Do By Friday
Episode 246 artwork
Episode 246 · June 24, 2021 · 01:04:00

246. I Midwest Hate Myself

This week's challengeThis week’s challenge: explore smart lighting.
dobyfriday.comApple PodcastsOvercastPatreon

Show notes

This week’s challenge: explore smart lighting.

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

Guest-Edited by Mark Bramhill

Engineered by Cameron Bopp

Show Notes

New week's challenge: meet your chief nemesis-in-chief.

Transcript

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

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, explore smart lighting.

Hello. Good afternoon. Good part's coming.

Speaker BI'll do anything to see it through Because these things will change Oh, shit dog

MerlinDo you hear that?

AlexDo you hear it? Sounds like somebody singing in the shower Do you have something to tell me? Do you have an announcement to make?

MerlinWhoa! Yeah, I do I do I'm having a day, man It feels like a Oh, aren't we all? Okay. All right. Let's make it about me. Hey, everybody. It's one of those listen to Taylor Swift song change on repeat kind of days.

AlexOh. Interesting.

MerlinThat's a banger, as they say. Yeah. I like the old version. I know that's controversial. It's a hot take, as they say.

AlexHave you listened to the spatial audio versions?

MerlinI did. Well, part of my day, which is becoming my week. No, I'm great. Everything's awesome. But one thing is, you know, I follow the Syracuse doctrine when it comes to AirPods. Do you know about this? There's only two places that an individual pod, because it's always two things in Syracuse.

AlexYes, yes, please.

MerlinUnder the Syracuse doctrine, what are the two places that an AirPod can be?

AlexIn its case or in your ears. And don't let anybody else borrow them because they won't return to the second place, which is your case.

MerlinYep, yep, yep. Never go with an AirPod to a second location.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinI follow the Syracuse Doctrine. I'm the only person who does. But a thing happened yesterday. I was fixing to go home. And I opened up the case. And I saw a very sad thing, which is there's only one AirPod in it. Now, I need to let you know, Alexandra, I use these things a lot. Like, I listen a lot, a lot. And I'm balls deep right now in the whole spatial audio mishegas. and I went, oh, no, oh, no, because under the man doctrine, and this is where we run into some things we're going to need an opinion from Justice Berger on this, but my thing is also that I have garbage cans

all over my office because I like to wherever my right hand wants to open, and I had that feeling. I had the feeling of, oh, no, is it conceivable that while this was charging over here with the dingus, with the cord, is there a chance, and I looked in the trash. It was not only in, my right AirPod was not only in the trash, it was submerged in garbage water.

AlexSee, I still don't know if this is a happy story or a sad story.

MerlinIt's just a story, Alex. Don't add a valence to everything I do. These things will change. Do you understand what I'm saying? We've been outnumbered, rated, cornered. It's hard to fight when the fight ain't fair. You know what I'm saying? You could learn a lot.

AlexI should. I need to listen more.

MerlinSo I stuck it in a bag of silica packets, and I think it's a no-go. I think the garbage water got too deep into the canals, and now the button doesn't click and stuff like that. So I think I'm going to have to do that thing. I think there's never a thing where you can buy one new AirPod.

AlexIt's definitely a thing in theory. I have never done it successfully.

MerlinWell, now I'm going to find out because I'm balls deep in this spatial audio stuff. You can spatialize it. I listened to a song that I made for the internet. I listened to it and guess what? It spatializes for you automatically.

AlexReally? Oh, fuck. I didn't listen. Oh, see, I'm a cuck and just listening with my regular headphones at my computer. I'm a monster.

MerlinWell, here's the crazy part. And you know, you can always tell, at least my wife can tell when I'm trying to figure something out with spatial audio because I keep doing this.

Speaker AHmm. Hmm. Hmm.

MerlinHmm. Right? Because you keep turning your head and waiting to see if anything happened. And I go, hmm. Yes. Because I was listening to the Taylor Swift song Change yesterday while I was bringing in the trash cans. And it says to myself, it says, huh, it says here that this is supposed to be spatial. I don't think I'm getting any spatial from it. I'm getting a nice sound. And obviously I'm standing out, you know, outside my house. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing an A-B test on Taylor Swift versions. But I was like, hmm, some things seem more spatial than others, as Morrissey would say. Don't you think?

AlexOh, absolutely. And in our house, that's called resting tech face because my resting tech face is, which involves a hmm, hmm, hmm. There's a lot more hmm.

MerlinLike when you clicked a button and you're waiting for a scene to change and it never changes and you go hmm.

AlexYeah. Or when your spouse walks in on you and you're just holding a single button going.

MerlinOh no.

AlexAnd like hmm. And they're like resting tech face.

MerlinResting tech face. I get it. I get a lot of that. I don't want to get into it because I don't want to get a reputation as somebody who complains about technology. So I've got to be real careful. But I'm having a lot of situations right now.

Oh. More projects? Well, projects that got created for me. I thought I'd simplify. You know what? We'll save it for the show. It's a Taylor Swift kind of on repeat day is my feeling. Also, I'm cutting up Bojacks.

AlexOh, that sounds very – do you have a factory now? Did you go? Are you making leather? What's happening? You mentioned that.

MerlinNo, I have a horse store.

Speaker ABecause he's a horse.

MerlinHe is. That was the joke. That was bad. But the pivot, as we'll get to, if we get to any of these points, I also want to hear about your day. But one of my things is last night we finished BoJack. Woof.

AlexI still have not finished it because it's like the Sopranos. I just got to be in the right spot.

MerlinI totally understand. And so I turned to my kid and I said, well, should we move on to the next Alex recommendation?

AlexOh, no.

MerlinAnd so we did. And we met a horse heart surgeon.

AlexYes. Yes, you did.

MerlinAnd so the horse hearts, we started watching Rick and Morty. And when Dr. Spichemin goes into the operating theater to talk to his wife about putting Rick into a retirement home, and there's a horse on the table.

Speaker ANo.

MerlinEmma, who now is better at references than I am, says, is that the horse from Horsin' Around? I said I think that might be the worst remorse than around.

AlexYour kid is too funny for her own good. She's pretty funny. She's going places.

MerlinAlex, how's your day? Is everything good?

AlexOh, I don't know. You sent me a very nice text this morning. I did? Yes, in response to me just saying, can we record in 30? I'm so sorry. And like the kind person you say, yeah, of course. And I think it, I don't know how long it was later.

MerlinOh yeah, it wasn't. I said, tell people what I said. You know, I'm not saying this for clapping, but it's true. The world should know.

AlexIt made me, all right, fine. We'll get to the nice part.

