257. Dildonics

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, share your what to buy workflow. Oh, tippet, tippet bell. I'm trying not to read

Merlininto the tippet bell. How are you, Merlin man? What's wrong with my bell? I thought that would

Alexbe more dang. You read so much into everything. I know. I know. I'm told I should stop.

MerlinDoes it help? No, no. What would help? Oh, hmm. You know how there's the question,

Alexdo you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I just kind of want to. I'm fine with being stupid but i know that i still wouldn't be happy because how if you're stupid how do you man i don't know and i didn't even take i didn't even take edibles merlin and i can't finish uh

Merlinthat thought you can't finish how are you um i feel i don't know i i i'm you know i'm betwixt in between i got a lot of thought technologies that i'm uh turning over in my head are you

Alexa leader of them? Why are they coming into your brain? I was listening to

MerlinTuesday's Back to Work, which as usual it just starts 2 a.m. early. 9 a.m. It's too early. I'm realizing how much I should collect a lot of my I need to spend some time on the wisdom document because I think that would center me with a lot of these thought technologies that I'm turning over. I guess Tuesday was a big day for me because I was sort of prattling on I'm back to work. But then on, um, come on, you're supposed to be in, you know, the stir.

I'm sorry for disrupting. I'm sorry. Because, and you know what, this relates to a thing that I sent you last night, uh, where I sent you, I sent you the, I sent you a screenshot of a tweet and I said, this is why I hate Twitter. And, and like, and the thing is that, that is, that is like not even in the top 40% of what drives me crazy about Twitter. But it was a person of, you know, a writer for the Washington Post who says,

you know, Gabby Burrito is all very sad, but, you know, actually indigenous women disappear every year and they don't get the attention of, you know, the blonde woman, which is absolutely true.

AlexWait, what? Wow. Why isn't anybody talking about this? Now, we should definitely stop our search and address that at this immediate moment. I'm going to get in trouble. I'm sorry.

MerlinIn the same area that she disappeared, 710 indigenous people, mostly girls, disappeared between 2011 and 2020, but their stories didn't lead news cycles. Now, true. And it's in quotes, so this person is quoting that. But it's got that, wow, really makes you think thing.

AlexAnd it's being written by the people who did not report on it. It feels like this stupid Netflix documentary about how bad Facebook is interviewing the employees who made Facebook. It drives me a little bit bonkers.

MerlinWell, I'm going somewhere and then I'm going somewhere. And then as I also said, and I'm not trying to drag this guy because I like his work. But then the response that I hearted to that was a fellow with 22 followers who was addressing this person who works for Washington Post and said, I was going to write about those in the Washington Post, but I don't work at the Washington Post. And I thought, you know, that's really funny. Because that guy's trying to do – the one fellow is trying to do some kind of like, wow, you guys dunk. And this guy stole the ball and kind of hit him in the face with it and went, if you like basketball so much, why don't you lace on your shoes, asshole.

but what I found myself saying to John and this is the kind of thought technology that is emergent in me right now and again as ever I'm not saying I'm good at this I'm saying this is what I realize I want to strive for when you realize something and it makes you feel, let's not say smarter but it makes you feel less dumb it makes you feel more like you understand the context for something something comes along, let's just say that helps you feel like you just grew a little bit because you're undoing something that you hadn't examined before, which in this case is like, man, there's all kinds of terrible

shit that happens in America. And it's really, it can be very instructive to realize what it is that gets attention, let alone help. But when I said to Syracuse was like, I'm striving to become a person who in that instance, when I learned something, even if it's from a dunk, a stupid fucking Twitter dunk, if I learned something and I grew a little and I feel less stupid, there's a couple extremes that that that can lead to one of those extremes is a kind of i'm smarter than you because now i'm telling you something i found on wikipedia two minutes ago and

you didn't know and that went so it's kind of like arrogant and negative spin and like but just the sense of superiority where you're not talking to anyone in particular but you're just kind of announcing how you're smarter than somebody else. And then the other way, the other instance of that at the other end of the spectrum is instead of leading to a feeling of superiority, what if that led us to a sense of humility? What if new information and growth made us more humble and open rather than feeling like we've just found

another poker chip to put in our cognitive bias pile or whatever? So that's the kind of thing that I'm dealing with. And this is why I should go to the wisdom document is I need focus in these thought technologies, these thoughts technology.

Speaker AYou know what I'm talking about?

MerlinLike when you try to grow and it's sometimes, you know, like when you plant a little seed, you don't know if it's growing for a long time. And even then when it's little head pokes out and it's a little green sprout, you don't even know if it's going to grow and thrive and live. And you may not even know what plant it is and you may not even remember having planted the seed. But something's definitely different. You just don't know what it is yet. And that's where I am right now. Maybe it's the edibles. But I feel like there's a lot of stuff that I'm working on right now that feels kind of important.

AlexI don't consider myself a thought leader or anyone who is good at technology in any way. In fact, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not opening. Oh, there we go. Thank God. I was finally able to finish. I was trying to subtly open my energy drink. I'm very tired. But it was encased in plastic.

MerlinI got beta blockers. I got Adzil. I got a Zippo.

AlexBut what you're describing is very common. And the other day, I think I came across something that made me wonder, okay, for the people who have similar, and I'm specifically thinking about the lush, because that is typically what I see on Twitter. The, like, well, did you know, dumb, dumb?

MerlinNow do Hunter Biden.

AlexYeah. okay i will he's attractive he's really hot anyway um the you know i'm talking about you

Merlinknow i'm talking about that that typical refrain from the broken inside um especially max's 2019 list that i i want to i want to hurl into the sun it's just all all the broken inside jokesters like so sweaty so sweaty for felix buterman to like their tweet that's exactly what it is it's

Alexlike well i'm down here and i'm alone i like i'm lonely and i'm sure believe me you're no felix

Merlinbeaterman just relax yeah i i don't know i don't know how much that guy is a character but everything he does is kind of smart and funny and fast and makes my brain spin and you're out there going like yeah here's two screenshots that show hypocrisy please like and subscribe that's the thing i i don't even think

Alexit's a look at i'm smart or rather that's what it is on the on the surface but the sort of some parts of culture on the left and progressives and any anybody that's honestly anything left of center or left of like left of biden it's like okay well if i i can't live with myself if i'm that negative so i am going to try to do the dunks of these people who i admire and respect like like

the cool potters and the very attractive streamers uh and it almost becomes like incel behavior but But they're like involuntary or non-conversive. I don't know. I think they just want to be happy. I think they're like genuinely like lonely, sad people who are like, well, these successful people just must be smart.

MerlinThey may not be lonely and sad, but like if they're not, they're missing their best bet. Like if you're happy and you like how things are going in your life, how are you spending that much time on Twitter being so negative and terrible all the time? I mean, is this just an exhaust stack for your bullshit title?

AlexFor most, even most people I follow.

MerlinWell, I see, but I don't know. I bet if I met a lot of these people and we hung out in times when you can hang out with people, I bet you'd be like, oh, my gosh, that person seems really cool and smart. and there are specific instances and there are names that I'm not mentioning here are people that I do I do like and I do admire and every month or so they publish something but then most of the time they're just they're just out there going meh and and I said this guy for some reason I don't know why I'm dragging this poor Washington Post guy so hard but it just really fucking like I was like I have not been personally put out by MAGA shitheads, chuds, and hogs for a long time.

Because they're doing their thing. We're in different worlds. Am I bothered by somebody with that pure of a troll instinct and shitty agenda? I mean, I don't love it. I find the left on Twitter so much more insufferable.

AlexYou're saying you haven't actually interacted with, so no harassment on the street or anything? Do you see them around your name? I don't know. Not to be creepy, but like...

MerlinNo, I know. Okay, so a lot of the implicit dunking and a lot of the express dunking is on MAGA shitheads because it's like shooting fish in a barrel, our big, beautiful boaters and stuff. which is actually funny. But, you know, I mean, we're making fun of all these idiots and the sparsely attended event in Washington, and Rachel Maddow's having a lot of fun with that. And, like, I guess what I'm saying is, like, if you go back four or five years, the, I feel like the bet noir of the left on Twitter was all of the imminence gris are all these maugus shitheads.

Well, like, the thing is, you go and look at replies to fucking anything, and it's like the Krasensteins never left. It's like, oh, you know, Emperor Cheeto has no penis. Ha ha lol. And that kind of stuff. And just like all of this people just, their whole brand is making dunks at the children's court. There's nothing interesting or sophisticated or learned about what they're doing.

They're just, as the great drunk John Wayne said, they're just saying things for clapping. did you ever actually hear that when i say that line i'm not saying this for clapping have you

Alexever heard that you heard you have you ever heard where that comes from when i say that i'm not

Merlinsaying this for clapping have you ever heard the source of that what i'm mentioning there no could you please put a pin in a john wayne drunk speech okay john wayne john wings john wings John Wings, Buffalo Wild John. And it bummed my head because, first of all, fuck me. I don't know why I keep looking at this stuff. Like Max, I'm mostly off of Twitter right now.

But no, but like, you know, it's my nighttime thing now. I don't do it during the day so much. But then I get to catch up at night when I'm watching my stories and I get to see all this stuff. And so I was saying this to my wife. I said this to you. I said this to my wife. I said this to several people. Like this, that, that kind of stuff is, is to me what, I don't know. It's, it's, I'm not putting this well. I'm trying, I'm trying to grow and I should be able to grow without having to drag someone else. But sometimes it's somebody else's stupid shittiness that makes me, and stupid shittiness in a way that they think is very grand and admirable.

It's watching people do that that makes me go, oh, like I need to grow. And in some ways, like I'm breaking my rule here, which is I need to grow without telling people that I'm growing. And there's just not much reward for that these days because you're expected to be out there donning the correct uniform of the day, the correct costume of the day. And like some days, some days we we hate Jen Psaki. Some days we like Jen Psaki. A lot of days we hate Joseph Gordon-Levitt Biden. And like you have to just be in the right.

You have to read the room right to know what kind of an unnecessary asshole to be that day. And I really I I really hate it. I know you hate it, too, but I'm just throwing to you here if you want to if you want to pile on with me.

AlexNo, I'm actually wondering when you say if you grow as a different person and you you're right, you don't get rewarded for that when it's done quietly and genuinely. But does it and you didn't say that it needs to be, but I one I am always worried that that's not something people even consider anymore. Like just the concept of doesn't feel like an option.

