271. Backsolve to Normal

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, use a blood oximeter for biofeedback.

Oh, beep, beep, vroom, vroom. I wonder if that's going to get picked up on the mic. Oh, I love that. Good morning, Merlin man.

MerlinHi, Alex. How are you?

AlexI am just, check, check, one, two, one, two. Beep, beep, vroom, vroom. Yeah, there seemed to be some vehicles outside, and they went beep, beep, and then they went vroom, vroom. Vroom, vroom. Yeah.

MerlinHuh.

AlexYou don't say that to cars.

MerlinOh, I don't know. I talk to a lot of inanimate things. I guess technically a car is animate unless it's, I mean, if it's very still, if it's out of gas or electric.

AlexYeah, don't be gas normative.

MerlinIf you ask me about my velocity, I swear to God I won't end you. I know.

AlexThat's why I'm good. I'm being very good.

MerlinHow's your velocity? Is your velocity good?

AlexYou know what? That's an interesting question.

MerlinThank you.

AlexI don't want to, you know, hurt the integrity or the spirit of the show, but I feel like I want to, oh God, what is the challenge this week? Take our vitals? What is, well, I'm going to take my vitals.

MerlinYou, of course, you know, I'm such a fan of yours and I do love you. You once again completely mangled the challenge in what you wrote.

AlexI know. What's the challenge this week?

MerlinWell, I think the format should be something like food the bar with the baths, right? There should be – I think the format should be something close to, you know, like a verby thing.

AlexA noun and a verb.

MerlinYeah.

AlexWe are the noun that verbs.

MerlinYou're close. I mean, it's basically I want to achieve – this is in my own words. The challenge this week is to – wow, this is two minutes. Okay. Okay. The challenge this week is going to be to use a blood oximeter to simulate biofeedback, which I think you put in scare quotes.

My specific goal is for you to use your new fancy Massimo. I don't know how to pronounce slim letters. Use your Massimo Mario to see specifically if you can get good at lowering the number of breaths per minute. was at least my challenge and what I encourage. But why do you ask? It's very early in the show to be talking about the challenge, unless you're introducing a new thought technology,

which I'm totally open to.

AlexNo, I... I haven't mentioned I have ADHD.

MerlinI probably never mentioned that. Because it's germane to why I'm 37 minutes late today.

AlexOh, don't you apologize for being late?

MerlinI didn't even make a document. I'm not apologizing. Merlin 2020, whatever this is, is trying to apologize less but more fervently. And usually to some kind of a tune, like a song.

AlexOh, like you are commissioning?

MerlinWell, you could start out doing it to the tune. You could do Patsy Cline. You could say, I'm sorry. Or you could do like Grant Hart. And you could do, sorry, sorry somehow. But then eventually you'll move into other things. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry that I am always fucking up and I'm late for things and I have ADD and I forget sometimes an H and ADD.

You know what?

AlexI like this. It's like an indulgence. You're an indulgence man. Man the indulgence man.

MerlinI might get a second thing on Urban Dictionary. Man's indulgence. Is it a corollary to man's assumption?

AlexI don't know what I'm laughing at right now.

MerlinBecause man's assumption is funny. That's why I'm on the hit comedy website, Urban Dictionary. Assume everything in a hotel room has been in a German man's ass.

AlexWait, you're really? That's not a bit. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

MerlinDon't look. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't. Let's not.

AlexAll right. I'm definitely not doing it.

MerlinYou people need to learn. You people. And I really mean all the kinds of people you are. You people need to dial it down and you need to learn to just sit with not knowing something for a while. And that's why you shouldn't make coffee in an iron.

Because somebody's fucked that iron. Or more properly, you know, it's a switch. They call it a switch. The, um, the, um, I don't really exactly understand that term, except I think that means that sometimes in, uh, in, uh, you know, in a courtyard Marriott, sometimes iron fucks you.

AlexI did not know that you were singing the song of my people. And there's been a lot of discourse of a switch versus a verse. And I don't know what. Or a slash. I am.

Not that funny, but it's making my heart rate go up. So must.

MerlinOh, you wearing it right now?

AlexYeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Circling back. I figured that I would take.

MerlinPut the pin in the circle. Circle the pin. Oh, do I need to attach the yarn? Don't let me take you off this. I have ADHD, Alex. I'm not. And sometimes I either don't have enough.

Sorry, I'm getting worse at this. Not better. I'm sorry. Speak over.

AlexNo, no, wait, wait. I can turn, turn myself. I should turn myself. Oh, there. I sound better, too. I hope. Oh, hmm. Well, I also, as I discovered last year, along with a lot of people have a comorbidity, which I hate, you know, bipolar and ADHD now. So when I'm manic, I'm like special manic. I don't know. And I thought I will take my, I'll Mossimo myself before the challenge at the beginning of the show and then see how I am at the end of the show.

because I have these lovely beta blockers and I've taken all of my meds except the anti-anxiety ones. So I wonder if my heart rate is going to dip. So this is a very...

MerlinWow, we're really serving up a lot of science today, aren't we?

AlexI know, this is a super... I mean...

MerlinVery wholesome. Hi, welcome to 2xFri.

AlexAt least one.

MerlinWhere we experiment on ourselves in ways that are obviously interesting, perhaps,

Alexflawed, definitely dangerous. Yes. You forget that for a week I drank Alex Jones's bone broth.

MerlinJust that sounds really roll back and hear that again in your head. I for a week drank

AlexAlex Jones's bone broth. Alex's Jones's bone broth. The bone broth he sells. I'm sorry, Alex,

MerlinLet me be clear. It sounds like you're talking about Texas jizz. Do you not remember this? You've got to check this out. I'm going to send you a quart in my bone broth.

Speaker AThis is okay.

MerlinI'm cracking my hogs. I'm cracking this. You've got to quit those beta blockers. The only way you're going to block your beta is to drink my jizz. Bone broth. Bone broth.

AlexIt was a challenge. But as you said.

MerlinWas that the one that was real powdery? Was that the powdery one? Yes, it was the powder. Oh, that was so bad. It was so nasty.

AlexOh, it tasted like terrible chocolate milk. But then I believe I also mangled that challenge because the challenge was just to drink it on air. But I was drinking it. That was my meal, my breakfast every day for a week.

MerlinYou know, this shows had evolution to it and growth and evolution, as John Siracusa would say. Lots changed. And I think, Claire, I like to think, at least for myself, all the advice begins with me. So, for example, I would say if the challenge was read a book. and I never read a book. I'm not going to read a whole fucking book. What am I, 19?

I'm 31. But that's why I added that codicil of, you know, get the Kindle sample and that's how much to read the first chapter or as much as you feel like. Don't watch all of this Buffy TV show. Watch, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I got advice from Matchy and I'm going to do it. It's going to end so. I got to slide it. It's going to be difficult because it sounds like He wants me to slide into the last episode of season one and then proceed from there. So I have to look past all the thumbnails.

I wish there was a turn off thumbnails in description mode.

AlexOh, that's actually a really great idea.

MerlinWell, and it's the one way in which HBO Max beats all of the other things, which HBO Max on every single detail page for every program has the big sideways triangle to play. and then it's got the floopsie-doopsie go-backy spin counterclockwise arrow, which means start just from the beginning without showing any of it. As opposed to the 7,800 movies I've bought on Apple TV where it'll just start wherever I stopped watching it, which as you know drives me crazy. The problem with ADHD,

here's the thing, also I've been sleeping on the couch. I made myself, I've always been fairly into it. I wanted to give her some non-snoring nights. So I have not been sleeping that great because I have chosen to sleep on the couch because I can't drive my wife crazy all the time. Until I can get fixed for my snoring, I've got to stop

Alexkeeping her awake. I'm going to do like a little snip? I'm going to tie your nose tubes? Sorry, sorry.

MerlinOh, you're talking about tubal ligation?

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinUh-huh.

AlexI spoke over you. I'm sorry.

MerlinADHD. Because you

Alexhave the H, too, right? I feel special because I have the H. I got no H. Oh, okay. I'm comorbid and H-E. All right, so you have ADD.

MerlinTell me again what you've had today, Alex.

AlexI can list my – I've had 300 milligrams of Lamykdal. No more Prozac because of that whole serotonin thing.

MerlinI feel a little bit like I'm trying to chase like six field mice that are like in different fields. it's a lot to keep up with

Alex15 or 20 adatoxamoxetine which is the not fun ADHD medicine like it's not really a stimulant but you know it is a stimulant claritin D

Merlinoh I had two claritin D's and a big Vyvanse dude I get this is not quite as bad as my Xfinity thing but it's almost as bad

Alexno it's not

Merlinoh this is shameful I get it. I now officially I'll tell you on Maine that I was tiring of worrying that the federales were going to appear at my door for sinus issues. And there are days where I says to myself, I says, hey, I kind of wish I had two Claritins today instead of one. But then that would blow out. You know, you got to you got to meter it out over the month because, you know, because of meth.

AlexRight. Yes. Yes.

MerlinAnd then I said to my pharmacist, too, it's a wonderful local pharmacy and they're really nice. I'm all out. I'm done with Walgreens. I mean, I still go to Walgreens every day. Congratulations. For my sins.

AlexIt's okay. It's okay.

MerlinBut my pharmacist said, hey, just so you know, I said, you know, what's the deal on this? Like specifically, and he told me, yeah, the law that they passed about this, one of their pyrrhic attempts to end the creation of, you know, bathtub meth or whatever. I think 2001, 2000. This is the dragnet that grabbed up ephedrine and ruined my life so many years ago. But he said, yeah, basically you get this many grams a month if you buy it this way, this many grams if you buy it that way. But, like, it's pretty unlikely these days that somebody's going to, like, show up at your door. But I'd rather not run that risk of, like, somebody who needs to make their quota at the end of the month, like a used car agent, comes out and, you know, slaps me in cuffs.