MerlinI said, I said, Alex, you have so much cred with me. You could deliberately cuck me. And by the way, it did autocorrect to suck. I fixed that. I said, Alex, you have so much cred with me. You could deliberately cuck me for a month and I wouldn't even realize it.

AlexThat's the thing. I wouldn't even know how.

MerlinBut like this is the thing. I talked about this on the Back to Work program. This is the thing. I mean like if you do good calendars, which seems trivial, which is why no one likes people who don't do good calendars. If you do good calendars, you build credibility. You can be as late as fuck. You know? And nobody cares. Because like you know like they're not trying to – they're not gaslighting you. As I say in my house, I don't even know how to turn on the gaslight. It's funny if you've seen the play.

AlexI know of.

MerlinYou know of it. It's – who is it? It's not Ray Moland. It's not Charles Boyer. It's, uh, is it the guy from Lost Weekend? No. Who is it? Who's in Gaslight?

AlexNo, no. No. Loretta Lynn?

MerlinIs she in it? Who's the singer from Kentucky? No. Who is it? Loretta Young?

AlexI remember thinking they looked like the people from Rosemary's Baby, but I think it's kind of like...

MerlinYou're like my kid. Is this from the 60s or the 90s? I'm like, oh God. Why would you say something like that? Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Hey, I got one of them right.

AlexThere we go. Ingrid Bergman. Thank you.

MerlinAnd Angela Lansbury and Joseph Cotton. There we go. The great Joseph Cotton.

AlexOkay. Okay.

MerlinGaslight.

AlexAll right. So no, I was right. I just don't. Okay. That makes me feel better.

MerlinDo people know the premise and where the term comes from? Are people aware of that? Like in your community?

Speaker AOh, absolutely not.

AlexNo. I would say they're willfully ignorant. Oh, I see. They choose to stay that way. Because gaslighting, great. Maybe I'm gaslighting them by saying that. Who knows? I do not know what the word gaslighting in Internet speak means anymore, because apparently people are doing it to me. I don't know.

MerlinI'm aware of the film. And so I think so here's a description from the Internet Science site. 1944 psychological thriller. It follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is descending into insanity. And I think this does still comport with the Internet idea of what gaslighting is. Gaslighting, I mean, I guess in terms of impact or effect, it makes somebody think that you're trying to make somebody think that they're – to make them doubt themselves and to think that they're crazy.

And I think there's always the implication of there's a thing that happened and I'm not only going to act like it didn't happen. I'm going to make you – try to make you believe that it didn't happen and that you're nuts for thinking it happened. In this case, I believe it's that there's a gaslight in the room that he's turning on and off. And she's saying, what's going on with that gaslight? And he's like, what? What gaslight? What are you talking about?

AlexMm-hmm. And it's a very, I won't say it's a very good movie. It is a good-ish movie.

MerlinYeah. Like a lot of movies from that time. It was a different time.

AlexWell, but haven't you I've seen it used to basically describe misunderstandings, bullying and terrible things like harassment and assault. But that's the thing is gaslighting is in. You are intentionally trying to make this person crazy. And you know that you are. Oh, oh, no. You don't think that I'm actually interested.

MerlinWell, I might be gaslighting you, but I'm not sure. This bit's not going to be funny forever, so we should enjoy it. But no, but like, okay, but like, oh God, one doesn't want to say too much. Let's say you know somebody who is pretty psycho and like where you're like, I don't know if that person even knows that they're psycho. I don't know if this is a bit. I don't know if they're actually crazy.

AlexSee, we need a different word for that, I think.

MerlinYou're probably right. But I mean, like somebody, you take somebody like the previous president where, or you've certainly had people in your life. There are people that you meet who say untrue things for no reason other than they just always say untrue things. And I think after a while, sometimes they don't even know that they're, you know, the way I define a lie as opposed to misspeaking or any of those things, a lie is where you say something that you know is not true and you want the other person to believe is true. That's the difference between being inaccurate or like all those other words, misstatement or, you know, all those different things.

It's the intention. When you lie, there's an intention to denying reality in a way that often has a big impact for the other person. So I know I think you're right. But I don't think people like rub. There are a lot of dudes, especially they're not rubbing their hands together and going, oh, I'm going to gaslight. But it's just more like it's just it's worse. It's fucking SOP. Yeah. Like think about like a madman type situation where it's like, no, this is you just need to always be doubting yourself. Looking at you, Maggie Haberman.

No, you know me. You know me.

AlexNo, I do.

MerlinGaslight. Better name and different name for that.

AlexI was actually thinking about that. This is unplanned, but ties in great. Please go. That's what happened to my day. But I also was kind of, I don't know why I was thinking about this, but I remembered the documentary Mitch, which follows Mitch McConnell's very lukewarm and pathetic. Oh, I'm sorry. It's a sad documentary of watching him slowly lose the presidency. Mitch McConnell? Yeah.

MerlinOh, was he during the last election? The like, what are you talking about? He wasn't running for president, was he?

AlexWait, oh my God, not Mitch. Wait, wait, wait.

MerlinOh, Mitt wrong.

AlexMitt, Mitt, thank you. They're not booing, they're saying Mitt, Mitt. Mitt. Well, and he, I don't think he has ever tried to gaslight anybody. And I think he is not a good person. I do not agree with almost anything he does. But I don't like most Republicans, as we see now, I think he really, truly believes in what he's saying. Like, he believes that a baby is being murdered.

He he believes that God is angry when I think at one point he thought interracial.

MerlinHe's a devout Mormon, right? Yeah. Yeah. I like I like I like Mormons.

AlexYeah. Pretty cool. It's yeah. They have a very nice city, too. but I am I don't know I think it's just I don't know if it's important but I

Merlinsomething more really just and I'm not here to like defend all these you know some of their serious chuds like for example it's hard and I'm not trying to do a bit because Jesus Christ people hold the brakes on the politics for a while but I think Ted Cruz is a pretty malign character because he has so many of the aspects that I find really unlikable in a person just in general including that like he does that code switching thing where sometimes he acts dumber than he is yep and or he acts more like earthy than he is

and i'm not even talking about like i like soup kind of stuff i just mean more like he just says shit i mean i made a joke a long time ago on my website fives about five people i like to imagine are professional wrestlers and i think one of them was ann coulter but the thing is that's not really like that's not really no no because but there are people it's all about it really does seem like it's all about appealing to the base owning the libs and like just saying whatever just saying whatever will get you attention in the group that you want to reach and it's not not to

say the politics has has ever or always been this place where we try to make a shining city on a hill but like it's just it's it's so gross and so transparent and to make it like a triple gaslight i think a lot of the people know they're just saying shit they just think it's entertaining the same way you like to see Ric Flair hit somebody with a chair or whatever. It's like, you know, it's relatively low stakes in some ways, but it feeds into very high stakes things. And I just have a special distaste for the people who are grossly manipulative. And I'm going to tell you a funny thing about me,

which is like, I don't like Mitch McConnell. I don't think he's doing good things, but I don't think he's difficult to understand. He's not, in some ways, he's way more transparent than a lot of these folks.

