Episode 137 · June 20, 2019 · 01:18:17

137. The Kill Zone

This week's challengeThis week’s challenge: get the data.

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This week's challenge: get the data.

You can hear the after show and support Do By Friday on Patreon!

Edited by Quinn Rose

Engineered by Cameron Bopp

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Transcript

Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

Speaker AThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, find the data.

MaxHello? Hello. Are you done going to the bathroom? Hello? Hi. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. It's Max. It's me. It's Max. It's Jeff. Can you hear me? Is this a bit?

MerlinHello?

MaxIt's all right.

MerlinI'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. I was shitting. I was shitting.

MaxI couldn't hear you. Merlin.

MerlinI'm sorry. I was just having fun with you because I was shitting.

MaxMerlin, all of Alex's little interns are scrambling around the booth. They're pressing buttons. Hello? And they're pulling cables.

MerlinHello? Did you replace that cable? Hello? Oh, boy. I'll text you. I don't know if you can hear me.

MaxNo sign of Alex.

MerlinHuh?

MaxI hope she's okay.

MerlinI'm sure she's fine.

MaxSo I guess we're having a boys' night this week. We've earned it. Boys' night.

MerlinWe're going to get a limo and smoke cigars.

MaxI've been getting pulled a little bit back into Twitter. Because you were out. I was doing a good job. You have to give up. For me, for how much I use Twitter, I've gone from using Twitter like five hours a day to like 15 minutes a day.

MerlinYou talk so much about Twitter for somebody who doesn't use Twitter.

MaxWell, because it's the center of my entire world. Everyone I know is getting into Twitter drama and posting memes. I'm in our super secret thread, and we send each other funny tweets. I don't know. Merlin, Vine is dead, and how often do you and I quote Vine? Oh, right. No, you're right.

MerlinI was on a guest on a podcast the other day, and I said this thing where it's like, I fucking hate this so much, but our entire, for me, in my world, everything always comes back to Trump and or Twitter. There's nothing that's not Trump or Twitter at this point. And it's because, I mean, you can't say anything on Twitter where somebody doesn't make a Trump joke.

MaxYeah. And it's like, I don't know, it just all seems so like it's just. I've been feeling very upset. Well, in general, there's been a lot of concentration camp news this week. and then yesterday was sort of concentration camp day on Twitter where, you know, it was like, did you ever go to summer camp? And they would have theme days and they're like, this is flag week or like, you know, like, you know, it's like music week at camp. And like, it feels like this is like concentration camp week in the Trump administration. And that's not a good week. No, no.

MerlinIt's, oh God, see, it must be working because we're talking about it. Well, it's, we should. But Jesus fucking Christ, it's like they said in The Onion. Did you see The Onion? Yeah, I think I retweeted that. The Onion was very funny, and it was really true. No, wait. I didn't see it, Merlin. What was it? What was it? Holocaust survivors remember the day the Holocaust suddenly happened out of nowhere.

Everything was going great. There'd been no oppression, no brown shirts walking in the streets. Something called the Gestapo came to get us.

MaxYeah, all of a sudden we were brought into these ghettos that were built, I guess, overnight.

MerlinYeah, I mean, you know, but that's why it's so great. I mean, as always, the story's funny, but the headline's everything. But no, that's the thing. And it's the weaponizing of concentration camps by people on the right is, I mean, what do you begin to say? Are you going to argue with somebody about that?

MaxIt's crazy because, and also, like, I have to acknowledge it works. Like, I felt that it was very effective.

MerlinBad faith works. That's why people use it.

MaxBad faith is easy to weaponize. It was, you know, yesterday we should have rightfully been having a debate over what is definitively concentration camps on the U.S.-Mexico border full of immigrants and extrajudicial detention who have had their rights suspended and they're subjected to various types of torture and they die in custody and they have unclear relations that are shifting all the time. You know, all that classic stuff that we know and love about concentration camps. And somehow, I guess the right wing like trolls, they started they were like, well, we don't we would really prefer not to talk about that.

I mean, that's not the that's not the thing.

MerlinI can't believe you. I can't believe you would take the our historical legacy of how important concentration camps were and use it to apply that to something as trivial as a bunch of immigrants being fenced in under under a bridge. How dare you, sir? How dare you?

MaxThey were also like they were going like, oh, this you're calling them concentration camps like dishonors. It's cultural appropriation. And it dishonors all of the Jewish people who that's a very triggering term for. And it's like, shut the fuck up. Like, that's not even your that. First of all, that shit doesn't even sound good when we say it. And second of all, you don't care about that. That is like it's so it's so obnoxious.

MerlinThis is, you know, I'll tell you, this is tough. It's a tough day for me because I really do. I do feel for the Jews because I, as you know, as a gun rights activist, I feel like there should be no movement at all on the issue of gun rights until people learn the difference between a jacket, a bullet and a slug. For example, you are not qualified. What about the bumps? What about the bump stocks? See, there's no bump and there's no stock. And like when people say it's not, you know, an AR is not an assault rifle. So I'm not going to have that conversation. You can't. Listen, listen.

If you can't be troubled to learn the difference between a work camp, a death camp and a concentration camp, you have no right to dishonor the legacy of these people that I don't actually care about.

MaxI all these also like there's so many people getting offended on behalf of Jews and like talking you know like talking about concentration camps. You're like the new you guys are like the new trans people. Everybody's mad for you. Yeah it's crazy. And like I'll say like I've had this conversation with with many many Jewish friends over the last few years. But like probably the one of the predominant parts of Jewish identity, of American Jewish identity in the late 20th century, from my experience, was constantly hearing about the Holocaust, constantly going to Holocaust museums, constantly being told that it could happen here and that you need to be vigilant and hearing stories of people who only survived because they fled early enough to recognize the signs.

it's this looming it's this looming specter over your life as a young Jewish child in the America you know in America in like the 90s it feels like you're taught to literally never forget like

Merlinit's just like you're not going to have the opportunity to forget because we're going to be constantly there just from you and other friends I have it's constantly reinforced in so much of the fabric of your not just your religious rights but in your entire culture is this sense of like this shit happened nobody believed it but it happened

MaxAnd post-Holocaust, a lot of the, you know, it seems to me like a lot of the big Jewish holidays that you do stuff for, like Purim and Passover, and, you know, the ones that even if you're not that religious, you sort of recognize in some way, they've become sort of reinterpreted to be about the Holocaust. Because they're all holidays about times when people tried to kill the Jews, and we were too clever, and a few of us survived. That's the lesson of every Jewish holiday. It started a small business. Yeah, and now we eat. I know you're in your house. Yeah. and uh and and so it's like it's just it's like multiple times a year the experience for me as a

kid was the whole family would get together and we'd tell stories about the holocaust and and my grandpa would get mad at people but anyone in our family who bought a german car and and you'd talk and i would lie awake in bed wondering i would have nightmares about i mean real honest to god night terrors about nazis you know you'd you'd worry about i would ask my parents like well what if someone comes to get us, you know? And you just go down that rabbit hole. Like, I have such clear, very, very clear childhood memories of being very scared of this thing happening. And anyway, so all the people, I just, it's just, don't tell Jewish people that what is

and isn't a concentration camp. Don't worry about us being offended by it. We've already, you know, like Merlin, like you said, thought the problem into a powder in our mind.

MerlinYou're not the first ones to tell us about the Holocaust, buddy.

MaxYeah. And also, like, also, they're for sure, let me tell you as a Jewish person, for sure they're concentration camps, like 100% they're concentration camps. And you, to the listeners of the Dubai Friday program, whatever, maybe you've thought, you know, you've been reading some book about World War II and you're like, oh, I wonder what I would have done if that happened and I was alive. You know, would I have tried to kill Hitler or rescue people or break people out of the concentration camps? Like, what heroism would I have done to resist the Nazis? It's whatever the fuck you're doing now. You would have played Fortnite and vaped on your mango jewel pods.

You wouldn't have done shit. You would have gone on Twitter and made memes about Drake at the basketball game. You wouldn't have done shit. And to all of the Jews, all of the conservative fucking Zionist Jews on Twitter who are whining and crying like little babies and saying they're not concentration camps and they're offended. Not only would you have done nothing to resist the Nazis, but you probably would have turned me in. You probably would have turned me in. Is Alex here? How's that going? You're fucking collaborators.

You're deferential. They're Vichy. You are. They're deferential to like a fascist regime. They've learned nothing from Jewish history. And there could really be no way to learn less from Jewish history than to be a Jewish person on Twitter yesterday going, well, they're not really concentration camps because of so-and-so.

MerlinI mean, there's heroes on both sides. Let me take some of the heat off you by saying some, as we like to say, politically incorrect things.

MaxDon't you feel like you're going crazy? Isn't it that feeling of the war in Iraq of like, are you people seeing this? Hello? Well, yeah, I do.