But he said, you know, you could talk to your doctor. And he knows the name of my doctor. And he used it. And he said you could talk to him and ask you to get a prescription. And then not only that, but, like, you'll at least get a discount, even if it's not totally covered. I get two full boxes of Claritin D per month. 12-hour, 30-day supplies. I get two of those per month every month now. So I could put them in a brandy snifter and just leave it out on the table.

Like, you know, maybe that's the new. Oh, you know what? I'm going to call this, you know, like used to be old people always have like Starlight mints and other sticky, disgusting worthers and shit like that that's been sitting there forever. I'm going to be the new old. The new old.

Speaker AThe new old.

MerlinThe new old. My generation. One of my Gen X. I think I'm Gen X. You. Yeah. You just have a like a big, big bowl of Clarendy for when you want to throw the D.

AlexI, you know, that is my favorite kind of D. I really think that you should do this. I mean, it's like it's like being on a college campus. If you're going to be around Merlin Mann, I think you should have a little bit of a stimulant in you. And then, you know, the sinuses are clear. Everybody wins.

MerlinOh, you can and you can match my energy. Is that what you're thinking?

AlexYeah. Get on the same velocity, viscosity.

MerlinThis is a known issue, though, that I'm thinking about this morning. So I was on the couch and then I went to bed at like one. And, of course, last night was a rec diff recording, which means I won't get to sleep for a while because my dreams are haunted by the Wicked Witch of the Massachusetts. And I know actually had a really good episode. But, you know, it's historically not a great night of sleep for me. But so I went to bed at one. I woke up to McJaray at like four and I did go to bed, just hung out and talked to my wife for a while, got up.

Anyway, I was my velocity was a little uneven. But then I did sleep for two more hours until she needed to start having meetings. And I can't listen to people talk about medical or educational jargon. So I had to leave the room. And but so I'm kind of fucked up. Then I sat on the couch and I watched John King on CNN and fell asleep again, wrapped in two towels. And so that kind of screwed me up a little bit. And my Vyvanse hadn't really hit me yet. But then here's the thing, though. This is one of the things. And this is why I miss Adderall.

And I think I'll never there'll never be a time in my life where I don't want Adderall. I mean, obviously, I don't think I maybe I'm addicted to it in a George W. Bush sense of like I used to be in. So now I'm a dry drunk, but I miss it. And one of those is that if you ever driven, of course, you've driven a stick shift.

Speaker ALike when you drive a car with. Well, OK.

MerlinThe point being that like it's sometimes when you slip really easy into like third gear or even second gear, you're like, ah, that was a nice shift. and and when you take Adderall you're like holy shit I can beat the world today I feel confident I feel uh as Steve Bannon would say you know I got my hands on my uh on my weapons and uh but the funny thing is though there's also this kind of a liminal time between like feeling like it's totally catching on to like where I'm evening out where I'm like I need to do lots of little things

right now like i feel this and this is i'm i'm being honest here in the sense of like sometimes when uh i won't say i don't know if it's working not well or too well or something but you know it is when you have stimulants and then sometimes like an adhd person like me an add person will go oh i suddenly was seized with a need to clean my desk as in take everything off my desk get all the dust off, get out the rubbing alcohol, clean the surfaces. It became very important to me.

And unfortunately, I had undertaken that when I was already like 10 minutes late with you.

AlexBut don't you feel better now?

MerlinWell, the problem is, how do you describe this? It's not mania, I don't think, in even like a colloquial sense. But I do have a sense of like, oh, God, I know there's a bunch of stuff that I'm suddenly, like you suddenly like remember a bunch of stuff you've got to do or want to do. And then you're in this, like I get into this, I hope you can get my back a little on this madness, this specific kind of madness. But it's like, if I were a totally everything typical person, I would just go, oh, let's see here.

I forgot to, I forgot. I did not yet create the doc this week, which is usually, is by default my job. And then I send you, and I say doc with an exclamation point. And then we have a doc to look at together. I did not do that this week that I can remember. I need to fix two of the scenes at my office because a thing happens where like I'm finally becoming less reluctant about recustomizing. Things seem to have settled enough.

AlexSo wait, home kit scenes. I know you don't care about our pair of pals, but I do a little. You're talking about a smart light situation, yes?

MerlinYes.

AlexAlso, I was genuinely a little bit confused. All right, thank you.

MerlinYou thought I was talking about stealing movies or like handkerchief culture?

AlexWell, no, I did not think that you were doing a hanky or a cuff. I was like, wait, is this a smart home thing or is this a reimagining of your office setup thing?

MerlinWell, in another age, I've described these things as mosquito tasks where I keep, for a long time, I keep a running list. Things have evolved, as John Siracusa says. But time was I would have a list of mosquito tasks, which is all stuff that absolutely does not need to be done right now. But to keep things running and to keep my demon dogs at bay, this is a small thing that I would like to get to at some point, which used to be one of my many uses of Thursday title. One of my many uses of Thursday was that that was a mosquito task day for me.

So like maybe this doesn't drive you crazy, but like I start getting nervous when I start getting certain kinds of messages in HomeKit and it bugs me more than it should. I start like start getting like the unavailable or everything's taking longer than I would like. Right. Or one of my three basic HomeKit scenes at the office. I'll hit it. Nothing happens for many seconds. And then it says that it did it partially. Now, for the main three scenes of my office, I also have key commands for those that I have utilized through home control.

AlexOh, nice. Oh.

MerlinYeah. And so I have some cords that do stuff like turn the fans off, turn the fans on, set this, that, or the other main lighting scene. And for some reason this morning, I want to have other shit to do, including talking to you, the dock I didn't make, all of those things, waiting for the, you know, for the Vyvanse to really do its business. And I was in that, let's say like a liminal state where I'm like, these little things done, got to get the things done. And then I get the scene partially failed or whatever it says. It says like, you know, I mean, you get the red, red letters and it says.

AlexYeah. Or like something did not respond. It depends which app.

MerlinUsually that means that's because I've been monkeying with my my multilite set up here. And I probably, for example, I know the iDevice's socket is not currently attached, which I highly recommend it to Sydney, by the way. Good device. And did they have a nice call with Sydney? I didn't tell you that, did I?

AlexThey mentioned it to me. And I was like, don't worry. I was.

MerlinI like Sydney.

AlexI did not have a panic attack the first time I talked to you. But I. What the hell are you talking about? Definitely had flop sweat.

MerlinIt was a call about nanoleafs. It was a very well-prescribed call about nanoleafs.

AlexI know. I mean, they didn't follow up with how it went, but I believe the first time we talked to it-

MerlinSaying yes would have been fine. Yes would have been fine. And that shouldn't bug me, but again now, I've got all these things here and I wrote down some things. I've got to get a slanty USB-C to put into here. I want to and then that reminds me also that I still haven't done my list of of my repeating tasks that I'm working on. I update that in drafts and like each one of those pointless. It's like you know what it is. What's it like? What did we talk about last week? It's like fighting five year olds.

It's just that they're five year olds of my own design.

AlexOh, gosh, I don't want to get on a tangent about this week's.

MerlinWhat do you imagine we're doing here? No, I don't. We're not the Supreme Court, Alex.

AlexOh, I dropped my pen. Everything. Oh, God. See, Matt is actually sleeping on the floor outside. He's not feeling well. Is it cold? Yes.

MerlinLiterally outside the building?

AlexNo, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

MerlinHave you authorized that with Dougie?

AlexOh, God. One of our neighbors, I believe, got in trouble for actually putting folding chairs on the lawn. But anyway. Oh, my God. I know.

MerlinOh, my God. You know what? I treasure my pathologies. There are many like it, but these are mine. I'm so glad I'm not Dougie. Oh, my God.

AlexYeah. Landlords, they contain multitudes. Most are bad.

MerlinI feel pretty good now, but I got a lot of things I'm trying to nail down here. And they are five-year-olds of my own design. And also, just to clarify, I'm not having a bad day. I'm doing swell and I think my velocity is fine. But you know, another thing, I just set it to the warm setting and five of the nano leaf shapes hexagons are the wrong color. And I have to live with that for now.

AlexI really don't like that.

MerlinWell, there's the problem. I was in, I came into the office and I had it set to bright. Oh, I also really need to fix my Eve button. Eve, my Eve button is broken and it's doing the wrong things. So I'm going to take a photo of what I have to live with for right now. I'll send that to you. But yeah, I should probably get all kinds of help. My wife has told me we have good insurance, so I should probably utilize it.

I'm sorry. I interrupted you on what you, I think, the third time this episode said you didn't want to do. What is it you don't want to do? No. Derail? Talk about drugs? You love talking about drugs.

AlexI do. I do. I adore talking about drugs. Have you listened to the podcast cover story? it's oh i don't know if you'd like no i i think maybe just the sarah marshall thing you sent me no no that's just a nice interview with sarah marshall on uh long form which is the i don't know the writery interview podcast but the um the podcast it's always sunny i think that's what it's called the unofficial podcast it's always sunny if you've listened to it it it involves a sort of uh

a similar like fighting situation, like, but a literal fighting situation. Oh, oh,

Merlinthe latest episode?

AlexThis latest episode.

MerlinNo, it's all there in the title. Rob almost gets in a fight, fight with a guy outside the hamburger store.

AlexYep. And it is probably.

MerlinIf you wanted chips, you should have gotten him when we were at the hamburger store. And did you hear when they, yeah, you, you heard when they first, when they first did that, there was the welfare store. And, and like, Rob thought that was so funny. Like he's basically lifted that from Charlie now. And then in the cartoon, in the cartoon, the one where they robbed the convenience store and the rats in the yard and they go to the wedding store. And it's the,

Alexand then up play. Oh God.

MerlinAnd the kids, the boys are all going off to be janitors and the girls are all going off to be waitresses. Oh my God. I love that episode so much.

AlexWelcome to Dubai Friday. We really like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And I really like the podcast because the most recent episode, I think will be my favorite podcast episode of the year. It's just.

