261. Secret Walgreens

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

Slippy, slippy. Slippity, slippity.

MerlinAh, ah, that's not the show. Here's the show. Now I'm recording.

AlexOh, man, man.

MerlinOh, it was such a good opening, too. You want to start?

AlexOh. I've started a new fall tradition, which is the first time I talk to anybody, and it's the first time I've worn slippers for the season. I just go, slippy, slippy. And it's like a warning as well as a welcome because it's like I could literally slip and die at any moment. So, you know, content warning. I'm slipping around a lot. Yeah.

MerlinHuh. Huh. Huh. I, um, this morning, uh, while we were waiting for our daughter to awaken, I, uh, we were talking about succession. And I'll propose nothing. You just reminded me of this. God, my brain is, my brain is so fragile. I went, succession, succession. And my wife didn't even, you know, crack a smile because she's over me. She's been over me for a long time. I think even, if I'm being honest, before I impregnated her 14 years ago plus nine months. But then I made her watch videos from Fiddler on the Roof.

But that's what Tevye, Tevye, Anna Tamka is the name of the town, which would be a pretty name for a girl. But Tevye says, is that his name? Or I always confuse him with the actor who played him. But anyhow. Tevye. Tevye?

AlexI think so.

MerlinAnd I said, this is a song about the importance of tradition. It's called Tradition. And I was kind of envious. He's got really cool milk gear. He's going out and he's got milk.

AlexOh, and that vest. Oh, my God.

MerlinOh, and his prayer shawl. I'd hit it.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinFuck the shit out of that little Fiddler man. Well, I think technically he's not the titular Fiddler title. title um um let's Let's see. So that was this morning.

And here we are. And I just wanted to say at the top of the show, you receive many plaudits for the amazing edit on last week's episode. I think you made it.

AlexWe don't talk about the show on the show. We don't talk about the show on the show on the show.

MerlinI think you made a lot of people happy.

AlexOh, I am glad. And people love you. Do I have the dock open? No, I don't. I had it open on my little screen, which is, I guess, called my phone these days.

MerlinOh, your little screen. Little screen.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou're waiting for your big boy to arrive. I can get a whole week chalked up on there, huh?

AlexOh, I do. Man, I put this in the doc, but I've heard, I have not heard, I've seen in your show notes for some of your other shows that you have, like, cracked Twitter and made it better. I don't know. You were using Twitterrific? Oh, yes, yes, yes, I have.

MerlinI mean, I'm still, it's, you know, like the great Jerry Seinfeld said, breaking up with somebody is like tipping over a Coke machine. You know, you don't just do it in one go. You got to rock it for a while. So depending on the device that I'm on, but yes, I have gotten religion about the app Twitterrific and its muffles capability. And it's kind of changed everything.

AlexHuh, huh. because I think I am in that relationship where it's like, yes, I'm mostly off Twitter, but then it's like you've had a hard night and you're both like, you know what? For old times' sake, let's just go for it.

MerlinOh, you're saying like one last time, let's do this thing, you and me.

AlexYeah, yeah, just for old times' sake. And then when I'm not feeling good, I'm just like, yeah, I'm going to go on Twitter because I know that people are, I might make people happy, but they're sure going to make me happy with all those hearts and woo. And it's not good.

MerlinYeah, I have a secret benefit in a number of ways, which is that, I don't know, I've been drinking a lot of iced tea.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinSo I'm on iced tea and it's been-

AlexSorry, go ahead.

MerlinNo, please go. I'm dedicated to, shut up. I'm dedicated, I'm gonna fucking stop interrupting people and I'm gonna do it, but it's really, really hard for me. And it kind of relates to this week's challenge. Because my mind does kind of run at 3x, especially when it comes to talking.

AlexWe've talked about this. You vellow people who are fast. Which one am I? Yep, yep. You have such a hard-on for Felix Biederman because he's very fast. And I agree, he's very fast and very funny. Wow, okay. Sorry for interrupting. Yeah, go ahead.

MerlinJust off the dome, what are a couple other things for which I have a hard-on?

AlexOh, I mean, it changes. Iced tea, huh? I think iced tea. You mean just one?

MerlinI think Catwoman got to be up there.

AlexNo, certain Mulaney bits.

MerlinOh, God, yes.

AlexEveryone's got a, well, I would say a semi for her succession, but I just, I don't know, it just kind of skipped over me. And now our household is all succession all the time. Oh, wait.

MerlinSo in a preview, sorry, I'm interrupting you. Okay, I need a buzzer. Oh, you know what I should do? I should get my shock collar.

AlexOh, that thing. I remember. The Pale Apollo. Pavlov. It's like the Pavlov, but it has like a Web 2.0 startup name, like the Pavvy.

MerlinYou know, the story behind that's not very nice. He cut a hole in a dog's mouth. Did you know that?

AlexYeah, I did. I didn't want to.

MerlinHe installed a tube so the spittle would dribble.

AlexYeah, I know.

MerlinSlipper, slipper.

AlexI know.

MerlinSlippy, slippy. Slippy, slippy. Okay, that's a good title. And so other things for which I have a hard on. You got your horny goat. That's in here. I got to type slippy slippy. I really fucked up the document. I think Stop the Madness, I did something, and now I can't copy and paste stuff with styles, even though I turned it off for Google Docs. So I don't know. I might be in Google Doc jail.

AlexI can't do that in Firefox anymore. And that's normally in my Patreon browser.

MerlinDo you have Stop the Madness or similar? Have you gotten new content blocking recently?

AlexYou know what? I should turn off. It's always been that way. Maybe I should just turn off all of the, or at least for Patreon, it's like, yes, allow, just track me, track me, daddy. Just go right ahead because it's never worked in Firefox.

MerlinThat's so interesting. And also the, I mean, it's definitely very instructive in the same way that a life of living with content blocking, you feel like a crazy person when you're on somebody's computer that doesn't have it. When I see screenshots of journalists, it's like, oh, my God, you see all of those ads, every paragraph on some of these sites. It's so hostile. How do you like to read? Like, how could you live like that?

AlexAnd when it's tech reporters, it's very upsetting. Like, if Kevin Roos showed up and there wasn't like, oh, God, one time I saw I was using Chrome. Oh, sorry, you're the jazz boy. Go ahead.

MerlinNo, over. It is instructive, though, because I have been playing with a bunch of new and different content blockers, different things. And one of the things by our friend of the show who makes Stop the Madness, he also makes something called Stop the Scripts. And I had to turn that off because there's so many pages you land on and there's just nothing there. Almost the way that like if you had, you know, frames turned off, like there'll just be like a dumb header at the top and then a white page because it, you know.

But then there's also sites like I want to say The Guardian and CNN. And there are these certain sites that just behave so oddly. They sometimes behave so strangely. And one is that The Guardian, you can't scroll at all if you have scripts turned off.

AlexHuh.

MerlinWhich feels hostile to me. But anyhow, I have hards on. I have hards on for lots of things. I mean, what one calls a hard on from man in the autumn of his years is very generous. You know, I basically have the pants full of gelatin at this point.

Alexwhich is a terrific spin doctor's record i've got my pants full of gelatin because i'm 54 now i hate this

Merlini described this to my wife i feel like i'm microdosing

Alexiced tea you use that in such a general sense i mean please explain what's what's the what's the

Merlinabstract what what what's what how should i be saying it but oh i i apologize i'm sorry i'm such

Alexa bad jazz girl this morning no you're not why are you being like this with me what did i do because i respect this week's challenge and it was you know we'll dig dug we'll get to it later but I

Merlinmy daughter has your Dig Dug keychain now

AlexI'm gonna pretend that doesn't make me happy what daughter?

Merlinshe also bought a pack of Blackpink cards Blackpink cards basically it's like dirty cards for 13 year olds because it's all pictures of the ladies from Blackpink

Alexoh my god that's so funny

Merlinit's really cute she takes them out like your weird uncle check out this one she's originally from New Zealand you're in Australia Fuller. So anyhow, you're watching Succession and that's cool. I'm enjoying ICT. The microdosing part of it is I feel – how can I put this? Okay. One reason I dislike and will almost definitely return the kick scooter that I have, it's not fun to ride. It has solid rubber tires.

You feel every goddamn bump. Your bones are just the whole time.

AlexAgain, no shocks. No shocks, which is – There's zero suspension and solid wheels.

MerlinI think this thing's a little bit overrated. I would not call it the Tesla of scooters.

AlexNot even a little, no.

MerlinIt's really not that good for the price. But what was my point about that iced tea? Wait, what was I talking about, Alex?

AlexYou were talking about micro-dosing iced tea. And you've said that a couple of times. And are you micro-dosing the amount of water and tea or the milligrams of caffeine?

MerlinWell, no. Here's the thing. Okay, so the other reason I don't like that scooter, I love how fast it gets. But if you've got, like, you can do this thing where you have one motor on or two motors on. And then there's rider mode one, two, and three. And rider mode three advanced is really fun because you get up to 60 miles per hour pretty quick. That's the top speed, practical top speed of this. But, I mean, I end up running, when I ride it, which is rarely right now, I have it in two because the acceleration is too, it's just too much.