MerlinI do feel that. Hello? Hello? I do. I feel like these people. What the hell is wrong with everyone? I know. I know. It's too much. It's all too much. Yes. But here's part of the bad faith problem. Should we talk about the Garfield restaurant? I don't know. Holy shit. where do you find loose tissues you gotta talk please save it for the show um here's the thing um the one of the hallmarks of there's probably whole good books about this but one of the hallmarks of bad faith arguing is when you choose some kind of a um a topic or a reference that you

consider to be um a cultural mic drop where like once once you've talked about this thing maybe it's sort of like godwin's law in some ways it doesn't have to be hitler and world war ii and the Holocaust. There's other things. There's a phrase that people have used in the past. We don't use this phrase anymore. But the starving African child, it was emblematic of this, where there was this thing that happened after we became aware of the current, well, in the 80s, it was the African famine. Of course, before that, there'd been famines in many other countries that

were terrible. China had a terrible famine. But it was legit awful. And solving it was more problematic than anybody had thought, including Bob Geldof. But after everybody became aware of that, that became the cause celeb, understandably, because there were all of these photos. Like, people cared about the Vietnam War once we started seeing photos of people whose bodies blown apart. People cared a ton about, like, legit cared about, what the fuck can I do to save these children that are covered with flies in Africa? Like, what can I do?

So much so that, like, you could, your mic drop in the mid to late 80s for any argument was to haul out the starving African child. You don't have to do fuck all to have ever helped anybody in any way apart from your dumb lip service and performative gestures. But like you haul out the starving African child and all conversation stops. Otherwise you're a monster.

MaxThis is like the great Simpsons bit.

MerlinWon't someone think of the children? Won't someone think of the children? Yeah, Maude Flanders. And it's a similar kind of thing here where like when you're, there's a reason it's called bad faith. There's a kind of bad faith that involves Republicans giving Democrats advice about what to do in an election. That's a famous kind of bad faith. But the classic kind of bad faith is to say, oh, you're being a terrible person because I'm going to do this mic drop thing. Or you're being a hypocrite because whataboutism. There's all that kind of stuff.

But the problem is now you're going to get in the weeds about arguing with somebody about whether it's bad faith to bring up fucking concentration camps. Well, you know what? Last week, you did not care about concentration camps. This is don't don't act like you're at the forefront of trying to protect human rights just because you can say, what about concentration camps? You know what I mean?

MaxI have a thought on this, which is I think that the liberals are constantly in search of some sort of rhetorical move or framework where they don't ever have to have a moral position and they don't have to do politics. But they can just police. They can just go, well, I'm right because of the rules.

MerlinDoes that make sense? Oh, they are. I think they're looking for, you see this in trending Twitter topics, which make me want to just tear my dick off and hit myself with it. You see all of this, like, all I really need is the facts that will give me the ultimate sick burn and everything I hate will necessarily end.

MaxIt's not even the facts. It's because I would say it's like pre-fact. It's like a framework by which you'll win the argument.

MerlinDon't you agree? But what you're really looking for is the sick burn. That's the thing. If I sick burn, if I sick burn Donald Trump bad enough, he'll have to leave.

MaxWell, that's a piece of this pathology, too. But the thing I'm talking about is different, which is liberals don't want to have an argument where there's a sick burn. They want to preempt the argument by having some sort of framework where you're wrong before the argument happens. And to me— Oh, like they didn't turn in their form right? They didn't turn in their form right. Yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And to me, a lot of— You didn't qualify for this debate. Yeah. And okay, so to me, a lot of the social justice language that's deployed on Twitter is supposed to be a sort of pre-ideological, pre-fact, pre-sick burn framework by which you can like adjudicate a conflict.

And so they would, so cultural appropriation, let's use that as an example, right? The idea is if someone is doing cultural appropriation, you go, stop right there, technical foul, you did not do your paperwork. I'm not going to hear the rest of your argument.

Merlinyou're wrong you've lost by default yeah you're out you're like you're out on a technicality but yeah the judges issue a default technicalities are important to me now maybe they were doing

Maxcultural appropriation like that that that's where then i just want to say like anytime you create the rules like that the rules of the debate that prohibit that where you you don't have to do politics you don't have to assert what's right and wrong you don't even have to get the sick burn you're just like no i've gotta i dictate the rules of how we're gonna talk and because i've i've done that, I'm setting the terms of the debate, and you're outside of that, and so I win by default. The right has a very long history of—see, they don't care about these rules, but they will co-opt

Merlinthem to confuse us. Oh, 100%. That's the thing with Trump. Trump's doing so much banana shit, and we're running from one room to the other filing different kinds of paperwork. And it's

Maxlike, that's not stopping him. What about fake news? Fake news was our word. We started fake news to criticize the Trump. Do you know where I'm going with this? I think initially, initially, I don't, I feel like it wasn't directly Trump, but it had to do, well, was it Trump? It was,

Merlinit was because we were saying, I remember being a liberal, there was a liberal term for about a month. It was the liberal term for when you would say there was, it was actually, you know, unfactual news about Trump that might've come from some kind of a dicey source.

MaxRight. Like the Pope endorses Trump over Hillary was fake news. That was a fabricated news story that was widely—

MerlinI barely remember that now. That's so crazy. You're right.

MaxIt was a huge—that was a big problem for us in the election. We'll leave it at that. And then fake news became, this is a fact that I don't like, so it's not true. Exactly. But did you see how quickly it was within like three weeks? Like we like had it and it became the thing of like we were trying to police the debate by saying, oh well we don't have to assert what's right and wrong because you're using fake news and so therefore we've won like take that take that you know conservatives but do you see how quickly it got flipped on us of they're like oh i see like this is like they don't care they don't care about

intellectual integrity internal consistency they're just like oh here's a rule we can exploit cool it's like it's like it's like yeah it's like if you've ever played like dnd with someone who's just a power gamer and like you can try to create a framework where they can't power game dnd but But any rule you make, they're just going to use it against. It's like judo, right? They're going to use your own power against you.

MerlinYeah, against you, your size and your mass.

MaxYeah, they're going to exploit loopholes. The more rules you create, the more loopholes there will be. Anyway, this is all by way of saying it just drives me insane that yesterday the right was actually saying concentration camps is cultural appropriation and it's anti-Semitic and bad. And we all were like – everyone on Twitter was just sitting there scratching their heads going, well, now I don't know what to do. I guess maybe they're good. Maybe we should be locking these children up.

MerlinI don't agree with everything he says, but he makes some good points.

MaxCan't you fucking assert? Is there no moral thing?

MerlinSomebody threw a pile of paperwork over here and then we all chased it because we love the paperwork.

MaxIsn't there anything? Isn't there any foundation, just moral foundation that we're willing to argue about and just say... We don't need a concentration camp. We need a focus camp. Yeah. it's not that i'm busy with the uh with the the forced labor it's that i'm time constrained by the time constrained no but but like it's like can't we how about this could we assert that it's wrong to have children in extrajudicial uh prisons without that with a suspension of

Merlinrights well there's there's two answers to that max one is we don't do that and second it's very effective. It's just, it's like, I would rather have the debate of whether it's right or wrong. Hmm. Well, we don't do it, but it's very effective. I feel like, okay, so I'm tired of all the Trump has baby stuff. Yeah, we all know Trump's a baby, but here's the thing. I feel like America, especially the Democrats are running some kind of like figurine store where there is a child who has somehow gotten his hands onto a mace or a battle ax. And it's like just literally running

through the store, like breaking everything. And we're frantically on the phone, like calling everybody in the phone book to try and find out who the kids' parents are. Like, we're like, oh, you're going to be in so, you're going to be in so much trouble. And it stops nothing. It stops nothing. The terrible, the shitty fucking performance that he turned in in Orlando last night to kick off, to kick off his campaign that technically began in January of 2017, where you could just feel like the energy is just draining from the room. And you just know that in that moment, that guy will just say and do anything.

Fuck it.

Speaker AI give up.

MaxI quit. I quit everything. I'm done. I'm donezo. Chris Hayes yesterday says, last comment on this, concentration camp is an extremely charged term, and I get why many people are, in good faith, uncomfortable with its application for Godwin's law purposes, among others. So let's just call them detention camps and focus on what's happening in them.

MerlinThank you.

MaxThanks, Chris. That's very helpful. To which Mike Godwin, the historian who coined the term Godwin's Law, says, Chris, I think they're concentration camps.

MerlinThey're going to rescind his golden necktie award.

MaxOh, for fuck's sake. What is wrong with us?

MerlinYou are now the president of necktie Twitter. We're so fucked. Where do you think we're so? Oh, my God. You're too about the fucking. What was it? Text bad boy to 555.

Max5-5. To get an exclusive wallpaper from the TNC.

MerlinOkay. An exclusive. Digga, digga, digga. Max, what the fuck? Tell me what this was.