MerlinIt's so funny. And it's funny timing because we've mentioned, I'm a little sorry that we're going on about this if it's not interesting at all. But we mentioned Alex had pointed me to, Alex was ahead of me a couple episodes, so I had not heard the saga of parking in the garage. And of course that continues. But I think I'd said here, and I know I said on the internet, that this has become, yes, we talked about that here. One of my favorite comedy TV shows has now accidentally become one of my favorite comedy podcasts when it could have been just another phoned in like silly promotional podcast.

And I think it really tipped possibly this week where this is the first week I know of where they were like, oh, yeah, I just realized we didn't even talk about the episode at all. Which is exactly the way a podcast should evolve. You should start as a challenge podcast and then make the challenge something like that's just there to save you if you run out of pills to talk about.

AlexWell, I mean, if you have a Top Chef podcast and then you ask someone to hop on the mic, it was like, oh, this is funny.

MerlinThe first rule of Top Chef Podcast Club is that you should be able to remember anything that happened on the episode you literally just watched. And sometimes you need producer Alex to come in and remind you of what happened.

AlexI mean, when people ask how I got into podcasting, I'm like, honestly, I think my life would be vastly different if the like if Top Chef had had a good season. No, it was the worst season of Top Chef I've ever seen. Yeah.

MerlinIt's so thanks for sucking. Also, also, I won't mention any other names. I will just implicate us. I mentioned this in a super secret private text channel but I was worried that I was the only person that really didn't like this episode this season of Survivor because a lot of people didn't Brian Hamilton really like it? a lot of people really liked it

AlexI really didn't

MerlinBrad should have been there to the end obviously that's a shame when your person goes out in the first two three weeks

Speaker Aof such a short season.

MerlinAnd you get the conniving lady or the lady on the island who always seemed confused, and I think she actually won. I don't know. I couldn't watch the rest of the finale. It was just...

AlexHad you heard it was

Merlingood or heard it was bad? I heard it was... Okay, it's not just us then.

AlexNo, but I went deep on Survivor Reddit because I had a lot of questions. I'm going to put car fighting down. At some point, we've got to talk about a car fight. Car fight. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're talking about

Merlinat the In-N-Out Burger? Yeah.

AlexIt was one of my favorite things anywhere.

MerlinJust playing car pranks. Every time Danny McBride says car pranks, it makes me laugh. Oh, there's one of those guys I do car pranks with. You're watching Rachel's Gemstones, right?

AlexWait. Is this a Flophouse bit or a Blink Check bit?

MerlinWas Jackie Chan in it? What? Wait. what are we talking oh nothing i'm just i'm dancing bits around your bits um did um did uh that uh i got more homework for you then so first of all you gotta watch dairy girls but you also

Alexhave to watch righteous gemstones wow do i do i don't remember that from righteous gemstones oh

Merlinmaybe i'm on too many pills oh uh the the car that would do you remember when they see the van and he and amber are driving no no no but like it's a phrase he keeps using over and over who

Speaker Ais that one of those guys I do car pranks with.

MerlinAnd then you see some and like, oh, yeah, there's some car pranks. You know, it'd be a good car prank is like you put some Chinese food in their glove box. Oh, my God, that show.

AlexI'm very excited.

MerlinI love Uncle Baby Billy too much.

AlexHey, welcome to Dubai Friday. Everyone should watch Rachel's Gemstones streaming on HBO Max.

MerlinAre you disappointed in yourself or something? Why do you do that?

AlexI, no, I, you know what?

MerlinCan't you just be happy to be a fan?

AlexI am going to take your advice and not know why I keep saying that for a little bit and be okay with that. Oh, you're just going to sit with it? I love that.

Speaker AI'm just going to sit. I love that.

MerlinHi, Alex. Happy Wednesday. It's January. And, you know, everything's coming up Milhouse. Mm-hmm. We have a lot of open threads, I feel like. Should we do a mid-flight and see where we are?

AlexI mean, this is what happens when we don't have a doc. We don't have a doc.

MerlinYou know, I got a date stamp, a literal rubber date stamp, and it's kind of changed everything.

Speaker AOw! I just got the same paper cut in the same place twice.

AlexOh, that's a... Oh.

MerlinIt's my... It's my... It's this mead planner. I think they make narrow paper. We've got car pranks. We've got car fight.

AlexAm I an empath? I just felt... Oh, God. Ow. Oh, Jesus.

MerlinI never know how to count knuckles. On my left hand, forefinger.

AlexOh, no, no. Ugh.

MerlinNo, no, it's just little. It's not bleeding or anything. Car pranks, car fights, beta blockers. Oh, you want to talk about your Massimo, you had something off the top with Massimo. This is the mid-flight. What else were we talking about?

Speaker AOh, ADD slash ADHD.

MerlinA-D-D. And then other podcasts that you want me to listen to, you assign me podcasts. I generally assign you TV shows, I feel like.

AlexOh, stop it. Stop it. I have focus mode on. I apologize. I was talking to my computer.

MerlinOh, I'm about to throw everything out the window, Alex. I finally deleted everything except my class at Do Not Disturb and Sleep. because work then like i turned off work because when work turns on like when i very first configured it i let people through which means while i'm recording with john syracusa my watch goes off when he texts me in the middle of the podcast and it's like i don't understand how okay you know i'm writing that down i'm writing down of focus mode i it's like all right i feel like

Alexthis should be designed for the adds and adhds but it's a really good idea and it's got so many

Merlingreat features. I haven't even gotten to doing anything substantive. And I think actually, again, once again, to mention it in front of the show, Brian Hamilton mentioned that he is, is he not a user of pages for focus mode?

AlexPages? Oh, like

Merlinhome screens and you're like,

Alexyeah. I want to get into that,

Merlinbut first I want it, what I want is for it to turn everything all the way off when it notices I have a quote-unquote meeting, which it kind of does now, but I guess that's work mode, so I should lean into work mode, but How in the mother-scratching F does it decide when to turn? Do you have any sense of why and when it turns on personal?

AlexI have mine set to go into Dubai Friday mode at 11 a.m.

MerlinDo you have personal set to turn? There's a bit. I don't know what it's called. I'm not going to look it up. But one of the defaults is personal. There's driving. But personal, you can have it set to like, hey, do you want us to kind of guess when you might want this on. And I had that on for a while. Not only has that been really weird for me, but my wife is like, why am I not getting any notifications or calls? And I'm like, that's because your phone's trying to help you.

AlexYeah, I turned that off. I deleted those, I think, immediately.

MerlinDo you have a sense of what causes it to think it should turn on?

AlexI think it is reading your calendar.

MerlinIt's probably documented.

AlexI don't know. I'm pretty sure that it's reading your calendar, whatever is synced with your iCloud.

MerlinThat works for work, for work. So now I now have sleep on because if you want to get, is it 02, I think? One of the readings will only work on Apple Watch if you're in sleep mode. So I now have sleep mode set to turn on at like 1030 or something and turn off at like 830 or whatever. But I think the work one turns on when it notices meeting stuff. Apple, focus, personal. Why?

Alexwhy do bad thing? What is the Syracuse type things like a human? That assumes that everybody types like or asks things like a human. And that's what the beauty of Google. When you do a plus and when you do the dumb computery things, it might take you to Reddit, but you find what you need.

MerlinWell, you know, I learned this from Syracuse. stop being smart because Google will actually find the thing you're looking for if you type it like you're simple. Sometimes. No, no. But because the problem is I was I came up with Google in the age of like Google hacks and advanced operators and Booleans. And to this day, I still use, you know, the primary part of my query is at the beginning. And then I'm real good and everything has an implied and, and then I use ors at the end.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinIf you do capital ors, it'll find any that match stuff after that primary thing. So you could say United States, you could say capital city, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, or whatever. That's a bad example, but you know what I'm saying, right?

AlexYes. I didn't know that you could do an or.

MerlinIt used to be, it was, you know, and the advanced operator stuff is still great. It's not as great as it used to be, but the date stuff is terrific. I frequently, probably half of the searches I do, I want to say, I then end up going to search tools and clicking on just in the last year. Especially if I'm looking for a Mac thing. Well, I don't want advice about sonar, radar, LIDAR, whatever those are. I don't want advice about that from six years ago. because if there's like an SABNZBD bug from back then,

that's not going to be as useful as knowing something that's come up in the last year. And if it's something that's Monterey specific, Monterey, Monterey, Monterey.

AlexMonterey.

MerlinWhat were we talking about?

AlexMonterey. Is that the – I keep calling this OS Big Montee. So, okay, it's Monterey.

MerlinI don't know why you would do that, Alex. That's not a thing.

AlexI don't know. Or full Montee. I don't know.

MerlinWell, you get funny things that you say and you get attached to them. And I've learned to adapt to that. I think I probably do the same thing. But, yeah, you do. But also that does leak into, like, when you say what the challenge is. And your punctuation is really uneven.

AlexI know. I know. I need a style guide. I updated my version of Mark. I'll put it in the doc. That's been in the doc. You know, in fact, I have a style guide draft in Obsidian, and I'm going to change. God, I love the stupid app so much. I know everyone's horny for it. There's a reason.

MerlinWhat are you talking about? What about Obsidian? I should come back to it. It's still on my home screen. I should come back to it.

AlexIt's just nice.

MerlinWhat was the funny search I did? I had a funny search yesterday. Oh, I watched Death of Stalin last night again. That's a really good movie. That's a really dark movie. death of yeah anyway um car pranks car fights beta blocking mossimo mostly i wanted to ask you

Alexif you'd ever gotten in into a fist fight at any or like any physical fight no no i don't think so

Merlini i don't think i don't i mean i i don't know i don't think i've ever even really been beat up really i've been bullied i should be surprised i've gotten no no i well it's surprising to me you were thrown in a dumpster what i was probably closer to a bully than being bullied uh just in terms of like no no just in terms of mind things i would use my mind my psionics my mind powers on people you know that's why comedians are so happy oh yep all of them

but i don't think i have and i'm actually uh very scared of violence mostly as am i which is why on

Alexthe it's always funny podcast that we enjoy to hear three men talk so casually about getting beaten up and getting into fights and they acknowledged this yes wait what what they get

Merlininto fights while they're playing basketball with their friends yeah my god i mean i mean how many and i like i almost had a little bit of a grain of salt moment where i was like i i can't tell if this is a bit but like dude is this like uh so wait now rob did grow up in philadelphia right

AlexYes.

