11. Dust on the Telescope

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Tumpkin. This week's challenge, don't tweet.

Hey Merlin, how's it going?

MerlinThat's good. I get confused because I listen, I'm an animal and I listen to when I'm on my Mac, I listen to podcasts in the Overcast website. And to ensure the window doesn't get closed, I double tap on the bar to make it go away, and then I can never find it. So it goes, boom, boom. Skype goes on. I'm like, ah, ah, ah, ah. Chris Latner's talking. I'm confused.

AlexOh, Chris Latner.

MerlinHoly shit.

AlexHe is a handsome man. Is he really? Yes. So friend of the show, can we call, well, Casey and Marco are meant friends of the show, and your friend, John Sterecusa, who I wonder.

MerlinMy frenemy.

AlexOn their program.

MerlinMy confessor.

AlexThey're having Chris Latner on. And for people who don't know, he created Swift and he's a big wig at Apple, but then he left Apple and now he's at Tesla. And he is currently, but not currently, being interviewed on ATP. And I don't want to record this podcast. I just want to go listen to that podcast.

MerlinWe should just sit and listen to it together. It's really good. But Syracuse is asking him great questions. This is the thing. This is the thing about when a show like ATP goes deep on stuff I don't understand, I'm not any less interested in it. You know what I mean? Like when he would go into stuff on Hypercritical.

He's not going to hear this. But, you know, I really enjoy the fact that he's very thoughtful, but also he's good at laying out something that's very technical in a way that isn't just pigs and bunnies. And I don't know. I just it's almost like listening to somebody somebody speak Mandarin for 20 minutes it's nice

Alexto just listen that's my impression of Mandarin we both had a lot of caffeine oh man so so I I had one of my you know trademark sinus infections um and I hadn't had Claritin D for quite a while and I took some today and I've got my Monster Energy Ultra Red with me and it's the

MerlinClaritin, I'm still taking it every morning and it's not kicking like it used to I need a new kick you know when I go in and buy it I bring my daughter and I shave and I think I look a little bit less like a meth dealer

MaxOnly three chefs remain to compete in the ultimate culinary showdown, and only two will make it to the finals in Mexico. At stake for the winner, a feature in Food & Wine magazine, an appearance at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, $125,000 furnished by San Pellegrino, and the coveted title of Top Chef.

MerlinWow, that was great. You did that all from memory. That was incredible.

AlexI've got some follow-in. Normally, I don't look at Macs because I'm paranoid about our recording and I'm just watching the waveforms, but you have a small black rectangle.

MaxOh, that's my new Kindle.

AlexI got the new Kindle. Oh, the fancy, fancy one. The way too overpriced,

Maxbut the one I desperately want. It's the new one. It's called the Kindle Oasis.

AlexOh, man.

MaxAnd it's just, I just was time for, I read a lot on my Kindle and I take it into the bath a lot. And it was just time for me to upgrade because I got, what happens is you get condensation. And this is over like two years of owning my previous paperweight. Oh, this is costly. Oh my goodness. You get condensation like in the screen and then it fogs up and it blurs and it's hard to read the text. Oh no, my Kindle. So now, well, that's the price you pay for reading the Kindle in the bath every night. So now I've got the new Kindle, the Oasis. I really love it. The paddle controls on this are just awesome.

It's like the pages load so much faster. I genuinely really like the removable cover battery dingus thing that they've added to this. And the screen is the same size, but the device itself is a much smaller footprint, which is great. Like a smaller device to see the same amount of stuff is always what you want.

AlexI am like a huge, huge Kindle person. um i i realized i i had a come to jesus moment this year where i kept telling people yeah i can never have enough physical physical books i love physical books and now i have all these physical books that i know i'm going to rebuy on my kindle because i just i hate this amazon's really got me

Maxby the balls here because i buy for the books i like i buy both because i want the book because i it's valuable to me to i like having it on my shelf i like being able to lend it to people Sometimes I love putting post-it notes in the sections that I like.

AlexOh, no, no, no, no, no. Just highlight stuff.

MaxOh, yeah. I do that, too. Yeah. A little dog ear and highlight.

AlexAnd then you take a screenshot of it, and you put it in Bear, and then you have this lovely, you just have a note of all the notes. It's great. Have you heard about Bear, Merlin?

MerlinYes. I play with it more. It's really cute. Do you want to do follow-in on Bear?

AlexYes.

MerlinYou got a really good follow-in in the list. I had a lot of coffee.

MaxI have some follow-up that I've prepared, which is last week we were speculating about what Chris Lattner was going to do when he left Apple. And, you know, we all thought it was going to be a long time before we heard. But I'm really excited to announce our special guest for this episode, Chris Lattner. Chris, why'd you leave Apple?

Speaker AHey, guys. How's it going?

AlexOh, man.

Speaker AWell, actually, the answer is actually really boring. I'm definitely Chris Lattner. I made LLVM and Clang things. Oh. and now i am on i'm definitely on a podcast it's a real get to have me who is definitely chris latner on the show did you have any questions about cars

Alexuh all right uh i just realized that people don't know what our challenge for last week was

Speaker Bshould we just keep them in a dark we got follow up and follow in what is what is happening do you guys just not look at the google doc i have follow up out the ass this week put it in the

Speaker ADoc. Did you know we have a Google Doc, Max?

Speaker BThere's a what?

Speaker AHe's a music man. You got to know the territory. Jesus Christ, they've had a lot of espresso. I

Alexwonder, because I understand that a lot of men get erections, and as soon as I heard Chris Lattner's voice, I'm like, I wonder if I was a man. This is something that makes me I just got so excited to the point where I yelled and Max assistant came into the studio. I was like, what's wrong? And I'm like, it's Chris Lattner.

I'm going to go. OK, you got a lot of boner.

MaxChris, Chris Lattner. Listen, if you create the Swift programming language, you're going to drop some panties.

Speaker BAre you kidding me? You're going to need a dehumidifier tonight.

MaxThere was. I have some.

Speaker BI have some incredible Donald Trump news that's breaking this morning.

MaxOh, my God. It's really it's honestly it's one of the funniest things that's happened so far in the transition. so I woke up this morning and you know I well we'll get we'll get to this in great depth in this episode but I go on Twitter and I scroll through Twitter and I look at what apocalyptic events have unfolded while I slap my heart starts racing and I feel like I'm gonna have a panic attack before I get out of bed and there was a Washington Post interview with Donald Trump that was posted 6 a.m. this morning I will just I'll just read a little excerpt from it so this is the

Washington Post reporter who's interviewing Donald Trump and the story was ostensibly about how did Trump come up with his brilliant campaign slogan, Make America Great Again? Halfway through the interview, oh, and then he basically, he talked about that he thought of it immediately and then trademarked it. So when like Cruz and Rubio started peppering Make America Great Again into their speeches, Trump like ceased and desisted them in like a brilliant tactical maneuver. So halfway, this is now the quote, halfway through his interview with the Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news. He's already decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

Are you ready? He said, keep America great, exclamation point. Get me my lawyer the president-elect shouted two minutes later one arrived. This is during the interview during my god Trump quoted will you trademark and register if you would if you like it? I think I like it right do you do this keep America great with an exclamation point with and without an exclamation keep America great Trump said got it the lawyer replied that bit of bit now here's what made Here's what made me tell you I have to get that out of the way But here's what's the part that started blowing my mind about this piece?

That bit of business out of the way, Trump returned to the interview. I never thought I'd be giving you my expression for four years from now, he said, but I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be amazing. It's the only reason I give it to you. If I was like ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen, the country is going to be great. Which raises the questions, how can greatness be measured and sensed? What does that even mean? Trump quoted again. This is, brace yourselves. Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country, Trump said,

and we're going to show the people as we build up our military, we're going to display our military. That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C. for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military, he added. Jesus Christ. Now, when you think of the military marching down, you know, main roads and cities and warplanes flying overhead, Does that conjure any sort of visual image of a type of personality of a leader, a form of government?

AlexI'm laughing because of that.

MaxBecause what I'm thinking is Democratic Republic.

MerlinYeah, yeah.

Speaker BThat's what it reminds me of, is a functioning democracy with a democratically elected leader.

MerlinDid you see Alex Jones' big reveal?

MaxWhat's that?

MerlinThis is the headline from the Austin statesman. Alex Jones, colon, Trump inauguration will be, quote, the biggest event in human history, unquote, barring a coup, assassination, or nuke attack.

Speaker BSure.

MerlinI'm going to try and do this in the voice. You can cut this out. But I'm going to try and do this in the voice. But I tried to do it for my daughter last night, and I had to give up after, like, a paragraph.

Speaker AA lot of people keep asking me, will they set off a low yield or a tactical nuke in D.C. to stop the Trump inauguration and try to basically derail the whole populist movement? And I haven't really responded to that because we don't have any hard intel on it. We don't have any chatter. I don't have any sources on that fact, but I have to ask myself. If Obama would fund ISIS and Al-Qaeda, taking over multiple countries in the Middle East and Africa, and killing hundreds of thousands of people, and overthrowing non-radical regimes, and putting every Christian they find to the sword, then the answer is yes. If the people behind Obama would launch major wars in the last few years, places like Ukraine, start a war with Russia, move U.S. troops to the border with Poland, have all sorts of other provocative actions put in place, federalizing of elections,

acting like they don't intend to leave, anything is possible. I want to be clear. before the national media picks this up and lies and says that I'm saying there's going to be a nuclear attack in D.C. on Trump's inauguration coming up in five days. I'm not saying that. I'm going to be there with my crew covering on the ground. And if the globalists did try something like that, it would blow up in their face because the populist movement worldwide is exploding. Nationalism is exploding. And the people are on to this corporate form of world government.

Speaker BNow, can I take a break and tell you about some powders that I like? You're going to put some powders in your ass. Did you see somebody registered Merlin Mann herbs? I did.

MaxI saw that on the website Twitter.com. Now, there's one final plot twist of this whole story in The Washington Post, which is after the story ran, someone actually took the time to do a trademark registration to see if anyone had already trademarked the phrase, keep America great. Keep America great. Now, I will tell you, spoiler alert, it has been trademarked. Do you guys have any guesses as to who might have trademarked the phrase, keep America great? What IP or person has trademarked that? What would you guys guess?

AlexCan you tell us if it is an individual or an IP? It's a company. Okay.

Speaker BI'm going to guess the Ford Motor Company.

