155. The Reach-Increaser

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

MerlinWhat's happening? What's happening right now? Can anybody hear me at all? Can anyone hear me? What is happening?

Speaker BOh, hey, Merlin. Sorry. They haven't put headphones on yet, so Alex and Dr. Don are just talking. Oh, okay. Thank you. Is this producer Cameron? Engineer Cameron. It's very different. Alex sounds very animated. Is she okay? Yeah, yeah. Came storming in, but seems fine. Okay. Thanks, buddy. No problem. Yeah, I'll let you know when they decide to put headphones on and acknowledge your presence. Well, maybe you and me should just do our own show. We'll just split it off. Quinn loves it when she gets to make two different edits.

Merlin men. Oh, who was that? Was that Dr. Don? No, that was me. That was me still. Oh, Cameron, that was so tuneful. Oh, that was really lovely. Thank you. Being tuneful is one of my only skills. Cameron on the line. I'm in the middle of I'm in the middle of Did they put their cans on, Cameron? Yes, they did. Yeah, we were just having a little chat.

MerlinOkay, I'll address Alex now. Thank you, Cameron. It was nice talking to you.

AlexNice talking to you, Mylon.

MerlinNice talking to you, buddy. Cameron on the line.

AlexOh, but big day for so many things.

MerlinWhat? What's happening?

AlexWell, apparently Trump did a thing. Today, Cards Against Humanity announced that the first game cafe is coming to Chicago, and we're making it. It's called the Board Game Cafe. It will be a dining experience with board games that you can play.

Speaker BAlex, you're a moon right now.

AlexWhat's going on? While you dine and there will be an escape room in the basement produced by none other than the house theater. I think it's called a sex dungeon, Alex. No, I wish.

Speaker BLet me show you my escape room. Oh, boy. Let me show you the rope trick.

AlexOh, I'm so glad that I am not in charge.

Speaker BYou should get a clown.

MerlinYou should get a Gacy clown, and he could sit down there and show the rope trick and read Bible verses to people.

AlexIt would be so cute. That's a – well, actually, Gacy never killed anybody in his clown outfit.

MerlinOh, sorry. I know. Wait, now, is Gacy the one that did the rope game? No. Didn't he strangle people with some cord and a screwdriver while he read in the Bible?

AlexHuh. Dr. Don, do you know?

Speaker BThat's classic clown behavior. Dr. Don, Dr. Don, you know about clowns. That would be no.

AlexSerial killer with rope and Bible. I mean, if he hasn't come up yet on Mindhunter, then Bible John. Oh, fuck. Unidentified serial killer. Oh, only three. Come on. Come on. Get your game up. Jeez.

MerlinI will give that a thrill kill status, but I will not give that a serial status.

AlexRead a fucking book. Right? Dr. Don, do you watch Mindhunter?

Speaker AI do not.

AlexI do not.

Speaker AWe favor the British television in my house, and I've watched a lot of very creepy British crime shows.

AlexLike what?

Speaker BLike with pregnant ladies and stuff?

MerlinSorry? Oh, so like the classic ones. There's that one with Carey Mulligan. That's a really good one. You could watch the sad one with the doctor.

Speaker AYeah, we did that one. We just finished Catching Up with Silent Witness, which is up to series 22. Probably the most creepy one is one called Wire in the Blood. Oh, I've heard about that. Yeah, super, super graphic and super creepy. Yeah, but all highly recommended.

AlexOh, I'm excited. I don't know about any of these. I just watch a doctor. You should watch Broadchurch, Alex.

MerlinIt's very sad.

AlexOh, yes. I've been saving that. It's got two doctors on it. It's got two doctors. I mean, they're kind of in everything. I'm shocked that none of them made their way to Downton Abbey. I still can't believe it. It's like they found, other than Maggie Smith, they found the other 10 actors in Britain. It was very exciting. I wonder where Max is.

MerlinMy Bluetooth, I'm sorry. I don't want to make this some personal news, as we say on Twitter. My Bluetooth keyboard is not working, So I may have to use my very loud clacky keyboard.

AlexThe solar-powered Bluetooth keyboard?

MerlinThe solar-powered Bluetooth keyboard is not letting me search for John Wayne Gacy. Maybe that's a mitzvah.

AlexI must have.

MerlinAre you guys ready? Let's bring the motherfucking rockets.

AlexOh, man. John Wayne Gacy Bible screwdriver.

MerlinWho was the clown killer of John Wayne Gacy? No screwdriver. I might be concatenating my killers.

AlexYeah, he lured young children. Oh, have I not told people?

MerlinIt was the offer of work, wasn't it?

AlexWasn't John Wayne Gacy the one where I needed to help me out with my house? Oh, hey, I've got a paint job for you boys. Want to come in? I need a paint job. That's what they call a paint job. Yep. Want some lemonade? Want some lemonade? You're going to produce paint. I had a friend whose father met John Wayne Gacy and was painting his neighbor's house. And my friend's dad was offered a job by John Wayne Gacy and had to turn it down. So I'm glad he did because now I have a friend.

MerlinWhen he was young? When he was a younger guy?

AlexIt was when he was 11. I'm sorry. No, no, no. Like 12 to 13. It was two boys. So, but yeah, it was in the 60s. Yay. Yep. No, he never killed anybody in a clown costume. He just killed the boys and buried them in the house.

MerlinOh, my God. It was sexually torturing to death some of the young men who worked for him. He lured them by promising them money or employment. One of his favorite routines was to persuade them. Oh, here it is. It's called the handcuff trick.

AlexOh, I mixed it. You're right. You're right.

MerlinIn order to incapacitate them, he would then chloroform them and they say sodomize. I don't think we say that anymore. This was followed by his quote-unquote rope trick in which he would insert a rope around the victim's neck, insert a stick in the loop, and twist it slowly like a tourniquet until the victim strangled to death. Gacy liked to read passages from the Bible while doing this.

AlexOh, my gosh. I would like to put forth a public apology. I am so sorry. Here I am. I'm talking about what I think is my suburban Chicago serial killer, and I'm just a fake serial killer girl. It's very disappointing.

Speaker Aso what do we say now if we don't say sodomy

AlexI don't know if that was a joke or not

Speaker BI think the problem

Merlinhonestly I think that is a word that people used first of all sodomy laws right do we want to talk about this

AlexI see what you're saying sodomy was seen as the act of gay sex as a sin

MerlinI think the main, at least in Georgia, if memory serves, the main sodomy laws that got enforced punitively were generally involved men and oral sex. We use sodomized to mean, I think, you know, but things. But I think it was mainly used as a heavily weighted, you know what we mean by this stuff. It meant gay stuff. Yes. Because Bible. Because Bible.

AlexThis is actually an interesting thing from one of my other shows that we talk about is this is still on the books. as a crime in some places because they have no other word for a man assaulting another man in the butt. They just can't. They're like, oh, we can't use the R word. You're talking about even consensual things. They don't have another word for it. They just don't prosecute that. It is still illegal on the books, and then it's tacked on with criminal assaults. I think this is Georgia.

MerlinI think it's Georgia, too. It's those worst kinds of laws. And it's those things like what you can think of like, you know, a classic example, Al Capone and tax evasion. But like there's also the ones where like, yeah, well, you know, I stopped this black guy in a car because he was speeding in this area. And like, OK, well, I guess technically. But, you know, you could come up with all these reasons why you think a stop was warranted. And then you kind of, you know, dunk that up into any kind of charge that you can get out of it. It's it's so gross. It's so gross. And that doesn't happen to white people so much.

AlexYeah.

Speaker ASo I hate to stop all this really good. You're welcome, Dr. Don. And I hate to like break the illusion, but I feel. Do you really hate it? Well, I do. I do. And Quinn can fix this, right? In post. Of course. She'll cut it off to do a fourth or fifth episode at this point. Can I find out what Wi-Fi I should be on and get a password?

AlexYay!

MerlinI'm getting worse at spelling. I'm getting worse at typing on my phone, and my spelling is declining. And on top of it all, and no shade, no lemonade, but all of the pre-release versions of Envy Ultra Beta shut off spellcheck every time you relaunch it.

AlexRight?

MerlinOh, come on, Brett. Do you get that too?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was just me.

MerlinDo you have it open right now?

AlexI haven't been using it because of that very recently.

MerlinI know. I went back. Yeah. But there's also like one of the classics in NvAlt that I really swear by is, you know, the text commands that everybody should learn. You know, about your command space.

AlexYes, I know all of.

MerlinSorry. But command, you know all those, right? So you know these commands, Alex? They're good commands.

AlexNo, like most of them. And that's why let's say when I – I do like Bear. I really like Bear, and it's the first time I've stopped using the –

MerlinYou sound like Quentin Compton. I don't hate the South. I don't hate it.

AlexI don't hate it. It's very pretty. I like the theme. It's easy on the eyes. Good God. It is, yeah. That's not –

MerlinYou're Casey Lissing them so hard right now.

AlexWait, why? Easy on the eyes-ing or trying to be like –

Speaker BI like – I love – listen. I love all of my Apple things except for reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 through 89.

AlexI hate my new phone except for my camera. You hate it, really? It's so bad. It's just iOS 13 is so broken. The beta.

MerlinOh, my God. It's so fucking bad. The white text is back. The white text when you type is back. Oh, I haven't seen. Did you get the thing in the beta where when you type, like, say, in messages, the text in the field would turn white and you couldn't see it, but it was there? Did you get that?

AlexYes, but I have not come across that now. I'm on regular, what is it, 13.1.2 or whatever, not on the beta. But I'm almost going to switch.

MerlinI'm still getting that iPad. I'm still getting the iPad bug where when I pick it up. When I pick it up. I know what you're talking about. Do you get the splitty screenie? Yep. Squeezy?

AlexOh, God.