MerlinRob Philadelphia. Oh, wait, I know this. Charlie, same town as my wife, one town over, Providence. And Glenn is from Montgomery, Alabama?

AlexI just know it's south of the blue state border. I don't know.

MerlinBut it just sounds like Rob was just always getting into fights with people. It sounds like they've all been in a fair amount of fights.

AlexYeah. Yeah.

MerlinI don't know, man.

AlexI'm like, wow. And then they bring on their producer.

MerlinI come from a long line of pussies. Like we don't, we don't seek that sort of thing out. It's so funny when Glenn said the thing about, Glenn said, well, the joke here in a second is going to be that I thought this thought before Glenn said this saying. It was, he's like, you know, and you get in a fight. And I was thinking, yeah, you can get your eye, your eye knocked out and you can lose your sight. And he goes, yeah. And you could like get hit in the eye and lose your sight. And I'm like, yeah, right. Like, I don't want that. I hurt my back taking out recycling right before Christmas. I went to lift a broken down Amazon box and my back was screwed up for like three weeks.

AlexI mean, you're a very nimble person. So I don't.

MerlinOh, thank you.

AlexYou are very nimble.

MerlinI have pretty good coordination and reflexes.

AlexYeah. You are gifted to that. I don't finish books. Ha ha. Well, there you go. Oh, Alex can read fast. What a talent. No, it's so useless. No, it's good. I love books. I love books.

I love books.

MerlinI love my books. Sorry, that was me being, I like talking about how much I like books, Guy.

AlexI have been asked at parties many times, so what are you reading now? And of course, that's the one time that you're never reading a book. I'm like, oh, God, fuck you. Fuck you, dumb bitch. Fuck you. Oh, you stupid cunt.

MerlinShouldn't you just say Karl Ove Nosgaard? And then that's a clue of the other person that you're both about to lie about something. And anybody, you're all going to be either in on the lie or confused by the lie, which is the best kind of lie.

AlexOh, that's, no, no, I don't know about that. I don't know, because then, I mean, you come to play in the space, and then the space disappears.

MerlinWell, it's like Elena Ferrante said in one of her books, I assume. No, I should be a better reader. Do you want to start the show?

AlexI just always say elements of style.

MerlinElements of style. Why do you say that?

AlexBecause I don't, I feel like it's a stupid, not a, hmm. If you were to ask a complete stranger, like, I don't know, in college, and it was asked, like, oh, how are you doing today? It's like, oh, so what to read in today?

MerlinOh, it's in terms of like what, oh, I see. Like an icebreaker. I think people are hard on Elements of Style, but it is a good book and it wouldn't hurt us to read it more.

AlexWell, that's, yeah, exactly. I read it, I do read it often. I don't take the advice, then it just goes out of my head.

MerlinIt's very inspirational to me. I mean, I can sense sometimes when I'm writing something in my little project and there's times where I go, oh, man, I'm definitely stealing this. if not this, this tone, I am lifting this tone from John Hodgman, or I am lifting this tone from Oscar Wilde, or in some cases, I am lifting this tone from E.B. White or William Strunk. I'm not sure which. But when I say, you know, like I'll never forget. Well, I probably will. I probably have forgotten and don't know that I forgot. But one of the classics in the usage section, nauseous versus nauseated.

I'll never forget that distinction. Do not say you're nauseous unless you're certain you have that effect upon others. That's a great way to remember nauseous versus nauseated. Nauseous means you cause people to want to throw up.

AlexI mean, both applies to me often.

MerlinI'd like to, well, oh, that's a, you know what? They need a new word for you.

AlexExactly. By nauseal.

MerlinLike nauseola or something. Nauseal. I, but because of my restraint, there's a lot of things that never make it in the doc because I, you know, what to leave in and what to leave out. I take out a lot of stuff that I think is, you know, sometimes just too snarky. So like there's a whole bunch of like usage things I just leave out unless I feel like I could do it in a funny way. But so like busy versus time constraint, that's worth being a pill about like telling people that they're using hopefully and presently long is a fool's wrong is a fool's errand. Hopefully does not mean what you think it means.

And for the love of God, presently does not mean what you think it means.

Speaker APresently means soon.

MerlinIf you mean now, say now. Don't say at this current time. You got that from Richard Nixon. and didn't even realize it. Don't say at the current time. You could say now. And don't say presently because using an adverb that's a longer word doesn't make you sound smarter. It just makes you sound like you're getting paid by the syllable. That's no good.

AlexWell, I was going to say, exactly, unless you are a student writing a stupid paper that's pointless.

MerlinOh, and they demanded you do it in times 10 or times 12 and you're screwed. You can't do Palatino.

AlexDouble space times New Roman. Chicago, sometimes Chicago style, sometimes AP style, we had to meet a literal word count. Chicago style is where it's real

Merlinthick and doesn't taste good. Is that the one that's like a pie? I don't

AlexI'll never forget feeding, well not me, but I will never forget watching Federico Vittici try various forms of American pizza and trying to be a good sport about it. just don't give an italian pizza don't give a new yorker pizza don't don't ever i mean i don't i don't like chicago deep dish pizza i would just say avoid friendships with people who have strong

Merlinfeelings about regional foods it'll never be good for you there's never a day where you're like oh my god i'm so glad i'm going on vacation with the guy who has a strong feeling about philly cheesesteak

Alexoh boy i mean that's why i'm not friends with chefs they really want me to eat different food and I'm like, I will for $50.

MerlinMake sure you get some of the sauce. Get some of the sauce.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinDid you understand that that was sauce? Make sure you get some of the sauce.

AlexOh, God. Yes, when someone dunks something and then hands it to you. Oh, God.

MerlinI just don't like having food explained to me. There's a lot of things I don't like having explained to me. Is this your first time dining with us? Hopefully, presently, there are other ones. But, you know, you don't want to be a jerk about that. I feel like there's been too much backlash against – I'm going to start creating backlash to the backlash for Strunk and White.

AlexOkay. All right.

MerlinWell, I just feel like it's something everybody could learn from. And so – oh, yeah, let me go back to the document here. Car pranks. ADD. You know, I think we can start the show. You ready?

AlexYeah. Welcome to Dubai Friday. Merlin, we start with the structure of the show each week. And I would like to ask you about your wisdom document because you mentioned you would passing just in passing. If, you know, if it ever makes it to the show, mention that you don't put certain things into your wisdom document, even though you want to. And I am now I'm I'm not literally dying. I might be. Well, I am literally dying.

We're all literally dying. I'm literally dying. And as I'm literally dying, I would like to know what you haven't put in there. I mean, you did list some of them off, but like, what's something that, oh, do you have? Oh, God, I'm so curious. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm ADing my HD. And I don't know. I think about, I read and think about your wisdom document a lot.

MerlinAre you trying to ask me if I have a standard for what goes in?

AlexI know that you have a standard, but do you have a, or at least I feel as if you have a standard. I've told you this. I feel like when I read it, you can just, or when you change something, you just.

MerlinOh, yeah. That was nice of you to say that.

AlexFuck you. Oh, my God. When I texted you, fuck you, I had not yet heard the part of the It's Always Sunny podcast where Rob just said, fuck you.

MerlinI think, did you say that because I told you that I love you? Yes. fuck you okay um but i thought you're supposed to say you hate my face or something no that's

Alexwell that's you and that's you and matt we need our own it depends on the verbal i love you is i i hate your stupid face and often yes a fuck you uh you stupid cunt uh along with this

Merlini'm very grateful for you i'm very grateful for you you're a really good friend and you go out of your way to uh you you more than just merely i think you do fret about me but you also seem to have actual concern for my welfare and that makes me happy and I say that I love you.

AlexI withdraw my consent.

MerlinI love you.

AlexI just know that you are a very talented writer and I hope that somehow you get to show what was on the cutting room floor of the wisdom document and why it didn't make it in.

MerlinOh, that's funny, Bullseye. It would be fun to have a cutting room floor document um well i think that the general uh thing is uh boy there's a phrase i use a lot you know about like um i use so many i'm laughing i'm sorry i'm too much i'm sorry too memorable

Alexis that oh oh um all right all right sorry you were being merlin man no no no no no no no no i'm

Merlinnot sure what we're doing here i uh i think there needs to be a something like a consistent tone and uh well here's a funny thing you ever have something yeah yeah okay so i i talked about this with dan with my um amazon products where like i got amazon products a long time ago they were like a thin end of the wedge for me getting into smart home stuff i i like to think i've been generally pretty happy with it with occasional because i hadn't thought a lot about them you And I'm talking here about the various lady in a tube things, the things with the screen, various things.

But I was vaguely aware of some slight dissatisfactions from time to time. Basically, I'd make this face. I'd go, hmm. Make that face. Yeah, yeah. But I wasn't super aware of it until for over, I think it was like two weeks, I want to say, I couldn't watch Hulu live on the Amazon show. Now, is that a big deal? Not really. but it is a thing that I do and that I expect to have work, whether you, the listener, think that's a good idea or not. It is something that I do. And it is, I think, arguably one of the marquee features of the product.

It's one of the differentiators, for example, from the far superior Google Hub, is that the Google Hub, to my knowledge, cannot play live Hulu. I'm not sure why. But the point is, something funny happened where it took really just that one day, I suddenly hated my Amazon products. And the day before, I had not. What changed?

Speaker AI don't know.