It's really like jarring and the little lever, this is just me, right? I'm so used to riding the Segway and it's such a joy for me to ride around on. And with this thing, it's a little bit itchy. So you hit it, whoa, whoa, whoa. And that's, coffee can be like that. Like this morning, because I was up crazy early for present morning, I did have a double espresso, which I don't, I don't want to say I'm off coffee, but I don't drink coffee. Let's put it this way. I don't drink coffee anyway, anywhere near the way my beloved wife drinks coffee. She's got a fucking problem.

she's a monster with how she drinks coffee.

AlexAny milligram amount or give me a range.

MerlinI don't want to throw her under the coffee bus, but when I make coffee for her, because I have a method, which I realize will surprise exactly no one. So my method is, not rounded, four even tablespoons of freshly ground coffee, and then I pour the water slowly and I stir because it's really, people don't get that. You got to stir and you got to do the thing. And then you let it sit for a minute. And then, you know, everybody's got their own ways. She makes it with boiling water and a number four.

I feel so bad. This is the mother of my daughter. And a number four coffee filter and a Melita dripper. She feels it, I want to say, not to the top, but well over halfway. She makes the equivalent of like a, what this company wants you to believe is a small pot of coffee. That's the strength that she makes for each coffee. And I see it because I'm usually the one that cleans up the filter later. And it's crazy. It's like I'm finding her needles around or something. It's nuts.

I mean, I don't want to heroin shame anybody.

AlexNo, good luck.

MerlinNow the beauty is with this, with the iced tea, let's go first principles, Clarice. First of all, it's not as strong as coffee. Also, I put in, it's about four to one iced tea to lime juice.

And I'm a lime man. Even though I'm lemon shaped, I'm lime in terms of my orientation. And I have that through the day. And then I throw, like I told you, fresh drink. You throw out everything. All new ice, all new everything. You have another one. And I've been like, you know, working on my project. You know, a little bit. And I'm feeling like, good. And then I go home and I'm like, cock of the walk. I don't hate it. I also got a new font I like for these things.

AlexOh, are you going to bring me away from JetBrains Mono? I love it so much.

MerlinOh, yeah. Actually, that was what I switched from. And you're probably not going to like it, but if you go to the Internet Bird site, I constantly just send this to you. If the Internet Bird site, go to my Internet Bird account and you'll see a thing from this morning where I was talking about how I like it. Scroll down. In Consolata. I've always loved In Consolata since I first learned about it. This is In Consolata Semi-Condensed Medium.

Alexand look at that i can send you a link if you need it the send me a link to your yeah send me a link to your tweet nope nope i i'm oh god i'm i can't i blocked this stupid website and i turn

Merlinit off nothing nothing is fucked here dude nothing is fucked here we go alexandra's window is over here and um yeah and it's just part of the inconsolata family you can get it from google fonts but i like the way it looks in lots of ways i like the slenderness because i like a font to be big, but I don't want it to be wide.

AlexOh.

MerlinMaintenance phase is going to cancel me now. I want...

AlexPoor Angela Lansbury.

MerlinShe just wants to jam on toast. Michael's tearing her apart because she likes Movement in sweaters.

AlexThis Johnny Carson guy. What? Johnny Carson.

MerlinI was just doing a Johnny Carson thing. So that's the micro dosing is like it keeps me at like a really nice level, you know, kind of throughout the day. And I mean, in my estimate, who knows how long this will last. But my estimation is, whereas I would never drink coffee after at this point, 11 or noon, I can enjoy an iced tea up until like two or three. And then I say, nah, nah. Time to start winding down. Have a beta blocker. I'm trying to have more beta blockers. My doctor says they're good. I got like a thousand of them.

Have a beta blocker. Relax a little bit. We talked about that in our last session, and it does absolutely hondo percent relate to the topic today because I brought up the topic of this with him last Friday.

AlexWe don't have topics. We have challenges. Holy God.

MerlinYou did it. You did it. You're such a wounded person, but you still got it.

AlexI know one thing. I may know for one thing. Oh, God. I was so worried. I thought that I was so proud. I thought I came up with ambient computing. And I don't I think that Walt Mossberg might have beaten me to it. But then I looked up his definition of it. And it's very different because his ambient computing is just like more of a minority report style, not necessarily the dystopian. I'm sorry, this is not the incidental computer show.

MerlinHis is more in terms of how you interact with it, maybe?

AlexNot even so much as interact with it. Like the same idea of like you shout into the air and like everything happens. But the idea of like, yes, your computers are all around you, but the your is not necessarily a singular situation. It is just the world has computers everywhere. And I'd argue that we're already living in like a beta version of that because, well, we're already being cucked. And there's very little agency. I don't know.

MerlinEspecially because the ambience that is there, because part of the ambient part of ambient computing is that you don't – the most basic way I think about it, and I'm no Uncle Walt, the most basic way I think about it, the way you described it so well, I think, is that there are computers that are doing things on your behalf. but you're maybe most saliently to an older person or a more veteran user of computers is you're not like sitting at a screen at a terminal with a keyboard and mouse saying,

computer, do things for me. There are things that are being done for you. In some cases, it's just around. I mean, your car has ambient computing in so many ways. And obviously, your home dinguses when they work. But I think a case could be made that the ultimate ambient computing that we don't think about is the shit going on in the background that's wheezing our juice.

AlexOh, that's –

MerlinIt's all the –

AlexYes.

MerlinYeah.

AlexLike when your Apple Watch is taking your – well, for me, it's always tracking my heart rate and my sleep. And the – I mean, if – well, if my car worked, it would show me the amount. It kind of shows me.

MerlinYou should get a car that works. That's important.

AlexNo, it actually does work.

MerlinMake a payment on a car that doesn't work?

AlexNo, no. That's lousy. An Apple – it should have a – what is it? God, oh my God, CarPlay. There we go. The thing that Apple has. Like it's supposed to-

MerlinOh, you should get a Tesla for that.

AlexOh, good Lord. Man.

MerlinCasey's so mean to Marco. They probably can't even get CarPlay on his fucking rocket.

AlexYou know what I'm saying? Oh, that's so- They have a proprietary system.

MerlinElon's a rocket. Yeah, ambient computing. I'm interested in that. Ice-T, Walt Mossberg. Oh, yeah, so we'll come back to this. So what we're going to do, we don't have topics here. We have challenges. And the challenge for this week was, I guess, kind of mine. We'll talk about it in a bit. But just to pre-announce a little bit, we're going to talk about, is it fair to call it a thought technology?

AlexYes, I'd say so, yes.

MerlinWe should define that, too, at some point. A new thought technology that I've been working on that's hardly novel in any way. But it's a way that I'm trying to calm the fuck down, especially when I'm supposed to be asleep. And I'm trying to adopt some methods that are not so different from a combination of mindfulness and breathing. But the primary part of it is this way that I'm trying to tell myself, slow down. And then that has an impact beyond sleep that I'm kind of interested in and excited about. And then your addition that I thought was smart was,

the alternate title is to turn down smart speed on your life, right?

AlexYes, yes. Well, that came from me.

MerlinI'm sorry, to change smart speed in your life, right? So if you're running your life in smart speed, I don't know if Marco, I don't think he invented this name, but like in Overcast, the thing that Marco has done in Overcast, and I do not understand this from a technical standpoint, but you could, I mean, since time immemorial, you think about the fucking Dave Alvin and the chipmunks. You could double the speed of tape, and it sounds like people are talking really high. You could turn it down and they sound really low, but it doesn't sound right. And Marco's innovation that is so clever is he has some secret sauce that detects certain like silence and certain kinds of silence.

And it doesn't take out all the silence. It doesn't strip silence, as we say in logic. It doesn't strip the silence. It reduces the silence. And then depending on how high you have it turned up, if you're some monster that goes above 1x, it's taking out more of your silence. Did I get that mostly right?

AlexI believe so. And there's a lot of proprietary stuff going on with both this and every, like, I do think he invented it. But a lot of apps do this. Yes. Both the term and the, not the technology, but the way it's implemented.

MerlinI would rather slight one of my friends who's a brilliant innovator than have to hear the 10,000 people who just Googled it and go like, Well, actually, it was invented by Thor Stenson Finn Lansen in 1978.

AlexNo, no. The only reason I bring this up is because, like you said, it... Well, you sort of said it. It does not sound bad, at least to my ears. Sometimes it'll get a little garbled if it's a really instrumental piece. Like, I think I have it actually turned off for Radiolab.

MerlinI notice it in the music of podcasts and certain themes more than others.

AlexOh, yeah, Strong Songs, I have it turned off, too. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinBut I'll tell you one right off the dome is – is it Slate? I think it's Slate Politics maybe.

AlexOh, I don't know. Everything is like –

MerlinReally, it turns it into ska in a very upsetting way.

AlexMaybe that's why I like it. Oh, God.

MerlinBut what's neat about it is if you just run – what I love about Smart Speed or whatever the fuck it's called is that I have it just on the most basic. Like, just do basic smart speed, which is, you know, unless it's Ira interviewing Mike Daisy, like, it's okay. Because those silences, it's so critically important that not a single bit of those silences be skipped. How brave they must have been to produce that episode and leave that much awkward silence in. They knew exactly what they were doing.

AlexAh, but in here I will go forth and advocate for smart speed. I have listened to different versions of that because I remember thinking like, all right, what does this smart speed actually do slash work like? And I think that is probably, I don't know if that was when it was released initially, but that was kind of my test case. And while it is shorter, you can barely tell. In my opinion, it's so difficult.