MerlinWhy is that in the... This is a good one. This is the one I like. So are you in a text area right now?

AlexOh, no. Let me get my... I have so many NFC tags, and I've got pills and my rings. Oh, SAG is here.

MerlinI have four that I have prepared here. Dr. Don, you're on a phone. You're not on a...

Speaker AI got my password spelled correctly, so I'm on a real computer now.

AlexI thought you had a PC for a second, and I... Oh, boy.

MerlinTry this one. Put your cursor somewhere where text is and then do option, shift, left arrow several times.

Speaker BNo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Late boys don't get to change the show. Option, shift, option, shift. We'll talk about the cafe in a minute. Option, shift, left arrow.

MaxWelcome to this week's special guest of the week. Oh, boy. Dr. Don Schaffner at Bug Counter on Twitter. Did that work for you, Alex? Yes, yes. Good Lord. The nation's leading food safety focused microbiologist.

Alexis that your actual title host which

Speaker Asorry I wasn't listening

Alexoh there's so much host of the

Maxhost of the

AlexAlex I have one

Maxon my laptop here I have one sticker that advertises a podcast which podcast is that that's advertised on this sticker okay

Alexfood safety talk

Maxthat's right it's Dr. Don host of my favorite podcast food safety talk thank you for joining us Dr. Don it's a pleasure to be here Max yes thank you for joining us Dr. Don thank you thank you Where can people find your work? A lot of people don't know.

MerlinYou can also do command arrow to go to the top of the buffer and command down arrow to go to the bottom of the buffer.

MaxDr. Dom, where can people find your work?

Speaker AAre people going to pay extra for what we're talking about or for what Merlin is talking about? Absolutely.

MaxYou know, I'm doing what I was told, which is introducing our guest at the top of the episode. But where can people find your work if they want to learn more, Dr. Dom?

Speaker AThey could find Food Safety Talk at foodsafetytalk.com. They can find me on Twitter at Bug Counter. and if they want to see about the work that I do at Rutgers University, they can just Google Don Schaffner Rutgers University and it'll be right up there.

AlexOh, I did not know that part.

Speaker BQuinn, edit that all in so it's the beginning of the show. If you hit the beginning of a line and you hit shift down arrow, it's so handy because it selects the whole line.

AlexI don't know which. Are we talking about the beta and VL right now? Are we just talking about it?

MerlinNo, no. I'm talking everywhere. I'm talking everywhere. Anywhere there's text on a map.

AlexOh, okay. Sorry. I was back on my iPad.

MerlinShift up hour, shift down hour. Hey, how's it going, Max? What's up, buddy? You sound like you got a lot going on right now. It's a big day.

AlexIt's a big day. Big week.

Speaker AHe's so busy, Merlin. He hasn't had time to have lunch. You guys, you guys, you guys.

MerlinThis is important, though, because Max has behind the scenes has been doing an actual lot of real, not the quote-unquote where I put my fingers in the air work. He's been doing actual real work for a long time to make

Speaker Bsomething really nice. Max, what is it you made that's so nice? Oh, thank you

Maxfor that wonderful segue, Merlin. Cards Against Humanity is opening a board game cafe in Chicago. So that is a restaurant where people can come and play board games. And it's going to have really good-ass food.

We are kind of taking a gamble. We're not going to give people the sort of normal slop that you get at these game cafes. We have a really, really good culinary team and they all come from fine dining and we're going to do really cool sort of global food from Vietnam and Spain and Mexico like you might find in markets and outdoor gathering places all around the world. So shared plates and great food. We're going to have a game library.

Speaker BDo you do things a little bit

Maxdifferent there? Yeah, we do things a little bit differently. And let's see what else. We'll have a game library. We'll have teachers who will teach you how to play a game. And we will have two escape rooms run by our friends at the House Theater of Chicago. And I've done many, many escape rooms all over the world. I've done probably almost on the order of 100 escape rooms. And the The room that the house did in 2016 called The Last Defender is the best escape room I've ever done, and I'm so, so, so happy to bring it back, and they're doing a new one.

This has been, and yeah, it's been a lot of work. We've been working on this for three years every single day just trying to get this thing built, and tickets are available at ChicagoGameCafe.com, and come and have dinner and check it out.

AlexI would say your pitch was maybe 40% better than mine. I got most of it right. Yeah. Quinn, edit that.

MerlinYeah, actually, send this edit to Gray, and then he'll send it to Mike, and then they'll send it back to me, and I'll do a pass on it as well. And also break off the podcast in the second podcast from earlier when I talked to Cameron and you guys couldn't hear me. So that'll be a bonus episode that'll be up for everybody.

MaxMerlin, I have not looked at the news today. So I saw one sort of picture of, okay, so it was one of these flabby, flabby sort of doe-like Republicans standing at maybe at a podium and you look pretty mad and then he was surrounded by sort of a throng of identical sort of white haired just upsetting grimace they all look like to me they all look like once I saw it I can't unsee it but they all look like those kickboxing dummies you know they have this grimace on their face

the technical term is called a tie rack of white men just very upsetting just really upsetting men and all the photos I saw was they were in some sort of atrium with a staircase going around it and all the journalists I guess were standing on the staircase and shooting down at these upsetting men and so it's just there. All you're seeing is their hairlines which let's just say is not their best feature.

AlexNo.

MaxWhat was that? And they were like we're going to storm the skiff.

MerlinYeah so a friend of the show Matt Gaetz, not Matt Gertz, Matt Gaetz the super interesting Florida congressman decided to do a Jon Snow unsheathing his sword style Area 51 bring the motherfucking rockets.

Speaker BHe and his buddies, they're going to go in and they're going to do a full frontal assault on the skiff. They're going to Naruto run into the skiff. They can't shoot you if you're Naruto running.

MerlinYeah, so the idea was – so according to what I've read, Matt Gaetz has now been thrown out of the skiff twice for not being on a committee and not being eligible to go into the secret depositions that are being held. But he's trying to make this into some kind of star chamber thing.

MaxNo girls in the treehouse.

Speaker BNo dogs allowed. So yeah. So anyway, that's the idea.

MaxAnd so he and then he's like he's like a droid trying to go into the Mos Eisley cantina. They're not served his car in there.

MerlinI'm not going to say anything. I've been I've been I got chided for 25 minutes last night for reposting an animated GIF of a Star War.

AlexOh, my God. Merlin, I wasn't going to say anything. But seriously, fuck you. Oh, my God. It's one. I don't care. I don't care. I know. I don't care. Oh, my God.

MerlinI need more of this in my life. So anyway, Matt Gaetz is is everybody's really. Boy, you know what? It's time for us to use this phrase. Everybody. All the president's men are heavily virtuous, virtue signaling their support right now. Mostly, especially the dingling Congress people in the in the very Trumpy districts are very heavily trying to signal their support to dear leader. for how terrible, boo, this whole impeachment thing is. So yeah, that's what's happening there. And so apparently they, and I haven't followed this closely

because I was watching Trump be so fucking gacked out on Adderall this morning, holy shit. So I was following that.

MaxHe did a talk?

MerlinOh, he did, yeah, oh yeah.

MaxWhat was the, give me the, give me the Epsom B's.

MerlinTremendous wins, tremendous wins in the Mideast right now, removing all the sanctions from Turkey and some of the deepest nasal draws that we have heard. Oh, you're saying he's fully decongested. Oh, he's breathing so clearly this morning. And he's got that, you know, you can really tell when he gets his dumb guy confidence on. You usually only really see it at the rallies. He was expressing huge silverback dumb guy confidence this morning about how cool he sounded. And it was super fucking bad. So they go into the skiff.

Supposedly Gates and his peeps They storm, storm the best deal And they get into the skiff And they're like live tweeting And like streaming from inside the skiff Max, I know our listeners may not know this

Speaker BWe tell people what a skiff is And what it is for

MaxI actually was going to ask you that It's a secure something I thought it was a boat

I'm really sorry. It's a bunch of doughy Republicans on one of those catamarans that's just slowly tilting on its side and sinking into the ocean.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinSCIF, and these exist in lots of different places. But basically it's a secure, heavily monitored facility for sharing extremely sensitive information with people in the various branches.

MaxNow, can I just – Dr. Don, you seem like the kind of guy who – maybe you've been in a skiff. Have you been in a skiff? I mean in as much as you can say, have you ever been in a secure location?

Speaker AI have not but I know people who have. So I know some people at FDA. Oh, shit. Matt's couldn't say. He couldn't say if he had. He couldn't say if he had. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I couldn't, right.

MaxHe can't confirm or deny. He returns to the home.

Speaker ABut no, seriously. So some friends of mine at FDA when they were working on all of this counterterrorism stuff, They used to, when they had to go into like a skiff room, they had to leave all their stuff outside and go in and they could like, you know, look at stuff. And I guess they could maybe write some stuff and then they had to leave it all and leave. Yeah.

MerlinI think, I mean, I think if it's done correctly, so there's a couple of things. Skiffs have been in the news in the last year and I'm almost done. It's been in the news a lot lately for a variety of reasons. We heard at one point, Jared Kushner spends a lot of his time in skiffs. Like he's decided that that's going to be like his EPA phone booth where he can go and have privacy times. And so what we can do is back-channeling, if you know what I mean. And so there's that piece of skiff. The other kind of skiff that we'll hear about a lot is, for example, I want to say with the unredacted Mueller report, where they would bring in like five congresspeople at a time to come in and look at a physical copy of the thing.

Absolutely. Here's the thing. Two things. The first rule of skiff club is like what happens in skiff stays in skiff. Like you do not, you know, you do not, it is considered like, I think it's top secret and higher level stuff usually. Sensitive, sensitive compartmented information. But, you know, to that end, yeah, you don't talk about what happened in Skiff Club. But also you cannot bring your fucking phone in. It's like, it is like bringing a droid in.