MerlinThere's, but a critical mass, I don't know if I'm using that term right, a critical mass of something built up. And then like as one, you know, it was like, well, you know what? Fuck this. And like, I've already, I've kind of lost. And I've never realized I had a feeling about it until the day I had a strong feeling about it. I've had this experience a lot in life. Sometimes, and this is also orthogonal to the whole like remember to remember thing. It's one thing to know something. It's another thing to remember something. And it's a quite different thing to remember to remember something. Because if you were good at that,

you'd already be a Buddha. And you're not. You're still fucking around with your dick in your hand making New Year's resolutions. You suck. Like, what are you doing? You think you're good at things, and that's the problem. But that's the way thing, life collapses on you sometimes with something as dumb as not being able to watch Nicole Wallace at 1 p.m. It's not like something, it's not appointment view. It's not appointment viewing for me. But then one day I was like, you know, suddenly every little scrap of conversation I've heard about the crappiness of the Amazon company, you know, kind of, you know what I'm saying?

And I think you got to be careful in your writing because think about on the Internet when somebody mainly has no feeling about you until they suddenly hate you. And you realize that they've all kind of been building up to hating you for a long time and all it took was one bad day before they now legitimately hate you. A document like this can go way wrong if you're unintentionally building scraps of the wrong tone. Because then when you hit a very wrong note, people realize they hate the whole document. So you have to be – does that make sense?

AlexAh, yes. And it makes – ah.

MerlinIf I Hector too much about usage of words and I become that particular every other guy on the internet about adverb use, which I don't actually have that strong of a feeling about, I just think, again, the lesson behind the lesson, it's difficult to be a careful thinker unless you're also a careful speaker, which sounds crazy coming from me because I'm neither. but I do know that sloppy thinking is sometimes really helped along by sloppy speaking.

If you don't know the words for things, it's like I said to my daughter, now that we're both addicted to coffee and the same coffee, we both drink extra bold stoke. She refuses to learn the proper way to open a bottle of stoke to take off the little seal. She stabs at it, stabs at it with scissors. And I said, can you please let me show you the proper way to do that? And she said, no, this works fine. I said, I understand. It gets you from here to there by stabbing, which is a kind of working. But like Picasso or anybody else, it's beneficial to learn the proper way to do something before you make a mindful decision to do it in a different way, improper or otherwise.

And that's why I think you cannot help but become a little less stupid if you think about word choice. you need to become insufferable about it but if you think a little bit more if you think more like a writer and less like a hot taker you're going to become a less dumb person i can't promise you'll become smarter but you'll become less dumb i don't understand what's the distinction i know i know you don't know the distinction because you're not ready to know the distinction yet because you you you you perhaps think that just having some jeremiah on social media is the same

thing as having a complete thought and it's not and so get pickier about words now with that said if i make the whole document about that kind of bullshit it's just going to be another like school marm bullshit internet jeremiah and i want it to be i want to be fun i want it to be light and if there is anything where i think this might be the thing that makes you hate me i need to make sure it sounds like me and might make you laugh and maybe let you even feel a

Alexlittle bit in on the joke no no exactly i i always assume every not everybody uh i i always want to assume positive intent with people but i do start out thinking that um no one has any positive feelings towards me so if i when i'm hated by somebody i just want to be hated by the right people and have it be worth it you don't mean that you don't mean that why why don't i mean

that um if someone were to hate me i prefer i mean you want to be as they say making the right kind of enemies it's yeah it it hurts more to be to be despised by like a community that you've been a part of and versus like a bunch of homophobic diet nazis i would rather be idiotically hated

Merlinthan lazily misunderstood.

AlexYes. Oh, fuck. That's good. Oh, God. That's good. Is that in the... Have you said that before? Is that in the document?

MerlinI think it should go in the document. Can you capture that, please?

AlexI mean, yeah. That's really, really good.

MerlinI appreciate your asking. And I have actually thought it would be kind of funny to have a wisdom project at Avignon where I put on the evil Abed beard and just fucking unload with all this... like my the meanest like 17 year old peak asshole remember 12th level asshole peak asshole merlin that would be kind of funny but uh what kinds of things that leave out well some of the things that leave out and let's make this quick because we got a challenge to do uh some of these are things that aren't a thing yet like um i was watching um an old episode of the office in the background

and um i imagine this is the kind of thing that jason goldmans and poker fans of the world have heard before. There's one where Pam is trying to fool Zach Woods into thinking that she's the office administrator. And he kind of picks up on the fact that she's not actually shouldn't be

Speaker Agetting paid, which she's now getting paid. And she has this great line. She says, if there's

Merlinanything I learned from watching Name of Poker Tournament, you play the opponent, not the cards. And I was like, ooh, I'll bet that's practically a cliche, but goddamn, that's good. Play the

Alexopponent not the cards that's really i mean because how many times you've heard somebody

Merlinsay well you know you have to deal with the hand that you're dealt i think this takes that even further which is and you know as somebody who enjoys you know the world building of uh for

Alexexample oceans 11 a lot of world building all right i gotta we gotta get that clip for it's

Merlinplay the opponent not not the cards now this one now and here's another one that i think will make it in but and when i want to put this the way that i want to i cannot i choose not to put it this way with my daughter i will put it this way with you i will repeat something i said before um and uh i got several takes on this here's one you don't get to pick what you want to fuck yeah now if i want to be a little nicer about that it would be something like you don't get to pick um you don't get to pick what you love you don't get to pick what makes you cry there's but like there's like

maybe you do, but I think you don't. I think mostly you love what you, one loves what one loves, regardless of whether you think it's the right thing to love. And like, I think it's weird how much I cry from certain episodes of Doctor Who, but there it is. But like, you learn a lot about that when you learn to accept, well, you know, as Morrissey says, why don't you accept yourself? You know, well, you're an asshole, Morrissey. No one wants to accept you. But that's a pretty good one. Like, you know?

AlexThat is very good. Because it takes the, I know the Marco one is in there of like, it's not your fault, but it is your problem. Which I would like to think, for example, not paying you for this program, patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. And the only reason I found out.

MerlinYou're saying when people join, you'll pay them? You'll pay them if they join?

AlexThey, no, no, no. I will pay you. Hey, Dubai. Gosh.

MerlinThat really feels like one of those, there's always money in the banana stand things where maybe doesn't really understand. If you take money and throw away a banana, it actually makes it worse. He's a flamer.

AlexOh, man. I don't know if Netflix's algorithm does the same thing as YouTube, where they switch up the thumbnails for shows based on what they think you like.

MerlinOh, I always wonder what did it think I would want more about that. Well, no, no, not as in did it think I would think it was more sexy, that it was less South Korean. like a lot of times I think the way they get me is they fool me into not realizing that it's dubbed and I'm trying I'm trying to avoid sounding extremely racist here but there are just times where I I wish they would just say by the way this is from another country if this is the night for you to watch this well there's a reason I'm not watching criterion right now you know I want to

watch girls have pillow fights I don't want to get into a whole thing with a money is this the

AlexScottish girls? Or are they Welsh? Well, spoilers,

Merlinmaybe. Yeah, Northern Ireland. Oh!

AlexDo they kill anybody? Okay. You know what? No, spoilers. I will watch Derry Girls. You'll watch Buffy and it'll just tear Matthew apart.

MerlinNow here's a good one. Here's one and I haven't touched it. I wrote this one down on December 5th and I haven't gotten to it yet exclusively because it contains the word pronoun.

AlexOh!

Merlincontinue. Because, well, straight off the dome, if I tell you this is about pronouns, isn't it going to partly make you brace and wonder is it going to be like, you know, about they stuff? Just because the word pronoun now has such the word pronoun now means something in the discourse. But here's what I have so far. If you're unsure when to use which brace of personal pronouns, try first breaking your sentence down a little. Jim went with him.

Jim went with me because it is neither fancy nor grammatical nor cool to finboyantly announce Jim went with he and I. Do you know that trick?

AlexWell, also that's grammatically incorrect. That's a preposition.

MerlinOh, but like you've never heard somebody go. He went with he and I,

AlexI genuinely,

Merlinbecause they don't, they think it sounds fancy. It's like an adverb. They think it sounds fancy. People, we were raised to always say, okay, this is a joke now, but it wasn't always a joke saying whom and saying and i before you or in spite of no you should know the difference like whom is for the object right yeah versus the subject yeah i yeah but like people say that you don't you know what would you say um like um whom went with you well

no you're not you sell are you trying to sound like shakespeare like what are you doing you don't need to say that. Or when people say, oh, please come to the gym with Robert and I, because Robert and I sounds fancier than Robert and me, because Robert and me sounds close enough to me and Robert that you're worried someone will think you're illiterate, but you're not saying it right. And the trick is break each of those down and say them separately. Come with Robert, come with me. He and him, me and I, both become so much clearer, but all you have to do is break it down.

And why did I not include that? It's subtle. And talking about pronouns might confuse somebody. And now that's one more thing where they're going to hate me.

AlexYeah, that's a, and I genuinely, I don't think that this is a generational thing in terms of pronouns, actually, but a generational thing in terms of, like, I mean, I don't know, we've talked about how I had, I was lucky enough to have diversity growing up. Oh, except for class and well. So it became almost a meme of if you were trying to say, whom is it? Like you were trying to be a fancy duchess and you weren't.

Like, I don't know.

MerlinAnd you maybe couldn't tell if it's right. Because if you, there are a lot of sentences, and sometimes I'll catch myself sounding like a fancy lad, where I want to say the correct thing as long as the correct thing is clearer than the incorrect thing. And I can argue with Syracuse all day about this, but that prescriptive versus descriptive thing, well, sometimes things evolve, things change, that kind of stuff. It's just that sometimes it is just easier and simpler, yes, there's a difference, to say, oh, who were you talking to?

Because if you walk in a room and say, to whom were you speaking? You sound practically English.

AlexYeah, I am not a good writer, but I had amazing. I was taught by amazing. See, my teachers were great writers. At least I think they were. And it was very much the Vonnegut thing of say as much as possible with as few words as possible.

