67. The Polish Instructions

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge. Check the weather.

MerlinI hear voices. Are you periscoping? Stop periscoping. Record the podcast. Time theft! Time theft! Time! Time theft! Time theft! Jesus Christ! This is what it's like to work remotely. Everybody's shucking and jiving and riding scooters and talking to Jen and getting drinks and shit. I'm sitting here with my dick in my hand. Nobody's even talking to me. Hi, I'm Merlin Mann. I'm a professional podcaster. I've been here for many, many minutes. I've updated the doc. I've duplicated the doc. This is the problem.

Put all this money into the studio

Speaker BStop fucking Alright, now it's good to talk to other pals

MerlinAlright, I guess I'll watch the Periscope stream See if we're going to record a fucking podcast Let's see, what are they doing now? They're walking around, shucking and jiving Oh, having a grand old time What's he doing? Oh, God I think that's the fart remover That's the other fart remover Okay You've got the eight carton walls And Knox is still taking his sweet fucking time Showing up I'm watching Periscope I have to turn the fart circulators on Not recording a fucking podcast Did you tell Jen to like and subscribe?

MaxYeah, Jen, make sure you like and subscribe Merlin, this is what it looks like every week When Alex and I record Yeah, you could run a real tight ship there Yep, yep Jesus Christ I go around and turn the fart circulators on I just turned mine off Are you still doing this? Oh yeah, we're going I think I'm going to become a vlogger That's my new plan in life I'm going to turn this off in a second But I just want to Guys This is my only goal Jesus Christ My only goal for this show

I have one goal for this episode Which is I don't want to say anything

MerlinYou get one of your employees to engage

MaxI just want one of them to engage with my content No, I just don't want to say anything That people get mad about I just want one episode Where I don't say anything that's controversial Or that people get really angry at me about Okay? Oh my god Can we just get through one hour of the show

MerlinWithout people being mad at us? Whose problem is that? It's like Marco says, you know, it's not your fault, but it is your problem. Bill Cosby innocent. Too soon.

MaxThe chocolate cake behind you. All right. Goodbye, Periscope. Thank you for engaging with my content. I enjoyed being a content creator for you. Hey, guys. Keep those hearts coming, fam.

AlexHey, only 10 minutes late. This isn't too bad, considering the morning. Oh, no.

MerlinEspecially being here for 40 minutes.

Speaker AMerlin, what's your daily routine once you get into the office, if you had an office? What?

MaxIn so much as you can say, Merlin, if you had an office that you worked at. What is this in service of?

Speaker AThis is I want you to ask me about my morning and what I do every morning because that's

Merlinreally good quality content. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Hey, guys. Are you having your lady time? Is that what it is?

Speaker AOh, well, we'll get to that later.

MerlinSave it for the show.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinOh, geez, Alex, I don't know. I ride my scoops-coops at the office. I come in and I fuck around on the internet for a couple hours. I pick up my kid and go to sleep. Hey, what's going on in your neck of the woods?

MaxWhat kind of stuff are you doing for routine and whatnot? When you're fucking around on the internet, what are your main things? What tabs get open first?

MerlinIt's like impossibly boring. Like what I do is like just redonkulously boring. And I do the exact same thing over and over and it's a great source of joy for me.

MaxYeah, do you ever close – are you ever on a website? Like sometimes I'm on Reddit and I read the front page and I'm like, okay, I'm done with Reddit. I need something else to read. And I go into my little bookmark bar, and I click on Reddit again.

MerlinOh, I know. I've done that. I've done that. You know, I think it was Internet Explorer, at least for me, Internet Explorer from Mac in the early 2000s, late 90s. Anyway, they introduced a feature where you could have not just bookmarks, not just a favorites bar, not just a folder full of favorites, but you could set it so that every time you clicked on that, without having to hit command, it would open all of the tabs. And that was the beginning of problems for me. So, yeah, I do that. I've got one where I go and I look at all the social medias that I do, which is basically Twitter.

I look at your stupid fucking political list all day, see what's up with Daniel. Hey, good news. Daniel's real name is Daniel. So when I'm making fun of his name, I'm really just making fun of his handle. And now I feel better.

So, Alex, what's going on? What's your – Alex, tell us about your morning routine. What's your routine like even?

Speaker AThe cats get me up at 6 a.m. And then I try to go back to bed for a half hour. And then I'm not successful.

MaxYou wake up at 6 a.m. every day?

Speaker AYeah. But I try to.

MaxRegardless of when you go to sleep?

Speaker AYes. But this was a very special morning. Because I was out drinking very, very late last night. So I was prepared. How late did you guys stay out? I don't know. Maybe midnight, which is late for a 27-year-old.

Alexon a school night no less exactly so i was prepared uh people after a holiday party people taught me how to deal with a hangover because that was one of my very few hangovers so i was super prepared but then this morning i felt absolutely fine and there was nothing and i just i i was nervous because i had a meeting at 9 a.m and i'm like oh i've made a mistake but i think i'm just bragging in that i guess i'm not as old as i thought i was uh because i just

Maxdrank a lot of water and i was fine nice alex and i had two social engagements over the last in between episodes we saw black Panther together and then we and then we had dinner together last night as part of our that's not a social engagement that's a company that's a corporate it was a work it's not organic it's not organic gross we said we were doing this like our like belated holiday dinner and then Renee was like the uh Renee sent out the invite and then she was like the employees want to know if it's mandatory and I was like tell them that it's not mandatory but it will be really bad if they don't come and they kind of have to do have to go oh no we have a

Alexlovely dinner with free like a free dinner like a seven course meal they're like they're like is

Maxthis optional or do i have to go i don't want to say that it's required but you you know you can't not go but it's all it's not mandatory i mean everyone is there by choice that said i didn't

Alexgo last year i was on i don't know why i didn't but i was like wait what oh what did we do last

Maxyear i don't remember maybe we did a dinner either uh the issue is that we get so busy over the holidays and we get, you know, our whatever, our 500,000 customer service emails for holiday bullshit and all of that. And then no one wants to do dinner in December. So we just don't,

Merlinwe usually don't do it. My wife told me that belated holiday parties are definitely a thing now. Yeah. Like we were at a hotel last weekend and there was a big holiday party in February. It's like a thing. And she's like, oh, that's definitely a thing now. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. There's too much, too much bullshit in the first two weeks of December. It all needs to stop. It's just too much. Too much mandatory, non-mandatory stuff.

MaxA lot of the holiday experience is, you know how, okay, you know how the White House says that they're not going to, that the new, like one of the new like Janine Pirro or however you say her name of Fox News, like talking points, is that Mueller wants Trump to testify about Russia shit, but it's, that Trump shouldn't do it because it's a quote, perjury trap. You know, they're like springing a trap. You know, it's like they painted their ex.

MerlinBecause they're expecting to be honest and remember things. That's ridiculous.

MaxRight. Well, it's like, who asked that of a man? Yeah. It's not so much a trap as it's just if the president...

MerlinLike a big X. Yeah.

MaxMueller draws a big X. I mean, I think the way to... Right. Exactly. Yeah.

MerlinHe's the expert.

MaxHe doesn't even need a jar of honey, though. I mean, the problem is the president is so fucked because he can't not testify. Like, if the FBI is investigating it, you have to go testify. So he will testify at some point. No, I think he won't. I think he won't. I think he'll refuse to. Well...

MerlinYeah. No, no. He'll refuse to. There was a whole... show where they talked about this is weeks and maybe months ago they talked about um walk us through what's actually involved to like serve a subpoena to the president and like it's actually it's pretty hard like they can just not answer the door and stuff like it's it's gonna be really hard to do and he can drag this out basically forever and i'll put my i'll put my my red line

Maxas they say my red axe here i hadn't really gone down that path but i guess absent any sort of like congressional oversight of like impeaching him if he doesn't do it which you know obviously isn't going to happen not going to happen yeah maybe it won't happen but i mean it is it is kind of a great like i i was thinking about it the other day and it's like well if trump testifies he kind of only has two choices which is he can tell the truth or he can lie and neither of them are really appealing if you're a white house counsel yeah like he can either tell the truth about having committed a federal crime in the past or he can commit a new federal crime in the moment by

Merlinlying it was just light treason yeah oh you just send a thumb drive with an mp3 just says no collusion on repeat. We want to restrict the scope of this.

