273. The Bonus Pile

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, identify repeating tasks.

MerlinHello. Hey, let me while I'm also here check my marker dingus. Oh, no. It was working a second ago.

AlexSo if your marker dingus works with Skype, let's just go with Skype or rather whatever you're most comfortable with.

MerlinBut I am curious about why it's not working. Let me open a shortcut. It occurs to me as I'm sitting here and just wiling away minutes of your life that we should do a whole episode where we just schedule and plan the episode. Maybe we're doing that right now. Maybe this is a show.

AlexI mean, I was reading my very upsetting lotion bottle slash.

MerlinThat sounds like a really bad emo band.

AlexYeah.

MerlinSay it again. Say it again.

AlexSay it again. Say it again.

MerlinYou were reading your.

AlexI was reading my lotion tube.

MerlinThat's not what you said before.

AlexMy lotion.

MerlinMy very upsetting lotion bottle is the name of your new emo band.

AlexVery upsetting lotion bottle. Gold Bond Ultimate Healing Hand Cream. You're horny for Gold Bond all of a sudden. It prepares dry problem hands.

MerlinWell, you have problem hands? That's your other emo band.

AlexThat's the side project. That's right.

MerlinMaybe all emo music is about cream.

We're beset on so many sides. I know this is a bad week to compare things to the Holocaust.

AlexGo on. Go on.

MerlinNo, no, no. I don't know if this is the show. It seems that we're working. I'm curious about why my marker dingus didn't work, though. Oh, testing. Usually it is I am discovering a stream deck problem.

It's a you problem, not a me problem.

AlexOh, that makes so much sense, actually.

MerlinWell, the first time that it happened, well, gosh, this whole thing is such an iterative process on my part because I'm terrible at following instructions. But I got it working. I remember last week then it wasn't working. I kept going bloop and it wouldn't let me type. I think one thing that happens is I had cleaned up, which is to say grabbed a ton of my old shortcuts and dropped them in a folder called garbage. and I think something happened where it changed the order and I wonder if Stream Deck was that sounds ridiculous but something seemed to have happened where it got confused and it thought I was trying to do

a different shortcut in Stream Deck okay this is the pre-show

Alexthis is the pre-show at least because this is cool

Merlinthis is why we're making almost $150 a month podcast marker what's marker now? It says it is drum roll, no it says it's marker, oh wait there it goes, I think I got it working um should we i think the file speak just a little bit please hello hello hello okay i think

Alexi mean i think we're working do you want to start over no oh i know that you're i know we're working

Merlinoh no i'm not in i'm not in my persona yet oh no hey everybody where do you put on like a mask before podcasting. We all put on a mask,

AlexAlex. Hey, Alex,

Merlinwhen I call you Alexandra, am I dead naming you?

AlexI don't think so. No.

MerlinAre you dropping Alexandra? No. Have you dropped Alexandra? It's a very

Alexpoetical name. Exactly. My full name is Alexandra Elizabeth Cox.

MerlinI don't like the Elizabeth. I think we can workshop that. More like Lizzie, am I right? That's why, as you know, as you know, that's why our child is was not an Elizabeth because my wife had been bullied by a Liz.

AlexYeah, it's not a, it sounds like a poetic name in your head, but it's difficult to say. So really.

MerlinAlexandra? It's a great name.

AlexNo, Elizabeth. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't care about that.

MerlinThat's why I'm leaving it out. That's a bad name.

AlexYou need to change that.

MerlinNo, but sometimes when I need to address you in the style that I address you, I'm, because this is something I picked up from Woody Allen.

AlexOkay, then it's going to be fine.

MerlinListen, I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Woody Allen. But you know what? I'm going to save it for the after show, which means I probably will forget about it. Alexander, where can people find the after show?

AlexOh, you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. There were a few people who thought that was a joke. It's both a joke and true.

MerlinYes, two things can be true.

AlexPatreon.com slash Dubai Friday.

MerlinI know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Mussolini.

AlexHe was hot. Or no, Stalin was hot. I don't think I've seen young Mussolini.

MerlinStalin was pretty hot. One of the cool things in Death of Stalin. Thank you, Alex. You can also go to patreon.com slash do by Friday. And we would appreciate any money you can give us because we need it.