MerlinNo, no. If you're running on a standard, like, yeah, just speed this up a little. I do that for most shows. You know, the other thing that's great is when you've got a show like Back to Work or certain other shows, if there's a, like there's a show I just listened to that has exactly 35 seconds of intro. and then you know back to work's case you don't want to listen to Merlin's band's song for two minutes you can set the when it starts and when it ends I love that

but it's weird though because then you'll get people you know just being nice will say like oh I turned off smart speed and you guys so drunk it's like oh thanks it's kind of like you're skinnier when I masturbate about you okay cool cool cool cool Star Wars in my head your boobs are bigger so that's you know the name of that tune and we're going to talk about that we also have a patreon uh alexandra and i that uh gives us money you can say shit like it supports the show but

what it does is it provides the way that we uh earn a living we want your money and you can you can support that and get some bonus content each week we have an after show that's fun if you like this sort of shit and you can go to patreon.com slash do by friday or give us your fucking money.com whatever feels good to you and uh we appreciate the folks who support that many of whom are our pals which makes me feel good wow you did that so i mean

Alexyou are indeed organic alex be honest was it organic i i think so and it'll be twice as

Merlinfast if you turned up your smart speed like a fucking monster. You sound drunk. I wonder what it

Alexsounds like when I cry at 2X. I don't know if we have any crying topics this

Merlinweek. This is what it sounds like

Alexwhen Alex cries. Oh my god. That should be the name of my emo album.

MerlinYour emo ebook? so that's what's going on we got uh did we close most of the threads there i'm enjoying iced tea i'm very excited about my project i'm having fun with it i'm excited about it you didn't mention

Alexyour project you've mentioned it previously okay and you know the other thing is okay so i want to

Merlintell you what my secret edge is i'm always angry no the thing where i get away with shit is like during the day if i'm not microdosing iced tea and i'm mostly just sitting around moping and

Alexdoing i don't post a lot of stuff on twitter during the day and it's like because that's

Merlinwhen everybody's all like they're all ratty and fucked up and like nobody's fun nobody's fun you're no rock and roll fun is what i'm saying but see now daddy comes up at night and like i'm having fun and I'm being myself and also it's late. So nobody sees it. The West Coast nighttime Twitter is arguably the best Twitter, at least it used to be. That's where you'd see the fun. That's where people are having fun instead of people just like, just everybody's so goddamn mad, Alex. And crazy.

Everybody's lost their mind.

AlexAbsolutely. Yes. And that's what I mean. I go on Twitter when I've lost my mind. And in my drafts, I have a whole bunch of silly topics because I'm like, yeah, I want the dopamine of these likes like, oh, man, Jack, just stay woke and put it in my brain. But I don't. Oh, it's not healthy. It's not good. Whereas I think that when I go on Twitter late, late at night, yes, not the best idea. But it's typically when West Coast Twitter is popping off and it's just silly and fun and people are sharing weird shit to watch or read.

I don't know.

MerlinNo, I feel the same way. You know, how about a new corner here? A new segment, if I can find it. How about a new segment called No Fucking Way Would You Post That on Twitter?

AlexOh.

MerlinBecause there's times I want to share something with you in particular, but everybody gets enough stuff as it is. But I have been stopped by my far superior daughter. I want to say on at least three occasions, I have been stopped from posting this. And she's so smart. because it's such a good joke for somebody, but it might be my undoing, even though it is a joke. I can't find the image right now. One time we were at Walgreens. I don't know if your Walgreens is like this. Ours is, we have a really crappy Walgreens.

It has a very small selection of stuff. This is true of many magazine areas at any place, but magazines you see at the supermarket or at Walgreens have gotten extremely strange. So it'll be something like, here's a... a special issue about Law & Order SVU. Or, like, here's how to have, here's a magazine called, you know, Energy Joy. Or it's just extremely weird, specific vertical content. And alongside, like, you know,

I think the only fashion magazines they have at this point are, like, Elle and Vogue, maybe. But, like, they just got all these weird vertical market magazines. And one of them is a magazine called Anne Frank. And I said to my daughter, I only read it for the articles.

Because that implies that I consider that like the way men used to think about Playboy. Now, that's a very – when people say, I just like the stereo reviews, I only read it for the articles. And she said, no way are you going to post that. And I said, you know, that's probably smart. And then like two or three more times, I took the photo again and said, this is a really good joke. Now, do you like that joke?

AlexOh, yes. And I think I've sent you –

MerlinIt says Anne Frank. The magazine is called Anne Frank, which it seems like it should probably be hidden somewhere,

Alexbut whatever.

MerlinLike behind a bookshelf, you know, with me.

AlexYou gotta pry open the floor. Maybe that's what the glass cases are actually for in Walgreens.

MerlinAre you saying there might be secret Walgreens? Like a New York City apartment dream? Oh my God, there's secret Walgreens? Like a speakeasy? Oh my fucking God.

AlexOh, I'm sorry. People get mad when I laugh at my own jokes. I liked that one.

MerlinWho?

AlexWho gets mad? I don't know.

MerlinWho gets mad? Tell me.

AlexI don't know.

MerlinYou imagine a lot of people. I have proof of this.

AlexI mean, not. I don't deny that. I'm sure I do.

MerlinYes, I suppose. All right. Okay. Okay, so articles and, you know, supposedly her dad kind of went a little crazy in cutting stuff out of the diary. You ever heard that?

AlexYeah, which bums me out.

MerlinThat Otto cut out all the, like, sexy stuff and, like, she's actually a horny teenage girl. And, I mean, I'm not saying that to, like, disparate Anne Frank.

AlexNo, she seems like a cool hang.

MerlinI hope she would have been a Belieber.

AlexYeah. That's what I said. No, that's the thing. I remember thinking in high school. Did you hear about that?

MerlinThat's the time Justin Bieber went to the Anne Frank house and he signed the book and said, I hope Anne Frank would have been a Belieber.

AlexIsn't that apocryphal? That's the thing he wrote with his hand. Oh, that's real? That's... He's from Canada.

MerlinIt's a different world. Anne Frank jokes, secret Walgreens. What?

AlexI think I've had... Have I not sent you some of my undoing tweets? Like, pull the lever if I ever need to be canceled and just be done. done that's get it get him in under the wire yeah no you just see it's the self-destruct of like okay everybody should have that everyone should have their like uh like funny pronoun joke or like whatever like i i'm really kind of over the terms punching up and punching down it's like

speaking truth to power who like what what power doesn't know the truth like who what mostly more

Merlinoften you're speaking bullshit to twitter but go on you know yeah you're fast today it's like it's like ministry said you know every day is halloween um finding i can't find the frank i'll find it for notes oh here it is here's an frank magazine it's right next to a magazine

Alexabout vikings and national geographics is an frank oh my god oh anyway uh centerfold would

Merlinbe in bad taste um so hey how are you you doing good i'm i'm doing all right we don't talk about

Alexum our show stuff on the show i don't know want to start over i've got hey i've got my slippies on they're so comfortable mac welton we got we got horny goats we got slippies we got horny goat

Merlinwe've got making twitter great again and then once again once again you sent me an odd context-free link to something called Nico Stratus who made a Twitter joke.

AlexOh, yeah. I just thought it was.

MerlinIs this related to Twitterific? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

AlexI think so. Hold on. Where did I? Okay. It's in the doc. No. I didn't send. Exactly. I did not send it. There's a doc? I put it in the doc. God, I miss it. I know. I know. Oh, I miss him too. What did she say? There should be a Twitter.

MerlinThere should be a Twitter where it's just people posting skate videos and photos of Lee Pace.

AlexThat's a good weed Twitter, too. Like, they're just...

MerlinYou know, he's hot in fucking everything. He's hot in Lincoln.

AlexYes. It's very strange. Everybody in Lincoln's pretty hot, though. He's kind of like Sarah Paulson. And even when she's, like, really ugly, like, intentionally, like, she's supposed to be literally strung out and, like, fucked up. I'm like, you're just... I could fix you. I'm going to take you home.

MerlinI just learned about a movie. You know me. I like to watch those YouTube videos where people like, you know, I don't know. Garbage man evaluates 35 garbage man scenes from movies. And this is a guy talking about cults. And he seemed okay qualified. He seemed a little bit thirsty. But he went through and said, yeah, this is like cults. And he talked about this movie I'd never heard of with Scarlet Witch. What's her name? Susan Olsen. Olsen. Terry Olsen. Terry Gross. Elizabeth Olsen. It's got a very young Elizabeth Olsen and a fucking course.

Sarah Paulson's in it.

AlexAnd it looks really good.

MerlinHe says it's one of the most realistic depictions of what it's like to try and leave a cult. And I'll find the name for it.

AlexWow. Wow.

MerlinIsn't that interesting? I love Sarah Paulson. She's so cool.

AlexOh, she's.

MerlinI liked her in Miss America, that whole show. I know it's probably problematic, but I liked it. It's called Martha Marcy May Marlene. It's a 2011 movie. Oh, also John Hawks.