MaxSo before your response, please describe what it is that you quote tweeted. Okay. Let me. I have to make a decision now. I'm having a real Robert Frost thing of how much tea am I going to spill. Well, I don't care. Whatever. Well, I have at various times in my life. I have been involved in the email operation for the Democratic Party. And I have some knowledge, institutional knowledge, of what works and what doesn't work to make money off of email lists and keep a subscriber base.

I'm going to be thinking about that thing you just said for a while. I'm sorry.

MerlinI want to hear this, but I got to do a Robert Frost thing where I decide how much tea to spill. That's something I would say. That makes no fucking sense. It probably does. I'm going to think about that for a real long time. Nothing gold stays? All right. Well, I'm trying to spill the tea. Rain Hand Small?

MaxI'm trying to spill the tea.

MerlinSo I have been – You've run email operations for – don't say which party. You've been involved with a political party that people have heard of. Let's just leave it at that.

MaxIt's been a job I have to manage fundraising email lists for big campaigns and things like that. And I'm on the DNC and the DCCC email list, and they're quite bad. And during the midterms, I was working on a number of midterm campaigns, and I was following all the DCCC emails.

And I got an email. They were really bad. I mean, really, really bad last time and widely mocked on Twitter. And the one that finally sort of broke my spirit was they sent one out that said, Mueller fired exclamation point. And then when you open it up, it said, this is the headline that you might see if Mitch McConnell gets his way. Click here to give $10. If you don't want this to happen, give $10 to the Democrats. They're trolling. They're trolling grandpas. Yeah, it's pretty. Isn't that a trolling grandpa kind of thing to do? I don't know. I mean, I think what happens is, I think it's

a little bit like The Wire, where they're juking the stats, they're juking the numbers, you know, so that basically someone's

Merlinjob... Oh, they're changing the way that it's quantified, so it looks like you're reducing crime in the case of...

MaxCorrect, right. It's a little comp stat in that email room, and someone at the top is going, we need more people...

MerlinOh, they're increasing their open rate. Correct.

MaxSomeone at the top is going... Okay, I see what you're saying. We've got to juice that open rate, and all the people down below, and no one is saying, we have to make this list be really high integrity so that we can use the exit it's like john

Merlinsyracuse says the xy problem you should have told me what you actually wanted to accomplish right you're gonna you're gonna this intern is gonna get i don't know get a tote bag if they're able to increase the open rate right but like do we want do we want anybody to fundamentally change

Maxthe way they think about this campaign and what we really what what we want is for people to is for people to actually open these emails and trust them and do what they say so that we can win elections and get house candidates elected but uh you know i think what happened was they probably had some sort of edict where it's like juice that open rate and then they had to do you know stupid headlines i'm just guessing i wasn't there but anyway so and the other problem is the d triple c in particular has very high turnover and it tends to sort of flip every two to four years with almost a completely new staff so i don't really know anyone working on this and they don't

really they're not really good at retaining any institutional knowledge so all the stuff that i learned is just and all the people after me is just out the window and some new people come in and they think they have it figured out. So anyway, I got very concerned after Mueller fired, and me and Laura Olin, who is the email director for Hillary 2016, and a few other people, I believe, reached out to the DCCC and said, hey, guys, we have some expertise in this domain, and I really think these emails are hurting the long-term viability of this list,

and we really will need this in the next presidential cycle, and could we meet with you and give you some free advice and just give us, you know, will you hear us out and we'll make our case of how to fix this? Okay, so in doing that,

Merlinso if I'm hearing you correctly when you say we're going to need this list, there is a benefit, a potential benefit to engagement and to getting people to donate, but also just engagement. The risk you run is they unsubscribe and then you can't... Merlin, are you familiar with the tale The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Hmm, I feel like I am. Is that Robert Frost? nothing gold stay nothing gold can stay is that yeah everything everything that glitters isn't gold okay okay say gold pony boy yeah is what you're saying yeah so but is that the question

i mean am i asking the right question here like you don't want those folks to bolt and unsubscribe because now you don't have their stuff you can't use them when you really need them how many times

Maxcan you say muller fired and trick people into opening the email before they go boy i better open all the daily email from the deeper triple c tomorrow to see what it is like at some point you know you're you're just people will stop opening those emails like that you know i get it that someone is doing a good job by juicing that number and that that day they were a good boy and they got they got a big number of opens but like what about tomorrow like that's what i'm thinking about is like this is this is why we don't hold like any real political power in in this country but anyhow all of this aside anyway so we emailed the d triple c it's a long-term game

Merlinyou're not going to worry too much about end game strategy and survivor in the first episode because then you get pegged as that guy and you know you're fucking out in two episodes well if you

Maxlisten you know i'm saying if you orchestrate a big blind side everyone's going to come back on you the next week because they don't trust you you've sacrificed you've given up your trustworthiness no trust never but you can never buy that back so we asked the d triple c to meet and we're like hey we don't want any money we don't want anything we'll just have a meeting we'll give you our take and you can listen to us and you know whatever and they were like we we don't want to meet with you we don't need to know anything that you have to say everything is great We're doing exactly what we want. And furthermore, we're worried if we meet with you that you'll just like say bad things about us on Twitter.

And like you're just you setting us up to like make fun of us. It was it was so paranoid and so fucking crazy. I think it is. I don't care. I don't care. I'm not. I'm not. I've already. I'm already just add up to 20 seconds of beeps at a time. Do you know the other thing the D triple C did?

MerlinThat's really crazy is they said. Well, because you just did the thing they were worried you'd do. I suppose I did, but they didn't meet with me. Did you drag them, Max? Are they canceled? They're canceled.

MaxThe DCCC has already said if you work for a candidate that's challenging an incumbent Democrat in the House, you're blacklisted. And so I'm fucking blacklisted. I'm going to work for Marie Newman for Congress.

MerlinWe say African-American listed now.

MaxYeah. Crisscross applesauce. but I'm like I'm like like you know fucking Dan Lipinski is like basically a Republican but he's just runs as a Democrat in Illinois and he's got to get he's not pro-choice he's got to get the fuck out of there so what good does it doesn't do us any good to have him in the party so if I'm going to be blacklisted so be it like I might as well make fun of them on on my uh um medium-sized podcast yeah yeah your large adult podcast but uh anyway so the DCCC so clearly they've taken what I've had to say to Hart. And they tweeted out that this is at the Democrats.

So they tweeted a picture. And it's a black picture with an iPhone 4 on it. And it's got a wallpaper. It's not even a wallpaper. It's like a little square Instagram. It looks like dog shit. You couldn't ever use this as your wallpaper. Because Alex would have an aneurysm if she saw this. Because it's like, do you know what I mean? It's a little square aspect ratio. It doesn't fill your background. It looks bad. And it says it's a picture of Trump from the nose down. So it's his sort of like grimacing like bottom teeth. I got him this time.

And it just says boy by 2020 Democrats.org and then the logo for the Democratic Party. Lots of text, you know, classically the thing you want on your phone background. And then it says get and then on the picture it says get your free limited edition boy by phone wallpaper. Text, quote, boy, by, unquote, to 43367 to get yours today. And then on the bottom, it says, by signing up.

MerlinAnd it looks like the warning's on a pack of cigarettes.

MaxYeah, it's got this real long warning text.

MerlinIt's got the danger box around it.

MaxBy signing up, you will receive periodic text messages from the DNC, text stop to quit or help for help, privacy policy, HTTPS, Democrats.org slash privacy dash policy.

MerlinSome charges apply. No motorcycles after 3 p.m.

MaxAnd then they, so they tweeted this picture out and then their caption on it is, this is a whole mood. Text boy by to 43367 to get this exclusive wallpaper.

MerlinThey sound like the focus group guy. Now you have to marry Donald Trump. I'm doing the best at this. He admit it.

MaxYou have no good exclusive wallpaper ideas.

MerlinHe admit it. I just saw that tweet.

MaxThis is a whole mood. Text boy by.

MerlinWhat the fuck? That really actually literally sounds like something that man would say. That's such a grandpa thing to ape at this point. It's like in the early 80s when moms started picking up the word gross. Boy by is from a Beyonce album from 2000.

MaxWhen did Lemonade come out? 2015, 2016? It's already old. I don't think people are quoting Lemonade anymore.

MerlinI also have hot sauce in my bag, swag. I got a shirt of it just now. I had it made on Redbubble. Hot sauce in my bag, swag. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Hillary. Just imagine if Obama had done it.

MaxOh, no.

MerlinI forgot. I forgot. We're going to lose. We're going to lose, Max. Holy shit. I just realized we're going to lose so bad. Yeah. Oh, my God. We're going to lose.

MaxYeah, I just saw this and I was like, Trump's getting reelected. Like, that's it. We're arguing about how we can't say it's concentration camps because it might offend someone. And we're texting boy bye to sign up for DNC email.