There's so much to like and fear and be uncomfortable about. It's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Stalin. I like the Death of Stalin a lot. I rewatched it a couple weeks ago. And I love the fact that everybody in it just speaks with an English accent. You know what I mean?

AlexKind of like Chernobyl.

MerlinGood point. Exactly. I'm sorry. Yes, exactly like Chernobyl. So, like, who's in it? Everybody's in it. But Steve Buscemi just talks like Steve Buscemi.

AlexI don't think he has the ability to talk like anything else. I mean, which isn't a bad thing.

MerlinHe can sound like a fellow teen. Jeffrey Tambor. I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Jeffrey Tambor. He's pretty good in that. You know who's great in that is Michael Palin. Michael Palin's good in that. Not Augie. Stephen Merchant. Stephen Merchant is very good in that. The kid who plays the frog face guy on Sherlock, the Baker Street Irregulars, that one guy. He's good.

AlexI have no idea.

MerlinHave you seen Death of Stalin, Alex?

AlexOh, wow. That's how much I want money. I was about to say something about Sherlock, and I just said Patreon. Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. If you want a list of people who've been canceled, which is not, oh, God, poor West Elm Caleb. No, I have not seen Death of Stalin. Oh. Although I know it's on your list of movies.

MerlinIt's upsetting. It's by the guy, it's by Armando Iannucci, who did the first few years of Veep and The Thick of It. And it's really, really dark. It's, you know.

AlexI mean, I can't imagine it being otherwise based on the title.

MerlinWell, I bet there are some people outside the USSR that were happy about the death of Stalin. But, you know, listen, I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Steve Buscemi. Steve Buscemi plays Khrushchev, if memory serves.

AlexHmm. All right. This is going on the Merlin media list.

MerlinOh, no, I just gave you more homework, didn't I? Is this the show for real? Are we doing the show?

AlexIt is up to you.

MerlinOkay, listen. You seem to not like it when I apologize, but I do want to say I do apologize. I feel like you – I was thinking about this earlier when I was making iced tea. I think you might get me at my weirdest. I think Dan gets me at my silliest. But I think you, at least in the current schedule, ordinary time, I think you get me at my weirdest.

AlexHmm.

MerlinAnd I don't know if I should apologize for that or charge you.

AlexPatreon.com slash Dubai Friday. Slash Merlin. Now do you think I should?

MerlinOh, that's a really good idea. We should get a system. And we should get a system. Hey, look, I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we learn from literacy tests for black people in voting rights. I know it's the wrong week to talk about that, but maybe there could be a jelly bean jar with a finite number of jelly beans. And you come in and you say, okay, there's Patreon dollars, and you distribute them, and you play a little game of Sims with you, me, I'm going to say Max, and also Quinn and everybody else.

AlexJust everyone who's ever been on the show, just vote for who gets the money that month?

MerlinWell, I think it should be a little bit like a cross between like Predicted and Logan's Run. Maybe some kind of frontier justice angle. But you can come in and go, you know, Merlin is always a real piece of shit making those sloppy steaks. Merlin's a piece of shit, but this week was even worse. So I'm moving a bunch of jelly beans to the jar of Matt Cox.

AlexOh, interesting. Wait, did you just say Matt Cox?

MerlinWhat did I say?

AlexOh, my God. Did you just, you know, you don't dead name me, but you did spouse name me.

MerlinWait, did I say something wrong? I have so much to keep in my, I have so much to keep straight in my head right now.

AlexThat's true. That's true.

MerlinSo isn't your spouse's name?

AlexYes, move the belly jeans. Good God, you get me at my.

MerlinHey, listen, I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Michael Jackson, but belly jean is not my lover.

AlexI know.

MerlinGive it a minute. There's a lot of levels.

AlexOh, levels, levels.

MerlinDo-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

AlexOoh, ooh. Something I told me. Be careful with Matt Cox. Be careful for that matter with all Cox. I can't tell if you're at your weirdest because I've just conditioned you to be at your weirdest at this time.