MerlinThere are people who have grown up in an environment where the only things that are private are shameful.

Alexno think about it think about it no i'm sorry i'm thinking of one to sakes going those three

Merlinthings are just private moments or sad everything that's in your life that's not shameful has to be touted online and documented and everything that is shameful you have to decide if there's a way you can spin it to make you lovable but in this this is why you're not supposed that's why you're not supposed to ever say anything like the like you and i would say to each other in text channels That's why you're supposed to never say anything like our friends would say on Slack. Why do they go to Slack? They go to Slack because every fucking American needs a place where they can go and say things that you're not supposed to say right now.

And I'm not talking about racism. I'm talking about undiagnosed personality disorders in hundreds of millions of Americans that things like social media are bolstering. are bolstering. And it's, you know, it's a shame that I reached a point where I realized I don't want to have tweets on the internet anymore. Um, because one of my really good tweets from a long time ago, I feel like was, um, something along the lines of as long as, as long as strangers have the power to change your mood,

you're deeply and fundamentally fucked, which is a thing that I still believe.

AlexUh,

Merlinit won't hurt my feelings if you disagree.

AlexUh, No, I'm...

MerlinYou hope.

AlexI think... Oh, God. Oh, gosh. I had a dream that I didn't write it down Merlin style. It's okay if you are. Oh, no. I'm saying I did have a dream where I deeply did not offend you, but hurt you. And it fucked me up.

MerlinOh, this is like me and Paul Kafasus all over again.

AlexI don't know what that means. But I'm not trying...

MerlinI had a dream that I offended Paul so deeply that I was never allowed to use another Rogue Amoeba product. This is a dream that I had.

AlexOh, I thought you were going to say like you were just taking off the betas. That's just, oh, God. I'm the beta now. Yeah. There are no betas, Alex.

MerlinDo you not know the first rule of beta club?

AlexWhat I see happening in private Internet spaces. Yeah. The fun jokes that everyone's going to yell at you for if they're in public. But also, if you're not per, maybe we are saying the same, we are saying the same thing of, you know, you're not wearing your hat right today. It is out of fashion.

MerlinWho doesn't want to wear the ribbon? Who doesn't want to wear the ribbon?

AlexYeah, yeah. It's like, why? Exactly. You know, it's like you're just hiding from takes. I think that's like, you're embracing conversation. But the reason, at least I think the reason that the sort of sharing of social justice or things that we perceive as unjust or educational online is because, you know, the youths have only grown up with that.

But even someone like me who had an iPhone in high school, when you were sharing that stuff, it genuinely was like, holy shit, have you seen this? Because we were actual literal children.

MerlinWell, that was the basis for a lot of early blogging.

AlexRight. But I can't help that the Twitter of whenever we first, whenever it was first like picking up like 2006 and like 2008 until now, it is extremely different. But in just all the worst ways, like all the good stuff went away. And yes, I get it. I know. Obviously, engagement. But there's something in, I don't know.

There's something in me that turns me into a 12-year-old when I am on certain areas of the Internet. Like when I'm with my brothers.

MerlinI know. And you said like, I don't know if you implied that I was hiding. I don't know if you're saying that I was hiding from takes.

AlexOh, no, me. I definitely do that too.

MerlinBut it's like, you know, if you know there are things.

AlexLike I'm not queer right half of the time on the internet. I just want to make a flag joke. That's obvious.

MerlinThat's obvious.

AlexYeah, I know. I know.

MerlinI got to find the greatest tweet of all time. I thought I put it in my bookmarks, but I didn't. I need to find it because the greatest tweet of all time, which I favorited a month or two ago was something like, and I know I've said this, but it's so painful and meaningful and useful. But to paraphrase from memory, it was something along the lines of, well, you know, this is Twitter. Everything you post as a joke is taken extremely seriously. And everything that you post seriously is taken as an extreme joke. Like if you ask somebody for help, they're going

to come in and they're going to put on their baggy pants and make jokes. But when you do come in and say something that's kind of real or as my daughter says, cringe, like that's when people like decide that it's a joke. And or you know what I mean? It's like or like when you make a joke, everybody says, well, like, you know, what about the children? What about the indigenous girls? And you're like, oh, my God, this is the collapse of context. I never knew how useful context was. As I said, I'm back to work Tuesday. I think I think September is my month of context. I'm thinking a lot about context.

AlexOh, hmm. This is very interesting.

MerlinIs it? Is it interesting?

AlexYes. OK. Well, it's interesting to me just because that was a fundamental part of our education and specifically in writing. I'm talking from grade school until high school was whether you are reading or writing or doing math. Context clues are everything. That was drilled into us.

MerlinThe context is more important than the content. And not to be on Marshall McLuhan. The context is much more important than the content in a lot of ways, I feel like. I mean, content's important, but without context, it's virtually useless. And so for, I mean, an obvious example that we've been talking about for six years or whatever is that, you know, just because you saw something and it didn't have a grammatical or spelling error doesn't mean that it's accurate and true. like you know i mean i as i famously like to complain i mean like almost every article i read

especially in the washington post which is a fantastic publication that one of five or so publications i pay for has a has a has a typo or an easy to catch error that would have had like red dots under it if you'd paid any attention at all you know and just the obvious kind of stuff that like political twitter does like that becomes than or whatever and stuff like that but But just because it looks credible and agrees with what you think, see also cognitive bias, doesn't mean that it's true. And what we're talking about there, though, is context. Do you remember when you first heard that, oh, there's this one crazy website called the Denver Courier Post, which is a totally made-up news publication that just puts out a lot of what we used to call fake news?

the context collapse means that we get so focused on the content and what our take on it is, as you say, or how we feel about it, that if we aren't paying attention primarily for context, consider the source, that kind of stuff. And this also very much leads into our challenge this week, I feel like. Like you don't have the calipers that you need to decide how you should accept or how you should consume and then react to any datum.

Without context, how would you even know what to do? If you always got the thing that was the top return in Google, well, you'd be missing the context. There's a lot of people who have a financial stake in trying to get to the top of Google whether or not their product is the best, which sounds like a desperately naive thing to say. And yet here we are.

Alexyou know i don't this is another context i don't know if it's naive to say when there are so many i we've i know we've talked about how there are so many different ways to label like generations and how useful or not it is but there is it is like such a shocking divide not even just between like iPhone and and after iPhone but from like me and my sister who's 10 years younger than me

just how uh there's yeah you know to her there is no internet um there's a TikTok and face with there's not even like Facebook or there's not even TikTok right now Snapchat is the one place for news and for like I I god I do sound like such an internet boomer but it's there's a benefit for, uh, obviously a lot of outlets to ignore, uh, context, but then it gets

kind of like, uh, whoa, look at your hand, man. And it's honestly for me of like, well, then what does context even mean? Like, uh, there's a CNN app or the CNN, the CNN, like blue check of snap snapstagram. Uh, I actually like Snapchat. I don't want to dunk on it, but I mean, I don't know. Like, it feels like we're being put on trial for life. Like, we, but we don't have a juror saying what should or should not be put into evidence. Like, it's very weird.

Like, can we talk about the emotional disturbance of what happened to the people who got the wrong blood test at their nose? Or are we just going to say?

MerlinThey're not allowed to, you know, they're not allowed to talk about how they feel about it.

AlexYeah. Oh, yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah.

MerlinDid you see John Kerry Rose back with Bad Blood, updates to Bad Blood for the Elizabeth Holmes trial?

AlexAre you talking about the –

MerlinThe guy who did the Bad Blood book in the Wall Street Journal articles.

AlexSorry, there's delay. The podcast, the new podcast that's out?

MerlinYes. It's like a strap-on to the original Bad Blood, wonderful Bad Blood series. And I think – oh, Jesus. I think everything after episode five is behind the Apple subscription wall, but I've been listening to that. and talking about, it almost sounds like he's trying to speak to people involved in the trial from afar and let them know what's a good angle to attack from, you know, the stuff about like the email that she wrote to herself at Berkeley in 2014 and all that kind of stuff. But one of the things they say is going to make this a little more challenging for the prosecutors is that I

think, so like, you know, the stories I think you're referring to, there's the woman who had been told she, so these are all people who had Theranos tests that for any variety of reason, well, the reason they didn't work is because, wow, it was a mess on several levels.

But that they got, you know, there's one woman who thought her cancer, I've been told that her cancer was probably coming back. There's another woman who'd been told that she had a miscarriage. There's all of these cases of people who'd gone to Walgreens and gotten what they thought was the Theranos pinprick. Oh, and by the way, why did they take out three vials of venous blood in addition to the capsule that she likes to hold between her fingers with her creepy doll eyes. But I think, I think there, what's it, what I want to get this right context, but what's admissible is that these things happen. What's not admissible is them going like, I thought my baby was dead inside of me.

And this is what that led to in my life, which is, I, I'm not a jurist, but that seems like important context. But I guess there's some stuff they can get in, some stuff she can't. And everybody and their brother is wondering if she had a baby just to seem sympathetic, which seems pretty dark.

AlexWell, hey, everybody. Go to Roboism.fm. Kathy, friend of the show, Mrs. Soup, and I just talked about this because we both have very dark and sad, like, just honestly, like a lot of people, an infatuation with Elizabeth Holmes. And one thing that the Blad Blood, the Bladdy Blood Strap-On podcast says, he's like, how do I say this delicately?

Some people are wondering maybe if Elizabeth Holmes may have gotten pregnant just for optics.

MerlinSo you've heard it. So the thing is both, I realized that both Bad Blood and The Dropout are doing this. the two warring podcasts that were both very good are both doing this

Alexyeah it's super weird they're both still good but they are kind of like vying for different structures

MerlinI think the original Bad Blood is gone I couldn't find it

Alexit was not a it was not ever a well actually Merlin it wasn't ever a podcast it was a series of Wall Street journals yes the Amazon newspaper

MerlinNo, ABC did the...

AlexOh, I thought ABC did the dropout. You're so confused. You don't even know what you're confused about. No, no, no, no. I literally, we literally just did an entire roboism about this. Yes.

MerlinOh, my God. Well, in that case, I better defer to you.

AlexHe, okay, he wrote article, he, oh, my, there was, I bet, man, I bet, like.

MerlinWall Street Journal.

AlexYes. The, the, mm, mm, mm. The guy who wrote the book. Call me in your. Oh, my Lord. But it's really, it's even before the big high.

