Overtired

Christina interviews Jeff on the years he spent going back and forth to pre-war Iraq, and about his ill-fated post-war trip. Then it’s on to product placement in The White Lotus and, of course, Grapptitude. Sponsor Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today at Kolide.com/overtired. Mental Chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter. Join Khanh and Jules, people with mental illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily process of working towards mental chillness. Show Links Jeff on MSNBC in 2002 talking about a possible war with Iraq The Very Issue of Covert Action Quarterly that changed Jeff’s life Jeff reflecting on his time in Iraq eight years after the war: “The Baghdad I knew: Before and after the fall” Nintendo Switch Gaming Console Used by Fred Hechinger as Quinn Mossbacher in The White Lotus S01E02 “New Day” What game do you think Quinn played on his Switch before he stopped using electronics? iBinged iCarly – Quinton Reviews Rick Rubin’s series of interviews with John Frusciante on the Broken Record podcast Rick Rubin’s and Tyler, The Creator discuss Igor on the Broken Record podcast Grapptitude: Jeff: DevonThink Pro Christina: Typst Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript How Jeff Found Himself in Iraq (Again and Again) [00:00:00] Christina: You are [00:00:00] Jeffrey: ready, aren’t you? Oh, I’m doing [00:00:01] Christina: are ready. Yeah, I was gonna say, we’re already recording. So, and honestly, I don’t even want you to edit this out because this is just, this is, this is what happens when Brett isn’t here. [00:00:10] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:15] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren. Joined, joined by, uh, Jeff Severns Guntzel, former M MSNBC star, Jeff Severns Guntzel. Uh, gonna have that linked in in the show [00:00:26] Jeffrey: They gave Chris Hayes my spot. [00:00:28] Christina: I mean, honestly, you were robbed. Um, uh, because I, I, I really, I would’ve rather watched you with your indignant, um, like consternation at the prop wish guy. [00:00:41] Jeff’s Punk Rock to Iraq Origin Story [00:00:41] Jeffrey: I sent my co-hosts a video from 2003 in the lead up to the Iraq War. And I had been working with an anti-war organization and had been traveling back and forth to Iraq before that, before we knew there would ever even be any kind of war. Couldn’t even imagine. Um, and I [00:01:00] got to go on TV to be a person who has gone back and forth to Iraq and this was an MSNBC appearance that was so incredibly unsatisfying as those things I’m sure always are for anybody who truly cares about what they’re saying. [00:01:16] Jeffrey: It isn’t just doing it cuz it’s their job, you know, which is another kind of fun. Um, but you know, the thing that I, uh, we’ll, we’ll link to this, but as I look at that younger, younger me that like baby baby me, um, the two things I noticed that I still relate to is this sort of brooding. Stare a little bit down, but not all the way down. [00:01:41] Jeffrey: And then I’m sw, I’m swiveling back and forth in my chair. [00:01:47] Christina: That. [00:01:47] Jeffrey: it was so that, that stuff was so hard for me because the, you know, TV and radio wanted to talk about the politics of it and the [00:02:00] optics of it and all of that stuff. And like as someone who had been traveling back and forth to Iraq, primarily from 1998 to 2001, but then still worked for an organization that sent people to Iraq. [00:02:11] Jeffrey: Like, it was like, you couldn’t, this wasn’t a good sound bite, but like, I don’t want this war cuz I don’t want my friends to die. You know, like, [00:02:23] Christina: But you, but you were actually focused, you were actually concerned about the people on the ground, which is the part that people claim to care about, but it’s the thing that gets the least amount of attention. Like, you’ll have your one-off stories, you know, profiling this or that thing, and people will read it and like, oh, this is terrible, and move on. [00:02:37] Christina: But they, but, but, but it’s, it’s always framed in like the larger geopolitical terms, which on the one hand makes sense because I think if you had to focus on those smaller things, a, it would just be impossible to watch and, and impossible to even kind of grapple with who we are as humanity when we do these things, right. [00:02:58] Christina: So you have to, I think, take a big picture [00:03:00] approach if you’re going to talk about it at all, but, but B would also just be, is like, you know, If you’re not there, it, it, you know, it, it’s, it’s really hard to get those individual things out, but that is the price we pay. And now we are, um, the 20th anniversary was what, like two weeks ago. [00:03:21] Jeffrey: yeah. [00:03:23] Christina: Um, [00:03:24] Jeffrey: And we’re almost on the 20th anniversary of when I, when I arrived there after the invasion for my final trip there. I. [00:03:31] Christina: um, we might have talked about this before and if we did, I totally, I, I apologize for asking you again, but what was it like, how did you get into doing the work where you were going there? [00:03:42] Jeffrey: It’s a really. It’s a really funny, weird story. Um, so I had been in a punk rock band called The Freedom Fighters, which was not a terribly political band. Um, but our one political song we played in LA to a very small audience, and Zach de [00:04:00] Laco was in the audience from Rage Against the Machine. And we had this one kind of obtuse political song. [00:04:05] Jeffrey: And when it was over, it was a great song. When it was over, he screamed out in approval and it sounded just like a scream from the record. And I was just like, that’s pretty cool. That was kind of neat. It was like we sampled him. Um, anyway, so I was on this, I was in this punk rock band and I was, I had been sort of having like a political awakening since like age eight and. [00:04:31] Jeffrey: Somehow the years of being in bands and I, I, I worked in a lot of warehouses and dish washed and all this stuff. Like, I was starting to really feel the absence of something that felt truly meaningful to me as like how I spent my time. Um, and, and I was starting to think about leaving the band and just, I don’t know what, I didn’t know what, but the one thing it seemed like you could do is like, travel to places that have political relevance. [00:04:59] Jeffrey: And, [00:05:00] um, I had that kind of in my mind, but I didn’t have a high school diploma. I hadn’t gone to college at all. It was just like I had a good head on my shoulders, but like, I had to find ways of demonstrating that, which I didn’t really know. I was super shy. I barely looked adults in the eye in, in this period of time. [00:05:14] Jeffrey: But anyway, so we’re touring and we went to a news stand. Remember those lots of [00:05:19] Christina: vaguely, yeah. [00:05:21] Jeffrey: many magazines. [00:05:22] Christina: I love them so much. [00:05:24] Jeffrey: I bought a magazine called Covert Action Quarterly, which is an awesome name. It’s like a lefty magazine that’s traditionally looked at the covert work of United States agents, but also globally. [00:05:37] Jeffrey: I’d never heard of it. I was like, this is a badass title. And that’s the What was so great about newsstands, right, is you could just be like, what is that? I’m [00:05:45] Christina: Well, I was gonna say, you could like discover all these things. Like I, I, for me, um, I missed like a lot of, I guess, I mean there was like the, the news section of like the supermarket, but it wasn’t until I first went into like a Barnes and Noble that I got kind of like the equivalent, [00:05:59] Jeffrey: Right,[00:06:00] [00:06:00] Christina: know? [00:06:00] Jeffrey: right. Totally. Yeah, that’s, I mean, they still do that. Like I was in a Barnes Noble for the first time in a while, the other day, and there was a long run of magazines. The problem is magazines, the ones that have survived are they survived cuz they’re ad-based. And so you get these like just a million glossy magazines where every single, you know, headline and sub-headline is meant to serve the advertisers and it’s boring. [00:06:24] Jeffrey: And whereas in the olden days you would be like, what the fuck is Covert Action quarterly? So, [00:06:30] Christina: because you could have all kinds of classified ads and other things, like it didn’t just have to be the big glossies. You could, you know, like they were still advertising bases. Just the internet hadn’t, uh, completely either collapsed that form of, of revenue or, or changed it substantially, [00:06:44] Jeffrey: Yeah, and the distributors would take your little magazine cause they had a million big magazines. It wasn’t a big deal for them. Um, but, uh, but anyhow, since also called C A Q, it had a cover story about, um, about Iraq. And it was kind of a, this was, this would’ve been like [00:07:00] 1998. And so in 19 91, 7 years earlier, there was the Gulf War. [00:07:05] Jeffrey: I was 16 when that happened. Un unexplainable to me. I was fascinated and completely attached to that war. I would skip school to watch it on cnn and of course was like famously the first war to be broadcast. 24 hours, uh, seven days a week. Um, and I would watch it and when I couldn’t watch it, I would, you know, tape it on, set the VCR to tape it, and then I watch it later. [00:07:26] Jeffrey: And I wasn’t at all into. It wasn’t like a war fetish, it was like, oh my God, we’re the stuff that we normally do that we can’t see, we can see. It was just fascinating. And it’ll be a theme of my career, you know, like just like light in the dark corners. Like, oh, we can go over here and see what’s over here. [00:07:43] Jeffrey: And you could see this war and I mean, uh, highly sanitized version of the war, but you could see the war. Um, and I had been completely obsessed with it and then forgot about it. And this magazine was basically, it had a feature that was kind of telling the story of 1991 to present, and it was the [00:08:00] story of these economic sanctions that we had placed on Iraq with international support. [00:08:04] Jeffrey: And the, the way it basically went down is in the Gulf War, we very deliberately destroyed all of Iraq’s critical infrastructure with bombs, or most of it. With the idea that when the war was over, we would put economic sanctions on Iraq and Saddam Hussein would have to, uh, you know, kind of abide by those sanctions in order for us to allow him to import things, to fix water treatment plants, uh, phone exchanges, power plants, all that stuff. [00:08:33] Jeffrey: Um, and turned out sayings pretty stubborn. And, uh, the US is pretty stubborn. And so it just became this like, Like Cold War. Not Cold War. Cold War, but it wasn’t a hot war. Right. And people were still suffering. They, people were, I mean, what I was reading about in the, in Covert Action Quarterly was a Harvard study group that went to Iraq. [00:08:54] Jeffrey: And, uh, and they had gone because there were all of these reports coming out of the UN that [00:09:00] especially children and young and old people were suffering from the fact that there were these decrepit, um, totally out of date water treatment facilities held together with like duct tape and wire and, um, and that that meant there was a lot of dirty water going through the system and that meant that people were drinking it. [00:09:17] Jeffrey: And when you drinking, Bad water and you’re a kid or you’re elderly, it can really, really do damage. It can kill you. And there was a UNICEF report that came out that said 5,000 children under the age of five were dying every month that would not have otherwise been dying based on mortality statistics. [00:09:34] Jeffrey: And that this was entirely due to the fact that Iraq’s water system was what it was on the hospital system was what it was. So like you couldn’t, I had to bring in like medical journals for doctors because, because of the sanctions they couldn’t get mailed in. Um, so it was like a really serious thing. [00:09:49] Jeffrey: And so I’m reading this, I’m like, my God, I totally forgot about this place. And as it turns out, we’ve been doing far worse to it. In the last seven years than we did in the war itself. And, [00:10:00] um, and I learned in that magazine about an organization that was like sending delegations of activists to Iraq with bags of medicine and other things that aren’t allowed in, and doing it as an act of civil disobedience, which they could then use when they get back home as sort of a news hook and start and talk to people about the effects of the sanctions. [00:10:20] Jeffrey: So this movement was like, it grew out of nothing. And it was mostly, um, this one organization outta Chicago that was sending activists there. And then those activists were coming home and kind of doing some lobbying, but also, you know, talking to other activists groups or whatever, trying to make it an issue, which was really hard. [00:10:38] Jeffrey: And, uh, and so I saw the name of this organization that they, that they were in Chicago, that they sent people to Iraq. And there was this woman, Kathy Kelly, who led the organization. And I just thought, ah, I have friends in Chicago, it’d be cool to drive there and meet this woman. Um, and so I, I emailed her in the early days for me of email and said, I’d love to just meet you and [00:11:00] hear. [00:11:00] Jeffrey: You know, the work or whatever. I read about it in the, in covert action quarterly and uh, and she invited me out to Chicago. Turns out she runs this thing out of her house, which is, or her second floor of a house that she rents in Chicago. Uh, in the back room of this house was her father who was bedridden and, and barely verbal. [00:11:21] Jeffrey: And in the midway between the living room and where her father was in the kitchen was, was like a, a bay of like five PCs and people at each one of the PCs doing just kind of clickety, clacking away and. She invited me to sit down in the living room, and we talked for like two hours. And at the end of it, she was like, so do you wanna go to Iraq? [00:11:42] Jeffrey: And I totally didn’t see that coming. And, but at the same time, I mean, they were just sending activists, not, I don’t mean just, but I mean like, you know, like everyone, anyone can be an activist and go like, as long as you decide you are. And, uh, I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to go. And so in 1998, [00:12:00] I, um, quit my band. [00:12:01] Jeffrey: We had like one final show scheduled for after my trip to Iraq, but I, I went to Iraq having only ever been to Jamaica out of the country. Um, and it was the most bizarre, hard left turn I can possibly imagine. And it, and I can trace everything that’s true in my life today and good in my life today. Back to Kathy’s decision to be like, man, you seem like a good guy. [00:12:28] Jeffrey: You wanna go to Iraq. And, uh, and so the idea was the whole like premise of these trips was like five or six people go, you bring all this stuff that’s banned by sanctions, you do a press conference. We had a letter from the Treasury department saying like, anybody who travels to Iraq, uh, risks a, it was like a million dollars and 12 years in jail. [00:12:46] Jeffrey: That was like the, the kind of the scare letter. And so we would hold a press conference in the US and say, you know, here’s the letter, here’s what we’ve been, you know, thank you for the clarity of your warning, and we’re going anyway because we believed da da da da. And so we would go and then we’d hold another pro [00:13:00] press conference once we were in Baghdad at a hospital usually. [00:13:03] Jeffrey: Um, and um, I came home from that trip. It was about two weeks trip. I came home and like, this is all I wanted to do. Like, it’s all I could think about. And so I, I actually ended up moving in to Kathy’s apartment. One other employee of the place was already living there. Her apartment was this amazing, just sort of like grand central station of eccentric characters. [00:13:24] Jeffrey: Um, and so, I started working, started to help organizing these things. Then pretty soon I was like, I really wanna go back and lead a delegation and maybe I could live there and just welcome delegations. And what ended up happening was like, between that trip in October of 98 and August of 2001, so like one, I mean just days actually before the nine 11 attacks, I made like 10 or 11 trips, um, to Iraq, always through Iman Jordan. [00:13:53] Jeffrey: In fact, in, I’ve probably said this in the podcast, but this impossible to explain how this ended up being true. [00:14:00] Um, but I, I came through Chicago O’Hare having. Ben to Iraq in August of 2001, carrying a duffle bag of Iraqi money and fireworks. And they were like, welcome back. [00:14:17] Christina: Fun. Hope you had a good time. [00:14:19] Jeffrey: I mean, like a duffle bag full of bound Iraqi money because the, the like economy was so shattered that I could trade a hundred dollars for a backpack full of bills, you know? Um, so yeah. I always tell people that like, you know how different it was before, like yeah, we didn’t have to date cover our shoes and all that shit, but like, [00:14:39] Christina: But no, but, but it was really that different. No, that’s so interesting. Well, no, but, so this is amazing. So basically radio against the machine was at one of your, you know, concerts, screamed [00:14:49] Jeffrey: tour as when I found that [00:14:50] Christina: Yeah. Screamed out. Then like you, you see this magazine, you’re like, I wanna do that. You reach out, you wound up meeting somebody involved in this organization and it changes your whole life.[00:15:00] [00:15:00] Jeffrey: Yeah. And I mean, so, and there’s a direct line to journalism. So like, I did that, I did that work for quite a while, but at the end of that organization’s work, at least when I was there, we started actually being able to, like, I took a journalist from Rolling Stone to Iraq, right? Like his piece ended up getting spiked from Rolling Stone and published in Mother Jones for some reason. [00:15:20] Jeffrey: But like, anyway, this guy, Chuck Sud, who had also covered the, the Warren Yugoslavia in like the worst, most awful way. Um, I, so I took a journalist, I took editors, I took like an AP journalist, I took congress, congressional staffers, right? Like, so all of a sudden, like I’m not just rolling around with like other dirty hippies like [00:15:41] Christina: No, no, no, no. Because at this point now, now you’re the dirty hippie who can like, show them stuff because they, because, because you know, now you can like show like the, even the Rolling Stone guy by 1998, you know, that’s, he, he’s in a suit. He’s getting paid real well, you know, got paid a nice KFI and got another nice p fee from, from, uh, from [00:16:00] Mother Jones, right? [00:16:00] Christina: Like, you know, you, you’re take, you’re, you’re taking like, you know, these like high on the hog kind of people to show them this is what’s actually happening on the ground because you wanna help promote, like your mission of the organization, of, of, hey, this is what the sanctions have, have done. This is what the impact of, of what’s happening here is. [00:16:17] Christina: And, and, um, and then they’re like, well, this is great that I have, uh, an American and maybe I won’t get shot now, or, or, or whatever, you know? Um, because I, because I don’t speak Farsi and I’m not gonna like, like, know where to get started on anything. [00:16:33] Jeffrey: Yeah. No Arabic, nobody spoke Arabic like I spoke enough to order my food. The thing, and the thing is, I probably would’ve learned much more Arabic, but because um, Americans were not coming to Iraq cuz it was illegal. Um, everyone wanted to practice their English, you know? And that was cool cuz. [00:16:53] Jeffrey: Traditionally terrible at learning languages. So it was like kind of nice actually to have that going on. But, but yeah, I [00:17:00] mean, it’s like, um, and, and the process of taking journalists started to change me because I really believe in and believed in our mission as an activist organization doing these fact-finding mis missions. [00:17:13] Jeffrey: But what I often found with people who came along is that they came along with the story they were gonna find already in their mind. [00:17:20] Christina: Of course. [00:17:21] Jeffrey: And of course, you could outline what the story was, but you don’t actually know. And when you, when you come with the story in mind, you’re rigid and you’re not open, you’re not porous for new information. [00:17:33] Christina: no. In, if anything, like you’re, you’re looking for anything that fits in with that pattern, [00:17:36] Jeffrey: Yes. Yeah, totally. And like one of the things that started, there were two journalists that I went with that that impacted the rest of my life. So the first was Chuck Sud, who was this totally. Hard Scrabble. I mean, this guy in doing his work in Yugoslavia, in rushing to a story, had run over and killed a kid with his [00:18:00] motorcycle. [00:18:00] Jeffrey: I mean, he just, in addition to having seen some of the worst things in the world, he, he was dealing with this shit, right, and he was, He was hard. I mean, it was like, he was awesome. He was funny. He’s the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. But he, what, what he did that was so helpful is, you know, as an activist organization basically saying, Hey, this, these sanctions are killing the vulnerable. [00:18:23] Jeffrey: The, the thing that those, um, delegations would typically do is go from hospital to hospital to hospital. But the problem is if you haven’t really thought through how you’re going to be in those places, then you could do a lot of damage. And so people, I, I had to pull people out of hospital rooms because they would go in with the doctor and there’d be a woman in her child. [00:18:43] Jeffrey: And her child was like emaciated. It was like dying as it looked awful. Right. And, and this is way before I was a parent, so it would’ve hit a whole different way had I been a parent. But like the doctor. Is telling you all sorts of things in English about this kid and maybe about this mom. In most cases, [00:19:00] they did not speak English and so they’re watching this doctor say all kinds of words to us and, and some people are starting to cry and shaking their head and all that stuff and it’s like, Hey, this woman doesn’t know what’s going on. [00:19:13] Jeffrey: Like for all we know, this doctor has been a shit doctor and has not said anything about prognosis or anything like that because he doesn’t, maybe he just never developed a language for having that kind of relationship with a patient. You never know. Or maybe he’s amazing, but like let’s just assume that she is under inform, like anybody sitting in a hospital ever, right? [00:19:31] Jeffrey: You cannot start crying and shaking your head because it is going to cause a response in her. It might be. And it might be fear and it might be sadness, it might be all kinds of things that we don’t even have the right to try to understand, cuz we’re not her. We’re not there. And, and so I went from that kind of thing where I would kind of pull people out to like then training people about [00:19:54] Christina: So, so, so you would see people, so, so people would actually cry like in the room, like they would. [00:19:58] Jeffrey: and shake their head. [00:20:00] That’s the part that was actually, they would look at the, the mother and just make a contact. Well-meaning, of course, but intentions as we know are not magic. Especially when there’s a language barrier in a and in a, in a fascist state where you don’t trust anything anyhow. Right. [00:20:15] Jeffrey: Like, um, and so eventually I, I just, I really wanted to just stop going to so many hospitals cause it just felt like we know this story and I don’t know that we do, I don’t think we do more good than bad when we go, you [00:20:28] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, um, at, at, at a certain point, once you started bringing people, did you notice that like the stories all stayed the same? Was that [00:20:37] Jeffrey: Well, yeah. And sometimes the stories [00:20:39] Christina: but like, was that maybe what encouraged you to, to maybe, um, get into journalism? [00:20:44] Jeffrey: sort of, I mean, the what, the, what happened that was so disturbing. I mean, actually the first press conference I was part of on my first trip, we were out in front of a hospital and a man and a woman as the, as the like AP cameras were rolling. Um, a man and a woman came out [00:21:00] of the door behind us with a, what looked like. [00:21:03] Jeffrey: Baby covered in a blanket and they were crying and they were saying something, I don’t know what, and they got into a Jeep and just like sped off and the cameras followed it. And it was like, and, and what we came to realize as we kind of reflected on is that was very possibly not actually a, a, a dead child. [00:21:21] Jeffrey: Like that was very possibly a, just like a medium manipulation, you know? Um, and that was like my first trip, my first day. And that, that alone, Changed me for a long time was just like trying to think about why it might have been that that happened and how they may have been made to do that. Um, you know, and they may have had no choice whatsoever, and maybe that was an actual child. [00:21:43] Jeffrey: I mean, it’s not to get super disturbing, but like, it’s like it’s a dictatorship, right? So like, you never know what’s true. You never know what’s true. And, and so anyway, so like, so it’s, it’s like two things acting now that I think about it. On the one hand, you come with a, with a, with a predetermined story, on the other hand, [00:22:00] you don’t know what’s true. [00:22:02] Jeffrey: And there’s this third part where you’ve gotta figure out a way to see things that might be true so that you can tell a more nuanced story. It’s a fucking mess. But like the thing that Chuck Sutich did for me that was so great is we. Couple days of just hard interviews in hard places, um, the way that a journalist like him would do. [00:22:22] Jeffrey: And um, and then he said to me one morning we were roommates, he would sing Delia by Johnny Cash in the shower. Um, and one morning he goes, we’re not going to any hospitals today. I was like, okay, what are we doing? He’s like, we’re going to the museum. And he’s like, this place is not just victims. Like this place is a country full of living, breathing hearts, beating people. [00:22:48] Jeffrey: It’s an incredible culture. It’s not, the story is not just one of victimhood. And we do everybody a disservice by insisting that that’s how you have to receive it. And. That [00:23:00] was huge for me and, uh, just absolutely huge. And the second thing that made a big difference for me in getting into journalism was that I traveled with an editor for a small newspaper in Kansas, and, um, he and I got along so, so well, and he, he kind of became a mentor to me even after that trip and told me like, you should be a journalist. [00:23:21] Jeffrey: Um, that’s like, that’s how your head works. And, and so, so when the invasion happened, I called him about a weekend and I said, I can’t stand it anymore, Tom. I need to go over there and said, I know I can’t be a journalist. Exactly, but I also know that. I know a lot about what it was and am better situated to see what it is. [00:23:50] Jeffrey: Um, and to be frank, and maybe this is the story I want to connect with the people I love and care about and, and find out what’s [00:24:00] happened for them since this war began. And this was a very different time in journalism because this editor of a small newspaper said, give me 15 minutes, and then called me back and he said, you got an interpreter. [00:24:13] Jeffrey: And I had a friend, a Palestinian Masen, uh, Palestinian friend who lived in east Jerusalem. Um, and we had been, we’d already traveled to a Iraq together. And so I’m like, yeah, I can get Ma Hassan. And he is like, all right, get a satellite phone and buy your tickets. Um, I’m sending you to a rock, which was just like such a kindness. [00:24:34] Jeffrey: Um, I mean, he was thinking of his paper, but it was still a kindness and he, and he knew I, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:24:41] Christina: budgets for it then, right? Like it, that, that’s, that’s, that’s the biggest difference. [00:24:45] Jeffrey: Yeah. In 15 minutes he was like, grab an interpreter, get hurt of Baghdad, get yourself to Baghdad. Get a satellite phone, which is not cheap. I mean, you rent them, but like, oh my God, not cheap by the minute. [00:24:57] Jeffrey: And, uh, and then go find, go [00:25:00] find a hotel, which was, I went to the hotel I had always stayed at, and there had always been this African gray parrot in the, uh, restaurant. And one of the restaurant workers who I’d come to know really well had trained. Um, to make, uh, gun sounds, but also if you made gun sounds to duck, it would duck in all these directions. [00:25:20] Jeffrey: It was amazing. And so I, I roll out to Baghdad, there’s fucking Americans everywhere. Uh, after all of my time there being one of five Americans in the country at a time, right? Like I was definitely not novel anymore. Um, and in the lobby of the hotel, there were soldiers playing with that bird. And when I went to the desk and talked to a friend there, the prices, the hotel was full. [00:25:44] Jeffrey: Anyhow, the prices were so high because they were rightly bulking the American military. Cause we didn’t have like a, a proper base yet. So it’s like soldiers are distinct. I mean, this is like unbelievable to think about because it became so dangerous to be a soldier there. But at this point you [00:26:00] just saw ’em walking around, they were like chilling in the restaurants, whatever. [00:26:04] Jeffrey: In fact, the what caused me to leave. This place. Um, after st. So I did find a hotel, by the way, which was in the lobby. They had actually welded in this, um, Florida ceiling grate with a door in it, and they would lock you into the hotel at the end of each night, um, because there had been looting and other stuff. [00:26:24] Jeffrey: And so it, it’s just like, and they had covered, they had, they had stacked bricks outside all the windows. Um, it was just, it was a trip. But anyway, um, so why I ended up leaving, cuz I intended to stay for a while, but I left only after two weeks was I went to my favorite restaurant and I was sitting in a booth with Ma Mosen and my friend Sak, who’s Iraqi and across the restaurant were three booths full of American soldiers. [00:26:54] Jeffrey: Their two Humvees took up like six spots in the restaurant in front, in the, in the parking, [00:27:00] in the parking, uh, lot area and. I had just returned. I was there with an Iraqi and a woman soldier came to our table after staring at us for a while, extended her hand and said, welcome to Iraq. And it’s like there aren’t many better metaphors to our, the way, like where our head was at as a country and as a military. [00:27:27] Jeffrey: When we got to Iraq, like, who are you saying welcome to me? Who’s been here a million fucking times? This guy who’s lived here his whole life, this woman who’s been here a million times, like, welcome. What the fuck are you talking about? And so I got so distracted by watching her in the soldiers that I ate a kebab of mostly raw chicken in a restaurant that had been having power outages on and off like everybody else for a week. [00:27:52] Jeffrey: And I got salmon. And, uh, I was shitting blood for a week, maybe more two weeks [00:28:00] I think. And uh, it was best for me to go home. [00:28:04] Christina: And so and so, so you ended up leaving right before it would’ve been very difficult for you to leave, [00:28:11] Jeffrey: actually, yeah. Well here’s what’s really wild is, I mean, it’s awful, but in my last days there, maybe in my last day or second to last day, there was a bridge outside my window. I didn’t see this, but it was close to where I was. And at that bridge was a soldier just chilling cuz soldiers were just chilling everywhere. [00:28:31] Jeffrey: They were just like lounging on their tanks. There weren’t a lot of them in the first place. Like I expected many more. I mean, we saw how that ended up being not a great thing, even though I was opposed to the invasion itself. They’re lounging talking to kids, talking to people, whatever. One of these days, a guy walks up to a soldier on a bridge from behind and shoots him in the back of the head. [00:28:53] Jeffrey: And from that point on, it was a slow march to just total [00:29:00] resistance, uh, to the American occupation. But like, that was like this, like canary in the coal mine moment. And, and I’ve never been back. And, and I, that that sucks. But it’s going back means, I mean, I said this in a recent episode where it’s like, I don’t feel like I can go back without causing harm to the people I would wanna see. [00:29:24] Jeffrey: So [00:29:25] Christina: Which. [00:29:26] Jeffrey: self-indulgent. [00:29:27] Christina: Yeah. No, I mean, and, and that’s, that’s really, really hard. Um, okay. That actually, I loved that. I, I loved that entire segment. Um, there’s no good way to now go into a sponsor read, but we are at that time and we need to do a sponsor read. I will say, I think that counted as Mental health corner, but also as like [00:29:45] Jeffrey: Yeah. Right, [00:29:45] Christina: one another segment that was actually, I, but, but, but, but I love that whole thing. [00:29:50] Christina: I love like, I mean, terrible to kind of hear about, you know, that the end of that experience, but to see how you taken a chance and, and how old were you? I guess you [00:30:00] were, how old were you when you, when you first started getting, get involved with this? In 98. How old were you in 98? You were like 21, [00:30:07] Jeffrey: Uh two. Yeah. [00:30:09] Christina: So 20, 22, 23. [00:30:11] Christina: So just amazing. Um, all right. I did just because. [00:30:17] Jeffrey: Let’s hit it. [00:30:18] Sponsor: Kolide [00:30:18] Christina: All right. Our, our, uh, show this week is brought to you by Collide. Our sponsor, collide has some big news. If you’re an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance. How? Well, if a device is not compliant, the user can’t log in to your cloud apps until they fix the problem. [00:30:37] Christina: It’s that simple. So Collide Patch is one of the major holes in zero trust architecture, which is device compliance. And without collide, it struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OS and browser up to date. You know, like Mac OS just released an update this week and, you know, patch Tuesday for Windows and unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing there to stop them.[00:31:00] [00:31:00] Christina: Collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with Okta. The moment collide agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it. And if they don’t fix the problem within a set time, they’re blocked. [00:31:16] Christina: They’re blocked. Collide method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. You can visit collide.com/ Overtired to learn more or book a demo. That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired collide.com/ Overtired. [00:31:38] Promo Swap: Mental Chillness [00:31:38] Jeffrey: Boom. All right. We’ve been talking about this podcast a few episodes now, the Mental Chillness podcast. If you are looking for more mental health podcasts, can you have too many? Probably. But if you’re looking for more mental, chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter. It’s led by Khan and Jules, two people with mental [00:32:00] illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily processes of working towards mental chillness. [00:32:07] Jeffrey: Coming from childhood environments that were not open about mental wellbeing and emotional self-regulation, Khan and Jules are opening up the conversations of the everyday struggles of dealing with a d h. Depression and anxiety, epilepsy and growing into adulthood. They share tips and tricks of emotional awareness from their personal experiences and how they hold themselves accountable through personal bs. [00:32:33] Jeffrey: Personal bs. That’d be a good book. Title. [00:32:37] Christina: I like it. [00:32:38] Jeffrey: bs and the way they know how to do it best is with humor, and you could keep up with them on any podcast platform and the YouTube channel. Mental Chillness for Full Video Chillness contents. Thank you. Mental Chillness. [00:32:53] Christina: Thank you very much. [00:32:54] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. [00:32:56] Christina: All right. So, um, I was just gonna say, okay, it’s [00:33:00] just to kind of back up a little bit before we kind of got into like the, the Christina and Jeff interview each other thing, and I really like that. I’m, I loved hearing [00:33:06] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s fun. [00:33:07] Christina: your journey into this, and, and it’s so interesting. You should write a book. [00:33:10] Christina: You really should. Um, [00:33:12] Jeffrey: that and I don’t, I just don’t know how to I’ve tried. Go ahead [00:33:18] Christina’s book title was waaaay better! [00:33:18] Christina: well, we, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll think on it. You might just need somebody else to help you frame it because, but there is a book in here, like, I know it, there’s a book in here. Like, I know that I have some sort of memoir at some point. Um, and, and I, I know the angles that would be sellable, but those aren’t necessarily the ones I wanna do. [00:33:31] Christina: And then I, I, I, I don’t know, there was one that would’ve been really good. And then s I waited too long and someone else stole my title and, uh, or close enough to my title. My ti my title was slightly better. And so that sucks, uh, because the title I had was fucking perfect. Um, [00:33:49] Jeffrey: You can’t say it Kenya, cuz you, [00:33:50] Christina: Yeah, no, I can, I can because it’s basically been stolen and, and that book is coming out at some point. [00:33:55] Christina: And, uh, I’m not even gonna read it because I’m so mad. I’m, I’m mad at myself to be clear, because I had [00:34:00] years to sit on this and to pitch this and I didn’t, um, how to be a woman on the internet. [00:34:05] Jeffrey: Oh, that’s a great title. [00:34:07] Christina: Right, [00:34:08] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Wait, what’s the one that’s close? [00:34:13] Christina: How to be a woman online is coming out. That’s not as good. Uh, I’m gonna be honest. It’s not as [00:34:18] Jeffrey: Yeah. It needs the hardness of the word [00:34:21] Christina: it does. It does. But regardless, I can’t now pitch a book called How to Be a Woman on the Internet when a book was sold called How to Be a Woman Online. [00:34:30] Jeffrey: What about how to be a woman on the worldwide web? [00:34:32] Christina: Ha But I wanted it to be like, I wanted to be like part memoir, part kind of like essay kind of thing about like, you know, Like, I even knew how I was gonna open it. [00:34:42] Christina: I just, I, I was afraid to pitch, honestly. That’s the, that’s the real [00:34:45] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always the, yeah. Afraid to [00:34:48] Christina: but like, I, I was afraid to like, do, do the, you know, send out stuff and, and to send out like the, the agent, you know, letters and other stuff. I was afraid to pitch. I was afraid of getting turned down. Um, so I didn’t do it. [00:34:57] Christina: Which sucks because [00:35:00] no offense to, to the how to be woman online thing, but if that’s the title that you chose, when the much better one is right there on the cusp of what you’re doing. I don’t have super high hopes for the book. I know that’s unfair and part of that is sour grapes on my part. And, but, but it is. [00:35:14] Christina: But, but I said what I said, I’m just [00:35:17] Jeffrey: Do you think it’s one of those things? [00:35:19] Christina: Sorry, go [00:35:19] Jeffrey: No, go ahead. Go ahead. [00:35:20] Christina: No, I was just gonna say what an objectively better title is right there. I’m gonna immediately be judgemental of you for not picking it as angry as I still am at myself. [00:35:29] Nintendo and The White Lotus [00:35:29] Jeffrey: What if it’s, you know, here’s what I wonder. So I was, I’m watching the White Lotus for the first time. Um, and yeah, there’s a point in the like third episode where the kid, uh, loses his switch, his Nintendo switch, and, um, when he comes home and is yelling about it, he yells, I lost my Nintendo. And I thought that’s not what he would’ve said. [00:35:49] Jeffrey: But then I realized someone probably edited that to be like, no, no, you can’t say Switch. Doesn’t make sense. No one knows what that is. They got a Nintendo where everyone knows Nintendo. Just like when he was playing it, he basically was playing Smash [00:36:00] Brothers based on his like, smash Bros. But like, they were literally just giving occasional sounds from Mario, but not like Mario’s fighting. [00:36:07] Jeffrey: It was, it’s, it’s funny, it’s funny to me at this point in the history of gaming that there, that those things can happen, right? [00:36:15] Christina: I agree. I agree. Although it’s, it’s, it’s fu it’s funny cuz I wonder how much of that as like a post-production rights thing, cuz Nintendo is like notoriously, you know, weird about that stuff. Right. And so, um, There might have been like a que because a, you have like the actual paid product placement, which is usually not people saying the, the, the product name. [00:36:39] Christina: And it’s, it’s funny because people think that, oh, you have to cover up the Apple logo. No you don’t. It’s just they cover it up because they’re not getting paid to show it. That’s typically what happens. You can show the brand logos all you want, as long as you’re not doing something derogatory with the product. [00:36:52] Christina: The companies don’t care. And even then you could argue it’s like a fair use thing unless it’s the subject of what you’re doing, right. Like, like that it’s, it’s a very clear [00:37:00] thing. But most TV shows and things don’t want to give free publicity. Um, H B O and things like that are different cuz they wanna go for the realism. [00:37:10] Christina: But you know, apple does do product placement in a number of things and be, even before Apple tv. Like you could, you could see that happening places where you’re like, wow, every single person has an iPhone or an iMac or this or that. And in just this like stunning way that just doesn’t, and you know, that it’s, it’s, it’s promotional consideration. [00:37:28] Christina: It’s not necessarily a product placement. But I do wonder, like Nintendo being as weird as they are, if they would be a thing where they’re like, okay, we can use the switch because this is enough of a known thing, but if we use the smash music, we have to clear that and Nintendo’s not going to clear it for this show. [00:37:44] Jeffrey: right, right, right. Yeah. Which is crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have been a big deal at the time, but it is still an H B O show. But yeah, I [00:37:50] Christina: Well, I mean, it’s white Lotus, I mean, like, let’s listen to the subject matter. That’s not gonna be like a, a, I mean, Nintendo is, they’re, they’re freaks anyway. Like, like, like, like there are people who, like, they [00:38:00] send take down notes to YouTubers who are literally doing nothing but promoting their thing. [00:38:04] Christina: And they’re like, no, we don’t like game streams. Why? [00:38:07] Jeffrey: guess it’s kind of in a way, you’ve, you’ve flipped me to the point where I feel like it’s amazing that they let the switch be there at [00:38:15] Christina: Uh, well that’s kind of how I was feeling when you were talking about it. I, that, that, it’s so funny cuz that was my first thing. I was like, shit, I, I’m, I’m actually impressed that they even like didn’t, because you do see, sometimes they’ll have like fake devices and fake things, but again, that’s usually not because you legally have to, but because they don’t wanna get free publicity to stuff. [00:38:32] In praise of deep dives [00:38:32] Christina: Um, but, um, like I, I did this deep dive a few months ago where there’s, there’s this guy Quentin, reviews on YouTube who does like these exhaustive, like multi-hour videos. And he’s done like this mini, mini, mini, mini, mini hour like digression into iCarly and Victorious. And he’s done the first half of, of, of, uh, salmon Kat, which was the, the spinoff of the two [00:39:00] shows with two of the characters. [00:39:01] Christina: And that the first part is five and a half hours. [00:39:05] Jeffrey: Wow. Uh, I [00:39:07] Christina: Um, I mean, I’m talking about like, like, like there’s like an eight hour iCarly video, like there, and there are several of them. Like, and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve watched them and, and so I learned more about like the Nickelodeon like universe of, of, of shows and like the, uh, this particular like universe of like, they, they created this, um, at this pear company to be a stand-in for Apple and they have all these pair devices like the, you know, pear pad and the pone and the, you know, like, uh, like yeah, exactly. [00:39:38] Christina: But, but they actually like created like it’s all lives in universe. It’s actually kind of funny. I’ve, I’ve gotta be honest, it is sort of clever to, to see that stuff. I’m like, okay, you know what? I don’t, I don’t hate that. That’s actually, if you’re going to like, have a commitment to a bit that, that’s interesting. [00:39:53] Christina: But, um, But yeah, you know, that that was just a Nickelodeon being like, oh no, we are not giving, you [00:40:00] know, Android or, or, or Apple or, or whoever, Motorola or whatever, Samsung, whatever. We’re not giving them any free publicity. We’ll just have plastic things cuz we’re just gonna be, you know, putting the green screen on this in, in po in post production. [00:40:13] Christina: Anyway, [00:40:14] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah, totally. That’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s interesting. I, you know, it’s interesting you said this, this five hour, uh, uh, digression. I was actually, it was, I had a topic kicking around in my mind about like how, what, what things we are able to listen to ad nauseum. Is that what I would say? [00:40:35] Jeffrey: Like deep dives, like, cuz I, I just got to do it. Something that like, I don’t know anybody could understand this. I listened to, so Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin has this podcast, uh, the name of [00:40:46] Christina: and you’re talking about music producer Rick Ruben, I’m assuming. [00:40:48] Jeffrey: Yes. Music producer, Rick Rubin. Um, and it’s not always him. It’s, he does it with Malcolm Gladwell, but I don’t find Malcolm Gladwell a really interesting music interviewer where [00:41:00] obviously Rick Ruben is. [00:41:01] Jeffrey: Um, and Rick Ruben did this series of interviews. It’s. Four one hour interviews with John fue, the guitars Onaga King guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers an hour with flea bass player, of course, uh, an hour with Anthony Kiis and an Hour with Chad Smith. So each of the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers a band that like I loved in a, in a Time, but I’m, I can’t, I can’t find the hook in their music now that I found in like Blood Sugar, sex Magic, which is just an incredible record. [00:41:35] Christina: Incredible record. You know what, it was also a great record though. I’m gonna briefly like, uh, digress you for just a second, California ation. [00:41:41] Jeffrey: so I have, I agree. And in fact, so here, so here’s actually, it’s walked right in the, what happened to me. So first of all, I could listen to. 4, 5, 6, 7 hours of over in a week of interviews with these guys. In part because I love listening to people talk about music in depth because I [00:42:00] was in bands and I love music, but also because at a time in my life I really loved this band and actually they had a huge impact of about how I, this is kind of interesting, like as like sort of misogynistic as they could be both in footage of the band and in the music. [00:42:15] Jeffrey: Like I, there was this documentary I watched over and over again that was the making of blood sugar, sex magic back in like 91, 92 with Rick Rubin. And the way that those, especially Anthony Kiedis and Flea, I feel so just don’t hate me for talking about these guys as much as I’m about to. The way that they, the way that they talked about their relationship with one another and the relationship with music was. [00:42:41] Jeffrey: Highly feminine in, in terms of like what kind of energy I had around me with bands and really connected with me. And like they would, I mean, they loved each other and they would talk about things about the beauty of music. It was actually kinda hard music, but they would talk about the beauty of it or they would just use words that weren’t being [00:43:00] used by the people around me to describe either friendships or music. [00:43:03] Jeffrey: And I. Altered me forever. Like, it, it helped ease me into a place that I knew I’d be more comfortable anyhow, and, and is where I’m at to this day. Like the way that I exclaim about music is, is still, IM impacted by the way that they exclaimed about music in those days. So I think part of it was, I was, I was looking for that and totally found it. [00:43:24] Jeffrey: Like it’s, I love listening to these guys talk way more than I love listening to them. Um, but to your point, I wanted just one other, an album to care about after all this, right? And I started going through ’em and I was like, oh, that California Cajun’s pretty good record. [00:43:39] Christina: It’s a [00:43:39] Jeffrey: And it’s really the, it’s the follow up to blood sugar, sex magic. [00:43:43] Jeffrey: Because Dave Navarro was the guitar player in between [00:43:46] Christina: Yes. Exactly. And, and look, Dave Navarro was great in his bands. He was not great in the chili peppers, [00:43:51] Jeffrey: I was so sad. I I, I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers on that tour in Lollapalooza too, and he was a guitar player. I was so bummed cuz that John Fian is a, is [00:44:00] a goddamn prodigy [00:44:01] Christina: I saw [00:44:02] Jeffrey: or was at [00:44:02] Christina: some, I saw, I saw them at some festival during the California kitchen, um, uh, era. And, and I loved, you know, I, I was, I was much younger, but I, I loved, you know, blood, uh, sugar, sex magic and, and, and, you know, great songs. And, and that was like their breakthrough. And, and, and I loved the behind the music. [00:44:20] Christina: And then, which actually came out, I don’t think it was even tied to Californian cation. I think it was like a year earlier. Weirdly enough, like I don’t think it was actually tied, cuz usually they would time the, the, the behind the musics to like a new album release or, or, or some other sort of moment. [00:44:34] Christina: Right. Which, which makes sense. Um, at the time I didn’t know that, but now of course I do. Um, but as a kid, I didn’t know that. But then like California Cation, like it came out that summer, summer of 99 and which was a great summer for music. Um, and you know, like, like Peak, peak peak CD sales and that, that album just, I still listened to it like that to me. [00:44:57] Christina: Like it had great, great [00:45:00] singles and, but, but all the, all, all the songs were like, you know, just like it hits. It’s a really good album. [00:45:10] Jeffrey: Yeah. Oh, it’s amazing. And, and it’s, it’s, I didn’t realize that the relationship with Rick Rubin just went on and on for them. Um, and Broken Record is the name of the podcast I just [00:45:20] Christina: Broken record. [00:45:20] Jeffrey: Um, yeah. And yeah, it’s just like, it’s, yeah. Anyway, so for me, like I can listen to people talk about music forever and just to, to, to say one other amazing episode is his interview with Tyler, the creator after Igor came out. [00:45:34] Jeffrey: Um, what a, what a [00:45:36] Christina: Tyler, the creator. [00:45:37] Jeffrey: what a charming person who just, he has the nicest way of loving his music so much and, uh, and, and unselfconsciously, but also not arrogantly talking about it. And Igor is amazing. That album’s amazing. I got into it through my teenager. Um, anyway, so for you. [00:45:55] Christina: know this. Cuz I, I like, I like Rick Rubin a lot. Uh, I, you know, I’ve obviously, you know, like [00:46:00] Def Jam is like massively influential in, in everything, but I think just as a producer, like he’s just, he’s incredible. And it’s funny because I probably did learn who he was probably from behind the music. [00:46:10] Christina: Um, or, or [00:46:11] Jeffrey: yeah. Sure. [00:46:12] Christina: types of things like that, you know, like, which I wonder, I guess today it is YouTube, like YouTube documentaries and podcasts. But I do like wonder like how kids today are getting that kind of information. Because on the one hand we have more sources than ever. But on the other hand, you don’t have these like, well produced in the sense that there’s like a team behind them. [00:46:30] Christina: Like you have individuals who will do documentaries and and stuff on YouTube, which might be very interesting and are good, but it’s not the same as when you have a production crew and paid researchers and people who can [00:46:43] Jeffrey: Well, it’s usually, yeah, [00:46:46] Christina: It’s just not the [00:46:47] Jeffrey: like repurposed. It’s repurposed content and if you’ve got a gift for editing, that’s great, and if not, it’s a drag. [00:46:53] Christina: Right, right. Like, like, like, like the, um, the, the, the kid who, you know, did like the extensive, like ridiculous, like, [00:47:00] you know, in-depth looks and analyses of like the, the iCarly universe. [00:47:05] Christina: Like he, you know, is even limited in terms of like, uh, what type of clips he can show because of copyright claims and this and that. And, and he’s done some original research, which is, which is interesting. But again, it’s not the same thing as if, you know, like the E two Hollywood story was still being made or behind the music or like those other types of things where you have a licensing group, like, it, you, it, it’s an office who contacts people and, and gets what deals with rights issues. [00:47:30] Christina: And, you know, it’s not that expensive, but it’s more expensive than what YouTubers could do. Um, you know, I mean it why I so prefer to watch Dateline. There are a lot of really good true crime, like YouTube things, and some of them are really interesting and the analysis is good, but I would much rather watch Dateline. [00:47:45] Christina: Why? Because there’s just a level of polish there that’s just better. [00:47:49] Jeffrey: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. [00:47:50] Christina: mean? Like, it’s just better. It’s, it’s just better. But, but I, but I’m glad we have podcasts like that. But I do wonder, and this is just my diversion, my, my digression. I know we gotta get into [00:48:00] aptitude and then you gotta go. [00:48:01] Christina: Um, like how, how kids today are like discovering this sort of historical stuff. I guess it’s YouTube, but I, I feel like, I feel like it’s actually, I, I hate being like, oh, it was better in my day, but I feel like it actually was [00:48:14] Jeffrey: yeah, for my teenage boys, I mean, they go deep dives in YouTube. I mean, it’s, I mean, and, and they come out of it with good shit. I couldn’t watch those things all the way through the ones that I see them watching, but like, man, they’re, they’re getting good information. [00:48:29] Christina: No, no, and it’s nothing, not getting it. I just wonder. I’m just like, but, but it’s not as, you know what I mean? But it’s like, it’s not as good. It’s like Wikipedia. It’s [00:48:36] Jeffrey: and there’s not as, [00:48:37] Christina: but it’s not the same, it’s not as good as Karta or Encyclopedia Britannica was. [00:48:42] Jeffrey: Yeah. And even if, uh, every media organization’s fired all it’s fact checkers, you still got a better chance at a pretty factual thing sometimes in the [00:48:49] Christina: Totally, totally. [00:48:50] Jeffrey: go wrong, they can go wrong, and then, and without, I mean, you know, I used, this is short, but I used to be an editor at New Reader Magazine and the purpose of that [00:49:00] magazine was really pre-internet in a way. [00:49:02] Jeffrey: It was like to be a digest of the alternative press. And when I worked there, um, the, the definition of alternative press had sort of expanded. So we might have stuff from like the American prospect or just whatever, like kind of political magazines that are actually doing pretty well. And we would always, if we were gonna, if we were gonna reprint a feature or even if we were gonna excerpt like 500 words from our article, we fact checked it. [00:49:26] Jeffrey: And the shit that we found in major magazines, you know, in just trying to fact check 500 words of it was chilling. And I feel like if that’s when you’re doing your very best, then if you’re doing your YouTube documentary, man, you just gotta be diligent. And I don’t think anybody really knows to be that diligent because it’s more about the story a little bit. [00:49:47] Christina: It’s about the story and then, and then it’s also about feeding the algorithm and you have like deadlines and things that you know are, are different. Like, it’s just, it’s, it, it it’s different lovers pulling on you, you know? Not to say that you were lover [00:50:00] free with the old way, because you certainly were, to your point, you have people who are going into Iraq with like a pre-written story or pre-written, not outline in their mind, right? [00:50:07] Christina: Like, so, so it’s not, it’s not like that goes away, but it’s just, it, the, just the, the lovers are, are different. [00:50:13] Jeffrey: Yeah, [00:50:13] Grapptitude [00:50:13] Christina: All right. Do you want to do, uh, some gratitude? Do you have time? [00:50:17] Jeffrey: Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah, let’s do it. Um, do you wanna go first? You want me to go first? [00:50:23] Christina: Um, do you got, do you have one? [00:50:25] Jeffrey: I happen to, yeah. I’ll be honest with you, it just came to me a minute ago, but, um, [00:50:30] Christina: I mean, same, to be honest, but yes. [00:50:33] Jeffrey: I have been using this app since maybe 2000. God, I feel like 2007 and that, that doesn’t seem possible, but Devin think, um, Which is like, you know, it’s basically the kind of thing where you can feed everything into it, your emails, your PDFs, your movies, your whatever, and it, it handles them all very well. [00:50:56] Jeffrey: It has its own built-in ocr, which works very well. [00:51:00] Um, and it has what, it’s, what it’s been calling an AI for like more than like decades it feels like, uh, approach to, um, being able to sort of organize or, or see across your files. It’s not really AI Exactly. It’s certainly not as we understand it today. [00:51:15] Jeffrey: But, um, I, when I have a big project and I’m at the point where, where I am now, I’ve had a project for about five years and I’m at the point where I’m writing some sort of summative reports, but also some like public things and, um, I put everything in there. And it is the most incredibly powerful way to locate what I need, and I don’t even have to be terribly thoughtful about how I dump stuff in. [00:51:40] Jeffrey: Um, and, and it’s what’s nice about it is in the beginning I think it’s true that in the beginning you just had to have your stuff inside of their, um, you know, walled off garden. But, um, ever since they made it so that, It just sim likes to files basically. Um, I think it’s right to say that. Uh, but it, [00:52:00] you know, you can just have a folder and it acts on that folder rather than having to bring it into Devin thing, which means it gets all this kind of weird shit happening to it. [00:52:08] Jeffrey: Or just like adds these, all these invisible files and all this stuff that just gets confusing 10 years later when you’re trying to make sense of something. Anyway, it is incredible. Um, it’s ability. I’ve fed it as many as 20,000 PDFs in one project and it’s ability to help me find my way through those PDFs was just like, it’s almost like using BB edit over like sublime texts when you have huge data where it’s just like, oh, BB edit is just waiting for me to give it something really big and challenging. [00:52:37] Jeffrey: Whereas Sublime Text is like, no, that’s not quite what I do. Um, and this is something that like at, at a, in a period of time, this was an alternative to Evernote for me. Um, but it really was so much more than an Evernote. There really isn’t anything else quite. Like it in terms of its, I think what I like about it, it’s probably my age, is it basically looks like an old, like an email interface for a classic email client. [00:52:59] Jeffrey: Um, [00:53:00] and, and I have always liked that format a lot and, and so yeah, Devon think I, I’m a Devon think pro fella and I just love it [00:53:10] Christina: Nice. [00:53:11] Jeffrey: much more to say, but I’m not, I don’t need to say it. [00:53:13] Christina: no, that’s a great pick. That’s a great pick. So my pick is, um, I, and I’m kind of stealing from things that I have featured on the download. So sorry for people who watch that, but, but [00:53:24] Jeffrey: watch the download. It’s awesome. [00:53:26] Christina: Yes, watch the download. It’s great. Uh, if I do say so myself. Um, so this is called Types, and this is a new, and, and actually this is something that Brett would be interested in because parts of this are open, open source. [00:53:38] Christina: Like they, they, they’ve open sourced the, um, um, uh, like the kind of the, the compiler, kinda the syntax extension. But basically there’re these college, uh, kids, uh, the, these like, uh, computer science, um, um, grads who became acquainted with late tech in college and realized that late tech is fucking terrible. [00:53:57] Christina: And they’re like, okay, so what if we [00:54:00] fixed late tech? And, um, you’re like, okay, well that would be interesting, but how are you going to do that? And so they, it’s taken them four years, but they’ve written. Basically kind of a, a, a late tech replacement. And they are, they’ve open sourced, um, uh, it, it launched, uh, like a couple weeks ago, um, in, in beta, like in public beta. [00:54:22] Christina: Uh, so it’s T Y P t, uh, t y pst.app. And, um, they have like a, a, a web app that, that that’s free. And I, I’m presuming this is how they’re gonna try to like, kinda make money with it, um, where you’ll be able to like write in preview at the same time. But they’re making the compiler open source and they’re open sourcing a lot of other stuff. [00:54:40] Christina: So that, which honestly is the move here because if you want this to actually take off as a format, this is what you do. And the whole way they’ve been thinking about this and the formatting and the styling is basically how to like, make something that will do what latex does, but with a syntax that is not terrible. [00:54:59] Jeffrey: [00:55:00] Yeah. And this thing where they’ve got the split screen, like multi markdown composer is really cool because the output is magical. [00:55:09] Christina: Yep. Yep. And, and it’s great cuz like, like, and they have like some, um, some built-in templates. Like they have this one that, that I just kind of created right now as we’re we’re talking where it’s like a, a newsletter sort of thing. And it looks like, you know, obviously this is all done kind of in, in css, other sort of type setting things, but this looks like the sort of thing that would normally be like a word or, or maybe even like a, um, a, a page mill, you know, uh, to, to go back that far, like kind of template. [00:55:37] Christina: And, and that’s really great. But the thing is, is that you have like different text boxes with, with potential, um, you know, ways that you could, you could do quotes and then you have like, like math. The, the way that math things and, and numbers could be, you know, expressed in certain ways and, and you have like full control over your layout and everything else. [00:55:55] Christina: And. That’s really great. Like, that’s exactly what you want. But it’s, [00:56:00] it’s similar to markdown in the sense that it’s, it’s readable and it, it, you know, I, I don’t know the whole syntax yet, but, but it certainly seems a lot more accessible than latex, which is incredibly powerful, but is fucking awful. So, [00:56:15] Jeffrey: awesome. [00:56:15] Christina: so, so types does is, is my pick. [00:56:18] Christina: Um, I, I, and I’m also just amazed like that so many people have the idea, they’re like, oh, this is terrible. I wanna create a replacement and then realize that it’s hard and stop. [00:56:27] Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s hard work. There’s a reason it’s been dominant. [00:56:29] Christina: and, and, and, and, and these are the, the, these are two like college students who actually did the thing. [00:56:35] Jeffrey: That’s so cool. What a good story. [00:56:37] Christina: So, yeah. So that’s it for me. Um, but, uh, this has been a fun, like, weird, like Brett free episode. Um, add, uh, we’ll, we’ll the show notes are gonna be weird, uh, but we should put in the, the podcasts for, uh, uh, Rick Rubin [00:56:54] Jeffrey: Yes. I will put that stuff in Tyler creator too. [00:56:57] Christina: Tyler, the creator. And, um, if you have any links to, [00:57:00] um, the, the gentleman, the Mother Jones Rolling Stone guy. [00:57:03] Christina: Uh, [00:57:03] Jeffrey: Oh yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah, he’s still alive, [00:57:07] Christina: Well, no, I [00:57:07] Jeffrey: Chuck. [00:57:08] Christina: you know, [00:57:09] Jeffrey: He’s insane. [00:57:10] Christina: I, I, I, I asked because you know, like not everybody did, you know, like Michael Kelly, right? Like, [00:57:15] Jeffrey: no, I know. Totally, totally. [00:57:18] Christina: like [00:57:18] Jeffrey: I mean, I, yeah, I hear you loud and clear. [00:57:21] Christina: gonna, I I think it’s gonna be 20 years next week when Michael Kelly died, which would, you know, like I remember that because like, that was just like, you know. Yeah. Because he was like a journalism kind of like, you know, like big figurehead guy and, yeah. [00:57:36] Jeffrey: no, I mean this guy, he started doing work for the International Criminal Court and then became a ghost writer for George Soros. [00:57:46] Christina: Nice. So, [00:57:47] Jeffrey: his way [00:57:49] Christina: uh, yeah, he did the International Criminal Court. Now that would be interesting. Place to work for because holy shit, you talk about like the, like the, you talk about like the worst of the worst people, but also people who still deserve to have [00:58:00] like rights. But, but you’re lit, but you’re literally talking about the worst of the worst people. [00:58:05] Christina: And when you’re talking about the crim, the international criminal court, [00:58:08] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s a bad crew [00:58:09] Christina: Yeah, like, like the absolute like, yeah, [00:58:14] Jeffrey: like George W. Bush and all them. No, didn’t happen that way. [00:58:19] Christina: No, hey, but Trump did get indicted. [00:58:21] Jeffrey: I know, I know. I’m, I’m waiting for the perp walk. [00:58:24] Christina: I know. [00:58:24] Jeffrey: my wife this morning, I’m like, I don’t even know that I wanna celebrate it, but I kind of feel like I have to celebrate it. Um, so [00:58:31] Christina: I mean, look, he’s never gonna, he’s never gonna spend a day in jail. It’s just gonna be like when Tom delay, remember when Tom Delay did his, uh, um, mugshot and he was all smiling and whatnot for, for [00:58:41] Jeffrey: yep. [00:58:42] Christina: for his Oxycontin or whatever it was. [00:58:44] Jeffrey: Yeah, I mean, the thing, the thing is, a hundred magazines have already created their own illustration of [00:58:51] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:58:51] Jeffrey: a prison jumpsuit and just throughout his, his presidency. [00:58:56] Jeffrey: So it’s like we’re already just like desensitized to even that site if he, [00:59:00] if it were to come. [00:59:01] Christina: Oh, when it was money laundering? Not, not, not, um, Oxycontin. [00:59:04] Jeffrey: money laundering. [00:59:06] Christina: uh, it was Oxycontin was a, was a brush limba, um, back before we, back, before we cared, um, about the opiate crisis. Um, and everybody was just like, oh, it’s not a big deal. You know, it’s just a little, just a little pills. Um, [00:59:20] Jeffrey: Just a little pills. [00:59:22] Christina: just, just, just some pills. [00:59:23] Christina: Okay. All right. Well, um, this has been fun. Um, [00:59:27] Jeffrey: Yeah, totally. [00:59:29] Christina: fun episode. Uh, we’ve missed Brett. We will have him back. But, but I always love talking to you and I love hearing more about you and Yeah. You’ve got a book. You, you’ve got a book in there, uh, that I, that I love to read. [00:59:39] Jeffrey: And what do people do when they have books? They start podcasts. [00:59:43] Christina: This is true. This is true. Uh, hey, you’ve already got the podcast. You’ve already got that promotional ly. [00:59:48] Jeffrey: That’s right. That’s right. Nailed it. All right. [00:59:51] Christina: All right. Get some sleep. [00:59:53] Jeffrey: get some sleep. We should say it more aggressively. You get some [00:59:56] Christina: some sleep. Go to [00:59:57] Jeffrey: Why am I supposed to get sleep? [01:00:00] Get some sleep. [01:00:02] Outro: The.