Alexthe guy from Deadwood he's also hot in Lincoln he's in it I okay um parentheses I love Marcia Marthy the triple M you've seen it yes it what did you say 2011 like it was the you know the cool kid movie at the time and because there was an Olsen in it it is very very good like oh man

MerlinI got it on my Plex I'll check it out Lincoln also very good that's got a lot of good people in it I like movies I'm a fan I like it I see the Tiger King trailer there's a second season of Tiger King coming

Alexyeah I'm like what are they gonna are they just gonna be a lot of like how to get it is it making a murderer we're half the thing I really liked it I bet it's miscarriage

Merlinof justice stuff

AlexI hope there's some maligned women type after turns out like like in a good turns out type of way because you tell him

Merlinyou telling me that we're gonna that like if uh you know uh uh what's that show we like if you're wrong about we're still doing new episodes they would eventually do a carol baskin episode you're

Alexthinking not even carol baskin but a um uh joe joe king uh joe tiger fuck what's his name um joe Joe Exotic. Joe Exotic. And just kind of like, I mean, if you're going to speak truth to Netflix, I guess, just kind of like the conditions in which this like big old gross boiling pot of sure corruption, but like cruelty. And I don't know, like that's the one. It's Florida. You better than anybody know how this shit is.

MerlinI'm a little bit of drift right now with what you're talking about.

AlexOh, okay. I mean, just the weird...

MerlinHow is he a woman? And we're speaking truth to Joe Exotic?

AlexNo, no, no, no. He's a woman? No, no, no, no, no, no. Like how Carole Baskin was, sure, like, quote, slandered. But like, was she really slandered? Like, I'm... Yeah, I'm team... I don't know. I really like Tiger King. And I still think it is just as good as everybody thought it was. But I... I don't know. I don't know what else there could be in that show, except if there was like a sort of updates and turns out like I want to know what happened to Vegas guy. I want to know like what prison Joe Exotic was put in.

MerlinI think Jeff, I think his name is Jeff, the douchebag with the beard, the rich guy. I think there's going to be a lot about I suspect we're going to hear some shit about what that guy's up to because he seems like he's got something going on. And I bet it will be about the attempts for him to, like, get a pardon and stuff like that. And it will certainly be about Carole Baskin and her creepy husband in some way or other.

AlexShe definitely didn't kill her husband. That was the one thing where I was like, hmm.

MerlinOh, the other one? Yeah.

AlexYeah. Well, I think he went missing in Columbia. Like, he was a drug dealer. Like, hmm, hmm. Ah, okay. Yeah.

MerlinI mean, this seems like there's a lot of, like, what amounts to circumstantial evidence. But, you know, anyway, there's that. What else have we been doing? We watched. What else have we been watching? I can't get my kid to watch anything interesting. She plays this impact game all day.

AlexOh, we're a gentian? Yeah. Oh, my God.

MerlinYou know what's sweet? You know what's sweet? Her pal, the one she was watching Squid Game with in the stall at 12.05 a.m. for her birthday today. 12.05 AM sent her over 90 pictures of her character, like fan art pictures of her character. He has three names, but he's mainly known as Childe, the E. Sent lots of pictures of this handsome boy child. He seems pretty fluid.

AlexYeah. I mean, I was like, I have some questions about just play style of the characters that she's picked, but that's very cute.

MerlinDid she talk to you about her three characters? She was very excited. I don't think so. She told me the first one, she's got three big characters. I don't know what the fuck this game is. All I know, it's her life mostly. And that something happened, and there's like a certain percentage chance that you will get something good in the game. It sounds kind of like gambling. And she got like, I don't know, like a one in 90 chance that she got her first character. Then she got her second character. And this child won. I think we had to pay something for it, but it's made her very happy.

AlexYeah, it's a, I mean, parentheses, I guess. It is less loot boxy than most people think. And do you know what loot boxes are? Loot, loot, not loop, not the audio hijack.

MerlinLoot box is a name, a word or phrase that I associate with the that's how they get you of modern video games.

AlexCorrect. And it is.

MerlinLoot box.

AlexYes, it is. It's not a loopy box.

MerlinBe sure to use our offer code.

AlexYeah. Have you heard of this game, Amazing Fiends? Good God, no. Have you never heard that ad, Amazing Fiends? I have no problem with...

That's a strong statement. I appreciate podcast advertising because otherwise I would not have been able to enjoy the majority of media that I consumed in college.

MerlinSeems that way for sure, yeah.

AlexBut I don't know. I don't really care about the sincerity.

MerlinAre we talking about child or what are we talking about? Are you talking about a loot box ad on a podcast? I might need more iced tea, Alex.

AlexI know.

MerlinI'm a little bit low on lime, so I can only have so many before I go home and get more lime juice.

AlexI wonder if – and anyway, I don't know. There's been a lot of ads for not Slate but a wondery podcast about amazing fiends. And I don't mind. What are some fiends? I don't even know if this is. I think it's the name. But I don't know. The disin... Ads.

MerlinBest Fiends?

AlexBest Fiends. That's so dumb.

MerlinCollect tons of cute characters and solve thousands of fun puzzles. That sounds like a waking nightmare.

AlexYep.

MerlinBest Fiends, a world on your mobile trademark.

AlexYeah.

MerlinWe get Best Fiends stars. and these are little critters who look like they should be in not a Sony or a DreamWorks but some kind of off-brand Oogie Loves type movie.

AlexAnd I downloaded this game and put in my little offer code because I thought I enjoyed the show that Dana Schwartz does, Noble Blood. Wait a minute.

MerlinI just had a Twitter exchange with somebody called Dana Schwartz?

AlexYeah, she's a journalist podcaster.

MerlinI just had a Twitter exchange with somebody named Dana Schwartz.

Alexhow fucking weird is that oh i mean she's she's in it might be her it might be who you're talking about yeah and no she's that's the thing she's great but then i realized oh i just i just thought it was a funny coincidence the um yeah i mean she's a great journalist i think and great at

Merlinwriting oh really okay i'm gonna go learn about dana schwartz here we go uh she's on the newest

Alexyou're wrong about that uh i haven't listened to it yet but i oh she's a guest that's her i keep

Merlinconfusing there's dana's i think i have a dana problem we're like i hear the dana part and then to get confused about the second name yeah sometimes i think it's the lady from the slate podcast dana schwartz okay and she i had to turn that off because sarah sounded really bad me oh man i god i can't do that for an hour alex i can't do it i know i know she's in a closet

Alexlike so many of the young people today listen if brace belton can get it like if he can finally get a better mic i i mean like what who oh race belton brace belden he's the um brace belden no no it just sounds like if they were game of thrones he would be part of house jerry lewis brace belden what is funny it's a small world huh yeah no and that's the thing is i thought that oh by benefit

by like, you know, even though I'm not going to get a Mack Weldon underwear, like, oh, I'm wearing Mack Weldon slippers right now. It's like, oh, cool. But I'll still put in the offer code and stuff because I like to support the pod people that I enjoy. But then I found out, oh, no, no, no, Wondery is getting all of that. It's not even like showing up that you downloaded this dumb fucking name. Oh, okay.

MerlinDoes that make sense?

AlexI think I understand. I don't know.

MerlinI think so.

Alexdynamic ads that like aren't really dynamic i don't i've bummed myself out maybe i need to dose

Merlinup more yeah you know what i'll mix some more iced tea in a little bit but you know i feel pretty good about it i looked through i didn't see that many things did you get that in consulata

Alexyou're gonna get that font i don't know i'm looking for a good costume thing i know no i know and i there's a font that oh boy uh patreon.com slash do by friday everybody there is a font that I love that I will find for notes. And I do think fonts should be very expensive because they're so fucking or type or whatever, because I know how fucking hard they are to make. But this one's like 400 bucks, which I guess is like the lower end. Oh, that's a lot. I just like looking at it, man. But it's not for my work yet. But, oh, man, one day, this right next to the titty fund, I'm like, damn, this is gorgeous.

MerlinAnd also your week of celebrating the new boy, which you're going to get for your work with permission, right?

AlexI had gotten permission from my spouse to get a Macintosh professional laptop.

MerlinMacintosh professional.

AlexI like that.

MerlinThat's like when Roderick a couple weeks ago talked about that podcast I used to be on MacBook Week. I was really impressed. If he knows anything that's not something he personally experienced in life, I'm always really impressed.

AlexThat's very impressive. Oh, my God.

MerlinI think one time he acknowledged the existence of Netflix.

AlexThat's weird. Oh, boy.

MerlinI found out he watched Rome a long time ago. That was weird.

AlexI mean, don't you agree, though, that the MacBook Max versus the MacBook – wait, the MacBook?

MerlinMacBook's Professional versus MacBook's Prime?

AlexWell, no, no.

MerlinThis is called MacBook One. That was for you, Marco.

AlexThat was cute. But no, there's two different chips and one's called the M1 Pro and one's the M1 Max. And I'm just like, it's the MacBook with the Max because I can't. And a little card's against humanity card pops up when he opened it. That wasn't funny. But I don't know. I got a or it is arriving in December and I'm very excited because I'm taking I'm doing an old school Merlin Man list where I've been trying to do stuff with my

Macintosh airport that is a little bit difficult, like stuff in After Effects. Kind of difficult. I mean, really, it just won't open.

MerlinMacBook Air.

AlexI call it the MacBook Air port because that's what... Well, naturally, I would understand what that means. It's what people carry in airports. Oh, that's funny.

MerlinWe made a joke. That's funny, Bullseye.