MerlinIt was on my podcast, so it must be true.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinI can ask the other person on the podcast. They'll tell me it's true. God.

Alexoh god you've turned this into a content episode jesus christ oh that means but even before the baby stuff it was like oh sure ah there like she's big bad who has the steve jobs turtleneck and it's like this woman to me clearly is a sociopath i know how problematic that is

uh but like this is talk about this i i know i'm sorry i was i you know what i am not sorry you gotta stop hashtagging your life it has to end the well okay i think elizabeth holmes is just psychotic i obviously think elizabeth holmes is psychotic but the way she was portrayed but you're

MerlinInfatuated with her.

AlexYes, because she was portrayed in the weirdest fucking way for years.

MerlinElaine Chao or Elaine Chao Cho. Margaret. The lady who used to be at Facebook, I believe, she says it's because of sexism that we're hard on Elizabeth Holmes. It was a very good and thoughtful article.

AlexBut it's a weird kind. It's like a weird kind of sexism, though. When a man does it, they call it assertive. Does it matter if she changed her voice? Who the fuck cares? folks who know Elizabeth Holmes supposedly according to like one Stanford teacher she had before she dropped out had a really high voice and then when she was in the public eye it ended up that she had

Merlinshe sounded like a flighty blonde

Alexyeah and now she's just like you know they say you're crazy and then you change the world and then you have a baby and stare creepily at people from the courtroom my uncle that I was very close to died that's my favorite blonde

Speaker AAnd then her family's like, what are you talking about? She was never close to her uncle. No one should ever have to see someone die. Could you please post that photo of me holding up the little capsule? First they make fun of you, and then they stir fry you, and then they serve you, and then they laugh at you, and then they invest in you. Church Schultz.

AlexNow you sound like the judges from Futurama.

MerlinFuturama?

Alexchurches what to um the judges from futurama pair pimples for hairy fish nuts what uh yeah title future futurama title title title futurama i'm just saying that because descript now knows to search for titles so i can look up exactly where this clip is um but but i wish that we could just bully her for her weird ass voice and doing weird ass shit and not just because she's you know how

Merlinmuch that hurts half of the planet do you know that hurts half the planet but not because she's a woman because she's a fucking weirdo obviously you're doing it because she's a woman not because at every conceivable turn according to the actual evidence she she and her business partner who apparently abused her um uh which i mean it's horrible but like uh but no it's you're you're obviously you're criticizing her because she's a woman and not because at every conceivable opportunity she said uh she deliberately said untrue things and then bullied people who said

Alexthat those untrue things were untrue yep definitely just because she she's it's you know not even a woman it's because she's she's blonde it's because she is blonde yeah deep voiced l woods blood lady

Merlingod damn let's see maybe there should be a new corner here the new corner and i really i do need

Alexto get back on my wisdom document i have so many questions about this wisdom document oh it's on

MerlinGitHub. You can see it. It's on GitHub. It's based on our craft challenge.

AlexI know, and I can't help but wonder why it exists. Does it exist for you? Does it exist? I don't think there's a good

Merlinor... It exists for everyone. Why does anybody do anything? As the great Danny DeVito says when he's stuck in a coil in his underwear, you know, he says, how does anything happen, Charlie? How did this happen, Frank? How does anything happen, Charlie? Just move on.

My Twitter bios are getting stupid and stupider. I had one. I watched a supercut of every Shut Up Leonard. Oh my god. Have you seen a supercut of every Shut Up Leonard? Yes. And my favorite, I think, well, there's a bunch I love, but my favorite might be the very first one. So I love the ones that are like, shut up, Leonard. I talked to your son on family day. I know about your gambling. Or, shut up, Leonard. I know about your crooked penis or whatever. But I think my favorite is the very first one, which is when Jeff goes, shut up, Leonard. Nobody even knows what you're talking about. When he goes,

somebody comes in and says something like well thanks Jeff you ruined that and then Leonard walks up and goes yeah Winger thanks for eating all the macaroni and Jeff Winger goes shut up Leonard nobody even knows what you're talking about wisdom here's some of my recent wisdoms go ahead please go

Alexoh no I just think that community was it still is one of the smartest sitcoms and I wish that not that like I wish it would just keep

Merlingoing. God, season two fucks, man. Season two is so fucking good. We're watching season two again.

AlexBut if it was written now, fucking A. It'd be so good. Well, you know,

Merlinthere's a reason that I steal all of the shows, because they go away. And there were three episodes that were pulled from Hulu, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which is one of the great episodes of TV. What? That's... Well, you can guess why. Do you know what a drow elf looks like, Alex? Drow elf, otherwise known as a dark elf. Do you remember

AlexDid they pull a McElroy, like it's blue or something?

MerlinChang is a drow elf, and so he has black skin. Not brown Amos and Andy skin. He has black skin and white hair like a drow or dark elf would have.

AlexOh, you mean they edited out the joke where they got rid of the joke that was making fun of racists? That seems normal.

MerlinOh, yeah, no, they got rid of the episode making fun of racists. Just like they had to get rid of every instance of Jenna Maroney in blackface, which was fucking hilarious and instructive. It's Tropic Thunder all over again.

AlexThis is actually one of my. This is not a. Well, unfortunately, jokes have left the room because they also took down the episode of God. This is not a good look, what we're talking about. But they took down an episode of Golden Girls where Dorothy's son is marrying a black woman. And the joke is at first like they it's like, oh, awkward because, you know, it's the 80s and a kid is marrying a black woman.

MerlinAnd it's one of those. It's got to be one of those Norman Lear style. Like when Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Archie Bunker on the cheek. it's one of those like you're there for the like look of disbelief when people realize what's

Alexhappening right well shot of dorothy oh really okay that's the thing well it that stuff is there but then they take it in and turn it and there's like and there's actual real conversations about how this woman who also turns up uh being like 50 and dorothy's son is like 30 or something oh man And then it becomes an actual episode about a conversation about race and like, well, if like, is he stealing a black woman from the community?

Like, it was like eight dimensional race theory. And they brought, I mean, yes, like they brought in black writers because it's like, this is such a complex issue. And how about you guys don't do this? Just the same way they did with the lesbian episode.

MerlinSo what was the reason for pulling it? What's the reason for bullying it?

AlexBecause there is a joke where Rose and Blanche, you know, the two of the other, the titular Rose is Betty White. Girls of Golden. Yep. Betty White. And they come out at one point and they're wearing, they are wearing face masks and their black face.

MerlinOh, okay.

AlexYep. I literally had forgotten the joke by the end of that rant.

MerlinOh, but that's funny. That's a misunderstanding.

AlexYeah. And it lasts for like 30 seconds. and now you don't understand why Michael just apparently comes up and has a kid. They broke continuity. Anyway, racism isn't

Merlinfunny. Hawkeye made a baby kill, made a lady kill a baby because he thought it was a chicken. And that was on MASH. Here's some of my recent wisdom. I have one, I can't find it. I wrote one last night. I think I'm not syncing correctly.

Here's some new wisdom. It was something along the lines of, never let anyone tell you how to season your food, how, when, or whether to season your food.

AlexOh, thank you. Hashtag ally.

MerlinAnd also not season your food in your case. Yes, exactly.

AlexThank you.

MerlinI made bachelor pasta last night, and I made it in—

AlexHold up. What's that?

MerlinOh, it's come up several times on Rectifs, but it's a recipe or a method that I learned about in college that I still use to this day. And I salted my food before I tasted it. And I remember there's that thing people always say, oh, you can judge people by, do they salt their food before they taste it? And I was thinking, you know what? In my head, I says to myself, I says, fuck you. Don't tell me how to season my food. And then another piece of wisdom I added last night.

AlexWait until you see the rest of my absolutely crazy behavior.

MerlinYeah, I haven't seen nothing yet, which is something that, you know, Eddie Cantor said in the movie where he's in blackface, the jazz singer. Another one is try to minimize the times you explain food to people. Like, I understand this, but I really don't like when people explain food to me. and I don't like it. I understand why people do it, but like sometimes people will go, oh, so, you know, sort of along the lines of like, is this your first time dining with us? It's like, no, this is my first time ever eating. Like, I just don't even understand how food works and where people go like, okay, now,

what you want to do is, you know, the niblet corn is in its own glassé and you want to get a couple of those kernels at a time and put that into the second dipping station with the Cretaceous salt. And you're like, look, you know what? It's a plate of food. Don't tell me how to eat it. you know and just don't tell other people how to eat food uh here's some other ones uh this is all this is all still draft uh my observation is that people often fuck up because they're usually thinking about the next thing rather than the current thing when you think too much about the

Alexfuture in the past you're not in the moment that's really fucking good yeah and then the example of

Merlincourse is you know david allen and toilet paper right like you don't think about toilet paper when you're at the grocery store you think about toilet paper when you're taking a shit and panic Let's get some other recent ones. Oh, yeah, another good one.

AlexOr, you know, your marriage, too. There's many things. There's marriages.

MerlinOf course, via Marco Arment. Sometimes in life, even though it's not your fault, it is still your problem, which has been transformative for me.

AlexMarco's one of, like, the smart lately. Never mind. I'm not going to compliment Marco. Anyway, sorry. Go on.

MerlinI got a lot more wisdom. We'll work on the document. Maybe we can make that a challenge. Here's some of my other bios. Let's see. Y'all don't want to hear me. You just want to dance. That's a line you can barely hear in Heya. Heya is the greatest song of all time. Y'all don't want to hear me. You just want to dance. Shut up, Leonard. Nobody even knows what you're talking about. Oh, a line from, you have seen the movie Jojo Rabbit?

AlexOf course I have. I'm told it's anti-Semitic.

MerlinThis is a line from Yorkie. This is a line from Yorkie that really landed for me. I guess I'm just a kid in a fat kid's body. I guess I'm just a kid in a fat kid's body. I forgot about that. I forgot about that.

AlexSorry, that was a good trans meme for a while. I forgot about that.

MerlinOh, really? Oh, that's funny. The line reported about the famous joke about Milton Berle's huge dick. Go ahead, Milton. Just take out enough to win. I don't know that. Well, Milton Berle had the biggest penis in Hollywood, and people were always sort of challenging him. And one time he was egged on by one of his other elderly comedy friends. He said, go ahead, Milton. Just take out enough to win. I think that's funny. How does anything happen, Charlie? That's a classic. This one I had to take down because I was, there's a line from a church's song that I'm afraid sounded too much like

something I would. So the way the song goes, I'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown, which is terrific line. But now it looks like I'm writing a book when I say that. And I don't want to write a book.