MerlinEconomically.

AlexYeah, and he said it in a much funnier way, I'm sure.

MerlinSo you figure out what works. You also then have to think about the thing you can't – well, you could teach, but it's more difficult to teach. It's not simple. You just fork it. It might be – Oh, that's all you do. Just push the master branch with your stash in it. And if you have to unstage it, then you just – yeah, exactly. You just do the pull, which is a push, and the push, which is a pull. by the way I'm not accepting any more good advice for right now if I could just make a note

Alexof that I am please bombard me bombard good

MerlinI'm burping

Alexsee my heart rate has gone down

Merlinbut you can't teach it's difficult to teach rhythm and it's difficult there's all kinds of things that you can there's a certain kind of there's a part of education or the educational process that involves somebody telling you something at the right moment where you're prepared to hear it and where you can go, oh, well, that explains a lot, versus giving somebody a bunch of rules that they have no context by which to apply it, right? And the thing is when you give somebody a list of things, like have you ever seen the classic? This might even be in Strunk and White, but a classic piece of writing advice that's good advice,

albeit mostly useless, vary the length of your sentences. And now there's names in rhetoric. There's Greek names for almost every trope. that you can, that exists in the world for like, you know, the different kinds of structures, the sort of biblical Old Testament types of structures. And I don't know the names of fucking any of them, but telling somebody to vary the length of their sentences is really smart. But until you've done it a lot and realize why not varying the length of your sentences may not be a good idea, how do you vary which by how much? Oh, I don't know. All I know is you

should vary the length of your sentences, but like until you've done it and then you go, oh, now I see the value of this. You know? Sometimes you end up having a sentence that's very long, and they might have a dependent part, and then it's done.

Punto. Like, a way to, like, you know, there's a way of rhetoric and speaking, but it's really difficult to teach people that stuff. And people who, say, for example, aren't super into sitting around and listening to fucking Dylan Thomas are not going to understand the musicality of this works better than the banality of that. And I think I just did one of the tropes. You know that one book? you know that one book? There's that one book. Do we ever read that one book? The one book where the guy walks you through all the... Is that one book? Dreyer's English? I always get these confused. I sent this to

Jamie, so I might still have it in. But it's the one where he says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's the first chapter. He goes, and that's an example of blah. And then he closes with deedle-deedle-deedle-dee and he says, and that's an example of blah. The next chapter is about that. And he keeps building on this and saying and basically walks you through all these rhetorical techniques by example and builds on it, like kind of cumulatively, I'll find the name of it.

AlexI see. I think that this is Dreyer's English because I've been saving it for a potential challenge. Because I don't know, or maybe not writing down the bone or not on writing maybe.

MerlinNo, no, no. No, no. I definitely got it. I specifically, I specifically, I got texted by JXPX1138 about this one time after a show. So JXPX keeps me honest about a lot of things. Great Twitter follow.

AlexOne of the few.

MerlinHe did his music theory homework and pen, you know.

AlexWhat?

MerlinYeah.

AlexOh, boss ass bitch. Woof.

MerlinI'll tell you what would drive you crazy about Jamie.

AlexGo on.

MerlinJamie's a magician and does sleight of hand stuff, but he's also just a naturally fidgety guy. He would spin his iPhone on the tip of his middle finger while you're talking to him.

AlexI feel like I would be both furious and aroused at the same time. Like that's, that's pretty much how magic.

Challenge.

MerlinI don't know. So rigid right now. Dryer's English and early correct guide to clarity and style. I feel like it's not. Let me see. Look at JXPX. Hey, would you please tell people to do this stuff? Would you wear promote things? I'll look this up.

AlexHey, everybody. Welcome to Dubai Friday. But seriously, thank you for being here. While Marlon looks for something. If you enjoy the show, you can go to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. And you get basically a second episode of Dubai Friday every week. It's the after show. But we're tired and I swear more. I say cunt more. And you can get that for just $5 a month. What? And you're seriously the people who are still supporting us.

I really, really appreciate it. What? Fuck you.

MerlinI don't know why I've had attrition. It's called The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsythe.

AlexI have no idea what that is. Oh, Elements of Eloquence. Oh, I hate that title.

MerlinThe Elements of Eloquence. He has a series of these books with similar covers. How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase is a nonfiction book. Book explains classical rhetoric, dedicating each chapter to a rhetorical figure with examples of its use, particularly in the works of William Shakespeare. Forsyth argues the power of Shakespeare's language was a result of studying formal rhetoric and highlights their use through Shakespeare's development. And I'll warn you ahead of time, this is a really entertaining book, and it'll also send you down one of those, I don't know, if you're like me, sometimes you go down like a cognitive bias rabbit hole,

or you go down a logical fallacy rabbit hole, you end up on one of those wikis with every exam kind of thing that there is for this. And this is the third one of those. This is one of those like alliteration, repeating the sound of the first consonant in a series of words.

Polypteton is the use of one word as different parts of speech or in different grammatical forms. Antithesis, merism, blazon, synesthesia.

AlexOh, I hate this. I hate this. I mean, I don't hate it, but yeah. It's like when...

MerlinBut I'd recommend the book. And I have a paid-for copy and a stolen copy if you need one.

AlexI feel like I have a paid-for copy and stolen copy of almost everything.

MerlinDreyer's English is also very good, though.

AlexDreyer's English is also good. I've only read the first chapter, which is very good. Well, I suppose... Well, there you go. I guess I've done the challenge, technically. Oh, I have an open tab. That's urban... Why is it urban diction? Oh, I was going to search your name, but I didn't. You're welcome.

MerlinCan we do the challenge?

AlexChallenge.

MerlinChallenge.

AlexSince I will mingle it, what was the challenge this week, Merlin?

MerlinChallenge this week is mine. And I had talked about, I think in a nut, one way to look at it, something Alex and I end up talking about a lot is in trying to fix ourselves. A general way of thinking, a framework for thinking about self-improvement, top-down versus bottom-up. Right? And there's other ways. But a top-down approach is very much like I'm going to read the whole manual before I do anything approach to life. top down could be very much like I'm going to go to therapy for my problems, but I'm going to start at like broad,

broad things and then hope that trickles down into the things I'd like to do differently. Or in our case here, feel different about. And, and I think I, I'm very encouraged by the idea of doing both, but I'm especially interested in like these little tricks that involve the bottom up approach. So, and, And, you know, this is a breakthrough for me a couple years ago. I've mentioned to you numerous times. Like, am I anxious because my heart's beating fast? Or is my heart beating fast because I'm anxious?

Or both or neither? I don't know. But, like, isn't it interesting to think about, like, what if I, what if my body is just polluted with bad signals? And that causes a lot of my physical and emotional chaos. So I'm very interested in bottom-up approaches to saying, well, what if I start by trying to work on my signs and symptoms, trying to work on the way I feel physically, and then kind of back-solve to normal?

And specifically here, I won't go into too much repetition here, but I did acquire a blood oximeter. This is one of those little things you put on your finger. You've probably, if you've ever been in the hospital or seen somebody in the hospital, it's a thing on their finger.

And, you know, so a blood oximeter uses light to shoot through your finger to tell your pulse, your, I think it does heart rate variability, et cetera. But one of the things it does also is your number of breaths per minute. It also has some other things like breath sensitivity that I don't understand. And the goal here, the challenge here in general was to, because I know Alex has gotten a blood oximeter, the challenge was to use a blood oximeter to do some bottom up self-care.

AlexYep, yep, yep, yep.

MerlinIs it funny to you that I keep saying bottom?

AlexYes.

MerlinOkay. It's called a switch.

AlexOr is it a verse? I don't know. No one knows.

MerlinA verse as in like part of a song?

AlexNo, as in, basically.

MerlinDid you just abbreviate verses?

AlexNo, no, no, no. Versatile as in you.

MerlinOh, gross. Okay. Cool. Any of my holes could be a purse. um and so but specifically and boy i thought this was so interesting there's a reason i challenged you to do this uh because i've heard it said that of the numerous bottom-up approaches one of the most interesting you always learn about breathing right you always learn about like oh you gotta like get your heartbeat down and you get your heartbeat down by changing your breathing and breathe deeply and breathe uh pivoting one of the most useful things i ever learned well the most

useful thing I ever learned about meditation is everybody's doing it wrong. That's the point. Stop criticizing yourself for doing meditation wrong. But the one that really landed for me personally that helped so much was if you need something to focus on, it doesn't need a candle, doesn't need to be a singing bowl. Try this. Try to just focus on the feeling of air passing through your nostrils. And not just, but get real specific. Like imagine like right at the ridge of the top of your nostril. Are you able to feel breath going in and out of your nose through that particular part of your nostril, like really focus on it. And it got so much less difficult

for me because now I did understand here's something I can focus on. And in the same way that every geek likes self-improvement that involves buying technology, I think the thing here is, wait a minute, the skeleton key for this in some ways is what if I reduce the number of breaths per minute? Not just focus on breathing deeply, maybe we'll get there eventually, But what if the way into this is trying to do fewer breaths per minute?

And I won't spoil my results except to say I'm very happy with my results. That was the general challenge. I use a blood oxima to do something approaching biofeedback.

AlexYeah, I forgot what you said the ideal number of breaths per minute.

MerlinOn the meter and in things I've read. But I mean, again, just so you strap this thing on, you sit for a while, you do whatever. I do it usually at bedtime, at least for a while, just to get a baseline day by day. But and when I first, it takes a minute to catch up. And then I'm generally 20 to 23 breaths per minute. But I've gotten to where I can, spoiler alert, fairly quickly get it down to six or seven.

AlexOh, fancy, fancy.

MerlinNow it does. as with the putting your face in water thing, it does go back to whatever it was before. But Alex, this puts a handle on the bag.

AlexOh, that's such a good way.