AlexAlex? This feels like a trick question. I don't like this at all.

MaxIt's a real question, and I'll tell you it's a film. It came out in 2016. and it's a little movie called The Purge Election Day. Yes! The trademark tagline of the movie is Keep America Great.

AlexOh my god, yes! Have you seen this film, Merlin? It's so horrible. I love it. It's my favorite of the It's no Reifenshtal. It's just the worst.

MerlinOh my god. And then he's going on vacation over the weekend.

MaxThat's very brave of Alex Jones to head into the blast zone, you know, to give us that kind of breaking coverage of will there or will there not be a nuclear explosion?

MerlinHe's going to be there with his crew covering on the ground. I think his word choice is very interesting, though, that he chooses to end this discussion of whether there will be – whether someone – of course, there's also lots of reports that there's going to be stink bombs. The liberals are going to be doing stink bombs. They're going to be – the bikers can't stop them. It's just an interesting choice of words to say that there may be a tactical nuclear device in Washington, D.C. And then he chooses to say if that happened, that would, quote, blow up in their face because the populist movement worldwide is exploding.

Nationalism is exploding.

MaxWhen Alex Jones thinks about a tactical nuclear weapon being detonated on American soil, he has the same reaction that Alex does when she hears Chris Latner on a podcast.

Like all these fucking Republicans when they talk about 9-11, have you noticed how sexually aroused they are? Like, oh, the travesty. It was so exciting.

Speaker BEverything changed.

Speaker AEverything changed. Everything changed.

Speaker BAll right, we got to start the show. I'm going to do my Top Chef bit again to set it up. Okay, but we also got follow-up and follow-in.

AlexWe did some follow-in. Do you have more follow-in, Merlin? God fucking damn it. Is anybody looking at the Google Doc? I am looking at the Google Doc. We have follow-up, but we are in follow-in right now. Digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. Okay. Follow-in. Merlin, what you got?

MerlinI was throwing to you there.

Speaker AEverybody shut up. Here's the thing. You're going to get a tactical nuclear powder in your ass.

AlexI think Merlin told a woman to shut up.

Speaker BIt's going to be a tactical nuclear explosion of energy, of masculine energy.

AlexNo, no. Okay, Max, what's your following?

Speaker BAlex, you're going to get that high T. You're going to get boners whenever you hear Chris Lattner's voice.

Speaker AIf you want to really, really express the fullness of your masculinity, you've got to get a Lattner powder. That's going to work with your clang. It's going to work with your LLVM. It's going to bring up your tea.

Speaker BYou've got to stock up on this Lattner before the government bans it for making you too manly.

Alexyou can buy a

Speaker Ahe sells bulletproof vests have you seen that he sells bulletproof you can buy bulletproof vests from Alex Jones

Alexwait really oh god

Merlinyeah he started pushing him really hard after the Fort Lauderdale shooting

Alexare we doing the show

Speaker Bis this the show

AlexMax what's your follow in

Speaker Bmy follow in he's got to do you're going to do your read Aren't you doing your Top Chef read? Oh, no. This is all going in. I mean, this is it. The show's the show. Everything that's on the show is the show. That's in the show.

MerlinThat is the show. All right. Bam. Digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. How you guys doing? Big week. Huge, huge week. You had a thought about thought experiments. Was there any other big follow-up of consequence?

AlexVine died.

MerlinOh, yeah. The one good thing on the internet.

AlexLemons. I opened the app store this morning, and the Vine update is just the exact same icon, except it's all black. Like, it's in morning. Aw, maybe sad. Yeah. But, Merlin, you don't use Vine or Instagram. Why is that?

MerlinThat's a whole other show, as you like to say. No, no, no.

Speaker AI, uh, have we talked about Vine on here?

Merlinbecause I discovered, excuse me, I discovered Vine. I've had a lot of espresso. I'm not going to lie to you. I bought a new AeroPress and I've been using the fuck out of it.

Speaker AOoh.

MerlinYeah. The build quality is not what it was. It's kind of weird, but I discovered Vine, I think when they announced that they were ending it and I didn't realize what an art form Vine had become. And so my friend John Roderick introduced me to the Vines of Will Sasso, which should probably be enshrined somewhere.

Speaker BSend it up on the golden record on the Voyager probe. Put it on the Sagan album.

MaxWhen we meet the aliens, we're going to show them the Will Sasso vines and Connor O'Malley yelling at cars. And we're going to say, these are our works.

MerlinJudge us. And it's almond milk. You can take almonds, water, lemons. Lemon.

Speaker AIt's always funny. And then a lemon comes out of his mouth.

MerlinYeah. And then, yeah, I saw one. And some people like in memoriam, we'll get to this in our main topic this week, but I've been looking at a lot of Twitter, including Max's horrible political Twitter list. And somebody on there yesterday posted a fuckton of their favorite Vines.

Speaker BDid you see those, Max? I mean, I'm just all the way into Vine. I mean, Vine is really the last good place on the Internet. A fight starts between these two guys, and it looks pretty brutal.

MerlinAnd there's this guy in, like, shirtless.

Speaker Ahe's pretty much all he's wearing is a pair of shorts and this guy starts hitting him and he runs back for a second walks out a little bit and his pants fell off and you can see his dick

Alexi like how merlin is discovering this after like three years of like beautiful joy but it was so

Speaker Agreat because everybody that thought they were there to see a fight something goes whoa whoa like too much too much have you ever seen the vine of that guy when his pants it's pretty funny that's comedy yeah yeah no no and then instagram is a whole nother thing but

Merlinyeah yeah this has been an interesting a very interesting week let me just i'm just gonna can

Maxi just come on and say what the challenge was because and then we can go back to our follow-up and why not challenge so here is my challenge this week my challenge and we cut it out of the podcast because i wanted to be a surprise the challenge this week was i challenged alex and merlin to not use twitter for an entire week uh which we all interpreted to mean not to post to Twitter because I think we all read Twitter and we all did it. It was also a bet. It was that if you were the first one to crack, it was really see how long we could go without tweeting. And if you were the first one to crack, you had to buy lunch for everyone. And nobody tweeted.

We did a great job. And we'll talk. I assume we all have a lot to say about it. But, you know, I just have to say, like, I'm so excited to talk to you guys. And I have so many, like, funny things to tell you about

Speaker Band so many things to say because I didn't fucking tweet it out all week. I had to create a new bear document just for stuff I couldn't say. I have huge big balls full of content.

You got a big angry scrotum full of content? Pounce on content. I have a raging Latner of jokes, and it's coming out.

AlexGod, Chris Latner, if you ever hear this, I'm so sorry. I admire you so much.

MerlinIt's admiration, Alex. It's pure admiration.

AlexHave both of you seen the Vine that I have posted? Okay, wait. So for listeners, this is a vine of a puppy, and we're going to listen to it right now.

Speaker ARemy, sit.

Speak.

Speaker AIt's funny because it looks like the dog said it.

AlexAll right, thank you. I won't talk for the rest of the show now. I'm happy.

Speaker AAll right, can you – wait, hang on, hang on. let's find let's find i'm gonna search for vine fight pants our friend i'm gonna put this in show

Alexnotes but uh our friend brent nepper brett oh i'm so sorry brent brent nepper uh created an amazing compilation of vines uh and i don't know if this will go in but but max uh max's birthday party is going to be a vine film festival are you gonna put the compilation online later yeah well uh so

MaxSo our friend Benedict Fritz made this tool. I think it's on GitHub, so I think anyone can just grab this. We'll try and put whatever info we have in the show notes. But he made this tool where you can actually, like, download all your favorite vines off of your vine faves. So, you know, if you're like me and you have, like, years of, like, favorited vines, you can just pull them down. And then we're going to sort of take those video files and we're doing, like, a vine film festival. We're going to do a movie theater,

Speaker Band we're going to show a bunch of vines this weekend.

MerlinWell, that's a really fun idea. Did you get that YouTube link, Alex?

AlexOh, all right, here we go. I downloaded YouTube Red, which still sounds like porn, but I'm really liking it.

MerlinLove YouTube Red. I can't vouch for that other part. But so do you think it seems like they started to fall off and then he's like, I got to lose these. And so he just pulls his pants off and he's ready to do some MMA style fighting.

AlexThis. Oh, wow. Drunk naked guys fight over ex-girlfriend. Oh, what is happening? Can't you turn InstaPlay off with YouTube, Red?

MerlinYeah, autoplay. You just turn off autoplay. Can't turn off annotations, though. They just keep coming up. Please remember to like and subscribe. That's a neat idea, Max. That'll be fun. You're turning 30. Is that right? Yeah. Are you upping your powders?

MaxWell, at some point, you're playing defense, you know? Yes. It's like a mummy. I have to pack every cavity in my body full of leaves and powders.

Speaker Bto preserve exactly what I have now. Unguines, poultices, treatments. I haven't really achieved much of physically

Maxanything to be proud of by the age of 30. And I always feel like it's like the kind of thing I'll do later is like, yeah, I'll get in shape. I'll like put some energy into that. And I really haven't done anything towards that. And it's only downhill from here. I mean, this is it.

MerlinYeah, the thing is for you, knowing your personality just a little bit, I think around 38, you're going to get super fucking weird. And knowing how you get obsessed with things, and then spend lots of money on it, I think you are probably going to spend two years becoming a grotesquerie of a man. You're going to have lots of surgeries. I think you're going to be ripped. You're going to be super, like, old man ripped. Like, when you're, like, that creepy kind of, like, J.K. Simmons a little too ripped. That's going to be you. Well, like Carrot Top. Like Carrot Top.

Speaker AThat's a terrific, terrific example. And the thing is, he has his powders, and he starts to lift,

Merlinand he's just looking at himself in a mirror the whole time. The whole time he's lifting, he's looking at Carrot Top. Can you imagine that?

MaxIt's funny. He's laughing. Yeah. I'd love to look at Carrot Top in the mirror every day. He's a funny man.

MerlinYeah.

Speaker BSo that's the challenge. Okay, this week's challenge, by the age of 38,

Maxhave a bunch of corrective surgeries and lose a bunch of weight and get in shape.

AlexAlso have a child.

MaxAw.

AlexYeah, no pressure, Max. When are you getting married? When are you going to have kids? When are you going to?

Speaker AYou should have a fur baby. I have a few more fur babies.

