150. Small Timothy

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

That would make you feel confident.

MaxWow, that's going to... I hope we're recording that for when it doesn't work.

AlexOkay, all right.

MerlinWell, that sounds good. So only you're allowed to have confidence, Alex. Is that the idea today?

AlexI'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

MerlinYou're going to feel so bad in a few minutes. You're going to feel super bad. That's going to backfire.

AlexAs soon as it came out of my mouth, I think this is the only time that I'm like, oh, yeah,

MerlinI'm confident it'll work. Don't need to work blue. Do you have a beta blocker you could take? Hey, buddy.

Speaker AMy back kind of hurts this week. I keep getting this gif of Ben Shapiro's sister and her boobs. I should close that window. Oh, did you find that on DuckDuckGo?

Save it for the show. No, no, no. It's in our super secret text channel. Oh, let me see.

AlexYeah, my physical therapist saw that this morning. She loves Wednesday mornings, let me tell you, because my phone keeps buzzing and is like, oh, you can take that. You can take that. I'm like, no, it's the first time I said, no, it's probably just my boss, which is not the normal response someone gives. You'll feel so bad in a few minutes. I know. It's going to be so bad.

MaxI have quite a bit of follow up.

Speaker ACould we do something? How's your back, Max? You hurt your back? It's just a little sore today. Don't you ever do that? You sleep weird and you wake up and you go, oh, shit, dog. I didn't get to talk about it because, you know, Roderick kind of took over the last

Merlinepisode. But Merlin talks too much. Really? Okay. It is my show. So the funny thing is that I slept like shit on Sunday night, like bad, bad. Like, you know, you know what it's like when you open your app, Alex, and it tells you a story and you go, whoa.

Speaker BYep.

MerlinI didn't realize it was that bad. And I had slept badly and I had this spiral staircase of pain that began on my back of my left thigh and went diagonally up my back and into my right temple. Oh, Jesus.

Speaker BWhat the fuck?

MerlinI think I pushed and pulled her at my neck. Yeah, I don't know. And then I realized I hadn't taken any of my usual sleeping things.

Speaker AThey were still in a little ramekin, my sleeping ramekin.

MaxSometimes you wake up. Like what happened this morning was I woke up at about 5 in the morning. I'm normally up at like 7.30 or 8, but it was like a couple hours too early. And I kind of woke up and I was like, something's wrong. And it's like, oh, man, my back is a disaster. Like I slept weird. like something was wrong like I was all contorted like maybe sometimes but sometimes it's because

Speaker Ayou slept too hard like you slept hard in a weird position you know like it's there's no winning it

Maxwas weird man and I woke up at five and I was like oh no and then what do you do I went back to sleep and you know and then I got up and dealt with it and you try and like I like try and stretch it out in the shower and stuff like that but it's no good oh yes I think I'm looking at a I think I'm looking at like a three-day like problem here oh no yeah oh yeah it's bad it's like a whole it's like on the the lower side of my back and it's wrenched and it's like merlin it's exactly like what you said of like because i have an issue there like i can feel it in my right leg and it's like all in my

Merlinbody is all weird oh yeah it's no good it's no good this is the only thing chiropractors are right about um don't at me it's the only thing they're right about which is like i talked about this before the you know it sucks to get older and lose symmetry in your body you know that won't make a ton of sense until you're older but you lose symmetry and and when you you realize how weirdly symmetrical this sounds ableist but for me my body has been mostly symmetrical most of my life but when your body's not symmetrical you notice and then you start feeling the knock-on effects and you overcompensate and you do like a weird walk or something i think that it's i think

Maxit's possible that um it's going to affect my card technique oh no i mean i've been practicing I've practiced until my fingers are bleeding the other day

MerlinReally? You like Pete Townsend Do you like stretches before you do your effects? No, I go in cold Wow Okay If you want longevity You can hear about this from like a John Syracuse who will tell you You know, you need get your desk set up right Do your stretches If you want to have any longevity in this business, buddy

Speaker AYou know what? I just

MaxThat's so weird Just yesterday I converted I have at home I have an adjustable height workbench that I have my computer on in my basement studio, and I put it in standing desk mode yesterday. I wonder if that's what screwed up my back.

AlexDo you have a little pad thingy to stand on?

MaxNo, hell no. I stand in my socks on the wood floor.

AlexYeah, that seems about right.

MaxWait, you think that's it? And then I stood for like eight hours yesterday.

AlexYes.

MaxIs that bad? Yes. That's not good?

AlexYou can build up your strength to doing that, especially if it's a cushy hardwood floor, but you've got to start out with one of those dumb mat-looking things.

MaxWell, I have some follow-up. I have some follow-up. The first thing I'd like to follow up on is I have a lot of audio follow up to play. So the first thing I'd like to follow up on is, you know, our dear friend Alex has been out for this hand surgery and is now making recovery. And Alex, you know, I was thinking of you and I had a few friends of the show record brief messages in these trying times. I know it's not as bad as me hurting my back slightly, but.

You need that for your magic. Yeah, I want to. May I play these for you?

AlexAll right. I'm just going to play Pokemon Go while this happens. But yeah.

MaxTurn your headphones up. All right. Here's the first one. Here's the first one. Wait, hang on.

AlexAh, this isn't my fault. This isn't my fault. You didn't set the audio to the right output.

MaxIt's not my fault. You're going to feel so bad in a minute. Not my fault. So when I was like, hey, do you think we should test out the audio?

Speaker BYou were like, no, no, it's going to work. You are a professional podcaster. You don't know. I am a professional. What is it?

Speaker AI'm a professional. I am a professional voice actor.

AlexI am a professional voice actor.

MaxThat's a real, I have those deep in the brain. I think of those, sometimes I'm just walking, I'm walking down the street and I'm like, I'm in a derby.

MerlinOh, I've lost my mind. Did you have a question for the sandwich?

MaxHere we go. Take two. I am now playing this message for Alex Cox.

Speaker AWell, hello, Alex. I'm John Lovitz. Guess who contacted me? Your friend Max Temkin. He told me you had a hand surgery. Well, that couldn't have been fun. No, I wish you a very speedy recovery. And I understand you have a podcast called Do By Friday. Well, I think by Friday you're due for a healed hand. And you're like cats and Apple computers and robots.

Maybe you should hire a robot to work your computer and feed your cats so that your hand can heal. Anyway, what the hell were you doing with that hand? Leave that cat alone. All right, Alex. I hope you feel better soon. That is so sweet of John Lovitz to send that along.

AlexI know.

Speaker AIt was so nice. It was his idea. It was John Lovitz's idea.

MaxWhat a good buddy. I know. I know. I know. I know we're all enjoying the audio of this, but you really do have to see the video of it of John Lovitz sort of squinting into the sun.

Speaker BOh, no.

MaxThat's right. So we will link the videos of these in the show notes. But I did have another person who I found who was a friend of the show who recorded a little message for you, Alex. Are you ready?

AlexYes, yes.

MaxAlex is actually playing video games.

AlexI'm actually playing video games in case someone I actually know slips in here.

MaxWow, wow, wow. Okay, you're going to really like this one. Here we go.

Speaker BHey, Alex. It's Lady O. I just wanted to come and say to you that I'm sorry to hear about your surgery.

MaxOh, you know what? Is she not going to introduce herself?

Speaker BWell, let me see if I can figure it out.

MaxThis is former reality show contestant and Trump White House staffer Omarosa, who I paid $30 to record a message for you on Cameo. Can we turn this up in the headphones at all? I can barely hear it. So she introduces, I can't believe I paid $30, and she doesn't even say she's Omarosa. She says Lady O. Lady O

AlexI'm like this isn't Oprah's voice

Speaker BHey Alex it's Lady O I just wanted to come and say to you that I'm sorry to hear about your surgery I hope that everything went well I wish you a very speedy recovery and I know that you're being kept company by your cats and your robots I hope if not your friend Max will come over and keep you company and bring you some special treats or something at any rate that sounded totally normal looking forward to hearing all about your podcast due by friday i'm hoping that you're still able to do that never happens

at any rate i hope that you feel better very very soon and anyway take care of yourself if not call max or call me we'll come and cheer you up bye alex take care oh thanks lady

AlexLydia. Lydia.

MaxSo I give a fascist, semi-reformed fascist $30 to I wish you recovery on your hand. She seems nice. She did send that to me at like 9 p.m. on a Saturday, and she's like all dressed up. So I don't know if that's when she gets dressed up to do her cameos. She has good makeup.

AlexNo, Merlin, you joke, but she looks as it. No, I know.

MerlinSee, I was in on this.

AlexOh.

MerlinI thought you would be grateful about this instead of admonishing Max about wanting you to be able to hear it properly, but that's fine. She looks amazing.

AlexYeah. I'm like, what? Did you just come home? Are you about to go out?

MerlinShe's got good skin. Yeah. That's a blessing.