AlexOh, absolutely.

MerlinLike, you know what he wants, whether you agree with him or not, he is about obtaining and maintaining power. Jeff Sessions, I think, genuinely did not like black people. I think Jeff Sessions had an agenda that was much more like, you know, as we say in the South, butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. Like he's going to say a bunch of shit, but he just, he can't finish without a black person not being

Alexable to vote. Yeah. There's a difference between doing something racist and truly, I think at his or he's a racist monster. I think he,

MerlinI think he, I don't like to say things like that about people, but I, I have less of a difficult time believing that. I doubt that Ted Cruz, like if you hung out with Ted Cruz, it would probably be fine. But like he has this whole persona like the Iron Sheik or, you know, or Macho Man Randy Savage or whatever. He's got this whole persona. We never get to really see him sitting around with the other wrestlers in his underwear.

AlexWell, that's why they're successful because they're very good at it. And I don't think a lot of people want to acknowledge that what they are seeing is a performance or that it is truly easy to understand. On both the right and the left. Because I mean, not so much the left,

Merlinbut... I mean, even somebody like Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff has never met a TV camera he didn't like. Or Ted Lieu. Like, Ted Lieu just fucking loves being on MSNBC. See, for the longest time, the two of them were just on all the time. You know? but I don't know it's really upsetting and then people take it seriously because you have to take it seriously and then pretty soon we're arguing about pro wrestling he really smashed that guy's face on the turnbuckle he's throwing sand in his face

that's not cool figure 4 leg lock that's his finishing move

Alexyou know what I'm laughing because I think I made you a little sad You made me sad? What are you talking about? You don't make me do anything What's the matter with you? Oh, true I'm sorry I need to listen I wouldn't say anything The slow clap has also become A big part of the Cox household

MerlinI roll with a crew of problematic bachelors what was I listening to gosh I always find so many good things on you are not so smart and what was the one Jesus Christ have I forget I'm so sorry I forget what I've said to whom about what but did you have you heard the one about narcissism from yes you recommended it it was great I thought

it was really really interesting uh i like have i also recommended yes and i also recommended the how-to episode about the guy who's worried about covid oh i don't where they talk they talk to tim harford i talked about maybe i'm back to work see i'm not caught up with the mpu i just saw back to work is here and then oh is it up all right all right pull to refresh yep hi it's june 23rd It's 11.33 a.m. Pacific time. How's it going?

What's up with your brain? You having a bad brain day, Alex?

AlexCome on. 1.33 p.m. Oof. Yeah, I sent you a photograph of something. And what would you say that photograph is? Don't talk about my dirty table. It's not my fault.

MerlinDirty table.

AlexMy problem. Not my fault.

MerlinDirty, dirty table. Whoa, I think we met at the same refrigerator.

AlexOh, really? It's a very nice refrigerator. That's the one thing in our apartment. Great stuff.

MerlinIs this the table that Dougie moves?

AlexNo, it's just the table that Dougie is very confused about because God forbid anyone put a table.

MerlinBut that is the table I've heard about. Yes, yes. Okay. It's down the hallway and there's a table and it's got some stuff on it. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from this. It is a live photo. I don't see any balls, but just FYI, it is a live photo.

AlexYeah, you see nothing there. I see nothing there. Oh, do I need to go into VR to see it or AR? No. Oh, God, I wish. Oh, that's part of, oh, well, I'll save it for the show, but part of VR is, well, I mean, I look at that photograph now of the little pathway between the rest of my apartment and the kitchen. Also known as a hall. Also known as a hall. It's a very small, well. Small hall. So it looks, the small hall contains often two people I hallucinate, which were orderlies in a hospital that I was in a long time ago for psych reasons.

And it is just like, I know that the people I am hallucinating are not real.

MerlinAnd that's a huge, huge gift. Do you see them sitting in like, I'm being serious. Like for me with the coat rack, when we move the coat rack in the hallway, or what do you call it, the house tunnel? when we move the coat rack even like a few inches so so Rosie can like clean better for the as long as it's in that new position it would take a week and a half for me to not feel startled every time I see the coat rack out of the corner of my eye because it's pretty close to looking like a person who's a little taller and wider than I am and my brain reads that as

a person now are you seeing something in like a shape here like Lincoln on the moon or is it just

AlexIt's like, unfortunately, it is just, well, I don't see it in a picture, which is probably partially why I like VR so much and screen so much. But I'm sure we've talked about some point on the show, but part of being bipolar often is being schizoaffective, which is different than schizophrenia in that you know that what you are seeing is a hallucination. Does that make sense?

MerlinMakes sense.

AlexI'm not sure if it makes it that much better. I mean, I, it does. It makes it a lot better.

MerlinYou're able to like, you're able to not self-see, self-talk, but you're able to like, okay, hang on. I know. Because like you at least have the awareness of going, I wonder if that's a real thing. You know, I'm not trying to make light, but like, you know, it could be anything. Like you hear a noise. Anybody could hear a noise and in the wrong state of mind go, oh my God, I think that sounds like this.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinAnd then you like listen harder. And like the longer you can't figure out what it is, the more anxious you become, even though with the right state of mind, you have the presence of mind to say like, oh, why am I freaking out about this? So you're not you're not like I mean, like my local guy, my local guy, Larry, that I adopted. Like, you know, he's I mean, he sees like stuff. And I don't think it's a big question whether, you know, the stuff is really there.

AlexYeah. And that's the I mean, that's that's why it's very important that I get that a little I guess I I guess I never might now look at the dirty table. There's a little green container, which all has my very nice medication that helps me to not be a paranoid schizophrenic. And that is not a bad thing. That is just a thing that your friend, a lot of folks, and unfortunately a lot of homeless folks often have. Because if you're not medicated, you don't just see doctors who are trying to pin you down and like have terrible flashbacks.

You can't, like sometimes it's lizard people. It can be anything, right? And so this morning, I mean, I unfortunately have the hallucinations like every day. And it's not that I don't talk about it because I have any shame around it. It's just because it is something that I have learned to live with and also recognize.

MerlinWell, it's one thing to say like, oh, today I got cut off in traffic. And that's different from most days. But if that's something that's around all the time, right? Sort of like me complaining about HomeKit, I guess, in some ways.