From the Post Office to the latest in AI, you don’t need to know anything about oversized VHS boxes to enjoy this amazing episode. Sponsor Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today at Kolide.com/overtired. Mental Chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter. Join Khanh and Jules, people with mental illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily process of working towards mental chillness. Show Links Ken Thompson’s SCaLE 20x talk Metropolis Metropolis Wikipedia for restoration shit Tár Linus Sebastian LTT Store I almost bought a scanner and the HN thread GPT-4/Bard/the AI race GitHub Copilot X Retool’s amazing Visual Basic essay MacUpdater Whisper Aiko MacWhisper Petey Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Unchanging Institutions [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Jeff: Hello, this is the Overtired podcast. I am your host, Jeff Severs. Gunzel. I’m one of three hosts. Here comes another Christina Warren [00:00:11] Christina: Hello. [00:00:12] Jeff: and Brett Terpstra. [00:00:13] Brett: Oh, hey, [00:00:14] Jeff: Oh, hey, I [00:00:15] Brett: are you thinking about pink elephants [00:00:17] Jeff: am not thinking about pink elephants. Brett tried to psych me out [00:00:22] Brett: that is, that is, that is, uh, steel will, that is presence of mind. I appreciate that. [00:00:27] Jeff: Steel will. That’s, uh, that’s not the first time [00:00:30] Brett: that’s my porn name. [00:00:37] Jeff: Um, yeah, I look forward to seeing that a across a very large box that’s like, I feel like, um, porn when I was a kid came on vhs, but it came on vhs, but in, um, really big boxes. [00:00:51] Brett: Yeah. Why was that? [00:00:52] Jeff: I don’t know. Because you’re trying to be discreet, I assume, but instead you’re. [00:00:57] Brett: the one time I ever bought like hard copy [00:01:00] porn in my life, um, I ordered it on D V D and they sent it in this D V D case That was a like, uh, library of Congress exploration of like Mark Twain’s work. That’s what it said on like the dvd V case [00:01:16] Jeff: a little cover [00:01:17] Brett: e Even, even the DVD was labeled as such. [00:01:19] Brett: And then you pop it in and it’s like, it’s just porn. [00:01:23] Jeff: I mean, that’s just asking [00:01:25] Brett: one of the, so Ella and I, my girlfriend, we have known each other for like a decade and w she used to come over and hang out when, um, when a deedee was traveling, like a deedee actually, uh, arranged that. Because she knew that Elle and I were so similar in our like, behavior and, and conversation styles. [00:01:47] Brett: So she was like, this, this is the perfect hangout buddy for my, my husband. Um, [00:01:53] Jeff: too. Perfect. It turns out. [00:01:55] Christina: Yeah, [00:01:56] Brett: out, turned out, turned out really well for two of us. Um, but [00:02:00] uh, but Elle was going through our DVD collection and I had just like slipped in there. [00:02:05] Jeff: like, Ooh, mark Twain. [00:02:06] Brett: yeah, she was, I don’t remember if it was actually Mark Flame, but it was Library of Congress something, and she was very impressed that I had that [00:02:13] Jeff: So cultured. [00:02:14] Brett: had to admit that’s not what that is. [00:02:17] Jeff: That is, that is the last work of steel will. Steel Steel. William. Um, wow. All right. There’s that. There’s that. Where the hell do we go from there? [00:02:30] Brett: one of the things that holds up my relationship together is my willingness to read Instagram memes out loud on the couch to my girlfriend. She loves it. She, she will, she will request, Hey, could you see something funny? And then force me to listen to you, read it out loud. Um, this is, it’s like a staple of our relationship. [00:02:54] Brett: So, in that vein, I wanted to read you guys something I found today, [00:02:59] Jeff: Okay.[00:03:00] [00:03:00] Brett: only Christina, I think will appreciate this. [00:03:04] Jeff: Hmm. Hmm. [00:03:05] Brett: He was a boy. She was a girl. I am a sentient octopus. He was a punk. She did ballet. I have eight prehensile legs. He wanted her, she’d never tell. I crept up from the bowels of hell. All of her friends. [00:03:18] Brett: And those two as well will fall when the seas start to swell. He was a skater boy. She said, see you later. Boy, neither significant to me. I’m a cephalopod, a miniature elder God. And soon all my brethren will be free [00:03:31] Jeff: What is that? [00:03:34] Brett: It’s Af Levine, but with octopi. [00:03:36] Christina: but I was gonna say, I, I, here’s what was so funny, like literally from the minute you said like, like, you know, he was a boy. I was like, oh, okay. It’s an, it’s a skater boy. Um, thing. Like, I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything else about what this is, but I know that this is an Avril reference. [00:03:49] Christina: Like, instantly like, like, like, like from, from like the first, from like the first word you said. I was like, yep, I got it. I know this [00:03:56] Brett: I figured you would. [00:03:57] Christina: absolutely. [00:03:58] Brett: I actually, I actually [00:04:00] didn’t recognize it until it got to the, he was a skater boy. [00:04:02] Christina: Oh really? [00:04:03] Brett: Yeah, I’m a supple pod, a miniature elder God. Soon all my brethren will be free [00:04:10] Christina: God. Now the song is gonna be in my head for the rest of the day. [00:04:14] Brett: I’ve had, I’ve had suck by pig face in my head since this morning, but in the kitchen, when I started singing it, it came out, uh, Sinatra style. [00:04:26] Jeff: That’s nice. I like when that happens. [00:04:28] Brett: like it’s, uh, there is no God up in the sky tonight. Uh, no sign of heaven anywhere on sight. Like it just came out like a real, like, I obviously not like that. [00:04:38] Brett: I’m just telling you the words and you can [00:04:40] Jeff: Yeah, no, I can see it. [00:04:41] Brett: sing it for you, but I had a whole thing going. It was really, really, like a lot of swing to it. It was good [00:04:47] Jeff: Anything that rhymes tonight, you’re definitely in Sinatra territory. [00:04:53] Brett: So I feel like, I feel like we, we segue into Mental Health Corner as is our tradition. Um, [00:05:00] I I can kick it off if you like. [00:05:03] Jeff: Kick it off. [00:05:04] Brett: Fucking, everything’s normal. Like, not, not even, not even my usual, like, I’m so tired of being stable. Uh, like I’m just, I’m, I’m normal today. Like I feel, I feel social. I’m a little bit bummed because we’re going on a trip next week and l is, uh, I have gotten to a point with Covid where I’m like, you know what? [00:05:28] Brett: I’m good most of the year, but I’m willing to take a risk. For a vacation. Um, Elle is not at that point, and I had to like, cancel plans with my friends because she wants to like isolate before we leave so that she’s not putting her family in danger. And I get it. And our friend of the show, Brian would totally be on board with this, but me, I get very, uh, I get annoyed that I still have to think about it and, and I have to be careful making plans with friends that I will only [00:06:00] see once, maybe twice a year. [00:06:02] Brett: Um, and I have to like, arrange things with outdoor seating and masking and it annoys me. I’m, I’m just, I’m done. I’m, I have, I have covid fatigue for sure. [00:06:15] Jeff: I’ve noticed a lot more masks lately in Minneapolis. [00:06:19] Christina: Yeah. Um, I, I, I’ve, I’ve noticed some, but I’m also, I I’m where you were, uh, Brett, I got to that place like last year [00:06:26] Brett: Sure. Yeah, we all did. We all did. But I don’t leave the house much, so it hasn’t mattered. [00:06:31] Christina: no, I know you don’t. I know, but, but what I’m saying is like, I know exactly what you mean because that’s exactly where I was like a year ago. I was just like, I’m done, I’m done. [00:06:39] Christina: I’m, I’m done. Like, I, I’ve got it. Like I’m, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been okay, like, I’m done. I’m gonna do the right things If people, you know, want me to, to mask up or whatever, I will. But I’m not, I’m not doing the whole like, charade and I’m sorry. It, it has been a charade for, for the most part, you know, about like, oh, I’m not gonna go out. [00:06:59] Christina: I’m not gonna like [00:07:00] travel. I’m not gonna like, live my life. Like, [00:07:03] Brett: I mean, that’s not purely performative. That’s just extremely cautious. [00:07:07] Christina: No, most of it is performative. Some people, I think it is true, but I think it, it’s, it’s gotten to the point that for most people, in my experience, it is completely performative because the, the precautions they’re taking don’t even make any difference. Like, we’re all getting sick anyway. [00:07:21] Brett: we’re gonna hear from Brian [00:07:23] Christina: I’m not talking about Brian. [00:07:24] Christina: Like they, they have a different, they have a different, um, you know, like, like threat model. But, but I, I said most people, I said Mo and, and, you know, but, and, and, and I’m sorry. I think that’s, I think that’s absolutely true. Um, like it’s just, at this point I’m just like, okay, like you do all the right things and the, the masks, if you’re not wearing the right type of mask, it doesn’t even like, it’s like, [00:07:45] Brett: sure. I feel like at this, if at this point everyone’s down with the K or N 95, [00:07:51] Jeff: I disagree. I feel like, so I spend a lot of time at doctor’s offices lately, and, uh, it, the one they give out is just the, the [00:08:00] cheap paper mask. And then that seems to be what people are buying also. And not only that, but like, [00:08:05] Brett: performative. [00:08:05] Jeff: and not well, yeah. Not only that, but when I’m at the doctor, I’m noticing more and more like nurses, uh, you know, the, as a group nurses have a fair amount of conservatives among them, and I’m, and I’m noticing a lot of noses. [00:08:19] Jeff: So they’re not only wearing like a mask that really isn’t designed to keep covid from spreading. I’m sure it has some impact, but it, it’s not designed to do that. But, uh, but now there’s noses as well, and, and that’s the part that’s really frustrating and feels kind of, I mean, it feels performative, but I don’t even, it’s not even that that bothers me. [00:08:38] Jeff: It’s more that how quickly we just threw away the idea of like, this is the kind of mask that works, you know, [00:08:47] Brett: Well, so here’s, here’s, here’s my pitch for k N 95 masks with the little metal band that goes over your nose. You can talk to someone for five minutes without. [00:09:00] Every 30 seconds having to pull your mask back [00:09:03] Jeff: Yeah. Right, right, right. [00:09:04] Brett: I watch like city council meetings where the people yelling at the council have, have shitty masks on, and they’re like, the whole time, it’s just this constant distraction of pulling their mask up over their nose. [00:09:17] Brett: Just get k n 95 masks. They’re so, they’re, they stay in place. They’re so much better and effective and they actually, you know, provide some protection [00:09:26] Jeff: Yeah, [00:09:27] Brett: for you and everyone else. But anyway, so I’m looking, I’m gonna see, uh, Dan Peterson and hopefully Dave Chartier, uh, in Chicago, and then have breakfast with friend of the show, Aaron Dawson. [00:09:42] Brett: Um, if, if all goes well and, and we come up with plans that are safe for everybody, that is, that’s my, that’s my Saturday and Sunday, and then I’m in Michigan for a week and it’s gonna be a lot like, what was it? Dusty or Sandy, what was your place in Utah [00:10:00] called [00:10:01] Jeff: Sandy, Utah. [00:10:03] Brett: Sandy, Utah. It’s go, it’s gonna, it’s, it’s gonna be a little depressing. [00:10:07] Brett: Uh, we got a Airbnb, um, and there’s not a lot around. I might make a trip to, um, mis, uh, to Ann Arbor. Um, I don’t, do you guys know Marina Appleman? [00:10:20] Christina: Yes. She’s the best. [00:10:21] Brett: I haven’t told her I’m coming yet, [00:10:23] Christina: No, you have to, no. Yeah. [00:10:24] Brett: she’s in Ann Arbor and, and if I get a chance, I would like to see her. It’ll be fun. [00:10:29] Christina: She’s fantastic. She’s fantastic. Um, I, I got to meet her in person. Um, she came to when she was in New York once and um, she’s, she’s, she’s so [00:10:38] Brett: just awesome. She’s [00:10:39] Christina: the best. [00:10:41] Brett: Russian. She’ll tell you stories about Sylvia, Russia. It’ll be [00:10:45] Christina: Also like, because she’s been through it, like she’s just, I lo I love her cuz she’s just like very direct and like funny [00:10:51] Brett: and so smart. [00:10:52] Christina: so fucking smart. Like brilliant. She’s, uh, she teaches, she’s a math or economics or something at, um, at math. Math at um, [00:10:59] Brett: like [00:11:00] applied mathematics, I think, [00:11:01] Christina: Yeah. I was gonna say some, some, it’s better than like, normal math. [00:11:04] Christina: Yeah. Um, at a, um, at uh, um, Ann Arbor. Um, so yeah, [00:11:09] Brett: she’ll probably, she’ll probably, uh, I’ll, I’ll tell her. We talked about her. She’ll listen to this and tell me, you have no idea what I actually teach. Do you? And I’ll say it’s over my head. I, I don’t really know. [00:11:20] Christina: smart. Honestly. Like we, we, we know that it’s really good. We know that it’s a very, very good school and that it’s something like very, very like smart, [00:11:29] Brett: Very smart. Uh, she taught me how to say late tech. Uh, she, she corrected me back in [00:11:35] Jeff: I thought it’s LA Tech. [00:11:37] Brett: so there, as long as you get the sound at the end, as long as you don’t say the X, [00:11:42] Christina: right? Which I did [00:11:43] Brett: you can say LA Tech. You can say LA Tech. You can say latex. As long as you don’t say latex. [00:11:49] Jeff: And why is the ex, [00:11:52] Brett: Really good question. I bet she would know the answer. [00:11:54] Christina: it because it came from tech, which was like the, I, the, the, the, I don’t know, ask the fucking Unix [00:12:00] guys is the only thing I can get in with that. [00:12:02] Jeff: yeah. Yeah. You know what? That would be a great podcast. Ask the fucking Unix [00:12:07] Christina: I mean, [00:12:07] Jeff: your host, Jeff Severance. I’m here with Christina Warren. Brett Terpstra. [00:12:11] Christina: Um, I, I got to meet, um, uh, Ken Thompson, uh, very briefly at a scale a couple weeks ago, and he was lovely. And, um, he’s 80 and he’s still programming and doing cool things. His, the video of his talk actually went up and it got on Hacker News and there were a number of people who were acting just like some of the assholes in the room who were like, they wanted, they were expecting him to talk about Unix and go, and he didn’t. [00:12:35] Christina: Instead he like shared this very human and like, kind of personal story about this thing that he called it like his 75 year like project, but it’s really been this thing that he’s been actively working on. Since the eighties where he’s like digitized every like, recorded song from like the 19 hundreds to like the, like 19 hundreds to, to 1999 or, or whatever. [00:12:57] Christina: And, um, uh, it, it’s, he [00:13:00] basically created Napster is, is, is the longest, the short of it, but, but it’s, but it’s actually pretty incredible. Like, like he legally obtained all these songs and stuff and then encoded them and, and like there’s player pianos and it’s not just recorded stuff, but also things like, stuff that beyond like player piano scrolls and other sorts of, um, media. [00:13:17] Christina: And, um, anyway, it was a really great talk, but when he finished giving this talk, and I, I’d met him the day before and I was just like, kind of fangirling. I was like, thank you for everything you’ve given us, you know, because you know Ken Thompson. And, um, he told me, he was like, I’m nervous about my talk. [00:13:34] Christina: And I was like, oh, that’s gonna be, And then a guy asked at the end, he was basically like, why did you just waste our time? He didn’t say, why did you waste our time? But that was the undercurrent. He was like, I was expecting you to talk about Go or Unix or this or that. Why did you just talk about this thing? [00:13:47] Christina: And, and like very much the undercurrent was like, why, why did you just like waste our time in this? And, and I, I was so pissed at the time. I, I wanted to boo the guy and I didn’t because that, you know, that’s, that’s, you don’t do that. [00:14:00] Christina don’t do that. But I, I do regret not having like, at the end, like when, when Ken was almost sort of apologizing now not yelling at like, we love you Ken. [00:14:08] Christina: Because I think that the vast majority of the audience really enjoyed it. But there were some people on and Hacker News who were like, Well, actually in certain things, they’re like, well, you know, he’s not that I, I don’t understand why everybody, you know, like, like kisses his ass so much. He was, he was factually wrong about some things when he came by the Debbie and Booth. [00:14:26] Christina: And I’m like, the dude is 80 years old and, and, and, and he, he did, he did, he wasn’t aware of like a raspberry pie shortage because it doesn’t affect him personally. Like, fuck you. Like, [00:14:36] Jeff: everybody fucking knows about what happens at the Debbie and Booth fucking stays at the Debbie and [00:14:40] Christina: Exactly. Exactly. [00:14:41] Brett: It’s the first rule of Debbie in Booth. [00:14:43] Christina: it, it really is. But no, you know, but you had like some people in Hacker News who were just being total like dicks about some of the stuff, but I thought it was like a really beautiful, um, story. Anyway, that was a tangent that came out of you talking about the, the, we should have the, the ask the Unix guys. [00:14:58] Brett: really enjoyed that [00:15:00] one. [00:15:00] Jeff: just be, it could be a [00:15:01] Brett: that tangent, [00:15:03] Christina: But, but seriously in the show notes. So we’ll have a link to the, the video from scale because it’s a really great talk and, and I think it’s just like, in its simplicity and like in its humanness, like I actually thought it was, it was really compelling. Um, I also, like, I definitely get the sense that, that Mr. [00:15:17] Christina: Thompson’s probably on the spectrum of some sort, because he’s dedicated all this time and, and all this work into like digitizing and cataloging all this music. I don’t get the sense that he’s listened to much of the music other than like figuring out how it could be as losslessly encoded as possible. [00:15:34] Christina: Like that, that like, I, I didn’t real, I didn’t get a sense that it w I got, you know what I mean? Like, I didn’t get a sense that it was anything more of like, I need to complete this thing other than like, I, I, I have great love for the, for the works themselves. [00:15:46] Brett: Do either of you know what that condition is called where you don’t like music or like music has no effect on you at all? You don’t feel anything you don’t hear. [00:15:55] Christina: yeah, I’ve heard of that. He, and he doesn’t have that, but I don’t know. Um, I [00:16:00] know [00:16:00] Brett: a, I have a friend with that Allison Sheridan. She’s not shy about it. Um, she runs the pod feet podcast and like, just music means nothing to her. Like she could hear it and like, if it doesn’t actively annoy her, it just has like no meaning. Uh, there’s no like, like I feel stuff when I listen to music. [00:16:21] Brett: Like that’s the whole point of music for most people I think cuz like feeling things that would be so weird. Anyway, anyway, sorry Christina, how’s your mental. [00:16:30] Christina: Um, pretty good. It’s pretty good. Um, it’s been kind of a, it’s a busy work week and it’s gonna continue to kind of be, you know, busy for the next, you know, few days and into next week and stuff. But, um, it’s pretty good. Uh, grant is out of town. He went to go visit his brother, who he has not seen in person in, I don’t know, in probably, probably 15 years. [00:16:50] Christina: They, well, they, they had a falling out for a while and they haven’t been talking, and then they started talking like a year and change ago for the first time in a really long time. [00:17:00] So he’s in Hawaii with his brother, seems to be going well. So I’ve got like, so I’m like in this interesting thing where I’m like, alone in the house, um, which is kind of nice. [00:17:11] Christina: I mean, I, I, I, it, it, I’m kind of like, it’s kind of weird, but it’s like I haven’t been alone in, in this space. Like I’ve been alone like other places, but I haven’t been alone here in like [00:17:21] Brett: you talk to yourself when you’re alone in the house? [00:17:24] Christina: No. [00:17:24] Brett: you say things out loud to yourself? Oh, [00:17:27] Christina: not really, not, not so much sometimes maybe, but like, I not, not, not really, like, I think out loud to myself a lot, but I don’t, you know what I mean? [00:17:35] Christina: Like, I, I think stuff to myself, I’m like, what the fuck are you doing? But I don’t, I don’t usually verbalize it, but, [00:17:40] Brett: I like narrate my life when I’m all alone and no [00:17:43] Christina: oh, I love [00:17:44] Brett: I just, I just say it all out [00:17:46] Jeff: Like Ron Howard in the rest of development. [00:17:48] Christina: Yeah. Oh, I love that. [00:17:52] Jeff: That’s awesome. [00:17:53] Brett: which is no longer on Netflix, even though they produced the last two seasons of it, [00:17:57] Christina: is so fucked up. And, and we talked about it. Yeah, it’s a [00:18:00] stupid rights thing. They, they had like a, a 10 year, um, I guess contract and they didn’t wanna renew it. And the shitty thing is, is you can get season four from iTunes or, or Google Play or whatever, but season five, they never released as a way to buy. [00:18:13] Christina: And then the season four remix, which actually made season four better, was also not released on home video. So the only way you can get it is if you pirate it, which is fucking stupid. So it’s, it’s so dumb. And, and because Netflix co-produced it, some people are like, oh, it’ll just show up on, on, you know, um, Hulu or whatever, and I’m like, no, Netflix like, paid for the co-production, so it, you know, they’d have to buy them out and, and I doubt Disney cares. [00:18:38] Christina: So it, it’s just shitty. [00:18:40] Brett: Yeah, [00:18:41] Jeff: That sucks. [00:18:43] Brett: it does. [00:18:44] Jeff: Um, I, uh, I went and saw the movie Metropolis on Sunday. [00:18:52] Brett: With, [00:18:53] Christina: Oh wow. [00:18:53] Brett: with which, with what? Soundtrack? [00:18:56] Jeff: It’s the original one and the soundtrack was actually a man on an [00:19:00] organ. [00:19:00] Brett: Yes. [00:19:00] Jeff: Um, live but live. [00:19:02] Brett: Minneapolis. I saw, uh, a live production. Uh, this was back in like, uh, maybe 1999, uh, 98, 99. I saw, uh, they showed, I can’t remember the name of the theater. Something Oak [00:19:16] Jeff: But yeah, the Oak Street Cinema, it’s long gone. It was a great one. [00:19:19] Brett: And they showed. They showed it and they had a live organ accompaniment. It was fantastic. It was really fun. [00:19:25] Jeff: Yeah, that’s what, that’s what happened here. Um, and it was the full, like almost three hour version of Metropolis, uh, such a cool story where they found like a complete version in Argentina, but it was 16 millimeter. And so they have to like, and then they, they were able to restore missing scenes, uh, via description, I think based on the Nazis censorship files, um, from the movie. [00:19:49] Jeff: I mean, it’s really, but I bring it up just because like, I, I mean, even though I missed movies so much during the pandemic, I have not made great [00:20:00] use of movie theaters since it has essentially ended and. have been so in my head lately that took on a new role with my organization, taking on a new project that it was just wonderful to just lay back in a seat and, and, and let someone tell me or show me a story. [00:20:20] Jeff: Um, especially that one, I, I’ve always wanted to watch it. I had no idea how fucking good it was. I mean, I heard obviously [00:20:28] Christina: I mean, yeah, [00:20:29] Jeff: Yeah. Like you hear about it forever. [00:20:31] Christina: no, but, but, but to your point, like you got to see like the definitive version because, I’m trying to think cuz I’ve seen, I’ve seen it a couple times, but I think the only time I saw it with like, the live, maybe accompaniment was the one that they, it was like 2002, but then they found like another copy or they found like other stuff after that. [00:20:51] Christina: And, and I, and I, I saw that one, but I don’t remember if it had the live accompaniment or not. Or, and I think I saw it, but I might not have, I [00:21:00] might just be like misremembering that I might, I might, might think that I saw it and instead I read about it. Um, [00:21:05] Brett: It works as a silent movie, like you can, you can get in, you can get involved in it without a soundtrack, but it is a different experience to see it where the company meant. [00:21:17] Jeff: I was amazed at, especially, I don’t know if it’s Briget or Bridget Helm, the, the woman who plays Maria, sort of the star of the movie, she plays two different Marias. One is a robot clone and one is the actual Maria. So she has, and she’s dressed the same in both cases, and so she has to, in a silent film, make it clear when you’re looking at, you know, like the clone Maria or the real Maria and the acting that it took to make that real. [00:21:45] Jeff: Amazing. She was amazing. And I was surprised to feel so many things in that movie. Generally. I thought it was gonna be sort of an academic, uh, thing to watch that movie. But anyway, it was, it, what it was for [00:22:00] me also though, was just like, it just got out of my head. It was just awesome. It was so nice to be in a story other than one I’m telling myself. [00:22:08] Jeff: Um, and then just a little piece of trivia came out of it. That’s fucking nuts. Which is that, so this woman, let’s call her Bridget Helm. This was her first movie. 1927. She’s amazing. She did a bunch of more movies before retiring in 1935 because the Nazis had taken over the film ministry and it disgust disgusted her. [00:22:30] Jeff: Um, but there’s a really crazy little piece to her history, which is she was apparently involved in several traffic accidents. This is on the Wiki Wikipedia page, um, and was even briefly imprisoned, right? Um, and one of her, uh, one of her accidents ended up in a death. And so she was facing charges of manslaughter and there was a certain person in power at the time who noticed she had a case and, and got it dropped. [00:22:58] Jeff: That person [00:23:00] was her fan, Adolf Hitler. So I was thinking how much it would fuck me up if a, I had killed someone in a car accident. B had the elation, the strange, guilty elation of having that case dropped, and C was recognizing over the course of the next 10 years what it meant that Adolf Hitler was that man. [00:23:24] Jeff: Cause I mean, [00:23:25] Brett: that’s a real rollercoaster. [00:23:27] Jeff: oh my God. [00:23:28] Christina: Okay. So that, so that right there, that’s like a movie like, like that, that’s, that, that, that’s, that’s like, okay. Cuz uh, did, did either of you see tar? [00:23:36] Jeff: No, [00:23:37] Christina: It’s great. [00:23:38] Jeff: yeah. Here. [00:23:39] Christina: Kate Blanch had, uh, um, Todd Field and it’s, it’s, you know, fake, but it’s, it’s great. But like that to me almost feels like, Like, you could do a, a, a, a tar like thing, but about her, like, like that would actually be an interesting sort of sort of thing. [00:23:53] Christina: Like, you know, to do kind of like a character study on, on this, this, this woman who has to deal with that stuff too. And then it’s [00:24:00] also like, okay, this is your first big role. It’s this, this, you know, masterpiece, but then it happens at this, you know, time and then all these other things happen and having to grapple with it. [00:24:07] Christina: Like, um, what’s her face? The, uh, the, um, the Nazi, um, uh, documentarian, um, uh, who, who did um, um, uh, triumph, the will, um, [00:24:18] Jeff: Oh, [00:24:18] Christina: uh, um, um, um, you, you know what I’m, you know exactly who I’m talking about. Um, [00:24:23] Jeff: it up so we get it [00:24:24] Christina: uh, Lil Gral. Um, [00:24:28] Jeff: Got it. [00:24:28] Christina: knew it would come to me. Um, [00:24:30] Brett: just gotta give her a sec. She [00:24:31] Christina: I, I was gonna [00:24:32] Brett: there. [00:24:33] Christina: with this stuff. I do. No, but that’s, uh, you know, like I’ve always, there’ve been a lot of talks over the years about like, wanting to make films about her story. [00:24:43] Christina: And, and that has also, but, but that’s complicated for so many reasons. And, uh, but, but that, that, that’s another character who I’m like, oh, she’s so flawed. And not, not to say that this actress is, cause I, I think it’s totally different. But just to talk about kind of like in that era of, you know, aligning yourself [00:25:00] with these, these people right. [00:25:02] Christina: With, with someone like Hiller and, and having it tied directly to your art form and being completely, you know, like, um, unretractable from it, which obviously again, like. She as an actress, didn’t like she, she’d quit because she didn’t wanna be doing those things and, and made that stand and still wound up benefiting, uh, from, uh, fur Anyway. [00:25:21] Christina: But anyway, just has me thinking about, uh, ri install, cuz that’s whole thing is just really interesting. There’s so many interesting stories, I think, uh, about like ethics and, and um, uh, art and, you know, like, I don’t know. It’s just, it’s fascinating to think about. [00:25:39] Brett: Here’s, here’s the little rabbit hole I just went down. So I, I was using search link to, to build out our show notes, and I have a TMDb, uh, like the movie database, uh, which is like imdb, but actually has an API that you can search. Um, so Search link returned, uh, for Metropolis [00:26:00] return slash movie slash 19. [00:26:02] Brett: And I was like, oh, do they do these in some kind of, [00:26:05] Christina: That’s what I [00:26:05] Brett: uh, chronological order is like, and so what’s number 18? Number 18 is the fifth element. And number two, there’s no number one, number one returns. The, uh, 4 0 4 number two returns. What was it? [00:26:21] Christina: Ariel. It’s Ariel. I’ve never heard of this. Ariel a, a drama comedy crime from, from K rated k12. So it’s foreign, but it is a, it is available on the Criterion, um, uh, collection, uh, service, which I have. [00:26:36] Brett: how these, I wonder where these IDs come from, though. [00:26:39] Christina: Yeah, me too. I’m like, I’m like very interested now. Yeah. Cause it’s on the Criterion Channel. [00:26:43] Christina: This is a finished. [00:26:45] Brett: in Paradise. Four doesn’t exist. Five is four rooms that I love. Four rooms, but I don’t see how that comes before Metropolis, uh, in any numbering system. [00:26:58] Jeff: Someone needs to watch those [00:27:00] films in order, uh, [00:27:01] Christina: Yeah. Oh, okay. That okay. Okay. Okay. You just invented a podcast, like a [00:27:06] Jeff: Yeah, [00:27:06] Christina: podcast that, that would appeal to like letter [00:27:10] Brett: in order. [00:27:11] Christina: No, but honestly, I, I, I bet you would have a bunch of people on letterbox that would totally be like down for that [00:27:17] Jeff: Right, right, right. [00:27:18] Brett: My favorite. My [00:27:19] Christina: the T M D B podcast. [00:27:21] Brett: The only line I remember from four rooms, like I enjoyed the movie, but the only line I remember is Madonna saying hell of a night haunted. And that comes up for me all the time. Anytime something weird happens, I just say hell of a night haunted. And then I have to like pause and remember why I say that, where that came from. [00:27:41] Brett: Um, which reminds me favorite line from I’m, I’m rewatching BoJack Horseman right now. My favorite line this week was, it’s hard to describe, but I also don’t know it if I see it. [00:27:57] Jeff: That’s awesome. [00:27:58] Brett: so Jeff Mental Health [00:28:00] Corner. [00:28:00] Jeff: That was it. [00:28:01] Brett: That was it, huh? [00:28:02] Jeff: Well, cuz the, the whole bit about it takes me outta my head [00:28:06] Christina: Yeah, it’s good. Which, which I think is beautiful. I’m glad you got to experience that. Um, and now I’m remembering I did not see, I, I have seen the, the rest, the restored version, but I didn’t have any sort of live accompaniment. So it was just like, whatever, whatever, um, version of the score they were allowed to, to. [00:28:21] Christina: Get, um, on that Wikipedia page, you will find out, unsurprisingly, this, that film with which there are multiple versions and lost things and whatnot, there have been fights over like who was allowed to like, create scores and, and not scores and, um, other stuff. But now it’s, but, but now it’s all in the public domain, so that’s also [00:28:41] Jeff: As of this year, I think. [00:28:43] Christina: Yeah. That, that’s, yeah. As, as, as of January, um, first, which, uh, it, it hit the, um, the 95 year mark or whatever. Um, [00:28:51] Jeff: That’s awesome. Brett is apparently cleaning his gun. [00:28:54] Brett: So I have, I have this, I have this screwdriver from like, I fix it [00:29:00] and you can like rotate it and it, every time you rotate it and push it in, it brings up a different screw head, uh, or like a different bit. And I broke it and now I can’t push it in or turn it. And now I [00:29:11] Jeff: that what you’ve been fucking clicking the last three episodes? [00:29:15] Brett: no. [00:29:16] Jeff: I’m editing them, I hear this. [00:29:18] Brett: my fidget, my fidget toy is a, is a lock blade that snaps open and I sit and I fidget and I don’t even realize I’m doing it, but I sit and [00:29:28] Christina: need to get you a quiet [00:29:29] Brett: it. Yeah, yeah. Let’s, let’s make that, if any listeners have a good suggestion for a fidget toy that Brett can use while podcasting, but I’ve, I’ve officially, I’ve officially broken this, this driver and in the process, oh, there’s the problem. [00:29:47] Brett: There’s a bit stuck halfway. Anyway, um, I have, I have, I have lost eight, eight small screwdriver bits in the process. You know, I’m gonna have to like cut it open. It’s gonna be a whole thing. [00:29:58] Jeff: Stay tuned to the next [00:30:00] episode. Hit us up on Discord. [00:30:04] Christina: Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say, what do I have? I have my, uh, my, my, my Linus Tech tips, uh, screwdriver came in and, uh, it’s pretty nice. Um, uh, uh, he, he spent a lot of money and a lot of time building a ratcheting screwdriver. [00:30:18] Brett: to vaults like [00:30:20] Christina: No, no, no. Like, no, no. Like the YouTuber, um, uh, um, uh, lions Sebastian, who has like a very popular YouTube channel and, and they employ a bunch of people. [00:30:30] Christina: Um, it’s like a mini empire. He like made his own tools and it’s not bad. [00:30:35] Brett: I’m gonna, I’m gonna add that to our show notes mostly because I feel like I need to check this out. [00:30:40] Christina: Mm. [00:30:41] Brett: I’m a fan of popular YouTubers. People keep, people keep turning me onto new YouTubers and I’m like, I’ve never heard of that. And I get there and they have like 3 million subscribers or more, and I’m like, everyone knows about this but me. [00:30:56] Brett: It’s not even TikTok. Like I, I’m not surprised when I haven’t heard of someone on [00:31:00] TikTok, cuz I, I don’t go to TikTok, but I spend a lot of time on YouTube and yet I’m constantly surprised by very popular creators I’ve never heard of. And it’s all, it’s the algorithm. Like I find stuff on YouTube because YouTube suggests it to me, and if it doesn’t suggest it, I have no reason to know about it. [00:31:19] Christina: Exactly. [00:31:21] Jeff: It’s a very important service in our lives. Um, can I say my post office bit [00:31:27] Brett: Yes. [00:31:29] Jeff: or should we do a sponsor? [00:31:31] Brett: Oh, we should probably do a sponsor. [00:31:33] Christina: All right. This episode is brought to you by Collide. Our sponsor, collide has some big news. If you’re an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance. How? Well, if a device isn’t compliant, the user can’t log into your cloud apps until they fix the problem. It’s that simple. And what Collide does is they patch one of the major holes in zero trust architecture, which is device compliance, making sure that everything is [00:32:00] updated and running what it needs to be running and provision the right way. [00:32:03] Christina: And without collide it struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OS and browser up to date. Uh, you might know, you know, iOS has had to release a couple of zero day patches. Google just released a big one, uh, for the Pixel seven and I, and I think, uh, the Pixel six as well. And, uh, unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing to stop them. [00:32:26] Christina: Clyde is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with Okta. The moment that Collides agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it. And if they don’t fix the problem within a set period of time, they’re blocked. [00:32:44] Christina: They’re blocked. That’s it. They can’t access anything. Collides method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. So you can visit collide.com/ Overtired to learn more or to [00:33:00] book a demo. That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired collide.com/ Overtired. [00:33:08] Brett: I’m so glad you realized that I made a mistake and, uh, it. Overtired too, and without a space. And you, you nailed it. You saw that and you’re like, that’s not right. I’m gonna, I’m gonna read it the way it should be. That was very good. Um, we also are, uh, talking once again about, uh, another mental health podcast that we love. [00:33:33] Brett: Uh, mental Chillness. If you’re looking for more mental health podcasts, mental Chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter. It’s led by Khan and Jules, two people with mental illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily process of working towards mental chill. [00:33:53] Brett: Coming from childhood environments that weren’t open about mental wellbeing and emotional self-regulation, [00:34:00] K and jewels are opening up the conversation of everyday struggles of dealing with A D H D, depression and anxiety, epilepsy and growing into adulthood. They share tips and tricks of emotional awareness from their personal experiences and how they hold themselves accountable through personal bs. [00:34:18] Brett: And the way they know how to do it best is with humor. You can keep up with them on any podcast platform and YouTube channel. Mental chillness for full video contents. Thanks. Mental chillness. Uh, they’re also talking about us. [00:34:32] Brett: So sweet deal there. [00:34:34] Jeff: Say nice things, please, [00:34:35] Christina: Please. [00:34:37] Brett: Um, just real quick before we do the post office, I, I just have to, I just have to say I did a, I did a poll on Macedon and usually if I do a poll on Twitter with 13,000 followers, I’ll get maybe 40, 50 responses. Uh, people that actually vote on [00:35:00] Maidan. I have 2000 followers and I did a poll about what programming language I should learn next. [00:35:05] Brett: And I got a hundred some responses including multiple people that wanted to write in new options and it was very productive and I love Macedon and I’m learning Rust Next. As a result, I kind of already knew that I was already planning, but I just wanted to see like, is go a contender? Uh, should I be learning Scala? [00:35:28] Brett: No, it’s rust. I’m going with Rust. But anyway, let’s talk post office. [00:35:34] Jeff: All I have to say about the post office is that, so I sell, uh, I sell shit on eBay. Like, like I. Used to go to auctions for like steel factories and shit, and I, and I sell kind of obscure consumable Sunny Bay. It’s just something I enjoy. Um, and so I go to the post office and I was walking into the post office the other day and I was like, this is one of the only things I can [00:36:00] think of that is a major piece of life that has not changed in my entire. And I mean at all, right? Like most post offices, like even like whatever fucking computer they have at the desk has been there since computers started. And I was trying to think of other things and I’m curious if you have any of those. I mean, cuz really there’s nothing like the post office. And if I were to explain it to you now, if I were to say there’s this thing where if you put a certain sticky thing onto an envelope, a man will come and pick it up. [00:36:31] Jeff: Or a woman man in my case will come and pick it up and they will make sure that it gets across the country to a person’s house. If I told you that, it would sound like it was 400 years ago. [00:36:44] Brett: I was gonna say that DMV hasn’t changed much, but it has, [00:36:48] Jeff: Mm. [00:36:48] Brett: I, I still, if I go to my DMV here in town, like I still have to fill out a lot of paper. Like it’s not electronic, but simply the [00:37:00] advent of digital cameras has changed the entire DMV experience and license renewal process. So, and I feel like the post office has changed in small ways. [00:37:09] Brett: Um, like handwriting recognition, for example. [00:37:13] Jeff: fundamentally, if you wanna send a package, you walk in with your box and hand it to a person who puts it in a bin that is also 400 years old. [00:37:20] Brett: Yeah. And, and they go with zip codes. And when it gets down to the finer details, it’s up to whoever your postal carrier is to figure out the quirks in, in addressing, I get, I get stuff delivered to me fairly often that has the address wrong, but has my name right. And if this were a purely automated system, that that would’ve been returned to sender because it was the wrong address, but it gets to the right route. [00:37:48] Brett: And then my postal carrier’s like, oh yeah, Brett, I know Brett. Here, here, here’s your mail. [00:37:53] Jeff: at the punk planet offices, we used to get, we also got, we got this regular catalog about Chick sexing, which is about,[00:38:00] [00:38:00] Brett: sorry, what? [00:38:00] Jeff: chick sexing, which is not what it sounds like. It’s about, it’s about, uh, [00:38:05] Brett: I, yeah. Birds are bird. Birds are notoriously hard to. [00:38:09] Jeff: So we would get this, this Chick sexing catalog, a addressed to punk planetarium , which was amazing. Anyway, uh, that, that’s my think, that’s my little thought puzzle. The DMV isn’t a bad answer. I mean, it’s changed, but [00:38:26] Brett: it has, but it, I mean, still it’s still a toil when it really shouldn’t be like, that. Seems like a process rife for a lot more automation and efficiency. [00:38:37] Jeff: It seems like getting arrested probably hasn’t changed that much. You know what I mean? Like it, it’s like you still probably do your fingerprints, although it’s probably on a computer, I guess. Remember when this is? I will, I promise not to go down anymore of memory lane after this, but like, remember when running a credit card was like they had that, that thing that was like the size of a [00:38:57] Brett: the Xerox [00:38:58] Jeff: and they would put it down [00:39:00] and they would just make a copy of it. [00:39:02] Brett: I do remember [00:39:03] Jeff: Okay, I’m done. [00:39:04] Brett: Christina might not remember, but that was definitely early credit card days for me. [00:39:08] Jeff: go through any machine at all. They just made a [00:39:10] Brett: it was, it was barely faster than writing a check. [00:39:13] Christina: Yeah, I, I, okay, so I do remember this because when I worked my very first job, we, if the machine was down, I would have to pull this massive thing out from underneath the, the counter, pull it back up, and then, you know, and then like pull out some Simpson paper, you know, make an imprint of the card, you know, to, to put it in. [00:39:32] Christina: And like, that’s what we would do. If, if the bank, if the modem or whatever, you know, was, was on on, on the po o s was down, I would have to like manually, um, make, make a copy, make an imprint of a card. But, um, that was only at that first job. Best Buy. Did not have Best Buy, buy that era already was like, no, we don’t, we’re completely, you know, digitized. [00:39:52] Christina: Um, if, if the machine is down too bad, um, but, uh, , but, but good old, um, EB games. Um, you know, if [00:40:00] somebody needed to pay with a credit card for their Pokemon cards, um, or, uh, you know, uh, final Fantasy eight or whatever, um, then, uh, then they could, uh, or, or their Dreamcast or whatever. Uh, and, and the system was down. [00:40:12] Christina: I could still take it in front of their card, but yeah. [00:40:16] Brett: For some reason, my, my instinct now, which we are not going to indulge, but my instinct is to talk about mimeographs and, and those, those, [00:40:27] Christina: I’ve only read about. [00:40:28] Jeff: That smell? [00:40:29] Brett: Those overhead projectors that teacher used to put, uh, like a clear, like laminate over and then write on with marker and it would project in front of [00:40:39] Christina: 100%. Uh, transparent, transparent things. Yeah, I, I used to print those. I, I used to, I used to, um, get those so that you could print on them with like my inkjet printer. So that you could, like, then I could like, give presentations like in like sixth grade and be like, oh, look at how fancy I am. [00:40:53] Christina: Yeah. With like, with like my, my, my, my, my well printed stuff or whatnot. But yeah, you would get, um, what, what were it was [00:41:00] called, um, they were um, cuz there overhead projectors. But, but, but they, but they were, there was like a [00:41:04] Brett: was a, there was a word for it. There was like, there was like a one word name. Then you knew what was happening. I can’t remember. [00:41:11] Jeff: you know it, listeners shouted, shouted at the speaker. [00:41:14] Christina: yeah. I [00:41:15] Brett: she yell it out right [00:41:16] Christina: I was gonna say I’m only aware of Mimeographs because they were mentioned in like Judy Bloom books that were like, written in the seventies and I was like, what is this, what is this? Like I have no concept of what this is. It’s like, this sounds like a shittier version of like a Xerox machine and, and that’s what it was. [00:41:30] Christina: Um, but, but like I, you know, didn’t, didn’t know, um, never had to experience that. But I, I did have the um, uh, you know, the, the overhead projector stuff cuz like, that’s what they would do in like math and shit. Like, you know, [00:41:43] Brett: Well, so [00:41:44] Christina: and. [00:41:45] Brett: there’s this interesting, yeah. Like Xerox has come a long way, uh, to use a brand name, but photocopy has come a long way. However, there have been recent issues where, because in [00:42:00] order, yeah, in order to, to most effectively and accurately copy a document, a black and white document, most modern copiers will actually scan and OCR and then rewrite. [00:42:17] Brett: So people are running copies and getting. Copies with different words or different numbers, more importantly, different numbers in the output than in the input, which is never a, never a problem back in the days of just photocopy when it was literally photocopying. [00:42:35] Christina: yeah, no, exactly. This is, this is, um, yeah, this is, uh, I, I, I read about this recently, um, about how like, uh, it’ll randomly alter, you know, numbers or whatever. Um, and some of this stuff, um, it, it’ll like, it, it’s like, um, this flock think apparently goes back like a decade now that I’m looking about it, but, but I, I, we must have seen it at this from the same place, Brett, because I saw it recently too and I was reminded of this and I was like, oh, this is so interesting. [00:42:59] Christina: Yeah, I did [00:43:00] too. And, and um, and, and, but you’re right cuz it is this weird thing cuz you’re like, okay, well they should have just done like the old method of like the, the, the, you know, um, uh, circular drum or whatever the method is, and just take the, take the, the photograph. And I understand that in most cases it is better to just, you know, like do the OCR and whatnot, but clearly it’s not always the case. [00:43:22] Christina: There was this other thing, there was this other thing that I read, um, on hacker. Um, a couple months ago, I’ll see if I can find it, but there’s this guy who’s been, he basically, uh, was trying to figure out, I guess if it was worth like a, he was doing some sort of big photography project and he was wanting to do like a big, uh, uh, 35 millimeter, um, scans and the, the types of machines that are made for this sort of thing. [00:43:45] Christina: Um, unfortunately the, the software that, uh, the, the main maker who made these machines, which were like many tens of thousands of dollars, they stopped support. Mac os passed a certain point, and, and I don’t think they ever, uh, you know, upgraded [00:44:00] to, um, to, to 64 bit or something. And, and so, um, you have to use like an old machine to get it to work. [00:44:06] Christina: And, and, and the company, even though they were selling the machines until only a few years ago, uh, like refused to basically update anything. Um, and nobody’s making these types of, of scanners. Um, but if you’re doing the sort of precision work that this guy wants to do of like these full frame, like 35 millimeter scans for, from like certain full frame cameras, you need to use these super rare, hard to get and very, very expensive scanners. [00:44:30] Christina: And, and everybody in Hacker News, because it’s a, you know, hell hole of, of, well actually, you know, Asby and Jack asses. Um, like they were all like, well, why can’t you just use this Epson scanner? This is the, the same d p and whatnot. And the guy was like, no, it’s not. The detail that it collects is not the same. [00:44:48] Christina: And, and, and it was, it’s interesting that as much as technology has improved in some ways, the old kind of barrel drum ways that like a scanner worked like, you know, 50, 40 years ago is still [00:45:00] superior to what the, the current kind of method would be for, for capturing things, you know, like cheaper. It, it’s, it’s fascinating to think about that. [00:45:08] Christina: Like it made me think about the, the Xerox thing because I, I get why they do it the way they’re doing it and are doing like the manual, like the, you know, computer aided OCR stuff, but at the same time it’s like you’re not actually getting copies. You think you need, you’ve, you’ve introduced a problem with all this stuff that, that you didn’t have, you know, which is terrifying. [00:45:28] Jeff: Ah, [00:45:29] Brett: So speaking of advances in technology, um, I we’re, we should, if we were responsible podcasts or switch to gratitude at this point, but, uh, We, we, uh, do you, do you have some time? Because I feel like we have put off talking about, uh, ai, uh, for a couple weeks now, and, [00:45:53] Jeff: in fairness, assuming the AI would talk about itself. [00:45:56] Christina: is true. [00:45:57] Brett: Uh, but like last week chat, G [00:46:00] p t four was introduced, uh, Google finally came out with their Bard. [00:46:06] Brett: Uh, uh, Microsoft made their chat, g p t powered Bing Public. And, uh, and then just very, very recently, GitHub announced co-pilot X, um, which, uh, th there’s just so much happening so fast right now. I’m kind of, I’m kind of curious, especially, I feel like Christina’s gonna have a lot to say about this. Um, but, but Christina, where would you, where would you start this convers. [00:46:34] Christina: Well, I think that, so g p t four and, and then I guess also Google, you know, release or opening the wait list for Bard are, are kind of the two things. I think, um, co-pilot X is, is not a product, so to speak, as it is kinda like a vision of where we’re envisioning, like stuff like what the future of things can be. [00:46:52] Christina: So some of the stuff will probably make its way into, you know, uh, co-pilot, like, uh, the C l I and, and, uh, the ability to, to [00:47:00] chat with it both for voice and um, with, uh, with text and some other stuff. And some other things are, you know, kinda more experimental in nature. But, um, yeah, I mean, to your point, I think that it, it’s shocking to me like I’ve been, I’ve been kind of beating the drum, um, For the, the, the show, the developer or news show that I, I write and, and do every week since probably, I don’t know, June or July, I really made like the consci conscientious decision to be like, Hey, this, this l l m stuff is becoming really, really big. [00:47:32] Christina: And we’re starting to see a lot of really interesting things happening with generative AI beyond just, you know, uh, get up co-pilot and, and some of the other things we’d seen first starting with the art stuff and then now chat G P T and, and then now all these add-on things. Um, but to your point, like it, it’s crazy when you think that really how much stuff has December when chat g p T was released. [00:47:56] Christina: But also if you go back even further, like if you go back to when stable diffusion [00:48:00] when was announced, which is like August and where we are now, it feels like a lifetime ago in, in some respects. [00:48:07] Brett: have you seen Adobe Firefly? [00:48:09] Christina: Yeah, I saw that, that that was also announced this week. [00:48:11] Brett: It kind of fixes everything that was really wonky about like Dolly as far like to actually use it for creative purposes, for, to actually use it for like production purposes. Um, Firefly. Addresses so many of those, uh, AI image generation concerns. Yeah. Like this shit, like people, people may say right now, like, here’s what’s wrong with it, but I’m at the rate things are happening. [00:48:41] Brett: Everything you’re complaining about right now is gonna be fixed. Give it a year, a year max, four years. And everything you’re talking about being wrong right now is going to be fixed. Like this is, this is here to stay. This is the future. The internet, the, the world of computing [00:49:00] is changing underneath our feet. [00:49:02] Brett: Uh, people my age, uh, are going to have to make a decision to, uh, to, to get with it and to become, to become fluent in AI prompts or to try to eek out a living in what will soon be old school computing. [00:49:26] Christina: Yeah, I mean, I think that I, I definitely think that we’re all going to have to become better at like, prompt, um, you know, uh, generation and, [00:49:34] Brett: There’s like, there’s a whole market out there for like prompt generation courses. [00:49:39] Christina: Oh, there is, and, and that, and that’s sort of the interesting thing. But I think that to me, like what you mentioned about Firefly, like to me, this is where I think we’re actually going to see really innovative art is when actual artists are using this stuff in their process, right? Like, it’s one thing if you’re giving it a prompt and it makes something that looks okay and you can, with the perfect thing in the, the exact right [00:50:00] response and, and the right tweaking, you can get a really great looking thumbnail, right? [00:50:04] Christina: But then if you l if you zoom in and you go too close into it, then you’re like, eh, actually this looks a little bit jank. But, but it’s still really impressive. But when you then take something and go, okay, well I have these editing tools and I’m an artist and I’m able to tweak the model even more so to, to give it the right source of, of results that I want. [00:50:21] Christina: And then me as an artist, I could go in and alter, you know, and, and make cleanup and make changes. That’s where I think you are. I think that’s where we’re going to see really exciting stuff. [00:50:31] Brett: Firefly can do vector, which means it’s way easier to fix issues. Um, [00:50:38] Christina: That I didn’t know. I didn’t realize it was Vector. That’s amazing. [00:50:41] Brett: I took draw things that, like you, you mentioned, draw things as I think a, a gtu a while back, or you brought it up on the show. So I, I was checking out Draw Thingss and I was using the Mac version of it, and in just four prompts, I got a perfect, I [00:51:00] needed a blonde, like 20 something with a red hat screaming for various political purposes. [00:51:08] Brett: And I was able to get like a perf, like exactly what was in my head in four prompts. Like it took four permutations of the prompt and I got exactly the image, like an image that I, I had no royalties, no, uh, no ownership, and I could just use however I wanted to to talk shit about a, an AI generated human being, but, Yeah. [00:51:35] Brett: And, and, uh, the video there. So most of the AI video stuff, I believe, um, I don’t think there’s anything out there that for free will generate more than three seconds of video right now, because the potential for deep fakes is just so dangerous. Like, but I, I can make Obama for three [00:52:00] seconds. I can make Barack Obama say anything I want to, literally anything. [00:52:04] Brett: And, and it’s completely convincing. [00:52:07] Christina: The voice stuff is even scarier, uh, because the voice models have become really, really good. And, and it’s one of those things that I become a little bit worried. Like I’m not worried about anybody impersonating me for like ill will, right? Like, I don’t, that’s, that’s not so much my problem. My, my issue is more, I’m like, okay, my, there are are thousands of hours of my voice out there that someone could transfer into, and then if they got my parents’ phone number or whatnot like that, that’s a gr This is a great way of, of doing, you know, the email scam where you send, oh, I’m, I’m stuck in a foreign country, you know, wire me this money. [00:52:38] Christina: Okay, now you can do it using someone’s actual [00:52:41] Brett: which is way more convincing for sure. [00:52:44] Christina: more convincing, especially if you then spoof a phone number or something. You know, there’s a lot of stuff you can do. So, That’s, I do worry about that. Um, I, I worry about the deep fake stuff for sure, but I think that there are, I’m, I’m hoping that, [00:53:00] yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things I’m, I’m hesitant to call for more legislation and stuff, just because I think that the government does such a terrible job with tech in general, that even if I think that we need more legislation, I don’t have any faith that the, that congress has any understanding of what they’re talking about at all on any level. [00:53:16] Christina: Um, but this is one of those areas where we’re gonna have to figure out, uh, things about like deep fakes for things like, you know, pornography and for impersonations really fast because the, the tools are getting so good, like turnkey, you know, just like anybody with like, you know, using a web interface can do the voice stuff. [00:53:35] Brett: yeah, I made a pretty convincing minute long rant from Elon Musk talking about how he’d been a bot the whole time, and that his, his, uh, his vengeance towards bots on Twitter was actually a very self-defeating, um, tactic that he was using to convince people he wasn’t a bot. Like I wrote out a whole script. [00:53:57] Brett: I had it read in Elon Musk’s voice, and [00:54:00] honestly, it sounds like Elon Musk giving an interview, um, maybe a little more lucid than he usually seems in interviews. Uh, but yeah, like the technology is there now and, and, and it’s scary, but a also at the same time, holy shit, we can do anything [00:54:17] Christina: Yeah, it’s exciting too. [00:54:19] Brett: I think so like when, when the internet first dawned when, when computers first dawned, like there was less trepidation than there is now because we hadn’t seen, seen things go, we hadn’t seen things misused as much previously. [00:54:35] Brett: We didn’t know how bad things could get. Now we do, like we’ve seen where these technologies can go and like, um, everybody’s first reaction is fear when it comes to this, and rightly so. AI is scary shit. Um, like we have, we have decades of movies about how AI can destroy humanity. , but, but the potential is [00:55:00] also awesome. [00:55:01] Jeff: Christina, will you kind of tell us about, um, GitHub’s co-pilot? [00:55:09] Christina: Yeah, so the big thing is, is that so, so G p T four was announced last week, and it’s, it’s out now. Um, in terms of like the, uh, um, if you pay for chat, g p. You get access to it and the API is, there’s a wait list, but I think they’re adding people to it fairly quickly, and the model is significantly better. [00:55:26] Christina: In some ways, it is a little bit slower in some regards. So when it comes to the, the model that copilot uses, we haven’t moved everything over to, to G P T four yet because, uh, we need to make sure that the, the speed and, and that stuff will be there. But there are some things that we will be using G P T for, um, for, with co-pilot. [00:55:44] Christina: So co-pilot, uh, if you’re not familiar, is basically our pair programming assistant. That’s why it’s your co-pilot that gives you suggestions, um, and, and, you know, um, can, can generate code for you as, as, as you’re, uh, going along and, and it takes it both from. [00:56:00] Your style, but also the, the code that’s within the different projects that you’re working on. [00:56:05] Christina: So it’s, the more you use it, uh, the better it gets. And so like, if you have a bunch of different files open all in a project, it’s going to be able to, to use that data to kind of infer, you know, the style that it’s doing and, and what suggestions it’s giving you. Um, but one of the things that you can do with the, the, uh, one of the, the GitHub co-pilot X things is that although you’ve been able to ask questions in comments before, now they’ve actually kind of built in like a, a chatbot type of interface. [00:56:30] Christina: So it’s like you have a more chat G B T type of experience directly in your I D E, so you’re not having to move to another app. You can do it alongside that and then, you know, insert the code that way if that’s what you wanna do. Um, you can also explain code. We’ll even do things like in different languages. [00:56:45] Christina: You can say, okay, you know, you can write something in Spanish and we’ll give you, you know, the, the corresponding code. Um, that way. Um, we’re, we’re also working on something. Uh, I see a beautiful cat right now as I’m talking. I love him. Um, or her. Um, and, [00:57:00] uh, we’re, uh, we, we’d previously called this, hey GitHub, and now it’s gonna be, uh, come I think a co-pilot voiced, I think, Don’t quote me on that. [00:57:08] Christina: Basically where you can, uh, verbally talk to your IDE and generate things that way. But then some of the other exciting things are trying to bring this into other ways. So like, there’s co-pilot for docs, which so far we have working with M D M and Azure’s docs and like the React docs. And so this is a way where it’s basically, it’s been kind of trained on all of that documentation. [00:57:28] Christina: So you can use that to, to ask questions and search better, which I think is really exciting. And then what, what Bread is gonna be super stoked about, and me as well, I’ve been using it for a couple of days, it’s really cool is there’s a, a copilot c l i, so you can actually use it in your terminal to, you know, say, okay, build me, you know, watermark a video for me using F F M Peg, um, and it will do that for you. [00:57:54] Christina: Or write me a red X that does these things and it’ll do it for you. And also explain step by step what it’s [00:58:00] doing. Which is, is, I mean, like that’s, that’s gonna be really great for me. [00:58:06] Brett: I want to use it with ff, F F M, peg and panoc and just something, something that knows all of the, all of the flags and switches and can just tell you, here’s what you need. [00:58:18] Jeff: Yes. I take it. I’ll take it. I love it. [00:58:22] Brett: I wish. I wish. So. As, as listeners know, I have never made the switch to VS code. Um, I have been using VS code just because that’s the only place GitHub co-pilot will work. Um, sublime Text. Short. Short, [00:58:42] Christina: neo them and, and, and Neo. [00:58:45] Brett: I’m a sublime text guy and while there have been some chat V p t, um, extensions plugins released for sublime texts, they are far behind what VS Code can do.[00:59:00] [00:59:00] Brett: Um, so I will actually open up a project I’m working in, in sublime and we’ll open it in vs code just to like say, Hey, write me yard comments for this ruby function or, or fix, tell me how to debug this error I’m getting and it’ll, it’ll figure it out. Like it’s amazing for debugging if you have code that’s currently in an R A P L A rep. [00:59:27] Brett: If it’s currently returning an error, uh, co-pilot can debug that error and tell you how to fix it. It’s so fast. It’s nice. [00:59:36] Jeff: The thing I wonder is like using, uh, using AI for coding still requires, uh, an ability to do computational thinking. Right. Um, I wonder how far we are from where that is not gonna be necessary at all. [00:59:51] Christina: We’re, we’re getting closer than, than you would think. Like one of the things they showed off at, in the open AI did a live, a developer live stream for G P T four. And [01:00:00] one of the things they did was that, um, uh, uh, g d b, he took a photo, like he basically drew out like, uh, what a website would look like. He wanted to create like a joke generator. [01:00:09] Christina: He took a photo of it, he uploaded it, um, and then used his discord bot to kind of ingest that into, to G P T four. And then it made that into code [01:00:19] Jeff: Wow. [01:00:20] Christina: and, and, and also did the job search from the functional stuff. So, [01:00:23] Jeff: geeky. [01:00:24] Brett: For at least a decade now, we’ve been promised technologies that would allow non coders to code. Um, I mean, even SQL L was originally developed for non coders to be able to work with databases. And I’ll be honest, uh, SQL takes some knowledge. [01:00:43] Christina: it [01:00:43] Jeff: Oh my God. When you get, when you get beyond, like, show me you know this from this column, [01:00:49] Brett: tables. Um, [01:00:51] Christina: Yeah. Little bobby tables. [01:00:52] Brett: but we have been promised this for, for over a decade. Uh, this no code kind of approach, and I feel like [01:01:00] this is finally the technology that is going to make it possible for someone to envision a problem. And habit solved for them, um, to be able, you know, obviously you want them to have some power, some, some agency in the process. [01:01:19] Brett: But yeah, we’re, we’re, we are definitely on the horizon seeing an era where, uh, a six-year-old kid can say, this is what I want to do, this is what I want my program to do. And, and, and have the program that does Exactly. If they know the right question to ask, it’ll do it. [01:01:38] Christina: Yeah, we’re, we’re getting close. And I mean, the thing is, is that even, I mean, cuz there have been some really decent like, uh, low-code, no-code solutions. There’s a, there’s a company I like a lot called re. But even that one, you really need to understand like databases a little bit. You need to kind of have an understanding of, of what you’re wanting to do. [01:01:56] Christina: It’s, it’s not really as drag and drop, like, uh, there’s, oh, this is what I wanted to mention. [01:02:00] There was a great article, uh, speaking of retool on their website last week. Um, they published, um, um, uh, history of Visual Basic, and it was just this beautiful, beautiful website, uh, this beautiful blog entry, the A, that was just like a fantastic thing to look at. [01:02:16] Christina: And B, like, um, like every detail of the bitmap fonts, The design is also like this ex exhaust of like 5,000 plus word, like kind of oral history of, of Visual Basic. And um, I feel like, you know, we never really replaced Visual Basic and, and HyperCard in the web era. Like, for whatever reason we just didn’t do it. [01:02:36] Christina: And, you know, maybe Flash was maybe the closest thing we came to that, but, but then that really didn’t go far enough and so we’ve lost that. And now I almost feel like we might finally get back to that. But with this addition of, you know, making it even easier in some regards, you know, for people to get like, you know, MVPs and proof of concepts running. [01:02:57] Christina: Cuz I, I don’t think anybody would argue that like, the, the code you’re [01:03:00] going to do is gonna be like the, the greatest code or like the cleanest or anything, but it’s gonna get you out closer to an idea to go from there. S same, same as the art, right? It’s not, not like the art that, that these prompts generate are the works of art, but it’s giving you a, a starting place where then you can alter that and make and build off of that. [01:03:19] Brett: in my experience thus far, um, I have taken stuff that I’ve written that I am perfectly confident in, and I have asked G P T to rewrite. Just, just to see what it would spit out if I said, rewrite this function. And it has provided, uh, code that was more in line with, uh, like modern coding practices, uh, that was more efficient, that was shorter, uh, that was more readable. [01:03:50] Brett: Like it, it is always found a way. And then, and it always gives me like a bullet list of why it did what it did. Um, and yeah, like I, [01:04:00] like at first I was like, yeah, you can use it to write code, but you’re gonna want to check everything it does. It’s already like in, in a month. It’s already getting better to the, to the point where I actually trust it to rewrite functions for me. [01:04:15] Brett: And there have been times that I’ve had it rewrite a function and that I’ve run, you know, spec tests on it. And it has failed, uh, for, for various reasons that have required some knowledge to figure out what went wrong. Uh, but for the most part, uh, like as far as adhering to modern coding practices, adhering to, uh, like you were saying, like it, it can understand a coding style and match it. [01:04:44] Brett: Um, that it’s, it’s spectacular in that regard. [01:04:49] Christina: Yeah, it will do the false hallucination thing. We’ll just kind of maybe create APIs that don’t exist, or it will create, you know, kind of endpoints to different things that that’s not really there. Right. It will, it will go that far and it will kind of trick [01:05:00] you or it will give you an explanation for something that will sound really great and be like, no, that’s not actually true. [01:05:04] Christina: But, you know, these things are imperfect. Uh, but when they work and they work well, I would say like 90% of the time in a lot of these cases, it feels freaking magical in a way that, I don’t know, I’m excited by it. I know a lot of people are, are freaked out from the, you know, the, uh, ethical implications. [01:05:22] Christina: And I’m not discounting any of that, but, but I just, I think about like all the cool shit that’s gonna get created because of stuff like this. [01:05:29] Brett: Did I tell you guys about the support requests I got from Merck because someone had asked chat, G P T how to do something. [01:05:39] Christina: No. [01:05:40] Brett: Someone, someone was looking for a way to split a markdown document based on its headers into multiple files, which is a thing. Sure, I have written scripts that do this. Uh, but chat, G b t three told them that marked my application could do [01:06:00] this, and then proceeded to give them the exact menu options to use to accomplish this task. [01:06:07] Brett: None of which actually exists in the application, but it, it had given them very detailed, very realistic sounding instructions for how to accomplish this with Mark. And they wrote me and they’re like, so can it actually do this? And I was like, no, this is obviously an AI fever dream, uh, for a feature that I never, I never had tort, but it was, it was ridiculously detailed. [01:06:32] Jeff: Until you check the next day and the feature has been added. it’s total son of Anton situation. Yeah, [01:06:41] Brett: Yes. Oh, man. All right. Should we, uh, this will, this will come up again. We are not done with ai, but should [01:06:49] Jeff: AI is not done with us. [01:06:51] Christina: No, it’s not. [01:06:52] Brett: should we do some gratitude? [01:06:53] Christina: Let’s do some gratitude. [01:06:55] Jeff: I can go first. So I, there’s this app that you, one of you [01:07:00] mentioned last week in talking about another app, and I had actually never heard of it. And it’s Mac updater somehow. I’ve never heard of it though. It’s clearly just, I mean by the design has clearly been around a long time. [01:07:13] Jeff: Um, is that true? [01:07:15] Christina: Um, it’s been around, that’s like four years. [01:07:18] Jeff: Okay. Not that [01:07:19] Christina: No. And, and version three just came out. [01:07:21] Jeff: So, um, it, it’s, it’s wonderful For anybody that doesn’t know it, it’s just, it, it, it gives you an, a really nice interface for seeing which of your apps, uh, have updates available. It’s also a really nice way to read the, um, notes on those, uh, on those updates. Really awesome for me. I, I, I always miss those. [01:07:41] Jeff: Otherwise, and this actually, I’ve noticed I end up going into the, um, developer’s notes before I update because it’s just so easy to do. Um, and they also have like a discover function, which I have not used that much, but it just, [01:07:59] Brett: it’s [01:08:00] interesting. You can see what, if you wanna find out what apps are currently under frequent and development, the Discover tab is great. [01:08:07] Jeff: yeah. And what’s free and what costs money and what, what’s popular and what’s not, and what’s a minor, um, update and what’s a major update or what is their minor or it’s, what does that mean actually [01:08:18] Brett: semantic versioning, like a, a major update is, so you have, uh, 1.0 0.0, right? Uh, the one is major updates, the Z, the first zero is minor updates, and the third zero is patch updates. So if something says major update, it’s going from like 1.0 to 2.0. But if it’s a minor update, it’s going from 1.1 to 1.2, and then a patch update would be like 1.2, 0.1 to 1.2 0.2. [01:08:46] Jeff: Okay. Got it. The other thing that I noticed when I was going to buy it is that they have this really awesome policy where if you’re a student or a resident of the 40 least wealthy nations, [01:09:00] you get a significant discount. And I was just like, what a, that’s like a cool little thing to add. [01:09:05] Jeff: Like I, I’ve never seen that before, um, ever. And so anyway, it’s a, just a lovely, simple but complex, uh, app that is elegant and serving me well. So thanks for mentioning it last week. Um, yeah. [01:09:21] Brett: full disclosure, and Jeff had no idea, but they have sponsored brett Terpstra dot com and they will be sponsoring again in April. Um, I am a huge fan. Like I only take sponsorships from things that I use and love and, uh, and their version 3.0. [01:09:39] Christina: It’s great. [01:09:40] Brett: Add things like, uh, completely interaction free pkg like package installation. [01:09:48] Brett: So right now in version 2.0, if you upgrade an app that requires a package install Microsoft Teams for exa, for example, um, you have to, it’ll, [01:10:00] it’ll say, could not con con complete the upgrade. Uh, you have to interact and it would pop up the package install and you would, you know, tab through, enter your password and everything, and then it would finish and then it would recognize that the updated happened. [01:10:15] Brett: Version three, uh, does a much better job of making pkg installation. Interaction free, like it can just complete them for you, which is, it’s kind of a big deal because I use a Mac updater every day and like I, I have enough apps that I get an update screen every day and anything it can update automatically. [01:10:39] Brett: I select quick update apps, hit the button, it’s done. Um, but there’s always one app that needs interaction that I would love to just seamlessly have happen. So I’m excited to start using 3.0 [01:10:54] Jeff: Awesome. [01:10:55] Christina: Yeah. And, and they’ve never sponsored me unfortunately, but I’ve been a fan of theirs for a [01:11:00] long time. And I will say, uh, that, uh, the, the c l I tool, which is part of like the, the, um, pro and like the business, um, license or whatever, you can get like a, a command line, um, utility that, that’s included in the bundle. [01:11:12] Christina: That was because I requested, uh, that and, uh, [01:11:17] Jeff: Yes. [01:11:18] Brett: a Christina feature. Nice. [01:11:19] Christina: was a Christina feature. And, and I was like, this is great because in my mind, cuz one of the things I like about. Is that it can pull things from home. Brew can pull things from a lot of different sources. And so if I can use it from the cli I’m like, oh, okay, well this is actually great while I’m doing my brew updates and whatnot, I can just, you know, query Mac updater. [01:11:37] Christina: Um, instead of having to maybe, you know, go through the, the UI sometimes just easier or if you wanna build a script to do something automated. I just, I was just like, why not? Uh, big fan, big fan of that. So, uh, [01:11:49] Jeff: Awesome. [01:11:50] Christina: uh, plus one on that. [01:11:52] Jeff: Yeah. Love it. [01:11:53] Brett: All right. Christina, do you know what you’re picking this [01:11:56] Christina: I do, I do, I’ve got a couple things actually. So, [01:12:00] um, while we’re talking about ai, one of the things, you know, that, that, uh, one of the cooler models that Open AI released, and they released this, um, like six weeks I think maybe before, uh, chat G B T. And so it didn’t get as much attention but it as Whisper, which is their, their speech to text model. [01:12:16] Christina: And they can basically take and translate, uh, a speech into text and it’s actually. [01:12:22] Brett: this on our podcast. It’s really good. [01:12:25] Christina: It’s incredibly good. And what’s amazing about it is that like it’s, I mean, I’m, I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ve paid for, The, you know, human translation services that you pay, like whatever the, the dollar a minute things, um, for, uh, or, or $10 a minute, whatever, whatever the, the fee is for stuff. [01:12:44] Christina: I’ve done that stuff for years. Then audit audited those things and the s r t files and the, the stuff that whispered gives you is incredibly good. You might have to make a couple of corrections and it has a hard time with some punctuation, but by and large, it [01:13:00] is better than anything I’ve ever seen from kind of like AI generated things. [01:13:04] Christina: Uh, and because it’s O whisper is actually open source, you can actually locally host it and run it on your own machine. So you could have like a, a, a web hosted version obviously, but you could have like the, you know, assuming you have enough RAM and enough resources, you can run these things on your own machine. [01:13:19] Christina: The problem is, is that actually, you know, if you don’t wanna have Python set up and, and run through, , um, all of that, uh, uh, stuff, it can be a little bit complicated. And I was working, um, on potentially like an open source project to try to make like a kind of an electron wrapper or something with that. [01:13:35] Christina: Um, but that, that project has, um, uh, unfortunately kind of, uh, been sidetracked for a little bit. But there are a couple of alternatives, um, that don’t do everything that we were wanting to do with, with a stage whisper, but are getting close. And so the first one I’m gonna mention is called ico, A I K O, and it’s from, uh, Cindra, uh, Sohu, who we’ve talked about his stuff before. [01:13:59] Christina: He makes, uh, [01:14:00] you know, he open sources and, uh, basically everything he does and, and makes his living that way has a bunch of great apps. Um, like, uh, he did, he has the, the interface for, uh, for Jif Ski, the, the, the gooey for that. And, uh, and, and Lango, which is like, you know, um, kind of like amphetamine. And, um, he, you know, has, um, a bunch of other stuff on his GitHub repo and in the Mac App store. [01:14:24] Christina: And ICO is AI powered audio transcription. It’s free, it’s in the Mac app. It’ll work on Intel and on Apple Silicone Max. These models do tend to run better on Apple Silicone Max, unless you have a beefy G P U. Um, and uh, he does also have a non app store, uh, version available if for some reason you can’t access it, but that’s not gonna get updated. [01:14:44] Christina: This will run on iOS and it’ll run on, um, on Mac os. And this is just an easy way to do high quality on device transcription it, and it includes shortcut support. Um, this is really great I think for, for most people’s stuff, but if you need more features, [01:15:00] so it uses the, the whisper, large V2 model, um, um, in, uh, in the medium or small model on iOS, depending on what memory you have available. [01:15:09] Christina: Um, and so, um, this is a really great, you know, if you’re Mac user, a really, really great way to, um, uh, get transcripts for your podcast or your YouTube files or whatever the case may be. So I’m gonna give that a shout out. But then there’s another app called. Mac Whisper is unfortunately not open sourced, but there is a free version. [01:15:29] Christina: And then there is a pro version, which I actually paid for, uh, to, to kind of play with. The free version will do a lot of things. This will actually transcribe between a bunch of different languages. So if you’re wanting to, uh, upload something in one language, it’ll transcribe to others. Um, the free version, um, uh, has, uh, some limited, um, model size. [01:15:49] Christina: Um, but if you want it to have faster and, uh, more accurate model sizes, you can get Mac Whisper Pro. What I really like about Mac [01:16:00] Whisper, the free version even does this, is that it will export what it does for you in s r t or v t t subtitle, export, or a CSV export. So the fact that I can get an s r t file from this and then I can upload that to YouTube is fucking great because that saves me a lot of time and also, Potentially it’s gonna save us like money from, um, you know, the, the service that we’ve been using to have some of my videos transcribed. [01:16:24] Christina: It’s really, really good. Um, you can take things even directly from like the voice memos app, uh, which is great. And then you can, you know, it’ll also support things from like MP3 or Wave or, you know, M four A or whatever. You can just give it a, a, a YouTube, um, link even. Um, and, and it’ll automatically, um, like you can just enter in the url, uh, from your YouTube video and it’ll automatically start to, to do the transcription. [01:16:48] Christina: You can also open files or even like create a new recording. You can choose what, what size model. You’re wanting to use. Um, so, uh, both of those, the, the free version of Mac Whisper is really good. The, the pro [01:17:00] version is like 16 pounds, so it’s like 17 US dollars. Um, I, I feel like supporting the dev. Um, so I’ll have both of those linked. [01:17:07] Christina: But if you’re looking at a way to try to do transcription and you wanna do it locally on your device, because maybe something like, you know, descript, which is great, but like, that either isn’t in your budget or you don’t, um, like Jeff, I think this would be great for you for journalism stuff. Like, you don’t necessarily want stuff on someone else’s server. [01:17:24] Christina: Um, this, this, this. Right. Um, especially when you’re doing some of the stories you’re working on, like you just don’t want it there. Like, that’s like just it, it could be a legal issue, could be a lot of things. Um, I, I think that, uh, both of these are, are really good options. So ICO and Mac. [01:17:41] Jeff: Awesome. [01:17:41] Brett: Nice. And on the, on the ai uh, vein, um, my pick this week is pd, uh, P E T E Y, which is, um, an Apple watch only app. Uh, there’s not even an iOS counterpart for it, but it is [01:18:00] just an interface to Mac G P T. Um, i, I assume three, but maybe eventually chat G p t four. But, uh, basically like it gives me a little complication on my watch that I can hit. [01:18:15] Brett: And ask it any question and get way better respon like for, you know, how you asked sir question. She says, here’s what I found on the web. And [01:18:25] Jeff: Yes. Yes. [01:18:26] Brett: she says, here’s what I found on the web. And, and even, even Google, uh, if you, if you have a, a Google Home, whatever, um, it will often just read you a webpage. [01:18:37] Brett: And p PD will actually give you usually a correct and detailed answer to just about any question you could possibly ask it. So when you’re in the car, when you’re in the car with your significant other, and one person says something you don’t agree with, and you say, I don’t think that’s true. And they say, oh yeah, look it up.[01:19:00] [01:19:00] Brett: This is what you turn to, this is, this is how you look it up. And then you say, see, PD says so, [01:19:06] Christina: That’s [01:19:07] Jeff: and pretty soon you are dating a [01:19:09] Brett: or in most cases, well, okay, PD says you’re right. [01:19:13] Christina: No, what I was gonna say is great timing on this because literally, um, uh, yesterday they, um, release an update that adds, uh, G P T four support, um, as an internet purchase. So it, it’s $5 and then there’s a $3 thing if you wanna get G P T four support. So, which I, I think is very, which I think is very reasonable, especially when you consider like you’re not having to bother with putting in your own, you know, op open AI keys, you know, API keys and whatnot. [01:19:38] Christina: Um, yeah. This is pretty cool. [01:19:39] Brett: Yep. All right. That was a good round. Thanks people. [01:19:44] Jeff: Good round. Good round. [01:19:46] Brett: Um, so, uh, I guess I feel like we’re at a logical conclusion here. [01:19:53] Jeff: Yeah. It’s literally where we end every week. [01:19:57] Brett: Literally where we end. [01:19:59] Jeff: [01:20:00] Yeah. [01:20:00] Brett: Get some sleep, guys. [01:20:01] Jeff: I guess I sleep. [01:20:03] Christina: get some sleep.

90s alternative bands are on tour, pets are aging gracefully, and parking in Chicago in the winter has its own customs. Sponsor ZocDoc lets you choose a doctor using real patient ratings, and book appointments (live or telehealth) in minutes. No more waiting on hold. Take your healthcare seriously and visit zocdoc.com/OVERTIRED. Mental Chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter. Join Khanh and Jules, people with mental illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily process of working towards mental chillness. Show Links Smashing Pumpkins/Dua Lipa mashup The worst way to get medical marijuana – Key & Peele Chicago Dibs Nilay Patel’s Brother Printer Affiliate Post New York Post covers Pop Secret Harry Plotter It Had to be Wu Dolt 45 SwiftGPT/WriteMage pam_wtid – watch and TouchID TouchID with auto-update Apple Watch only PAM module — need to adjust MAKE file for Apple Silicon Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Chicago Dibs! [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Christina: Hello, you are listening to Overtired, a podcast with, uh, me. I’m Christina Warren, and I’m joined by my great friends, Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severns Guntzel, and, um, I’m back. I, I was, I was in Los Angeles and then Sandy, Utah. So, um, I’m, I’m back and I’m glad to be [00:00:25] Jeffrey: Sandy, Utah. [00:00:30] Christina: It [00:00:31] Brett: Who doesn’t love you? [00:00:33] Christina: I mean, look, it is beautiful. Like even the airport, which is, you know, uh, recently been, been like, basically they raised it and, and, um, it looks great. Like you see the mountains and it’s a beautiful place. But the problem with going to a conference in Sandy is there’s like nothing out there. [00:00:48] Christina: It’s, it’s just like Baron like, [00:00:51] Brett: that actually the name of a city? I just thought you meant Sandy, like Utah [00:00:55] Christina: no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. No, no. To be clear, that, [00:01:00] that that was not an adjective, that was actually the name of, of, of the, of the town I was in. Yeah. [00:01:07] Brett: Sandy, Utah. [00:01:08] Jeffrey: San [00:01:09] Brett: What’s the big mountain bike destination in Utah? There’s like a national [00:01:14] Jeffrey: not Moab, moabs, where the, that’s where the Jeeps [00:01:17] Brett: climbing. Climbing. It’s the climbing, the big climbing and, and mountain biking. Destina, Moab. Yeah. I have friends who used to make, uh, regular pilgrimages to Moab. I think that’s where the big swing is that you can like swing across like the desert [00:01:34] Brett: It’s [00:01:34] Brett: huge. It’s [00:01:35] Christina: I mean that Okay. That [00:01:36] Brett: 80 feet. [00:01:37] Christina: I mean, that, that does actually sound fun. Um, I mean, look, it’s beautiful. Uh, and, and if I’d been there for like, to go skiing or something, then that, that might maybe would’ve been different. I was there for Dev Day Salt Lake City, uh, which again took place in Sandy. Um, and, uh, I think is because it was close to where some businesses were. [00:01:55] Christina: But, um, my only other experience with Utah has been in Park [00:02:00] City, uh, for Sundance. And so this was not Sundance, let’s just say that. [00:02:05] Brett: Sure. Yeah. When I was a Mormon. kidding. [00:02:11] Jeffrey: It sounds like the, the spoken beginning of a song when I was a Mormon [00:02:19] Old People are Touring! [00:02:19] Brett: previous Swiss career as an architect, um, man ministry is touring again to Duran. Duran is touring again. Uh, the Cure is touring again. Skinny Puppy is touring again. Like all [00:02:33] Brett: the [00:02:34] Christina: Taylor Swift is touring. [00:02:36] Jeffrey: Taylor Swift is touring [00:02:38] Brett: Like Taylor Swift is at least more recent, like skinny puppy touring. That’s kinda like, whoa. [00:02:44] Brett: Like that is. That is so, like my childhood is, is back. Like I could get tickets for basically the entire lineup of like 1995 alternative music right now. [00:02:59] Jeffrey: know what’s [00:03:00] still one of the most bizarre collaborations of all time is, uh, Al Jorgenson from Ministry, who is a, he looks so awful right [00:03:08] Brett: Yeah. [00:03:08] Brett: He, [00:03:09] Jeffrey: and, is a notorious sort of like junky, like forever guy, uh, and an asshole. And he had a side project for one album with Ian Mackay from Fugazi, the [00:03:20] Brett: what was that? Which one was that? [00:03:21] Jeffrey: uh, I can’t remember the name, but they did it [00:03:26] Brett: he had so many side projects. Pig face being the most notable one, but I, yeah, I would, I would love to hear what he did with Ian McKay. That would be [00:03:34] Jeffrey: It’s not that good. It’s not that good. I saw ministry in 1992. It was awesome, but [00:03:42] Brett: Uh, the Mind is a terrible thing to taste that. [00:03:46] Jeffrey: Uh, no, it was the, um, the one after that, uh, the, the, what is it? Jesus Hot [00:03:52] Brett: Jesus built my heart Rod. [00:03:54] Jeffrey: Yeah. And I remember when I, it was Lollapalooza, the second Lollapalooza, and it was [00:04:00] ministry and all their like, you know, like blinding flashing lights and dark colors kind of vibe. And then Eddie Vetter in a, I think a sheep’s head, a sheep’s head mask holding, uh, like a long stick with another, some kind of head on it. [00:04:17] Jeffrey: It’s very strange. [00:04:18] Brett: I went to, uh, I went, this is, this is very rapidly turned into a, a very organic conversation, but I went to, uh, an art opening at, it’s, it’s a local bar called Ed’s No Name Bar, which is no longer even owned by ed’s, but it’s just, he never felt like naming it. So it literally became no name. Like if you look it up on, on Google, it’ll be the no name [00:04:45] Jeffrey: Yeah, but putting Eds in there [00:04:47] Brett: Right. Kind of. Yeah. Kind of. Right. Um, but it became this real like arts hotspot. Like they always have like, uh, some local artists, like all around the second room [00:05:00] and it’s, it’s the crunchy hangout. It’s where all the granola people go to drink and, uh, they have live music, like seems like four, four nights a week. [00:05:10] Brett: They have live music, um, on a shitty little stage with horrible acoustics. But, um, but I went to an art opening there that was a women and non-binary art show, and it was like ages maybe 15 to 70, like just artists from all walks of life. And there was this weird theme of goat horns. Most of the subjects of the paintings were female, but they had goat horns, which is obviously like a masculine, as far as biology goes. [00:05:47] Brett: It’s a masculine thing, but it also has like pagan origins. So we had these long conversations about what does it mean that all of these separate artists were drawn toward the idea of goat horns in [00:06:00] their, [00:06:00] Brett: in [00:06:00] Jeffrey: wasn’t the official theme. It [00:06:01] Brett: No, it just happened. [00:06:03] Brett: It was just [00:06:03] Jeffrey: like some sort of satanist problem in Winona? [00:06:06] Brett: Yeah. Satanic panic all over again. [00:06:08] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. sounds like it. Sounds like it. Yeah. Well, it’s all the people can tour and I’m still never gonna go to shows. Um, [00:06:18] Brett: Right. [00:06:19] Jeffrey: unfortunately. [00:06:20] Christina: Yeah, I was, I’m trying to, they, they don’t have the, the, the tickets out yet. They’re just like, oh, like, notify me when they’re, when, when we know where we’re going. But, uh, dashboard confessional one of my favorite bands. I mean, it’s really one guy, the band is, is incidental and Counting Crows, genuinely. One of my favorite bands [00:06:38] Jeffrey: Oh yeah, [00:06:38] Brett: Excellent. Excellent. [00:06:39] Christina: touring together. [00:06:40] Christina: And, uh, and so, and, and they’re like two different generations. So that, that’ll be interesting. Um, but, but I’m a massive, massive, massive county Crows fan [00:06:49] Brett: it’s, it’s kind of like you, uh, when you look at like, uh, differences in dating ages when you’re 20, dating a 15 year old is out of the question. [00:07:00] Uh, but when you are 70 dating a 65 year old, it doesn’t matter anymore. And I feel like dashboard confessional and counting crows have reached an age [00:07:09] Christina: Oh, 100%. [00:07:11] Brett: where they can kind of be considered generational at this point. [00:07:15] Christina: No, no, I, I totally agree. Not only that though, but like, um, musically, like they’re both kind of like, you know, like songwriter, so songwriter driven, you know, like, like, you know, um, an anthem, you know, like, okay, dashboard confessional, arguably kind of like popularized emo, but like Counting Crows like, was like some like sad white man rock, a little bit Whale Rock, you know, in, in, in, in the, you know, August and everything after and whatnot, which I think is like a perfect album. [00:07:41] Christina: Uh, no notes on that. Like, that’s just a fucking great album. Um, actually like that, like, uh, recovering the satellites and, um, what’s the, uh, the, the next one, the one, the one with, um, uh, colorblind and Mrs. Potters lullaby. And anyway, those three, al those three albums are like, [00:08:00] awesome. Um, and they’re really, really good live. [00:08:03] Christina: So, [00:08:04] Jeffrey: I was, I was not a fan of either of those bands, but my friends who were fans, especially of Counting Crows, have seen them recently and said it was just fantastic. [00:08:11] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, he, he is like, I remember, and this was like 10 years ago, he somehow was like on the cover of like a a r P magazine, and I was like, [00:08:22] Jeffrey: Great fucking publicist, [00:08:24] Christina: Totally. [00:08:26] Jeffrey: I the good news. I got you a cover [00:08:28] Brett: It’s kind of like counting Crows is kind of like Dave Grohl for me and like the Foo Fighters. Like, I don’t, I don’t care about the music. Uh, but every time I read a really in-depth music review, um, like Dave Grohl grew on me just because of his, like, just being a fucking awesome guy, right? Uh, count Crows grew on me because I would read, uh, music reviews from people that I respected that just talked about how the depth of like the counting [00:09:00] Crows musical discography and, and, and how great the songwriting was. [00:09:06] Brett: And I’ve heard some songs and I’ve thought, yeah, it’s okay. It’s okay. But, but I have a lot of respect for the Counting Crows just because they, they have impressed people that impressed me. [00:09:19] Jeffrey: um, just, uh, my, my game today is gonna be bring everything back to Pearl Jam. Um, I remember I was at, I was at Jazz Fest in 1994 in New Orleans, and I was walking past a club where a really big show was happening and he, the singer of Counting Crows was standing in line with, um, Pearl Jam Sweat shorts. [00:09:37] Christina: Nice. [00:09:39] Jeffrey: I was like, oh, awesome. [00:09:40] Jeffrey: Cool. By the way, pale Head, did you say Pale Head, but that’s what it was. Yeah. [00:09:45] Brett: pig face, but pale head, I [00:09:46] Jeffrey: Pale Head was Ian mackay Jorgenson. Sorry about that. [00:09:49] Brett: And with the, with the guitarist pale head. [00:09:52] Jeffrey: Yeah. No, that’s Buckethead. You’re thinking of [00:09:53] Brett: Oh, I’m Buckethead, [00:09:54] Jeffrey: I don’t think Buckethead anything to do with that. Buckethead is a whole nother story. [00:10:00] We’re talking about a man who joined Guns N Roses and still did his special thing of a guitar solo that involved beatboxing, really good robot dancing, incredible nunchuck work, and then back to guitar, but, and all with a bucket on his head. [00:10:19] Jeffrey: Right. And a, and a mask. Like I could talk about buckethead all fucking day. Um, cuz Wow. But this is pale head anyway. Sorry, [00:10:28] Brett: pale head. I think I always conflated the two pale pales and buckets. [00:10:34] Jeffrey: Yeah. Who can blame you? Who can blame? [00:10:36] Christina: I have no idea what any of this is. [00:10:38] Jeffrey: God. Buckethead. I’ll send y’all a link and I’ll put it in the show notes, but it’s something to see. I’m telling you. This is a man who is a wizard guitar player. A Wizard Nunchuck Wheeler. A Wizard Beatboxer who only appears in public in a long white trench coat, a K F C bucket on his head, and a white mask, uh, just like a face mask with no [00:11:00] facial features on it. [00:11:01] Jeffrey: Nobody’s ever, for the most part, [00:11:03] Christina: so, he’s, so he’s cia basically [00:11:05] Jeffrey: Yeah, he’s CIA basically. And for, until very recently, he was the guitarist of Guns N Roses. So next to all of that, was fucking Axl Rose. Like, it’s just like the most bizarre. It’s like I had this dream. It was a fucked up dream. This guy had a bucket and Axl was there. [00:11:19] Christina: and that, that, no, that was real life. Also, a also Guns N Roses are torian again. [00:11:22] Jeffrey: yes, they are. [00:11:24] Brett: Are they really? [00:11:25] Brett: Full original lineup. [00:11:27] Jeffrey: reg. Mostly not [00:11:29] Christina: I think not [00:11:30] Jeffrey: I don’t think Izzy Stradling, well, I noticed Matt Swarms, not the drummer, the second drummer who I never liked, but [00:11:36] Brett: Dizzy. Dizzy. [00:11:37] Jeffrey: Izzy straddling Duff. [00:11:39] Brett: bass. Yeah. [00:11:41] Jeffrey: Yeah. And some guy Gibby or Gabby, I don’t [00:11:43] Brett: Izzy. And Dizzy. And [00:11:44] Jeffrey: Yeah. Truly. It’s just like a comic book anyway. [00:11:49] Brett: Are they any good? I did not like Chinese Democracy. [00:11:53] Christina: Well, nothing could be good after like that much buildup, but like [00:11:57] Brett: After 10 [00:11:58] Jeffrey: And that [00:12:00] voice, that voice was not, that voice was not made to age. Did you see him at Lisa Marie Presley’s funeral? [00:12:06] Christina: Yeah. [00:12:07] Jeffrey: He played like, I think November rain on the [00:12:09] Christina: played November rain on piano. [00:12:11] Jeffrey: awful. It was like, at least Elvis at the end was still though he looked terrible, had the voice of a fucking angel. And, and to, to somehow put that man in front of Graceland. Wow. And he’s clearly gotten to the point where he’s not self-assessing, you know, he’s like, I’m a fucking rockstar. What? [00:12:32] Brett: If he ever did, yeah. [00:12:34] Christina: I, he’s like, I’m gonna do November rain. [00:12:36] Jeffrey: Yeah. Alone. [00:12:38] Christina: It’s like o o, okay. Like, that’s a really anthemic, like, beautiful song, but [00:12:42] Jeffrey: Yes, it is. [00:12:43] Christina: can, can you do it still? Like, [00:12:45] Jeffrey: And he sounds like, you know, when you, when you step on a dog toy and then you let your f you let your foot up and it kind of inhales. That’s what his voice sounds like right now. [00:12:53] Christina: Ugh. [00:12:54] Brett: Ste. Stephanie Seymour has aged way better than Axl. [00:12:57] Christina: Well, yeah, totally. [00:12:58] Jeffrey: a strange. [00:12:59] Christina: [00:13:00] great music video. [00:13:01] Brett: It was. [00:13:01] Jeffrey: man. You kidding me. Loved it. Loved it. [00:13:04] Brett: And that guitar [00:13:05] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:13:06] Brett: November Rain? [00:13:06] Christina: Yep. Which goes on and on, and that was such a long music video, but it was so good. Like M T V would aired, edited versions sometimes, but [00:13:13] Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s right. [00:13:14] Christina: when you could, when you could watch the whole thing, when they would put that on, like after 10:00 PM or whatever, you could watch the whole thing. [00:13:20] Brett: Like the, the usual Illusion two version. Weren’t there two versions of November Rain between the user illusions, [00:13:28] Jeffrey: Oh, I don’t think so. [00:13:29] Brett: which, there was one song, there was a song [00:13:32] Jeffrey: There was Civil War. There was Civil War That was really long on one [00:13:35] Brett: on. No, but there was one that was on both albums with slightly different lyrics. [00:13:41] Jeffrey: Hmm. I believe you and I, I’m kind of sad that I can’t participate even though I listen to [00:13:47] Christina: Yeah. I was gonna say, I have no idea, because I really only knew. The stuff that was on M T V and I was really [00:13:52] Brett: Okay. [00:13:53] Christina: when you know, they were like at their peak [00:13:56] Jeffrey: It’s that the thing, the thing , there’s a, a real [00:14:00] demarcation with that band and it’s when Axl started wearing like incredibly tight spandex, short shorts, it’s like, that’s when you, that’s when everything just got a little out of control. But anyway, [00:14:13] Brett: Um, I’m, I’m looking this up. Disc one, oh, it was don’t cry, I think [00:14:20] Jeffrey: Don’t you cry? [00:14:22] Brett: No, wait. Oh, there, wait. The, the, the deluxe release had four discs. [00:14:30] Jeffrey: That’s but that’s recent. That’s recent though. [00:14:33] Christina: Yeah. The only band that was doing multiple disks in [00:14:36] Brett: Yeah. No, it was, it was, it was, don’t cry on, on unusual illusion. Two, there was an alternate lyrics. [00:14:42] Jeffrey: Okay. Okay. [00:14:44] Christina: smashing pumpkins is also torn. Again, I will not see them. Because it’s not smashing Pumpkins, it’s Billy Corgan and whatever random people have agreed to continue to tour with him. [00:14:54] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:14:55] Brett: see a good mashup of Smashing Pumpkins. Unplugged [00:15:00] with Dua Lipa. [00:15:01] Christina: Oh, that I bet would be amazing. [00:15:04] Brett: I’ll see if I can find that for the show notes. [00:15:06] Christina: they did unplugged and they did unplug more than 20 years ago, cuz like he basically retired or said he was gonna retire in, in the band in, in 2000 or whatever. Um, cuz I went to one of the final shows and I remember he did like a VH1 storytellers. Um, that was really good. [00:15:26] Christina: And, and, and that might be, I think that, I think it was that instead, but they might have had an unplugged, but it might have been the VH1 storytellers that, that they used for the mashup. [00:15:33] Brett: the, the thing about Smashing Pumpkins is their songwriting in general. Par for the course at the time, but his recording methods like layering 15, 20, 30 guitar tracks on top of each other in creating like, like the, the Ramones, the, the rock and roll ar, the, uh, rock and Roll radio [00:16:00] era, like Wall of Sound. [00:16:01] Brett: I can’t remember the producer’s name behind that, [00:16:04] Jeffrey: Phil, uh, Phil [00:16:05] Christina: full [00:16:05] Brett: yeah. Yeah. So like this idea of the wall of sound. Sure, sure. . Yes. Um, but like, it came to this head kind of with Smashing Pumpkins, where they created this wall of guitar, like Billy Corrigan created this wall of guitar that you couldn’t even pick out. [00:16:24] Brett: A guitar sound from, cuz it was so many layered tracks and that like listening to Siamese dreamed the album, like the recorded album is a totally different experience than seeing a live video because they were a studio band, in my opinion. [00:16:40] Christina: No, they were, although I think that they did well at live stuff. Cause I have a, because they, that was my very first favorite band. And so I have a lot of like bootlegs and like live recordings and stuff that I collected over the years. But you’re right. And then I think, but the big thing obviously was melancholy and the infinite sadness when he is very, brings in the strings and, and, and the [00:17:00] orchestra and again, the layering and then just has so many hits off of that album, which was a double album in an era when that was a hard sell because you didn’t have streaming, you didn’t have, you know, other ways, like you had to buy the whole damn, like, two disk thing. [00:17:16] Christina: Um, but, uh, but then, you know, it’s just the interpersonal stuff unfortunately kind of got in the way. And, and I, and I didn’t mind that the, um, like after Darcy left, I didn’t mind the album with, um, Melissa, um, uh, from whole, [00:17:32] Christina: um, exactly off tomorrow. Um, and, and man, she has to be like, She has to be a saint cuz [00:17:39] Jeffrey: she’s put up with some fucking [00:17:41] Christina: that’s what I’m saying. [00:17:42] Christina: She had to deal with Courtney love during like peak bad Courtney love period. And she was dealing with Billy Corgan during like peak bad Billy Corgan. Like, holy shit, Melissa, like you’re a, like, you deserve better , you know, [00:17:57] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah. [00:17:58] Brett: How did this, [00:18:00] so, you know what wasn’t on our list of things to talk about today? [00:18:03] Christina: was music. [00:18:05] Brett: It was music in general, especially like nineties music. Uh, somehow we spent 20 minutes doing this. I, I can’t even remember how it started. Um, But that’s okay. That was, that was a fun four four. I’m gonna guess our target demo. [00:18:22] Brett: That was a fun, little fun little walk [00:18:25] Christina: I think so. I think that that was just like, that was a, that was also a very h d like thing to do. Like we just went on like a genuine, like h d tangent and we didn’t stop ourselves. I’m kind of, I’m kind of into that. [00:18:35] Jeffrey: Yep. [00:18:36] Brett: a, I went to a 70 year old trans woman’s poetry reading and, uh, she revealed, she had just been diagnosed with a D H D at like, the age of 60. And like, she had always been a poet. She was very creative, used to be a blues musician. Um, and, and just like all of my questions after, after the reading, you know, [00:19:00] like o open questions, all my questions were like, tell me about being diagnosed. [00:19:06] Brett: At the age of 60. How did that, how did that change things? Did it change things at all? Did that like change your view? Did it change your poetry? Did it change anything? The basic answer was no. I had just, uh, learned to accommodate my brain at that point. Um, but anyway, sorry, that was an ADHD thing. [00:19:28] Christina: no, no. Totally. Okay. Um, [00:19:29] Christina: on [00:19:30] Jeffrey: You’re like all of my questions. [00:19:32] Sonsor: ZocDoc [00:19:32] Christina: was gonna say no. No. Um, uh, I, I was just gonna say, this is a great segue, uh, to talk about our sponsor, Zocdoc. Cuz if you’re looking for a diagnosis and you need to find a doctor, uh, I figured we could do our zoc read and then come back and do a mental health corner. [00:19:46] Brett: Well done. Perfect [00:19:48] Christina: All right? [00:19:48] Brett: you. [00:19:49] Christina: All right. So if you are looking for a doctor because you’re trying to find a cause for your symptoms, Maybe you think you have a d h D, you know, you’re having a hard time focusing. Um, [00:20:00] you, uh, find yourself, uh, kind of pull down rabbit holes. Uh, you might fidget a lot. There are a lot of, there are lot, lot, lot of symptoms. [00:20:07] Christina: You know, you stumble down a TikTok rabbit hole full of questionable advice from so-called experts. And look, do not trust TikTok for health advice. I cannot say that enough times. Like, do not take medical advice from people on TikTok. That is how you get ants. That is also how like you potentially wind up in the emergency room. [00:20:24] Christina: Um, there are better ways to get the answers that you want and the care that you deserve from trusted professionals and not random people on the internet. So Zocdoc helps you find expert doctors in medical professionals that specialize in the care you need and deliver the type of experience you want. [00:20:42] Christina: Zocdoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed. Take your insurance are available when you need them, and treat almost every condition under the sun. So when you’re not feeling your best or when you’re just trying to figure out like, what is going on with my knee? [00:20:58] Christina: Uh, this is a thing I’m, [00:21:00] I’m, I’m, I’m going, dealing with right now, and you’re trying to hold it together, finding great care shouldn’t take up all of your energy, and that’s where Zoc Dot comes in. So using their free app that millions of users rely on, including myself, you can find the right doctor that meets your needs, fits your schedule, takes your insurance. [00:21:17] Christina: You can book an appointment with just a couple of taps on the app and you can start feeling better with Zoc. So go to zoc.com/ Overtired and download the Zoc app for free. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That’s zoc. Do c.com/ Overtired zoc.com/ Overtired. [00:21:43] Podcast Swap: Mental Chillness [00:21:43] Brett: Speaking of mental health. Thank you, Christina. That was a perfect, that was a perfect one. Take read. Um, uh, speaking of mental health though, we, we do have a promo swap, uh, where once again, uh, swapping with mental chillness, [00:22:00] uh, do you want to tell us about that? [00:22:02] Jeffrey: Yeah, sure. Um, if you’re looking for more mental health podcasts, if you’re in the market, mental chillness is a safe space that heals with the power of laughter, as that sounds nice. It’s led by Khan and Jules, two people with mental illness that come together weekly with occasional guests to share their daily process of working towards mental chillness. [00:22:26] Jeffrey: Coming from childhood environments that weren’t open about mental wellbeing and emotional self-regulation, Khan and Jewel are opening up the conversations of the everyday struggles of dealing with A D H D, depression and anxiety, epilepsy, and growing into adulthood. They share tips and tricks of emotional awareness from their personal experiences and how they hold themselves accountable through personal bs. [00:22:51] Jeffrey: What does that mean? [00:22:53] Brett: It means bullshit. [00:22:54] Jeffrey: Personal bullshit. Hold themselves accountable through personal bullshit. [00:22:59] Brett: Why? I think [00:23:00] [00:23:00] Jeffrey: Check out the podcast. And the way they know how to do it best is with humor. You can keep up with them on any podcast platform and the YouTube channel. Mental chillness for full video contents, mental chillness, Just, I’m just trying to help our own listeners get chill. [00:23:21] Brett: We’re also on YouTube, if that’s where you prefer to listen to podcast. Look up Overtired on YouTube. We even published some fun shorts. [00:23:29] Jeffrey: Yep. And I’m auctioning mine. Ha [00:23:34] Christina: But I’ll bump. [00:23:37] Jeffrey: Okay. Hi everybody. [00:23:38] Mental Health Corner [00:23:38] Brett: I’m just doing feet picks. Should we do mental health Corner? [00:23:42] Christina: should. Oh my God. Feet picks. Don’t do that. Don’t do that, Brett. [00:23:45] Brett: I can’t, I have this weird thing on my heels [00:23:48] Christina: Oh yeah, [00:23:49] Brett: I think, that I think is like fungal, but they’re like armored. I have like callouses that in case my, and I do not walk around enough to deserve callouses [00:24:00] like that something is [00:24:01] Jeffrey: What about, do [00:24:02] Brett: I cannot show this to anyone other than a skin doctor. [00:24:05] Jeffrey: or a Pedicurist [00:24:08] Christina: No, they are so judgmental and mean. [00:24:11] Brett: went, [00:24:12] Jeffrey: haven’t had that experience yet, but that’s, I’ve only had a couple, [00:24:15] Brett: we have, we have a, uh, a technical college in town that has a cosmetology school and you can for like five bucks, go get [00:24:25] Brett: a [00:24:25] Jeffrey: student anything. [00:24:27] Brett: and I went, I went, my mom convinced me. She’s like, let’s go get a pedicure. And I’m like, fine, whatever. So I go and they do a chemical bath on my feet and they scrub them, they scrub them clean, which is, it’s nice. [00:24:42] Brett: My feet are soft. They put a fucking clear coat on my toenails, which I hated. Um, [00:24:47] Jeffrey: You could say no to the clear [00:24:48] Brett: I, I didn’t know. I didn’t, I didn’t know what they meant when they said, do you want a clear coat on your toenails? I’m like that, sure. [00:24:55] Jeffrey: just learning. Yeah. [00:24:57] Brett: but the chemical bath left a [00:25:00] circle, a dry, a spot, a circle of dry skin on the top of my foot. [00:25:05] Brett: That lasted for two [00:25:07] Jeffrey: Jesus. Two years. [00:25:09] Brett: Two years. I had this [00:25:11] Jeffrey: Wait, this was at the school. [00:25:14] Brett: I mean, I wasn’t at the school for two years, but yeah. This [00:25:16] Brett: happened [00:25:17] Jeffrey: saying this was the student pedicurist. Uh, no way, man. I was getting, I was getting a, when I lived in New York, I, I got a, um, root canal from a student dentist [00:25:29] Christina: Oh [00:25:30] Jeffrey: and at, at Columbia School of Dentist Gym, like, oh, it’s fucking Columbia. Maybe the students are just a little better, you know what happened? [00:25:36] Jeffrey: So he is, he, this was back in the day where, you know how now they give you like wraparound sunglasses, like you’re fucking barbecuing. Um, and so this was before that. This was when they wore wraparound sunglasses. Um, and, and he was wearing wraparound sunglasses for some reason, and he was doing the filing in my root with the tiny, tiny file, and then he stopped for a minute. [00:25:57] Jeffrey: And he’s looking and he’s looking, and I, I [00:26:00] motioned for him to take the cotton and shit outta my mouth. And I said, what’s up ? And he goes, I just broke the file off in your route. And so he had to get his, he had to get his, uh, you know, [00:26:12] Christina: He had to get his boss. [00:26:14] Jeffrey: or whatever. And in the end of the day, [00:26:16] Christina: real dentist. [00:26:17] Jeffrey: yeah, all they could do was Intuit in there. [00:26:19] Jeffrey: Like, it’s in there. It’s fucking in there. And they were, I was like, could this be a problem someday? They’re like, maybe. I’m like, okay, thanks. I was done with student shit at that point, but he said this look on his face. And I’m like, okay, before you do anything else, you’re gonna tell me why you look like that right now. [00:26:35] Brett: so would you leave your body to science knowing that it would be students that were [00:26:39] Jeffrey: I can’t stand the idea leaving my body to science. I had a, I had a cousin who was in medical school and he once, he would sometimes randomly send me pictures of corpse feet while I was in meetings with my phone up. And I was so disturbed by his decision to do that, you know, and I hated, I just felt so [00:27:00] disrespectful, right? [00:27:00] Jeffrey: Like, um, that I was like, man, I don’t know if I could leave my body to science. I don’t want someone just like toying around. But then again, I don’t know, I’m [00:27:07] Brett: feel like, I feel like once we get. [00:27:09] Christina: I was like, I’m gone. I don’t really care. I mean, my whole thing is like, are they actually gonna use it for anything interesting or is it just gonna be like, [00:27:19] Jeffrey: I don’t want it to be like the lesson for the day, like, here’s [00:27:22] Christina: that’s what I’m saying. [00:27:23] Christina: Yeah. [00:27:23] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:27:25] Brett: We should, uh, we should talk about green burial sometime, but first, mental health corner. You’ve all been waiting. It’s time. Now. We’re at 27 minutes in, uh, the mental health corner. Who wants to kick us off? And the answer could be me, but I’ll, I’ll let you guys decide. [00:27:45] Christina: You go. [00:27:46] Jeffrey: Yeah, go ahead. [00:27:47] Brett: Okay, so I’m in this weird fucking cycle. [00:27:50] Brett: Um, like anyone who’s listening to this show knows that I have like bout to mania that lasts three to five days, followed by a couple weeks of [00:28:00] depression, usually followed by something that could maybe be considered stability, but still leans towards depression. Lately, I’ve been having one day manic cycles. [00:28:11] Brett: Uh, like I’ll loose sleep for one night, or I’ll get up super early and I’ll just bl like blister through a bunch of code and create a bunch of stuff and be like firing on all cylinders. And then before the end of the day, I’ll feel it crash. And then for like three days I’ll, I won’t be able to wake up in the morning. [00:28:31] Brett: I’ll just sleep constantly and then get to. What is actually a, a pretty decent stable, uh, not totally depressed, um, which will last a couple days and then boom, another like one day mania. And I don’t know what to make of this. Uh, the cyclo, emia, cyclo Mia is like the one explanation that I’ve been able to find, but I’ve not had a, a psychiatrist [00:29:00] appointment since this started happening. [00:29:02] Brett: So I don’t have any like, uh, any medical advice on, on what’s going on, but it has been. It has been weird and oddly sustainable. Like, I can work with this, like, being productive every four days of having like a day where I do four days worth of shit. Uh, and then just kinda like sleep and then like have it come back instead of like that three, four weeks of like, not knowing if it’ll ever happen again. [00:29:31] Brett: Just like having this rapid like turnaround. Um, I, it’s not ideal, like, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s not perfect. I have seriously been looking into microdosing [00:29:49] Christina: Okay. [00:29:49] Brett: and like the people that I know that are doing it have seen major improvements in. Depression. [00:30:00] And I think, and I, I, I’ve not, I’ve not run this by my psychiatrist yet, but I will before I do anything. [00:30:07] Brett: Um, but I think that, uh, like shrooms, for example, could, could help with depression without affecting my other medication. Like, the reason I can’t take an antidepressant is because it can trigger mania. And because I’m bipolar, I can’t effectively treat depression, uh, without risking elevating my mood too far. [00:30:33] Brett: Um, but I feel like, uh, the, the lesser studied realm of psychotropics. In treatment of depression, and maybe even like ketamine therapy or something. But I feel like a lot of those could have positive results without the usual, uh, downsides of antidepressants for me. So that’s a thing. And I will keep, I will [00:31:00] keep our listeners posted. [00:31:01] Brett: Um, I, I’m going to do this very carefully and under the advice of medical professionals, but, uh, it is something I’m very curious about. [00:31:12] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s super interesting. I, I so curious about it, and I’m so curious about where, like legislation goes or the, you know, as we, because it’s now to the point where like, even like major mainstream podcasts are doing, like the Mind Bloom read, which is I, the ketamine thing is like little dicey through services like that, I think, but [00:31:30] Brett: We have Keta, we have a, we have a Ketamine therapist in town [00:31:33] Jeffrey: you do. Oh, that’s great. [00:31:35] Christina: Yeah, I, I’m pretty sure we had them too. And we, we had Mind Blum as, as a sponsor a few times. We couldn’t, we couldn’t get them, neither of us could try it because of of, of legislation stuff. This is what I think it becomes really interesting in, you know, how these, how these drugs are like scheduled and, and how, how they’re classified because obviously people use them as street drugs and, and other things, but there are real medical use [00:32:00] cases and so it’s, it’s interesting to see. [00:32:03] Christina: Um, I mean it’s dissimilar insofar as I, ironically, I feel like it’ll be easier to get legislation and, and make things like, um, you know, small amounts of psychedelics or ketamine [00:32:14] Brett: SIL psilocybin and L S D, like all of the loss surrounding that were just like racist to the core. [00:32:21] Christina: No, [00:32:22] Brett: there was never [00:32:23] Christina: Well, no, no. [00:32:24] Brett: any medical danger to them. [00:32:26] Christina: No, no, no. But, but, but I mean in terms of, well, but marijuana there were, there’s, there’s not either. And marijuana [00:32:32] Brett: Again, again, racist to the [00:32:34] Christina: Well, 100%. What I’m saying though is like, marijuana’s this weird thing where, you know, more and more states have it legalized, but it’s not a federal, it’s still illegal. [00:32:42] Christina: Federally, I weirdly could see them making, you know, carve outs for ketamine and, and, and psilocybin and things like that, like at a federal level because the a m a might get involved in lobby and be like, oh, but this is this certain treatment thing. And marijuana, even though it’s a great pain treatment and [00:33:00] whatnot, doesn’t ha you know what I mean? [00:33:01] Christina: Like, they, they’re not, they’re not using it as like a, as as a depression treatment. So, so, so, [00:33:08] Brett: that? It doesn’t have clinical, clinical treatment value. [00:33:11] Christina: right. And so, so it is this weird thing where like, that’s just strictly a recreational thing and you can argue, hey, so is alcohol, you know, like treated the same way. Um, But, but, but the federal government is still like, on their, their hands on it. But that’s what makes this so weird is like, okay, I can, you have like a, a ketamine like place in Winona. [00:33:32] Christina: You’re like, okay, but, but what are, what are the laws here? Like, is this going to violate? Cuz one of the questions that, you know, this, and this is not, not even a, um, this isn’t even a fake thing, this is a real thing, is that like, if you’re trying to apply for like, a government job, for instance, and, and you admit that you’ve done drugs, even if it was under the guise of a doctor, like that could be completely disqualifying. [00:33:56] Christina: So that opens up a lot of questions. Like, like you can’t get a job for [00:34:00] like the federal government if you’re like, yeah, I, I smoke weed or I, I take edibles even though it was Lela in my state. [00:34:06] Brett: we have a PA locally who, I actually saw him when he was at the, uh, major, the hospital in town, um, as a psychiatrist, uh, as a, as a, as a pa. But, um, he left Winona Clinic and started a practice on his own that literally builds itself. I can’t remember the phrasing he uses, but he bill, he builds himself as a weed clinic. [00:34:37] Brett: Like he uses pot to treat all kinds of psychiatric disorders. And he made the headlines of the newspaper as like, basically the guy you go to if you need a, a weed card. And it seems sketchy to me because I don’t see pop being a viable treatment for things like depression or anxiety for that [00:35:00] matter. Um, but that was what he built his practice on. [00:35:04] Brett: I I see a lot more potential for ketamine. [00:35:06] Jeffrey: Have you ever seen the p and peel sketch where, uh, he’s being walked [00:35:11] Brett: Oh yeah, [00:35:12] Christina: Yes. [00:35:12] Jeffrey: you know, you just, he’ll, he’ll, he’ll give you cannabis for anything. And he goes in and the doctor’s like, what’s going on? He is like, AIDS [00:35:18] Christina: Ha, [00:35:20] Jeffrey: Rickets, [00:35:22] Brett: I love [00:35:23] Jeffrey: that. I’ll put a link for that. That is the best sketch. [00:35:26] Christina: and Peele was like such a great show. Um, [00:35:29] Brett: Maybe you have a backache. Nope. [00:35:31] Jeffrey: Nope. Yeah, it’s just like, Uh, amazing. It’s a good bit. [00:35:37] Brett: All right. All that’s my, that’s my mental health update. [00:35:41] Jeffrey: All right, Christina, you wanna go. I [00:35:43] Christina: sure thing. So, uh, I, my, my pen health is doing pretty good. I was just, I was out of town for a week, which, uh, in two different cities. So that is was the first time that I’ve been like, in a while that I’ve done kind of one of like a multi hop thing. So I went [00:36:00] to, um, la, well Pasadena more specifically for, for scale the Southern California Linux Expo, which was really, really fun. [00:36:07] Christina: And it was really great to connect with people. I met some new friends and. Definitely it’s a nerd, uh, conference. I met Ken Thompson and, and, and, and, and like thanked him for everything he’s given us. He was like so humble and nice. Um, and uh, and then I was in, in Salt Lake City area, uh, Sandy for, for work, uh, which was, you know, I, I got to meet up with a friend who lives, um, in, uh, in the area. [00:36:30] Christina: But you know that, that was not as spun as as scale, but no, my mental health is doing, is doing pretty well. Um, I was really, really tired and I took an edible on Thursday night and I slept for 13 hours and that was magical. [00:36:48] Jeffrey: awesome. [00:36:49] Christina: A plus. Cannot, cannot recommend enough. No. But I’ve also been talking to my doctor about potentially doing like ketamine and some of the other, like the. [00:36:57] Brett: Yeah. [00:36:57] Christina: It’s hard because he’s in another state [00:37:00] and, and he could find me someone who would do it, but like, I would need to have someone local to kind of do that. And I have a really hard time trusting and like even wanting to go through the process of like finding a new, or finding like a secondary shrink, [00:37:13] Brett: Understood. [00:37:13] Christina: which which is so funny. [00:37:14] Christina: I have somebody mention to me like, you’re the only person I’ve ever here call, call it a shrink. And I’m like, yeah, maybe that’s an old, like throwaway, like [00:37:22] Brett: a generational thing. [00:37:23] Christina: It Well, it is and it’s not. I think I be, I’ve been going for so long that I’m just like, you know, this is what he is. But I’m also like, I’m not going to my therapist. [00:37:31] Christina: I mean he is, but like, he’s my psychiatrist, so. [00:37:35] Jeffrey: He’s the shrink. [00:37:36] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Um, also, I don’t mind like poking fun of myself a little bit on that, but that did make me think. I was like, oh, okay. [00:37:42] Brett: I think that’s the, the term shrink, like psychologists hate that [00:37:46] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:37:47] Brett: uh, in my experience, like the com head shrinker. Um, but for, for me, it’s a lighthearted way of saying that I need, uh, like therapy, [00:37:58] Christina: That’s how I [00:37:59] Brett: that [00:38:00] I need psychiatric, uh, guidance. And for me, like using, uh, in sixth grade, I, my grandfathers both died on the same day [00:38:09] Brett: and [00:38:09] Jeffrey: What, what? Where were they Both in Manona. [00:38:11] Brett: No, no one was in Missouri, one was in my [00:38:14] Brett: basement. Um, we, we had a, we had a walkout, we had a walkout home, uh, furnished home in our basement where [00:38:21] Brett: my, where [00:38:22] Jeffrey: down there. [00:38:23] Brett: my maternal grandparents were living. And they both, both grandfathers, died on the same day. And I went to my sixth grade math teacher and I said, I gotta go. [00:38:32] Brett: My grandpa kicked the bucket and he sent me to the principal’s office because I was so disrespectful about my grandparents’ death. Like for me, that was how I was coping. [00:38:45] Jeffrey: Wait, how old were you? [00:38:46] Brett: uh, 12 [00:38:47] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:38:47] Brett: and that was, that was my form of coping, was to use a colloquial term to refer [00:38:54] Jeffrey: distances you from the [00:38:55] Brett: Yeah, exactly. And I feel like shrink is very much that, like we use [00:39:00] that almost defensively to say, yeah, I’m going to see my shrink. [00:39:03] Brett: Instead of I’m going to see a licensed psychiatrist to talk about my mental illness. It’s shorthand. [00:39:11] Jeffrey: So wait, hold on. How, I don’t mean to, uh, I don’t mean to make light of this, um, or minimize it, but how close in time did they die? [00:39:19] Brett: About six hours. [00:39:20] Jeffrey: Jesus Christ. That’s crazy. How did they, how did they each go? [00:39:24] Brett: Uh, heart attack, both of them [00:39:26] Christina: Oh my God. [00:39:29] Brett: Yeah. Which is, which is why I am, which is why I go to the ER very quickly when I have any kind of heart related problems. [00:39:38] Jeffrey: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay. [00:39:41] Brett: Yeah. Sorry, Christina, I didn’t mean to hijack your mental [00:39:44] Christina: No, no, that’s Tyler. That’s totally fine. I’m basically done now, but like, that’s, damn, that’s, that’s, um, that’s intense. Okay. [00:39:52] Brett: was a, it was a fun summer. [00:39:55] Jeffrey: Oof. Um, [00:39:57] Brett: I, I say summer because it was towards the end of the school year, and [00:40:00] then we had to go to two funerals, like as the beginning of my summer break. We went to, we tra traveling around the country, going to funerals. It was fun. [00:40:09] Jeffrey: My, um, my maternal grandfather died on my birthday and I was, and it was pre-cellphone and everything, and I was out that day. And when I got home that night on my voicemail was essentially like an audio diary of his day where my mom would call me and say, Hey, it’s not looking good. Then she’d call and say, Hey, he wants all the sisters and you know, he wants all the siblings here. [00:40:30] Jeffrey: And, and then finally the call that saying that he was, he had passed and it was such a, it was such a intense way to experience the news of his death. Cuz it really, it really unfolded, you [00:40:40] Christina: Because you really, you, you hurt. You hurt. Yeah. [00:40:42] Jeffrey: yeah, yeah. [00:40:43] Christina: and like you weren’t able to like be there and you don’t know what’s gonna happen, you know, until you get to the final call. [00:40:49] Jeffrey: And well, but here’s the thing. It went backwards cuz it’s like the most recent [00:40:53] Christina: Oh, so, oh, right, right, right, right. It starts [00:40:55] Jeffrey: so it was, it [00:40:56] Christina: hear that and you’re going with it, and then you’re going backwards. oh, [00:40:58] Christina: man. So it’s, it’s, it’s, oh, [00:41:00] wow. [00:41:01] Jeffrey: Um. Anyway, uh, is that, is that you Christina? Should I go or do you [00:41:06] Christina: Yeah. Go. Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. [00:41:08] Jeffrey: I just have kind of a hack from my mental health check in. Um, I don’t mean to constantly equate mental health with medication, but because I’ve been in a period that I was warned would be long of kind of trying to find the right medication for bipolar. I, I have, uh, I’m in a situation now where I’m getting off of one medication and, and merging into another. And I’m also in a situation where like I, I have lost my ability to kind of remember when I started taking any particular drug or, you know, when I was taking certain drugs at the same time, whatever. [00:41:44] Jeffrey: So I, um, . What I did was I in my, in my Google calendar, I just made a little like, um, a little calendar event at the top of a day where something needed to happen, either where I started something or decreased it or increased it or ended it right. And [00:42:00] um, and I gave it a hashtag, like hashtag meds in the notes. [00:42:04] Jeffrey: And now on my fantastic, hell on my phone or on my calendar, I can just search hashtag meds and I get a really clear list of what’s coming up. So for me, for me, I have three or four, um, you know, this one goes down a little, this one goes up a little events over the next, um, two months. And I can now just like, and I’m constantly checking it. [00:42:24] Jeffrey: I’m just, even though I kind of know what it is, I just get kind of like nervous I’m gonna miss it or whatever. And so I just do that search hashtag meds, and I get my list and it works on my phone, like I said, with fantastic. How [00:42:34] Brett: That is so [00:42:35] Brett: smart. [00:42:35] Jeffrey: on my desktop, but it’s a huge help. And it’s also just important for me to know when I started meds at all because, uh, up until, um, like March of 20, February of 2020, I had never taken. [00:42:46] Jeffrey: And I started then, and it kind of like to see how it kind of turns into two meds [00:42:51] Brett: There, there are so many times that I’ll, I’ll be some, something will come up in history. Someone will say, well, you did this [00:43:00] thing at this time. Which med were you on? Or had had you? And I won’t remember. Like, I, I don’t, those changes happen and they seem important at the time, but the actual dates, the, the way it correlates with things that I might not immediately associate with them is, is always beyond me. [00:43:19] Brett: So that is a really good hack to be able to just open up the calendar and say, oh yeah, here’s where, here’s where that med change and here’s here’s what it might have affected. In retrospect, I might be able to see that. [00:43:31] Jeffrey: Well, and the, the other thing I’ve bet that’s a little harder is so if you get a, say you get a pill that’s 25 milligrams, but you take 75 milligrams, meaning three of those pills. Right. There’s not an easy way looking at my prescription history to know, um, when I went from one to two to three, I’m sure my prescriber knows, but, um, I was, I just went into my, um, email and I went into my messages and searched the name of that drug and because usually I was telling somebody that I was going up that [00:44:00] day or whatever. [00:44:01] Jeffrey: So that was part of building that history too, cuz it’s like, . It’s like the future and the history are both important to me, and it just, I don’t know what it is. Like putting, being able to look at the kind of boundaries of things just helped me to feel a little less, sort of like, I’m swimming in mats, you know, it’s just like, oh yeah, I started this here because of this. [00:44:19] Jeffrey: And, you know, so that was, that’s been really nice for me, um, because I’ve just, I, I’m not, I don’t love switching out meds. It’s not a, not a particularly nice experience. I mean, the other , the other thing I would just advise people on is that something that my wife and I have realized is like, oh, when I’m dropping an amount or adding an amount, I’m probably for a couple days gonna just be off. [00:44:40] Jeffrey: And oftentimes that offness is like really irritable. Um, and knowing for both of us being able to be like, okay, got it. It’s on the calendar. This is happening right now. Let’s like, let’s remember, you know, um, so. [00:44:55] Brett: Elle is very good about like, noting, like if I tell her, [00:45:00] uh, my, my psychiatrist says I’m gonna make this change and I’ll do make it at my next refill, she will make a note because she knows that like, my mood will shift, even though I don’t, I don’t make any special note of it. Even, even in my own head, I’m just like, okay, yeah, we’re gonna shift medication. [00:45:18] Brett: Maybe eventually things will get better with whatever problem I’m having. Um, but she keeps very close track because it affects our relationship, it affects, uh, our interpersonal communication and to be able to say, yeah, obviously you just did, you know, you just made this change to the chemicals in your body. [00:45:39] Brett: Yeah, that’s really helpful and, and again, like having it on a calendar, there are so many times that would’ve helped me. [00:45:49] Jeffrey: Yeah. And I mean, the other thing too is just knowing, knowing yourself and, and really paying attention. Cause like for me, I know that the most common impact of a medication change is that like, not [00:46:00] only am I irritable, but I just find it completely impossible to be soft. Right? Like, I’m just like all hard [00:46:06] Brett: because it takes, it takes energy to be truly gentle with people. Empathy takes a certain amount of energy, and when your energy is consumed with dealing with your own shit, like whatever happens in your brain when you make a medication change, you don’t have the energy to like accept other people’s input. [00:46:26] Brett: To accept input and process it properly to have a soft response. And that can get, that can get real messy real fast. [00:46:34] Chicago Dibs! [00:46:34] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. . Well, that’s my check in. Um, can I add something to that? That’s really quick. , that’s about irritability. So I had a really bad fall trying to get into my car today because we’re at that point in Minnesota winter where, um, everything outside of your car when you park is like, uh, just a slope of ice basically. [00:46:55] Jeffrey: And so, uh, trying to get into our car in our little driveway, um, you have to like really brace [00:47:00] yourself and all this shit. And I was carrying a big box. I was carrying a coffee and I totally bailed and, and fell and I was so pissed off. But at the end of the day, we don’t really have room on our street for our car anymore because people are used to us. [00:47:12] Jeffrey: Parking in our little teeny drive spot. Right. And I was reminded of, when I lived in Chicago, um, there was a sort of a rule or a kind of a phenomenon called dibs parking. Right? And, and basically what that means is, and what that meant is that if you had a parking space and it was winter, you’re like, the fuck if anybody’s gonna get this space? [00:47:31] Jeffrey: First of all, you position yourself before the first big snowfall so that you have the good spot and then you hold it by putting things like chairs, or I had seen cribs or baby bouncers, or I saw a microwave once. Uh, I’ve seen, I’ve seen, I think I saw a dishwasher, um, that they would just slide out of the way. [00:47:49] Jeffrey: And I am including in the show notes, an amazing photo essay of examples of this. But I wanna just say, Brett and I were talking about this before the show in Minnesota, we’ve gotten to that point where no one gives a shit about [00:48:00] anybody anymore. Right. You’re just like, you’re so tired of dealing with [00:48:02] Christina: It’s just so cold and like, just [00:48:04] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:48:04] Jeffrey: And you’re snow and slipping. And, um, I had this thing happen, the ultimate Chicago dibs experience when I was living in Chicago, in Humboldt Park. Um, and what happened was the person who had reserved a space was watching another person move the chair out of the way and take the spot, and they went out and stabbed the person. That person I think was okay, but I was like, I was like that. That is a rule you don’t fuck with [00:48:38] Brett: This feeds into, this feeds into my mother’s belief that Chicago is a, a hellscape of, of crime and, and, um, she watches a lot of Fox news [00:48:47] Jeffrey: Oh yeah, sure, [00:48:49] Brett: and basically basically Chicago is on fire and everyone is stabbing everyone but [00:48:54] Jeffrey: We were on a block that clearly contained a meaningful gang leader. And I’m pretty sure I knew him, but we [00:49:00] just didn’t talk about it cause he was right next to my house. But like, there was, there was a dude who was about, I mean he was big and strong. He was just a giant and he would walk up and down our street all summer long, um, uh, like on patrol. [00:49:14] Jeffrey: And, and the guy next to me, uh, was I think maybe on house arrest , because he would never come out of the gate. So I would just sit on the stoop and we’d just bullshit. But like one night a guy went through that gate and I’m not , I’m not trying to support your mom’s belief cuz it’s bullshit. He, someone came through that, that gate and just shot up this guy’s picture window right under my window, , and then just like took off. [00:49:37] Jeffrey: It was the crazy, another time a guy pissed the Latin King King’s logo in a snowbank, which I thought was the cool, coolest, most badass thing I ever saw besides the stabbing. Um, anyway, Chicago is incredible. [00:49:48] Brett: I like, there’s one picture in this, in this link you had of, it’s like a chair and a lectern. [00:49:54] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [00:49:57] Brett: Well, there’s one that’s a Bears [00:50:00] parking sign with an arrow [00:50:03] Jeffrey: It was, it was nuts. It was nuts. Anyway, that’s what, that’s what I got. [00:50:08] The MIghty Yeti [00:50:08] Brett: the one add-on I have, we’re talking about death and the, a big, so I’m, I’m about to leave on a, a trip to Michigan, uh, which is, if I were, if I were, if someone said, you get a week off of work, where do you want to go? Uh, Michigan would. Way down on my list, but I’m going, cause it’s where Elle’s sister lives and, and her three kids. [00:50:34] Brett: And we’re gonna have like a, it’s like a family vacation, I guess. Um, not, not something I’m super excited about, but we do get to stop in Chicago and Indian Indianapolis for, uh, [00:50:47] Jeffrey: Two great cities. [00:50:48] Brett: some fun dinners, some fun breakfast, some good overnight stays. Um, and we got a cool Airbnb for the week in Michigan. But anyway, the big concern [00:51:00] is my 19 year old cat could go at any time [00:51:05] Jeffrey: oh, man. [00:51:06] Brett: it, it would break my heart [00:51:09] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:51:10] Brett: when I was out of town. [00:51:13] Brett: If he had to go on his Yeah. Yeti, if he had to, if he had to go. And I wasn’t there like we are attached at the hip. If I’m around, he is with me. And, um, Like we’re, we have someone house sitting, uh, we’re not sure yet if she is going to be comfortable with like, all the medications he has to take with giving him intravenous, not intravenous, intramuscular fluids. [00:51:38] Brett: Um, subdermal fluids, I guess would be [00:51:41] Jeffrey: with a, with a needle. [00:51:42] Brett: yeah. Um, yeah. And like, because he gets dehydrated. Um, but if you mix in, like we have this cat food we call kitty crack. Um, it’s not, it’s not healthy food, but he will always eat it. So he mix it in with like a bowl of [00:52:00] water and he’ll like slurp it down. Um, and maybe he can get away with that. [00:52:05] Brett: But like, do I, do I, do I leave, uh, a cat with a, an expiration date with a stranger? Or do I send him to board at the vet where I know he’ll get like, the best possible. Medical care, uh, which would, it would honestly, it would cost about the same, uh, the, what we’re paying the house sitter. I could also pay the vet and we’d have to pay twice cause we have two animals. [00:52:33] Brett: But, um, it, it’d be like 40, 40 bucks a day to, to board him at, at the vet. He, we’ve been going to forever and it’s just like I have all these contingency plans. Like if some, if I get a call, like I will, I will have someone drop me off at the airport in Detroit and I will just find like the fastest flight home so that I can be here to hold his hand. [00:52:58] Brett: And it’s just this [00:53:00] weird situation [00:53:00] Jeffrey: Does he get stressed if he’s bordered? Do you think? [00:53:03] Brett: used to, he used to like any change of scenery, used to, he used to get crystals in his bladder, which would have to be expressed through his penis, which was a very painful prospect. And this is how I learned that Yeti will never hurt me, is he would hold my arm, he would wrap his paws around my arm while a vet squeezed a crystal, threw his dick, and he would yell and cry, but he would never extend his claws and he would never bite. [00:53:35] Brett: He would just hold my arm until it was over, and then he would be fine. [00:53:40] Jeffrey: wow. [00:53:41] Brett: he is, he is like, honestly, like I, I know he’s my cat. I’m gonna say he is the best cat, but he, he is the best cat I have ever known. He is just gentle to the core, extremely empathetic. Um, he’s been an amazing partner and I don’t want him to die [00:54:00] without me. [00:54:00] Christina: Totally. So, okay, so in that case, maybe being with the vet, like who do you think is gonna call you more reliably? [00:54:08] Brett: I don’t know. [00:54:10] Jeffrey: Well, that’s a good question. [00:54:12] Brett: I, I think the vet would feel responsible enough to, or I think the vet would recognize a problem before a house center would, I think the vet would be more proactive in that regard because we’re basically, we’re gonna give the house sitter the best information we have, uh, and try to give her an i her an idea what to look out for. [00:54:34] Brett: But she’s not trained. She doesn’t, and she doesn’t know Yeti the way I know Yeti. Like, like I can see discomfort in Yeti’s eyes. I know when he’s not. Okay. She’ll have no idea. Um, cuz cats hide, hide pain, right? Like, like they, they make it all very internal. And I have 20 years of. Knowing when Yeti is not [00:55:00] okay, and she’ll have no idea. [00:55:01] Brett: So maybe, maybe the bet is, and he’s old enough to not give a fuck where he is these days. Like he, you can take him anywhere and he just, he’ll just sleep. Like, he’s like, all right, this is a comfy spot. I don’t care where I am anymore. Like, he used to freak out about leaving home, but I don’t, I think he would be okay. [00:55:21] Brett: I think he would just sleep all day at the vet. [00:55:23] Christina: Yeah. So I, I, I would say the vet and then I would like be very clear with the vet, be like, look, I wanna be here with him. So if you’re noticing things, don’t, don’t like, think that you’re putting me out or whatever, just call me because I will find a way back. [00:55:37] Brett: I, I will fly home. Yes. Yeah. So anyway, that’s, I guess that’s actually part of my mental [00:55:43] Christina: I was gonna say, this [00:55:44] Jeffrey: Yeah. No kidding. [00:55:45] Christina: that you’d be going through. Like this is, this is a lot, you know, I mean, and, and then like, and, and, and I’m so sorry that this is gonna be like hanging over you, like with this family stuff, like when you’re there, you’re not really going to be there. [00:55:55] Christina: There’s gonna be a part of you that is always concerned about [00:55:58] Brett: been, it’s been like that for a couple [00:56:00] years now. Like I’ve never, he’s old enough that anytime I leave for more than a few days, like there’s always the possibility that things go south while I’m gone. And it’s always, it always drags on my, my heartstrings to like, to like leave. And I, I can’t, I can’t just [00:56:19] Brett: sit [00:56:20] Christina: No, you can’t. You know, I mean, no, that, that’s, that’s like a difficult thing is, is especially if it’s been a couple of years, like, because then, um, then, then like, you know, you’ve had like the opportunity costs, you know what I mean? Like, you’re like, okay, well I stayed home for all this period of time and it was fine. [00:56:34] Christina: Like, what did I give up? And now it’s like, okay, now it might actually be closer to time, but like I, I, you know, can’t, [00:56:40] Brett: my, [00:56:41] Christina: to be in stasis? [00:56:42] Brett: my maternal grandmother had Parkinson’s and, uh, she, she was given like a year to live and, uh, she went into hospice care and. She lived for another 10 years [00:56:58] Christina: Oh my god. [00:56:59] Brett: [00:57:00] in hospice care for 10 years. And, uh, at, at, at most, for most of it, I was the only person left in town, uh, like my parents had had to move. [00:57:11] Brett: And, uh, it was me living in Winona and visiting my grandmother. And it got to the point where it was like, she’s never gonna die. [00:57:24] Jeffrey: Mm. [00:57:24] Brett: and honestly, by the time we got the phone call by, I got the phone call like, your, your grandmother has passed. Uh, it was a relief. [00:57:33] Christina: It had to be, [00:57:34] Brett: she just kept and, and like, not in a, she could barely talk. [00:57:39] Christina: well, this is what I’m saying, like, like it wasn’t living right. Like, like, like her, like her, her, her, her, her, her, you know, she was breathing [00:57:46] Brett: was, yeah. Literally just breathing. She wasn’t mentally there. She, she couldn’t do anything physically by herself without help. Like she had to be moved. She had to be picked up, put it in the wheelchair, pushed to the table, fed [00:58:00] food, and then taken back to bed. And it was no way to live. [00:58:03] Brett: I, it’s part of why my, um, my living will is very clear about if I am, if, if I can go, let me [00:58:12] Christina: totally. You have a D N r? Um, yeah. Um, my, my grandmother and it wasn’t like that, but she, she was, it, you know, she, she was in, um, nursing home and she died and whatnot, but it was one of those things where she had a A A D N R and we were very grateful for that because when she went and we were there, um, like, you know, we, we’d said our goodbyes and whatnot, but she hadn’t been, she had had mental acuity in quite some time, um, uh, because she had Alzheimer’s or dementia or, you know, whatever. [00:58:44] Christina: Um, but, but it was, it was one of those things where like, when you see that happen, like when you see like prolonged suffering, we were really glad that she had, you know, we had the, we had the advanced directive to, to not continue to keep her going because. God, that’s a nightmare to be, you know, [00:59:00] in hospice you think, which is supposed to be for, for end stages and then go another decade and then lose even more [00:59:07] Brett: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t care how young you are right now, go out, uh, find whatever, whatever resources you need. A lawyer or the hospital can provide you with the forms. Uh, but have a living will have, have a get your d n R in order because shit can happen. And unless you wanna live as a vegetable and be a train on everybody, make, get that, get that in writing. [00:59:36] Brett: Get that taken care of now while you’re young, while you still have the option. We should do a whole episode on euthanasia. I feel like that would be a real upper, [00:59:46] Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay. That [00:59:47] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say now, now, now, [00:59:49] Jeffrey: Tune in next week, everybody. [00:59:50] Christina: next week when we, when we have a a, a live viewing of Million Dollar Baby, A group viewing. Yeah. [00:59:57] Grapptitude [00:59:57] Jeffrey: Hey, it’s gratitude [01:00:00] time [01:00:00] Brett: Oh, shit. Yeah. [01:00:02] Christina: Yeah, we didn’t talk about anything that we were going to talk about, [01:00:04] Brett: We had, we, we hit nothing on our [01:00:07] Christina: Zero. [01:00:08] Jeffrey: I got, I got, I’ll take first gratitude. It’s not exactly an app, but, um, the New York Post has a, has a , has a page where you can just look at their covers and, and I’ve long [01:00:22] Christina: Oh, I love it. [01:00:23] Jeffrey: respected and ab horde their, um, their skills. And so I just wanna give you a few examples from recent covers. [01:00:30] Jeffrey: Okay. For the, um, for the story about the spy balloon being shut down, headline Pop secret, [01:00:38] Christina: Ha. Pop secret. I love it. [01:00:40] Jeffrey: uh, for, um, Sam Bankman Fried, who we all remember is a very hairy crypto bro. Harry Plotter. Hmm. How about that? [01:00:49] Christina: I love it. [01:00:50] Jeffrey: With a, with another bit. They have a couple bullets. One is begs for bail because he’s a quote, depressed vegan, [01:00:57] Brett: What was the, what was the Donald Trump [01:01:00] after the midterms one? [01:01:01] Jeffrey: Oh, I don’t [01:01:02] Brett: It was a hump. It was a Humpty reference. [01:01:04] Jeffrey: was a good one. Here’s one that’s about the, uh, covid leaked from the Chinese lab. It had to be woo. Ugh. God. I got a couple more. Okay. Um, Baldwin, uh, this is the subhead. Baldwin was on cell phone during gun safety training, which by the way is awful. Headline Dolt 45. Uh, that one goes woo. [01:01:25] Jeffrey: Uh, and what do I, last one is about the, uh, bailout of Silicon Valley Bank and its tech support and the s is a dollar sign. Anyway, you, they, it turns out they have their own little webpage just for their covers, cuz they, they know how good and horrible they are at that, uh, at that game. I am not in any way, shape or form, uh, [01:01:48] Brett: Endorsing the post [01:01:49] Jeffrey: or endorsing for the work of, of the New York Post, but I s I remain in, in disbelief. [01:01:56] Jeffrey: Uh, so anyway, that’s [01:01:57] Brett: It’s, it’s kinda like the Enquirer, like [01:02:00] you can really enjoy the cover of the Enquirer without [01:02:03] Christina: I I’m, I’m gonna, [01:02:05] Brett: the Enquirer. [01:02:06] Christina: the post is better than the Inquirer. Like it’s a higher quality thing, but you’re not wrong. But the Post is just, they have the best headlines, and I love the war between the posts and the daily news. Like, like, they’re, like ongoing, like beef is one of the greatest things in media. Um, make sure you put that, that, that website, [01:02:23] Christina: um, in, in, uh, in, in the links, [01:02:27] Brett: what’s the uk, is it the Daily Caller? Is that the, [01:02:30] Christina: well, the, the Daily Mail and it, the, the, the Daily [01:02:32] Brett: Daily Mail. That’s The Daily Mail is what I’m thinking of. They do, they do the same kind of just fucking great headlines with just horrible, horrible takes on everything. [01:02:43] Christina: Yeah. And, and, and the Daily Mail and, uh, the Post have like some sort of syndication thing because both of them will pay for the paparazzi shots. So, and then like the Daily Mail, what I love about them is they’ll do like this exhaustive like, description of every single photo that you see in like, the most, like, deranged way [01:03:00] in like, and in like insulting or in, in, or in some cases, like weirdly like complimentary method. [01:03:05] Christina: And then they describe the clothing and the like, oh, you can buy this top just like this person that we’re shitting on. Um, it, it’s, it’s really, really fantastic. But no, but post headlines are the best. Uh, and, and look, page six has some good gossip sometimes. And, and I, and I, and, and I miss, I Ms. Keith Kelly’s media column because he was, uh, a great, he, he, he retired, uh, last year, but he always had like the dirt, so that’s a very good [01:03:31] Jeffrey: Yeah. [01:03:32] Christina: Um, [01:03:33] Brett: guys, did you guys see Neela Patel’s, um, printer [01:03:38] Christina: Yes. That was the best thing. That was the best thing I’ve read. I saw it. Oh, it’s so good. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what you would think. It’s that it, it, all it is is, yeah. [01:03:47] Brett: hi. Hi. The headline, if I, um, this is from memory, but, uh, best Printer 2023, just by the Brother Laser printer that everybody has. It’s fine. [01:03:58] Jeffrey: Yeah.[01:04:00] [01:04:00] Christina: That’s exactly what it is. And, and it, and it’s so good. It was one of those things that I, that, uh, I saw and I was like, yep, this is accurate. And then it shows off all the different photos the [01:04:08] Brett: follow the link for whatever, for whatever, for whatever we get the most affiliate profit from. That’s what the lingo before. Just click it. [01:04:17] Christina: just click it. They’re like, this is the one you want. Like, I’ve had mine for forever. And then it has like photos of different, like Verge, you know, staffers. And it’s so funny because this is what I’ve been telling people for years. I’m like, just get a brother printer. Like get the all in one, get [01:04:28] Christina: the other thing. [01:04:29] Christina: It’s, it’s fine. It’ll last you forever. You just need to print shipping labels and occasional documents. You’re not caring about photos or anything else. Just get the brother printer. Like I, I, I made my dad get one of those and then he bought an HP anyway and I was pissed off. I was like, just use the brother. [01:04:44] Christina: The brother is fine. [01:04:46] Jeffrey: My, uh, my brother I, I believe is kicking up the air. It kicks up about every, um, three years cuz I’ve had it forever, which is optical photo conductor near end of life which I [01:05:00] think is just the drum. I can’t remember. It’s whatever holds the toner, but you just replace that every three years and you’re fine. [01:05:05] Brett: just for clarity, the reason I got here was because Christina said that sometimes in the description they tell you where you can buy [01:05:13] Brett: the clothing, and I was like, yeah, affiliate cash. And then that led me to Neely Patel’s. Okay. Just, just to just clarify the trade of thought. [01:05:22] Christina: totally, totally. I, I, I didn’t know I was, I was like, if that was gonna be your gratitude, although it was like a great thing. I was, I was like, that’s a weird, I was like, that’s a weird gratitude thing. But [01:05:30] Brett: my, my gratitude, I, I really thought we were gonna talk about AI this episode, just because it’s so prevalent [01:05:37] Christina: yeah, we didn’t even get to talk about G P T four, but it’s okay. [01:05:40] Brett: but, and, and we will get to it cuz it’s not going away. Um, my picks for the week are, uh, swift, g p t. We’ve talked about some Mac uh, clients for chat, G p T before, um, a newish one came out called Swift, G p t. [01:05:59] Brett: It’s free. [01:06:00] It gives you, this is since the actual release of the api. Uh, so it’s no longer just a wrapper around the web interface and you get an actual, like iMessage chat interface to chat G P t. It’s really well done. Uh, for some reason it doesn’t have like sparkle updates yet. You have to download new versions. [01:06:22] Brett: Uh, but Mac updater, we’ll let you know when there’s a new version. Um, and it is, it, you can, you can put in your own API key. Uh, so, and it will tell you it’ll track cost for you, uh, if you have your own API key in there. Um, and then the other one that is similar is, right ma, uh, which I discovered through Product Hunt. [01:06:45] Brett: I, I tried it out, decided to pay for it. The developer was like, oh my God, thank you. How did you find out about this? And I explained to was from Product Con. Um, I don’t think he’s getting a ton of business, but he has written a [01:07:00] chat G P T interface that works with Mac OS accessibility. So you can just highlight some text, hit a shortcut key, and pop up a chat G P T interface that you can predefine prompts on. [01:07:14] Brett: So you can have like an explain this prompt or a comment, this code prompt or like whatever prefix prompt you want, and it will insert the selected text into. what it sends to chat G b T, which makes it very seamless to like, if you wanna reply to an email, you like highlight the text that someone sent you, you bring it up, you hit reply positive or reply negative, and it will write your, your email response for you. [01:07:44] Brett: And then you can, uh, click it and paste it into your email program. And it, it, because it’s a Mac os uh, accessibility application, it works in any app that has accessibility features. [01:08:00] Um, and, and it’s, I think it’s really well done. I think he deserves, uh, a little more traffic than he may be getting [01:08:06] Christina: Fantastic. Fantastic. So my pick of the week, so this is something that I did yesterday, um, and, and I need to play around. Some of these a little bit more, um, I’ll have a couple things linked, but I’ve been playing around with, um, with, with, with Pam, um, modules, um, which is like Apple’s um, authentication system so that, you know, there’s a way where you can add like pseudo to with, with touch ID support to your terminal. [01:08:31] Christina: There’s like a brew command that you can install and that’ll even like monitor whether the pam, um, uh, file has been updated or not. Um, but uh, I finally got app, my Apple Watch working on my, on my imax so that I could use that for, for, for pseudo. But, but I found out somebody was one of my followers on, on, um, Macon was like, I like that, but I can’t use both touch ID and Apple Watch at the same time. [01:08:55] Christina: And so someone created a PAM module [01:09:00] that adds watch authentication in addition to touch id. So if you have both and, and, and like you wanna, for instance, use watch when your, uh, the lid on your, on your MacBook is closed, you can do that. So, um, So if you, you have a watch paired your Mac or fingerprints enrolled for unlocking, you can use the module to authenticate both of them. [01:09:18] Christina: And so this is called, uh, pam underscore w t i d. And uh, it is, um, a patch on, um, an existing module, um, to, to be able to add support for both. Anyway, the, the, the GitHub, um, the guy goes through all the details of all the different things that he looked at. And how he ended up having to do what he did. [01:09:41] Christina: There’s some, there’s a thing in the GitHub issue that it might have some issues on Ventura. I have not played with that aspect yet, but I feel like we could probably find a way to fix this. Um, but I’ll, I’ll have a couple of these pan modules in, uh, in, in, in the links. But the, this one, um, the, the W T I D that does [01:10:00] both is really good. [01:10:00] Christina: That’s not the one I installed. I installed the original Apple Watch one, which, um, does work on, on, um, uh, apple silicon. But you need to, you need to update the make file, which, and, and, and the, the, the developer has been MIA on GitHub for over a year. So, [01:10:18] Christina: So that one, somebody’s created a fork and like I could create a fork too. [01:10:21] Christina: What I’m trying to see if I could do is if I can get this, this, this Pam W T I D thing working correctly, I’ll submit a pass to them of course, but I might just fork my own. I would love to like have it so that, um, do do the same thing that, um, uh, the, the version that is, uh, updates that’s installed and um, via home brew and they auto checks, um, with any update to, to automatically update like it’s just a bash script of the runs and will automatically update, uh, when you install new versions of, of, of Mac Os. [01:10:50] Christina: I’ll, I’ll see if I can like basically hack together like a Frankenstein, uh, thing that we’ll do all of those things. So, [01:10:56] Brett: Here’s some weirdness. I, I, I don’t [01:11:00] know if, if it’s related to my messing around. The PAM authentication system. But if I use pseudo in, I term it, any pseudo command will crash. I term immediately Pseudo, anything pseudo minus says pseudo any command immediate crash. And no. And I’ve sent the crash logs to them. [01:11:27] Brett: I haven’t gotten a response. Uh, but if I do the same thing in terminal, no [01:11:33] Christina: fine. [01:11:33] Brett: It’s fine. [01:11:34] Christina: Interesting. So what I would, what I would be curious about would be when the next, like when, when you have another Mac OS version, which will reset that entire directory, I would be curious if that fixes the problem. So like, before I would run one of those commands again, I, I would be curious if that fixes the problem. [01:11:55] Brett: I have an, I have an update waiting for me. It’s a disappoint update [01:12:00] of Ventura, uh, which I don’t think we’ll reset it, but, but I also, like, I I, I removed all the PAN modules I had installed, [01:12:09] Christina: Right. But, [01:12:10] Brett: still [01:12:11] Christina: and it still. [01:12:11] Brett: be completely unrelated. [01:12:13] Christina: It might be unrelated, but Yeah. But it is your pseudo file back to what it was originally. [01:12:18] Brett: Yeah, [01:12:19] Brett: yeah. Removed. Removed all references to any additional authentication methods. Uh, it, it’s still, I, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why that, I don’t know what happens when you create a, when you run a pseudo command that could possibly crash an app. Like I could see the, the command failing. I could see errors in the shell, but to crash the app, I don’t understand how that could happen. [01:12:48] Christina: Yeah. That’s weird. I’m not sure either. Um, yeah, I don’t know. Um, that could be a lot of things that, oh, that is the one thing I will say. If you’re playing around with these things, make sure you back. [01:13:00] Your, uh, your, your pseudo file, because I did make a mistake, boy that I had like a wrong character or something in mine, and then all of a sudden, like pseudo was broken and I was able to just, uh, fuck with a permissions and, and finder of all places [01:13:12] Brett: Yeah. Cuz you can’t edit your pseudo file without pseudo, it’s kind of a catch [01:13:16] Brett: 22 there. [01:13:18] Christina: Except if you go to go to folder and you go to find it and find her and then you like adjust, like you unlock it and then you, you know, adjust just, just the rewrite permissions or whatever. Like it’s, it’s you, you can do it. Um, I mean, I also could have start restarted in recovery mode, um, and had a route, but, but I was, I didn’t wanna like restart my computer. [01:13:34] Christina: I was like, I actually still have five thou thousand tabs open. I’m doing other things. I don’t have time for this. Um, so I was able to get around it, but I was like, oh, okay. This is why the, the one that has the, the home brew auto update thing, this is why they do like a a, they make a a dot back of your, of your pseudo file. [01:13:50] Christina: I was like, that’s smart. That’s what I should have done. Can’t say that I didn’t do this to myself, that I didn’t know what I was doing. But if you are gonna be playing around with these pan modules, Yeah, make sure you have [01:14:00] backups, um, because otherwise you could, yeah, then you can’t edit pseudo, uh, you know, you can’t use pseudo without pseudo and uh, and that’s not great. [01:14:10] Christina: So, um, but, but it’s fun. And I do have to say like, so cuz I, so I have, um, two apple silicon machines. And I love them and they’re great, but my iMac is still really, really powerful. And I’ve got like the, the, the two screens. I mean, I, I also connect the, the, the, um, uh, studio display to my laptop sometimes. [01:14:29] Christina: But like in my office, like I have like my big like 27 inch iMac and I’ve got, you know, the studio display and like the Zac has 128 gigs of RI and, you know, a 10 core, you know, like beefy intel cpu and a really, really good, uh, gpu. Like it’s in a lot of ways still better than, uh, for, for some purposes, especially with, you know, VMs and stuff than, uh, than even using my apple silicon stuff. [01:14:53] Christina: Even if it, like, the fans come on and it’s, it’s not silent. So what, but what’s annoying is [01:15:00] that even though it has a secure enclave, um, you can’t use the touch ID keyboard with it, which is, which is completely an arbitrary Apple decision. They absolutely could have done that because Touch ID was on Intel Max first. [01:15:13] Christina: And so if you’ve got the secure enclave. Which this one does. You know, there should be no reason why you can’t have the touch ID third party keyboard, but you can’t. Um, and so it’s really annoying for me to have to type a password in all the time when passwords, um, uh, account is, is pretty good. Uh, oh, I will give a shout out to Okta. [01:15:36] Christina: This is, sorry, we’re just talking about authentication stuff cuz this is annoying to me. Okta now supports PAs keys, at least my instance does, which is great because if, when you’re logging in, if you don’t wanna have to reach around the back of your computer to find your, um, your UBI key, or if your UBI key, your, your, your secondary one is like in a bag of someplace and you’re like, man, I really don’t wanna fuck with this right now. [01:15:58] Christina: If you set up, um, [01:16:00] uh, in, in your Okta settings, you can set up, uh, your, your phone as like, uh, a PAs key and then you can just scan the QR code on another machine and then on your iPhone it’ll come up and be like, do you wanna use the PAs key that is saved to this account to log in? I’m like, yes, yes, I do. [01:16:15] Christina: Brilliant. So, so Pass Keys are great across platform and they’re supported by all the different, um, uh, big, you know, Microsoft, Google, apple, uh, it’s a consortium that came together for them and the, the, um, the Okta support really handy. Also, if you’re trying to like, look at ways to have to avoid typing in your password as many times as, as I do when you’re on an Intel Mac if, or I guess if you were on like a, you know, like a a Mac Studio or Mac Mini Apple, Silicon One, and you, you didn’t wanna pay for the, the Apple Touch ID keyboard because you’re like, I actually want a keyboard that feels good and, and, and you don’t wanna do it. [01:16:53] Christina: What, what Jason Snell did, which was like, cut it, cut it up to like find a way to, you know, get, get, get the sensor [01:17:00] into a, a normal [01:17:00] Brett: I, I would love, I would love a touch id sensor on my ultimate hacking keyboard, but I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna switch keyboards just for the touch Id. [01:17:10] Christina: Absolutely. And that’s the thing, [01:17:11] Brett: even though I hate using my watch, cuz right now during the winter, I always have long sleeves on. So I’ve got my fingers on the home row. A a prompt comes up, I have to pull my hands up the keyboard, pull back my sleeve, and then I wear my watch backwards for various and sundry reasons. [01:17:29] Brett: But that means I have to like, grasp my watch from the right and then carefully double tap the button on the left because if I hit the wrong button, it’ll dismiss the password prompt. It’s kind of a pain in the ass. And I would rather, I think in most cases, so I use, I use key bindings. Don’t tell anyone this, this is secret, but I use key bindings and I have a, I have a sequence. [01:17:55] Brett: If I type a certain sequence of keys, it fills in my system password. [01:17:59] Christina: [01:18:00] smart. Oh, I should do that. [01:18:02] Brett: and it’s, it’s a complex sequence. It like, You’d have to, you, you would have to be me to [01:18:07] Christina: I was gonna say, you have to be in your brain. [01:18:09] Brett: you would never guess it. But it’s way shorter than typing my system password. Um, [01:18:14] Jeffrey: You know, who wears their watch backwards? [01:18:16] Brett: my dad [01:18:17] Jeffrey: Snipers, [01:18:18] Christina: Huh. [01:18:21] Brett: I, I do it because in yoga, uh, if I go into like a downdog or anything on my, where my palm is on the ground, bent backwards, it will hit the button on my watch and will set, set off the emer, the sos alarm, [01:18:40] Christina: Oh, very bad. [01:18:42] Brett: to people in a yoga [01:18:43] Brett: class. [01:18:44] Jeffrey: wear it backwards like that. So it’s not that the face is, um, [01:18:47] Brett: I just, so, so that the crown, the crown and the button are on the [01:18:51] Christina: Got it. Got it. Okay. Now I do have a question for you. Are, are you, um, a, a, a right wrist or a left wrist watch person? [01:18:58] Brett: Left w left [01:18:59] Christina: Same. [01:19:00] Uh, Jeff? [01:19:01] Jeffrey: Same. [01:19:02] Christina: Left wrist? Yep. [01:19:04] Brett: Who, what, [01:19:05] Brett: what, what, Right-handed person. Yeah. I can’t imagine wearing a watch on my right [01:19:11] Christina: I can’t either. Uh, it would be weird and, and I assume it’s because we’re all right-handed, but I don’t know. Um, I did have to at, uh, when I went to Disney World, um, I got there, there were stupid magic band things, which are not stupid. I mean, it was, you know, uh, we, I, I, I bullied my, my, my two friends into both buying magic bands. [01:19:29] Christina: I was as disappointed that mine, which was still over. Was just purple. Whereas they had like really like terrible like kind of themed ones. But the thing is, is that you could do most of what you could do with the Magic band, with your Apple watch, but not everything. And like the magic band was great cuz like, we get you into the hotel room and like if you, if we’d chosen to do this, we could even hooked up like a credit card to it. [01:19:50] Christina: But it was like great for like, you know, getting into the, into the rise and like, uh, uh, I, I stupidly bought the photo pack, like where the photographers will take all [01:20:00] the pictures for you. And it was like $200, but I got my money’s worth. I I, I did the math and I was like, this is how many photos we have to take for this to be worth it. [01:20:07] Christina: And we more than did that. I was like, good. But like, but I had like, but it’s basically the same size as Apple Watch. So like my Apple watch on on one wrist and then I have like the magic band on the other and it was so weird having something on my right wrist. Um, [01:20:20] Jeffrey: I bet. Yeah. [01:20:22] Christina: I had to use the kid size, um, of, of, of the, the magic band thing. [01:20:26] Christina: Like, like genuinely, like it was one of those things, like they’ve got like a longer band, like it’s clearly for adults and then like you have to rip that part of it off the kid size. It was like, oh yeah, I, I’ve always said I have childlike wrist, but now this is proof cuz I’m, I’m only halfway through like this, this, this thing. [01:20:41] Christina: Like, I, there’s no way I even could have a approached, like the adult one. I’m like, I’m like, I’m like halfway through the kid thing. I’m like, yep. Cool. that was also just a random tangent, but, but, uh, but, but, but Pam w uh, t i d and I’ll have some other, um, of the, the modules linked because they’re, uh, this is [01:21:00] like a fun thing to, to play with and potentially bork your system. [01:21:02] Christina: So again, [01:21:03] Brett: Yeah, totally. [01:21:04] Brett: It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing when it works and at worst it’ll just break your system. It’ll be fun, [01:21:13] Jeffrey: Uh, that’s awesome. [01:21:14] Brett: All right, so just a quick recap of all the things we didn’t talk about today. We, we didn’t talk about TikTok and acquisitions. We didn’t talk about G P T four or Bard or ai. We didn’t talk about how Samsung is full of shit from Moom picks to foldable phones. Um, and we didn’t talk about the post office. [01:21:34] Brett: These are all things that may come up in the next episode. So stay tuned. [01:21:38] Jeffrey: Not euthanasia. [01:21:39] Christina: Not [01:21:40] Brett: Not, no, we’re prob probably [01:21:43] Jeffrey: You know what? Let’s, let’s go, let’s go straight from euthanasia to get some sleep. [01:21:48] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say, uh, [01:21:50] Jeffrey: but not eternal rest. [01:21:52] Brett: Get some sleep. [01:21:54] Outro: The.[01:22:00]

Brett and Jeff fend for themselves as the conversation turns to microdosing, extensible software, Electron woes, and technology past and present. Sponsor Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today at Kolide.com/overtired. Promo Swap: The Nerd Room — Are you looking to get more out of your fandom experiences? Do you wish you had the time to keep up with all the latest news and insights about your favourite film franchises? Check out The Nerd Room on all major podcast platforms. For more from The Nerd Room, head to thenerdroom.net or use the hashtag #WeTheNerd Show Links Michael Pollan – How to Change Your Mind Doing TextExpander QuickSilver BBEdit RegexRX Path Finder Brett’s Popclip Extensions Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Elegantly Extensible [00:00:00] Jeff: Hello, you are listening to the Overtired podcast. I am Jeff Severance Gunzel, and I am here with Brett Terpstra. Christina is away this week. Hello, Brett. [00:00:17] Brett: Hello, Jeff. Um, I had a dream. Last night that we had already recorded, or like I, we did, we did the recording in my dream. Uh, so I have already spent in dream time. I have already spent an hour talking to you, um, in, in which almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. There were crashes and restarts and like we started, and I forgot to say who was doing the intro. [00:00:43] Brett: So there’s this whole like, garbled thing at the beginning and then I swore I swore right away because I recently read that. Uh, and it doesn’t matter for us cause we don’t monetize on YouTube. But on YouTube, if you drop the F-bomb in the first 15 seconds [00:01:00] of your video, according to the new profanity rules, you get demonetized. [00:01:06] Jeff: Wow. [00:01:07] Brett: And you can, you can use the FBO after that. Um, as long as it’s not, I can’t remember how they phrase it, but like, it was like, don’t do it too much. Um, and don’t put it in your screenshots, your, like your thumbnail image. Um, there’s all these new profanity rules, but they’re actually laxer than what they had before. [00:01:27] Brett: Now, now you can say the FBO and still get partially monetized. Anyway, like that was on my mind. So in the dream [00:01:35] Jeff: Yeah. [00:01:36] Brett: dream, I was intentionally not swearing. [00:01:39] Jeff: That’s amazing, [00:01:40] Brett: Yeah. [00:01:42] Jeff: Well, it’s too bad we can’t access that file somehow. [00:01:44] Brett: I know. We could save a lot of time. [00:01:46] Jeff: We could, [00:01:47] Brett: Have a real, really trippy episode. It was, it got weird. It got weird. [00:01:53] Jeff: Well, let’s see what happens in, uh, in real life. [00:01:56] Mental Health Corner [00:01:56] Brett: Yeah. So, uh, so we’re gonna [00:02:00] reinstate after a couple weeks off, uh, the mental health corner. Would you like, would you like to kick off the, the season? We should start season four soon. Um, [00:02:12] Jeff: Season three was like five episodes. [00:02:14] Brett: was it, I thought it was like 20, it was 20 episodes. We’re on, this [00:02:18] Jeff: Really? Oh yeah. It’s three 20. Oh my God. See, this’ll, this ties into my mental health check-in [00:02:23] Brett: All right. Go for it. [00:02:25] Jeff: Um, I don’t know. I think it’s just that I’m trying to do too much, but my sense of space and time is really messed up. Like it wasn’t good to begin with, but I’ll be in a conversation. [00:02:39] Jeff: It was just in a conversation with my wife actually. I was like, well, we talked about that on Friday. She’s like, eh, it was Monday. I was like, oh, Uhhuh. Okay. Got it. And that’s not just being like a stupid sitcom husband. It’s like . It’s like, [00:02:51] Brett: mean that’s, that’s a common ADHD symptom, like time dilation and, yeah. [00:02:58] Jeff: But it’s, it, it’s been really, [00:03:00] really hard the last couple weeks. I mean, um, and I think it is, I’m trying to do too much. I’m doing a lot in the house. I’m doing a lot at work. Um, there’s a lot of sort of, at work, especially, I’m wrapping up a five year project, which is gonna take a few months, but it’s like, there’s just a lot of feelings around that. [00:03:19] Jeff: Um, and just a lot of work around that. I took on a new role in our, um, I’m, I’m a member owner of a, of a research, uh, cooperative, uh, a research firm that focuses on, um, mostly on social justice efforts, essentially. So organizations that have social justice at their focus, we do research and evaluation for them. [00:03:40] Jeff: And so I’m, I also took on a new role, um, on, on the board and with our organization. And so, I don’t know, man, I just, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m daily noticing myself kind of failing to, um, Remember things that it’s kind of unbelievable. I failed to remember. Um, and, and [00:04:00] despite having notes or whatever else it is, I mean, I just, I can’t, I’ve never been able to fully explain it. [00:04:04] Jeff: They do describe it as an A D H D symptom. Um, I just, it, it doesn’t, even, even with that, it doesn’t seem like, it seems like I should be able to, um, get on top of it. It seems like I should be able to systematize it, but I’ve, I, I’m not sure that for me, I believe in the longevity of systems anymore. Um, and I am, I am constant evidence of that from my life. [00:04:30] Brett: So like what, is there anything historically that has worked for you to stay on top of these things that, that rationally seem like you just shouldn’t forget, but you do? [00:04:41] Jeff: I mean, my calendar works pretty, pretty well for me. Uh, it’s just that one of the things that can happen is, uh, I can look at my calendar in the morning and have forgotten most of it, um, by lunchtime, you [00:04:53] Brett: I do the same I do. [00:04:55] Jeff: Uh, and, and that just, it makes me crazy. So, like what I used to do, the two things that have [00:05:00] worked, two things that have worked for me is to just grab a note card and write out my schedule in the morning. [00:05:07] Jeff: Um, sometimes then I never have to refer to it and I, and otherwise I have like a little reference card next to [00:05:12] Brett: just the act of writing embeds it better in your brain, [00:05:16] Jeff: Yeah. And then when I had jobs that were, when I’ve had jobs that were more. That lent themselves more to daily routines. Um, I, I would, I remember when I, I was a editor at Reader Magazine and I handled our website and I would just have a, a handwritten checklist that I photocopied that just had the things that I needed to, you know, uh, check or do that day and, and, and I could kind of look over a week’s worth of those and be able to see what I missed and what I did and whatever the , since we’re talking about it, the other thing that has worked really well for me, and maybe this is the other thing I need to do, is, I mean, I, what part of, I mean why, why what I’m describing can be so [00:06:00] bad? [00:06:00] Jeff: Is it. Is that I work with other people, right? Like there are people that are depending on hearing from me or, um, that I’m waiting on something from, or whatever it is. And I have found in my life that if I, if I forget to stay engaged with people, even just a back and forth, maybe by text or whatever it, people quickly fall into the background. [00:06:28] Jeff: Um, the world outside my four walls, this office I’m in now quickly falls into the background because I’m just. I’m just so focused on whatever’s right in front of me and sort of triaging or whatever else. Right. Um, but anyway, one thing I used to do, I used to have this, I should I say used to, I’ve actually probably brought it, uh, I, I’ve re I’ve resurrected it several times in life, a daily, um, template for, um, for kind of how to stay engaged. [00:06:59] Jeff: And [00:07:00] one of the things I would do every day is just I would list three people that it would be good if I got in contact with, whether it was an email or a text or a phone call or whatever, people that are waiting to hear from me. Right. Um, and if I didn’t have three people waiting to hear from me, maybe I had one waiting to hear from me, I’d, I’d pick two that I know it’d be good to be in touch [00:07:19] Brett: Is this both? Both professional and personal or one or [00:07:23] Jeff: Professional and personal, definitely. And then the next bit would be, um, who am I waiting for stuff from? Because that also just falls into the background after a while. And so anyway, I mean, I, you know, if, uh, if listening to this in the future because I am applying for a job, I’d just rather you just, you know, move forward to the next part of the podcast. [00:07:42] Jeff: But , like, cause this is my own business. Goddamnit , but I’m just in that space right now. And I’m, and the interesting thing is I’m also in a really productive space. So it’s not just like, I’m like, I have been in the past. I’m not just lost in the [00:08:00] wilderness of all the things. Right? Um, I’m actually getting a lot done, but it’s like, woo, it’s, uh, the brain. [00:08:07] Jeff: I need like a serious memory upgrade. I need like, uh, I think these new MacBooks. My new macro pro. I don’t think I met like 60 or something like that. That’s what I need No more of this 18, uh, gigabyte business [00:08:23] Brett: Yeah. [00:08:24] Jeff: anyway. [00:08:25] Brett: as you know, I’ve spent a good portion of my life developing tools to help me with exactly the stuff you’re talking about, and honestly, I’ve never found a perfect system that I stick with. Um, like OmniFocus is great if you get into a habit and you have a daily review and you’re actually curating. [00:08:46] Brett: Like if you just let let your inbox pile up and never file anything, it doesn’t do any good. And if you file, file everything, but don’t review it, it doesn’t do any good. Uh, because like the whole point is to get it out of [00:09:00] your head into someplace you trust, right? Like basic G T D stuff. Um, but if you. Get it out of your head and then forget about it, then you’ve actually done worse than just trying to remember everything you have to do. [00:09:15] Jeff: Yes, [00:09:17] Brett: well, I, so I guess this leads into my mental health corner. Um, I had a one day manic episode, uh, just a few days ago, and like I, I woke up at like 11:00 PM I went to bed at nine, woke up at 11. Just immediately knew I wasn’t gonna fall back asleep. Um, I stayed in bed for like three hours anyway, just completely awake. [00:09:46] Brett: Um, and when it eventually drove me nuts, I went downstairs and did my usual thing, started coding, uh, wrote, wrote a bunch of code, um, and then crashed like that during the day. The [00:10:00] next day I just, I could feel it, I could feel it end, and I slept for the next two nights. I slept great. Last night was a bit of a rough night, but not like a manic night. [00:10:10] Brett: Um, and. The thing is, without all the tools I’ve built, I would have no idea what happened that manic night like I do. I do not consciously remember because I had two really good nights of sleep. Um, it like cleared my brain of all the stuff I was obsessively working on. Um, and if it weren’t for like doing, which, uh, I have, I have it set up so that anytime I make a get commit, um, I have a, a default hook that gets initialized with any new Git repository. [00:10:44] Brett: So anytime I start a project, I initialize git repository and there’s a gi commit hook that once it saves the commit message, it adds it as an entry in my doing file. So simply by. Committing, [00:11:00] which is, you know, like I, I have a good habit of committing every change. Uh, simply by committing within a project, I create a, a record that I can easily, easily pull up and say, here’s what I was doing. [00:11:12] Brett: And when I realize I’m manic, I add a default tag to my config file. So anything that gets, anything that gets added to my doing file during that period gets a tag manic. Um, and then when it’s over, I remove that tag. And that means that I can just write doing show manic and it will show me everything that I did when I was manic. [00:11:39] Brett: And I can plot that out. I can use the timeline output and actually see like a, a JavaScript of like a view based time. [00:11:46] Jeff: Yeah. [00:11:47] Brett: my mania, and I can see exactly like when I was manic, what I accomplished while I was manic, how long it lasted. Uh, and this last one was less than 24 hours, which is just weird. [00:12:00] Like I’ve never had, never had a mania that lasted less than three days. [00:12:04] Brett: Um, and it, it hasn’t been followed by any major depression. I want to talk to my shrink about microdosing. [00:12:13] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. [00:12:15] Brett: I’m, I’m really excited about the possibility, like I don’t know if there are drug interaction concerns, uh, with things like psilocybin and L s D, but from the results I’ve seen and I have friends, like I went to a , I went to a 70 year old trans woman’s poetry reading on Friday and no on Thursday night. [00:12:40] Brett: And, uh, The crowd was mostly also 70 year old people, and the guy who introduced her was like misgendered her left and right in his introduction. It was, it was very uncomfortable to be there. But I met up with a queer [00:13:00] studies professor. Um, and halfway through the thing she tells me, uh, that she’s on mushrooms. [00:13:06] Brett: Um, because she had been dealing with some major depression and a friend had, uh, convinced her to try microdosing. Um, and that night I think she might have macro dosed, but she said that, like she said, [00:13:22] Jeff: tried macro dosing [00:13:26] Brett: she, she said that like, just like tiny bits of a psilocybin. Um, did wonders to get her out of bed into the world. Um, feeling alert and, and bright-eyed and hopeful. And I like, cause we’ve talked many times about how I feel like my version of bipolar stable is actually leaning towards depression. Uh, like, like as long as I’m sleeping, I consider myself in good shape, but I also [00:14:00] do not enjoy life much during those periods. [00:14:03] Brett: Um, and I really, I think, and I can’t because of the bipolar, I can’t medicate the depression effectively. Uh, because any good antidepressant will just make me manic. Um, so I have to use these things like Lamictal that have antidepressant qualities. [00:14:24] Jeff: about that. Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:25] Brett: Like it has qualities, but it’s not an antidepressant. Um, and, and, and honestly, my A D H D meds increase dopamine, um, and, and make me and, and help with serotonin production. [00:14:40] Brett: So that aids a little bit, but once I’m depressed, it’s so weird when I’m manic one A D H D pill, uh, in my case, Vivance right now, um, will, it shoots me through the roof. I’m like just, just super focused coding, [00:15:00] writing, uh, like social, like it’s amazing what it does. And then when I’m depressed, it doesn’t do jack. [00:15:08] Brett: Like I can take it and I don’t even notice like a difference. [00:15:13] Jeff: It’s not like the classic up upper downer [00:15:15] Brett: Right. No, the depression can override the A D H D meds, which is, uh, it’s kind of frustrating, but, uh, anyway, yeah, I’m, I, I really wanna look into microdosing. I spent like a year of my life tripping balls. Um, got really into, uh, like D M X and acid and, uh, mushrooms and actually started dealing mushrooms. [00:15:41] Brett: Um, I had a dealer that would like front me a pound at a time, and I would just like sell it to college kids. Um, [00:15:49] Jeff: Like college kids where? [00:15:50] Brett: uh, m a [00:15:51] Jeff: Oh, mcad. The art school. Yeah. Right. [00:15:53] Brett: Yeah. And I was just tripping the whole time and got, I got really kind of good at [00:16:00] like, tripping and, and like maintaining a good trip and, and getting used to navigating the world. [00:16:08] Brett: In a hallucinogenic state, um, which isn’t because I could never smoke weed like I’m allergic to T h c. Um, so like I didn’t have a lot of experience with any kind of hallucinogenic until I get into that stuff. Um, but what I’m saying is microdosing, which is not, you know, you don’t trip you, you’re not like hallucinating. [00:16:33] Brett: I think I, I think I could navigate it. Fine. I think I’d be good at it. [00:16:37] Jeff: Yeah. I have the Michael Poll book sitting on my bookshelf about the various uses of psychedelics. Um, [00:16:46] Brett: What’s it called? I’ll add it to the show notes. [00:16:49] Jeff: Oh God, it’s, uh, I’ll have to, I’ll have to search it, but I, for some reason, this is one of the things, my brain is just not holding [00:16:56] Brett: I, I, I added a poorly spelled note to the show notes. You can flush [00:17:00] it out when you have time. Um, [00:17:02] Jeff: Um, you know, when you were talking about doing, um, I, which I’ve used, I mean, I love doing, like doing is one of the things, like I could tell you, I could sit down, I forget, tell you, I could sit down and, and map out the perfect system for me, right. Like, and the elements and the tools and everything. [00:17:20] Jeff: What’s too, what’s like, not too much and not too little and, you know, um, but my ability to stay with it is a whole different story. Anyway, I think two episodes ago, our first question, uh, our first big like question episode, right? You had asked about input devices, like the dream input device, and I, I said somehow it would involve drumming, and I realized that like what I, what I would love is like, To be able to, like my entry in doing would be triggered by like the end of a song drum thing, like, right. [00:17:53] Jeff: And then it pops up. It’s like, what were you doing? Oh, thanks for asking. I was just, you know, and I’m just finishing now. Thank you. And then I count it off. I [00:18:00] count off the next one. Right. Like, [00:18:02] Brett: Yeah. [00:18:04] Jeff: that would be perfect. Just perfect. But I wanna say that like, um, I, I’m in a stage of kind of being hard on myself about not being able to kind of hold with a system. [00:18:14] Jeff: But I remember, um, I had a therapist once and I was describing kind of this very thing where it’s like, I imagine I’m walking on a berm, you know, and it’s like I could fall down on either side. Um, I’ll walk on that berm for a couple weeks and then I’ll, I’ll trip and fall, right? And, and if I’m not doing well, I’ll just walk down where I fell. [00:18:34] Jeff: I won’t try to climb back up on the berm, right. But if I’m doing well, I’ll work to climb back on the berm. And I don’t know how long I’m gonna last up there, but like, at least I went back up and she, she kind of affirmed that, you know, what’s really important in this case is, you know, how to, she put it really nicely. [00:18:50] Jeff: You know how to call yourself back, essentially. And I, I, I find that I, I put emphasis when I’m, when I’m really conscious of it, which I will be, now that I’ve [00:19:00] said it here, I put emphasis on can I call myself back more than what have I sustained? Right? Um, and that seems to me far more. , um, realistic as a human being and, and as an expectation of myself as a human being. [00:19:17] Jeff: doing like knowledge work and all this other stuff. So anyway, I just wanted to add to that at the end little, so I’m not just being hard on myself. I forget to not be hard on myself. [00:19:26] Brett: Uh, doing was actually one of the things I worked on when I was manic. Um, so I have been in the habit recently of adding plugin architectures to all of my tools. Um, so they can be easily extended, uh, if, you know, whatever language I happen to have written it in. Um, it’s not like text mate where you can like write extensions in any language, but, but like doing, uh, with just some basic Ruby school skills, you can add new [00:20:00] features to it. [00:20:00] Brett: And, uh, someone asked me if they could output a view. By day where like everything was grouped by day in a table, um, and you could just like see kind of a calendar view of, of what you had done. And I was like, that is absolutely an export plugin. And uh, in about maybe 45 minutes, I wrote one page of code that now you can type dash o by day, uh, all one word by day, and it will, it’ll output an like a Nastys doc table of all of your, all of all. [00:20:39] Brett: So you can combine it with any command. So like doing today or doing since or or doing, show any command that has output, you can just add dash O by day and, and it’ll output in that day format. And it just like, I’ve really been appreciating this. This [00:21:00] focus on plugin architecture, because even if no commu, no community, like evolves around it, even if you don’t have like an obsidian or notion or text make kind of community making extensions for you, just from a code maintainability perspective, uh, the ability to add features that are optional and are completely modular, and I didn’t have to go in and edit any of the core code to do it. [00:21:30] Brett: I, I am, I, I I will moving forward. Always, always include a plug-in architecture, like marked kind of. You can use custom processors and you can write them in any language, but they’re, it’s also a little flaky. Like the best way to crash mark is to use a custom processor. Um, [00:21:49] Jeff: Is that what you wrote in your iTunes review? Unmarked [00:21:51] Brett: the best, the best and most consistent way to crash. [00:21:54] Brett: Mark is the fuck up your. Your custom processor. It, it is, it [00:22:00] is not graceful when things go wrong, and I’ve tried to fix that, but like the idea is there, it’s extensible. Like you don’t want to use multi markdown or GitHub flavored markdown, add your own processor and use whatever you want. Um, so this isn’t like a new concept to me, but it is definitely something I’m trying to make, like an elegant part of anything I code. [00:22:21] Brett: No. [00:22:21] Jeff: I love that. And it actually speaks to something I’ve been meaning to bring up with you on the podcast, which is that in the last couple of weeks I’ve moved back completely to Envy Ultra for, I was using obsidian for some things and whatever, and, um, I just, I find. Uh, I find that the closer I can feel to my actual text files , um, the more comfortable I am and obviously Envy Alt is and was that, and Envy Al Ultra is that as well. [00:22:52] Jeff: And what I had been doing was sort of using a single notes folder that Obsidian could act on and pull from. Right. [00:23:00] But also Envy Ultra. But I don’t, and this may just be, uh, like my own, like personality disorder or something, but like in the end, and you and I have talked about this when talking about sublime text versus vs code, like I find that I just feel more comfortable and, and I feel more of a flow when I feel super close to the text file itself. [00:23:25] Jeff: So like if you’re the type of person that’s going to even go in the direction of text files, right? Like why not stay as close to those files as you can? Um, [00:23:35] Brett: Well, the other, the other commonality there between sublime texts and uh, NV Ultra is, is operating system like being as close to the operating system as possible. Um, electron and obs, I mean, uh, obsidian and VS code are both electron and do not integrate fully with Mac os. Um, which is, [00:24:00] that’s for me, that’s why I prefer Sublime and NV Ultra, uh, just like right down to, uh, sublime less so than NV Ultra, but it uses real Mac OS components. [00:24:13] Brett: And you’re, you’re like directly interfaced with the operating system. [00:24:17] Jeff: And can you explain what electron is and why it doesn’t integrate fully with the operating system? [00:24:24] Brett: Electron is a, a layer, uh, it’s a web-based. Layer, um, where you’re basically, I think mostly in node js, uh, but they build their own components that run within kind of, you could consider electron like, uh, an operating system layer, um, that provides all of the interaction between the components and everything. [00:24:47] Brett: Uh, but they are not, a text field in Electron is actually a web field, um, like an H T M L field, not an os, like a Mac OS text [00:25:00] field. So things like system services are abstracted away from, from working the way they would in a cocoa text field, uh, and like an NS text field. Um, it’s, it, it provides a lot of flexibility, especially for developers who want to write cross-platform applications like an Electron app with very little effort can run on any operating system. [00:25:26] Jeff: and is that the primary attraction to it and the reason for its popularity? [00:25:31] Brett: For, yes, for among developers, yes. I mean, that is why you would make an Electron app is, is for cross platform availability. It also makes a lot of things easier. Like the, the things that VS Code can do, um, it can do more easily because of the electron kind of ecosystem around the functionality. Um, and what makes like VS code so popular is just the [00:26:00] sheer adaptation adoption, I mean, um, by users and the number of packages available and the amount of the extensibility of it. [00:26:10] Brett: Um, it is easily. Five times what, uh, sublime taxes ever had available. It’s insane what [00:26:19] Jeff: is [00:26:20] Brett: extend it to do, but I just run into enough friction when I try to use it the way I want to use my I D e I run into enough little, like not being able to run system services, like it’s a big deal for me. It seems like a small thing, but I kinda rely on, on, on the text navigation, the custom key bindings and the system services that I’m used to having in any cocoa text field on any app on my Mac. [00:26:49] Brett: And then suddenly they don’t work and it, it’s friction for me and it just sublime. Sublime has enough packages that do what I need to do. Um, I’m just [00:27:00] more comfortable in it. [00:27:01] Jeff: Well, and when I get really drawn into obsidian, it is because of. It’s not just that there’s the shared number of plugins. Cause it is pretty incredible. There’s a woman who keeps a, um, who keeps a weekly, uh, who runs a weekly newsletter that always lists like, what’s new, what’s in the approvals. You know, I’m always like Jesus Christ. [00:27:20] Jeff: Um, but I, I actually, the more, the more sort of plugin, the more plug-ins you have, the more plug-in like spam you have kind of, it’s, it’s like, and I forget this is what happened in obsidian. I was like, let me just really look at how I use obsidian. Do I really need obsidian for this? Because the other things I used to do, there are plug-ins to do this. [00:27:40] Jeff: There are other ways of doing this that make me feel a little closer to the note. And I don’t know if that’s just me being artisanal [00:27:46] Brett: the, the one thing obsidian does that I wish I could convince Fletcher to steal is backlinks. [00:27:53] Jeff: Yep. Back links are good, although I like ’em better in Rome, but [00:27:56] Brett: Sure. Like, like Envy Ultra [00:28:00] has wiki linking and you can, you can with auto completion add a Wiki link to another note. Uh, and it has somewhat of a back button feature. Like you can navigate backwards in history, so you can go back to the note you click from, but you can’t see what all notes link to your current note, and you can’t easily see any kind of graph of where the notes link together. [00:28:24] Brett: Um, and that is, that is the one thing about obsidian, like I’m. [00:28:28] Jeff: of fun. [00:28:29] Brett: I’m like you, I, I prefer Envy Ultra and just being very close to my text files and just basically it serves as an interface to raw text, and that’s what I love about it. Um, obsidian abstracts that by one layer, it’s still a, a, a bucket of raw text, but it has, the thing with extensions and plugins is it’s very easy for me to add too many and no longer know why something’s happening, which is what I [00:29:00] always run into in VS code. [00:29:01] Brett: The first thing I do is add, uh, you know, the recommended packages for say Ruby or Swift or Markdown. And, uh, I get a bunch of, a bunch of packages that I’ll provide different features and I no longer know. When I, when I experience a behavior, what caused it or why or where this keyboard shortcut is coming from, and I’ve never spent enough time with it to really get good at tracing that backwards. [00:29:30] Jeff: Well, and there’s a relationship in a way to, so like if, I mean, I know I don’t speak just for myself here, but what, what is so attractive about text files for me, besides the future proof aspect of them, um, is that I don’t get distracted with, um, formatting, which I am just prone to do. Um, and if you happen to just naturally think a textile in markdown format looks beautiful, then you are a lucky, lucky, wonderful person. [00:29:56] Jeff: And I am one of those people. And so for the same reason, [00:30:00] I don’t want to be in a bloat of formatting features. I don’t want to be in a bloat of plugins, you know, cuz that’s where I’ll go. Like, and, and with obsidian, some of those plugins, like the way you. Almost turn every sentence into a kind of data and then do data views. [00:30:18] Jeff: Like that is stuff that causes you to alter how your text files are written. And, and I, that has never been worth it in the end for me. And I, and I often am super suspect of, of people who do their initial few obsidian videos right on YouTube. I, I would love to know what it actually looks like for them a month later, two months later, a year later. [00:30:42] Jeff: It’s not, I’m not trying to be caddy, I just mean like, I wanna see the data generally, like how many people after they dive in and install their plugins and whatever, are still on the platform, right? Like, and, and with text files just used to something like Envy Ultra. That’s never something you would think about. [00:30:59] Jeff: It’s like, this is just where my [00:31:00] notes are, you know? I mean, the thing I think about most is how poorly I’ve labeled my notes over the years, [00:31:05] Brett: There. So I, I speak at, I speak at Max Sock pretty regularly. Um, not going to this year, but, um, There’s always at least one person that does a presentation on productivity, you know, of some kind. And one year it’ll be notion, and then one year it’ll be obsidian and like you’ll watch the same person do a deep dive on, on this new app that solves all the problems. [00:31:34] Jeff: Yeah. [00:31:35] Brett: the next year it’s something else. And the next year they’ve moved on. And, um, I think it’s really easy to get distracted by new shiny, um, and it’s really easy to recognize, to see the power in something, the possibilities, [00:31:49] Jeff: It’s exciting. [00:31:50] Brett: But, uh, when you really sit back and look at like, what’s the portability? If I use these new syntaxes and, and come to rely on this [00:32:00] data layer in this app, and then I wanna move to something else a year from now, uh, will all of this, will all of these systems that I built around it cease to function and it makes you, it makes you crave minimalism. [00:32:16] Brett: It makes you, it makes what’s, what’s the bare minimum syntax I can add to this to accomplish what I actually need without being lured in by like, oh, but I could get the, I could get this special view if I use this like very specific syntax, that would be impossible to rejects out later. [00:32:36] Jeff: Right, Yeah. And by red rejects out, you’re, you’re, you’re hitting the thing, right? It’s like, for me, if I go deep on something and change, essentially add a new syntax to my text files, it’s gonna be a year or two. But I’m gonna want to be writing a script that takes all that shit out, [00:32:53] Brett: Exactly. Exactly. [00:32:54] Jeff: and none of this is to like judge people who are excited about obsidian or anything. [00:32:57] Jeff: It’s just, it helps me to kind of [00:33:00] explore my own. Like, I just find it, I, I don’t know why, you know, those of us who have such an intense draw towards text files and markdown and that stuff, I, I would love to know what is going on there beyond what we’re able to articulate. Right? Like, cuz it’s a type of person, [00:33:18] Brett: Let, let, let me just, yeah. As a, as a, as a caveat, um, I, I think obsidian is amazing. I [00:33:26] Jeff: it is. [00:33:27] Brett: a really cool app with a lot of power, and even if you just used it at its bare minimum, um, it’s a great companion to Envy Ultra and potentially a complete replacement for NV Ultra. It’s a solid app. [00:33:39] Brett: I’m not, I’m not, I’m not dissing it. There are, there are a couple of friction points for me, but I don’t begrudge anybody their love of obsidian. It’s a solid app. [00:33:51] Jeff: Yep. My only issue with it is the way it changes how I behave and the way I behave because of it. It’s not, has nothing wrong with the app. I mean, it’s [00:34:00] cool and I actually love, I love communities that are just, just like popcorn popping plugins and, and ways to use it. I, I learned so much from that, but I just happen to be returning home right now. [00:34:14] Jeff: That’s where I’m at on my journey. [00:34:15] Brett: That’s actually, um, one of your, one of your interview questions that we may or may not get to was what was the first app or program that expanded your sense of what could be possible? And, and my answer to that would definitely feed into what we’re talking about right now, but I’m gonna take a quick sponsor break. [00:34:34] Jeff: Okay. Sounds good. [00:34:35] Sponsor: Kolide [00:34:35] Brett: Um, our sponsor Collide has some big news. If you’re an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance. How you ask if a device isn’t compliant? The user can’t log into your cloud apps until they fix the problem. It’s that simple. Collide Patch is one of the major holes in zero trust architecture, device compliance. [00:34:58] Brett: Without collide, it [00:35:00] struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OS and browser up to date. Unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing there to stop them. Collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with Okta. [00:35:17] Brett: The moment collides agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gets some instructions to fix it. If they don’t fix the problem within a set time, they’re blocked. Collide method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. Visit collide.com/ Overtired to learn more or book or book a demo. [00:35:39] Brett: That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired. [00:35:45] Promo Swap: The Nerd Room [00:35:45] Jeff: Awesome. Awesome. Okay, I, I’ve got a podcast, uh, to talk about the nerd, the nerd room. Um, are you looking to get more out of your fandom experiences? Always. Uh, do you wish you had the time to keep up with all the [00:36:00] latest news and insights about your favorite film franchises? Generally, well then look no further than the Nerd Room Podcast, a weekly audio experience with deep dives into the latest news reviews and speculation from the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel, DC and beyond. [00:36:19] Jeff: Whether you’re a casual fan or a diehard enthusiast, the Nerd Room has something for everyone. Plug into the Nerd Room podcast every Thursday on all major podcast platforms, and let them bring the nerd to you. [00:36:32] Jeff: For more from the nerd room, head to the nerd room.net or use the hashtag hashtag We The nerd. Hashtag [00:36:42] Brett: Hashtag with a nerd. [00:36:44] Jeff: Yeah. [00:36:45] A sense of wonder… in an app [00:36:45] Brett: So, so do you want, do you wanna, do you want to dive into this question for a couple [00:36:50] Jeff: Yeah, let’s do it. [00:36:52] Brett: So the first app or program that expanded your sense of what could be, what can be possible or as a [00:37:00] user or a programmer? Uh, for me it’s both. It’s text mate. Um, so I, I, I didn’t start using a Mac until 2000. [00:37:11] Brett: Um, I was always a PC Linux guy up until that point. Um, and then OS 10 came out and, and I got into it and I started, I learned a little Apple script, like I’d been using VB script and, and I learned Pascal and c and stuff before that. But like, apples script was a, a new beast that allowed me direct. [00:37:32] Brett: Interaction with apps, and that was fun. Um, and then I, I, I heard about this text editor called Text Mate, and I downloaded it and I opened it up and it was like a blank screen with no buttons. And, and I didn’t, I didn’t know what to do and I quit it and went back to whatever editor I was using at the time and maybe BB edit and, and I didn’t think about it again for a few months. [00:37:57] Brett: Um, and then someone pointed out like [00:38:00] how to do a certain thing using a bundle in TechMate. The plug-in architecture was called Bundles. And so I loaded it back up and, and I opened the bundle editor and I began to immediately see, How extensible it was and how it could be crafted and, and like the lack of buttons became, it was the first time that I had had, uh, an editor of any kind without a toolbar. [00:38:26] Brett: Um, and cuz you know, I came from Windows in like Microsoft Word, uh, which is just overloaded with buttons. And, and I began to see the elegance of everything being keyboard based, everything being plugin based. Um, and that’s why I learned Ruby. Uh, my strongest language today is Ruby. And it is all because. [00:38:50] Brett: The easiest way to extend TechMate was with Ruby, and I learned Ruby specifically to extend TechMate. Um, Ellen Agard, the, the [00:39:00] creator of TechMate, ran a mailing list and was just super helpful to newbies like me, um, who I would ask the dumbest questions and he would gently explain like, well, here’s where you went wrong. [00:39:14] Brett: Here’s what you need to do, here’s how it would work. And, and he, he fostered the community, uh, which was very active, uh, for an app at the time. Uh, probably not to the extent that you see like obsidian and notion communities now, uh, but in its day, In the, in the early days of kind of extensible Mac software, uh, it was a, it was a vibrant community full of very helpful people. [00:39:41] Brett: And like the mailing list was like, it was like Usenet just full of ideas and, and helpful tips. And that was, to me, it’s still the gold standard. Like it, it was a Mac app that literally gained its popularity on the [00:40:00] basis of its extending extend ex the community that was extending the application. Like he built, he built something that was very much designed for community involvement and it became, it became, uh, uh, cult status really. [00:40:19] Brett: Um, if, if you, if you know, you know, like Text Mate was, was the original and yeah, it was fun to be a part of and it really opened my eyes. [00:40:30] Jeff: That’s awesome. I, I, that was my first text editor, text mate. Um, and I was not, uh, writing plugins or bundles, but I sure used a lot of them [00:40:40] Brett: Yeah. [00:40:41] Jeff: I wasn’t happy to have to leave it. What happened? What happened to it [00:40:46] Brett: Well, so Tate 2.0 was in Alpha for years and eventually he open sourced it and um, people got. Nervous because [00:41:00] it was never reaching a stable state. Um, and everyone just began to consider text mate kind of dead. Um, he did eventually release Text Mate 2.0, but at that point, at that point, like everyone had already started to move on and new editors had started to crap up and people’s loyalties, uh, had shifted. [00:41:22] Brett: And I mean, there are still people who use TechMate and, and it’s still a solid editor. Um, but, uh, the, the, the arena was rife for new competitors and, and some, some text editors really stepped up. I mean, BB edit is still like, man, rich has never dropped the ball like [00:41:44] Jeff: Oh, actually my first, my first text editor. What was the, what was the kind of light version of BB edit? Um, [00:41:52] Jeff: Was it Text Wrangler? [00:41:53] Brett: Yeah. [00:41:54] Jeff: Yeah, text Wrangler. That’s right, that’s right. Um, [00:41:58] Brett: scriptable [00:42:00] and just a good solid interface to the NS text field. [00:42:04] Jeff: yes, totally that my, um, my first job, uh, editing a website, uh, the person who had created the, the website, you know, was like, here’s, here’s what you need to do to every post in Text Wrangler. And that was my first experience of having a text editor and, and realizing that like, there are these things that can do these things to text that aren’t word. [00:42:25] Jeff: Um, don’t leave artifacts. [00:42:28] Brett: The, the strength of both Text Wrangler and BB edit. Um, aside from, you know, script ability, which is like, I find BB edit script ability, uh, being all Apple Script based, uh, to be a little bit confining for, for like string string manipulation in Apple Script is a bitch. Um, but, uh, their real shining strength was the size of text files they could open, um, and not, [00:43:00] and not freeze. [00:43:01] Brett: Like so many other text editors had this thing where if you opened a one megabyte text file, you were gonna crash it, or you were gonna spend a lot of time with a spinning beach ball waiting to scroll down a page. [00:43:14] Jeff: yeah. I’ve always got, um, I’ve always got BB edit in my bag because like I’ll often open up a text file, it turns out to be way too much for sublime to handle, and I open it up BB edit, bb it’s like, what do you wanna do? [00:43:26] Brett: Yep, [00:43:27] Jeff: Um, which is great. I think for me, my, the, the app I’m thinking I’m gonna speak as a Mac user and I, I started using Max in 2002 and, um, When I was pointed to Quicksilver, um, the first like launcher slash you know, you can make compound requests into this thing with a keyboard shortcut pops up. [00:43:53] Jeff: Um, just what I use Alfred for now, or what other people use Launch bar for and all that stuff. Um, when I [00:44:00] saw that there was a way to interact with apps and with files without having to be in a specific app or be looking at a specific file that. That was a paradigm shift for me, um, that I could actually operate my computer from this little line that pops up in a window rather than having to go in through nested folders or have to search through finder or have to, you know, all the different stuff it could do from how it interfaced with iTunes to how it interfaced with, you know, web browsers and, and, and search engines to how it interfaced with like, getting a file into an email, whatever. [00:44:37] Jeff: Like I had no idea. because I had never used the command line or anything like that either, right? So I had no idea you could act on your computer without using sort of the gooey [00:44:47] Brett: Mm-hmm. [00:44:48] Jeff: in front of you. And that was amazing. And the dude was super mysterious. Like, I don’t think people knew who he was back in the day they do now. [00:44:56] Jeff: Uh, I could be wrong, but like he was mysterious. The [00:45:00] icon was mysterious. Like everything about it was mysterious, including how it acted on my computer. So I just felt like I had something real special on my hands. Um, and of course, like when I think about using Alfred now, it’s like, it’s such a dominant part of my computing experience. [00:45:17] Jeff: Um, [00:45:18] Brett: Bar for me, but. [00:45:19] Jeff: we just, we can just take it for granted. But when that thing came out, it was just like, you do what now? [00:45:24] Brett: The, the only, the only reason I ever trigger Spotlight is to launch Launch Bar if it’s crashed. [00:45:31] Jeff: Exactly. Oh yeah. I remember sometimes when Alfred crashes, I’m like, fuck, what do I do now? [00:45:37] Brett: Yeah. [00:45:37] Jeff: I remember. [00:45:38] Brett: Yeah. No, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll use, uh, who to spot for all of my file searching and launch bar for all of my launching and file operations. Uh, Quicksilver was kind of in the same boat as text mate for me. Where it, it. [00:45:55] Jeff: had a lot of plugins too. [00:45:57] Brett: It was extensible and it, it [00:46:00] revealed a mode of operation that I never had in Windows. Um, there was no, there was no parallel for me in the, in the operating systems I was coming from. [00:46:12] Brett: And like, I immediately latched onto Spotlight. Uh, it was one of the, the first cool things about the Mac. Um, and Spotlight has come a long way, uh, with Siri integration and, and filed previews and drag and drop and everything. It’s come a long way since like os ten first came out. Uh, but Quicksilver, like Quicksilver was amazing. [00:46:36] Jeff: It was so amazing. It felt like having a superpower. [00:46:39] Brett: It did. And, and, and the likes of Merlin man. Uh, were all about it. And I, I think, I think I actually got into following Merlin man because of, uh, his, his Quicksilver, uh, Posts and there [00:46:57] Jeff: that in the 43 folders days? Yeah. [00:47:00] That’s how I learned about it too. And I didn’t know that was Merlin Mann. I didn’t know. I didn’t know from Merlin Mann, but I knew that site. [00:47:05] Brett: Do you remember quicks? It was a, a bookmarklet that you could write like extensions to do all kinds of stuff with webpages. I think I, I think I learned about that from Merlin too. Als I learned, I learned about GTD from Merlin. He was, the reason I bought getting things done by David Allen was, was, uh, was Merlin Mann [00:47:27] Jeff: It’s interesting. That was such a, I mean I guess it was such an exciting time because they had just left their old version of their O or operating system behind, and so it was just everybody playing. Like when did the first OS 10 or os OS nine is, is OS nine the end of the previous, [00:47:45] Brett: yeah. [00:47:45] Jeff: uh, operating system. [00:47:47] Jeff: Okay, so when was the first OS [00:47:49] Brett: I, I believe, I believe, uh, was it Tiger or Jaguar that came first. I think Tiger. I think Tiger was 2000, [00:47:59] Jeff: [00:48:00] Okay, got it. Got it. Back when you had to go get it in a box. [00:48:04] Brett: Yeah. [00:48:07] Jeff: Grandpa [00:48:08] Brett: Not, not, not a pile of three and a half inch floppy discs, but still in a box. [00:48:13] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly. [00:48:16] Brett: It was in the, in the age of CD ROMs at that point. [00:48:19] Jeff: Oh, CD Rams. Man, what a mess. [00:48:22] Brett: I used to, I used to archive everything, um, like everything from my email to my project files and everything on Burnable, CDRs, [00:48:34] Jeff: Same. [00:48:35] Brett: and then eventually, as, as D V D Rs became available, I started writing, but I just had you remember those like books of CDs like that you could get in, like in [00:48:49] Jeff: have one. I have one in my basement full of backup CDs. [00:48:52] Brett: Yeah, I have like dated books and like I, I had to create, I found apps that would [00:49:00] create indexes, searchable indexes of like a 12 CD set [00:49:06] Jeff: Oh, that’s [00:49:07] Brett: and then you could pop in one CD and use it to figure out which CD you needed to load. Um, but it was, it was a kind of messy system compared to the way I archived these days, but, [00:49:19] Jeff: It was totally messy. It was totally messy. Like, I remember having to, like, if I was, if I was backing up my iTunes library, I would’ve to do it across like 10 CDs, right? Or my, or my photos library or whatever it was. So I actually, a, a couple years ago, worrying that I maybe had lost some of those early files, decided I was gonna put my, I had, uh, I had all my backup CDs in like, you know, the cd like Tube , that CDs came in. [00:49:47] Jeff: Um, I, I kept them all in there, but then I was like, nah, I don’t like that. Cause I wanna make sure they’re, you know, they’re probably gonna last a good long while. [00:49:53] Brett: you want ’em in archival quality sleeves. [00:49:56] Jeff: So I got the big kind of book, you know, it’s like square and it’s [00:50:00] got four per page or whatever, and I put ’em all in and I took a paint marker and I labeled each slot and then I brought each one in and, and, and put it in a folder with the name of the, of the slot, um, as the first step. And then I went and organized the files. [00:50:16] Jeff: But it was delightful. I, it was cool, man. I, they all worked. I think there was maybe one that was not working and that’s basically true of my three and a half inch disc too, which [00:50:26] Brett: I love, I love, I love collecting, I love developing systems to maintain a collection That’s like a fetish for me, [00:50:34] Jeff: totally man. Yeah, [00:50:36] Brett: ever since, ever since my early days of rock collecting. Like I just love coming up with cataloging systems [00:50:42] Jeff: It’s the best. [00:50:43] Brett: yeah. [00:50:44] Grapptitude [00:50:44] Jeff: It’s the best. Well, I think we, this is a good flow into gratitude, even though it’s Ben gratitude [00:50:50] Brett: yeah, [00:50:52] Jeff: You wanna, you wanna give yours [00:50:54] Brett: sure. Um, my pick this week is reject rx, [00:51:00] um, or as, as Jeff used to say, it rejects Rx [00:51:04] Jeff: When we first started working together That’s right. I was like, it’s. [00:51:10] Brett: Um, and, and, no, I don’t care if you say RegX or RegX. Uh, this isn’t a gift gif problem. Um, but it is a, it’s, there are a bunch of regular expression testers out there, patterns and oyster and, uh, there are websites designed for testing regular expressions. But I find rejects rx, despite it being like ugly, like Java app, ugly, um, it is the most effective. [00:51:40] Brett: It handles the most different variants of. Regular expressions, um, because there are different, there are different standards that handle different, like character sets differently and everything. And it has this amazing feature where you can paste from and two different [00:52:00] languages. So if you have, if you’re working in JavaScript and you copy out your regular expression from your text editor and you use Paste as JavaScript, it will convert it into a more standard P C R E regular expression in the field. [00:52:17] Brett: And then when you’re done testing and editing, you can do copy, copy, special, uh, JavaScript, and you can do it as a. Pattern or it can give you the full code for like, uh, a replacement and, and copy it right back into your editor. Um, it can do objective C, it can do uh, Java. It can do java script, it can do ruby, um, Python. [00:52:44] Brett: Uh, it can create the code you need to turn a regular expression into, um, code you can use. And then as you, you give it like your test string and then you start working on your expression and it shows you like [00:53:00] all of, all of the captures and individual capture groups, um, either named or numbered, depending on how you write your regular expression. [00:53:08] Brett: And it is just like the most complete, most usable, regular expression tester for me. I don’t remember how much it costs, but I do think it’s available on the app store. I’m gonna look that up. [00:53:20] Jeff: That’s awesome. Sounds great. I wanna play with it. I love rejects apps. [00:53:26] Brett: Who doesn’t [00:53:27] Brett: 4 99? It’s 4 99. [00:53:30] Jeff: Oh, it’s a sweet price. [00:53:31] Brett: Yeah. Damn. Good deal. [00:53:33] Jeff: Can I, um, so I have an app to talk about, but I also have, um, the theme is file navigation. Um, but I wanna recommend something a little life hack. So I’ve been going through, like I said at the beginning, like all these files from a five year project, um, which are sometimes mixed in with personal files a little bit, right? [00:53:52] Jeff: And I have all these screenshots, like eight fucking million screenshots. And I finally realized what I can do is [00:54:00] I’ll just make a dedicated eye photos library, dump them all in there. I’ll be able to get rid of duplicates, and I can just quick browse them all, um, and, and decide what I want or just let it be. [00:54:11] Jeff: And I really wanna recommend that It was a, it was actually really fun. I ended up discovering things that I’m really glad I made screen grabs of. Um, but anyway, so. A few or several or maybe a dozen or more episodes ago, you and I were talking about forklift versus Pathfinder and we had both fallen on the forklift side. [00:54:32] Jeff: And I had told you, I go back and forth and I feel like that’ll happen forever. And I have, um, I have gone forth , um, or back to Pathfinder because I’ve been doing a ton of working with files and, and old archives and stuff of files. And you know what, it’s my current favorite. It, it, it is a little more. So what I found with forklift is when I started getting really, like spending a lot of time in the app, looking at files, comparing files, whatever else [00:55:00] that like it. [00:55:01] Jeff: It was a little rigid for me, but Pathfinder, I don’t even use most of their, what do they call ’em? Like buttons or whatever. They have these like, almost like [00:55:09] Brett: Uh, widgets or, [00:55:10] Jeff: widgets or something. I don’t really use any of them, but I find that the way I can manipulate the finder environment inside a Pathfinder is, is just, it is, I guess what I need. [00:55:20] Jeff: So I’ll let you know when I go back to forklift, but my gratitude today is, is Pathfinder, which like, you know, that’s it, it’s a big deal to have like a, a more powerful finder app that keeps getting better or stays alive at all. And, uh, and I, I just want to give props to the developers for that cuz they really keep it moving. [00:55:42] Jeff: Um, and, and now I’m back in it. So. Hi Forklift. Forklift. I love you too though. That’s all I got. [00:55:49] Brett: so in a part that has since been edited out previously, we, we did, we did mention pop clip. Um, and I, I wanted to tell you, [00:56:00] so a lot of the pop clip extensions I’ve written, and I have a whole collection, uh, linking pop clip extensions in the show notes. Um, um, so I have a whole bunch, but a lot of them use modifier keys to provide multiple actions. [00:56:19] Brett: Like there’s a, a critic markup, Uh, extension that gives you like insert, delete, uh, comment highlight depending on which modifier key you hold down, when you trigger it. [00:56:32] Jeff: I didn’t realize that. [00:56:33] Brett: But it’s too much to remember and it drives me nuts because, uh, even having one alternate action, like, uh, the numbered list, um, extension does mark down numbered list cleanup and can convert like a bullet list to a numbered list, et cetera. [00:56:50] Brett: And if you hold down option, it gives you a bullet list instead of a number list, and it’ll convert. Um, that one’s easy enough to remember, but you get these ones with multiple [00:57:00] modifier keys. It’s impossible to remember unless you’re using ’em every day. And, um, in a recent update to pop clip I’ve forgotten the Nick, had added this thing where holding down option key, like always gave you like a preview of the text and holding down shift, copied it to the clipboard, [00:57:22] Jeff: did not know any of this. [00:57:24] Brett: overriding all of my custom modifier keys. So there, there’s a defaults command listed on the, on my webpage. [00:57:32] Brett: You can run defaults, right? And, and override these new modifier key behaviors. But the here, and here’s why I bring it up, is he has plans for, um, kind of like sub menus. So you trigger a pop clip extension, and then the bar changes to offer you. Multiple options, which to me is ideal, especially if there are [00:57:56] Jeff: Oh my God. Totally. Yeah. [00:57:58] Brett: way better than [00:58:00] trying to remember what modifier does what. So I’m excited to see the future of pop clip and that once, once, once that system is, finalized and out, I will definitely make pop clip a new, pick of the week here. [00:58:13] Jeff: Love it. Love it. [00:58:15] Brett: All right. Well, I barely missed Christina. [00:58:20] Jeff: I missed her terribly [00:58:21] Brett: Yeah, no, I was lying. I did too. [00:58:24] Jeff: No, this was fun. This was [00:58:25] Brett: She’s, she’s a, she, she brings, she brings an element to this show that, uh, definitely is it, it’s sorely lacking when she’s not here. Um, I don’t know if that’s true for me. I know it’s true for you. You bring like [00:58:40] Jeff: for everybody. [00:58:41] Brett: you bring like an anchor to this show that when it’s just Christina and me, things can get a little off the rails. [00:58:48] Brett: Um, , I think when it’s just you and me, it’s, it’s got a lot. It’s, uh, it’s got some male energy to it, [00:58:55] Jeff: Yep. Yeah. That’s bound to happen. [00:58:59] Brett: [00:59:00] All right. Well Jeff, thanks for being here. Get some sleep. [00:59:04] Jeff: Yeah. Get some sleep.