MerlinBut all our paperwork is exquisite. Holy shit. Lose. We're going to lose. Going to lose the election. Lose the election. We're so fucked.

Boy bye. Boy bye. Oh, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Someone just sent me a photograph that said, boy, bye. I have to leave. Where's my other coat that I wear on top of my coat?

MaxIt's so overwhelming.

MerlinI need the other coat for on top of this coat.

MaxHow are you supposed to do anything? How are you supposed to fucking go to the grocery store and get tomato paste when there's concentration camps? It's so... I probably shouldn't be... Girl from Ipanema playing. I probably shouldn't be affected by it this much, but it's so hard. It's such a fucking dark cloud over everything like all food tastes a little less sweet and all jokes are a little less funny like just everything is a little worse i can't i can't go totally to sleep i i sleep with one i open like metallica says just fuck try i can't believe how miserable trump is making me oh no no it's

horrible or am i maybe i'm already maybe i'm always this miserable and i'm just sort of projecting it's just like i'm getting health conditions i think my organs are moving and something's not

MerlinSomething has changed. You've got a wandering uterus. You want a train that went too fast? I love that Sarah McLachlan song. Is that what it's called? Wandering uterus.

You know what I fucking hate? Is this an open thread? This is an open thread, right? Yeah. Okay, OT. Too good. You know what I fucking hate? Oh, never mind. You know what I hate, Max? God damn it. My organs are moving. What do you expect of me? I have a lot of problems. You know what I hate? I hate every tweet that ends with then you aren't paying attention.

MaxYeah. Boy, I hate that.

MerlinWell, if this news about the concentration camp is something surprising, then you haven't been paying attention. Fuck you. Fuck you.

MaxI know you're going to make fun of me for saying this, but I really have cut my Twitter consumption down by over 90%. I mean, I'm so infrequently on the website now.

MerlinI should have said, that's the thing. A tweet is a thing where it's like a capsule

Maxof word bomb. Words. What is words? Well, language is a game that we're all enacting together. What are words? Toe, I let. We're in it, but we're also of it.

MerlinOf it, yes.

MaxNo, I just, it's a real, I'm telling you, like, I don't know, maybe you've already come to this through your own sort of leaving Twitter for a while, but, like, it's a real emperor has no clothes situation. Like, I used to get so worked up about this stuff, and I'd be so, feel like this was where it was happening, and it was, like, the thing. And like, I just don't feel like I just I'm like, oh, my God, it's just it's like it's one of those things where it's like, well, it's like the if you close your eyes, the whole world really does go away. Like if you just don't look at it, it has no power over you.

MerlinYes, it's crazy. It's so it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything. I feel certain I've said this before. I don't fucking care. I'm going to say it again. This is something that I came to realize in the days where I thought a lot and wrote a lot about stuff like email. And like here's the thing. Like when you are in a very keyed up state, you can't stop checking your email. And for a lot of people, and I'm not, I'm just going to own the privilege and say that depends a lot on your job. There are people who have to do that kind of stuff all day. But when you have to stand over that email all day, wow, is that ever, can be a terrible

feeling. It makes you feel like your organs are moving.

MaxYou're saying some people have a job where they might have some important news.

MerlinWhere they have to use their email for work. They might hear some news about the Yamamoto deal. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, and you've got to get the Henderson report out. But back in the day when you couldn't just get email everywhere, I would always feel the wildest thing where I couldn't be around email a lot, like on vacation. And then you come back and you're like, it's amazing how much of this shit kind of sorted itself out. And if I had been there, I don't know how much I would have contributed to any of this. And the same thing happens especially on political Twitter, our beloved political Twitter list. And the same thing happens there where if you step away from that shit,

like I've been doing some hobby things with my kid And we've been having a lot of like, you know, family adventure times and like going places and doing little little little things, you know, hikes and stuff. And like I'm away from Twitter for, you know, whatever, three hours, fucking five hours. I don't know. And then I come back and oh, like everything, everything is everything. And people are just fucking losing it. And I'm like, wait, what? What? What? What is like? What am I looking at here? I come back and I'm like, this is what I missed. What I missed is you guys taking this as the opportunity.

Something weird happened, and it's your opportunity to retweet your Washington Post article from two years ago, and that's what I missed? I didn't miss that much. And some of the shit that was bad worked itself out. Some of the stuff didn't, and I would not have changed anything about it by looking at it while it was happening or not happening. I was painting Dungeons & Dragons figures with my daughter, and I'm so glad I did that. Listening to The Adventure Zone, I'm so glad I did that. instead of laying on my bed with this thing nine inches from my fucking face scrolling by for seven hours. So you are absolutely correct.

I totally feel you.

MaxDo you ever have one of those, this maybe is under the category of private mind motion, but I had this thing where I was driving somewhere the other day and I think the deal was I just happened to at that moment, I just didn't have any music or a podcast on and I was just sort of thinking, which is rare. I usually have something going on in the car. Usually I'm tweeting and I'm listening to a podcast while I'm driving.

I'm good at it, but I'm good at it, though. You don't have beast mode on, do you? Oh, absolutely. But I'm good at tweeting and driving because I've done my –

MerlinThat car goes so fast, Max. What are you doing? If you get upset and accidentally hit the pedal, you're not even going to hear it going into a truck.

MaxNo, but I have Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. Oh, that's right.

MerlinYou're like – you played all those hours in Hamburg. Yeah, I'm already an expert at tweeting and driving.

Maxdon't don't don't message me but uh anyway uh he won't receive it you've been banned no but i didn't i wasn't doing anything and i had this moment of like mindfulness just come like crashing down on me and i was like and i was like man like like i don't what was the i was like i was thinking like this is so crazy like i've been down the street a hundred times and i've never i've just i don't know i've never actually been present in this situation and like looked around and like seen all the stuff here and then i started thinking like how many days do i go i wake up and i go with you the entire day and I go to sleep and I'm not really attentive to anything.

Like I don't really see any of the moments or any of the streets. And if I were to think back on that day now, I mean, what is a day other like in your life other than something you can look back on and remember? It's like a little story that you have for yourself. And that's, that's maybe what you would call like a well lived life, you know, is just having lots of those memories of, of good moments and good days.

MerlinAnd like, and like, not, it sounds floofy, but like having, having been there and having been present for what was happening while you were there. Which sounds, it sounds so obvious and so like yoga mat, but like that's so fucking true. Like I spent so much of my day slightly to completely tuned out from my environment.

MaxYeah. And how many days of my, like probably years have I like not had a moment where I was just like, damn, I'm like right here in this situation and here's a little moment. Look, weirdly, I'll remember that minute sitting in my car in traffic probably more than I'll remember the entire week that preceded it where I'm sure I did some cool shit and hung out with people or something. It's just a weird, it's one of those weird things of, of the way you like process. But I, I was thinking like, there is there like, like, you know, what reminded me of this was when you were saying you can work yourself when you're like on your phone and

you're like refresh email, nothing there, refresh Twitter, nothing there, refresh Instagram, nothing there, refresh. And then you get into a loop. Suddenly you're like four inches away from a panic attack for absolutely no reason. Yeah. You just, you sort of, you sort of spool yourself up you're like you're like here we go let's let's get all wound up and yes you can really work yourself to a mania and i think it has this effect of chopping every moment up into 500 micro moments that that string you along from this to this to this to this to this in a way where you you're not that then that's it and then you go to bed and that's your day good work yes and i i have

Merlintwo things to say about this um uh first of all i've mentioned this before but something that i I have, I'm not good at this, but boy, am I ever fucking aware of this. And I, and this, a lot of this has come from like trying to deal with my anxiety. And there's this one book I like about anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. Which is that? Stopping the noise in your head. Stopping the noise in your head.

MaxMm-hmm.

MerlinYeah. And the basic idea is that there's signals and there's noise. And people with anxiety, and especially people with OCD, it's virtually impossible for them to distinguish signal from noise. and in fact they can actually kind of generate their own noise. And so you learn to not worry about your content or a signal, in this case. He calls it your content. The content is the thing that makes you think, oh, did I leave the iron on or whatever. And it's like basically having you deal, you confront the anxiety rather than the thing that causes the anxiety

because otherwise that's how they get you.

MaxI bought this almost exactly a year ago. I wonder why.

MerlinBecause you told me to buy it. But, you know, point number one, And in reading that book and thinking about this a lot, there is something I discovered. I discovered this with my sleep shit. I discovered this with my anxiety shit. And this is going to sound not very profound, but it actually has huge implications, which is that like, let's say, so the classic example, let's say you suddenly realize you're being chased by a tiger or whatever, whatever the classic example is. And a lot of stuff happens with your body. So your pulse starts racing, you release adrenaline, you might shit yourself. Like all the stuff that happens when there's this legit fear in front of you causes your, I think, you know, I think you could say autonomic system, your limbic system to really kick into gear and do all of this stuff, which makes a ton of sense.