Like you're really super not supposed to do that. And yeah, as the president says, we'll see what happens.

MaxIt is, on the one hand it's very funny That all these like Just sort of flabby Upsetting dullards are like storming into the Into the congressional skiff I think it's, I think the whole I would actually go so far as to say the entire tableau Is very funny because you have a sort of A sort of Phony faux outrage impeachment That's a non-starter that's not going to go anywhere Or change anything Being taken way too seriously by the Democrats And they're like we have our documents in the secure location to proceed with the crimes and misdemeanors of Mr. Trump.

And then you have Republicans storming in with their phones going, we're going to infiltrate the skip. The whole thing is very funny. High school play. But no joke. It is some fascist shit that I'm like running into the thing in Congress. You know, doesn't that give you a vibe of like, it's some real fascist shit. Like they're like, we're going to storm into this location and we're going to do it so brazenly that it seems like it's not even wrong what we're doing.

Alexi never thought that they the the running was part of the not literal running but like oh yeah we're we're doing that we're doing it was so you you think it's an attempt for them to make it seem

Maxnormal well that that is in fact trump's whole strategy right now his whole legal defense strategy is he's just coming out and saying yeah i extorted ukraine to get the info on biden and he's like if i say it confidently enough people will go it can't be that bad i'm saying everybody

MerlinSomebody reposted the great bit yesterday. Somebody said, many people are asking questions about my no quid pro quo t-shirt that are clearly answered by my no quid pro quo t-shirt. And that's the thing. They're going to try and they do not have much of a basis in anything right now. And so they are going to try and make this about what they consider a corrupt process. And it's not going great.

MaxI would say my read on it is that as this progresses, we're kind of peeling the layers of the onion here, right? Because what it comes down to – to me what it comes down to like materially is Trump broke the law. Obviously, he broke the law in this instance and a million times before. He's done impeachable offenses over and over and over. Like this whole thing where he was going to have the G7 at his golf course, like we just rode right by that. But that's an impeachable offense right there, right? Like it's like he does them all the time. But the material reality is it doesn't matter if he breaks the law because he has the right political power in the right places

so that there's never any consequences for it, right?

MerlinI half agree with you. I do agree that they're peeling away the onion, but I also think given how silly the Democrats can be, they're smart to mostly focus on one onion.

MaxAnd I think that approach is pretty smart. I don't necessarily know that I have like a prescriptive, like this is what the Democrats should be doing.

Speaker BYeah.

MaxNo, I feel you. We talked about this. You don't want to be optimistic. Yeah, I just don't think that. Anyway, all that aside, Like it is interesting that the Trump administration has like tried all their normal tactics of sort of like kicking dust up into the air and clouding the issue and making it confusing. And now they've gone straight to the part where I don't think that they're sort of outright admitting illegality. But they're like, well, it doesn't matter if it's illegal or not because he's not going to be impeached. Like they're like, let's just lay our cards on the table.

MerlinWell, to that point, Max, I'm really glad you brought that up, Max, because I'm going to do a thing that I don't ordinarily do, which is – and I'll give you a second here too if you can play some audio. So this morning before I came into the office and, you know, I follow this stuff too closely. Shame on me. Tune into C-SPAN for the appeals court hearing on basically the some of the folks trying to get his taxes and the DOJ lawyer responding. And I heard something on C-SPAN that I found very difficult to believe. I was pretty sure I hadn't heard it correctly, but I think I heard it correctly.

So what you're about to hear is a question, something that kept coming up. That's what they call, I think, the Fifth Avenue issue, which is basically saying, oh, so Donald Trump one time said that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and he'd get away with it. And now that has become, in the court case, something that they're talking about as an extreme example of like, oh, can't we at least all agree that if you shot somebody, you could arrest and prosecute him, right?

Speaker BWhat's your view on the Fifth Avenue example? Local authorities couldn't investigate? They couldn't do anything about it?

Speaker AI think once a president is removed from office, any local authority, this is not a permanent immunity. Well, I'm talking about while in office. No. That's the hypo. Nothing could be done.

MerlinThat's your position. That is correct. So that's a nice way to start the day.

AlexYep.

MerlinOh, boy.

AlexThanks. Thanks.

MerlinSo basically, they wouldn't be allowed. Here's the thing. They wouldn't be allowed to stop him. If he did, if he finally said, okay, that's it.

Speaker BOut of beer, out of here, a new dealer. I'm going to just go get an AR something, something. They wouldn't be allowed to stop it.

MaxYou know, I have always felt that just by some sort of like Chekhov's gun type logic that this thing is going to end with him shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, right?

MerlinA hundred percent will end with this.

MaxLike, I mean, that is kind of – I've seen enough prestige TV to kind of know. It's not going to be the last episode in the season. it'll be the second to last episode in the season.

MerlinYeah, and there'll be a disappointing, like, what happens after, who we let be the king. Is it the kid in the wheelchair? Yeah, it's gonna suck.

Speaker BMm-hmm.

MerlinMm-hmm.

MaxWould that be, who would that be? That would, I guess, be Biden?

Speaker BI really have great for guys like you anymore.

MaxWho is the kid in the wheelchair And who's the Bran Stark in this race?

MerlinOh, that's such a good question

MaxI mean, I think it's probably Miriam Williamson

MerlinIvanka? Oh, God Oh, Miriam Williamson, okay

AlexRight?

Speaker BIt's gotta be family, right? Doesn't have to be She's got the

AlexShe can talk to

MaxShe can commune with she sees the three-eyed raven.

AlexOh, God.

MaxRight? She can warg.

AlexYeah.

Speaker B99% sure that she can warg. Oh, okay. So she could warg into Ivanka if needed. Okay. Uh-huh.

MerlinMm-hmm. I feel like it has to be family.

Speaker BI feel like, I mean,

MaxI think Eric would be a great candidate, you know? I met Marianne Williamson. She came to the office and she did an interview on a radio show in the Cards Theater and I saw her speak and... She did some DMing.

Speaker AI heard you did a magic trick for her, and she was very impressed.

MaxI did. So I was doing card tricks for her. While she was doing her event, her staff was sort of milling about, and I did some card tricks for them out in the hallway. And then afterwards, when they were cleaning up, they were like, you have to do a magic trick for Marianne? And I did a magic trick for her, and she liked it. And then she told me that one time at Deepak Chopra's house, she saw a real mind reader. An actual reader of minds. A real mind reader, yeah. That's tremendous. but I liked did you see her talk?

yeah you were here, you were running the feed what did you think? what were your thoughts?

Alexno comment

MaxI know how you feel about her DMing I liked her oh right, she did a photo op with Dungeons and Ice and everything nice she topped a campaign she said one of her great quotes was as a politician I roll the dice every day

Alexshe says she faces dragons all the time in Washington

MaxThanks, I hate it. I liked her position on reparations. I think she actually probably has the most progressive and best policy on reparations of any Democratic candidate in the field. And I actually am interested in her idea to create a Department of Peace. I think that's probably a good idea.

MerlinWhat about, are there any Second Amendment issues around familiars, whether that's a cat or an owl or a rat. Is there anything we need to be talking about in terms of munitions? And really, if you're going to get a Crookshanks or you want to talk about it and have a conversation, debate me, right? Debate me, change my mind, and you know what? Know the terminology. You know, if it's not a Persian, don't call it a Persian. Call a cat a rat and a rat a cat. No, sorry, you're out of the discourse. Debate me.

AlexHow am I going to feed my 30 to 50 feral hogs without my plastic water bottles because she did not like that I put those out for her?

Speaker BWhat is this egg that you're fondling?

AlexThis is, oh, this is my.

Speaker BOh, dear. You guys need me for this one?

AlexI don't think you're supposed to ask about my eggs. No, no, no. Alex is like flipping.

MaxThis is my new physical therapy. Back me up here. She's sort of gingerly rolling this black egg in between her fingers.

AlexThis is my new special physical therapy egg I got this morning. and it's stage three of a series of eggs that I've been using to build up my hand strength.

MaxOkay.

AlexSo that is the answer to one egg I'm fondling. It's a squishy.

MaxFinish me over. It's squishy, too. Are you going to walk into a fire with that thing and catch a physical therapy dragon out of it?

Speaker BI fight dragons every day, Matt. Anyway, sorry, that was a critical miss.

Alexwe're talking about the skiff the republicans the impeachment i don't know what else we got

Maxuh we're oh i have a question five minutes in yeah god damn um how you hanging in there dr don i'm good i'm good dr don i have a question for you um i don't know if maybe i don't actually don't know if you um if you know the answer to this but are there uh have the democratic field said anything about about uh your like public health areas is there like policy differences Oh, yeah. Is there a plank in the platform for food safety?

Speaker AWell, so actually this is a nice segue to why I'm here in Chicago this week. So I'm here for the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance, which is helping the food industry implement part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was an act signed by the last good president.

Jimmy Carter. They made him put his farm in a truck. He had to sell his peanut farm, Max. He had to sell his peanut farm. I'm so angry about that. What a good guy. So no, so Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act. And that actually transformed the FDA side of the food industry.

But as far as I know, none of the candidates are really talking about food safety. But we got all we can handle with dealing with the Food Safety Modernization Act.

MaxIsn't there something where the candidates, because they're all in Iowa and New Hampshire, and they start pandering to farmers and they start offering them, oh, we'll change these rules and those rules. But that hasn't really – you haven't heard anything?

Speaker AI haven't heard anything about that, no.

AlexThis is incredibly stressful. Dr. Don, can I pivot to – let's circle back to this later. No, I do have questions.

MaxYou know that I have questions for Dr. Don. So many questions. Can we just start peppering Dr. Don with our safety questions?