MaxAll right. And the final piece of follow-up is listeners of the Dubai Friday program may remember that I am in a little feud with Mike Hurley from the Relay FM network and the Upgrade podcast. And I said I wanted this futuristic helmet and Mike sent it to me, but it was destroyed by customs because you're not allowed to have it in the U.S. And then Mike wouldn't accept my – I kept trying to pay him back for it, and he wouldn't accept my payments. Did he ever invoice you at all? He did invoice me, and I still haven't paid him for the ad.

So now I'm doubly wrong. Okay. Now it's a proper feud. But then we came up with this idea of, like, well, I need to give my – I'm trying to get even and give Mike the money for this helmet. So we bought an ad on the upgrade program, and I had Mike read an ad. And we'll get to what happened with that in a moment. but I'm going to hit play, but I don't think Alex sent this to me with a time code, so we'll see what happens. No, no time code.

AlexOkay.

MaxWhat is the time code?

AlexHold on, hold on.

MaxIt's a good thing we didn't test this. I think that was probably the right call. We're a little waste of time.

Speaker BI am, but I'm afraid of what might come next. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Howdy, y'all. This episode of Upgrade is sponsored by the Dubai Friday program, and they've asked me, Mike Hurley, to read this important message to the Upgrade listeners. Several months ago, in our super-secret channel, Dubai Friday host Max asked me to purchase and mail him a futuristic sci-fi bicycle helmet that, as it turns out, may not be technically legal in the United States. I purchased the sci-fi helmet for €299

and paid shipping on top of that to send it to Max just because I'm nice and I'm a good friend. After I mailed the helmet to Max, I received a message from Her Majesty's Royal Carrier Service stating that my parcel had been, quote, identified as containing items suspected of being prohibited or dangerous. They examined the package and then, quote, disposed of it accordingly. For the last several weeks, Max has been attempting to reimburse me for the cost of the Cypher helmet and shipping. However, I have stubbornly refused to accept these payments, instead telling Max to, quote, buy me dinner next time I'm in Chicago,

even though I know full well that neither of us can eat €299 worth of food in one sitting. So now, because I have left Max with no other recourse, He has purchased this advertisement on the Upgrade program for far more than the initial €299 financial outlay. So anyway, thanks to Dubai Friday for supporting RelayFM and all the great shows. Now we're even.

I think now you probably owe Max some, like a dinner. No, I already have a plan for this, which I've not shared. My plan is to invoice Max for the amount of money minus the bicycle helmet. Look out for that invoice, Mr. Sampkin It's coming your way We're not even

MaxSo, I don't know what to do now Is that where it stands right now? That's where it stands, I haven't paid Mike yet, I have to get on that Alex, pay Mike

AlexMike, send me the invoice I'll pay it

MerlinI just forgot, I keep forgetting I don't know, I would hate to see this end Is there any way that we can Escalate this publicly It would be good for everybody

Speaker ADo you think Mike likes, like, what if we, where does he live? He lives in, like, somewhere in Europe.

MerlinI think he's got a cold water flat by the lorry.

MaxGloucester, is that a place? Gloucester?

MerlinYeah.

AlexYep, yep.

MerlinIs that a place?

Speaker AHe's a salamander up on Squigglebutt.

AlexYeah.

MaxDo you think, what if we hired every, okay, how about this? You know, Mike, if there's one thing I know about Mike Curley, it's that he loves, like, clowns and birthday entertainers.

MerlinClowns. He likes clowns. He likes the color orange.

MaxYeah. What if we hired every birthday entertainer, every children's birthday entertainer within like a 100 kilometer radius of Salamander upon Lori England? Lori Petch, yeah.

And sent them to Mike while he was recording a podcast.

MerlinAlso, could I suggest that you pay them in pounds sterling by the hour? So they won't get the full amount if they leave. They have to, I imagine, 16 to 45 children's clowns appearing at his cold water flat. And they're not allowed to leave if they want to get paid. Tell them it's a protest.

MaxIt's a protest. But if he doesn't pay them, though, what if they challenge him to a duel?

MerlinA duel. Now, if they challenge him, he gets to pick the weapons, right? So they might pick balloons, and he might pick something like an iPhone case. I was going to say XLR cables.

AlexOh, he's, no, no, no. He's going to like pop the pop sockets off on them and then throw some Nintendo Switch, those little handles.

MerlinYeah, he's mad that they moved the Apple logo. They moved the Apple logo and that's where his pop socket goes.

AlexIt's a tough time to be alive and have a pop socket.

MerlinIt is, it is. I don't know, something where he can't turn it down.

Speaker AHere's the problem. I've got my pop socket and my wide angle shot. Pop socket. The pop socket's in the wide angle shot. I've sent Jen Bain $60 twice, and she's never collected it.

AlexI keep sending her $69, and it's just sitting there in Venmo.

MerlinWell, the second time I went for $69, and she never collects it, and then I get an email from PayPal months later that says, Jen Bain never collected your $60. Now, she's always asking people to PayPal her $60, and I finally did, and then I did it again, and she never collects it. So bad on me, I chose an avenue where by doing nothing, she kills my goof. So I think with Mike, you're going to need to make his life very uncomfortable. You're going to have to do something that he can't look away from. Maybe tell him, oh, you know what? You should hack him.

There's some Bitcoin you got to pick up.

Speaker AYou got to go.

MaxWait a minute. What if I go on Cameo? What if I buy him Cameos? Do you think there's any English celebrities on Cameo? Let's see. What do we know Mike likes?

MerlinOh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Pay the McElroys. pay.

Speaker AGo on. Go on.

MerlinOh, get him a Jumbotron? Do a super Jumbotron and get those good, good boys to do an Adventure Zone goof for Mike that's very... Because, you know, those guys make a lot of dough. Let's be honest.

MaxI think if I... Here's my concern is I think if you do a Jumbotron, they don't get to it for like a year now.

MerlinNo, no, no. No, no, no. That's why I say super Jumbotron. You're going to have to really escalate this. And you've met these boys. You should tell them. I don't know. It might involve blackmailing them and then we're getting into a much bigger goof. But I don't know. But it's got to be something he can't refuse.

Maybe make it look like something else that's being delivered. Oh, your new iPhone 12 Super Plus Max Enterprise is available for pickup today, governor. And then he goes and it's literally thousands of dollars. And now you're the winner.

AlexWell, he is in the United States right now. He is? Yeah. Why is he here? OPSEC. Well, no, no, no. We should say he's in the United States because on September 20th, he and Stephen Hackett are going to do a podcast-a-thon for St. Jude, which is a hospital.

MaxI'm sickened by this. Oh, my God. He's too good.

MerlinWell, he's avoiding you, let's be honest. Yeah. It would be so trivial for him to come and collect his dinner.

MaxFirst, he's buying me. He's giving money, and then he's getting me. He won't let me pay him back with this thing. And now he's raising money for kids. Like, it's disgusting.

MerlinWhat if we donated to St. Jude in a way that's very embarrassing for him? Oh. What if we take, let's say we take $1,000 of Dubai Friday money or, you know, whatever you think is appropriate. But we do it in a way that's going to be very publicly embarrassing for him.

MaxAll right. I've got it. I've got it. I've got it. Here we go. Here's the deal. Now, this is going to take some doing. I don't want to hear why it's not going to work. Okay. We're all, everyone's got to figure out. I already know why it's hard. I need everyone to tell me how we're going to get this done. Okay, we need a cancer kid. He's got to be real sick, okay? And he's going to go up to Mike, right? Maybe he's got one leg. I don't know if that's an option. Let's file that for, you know, if possible. We can work with the Shriners. Yeah, he hobbles up, okay? And he's got to go, Mr.

Speaker AOh, like a tiny tent, like an American tiny tent.

MaxOh, Mr. Hurley, Mr. Hurley, it's my one make-a-wish is that you take the money for the helmet that you owe to Max. And now Mike's going to, what's Mike going to be like?

Speaker AYou know, fuck off. Oh, there's photographers. We also hired photographers and videographers.

MaxI think he should be, I think, I mean, I'm picturing he's got soot on his face.

MerlinYeah. Right. Because of the chimneys. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. But to do it right, I think you should hire a little person. Hire a little person who can pass.

MaxOkay.

MerlinAs a small Timothy. And then a small Timothy comes up in some kind of an adorable rickety cart. and he says Mr. Hurley Mr. Hurley I won't make a wish I won't make a wish and he'll say he'll say

Maxwhat could I do for you small Timmy do you think he's wait a minute could he be do you think we could is this too much is this you tell me if it's too much what if he's got one of those Peter Dinklage what if he's got one of those little caps and he takes it he puts it over his heart he takes it

Alexoh that's required he's got a floppy cap

MaxYeah, and he's holding it against the side. Excuse me, sir, tugging on his pocket.

MerlinHis crutch falls off the rickety cart. It's so creaky. Here comes small Timothy.

Speaker BOkay, please describe this rickety cart.

Speaker AHe should have a real dry cough.

Speaker BWhat is this rickety cart?

AlexIs it a tricycle that's falling apart? I don't understand.

MerlinNo, no, it's how small Timothy gets around.

AlexOh, like one of those scooters?

MerlinYeah, like the frog in the National Lampoon cartoon. He pushes himself around in a little car. It's very low to the ground. It's not well made.