But here's the thing. Like when you are an anxious person, you will find yourself not even realizing the physical symptoms that you are having until it's probably too late. I'm not putting this super well, but here's the problem. It isn't that, like, I just discovered there is a tiger or might be a tiger. It's that my heart is really, really racing, and I'm getting all these signals that are now telling my brain how I should be thinking and how I should be behaving, right? The cognitive and the behavioral, the emotional. All of those things are coming out of this physical activity.

So why am I saying that here? You get all fucking keyed up, look at a fucking Twitter, and you get all the apps and the app switches, and you're going around, and you're doing all this shit. And like pretty soon your body is racked with all of these not deadly, but really important cues to your body that bad shit is happening. How would you feel any way other than terrible? You're like the Dan Benjamin used to say, you're a guy in a room. You're fucking sitting in a room in a chair or like a nice car or like a podcast studio.

You're in this environment where there is not actually any imminent danger to you right that second. right? And yet your body is sending you all of these cues that go straight into your limbic system, your amygdala, like all this shit is going on that is causing your body to now say, oh, I guess I got to go make more anxious juice. You know what I mean? But like, you don't stop to go like, well, what if I dealt with these physical symptoms first? Like, what if I said, I try and get my heart rate down. I try and control my breathing a little bit, all that kind of stuff. And then the other stuff kind of falls in line. You take a minute, you just fucking chill out for

a minute. Like the phrase that this guy uses in this book that I like is when you start feeling the anxiety welling up, you acknowledge it by saying, oh, I'm doing that thing again, or something like that. Or here comes this thing again. And then if it is, you could say to yourself, you know what, this is difficult, but I can handle this. It's just a kind of self-talk, but you just deal with the fact that the problem is, how much of the time do you walk around? If you stop for one second, I'm screaming into a microphone about self-help right now. I don't even know what my heartbeat is. I should probably check. How often do we stop and go like, why don't

I just chill the fuck out for a minute. What am I doing to myself? I'm going to address this by opening more tabs? That's mental.

MaxWell, okay, I have a little idea.

MerlinI do have a tube, but go ahead.

MaxI have a little half-baked... Pick what you can.

MerlinIt's not delivery, it's DiGiorno's. Let me throw this out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up.

MaxAll right.

MerlinLet's shed a flagpole and see if anybody salutes. Let me piss him into your leg. You tell me if it's raining. I hope Alex comes back soon. This is not good.

MaxNo, this is, this is, as we say, this is not a good one.

Here's my thing. I think people have, I think about this a lot. I think people have, the human mind has an amazing capacity to like, how do I put it to like feel a certain way and then sort of like back solve into why they're feeling that way but for the wrong so let me give you an example right hundred percent like so maybe to use the concentrate if I can use the concentration camps thing as an example like reading these news articles or whatever makes me feel extremely anxious I feel very small I feel like out of control I feel very powerless like it makes me feel just for me personally those are

like some of my my worst feelings like that that you know some horrible thing happening to someone and i am powerless to do anything it really it makes me feel like i get like enraged like i feel very like red and like hot but also just like it's very scary like i hate it i i hate feeling that way and so there's some way i i think but i can't really so but the core thing in some ways is

Merlinis the helplessness a little bit of panic but it's it's helplessness yes and and rage and and

MaxAnd I don't want to be feeling like that. And there's not really anything I can do about it other than address it within myself. I mean, I don't think there's much more I can be doing to sort of like about, you know, these whatever concentration camps or whatever is making me mad. But there is a weird way where like what I'll do when I get into that state is go on Twitter and get in fights with people and tell people to, you know, log off or whatever. Suck my balls. and it's a weird way of I can then I have a little story I tell myself of like it's not

that I'm feeling these ways because of something that is it's a way of making my it's like no I'm really mad about these morons on Twitter I'm mad about something that I can control you know what I mean it's a defense mechanism because it's like it's so scary

Merlinthink about the alcoholic dad who hates his job that ends up hitting the kid.

MaxRight.

MerlinHe's not actually mad at the kid. The kid is what he can control. He hates his boss and he hates his choices.

MaxI have to say, I think there's a similar cycle. You know, I've been punishing myself since the election by just like read all this, you know, whatever. Are you back on your bullshit with the Jewish books? I'm back on my bullshit. And I'll say like,

Merlinthere's this thing where- Oh, this Hannah Arendt

Maxwill be nice before I go to sleep. There's a thing where just, it's not always that people are completely dehumanized and then they're like, oh, they're insects and so we'll put them in concentration camps. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes you put people into concentration camps and you treat them poorly and the public feels such cognitive dissonance. They go, well, we wouldn't do this if they were people.

MerlinThey have to have done something.

MaxYeah, they have to have done something.

MerlinIt's like people watching cops. It's like there's that whole podcast now about the history of cops and it's like that's formed our idea about how policing should and does work and all of those people are fucking guilty maniacs.

MaxYeah, but there's this idea of, well, if they're there, they must be less than human because we wouldn't have put them there if they were fully human. And that creates what Hannah Arendt called the environment in which anything is possible. And that's where you really get the-

MerlinNow we're getting into the hyper- What's that movie?

MaxIt's kind of like that? Well, that's where you get some Dr. Mengele shit. Mm-hmm. Which coincidentally also we're doing to people in these camps.

MerlinOh, God. What's the movie? Yeah, hyper...

MaxHypernormalization.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. Part of it is like you're not sure what's real in some ways.

MaxYes, yes. Pretty cool.

MerlinWhat was my number two? My number two was about there's the anxiety thing, and I had a really good number two. That's why we started late.

MaxSorry, did I throw you off, Merlin?

MerlinNo, no. Sorry. No, no, no, no. I threw me off. That's what I do. I do that. No, no, no. I think it was – but I was just – it was having to do with that – I guess it was just this moment the other day when I was walking down the steps and getting ready to go out. And I was in the area of our house that I call the Kill Zone. And the Kill Zone is the area right by our door where I'm pretty sure we're all going to die because that's where all the children's shoes are. And sometimes there's a bag that won't let the door open completely. And even as recently as this morning, I call it the Kill Zone. and sometimes when I'm walking through the kill zone

to leave the house I'll be thinking and I was getting ready to go down I was going downstairs and I just suddenly just like I guess just it dawned on me how many things were kind of on my mind because I'm in a very fretful state of ah ah ah like a lot of the time

MaxDo you ever get so much ah ah ah that as you go to write something down in your to-do list something else pops into your head and you start writing that down and you can't remember the first thing you went to open your to-do list to write down?

MerlinWhat do you think? What do you think? I still have a page in a moleskin that just says Jeff Goldblum.

MaxI get that all the time of like, I came into this room and I can't remember why. I'm staring at OmniFocus. I'm like, why did I have this open?

MerlinI was just walking down the steps, getting ready to go through the kill zone. And so I had it on my backpack. That's where the children's shoes are. I'm gonna die there for sure. And I always say to my daughter, I said, be careful because remember, the door wants to kill you. The door will be part of the calculation. Because the door, when it is open, then the door closes very, very slowly, and you will eventually break your nose. The thing is, you will break your nose on the door, but it really wants to kill you.

MaxMerlin, if you break your head open on the door and Alex is gone, then the podcast is just going to be me yelling at Chris Hayes about a website I don't use anymore. And I don't think the listeners are going to like that.

Speaker AHour nine.

MerlinJust the sound of you smoking a cigarette.

MaxI'll be talking about my survivor draft pool and telling Chris is to suck my balls.

MerlinIt doesn't fucking matter. But I was just, I was walking down the steps, getting ready to move through the kill zone. And I'm thinking about what I, what I'm thinking a little bit about what I'm doing. I'm thinking about what I need to do. Of course, I'm thinking about what I've done. I'm thinking about what I haven't done. And I just had this, like, it's going back to you and your tweeting in your car where I had this kind of, like, you know, slight, just very, very brief moment of clarity that I kind of imprinted on. And it was just so weird because, like, I was walking down the steps, going to the kill zone. I got my backpack on. I'm going to eventually go downstairs.