AlexI don't like the name Air because it's not fucking Air. It's stupid. But I have a list running of all of the things that I can't do or the things that are slow, especially in terms of the GPU. And I'm very excited to try those out.

MerlinCan't mind your Ethereum. Dana Schwartz is a writer of TV, books, comics, and podcasts. That's cool. She makes something called, looks like Noble Blood Tales.

AlexYes. It's very upsetting. It's about how, well, how nobility died in gruesome, gruesome ways.

MerlinOh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Huh. Huh. She lives in Los Angeles, California. And she's got a birthday.

AlexWhy are we doing this? Oh, no. Ah.

MerlinI just think it's funny that I talked about urinating next to Tom Hulse to somebody I'd never heard of before, and you just said the person's name. And I mentioned that I was almost killed on two different occasions by Bob Hope to this person.

AlexMy God, you love talking to people on Twitter about urination or engaging in urination. You are remembering things. I don't.

MerlinYou remember things too much. I'm just as God made me, sir. I'm just wandering across the same fucking planet as everybody else. And maybe everybody just pay less attention to me. I'll be over here.

You haven't told us. You haven't told us. You haven't told us. You haven't talked about pee.

AlexI'm a big old rube. I'm your biggest fan.

Dick, Doug, have we closed all the threads and parentheses? Yeah, I think so. Because I am very interested in what you have to say about your challenge, not topic, that you chose this week.

MerlinYes, thank you. So I have anxiety and I have ADHD and I probably have lots of other things. That's two that I've been officially. It's always two diagnoses with me. But I even if almost no matter what I do, I sometimes still find myself having fitful sleep. And I also, for whatever reason, it could be my pseudo traumas. but for whatever reason i i also have i have anxiety uh and i've learned over time that

anxiety is not just this freestanding thing that happens that anxiety comes along with a ton of stuff including depression and including like you know pretty much you name it it's it's sort of like when you're watching msnbc and like no matter what the drug is the side effects are always you know headache nausea you know that kind of thing and by the way do not take dupectin if you're allergic to do pectin which seems like very good advice um but uh i have that and the way that there's a number of ways that evidence is i will not carry on here but is that let's just put it

this way uh there are people in this world that believe in ghosts um like seriously believe in ghosts like these serious like no i'm not being unkind but just to say even though they can't

Alexprove that ghosts exist hopefully well i mean if one is no ghost at all and it's just a creaky floorboard and 10 is a Rudy Luby Lincoln. I think I'm a four on that scale. So, yeah,

MerlinI mean, it's, it seems it's one of those arguments, like who should have like won a sports game where it's like, I mean, I'm not going to devote a ton of time to that kind of speculation.

AlexI'm trying to say simulation thing of like,

Merlinyou could be somebody who's very into ghosts, even though ghosts are sort of by definition, you know, these ethereal things that are impossible to prove. of sales of Christianity, like whatever that is. But like the classic example, at least to me, the classic example is that like if you're being, if you discover you're in the jungle, because I'm forever in the jungle personally, you're in the jungle and you see a tiger running at you, let's say, it's completely normal that your pulse would quicken and maybe you'd shit yourself. But you do all the kinds of like fight, flight. What is the third one, the new one we're doing?

Hide?

AlexFight, flight, freeze.

MerlinFreeze. Okay. Fight, flight, freeze. But it's very natural to say, like, well, of course, this is danger. This is, like, imminent danger, and I need to do something to make myself safe right now, right? And that maybe that makes you, like, run away or whatever. The point being, it would not seem beyond the pale of logic to say that in the face of an imminent threat or bodily, especially bodily harm, like, your body would react and your mind would react in ways.

Like, you know what's weird, Alex? You know, the time, the one time in this entire goddamn life that I can actually breathe, I have a breathe right on right now. The one time in life that I can breathe clearly is when something just made me panic.

AlexOh, wow.

MerlinYou know the way animals shit themselves before they run away? Yes. Your body, as I understand it, the autonomic system, but there's your old brain that's working with your nervous system to say, okay, here comes the tiger title, and here's all the things we need to do. We do need to quicken your pulse, and we do need to start pumping adrenaline because that's going to help you burn nitro to get your ass out of there if you do decide to run. But in any case, it's going to make you one of the other things, Alex, it makes you hypervigilant.

So like you're going to notice like you've ever been alone at night and you hear a ghost or whatever. And like you get like and like you a thousand percent of your attention is focused on proving to yourself that there either is or is not a burglar or whatever.

AlexRight.

MerlinEverybody knows this. It's just important to me that the listener understand that all of those things that are completely normal when there isn't like when something bad, especially physically, maybe deadly is happening to you. It's totally normal that your body flips out and does a bunch of crazy stuff. But by next month, you're not going to be feeling that. Perhaps even like by tomorrow morning, you're not going to be feeling that. That will have all sort of burned off.

however I got how I am, things that are not an imminent danger can cause, if not quite that same tiger reaction, something that feels roughly equivalent, which is I am, as Dan and I used to like to say on back to work, I'm just a guy in a room. I'm just sitting here. Again, to quote the great Walter Sobchak, nothing is fucked here, dude. Nothing is wrong except what is happening in my brain right now. And it could be that if you like something triggered, and this is where

the trauma part potentially comes in, something triggered a response that is way outsized in terms of depth and breadth, and maybe importantly, in the length of how long I can feel fucked up by something. And I am not proud of any of this. I am quite embarrassed by a lot of this. But example I think I've shared with you is that at a time in college when I just, I ran out of money. I was behind on rent. And everywhere I went, I thought I saw my landlord's car.

And as it happened, he had like a fairly common, maybe even like a cop car sort of like Crown Vic type thing. But the point being, none of those people except for one could be my landlord. and I like logically rationally I could say to myself like there's no way that you you're seeing ghosts essentially now I'm the believer in ghosts and I'm seeing shit everywhere and so like when you hear it and I'm not trying to align myself with somebody who's had like next level trauma but it's like no no I mean I'll save it for the after show what I'm trying to say is if you if you

are assaulted and abused by a person with a very specific sort of appearance. Sometimes when you see somebody who looks like that person, whether you want to or not, you get panicky. And you may not even know why until you really interrogate it because against the also trauma, your brain's trying to protect you. But anyway, it's a long-winded way of saying, however I got how I am, that's a thing I deal with. And it sucks, especially because alongside that, I do have ADHD. and the most effective treatment I've found for everything we're pretty sure,

well, there's parts that treat the part that's about depression, but there's also the part that's about ADHD. And I take a very mild stimulant for that. But what if I had too much stimulant? What if I had too much coffee? What if I had too much iced tea? And now I go lay in bed at 11 o'clock and my heart's beating really fast. And rationally, I can kind of talk myself down a little bit. I can make the rational case. And again, let's go all the way back to the very first episode of Back to Work, which is kind of about this topic.

And it was called Alligator in the Bathroom, which sounds like an English beat song. Gator in the bathroom, please don't. But we were watching, my parents and I, my father's still alive, and we were watching, see also trauma. And we were watching Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. And I think they might have actually said to six-year-old me, oh, they're funny monsters. But I don't know how that became. I really need to go to the bathroom right now. I need to pee.

But I'm like, I can't go in the bathroom. And my parents are like, why can't you go to the bathroom?

AlexI said, because there's an alligator in there.

MerlinAnd they said, there's not an alligator in there. You could totally go in there. I was just in there a while ago unless something very odd has happened. Something has changed. there's definitely not an alligator in the bathroom. I'm just here to tell you, that kid, me, has to a very high level of certainty, maybe more certain than I was that I was talking to my parents, I was aware of the incredibly strong, unshakable feeling that there was an alligator in the bathroom. That's fun. That's silly. But it was really real. I had somehow gotten something

into my head watching Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. I somehow got it in my head that there was now a danger of something that was utterly irrational, non-existent. And do you think that mattered at all? It did not. So yeah, they made a really good case, a really good rational case. I can make a really good rational case to myself that like, it's okay if you owe rent from 1988, because this is a different millennium and you'll probably be fine. But I don't know, as I believe Elliot said, you know, these roots to the clutch. I don't fucking know,

but I deal with that. And so I've been trying to adopt various approaches over time, most of them extremely mundane, to get better sleep, but also to just get better at a mindful approach to dealing with a thing that I'm feeling. And feelings are real. See also my project, right? So that's where this comes from. And the latest thought technology that is utterly unoriginal and so much exactly like six other things everybody already does is I try to tell

myself slow down and that can mean breathing that can mean but like I described this to my shrink I'm sorry I'm talking a lot I apologize no no go go go I described in the last last visit I had with my shrink last Friday I told him what led to this new slow down thought technology and it's that a thing happens sometimes, and this might be from alcohol, it might be from stimulants, but it definitely doesn't hurt that I'm also kind of emotionally fucked up, is that sometimes imagine, you know, like a Trivial Pursuit piece.

Imagine like a circle with six sections in it, and now just imagine that's a carousel or a, like, you know, like almost like a, not a zoetrope, but like, and it keeps spinning. For a few seconds, I have a song from Hamilton in my head. For a few seconds, I'm late boarding a flight at a Paris airport. For a few seconds, there's another song in my head. For a few seconds, I'm thinking about my relationship with my mother. And the carousel just keeps going around and around.