MaxIt's like when Omar gets shot and he builds the crutches for himself in the janitor's closet. Yeah. It's going to be some sort of jury rigged.

MerlinCould you hire Omar? Anyway, I think that's a very good cause. It's one of the... How does one say? It's a very good charity. They do good work. But if we could have small sympathy somehow, I don't know, I would love to donate to them and embarrass Mike and get him to admit what he's done to you publicly.

MaxYeah. Yeah.

Speaker AHe's not going to say no to it if it's one of those little kids. He can't. There's cameras there. Yeah.

MerlinAnd, you know, and Steven. Like, he's going to have to. What's he going to say? Not now. I'm podcasting. Yeah, right. Well, he's podcasting for hours. There's plenty of time for that.

MaxYeah.

Speaker AI need a real sick kid. So if anyone's listening. And just to be clear, it wouldn't be a kid. The point of the bit is it wouldn't be a kid who's there for care. They're in Memphis. Oh, I understand.

MaxI thought, okay, okay.

Speaker AI'm on board. For months, he's been waiting for the opportunity to meet. You're saying it's like a character actor. Yeah, you get a Dinklage in there. And he's a small Timothy and a very, very low card that creeps. I'm on board. So you're saying he's not really sick. It's an actor. Oh, no, no. That would be in bad taste if we said an actual sick kid. Why? Why? What if he's a little sick kid that's a clown? What if he's dressed as a clown? What else do they have going on? That's the only problem.

Small Timothy, he's a clown. What is their calendar full? Help me with my bed.

MaxCome on, kid.

Speaker AI mean, they're probably very close to it. Yeah, they're right there. They don't even have to go across the street. There's sick kids everywhere. we could pick you know we could do a casting call we could do a casting call i know everyone's

Maxlaughing at me but this isn't that big of an ask no it's not it's not oh god i think it would be

Speaker Bselfish of them not to do it it really is if anybody out there a listener to the show knows

Merlina small timothy um you know really anywhere in the central states let us know yeah we'll build

Maxa cart yeah thank you for your service i i feel i i feel like the the walls are closing and i'm I think we got him now. And that's coming down. That nice piece of shit. I hate him.

Speaker BSo much. What a good friend.

Speaker APiece of shit.

MaxI had. What else do I have? do you guys have stuff? I have a couple of topics.

MerlinI have a super quickie from a listener to the show, BenjiBomb16, shared with us, remember we had the mystery of, we did the unconventional fancy challenge and none of us could remember what the fuck it means? Unconventional fancy. Unconventional fancy. He says, I've been re-listening to the podcast from the start and I think I found the origin of unconventional fancy. In the Snot Yoga After Show at approximately 1550, you talked about reframing the shoe tree challenge as, quote, Do something unconventionally fancy with your clothes.

MaxOh. That's where it came from.

Speaker AAnd then Alex was probably all whacked out on her goofballs

Merlinand she wrote down unconventional fancy. That sounds great. No, it was Daddy. Daddy wrote it wrong. I'm pretty sure it was me. But thank you to Benjamin for sharing that with us.

Speaker AI can finally sleep now.

MaxI think someday someone's going to finally crack where the origins of peanut butter came from. Oh, don't start it. Don't start it. No, no. It's John's here. I think we've already established canonically it's John Syracuse's BDSM safe word.

AlexOh, my God.

MaxYep, yep, yep.

MerlinThat's his safe word in Destiny when he's wearing his nightgown with his enchanted sword in the vault.

AlexI didn't think I need my powders this morning. And I do.

MerlinI've leveled up my nightgown. I've got all my slots full.

AlexOh, boy. Now Alex has some sort of blue tube, and it's called Noom. Noom. This is my piss water.

MaxAnd God's name is Noom.

AlexThis is how I start my piss water because we have a friend. Actually, I reached out to Mike for this. There is a product in the UK that's similar to this. Oh, right.

MerlinThis is the thing you've been looking for. Yes.

AlexYes. Both Mike and Rosemary Orchard directed me to this very similar type pill that you put in water. It dissolves and it's caffeine and like sodium and other bullshit that you should have in your body that I probably don't. And you can't get it in the U.S. So I did spend about $50 to get it sent here. And it was great. But I'm like, this isn't sustainable. So I found NUNN, N-U-N-N. And it's very, very similar. There's like one chemical that's different. I forget what it is.

But it's got, yeah.

MaxI put every morning I awaken and I put the NUM in my water and I drink it.

AlexYeah. But actually, I think it's pronounced NUNN.

MaxIt has many salts and caffeines in it. NUNN.

AlexYeah, it's none because there's none of the bad chemicals, just the good stuff.

MaxI got many messages from people last week sending me studies that link the emergency and any of the vitamin C beverages and all of these kind of things to kidney stones. That's apparently one of the things, only medical study quality things that we know about these. Remember last week I said I've been taking the emergency?

MerlinOh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were with all the Joshes and you didn't want to get sick, so you had emergency. something plus plus.

MaxYeah, and a number of people sent me studies. It's truly one of the only things medically we know about all of that stuff is that it does give you kidney stones. That seems like a small price to pay to not get a cold. I stopped doing it and I retract my endorsement. I do not want a kidney stone. Oh no. Yeah, so don't do them if you don't want kidney stones.

Speaker AYou do not have to hand it to them.

MaxYou guys ever had a kidney stone? No.

AlexDo women get kidney stones? Is that not a thing? I believe they do.

MaxYeah, I think they do. Can I get

Alexvagina kidney stone. And I know vagina is not where the pee comes out. Oh, yes, women can get kidney stones.

MerlinI heard they're pretty painful. I heard they're very small. They're like the size of a grain of sand, but it has to get through your urethra, and it's pretty bad. Yeah, no. My English teacher had one, yeah.

AlexOh, ah. Can you, like, push it out? I feel like if you have a penis, there's, like, can't you dislodge? There's things to do that sort of, like, dislodge it. and I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt less. Like jumping jacks? Yes. You know, you jump and jack. You jump and jack.

MerlinYou jump and you jack. You jump and you jack. The jacking would help because you get some transit there.

AlexI didn't say that.

MerlinI didn't say that.

AlexBut doesn't it move the blood around and stuff? I don't... I'm backing out, backing out.

MerlinNo, it's about your medieval view of how a penis works is enchanting to me.

AlexAgain, I'm not very familiar.

MerlinYeah, no, it takes a sweet time. And now what is the part... Just to circle back for a sec, what is the thing in the emergency plus plus? What was it called? What was the word? You had a noun, emergency?

MaxI think the one that I'm not doing anymore but I was taking was—

Speaker AThe one that you've withdrawn your endorsement for. It was called emergency immune plus plus or something like that. What is the thing in that that causes the kidney stones? I think it could just be the vitamin C, but I think it's basically— Vitamin C? See, I would have guessed calcium. It could be that too.

MaxOh. I think it's just whatever. I think it's like if you're taking a bunch of weird powders and vitamins, it's going to coagulate in your kidneys and make kidney stones.

Speaker AThat's why you need gorilla brain. I assume that's how it works. Gorilla brain, gorilla mind.

MerlinAll right. Also, did you put the GM watchOS 6 on your watch, Alex? I did indeed. Are you tracking your flow?

AlexSee, that's the thing. I already have been with a lovely app Clue.

MerlinIs that the one that shares your data with Facebook? No. That's Flow. Flow's the one that does that, right?

AlexI think so. Yeah. No, Clue is great. So it shares it with the health app automatically. But it also pops up quite a bit. That's like, oh, you might be ovulating. And I can't figure out how to turn off those notifications.

MerlinDoes that have an effect on how you conduct your day when you know you're about to ovulate?

AlexOh, of course. Of course. But it just pops up. I've never had a health notification before. Oh, right. Yeah. It doesn't just pop up on the watch. It pops up on the phone. If, you know, like if my phone is open, it just goes bloop. And so that's fun, I guess. Yeah. I don't know where you want me to go with this.

MerlinNo, I'm just curious. It seems like, you know, because I thought, oh, it's the GM. I'll go ahead and put it on and get those new faces, some of which are extremely confusing. and uh yeah no i thought i'd try it and it seems like that's kind of um sort of a like a tentpole feature like they're really mentioning that a lot maybe because they didn't hear my conspiracy you

Maxwant to hear my conspiracy theory yes i have a big apple conspiracy theory so i think that i did watch the i finally finished watching the um the what do you call it the big ad the computer show the computer show and here's my conspiracy theory i think that they knew i think they had a big meeting and they go, okay, we're announcing this period tracking software. And it's got to be, it can't be a man on stage announcing that. It's got to be a woman on stage who talks about and demos the period tracking thing. And then they go, well, wait a minute.

We can't only have one woman on stage who's talking about period tracking, right? Because then people will get mad at us. It's got to be, she's got to be intersectional. One in a series of women, right? A flight of ladies. I think that's basically the thought process at Apple of why they have diverse presenters now. I think it would all be white dudes, but I think they started with, okay, we have to have someone introduce our period software, and then we can't just have one, so now we've got to have a bunch, and then here we are.