MaxWitch hunt! Witch hunt! Don't cause me innocent! Good Lord.

So the holiday parties are kind of their own form. The holiday season is kind of its own perjury trap, because all that happens is it's like You think you're clear on people, and then all of a sudden you get an invite to their holiday party, or you get a present for them, or you get a card from them. Have a little bit of mandatory fun. Yeah. And then pow, perjury trap. Step into my net, bitch.

I got the armaments pretty bad because I heard they sent out Christmas cards, and I didn't get one, and then I scrambled and sent them one of my Christmas cards defensively. It was more of a preemptive strike because I knew that they were armed. It's a holiday perjury trap. That's good. Yeah, and I got them. And then I got a belated one. I got a belated card from the Armands and they were like, sorry. Oh, so nice of you to send us a card.

Speaker BYou're the worst.

MaxHey, happy holidays. I mean, you know, it's like, you know that they have WMDs, so you got to strike first.

Speaker AI mean.

MaxThat's why you give them a bloody nose. Yeah. Pop them right in the face. Ow, ow.

AlexShit. So because the holiday. So. So. So. So. So it started as a joke, but I can't stop singing. Tick, tick. That was a good episode of Backdork.

MerlinI'm so lost. Tick, tick.

AlexWhat? Tick, tick.

MerlinTick, tick.

AlexI thought you liked OmniFocus.

MerlinOh. You got to say it real decisively to your dingus. You got to say, you know, build perjury trap in tick, tick. Tick, tick. You got to say it real percussively or Siri gets confused.

Speaker AYou know, I enjoy the productivity apps, and I like saying I can't do like, at-a-ta-ta-da-wa-s, descend to the things.

MaxAlex, some of my professional vlogging gear arrived.

Speaker AYou have it. Oh, boy.

MerlinI couldn't find it, so I bought another one. What are you going to vlog about, Max? You can talk about success and the things the fat cats don't want you to know. Are you going to give some of the secrets to Max Temkin?

MaxWell, obviously, Merlin, let me tell you some facts, okay? As you can see here, I have the Lambo. But what I'm more proud of is these 20 new bookshelves that I had built to hold my 2,000 books. Because as I said in my TEDx talk where I quoted billionaire investor Warren Buffett, knowledge is power. And I'm more proud of having to have built these bookshelves to hold the books that are in my garage for some reason.

MerlinThat's just definitely my house. Definitely my house. Definitely my Lambo. He only had 47 Lambos in his Lamborghini account.

Speaker AIt didn't occur to me right now until now that, yeah, they're in his garage.

MaxYou know, the classic place where people keep books exposed to the elements in a thinly insulated aluminum wall.

MerlinThere's two things every young man keeps in a garage. It's 2,000 books and a Lamborghini. It's pretty typical. We don't want the Lamborghini to get bored.

MaxSlight. There are two types of people in this world, those who know how to convert PDFs into Word documents and those who are indicted for money laundering. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is the second kind of person. Back in October, a grand jury indictment charged Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates with a variety of crimes, including conspiring to, quote, defraud the United States.

On Thursday, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a new indictment against the pair, substantially expanding the charges. As one former federal prosecutor told The Washington Post, Manafort and Gates' methods appear to have been, quote, extensive and bold and greedy with a capital G, but not all that sophisticated.

MerlinI mean, how do you convert a PDF into a Word file? I don't even know how that—I mean, I imagine you could do it, but it seems like it would

Maxjust be solid. The Slate article helpfully tells us. One new detail from the indictment, however, points to just how unsophisticated Manafort seems to have been. Here is the relevant passage from the indictment. To create the false 2016 P&L on or about October 21, 2016, Manafort emailed Gates a .pdf version of the real 2016 DMI P&L, which showed a loss of more than $600,000. Gates converted that PDF into a Word document so that it could be edited, which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that Word document by adding more than $3.5 million in income.

He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the Word document be converted back to a PDF, which Gates did and returned to Manafort. So essentially they created an incriminating paper trail in their email just because they didn't know how to convert a Word doc to a PDF and back and forth.

And the Slate article helpfully notes that changing PDFs back to editable Word documents, meanwhile, is possible in Adobe Acrobat via the save as other command under file on a Mac. For as little as $2 a month, Adobe will allow you to convert PDF files to Word, Excel, and Rich Text formats.

Speaker AI mean, this article is really in my wheelhouse because it makes me stressed out about politics and it's got some little life hacks built in.

MerlinYeah, tech tips.

MaxWell, can I tell you guys about something I like? This episode is brought to you by our friends, PDF Pen. PDF Pen! Thanks to, they're not at Smile on my Mac anymore. Smile. Smile.

MerlinSmile on my Mac and then they became Smile. Smile Software.

MaxThanks, Smile Software. It's a better way to convert. We're not using the other apps anymore.

MerlinWe're not using the other apps.

MaxHow much is PDF pen? It's like five bucks, right?

MerlinFive, ten bucks? No, it's more than that. But it's very nice to have on an iPad. I remember Acrobat, Acrobat Pro being very costly back in the day.

MaxI mean, fuck converting it to a Word document.

MerlinI don't even do PDFs on my computer anymore. I prefer to do them. Maybe I'm being stupid. But, for example, when you see the PDFs that Mueller puts out or whatever, or you see stuff on like the, you know, federal sites, it's just an image. There's no, is that app OCRing it and then turning it into a Word doc? Because I imagine that looks real bad. Oh, Acrobat? I mean, I know it's not difficult to take something that's already been OCRed and turn it back. But in most cases, I think most people are just saving images.

MaxSo I think the, okay, so I'm going to wildly speculate about something I don't actually have any technical knowledge of. but I think here's how it works is if the PDF is images already, right? So if it's been converted from text into like an image, so it's like, you know how when you get a PDF of a magazine that you've subscribed to, it's like half a gigabyte? That's because the text isn't selectable. They've converted the whole thing to an image because they don't want to embed the typefaces and the layout and all of that and have it displayed differently on the screen. So they convert to image. But 99.9% of the PDFs you get, it's just data in there, right?

It's just text. and the right program will be able to turn that into something that's readable by word. Okay. Makes sense. Right. It doesn't need to be OCRed because it's like HTML. It's just a markup line. A PDF is just like a markup language to display text in a certain way. And I think it even has placeholders for like forms and stuff like that. Although they never really work in preview if you guys have ever tried to do that. Oh, no, no, no. You've got to really look at it.

MerlinOh, that's such a pain in the butt when you've got to send somebody.

MaxWhen you go into that goddamn preview PDF editor and you just want to type your name in there. Here it comes. You just want to type Max Temkin on the line or just put the date. It never fucking puts the text box in. You always have to click around like you're drunk and click on 10 different. It's always like an A with an underline and like a little cursor. I'm like, I just try them all. And I'm just got make a fucking text box. That's all I ever want. I never want anything else. I don't want to select a square.

MerlinOr thanks to Smile for supporting Dubai Friday and all the great shows.

MaxI don't even do I do all my PDFs on the iPad now It's so much faster on PDF

MerlinOh yeah, because it'll make the boxes for you But even then you want to double check it This is really exciting But if you do that, you export it, you look at it Go open it in preview or in Chrome And see what it looks like In Dimes and Donuts, something's going to be cut off Something's going to be in the wrong place What do you think? None of these guys are Mac people

MaxYou think, right?

Speaker AOh no, you can't, no

MaxI mean it's like I don't know. They're just, in all areas of their life, they just have such awful bourgeois taste.