MerlinYou know what I said to Matt Cox probably four days ago? I think it's important in life. What did I say? Oh, there's always two things with me. I think I said that a couple of my selfish and weird parenting things, one of them is try always not to pathologize other people. And why is that advice? Because I need it. I pathologize people all the time. But that also makes me very sensitive to trying to not pathologize other people and to when I've been pathologized. And I think you pathologize me a little bit. Do you do that? You do that. I do that?

AlexNo, no, no, no. I mean I do that to strangers because it's fun and terrible but I don't make a TikTok about it I don't make a TikTok about it no no I'm not gonna West Elm or is it no West Elm Caleb you

Merlinis this something you want to talk about are we going to do this really

Alexno then you're part of

Merlinlisten I know it's the wrong week to talk about about sassy black lady shows is this going to be one of those weeks where we have the bachelorette lady and we have a sexy black lady talk?

AlexIs that it? No, no, no. Your velocity is interesting today. I think you just pathologized me again. I was just making an observation.

MerlinJust is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there as they say. We're here. We're queer. Get used to it. I think this is recording. I fixed a lot of things. Oh, I'm going to talk to you about the show in the show. Jim told me that my audio was a little bit crispy-grunchy, and so I've been trying to improve things. You're at the bottom of the pile, unfortunately, because I need to do the actual real shows on Skype before I do this bullshit that we do with Zoom. So I'm fixing that first. But I did turn off Overdrive,

so hopefully it'll be less crispy-grunchy now.

AlexI realized that I've got a Pavlov thing going on with Zoom in that I literally start salivating, and I don't know why. It's like, are you at your, yes, yes. I don't know why. I don't know why. And then I have less of a dry mouth.

MerlinThat would be worth exploring. I don't want to pathologize you. If you find yourself salivating, especially if, say, for example, Matt Cox has inserted a tube in your cheek that allows it to be quantified. You should look into that. That's what happened to Pavlov's dog. People think Pavlov's dog is cute. It's like Bolt or something. They think it's an adorable thing and it's like, no, it's a Russian man who put a tube in and the thing is it's probably backed by a molar or a wisdom tooth. You couldn't even satisfyingly lick it. And so when they give the dog

the borscht, it goes drip, drip, drip. And that's Pavlov's law. If you see a dog over the fireplace it has to be fired by the third act. I should tell you about Ruby. It's a good day. I'm finally waking up. I do apologize because you do get me at my weirdest but also what did I do last night? Oh, I recorded with Squidward. And we finally got to his body.

AlexOh. Oh.

MerlinDo you remember how he keeps threatening appliances and body?

AlexYeah. Yeah, we finally got to the body last night. Oh, God.

MerlinAnd then what did I do? I watched some alien-related content. And because I watched a sad hoarders on Monday, I tried to find a happier hoarders to watch Tuesday night. But then I slept really hard. I woke up. I reinvented prayer. I was an hour late for the show. I made iced tea. I put a Milky Way up in my overhead light.

It's been a good morning.

AlexThis is very...

MerlinIf you swear to God, I swear to Christ, if you pathologize me right now...

AlexOh, no, no, no. I do want to know how you reinvented prayer, though.

MerlinI would love to talk about that. If you followed... I'm sorry, I'm talking about another show on the show. Para Pals. But I've been on a quest, a minor quest of my mini quests. This is really silly. Seriously, like the sidest of side quests. Is working on my LED overhead lights at the office. And what I've discovered is a thing they make primarily for schools, future students. You know when I say an overhead light. You've worked in a real office, right?

AlexMm-hmm. At one time, yes.

MerlinHave you ever worked in an office that doesn't have a painted container in it? Have you ever worked in a real office, like a sad office?

AlexOh, yeah. Okay.

MerlinNot like a cool office where you get to pick, you know, like the bathrooms are constantly being rearranged.

AlexEvery office is a sad office. I know.

MerlinNow more than ever amidst these challenging times. But, you know, overhead lights with the tubes, the kind Dan and I complain about, and the kind that Syracuse and I have been dealing with. It's like a two-foot by four-foot hole in your ceiling where there's usually two bulbs, et cetera. They make these things. I don't know what you want to call it. Oh, you've been in theater. I'm going to call it almost like a gel or a scrim. But you can buy a two foot by four foot plastic thing that's translucent that looks like things to put in your life.