AlexThat's not a conspiracy theory. That's just how tech industry and many industries work.

MerlinIt's called growth.

AlexYeah. Oh, we should have not a token. We should just add more in here, right? Right? That's pretty sure not a conspiracy.

MerlinWhy aren't there more corgis on stage? I thought you guys said you were diverse. Why aren't there more 19th century tables on stage? Could be, could be, could be. Did you play with the faces? They're pretty crazy. The California face. I just don't understand why you want those weird numbers on there.

AlexI haven't played with the faces because there's something up with my battery. So I've just been keeping it on the default modular one. I don't think the faces have like anything to do with it, but maybe the complications. I don't know. So I've got all like series, the regular series four ones on here still. Yeah.

MerlinWell, have a look at messages.

AlexOh, I saw this.

MerlinYou can see what I'm working with right now. Yeah.

AlexOh, wait. Was this, is this not a bug? Is this, is this a feature?

MerlinNo, no, no. That's the face. That's it. Send tweet. Yeah, that's it.

AlexOh, I thought that was just an amusing bug. No, no. Oh. No, no.

MerlinI don't know why it's at an angle like that. But apparently it's, I don't know, it's nautical. I don't, not sure. Huh. I don't know what, I don't know what it is. This is the solar something face, the solar something face. And it presents as a 24 hour dial?

AlexYeah. I guess. It's like, I know, I think what information they're trying to provide.

MerlinThe sun is at the time around 24. And then you do have the time in normal numbers with dipty dips for each second. and I got my complications, I don't know why it's at that slightly askew angle.

AlexAnd why is it like a, I'm looking more closely at it. It's like a pie graph, like a pie chart. See how like around the six,

Merlinthere's different hues? It could be meaningful. Could that, oh, could that be sunrise, sunset?

AlexWell, I think that's what the horizon line is, right? But, oh, like twilight, maybe that's. Oh, that's why,

MerlinThat's sunrise sun. It's dark times.

AlexYes. Yes. African-American times. What are the dots in the circle? I think that might be like twilight or do you have-

MerlinOh, like last light and then actual darkness.

AlexYeah. Does anything happen if you do a tapy tap on it? All right. Now I need to put this on my watch. I'll tell you what I can do is this.

Speaker AWhy would you need your watch to tell you when the sun is going to go down? Nautical.

AlexFor when you can go home. Two fingers.

Speaker AHit two fingers on the dial.

MerlinI want to tell you what time it is.

AlexCheck it out. Okay. This is the most, actually, I think this is the most masculine thing you've ever said. I need to know whether or not I am walking home or I'm taking the bus based on how dark it is outside. That's just a thing. Or whether you're ovulating. Yeah. And yeah, there's the ovulation part.

MerlinThey should include it. That should be a complication. There should be an agent.

MaxDo you guys, other than just fucking around with it, do you guys use any watch faces other than the one where it's, I'm sorry, I don't know what it's called. It's the one where the time is just spelled out. I like modular. That's the computery looking one. I don't know what to call it.

AlexIt's the one that looks shitty, but it's very useful. Yeah.

MaxIt's the one that doesn't look like an analog watch. It's a digital watch with stuff on it.

AlexYeah.

MaxThat's what, it's like the only one that's functional.

AlexHere's my worry.

MaxIt takes me like five minutes to understand the time on an analog watch. Technically, I can read it, but I have to squint my eyes at it and I go, it's, what is it? It's 1135.

AlexThat's the problem. I always liked that the watch face wasn't on all the time because I could have my nerdy modular part. But now if the watch face is always on, people are going to see that it looks gross or they're going to discover that I can not. I basically can't tell time anymore because why would you need to?

MerlinI think there's some infosec concerns for always on personally.

AlexOh, yeah. I mean, people are going to see when my flow is starting and when I'm ovulating.

MerlinThey're going to see that big egg and go, now I know a thing about you. I know your true name.

AlexIt starts rumbling.

MerlinYeah, I was streaming some C-SPAN, making my family watch C-SPAN last night, because that's the thing that I do. Oh, how nice. And I kept getting these pop-ups. Instacart, rate us, and all that kind of stuff. And in this case, you're in a meeting, and that screen's always on. Woof. Mm-hmm. It could be a lot of egg watching. Okay, so what I just sent you was solar. Then you see the modular one that I use, the new one, or I think a new one, California, and then one that just gives you a big nine.

AlexI kind of, that is.

MerlinThe one that's the flight computer is so weird.

Speaker AI know. I'm kind of into it. I feel like Marco or something.

MaxSo strange. Merlin, can I ask what are your three icons on the bottom? So I recognize activity and then I think the drafts.

MerlinYeah, drafts and then battery.

MaxAnd do you use that for voice? You do voice? Mm-hmm. Okay.

MerlinNot a lot, but I put it there because I wanted to use it more.

Speaker AGot it.

MerlinAnd then now that I'm all gacked down on beta blockers, I like to check my heart sometimes. So that's why I got a heart up there.

MaxOh, I love this. Have you ever fucked with HeartWatch?

MerlinYeah, that's, yes, HeartWatch and SleepWatch. Yeah, but they work nicely together.

MaxI have the, I prefer the HeartWatch, like, complication.

MerlinOh, okay, I should do that,

Speaker Abecause SleepWatch is one of the two sleep apps that I use, and they work together. The HeartWatch complication on Apple Watch is excellent.

MaxIt is much more, like, information-dense than the Watch app. All right, I had some, this is. Cut all that out, that was terrible. Really boring. I have some good follow-up. I have some good topics for us. You guys want some good topics? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

AlexAlex has follow-up. Hold up. Is it funny? Is it funny? I don't know. It doesn't matter. Quinn, don't cut this out. Found out my in-laws listened to this show.

MerlinOh, no. Oh, no.

AlexYeah. Time for the keychain challenge. And this morning.

MerlinYeah, absolutely. Sorry, Nani.

AlexOh, no. Yep. And in the mail this morning.

MaxDid they listen to your other pod? Do they listen to your? two-headed girl?

AlexThey do indeed. That's

MaxThey probably just They just hear you They just hear you get savagely owned

Speaker Aby Maddie like every week.

AlexHe just joined

Speaker Athe Patreon.

AlexYes.

Speaker AVery excited

Merlinfor the program.

AlexOh boy.

MerlinOh no. Oh no. Wait. Hang on. Did you see your in-laws? Yep. Yep. Oh no. So they know. They know. They know. Oh no. They know.

AlexThey legitimately found out.

MerlinOh shit. I never think of people listening to these things.

AlexYep. Yep. I'm going to pull Max and tell a story. When I go out to dinner with my in-laws, I just want to pay sometimes because, you know, just as a nice little treat. So I have a variety of gift cards that I bring with me.

MerlinDon't you have a CD wallet full of every chain restaurant's gift cards?

AlexYeah, it's actually a little pouch. I think I got one here.

MerlinTap, tap, tap.

AlexI switch out my... Oh my God, I do. Check it out. Oh, what a coincidence. Oh my God. So this morning, I received in the mail a gift card and it says one card, all the favorites. So all the fixings. And it is $100 to either Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Yard House, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons? I don't know. We've never been there.

MerlinTwo of those are real. Two of those are real, and the rest are utterly made up.

AlexYeah, yeah. Cheddar's? Cheddar's? Oh, Cheddar's is in the, it's definitely on the southeast coast. I know it's in Naples, Florida.

MerlinYard House, Bahama Breeze.

AlexMm-hmm. And then I get a call and it says, looking forward to our next dinner together. Oh, you got owned. I got cooked so hard. They're so ready to watch me use this in front of them. All right.

MerlinThe Matchy family is taking you down.

AlexThey are. All right. That's my only bit of follow up. That wasn't very funny. You know what? While I was playing video games, Max was in our super secrets slack. So, yeah.

MerlinOkay. I don't have that on.

AlexShould I go? Oh, I'm chatting.

Speaker AI'm chatting with Marco. It's a big day for Marco and I. They finally released 2.0 of TextMate. You guys remember TextMate? Oh, my God, yes. No, I still have 1.0.

MaxWell, 1.0 TextMate, I think, is probably one of the best pieces of software. I learned how to code on it. I used it way past its prime.

MerlinOh, my God. I spent so much time with those macros and all of the – I had so many crazy – I still do. It's still my default text editor for when I need to just go do something real quick. and I've got so many Rube Goldberg scripts in there

Maxthat are just utterly bananas. For me, it's I took the time to configure the linter and once you do that, you basically never want to, I don't know how to get the linter rules out of TextMate and into, you know. Lint as in clean up HTML? Yeah, it's like anything, right? I have the linter for PHP, HTML, CSS, Python, like all the things that I write in.

MerlinRight, but just so I know what you're talking about. Lint is a thing that will like tidy according to your rules. It'll clean up and structure.

MaxWell, let me give you an example. So like when you write, if you install a CSS linter and you're writing a CSS style sheet, like depending on who wrote the linter, I mean, there's a lot of opinions in CSS, right? So like sometimes if you do exclamation. There's so many different ways you can do it. It's crazy. Exactly. And they all work, right? And so like some people are like religious of like if you ever put an exclamation point in your CSS to like. That's cheating. That's, yeah, yeah. They're like, they're like, you know, red card infraction.