AlexI thought that 30 was going to be the year that people started pestering me about that. Nope. The answer to that was 26. Yeah.

MaxWow. Really?

AlexOh, God. Before you were married? Oh, yeah. Well, because Mel and I were together for a very long time before we got married. So it was when we were going to get married. And then now the baby thing is just ramped up.

MerlinTick tock, tick tock.

AlexBut here's the thing. I can just go and get one.

MaxYeah. Pick one up at the store.

AlexIt's like my cat costs $30.

Speaker BThey made my landlord fill out a piece of paper.

AlexThey're like, oh, you've got a job? Have it.

MerlinYou can get it from Amazon Prime. You can go to a playground.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThere's all kinds of places you just pop by. You just run an Angelina Jolie on them. You just stop by and say, this kid needs an adoption. I'm going to adopt the shit out of that.

MaxAll right, I have a piece of follow-up. Can I do a piece of follow-up? Yes, please. There was huge breaking podcast news this week that came out, which is—this is a story from the Jewish publication JTA from yesterday. The founder of popular right-wing blog The Right Stuff, this guy Mike Enoch, who's also a major player in the alt-right and co-hosts a podcast called— an extremely popular anti-Semitism podcast called The Daily Show-Up.

The founder of popular right-wing blog The Right Stuff resigned over the revelation that his wife is Jewish. Mike Enoch, who also co-hosts The Daily Show, a weekly podcast, was outed over the weekend as Mike Pinovich, a website developer from New York. On the podcast, which has about 100,000 regular listeners, which can we just pause to talk about this for a second? The nation's preeminent anti-Semitism podcast has more listeners than we do. This is an outrage.

AlexJesus Christ.

MerlinBut it's, I mean, the thing to clarify here in the midst of an age, a time when we really struggle with what to call things, this is a pretty unalloyed, you don't even want to say neo-Nazi. This is an anti-Semitic, like basically pro-Nazi podcast with 100,000 listeners. Just, I know, I'm probably putting too fine a point on it, but this is not a bunch of code.

MaxNo, no, it's called the Daily Shoah, which is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. So it's about, I mean, I've listened to the show before, and they're talking about killing Jews and white genocide. That's a pretty clever pun. Yeah, The Daily Show. The Daily Show. Yeah. It's very clever.

AlexYou seem way too impressed by the name, Merlin.

MaxEnoch was considered one of the three most influential figures in the alt-right movement, along with Daily Stormer creator Andrew Anglin and Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, white supremacist think tank. this guy is the co-creator of the alt-right label and he traffics variously in white nationalism anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for political correctness Pinovich came clean with readers of The Right Stuff posting a message in a password protected forum that was reprinted in part by Salon this is his message

as I'm sure you all know I was doxed in an ill-advised attempt to fool the media about my identity led me to not talk to you people and try to simply ride it out by being silent This was irresponsible and a disservice to all of you. Yes, my wife is who they say she is. I won't even bother denying it. I won't bother making excuses. If this makes you want to leave the movement or have nothing to do with TRS, then I understand.

MerlinYeah, and apparently she had also participated on the show.

MaxShe's been a guest on the show, yeah.

MerlinYeah, where they do like jokey Jewish things.

MaxNow, here's the thing, because I know we're kind of getting into some personal things with the marriage, talking to kids. I just want to make sure that none of us is married to a Jew, because I would really hate for that to be the way that this podcast ends.

Speaker BAnd I don't want to be outed.

MerlinOkay. All right. I'll go first. This is the kind of thing I thought I could avoid this by not discussing it. People are trying to disrupt the movement. I am married to an OctoJew. My wife is one-eighth Jewish. That just makes me want to leave the movement. Okay. As long as I'm getting it all out there. She's an OctoJew. And that particular, she's one-eighth Jewish. she's also one eighth Canadian.

Speaker BOh, that's just the worst.

MerlinI have Canadian Jew in my blood.

AlexI don't think it counts because Mel's one fourth, but it's on her dad's side.

MerlinShe's a quattro Jew.

AlexYeah. Yeah. And,

Merlinand it passes through the woman. Is that right?

AlexYeah. And with like, we recently discovered on my family, like it's, it's, it's, it's like Polish Catholicism, big, big deal in my family. But it turns out if you get a genetic test, I'm, I'm like, I think an eighth. No, a sixth. I don't know how it works. I'm fairly Jewish, but that makes sense just from where we lived.

Speaker BThat's enough to be rounded up, though.

AlexYeah.

Speaker BOh, yeah. You always round up with a Jew.

AlexYeah.

MerlinBelieve me, they're doing it to you.

AlexTrumpelli wants like an eighth of me dead. Oh, I keep forgetting.

MerlinYou're an Ashkenazi or a Sephardic? Which one are you? Sephardic is the one where you're like a Moor, right? That's like the Spanish. That's like the Milton Freeman Jews, right? That's the ones that are from Spain.

MaxYeah, they can have the rice on Passover, so I always thought that one was cooler.

MerlinWhat about Othello? Is he a Jew?

Speaker BYeah, the black Jew, Othello.

MerlinOkay, all right. I thought that was Dickens.

Speaker BYeah.

Speaker AHuh. Yeah, I see. When you said you were from Poland, I was thinking that that was a Jewish thing, but you got a lot of Catholics there too. Is that right?

AlexYeah, yeah. It depended on what village you lived in, but we come from, I think I talk about this a lot because I think it's really cool. We come from Kaminsky, which just happens to be the last name, and it was like a suburb, like a village suburb of Warsaw.

So it was like growing up, it was like we did have family. We don't know where they were, but they died in the Holocaust. So it wasn't like a huge, I don't know. It was weird. So it was like we were kind of Jewish, but not, yeah. and i i wondered though because i was like my grandpa is like the make america great again guy right he should be so into trump and then like as this comes out it's like oh yeah like he he

his supporters uh killed your grandpa right got it yeah that's also it's interesting to think about

Merlinuh to me like growing up in america at a time when we were still very much talking about whatever you want to call it the melting pot or the salad maybe you know and growing up in the 70s that was a big part of everything was like hey you know it's land of opportunity etc etc and it's interesting to think though about like you take u.s versus somewhere like canada versus somewhere like especially maybe especially japan like the way that you think about similarity and difference it seems like it's there's so much contrast from country to country and like i think we're the

outlier or historically the outlier don't you think i mean you talked about this max and like feeling didn't you feel this a little bit when you were in japan just that sense of like there's

Speaker BJapanese people and then like everybody else. Well, I just want to say that I feel extremely validated

Maxbecause I've long suspected that I'm the only pure blood on this podcast and that I'm surrounded by cuck-servatives all around me at every angle that are secret Jews.

Speaker BAnd here it is. It's all out in the open.

MerlinAnd now it all comes out. And you think, what, we're mudbloods? Is that what you call it? Mudbloods.

MaxThat's an ugly term. That Jewish blood.

MerlinYeah.

AlexThe Daily Show website, it is what I would imagine a parody site to be.

MaxI mean this as a compliment. It's the ATP of anti-Semitic podcasts.

Alexall right merlin follow up um you have do you want me to do mine or you want to do yours you know i so so theoretically uh hypothetically i mean this this is both in theory and and in as and a hypothesis i hypothesize that

you have a big phone um but let's say in theory do you like large phones as a concept and as a

Merlinutility that's a very good question first of all to to get straight to the point of your question there's no fucking way that i would buy an iphone 7 um but i love it um let's clarify

Alexseven or plus?

MerlinYou there.

Speaker BGot a plus. Wait, you switch to the plus? Yeah. I got the big boy phone.

MaxWelcome to the club. You cram that guy in your pocket, you let it rest right up against your latiner?

MerlinClang.

AlexI'm so sorry, Chris Latiner. I hope you never hear this.

MerlinI keep it right next to my compiler. I got it integrated with my Xcode. You get in there, you do a call on the data, and you do a push and a pull. I love it. I love it. See, here's the thing. It's like I waited for, you know, the thing is, how do I begin? The 6S has been good to me. It has not been a super interesting phone, but it was a solid phone. This is going to sound so silly, but like, I hated how slippery it was. It wasn't fun to use. And as I use the iPad more and more and more for stuff, I thought, hmm, I wonder if it's time. Plus, I really wanted to get the good photos. So yeah, I popped for

that probably silly but i got one and uh i i absolutely love it and the thing is i'm i'm half deaf half blind i don't notice anything i really notice a difference in the photographs it's it's really to my eye quite dramatic oh the photo quality and the battery life are i i know i now

Maxlike i can't switch to the small phone because i miss the photo quality in the battery life

Merlinare you uh are you a battery life denier alex oh no i don't think it makes a difference i i

Alexit 100% makes a difference. It's just a ridiculous size. And here's the thing. I'm just jealous because I have very tiny hands to the point where like, I just can't even hold the phone. Like I understand it is a two handed phone, but like, we've broken that we've broken the small hand

Maxbarrier in society and the president of the United States, they said it would never happen. We have a small handed president. Anything is possible for you and your people, Alex.

MerlinYou could say, you could say that little kids, little kids in school with tiny hands, You could say one day you could grow up to be the authoritarian leader. Even with your little tiny hands, you won't be able to sign things. You might need some big boy help to sign things because of your little grubby fingers. What an American dream. In our lifetime, it happened.

AlexHow about a case? Big case boy?

MerlinI did get a case, and I'm mostly using a case, but I don't feel like I need the case. And I'm probably going to go back to nutcase. So let's get mine out of the way, and then I really want to talk about why you didn't like or keep yours. That's more interesting to me. So, yeah, I figured I was ready for this. As I mentioned before, my typing on iOS has gone to shit over the years, and it doesn't feel like it's purely my fault.

And the big boy phone, my typing is a lot better. I really, really like it. I feel really guilty about buying something I didn't absolutely need, but I am enjoying it. Not as much as my iPad Pro, my little boy iPad Pro, but I really like it a lot. And even though I am relatively small-handed, I'm not – I got to tell you, I mean, the difference between a 5 and a 6 is much bigger than the difference between a whatever and a plus. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, you can really hit everything with a 5.

It's just like – I'm not sure the 6S is that much more – or the 7 or whatever is that much more of a bargain in terms of, you know, hand space. So anyway, that's the short version. Yeah, I did that. I feel terrible about it, but I love it. Now, here's the thing. You have been sitting here for weeks looking at photos of the iPhone 7 Plus. I have encouraged you as your mentor and former hero to go and buy the fucking phone. And I want to know what happened because I'm super interested to hear how this went.