Speaker AThat's just the ones you hear.

MerlinImagine living my life. my lived experience of home kit and and that but that that green box the contents take the edge off a little bit oh oh no uh no

Alexthat's just my daily my daily meds it's one one of those things that typically like you know old people have and um i'm sorry i'm i'm losing i'm losing the plot as as they say there's never two plots with me but i um typically i have this these hallucinations and they're fairly normal uh to the point where part of the reason i want to move from my apartment is because this is such a consistent obnoxious hallucination seeing these two orderlies that are purely purely fictional and a part of my

past that just involved, you know, childhood mental illness drama. And I, again, I know that these are, I'm talking, hey, audience, hello. I know that these are not real and that it is a pure work of my brain being a mess sometimes. You're not alone. You're not alone in this. Exactly. This is why I thought it might be good to mention, I guess.

MerlinI totally agree.

AlexBecause most days it is like most days if you were cut off or someone was a dick to you on the way to work, it it doesn't you know, you might mention it, but it's not a car crash. And this this morning I did not have a car crash, but a close call. Yeah, a close call. Yeah. Because I know that if I do not take my meds that this could get worse. And also, you know, our wonderful, wonderful content also is just worse if I do not have my good meds.

But this morning I was like, oh, oh, dear. Oh, dear. Because, you know, you have like that anxious feeling. And then you're anticipating it.

MerlinI mean, I don't know if this is implicit in what you're talking about here. But when you walk down or start approaching that particular tunnel in your house, what some call a hallway, you might be thinking like, oh, is this going to be the thing? Is it going to be the thing? Is it going to be the thing? Because, you know, we all have triggers. I know that word is, you know, it's gotten a little silly. But like we all have things that did actually have a meaning. It can actually have a meaning, which is there are things that can happen in the world that end up having an outsized effect on how I am. And, you know, it's not anything anybody's necessarily particularly proud of.

But, you know, it's like when Rick brings the homeless veteran to the house. Oh, to Santa. Pearl Harbor. Santa, poor Santa.

But, you know, it's – but you – and the reason I want to bring myself into this without being asked to is that I think it has a lot of – or similarities at least with anxiety. I mean it's anxiety. Anxiety is like you're freaking out about something that's not happening. You're not even just freaking about something that could happen. You're just, if you look at it from a neurological standpoint, it's more like, it's like the world's most painful, like bobbing for apples. Like you're just going to keep doing this weird thing until you can make an apple stick under your chin. And that's kind of what anxiety is just like.

You just keep casting about until there's something to freak out about.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinI mean, it took me a long time to like really realize that. And it did help a little, but it doesn't make it fun. At least now I have a little more presence of mind. But I think when, whether or not it's there in the existential sense, like your brain is still trying to protect you. It's still trying to compensate. It's still trying to like do its best to make you safe based on the tools that it has.

AlexYeah. It's like a full on fight or flight situation, which like trigger, who knows what that even means anymore. You know they added a third one to that?

MerlinYou know about the third one? Yes. Freeze.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinFight, flight, or freeze, which I think is very, very interesting.

AlexAnd I think that we should embrace the freeze more. And what I mean by that is another important part of this picture in the table is along next to my meds is like stuff that I have for Dubai Friday. I've got my bubbly. There's a Diet Coke, my tissues.

MerlinIt's like a staging area, like getting ready to go out on some ops.

AlexWell, yeah. Yeah. Just my, you know, early morning routine. And I see that these hallucinated orderlies are there, but I'm just going about my day. But then I turn around and this was like, what, 10 minutes before we recorded? And I was like, oh, fuck. Like they look, I still know that this thing is not real. Right, right. But I just could not walk through that hallway. Oh, shit. And I, yes, yes. But like, yes, it is sad and fucked up.

MerlinIt just sucks. I just feel bad. I feel bad that you're.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat feeling sounds terrible. Yeah.

AlexAnd it is, but you're right in that it is similar to anxiety. And it's not that it's not a big deal, but I don't know. I wish that more people had. Why isn't anybody talking about this? But I wish that I could. Well, that's the thing. I can. I can tell you and text you, hey, something. It was weird. Like, not bad. because I froze. And in that point, freezing was a good thing

because I did not, there was no fleeing. I was like, okay, no, this is not going to unravel my day, but it sure is going to put kind of a little dink in it. But, and you were kind enough to be like, nope, nope. Well, all right, fine. No, no, I appreciate you saying that,

Merlinbut I don't know. And I'm the same way. I just.

AlexWell, your brain's also saying like you're letting people down And then also everyone's going to be mad at you and hate you. And it's –

MerlinBut sometimes when you thank people, I mean, as I've tried to explain to my terrible family, sometimes we tell each other anecdotes as a way to bond and say I love you. And I think sometimes when you – I mean there is a thing called metta meditation in Buddhism, which is a mindful meditation of gratitude. And it's not just like, oh, bless my boat or something like that. It's just more like trying to have – or I think it's known as I don't speak anything. I don't know poly or whatever, but I think it's also known as loving kindness meditation, which is, as I understand it, just a way of, yeah, it's a way of trying to develop.

I mean, I guess you could think of it in one way. If you're looking at it as a prophylactic, you could begin by saying, well, it's a way of not thinking about this in 50 terrible ways. And it's a way of starting to think about this in a more loving and open hearted way of like, you know, that I feel kind of relates to our whole Doctor Who thing about like, learn to be, have, if you're going to be scared eventually, like try to always precede that with curiosity. You start realizing that curiosity, even in that ding-a-ling book you didn't like. I think that's a pretty, the guy makes a pretty good case, the anxiety book.

AlexOkay, the reason I didn't like it is because you say it all better. You say the same things, a more condensed version,

Merlinand in a better way. I'd be great at that. You would be. You're the great curator. I think that something like that, I'm not saying you got to go buy a cushion or an app, but I do think there is something valuable to finding a way to, if one can, to, again, take the edge off. I love that phrase. I love that phrase. There's a couple of phrases

Alexthat really stuck with me. It just has negative motive or connotations right now. And I think that's why I was like, eh, no, but you're right. Yeah. The medication item does take the edge off.

MerlinWell, I mean, think about, think about like, what if you go to the, as a terrible example, But if you go to the dentist, they would, certainly for legal reasons, but also for medical reasons, they want to do the minimal amount of anesthesia that they can.

AlexUnfortunately. Well, yeah. I was like, give me everything.

MerlinI miss laughing, guess.