MerlinBut also, like, just Manafort, just in general, is such an intriguing character because all the stuff, my wife and I were just saying, we were watching MSNBC last night and the whole Jared thing. Jared's very bad, terrible, not good day yesterday. And I'm just like, honestly, I legit don't understand how he is not literally shitting himself all the time. Ditto Manafort. Like, I don't know how Manafort just, like, walks around like a person. I don't know how he's not. I don't have any problems and I'm anxious. And like, I don't know. I just don't know how they do it. But then like, so all the thing came down,

they raided his place. He, I think he got arrested. Like all the stuff happened. He's out on bail and he's working with some Ukrainian cutout to publish an op-ed about himself. It's like, I don't know, man. Maybe he's got the right idea. I don't know.

MaxHim and his legal team spent all their time writing letters to the court, asking for him to get permission to leave the state to go to parties. Like, they keep appealing for him to, like, take his, like, peel off his ankle monitor and leave the state to go to a Christmas party. He has to go to Florida for medical reasons.

MerlinHe has medical Florida reasons.

MaxI mean, I think you do have a selection bias here of, like, these are not normal guys with, like, a normal, correct, with, like, a, like, they're, like, low empathy individuals. Like, these are not people with, like, normal amounts of shame and empathy. Like, I would shit my pants, I would, I would, I would, I would, I would shit my pants constantly. I would have diarrhea. I would be a constant

Merlinpants shitting machine 24 7. I would just

Maxbe a liquid slurry of shame. I would have propulsive diarrhea continuously throughout the entire

Merlinday. I would be firing across the room. I would be an AR-15 of wetness all the time. It would be a veritable bump stock of turds.

AlexSplatter! I wonder what Ivanka's period is like. I bet it's very polite. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. You get stressed and just more comes out. Me too.

MerlinIt's not appropriate. Not appropriate to ask about her father. It's not appropriate.

Speaker BI'm a little girl. Don't ask me about my daddy. Meh.

Alexdig dug merlin there's there's nothing in follow-up and front matter only my sad lonely bit about periods you have no fun updates for us what's your period bit the there's it's not a bit it's just yeah it is no it's not what why is it more of a chunk why is it a bit yes more of a

chunk it's more of a gelatinous blob really yeah i think it's not what people expect no i think on

Merlinthe one hand guys think it's going to be either a drip drip drip that's very polite and avonka-like or they think it's going to be some some kind of sausage that comes out and really it's it's

Alexmuch more than even i i promise everyone it is much more disgusting than you can even imagine well did you see the very not into this conversation no no this is an important conversation okay this is this is just the between merlin and i now uh did you uh did i send the

Speaker Aarticle in our super secret text channel yes yes queen yes yes uh the the men i i don't i didn't really understand what was happening but it like some man doctor said how i don't understand how they quantify i don't either i mean i've never um some some guy was like ah yes a period can be as painful as a heart attack which i've never had a heart attack but i you know i don't think it's been the max is vlogging my period if you could do me a favor i would like you while you're

Merlindiscussing this i know you guys don't like to look at each i would like you guys to both make eye contact with each other while you discuss the i'm already looking at alex through a camera right

Speaker Anow. Nope. But there was this whole, there was just the, the internet's all like, ah, yes, finally. But I, I'm genuinely curious. The 10 women who listened to this podcast, have you ever had a heart, have you had a heart attack as well as a period? Because I'm just super curious.

MerlinOh, the Venn diagram.

Speaker AWell, right. Because women have way fewer heart attacks than men. And, and periods are terrible. numbers on that exactly and and there was a time where i was briefly off birth control and i i literally thought my appendix had burst and i went i like uh went to the emergency room and they no one could figure out what was wrong and it was like oh oh wow you're like i got an mri and they're like wow your pain scale is off the charts like all my neurons were firing and i was just getting

Merlinmy period did you get did you get uh shorter and lighter periods uh do you get shorter and lighter

Speaker Aperiods with birth control? Yes and no. It really depends. I have polycystic ovaries, so it depends, really. It depends on the globs. It's never consistent. It's not a polite Ivanka

Merlinsituation. But do you have the lady from Girls? Do you have that? You don't have endometriosis, though, right? Oh, no. That's like a big... You get spider webs in your... That's bad. I had a lady friend that had that, and it was no good. Max, do you have endometriosis that you know? Not that I can recall it this time.

Could you do me a favor and Google endometriosis? Because, Alex, I think you'd really enjoy the photo or the illustration for this.

AlexOh, there's a...

MerlinShe's holding... It's not funny, but she's holding her abdomen. She has her hand up to her forehead. She's hunched over and she's going...

AlexYeah, it's just, oh, I just got a little bit of a headache and a tummy ache as tissue grows outside my uterine lining. Like, oh, this is an ouchie.

MerlinI need to recline on my fainting couch.

AlexPlease give me a rose.

MerlinSo the question is, so we're talking about this without talking about this. An article recently came out that said, and I just looked at the headline. You can tell us more detail on this, but it is believed that period pains and cramps can be as bad as a heart attack is the basic idea.

Speaker AYeah, I'm just putting it out there. I'm curious. because I by no means doubt that this is a thing,

Alexbut it doesn't really explain how they measured this. Did they do brain scans on people and be like, ah, yeah, this totally matches what's going on in a brain, the amounts of pain that are happening with people when they're in cardiac arrest? I don't know. Also, I can't find this article. Are periods pain? Periods pain after marriage. Which period pain relief after pregnancy? Let's try period heart attacks.

MerlinHeart attack.

AlexWell, period pain is officially bad as a heart attack. Who does, like, the official, who's doing this?

Speaker AOh, there's more than one.

MerlinYeah, you would need some kind of a pain czar or a pain czarina. I want, that's what I want. Somebody who's in a position to say, that's a big picture of a tampon.

Speaker AYeah, that's a very, to circle back to the whole Fatberg issue

Alexand in our office when all like half of the office flooded because of apparently the the shit lords and the the tampon queens um now now it's very nice because there are various size we have like literally every size of tampon possible in our office wait how does this occur i haven't

Maxlooked in a long time how does this occur what what happens uh people keep buying them or what

AlexNo, no, no. There's just a lot of people who put on the grocery list, I guess, various sizes of tampons. And now we have like a whole array. It's like a spread.

MerlinAre they very large tampons? I mean, I know about the difference.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinYou can get a very large, you can get an extraordinary, like a jumbo tampon.

AlexI actually did not know how big tampons could get until I went to this office.

MaxDo they get measured like sausages? Like you've got your 6 to 1, your 9 to 1, your 12 to 1?

MerlinIt's more like a cigar. I bet you get the gauge and the length. You can get a Maduro tampon. Large tampons. Oh, well, I'm rocking a Churchill. He only smoked the first half. Let's see. Biggest tampon yet. Okay, Tampax. Digga, digga, digga. What are the little guys? The Corona? Oh, no, you mean, see, I'm so out of, I have not done this in years. But the little ones, no. Like, oh, geez. Robusto. Oh, challenge?

Speaker AInteresting. I did not know this about you.

MerlinYes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker ABecause I...

MaxSorry, sweetie. I have to do it for my podcast. It's for work.

MerlinWhy does daddy smell like compost?

MaxIt's for my work. This is a requirement for my work. There's literally no unsafe dose. That's the Dubai Friday guarantee.

AlexYeah.

MaxLiterally no unsafe dose. we medically stand behind every challenge that's issued on this podcast

Speaker Bi guarantee you if you take this if you take my powders for 45 days you'll get lumpy in a slightly different way i was lumpy in this way and then for 45 days later i had my powders and now i'm

Maxin this way and my skin color is different i saw a video on twitter the other day of milo yiannopoulos like like half-heartedly hawking some sort of testosterone powder while he was hosting like some Alex Jones bullshit on the Infowars set. And he looked so defeated and wet. He was very moist. He looked very moist and sad and defeated. And I felt almost bad for him. I was like, man, this guy must have, because he's an elitist, he must have total disdain for the viewers of the show

and the place that he is and Alex Jones himself. He must have total fucking disdain for those people. But this is what he's reduced to, just to try and have some sort of relevance or maintain some sort of audience. I mean, he's pretty much completely ostracized himself from polite society. And I guess that's all that's left to him.

