Overtired

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. 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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.

Christina and Jeff must be brave in Brett’s absence. They discuss a gentler kind of New Year’s resolution, the wonders of AI-assisted coding, and the dark underworld of search engine optimization. Sponsor The Daily Observations has been talking Apple news of the day, on the day, since 2014. 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. If you follow Apple news, and you listen to podcasts… put this in your ear. Show Links A Brief History of What Time Is the Superbowl? Google results page for Dillenger Four Grapptitude Jeff: Pacer Pro Christina: Recap from Court Listener 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 Resolutions Without Hubris [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Jeffrey: Hello, everybody out there. I see you. I see you in your kitchen. I see you in your car. I see you walking your dog. I don’t really see you. That’s the government you’re thinking of. Um, this is Jeff Severance and this is the Overtired podcast, and I’m here with Christina Warren. Hello, Christina. [00:00:21] Christina: Hello, Jeff. Happy New Year again. How [00:00:24] Jeffrey: I thank you. I thank you. It is still a happy new Year. See, I celebrate New Year officially on my birthday, which is January 16th, [00:00:31] Christina: Yes, which I, I, I knew that this was coming up cuz I was looking at my, um, calendar and, uh, it, it populated in my calendar and I was like, oh, I gotta remember to, to, to wish a Jeff happy birthday. Um, so ha, happy, happy birthday. [00:00:45] Jeffrey: Thank you. It’s a great thing because I have usually completely bailed on my initial idea of resolutions for the year. By my birthday and my birthday allows me a chance to declare that this is really [00:01:00] the beginning of the year and, uh, and make a, a less, um, I, I make some kind of resolution with less hubris, [00:01:07] Christina: I like [00:01:07] Jeffrey: maybe Yeah. Something I can keep too. [00:01:10] Christina: Less, less, less hubris and uh, um, keep keeping things, um, uh, more honest, which I think is good cuz that’s, I I was curious. Like I, I gave up on New Year’s resolutions, like in my teens, I think probably. Um, do you ever really like, try to have them or, or is that something that, that you like. [00:01:36] Jeffrey: I, I, I do try to have them, um, but they don’t really go anywhere. I just, what I’ve come to believe is that, It’s worth it just to have the thoughts about what is it I would like to change and then to just let ’em go and maybe it’ll, maybe it’ll, you know, take care of itself over the course of the year. My, my, uh, my wife has the most amazing, [00:02:00] um, uh, resolutions. One year it was to park better [00:02:04] Christina: Oh, I love that. [00:02:05] Jeffrey: just generally to park closer to the curb. And another year it was to watch national, uh, nationally televised events like a normal American where she watched every single thing from the Golden Globes to the Super Bowl. Um, and I’m trying to, I always try to take inspiration cause I think those are just genius resolutions, but I can never find mine. [00:02:25] Christina: see. Okay. Those are awesome. So I love that actually. And so, cuz I’m like you, like I, I like to have things that I think about and I have goals. I stopped probably when I was around like 15 or so, like actually writing out like. Resolutions because I realized I’m not doing a great job keeping these and then it would just make me feel bad. And so I was like, eh, don’t do things that make you feel bad. But I do still in my mind like, oh, these are my goals for the new year and this and that. And there are things that I, that I, I have like goals from three years ago, like start a newsletter and I’m like still working on that. Um, but, uh, [00:03:00] I love, I love your wife’s cuz those seem like things that are actually actionable and that could also have some sort of impact on your life. I mean, I don’t know if like watching live events does except like then like, you know more about the, the water cooler conversations and the topical things that, you know what I mean? Like, so, but, but those are, those seem like low, low stakes things. I wonder too, you’d have to ask her about this. I would love to ask her myself, but I you, you can ask her like do, or, or even based on your observations, the fact that she has kind of these really interesting resolutions, do you think that that helps her? Achieved some of her other goals that might be bigger, broader, like the fact that she can say, my resolution is to park better. She does. She works on it. Do you think that helps maybe with follow through on maybe some of the bigger goals she wants to achieve? [00:03:49] Jeffrey: That’s a good question. I’m not sure I will say. Even a, um, sort of silly, uh, resolution, like I wanna park better, which is perfectly reasonable. I don’t, I [00:04:00] don’t mean silly, like [00:04:00] Christina: No. No. Totally. But, [00:04:01] Jeffrey: silly. It’s fun, [00:04:02] Christina: right, right. We just, we j we just mean in Sava as [00:04:04] Jeffrey: it’s whimsical, you know? Um, by the end of the year when you realize she’s still doing it, it’s like, for me, I’m always like, man, I gotta think of something. Because at the beginning I thought, well, that’s not enough, you know? But at by the end of the year I’m going, no, that actually feels like a [00:04:19] Christina: No, I [00:04:20] Jeffrey: I would’ve been glad to be there. [00:04:21] Christina: well, no, well, well this is kinda my, my, my, my thought, right? Like, is that, that is like enough, like especially if you, cuz at that point it’s no longer even a resolution. It’s like that has been a behavior change, which I think, uh, is, is even better than a resolution. Cuz I think a lot of times, , I, and, and I’m including myself in this, I’ve viewed resolutions as like things to do and like things to like seeing like, okay, I need to check this off, right? Like, I need to, I need to, to do this, be one and done. Whereas what she’s doing is actually saying, I want to change my behavior in a [00:04:52] Jeffrey: Yes. [00:04:53] Christina: I think is actually much more important, harder, and like much better. Right? Like, I think that’s [00:05:00] actually a way better way of, of viewing things, [00:05:02] Jeffrey: Well, and I think, I mean, at least as an observer, like it’s, it’s absent all the like, because I will be better if I X. Right. They’re usually not things that like are going to, are going to carry the weight of, will I be a better person? How [00:05:20] Christina: No, totally. [00:05:21] Jeffrey: You know? And I love that. [00:05:22] Christina: except by being able to successfully change your behavior. You are right. [00:05:28] Jeffrey: Yes, yes. Every time you do that, it’s data [00:05:31] Christina: It, it is at, and, and every time you do that is also, I think, and this is why I’d be curious to know, like it’s helped her. Um, and I guess resolutions is probably the wrong word, but I would be curious to know if that has helped her make behavior changes in other ways. Right? Because if you could do it for these things that seem small, right? But you can do it and really carry through, right? Like, I, and I failed at this, but I’m gonna get back on it. When I had my nails painted for GitHub universe, I didn’t bite my nails for like, the entire time that I [00:06:00] had those, those, those gel nails on. And, but, but as soon as it shipped off, I then immediately bit my nails again. And it was awful. And I was really upset with myself, but I was like, okay, well this is just, I’m going to start getting my nails done and keeping them up. And, um, I just, I, and I’d wanted to actually get them done, um, before it was, uh, chipping, but I couldn’t find, um, a, a place, uh, close by. Soon enough for, for when you know it was happening. And then by the time it happened, I was like, all right, I’ll just, then I got sick and everything, but, but I’m gonna, like, this is actually, okay. So this is one of my behavior changes. I don’t think that I will reasonably probably, at least for a long time anyway, I don’t know if I will ever be able to stop biting my nails. However, when I had the gel tips, which, you know, and, and I’ve had painted nails before, but it hadn’t really worked this well, like, I really was able to at least for a month change my behavior. And I do wonder, like this would be a thing like, okay, I might not ever be able to completely prevent myself from like, biting my nails. It’s a nervous habit. It’s something [00:07:00] I’ve been doing literally my entire life. Um, like I, before I bit my nails, I picked my nails and, um, and so I, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s ever anything that’ll go away, but I do feel like I could, you know, by going every three weeks to get my nails done like that, that could be part of it, right? Because if they’re painted, they look a certain way, then I’m not So, um, I like that. I like that. Rather than my resolution of being, I’m going to bite my nails, uh, I’m not gonna stop biting my nails like I’m going to, you know, commit to getting my nails done every so [00:07:32] Jeffrey: yeah, that’s, that sounds way more fun too. Right. Like you handle it, but you also have fun handling it. I mean, that’s like, it’s also similar to what is the thing that Judo wrote? Atomic Habits, his thing about habit stacking, but also his thing about the envi, the, the, your environment that like he, he would say, or he says, there’s not like a type of person who’s good at holding their resolutions, right? There’s a type of person who’s good at creating the environment wherein [00:08:00] they can hold their, um, resolutions. And in a way you’re doing that by just making sure you get those nails, , those nails done. And that’s, and that’s like way more fun cuz it’s not loaded with like, oh God, I don’t tried to stop biting my nails. [00:08:13] Christina: It’s like, no, I’m not even, I’m not even gonna attach that. I’m just gonna say, okay, I’m gonna get my nails done every three weeks, and maybe that will, if I do it long enough, there will be a real behavior change. Right? Like, maybe that would be the real goal. Maybe, maybe at a certain point, if I didn’t go every three weeks and, and something chip that maybe I would finally be past that point where like, I wouldn’t be doing exactly what I’m [00:08:35] Jeffrey: yeah, sure. [00:08:36] Christina: which listeners, uh, can’t see. But I’m like literally putting, I’m [00:08:39] Jeffrey: right now live. [00:08:41] Christina: I’m like, Ooh, I see a little bit of white. That’s because I, I, I bite them to the quick and I’m like, Ooh, I see a tiny bit of white. I could totally bite this now. And yeah. [00:08:51] Jeffrey: Oh man. You’re reminding me I need to put a pedicure on my birthday list. [00:08:55] Christina: Ooh. Yeah. [00:08:56] Jeffrey: had two now in the last year and a half. [00:09:00] I had never had a pedicure before, and I don’t know what toxic masculinity was keeping me from doing that, but what an amazing thing. [00:09:09] Christina: I. [00:09:09] Jeffrey: it tickles [00:09:10] Christina: Yeah, I, I, I wouldn’t mind getting that done just in terms of, uh, I guess like having like, them like clean stuff up. Um, my toes are terrible. My feet in general are terrible, which is, uh, we talked about this cuz I discovered this cuz this was a horrific discovery that I did not make that one of my friends in informed me about. But, um, uh, we talked about this on a, a addition of the, the podcast like a year and a half ago. I, I’m on Wiki feet. Um, yeah, which is exactly what it sounds like. [00:09:42] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:09:43] Christina: And, um, it’s hilarious because [00:09:46] Jeffrey: How are you on Wiki feet? [00:09:47] Christina: somebody submitted my photos and thinks I’m notable enough. I don’t know, [00:09:51] Jeffrey: That’s amazing. [00:09:52] Christina: somebody went through all my Instagram photos and all of my like Twitter things and submitted photo, any photos of my toes. It’s bizarre [00:09:59] Jeffrey: that is? [00:10:00] Wow. [00:10:01] Christina: very disturbing. I’m not gonna lie. Like that was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever learned. And I was not at all like, happy to learn that. But also I was, I was a little bit, I was amused because my feet are absolutely my worst feature. Like my toes overlap. Like I don’t have attractive feet. Like there’s nothing attractive about them. Like, you know, like if, if I had longer nails and painted nails, like I, I don’t have ugly hands, um, or ugly fingers like that, that’s, that’s fine. But like my feet are not attractive. Um, and, uh, so why anybody would wanna look at my feet is just, uh, [00:10:33] Jeffrey: Wiki feet, . Oh my God. That is, it’s just like what my brain is doing is, um, going through the, the de decision patterns of whoever was responsible for that. And then the action, the workflow itself, um, and then the horrible conclusion, [00:10:50] Christina: 100%. And then it always reminds me of the Great King of the Hill episode, um, where, uh, Peggy, um, uh, becomes a foot model, um, unexpected, like unknowingly, [00:11:00] um, and starts making fetish films, um, because of her giant feet, not realizing that, that, um, thinking that people like them because they’re beautiful, not realizing people get off on them because they’re terrible. Um, and, uh, yeah, um, it’s a great episode. Um, [00:11:16] Jeffrey: Okay. So we’ve, we’ve entered a total cultural corner there I, that I had forgotten existed, [00:11:23] Christina: yeah, then I, I, I, I’d forgotten existed too until you said pedicure. But you should get a pedicure for sure, cuz treat, treat, treat. Treat yourself. Treat yourself for your birthday. Treat yourself. [00:11:30] Jeffrey: wanna get myself up on Wiki feet. [00:11:32] Christina: absolutely. See, uh, listeners, uh, if, uh, Jeff posts photos of his feet, please submit. [00:11:38] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yep. That’s all [00:11:40] Christina: actually, no, no. Don’t actually do that because it, when you find that out about it’s [00:11:45] Jeffrey: Yeah. It’s not, no, that’s [00:11:47] Christina: not at all like, yeah. [00:11:51] Jeffrey: I’m just seeing if, if both the other co-hosts were also on Wiki feet, you know, maybe it takes some of the sting in the weird out, or it adds much more [00:12:00] weird. [00:12:00] Christina: Yep. [00:12:01] Jeffrey: You’d be the judge audience. [00:12:02] Christina: agree. [00:12:03] Jeffrey: All right, well, good. Check in. I’m, I’m gonna still put pedicure on my, [00:12:07] Christina: You definitely should. Yeah. [00:12:09] Jeffrey: I haven’t found the place I love yet. [00:12:11] Christina: okay. Yeah, no, that, well, that’s the thing too. Okay. So you’re gonna be looking for product here? I’m gonna be trying to find, um, a good manicurist. I’m probably gonna have to go to Bellevue, um, which is like the bougie, uh, uh, town, like over the, um, over the lake, but [00:12:25] Jeffrey: Bougie. Bougie. Yeah. All right. [00:12:29] Christina: you know, I, I, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m becoming just like a, a rich Bellevue mom, and, and I don’t like that cuz I like to live in the city and whatnot. But there’s just a lot of [00:12:37] Jeffrey: Get a minivan. [00:12:38] Christina: Oh, fuck no. [00:12:40] Jeffrey: Oh, they’re the best [00:12:41] Christina: Oh, absolutely not. Under, under [00:12:42] Jeffrey: I love. I am long past needing one cuz my boys are both teenagers and one of ’em is practically out the door. But I fucking love Minivans . Thanks for asking. [00:12:57] Podcast Swap: Mac Observer’s Daily Observations Podcast [00:12:57] PodSwap: Let’s take a little break to do a podcast swap. [00:13:00] Swap is with the Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast. Do you follow Apple News? Do you listen to podcasts? Well, I already know the answer to that one. Well, there’s a podcast all about Apple News that we would like you to check out. It’s the Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast. And when they say daily, they, they mean it for the most part Monday through Friday. That’s reasonable. Each of those days, they hit you with 20 minutes of talk. The most interesting Apple stories, they’ve been doing it since 2014. Um, and that’s like . They had the announcement of the Apple Watch. Remember the free U2 album? Nobody Wanted. Get that thing off of my computer. Uh, the announcement of Apple TV plus the transition to Apple silicon. I mean, all these things that have happened have been covered by the Mac Observers Daily Observations podcast, it’s ripped from the virtual pages of Mac observer.com host Kent Ray brings in Mac Observer staffers and other tech types for quick, informative and entertaining talk [00:14:00] centered on the apple and related stories of the day. So if you follow Apple News and you listen to podcasts, again, you’re already busted on that one. Put this in your ear, the Mac Observers Daily Observations podcast online@macobserver.com wherever you get podcasts. [00:14:17] AI-Assisted Coding [00:14:17] Jeffrey: what do you wanna talk about? [00:14:19] Christina: Uh, so, um, I guess, well, I guess that was kind of our mental health corner, [00:14:24] Jeffrey: I think that, I love the idea of that standing in for mental [00:14:27] Christina: Uh, honestly, I do too. I do too. Um, okay, so on our topic list, you have chat and G P T. And this I wanna hear about because, because you’ve been going, you’ve, uh, you said that this is like, taken over your life over the last week. And, uh, and I, I don’t wanna hear more about. [00:14:43] Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay, so here’s what, and, and just the footnote is this is not one of the existential conversations about chat g p t. Um, I like kind of had that experience in my own head initially and then wanted to kind of start trying it. And um, [00:15:00] and what I’ve been using it for, uh, for the last week is like tons of coding help basically. Um, and so like, here’s, here’s my deal, my sort of level of literacy when it comes to programming. Um, I have a comfort level with Python. I couldn’t just write you a Python script, I mean, That was 10 or 15 lines. I could write you one that was two or three. Um, I have a comfort with Bash scripting. I’ve usually, I may learn that mostly through Stack Overflow, um, and borrowing code from people that were, you know, kind enough to, to offer it to me. Um, and I generally know what a computer is capable of doing and how you talk. Right. Like, what, what can you ask a computer to do reasonably, right? I know these things, but I always need help to actually do them. And so until recently, that would be, you know, maybe I had a friend like Brett, and you know, Brett and I have worked together on a project. So maybe I’d just be like, I’d [00:16:00] call Brett. I’d be like, run the clock. You’re on the clock. I want you to help me figure out the last bit of this script. Um, or I don’t understand, uh, how this particular function works. It’s, I’m just having all this trouble. Um, and Brett would very kindly help me out. Um, if I didn’t have Brett, I have Stack Overflow. Um, but I’ve always thought of myself as someone who, if I just had someone next to me all the time who could code to my specifications, I could do so much for myself and for my workflow that I cannot otherwise do cause I’m too slow or because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to search out the answer. And so it is, it is in that sort of context that I turned to chat g p t last week first with a, with a script I needed but didn’t have. Um, it was very simple. I was actually doing some budgeting and I wanted to be able to quickly throw a number into my terminal and have that number, [00:17:00] uh, be turned into the total with sales tax. So, you know, looking at some of this 1599, I put it in, comes out and it adds it to my clipboard the whole bit, right? And so I wrote this paragraph about what I wanted it to do, ends with it putting, uh, the amount onto my clipboard so I can then paste it into, you need a budget, why a, my, my wide app software? And it did it in about five minutes. And then I was able to kind of do some finessing, add a few features, kind of do a little bit of yes, ending ala Brett Terpstra. Um, and pretty soon I had this like, you know, pretty complex script for what I’m normally able to produce. I had to run it and get errors and run the errors by chat G P T. So it’s like I still needed to know how the process works, right? And I needed to be able to read an error enough to know that like, oh, this error is something I should run by chat G P T, or this error is just a stupid thing I did and I can fix it myself. And so I started with this like sales tax [00:18:00] script. Then I took an old script I had from my journalism days, like a bash script. And it was just something that used this, there’s this amazing tool called CSV Kit. It’s created by Christopher Gross. Um, who does a lot of like news nerd programming and it’s just a suite of tools to work with CSV files or without opening an Excel file to convert it to csv, all this different stuff. And I used to always, when I got a new data set, I always did this like audit using a few of the CSV kit tools that would kind of just give me like, here’s like, um, you know, the most common values for each column. Here’s it is like everything. It was like a two or three page like audit report, right? And, um, and that was written in Bash. I did it, wrote it totally using Stack Overflow. And by the way, one of those questions per our conversation last week turned into one of that dude’s weirds videos of my Stack Overflow questions. Um, And what you do is you just, you know, you type an input file, you type an output file, and it creates a text file data audit of the, um, of the data [00:19:00] you just got. Super useful, super simple. Even today though, I can’t read that bash file. Like if I try to read it, I’m just like, I don’t know what the fuck this stuff is. I basically treated Stack overflow by chat g like chat G p T, and went like line by line [00:19:15] Christina: Right. [00:19:17] Jeffrey: And so I was looking at, I’m like, you know what, you know what this script doesn’t have and I’ve never done. It’s one of those things where if I type, you know, the name of the script and then uh, you know, uh, dash dash help, it tells me what this thing is and, and what the correct usage is. And so I was like, I don’t, I don’t really know how to do those things. So I was like, chant. How do you add a help function? So you, I said, well, it turns out you add a help function. I was like, cool, what does that look like? They gave me an example and I’m like, cool, what would it look like for this script? And I just plugged the whole script in, right? And it gave me text for a help function that is now part of my script. Um, and so that’s, that’s some of how I’ve been using it. Now the [00:20:00] other way that I’ve been using it is APIs are something where it’s like, I thousand percent understand how an API works, why it exists, what you do when you’re calling an api. I mean, I get it, like conceptually, I totally get it and I can usually make simple requests just off the documentation cuz one would hope the documentation was good enough to help you make simple requests. But what I did is I took a list of like 10 APIs that I’ve used in the past, and I just said, show me a complex, a p I call for the Airtable, a p i. Show me a complex call for the Twitter API for the, you know, I just like went down the road and I learned so much by looking at, cuz they, it’ll show me a complex, um, a complex call and then it will, it will tell me in plain language what it’s doing. And so I was able to do that with a bunch of APIs, which allowed me to kind of tighten up a few API calls I make, uh, as part of my workflow.[00:21:00] It was just this loving friend . And, and the fact that you could Yes. And that fucking thing to death. I mean, I can continue. I remember one of the things I tend to do is like, if there’s an API I want to know a lot about, I’ll say, I’ll start with, show me a complex api. I’ll say, now show me 10 features you didn’t show me in the last one. Right. And they’ll be like, now show me five features you didn’t show me in the last one. Um, and you can just keep going in it. And I, and what’s funny is I started to think it was human because. When I’m working with someone like Brett, I, there’s a point pretty early on where you just feel bad. Like, I’m sorry I’m bugging you with all these remedial fucking questions that like are a little bit beyond what I could have Googled, but not too far beyond. Right? So I found myself wanting to ask nicely, but then I was like, that’s fucked up. And so I just started being really straight, like it would’ve been as a text, if this were a text conversation, I would, I would have [00:22:00] way too little affect and everyone would wonder what I meant. But with this thing I’m just like, yeah, now show me five more. Now show me five more sucker. Come on motherfucker, show me five more. I bet you’re not done. You know, like that’s essentially what, that became my , my sort of attitude in using chat G p T And the, the one thing I regret is that I had, I had put a Firefox extension on that allows you to download your different chats and um, and as markdown files, And I had been doing that pretty faithfully, but I had built up quite a bit of questions and today, uh, they’ve hopefully temporarily, uh, made it so you could not see or interact with those previous chats because of the overload that they’re dealing with. [00:22:45] Christina: Mm-hmm. [00:22:46] Jeffrey: And, uh, and I’m a little scared cuz I, I really got, I’ve gotten quite good and clean at essentially creating for myself documentation on an API or on a certain, you know, feature or whatever by asking [00:23:00] very specific questions that it allows you to build on it, you know, you can build on previous questions. And so anyway, I have just found and Unselfconsciously, I don’t care that I can now write scripts that are mostly existent because of chat G P T. That’s fine. I knew that I wanted him and I, I know how to think in that way. Uh, hold on, that’s my mom calling. [00:23:21] Christina: Sure. [00:23:22] Jeffrey: I like, I feel, I feel good about myself because I know what it is I need to ask, and that itself is, is half the work, and so I’m just, I’m putting that out to you. It’s a beautiful, beautiful new life I’m living. If they can just keep this thing online, which seems to be a struggle right now. [00:23:39] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, uh, I know some stuff about that that I can’t talk about, uh, in terms of like the, the, the, the, um, the strain that things are under. But yes, um, uh, they’ve said this publicly, so, so this isn’t me, uh, sharing anything outta school, but, uh, I, the success of this, uh, took everyone by [00:24:00] surprise because it completely, I think, surpassed everyone’s expectations. [00:24:04] Jeffrey: Because they didn’t realize they were changing society and how it functions. [00:24:08] Christina: Well, I, no, I, I, I think they did. I think that for a lot of people, and this is what Sam Altman, uh, mentioned this, and, and, uh, I think I’m stealing from him. Uh, someone else had mentioned this too, like the, the, the functionality already kind of existed, like copilot already did a lot of what you’re talking about. And in fact, copilot Labs, which is a a a Vs code extension, which has been out for a few months now, has had a, um, which basically does like experimental features, um, which, uh, has had a feature like explain for a while that’ll let you, you know, highlight a block of code and then it’ll explain it to you very much like exactly what you were using co-pilot for. And, um, you know, has, uh, and hey, GitHub is, is a thing that we announced at GitHub Universe, which will also be very similar to, to kind of this thing where you can kind of talk to, to copilot and, and have it, um, you know, give you responses and whatnot. [00:25:00] Um, so. , a lot of these things were, these models were already kind of available. Granted, uh, you know, co-pilot costs money. Um, but, you know, these things were possible. The interface was different. And, and I think that’s what has changed things with this is by making it a chatbot, which is really smart. The interface is, I think was the, was the perfect thing to kind of go mainstream in a way that I, I don’t think I, I certainly didn’t anticipate it taking, I, I knew it would be big and I knew all this stuff would be big. I’ve been really, really bullish on AI for the last couple of years, actually, largely because of G P T three and, and the things that I’ve seen. Um, you know, companies building also things like stable diffusion. Like I, I’ve, uh, I’m somebody who tends to be skeptical a lot of times, but this has been an area where I’ve absolutely not been. Um, because like you, when I’ve played around with it and I’ve, I’ve seen the results, I’ve just. Okay. This is, this is like an iPhone level type of thing, right? This is, this is the [00:25:56] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah, [00:25:57] Christina: I, I, I’m not saying that they’re the same, but I’m just saying, [00:26:00] like, in my mind when you think of technological advancements like this, this feels ai, this, this next generation of, uh, you know, uh, natural language AI feels like an iPhone type of moment, right? Um, but I feel like chat G P T, which is still very, very primitive, which is what makes it so e exciting to me, I think is the, such a great interface for. Showing what the power of these models are, because everything else has required either you know, you to know a little bit of something, you know, be, you know, have, have a a, a code editor and an extension up or, or be using, you know, something like, like Dolly too, which, you know, they give you free credits, but it’s also, you know, takes a little bit of time. It feels, it just, it feels different. This, I think just the, the chat nature of it and, and the, uh, instantaneous nature of it and the fact that, like you said, you can get it to do so many different things is really, really impressive, uh, to the point that, yeah, you know, people are now building so many things on top of [00:27:00] it. It’ll be interesting to see what Open AI decides to do in terms of, you know, I think that they. probably will have always have some sort of free tier, but it’ll be interesting to see like how they start to rate limit stuff. Cuz you do, you’re already seeing businesses starting to basically be like, yeah, we’re building off of this. Which I think it’s fine to do the model, but it’s like the compute resources have a very real cost. Uh, that’s the thing that people don’t understand enough about, um, AI stuff is that. Uh, and one of the reasons why, uh, frankly, it’s harder to do these things locally when we talked about, um, one of the, um, the iOS apps that, that does stable diffusion locally on the iPhone last week as, uh, was my, my, uh, couple weeks ago rather, uh, was, was my pick of the week. Um, draw things, which is a great app and you can definitely, if, if you were to, you know, massage things enough, you could get some of those models and sizes that you could run locally, like on your, on your local machine. The problem is, is that a, that takes up a lot of resources and time and whatnot, and then to update it would take bandwidth, but b. So it’s just not gonna be feasible in a lot of situations. But for these things [00:28:00] to work, what makes ’em so magical is that they are doing all this stuff, you know, in the cloud and, um, and there’s, that’s a finite resource and there’s like a hard cost to that stuff. So as this stuff grows, that’s, uh, I, I think that not just, uh, the open AI stuff, but any of these services, we’ll, we’ll start to see them struggle a little bit until people can figure out, you know, how to, how to scale them. But, but it’s super exciting. But I love hearing about this and I I love that you were using these for these reasons. If you haven’t played with copilot, um, definitely [00:28:31] Jeffrey: I should get there [00:28:32] Christina: no, you sh you should do it because I think that that would be, cuz it, it, it lives in vs code, but you can also use it with JetBrains and with um, uh, uh, Neo Vem and. It’ll, it’ll do very similar things, um, to what chat, chat g p t is doing. Uh, in that case, it’s more predictive in, in terms of like if you’re, if you’re typing something, it’ll kind of auto complete for you, um, in, in some ways. But you can also have it explain things and you can even kind of like ask [00:29:00] it specifically to do stuff for you like that. So it’s got some similarities. Um, like, like I said, um, the, uh, like the explain feature in the labs, you know, you can highlight a block of code and then it’ll give you like the real, you know, language reaction is, is great. And, and hey, GitHub is, is gonna bring some of that stuff to it too. But, um, I love how you’re using chat G P T and I love, honestly, like this is, it’s, it’s funny because, um, internally, uh, you know, we never wanted to, to draw illusions to, to stack overflow cuz we wanna be respectful of them and everything. But you’re not the first person who’s drawn kind of comparisons between things that you have been finding out from. You know, uh, chat g p t and, and, and using it the same way that many of us have used Stack Overflow and things like that. Um, which, which is great, but I, I, I, I really, the fact a, it’s great for Brett not to be bother as much, but also like you’ve gotten a lot out of it and you, and you’ve learned, I mean, [00:29:58] Jeffrey: a lot. Oh, I’ve [00:30:00] learned a ton. [00:30:00] Christina: that, that’s the thing I think that enough people don’t talk about when we talk about like AI stuff, we focus on the jobs that we’ll displace. We focus on the plagiarism and the other stuff that it will do, and we, we focus on all these negatives of like all these instances where people are not going to have to learn. And there is truth to that. I’m not discounting that at all, but I also think that there’s truth and we don’t talk enough about it. Scenarios like yours where you’ve learned a ton now and you’ve been able to do things that you were not doing beforehand, right? It’s not like you were learning that stuff beforehand. It’s it, you were asking Brett, you were doing other things. It’s not like you’re really rocking it. Right. So, The net positive one. This a, is that stuff has done faster and and better, and you’ve got things that are gonna working the way you want it to, but also like you’ve learned a lot too, you know, and, and, and it have, it sounds like, have a much better comprehension of what you’ve actually done than before. You know, when you were just putting together, you know, these, these complicated batch scripts that you’re like, I know it works, but I don’t [00:31:00] know what it says. [00:31:01] Jeffrey: Yeah, in fact, I, I have to, I was like, oh, I should finally write comments for this bash script and I’ll go through each thing here in Chat J pt, so I understand it, and then I’ll see if I feel like I could put my own words to it. I mean, there, there’s certainly, like, I certainly have instances where I would, you know, I would pause before using what was there, and I’m always testing it. I mean, I’m not asking it to do something where the output is something really critical, you [00:31:24] Christina: right? Well, that’s the thing, right? Yeah. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t. And sometimes the explanations. The only tricky thing is the explanations are so accurate sounding. They can sometimes be wrong, but I think. For most of what you’re doing. I don’t think that’s a problem at all, so, [00:31:40] Jeffrey: What I’m essentially doing is, okay, chat. G p t said I should do this. Let’s go over here and test it. No, that’s not working. Let’s go back to chat. G p T. You know, like the, the real thrill is it, it gives you code that produces an error. You give it the error and then it gets it, right? It’s like, it’s almost like that is why it’s like having someone next to you, right? Or it’s just like a person, not a, [00:32:00] not a bot. And I definitely am, am cautious of like the like white male, uh, threat of like, you sound awful, confident. This must be true [00:32:10] Christina: Well, but, but it’s been designed in a way that it is and it, it, it, it’s kind of a, it, it’s kind of fun in some ways, right? Because it does sound like just completely, like likewise, I found with most programming stuff, at least at the level that I’m doing things at, and I’m doing things at a very similar level, that you’re doing things. I think that it’s, it’s fairly reliable and again, you test things, not running things in production before, you know, things have been tested and whatnot. But there, there have been some circumstances where, where it’s been wrong, but at least from my, this is anecdotal, but from my experiences, it’s a lot more accurate in terms of like explaining code blocks and whatnot than it is, uh, in terms of like, cuz it can sound just as accurate explaining, you know, like, uh, NCHE or, or Kafka, [00:32:55] Jeffrey: Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right, right. [00:32:56] Christina: where it can also sound very, very, uh, [00:33:00] big. But it’s, it’s, um, uh, it, it’s, it’s funny, uh, Joanna Stern from, um, wall Street Journal to a great video where she used chat G P T to write, um, to try to see if she could use it to pass AP English. And so she went to an ap, an AP English class in New York City, and she used it to write an essay and she asked the, the, the teacher, she was like, , you know, would you have caught that this was an ai? And he said, no. Uh, he’s said, I gotta be honest with you, I probably wouldn’t have. Now, he did mark it down and gave her like a three, you know, which is a passing grade. Like, you know, like a, like, like, like like a B or a C. Um, and it, because he was wanting to, uh, the prompt was actually really great. It’s one that I wish I would’ve had in high school, which was comparing fair Thursday off, uh, with the metamorphosis and, and, and talking about like, existentialism in, in, um, uh, uh, uh, fair Thursday off, which I actually, again, I, I would’ve loved that in AP English. Like, that would’ve been like my dream. Cause that’s one of my favorite movies ever. And, and I, and I love it. Um, but the, the essay that the, the [00:34:00] AI wrote confused the characters of Cameron and Ferris a few times and got some other [00:34:03] Jeffrey: Mm. [00:34:05] Christina: Um, and so, and, and those are things that are, that are gonna happen, right? But like, the bulk of it, you know, like, he was like, yeah, I, I probably, I, I wouldn’t have, this wouldn’t have flagged to me that this was an ai, um, , which is, you know, concerning to a certain extent. Although I think it should also be maybe reaffirming that it’s like, okay, even though this would not have been caught by a plagiarism detector at least yet. And even though this is something that, um, like, uh, what was I gonna say? So even though obviously people could use this to cheat or whatnot, and, and the plagiarism detectors didn’t catch it, it’s still, it, it might’ve given a passing grade, but it, it still wasn’t like a good essay, right? Like, it’s not like somebody’s gonna write, like, like to me, I, I care much less about if somebody’s look, cuz if somebody’s gonna use people cheat, if they’re gonna use a tool like that to cheat, they’re gonna cheat. Right? I think I’d be much more concerned [00:35:00] if people were being able to create like Pulitzer worthy. , you know what I [00:35:03] Jeffrey: Right, right, [00:35:05] Christina: that would be much more concerning to me than, than, than if like, okay, you’re giving an essay that’s grammatically correct and that has some decent sin structure, but has factual errors and some other things, right? That, that a human being who didn’t resear like that, a kid who frankly didn’t watch the movie or read the book mistakes they might have made. Right. Which, let’s be honest, that’s a very common scenario anyway. So I some, some of the, some of some of the, uh, like furor over that I, I think is completely overblown cuz I’m like, you’re making a lot of assumptions about high schoolers that I, I remember very distinctly being a high schooler and a college student and you know, The, the shortcuts kids take, like, don’t, don’t underestimate that. You know, [00:35:50] Jeffrey: Yeah, there’s always [00:35:51] Christina: only this, this is, this is only one tool, right? This is just like the next generation of these things. This isn’t going to fundamentally make, you know, yes, it’ll make a, a [00:36:00] passing essay, but potentially, but it’s not like it’s gonna make a great essay. You know? It’s not like [00:36:04] Jeffrey: Right, right. [00:36:05] Christina: straight A’s out of this, right? [00:36:07] Jeffrey: Totally. Man. You know what it does do that’s wonderful is cut out the croft, the design, the everything of websites, um, that deliver us information. It’s all gone and reduced to a simple sort of, Um, template, and my real hope is that this destroys the mom blog recipe blogs forever because like, I, I had to roast a chicken the other day and I was like, give me a simple roast chicken recipe. I knew exactly what I was looking for, which was just olive oil, salt, and pepper. But I just needed someone to say it real quick and succinctly and man, it gave it right over to me. I didn’t have to deal with any interstitials, [00:36:52] Christina: See? Okay, so, okay, so my hope then is what this can do is that this can now be the way that, uh, the different digital assistants [00:37:00] source things like recipes. You know what I mean? So when you say, Hey, hey, Siri, hey Alexa, whatever. Like, read me a recipe. It won’t be the whole preamble that happens on those things. Like, honestly, that should be open AI’s next partnership. Just be like, yes, we will provide the, the, the, the data for these, voice assistance [00:37:17] Jeffrey: Love it. [00:37:18] Christina: things. I found this on the web for Alexa. Whatever, like, read me. Shut up Siri. Goddamn. [00:37:24] Jeffrey: What were you gonna say? [00:37:26] Talking SEO Blues [00:37:26] Christina: No, I was gonna say, uh, you’ve wanted to talk about seo. So that’s actually like, this is a good segue. [00:37:30] Jeffrey: Yeah, it sure is. Um, well, it’s funny, I, I haven’t had to deal with SEO in many years since I, I was the editor of the website for this magazine, nut Reader, and the ownership was really big on maximizing our SEO and would often send us little bits from Danny Sullivan, um, and and other giants of the field of seo [00:38:00] search engine optimization. And so the idea of course being like you use certain keywords in, in the right places and, and it will get picked up and, and maybe put in front of people, uh, uh, in Google results or other results. Um, and it got so bad in the 2000 tens in my experience. That you were not only asked to create, but you were seeing everywhere content that was so obvi, like headlines that just made no sense [00:38:28] Christina: time does the Super Bowl? [00:38:30] Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly. [00:38:31] Christina: you remember that one? That was one of the most that No, that was one of the most famous ones, if you remember that. That there was a Washington, there was a Huffington Post, um, article that I know the guy who, who did it, and he, it was, it was an unexpected thing. It was like, what time does the Super Bowl start? And it became like one of huff post’s, like biggest stories ever. And then sort of ruined and changed a whole genre of, of, of, of headline writing for, uh, and type of news writing for, for a while, but [00:38:55] Jeffrey: Yeah, and it was like, as I remember, this is what I remember were the, were the elements. There was [00:39:00] your title itself, uh, keywords that were in the title. There were keywords that were used in the first what paragraph or a couple paragraphs, and then there were keywords that were linked that had like hyperlinks over them. And then in the H T M L, you could actually put keywords. [00:39:16] Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now it’s changed a little bit. You can still do some of that, but there’s like meta. Stuff. So there are tools, like depending on what platform you’re using, like if you’re using WordPress, um, there are a number of different plugins, you know, for SEO on that. Um, some of the other platforms have their own kind of SEO tools that are built in. Some of them that do things I think kind of holistically and some that do things otherwise. But it is still one of those things where, from what I understand, you know, talking with people who deal with this stuff and whatnot, like there is a certain amount of like keyword stuffing, not just in like the, the tags and whatnot, but then also in the copy, right? So I think the, the biggest negative for SEO for me is that you can read articles and you can totally tell that they were written in such a way to rank Kylie [00:40:00] in, in Google, not, not dissimilar to the recipe blogs, right? Where they do the whole preamble because they don’t just want, you know, people to, they want people to stay on the site. And they’re also maybe trying to stop the, the, the, the Google snippets. Um, Uh, you know, so you have to read the whole life story before you can learn how to make the apple pie. Like, I don’t fucking care, just gimme the recipe. Um, but, but, uh, you know, there’s a, it changed, like there became this very specific like key word laden, like writing style where, you know, you, you see the full name of the product mentioned like six times is the reason I really like using, you know, country fresh butter is because it does this. Why Country Fresh Butter. I’m like, oh my God, I, I get it. You, you wanna rank highly [00:40:41] Jeffrey: Country fresh butter. Yeah. That’s, that’s how I think, that’s how I remember everything is just the stuffing of keywords. And so it sort of poisoned my, my sense of what SEO is because, I mean, SEO itself is fantastic, right? The idea is, I mean, the, the idea behind it is fantastic. How can we make sure the content that wouldn’t otherwise be in [00:41:00] front of you gets in front of you? It’s kind of how I thought of it. Um, and I, and I bring this up as a topic because a friend of. Danny Glamor, uh, guest a couple of episodes ago, not just friend of the show, former guest. Um, he has a music blog and he was, he was asking me about SEO and, you know, should I go over to Squarespace or, or WordPress and, and I didn’t know what to say cuz I wasn’t sure what was true anymore about seo. But it’s certainly true that it still matters. Is that right? [00:41:29] Christina: no, it definitely still matters. And, and I, I think that like, um, where you’d wanna go would sort of depend. I, I, I, I would focus primarily on like what is the most comfortable thing for him. He has more options, I think, to do better nestio with WordPress, although a lot of those plugins cost money and wanna do web sells. So it would depend on how much you would wanna invest in things. And, and I don’t know like how useful that would be. Squarespace, I think does a, a decent job. Subs does not do a great job, although they’ve gotten better. But that’s been actually [00:42:00] something that a number of people who use them, I’ve talked to, like, I think they’ve improved. Actually. Actually, I, I wanna, I wanna, uh, give that a caveat. A year ago, they did not do well. I think they’ve had to invest a lot in getting better. Probably because a lot of their writers and people were like, Hey, I’m not ranking and my blog used to, you know, rank fairly well. Um, because there, cuz there are things that, you know, you can do with your platform to, to make it rank better and worse. WordPress, the way it’s designed, you know, I think, um, because it’s so ubiquitous, it’s what, like, like 45% of the web or something, you know, has some tools that are good and then there are plugins. Like, I know there’s like, uh, Yos SEO and some other, you know, uh, tools that, that, that are free. But again, have like, you know, they, they wanna, they want you to pay. Um, I don’t know how necessary that is, but those will, will do a decent enough job of helping with that. At least walking you through it. It matters. But I, I don’t know like how much the platform he chooses specifically. Like if that’s gonna be like, uh, a [00:43:00] defining factor one way or another, like I, to me it would be a much bigger deal. Like what’s the writing platform you find more comfortable writing in to me would be a much bigger choice. [00:43:08] Jeffrey: But it seems like music is sort of a, is a good one for SEO because you’re just, you’re going to say a band’s name, you’re going to say one or two of their album’s names, and just that alone. And it’s gonna be in the headline [00:43:19] Christina: the headline. And, and if you have other things with your tags, you know, if you review or preview or this and that, like, it, it can rank pretty well. There are also things you can do in terms of like, if you can get it in like, and, and the, the news results and things like that don’t matter as much anymore because Google has changed so much of how they show things. But, um, uh, like the biggest difference, I think the biggest impact on SEO over the last decade compared to the last decade is just if you look at what the Google search results page is now versus 10 years ago, it’s incredibly different. Like if I, if I search, um, uh, give, gimme a band name, [00:43:52] Jeffrey: Oh God. Okay. Dill four. [00:43:55] Christina: Okay. So when I, now, when I search Diligent four, the first like [00:44:00] big part of the page is I see photos of the band, I see the Wikipedia page, I see their Facebook. Then I actually see a, a, an Angel fire website. Then below that I see, I, I see videos, I see a whole video block. Then I see a block of people also ask, then I see the Spotify, then I see the band camp, and, and then I’m starting to get into related searches and stuff. And so, and then on the sidebar I see songs and I see some other things. So there are, and, and because it’s a band, like they have an albums tab and, and songs and events and members and videos. So like, the biggest change I think for, for, for content creators isn’t so much even like, okay, like how, how do I stuff the keywords in rank? It’s that the, the whole way that Google is laid out. is very, very different than it was a decade ago. And so you’re now competing with a lot of stuff that Google does, which is very different than, um, you know, otherwise. But if I go to news, for instance, and this is what’s interesting, and I don’t know how [00:45:00] many people use this tag, then I see louder than war. I see the Aquarium on a sea, Brooklyn Vegan, which are all no echo. These are all music blogs, right? And, and these are all things, you know, that, that come up, you know, um, in, in, in various, I see the Mansfield News Journal. You know, I see various. [00:45:17] Jeffrey: These are all, a lot of these are the things that would have come up in a Google result, uh, [00:45:21] Christina: right, but now, now, now you’ve gotta kind of go to that tab. So those things still matter if you’re wanting to, you know, people are wanting to look for the latest news and are trained to do that. But the, the, the basic things like, you know, the official, like the main Google page at this point to get to your results, like the entire first page, like the entire first block is, you know, I see their, the stuff like, you know, goes the videos. People also ask for, they’ve got the sidebar, like you’re having to scroll quite a bit, um, before you even get to that point. So that’s, that’s, I think that that will be a much bigger challenge than I think, like what keywords you use or what platform you’re on. [00:45:58] Jeffrey: Well, and the other thing that’s up there now [00:46:00] is that little box. It’s after, so you have the Dillinger four Wikipedia page, you have their Angel fire site, [00:46:05] Christina: amazing. [00:46:06] Jeffrey: and then, and then you have people also search for, and it tells you Dillinger four merch, Dillinger four, new album. In the past, that was kind of what it was like to do keyword research, right? You’d just be like, what do people search for when they search Dillinger for, and now it’s like right in front of you, [00:46:21] Christina: Like where, where is they from? You know, what genre are they and whatnot. Right. It is interesting though, and, and, and I think this, this is interesting and, and I, I assume as the band who would have to do this, but like, it’s interesting to me that, you know, you have to basically scroll down and, and at this point too, now Google doesn’t even have like pages standard. It’s just kind of an infinite scroll. [00:46:39] Jeffrey: Interesting man. I, you know what’s funny is even though I see Google every day and have since 10 years ago, it didn’t occur to me from the, from a content creator’s perspective, how [00:46:50] Christina: Yeah. And well, it, because it’s happened subtly and then it’s like everything, like it happened suddenly then all at once, like slowly and then all at once. That, that, that’s the, the phrase. And, [00:47:00] and that’s what’s kind of happened, at least from my experiences with Google, is that I’ve noticed these changes over the years and they’ve been kind of small things. And then when I really started to kind of take stuff in, I go, oh, wow, yeah, this is a completely different search experience than what I used to have. And, and, um, and I think a worst one, to be honest, like at. [00:47:21] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. , oh, it’s messy [00:47:22] Christina: at this point, I, I appended Reddit to most of my searches because, because honestly, I can usually get better, more updated information on stuff and, and ironically, like Reddit’s search is not super great. Um, and, and so it’s, uh, but yeah, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. The Google search is still like the thing that powers them as a company and that it is degradated, in my opinion, so much over the last decade, but especially for the last like five or six years. Um, even though, and you want, I, I always wonder about like the product [00:48:00] teams and the engineering team. Well, the product teams, engineering teams aren’t concerned with this, but the, the product teams, like if their focus has been solely like on money and on other things, uh, and not, they’re clearly not focused on the experience because if they were then, then I don’t think that they would, uh, have things, uh, as cluttered and and whatnot. But it is interesting as like you, you can see them trying to kind of. Monopolize the experience, whereas like Google used to not be that way, where now it’s almost like, you know, they really want like to monopolize the experience as much as possible. So unless you’re, you’re looking for something very specific, you know, you’re not going to be getting maybe more organic results. [00:48:43] Watching the slow death of what Twitter was [00:48:43] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, for sure, man. Okay. Uh, before we do gratitude, I have a Twitter question for you, um, as you are, uh, uh, a, um, dedicated Twitter user over time. You said that you had a little bit of a break, um, when you were traveling, [00:49:00] uh, but I’m curious how, for you, how post Elon Twitter is as an experience for you. Have you, have you noticed people disappearing or is it basically how it felt or what. [00:49:11] Christina: Uh, it, it, it’s worse. Um, like I haven’t had like the, you know, the more negative kind of experiences went up, but I’ve noticed a lot of my friends and people who, you don’t think about it a lot, but you’re like, oh, I haven’t seen so-and-so, and you’re like, oh, they’re on Masson now. It’s like, okay, all right, well, you know, I, I gotta go into that. And, and Macon is just, I just don’t like it. Um, I, I like what it stands for. I just, I just don’t like the interface and, and I, I find it hard to kind of, you know, deal with all the various things, but you miss out on stuff. Um, I’ve also noticed like, one of the big changes because they fired, like all the staff, like a lot of the curation and things like that, that used to happen is, uh, not really there, um, anymore. Um, I definitely, the ads are worse. Um, it’s, uh, it, and, and, and everybody’s [00:50:00] meaner. Everybody’s mad, like whether they like Ilan or not. Like, it just seems like it went from a place where, , everybody was sort of pissed off, but, but kind of hiding it now, it’s like almost feels actively antagonistic at times, which is really a shame. [00:50:16] Jeffrey: Yeah. It sucks. [00:50:17] Christina: I think what, what was my very favorite social network really just devolve in in a lot of ways. And, and, but I, I don’t, I haven’t found another home. I mean, I need to, I need to invest more time in massed on, I get that. It’s just, it’s hard for me to kind of live both places and, and you know, figuring out what instances you wanna be on. Things you see. Cuz one of my favorite things is being able to see stuff organically, which you don’t see the same way with, um, Macedon because of, because of his decentralized nature, which I get. I get it, but it just not, um, I, like sometimes I think we needed a centralized thing, but like, right. [00:50:55] Jeffrey: I was, I. Go ahead. Well, I, I was on [00:51:00] Twitter this morning and this, uh, a nurse had posted and just said, all right, let’s create a thread about all the, all the experiences we’ve had to have in hallways in our hospitals in the last year. And it was this long thread of nurses, um, chiming in, and it was incredibly illuminating. It was an instant access into a community that is very hard to have access to, especially in ways that are sort of open and comfortable and talking about their experiences. And I was like, God damn it, that’s what Twitter is, . And I don’t know how easy it will be for that to be possible on [00:51:40] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn’t be. And that, and that, that I think is, is to me is the problem. And look, that’s sort of by design and that’s okay. But that’s also, I think, uh, to the people who are really big fans of Macedon, I think you have to concede that that is, An ultimate, you know, like that is a trade off. Like, it, it, it is a trade off. Um, and, and there’s no way [00:52:00] to get around that. But there are a lot of people who I think don’t wanna acknowledge that there’s any, a trade off with master on at all. And it’s like, no, but there is because you have to choose your instances and you, you have a difference of who can see what, and that’s great you have that privacy, but it also means [00:52:12] Jeffrey: It’s wonderful in its own [00:52:13] Christina: it, but it’s a very different experience and, and for people who use things, you know, like, like, like way a lot of people, a lot of communities have used Twitter. I I, there there isn’t a replacement and that’s a shame. Um, but yeah, I, I mean I’m still on Twitter, but I’m just, it, it’s a, a worse experience and uh, yeah. [00:52:34] Jeffrey: yeah. Yeah. I’m late. I’m late to the game saying I’m sad to see it go, but um, it does seem like it’s going. [00:52:42] Christina: Yeah. Same. [00:52:45] Jeffrey: Uh, I’ll be honest, there was a part of me, I’m not, I’m a Twitter reader quite a bit, used to tweet a lot, do not in a long time, but I was kind of like, I think everybody’s gonna come back , because like that’s, that always [00:52:56] Christina: it does, [00:52:57] Jeffrey: you know, nothing as big as [00:52:58] Christina: right? Well, I mean, people usually [00:53:00] do, but it’s, I don’t know. The only thing that bothers me is that there’s been a tonal shift. Like there’s been just a, a, a tonal shift in, in, in the rigor. And so people will, I don’t think that masson takes off again, this was always my fear was not that, like my, my biggest fear is kind of coming true, which is like, you don’t wanna see it just kind of slowly like devolve into something shittier because I think that rather than a lot of people migrating to something else, You would have people just opt out or, or go to more siloed places, go to Discords, go to, go to Reddits, go to, you know, signal groups. Um, rather than going to one platform, people are just gonna, you know, uh, dissipate. And, and that is, is a problem. Do I think a lot of people will come back? Yeah, I do, but I also think there are a lot of people who were casual users. And the casual users I don’t think are coming back. Like, at one point Ilan had said that he’d wanted to bring the celebrities back. And I was like, that shit has sailed years ago. Like, like the Trump era, they were, they were not gonna be there. Like when the Leslie Jones stuff happened, like they were kind of gone, [00:54:00] like, you know what I mean? Like, because it was, it was proving when, when things were toxic in that era. If, if I were. You know, a a if I were managing a celebrity’s career, I don’t know if I would be in right now. I certainly would not be telling them. They need to have a Twitter account. Say you need a TikTok, you need an Instagram. Um, you, you might need a YouTube channel. Uh, I, I don’t know if you need a Twitter, and if you do, it could probably be run by someone else. Right. Whereas part of the power of Twitter and, and what sustained it for a really long time was that these important, these culturally significant people, or not cult and if not culturally significant, then like people that were, were, were deemed important. You know, like, like, uh, journalists, celebrities, newsmakers, whatnot, were on it and were actually engaging as themselves. That was always the power of it. Right. That was always the [00:54:48] Jeffrey: That was amazing. Yeah. [00:54:49] Christina: that’s the thing that like Facebook never really had that, right. When they did pages, it always felt corporatized, which Twitter was always like, It is the real person. Right. But a lot of the celebrities like left [00:55:00] Twitter and, and, and you know, I Instagram really did step in for a long time and kind of took on the mantle, but now it’s even more so, and Instagram, you don’t have to have that one-on-one thing. Like you can reply to comments and you can DM people, but it’s not the same thing. You can’t repost, I mean, they’ve talked about this thing, it’s a different experience. It is much more of a one to many thing. Whereas like Twitter I think was really unique in that you could truly kind of have a back and forth with people and you would see people get addicted to it in a different way. Right? Like you would see [00:55:28] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:55:29] Christina: really actively use Twitter in a way that you don’t actively use some of the other things. And I, I just, uh, it’s a shame to see. I mean there, it, it’s been on the decline for a while, but if, if the goal was to bring the, the famous people back, that certainly I don’t think is gonna happen. And, and if anything, I think the other casual users are, are probably gone too. And that’s, that’s to me probably the, the biggest challenge. [00:55:54] Grapptitude [00:55:54] Jeffrey: yeah, it’s a drag. All right. Well, it’s gratitude [00:55:59] Christina: is a gratitude [00:56:00] time. [00:56:02] Jeffrey: And our gratitudes, I believe, are on a theme, uh, on a theme of pacer, [00:56:07] Christina: Yes. [00:56:07] Jeffrey: the Federal Court’s document access system, uh, which is clunky as shit. It’s like built with sticks and stones and, uh, and [00:56:21] Christina: CGI. [00:56:22] Jeffrey: documents out of [00:56:23] Christina: scripts, Pearl Scripts. I’m not even joking. [00:56:25] Jeffrey: Yeah. Oh yeah. Ah, good stuff. You know, it’s a museum. They’re trying to honor our roots, the roots of the web, you know, and in that case, that’s just, that’s wonderful. Um, I interface with Pacer as a journalist and as a researcher. Um, usually going in to find a specific case back in the day, I might, uh, filter so that I could just, you know, if I was, if that was my beat on the courts or something, I would just kind of watch what came in. Um, in fact, there were, there were PACER computers at the, um, at the government center downtown, uh, [00:57:00] when I never worked for a place that could pay for Pacer. So I would go down there and you could [00:57:04] Christina: Oh, nice. Okay. Because, because I, I always like had to expense my stuff and you know, like you get like cuz because, uh, for, for listeners who don’t know, everybody gets, I think you get like $25 a quarter or something. Um, uh, we, because each search costs money and each page is 10 cents a page and. [00:57:21] Jeffrey: yep. Each [00:57:22] Christina: and, and, and there there is a document limit, I think on like how much they can charge you, but there’s not like a limit on, on, you know, like, uh, per case or anything. So you could spend, and I have spent, I’m sure you have like hundreds of dollars on, on individual cases and researchers like, it, it, it’s very expensive. Um, and, and everybody has to pay this. Like a lot of this is, there’s been a whole movement to um, try to like, make pacer free. It was even part of the, the, um, ombudsman bill or whatever. Obviously it did not go through and we knew it would not, um, because the filing fees, because cuz what STEM about it to me is it’s like, um, and actually I just logged into it for the first time. The, the website’s been [00:58:00] updated recently. It looks good. Um, [00:58:03] Jeffrey: Mm. Yeah. They have [00:58:04] Christina: but, but the, some of the individual courts are still awful. Most of them. Some, a lot of them, but some of them really bad. And not everything is on pacer. Like you have the federal courts, but then you have to go through. Similar, but unrelated systems. Like, uh, if I wanted to go to like the, the Seattle, like, uh, uh, court systems like, it, it, the whole thing is a nightmare, but Yeah. But, um, but it costs money and, you know, for, um, it, it’s also expensive for, um, lawyers. So for people who are doing, um, pro bono work or who are, um, you know, public defenders, like there’s a very real cost to getting all the documents, uh, related to a case, um, you know, for their clients. Sorry, go on [00:58:45] Jeffrey: Right. No, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s, it’s a huge pain in the ass. And I, I have been using a service for a while, which is my gratitude called Pacer Pro, which is not related to Pacer, um, that at [00:59:00] least makes the navigation of pacer pain. Um, you’re still paying, uh, as you download things. In fact, they make it easier to spend a lot of money because they, they have a great, they have a great bulk download feature. You know, if you just like, gimme all this stuff, which is how I like to do it. Um, and they have a kind of watch your cases feature that’s really nice. I get an email every time there’s an update in certain cases I care about. Um, you know, there’s a fee to use it above and beyond Pacer itself, but it’s, um, but it’s, I mean, when I first saw Pacer Pro, I was like, oh my God, thank you Jesus. And, uh, and I love it. And so if anybody out there does, um, any kind of research using cases, uh, I, I highly recommend you go through Pacer Pro. It’s really made for, um, [00:59:48] Christina: I was gonna say, I’m [00:59:49] Jeffrey: can, you can submit [00:59:50] Christina: Yeah, no, exactly. No, I was looking at it and, and it’s smart, right? And they, and, and they, they charge, uh, it looks like $30 per seat, um, a month if you’re one to four A and it’s lower a as you go [01:00:00] up. And so I can imagine, like if I were like, cuz you’re already, cuz you have to imagine if you’re even a mid-size law firm, your pacer fees are already exorbitant in a month. Your time is worth whatever, you know, the, the, the fees would be, um, for giving you a better interface because the, they, they’ve modernized it a little bit. Um, it’s better than it used to be, but it’s still really hard to find things. And then the, the problem is, as you said, you can do the bulk download, which is good, but the problem is, Uh, least this is what I’ve run into. Um, and, and I don’t have as much experience as you do, but I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time with Pacer over the years, and I’ve spent a lot of money on things by doing bad searches or, or, or by searching the wrong frame and whatnot, because again, it costs money to do and, and, and, and you don’t think about it like in a kind of our Google area. You’re not thinking, oh, 10 cents at a time. It’s like, no, okay. And now I’ve opened up this file and I realized that I’ve downloaded this document, and it turns out that it was just like, you know, some sort of something inconsequential to the case. Okay. Well, that, that just, you know, was, was a few dollars. And, um, [01:01:00] so having ways around that I think is probably really, really good. Um, and, um, I, I, I, I love this. Um, I’m, it, it’s in it, it’s interesting to me that there haven’t been more companies who’ve done this, but I, I think this is really smarter than I’m assuming. They’ve just probably, you know, they basically were like, Pacer’s broken. We’re just going to fix it. [01:01:21] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they can even, you can actually have them send you a P D F, like if a, if a document has just been filed, the second [01:01:30] Christina: that I love, because I used to, I used to use, I used to use a tool called Pacer Watcher, or I think that’s what it was called. And, and it, and it stopped working at, at a certain point, but I used to do that where I used to monitor certain cases because in journalism it’s very important to oftentimes get access to those things as soon as they go up, especially if you’re competing with a lot of other people on a story, but also can just be useful just to have in general. And, and Pacer does not have a way, I think if you’re a lawyer, you, uh, if you’re a party to the case, you would get notified, but otherwise, like [01:02:00] you don’t. And so, um, you, they have to be all these third party, like, you know, alert systems that, that, that work. Um, so that’s awesome that Pacer Pro does that because that’s a, that right there would be worth the money if you’re somebody who’s following a lot of cases, especially an active case. Right? Like that, that’s definitely one of those things. Um, [01:02:20] Jeffrey: I also, I also see now that, uh, if nonprofits and academics can maybe get [01:02:25] Christina: Yeah, I just saw that I was, I was looking at that. I was like, Ooh, you should, you should reach out to them about that. Um, but so, uh, my, my pick, uh, so, so Pacer Pro is your pick. My pick. Speaking of Pacer, there is, um, a, uh, Chrome extension called Recap, which is, um, pacer spelled backwards. And, um, it is from the, um, what is it called? It’s, it’s from the, uh, freedom, uh, it, it’s from the Free Law project, or, um, I, I believe, um, [01:03:00] let me, who, who is it from? Let me the actual. [01:03:03] Jeffrey: Ouch. [01:03:04] Christina: Okay, so this is, this is from the Free Law Project, which is a 5 0 1 , um, nonprofit. And, um, it’s a service basically known as court listener. So if you go to court listener.com/recap, uh, you can go there. There’s also a, a, a Chrome extension, um, which is really, really good. And what this does is it lets you search millions of, of, um, uh, different cases by name and, and you can find, it’ll basically give you the whole. Of a case. And then what it’ll do is that it has this thing called their recap archive where if somebody has, uh, downloaded it before and has uploaded it to their service, then you can go ahead and access the document. So for a lot of bigger cases, you can have access to to everything. And so what’s nice about the, uh, the extension is that it automates the process that when you download a file from Pacer, it will automatically upload it to the, the recap archive. And so you’re kind of helping [01:04:00] everyone. So it’s one of those things where, you know, like, in my opinion, all this stuff should be free, uh, or at least be much more subsidized than it is like. I, I real, I’m not, I’m not saying that there’s not a cost to, to some of this stuff. And so if you wanna charge a quarterly one off fee of $25, like I would be fine with that. But I think that, that, the 10 cents a page stuff, I mean it’s, it’s absolutely, um, it, it’s absolutely unreal. Like how much money they’re, they’re getting out of, out of this stuff and, and it’s, uh, especially for how bad the, the software is. So, um, what’s, what’s great about the, the, um, extension is that it basically will, um, help you, um, continue to help other people get access to stuff and, um, you know, upload past things. Cuz, cuz, cuz I make a point, anytime I’m, I’m looking stuff up is cuz a lot of, at this point, most the reason I’m, um, looking at things is, uh, for like just pure. Nosiness or, or interest or like personal research. It’s not like I’m, I’m doing things for journalism, but even when I was [01:05:00] in journalism, you know, it was like, okay, if I’m going through this, then I want somebody else to be able to do this too. Uh, the, the, uh, the extension is also available, um, for Firefox and, um, so I, I think that, uh, and, and it’s on GitHub, which is great. Um, so I, I think that this is really, really good just to be able to kind of give back and use court listener, um, to, uh, get access. Obviously not every case it’s gonna be there, but more high profile cases usually are. And so, you know, search there first, like before you pay for pacer, uh, to download something like search court listener to see if they’ve got it, because in many cases they do. [01:05:40] Jeffrey: And their archive has an API for me to plug into chat. G p. [01:05:43] Christina: Oh shit, that’s about us. [01:05:48] Jeffrey: That’s [01:05:48] Christina: Yeah, I knew they had an api, but Yeah, that, I hadn’t even thought about that. That’s really awesome. Yeah, they have an api, which, which could be good for a lot of reasons. Right. So, um, anyway, so, so, uh, uh, also support the, the free [01:06:00] law project. They’re, they’re really good. [01:06:03] Jeffrey: Yes. That’s awesome. Awesome. That’s our gratitude. You know, we got carried away talking about resolutions and I just wanna mention Brett won’t be with us this week, [01:06:14] Christina: That’s right. We didn’t even, we didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t even like, like, like mention that. Yeah. This is just a, a, a, Christina and Jeff show. Cool. [01:06:22] Jeffrey: morning drive time. Um, alright. Good to see [01:06:26] Christina: Good seeing you [01:06:27] Jeffrey: uh, when the time is appropriate. Get [01:06:30] Christina: Yes. Get some sleep. [01:06:33] Jeffrey: Thank you. [01:06:34] Outro: The.