And I hate it. And like so many of these things, we eventually learn it's difficult. You can't just yell at yourself to make something stop. That is a shockingly unaffected way to handle something. So how do you get out of that, right? Do you go drink more? Do you take drugs? Do you do whatever? Well, I'm just trying to approach this idea. And then so, you know, I've slowed down. But then what I love about the slowdown concept, as we discussed in the after show last week, patreon.com slash do by Friday, is that this also, you know, a thousand flowers bloom. If you start thinking about different ways you can slow down.

Some people like to slow down their eating. Some people like to slow down their buying habits. like pump the fucking brakes on some part of your life. And your addition to this, which I love, is this smart speed part. And the reason I'm saying it's not turn down smart speed, I'm saying change smart speed. There might become some stuff where like you need to go to triple speed. If triple speed gets you past a dumb thought that you'd love to get out of your mind and you can do that, that sounds smart to me. But then other kinds of things, I need to spend the next five minutes at half speed.

And what does that feel like? what does that look like and that's our challenge this week is slow down aka change your smart speed settings on life

Alexthat was really good no one wants to hear it from me that's

Merlincome on why do you say something like that

Alexdo you know how that makes me feel

Merlinit's like my kid saying she does a little birthday gift

Alexwait like a compliment what she says she does a little birthday gift and I say

Merlinit's not for you it's for me don't be a dick

Alexsometimes email is just a way

Merlinto say I love you

AlexUm, I really kind of leaned into actually the whole changing or adjusting of smart speed because I have, you know, yes, I'm a monster and sometimes I listen to podcasts at 2x and sometimes my average is like 1.7, but more and more so I listen to podcasts at 1.0. And part of that is, okay, if I, and this is a cliche, like if I were to die tomorrow, is anyone going to give me awards for not using my stickers, as you'd say?

Or am I going to regret that I didn't listen? Like I often save my favorite shows for like my favorite podcasts for like the end of the week, which ends up being silly because then I don't have – like it sounds smart. Like, oh, yes, it's a treat.

MerlinBut you're in different moods different times of the week.

AlexRight.

MerlinLike I still – this is going to sound silly to a lot of people is I still really miss the TV podcast that Jason Snell did with Tim Goodman. That was my Friday night podcast. I would take a shower and listen to that every Friday night. And I, you know, and now today I have other ones that are like that. Like, you know, like I say, like listening to Slate Money on Saturdays. I know this sounds compulsive, but like, you know, you're you know how you feel and you know what you're in the mood for. And me listening to no such thing as a fish on Friday afternoon is a fun way for me to like I'm cleaning my office.

I'm winding down and I'm listening to this podcast that I really love. And that show could be twice as long and I'd still love it.

AlexTotally. And I'm not talking about like saving a tree. Like, typically Sundays are a reconcilable difference days. Relay.com, RelayFM.com slash recdiffs to support Merlin and Squidward.

MerlinAlex is a digital native, and that's why they're so good at this stuff.

AlexOh, so, so good. But then... Another new Alex sound. Have I... Okay, this is how... Okay. All right, quick parentheses. the only i thought asmr was a total sex not even a sex thing but something that like stimulated some sexual no no the only time i've experienced what people what at least i think is how folks describe asmr is when steven hackett does it with his like new fancy microphone and i hate it i get so mad i

there should be a warning it's like like listening to somebody eat yeah it's just like he's like asmr the rickies and i'm like no steven i bought your calendar and your beautiful stickers and you upset me like this but i it's different than like um saving a treat for the end of the week can you

Merlinimagine being a furry who's really into asmr oh and you just spend your fucking whole day going

Alexit's not it's not about uh it's not about sex sometimes it's not i guess i don't know i i am i've had a lot of come to jesus moments with furries and i respect them quite a bit uh mostly because in the same way that i respect people who come into costume i guess Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, boy.

MerlinYou got to really get in there. Really get in there.

AlexAll right. An example, a perfect example, I think, is there is an episode of, I believe, there's like a special premium episode of Mac Stories where Federico Vitticci, Mac Stories is a computer podcast mostly about Apple. and Federico Vecicci every year writes a big review of iOS, whatever new iOS release that is. Yeah, he does a great job with it. He does. And I have not finished reading it yet. So I'm like, I'm going to save this podcast

because then it'll be like, I'll save it for later. Or I'm going to save this episode of Radiolab for later when I'm like, I'm going to put on my big headphones and make some, maybe microdose some tea and like have a good time. And I was like, this is fucking silly. Just do the things you like. It's like reading a bad book because you want to save the good book for later. Like I wasn't doing it.

MerlinYeah, it is a lot like saving your good stickers.

AlexIt was. I was saving too many stickers. But at the same time, I was also rapidly using up other. I don't know. I just thought about all of the way. Like I've been trying to slow down all of my different speeds for like six months now. and they I'm going to do the privilege thing where I'm like why should I be that worried about wearing headphones in public because someone might think I'm rude or someone might think I'm weird

but no one's like if someone's day is ruined by that I think I'd have to be so part of it is

Merlinyou're saving in the same way that you might save like oh you're like you say save dessert till the end there's an element of like I want to have time to enjoy this on my own terms but there's also an element of like do you feel a little bit of social pressure about seeming out of place yes

Alexby having headphones okay well it's two it's always two anxieties with me like the one anxiety is i'm gonna die before the most recent radio lab series is over and two the way that i can slow

Merlinmyself oh yeah what are they doing i heard about this i heard it's really good it's um is it about cassettes yes it is okay i gotta listen to that i'm so fucking sick i'm i'm so the goddamn bad The Blood Podcast is the latest one. Hey, check out this other podcast. It's not the show you subscribe to. And I'm like, I'm just, it's burn it all with fire. But I will check that out because I love Radiolab and I love cassettes and I will do that.

AlexIt's very, there's only one so far, but it's very good.

MerlinBut you don't want to die before you've listened to it. That'd be a bummer.

AlexThat would be a bummer. But also I feel not great often when, for example, I'm in Walgreens or when I'm about to go to a doctor's office or whatever the fuck it might be because of quote pseudo trauma.

MerlinPseudo trauma isn't a thing, people. It's an honest thing.

AlexI am just better and even, not even like blocking the world out, but I set my fancy pod Siri, like the little, what are they? AirPods, there we go, to transparency mode. And just having a voice in my head that isn't an alligator being like, chomp, chomp, chomp, gonna get your pussy. It's just this nice, I don't know. And I see people being dicks with headphones and I'm like, well, you don't know their fucking story, man.

Like this is water.

MerlinWell, I've got, because of my terrible hearing, I was so excited when they added that new, the new thing in 15.1 where you can like, it's not vastly different, but you can go in and you can tune to your weird hearing, how do you want music to sound, stuff like that. But it still has the magic of transparency mode, but posposably, it focuses on trying to hear voices in front of you. Yes. I don't exactly understand how that works, but it does work.

So I could actually, ironically enough, if we talked at Walgreens, I might hear you even if I were listening to music, I might hear you a ton ass better than if I had no headphones. But in a million years, I could never talk to somebody with headphones on. I feel so weird.

AlexI've accepted that it was a privilege thing because there are people like it's considered weird. People get so pissed off when there's like a black teenager on the CTA who's like, yeah, there are some kids who are dicks who like Blair music. But no, they're like the kids like with their phones like close to the ears, like they fucking don't have headphones. And like, that's just the only time that they can listen to their music. And I don't know. I just was like, you know what? If the who I I'm fucking 31.

I don't care. And it has brought me a great deal of comfort to. Yeah, I the other day went to pick up a prescription and talk to the person at the desk. And you know what? I could fucking hear them better because there is that like weird music playing in the background. And like, I'm not quite hard of hearing, but I'm sure I will be eventually.

MerlinThere's just, there's so many places. Before we even get into restaurants, and they are, restaurants especially, I imagine it's everywhere now, but restaurants in San Francisco, I think, got excruciatingly loud earlier than a lot of other places. Because, you know, there's the hipster redone wood and that sort of industrial design that was popular in the 90s.

AlexOh, all the glass.

MerlinThe Chronicles started, when they do restaurant reviews, would start reporting how loud the ambient level of noise was in these restaurants. and it's basically like being at a baseball game and you're trying to like have an intimate dinner but i feel like it's like that everywhere because people are so i mean you're getting at something i didn't want to interrupt you super interrupt you but like people are scared of being bored i think one reason people don't gobble down all their favorite things is they're terrified that they won't have anything to do or listen to and their life will seem bleak if they don't have something to look forward to but and that's just like like i think men in particular there's a reason those

TVs blaring in airports all the time because men are scared of well, almost, probably a little less than death, but terrified of being alone. And I think there's that's why there's so much ambient fucking bullshit everywhere. It's like, can't you all just do something without forcing me to, I love getting to choose what I listen to, I think was what you're implying, but like oh my god, I can't believe like how often you have to be just assaulted. It's crazy.

AlexYeah, and that's kind of the whole surprising thing that I realized in this challenge was, I don't know. There are times where it's not, you know, the blaring, I'm not the blaring businessman at the airport, but I am afraid not of being alone. I, well, yeah, I'm terrified of being alone with my own thoughts, which I mentioned yesterday and people shared their own, like how many hours have you shared with, or saved with smart speed?