AlexGive me everything.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. But like, you can think of it however you want. But I think of taking the edge off as meaning like, this is not going to make this better. This is not going to make this go away. But it's going to make it more tolerable or less intolerable. So we're going to start by giving you a shot into your gums, which is not really fun. And if that doesn't work, what we don't want to do is put you under because there are risks to putting you under. Like anesthesia is a very difficult. And I know this is not a perfect example, but I think the idea of taking the edge off is, I mean, like with me and my journey, it's like a lot of it is like I need to just not constantly be in emergency mode.

So before I can get to like, you know, being the new Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm going to need to figure out how to make this less terrible. Think about it like a snack. Like, we're going to have dinner soon, but like, why don't you have a pickle? If you have a pickle, that'll take the edge off. Like, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, order people around with food, but I'm saying like, that's an example of taking the edge off. And if you can go from, this is utterly intolerable in a way that is not sustainable. Like to just think that you flip a switch and get all better is not realistic.

If you can, for me, I feel like I've been very fortunate lately for probably a handful of different reasons. But however I got to where I am, as I sit here today, I'm extremely grateful that whatever has changed has made it so that I don't find myself disappearing into a world that's not there. and whether you can just think about that in a million ways, whether that's like staring at a screen that's talking about politics or whether it's like being mad about what somebody said to mean,

like probably didn't mean anything by it, like any of that stuff. Because somehow an edge has been taken off. I don't want to say I took the edge off. But that's, I don't know, it's not a solution, but it can certainly give you the headspace, the runway. It'll give you the expansiveness from an emotional standpoint to be able to deal with stuff and not feel like everything that makes you sad has to be your imminent destruction.

AlexYou just Merlin manned me so hard because yes, yes to all of that. And then I was thinking, oh, wait, why did I react so strongly to be like, no, it's not taking the edge off. It is because of that ingrained thought that you, I guess, hi, I'm Dr. Mental Illness Soapbox today. But the idea of like you need to, it was just easier to say.

like the the idea of like you need to in order to be a good human being or a functioning and happy human being that you need to cure yourself of what whatever the heck whether it be a brain thing or or a chronic physical pain all the things that make you a difficult citizen and employee should be purged and yeah we're right right and and i have the also the i was also what uh what what is it like a thinking in gratitude or uh i'll rewind and remember what you said that had just oh the

Merlinum the um uh loving kindness meditation yeah yeah uh and and sitting in like loving kindness of

Alexi mean part of sure i've been kind of cagey about uh whether or not i have a job in the future but right now i do have a job and part of what's so vital and important about why i love this job is because I got to I'm able to take a mental illness leave and handle this stuff and make sure that I can maintain the edge really edging I'm mature uh but again you're right you can think about in so many ways but like a lot of times the things that you do into your brain are not going

to make it completely better and that that's okay like if you if you know where the edge is and you can avoid it and just kind of or take that chip out of your shoulder for a little or make it less sharp i think we i don't know i think it's not i'm not commendable but but um it is important for other people to acknowledge that whether it be bosses or um partners or friends or whatever

Merlinwriters um so i agree and um i'm steering that away from that uh but the um but it's also it's also a case of like jeez i don't know and there's just there's always so much pressure from the entire world to like be a certain way or to like maintain a certain way or to like as we've certainly talked about at length here to like perform a certain way but i don't know i just feel like there's a lot of things where it helps to go easy on ourselves a little bit and to like not feel like

you know our problems equal equal us

AlexI don't know you're never I'm sure it was Walt Whitman who originally said you're not you're not the worst thing you've ever done

Speaker Aoh yeah not the worst thing you've ever done am I a pussy

Merlinyes you are

Speaker AI haven't eaten out in months can I get this for delivery please

Merlinsir. Sorry, I cut you off. I, I, you know what? I am still from the Midwest. I do still, you know, sometimes feel like, you know, you gotta, and my kid hates it. My kid hates it when I like start making a joke, try to try to like lighten the mood or something that's heavy, but she hates it. I really admire it.

AlexOh, wow. That's super interesting. I mean, I do that too.

MerlinI think it's actually weirdly emotionally mature of like, Like, hey, you're not going to laugh. We're not going to laugh our way out of how I feel right now. So, like, why don't we just sit with how horrible this is? That's the feeling I get.

AlexThat's what I'm – well, I would like to reiterate that I – not horrible. Good. Edge is gone. But the fact that she – God, that is so – It doesn't happen that often. Well, but still, both of us are from the Midwest. and want to apologize and want to put other people first. And that's not even, that's not saying.

MerlinBut it's like watching somebody poop. If you're from Ohio, it's like, I'm not helping by being here watching you squat. Like I should, like, I should at least make a joke to lighten this up or maybe I should leave. And the reason that sounds like an imperfect analogy is, oh my God, you have no idea how much that's a nearly perfect analogy, which is like watching somebody be awkward is not something that comes naturally for my people. I had another really smart thing to say, and I already forgot it. About edging, you like

edging. You like what was the other thing?

AlexWe'll come back to it. You were talking about the Midwest. I think you were getting to a part of honesty and transparency. At least I think I was going to say something. Overrated.

Speaker AOverrated.

AlexWe can talk about radical hope.

MerlinYou'd be amazing how easy transparency is to fake. Oh, yeah.

AlexYep. No, I wouldn't be surprised. See it a lot.

MerlinWe're not supposed to talk about it, but you know.

AlexYeah, it's very upsetting.

MerlinSo we're watching Rick and Morty. It's a horse. Horse from Horsin' Around. And she went right back to the beginning. So I'm walking in and she's watching. Oh, shoot. The kid. The kid. Lynn. Jamie Lynn? Jamie Lynn. What's her name? Sarah Lynn.

There's so much already there. The groundwork has already been laid for so many things. like they're shooting a music video at the fucking planetarium and stuff. It's like, oh, God.

AlexYeah. My, yeah. In our earliest discussions about BoJack when you had mentioned things, and then I would make the noise.

MerlinAnd now, like all men, I have finished before you.

Let's keep it short today. No, let's actually keep it short today.

AlexYes, let's actually keep it short.

MerlinRug cleaning and power washing on YouTube. I'm going to save that for the after show. You obtained Gallium. We have tickets to two different concerts.

AlexYeah, what the fuck? This is the man family. Everybody's getting back on the road,

Speaker Band a lot of them are starting in San Francisco.

MerlinSo we have tickets. Our first family concert. Our first two family concerts. There's always two things with my family. We're going to see Marina in San Francisco.

Speaker AOh!

MerlinAnd, well, that's good, but the huge news is we're going to be seeing Ricky Montgomery in San Francisco.

AlexOh, my goodness gracious.

MerlinAnd that's her favorite. He's very talented.

AlexHe is. Very, very talented. He fosters cats.

Speaker AEasy on the ice, too.