It’s a new year! The gang talks chatGPT and what happens when we use AI to police AI. And Jeff presents a mystery involving his old Stack Overflow questions and a YouTuber who is clearly in the pocket of Big Mango Juice. 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 Staying In Podcast Most weeks we do a podcast swap where we tell you about a podcast and they tell their listeners about ours. For this episode, we’re swapping with the four lads at the Staying In Podcast. Listen to these four lifelong friends talk video games, board games, movies, TV, and comics. If this sounds like your thing, we thoroughly recommend you give them a listen, and you can do so for free by subscribing to The Staying In Podcast wherever you’re listening to this, or heading to StayingInPodcast.com. Show Links Tyler built OpenAI into TextBuddy ChatGPT browser extension (https://github.com/wong2/chat-gpt-google-extension) that shows results next to google searches Humans Find AI-Generated Faces More Trustworthy Than the Real Thing Imagine a YouTube shadow world where Jeff’s very old Stack Exchange questions become content for a Christian man who thinks you should drink more juice Watch the actor from The Flash do the most awesome duet on Glee, probably ever Grapptitude Jeff: Wander for Oculus Christina: Draw Things (using Stable Diffusion) Brett: Sendy 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 PHP (Pretty Hot Party) [00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Christina: You are listening to Overtired. It’s 2023 and we are still here. We are still Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, joined as always by my friends, Jeff Severns Guntzel and Brett Terpstra. Boys. How are you? Happy New Year! [00:00:17] Jeffrey: Hello. [00:00:19] Brett: Happy Year. We are covered under, it’s been, there’s been freezing rain all day. There’s ice and slush everywhere it is. I tried to walk my dog and it was a slip and slide. It was awful. [00:00:30] Christina: Oh no. [00:00:31] Jeffrey: All of America is always having a storm [00:00:34] Brett: It’s true, it’s true. [00:00:36] Jeffrey: That’s crazy. Mental Health Corner [00:00:37] Brett: So, uh, how do you guys feel about, uh, a quick mental health corner? [00:00:42] Christina: I think that sounds good. [00:00:44] Brett: I can, uh, I can kick it off. I have, I have weird news [00:00:47] Christina: Okay. Tell. [00:00:49] Brett: after months of being stable. Um, or depressed. Still have never figured out exactly what that means for me, but I had one night of like crazy, couldn’t sleep, had to code, made a bunch of shit, wrote blog posts, got it all done. [00:01:08] Then a day where I immediately fell into like a depression, and then I’ve been sleeping fine ever since. It was like a one and one. One day of manic mania, one day of depression, and then it was over. It was the shortest cycle I’ve ever had as a bipolar person. [00:01:27] Jeffrey: Wow. [00:01:28] Brett: I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know why. [00:01:30] Um, I have learned, like, as soon as I realize I’m manic, like I don’t take, uh, stimulants, I don’t drink coffee. I, I go for walks, take showers, like do things to kind of combat man. Uh, and I did all of that, but it’s never worked that quickly. , it was weird. Like I’m usually, if I’m, if I sense I’m manic, it’s gonna be three days minimum of, of not sleeping and, and extreme productivity and, uh, weird, weird, uh, behaviors in general. [00:02:09] But this just, it. It just happened like in a blank of an eye. I was manic and then I was depressed and holy shit when I got depressed, like I lost all self-confidence. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced that. I’m not you, you may have, but like this idea that everything I say is wrong, um, this like, it makes you scared to tweet because you are convinced that who would ever want to hear what I have to. [00:02:40] Nobody cares. And like the fact that I, you know, thousands of Twitter followers didn’t matter in my head. Like everyone hated me and I was just a fuck up. And I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t smart, I wasn’t talented. And it, it got ugly for about 24 hours and that’s like the worst it’s ever been. And then it was over, and now I’m back to just being, uh, [00:03:08] Jeffrey: So it was like brief but super potent. [00:03:10] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. [00:03:13] Christina: Yeah. So, so, so you’ve had like the, the, the mania. And then do you usually ever have like the self-doubt thing, follow that or is that a, [00:03:19] Brett: Oh, always. Yeah. Yeah. Mania. Mania is always followed by depression for me. Uh, but usually I’ll be manic for three to five days, and then I’ll have like, Three days where I just get to kind of recover and sleep a little bit. And then the depression will set in for a couple weeks and, you know, couple four weeks and, and this just, it was just over a 48 hour period, rapid cycling. [00:03:48] Christina: How does L deal with that? Like when that happens? [00:03:50] Brett: This happens so fast that Elle didn’t really have time to react to it. Normally I’ll let her know that I’m manic or she’ll pick up on the signs that I’m manic and she will encourage me to take care of myself in the various ways we’ve determined, um, help. Control my mania and she will give me the leeway I need. [00:04:11] Uh, she’ll understand that maybe I’m not gonna be able to walk the dog today because I am, uh, I haven’t slept in two days and all I can, all I can do like reasonably is just sit in my office and code. And we have kind of, we’ve developed a language around that and she understands depression and she, she gives me, Accommodations for that. [00:04:35] But this happened so fast. Like by the time I realized I was manic, it was over, and she , she didn’t, she didn’t have to do anything. Um, I didn’t realize that I would still immediately go into depression. So I think I, I think my attitude towards life may have shocked her a little bit that evening because she didn’t have three days of mania to prepare for it. [00:04:58] Um, all of a sudden I was just like a fucking. But we’re both neurodivergent and, and she is. She is a great partner in that kind of thing. [00:05:08] Christina: That’s. [00:05:09] Jeffrey: Christine, you been traveling around. [00:05:11] Christina: It was really nice. It was really, really nice to spend the holidays with my parents. Um, and, uh, and, and that does a lot for, for my mental health, even when there’s other stuff going on. It’s so, it’s so weird because, um, I would never move back to Atlanta. I just wouldn’t. But, um, I, I really am glad that I’m, I’ve been able to spend so much time with, with my parents, um, over the last, um, you know, Almost two years. [00:05:35] So I don’t know. I think that, uh, I, I’ve mentioned this a number of times on the pod before and another mental health updates, but I think that the only positive in any way thing that I’ve, I’ve taken from the pandemic has been not taking for granted anymore. The fact that I thought I could always get on a plane and go see people. [00:05:54] So now when I’m with people, whether it’s it’s my family or my friends or other things, I try to. Really utilize and appreciate that time in a way that I, I, I honestly just didn’t before. [00:06:05] Jeffrey: Yeah, utilizing the time being present, right? Like someone said to me once, uh, I want to be here before I go. It was, you know, [00:06:13] and that was, I think that’s a great, extremely succinct statement about presence, [00:06:19] Christina: No, I, I think, I think you’re right. It’s weird though cuz like I don’t tweet a lot. Like people are like, oh, are you okay? You haven’t been tweeting? And I’m like, you’re right. I haven’t been, this is this weird thing where you get out of your own head and, and just. You know that I wanna be here sort of thing. [00:06:32] You know, I’ve been very present for, um, other people that I’ve been around, which is, um, important and, and good. Um, my husband is still, um, in, uh, Florida. He came, uh, we went, we saw his mom who’s not doing well, um, last week. And then, um, he came to Atlanta for a few days and then drove back to Jacksonville yesterday. [00:06:53] Uh, and he’s gonna be there until Sunday. So, um, I will be by myself this week, um, which, uh, um, after being around so many different people for the last two weeks, um, I’m not necessarily upset about, but, uh, but it’ll be weird. So, final mental health thing, my mom and I are finally going to Las Vegas to see Adele, uh, uh, January 21st. [00:07:18] And, uh, so we were, you know, booking our flights in our hotel and all that stuff. And, um, I’m, I’m excited about that cuz that’s, that’s something she’s never been to Vegas before and a lot of my friends are in Vegas this week. For c e s I would have historically been in Vegas, you [00:07:31] Brett: this week’s ces. [00:07:33] Christina: week is c e [00:07:33] Brett: I didn’t even realize it. [00:07:35] Christina: Totally because it’s, you know, it’s faded because of the pandemic and stuff. And I think also just in general, um, companies have largely kind of abandon. [00:07:44] Brett: And I don’t, I don’t work for anyone that has to be there to block about it anymore, so [00:07:49] Christina: Right, exactly. [00:07:50] Brett: my radar. [00:07:51] Christina: was gonna say mine too, but I still keep up with this stuff. But a lot of these things have just sort of like changed, I think, in like how much we care about them over the years. But, uh, but it’s gonna be really nice slash weird to be in Vegas, not for c e s, not for n a b, not for some work thing, but just to like take a person who’s never been to Vegas before, to Vegas. [00:08:10] Brett: To actually be there on leisure time. It’ll be different. [00:08:13] Christina: I don’t know if I’ve ever actually, I mean, I think I have once been to Vegas, like for leisure, [00:08:18] Brett: when, when I was 16 I went to Vegas. Uh, for fun. Every other time I’ve ever been to Vegas has been for work in some capacity or others. Same with Miami. I haven’t been to Miami for fun since I was like maybe. [00:08:34] Jeffrey: Um, well, I actually can close a, a saga. I hope it’s the close of a saga, uh, that’s played out over, um, the last few. Uh, episodes, um, when I was told by my insurance company that I could no longer have Vivance, and if I wanted to have it literally in their language, I would’ve to fail at, uh, a number of other options. [00:08:56] Brett: Such as like, I’m curious. [00:08:58] Jeffrey: Adderall, Focalin, uh, Dexedrine. Is it Dexedrine or is [00:09:01] Brett: That’s so weird. Like most insurance companies would prefer you take buy bands. That is weird. [00:09:07] Jeffrey: Vivance for me. I’ve figured out how to roll with it. You know, I tried somebody’s Adderall and I was like, this is not what I want. That was like some, your buddy’s uncle picked you up, you got to drive really fast in his car, and then he couldn’t remember where he lived and just dropped you on the side of the highway. That’s Adderall for me, Anyway, um, I, so what happened was I had to appeal that. Um, but in, in the course of waiting for the appeal to come back, we ended up switching health insurance anyhow. And so I got to get my Vivance yesterday for $14 a pill, uh, and [00:09:47] Brett: What [00:09:48] Christina: 14 times thir. So, so what is that? That’s, uh, it, it’s four 20, which is actually a great number. [00:09:53] Jeffrey: ooh, [00:09:54] Christina: I have a friend who used to text me every single day at four 20, and that was the best. And, uh, yeah. [00:10:01] Jeffrey: 14 year old and I have this bit where, you know, cuz sometimes you’ll just hear four 20 or C four 20. But anytime we hear it, whether we’re in an airport or the radio zone, we just quietly fist bump [00:10:13] Christina: I love it. [00:10:15] Jeffrey: That’s it. Um, so anyway, you know, I think, I think I’m back to having my like, regular cocktail of meds, which is, which is. [00:10:26] Christina: So going forward, even if you have to pay 3 75 a month, like will that eventually go down? Like my insurance resets every year, so I’m about to start paying my like deductible even though [00:10:35] Jeffrey: It’s all about the deductible. Yeah. [00:10:38] Christina: Got it. Okay. Okay, so, so that’s good at least. [00:10:41] Jeffrey: yes. [00:10:41] Brett: I’ll have like, I’ll have like two months where they’ll charge me a thousand dollars. [00:10:45] Christina: Mm-hmm. [00:10:46] Brett: For like some of the, some of the bipolar meds I take. Um, and then after that, everything will be free for the rest of the year. [00:10:54] Christina: Yep. Sponsor: Rockey Money [00:10:55] Jeffrey: So we’ve had Rocket money as a sponsor for a little bit. Now, Brett has really revealed quite a bit about himself as he talks about the various services, uh, streaming mostly that he gets caught into, and then ultimately probably spends too much on. I think you had a robot Hallmark channel [00:11:14] Brett: Robot [00:11:15] Jeffrey: also something about robot dominatrixes. [00:11:19] Oh, matrixes. Or Matrixes, [00:11:20] Brett: Matric sees its see, [00:11:23] Christina: Matrices [00:11:24] Jeffrey: which turned out to be [00:11:25] Christina: a real thing. [00:11:25] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah. He’s got, he has a way. Of making things manifest. Um, so I was like, I actually was like, oh, okay. I kind of like what Brett keeps saying about this thing through all the like , cat dominat and whatever else. Like, I’m gonna try rocket Money, cuz I’ve heard of it forever. It used to be called True Bill. [00:11:44] And, uh, so it’s a personal finance app, fines and cancels your unwanted subscriptions and kind of like can monitor your spending and helps to lower your bills. All that stuff, you get it. It’s that kind of service. I already have something that does some of that for me. I use yab. You need a budget. I’ve used it forever. [00:11:59] Um, I love it. Um, but it doesn’t give me feedback. On how I’m spending. It just kind of helps me to be smart about how I’m spending. And so I just like threw in my credit cards in my bank account. It’s a secure, you know, secure connection. And they just started telling me rocket money, rocket money just started telling me what was what. [00:12:19] And initially I had to do a lot of like data cleaning. Like there, there’s dirty data, right? Like they try to guess what is restaurants and what is. But they got that wrong a lot. But that’s not their fault that that happens. So I was able to kind of like clean all that up and once I did, it just like showed me so much that I hadn’t really realized about how I spent money over the last year. [00:12:43] Cause I’m just kind of like doing the old New Years. You know, but then I have this super, super bad habit of trying everything. Like if you throw a trial at me, it’s like, here, this is the free trial for service that hits you in the head with a hammer three times a day. I’d be like, well, that’s cool, as long as I don’t forget to cancel it before they charge me. [00:13:04] Um, and, and so like, I’m terrible at that. And so that was the thing I most wanted to see. And it was so cool. Like I could see, you could look at it like a calendar and it shows you what’s coming up next and it it shows you which things are recurring and all that stuff. Or I could just look at it as a list. [00:13:20] Um, and I could like go in and see how long I’ve been paying for something that I didn’t mean to be paying for ancestry.com. You know what I did with that? I did the family tree of Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed. George Floyd because I wanted to see how far back law and order and violence went. And let me tell you, it goes way the fuck back. [00:13:39] And there is not a publication in the world that would want me to write about that, but it was fascinating. And so I paid $50 a month for months on end , and [00:13:49] now that’s done. Thank you. Rocket Money . So stop throwing your money away. Like. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and maybe you do want them, but you don’t need ’em. [00:13:59] So cancel the unneeded subscriptions as well and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocket money.com/ Overtired. That’s rocket money.com/ Overtired. And just because you’re supposed to say it three times, rocket money.com/ Overtired. Um, should we also do our podcast swap? Should we just do a [00:14:20] Brett: Let’s make it a block. Let’s make it a. Podcast Swap: Staying In [00:14:23] Jeffrey: Okay, so most weeks we do a podcast swap where we tell you about a podcast and then they tell their listeners about ours. It’s a little bit, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. But we don’t really know these people. And sometimes I haven’t even heard the podcast, but for this episode, I’m like, I’m gonna listen to the podcast. [00:14:40] And so we’re swapping with the four lads. It’s staying in the Staying in podcast. I say lads because they’re British. And that’s really relaxing. Turns out, as long as the talk is slow and easy. So I just, I finished not long before, uh, we started taping here. I finished listening to their latest episode where these like four, they’re like four lifelong friends. [00:15:03] They talked about video games, board games, movies, TV and comics, and I was not sure that I was in the mood for all. But I was immediately smitten with the calm, thoughtful conversation. I mean, it was really chill, uh, . It was, it was like a, it was like as much about like meaning making as it was about like sorting the nerd cannon because they definitely sorted the nerd cannon, but it was still relaxing and still I hung on. [00:15:28] And here’s the thing that kind of like vexed me, is like, these guys are four lifelong friends. Can you imagine having a podcast with three of your lifelong friends and having it be described as relax? Like that would not be how mine went. Um, and like, listen, I’m gonna play a clip. Okay. Just listen to. [00:15:45] Staying In: It’s like someone giving you a hint to a puzzle rather than someone telling you how to do it. Yeah. It’s like just helping you connect the dots rather than just, and like you still have an element of that satisfaction. you don’t feel robbed of the experience. You get that in, um, things like, uh, the room where they’ll say, oh, right, there’s three levels of, and the first one is like, wouldn’t it be like, what do you think the, the, the vicar would say about the matchbox maker? [00:16:15] And it’s just like some weird cryptic thing. [00:16:18] Jeffrey: So if it sounds like your thing, we thoroughly recommend you. Give them a listen and you can do so for free by subscribing to the Staying in Podcast, wherever you’re listening to this HEAR podcast. Or by heading to staying in podcast.com. That’s staying in podcast.com. Just twice. [00:16:37] Brett: I’m, I’m sold. [00:16:40] Christina: I love [00:16:40] Brett: just my ocd. Staying in podcast.com. It’s gotta be three times. [00:16:48] Jeffrey: That’s staying in podcast.com. Candyman candyman candyman. Enter the Arrowverse! [00:16:54] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of nerd Cannon, um, this is a brief aside. I don’t want to get lost in it, but did you guys ever get into the arrowverse, meaning flash the arrow, uh, Von Supergirl Justice League. [00:17:12] Christina: Vaguely. I like Greg Brite because he comes from Dawson’s Creek and he made Brothers and Sisters, which was a good show, but mostly because he came from Dawson’s Creek, but uh, also Everwood f fucking amazing TV show, which was way too good for the, for the wb. Anyway, I digress. But no, I, I didn’t that much except I liked the kid who was on flash because he was, I remember when he was on Glee. [00:17:33] He was really, really good singer. Well, he was a really good singer, and and I, I did watch the musical episode of The Flash and I was like, this guy has, [00:17:40] Brett: There’s a musical episode of The [00:17:42] Christina: there is, and, [00:17:43] Brett: haven’t gotten [00:17:44] Christina: and they don’t utilize him enough, which is kind of funny because he’s got like one of the best voices. Like, he’s incredible. Anyway, go on. [00:17:52] Brett: so, so El made a spreadsheet, like we started watching Arrow and, and like, it, I, I had watched the, maybe the first three seasons of Arrow previously. But then it’d just kind of fallen off. And I had watched a couple episodes of the Flash and didn’t like the, I I didn’t get into it, but we went back and we’re like, finally, all right, we’re gonna get into the DC comic universe here and we’re gonna try this out. [00:18:20] And she made a spreadsheet and we, we’ve mapped out all of the, uh, chronological dates. Arrow Flash, Constantine Von Supergirl, et cetera, like it continues growing and there’s, when you watch the arrow in the flash in the right order, the, the plots intertwine between the two shows. And, and there are, there are references and there’s plot development in one show that affects the other show. [00:18:53] And it’s really, it’s crazy and you kind of have to take it all. As like a whole, a whole universe. Uh, the averse, it’s called, uh, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been intriguing. I’ve, I’ve been enjoying it. It’s my current, it’s our current comfort show is basically all of the averse. [00:19:12] Christina: I like it. [00:19:14] Brett: I had to torrent, I had to deterrent Constantine and Vixen because they don’t stream anywhere. [00:19:19] And Constantine was like a one season one and done kind of thing. But he shows up later. In other Arrowverse shows, if you’ve never seen Constantine, great show. Loved it. [00:19:31] Jeffrey: I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any of that stuff. None of. Verse. [00:19:35] Brett: I’ll add you to my plex. I have it [00:19:36] Jeffrey: All right, sounds. [00:19:38] Christina: I love. Chatting up the GPT [00:19:39] Brett: all right. We have, we have multiple topics. I would like to, if it’s alright with you guys, talk about chat. [00:19:44] G P T I I didn’t immediately jump on the bandwagon. Uh, it took me a while to try it. Um, I found a, a menu bar app for Mac that is, I believe it’s just called chat, g p t. Um, I’ll find the link to it, but you can just punch in your, your prompt in your menu bar and get a response. And like, the first two things I asked it is, why should I use plain text and why should I use Mark? [00:20:17] And it wrote an article that was as good or better than anything that I could have written. Uh, like I asked it for three bullet points, like gimme three reasons why I should use plain text. And it, it exactly nailed what I would say and then elaborated on it in a way that I was like, I, I couldn’t write this better. [00:20:41] So I was, I was very impressed with its ability to. Content. And then Christina through her, uh, GitHub stars linked to a chat G B T or a browser extension, and it’s available for alro and chromium browsers as well as Firefox. And it interfaces with all the major search engines from Yahoo to Bing to duck dot, go to Google, and in the sidebar, Of your search, it will give you chat GT’s response to your search query, uh, and kind of puts it all up at once, which is, it’s amazing because like people are talking about how chat G p t Open AI could be the new Google, where you ask it a question and it carefully explains the, the concept to you and you can have it write code. [00:21:41] The other thing that I just found out about it right before we sat down to record, uh, Tyler Hall added OpenAI slash jet G p t extensions to text buddy. So from within text Buddy, you can ask it. You can ask it either to write prose or you can ask it for. You can say and, and his, his example video, he’s like, how do I write a JavaScript function that finds the, uh, highest element and array, I think? [00:22:14] Um, and, and it basically like writes out the code in JavaScript to do that. And I have tested its code generation capabilities, uh, with Ruby and Python and JavaScript, and it has not led me. I’ve not asked it to do anything like, like, uh, stack Overflow Band Chat, G p t responses because they sound right but often [00:22:43] Christina: Right. Exactly. That, that, that’s the freakiest thing to me about it. I, I, I’ve mentioned this, um, when I’ve talked about it before and I’ve used, um, you know, uh, G P T three, um, implementations a lot. But, uh, Chad, g p t especially, I think even more than Codex and some of the other ones, like, it’s so conversational, but it sounds so authoritative. It’s like you, even if it’s something you know intimately, you’re kind of like, huh, well maybe this is true. It, it’s, it’s funny just how [00:23:13] Jeffrey: like white men learned this trick a long time ago. [00:23:17] Christina: totally. [00:23:18] Brett: There’s a, there’s an open AI in, in the a p i, there’s a setting, I think it’s called temperature, where you can set it to zero and it will only tell you factual things, but you add any, anything between zero and one point 0.4, for example. Could give you mostly factual, like mostly guaranteed to be true. [00:23:42] But we’re gonna, we’re gonna take some creative liberty. Uh, we’re going to, we’re gonna give you creative responses that may or may not be factual, but we’re gonna say them in an authoritative tone. [00:23:55] Jeffrey: Right, right. [00:23:56] Brett: could be very detrimental, like I think immediately Stack overflow saw how detrimental this could. [00:24:05] Like Stack Overflow has built a huge compendium of authoritative answers to coding [00:24:12] Jeffrey: Yep. [00:24:13] Brett: Uh, and to have that flooded with something that sounds real, but hasn’t been tested. Uh, I, there’s, there’s huge harm in [00:24:22] Christina: Oh yeah. No, I think they absolutely made the right decision, right? Like I am of the opinion that a lot of the people who freak out over AI stuff are doing so at their own peril because it is inevitable. [00:24:33] Jeffrey: it’s here. [00:24:34] Christina: And I think that chat, g p t is, uh, a great example of that because even though there’s, it’s, it’s a novelty, it’s kind of a toy, and it was. [00:24:42] You know, not really doing anything necessarily new than what already existed, the user interface. I think, uh, I’m stealing this from someone and I wish that I could properly credit them for this. Um, I, I think kind of, uh, distillation because I’ve been trying to think in my own head like, why did this one take off so much more than some of the previous? [00:25:03] Use cases of of G P T three. And, and I think that just the, the user interface of just, you know, simple, you know, kind of prompt to kind of do it and to