And it'll literally flag it. So do. So do. E, E, E, E. It literally flag it. Like it's like improperly formatted CSS. And listen, I've made a pretty good career as a person who makes websites. And I put my shit is riddled with exclamation points. And like I use like I use I use like classes as IDs. It's all it's a fucking disaster. I don't do it right. So I've sort of turned.

MerlinThat's that's the way that I learned to do PHP. and it's the way that I eventually did CSS is I did it every conceivable way until one of them worked and then just kept them all in there.

MaxWell, I know I'm going to upset people, but that's how you do shit. That's how the internet gets built. That's how everything gets made. And there's people, I have to say, all the people who become really religious about this and they have really strong opinions and they're like, don't just guess and check. You have to have a system and learn it. You know what? They're not making shit anymore. They're not making production stuff that people use anymore. They're lecturing and giving conference talks and writing medium articles. you know if you're in the shit you're gonna fucking put an exclamation point on there and

Alexmove on with your life because things got to go online i've fallen into a rat hole from 2009 i think this what's happening what is going on this is very upsetting are we gonna it doesn't matter on sublime text now too like sublime's fine i just sublime text sublime text i couldn't get i

Merlincouldn't get past the way the preferences work it was too frustrating to me to do it all like a p list or something i and i keep returning to it because like text mate i think it came out i I think it was 1968. And it just didn't get updated for a long time. Everybody thought it was dead. And then it got some kind of update. But Sublime Text was great. Every time I'd open it, I'd be like, why do I have to type in this file to change the color of the cursor or whatever?

Speaker AHave you ever had someone?

AlexOh, my God. I can hear people sliding to delete in Overcast.

MaxThis is the worst episode we've ever done. But have you ever had someone demo Sublime to you? Yes, and I liked it. So like I know people who are real like fucking, you know, heads. They're like really they know all the syntax and the keyboard shortcuts and whatever. Yeah, they're the real fans. And so often someone will show me and they'll be like, dude, it's all about sublime. You've got to get into sublime. And then they'll like start taking text and they'll go, tap it, tap it, tap it. And they'll look, now it's all aligned. Tap it, tap it, tap it. And now it's all, you know, markdown format. And they're banging away at their keyboard.

And it's like I'm like, I don't know what the fuck you're doing. Like I can't use any of this. Like they'll never teach me anything. Like it's just this like dazzling cavalcade of keyboard shortcuts. And they're like, look how powerful I'm in. And I'm like, do you use any of that to program? And they're like, no, no, not at all.

MerlinThink about when you watch somebody who's extremely good. Like I'll watch a video of a Ricky Jay and it'll be like, oh, here's the magic trick. And you're like, wow, how do you do that? Well, I worked on it for years. I worked on it for years. And like that's what it is. They've worked on that for like months or years. It's like people with their Emacs or VI stuff that they can do.

MaxThis is such a good, that's such a funny thing. So like there's a lot of moves in magic that people learn just to show off to other magicians how good they are at it. So like a pretty classic example of that to me is like a second deal. And a second deal is like a way of cheating at cards. And a second deal is, it's not actually the method for any magic tricks. Like any magic trick that uses a second deal, there's like a much better way to do the trick where like it's more deceptive and it's easier to do. that really the only reason to have a second deal is to jam with other magicians and go, look how good my second deal is.

And that's so much of what people do with these fucking, like, they set their preferences up in their console. You know what I'm talking about? No, I do. Look at all my keyboard shortcuts. I'm like, dude, you only did that so you could show me sublime text. Like, you don't use any of that shit when you're writing code. You sit there and type it out like I do.

AlexWell, there's a Lillipop at this Pokestop, so I'm not sweating it.

MaxDo you want to do some interesting stuff?

MerlinHey, everybody. Welcome to... I'm looking at my bundle editor. I'm looking at my bundle editor. Ooh, let's start the show. Oh, my custom bundles. Oh, God. Oh, no. I have six different scripts called Hamburger Helper. What do these do? Custom bundles. My bundles. My new journal entry.

MaxI've spent many hours configuring my bundles.

Speaker AI always knew what script I would run. The bundle ecosystem is quite robust.

Speaker BThis is what I needed two people. Several called Untitled. I'm not one of them. Oh, boy.

MerlinThese are great.

MaxOh, did you know there's a bundle for that? You can download it on GitHub. Fork my bundle.

Alexso you hear about this Cameron you want to go raid let's talk about Markdown across the street there's a clink raid at this Pokemon gym

Merlinis that a German thing

Alexa furry convention band Milo

MerlinMyla Hippopotamus

AlexI thought that was fun

MaxI mean I'm glad he's suffering but we I mean this in all seriousness I actually think we shouldn't talk about these people the whole reason it's good that they got banned is less people hear about them his whole business and his whole thing isn't like oh I want everyone to love me and agree with me he's purposely saying shitty things so that people talk about it and here we are talking about it

Alexnormally I agree with that like I don't think there's any use in quote tweeting people and like trying to dunk on him but the thing about milo hippopotamus that's so great is he's failing at that he has failed to get people angry anymore everyone has just been like nah nah nah nah nah and even like getting banned from a furry convention just delights

Merlinme that's the that's the part that's funny is the like you know i'm not crazy about that phrase deplatforming but in his case uh in the case of you know whether it's storm watch or any of these things like not having a place to do their thing and provoke and be provoked not having you know an 8chan type thing like i think he's hurting pretty bad for somebody i mean he's he's basically he's eating boogers and nobody gives him a nickel anymore like he he doesn't there's nobody he's he's run out of places to be terrible in public it's just very satisfying to me

Maxmaybe i could hire him to play a disabled child So as you know, I've been trying really, really hard to get myself out of Twitter. And I don't know why you're making fun of me. I'm not making fun of you.

I'm being supportive. Yep. I really don't want to be reading Twitter. I really want to be free of it. One thing that's interesting is when I really started looking at the screen time stuff on my phone and seeing how many hours a day I was reading Twitter. Yeah. It was really bad. It was hours and hours a day. When I think back on my life and my day, I don't want to go like, oh, I spent an eighth of my day on Twitter.

Like I want to say, oh, I read a book and I learned a magic trick and I had conversations with people. You know what I mean? No one's like, no one's ever on their deathbed going, oh man, I wish I spent more time on Twitter.

MerlinThis will be something where like I've got like a day off and I find myself laying in bed like Charlie Bucket's grandfather staring at my fucking phone for eight hours. And then I go, what am I, this is the way my day went. And then I close it and then I just open it again.

Speaker AAnd it's like that, this is not who I want to be. Well, you go, you go, well, now what? I guess I'm going to find out what's going on on Twitter.

MerlinYeah.

Maxgotta check and see who needs my hot take so i've i've i told you before like my my basically my big strategy is to stop posting and when you stop posting all the the um engagement dries up it just goes away and um that makes it to me that makes it much much easier for me to not feel like i have to check it every five minutes because when i go on i don't have a lot of notifications right so it's like well what am i here for like the note having a lot of notifications is part of the loop that gets you back. But the first time I did it,

I deleted Twitter from my phone, but then I logged in through mobile Safari. But the thing is, the mobile Safari interface sucks, so I was using it, but it was just slow and bad, so I was on it less because of how bad it was. Now I am not logged in on mobile Safari. I deleted it from all my devices. I'm not logged in anywhere, and I will maybe go on once every few days on my computer. I'll log in in the browser and read for a few minutes just to see what people are talking about, but I'm doing so good. And one thing that's very interesting is my whole conception of what is news

and what is not news is totally off from everyone else around me, which is very interesting. Oh, yeah.

AlexWhat do you mean by that? Just like the speed of the cycles?

MerlinWell, and just what's over covered in the bubble. Like, for example, my political Twitter list, which is so much better than yours at this point. There's so many people you should ban from your list. Mine is so much better, But I go in there and I look at that thing and it is I have I have trimmed that thing down from so many of the people who are not great at Twitter to the people who are really great at Twitter. But it's gotten also to where, you know, remember how you originally wanted it as a fire hose to see what was going to be a story? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So in this case now, I've gotten it down a lot smaller.

And so if something is if you do that thing where you don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. You haven't been on in a while and you start swiping and you notice the same thumbnail card picture over and over and over. You go, oh, I got a feeling that's a big story. Like something Washington Post or New York Times or New York Magazine or whatever just had a big thing. And like, oh, that's a big story. And it's, no, it's not. I mean, it is. It is, but it isn't. It's big amongst that necktie Twitter, but it's not big for everybody else. And like if you wait for fucking four to eight hours, you're going to discover like and watch a reputable source or read a reputable source.

You're going to discover what actually was a story. You're totally right. You're 100 percent right. Like me and the Lewandowski thing yesterday. I'm sitting there. I got the Lewandowski thing playing on my Echo show yesterday. And I'm just. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I just C-SPAN. I was watching on C-SPAN. Or the stuff with Parliament. And I'm sitting there with every blow by blow that's happening. I don't think most people at the gym today are talking about the half-hour grilling that Lewandowski got from Nadler's prosecutor guy yesterday.