AlexOh, one general overall question. in hospitals when they remind doctors to wash their hands, is that for us as patients to see? Or do doctors and nurses need reminding like food worker? I don't think food workers actually need to be reminded. That's just required by law, right?

Speaker AYeah. Well, it's required. Yes, it's required by whatever your state and local food code is. Got it. Got it. We can talk about whether the requirements are really legitimate or not. The problem is, not to creep you guys out, but if people wash their hands as much as the food code says that they should wash their hands, they would probably spend 20 minutes out of every hour washing their hands. I'm okay with that.

MaxYou're saying this like it's a bad thing.

Speaker AI'm not a small business owner, but I would love a clean hand in my food. Well, yes. Yes, but people can wear gloves. They can use utensils.

MerlinMax, do you feel it coming? Do you feel it coming? Here it comes. I can already feel it coming. Well, it depends. Here it comes.

Speaker BGo ahead, Don. Oh, please, by all means, dissemble, dither, and equivocate here on our program. Welcome. Hi, Merlin.

Speaker AHey, buddy. Oh, my God.

AlexOh, my God.

Speaker ATurns out too much hand washing is even worse. Well, no, so if you wash your hands too much, you could get dermatitis, but I would rather...

AlexOh my god.

Speaker BHere's the thing. If you have a whole lot... It turns out changing gloves a lot makes upsetting noises.

MaxIt turns out if you change your rubber gloves too many times a day, it increases the odds that one of the gloves will become too tense and it will snap your penis and render you infertile.

Speaker BYou know, the thing is This is something we've been looking at in my lab, and it turns out there's no way you can shit too much in a kitchen. Because you could get dermatitis.

MaxNow, I have a study here paid for by the Purell Corporation.

Speaker BOh, my God. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Listen, listen.

MerlinIt's believed that really every veteran chef has come into the soup on at least a biannual basis.

Speaker Band then if they don't, they won't be able to finish when they're at home. It's what we call the mother sauce. Hi, I'm Robert Béchamel. Now what you're looking at here is the scoby. You do not want to break my sauce, buddy. You do not want to see what happens when that goes down. Anyway, try the chowder. Rejoice, it's a living beverage.

So, Don, what were you going to say? Can we talk about Alex's mask?

MaxI was just going to ask you about this, Dr. Don. Oh, Merlin sent it. I was just going to ask you about this article. Oh. Okay, well, on a quick follow-up on the hospital thing. So I have a friend who works at a company where one of the things they're trying to do is create a piece of technology that doctors can wear where they can scan it to log how many times and when and where they're washing their hands. And they're trying to sort of monitor hand washing and stuff in hospitals. And I think from what their studies and case studies are that there is insufficient handwashing happening in hospitals and that you could do things like prevent MRSA from spreading and things if everyone followed the guidelines of washing hands in hospitals.

Speaker AWell, yeah, it's handwashing. I think sanitizers have a role to play. I'm required by the Purell Corporation to say that every time I talk about handwashing. And actually, you know. You just got PayPal'd $60.

Speaker BIt's spreading.

MaxDr. Don, you want to tell us about something you like?

Speaker BThis episode of Dubai Friday is brought to you by Purell. Keep wheezing that juice. Oh, God.

Speaker ASo, I mean, infection control in hospitals is important business. I was just handling a manuscript for a journal where I'm an editor, where they're looking at contact surfaces.

Speaker BWe're wearing gloves.

Speaker AI was typing very carefully on my keyboard.

Speaker BIt's okay if you finish on it. Turns out that's healthy. Sorry, sorry, go. Infection. So we're being the worst. Why does anyone with dignity come on this show? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm going to mute now.

MaxMerlin is acting out, and I'm encouraging him by laughing. but I'm actually so interested

Speaker Bin what you have to say. Merlin is being so rude. I'm going to mute for three minutes. I'm muting for three minutes. I'm so sorry.

Speaker ANo, it's good. Where's Quinn? We need some infractions.

AlexI'm just here. I'm being good. Quinn, notice I'm being very good.

Speaker AI love you guys so much. This is so much fun to do. It's fine. Infection control in hospitals is an important issue and we need a multi-faceted approach. It's hand washing. It's using sanitizers. It's figuring out surfaces that actually cause bacteria to die. So you can use certain metal ions that are toxic to the bacteria that will help with the cleaning process.

MaxIs this like copper surfaces? Yeah, copper.

Speaker AAnd there's some other chemicals as well. Is that real? Yeah, for sure it's real. Interesting. For sure.

MaxSo I've heard like copper handrails, copper. Okay, interesting.

Speaker ABut the problem is that copper is very expensive, right? So you've got to figure out, well, we're not going to make the whole handrail out of copper. We're just going to figure out where the touch points are. And so, yeah, there's a lot of cool, good science coming out around this, including the article that Merlin sent, which says that doctors should not wear neckties.

MerlinThis one blew me away. It's from a few years ago, but I'm really interested in any of the things. I mean, you know, like, turns out stuff. I think it's interesting when you get one of those, the call is coming from inside the house type things where you're like, oh, I'm the dick here. And so maybe, Don, maybe you could address this. Is this true in your experience? This is an article. Well, I remember hearing about this on, I want to say NPR, where they've been looking at ways to reduce all kinds of problems in hospitals. And they've done all this stuff with hand washing. And we've done seminars. And we put all the things everywhere.

And maybe you could tell us about this. But I think what it came down to was they eventually said that doctors' neckties in hospitals are one of the most disgusting things you can have. People are coughing on it. They're touching it. Tell us what you know about this.

Speaker AYeah. So this is a 2006 article, which looks like it's just like a policy statement. It's not an actual peer-reviewed research article. But it makes perfect sense, right? In retrospect, of course, the neckties just hang in there. It's touching everything. It's not getting – maybe – I don't know how often you wash your neckties. But I mean maybe once a year they might get dry cleaned.

AlexWhat? Wait. Aren't you supposed to do it every single – I don't wear ties often. But every single time I get them dry cleaned. is that like I have to say

MaxI own that's really good idea I don't know that I've ever dry cleaned a tie I think I've cleaned a tie I could definitely count it on one hand I'm not a big tie man but maybe if I got some like a chowder on it I would dry clean it

Alexbut I don't do that oh my god oh okay I'm sorry Dr. Don please can you know Alex that would be like

Maxsaying that you like launder your belt like it's just like I don't know

Alexyou put it on every day no no no it is fabric you could get a copper belt And yes, I have had fabric belts in the past that are laundry washer safe.

MaxAlex, when you brought this topic up, you were waving around two bottles of pills.

AlexOh, I was just reading them and wondering if I don't think, Dr. Don, I don't think you can comment on them. Because caffeine and L-theanine, a friend of the show, Matt Enloe, gave me this cocktail. I don't think you can have any comment on them officially because it's not FDA. He's not that kind of doctor.

MaxIt's not an FDA.

AlexExactly. Well, there's no like food.

MaxDr. Dom, could you take a look at this rash?

Speaker ANo. No. I will look at Alex's pills, Max. I will not look at your rash.

AlexGet the suntheanine. It's the baller shit. No, no, no. You need to take it with caffeine. So it is a two to one ratio.

MaxWhy don't you guys just skip the middle man and take the UK Sudafed?

Speaker BI got new drugs. I got new drugs.

AlexDon't worry. I'm there. Thanks, Adina. I'm working on it. I'm working so close.

MerlinI just thought this was interesting because I don't remember if this was included in the reporting that I heard, but it's very interesting because, well, you know, let's pivot a little bit to culture here, which is that there's a lot of shit that doctors do that is about expressing status and power in what they do. You think about those fucking lab coats. You think about every time you see an ad on MSNBC about like this drug that makes you want to commit suicide, there's always some doctor. Oh, how can you tell? Well, they have a lab coat and a stethoscope, right? And the necktie is part of that. I bet there was huge pushback to this because it's going to make you not have the same authority.

Speaker AYou know what I mean? Well, and the one that gets me is when I see people wearing scrubs like out in the community around the hospital. It's like, no, those are for in the hospital and then regular clothes for outside the hospital. Oh, I never thought of that. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean it just doesn't make any sense.

AlexOh, my God.

Speaker AOh, my God. Yeah. So I do want to talk about Alex's drugs here. So L-theanine, which apparently, quote, promotes relaxation and restores a sense of calm. And it's a dietary supplement. And this is, again, a bit outside my area of expertise, but dietary supplements are regulated essentially as food.

But, again, this is back to politics. A lot of the dietary supplement industry is based in Utah, and the senators from Utah wanted to kind of make it easy for that industry to succeed. So the rules are pretty loosey-goosey.

Speaker BWell, wasn't that also where Herbalife was based?

Speaker AOh, it might have been. Oh, boy.

MerlinWhere they were doing like pyramid scheme ephedrine basically? I'm pretty sure. I mean, because I know I don't want to I don't want to cast an aspersion, but I think there's a lot of interest in network marketing opportunities inside of certain religions. Have you heard this? Yep. Yeah.

AlexOh, yes. You know what? I'm going to ask my sister in law about this because she is actually a biochemist or is getting her PhD in biochemistry. I don't know. I think it is what Dr. Veronica does. Kind of. I'm not sure. Um, but like, I think about, um, uh, what's it called? Melatonin. Oh, melatonin. Like Merlin, both of us have tried this, right?

MerlinAnd it like, I take all of this stuff every day.

AlexYeah. I take it all. It fucks me up. This isn't. Well, it's a hormone.

MerlinYou're not supposed to take it too much like I do. It's a, it's a hormone.

AlexIt's not good for you. I hate it. It, it gives me like genuine, terrible, terrible nightmares.