AlexI didn't even think, I thought he had just gotten, like, I thought he just kind of went into the ether and forgot that he existed until now. So thank you.

MaxWell, his whole thing is making sure that you don't forget that he exists.

AlexWell, he's doing a pretty bad job of it, honestly. Like, just, I think more and more platforms are just slowly banning him.

MaxWell, they learn that there's no way to shame him. so you just need to not cover him. Like, we haven't been hearing as much about the alt-right in the last six months or whatever since Charlotte. Right-wing Abraka Daniel.

MerlinI want to circle back to tampons, but Max, were you following the exchanges with Alex Jones and David Hogg yesterday?

MaxOh, no. David Hogg is one of those kids. He was the one that was probably a crisis actor.

MerlinI believe so. Right, he was a crisis actor, but Alex Jones, I don't know. We shouldn't go on about it, but it was pretty fucking hilarious because Alex Jones, who said Sandy Hook was a jam-up, was on there basically begging David Hogg. He's just asking a question, Merlin. He's not allowed to ask a question. He's just asking a question. He wants to clear up this problem because he's gotten the first of his three strikes from YouTube. They're going to give him two more strikes. He's gotten his first strike from YouTube with his two billion viewers, and he's real worried, and he wants David to intervene. Do you know what's being done in your name? Take down the First Amendment.

MaxDid you follow this yesterday? It was mental. So he was basically, what was happening? He was basically begging this child to help him appeal to YouTube?

MerlinAnd he was begging the child to come on his show and also essentially asking him to intervene because YouTube had taken down the video that Alex Jones had about how this was not true and that these were crisis actors, I believe was the subject of it. And also you can search for Alex Jones strikes. But like YouTube has been – some guys sat in a room, as other people have noticed. Some executives at YouTube sat in a room and said, hmm, how many strikes should we give him? Oh, let's give him three and let's call this his first one and we'll talk publicly about that.

MaxThat's probably how I'll go out as a professional vlogger, begging some child that I've defamed to help me appeal to YouTube so that I can undo my three strikes.

Yeah, I actually have decided to live my life as a DJ. You guys, some personal news.

MerlinI've decided I'm going to come out as an emcee, as you can see.

MaxAnd I deliver all my rhymes with glee. Yeah, my thing is that you've got to really read the energy of the crowd and then hit the space bar at the exact right time. It's called the drop. Knowledge. What did Sandy tell us? Sandy was saying his kids, he's like a seven-year-old son, and he's been listening to DJ Marshmello a lot. And we listened to a little clip of DJ Marshmello on Twitter. You've got to put this on. And Sandy was like, in my entire life, I always thought I would be a cool dad. and I've never felt more lame than when my kid is listening to DJ Marshmello

and I'm just like, what the fuck is this shit? Turn this shit off. This is upsetting on many levels. Put DJ Marshmello on, Alex.

AlexLet's hear it.

MaxThis is what the kids listen to now.

AlexAll right, we'll put in the – oh, let's see. Let's see. Play DJ Marshmello.

MaxI've been laughing about that for like two days ever since Sandy told me that. The idea that he just stomps around the house going, turn that shit down.

AlexWhat?

MaxIt is really bad. Wait, is the drop happening? Energy. Help.

Speaker BYou. Minstrel cycles. Professional vlogging. Libraries for your Lambos.

Productivity.

AlexIs it just going to go? There's no drops? What's happening?

MaxWe haven't even begun to build up to the drop.

AlexAlso, notice that the title of the album is just Alone, and the album art just says Alone with a blurred background.

MaxI truly hate this. I apologize. It's probably alienating our young audience, and they're like, I love DJ Marshmallow.

AlexOh, here we go. Here we go.

MaxIt's like charging up like Goku. He's not even fully charged.

AlexThat was it?

MaxThis is Dubai Friday.

AlexOh, fuck that. Please play mine, Alex. Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. All right. Oh, dear. Oh, boy.

Speaker BIt's raining tacos. From out of the sky. Tacos. No need to ask why. Just open your mouth and close your eyes.

MaxThat always ends well. I recognize this melody. Where is this from?

MerlinEvery Skrillex song? I had it on repeat at my house for about a month. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, your daughter was listening to this? Let me check it out.

MaxAlso, Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom is also really good. That's another one. Have you guys seen this ad? These like, hang on, breakfast time commercial. This was this thing that Nickelodeon was doing a couple years ago. And it made me understand this. Just hearing this animation made me understand something about the kids of today and their attention spans and their mental faculties.

There's like an epileptically Flashing spoon

MerlinIt's like a Teen Titans The Teen Titans Go was a song This would be it

Speaker BMmm Mmm That's them. Man of grapes, cheese and grapes. Some yogurt parfait. Holy toast and no taste. British muffin pizza, sausage, egg and pita. So bright. Mmm. Mmm There's like a breakdancing sexy lady spoon.

Speaker AI think my ovaries are just now completely dry. I don't want children who... But okay, so in fairness, this is a commercial from our childhood.

Speaker BIt's packed with celebrity interviews And comics and posters And great stuff to collect But only a real live grown up Can call to order it for you Of course you can think of a nice polite way to ask Nickelodeon magazine please Oh god It's so good it's so good Oh my goodness Nickelodeon magazine please You never know who will pop in What will pop out And it's so good You'll eat it all

Speaker ASee that encouraged creativity in manipulating your parents to buy something for you.

MaxI did a little Twitter thread this week, and I asked people to send in their all-time number. Here's what I want, everybody. I want your favorite YouTube video, and there are some rules on this, okay? So I want to know, this is like, Your social media is so engaging suddenly, Max. I think you've really upped your game. Thank you. I'm thinking about becoming a professional vlogger, so I really want to get those engagement numbers up.

So, all right, here's the situation. We do the Cards Live show, and we kind of show these short little, like I would say no more than 90-second interstitial YouTube videos that we ask people to submit. And I just want to expand my horizons and learn about more of these things. And, you know, I think everyone has a favorite couple of sort of, I would describe them as like weird, weird little delights on YouTube. So it could be like an animal doing something funny or a guy in a costume falling down. Or I love news fails, like a news anchor like goes insane and starts cursing or something.

So here's the rules of what I'm looking for. I am looking for something that is funny, delightful or surprising. It has to be on YouTube.com. It can't be widely known. Okay. Don't send me something that everybody has already said. Don't send me it if it has over, you know, two million views and everybody's already seen it. You want a little surprise, a little surprise, a surprise that's little. Yes, exactly. And 90 seconds in length or less, or if it's really long, like, just send me, just give me the nut, right? Just give me the 30 seconds that I need to watch. And I have collected these videos, the best ones that I've found.

I don't, beyond that, there is sort of a taste issue, and I'm sort of the ultimate arbiter of, like, what I think is delightful and surprising and weird enough. but I've collected the sort of best emblematic funniest videos in a YouTube playlist on my account called favorites. And we'll put that link to that in the show notes. Alex, we put that,

Alexwe remember that in the show notes. But don't look at it if you come to our live shows because

Maxthat's well, that is kind of where we get the videos from, I guess. Yeah. And then I also have two other playlists. One of them is called high quality animals. And the other one is called videos to watch while you're high and which are both very good, very, very good lists. Thank you. and I put a lot of work into those.

MerlinDid you know I'm subscribed to you? I mean, even before you were a vlogger, I was subscribed to you. My daughter and I would watch your excellent animal videos.

MaxOh, really? The high-quality animals?

MerlinYour curation is really tight. Like, there's no bad ones in there.