get the results. The fact that there wasn’t a signup, that that flow I thing really can’t be, uh, undermined. But, um, and, and I, and this stuff is inevitable. [00:25:18] So for whatever qualms people will have, and I’m not saying that they aren’t valid because of course they, and we should have discussions, but people wanting to pretend like, like, I’m not really down for the whole, like, this is all evil and we shouldn’t use any of this stuff cuz. Look, this ship has sailed. [00:25:32] This is gonna be here. Like, regardless of how [00:25:34] Jeffrey: has sailed. [00:25:35] Christina: gonna be [00:25:35] a [00:25:35] Brett: is the [00:25:36] Christina: This is absolutely the future And, and if, and you, you ignore it at your own peril, in my opinion, especially for people who are afraid about like what it might do to their jobs or other things. You ignore this at your own peril. [00:25:46] You need to embrace it. Like, and, and, and I would say that that’s the case for anybody who sees themselves about to get disrupted. You need to embrace the disruption and lean into it instead of fighting against it. Because fighting against it has never, ever worked in human history and it won’t work here. [00:25:59] That. Stack overflow, I think absolutely did the right thing by banning it because I don’t, I think that there, those are different issues, right? Like you can still appreciate, um, where this is going. And also say, right now we are not in a position to accept these sorts of generated results because it is, you know, an anthem and an actually harmful to our overall experience. [00:26:21] Even though in many cases people could probably, you know, craft maybe even an accurate response. [00:26:29] Brett: Yeah. What scares me is so out of curiosity, after seeing the kind of content it could write, because basically when I gave it, you know, some plain text markdown prompts, it literally wrote an article I would publish on my blog. So, The first thing I did was go check out those scammy swarmy SEO channels on YouTube to see what they were saying about chat G p D. [00:26:55] And they were all [00:26:56] Christina: Of [00:26:56] Brett: They’re like, you can produce, you can produce authoritative content in mass for your blog. And you could have, you could have a new article every hour that is original, uh, intelligent funding content, and you can dominate search. Results, [00:27:14] Jeffrey: just like that, we’re right back to 2006. Yeah. [00:27:19] Brett: exactly like it is. It’s terrifying to think that, that the web, the web of knowledge that we have built could be overrun by artificial intelligence. [00:27:31] Like that’s not, to me, that’s not a bright future. Um, like, I’m really impressed, like this thing could pass the touring test. Like the touring test is like in the rear view me mirror at this point because this can absolutely, this can absolutely convince any human that it is another human, um, writing these responses. [00:27:52] And I just like, it’s, it’s so, there’s gonna come a point right now. Chat, g p t is freely available for testing. [00:28:02] Christina: Mm-hmm. [00:28:03] Brett: There will absolutely come a point where it becomes a paid service, but you know, you know who’s gonna gladly pay for it is SEO [00:28:11] Christina: 100%. But a and you’re not wrong. And, and this is where I think that it’ll actually be interesting. I kind of am interested to see AI obviously be different models, but I’m actually looking forward to seeing AI be used to weed out these ai. Generated responses and things that aren’t good because you know that, that Google or, or, or other search engine people are going to have to do that. [00:28:31] And look, your people are right absolutely. That you are right. You can make the authoritative sounding crap and, and we’re gonna be back to click farms. But that whole model didn’t really die the way that that we thought it did. What happened is, is that people who are paid since a post did it, or even worse, there were oftentimes. [00:28:51] And it’s been AI driven. It’s had to be because the, the, the stuff has been wrong in ways that just wouldn’t happen naturally, even with somebody who’s speaking a foreign language. Um, where I know that stuff has been scraped and then has been rewritten using some more primitive AI things like this has been a thing for years. [00:29:07] Like, and, and, and, and it’s already dominated a lot of search results stuff. So I don’t know. It’s interesting. It, it’ll also, it would be, to me, it would actually be interesting if this had to then lead to us rethinking how we do search. Because I think that the, the, um, page rank model worked really well for a long time. [00:29:24] And, and Google has obviously relied less on that, uh, over the years. And um, you know, it has been more than 20 years since that model I think started. And it probably is time for that to be kind of reevaluated in terms of. You know, showcasing what is actually relevant responses to what you’re looking for. [00:29:43] Like, this is not common to me. A lot of people have done this, but I, I add Reddit to almost all of my Google results. At this point, because I find that, that Reddit is actually a better search engine than Google for a lot of things. But going to reddit.com and searching is not a great experience. So it’s, it’s weird that you have to search Reddit to get, like, you have to add Reddit to Google, to search Reddit. [00:30:06] Uh, but that is how I can often find like the best and most helpful results for things. Anyway, that’s an aside. [00:30:12] Brett: One of the things and, and, and I have another article I’ll drop in the, uh, show notes about how studies have shown that people buy a slim margin, but people find. AI generated faces more trustworthy than, than real human faces. Um, and this goes into deep fakes, but the way that these, uh, these AI generated faces were created was using AI to train ai. [00:30:45] So you have one AI that is producing responses or faces or, or deep fakes, and then another ai. Judging, you know, and saying This is believable, or this isn’t. And the two can go back and forth to generate something that is more, believe, more human than human, uh, to put it in Blade Runner terms and like AI’s training ai, like this is the future. [00:31:16] This is already like, everything’s scary about. It is within years of happening and everything beneficial about AI is already happening. [00:31:27] Jeffrey: Mm, mm-hmm. . Uh, when I, I think the, the first deep dive I did into chat g p t was by listening just to the daily podcast and it had a great episode on it. And I remember thinking, cause I hadn’t played with it yet, I was like, That’s it. Fuck it. I’m done. I, I have a workshop. I have a workshop out back with a bunch of old tools. I, I can make all kinds of things with ’em. I’m like, I’m just gonna go live in my fucking garage until this blows over. Uh, which obviously it won’t. But then I was like, wait, you can write sequel statements for me. [00:31:59] Christina: Yeah, exactly. [00:32:01] Jeffrey: like, hi. [00:32:02] Brett: Well, and for simple. For simple, like what’s the algorithm to. Find the longest, uh, longest element in an array of strings. Like it will nail that. It’ll give you an answer faster than you would find it on Stack [00:32:18] Christina: 100%. Like this is not a plug, I promise, but the GitHub co-pilot, which obviously I work at GitHub and, and, uh, GitHub co-pilot is done in conjunction with, um, uh, open AI and, uh, is powered by, uh, chat or by, um, uh, uh, G P T three and has some similar responses to things you would see. Does some similar things as what chat G P T has. [00:32:38] Um, one of the things we, we showed off at, uh, like. I don’t even think beta is a, a appropriate kind of a preview, kind of an experiment that we’re working on to add to copilot is this thing called hey GitHub, where you can actually use copilot with your voice. But one of the ways I use copilot in addition to kind of like an auto-complete on steroids, is to do exactly that sort of thing. [00:32:59] Like, wait, how do I write this statement in, in this? Or, or what is boiler plate code for this? You know, like, like how can I write boiler flick code to like use Twitter’s API in Python, right? And. It’ll give it to me and, and it’s gonna be, in most cases, I can run it. And it’s, it’s, it’s gonna work, you know, and, and a lot of cases. [00:33:18] And it’s, it’s in it’s re and that’s remarkably, like, that’s all, that’s all I’ve ever really wanted in life, you know? [00:33:25] Jeffrey: Yeah, totally. [00:33:28] Brett: that actually works for computers. [00:33:30] Jeffrey: exactly. Now we, we gave a lot of Stack Overflow examples, so I discovered something super crazy when I was searching for I, so this is the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War. It will be in March. Uh, and I was very involved both in as a, as a, um, organizer trying to stop the war. Um, I went back and forth to Iraq a lot for previous Steven that, um, and I was on M S N B C. [00:34:04] And I’m like, I’m just this little kid who can’t sit still in his seat, but is talking about, you know, what’s going on on Capitol Hill vis-a-vis the Iraq War, the Looming Iraq war. And I was looking for that on YouTube, couldn’t find it, but I did find something super fucking weird. And that was, there’s some dude out there. [00:34:25] I said, I, I get all of these results and there are five videos made where the thumbnail is one of my questions on Stack overflow old questions. I mean, like, I’m talking a decade ago, right? I mean, what the fuck’s going on here? And I’m credited inside and I, I open it up and I play the video and there’s a man talking about drinking juice. [00:34:47] He’s outside, he’s holding his phone and, and he’s saying like, I, I would love it if you would subscribe. It would be great for me and my family. And, and then he, and then he says something about drinking juice. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll raw some tape. [00:34:59] Roel Van de Paar: Drink more apple juice and eat more mango. Hmm. This video will quickly show you a technical question as well as possible answers. I hope you subscribe and like that will really help me and my family. And why should we drink more apple juice and eat more mangoes? Well, because I noticed they’re good for your brain. [00:35:15] God bless. Bye. [00:35:17] Jeffrey: He says something about drinking juice, and then up comes my question. With an answer. It’s a minute and 17 seconds long. It’s been waiting for me. The only people that have looked at these are the other two hosts on this show. And let me [00:35:32] just tell you [00:35:33] Brett: views. Four views [00:35:35] Jeffrey: four views and, and this is a year ago. Okay, so, and you know these are good questions. [00:35:39] So you guys, what is this? [00:35:41] Brett: This is a weird. Like it can’t be working for him. He does not have the views or the [00:35:47] Jeffrey: He has 109,000 subscribers. [00:35:49] Doesn’t. [00:35:50] Christina: wait. [00:35:51] Brett: my God. He does. [00:35:52] Christina: Wow. So, so. [00:35:54] Brett: Who’s falling for this? [00:35:56] Jeffrey: so let’s see what else we got here. [00:35:58] Brett: Yeah. What, what else does he have on his channel that would justify? [00:36:02] Christina: Did he buy these followers like, or these subscribers [00:36:05] Jeffrey: Right? [00:36:06] He’s got a [00:36:07] Brett: his whole channel is, his whole channel is just stack exchange headlines, and then he literally posts a screenshot of the answer, holds it there for 30 seconds, and then moves on [00:36:20] Jeffrey: Wait, I’m gonna [00:36:21] Brett: and asks you to subscribe to his channel. [00:36:23] Jeffrey: Okay? I’m gonna search you guys in there. Roll Van. Christina Warren. Huh? Sorry guys. [00:36:33] Christina: Yeah, I don’t [00:36:34] think, well, I I don’t [00:36:35] Brett: never ask a question on Sac [00:36:37] Christina: I [00:36:37] Jeffrey: I get it. I get [00:36:38] Christina: was gonna [00:36:39] Jeffrey: You guys don’t have to ask Stack [00:36:41] Christina: no, I just, I just haven’t wanted to, to open myself to these things. But I, I did like look for his popular videos and it looks like he has a few that are like, remove enterprise enrollment from Chrome OS three solutions. [00:36:54] This has 138,000 views and he has, you know, apple problem creating new Apple ID account cannot be created at the time. That’s 57 k. [00:37:03] Brett: So he’s just, he’s siphoning Stack Exchange search results, [00:37:08] Jeffrey: Which in another era would’ve been genius. Right. But, and also I wanna say this one speaks to everybody. Stop tic-tac-toe from overriding moves in sea. Mm. I’ve been there. I have been down that dark hole. [00:37:21] Brett: Oh, what the fuck? [00:37:23] Jeffrey: So anyway, [00:37:24] Christina: has a Patreon, which, okay. [00:37:26] Brett: He’s also very Christian like. There’s always references to blessing you and praise to God, and [00:37:34] Christina: He has [00:37:35] Brett: it’s a weirdly religious take on Stack Overflow. [00:37:39] Christina: he has 28,938,108 views, so, which is decent. I’m still thinking these have to be mostly bought subscribers because, [00:37:51] Brett: Yeah, they have to be cuz nobody would watch one of these and go, oh man, I wanna, I wanna see what else this guy has to [00:37:59] Jeffrey: Get your hand outta my pocket. Raul Van Depar. [00:38:03] Brett: you should sue, you should sue for his one Patreon subscriber. [00:38:07] Jeffrey: maybe I will see if I can, I bet I can write up a legal finding in chat. G P [00:38:12] Christina: Oh, [00:38:12] Jeffrey: or a legal I could [00:38:13] Christina: See, that would be fantastic. [00:38:18] Brett: Right about cease desist Grapptitude [00:38:20] Jeffrey: Right . All right, let’s, should we grab the tune? [00:38:24] Brett: Yeah, [00:38:24] Christina: Yeah, let’s go for it. [00:38:25] Brett: Who first? [00:38:26] Jeffrey: I don’t mind going first. [00:38:27] Brett: Go for it. [00:38:28] Jeffrey: So my kids bought a, uh, Oculus a while back and the only thing, as I’ve reported, I think in the past, the only thing I’ve done in it is watched Richard Pryor on Netflix. Um, and. I felt like I should start using it cuz oh my God, there’s this really cool thing in the house. [00:38:44] So I got the app Wander and . In typical me fashion, I still barely did anything with it, but it blew my mind this time. What I did, uh, wander allows you to, to basically wander through the world via Google Street View. But here’s the crazy thing. I was able to stand in the middle of the street in front of my house. [00:39:05] I. I was in the basement, but you know, I was wandering. Um, and look at my house and then you can actually say, show me. 2007, show me 2009, show me 2015. And this house prior to us owning it had been a rental for like 20 years. And it was, it was inhabited exclusively by rock bands. And so you can imagine that it, it was in a certain state, uh, after 20 years of, of rock band inhabitants, and we could watch it become our house and it was amazing. [00:39:41] Christina: That’s awesome. [00:39:42] Brett: called, it’s called Wander. [00:39:44] Jeffrey: called Wonder. It’s super cool. I mean, [00:39:47] of [00:39:47] Brett: an [00:39:48] Christina: I do [00:39:48] Brett: and I do, I feel like I do not. I do not use it. [00:39:51] Christina: I definitely don’t. [00:39:53] Jeffrey: can we, can we meet for an episode in our Oculus, in our oculi? [00:39:58] Christina: I’m, you [00:39:58] Jeffrey: I would love that. [00:40:00] Christina: know what I’ve like, I’ve, I’ve made fun of the entire metaverse like thing and I will continue to do that. Having said that, I genuinely really want us to do an episode of Overtired in our Oculus. [00:40:12] Brett: Let’s figure that out. [00:40:13] Christina: Yeah, we’ll figure that out. Okay. It listeners, if you have ideas of how to do that, let us know. [00:40:19] We will research it, but, but if anybody else knows, like that’s obviously. [00:40:23] Brett: Yeah. [00:40:24] Jeffrey: I was, I was playing the game super hot, which is like a gun, it’s a shooter game, but nothing happens unless you’re moving, like time stops when you stop moving, which is super cool. But I got so lost in it that I was trying to avoid being shot and there was like a bench and I, I tried to lean my hand on the bench and I fell over. [00:40:45] Brett: I know [00:40:45] Jeffrey: And then in the very next game I tried to, I tried to go under the bench and I actually ended up like under a shelf and I was like, this is not okay for me. This is not okay. [00:40:56] Brett: The, the one Oculus app that I think everyone needs to know about is skybox. You can serve up any video from your Mac, I, I assume it works for PC as well. Um, and sure you, I mean, you can do with this what you will, you can do all kinds of crazy expert stuff with it. But, uh, if you have movie files that you wanna, like as if you’re watching on a huge. [00:41:23] Like movie [00:41:24] Jeffrey: Oh cool. [00:41:25] Brett: your Oculus? It is, it is. It’s fantastic. My rabbi created a chat group, like I have this chat group on my phone of all friends of my rabbi who own Oculi [00:41:39] Jeffrey: Oh, get me on that list. [00:41:41] Brett: and [00:41:41] Jeffrey: of your Rabbi [00:41:42] Brett: there’s always somebody who wants to play ping pong or golf [00:41:45] Jeffrey: so, uh, [00:41:47] Christina: That’s awesome. [00:41:48] Brett: Christina, what do you wanna. [00:41:50] Christina: Okay, so since we’re talking about chat, G P T, I think that it is time to talk about stable diffusion again, because I think that that is awesome. And I found, um, this app, it’s available for iOS. So there are a couple of different stable diffusion apps for Mac. Now there is, um, diffusion B, which works on both intel and in one. [00:42:12] Apple did actually release their own stable diffusion. Um, like fork or whatever. Uh, uh, you know, I think for people to use with against their GPUs, I don’t know if apples is in, is apple, silicon, or, um, Intel. Um, uh, as well. I, I think it’s only apple, silicon, but I don’t know. Uh, ciran, uh, cis, I can’t say his name. [00:42:33] The guy who makes a million things on, um, GitHub, um, he’s created a, an app, um, uh, for, for, um, Stale diffusion for Mac, that is native, built in Swift, but his is, um, uh, apple silicone only. But the one I wanna actually talk about is free. It’s called Draw Things. And it is an iOS app that, um, does, um, AI generation, um, for you in your pocket. [00:43:00] And it’s, uh, it’s free and it runs locally on your phone or on your iPad. So it’s actually really, really, Um, and, and it’s surprisingly, um, like, like the model sizes are big. Like some of them are like, you know, a couple gigs in size or whatever, but, um, and, and it, you know, but it’s, it’s actually surprisingly powerful and, and works really well. [00:43:22] So this was one that, um, that I, I found, um, last week. I think it’s been out for about a month. But, uh, this is an iOS app. Um, I’m assuming you can also run it on like, like your. [00:43:34] Brett: It has a Mac app store. [00:43:36] Christina: Anyway, if you’re somebody who’s been wanting to maybe get into some of the, the art stuff or wanting to look at it, um, the fact that you can even do this on iOS is unreal to me. [00:43:44] And, um, I think that this is really cool. So draw things is, is my pick. [00:43:49] Jeffrey: And to emphasize, to emphasize what you already said, that it runs locally and that it does not collect your data. [00:43:55] Christina: 100%, which I think is actually really important because like Lin, uh, and there have been some other ones that people have been using to, like, they’ve been uploading their photos and then thinking, oh, we delete them and whatnot. And I’m sure they do. I’m also equally sure that they use all the, the information and the results that they generate for you in their own models and their own stuff. [00:44:12] And there’s nothing wrong with that inherently, but, You know, you should, you should be aware of those things. So if you don’t want, you know, um, your prompts and your data and that stuff, you know, generated or stored elsewhere, doing it locally I think is really cool. So, big fan. [00:44:27] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:44:28] Brett: Awesome. All right, so I used to use MailChimp for managing email lists, but my email list got up to over 10,000. Subscribers. And once you hit a certain point with MailChimp, it gets very expensive to send out emails to everybody, like a hundred bucks to send something to my mailing list. And so I discovered Cindy, I think I discovered, I think the guy who creates agenda turned me onto it. [00:45:01] I can’t remember exactly how I found it. Um, maybe it was, yeah, I, I don’t remember A lot of indie developers used. And you pay like $60 I think, for a license. And, uh, you install it on your own server. It’s p h p and it uses Amazon a e s to, uh, to send your emails. And I have, I just sent out 17,000 emails and paid, I think maybe $5 in service fees to Amazon. [00:45:37] Uh, and that would’ve cost me over a hundred dollars to do with MailChimp. And it has all of your basic mail, email list management, and it shows you, uh, bounce rates and sub unsubscribes and open rates. And it is. For 60 bucks, uh, you, it pays for itself the first time you send out an email to out, to a list of any decent size. [00:46:04] And I think everybody, uh, software developers, people running any kind of independent email list should absolutely know about Sunday. [00:46:14] Christina: awesome. I, I’m, I’m really glad you mentioned this because we talked about this you and I, uh, a couple years ago, I think, when you first started using it, because we were both looking at maybe some newsletter alternative things, and I’m really glad to hear that this has continued to work well for you. [00:46:27] I did have a question for you, which is, and I don’t know how Cindy helps with this, or, or if it does, but how do you, I guess, make sure that your mails aren’t going to people’s spam, uh, folders Or, or, or do you. [00:46:40] Brett: I don’t do anything special. Um, I don’t know what, like, I, I, honestly, it’s black magic to me. What, uh, what gets spammed by Google, uh, by Gmail and what doesn’t? Um, I do know that my open rate tends to be about 60%. When I send to a list of about 10,000 or more, I get an open rate of 60% and an unsubscribed rate, usually of like one. [00:47:10] So the emails are, for the most part, getting through and, uh, and, and having in the click rate is generally very good. Uh, if 5,000 emails are open, I’ll usually get, you know, 3000 clicks, which is kind of insane. Uh, click through for, for the kind of emails I send out. I don’t know, I don’t know if Cindy does anything in particular. [00:47:39] But like I said, it’s, it’s black magic to me, so I don’t even know what the process would be to make sure you don’t get spammed [00:47:45] Christina: Yeah, that, that makes sense. Um, but uh, yeah, I just wanted to ask about that, but no, Cindy, I think this is great and honestly it reminds me of that era of app when like you had the self-hosted sort of things. Like, um, who is the guy who made, uh, mint? Sean Inman. Yeah. Because, because all of his stuff, he had a URL shortener, uh, a Fever, which was his RSS client, which was amazing. [00:48:08] Um, like I love that kind of era of self-hosting stuff, so, uh, kudos to, to the Cindy guy. I can’t remember if I’ve bought it or not, but I, I think I definitely am going to, uh, do this cuz I would like to do the newsletter thing, but I, I have hesitancy about using sub even though I know that they would be the best platform to use. [00:48:26] I have hesitancy. I don’t, I don’t care about any of the, the ideological stuff. I, I don’t, but, um, But, but for me it’s more like, I don’t know if this is gonna be around in the future or do I want anybody else owning my platform? [00:48:40] Brett: Yeah, I’ve gotten really into subs lately. I follow like a bunch of people on subs now and, and I do Patreon for several of them. Um, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a great source and I’m tempted to write there myself, but I really, I love, I love ODing, my stuff. [00:48:58] Christina: was gonna say, I’m, I’m in the same thing cuz I, I actually, like, I was having to do expenses at the end of the year. For, um, um, like stuff that I count as learning and development, which meant that I got to write off a lot of my cks and um, and actually subscribe to a couple of more. And because, hey, honestly, at this point, I think like newsletters are a really great learning and development tool to [00:49:19] be completely honest with you. [00:49:20] Um, and, um, and, and, and I, I really like paying people for their work, but, and I, and I think sub is a great platform, but yeah, I had that like Catch 22 where I’m. I kind of wanna own my own thing because this doesn’t feel right to, like, even though I have the list, I don’t love that all the, if I were to charge for something that all of that is going through. [00:49:41] So there’s just, I have, there are questions that I have. Let’s, let’s, let’s put it that way. [00:49:46] Brett: So I have bought Cindy three times now because you can buy it for one domain and then add as many brands to it as you want. But then the signup and the, the, uh, web versions of all your newsletters are on the primary domain. And for the purpose, like if I wanna, brett Terpstra dot com email list, I don’t want them to have to go to envy ultra.com. [00:50:14] And, and wonder why, but for 60 bucks, I mean, compared to the cost of doing the same thing with MailChimp, like I’ll just, I, I bought it for marked, I bought it for brett Terpstra dot com and I bought it for NB Ultra, and I just run it independently on each of those domains. So everyone has an SSL encrypted signup form from the right domain. [00:50:39] That makes sense. And it leads to no. Questions of hanky, hanky [00:50:44] Jeffrey: Oh, oh. [00:50:49] php. Pretty hot party. [00:50:51] Brett: right? [00:50:52] Jeffrey: All right, you guys. It’s good to have the band together, [00:50:54] Christina: I love it. I I, I missed you too. [00:50:56] Jeffrey: you too. [00:50:56] Christina: fun. Glad to be back. Feels like the, feels like the, the new year is, is starting off right. Hope it, hope it’s good for everyone. [00:51:03] Brett: Don’t jinx it, [00:51:04] Christina: I’m trying not to. [00:51:08] Jeffrey: Why do we always fight at the end? [00:51:10] Christina: I love you guys [00:51:11] Brett: Get some sleep you guys. [00:51:12] Jeffrey: Get some [00:51:13] Christina: and get some sleep. [00:51:14] Outro: The.