MerlinOne problem with, one problem with melatonin. I'm not a doctor. Um, uh, but I am a real worm. Uh, the, the, um, the, uh, The problem with melatonin is that a lot of people are taking way more than they need. I think the effective dose, if you believe in melatonin, like I believe, you don't need as much as in a lot of stuff. And maybe Dr. Don knows about that, the hormone part of it. Like you don't want too much of that getting jacked into your matrix every day.

Speaker ASo I guess sort of the top line summary is be careful with dietary supplements, right? Because they're regulated, but they're not heavily regulated. I mean, and I would absolutely echo Alex's comment about melatonin. And actually, I take it sometimes when I'm traveling to help me sleep. And I think I took some last night before I went to bed. And yeah, it just gives me weird dreams. So yeah. But the other thing too, and you guys have talked about this before on the show. What's the one that you were taking, Alex? Kratom? Oh, yeah. And there were salmonella recalls for some kratom. And if you think about it, it's an herb.

It makes sense. Yeah, it's an herb. It comes from the natural environment. It can get contaminated just like spices. and spices are among the most contaminated of things in our food supply. So, yeah, you should be careful.

AlexYeah, and it's regulated in Illinois. Also, I realize this thing is super illegal in other places. It's very strange.

MaxDr. Dunn, what about crocodile? Because that's what I'm into.

AlexWait, what? No, hold on.

MaxLook it up. Okay, I have a new topic.

AlexCan I give Dr. Dunn a new topic?

Speaker BAll right, Max is bored. Let's move on. We're not done with science questions though, right? No, no.

MaxI have a new science question. So do you guys know or use – I believe we must have talked about this on Dubai Friday before, but the sinus blaster?

AlexYep.

MaxYou use it, Alex?

AlexI have in the past, and then I stopped because people will die.

MaxYou mean the amoeba introducer? The amoeba injector. The amoeba injector 9000. Now, okay. So, Dr. John, what this is is it was recommended by an actual medical doctor for me to help me with my chronic sinus problems. Same. So it's like the idea of a neti pot where you're like running water through your sinuses. But it's a different design. It's like a newer thing than a neti pot. So it has a plastic bulb on the top that you fill with like a Diet Coke can worth of saline water.

So you do like a salt pouch and then a water. And then you put pressure on it so you're like irrigating. You're like blasting out your sinuses. And you do one nostril and the other. And it feels like you're waterboarding yourself. It's very exciting. And it does have a – the one that I purchased from CVS has a something-something micron filter so that it advertises that it's safe to use tap water with it. So I have two big topics for you.

Is it safe to – you know about the – so some people have said that if you use like a neti pot with tap water in some parts of the country, you can get amoebas that will kill you in your brain. Is it with the filter in there, is it safe to use the tap water?

Speaker AWell, so for sure people do get amoeba infections, right? Generally, they get it from swimming in water where the amoeba is, like stagnant water or things like that.

AlexSo like hotel swimming pools?

Speaker AWell, I think more natural environments because hotel swimming pools should be chlorinated. So natural, natural, unchlorinated water supplies, right? Or, you know, like ponds and creeks and things like that. For sure, you know, I think it's probably theoretically possible that you could get an amoeba from tap water. I think that generally speaking, our tap water is relatively amoeba free. If there was a filter and the filter was working and it was a 0.2 micron filter, then that would definitely keep amoeba out because they're bigger than 0.2 microns.

What they wouldn't do, I don't want to stop you from using this, Max, but I have to fully disclose as a scientist I'm prohibited from lying about things. It would not filter out viruses. So if there were viruses in the water, they would go through. Virus water.

MaxYeah. Now, what if I – I've also heard it – so I've definitely heard it recommended for an unfiltered product like a neti pot that you purchase one of those gallons of distilled water, and then you mix that with your saline, and then you blast that. Is that safe to blast? That's what I do.

Speaker AThat distilled water should be safer than tap water. Or you could just take tap water and boil it, right? And then if you boil it, it's, you know, obviously don't put it in your nose when it's still boiling. Oh, yeah, you're a busy guy. I understand. Stores to open and things to do.

MaxOkay, so here's my, so that's question number one. Question number two, which I'm very interested in, is I have heard some back and forth on the internet. You know, I Google everything until I work myself into paralysis about being able to do anything. But I've heard that basically, and this actually makes perfect sense to me. Like let's say you're sick and you have some sort of infection or virus or whatever and you blast your sinuses, right? And then a couple weeks later, I use the thing again. It does kind of have a certain logic that this thing could be contaminated and you could be reintroducing the original thing that made you sick.

Or obviously, I mean, I'm not sharing with another person, but it's like the same idea of like, you know. So the question I have is how should I be sanitizing this thing? Because it should be somehow you should be doing it, right?

Speaker AYeah, like I know. So my wife uses a neti pot. It seems like kind of a gross idea, so I just rather have a stuffy nose. That's just how I deal with it. Have you ever tried being waterboarded? I have not tried being waterboarded.

MaxNow, I'll tell you, like there's this real feeling of when your sinuses just fill with water, it's a real feeling of panic that sets in. And then when that goes away, it feels pretty good. So you're topping yourself.

AlexI have a video of myself doing this. I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, it's great. It's great.

MaxDo you ever start, you do like a sputtering cough? Oh. And salt water flies into your throat?

AlexOh, yeah. And then you spit out the salt water, and I'm like, oh, that's right. It's all connected. It's pretty cool.

MaxDid your doctor tell you to do this?

AlexThe blasty one. The blaster. He told me to. So I think we have the same one that's at Walgreens. It's like blue. Yeah, yeah. And it looks like an enema type thing.

MerlinHave you tried the Arm & Hammer one?

AlexI don't know what. No.

MerlinThis is recommended to me by a celebrity friend who swears by it. And Arm & Hammer makes it.

AlexOh, hold on now. Hold on now.

MerlinArm & Hammer makes a blaster that you can get at a drugstore, and it just shoots saline in. It's not hot like you get with one of your pots, but you can just keep it in the shower and shoot snot rockets.

AlexSee, this scares. So is this a little bit like Flonase?

MaxLet me ask. No, no, not at all. Oh, it's a sprayer?

AlexArm & Hammer is simply saline. I see, I see. Okay.

MaxSprayer.

AlexSplatter. Simply saline nasal mist, instant relief for everyday congestion. 4.5 ounces. You can also get one with Elmo on it.

MaxMerlin, can I ask you a question? I've always wondered how do you use this? Do you put it in your nostril and you hold it down until it comes out the other nostril? Or are you just like spritzing?

MerlinI mean, the way I use it is very simple. Alex and I swear by the turns out nostril technique for clearing.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinBecause the turns out technique is it seems like you should try and blow out the side. Well, you know, we're not even getting into the thing about how your sinuses change side every 90 minutes, which was news to me. But there will be one side that's always more congested than the other. This is really gross, and I apologize. And so if you're trying to clear a side, the ironic part is, the turns out part is, you should start with the side that is less congested. So if you're blowing your nose, you know, into an according to oil tissue, start with the side that's clearer, and it actually weirdly clears out the other side.

AlexOh, have you never done this?

Speaker BCan I get an answer to my question? Oh, sorry. I didn't answer your question. So no, I keep it in the... But what does it do? What does it do? So there's three cameras on the back.

MerlinYou put it in the gimbal, put the lime in the coconut, and then I keep it in the shower right next to my Neutrogena. And I just go...

Speaker BI'll give it a blast right into there. And then I go... So now, is it... Are you blasting enough liquid that it's coming out the other nostril? I feel like... I mean, it's not going to do a full wraparound netty style, but it's definitely getting in there. Faux shizzle. Yeah.

MaxOkay. So what are you doing? You're doing like a three Mississippi? No, no.

MerlinWell, I'll do it until I really feel it. Like until I have regrets about my life. And that's usually enough. And then I just work the hot water.

Speaker BI don't need a spray for this. I'm willing to cock and just shoot it out, you know? I'm willing to try this. Cock. That's the sound of me shooting a farmer's hanky in the shower.

MaxOkay, so let me return. Should I purchase an autoclave? Oh, I want an autoclave.

Speaker BI want an autoclave so much.

Speaker AThis sounds like a great challenge. Well, no, we've talked about it. We've talked about it for sure.

MaxHow should I be sanitizing this thing?

Speaker AAll right, so let's close the loop on this. So with my wife's neti pot, it goes in the automatic dishwasher, right? And we can run it on a sanitizer cycle. Now, I don't know what the device is that you're using.

MaxCan I describe it? So, yeah, sure. Okay, so it has like three components, okay? Here, let me get a picture. I'm going to pull up a picture of it. So it has a big plastic, clear plastic bulb that's kind of that soft plastic that you can squeeze. Computer is fully frozen. Has anyone noticed that the new Mac OS is a little...

AlexOh, did you install... Oh, my God.

MaxIt's a little buggy. It's a little bit bulbous. I haven't upgraded yet. I'm probably the first to observe that, right? A little bit pear-shaped, yeah. Okay, so Dr. Don, we'll put the link to this product in the show notes so people can see. So yeah, this is it. Okay, so it's got kind of a plastic bulb where the liquid goes where you squeeze it. And then that's threaded and it unscrews. And then it has this two-part rigid cap. And so the white part has an interior structure with, I think, like a HEPA filter in it. And then there's the blue thing, which is just sort of a protective shell.

so the water is squeezed through the HEPA filter into the blue part and then it comes out here. Now, I think if I put this into the dishwasher, this part would all... Let me stipulate. I'm not dishwashing the HEPA filter. That stays out. But I would dishwash the rigid blue part.

Speaker ASo what do the instructions say? Do they have cleaning directions? I don't trust them. Oh, well, yeah, but that's where you start.

Speaker BWell, that's in the pocket of big manual.

MaxI don't know why it's never occurred to me

Speaker Bto read the instructions.