People aren't talking about that. It's all I can think about because it was fucking amazing. But nobody else is talking about it. I think you're totally right, Max. Now, where do you go?

Speaker AWhen you're ready to get the news, where do you go?

MaxWell, I don't have a good answer for that. I actually think that it's really fucked up trying to understand what the news is right now. but I have the Google News app and I ignore that there's two tabs there's one tab which is like top stories

AlexMerlin is he doing it? I can't tell if he's doing it I don't know if it's a bit

Merlinhe is doing it and he doesn't know

Alexoh okay sorry go ahead

MaxI said this already on the show

Alexwhat? no I don't know

Maxthere's one tab that's like for you for you do you ever notice

Merlinthat sometimes in Apple News the training stuff is not that useful to you

MaxWell, Apple News doesn't differentiate between Top Stories and For You.

MerlinOkay.

MaxApple News has one page of news.

MerlinSo, you're saying there's a Google News app and they have an area called For You.

MaxAnd one called Top Stories.

MerlinOkay. Okay.

Speaker AYeah. Did you say that you're trying to get off Twitter? Yeah.

MerlinOkay. And so, the For You section in the Google app? All right. I won't share my news stories then.

Speaker BWell, every day someone's bored who hasn't seen the Flintstones. Maybe I'm wrong in this.

MerlinYeah. Or the For You section. Google News is interesting, though, because it should be, if all the things that you, so if all of my interactions with the Google News service worked as they appeared to be working, it should be about 20 times better. Because I know I've said this before, and I'll say it again, because I use it on the web, and I very aggressively say, show me fewer stories like this, or don't show me stuff from this source anymore. Like my, not block list, that's too strong a word.

But you know what I mean? how you can go in and say, I don't want to see stuff from Fox News or whatever. And I wish that it felt like that worked better. Because when it tries to guess what I want in the For You section, it's sometimes a little bit weird. And I wish I could just, I wish there was something a little more mushy about, like, just stop showing me this kind of tech news story. Like, it takes up so much, so many square inches of my day. And I just don't need to know about that. You know what I mean?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

MerlinCan you do that, Max? Do you get the thing with like the, do you get like the triple dot where you can say, so in this case I see like I'm clicking, oh Jesus. The Big Bang Theory and Parks and Recreation find new streaming homes, says USA Today. And if I click the triple dots, I get view full coverage, which can be very useful. Go to USA Today. Hide all stories from USA Today. Thumbs up, more stories like this, or thumbs down, fewer stories like this. And I think, my gut is that fewer stories like this is a little bit like my friend Celas Often on Twitter. I'm not sure it's hooked up to anything.

But that should make it so useful to go like, you know, we were talking about this, Alex. We were talking about the weird thing where iOS will present you with a little icon with the alarm clock to say, this seems like a thing that you do a lot at this time of day. This seems like almost as much of a no-brainer of like, okay, boy, he sure does this a lot for things involving the Kardashians. Maybe at some point we should do fewer of those, fewer Kardashians. But I'm not sure it does.

AlexYeah, I don't know. like you said, what it is hooked up to. And the problem is, I think, when you downvote something, it's not thinking about the content. It's thinking about what outlet it is. Because there's sometimes where I'll completely miss something because I downvoted a variety story about, I don't know, something.

MerlinNo, no, no, no. We talked about this on Rectifs. Is Max mad? Did he walk away? What's happening? No, I'm here. Where is he? Okay, good. I'm sorry if I yelled at you. So we talked about this on an episode of Reconcilable Differences about one of the problems with reviews. And that's, you know, when a review needs facets to be useful. To say that anything is in toto one to five stars is real stupid, right? So, like, you could at least have the facets of how was the build quality? How was the this? How was the that? In the case of Amazon, like, you know, don't yell at the don't yell at the Beach Boys because your package was damaged.

Right. You've just downvoted pet sounds because the scoundrels who sent that to you from marketplace, you know, screwed up your package. Right. Or UPS screwed up your package or you're mad that this is yet another re-release of something you already own. You know what I'm saying? There's without facets. All that stuff becomes so useless. So me not liking this story, so does that mean, let's say I see a thing about everything we know so far about iOS 13. If I say fewer like this, does that mean I'm not interested in Apple stuff?

Does that mean don't ever show me iOS stuff? Or does that mean, with all due respect to the prognosticators and the Germans of the world, I'm just not interested in that racket? You know what I mean? Like it's how does does it know what facet of this makes me want to not see this? And I think it must be very difficult to know.

AlexAnd I get that this is how it's supposed to work. Like because we're afraid of missing something, we go back in and back in. But I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm nostalgic for RSS. And there used to be like a lot of good newsletters. Remember, what was his name? David Pell? David?

MerlinYeah, yeah. the internet rock star, but he's got the icon with the glasses. Yeah. Dave Pell.

AlexYeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it would just be here. Like the five things you need today. I think mule did something like that too. That is just completely untenable. It, it, nobody, nobody's going to pay for it. And I, there are promising things like citizen, which I think is still in beta. That was that it kind of a failure.

MerlinThe nine, the nine one one app.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, Citizen with a K. Or not kiddison.

MerlinCitizen with a K.

AlexCitizen. There was a zip. Oh, fuck. What was it called? The lady who did the seven days of boredom thing started another podcast and is trying to do this app. This is all very boring. But they tried to make Bitcoin, but for journalism.

MerlinOkay. With a K.

AlexOh, I can't find it.

MerlinWe'll find it.

AlexI just created this in a fugue state.

MerlinThis show will never be released. So speak your truth.

AlexIt's just the worst.

MerlinMax, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound dismissive. Where do you go when you're ready to sit down and tuck in and really find some substantial news? Where are you with that process? And do you have a leading favorite right now?

MaxOh, I don't have an answer. It's really hard to get the news. I've been using Google News and I collected some funny headlines. But I think we already did this bit. Let's do the challenge.

MerlinNo, no, no. Because I mean, here's the thing. I really like The Economist. They don't necessarily love everything about their sort of politics and POV, but it's challenging. But have you ever done that? You ever subscribe to The Economist and just read that front section of all the news updates?

MaxI can't. Every time I've ever gotten paid for a magazine in any form, I read like two issues and then I get bored with it. And then I stop reading it and they pile up and I get anxious and I stop reading it.

MerlinMy kid reads my art in New Yorker more than I do at this point, which is probably good, I guess.

MaxI do the New Yorker on iPad, and I read it sometimes. But I don't know. It's very hard to get the news. It sucks. It's not good. Challenge.

AlexThat is a good segue to our challenge. Whose challenge was it this week? I don't know.

MerlinI think it... Wait, I can find out. I've got it in the thing.

AlexAll right, all right.

MerlinThis challenge comes from... Oh, apparently it's me.

AlexOh, hooray.

MerlinWhat led to this challenge? I don't remember. The nut of it was, I feel like how we got here was interesting. But the idea is that, hey, what happens if you change your search engine? So, like, I use Google for everything. Don't at me. And so the challenge was this week to make DuckDuckGo your default search engine on all of your devices. Use that as the way you search. And then be prepared to discuss how you feel about it. Did we do it?

AlexOh, hell yes. Did I ever?

MerlinI mean, I did the opposite of peanut butter, which was like I did it super duper hard. And it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that I lost my fucking mind and turned it off. But I learned a lot. And I thought, no, no, no, no. I thought it was super interesting. And I learned a lot about myself. I learned so much about myself from this challenge.

MaxI think I'm going to leave my browser hooked up to DuckDuckGo. I think it works really well for me. The only thing that does not work is I use, I guess when I was using Google, I used Google News Search a lot, way more than I thought, because I would see someone talking about something, and I'd go, why are people talking about that person? And I would type their name into Google, and then go click on News to see what the newest thing is. All the time. And that straight up doesn't work on DuckDuckGo. It's fully broken.

MerlinYeah, those sub areas are definitely, it's on my list here, one of the places where it falls apart, whether it's news or images or video. I mean, I guess I did not realize how often I search for something knowing that I'm going to want to watch a video. and knowing that it's almost definitely going to be YouTube. And one upside of DuckDuckGo is that the Google properties are not heavily overpromoted. If you don't want to be on those properties, it's great. But a lot of times I'm just searching for a YouTube video and I know Google will get me there. And instead it's like, ah, it's Dailymotion or whatever.

It's like, no, no. It doesn't have the overall biggest problem, apart from being outside the Google infrastructure, is the relevancy is nowhere near what Google does.

Alexthat's the downside i think isn't there one of the bangs for that or am i wrong but do i mean

Merlinyou're not have you done that did you do it a lot because i found myself by friday what was i doing i was doing something that required a lot of googling and i was on my phone and having to constantly go oh fuck you know um exclamation point g before i typed this and doing that on a phone it's just not fun every time i again it was it was i didn't realize how much i use Google for everything. I mean, I didn't really, I knew like generally, but I didn't really know until I did this. And how often, it was instructive to me how often I got frustrated with needing to like jump

over to Google. Really?