Friend of the show Danny Glamour joins us to talk health scares, Minneapolis hardcore, and app developers that know when to leave well enough alone. Sponsors The next time you’re feeling down on yourself, check out Self Esteem Party and let Alana Johnston cheer you up with conversations with her show biz pals, mixing humor and vulnerability. New episodes every Tuesday at The Sonar Network or wherever you listen to podcasts! TextExpander: The tool your hosts wouldn’t want to live without. Save time typing on Mac, Windows, iOS, and the web. Overtired listeners can save 20% on their first year by visiting TextExpander.com. SimpliSafe has everything you need to keep your home safe — from entry and motion sensors to indoor and outdoor cameras. Visit simplisafe.com/overtired and claim 20% off any new system. Show Links Daniel’s poems, etc Daniel’s music writing Find Daniel on Mastadon at @dannyglamour@toot.community Two Dots s3-ocr MultiMarkdown Composer 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 Code Word Felix with Daniel Muro LaMere [00:00:00] Intro:Outro: Tired. So tired, Overtired. [00:00:04] Jeffrey: Hello, everybody out there. This is Jeff and I am here with Brett. Christina is not with us. We miss her and we have, um, replaced her for one week only with, uh, with a fellow who has been name checked more times on this podcast than any of our partners [00:00:22] Brett: true. [00:00:23] Jeffrey: uh, we call ’em Denny Glam. But his name is Daniel Miro Lair. [00:00:28] He’s a writer. He’s a, he’s a poet. He’s a, he’s a hardcore archivist. He’s a teacher who? A bunch of kids. welcome to Overtired. [00:00:39] Daniel: Thanks for having me. Um, I do wanna say that I don’t seek to replace anyone. I’m just happy to be here. [00:00:45] Jeffrey: Well, that’s a nice spirit with which to enter the podcast. [00:00:48] Brett: I still consider usurper. [00:00:52] Daniel: Fair enough. [00:00:53] Jeffrey: Bend the knee. [00:00:54] Daniel: Gauntlet thrown, [00:00:57] Jeffrey: Um, Daniel is actually in my guest room right now. He is guesting on this podcast from my guest room. Um, and his, his setup is really depressing cause our guest room is still the, like covid guest room, which means it’s not a guest room at all. [00:01:10] Daniel: but there’s lots of books. [00:01:12] Jeffrey: There’s some books. [00:01:13] Brett: What is a Covid guest room? [00:01:15] Jeffrey: Like, uh, we turned it into a treadmill. there’s no longer a bed in there [00:01:20] Brett: Oh, I see like a pandemic. A pandemic guest room. Okay, [00:01:24] Jeffrey: nobody came over, you could just throw things into any room and it didn’t matter. And it never came around to bite you in the ass. That’s where Dan, that’s where Daniel is. He’s basically [00:01:32] Daniel: the air’s not safe to breathe. [00:01:34] Jeffrey: the basement. [00:01:34] The air is not safe to breathe. No. Um, so anyway, uh, hello. [00:01:40] Brett: Hello. [00:01:41] Jeffrey: Here we are. Go ahead Brett. You got so. [00:01:43] Brett: I gotta, I gotta warn everyone. I, my, my family’s in town for Christmas and I had some burning questions from my brother that maybe we’ll get into later. But, um, I invited him over for bourbon at noon and I drank, uh, two glasses. Uh, we’ll say, we’ll say like singles. I drank two singles at noon, and I, I just like crashed. [00:02:16] After he left. I was just like worn out and now I’m here on a podcast and I am super, I am basically in recovery mode. I, I don’t, I don’t know what’s happening around me right now. [00:02:31] Jeffrey: Well, you could do the exercise where you go green walls, uh, framed pictures, bass, guitar, and another bass guitar. What do I see in there? Treadmill on its side. That’s not how those go. Um, [00:02:43] Brett: is, it is a treadmill on its side. You’re not wrong, I have a standing desk that I can, that I can elevate and then floor this treadmill down, and it’s a walking desk. But for the purpose of podcasting, I lower it and sit in a, in a chair, like a, like a normal person. [00:03:00] Jeffrey: So Daniel, I’ve said a lot about who you are, but actually, why don’t you take control of the narrative. Tell us who you are, Daniel. Introducing Danny Glamour [00:03:08] Daniel: Oh my. Um, well, hello, I’m Daniel Mira Lair, uh, AKA a Danny Glamour. Uh, there’s a long origin story there, but, um, I’ll spare the listeners. Um, I teach high school English and uh, a class called Avid, which is like a college prep class and critical ethnic studies. And I’m a dad and I got some animals that live in my house. [00:03:30] And, um, And I write poetry sometimes, and I blog about music sometimes. And, um, and I would love it if, if people would come hang out with me on Mastodon sometimes. So, um, that’s, that’s I think what, oh, and I’m like, you know, an elderly, uh, punk rock hardcore person, so, um, [00:03:51] Brett: Poke rockers. Yeah, I, I think, I think you’re as old now as Bob Murderer was when I was in like the punk rock. [00:03:59] Daniel: Oh, Bob Murderer. You know, there was a time, [00:04:02] Jeffrey: That’s like rural juror. [00:04:03] Daniel: yeah, there was a time when you, you could see that guy reliably on public transit. Um, I think we had a similar schedule for a while, um, coming from Whittier to downtown and, um, in Minneapolis. Uh, and um, also at the Triple Rock Social Club. You know, you’d often see him swallowing, uh, large quantities of cider. [00:04:23] Brett: Yep. [00:04:24] Jeffrey: Okay. I wanna say something as a, I’ll be a stand in for the listener. I have, I have spent time with these two together before in person and I, while I, I came up in the punk rock, Minneapolis. Thing I was not in the parallel existence, uh, the multiverse existence of the hardcore scene here, which both Brett and, and Daniel were like deep in. [00:04:46] And so every once in a while one of them would just go, yeah, like Bob Murderer And, and I just encourage you listeners to just, you know, nod your heads smile cuz you’ll, you’ll get somewhere with [00:04:57] Daniel: I think it’s probably a, a, a phrase that would be worth Googling and I think all would be revealed, uh, if, if the listener googled Bob murderer. But, um, also I was thinking of [00:05:07] Jeffrey: I’m sorry. [00:05:08] Daniel: no. What? Oh, yeah. Robert. Robert Homicide, um, [00:05:14] Jeffrey: Robert, this is is his Christian [00:05:17] Daniel: Yeah, that’s right. No, I was thinking, um, today or recently about how, um, you know, we all do sort of come from punk rock, but I think each of us sort of in a, a different corner or niche, uh, part of that at the same time, which is funny for a town as small as Minneapolis. [00:05:37] Jeffrey: Yes. And, and back in the day there was very, there was, as the nineties went on, there was much more sort of intersection. So if you take an example like the band Dillinger four, which is [00:05:46] Brett: No, [00:05:47] Jeffrey: a, a, a punk rock slash not, you call ’em punk rock or hardcore, what do you call them? [00:05:51] Brett: I call him pop punk. [00:05:53] Jeffrey: Pop punk. Yeah, [00:05:54] Daniel: You know, I asked, uh, Patty on, on Twitter not long ago, um, you know, is Dillinger for a hardcore band? And he said no, but heavily influenced by hardcore. So I don’t know, you know, he’s one of the, of the four. So that’s, you know, [00:06:06] Jeffrey: Because they were, in a way, the Dillinger four were the, um, were the bridge between the sort of more sort of punk rock noise, rock scene and then the hardcore scene. And there was, when I was in a band and playing like there was such a division. And then as the years went on, uh, the two scenes just started to sort of like, you know, intermesh in a really cool way so that now it’s kind of everyone. [00:06:29] History. But I will tell you when, when you guys show me, like I saw this, this YouTube page today by, what was the guy’s name? Daniel Zimmerman. [00:06:37] Daniel: Dan Zimmerman. Yeah. [00:06:38] Jeffrey: Zimmerman. Who? Who is, we explained this archive cause it’s incredible. [00:06:42] Daniel: Um, the, the page is called 25 after, um, and it’s, you know, Dan used to play guitar in harvest. Um, I think he later moved to Brazil, and I think he might live in Spain now. Um, I’m not entirely sure, but he. You know, used to always have a camcorder o over his shoulder at every show. And so, um, you know, a lot of us knew that there was this, you know, vault of, you know, content and, you know, we’re like, when is he ever gonna do anything with this? [00:07:10] And so, um, in the last handful of years, he’s digitized all these shows and he releases them, you know, as best he can 25 years to the. after, you know, the show happened and he’ll like release it, you know, at, you know, Showtime seven, 8:00 PM or whatever [00:07:25] Jeffrey: A stream. A live stream, essentially. [00:07:27] Daniel: On YouTube. Um, and sometimes [00:07:29] Brett: 25 year delay on [00:07:31] Daniel: Well, and sometimes it’s like 26 or, you know, with the, um, the code 13 disembodied video that I sent to these guys earlier. Um, I think that was like 27 years ago. But also really great example of world’s colliding because those were bands that existed in very different scenes. But, um, it, you know, it’s funny, Jeff, I don’t wanna contradict what you said before, but I, to my mind, and maybe this is, um, evidence of our. [00:07:58] Experiences within punk. I, I feel like the nineties were a time when there were way more mixed bills and, and bands that were really different that played together or were on comps together, like the, um, the no slow algo, [00:08:10] Brett: Yeah. Oh man. [00:08:12] Daniel: And I feel like things really, um, sort of calcified where people kind of ended up in their own corners, um, as time went on, uh, where, you know, it’d be like a hardcore show and just be like four mosh metal bands. [00:08:25] And then, you know, there’d be like a cross show. Whereas, you know, I remember some of the first shows I went to, it was like really wild, you know, pairings of styles and it that was so great and I miss that. [00:08:37] Brett: the first show I went to after moving to Minneapolis was at the University of Minnesota. Um, it, where I was attending school did not finish there, but, um, uh, saltines. And Dylan four played at like, I don’t remember the name, the name of the venue there. Uh, but it was literally across the street from the hall where I lived and, and I showed up. [00:09:06] Um, my No SOK was seminal for me, like back in high school when that came out and we, we tracked to extreme noise and. I think we met Felix that day and, and we bought no Sogo and got an introduction to the Minneapolis scene. And, and then Matt and I, all of a sudden we did these flyers for this Dill four saltine show, and we absolutely showed up for it. [00:09:38] And I believe it was all ages, no alcohol. Wow. So it was, it was kind of a weird show for me. Um, but yeah, that. That’s history right there. That’s good. [00:09:49] Daniel: I was wondering, um, If we need to have an explanatory about, um, who Felix Von Havoc is, or what extreme noise is, or any of that maybe. [00:09:59] Brett: I feel like that is, that is, that is Minneapolis history. We should definitely do that. [00:10:06] Jeffrey: Can I segue into it by saying that like Daniel and Brett both have such deep connect. Of these really key parts of Minneapolis punk hardcore history and, and things like, um, extreme noise and names like Felix become very significant so that if you listen closely and then meet someone who was from Minneapolis in those days, you could just say one of those words. [00:10:27] Brett: Felix, who we’re on a first name basis with apparently, but uh, goes by, goes by Felix Vaughn havoc, and I don’t know well enough to know his real name, but Felix Vaughn havoc is Central [00:10:38] Daniel: I’m not gonna share it here. It’s not that difficult to discover online, but it’s not for me to put it out there. Um, yeah, he, uh, I think he was a transplant from DC um, to Minneapolis. Um, and I, you know, I think had, had gotten sober. And just really threw himself at the local scene. He was, um, he sang in a band called Destroy and maybe most notably code 13 for a really long time. [00:11:01] And he still runs a label called Havoc Records, which is really great. Um, and he was one of the, um, people that were behind, uh, getting extreme noise records off the ground, which is, you know, in, in, I think next year it’ll be 29 years of, of volunteer run punk rock record store. [00:11:18] Brett: An anarchist record, sir. [00:11:20] Jeffrey: in [00:11:20] Daniel: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And it’s, uh, I volunteered there for, uh, a couple years, way back when. [00:11:26] And, um, it’s a really important institution. and I, I went there a couple weeks ago. Um, it had been a very long time and, uh, and I had just, I had had a hospitalization, which is a whole other conversation, and so I was like running errands to sort of treat myself for being able to be out in the world and, and went and. [00:11:46] And he like rang me up and I was like, I wonder does he, I knew that, I knew who he was. Like we’d been neighbors, you know, in East Phillips, in Minneapolis and like we worked on building a stage at a show space that ended up burning down. Um, and so like we knew each other, but, and I was, I. It just felt weird to like man. [00:12:07] I don’t know. I get weird about stuff like that sometimes, and so I was wondering maybe he’s doing the thing I’m doing or maybe he has no idea who I am. Um, but it was cool to see him and to know that he’s still volunteering there and just really a, a life or an important part of what I think is an important scene, even though my participation in it is somewhat, um, you know, lacking these days. [00:12:28] Yeah. Yeah. Mental Health Corner [00:12:29] Brett: Is this a mental health corner now? [00:12:31] Jeffrey: Let’s do it. [00:12:32] Brett: Um, I’ll kick it off. I, uh, I survived my, my Christmas, uh, my, my sister got delayed by the storm in the north here, um, going from Ohio to Minnesota, and she didn’t show up until like 4:00 PM on Christmas Day. And then they went ahead and had Christmas dinner. [00:12:57] And given that between EL and I and our dietary restrictions, we can eat almost nothing. Um, except for like seeds. Um, they, they had, they had Christmas dinner without us. Which I’m fine with. And then I showed up at like from six to eight maybe. We opened all the kids presents and everyone got to gimme hugs and say, thank you Uncle Brett. [00:13:25] And, and I I’m working on getting what? [00:13:30] Jeffrey: you and Elle opened all the kids’ presents. [00:13:33] Brett: No, [00:13:34] Daniel: Thank you Uncle Brett. [00:13:35] Brett: We, we [00:13:36] Jeffrey: you Uncle Brad [00:13:37] Brett: We were, we were present for the opening of the presence from us to them. Um, I’m working on getting the, the kids to call l Auntie L. Um, we’re not married and in my family I think that’s a big deal, and it’s Uncle Brett and Elle. Um, and like Elle and I are, we’re kind of in it for the long haul. [00:14:04] We don’t believe. Marriage, uh, as a, as a pairing. We we’re not big on the, the certificate. Um, but I really like, I don’t know how many years I’ll have to be with her before I can be like Auntie L Um, they still call my ex-wife an didi. So [00:14:27] Jeffrey: uh, [00:14:29] Daniel: That’s not okay. [00:14:30] Jeffrey: that’s gotta be passed along. [00:14:32] Brett: Yeah, you would think, but the fact is Uncle Brett, you know, could, it could change. Like I don’t, I, I don’t see a, a forever with anybody. Like, I love Elle and I will be with her for as long as it’s good for both of us, but when it’s not like I want the ability to move on, I don’t want, I don’t want a bunch of kids feeling dejected because something went awry in my relationship. [00:15:07] Anyway. All right. That’s, that’s beside the point. Um. My family has remained in town and they, they don’t leave until tomorrow. And I, uh, we made a visit today. El taught the nieces how to, uh, cast on, which is how you start a knitting project you cast on to the needle. Yeah, so it’s like you start, you start with a slip knot, and then there’s a series of knots that you, you, you tie around the needle to begin a knitting project. [00:15:40] And one of my nieces has gotten pretty good at knitting, but she didn’t know how to start the project. Uh, so Elle was there to teach her to cast on, she tried to teach a couple of the others. I learned a lot, very quickly about the learning styles of my nieces. I have one niece who has an interest. She a curiosity, but zero patience. [00:16:04] And as soon as something is too hard, she like, she fucked it up as much as she could and then like held it up as like, did I do it? Obviously she didn’t and, and then she was off. She was gone. But the niece who actually wanted to learn this was so patient and so determined and she got it and I. It was, that’s the kid I have a lot of hope for. [00:16:31] I think she will be, um, I think nine, maybe [00:16:35] Jeffrey: Got it. Yeah, it [00:16:36] Brett: I lose track. They keep growing. [00:16:39] Jeffrey: it’s lovely when they’re at that point where it’s like they want it. And so, you know, anything you do to help is gonna be in service of that, not in service of like [00:16:49] Brett: Yeah, but she had the, she had the patience, she had the, the determination to keep, keep getting it wrong until she got it right. I don’t have that, like I, I, I more relate to my older niece who just did not have the patience to learn this. I, I felt. I felt for her, I understood like, yeah, you should just go because this is gonna take more determination than you have. [00:17:19] You don’t have the level of determination necessary to, to beat this learning curve. Um, you’re not that interested. And I think she’s probably fine if she’s interested enough, but I wouldn’t doubt there’s some kind of a D H D going on. Uh, in her, uh, obviously I’m not a doctor. I can’t diagnose that, and she’s also very young. [00:17:44] Um, [00:17:44] Jeffrey: you’ve had a couple drinks, [00:17:48] Brett: but anyway, so, so I have this burning curiosity about like, these kids are being homeschooled, which I am innately. , I, I innately object to, um, I given how religious their parents are. I don’t like the idea of being, them being homeschooled, but in conversations, holy shit, these girls know so much and they have such a grasp on history and science and technology. [00:18:23] Uh, they, they, they’re using this method where they learn songs. Uh, like extended 13 minute long songs about like historical events and they can sing like the history of the Reformation, for example. Uh, like she was able to recite it all at the dinner table. [00:18:44] Jeffrey: just real big. They might be Giants fans, huh? [00:18:48] Brett: But, but. They’re also able to pull from that and understand the connections. [00:18:55] And the interesting thing about it is like in school we learned American history. I like, we learned what happened in the 18 hundreds, the 19 hundreds, but we didn’t necessarily learn what happened around the world. At the same time, we didn’t understand the global implications of what was happening. And these kids have already. [00:19:16] At the ages of seven to 11 years old. And, and I was very fascinated and they understood enough about science. Like I showed them pictures of my Asher photography and they started talking, me, talking to me about the, the theoretical existence of microscopic black holes. And, and I was like, holy shit. How? [00:19:38] How does a family that doesn’t believe in evolution understand? Advanced astrophysics. And so I had to have my brother over four drinks to talk about like exactly, I ne I needed to know what is it you believe and how are you conveying this to your children and. [00:19:58] Jeffrey: believe in the power of song [00:20:00] Daniel: Do you think that they maybe believe in black holes? As long as they’re small enough. [00:20:05] Brett: here’s the Here’s the thing is they act. My brother believes in evolution. Uh, he couldn’t speak for his wife. Uh, he said she didn’t care whether evolution was real or not, but he believes in evolution. He believes in the earth being billions of years old, not 6,000 years old. and he doesn’t believe in hell. [00:20:29] That was the big revelation for me, is that their brand of Christianity is, he called it nihilism, which means something, [00:20:39] Jeffrey: Donny. They can’t hurt [00:20:40] Brett: means something different to me. But for him it meant that instead of eternal damnation and burning for eternity, those who didn’t believe were just snuffed out. Like there was a reward for the saved. [00:20:56] Jeffrey: Wow. [00:20:57] Brett: there’s no, there’s no punishment. There’s no eternal punishment, uh, for not finding Jesus. And that was, [00:21:05] Jeffrey: of nihilism, isn’t it? [00:21:06] Brett: it’s a kind of Judaism, really. I, uh, [00:21:09] Jeffrey: but it’s not like arguing with God, like Judaism is so wonderful at, you know, like, it [00:21:14] Brett: it. It is, it is a little bit nihilistic. Uh, I also determined , he kept throwing around this term, right-Leaning, anarchist. Like he saw himself, [00:21:27] Daniel: I think [00:21:27] Brett: himself as a, he saw himself as [00:21:29] Daniel: way fewer [00:21:29] Brett: I know, I know [00:21:31] Jeffrey: white. [00:21:32] Brett: I, I was like, I was like, you know, you mean libertarian, right? He is like, well, it’s a, it’s a circle. And I’m like, yeah, and when you cross this gap at the bottom, you’re a libertarian. [00:21:44] So for the rest of the conversation, he was a libertarian. But, uh, but it was, it was enlightening. I, I appreciated the conversation. [00:21:52] Jeffrey: yeah. Yeah. It’s nice to open that conversation up. [00:21:56] Brett: And that’s, that’s basically my mental health right now, that that sums it up. [00:22:00] Daniel: You know, each week when I listen, um, I always think like, well, what would I say if I was in the mental health? Like, what is my, so it’s, it’s kind of a, I really appreciate this as a feature because it’s an opportunity as a listener to reflect, you know, on one’s own situation. But, um, So, yeah, I just recently, um, I alluded to it earlier, but I had a sort of a health scare. [00:22:24] Um, my, my gallbladder went, um, I’m trying to remember the sophisticated term that, um, tits up and, um, and, uh, I Thanksgiving, um, Afternoon, I was getting ready to prepare some stuffing and I was like, Ooh, I feel kind of gassy. And um, you know, and I just was like, that sucks. I was uncomfortable. And I was like, well, maybe I shouldn’t have had those dried cherries, you know? [00:22:46] And then I just like went about my business cuz I had a meal to prepare and had to get the kids together and get to my parents and didn’t think much of it. And then that night, um, laying down in bed, I had like, really bad back pain and really didn’t sleep very well. But I, you know, At that point had been really battling some insomnia for some months and months. [00:23:06] And so I was like, well, I guess this is just another night where I’m up, you know? And um, and then the next day it was like a lot of stomach and back pain and I was like, oh man. Um, I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess I’ll call the nurse line. I’m out of ideas and. The woman at the nurse line who , I think probably saved my life, uh, told me to go to the er and she’s like, yeah, if you don’t feel like you can drive yourself, you should get an ambulance. [00:23:31] And I was like, oh, okay. And for me, like calling the, I guess they call it the Caroline, um, calling the Caroline and going to the emergency room are, you know, worlds apart. The book is a lot of, lot of steps in between. And so I was like, oh God, you know, she thought it might have been my. So, yeah. So then I go to the er and again, they thought maybe it was my heart, a thing I mentioned a few times to them because they were telling people, um, nine hours, uh, for a wait. [00:23:55] And this is, you know, five o’clock, uh, 5:00 PM on Black Friday. Um, and you know, I, I wanna be clear that I’m not complaining about these people. Um, I’m complaining about our healthcare system, but there. Shit ton of people that, um, end up clogging up our emergency rooms because they are in a position where they have to use it as their primary care. [00:24:17] Because, you know, if, if you don’t have the right kind of job, then you don’t have insurance and it, or if you’re poor on disability, it’s just fucked, you know? And so, um, there’s people in all manner of, uh, disrepair. Um, and then, and then me who. Sit still because of the discomfort. So I’m pacing around and getting side eye from a lot of people. [00:24:35] One woman in particular just kept giving me, you know, fucking daggers. And then, you know, I’d walk past [00:24:40] Jeffrey: like a man son, [00:24:42] Daniel: Yeah, exactly. I’d walk past the, um, sort of the check-in booth and uh, sir, is there something we can help with? No, I just can’t get comfortable. I’m sorry. And, um, you know, and then I’m still like trying to go to the bathroom a a lot cuz I don’t know what’s going on. [00:24:54] And, um, two hours later I finally got the ekg. Uh, so thank God it wasn’t my heart and I didn’t die of a heart attack. And the chairs, um, And then finally they did like a CT scan and they, they were like, you know, I’m really sorry. We don’t have any beds. We think it, but we think it’s your, um, gallbladder and, um, you know, we’re gonna have to check you in. [00:25:15] But again, we don’t think we have any beds, so we’re just gonna have you, we’re gonna have you back in this back hallway. And, uh, sorry again. and then, yeah, I had the surgery the next day and um, so then, you know, it’s that weird thing of like having a conversation after surgery and not being sure when it started or how many times they had to try to have it with you. [00:25:34] But then, you know, as a surgeon again, she’s like, yeah, then explaining everything of course, and all these like 12 syllable words. But she’s like, yeah, you know, it was, uh, took a lot longer than we thought. And it’s like, well, it’s all the same to me. I don’t know. I was out, but. You know, it was really swollen and, um, you know, parts of it were gangrenous, other parts were necrotic. [00:25:51] And I was like, okay, I don’t, like, I was like, hold on. Did you what ? Yeah. I was like, gang, like gang green? And she’s like, yeah, yeah. And she, I was like, like, I, I could have died. And she’s like, yeah. And so, yeah. Um, and so because it, it was like four or five times the size it was supposed to be. So, um, four scars because two of them, the two became one. [00:26:12] And, um, So they could get it out. Um, and you know, and then I was like, I was like, well, maybe I’m being a weirdo and sensationalizing a thing I’m prone to doing from time to time. And so I was like, maybe this wasn’t as bad. And she, you know, cause she didn’t lead with the thing like, well, you almost died and so maybe, you know, she was like, yeah, it could have happened, but we don’t really know. [00:26:32] Um, So I, a few days later I got like my chart like sent to me on my phone and I copied it and pasted it and sent it to my, um, sister-in-law who’s a nurse in California. And I was like, yeah, I guess I just don’t really feel like I know how close I really got. And she’s like, pretty fucking close, dude. Like, that was really gnarly. [00:26:50] I’m glad you got checked out. So, [00:26:52] Jeffrey: Wow. [00:26:53] Daniel: That was a weird thing because, and I like had to work this out in therapy, which is the mental health component of it. You know, the having almost died, but not having experienced sort of the near death, you know, in the way that, [00:27:07] Brett: You didn’t, you didn’t ha, you didn’t have the diagnosis in advance. You were told in post that you almost died. [00:27:14] Daniel: And kind of had to piece it together over the course of like 10 days. [00:27:17] And so it was like, and then what? And I, you know, I always want everything to be meaningful and there’s no way to, you know, and now what shall I do with this? Well, it’s, you know, the same thing you should have done before , like to be a good person. So, um, so, you know, but I’ve, you know, I’m very aware of, um, Sort of mortality and, and also, um, how fucked up our medical system is. [00:27:40] Although nurses are amazing and I got really good care and obviously the surgeon did a great job. Um, I, I do wanna just tell people as a public service announcement, especially dudes, I feel like, um, to like get things checked out. Um, yeah, I’ve got other people in my life that have had some things happen recently where I kind of wonder if things could have been prevented had they gone in. [00:28:03] Brett: Yeah. [00:28:04] Daniel: of which was unfortunately fatal. So, um, yeah, it’s just so people should get things checked out cuz like, if I had just tried to tough it out, you know, another night, I mean, who knows? Right? So, um, [00:28:15] Brett: I, when I had appendicitis, I, I, I waited three days. I thought it was a bad flu of some kind with a lot of stomach pain. Um, and they told me if I had waited one more day, I’d be dead. [00:28:30] Daniel: that wild? [00:28:31] Brett: I went to the ER on Tuesday this week. Uh, because my watch alerted me that my heart rate had hit 120 B bpm while it had determined that I was sitting still and I was cooking at the time, I was like slowly ambling around the kitchen and my heart rate was at 120. [00:28:51] So I like sat down and it didn’t go down. Um, it, I was ranging between one 10 and one 30 for an hour before I decided, okay, I’m gonna go. To the er. I’m gonna get this checked out. It’s a Tuesday night on like Christmas break. It was pretty empty. I got seen very quickly. They did a bunch of tests. They determined I wasn’t having a heart attack, and like did, did some other tests to just see if they could figure out what was going on. [00:29:23] Didn’t resolve anything, but, uh, but they were very, they were very cool about, um, the care and, and I really appreciated that. I, I feel like a hypochondriac when it comes to that stuff. Uh, heart disease runs in my family and I worry every time, every time something abnormal happens with my heart, I worry. [00:29:46] Um, I’m very paranoid that I will die of a heart attack. So that was comforting. It was a weird way to go into a square dance with my mom. [00:29:57] Jeffrey: Wait a minute. I, sorry. my brain just like rebooted. [00:30:09] Brett: That was, that was so my parents had their square dance. Uh, and, and [00:30:15] Daniel: is an anniversary thing, right? [00:30:17] Brett: My excuse for not participating in the square dance was I just went to the ER and they told me to take it easy for a couple days. [00:30:27] Daniel: That’s great answer for a lot of people, is taking it easy, I think. But um, so [00:30:33] Brett: your partner round and round. [00:30:34] Jeffrey: Not if you’ve been, it swung. [00:30:35] Daniel: Yeah. No, no, shit. So I’ll be, I’ll be quick to wrap up my