AlexOh, I don't like this. I don't like this at all.

MerlinWell, I should get a photo for you because I got a Milky Way over my head right now.

AlexAre you? God, you're a character on TikTok. I thought you were going to say something like you have a, I don't know, what's a Gen X thing?

MerlinI'm going to say maybe at least for the rest of the year, you should avoid TikTok and anything involving whatever Caleb is. Because this seems to be really, these are intrusive thoughts for you. The two foot by four foot thing over my head.

AlexAre you apologizing me? Okay. All right. Somebody's got to.

MerlinI don't think you're going to do it yourself. You can be too forgiving of yourself. You know what I'm saying? Listen, let's admit it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from our Lord Jesus Christ. But the point is overhead, two by four foot. So the idea is like, let's say you got a classroom and you got all these horrible lights.

And somebody like Dan or me, like Dan and I, independently of each other in the 90s, used to unscrew the lights. And speaking for myself, it drove my boss crazy. Because he would come tearing into my office, wanting to scream at me about this quote by Paracelsus, and turn on the overhead light, and it wouldn't work. And then he'd make that quacking noise. He'd go, argh! And like the penguin, because I worked for the penguin. And you might like Derry Girls. It's got Catholics in it. Why do I say that? I say that because in the Blues Brothers, they call their nun, the ex-nun, well, their ex-nun,

the current nun, the penguin. the color of the penguin so what you do is you order these and I bought two of them I ordered and bought and purchased I've installed one of them because I was out of time and needed to make iced tea the two foot by four foot hole in my ceiling out of which comes my LED light you put a two foot by four foot is gel kind of the right word for it like you think about what you put into a spotlight or like you know a theater lighting light

Alexyeah a translucent thing

Merlinyeah yeah yeah I'll send you a link it looks like the Milky Way And that way the light has to pass through the Milky Way before it's in your office. The other one I got was just a star field, blue, like bluish dark midnight with white stars. And so that way I can have some of my overhead lights on and it'll look like I'm in space.

AlexI don't want to make any assumptions.

MerlinIs it clear what I'm talking about?

AlexIt is clear. But why are you doing this? I love it.

MerlinIt's the final solution. It's, well, it's the, it's, it's, I'm getting to the end of what I would like to do with smart lighting at my office. With that said, Nanoleaf has been weird lately. Lots of HomeKit stuff has gone real weird for me lately and I can't tell why. But, I mean, the Nanoleafs, when they work, are great. Like, I mean, the Hue stuff is seeming more and more ridiculous to me all the time. And they're $700 stick lights. Oh, Jesus. Have you looked at their recent offerings? it's crazy

their pivot is away from like here's cool stuff you can do our partners will do all the fun stuff we want to sell you costly bullshit that only does one thing it started with the beyond lamp and now they got these $400 stick lights that suck I talked to Sydney about it, they're garbage

Alexpeep welcome to Dubai oh wait, I have something that was too dramatic I'm sending you a photograph of the most recent purchase for our smart home. Oh, God, where's my phone? Oh, no. Oh, no. What happened? It keeps happening.

MerlinArriving Tuesday, Dr. Elsie's ultra premium clumping cat litter. My repeating order just came back up for the first time. Cancel items.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinI miss that piece of shit. Select cancellation reason other cat is dead. it's probably gonna say you can't it's too late yeah there's that samurai sword i wanted let me

Alexfind this you were gonna say you're gonna send me something oh yes here is a it's what i call a glow blob and a glow blob a glow blob and we've talked about this many times before how because we can't decorate our walls we we are now allowed the edicts of dougie But Dougie said that we can hang things if they're – what's the thing? 3M. Command strips. There we are.

We're able to use command strips.

MerlinWhere you can fully – yeah, yeah. But where you could pull – and the beauty of a command strip, for folks who don't know, is that it works pretty darn well in a lot of situations. And to take it off, the beauty of the 3M, the Minnesota mining and manufacturing process, is when you pull it, it kind of opens up the pores and detaches itself. I don't know how it works, but it's amazing.

AlexWell, so far for me, it hasn't worked, and I've got a bunch of holes on the wall. I can tell you about my 30-pound tape.