AlexI bought it, maxed it out, had it for about 48 hours, and I was losing my mind. Oh, wow. I can't even – like I can barely reach stuff on my 7, and it's just so big. And I tried on every pair of pants I own. none of my pockets uh would hold this yeah yeah we there's that um i get i get that the camera is better um but in like low light situations which is what i was most excited to see it

Merlinand it was it was meh meh it's still it's still pretty noisy no i agree i agree and also the the portrait thing is really neat it's a fun parlor trick i actually really like the way it looks but

Alexthere are huge limitations to that if you are not in like outside and a person is standing in front

Merlinof a solid background it does not work yeah i was messing around we were waiting to go see la la land i was standing outside the studio outside the cinema just taking pictures to kill time and uh stuff in windows and experimenting with you know using portrait and not portrait well first of all portrait really zooms in you got to really step back there's all kinds of rules about what'll fit but even just taking a normal photo the low light was not as good as i expected when you see some of those photos that get touted as like famous iPhone photos. It's like I'm not getting I'm getting way noisier stuff than that. So I don't know. It's fun, though. I also I fiddled with it. I've been

taking more videos. The videos look incredible. And I've been doing more videos playing with the Osmo. And it is it is pretty dramatic. I shot a video of my kid playing piano yesterday. And it's it's stunning. I mean, the level of detail in it is really stunning. I could be wrong,

Alexbut I don't think there is any difference between the seven and seven plus in terms of video, because they put stabilization in the 7. So that was the one thing where I was like, okay, if videos are the same, and that's what I've been having most, the most fun I've been having with iOS is really with video right now and bear. Good old bear.

MerlinBut I was on a 6S, so I didn't have that.

AlexExactly, right, right.

MerlinYeah. So that photo I just sent you of my cat, that's our cat, next to a new plant we got who we named Planty. And I could instantly see, Those are deeper, greener greens, I feel like, than I was getting before from a usual iPhone photo. I'm not saying it's a great photo. When I'm at home and my wife is at work, I take photos of the cat. I send her pictures of the cat. So that was a photo. But yeah, I feel like it's much richer looking. The photos are much richer. Now, Max, what about you and yours? You sounded like a few episodes ago you were on the fence about whether you'd made the right decision with the big boy phone.

AlexBut now he's going to keep the big boy phone because Merlin Mann has a big boy phone and, you know, the cool guys have the big boys.

MerlinWould that I could have that kind of influence on people.

MaxListen, I just don't want to, like, do the work of setting up the phone. So I'll just keep it. And when the new phone comes out, I'll probably go back to the small one. Although I do, I will say, like, I can't imagine going back to the phone with a smaller battery because with the regular size phone, I really, I charge it overnight. I wake up and then I need, it runs out of battery before I go to sleep. and with the big phone I can actually go like two days before running out of battery.

Speaker BSo I notice a huge dramatic difference.

MerlinI'm grading a little bit on a curve. I've had it for, I don't know, a week or two now. And so, I mean, I was not seeing, basically I was seeing the same problem with battery that I've had forever, which is I wake up, I diddle around with my phone for a few minutes, I do some things, and by like 8 or 9 a.m. I'm at 80%, which seems weird to me. I think there's got to be something that's a runaway something happening somewhere. And the reason I say I'm grading on a curve is I'm trying to account for how much of

that is photo recognition stuff because it's got to restart all that stuff. My poor little MacBook Air. I mean, I put Sierra on my 2010 MacBook Air weeks ago, and I think it's still catching up on photo stuff that that will really put a hurting on on your system i have to say like oh man the

Alexthe i i love my little ipad too i've got the baby pro but again the the thumbs like i just it feels uh have you ever dropped a phone and or ipad on your face no you said you do that when you sleep right constantly it happens to be once a night okay good good see this kindle is lighter though So there's less. And I've never dropped a Kindle. It's too small to fall on my face. So now I'm looking at pictures of Kindles.

MerlinI might have become a diva. Like, the timing on you mentioning Kindles is funny because we've got, it feels like this rat king of old Kindles around. And one of them was, it's a paper white, so it's relatively recent. And I saw it sitting around. It was on the refrigerator underneath the scale. And I was like, hmm, I should plug this in. And, you know, haven't used this in a while. My wife hadn't used it in a while. I plugged it in. and it was like the minute it came up i was like oh like i know i could adjust to this but it did you do you just stop noticing like how it looks with the justification and everything

Alexyeah i i think because i've i've had the original kindle and like every generation since then almost i just have accepted my fate and tried to ignore it i should read more books did you guys finish

Merlindid you guys finish infinite jest how many of us here show of hands how many people have read it all the way through.

MaxNo. My hand is up. I've read it three or four times all the way through.

MerlinHmm. All right. Well, then.

MaxAre we talking about this? We're talking about what iPhones we have and whether we read Infinite Jest or not. I'm losing my, my Latiner is drooping right now.

Can we talk about the challenge now? Are we done with our stupid follow-up and pre-follow and whatever?

AlexLet's check the Google Doc now. All right. Alex Jones.

MaxWho's working for you here? Are we working for the Google Doc or is it working for us?

MerlinAm I right? Alex, you had a thought about thought experiments.

AlexI don't remember what this was. Okay, moving on. Oh, would you eat a person?

MerlinWould you what?

AlexWould you, Merlin, I bring a doorbell. I have $5,000 in cash and I have a cooked piece of meat. And let's say it's like two bitefuls. And I say, this is a human person. Do you take the money and eat my person?

MerlinOkay, so you got, it's cash you've got with you. You got a human amuse-bouche. Yes. And the terms of this, this is not going to be like one of those Julian Assange things where I have my lawyer respond that doesn't really, it's a very clear thing. If I eat the amuse-bouche that I know is definitely a person. then Chelsea Manning goes free. Is that how this works?

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinOkay.

MaxDo you know that it's safe beforehand or you're taking a risk that you might get that thing that Hillary Clinton had from eating people?

AlexYep, who knows? That is the only information you have.

Speaker BDo you know what I'm talking about? What do you call the prions in your brain? Yes. Oh, is she like a Morgelon? Yeah, she got the Morgelons from eating people.

MerlinThey figured that out online. Oh, they were able to decode that from things in the background, the cryptic symbols at the pizza place. They were able to put all that together.

MaxWell, so if you want me to explain the whole thing, it's actually amazing.

MerlinI really, really would.

MaxYes. So basically, as we all know, Hillary was suffering from a wide array of neurological disorders during the campaign. I mean, the evidence was obvious for anyone who wanted to pay attention to it.

MerlinWell, anybody who actually looked.

MaxYeah. I mean, occasionally you could see her moving her head to look at things, and that was clear evidence of neurological trauma.

MerlinWhat about that compulsive laughing? Did that have anything to do with like she wasn't able to control her reactions to people? Wasn't that part of her neurological constellation of problems?

MaxWell, yeah, Merlin, that's a symptom. That's a classic symptom right there. So essentially, after the Podesta emails leaked, there was a hilarious exchange where – so John Podesta's brother is like a big art collector in New York. And he has a relationship with the artist Maria Abramovic, who basically invented performance art. And way back in the day, I think in the 60s or 70s, she did these series of dinners called Spirit Dinners where she like – she painted with menstrual blood and did performance art things. and it culminated in a meal that people ate together.

And it was sort of this art experience. And Maria Abramovic did a Kickstarter a couple years ago, and one of the rewards at the very high level was if you spend $10,000 on the Kickstarter, you can have a spirit dinner with Maria Abramovic. And the spirit dinner was just a dinner with Maria Abramovic. There wasn't any kooky stuff happening.

MerlinAnd it wasn't code for anything.

MaxNo, if you're at all familiar with her body of artistic work, it's all out there in the open, which is some kooky performance art stuff, and then it's a dinner. and you know this is a bunch of high society New York fancy boys who pay $10,000 on an art Kickstarter getting together and having dinner with an artist they like so John Podesta's brother emails Podesta and says do you want to come to this dinner with Maria Bromovic to the spirit dinner and Podesta says no because he has no he has no taste in art because that would be an incredible experience and that's the end of it but once that email leaked people started figuring

it out and they were like oh my god Hillary Clinton is having spirit dinners she is eating people and according to this episode of house if you eat people you can get these prions in your brain and it causes all the neurological symptoms that explain all of her symptoms and they put it together and it was like fucking you know beautiful mind all the string connected all the yarn yep and uh it all made sense and it was like oh she's got the kurosawa disease

Speaker Awow that's you know you gotta hand it out there you gotta hand it to get in there to your own

Maxresearch yeah i mean that's the kind of on the ground reporting on any possible tactical nuclear detonations that may or may not occur that you come to expect from info wars um let's see uh okay let's check in with our tactical nuke strike team on the dubai friday podcast to get an update on whether any tactical nuclear weapons have been detonated. Alex, your report?

AlexMerlin, follow up.

Speaker AYou got to say it before you let the media get in there and spin this and make me sound crazy. Here's the thing.

MerlinI got two problems with this. First of all, I think the nature of this show is you take the challenge and either do the challenge or you say why it's difficult. I'm going to say this every week. Now, here's my problem. First of all, $5,000, I might have eaten a person for $5,000 in high school. Probably definitely in college. $5,000 does not seem like that much money to eat a person. Now, also it depends. Like if it was Padma, if Padma showed up and she was wearing something really flattering and had like $200,000 and a mousse bouche,

I'd have to think about it because part of me is also thinking this is a prank. It's a double backwards turns out secret prank where it's actually chicken. So I'm not sure if I would eat the person. Alex, somebody comes to your door with $5,000. They have an mousse bouche in their hand.

Alexare you gonna eat it are you gonna eat the person uh it needs to be 10 000 that is my number i've set for myself if the situation occurs i do it i do it for five grand no question what's yeah i

Maxdon't understand this because like do you guys draw do you fundamentally draw like a moral distinction between eating like uh a chicken and eating a person no but the the number the

Alexten thousand dollar gamble is with the inform like not having that information like i'm gambling my health if i had documentation that this was oh you think there might be some prions in there right so so if it was like yes this is fully cooked like it is safe then it would be like a thousand dollars

Merlinpoint of information would how much would it change either of your decisions to know that it

Alexwas a given person uh if that person i so i've i thought about this a lot um i think i would actually be more okay with it if the person had given their consent uh or if they donated their body to science like if they donate their body to science anything's fair game so so we are so we

Maxare very close to uh the ability to be able to print meat using basically like gene sequencing and 3d printers and there's a lot of speculation on what the market for this will look like so one thing that you'll the obvious use case is you won't need to kill animals for meat anymore you'll synthesize meat in a laboratory and it will be the best meat that people have ever eaten like They'll basically find the best cow, the most like tender, perfectly marbled, incredible cow, the single greatest cow that has ever lived.