Continuing the interview fun, here’s part 2 of our hosts asking each other some thought provoking questions. Sponsor Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today at Kolide.com/overtired. Promo Swap: The Nerd Room — Are you looking to get more out of your fandom experiences? Do you wish you had the time to keep up with all the latest news and insights about your favourite film franchises? Check out The Nerd Room on all major podcast platforms. For more from The Nerd Room, head to thenerdroom.net or use the hashtag #WeTheNerd Show Links Kitchen Confidential Knight Rider Deerhoof: Love-Lore 2 (Knight Rider/Raymond Scott/Mauricio Kagel/Eddie Grant/Gary Numan) Motley Crüe Tommy Lee’s Epic Upside Down Drum Solo Hot Tub Time Machine Sesame Street How I Made my Own iPhone What is it like to work in a Michelin-starred kitchen Garfield Minus Garfield Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript ot320 [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Brett: Hi, this is Brett Terpstra. You know me. Um, this is episode two of our very special series. What was it? A very special episode. Isn’t that like Hallmark channel? Um, um, I am here again with Jeff Severances Council and Christina Warren. And we are going to, we’re we’re gonna offer, we’re gonna ask some, um, Hopefully open-ended questions that will lead to some really fun discussions. [00:00:34] On Mastodon [00:00:34] Brett: The last episode went great. I think, uh, this was, this was Jeff’s brainchild. I’m, I’m very impressed with how it’s going so far. Um, before we roll into the new interview questions, I did have one topic, um, especially for Christina, but I’m curious about Jeff’s input on this as well. Um, Mastodon, uh, I. I didn’t run away from Twitter when [00:01:00] Elon just completely royally fucked it. Um, I have, I have 13,000 followers there. I have a good community. I feel, um, I feel heard there and, and that’s hard for me to leave behind. But the fact is it has become truly a, a wasteland. Um, and all of the sudden, like I set up a Macedon instance. Maybe a year ago. Um, and all of a sudden I started getting enough followers that I started following back. That my timeline got interesting to the, to the point where I check Macedon before Twitter. Now Twitter has become kind of a, a secondary, I’ll just see what’s there, where that used to be, what Macedon was. I’d check it like maybe every three or four days and respond to queries there. But I hit like this critical mass. I, I’m up to almost 2000 followers and I follow about. [00:02:00] Maybe 350 people. And that was like a magic number. All of a sudden, Macedon got really interesting for me. Um, I, I was getting more interaction from a post there than I have on Twitter for a long time, and I was finding more interesting articles and more links and more funny jokes. And like Macedon suddenly became a thing for me. Uh, like this just happened in the last couple weeks. Um, ivory came out and, and th there’s honestly a great ecosystem of apps, Mona Ice cubes, like, uh, toot, uh, there’re just, there are so many good Mastodon apps. It feels like the early days of Twitter, uh, when Twitter was a little more. Before the invention of the hashtag, you guys remember that, like that era when Twitter was still figuring out what it was. And I feel like that’s where we’re at with Macedon. So I’m curious, [00:03:00] uh, how, what your guys’ current perspective on Macedon is, uh, how your, your follower accounts are going. Um, is it, is it replacing Twitter for you? [00:03:13] Christina: Yeah. So for me it’s getting there. I’m, I’m still in this weird place and I’m actually, so, and this is what’s frustrating because Twitter may or may not be shutting down the, or changing the terms of the developer api, which will make this difficult. But I’m still in this weird place where like, I kind of have to use both because I have a master, really large audience on Macedon, uh, relatively speaking, like I’ve got almost 13,000 followers now. So I have more than 10% of my Twitter followers are now on Macedon. And I find that the engagement is a lot better. I think a, because frankly it’s, it’s a smaller audience, so more people, even though I have like. Fewer followers because like the pool of Macedon users is smaller. Like more people see your stuff and more people wanna be engaged with it. Um, which honestly was [00:04:00] similar to Twitter in it’s early days too, when it was smaller. Uh, I think a lot of times you had sometimes, you know, people who were lucky enough to have like bigger accounts had like, A bigger impact, so to speak. And then as the services get bigger, you need bigger and bigger, like account numbers for that, um, to, to continue to work. Um, the people who are on Macedon, it, it reminds me a lot of like Apple, Twitter circa like 2007 to like [00:04:25] Brett: Yeah. [00:04:26] Christina: Like the Mac people are all there, you know, like our, like my, my, my kind of tech nerds. Um, but not everybody is there. Like pop culture is not there. Memes are not there. Um, and so, uh, there are even some people who do cool stuff that like, like I, you know, um, who I, I maybe wouldn’t give a shout out about something who aren’t there. So I still feel like I have to use both. And so ideally, and, and, and I’m trying to treat them as different things. Like I, I don’t wanna set up like an automated. Crosspost the same content to each service thing, cuz that’s doesn’t feel right. But it [00:05:00] also is annoying to have to rewrite the same post for two different audiences. So there’s this service called MOA Party, uh, uh, is moa.party. And, but you can host your own instance, um, as well. That basically lets you cross-post between networks like Macdonna Twitter and it, and it can be conditional. So you could have like a hashtag and only post that have that hashtag would be cross posted. That to me is ideal and that’s really what I want, but I don’t know how long that’ll be like, um, useful given that the, the Twitter API is kind of in [00:05:34] Brett: Yeah, I was using, I was using like open web services for quite a while, for a year, uh, to cross post anything. I posted to Twitter, just got posted to Macedon and anything I retweeted on Twitter showed up as a boost on Macedon and that, that worked for a while. Twitter broke that. Um, that no longer functions, and I’m fine with it because Macon has just become the place I go first,[00:06:00] [00:06:00] Christina: Yeah. I’m, [00:06:00] Brett: about stuff. [00:06:01] Christina: I, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to kind of do that too. And to, to the point though, where Yeah, but because of my job and because of other things, like I can’t completely, I mean, I guess I could completely migrate, but it just, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel fair to the people who are still on Twitter in some ways too. Who, who, who I know still wanna maybe converse with me. [00:06:19] Brett: Yeah. I’m not, I’m not deleting my Twitter [00:06:21] Christina: Totally, totally. And so, but, but, um, I’m trying to kind of figure out like the, the way that I can cross post again, like I said, conditionally, right? Like there’s an instance where, but, but it is interesting what, for me, the changing moment was getting rid of the Twitter clients. Like all the Elon stuff. I didn’t. I mean, I hated it, but it was getting rid of the Twitter clients. And for me, I think it was because then I started seeing a significant, uh, mass of people who weren’t there. And it was also, I think that that decision also coincided with some of the other decisions that have been made at Twitter where things are breaking, but we don’t know how broken it is because so many people are gone. And so the website’s [00:07:00] still functioning, but it’s not really functioning. And so people don’t see your tweets because that stuff has been changed or the, the logic behind that is broken and, and no one [00:07:10] Brett: Somehow, no matter how much blocking and unfollowing I do, I still see tweets from Elon every day, [00:07:17] Christina: Yeah, yeah. Uh, and, and there were reports that he like had, like made, forced kind of, uh, you know, engineers to rejigger the algorithm so that everybody would see his content first, which is. [00:07:30] Jeffrey: Uh, the great fictional company, Huli, [00:07:32] Christina: Yeah, exactly. 100%. 100. I mean, [00:07:35] Brett: Oh, Gavin. [00:07:36] Christina: all of this is like literally out of like Silicon Valley. Um, but it’s real, but, but, but beyond like that stuff, like, stuff is just broken and the site is breaking and whatnot. And so it’s becoming this frustrating thing where it’s like, I don’t get the engagement. I don’t see people that I used to really, like, some of them have moved to Masson, some of them haven’t. And so I’m like, well, if I get more engagement, you know, on this [00:08:00] platform, I’m, I’m gonna spend more time here. But like I said, the thing that sucks about it is like all my memes, all my pop culture, all that stuff is just not there. And I don’t know if it’s going to be there. Like, I think that, yeah. [00:08:13] Brett: Does Instagram fill that gap for you at all? Because to me, Instagram is broken these days too. [00:08:18] Christina: Yeah. It, [00:08:19] Brett: every third post on Instagram is an ad I get. They, they infiltrate my timeline with people I don’t follow because someone I do follow liked a post and they decided, all right, I’m gonna show that to you. [00:08:32] Christina: I’m getting notifications now that so-and-so posted something and I’m getting a notification because two people that I follow also follow. And I’m like, what are you doing? Like, I, I, I don’t know, [00:08:43] Brett: Not, not in the way that Twitter is broken, but it is, it is. It’s gonna kill itself. It is going to kill itself. [00:08:51] Christina: The thing that had kept Instagram, I think, so successful for so long is that Kevin Systrom and, uh, Mike, I can’t think of his last name. Um, uh, last name starts [00:09:00] with the K, the two like founders were still there. And when they left, I think that they left in like 2018, um, because of some clashes was z uh, that to me, I was like, okay, there it goes. Because they had, they had maintained like creative control and like product vision. and you know, he started putting just the, the, you know, ad guys and the people who are juicing engagement in charge, and then the service dies, like, you know, [00:09:31] Brett: because it’s not sustainable. And with apple’s latest, like do not follow, uh, technologies. And with Google removing like cookie tracking, um, in upcoming removal of cookie tracking, like the ad, the ad based. Uh, system that these major services were built on is going to fail them. And they do. They’ve never put time into figuring out [00:10:00] an alternative way to make money. And Elon’s struggling with that right now. Uh, but also z like, there’s just, it’s, it’s in an, in an era where we’re starting to worry a little more about privacy, where we’ve stopped just voluntarily giving up privacy. Um, ads aren’t, ads aren’t gonna work the way they have for the last 10 years or so. [00:10:25] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. People will have to change things. I, it’s interesting to look that at a, you know, talk’s Rise too, which is, uh, So in TikTok is a completely different system in that like, and this I think is why Instagram has been struggling because Instagram was brought up in like the old web era where your social graphic was very important that it be people, you know, and that was what linked you together. And like that was, you know, uh, Facebook and that was Instagram. And, and to a certain extent that was Twitter. Twitter’s always kind of been kind of in the middle of these two worlds, which [00:11:00] to me is actually strength. But, you know, uh, it’s not strength if you don’t capitalize on that, whereas, TikTok is all about your interest graph. It’s not about your, your personal, uh, graph. Right? Like, I don’t really follow a lot of people that I know in real life. I follow some of them, but a lot of them I don’t. And I, I kind of don’t even like that. Like I see people auto following me on TikTok cause I, I don’t post anything on there, but I’m kinda like, oh man, I’m, that’s not really, you know, the audience. I’m kind of going for like, if you want to, cool, but like, that’s not really, you know, my, my, my bag. And so it’s, it’s a, it’s different expectations and different types of, you know, interactions with things. The reason it sucks that what Instagram is doing is that it’s like you go into it with the expectation that I’m going to see people that I chose to follow my friends or people I’m interested in. And instead they’re showing you content that they think you’re gonna like, and hey, maybe you do like it, but like, that’s not what I signed up for. [00:11:52] Brett: but yeah, and it’s like the majority, like if you wanted, if you wanted to slip in, you know, something you thought I would [00:12:00] be interested in every 10 20 posts fine. But you get past the first five posts in your Instagram feed and it’s, it’s not stuff you signed up to [00:12:10] Christina: no, no where, [00:12:12] Brett: just reaching for your interest at that point. [00:12:14] Christina: exactly. Whereas TikTok was very clear about, we are going to show you stuff that we think you will like based on your activity and you might not even have to follow people. We’re just going to continue to feed you this stuff. But like I know that, I know that going into TikTok that that’s what it’s going to do. YouTube is sort of similar in that way, right? Like I might follow certain personalities, but I don’t need to have like a personal relationship with people that I follow on YouTube. And a lot of times stuff that’s recommended to me is not people that I follow. And that’s great [00:12:42] Brett: Yeah, like [00:12:43] Christina: I come into it. [00:12:44] Brett: YouTube’s algorithm, YouTube’s algorithm is working for me. I watch a video from someone that I specifically subscribe to. I watch their video. At the end of it, after I’ve gotten the content, I came there for. It gently suggests. Oh, if [00:13:00] you dug that, here’s some other related content. Um, and sure, you know, like the whole radicalization procedure that it puts people through is, is terrifying. But for me, I, I, I find new content. I subscribe to three new YouTubers last week just because of suggested content after our video. I watched that’s, that’s an okay way to do it. But that worked on YouTube because you are consuming more than just one image and then moving on, you’re actually engaged with something for five to 20 minutes or longer if you’re into like crazy Collin shows like the atheist experience. But we totally lost Jeff in all of this. I’m sorry, Jeff [00:13:44] Christina: Jeff [00:13:45] Jeffrey: you didn’t lose me. I’m listening. I, uh, I was on a [00:13:49] Brett: here to listen. My favorite 12 step response. [00:13:53] Jeffrey: I, I have the privilege of being able to kind of sit back and see how this mastered on [00:14:00] Twitter thing sorts, cuz I don’t have any reason to be, I don’t have any, I don’t have any, no, I’m not, I’m sorry. I’m, I don’t have any professional reason to be on Mastadon or on Twitter at the moment. And so I, I’ve been just kind of letting it fly, letting it go, see what happens. But I, I find it a little, we’ve talked about this before, Christina, you and I talked about this, I think when Brett was out. Like, it is, it is the case that I, I know there’s so much of what I have gone to Twitter for and what I’ve built and uh, you know, in terms of who I followed and lists and everything else. Like, they just can’t be recreated. Like, and, and I am, I’m, I’m not ready to fully grieve that loss. And so I’ve kind of. I’ve stayed in, but I’ve, I’ve noticed, you know, every, every week it’s, it’s a truer thing that, uh, what I created is not really what I created anymore. Um, and so, you know, as a kid who had to move like 30 times or something, I pisses me off to have to like, take all my posters down and put ’em on up somewhere else. But I do have to, I do have to [00:15:00] go over to Macedon and, and put my posters up. [00:15:02] Brett: I create an Overtired MA sit down account? And if so, what instance should I put it on? Is there a podcast, like what place where Podcast Gather? Is there an instance for, I bet there [00:15:18] Christina: I bet there is. I bet there is. Yeah, cuz, cuz there are, because unfortunately it does sort of matter. I would think Hacky Durham might be the one that we would use, uh, because that’s kinda like the tech-centric one. Um, uh, but actually let’s, let’s also put this out to our listeners. [00:15:37] Brett: yeah. [00:15:38] Christina: What, what, what instance do you think we should be on? Should we be on Macedon? For Overtired? I feel like it, it, it would find our audience cuz like both of us have managed to build, you know, um, good proportions of our, of our Twitter audiences on Macedon really quickly with, with very little work. [00:15:55] Brett: I wanna switch, I wanna switch instances like I signed up . [00:16:00] I’m on no, noj dot ez dns.com. Uh, or ca. [00:16:08] Jeffrey: Is that? Is that, that sounds like some dark web drug buying [00:16:11] Christina: it does. It [00:16:12] Brett: it is. What it is is Libertarian shit. It’s, it’s, Easy. DNS is run by a libertarian who puts out a libertarian newsletter. And there there’s this fine line between like skeptical of the government, which I am, um, and, and libertarian and like I, I am the newsletter he puts out, talks about privacy invasions, especially in, uh, Canada and the us and, and it’s stuff that is actually of interest to me. Uh, but the , the approach he takes to it is disconcerting for me. Um, that said, like, I signed up because it, he was like, Hey, I made a ma instance and at the time Macedon was a new thing. And I’m like, all right, I’ll sign up. [00:17:00] And I did. And now I have this embarrassing, uh, Macedon handle TT scoff at noj jack dot. Easy DNS ca. Um, and I, I wanna switch. I feel like there’s, there’s like , there’s an, there’s, uh, there are indie app spaces. Um, there are, uh, spaces that I would feel more comfortable having associated with my handle that, um, I, I know it’s possible to like switch instances and have all of your followers follow you there? [00:17:37] Christina: and I’ve done it. [00:17:38] Brett: haven’t looked into it yet. [00:17:40] Christina: yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I can walk you through that. The only thing is, is that like you wanna figure out what essence you wanna go to and then, um, with your number of followers, I think that you’d be okay. It takes some time cuz they have to re propagate. You won’t bring your posts with you. That’s, that’s the only thing. All of your posts will remain kind of in a read only state in, in the [00:18:00] old thing. Um, and. [00:18:01] Brett: At this point, I think I’m okay with that. [00:18:03] Christina: Totally. I’m just saying that, that that is kind of a, a concern, uh, that a lot of people have. And I’ve actually been looking at maybe getting my own, like hosted, uh, master on instance that like I control at, at like Master Host. Um, [00:18:16] Brett: Oh, we should start an Overtired [00:18:17] Christina: was thinking that, I was thinking that, I was like, we could do that for like $5 a month or something. Um, but uh, and we’ve been thinking about doing one for Rocket, but um, [00:18:28] Brett: I would join the Rocket instance. [00:18:30] Christina: yeah, totally. Totally. Um, and we could have it Overtired at, at like whatever our, um, uh, [00:18:37] Brett: I’m surprised re relay doesn’t have their own incense. [00:18:40] Christina: does, I think. But they don’t have it. Like, it’s not like a thing where like, at least to my knowledge anyway, they’re, I mean, maybe for some people they’re like, Hey, join our instance and, and moved all your stuff over. But [00:18:50] Brett: But it’s mostly for shows at this point. Yeah. [00:18:54] Jeffrey: I don’t know, Brett, wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you miss TT scoff at, uh, take it sl. That’s what [00:19:00] she said. Biz [00:19:02] Brett: It’s gotta be ca it’s gotta be, it’s gotta be a Chinese, a Chinese tld. Um, um, alright. We are, we we’re 20 minutes in already and we haven’t gotten to interview questions. So what I’m gonna do is take a quick sponsor block, uh, and then we’ll spend the rest of the time on our interview questions. So same sponsor from last week. [00:19:27] Sponsor: Kolide [00:19:27] Brett: Our sponsor Collide has some big news. If you’re an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance. How. If a device isn’t compliant, the user can’t log into your cloud apps until they fix the problem. It’s that simple. Collide patch is one of the major holes in zero trust architecture, device compliance without collide. It struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OS and browser up to date. Unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing there to stop them. Collide is [00:20:00] the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with. Ok. , the moment Collides agent detects a problem. It alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it. And if they don’t fix a problem within a set time, they’re blocked. Collides method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. Visit collide.com/ Overtired to learn more or book a demo. That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired. So if you or your team is on Okta, check out collide.com/ Overtired. [00:20:44] Promo Swap: The Nerd Room [00:20:44] Brett: Also, We have a promo swap this week. Are you looking to get more out of your fandom experiences? Do you wish you had the time to keep up with all the latest news and insights about your favorite film franchises? Well [00:21:00] then look no further than the Nerd Room Podcast. A weekly audio experience with deep dives into the la, the latest news reviews and speculation from the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel, DC and beyond. Whether you’re a casual fan or a diehard enthusiast, the nerd Room has something for everyone. Plug into the Nerd Room podcast every Thursday on all major podcast platforms and let them bring the nerd to you. For more information on the nerd room, head to the nerd room.net or use the hashtag We the nerd hashtag we the nerd. [00:21:40] Jeffrey: We the nerd. We The [00:21:42] If you could go anywhere… [00:21:42] Brett: Yes. All right, Jeff, do you want to kick us off with a question again? [00:21:46] Jeffrey: Alright, here is the question. It’s not so much a tech question, although I guess maybe it could be if you choose to snap and end up in like a server room. But if you could snap your fingers and be anywhere in the world [00:22:00] but invisible. why invisible? So obviously why the place, but why invisible? [00:22:05] Christina: Okay. All right. I think that I would go to China and I would go to China, or I would go to Ukraine. Um, and I would be invisible in both of those places because I, well Ukraine, because I, I would want to be safe and would not want to necessarily have to like engage in all like the horror that’s happening there. But I would also like to see what’s happening on the ground. And China, I would love to go to China, but my fear about going to China has been for a long time, and not so much fear, but just like hesitation. It’s been like, I’m gonna have to bring a burner phone, I’m gonna have to bring a burner laptop. I’m gonna have to like, deal with a lot of like the, the state sponsored stuff. and I, I don’t know how much I would wanna engage necessarily with the state. And so I would love to see China, [00:23:00] but I would like to see it in a context where like, I’m not having to engage with the government, which seems like that would be difficult to do otherwise. Um, and in the Ukraine, simply it is just that I’m a freaking baby and, and don’t wanna go to like a war zone. Um, [00:23:14] Jeffrey: that that’s not being a baby that’s wanting to live [00:23:19] Christina: but I, but I would like to see like what’s happening on the ground and I would like to like, you know, [00:23:23] Jeffrey: Yeah, [00:23:24] Christina: uh, ha have, have perspective of that. [00:23:27] Jeffrey: totally. Totally. That’s awesome. Did you ever see the, um, the YouTube videos? This guy, I think he’s in Shinzen, and he, he’s like, how I made my own iPhone. And he basically goes through all the tech markets to find the various [00:23:42] Christina: Yeah. [00:23:43] Jeffrey: of iPhone tech and puts it all together. Uh, just about at the end. Oh God. That’s what I thought of when you said you’d wanna, you’d wanna be chat. I, [00:23:52] Christina: No, I totally, the tech markets, yeah. I would love to see the tech markets. I would love to see like the, some of the factories. I would love to see some of the, I mean, it’s such a vast country, right? [00:24:00] Like, like, [00:24:00] Jeffrey: Yeah. Incredible. [00:24:01] Christina: I would love to see like the, the Great Wall as, as, uh, you know, trite as that is. Um, uh, but, but I would love to see, yeah, I would love to see the cities. Like I haven’t spent a lot of time in Asia, unfortunately. Um, I’d, I’d had some trips planned and then, uh, COVID happened. Um, but I would, I, like, I, I don’t wanna be invisible when I go to Tokyo, like I wanna like be fully immersed in all of that. Um, but I, in China, I, I, I have a feeling I’ll go there certain day and, and not invisible. And I’ll be very happy to do that. But again, like I’d be thinking about my opsec and I’d be thinking about. The state. So it would be cool to be there, you know, again, kind of as an observer, um, and not having to necessarily be like a participant. I, I think that, I think that for me is, is any place I would go be like a place I would wanna go to observe, but not to participate in [00:24:52] Jeffrey: yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense, Brett. [00:24:55] Brett: I couldn’t think of an answer to this. Well, I had to think hard [00:25:00] to come up with an answer that wasn’t creepy and overtly sexual. Um, [00:25:05] Jeffrey: You know what’s funny? It didn’t even occur to me. What a creepy question that could be. [00:25:08] Christina: No, it didn’t. Me either. And until we said this, and I’m like, oh, actually, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. [00:25:13] Brett: So, so here’s my answer. Here’s what, here’s what I came up with. Um, I would like to, Are we in al Like, do we take up space in this invisible, [00:25:26] Jeffrey: I, I leave that up [00:25:28] Brett: with like, I wanna go to a Michelin star kitchen. Um, and I wanna, I wanna watch the chef and the sous chefs. I wanna watch them work. Um, I’d love, I love cooking YouTube. Um, I love watching real chefs do their thing. I love food so much. Um, and it’s just fascinating to me to see that what goes into the preparation of Michelin star meals. And if I could be [00:26:00] in those kitchens which don’t have a lot of space and like you can’t be in the way. So I would literally have to be a fly on the wall, an invisible fly on the [00:26:08] Christina: Or you’d have to be a rat at Chewy. You’d have to be a rat. [00:26:11] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:26:13] Brett: I would hope that there aren’t a lot of rats in Michelin circuit kitchens, but, but yes. Um, I, I would just, I would love to just spy [00:26:24] Christina: That would be [00:26:24] Brett: on someone not making a YouTube video, just doing their thing just in the moment, not explaining what they’re doing. Just fucking cooking. [00:26:33] Christina: just wanna actually observe. I love, oh, I love this answer so much. This is like, this is genuinely like, such a better answer than mine. That’s so cool. [00:26:40] Brett: I, I, I liked your answer. [00:26:43] Jeffrey: that’s awesome. [00:26:44] Brett: Did you guys, oh, we talked about the bear, right? You guys saw the bear. I know, I know. We’re not talking [00:26:49] Jeffrey: I do not want to, I do not wanna be in the bear, uh, invisible or otherwise, but love that show. [00:26:56] Brett: but that kitchen environment, like to me, there’s something [00:27:00] attractive about like just being in a kitchen that knows what they’re doing and like, yeah, [00:27:06] Christina: You read, you read, you read the book Kitchen Confidential, right? I’m sure you. [00:27:09] Brett: I didn’t. [00:27:10] Jeffrey: I did not either. [00:27:11] Christina: You have to, and the audio book is really good, especially now that he is gone. Um, that is Anthony Bourdain’s, you know, book. It was turned into a TV show. But no, you would love it. You would love it, Brett, because it, it’s all the culture and, and everything that goes into that. And it’s, it’s, it’s a great book. Um, the audio book is really, really good too, because he, you know, is, is the narrator and he’s obviously, you know, he was a fantastic, um, uh, speaker and and storyteller. Um, you saying this. So my favorite ride at Disney World was the rat [00:27:42] Jeffrey: was my next question, the TUI ride. [00:27:45] Christina: rat ride? Uh, uh, like Remy’s, uh, quest or something. I don’t remember what it’s called now, but basically you’re in these little, um, the way that they have it working is that it’s one of the, the three. Um, rides, um, [00:28:00] or I think it’s 3d. Um, I think you have 3D glasses. It, it’s kind of a combination of different elements. So, uh, basically it’s like a dark ride coaster sort of thing, but each of the, um, cars is shaved like a mouse. And so the idea is that you are a mouse who’s, um, helping, um, assist Remy as he’s helping get service for the restaurant. And so everything is like massively like scaled. So like you’ve got like, you know, and you’ve got these experiences where like you have, um, somebody sees you, uh, and, and you almost get swept under something and then a water from the, uh, mop comes and hits you in the face and real water comes out and, and, and, you know, you see like these, these, these different kind of, uh, thing, it’s just super, super fun. Like, I, I, I went on it several times and I had a great time. Uh, so, uh, that made me think of that because that was like, [00:28:53] Brett: I feel like there’s a, [00:28:54] Christina: the wall in, in a high end restaurant? [00:28:56] Brett: there’s a litmus, there’s a litmus test much akin [00:29:00] to knowing that Frankenstein wasn’t the monster. Um, and knowing that rat Tui wasn’t the rat [00:29:06] Christina: Yes. [00:29:07] Jeffrey: Yeah. Right, right. [00:29:11] Brett: All right. Can I, can, before we switch to Jeff’s answer, which I want to hear, um, have you guys ever read a deadly education? [00:29:22] Jeffrey: no. [00:29:22] Christina: No. [00:29:23] Brett: It’s, you, you, you said audiobook, and this, I just wanna mention this completely, completely as an aside. Uh, but it’s Harry Potter, except. There are no teachers in the school. The school wants to kill you. Only a quarter of the graduating class survives. But it’s, it’s magic and it’s lethal. And I started this book and just immediately gotten grossed in it. Like it is what I look forward. I’m, I’m doing the audiobook. It’s part of a trilogy, but a deadly education is the first one. And [00:30:00] it just drops you immediately into this world where magic wants to kill you. [00:30:05] Christina: Okay. I love [00:30:06] Brett: e every decision you make is a survival decision. It’s fascinating. [00:30:11] Christina: Okay. I’m gonna, I’m, I’m gonna put this in my queue of, of things to like, to listen to next. I have an [00:30:15] Brett: Yeah. I highly recommend it. Very good. All right, Jeff, so what is your answer to this question? [00:30:23] Jeffrey: Um, it’s funny, I wrote the question and then instantly had an answer as I was writing it. Um, [00:30:29] Brett: And it didn’t have anything to do with girls’ locker rooms. [00:30:32] Jeffrey: No it did not. Sorry. It’s, this isn’t gonna be, what’s the movie? Oh, what’s the porkies? Thank you very much. Well played Um, okay. So I, from 1998 to 2001, I was traveling back and forth to Iraq, uh, doing like humanitarian work. And then, um, I stopped for a while and then the war happened and I went [00:31:00] back and I went back like, know, does everybody remember the big statue being pulled [00:31:04] Brett: Mm-hmm. . Sure. [00:31:06] Jeffrey: I went back, I went back like right after that, right after that, like a day or two after that. Um, so the occupation was pretty new and, and everything was still very confusing. And, um, and, and also it was the, um, first time I had ever experienced a city that I knew, well, this is the only time I ever experienced , a city that I knew well, um, being totally [00:31:29] Brett: Leveled. [00:31:31] Jeffrey: not leveled because in Baghdad, like it was a lot of like what they call smart bomb hits, you know? But, but there were, there were, there was just enough of that kind of stuff that the whole city felt different, even though, you know, other parts were still working, whatever. Anyway, I really love that city, um, and, and really loved the time I was blessed to spend in it. Um, but once the war ended, and especially once the Civil War started, [00:32:00] um, Which, you know, was like 2006 or so when that started, lasted a couple years. It, it just wasn’t possible to go back. Like I, I had had friends, um, Iraqi and American Kidnapped. I had had, uh, someone who was traveling with my organization was kidnapped and then beheaded. Um, and, and it just wasn’t possible to go and not get someone hurt basically. Um, and, and the place that I would like to go now, because it’s now been since, uh, 2003, since I was there at all. Um, and of course coming up on the 20th anniversary of the war this month is, um, there was this big hotel called, called the the Palestine Hotel. And. You could go to the restaurant on the top floor, which was like a 360 restaurant. It wasn’t one of those that moved. They had one of those in Baghdad, but this wasn’t that. But it was like, there were all of these like, um, really high backed booths that you could sit in and kind of see some part of the city. And it was like a perfect place cuz you’re like [00:33:00] right on the Tigers River and um, you could really see how the city’s laid out and how it’s functioning and um, all of that stuff. And I used to love it cuz like you could go up there and there’d be like young lovers eating cake in the like, private booths, you know? Um, and uh, and people would meet there for various reasons. It was a lovely place to hang out. Um, and I would love to just be plopped. There first in that restaurant to just have sort of a look around the city and see what’s changed because I, it’s not so much that it was all bombed out anymore, it’s that it’s been in a rebuilding process for quite some time. And, um, and I, and I know exactly how I would be able to see that, um, like which park areas and which whatever else, and just sounds lovely to be able to be there and, and wandering around and not, uh, not getting, Hurts , because that is the sad reality to this day. I mean, I have friends who go, everyone always goes to Northern Iraq, but in [00:34:00] Baghdad, I, I think it’s still not terribly safe for anybody who is your friend if you’re there, [00:34:05] Brett: Sure [00:34:06] Jeffrey: So I wanna be dropped in a restaurant too. Um, [00:34:10] Brett: for entirely different reasons. [00:34:12] Christina: different. [00:34:12] Jeffrey: reasons, [00:34:13] Brett: All [00:34:14] Jeffrey: oh, and the sunsets. You could watch the sunsets there. It was really awesome. That’s an awesome city, man. I hope, I hope to God one day you, you could just travel there normally and be a tourist. It’s just an awesome city [00:34:25] Brett: Nice. [00:34:26] Christina: what do you think would have to happen for that to actually be a reality? Like I, I would hope that too, but I just don’t know geopolitically if that’s ever going to really be a possibility. [00:34:33] Jeffrey: I have no idea anymore. I used to think I could imagine a pathway to that moment, but the way in which, the way in which the region and, and geopolitical forces generally like shifted or imploded because of that war and the way in which that some of that implosion didn’t happen for five years or 10 years or 15 years. And the way in which that’s still happening, you know, I can’t imagine. I mean, I [00:35:00] just think I get so frustrated as someone who was working pretty much full-time as an anti-war like organizer and going on TV and radio. Cause I’ve been traveling there. It’s like, like talk about it like that. Um, you know, it’s not even satisfying to say we were right cuz actually we were wrong. It was bad. We had no fucking idea. How bad it was going to be. Um, you know, we weren’t saying, we weren’t saying, Hey, there’s gonna be a civil war and there’ll be bodies in the street every day that nobody wants to pick up because it’s dangerous to even go out and pick up a body in the street. Right. Like, we weren’t thinking of that. We weren’t thinking of Syria, we weren’t thinking of the Arab Spring and, and, and where that fits into everything. [00:35:37] Christina: weren’t thinking 20 years. [00:35:38] Jeffrey: yeah. And so, I don’t know. I, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to think about it, [00:35:43] Brett: You know who you should talk to though is Jared Kushner, [00:35:47] Jeffrey: yeah, that guy seems to be on top of some shit. Yeah, [00:35:53] Brett: All right, [00:35:53] Jeffrey: love to kick him in the shin and flick his ear [00:35:58] Brett: Um, all, so [00:36:00] my question for you guys would be, since, since we were talking about Michelin Star kitchens, [00:36:08] Christina: Yes. [00:36:09] Brett: all right, so envision your last meal. You don’t have to be on death row, but you have the opportunity. You know, you know, this is your last meal for whatever reason. What do you want to eat and where do you want to eat? [00:36:25] Jeffrey: I’m so, I’m so confused about this question because like I get way too in the weeds right away. Like, I’m like, I’m like, well, if it’s my last meal, I don’t wanna just be jerked around some part of the world and I’m back home and like I wanna be with my people. You [00:36:38] Brett: snap of the fingers. It’s a snap of the fingers. You’re just suddenly, you’re suddenly where No, no, there’s no travel. You’re just, you have this moment where you get to eat the meal of your choice in the setting that you choose with no other repercussions. And, and if you have any dietary sensitivities, they don’t [00:37:00] apply. [00:37:02] Jeffrey: I don’t apply. [00:37:03] Brett: Like for me, like I’m, I’m, uh, gluten and lactose intolerant, so like some of my favorite meals, I, I just, I can’t eat. So for me, this is like a total fantasy thing. [00:37:18] Jeffrey: Okay. I have one. I have one. I have [00:37:20] Brett: okay. [00:37:21] Jeffrey: I don’t know where this location is, but I’m assuming I could almost like, make a request and, and the location would be found. Um, I would love to have, The, the best papu cart in El Salvador’s, papusas as my last, [00:37:40] Brett: and you want street food. [00:37:41] Jeffrey: I want street food, but I want Papusas and, and I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do what always happens when you’re in the States, which is like, oh, maybe they’re gonna be super dry. They’re never, you can never know they’re gonna be right. I wanna know that they’re right. And I want that to be my last meal with if, if possible. And I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna assume they’re [00:38:00] supposed to have, uh, uh, the cake of another country or anything like that, but if there’s some trace leche cake for dessert sounds great. [00:38:07] Brett: It’s, it’s your fantasy, man. You, you set the menu. [00:38:10] Jeffrey: My, my friend Dan and I, um, when we lived in Chicago, we both worked Fit Punk Planet Magazine. He was the, like, founder of Punk Planet Magazine, and we would get Papusas every week and we actually took a community Spanish class just so we could order our papus in Spanish. [00:38:24] Brett: Wait, Dan, Danny. [00:38:26] Jeffrey: No, Dan Sinker [00:38:28] Brett: Oh, [00:38:28] Jeffrey: different, not Danny Glamor. [00:38:30] Brett: Oh, I was gonna, if, if he was the founder of, of punk planet, I, I was gonna, I was gonna regret not not, not knowing that at our last interaction. Okay. [00:38:41] Jeffrey: So we learned just enough Spanish to order in Spanish. That was our goal. [00:38:44] Brett: Nice. Christina, have you thought of anything? [00:38:49] Christina: I have. So I think. it would be a John Georges restaurant, and I’m just trying to figure out which one it would [00:38:56] Jeffrey: Mm. [00:38:57] Christina: Um, because there are a bunch, [00:39:00] so like I could go like lower end in the John Georges like Pantheon, which is not to say it’s low end cuz it’s still gray. I and say ABC Kitchen, um, in, um, uh, New York City in the Flatiron, um, where I’ve been many times and where I had Thanksgiving once. Um, and uh, I I I love ABC Kitchen. I think it’s a great restaurant. Um, and it, it has like a nice mix of um, uh, different types of, of foods, but they have really good, um, like pastas and, but also great fish, which he’s known for and, and meats and steaks and other things. There was a John George’s restaurant that I was went to in Sao Paulo in Brazil. That was at this hotel that, um, one of my coworkers was staying at because she booked the fancy hotel and the rest of us stayed at like the Marriott, like in the city. And she stayed like further out, like this super, super swank hotel cuz she did it right. And like my last day in Brazil, and this was [00:40:00] in, um, early December and it made me think that like, I would love to go to Brazil during, um, new Year’s, some, some year because it’s, uh, warm there. It’s summer there. And, um, we were like out by the pool and we ate at the, uh, the, this just fantastic restaurant. I had this great risotto and this great, um, uh, uh, these great scallops. Um, [00:40:22] Jeffrey: That [00:40:23] Christina: and, and, and then there’s, then there’s John Georges in, in New York City. . But I think honestly the one in Brazil, I think the one in, uh, in Sao Paulo in, in kind of like is outside of the city a little bit. It’s this beautiful hotel that had this like beautiful pool and, and the restaurant was fantastic. And, um, the food was just great and, and it was just a wonderful location and it was kind of a fusion of a bunch of different things. And so I think that’s one of my favorite restaurants. And, um, I’ve also been to some great restaurants in Paris, but I think that the, the John Georges in, uh, in Brazil is, is where I would have my final meal.[00:41:00] [00:41:00] Jeffrey: That sounds like fun. [00:41:02] Brett: Nice. Do you wanna hear my [00:41:04] Christina: We have to hear your [00:41:05] Jeffrey: course, we ought to hear answer. [00:41:07] Brett: I have, I have two and, and come, come end of life, I would have to choose one or the other. Uh, first one would be like a, a neopolitan pizza with a like Italian meal served in Rome wi in a small villa with like a family of 12. [00:41:28] Christina: Mm-hmm. [00:41:29] Brett: Like the whole Italian dining experience, like family style, dining experience, um, pizza. And, and I, I don’t even know, I’m not Italian enough to know what like ideal accompaniments would be, but I envision like a whole meal built around Neapolitan pizza. Um, [00:41:49] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:41:50] Brett: second option is street taco pork. I’m a vegetarian, but this is my last meal. [00:41:59] Christina: meal, so, [00:42:00] so you’re going all out. Do it. [00:42:01] Jeffrey: Yep. [00:42:02] Brett: uh, an aest store pork taco from a street cart in Mexico City, [00:42:09] Jeffrey: Sounds [00:42:09] Brett: Eaton at a picnic table. Streetside, like, that’s, those are my, those are my two competing options for my last meal. [00:42:19] Jeffrey: Awesome. What are you gonna do? Flip a coin or what? [00:42:22] Brett: I mean, I, I think it’s whatever I’m in the mood for at the moment, I find out that this is my last meal. It’s, it’s whatever comes to mind first. The way I, when, when we’re talking about like going out for dinner, what I do is I close my eyes and I imagine eating different foods, and I pay attention to the way it makes me feel in my body. When I imagine the foods and people, when we go out to restaurants, I am always the guy that everyone’s like, oh, I should have ordered that. Uh, because I order , I order, well, like I’m really good at, I’m really [00:43:00] good at examining how is this gonna make me, how, what level of happiness is this dish going to bring me? And, and imagining it and, and fueling it, and then making my decision. So give, like at the moment, in the moment where someone’s like, this is your last meal, what do you do? I would picture the two. I would see how I felt and, and roll with it. [00:43:23] Christina: I, I, I have another potential addendum. Patsy’s, you, you said pizza and I was just like, I gotta go [00:43:28] Jeffrey: Oh yeah. [00:43:30] Christina: That’s like the best pizza. [00:43:31] Brett: haven’t been there. [00:43:32] Christina: It, it, it’s like, probably like the, the best pizza in New York, in my opinion. [00:43:36] Brett: All right. [00:43:37] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s lovely [00:43:39] Brett: God, I love talking about food. All right, Christina. [00:43:45] Christina: All right. My question is, um, what was the first thing, like, you know, talking like, like musician or a band or a film or an author or a brand or whatever, like that you were a fan of, like a fan, like your first like, introductory to [00:44:00] fandom, like the first thing that you loved, you know, that you maybe like, had like, would, would, you know, get merch from, or, or, or wanna be, you know, wanna put posters of your wall up of, and, and, and just loved everything about it. Like beyond just liked, but like, you were a fan of. Uh, and, and then the, the secondary question about is like, are you still a fan of that thing? [00:44:20] Brett: All right. So I had to think long and hard about this because like I grew up, we weren’t allowed to watch a lot of tv. I wasn’t allowed to buy music. Um, my parents listened to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and like, there just were not a lot of things, but the TV shows I was allowed to watch as a kid, I became fans of. And I would have to go with Night Rider. Um, like I had, I had the Kit model car, I had the action figure of David Hasselhoff. I had the poster on my, on my room wall. Um, like Night Rider [00:45:00] was the first time that I experienced like, going to bed at night and wondering what Night Rider was doing now, uh, that like, I want into this person’s life and Night Rider. I mean, secondary secondarily like Buck Rogers. But I would say Night Rider was my first fandom. And no, I’m not still a fan. I’ve seen episodes of it. It doesn’t hold up. Um, I, I, maybe I’m over it. I might be overly critical. [00:45:34] Christina: the theme song is still fantastic. [00:45:36] Brett: is [00:45:36] Jeffrey: did you hear the band? The band Deerhoof made an amazing record recently that integrated that, [00:45:42] Brett: I haven’t heard that. I’ll check that [00:45:45] Jeffrey: really amazing. [00:45:46] Brett: All right. I’m adding a note for the show notes, dear Hoof. All right. That’s what I got. [00:45:51] Jeffrey: Um, mine. So if we’re talking first, like the first for me, I believe would be Motley [00:46:00] Crew. Um, first time I was exposed to them, it was just to their images. So my, not even my stepbrother yet, cuz our parents were dating and, and I was living and living together. And so he came home and at the bottom of the stairs in our townhouse was a record. And it was the shout at the devil record, which was, it was the version that had a black front. So it had a black front, a matte front, but the pentagram was gloss and, and it said Motley Cruz name. And I thought, well that looks. Badass and I turned it around and like their photos on that album are just like, there’s flames and they’re wearing that awesome red and black leather leather with like little spikes and shit, and cod pieces and everything. And I was, I was probably in fourth grade and I was like, that is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. And, and so I, I got to listen to that record and I, I definitely loved it, but it wasn’t until, um, theater of [00:47:00] Payne came out, um, with their hit home suite home, one of [00:47:04] Brett: Mm-hmm. [00:47:04] Jeffrey: hits, um, that I like, truly fell in love with that band. Um, and, and like w you know, I had. Not just posters, but like door posters. Remember those like the [00:47:14] Christina: Yeah, yeah, [00:47:16] Jeffrey: like so many door posters that they had to go on the wall and, um, . And I had like, you know, my, my mom and stepdad worked at this magazine, distribution company, which had like every music magazine. And so I had tons of like, cutouts [00:47:31] Christina: so you had all the cutouts, you, you, you had everything. That’s [00:47:34] Jeffrey: everything enough to like, I had a cutout so I could tape onto my school folders. Like everything I needed to be a fan. And like, and, and I, and I thought about them all the time. I remember buying their VHS like home video. Cause bands used to always have like a VHS home video they called it. [00:47:50] Brett: Before the Pam and Tommy video [00:47:52] Jeffrey: not that home video [00:47:54] Christina: I mean, I, I mean, I mean you did have that home video we’ve all talked about, well, maybe, maybe you didn’t buy it, but we all saw it. We [00:48:00] all saw [00:48:00] Jeffrey: right, that’s right. But like, you know, it was like them, like just going to band practice and being in the studio and like hanging out chicks. Stupid. It’s stupid. But I, I watched it over and over again and I would buy, like, once Tommy Lee had custom sticks, I used those, those drumsticks for my drumming. And just to say that the first time my band ever played like a meaningful show, which was all the way in like, probably seventh grade or eighth grade, I guess. I, I actually like, before leaving the house to go to this show, I actually sort of prayed to one of those door posters. I was like, [00:48:32] Christina: Yeah. [00:48:33] Jeffrey: dudes, I’m gonna need. everything I can get tonight. Okay. You know, it was like a battle of bands or something like that. And, um, so yeah, that was it. Like I, I was, I thought about them all the time. I imagined their lives, I imagined myself in their lives, like, did not have an easy time doing that. Um, and they did not hold up, as we all know, if we’ve got YouTube. Um, not only did they, I mean their, some of their records [00:49:00] did hold up. I can really enjoy the first record. I can really enjoy. [00:49:03] Brett: Live Wire. Live Wire is still a banging song. [00:49:06] Jeffrey: and I still love shout at the Devil. I still, I still love some of the, I actually love riffs on every album. I mean, I, I, I fell off at, uh, Dr. Feelgood, but [00:49:17] Brett: mc Mars was a genius. Vince Neal’s younger voice like [00:49:21] Jeffrey: yeah. [00:49:22] Brett: all the way up through like Dr. Feelgood, like his voice was magical, [00:49:28] Jeffrey: and like as a drummer, I loved the like drummers front man thing. I was like, oh yeah, that’s pretty, that’s pretty sweet. That’s a good idea. [00:49:36] Christina: were, were, were you in, were like, did you become a drummer because of, because of them, because of Tommy Lee. [00:49:41] Jeffrey: Did I become, no, I was already a drummer, but he, he just was such a charismatic character, you know, like, I loved how if you watch how his body moves when he is drumming, it’s like there are, there are no drummers that look like that when they’re drumming. Like he just, he had, he, his body was so [00:50:00] into that role. Um, and, and I just found it amazing and I thought it was great when he was on a crane and being turned upside down and shit. It looks really stupid now. And if you watch the YouTube, we probably talked about this in our first, our first episode together, but like, if you watch the YouTube recordings of those solos, they’re not super good. And they’re not good because he is upside down. You know? It’s just like, Jesus. One, my, my closing bit on this is one of the things that I enjoyed about the Taylor Hawkins tribute show. Um, the one in LA is that Nikki six. and Tommy Lee played a couple of Motley Crew songs with Foo Fighters and others helping to sing or whatever. And it was just really cool to like see those songs being performed like super competently and like not in the, not in the context of just utter terrible cheese [00:50:56] Brett: Yeah, [00:50:57] Jeffrey: like just hot melting, [00:51:00] drowning cheese. And I was like, oh yeah, these songs are still pretty good . So anyway, that’s mine. What about you, Christina? [00:51:08] Brett: I’m curious about Christina’s answer to this. [00:51:11] Christina: So the first thing that I ever loved, the way that you loved Motley Crew, I think, was the TV show saved by the Bell. But when I was like six years old, but the first thing I ever really, really loved and had like an outstanding love for and like I’d merch for, and that, like, I, I didn’t think about it the way that you thought about Molly Crew because when I say what this is, you’ll completely understand why, but that I genuinely loved was Sesame Street. [00:51:39] Jeffrey: Yes. [00:51:40] Christina: Sesame Street. Like I loved it so much as a kid and I had like the sleeping bag and I had like the stuffed animals and I would go to Sesame Street Live and I had like, You know, I would watch it and I had the, the, the tapes and, um, I had some of the books and, and [00:52:00] I loved it. I loved it so much and, and I don’t know why I loved, you know, Sesame Street and the Muppets and, and all of it, but it wasn’t just the Muppets, right? Like I, I, I liked the humans too. Like I wanted to marry Bob and, [00:52:12] Jeffrey: yeah. Bob. [00:52:13] Christina: Gordon was great and, and, and Luis, I remember when Luis and Maria got married, like that was like a whole special episode. And like, I loved, loved, loved, love Sesame Street and by extension Jim Henson, like, I just like, loved that. Um, and, uh, Yeah, I, I’m still a fan. Like I, I still love Sesame Street. I met, um, I was very fortunate that I got to meet Carol Spinney, uh, who, uh, was the voice of Oscar and Big Bird and, and, and, and played Big Bird when he came to Mashable to do a, a collab between, uh, uh, Oscar, the Grouch and Grumpy Cat. And it was, and it was a close set. And, and, and they let me come in and I was off of a red eye. And I’ll never [00:53:00] forget this, like, I got in at like six or 7:00 AM and I went straight to the office. Like I had like my bags with me. I was just getting in from San Francisco and I, I, I have a photo and I look like shit, but there’s a photo of me and Oscar and I got to meet Carol spinning, and I got to tell him that, like to thank him for my childhood and like, I cried like a baby. Like I’m gonna cry right now even thinking about it because I got to like tell this guy like, Thank you for that. I had the same thing when I met the, um, the current, uh, voice of Bert, who wasn’t even my Bert, but he was, he was, you know, he took over, um, uh, like I think in the, in the, uh, ladies early nineties cuz I, I don’t remember if Jim Henson was, was a voice of Bert or not. Um, but, but he, um, took over in the early nineties. So this guy wasn’t even really my Burt and, um, I mean, there might have been some overlap, but, but not, not great one. And I like cried when I met him and I was like, thank you for, for what you do and what you bring out to kids because it’s, it’s [00:54:00] magical what they do and when you know, when you see them. Especially like when I’ve been able to, luckily been fortunate to see those, uh, puppeteers. How. Are with them. And like it is like they are the puppet is, you know, you don’t even look at the human like you’re interacting with a puppet. It’s, it’s, it’s unreal. And, and, and they, they clearly love what they do so much because they could make more money doing other things. And everybody who’s involved with, with that, except for I guess the licensing people, uh, could be making so much more money than what they do with, with Sesame Street and, and those types of things. And yet, uh, they do it anyway and, uh, and they do it because they love it and they do it because they, they know that it helps people and because it like, touches kids in like a really special way. And so, uh, yeah, like I, I will never, always be so grateful that I got to like, tell Carol Spinney like, thank you for, you know, childhood. [00:54:55] Brett: Yeah. That’s awesome. Did you, do you remember the Muppet babies?[00:55:00] [00:55:00] Jeffrey: Of course. [00:55:01] Christina: babies. We make our dreams come true. Yeah. I love [00:55:04] Jeffrey: There’s your answer. [00:55:05] Brett: My first, my first rock and roll album was the Muppet Baby’s Rocket to the Moom, which I had on a seven inch record that I played on. I can, I can picture it exactly this like play school record player. I [00:55:21] Christina: Yeah. [00:55:22] Brett: Anyway, so, so the Muppet Babies Rocket to the Moom was like, I had, I literally only listened to classical and I had heard a little bit of the Boston Pops, um, uh, like classical versions of pop songs and like the Star Wars theme and stuff like that. But I had never heard a four on the floor rock and roll. [00:55:45] Jeffrey: roll [00:55:47] Brett: Up until that point, and the Muppet babies rocket to the Moom Moom, I was like, snap, snap. Oh, I get this, like this, this speaks to my soul. And, and that was the beginning of a [00:56:00] journey into rock and roll for me. But I absolutely owe it to the Muppet babies. [00:56:04] Jeffrey: that’s awesome. I love it. I love it. I, you were, when you brought them Muppet babies and, and when Christina brought up, um, Sesame Street, I was like, wait, mine is Garfield I had like the bedspread, I had, I got all the books from my parents’ [00:56:21] Brett: is, what is what, what about Garfield Garners any kind of obsession? [00:56:27] Jeffrey: Yeah. No, I [00:56:28] Christina: Brett, there there are a lot of people who love Garfield is actually kind of [00:56:30] Brett: really? [00:56:31] Jeffrey: I will say that when my kids had a Garfield phase, I was like, I don’t remember why I liked this, but I loved him. He was a grump. He didn’t like Mondays. He was like, he was sassing off to the, to the clueless adult in his life. You know, [00:56:47] Brett: you, did you also love Kathy? [00:56:50] Jeffrey: no, I wasn’t the Kathy fan, [00:56:52] Christina: See and I only knew Gar. No, no, no. Was this just the comic strip? I was gonna say cuz I remember Garfield primarily from the animated show and, [00:57:00] and [00:57:00] Jeffrey: I watched the cartoon. I watched the cartoon, but I was a huge fan of the books which I could get at my parents’ work. And yes, that is the same place that that carried all the porn. Um, [00:57:11] Christina: Because they, [00:57:11] Jeffrey: and, and I, and I also, [00:57:13] Christina: stuff. Yeah. [00:57:14] Jeffrey: also just loved those books were rectangular. Um, they were all the same size and, and I loved how they were different. They felt different from any other book, which was really exciting. But another fan thing I realized that ties back to one of our conversations from last episode is that. When I, because again, my, my parents worked at a magazine distribution company, which means that I was regularly in a warehouse, massive Costco size warehouse full of every magazine that exists and a lot of romance novels. And, um, and so I had, I would come home, one visit, I would fill a box with Circus Magazine, hit Parader, Quang, like all these, uh, in this case, like kind of rock hard, rock and metal magazines and, you know, rolling Stone and I mean, everything, right? And so I had a [00:58:00] knowledge about the bands I loved that was quite current, given that there was no internet because I was constantly reading the newest interviews with them or, or reviews or whatever it was. And I, I don’t think about that often enough. I had, I had something much closer to the internet than most of my friends by being able to, you know, there was a magazine called Soldier of Fortune. Soldier of [00:58:22] Brett: Oh man. [00:58:23] Jeffrey: and, but be, before they got busted for it, there were people in the back advertising their services as mercenaries. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, I, I had the whole, there was a magazine called Prison Life. Like I, it was just like I had everything in front of me. Anyhow, I’m going off on a [00:58:39] Brett: You can, you can imagine how a kid from my background grew up with a certain survivalist bent. Um, that is, that is common for fundamentalists. Um, but yeah, like, uh, I used to run around in the woods with, uh, an army helmet and full camo, and we would read Soldier of Fortune and, um, you know, [00:59:00] imagine someday when we could offer our mercenary services to people in the back of Soldier of Fortune, [00:59:06] Jeffrey: I mean, what’s crazy is in this case, right, these were Vietnam vets. It was pretty [00:59:10] Brett: Uh oh, yeah. [00:59:11] Jeffrey: these were guys that were like, the war’s been off for 10 years and I don’t know what to do with myself. [00:59:16] Brett: It, it was, it was for real. It was scary shit. [00:59:20] Jeffrey: that’s a funny to go from Muppet babies to that [00:59:23] Brett: Soldier of Muppet babies. Um, [00:59:26] Jeffrey: this [00:59:27] Christina: although, although, although Muppet babies did so many parodies, you know, cause that was their [00:59:30] Jeffrey: yeah, that’s a good point. [00:59:32] Christina: you, you, you could imagine them doing like a parody of like [00:59:35] Jeffrey: Totally. Totally. Yes. [00:59:39] Brett: of Fortune. I I would watch that. I would watch that. [00:59:43] Jeffrey: uh, show title. Um, this has been awesome. [00:59:50] Christina: will. [00:59:50] Brett: Yes. Um, so we only in each episode we got through one question each. We could continue to do this. I say we put it out to the listeners. [01:00:00] If you wanna hear another episode of, of Christina, Brett and Jeff interviewing each other with pie in the sky questions. Uh, let us know. Otherwise we will get back to our regular programming. We are now the, the we. So full transparency, we did this, uh, two part series. We recorded it in one day because we want to get on a Monday publishing schedule. Uh, so we have weekends to edit and we needed to get a week ahead. So we did this long Saturday. [01:00:32] Jeffrey: Sorry, Garfield. [01:00:34] Brett: Sorry, Garfield. Um, and, and we are now officially back on track, uh, with sponsors and whatnot, so we are happy to continue doing this. This has been truly a blast and, uh, uh, an in-depth look into psyches, um, that I’ve really enjoyed. But we can also get back to the usual, the usual Overtired shtick. [01:01:00] Um, so let us know. Let us know. Ping us, ping us on Twitter. Um, our, our Macedon account that doesn’t exist yet. Or on the discord or, or you know, if you Yeah, [01:01:14] Christina: whatever. And, and also let us know, like, uh, if you have suggestions for where we should go for Mask on or what we should do for that. Or if you want us there, like if you’re there, like, we’d love to hear from, from you, the listeners, if that’s something that we should, we should be investing in, uh, for the [01:01:28] Brett: yeah. [01:01:29] Jeffrey: One, one final recommendation to everybody, including and especially you two. Have you ever seen Garfield minus Garfield online? [01:01:36] Christina: Yes. [01:01:37] Jeffrey: Garfield [01:01:38] Christina: one [01:01:38] Jeffrey: strips with Garfield removed, [01:01:40] Christina: It’s [01:01:40] Jeffrey: and John, John goes from like introspective to totally insane. I put a link in the show notes. It’s magical. Garfield minus Garfield [01:01:49] Christina: It’s absolutely the best. I haven’t thought about them forever, but yeah. That, that is, that’s like one of those like peak, like, like that, that’s like one of those, like, like, like late, late, late, late odds, early 2010s. [01:02:00] Like things that’s just like such like a perfect, like encapsulation of like that, like time on the [01:02:07] Jeffrey: Like the GI Joe PSAs. Do you remember those? Did you [01:02:09] Christina: Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cause cuz yeah. Oh yeah. Cause [01:02:12] Jeffrey: the ones that were turned into, they were dubbed over. [01:02:15] Christina: Well, yeah, cuz Garfield, mine, Garfield was, was, was a, was a Tumblr or, or still is a Tumblr, I guess. [01:02:21] Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. The, the GI Joe PSAs would be like a kid fell his bike and the GI Joe Guy shows up and instead of saying what he actually says, he says, who wants a body massage? Anyhow, all right. Get some sleep. [01:02:40] Brett: Get some sleep. [01:02:41] Christina: and get some [01:02:42] Outro: The.