AlexOh, I was like, wait, I'm like, it's not necessarily about suicide. That's that Robert Smith.

MerlinThat's all you like churches. You talk about it, right? That's a good record. It's a really good record.

AlexI love them so much.

MerlinI'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown.

AlexCan't kill the king, so you kiss the ring. Oh, God, I love that album so much. Oh, God.

MerlinIt's really good. I still like the first one the most, but that's just me.

AlexI think I do, too, but I have a feeling that's just because of where and when I...

MerlinThose first three songs, man. Oof.

AlexYeah, maybe, yeah.

MerlinBachelor Pasta is something I learned about. I love reference books. I have several acquaintances in life where I began bonding with them over a shared love of reference books. Reference books and things that also could be like, not advice books, but like, you know, I love books like Rules of Thumb, terrific book, which in a current edition, Inbox Zero is featured, which is kind of weird.

AlexWhat?

MerlinYeah.

AlexI wonder if Kindle updated it because I just did not. I didn't hate that book. I do hate the Checklist Manifesto. I am comfortable. Hate is a very strong word. Yes. but I did

Merlinit is a strong word

AlexI really hate the Jackman's manifesto

Merlinit's a currently out of print book that I loved in college called The Modern Man's Guide to Life and it just has a bunch of stuff in it and one of the things it had in it and kind of a sidebar was this thing called bachelor pasta and it's like hey if you want to make pasta if you want to make yourself a quick pasta dish and like this is very much a college guy kind of thing and John Syracuse loves this recipe so basically you boil up some macaroni you and then you got you got garlic salt and frozen peas and butter or oil and then you mix that together and eat it up yum and so I made that last night with Jameli Jameli

Alexthat actually sounds almost edible for someone like me who does not like all of the tastes did you ever like when you were out of well one you didn't have a container and or two microwave and or three utensils just did you ever just eat the raw ramen you know in the little I guess you can't that's a thing yeah it is a thing

MerlinI didn't know this. I was watching a, as it happened, I was watching a really good sort of, I don't know if you call it a review, but it's a guy from South Korea who was giving a tour of H Mart, which is an amazing store. It truly is. It really is. It's so cool to me that that exists. And it's so cool that they've been nice enough to like Westernify it without de-Koreanizing it. You know what I mean? It's like, because like, like a lot of Asian and Chinese grocery stores, like there's one in our neighborhood.

My kid and I like to go to because it's like going to the zoo. It's so fucking funny how, how insane. I can't believe this place is still open. Their meat, their meat area does look like the world's saddest aquarium. And it's got all these, it's got those big clams that look like dicks. And it's got these pigs hanging from it and all the floors are filthy. But like H Mart is like super clean, super easy to figure out. But anyway, this guy was doing like a little tour slash review of H Mart and took you down the ramen and, you know, instant noodles aisle. And was talking about growing up. Like there's the one brand that's got the little boy on the front.

And like you smash it up and then put the flavor on top of it. My kids started doing that. And she really likes it. I've never done it. But apparently that is a thing. People will just eat the crunch. So you've done that. Have you eaten just crunched up ramen?

AlexMany, many, many times in college. And then I saw it was a thing. and into like both a comfort food and a fancy food thing in Korea and other Asian countries. Then I'm like, ha ha, it's normal, everybody. Or if not, it's racist.

MerlinOh, you're saying there's precedent. Like you can't make fun of me. This is normal.

AlexExactly. Yep, yep, yep.

MerlinAll you need to do is find one person somewhere in Asia that uses a spoon to eat popcorn for some reason. And that will normalize it.

AlexOh, I came across an issue. You can't, a puff, I recently I was trying to eat a puffy Cheeto with a spoon. You can't eat a puffy Cheeto with a spoon and a fork just makes it all crumble. So I used my hands to eat a puffy Cheeto and I really didn't like it. The.

MerlinWow. That's very troubling.

AlexGripping.

MerlinAnd then I can. What I'll do is I'll see when we take our break, I'll see if I can find you the John Wayne speech. And you can hear that in the after show. You can support our program and you can hear more of whatever this is by choosing to support us on Patreon. So you can go to patreon.com slash do by Friday or giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. And you can give us a small amount of money each month. And that helps us have money.

And I'm sorry. I'm getting distracted by remembering that Matt, she's trying to photograph your boobs.

And if you just joined the show for the first time, hello and welcome.

Who is matchy? Why is that person photographing your co-host's boobs? It's for medicine. So you have, anyway, thank you very much. We do appreciate your support. So I saw a tweet where you were responding to somebody else's tweet, and I think you had an edible because there was no context I could see about what it had to do with the other tweet. But, but Matt, she needs your, your, your spouse, Matt needs to get a photograph of your top section. And so that's like a surgical for your surgery team.

And that's like a before a picture or it goes into them figuring out, well, we need to plan for these kinds of things.

AlexRight. You have different types of consults. People are going to be genuinely confused. hello uh everybody top surgery as in when you get your boobs taken off and okay so yeah there's

Merlindifferent alex alex has an ongoing omnibus project that we that we mentioned in passing it truly is well it's part of it oh yeah you could do the paperwork i saw that um alex is i i mean you know what if it's not too raw and real um when you meet somebody and they seem like a person of good heart and you're talking about your life and you're close enough friends how do you describe what's happening right now? How do you describe it to them? Because I could describe it and I'd almost certainly, no, but like in your conception of this, I'm just going to say a thing and I don't

Alexmean this to be hurtful. Yep. You're going to be canceled. Do it. I know what you're going to say.

MerlinWell, but when I was young, when I was younger, you would hear about what was called a sex change operation. And so you would hear about, oh God, I always say, I always confuse Wendy Carlos and William Carlos Williams. Wendy Walter Carlos Williams who had that really popular Moog synthesizer album had what was then called a sex change operation. So different kinds of that. I'm telling you things that you have what you call gender confirmation

surgery. But the thing that you're doing right now how do you describe that to people if I could ask?

AlexThe word I often use because it is easier for people to understand to a point is, quote, transitioning. So that is, you know, typically, or at least in the past, would typically refer to someone who was a born boy girl and then goes switches to the opposite. So and it would be called a sex change operation.

MerlinSwitches to the opposite in terms of the extant physical body equipment.

AlexYeah. And, well, here's where it gets complicated. There are so many types of surgeries, especially for trans women, because there is what's called top surgery for everybody, which is either the adding or removing of breast tissue. And then there's bottom surgery, which is...

MerlinI bet that can be a lot of different things.

AlexAnd it can do a lot of different things. And there are many different ways to do it. And vaginoplasty, I have no idea.

MerlinAre there levels of extremity or creativity or budget? What are the factors that go... Well, I'm guessing... One factor is you've been through this long before you ever get to anything in physical change. I'm imagining there's a lot of discussions. I doubt you go in and get an appointment the next day to slice the Oscar Mayer or whatever. But you've worked through this thing and they talk about – and I'm going to have a follow-up question in a minute that's going to really get me canceled. But they talk about what it is that you'd like to transition to, I imagine.

AlexRight.

MerlinBecause there's not a single answer to that. You can't just go in with a picture of Burt Reynolds and go chop chop. I'm transitioning to Burt Reynolds.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinI want the bandit. Give me the bandit. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. I want you to transition me to Boogie Nights, Burt Reynolds.

AlexNo, there's so many.

MerlinStrap on mustache. All right, all right, all right.

AlexI will also put a link into the Burt Reynolds episode of Golden Girls.

MerlinThere's also one. You remember the one where we're on community where everybody has to help out Abed pay his debt. And so they all end up working for that one guy.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinCelebrity impersonators. There's two different Michael Jacksons. And Pierce wants to tries to be Burt Reynolds.

AlexOh, God. Pierce. Oh, I wish he was a nice human being in real life.

MerlinSo do you call it do you call it transition?

AlexI will typically be like, oh, I am getting gender confirmation surgery, which means it's, you know, further transition to be like a transmasculine or non-binary person. And usually those words are so confusing that there's very little follow up.

MerlinRight. It's like me saying I'm a ceramicist. Yeah, it just stops the conversation.

AlexAll right. Because we actually, I think in our famous U-Haul lesbian episode was, I forget what it was called. I talked about how my, in one of our many terrifying drives with grandma series, she had me in a parking lot and she was trying to understand.

MerlinOh, I like this. I remember this story. This is a good story.

AlexYeah, yeah. She was asking, she had like, this is when Maddie and I had been dating for like a year or so and she was trying to figure out what the lesbians do, what the gays do. Because a lot of old people just think that gays involve, like, they think women have butt sex primarily too. Like, as if it's very weird.

MerlinJust rubbing their butts against each other?

AlexYeah. Well, oh, that's the thing. Yes. As if, like, you put it.

MerlinDepends what you define as a but.

AlexHonest to God, like, I've had older, like, greatest generation people ask me, like, so is, with the double, the double equipment, is it difficult? I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Until I realized they were talking about, like, a train-spotting double, like, two-ended dildo. I'm like, oh, God, no wonder you're afraid of gay people. So am I. But my grandma was just asking, like.

MerlinEven a modestly sized one, I guess, probably is a challenging idea for a lot of people.

AlexI mean, there's one of you put it in your butt. Logistics aside, there's just, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, not Trainspotting.

MerlinDildalingus.

AlexFuck. Requiem for a Dream. There we are.

MerlinRequiem for a Dream?

AlexThat movie's terrifying to me. Okay. Yeah.

MerlinOh, is that the drug one or the baseball one?

AlexThat's the drug one. It's good, though, right? It's good. it's a bit much it's a it's a lot it's it's it's tough though yeah oh yeah it would be it's very

Merlinchallenging content is it in south america i feel like no where is it no i think it's i think it's

Alexin new york but like they do basically it's like a lars von trier uh dare ad it's very strange i haven't seen it in a long while yeah uh no spoilers but like darren aronofsky i like him

MerlinHe did Pie. Not Life of Pie, but Pie.

AlexYeah, yeah. It's a good movie. Very of its time, but still good. Anyway, Patsy was like...

MerlinYou're in the car with... No, you're in the car with Grandma.

AlexYep. That's... Yeah, and so...

MerlinDid she ask you something along the lines of how do you decide which one's the man? Did she ask you something like that?

AlexYes. A number of... Classic. How do you decide who's a man? And do you... Are you both the girlfriends? And like...