MaxThey're all really good. I mean, thank you. I genuinely put an enormous amount of work into picking those YouTube favorites, and I will say one of my favorite party activities, I know, don't tell me how lame this is because I know how lame it is, but a lot of parties that I go to devolve into people showing their favorite YouTube videos. It's one of my favorite activities. It's the best. It's a total fucking blast of serotonin, just watching a little comedy with your friends. Have you guys seen where

Merlinthe lady has to rake up where the pandas are and they keep falling on their behind? Yeah. And they want to get the basket so much, they want to get that bass stick. It's so cute. She picks them up. She picks them up with their little claws, keep grabbing them, and they fall on their bottom.

MaxAll right. So anyway, send those in to me. Send me a tweet or whatever you do of Verit or whatever

Alexyou're on and uh finally uh we were thinking wait wait wait i want to um add i'm gonna add on to this um if you have a playlist not just like here's all of your likes but a playlist that is like max's then it no one's is gonna be good no none of them are going to be as good no one is gonna send me a good but tweet no tweet them to me because then i can get the best ones and it makes my job easier i sincerely doubt it also well i have to watch all a bunch of bad ones i i mean And at this point, people send the same one every time.

And so I'm like mining the deep, like going deep into Reddit, be like, please, someone send me something funny. Also, if it is a funny Twitter video, like if the video is hosted on Twitter, I will accept that. Don't send it to Max. All right. Dig Dug. Max, what is your third item?

MaxAll right. Item number three. We are we want to make a what do we want to make one of those like little iTunes promos for Dubai Friday where it's like this is this is the show. and we want to know what are your all-time favorites people have been listening to the show for a while uh what are your all-time favorite moments like like what's like a little clip that we can excerpt in what in that intro and sort of set it up and then and then other listeners will be like oh this is a funny show and they won't be expressing any opinions like bill cosby innocent and i should subscribe and like this you guys you guys with me yeah yeah

Merlinso i'm kind of this is kind of new to me this is what is what is what are we talking about this is an iTunes feature? We want to make like the thing. Oh, we talked about the like, you don't have to listen to everything to get into the show. Correct, correct. That's like the iTunes promo episode. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, but anyway. How will we create, since we're talking about administrative stuff on the air, will we create a Google spreadsheet and make a forum for this with a place for a timestamp? How will we do this?

MaxOh, well, it's good that you bring that up, Merlin, because we've already done that. And you can find the link right now in the show notes. Yep.

AlexAlex has definitely done that. Oh, there it is.

MaxI'm sorry, I didn't see it. Oh, yeah. Yep, it's in notes. Google. I'm so sorry, you guys.

MerlinI should have looked at the notes.

MaxYep, yep. Yeah, it's already been done. So you just go on the show notes for this episode. And if you're a true fan of the show and you really like us and you want us to be friends, all you have to do is send us the time code of one of your favorite bits that we should include, just like a funny moment. Give us your fucking time code. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing, guys. You have time and we want your time. So you go to giveusyourfuckingtime.com. Actually, we should really buy that. I'm going to go ahead and buy that. Go to giveusyourfuckingtime.com and send in your favorite clips of Dubai Friday. And we do need a timestamp for that. So you're going to have to go back and find it because we're a little too lazy for that.

All right. That's all my stuff.

AlexOh, yeah. A reminder that I have a minor in gay. I don't know what it's called, but I think it's... What were the most interesting...

MaxWhat were the most interesting things you learned in gay class? How to be fabulous. Did you learn how to say make it work?

What about that thing where you snap in a triangle? Did it teach you to dispense sort of wise, empathetic advice in a time of need for the straight protagonist? Yeah, but like in a non-threatening way.

AlexI know. People are scared of dental dams. You got to walk them through it slowly. At least it needs braces.

MaxAlex, nobody uses a dental dam.

AlexOh my God. We're not going to.

MaxNo.

AlexYes.

MaxNo, they don't. No, they do not.

AlexNot often. I can't be compatible.

MaxMy consciousness is not compatible. I can't exist in a world where people actually employ the use of dental dams.

AlexThey are not. Okay.

MaxThey're almost never used.

AlexPlease tweet at Max Temkin if you have used a dental dam or dental dam device.

MaxNo way. Please do. Please do.

AlexTweet at Max Temkin.

MaxAbsolutely not. Absolutely not. far more dental dams are open for sort of novelty or educational purposes than are opened for sex i would say by three to one more dental dams are open for educational or novel this would also be

Merlina good point to drop in that audio from very early in the show when max says he hopes this week he will say absolutely nothing that offends anyone because that's always top of mind for max it could have been the week please remember to like and subscribe I'm trying to enjoy my stories Can't I just enjoy my stories Why do they all need a massage They all need a massage at the same time They're so sweaty

AlexMerlin it's your challenge What no Are we not at the challenge Oh really Oh a bunch of people asked me whose challenge it was this week And I said it was Merlin's nevermind

MerlinChallenge

MaxMax what was the challenge this week This week's challenge was monitor the weather and purchase some sort of implement for monitoring the weather at your personal domicile and up your weather game. I somewhat did this challenge but I'm not 100% complete. So I bought, let me see, I bought the number one wire cutter recommended weather dingus. Let me go on Amazon and see which one I bought.

Your orders. It's going to need to do a little face authentication. Okay.

Merlinso i bought talk about that can i add that to the topic list i really want to talk about face id yep holy shit it's so not as good as touch id oh my god i bought the ambient i bought the ambient

Maxweather ws2902 10-in-1 wi-fi professional weather station with internet monitoring compatible with alexa and that is amazon's choice for weather monitoring station 169.99 i had it delivered the next day. So here's where I've gotten, oh, okay. Here's where I've gotten with this product.

So basically, I followed the very confusing instructions and assembled it. It did need assembly. I powered it on. I got it to transmit to the little monitor, but I have not gotten it to transmit to the app yet because I need to like connect it to Weather Underground or W Underground, I think, and get it, and I haven't figured that part out yet. And I also have not mounted it. I have not attached a mounting pole to the exterior of my house. Yep. And that's, I didn't understand that you really need, that this was like, that I would need to use my cordless drill for this challenge.

MerlinIt's definitely a whole process. I have the, just so you go, if you go to notes for this episode at DubaiFriday.com, OfficeHagrid.com, you will see a link to Weather Underground, an overview on which weather stations are compatible with Weather Underground, and a handy page where you can sign up for your own PWS.

MaxSo, okay, so I have not actually set up the W Underground integration for my dingaling. What is it exactly? Can you explain what that does? I mean, I know that's the thing. What I think it does is that you can go on your phone and it tells you how fast the wind is outside your house.

MerlinYes. Shall I weather explain that? Please. Okay. So Weather Underground is a really cool service that monitors lots of different professional and amateur weather stations. And you can find weather stations in your area. And you can even put your own up. And the idea is you go in. And so in my case, the dingus that I got, you register it with that company. You put in this MAC address. And then what happens is you go to Weather Underground and you register under the MyPWS, My Personal Weather Station, I think it's called. And you go in and basically it handshakes with your device through whatever means it gets on the internet.

And read the fine print carefully because not all of these can get on the internet. Mine has an ethernet connection. I'll tell you mine in a minute. But anyway, long story short. And then what you do is you go into Weather Underground. You register your dingus. And then it's available. You give it a name and it's available on the internet. You can see it yourself. In my case, I got an Accurite.

MaxI can buy this other app called Ambient Tool.

MerlinWhat is that? I don't know. I got an Accurite. And Accurite has a service. Accurite is also the maker of most of my hygrometers, as you know.

AlexAnd real quick, what's that again?

MerlinRelative humidity.

AlexWait, relative to what?

MerlinYeah, exactly. Am I right? Am I Accurite? The Accurite product page is very, very funny. It's like if you've ever tried to think about buying a Windows computer and you go to Dell, it's like, what? What are the options? What? It's completely bananas. You could buy this one with two sensors or you could buy that one with this screen. You could buy this one with the dark screen and one sensor. Like, ah! I'm very, very happy. I'll tell you mine in detail when you're ready. But the basic nut of it is it is kind of a pain to set this thing up. You've got to calibrate your rain gauge.