And someone had like 12,000 hours. And I am often afraid to be with my own thoughts, both like I'm sure some of it is with the whole neurodivergent stuff. But I think a lot of it is just also just the fear of, I don't know, like the existential fear of maybe finding that alligator in the bathtub. Because I'm I'll save it for the after show because I don't think you're just a guy in a room often.

And it's easy to. Right. I don't know. I've been listening to music and podcasts or rather. No, I have been listening to music more and podcasts less because. Me too. Tons more. And I always feel guilty saying that. But I'm like, no, our actual pals like won't like they might be a little bit sad. But, you know, like it's always a bummer to hear that someone's not like listening to your stuff, but it's not like, oh, no, fuck you.

MerlinI let me just let me just clarify this to everybody. I. Boy, this is it's on the one hand, it's going to sound like false modesty, but it's really just totally real arrogance is like, please never feel like you have to listen to anything I do or pay any attention to anything that I do, because it's critically important to me. really listen to this that the only people who pay attention to my shit get it and like if you don't get it this week i totally understand there's probably a very good chance that i don't get your shit this week too but like the idea of like pretty soon it's gonna be like facebook and

we're poking each other and saying each other fucking popcorn because you didn't listen to my tear down on the 14 inch bleep bloop and it's like give me a fucking break grow up like you know I do this for others, but I do it for me. I do it for me, and I do it for the people who I think like it. And I really hope they like it. And if you're out there making stuff and you don't like it, and you don't think other people like it, you need a different job. I need to like it first, and then I really hope you like it. So when Matt Howey likes it or if Tiff likes it,

that makes me extremely happy because I have regard for them. But let's just say for the sake of writing, maybe Tiff has to go talk about monsters for a half hour. I'm not going to be mad because you can't report back on a regular basis it's almost like you know I think in college it's called bed check when you're like high school boyfriend would show up out of nowhere bed check I had a friend who used to call it no guys do that it's gross I'm not going to do a bed check on you guys like it's okay I really want you to like it I try really hard to make something that I like and that hopefully you will like but like it's not

for everybody every day and like we need to get out of that mindset that I gauge my friendships and my feelings. I can gauge the level of affection of people I know by whether they pretend to pay attention to me. Holy shit. That's so goddamn bleak.

AlexOr not.

MerlinOr not. Maybe I'm being terrible. Maybe I'm being terrible, and I'm not accounting for a million things, and you have to be on Facebook for your work. I totally understand. But don't feel like you just need to stop by and say, lol. Don't worry. Lol siento, as my internet friend Brooke says.

AlexI think it was a typo, but it's so goddamn funny.

MerlinOh, gosh. Go ahead. Being alone.

AlexOh, no, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. Because when I don't want to be alone, it's not even a matter. Sure, I'm listening to a podcast, but I am also power puttering or procrastinating. You invented power puttering, Mike. See, look at me.

MerlinI invented smart speed.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinBecause people waste too much time listening to podcasts with normal voices. They should sound like, Christmas, Christmas time is here.

AlexIt's fun sometimes. Honestly, that Bacon Ray song, when it's at the reacts, it is a little bit of fun.

MerlinAnd then Bruce's drum part on that. I don't know if I can appreciate it. But appreciate his roles on the toms. It's so goddamn good. It could be an Adam and the Ant song. So good. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, I'm not slamming, like, the epidemic of human loneliness. I have a tremendous amount of human loneliness. I think we all do and we all address it in different ways. It's just that, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to say anything too strident because I think everybody should take care of themselves, how they need to take care of themselves.

But I mean, think about the pandemic and the whole like we talk more than ever about introverts.

AlexThe former pandemic that people are referring to in the past tense. It's definitely over.

MerlinBut like Roderick can be talking about like introverted versus extroverted. The way I came to think of it during the pandemic is one of the various ways that I think I'm really not just fortunate but lucky. I think there's a difference and privilege. But, you know, one of the ways I'm fortunate is I've got a platform. which is like first of all like I don't super love spending that much time in a room with other people not because I hate people but just because like I don't like going places I don't like wearing pants I don't like I don't like finding parking there's just all kinds of stuff and if that makes

me a bad person put it on the list like there's so many ways I'm a bad person but I do love the as you say parasocial relationships I have or the social relationships that I have with people I love texting with you in Syracusa. I just sent my kid something about, oh, a listener found where I can get Sims 4 for the Mac, and we're both really excited about that. I love all of that.

AlexOh, it's so hard to find. Sorry.

MerlinBut it's just that, what am I trying to say? I did not suffer in hardly any way during the pandemic. And certainly, for whatever it was, it's mainly just my own grief about my kid's life that got so fucked up. that's weighs heavily on me like to this day um but i think when the pandemic happened a lot of people lost their platform so like where you could like take some little tokes and vape hits off of facebook or instagram and people liking pictures of your feet or whatever the fuck i think there

are i don't understand this but i acknowledge it there are people who feel very alive a form of extroversion where people feel very alive being incredibly fucking loud at a large table in a restaurant or a bar and i think that is a platform in very much i have an outlet for the stuff that i consider fun and creative about me it's just that i get to do that in an office with nobody else here i get to like have some kind of a relationship or parasocial whatever like i get to have that relationship with people and get to have a good feeling sometimes about myself

without having to be in a loud bar with pants on. And so I'm entirely aware how I personally dodged. Imagine if it was the opposite. Imagine if there was some condition. I don't even want to think about it. Some condition where I had to go. You know what my nightmare is? My nightmare in some ways is what John Roderick did when he was running for office. The idea of like he spends his entire day in a suit going places where people are folding their arms and talking about how he probably won't do a very good job.

like over and over and over. Like, that's my nightmare. Like, I would never, I was like, the first time that happened, I would just be like, well, that's your opinion. That's just like your opinion, man. And I bounce, right? But like for the people who love the platform and maybe they love the human touch. I told you about my wife's employee who said I haven't touched another person in five months. That's brutal. Person lived alone and we all had to stay inside. He couldn't go to Comic-Con. He couldn't go to Disney. He couldn't do all the stuff that he loves. he couldn't just be a fun gay guy in San Francisco.

I haven't touched another person in five months. So, boy, lucky, fortunate, privileged, just pound sign blessed. But I think without the platform, it really hurt a lot of people. And I think it's valuable if it's not obvious. I think it's valuable to hear, think about what your platform is. Like, it's obvious for me. My platform in some ways is like doing poop jokes on podcasts. And for other people, that might be buying a round of shots for everybody or like just getting to be pretty in front of other people. That's not a slight dumb thing. Going somewhere where you feel loved and the place that you feel loved is just not accessible to you, that's brutal.

And, I mean, in some ways, as fucked up as you and I are, we are fortunate that, you know, pound for pound, we do have control and agency about stuff in a lot of ways. And, at least in my case, I am very happy to be just left alone to watch TV. I believe I will not get I will not get surpassingly lonely not having to go to meetings.

AlexYeah. I mean, we've talked about many times before, but I was mostly that similar to the sort of grief I felt during the pandemic was, you know, not being able to spend time with my newborn niece. But, well, now I have another newborn niece and the other one's cool.

MerlinAlso, like you're doing that also out of protection. You're doing protection for your family, for your niece, for everybody. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm scared to break the rules because I'm, you know, I'm an achiever. God, I don't know why I'm making so many big Lebowski references. I kind of have Philip Seymour Hoffman on the brain. But like even if you're a little Lebowski-er urban achiever and proud we are of all of them, I thought the way you did that. But that sucks. I mean, I know my mom would love to hang out with us, you know.

Sorry, go ahead.

AlexNo, but at the same time, like, yeah, I, you know, literally institutionalized after after the pandemic when things were, quote, after the pandemic normal.

MerlinBut after the after the part of the pandemic where people at least pretended to take it seriously in larger numbers.

AlexRight. Yeah. And it was I just the oh, yeah, this is not a muscle that I've exercised. But also I didn't need or want or like that exercise in the past where has folks, I mean, man, they were like rearing to go and either did like went too hard or too fast in terms of both like, you know, jumping up on the table of the bar or shopping or whatever. This is no, again, I hope that people know that this is a good faith state, like a good faith statement.

MerlinI do too. I don't want to sound like I'm just like taking shots at people. I am saying that is real in the same way that like I get frustrated with my family because they're one of my platforms too. And like in the sense of like sometimes I can amuse my family and, you know, because I'm a middle-aged man who's always indignant about not being appreciated, I'll sometimes think like, oh, you know, like you didn't hear my funny joke and it bums me out. Sort of like, you know, like, what's his name? Wayne in Letter Kenny with his Seminoles joke that they heard and understood but didn't think was funny.

Because on our platform, it feels like my platform got cocked a little bit.

AlexYou know what? That's the funniest thing you've ever said.

MerlinOh, thank you. You might be a piece of shit. What else do we have? So I have to, it's my daughter's birthday, and I think my landlord's coming by to hopefully fix our roof, and I have to get my flu shot and my booster shot.

AlexOh, you lucky bitch. Yes. I'm a lucky bitch.

MerlinEveryone says so. So let's start winding down this part. Any takeaways? Any leave-behinds?

AlexI love what you said about, well, not just like the adjusting your speed, but also sometimes it's just not the day or the week to listen to a podcast. And like you can extrapolate that in, ah, yeah, today is not the week that I want to go out and like, I am an, I'm not an extrovert, but I do miss going out and hearing, you know, my friends who are extroverts be the funny guy and have their platform. Cause that's, I enjoy, that's what, how they do. But I don't know. I think there should be a lot less guilt and shame around.