MerlinHow do you decide which one's reluctant and bitter?

AlexYeah, exactly.

MerlinHow do you decide which one is permanently dissatisfied? How do you decide which one does the emotional labor? How do you decide which one mows the lawn and does the barbecue?

How do you decide which one yells at the waitress? Do you share your dildonics? It's a very unsafe neighborhood.

Alexshe definitely assumed that i would be the man in this the in the relationship because i just i can't pull off straight i tried so hard guys uh but anyway grandma pat was like uh so do you want to be a man and i i said um oh no not at all which is still something that is true for me and for and weirdly in but i could not articulate this in like 2015 to my grandma

but it is something that uh well maybe i could have but you know um

Merlintrans but i mean isn't there isn't there a distinction to be made i'm going back here again to to a book that was transformative for me my second or third year of college and um i had a really good class i know i've mentioned this before but this book blew my mind. I still can't get my kid to read it. I still have my copy of Kessler McKenna's book, The Ethno-Methodological Approach to Gender, which is one of those things, and you know something's really good and important if it starts out and it makes you angry. Because I was like, so the thesis of this book, as I recall, from 1988, is along the lines of, well, like, what if

gender is not a binary? And you're like, what? And they're like, well, let's look at every single aspect, every bullet point of what we could conceivably call gender. And like in, in, in, like in, in gross, large patterns, it is very unusual for people to say, have two different genders, you know, genitalia or for men to have like meatloaf breasts or whatever. Like these are all unusual, but like, there's no thing that is a definitive, there's nothing definitive about any one of those bullets that could make you say that, that this person has that gender. But like the

reason I ask, and if it weren't for that book, I wouldn't find myself asking a question like this. Isn't it fair to say that there is... God, I'm either so wrong or so wrong. Isn't it fair to say there's a big difference between wanting to be a man and not wanting to

Alexbe a woman? Yes. And that will know.

MerlinIs that a really dumb question? Because I feel like there must be... No. Like when you say transitioning to... Well, if you believe in the binary... It's more like transitioning

Alexa way that that's another way i say it is i'm like yeah if you're standing the binary you only

Merlinget one of these two choices is it going to be do you want to fish or chicken right and so it seems like in the old school 1970s idea of this like you walk out you go into that operating theater one gender and then theoretically come out the other side a different gender and it's like well god there's a million reasons that that seems like sort of a an extreme thing to say but like anyway I'll show up you should tell me but is that kind of how it goes that's I mean that's the

Alexthing is the word non-binary has been around for and I'm not talking about like trans people been around forever yeah absolutely but the word and definition of non-binary as it you know stands in like the English language and in the queer community has been around for a while but that's That's another one of those sort of umbrellas where, I mean, as we say, words mean things, but there's also many words that I don't want to say people have made up, but it's like their own identity under this umbrella, whether it be like a transmasculine or a demi boy or a demi girl.

And a lot of these things I do not understand or know because I do not have that lived experience. and I

Merlinbut you don't need that lived experience if you know what your lived experience is

Alexyeah

Merlinbut when we talk about binaries though it's so fascinating to me it gets me into a million thoughts so you're either this or you're that like I say you're a chicken or you're a fish well there's no such thing as a fish what if there's no such thing as a chicken yeah why chickens don't exist Do you really want to be a hen? Do you want to be a Drake? Do you want to be, not Drake, the Canadian singer, but the Canadian duck? Or do you want to be a Canada geese?

These are all different kinds of things. And if you get past this idea, and again, I'm not trying to sound like even, obviously, I'm not trying to sound woke. But because these words get tossed around so much in the absence of actual, as you say, lived experience, well, the words aren't the part that matters. The part that matters is this much longer and, let's just say, a contextual conversation about how this—I don't know. I almost don't want to say dysphoria or dysmorphia, but how my unease with my current setup, where that leads me and how I think that that could be helped.

Can you give me some advice on like what I could do to get closer to the person that I would like to be? And let's not really worry so much about which dictionary definition will make people happy for what it is I want to be. It just, you know, it seems to me like once you, this is, and this is part of the problem. People want to treat this like it's a math problem or that it's the equivalent of pregnancy. Well, you're pregnant or you're not. You're a boy or you're a girl. You're all those things. I'm like, well, I'm not trying to confound you with my openness to the idea that there is more than that choice you've presented to me.

But, you know, again, go read the fucking Kessler and McKenna. Like, everybody's got aspects of all these different things. This is why the yin and yang is the way it is. Yin and yang is not just two curvy things. The beauty of yin and yang is that at the center of each of the curvy things is its opposite. And that's kind of what makes it cool. It's not the two different colored sperms cuddling. it's the fact that also that you never cuddled a sperm that's not your lived experience

Alexoh no I've got a gold scar on that one

Merlinyeah it comes off with a damp cloth but that's the beauty and then if you want a yin yang you're going to have to go to a different doctor I hope it goes well and your support of this show helps Alexander become whatever the fuck they're becoming

Alexthe short answer if someone was like oh so you're transitioning I'm like, yeah, I'm getting I am non-binary and I'm getting top surgery and gender affirming surgery. And and yeah, it's either there's ceramicist or oh, oh, cool. Interesting. Or like I have a cousin who do that.

MerlinI have a brother. I have a brother who's gay.

AlexYeah. Yeah.

MerlinEverybody has a brother who's gay. Carrie is really tired of hearing that.

AlexIf you really want to, the way that I try to encourage people to think about gender, because I have a degree in gay, is how you think about task management. It's like gender is much more of a, no, gender is much more of a verb than it is a noun in how we actually experience it and practice it.

MerlinOh, and this goes back to the, oh God, I always confuse her with the woman who talked about WMDs in the New York Times. Is it Judith Butler?

AlexThe famous Judith Butler? Yes.

MerlinIsn't that kind of a big part of her book is like the performance, the performance of these things, what you're calling the verbs of these things?

AlexYeah. And the thing is that once you use, it's considered a little bit problematic to call gender a performance now because it's been taken as not.

MerlinOh, I didn't mean it in this. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean in the sense of sexual preference. I didn't mean it that way.

AlexRight, right. No, that's that's one of the thing. It's like, until very, very recently, it's like, yeah, I the performative part of this gender. But now, you know, Tucker Carlson goes on performing. See, it's all an act. which also if it is it so what it's also the same thing i think with with gay marriage and it is a little bit unfortunate that the way we got to where we are in terms of legality and uh de

stigmatization of gay marriage was because oh it's not a choice and which i who know like i have many

MerlinAnd the unstated sort of footnote, you know, why do you care? Why do you care so much about whether somebody's doing dildonics? Why do you fucking care? What's going to be disrupted in your life because somebody else is becoming the person they'd like to become? We're all transitioning into something. It's just that some of us are more affirmative about the enthusiasm, energy, time, money, and attention that we put into that transition. And God, maybe instead of judging all the gay, maybe maybe why don't you transition into something better, you piece of shit? Nobody knows what you're talking about.

AlexOr like the 16 year olds who continue to ask in a such a bitchy little way. Oh, what are your pronouns? I just like to ask, why are you writing a grammar paper about me? Which I feel like just makes them very.

MerlinNobody ever asked, why are your pronouns?

AlexYeah. How's Waldo? Instead of just shouting, they're literal children who are bullies. It's terrible, but let's calm down.

MerlinMy kid's been dealing with that.

AlexOh, fuck that in a million ways.

MerlinOn the one end, she's been harassed by some shitty kids, but also this poor bastard. This boy's got a crush on her. Oh, oh, sweet thing. She finally had to be like, look, you need to stand. You need to stand down.

We're into it. I don't know.

AlexChallenge. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge.

MerlinWow. We've really done an hour already?

AlexYes. Shit dog. Yeah. Well, do you want to? I thought this was a very, very good challenge because when I unintentionally peanut butter, like I fight real hard to grind those peanuts and just can't make it happen, then it's when I think it is an interesting...

MerlinI think I agree. If I understand what you're saying, I think I agree with you. I like the ones where I think... I define myself if I stick to it, if I have grit, if I have stick-to-itiveness, I sit with it and I go, well, why is this? Why does this feel difficult for me? Or like it does kind of compel me. I know there's something interesting in there. There's some grain of sand that's trying to make a pearl, I guess, or similar or some analogy that's trying to make a metaphor, which is like I and then I sit with it for a bit and I go like, oh, this is actually if I if I squeeze this particular pimple, they'll like you never know what will come out. Might be a full grown 16 year old boy.

AlexI mean, yeah, going back to the gender stuff. Well, Merlin, this week was your challenge. My challenge. Share, share.

MerlinI mean, it seems like they're all my challenge lately. But this stems out of what it says on the tin, and we need a better name for this. And as usual, you'll say one thing at the top of the show, and then I'll write something different. And then there might be a third thing somewhere else. But something that came up.

AlexWe need a style guide.

MerlinI know the style guide. and I shouldn't have to write it down. It's like having to tell you my pronouns over and over. Did you know my pronouns are he and him? You probably didn't know.

AlexOh, God. Do you notice on Zoom now that I do have my pronouns in my bio?

MerlinI saw it.

AlexNo, but there was a... Nothing wrong with that.

MerlinThere's nothing wrong with that. I wish there... You know, maybe if... Here's the thing. Maybe if I put that in my Twitter bio, like my daughter would like me to do, which I think feels a little performative

Speaker Abecause I don't think there's that many people

Merlinwho are guessing, But if I did put it in my profile, maybe I could be one more person out there where the only thing I will say that's good about it. And I did put it in my profile in other places. But like it's just that it's some of the most insufferable men on the Internet. Once you go and look, what do you see in their bio?

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou see that they've declared that their pronouns are he, him. And you're like, I know. Nobody else would have said dumb shit like this unless it was a he, him.

AlexAlso, no one was asking, which is why it feels.

MerlinBut I do want to support the cause. I don't want to have to go do a fancy dance and make people think I care about their life.

AlexWell, and if it's irrelevant and you don't need any context, I'm pretty confident based on what I know about Merlin. His pronouns are he, him. And I also think that you're a confident person where if for some reason the context mattered and you're like, oh, nope, it's different.

MerlinCould I make it a different part of speech that I get hung up about? Could I say, here's what my articles are?

AlexThe intro. Oh, interesting.

MerlinMy articles are the and and. What are your conjunctions? Oh, it's my conjunctions are of and for.