MerlinIf we end up talking more about this incredibly boring abstract topic, I mean, I'm learning to be, I don't love the word mindful because it sounds like a bozo bit for hippies, but I'm becoming more aware of my ability to locate a handle on something because of this technique. A few weeks of doing this, I'm finding it very handy.

Alexi have been doing this every night and i love this uh i i've been uh using this so you're

Merlinspecifically like you're looking at the terrible app you look at the terrible app so bad if well the device is terrible too the device is like in second place to things i have bought to try and test you ever bought anything i think we've this might have been a challenge things to test like the charge of like a usb device those yeah those super crazy multi-color chinese interface things that are like virtually impossible to tell heads or tails the actual hardware device for this thing

Alexis really ugly and stupid looking i mean none of them look good am i wrong but at least they've got

Merlina big they got a no they got a big pulse that you can see or what are the two uh a big uh blood uh blood oximeter percentage and a big pulse, at least on mine. But then in the app, you get a few more data points to look at. And that's where you see breaths per minute. There is no dark mode. It needs to be on in order for you to see it. And boy, is it bright. But so you tried it. You tried

Alexthis. Yeah, I, I, like you said, the app is terrible. And I immediately ran into the issue of perfusion index, which basically is...

MerlinIs that the one where there's not enough blood?

AlexYeah, the one where it's like, oh, your circulation's pretty bad. And I was like, oh, oh, fuck. That's not good, right? But then it turns out, well, actually, our apartment was just too cold. So then basically, you walk around a bit and then...

MerlinIt's a poor meditator that blames his Dougie. That's all I'm going to say about that.

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MerlinNo, but you're right. Like that's not, I don't think that's, it's again, we're back to this thing. And boy, I got to start this new document of things that need a name. The Photoshop problem. Where it's difficult to know. Like I know I'm supposed to look at my, like how, what percentage of oxygenation is my blood getting? Do I have COVID, right? Like if you're consistently at 80%, that's not super good. But then it's hard to know. Like what should, the pleth sensitivity or whatever. Like I don't think you need to pay over much attention to those.

Alexbut i mean wait no i'm not agreeing don't uh let's just take this advice as you would the don't don't oh god what are you saying i am constantly worried someone's gonna like have some weird kratom or they're gonna do something weird and then i've killed somebody we tell them

Merlinand we basically tell them ignore the warning signs yeah yeah so you don't need to worry about Say, you know what, guys? Avoid weird Kratom, whatever that is.

AlexWhen I talked about that, everyone was like, you're going to die. I'm like, well, okay, I'll stop.

MerlinBasically, anytime you learn about something and somebody says, have you ever heard of X? Exactly. You ever heard of Kratom?

AlexOr do you know what blank is? I have a friend who swears by it.

MerlinRight.

AlexAll right, hold on. But then, so I put it on my ring finger because, I don't know, like in the hospital, that's

Merlinalways where they that's why i do mine i do mine on my right ring finger because um the left hand

Alexis my operational iphone hand the uh oh i have i had mine on left ring finger but then the uh perfusion index was real low so then i moved to my forefinger uh and then everything was the same except for the perfusion index and i i have a terrible heart rate it's usually resting around around oh it's so bad uh no resting is 80 82 and uh walking is 92 mine is very high oh it's it's

that's well well uh that's the thing is my i think i was my resting was a solid 90 until the uh beta blockers and it was like oh so i was i anxious because my heart rate was high or like i still don't have an answer to that question.

MerlinMy heart rate is 99 right now. I'm sitting here recording a podcast.

AlexOh, no. Mine is all over the map during this podcast and an episode of Roboism I recorded because sometimes I get a little bit uppity about Elizabeth Holmes.

MerlinOh, and you're a time tracker. Do you like exist.co, that data, to like look at this against that? Like, oh, I knew I was working on this thing that stresses me out because of my time tracking timeries?

Alextimeries that is where okay so this is where i'm trying to figure out a way to do this um also because i put just because i'm not making fun of you i think that's crazy interesting

Merlinno no actually i really do like i i want i want to be able to see because i can see from my watch on sleep watch how to sleep sleep i think sleep watch um i can see where i was snoring Because it records sound. Yes. Right? It could show you. And I want to, like, see what's the correlation. I'm off exist.io. It just wasn't doing it for me. And I'm off gyroscope. I'm off all that stuff. I don't go anywhere. But, no, I really would love some insight into, hey, you know, your blood oxygenation goes down.

I'm sorry to interrupt you again. Your blood oxygenation goes down. Your snoring goes up. Your heartbeat goes up. I would love to see if there is a correlation because I really have a feeling there is one.

AlexAnd the correlation I want to know, and we have talked about this before, I don't know what I'm going to use this data for, but I like gathering it.

MerlinAbsolutely. It doesn't cost you anything.

AlexExactly. I made the mistake of switching to Guest in the app, the Misimo app. So now it's not recording any more of my data, which is making me upset.

MerlinIt's not recording it and consequently it doesn't go to Apple Health.

AlexNope. Nope. So I have like three days of it. So I probably just need to unpair, repair, delete the app and then reinstall. I don't know.

MerlinYou know what? I would suggest there's a lot of things. You didn't ask for advice, but that little tab for device, sometimes it just forgets that it's connected. Like there's a lot of little things that get fixed by doing something under device. It kind of forces it to reconnect, I think.

AlexThat works for me when it doesn't, when I constantly, it actually got better. I think because I did that with, it will reattach to Bluetooth pretty easily now. but this just happened the other day and I don't know what it is. So I'm going to delete the app now and reinstall it. I was putting it off because I'm like, I don't want this fragile thing to break, but I do really want this data recorded because I've also been recording my energy level throughout the day

because of that app I sent you without context. It was very confusing just every hour.

MerlinOh, it just asks you how you one to five. How do you feel?

AlexYeah, and you can make your own little scale, which I did, including high energy, which for me is basically...

MerlinAnd does that go anywhere? Does it go anywhere?

AlexA JSON file. And people have made various graphs of it, which I guess is interesting. But I want to...

MerlinIt's JSON. I mean, I'll talk out of my ass for a minute here. JSON is powerful in terms of what you can manipulate and move around. I mean, I think there's a fair amount of stuff out there for just transliterating or whatever the word is. Exactly. Like, turn this into CSV or whatever.

AlexYep, exactly. So the plan is to do this for a month and then actually figure out what I want to do.

MerlinI love this. Yeah, yeah. I should do this.

AlexBecause it does cost you something, I mean, time. Like, I don't want to, I guess I am doing a top ten. I will always forget which one. Like this one, I'm kind of top downing and just, you know, get it. No, bottom up.

MerlinYou're not obligated to do one to the exclusion of the other to state the obvious.

AlexYeah. Yeah. This this I'm just like approaching a little bit different.

MerlinAnd yeah, but like that. But if top down means finding patterns, I think that's really smart. I mean, because, you know, patterns are a thing like I used to talk about back in the day. It took me a while to realize that, like, when I'm coming home to see my wife and my baby, like I have to as soon as I can see my house I have to take out the take off my headphones as we used to say right and I'm not allowed to the big rules back then were my rules for myself is that I have to take off my headphones and put my phone away I take off my headphones look at a picture of my kid put my phone in my pocket as soon as I can see my house I have to take off my

headphones and put my phone away and I'm not allowed to take out my laptop which before we used phones for everything um i couldn't bring out my laptop till after the kid had gone to bed but like that how do you arrive at that what a healthy way to live kind of yeah it was very it was helpful for me because i mean that has that's like a that's like a four quadrant hit for me because i do need a handle on the bag i do need a trick i do need a if you like a mnemonic i'm not trying to be clever about this it's like you can wander around with the best fucking intentions

in the world and still be a piece of shit how do you as max used to say a word i love how do you operationalize a good idea. Yes. And that's where you're going to have to figure out like, okay, well, maybe that means I just gather information I don't even look at except to make sure it's still being captured. Maybe I gather information for a week, a month, two months, whatever that is. But the operationalizing is kind of, as they say, where the rubber meets the road. That's where you go from your good intentions to something that's a practice. And that does not happen

Alexwithout effort. And well, and I, you know, I constantly get on and off the mindfulness slash meditation train. Now, now I'm mostly doing the thing where I am, I am going to go and relax and relax means various things. Maybe it's an app, maybe it's meditating and but who knows. And now during my like relaxy time i am wearing this thing and trying to just bring my number of breaths

down to and using a box have we talked about box breathing on here very very very briefly uh i i

Merlindidn't know that i knew i've heard i first saw that in a david smith app and i didn't know what it meant and then i realized oh that's the name for a thing i didn't know how to name could you describe it to our listeners oh really okay well because like i said well the reason it came up last week was where I was saying, I think most people tend to think of breath as one and two and one and two. But really, it's more like one and two and three and four, because in between each breath, there's however short, it might be such a short pause, you don't realize it,

but there's a pause before you exhale and inhale. And that's kind of where the magic is. The magic lives in those pauses. And if you're going to, spoiler alert, if you're going to try to bring your number of breaths down, you're going to have to find a pattern of hitting those, you know, it's kind of like the reggae, the two and the four notes. Like when you're doing the pause, I hate reggae. No, I don't. I don't hate reggae. I hate people like reggae. I don't hate people. I love everybody. I just want people to be happy.

And that's where the art is. And you'll discover, and like I gave you that tip of mine that's almost ridiculously stupid and what does it even mean of like I imagine air passing through a tube, like a toilet a paper tube or a paper towel tube, imagine a clear pathway for breath where you don't even have to,

Speaker Ayou don't have to think about going,

Merlinbut just like ease, ease up as they say sometimes in relaxation that soften your belly, like find all the places where you're unintentionally contorting and tightening up, which is so much harder than it sounds. And then that breath part, actually, instead of you arguing and fighting with your breath, it really becomes your partner in relaxing. And again, hard to get to if you're just trying to, oh, I got to get good at meditation. I suck. You're like, well, that's not going to help. Like yelling at yourself is optional.