And that'll just be all the beef from now on. Right. Because you'll just sequence it over and over. So it'll change the quality of all meat moving forward. It'll eliminate the need to eat animals. But check this out. You'll also be able to eat. If we can get the DNA, you'll be able to eat extinct animal species. So you'll be able to have like a dinosaur burger and eat it. And there may be a market for that. There will also almost certainly be an underground market to eat celebrities because what people will do is they'll steal a hair off of their hairbrush or DNA from the hotel room.

MerlinIt wouldn't have to be something where someone had diabetes and they lost a leg. You could do that with something as simple as an eyebrow hair. If you got Charlize Theron's adoptive son's eyebrow hair.

MaxExactly. That's what I'm saying is that I pluck a hair off of her jacket, and I guarantee you there's a website. I can go on the deep web and there's a website where people are willing to pay to eat the Charlize Theron meat.

MerlinI think we're getting into a little bit of a Hermione Granger type situation, though. We've got to be careful that we don't turn into a cat.

Speaker BOkay.

MerlinI mean, you really want to vet your sources on where the eyebrow hair has been sourced. Is it definitely her son? Was he enjoying a video on the iPad when it happened? I think you're going to want some deep information. You know, it's really going to be nursery to table. You know, if you want to eat a young person, you're going to want to know a lot about, was there a college fund? Uh-huh. How many other people are eating it? Because part of it is scarcity. Here's the thing. When you buy a Fabergé egg, like Max likes to do, you get a Fabergé egg, but that also means one less Fabergé egg on the market. Well, they're not just making those anymore.

No, it's like a Stradivarius or an African child. Right. Okay. So what do we decide? I'm going to say, you know what? I'm going to be honest and say I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't.

MaxI would absolutely do it because I don't think there's any fundamental difference between eating a person and eating any other animal. and um i eat other meat i've i've bit the moral bullet so why not just go all the way and have a

Merlinperson and alex you're okay as long as you're in the single comma club you you want you want to

Alexyou want 10 10 large for this no uh yes like i think that is a big enough uh gamble for my health whereas 5 000 if i had all the data then no no question like a point of information if there's

Merlinif there's two amuses bush on the tray is it permissible for me to pick and say i'm gonna eat that one but you got to eat that one no we'll do this together no okay then i'm definitely now i'm out but now i'm hungry

Speaker Ai i think max is tweeting all right god damn it i i think you're not following the spirit of the

Speaker Bchallenge. Just let me get a little more. Just let me get a little more. Clang, clang, clang.

Speaker AI'm almost there. Is clang the language or the compiler? Which one is he?

AlexI'm not smart enough to know anything about Chris Latner other than he's very intelligent and good looking.

MerlinI've dealt with compilers a little bit. Oh, that was another question I wanted to ask. I'll save it for another show. But you're attracted to Chris Latner, even though that's not generally how you roll. I think we should, at some point, should talk about people of differing sexual orientations, interests, preferences. We should talk about people we're attracted to who would never be into us, or we shouldn't be into them.

MaxGod, this is exactly what happens. You get a couple of Jews on the podcast. One thing leads to another. Suddenly I'm fucking Chris Lattner.

MerlinYeah. You've got to hire somebody to come in and say it for you, because it's Friday. Mazel Tov. It's called a shibla. No, what do you do? It's a Shonda. Shonda rhymes? What do you call it? You have somebody come in and you light up your elevator.

Speaker BYeah, you get your Shabbos latiner. That's right. L'chaim.

AlexDo you have, like, a document of things you would like to say that you were not able to tweet?

MaxOh, you know, they were bad. Like, looking back on them, I did, but they were awful. Let me just look. All I wrote down was, I really miss piss Twitter.

Speaker BSo that was it. And I do.

MaxI truly do miss piss Twitter. I think that was, for me. Well, I'll just – I could give a couple of opening salvos on this challenge. But I've come to feel that, especially in light of Obama's comments about Twitter that he talked about in his farewell speech and talking about how it makes – it's actually a threat to democracy, that it makes people insular, makes your worldview small, and gives you the feeling of having taken political action without actually having done anything. Mixed with how bad it makes me feel, I think I'm fucking done with Twitter.

Like, I just, I don't like it. It's bad. I just don't think it's a good, I think it's a bad technology. I think it gives, it's shortened people's attention span. It's poisoned our dialogue. It's exacerbated the problem with outrage culture where no one is allowed to, we can't have a discussion of ideas. and because it makes language and speech the primary thing that everybody can do and in some ways the only thing you can do it's made it so that saying mean words or saying the wrong words

is like the worst crime alternately the greatest the greatest advocacy to use the right words is the greatest thing you can do and to use the wrong words is akin to an assault on someone And I just want to say neither of those are true. You don't actually do that much by changing the words. I mean, it does a little something to change language. It helps. It's not harmful. It helps. And similarly, you don't really hurt that someone that badly by saying something mean or cruel to them. I mean, again, it's not good. You shouldn't do it. It's bad.

But then the scale of that can be brutal. If it happens to you, I mean, the human mind is not designed to withstand hundreds of people yelling at you. And you go and, like, listen, it's happened to me. I'm sure, Merlin, I'm sure you've gotten some of this. Like, it's only a matter of time. Listen, if you're on Twitter, it's only, listen to me carefully. It is only a matter of time before Twitter turns on you. It will happen. You will have your day. You will say the wrong thing. You will paste the wrong link. You will make the wrong comment. Something will be taken out of context. I promise you it will happen. Twitter will turn on you.

And the human mind, I know it's just people yelling at you, but the human mind is not built to withstand hundreds of people yelling at you. I mean, you feel like you're going to die.

MerlinYeah.

MaxAnd similarly, it's so exhilarating when everyone around you is yelling about the same thing. There's so much, just every evolutionary piece of software in your brain is firing up going, you better start yelling, you're one of them. Right. And that's no way to live a life.

Speaker BYeah. Yeah, I actually, yeah, I got a lot to say about this. I'll say the one, so the things that were, so I read Twitter.

MaxI still went on Twitter because there is no substitute at this moment in the culture for, especially for me who's like trying to follow politics like very closely, like hour to hour. There's nothing else. Like Twitter is journalism. And of course that's the good and the bad. What's good is that you get unprecedented access to the stream of information and facts as they flow. What's bad is that it allows Donald Trump to be president because the attention span of the media is so low. The public's tolerance for information and context is so damaged that the person who tweets the loudest and makes the most outrageous statements and has the least dignity profits.

And that's why we are where we are. The thing that was the one thing I wrote down that was really frustrating to me was, you know, there was some stuff that happened this week that I wanted to promote.

MerlinOh, there was the birth control one. You were very excited about that one. What's this? Oh, if you can't afford $9 for birth control, maybe you shouldn't be having sex.

Speaker BBut that's a perfect example of like,

MaxI already forgot about, listen, I literally already forgot about that. And when it was happening, there was something that happened last week of some moron conservative didn't know how much birth control costs. And he was saying poor people shouldn't be able to have sex. Whatever, it didn't matter. But everyone on my timeline, everyone was like all like, like they were just like tumescent with outrage. They were engorged with the anger jelly. And they were, it was, it was, they were, they were fully erect with huge angry balls. And they were just all pointing in the same direction and pointing and yelling and going,

ah, look at that guy, fuck that guy. And I wanted so badly to join them. Like every neuron in my brain was going like, you better point at that guy and yell too because you're one of them.

MerlinYeah, like this is outrage that was made for me.

MaxYeah, it spoke to me so clearly. And I texted, we have our group text and I texted the group text. I was like, I want to retweet this so badly. I'm so mad I can't participate in the angry retweeting of this idiot. And I already forgot it. It's what is it four days later? And I it's gone. I already

Merlincompletely forgot that this transpired. Right. Yeah. Um, I, I would like to, uh, in the fullness of time, talk about some specific details about what I found difficult and easy about it, but, um, I need to workshop this epithet a little bit, but it's, um, it's one, I feel like it's one thing, the way that the internet and access to the internet has made, uh, the expression of ideas inexpensive, and I'm avoiding the word free for obvious reasons, but you know what I mean? I think it's one thing to make ideas and words inexpensive, and it's another thing to make them

cheap, because I think there's a difference. And what you get when you have to just watch this versus just participate in it, especially reading the politics list that you share with us, ideas and words are so cheap. It's, there's no, I mean, and this is an old idea. This is nothing new, but you really feel it in your bones when you're not participating in it. Because when you get to participate, you burn off a little bit, like you shoot off some of that steam that you've got, because now you're part of it. So I'm not about to say that I'm going to quit using Twitter,

but it's been very instructive for me. And as we'll get into maybe in a minute, for me, for a variety of reasons, the first two or three days were difficult. But by Saturday,

MaxI was not really missing it that much. So one thing, I touched on this earlier on the podcast, but I've noticed that since I've not been tweeting, so I'm more excited to see people and talk to them because I have things to say to them. Not me.

AlexYeah, no. Really?

MaxNo, sorry. I'm so excited to talk to you guys because I haven't really.

MerlinThat's a human too far for me.

MaxInteresting. I'm so excited to be here right now, you guys.

MerlinOh, my God. What about you, Alex? What was your experience of this? Because you're not a high-volume tutor.

AlexI think I would disagree. Sometimes I get a little hypomanic and go a little crazy.

MerlinJust so you know, I follow you on Twitter.

AlexI apologize. The only thing that I wrote down, the one tweet that I still held on to was, how much would I have to pay you to eat a chunk of human? And we discussed that, and now I'm satisfied. That's so funny.

MerlinThe only one I have is a quote from a friend of mine. It says, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few optical cables. And that line was so goddamn funny to me when I heard it on this podcast. It was all I could do not to toot it.