AlexOne time I made that joke on my Twitter bio. And I know it made people sad. And that's where I feel bad because I know.

MerlinYeah. But like, you know, the thing is, the attack helicopter thing is funny. But even in my kids circles, like that's the only thing that asshole Trump kids say. yeah yeah so you don't want to be allied with that like the off-color jokes are great until frat boys and joe rogan start doing it and you're like oh dude i didn't mean to prop up this busted

Alexass system which is how i've always felt sort of about sharing pronouns when it is out this is why natalie win aka contrapoints was canceled because she's like god i hate being in groups where we go

Merlinaround and say natalie wins queer wrong though i don't think you want to lie yourself you know if If you really cared about the community, you would have broken ties with this person you don't know earlier. Mm-hmm. And so the challenge this week, which stemmed from, I think it came out of a.

AlexOh, wait. Hold on. Hold the phone. Fuck me gently. I am going to give me. I'm Jaz. I'm Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. Jaz. But I have my, this is more of a Zoom complaint because I do have my pronouns in Zoom. And it's just you can only keep like one thing in your Zoom profile if you have a business account. And usually my like until like usually I just don't have my pronouns in there. But like before I was in this group that is a like basically like a queer support group where it is.

We just have our genders in the thing because it it intentionally allows people to make assumptions in a good like it is relevant. We are talking about that.

MerlinYeah. What if my pronouns – and I realize I'm being – I may sound counter-revolutionary here. But in the same way with what happened to George behind the scenes on Grace, what if my pronouns are none of your fucking business?

AlexThat's basically why I don't like sharing them.

MerlinIs it okay? Is it okay that my – not my pronouns, but I'm speaking as a person here. What if my pronouns are – don't worry about it.

AlexYeah. And then you seem like the dick. And it's –

MerlinDid you read that article? I sent you the Grey's article, right? I sent you that, right?

AlexI'm pretty sure. I think I've read everything about Gay George. Oh, shit.

MerlinI sent it to my family. I thought I sent it to you. There's an article in I Want to See Daily Beast about a book that's coming out from somebody who used to –

AlexOh, definitely not then. No. Oh, shit, dog.

MerlinOh, it's basically – it's about – it's this dishy – the book is pretty dishy. This article is focused on the dishy, and it's like all the shit show behind the scenes stuff at Grey's. and I don't even think this was the first big dust up. I think the first big dust up might have had to do with Patrick Dempsey. I know several of these had to do, but it was basically the one where, I don't remember his name, the guy, the dude, the African-American actor had used a slur,

was rumored to have used a slur in talking about something completely different, I guess, used a slur to refer to T.J. Knight. What's his name? What's the actor's name?

AlexI think so. It's not T.J. Miller. I think it is T.J. Knight.

MerlinBut anyway, the guy who plays George and but so he so first of all, he kind of unintentionally, I won't say that he outed him, but he certainly gave the Internet a puzzle, if you like, in my parlance. But it was during some kind of like I guess he was defending himself, maybe at an award ceremony or something somewhere in public. He used the same slur again and did like out the guy who plays George. right and when i say out i mean i know that's kind of an old term but like when you put somebody in

a position they don't want to be in to have to talk about their sexuality or gender or whatever what about their health what about hipaa like there's all kinds of ways where it's like hey you know what how about you just don't talk about my shit and like if when i'm ready to talk to you about my shit you'll know because i'll be talking about it and until then do not assume that you are in a position to decide what the world needs to know about me and when it needs to know it. That's a shitty thing to do. And so I could, I'm not saying I'm saying this, but I could see somebody saying, hey,

if you want to provide anything about yourself, that's up to you. But like, you are not in a position to demand that I do anything. And I definitely don't need to explain why. That's my take on it. But I'm from Ohio, so I'm like that. It's a very Ohio hot take.

AlexNo. Oh, yes. Very hot take of like, man.

MerlinDon't ask John Syracuse for his sauce recipe.

AlexYeah. He's not out. You haven't even said what the challenge is and where. Well, you keep stopping me to talk about your dick. I didn't. I did. No, no, no, no. I was like, Marla, what was your challenge? And you're like, okay, Grey's Anatomy.

MerlinOh, yeah. Let me find it for you. Let me find it for you. I sent it to my family. Oh, my God. And so I'm doing this new thing. um i'm doing a new thing where i open up i double click on an icon in messages to make sure that that window is open and the window with all the other ones are behind and that way i don't send

Alexthings to the wrong people as much i mean yeah i do that too but but the key here is as much for

Merlinfor me at least the brutal irony of this is that the person i most often because it's the person that I text, well, you, my family, and Syracuse are the three people I text with the most. And so if there's going to be a rogue thing sent, it's generally to one of those three persons or groups.

So like last night, we were taking the break after Rectifs, and I sent Madeline a message that said, what did I say to Madeline? I said, oh, I said, I talked about savvy with Syracuse and I think it was nice.

Except I'd sent it to Syracuse.

AlexOh, Lord.

MerlinAnd Syracuse said, wrong window, but thanks. This article is in the Daily Beast. I'm sending it to you in this open window right here. I cried a little bit. I cried a little bit. I cried a little bit because when we got to the end, it was John encouraging me to share good memories of Savvy. And at the end, I talked about how everything in our house that's white and fluffy, I had to put away. Because every time I see it out of the corner of my eye, it makes me extremely sad. Inside Grey's Anatomy, many behind-the-scenes scandals from diva antics to sudden exits.

And just to get the facts on the record, Catherine Heigl sounds like, as you have said and as my wife has said, But, you know, she got that reputation for being, you know, difficult or whatever. But, like, she totally stepped up for George, like, in several. She also broke up a fight. She's like, Katherine Heigl on set sounds like she's maybe pretty cool. And you know what I got to say? There's one person who comes out of this not looking great. And it's not that accurate.

AlexEllen Pompeo?

MerlinNo. I'm not going to say her name because she's very mean and litigious, apparently. She made the show, and she sounds like she might be kind of a piece of crap, a little bit.

AlexShonda Rhimes. Well, that's what I was... Well, you said not the... Yeah, no, Shonda Rhimes is notoriously... She sounds kind of terrible. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinShe sounds very hostile.

AlexOh, wait, so then did you... The whole, like, she wrote the book, the year of...

MerlinLiterally throwing George under a literal bus? yeah yeah yep and um letting his last scene be him like where you can't even tell it's him

Alexyep yep yep uh and that's where the joke of my year of yes comes from uh from the other two because shonda wrote a book called the year of yes oh that's so funny so bad like it was and it was like basically a book it was just a really mean and bad book oh oh can i do just a

Merlinquick i'll do a quick can i do a quick short reading series hour and 14 minutes please do

AlexPlease do.

MerlinThe first inkling of intertorn... I'm sorry. I want to credit the person. I don't like when people don't credit the person. This is an article from, I want to say, yesterday in the Daily Beast, to which I am a subscriber. I have to constantly log in again. Let's say Inside Grey's Anatomy.

Cheyenne Roundtree is the author of this article. The book in question is called How to Save a Life, The Inside Story of Grey's Anatomy, written by Lynette Rice. and I'm going down a few paragraphs. The first inkling of inter turmoil came when news leaked that a physical altercation broke out between Isaiah Washington, who played the stoic Dr. Preston Burke, and Patrick Dempsey's Dr. Derek Shepard in October 2006. Did you know about that?

AlexNo.

MerlinThose on set that day recalled to Rice that Washington not only pinned Dempsey up against a wall and lashed out at him for showing up late to set, but also referred to his co-star T.R. Reid with a homophobic slur. Paren, Knight had not publicly come out yet. Things allegedly got so heated that Heigl was one of the few people who jumped up to help break up the scuffle. You go, girl. Everyone tried to play down the altercation at first, but when Washington used the slur again, when trying to defend himself at the Golden Globes just a few months later,

tensions allegedly boiled over. and uh heigel told access hollywood at an after party i'm going to be really honest right now he needs to just not speak in public period i'm not okay with rice heigel says her remarks came after quote a couple glasses of champagne unquote and out of wanting to stick up for night i was furious and frustrated for my friend and sick of the whole mess of it sounds like a toxic workplace i don't know well that's the thing rhymes claim that night uh coming out wouldn't affect his character, but his screen time, this is further down, gradually shrunk, prompting Knight to request

to leave the show in season five. That's when the show was still kind of good. There just comes a time, quote, quoting, there just comes a time when it's so clear that moving on is the best decision, Knight tells Rice. My five-year experience proved to me that I could not trust any answer that was given about George. I never made any demands like, you do this or else. I was always very respectful. In any sort of creative process, there were going to be disagreements. It didn't help that Knight's beloved character of George was killed off by literally being thrown under a bus. Spoilers left horribly disfigured and unable to speak.

What a moving scene that is, though.

AlexThe, oh, 007.

MerlinBut not very nice for that actor. Not nice at all.

AlexA similar thing happened to, oh, fuck, the guy who plays. I mean, actually, this is, you know, Matchy goes deep. this is like the one thing where he goes on deep dives with like celebrity stuff. So I'm sure everything we said, he, he knows, or at least the stuff before, um, it was, it's going to, whatever's going to be in this new book. But, um, the, uh, April and, you know, the, um, the, the gym.

MerlinApril lost is the one who lost the, no, it's Arizona. Who's April?

AlexNo, uh, Arizona loses a leg. April loses a baby. Which one's April?

MerlinRemind me.

AlexShe is brunette. And I'm sorry, Ginger and Christian and dates Jackson.

MerlinOh, yes. She's adorable.

AlexYeah, she is. And along with those two, the other only original cast member aside from like the of like Meredith's peers, I guess they were all of the original residents or whatever. Yeah, none of their contracts were renewed just because they weren't given any explanation. And it was just like, or rather there was no, it was one of those things where all three were like, we are very sad that our time is ending at Grey's Anatomy.

And now we must go because we have an NDA. It's a bummer.

MerlinBut also, I mean, the feeling you get from this article anyway is like, don't cross her. The author of this book, I don't have it open right now, but the author of this book was told there are topics, there are things you definitely want to avoid. And I think that she was even warned off a couple things by legal representatives.

AlexOh, Lord. I mean, I'm not surprised by that, but still.

MerlinAgain, never give the Internet a puzzle. And in that instance, like, well, OK, well, now they're going to write that in the book. And like now you're going to get a Barbra Streisand type situation. Putting this into notes, also sending you this. As you know, I'm also obsessed with Law & Order. I happen to just have – you know how I am on Sundays. I just have the TV on.