AlexWait, do we actually explain? In box breathing, it's literally you in any way you want. You breathe an inhale and that's one side of the box. And then ideally you pause as long as it is comfortable for you and you exhale. And that's another side of the box. and you just create a square with your breath. And you can do this in different ways.

MerlinYeah, for your music fans, for example.

AlexSorry, go ahead, go ahead.

MerlinI was just going to say that when you get your piece of music and you'll see the quarter note equals at the top, which you youths call BPM, but you get your tempo, right? But start with box breathing wherever you are. I don't love that term. But just first of all, realize, accept, and operationalize that there is, can or should be a pause between inhale and exhale. You don't need to overthink this. But let's say you start out and you're like me and my tempo is going to be something like,

I don't know, maybe 80 or 100 or more beats per minute. What if I bring that tempo down to 60? Eventually, if I've slowly, I don't know what the name for this would be in Italian. But over time, over my session, I try to make, I'm trying to keep this. I'm trying to keep, how can I put this? I want to keep the same quarter note tempo, but the beats per minute is what I want to bring down.

Speaker AYes.

MerlinRight? So the in, pause, out, pause. How do I get to where I'm doing that, you know, I guess six times per minute or whatever?

AlexWell, and that's how I, for some reason, I just couldn't do a box. Like how I'm really bad at body scanning because it gives me some dysphoria because I'm just thinking about my boobs. But then that hypnosis tape taught me the weird thing of I now imagine. Your orange fluid? Yeah, I imagine. Oh, really? Yes. Oh, shit.

MerlinThat's so funny.

AlexI do that all the time, and it's very helpful.

MerlinThey are referring here to a self-hypnosis cassette that I had in high school. And it fills your body with orange liquid. Oh, my God. I can't believe you remember that. It's a pretty memorable image.

AlexExactly. Yeah. And it's just dumb and distracting enough that it's like, ah, this is a delightfully stupid place.

MerlinBut, I mean, you know what I mean? You need a handle for the suitcase. Right. And there's that phrase I used again last week. Like, are you pushing a rope or are you pulling a rope? Because if a rope is the only tool that you have, pulling it is a lot easier than pushing it. And if you figure out what your handle is for like – this is so true about so many ideas in life. just in general it's like you need a shortcut a rule of thumb if you like a paradigm but you need a handle for as good as a suitcase is if it doesn't have a handle or it ends up being a sphere

that's going to be inconvenient to carry around you've got to find where the handle is on it and if you get a trick to do it is it a crutch i don't know also don't say that it's probably ableist but you in this instance can go like i i did of all the things where i try to control my body. And for some reason, I always think of this episode of the bionic woman from the seventies, where there's this monk that could slow his breath down. I still think about it. I just found that of all the different ways of, oh, you sit and when the cushion this way, you bend this way and you do that. Whoa. But guess what? Anywhere you want, you can stop

and think a little bit about breathing more slowly. And the results are kind of shocking to me.

Alexit worked for me alex it oh yeah i i just started thinking wasn't permanent but it it became a handle that i can always find oh interesting so that's my my handle i think uh is the idea of whole notes like i i don't want to as in uh people who don't know music i also don't know music but a lower note is an E. So, like, I always want

a whole note and an E when I am breathing. And if I, for, does this make sense?

MerlinOh my god, I love this. Like an E on the staff. Like an every good boy does fine.

AlexYeah, like a treble clef E. And then, uh...

MerlinDo you think he does fine or deserves fudge, be honest?

AlexWhat's this bit? What? Fudge? Poop?

MerlinHuh? F-A-C-E are the spaces.

Alexoh there's face

Merlinevery good boy deserves fudge

Alexoh I

Merlindo you deserve fudge Alex are you a good boy

Alexno I did great big dogs fight animals what am I doing

Merlindid you ever learn hi Herman Lily bet Bob cannot did you ever learn that one for the periodic table

Alexno

Merlinhydrogen helium lithium beryllium boron carbon oxygen fluorine neon a single bunch

Alexoh we had a song

MerlinI think quarter notes, four notes to the major quarter note gets to be, you hold an E for a quarter note per major or sorry, sorry, a whole note, whole note per major.

AlexYeah. Well, I just want to go. Okay. For, for purposes. I see this is terrible. Like God, Adam, I wish Adam Neely could be here. I got it. Uh, the,

Merlinso one, two, three, four at one, two, three, four, two,

Alexthree four yes and i i want there to be i i want there to be a whole note rest just hold out rest and i'm just kind of thinking of like okay whole whole note played like the round the little round guy the round guy whole note plays whole note rest yeah so the the and i don't know it just helps my uh i don't know it just helps my mind more uh sometimes i think of a of a like sometimes

i'm not even thinking e i'm not good at music as one can tell see sometimes i do my bit like i say as one could tell and i can just say as people can see right now well one and one and me

Merlinone and me can tell

Alexi don't know i i no keep going keep going no no no that's it i i loved this challenge i can get my um i'm generally when i think about it can get myself to uh six breaths a minute

Merlinthat's the thing because then you don't you don't need the dingus like i'm already learning and And this takes me back to like, okay, so this is still the show. This takes me back to why I found what was described to me as biofeedback as so interesting in the late 80s, which was, oh, I accidentally discovered that I could find the handle on this. And like now you can take that anywhere. You don't need to have that thing on, but you can check back in. And like now you know you have a way – how do you even put this? God, this almost feels like Dianetics. you're able to identify whether you're succeeding at a thing without really

knowing what you're doing. That was biofeedback for me. I learned that I was succeeding at something, even though I didn't know what I was succeeding at. Cause he didn't tell me the trick until the end. And in this case, like, you know that like, okay, my goal is to bring my, well, just for the sake of argument, like me and you, you and me, he and they, I want to bring down my breath per minute. Can we do that? Maybe try this. Okay. well, I'm not doing very well. I think I'm doing better. Oh, I think I'm getting the hang of this. Four nights later, oh, I really think I'm going to, I don't know if this is making a huge difference,

but whatever this project is, I seem to be succeeding at it. You know? Yeah, absolutely. First there's a mountain, then there's no mountain, that kind of thing. And then at any point you can come back. And if you're practicing, I don't know, I feel like there must be a lot of things like this. Maybe like resistance training with like weights where like, I don't know, but like, I don't know. I'm so glad it worked for you. That's so cool.

AlexOh, yeah. I'm absolutely keeping with this.

MerlinIt was a real confidence boost for me, to be honest. And I also feel like even though the effects are fairly modest in terms of their, to me, and their long-term physical impact, I do feel a little more confident now about finding handles. And I don't know. I think it was an interesting idea that reached me at the right time.

AlexYeah, I always worry about talking about health in general, because I know that that can be like jokes leaving the room like that can be a genuine trigger to people, especially with eating and food stuff. But I think like I would recommend this to folks just because it feels it felt as if I even if I didn't have control over it, just like the knowledge of what your body is doing. And if you can get your breath down, like, I don't know, you know me and agency.

I like it. I want more of it. And yeah, knowing that you have the handle is just a nice thing.

MerlinEverybody loves a handle. Yeah. Yeah. And like, just to clarify here, I'll speak for my friend Alexandra. We're both broken inside. And so we are both, I feel, again, I will speak for both of us because I'm the man here. Is that – no, I mean I was the – do people sometimes think ACAB means assigned cop at birth? Is that already a joke?

AlexMaybe.

MerlinOkay. Anyway, I speak for both of us when I say that we were assigned cops at birth. But I need a hook. I need a bit – I do like buying gear for things. Is that wholesome and healthy? I don't know. But a lot of people buy new running shoes before they start running. You don't have to do it with this device in this way. But Dianetics aside, I do walk away from this challenge feeling like there is something valuable to doing some self-quantization in the moment and then experimenting with what

you could change about it. Now, maybe you do want to change your breath. Maybe, or sorry, maybe you do want to try and quote unquote change your heartbeat. Whatever that is, it's an interesting, pretty easy inroad to doing some self-experiment.

Alexon your body. And if you're like me and just can't find COVID tests, for the love of God, it's nice to see that your blood oxygen level is pretty high. Good for you. Congratulations. I know. I'm good. Thank you, machine. Tell me I'm good. Say something funny, Merlin. Oh, speaking of handles, what's the dumbest handle that you've ever had on the internet? Be vulnerable. Come on. Come on. Come on. Hot dogs, ladies. Fuck you. Oh my God.

MerlinWhat's yours? Oh wait, yours is probably something like, I don't know, Emo Twink 93 or something?

AlexEmo Twink 93. No, it's What's Her Name 990, which is a Green Bay song from American 80s.

MerlinOkay, here's another one. Here's another freebie. This isn't as funny, but it'll still work. A good sign for me, a good way to check the blood oximeration of my sense of humor and what mood I'm in is when I get fucking mad at shit on Twitter. And then I realize, eventually, on the other end of it, I come out going, I'm glad I didn't make a big deal about that.

AlexOh, yeah. I was not wholesome on Twitter today.

MerlinNo, no, it wasn't about you. The sweaty memes from the sweaty memesters. You can only live in one house. And then you're supposed to pick some rock bands. And my first reaction was I wanted to just respond, quote tweeted and say that's true you can only live in one house that's true in life but then i was also like oh what if i don't and then i was like what am i doing what am i doing just just leave it just leave it but everybody's so sweaty alex except for us i know you know what

i'm saying say something funny oh poop fart um oh wait what do we have a song do we have a song earlier about something? What was the song earlier?

AlexYou were doing an I didn't get an apology song. You were going to do an apology song. Oh, that's it. No pressure.

MerlinI'm sorry that you're how you are.

Speaker AFuck you!

MerlinI'm sorry If what I said offended you I'm sorry for how you are Even more sorry for how you'll be I'm sorriest of all

That we're friends at all I'm sorry for you and for me

271. Backsolve to Normal

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271. Backsolve to Normal

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