So I need to open the garage door. I need to get my scoot scoot. Is there anything I forgot? Because you know what I always say? I always say, if you think you forgot something, you probably did. So I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about how I got to do pick up at this particular time. I'm thinking about the myriad tasks that I need to do to just keep, I have to spend so many goddamn plates just to keep toilet paper in the house at all. I'm thinking about my role. I like the job I like to call the night manager, which is like if mom has gone to bed at a decent hour, I am a little later. Now I'm doing the management of like how much video we're allowed to watch for this long

and do we get a second water and all these kinds of things. The night manager. Then I call myself the night manager. And so last night my wife was tired. and we were watching Project Dress, Top Dress and I said don't worry, the night manager's got it the Nachtmacher or whatever my name would be anyway, I don't know but I just had this moment where I was like wow, my brain is in so many places that are not on the steps walking through the kill zone right now it's so fucking manic that I just kind of

caught myself, and again, I want to be clear for once in my life I was not listening to a podcast I did have everything in my podcast, but do you ever have the feeling like you're i'm running through this array of shit like i'm looking at some kind of like ozymandias like one million television sets with my pet tiger like trying to figure out what the fuck is happening in my life and i'm thinking about the kill zone and i'm thinking about the segue and i'm thinking about did we get the right kind because we accidentally bought the kind of paper towels that aren't just half size but they could be quarter size then who wants that you rip

but often you get a quarter of a sheet that's too small a slice. Are you getting the vivas? They might be the vivas. My usual reorder, they had to replace. They said, Mr. Man, we're replacing this with these new ones. You're going to have a smaller slice.

MaxI got an Instacart. Let me tell you, Instacart is almost canceled. I ordered one head of garlic on Instacart, and they brought me a... Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no. You paid for what? No, no, no, no. I ordered $50 of groceries, but one of the items in my cart was I asked for, please bring me one head of garlic. and they brought me instead a bag of pre-peeled garlic. Oh, that's not what you wanted? Yeah, that gets Syracuse on the phone. I can't work with that.

MerlinHave I ever told you, one time I ordered number four coffee filters and they were out, so they brought me two boxes of number two coffee filters? My hand to God. Like, you know what? I would have done the same thing. The math adds up. Why do you smell like weed? I figure two times two is...

MaxThat's so funny.

MerlinGarlic. And so all I wanted to say is that I had it wasn't a moment of clarity. It was a moment of shame as I walked to the kill zone and I'm thinking about the too small slice and I'm thinking about the pickup. And did she wear the right shoes to be able to walk home today like we had planned? And is anybody going to reschedule anything because it's silly season? I'm thinking about all the things and I just I just have that feeling of like fucking like Jesus. No wonder it feels like my organs are moving. Donald Trump is president and I'm thinking about everything except what I'm doing right now. And it was a terrible feeling. Yeah. I'm sorry. Now it sounds like I'm doing back to work by myself again. But no, it was a terrible feeling.

I'm like, just fucking calm down.

MaxLike Taylor Swift and Alex Cox say, you need to calm down. Yeah. I get that. I walk around with, like usually I like to be doing no less than six things. So I'll have a podcast on the stuff. Of course you do. That's how you keep back the demon dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I usually like to have a podcast on the speaker phone of my iPhone. And then maybe I'm texting someone and writing down to-do items and things. And then I'm practicing a coin trick in my other hand usually. You sound like Shiva. You sound like you've got multiple arms. And then I'm skateboarding to work also.

MerlinThat's a cool look. Yeah. Anyway, we need to calm the fuck down.

MaxI don't know, man. Is that the show? Are we done? Can we go? What? I guess we got to do Garfield.

MerlinOh, we don't have to do Garfield. We should do, what could we do? We got Garfield. No, we can skip Garfield. And do you want to, because we got to do the after show too.

MaxWell, I guess that'll be our after show.

MerlinNow, Max, Max, come on. We got to do this thing. Do we do the challenge?

MaxOh, yeah, sure. Did you do it? Well, I picked a challenge that I could do right now, and I can just pull open my little Instagram here. God, I was so pumped to hear what Alex was going to say. Let's see if I got anything else to talk about. I bet hers would have been pretty funny.

MerlinPretty, pretty. Oh, I sent you a video that, as I mentioned in my private text to you, I said, per what you're talking about right now. and it's a CGP Grey video called You Are Too and it demonstrates, oh fuck, I don't know what it's called, but like you got the two brains and the way the perception works is so bananas and he's talking about these experiments where people are, your left hand doesn't basically doesn't know what your right hand is doing. Anyway, it's a really good video but the thing that he says in here that I think about a lot,

I've heard this other places, but the thing I think about a lot is that so much human behavior involves doing something and then, if needed, later on coming up with a reason why you did it. And it happens all the time with people. It's like if you ask somebody why they did something, very few people, unless they're deliberately trying to cover something up, will say, oh, no reason. A lot of times people just do shit, but what our motivations are for doing practically everything are so muddy and weird. Like, why'd you yell at that guy?

Is it because Donald Trump made my organs move? no but he was mean to me online you know and it's like uh anyway i'll put this in show notes it's a good video you are too and it's it's one of those this is one of those ones like the star trek transporter one that like you end up thinking about for a real long time have you seen the

Maxtransporter one uh probably okay on your instagram profile tap the settings oh no you're literally doing it now then click on got it okay challenge uh all right well as you know on dubai friday we like to do a little challenge every week, you know, just to really keep the gremlins at bay, you know, just get them right off those airplane wings. Yeah, just a little something to think about other than... Yeah, because we don't have enough to think about. Having to flee the country and when's the right time and should I have just got a house?

Did my organs move? Yeah, and like, well, what country would you even flee to that would sort of be free of climate disaster and political turmoil? I mean, maybe somewhere in Central America, I guess. I don't know. not that I think about that all the time but anyhow if you do know reach out let me know where to go

Merlinwhere should we go pick a nice one like a Paul Manafort country you know Paul Manafort is eventually going to disappear and go somewhere you know he's going to disappear from jail and just go somewhere

Maxhe'll be in one of those little villages in Argentina

Merlinmaybe it'll be like a Papillon or maybe like a Silence of the Lambs you know like in Silence of the Lambs at the end

Maxwhen he calls Clarice on the phone what about like West Virginia somewhere like the Shenandera because you could kind of be off the grid. Do you think they'd find you? I don't. Do you think they'd find a Jew in the Shenandoah?

Coming through the rye?

MerlinYeah.

MaxDo you think when they round the Jews up, do you think I'll say, take me too, I'm Jewish, and I'll do one of them heroic things? Or will I be like, Oh, will you be a hero to your people? I always wondered, why don't more people just go there? Are you Jewish? you should be like, no.

MerlinOr just say, I'm not going. Forget it.

MaxI got stuff to do.

MerlinI'm time constrained.

MaxI got a podcast to record.

MerlinI can't go to the ghetto. Pump the brakes. Pump the brakes. I got shit to do. No, but you know what I mean? I do a funny card company. I'm not going to your camp. You call that a concentration camp? That's not a concentration camp.

MaxLike maybe it's cowardice, but you'd think more people would just go, they'll go, you know, if you're a Jew, you have to wear this star. And you should be like, I'm not a Jew. But can you also just say,

MerlinI'm not that into it?

MaxI don't think. well that's a good question see I gotta bounce sorry man get to your start gotta go

Merlinyeah

MaxI don't know maybe it's one of those

Merlinyou say I'm not a Jew I'm not a Jew I'm a faux Jew

MaxI'm not a Jew you'd just be like I guess I'd be like no I'm a Christian

Merlinoh but then what if they give you a quiz like in World War 2 they ask you who plays for the Yankees that kind of thing

Maxhow hard could it be I'd be like I love wheat thins and I listen to POD oh that's really good so you would just say I would prefer Jell-O and Triscuits Thank you very much. I could probably home a few bars of a Creed song. How hard could that be? can that be?

Um.. Cards Against Humanity is bringing our live show to Gen Con 2019 on August 2nd and 3rd in Indianapolis. It is a very cool theater. It's an old church, and it's sort of set in the round, and it's really beautiful, and we're bringing a very, very good lineup of people to do our live Cards Against Humanity late-night writer's room. I am a little bit terrified that we're not going to sell out, so if you're in the—

MerlinYou've got to have a sellout. If you don't sell out, it's not as funny.

MaxIt's embarrassing to me if we don't sell out. I really do want to sell the room out. So it's the Scottish Rite Theater, August 2nd and 3rd at 8 p.m. in Indianapolis. If you're anywhere near Indianapolis or frankly anywhere in the United States or really anywhere in the world, arrange your travel. Come to the live show and we'll give you a Dubai Friday windbreaker if you come and say hi to us. And you can get your tickets at KaliveGenCon.com. Oh, that's a bit of a mouthful. That's C-A-H.

That's C-A-H. KaliveGenCon.com. Please come. Alex and I will both be there. We'll both be signing stuff. I'll show you magic trick. It's going to be great. Or not. I won't show you magic trick if that's more likely to make you come in. Whatever you want. I don't care. Just please buy a ticket.

Anyway, so we do this. What do we got? We got to fucking do this. Got to do this. We got the whole challenge. We got a whole challenge going. And people, you might be listening to the show and you might be, how can you bring us all of this wonderful, uplifting content every week? And there's no ads, right? We're not telling you about concentration camps and selling you a mattress with just the right spring and just the right bounce.

It's just the one. I crave the sweet release of Death.

MerlinIt's just the one.