Speaker ASo, I mean, theoretically, if the chamber that has the liquid is contaminated, it's going through the HEPA filter, so it's being filtered out. But I – yeah, I mean, I just would – yeah, I mean, sometimes things are designed by people that don't understand sanitary design.

MerlinDon, Dr. Don, I don't want to oversummarize your career in one sentence. But it strikes me that a lot of the wisdom you have to share comes down to a very interesting, surprising, turns out sort of thing, which is that things come in contact with other things. We often don't realize that things – no, no, I'm being dead honest. This comes back to the spinach. It comes back to all the things. But it seems to me that a lot of what we don't realize as dorks, snorks, and consumers is how often a thing has touched another thing,

and we didn't know that thing touched that thing, whether that's a necktie or whether that's your spinach water and your chicken water. I mean, isn't that kind of – that seems like something that's always top of mind for you. It's the like, hmm, it may not be obvious, but like that water touched, you become like an OCD person. I had a friend with OCD really bad in college who was like, if I touch the steering wheel and then that gets in my hand and then I touch my eye. And that's how I feel so much of the time with this. We're like, what if my chicken water gets in my neti pot?

Speaker ARight. And well, here's the thing about bacteria, Merlin. They're small and you can't see them. Right. And so, yeah. So part of what I do as a microbiologist is just try to imagine like what they're doing. Right. and how they would go from one place to another and when they would be able to grow or when they would die, right? Because that's just my career, as you so eloquently summarized.

Speaker BOh, did I make you mad?

Speaker AOh, not at all.

Speaker BNo, no, no, you got it.

MerlinYou nailed it. Well, I also want to talk about wiping my ass with this tool at some point. What did you have, man? With what? Oh, you'll get to it. Don't worry about that. You're not getting out of that fucking room until we talk about this toilet aids tool,

Maxlong-reach comfort. I had a philosophy professor who told me this. I think it sounds now to me like maybe he, It was kind of – it's almost like a Zizek thing. But he was like, I was in this store – he may have been paraphrasing this. I don't remember. But the story was – he was in a store and he saw a soccer ball being sold in like a sports store. And the soccer ball was wrapped in like a cellophane, like a wrapper. And then it was like packaged in like a clear clamshell and a cardboard box. And he was like, it's so weird because the intended purpose of this thing, like what you're going to do with it is take it out of all that packaging and then put it in the dirt and kick it.

with your shoes. It's a ball. And so, but he was like, you know, there is something about that act of like when you buy the soccer ball and you peel off the layers of packaging and then you take the final layer of plastic off where it almost lets you, it allows you to believe that you're almost giving birth to this project, right? Like it's never- Like you taking the sticker off your phone, kind of. Yes, like it's, well, I mean the sticker off the phone, it does have a lot of that little symbolic, like you're taking the layers out. You're decanting your new life. Yes, Yes, it almost like, I mean, it really is this moment of like the virgin birth, of like this thing didn't come from anywhere.

It came to you, and you're the one who's doing the final step of putting it into the world. And it is weird because like we live like we're so alienated from like where this stuff comes from, right? We're like fully alienated from like the actual means of production as consumers. Like the stuff is all made.

Speaker BThis is the interpolation. This is the interpolation of the ideology is that the woman is like the soccer ball.

MerlinShe is virgin or she is whore.

MaxBut this stuff is made thousands of miles away in China by people that we have no concept of. Like there was another – I mean there was this other story. Do you remember there was like a phone that shipped and someone found pictures of the factory workers taking selfies on their new phone that they got? And it was a big to-do. There was a big – it was like an Android phone and people were mad about it. And I was like, it's so weird that that became a story, but it's just what it is, is it's reminding people that your stuff comes from somewhere. And we don't always like to think about that because it's, for a lot of reasons, it makes people have feelings.

And I think that there's something there about what you're saying about the nature of Dr. Don's work is like, you know, Dr. Don, you're always thinking of where stuff, of those, you know, you're not just buying spinach, right? But we also love the theater.

MerlinLike every, what happens when you order a glass of water with room service? Well, ordinarily, I try to get a pitcher of water. But what happens when they bring you two glasses of water? Oh, it's got a little cardboard cover on it. Yeah.

Speaker AKeeping the germs out.

MerlinOr it's got a cardboard cover or it's got some saran wrap on it, which is about as useful to me as the arrow point on my toilet paper. Like, great. Now three people have touched it.

MaxBut I was listening to, I want to say it was maybe a Planet Money episode where they were following the investigators who were tracking the lettuce. the, was it the romaine lettuce outbreak from last year and it was from like they found this one field where there was a creek where the horses or the cows were like shitting in the creek and like, you know what? It's so weird how much of our world is set up so that when you buy the romaine lettuce you're not thinking, you're not supposed to think about that, right? You're buying it in this little Tupperware

tin and it's like, oh it didn't come from anywhere.

Speaker ARight, and it's been triple washed. Right.

Speaker BAnyway, that's my, those are my musings. I think that's incredibly interesting.

MerlinLike, think about, like, so I used to work at McDonald's in the 80s. And, of course, I was, you know, already radicalized. And I'd be like, why can't we recycle some of this stuff? I'm like, you fucking ding-a-ling. What are we going to recycle? Everything here is fucking styrofoam, waxy paper. And it's like McDonald's will never recycle. And, of course, now McDonald's at least pretends to recycle. But, like, then, so then, okay, so, yeah, oh, great. Now McDonald's is green. Yay. But then you get into, like, even in the 90s when we're all going, like, hey, are there easy ways for us to reduce waste? Like, do I really need my toothpaste to be in a box?

Do I really need my deodorant to be in a box? Do I really need my CD to be in a long box? And for each one of those things, the secret reason was, well, it's easier to ship and market. But the stated reason was, no, no, no. Like, this is what people want. People want this long box on their CD. People want, you know what I mean? They would, they would turn into this thing like, we're just responding to the markets. And, and then now, I mean, going by deodorant, it's not in a box you buy toothpaste it's not usually so much in a box and i guess they could say oh we don't want to tie in all situation but i think it's super interesting i think you're are

actually on to something in terms of like like me uh half joking totally serious like i want to walk into a hotel room and feel like i'm the first person who's ever been in there i want to be the one that deflowers this room and like i know that's i know that's impossible because germans exist. There's no way this room is clean.

This has been passed around like a bong in your third year of college, this room. But I still like that feeling of feeling like, oh, please at least let me have the theater of the plastic on my glass and not seeing butt cheeks imprinted

Maxin the bedspread. Dr. Dunn, do you ever encounter, so I feel like sometimes you find yourself in this position where people have these little bits of theater, these, oh, if we put the cardboard over the water, then we can imagine that it's sanitary, right? Right. It invites you to believe things that might not be true. Do people get upset when you are like – I mean people want to believe in that stuff in a way, right? You know, and you're – like do you ever meet that kind of resistance from people of like they don't want to hear that that stuff isn't as good as they think it is?

AlexLike me right now.

Speaker AWell, there you go. The funniest one that I saw though, like if you're ever in an airport lounge and there's fruit there, sometimes the fruit will be wrapped up. So the apples will be wrapped up. I went somewhere and they wrapped up the bananas. And I'm like, it has a covering. It doesn't need a covering on top of the covering. That's actually brilliant. That's amazing.

MaxThat's great. All right. Let's talk about the butt wiper. Is that the next word? Wait. So how should I be? So I'm sorry. So I want a straight answer. on this. So the problem is, Dr. Don, if I put it in the dishwasher, the interior of this thing, it's got a little screw top on it. The dishwasher is not going to get in there.

Speaker AWell, right. And so part of what does the sanitizing on the dishwasher cycle is the temperature of the water, right? And so as long as the heat penetrates, it's okay. But again, I would be very careful about making recommendations for this device without looking to see what the manufacturer says, because you could, in fact, crack it or make it worse by putting it in the dishwasher if it's not designed for that. So it really, I mean, I hate, I'm not trying to dodge your question, but I would really need to look at what the manufacturer says, what the directions say, look a little bit more about how it's constructed.

MaxOkay. What about this? I see these ads on Instagram now, and they advertise a little UV light sarcophagus that you can put your phone in. Have you talked about this on the podcast? We talked about this on Dan's one of the ones. Yeah. Yeah. Does it work? I don't think so. Leaving aside if your phone gets so dirty that you need it, which it does not.

Speaker AYeah, exactly. I mean, this would be fun to do sometimes, like swab our phones. Actually, I was trying to get funding for a project to go out and swab phones. And actually, food companies are interested in – we have all these touch – all these touch screens. Are you coming on to me?

AlexI'm sorry.

Speaker AAll these touch screens out there in restaurants and stuff and do people – how dirty do they get? Look at the airport.

MerlinAt the airport where it's like, oh, please have this – Newark Airport has an iPad. I'm sure you've seen this, Newark, which is –

Speaker AIt's horrible, Merlin. It's an abomination.

MerlinEmpirically the worst airport in the world. And you go into that giant Uber like food court area and every single chair you have to look at an iPad.

Speaker AI know. And you're like, oh my god. I turn it around so I don't have to look at it. I know. I put a jacket over it. It's so angry. Yeah. So angry.

MerlinYou know, here's the thing though. I mean like when you're a waiter, you learn lots of stuff about – when I was a waiter, even at the relatively informal cafe where I worked, I learned a lot of stuff about theater that makes everybody happy. And so, like, if people ever went into the actual fucking kitchen at this privately owned tourist trap cafe, they would be aghast. But, like, what's the kind of thing they teach you? Well, like, yes, all the things we've talked about. This should feel like the freshest, cleanest food on the best plates and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But, like, shit, like, easy stuff. Like, don't – this sounds so obvious, but I've had this happen. Thumb in the water glass. Have you ever had somebody set down a glass of water grasping the top with their thumb literally in the water?