Get engrossed in part 1 of a 2? part series where our hosts interview each other with some very creative questions. Much discussion ensues. Sponsor Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today at Kolide.com/overtired. Show Links Mastodon Mastodon/film_girl@mastodon.social Mastodon/ttscoff@nojack.easydns.ca XBAND Gopher IBM System 3 The Clapper Paul Chan Breather Modahl Katharine’s showrunning article Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript I Have a Question Part 1 [00:00:00] Brett: Hello and welcome to two very special episodes of Overtired. I am here as a, this is Brett Terpstra. Hi. Hi. Hi. Um, hey. Um, so I am here with Jeff Severance Gunzel and Christina Warren, and we are going to do two episodes where each of us takes a turn, asking a kind of, we’ll say, creative open-ended interview question. Uh, and the other two then answer. And I, I assume we’ll end up answering our own question too, because someone will say, well, yeah, but what about you? What do you think? Um, so we are going to forego the mental health corner this week. I feel like our answers will probably give you a good insight into our mental health. [00:00:52] Jeff: now and, and past. [00:00:54] Brett: And we have, we have some questions about apps and technologies that I think will [00:01:00] satisfy the need for a gratitude segment. Uh, so without further ado, let’s, uh, let’s get into the, the q and a time. I should before. Okay. No, let’s warm up. Let’s warm up a little. [00:01:14] Jeff: Let’s warm up a little, do some stretches or something, [00:01:17] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Some jumping jacks, calisthenics, I think they call it some verbal calisthenics. [00:01:26] Jeff: I’m good. I, I took my son to a college tour yesterday, um, as somebody who did not go to college that was super novel. It’s the second time I’ve done that. Um, we’ll do more and, uh, it’s fun. It’s fun. Kind of one of those things that makes you feel old, but in a good way. [00:01:46] Brett: How are you, Christina? [00:01:48] Christina: Well, I’m tired. Um, although I’m like gonna be completely awake and, and happy to do this, I, um, I had like two hours of sleep. And then I had a really weird, like, lucid dream where I [00:02:00] thought that we were recording a little bit later than we were. Um, but I also watched that, uh, that Murda family, uh, murders, uh, uh, Netflix series because of the, the Alec Murda trial that, uh, ended this week, which, uh, I like belatedly kind of became obsessed with. And, um, so I had weird, like intermingling dreams about some of that stuff, but I’m fine. [00:02:27] Brett: were there murders in your dream about this podcast? [00:02:31] Christina: There were not, [00:02:32] Brett: Okay. [00:02:33] Christina: unfortunately, I, I, I did [00:02:34] Brett: Yeah. That could have been [00:02:35] Christina: not dream of kill. I mean, that would’ve been interesting for, for, for our, our conversation to focus like, yeah, I dream of killing both of you, but no, I didn’t [00:02:41] Jeff: It was strictly a lucid admin dream. [00:02:44] Christina: Yeah, it was, it was true. This is, I was gonna say, my lucid dreams are like the most boring things ever. Whereas like I look at my phone and I’m texting with people and I’m like, oh, I have 30 more minutes to sleep. Like that’s literally like [00:02:59] Brett: You [00:03:00] dream about waking up and going back to bed. All right, [00:03:02] Christina: Basically. [00:03:05] Jeff: That’s awesome. [00:03:06] Brett: quick question before we roll. I have noticed that Gen Xers love the bomb, and I think my, my theory is that Gen Xers love the F-bomb more than the surrounding generations. Um, not elder millennials. Elder millennials still love the F-bomb, but you talk to younger millennials and you talk to Gen Z. Like ones that are old enough to comfortably swear. Um, and, and it fe like I drop the F-bomb and it feels uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable with certain types of boomer and silent generation people. There are always exceptions. There are always people who, you know, swear a lot. There have been age as old as time swearing is, but there’s something like a Gen Xer will just f this and F that and fuck you, you fucking fuck. And like, I feel like we [00:04:00] grew up on Tarantino and it just, what do you guys think? [00:04:05] Christina: I think you’re totally wrong. I think that like Boomer, no, I think I, I think the boomers like, might have more of an aversion to it and, and I think you can credit Gen Xs with maybe like the tarantinos and whatnot of a popularizing, some of it, although you could make the same argument that fucking Scorsese, like honestly, you know, really led to that. And, and he’s a boomer. But I, if you listen to popular music and, and everything else, like especially hip hop music, which has been the like defining force in culture for the last. 25, 30 years. It’s definitely not Gen X. Uh, especially not the hip hop that’s out now. Like none of it is. Um, they drop the all the time. Like TV shows now. Like especially now we’re in an era [00:04:49] Brett: But I’m, I’m not talking about media though. I’m talking about conversations [00:04:54] Christina: but I’m talking about people. Yeah, but I’m talking about people too. Like, because it’s in the media and [00:05:00] the media at this point, the people who are creating it, making it are not Gen Xers. Um, they’re not. So it’s like, no, I, I, I, I don’t, I don’t think so. Like, [00:05:09] Brett: so you think it’s all in my head? [00:05:11] Christina: I think that people might, you might be noticing people’s reaction to you saying words, but I don’t think it has anything to do with, with the, the lack. [00:05:21] Brett: like to make it a generational thing as a broad. Characterization. Um, and, and I know this very much relies on anecdotal evidence. Um, I’m just, I’m computing, I’m computing all the conversations I’ve had in the last year and realizing, I swear a lot, and obviously they’re like, I can’t swear on my parents. Um, but I don’t, I don’t ascribe that to their entire generation. Um, you know, boomers do say the [00:05:52] Jeff: I mean, it’s, uh, been a rhetorical friend to humanity [00:05:56] Brett: Yeah. [00:05:57] Jeff: quite some time. I, I have a very specific [00:06:00] memory from second grade. I was walking home, I was a latchkey kid and I was walking home from school with my buddy and I said, you know, I’m gonna try to stop swearing so much. You know, [00:06:14] Brett: I remember in, I was in would’ve been I think the equivalent of third grade. uh, I was getting picked on by a bully and I called him an f n a hole. And for me that was like, I can’t believe I just said that I felt so guilty. Um, and then he made fun of me because I couldn’t actually swear. Um, so [00:06:39] Christina: fair? [00:06:40] Brett: that didn’t help with the bullying at all. [00:06:42] Christina: no, that made it worse. I bet. Because he is like, you fucking nerd. You can’t even say, fuck, what the fuck. You freaking loser. You fucking loser. Yeah. Uh, I’m sure that didn’t help. I didn’t say so I, my sister taught me the curse words and I didn’t curse a lot until probably middle school. And then I never stopped, [00:07:00] but I did like, but I also didn’t take like the Lord’s name in vain until I was like 11 or 12. And then I started saying God all the time and feeling bad about it. But then it slowly became desensitized and I was like, I don’t care. [00:07:13] Brett: yeah, we were not allowed to say, oh my God. We had to [00:07:17] Christina: same. Oh, same, which, which, which then like [00:07:19] Brett: even say, geez, we couldn’t say, oh geez. Cuz that was too close to Jesus [00:07:25] Jeff: I remember taunting, taunting my teacher in like fifth grade. I would just go, fuck without the ck. She’d be like, stop it. I’m like, I didn’t swear. I just said fuck. And I’d be like, shit. She’d be like, stop it, [00:07:36] Brett: my girlfriend’s sister has, um, a daughter who she was trying to get out of the habit of saying, oh my God. And I don’t think it was for religious reasons, it was just because she said it so much, just like always. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Um, but she says, she has a little bit of a speech thing and she says, oh my God. Oh my God. And so as, as her like, kind of, [00:08:00] uh, negotiation with this, she would go, oh my God. [00:08:05] Jeff: Just a little bit off to the side [00:08:07] Brett: Yeah. [00:08:07] Jeff: just to please the people in the back. [00:08:10] Brett: All right. Um, so Jeff, do you wanna kick us off with, uh, an interview question? [00:08:17] Jeff: Oh yeah. Okay. I’m really excited about this. I also like that we shared them with each other in advance, actually. Um, it helps. Okay, so I, here’s a question. This is, let’s start with a tech question. Okay. If you could experience, and Christina, you start, if you could experience any tech for the first time again, why? Again, [00:08:41] Christina: Okay. So are we talking about tech that I’ve experienced or tech that like maybe predated me or [00:08:47] Jeff: something that it, I would say it, it’s in your lifetime. It’s something that you did yourself. Experience for the first time, but maybe you were a lot younger or maybe you just didn’t get it at that point or whatever. Or you just, it was such a nice experience, you’d like to go [00:09:00] back to it. [00:09:01] Christina: Okay. So I think that for me it’s probably a cross between like, The internet [00:09:12] Jeff: Hmm. [00:09:13] Christina: or video games. Um, what’s interesting to me about the internet, and that’s I think one of video games I loved and I loved them from the minute I ever saw them, but I saw them so early that it’s hard for me to experience like what my first experience with it was, right? Because it basically had an Nintendo from the time I was born, basically. So it’s hard for me to like, put that into a context of a world we didn’t have it. Um, whereas the internet, like the worldwide web I read about before I ever used, I read about in a magazine [00:09:46] Brett: Pc PC world. [00:09:48] Christina: um, for me it was actually weirdly, it was Nintendo Power. It was, uh, because they were talking about the x uh, link or X browse. It was, it was a I’ll, I’ll, I’ll find it, but it was basically a cartridge that would [00:10:00] connect you to the worldwide web and, um, For, for the Super Nintendo, sorry, not the Nintendo 64 for the Super Nintendo. And, um, it was, uh, um, uhand, there we go. And [00:10:13] Brett: browser on a cartridge. [00:10:15] Christina: it was, it was a, it was a modem is what it [00:10:17] Brett: Oh, [00:10:18] Christina: and it, it, it was called Expand. It was for the Genesis and the Super Nintendo. And it was a modem that would let you connect to a, not the full worldwide web, because not This was 1994 when [00:10:31] Brett: Every, everything was corralled by like AOL and CompuServe. That in [00:10:35] Christina: I I I was gonna say it was basically internet. It was basically like a, what were those called? Uh, uh, uh, um, they weren’t internet service providers. They were like, um, online, um, uh, service or [00:10:44] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:46] Christina: like an online service thing, kind of like a prodigy, I think Prodigy might have even, um, run, um, their, um, their system. And then the idea too was that you could potentially, Um, like, uh, online games with people and which, which in [00:11:00] that way was sort of similar to the Sega Channel, which used cable, so that was better to, to kind of stream games. But this was, this was an actual modem, [00:11:08] Jeff: Used cable. Like a, like what do you mean? [00:11:10] Christina: I mean like, like cable television. [00:11:11] Jeff: Cable television. [00:11:12] Christina: So that’s why it was called the Sega Channel because it was a, a system where you would have a special cartridge that connected to cable tv, and then you could basically, um, stream, um, games, um, because you had access to a whole library of [00:11:25] Jeff: neither did I. Did you have any of those [00:11:28] Christina: Um, I had friends who had, um, a cable, uh, Sega channel. Um, and so I played that like in, in fourth or fifth grade, and you could rent Theban from Blockbuster, but it was expensive. So, but, but, but, but, but I, but I rented, it was, it was like 15 cents an hour or, or I don’t remember how much it was. It was like $3 an hour or something. I don’t remember how much it was, but it was expensive. But you could rent it. Oh, no. So here’s what it was. It was available blockbuster video for $20, a equivalent of $40 and 2021 with additional charges based on usage. And one had a monthly fee of [00:12:00] $5 and allowed the user to connect the service up to 50 times per month with each additional connection costing 15 cents. And the other had a monthly fee of $10 for unlimited connections. And I did rent it once I think. , but I might be inventing that in my head. But regardless, I read about, this was the first time I’d ever read about like a o l or any of these things. And I’d used Usenet, but I, that didn’t really click with me. I didn’t really know what I was doing. And, and this was like a graphical thing and it was describing all the stuff that you could do. And my mind, just like the possibilities just unfolded before me. And so when I finally used the internet, like, and then the world wide up for the first time, like a year later, like again, like I saw everything that we’re doing now. I didn’t know exactly how advanced it would be and I had no idea how far it would go, but like, I got it. I instantly got it and, and it was my first love and, and it remains my, my, my biggest love. And, and so [00:13:00] if I could go back and experience anything again, it would be like the worldwide web. Like that would be it. [00:13:05] Brett: Because of the feelings it causing you, like the amazement and the Yeah. [00:13:10] Christina: the amazement. And, and, and not only that, but like, I instantly understood. I was like, this is going to change everything. Like I, I, I just knew, I was like, the idea of, I was like, oh, you can look things up, you can create things, you can link to other things. You can have images, you can, you know, um, uh, have it as a way to tell your own stories and do your own stuff. Like, it just instantly made sense to me. I was like, oh, this is gonna change everything. Like I, I, uh, I went to the library and I rented, uh, check out two books, one on, on modems and one on the stock market. And the librarian was such an idiot. And she was like, but not together, right? Because those things would never go together. And I’m like, that, and at, and at that point they already had for, for, for decades. You know, it’s not the eighties, [00:13:51] Jeff: But not together. [00:13:52] Christina: but not together. Right. And it was like, like a year later, like the whole thing was intertwined and you had, um, uh, [00:14:00] uh, what’s the, um, e-trade and, and all of those, which, you know, became like these massive things. So it was really, it’s so funny that she was like, oh, but not together, not modems [00:14:08] Jeff: She’s like, I clearly global finance would not intermingle with this internet thing. [00:14:14] Christina: and, and, and, and, and, and I was like, no separate. But then when I was reading about them, I was like, oh no, obviously these are going to be, I mean, you know, I realized the high finance had already had been, but I was like, oh, obviously individual trades are going to happen this way. And they did like almost immediately. So I, I I, I would re-experience, uh, the worldwide web because. A, the feeling like you said B, like I just, it’s one of the few times in my life where I’ve seen something. I even got a glimpse of it, even reading about it, and I was like, oh yeah, no, this is the future. This changes everything. This makes complete sense and this is exactly what we will all be doing for the rest of our lives. [00:14:49] Brett: Yeah, [00:14:50] Jeff: so cool. Do you, I know this is still inside of the question, sorry, but I have to know, um, if you all remember the very first act you did on the internet, [00:15:00] like, do you remember when you logged on and you were like, this is the. Or was it something like more like you’re in college and there’s emails [00:15:07] Brett: I think, yeah, no, I, I think email was the first thing I did. [00:15:12] Christina: I had a Juno account. [00:15:14] Jeff: yeah, I had a Juno account. Planted hands [00:15:18] Brett: Yeah, [00:15:18] Jeff: Duck. I did, um, I, uh, I made, I was with my brother the first time I went on the internet and we did film it. But unfortunately my brother and I, when we’re together, our collective IQ and our general emotional intelligence just tanks. And, and you can imagine some of the decisions we may have tried to make once we were finally on this thing where you can see anything. Um, and uh, so that’s not [00:15:42] Brett: with just, with just 20 minute time investment, you can download a single JPEG of a nude woman [00:15:47] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think it’s coming in, I think it’s coming in . Exactly. [00:15:55] Brett: like, like printing it on a dot matrix printer. Um, [00:16:00] so is do I, is it [00:16:01] Christina: You good out? Yes. [00:16:02] Jeff: It’s your. [00:16:03] Brett: so mine’s actually very similar, just goes back a little farther. The first time I logged and, and this, so there’s two equivalent experiences for me. One is the first time I logged into Phyto net, or no, no, no, not Phyto, um, uh, gopher from an As 400 and, and just started, uh, flipping through the equivalent of library stacks worth of information and realizing like what I had at my fingertips. That was literally an intoxicating experience. And the other equivalent experience would’ve been the first time I logged onto a bbbs and, and felt like I was part of a community. Like I had been using computers for 10 years before that. Um, and, and me and my friends would get together and we, we would hack and write code. Uh, but it was, it was this small group of friends and suddenly I’m on a P B S [00:17:00] that has maybe 500 users. And, and I’m communicating not simultaneously, everything’s async, but I’m communicating with 500 people and we are sharing interests and likes and, and text-based role playing games and, and, uh, sure porn, but like, it was, it was communal. And that sense of community combined with the, what felt like limitless information, uh, like you could find anything you wanted to, uh, that first time you feel that. And I don’t know what it’s like for a kid today who literally, like, as soon as they’re old enough to hold an iPad, they have access to all of this. I don’t know if they get that same like, oh my God, everything’s here. Um, as we did when it first became available. But that, and the reason I would wanna experience it again, is just that sense of intoxication. Uh, it like, so the, the new field, uh, the emerging [00:18:00] field of ai. Is is as big a change, like potentially as big a change, um, to the world as the internet was. Um, but it, but it’s not intoxicating me in the same way. It’s not, I’m not getting the same chills from it, [00:18:17] Christina: I, I’m, I’m not, [00:18:18] Brett: getting different chills. [00:18:19] Christina: I’m not getting the exact same shuls, but I have a similar feeling like this is obviously the future and we’re all going to be doing this and this is, this is how things are going to be. Like. I have that same feeling, but I’m, but I’m with you. Like the intoxication thing is different and Yeah, I’d be interested to know like how your kids would answer this, Jeff, because they’ve grown up always having access to the internet. Like my generation was the first where like we were, you know, spent like our, our formative years online, but we did have a pre demarcation, like before the web and you know, like after, uh, we, we, we were, you know, young, but we were, we, we had, you know, we had that demarcation thing and, you know, [00:19:00] um, people who are, uh, younger than me don’t have as much of that, but still have some of it because wide broadband wasn’t available. You know, people, your kid’s age and your son’s age and younger, like literally have never not, it’s not even that, they just haven’t always had the internet. They have, they’ve always had broadband [00:19:16] Jeff: They’ve always had iPhones. [00:19:17] Christina: had iPhones. That’s what I’m saying. Right. [00:19:19] Jeff: Yeah. Whether it was ours or they’re ultimately [00:19:21] Christina: Right. So, so that’s, that’s a a, a different sort of thing. You know. [00:19:26] Jeff: Yeah. It’s interesting because they, they together, um, ha, have built a collection of old tech stepping backwards bit by bit until finally they have this like Windows 95 machine and there’s a DOS machine here. And like when you, one thing that’s, I highly recommend doing it. I’m sure it can be done in an emulator, but I did this yesterday just turning on a Windows 95 computer and reading how it talks to you. Like, would you like to access the worldwide web? An unlimited amount of electronic communication. You know, it’s like, yeah, yeah. Click, yeah, I want to get online, [00:20:00] whatever. Just settle down. Um, and so they definitely have kind of, they almost seem to be seeking what that was like. But you know, when I think about my first time on the internet, like I had been, I have been like a hunter gatherer researcher, almost like from my youngest age. And when I think about what it took me to find certain albums or bootlegs or magazine interviews, what it meant to be a fan, which we can talk about later, um, in pre-internet, like that was a lot of goddamn work. It’s like, it’s like grandpa went to the mine every day, you know? [00:20:31] Brett: there was this, there was this weird thing for us too, because like we grew up in the era of 900 numbers where you would [00:20:39] Jeff: Yes. Yes. [00:20:41] Brett: you wanted King’s Quest advice or someone to talk you through your lonely night, you were paying 25 to 50 cents a minute to get this. And then Prodigy and CompuServe and AOL were all pay as you go services. And every time you connected your modem, you were thinking, [00:21:00] Oh God, I gotta do this fast. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get this done and get offline. Um, because you’re paying for every minute you’re on [00:21:08] Christina: You, you’re, you’re paying for every minute. And, and again, like I, I, you know, because I, cause I’m just enough younger that, that it, that it was different. Like it started to be, they started off with the unlimited plans or more hours or whatnot. Um, and also modems were, were faster. Like my first, you know, modem I think was a 14 four, um, uh, modem that we had, um, connected to the laptop. Um, and, uh, that, that I bought like an external modem or something. And, um, granted my family was a little bit later at adopting this than people who were already on this in the eighties. But the difference too is like you were, not only did you have to get on and get fast, but it was also because speeds were so much slower. A lot of things were designed around like you downloading and getting off, right? So like a BS was that you would upload like your information, like you, like send your message or whatever, but you would, you know, download a bunch of stuff and then get offline. [00:21:59] Brett: And then you [00:22:00] would check back the next day to get responses to your [00:22:03] Christina: exactly. And, and well, and I, and I even remember that, you know, with my Juno account, it was because it, it wasn’t Webmail, it was like an actual application that had its own dialer that was different than like the I s P dialer, right? So it was, it was not a, a web thing like that wasn’t until Hotmail. And so you would log in on this, on this program that had like a free, you know, dial-in number. And that was one of the advantages of Juno. It was like free email. It was like one of the first ones, but you didn’t have to have the corresponding, you know, AOL or Prodigy or whatever service. And so you’d log into that number and you’d download your mail, um, or you’d stay connected to, you know, read other messages coming in and you’d write your stuff and you’d send it off and then, and then, you know, you, you’d disconnect and, um, but you’d have to reconnect a bunch of times to, you know, throughout the day to, to check your mail unless you, you know, were some fancy person who had like a separate phone line. Um, and, um, so it’s a very different experience than, you know, [00:23:00] Always having access to stuff. Uh, but, but to your point, Jeff, like, yeah. For you as always being a hunter-gatherer researcher type like internet must have like blown your mind because I mean, I remember not well, but I do remember like, you know, using libraries before, like with card catalogs. I think the public library had computerized systems, but you just think about how much research changed [00:23:24] Jeff: oh my God. My God. Yeah. Especially someone who loves, as a researcher now looking across things like, I was showing my boys a card catalog and I’m like, this is how, this is literally how you, and they’re like, what? I’m like, yeah, it’s fucked up. It is fucked up. [00:23:40] Christina: yeah. Yeah. I, I remember having to go to like some of the better public libraries or having to go to some of the university public libraries to access certain things and even certain databases, right? Like, I remember like, like in elementary school, like making my mom take me to the University of Georgia. Libraries so that I could do research on certain things [00:24:00] because they had better, um, like, and I think I went to the Georgia State Library once too, but the, the u g A one was, uh, at the time was nicer and to, to, you know, go through like different research databases to be able to do something for a project because otherwise, you know, you’d have to go from like branch to branch to try to find all these books. And they didn’t have stuff scanned in like newspaper. I mean, you know, they had microfiche, but it wasn’t like it was you. But that was still like a per branch thing. [00:24:27] Jeff: yeah, yeah, [00:24:28] Christina: school, I remember having to do some research and because everything wasn’t digitized, having to go to like a specific branch to the library that had every issue of like the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution and some other papers backed like the 18 hundreds and having to go through the microfiche [00:24:45] Jeff: Micro fish. [00:24:46] Christina: having to, um, do go to a specific branch because it wasn’t all network connected. [00:24:53] Jeff: Right, right, right. [00:24:55] Christina: is unfathomable. I’m like, okay, you might be still be seeing like a scanned copy of something and, and, [00:25:00] or maybe poorly ocr and I’d prefer a scan, honestly. But, um, you know, you don’t have to go to a specific library branch to do it [00:25:08] Jeff: Mm-hmm. [00:25:09] Christina: that’s all gone. And, and you know, that’s just 20 years ago. [00:25:14] Jeff: Totally. Totally. Um, can I answer my own question? [00:25:18] Christina: course. [00:25:18] Jeff: Um, the first part’s not the answer. So my mom worked in it from, you know, the sixties or late sixties. She, when she was, you know, she’d have nightmares that she was carrying the computer cards that were all collated in order, and then she’d dropped them all and she’d wake up like sweating and screaming. [00:25:33] Brett: my mom told me about the same nightmare. [00:25:36] Jeff: Yeah, , which you can imagine cuz you look at like, there’s, you’re talking stacks, right? [00:25:41] Christina: yeah. Yeah. [00:25:42] Jeff: so, um, and in fact, just a, a quick like PC thing, like the reason we had a PC in our house is as PCs started to become more common in offices, for her to be able to get a job, she had to be able to say, I know how to use a pc. You know, she had told me this story once too, where, uh, her office had [00:26:00] just started bringing in PCs for the first time and, and nobody had used them or used mouses or anything like that. And a woman came into her office, one of the people in the office said, I can’t get my mouse to work. Can you come in her office and, and tell me how? And she goes in and she was holding it on the wrong plane and she was like holding it up like you’re waving at someone and moving it around in the air and it’s like, you are way ahead of your time, like [00:26:20] Christina: super ahead of her time. [00:26:21] Brett: That le that leads into, into one of my questions. We’ll get there though. [00:26:25] Jeff: Okay. So anyhow, I have put, I don’t know if both you’re in Quip or not, but I’ve put pictures of my first computer, um, which is an i b M system, three room size computer. It was [00:26:35] Christina: Oh my God, [00:26:36] Jeff: It belonged, it belonged to the magazine distributor. Go for news. Speaking of porn, that’s how they made all our money. Um, and there is a little, you know, green and black screen in there and I used to play hangman on [00:26:47] Brett: mm-hmm. [00:26:48] Christina: that’s [00:26:49] Jeff: And I would love, I would love to be able to go back and experience it for the first time, but, uh, uh, as me now , just to be able to get in there and play around, [00:27:00] play hangman, like see how much memory was in that room, , um, which I’ll put, I don’t know if we can put images in the show notes. Can we, I can [00:27:09] Brett: uh, yeah, we can fit it in [00:27:10] Jeff: And that printer, that’s my mom. My mom’s sitting next to that. My mom’s sitting next to that printer. Look at the size of that printer. . She’s just waiting for it to create. If you look close, it’s f it’s like financial reports. She’s just waiting for it to finish. But I assume she’s gotta stay there because you never know if it’s gonna get all jammed up. You know what I mean? [00:27:29] Christina: Oh, totally. Totally. And that was, that was got, I mean, I don’t even wanna think about how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that printer [00:27:35] Jeff: my God, can you imagine, can you imagine all the cook, the books for a porn dealer? Um, Anyhow, I would love to go in that computer room. It was a false floor and underneath it were all the wires and there was venting down there. I used to sit on the floor and color and I could pop open one of those things. I mean, that whole room was the infrastructure of this one machine and all of its data . So anyway, I would love to [00:28:00] just walk into that room and, and play. [00:28:02] Christina: Yeah. [00:28:03] Brett: of my first apps that I ever wrote was Hangman in Basic. [00:28:08] Jeff: Awesome, [00:28:09] Brett: Yeah. [00:28:10] Jeff: I love it. I love it. All right, who’s next? [00:28:13] Brett: Um, I have a question. [00:28:15] Christina: Yes. Go for it. [00:28:17] Brett: All right. So I, I’m gonna pick my last question first. If you could pick, if you could imagine the perfect input device for a computer or for, for any, any platform. Uh, you know, uh, keyboard, power, glove eyes. Like glasses. Like what, what to you is the perfect input device? Uh, and how would it work in general terms? Uh, who wants [00:28:44] Christina: with Jeff. We’ll start with Jeff. [00:28:46] Jeff: Okay. I love this question because the answer surprised me. I had not previously had this answer, uh, . I had not previously kind of like had this thought before. Um, so I, I’m a drummer. I, I [00:29:00] drummed almost every day from eighth grade until I was about 24. Um, touring bands like the whole thing. But I, I drummed a nonstop. I loved it. Um, I loved how it felt. I loved how my brain worked. I loved that it was, I didn’t have anything in the like, knowledge world where, where that was nearly as effortless as drumming. Like I, I would love to be able to do certain things like computer programming, something as effortlessly as I did drumming. Didn’t have to think. [00:29:27] Brett: it’s like a leap motion. [00:29:29] Jeff: So basically not, here’s, here’s the thing. I’m, I’m ta between two things. One is like, it all depends. So it would somehow, um, it would all be based on specific rhythms, like some quick thing like whether it’s like the rhythm of a fill or, you know, uh, two time signatures. You know, like my one hand’s doing one and other hand’s doing the other or something. Cuz like I am terrible at remembering keyboard shortcuts. But if I could just be like, oh yeah, no, that’s the opening, uh, to, to immigrant song , [00:30:00] you know, just once, boom. That’s your, you know, that fa that opens my browser. Um, I would love that. [00:30:08] Brett: I just wanna point out that, um, keyboard mice show accepts midi inputs. [00:30:13] Jeff: Oh [00:30:14] Brett: with like an old like rolling drum machine and a bunch of Paso [00:30:19] Jeff: yes. [00:30:20] Brett: have a drum input [00:30:22] Jeff: or even I have this, I have that one of these little, um, keyboards in my closet here. Just like certain harmonies or something. Right. Like a cord. [00:30:31] Brett: I actually, I, I played around with that a while, like having different [00:30:34] Jeff: Of course you did [00:30:35] Brett: Different chords. Well, because I mean, keyboard shortcuts, you’re learning chords like, like control shift, op delete, like that, like that’s a chord, that’s a two-handed chord. Uh, but yeah, like you are creating chords. So I figured I’ve got a 24 key mini keyboard in front of me. What, you know, what could C minor do? What could, what [00:31:00] could an A seven, like, how could I, uh, like trigger just with like, just keyboard, literally like piano, keyboard chords. [00:31:08] Christina: That’s, and that’s actually a brilliant way to maybe teach somebody music. Like somebody who like, has a, a different, like, like, like, like I, I know music primarily by ear and um, and I was able to kinda like fake it enough to, to, um, like read music, at least for, for voice stuff. Um, and, and play a little piano. But my problem is, is that I primarily am, am a by ear person. But like that would be, I, I could learn music that way. Like, you know, kind of reverse engineering things. Like, okay, you know, this is, this is what you do to, to get like, you know, this chord will correspond with this shortcut. Like that, that would totally, that would totally be how I [00:31:49] Brett: a very specific personality [00:31:51] Christina: 100%. But I don’t think I’m, I mean, it would be specific. I’m, I’m, it’s niche. I’m not trying to claim this is the broad, broader poach, but, but I also don’t think that it’s quite as small as, as you would [00:32:00] think. Like I think there are a lot of people who are like, oh no, if I could see this in, you know, have this cuz you know, music is mathematical. But like, if I could have it framed in this way versus this way, I, I think a lot of people would probably be able to understand like notation. [00:32:16] Brett: If all those Photoshop users who had learned all the keyboard shortcuts, who, who could hit command shift option S uh, to save a JPEG without thinking twice about it, realized that those skills could translate to making music. Yeah, sure. [00:32:32] Christina: Oh yeah. No, I, I I wonder if there’s like a high correlation between people who are really good at piano, um, or really good at starting guitar work and people who are really good at, you know, certain like ridiculous keyboard things. Like, just in terms of people who do both. Like, I wonder if there’s a, like if you have people who are, you know, do both of those things, the people who are really like, you know, people who both, um, dabble Photoshop or whatever, play music. If the people who are really skilled at the [00:32:57] Brett: That would be, I would be [00:32:58] Christina: they’re good, that would be interesting to [00:33:00] look at. But that, that’s, that’s fascinating. [00:33:02] Jeff: Yeah. [00:33:03] Brett: I’ll get us a grant. We’ll study that [00:33:06] Christina: I [00:33:06] Jeff: we should get a grant. We should, we should get a bunch of [00:33:08] Christina: Are we kidding me? Oh my God. We could have an o o Overtired Pod. Pod. The, the grant, the grant funded podcast, honestly, [00:33:13] Jeff: We got our internet, internet history grant. We got our emerging, uh, technologies, grant. All right. Christina, what’s your, what’s your answer? [00:33:22] Christina: Uh, I think that, and it’s so interesting what you say about the drumming because a, I wish I could drum, but I can’t do the, I can’t keep a different, um, a rhythm on one hand and the other. I’ve tried my whole life and I’ve, I can’t do that. Like, I can’t like have like a consistent like pattern, [00:33:41] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. [00:33:42] Christina: 1, 1, 1 thing on one hand, one on the other. Um, I think, I mean, mouse and keyboard is pretty great, but like touch input is also great. Like part of me thinks that what they should often minority report. Which was just a little bit [00:34:00] too ahead of its time in some ways, but dead on. And some others I think was really good because it got the touch aspect of what we were gonna see with multi-touch on the iPhone, but it was, um, rather than on a, on a, you know, physical device, it was kind of in the air [00:34:13] Brett: in 3D space? [00:34:15] Christina: in 3D space. And I think that that whole concept makes tons of sense. Uh, I still do. And so I, I, I do feel like, I think kind of, as much as I love, like my mouse and keyboard, I really do think that kind of like the pinnacle of kind of a perfect input is, is touch. [00:34:31] Brett: Here’s the thing, did you ever have a leap motion? [00:34:36] Christina: Um, no, but I, I, I, I, I did, I did review. Yeah, I did, I did review it though. Yeah. I, I didn’t have like a, a full-time one, but [00:34:45] Brett: I had one and I set up like I could read through all my r s s feeds, just using hand motions, uh, while I was walking on my walking desk treadmill. And I could just like, [00:34:57] Christina: Yeah. [00:34:58] Brett: wave to the next article. [00:35:00] Scroll up and down with two fingers. My arms got real tired [00:35:04] Christina: That, that’s, that’s what they, uh, that’s what they said in Minority Report is that they had to do like that, that was the biggest problem in that film. It was, it was doubly a problem because they had to make the movements even bigger to be appear on film. [00:35:17] Jeff: Oh. [00:35:17] Christina: But like Steve Harris and, and Tom Cruise and other people, like their arms apparently like got real sore [00:35:23] Brett: it’s exhausting. I mean, like the effort that you put into a keyboard that you most people don’t even have to look down at. Um, you know, and then your track pad or your track ball or your mouse, um, that you can, you know where it is on your desk. You don’t have to look down. There’s just these minor elbow and wrist movements to do it all. Um, like that seems. [00:35:45] Christina: I agree. Well, well, that, that’s why I, I’m not saying that. I was saying touch, like, like touch, like on a phone or an iPad. [00:35:51] Brett: Yeah. Have you ever, you used like a surface, right? [00:35:54] Christina: Yeah. [00:35:55] Brett: Um, do you find scrolling the screen using touch [00:36:00] to be superior to scrolling with like a track pad? [00:36:02] Christina: Yes. [00:36:03] Brett: Okay. [00:36:04] Christina: Significantly so. [00:36:05] Brett: Yeah, and I haven’t, I haven’t, like I’ve used an iPad but not as like as a computing surface, really. [00:36:11] Christina: Right. And [00:36:12] Brett: as a me, a media consumption device. [00:36:15] Christina: mean that’s primarily how I use it too. But I will say, and, and the iPad is also weird because they, they try to kind of be this weird mishmash between the two and it kind of doesn’t really succeed. Um, and, uh, where’s like, the surface, what’s interesting about it is I don’t use touch on a lot of other things, but, but scrolling, scrolling, it is significantly better. Now, I will say it’s usually faster to use a track pad, but there are also times when it’s not where I’m just like, oh, I really quickly need to just get to the bottom of a page. and, you know, just being able to flick up on the screen is significantly better, or zooming in is another area where it’s just so much better, um, to be able to pinpoint that exact place that I need to zoom in on. Um, I mean, you know, the magic track pad goes a long way with that, [00:37:00] but it’s, it’s still not as good. Um, so I mean, I feel like, uh, stylists sometimes I think is great because like, like a, like Apple pencil, um, oral Wacom, because you can again, get really granular with things and, and really kinda like annotate on stuff. But I don’t know. I think I feel like touch, I think this is why the iPhone worked, because capacitive touch is the thing. Like we’d all used the, um, uh, resistive touch screens on like the, you know, Palm pilot and, um, you know, the, the, the, the trio and that [00:37:33] Brett: had a, I had an 800 by 600, uh, capacitive touchscreen that I used for home automation, the thing, so the screen is 800 by 600, but it was like two feet deep and, and went out an additional three inches on each side with like perforated steel and that I mounted in the wall so I could have a touchscreen [00:37:54] Jeff: When was this? [00:37:55] Brett: This would’ve been like 90. [00:38:00] No, I guess it, it would’ve been like 99, but, uh, 99, 2000. But, um, like I was buying ancient tech at that point. This, this was from an airport terminal. Uh, the, the device I bought was like a scrap from an airport terminal where you had had like touch touchscreen [00:38:21] Christina: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. To like check into the airport. Yeah. Gotcha. [00:38:25] Brett: yeah, [00:38:26] Christina: Well, and we all know, well, even to this day, we still know how bad some of those systems are. Right? Like, they’re not all like capacitive the same way. Right. Completely inaccurate. Like, like even like in, um, um, maybe check-in is better. I, I don’t check in at the airport, but, um, like definitely the, the, um, screens, you know, for the, in, um, uh, you know, ine entertainment. Um, if, if you don’t have like the latest plane, like, like I’ve, I’ve more than once had an experience where it is just been off enough that I haven’t been able to like, actually watch anything in the seat. And I’m like in first class and I’m like, [00:39:00] this is why we all have to bring our iPads because I, the, the capac, the, the transitive test doesn’t work, but a capacitive touch. Like I, that’s why iPhone is such a game changer, you know? [00:39:11] Brett: So looking at my setup where I’m sitting right now, uh, I have 2 30, 2 30, 32 inch displays that I can’t reach. Like I hold my arm out straight from where I am. I can’t, I can’t touch these screens, don’t want to. Um, my track pad works great. I could see if I had like, leap motion and I could just pretend to touch the screen and get accurate results from it. If I could just point at something and move it around the screen, I could see that being, uh, a useful interaction. Do you wanna hear my answer to this question? [00:39:46] Christina: We have to, [00:39:47] Brett: Neural link. [00:39:49] Christina: yeah. Okay. I, I was, I was, I was actually kind of thinking this too. This was, this was gonna be like one of my like futuristic answers. [00:39:55] Brett: no, no, no props to Elon, but if we are [00:40:00] imagining the perfect human interface device, I want to think shit and have it happen. Um, I don’t know. I don’t know how it work. Work. That’s why I said in general terms in the question, because there are so many questions. Like, like they have, uh, for disabled users, they have eye tracking [00:40:18] Christina: Yeah. Which is amazing. Which was so, which is incredible. [00:40:21] Brett: huge. It’s huge, but not terribly convenient. Like you would do better using your hands if you had that option. Um, for, for people who don’t have that option, amazing [00:40:34] Christina: Well, and it certainly results in eye strain, in, in ways that like, because people who, um, don’t have those options, it’s amazing how quickly they can do stuff. Like, it’s unreal, but, but, you know, but it leads to the genuine eye strain and, and other stuff, whereas just being able to think it [00:40:50] Brett: Just imagine how, what Stephen Hawking could have done if he could interface directly with his brain instead of the assistive [00:41:00] technologies he was forced to use later in life. Um, like I, I, I don’t know how it works. I, I don’t, but I just want to control things with my brain. [00:41:11] Christina: I mean, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s gonna be Elon, but like it’s going to [00:41:15] Brett: I bring up, I bring up Elon [00:41:16] Christina: Oh, I know, I know because Nora link No, I know. I, oh, no, no, no. I know, I’m, I’m just saying like, I, you know, I, look, we all hate him, but he’s not like some of the stuff that he’s invested in and, and the ideas he have are not bad at all. And, and they’re going to do it. I mean, from what I understand, and, and, uh, the two of you might have more information than me, but from what I understand is they basically, I think the idea would be you could kind of take like brain waves from MRIs, types of things, and they’re able to map that to, I guess, certain actions or, or certain functions and kind of, you know, uh, they find, they find patterns there. And so they would be able to infer basically from those wave things and kind of program things and that regard saying, okay, if we, if we get this sort of signal, then this is what we’re going to be doing. [00:42:00] So it’s not, Again, I think this is where like the AI stuff becomes really interesting because that could potentially speed up the processing of all of those, like brain scans, right? And, and looking at the patterns and maybe figuring stuff out like that would automate that a lot more than you could, you know, in a, in a, um, uh, like a manual kind of way. Um, I don’t know. I, I think we, we might have something like that in our lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised. I, I It would be exciting. [00:42:27] Brett: Yeah. [00:42:28] Jeff: Just as you, right. When you’re like, can I tell you, mine and I, and you hadn’t said neural link yet. I had this thought at the exact same time as you said, neural link, where I’m like the clapper which is like, exactly why I am not you. Um, but I was like, but, but that, and that worked great. But what if you had like, like you’re, you’re the choir teacher and you have like, um, update website, right? You just, that’s the pattern and then your bunch fires, you know, and you’re updating your [00:43:00] website. [00:43:00] Christina: no, that would be genius. That would be, and honestly, that would be a lot more doable than, than the Neurolink thing, [00:43:06] Jeff: Well that’s what I’m thinking. I think we can get funding for that [00:43:08] Christina: I totally think we could get funny for like a, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s like a clapper meets like a voice assist thing. And, and that goes along with, with, with, with your, uh, perfect thing, Jeff, of being kind of like the rhythm based. [00:43:19] Jeff: Yes. Right. [00:43:20] Brett: yeah. I mean, so like four years before Siri existed, makos had, I can’t remember what they called it, but they had voice commands. You could record your voice saying a command, and then have your computer listen for it and execute. It was in the sis of technology. Um, I, I feel like you could record beats with that. [00:43:42] Jeff: I think you could also do that with like an Arduino or something. I, I think I, I’ll have to look it up. I bet somebody’s done that. [00:43:47] Brett: sure. [00:43:48] Jeff: I like that even better though. [00:43:51] Brett: I’m gonna, I’m gonna read our, our sponsor read for the week. Um, before we get, let Christina ask her, uh, first interview question. [00:44:00] Our sponsor, collide, k o l i d e, has some big news. If you’re an Okta user, they can get, they can get your entire fleet to 100%. How you ask if a device isn’t compliant, the user can’t log into your cloud apps until they fix the problem. It’s that simple. Collide Patch is one of the major holes in zero trust architecture, device compliance. Without collide, it struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone’s OS and browser up to date. Unsecured devices are logging into your company’s apps because there’s nothing there to stop them. Collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication, and it’s built to work seamlessly with Okta. The moment collides agent to text a problem, it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it. If they don’t fix the problem within a set time, they’re blocked. Collides method means fewer support tickets, less [00:45:00] frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. Visit collide.com/ Overtired. That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired. To learn more ab, to learn more or book a demo. That’s k o l I d e.com/ Overtired. All right, Christina. [00:45:23] Christina: All right. So if you could do anything in the world as a job, like what would it be and why, and, and kind of an add-on follow-up to this that you can add on as you’re answering this. Like what has stopped you from trying to do this [00:45:40] Brett: Oh, I have the answer for this [00:45:41] Christina: Yeah. All right. You, you, you go first. [00:45:44] Brett: Deep Sea marine biologist. [00:45:47] Christina: Okay. [00:45:48] Brett: like it is, out of all of the jobs I’ve learned about in my life, the one that has intrigued me the most and that I thought I could really just fucking [00:46:00] dive into, no pun intended, um, is Deep sea marine biologist, because the deep sea contains such weird things. And it’s so overall unexplored that it would, it’d be like being an astronaut, but underwater. Uh, what’s kept me from doing this is I, I don’t think I could get through the schooling. Um, like I, I, I’m not good at chemistry and biology and at least in a school setting, like these things I understand in a general sense. But, um, and I also, I’m claustrophobic and like submarines don’t really appeal to me. So all things being, uh, if, if, if I could take care of those issues, I think that would be just, uh, a very fulfilling career. Uh, but there are some major blocks for me.[00:47:00] [00:47:00] Jeff: Oh my God. I, my, my stepmom’s father, uh, was not in a submarine, but he was in a battleship at World War ii and he was in the boy, he was in the boiler room upside of being in the boiler room. He would take coins and melt them on the boiler and turn them in, turn them into naked lady rings that he would sell. Um, downside, he, he is told from the be beginning, anything goes wrong in this ship. Your little space gets steeled off and you die. Like you are not coming out of there. Everyone else may survive, but you are not coming [00:47:34] Brett: I had an uncle who worked on a nuclear submarine for a good portion of his naval career. Um, and, and he was kind of in the same boat. Like, uh, you’re, you’re, [00:47:46] Jeff: Same boat. Huh? [00:47:48] Brett: I’m so full of puns, unintentionally unintentional puns, but like, yeah, um, you, you go about, you go about your business, you do your job, but if something goes wrong, probably outside of your [00:48:00] control, you are gonna die. Like this is a seal, this is a coffin. Underwater [00:48:05] Jeff: right. [00:48:06] Brett: you’re going down. [00:48:08] Jeff: Um, my answer to that is I think, I think I know my answer, uh, but I’m so worried I’m not, I’m not thinking of something, but I, um, I had, uh, a family, distant family member from Norway, a sculptor who was in town this week to unveil like this very large sculpture, uh, that’s now in Minneapolis. And he was describing the work it took to make the sculpture and, and how, you know, it was a year and a half of just kind of a bunch of people hammering on this thing, this metal to bend this metal just so whatever else. And like, but it was like a year and a half of like this very specific act. And, uh, had another friend that came in town that has a, a, a survey at the Walker Art Museum. This artist Paul Chan and Paul makes these things called breathers. And it’s like, if you imagine those like [00:49:00] gas station guys that with the wavy arms, you know, he, he figured out a way to make them in the different types of figures that are actually kind of oddly moving to look at. Um, but it, they’re literally inspired by those goofy things, but they end up being really serious. Um, and, and just kind of, uh, just amazing. And, and he, to do that, he learned sewing, um, he learned fabrics and, and he spent, you know, day after day after day making a shape. How does it move? That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m gonna fix it here. And so I would love to be an artist that works with like physical mediums, because I think that one of the things for me that was not ingrained in me having not gone to college was that sometimes. To get a thing done. It just takes this like day after day of like tiny steps that don’t look like anything. Right. And that was never ingrained in me. And so I’ve always, I’ve always hustled in a way to get things done. Even when I’m, even when I’m getting them done very [00:50:00] slowly, I feel like I’m hustling to get them done cause it’s supposed to look like something or something. I think I just never got that, that piece. Plus, it’s probably also personality, whatever, but like, I am so blown away when I, when I realized that like a researcher just spent a year and a half reading one document after another after another, and they could not come to this like grand conclusion had they not spent that year reading these documents. Like I just, I want to do something that takes advantage of that, that style of working. [00:50:30] Brett: is part of the appeal though, that they are short term, that they are finite. Like you can dedicate all of that time and energy, but you know, it has, it’s not the rest of your life. It’s a year and a half and, and you can use your creativity and problem solving and, and really dig into working with your hands. But with, but with a final goal [00:50:53] Jeff: Totally. So in the case of the art, in the case of the art, that’s totally it, because like I can’t just do the same thing forever, right? I don’t want to [00:51:00] be the person you hire who’s always hired to hammer on things, right? Like, I don’t want to be that person, , you know? I wanna be, I want to have the vision, be working on it, get it done. Next thing. [00:51:11] Brett: that’s what’s appealing to me about being a craftsman as well. Like, I’ve often thought woodworking would be a fun pursuit and like someone hires you to build something and, and you have a couple weeks where you use your, know-how, you use your creativity and you’re building something and when it’s done, you get paid and you move on to something new. And for my A D H D brain, that sounds very appealing. Um, like I went to art school, we, uh, we would get usually like in a 3D class, in a, in a metals class or in a 3D sculpture, We would usually create like two pieces for the semester and you would dedicate hundreds of hours to building one thing. [00:52:00] And you should have an idea what it was gonna be, when it was done, when you started. But you don’t always, uh, but you really, you get to go to sleep at night thinking about how you’re going to contribute to this finite object the next day. And, and that, that worked for me. That worked well with my brain. Way better than going to a university ever did [00:52:23] Jeff: like that. Yeah, Christina, I’m very excited to hear your answer. [00:52:28] Christina: So it’s kind of pouring in, in comparison to these. So it’s, it’s like a cross between two. Like one would be like a talk show host slash like news anchor. Um, and uh, and the other would be like, Being like a, a, a television showrunner, like, like, you know, like, like being a, a writer, creator of my own, um, uh, TV show. And, um, I guess what stopped me from, well, [00:53:00] the, the writer creator thing is honestly a lot of the atmosphere and, and not being in Los Angeles and, and being willing to kind of take the chances you’d need to do to do that sort of thing. Um, the anchor thing, like I, I’ve been on TV a lot and I’ve, I’ve definitely host a lot of things, um, for, for Microsoft and now for GitHub, and I hope that continues and, and I’m really good at it. And I obviously do podcasts, um, but I, it was a weird thing where to do, to get the on air jobs, like if you really want them. I did have an interview with CNBC and I blew it and it sucked and that is what it is. Uh, but. typically, like you have to kind of start, you know, the very low paying jobs at the local news stations and then kind of work your way up. And when I was starting out in journalism, I was getting paid double what you would get paid the local news stations to do that. And I just was unwilling to, to take the, like, the monetary cost, like the, like the cut that would be [00:54:00] necessary to kind of go through those steps. To be totally honest. Like that’s, and I, you know, I was hoping that, oh, you know, if I’m good enough, you know, on camera, that I’ll continue to get invited back and maybe that’ll lead to something and that can for some people, but you typically have to go viral and like a certain way. And, and for things that I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable going viral for, like, you’ve gotta be like a Tommy Laren or someone and then they don’t end up becoming good, um, hosts most of the time. Right. So, um, one, like, I think that those would be the two things that I would, I would love to do, like. All things, like, if I could just like snap my fingers and be like, oh, you know, what would I do every day? One would be like running like my own TV show because I have a lot of ideas for things. Uh, and then the other would be just like, yeah, I would love like having like a daily like newscast talk show, whatever. [00:54:51] Jeff: Yeah. [00:54:52] Christina: Rippa. That would be fun. [00:54:54] Jeff: Yeah. [00:54:54] Brett: You would be, you would be an amazing host. I just gotta [00:54:57] Jeff: Totally, [00:54:58] Brett: like your, your [00:55:00] depth of knowledge of any fucking topic, like you could, you could get answers out of people. You’d, you would be the John Stewart of any tech talk show. [00:55:12] Jeff: Yeah, that’d be awesome. That’d [00:55:13] Christina: Yeah. My, my goal and, and, and this is why it sucked so much that I blew and it was my own fault that I blew the scene VC interview, was that like I’d always wanted to be the Erin Burnett of tech because what she did, Uh, finance stuff when, when she was in finance. And then she parlayed that into getting her more general news thing on, um, cnn. But what she did for, uh, financial news and reporting on, uh, cn bbc, I was looked at that. I was like, I could do that for tech [00:55:39] Jeff: Mm. [00:55:39] Christina: one to this day, and this is what’s frustrating, like, uh, we’re now like, it’s been more than a decade since I kind of had like that, you know, kind of like brainwave or, or thought or whatnot. It’s been, well, more than a decade, like nobody’s done that, like, for whatever reason, as as big of a topic as a tech is, there aren’t, like tech TV went off the air a billion years ago, but there aren’t like tech focused, [00:56:00] like you have segments on, on these news shows, but you don’t have anybody who, like, that’s just the whole thing they talk about. And uh, and I think it’s because it, it’s a hard mix to find somebody who. Talk to a general public and bring on experts and ask questions and have the skills that are needed to actually understand what they’re talking about. I think it’s just a hard mix. Is is all I can guess that, that, or there’s just not an audience interest. That could, that could be the other thing. [00:56:27] Brett: so would you wanna be talk show slash showrunner now, or in this hypothetical scenario? Would you want to do it 10 years ago? [00:56:41] Christina: I would totally do it now, but it would obviously would be, would’ve been better to do it 10 years ago. [00:56:47] Brett: Okay. Easier perhaps? [00:56:49] Christina: I don’t know, the easier, but yeah, it would be easier to, to break into it for sure, 10 years ago. But, uh, but I would totally still do it now. Like, and if somebody wanted to call me up and be like, Hey, [00:57:00] do this for, for, for you know us every day and we’ll pay you really well for it and you can make living off of it. I’d be like, absolutely hell. [00:57:07] Jeff: Yeah, [00:57:09] Brett: I wanna [00:57:10] Christina: show, the show running thing, I was still like, in any age, that would be still [00:57:14] Brett: Oh, well, like right now, to me, right now, the, the television landscape, um, this is the ideal time to be a showrunner. Better than any time in history. Uh, TV is breaking ground. That fascinates me. Like I, this is the first time in, in my lifetime that I’ve paid close attention to who the showrunner for a show is. Because I watched the show and I’m like, who, who, who put this together? Who is in charge of this? Uh, showrunner has actually become like a real, um, part of television for. [00:57:54] Christina: it has. Yeah. No, it, it, it’s so interesting kind of the rise of, of that. And uh, my friend Catherine, um, she was one of my best [00:58:00] friends. She wrote an amazing. For, um, vice last year that went viral. And it was funny because it had originally, I dunno if I can share this. No, I’ll share it. It had originally been pitched to another outlet who winded up spiking it and like paying the kfi. And then, um, it went to Vice and it did gangbusters and has had like some actual impactful changes on the industry where she wrote about how like television is having a show running crisis. And, um, because, [00:58:30] Jeff: I remember this. [00:58:31] Christina: uh, yeah, because she’d interviewed, um, like just so many people it, she was in the process of writing that. I think she started like basically right as, as C O V was kind of, uh, kicking off. And so it was, it. Probably 18 on this of, of work that kind of went into this cuz um, she works at the e f now, but it’s, it’s just this incredible article, and you’re right Brett, that like, we care more about the show owner than ever, but it’s all, it’s equally true that a lot of people are getting thrown into that role who have [00:59:00] no experience and aren’t being mentored well and are, you know, it, it’s all these things. And so I think that to that point, like it becomes even more important than ever to have like a good showrunner because there’s like a massive difference and you see it in the quality of the shows, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. But yeah, Catherine’s uh, Catherine’s article on that was just, uh, such an awesome thing. Um, and, and when I read it, it was funny because I was like, oh, so, so Showrunning is just like PMing, like that’s, that’s like, [00:59:31] Jeff: Yeah. Right, right. [00:59:31] Christina: exactly what it is. And, and, and, and I was, I was drawing all these parallels between like software development and Showrunning and I was like, that would be an interesting article that five people would really like. But I might write it. I, I might write it someday anyway. [00:59:46] Brett: So I want, I kinda wanna hear the, the follow up answer from Jeff. What, why, what stops you from this career, this artist, artist career? [00:59:57] Christina: Yeah. [00:59:58] Jeff: it’s only a, it’s only a [01:00:00] recent, like in the last five years, uh, it’s only a recent kind of epiphany that, um, you can do that kind of thing. And of course you can’t just do that kind of thing, right. Um, so like it takes a lot to make money doing that kind of thing. But, um, I don’t know. I would say fear probably, cuz I’ve had ideas over the years and of things I’d like to do and I, like I weld and I, I am handy with all sorts of tools and everything, so it’s like I have the. I have the skills to kind of fabricate something if, if, um, if I had an idea that I loved and, and felt like sort of bold enough to, to seek some money for. Um, but I think it’s just, yeah, I think it’s just fear probably, but also just recency. Like I just, I honestly, it was two nights ago that I went to this family member of this Norwegian sculptors thing, and he talked to me about the whole process and I was just like, God damn, I would like to do something like this That [01:01:00] was my job, but like as a, as a side hustle. [01:01:02] Brett: you know, what I could see you doing is, um, art in public spaces that benefited people. Um, art, art, art installations for the unhoused. Um, you, you did like the the water stations. [01:01:18] Jeff: hand washing stations. Yeah. [01:01:19] Brett: Like you could make that into public art that I could totally see you doing that. I could totally see you being a, an activist artist working in 3d, working with all the skills you have. All right, Jeff. I [01:01:34] Jeff: Well, it’s funny, the, the funny thing about that is when, go ahead, Christina. [01:01:38] Christina: I was just gonna say, I could see you doing that in addition to like doing like the public art thing. I could even see you like making it a nonprofit thing, like having a public art space. Right. Where in addition to [01:01:48] Brett: A Maker Space [01:01:50] Christina: Yeah, yeah. In addition to being kind of a gallery for your work that you’re doing, it could also be a space for, um, you know, like, um, underrepresented groups, um, to, to [01:02:00] come and, and either appreciate the art or create their own, sorry, go on. [01:02:04] Jeff: I think it would be fun. I was thinking about that yesterday when I was touring this university with my son and all of the resources they had, and you could like, You know, you could like check out a 3D printer and bring it to your room or whatever. It was kinda cool. Um, no, I was gonna say with the, so what Brett’s referring to is during the early days of the pandemic, um, uh, there were a lot of, um, unhoused people in, like kind of little mini tent cities in Minneapolis. They were popping up everywhere and, um, there was nowhere to wash your hands. And this was when we were all freaking out about washing our hands. And so I looked at a bunch of designs online for like, um, like foot pump, hand washing stations where you can get some kind of water flow and some drainage. Um, and I ended up , the funny thing about this is why I’m bringing it up is I could have just, it’s two five gallon buckets basically. Right? Um, and I could have made it just that, but I, I really wanted it to be beautiful. And so it had, um, like, it had like [01:03:00] a, um, stainless steel bowl, uh, and an actual drain, like sink drain so that it just didn’t seem like something throwing off on people. Ah, they’re homeless. Here you go. You’ll figure it out. Um, yeah, here’s a bucket. And then I remember I even, like I, it had said hand washing station on it. I, I bought two like fleet farm white buckets that were extra large and then I spray painted the, the logo over. So it was an all white bucket. And then I got . I used the JetBrains [01:03:26] Brett: Yep. [01:03:27] Jeff: mono space spot, which I loved, and it’s, and it’s in this blue, and I use it with my cricket, which is what usually use middle-aged ladies making wedding invitations. And it, and I kind of, it said hand washing. It said hand washing. I love the cricket. And so I just found a picture of it the other day and I’m like, God, it’s beautiful and I wanted it to be beautiful. And so I’m, anyhow, it’s funny you’re saying that thing about that mix of like some kind of social purpose and, um, and art, but I ended up kind of forcing that onto this hand washing station, [01:03:57] Brett: We’re gonna, we’re going to get you some grants. [01:03:59] Jeff: That’s right.[01:04:00] [01:04:00] Brett: It’s gonna be [01:04:01] Jeff: all your [01:04:01] Brett: your side project is gonna be grant writing and, and public art. [01:04:06] Jeff: That’s right. Awesome. Well, [01:04:08] Brett: we got through one round of questions in this first, in this first episode. Um, I think, uh, I think we, we call it here [01:04:17] Christina: Yep. [01:04:19] Brett: and then continue. We, we all wrote down three or four questions, but I think we’re gonna make this a two episode series, so we’ll see what we get through next time. In the meantime, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks, you guys. [01:04:33] Jeff: Yeah, super [01:04:33] Christina: you. I love this. [01:04:35] Brett: Get some sleep. [01:04:36] Jeff: get some sleep, but not too much cause we gotta start recording again. [01:04:39] Christina: Exactly. Get some sleep. But you know, just enough I. [01:05:00]

The gang is back together and there is catching up to do! Also, where have all the good rom-coms gone? Jeff pretty much sits that last bit out, but offers that he cried at The Notebook, FWIW. Sponsor ZocDoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need, and deliver the type of experience you want. Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun. Go to https://zocdoc.com/overtired and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. Show Links Cocaine Bear Cocaine Bear game CocaineBear.movie David Wain promo Your Place or Mine or why the hell did Reese take this part? Freeway They Came Together Barbie Twelve Monkeys Gracie Abrams Breaking Bad/BoJack Horseman Breaking Bad Table Read The death of social media Book Your Own Fucking Life Kitty Catppuccin Snazzy Readwise Readwise Highlights CleanShot X Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript I Brake for Descenders [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Christina: you are listening to Overtired where, uh, we’re a little bit less tired than usual, or at least I am. I’m Christina Warren, joined as always by my good friends. All three of us are back together again. Jeff Severns Guntzel and Brett Terpstra. Woo-hoo. Gangs back together. [00:00:22] Jeffrey: I just honked. [00:00:24] Christina: I love it. [00:00:28] Brett: Yeah. Did Jeff, did you get a chance to listen to the marching episode? [00:00:32] Jeffrey: Not yet. No. [00:00:34] Brett: It was good. It was. [00:00:35] Christina: good. Um, and, uh, his book has now, since we recorded it, is become the second most popular. A nonfiction book, uh, ever on Kickstarter, but he has set another stretch goal. Uh, so I think you have until like March 9th to back the book if you’re interested. And the, the third stretch goal is he’ll make the, the custom font option even better. [00:00:56] And the the third kind of book thing that he’s, uh, putting together will be in color rather than black and white. So if people are, are, uh, if they liked what Wood Martian had to say on our last episode, and if you’re interested in the history of keyboards, you’ve still got like another two weeks or so, I think to back that book. [00:01:13] Brett: We didn’t get into it on the show, but he, this is a designer who, um, the underlines that you see on medium, um, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, they’re like perfectly, uh, aligned underneath and they break for descenders on, on lowercase fonts. Um, like he developed an entire system to use background images to create underlines because like the c s s underlying property sucks for it. [00:01:42] And, uh, using border bottom is inaccurate. So he like created, he, he’s so detailed. He’s, he’s, uh, a perfectionist and he wasn’t gonna be happy until the underlines were exactly the way you would find them in like, print. [00:01:58] Jeffrey: We need a, we need [00:01:59] Christina: I I did not know he did that. That’s amazing. [00:02:01] Jeffrey: we need a bumper sticker that says I break for Descenders. Also, while I have not listened to that episode yet, I actually, funnily enough, that’s the word now as of today. Um, I spent so much time on the website, uh, not just the, it’s not just this website about the book, but like blog posts and what I was just like, I just kept getting drawn in. [00:02:26] Like I was, I was so, I was already pissed. I wasn’t on that episode then. I was just, I was like, man, this is so good. [00:02:33] Brett: I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on that book. It’s gonna be quite a ride. [00:02:38] Christina: Me too. I’m, I’m, I, I’ve never been happier that, like a random Twitter conversation, like led me to talking to him for like, we, like we talked for like two and a half hours, one Sunday, like a year ago. Because I happen to tweet about, um, sneakers being like the best hacker movie ever, which is not even the first one I’ve ever tweeted about that. [00:02:57] Like, that’s a common, um, like, [00:02:59] Jeffrey: you, you, you’ve, you’ve fished with that bait before? [00:03:02] Christina: oh, I have, well cuz it’s just, it’ll occur to me and I’m just like, man, this is a good ass movie. And uh, and then somebody was talking about the soundtrack and then he and I started DMing and, and he had a copy of it because it’s not available on streaming or anything. [00:03:15] And then it turns out he has this ridiculous collection of like every version of sneakers that’s ever been released. [00:03:20] Brett: every media you can [00:03:22] Christina: medium. And, and, and we, we just, we, we, we just like talked about all kinds of stuff for several hours and then when I saw the, the shift happens thing, I was like, oh, this looks awesome. [00:03:30] And then I looked to what’s behind it. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is, this is, this is Martian. Like this is, this is so cool. [00:03:39] Jeffrey: What a talent. Yeah, what an interesting brain Mental Health Corner [00:03:44] Brett: Well, uh, I have a movie that’s not so great to talk about, but, uh, let’s, uh, yeah, let’s do a little mental health corner. Um, I, I usually wait until last, I’ll just go first this week because I have so little to report. Um, I’m still, uh, I had a little bout of, uh, kind of hypo depression. Um, just like not motivated, but not like seeing everything as like dark and imposing. [00:04:15] Um, but overall I’ve, I’ve just been stable and. Um, you know, like as, as usual when I’m stable, still kind of craving the hypomania, but getting along. I did yoga in, in, in studio today for the first time in a couple years. Um, and it was, it was a weird experience. Um, I forgot I was gonna go into the studio and got up late and like, basically I got up, drank coffee and went straight to the studio, which always puts me in a bad mood. [00:04:49] Um, cuz I take like an hour to wake up in the morning. Um, I like sit and play like wordle until I can like, have a co a real conversation with somebody. Um, so I showed up kind of in a bad mood and, um, recovered from it quickly. Everyone was very, uh, happy to see me after a couple years. Like it was the same people that I used to practice with, but I’ve just been doing Zoom for so long. [00:05:14] It was, it was a weird experience. But I had to focus, partly I had to focus on not farting. like [00:05:22] Jeffrey: a major part of [00:05:23] Brett: when you practice at home over Zoom, you can burp and fart without any concern. Um, but today, like I felt a fart coming on in the first 10 minutes of class and I held it all the way [00:05:36] Jeffrey: Oh, that’s not yoga. Ooh. [00:05:40] Brett: our class doesn’t fart a lot. Um, it’s, [00:05:43] Jeffrey: Another, another bumper sticker. [00:05:45] Brett: I had a, I had a speech prepared for if I farted, I’m just gonna be like, um, sorry I’ve been on Zoom too long. Um, but uh, but I pulled it off. I didn’t, I didn’t fart until I was getting in my car. Uh, so it was a success. It was a success. I had a good time. [00:06:02] Jeffrey: I never, I always think of farting when I think of yoga. I also think of a yoga instructor I had for one class because his shorts were so tight that a testicle kept popping out and it’s not, I wasn’t like offended to see his testicle, but it was just distracting. [00:06:16] Christina: like not what you’re expecting. [00:06:17] Jeffrey: focus. [00:06:18] Brett: I, I wore, I wore sweatpants to class and I forgot until I got there that I had on Spider-Man underwear. [00:06:26] Christina: Nice. [00:06:27] Brett: And [00:06:28] Jeffrey: under. [00:06:28] Brett: made me like from uh, meundies.com, [00:06:32] Christina: Oh, okay. [00:06:33] Jeffrey: Not under. [00:06:34] Brett: underwear. And like, I suddenly got very self-conscious about it. I’m like, I gotta keep my pants pulled up and my shirt pulled down cuz I don’t need these people. [00:06:42] Like, what, what do you think of some of an a grown man in Spider-Man underwear? Like, I don’t wanna [00:06:49] Christina: I mean that, [00:06:49] Brett: make that impression. [00:06:51] Christina: See, and this is what’s like, so funny, like, about us, like just our, our, our small like, generational thing is that like, I’m like, yeah, of course people, adults have Spider-Man underwear. Like Marvel’s the biggest, you know, franchise in the world and everybody loves nostalgia. And actually, frankly, starting with Generation X is when they started the whole like reselling your nostalgia back to you thing. [00:07:14] And so, so, you know, like at, at this point, I think that I, I don’t know if anybody would, would even be phased by that. [00:07:22] Brett: to be fair, my class is mostly 50 and up people. Uh, this is not a class of Youngs, of, of Gen Z and millennials. This is, uh, boomers. [00:07:34] Jeffrey: Boomers, what the fuck? I’m 48. I’m Gen X, [00:07:38] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say at this [00:07:39] point, like, [00:07:40] Brett: me there, there’s a woman in my regular yoga class who is, uh, almost 80 [00:07:46] Christina: okay. But like [00:07:47] Brett: and surprisingly [00:07:49] Jeffrey: so, so when you say 50 and above, you’re talking about an [00:07:51] 80 year old [00:07:51] Christina: Okay, so you’re talking like, like sep, so you’re talking like SEP areas and shit, which [00:07:56] Brett: Yeah. She, she is a force to contend with. She’s amazing, and she’s so funny. She’s so mean. But like she’s old enough that it comes across as cute. [00:08:08] Christina: right, right. Well, so at that point, okay, nobody else is probably gonna say anything to you cuz it’s a yoga class in Minnesota and, and if the old lady does then it’s just funny. So in the future, like, don’t be embarrassed by your cool underwear. [00:08:22] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, I’d be [00:08:24] Brett: lot of things that I just, I shouldn’t be self-conscious about, but I am, um, I, I am very, I defeat myself in a lot of ways because I project my own insecurities onto everyone else. And, uh, it’s not, it’s not healthy, it’s not great, but I do it. That’s, that brings it back around to [00:08:42] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say that’s actually, that’s a good mental health like that, that that’s a good analysis thing. You should talk about that therapy. That’s a, that’s a good, like, [00:08:49] Brett: I skipped therapy this week. I just, I got two, I had two nights of insomnia. Um, and I just did not feel like having a conversation with my therapist. Rather forceful when it comes to conversational style. Like he’s very, um, alpha male. Uh, I don’t find him relaxing at all, and I was too tired to deal with it. [00:09:12] So I skip therapy next week. I’ll talk about it next week. [00:09:16] Jeffrey: I, I think this was probably my update the last time I was on the show, which is, feels like forever ago. But, um, I continue to be in a situation where the, like medical forces that are supposed to be sort of watching out for me are just absent. So I had a, I had a, a blood lab and, um, I take lithium and it, and it, I’m working my way off of it, but I take it right. [00:09:44] Um, and it showed that I was on the very edge of lithium toxicity when I logged in. Now I did not get any, um, things from my doctor, from my medication manager, nobody, and it’s bad to have lithium toxicity, [00:09:59] Brett: Sure. That sounds bad. [00:10:01] Jeffrey: so I had to call first my medication manager. They seemed scared, but seemed that they did not want to speak too much about it and just came up with a prescription solution by lowering the amount. [00:10:14] When I talked to a dear friend of mine who used to be a nurse in the ER and who also is a medication manager, he was like, this is something that should have triggered one, you being told to go to the er and two, you being told to drink lots of water in order to kind of try to flush this stuff out, right? Didn’t hear from my doctor who has to presumably sign off on these things. So I’m the one raising the alarm to people only to find out a week later. That they had messed up the labs and in fact, I was at a, just about sub-therapeutic amount of And, and so one, the labs are wrong in the first place. Right? Two, when they were right, nobody was reaching out to me, , right? And, and it was like this point, I was talking to my partner about this. I was just like, I feel like I’m the responsible, reliable party in this situation, and given that this is mental health related, that shouldn’t be the case. [00:11:14] I should not be that person. [00:11:15] Christina: no, no. That pisses me off for you because. Here’s the thing, like in this country, like in the United States, we do not have free healthcare. We do not have, you know, like, like a system that you can blame on these inefficiencies like the, the NHS or, or, or whatever the system is in Canada or, or, you know, the, the better, uh, run systems and, and every other country, like, we have to pay out the ass even if our employers cover it. [00:11:40] Like, it, it, it is expensive and mental health coverage is ex like, healthcare is especially expensive. Like my shrink isn’t even covered by, by insurance. I can submit, um, and have it paid through like my, my HSA funds. But like, he doesn’t even take insurance. Um, sometimes, um, you know, you can get it processed, but like he doesn’t even accept it. [00:12:00] He’s just like, no, um, I’m not dealing with that. Um, and that’s always been the case with him. So you’re paying a lot of money for these things. Now they have these computerized systems, which are frankly, in some cases worse because everybody can log in and see stuff. And, and if you don’t read things correctly, you can maybe misinterpret stuff. [00:12:18] Or in this case, you get the wrong freaking labs and you’re seeing something that should absolutely be flagged. Um, and, and, and they’re just being nonchalant about it. Like, come on, man. [00:12:30] Jeffrey: and I was not, not only was the, did I not kind of have anybody raising the red flag when it came on so high, I didn’t have anybody loading it. [00:12:38] Christina: Right, right. When, when they realized [00:12:39] Jeffrey: just found it by accident. I’m like, oh, I’m not on the urge, verge of being in a coma. That’s great. [00:12:45] Christina: Like that, that that’s, and, and, and I’m certainly not, not, um, like recommending this because again, and this is another problem with like mental health coverage and, and whatnot in this country, is, is I would never say to leave like a, a doctor that you have a good relationship with, um, for mental health. [00:12:58] If, if, if you can, but like in normal circumstances for almost any other service, this would be the sort of fuck up that would be like worthy of going to a new provider over. [00:13:10] Jeffrey: Yeah. And I do, I actually have an intake meeting with a new provider in May. Like that’s the soonest I could get it, you know, so that’s the other piece of it, right? It’s just like, you know, this is actually somewhat urgent, but, [00:13:21] Christina: Right. Because we’re, you can’t do anything until May, so you’re stuck with it. But it’s, but, but it, but it is, but like, I, I can’t imagine any other field where if you’re given the wrong information that could have like life or death consequences and then the, uh, you know, the information is corrected that you’re not contacted either time. [00:13:39] Like if, if like, if somebody like, you know, knew something about your car, like if you got like a, a wrong recall notice for your car and then they didn’t tell you that your car was okay, like people would be livid. Can you even imagine [00:13:50] Jeffrey: You are making me wonder if I’ve been missing recall notifications for my body, for my body and mind all along. Someone’s been trying to get me [00:13:59] Christina: anyway, I’m not trying to roll you up. I’m just trying to say like, I, I’m, I’m sorry that happened and uh, yeah. [00:14:03] Jeffrey: you. Part of what that ends up doing that’s separate from the medication is that it puts you in, uh, a situation where, you know, you really have to be someone who is, is actually engaged enough with your like inner life to advocate for yourself, right? Because it’d be so easy to be like, well, fuck it. [00:14:22] I know I don’t deserve. You know what I mean? Like, and so I just always think of, I mean, I think of myself cuz this is a issue, but I also think of just so many other people that don’t, don’t have that ability to advocate for themselves. Uh, it’s just kind of nerve-wracking, um, just to think about. But anyway, so there was that, and that’s actually been going on in every, in every way. [00:14:42] So I got a crown, temporary crown and they, they put it in a little wrong. So my gums got infected like a few months ago. I got a bunch of, I call it corpse dust. They, I got, I’m getting like an implant in my tooth and [00:14:53] they put this like bone dust for bone grafts in there. They did it wrong and it, my body just like rejected all of it. [00:14:59] It was just coming out constantly for like a week and they had to redo that. Like, it’s just, everything’s, everything’s been like that for me. It’s just crazy. Um, anyway, that’s my update. . Stay alert everybody. Stay. [00:15:13] Christina: Yeah, no, which is a, a good reminder. And I know like from my mom’s experiences, like how important it’s to advocate for yourself and I know all these things, and I’m so laissez-faire about certain things with the medical care, and it’s not because I, I can’t advocate for myself. It’s just a lot of times I just don’t wanna go through the effort of even dealing with things. [00:15:29] Like both of my knees are hurting me right now. Um, one of them, because I was hit by a car five years ago. And, um, uh, and, and that was not great. And, and that issue has been presenting itself more. And the other one, I don’t know, it just like started like yesterday, but I just kind of noticed, I was like, my knees hurt and maybe it’s an aging thing. [00:15:51] Although, you know, I’m, I’m. Immune from aging, so, so I don’t know. Um, it could be like weather related. Um, I’ve had like arthritis like symptoms since I was a kid, so I, I, if there was stuff, you know, it will, like, I will not at all be surprised if I have to have like any knee trans, like knee transplants or something, even though, um, I’m in, you know, uh, I’m not overweight and, and I don’t have the other sorts of symptoms that you would typically associate with that sort of thing. [00:16:20] Um, but I, I got like a virus when I was really little and, and basically started having symptoms of arthritis when I was like eight. So it’s just, it’s kind of been one of those inevitable things. But again, these are things I just like put off and, and don’t deal with, um, until maybe forced. So that’s a good reminder for me to be like, don’t let this go too long. [00:16:42] Um, my mental health’s okay. Um, as, as I’d mentioned, you know, before, like we had layoffs a couple of weeks ago and, and they’re not being done in, um, well, there’s no good way to do them, but they’re kind of being dragged out and so there’s this feeling of uncertainty. Um, I still. I think my team is, is safe, and I don’t have any like, concerns about like, my job security and, and, and I feel confident that even if I were to be laid off that like I could find another job relatively quickly like that. [00:17:13] I, I don’t have like massive anxiety about which is, which is good. I was talking to my shrink about that this week that I, I’m finally at this point in my, my tech career where I was in my journalism career, which is that I feel like, okay, if I got laid off tomorrow, not to say that it wouldn’t suck and that, that I wouldn’t, you know, have to rely on my savings and whatnot, but I feel confident, um, in my abilities to, to get hired, um, even in, in this kind of uncertain economy, um, without a problem. [00:17:44] Uh, you know, uh, comp and other things might be different, but like I, I, I feel confident at this point in my, my skillset, um, that I, that I’d be able to find another job, which is good. , but you know, every single day, you know, seeing everything that’s happening, you know, in kind of the, the sector and all this stuff. [00:18:01] It is, it is deeply unsettling. And, um, and I know I’ve talked about that before and I don’t wanna keep bringing it back to that, but it does like, bring up like those, you know, those fast feelings of, um, uncertainty and anxiety. But other than that, I’m, I’m, I’m doing, I’m doing fine, you know, um, I’m going to see cocaine beer tonight, which I’m really excited Overtired Goes to the Movies! [00:18:24] Brett: Oh man. Uh, so I wasn’t, I wasn’t psyched about it until David Wayne did like a, i, i, maybe a tic-tac, but I saw it on Instagram, um, about like how great it was, and now I’m totally into seeing it. [00:18:40] Christina: Yeah, the trailer I was kind of, I was kind of in, and then when I started reading, like when they did the junket, I was like, okay, now I’m fully in. Because like apparently how Elizabeth Banks got involved, how everybody got involved was that I guess the, uh, the peoples that the, uh, Phil, um, um, and, and the other guy, the Lego movie guys are the producers. [00:19:02] They read the script and then they gave it to Elizabeth Bank. They’re like, what do you think about this? Do you wanna direct this? And she was like, are you serious? This is insane. Yes, I want to direct it. And then that was sort of the response of everybody else who’s involved and is for the most part, like really good actors. [00:19:17] Like she was on the phone with Carrie Russell about a completely different project, and then called her the next day and was like, , do you wanna read this, this, this Cocaine bear thing. And then, um, um, Margo Martindale texted Carrie Russell, she was like, wait, are you doing this? And Carrie was like, wait, are you doing this? [00:19:33] And then they were like, okay, well we’ll both do this. And, and, and Carrie Russell’s, uh, husband even like, makes a cameo in it because he read the script and he was like, who’s playing this guy? I wanna play this guy . And Elizabeth Banks was like, see you in, see you in Ireland. And so again, it could be terrible, but unlike Snakes on a plane, [00:19:51] Jeffrey: I was just gonna say, snakes on of plane. [00:19:55] Christina: right, but, but what? And Snakes on a plane was like, let’s be honest. Like, that was a trailer that, that then kind of like everybody got excited about and made memes about it, and they, they went back and re-shot and like made more with it. And, and that’s fine. And I’m not saying that that Samuel L. Jackson, Juliana Margoles aren’t good actors, but like these are good actors who are involved in this. [00:20:15] and, and so it has to, to me the script has to be just like bat shit enough for them to be like, fuck Yeah, [00:20:22] Brett: Ridiculous to the point of being awesome. [00:20:24] Christina: Right. And then just to see someone like David Wayne, who of course would be like, if I’m gonna take like camp, like recommendations from anyone is going to be David [00:20:32] Brett: From the guy who made a wet hot American summer. [00:20:35] Christina: That’s exactly, that’s what I’m saying. [00:20:36] Like, so, because cuz you won a good campy film. The marketing has also been brilliant. Like, they had like a, um, a, a tweet that I loved where they, they used the DARE logo and they used the DARE logo in the freaking marketing, which is great. And they were like, I dare you to see this or whatever. And then the tweet was like, yes, we’re bullying you. [00:20:54] And, and I was just like, okay, this is great. And their website, uh, cocaine bear.movie or whatever, there’s a, there’s a web game, which I guess is an HTML five cuz you know, can’t be. It’s, it’s what would’ve been a flash game 10 years [00:21:06] Jeffrey: Right. I saw [00:21:07] Christina: And it’s amazing. You basically, it’s like the adult, it’s like a really adult Marker [00:21:12] Christina: graphic, violent version of, um, The, um, buffalo hunting game in, um, Oregon Trail where you have to kill as many humans as you can, but you have to have enough cocaine power and so you have to collect the cocaine, and then you run around and then they make all these noise and it’s fantastic. [00:21:34] Like we’re gonna have the link of the show notes. So, um, this is a, a weird way to end Mental health corner except Oh, uh, uh, like I’m just, uh, uh, you know, in, in my, my part of it or whatever, except to say like, I’m very, very excited about cocaine bear. [00:21:50] Jeffrey: Awesome. [00:21:51] Brett: I, uh, I had this intention of opening the mental health corner with, um, the Frazier Crane. Um, you’re, you’re listening to Frazier Crane on K a C L. I’m listening. Um, and then end it with Goodnights, Seattle and good mental health. But I, I forgot. Um, but we we’re, we’re on a movie kick, so [00:22:14] Christina: Great. Great [00:22:14] Brett: sneakers, we got sneakers, we got cocaine. [00:22:16] Bear. Um, I sat down, oh, what’s up? [00:22:20] Jeffrey: Can I just insert something that you made me think of? Because one of the things about this podcast that I enjoy most is it sometimes fulfills my dream of being on a morning show. Um, and so we’ve had, so we’ve had this morning show at our classic rock station, K Q R S since I was a kid. It’s this guy, Tom Bernard. [00:22:38] He’s racist, misogynist, and just generally annoying except that he has the best radio voice ever. [00:22:45] Christina: Isn’t that always the case? [00:22:46] Jeffrey: And I can turn on the morning show, which I never do intentionally, and if it’s on for three seconds, he says something that makes me, uh, angry. Yeah. And I get angry enough when they play the Eagles, you know? [00:22:59] It’s like, I gotta, you gotta, like, anyway, so he got canned by their corporate overlords for not really that clear of a reason. And in his place they hired a man named Steve Gorman, who was the drummer of the Black Crows in the, in, in their first few albums. Right. [00:23:15] Brett: an underappreciated band. [00:23:16] Jeffrey: oh, amazing band, especially those first two albums. [00:23:19] And he actually has a syndicated classic rock show that already ran on this radio station. But he moved here to be the morning show host, and it has been amazing. And he told the following story because it was an anniversary of the release of the first Black Crows album. Now he’s like suing them. Like that went bad, but he said that. [00:23:38] So first of all, [00:23:39] Christina: I was gonna say cuz he clearly didn’t get the, the riches of the black throw stuff like no offense to him, but if he’s living in Minnesota [00:23:45] Jeffrey: Just moved here. No, he just moved here. He was living in la [00:23:48] Christina: Okay. Okay. Well, but if, regardless if he moved even worse, if he moved to Minnesota to host a morning show for a local station after having [00:23:57] Brett: going well. [00:23:58] Christina: And I know how much those, those syndicated Sirius xm, uh, shows, um, pay if you’re not like a [00:24:04] Jeffrey: yeah, [00:24:05] Christina: So he’s not Yeah. So, so clearly, so, so it clearly didn’t end well. But anyway, sorry. Go [00:24:09] Jeffrey: he, I love these types of stories. So he told this story about, so first of all, when he recorded that Black Crows album, that first album, it came out in like 91. Uh, and, and for me, this was like a big album for me, which is why I’m even bringing it. Um, he had o only been drumming for two years and he was all of a sudden in like one of the biggest rock bands in the country. [00:24:28] But also he told this great story where the day it came out, he had to go to work at a record store where he had a job and his job involved, like shelving, black crow CDs. And he described sitting behind the counter all day just being like, buy one, buy one, buy one. But nobody did. He has no idea. That’s about to be the biggest band, you know, in the country. [00:24:46] Anyway, uh, I love this morning drive show that we’re on, and, and I wanted to share that since you mentioned Frazier and radio. [00:24:53] Brett: Yeah. All right. Uh, it, it’s typically false, or Christine, or do this Sponsor: ZocDoc [00:24:58] Christina: Yep, I got it. All right. This episode is brought to you by Zocdoc. All right. So you’re trying to find a cause for your symptoms, like maybe your knee is bothering you. I don’t know. I’m just using personal experience here, and you stumble down a TikTok rabbit hole full of questional advice from so-called experts. [00:25:16] Note to self. 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You can book an appointment with just a couple of taps in their app and start feeling better faster with zoc. [00:26:15] Go to zoc.com/ Overtired and download the Zoc app for free. Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That’s zoc, D o c.com/ Overtired zocdoc.com/ Overtired. [00:26:34] Brett: Zuck doc.com/ Overtired. Get that third time in there, you know, really sink into [00:26:40] Christina: Really, really sync it in. Yes. [00:26:42] Jeffrey: Nicely. Where have all the good rom-coms gone? [00:26:43] Brett: All right, so I, uh, my, my girlfriend and her sister, I’ll call her Elle, uh, um, and, and Kari, um, they wanted to have a, like a group watch movie night. Uh, Kari in Michigan were in Minnesota, and, um, they were interested in watching what somehow was in the top 10 Netflix movies. [00:27:09] Um, a romcom called Your Place, or Mine not to be confused with the 2015 Japanese language film of the same name. Um, this is a new film with Reese Witherspoon, Reese Witherspoon, and. [00:27:25] Christina: Ashton [00:27:26] Brett: Ashton, Kucher and Kutcher, and, um, [00:27:30] Christina: My Twitter friend. [00:27:31] Brett: so I promised, I promised to be good, and I did. I bit my tongue. I didn’t say anything smart ass in the text chat or in the conversations. [00:27:42] I just, I rolled with it, but it was so bad. It like, how did, how did Reese sign on? She’s, she’s got chops now. [00:27:52] Christina: She, [00:27:52] does, and she, and [00:27:53] she’s [00:27:53] Brett: deserves better. [00:27:55] Christina: Well, the whole thing did, did you see all the, the drama about how bad, uh, the, the promo for it was? Like, and, and, okay, so, so this might add to, cause I wanna, I want you to, to complain, but just to set up some context that might make you even, uh, more perplexed. The, the promo when they had to go do the junket stuff or this in every photo he was in with her, like, he looked like he did not want to be there and like didn’t wanna touch her. [00:28:19] And then his excuse was, he was like, oh, well if I, if I look like I’m, I’m too close to her, then people are gonna have like a rumor that we’re having an affair. And I don’t want that to happen. But it got, but it got so bad that Mila Kunis like stepped in and she was like, You look like you’re having a miserable time. [00:28:38] What are you doing? Also, like, not for nothing, but I, I don’t think Reese’s is leaving her, her husband, uh, who, uh, she also has like a business relationship with, right? And, and, and it seems to be very much in love with, he’s not leaving Mila Kuni. Right? Like it, the, like, no one’s thinking that people would be like, oh, these two people might have like a good, might have good chemistry together. [00:29:02] Um, I only saw the trailer and I was like, oh no, this is an Anne Hathaway, uh, um, uh, you know, James Franco situation where you think it makes sense and then the chemistry mash is just not [00:29:13] Brett: they got some big names behind it, but holy shit. Just there was no. Even as a romcom, even following a romcom formula, it fell flat. [00:29:24] Christina: It was no sweet Home Alabama. [00:29:26] Brett: not interesting at all. I never saw Sweet Home Alabama. [00:29:29] Christina: actually a good one. It’s actually a cute one. [00:29:31] Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey. [00:29:33] Brett: this just never had any, um, tension. Like you never thought, oh no, everything’s going wrong. [00:29:40] I hope it ends well and everything and has a happy end. Like you never got to that point. It was just, it was just like slice of life. Boring. [00:29:49] Jeffrey: But I wanna, I want to point out what to me is the most interesting part of this, which is you’re in a situation with, you’re with two other people, it’s a romcom and you are the one going, I hate this, but I don’t wanna say it, [00:30:00] Christina: Right. You’re, you’re, you’re in, you’re in this [00:30:02] Jeffrey: which is the right thing to do. [00:30:04] Christina: is. No, that’s [00:30:05] Brett: yeah. You know me though. I do not do a great job of keeping my mouth shut, so I, I was, my tongue was ready to bleed. I was biting it so hard and I just, But I did it. I was a good sport and, and just, I didn’t say anything negative. Um, [00:30:22] Jeffrey: Even. [00:30:23] Brett: think even after, [00:30:25] Jeffrey: that’s the real challenge. You gotta go. It’s over. Now someone’s gonna ask me what I thought. I have to figure out how to say it without sounding a [00:30:31] Brett: Okay. So l was able to pick up on my disappointment. Um, like, so like we were able to discuss honestly how I didn’t like it. But in the con, in the group chat and in our, like, we, after, after we finish a group watch, we always have a phone call just to like decompress whatever and, and talk about life. [00:30:52] Um, and I, I kept my mouth shut through all of that. Um, I, I was pretty proud of myself. [00:30:59] Christina: I’m very [00:31:00] Brett: this is, this is, I, I’ve been holding onto this for the, for this episode to be able to vent. [00:31:07] Jeffrey: he’d or so. [00:31:10] Christina: Well, well, well, well, Carrie’s never gonna listen to this podcast. And, and Elle will appreciate that you, uh, if, if she listens we’ll appreciate that. Like you did the, the correct and the adult thing of like saving it for the pod. Um, what was so egregious about it? Cuz ti tid the reviews I read was like, was a chemistry mismatch and, and some other things. [00:31:30] But she’s great, right? Like Grease is, grease is fantastic in, in everything she does. Like I, I’m, I’m, I love her. I’m like a genuine, huge, super [00:31:38] fan of both her as an [00:31:39] Brett: Little fires [00:31:41] Christina: Little Fires everywhere, [00:31:42] Brett: Yeah. So [00:31:43] Christina: um, which is great. Big Little Lies was one of the best first se like the second season didn’t work as well cuz hadn’t been designed for that. [00:31:49] But that was one of the best [00:31:50] like mini-series freeway. [00:31:53] Brett: Freeway was the first time I ever met Reese Witherspoon. Um, it was with, uh, what’s his name? Uh, lost Boys [00:32:02] Christina: Yeah. Um, [00:32:03] Jeffrey: Key for Sullivan. [00:32:04] Brett: Keifer [00:32:05] Christina: Yeah. Keep talking. That’s right. Yeah. He’s a big [00:32:06] bad wolf. [00:32:06] Brett: her Sutherland as like a serial killer and she’s like a runaway and it’s a little Red Riding Hood, modern Tale. Like that was the first time I ever saw her and I was sold. [00:32:17] I was like, this girl is a great actress. [00:32:21] Christina: I, I first saw her in her first film, which was, uh, the Man in the Moom, and I only saw that because my sister, who’s her age for some reason, I guess they wrote about it in 17 Magazine. This is the only thing I can imagine, because I don’t, I don’t know. I was like, I was like seven or eight years old. [00:32:37] Um, but I, but I’m guessing they wrote about it in one of the teen magazines and she rented it from the video store. And this is like a small movie that still most people have never seen. It was her first film, and she was fantastic in it. And Roger Ebert famously, like in his review, he like called her out. [00:32:51] He was, She’s going to be massive. And, and from that time forward, my sister is a huge fan and, and even though we don’t have a lot in common, like I did pick up on some of her tastes, but I’ve always really, really liked her and I love her as a business woman as much as I love her as an actress. So this is very sad to me. [00:33:09] Like when I was seeing all the stuff failing [00:33:12] Brett: so what was wrong with it? So, a romcom is two words, right? Romantic and comedy. Um, I did not laugh once. Uh, there was, there was, there were no, there was no situational comedy, there were no witty lines. It was very cut and dry. Uh, from the romance perspective, there was no, like, these two people belong together. [00:33:37] I can’t wait to see it work out. There was none of that. Like, you guys just deserve each other. It was more like, well, they’re probably gonna end up together. It’s, it’s fate. Um, I, I’m not saying that a romcom needs to be unpredictable. They never. But this was like [00:33:55] Christina: you, [00:33:55] need to care. [00:33:56] you need to care about the journey of them getting [00:33:58] Brett: Yeah. You knew from the opening scene exactly how it was gonna end. [00:34:01] Um, and you, and, and there was just so little storytelling. It just, it just did not intrigue me in any way. [00:34:11] Christina: What’s disappointing about this to me is that a, there has been this dearth of romantic comedies, which is the one. Which is this thing that the Reese Witherspoon actually said in her press, like stuff for this. She did try, she did try to promote this movie, but I think everybody knew that this was not gonna land. [00:34:27] And it’s a Netflix thing. They already got paid, who cares? But like, she commenting on the fact that there are no romcoms anymore. And there had been a time in her career before she won the Oscar where she was kind of been pegged to only doing romcom stuff. And then she was in that weird place where she won the Oscar and they’re like, well, how do we cast her? [00:34:45] You know what, what? And nobody would cast her in anything. She had to create her own parts. But Romcoms used to be this massive business. And we have some of our, our best movies, our romantic comedies, like when Harry Met Sally is a great fucking movie, right? Like it’s a great script, but like Rob Reiner directed the hell out of that. [00:35:01] Like there are some really great romantic comedies. But now, and you would think like, there, there are some on, on Netflix, but they’re not great. Um, cuz most Netflix movies are not. But it’s like everything went to the fucking Hallmark channel, which I’m sorry. I know my, like my dad’s real into the Hallmark channel, which weird, but cuz he’s my dad. [00:35:21] My dad, I swear to God. Like he has, so he has some slight segue. He has some, like, my dad is a very masculine, heterosexual man. And, and I, and I say that because when I describe some of his idiosyncrasies, it will not sound that way. But my dad is like a man’s man, like nobody would ever doubt anything about. [00:35:39] And, and it’s not even like, he’s like homophobic, but it’s just like he puts out, he’s like, just that energy comes across masculine. But he loves fucking romantic comedies and shit, like the Hallmark Channel. And when I was growing up, he had not won, but both Ali Mcil soundtracks and he’d play them in the car and I’d be like, what the fuck? [00:36:00] Like, he’s, he’s, he’s into like, Celine Dion and, and, and Elvis and j. Anyways, it’s very, some my dad’s music case is very, very gay, but like stereotypically gay, but like, Other than the Hallmark channel, which has made massive amounts of money. Um, but those aren’t like the same thing as like a good old fashioned romcom. [00:36:20] You know what I [00:36:20] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of David Wayne, um, did you guys ever see they came together? [00:36:26] Christina: yes. [00:36:27] Because you recommended It [00:36:28] Brett: it was his lampooning of romantic comedies starring, um, Amy Polar and Paul Rudd, [00:36:35] Jeffrey: Oh right. [00:36:37] Brett: it was, for me, to me it was hilarious. [00:36:40] Christina: I thought it was funny. I remember, I remember watching because of you. [00:36:42] Brett: like every single trope that you find in a romantic comedy, they found a way to lampoon and, and it was for someone who kind of hates romantic comedies, even though they kinda, like, love actually is a fucking great movie. [00:36:57] I’m not gonna [00:36:57] Christina: great movie. Absolutely. All, well, all, all, all of the, uh, studio Canal, like all of those, um, like all of those are [00:37:04] Brett: I’m in, I’m in. But like, they came together just like lampooned it in a way that I found very appealing. Um, and that was 2014. And I can’t remember seeing a romantic comedy since 2014 that I’ve thought, oh, that despite the genre, that’s actually a really good movie. I don’t, I don’t think there’ve been one. [00:37:25] Christina: No, I, I, I’m looking right now, it’s, I’m looking on the Wikipedia thing cuz it’s just easier to browse this of like, list of romantic comedies and I’m looking at the list and, uh, okay. Crazy Rich Asians, they classify that as a [00:37:36] romantic comedy. That was great. That was a great fucking movie. Um, and, um, uh, uh, love Simon. [00:37:44] Um, that was really sweet. But that’s more of a coming to beige film I [00:37:47] Brett: saw that, I don’t [00:37:48] Christina: Um, it’s, it’s like the first gay kind of like, teen coming of age, like, like romantic comedy kind of thing. So it’s, it’s great in that respect, in that it’s like, you know, a gay teenager and it’s not treated as like, you know, this big like, oh, like, like rot thing. [00:38:04] It’s like, it’s like a romance. It’s, it’s great. Um, to all the boys I love, before this was a Netflix film, but it was, that was good. Uh, the first one was I thought that the other ones weren’t, but that was good. That was okay. Right. But also we might’ve given it a little bit over thing. Mama m here we go again. [00:38:21] Surprisingly, surprisingly, I mean, I like the first one m uh, way more than it, cuz it was way better than it had any Right to be the, the, the sequel wasn’t awful. I didn’t love it the same way, but, but it [00:38:31] wasn’t awful. But, but you’re right. [00:38:33] Brett: love it. [00:38:34] Christina: Um, but did you like the first one cuz the first one. [00:38:36] Brett: I can’t remember the first one. [00:38:38] Christina: Okay. Uh, the first one, you know, just, you don’t expect Meryl Streep to be just like all in on this stuff, which is, [00:38:43] it’s just, it’s just delightful. [00:38:45] You just don’t expect it. Um, but no, but I’m looking, you’re right. Like, I’m looking at this stuff and, and it’s, [00:38:51] it’s, it’s a massive [00:38:52] Brett: love actually [00:38:54] Christina: No, no, we haven’t had that sort of [00:38:56] Brett: even nodding hill. Like it [00:38:58] Christina: I mean, all those about a boy, like, which is my personal favorite of, of, [00:39:01] um, of those about a boy is a great film. [00:39:04] Like, I still watch that. I still want his apartment from that, but No, you’re right. Like, we, like, since, I guess like, I guess probably the, the Kate Hudson heyday of like the mid two thousands. We haven’t really had, the proposal was probably the last really, really big one we had. That was with, uh, that was Sandra Bullock’s comeback with a, with, um, um, uh, what’s his face? [00:39:25] Uh, uh, Ryan Reynolds. Um, [00:39:28] Brett: I do love Ryan Ram. [00:39:30] Christina: the, the proposal is fucking great. It’s, it’s a really funny movie, but, um, Yeah, that was 2009 and I’m looking now. Yeah. I, it’s, it’s been, um, God, yeah, it, it’s, we’ve had this dearth and it’s sad because I think it’s probably because, uh, big movies aren’t made anymore. I mean, not big movies, but small movies aren’t made anymore. [00:39:51] It’s all just, you know, massive things. [00:39:53] Brett: here’s the thing is Deadpool was a romantic comedy. [00:39:57] Christina: true. [00:39:58] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. [00:39:58] Brett: so like, that’s what, that’s what Ellen and I watched on Valentine’s Day. I got her a Valentine’s Day card from Love Pop. That was a pop-up Deadpool, uh, with the thought bubble that says, love hurts, but you’re worth it. Um, like to me like that is like Marvel versus romantic comedy. [00:40:17] Like that’s kind of where it has gone. Like the superhero version of a rom-com. Um, the kind of writing that you saw in the, in the mid two thousands just doesn’t seem to be, it’s not that people can’t do it anymore, it’s kind of people have moved on. [00:40:35] Christina: Yeah. [00:40:35] Brett: not that no good movies are coming up. There are a lot of good movies. [00:40:39] Uh, people have just moved on from that witty, witty, [00:40:43] Christina: is which. And, and the reason I think is because it’s really hard to get like a 20 million movie made. And, um, and, and, and that’s kind of the sweet spot for those budgets, right? Like, it’s really hard to get a 20 million movie made. It’s easy to get a 200 million movie made. It’s easy to get a 2 million movie made, but it’s hard to get like a 20 or 40 million movie made. [00:41:02] And, and that’s kind of what you need for those things. Um, but, but it’s a shame because on paper you could see that Ashton and Reese would be cute together. Like he’s charming, you know, like he’s, he, he’s, he’s charismatic and she’s got chemistry with anybody. But, but it, it sucks that, um, that like, that’s not what this was. [00:41:27] Um, Barbie, which the Greta Gwi film, which I cannot wait for, which will be out in July, that is classified as a romantic comedy. Um, and that’s gonna be of course, with, uh, um, uh, Ryan Gosling and, um, um, uh, what’s her face? Um, uh, Margot, um, Robbie, um, and the, the trailer for that looks bananas. And I, when they first started working on the Barbie movie, and they, it’s gone through so many different turnarounds, like it seemed awful. [00:41:59] But then when Greta Gerwig signed on and then when we started seeing the set photos, I was like, okay, this, this might actually be really irreverent and good. Jeff, are you with us [00:42:10] Jeffrey: I’m gonna paint a picture for you. Um, you know how astronauts when they’re gonna load into their rockets or space shuttle and they’re, they’re, they’re in these pressurized suits. They got their own piss and shit in there with ’em. They’re locked into their seats and they’re facing the skies. So there’s all this weight acting against them, and they sit there for hours and they don’t know how much longer they have to live. [00:42:34] And if they’ve made the right decision, like, that’s how I feel whenever I’m watching a rom-com And like, I’m not an asshole about it. Like I cried at the notebook, which I realize is just a rom. Um, but for some reason I cannot though everyone around me has a general love for the cannon. Like, I can’t do it, and I’m not being a snob. [00:42:57] I just, I feel like I’m suffocating. It’s probably probably from my [00:43:00] Brett: failure to launch. [00:43:02] Jeffrey: failure to [00:43:03] Christina: to launch. Amazing. Amazing. Um, but, okay, but did you like when Harry met Sally, or does that one also like, do even like the Meg Ryan ones [00:43:13] Jeffrey: So I have that in my, I have that that lives somewhere in my body because it was like cultural osmosis and I know I saw it and I’m pretty sure I liked it. I don’t think poorly of it. Of course, everyone thinks of like the orgasm at the cafe scene, right. But like, [00:43:28] Brett: the most meed, the most meed scene [00:43:31] Jeffrey: And that is all I can call up. Um, but I, I do remember liking that and I agree. [00:43:36] I mean, I can definitely notice the cultural shift and like quality and, and even cadence and like whatever. Right. I caught the last like 20 minutes of the George Clooney, Julia Roberts, uh, number, [00:43:48] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:43:49] Jeffrey: oh. And I could watch Clone, I could watch Clooney in anything [00:43:55] Christina: Same. I watched solos in the theater. [00:44:01] Jeffrey: although nothing beats What movie was it? Where the, it’s a bank robbery in the beginning and it’s, I think it’s him and Jennifer. No, [00:44:07] Christina: no, no, no, no. Out of, no Out of Sight. Out [00:44:09] Jeffrey: sight and they, they, they run out of the bank after robbing it and they’re doing the thing where he’s trying to auto pop the locks. [00:44:16] She opens the door too fast or he opens the door too fast. Like, I was like, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. [00:44:22] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And then they’re in the car together and they had that sexual chemistry, that movie, which is not a romcom, that is, that is like a straight up, like noir, like thriller type thing. Like that [00:44:30] Jeffrey: to watch that again. That was a [00:44:31] Christina: is, that is honestly like one of my, like, that is in my top 10 list. And, and that, [00:44:37] Jeffrey: that opening scene in the show notes. [00:44:39] Christina: yeah. I, that, that, that, that is, that is my top 10 list. [00:44:42] And, and that is a film that was introduced to me by the first guy that ever broke my heart. And so it is hard. It was like, it was like, it’s hard for me. Like this is how much, how good that movie is, is that even he couldn’t ruin out of sight. [00:44:54] Brett: Oh, [00:44:54] Christina: I was like, you know [00:44:55] Jeffrey: Right, [00:44:56] Christina: was like, I was like, I was like, you’re a piece of shit. [00:44:58] And, and, and, and you told me you loved me so you could fuck me. And, and you still could not ruin this movie for me. [00:45:08] Jeffrey: Yeah. Brutal. I’m just remembering as George Clooney is like smiling face to the bank teller as he’s robbing the, and he just says very, very gently, like, [00:45:17] Christina: Oh, we’re robbing [00:45:18] Jeffrey: this is your first robbery, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. [00:45:20] Christina: And then, and then he leaves and and she’s like, have a great day. You too. She like realizes kind of like at what she said, cuz he was just so polite. He just walked in and just, just walked in and just, you know, walked out with the money. And, uh, yeah. [00:45:32] Jeffrey: I ever told the story of being arrested for shoplifting in North Dakota? [00:45:37] Brett: I have heard this story. I can’t [00:45:39] Jeffrey: Maybe I’ve [00:45:39] told it. [00:45:40] Brett: on the podcast. [00:45:41] Christina: I don’t, I don’t know, [00:45:42] Jeffrey: It ends like that with it end . Oh, uh, . I do remember, I’ve told on the podcast before, actually, I think I told it one time when you were gone, Christina, but ultimately what happens is that I’m, I’m with this, um, secret shopper who caught me shoplifting, and he’s called the police. [00:45:58] And I’m in a backroom waiting for the police officer room. I had, I had shoplifted some cheese in a roll of 35 millimeter film. And, um, I was on tour with my band. There’s just no, there’s no rules when you’re on tour . And, uh, and, and he and I were talking, I was asking him like, what, this is a crazy job you have. [00:46:14] Like, what’s the craziest thing you caught someone stealing? You know, and he’s like, well, you know, I’ve sometimes girls are stealing tampons or condoms. And I was like, oh, that’s brutal. Why would, how do you feel about catching people doing that? Like, , that seems like it’d be hard for me. He’s like, no, I don’t like it. [00:46:29] I don’t like it. Anyway, just before the police officer, uh, rolled in, he’s like, you know, I’m sorry. I have to do this. I really like you, . I was like, I was like, oh, thanks man. I, I don’t know. I haven’t made an opinion about you. Cause I think what you do is evil, but like . Anyway, [00:46:46] Christina: That’s hysterical. [00:46:48] Jeffrey: it’s a long story, but that’s the part that the Clooney thing reminded me of. [00:46:51] Christina: he, he, he’s like, he like, did not wanna do it. He [00:46:54] Jeffrey: Yeah, he’s off. I can take it back. [00:46:56] Brett: in what movie? In what movie was George Clooney? Playing an actor playing a Roman centurion. [00:47:04] Christina: oh. Um, yes. [00:47:08] Jeffrey: I just started watching that for the first time a week ago. That’s [00:47:11] Brett: Like I love that George Cloy takes some really shitty parts in, in mediocre movies, [00:47:16] Jeffrey: I mean, it is a Cohen Brothers movie. Yeah. [00:47:19] Christina: so well. He, he, he’s, he’s like the consummate. He’s just great at anything he does. And also, how else are you gonna pay for that villa? In, uh, in, in, in, in Paris or in Italy or wherever the hell he lives [00:47:30] Brett: kind of like Brad Pitt doing 12 Monkeys. [00:47:33] Jeffrey: any [00:47:34] Brett: mean, like, not like today’s Brad Pitt, like bullet train sucked. Um, and Brad Pitt took that part and, and he pulled it off. But like 12 Monkeys, this is coming out of like Legends of the Fall, right? Like this is Brad Pitt is just [00:47:47] Christina: He’s like, [00:47:48] hot [00:47:49] Brett: yeah. And [00:47:50] Christina: interview with the vampire, like, he’s like the biggest like man in the, yeah. [00:47:54] Brett: And then he does 12 Monkeys where he is just this fucking insane person. Before the Fight Club days, [00:48:00] Christina: Right before he got cut. It led up to Fight Club for sure. But it was like, but it was this weird thing. Cause you’re like, wait a minute. You were always kind of this, you know, more heroic kind of guy. Dreamboat. Totally. Right. Like we all like fell in love with him, like [00:48:12] girls my [00:48:13] Brett: like I hated him like [00:48:15] Christina: yeah, I know you did because you were a guy. [00:48:17] Brett: was not cool to like the Dreamboat actor. It was cool. It was cooler to hate them. [00:48:21] Christina: I, I, I was, [00:48:22] Brett: came out and I was like, oh shit. [00:48:25] Christina: I was 12 years old, so my perspective, I didn’t care about any of that. I was just like, this is the most beautiful man, and this makes me feel things in my other regions, you know? Um, like he, he’s very attractive. Like, that, that was my whole, you know, thing. I, I didn’t care about the coolness of it all, but it was, it was funny to see the, um, the evolution of like, men who hated Brad Pitt to then fight Club was the turning point where all of a sudden they were like, goddammit, all right, fine, fine. [00:48:54] We’ll, we’ll accept. [00:48:55] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. [00:48:56] Brett: He is one of us after all. All right, [00:48:58] Christina: Right. [00:48:59] Jeffrey: He can come through. Grapptitude [00:49:00] Brett: should we, uh, should we try some gratitude? [00:49:03] Christina: Let’s definitely do some gratitude. [00:49:05] Brett: I can cert, I, I know what to do. Um, there is a, i, i, newish, I guess, uh, terminal app called Kitty. Um, I discovered this [00:49:18] Christina: oh, this, this, this is the Linux one, right? Or it was originally written for Linux. [00:49:21] Brett: yeah, it’s cross-platform now. Um, it, it uses a, uh, a, a, the default color is a theme called cappuccino, um, which is a goddamn sexy color scheme. [00:49:39] Like I’ve been using the Nord color scheme in, in terminal for quite a while. Uh, but then this, this, uh, syntax coloring kind of blew my mind. It was, it’s, I mean, there’s generally like 16 colors to work with, right? And, and your, your palette is pretty limited. And so it’s been a long time since a theme has actually looked, looked to me like it was better than what I was used to. [00:50:11] Um, so this, this was a theme like that. And then I found out that it came from this terminal called Kitty, which I admit I have not tried yet. Uh, but I [00:50:22] Christina: it’s okay. It’s okay. [00:50:24] Brett: okay, I watched like an 18 minute video on all of its capabilities today. And it has some things like, uh, you can, with a keyboard shortcut, load the output from the last command into your pager. [00:50:40] Uh, you hit command shift or control shift G and you, you know, pages long output from your last, like build command loads up in a pager and you can navigate it with. Keyboard shortcuts that you’re used to, and little things like that are like, I wish I term would incorporate something like that. Um, like I term, you can hit command, shift a to select all of the content from the last output, uh, which you can then pipe into a pager, but just a single keyboard shortcut for that kind of thing. [00:51:12] And the script ability of kitty looks great. [00:51:15] Christina: It is, it’s, uh, the, uh, the guy who makes it, uh, uh, COVID Goyle. He’s the guy who does Collibra, which is, which is not a great [00:51:24] looking app. [00:51:24] Brett: no, [00:51:25] Christina: it’s. [00:51:25] basically the only one. It’s not, it’s a pretty ugly app. Uh, but, but it’s very, very functional. Um, which was kind of my, I haven’t, I haven’t seen the theme you’re talking about, and so the theme, um, might change my mind, but as I recall, last time I used Kitty, that was sort of my same takeaway, was that it was very performant because that is one of the big things that was built on was to be very, very performant. [00:51:46] Um, but that it’s not like I term is still has like a level of polish, but [00:51:52] Brett: I’m dropping a link to Pacino Ka Capuchin, I guess it’s c a t p P u c c I N. [00:52:00] Jeffrey: the. [00:52:00] Christina: Okay. [00:52:01] Brett: that link is [00:52:03] Christina: Oh yeah, Kain. Okay. There we go. Yeah. [00:52:05] Brett: Kain. Um, yeah, it is, it, it just looks so good. I love [00:52:11] Christina: Yeah. So I love that. And, and it looks like that it works with that theme that you, you dropped. Thank you for that. Um, works with Alacrity, which is another, um, good terminal app. Um, if you’re talking about things that are, are like, that one’s built on rust, I think alacrity, [00:52:25] Brett: Oh, haven’t tried that one either. [00:52:26] Christina: which is, uh, a, um, uh, like, I think it’s a, it’s a rush driven, uh, rewrite of the terminal again for speed. [00:52:34] But, but, but [00:52:35] Brett: there are so [00:52:36] Christina: a lot. [00:52:37] Brett: that I just haven’t tried. Like I’m so, I’m so used to I term, every time I try, like Warp is a cool terminal, does a lot of cool stuff. Um, but I just haven’t, I’ve never been able to break the I term habit. [00:52:51] Christina: Yeah, I’m, I’m in a similar situation, um, but because I’ve used more cross-platform tools than you have, um, uh, I, um, I’ve, I’ve played around with more of these things. Um, I will say like, if you don’t have I term like I do, I, and I think Kitty, like, I think that the, uh, I’m not taking anything away from like the technical achievements. [00:53:09] It is a very, very performant, um, terminal. And that is something that I term can suffer with, especially if you have like a really big like Z shell profile, which, you know, whatever, like there, there are problems with, uh, with all the extensions and whatnot. Anyway, but, but, [00:53:25] if, [00:53:25] Brett: it, lags a bit. If you’re not using an async prompt in Phish, uh, I term can lag a bit. Just doing a regular cd. [00:53:34] Christina: It totally can. And, and so depending on what you’re doing, some of these things, alacrity and, and, and kitty, um, are both really, really good with that. Hyper is one that people really like, but, but hyper is electron and I don’t have anything against electron apps, but for a terminal that is not go, I think that when they’re well made, I don’t have a problem with it, [00:53:52] Brett: Yeah. Like I, I, one password electron. One password, no problem. I have not had a single problem with it, [00:53:58] Christina: vs. Code. Great. Right. [00:54:00] Brett: honestly, the reason I can’t switch to VS code is that it is electron and, and not because it’s electron, but because the fact that it’s electron causes certain quirks for me [00:54:11] Christina: For you, right? Because you’re very right. But, but you’ve got very specific edge cases, which, which makes sense, right? But I’m just saying from a performance standpoint, like I don’t have a problem with Electron if it’s done well. Um, and, and nothing against the hyper folks, but like that was designed like, because they think it looks pretty and I’m just like, hmm, [00:54:29] no. [00:54:29] Whereas Alacrity and Kitty don’t have, like, they take the opposite approach. They’re like, how can we get as performant as possible versus [00:54:37] Brett: Kitty, like it’s big. In the tagline, it talks about being offloading all of its processing to the gpu, uh, which is uncommon for a terminal app. [00:54:48] Christina: I mean it’s, it’s more common now, um, like a i term added support for Windows Terminal does it? But, but historically that has not been what you’ve done. Cuz why would you? Right? Like the whole point of a terminal is it’s supposed to be able to run headless anywhere. And, and, and you wouldn’t, you know, if you’re on a server box, you, you wouldn’t want necessarily if you’re, you know, running the terminal locally and not remotely, um, you, you wouldn’t necessarily wanna be, um, dependent on that. [00:55:12] But in modern workflows it makes a lot more sense. Yeah, [00:55:17] Jeffrey: Right, [00:55:18] Brett: All right. So that’s my, that’s my, uh, that’s my, my gratitude for the week. [00:55:23] Christina: I’m, I’m gonna try out this, um, this theme. Um, cuz the theme actually, yeah, this looks good and it’s got like different colors cuz what is the one that I used? Um, let me open up my, I term [00:55:36] Brett: By the way, this theme is available for literally every [00:55:40] Christina: Yes, I [00:55:40] w. [00:55:41] Brett: a theme. [00:55:42] Christina: Yeah, no, I looked at that and I was like, that’s fantastic. [00:55:44] Um, so my terminal is, this is the only thing I hate about my term is that, um, it’s hard to find. My preset is snazzy and uh, I will find it and I will link to it, um, snazzy term, um, terminal theme. And because it’s in my GitHub stars, I’m sure. Um, and yeah, I really like that. But I’m gonna look at, um, this, uh, Capuchin cuz I like that. [00:56:11] Um, do you have any picks, uh, Jeff to go for? [00:56:16] Jeffrey: Um, last time I had a pick, it was the read wise reader, which is, which I’m, I have not been able to, it does not, it has not replaced instant paper for me yet, though I think it will one day. It’s just, there are just small little bits that are obstacles to my feeling like I can really live in it, but it has been amazing. [00:56:35] But anyway, I’ve been a read wise user for much longer. And, um, one thing I’ve been using a lot, this. Just to go over old, um, highlights in my various, like in Insta Paper and Apple Books and Kindle, whatever is, is read wise is just like their service of importing highlights basically. So like I highlight a lot, but sometimes I’m like, to what end [00:56:57] Like, why, why am I highlighting exactly. I don’t know. Um, but because I can import so many highlights and read wise and then export it as a markdown file, which is really what I’m, what I’m kind of repping here is that service. Um, it’s, it’s just, it makes me a more engaged reader and it, and it makes me think differently about, about how I highlight whatever else. [00:57:18] And the cool thing is you can actually create a custom format for your exports. Um, and so you can make your marked on files look like whatever you want them to look like. Uh, and you can also, it, it differentiates. So like if you’re downloading it again, it’ll, it’ll give you the option of just downloading new highlights to that file or whatever. [00:57:37] And so anyway, I’ve been in kind of like a creative mode and wanting to kinda look back at things I’ve, I’ve, uh, I’ve marked and highlighted and, and quotes that I liked or whatever to see if they can kind of fit into what I’m writing and, and read Wise has just been amazing for that. And you can import just from a ton of different sources. [00:57:55] I just happen to use like Kindle, Insta Paper, apple Books, and the Read Wise reader. Um, but you can also like, you know, import Jason files, uh, that kind of stuff. So anyway, read wise again, uh, they just continue to be a really like, regular part of my life. [00:58:12] Brett: Nice. [00:58:13] Christina: I love it. I love it. Yeah. No, I, I started using it, um, after, uh, their, um, uh, their other service. Um, I heard about that cause I was like, I think this could be like, you like my Insta paper replacement because I’ve been an Insta paper. I still subscribe to Insta Paper and I don’t really know why at this point because I don’t have any personal connection to anybody involved in it. [00:58:31] And I don’t even know who’s involved and if it’s even being really maintained and, you know, um, and I’ve never been a pocket person. I know that there were [00:58:37] Jeffrey: Me neither. I can’t do it. [00:58:39] Christina: but I was like at, I remember at, at, at, at a gizmoto when, um, when Insta Paper was, was sold or something like that happened and people were like, oh, just use Pocket. [00:58:46] And, and I didn’t even have to say anything. One of my, uh, bosses, Alex, he was like, he was like, well, we’re an Insta Paper family. I was like, yes, yes we are. So I always [00:58:56] Brett: you guys, did you ever [00:58:57] Christina: when, when, when I think of that. [00:58:59] Brett: did you ever see the Safari plugin I made for Insa paper? Way back in the early two thousands? [00:59:04] Jeffrey: What did it do? [00:59:05] Brett: It, it, like, first it reformatted it, so it looked a little more modern than it did at the time, and then it added keyboard shortcuts for just about everything that it could do. [00:59:17] Christina: I [00:59:17] remember that. [00:59:18] Brett: I got really into hacking that for a little while, and then it, and then Safari came out with like the actual plugin architecture. [00:59:25] Um, and I never updated it for that, so it kind of died. It was fun. [00:59:31] Christina: Okay. So mine, and I think we’ve already talked about this one, and I apologize. I’m, and I’ve, I’ve taken this as an action item, uh, for myself. I’ve talked about it before, but I’ve actually literally now taken this as an action item, which means it will get done. Because I’m putting in on like my, my work stuff to do to actually create a, um, repository for us so that we can have a list of all these things and a website for all of you to go to. [00:59:54] Um, I think we’ve talked about this before, but I’m gonna mention it again because, uh, I take so many f I take so many goddamn screenshots. Like no matter what I do in my life, I can’t ever get away from the fact that I take so many fucking [01:00:08] Jeffrey: Yeah. [01:00:09] Christina: and clean Shot X Really [01:00:11] Brett: deserves to be repeated as [01:00:12] Christina: It [01:00:13] Jeffrey: I was hoping that’s what you were gonna say. [01:00:15] Christina: it does. [01:00:15] I mean, the thing is, I’ve used every screenshot tool and I still like, um, drop share. Uh, and, and I, I, I still appreciate like what, what they do. Um, I used to be, what was it called? It was all, uh, uh, cloud, uh, No, it was before dropper. It was, uh, it was like cloud. It is cld LY was was the short U url, but you could have a customized one too. [01:00:40] And I paid for them. Um, and I paid for them for a long time. Um, and then they kept raising their prices and then were really like a agro about trying to get me different, like to, you know, like, um, [01:00:57] Brett: I still pay for [01:00:58] Christina: accounts and stuff. Um, and, uh, I stopped paying for, for those things. I did pay, like I bought a drop share license before it was part of setup. [01:01:06] But, uh, both drop share and um, um, a cloud shot XR and setup, and the setup version. Um, this is also a free plug for setup. Uh, gives you access to the, um, hosted version, which includes custom domain support, which this was one of my favorite feelings of, of CloudShare, maybe that’s what it was called. [01:01:25] CloudShare, uh, was that, You could, like I had a short U URL that I used and I could automatically upload my, you know, screenshots to that, have my short U url, but automatically go, I had like a keyboard shortcut automatically, you know, go to my clipboard, I could upload zip files and other things. It was great. [01:01:44] Drop share is a, is a really good kind of drop in replacement for that. But cloud shot in terms of both creating videos and screenshots. Clean shot, sorry, clean shot X, sorry. Wanna be cleared? Clean shot X, um, for creating screenshots, uh, of all types. Matted with stuff behind them, doing annotations, sketch style videos. [01:02:03] Scrolling. [01:02:04] Brett: off the [01:02:05] Jeffrey: just the text. [01:02:06] Christina: Yes. Capturing just like is, it’s just such a good app that I, it’s one of those things. Um, I, I still have some of the actual screenshot tools mapped to some of my shortcuts, but for some of the other ones I’ve just full on mapped it to, um, cloud Shot X [01:02:26] Brett: why do anything else? It’s so [01:02:28] Christina: Yeah, the only reason I don’t have a command shift for uh, uh, tied to it is because I don’t always want to have a background on it. [01:02:38] And there’s not a granular way for me with just like a hot key to say, add, uh, a desktop background or have [01:02:44] this to [01:02:44] Brett: should make that feature request cuz every time they release an update it adds something. [01:02:50] Christina: I will make that feature [01:02:51] Brett: it adds like a vital feature that I hadn’t even realized I wanted. Every [01:02:55] Christina: Yeah. Cause if I could have that, I [01:02:56] Brett: I’m like, oh shit. Yeah. That’s awesome. [01:02:59] Christina: Yeah. If I had that ability to be able to, like, with a, with a, you know, hot key, um, toggle on or off the padding because some, the padding is oftentimes really, really great, but I don’t always want that. Um, if I could get out of that, that would be perfect. [01:03:13] So, yeah. Uh, um, uh, clean Shot X is just such a good app, whether you get a setup or, or get it, you know, it’s a one-time purchase. I think it’s just, if you take screenshots or screen capturing it all, You have, you have to [01:03:28] Brett: just as far as an elegant Mac app goes, it is the best app that I have seen in the last few years. Um, just one that does, it’s one thing so well that like you’re just constantly pleased. it can do that. Oh, it can do that. Oh, it does that in a way that’s so much smoother than I would’ve done it if I had written this. [01:03:54] Um, just constantly makes me smile. I love clean shot. [01:03:58] Jeffrey: And the preferences, which I’m going through now for the first time in a while are insane, like how you can customize this. I wanna say the very simple thing, the first thing I loved about Clean Shot, which probably isn’t totally unique. But I hate when I would take a screenshot with the system screenshotter, and then I would be like, the clock is ticking, it’s gonna disappear, and this one will just let ’em stack up. [01:04:20] So if you’re just doing a bunch of ’em, you wanna deal with it later, they’re just stacking up and floating there for you. Beautiful. [01:04:25] Brett: And you can go through and like choose the, so you took an errand screenshot, you just hit the X and it’s gone. You don’t have to delete the file, you don’t have to do [01:04:34] Jeffrey: I take one err screenshot for every actual screenshot. [01:04:37] Brett: Yeah. We all do [01:04:39] Christina: Mm-hmm. [01:04:40] Brett: Nice. All right. Well, [01:04:44] Jeffrey: folks. [01:04:45] Brett: I’m sorry about the extra editing that Jeff had to do before you all got to this perfectly polished point in the podcast. [01:04:54] Jeffrey: Awesome. Good to see y’all. Good to [01:04:56] Christina: good to see you. Good to, good to talk with both of you. [01:04:59] Brett: Yeah. some. [01:05:01] Jeffrey: think. I think you should get some sleep. [01:05:03] Christina: Get some sleep, cooking beer. Get some sleep.

Marcin Wichary, author of Shift Happens, joins Brett and Christina to talk keyboards, the Playdate, and Mastodon. Show Links @mwichary on Mastodon Shift Happens Book goals (2017) About me and my book (2023) Seiko watch keyboard IBM Selectric In the land of Invented Languages Status Board Playdate mcfly Sloth Ivory Christina’s GH Lists: mastodon/playdate Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript The Keyboard Episode [00:00:00] Marcin: You can [00:00:04] Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. Hi. Hi there. I’m Brett Terpstra. I am joined by Christina Warren This week Jeff is out, uh, but we have a special guest to take his place marching. Is it Witchery? [00:00:18] Marcin: And there’s beginnings of [00:00:19] Brett: Wickie Witchery. [00:00:21] Marcin: of course the fonts you can swap. And it’s, you know, my, my kind of mental model was, it’s sort of like the last movie with special effects before CGI where, you know, it’s at dead [00:00:31] Brett: Yeah. We have, I, I work, I work with a very international team, and some people have resorted to spelling their names phonetically for Amer for like American English speakers. And some people have just basically changed their name because that’s the way everybody says it. It, [00:00:48] Marcin: incredibly complicated. So, [00:00:49] Brett: uh, poor Stephan. Everyone calls him Stefan because it’s s t e f a N. [00:00:55] Christina: I see. And which is how I would say it, but it’s stuff and yeah, that’s not so much. [00:00:59] Brett: I do [00:01:00] my best. Like, first thing I ask people is like, how do you say your name? And then I do my best to remember, but a lot of times it throws me. So merchant is, he’s, he has a, a book coming out. It’s a Kickstarter right now, um, about keyboards and the history, like 150 years of the, the evolution and progression of the computer, keyboard and typewriter, keyboards and early input devices. And it is, from what I’ve seen, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating. I’ve only read excerpts that are up on the Kickstarter page around the shift Happens site, uh, if anyone wants to check it out, that’ll be on this show notes. But yeah, we’re excited to talk. We’re, we’re excited to nerd out about keyboards and, and all of the, uh, all of the work that went into that book today. [00:01:47] Marcin: Great. [00:01:48] Brett: how you guys, how, how are you guys, how are you? [00:01:51] Christina: I’m, I’m good. I’m good. I’d love, love to hear from Merchant Martian because it’s been a busy couple of weeks, right? Because, uh, the, the Kickstarter went live what, uh, like, um, [00:02:00] last week or week before last. [00:02:01] Marcin: Yeah, a a a week and a half ago. And, and, uh, it, it’s funny, it’s, it’s went really, it’s gone really well. I, I, I’m really grateful for people’s support because the book is, um, I like the book. I hope a lot of people like the book, but it’s a little bit of a strange book. It’s not like a usual book. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty nerdy. It’s pretty deep, but it’s also very visual. And I think seeing people, um, you know, bucket and we met our goal in 102 hours. Um, it was incredibly validating, but it’s also a strength set of emotions for sure. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, the Kickstarter is kind of like, I mean, it’s going, but it’s, it’s met its goal, but that doesn’t. The book is ready. The book is still half a year away, so it’s sort of like a strange moment of half celebration, which I think you, you don’t get with maybe traditional publishing, but, uh, you sort of inherited the strange sequence of steps. And, you know, it’s always interesting because [00:03:00] like, I think every big creative projects is tricky because even if it goes really well, it’s over in a way. Like it is this sort of, it’s almost like a performance, you know, you bring something out there, people maybe like it, maybe don’t like it at probably a combination of both. And then, then there’s this strange like hollowness, right? There’s this sort of the end of the, the, this stage of performance. And so the Kickstarter was very exciting for a while, and then it started quieting down, which, you know, it would, everything would, and now it’s a little strange because I don’t know how to feel exactly. [00:03:36] Brett: Yeah. Um, I think that’s true of anything that’s, that’s as, that’s as exciting as seeing 500 some thousand dollars come in. Um, there’s , there’s gonna be a, there’s gonna be a hollowness after that excitement is over. Um, Speaking of feeling hollow, you guys wanna do a quick, quick, uh, mental health check in, uh, a mental health corner. [00:03:59] Mental Health Corner [00:03:59] Brett: [00:04:00] Erin has told me she, she’s gonna work on our segue music, uh, but I have failed to get her, uh, my notes, so that’s on me at this point. But just imagine, if you will, some like martini music, uh, 1950s, maybe even zox voice saying Mental health corner. Just picture it. Just picture it. Uh, Christina, do you want to kick us off? [00:04:28] Christina: Yes, mental health corner. Um, my mental health is, is, is pretty good this week. Uh, last week was kind of a mixed bag because I was getting back from vacation and there was the high vacation, which was awesome. And then I was immediately came back from vacation and, um, GitHub announced, um, layoffs and, and so, uh, which is, uh, unfortunately, you know, not, uh, unique for, for the tech industry right now. Um, Microsoft had announced some, a few weeks. Uh, we’d hoped that we would [00:05:00] be immune. We were not. And, and so that’s, that’s hard. Uh, it brings up, as we’ve talked about on the podcast before, like a lot of past feelings about the industry I used to work in and the uncertainty of things. And it’s just, it’s, you know, and then obviously you, uh, you feel worse for all the people who are losing their jobs. Um, in addition to the, the, the uncertainty about your own position and whatnot. And, and even though I, I, I feel, I think, I think we’re okay. Like there are no guarantees and, um, like my mediate concern isn’t like whether or not I’ll have a job because I, I think that I’ll be okay. Uh, even if I were to lose my job, I, I, uh, have, um, confidence that I would be able to find something. Um, and, and at least I have savings, but it’s still hard. So it was sort of like this, uh, you know, like high of, of taking my first real vacation in several years and then, you know, immediately hit with like, The stress of, [00:06:00] um, layoffs and everything that comes along with that. Uh, but this week, um, you know, trying to kind of turn a page and I’ve, I’ve had some really good conversations with people and I’ve done some cool things. Having, uh, marching on, on Rocket earlier this week was honestly a delight. And those sorts of things. Like when I do things that feed me creativity, like creatively, that helps my mental health a lot, even when there are other uncertain things happening. Like if I can do things that I feel fulfilled creatively, and I, I, I felt that this week, um, in a number of ways. That’s really good. So I would say like I’m in a good place, but it’s, uh, it was definitely like if we had recorded last week, that would not have been great. Like, I would not have been in a good place to record last week. [00:06:45] Brett: which is part of why we didn’t record last [00:06:47] Christina: of what we didn’t. I was gonna say, I, I, I, not only do we not record this podcast, but I didn’t record the show that I do on YouTube. And I do have some guilt about that because part of me is like, Suck it up. Your job is to [00:07:00] literally talk into the camera and to get excited and act, and I can do that. Um, even if I was in a really bad place, I could do that. The hard thing was I couldn’t write the script. I was, so, my, my A D H D got really outta control and I was like, I, if somebody else had a script for me, I could show up and suck it up and do it. Right? Like I, I, I, I, I, I have that ability. I know not everybody does. I have that ability, even when things are like awful. Um, I, I’m, I can be bipo. It’s not bipolar. It’s, it’s, honestly, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s a, I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but I can go from like screaming at someone to then immediately like, Hi, and welcome to, you know, like I could do that, that, that turn in two seconds. Um, if I had to, but I couldn’t write the script. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it and, and I couldn’t get it done in time for us to record, and I was just, I had to just tell, like my team, I was just like, I, I can’t do it. You know? Like if, if somebody had something pre-written for me, I could have done it, but I, I just can’t go through the [00:08:00] motions of like getting myself focused enough to actually write what I needed to write and research what I needed to research, you know, that I, I was not unable to do. [00:08:10] Brett: I think knowing you as an ADHD person, if, if enough stress had been put on you. . Um, if enough pressure had been behind, like, you do this or you are fired, or you do this, or we kidnap your mom, like, you could, you could pull it off. [00:08:28] Christina: Oh, totally, [00:08:28] Brett: you could, but Yeah. Given, given the ability to take the out Yeah. I can see for sure why you did that, [00:08:35] Christina: And, and, and that’s what you’re exactly right. Um, I think back about when Mashable had layoffs, and that was like one of the worst experiences of my professional life and will probably remain that because it was just so hard. And the following week I had to fly to California to go to, um, a, a secur, an on background security briefing with Apple. And I booked my flight to the wrong co [00:09:00] to to, to the wrong San Jose. And which I realized right before I boarded a flight to Costa Rica, thankfully I did not get on the plane. Um, and then had to [00:09:08] Brett: I was, I was gonna say, where’s the wrong. [00:09:12] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, the airport codes are similar. Concur messed up. They’re, uh, I’ll take the, the L on some of it, but it’s also, it’s one of my favorite stories because. I did almost go to the wrong Costa R or go to the wrong San Jose, but you’re right. And then that moment where it did feel very much like everything was at stake, where I was like, if you don’t, this is a very important thing you go to, we’ve just laid off 10% of the staff and or more than that 20% of the staff. And, um, the money is, is not great and you’re going on this trip because they’ve approved it and you cannot screw up. So when people were like, oh, you should have just gone to Costa Rica, and I was like, no, , you know, I, I, I I, I transferred like three other cities and had to go on a ridiculous process to finally get there. But I did. But yeah, you’re right. If, if it had been like [00:10:00] enough stress, I could have done it. But, um, fortunately. [00:10:03] Brett: you, sometimes you don’t fuck around and find out. [00:10:06] Christina: Exactly, exactly. So that, that, that’s my update. [00:10:10] Brett: All right. Well, speaking of feeling creatively fulfilled, I am not, and it is killing me. I, I am, I’m writing content for work and it’s not like I have found things I’m excited about. Did you know that you can create a virtual box image and with the click of a button, deploy it as a compute instance on Oracle Cloud? To me, that’s interesting. Uh, you, you, like, you can build your own local Oracle Linux box. and deploy it as a cloud machine and it’ll generate all the same processors and, and memory set up and, um, all of the command line utilities that you’ve installed fastidiously with their, uh, with Oracle Lennox’s package manager and everything, and you can just push it [00:11:00] to the cloud. And like that’s interesting to me that I can get excited about that. I have fun playing with right now. I’m writing a deep dive on like command line parameters for the, like flags for a command line tool because I just needed content to come out this week and I haven’t had the motivation to do any personal coding projects. And I decided my project was going to be, to start watching, um, breaking bad alternating with Malcolm in the middle, uh, just to try to get the Brian Cranston juxtaposition. But it didn’t work out. I ended up going all in on Breaking Bad. So I, I’m on season three because I just don’t have the motivation to do anything else with my time right now. Um, I, uh, it, it was, it was an interesting experiment, uh, seeing Brian Cranston as like the, uh, what would you call his Malcolm in the middle [00:12:00] character, befuddled, um, quirky, uh, , the, the comedic dad, uh, versus the, uh, breaking bad. Brian Cranston was quite a, it was a trip. But anyway, I, I need, I, I, I need mania. Uh, I mean, we know what happens if I’m stable for too long and I have been stable and, um, like I’m, my brain is starting to think. . What if I accidentally took two of my A D H D meds today? Or what if I made myself stay up all night and just kind of push that line of like, uh, being okay versus being manic and just try to trigger a manic episode. And that, like, I talk myself out of it every time because I know what that leads to as well. Um, [00:12:51] Christina: right? [00:12:51] Brett: which is to say, I, I know that that leads to being very tired and, and unproductive. Like my mania doesn’t get very dangerous. Like, I don’t, [00:13:00] I don’t gamble. I don’t have crazy sex. I don’t hurt anybody. Um, I, I write code, but it also means not sleeping and being very unhealthy. And, anyway, anyway, that’s me. So we saved marching for last. Uh, you can choose, you can choose to partake in the mental health corner. Uh, if there’s anything you wanna share. Um, but you can also pass. [00:13:26] Marcin: Um, I, I wanna share, I, I don’t know how much of this is, uh, the listeners don’t know me, so the context might be missing and, but I already started a little bit about, you know, how, um, sort of getting your, this big personal project that was like the, the book has become so big that it almost became like a partner. Like, like, like, like something that was accompanying my life for many years. And it still is with its own moods and its own sort of, you know, um, uh, conventions and, [00:14:00] and, and, and, and so like, at, at, at no point, uh, I know whether the book is gonna be kind to me today or is it gonna be, you know, cruel and whatnot. So, uh, so it’s definitely become like this strange big personal project. And in addition to the fact that I’ve in, in many numerous ways tried to do the book, the my my Way, you know, kind of like put something out there that’s really just like me in a book form. And it obviously has challenges whenever somebody then pokes at the book when it’s out there, or even the website or a Kickstarter and say, I don’t like it, or, or I don’t know about that. Luckily enough people seem to be liking it, and actually it’s been incredibly. Wonderful and, and, and warm for me to see all of my friends from my prior lives and careers and just nooks and crannies of life saying like, oh, finally I was waiting. I was like, I, you know, we haven’t talked in 10 years, but I’m glad you’re here. But there were also moments, [00:15:00] uh, honestly, uh, where I was, um, frustrated because I think maybe for the first time in my life, I’m a white guy, so my Twitter life is very easy in general. But I think this was the first time where I got angry at people mansplaining things to me about keyboards, where I was like, Hey, I j i, I just wrote a book about this. think I kind of know a lot , so you don’t have to tell me things. I, and, and, and it’s this, and I kind of started understanding how, how complicated that is, because some of their feedback was great. And I don’t wanna say like, don’t tell me anything about anything. I, I want feedback. I’m a designer in my real life and feedback is currency. Like I want to be good. But there’s some moments which is like, I kind of wanna stop you right here because this is just annoying to me. So, [00:15:46] Brett: Do you know who I am? [00:15:48] Marcin: yeah, exactly. . So, uh, so, so that was really, I’m gonna say interesting, mostly all positive. [00:16:00] Um, there are people helping me out there, people checking in with me, which is really great. But there definitely was heightened emotions. And Christina, you mentioned tech industry. I’m also part of tech industry in my real life, but I didn’t have as much time in the last weeks to think about it because the, the book. Um, took such a big part of my life and sort of like getting it out there and, and having a Kickstarter for your project is its own project It’s sort of like the secondary sort of sidecar project a as I’m learning. Um, and the last thing I wanted to mention, I went to my first boxing class in my life and that was fun. And it turns out I like punching things, so I don’t know what it says about me. [00:16:39] Christina: That’s great. [00:16:40] Marcin: there was, there was a fun discovery. [00:16:42] Brett: did you also get punched? [00:16:45] Marcin: No, I was, I was put next to a punching bag as, as a, as a, as a rookie, [00:16:49] Brett: I was just curious because that, that seems like the other half of boxing is getting punched, [00:16:54] Marcin: No, I think, I [00:16:55] Brett: have to like both. [00:16:57] Marcin: yeah, I think that’s gonna come next. Uh, we’ll see, [00:17:00] we’ll see how it goes. But the first one was, [00:17:01] Brett: gonna go back. You’re gonna keep [00:17:03] Marcin: I’m going back. Yeah. [00:17:04] The Keyboard Corner [00:17:04] Brett: All right. right. Um, so, uh, now onto the keyboard corner, shall we, um, we, we were talking before the show, before Christina got here, um, about how you are not actually like a mechanical keyboard nerd in the way that, uh, kind of the community exists, uh, today. Uh, people that are very worried about walk and sizzle and, and soldering and, uh, and lubricating their switches and like, that’s not necessarily, uh, you, uh, so what, what is your general, what is your interest in keyboards? [00:17:48] Marcin: Yeah, I, I, I, I think numerous by, by this point, uh, and I have a mechanical keyboard. Um, I, I think I just needs to be obsessed. About [00:18:00] keyboards in general, including their history and the sort of societal aspects and, and the software and all of that stuff. So, uh, so I, I, I think partly, you know, my role is to be an observer, but I think originally, so I’m, I’m, I’m a UX designer with, with a big, sort of serving of an engineer on the side. And so I think originally the keyboards were just really interesting because they’re, you know, they’re the interface between people and computers, um, and. and I started being curious like who designed them. Um, and it turns out really nobody . My book is actually called Shift Happens. It’s kind of a joke, but it really is actually meaningful to me in the sense that keyboards just sort of happened. It was like 150 years of them happening over and over again, and there was nobody in charge. And there’s this, this strange evolution of things and the fact that, [00:19:00] um, if you look at the keyboard from 150 years ago, the first query keyboard, and you look at the keyboard you have under your fingertips right now, they’re both almost the same. Which is really strange. It’s still query. You could, you know, grab the person who invented it and put, sit them in front of your computer today. They, they would know what to do. But of course, they’re also incredibly different. They’re attached to very different devices. They’re serve different purposes. We, we spent much more time talking with our fingers now than writing, which is not something that happened even 20 years ago. So there was a sort of desire to, or interest for me in that all of the design aspects, like who’s using them, what problems they’re solving, how they evolve as an object, how the technology that was attached to the keyboards changed the nature of keyboards, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Like, like, like, so, so all of this. And I found, um, and there are some books that talk about typewriters. Um, and they’re definitely, you know, a lot of contemporary writing about mechanical keyboards because it’s a [00:20:00] big thing now. But there was nothing that connected all of this. Uh, and I just wanted, for a while, I wanted it to exist and then I decided that I will make that exist. This sort of grand story of how it all happened over the last century and a half. [00:20:17] Brett: So, so you’ve been researching this for like six years, right? [00:20:21] Marcin: Yeah. [00:20:22] Brett: And probably before that as well, but like actually working on the book for, for six years. What is, what is the strangest keyboard you ran into? [00:20:33] Marcin: Oh, my , there are many strange keyboards. I, um, it’s really actually hard to say because on any given week I will give you a different answer. Uh, but. I have this, uh, the, the, the recent strange one. Um, I have this, uh, watch. It’s a, it’s a sec watch from the 1980s, and it has what I think is the smallest keyboard ever keyboard ever made.[00:21:00] Each key is, um, like one millimeter. It’s not even a key. Like you’re not touching it. It’s, it’s more like a, you go left and right and then, and then you, you, you know, it’s an what, what would they call, what they would call an index typewriter? An index keyboard today. You know, like how you type in your Apple TV password or, or your Xbox thing. So, so, but it’s so, it’s comical. It’s so tiny. It’s like the watch is not even that big because eighties watches were, and, and, uh, it’s neither a key, uh, really nor a board in a way, but it is kind of, kind of cute that they tried to do it and it’s really pain to use, but, uh, it’s kind of fun to have like the smallest keyboard. I’ve never, I’ve never heard of a smaller one in my life. So that’s, that’s the most recent strange cure that I learned of. And of course it’s in a [00:21:45] Christina: love that. And, [00:21:47] Brett: a, I had a calculator watch. Sorry, go ahead, Christina. [00:21:51] Christina: no, no, no. That, no, that, that’s, that would also be like a similar thing, a calculator watch. I was just gonna ask like, what, what’s your favorite keyboard personally [00:22:00] from any era? Teletype, typewriter, computer, whatever. [00:22:05] Marcin: um, uh, yeah, I think the one that I was. Maybe, you know, if you count like my amazement, um, as a metric. Uh, so for longest time I’ve heard about electric as being like the ultimate keyboard, right? Like there’s, um, I think people of a certain age say Model M and then people a little bit older say electric and it’s just like over and over again. And it’s really interesting because I’m always suspicious of people like saying like, oh, the, they picked with the electric and then it all went to hell because, you know, like they don’t make them like they used to. It’s generally like scary attitude often and, and maybe there’s some version of gatekeeping. It’s just like the bad nostalgia. So I was just like, whatever, electric, fine. And then I rented one for a week from, from a, from a local typewriter store, which is a funny thing to say. and, uh, [00:23:00] it was actually really amazing. I was, so, first of all, it’s a beautiful object, this electric, like it was beautiful in the 1960s, but it’s still a beautiful object today. And, and then as I typed on it, I actually realized it’s, it’s much, it’s much more like a computer keyboard, but there’s no electronics in it. It’s still electromechanical, but it made it feel so smooth and, and it has the features that you would expect from a computer. Like you can type. You can press two keys at the same time and mechanically through like a very clever system of ball bearings, it would allow you to press two and it would remember the second one. Or if you press enter and the courage still goes to the beginning, you know, it takes a while, you can press another key and it will not lose it. And there’s beginnings of arrow keys there. And of course the fonts you can swap. And it’s, you know, my, my kind of mental model was, it’s sort of like the last movie with special effects before CGI [00:24:00] where, you know, it’s at dead end, but you really appreciate how much effort and, and it’s, it’s, it’s an incredibly complex object inside. It’s really, it’s, I think, 5,000 parts. You could, in the sixties, seventies, eighties, you could have a career of fixing electrics because they were both incredibly popular but also incredibly complicated. So, so you also appreciate this like, really complex object in a way that Of course. Everything we do today in software is probably more complex, but you don’t see it, right? You don’t, you don’t have a sense of how complex things are. And this one you could open up and see like, oh my God, okay, this is not a regular type priority. This is some next level stuff. And, and I think to me, it was just kinda amazing, right? It was maybe like the last impressive type priority you could relate to because, you know, the, the electronic typewriter, the iPhone keyboard, all of the machine learning today, it’s, it’s just there, right? It’s just there in a cloud doing its own thing. Um, and any mechanical keyboard today is actually incredibly [00:25:00] simple, right? It’s, it’s just like the same switch over and over again. So there was something about this like built device and, and it really felt wonderful. And your fingerprints, I was like, okay, I see how people will remember this. I see how people try for it. And the funny thing is that the last thing maybe I wanted to mention, um, and people kind of forget this, the. People love the electric so much by the way, you can blame electric for the caps lock key being in a place it is today, which every programmer hates. Um, programmer lost that battle in the early eighties. There was a literal battle. Um, people who use electric were just like, no, this has to be like electric. So they moved it back. But, uh, people loved it so much that IBM like forever tried to recreate that feeling. So first there were beam springing keyboards. There were the, you know, seventies kind of term, really expensive terminal keyboards. And then there was the model F, which was the cheaper version of a beams springing. And then there was the [00:26:00] Model M, which was a cheaper version of the Model F. So it’s funny because the Model M, which people today say it’s one of the most wonderful keyboards, right? It’s the king of click is the God’s own keyboard. It’s like the fourth water down version of the electric. Uh, which, you know, just tells you how funny, how funny it is, how history works, right? Like, [00:26:21] Brett: Yeah. So do you think it’s a, a feature or a bug that the complexity is hidden now? Um, well, the complexity by and large has moved into the realm of software, like you said, like a mechanical keyboard Today is just, it’s a bunch of switches on a board. Um, and, and most people using a computer have no idea how complex the software they’re using is. But is that, is that good or is that bad? [00:26:52] Marcin: I think it’s, well, you know, it depends if the software is good itself. I think like, you know, if I see a bad, bad web [00:27:00] app, I kind of wanna fix it , and it’s not, it’s not really possible with the exception of maybe, you know, overriding CSS and [00:27:06] Brett: Uhhuh. [00:27:06] Marcin: like that. Um, I, I, I, if it’s go, if it works well, it might be okay. But I think there is something, I think what we lost. To some extent is you can just like pick under the hood of software as easily as maybe you used to. And also, I don’t think we ever figure out how to make software exciting for people who don’t care. Like in a way you can sort of, you know, again, open the hood of your car, well not today, but to 20, 30 years ago and, or, or, you know, or just like get, get a packet of Lego and kind of like appreciate the, the bits and pieces and the whole result. I, uh, I think, you know, view source was the last maybe example of that. And there are, you know, modern version of view source. Of course there’s um, but, but software is, is like, can be so beautiful and not even like well-written software, like software bags can be beautiful and fascinating. [00:28:00] But I, I’m, I’m, I’m still waiting for like, maybe waiting for more like storytellers in that space because I, I think there’s so much more we could do to, to just get people. Excited and understanding. You know, maybe, I just really remember one of the foundational works of art for me was the Soul of the New Machine, the book from I think early eighties. And it was, you know, because [00:28:29] Christina: a great. [00:28:30] Marcin: yeah, it was the book about ostensibly, it’s the same way, uh, like my favorite movie Sneakers is ostensibly about technology, but it’s just really about people and emotions and, and, and the soul of the New Machine. The book was about like, how is it to create a computer and how it is to sort of negotiate with olive’s, feelings of having this sort of creative pursuit, but in this really strange space. And, and I think I’m, I’m, I’m just hoping we see more of those kind of [00:29:00] stories, uh, told, because I think we lost some of that sort of wonder of. [00:29:05] Christina: Yeah. No, I think you’re right. I think you’re exactly right. I, it was funny right before the reason I was late to record this podcast, not that the audience cares, but I’ll, I’ll share anyway, is, I was recording, um, another podcast and I was talking about, um, it’s called The Last Detail. And I was talking about, um, Manita Claires, and was, was, was, cause it’s a podcast where you like focus on like hyper focus on like one particular object. And I kind of. Really follow the script because we were talking less about the specific object, which was interesting and I loved, but, but more about like mini disks themselves. And a lot of that was kind of the personality and kind of the, the weirdness and the like, the care that went into that, which, which we don’t have today, right? Like, like the consideration. And you know, cuz and I, I, I almost wonder if that’s part of the reason why there has been that such a resurgence in, in the keyboard community [00:30:00] is that we’ve all just kind of become bored with the status quo. And there is something about being able to really customize and really be particular about what you’re doing, even if it’s not to, to, to the level of, of like the, the soul of the new machine or like what, what, um, was happening with like the selecta and, and, and, uh, like typewriters. But there is still this thing, which is like, okay, things have kind of become soulless and a way of injecting humanity and personality and, and whimsy into our, our computing is by obsessing over thought and, and key caps and switches and, and, and weight, you know, and, and, and all that stuff. And, and I, I wonder if that’s maybe part of it is that we’re all like seeking that bit of humanity, that that is, felt like it’s been lost a little bit, but which was a core part of why computing exploded to begin with. Because if you hadn’t had that human, human aspect just like, you know, sneakers, [00:31:00] like, I don’t know if it would’ve taken off, right? Because there are so many technological things that don’t have that kind of through line. But you could see it in the early computers. I mean, especially with Apple machines, but even with the I B M PC that you could see the humanity, you could see, you could, it, it was, is kind of a. it. It was like more than just an object, you know? [00:31:24] Marcin: Yeah. [00:31:24] Brett: I, I just gotta interject that like marching brought up, looking under the hood of a car, um, which will like my dad at, in high school, like he. Bought parts from a junkyard and built his own first car. Like you can’t do that now. Like we are separated. We have separate, like a car used to be a thing. Any, anyone with the motivation could take their car apart and see how it works. And like, we’re separated from that now and I do think it removes a certain amount of humanity from the machine. [00:31:57] Christina: I think you’re right.[00:32:00] [00:32:01] Marcin: Yeah, my, my my, it’s funny that you mentioned your dad. Like, uh, my dad’s job, uh, when I was a kid, was perfect for me because he was, uh, an arcade game and pinball repairman. [00:32:13] Brett: Nice. [00:32:14] Marcin: he would be sent all of the arcades and, and you know, I still remember, uh, for people who remember pinballs, like, um, or if you have a pinball nearby, uh, which I think a lot of people do still, you just maybe have to find it, but they’re all of this, they’re modern arcades. Uh, ask them to open it up for you and you know, they can remove the glass and take the whole play field and move it up. And you can see under the play field at all of the solenoids and switches and stuff and light bulbs. And, and to me seeing that was like a revelation because it was, you know, it’s sort of like view sourced for a pinball, but you know, you can like stick your finger there. You actually probably don’t wanna stick your finger there. You stick, stick a pen that. So noise can actually hurt you. But, uh, speaking from experience, but you [00:33:00] know, you can sort of like see how it’s made and you can see like some logic choices that they made or. Cost cutting choices or some, you know, algorithm choices. And, uh, there’s some, the bugging modes in software for all these pinballs from the eighties and, and award and it, and it’s just this wonderful thing where you realize like, oh, even play has to be designed and even play has to be considered. And, and, and even play has to succumb to like boring logic. And how do you sort of creatively use that logic? And so, uh, yeah. I, I think Christina, you are also right that it’s like, I, I think keyboards probably resonate along the same lines. Like you just, just solely, maybe you can open them and you can like grab a KickUp and remove it and grab a switch and remove it or open a switch. This is like multiple layers of discovery there. If you’re interested, you can get us go even deeper and solder it. If you’re interested on a different level, you. Change the software to do some things right? You can, you can be the next vak, you probably also fail, but you’ll , [00:34:00] you’ll have, you’ll have your layout and you can use it and maybe convince a few people to use it as well, or, or do something completely random. Like my, one of the people that, uh, that I interviewed for the book just, you know, made a keyboard with this unique layout made out of wood, uh, because there were no keyboards made out of wood before. Um, and, and, and, and it’s kind of interesting and, and, and you can start very simply as well, right? You can just grab one kick up or, or buy like one extra keyboard and see how it makes you feel, or, or, or, um, I don’t know, just like add one keyboard, ma you know, combination to keyboard mast and, and, and feel just kind of like a little bit more excited about it. [00:34:39] Brett: Oh, are we gonna talk about keyboard maestro? [00:34:41] Christina: We could, I was gonna say you, you spoke, uh, Brett’s language. Because, because that, that’s like. [00:34:47] Brett: Um, speaking of bizarre keyboard layouts though, uh, someone, someone in our discord, and I’ve forgotten who, and I’ve forgotten what it’s called, but there was a keyboard layout that started with t h e, [00:35:00] um, and the keyboard layout was based on like the most common letter combinations when writing in English. And it was like, I took a look at the keyboard. I, I knew that my brain was never going to rock like this entirely different. And I’ve tried Dvorak, like I, I, I, I was, I grew up, I grew up in the eighties. Like I, I typed on Cordy keyboards and it’s home. My brain, I think is ever going to be able to take in as far as touch typing goes without having to like look at the keyboard all the time. Uh, it, the idea of like smarter keyboard layouts, uh, it, it’s kind of fascinating. It’s, it’s like you said, Cordy. Been around for like 150 years and even though it’s not the smartest layout, everyone can agree it’s not the, the most intelligent organization of the Keys. It still has, it is one diamond again. [00:35:55] Marcin: I see. I’m gonna like, I’m always [00:36:00] fascinated by people kind of, um, hating on query because, um, yes, they pro like I would say they could be smarter layouts. Um, but I also wonder, like using VA as an example, right? So August VAK came up with this thing in, I think the thirties, 1930s, 1940s. Which is funny because it seems likeon ago, but it, this was like, 60, 70 years after the keyboard, um, was invented. Right? So, so, so, uh, you know, time, uh, history compresses events, but, you know, so qu has been around for a while and he, he didn’t mean war, right? He, he called qu the primitive torture board. He wrote the whole book was called Typewriting Behavior, saying basically the premise of the book was squarely sucks, , what are you doing here? Right? And he had this whole math and really an amazing set of considerations, uh, for how fingers travel on the keyboard and where the letters should be and how people [00:37:00] make mistakes. And even just like the psychology of typing, like this whole chapter about like laziness of all things. And, and so really strange, an amazing book, and I would recommend reading it for people who are interested. and then he had this layout and kind of nothing happened because I think VAK kind of forgot that like, well, you, you, the quote unquote smartest layout, it only takes you so far. Like you still have to, you still have to, on one hand you have to market it, you have to build it, you have to convince people, you know, you working against motor memory of generations at this point. But then like, I think what he also ignored is that like, What, what if the, what if the premise is wrong? And what if court is actually good or at least good enough? Like what if the fact that it’s been used for 60 years is like not an accident? Like people like to believe that it’s just like this one time where market chose poorly, right? It’s like it’s, we chose VHS against beta [00:38:00] max, right? And which actually also has been debunked. VHS is supposedly actually really good. But, um, but the funny thing is that like even in the seven years that he’s seen keyboards, keyboards change, like we progressively see fewer and fewer people, professional typing. The keyboards become, quote unquote more and more ergonomic every five years. Even if you don’t buy a ergonomic keyboard, a keyboard is just softer on our fingers and better. And, and query was okay. It was actually intentional from, from what we can tell, it wasn’t like an accident. It wasn’t there to slow people down. It was actually very thoughtful. Um, and it’s. And it’s only gotten better because the way we use keyboards and the keyboards themselves gotten better. So in a way, you know, maybe for some people, yes, some people have problems with their shoulders, with their arms, with their, uh, wrists. Um, there’s a lot of people who would benefit from an improvement over like a $10 Dell [00:39:00] quality keyboard. But for vast majority of people, I, I’m gonna say it’s probably good . You don’t have to worry. And particularly even touch typing. I think we’ve seen studies that say like, touch typing maybe kind of overrated too. Like you don’t have to touch type perfectly to be okay. Um, and so that’s kind of interesting. Like I’m actually, I’ve become a fan of quirky through writing this [00:39:22] Brett: Was [00:39:23] Marcin: which I didn’t expect. [00:39:24] Brett: Was there an industry that cemented Cordy as like the keyboard, like in the, in the VHS Beta Wars. It was really the porn industry that, that made VHS win. At the time that Quy kind of became popular. Was there an industry that that made it the forefront? [00:39:45] Marcin: So, so what’s really interesting about, uh, query is that it was the first one, I mean, obviously there were typewriters before the query typewriter, um, but most of them were not mass [00:40:00] produced. Uh, most of them didn’t really go very far. They, you know, they, you couldn’t actually use them well, or they didn’t print well and Kuti just happened to be the first or, or the first big commercial layout. And, and so it, it always faced competition from day one and it always somehow managed to, um, to, to win. And I think the first use cases for query were. Qu actually invented bureaucracy qu and elevators, right? They, they, they invented offices in bureaucracy. So that’s kinda like a funny thing to think about. Uh, but also, uh, you know, I think it was, so it was like early, early typing for offices, but it was also transcribing Morse communication. And we know that, like the person who invented the, the early typewriter, um, the query typewriter, he cared about that. So he was pretty smart about like, knowing what the use cases are and knowing what’s the minimum speed, which was maybe 30 to 40, uh, watts per minute, [00:41:00] um, should be achievable. And like, you know, like many good inventors, they mostly focus, or he and and his team mostly focus on picking the right bottles, right? So the first typewriter didn’t have uppercase, sorry, lowercase, because, eh, maybe not as important. That only came like, you know, within the next decade. But, you know, the print looked. And you could get a certain speed and it wasn’t jamming, right. So, so the whole query was designed not to slow people down. It was the opposites to, to make it both, um, faster type and to make it easier to, for the machine to actually work. Right. So this interesting concept of like human considerations, but also machine considerations. [00:41:43] Brett: Huh. Oh, so like, uh, like it’s be, is it designed around the idea of like the hammers and the typewriter, like not coming from the same two points at the same time? I never realized that. [00:41:57] Marcin: yeah. And it’s funny because, and it [00:42:00] was very specific to the, to the way the first typewriters were made, which actually became obsolete 10 years. So within 10 years, QUT was solving a problem that didn’t need solving anymore. Yeah. Uh, that’s why, that’s why it’s really hard to even compare qu in vak because they didn’t exist in the same time span. They were there to solve very different problems. [00:42:20] Christina: That, which is very interesting. And, and so, but, but yet, Cordy is endured, which, which I also think is interesting. Right. And, and, and I wonder if it’s because. Sometimes I do wonder if it’s because like Dvorak maybe was trying to solve the wrong problem. Like, like it’s claiming that it’s going to be easier, more efficient and and whatnot. But, but if it, but if that’s maybe not what, maybe, maybe not really a problem. You know what I mean? Like, like if that’s okay, you, you, you can make more efficient layouts, but, but that cordy works well enough, even though the reason for its genesis doesn’t exist anymore. [00:42:54] Marcin: there, there’s, uh, there’s this wonderful book by Ericka Aran called In the Land [00:43:00] of Invented Languages that talks about people who, you know, created Esperan or Log Land, is it called, or even Klingon. Klingon had more commercial roots, I suppose, and, and, and there’s this interesting notion. Uh, it’s actually like a surprisingly warm and sort of sad book because it speaks about most of these people just wanted to fix the world. Like they said, I don’t like the messiness of languages today. I don’t, I, I, I would like them to work a certain way or I would like them to reflect the universe a certain way. Um, but it all came with this sort of naivete of like, oh, if I only solve this thing, people will understand it. And that’s not like the language is being messy. It’s actually the beauty of languages. And every language gets messy. Like even espresso has shortcuts right now and all of these things because that’s how people use languages. So I think Vorax, like there was a certain naivete that if I only prove you mathematically that my keyboard is better, um, you will use it. Um, [00:44:00] um, and that there’s also this other thing, of course, uh, the dark side of QU is that Remington, which was the first, you know, big typewriter company. They also had a good legal team and a good sales team, and a good promotion team, and, and a lot of, a lot of the success of query. And unfortunately we cannot decouple them, right? We, we cannot say like, this was 40% engineering and 30% whatever, but they had a really good ideas of how to sell the typewriters. And that probably didn’t hurt. And maybe if they sucked at it, maybe they would’ve, maybe another layout from 1870s or 1880s would’ve actually observed qu uh, and they were also really good at, um, sending their keyboards abroad. Uh, which, uh, which explains why QU Z is so close to QU or Aer is so close to qu because it was all done by the same guy who actually didn’t even speak any of those languages. But, but, you know, they were, they just moved the keys enough, just again, so their keyboards wouldn’t clash, you know, in the same way they had to solve it for query [00:45:00] for English. [00:45:01] Brett: I, uh, Christina, just, just fyi, your video has frozen for me, but in like a, a perfect pose, like you look, you look curious and intrigued, um, and like it’s a nice, like semi profile. You look great. [00:45:19] Christina: Okay. You, you, you should take a, you, you should take a screenshot of that, um, uh, because I’m gonna turn it, I’m gonna turn it off and turn it on again and see if that fixes it. But take a screenshot first, cuz I wanna see how ridiculous I look. [00:45:30] Brett: Done. You don’t look ridiculous. You look fan fucking fantastic. [00:45:34] Christina: Yeah, I don’t believe you. Am I back to you now? [00:45:37] Brett: no, no. It, it went off and you came back looking exactly as good. [00:45:43] Marcin: Oh wow. [00:45:45] Christina: That is [00:45:45] Marcin: For the record, I see Christina moving, so I’m no contact here. It’s just you. [00:45:51] Let’s have a Playdate [00:45:51] Brett: Um, so speaking of arcade games, oh, there, Christine, I can see you moving now. Um, uh, you guys, you guys [00:46:00] both have the play date, which has come up on our show before. Um, I, I am outside of this, uh, I, I observed the release of the play date and have not heard much about it since. So I’m curious to hear you guys talk a little bit about your play dates. [00:46:19] Christina: Yeah. Uh, Martian, would you like to start? [00:46:23] Marcin: Uh, yeah. Yeah. I, I, um, I, you know, I’m, I’m a. Where do I start? I think, you know, I’m a big fan of panic, uh, and have been just, uh, even outside of like specific things that they do, just the way they do things, um, uh, you know, sort of like creators before creations. Um, but yeah, . But what’s really interesting for me, and, and I think that actually came up with the book as well and, and, and a lot of other sort of, I’ve always been into computing history, um, and there’s this idea of like, how do you approach nostalgia? Um, because there are good ways and bad [00:47:00] ways, right? Like nostalgia is supposed to kind of help you. And, and it it, it’s there to, to soften our lives in general. But, you know, you can sort of weaponize it, um, as, as we’ve seen in some presidential elections. And you can, you can also sort of succumb to nostalgia and be like, well, you know, the only arcade games were in the eighties and nothing after that matters. And if you like them, you you’re stupid. Um, or something like this. And I think what I really like about Play Date conceptually is how they try to negotiate with nostalgia. Cuz it’s not just like, we’re just gonna rewind the clock 25 years and build this device. It’s actually, we’re, we’re just gonna look at the past and see maybe, maybe some of the simplicity that used to. Coming from the limited technology and then, you know, as the technology progressed, went away, maybe that simplicity was still worth it outside of, you know, but maybe they were just coupled together. And maybe, maybe there’s something nice about, like a simple controlled scheme or a black and white thing. There’s something that could [00:48:00] help with creativity that maybe something that would help people relate to the sort of beauty and quirkiness or maybe something that would attract strange creators, which I think played at it really well, which is just like a, a lot of those games. Sometimes hard, even call them games, they’re just strange and quirky and weird. And they would just be like, how do we build a device that sort of optimizes for weirdness? And I think so. So I, I think I’m in awe of the process of play date coming together, maybe more so than the play date itself, which is a beautiful object holding in my head right now. But it’s just like the, the way, the way they talked about what it means to them and, and, and some of the design decisions and some of the, some of the choices they made is just a vision of a device that doesn’t belong in any particular era. It just sort of picks from different moments in time. And I think that’s something wonderful that as, as computers get older, we should all be doing very carefully of sort of picking like, like I have a keyboard with [00:49:00] modern keyboard, but the kick ups are from the seventies. Because I think that’s my responsibility to do stuff like that. [00:49:06] Christina: Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. Um, I, um, like you, I love panic and, and I’ve been a fan of their aesthetic for so such a long time. Like I still have, they sold, God, this was so many years ago, but they sold, um, like Atari style, um, game boxes for their software products that you could just like buy. And so it was like, like Transmit and candy bar and um, I [00:49:30] Marcin: I remember that. [00:49:30] Christina: for like audio. So, and I have them somewhere, and they were just so fun and, and, and, and I was not alive during any of the Atari’s run. Like I’m, I’m a Nintendo generation kid, but I love the aesthetic anyway. And so, um, I’ve always loved their whimsy, you know, when they had their, uh, what was the app that they had, um, in the app store, uh, kind of based on their dashboard that the iOS really unfortunately wasn’t, wasn’t prepared to do what it [00:49:56] Brett: it called dashboard? [00:49:57] Christina: Something like that. . [00:50:00] Um, but, but, but that was based on, you know, the, the custom, um, like, uh, dashboard that they’d created at at their office that would show, you know, like what, what, what commute times were and, and, and what people’s progress was and certain things. It was, it was great. Um, I love all their experiments. I love their design philosophy. I love the status quo. There you go. Status sport. I, I, I love their whimsy. I love their design decisions. I love their blogs. I love, you know, uh, cables like obsession with, you know, like, uh, weird snack foods. You know, I’m just, I’m just fan of panic and, and, and I, and I, and I’ve met, you know, um, the, the team a number of times and, and, uh, over the years, like, uh, you know, I’ve been at their offices. Like, I, you know, I can, I feel like, can call them internet friends of mine. Um, I think the first time I ever met cable, uh, and Steven, like I, it was like meeting superstars to me. Like I think I was more excited by that than. Actual celebrities that I’ve met and interviewed, if I’m being totally honest. So like you, like the, the process of the device is almost, has it definitely mattered. Way more like [00:51:00] I haven’t played my play date much since I got it. I got all the games and I’ve used it and I have played with the S D K, which is really cool. But when I first used a play date at XO XO 20, 19, I guess it was, I think it was the last exo. Um, there’s a photo that someone took of me using it and, and I, I, um, you know, tweeted, I was like, this is what pure joy looks like. And, and you just see this huge smile on my face as I’m interacting with, with the crank. And, and I love teenage engineering who obviously had a huge, you know, a, a amount, uh, to, to do with it. And so, yeah, I think that kind of going back to a thread we’ve had here, sort of the humanity and, and the personality and the thoughtfulness that went into the whole thing. And also I really appreciated and I still appreciate that it is not a device for everyone and they’re not trying to make [00:51:51] Marcin: Yeah, yeah, [00:51:52] Christina: I love that. Like I love that because there were so many people who were telling me online and, and because I would talk about a podcast or [00:52:00] saying to person like, why would you ever buy that? This is, this is so dumb, it’s gonna be sitting a door somewhere. I was like, yeah, probably. But this is the perfect device for someone like, like us, you know, which are like older millennials or Gen Xers who have disposable income and have like a love of like weird nostalgia kind of driven devices. But also frankly, the crank is a really, really good, um, interface. It’s a really, really good interface for, for controlling the games. Like it’s actually really interesting and, and, and I, and I think about that a lot. Like you’re a designer. I’m not a designer, but I’m a designer. Appreciator Brett is, is, is, um, is is a designer, but I’m, I’m somebody who loves, like I wish I could, I wish I had the artistic abilities cuz I, I love design and art so much. And, and I think about like the, the thought process that goes into that and like thinking about, okay, how can we make this crank more than just a gimmick? And actually now how are you going to build a game that is going to use that as, um, you know, a, a, [00:53:00] a UX mechanism, but also as like a mechanical, you know, control of, of, of getting through, you know, the game. Like, I think that’s so. [00:53:08] Marcin: Yeah. I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, I’m glad you used the word joyful. Like it, it definitely like awakened a lot of like joy in me and, and, but also just sort of this. It reminds, it reminded me of like, oh, like there’s a lot of places that still deserve creativity. Like, we’re not done with any of these things. Right? Like, like this, this, this, this is a unique thing in a space that’s filled with things like this already. Right? And, and, and, and it pos that like maybe in every space that’s already filled with things, there’s still room for other things that are unique. And, and, and I also like that. Yeah. The crank is like, I’ve always believed like there’s nothing wrong with a good gimmick. You just have to like cook. You know? Like you just have to run with it and use it well, and I think people love gimmicks. It’s like, there’s nothing wrong with like using the word gimmick because they [00:54:00] actually like elevated it. Right. And, and it’s funny. Oh my God. You, when you started talking about panning, I was just immediately like, remember the thing where they, they, they had this app, you can control their, their sign on their building, [00:54:11] Christina: Yes, [00:54:11] Marcin: of the sign, or, uh, Buggy Stro, the musical that, that from 20 years ago or 50 years ago, like cable just like, made this musical about the bugs in the game Stro. And so I, I just, you know, in, in part of like loving play date is just like, I just wanna support creators that do things like this and that, that, that, that bring this joy to other people and, and who remind us that like, yeah, we can, we can, like, there’s so much more room for gravity everywhere. Uh, and even in, as you said, like places where some people might scoff and say like, well, this is not gonna be the next Ds, you know, or the next switch or whatever. [00:54:54] Christina: like, it doesn’t wanna be, you know, like they weren’t trying to do that. They were wanting to build something cool for them. I think they were a little [00:55:00] bit taken aback. Um, I mean, they’ve written as much, but I think even talking to them, um, when, when I was playing with the prototype and talking to some of the team members, Who worked on it. Like, I think that they were taken aback by the initial interest and, and obviously, you know, like, uh, how many people wanted to order and how they had to, you know, which created a bunch of logistical problems, which 2020 didn’t help with. But [00:55:20] Marcin: Oh, I remember that. Yeah. [00:55:22] Christina: but even without that, I think that they would’ve suffered a, a little bit just because, like, this was supposed to be kinda like a small batch thing that did have wider [00:55:29] Marcin: Yeah. [00:55:30] Christina: And, and, but, but that’s an interesting thing too, I think kind of relates to keyboards a little bit, which is you have this thing that is maybe specific specified at a niche, right? And then it becomes more broadly adopted and then the expectations change. And, but, but what you were doing, like your initial intent doesn’t, [00:55:51] Marcin: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s both keyboards or even, um, we were talking earlier about my [00:56:00] Kickstarter and you know, once, once, and I imagine it’s pretty universal. Like I, I imagine that once your Kickstarter gets like to a certain level, you start seeing all of this spam, Hey, we can give you like 10,000 more people. Probably not 10,000, but like, you know, a thousand more people or 500 more people looking at this. And I’m like, I don’t know if I want to, you know, like I, I, at some point I don’t, I don’t want, like, I don’t wanna lose this sort of strangeness of this thing I’m creating, uh, or this, uh, you know, this, this, this. I don’t wanna soften the quirkiness necessarily. Right. Or I don’t wanna, like, I don’t wanna, I, I don’t want mass appeal because I think that’s covered. Like there I industries that do that really well. I, I, I, I, I want to rather find somebody, like, I wanna find everybody who love this thing that created rather than more people who might like never care for it, you know? [00:56:53] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of curious about that, like to talk maybe a little bit more about it, and I know we’re getting close on time, but I just wanted to kind of know more about like your [00:57:00] experience. with the Kickstarter, cuz I, I have to imagine it’s similar with the play date. Like you were hoping it would be successful. Now is, is it still the third most, um, um, uh, back book? Or is it the second most at this point? [00:57:13] Marcin: It’s gonna, it’s close to being like the second most funded non-fiction book in kickstart’s history, which as I say those words, I don’t even know what they mean to me. [00:57:25] Christina: right? No, but, but, but that, that has to feel incredible. But that also has to feel like, again, I, I wonder like you’ve put all this time into this, you built it with a certain thing. At the beginning you were even talking about how like you get people who were, you know, kind of mans trying to mansplain keyboards to you, which is what’s gonna happen when something gets out of the bubble that you created in and goes more broad. Um, but, but, but I wonder like, I guess, I guess just like how, how you’re kind of like dealing with that, because I appreciate that you’re still trying to keep it what it is. I’ve covered over the years, especially when I was a journalist, so many failed [00:58:00] Kickstarter campaigns where people couldn’t fulfill what happened because it blew up and it was way more successful than they expected. And then they add on these goals and they’re like, oh, well now we’re gonna do this and this and this and this and, and it, and it, and it takes away from, you know, because people in the process get excited about what the possibility of this thing could be rather than what the inventor’s intent was. And, and I, and I wonder, I guess about like, how, how, how do you balance that, like, you know, staying, I guess, kind of true to what your book is? Because at this point, in addition to having spammers coming at you and like, we can get you this much more, I would also imagine like, ha, have you had, uh, more traditional publishers. come at you, because I would think that, that you would, right? Like, I would think that they would be like, Hey, maybe you won’t be printed the same way that you’re doing it, but this clearly has an audience. Do you want, you know, partner and, and I’m just curious like how, how you balance keeping what it is while at the same time you’ve got this runaway success. [00:58:53] Marcin: Yeah. So I, I think what was important for me and what I spend a lot of time is thinking about, like, what do I want this book to be [00:59:00] to a point that I actually have it written down. Like many years ago I was like, here are my goals for the book. And at no point, you know, there’s, there was a certain, like, number of people that I wanted to have this book, which the campaign now succeeded. And, and that was the numeric goal. Um, and of course, like I didn’t wanna lose money on the book because that opens like a whole universe of travel. Um, but other than that I just had like, you know, I wanna be proud of how the book feels. Like I want to do justice to the people who I’m interviewing. I want not to lose the quirkiness. And so, um, there, there were a bunch of those kind of things that I kept looking at over and over again and talking to people. And even the whole process of, I originally wanted this book to be traditionally publish. because that’s kinda how I grew up and, and, and, and what felt like quote unquote, the right way to do it. And, and it took me like a year to via conversations with many, many people to realize I actually don’t want this self publish. Uh, [01:00:00] sorry, I don’t want to, I wanna self-publish this and it’s not gonna be me being a loser if I do that. , like, so publishing is like a much more interesting space right now. And, and, and, and, and so I, I think I just had a lot of time to think about what I want this and the sort of quote unquote success criteria and whatnot. And that was really helpful in hopefully not losing the debt right now. Not sort of chasing the ball of like, oh, what if I was the number one Kickstarter book of all time? Which, that’s actually not possible. The second credit, it, the number is just wild, but it’s like 46 million, right? It’s just like, it’s like out, it’s, it’s, it’s really [01:00:41] Christina: It’s not gonna happen, right? [01:00:42] Marcin: Yeah, but, but you know, the sort of, yeah, exactly. Like chasing this sort of like a, a, a certain deal with a publisher says like, oh, what if, what if this is a, you know, a, a a a, an airport bookstore kind of a book? I was like, no, no, no. It’s not. Like, maybe there is, maybe, maybe, maybe I won’t get tired with keyboards and I [01:01:00] will actually write another one. It’s a very different audience and a very different process, which could be interesting. But, but it, so I think for me was just, just trying to think and be honest with myself and write down the goals for this project for me. Um, and then not lose track of, of, and, and I’m, I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are helping me with this project, like my editor, um, who also get it, who also understand what I’m after and who, who are helping me sort of, you know, navigate those spaces. Um, and, and I think, and, and giving me candid feedback. Sometimes, you know, Hey, you, you may be getting distracted here, or, uh, or vice versa, saying like, you know what, like, For the next marketing thing, just do kind of put what you wanna do. Like do do something that and you, you enjoy rather than, you know, something that you have to do. So, so navigating that, uh, that’s, that’s been like very important to me. [01:01:59] Brett: All right. [01:01:59] Christina: think [01:02:00] that’s, [01:02:01] Grapptitude [01:02:01] Brett: Should we, uh, should we do a rapid fire gratitude before we close out? [01:02:06] Christina: Yeah, I would love that. [01:02:08] Brett: Do you have one ready, Christina? Or do you wanna wait while we go? Okay, Christina, you get to, you get to kick it off just like the mental health corner. [01:02:16] Christina: Okay, so my pick is an app called Sloth, and this is one that I actually, it’s been around for a while, but I just discovered it on Hacker News yesterday. And it is, um, basically a Mac app that shows you a gooey to show you all the open ports and data things that are happening. On your system. So it’s really interesting. Um, and this is something that I don’t think that I would probably use very often, but I’m playing with it and it’s interesting just to see like, I guess if you’re trying to, to figure out, like, cuz it shows you like all the open files, directories, sockets, the pipes that are, that are in use and, and then the, the, the running processes. So it’s basically just a gooey for, um, uh, is off. Um, or, or I, I, or maybe it’s [01:03:00] Ellis off. I don’t know. I, I don’t know the Unix command cuz I’ve never used this command Ellis off. Yeah. I’ve never used this command. And so, um, but, but it’s, it’s in like a usable way. And I saw this on Hacker News yesterday that a new version was released. It’s available for both, um, apple, silicon and um, uh, Intel. And I was like, oh, this is actually a really interesting way to like look at all the different things that are happening on my Mac at one time. And I could see this as actually being really useful for figuring out like, If something is broken or, or what it’s doing. And also, you know, maybe like what apps are spying on you. Um, although, um, little, uh, little snitch would be, uh, uh, would, would be way better than that. But, um, I don’t know. It, it doesn’t have the best design or anything. Uh, it’s, it’s a pure utility app, but I saw this and I, I only play with it a little bit and I really like it and I’m, I’m like not mad at it. It also goes all the way back to Mac Os 10.8, so like [01:03:55] Brett: I, I, I did see this come up on Hacker News. Um, [01:04:00] the, it’s from, uh, I don’t know how to Sine Bjorn, um, Bjorn Spine. Uh, the same guy who made platypus the, the, the Mac app that can turn a shell script into a, an application bundle. Um, simple idea, very handy tool. Uh, back like I started, yeah, I’ve used platypus. Oh, Jesus. 20 years, 15 years. Um, yeah, that’s old school. So it’s, I, I, I went to his software page. He has a whole bunch of apps I’ve never used, but Sloth is, sloth is the second one on his software page. So, yeah, that looks cool. Uh, he, he describes it as basically a friendly, exploratory, gooey for L S O F, which all the developers will know what that means, and everyone else will be like, what, [01:04:53] Christina: Well, and I, and I’m, I’m a developer and I’ve never used it, like, you know, but I’m not like a hardcore or anything, but like, I’ve literally, I don’t think I’ve ever used that. [01:04:59] Brett: I [01:05:00] have used L S O F in when I’ve had questions about . I don’t even remember what the last time it came up was. I’ve never voluntarily used L S O F, but I have been instructed to, in the process of solving other problem, Run L S O F to determine what port something was using or what was using, what was accessing a port or a file or a socket. And yeah, like it’s not, it’s not a regular part of my repertoire. I could definitely use a gooey, so That’s awesome. Um, do you, do you want to go next? [01:05:41] Marcin: Sure. Um, my choice is, um, ivory. Uh, I like, like many people, I think I, I found Masteron to be a great alternative to, to, you know, the, the artist formerly known as Twitter. And, uh, and I very is I think the [01:06:00] first app for Maan that I actually really enjoy using. I, I struggle with some of the other ones. Um, my designer, maybe I just need something that’s a little bit more polished, that’s a little bit more aesthetically pleasing or, um, and, and, and Iry is, is the first step that I was just like, oh, this is, uh, you know, this is like a great alternative to, uh, to all the other ones. But also I, I really like, because it’s sort of similar to, to what we talked about, uh, with Play Date, which is, it’s kind of quirky. It’s a little weird. It has personality, uh, uh, it’s, it’s made some choices that I as a designer wouldn’t maybe make, but. and maybe some I actually disagree with, but also they’re like really interesting choices and it’s really fun. It, you know, it’s, it, it, it, it again sort of made me feel like, oh, we are not done with those things. You know, there’s some, some creative choices we could make here, or some, some weird stuff. Not just like in, in a space of like a social media, you know, [01:07:00] consumption up, but just apps in general. Like, like for example, I forgot how long it’s been since the app allowed me to choose like an accent color, which I immediately orange. It’s gonna be orange. Oh, I can change the icon to be orange too. It’s so simple. But I think like, you know, iOS and macro is sort of locked a lot of this down because, you know, design and I’m speaking as a designer, I, I do that too. Um, but, you know, just, just the little moments of customization just made me so excited to, you know, it’s like the, it’s the only, let me see. It’s the only yellow icon I have on my home screen, which it’s like a funny thing to say, but my home screen is very, very grateful for that. So, I don’t know. Ivory And it’s done by tap bots, right? [01:07:46] Brett: Yeah, same people who made one of our favorite apps, tweet bot, um, and we talked about it on a recent show. They, they have a, a rest in peace page for tweet bot with, uh, with an [01:08:00] elephant looking at it, uh, which is a reference to ivory, which is now out for, uh, it’s in beta. Uh, I did, I did I I have it through test flight. I haven’t actually, I’m loading it up right now just to see what’s up. But, um, yeah, I’m a huge fan of tweetbot. I have a, I have a lot of faith that I’m gonna love ivory. [01:08:23] Christina: Yeah. Yeah, [01:08:24] Marcin: I’ve never used Sweet Bot, so I [01:08:26] Christina: oh, that’s so funny. [01:08:28] Marcin: out. Maybe I’ve been missing out for like 15 years. . But you know, maybe better late than. [01:08:33] Christina: Totally. Totally. Yeah. No, I’ve been, I’ve been using it since, um, uh, I missed out on the beta for iOS. But, um, uh, Paul was nice enough to invite me into the, the mac beta early, and, um, and they just recently changed, um, uh, that test flight. Um, they separated the two. And so, um, I’m, I’m back in that one as well, and it’s really good. It’s really, really good. Um, I, uh, it’s for me and I, I’ve talked about this I think before. [01:09:00] What’s totally changed, my Macon experience has been getting good apps and, and Ivory is definitely one of them. One of the fun things is also for the iOS app, and, uh, this I think is really, really cute, is that you can customize the icon and one of the icons is basically the r i p tweet bot icon. So if you wanted the app icon to look, you know, like a, like, like, still, still have kind of the, the, the tweet bot with the halo on it. Like that’s, that’s one of their options, which I think is really cute. But, but, but, but it is, to me, I don’t know, it’s just amazing how much of a difference good tools make for this, for this platform. I still have some issues with Macedon, but it, it, for me, like, it’s just a completely different experience. Um, having things like elk.zone and ice cubes and um, uh, ivory being, I think the most polished, just like, has fundamentally changed my experience with the service, whereas the, the apps that existed before, um, that, and, and the main website, [01:10:00] like, I’m not trying to criticize people who are putting labor love into things, but just it’s not there , you know, it’s just, it’s not the sort of thing that I can come back to, especially for people like us who really respect the, the thoughtful design of things. [01:10:15] Marcin: Yeah. It, it reminds me a little bit, and this is at the risk of maybe angering a lot of people, but there was this recent debate I think Gruber wrote about, um, um, Android and iOS, sort of the quality of design. And there’s something about it that I think the, the conversation there were more people adding to that conversation. I think they captured something. It’s like, yeah, there’s, there’s intangible things that matter and, and it’s hard sometimes to understand for people who don’t understand design or never maybe talk to a designer, but those it up and, and like, this is exactly right, Christina, for me, I’ve already like crossed the threshold, which is just like, oh. This is enjoyable. This, this wasn’t optional. The, the, the, there needs to be a center level of care and attention polish and, and [01:11:00] quality to apps. And maybe we all calibrated differently, but for me, I already crossed the trash car and I started just feeling like, oh, the muston experience is really fun. I, I thought, I thought it couldn’t be, but it was really the app and [01:11:14] Brett: I have, I have finally hit like a, a critical mass with my Macedon follower versus following and, and am getting, uh, an amount of feedback to a toot that makes it feel inter. Active instead of just shouting into a void. Um, and it feels like there’s a community there. And my following on Macedon is way smaller than my one on Twitter. Uh, but they are as interactive and I have enjoyed it. I use Tut on iOS. It’s just toot with an exclamation point. Um, it’s been pretty good. I would love to get on the ivory iOS beta, but I did [01:12:00] not catch that one. [01:12:02] Christina: Um, uh, TM DM Paul and um, and c cuz I’m sure that they have people who go in and off of the, of the things. It’s also available to buy now, so you can just like, you [01:12:11] Brett: Oh, is it? I’ll buy it. I’ll [01:12:13] Christina: yeah. It’s, yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s in the app store. It’s, it’s in the app store. The, the Mac version is not in the app store yet. It’s in Alpha, but um, [01:12:20] Brett: the Mac version. I’m [01:12:21] Christina: oh yeah, no, yeah, yeah. You can just buy it. What is what? Okay. I thought I was following you on mask on. I don’t know if I am. What is your mast on user? [01:12:28] Brett: Oh man, my Macedon username is tt scoff as usual@noack.ezdns.ca. [01:12:38] Christina: Okay, then I am on, I am following you there. Okay. [01:12:42] Brett: Yeah, I, I kind wanna switch to a more, uh, notable instance, like, you know, Macedon social or one of the various, but I jumped on, I jumped on Macedon early and, uh, EZ [01:13:00] dns, the fucking libertarians that run it, uh, had a, had a pretty good privacy policy and, and, uh, uh, overall community policy that I agreed with. And so I jumped on that one and just kind of stuck with it. , libertarians. Um, anyway, so you guys both went. You guys both went gooey with your picks. I, uh, I’m going terminal. Um, I found this new thing called Mick Fly, um, and it is a replacement. So like in, in your terminal, you hit control R and you can reverse search your command history. Right? Um, I have for a long time used F zf and, uh, I’ve, I’ve set it up so I hit Control R and it pipes my entire history file through F Z F and I can fuzzy search for a previous command. [01:14:00] Mc fly basically offers. A similar fuzzy search, not as fuzzy. You still, like, if you don’t include a space, it won’t recognize the search. Uh, but it does add, um, directory awareness. So it will prioritize commands that you have run in the current directory when you do the command history search. Uh, which is even if, even if you just hit control art and just use your arrow key to get to a command, you’ve run in that directory, but probably not in the current session. Um, it works great. It works with Phish, it works with Z Shell, it works with Bash. Um, it, it is, it is an excellent little Control r history replacement, [01:14:47] Christina: I love this. And I went to add it to my stars and it was already there. So I’ve clearly seen this before. Um, uh, Martian, uh, for some background, my GitHub stars is the greatest. Like, like I always tell people, [01:15:00] don’t follow me for my code cuz my code is worth worthless. My stars are freaking great. I find the best stuff. So I search through my stars all the time, but I find little gyms and then I forget about it. But I had McFly there and, um, I, I, so clearly I looked at it at one point. I might have used it once, but I don’t have it installed. I’m installing it now. Um, but I, I love this. [01:15:21] Brett: For anyone who doesn’t already know, if you go to Overtired pod.com, I wrote a WordPress plugin just to display Christina’s starred repositories on the website. So you scroll down to the bottom, and in the footer of any page you can find Christina’s starred repositories, which is, as she said, a fantastic collection of the latest and greatest in in open source. [01:15:48] Christina: Yeah, and I also, I also have, sorry, go. No, go on. [01:15:52] Marcin: Is McFly a reference to Back to the [01:15:56] Brett: Back to the future, I have to assume. [01:15:58] Christina: I have to assume [01:15:59] Brett: it’s a hi. [01:16:00] History. History. Search back to the future. Yeah, it makes sense. [01:16:05] Christina: The only thing I was gonna say is that in my Stars collection, so in addition to having all the stars, we also have a feature called Lists that you can create in, in GitHub. And I have one called MAs Dawn Goodness, which I’ve been keeping relatively up to date, which is like front-end clients, guides, tools, and other stuff related to Mastodon. And then I have one called Play Date stuff, which is cool things for the play date. So that is, um, both of those are, uh, are available, um, a as well as, as the other things that I find. So just wanted to point that out there. Um, I’m, I’m trying to curate, um, my massive list of, of stars into better organized lists for certain purposes. And, uh, I happen to do that [01:16:44] Brett: know you could have lists. That’s awesome. [01:16:47] Christina: I know we don’t talk about it enough because I don’t think, I think that I’m probably one of the biggest power users of Stars working at GitHub, and I don’t even work on the Stars Project [01:16:59] Brett: I also, [01:17:00] I also just started using GitHub co-pilot. Uh, finally, finally got around to testing it out. And it turns out because of my open source contributions, like I’m at, I, I have free access to it, so I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get, I gotta get more used to, they have a feature called brushes, brush co-pilot, like you can, like give it a function and, and tell it to just fix any bugs in it, and it just figures out what bug is Interesting. All right. Well, Marchin, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure. [01:17:37] Marcin: Thank you so much for having me. [01:17:39] Christina: It was so great. I’m so glad you could come on and, and you’re like, I think this book is perfect for, uh, our audience of people who are into this sort of thing. Um, I, I pre-ordered it, uh, the book immediately and what was so funny, what was so funny was that you and I, we met in a completely unrelated way and I saw some tweets about the book when it [01:18:00] was kind of coming out and I was like, wait a minute. I know him. Like, it was so funny because, because, uh, last year, uh, Marchin and I spent. More than an hour talking about hacker, uh, sneakers and, and, uh, just, just in dms. And we just had a fantastic conversation. It was like one of like the highlights of like my afternoon, uh, like, just like a random Sunday afternoon last year. And, and, and I, it was so lovely. It was like one of those like classic, like good internet experiences where you just connect with a stranger over something. And then I, I saw the book and I was like, oh my God. And Glen edited it and, and it looks like this is completely like my shit. I was like, I’m so excited. I immediately told Brett and Jeff, and I’m so sad Jeff couldn’t be here. I was like, no, we have to have him on because this is completely like in the pocket of everything that our audience cares about. [01:18:47] Brett: Yep. Yep. All right. So everyone check out, shift happens.site. Uh, you can even see 3D renderings of the book and get an idea what you are, um, uh, [01:19:00] kickstarting and it looks amazing. I also am, uh, I’m on for a pre-order. Very much looking forward to it. Um, and in the meantime, get some sleep. [01:19:12] Christina: Get some sleep.