mental health situation. Um, so then I had to convalesce for a week and, um, you know, public education is a wonderful thing, but, uh, it was really, um, eye-opening, how much the job crept into my life when I was supposed to be just like laying around, being grateful to be alive and, and recer. [00:30:59] Yeah, there was like multiple things a day and it wasn’t really anybody’s fault. It’s just shit trickles down on teachers. And um, and it really, like, it’s really given me pause to think like, I wonder how much longer I can do this. And um, and that’s not to say that, I’m making a decision or not. It’s just, that’s, that’s been a weird thing because it’s that, you know, I have felt so fortunate to have found teaching and sort of fell into it and, and felt like, um, I don’t know, to have a job that I really love and feel like I’m good at feels like such a gift. [00:31:34] And to, to sort of be questioning that as. Place to be. Um, and also, um, as an ADHD person, I recently ran m into the national or international, um, stimulant shortage. I take, uh, Dexter amphetamine for my A D H D and um, good luck finding that anywhere. The guy at Walgreens was like, yeah, there’s none in the state, in our [00:31:58] Brett: Like, uh, Folkin. [00:32:01] Daniel: Uh, I dexedrine, I guess I [00:32:04] Brett: Okay. Okay. [00:32:05] Daniel: Um, and they were able, I take 15 milligrams and, um, they were able, you know, and it’s, it’s really fun to be the person with the compromise executive functioning, to be like trying to be the conduit between the psychiatrist and the pharmacies. But I was able to find a pharmacy that was able to fill, um, a 10 milligram prescription and then I just, you know, cut one in half. [00:32:27] And I have to tell you, Being back on those meds today. It was a combination of that. And my daughter had a play date today, and we are not tidy people, so we spent hours like tidying our house. I was a sweaty mess. Um, but the physical activity early in the day and the clean house and the pills, I just felt like so much better today and I’m so grateful. [00:32:52] So, um, I really. It’s kind of in rough shape the past few days and it’s, it’s nice to be back. So that is my mental health update. [00:33:02] Jeffrey: I. I have a, a, a new chapter I’m in with, initially it was the shortage and there was no Vivance. Um, and may or may not have gotten some from one of the people on the air with me right now. Uh, I can’t remember who. Um, but I, um, I got a letter from my insurance company that said, um, essentially we’re no longer, um, going to cover you taking Vivance until you have failed at, and that was the, those were the words. [00:33:32] Any of these four alternatives and they gave me the alternatives. Focalin, what you’re taking Daniel, like, you know, um, Adderall, which it does hit different than Vince, even though they’re basically the same thing. Um, and like I almost don’t have the energy to be as full of rage as that actually makes me. [00:33:53] The idea that they would take a medication I’ve been taking for I think, uh, two years now. It’s worked great for me. Um, I finally have it kind of balanced into an overall sort of cocktail and then say, Hey, guess what? We’re gonna play a little game. Okay, no more Vivance. Now we’re gonna play fail at folk [00:34:11] Right? [00:34:12] Brett: that is, [00:34:12] Jeffrey: like, oh my God, those are such different drugs. Like [00:34:15] Brett: is the ADHD game, man. [00:34:17] Jeffrey: that. Yeah. It’s like you’re the worst drug dealer ever. Um, [00:34:21] Daniel: Vivance newer too, like [00:34:24] Brett: Yeah. Vivance is newer than Adderall, but it, like, it’s the same families Adderall, but it, it, uh, it, it, uh, moves through your system differently. It’s more, it’s more directly processed by the liver. Um, [00:34:38] Jeffrey: and it’s actually partly made so that you to kind of, it was an answer to the problem of snorting [00:34:44] Brett: yeah. [00:34:45] Jeffrey: Um, basically it’s like you can’t snort by band and [00:34:48] Brett: I mean, you can, but it [00:34:49] Jeffrey: can, yeah, you can, part of the reason that works is cuz it moves differently through your body. So my understanding is that Adderall just hits right away. [00:34:57] Um, and is a little bit and drops you off at the door, you know, like a few hours later, [00:35:02] Daniel: What about if you cooked it down into a gummy? [00:35:06] Brett: Uh, [00:35:07] Jeffrey: Hey. [00:35:07] Brett: a good idea. I’ll let you know. [00:35:09] Jeffrey: yeah, let us know. By the way, there’s a new cannabis shop in, in my neighborhood called Cannabis. [00:35:14] Brett: Oh my God. So Minnesota [00:35:16] Jeffrey: Minnesotan thing ever, [00:35:20] Brett: So, so we’re gonna have to take a sponsor break here. [00:35:23] Jeffrey: let’s. Sponsor: SimpliSafe [00:35:24] Brett: I’m gonna tell you about Simply Safe. Did you know that property crimes like burglar breeze and package thefts spike over the winter? That’s why now is the best time to secure your home with award-winning home security. Simply Safe is the home security system that I recommend to everybody. [00:35:43] Make it your resolution to start the new year with greater peace of mind and safety for you and your family. Here’s why we love it. Simply Save was named the best home security system of 2022 by US News and World Report, a third year in a row in an emergency 24 7. Professional monitoring agents use fast. [00:36:06] TM technology exclusively from SimpliSafe to capture critical evidence and verify the threat is real, so you can get priority police response. SimpliSafe is whole home security with advanced sensors for every room, window and door. HG security cameras for insight and out. 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There’s no safe like SimpliSafe. Do you ever look at your favorite comedians and think, wow, they’re so successful. They must be so confident. [00:37:49] Jeffrey: Every night on TikTok. Podcast Swap: Self-Esteem Party [00:37:51] Brett: right? So guess what? They’re all hanging on. Hanging on by a thread just like us. Thanks to social media. Self-esteem is a huge part of our everyday experience. The same goes for people who make us laugh. Self-esteem party is the perfect blend of comedy and honesty each week. Comedian and self-proclaimed superstar, Alana Johnson interviews one of her showbiz pals and dives right into the core of who they really are and how they feel about themselves. [00:38:23] Alana playfully guides her friends through their. Own self self-exploration while simultaneously cracking them up. Each guest reveals a different struggle with their own self-esteem, self-image, and self-care. They’re powerful, relatable conversations interspersed with Alana’s exuberant comedy. So the next time you’re feeling down on yourself, check out Self-Esteem Party. [00:38:49] And let Alana cheer you up. New episodes every tuesday@thesonarnetwork.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. [00:38:58] Jeffrey: I’m gonna talk about text expander. Get your team communicating faster so they can focus on what’s most important. With text expander your team’s knowledge is at their fingertips. Get your whole team on the same page by getting information outta silos and into the hands of everyone that needs to use it. [00:39:14] You can share your team’s knowledge across departments, so your team is sending a unified message to your customers and isn’t spending time reinventing the wheel. Here’s how it works. First, you store it, whatever it is, keep your company’s most used, emails, phrases, messaging URLs, and more, right within Text Expander. [00:39:34] Then you could share it, get your whole team access to the all the content they need to use every day. Then you expand it, deploy the contents you need with just a few keystrokes on any device across any apps you use. It is that easy. Text Expander is available on Mac, windows, Chrome, iPhone. Overtired listeners, that’s you get 20% off their first year. [00:39:56] Visit text expander.com/podcast to learn more about text expander. Okay. Ad reads, check. Grapptitude [00:40:06] Brett: Oh, we did It. Is, uh, Danny, are you participating in. [00:40:12] Daniel: Yeah, I got one. [00:40:14] Jeffrey: Oh yeah. Way to come [00:40:15] Brett: let’s, let’s kick it off with our guest. [00:40:18] Jeffrey: Okay. [00:40:18] Daniel: thank you. Um, I am not a power user of, um, anything that I’ve ever put my hands to. I would like to say that off the top. Um, but I, and also the laptop I use belongs to the school district for which I work. Um, and so I am not able to, To do fun things with it, nor would I know how. Um, but, um, I, I’m a big fan of the iOS app. [00:40:43] Two Dots. Two Dots, which is a [00:40:46] Jeffrey: Yes. [00:40:46] Daniel: It’s a, it’s a game wherein one, uh, you know, connects dots and there’s nice, like, chill music that I rarely turn on. Um, but you know, in those times that I, I think I’ve heard others refer to as interstitial times throughout the day. I like to just, you know, have little two dots going. [00:41:04] And it’s good for, you know, sometimes, you know, I might be watching a show and playing two dots at the same time, cuz that’s how my brain works. Um, especially late in the day when I’m not medicated. But, um, yeah, it’s just a nice little, it’s just a nice little game. I’m on. I’ll, I’ll tell you now. I’m on level. [00:41:18] Let’s look. Well, I, I wanna tell you, but I, I, hold on. Okay. Games over here. Click on it. I’ve been playing this bad boy for like eight years. Looks like we’re on level, um, level 2,938. [00:41:32] Brett: Jesus. [00:41:33] Daniel: So that’s [00:41:34] Jeffrey: Hap good haptic feedback that game The little vibrations. [00:41:38] Daniel: And, uh, accessibility for the, you know, I don’t, thankfully I am not, I don’t believe colorblind or if I am, it’s just a, just a touch of the colorblindness. [00:41:49] Um, but I, uh, you know, they do have a colorblind feature if, if one needs that. Yeah. [00:41:56] Jeffrey: That’s awesome. I, I, I’ve also been playing for eight years. The reason it’s not on my phone is the same reason it’s never on my phone because it’s never on my phone for more than three days, and I get so hooked and like completely like lost in it that I’m like, gotta delete this app. It’s too good. [00:42:11] Brett: I’ve never played this game. [00:42:14] Jeffrey: Oh, it’s so delightful. [00:42:16] Daniel: I wanna say too, one thing I like about it is that they don’t it, it doesn’t feel like they mess with it. You know, whereas like there were other apps that I, that I have enjoyed both games and otherwise, where it’s, you know, a couple of them are getting folded into things at the end of the year, like Dark Sky. [00:42:32] Um, and you know, I’m a big fan of Geo Guesser, but they just did something weird with that. And, you know, I just, I like for people to just leave well enough alone, you know, leave, leave, leave my, just don’t, don’t get in there and mess with my stuff. [00:42:47] Jeffrey: Exactly My, my pick is a tool by Simon Williamson who used to work for The Guardian doing sort of journalism hacker shit. Um, and once he left the guardian, Built something called Dataset, which is just an amazing, um, tool for, you know, looking at, looking over your kind of SQLite databases. But he also has a bunch of tools that help you create those databases. [00:43:12] And so he wrote a tool called s3, o c r. Um, and basically what it allowed me to do was say, Hey, there’s that bucket over there. I want you to OCR everything in it. Right? And that’s cool, but the thing that you can do next that’s amazing is create a whole index of everything there. So, I, I, I ended up with this amazing like, um, SQLite database that allows me to interact with the data in these, um, documents in a way that I didn’t never dreamed was possible. [00:43:45] So, It’s a little tool. It’s a little tool that allows you to OCR the stuff you have in your S3 bucket. And that just seems so simple, but lemme tell you, it’s not [00:43:56] Brett: So, so my, my pick y for my pick. You have to go back to Byword. Um, [00:44:04] Jeffrey: byword. B y [00:44:06] Daniel: W a [00:44:06] Brett: B Y W o R d, byword, [00:44:09] Jeffrey: app. [00:44:10] Brett: great app. It was a, it was a great, very minimalist in the spirit of TechMate. Like the first time I opened TechMate, I was a, I was a pretty brand new Mac user and I opened up TechMate and there was no toolbar, there was no menu. [00:44:28] Nothing. [00:44:29] Jeffrey: Yeah. [00:44:29] Brett: Um, and it took me, there’s this like learning curve you have to go through to realize everything is keyboard based and, and all of the features are there. You just don’t have a word esque menu bar to tell you where everything is by word was like the pretty version of that for writing markdown [00:44:50] Jeffrey: not was I still use by word, [00:44:52] Brett: byword still, still operates, still. Great app. Um, and then I found a multi markdown by Fletcher Penny, uh, which was a flavor of markdown that incorporated a bunch of things that. That standard markdown didn’t like tables and footnotes and citations, et cetera. Um, and Fletcher built an app called Mark Mult, multi markdown composer, uh, which currently version five is in beta and I am on the beta for it, and it remain. [00:45:28] These days my go-to for markdown editing, um, the engine that runs all of the text transformations and editing in multi markdown composer is being is in Envi Ultra. Um, it’s basically the same. The underpinnings of multi-market on Composer are available. In ENV Ultra, he like, he built them as sea libraries that are portable to other applications. [00:45:58] So that’s what you get when you are running ENV Ultra. But if you want the full version with basically design for longform, markdown editing, uh, multi markdown composer is my pick for the week. And it is, it is an app that I use pretty much daily. [00:46:20] Jeffrey: I need to revisit it. I, I loved it when I think I used it around version two or three [00:46:25] Brett: Yeah, it’s version five is outstanding. Uh, my favorite thing he ever added, which you cannot find in envy Ultra is table of contents. Uh, manipulation. So like you, you set up headings in your document with, you know, uh, hash marks to set like heading one, heading two, heading three. Uh, multi markdown composer in the sidebar creates, uh, a hierarchy of your headers and then you can drag one head. [00:46:59] Before another header and everything between that header and the next header will drag with it. So you can manipulate, yeah, you can reorganize your document just by dragging the headers around in the table of contents menu bar. And it has a ton of features like that. That better outstanding? [00:47:20] Jeffrey: Awesome. [00:47:21] Brett: Yep. Yep, yep. [00:47:23] Jeffrey: All right. [00:47:24] Daniel: Buy word is, uh, $5 and 89 cents. [00:47:27] Brett: Mm-hmm. [00:47:27] Jeffrey: it? Yeah. I paid it years ago and I still use it when I’m really, my brain’s really cluttered and I need to write something. I will just open up [00:47:36] Brett: Best. Best. My favorite feature of byword that does exist in multi-market on Composer and in NV Ultra is Command Option Up Arrow. Um, if you have, if your, your cursor is in a word command option, up arrow will select the word, you hit it again, it will select the sentence. You hit it again, it will select the paragraph. [00:48:00] You hit it again, it’ll select the full document. It, it expands your selection from the cursor position, [00:48:07] Jeffrey: Hit it again and it opens up, uh, chat, g p t [00:48:10] Brett: uh, no, it opens up a wormhole and then you’re fucked. [00:48:14] Daniel: But a microscopic wormhole. [00:48:16] Brett: Microscopic. Yep. [00:48:17] Jeffrey: you can believe in, you know, Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you people. [00:48:22] Daniel: Hey, [00:48:23] Brett: Oh my God. It’s over already. [00:48:25] Daniel: I’m really tired. [00:48:26] Brett: I feel like. I feel like we hit a bare minimum of Minneapolis hardcore history. [00:48:31] Jeffrey: That’s true. Can always do more [00:48:34] Daniel: Yeah, it’s probably the re listeners are probably glad for that. [00:48:41] Jeffrey: Well, listeners, I do hope you’re glad, whoever you are, because the one listener and I know is always listening is on the fucking podcast. So I’m not sure what our analytics are gonna look like. [00:48:52] Daniel: I’ll still listen. I liked the sound of my own voice. [00:48:56] Jeffrey: Me too. Me too. That’s true. Uh, you guys get some sleep, but not yet. You’re in a guest room without a bed. But like, you know, as it goes, get some. [00:49:03] Brett: Get some sleep. [00:49:04] Daniel: Get some sleep. Thanks.

Take a trip back to New Year’s 1999 and relive the horror and delight that was the Y2K scare. Plus, classic literature, hilarious antics, and some great apps of the week in the Grapptitude segment. Sponsor Cancel your unused subscriptions and save hundreds of dollars a year with Rocket Money. Visit RocketMoney.com/Overtired to get started. The next time you’re feeling down on yourself, check out Self Esteem Party and let Alana Johnston cheer you up with conversations with her show biz pals, mixing humor and vulnerability. New episodes every Tuesday at The Sonar Network or wherever you listen to podcasts! TextExpander: The tool your hosts wouldn’t want to live without. Save time typing on Mac, Windows, iOS, and the web. Overtired listeners can save 20% on their first year by visiting TextExpander.com. Show Links Y2K Survival Guide Wikipedia — The Year 2000 Problem King of the Hill – Hillenium Affinity Photo 2 Astrophotography Stacking in Affinity Photo Shooting Stars with iTelescope.net Obisidian — Canvas Pixelmator Pro Craft 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 Overtired 311 [00:00:00] Christina: [00:00:02] So how’s the weather? [00:00:02] Christina: You are listening to Overtired. I am Christina Warren. Joined as always by Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severns Gunztel Gentlemen, how are you doing this? Uh, you know, Christmas Eve? Eve, [00:00:18] Brett: So cold. [00:00:19] Jeff: I’m lucky to be alive [00:00:23] Brett: Yeah. Like I, I, I know, I know Christina’s got unseasonably cold weather in, uh, you’re in Atlanta, right? [00:00:30] Christina: I am in Atlanta. Yes. [00:00:32] Brett: And it’s like 12 degrees. [00:00:33] Christina: It’s like 12 degrees. [00:00:35] Brett: Our, we, when it gets this cold in Minnesota, we, we go by wind chill. Um, because that’s all that matters, how fast we will your face freeze when you step out the door. Uh, we, we have, [00:00:46] Jeff: Fuck that. How fast will you die if you step out the [00:00:50] Brett: Jeff and I have negative 30 degrees right now. [00:00:54] Jeff: It’s beautiful. [00:00:54] Brett: It’s crazy. [00:00:55] Christina: So, so, [00:00:56] Brett: warm up today. It’s gonna get up to negative 26. [00:01:00] So looking forward to that. [00:01:03] Christina: it’s only the windshield here is only five degrees. So, uh, or, or, or is is, is actually, sorry. I was gonna say is actually five degrees. So, so we’re not as bad as you. [00:01:12] Jeff: but that’s [00:01:12] Brett: frigid. Nonetheless. That is still, that’s still frostbite in about 15 minutes. [00:01:18] Jeff: What I [00:01:19] Christina: we’re not used to this, this sort of, you know, weather, [00:01:23] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what Jeff was saying. Like, we, us Midwesterners, we, we talk about like our, our, our cold and our snow and everything, but we have the infrastructure to deal [00:01:36] Jeff: the constitutions. [00:01:37] Brett: have, we have years of dealing with this. We’re, yeah, we’re, we’re used to it. This is almost expected for us, but like the rest of the country now is seeing whether that they’re not prepared [00:01:48] Jeff: It’s scary. [00:01:49] Christina: Yeah. So I left, I left Seattle on, um, what day was it? Sunday. No, Tuesday left Seattle on Tuesday and, uh, today’s Friday. And, [00:02:00] uh, it was like snowing, like right as I was leaving it to the point that our flight was delayed about half an hour because it started snowing fairly heavily and then we, they had to de-ice the, the tarmac had let us get off and whatnot. [00:02:12] Christina: But even just the, the, the light, you know, pattern of snow is just so, such a weird comparison to snow in New York where, you know, the streets are salted and people are used to it. And the way that they design the roads and stuff are usually so that like, if it snows, you’ll be able to walk on it. Okay. And, you know, I have, I’m like, I have this cobblestone type of walkway outside of my apartment complex on this like one way street, which is in no way conducive cuz this has happened before when it snowed or, or iced over. [00:02:48] Christina: Like you could fall on your ass and, and, and really hurt yourself. Oh yeah. Or. Like the University of Washington, this girl slipped on black ice and died, and they didn’t have any [00:03:00] signs up. So her parents sued the fuck out of the school, and I hope they got every single dollar in the universe because that was 100% the university’s fault. [00:03:08] Christina: Like, fuck them for real, for not having signs up or anything when there was black ice. Also, Seattle, I’m gonna bitch about this for a second. They refuse to ice the, the sidewalks and it’s, it now it snows. They’re usually in February. And, and, and [00:03:22] Brett: do you mean salt? The sidewalks? [00:03:24] Christina: Yeah, they refuse to, [00:03:25] Brett: You said ice the sidewalks. I feel like [00:03:28] Christina: sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So sorry. [00:03:29] Christina: They refuse to salt the sidewalks. Wh the ice. Sorry about that. So they refuse to ice, uh, salt the, the sidewalks when, when they’re iced over because they’re worried about the fucking fish. And like, here’s the thing, for one or two days out of the year, Fuck the fish. Dude, I don’t give a shit. People are dying. [00:03:48] Christina: No, when, when, when, when? When a girl, when a girl at UDub dies because they don’t have the proper way to, you know, de-ice stuff. Like, fuck that. Like, honestly, [00:04:00] like fuck that forever. I, I, I, I, like, I, the, the environmentalists can come after me, but the rest of the freaking country that also has big fishing things has figured out how to get rid of ice. [00:04:10] Christina: I mean, again, Midwest, you know, you’ve got a lot of lakes and stuff there. New York, the whole, like East coast, they ice shit. So like, fuck the fish, man. Like they will adapt or it’ll be three days and it’s not the end of the world, but maybe like, maybe 19 year old girls won’t slip and die. [00:04:27] Jeff: This is [00:04:27] Brett: I finally bought crampons this year. Do you know what crampons. [00:04:31] Christina: I do, I do. [00:04:32] Jeff: so much. That sounds like tampon [00:04:33] Brett: I know it’s, it’s a weird word, cramp and tampon and like, it just has all these like weird associations. But for anyone who doesn’t know crampons are, uh, cleats, metal cleats for your shoes. And, and I got some that are, they’re rubber and I, you just slip ’em on as if they were rubbers, not like condoms, but like, I know it’s so many. [00:04:56] Jeff: It’s a really problematic topic. [00:04:57] Brett: Yeah, but like I can, I can [00:05:00] flip ’em on before I go for a walk with the dog who now refuses, like, we get her all suited up, we get socks and boots on her. We put two coats on her, get her all bundled up, get her out into the middle of the driveway. We get her out to the driveway and she just plants, she plants her her paws and refuses she’ll. [00:05:18] Brett: Like she does a hard look away when she doesn’t wanna, when she wants to let you know, like she does not like what’s happening. She hard turns away from you. And she does that in the middle of the driveway. And I’ve tried like just getting her, just getting her to walk a little ways cuz she won’t poop unless she walks. [00:05:36] Brett: So if she doesn’t walk, then she just barks all night and like goes outside for like 30 seconds and then she’s like, no, I gotta let me back in. So I’ve been trying and we, it takes like 10 minutes to get her all suited up and to get my park on and everything. And then she just plants her feet in the driveway and will not get, she won’t walk. [00:05:56] Brett: It’s uh, I get it. I do, but it’s, [00:06:00] it’s been frustrating last night to try to get her moving so she would poop. I went to the basement and Elle stood upstairs and we called her back and forth and gave her a treat on each end just to get her to run up and down the stairs, uh, to try to try to move that poop out. [00:06:16] Brett: And, and she did it about four times and then she just, I called her and instead she just ran to the couch and just like buried her head in the couch. She’s like, I’m done with this [00:06:27] Christina: She’s like, I’m, I’m not. She’s like, I don’t like the cold. I’m not into this. I was not, I was not, I was [00:06:32] Brett: into the stair climber [00:06:33] Jeff: You are reminding me of all of my friends who have this experience but then also are like, fuck no kids . It’s like really? It’s a lot easier. [00:06:44] Christina: See? And I’m like, fuck no to both, right? I’m like, I’m, I’m like, I’m like, I, I, I love animals and, uh, uh, some, some kids are cute, but I’m like, absolutely not. [00:06:55] Brett: Yeah, I could, I could honestly live without the dog. Um, [00:07:00] I, I [00:07:00] Jeff: I was gonna ask you, you’ve got both and like, cuz my thought when I hear that also is like, that’s why cats, but you’ve got both so you [00:07:06] Brett: Yeah, no, I, I’m, I’m a cat guy. Uh, it’s el I had Emma the pit bull and I loved her dearly and she gave me so much love, like she was worth. And she, she really just, other than being dog aggressive, um, like she was fine with any person, especially love children and just like would curl up with you and love you. [00:07:28] Brett: And she was not a pain in the ass. But Lulu, who, who is Elle’s dog? I mean our dog now we’ve been together long enough. I have to take some ownership of this dog. But, um, but Lulu does, she, she doesn’t lick. Like I love when dogs lick my face. I know a lot of people fucking hate that. Uh, [00:07:48] Jeff: this, are we leading into your, um, rocket money ad [00:07:51] Brett: But, but it, it, that feels like love to me. [00:07:54] Brett: And, uh, and, and she doesn’t do that. And she’s very just [00:08:00] needy and prissy and also dog aggressive. Like we can’t take her to the dog part cuz she’ll fight everybody. And I don’t, it’s just not as much fun as Emma. And if I had to choose right now, I would 100% take my cats. [00:08:15] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. No, we, I was, I was gonna say I’m a dog person, but, but part of that is I’ve, I, well, I’m allergic to cats, not super, super bad. Um, my dad is like, incredibly allergic and like, like, like walks into a house where the cat might not even be there, but if there’s any whiff of the, the dander at all, then his face and his fingers and his glands and everything starts swelling. [00:08:43] Christina: And, um, uh, like, like, uh, you know, probably be the thing. Or he could probably go into like a, uh, um, [00:08:50] Brett: Anaphylactic shock. Yeah. [00:08:52] Christina: Yeah, if you were around too many cats, uh, honestly, which makes it funnier that like the one time our family did have a cat is because my [00:09:00] sister wanted one. This is before I was born. And, uh, and he, he let her have a cat and then I guess she, you know, like everybody realized that it was just not for the best and, and something happened to that cat. [00:09:10] Christina: I don’t know. But, um, so I grew up with dogs, so I, I’m not as comfortable with cats even putting some of the allergy stuff aside, which for me is mostly just like itchy eyes. Um, [00:09:22] Brett: tried hairless Cats? [00:09:25] Christina: but again, I’ve never been around cats that much. So cuz my, my whole thing too is that like, I, I think that personality-wise, there are parts of me that would appeal to me, and then there are parts to me where I’m like, oh shit, no, they jump on things and they get into stuff and like, [00:09:40] Brett: love it. [00:09:42] Christina: and I’m like, and I’m like, oh hell no, like, [00:09:45] Brett: I love watching a cat get up on a bookshelf and just like test things to see what will move. And as soon as something budges a little, knock it on the floor, like I get that, like I that like, I’m like, I feel you man. I get that . So if it moves, knock [00:10:00] it on the floor. [00:10:01] Christina: Yeah, and, and then, then I’m like, I’m like, what the fuck are you doing, man? I just spent all this time organizing this or like say outta my jewelry box. So. [00:10:09] Brett: that’s what you get for organizing. I I get it. I get it. [00:10:14] Jeff: That’s why I want, want a monkey. [00:10:15] Mental Health Corner… Christmas is coming [00:10:15] Brett: so for the mental health corner, I think we should mix it up with kind of Christmas plans. Um, we got a couple days till Christmas. I know all of us have very different situations when it comes to Christmas, so, uh, for me, my Christmas plans are pretty tied to my mental health right now, , and, and so I figured we could combine the two. [00:10:37] Brett: But, uh, Christina, what are. What are your Christmas slash mental health plans? [00:10:43] Christina: So I’m with my family in Atlanta. I had Covid last week. Um, and that was man, like, so my big, my big kind of takeaway on that was, um, I was just really tired. Uh, but it knocked my, knocked me on my [00:11:00] ass. Like it really, really did. I, I, I thought that I had it, uh, in January and I might have, but in that case it was not like this, like this, whatever, this strain, whatever this latest strain is for me. [00:11:13] Christina: I had a, and here’s the thing, I wouldn’t have even known that I was positive, but my mom unknowingly had it. So did my dad. And I was like, well, I’m just gonna take a test. And my first test was positive, but I’d messed it up. And so I was like, well, I cured the test. Not a big deal. I took another one. I waited. [00:11:31] Christina: I thought I’d waited the 15 minutes and it was negative. I was like, okay, cool. I’m fine. And then two days later I was looking at the bathroom counter. and I looked at the test again and I realized there was a very faint red line. I was like, oh shit. And then I took a test again and I was immediately red. [00:11:48] Christina: And then Grant, I got it from him because he was sick first. And uh, and, and he was immediately positive and, and he was negative. I think as of like Sunday that I think it took me until, or Saturday it took me into like [00:12:00] Monday to be negative, but I was just like knocked on my ass for that. So, um, my parents likewise have been sick and so Christmas here are slash holiday plan. [00:12:09] Christina: So I’m in Atlanta, um, with my family, but um, everybody’s just feels like a