Speaker AWell, Merlin, I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me this weekend when I was in Chicago. I was invited to someone's house, and I asked for a glass of wine. Did I dodge a bullet? I dodged a bullet. And the host very, very nicely brought out a bottle of wine and three glasses. Do you know how he carried the glasses to the table, Merlin?

MerlinDon't you even hint at this? No. Did the bowling ball three fingertips? Yes. Oh, yes. He did.

Speaker AHe did. Jesus. Take the wheel. Because I am a polite person, I did not mention it. I poured wine into the glass that's going to have a slightly sterilizing effect. And just kept pouring it. And I drank out of that glass, and I didn't say anything. And I was not going to bring it up because I had honestly forgotten about it until you brought it up, Merlin. So anyway, we can talk about who that person might have been. Good to know.

AlexOh, my God.

MaxQuinn, this is Max.

Speaker AI need you to think very – Do not cut this out, Quinn. Quinn, leave it all in, Quinn. I want you to think very carefully. I have a PhD in food science, and I'm a food safety microbiologist, Quinn, and you have to leave this in.

MaxCounterpoint, who signs your checks?

Speaker AQuinn, you can work for me this week. I will pay your salary.

AlexQuinn, who are you loyal to? Who are you loyal to? I'll actually go to you. Yep, yep. Cheers.

MerlinQuinn, hand over the gun. Quinn, who will you kill for?

MaxCome on, Quinn. We can stop and get a pizza. We'll get a pepperoni pizza. We'll get a cold beer.

AlexWhat a weird offer.

MaxNo one knows that reference? Our listeners thought it was funny. Tweet at Alex and Merlin if you thought that was funny. Should we do our challenge? I want to talk about the toilet. Maybe that's our after show. Is that after show content?

Speaker BMine's out for delivery, boys.

MaxMine is out for delivery. Oh, you ordered it?

Speaker BDidn't we all agree we were getting a toilet? You both ordered it?

MaxCan you tease what it is, and then we're going to get Dr. Don's take in the after show? What are we talking about?

MerlinWhat if I simply read the description? Please do. In a minute, Max is going to tell you how to get access to the Dubai Friday after show, where we'll be discussing Toilet Aid's tools. long ToiletAid's tools long reach comfort wipe extends your reach over 15 inches grips toilet paper or pre-moised wipes by Fawner. Fawner. Fawner? So Max, if people want to hear me

Speaker Btalk about increasing my reach, where would people find that? By over 15 inches? Yeah, I'm known for my reach. Over 15 inches.

MaxThey can really get in there with 15 inches.

Speaker BYeah.

Speaker AThere's a whole lot of different toilet reach tools on the internet. It's quite amazing.

MaxWell, you can hear us talk about our plans for the extendable ass wiper on the 2xFriday after show.

Speaker BRestore the reach increase or not.

MaxOh, boy. Oh, boy. Now, how does this work? Well, you have money and we want your money because we need to spend it on things like the reach increase. And for the low, low, low price of $5 a month, you can become a member of the Dubai Friday Patreon at giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. You give us those $5 a month and you get to hear about the asswiper, the reach around, the whole kit and caboodle.

Speaker BAll the fix-its.

MaxAnd in the after show, Dr. Don will give us the exclusive answer on how to clean the sinus rinse, the actual answer. in the after show. So true, so strong, very special.

And let's see, what else we got? You can also become a member for $10, and we will periodically send you treats and surprises in the mail. And we have a doozy coming up. I'm not supposed to raise expectations, but you're going to want to move up to that $10 level if you want some pretty cool shit in the next month or so.

Pitch over. Add over. Pitch over. Use the offer code SHAFFNERGROUP. We're 20% off on your first order.

AlexChallenge. Challenge. Oh, boy. Challenge this week was do NFC. Do an NFC. Do an NFC. Do an NFC. Did anybody do an NFC?

MaxOh, I did.

AlexOh, yeah. Oh, all right. All right. Merlin, can you tell us what NFC or near field communication is?

MerlinSo mostly in iOS and kind of in other places, it's something called Siri Shortcuts, which is a thing that introduced in, I want to say, iOS 12 that enables you to do some basic bits of programming, do some bits of Siri learning from things that you do. And like all things Siri, it's kind of a lot of different things. But what we're looking at today is doing what are called personal automations that allow you to tap your compliant phone on a near-field communication tag or sticker

and then have things happen. When I click my phone on this thing, accomplish the following things with Siri shortcuts. So, you know, some trivial applications of that would be turning lights on and off.

There's all different things you can do. And so that was our challenge this week. Did we do an NFC?

MaxWell, here's my question about the NFC stuff. Do you have an opening statement, Max? I have an opening statement, which is like I actually did use this, and I found some pretty cool stuff to do with it, but I think you have to have a little bit of other automation in your life happening, like some other smart house kind of type stuff happening in order for the NFC to really be cool. Would you guys stipulate to that? No. You would not?

AlexNo. The thing that I am presenting, I mean, I have a whole bunch of NFC stuff.

MaxMaybe I'm not using my, Dr. Don, do you go in for any of this clap trap?

Speaker AWell, I was going to ask because I have a dumb home. It is not smart at all. I have nothing going on except my phone does know when I arrive at home and when I arrive at the office.

MaxHow do you, what do you talk to to turn the lights on and off?

Speaker AI'd tell my wife to do it, Max.

MerlinI think I'm going to agree and disagree with everybody, which is that it really is beneficial as a way – it can be most beneficial as a way to leverage other smart home things. But the frustrating part that I will keep to myself because we're running short on time is that, boy, it really stops at the water's line for lots of different stuff. So, like, for me, I went into this looking for things that specifically would make the most sense by tapping NFC. as against things where voice really is easier.

So if I say, hey, dingus, turn office lights off, that's way easier to me than going out and seeking out something physical. Like, that's crazy. If I can yell it across the room. So I did look for things where specifically there's something that's easier to accomplish physically. But Dr. Don, for example, one of the ones I worked on that kind of works, but is, I'm going to keep working on because I need it and want it, is basically like a start podcast workflow where I tap it and it turns on do not disturb till the end of my next event. So, you know, there's all kinds of things that you can leverage in shortcuts that are not obvious.

This is not an intuitive application to use, I feel. But there is some neat stuff that is not just smart home stuff. I mean, all the examples you see are, to me, to my mind, really, like, dumb. I keep seeing this one of somebody putting a sticker on a lampshade. And it's like, really? You're going to tap your lampshade with your phone? Like, that's the easiest way you have to turn that off? That's weird to me. Like, at the point where you're using something physical to do something physical, like, You could do it with your voice, but instead you have a meta layer of physicality. That's odd to me. Unless it sets off routines, which currently you would have to do manually in iOS.

It exists in Google. It exists in Amazon. But you can't leverage that unless you get into some really crazy Zapier stuff, which I didn't get up to. But there are uses for this for sure that don't require you to have Dingai.

Alex, do you have my back on this?

AlexYes. I mean, I have a couple stickers in my house just so I don't need to shout if Maddie's asleep or something. But typically, I'm yelling at a dingus. Like, by my bed in the morning, if I'm going to go into the kitchen or something, I have a morning one and a night reading one. So like the morning one turns everything on and does basically the exact same thing as my morning routine, but I don't need to shout.

And then I have a nighttime one that turns on like my really like the super red, very light reading lamp that's next to my bed and then another one to turn it off. So which is, again, it's like I'm doing two things. I know that a Philips Hue like could probably solve this problem, but I don't like changing the batteries.

I don't know. I think a lot of people are going overboard with them.

MerlinYou can find yourself – I mean, if you have this as a project or a challenge on your weekly challenge podcast, you can really go overboard trying to find a use for this. and there are totally applications for this that make tons of sense. It's just that it's not always easier than another way that's actually easier. But I think it does exist. Max, what did you do?

MaxWell, I solved a little inconvenience in my life, which is most days I leave work and I get in my car and I drive, go the like very short drive home and I'm listening to a podcast in the car and then I get out of the car and my podcast stops then I usually go down in my basement and I like plug into my office and I like plug my computer in and like you know get ready to finish up my work for the day and I have this thing of like I come in and I have to turn all the lights on and my podcast turns off when I get out of the car so what I did is I put an NFC sticker on the inside of my door where I come in

where I can tap my phone, it turns on all my office lights, and it transfers the audio from my podcast onto my Apple TV.

MerlinThat's my single favorite thing I discovered is audio destination.

MaxYeah. That feels very futuristic and mind-blowing. It's like genuinely a great use of the NFC thing. It's very magical to me that I can just tap my phone on a sticker, and then suddenly it knows to start playing Overcast on my Apple TV. so that I can hear it out loud. Very, very futuristic and magical. That's one of mine, yeah.

AlexI ran into some issues with that because I have two HomePods, I think. Like, I can't send it to the right one. And I normally want to bring them, but I want to add them both. And it doesn't, I don't know. The HomePod on iOS 13 for me has just kind of been...

MerlinDon't feel bad, Alex. There are so many weird limitations and so many weird bugs to this stuff. It's like it's really it's actually and I'm trying not to be that guy as much as I usually am. But like there's all kinds of stuff about this that is so janky. It's really janky, jankily implemented.

AlexNow I do the same thing actually sending it to the Apple TV. And the Apple TV is set to automatically take the HomePod as its audio since like my TV speakers are shot. And that usually works like 80% of the time.

MerlinHow do you do that? How do you make that automatic?

AlexI think in settings. In home? Let me go. In the home app? No, no, no. In the Apple TV app. Oh, okay.

MerlinI see.

AlexLike it reads it like it would a sound bar, I think. Makes sense. But yeah, this morning, the other thing is the NFC devices, the various cards and stickers and I got some keychains today. They're so hit or miss and it's become very frustrating.