Christina returns from her Vegas adventure; more and more and more tech layoffs; and Jeff gets his Chromium questins answered. Sponsor ZocDoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need, and deliver the type of experience you want. Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun. Go to https://zocdoc.com/overtired and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. Calm The Bleep Down Our days are busy and with so much going on, it can be hard to stay stress-free and balanced. That’s why there is Calm The Bleep Down. Calm the Bleep Down is a podcast to help you get back to feeling refreshed and relaxed, so you can navigate the chaos of regular life with some balance and perspective. Each week, host Michael Bekemeyer (pronounced Beck-uh-meyer) releases two free, guided meditations. They’re low-key, relaxed, and simple. With each meditation lasting 15–20 minutes, it’s not a huge commitment and the benefits make it well worth your time. You don’t even need to know how to do it. Anyone can meditate. All you have to do is close your eyes and breathe for a few moments. Search for Calm The Bleep Down in the Apple podcast app, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Show Links Nostr Priests React to King of the Hill Grapptitude Brett: Hookmark Jeff: Readwise Reader Christina: Ice Cubes Ivory Elk and GitHub Toot! Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Tweetbot Sleeps with Angels [00:00:00] [00:00:04] Jeffrey: Hello everybody. This is the Overtired Podcast. I am one of your hosts, uh, Jeff Severance Gunzel, and I’m here with your other two hosts. They are yours. We are all yours. Um, Christina Warren. Hi Christina. Hello. And Brett Terpstra. Hello Brett. Oh, hey, I didn’t see you come in. Oh yeah, no, I Did you, are you here for the podcast or [00:00:30] Hi everybody. I wanna say there’s something I can see that nobody can ever see, which is that Brett and Christina have matching headphones which have little blue foamy parts. Every time I see that, I think I need to get mine. Cause I think we’re all using the same headphones. [00:00:42] Yeah, [00:00:42] Brett: we are. Same headphones. Yeah. We just went to the extra trouble to put the like microfiber ear cups on it. [00:00:49] Jeffrey: That’s right, [00:00:50] Christina: that’s right. In my case, I’ll be honest with you, it was because the original, um, ones on, on that pair, cause I have three or four pairs of these headphones. We’re all using Sony, um, MDR 75 0 6 s, which are like the standard, um, headphones for, for people in production. [00:01:07] And um, cuz they’re cheap and they last forever. But, um, my, my ear caps. Um, tour, um, and, uh, and I ordered these. I think that now Brett, did you get yours after I got mine? Or did you get yours for Yeah. [00:01:21] Brett: Okay. Yeah, I got right. Got yours. I got mine Because you got yours. That’s right. You [00:01:24] Christina: recommended them to me. [00:01:25] Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Cause they’re really good. So Yeah. Brainwaves I think is what is who makes them I forget something. Yeah, [00:01:32] Jeffrey: all I’m gonna order mine. Cool. I, I just gotta, I’m tired of standing out. Is the, they [00:01:36] Brett: only, they only come in this blue. So you will match us if you get some, [00:01:40] Jeffrey: that’s great. Maybe we can have a listener giveaway. [00:01:42] You just get, even if you don’t have the headphones, you just get the blue foam. . Lay your head on it at night. Uh, hi everybody. [00:01:51] Brett: Hi Jeff. Hey Jeff. Um, what do you wanna do first, Jeff? [00:01:55] Jeffrey: Well, I wanna say we have, there’s one of us, only one of the three of us is just back from Vegas, and I’d like to hear, I’d like to hear all about it. [00:02:04] How was it “Vegas. That’s my mental health check-in” [00:02:04] Christina: Christina? Oh my God. Um, it was amazing. I had such a great time with my mom. Um, this was her first trip to Vegas, which I think I mentioned before. And so, uh, I’ve been many times, but I haven’t been like, on a non-work trip in probably since college. And so I was really excited. This was, you know, big 75th birthday Thing is, you know, originally when I bought the tickets for her, it was before her 75th birthday. [00:02:30] And so originally we were supposed to go like six months before her birthday, and now we want wound up going five months after. But it was, it was an amazing, amazing trip. We, um, had just a great experience. Um, Adele was phenomenal. Like, uh, it, it, a lot of it was up on my Instagram stories and, um, I, I might archive them into some sort of archive if you wanna see, but the show was unreal. [00:02:56] Our receipts as I knew they would be for what I paid not. No, but I would’ve won mm-hmm. , um, if I paid, um, okay. Like I paid $3,800 for these tickets, which is insane. Yeah. Hey, I would go way higher , which I now regret not doing, to be honest with you. Um, mm-hmm. When I got outta the show, I said, my only regret was, and I know that there’s no way I can say this without ma making me sound like an asshole, but I wish I had just paid $10,000 for floor seats, um, and, or, or over closer seats. [00:03:27] Um, I could’ve paid. And here’s also what killed me because she rescheduled and because of all that mess, the, the price that I paid could’ve gotten me tickets on the floor. I’m, or, or maybe a little bit more, but I probably could have had tickets on the floor for that price once the, the rescheduling happened because a lot of people. [00:03:48] you know, we’re like, got refunds and we’re like, I’m out. And then, you know, um, some of the pricing came down on the resale tickets, although not as much as you would think, but certainly they came down. Yeah. Um, if I paid like anything, even double like face value, I would’ve been ecstatic. It was just, The amount that I paid. [00:04:09] But even, even from like the nosebleeds, it was a great show. She’s incredible. The, the interesting things that she did on the staging was really phenomenal. She had these things behind her that were visible. Only some of the times there was like these screens that kept going back and forth, and the way that they had, um, her, you know, blown up on, on, on the side, like l e d screens and the way that it would focus in on her face and that it would have things like in black and white certain points was really cool. [00:04:35] But also the way that the stage screens that made like a red a and how that would, um, go back and reveal things was great. But behind her, in addition to having like a piano on stage and like her, her, um, backup singers, she had people playing like, like cellos and stuff, but they were, it looked like it was on like two, it was on like a two story risers where they were in these like little cubes and. [00:05:01] they were sometimes obscured and sometimes visible. So it was like you had this massive thing behind her where you see these people full size, like playing, like the orchestra playing that was sometimes visible depending on, um, you know, what, what the setup was, which was really, really cool. And then sometimes they had other things playing on that screen. [00:05:20] So, um, absolutely incredible show. I really hope she releases a DVD or a streaming thing, I guess is what they would do. Now, they wouldn’t do a dvd, but I, but I hope she releases like a, a, a streaming version of this show. Uh, she was lovely. The rest of the trip was fantastic. Um, we, um, we stated that at the Venetian or the, the Plateau, which. [00:05:40] In my opinion is the best overall value for a place in Vegas. You can find hotels that are going to be nicer and fancier if you, if you pay more money and get like suites. But in terms of a standard room, I really do think that that place is, is the best overall value. And uh, it was a great location for us cuz it was close to, um, the Mirage where we saw the Beatles, um, uh, se show love, which is incredible. [00:06:05] Nice. And as right next door to the win in the Encore, um, I took her to dinner at the Bellagio on Sunday night so that she could see the fountains and we had dinner at Lago there. Um, we also, uh, you know, uh, Adele was at Caesar’s, so I was able to basically take her to. Every casino on the strip that I would’ve wanted to show her except for the, um, cosmopolitan. [00:06:27] Um, but, um, we had incredible service. It was a trip of a lifetime, like she said, like, it’s gonna make me cry, but she was like, it was my best birthday ever. And so I like mission accomplished. I, I’m so, so glad that at this time in my life I had like the ability and the means to really do this right for my mom because yeah, you know, she’s, um, she’s never been. [00:06:50] And, and I wanted everything to be perfect and I was a little bit concerned. I was like, Man, given how the service industry has been, you know, I don’t know what the service is gonna be like and if people are gonna be nice or if people are gonna be, you know, whatever. And like, I would be understanding if people weren’t, cuz Vegas can be hit or miss anyway. [00:07:06] Like it usually people are pretty nice, but you know, it, there’s a lot going on and, and I get it, we had such incredible service everywhere we went. When we got to the hotel, we got in at like 11 15, 11 30, and we tried to get early check-in and try to pay for it. And they were like, oh, you’re a decline. And we’re like, all right, well, we’ll just, you know, leave our bags, the luggage thing and, and bum around for, you know, four hours. [00:07:29] Um, no, we were able to check in early and then the girl was nice enough to like have us check out late, um, for free. So we didn’t have to pay. So we had like the first day it almost felt like a, like a free day because we had like, you know, an extra four and a half hours, um, of, of not having, you know, um, to be like, Feeling weird about like, okay, well what are we gonna do? [00:07:52] We don’t feel refreshed if you wanna shower, if you wanna do other stuff. So yeah, it, it, it couldn’t have been better. Um, just, just a really, really great trip. And I’m just, like I said, I’m just so grateful that I had the ex, the ability to share this with my mom and to take my mom to this because she deserves it. [00:08:08] She’s the best. And, and it was just, you know, something that neither of us will ever. [00:08:13] Brett: I’m really awesome, happy. I’m really happy you got to do that. I cannot get over how much tickets cost. Mm-hmm. , like I still, for me, $80 is too much to pay to go see a live show, um, to pay three plus thousand dollars for, uh, one night show. [00:08:30] Like I just put all new windows in my house and it costs, you’re not my brand. And that’s, that’s insane to me, like to do that for when entertainment is nuts. No, I’m not, I’m not judging you. I’m just saying, oh, I know you’re not. It’s that, that’s what it costs now. [00:08:44] Christina: No. And, and to be, and also to be fair, if I had not been insistent on getting the tickets when I got them, if I had waited until it was closer to the show, which would’ve been smarter in retrospect because she wound up, you know, uh, rescheduling, uh, no way to know. [00:09:02] Right. There is no way to know. And now this was also the thing, I think the reason that I did. A, I kind of got caught up in the hype to be a little bit honest. I was like, I need to get these tickets, I need to do this for her birthday. I had a certain budget and I just did it because I was like, I don’t know if these are gonna get better or not. [00:09:17] Um, and because this is a, you know, she’s probably, Adele said that she really only wants to do these types of residencies in the future. What I think that she’ll probably do is that she will do really big international shows, like She’ll do Wimbly in the UK and maybe she’ll do some like shows in South America or Australia. [00:09:36] But she will primarily do kind of what Celine did. But unlike Celine who had a residency for on and off, I think for like 14 years, um, like, cuz one of her residencies I think was like, uh, four years. And I think one of them was like seven or eight. Like this was, she added a co she added two more shows. [00:09:57] But this was. A 40 show or 38 show engagement. And so, and, and last time with El to was 2016. And, and we saw her then. So I was just like, you know, this is, this is, this is like Springsteen on, on Broadway where incidentally Yeah, my tickets were less than this. So you’re not wrong, Brad, that the prices are insane. [00:10:16] Oh, you saw that show? I did awesome. And that was un awesome. That was unreal. But I also got lucky with that. Like, I’m sure plenty of people paid more than I paid for Adele, for Springsteen and Broadway and, but, but I, I got lucky and, and knew someone who, who had tickets, but, um, yeah, you’re not, you’re not wrong about any of the, the pricing meeting saying, but I was looking at it as like, okay, I have a budget. [00:10:39] This is, this is, I wanna do this for my mom, like, money be damned. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it was about, it was about, it was about the whole thing. Not just Adele per se. Like honestly, she loved Adele and had no complaints. But like, she even said that if all we had done was was see the Beatles CRC show. [00:10:56] She that would’ve been worth a trip. You’re like, don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t say that exactly. I was like, right. Totally, totally. But, but, but here’s the thing. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten her to Vegas for just that. Right? Yeah. So, [00:11:08] Jeffrey: um, yeah. That doesn’t, that doesn’t sound like nearly as awesome of a trip, [00:11:12] Christina: No. Well, what was funny is my dad I’d originally. When I looked at booking the tickets the first time, cuz we were supposed to go in March of, of 2022. Um, and, and then it was rescheduled for January. So not as great weather, but whatever I’d originally, like my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary was last April. [00:11:31] And so I had said, I was like, look, I know dad doesn’t like Adele for whatever reason, but I, um, which given his tasty music, I still don’t understand. Um, but it’s the hard, it’s the hard one not to like . It really is. It’s just, and, and, and, and he likes Celine a lot. Like it, there’s, there are thing it does, I don’t get it, but it is what it is. [00:11:51] But, um, I was like, well dad, you know, you can come to Vegas too. You don’t have to go to Adele, but like, I would love to take you both to Vegas for your 50th anniversary. And he was like, no, no, no, I don’t wanna go to Vegas. You, you girls go, it’s a girls trip. And then he started doing what he does now because he’s an old man. [00:12:05] And, um, uh, , which is, he looks up everything on YouTube. Um, he also watches like the celebrity gossip explainer YouTube stuff like nonstop, like, like, like the Nicki Swift stuff, like why this celebrity has fallen off. Like it’s, it’s really funny and I learned somehow, man, he watches, he’s, he’s like really into, it’s funny, that’s called the School of [00:12:23] Jeffrey: Hard Knocks, [00:12:24] Christina: ain’t it? [00:12:25] it totally, no, but, but he started looking up the resort and he started seeing the videos of all this stuff and he was like, I wanna go. I was like, I told you, I told you you could have gone with us. He was, he’s like, I didn’t know Vegas was like this. And I’m like, oh my God. Like my parents had apparently missed out on the entire, like two thousands, like rebrand of Vegas as like a family friendly luxury vacation thing. [00:12:48] Like they, they just totally, totally missed out on that. And we’re still under the impression that it was like, Like 1970s or 19. There are whole blocks. Can’t [00:12:59] Jeffrey: get heroin. . [00:13:01] Christina: Yeah. You gotta go to downtown. You gotta go to downtown Vegas for the heroin. Right. Which is like, which we did not do, like, we did not leave the strip. [00:13:08] Right. So, so we were like, not in real Vegas. I’m, I’m, I’m aware. But yeah. You know, like, they totally missed out. [00:13:16] Brett: It’s bizarre. Going, going off the strip or even going to the old strip, like, it’s such a trip. How, how different the world is over like a four block radius there. Um, like once you leave the strip. [00:13:28] Yeah. I, I went to, I went to multiple NA meetings last time I was in Vegas, uh, which were not on the strip. They were, you know, in like suburban Las Vegas. And it’s a different world. It’s. [00:13:44] Jeffrey: Yeah. Um, so I wanna say something very quaint. What is, what now seems very quaint and actually seemed that at the time, but about ticket prices, which is not at all about, um, what anybody’s paying now because that, that’s just what people are paying. [00:13:59] I mean, that’s just, that’s the world we live in, right? , like, um, I was, I was thinking the other day about, um, this band Fugazi, who always insisted that their tickets, yes, $5, their tickets be $5. But there was one exception and I was there and they had to play First Avenue, and it was on probably one of their, like it was 98, 99 probably. [00:14:23] They were doing two nights, I think two shows. Two nights. No, it was their, um, second to last album actually, I think. Oh. anyway, they, they, for reasons I don’t remember, they had to charge more than $5. I think they had to charge, like I have the ticket stuff somewhere. They had to charge like 5 75 . And the reason, the way that they agreed to do that was if they could print the breakdown of every cent over $5 on the fucking ticket [00:14:54] Um, and so I have that ticket, it just says in like 5 75 or whatever, and then it’s like every little tax or whatever that’s [00:15:00] Brett: on there, I was like, Fu Fugazi, Fugazi, the hard hardcore band that didn’t allow people to mosh at their shows. [00:15:08] Jeffrey: That’s right. That’s right. I mean they were, they were hyper controlled, right? [00:15:12] Yes. [00:15:12] Brett: Like absolutely straight edge to the, to the [00:15:15] Jeffrey: max. And that was, whoa, there goes my microphone. But I thought that that was kind of adorable and in the face of how, where ticket prices went in our world, it’s like Yeah. Beyond quaint, right? Because even then I was like, I’m not paying 35 fucking dollars to go to Target [00:15:30] Brett: and see Neil Young paid, I paid like $20 to see Iggy Pop and that was just, yeah. [00:15:34] Yeah. That seemed insane to me. Oh my God. Anyway, [00:15:38] Christina: which is amazing. See, by the time I started going to concerts Yeah. Unless you were going to a really small show, like those, those days were not there. Or you knew the band or something. Right. Which is why most of the concerts I went to, like in high school, um, were festival. [00:15:56] because Yeah, right. You know, you, you, because you know, okay, you pay your 50 bucks or 60 bucks or whatever it is, your a hundred bucks. If you’re doing a three day pass and, and you see you’ve got like a hundred bands there, right? Like, so that was how I saw most bands. If they weren’t, you know, really small. [00:16:10] Um, because everybody else, cuz it’s the fees. Well, even for me, the tickets I think were like, 1100 a piece. And then what happened was StubHub fees were like 50%. Oh, Fred Dell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so again, if I had been able to like, find somebody to do it one to one with, and there were some various like, uh, ticket platforms that are apparently, you know, more safe and whatnot, I could have done that for this show. [00:16:38] I was absolutely not risking anything. Yeah, you didn’t get it. [00:16:42] Brett: Definitely. Definitely keeps the rabble out of the show. If you’re in a show and you know that everyone there paid at least a thousand dollars to be there. Right. You’re, I don’t know. I bet you’re among a, a certain class of people at that point. [00:16:56] You still gotta deal with some [00:16:58] Jeffrey: boomer shenanigans. [00:16:59] Christina: Yeah. Well, or not, well, not, not, not zoomer shenanigans. Actually. Zoomer shenanigans. . Because honestly, cuz at that point then you have like really entitled like either influencers or like rich. Mm-hmm. Like kids who don’t understand. Yeah. Unfortunately, no amount of money will ever have people act Right. [00:17:14] If that, if, if that were the case, then everybody in business class wouldn’t act like fools. And there are plenty of examples of that , you know. [00:17:23] Brett: Well, I do, [00:17:24] Jeffrey: I will say I love a good residency. I love feeling like, I love how you can feel the way the artist has obviously not just spent the last two days traveling and schlepping and whatever. [00:17:34] Totally. And that they’re just walking comfortably into the building and up on the stage that like, uh, I’m sure it’s wonderful for them, but I always feel like it’s wonderful as an audience member too. So relaxed. [00:17:44] Christina: Totally. Totally. No, and it’s so funny because honestly, Celine really did like, completely change it from modern artists. [00:17:49] Like nobody who was a current act did it to my knowledge. So it was [00:17:53] Jeffrey: her really got [00:17:54] Christina: that going. Yeah. So they built the coliseum for her, which is where Adele was at Caesar’s. They built that for her. Um, and, and that opened in like 2002 or 2003. And that was like, if you think about it, that. A that was peek Celine, like, well, okay. [00:18:10] Peek Celine was probably 98 with my heart Will go on. But like she’d had so many big hits. Like she was definitely a big star, right? So she could have done international tours in massive stadiums. Um, but you know, she had the geriatric husband and um, and I, and the kids I think. And so she was like, oh, I’m gonna do Vegas. [00:18:29] And at that point, to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong listeners, but I, I think my history on this is right, is it was mostly legacy acts and then she was the first. Modern, kind of like Hot Act, who did it. And like U2 is doing a residency this year. They’re gonna be at, at the, at the Venetian, I think. [00:18:46] Um, and [00:18:47] Brett: they could be [00:18:48] Christina: considered Legacy, couldn’t they? They are, but my point being like, of course they are, but I’m just saying like, like, but, but, but I say this U Two’s last tour, which was a decade ago, and I know it’s a decade, but, so U Two’s last tour is still to this day, the best selling, like the highest grossing tour of all time. [00:19:04] Huh? Like, so, and, and, and that was a hundred plus shows where they were playing in the, the 360 stadiums, you know, a hundred thousand plus people. So, you know, um, even when even those big rock acts like, you know, Uh, are are doing residencies, but yet you see everybody doing it. You know, Britney obviously had a, had a residency and, and um, Katie Perry has one there right now, but, um, you know, uh, it’s usually not like top of their game artists though. [00:19:34] So that is still, I think, a little bit unique to Adele and, and a little bit like Celine cuz like Katie Perry is, is not selling records like she used to, whereas Adele is still selling. Yeah. You know, like Mil, she’s still selling millions and millions of albums. So, um, but, but you’re right. It’s great. It’s great for the artist and, and for the fans. [00:19:52] Like you said Jeff, [00:19:54] Brett: so like 20 minutes to talk about Vegas. That was uh, that was a good intro salad. [00:19:59] Christina: It was solid. Sorry about that. And that’s also my mental health update, Sponser: ZocDoc [00:20:01] Brett: so everything else. No apologies. Yeah. That’s awesome. . Uh, Christina, do you want to do the Zoc read this [00:20:08] Christina: week? Yes, absolutely. This episode is brought to you by Zoc. [00:20:15] All right, so you’re trying to find a cause for your symptoms and you know, maybe you’ve got like a cough cuz you were just in Las Vegas and you’re around a bunch of people and you’re like, oh my God, do I have an ear infection? Do I have like sore throat? Do I have covid going on? , exactly. Like what do I have? [00:20:31] Anyway, you stumbled down a TikTok rabbit hole full of questionable advice from so-called experts. Do not take. , like the, the dewormer. That’s all I’m gonna say. But there are better ways to get the answers that you want and the care that you deserve from trusted professionals and, you know, not randos on the internet. [00:20:48] Don’t trust the randos on the internet. Reddit is not medical advice. Uh, neither is WebMD, frankly. Doc, doc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care that you need and deliver the type of experience that you want. Zocdoc is the. 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I’ve [00:22:05] Brett: probably told you this before, but there was one time I was in Vegas and apparently there’s some kind of desert pollen that causes, uh, like flu leg symptoms. Yeah. And I had like an allergic reaction, completely lost my voice and stuff. [00:22:20] He knows. It was like, I thought I had left Minnesota behind, but all of a sudden I had this just horrible, like head cold and laryngitis and it was awful. Yeah. I spent, I spent my entire four days in Vegas, just unable to talk, unable to breathe. It was awful. Um, wow. And, and WebMD told me I had cancer, so I could have used Doc. [00:22:45] Um, that’s a, that’s a web, that’s a web md Well, desert cancer. [00:22:50] Christina: Um, desert cancer in biggest cancer. Podcast Swap: Calm the Bleep Down [00:22:52] Brett: Our, our podcast. Our podcast swap this week comes from the Calm, the Bleep Down podcast. Our days are busy, and with so much going on, it can be hard to say stress free and balanced. That’s why there is. Calm the bleep down. [00:23:07] Calm the bleep down as a podcast to help you get back to feeling refreshed and relaxed so you can navigate the chaos of regular life with some balance and perspective. [00:23:17] Each week host Michael Beckermeyer releases two free guided meditations. They’re low key, relaxed, and simple. With each meditation lasting 15 to 20 minutes. It’s not a huge commitment, and the benefits can make it well worth your time. You don’t even need to know how to do it. [00:23:34] Anyone can meditate. All you have to do is close your eyes and breathe for a few moments. Maybe like so many others, you have a really busy mind and you’re convinced you can’t meditate. Or maybe it’s been a while and you wanna get back into the habit. Search for a calm the bleep down in the Apple Podcast app or wherever you listen to podcast and come meditate with us or them, depending on whose voice this this read is written in. [00:24:02] Christina Mental Health Corner [00:24:03] Brett: says she’s already done her mental health check-in. [00:24:05] Um, yep. I’ll give you my quick update. I, uh, so I missed a week of the podcast cuz I was sick and then immediately went into like a hypomanic phase where I was still sleeping like six to eight hours a night. , but definitely like had my, uh, obsession, my coding. Like I just wanted to be in my office coding all the time, uh, which I enjoy. [00:24:29] It’s great. I I get a lot done. Um, it lasted, uh, I, I, yesterday I decided I was gonna stop taking my h d meds, cuz I needed to kind of get off this, uh, very long hypomanic phase. Um, so today I’m, I am without medication and, uh, a little bit, uh, scattered. Feeling a little calmer, but not much. Like I honestly, I, I’m, I’m in the middle of what could be a very long, hypomanic phase. [00:25:02] Um, I don’t hate it. My girlfriend tells me I’ve been distant. Um, I don’t know exactly what that means, but she’s like, not emotionally distant. Like, I feel like you’re here, but then I don’t, I don’t know. I guess I’m not, I’m not the greatest partner when I’m mad, like I know that. But, um, I thought I was holding it together pretty well this time, but, Um, yeah, so I’m trying to, I’m trying to kind of end it, get back to stable, uh, hopefully without a lot of depression. [00:25:31] But, um, it’s been, it’s been over a week that I’ve been just slightly elevated, which, uh, at first I was like, holy shit, did I find the new stable? Did I find like the perfect stable where I’m like productive and like, and focused and, and happy and, uh, but it got old after a little bit. So still haven’t, still haven’t found that sweet spot [00:25:58] Jeffrey: That sounds like a sweet spot. [00:26:02] Um, I’m, uh, I’m, I’ve. I’ve been thinking, or sorry, I’ve been observing myself. Like, I don’t know if it’s that I’m moving too fast or that my, my brain is impacted by certain medications or what, but I’ve been kind of just making little mistakes that are making me crazy and that aren’t, I mean, some of these are in publishing the podcasts and Brett will be like, it’s not that, not that big of a deal. [00:26:29] And I’m like, ah, fuck Gabby. [00:26:31] Brett: I don’t, again, [00:26:32] Jeffrey: don’t give up on me. Ah. Um, and uh, so let’s just talk about a lot of little things like that, that are, it just when they add up like that they can be kind of stressful. And I, I realized I was kind of looking for a reason and I realized that like, , you know, in a couple months. [00:26:47] My, the project I’ve been doing for five years ends and it’s my only source of income. Um, and I am looking at what the hell to do next. And I think for me, when I’m in that position, I go through a whole swirl of like, I have moments where I feel confident and I’m, I, I feel like, yeah, no, I’ve, I can, I can definitely build off of what I’ve done in the past and I’m really proud of that, whatever, into like imposter syndrome where it’s like, oh well it’s all a fucking house of cards and , you know, like whatever. [00:27:17] And um, so I’ve been kind of cycling with that and, and realizing like, oh, I wonder if that’s actually impacting my, like, overall sort of, um, cognitive abilities. Cuz it takes up like way more space than I, I think it will or think it does. Um, so I’m just trying to like, I’m just trying to continually slow myself down a little bit. [00:27:41] Um, part of part of the way I’m doing that is like if I’ve, if I’m in the middle of trying to do something and I’m moving kind of fast, I’ll just stop and try to like write out what it is I’m doing and I’m going to do next it, when that’s useful. I don’t, I wouldn’t do if it wasn’t useful. Um, but just trying to kind of like stop myself and slow down a little bit and gi give myself a little spaciousness. [00:28:02] Cause I don’t think I need a ton of spaciousness. I can need just a little, and I need many little bits of spaciousness through the day. Um, so, and I need to not be in a situation where I’m, where I have no choice but to rush, which is a situation I put myself in all the time, . Um, so I’m trying to kind of deal with that rather than being like, what’s wrong with my brain? [00:28:23] Um, I’m, I’m like, well here, it’s what’s obviously wrong with your brain and can be solved with behavioral changes, . So anyhow, it’s my. . All right. But it’s a lot. Like I, I have, you know, I have a wife of two kids and I’m, I, I’m a, I’m a breadwinner in this house. Mm-hmm. . So it’s just like, shit, I gotta get this. [00:28:45] Right. [00:28:46] Christina: Right. You gotta get shit done for sure. Yeah, exactly. . [00:28:51] Jeffrey: So anyhow, that’s my deal. Yeah. Ugh. Tech layoffs [00:28:53] Brett: What do we, my, uh, the tech world is facing massive layoffs, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Um, and nobody working in tech is feeling perfectly secure. Um, I don’t care how untouched your team seems right now, there’s like, yeah, there’s a. [00:29:10] What was it? Google employees were fired by email and they found out, a lot of them found out they were, they had been laid off when their key cards didn’t let them into the building the next day. Oh, that’s funny. So rough. There’s no, there’s no guarantee that, uh, tech jobs are safe, which is probably true across the economy. [00:29:31] I’m just mostly involved. Well, it’s a lot, a lot of those tech moves, but I spend a lot of time thinking, holy shit, what do I do? If, if I get laid off in the middle of a tech recession and nobody’s hiring, like, what happens to me? What happens to, to my family? Yeah. Uh, like me and my partner and my, I guess, yeah. [00:29:51] But that’s a family. Um, [00:29:53] Christina: well, I, I think so. If, if, if, if it makes you feel any better, Brett, like, I think that you a, I think you’re in a better position than a lot of other people because you have a lot of skills, so you can be slotted into a lot of things. Um, I, I have a very um, , I have a much, uh, smaller set of skills, shall we say. [00:30:13] Uh, so, um, I, I worry someone, but I’m also, I have to just be confident that if something happens, I’ll find something. But I think you have a very broad skillset where you could be s slotted into a lot of things. The only thing I’ll say, and I also worried about the, the, the tech recession and and whatnot, is that even though all these layoffs are happening, if you look like even in the United States at the number of like engineers that we need, we still don’t have enough. [00:30:41] So even if like the, the, the scary thing with the big companies doing the layoffs is that you might find another job, but it might not pay as well. And depending on your budget, and if you’re like really reliant on like that, you know, like mid six figure salary, like, uh, you know, for your mortgage and all these other things like that could really fuck you. [00:31:01] I’m not like discounting that, but, If, if this is more like a, like a, you know, early two thousands kind of tech bubble thing and, and, and we don’t know yet. Like there are still like startups. I, I know for a fact are still hiring and so you’re sort of in this weird place where, yeah, okay, you might lose your job at Google and, and I’m not in any way discounting how horrible and like awful and stressful that would be, but there are other places hiring. [00:31:27] It’s not like, you know, some industries that I’ve worked in where like then no one is hiring and you know, you wouldn’t even be able to find anything comparable to live off of. So I hope that can give you a little bit of. It, it, it’s not gonna give you reassurance, but just, just, just to say like, I’m just looking at it. [00:31:46] There are still jobs, they’re just maybe different, right? Like we just, I think the, the interesting thing is Brett and I were talking about this before the podcast started. There’s this entire generation of people who, um, have never been through layoffs or recession before. Mm. And, and that’s weird for me because I used to work in journalism, which obviously had lots of that. [00:32:09] Right. Even after like, the boom years of digital, which was the only part of journalism I worked in, there were all kinds of layoffs. But, you know, I also graduated from college in 2008, so like my entire, like worldview was shaped by that. And, uh, but there’s a whole generation of people who’ve literally never seen it. [00:32:26] And so, uh, I totally understand the, the anxiety because I have questions too. I’m also the breadwinner in my house, so I definitely have, I’m definitely there with you where. You know, I have decent savings and, and I’d be okay. Um, but you know, like yeah, you know, you’re definitely have like those questions. [00:32:43] It’s [00:32:43] Brett: amazing how fast savings can disappear when you have no other source of income. Like, I have decent savings right now too. Um, probably, probably not as decent as yours cuz I’ve only been back in the job world for Right. A little over a year now. Um, but like I could survive six months, like if I lost my job and had no, like unemployment or anything, I could survive six months, um, comfortably at my current lifestyle. [00:33:12] Um, yeah. But, but then, right. If it took me longer than that to find a job, I’d be in trouble. [00:33:18] Christina: Yeah. I could do a year right now, um, at, at, at my current stuff and, and probably extend that. That’s great. If, if I cut things down. Um, but you know, I definitely don’t want to do that. Right. Yeah. And that would, and, and, and to be clear that’s, that, that’s before going into the 401k. [00:33:33] Right. Yeah, exactly. Other stuff the same, which, which I wouldn’t wanna touch. Um, so I, I have a year, but yeah, I obviously don’t, you know, yeah. My, [00:33:41] Brett: you know, my 401k, I lost half, I lost half of my 401k from the first half of my career. When I got divorced, I just, uh, without really even being asked, I just was like, you deserve half of this. [00:33:54] And I just signed over half my 401k. Um, and then didn’t, didn’t have a job for the next, like seven years. Cause obviously no [00:34:03] Jeffrey: lawyers involved , [00:34:05] Brett: which is better many times. Yeah, I know it’s way there. And my divorce was super easy. It was, it, it, it went fine. Um. . I think I did, I think I did right by her. Um, at the time we got divorced, she was making more than I was anyway, so mm-hmm. [00:34:21] um, it, it, that wasn’t too hard, but I didn’t start Redding to my 401K until last year. Um, so basically I have the 401k of like a 21 year old right now. Um, yeah. It’s not, it’s in a similar, it’s not significant . Yeah, [00:34:39] Jeffrey: yeah. Yeah. That’s scary. Yeah. [00:34:43] Christina: And mine is mostly my, I mean, I have my mind, my 401k is definitely not what it should be because I saved a whole lot less than, than um, you know, you were suggested to. [00:34:50] Cuz I lived in New York City and I was like, What do you mean? I’m supposed to say this amount of Yeah, yeah. . Fuck you. Um, but, but a lot of my stuff has been, uh, it has been caught up in stock, stock that I didn’t sell dumbly. Um, and the stock has, has, you know, gone down significantly and the last year. So that’s been fun to just see a third of that disappear. [00:35:13] But, you know, [00:35:14] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:35:16] Christina: Yeah. But also I, I work in an industry that gives me stock so that there’s, that I, I, I’ve [00:35:20] Brett: restricted stock units that if I stick around long enough, they’ll, they’ll vest and I’ll be able to take them out. But I, I have another six months before the first quarter of my last bonus, actually vests and I can touch it. [00:35:34] Okay. Uh, so hopefully, hopefully I can stick around that [00:35:37] Christina: long. We’ll see. Yeah. My, my, my mine, mine vests quarterly, but I, I don’t do the thing that you can do with after, [00:35:43] Brett: after a year. I learned this about GitHub, uh, invest quarterly after a year. But your first year you can’t, [00:35:50] Christina: well, no. Well, well, that, that’s, that’s for your signing, uh, amount. [00:35:54] Um, because I was joining from Microsoft. Oh, okay. All my stock already transferred over, and then my, my bonus that I got at GitHub is quarterly, so I was already on like a Microsoft vest. So, but yeah. Um, so most of them, most of them, the, the, the first amount that they give you will vest. Yeah. Um, At least the signing amount will, will vest, um, after a year. [00:36:16] But, but, um, your first bonus, even if you get that in under a year, usually quarterly. Nice. King of the Hill Corner [00:36:22] Brett: Um, I know we have a, we have a few topics to cover. I, uh, the week I was gone, you guys mentioned King of the Hill and it’s come up a few times, . Um, it’s a great show. Uh, last time Christina mentioned it was about the, uh, Y2K episode. [00:36:39] Yeah. And, uh, so I, I was like, all right, Christina seems very gung-ho on King of the Hill. Like she brings it up all the time. And I trust Christina. I trust Christina’s like media chaps. And I had seen, I had watched it when it was on and I enjoyed it. It was a good show. I had, I had warm feelings about it, but I had just watched all of future drama and been disappointed. [00:37:04] Um, and Christina said, you know, king of the Hill is better. And so I went back and I started from the beginning. I’m on season. Nine now. Mm-hmm. , um, I’ve been watching it. Uh, we have, we have learned that El is her at her best, if she has some time to, uh, with, with autism and, and recovery times needed from social interactions, if she has an hour to two hours of just her time, um, like close the door, read, write, do all of those things. [00:37:39] So I’m left in the living room, uh, and I watch King of the Hill every night now. . Um, and it is really good. Yeah. Like the way that they have it set up. So you have like an uptight, Christian, patriotic Texas family, uh, dealing with the problems that arise from having a slightly, a different kid, like he’s a good kid. [00:38:03] Mm-hmm. , but, uh, but, but he maybe is a little more effeminate than, than the, the, the dad would like, maybe he’s a little puer than his parents expected him to be. Like all of these little things that they have to deal with and they have to deal with all of the things that Bobby brings into their lives. [00:38:23] And it deals with it in a way that even my ultra right wing religious parents could watch and understand the progression that Hank goes through every week as he learns to deal with these new things. And they do it in a way that is. Not offensive, like it’s not in your face. They tackle these issues in a way that’s like, yeah, it’s, it’s okay to be offended by this at first, but here’s why. [00:38:51] Here’s why you will eventually come around and still love your son. Despite your misgivings at first, and I think it’s a brilliant show. It’s really good. [00:39:01] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I, I totally thank you for saying that. Um, I, this is, this is Grant’s favorite show, and, and he always calls himself like, like he was Bobby Hill as a kid, , and, and, and that’s how he really related to it. [00:39:15] And yeah, the, the show, and even, you know, you, when you get into the later seasons, it does fall off the rails a little bit more, although there’s still some gyms, but like, it, it’s, um, I think it’s a really great just kind of representation of a lot of the characters. Like Hank, who’s this conservative kind of guy. [00:39:32] Like he could have been an archetype that would’ve been really one-dimensional, and he is not a one-dimensional character. Yeah. You know, he really feels like a real person. He’s not Archie Bunker. Yeah. No. And he really does evolve and he really does grow. Right. And, uh, there’s, there’s this great episode, um, that happened I guess in 2000 when George W. [00:39:50] Bush was running for president, where he met him at, um, at like a fair or something. And then he had a weekend shake. And then he has this crisis of conscience about who he is gonna vote for . Um, and, uh, it, it, it, it’s very, very funny. Um, there was this great thing that I saw, um, over Christmas, uh, I’m gonna blink it in our, our show notes. [00:40:09] It’s called Priests React to King of the Hill, and it’s these two, um, priests and they do these react videos. They’re these two like, like Catholic priests, these two friars I guess who, uh, react to, um, Various, uh, pop culture media, and they talk about the one where the episode that they react to is the one where, uh, Hank, um, leaves his church mm-hmm. [00:40:31] because they give up his seats to someone else and, and then they go to the megachurch and mm-hmm. and kind of the whole thing there. And it’s actually, it’s like, it’s, it’s a really interesting thing to watch, to get that perspective from, you know, even if you’re someone like me who, who doesn’t appreciate or doesn’t, it’s not that I don’t appreciate, but who doesn’t really jive with organized religion. [00:40:51] Um, it was actually, I even had Grant watch and he really liked the reaction and he’s even more anti-religion than I am. Um, he who really, really liked, um, their response to it. And, and it was really interesting because. The priest is, is younger and it’s clearly showing the older one this media, but they, they, they walk away with it like very impressed and thinking, oh no, they got the, got the message right. [00:41:13] Um, Greg Daniels, who was one of the co-creators, went on to create the office and, and I think that you, you can see a lot of like the humanity and things that you later saw in the office. You can see it in King of the Hill. So I’m glad, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying it because I really do think it’s one of those like special shows I think [00:41:31] Brett: of you a lot. [00:41:32] When I watch it, I’m like, oh, Christina would’ve loved those . Explain Things to Jeff Corner [00:41:36] Jeffrey: That’s awesome. Uh, can I ask you guys to explain something to me like I was five? Yes. Okay. Why is it that there are so many things that only work in Chrome? , even though chromium [00:41:49] Brett: is everywhere. In my experience, if something says it will work in chro, it’ll work in a chromium browser. [00:41:56] Um mm-hmm. They’re not gonna, they’re, most places aren’t gonna be like, this also works in brave, they’re just gonna say ch because it has so much market share. Yeah. Um, but for the most part, like Riverside, which we’re using to record this, for example. Yeah. Uh, it, it works fine and, and brave or edge. [00:42:14] Christina: Yeah. [00:42:15] Okay. Now if you’re talking about chromium, the open source Google thing, is that what you’re talking about? Um, yeah. Jeff. Okay. That lacks a couple libraries that, um, some websites call on. So it’s, um, D r m is one of the big ones. So Wild Vine, which is like the, the d R m that, uh, YouTube, uh, actually I don’t think YouTube uses it, but Netflix and, and Hulu and a bunch of other services rely on, um, is, is bundled into Chrome official and it’s actually bundled into Firefox, which was very controversial, but. [00:42:50] that was the correct move. I’m sorry. For the, for the, you know, open source purist or free software purist, excuse me. Free software purist. Yeah, yeah. Don’t, don’t, don’t wanna mislabel anyone. Um, but, but that was the right decision. Um, but there are a couple of, there are a couple of specific things that Google does in Chrome, which then is by the most part adopted in brave and in opera and in edge and other things that, for whatever reason, are not in the pure open source builds of chromium. [00:43:19] Um, but it’s usually D R M related. And, and I don’t know why I would say, and, and Brett tell me your thoughts on this, but I mean, at this point, a lot of it is, it is like Internet Explorer all over again where a lot of developers just don’t even bother to test in desktop safari. They will test in, in mobile safari cuz they have to, but they don’t even bother to test. [00:43:41] in Firefox, right? Like, and there’s certainly, you know, WebKit they’re not going to use. And so it’s one of those things that if there are flags, um, that, that might be off on chromium and I don’t know what they might be for some reason, the, that the site is using one of those things maybe. Maybe that’s why it breaks. [00:43:59] Jeffrey: Tell me, uh, describe and, uh, tell me this, like, I’m five, what is [00:44:03] Christina: chromium? Okay, so Chromium is the pure open source implementation of the Chrome browser. So it is, um, taking all the Google bits out of it. So Google would have their server for some of the extensions and for maybe some of the stuff that they would do for YouTube, you know, or, or d r m as I said. [00:44:23] And, and this is what they’re basically kind of giving out to the community and, and frankly Linux users to be like, look, you wanted something that, that is unencumbered and that is deco. Here you go. It’s not gonna have all the niceties that we have and it’s not going to have like all the bells and whistles and polish, but this will, this will work. [00:44:43] Um, and, and you can, uh, be assured that it is purely, uh, open source or free software. [00:44:49] Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay. So what is built on chromium or out of chromium ? [00:44:55] Christina: Um, well, it ver it, it, it depends again, like Microsoft Edge is technically based on chromium, but they use a lot of things from the Chrome project too. And then Microsoft is obviously gonna add in the D r M component and, and the other things. [00:45:08] And they’re gonna adhere really strictly to the Chrome release schedule to try to make sure that if it works in Chrome, it’ll work in edge. Um, but if you, for instance, wanted to build a brand new web browser that had the, the, the Chrome engine, so you would have the JavaScript engine and you would also have like the, the rendering engine blink. [00:45:26] Um, and you would have the ability to use the extension format. Um, you could just use the chromium base and then add or remove whatever, whatever, you know, kind of googly bits you wanted. But like, the idea would be, for instance, like a lot the. You know, brave kind of started and, and edge to, to a certain degree too. [00:45:43] Like, they don’t have all of like the, the, the really high Google optimized things, right? Which, which are really dedicated for, you know, around Google search and, and the other Google services. Like, that’s not part of Chromium. So, so the idea of chromium is, is basically like you can take our JavaScript, um, um, engine engine and our, and our, and our, you know, renderer. [00:46:05] Um, but there are other things that the Google builds that, that they are like, Hey, this is ours and I, and if you wanna use them and, and like the dev tools for instance, are, I, I believe for the most part, open source, but some people build on them. Like, I actually think that the edge, uh, dev tools are better now, um, which I know is an anthem, but I actually think they are. [00:46:24] But if you wanted to, you know, make changes, Uh, to, to remove certain things, which usually people do for privacy reasons, where they’re like, we don’t want all of our searches and all of our pages and everything that we’re doing necessarily be tracked by Google or whoever, you know? Yeah. We’ll, we’ll do our own thing. [00:46:40] Or if you are a, a company who’s like, I don’t like manifest v3, which is gonna be the thing that, that Google is supposed to, uh, finally force everyone on and the next couple of months, which will make ad blocking as we’ve done traditionally, much more difficult. Mm-hmm. In theory, somebody could fork, you know, um, uh, or one of the forks like, like, like, like brave or, or, or chrome, uh, or not Chrome Edge. [00:47:04] Edge isn’t gonna do it, but, but Brave could. They could be like, Hey, actually we wanna still support the old, um, e extension manifest. Um, and, and, and continue to upkeep the fork, if that makes any sense. Okay. [00:47:18] Jeffrey: Okay. So really when I, I was kind of thinking about it wrong, um, it’s really that where Chromium exists, there’s a whole lot more built on top that is proprietary to the new or [00:47:31] Brett: Chrome or the new ARC browser that, uh, Bryant and Quinn, you guys weren’t here for that episode, but it’s great track browser talking about arc, and it has, it adds a lot of, uh, rather ingenious developments, but it’s chromium based and mm-hmm. [00:47:46] and I don’t think that browser could exist if they didn’t have chromium to build off of. [00:47:50] Christina: No. Yeah. Cause they’d have to do the entire thing from scratch. Same, same thing even with, with Brave Right. Or even frankly, like, like Microsoft Edge, Microsoft. The old Edge, like was its own rendering engine and JavaScript thing, Trident and, and like it evolved from Internet Explorer and then they had it. [00:48:06] Adoption wasn’t there, development was slow, couldn’t get extension developers. And so that team made what I think was the right choice, but it was definitely a hard one. And it was definitely a contentious one where they said, okay, we are going to scrap all the original work that we’ve spent years and years on and had a ton of engineers doing. [00:48:22] And instead we are going to rease off of Chromium. Um, but we’re going to work upstream as much as we can with Google, but we are going to make our own optimizations so that things like have better battery life and maybe it’ll be more integrated with certain Windows things. And, you know, uh, we will default to Bing in, in instead of Google, although that is always the very first thing that I change. [00:48:45] Right? , they have their own extension store, um, you know, for, for Edge, but you can also go to the Chrome store and install any extension, which is the same thing you can do on, on Arc or on, um, , but you know, on, on, on, on Brave or whatever. So, [00:49:00] Jeffrey: okay. So then, oh, go ahead Brett. I just gotta [00:49:02] Brett: say like, Bing is the last search engine to offer an api. [00:49:08] Mm-hmm. , uh, they charge for it. Like, you have to, you have to subscribe and pay to use the Bing search api. But as someone who puts a backend, a search backend into multiple projects, um, I greatly appreciate everyone else has pulled what little APIs they had to begin with. Even Duck Duck Go has pulled their api, [00:49:30] Christina: which is funny because they’re based on Bing, [00:49:32] Brett: right? [00:49:33] Yeah. So, I mean, they, [00:49:35] Jeffrey: duck Go is based on Bing, [00:49:37] Christina: a lot of it. Yeah. They have, they source, [00:49:39] Brett: they source from multiple engines, but yeah, Bing is a big, it’s [00:49:43] Christina: a big source. Yeah. It’s not a, it used to be their primary one, but, but, um, now they have like their own crawlers too. Yeah, they source from multiple places, but, but at least historically, Bing has always been their largest. [00:49:53] Jeffrey: Yeah. Why is it good that they’re. These people are pulling their APIs. It’s not, it’s not good. Oh, I thought you said it was okay. It it, you, you state it in a way they had me thinking you were like, no, [00:50:03] Brett: I mean basically it all comes down to ad money. Yeah. And being, and being able to control what people see. [00:50:10] And if you bingo, just expose this huge, this huge trolling database you have of search results, uh, you can’t make money off of that. Yep. So, yep. So Bing charges for access to the search api and I, I’ve never paid for it, so I don’t know if it’s if you get the exact same results as you would in the browser or not. [00:50:33] Uh, but I do know that Google has made it nearly impossible to even scrape results. And Duck dot go does not make it simple. Um, duck dot go. It’s easy to work around and get like the one top result from Duck dot go. Hmm. Um, but anything else to actually get like search results from anything, it’s no longer even feasible. [00:50:54] Yeah. [00:50:56] Christina: Hmm. And, and Bing is, is, um, apparently they’re gonna be building chat g p t into it. Right. So, which is cool. Yeah. 10 [00:51:02] Brett: billion investment. [00:51:03] Christina: Sure. Absolutely. And, uh, and, and that was even [00:51:07] Brett: before, but Google supposed, Google supposedly has, um, something that, like their AI supposedly is already at the same level as chat, G P T. [00:51:17] Mm-hmm. . So this, this purchase, this, this investment, uh, brings Microsoft closer to, uh, what Google already has in-house. [00:51:27] Christina: Totally. Well, yeah, but but you’re not wrong. I mean, and I don’t know how, I don’t know. I, I don’t, I don’t work at Google obviously, so I don’t know what their, um, capabilities are. And, and Microsoft had a lot of capabilities even before the open ai, open AI partnership. [00:51:42] Um, however, like, and, and this is, I think what, what the ultimate question will be with how these things work out is it’s like, Who can, who can execute the best, right? Because there are countless examples of people of better technology or as good technology, but can’t execute as well. And Google has had arguably, I would say like a, a, a decade head start on everybody else in ai. [00:52:04] But they haven’t done anything that is. Like worked. I mean, other than the Google Photos stuff, which is amazing, but people don’t think about as, as AI in the same way. They haven’t done anything that is so far that is, you know, captured kind of like the mainstream public. Yeah. You know, where like as chat g p [00:52:22] Brett: t, you mix, you mix chat, g p t level AI into like a home assistant or into fucking clippy for that matter. [00:52:31] Yep. Um, and you have some tools that are seriously useful. Yep. Um, that, that are like, it’s the fu the future is now, like this stuff is about to start happening, so, oh, [00:52:42] Christina: no, I totally agree. I, and, and, and, and I’m not like, I, I don’t think that like it’s a, it’s a given that, that, that open AI will be the winner. [00:52:48] I have no idea who will win. Yeah. But I, I, I, I do think that there’s something to be said with like, well, Google, Google has had this capability for a long time. For whatever reason, they, they didn’t execute, you know, [00:52:57] Brett: despite these huge investments, open AI is basically operating as a nonprofit. Uh, capped, capped, uh, For profit. [00:53:07] Yeah. Meaning like they, it’s a hundred [00:53:08] Christina: limit. Yeah. It, it’s a hundred times the investment amount. So, [00:53:13] Brett: so they’re not in it to get rich. They’re in it to keep the servers running. Right. Um, which in, you know, we live in a capitalist society and whoever makes the most money is going to have the most dominant technology. [00:53:27] Um, so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes from. [00:53:30] Christina: Totally. A lot, a lot of the investment from Microsoft has historically gone, just frankly, towards compute stuff because all of it runs on Azure and it’s expensive. Well, it’s expensive, yeah, for sure. Because almost everything they’re doing is, is GPU bound, and that is really expensive. [00:53:42] And so, mm-hmm. , you know, um, uh, like Azure’s gonna have to buy a whole lot. And I know they’ve been working on this for a while because obviously like I, you know, work on some things that are adjacent to this. But, you know, I’ve been trying to, to get way more GPUs, you know, for the data centers where, um, it’s sort of an interesting place where I think, like, I think we talked about this before, like data centers are really moving less from being like processor based because you kind of reached a point where you can even do arm, um, uh, you know, stuff and save money for, for, for your data centers, for some of your compute. [00:54:15] But when you’re talking about ai, it is all G p U bound [00:54:19] Brett: and I don’t even, I don’t even want to know what the ecological impact of something like open AI [00:54:23] Christina: is. Yeah. I don’t know. Like it’s, it’s. It’s better than Bitcoin though. Cause I mean at the least, you know what I mean? Like at the very least it’s actually being used for something like great, you know what I mean? [00:54:34] Actually had [00:54:34] Brett: some productive use in society. Well, [00:54:36] Jeffrey: maybe as it comes up and Bitcoin goes down [00:54:39] Christina: it all. Yeah. Well and, and then I think that the hope is obviously is that these GPUs will over time become more and more power efficient and you know, Things will, as models get better, you will be less maybe bound on those ends, but Yeah, we’ll see. [00:54:54] But you’re not wrong. I mean, those are definitely things to think about, like long-term, like what is the, what is the impact of this stuff, because it’s not nothing, but it is, uh, given like the ecological impact of what we used to be using GPUs for, which was literally just to create fake money, you know? [00:55:10] Right. like, yeah. At least we get something out of it. [00:55:13] Brett: All right. [00:55:14] Jeffrey: So you’re not, you didn’t, you’re not wrong, Jeff. You’re not wrong. Would be the great, a great name for a podcast, not an episode, but just like, welcome to You’re Not [00:55:22] Brett: Wrong. The, the opposing view to You’re wrong About, which is great podcast by the way. [00:55:27] We should do a swap with you wrong about . Um, We didn’t get to. No, sir. I, I’m going to do a little more research on it. I think it will be a topic along with talking about Mastodon, um, and maybe we revisit in the future, uh, the travesty. That is the Elon Musk Twitter. But for this week, we should get to gratitude. Grapptitude [00:55:49] Brett: Um, who wants to kick off? I can, if nobody’s up for it. [00:55:55] Jeffrey: Hmm. I’m fine whenever. Go for it, Jeff. Um, okay. So my pick this week is, um, the Read Wise Reader, uh, read Wise is a service I’ve used for a long time, really just as a pipeline for all of my highlights from Apple Books and, um, Insta Paper and everything to pump them into my, well, back in the day, we called it a second brain. I kind of dump it into obsidian, or I was playing with Rome before that, and even before that it was just text files, right? So it just like does a nice job of almost creating like an API of all my, um, highlights. But I. Regarded it as just a pass through kind of situation. Um, just this week I saw that they have a beta for something called the Read Wise Reader, and it blew my mind. [00:56:41] Um, so basically you can picture, um, Insta paper, uh, where you can read your articles in a nice, you know, readable format. You can highlight, um, you can look at just your highlights, that kind of thing. So at its base, it’s kind of an insta paper like service, but it takes in, um, eub. Twitter threads, YouTube videos, r s s feeds, email newsletters, whatever. [00:57:05] Like it takes in just about anything and, and handles everything like with a kind of grace and just that I did not expect, um, from such a service that even allows you to, um, watch YouTube videos with the transcript going. Um, and you can highlight in the transcript. Um, so anyhow, it captures all kinds of stuff. [00:57:23] It presents, its beautifully. There’s a, there’s a, a, a right, uh, sidebar and a left sidebar, and then down the middle is your article. Um, and it has the most amazing keyboard shortcuts. There’s so simple. Nice. So like, if I’m looking at an article, there’s gonna be like a focus indicator on the left side of a line or a paragraph, and I can just, you know, use the arrows to kind of navigate down. [00:57:45] And then when I wanna highlight, I just hit H and it highlights that work or that paragraph. And then in your right sidebar, it shows up as a highlight. Nice. and you can highlight fucking images and they’ll show up in there. Um, and then, you know, you, if you want to like write a note and highlight it, you, you just type N and all of a sudden the highlight is in the sidebar and you’ve got a, a prompt, uh, to type your note into. [00:58:09] It’s just like, nice. It is so, um, elegant and it’s even got this really crazy, uh, feature where it uses G P T three, um, it’s called Ghost Reader. So you, there’s a keyboard, um, shortcut to invoke ghost reader, at which point you can ask the document a question, summarize the document, generate q and a pairs using your highlights, , and then using the, I don’t know much about the ginger. [00:58:37] Templating language, but apparently you can use that to make custom queries of the, of the article, um, and . And that’s not all. Um, it also is a web highlighter. So I can be on any webpage in the whole wide world and I can highlight something and write, click and say either save just this highlight to my read wise or save this article with this highlight to my read wise. [00:59:02] And so like, this is something I’ve dreamt of for a really long time. Yeah. To be able to really just interact like elegantly, um, and powerfully with any kind of content, um, and then be able to export it into something. And so they’ve, there’s all kinds of stuff they’re still going to be adding. Um, but I was actually, surprisingly, Impressed with the generating of q and a pairs. [00:59:27] I didn’t think I cared . Um, but when I read them I was super interested and then like generate thought provoking questions. I actually found it an interesting way to review. I won’t do it, but it was interesting. Um, so anyway, uh, I think it’s free right now or it is free right now. It’s in beta. I’m sure it’ll cost something at some point, but it’s sounds like it should. [00:59:46] Incredible service. Yeah. Yeah. I should, I hope it costs something at some point. [00:59:50] Christina: Okay. So I actually have a couple. So I’ve been playing with Mastodon a little bit more over the last, uh, couple of days. [00:59:57] Um, because not only has Twitter, uh, killed the third party clients, as we discussed last episode, um, but my experience on Twitter has become degraded, uh, as it has for a lot of other people. I, there’s, there’s, um, a, a thread, um, that, uh, I will link to, um, from, from like a former engineer that is, uh, kind of, um, opining about like why this might be because of various things. [01:00:23] Um, you know, being shut down with the service, with the server. Basically the website can’t keep up with, um, with, with what’s going on. Um, and, uh, and so, um, , it’s, uh, it’s not great. Um, so I’ve been playing a little bit more with Mastodon finally, and that’s because there’s finally some decent clients for Mastodon. [01:00:47] So the first one is an iOS client. They’re two iOS clients. First one is called Ice Cubes and it is open source. Um, and it’s available in the app store. Um, and it is a really, really good, um, iOS client. It’s free, uh, but you can, uh, tip the, the creator, which I absolutely have. Uh, this was for some reason banned from the app store for a number of, uh, days. [01:01:13] It was the whole proof aha, but, but it is, um, now available. It was unfortunately only on, on, um, you know, iOS, it doesn’t work on, um, Mac os. Uh, but, but it’s great. And, uh, ivory is also, um, now available from the, the Tap Bots team. So the team behind, um, Tweet bot, tweet bot now make a, make a client called Ivory, which launched, uh, yesterday as we’re recording this. [01:01:39] Yay. Um, it is, uh, it’s, it’s $2 a month or, or, or $15 a year. So, you know, um, it’s, it’s a little more expensive than it was before, but I’d love to be able to support, uh, good devs and then some people were recommending this to me. There is, um, a web app called elk.zone. This is also on GitHub. That is, um, in my opinion, a much, much better web interface for Mastodon. [01:02:04] It is much more similar when the way you look at it to what, like the old Twitter interface was back when, like Twitter had a decent web interface. So this is now becoming my, my primary way of wanting to, uh, to interact with Macedon on. The desktop. Uh, I’m still looking for like a Good Mac clients. There have apparently been some good ones that people have mentioned. [01:02:25] I think one is called Mona, but I haven’t tried that out yet. And so, uh, yeah, mass Don apps are, are finally kind of coming into their own, um, which is interesting. You know, it, it, it, uh, lagged a little bit longer than, um, well actually a lot longer. You, it says something that it took this many years, uh, for Macedon to exist for, for really good clients to come out. [01:02:49] Yeah. But I do think it, that it, it is because, uh, of the decisions that Twitter has made, not just with the third party stuff, but with degrading the overall experience where you now finally have people who are actually really talented both with, with, um, you know, design and with, with, um, programming finally coming together to, to make things. [01:03:07] So, so the Macedon stuff is my stuff and, and I’m at film underscore girl at, uh, Macedon uh, dot social. [01:03:17] Brett: I, uh, awesome. I use, I use Toot with an exclamation point on iOS. Uh, it’s been around for quite a while. I, uh, I do quite well with it, but I’m definitely gonna check out Ivory that, uh, anything from tap bots gets my vote. [01:03:32] So [01:03:32] Christina: for sure. One, one of the nice things about ice cubes I will say that I hope other clients adopt is that it has a stability for you to bring in a remote, local instance. And what that means is that you can bring in basically a timeline from, um, like other, uh, um, instances that you’re not part of, and you can like, browse, like whatever their public things are. [01:03:52] So this is a really good way for discovery. So, like, for me, one of my problems there are services like Move to Shadan and other things where they’ll find your followers on. Um, platforms and, and bring them in for you. But one of the things is that sometimes, you know, like, because it’s decentralized, you don’t see all the, the, the content other people are, are putting on. [01:04:11] And so I have some friends who are on Hacky Derm and I have some friends who are on infosec.exchange and I have some friends that are on other instances. And, um, it’s annoying to have to like try to bring up like a, if you’re on the desktop, I guess you could just like browse that. But it’s, it’s annoying to try to do that. [01:04:25] And so one of the nice things I like about Ice Cube is that you can bring in like a remote local instance where you can browse those kind of like main timelines and then that way you could interact or follow people from that. Yeah. Which I think is a really, really good thing. I hope that, I hope that other clients adopt that feature cuz I think that’s a really, really good solution to trying to figure out like, where is everybody at? [01:04:46] Because I’m like on like the default instance, but there are a lot of people who are on other more specialized ones and, and even though people tell you what instance you’re on, doesn’t matter, it kind of does when you’re kind of getting your feet wet and trying to kind of. , discover where all your people are. [01:05:02] Brett: So I, uh, Elon Musk tweeted out a tweet that just had, uh, two shield icons in, in between it, it said Veritas and three spaced out syllables, uh, to which I wrote back, uh, two Shields with oh fuck off . And, uh, and that got me so many responses from Elon. Fanboys. . Yeah. And even, even fan girls. I, I, oh yeah. But then, Right in the middle of that us, like, not as a reply to Elon, I just wrote the Twitter client on Max Sucks. [01:05:39] Fuck you, Elon Musk for taking away, taking Tweetbot away. This piece of shit can’t even complete a username from the keyboard. It requires a mouse click. And I loathe having to reach for the mouse just to click your stupid stupid name. Um, which got me banned from Twitter for 10 hours. Oh my God. But it was 10 hours. [01:05:59] I didn’t have to read hateful replies from fucking Musk fan boys. [01:06:06] Christina: My, my, my, my jaws like literally dropped though. Like that. Got you banned for 10 hours. [01:06:11] Brett: Yeah. Yes. It said, uh, you may not engage in tar in the targeted harassment of someone even though it’s totally punching up. And even though it was entirely justified anger. [01:06:22] Uh, yeah. Uh, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm. All I said was, fuck you, Elon Musk. Yeah, that was my targeted harassment. [01:06:36] Christina: Okay. There’s a certain irony in this because like, that used to be the shit that, like the, the people on that Elon used to like get mad about. [01:06:44] Yeah. Because look, Twitter, Twitter did used to do some of this shit. Twitter did used to do a thing where like if you told like Mike Pence to go fuck himself, like they would like maybe like, like, like, you know, quarantine your account or whatnot. And, and I’m of the opinion, I know some people will, will, um, uh, disagree with me. [01:06:58] I don’t actually think that saying kill yourself to someone I is impolite. I don’t actually think that’s a death threat. I’m sorry. I don’t. Mm-hmm. And, and, and I don’t think telling someone to go fuck themselves is, is a threat of violence. Right. Like, I’ve had actual rape and death threats come to like my inbox and things to the point where because of, not because I have any trust in the police, but because of like corporate policies and whatnot, I’ve had to report them. [01:07:23] And, and the police don’t give a shit. Um, so like, you’re a public figure, who cares? But like mm-hmm. , it’s different, like when people send you like a very detailed thing, like, I’m going to do X, Y, and Z to you. Like, that’s very different than someone being like, kill yourself. Which again, not nice. Also not a death threat at all. [01:07:42] At all. So like, you know, he used to rail against that sort of stuff and now mm-hmm. because it’s against him. Oh, that’s a, that’s a violation of a harassment policy because you told him to go fuck himself. Yeah. What a, what a little [01:07:55] Brett: bitch. Yeah. So anyway, on that bright note, I will say my actual pick for the week is hook mark. [01:08:02] Uh, which according to our master master list, I somehow haven’t mentioned before. Um, but it is a, a Mac utility that lets you create links between any two objects on your system, whether it’s a, an OmniFocus task or a PDF or an envy ultra note, or an email or a specific line in a document. You can copy a link to it that you can then, Attached to another object or drop into like your markdown notes or an email and, and provide links to things that you don’t normally think of being linkable. [01:08:45] Um, and when it comes to, like if I’m working on a project, I link together like a task paper document and like the main source code and, uh, my ENV Ultra notes in any mine maps I’ve created, and I can jump from any of those individual objects. I can jump to the other parts of the project even though they’re in completely disparate parts of the system. [01:09:07] Um, and it, it’s way faster than spotlight searching, uh, because you are very. Um, intentionally creating these links between objects and it, uh, it’s a game changing utility that’s hard to describe. Uh, but once you, once you get into it and start using it and the links are sturdy, like you can change a file name or move the file and the link to it in hook mark will still work like, it, it, it uses basic file system bookmarking rather than like a directory location or a file name or, or things like that. [01:09:46] Uh, so in general they are very robust, sturdy links and it’s very nice. [01:09:51] Jeffrey: I have a question. So this used to be called Hook, right? Yeah. Um, and I know it’s on Set App now. Yeah. As, as hook mark. It was never there as Hook, I don’t think. [01:10:00] Brett: No. Um, uh, 4.0 they rebranded as Hook Mark because they wanted to clear, clean up the language, uh, between a hook, which is what it creates, and the app itself, which they rebranded as Hook Mart. [01:10:13] And [01:10:14] Jeffrey: were there other major. Changes or anything? No. Significant, uh, [01:10:17] Brett: 4.0 did not have any major under the hood changes. It was mostly a rebranding. [01:10:23] Jeffrey: My, my fear was always I was creating some kind of invisible croft that, that wouldn’t travel with the file in the first place, and no. Would look like a mystery to me 10 years down the line. [01:10:33] But you’re saying it, that is not a problem with hook mark. Well, I, I [01:10:36] Brett: mean, no one can predict what your data system will look like in 10 years. Yeah. [01:10:41] Jeffrey: take away the [01:10:41] Brett: 10 year forecast. But, but the hooks the, no, the hooks are robust and, and, uh, there’s a free version of Hook mark, uh, that even if you were to stop paying the subscription fee for Hook Mark, you would still be able to access all of your [01:10:55] Jeffrey: links. [01:10:56] I see. Okay. Cool. I might play with it. It’s been a while. I played with it early on. [01:11:01] Brett: Cool. We did it. Awesome. [01:11:05] Jeffrey: We did the podcast. We did it again. Yeah. Hey, show up. This is been fun. Can I say, can I say that? Um, on the Tap Bots page, there’s something very sad. It lists their four apps with their icons, and the Tweetbot Bird has a halo now, and it just says, oh, the button says memorial. [01:11:24] And if you click it, it’s amazing. Sad. It’s an elephant. It’s, it’s an elephant for their mastodon, uh, app. Looking at Tweet bot’s. Um, gravestone. . Oh, it’s the, it’s the saddest thing in the world. That’s so sad. Maybe you could find a show Art in that . Maybe. Maybe. Anyway, I loved that app so much. [01:11:48] Brett: Well, is it, is it time to say Get some sleep? [01:11:51] Get [01:11:51] Jeffrey: some sleep. [01:11:53] Christina: Get some sleep. [01:11:54] Jeffrey: Boys. Sleep with the Angels. Tweet bot.