week behind because we all got knocked on our asses for a week. So, um, but the good news is, is this’ll be, not baby’s first Christmas, but it’ll be the first one that he is a little more aware of, cuz. [00:12:28] Brett: for sure. [00:12:30] Christina: Right. Cause he’s, he’s 20 months now, so, um, we have a, a Thomas, the, the tank Engine right on toy coming today that also has a track so he can both ride on it, um, like, you know, through the house or through the backyard. [00:12:44] Christina: But there’s also like a circular track that it goes around too. So [00:12:49] Jeff: is what it’s like when you get a job. [00:12:52] Christina: Exactly. So, so, because, well, he really likes trains. He really likes trains and I wanted to get him a car of some sort. And then I saw this [00:13:00] Thomas thing and I was like, oh, this is actually even better because he is so little. [00:13:02] Christina: Um, you know, like maybe get him the G wagon for a second birthday, but, and this way he can like, use it indoors in outdoors. So now that the fun part will be, you know, getting him all kinds of toys and stuff and in watching that unfold, cuz the rest of us have just been kind of on our asses. So that’s me. [00:13:24] Brett: All right. [00:13:27] Jeff: Uh, you know, I don’t have a lot of emotional, uh, sort of. I don’t know what chaos or trauma or anything around Christmas, um, like so many people I know and love do. Um, so we, every other year we stay home and, uh, on the flip side, we go to Indianapolis, where my wife’s parents are. And, um, I can just say I just love staying home. [00:13:53] Jeff: I actually love being in her parents’ house. They’re great, they’re wonderful people. Um, fun to be around. Uh, but [00:14:00] I just love to be home. I, um, I, uh, I come from on one side, a gigantic family, gigantic Catholic family. So we’ll go there for Christmas Eve and there’ll be about 45 people there. Um, and I find that exhausting. [00:14:13] Jeff: Uh, it’s fine. It’s not terrible, but it’s exhausting. Uh, but I love a quiet Christmas morning. That’s like my favorite thing in the world. Uh, and, and we get that, get that all to ourselves this time. So it’s always hard to say out loud cuz I, it’s like, Hey everybody, listen. I like coming there. I like coming here, but I love, love being alone with my family on Christmas Eve. [00:14:35] Jeff: So I’m looking forward to that. Um, and, uh, yeah, I don’t know. That’s, I don’t have mu I don’t have much to report on that front. [00:14:43] Brett: All right. Okay. Um, I, uh, my, my whole family is in town, like my brother, my sister, my parents, all of their children. Um, and I am, my brother’s been [00:15:00] in town since like Tuesday and I haven’t seen him yet cuz I, I’m not comfortable around my brother. Um, I like his kids, but I don’t need to see a lot of them. Um, I, I have a lot of. [00:15:15] Brett: Weird emotions around family in general. Um, I like my sister and her family better, but still not like, Hey, let’s all go out and get manicures or whatever. I don’t know what people do with their families. Um, [00:15:33] Jeff: pedicure for sure. [00:15:35] Christina: They, they, well, well, if, if you’re my family, my, my, me and my mom and my dad watched Little Lo Lord, um, uh, Fon Roy, uh, Fale Roy, whatever the movie is called last night. So, and then we’re watching Christmas movies all day today. So that’s, that, that’s what we do. But I, I, I feel you, you’re, you’re, you’re not wanting to, you, you like your sister, but that’s not your, [00:15:56] Brett: we don’t have any tradition of watching movies. We will, [00:16:00] I will go over there Christmas morning and I will spend probably two, two and a half hours. Being inundated by small children and, uh, dealing with my brother’s sarcasm and judgemental nature, and my mom’s, uh, tactless interrogations. [00:16:21] Brett: And, uh, it’ll be, it’ll be fun. Um, my girlfriend of like six years now, um, she, her parents are both deceased. Um, and, and speaking of Textless interrogations, my mom, like the first time she hung out with Al alone , she’s like, so at what age, what age were you orphaned, [00:16:45] Christina: Oh my God. [00:16:46] Brett: the weird, the weirdest way to ask that question. [00:16:50] Jeff: Oh my [00:16:51] Christina: one of the, also like one of the shittiest I have to say, like, just, come on mom. I’ve read like, what the fuck? [00:16:58] Brett: is her mom died on like [00:17:00] Christmas Eve. So for her and her sister, it is. [00:17:04] Christina: this is, yeah, [00:17:05] Brett: Especially for her sister. Her sister dealt with that. Like Elle was the one who was like hospice care for their mother. Um, she, she had a lot more of a chance, I think to um, come to terms with and grieve like in the moment. [00:17:24] Brett: Uh, whereas her sister was a little more removed from it. And, and Christmas always fucks her up a little bit. Um, it’s, it’s gotten better, but, uh, but I don’t have any in-laws to visit, you know, I only have my own family that I have a very contentious relationship with, [00:17:42] Christina: right now. How now, how, how, how does L deal with being around your family? Because I know like [00:17:48] Brett: she does her best, but my parents make her angry cuz she can see. In our interaction, she can see how they fuck me up. Like she can see, she can see like [00:18:00] all the things that are painful for me. Like she sees where they come from and she’s very cordial, friendly. Um, she makes a real effort cuz she knows my relationship with my parents as important to me to some extent. [00:18:14] Brett: Um, and she will make the effort to, to be friends with them, but we will never go out of our way to hang out with them [00:18:25] Christina: No, no, that, no, that makes total sense. Yeah, cuz so my grant and I, it’s sort of a similar thing. I mean, not that his, uh, well only his father is, has passed now. Um, his mom as, as I talked with the last episode I was on, um, is not doing well, although, um, they are all together right now, um, in, in Florida. Um, but, um, I grew up like, not to say my, my family life was perfect because it certainly was not, but it’s a lot more like normal and, uh, or not normal, but like stereotypical. [00:18:57] Christina: Like, I, I don’t think anybody has normal families, but like I have a much [00:19:00] more stereotypical like, you know, two parent household thing and whatnot and, and, and my parents, like everybody’s parents fucks them up like mine, to be honest. Like, you know, [00:19:08] Brett: That’s course of life. Sure. [00:19:10] Christina: other things fucked me up more than my parents did. [00:19:13] Christina: But, um, so for him it, it, it’s like this, this weird thing where like if I, when I have to like be around like his family, sometimes it’s the same thing where like I see all of his traumas and stuff and I’m like, okay, how do we, how do we deal with this? You know? And, and, and wanting to be supportive. But so I, I totally understand. [00:19:31] Christina: Like, um, and then, uh, yeah, and I, but I definitely understand too the experience. Like my immediate family, I don’t have this, but, so my extended family, I definitely are similar to, to, to you Brett, where I’m just like, I don’t care anything. Like, at least with some of them anyway, I’m like, I need to hold my tongue or, and this might be different from you cuz like, you do want, like a relationship with, with your family. [00:19:56] Christina: There’s some members of my extended family who I do not give a shit. I [00:19:59] Brett: Oh [00:20:00] my, my entire mom’s side of the family I haven’t talked to in 20 years. [00:20:04] Christina: But like, but, but I have to, but, but, but I have to see them sometimes and then I have to like, you know, put on the face and I’m just gonna but it, but internally I’m like, you literally mean nothing to me. So this is awkward now because they’re are judgmental and, you know, like the type of people who [00:20:21] Brett: Yep. [00:20:22] Christina: make, make it difficult through that process. [00:20:24] Christina: I’m just, I’m just fortunate enough that, that my, uh, my parents are, are, are good. And my mom has even stopped asking me if I wanna go to church. So, [00:20:33] Brett: My two [00:20:33] Christina: I appreci. [00:20:36] Brett: they, they, for years, they’re like, do you want to at least come to like Christmas Eve service with us? And I did one year, probably like 15 years ago, I went to church with them and I walked out. Like it was so uncomfortable for me to be in an evangelical free church. And, and the way it made me feel was so awkward that I had to leave, um, , [00:21:00] I got angry. [00:21:02] Brett: Um, but yeah. Uh, I hit a soc, I hit like, I have a social time limit. Um, I’m really good and gregarious, even for about half an hour. Um, if I am forced into social situations for more than an hour, I get sarcastic and a little bit grumpy and mean. Um, and then the case of my family, that means like lashing out and saying like, intentionally saying of offensive things, uh, to try to like push buttons. [00:21:32] Brett: And that do, like, it doesn’t happen until I’ve like hit my time limit. Um, and Elsa actually, she understands like what’s happening and will like work to get me out of a situation if she senses. Like I’ve hit that like whiplash moment where I’m gonna start, start lashing out at people. But anyway, yeah, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be interesting. [00:21:58] Brett: It’ll be over soon. We [00:22:00] got a couple days. [00:22:01] Classic Lit [00:22:01] Jeff: I feel like we shouldn’t let this, uh, segment end without, uh, the Tolstoy line from the beginning of Anna Carina. All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. the opening lines of that book, which I recently started rereading [00:22:19] Christina: I, so I can’t remember if I read it or not. I don’t, I might, I think I would’ve remembered that line. So I guess I did not read that in high school, but that’s amazing. And now I kind of wanna read the book to be honest. [00:22:30] Jeff: Well, also, even if, and anybody out there that did read it in high school, I, I did not read it in high school. I read it about two years ago, um, at like 46 or whatever that is. It’s like, it, it’s, it’s, it’s at a point of adulthood that you need to read that book. That’s where it really hits beautifully and wonderfully. [00:22:46] Jeff: Like, I don’t understand, I think of all the people I know that read that in high school and I think of that book and I’m like, how did you even have any kind of resonance at all with any of this shit? [00:22:54] Brett: Yeah, I tried to read it. I thought I tried read in fifth grade because I thought it would be [00:23:00] like smart, like I was, I was, I wanted to be smart, so I was like, I’m gonna read Tolstoy and I, it, it sevki and Tolstoy. I just, I I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. [00:23:14] Jeff: At [00:23:14] Christina: Well, you were 11. [00:23:15] Jeff: Love it. Yeah. [00:23:16] Christina: were 11, so I mean, like, I, I did dickens then. Like Dickens you could do, right? Like I, I, I did Dickens then. Absolutely. Dickens is perfect for that stuff. Get some great [00:23:26] Brett: I was, I was really into like Anthony Burgess at the time. A mouthful of [00:23:33] Jeff: I read nothing, nothing on my own. Uh, all through high school and elementary school except Hammer the gods, the, the largely falsified biography of Fled Zeppelin. Um, I, you know, the reason I, what, what I did that worked so beautifully is like, I legitimately wanted to read all these kind of classics that seemed like just part of the cannon, that for some ridiculous reason, everybody was only reading in high school. [00:23:58] Jeff: And so I, I initially [00:24:00] wanted to just, I wanted to read Warren Peace really bad. I’d started it every New Year’s resolution for three years. And finally I put out ano, I didn’t say Warren Peace, but I put out a thing on Facebook. I’m like, who wants to read Tolstoy short stories? It was a, it was a manipulation. [00:24:13] Jeff: Uh, cuz I figured anyone who enjoyed the short stories, I could, I could get him at the right moment and be like, how about we do war and peace next? And sure enough, man, this group is such a beautifully random group. Um, and we read Warren Peace just over the course of a year. We took our time, we just like a little bit at a time, right? [00:24:30] Jeff: And then we were like, this is a great concept. And so we did fucking, um, we did Moby Dick, we did Crime and Punishment and a Karenina Frankenstein. Amazing. Frankenstein is [00:24:41] Christina: Oh, Frankenstein’s so good. [00:24:42] Jeff: Oh my God. It’s just [00:24:45] Christina: now. [00:24:45] Brett: Mary Shelly and have you guys read other Mary Shelly’s stuff? Like she’s brilliant. She’s like un under underrated, like for sure [00:24:56] Christina: Oh, 100% agreed. No. So no, Frankenstein is great and, and a [00:25:00] lot of those books are good. Now here’s my question for you, cuz this is the one that, and I’ve read a lot and, and I, I, I consider, I don’t consider myself like to be like a upscale, whatever, reader, but I read a lot and I read a lot of different things. [00:25:12] Christina: I have never been able to get through Ulysses and I have [00:25:14] Jeff: No, it’s on our list to try, [00:25:16] Christina: but, but, but, but, but Joyce kicks my ass every single time and, and I, like Ulysses just fucking kicks my ass. [00:25:27] Jeff: Right. Well, and I, [00:25:28] Christina: been able to get through it. [00:25:30] Jeff: and I want to be clear here. I’m not talking to you as like a clean fingernail, uh, liberal who’s done all the right things. I did not graduate high school, so I’m like, I’m, uh, I’m, I’m not going. Some people react that way. I was like, I’m not going for social capital. Like, I really wanted to read these books and they were all phenomenal. [00:25:45] Jeff: Now the experience I’m having, I’m curious if you guys have had What’s that? Go ahead, Christina. [00:25:50] Christina: No. I was gonna say now I haven’t gotten through Ulysses. I did read Finnegan’s Week and I liked [00:25:54] Brett: Oh my God, that’s a hard one. [00:25:55] Jeff: I’d love, I [00:25:56] Christina: It’s a hard one, but, but, [00:25:57] Brett: it’s a hard [00:25:58] Christina: but I, but I, I was able to get through Finnegan’s [00:26:00] Week, but Ulysses was the one where I was just like, I can’t, [00:26:02] Jeff: Two big ones for me that I’d like to read are Ulysses. Ulysses, and then obviously completely different era, infinite Jest. Um, [00:26:10] Brett: Oh, I haven’t read Infinite. Just [00:26:12] Jeff: because it’s [00:26:13] Brett: parents bought, my parents bought one of those, uh, like bookshelf, uh, like all the classics, right. And it looks like an encyclopedia set. And it has like, in gold, gold lettering, the names of all the authors. And I worked my way through that as a kid and a lot of, like, that was where I discovered how fucked up, um, Allison Wonderland. [00:26:35] Brett: Was the, like the actual book and Wizard of Oz that was in there, like the original version, like the actual book of Wizard of Oz was pretty fucked up. Like especially when you’re, especially when you’re like nine, 10 years old, like reading, reading obvious drug references through and through. Yeah. [00:26:55] Christina: totally, totally. And then, and then, and, and I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s ever been decided or not. [00:27:00] I’ve always taken the interpretation that, uh, the Allison Winterland guy was a total pedophile. Um, I don’t, I don’t think there’s any, I don’t, I don’t think there’s any interpretation. [00:27:09] Christina: I don’t think there’s any interpretation you can have of, of that book and of his life that is not, he was a complete pedophile. Um, [00:27:16] Brett: me that way as a nine year old, but I, I believe if I read it, if I read it as an adult, I would probably be like, oh shit. [00:27:24] Christina: well, I was in high school when I read it, and, and I, I was like, okay, this is, something’s not right here. And this is before everybody was like, You know, having the really problematic discourse we have now, you know, about like the groomer that’s groomer that No, like, I’m sorry. Like I read Alice Wonderland, I know there are a lot of people who defend Lewis Carroll, but I’m like, [00:27:46] Jeff: You’re not [00:27:46] Christina: bros fucked up bro was fucked up and in, in a way that wasn’t like, you know, ed Garlin Poe marrying his 13 year old cousin, which gross but not like out of context for the time. [00:27:58] Christina: Like, that was not an [00:28:00] uncommon thing to happen in, in the 18 hundreds. Whereas like Louis Carroll, I’m like, I don’t know bro. But yeah, you’re right. A lot of those kids books like Alice, uh, not Alison, no Wizard Oz, cuz that was a whole series of books. Right? And, um, [00:28:14] Brett: I, I read it as, I read it as one piece. I don’t know if it was [00:28:17] Christina: well, no, no, no. But they [00:28:18] Brett: serial. [00:28:19] Christina: no, no, no. [00:28:20] Christina: They had, they had one and then there were subsequent books [00:28:22] Brett: Oh, okay. Yeah, I [00:28:24] Christina: And, and, and so, and, and, and if you’ve ever seen, uh, return to Oz, which is the ill faded, uh, Francis Ford Coppola produced, uh, sequel, uh, with the far bulk, uh, from the eighties, um, you see how fucked up some of it gets. And, and that to me probably like, was more true to the, to the books than, um, than the the 1939, uh, MGM Classic [00:28:52] Jeff: You know something I realized, I, I had no idea that, um, Frankenstein was not the monster, [00:29:00] you know what I mean? Because that’s how, that’s how it became. But, and, and so I was reading Frankenstein and I’m thinking about all the ways in which he’s been, or Frankenstein’s been represented as Frankenstein, the monster, not the doctor. [00:29:11] Jeff: But then I realized Motley Crue was telling me all along, cuz they say he’s the one they called Dr. Feelgood, he’s gonna be your Frankenstein. So they’re telling me Frankenstein is the doctor. Right? How many times did I listen to that song And I still didn’t get it. I also never knew what happened at the end of Moby Dick. [00:29:28] Jeff: Uh, uh, the rest of my book club was laughing cause I’d be like, don’t spoil it. I don’t know what happens with the whale . But anyway, I, I just wanna say that having a group to do that with, um, was just incredible. And, and for, for that reason, I’ve read all these books that I always wanted to read and now I’m reading them the second time through and I’m finding for the first time, cause I’ve never read a book twice, I’m finding how much, um, Enjoyment. [00:29:54] Jeff: I get out of reading a book when the part of me that’s worrying and wondering about what’s gonna happen is [00:30:00] just not there. I already know what’s gonna happen, so I can just like go for the ride. And I’m finding that amazing. I know everyone else figured that out, probably in college or earlier, but it’s new for me. [00:30:10] Brett: So, uh, speaking of classic literature, I would like to take a quick sponsor break. [00:30:17] Christina: Yes. [00:30:20] Sponsor: Rocket Money [00:30:20] Brett: Uh, there, that is not actually a good segue because my, my read for Rocket Money is anything but classic literature. But a while back I subscribed to the robot Hallmark channel, uh, which is like BattleBots, but with Meat cutes. And, uh, every synopsis starts with Sparks fly when, uh, it was fun for a little while, but I, I got bored with the repetitive storylines, like it’s always the same plot with different robots and varying professions. [00:30:47] Brett: So I decided next month I’ll cancel it, but then I forgot and I kept paying for it for seven years. Um, I need a quick way to see all my subscriptions and cancel the ones I’m done with. That’s why I love using [00:31:00] Rocket Money now, formerly known as truebill. The app shows you all your subscriptions in one place and then cancels for you whatever. [00:31:07] Brett: You don’t still want. Rocket Money can even find subscriptions you didn’t know you were paying for. You may even find out you’ve been double charged for a subscription. I did actually find that out. Uh, I, I accidentally signed up in two different ways for back Blaze. Um, uh, I was paying a monthly and a yearly subscription and Rocket Money helped me find that. [00:31:29] Brett: Um, to cancel a subscription, all you have to do is press cancel and rocket money takes care of the. Get rid of useless subscriptions with Rocket Money now. Go to Rocket money.com/ Overtired. Seriously, it could save you hundreds of dollars per year. That’s Rocket money.com/ Overtired. Cancel your unnecessary subscriptions right now@rocketmoney.com slash Overtired. [00:31:54] Brett: If you’re no longer interested in sappy robot love stories, stop paying for them. [00:32:00] Check out Rocket money.com/ Overtired. [00:32:04] Jeff: Hmm, man, you got a whole life I don’t know about until you [00:32:09] Brett: Yeah, [00:32:09] Christina: I was gonna say [00:32:10] Brett: it’s, uh, it’s rich. It’s a rich [00:32:12] Jeff: some, for some people it, it takes booze to loosen ’em up a little bit, but for you, it just takes a sponsorship [00:32:18] Christina: it just takes sponsorship. Also though, like I feel like we do need like the robot, uh, hallmark channel though. [00:32:26] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:27] Brett: Well, so last time I made it about robot dominatrix is, but it turns out that’s actually a fucking thing. And, and some people didn’t know if I was joking or not. And so I tried, I tried to find, [00:32:41] Jeff: You googled this one a few times. [00:32:43] Brett: find the line where people would, it would obviously be a joke. Um, I did not actually Google Robot, robot Hallmark channel. [00:32:50] Brett: It does feel like that might be a thing that exists. Um, maybe in Japan. I [00:32:56] Jeff: I bet, I bet nobody’s asking ftx dude from him anymore, and I bet he’s [00:33:00] willing to try to, at least on the, on the sly, give some out [00:33:06] Brett: So, uh, uh, Jeff, do you wanna, who wants to do the, uh, the promo swap this week? [00:33:13] Jeff: Oh, doesn’t matter to me. I can do it. [00:33:16] Brett: Rock on. [00:33:21] Jeff: Yeah, no. Okay. [00:33:23] Christina: I like it. [00:33:24] Jeff: Thank you very much. [00:33:25] Christina: I’m a fan. [00:33:26] Promo Swap: Self Esteem Party [00:33:26] Jeff: Um, promo swap, self-esteem party. Do you ever look at your favorite comedians and think, wow, they’re so successful, they must be so confident? [00:33:35] Jeff: Well, guess what? They’re all hanging by a thread just like us. I would actually say in my experience, more than [00:33:41] Brett: Yeah, [00:33:42] Jeff: um, thanks to social media. Self-esteem is a huge part of our everyday experience. The same goes for people who make us laugh. Self-Esteem Party is the perfect blend of comedy and honesty Each week, comedian and self-proclaimed superstar, Alana Johnston, self [00:34:00] proclaim. [00:34:00] Jeff: That’s nice. I’m gonna start putting that in my deal. Self-Proclaimed Superstar interviews one of her show Biz Pals and dives right into the core of who they really are and how they feel about themselves. Alana playfully guides her friends through their own self-exploration while simultaneously cracking them up. [00:34:17] Jeff: Each guest reveals a different struggle with their own self-esteem, self-image, and self-care, and their powerful, relatable conversations interspersed with Alana’s exuberant comedy. So next time you’re feeling down on yourself, check out Self-Esteem Party and let Alana cheer you up. New episodes every tuesday@thesonarnetwork.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. [00:34:41] Brett: Thanks, Jeff. Actually, like I, I looked that podcast up before we started recording and I didn’t have time to listen to an episode, but it is one that I added to my podcaster because it looks, it, it, it does look both funny and I feel [00:35:00] like it’s a lot like our mental Health Corner , we’re, it’s a combination of, of things that make you laugh and things that, that you can relate to, so it looked good. [00:35:09] Jeff: Yeah, [00:35:10] Christina: No, it looks great. I really do hope that that, uh, um, offspring self-esteem is the theme song though, because that would be really, really good. [00:35:18] Brett: Did you ever hear Kay Flay do that? [00:35:21] Christina: Yes, we talked about it. I know. Yeah, we talked about it. It was fantastic. I was actually, [00:35:26] Brett: to that song that I never appreciated before [00:35:30] Jeff: awesome. [00:35:31] Christina: Play is just fantastic and she, she’s, she’s a, a, a bright discovery for me, so yeah, big fan. [00:35:37] Brett: you saying that. She’s a favorite of mine. Um, Christina, do you want to do the text expander? [00:35:43] Sponsor: TextExpander [00:35:43] Christina: I will definitely do the text expander read. So get your team communicating faster with a text expander and keep your team’s knowledge at their fingertips. Put information in the hands of your team outside of silos. Your team could be sending a unified message to your [00:36:00] customers without reinventing the wheel. [00:36:02] Christina: So here’s how it works. Store it. It means you can keep your company’s most used. Emails, phrases, messaging URLs, and more, right? Within text expander. Share it. Get your whole team access to all the content they need to use every day. And. Expand it. Deploy the content you need with just a few keystrokes on any device across any apps you use. [00:36:25] Christina: It’s that easy. Text Expander is available on Mac, windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad, Overtired. Listeners get 20% off their first year. You can visit text expander.com/podcast for more info. That’s text expander.com/podcast. We are huge fans of Text Expander here at Overtired, and so whether you wanna use this, you know, individually or I think actually in a team scenario, this would be a great way of like having kind of a wiki kind of, uh, uh, but with everyone having access to it don’t have to, to, you know, remember what [00:37:00] little things needed to type in. [00:37:01] Christina: And, and Access Text Expander is, uh, is great for that. Text expander.com/podcast. [00:37:08] Y2K and You [00:37:08] Brett: Awesome. Cool. All right, so we got, we got a couple, a couple of topics. Uh, Jeff, Jeff has a book we do need to talk about. Um, I feel like that that might be the next, next topic on the list here. [00:37:24] Jeff: Yeah. I have, um, in my hands, I bought this in, I bought this in spring of 1999. It is a little booklet published by the Ney Reader where I would later serve as editor, but God, it was a lot wackier then, um, , and it is the Y2K Citizens Action Guide. First of all. Each of you, give me a little something of your memory of Y2K or the, the, the approach to it. [00:37:51] Jeff: Was it on your mind? Were you worried? Were you blowing it off? [00:37:55] Brett: I was excited. Like I was an anarchist kid. I was [00:38:00] looking forward to, uh, chaos, the world falling apart, and I was just going to drink and sort my way through it, and it was gonna be a really good time. And I was, I was a little disappointed. [00:38:15] Jeff: Did you worry about your own little computers [00:38:18] Christina: Oh. [00:38:18] Brett: I mean, no [00:38:20] Jeff: Me neither. [00:38:21] Christina: No, I did not. And, and I, I’d also, I’d set forward the clock a couple of times and saw that nothing happened. And yeah, I also even like reset like the CMOs like thing. At one point I was like, this is not a big deal. Um, but I do remember like my aunt, um, uh, who, who’s sadly, um, uh, no longer with us, but she, um, worked at a csx, the, the train company as a software engineer. [00:38:46] Christina: And she, uh, was, uh, I mean, she, she switched into other languages, but she got her start programming in Cobalt. [00:38:54] Brett: Yep. [00:38:54] Christina: so, and so her, her skills were very much in demand and like the train company, you know, [00:39:00] like they needed to update a billion old mainframes. And so my underlying like memory of that honestly was just like how much she was working around the clock to update all of those like mainframe systems from the seventies. [00:39:15] Christina: You know, to be able to, to accept, you know, for um, letter, uh, uh, for, for, for, for character rather, um, dates. But yeah, I mean it’s sort of weird cause what’s, what’s the next big one that’s gonna happen? It’s like 2036 or whatever, [00:39:29] Brett: Oh, I thought it was 30. 