MaxAnd you're probably asking, well, how do they do that? And the answer is, how can I give the money? Dubai Friday is 100% listener supported. And you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com to give us $5 a month. And you will get access to the Dubai Friday After Show. That's a whole second episode every week where usually we're not quite this depressed. We're just sleepy. No. No, I don't know what it is today. I think it's because Alex isn't here. We're super depressed. I think we're a little... I'm a little worried that I don't know where Alex is. I worry.

MerlinOh, you know, she'll be fine. She's like the Lord. She'll turn up when she's needed.

MaxYeah. Okay. Well, anyway...

MerlinChallenge this week was Max's challenge.

MaxYou can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. It's going to help fund the search and rescue efforts. Can I eat a gummy bear? Do you mind if I eat a gummy bear? It's got vitamins in it or just regular? No, no.

MerlinNo, no. It's a classic Haribo gold bear. You know, if you eat too many of those, you'll shit. Really? Yeah, Google it. I feel like I took care of that already, but no, you know what?

MaxNo, you'll get diarrhea if you eat too many. Does this have horses? I don't know if it's that or something else. Can one of the interns look up gummy bear diarrhea and just find out what is it? Is it the gelatin or something?

MerlinWell, Alex isn't here. They're both sitting here playing.

MaxI have a little gift for your browser history. They're both fucking playing snood on their computers back here.

MerlinI don't know what's going on. They're not laughing at any of our bits or anything.

MaxAre you an influencer?

MerlinYeah.

Maxlet's go do some work someone someone look up gummy bear diarrhea make it learn earn a living

Merlinthese are great for when you're on a plane i always get these when i'm on a plane you just

Maxeat the whole bag and shit and shit shit your pants anyway it's uh give us your fucking money dot com you give us five dollars you become a member of do by friday and now what's the best part is you'll find out the challenge the week before so you can do it with us and and when we talk about it you'll uh you'll know what the hell we're talking about so this week was my challenge and i thought that because we live in a surveillance state where they track you know if you're jewish and how Jewish you are and if you should go to the camps and when and with your family or without or if you pick one of your children. I don't know. I assume that's where they keep that all on Facebook.

They're not jailing the children. They're protecting them. No. Well, it's for their own good.

MerlinYeah.

MaxThey could do a voluntary deportation. You could call it a self-deport? The thing is, the other argument is, well, the right goes, well, they crossed the border illegally so it is a crime so it's not a concentration camp because the only people if it's you could only be a concentration camp if they were there without breaking the law but let me remind you crossing the border to seek asylum is not a crime

Merlinmost of the most of the well again the united states is a stand your ground state right so you know i'm saying right well it could be ex post facto oh sorry you gotta quit bro quo okay all right all right all right

MaxSo Challenge this week

MerlinYou wanted us to go into Wherever we could find it On any of our socials

MaxYeah right

MerlinThat's it

MaxWe gotta do this This is the job Yeah no I'm doing it I'm there I'm not thinking I hate this too I hate all of this I'm not thinking About anything else Anyway You know it's really cool That we have this That all these companies Have this info on you And I thought that it might be A good goof If we went on and found out You know that when you use Instagram or whatever They or Facebook Or any of these things Twitter they sort of try to compile a little picture of you a little a little uh a little vignette of you and your life avatar logo now like what do we think is this guy's deal and how can we sell him

pictures so you know the classic example that i love to say is like when we when we got our house i had to buy a washing machine and i must have been googling like what's the best washing machine to buy and then we bought one and for like three months afterwards every day i would see ads for washing machines and so somehow a bit got flipped and they were like all the ad companies were like this guy loves washing machines. We better show him some ads for washing machines. Oh my God.

MerlinIt's so mental. Matt Howey bought a lamp, like a light for his porch. Like the kind of light, you know, like an outside light you turn on at night. You know, he bought a light for his porch. And then after that, he, for months, he kept seeing ads on the web for porch lights. Now, a lot of you out there are going to say, well, of course. Maybe they thought he was a moth.

He's like self-harming moth. Yeah. No, but like this, like on the one hand you go like, cause, cause you, you smart guy goes, well, of course he's going to, he's going to see ads for that because he's been identified as a porch owner who likes light. You're like, yeah, but he just bought that. How many, how many porch lights will he need? He's the least likely person to, well, the other thing is. He is statistically just about, unless something horrible happens to him, unless it self combusts, he's not going to need another porch light for a while.

MaxOne of the websites that I buy magic stuff from is they have like a retargeting email where it's like, hey, you left some shit in your cart. Do you want this? Yeah. And they do it every fucking time I buy something. So I put stuff in my cart. I check out. I purchase it. The next day I get an email going, you left some shit in your cart. And it's the shit that I just ordered. And every time I'm like, wait a minute. Did I fuck this up? Did I not order it? And then I have to go in and look at the order. I'm like, no, I ordered it. It drives me insane. Why would you do this? I just bought it. Don't punish me. A follow up. It's brawny terra square.

Do you know about the Viva paper towels?

MerlinI don't know.

MaxWell, I'm a big fan.

MerlinYou know, I used to get the Viva because they're very, very heavy. It's almost like cloth.

MaxYeah, but you just need a tiny square. Just a little slice. Yeah. One little slice. Just a little small slice. You need a big enough slice. Yeah. Yeah. You can get your whole mud pie with one slice of a Viva. No mud pie.

And so, yeah, I'm very interested in this, too.

MerlinI, unfortunately, you know, I think I'm fully deactivated on Facebook. I think I'm fully deleted on Instagram. I did have a couple things I was able to get with Twitter, but I had to go back because I had all the bits on personalized everything. Good for you.

MaxI run some extensions. Maybe we should spend a little bit of time on this because I know you had prepared some resources.

MerlinOh, the practical, the practical components.

MaxYeah, just like how to not have this happen. but so the thing for me that got me thinking about this was I saw an article and I saw like Instagram saves your ad profile, what they think you want to be advertised about because you know the argument for all these personalized ads is like oh well it's actually good for consumers because we'll connect them with information that they want to know about so I always think it's funny what they think that information is but that can only be improved by Mark Zuckerberg making his own currency

Merlinit's like Jesus fucking Christ this is are you just you've given up yes hans we're the baddies like you're gonna facebook is going to make a cryptocurrency and get it out all over the world you saw that right yeah yeah but my friend

Maxyou know it's as my friend aziz says bitcoin is united miles but if there was no united and it's not to spend them on and facebook coin exactly well right it's like well could i interest you in some miles for an airline that doesn't exist you'd be like no thanks yeah i'm good but But Facebook dollars is like United Miles if United does exist. So it's maybe a better business opportunity. I think they're looking at cross-border sort of transactions and things like that. But I don't know. It's pretty like – I feel like everyone – Let me ask you an obvious question.

MerlinThis is such an obvious question. But I think it's worth re-asking sometimes. Sort of like what you just said, what I've said a lot, what a lot of people say a lot of the time, why do they do this? Why do the companies do this? And what is the answer we always guess or provide is that they do this to get you more effective ads that they can charge more money for? I mean, this is not a trap. I mean, isn't that kind of what the conventional wisdom is?

Why does so much effort go into like trying to get up my fucking ass about what I'm doing? Why do they do that? And the answer is?

MaxThe answer is this. There's this great, you know, you've probably heard this, but there's this great like idiom and advertising of, I don't know if it was like Marshall McLuhan or some guy was like. If you don't know. Well, it's like, I know half of my advertising budget is wasted. But the problem is.

MerlinYeah, that somebody said, I'm sorry, I thought you're going to do it if you don't know who the product is. It's you. The other one was, yeah, it was somebody who worked at a, I think he worked at an ad agency, I want to say, or in like the 70s. It was like, I spend. He's like, yeah, he's like, I know I'm wasting half of my ad budget. But the problem is, I don't know which half. I don't know which half.

MaxAnd that's true, right? Let's say you're Coca-Cola and you want to sell some delicious beverages to people. What do you do? You buy a billboard and you're like, I don't know, a bunch of people are going to see this billboard. But do I know that they're the people who want Coke? And so Facebook comes along and they're like, actually, we can just show the ad. You'll pay. How do billboards charge? They charge CPM, cost per meal. So it's like how many eyeballs look at it and then you charge a few cents per eyeballs. And Facebook goes, we can do much better because we'll charge you the same cost per meal. we'll charge you the same, you know, two cents an eyeball.

MerlinLike what if we showed your ad only to women who are about to have a baby? Right. Like if that's who you're trying to target, we can tell she was buying baby vitamins and like all this and stuff. And like, oh, we can collate that with over in this other place. She was looking at diapers or whatever.