MerlinOh, nothing wrong with that. Absolutely. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. That was really all of that. Oh, jeez, I got a typo here.

AlexWait, but you are going to be in person?

MerlinMm-hmm.

AlexAs in you? Yeah, the three of us are going to go.

MerlinAnd we were seeing if any of her friends might want to go. But, oh, God, she's so weird. She's like, if there's any, whatever was the phrase she used, I hope there's not a bunch of TikTok stans there. I think she said something like that. And I'm like, you know, I'm tempted to ask you what the fuck that means. But the truth is I really don't want to know. She's like, if there's people and they're just dancing along to Loverman, ugh, we're a bunch of posers.

AlexOh, I got I was like halfway there because Loverman's a very good song.

MerlinIt's a big hit, you know, but like, you know, they're the people that's like it's all the people were like all they know is Stairway to Heaven. Yeah. From a different generation.

AlexYep. And then everybody goes this this this actually isn't a or isn't as much as a generational thing as I used to think. But yeah, people can be real bummers at concerts where they just go to the back and then they're on their phones. And I am absolutely guilty of this.

Merlinit's so wild yeah and of course the photos i mean like i i i still remember a time when i used to take photos sometimes at roderick shows or but like the thing was i remember jesse garrett talking about this like going somewhere and i'm the photos jesse would be 2002 2004 maybe jesse and matt but like you go somewhere and like they wanted you to like check your phone or like they like as in like you know there's a thing now oh you put in a bag or whatever but like it was not that okay so it Okay, it's a little bit long ago, less than 20 years.

But when we first got cameras on phones, the feeling was you can't have that in here. Like that's basically spy stuff. If you've got a camera here, you can't. And I was talking way before like comedians don't want their bits. I'm talking about like, you know, you just can't even have this in here. This is, you can't take photos in here. You're not like an approved photographer. And like, what are you going to do with that photo? You know, we can't allow that. And then I don't know. And then I guess various things happened. And at a certain tipping point, I think it became pretty unmanageable, especially since phones, the phone is your ticket, phone is your phone, phone is your everything.

But then I think about like fucking, can you imagine a restaurant now that would not let, a restaurant or a bar that would not let you take photos? Could you imagine that being a policy at most?

AlexYeah, they exist.

MerlinThe exact, but it's the exact opposite of that. Like there's this place that opened near our, not long before Korn, there's a place that opened in our neighborhood that I just started calling the Instagram bar because they had this big pink neon art on the wall and i was like oh fuck you know they bought that to be photographed to be selfied or whatever and it's just i don't know it's just strange to think about that like how all that has changed where now it's like oh for the love of christ please take photographs and please tag us in the photos yeah you should really watch the other two it's very good it

Alexcovers a lot of these issues wait the other two what what's happening now the other two is about

Merlinthe youtube sensation the 13 year old youtube sensation who has an older brother and an older sister and it's a very very funny tv show and it goes down real easy oh molly shannon molly shannon is the mom and she's ken marino is the manager his hair dies melting he always feels left out of everything ken marino oh my god he has a comfort pig on a flight i don't want to spoil it for you

Alexi oh this looks lovely gonna spend a night with ken and molly all right yeah just uh try the first

Merlinone see what you think and the boy the guy who plays chase chase dreams chase is the kid who plays him is so cute it's so sweet and you end up really liking this this weird self-involved family it's really nice i think i think you might enjoy it i think match you would enjoy it too

Alexthat's my guess i i'm angry now because it says the second season will be released on hbo max because i every time i'm like oh thank god i can finally cancel hbo max oh they pull you back in

Merlinyeah i know yeah they're very good at it they are good at it the app sucks but like i want that's

Alexhow i watch oh it's the worst it's pretty bad finally something worse than hulu ah god it's

Merlinhappened it's finally happened all right we got to keep this one short i don't think i think we need to have to have a sanity day uh so you talked about your brain see that's the thing my my sanity

Alexday is uh oh oh so let's let's do the bright and the tight but i am i'm great let's i'm good to talk about oh very strong like both but still still want to keep this short so we can save stuff for the after show, but what's that, Merlin? And where can people find it?

MerlinAfter show is, yeah, it's a show after the show. Whatever's in the after show is in the after show. And so we have a, I mean, do you call it a second episode? We shuck and jive when we're done here and that's usually like, you know, in recent weeks it's been equivalent to more than one regular episode, but yeah, we do, we talk after it. So as I like to say, you know, if you like whatever this is, you can also get more of it. And it's also an opportunity for you to support what we do by giving us money. If that's something you can afford to do and you go to patreon.com slash do by Friday

and you get the after show. And I don't know, we kind of pump the brakes on all the treats. Like we're not giving away playing cards or anything right now. But the show is there and we're trying to figure out more nice things to put into the feed. But really what it comes down to is I'm not going to mince words. We could really use the money. So it helps a lot. There's nothing wrong with having ads, but we don't do that. And if you wanted to support the show, you can give us $5 a month and it would help us a lot. Anything else?

AlexIt has helped so much.

MerlinTalk about your boobs. Go ahead. Talk about your boobs.

AlexOh, dude. I mean, well, also, I mean, also, yeah, I am saving up for top surgery, but that I have other ways and other methods of doing that. You guys really need to get more terms.

MerlinThere's too many things that mean top.

AlexTop, you're, no, yo, gosh, you're right. Oh, oh, oh.

MerlinAnd somebody will tell me what a keyhole is. But you're going to do that.

Alexyou're going to go to michigan or whatever oh yeah uh but but yes we don't say master and slave anymore think all of that that entire uh first half of this episode that you either really liked or thought was boring because there's no in between i found uh the the or yeah or or both um that that can only happen because of this because you know um that is how i i get the things to take the edge off um not the weed we don't have that much money yeah But I think at a certain point, we did a bit where we're like, okay, if we reach the goal, we'll do a guitar duel that was mostly a joke.

Oh, yeah, it's a guitar duel. But now I'm like...

MerlinWe're also going to get a palette of used things from Amazon at one point, which I think is a terrible idea.

AlexIt is, but it'd be so fun.

MerlinOh, my God. Did you see the piece about how much they destroy? Did you see the thing?

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, you don't want to know. Oh. As a serial returner, you do not. Oh, no. You do not. Oh, no. They, at this one particular Amazon place, because, you know, there's an expense to keeping that stuff stored. And I don't know. I don't know. I haven't vetted this, but let's just say they actually literally destroyed and threw away half an order of magnitude more stuff than they, like, donated. Because it's just too much to deal with. Hundreds and thousands of items destroyed.