You just got to be pointing the right way. You got to have the right size rod.

MaxOh, that was the other thing. I have not calibrated yet. I thought it was assembled, and then a whole new sort of section where I thought the instructions would turn into Polish instructions. It actually transitioned into now it's time to calibrate all of the instruments that you just installed. And I was like, I think I'm going to give up on this.

MerlinBut the neat part is once you've gotten it on to – so in my case, like I say, there's an app called – I think it's called My Accurate, where it connects you directly to your weather station, whether or not it's publicly available. but then the with weather underground uh yeah you can go in and you can it's now available and you're contributing to the community of weather nerds now i'll say like before we did this challenge

Maxi primarily suggested the challenge because i thought it'd be funny to make fun of you for all of your weather nerd shit that you have merlin like your hygrometers and stuff yeah and i'll say even though i haven't installed mine since i got it and i like assembled it and i and i installed the pygrometer and the wind speed measure there's been like 10 times in the last week where i was like boy i wish i had that thing up because i wonder how fast the wind is blowing right now like we had a crazy windstorm that was it over the weekend or maybe last friday alex yeah i didn't know that there could be a wind advisory but we had one it was bananas there was it was wizard

of oz shit happening in chicago and there was like furniture i woke veronica and i both up because all every little like metal like like fireplace you know plate and every every our house was making all of its sounds the house was going it was it was singing its its native song and it was going hog wild and there were fucking chairs flying around outside and furniture patio furniture tipping over it was nuts and i was like man i wish i had that weather station installed but i didn't want to do like a full twister and go outside and try and install it in the middle of the tornado

Merlinright um i can totally understand why you would make fun of me it's such an old man thing to be end of this, but this has been so much fun. So I'm sending you, so there's two images in the doc.

MaxOn mine, okay, check this out, what you can do with mine that I haven't said, to be clear, I've not set this up yet, but you know, I could, which is, so the way you know that it's going to rain, I don't know why I'm saying this like I know, according to what I Googled in 30 seconds, the way you know it's going to rain is if the barometric pressure drops a certain amount. And so you're not really relying on like a weather forecast, you're relying on like a thing that is actually materially occurring outside of your house, right? Like, it will rain if the pressure changes quickly. And what you can do is have that send an if-ta-ta-ta to your shit to be like, prepare for rain.

So you could have it text you or you could have it like, yeah. Basically, we have like smart skylights in our house too. So on our top floor, we have like a skylight and then we'll actually like, you can send it a command through the internet to close. So I could say if it's about to rain and the skylights are open, Go ahead and close that. That's actually really useful.

AlexSo remotely, like you don't need to be, that's very cool.

MaxYeah, it's like some sort of Wi-Fi enabled. I mean, it's, yeah. It's like just a little motor that closes them and opens them. Alex has some sort of vape that she's turning on over here. Oh, is that a PAX?

Speaker AWell, no, I don't know what that is. But, well, Merlin, would you like me to proceed with the results of my challenge?

MerlinYes, I just would like to say, just to get it out of the way, I will click the link. The one that I got is the Accuride 010, because people will ask. I got the Accuride 01014M weather station with Accuride access for remote monitoring. And this comes with a little Siri ball that you connect to your Ethernet, and then that is able to... Oh, and so I got that. Plus I added two interior remotes that'll monitor humidity and temperature in the house.

And then that's all exposed by the Accurite app. And this one, it's not exceedingly difficult to set up, but I would allow at least an hour to set it up. But that's the one I got. Tell me about yours, Alex. Did you do a pole? No, I did the cordless drill. What do you mean? Oh, it's got a, so if you look at the one, so there's several ways to mount it. You can use the standard pole. There's a standard pole diameter. It also has a mounting thing. It needs to be pointed north. And so as long as you can put it somewhere where you can turn it to face north, you can do it flush to a wall or a post.

Oh, I totally cucked myself. Why didn't I buy this one? Well, this is why I say it's worth really – it's so confusing and it helps to have like a rabbi for this because a lot of these that look – like a lot of these are just like you buy this costly weather station and it comes with a fancy screen but you can't even get it on the internet, which sucks. um so make sure it accommodates your needs make sure you've got a spot the right place to put it that it's not like under a roof or something because then you won't get rain coverage etc um but the nice thing is if once you calibrate it it's not super easy but you um once you

calibrate it you basically pour uh exactly a cup of water in in my case and if it's not exactly this amount you turn this little screw left or right and that says okay this is how much it should be you can also like calibrate you can basically say like well i know the temperature of humidity in this room is this. You can have

Maxyour sensors change. I'll be honest. I've already ordered the one that you got. And I don't know what I'm going to do with mine. Maybe we'll put it at the office or something. Donate it. Yeah, I'll donate it. Yeah, Marco, expect a expect a Send me a Christmas card. A weather station. Where's my fucking Christmas card?

Alex, make a note that I'm going to need you to send some mail to Marco this week. Yep, yep, yep. So I already bought the one that you got, but Merlin, would you come on my new vlogging channel and sort of walk me through the setup? Because I'm not going to be reading those instructions. I'm going to need you to talk.

MerlinWell, I mean, A, of course, I would be honored to be on your incredibly popular 2 billion watcher YouTube. But I mean, also that's a big part of social media. Like, you know, nobody cares, you know, who the song is by. They want to know featuring who. Turn down for who. You know what I'm saying? So I'm featuring MC Trans Merlin. It's going to be fucking huge for you. Your shit's going to blow up.

MaxAnd then because here's the thing is it creates a whole ecosystem of the guest where it's like, well, first, okay, step number one. We're going to be like the Logan brothers.

MerlinWe're going to have a mansion full of douche tars.

MaxIt's going to be great. Exactly. Step number one, you come into my net. I got you on the show. Step number two, I do a blog post saying here's how I got my own man into my net. You feed me all nuts till I come.

Speaker BStep number three, I do a podcast.

MaxI push up with one of this net. I'm so tired of coming. Three, I get the podcast going and I'm like, guys, you got to check out the blog post. I reveal all my secrets in this post of how I got Merlin Mann into my net. Then I write a book where I summarize the blog post about the podcast, about the guest appearance, about the vlog. That's so smart, Max. Now it's integrated. It's integrated. And at some point, people start to buy pills from me. Do you see? Well, they're going to buy your powders and they're going to buy your shirt that says Max. No, it doesn't say Max. It says I have some sort of motivational platitude on it.

Oh, come hard. yeah just just do the work you know something like that follow your bliss work harder dingus 47 lambos knowledge i would 100 wear a t-shirt that's at 47 now The lamppost.

Did you already mount your weather station?

MerlinMounted the fucking shit out of it.

MaxWhen did you do it exactly? Yeah, yeah. Because for me, I opened the box, I put it together. That took about, probably cumulatively, I spent about 90 minutes poking and prodding at it and reading the instructions. And then I kind of got tired and I wandered off and then it was already Monday. Oh, I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait.

MerlinMy daughter and I were like, when's it going to arrive? When's it going to arrive? I got it next day. So this was a daddy-daughter time. Yeah, yeah.

MaxWe put it together together. Like experience.

MerlinYeah. Yeah, no. Yeah, I put it up immediately. It's been running the whole time. Yeah. Alex, are you going to talk about your vape? Vape? I don't know. And your cigar? So I can actually see from here that you have a famous smoke shop catalog. Not that I've ever seen one of those before.

I don't know what that is. Boy, look at your – wow, look at your – what is that thing that says studio oh that's one of your dongles oh yeah that's my usbc to there's max looking at his phone yeah okay so you got the netat netatmo net netatmo i'd never seen it with the bold text now it makes sense because i i thought it was neat mo at first i was misreading it you got the netatmo tell people what you got alex i still don't really know the

Speaker ANetatmo weather station for smartphone compatible compatible with Amazon Alexa um I received it like two days ago and the package was open and like oh no I'm sure it's I'm sure it's fine um and then so I returned it and they sent me a rush delivery one and I got it last night and I've been setting it up as we've been sitting here uh and it's still not working I don't know Well, this time it did turn on before nothing was turning on.