AlexWait, the SVU or the OG?

MerlinWell, lots of them. But I happen – so I know they just put on the TV. I go to – on Hulu, I generally look at a few things. But I was like, yeah, fuck it. Let's see what's on. And there's a bunch of Laws & Orders on SVU. And the episode that I caught was my wife and my favorite back before we had to stop watching the show when she got pregnant. And it's the one where there's a little girl on the phone.

AlexShe goes, Olivia! Olivia!

MerlinThat one. And first of all, Gavin Belson, spoiler alert, the guy who plays Gavin Belson is the bad guy. But also Bailey is in that episode.

AlexOh, I'm looking at what you've just sent me. Holy shit.

MerlinNow look at the thing I just sent you, which is a list of 10 greys. Well, first of all, everybody's been on Law & Order. Again, if my tweets were still up, you would see that this has been – I had a great ongoing thread of people I can't fucking believe are on Law & Order. But of course they're on Law & Order. Everybody was on Law & Order. Ten Grey's Anatomy actors you forgot were on Law & Order. And look at these. Look at these babies. Look at these young people. I'll put this in the show notes.

AlexI am looking at.

MerlinTell me who's blowing your mind.

AlexHoly shit.

MerlinLook at the very young Bailey. Look how young she is.

AlexLook at Sarah Ramirez. And I mean, talk about performing gender. Jesus Christ. Let's see here, Sarah.

MerlinOh, that's Arizona. Calliope. Yeah, right.

AlexLook at that with a blonde wig. Oh, my God.

MerlinShe's got an alias quality wig. Not good. Kim Raver. Kim Raver. No, wait. Oh, she's Teddy. I love Teddy. And then here's my girlfriend on there. Lexi, right? Her sister. That's my Grey's girlfriend. Do you have a Grey's girlfriend or boyfriend?

AlexOh, I mean, Calliope, who was written off. But then did you, when you saw, this is a challenge. I say that we either punch this challenge or something. I don't know where we have gone to because I drank. Oh, oh, this is two serving sizes, this Monster Energy drink. All right, that explains a lot.

MerlinThis should make it clearer.

AlexI mean, quite honestly, I feel much better. You seem good.

MerlinNice to have you here.

AlexNice to have you here.

MerlinTransition to what? Womp, womp, womp, womp.

AlexYou know what? If you read this Grey's Anatomy article, you're like, oh, man, I like this. and you want to encourage my transition away from, you know, like body parts, jobs, whatever. Again, Dubai Friday. No, what is it? Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday.

MerlinYou're giving the internet a puzzle again.

AlexGive us your fucking money.com. Well, that's the thing. It's a puzzle that's easily solvable with a Google search challenge. Really? Oh, shit. I'm going to do Google. You just got to type like a person, as Syracuse says.

MerlinI don't like using Google. I don't look for things anymore. I don't want to know. Like, I've spoken about this. You know, I just don't want to know things. So, what, you're saying we don't do the what to buy challenge?

AlexWait, it's a what to buy challenge? I thought the challenge was.

MerlinI thought the challenge was what to order.

AlexWell, the decisions you make in terms of what to order.

MerlinYour process, your workflow for deciding what you're going to get, right?

AlexI don't. Yeah. And I don't have one and it's weird and I'm trying to get one. Or rather, I...

MerlinOh, you want me to do my entire one in like three minutes?

AlexSure. Oh, yeah. If it can be, please, please. Impart your wisdom.

MerlinAnd then we'll take a break and do the after show?

AlexI haven't... A joke has left the room. I'm serious.

MerlinWell, okay. So I feel like this came up. Boy, this is... I'm so confused right now. I mean, I'm happy for you when you have a lot of energy drink, but it doesn't... It's sort of like I can enjoy somebody when they're having their second martini, but I

Speaker Adon't want them on their sixth martini.

MerlinBut it doesn't make me unhappy for them. um what we we talked about i just mentioned in passing that somewhere i talked about like i forget okay so the question becomes alex is curious about what my workflow is and it's super not interesting but it might be useful it's like you thought i was talking about like how i buy a bag or something or a something and i was just saying like i have a loose process for like say I have a specific example of one that I'm working on right now, which is I was contacted by my lady friend yesterday.

I do live with her, but we conduct our work in different locations during the day. And that's why she misses the cat. She misses the cat. She tweeted. She did it to me again. She tweeted again. And that's how the world knows now. But she said, hey, look, I need to upgrade my webcam. What should I get? And I said, well, I'm happy to look into that. I said, if it were me, and I don't think I'm outing him or they, I'm not up to date. But I said, I would ask Matt Howie because Matt Howie has a great setup and he knows a lot about this stuff and follows this.

And I think as a Slack person who's working remotely, has always worked remotely, I think it's a huge part. He has the cool room with the setup and the lights and he has a beautiful setup.

AlexBut that's an example. His spoke purple lights. Oh, so good.

MerlinYeah. Well, so what I said to Madeline was, well, tell me the model you have now, if you would. and let me know what you'd like to be better or different about it. And I'll check it out on my own, but also importantly, we'll contact Matt. I think that's a pretty good example for a variety of reasons. The what to get question. So like sometimes this starts with, ooh, this Inagi scooter looks cool. Is that a thing I want to do? Or it could be, oh, there's this announcement about this new certain kind of smart home thing.

It could be like, for example, like when you said you're really into the Cynic backpack, I wanted to go learn about that. And it's not just about the acquisition of things, but the one way in which I would like to try and be more like a millennial is like, I want, if I'm going to get a thing, I want it to solve a problem, make my life better, not just to add shit to my life. And I'd like to know that I got in my own parlance that I got the good one.

And so that goes for lots of different things. So I could just go and get the most, the quote unquote best reviewed webcam, but my wife's on a PC at home, fucking monster. I don't know what's going to work with that. If I get the wrong Logitech thing, it wouldn't work, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's a pretty good example.

So the most basic thing that I do a ton is that I do at the very end, this is the good one to know that I'm happy to share first, the last part of this process, especially if I'm going to order it from Amazon, is to utilize FakeSpot and ReviewMeta, which are two websites slash extensions that offer some analysis of the reviews and ratings on Amazon and do some really smart stuff.

If you just want the easiest, if you're mainly an Amazon user and you've got, say, Firefox, these extensions will make your life so much better. I'll come back to those maybe later. But the biggest thing for me in some ways is the smartest thing is to make sure my ladder is against the right wall. or like in John Syracuse's terms to like not succumb to the XY problem, which is I try to start by saying like, well, why do I want this thing? Why am I interested in this entire space, right? Like if I'm going into, like for example, I have a pretty good idea

if I wanted to buy an iPad and had to buy an iPad, like I know what I would probably get. You know, I had to replace my kid's phone recently and I very reluctantly, regretfully knew what I had to do there. That area I'm not super confused about, But whenever I'm going into an area where I have to even wonder what the good one is, I think that's confusing. I have a lot of fun with Wirecutter. I do feel like I'm just going to say the words out loud. This is nothing against my friends who work at Wirecutter or the New York Times. I do think Wirecutter used to be better. I think Wirecutter used to do a better job of really clearly saying, I mean, here's what everybody wants to know.

Everybody wants to know, what's the good one? What's the cheap one? What's the one everybody gets? Do you know what I mean?

AlexYep.

MerlinAnd I don't want you to go and do some incredibly obscure analysis that elides the fact that this won't work with other shit that I own. And I certainly don't want to, as I put it. I know this is mean, but it's just my impression that Wirecutter frequently says just buy the second cheapest one. I think they've gotten, and I think our friend Marco agrees with this, they've gotten cheap. And maybe because a lot of the revenue comes from affiliate links, if they tell you that this is the good one and that good one is costly, Maybe people are less likely to buy it through that link.

I don't know if there's any.

AlexI mean, quick sidebar. I don't know anything definitively, but because, you know, it's going to be behind a paywall. And we.

MerlinWell, it's a very generous firewall.

AlexSure. But why would they need to do that if the affiliate links were no longer. I see. Provided. And also, could it be that they're worse?

MerlinWell, and that's why I in our Slack channel, that's why I was like, are you fucking kidding me? A site that makes most of its money from affiliate links you can't get to, that's kind of nuts. That's like starting your podcast on Spotify for pay.

AlexUnless it sucks to the beginning, or rather started to be sucky. Anyway, yeah, it was really disappointing.

MerlinThe landscape part is important, and I say the XY problem because this is a concept. Very nice man on Twitter who's constantly reminding me that he's the one who told me about this, and I apologize. But XY problem is that thing that I suffer from a lot and I'm so glad to know about now, which is I ask for advice about X instead of just telling an expert that I want to do Y. So if I pose the problem wrong...

AlexHuh. Can you give me an example? Have you heard an XY problem? Not, I think, in the way you're putting it. I'm confused.

MerlinAnd it came up through Syracuse because I used to do it with Syracuse all the time. I try not to bug him too much about stuff, but because of his various defects and personality problems, he's really good. I'm not going to ask him whether I should get a TV because he's going to die with the TV he's got regrettably but there's certain kinds of stuff another one would be Marco another one would be Jason Snell there are people that I know women laughter

Alexlaughter laughter

Merlinbut the xy problem what's an example of that of where i screwed this up i mean you know one example of the x okay so here's an xy problem is like um and it's sort of that old merlin man thing if i'd written a book this would have been a really good part of it success in life means that you try to solve the right problem at the right level for the right reason. And if you fail those tests, you're going to have problems in life.

What are you trying to solve? At what level are you trying to solve it? You know what I mean? That to me is a pretty good philosophical approach to the XY problem. So if I go to someone who's knowledgeable about house things, and let's say I go to a general contractor or even specifically a plumber, and I say, can you tell me the best kind of glass or just really any kind of container. Can you tell me the best kind of container to put under my faucet that drips?

And that person might go, well, why wouldn't you just fix the faucet? And I go, well, I don't know how to fix the faucet, but I do know how to buy a bowl. Why are you looking for your keys here? The light's better. You know, that kind of a thing. The XY problem is where you go to an expert and you haven't told them what it is you're trying to accomplish. You're just asking them for advice on one implementation detail and you are, as Stephen Covey would say, you don't realize your ladder's against the wrong wall. So I could spend two years researching containers to catch water from under the faucet,

or I could go to somebody and say, I don't want my faucet to drip anymore. But then to take it to the next level, so to speak, somebody could come out to the house and say like, oh, you know, I'm here to fix your dumb leaky faucet that you probably could have fixed if you were an actual man. But I also need to tell you that in doing so, I discovered this other thing, because what's a visit from a tradesperson without a Stern lecture? But when I look at the landscape, that starts with me asking myself what it is I'm trying to accomplish or what problem I'm trying to solve. And then I want to understand enough about where this is.