AlexOh, I mean, I've. You didn't want to hear that, did you? I have to show because I've made some very good improvements to my home setup. But, oh, fuck me.

MerlinI send them a lot of my recycling. You know, when I say recycling, I mean things that I know actually don't recycle. I just package it up and send it to them. This is yours now. You deal with this.

AlexThe only difference between recycling and trash in Chicago is that one is held in a green bin before it goes to the same dump.

Merlinoh absolutely oh no absolutely absolutely yeah but you know it's fun uh it's fun to fool yourself sometimes it is um do you want to talk about the challenge and then we'll save a couple nugs i do

Alexbriefly yes because i forget what we called it but i enjoyed it very much explore uh challenge everybody do by friday explore smart lighting yes yes yes yes this was sort of i think it was my challenge because I discovered the Nanoleaf, or not the, is it called Nanoleaf, like the whole company, I think?

MerlinNanoleaf is the company, the one with the hexagons is, it's pretty confusing. The one with the hexagons is called Shapes under the Essentials brand. But I think that's when people think of Nanoleaf, I imagine they tend to think of the hexagons. You can also get triangles, there's different ones. And of course, they all have different connectors. Alex, don't get me started on the number of connectors they give you. I'm extremely disappointed in the number of connectors that they give you. That's all I'm going to say about that.

AlexToo few, right?

MerlinHoly, I will be in receipt today or tomorrow of an entire extra pack of just connectors.

AlexOkay, good.

Speaker BBecause I'm tired of thinking about it. I'm tired of thinking about it.

MerlinAnd like, should the adhesive be the only... Anyway, the train went by one day and a bunch of my Nanoleafs fell off and it all just like... Because they barely hold together. But they're great. So I've got the light strips. I've got the shapes. You also sent me a link to something I did buy, which is the Elgato strips, which play relatively nice with the key lights and stuff like that. And the ideas, I mean, like that's just a lot of talking and words. But the thing Alex and I keep sort of dancing around is this idea of like creating, you know, not just an aesthetically pleasing.

How do we put this? I think the crux of what you were talking about that interests me anyway is, well, like, are there modes, could be aesthetic, but are there modes in which you would like to work? And are there environmental changes like light, color, intensity, etc. that could be beneficial to the mode that you've chosen to be in? Is that close?

AlexOh, yeah. No, I don't. Well, when I dance around it, it's just because I am trying to articulate what I'm saying and not even in the Alex Stammery way, but in the sort of idea of we are really rethinking space, not just because of the pandemic, but us nerds.

MerlinThey could always get another job.

AlexThe nerds who are so horny for AR and VR right now. It's like, OK, but have we all really thought about what space means and like how we feel in different areas and like how what that triggers in our brain?

Speaker AYeah.

AlexSo I'm just really investigating what things, you know, you have a home. You do many, many things in our homes, in your home now, but in our hopes, I hope that it's not an R.

MerlinI do so many things in all of your homes when you're not there.

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah. All of my many, many, many homes.

MerlinTurn off your motion smoothing.

AlexI would love that. It is, though, like I have three apartments now, or I am training my brain to think that I have three apartments because I have an office and I have a regular mode and I have a chill mode, which are three. Obviously, they're very vague and amorphous blobs of what that definition is right now. But I have really started thinking, okay, yes, these very, very bright lights,

these are the work lights and the warmer lighting. This is really like the simple ones. My warm lighting is just the regular like power puttering type thing of just like going about my day, doing stuff kind of productive. And the chill lighting is might as well be no lighting. Like this is the read, dick around, hang out lighting. And it's been really, really good for my brain and also an excuse to buy very pretty things.

Yep. So I've just been playing with that.

MerlinYeah. So to add to that, at least from my own point of view, yeah, there's the, and I'm not trying to give aesthetics short shrift because, you know, having things look the way you want is important. But the only, the butter I want to put on this muffin is that if we start by thinking about things like light, let's think about, you know, maybe our other senses. Well, not a lot of them. But like, for example, I mentioned, for example, that I made a scene in the home app. When I click that scene, it's called most days, which I think I'm kind of running out

of steam on already. But you click most days and what happens? Well, it turns on these lights at this temperature and brightness. It turns on those lights on this different system at this lighting and temperature. And then, but like, okay, that's really cool. That's lights. And those lights actually have a functional component, which is I want to light myself a certain way to make a video. But guess what? There's other parts too. it turns off my fans. So there's no noise. And I love my fans. You know, I love my dehumidifier on my fans. I love keeping that air in motion. I like to look at the aware and try and bring that number down. I like, you know, it's like a sad video game.

But there's other parts to that too, which could be, again, I want to not have that noise of the fans, importantly. But then I think it goes further into other stuff. And I don't want to go too far into this because I really don't want to just bitch about stuff. But like that stream deck thing becomes so important for me as a connection. Well, it's not the home assistant part that's important. It's just that home assistant can do so many different things that if I get things working the way that I want in something even as relatively simple as HomeKit, that means I now have a

button to say like, okay, I want it to be like this now. Like I'm going to go home in an hour and I would like it to just be a little bit like, like in one, I'm in one of those like Norwegian ice hotels. I would just like all the lights off except for the pretty blue ones. Yes. I would like those to be on. I might, you know, but when you talk about noise, though, I think this is more subtle than it seems. So, like, you know what? Actually, I like the noise of the fans. I like the sound of our dishwasher. I confess to my wife that our crappy little fake dishwasher on a rolling cart makes me happy because I realized it reminds me of being a kid.

And I haven't been in a house with a dishwasher since 1988. but like it's you know i i'm hand washer i wash but like how that can make me happy that sound like that means now i'm winding down at night i'm watching some youtube and i can hear the dishwasher sounds really strange but i bet you have things like that so there is the aesthetic part and there is the functional part and then the nerd part that we don't have to go super into is like okay well like how do i bring all these pieces together you know for example it's relatively easy at this point to automate if you're an Apple person. It's relatively easy to automate things

like, hey, tell me when it's time to start winding down for bed, change the lights to be like this, turn on, do not disturb, all those kinds of things. That all feels like a pretty janky, you know, technological collage right now. But I think there's, you know, apropos our discussions about ambient computing, I think it's an interesting direction. So yeah, it starts with going like, really, do I need to spend $200 on blue lights? No, you don't. But like, it's kind of cool to be able to set up some environments and situations in which you make a decision to

be in a mode. And then a few seconds later, your environment can reflect that. I think that's kind

Alexof cool. I think it's more than cool. I think it is essential and somewhat astounding, both in the tech sense and in just the neurological sense of how... If you turn your lights on all red,

Merlinwhich my family hates. They hate it so much. When they leave the house and it's dusk and I got the goddamn place to myself for 20 minutes, I have a setting, it's called Red Lights Everywhere, and every hue light in the house, and there's a lot of them, all go to like the color of a dark room. And it changes the feeling of everything instantly. If you have super intense red or purple light, everything looks different. It's like being in the black light section of a Spencer Gifts or something.