But it has our location. It knows the temperature, but also this little, like it comes with a base that's like the Wi-Fi. You need to keep it in, plugged in at all times.

MerlinIt looks a lot like a lady in a tube device.

Speaker AYeah, yeah.

MerlinLike if Johnny Ive made it.

Speaker AExcept it's terrible. And then there's this other thing that I assume is the weather station, but it has like.

Merlineverything i i almost got this one i almost got this one but everything is an add-on like if you want to get rain you got to pay 100 bucks for an extra rain catcher it's crazy where does it go i where does the rain catcher go it's remote you could put it somewhere remote whereas mine's an all-in-one so it's like it has like a it's like an internet of things yeah yeah this is much more internet of things and their stuff is costly costly as i'm opening the app immediately it's

Speaker AYeah, it's advertising the rain gauge, the wind gauge. So I don't know what this thing does. No, I think it does temperature and humidity.

MerlinI think it's probably temperature, humidity, maybe barometric pressure, I'm guessing. Metatmo.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinI'm looking at a thing here. Let me go look. Personal weather station. God, it really requires that much tubage? Two big tubes?

Speaker AI guess. And like the little station thing runs off AA batteries. It's very different. It's a completely different beast from what you guys got.

MerlinYou're getting outdoor temperature, outdoor relative. So it's kind of – it's playing a little fast and loose here. It says discover your external environment, which every millennial should hear. Outdoor temperature, outdoor relative humidity, outdoor air quality, whatever that means. It's probably like canaries like, oh, it's special sauce. It's abnormal. barometric pressure and then quote unquote weather forecast which i have a feeling they're just

Speaker Apulling down from i just tapped something and it so it says smart home bot and then i i tapped it and it opened facebook messenger and it wants me to talk to the facebook bot neted mo smart home bot oh he's kind of a nightmare you have to configure it to a facebook this is terrible

MerlinAlso, this is really terrible. This is the worst. If you want rain stuff, you have to buy the rain gauge. If you want wind stuff, you have to buy the wind gauge. And then you can get an additional indoor model, which I guess is what you already have.

Speaker AOh, so this, I'm not even supposed to put this outside.

MaxNo, see Alex, you got a probe, but you need the smart hub, the winkle hub.

Speaker AWait, so it's this?

MaxThis will not connect without your Wemo winkle hub.

MerlinAlso, if you're going to get the wind gauge for the weather station for $99, I recommend getting the warranty extension. You get two years instead of one. It's only valid for products and purchase on the online boutique Netatmo.

AlexGood. Good advice.

MerlinGet them out for free. Get them out for free. Max, you can buy the ambient weather EZ NPP tripod and mass assembly with platform. It's only $140.

MaxLook at that. You've got a stick. I've already spent $200 on weather stations because I just bought the one that you told me to get. Well, I guess the show technically spent $100 and I spent $100. Check your cameras. Is your drill okay? Can you tell? You know what? I was pushing buttons on my little security camera system this morning, and I locked myself out of it and disabled the whole thing. Now I have to call our internet guy, Josh. Now you lost on your Bitcoin. I have to say, Joshua, how about me? You locked out of Bitcoin. Yeah. I think if I go on, I can't connect. Let me look. So I have no idea if the fucking drill is working or not.

MerlinOh, God. What a way to live. A mess. So I'm the one who, I'm the least peanut buttery.

Speaker AYeah, and to actually get into that, I knew that my own out's dead again. I just wanted to see if it would work. It probably isn't. But what is the advantage of these really, other than being a cool weather nerd?

I guess, and I know you can have your actual local weather station and connect it to weather underground.

MaxYou don't want to know how fast the wind is?

Speaker ANo, no, I do, I do, but I can use...

MaxHow would you not want to know that?

MerlinBut it's your wind, Alex. How fast is your wind going? Right. This is why I say, look in the show notes in the doc, and you'll see on the one hand— You think I'm going to trust those idiots on the news about what the weather is going to be? What the fuck do they know? What about Congress?

MaxWhat's going on with those guys? I spent $100. I'm as smart as them now.

MerlinAlso ice skating. So anyway, this is boring. But weather's boring. Let's talk about it. So you can see a screenshot of the MyAcuRite app, which is pretty good. But what's neat is you get a sense, and the other one's not for sharing, which is my personal weather underground. station. And so you can see all kinds of stuff. Like you get the idea that you can show stuff like check out the wind widget. It's really cool. It shows you what direction the wind's coming from and how much it's gusting. So what's the advantage of it? I don't know if there's that much advantage to it. Truthfully, Dark Sky has been disruptive. What Dark Sky does, and I think almost everybody

probably knows this, but Dark Sky is a, what, a service that gives you hyper-local weather and hyper-local weather notifications. And they have an API that is used by a lot of weather apps such that you can get a little bloop on your phone if it's about to start raining or about to stop raining or whatever. And it's generally really good. The nice part about this is you can still have all of those things, but then you also know what's happening on your back porch, in my case, which I really like.

It's just fun. It's fun to watch. It's fun to monitor. It's just a neat thing.

Speaker AI am a big... You know what? I didn't totally peanut butter because while I failed at this challenge, I also did the ultra premium membership upgrade to my favorite app, Carrot Weather. And you can change to like I've been switching between Weather Underground.

MerlinYou got to tell us about your settings. You got to tell us what your settings are.

Speaker AOh, OK. OK. So settings. The personality I have set to snarky. Oh, I should explain.

MerlinWhere is that on the continuum? Let me go look.

Speaker Auh it's it's the middle because once it got to overkill it was well it gets it gets real pissy

Alexif you let it it's very sorry i wasn't making attention you're talking about carrot weather carrot weather and it's um the sassy weather bot yeah yeah it's snowing bitch yeah yes basically

Merlinand you can you can also say whether you want it to be conservative or liberal or libertarian

Speaker Areally oh they added they added conservative and tell me what it says well that's the thing i had it on conservative or rather i had it on no yes i had it on conservative for a while but and i had

Maxit on overkill why would your weather app need like a political well you can also have it mike hurley likes it well what would it say uh it's uh it's snowing bitch global warming isn't real

Alexsee but okay so here's the thing i just switched it to conservative and it says you're a fucking weakling so you've got that going for you which is nice and that's all it says i don't think

Speaker Athey're ever like because when it's set to liberal they're snarky like global warming comments and

Speaker Bstuff like that i have my security clearance downgraded thanks a lot mainstream media hang on let's do another one of secret locations across your ride so i'll make the first one are you really that bad at geography zoom in on the east okay here we go i don't want a secret location

Merlini want my location okay here we go current location engineering weather conditions

Speaker Bthat cloud looks like rush limbo popping a bottle full of pills it was that conservative yeah it's conservative what so many weather patterns to control so few major metropolitan

Maxareas to unleash telepon let's try liberty you won't need an umbrella today and there are only

Alextwo genders well that's the thing i i think it's kind of a troll it's just trolling people who actually choose that as their uh their weather app opinion of choice overkill libertarian and

Maxwhose voice do i want there will be a full moon tonight and school shootings are caused by violent

Alexvideo games oh i've never tried tessa let's see let's see what tessa feels like 60 degrees outside

Maxi would have run in there to help those kids no collusion

Speaker Awell and also with with uh in fairness to carrot uh weather you can turn all of this off and have

Maxit be just a basic wind advisory bill cosby innocent are we done talking about the weather i think so

MerlinDid you know there's 600 Dick's Sporting Goods? Yes. First of all, there's something called Dick's Sporting Goods. Yes. Second of all, in 2018, there are 600. How do you have a retail specialty-ish store with 600 locations in 2018? I mean, it was kind of cool that they're doing the whole gun thing, but then they said there's 600 of them, and I was like, how are there 600 of that?