Alexand not sitting in my bear like a monster the thing too is like the things that i got really excited about you know like chelsea manning like me retweeting something is not informing or exciting anybody else like i am informed and excited uh and i can like i feel like i'm a part of this conversation and i don't need to say anything about it um i did get kind of sad not retweeting vines well i guess i can now um like i don't i don't know i'm a weirdo on twitter and I talk about things that aren't important, but it's stuff that my weirdo friends care about.

And I'll go on a, I wanted to go on a rant about how the wire cutter, I've never regretted anything that I bought from the wire cutter, except for their iPhone recommend, iPhone case recommendations, which are so, so wrong, but that's a whole nother show. But yeah, I tried to actually avoid Max's Twitter list and just I followed a few of those folks and just was using Nuzzle a lot which other than those ads wow I don't know I liked

it without all the snarky and conversely smarmy comments I don't know it was a pleasant week

MaxI found that once I stopped posting on Twitter after like three days or whatever I didn't care as much about what was happening on Twitter, because a lot of the cognitive loop of going on Twitter all the time is you want to know what people are saying about you and how they're responding to

Merlinyour little comments and tweets. To what you've recently said. I've never been to an orgy, but I imagine it's a little bit like some kind of a group sex thing, where it's probably more interesting when you get to be involved, unless you're one of those cucks that likes to watch. But eventually, at a certain point after a week of watching other people have sex, you're like, this is pretty gross, and I'd really rather do something else.

Maxyeah I um I that was very much how how I felt about it um I had so there were there were two things that I wanted to um that can happen this week that I was um really really excited to um oh here we go uh there were two things that happened this week that I really wanted to promote so I'll just tell people on the podcast and hopefully that makes up for for not uh for This is not what we're here for.

Yes, it is. There are two things I wanted to promote. One of them was our friend Brent Knepper did one of the coolest projects I've ever seen on the internet. Brent lives in a van and travels to national parks and takes photos of national parks. He's been trying to figure out how to share this with people. He started a Patreon where you can get once a week a text message with a story and a photo from a national park from Brent, which is patreon.com slash brentnepper. And a designer I really like named Jessica Paley, who's Skullface on Twitter, relaunched her store False Lock.

And there's really cool enamel pins and stuff that I love. And those are the things I couldn't share this week. I was really bummed.

AlexI would like to share the website. I found it and I got really, really excited. 43folders.com. I mean, there's this thing called Inbox Zero that, wow, wow.

MerlinThat's the thing Max came up with where you do your email.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MaxDo you want a merit badge? I have made up some Inbox Zero merit badges.

MerlinWell, I've been making some changes to my iPad workflow. I want to talk about what was easy and difficult. So Max is a monster who decides by his own fucking caprice when he will be the one who comes in with the planes flying over New York and decides that he's going to be the one who, quote, unquote, edits the episode. And he always leaves off the challenge because he's a monster. I just want to mention I had many protestations about this, some of which I still stand by. I don't like people telling me what to do. But there were things I knew would be difficult. There were things that were harder than I expected.

And there was a constellation of things that were not that hard. That's the crazy part of this to me. So I want to hear, like, it sounds like we focus so far on the things we wanted to jump in with. I mentioned this to you in text, I think. But you know what? The one that I found, I'm not going to say it was the hardest for me, but it was the one that almost screwed me up the most times, was responding to people. It was not posting. Because I could catch myself. like, oh, I can't do this. I can't post a new tweet. I cannot cause a new tweet to be tweeted.

That was the least of my worries. My second biggest thing was retweeting. Like, oh, I shouldn't retweet because I can't. That's not part of the thing. The hardest thing for me was not responding to people. And I don't mean mean people. I mean like somebody with a question, somebody with a compliment, somebody with a whatever. And it made me realize like how much more than I realize I respond to those things the instant that I see them, good, bad or indifferent. And that's what drove me crazy. I felt it was hard for me to stop doing it. And I felt weird and bad and unkind and ungrateful to not respond to stuff I ordinarily would have. But nobody seemed to notice that I

Maxwasn't tweeting. Not a single person. I didn't get any comments about it either. I thought maybe people would start saying like, oh, are you okay or whatever? And nobody said anything about it.

Speaker BYou could beat down a mineshaft and no one would know. And well, it just says how important your contributions to the discourse are. No one notices when you stop. It's like if John Dickerson didn't show up for his Sunday morning show. They just shot a chair. Yeah, and you just stared at this chair for an hour.

MaxHow long have you been gone, John? Oh, you good, man? I found that it was so reflexive for me to reply to people when they sent me messages, or especially if they were wrong about something. I hit the reply button and started typing a tweet before I remembered I wasn't supposed to be tweeting.

MerlinOh, so many times. That's the only one that really tripped me up. And I actually have an anecdote. This is short, but quick. Didn't I tell you on this show about how, yes, I know I told you about this, that I was getting the, oh, you know what? We talked about this in the text. But anyway, I mentioned that we got this gift my wife got me of meat. It's meat, pound sign grass fed meat that gets delivered once a month. Long story short, it arrived after 11 days. It was melted. There was blood in the bag. It was a terrible mess. And I'd mentioned it on this program.

Do you remember, just in passing, in the service of the anecdote about how sometimes I would text with my wife when we're in the house at the same time? I told you about this, right? I think so, yeah. Yes. Did I tell you that the guy from the company responded on Twitter because he heard it on the show?

AlexOh, no.

MerlinLike Mr. Meat, like Johnny Meat got on the horn.

Speaker Aand he got on the blower and he said, hey, I heard about your experience with pound sign grass.

Speaker BYour negative customer experience with our, you got a bag of blood.

MerlinI got a bag of blood and I'm not going to say the name, but he said, is it my company at sign this?

Speaker AAnd I can't say anything because I'm under admonishment from Max. So you know what I did? I hearted it. What the fuck is that poor man thinking?

MerlinAssuming that he or his agents now hear this, he'll know that we're talking about it now. It's much like that Mr. Show sketch about the call-in show.

MaxListen, if there's one thing that I hope people learn from this podcast, it's that if you hear something advertised on a podcast, whether it's powders or a bag of meat, buy it immediately because the quality is assured.

Speaker BThat's going to be the new slogan for our program. I guarantee. The quality is assured. I guarantee the quality. You personally guarantee it? You're going to like the way your meat looks.

Speaker AI guarantee it.

MerlinIt's going to be a bag of blood, but you know what? It turns out it is pound sign grass fed blood. That's good. Anyway, that's the parts I found difficult. And the funny part, I have to be dead honest. So here's the stuff I felt shitty about. I couldn't promote this show. I could not promote the new episode of Reconcilable Differences. The one that really bummed me out and I felt like shit about was I could not promote a live show that I did with John Roderick on Saturday. Because we did have, I mean, I think it was pretty full. It might have been sold out. But that's the kind of thing where I feel like I have an obligation to do that. And I felt really bad about that.

But I have to tell you, I'm not sure how much of a difference all those things really, really make. Like, I just checked the numbers on our program, which I'm very happy with. It's not Daily Showa. No. I mean, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Well, if there's any event in human history where the numbers have been a little inflated, I think it's probably the Holocaust. Um

Speaker AWow, it's a shame you're gonna have to cut that out cuz that might be the best joke

MaxIn history the show get a letter from the ADL about that one They haven't they gave up a long time ago when I went on my Jewish witch hunt

Speaker BJewish witches oh, we're ripe with witches we got witches allows you with witches witches out the wazoo. Who do you think is sending you these bags of blood? Jewish witches. They get in there.

Speaker AMishpohat. Anyway. And then you step on the light bulb. But the witch can't work on a Friday. You got this guy over here. We got no soup.

Okay.

Speaker AAnyway, we had a challenge and we did it.

MaxAll right. I'd like to permission to expand and respond with my remarks, Senator. Senator Mann.

Speaker AYes, I would like to I'd like to point to the distinguished Jew from Chicago.

MaxPlease go. Please, please go ahead. Don't help me. Edit that out. I don't want anyone to know I'm Jewish because I feel like I'll have to resign from the podcast. So there were. OK, so I agree. I went through the struggle of not being able to reply to people, too. And ultimately, there's a couple of things. I agree with you that it probably has me questioning how much it matters to tweet about things to promote them because things went fine without me promoting them. But it also reminded me of this piece, this blog post I read a while ago. It's called – I think it's called The Art of Letting Others Be Wrong, and it's by just a blogger named David Cain.

He has this great story. He says, I was never exactly a fan of The Oprah Winfrey Show, but I've surely seen several hundred hours of it. for years after it went off the air, I kept remembering a particular insight that Oprah shared once. I forget the context, but Oprah was amazed to realize that she didn't have to answer the phone just because it was ringing. It was a significant insight to me, too, not because answering the phone is a particularly difficult task, but because it meant that there was an invisible freedom there, which I somehow didn't realize that I had. Even if I still answered every call, it felt like a choice.

Before that, it had been kind of a master-slave type relationship in which some remote person could push some buttons and force my body up onto its feet, perhaps tearing me away from a Star Trek rerun. For those of us inclined to argue every point, it's easy to forget that we have the freedom to simply carry on with our lives and let wrong viewpoint stand. It's amazing how often it seems like an exchange needs your input, the way a screaming kettle needs to be taken off the element.

MerlinThat's so good. Oh, that is so good. You know, it's, yeah, it's really true. You have, and this is partly because it stems out of my interest in cognitive behavioral therapy, You know, just just the idea that something you perceive in the world and and how you feel about it have an invisible link that comes out of your own head. Do you know what I mean? The idea that the classic example of like somebody not saying hi to you at work and you deciding that means something in the world like that's happening in your head unless you have evidence to the contrary.

And I think I think you have to realize that you don't you're right. you don't have to answer the phone. And in some ways, it's almost like the freedom you get from like a GTD-like system of going like, well, no matter how much I want to mow my lawn, if I want a plane, I can't do that. So like you could stress out for that entire flight or you could read a book. And that sounds so obvious until you're caught up in the emotions of it. And those emotions will completely carry you away. And in this case, why am I saying that? In this case, I wasn't allowed. And my response is, again, my response is like, I'm talking about friendly stuff, but I get what you're saying here.