We should not feel indebted to people because we need to adjust our smart speed. They're profound.

MerlinYeah, which, and it would be very, very good, but it would just also be helpful if I understand that, I understand that we all derive meaning in part from our relationships with other people and the groups that we're a part of. And like, there's just a million ways that that's just how we are. We're ultimately kind of like, we're just pack animals with computers in a lot of ways. But, you know, I get that and I honor that. I mean, in the same way that I can understand my own completely selfish drives, believe me, I do everything I can to respect everybody else's selfish drives.

It's hard. It's difficult, though, to I don't know. It just sucks. It's embarrassing. As we keep talking about, I feel like a theme on this show could really just continue to be shame because shame makes everything worse. And, you know, it's it's difficult. Like, it's difficult for me to tell you about my landlord's car. It's difficult. In some ways, it's difficult for me to tell you about the alligator. I feel like an idiot about that. I don't like how I am, but whether or not I like that aspect of myself, and I mostly

do not, who knows what else that has an impact on. Certainly, there's parts. If I had not felt, bullied is very much a way too strong word, but if I had not felt, let's put it this way, if I had not felt like a childhood underdog, would I have ever become theoretically funny? if I always got everything the way I wanted I'd turn into James Spader. You know what I mean? How different would I be? Here's a thing that I prepared for back to work in May and for any variety of reasons I didn't use

mostly because it's stupid. I created this document because I went...

AlexIt's pseudo-stupid.

MerlinIt's called Lessons of Things I've Learned from Writing a Segway. And this is going to be one of those like Andy Rooney or your local columnist who your grandpa met at a Kiwanis dinner once. It takes a heap of living to make a house a whole. But here's the stuff I learned from a Segway. Number one that's directly germane to what you just said is that if you go too slow on a Segway, you'll fall off.

And the thing is, in some ways, I almost feel like it might be safer to fall off a Segway at a medium speed than at a slow speed. Because at a slow speed, let's say you're heading up to a curb and you're not sure if you can take the curb cut maybe the curb cut's a little higher than you'd like or every driveway cut in our neighborhood is completely different. I mean, some of them are like a cliff. Other ones are like something Evel Knievel could jump off of.

But if you take that too slow, you're going to fall down. And falling down fast sucks. But if you're falling down fast, I think your body is somehow a little better situated to go, whoop, got to deal with that. Whereas if you start falling down before you've realized it because you're going too slow, you hit the curb too hard, or you got too nervous. The one time my kid utterly ate it on a Segway was she started turning in a way because like it's very intuitive to ride the Segway that I have. It's incredibly intuitive until it's not, which is when you panic. If you panic, you're going to go ass over tea kettle and it's going to

suck. And then the godforsaken Segway just still keeps spinning and like it taunts you running over your leg as you've fallen down, insult to injury. But that's what we're talking about here with smart speed. Like you need to go, and I don't mean to be a fucking Taoist here, but like that, you need to go the right speed or, you know, a phrase, a word that's very important to me that I've been currently exploring the word proper. You need to go at the proper speed. Is that different from the right speed? Kind of. I mean, there's a way to do things properly and there's a way to do

things every other way. And this is why I'm such a pill about shit nobody else fucking cares about because I think a little bit like my friend John Syracuse, I've learned that there is a best practice for this thing. And if you don't do it that way, we're both going to feel terrible about it. So what's the proper speed? It depends. It depends where you're writing. It depends how fast you're going. It depends if you're drunk, whatever it is. But there is a proper speed versus every other speed. And you don't know what that speed is

until you start making some changes. Definitely, don't go too fast on that shit. Don't go downhill before you understand. There's that moment a little kid first rides a bike, and then they start thinking about how they're riding a bike, and they turn into fucking Wile E. Coyote and just fall down the side of the cliff. Got to go the right speed. Hardest part about a Segway, Alex? Stepping onto the Segway. No one believes me until they try it. No, that's true. It's so, the first time you step on a Segway, your body is trying so hard to help you because you're going to step on this thing that even if you're good at it,

It kind of rocks back and forth. It feels unsteady. And the tip that I have for someone is useless. Here's my tip for how to step onto a Segway. Ready? Act like it's a step. You don't have to throw your body around usually if you're on like a pretty stable step. You just step onto it because it's a step. It's even the same word. And you have to do that with a Segway because guess what? If you and the Segway are both trying to overcompensate for motion, see also, ass over tea kettle.

Hardest thing. Hardest thing is stepping on. Try not to squeeze the bar with your knees. It feels like it makes you more secure, but it doesn't. It fucks up your steering. You're gripping too hard. And when you grip that bar too hard and you think that's how you balance, that's how you fuck yourself up. You know?

And on a Segway, don't always go as fast as you can. because part of the fun of it, like it's nice to get someplace fast if that's the proper speed for the conditions and what you're doing. But again, we're back to what is proper. Well, you figure out what is proper. The proper speed is, hopefully I'm not going to run, I'm not going to get doored by a car or a vendor. I'm not going to hit a hot dog cart and make his cutlass fly in the air. What is the proper speed? Well, not too fast, not too slow. I don't know. This is just a bunch of like corny bullshit, but I think about it. When I'm riding around, I think about like,

it's a little bit zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance maybe doing this the proper way

Alexno it's it's hipster segue it's really fucking good it's really fucking good hipster segue

Merlinum and so that's what you got to do and then you know oh i didn't tell you like so then i have all these things i'm almost done but there's all these things that we're like i'm working at crossed purposes it's sort of like with my mom and her medications where like it's amazing that she's alive at all with the insane mix of medications. Like once you're on a blood thinner, everything gets complicated. And there's all these different things, you know, where there's these weird interactions. Well, how's this for an interaction? Which is that like, I won't say I

need, I'm going to say I benefit from drugs that include mild stimulants to help me with my ADHD. But it would surprise you to know that stimulants are not always the best thing for my anxiety. so like these beta blockers are pretty mild but like if i was back on klonopin or something or what's the other one everybody likes um oh was uh xanax xanax like xanax you gotta be really careful with that stuff in my experience it's not it's maybe not oxy but like you may find

yourself suddenly using that a lot more than you'd wanted to so like but if i take that i mean And it might make me go to sleep. Like, this is not a new medical problem. But I always have to weigh those things. Right? And that's where I get into, like, yeah, how's some iced tea? But not, God, I sound like fucking the guy from Berkeley that says you should buy a cow. You know, some stimulants, not too much, mostly vegetables, whatever.

AlexOh, well, no, he does drugs now.

MerlinIt's not Michael Chabon. It's the other one.

AlexMichael Pollan. Jesus.

MerlinWhose microdosing book actually sounds super interesting.

AlexYeah, I've read it. It's really good.

MerlinIt sounds amazing. I've enjoyed the interviews with him. But then what's the other part of that? The, I don't know, I just always feel like I'm kind of fighting myself on this stuff. There's also then, I think I've told you this before, but like, I am, another thing you need to know about me is that when I was a kid, it was a different time. You could buy over the counter medicine for a cold that today you would never give to a kid. I took Paragoric as a kid.

AlexYou can't get it as in your 30s without like two different forms of ideas.

MerlinBut for example, what was the one? Triaminosin was one. But there were these, you take cold pills.

AlexWait, wait, wait. What's that?

MerlinWell, okay. So all I'm trying to get at is between cough syrup and quote unquote cold medicine, you got contact with no T. Contact. You got, you know, triaminosin was one that I think was a decongestant and antihistamine and maybe like a cough suppressant, but it was a pill. You take two of these horse pills. And now today, you know, the medical advice you hear mostly is, oh, God, no, just rest, drink water. Don't take cold, quote-unquote, cold medicine.

But, you know, and I've had all different kinds of things like that. But when I was a kid, they gave out antibiotics like PEZ. Like they would just give you antibiotics. Like if you got a cold, they give you, in my case, V-Cylin-K, I think it was called, right? They give you penicillin. And you know what I did, Alex? You know, another one of the many ways I suck. Like almost everybody I knew, you take your antibiotics until you feel better and then you stop. Well, no, no. You have to understand. I was born the year that like, you know, Rubber Soul came out.

Like I've been around a while. But like I feel like I've done a similar thing with a lot of nominally centering or relaxing things. ask me if I have a meditation practice that I do every day no matter how I feel save the trouble I don't when do I meditate Alex when do I do breathing exercises when do I do any of those things only ever when I'm losing my fucking shit can you guess what I associate with meditation what I associate with breathing exercises I would say hyperventilation and anxiety

I absolutely. So yeah, exactly. I mean, you might as well be putting a bag over my head. I absolutely feel like I'm going to have like that a panic attack. That's too strong a word. But like I only associate those things with something that some people will only go to church on, you know, Christmas, Easter. And, you know, when something terrible happens, you know, anyway, that's part of it. So breathing exercise, do breathing exercises. Oh, great. Now my mind starts racing about all the times I've been terrible about meditation. That feels great.

I should get a new app. I should get an app with a gong or a singing bowl or something like that. Maybe I need a new computer. I should get a Macintosh Book Pro.

AlexMaybe.

Show notes

Transcript

261. Secret Walgreens

Show notes

Transcript

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