MaxAlex, you gave me a bunch of stickers and I found one that were, and no, I ordered a bunch online actually and I found one that I like the best, which is the thickest, biggest sticker. It's a circle. It's a white circle and it's a chunky sticker.

AlexThat is what I have ordered now and the new one I've ordered, apparently it works on metal devices like for a while I had uh well for a while I have so I've got a sticker on my kindle and it starts uh a timer a little thing pops up for um in timery what are you doing research for and I or what are you reading about and I select whatever project it is and it's lovely uh and now it has just stopped working is does it look like this these are all my boys that I have right now. It's like, it's not, it's not chunky.

MaxOne of them is a, I have one that's kind of a chunker.

AlexYeah. These, these, these are little babies. Um, and Matthew and one of,

Merlinone of Matthew, uh, casting in the Laney's posts, he has his suggested, um, devices for you. That's how I found the key chain. So I just sent you a photo, uh, the bag of key chains and how I found the bag or the, um, packet of a bunch of like hotel room kind of cards.

AlexYeah, those have been the most successful for me.

MerlinYeah, that's been the least of my problems with all of this stuff, actually.

AlexHmm, really?

MerlinOh, far and away. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay, so here's a beef, like a ton of what I want to do. Okay, so tell me if I'm insane. I've gone into Overcast, and Marco has very thoughtfully put in a whole area where you can customize. First of all, he showed you the dictionary, basically, of everything you can do out of the box with Overcast. and it's so handy. You go in, you click on a thing. So you say like, okay, to play Overcast, I will say the following thing

and then we'll play Overcast. If I want to play my bim-bam list, I say that. If I want to set a timer that turns this off at the end of this podcast episode, I say this. And then I hop over to Shortcuts. I'm not blaming Marco for this. I hop over to shortcuts and I've got two available things at all period full stop in Overcast. Right? So I've got like, I forget what they are. I could look at them. But here's what's weird is in the past, I have somehow in the beta, in the days before they took out the automation stuff, I did create a play mime-bim-bam list.

So I made that somehow one time. But what I'm saying is the full dictionary of everything that's available is not all in there. Have you run into this where you're like, I know I can do this. I go through the search. I go through the app-specific area. Have you run into this where there's just stuff that's just not in there?

AlexMm-hmm. I was talking to Matthew about this, and apparently you have to have already run it. Like, we were troubleshooting something we were trying to do for Macs.

MerlinRun it as a vanilla shortcut outside of the Shortcuts app.

AlexRight. And it's like, well, if you've never done the action itself before or if you haven't done it enough, like the machine learning won't be like, ah, you want to use this as a shortcut, which I don't get.

MerlinI get that for not being in recommendations. I don't get that for not being in the app listing.

AlexYeah. In search. Yeah, yeah. It's super weird. I guess I haven't, well, actually, that was the thing. I thought it was, Timery was just broken on the beta, which is a wonderful app if you do time tracking. People should check it out. Because I'm like, oh, stuff isn't showing up. I guess I just haven't been using the timer, like the timer's enough. Or sorry, I thought the app was broken. But no, I just hadn't been using those specific timers enough. So they wouldn't show up as suggested.

They didn't show up in search. It was very, very weird.

MaxLet me ask you guys this. Like, what's a cool, what's like, let's say someone's listening to this and they're like, oh, I'm going to go on Amazon. First of all, we haven't stated this, but the NFC stickers are very cheap.

AlexYes.

MaxThey're like 25 cents a sticker, maybe less. I don't know. They're very cheap. so you can get a little package of them on Amazon and fuck around with them Alex and I also were kind of coming up with some ideas for magic tricks where we were putting stickers on cards and in the card box and stuff and that was kind of a fun experimentation but what should people do what do you think is an easy, a quick win or people are thinking, they're hearing this what can I do, for me it was like a quick win like what Alex said maybe it's late at night and Veronica's asleep

I could just touch my phone somewhere and have the lights turn off that's kind of cool

MerlinYeah.

AlexYou should have just gotten a text from me. Oh, wait, no, I had turned it off.

MerlinI mean, that's, okay, so here's one general pattern. If you're interested in playing with these, I think there's one no-brainer idea, which is to get a few of these. Like Max said, they're not very costly. What I would suggest is, you know, me and my philosophical approach to these things, start with a thing that you want to accomplish. Unless you're going into this purely as an experiment, here's what I would not do. I would not have this be the first time you spend a ton of time with shortcuts or you're going to lose your goddamn mind.

AlexYes, I agree.

MerlinSo use someone else's shortcut that's already made. And then when you go, so basically you add somebody else's shortcut, which is like what I did. All of mine are inspired by or directly lifted from other people. And then one of the automation things you can do is say when I tap my phone on this NFC thing, run this shortcut. So it can just be in your regular shortcut list. And then you're just using it as an automation, which is slightly different from a regular shortcut. But so, like, you know, okay, like one that I got last night because I was really panicking to find more good ones.

I found so few good ones. One of them that's kind of neat but also reveals a lot of the limitations, I made one. So I sent you guys my usual literally everyday Amazon routine, which is called Morning Lights. And I wanted something kind of like that. and I haven't totally tricked this out. So first of all, I just want to say the Amazon products routines are very good. They're real good. And if you do voice stuff, you're plenty good with that. Here's one that's kind of interesting.

That sucks. Okay, it's called Morning Audio and I'll send it to you. It's somebody else's thing. So I say, first of all, set playback destination to my HomePod. Set as current date. Format the date as this. If the format date is Wednesday, if it's Wednesday, play Office Ladies, the Office Recap Podcast. And if it's not, play KALW. Stream that to my HomePod. Because they don't have if-thens. They have repeats, but they don't have if-thens. So you get basically one shot at Logic, I think. But that's kind of cool.

That's the kind of thing. You tap that and do it. But also, you know, again, you sort of see the limitations. My only advice is if you're interested in this, yes, buy these cheapy things. And then go find other people's shortcuts and use those. Does that make sense, Alex?

AlexYeah, I feel like people get really intimidated by shortcuts, which especially now that it's shortcuts and not workflow, there's some really weird UI stuff that even I'm sometimes like, wait, I need to go back and then go back. What? What is going on? But there's amazing like Matthew Cassinelli stuff, share cuts, of course, Mac Stories has a million things. You can just take people's shortcuts and add them. You could never build a shortcut and still get a ton of use out of this stuff, especially

even the location-based stuff. I use it all the time when I'm coming to work.

MerlinThe most powerful stuff in here is in the section called, the tab called Automation, of which NFC is only one thing. But I feel like if there's, I mean, like setting aside the actual challenge this week, go look at the stuff under automation because the triggers are wild.

Speaker BThere's such good stuff.

MerlinSo you can create a personal automation. So you can create a personal automation for yourself or one that's shared throughout your household, like on your HomePod. But you can trigger stuff based on stuff like time of day, when an alarm happens, when I arrive or leave somewhere, when I join this Wi-Fi network, do the following things. Are you ready for this? When I open a given app, do this thing. like all that stuff is really good no-brainer stuff uh so nfc is to me not even anywhere near the most useful part of this but when i do do not disturb do the following things as well i think

Alexthat's really really handy i love it so much uh and as max just saw i have three cards one of which doesn't work when i put it in my wallet which is obnoxious uh i've got max i'm at like he'll be like are you in the office and i say i'm at my one says i'm at the desk one says i'm in the studio and one says I'm on my way, wherever that is going. But it doesn't work even through the thinnest bit of fabric, and it just drives me crazy. Like, I get not going through the leather for some reason,

but, like, why is it not working through? I don't know. I should have tried this before. Oh, wait, maybe I just turned. Nope, nope, it's fine. All right. I guess that's the other thing, too, is I don't understand NFC technology enough to figure out what the physical limitations are. Like, we have little key fobs to get into our office, and I put an NFC sticker on it, and I have fully broken it, and I don't know. We can't talk.

MaxCan we make other NFC things get us into the office or only the ones that they provided?

AlexI am working on it. I'm told only the ones that they have provided, but I think it was ridiculous. That sounds ridiculous. Exactly. So I'm going to, yeah, we're going to like push him on that because apparently it's proprietary NFC or something. It's very strange.

MerlinI think you're running into something I run into with my Muni card for going on public transit, which is I imagine you guys have something similar, which is you buy a card like this NFC card and you put cash on it or a pass on it. Now, I see a lot of the people who like will wear that like around their neck and they'll scan it. I do see people who keep it in their wallet. I have to take mine out of my wallet. Why? Because I have one for me and one for my kid in there. So I think you might be running into something similar where it doesn't know which one wins.

AlexOh, fuck. Does the Apple card have in it? Oh, shit. Oh, that's a really good point.

MerlinWell, that's the other thing is debit cards. Debit cards can be, if you have touchless capability, like on a PayPal debit card, that can be an NFC tag too.

AlexYeah, I know that doesn't, but I think the Apple Pay one does. This has gone off the rails. Oh, it's a good. We've lost all our listeners. Oh, no, it's interesting.

MerlinMy favorite actually useful one that I actually use is the very first one I did, which is I chose orange because of Overcast. And I basically keep it next to my standing desk at home. And when I tap it, all it does is send the current audio to the HomePod. Dumbest, easiest thing in the world. I could just as easily do it by clicking on the little blue icon. But I like it, and it's easy. But I don't know. I haven't found that many uses for this that are actually that useful.

MaxWhat if you put one on your butt reacher and it starts playing like Spanish Flea? Officer Flee.

Speaker BHa ha ha ha ha ha ha No No

AlexNo

Speaker BExtending the reach around, 15-inch reach around grip. No

AlexYou can install a voice and wipe. No.

Thank you.

155. The Reach-Increaser

Show notes

Transcript

155. The Reach-Increaser

Show notes

Transcript

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