AlexYou're in a different space.

MerlinYes, it feels like a different place. And then I swear to God, go to the bathroom and turn on the regular lights. It's going to blow your mind. How different. It's like having night shift on or whatever it's called. Like you really do notice a difference. Whether that helps you sleep better, I think is disputed. But if it feels different, then it's real.

AlexYeah. Like the placebo effect is a thing because it's important because it does affect you. Like I don't care any more so much about the science behind blue light. It's more of, it just puts me in a mindset, you know?

MerlinI totally agree. I mean, how different is it from like having a, if you're like a runner or like you want to exercise in the morning, you lay out your clothes the night before. And you know, a good trick, a good Merlin Mann trick, if you want to get it done, get it ready the night before, but also make sure it's stuff you enjoy wearing, that it's clean. It sounds so dumb, but like, you know, who was I talking to about this? Maybe Roderick, but I have this thing I'm struggling to articulate, but it feels very important to me, which is like in order to be, one doesn't want to say successful, but in order to stop being unsuccessful, I think it helps to turn stuff into things you look forward to doing.

Can you make this into something you look more forward to rather than less forward to? Again, thanks, genius. But no, it's true. It's just stuff you're not doing that you think you should be doing, that you want to be doing. What would need to change for you to look forward to doing that? Because then now like those little, you know, if you put your two fists together. That's the size of your brain. Did you know that? Is that a thing? Really? Yeah. Make two fists. Make two fists and put them. Don't be weird. Make two fists, put them next. That's the size of your brain. But the point being that like give yourself a break and like why don't you,

why don't you let yourself be kind of like a hopeless idiot and say like, well, if a blue room is fun for me or a red room, you know, Gambleville Horror Closet, if this makes me happy, well, I wonder if this is a thing I'd want to do because isn't it odd how if we keep doing something that's more positive than negative, unlike most of the bullshit we do, it ends up habituating us. And in the same way that a bedtime routine is a way of telling your body, your brain, your life, it's time to start getting ready for bed. Like, is that useless? I think it's not.

People who don't do that probably don't get a lot of good sleep. I don't mean to sound mean, but I'm, you know, defending myself in advance for no reason. But anyway.

AlexBecause you're from the Midwest.

MerlinOh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

AlexThat's how we are.

MerlinI'm so sorry.

AlexI'm sorry for everything.

Merlinso i got all that set up i'm not gonna complain i'm not gonna complain i got a lot to complain about right now shit dog fucking everything in the stack is breaking and i don't know why

Alexmy eero well save it for the incidental computer show because oh i have a lot oh but but just one more thing to your point before what i because i always want to as i i don't know who said it probably you a long long time ago um setting yourself your future self up for success because

Merlinother this is started with nighttime merlin and daytime merlin daytime merlin makes assumptions about nighttime merlin that are not in evidence and it started with like oh i'm gonna get three true foe films from netflix and then they just sit there and you don't look at them yeah i'm gonna

Alexto be great at working out tomorrow it's i'm gonna be awesome oh i know i know i'm gonna watch alphaville tonight it's like knocking down a door well and that used to fall down for me when i was like i i don't want to do set this stuff up for tomorrow or i would procrastinate things like taking a shower because having dysphoria isn't great but also i really want to have a shower so i would set up i set up my dumb little lighting scene and always prepare my clothes for tomorrow becomes a better experience there's less there's less to be resistant about right and the the

resistance i found and the procrastination i found wasn't in the setting myself up for success it was before that i'm like i don't like myself right now and i so i just you know midwest hate

Merlinmyself and it's like oh sorry that's really good i midwest hate myself thank you very much

Alexcommunity. Yes. Like this is like mental illness aside. Maybe you should try to be kinder to your future self because maybe they're maybe they're a nice person. I feel to summarize a lot of it.

MerlinIn my experience, it basically comes down to what makes using you're so great. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, isn't that kind of a part of it is like if we all just act like we're nothing and nobody and try to never, never bother or offend anybody, we won't be successful, but we won't be the victim of the lottery. I don't know if you ever read that short story by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery.

AlexI hear there's a lot of nuance to it.

MerlinIt's very nuanced. Midwest hate myself. So I think it's cool. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the struggles. Oh, and also I'm all in on the Elgato Mount lifestyle. Very excited about that. I want to talk about that. Oh, dude, it's a whole world. It's a whole world. You should see what I'm doing here. You should see what I'm doing with ball joints. Blow your fucking mind what I'm doing with ball joints right now. It's all about the ball joints for me.

AlexWait.

MerlinYou know, like think about a Joby, what the fuck's called, a gorilla pod.

AlexOh, so that's what, yeah. You're like talking about like AV jaw, like jaw, the ball points as in like in a tripod, right?

MerlinWell, and I was, yes. And I was struggling because I kept going through this whole goddamn, you know, like a baby with a sorting box going like, hmm, how do I get this thing? And I pull out all my little brass bits. I pull out all the little connectors. I throw it on the desk. I'm very Apollo 13, right? I've got to make the square thing fit into this circle thing. How will I get it so that could I have a monitor up on this thing? And I went around and around. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's like I'd have a couple of those for different things, and I could repurpose them. I could Frankenstein my Joby onto a different ball joint.

And pretty soon, I got a whole situation. It looks like I have squids behind my monitor. There's a lot going on. hot i mean cool oh it's true it's true he just wanted to explain a joke to his kids um but the uh but uh but uh but you know what it's neat about the uh the elgato thing is like it's all about the ball joints you're not talking about like how you get you get the little swively guy and you screw it on it's always real hard to put on but then it goes on to a mount go go look it up go look up uh do it now go look up elgato multi multi-mount ball joints uh lilu dallas

multi-mount. Multi-mount El Gato. It's a system. It's a system. But look at all those ball joints. I got ball joints out the ass right now. You connect them up. Look at the flex arm L and the flex arm S. That's nothing but ball joints all the way down. You connect them up

Alexinto each other. I'm told you're supposed to play with them. You can't ignore. You gotta play with your balls before you're kids. Is that right? Huh. I read a thing

Merlinin the New York Times that says you never play with your kids. Maybe they're saying, don't play with your kids. Just play with your balls.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYour balls are your real kids. They're the only ones who love you. Stop being so sensitive.

246. I Midwest Hate Myself 0:00 / 01:04:00