MaxHuh. But, but it's a cool service. Did you do the exclamation point G or whatever it is? People got mad I said it wrong last time. Like I said, yes, I did.

MerlinIt's just that doing that on an iPhone is frustrating because you gotta, you know, get to the exclamation point and then type a G and it's just not fun. But, boy, big marks for, you know, easy to set up. It's got a very cool, because it's doing so much to protect your privacy, but wants to be good. Did you guys mess with the bookmarklet and the cloud and getting your settings and all that stuff? Did you mess with that? The what?

AlexNo, not at all.

MerlinSo, when you go to, so basically, you know, there's certain ways you'd like the site to operate, right? That's a normal thing to want. So, go to the homepage, DuckDuckGo, right? You're on DuckDuckGo. Click the hamburger. Go to other settings.

AlexThere we go.

MerlinSo I don't know how this works. This is Disney magic. But basically, you get this thing set up the way that you want, right? Including stuff like.

MaxOh, look at this. Here's where all the.

MerlinYeah, that's where the stuff is. And you could turn off all of the like, hey, do more DuckDuckGo things. You can turn all that off. I've got a nice pretty EEEE header on here. And I want that to be on all of my things. Now, if you click on show bookmarklet and settings data, look at all the options you've got. for having that. So you can now, that's all, like whatever arguments or attributes in the URL. You just make a bookmarklet of that and you click it and then that sets a cookie with all the things that you want on that device.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinYeah, and then the cloud part is crazy. You are in like a nonce password. I have no idea how this works. And then apparently it's in the cloud. I never figured out how that works.

AlexYeah, that was the one thing that sort of set off a red flag only because I don't know how it works. and because duck, duck, do, wow, whatever, Buck Bucks is the big privacy boy. Like, what is it doing and why? Like, how are these different than just my Safari settings and bookmarks being everywhere?

MerlinWell, I mean, the idea is if you want infinite scroll, for example, to be off on all of your devices, it's adding an attribute or an argument to the URL. You make that your bookmarklet. And then when you click on that, am I missing what you're saying? When you click on the device, it remembers that. I don't know what the cloud part of that is. I never understood what that part is.

AlexYeah, that's what I mean. Like, how is it different than what Google does?

MerlinHow is entering in that password going to know that it's you? Yeah. That's what I didn't understand. But anyway, that was in service of saying that was one thing I thought was real cool was that you can go and do that. I think it's cool that some but not all the Google operators and syntax work the same, but not all. Like I'm a huge user of capital O, capital R, or on Google. And they only seem to do that with just assuming everything is an or.

And the relevance is sometimes terrible. So basically I'll search for the thing. And so in Google I will say, you know, foobar baz. And then I'll say like TV or radio. And so that means that it's going to find those words that I wanted and then TV or radio. And I don't see a way to do that easily. You could do it. Some places do that with a pipe, like a regular expression. But I thought it was, I think this is, I can see why people Switch did this.

Speaker AIt's really good. Are you going to keep DuckDuckGo on any of your things?

MaxAlex?

AlexYes, I'm keeping it on everything. I have found that I'm way less of a, like, Google, Google is in the search engine specifically way less of a power user than I thought I jumped in maybe once or twice it might also be because I'm on iOS so often so if I'm looking for a YouTube video it's right there do you use the app using YouTube app I just reinstalled that yesterday as an exercise oh are you are you one of do you watch too much I'm one of the anti I'm an anti

Merlinapp person oh okay okay well but i wanted to in this case i wanted to have i wanted to walk around and be listening to c-span and you can't do that in the uh safari version you need why are you

Speaker Ayeah what's the logic for for i've never really thought about it but why why wouldn't you have

Alexthe youtube app it's a pretty bad app i mean it is but it isn't better than well it takes you for

Merlinone thing it takes you out of safari like sometimes you want to just stay in safari Oh, I see what you're saying. I've got the super paid for version of YouTube that lets you do all the things.

Speaker AAnd I really don't want to see the ads.

MaxYou know, I actually don't know literally anything about this. But I've always wondered why does some on the iPad, why does some video apps support picture-in-picture and other ones don't? Is it hard? Is it technically hard to implement?

Speaker ANo, no.

MerlinIt's totally arbitrary. Like obviously Hulu lets you do that. The YouTube app, if you pay for the premium YouTube, you get that. I think it's totally arbitrary. No, you don't. No, you don't. I do.

MaxHmm. Wait. I have YouTube Premium, and what it does is play in the background, but not picture-in-picture.

MerlinOh, okay. I'm sorry. Like I say, I just reinstalled it yesterday. Yeah, no, you're correct. That is correct. Yeah, I don't know why that is. I mean, I bet sometimes...

MaxThe only reason I'm certain of it is that's a feature I really want. Sometimes I watch long YouTube videos, and I want them in picture-in-picture.

AlexI think it's a data thing.

MaxLike they want YouTube in the foreground as much as possible so they can be like collecting data on you?

AlexYeah, and they want you to be watching the ads. But that's why I think I too have the premium red or whatever YouTube is calling its paid service right now so that I don't see the transitional ads. But maybe it's because like if you build a single app, you can't enable picture and picture just for some people. Does that make sense? You know, like, because I don't think it's an in-app purchase. Or rather, I do think it's an in-app purchase for me.

Like, oh, it's like $15 a month. It's, ugh. I think it's just laziness.

MerlinI can't imagine, but I can't imagine not doing it. When I hear people don't do that, I'm like, oh, my God. You just, I guess you don't watch as much YouTube as I do. I would lose my goddamn mind.

AlexOh, whenever I, like, go on, you know, like, when you're at a party, and I'm the obnoxious person who's like, you gotta see this part. You gotta see a YouTube thing. And then, oh, the ads. And I'm not, like a lot of my friends make, you know, this is a podcast. We don't have ads. Most podcasts have ads. But I don't know how people stand it. And then they interrupt in the middle of the video. I didn't even know that was a thing.

MerlinBut I am not. I am fully switched back to Google. But I'm without judgment, without prejudice. this, I can see how and why someone would choose. Okay, here's one for me. I get a random phone call. And I just, you know, I'm banning everything left and right. But sometimes I'll get something that looks like it could maybe sort of maybe be a real phone number. And I go and I Google it. And in honesty, what I'll get is a bunch of those bullshit, what's this phone number sites, but I do get that. Whereas when I do that, go search for a phone number on DuckDuckGo. And

There's so much random stuff that just includes portions of that string, of that number. It's not good at that. It doesn't make those connections very well, which is frustrating. And now I'm on my phone doing exclamation point G. But we should talk about the search syntax. Did you guys get attached to any of the good syntax things or bangs?

AlexYeah, the Amazon search and the Wikipedia search.

MerlinWhich benefits them. Did you notice it has their tag in it?

AlexMm-hmm. And I'm kind of okay with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinSure, sure, sure.

AlexThey're really transparent about that. And also you can report ads if they're weird, which I thought was very interesting. I didn't do it.

MerlinThey seem like a good company. I mean, on the face of it, they do really seem like a good company. It's a pretty presentation. The search syntax. So we'll put that in notes. There's so much good search syntax. But then they have tons of these bangs. How do you describe the bang?

AlexI don't know. And I would call that, I guess it's not a search syntax. What is it?

MerlinIt detects. So when you say exclamation point and then a string after that of a certain kind, it detects that you want to use something other than the vanilla DuckDuckGo. So basically, it's the same kind of thing. I think Firefox was the first one to have this. Chrome has this. Chrome, I think, might call it shortcuts. But, you know, in Chrome, you can go in.

AlexWe're thinking of the same thing, right? Like I do exclamation point A, and then I just search as Amazon.

MerlinSo what it's doing is, I think what's happening is it's detecting that, okay, you want to use something besides DuckDuckGo. What is it you want to use? I want to use Amazon. So in the example here, if I do exclamation point A space blank 182, it's going to search Amazon. No, that's their example, not mine.

AlexI love that part.

MerlinBut there are a lot of sites that built in, baked in a lot of sites that do this. 13,094. And my only note on this would be that is trivially easy on a desktop. a little janky on mobile, but it is cool.

AlexOh, really? I actually was using the DuckDuckGo app a lot.

MerlinTheir browser? Don't they make like a, what's in Notes, I think? DuckDuckGo privacy browser.

AlexYeah.

MerlinSo you're using it on your Mac?

AlexNo, no, no, on iOS. And it's, I realized as soon as I opened it, I'm like, oh, this is like the porn browser.

MerlinOh, I see. Okay, look at that. Okay.

AlexIt just seems faster than the search in Safari. There are no shortcuts integrations, but...

MerlinAre the bangs faster in this?

AlexYes, I think so.

MerlinI will get this and look at it. This is cool.