MaxThere's a girl that I went to Hebrew school with whose father was the – who I was sort of – we sort of dated for like several hours on like a – Is that how she would describe it, Max? Like a playground or something like that. I mean this was in like elementary school or middle school or something. And her father was the manager of a dick sporting good. And I remember that being a very impressive job. It's a pretty big deal. Like a high status job.

AlexMy father is a dick executive.

MerlinI'm Googling dicks. You're going to want to turn safe search off for that. Okay. Let's see in the last. Oh, okay. No, no, no. Dicks is all there's dicks all over the place today.

AlexAs a dick customer, I think the reason they're no, I know the reason they're so successful is you want to try on like your Under Armour stuff and you want to try like, I don't know. I'd feel weird buying a tennis racket online, you know. And I think that's why they're different from other sporting goods stores.

MerlinAre they especially good about that?

AlexWell, they're no, no.

MerlinLike REI. REI is all really into the like, you know, come and experience this.

MaxI went to that REI last week, the one in Chicago. Never been in there before. Love an REI. I needed a pair of gloves. It was like after that really big snow and I needed a pair of gloves because I just don't. I actually like don't own winter gloves. I have like those like little fabric-y ones. But you know what I'm talking about? You know, little stretchy guys. Stretchy boys. You don't want that. No, but those are not good for shoveling. And so I was like, so I was looking online and doing some research, and I was like, you know what? If I fucking get a pair of gloves, I don't want to fuck around. I'm going to go to REI. I'm going to get the best gloves and just have them for the rest of my life and have

like an ultra warm tactical performance, you know, gloves. And so Veronica and I went in there, and REI is such a funny story because everything in there is like a fucking, it's like a paracord, like, you know, some sort of like six blade paracord tin cup for you know that one brand is it not aperitix but there's that one where it's like everything's six hundred dollars it it is crazy and there's fucking canoes that shoot webs at bears coming off of the ceiling it's like all like adventure travel and meanwhile i went in there

and i spent a hundred dollars on gloves and i bought and they have a little receptacle they're skiing gloves and they have a little patch of fabric on the top of the glove that you can wipe your snot onto. And then they also have a little pouch inside the glove where one of those hand warmer, those chemical hand warmers go. That's actually very cool. And then there's a liner that you can also wear as its own independent glove. And they are so fucking warm. They rule.

MerlinThat sounds so, I mean, on the face of it, that sounds costly, but for what you get out of it, that's so good.

MaxThey're great. They're the last pair of gloves I'll ever buy until I lose them. And they're also like fully articulated. So I could like easily grip the snow shovel and like, you know, turn my doorknob and stuff like that. And they're like waterproof, windproof, very warm. These gloves rule. But we were having this conversation on the way out of Dick's and we were, you know, they make you snake through the little impulse purchase gauntlet.

AlexAnd it's all like granola there.

MaxYeah, it's like the fucking Triwizard tournament and there's like shit popping out at you and you have to like defeat it in order to get to the cash register. and we're like and i was like you know we stopped at one point i was like maybe we should buy a camping stove like i don't know because then we'd have it and rodrigal was like no we don't don't we don't need a camping stove check out the pocket knives oh did i i mean yeah i was like i was like i was like well i was like what if we ever needed to rent a canoe i mean why wouldn't we just own

Merlinour own canoe that's crazy it's like a tuxedo if you're gonna wear it more than twice you might as well own it especially yeah yeah so i went to my daughter's on my daughter's on a school field trip and i went to get her a cool flashlight so i went to the liberal hardware store where they play npr and i was like you still have those really baller flashlights that are like the leds oh no we don't have that one but check this one out and we're both getting really excited and terry gross is on i was like man masculinity is bullshit except for pocket knives and flashlights he's like right so what's your daughter's what's her edc her edc her edc is some kind of a fantasy book uh her journal and then a tourniquet she gotta practice putting on with one hand

Maxum sorry i cut you off you're still you're still at rei no i the only we were just wondering like how much of rei's revenue do you think is like you know suburban cucks like me going in there to like buy uh it's aspirational to buy a hundred to buy a hundred dollar pair of gloves even though i've never stepped put on a ski slope in my life versus how much of it is like you know some sort of guy with, I presume, a beard who adventures.

MerlinCan I repeat my often told REI story from 1999? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've told this a million times, but this is absolutely true. My boss and I, maybe 2000, my boss and I are on our, you know, went to lunch, went to fancy lunch in Menlo Park. We're like, oh, you know, let's pop into REI. So we go to REI and I go up to the boots and tactical shoe area and I'm like, hmm, can I see these in a nine and a half? The guy's like, yeah, these are really good. They have torsion control and stabilization. like you walk on this fake rock if you want to see what it's like to cut i said uh-uh these are web page making shoes the crust falling it's like it's like you know like i had broken the illusion

that we would had about the lie agreed to as they say on deadwood oh that's really fucking funny

Alexhe broke his spirit oh yeah i think we had the sand dabs for lunch and then we went up and bought

Merlinsome webpage shoes. Did they come with a tactical carabiner that hangs off of them? No, but Max, to your point, I think that every time I go in there, it's not like you're seeing grizzled mountain men in there buying a pup tent. Yeah.

AlexI mean, you see moms with their under armor, and then they have one of those puffy vests. You know what I'm talking about? Where it looks like a winter jacket.

MerlinYou can get the mom vest, the Han Solo mom vest that everybody owns from Patagonia or North Face. Exactly. Mom vest. My sister-in-law has like 14 of those. It's hilarious. Our closet is full of sleepless vests.

MaxThe one in Chicago, they might do this at every location, but the one in Chicago, one of the funny details is the big exterior doors that you come in, the handles, they're not like door handles. They're like hatchets that are welded onto the door. Yeah, that's all of them. And they're like blunted hatchets.

MerlinBecause I think that's how you use a hatchet.

MaxYeah. Here's a horse. And I was like, this store rules. This store is so cool. I'm going to go in the store and be as cool as everyone in here. And then once we got into the airlock, there was like a like a like a young parents like trying to wrestle a double stroller into the door. They're like, hold that hatchet, honey. Get the double stroller out here.

AlexWell, in Seattle, they've got you need to basically walk through there.

MerlinOh, that is a nice store. That's like that. That's like their anchor store.

MaxJohn Roderick demanded satisfaction.

MerlinNo, that's North Face. But I walked to that REI one day and bought me a rain jacket. That was a that's a nice ass.

AlexAt that time, did they have the arboretum maze that you had to go through in order to find the store? I mean, it's very cool. First you must face the challenge of our flower maze. Exactly. I was like, I just, and it was one of those things where we were at a convention. I just needed something and like a battery and then needed to leave. And they're like, would you like to be a part of our co-op? I'm like, no, we need to get back through the arboretum maze.

MaxExperiarmus. Come with me if you want to live. A guy pops up. Do you want to apply for the REI credit card? Stupify. Reducto.

Speaker BI have an idea, but it's mad.

I'm the time guy.

MaxThat was so fucking funny.

Speaker BAs I always like to say, time is money. Effectiveness. Productivity. It's me, Gerald, the time guy.

Today's time hack. Hey, guys, sorry I've been away for a while. It's me, Jared. I'm back with the time guy. Today's my hack. I've been well since I posted.

MaxJared, the time guy. Today's life hack, you can save a lot of time if you never pay your bills.

Speaker BThat takes hours every week. And your workflow for deleting your email is going to shave hours off every day. It's me, Gerald, the time guy.

A lot of people ask me how I get someone's dad. It's because I don't know people. Hello, guys. I hope you're here. I'm here to see.

Hi, guys. It's Gerald.

MaxThis week, my time-saving holiday life hack. Wait to see who sends you a holiday card and then send them one defensively.

Speaker BHey, guys. I recently had my phone cut off because I didn't pay the bill. I saved so much time. Hi, guys. It's Gerald. Woohoo!

67. The Polish Instructions

Show notes

Transcript

67. The Polish Instructions

Show notes

Transcript

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