If it's smart home stuff, if you go into smart home stuff, it's really – before you ever get to like will this work with HomeKit, you should really look at how mature is this particular area of the smart home stuff. Is there likely to be a big change in this? What is thread? Do I need to know about it? you have to first have a general understanding of the landscape to even know where to start. Because if you just go and buy stuff, like if your approach to this is buying shit out of a vending machine at the airport, you're rarely going to get the best solution unless you already

Alexknow a lot about it. Do you know what I mean? The domain. Yes, but how do you find out where you, because you need, where do you find out where you need to start? Well, for example, like right now,

MerlinI'm at a place where I can say, oh, I'm very interested in personal electric travel devices. Right? But like...

AlexIs this like a way to say vibrate? What do you mean? Personal electric?

MerlinWell, like I've had some segues and I like the segues.

AlexOh, okay.

MerlinBut for example, if I just said, hey, I want something electric that's not a car or a bike. What if I bought one of those shitty scooters that was catching on fire a few years ago. Do you remember there's that period where what they were then calling hoverboards were so popular and they were really cheaply made, mostly in China, I think. They had terrible defects and were causing fires when they were

Alexdoing nothing. Do you remember that? Yes. Ours set on fire. Well, my brother's on Christmas Day.

MerlinIt was very funny. But that's the kind of landscape I'm talking about, which is like going into it, you might see that on Good Morning America and go, I need one of those. And then you buy one and your house is on fire because you didn't understand the landscape. And the landscape, part of the landscape is, well, you know, first of all, nothing happened for a long time with electric personal travel devices. And now a lot's happening and still more is happening. And Nagi has an announcement, I think today or tomorrow, about some new product. Like, you know, stuff is happening because of the pandemic and Grubhub. Did you see that New York Magazine article or hear that podcast episode about,

it started out as in, the guy in the New York Magazine started out writing a piece on electric bikes, but ended up writing about New York food delivery drivers?

AlexNo, but checks out.

MerlinOh, God. I'll find it for notes. It's amazing. You have to buy this $1,800 to $3,000 electric bike. You don't have anywhere to go to the bathroom. People are renting spaces in garages together so they have a place to be when they're not working or to charge all their shit. No bathrooms.

So because of the pandemic, a lot of people have gotten more interested in, What if I want to get around in a way that's not a car? So, I mean, that means also that there's a lot. I'm sorry, I'm going on. But like, you know me, right? Before we get to the implementation details, we have to look at the philosophy. Is your ladder against the right wall? So that's when you look at the landscape. And if you look at the landscape for whatever the domain of like, you know, technology, like what's the good oat milk? Like whatever it is, if you don't have a sense of the landscape and the domain, you're very likely to make stupid and potentially very costly decisions.

Synology. You know, please talk to me before you get a synology. Because here's what I can tell you. I spent a ton of time on synologies and I still find it very confusing. And what I will tell you and what I tell all my kids, I'll keep saying this, but somebody's going to still go out today and buy a soon-to-be EOL'd two-bay Synology, and they're going to be so bummed that they're in for $600 to $1,000 on something that is definitionally pointless.

You need to get at least four and probably six bays to get the value out of this. Yes, it's going to cost a lot, but guess what? That is the landscape. That is the domain. And I'm not trying to sound like I'm being mean, but if you can't afford to get the one of these that works, you will find yourself wasting potentially $1,000 on something that literally doesn't work. And that's because you didn't understand the landscape. You didn't understand the domain. And that's why sometimes the best answer to when I say to somebody like Marco or whomever is, what's the deal with this?

They're like, oh, just don't even look at that. Don't worry about that. You don't need that. You're not ready for that. Or this is still shaking out. Like John Syracuse thinks the TV market will be shaking out for the next 16 years. I've bought two TVs in the time that John Syracuse has not bought a TV. But you know what I'm saying? Like that – you have to start with the whole like, well, why do I want a new bag and what will it perform? What should – I will know this has gone well if what happens. So go ahead.

AlexNo. No, I mean, I feel like I have similar steps and I just don't, sometimes I don't perform them because of impatience or impulsivity or whatever.

MerlinI mean, have you ever bought the wrong thing and you should have known better? Like this happens to me on Amazon where I'm moving too fast. And this is the thing that I think my wife suffers from a lot. My wife is the first woman I've been with in my life who does not try on clothes. And it's because of my past experience, especially with women and a lot of men, I find it utterly bewildering. And she's passed it on to her daughter. Because sometimes she'll just arbitrarily decide this is our daughter's size. And I'm like, no. Find out what the child's size is. When I buy the child's shoes, she is compelled to put her foot into the Brannock device to find out what the truth is of her shoe size.

Because if I buy her these cool red-winged boots and they're too small, that's a lot of money to blow on something. But it happens to me. I'll go in and I'll buy something. I accidentally ordered the wrong tape last week. Or sorry, I didn't order it. It was in my cart. And I realized, no, wait, I don't want Gorilla tape. I want the scotch mounting tape. Sounds small, but like when you make a dumb decision because you don't know what you're trying to achieve, you get a bunch of useless shit. And now your house is full of crap. And unless you're Alex, you probably don't return it. It probably just sits around and collects dust.

AlexWell, I mean, that comes to the other thing is like whenever you purchase something. And for me, I'm like, what, not just what purpose does it serve, but like anytime you're starting a project, it's like, what is the goal of this object? And also, how long is it going to be?

MerlinThat's what David Allen calls outcome-based thinking.

AlexOh, sorry, David Allen Co. um but but also like every time i uh buy a um i mean i guess like in anything like um that's something that i'm not sure about it's like okay is this an object that i want in my life for for forever just this is this will be at the end of my bed as as i die uh and

Merlini don't know if it's healthy or not i've talked about my friend jonathan who has a one-in-one out policy. If he buys a pair of shoes, he has to get rid of a pair of shoes. Where you would ask yourself, would I make room for this, not just in my house, but in my life? Is there something I'll throw away to make room for this? And then in the future, is this the thing that I would end up throwing away to make room for something else? Which is a horrible way to be in life. If you've gotten to the point where you have so much stuff like me, you don't have room for it all. And it's like, well, guess what? Now your new problem is getting storage bins. And it's like, no, just get

the good one and you know get the spend money on good screwdrivers find out what the good screwdriver is and get that one i did my research i got the good drill like i got a good drill inexpensive but good drill i got a package so like it came with an extra battery it came with a bunch of you know pretty good bits it came with an extender thing it came with a socket set it came with an entirely separate and it was some kind of cobbled together chinese thing but it's a great drill and it was like 60 bucks and like but if you get the wrong one you go like oh you should

have gotten the 20 volt one instead of the the 16 volt one or whatever like and then just you feel like a fucking idiot and you're like the most american showed ever i i mean i'm sure people who

Alexyou you feel like i showed you you you do that and uh that that's fine for merlin but another Another thing that I think about and that causes me anxiety is at one point, you know, in college, I always bought the shittiest, cheapest thing. And now our house is filled with many house.

MerlinWe just buy the same cheap coffee maker every year and it would break every year and we buy another one. And so one approach to that in terms of misunderstanding the landscape is, oh, I must like this one because I replace it every year. Or you get a different or nicer one. Or in our case, you start buying this one electric kettle and do pour over because the landscape has told you that's a better way to do this. Just buying it out of like, oh, here's the cheap one. Let's get another one. Let's do this Walmart approach of like when the shitty plastic thing breaks, just replace it. Pairing knives. Is anybody out there living with a pairing knife that they don't love?

It's so inexpensive. You could spend twice as much on a pairing knife. Let's say you spent let's even say you spent eight dollars rather than two dollars or four dollars. Having a shitty paring knife is the worst. Why would you do that to yourself? Well, because I always buy the cheap one. Well, you're going to pay that out in hospital bills because this America, man.

AlexOr or in in let's say a certain case, you just have have you're so anxious about having to buy another thing, Not because you can't afford it, just because you are, you know, you grew up in the Midwest and you've had the same plates for over a day. Like I, my plates still, they're, they're fine. They're ceramic. They don't, don't, is that what it's called? The ones I, but they're also so bad.

MerlinTalking about like, well, we're like that. We're like that with this, this silverware that I've had since the nineties. And I really like the way this fork feels. but it's getting increasingly more difficult to get replacements for it. The company's called, I think, Towel, T-O-W-L-E. And I used to be able to-

AlexWell, don't tell people. They'll go after that. Oh.

MerlinOh, you say an OPSEC. But again, this is a good example, though, because there is this website. I forget what it's called. I used to buy my eyeglasses from eyeglasses.com. And I think there's one called silverware.io or whatever. And it's just all of the silverware and the replacements. There used to be a store in San Francisco, believe it or not, Alex, in Soma, there used to be a store, and I'd still be there, that sells nothing but light bulbs. The entire giant fucking store is just light bulbs. And you're like, oh my God, this is so great. If I need a light bulb that's not one I can get at Walgreens,

I definitely know where to go. That's here on my list, is find, not only should you find advice, sites, friends, people that you can trust, but if you can find a place that has all of the things, that's also a good peek into the landscape. that might be Home Depot or that might be eyeglasses.com or whatever it is. But there's places where you can go and see what all the things are, see what your options are. Then you go to the vendor site and say like, okay, this Eve light looks really cool, but it's currently unavailable.

Or this Eve smoke detector is just not available in the United States. Like good things to know. But that's, again, part of the process is once you understand a little bit about the landscape, you drill down, but then you still need to keep going back to the landscape because as you learn more, you need more information to be put into context. And really, the greatest thing is to have a friend who knows more about a thing than you do.

AlexOh, well, that's step one that I find difficult to complete.

MerlinWhy's that? You don't like bothering people?

AlexThat was the joke about me not having friends, but that's not true. Oh, that's funny. I'm very, very grateful for it. No, no, no. Alex has no friends. I was trying to find it. You know what?

MerlinYou need fewer boobs, more friends.

Yee-hee-hee!

Show notes

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257. Dildonics

Show notes

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