AlexI mean, again, it's like out of... It's a pain in the ass, but if someone were to want to watch a lot of Steven Crowder videos and not want to fuck up their YouTube... suggestions you know it's it helps to have this on uh just the whole thing too we talked about this earlier like all of the cool tech benefits aside it's just kind of refreshing and soothing

Merlinlike totally agree it's totally agree it feels like it's from another time um from like a web 2.0 era when people were trying to design something from scratch that that were the main thing was we You just want this to be really good. And it seems so naive now to say, like, you now have to make not being an asshole part of, like, a value in your app. Well, I'm glad some people do that. But there was a time when it felt like you didn't need to do that.

We just want Flickr to be good. We just want Delicious to be good, right? Like, whatever it is. And now today, it's like it is a value and a decision to decide not to be a dick with your service. and you find places like that. And in a second, I'm going to re-up my suggestion for Guardian app, which I'm really appreciating right now. But same here. It's like these apps where it's like the basic reason you use this is because the other apps are fucking with you. It's so strange.

AlexI just opened Google for the first time on desktop Safari in a while, and there's a pop-up that says complete your privacy checkup. Review your settings to make sure that they're still right for you and you can complete that or do no thanks. I have no idea what the fuck that is.

MerlinYou can go in and say stuff like, stop tracking this thing or delete your tracking of this thing. Some things are way harder than others.

AlexBut why is it telling you that? Because I haven't used it for a week? That's such a weird pop-up to have. And it's really anxiety-inducing.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, what were you going to say? Scroll down. What happened?

AlexHelp create healthy digital habits with Family Link? What the fuck is this? This is just making me happy to use DuckDuckGo. There's a... Oh, this is terrible. I don't like... Max, are you using... Are you going to keep using this?

MaxYes, I have DuckDuckGo on my Mac, and I haven't... The phone might go back to Google because when you Google something on your phone, you kind of need to know it right away. Whereas on the Mac, I'm sometimes a little more tolerant of like, well I'll try the one I like and then if that doesn't get the result I need I'll try again but on the phone I really I'm not trying to fuck around like when I need to google something I sometimes I need to know what I mean you know you're running late for something you need to look up the address or whatever yeah that makes sense interesting that's a good middle ground yeah

AlexI'm more paranoid I think about the stuff that goes on I would like to I'd like to get google

Maxout of my life like I don't I would like google to not know anything about me and not use any Google services, but it's almost impossible to avoid. Like it's YouTube, it's Gmail, like there's no competitors.

MerlinAnd every time, every time one of us gets, a person gets close to saying, this is so frustrating. You get close to saying like, you know, I really would like, I don't want to be on Facebook and I don't want Google tracking me. And like, then you get, you get the, you get brigaded by everybody saying, well, you know, Facebook doesn't even need you to be logged in to understand you. And it's like, it's so frustrating to me because it's like, no, I guess they don't. But is it not conceivable that I can do things that help me participate in that less? It just seems very dangerous and very damaging to encourage people to think there's nothing they can do to help themselves.

They're foolish to try and do anything that ameliorates their condition or that makes it less easy for people to just fucking track everything. That point of view is really unhealthy to me.

MaxYou want to do as little to contribute to the problem as you can and as much to help towards the solution as you can.

MerlinSo that's why I want to re-up Guardian. And again, I know, I know. Who can you trust? But Guardian is so fucking cool.

Speaker AAnd I feel like there are ways in which I see.

MaxYou know, I got a message from someone who works at Guardian. And they got mad at me for saying that they might be a state actor.

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MaxThey said we're not a state actor.

AlexThey weren't mad. I feel so bad about this.

MaxHow would they know you? They heard the show? Yeah, and I said, I'm very skeptical of VPNs in general because a lot of them are weird surveillance things.

AlexAnd the reason, one, they listened to the show, two, this very nice person came up to me at WWDC and got me on the beta, and I've been apparently using Guardian since then and just didn't realize it. Oh, it's just running? So sorry about that. It's very good. I totally forgot. Well, it's like one blocker X. I don't remember.

MerlinOh, I know. I don't know. I know. It's so weird when you, then you go see somebody else's browser. You look at their browser and you're like, what are you looking at? Did you get hacked? Is that what your pages look like all the time? Jesus Christ. Yeah, so anyway, I can't vouch.

Speaker AAll right, I'm going to do a quarterly subscription.

AlexOh, do a yearly subscription. I don't know if I'll like it. I do monthly.

Merlinum i the but so i'm not here to vouch for the vpn part but we keep we keep returning to the vpn part because that's the part where people are going to worry i'm talking about the firewall part because you can fucking see it working it's it's so wild um so like for example and i had a really good interaction with a guy i think a guy at guardian about this uh you know i sent them a email because like it had suddenly turned off on all of my devices and i think we arrived at when you do the monthly subscription, there's a chance that it's going to get confused.

Anyway, long story short. But I've now gotten used to being on Google. And you scroll to the bottom of the page. So if you scroll to the bottom of a Google search page right now, you're going to see something there about your location. Where it's going to say, oh yeah, this is your precise location, or this is what we've guessed from like DLAD. And mine always says unknown or Santa Clara now. because the VPN that I'm using is in San Jose, Santa Clara County. But it's just wild because one day I was surfing around on Google

and I saw my location in the footer and it really jumped out at me, right? Because I'd gotten so used to seeing something different there. And I went and I looked and the app had turned off. So it's not to say, and I think, like I say, that must have to do with subscription and confusion. But like, you don't see that anymore. is saying, you are exactly here and we know it. And here's the reminder. So I don't know. Maybe I'm living in a dream world. But that dumb little thing, my friend Chris Cauldron, his dad always used to say, you lock the screen door

to keep the honest people honest. There's nothing to keep somebody from knocking down your screen door. But having a screen door might help a little bit because it keeps the honest people honest. And in that instance, having things like that, using stuff like DuckDuckGo, if you can, I don't know. I don't want to get to a place where I'm turning into Holden Caulfield again. I just don't want to get to the place where like you start to feel one starts to feel so utterly helpless that being cynical about other people's attempts to improve their life are something you feel the need to knock down is all I'm going to say about that.

AlexThis is a wonderful, wonderful, very uplifting episode. Can't wait to follow up for Rectifs.

MerlinSometimes, sometimes if you're feeling sad, you listen to Elliot Smith. You know, we're here to bring you down so we can build you up.

AlexOh, I have something sad.

MerlinOh, good.

AlexYou ever look at your Uber rating?

MerlinNo. Never, ever, ever, ever. Why do you want to know? Don't. No. That's not for you. Merlin doesn't want to know the reviews that him and his Chinese girlfriend get in the Uber. Don't look at me. Nobody look at me. Everybody look everywhere else but at me. The last thing I want to do is look at myself. Jesus. Tap dancing Christ now. How's your rating? Is this the after?

MaxAre we in the after?

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no. I, uh, I'm a four. Oh God. I'm a 4.7. And I assumed, which is very low. Can you see your lift rate?

MerlinI think you're at least a Chicago seven.

AlexNo, you can't. She's dank. But I assumed that a 4.7 was because a lot of times for work, I take, um, uh, Ubers and we bring a ton of stuff and it's a pain in the ass. But I always call in advance. I'm like, would you like me to cancel? Is your car big enough? Do you have time for this? And they say yes. So this morning, I just got up the balls because I noticed that I went from a 4.7 to a 4.69.

And I had to ask, I'm like, excuse me, are there notes or something about why a person has a bad rating? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Do you want me to check yours out? and apparently I'm a door slammer.

MerlinYou're a door slammer.

AlexHad no idea. I'm a door slammer.

MerlinAnd now you know.

AlexYeah. Don't be a door slammer.

MerlinThey should have a way to say they should be able to give you notes in a non-judgmental way.

AlexYeah.

MerlinHere's something you could work on.

AlexI'm just trying to be.

MerlinHave you tried not being gay?

AlexWe'll see. We'll see.

MerlinI think you're at least a seven. I think you're at least a seven. Now 4.7. Oh, thank you. You get fired for below 4.7, I think. Have you noticed lately? At least. So I don't YouTube her. But on Lyft, suddenly every single driver is 5.0. Are you getting that too?

AlexYep.

MerlinWhat happened with that?

AlexI don't want to think about it.

MerlinI've gotten a lot of non-5.0 rides.

AlexYep, yep, I agree.

MerlinAnd where it's like, you are a very dangerous man with the things that you do in the car. You are so not a 5.0. I refuse to believe that that's legit. Do you think they're just fudging it? Do you think they just painted that on? Everybody gets 5.0?

AlexI have two theories. People can deactivate and reactivate their account if they get too low. Wait, what does that do?

MaxThat resets it?

AlexI think so. Why don't you just do that every day? Well, because then you get flagged.

MerlinThat's like a cabaret license. That's so wild.

AlexYeah, or they're only updating it like once a month or something now, maybe does that make sense instead of an instant like you get one star and it's flagged or something whereas if you let's say you give this person four stars because they're not a safe man

Merlinbecause you started driving you started driving away my for my daughter had closed the door sir sir i'm not even gonna get into the fact that she doesn't have a seat belt on because her little right leg is outside the car sir 5.0 my ass

Show notes

Transcript

150. Small Timothy

Show notes

Transcript

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