Brett is back after a vicious battle with bread cheese and, with his new lease on life, evaluates chatGPT as a coding assistant. And Twitter puts new fuel on the dumpster fire by effectively pulling the plug on the languishing and once great Tweetbot. Sponsors Rocket Money Say goodbye to last year’s outdated, disorganized methods of managing your money, and say hello to Rocket Money – the better way to hack your finances in 2023. Rocket Money, formerly known as Truebill, is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills —all in one place. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to rocketmoney.com/overtired. Promo Swap: The Mac Observer’s Daily Observations Podcast Do you follow Apple news? Do you listen to podcasts? There’s a podcast all about Apple news that we’d like you to check out. It’s The Mac Observer’s Daily Observations Podcast. Ripped from the virtual pages of macobserver.com, host Ken Ray brings in TMO staffers and other tech types for quick, informative, and entertaining talk centered on the stories of the day. The Mac Observer’s Daily Observations Podcast is online at macobserver.com, or wherever you get podcasts. Show Links ChatGPT for code Mac Menu Bar directory ChatGPT Mac ChatGPT menu bar app Evernote digression MyScript – Best handwriting recognition engine Twitter bullshit Chocklock on Twitterrifiic stuff New York Mag/The Verge article Grapptitude: Jeff: MuckRock Developing your first Document Cloud add-on Christina: Christina: Pirate Weather Brett: SearchLink Join the Conversation Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jeffreyguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Brett v. Bread Cheese [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Brett: Hey, everybody. You’re listening to Overtired. That sounded way more chipper than I feel. Um, uh, [00:00:10] Jeffrey: woke me up [00:00:11] Brett: this is Brett Terpstra. I am, uh, I am back after a week of being ill and, and missing my friends here. Uh, speaking of my friends, I am here with Jeff Severns Guntzel. Hi, Jeff [00:00:23] Jeffrey: Hello? [00:00:24] Brett: and Christina Warren. Hey, Christina. [00:00:26] Christina: Hello. Hello. Welcome back, Brett. We’re glad to, uh, to have you, uh, back with us again. [00:00:32] Brett: I spent six days unable to get, like, I was alternating between laying in bed and reclining on the couch, uh, just for the sake of variety, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t walk. My stomach was, I was doubled over in pain. [00:00:47] Jeffrey: Ugh. [00:00:48] Brett: It was horrifying, and I won’t go into details, but I will never eat bread, cheese. [00:00:57] Christina: Now, now breaded cheese. Cuz you, you, we we’re talking about this pre-show. Do you just mean like, like a, like, like, like, like craft? Like what? What do you [00:01:03] Brett: No, no, no, no, no. So it’s called bread cheese, also known as grilling cheese. And it’s like a, a one inch by four by four inch block of, uh, I don’t know exactly what kind of cheese it is, but it’s designed to put on like the grill or to put in a saute pan and [00:01:22] Jeffrey: Like, like halmi cheese, [00:01:24] Brett: I have no idea what that means. Um, but you heat it until it gets like a little bit gooey, like a brie consistency. [00:01:30] And then you can like season it, like chop it into like strips and put like Italian seasoning on it and grill it till it gets like a nice char on the outside. [00:01:40] Christina: Oh, okay. I’m, look, I’m looking this up now. [00:01:43] Brett: of [00:01:43] Jeffrey: it’s halmi cheese. [00:01:44] Christina: I’m looking this up now. Like it looks pretty great. I, okay. I’ve had every variety of cheese and I’m lactose intolerant. I should add, um, which, uh, but, but my attacks don’t leave me with like six day things. I, I will, I will shit my guts out, but then it’s usually like over with, um, as soon as it’s out of my, you know, like, system. [00:02:06] Um, and, and I, I love cheese, so I will deal with it, but, uh, [00:02:10] Brett: I, I could deal with that. I have the opposite problem. [00:02:14] Christina: Right, right. Yeah. And, and, and actually, I, I should, I should, um, uh, clarify. I’m not lactose intolerant. I mean, I, I think I am, but I’m, I have a milk allergy, which is different, but, um, anyway, uh, but, um, I’ve never had bread cheese, but, um, it’s intriguing to me, but I’m also probably not gonna go near it because of, uh, uh, you know, what it, what it did to your body, [00:02:40] Jeffrey: it’s, here’s a, here’s a 2005 Bon Appit article. Love Halloumi. You need to know about bread, cheese. [00:02:47] Brett: there you [00:02:47] Jeffrey: I’m just bringing Halmi back in the conversation cause I have a feeling. [00:02:51] Brett: You call it, you’re like a goddamn cheese bro. [00:02:54] Jeffrey: Yeah. I, my [00:02:55] Brett: A cheese [00:02:56] Christina: I’m, I’m, I’m also seeing Tuia, uh, but, but I’m, I’m sure [00:03:00] Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s the same. That translates to bread cheese. Apparently that’s like Swedish or Finn, depending on the fucking website. [00:03:06] Chat. G P T Save me [00:03:09] Christina: Exactly. Chat. Pt. What is bread cheese? [00:03:14] Brett: I have it loaded right now. Let’s see. What is bread, cheese, bread, cheese, also known as, who is the type of cheese that originated Finland. It is a semi-hard cheese that is traditionally made from cows milk, but can also be made from a combination of cows and goats milk. The cheese is typically formed into a loaf or a round shape and is often served, sliced or grilled. [00:03:39] And then it goes on for multiple paragraphs that I’m not gonna, I’m not just gonna make our, like we, we could have chat, G p t, write our podcast. We could just do a whole podcast reading from chat g p t, but I feel like it would be a bit dry. [00:03:56] Jeffrey: That is not the fun or even effective way to use chat. G P T I found I, I did just a little bit of that stuff and I was like, this is kind of boring. But then it was, the coding was just like, oh. [00:04:07] Brett: I missed, I missed last week’s conversation, but I, I have a couple, I wanna, I wanna like revive it a little bit. Maybe after mental health corner, we can talk just a little bit about my experiences with chat G P T and where I see it fitting in and, and what dangers I see. Uh, do you want me to start? [00:04:25] Christina: Yes. I want you to start because you, uh, are the one who’ve you’ve, you’ve been gone. So we need, we need to hear from, Mental Health Corner [00:04:31] Brett: So, uh, the day, the day that I felt better, the day I got some relief from my stomach pain, I immediately, uh, felt like I was getting manic. Um, I went from. Stuck, stuck on the couch to like, oh my God, I can catch up on everything in a day. And, uh, uh, so I, I did not take my, uh, ADHD meds. Um, I got exercise, I took a shower. [00:05:01] I ate all three meals and, and, uh, went to bed on time and I slept fine that night. I woke up the next morning, still feeling manic. Um, but I have slept every night since then. Um, not as much as I usually do. My body, like left to its own devices, once nine and a half hours of sleep. Um, and I’ve been getting more like seven, but I am sleeping. [00:05:28] Um, so I would say I’m in a hypomanic phase right now, and I kinda, if I can maintain my, like, self-care levels at this point, um, I can, I can live with this for as long as it lasts. Uh, I, I, I rather enjoy it. I’ve, I’ve written so much code and kept up with work and kept up with my, like, personal relationships and been able to settle down and watch arrowverse shows every night. Um, it’s, it’s working out. I, I can work with this. [00:06:02] Jeffrey: Nice. [00:06:03] Brett: Jeff [00:06:05] Jeffrey: Uh, I’m podcasting for the first time through Progressive lenses, which is awesome. Thought I’d hate it. I do kind of hate it actually, but I don’t hate, I don’t hate it. Like, oh my God, I have to wear progressive lenses. It’s like now my reading glasses are always on me and it’s kind of awesome. And, and related to that, I just had a birthday and, [00:06:27] Brett: Oh yeah. Happy. [00:06:29] Christina: Yes, exactly. Happy. [00:06:30] Jeffrey: Thank you. And, uh, I like, I don’t, I don’t like birthdays, like I like to celebrate them or anything, but I like anything that kind of marks a beginning or, or suggests a clean slate, even if it’s sort of a false promise . Um, and uh, and I’m also just feel like every time I’ve been in a seven year, 27, 37, 47, I always felt like I might as well just round up at this point. [00:06:58] And so the time between 47 and 50, I have a feeling is gonna feel like the time between 37 and 40, which is like, I’m just 50 that whole time . But it’s just like [00:07:08] Brett: do that. I, I round up by fives no matter what age I am. Like right, right now I’m 45 and if someone asks me, I have to think hard to realize I’m only 44. [00:07:18] Christina: See, see, see, I ran down by 10, [00:07:20] Jeffrey: around town by 10. Yep. Yep. That’s one way to do it, for sure. Um, but yeah, I don’t know. Like every once in a while, uh, the way Facebook plays out on your birthday can be nice. Other times I’m like, I don’t buy it, you know? But like, but, uh, this time around was just nice. I got some nice messages and stuff. So anyway, and I’m just kind of, I don’t know, I’m like, weirdly, not physically, but like existentially, I’m comfortable in my years. [00:07:49] physically, I’m not at all comfortable in my years. Um, so it was a, it was a, a big year of changes for me in terms of. Medication, which is an ongoing sort of collaboration. Uh, it is a collaboration, but I was gonna say calibration. Um, but yeah, I was there. I got to spend uh, my birthday with my dad and uh, my parents were divorced when I was two and my dad lives in a different state and this is only the third or fourth time I’ve ever been with him on my birthday, which was kind of fun. [00:08:19] Kind of unusual. [00:08:21] Christina: Yeah. That’s nice. That’s really nice. [00:08:23] Jeffrey: it was good. Especially cuz I like my parents and [00:08:27] Brett: Lucky. [00:08:27] Christina: is, which is fantastic. I, I, I, I love hearing that. Yeah. [00:08:31] Jeffrey: Yeah. And then from like, speaking of my parents from a pure, um, joy standpoint, um, so my dad and my stepmom are, are very much, uh, like I am like them. I, they, my stepmom is an artist. She makes artists, she makes art out of junk. Um, my dad is a total hobbyist, like electronics and a workshop and all this stuff. [00:08:50] So whenever I visit them, it feels just like how life ought to feel. But it’s also, there’s a real taste for the absurd. And so my dad gave a paintball to my boys to shoot into the ravine off the deck. And my stepmom, who used to be an elementary school teacher, was like, I was inside with her. She’s like, I could put my Turkey suit on and I could go out there and they could shoot me [00:09:12] And she’s like, exactly what she did. She put a Turkey suit on, she had a gobbler that she was shaking. And she ran around while my sons shot her. And I was just like, you know what? This is great. I love absurdity so much. Absurdity equals joy. , that’s what chicken. [00:09:30] Brett: I forgot to, uh, I forgot to mention, uh, I had a psych appointment this week, um, Monday. And, uh, I was told that my provider is leaving the clinic. [00:09:45] Christina: Oof. [00:09:46] Brett: and so the, the woman I was seeing before her when I was still at the same clinic, um, had come back and I was like, oh, well I’ll just go back to this woman who, you know, saved my ass. [00:10:00] She was the one who gave me vyvance after years of not being allowed to medicate my adhd. So, but she’s leaving at the same time. Everyone’s leaving and the one psychiatrist they have left in the practice is not taking new, new clients. [00:10:16] Jeffrey: Oh. [00:10:17] Brett: So hopefully I will be able to, my, my psychiatrist is moving north to Edina, uh, which is farther than I would want to [00:10:26] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s just, why don’t you say how far for people that aren’t in Minnesota [00:10:31] Brett: I think, I think it’s about two hours. [00:10:33] Jeffrey: Yeah. It’s about [00:10:33] Brett: Um, and, uh, uh, but she would do telehealth. Uh, so, so if that works out and I can get into her, uh, new client list after she moves, um, I’ll be okay. If not, I’m fucked. Like there is nowhere left to go in Winona and especially nowhere that would, that understands that treating A D H D prevents, uh, addictive behavior, um, like that is somehow despite, you know, plenty of studies to back that up. [00:11:07] It is not common wisdom among medical providers. Um, and I could easily lose my ADHD meds again, which would be catastrophic, [00:11:17] Jeffrey: we can talk about this offline, but I have somebody for you who I’ve never had to see in person. She’s actually over by the South Dakota border, um, and she’s my medication manager. So if you, if you get stuck or if Psychology Today doesn’t help or anything, I know this person would understand exactly what you’re describing. [00:11:33] Brett: Cool. All right. That’s all. I, Christina, your turn. [00:11:38] Christina: Yeah. Well, I’m, I, um, like cross my fingers for you, um, on, on that front, Brett, because like, that’s, uh, beyond like, stressful. I, I, I know, but, but I, I’m hopeful that like, with the Teladoc stuff, hopefully like telemedicine is in a much different place than it was three years ago, which is like the good thing. [00:11:59] So hopefully that will continue. But, but also hopefully like, uh, it’s great that you have, uh, Jeff, um, to, to maybe give you, um, some names too. But yeah, so, um, thinking that, thinking good thoughts for you there. Um, as for me, so, um, I’m okay. Uh, I’ll, I’ll just be be honest. Um, right before we recorded this, uh, Microsoft, uh, who, uh, owns, uh, GitHub, um, announced that they’re doing 10,000, uh, layoffs, um, uh, between now and, and the end of March. [00:12:30] And, uh, you know, as far as I know, uh, I, my job is safe. Uh, and, and my colleagues at GitHub are safe, but. This is the sort of thing that that does weigh in on my mental health. Um, and it, it, it’s, uh, and, and I think it weighs in on anybody’s mental health, but I think it’s, it’s one of those things where, because I’m such a workaholic and because so much of my identity is tied up to my job and because of the past, uh, frankly, I’m not going to say P T S D, but, but PTs d like experiences that I had working in, in the, the media industry, which I know Jeff can relate to. [00:13:09] Um, seeing things like what’s been happening in, in the tech industry, uh, you know, over the last few months, but, you know, is, is hard. But then seeing it affect, potentially affect, you know, people that, that I’ve worked with and, and know and care about, like, and, and I, and I don’t know who’s safe and who’s not yet, right? [00:13:26] Like, which is like, honestly like the, one of the, the worst parts. Um, and I’m not even impacted as far as I know, knock on wood, but. It, it’s hard. Um, and so these are those things where, you know, like I, um, am very fortunate that I now work in an industry that has better severance and that has better policies and that has, uh, better job demand than, than what I used to do. [00:13:51] But it, it’s still really, really difficult. And, and it’s one of those things that’s challenging for me. Um, like, it, it just, it, it’s hard. So it, it does impact my mental health when, when things like this happen. Like I can’t just turn it off, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just, it, it, I, I, I have like a very real reaction to it. [00:14:11] So, um, so that, that happened right before we, uh, started recording. Um, other than that, um, you know, it’s been pretty, it’s been pretty good. I’m actually, um, going out of town with my mom, um, wheelie for Vegas tomorrow morning. Yeah. For Adele. And I’m really, really excited about this because this trip has been in the works since, you know, like. [00:14:34] November or December of, of, um, of, of 2021. Um, and then the, the concert was supposed to be in, um, April of, of last year, or, or March of last year rather. Uh, and, and Adele, um, postponed her, um, her concert series. Um, and, um, so we’re going, um, our concert is on Saturday. We’re gonna go see the, the Beatles, um, se show on, uh, on, on Friday. [00:15:00] Uh, we get in tomorrow. Um, my mom has never been to Vegas before and, uh, I’m super, super excited to like, show her Vegas. We’re staying at the Venetian, which um, is one of my favorite, um, like, uh, hotels, uh, strip things because they, every, every room is a suite, so you get, you know, I think it’s a better experience. [00:15:22] And then I think she’ll, um, like. The layout of, you know, kind of the, the Italian, um, like the, you know, uh, theme of, of the hotel. Um, you know, I can’t take her to Rome, but I can take her to fake, you know, Vegas, Rome. So, um, it’s, uh, so I’m, I’m really excited about that. And, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I don’t know, I’m, I’m really, I feel just like really happy that I can do that for her. [00:15:48] And, and she’s really, really excited. So that, that definitely helps like my mental health a lot to, you know, bring other people joy. So, yeah. [00:15:58] Jeffrey: That’s great [00:16:00] Brett: Nice. [00:16:01] Jeffrey: love. chatGPT (Part III) [00:16:02] Brett: I wanna, I wanna dredge chat, g p t back. [00:16:06] Jeffrey: Drudge suggests that Jack g p t is not at the surface already. [00:16:13] Brett: So I, I’m fascinated with chat. G P T. I know you guys already talked about it a bit. Um, I’ve had, uh, consulting clients that have come to me with like, excited that chat, G p t wrote them say an Apple script to do something and they show it to me and they’re like, what do you think? And it has been clearly wrong. [00:16:37] Like, I mean, I can look at it and immediately say, this does not, this will not do what you think it’s gonna do. Um, but before we started recording, I decided to just try, um, some prompts for various AppleScript tasks and it nailed every once. So I don’t, I think if you give it the right queries, you can get good code. [00:16:59] Um, like when I ask it to write Ruby Methods for me, uh, it gives me honestly, The best, the, the most accepted answers. Um, like, uh, stack overflow worthy answers for doing basic things. Uh, bubble sorting and sorting a raise by length and things like that that can be done in, in one line. And it, and it nails it, it does a really good job. [00:17:24] And it’s, it’s become a great little tool that prevents me from having to go to stack overflow to answer basic questions. But you can’t do it if you don’t understand the language to begin with because it’s very, I would say [00:17:42] Christina: Very [00:17:42] Brett: 50 chance, yeah, it, there’s a 50 50 chance. It gives you code that looks good and doesn’t work at all, or, or, or has, you know, faults that will bite you in the end. [00:17:54] Um, overall though, still I’m impressed. Um, I also have been using it, uh, for content development, um, because. I can give it like a very specific prompt, like, uh, write a Terraform script to spin up an Oracle compute instance and describe how to define the variables necessary and where to find them. And it will take that prompt and basically write out a tutorial for me that I can then, I mean, it takes some editing and it gets a, it gets some stuff wrong, but as a prompt to like get going on an article. [00:18:34] Um, like sometime ask it what the top three reasons to use markdown are, and it will write you an article that honestly, I, it’s the exact same thing I would’ve said, and, and it even sounds like my voice. It’s weird. [00:18:49] Christina: It. Well, honestly, your your, your stuff I’m sure has been used in the model, right? Like, like I, I like, you know what I mean? Like that, that, that’s the, the truth is that, um, cuz they’re, you know, scraping a bunch of, um, resources and, and I would, I’m sure that, that you are, things you’ve written are definitely part of the corpus. [00:19:06] Sorry, go on Jeff [00:19:07] Brett: Ask it to do it in Dickensian style and you’ll get a different answer. [00:19:13] Jeffrey: I find that using chat, G P T for code purposes is helping to sort of. Helping me get closer to a definition of a kind of, um, programmatic literacy that I’ve always been kind of seeking and wanting to have for myself and describe for others. Just like you can’t sit down and code, but when presented with code, you can ba basically understand what’s happening or, or just on the most simple, simple level you are able to create in text a multi-step algorithm that can be translated into code. [00:19:50] Right. Um, and what I’ve found so kind of interesting and fun in chat, G p t is like, it almost, it quite frequently gives me the wrong thing. And if I, if I give it the error, it always goes, sorry about that [00:20:05] Brett: yeah, [00:20:05] Jeffrey: I was trying to have you go this way and now I’m gonna have you go that way. Which is such a bizarre. [00:20:10] Brett: you can keep adding to your query and like, it’s a chat, right? And you can say, well, that won’t do this. Or, or, why does it do this? And it will continue to, uh, refine its response. And I love that it gives you a description. Anytime it writes a method for me, it will explain to me afterwards why it used the, you know, method calls that it used, why it used the functions it used, um, and what each one does, which is more than you will often get from a stack overflow answer. [00:20:42] Jeffrey: And I’ve found that when you ask it to write a complicated function or a script, it will comment it, um, and comment it pretty well. I mean, but the other thing that I find really useful is I have it, write me something and then I just go line by line and say, what does this do? What does this do? If they haven’t already explained it right. [00:21:00] And then the other thing I do that helps me a lot just in learning is I say, what’s another way to do. Right. Like, or like I did one early on where I was like, show me how to, you know, scrape the title of an article in a webpage in Node. Now show me in Python. Now show me in Ruby. Right? And it was like, you can just kind of look at how those things, um, are different across languages. [00:21:21] It’s just, to me it’s like an incredible teaching tool. But like you said, you can’t just take it and assume that what you’ve got is correct . You definitely have to, you have to fact check it, but you can fact check it with chat G P T for the most part, which is crazy. Crazy. I love when it’s like, oh, sorry about that. [00:21:37] No, you’re right. You know, that’s [00:21:38] Christina: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:21:39] Jeffrey: that’s the least thing. I did not expect that for it to be like, oh yeah, no, you’re totally right. Um, you know, it’s, it’s beautiful. [00:21:47] Christina: yeah, exactly. It’s like, uh, let, let me find a way of explaining myself, you know, which, which might still be wrong, might still be wrong, but, but, but let me, let me find a way of, of, of explaining myself and, and correcting myself on this. Yeah. Um, si, Simon Wilson, uh, who, who’s, uh, um, uh, um, you know, one of the creators of Django. [00:22:03] Great guy, and, and his log is, is so good. Um, Simon wilson.net. We’ve mentioned, um, his stuff before, but [00:22:10] Jeffrey: Yeah, except the last time I mentioned him, he was gratitude and I called him Simon Williamson. Sorry, Simon. Anyway, go [00:22:17] Christina: but, but he, he, he’s been, um, doing like, uh, you know, his kind of like, he’s been, uh, using various G PT three, 3.5 things, um, for months now, uh, with, with co-pilot and with Codex and, and with Chad C p t and, and using the API and other stuff and doing these sorts of, uh, I guess kind of experiments. And it’s been documenting. [00:22:39] This is what I love about him so much, is that he documents every single thing that he does and what he learns. Um, his, his website is just so freaking good. Um, but yeah, that, that’s one of the things that some of his examples have said over the months, as, as I’ve been, cuz I’ve been obsessed with, I’m so glad that you two are obsessed with this too, cuz I’ve been obsessed with this stuff for like months now. [00:22:58] And, um, I, I feel like now because, because, uh, as we talked about last week, J Jeff, the interface is what makes chat g p t different. It’s like the, the stuff was already out there, but the interface has, has, I think just opened it up to a whole new audience. And so, um, the discussion is now, it’s not just me screaming on Twitter or on my YouTube show or in like, private conversations. [00:23:22] It’s um, like everybody’s having able to have these things. But Simon’s you know, tests have kind of shown what you’ve, what you’re talking about, how, you know, you can like, argue with it and it’ll, you know, kind of correct itself and, and give you results. But I think you point out a good thing, um, Brett, and honestly this is to me at least a little bit encouraging right now, is that yeah, you do still need to have a certain understanding of what you’re, what you’re looking for to be able to get the best results out of it. [00:23:49] Like if you’re just going to be relying on any of its output for anything, like, for some stuff that are some basic, you know, like, well, I mean, and even then, I mean, there could be errors, but if, if you’re talking about some like very basic concrete kind of like factual things or, or some very basic like mathematical stuff, like I think that the results you get from it, uh, could definitely, um, be kind of probably taken without doing fact checking, but for anything else. [00:24:17] Yeah. Um, it really does help to have a, an understanding. Of what you’re doing. Um, that’s why, you know, GitHub, that’s why we call it co-pilot And, and not like, you know, it, it’s like your, your pair programmer, like, you know it, it’s sitting, you know, behind, you know, sitting in a cockpit with you. It’s not writing your code for you. [00:24:34] And that’s how I always try to explain it to people. I’m like, look, this isn’t doing it for you. You need to have an understanding of what code you’re doing, and the more you do, the better it will be. And the same is true for chat G P T, right? Like the more you know, the better the results you can get because the prompts you can give it are better. [00:24:49] And the more you can like, kind of argue or disregard, you know, if it’s gonna give you an Apple script that is not correct versus, and that honestly makes sense too. I, I don’t know, like the cor because you know, the, the corres for a lot of the code stuff is obviously GitHub and although there is a lot of AppleScript on GitHub, there’s way more Ruby code and there’s way more, way more like bash code and other things. [00:25:11] And so that’s going to play a role in what types of coding it can do and learn from, right? Like the data sets. All kind of go into that. So it’s, you know, the, the more you use it, um, at least with, with copilot, the better it gets. Um, but I, you know, the, the better these models will get over time, these things will get better. [00:25:31] But yeah, the, it’s, to me it’s, it’s, I kind of appreciate that you have to know a little bit about what you’re doing, because that makes, I don’t know, a, it makes you work a little bit more for the results, which kind of makes it feel more like a puzzle and, and b you know, like, I think that it, it can hopefully prevent against some of the abuses, uh, that could potentially come from it. [00:25:55] Brett: Like I could see eventually a day coming where code becomes irrelevant because. We can just tell a computer what we want to accomplish as as complex as we want, and it writes all the code, like the, like the id, the, the job of coder, uh, could eventually be irrelevant. I did want to mention like one of the great features of Warp the Warp Terminal, um, is there ai, uh, like you can just write out like, how do I colorize a man page and it will give you the command to do it. [00:26:29] Um, I term just added open AI [00:26:33] Christina: Oh, did it? [00:26:34] Brett: If you [00:26:34] Jeffrey: Oh, it did. [00:26:35] Brett: if you open the composer, you can write out like what you want to accomplish and hit the Engage AI button and it will give you like four or five different ways to accomplish whatever prompt you gave it. Um, built right into the terminal and there’s no keyboard shortcut, which I find annoying. [00:26:54] You have to like, you can pop open the composer with a keyboard shortcut. You can tell about your, your query, but then you have to grab your mouse and. Click the, the open AI button. But, uh, [00:27:05] Christina: Is this an A beta or, or what? What was this saying? Cuz I haven’t [00:27:08] Brett: what am I running? Um, I am on build, yeah. Beta nine [00:27:17] Christina: Okay, cool. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s really cool. [00:27:22] Brett: Yeah, it is. Um, also, uh, there are multiple menu bar chat, G p t implementations for Mac. [00:27:31] Um, the one I’m using, they’re all the same. Like they’re all just, you know, web kit browsers into, [00:27:37] Christina: absolutely. Into a menu bar. [00:27:38] Brett: AI website. But, um, the one I’m using right now I love, except it has a hard coded, uh, shortcut for command shift G, which is find backwards when you’re in an editor. So I’ll be like, searching and I’ll hit [00:27:54] Christina: Oh yeah. That’s terrible. [00:27:55] Brett: hit command shifty and, and the chat window pops up. [00:27:58] Uh, so I’m, I might try to find one that at least has like a [00:28:03] Jeffrey: What is the one you’re using? [00:28:05] Brett: what? [00:28:06] Jeffrey: What is the one you’re using? [00:28:08] Brett: Um, they’re all just called chat, G p T, um, [00:28:13] Jeffrey: Yeah, I’m using one in, um, Chrome that just, just for the purpose of downloading [00:28:17] Brett: the one I’m using is from VI Vince, l w t, um, chat, G P T Mac it’s called. But they’re like, I’ve seen four or five different implementations of this, [00:28:33] Christina: Yeah. [00:28:34] Brett: just little swift [00:28:35] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His, his is the number one on, uh, the first GitHub result I got. He’s, [00:28:40] Brett: yeah, and I found it, I found it via that menu bar. Jeff pointed out, uh, a site. I can’t remember. I’ll, we should [00:28:48] Jeffrey: I am, I’m taking notes for show notes, but I’m taking ’em on an index card, so [00:28:53] Christina: which, which I. [00:28:54] Jeffrey: you know what, I have not been able to type while we’re talking. I cannot do this podcast and write show notes. I cannot do it, but I can write on this index card. [00:29:03] Christina: I love it. [00:29:03] Jeffrey: a, it’s a big index card, not just a little one. Uh, [00:29:06] Christina: the, I I I I appreciate that. I, I, but I love that you lo that you know that about yourself because they are two different, um, um, like modalities and I can type and talk at the same time. Um, I would actually probably have a harder time writing and talking at the same [00:29:20] Jeffrey: Interesting. Well, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I cannot type without looking at the keyboard, so that just adds another layer of sort of [00:29:28] Christina: no. Okay. No, no. But that actually makes sense because, but, but you could probably, I don’t know, can you write without looking [00:29:34] Jeffrey: I mean, I can write, yeah. I can kind of keep an eye on it, you know what I mean, while I’m writing Yeah. [00:29:39] Christina: Yeah. Whereas I’m [00:29:40] Brett: no way I could write [00:29:41] Jeffrey: It, well rem but, but like years with a reporter’s notebook in my hand, trying to get every kind of [00:29:46] Christina: No, right. [00:29:47] Jeffrey: it automatic [00:29:48] Christina: It does. Except, so what’s funny about, it’s that for me and my reporter’s notebook has always been my phone because I, I literally started like in like the smartphone era. And so, um, because when I graduated from college, like literally it was like iPhone was already out. So for me, if it wasn’t a recorder, I’ve always taken notes on my phone. [00:30:11] So it, it, so, so you see what I’m saying? So it, it’s a similar sort of thing, but yeah, I, I’m a, I’m a touch typist, as is Brett, so [00:30:19] Brett: did you guys ever use Pair Note? [00:30:22] Jeffrey: What’s that? [00:30:22] Christina: No. [00:30:23] Brett: a, it was a Mac app. I don’t remember if they ever made an iOS version, but you, it would record what you were listening [00:30:30] Christina: yeah, yeah. I remember [00:30:32] Brett: note, any note you typed would get a timestamp [00:30:36] Jeffrey: Shut [00:30:36] Brett: you could just click on your, you could click on your note and you could. [00:30:41] What was happening when [00:30:42] Christina: I remember this now. I [00:30:44] Brett: notes didn’t have to, your notes didn’t have to explain everything. They just had to be like, uh, here’s a point where we learned about blah, blah, blah, and you just click it and get the actual audio from what you were experiencing at the time. It was [00:30:58] Christina: I, I remember this now. I don’t think I ever used it hardcore. I u I used to use Evernote ironically, um, for those purposes be because, yeah, because I had like, uh, one of those pens that that integrated with, with Evernote that could [00:31:10] Jeffrey: Oh, right. Yeah, I remember [00:31:12] Christina: uh, like the live scribe pen I think they were called. And, um, but honestly, a lot of times for me it it, because I, the way that I would, I would take notes on calls is like a, I would try to record the phone calls, which. [00:31:25] You know, once they got rid of the headphone jack especially got complicated. I would love to talk to you about whatever your recording setup is now. Um, uh, Jeff, because I’m always Oh, yeah, well that’s primarily what I used. I would use, primarily use Skype and call Recorder. Um, and now I guess it would be Zoom, but, but Skype worked well because you could have, you could actually dial a real phone number. [00:31:42] Um, and, and obviously, you know, some of the rules are dependent on what state you’re in, deter determinant of, you know, [00:31:48] Jeffrey: Yeah, totally. Had to make sure it was a one one party recording [00:31:51] Christina: one party or, or, or letting people know. But a lot of times what I would do is like, if there were calls that I would be on, you know, like I’m just such a fast typer and because I can like listen and kind of type at the same time, I would basically just almost transcribe like the call while I would be on the call. [00:32:07] Um, you know what I mean? Like that was sort of my kind [00:32:11] Jeffrey: I can, I can basically do that and did that. It’s just, it was, it was a mess because it, as long as I was on a phone call, it didn’t matter that I was looking at my keyboard. Right. But if I’m on a Zoom call or something like that, I have to give attention somehow and then that’s just forget about it. [00:32:27] Brett: so Evernote got acquired. [00:32:29] Christina: Yep. [00:32:30] Brett: I think we can all agree Evernote, Evernote is, is shit these days. [00:32:35] Christina: Oh yeah. I, I stopped paying six or seven years ago. [00:32:38] Brett: yeah. I, I, I left even longer ago than that. Like I was very gung ho on Evernote when it [00:32:44] Christina: You were like, you were one of the very, I, I, I was an Evernote user, I think because of you. Because they had a Mac app, like beta thing or something. And you got us. We wrote about it too. Well, you wrote about it and you got us into it, and so you were the reason that I ever used it to begin with. You were like one of their biggest evangelists for a long time. [00:33:01] Brett: yeah. [00:33:01] Jeffrey: It was great in the moment that it was great in the moment that it was the only thing it did that. [00:33:06] Brett: The lock in became apparent the first time you wanted to move your notes and you realized that there was no viable way to extract your information from Gavin. That’s when I left, and then I watched it just bloat and bloat [00:33:25] Christina: Yeah, for, for me, when I should have left and I still paid, and this was the thing, and I paid because out of this bullshit sense of loyalty, she had this corporation that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars, but I remembered when they were smaller and I was like, it’s only 50 bucks. 50 bucks a year or whatever. [00:33:42] I will pay this. I don’t really use it that much, but I’ve got my notes and this is fine. I’ll pay my $50 a year or whatever. You know, my, my, my fee is. Um, but when I probably the writing was on the wall, like when they, remember when they did the recipes app? [00:33:55] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:33:56] Christina: Yeah, they did like a fucking recipes app Evernote, like recipes or some shit. [00:34:00] And I was like, okay. I was like, and they were selling socks and they were doing all this stupid shit and I was like, okay, Phil, whatever his last name was. I was like, you are absolutely. Yeah. I was like, you are absolutely. What are you doing? Right, because I got like the moleskin integration. I got the live scribe integration. [00:34:18] That was okay. Then when they start, then, then they acquired and ruined Skitch, and I was like, I, I, I can almost, I can, I can almost, [00:34:27] Brett: then stop supporting it. Like sketch is shit now. Yeah, [00:34:30] Christina: been shit for years, but like, but they, but almost as soon as they acquired it, they ruined it. Right? And, and so then yeah, I was like, okay, that’s fine. But then they raised their prices to the point where, for me, and I am a price insensitive user, and when I’m like, okay, actually this is now going to make me go through the hassle of canceling, like, but that was, that was six or seven years ago. [00:34:53] But yeah, they’ve been acquired by somebody, [00:34:56] Brett: bending spoons, bought them and immediately laid off. Laid off 18% of their staff, um, saying they were trying to compensate for overexpansion and inefficiency, both of which I would agree were problems. So it’ll be interesting to see if, if they can salvage Evernote at this point. I mean, Evernote has a lot of users, [00:35:21] Christina: Yeah, I [00:35:22] Jeffrey: Still, I just got, I had to . I just had to fix, uh, a CNC machine. And the software and instructions came via an Evernote note. [00:35:32] Christina: God, see, well, no, so which, which, which is ridiculous. Yeah. No, no. Because at this point now what do people use to use notion, right? And, and some other things. And like, and, and I have my own issues with the notion. Like I actually, I don’t think that’s actually great software, but I know a lot of people love it. [00:35:45] Um, I actually don’t think it is, but whatever. But like, um, no, they’re at best, let’s just be honest. They’ll be able to be a very small, you know, but sustainable, hopefully sustainable business. Even though I, I, I don’t enjoy it as much. Like OneNote is free and then I have Office 365 that I, that I pay for plus, you know, I get it free at work or whatever, but I, I pay for the, the family plan cuz honestly that’s like the best hundred bucks I think you can spend, um, you know, for like six people or whatever to get office and, and um, uh, OneDrive access. [00:36:18] But like OneNote one note’s pretty great for 99% of you, honestly. OneNote’s pretty fucking great. And they don’t put limitations on how many devices you can have connected to it, which that was the shit that Evernote started when they were like, oh, if you don’t pay us this amount of money, you can only have one device connected. [00:36:35] And I’m like, okay, you’ve locked my, all my notes in. Yeah. [00:36:39] Brett: two things about Evernote that I loved when I was using it. One was, um, handwriting. Transcription. Uh, so I could take, like, I like Jeff, I prefer index cards to a moleskin. I actually have, it’s shaped like a moleskin, but it’s an accordion folder for index cards. And that’s, that works better with my brain than having this very linear page by page kind of note system. [00:37:04] Uh, number two was the web clipper. It was the first [00:37:08] Jeffrey: the Web Clipper was woo. Loved it. [00:37:12] Brett: and it was spectacular. Uh, Devin think has added a web clipper. Uh, they [00:37:17] Jeffrey: They’ve had one for a while. [00:37:18] Brett: they actually used my software [00:37:20] Jeffrey: Oh, really [00:37:21] Brett: yeah. Uh, they use a version of, of Marky, the Markdown a fire, uh, that they ran locally. And it, you could clip markdown copies of any webpage or any selection on a webpage. [00:37:33] Um, and I, I tried to talk Fletcher into incorporating. Web clipping into Envy Ultra. Um, I even did all the coding. I made it work, it was happening. Uh, but he thought it was Bloats, so that’s when I made Gather, uh, which you can run as, uh, as an Apple shortcut and clip any webpage straight to Envy Ultra, like it has their command line flags that will take whatever eclipse and automatically turn it into an Enval Ultra note. [00:38:04] Um, so [00:38:05] Jeffrey: love that feature. [00:38:06] Brett: this is all inspired by Evernotes Web Clipper though, [00:38:10] Christina: Yeah. [00:38:11] Brett: honestly, like, especially when it comes to like Stack Overflow stuff, when I find the answer to a problem that I’ve run into multiple times, I just wanna clip it into my own knowledge base, uh, and make it make it way more searchable. [00:38:24] So, um, yeah, the Web Clipper lives. [00:38:28] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. [00:38:29] Jeffrey: I love that. [00:38:30] Christina: I was gonna say the web clipper was one of their great things and like Microsoft obviously like, uh, has one too and a lot of other people do as well. And like people have built things into obsidian and, and other stuff. Right. Um, but they were the first to really, to my knowledge anyway, I think they were the first ones to really, um, at least the first bigger ones to implement it. [00:38:48] There might have been some smaller people. I don’t wanna like make a universal statement. Somebody will, somebody will tell us on the Discord or on Twitter, be like, no, actually this company had a web clipper first. Well, I don’t remember it. Um, but yeah, no, the web clipper was, was massive. And I remember the handwriting recognition, that was a big deal too. [00:39:02] And that was a thing that I remembered. Yeah, I really enjoyed that cuz you could take a photo of your handwriting and it would do it like there were [00:39:09] Brett: I would take, when I ran a company, um, I would take all client notes on index cards, and then when I got back to the office, I would just snap photos with my phone and I would have digitized notes in Evernote ready to go. Uh, it was, it was very handy. I don’t know what exists currently, cuz I, I don’t, I gave up on trying to hand write notes. [00:39:31] I, [00:39:31] Christina: Yeah, same. [00:39:33] Brett: only gotten worse over time [00:39:34] Christina: The the best thing that I found, so the best thing I found is, um, I think it’s, is it’s no two, it’s N O T U I think it is, but they make, um, let me find it. Uh, handwriting recognition. Cause they license their tech, um, to, um, other people. Um, it might be no to, um, because they have an iOS app, but then they do also license their, um, yeah, Nodo Inc. [00:40:02] So they, um, is, is this them? Maybe it’s not. Um, there’s, um, A service that basically does, like, I think in my, from my perspective, the very best handwriting recognition and they’ve licensed their, um, technology to a number of other companies, including various iOS apps, but also even I think like, um, some, um, of the other like ein um, tablet things and whatnot. [00:40:29] And so if you have an iPad and you use an Apple pencil, it is like fantastic. Uh, it might be Nobo. So that, that, that’s the best one I found. But I’m, I’m with you. I, I don’t, I don’t, uh, do, um, [00:40:45] Brett: handwritten notes [00:40:46] Christina: no. Well cuz my handwriting is, is just complete and, and utter like garbage. [00:40:51] Brett: have a contest to see whose handwriting is worse. [00:40:53] Christina: It’s probably yours. But, uh, because if I, because well then I only say this cuz because if I, if I, if I try it, it’s my script that’s the company’s name, my script. [00:41:01] But they, uh, so, and, and there’s, there’s an app that you can get in the app store that works really well. Um, and, uh, but, but they, they, um, License their technology to other people. But, um, yeah, uh, if I try, mine can be decent, but like, it hurts to write. I just, I don’t, I haven’t [00:41:18] Brett: My hand cramps almost immediately. [00:41:20] Jeffrey: Mine always been like that. Surely there’s a tool or will be a tool that you train it in your handwriting and then it can just go from there. [00:41:29] Brett: All right. We should fit on a sponsor break. [00:41:31] Jeffrey: Hmm. I’ve got a, I’ve got a segue. I’ve got a segue, but first I wanna say that, um, per note, uh, no update in six years, but $40. $40 in the app store, So they’re willing to take that money knowing that they warned you, [00:41:46] Brett: it. I used it before the app store existed, [00:41:49] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, I remember the app store, oh, Skitch is still in the freaking app store and it’s still like an app that like is recommended and I’m like, this app is garbage and hasn’t been used in years and you should really use, um, what is it? A, um, [00:42:02] Brett: clean shot [00:42:03] Christina: clean shot? Yes. Clean shot. Because that’s, that’s the replacement and that’s better on every level. [00:42:08] Jeffrey: They just need, the app store just needs a tab for graveyard, so it’s like you can still see what was [00:42:13] Christina: the problem, the problem [00:42:14] Brett: site, if you go to, if you go to the project [00:42:16] Jeffrey: Yeah. I love that you do that. [00:42:18] Christina: I do too. [00:42:19] Brett: section at the. [00:42:21] Christina: The problem, the problem is though, Jeff, if, if, if we, if the app store, if the Mac app store had an area called like graveyard, it would be almost the entire app store. That wasn’t anything that was like an iOS app. I [00:42:31] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right, right, right. Exactly. [00:42:33] Christina: We, we at some point, uh, cause we need to get a responsible break. [00:42:36] I’m gonna let you do your segue, but at some point we should have, especially since we do our gratitude segment, so we should just have a whole like segment talking about like the, the utter failure that has been the Macapp store. [00:42:48] Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay. Fine. [00:42:50] Brett: someone suggested that we do a gratitude of like, uh, like an r i p gratitude apps. That, apps that have [00:42:57] Christina: I love this. Yeah. [00:42:59] Brett: my, my, my, my submission was, uh, delicious library. Um, but we could talk about, uh, the apps that were amazing in their heyday, but have since passed [00:43:09] Christina: Yeah, I, oh, I love that. Okay. That’s, I, I mean, I don’t wanna wait until Halloween, but maybe like, uh, we, we, we could do it for Halloween and then also do it on Halloween. I think that would be great. [00:43:20] Jeffrey: But there’s also this element of like, with Pair Note, which is such a great concept, surely that’s, that exists in some piece of software somewhere. It’s like a wonderful feature. Um, but I don’t, I can’t think of what piece of software that is, and I feel like the three of us would know it [00:43:34] Brett: Like it’s not a [00:43:35] Jeffrey: it [00:43:35] Brett: hard concept to like, to add a timestamp at the time you hit the keyboard. Like it’s, that’s pretty basic. So it’s gotta, there has to be a something. No, that [00:43:46] Jeffrey: Yeah. Interesting. Um, okay, so here’s the thing. I, I realized something. It’s just a dirty little secret. I’m not even sure it’s exactly true, and I’ll tell you why, which is that I’m still paying for Evernote. Through the app store, through some fucking work iCloud account that I cannot somehow access anymore. [00:44:04] Um, the last time I, I went to try to figure out what it was. I figured out it was that, but I couldn’t cancel it and I can’t, we don’t have to get into that mystery, but it’s my segue into talking about Rocket Money, which is formally known as True Bill. It’s a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, see what I was doing there, and monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills all in one place. [00:44:27] Now, the last time I talked about Rocket Money, I talked about just the how, like , how easy it was for me to actually like, wrap my mind around how much I was spending on various services that I’m really not even using. And that was a large amount and I actually used it to, um, cut down on that amount. I have not yet used their function that allows you to empower them to cancel something. [00:44:55] Brett: The concierge [00:44:56] Jeffrey: The concierge function. And I’m think, but here’s the question. Do you think it’ll work for an Apple store, um, like forever Evernote through the app store? Uh, because it can’t actually identify it except for the amount, right? So I, I’m kind of, [00:45:12] Christina: I’m gonna say probably not, because I think that they’d need to have access to your iCloud account, but, [00:45:17] Jeffrey: problem. [00:45:18] Brett: even, even the apps you subscribe to through the app store can’t cancel your subscription. You have to go to your subscriptions page to cancel the subscription. Um, so I could see that being very problematic for a service like True Bell. [00:45:34] Christina: but it can at least find it as like a, one of your, like bills and you can like at least see, you know what I mean, which is great. You can highlight and then you can figure out in your case, oh, hey, this is a, an iCloud account I used for something else that I just completely forgot about and, and I can go ahead and, and cancel it, which is fantastic. [00:45:51] Jeffrey: In our, the way we budget, uh, we each have like discretionary money and I have to file that goddamn thing to my discretionary money every month. It’s just like 4 99 or something. Anyway, here’s, here’s, here’s the challenge I’m putting to rocket money next. So I have a fellowship through the University of Southern California’s. [00:46:09] Called the Civic Media Fellowship. It’s with their Annenberg Innovation Lab and comes with that, a college email or a university email. Right. Which definitely means discounts. And when I first got the fellowship, um, when I first came on board as a fellow, there, I, I did a whole ton of that, um, and then felt like I’d pretty much exhausted, uh, , exhausted my, my discounts. [00:46:34] But I’ve decided using Rocket Money, I’m going bit by bit through every single monthly charge and, and then going and seeing if they have an education discount and seeing if I can apply that discount. So stay tuned, but that’s how I’m using. Rocket money next. Um, and I’m, I’m very excited. It’s amazing to have a university email [00:46:55] Like I really feel like I haven’t used it nearly to the extent that I should have so far. Um, so anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s why I have been loving rocket money. It can just really like, visualize for me and really multiple different views, like how much money I’m spending every month. And like, I get kind of like old man mad when I look at it. [00:47:15] I’m just like, ah, they’re just, they’re robbing me for every dollar I’ve got. You know? Like it used to be like, man, Netflix is great. Lot cheaper than cable used to be. And now it’s Netflix and Hulu and Disney and everything else. And it’s just kind of crazy. [00:47:28] Brett: Peacock. [00:47:29] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah. So anyhow, I, I’ve been, I am so grateful to, to rocket Money for helping me kind of track all of that in a way that I never have before. [00:47:39] It’s a good kind of New Year’s partner. Um, so stop throwing your money away, cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to Rocket money.com/ Overtired. That’s rocket money.com/ Overtired. That is rocket money.com/ Overtired. Three three times. That’s all I’ve got. You got you. [00:48:03] You’re up. [00:48:03] Brett: We’re also, we’re also doing a podcast swap with the Mac Observers Daily Observations podcast. Um, do you follow Apple News? Do you listen to podcasts? There’s a podcast all about Apple News that we’d like you to check out. It’s the Mac Observers Daily Observations podcast. When they say daily, they mean it mostly Monday through Friday. [00:48:28] T d o hits you with 20 minutes of talk on the most interesting Apple stories going since 2014, the Daily observations has been talking Apple News of the day on the day. That’s the announcement of the Apple Watch, the Free You two album. Nobody wanted the announcement of Apple TV plus the transition to Apple silicon. [00:48:47] And so much more ripped from the virtual pages of Mac observer.com host Ken Wright brings in TMO staffers and other tech types for quick, informative and entertaining talks, centered around the stories of the day. If you follow Apple News and you listen to podcast, put this one in your ear, the Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast online@macobserver.com or wherever you get podcasts. [00:49:14] I always second guess myself because I know there’s a difference between Apple silicone and silicone breast implants, and I never remember whether it’s silicone or silicone. I think I got it right though, [00:49:28] Jeffrey: Congratulations, [00:49:31] Brett: so I, I don’t know. How do you, do you guys have time for one more topic and a gratitude, or do you have a heart out? [00:49:39] Christina: I’ve got time. Do you have time? Yeah, because this is good, I think, speaking of Apple News, right? I know what you’re gonna get. [00:49:46] Brett: Well, kinda, yeah. So early this week I suddenly got an error that, uh, Damn You, Twitter [00:49:52] Brett: Tweetbot on my Mac could not log in to Twitter. And, uh, I tried a few times, uh, and then went to check like the status, did some searches on Twitter, um, and found out that without warning, um, Elon’s Twitter had, uh, curtailed access for a huge swath of third party Twitter applications. [00:50:21] Um, and at first it was like, maybe there’s, maybe there’s a bug. Maybe, maybe it’s just expected downtime with the amount of layoffs they’ve had. Uh, but, uh, then on their, uh, a p I pages, they were all listed as suspended. And, uh, it has become very evident that, uh, Whether Elon himself or uh, a group of people under Elon, I’m gonna go with Elon himself, have decided that, uh, third party Twitter clients are not profitable and have cut out their access. [00:50:57] And I think it is a horrible idea, especially after all of the hoops that developers like Tweetbot and Twitter, Twitter have had to jump through [00:51:07] Jeffrey: such a journey. [00:51:09] Brett: Twitter, um, and all the concessions they’ve had to make. The fact of the matter is you don’t see ads when you’re using Tweetbot, and that is a major selling point for using tweetbot or Twitter or, you know, tweet, tweet deck or whatever. [00:51:25] Although Tweet deck is owned by Twitter now, I [00:51:27] Christina: Yeah. It is, it, it’s, it is, yeah. It does. It tweets been known by Twitter for 12 or 13 years. Um, so, but, uh, it’s also basically kind of been abandoned. Um, I mean, it, it works, but, but there’s been a big question as to like, Is anybody who works on it still around, but [00:51:46] Brett: Yeah. So this is very disconcerting to me. I, I have loaded for the sake of, you know, still being able to use Twitter, um, without the, the PWA that Christine uses, um, I have loaded the Twitter app on my Mac and it is awful. I don’t mind Twitter on the iPhone. Um, it actually, it’s really nice because things like polls, uh, don’t show up in tweet bot, but they do show up in the Twitter app. [00:52:17] So, on my phone I tend to use the Twitter app and it’s, it’s functional, it’s good on my Mac. The Twitter app sucks and tweet bot rules Twitter rules and it. [00:52:30] Jeffrey: Ooh. [00:52:31] Brett: Like Tweet bot has like all of the keyboard navigation I want, has all of the, uh, blocking and filtering that I want. And none of that exists in the Twitter app on Mac. [00:52:42] And this is a sad state of affairs. [00:52:45] Christina: Yeah. Well what’s really disappointing to me is. You know, Twitter, terrific. Especially because like, let’s Tweetbot came out after the great, um, a p I purge, uh, the first time, right. So it, it was, it was, it was actually kind of a response to, you know, the death of, of, well, I guess, uh, Tweedy ascending from being like TWE and to being the official client and then some other things. [00:53:08] But like terrific, which was one of the very first Twitter clients. Invented the word tweet was the first one to use like a blue bird as the icon. Right? Like basically literally like helped, you know, invent a lot of the, the things that we know as, as Twitter and, and were very instrumental in the very, very early days of the platform and being a part of it. [00:53:28] Like have, they’ve all, as you, as you’ve mentioned, Brett, they’ve had to jump through all these hoops over the years, right? Like where they’ve had to like, follow API guidelines and like, there was a limit on basically like how many, you know, like, uh, tokens they could submit, which for a long time meant that like, it, it curved their growth because there was like a set limit on like how many keys you were going to get because, you know, uh, this is not the first time Twitter has had, um, concerns about third party apps. [00:53:55] This started back in the Dick Costolo days. And um, and like I remember this cuz I wrote about this at the time and I covered this very deeply, uh, talking to people about the Twitter, but especially talking to the third party developers plus, you know, I was there like, like, uh, like you were right. Like we, we lived with this shit because we were, you know, heavy users. [00:54:14] But like they, they have gone through all these gyrations last year, Twitter, or maybe it was 18 months ago in the last two years anyway, Twitter revamped its API and actually was really trying to kind of come around and trying to say, Hey, we want people to build on our API again and, and trying to make some things better for third party clients. [00:54:34] They still were not going outta the way to encourage third party clients because that has not been like in the company’s like, you know, Mo for more than a decade, but they were at least trying to like add a p i endpoints and stuff to make the clients better. And then, you know, and, and Ilan says, oh, we’re going to, you know, have API be more open until he realizes, oh, well people don’t see ads. [00:54:59] Well, first of all, you could have added ads to the api. Like that’s, that’s number one. If you really, this was really a concern, you could have added that and, and made a requirement that if you wanna have, you know, a token id, if you wanna have access o off access, you have to have ads. And people who don’t want ads would just have to fucking suck it up. [00:55:14] And frankly, I think that would be a very fair concession, frankly, like I, you know what I mean? Like, if your, if your business is based on someone else’s platform, suck it up. But what’s shitty is that the, the Twitter dev account, which, you know, came back to life after they fired the entire staff that ran that. [00:55:31] So it, it, it’s a skeleton crew of people tweeted that, uh, Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules that may result in some apps not working, which then has community notes on it where people are like, actually, The, the API rules, you know, you, you haven’t told anybody what it is. And, and so, um, it’s just, um, complete bullshit for them. [00:55:54] Like these are company, like these are applications that have followed every a p guideline. They haven’t broken any a p i rules. And so if you wanna change the terms, I mean, fair enough, but like, don’t pretend like this is something that they’ve been doing behind the scenes that, that somehow, oh, they, they were getting away with something. [00:56:13] It’s like, no, they were literally following all the terms that were laid out in your, that are still laid out on your own API docs. And so, um, uh, the, the Icon Factory folks have, you know, written about this and it, you know, of course it happened just short of the 16 year anniversary of Twitter and you know, but look, it’s, it’s a shame cuz I, I think that it, for all intents purposes, the third party apps are probably dead and. [00:56:39] Brett: much, how much do you think if Twitter were to come up with a pricing structure where, uh, apps that wanted to use its API paid like a certain number of pennies per user of [00:56:52] Christina: they used to do. Which they used to do. [00:56:54] Brett: How much do you think would be necessary to make up for whatever they think they’re losing on advertising? [00:57:02] Christina: I don’t think it’s even so much about advertising, cuz the thing is, the fact of the matter is the, the people who use the third party apps, it’s such a small microcosm of users, um, at least who use the consumer apps. I’m not talking about things like Sprout and, and other like, uh, crm, like, like enterprise apps and Sprout. [00:57:18] I should, I should instantly say they charge like more than Adobe per, per seat for stuff like, so these, these social, you know, like these big apps that, and, and they have paid, you know, more money, at least historically. I know they’ve paid for fire hose access and have paid decent like big fees to Twitter, right? [00:57:34] But. I, I don’t think that the money would be meaningful because it, it’s power users and it’s very vocal users, but it’s a very small percentage. And I, I know this from talking to past Twitter, um, uh, employees. I think what it is, the reason they don’t want the third party apps is because they wanna control the end-to-end experience, which I understand. [00:57:50] What I don’t get is that it, if you’re pissed off about, like what you see is like losing advertisements and whatnot, just make that an endpoint. Like just make, just serve the ads in the fucking client and make that a requirement. [00:58:04] Brett: kills me, what kills me is Twitter rose above all of its compatriots. At the time it came out, it rose above because it allowed third-party developers to create third party tools. It, it offered an API where something like Jaiku did not. Um, and they, that is how Twitter became the, the micro blogging platform. [00:58:31] Christina: it is. It is. [00:58:33] Brett: to, and, and this like when they did their last round of like, um, making really strict API rules, like it was the same, same concern on my part, on my part was your API made you like you would [00:58:48] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:58:49] Brett: where you are [00:58:50] Christina: In, in, in all honesty, I’m gonna say I don’t think this is as bad as that kind, because people should have already kind of been prepared to a certain extent, right? Like, I think when that happened, like in 2011, I think it was, or 2012, like that to me was a true slap in the face because that was genuinely like, like genuinely like spitting in the face of your power users and your developers. [00:59:10] Now, they haven’t even been issuing like, there’s been a problem on Android for years where there haven’t been, you know, because typically I think you were limited with like 250 K or 500 k, um, user accounts that you could get in. So a lot of apps were capped at, at, at a, at a user limit, and that that remained. [00:59:28] Over the years, um, uh, Twitter and, and tweet bot and a couple of others were kind of grandfathered into higher amounts, but it certainly wasn’t like multiples of that by, you know, like, you know, you gotta think, okay, maybe they have, you know, 5 million accounts and I, and I’m just guessing here, I have no idea. [00:59:44] It might have been less than that, but, you know, um, certainly it’s not like you’re talking about like tens of millions of people. Um, the one that actually did have tens of millions of people was tweet deck, which is why they bought it. Um, and, um, and, but to me, yeah, it’s, it’s a slap on the face. It just, it just goes against everything that he, you know, when he came in and we knew he was a liar, like claimed, oh, the API is gonna be this and that, and I don’t want it to be an open protocol. [01:00:11] Well, you, you can’t have it both ways. You either have it as an open protocol or you have it as like a pretty lockdown thing. But again, to my point, I’m like, not that they have people who can really add things to the API cuz they’ve laid everyone off, but like, Add, they could have done this years ago. [01:00:27] Like add the, the advertisements, add the promoted tweet stuff into the fucking a p I. Like, I, I don’t understand how that’s difficult, like, [01:00:36] Brett: is, there’s an article in, I believe, the current New Yorker. Um, I don’t remember who wrote it, but I will find a link. Um, and it, it interviews people who have been in the room with Elon when he does like his quote unquote code reviews. Um, and who were responsible for trying to explain the tech stack to Elon and like exactly how those meetings went. [01:01:03] And it is, I mean, we, it’s nothing, there’s nothing surprising about it. Like we all know what a travesty this has been. Uh, for, for anyone who appreciates tech in general, [01:01:15] Christina: is [01:01:15] Brett: Elon is a scourge. Um, but it, but it is a assorted tale. Um, and, and worth a read. [01:01:23] Christina: Yeah. Um, the one that I read it on, um, was, uh, the Verge who did it with [01:01:27] Brett: Yeah. The Verge, exer exerted the same article. Yeah. [01:01:31] Christina: Yeah. Okay. So you’re, you’re talking, uh, New York Magazine. Okay. Um, [01:01:34] Brett: Yeah. Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. [01:01:35] Christina: yeah. Um, yeah, I’ll, I’ll put the, I’ll put the link in the, um, show notes. The one thing I’ve said, and I’ve said this before, over the years, what’s, to me, I think Twitter’s biggest failure as a business has been the fact that they never turned TweetDeck into an enterprise CRM SaaS, like customer service product. [01:01:53] And they could have, they could have taken Tweet deck, they could have invested money in it, [01:01:56] Brett: was ripe for that. [01:01:58] Christina: it was, and, and people would’ve paid it and people would still pay it. Like again, um, sprout charges more than Adobe. And, um, so there’s real money in, in that and people pay it. Every big agency, you know, uh, news publications, all kinds of things. [01:02:14] Like they pay that money and they pay it like happily. They could have, they could have literally been making billions and billions of dollars if they had done that. And, and to me that is like the biggest failure I think of Twitter, like as a company, is that they never turned TweetDeck or anything else into like an enterprise CRM product. [01:02:32] And if they’d done that, like again, I don’t know if that would’ve saved any of our, um, you know, like consumer clients. Um, maybe they could have put, maybe they would’ve had to put limitations on what you could have done with some of the consumer clients or whatnot. But I, I don’t think that the company would be in the position that it’s in right now if they did that. [01:02:49] And, and I, I look back and I know it’s easy to say hindsight’s 2020, but I remember even thinking this more than a decade ago. It’s like, why are you letting Hootsuite and all these other people. You know, get into this, why are you not building this yourself? Like, what, what are you doing? Because they literally could have built, like Brett and I, we both, we both work in enterprise, um, software to a, to a certain degree. [01:03:12] Like, you know, how much money you can make from that stuff. It’s just unreal to me that they like left that on the table. And that’s not anything that you are ever gonna be able to get back because the longer the time goes on, the more the service erodes, the more people move away from it, the less valuable it becomes. [01:03:29] So even if you did come out with a product like that, like, okay, nobody cares anyway. [01:03:35] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember there was a time too where like the, there was a service that was built off of Tweet deck and they were charging the New York Times and Washington Post and other major newspapers and news organizations, tons of money to help give them a sort of intelligence that was rooted initially in using tweet deck. [01:03:54] Um, and that was another, it was one of those enterprise, in a way, enterprise opportunities, like, [01:03:59] Christina: Oh, 100%. [01:04:00] Jeffrey: and they were, they were charging so much that I could, not even with a decent budget in my project, could not afford to use it. [01:04:06] Christina: No. Totally. Right. Like I, I, I remember that and, and cuz we used to build our own, um, stuff, uh, at Mashable. Like we had a, um, uh, an AI team and we had like a data science team and all kinds of stuff where we were trying to um, I guess basically do like predictive stuff to see like what the social lift would be on a story and, and like what we were also trying to do predictive stuff, like what stories were going to go viral, like kind of in the ether and we’re analyzing a lot of that stuff and, um, yeah, like they could have made a ton of money off of that. [01:04:36] Um, but it’s also, it’s just. To your point, Brett, like this is literally a company that was built on the backs of third parties, like from like, from the get-go. And it’s been disappointing that every single management regime from, from Jack Dorsey to Ed Williams, to to, um, you know, a Dick Costello, to Jack Dorsey again to Elon Musk has basically just like rejected. [01:05:00] Like the, the community that made it. [01:05:03] Brett: Yeah. It’s very frustrating. [01:05:06] Jeffrey: Yeah, [01:05:07] Brett: Should we, uh, should we do some gratitude? [01:05:09] Jeffrey: Sheila. [01:05:11] Brett: I want to go last. I’ll go last. I’m gonna take a minute, but I’ll go last. [01:05:16] Jeffrey: I’m ready if I should. [01:05:17] Christina: Yes. Please go. Grapptitude [01:05:19] Jeffrey: Um, I am choosing, it’s, it’s a service on a web app called Muck Rock. Um, it’s, uh, by the, by the people who, I mean not originally, but it’s by the people who bring you document cloud, which if you’ve ever seen a, a document embedded into a news story you’re reading, it’s probably comes from Document Cloud. [01:05:37] And that’s just the [01:05:38] Christina: Or it should [01:05:39] Jeffrey: Or it should not script, no scribed, how do you say it? I dunno how you say that one. Scr d um, [01:05:46] Christina: That’s how I’ve always said it, [01:05:47] Jeffrey: is the worst. [01:05:49] Christina: actually. I, I’ve always said scripty. I, I, I thought it was scripty for 15 years. Script. [01:05:55] Brett: That’d be like saying flick r. Flick r I go I I use flick R for [01:05:59] Jeffrey: flick. Our scr D scr d I think even to this day, feels like an interstitial on a like tennis shoe hunting website. [01:06:07] Christina: yeah. No, and it’s awful. [01:06:08] Jeffrey: say tennis shoe [01:06:09] Christina: well, tennis, you, no. Cause what’ll happen is they’ll give you all these, like, like you’re, you’re reading it and then all of a sudden it’s like, if you wanna continue reading this, you’re going to have to. [01:06:17] Jeffrey: exactly, exactly. So Muck Rock is, is for people who are interested in doing freedom of information work. Um, and you have your own account and you can track, you can actually like generate, first of all FOIA requests, which is wonderful. And then you can track them and they actually do some of the back and forth, um, between agencies. [01:06:40] And so one of the things I do most with Muck Rock is if there’s someone who I, I think might be interesting to see an F B I file on and they’re dead. Um, and they have some newspaper stories about them. These are the, these are the things that have to be true for the F B I to grant you the file of a dead person. [01:06:58] Like they have to be, the, the establishment memory has to have, uh, has to have given them a place. Um, and so I will just do a ton of these F B I file requests and then, uh, just check back in once a week. And if the FBI writes back with questions, I can, I can see that cuz there’s a little alert. Um, and the cool thing is once you’re done, uh, once you get a completed request, it’s yours alone for a little while, but then it just becomes public. [01:07:27] Um, and so there aren’t a lot of like, you know, people kind of hoarding, um, information there. It’s really a place for sharing. And so, and I actually recently got an email from a researcher who, um, was using a file I’D requested only cuz it was someone that I. Had admired and I was, I was curious to see what was there and to add it to the record. [01:07:47] And this woman was working on a documentary of her, her name was Barbara Deming, really amazing. Feminist, pacifist, badass. Um, and she’s like, you’re, the file’s been a huge help to me. And so you kind of, you’re instantly part of a community and um, and they also just have a good site that just shows you what documents are there and what you might wanna look at. [01:08:07] They write their own posts and articles, and then there are what are called assignments. So somebody is trying to, you know, gather, uh, information around a topic like police union contracts or something you can sign up to help, um, to help, you know, say I’ll do five or six municipalities or whatever. Um, and you become part of. [01:08:27] Project. And so it’s just a, it’s a lovely, it’s a lovely thing. It’s now attached as a service to document cloud, which is just a great way to host your documents and to, to, to kind of c collaboratively, um, highlight things in the document, uh, look through the documents, whatever, make comments. All that stuffs muck, rock, and it’s, it’s just a lot of fun. [01:08:47] Like if you have like a little bit of a, of a journalist bone in you, but you’ve never been a journalist, it’s a really fun place to go and, and help with the work of journalism. [01:08:57] Brett: And they’ve, they have introduced add-ons, uh, which are automations that you can incorporate into GitHub actions for [01:09:06] Christina: so cool. [01:09:07] Jeffrey: What, [01:09:08] Brett: document Cloud using, uh, muck rock, [01:09:12] Jeffrey: uh, that’s awesome. That’s fantastic. [01:09:17] Brett: drop this, uh, news [01:09:18] Jeffrey: Yeah, please do. Yeah, so it’s just a great, I mean, I, I get a lot done thanks to, uh, ed, because it’s funny, it, it, doing FOIA work is a lot of like template work basically. Um, and they just kind of solve that problem. And for me, I know, like I have text expander snippets for, um, public records requests in the various municipalities in which I have projects. [01:09:42] And like without those, that’s just a barrier for me. It’s just a barrier. [01:09:46] Christina: No, it, it is And, and I’m sure like, like, like, like, um, like me, you’ve had to teach a bunch of people how to do FOIA [01:09:53] Jeffrey: totally. Yeah. [01:09:54] Christina: and I remember what it was like before mock rock. and what it was like for me, and then having to teach people and then after like muck rocket, it just, it makes it so much better to, to teach people and, and, and really, uh, cuts down the barrier. [01:10:07] And, and it’s important I think, for so many researchers, not just obviously journalists, but for so many researchers, and even just look, this is, this is like, you know, freedom of information act. It’s open for everyone, right? Like, use it like we, we need more people digging into stuff. And, um, it, and like, it shouldn’t be this thing that has this barrier where you feel like you have to know the right language and, and knock on the right door and, and know the right things to get access to because like, no, like everybody’s supposed to have access to this stuff. [01:10:36] Like that’s why it exists. [01:10:38] Jeffrey: Yes. And then when you have a place where stuff already is posted there, you, you cut down on a problem that really is an issue. I can say this as a person that works with public records all the time, is like public records. Um, people, the people who are handling public records in an agency get such a huge amount of bullshit requests that are not thought through, that are not actually like, they’re like the worst kind of fishing, uh, , you know, like exercise. [01:11:04] And I don’t want to say that I side with people who work in those agencies who say, these should not be allowed, whatever. But I do think there’s a, a real like, etiquette to doing this work. And the first one is just to make sure, do everything you can to make sure the information you’re looking for is not already out. [01:11:22] And then, and then you will just, you’ll have such a better experience trying to get what isn’t out there when you know that it’s not out there. And, and they know that you’ve done that work. So anyway, muck Rock puts so much up. I’ve, I’ve used requests from Muck Rock that I was about to make myself. So anyhow, this is great. [01:11:38] It’s great. [01:11:40] Christina: Love it. [01:11:40] Brett: All right. [01:11:42] Christina: Um, all right, so my pick is pirate weather. Um, are either of you familiar with pirate weather? [01:11:47] Brett: No, I, you’ve dropped it into the show notes. I’ve been reviewing it over [01:11:51] Christina: It’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. Okay, so, uh, you guys remember Dark, dark Sky? Right? Okay. All right. So exactly. R i p. So [01:12:01] Jeffrey: Body is still. [01:12:02] Christina: so that is now part of the Weather app. Um, and the API was shut down January 1st. Uh, now if you are building, uh, a Mac app or an iOS app, uh, honestly, um, I don’t think you need to use pirate weather. [01:12:15] You should use the Apple, like, uh, what is like, like weather cloud or whatever weather kit or whatever they call it, which gives you, if you’re an Apple developer, like 500,000, um, calls a a month. Um, and it has very reasonable pricing. That’s honestly what you should do. You should refactor your app and use that. [01:12:31] But if you were using the Dark Sky api, which existed for a really, really long time, and you were using it for, you know, like some of your um, uh, home brew projects, you know, like you had it like integrated into, you know, um, like maybe a menu bar thing or you had it into, uh, something with your home assistant setup. [01:12:51] When the API broke, you know, all that stuff broke too. Or when the API died, all that stuff broke too. Well, um, Alexander Ray, he, uh, when he was working on his PhD, he became familiar with the various NOAA data stuff and he created, um, pirate weather to be a drop-in replacement for the Dark Sky api. And 1.0 was released in December and basically works exactly, you know, you can drop it in and basically, you know, [01:13:19] Brett: change your end point [01:13:20] Christina: just change your own point and you’re good to go. [01:13:21] Um, usage is, is capped at 20,000 calls a month, um, every 15 minutes. Um, and, and he can change that depending on this a w s bill. Um [01:13:30] Brett: he’s paying his AWS bill out of pocket to provide this free service that is understandable. [01:13:36] Christina: is f which is fantastic. Uh, maryweather uh, dot net I think is, is the website where he like, has like a, shows like what? Um, it looks like he even has like a, a web, you know, interface that shows, um, what, um, With the old kind of, he’s recreated the dark sky stuff. The reason it’s called pirate weather is pretty cute. [01:13:54] Uh, it’s using the, this H R R R, like this high refresh something or another, um, uh, uh, way, way to get the, the data. And he thought that that sounded like our, like a pirate. So that’s why it’s called pirate weather. Um, but um, he’s on GitHub sponsors if you wanna help him out. I’m, um, I, I’m sponsoring him. [01:14:16] Once I found out about this, uh, last week, I was like, this is really, really great. Um, and, uh, I don’t know. I think that, um, cuz again, this is kind of one of those examples similar to Muck Rock, where this is public data. Look what Dark Sky did. They didn’t, the, the data, the dark sky gave like wasn’t anything new. [01:14:34] What they did was they were able to take that data and format it in a way that was really actionable and beautiful. Right? Like that was the real magic. [01:14:43] Brett: and [01:14:43] Christina: Yes. [01:14:44] Brett: multiple sources. [01:14:45] Christina: Exactly. And, and that was the real beauty of it. Right. But, but it’s like, but the, the, the data is, is, um, this is one of the good things that’s happened, like kind of with the government is, is out there, it’s just, it’s really hard to parse and, um, and, and difficult to kind of deal with. [01:15:00] And, and the dark sky made that easy. And by kind of reverse engineering and rewriting, you know, making this drop in, like you can take advantage of that same stuff. And so you can use it with home assistant or, or Magic Mirror or, you know, if you had a menu bar or app that was pulling the weather, you know, and, and showing you stuff, um, you just drop in that endpoint. [01:15:20] So, Pirate weather is, is my pick. Um, Alexander, I think that what he did with this is just fantastic. Also, the fact that he’s funding this out of his own pocket is really great. It’s also all on GitHub. So in, in theory you could build this yourself, you know, if you wanted to, to self host something. Um, but, uh, because cuz he’s, he’s doing it. [01:15:39] Um, he’s got, um, you know, a bunch of AWS Lambda things, so he’s got some serverless stuff going on because, um, the, the NOAA data set is on aws, which is cool. Um, but, um, yeah, I just, I, I love this. I think that it’s really nice to see people, uh, do things like this and keep little small projects up and running and, um, big, big fan. [01:16:04] Jeffrey: Awesome. [01:16:06] Brett: All right. I’m picking from my own library this week. Um, I have been, since this hypomanic phase started, I have been a little bit obsessed with Search Link, which I maintain is the most useful tool I’ve ever created. Um, especially like if you’re doing show notes for a podcast, like as we record show notes, I will just type out text like, um, uh, like New York Magazine, Twitter article and hit a keyboard shortcut and it will create the link for me. [01:16:44] To the, to the endpoint. And, um, I have added in the last, what day is it? Wednesday right now, as we record, um, in the last four days or so, I have added so many new features. You can create a YouTube embed, [01:17:02] Christina: Ooh. [01:17:02] Brett: create the eye frame just by typing bang Y t e, and then giving it some [01:17:07] Jeffrey: Oh, I say Sir, wow. [01:17:10] Brett: the eye frame in bed from YouTube. [01:17:13] Um, it has built-in version checking it. When you run it once a day, it will go to GitHub and check for the latest release. And if you’re outdated in the report that it gives you in an HTML comment underneath your results, it will say, you’re running this version, this version is available. And then you can just select, you can type the word update, select it, and run the service. [01:17:39] And it will update itself in the process. [01:17:42] Jeffrey: That’s amazing. It’s amazing Guess and yes, and [01:17:45] Brett: it, it, so, I mean, basically just to describe it, it is designed so that people who write in markdown, whether for blog or for show notes or for, I mean, I guess those are the two things, right? Um, uh, it allows you to add hyperlinks to your writing without ever switching to a browser. [01:18:10] You can just type out anything that would be a, anything. You type out a search query like you’re, you’re all web professionals. You all know how to construct a Google query that will give you the right result. This basically just runs that query, takes the first result and inserts it into your writing without having to switch to a browser. [01:18:32] And it can search iTunes, it can search last fm, it can search the, the movie database. It can search the internet movie database. It can search, uh, Wikipedia, it can search duck dot go. And like basically any kind of search you wanna run, uh, with a very simple syntax, you can just write the text, highlight it and g and turn it into a markdown link and never leave your editor. [01:18:58] And I have so much fun with this, and I’m, I’m really proud of where it’s at right now. Uh, like, because it runs in a Mac Os service, it has to be one long script. So the more complicated it got, it was like, it had to be a couple thousand lines of code in a single file and it, it became unmanageable. So, uh, this week I broke it out into, uh, kind of a more of a, a, a ruby happy, uh, like bin and lib directories in every, every type of method called sorted out into different files. [01:19:37] Jeffrey: Nice. [01:19:38] Brett: in the main file where it has to require statements to include those external files, I have a compile script that we’ll go through and actually grab that external file and inject it into the, the final script. So I can work in 20 different files, but when I get ready to prepare the release, it compiles it all into a single file document, opens up my, my, my services in automator. [01:20:08] I can just hit paste it, copies it to the clipboard. I just hit paste and save and export a code sign service from it. Um, so big part of this week was automating the release process, um, which won’t, which won’t affect anyone but me, but, uh, it should make for more consistent releases. [01:20:28] Christina: Yeah. Have you [01:20:29] Brett: a lot of [01:20:30] Christina: documented, have you documented that anywhere? Cuz I’ve run into that issue. Like, and I, I, I have like things documented in various places, but for certain stuff that I wanna do, like even for personal things, I find it, you need to like sign shit. And, and the process is I always have to wind up like looking up what I’m doing. [01:20:48] So if you document what you’ve done anywhere, that would be useful. [01:20:51] Brett: it is, it is documented to some extent in the Build notes file that I use House, it runs the, like, it’s my make file for the, uh, for the repository and the build notes are included. Um, and, and you can see the compile script that it runs and everything. Um, um, I, I, I could actually make a whole blog post out of this process, but, uh, basically so to, to make a release, I run house it minus R, which for me is Alias, says Bld. [01:21:21] So I run, build, prepare, and that opens up my services and I export the, the code signed. Versions. And then I run Build Stage, which just basically does a get commit for release preparation and then build finalize, which creates the GitHub release and uploads a zip file of the services to the release and updates the blog pages for the project and change log. [01:21:51] And, and so it’s, it’s three commands instead of my usual just build, deploy. Uh, but it’s a three step process, but it’s all automated at this point. [01:22:03] Jeffrey: That’s great. [01:22:04] Brett: I’m very proud of it. [01:22:05] Christina: Yeah, no, you should be, and this is fantastic. [01:22:08] Brett: Yeah. Any, if you write for the web, if you blog or if you regularly create like show notes for a podcast, um, definitely check it out. It will save you so much time. [01:22:20] Christina: Yeah, this is you, you wrote something like this for me when I was at Mashable. It was a text mate, um, uh, uh, tool and, uh [01:22:29] Brett: actually came from, it came from the, the, uh, instant web search from the, the blog Smith bundle, which became part of the markdown service tools, uh, as an instant web search. And this was basically the evolution of that. And this is replaced all of those previous incarnations nations? [01:22:47] Jeffrey: I love it. [01:22:48] Christina: I’m so excited about this, this is that, because that was one of the, the most useful things I had for years at Mashable was cuz um, you wrote like a custom version of that. Cause when I stopped using, um, locksmith, I, I paid you to do that for me. And that was like some of the best money I ever did. [01:23:01] Like I ever. [01:23:02] Brett: add, there’s a yammel based config file that you can add all, all the custom searches you want to, so you can have like a site search for whatever blog you’re writing for, and you can include additional keywords if you like. I have one that’s B T P, and it searches brett Terpstra dot com, but includes the keywords project. [01:23:23] So I can just, like, I can write type, I can write Btp Gather, and it will link to the, uh, project page four, gather, uh, with one click. [01:23:34] Jeffrey: That’s awesome. [01:23:35] Brett: So yes, this is, this is all of that that, that I made you before and, and done some. [01:23:41] Christina: I love it. I’m so excited. [01:23:43] Jeffrey: Pretty great, [01:23:45] Brett: All right. Well, I have to go to a meeting. [01:23:50] Jeffrey: not me. [01:23:52] Christina: Yeah. I. [01:23:53] Brett: Sonar Sonar Code is throwing warnings on pull requests, and I have to figure out why. [01:24:02] Jeffrey: Well get on. Then get some [01:24:05] Brett: Sonar, sonar cloud, not sonar code, sonar cloud. [01:24:09] Christina: Well, [01:24:09] Brett: for static analysis. It’s, it’s fickle. It’s fickle. [01:24:14] Christina: good luck with that [01:24:16] Brett: Hi. Thanks. Good thing I’m hypomanic and can totally deal with this, right. [01:24:22] Christina: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve gotta write a script, um, and uh, and go in and, and shoot a video. So, [01:24:28] Jeffrey: Good luck. [01:24:29] Christina: you. Yeah. [01:24:31] Jeffrey: All right. You get some sleep, [01:24:32] Christina: Yes. Get [01:24:33] Brett: Get some sleep. [01:24:34] Outro: The.