MaxIt's to say the idea is to eliminate this dilemma on behalf of advertisers and companies where they say, well, I know I'm wasting half my budget, but I don't know which half. Now you know which half is wasted. and the concept is like, oh, well, you'll just show the ad to people who are more likely to care about it. That's why they do it. But they also have to have some nonsense they tell people because people wouldn't tolerate that, right? It feels invasive and bad. And for the simple, I guess, because...

MerlinSo you say you're doing it to give you a better experience.

MaxYeah, well, and why does it feel bad? Because it's the wrong thing to do and it's evil and it is invasive. I mean, pretty self-explanatory. But yeah, but then they go, well, they have to have some bullshit to tell people. So they go, well, if we didn't do this, you'd be seeing a bunch of random ads that you don't care about for Coca-Cola. But because we're targeting the ads, you're only going to see things that apply to you. And I have heard this party line ideology. I have heard this, like, what's the North Korean ideology called? Alex's interns, look this up. It's called, like...

MerlinAlso, do we ever get anything on gummy bear diarrhea?

MaxGummy bear diarrhea.

MerlinCould we get a follow-up on that? What are they doing? Are they playing video games? Are they doing anything?

MaxThey're both... How long could it take to Google gummy bear diarrhea? There's buttons being pushed. Joosh, thank you. oh nice good poll and the diarrhea big old diarrhea oh thank you buddy thank you now that's

Merlinnow that's what you're right guys take the rest of the day off thank you that's why they call

Maxmaking a brown bear um yeah joosh that's the i've heard people in the advertising industry and in the startup world who like are they're like real into the how do you spell that i don't uh interns nope they left uh uh joosh thank you thank you yeah they're real into this and they This is amazing.

MerlinI need to get an intern.

MaxThey really believe in this. Well, I recommend getting an Alex who has interns. Oh, assistant to the assistant to the regional manager. Yeah, you got it. It's going to be bears all the way down. Now, yeah, I've met people who really believe in this ideology. I mean, they fully are like, no, it's great for consumers because you'll just see ads for the things that you care. You know, you'll just see cat food ads or, you know, whatever shit you care about. But anyway, so this all came to mind because, well, obviously I've been thinking a lot about this cool surveillance state that we all live in. But also I saw this article and it said how to get to this.

You have to do these arcane menu swipes to get into the – to see the info that Instagram thinks it has on you. And I will read that now. So on your Instagram profile, tap the settings or the gear icon. So first you go to your profile and then there's this little settings icon. I think it might be a hamburger icon or something like that. Then you click on the tab that says Security on there. Once you're in Security, you're going to click on View Account Data, or sometimes it's called Access Data, and it seems to change,

so maybe they're A-B testing or something. Then you scroll down all the way down, down, down, down, down, down, past a million things under Account Data, to the last little hidden section below the fold, way, way down there, called Ads Interests. then you need to go into another mode and click on view all and then what you'll get is the screen that shows you everything that they think you're into so for me what it's really it's really just that easy yeah very simple so here's what instagram thinks that i'm interested in shop it's very it's long but so they get weirder as they go so shopping and fashion

is that really an interest i mean i'm not interested in fashion tattoos and have avocation tattoos again like i have a tattoo but i wouldn't say i'm interested in tattoos Nature, well, that one's true. Sports, wrong. Food, I guess I'm interested in food. I guess most people would be, right? If food is something, well, if one is not interested in food, you know, it could be a problem. I mean, they're not going to be an Instagram user for very long. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. But that's a weird one. That feels like that whole argument of like,

no, we're really zoning in on your interest. And they're like, oh, he likes food. Oh, cool. Let me see if I got food on Twitter. Thank you.

MerlinOh my God, I got food twice on Twitter.

MaxYeah, hell yeah.

MerlinLine 96, line 97. I got food and food. It's right above Fred Van Vliet and right below Fitbit. Basketball, wrong. Hip-hop music, I suppose.

MaxTelevisions. Televisions. It says I have an interest in televisions. You're always on about your television. Couldn't tell you which television I own. I bought it based on square inches and no other factors. Mobile phones, smartphones, movies, interior design, technology, furniture, cooking, home improvement, American football. What the fuck? Software, photography, first-person shooter games, baseball. How do these fucking sports all get in here? Wine? When have I? I've never looked at anything about wine in my life. How would it get?

Gambling? Gambling. What the hell is this?

MerlinLet's see if I got gambling. I don't have gambling. I got games, gaming community, George H.W. Bush. Heavy metal music. Heavy metal music. You're always on about your heavy metal.

MaxYeah, I love metal. Card games. Well, that one actually is pretty dialed in. Manga. Manga's the one that's porn, right? Is that the one that's the movies or the books? No, I think that's porn.

MerlinIs that Zentai? Yeah. Okay.

MaxIt says I'm interested in aesthetics. Oh, that's true. Yeah, can't argue with that.

MerlinCan I read you some of mine from Twitter? Yes, please. So I had, so this is from, I went in, and this is one from a very, I think this might be from a pretty long time ago.

MaxNo, no, this might have been the reason. Aerosol paint. Witchcraft.

MerlinAerosol paint.

MaxI have 272. Manoa Luzon, who's someone I've literally never heard of in my life. Oh, I love her stuff.

MerlinShe's everything right now. Le Bon Bon.

MaxWhat the fuck is Le Bon Bon?

MerlinLe Bon Bon. Le Bon Bon. Le Bon Bon. So I have 272 things that Twitter thinks I'm interested in, and I've highlighted just a few.

Behavior around fashion.

MaxBehavior around fashion.

MerlinBehavior around fashion. What is the outfit of the day? Yeah, right, exactly. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi, Merlin. Thank you. Hey, I love that. Herbs and spices, hot dogs, hamburgers, Mercedes Benz. I'm not going to pay a lot for that muffler. I know. I would never buy a German car, except for RVW. movie watching terms opioid awareness tanning and sun care huge vegetables I'm into vegetables

Guy Fieri oh Bethesda like Todd Bethesda that makes the games

Maxyeah it could be or Bethesda Maryland maybe you maybe you need to eat at TGI Fridays

Merlinnow this isn't I do actually pound sign TGIF is one of them in here John Dickerson John Harwood Dwayne Johnson Ryan Johnson Ron Johnson but not John Ronson

MaxI've got Pakistan Orlando Magic Carol Danvers and then here's one that's Captain Marvel you're fucked whoo Blog Gaiallo Zaffarino I don't know what the fuck that is or who that is I've never heard of this person in my life Blog Gaiallo Occult Spirit Mufti Ismail Mank I don't know what that is Are you okay do you smell toast Reggaeton, Chicago Bears.

Reggaeton. Tattoo Machine, Gordon Ramsay, Buzz Lightyear. Padme Amidala. Padme Amidala. That's a Star Wars. Ska, anime and manga fandom. Love Ska. Teletika.

Supernatural. Laughter. Scoop Whoop. Scoop Whoop. Scoop Whoop. Posty Mobile. RuPaul, which I've never seen an episode of in my life Math Fashion Jack Kirby Oh, cool

MerlinHe's a comic guy

MaxThis is insane

MerlinYeah, and this is what's interesting here Hootsuite, it says I'm interested in Hootsuite

MaxYou used to use Hootsuite Hootsuite

MerlinHootsuite is power tools for Twitter douchebags Stormtrooper from Star Wars It specifies Stormtrooper from Star Wars what it said on mine so I believe I'm trying to remember which one of these oh come on it says Alaska Thunderfuck 5000

MaxAlaska Thunderfuck is that marijuana it sounds like marijuana

Merlinhow could it I don't think I've ever had that I thought Alaska Thunderfuck was a marijuana I feel like there's some kind of Thunderfuck I've heard John Roderick talk about but I don't know yeah so this when I downloaded this and opened it up let me find the original file because I had to put it into Google Sheets because that's where I live.

MaxManish Malhotra, V-Ray, Home, 2009 film, Anime Expo, Arch Daily, Princess Leia, Vizzer. Reiki. Isn't that that thing where you put the suction cups on your back and you suck the toxins out?

MerlinReiki, Reiki, Reiki, Reiki.

MaxReiki, Reiki, Reiki. Shut up. Reiki is, I think it's in that school of like massage things. Pisces, in parentheses, constellation. Not my astrological science.

MerlinOh, okay, good. So it does its own disambiguation. That's cool. Shamanism.

MaxBlink-182.

MerlinCrystal healing.

MaxChannel 4.

MerlinMine are what are called inferred interests. Inferred interests like behavior around fashion and Todd Bethesda. They're inferring my interest.

MaxOkay. What is it inferred that you're interested in?

MerlinWell, that's stuff like Todd Bethesda. Blake Hounshell is. Hello. The word hello, Max. Jinx monsoon. Jinx monsoon. Seriously, I feel like I'm having some kind of an aneurysm right now. You've got to stop reading these. Movie watching terms. Smiling Asian boy. Smiling Asian boy. Spencer Bledsoe.

Thank you.

137. The Kill Zone

Show notes

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