Like the somebody is wrong on the internet. I can't go to sleep kind of thing. but like knowing that I can't reply made it more okay in some ways I don't know if that's what you're saying but that's that's how I feel is it had to be more okay I mean it in both ways because

Maxof course like I passed up I mean a lot of what I do on Twitter is like have stupid arguments with people or correct people when I feel that it's important or something and I you know of course it's helpful to remember like I don't actually need to do that so it I don't think it really changes their mind and just waste my time but like I just don't no one appointed me the to be the person in charge of correcting other people like just because i i was born a white man and that is society put that cruel expectation on me that i correct everyone around me on their opinions

Merlinabout technology i mean isn't it amazing how much you get corralled into having to do that because of your role it is you don't you don't want to do that you don't want that responsibility i don't

Maxlove uh opening my legs real wide on the train but society you don't want to be fucked with these expectations on me no but in all seriousness like i do argue with people and it's nice to know even if I go back on Twitter and keep arguing with people in the future, like, it's nice to be reminded that that's a decision I'm making. Like, I don't have to do that. It's not a job. It's, it's totally, it's totally choice. Every time I do it, it's a choice. And the same thing is true of, of replying to people. I mean, Twitter, every, any fucking person in the world can tweet at you. Like, it's crazy. Like you would never accept a work environment where literally any living human

could come tap you on the shoulder and bother you. It would be unacceptable. You would quit, you would go insane but somehow we we let ourselves do this with twitter all the time and just anyone has access to you they can say whatever dumb shit they want or ask any stupid repetitive oh it's your favorite card use humanity card and somehow i'm like oh i gotta respond to the fans or gotta gotta respond to these people on twitter i'm like no i don't actually i can just let it go totally agree

Alexwhat do you think about alex i just well i i have the privilege of pictures of chris latner over here i i i'm actually looking at pictures of uh the the newest spacex launch um but i have the privilege of uh no one following me on twitter so if someone said something that i thought was really nice or they asked a like legitimate question i i actually opened my tms for the week and just replied to them there so that was my solution wow wow wow way to embrace the spirit

of the challenge yep uh well there was that one guy with the chicken wallpaper that i just so good he uh someone sent me their uh iphone home screen and it was terrible but they had a background of chickens and i just oh i love that that guy that was a very unusual setup that guy i i love chickens um chicken chickens is is it chickens if they're still alive is that the

Merlinplural or is this like shrimp and shrimp yeah i'm wondering plurals because it's it's yeah

AlexAll right. Anyway.

MerlinI think technically it's Chicken Americans.

AlexI actually have a Texas Expander snippet for if somebody asked me what my favorite cards against humanity card is. What is it? It's the dolphin one. The dolphin sex one. I should update it to the scissoring one. What is the dolphin one? Let me find one.

MaxOh, figuring out how to have sex with a dolphin?

AlexYeah.

MaxThat's a good one.

AlexScissoring, if it's a thing, though, I think is my new favorite card that I was consulted on. Oh, scissoring, if that's even a thing. Yeah. let's laugh at the cards max wrote um oh it's so nice to be able to laugh again

Merlindoes anybody remember laughter it was hard it was hard now okay so uh dugga dugga dugga max are you and you go through these little fits sometimes sometimes you drop a little montero you are you serious you thinking you're you're getting off are you reducing what is your plan here it sounds like you you got to be in your bonnet about twitter well i i'm i'm doing

Maxsome soul searching in general you know listen let me just like back up for a second and and tell you like what i'm thinking about the world like i you know i spent i sorry like i uh no no

Speaker Ai just i just love the sentence let me back up for a second and tell you what i'm thinking

Speaker Bit's the ultimate giant step back okay yeah let's zoom way way out to the alpha century galaxy

Maxuh uh no i mean listen i'm i'm thinking right now you know obviously a lot about politics and like the last you know i i found the other day i was like going through a bunch of old obama shit and i found a business card from the first time that i met obama and i realized i've been in some capacity working, volunteering, supporting for consulting for whatever. This guy, Barack Obama, for coming up on 15 years. So it's been half of my life. I've spent working for this guy. And obviously when I started working for him, he was a state senator.

I thought he was a losing primary Senate, a protest candidate in the Senate race when he got into it, which is why I liked him.

MerlinAnd that was him against the Jerry Ryan guy?

MaxWell, that was in the general, but yeah. And he was the anti-Iraq war candidate, and that was important to me. And I was like, I'm going to volunteer for this guy because it's important to me. So I'm just thinking about the legacy of really the first part of my adult life, which feels like it's at an end point now that Obama's leaving office. And it's not looking great. Like a lot of that Obama legacy is going to be wiped away and the ways in which I thought that I understood society and that I thought I understood, you know, the role of progressive politics in this country and my own sort of, you know, small contribution to that and the way in which I thought I understood this election.

Right. Like I was very confident about my understanding of the election with all of my smarts and experience. And it was all wrong. So I don't want to go rushing in and be like, oh, well, now I understand it because I don't. Right. It was it was very wrong. So I'm just trying to reevaluate. And, you know, I'm I'm trying to I'm reading a bunch of like philosophy and kind of getting my feet back into a little bit of political philosophy and just trying to like put my feet on the ground and figure out what to do from here. And, you know, I keep coming back to Twitter as Twitter has changed politics and news in a way that I think is bad.

And I think if you're spend, you know, for me, Twitter is a big part of my life. Like it's a primary way that I talk to people and get feedback and follow up with what's going on. I think it's pretty toxic. I think it's really bad for my brain and my worldview. So that's what I'm thinking.

MerlinThere's one kind of facile way of looking at these things, or maybe this is going to seem really simple-minded and really, I don't know, lame. But for anything that you either decide to do or find yourself doing on a regular basis, well, first, if it's happening a lot more than you're realizing, that's good to know. But if it's something that you're doing a lot, a lot, a lot, it pays. This is so, I'm sorry, this is so lame and so Merlin Mann. does doing this a lot make me the person I want to be more or less?

Which sounds really simple minded until you really accept that. So, you know, does exercising a little more make me the person I want to be? Does like sleeping late do that? Like whatever it is, whether it doesn't have to have a value on it. But in that case, you know, I've done stuff like, you know, you're making me want to run. Oh, this would be a good challenge. Oh, I might run Rescue Time again. I haven't run it in a long time. But Rescue Time, when I ran, Rescue Time is an app for those listeners who don't know. is an app that runs on your Mac and basically watches what you do. It looks at the websites that you go to. It's your own little way of spying on yourself.

Because if you say, like, I am this kind of person, I'm not this kind of person, we're going to find out exactly what kind of fucking person you are, because Rescue Time is going to go, you know what? You spent three hours today in the document where you composed funny tweets, which was a reality that I faced at one point. And, like, that was really telling to me. Anyway, I'm applauding what you're saying because I know it's difficult, and maybe I'm being more sincere than is appropriate for this show, But I think it does help to periodically say, does this get me closer to who I want to be? Do I want to do way more of this or way less of this? Do I want way more of this or way less of this?

Or is it mostly okay? And I think it takes a certain amount of maturity to be willing to notice those things and then ask yourself those questions. And I may find myself asking those questions now too.

MaxI had one other point, a sort of like politics and philosophy point. And maybe this is going to be too boring and it will get edited out. Can I go down this rabbit hole for a minute? Yes. So so so I'm also thinking I'm also really interested in the role of writing and language in our in our like national conversation and in our politics. And maybe I only mean this in the national. I mean, maybe there is no such thing as like a quote unquote national conversation among like all Americans, although like dumb, unwashed, massive Americans.

So I really only mean this among like the like good, smart thinking people in this country. But there's this rant. Of course, it's on Twitter, which is hilarious, but it was by the account at fuck theory. But it really like me and a bunch of other philosophy friends read this thing and it just like got us in our bones. And I'll just read it's sort of a strung together Twitter rant. I'll just read a paragraph of this and then and then explain why it speaks to me. This is this at fuck theory wrote. For at least 20 years, upper middle class, often tenured academics have been teaching young people that politics is a futile form of irony.

I've watched Ivy League professors with tenure explain to graduate students with no health insurance that striking for pay is silly. I've heard smug male assholes with PhDs describe registering voters as the quote unquote busy work of political activity. I've watched Derridians and Lacanians who own homes sneer at 19-year-olds who raise their hands to ask what forms of activism are useful. I've watched post-Zizek fuckboy Marxist condescendingly tell young socialists that signification, not class, is the real locus of struggle.

I've watched Tim Dean tell young men that ethical gay liberation means filling as many anonymous assholes with cum as possible. I've watched Lee Edelman tell students with a shit-eating grin that hope is surrender and that fighting for the future is quote-unquote heteronormative. Kids were the first in their family to go to college. Kids who spent their whole life fighting for a scholarship. Kids who worked full-time while they studied for their SATs rather than having a family tutor come to the Hamptons every summer. Kids who, like me, grew up with awe looking at the worn, dog-eared copies of the Communist Manifesto on their grandparents' bookshelves.

Kids who, like me, had the shit kicked out of them for being smart, for being queer, for being brave, for being different. The smartest kids, the most determined kids, the most enthusiastic kids. The kids who need a concept of ethical politics the most. The kids who could, and in so many cases would, have gone back to their communities to teach, to read, to lead, to work.

And so, yeah. Send that to me. I will, I will. It's a good little Twitter rant. But anyway, I'm really interested in, because this is a problem, I think, with campus activism. God, this sounds so conservative and lame of me. But it's a problem with campus activism where if you're a professor and your entire world, your entire life is standing up in front of people and talking or going to lectures and listening to people talk. And that's everything you do. Then in your worldview, speech and performance are going to become primary.

It's going to become all there is. And you're going to come to believe that the only way to do anything in the world is to use the right words and to make the right speech acts. And, of course, that's not all there is. That's a ridiculous worldview. I've been reading a lot of this philosopher Martha Nussbaum who's like maybe my favorite political philosopher. and she has this very famous sort of philosophical feud with basically like the mother of campus sort of feminism, Judith Butler, who herself is a great philosopher

and really interesting to read. But Martha Nussbaum has this critique. She has this great critique of Judith Butler called The Professor of Parity. And I'll just read a quick quote from that. So this is Martha Nussbaum writing. Judith Butler's feminism is in many ways easier than the old feminism. It tells scores of talented young women that they need not work on changing the law or feeding the hungry or assailing power through theory harnessed to material politics. They can do politics in the safety of their campuses, remaining on the symbolic level, making subversive gestures at power through speech and gesture.