33. Is there one in 2026? [00:39:33] Christina: 2036 I believe is there, there’s a date problem. Um, and uh, cuz I think that there’s like a, yeah. Uh, cuz there’s like another, uh, the 2038 problem that, that’s what it is because it’s another bug in [00:39:46] Brett: Unix or Windows? [00:39:48] Christina: Unix, the problem existence systems measuring in Unix time, um, because the number of seconds entered since Unix epoch, which is 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 U [00:40:00] UTC on January 1st, 1970, because that’s stored in 32 bit as an integer. [00:40:06] Christina: The 32 bit namespace will be ex uh, will be ended in 2038. And so this is actually, [00:40:13] Jeff: more fat [00:40:13] Christina: a very similar. Right. So this is Well, no, that’ll be fine. But this is just like for systems [00:40:19] Jeff: No way, man. You [00:40:22] Christina: and, and it’s not fat 30 and it’s not fat 32 now it’s, it’s, it’s whatever it is, it’s, it’s, uh, X fat [00:40:28] Jeff: fat. Yeah, [00:40:29] Christina: or X fat. [00:40:30] Christina: That’s what it is. Yeah. But, but, um, it, anyway, it’s very, very similar to the year 2000 problem. But in this case, there is still, and you are shocked, right? Cuz we’re now, we’re, we’re 23 years past y2k, you would think that we would’ve learned some things, maybe gone back and started updating crucial systems to deal with, like, you know, like namespace problems. [00:40:51] Christina: No, we haven’t. And there are, there’s a ridiculous amount of infrastructure that’s very important that I don’t think anybody’s worried [00:41:00] that like the world’s gonna end or planes are gonna fall out of the sky. But a lot of billing systems and, and nuclear reactors and things like that. Oh, nuclear reactors at this point are all usually window space, actually. [00:41:11] Christina: So, uh, I think that they were okay, but there, there are a lot of other, yeah. Well, [00:41:17] Jeff: like you’re having a meltdown. [00:41:19] Christina: Ba basically, actually, actually, fun story. The reason that it took them so long, just brief tangent. The reason it took them so long to replace the terminal in the command line in, um, windows and, and now it’s, it’s, uh, you know, the Windows terminal is, uh, available in the, in the window in the Microsoft store, and you can download it and it’s great and it’s open source. [00:41:41] Christina: But the reason that they couldn’t just like pull it out and replace it years ago, and the reason they had to do it the way they did it is because a lot of, um, like oil refineries and, and nuclear things like rely on very specific quirks within older version of Windows. [00:42:00] And because Microsoft is actually committed to backward compatibility, unlike some companies, um, they can’t make those changes. [00:42:09] Christina: Uh, but anyway, needless to say, we’re gonna have the exact same thing. Like I, I’m, I’m looking forward to in 15 years, For us dealing with like Y Y2K 38, like, you know. [00:42:21] Jeff: Well, there’s actually, go ahead, Brett. [00:42:24] Brett: How do you feel about backwards compatibility? Because Apple, apple is able to introduce a lot of new, solid features because they are willing to say, oh, that was five years ago. That won’t work anymore. Uh, we were ditching, in fact, our computers from 10 years ago can’t use our latest operating system. We, we don’t care. [00:42:48] Brett: And that gives them the opportunity to push forward, in my opinion. Um, sure. It’s annoying, especially if you want to keep, if you wanna keep a 20 12 [00:42:57] Christina: Well, well, no, it was expensive. [00:43:00] Well, it’s expensive. Here’s the thing, my opinion, I think that it’s fine for consumer devices to have that approach and, and I do think that Apple has an okay track record, although they’ve gotten worse and I do think that it is unfortunate. , you know, they, they’ve made decisions to not support things. [00:43:19] Christina: Maybe it’s because they, they don’t feel like they can offer full support, but there’ve also been ones that feel very arbitrary, like, this fits the minimum specs, but we’re not going to allow it to be updated. And, and people are able to find shims and get it working. I’m okay with it on a consumer level, although I do have questions about device preservation and whatnot, which is separate. [00:43:36] Christina: But I think when you’re talking about enterprise, and I think when you’re talking about industrial use cases, I think it’s a completely different scenario. And to Jeff’s point, from a cost perspective, I don’t think you can necessarily expect, you know, systems that, that work to constantly be, you know, refactored and, and updated just because we wanna introduce the latest features. [00:43:58] Christina: Like, I think that’s, that’s a cop [00:44:00] out. Now, is there a happy medium between being where you are forced to, Have a lesser experience because you have to support things from, from 50 years ago. I’m sure there is, but I, to me, I don’t think you can compare, like Apple has no presence and will never have any presence in industrial enterprise. [00:44:21] Christina: They never will. And they, they are a consumer company through and through, so they don’t have to worry about those problems. But I think that that, and that’s one of the reasons why they never had a chance in the server market and why they would never be able to do anything in a lot of the industrial markets because they like to move too fast. [00:44:39] Christina: So that, that’s kind of my take. I think that there are trade offs to both [00:44:44] Brett: I always appreciate your insight. You’re smart. [00:44:46] Jeff: I just remember my mom just like bouncing back and forth to these cities and it was just like all they met about for a whole year. Just like ki especially, it’s the government, you know, so they’re just, It’s going crazy. They’re crazy, they’re nervous. I am rambling like a motherfucker.[00:45:00] [00:45:00] Jeff: Um, can I just tell you about this amazing, uh, uh, financial opportunity we missed out on? This is from my Y2K guide. It says, item Colon on September 14th, 1998, the former c e o of United Press International, James Adams, no kidding, announced the creation of the world’s largest Y2K website. In order to sound a public wake up call dubbed Y2K today. [00:45:28] Jeff: And here’s from the promo material. It will feature a daily feed of some 500 stories from a special reporting team. What plus wire reports. It’s , it’s time the public worldwide had access to accurate and timely information. Said, said Adams, did you hear any, does this, did you ever hear of this? Because where are these, where’s this story? [00:45:48] Jeff: I want to know the story of this operation. [00:45:50] Brett: this book came out pre y2k. [00:45:53] Jeff: Yeah. Spring 1999. [00:45:54] Brett: Okay. [00:45:56] Jeff: So that was a 1998 effort by the former U P i, [00:45:59] Brett: So [00:46:00] this book is not ironic. This book is actually saying, [00:46:03] Jeff: No, this book is like, it’s coming. Here’s, it’s called the Y2K Citizens Action Guide. So it has a whole section on how to organize your community. I mean, honestly, when I read it now, it looks like a great plan for the early days of covid. [00:46:16] Jeff: Um, it’s like, buy your toilet paper up. They even say that, [00:46:19] Brett: a disaster preparedness [00:46:21] Jeff: it’s a disaster. Yeah. And then it has sort of like how to lobby your politicians to care more, um, about Y2K and all this crazy shit, which we haven’t even explained. I mean, h what is the simplest [00:46:33] Christina: Oh yeah. [00:46:34] Jeff: what it was? [00:46:35] Christina: Okay. So in, um, back in, in olden times, in, in early kind of, you know, Unix and, and, and, uh, other systems, a lot of the, the way that they would code in dates was, would be just to use the last two characters, uh, of the year. So, so the only integers you would have would be, you know, like, like, you know, like 77 0, or, or, or nine. [00:46:58] Christina: Nine. Well, when the [00:47:00] clock hit January 1st, UTC time, you know, the year 2000. There was a big concern about what would happen to those systems when the clock was going to be reset, and when you’re going to now have to go from, from two into zeros to four. And, um, so there was a lot of strum and drum about, uh, banking systems, aviation systems, uh, nuclear reactors, uh, and, and, and other things, many of which, like the infrastructure again, was like built in the seventies, uh, and hadn’t necessarily been kept up well, uh, whether or not those things would function. [00:47:33] Christina: Uh, and, um, so you had, uh, a mass of, uh, engineers, uh, usually in, in no longer invoke languages, having to be like dispersed out to issuing patches and update the code, um, to use, uh, four integers rather than two. [00:47:51] Jeff: Yeah. So crazy. It’s just this little bit baked in, right? And it’s not, not nothing . So if you look at, [00:48:00] if you look at the Wikipedia page, there are some super interesting, uh, reported problems that have been verified. The first one was that I loved was 150 Delaware Lottery reino slot machine stopped working. [00:48:12] Jeff: Shit. But right next, but right next to that, this is street straight from the Wikipedia page. Okay. So right, right after that, as a direct result of the Y2K glitch at midnight, computers at a ground control station ceased processing information from an unspecified number of spy satellites. The military implemented a contingency plan by 3:00 AM nice work and restored all normal functionality, and the empire was saved. [00:48:38] Jeff: Um, . And then there’s the last one that’s on here that was interesting was the US Naval Observatory, which runs the like master clock that keeps the country’s official time for just a moment. Gave the date, uh, on its website as January 1, 19 100. [00:48:54] Brett: Okay. So I mean, I think based on surveys we’ve done, most of our [00:49:00] listeners were sentient in in the year 2000, but, but for anyone who was born, like if you were born in the nineties, you may not have fully been cognizant by the time 2000 [00:49:15] Christina: Of like, of like Oh, oh. Even. Even, yeah. Even if you were, say born in 1990, you’re like 10 years old, you might not have realized, like you might not remember what a big deal it was in [00:49:26] Brett: panic, the sh the sheer panic, the media ran with these stories that literally Armageddon was gonna happen, uh, when all of these computers fritzed out [00:49:39] Jeff: Nonstop, nonstop coverage. Probably the 500 articles that U P I guy said his apparent his team’s gonna do that. That was definitely happening. It just wasn’t. His team [00:49:49] Christina: Oh yeah. No, no. It was, well, well, it it, I was talking about this before, uh, we started recording, but if anybody wants to watch, um, I think one of the, the best episodes of, um, [00:50:00] uh, television about this whole phenomenon, it’s also one of the best episodes of what is, in my opinion, one of the best animated sitcoms ever. [00:50:07] Christina: Uh, the, the, the season four, um, holiday episode of King in the Hill called Millennium, um, deals with this exact same thing where, where Hank, um, gets kind of caught up be, be because of some computer issues. He’s, he’s basically brought into the Dale, who’s his conspiracy theorist, friend’s side of being worried that. [00:50:29] Christina: The whole grid is going to go down and the systems are going to be overtaken and things are gonna be really terrible. Uh, when the millennium hits and, um, uh, basically ruins Christmas for the family, um, it, it ends up having a nice ending, but it’s a very, very, very funny episode that I think really encapsulates and, and the great thing about it is that it aired on December 19th, 1999. [00:50:51] Christina: So it was written, uh, you know, uh, probably in the early, you know, uh, uh, uh, 1999 because, you know, they have to do several months [00:51:00] of, of animation production. Um, and uh, it really did kind of predict exactly, uh, a kind of the, the, the fury and, and kind of the insanity that was happening. And then be the fact that like nothing happened. [00:51:13] Jeff: I mean, they were saying planes might fall out [00:51:15] Brett: Yeah, [00:51:16] Christina: I know, I know [00:51:18] Jeff: I actually remember opening the door and being like, I don’t see any That was intense . But I, I was like, you, Brett, I was in something of a nylas stage. I had been, I had been going back and forth to Iraq, uh, and, and seeing like in the, the effects of what happens when our country, what happened, uh, when our country bombed most of their infrastructure and then, uh, and then laid sanctions on them so they couldn’t rebuild. [00:51:46] Jeff: Like I was already, yeah. Half, half of my time was already in a post Y2K environment and I was like, fuck it man. Just bring it [00:51:54] Brett: bring it. [00:51:57] Christina: Yeah. Um, I, I, I mean, I, [00:52:00] I was, I, I, I was not at all concerned, but I was, I was like 15. So it, there was, you know, it just, it seemed overblown to me, but yet we didn’t know it was gonna happen. So there was this bit of excitement that was like, well, maybe some shit really will go down, right? Like, I don’t think it ever occurred to. [00:52:15] Brett: you gotta consider the possibility [00:52:18] Christina: Totally. I was sort so as always with me, I was in for the drama, but I also like, I I, I, I, I was all about the drama. I was like, oh, hell yeah. But I was also like not, I don’t think it’d ever even occurred to me that planes would actually fall out of the sky. Um, I was just like, I, I, I just, I had faith in our institutions that I perhaps should not have had that. [00:52:38] Christina: I was like, no, clearly the f a a is is gonna have this shit under control. The Boeing and Airbus people are gonna have this shit under control. Like, it didn’t even occur to me that they wouldn’t, but it, you know, there was always, there was the drama and the intrigue of, well, what’s gonna happen? You know? [00:52:54] Jeff: right. [00:52:55] Christina: like my computer, I was, I was on the internet, I think like when it happened, I was either on the [00:53:00] internet or I was drinking underage, one or the other. But, um, uh, regardless, like I, you know, got back home. I think, I think I was drinking underage, but I think I got back home and, um, You know, everybody like my computer was fine. [00:53:15] Christina: I was like cool. I was like on I C Q or Ale Instant Messenger, you know, probably like chatting with people. Be like happy, happy 2000. Everyone like [00:53:24] Jeff: Yeah, right. [00:53:26] Christina: yeah, [00:53:27] Brett: All right. We’re, we’re coming up on an hour, but I want to give, Jeff, I want to give you a chance to, is there, are there any other pearls of wisdom you wanna drop from the citizens guide? [00:53:38] Jeff: No, just that it’s interesting to read it now and think back. Um, you know, that wasn’t too far before September 11th, which is a, an unfathomable event similar to what we were describing in y2k. [00:53:52] Christina: oh, okay. Actually this is what I was worried about now, now that I have memories back. Okay. Cuz I was in Model un, so I was 15, 16, [00:54:00] so I [00:54:00] Jeff: You’re in Model un Nice. [00:54:02] Christina: Yes. So I was actually concerned because I had been studying OSA Bin Laden and the Taliban. I was actually concerned that he was going to bomb times Square. [00:54:12] Jeff: Oh, I remember that. That’s right. [00:54:14] Christina: So that, that was, that was like my big concern was actually way less the, the things calming out of the sky and the Y2K of it all, but more that it was going to be a time that like massive terrorism activity was going to happen. [00:54:29] Jeff: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. [00:54:31] Christina: So, so me as, like, me as like a a, you know, you were obviously aware of those things too because you were doing, you know, you were in Iraq and you were, you know, um, in those parts of the world around that stuff. [00:54:42] Christina: But most people, Certainly no one else my age. Um, I don’t even think the other, uh, model UN kids were like that concerned. Certainly not my [00:54:53] Brett: that wasn’t [00:54:54] Christina: or, or other people. I was gonna say most people were not even thinking that at all. But yeah, my concern was never about like, [00:55:00] oh, the infrastructure is gonna go down. [00:55:02] Christina: I was like genuinely worried that as, so Bin Laden was going to bomb the Times Square. Like that’s what I thought was gonna happen. [00:55:08] Jeff: I’m seeing a headline in the newspaper model UN Warns of Possible Times Square Bombing [00:55:15] Christina: Well, okay. I did write an essay that fall fucking terrible. It’s called Don’t Hate Me because I’m a Terrorist. Hate Me because I’m Confused. Bio. So Bin Laden, that was a parody sat satirical essay about how he was like mad at the Bush family and that all of his stuff like stemmed from like never feeling good enough in, in high school [00:55:38] Jeff: contracts. Oh, [00:55:38] Christina: again. [00:55:39] Christina: Again, I, again, I was again. Exactly. Again, I was 15 years old. So this is. . I [00:55:45] Jeff: you’re like you, you’re like, email to your editor from aol.com. Lemme take a crack at this [00:55:49] Christina: we get no like, like, like two, like two year, two years, two years later, I’m like, oh my God, Christina, this is no longer funny and satirical at all. Like, please no one find this essay, [00:56:00] because it’s gonna really come across differently than it did in the fall of 1999. But like, yeah, [00:56:07] Jeff: You’re like, thank God Angel Fire crashed. [00:56:10] Christina: yeah, exactly. [00:56:11] Grapptitude [00:56:11] Brett: Should we, uh, should we do some gratitude? [00:56:14] Jeff: Sheila. [00:56:15] Brett: You guys, I have my gratitude. I know it’s a holiday weekend. You guys might, you guys might not be down. Uh, we’ll see. Um, but [00:56:24] Christina: no, no. Start us off. [00:56:25] Brett: so it wasn’t too long ago I talked about affinity, uh, products as, as a gratitude. Um, but I recently got back into astrophotography. Um, and I use a service called i telescope.net, which lets me remotely control about 24 different telescopes around the world. [00:56:49] Brett: And, and I can set them up and I can take a bunch of, uh, different color, uh, filter photos, and then you have to [00:57:00] composite them and color balance them and, and turn like basically mult multiple plates into a single color image. And. I had always used some shitty Java apps to do this. Um, it turns out that affinity photo. [00:57:22] Brett: Uh, and Affinity Photo two now have astrophotography features and it has blown me away how I’m able to stack. I can take like five exposures from each color lens, stack them together, create something where I can just do basic, like turn them all into add, add, add layers. Like when you set your, uh, opacity type, uh, change it to add, add colorization filters to them and come out with some pretty fantastic images. [00:57:53] Brett: And I’ll, I’ll drop a link in the show notes to a blog post I wrote about this, but, um, [00:58:00] it is, it, it’s fantastic and it’s something Photoshop can’t do. It’s like somebody, somebody took the time to add full, a full astrophotography persona. Two affinity photo as well as filters that do things like removing background and reducing excess stars in. [00:58:25] Brett: Because when you shoot a long exposure of a nebula, you’re gonna pick up thousands of stars that, that get, kind of get in the way of viewing the nebula itself because, you know, you’ve done a, an hour long exposure and so like affinity photo has filters that will just automatically detect excess stars and remove them from the photo. [00:58:49] Brett: Uh, it is, it’s just, it’s outstanding. It, it, it, it’s bizarre to me that a, an app that was designed for [00:59:00] photo manipulation put this much effort into what is very much a niche area of, of photo editing. [00:59:10] Jeff: That’s amazing. [00:59:11] Christina: That’s awesome. I, I, uh, I, I’m huge fan of, of the Affinity products as we’ve mentioned before. Uh, also we will note if you’re interested in like trying them out, they still have a deal right now where the US price, I think is like a hundred dollars for, to get the version two of all three of their apps. [00:59:30] Christina: Um, and now it works. It, it’s a universal license. It’ll work across platforms, Mac, windows, and um, iPad os. So if you’re looking for something that is gonna get you, at least in my experience, about 90% of the way that Photoshop and Illustrator do, like, there’s still gonna be some like, look, if you’re doing certain professional things where you’re having to exchange files, I’m gonna be completely candid with you. [00:59:53] Christina: You’re probably still going to need to have a creative, um, suite, um, a creative Cloud account. Um, but if you [01:00:00] are just doing like the sort of stuff that, that Brett is talking about, or if you’re wanting to get into photo editing, or if you’re wanting to do other types of, um, you know, [01:00:08] Brett: publishers. Amazing app too. Like [01:00:11] Christina: Okay. I haven’t used that. [01:00:12] Brett: if you have to share, if someone, if someone needs you to share an InDesign file with them, you’re gonna need your creative suite. But if you are, if you are creating for print and you need to send to a professional printer or you’re just creating your own to print at home, like publisher is everything I’ve ever used in InDesign I can do in publisher. [01:00:35] Brett: It’s really good. [01:00:36] Christina: That’s awesome. Yeah. So, uh, I, I, anyway, I can’t recommend those apps highly enough. Um, people, uh, are still complaining about the fact that after five plus years, you know, they, they had the temerity to, to have a very good upgrade plan and to not move to a subscription when they could. And like, look, because if Affinity said we wanna [01:01:00] charge five or $10 a month for our suite of apps, I would pay it because, because, because I, I, I get more out of it than, um, I do, um, like frankly the, the Adobe Suite. [01:01:13] Christina: Cause at this point I’ve actually canceled my personal Adobe, um, uh, subscription and I just rely on my work one, which I did not do for a long time. Um, but I’m now at the point where I’m so frustrated with some of the things that Adobe has done, and I do like some other tools, but I’m so frustrated with some of the decisions they’ve made and, and frankly also the frequency of the updates where you never know, like what feature you’re going to have or what, what version you’re at or whatnot. [01:01:38] Christina: That I’m kind of like, you know what? For personal editing of stuff, if I don’t have to collaborate with others, I’m, I’d much rather use the, the affinity tools. They’re also really good on iOS. [01:01:49] Brett: And to be fair, like a, uh, like affinity photo can import and export, uh, p s d files, uh, so you’re not completely cut off [01:02:00] from the Adobe world by using affinity photo. Um, but there are like, sometimes layer translations don’t come across the same. And each, each app has its own version of like live filters and non-destructive filters that don’t necessarily translate between the apps. [01:02:18] Brett: But for your basic, for a more basic P s D file, you can export [01:02:24] Christina: Oh, yeah. [01:02:24] Brett: file and send it out. [01:02:26] Christina: totally, totally. But it’s, it’s sort of like, you know, using like open office to interact with Microsoft Office files, right? Or or to use, if you’re trying to use pages or, or, or Excel. Yeah. Or, or if you’re trying to use, you know, like, like pages or numbers to open like Excel or, or Word files, right? [01:02:41] Christina: Like there are gonna be slight differences. So it’s just one of those things, if it’s for professional reasons that, that’s what I’m saying, like if you have to collaborate with other people, but if it’s a basic file that you’re just needing to open that you’ve downloaded off the internet, or if, you know, you just wanna need to make a quick change, you know, to an InDesign or a Illustrator or a Photoshop file.[01:03:00] [01:03:00] Christina: Yeah, I’m, I’m a big fan. Cosign that, but that’s also also the, your, uh, your photography stuff. That’s very, very cool. Do you, do you have one? Do you have one, Jeff? [01:03:11] Jeff: Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been playing with, so I’m an obsidian user, but just kind of a light obsidian user. I mostly use it to do daily notes. Um, but they, um, they just added something called Canvas, which is like a, you know, infinite canvas on which you can organize your notes. Almost like a mind map or exactly like a mind map. [01:03:31] Brett: Oh. [01:03:32] Jeff: and I am just starting to play with it. I love the idea cause I’m someone in mind maps who has a tendency to make long notes. But I’m curious, like if I’m looking at it strictly as how would I create a note so that it would be useful in this canvas functionality, it’s kind of opened up my mind a little bit in terms of how I want to, or, or like to organize information. [01:03:54] Jeff: I’ve talked about this on the show a lot where like I just, I really appreciate a tool that causes me [01:04:00] to think differently about information or taxonomies or whatever else because my head is always just full of things banging around out of order and, uh, and so any, any time I can kind of put something in order and it allows you to just drag a note on, or if you have images stored, you can just drag an image on. [01:04:18] Jeff: Um, and uh, I think it’s just a really cool functionality and I just appreciate that obsidian kind of. I mean, even it’s not so like they have this great community, um, who build all sorts of extensions for obsidian, but they also are, are, they’re not just like resting on that, right? Which like can, which a company can do. [01:04:37] Jeff: Sometimes they’re like continuing to give this like kind of backbone to obsidian as people then kind of come in and build off of that. And I just, I’ve been really impressed with that and I still haven’t, isn’t that cool? Are you playing with it? [01:04:50] Brett: I’m watching this video and it’s basically, it’s curio inside of obsidian. [01:04:55] Jeff: It’s crazy. Yeah, it’s crazy. Um, so anyway, just kudos [01:05:00] to them for continuing to not only like kind of hold space for a wonderful community of users, but also for just continuing to do things that surprise me. [01:05:08] Jeff: Um, so that’s me Obsidian canvas. [01:05:11] Brett: Nice. [01:05:12] Christina: Yeah, I, uh, I saw that on Hacker News, but I hadn’t had a chance to check it out, so that is awesome. Um, so my pick, so I was, I was held up between two. Um, I do wanna, so I’ll, I’ll, because it’s the end of the year, I’ll, I’ll give. A brief kind of, uh, thing to both, so the first one, pixel Meter Pro. So speaking of alternatives to Photoshop, um, they announced a, a new version of their app, which now has like a, an AI filter to do D banding. [01:05:41] Christina: And, um, it’s really, really impressive. So, um, basically it’ll get rid of color, it’ll get rid of color banding from photos and, um, pixel meter was, was one of the first, you know, cause it’s a Mac only app. And, uh, it was also on, on, on iPad, I think, you know, used a lot of, like G P U, the power of the G P U to do a lot of [01:06:00] filter effects. [01:06:00] Christina: And, and they, I think they might even been a little bit ahead of Photoshop on, on some of that because they were using like the way they were using like open GL and core image and stuff. Um, and so the demanding, uh, feature is now part of Pixel Meter Pro. Uh, I also think that app is 50% off right now. So if you’re looking for other alternatives, that’s another one. [01:06:18] Christina: I have both Affinity photo and pixel meter. I’ll be honest, I tend to use, uh, uh, acorn for basic things. Affinity photo for. [01:06:26] Brett: you got [01:06:27] Christina: Advanced stuff. And then, and then I’ll go into, um, uh, Photoshop if I have to do something very specific, um, that, that’s usually like, like my, my hierarchy there. But, um, but Pixel Meter is a great app and so I wanted to mention that. [01:06:40] Christina: And then the other one I wanted to mention because I just realized that it, it’s just been added to setup, is Craft, which is, um, a really great, it’s kind of like a notion alternative, but it’s, uh, they have a web app and, and a Mac and, and and iOS apps. And it’s just a really great way of, of creating, um, formatted documents. [01:06:59] Christina: So, [01:07:00] uh, honestly, the, it, it’s very similar to Notion, but I, I like it better than Notion. And so, uh, so it, it’s, it’s craft.do is is the website and it’s now part of, um, setup. I’m not exactly sure what plan comes with it on setup cuz I already pay for craft, [01:07:15] Brett: Setup requires that you unlock all features. So if they’re on set, then you’re getting whatever quote [01:07:22] Jeff: they do. Interesting. At least that makes sense, I guess. Okay. [01:07:26] Christina: Well, that’s awesome. That’s really cool. So, um, so I guess you probably get the, like the $5 a month plan is what I’m guessing, um, from, uh, from craft, uh, which is, which is great if you’re a setup subscriber. Um, and, uh, but, but craft is, is really, really good. Um, and, uh, you know, let’s you like, kind of create an Instructured documents, but I’m, I’m, I’m a big fan of it. [01:07:48] Christina: So tho those are my [01:07:49] Brett: Obsidian craft, all these things that didn’t exist when I should have released Envy Ultra and have diluted the market to the extent where [01:08:00] Envy Ultra has to serve a very niche purpose at this point because there’s so many great note-taking apps out there, [01:08:06] Jeff: sure. [01:08:07] Christina: Well, well, what happened, Brett, is that none is good, but, but what happened is that everybody loved, uh, uh, envy, alt so much that they had to like build and in, in many cases, spend probably millions of dollars building a [01:08:20] Jeff: are burying me. [01:08:26] Brett: Uh, speaking of text expander, my most used text expander snippet has been, uh, because I, I, we talked Jeff about me doing the automators episode, and I also mentioned in my, the blog post that we did the lightning round from last week, uh, I mentioned if anyone really wants on the envy ultra beta, uh, just email [01:08:51] Jeff: I use it every day. [01:08:52] Brett: the envy ultra.com email address. [01:08:56] Brett: Uh, and I have sent out at this point [01:09:00] over 200, uh, invites to the envy ultra beta. And if it weren’t for tax expander, oh my God, that would be such a pain in the. [01:09:11] Christina: Oh my God. Yeah. I can’t even imagine. Yeah. Cause with Texas Banner, you can basically do like a red X to do like a, um, a what, what is it called? What, what’s, what’s the print? Um, mail merge. Is that what it’s called? The feature. [01:09:23] Brett: Yeah, I don’t use that. I just like, I get the, I get the request in email. Uh, I hit reply, I type N V U B. Sometimes I’ll insert a a like, Hey Jeffrey. And [01:09:38] Jeff: Hey, that’s me. He’s talking to me. [01:09:40] Brett: only, only one person out of over 200 so far has written back to say, that was obviously a text expender snippet that you just sent me. And I’m like, of course it is. [01:09:51] Jeff: Yes. It’s none of your business. [01:09:53] Christina: it’s, it’s like, yes. Uh, would, would do, do you have the time to type this in manually? I’m so sorry. I [01:09:59] Jeff: I didn’t [01:10:00] personalize this to, uh, you personally. I don’t [01:10:02] Christina: I, I, I’m, I’m so sorry that this was not artisanally organically crafted like by noms, like, [01:10:09] Brett: What do you want from me? [01:10:11] Jeff: not like you were using like a, a signature, [01:10:13] Brett: I think that guy, I think he was saying it out of appreciation though. I think he was like, oh yeah, I know. I know you love Text Expander and I see you using it and I appreciate that this is happening. [01:10:25] Jeff: Do you know what’s been happening in my head ever? Ever since you said whatever. I’ve been hearing [01:10:31] Christina: Ha ha. [01:10:33] Brett: N vb. Oh, alright. [01:10:36] Christina: See, see, there you go. Get, get get, get boys yours involved. Have a, have a, have a culture club, um, riff on this. Totally. I love it. [01:10:46] Brett: All right. Hey, you guys have a Merry Christmas. Are we allowed to say that? I keep forgetting [01:10:53] Jeff: I [01:10:53] Christina: we’re allowed to [01:10:53] Jeff: this circle we’re all Christmas. [01:10:57] Christina: Well, Merry Christmas also. Awesome, but it’s also the week of [01:11:00] Hanukkah, so happy Hanukkah [01:11:01] Brett: Yeah, happy holidays in general. Kwanza, Hanukkah, you know, like there’s a reason. Happy Holidays, it’s an accepted term, but nobody ever made it illegal to say Merry Christmas. So all of the things to all of the people and to all of you guys. Enjoy your, enjoy your holidays. Um, I look forward to talking next week. [01:11:23] Christina: Likewise, take care of yourselves. [01:11:25] Brett: Get some sleep. [01:11:26] Jeff: get some sleep. [01:11:27] Christina: Get some sleep. [01:11:29] Jeff: Sleep. Are you awake? [01:12:00]