This, the theory says, is pretty much all that's available to us anyway by way of political action, and isn't it exciting and sexy? In its small way, of course, this is a hopeful politics. and instructs people that they can, right now, without compromising their security, do something bold. But the boldness is entirely gestural, and insofar as Butler's ideal suggests that these symbolic gestures are really political change, it offers only a false hope. Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.

That's the nut of it for me. It's not nothing to use the right words and to make speech acts and to get your angry tweets in and feel good and feel that you've done something, but don't confuse it with having done something.

MerlinDo you have a feeling about that phrase, slacktivism? I mean, does that put you off? Does that seem unkind or incomplete, or does that miss part of the texture of affecting change today?

MaxYeah, I mean, I think there is some slacktivism that's effective and works. I prefer to say Twitter activism, because I think that's an even funnier and more descriptive phrase. description of what happens and you know when you see these people who it's like let's all tweet at this person and show them how mad we are and you know point our our anger guns at them it's like I don't know it would be so much more effective to do almost anything to go talk to your neighbors or have a community meeting or do anything in the real world I think the biggest thing I've

Alexbeen struggling with is I just I feel like uh everything I know now is wrong and I just kind of want to sit in a corner and read and try to like I don't know just get a handle on the world but it but that feels almost like less than speech acts it's it's just like I have the privilege of crawling into a ball and trying to to learn as much as I can um but also I I feel like something like I it's not just a term or it's not just um like a matter of worrying I'm gonna say the wrong

thing that is like politically incorrect or not cool with the social justice warriors it's like what if i develop opinion that is genuinely harmful to like people in my community does that sort of make sense um it could just also be my own like uh social anxiety paranoia um

Merlinno i think what you're saying makes a lot of sense and i mean a thread that's running through a lot of what you're saying and i feel like a lot of stuff at least i i feel and i feel like max feels, is feeling a little bit unmoored about—we've certainly gone through a cycle where truth seems to have taken a backseat, if not the trunk, to how we think about how things happen in the United States. But there's also that feeling of, I don't know what I know anymore. My epistemology is all fucked up. I feel sometimes like I don't even know how to test what's a good idea or not. It's some combination of this weird political intrigue and turns-out culture, and there's

all these various things. I mean, how many things do you feel sure and certain and clear in your bones about? And like, are you sure about that? Like, have you even examined those things? I don't know if that's what you're describing, but I feel kind of that way. Like I, in this kind of Hippocratic way, I'm thinking like, God, I just don't want to fuck anything else up more. And at the same time, things that I thought typically in the past would be useful for things could actually be harmful. And will Piscate turn out to be something that was just a huge distraction from all these other things? And it's like, I don't know. For a man of my age and theoretical nominal maturity, I don't know what to think a lot of time, and I'm not sure how to even find out what to think.

MaxI don't think it's that there's the truth on Twitter versus the lies on Twitter. It's actually not that simple. I think it's a much more complicated situation that's happening, which is—sorry, too much powder. which is I think it's I think it's a much more complicated situation happening which is people have an enormous capacity to accept the data that conforms to their worldview and reject the data that does not conform to their worldview and living in an ocean of data makes it possible

to always have enough data to confirm any worldview that you pick for yourself and if you only surround yourself with the people who also conform to that worldview you'll just be awash in that data and you'll never sort of have a reason to critically question it or think that you're wrong or wonder what data your cognitive dissonance is causing you not to consider. And all you can do, I mean, maybe people as individuals don't really have access to the quote unquote truth, but all you can do is hope that you have a theory of the world that explains as much of the data as possible

and rejects as little of the data as possible. And it's increasingly difficult. Like I think Twitter makes that much harder. And the amount that I was so sure about Piscate a week ago, and I felt so confident that it was real, is a great example of that. Because who fucking knows? Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I'm trying to get all the data on all the sides of this that I can, and then form the theory that incorporates the data in the best way. But it's crazy to think that just being aware of a logical fallacy doesn't mean that you're any less likely to commit the

Alexfallacy right you know it felt like in uh high school if if i disagreed uh with someone's philosophy or uh it was like iffy on a scientific theory there there were reliable sources to go and read about and be like okay this this isn't like necessarily true but i can get like an accurate viewpoint or um some conflicting science that is interesting um but now it's like okay all

i can read about are uh angry medium posts from nazis like i don't know where to get um like different viewpoints it's it's i don't know like the like max said there's like a sea of like i get there is a sea of data but it's almost like if i don't come out of the whirlpool of things that confirm all of my beliefs it's just like where do I go yeah well I I'll tell

Maxyou what I've done this week because like not being on Twitter as much as and participating in Twitter is like actually freed up like hours and hours of time as it turns out like the amount of hours I'll just I'll just be honest like the amount of hours I spend on Twitter is it's unbelievable I mean I I have rescue time and I don't want to look at it because I'm it's embarrassing how much time I spend on Twitter. But I've been reading a lot of books and, you know, at least a book is like a well-respected book in its field. At least it's like a thing you can

think about for a long time. So if it's totally full of shit, you'll have a greater chance to realize it than 140 character tweet. You know, at least a book, you could spend some time with it and you live with it and you sit with it for a minute. I also subscribe to the New York Times, the hard copy of the New York Times. It comes to my house every morning. And it's like, I don't know i guess i never subscribed to a newspaper before so i assumed it was like a really expensive thing and it's not an expensive thing it's actually like incredibly cheap to have a man bring a

Merlinprinted paper to your house every day now it might be the introductory period because we tried that and it got expensive fast but it was it was very it was it was i'm glad we still get the sunday uh hard copy which my daughter does not understand at all like why you would get this but no and it's this thing we kind of like look over throughout the week and i don't know how you do that every morning, do you have a way you approach, I derailed you, I'm sorry, but how do you approach

Maxgetting that every morning as a busy person? Oh, I just grab, so I either go down and grab it and have my coffee and read the New York Times for, I don't read it cover to cover, I read the headlines, I pick out a few headlines, typically something I don't know a lot about already, and I read the article, and then I throw it out, I'm done with it, that's it, but just knowing the ecosystem of news of like, here's a bunch of really smart, well-informed editors who decided what's important today helps more than a bunch of random assholes that I followed on Twitter being mad about something.

And a lot of times, whatever dumb, shiny keys are jangling in front of people's faces on Twitter, surprisingly, does not make the pages of the New York Times, because it turns out to be extremely unimportant.

MerlinMy coffee's wearing off.

MaxI'm very dry and powdery. I mean, this wasn't funny at all. I just felt like it made my life better.

MerlinBy the time you're done cutting everything out of this, there's not going to be much left. It's going to be no apple all core.

MaxIt's going to be the Top Chef intro and then the jazz, and then we're done.

MerlinI wonder what Chris Lattner's doing right now. Do you think he's committing some code?

AlexDo you have any anxiety around reading books? I'm super interested. Because I'm a liberal arts kid, I love science journalism so much. Most of the time, I'm reading about robots and Tesla. um but like Jonah what's his name Jonah who's the guy who made up the Bob Dylan quotes um Jonah yeah like like I know we like everyone jokes about Malcolm Gladwell and stuff like that but it's like there were people that I trusted and who are smart and like I read him uh in Wired

Merlinand thought he was a smart person and he felt like he felt like not only one of us but like a way

Alexsmarter version yeah and I know that those are edge cases like I I understand that this is kind of again just an anxiety that is that's an internalized piece of bullshit but I don't know like I always get really excited when uh people smart people I like recommend books but um you

MaxI don't know let me let me tell you my I have a couple of just like rules of thumb so that I don't uh Jonah Lehrer myself um and and to be honest it makes the world do you sometimes Jonah Lehrer all over yourself a little bit yeah you know you're home alone listening to be like i could write bob

Alexdylan's song yeah you're you're looking at you're looking at pictures of chris latner and you uh you general area yourself i'm sorry chris latner i'm sorry i'm sorry chris latner maybe chris chris

Maxlatner's being interviewed on lifetime or something i uh no so i uh here's a couple of like rules of thumb and and even the other thing is like i just know a bunch of scientists so i've learned a certain amount of scientific literacy because I periodically, when I see a really cool science thing, I periodically message my science friends and say, what's your read on this? And I'll tell you this, be in all aspects of your life in terms of consuming news about the world and whether that's science or politics or whatever, be very wary of anything surprising.

If something surprises you, if you read something and you go, holy shit, that's amazing, your suspicion should dial up to a 20 because it's exceedingly exceedingly rare that something

Merlinsurprising happens if that was if it was conducted correctly that should be very unusual that's

Maxcorrect science moves inch by inch by inch and a surprising result is almost always dust on the telescope and almost never aliens like you know what i mean like it's it's up it's it's much more like and the science and you have to also understand that the incentive of the science press, even the really good science press like Radiolab, is that they want to show you surprising results. They want to present a surprising story to you. All funding for all science is contingent upon professors and scientists and lab groups getting turns out results, surprising results.

There's a strong bias towards finding out something surprising. And it turns out there's now a replicability crisis in science because people pursued these surprising results. And it's much more juicy and much easier to get funding and much easier to get the public to care about a surprising result than to say, hey, we tested something and falsified it, and it turns out it's not true, right? No one wants to be that guy. No one wants, that research is boring. It's hard to get funding for, but that's what true science is. So, and that, I would extend that to politics to say, if you read something that is so good that it seems too good to be true

about Trump, it's so surprising. It's like, oh, I can't believe he sunk this low. I can't believe that this or that happened. Be so skeptical about it because I'm guessing everyone listening to this podcast you're inclined you want to believe the piss gates of the world you want it to be

Merlintrue you want that guy to be humiliated you want him to if it's if it's your frame you know if nothing else it really if it's your frame or you made a you made a really quick in passing joke last week about piss gate and how this you were made for this i think that's the feeling is like when you've come across it's it's not that much of a joke where you go like oh my god this is right in my wheelhouse not only do i agree that this should be true even if it's not but i've got i've

Maxgot so much material that I could do on this. Yeah. Right. And it's very hard to separate the part of your brain, the critical part of your brain that's like, oh, I've like found something that's true from the less critical parts of your brain that are like, I really want this.

AlexI just really want big lithium ion batteries, guys. I get real, real excited.

MerlinYou know, companies that are, you know, one company that's doing a lot of good work with batteries is Tesla. Self-driving Lattner.

You

11. Dust on the Telescope

Show notes

Show Notes

Transcript

11. Dust on the Telescope

Show notes

Show Notes

Transcript

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