MerlinI got 30-pound tape. I'm killing it with the 30-pound tape. But, you know, Dougie wouldn't like that.

AlexDid you try it? Have you?

MerlinThat's all that has kept my Nanoleaf douchebag hexagons on the wall for this long. They were falling down overnight, every night when I used the included. Wait, do you have hexagons? Are you a douche?

AlexI do. I do, but they haven't stayed on the walls.

MerlinAnd the ones that it comes with are garbage. They fall right off.

AlexOh, absolutely. They come with too few as well. They're just a disaster.

MerlinOh, the connectors? No, I bought two extra packages of connectors.

AlexNo, both. Both. The stickies and the connecties.

MerlinYeah, why cheap out on that? It's a premium product.

AlexMore like cramulum. Okay.

MerlinCopy, A, paste. Okay. Go ahead. Tell me about it.

AlexNo, it's just a ball that you carry around if you'd like.

MerlinThis is Bob LaBlog? What is it? What am I talking about here? Bob LaBlog? Oh, there it is. You sent it to me. Oh, Jesus. Oh, it's an Eve. Eve.

AlexI like Eve. Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm very excited for it. All right, so why is Nandoleaf on your shit list now?

MerlinHang on. Octolight's fluorescent light covers for classroom office eliminate harsh glare causing eye strain and headaches, office and classroom decorations astronomy 005 Click it. Isn't that kind of cool?

AlexWhy do you, I'm looking at it. It is incredibly cool. Look at all the different ones you can get. What does it does it actually work? I like the, I see the Milky Way one.

MerlinI mean, I had to make iced tea and if you're going to keep pulling it out of me, I had to go to the bathroom. I had to make it too. And so I was running late already. I was making you late. I see you still because you continue to pathologize me. I've still not had the proper opportunity to apologize to you, which is making me extremely angry.

AlexAll right.

MerlinListen, it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from St. Augustine. But Octolights. But the last piece of this, and we'll circle back to Nanoleaf. Is this the show or is this a before show?

AlexI don't know. I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, I think I have just dropped into a universe.

MerlinNo, you've been in a universe, sweetheart. You've been here for so long. Oh, no. You've always lived in the castle. Oh, God. I don't know if you've ever read any Shirley Jackson. So what this does, though, so the nanolips and everything, it's pretty good. And when it's working okay, I'm pretty sure, I don't know if this is what's causing my home kit problems, but a thing that has happened in the past that is at least bewildering seems to be related. so I have two locations in my life because it's and so that means I've got

HomePod, Minis Apple TV iPads at my house and at my office, well I don't have Apple, but you get the point any of the things that, sorry let me start again any of the things that can operate as a HomeKit hub I have numerous of those in various places HomePod Minis are good for that, they're really good for that like if you don't have an Apple TV, if you have a HomePod many your gtg like you're gonna have a home kit hub that will work even when you're away from home that's the best not many people have an extra ipad around to act as a home hub some people

have an apple tv to act as a home pub but what's weird is when i'm at the office you ever go in you go to home settings i'm sure you have and you go to home hubs and it says okay you've got this array of different things and some are connected some are disconnected some are standby right so i'm sitting here uh in my in my private office looking at my home kit settings and it says the one that's connected is like the home hallway home pod oh i hate that i know what you're talking

about uh and so what do i do i unplug it i do whatever and i i so my clues are there's something involving that i do know that because i have i don't know touched the third rail and messed around with apps like home plus and eve it can get confused where you like in nanoleaf for example you say what is the primary home and i'm always like hmm the primary home for where i sleep where my children play with their toys or the primary home for my eve affiliated products and there's

not a surpassing amount of documentation about that but right now sometimes with the nanoleafs Like when I left last night after talking to Squidward, I said, hey, dingus, office lights off. It took a second to hear, as it has been for a while. And then everything but the Nanoleafs went off pretty well. Oh, other clue. It could be Home Assistant being Logie.

AlexOh, I don't – don't slander that app. It's so good.

MerlinIt is, but how much of your week do you spend updating HACS, Supervisor, and Core software on your home assistant.

AlexWell, save it for the challenge because...

MerlinIt's basically like owning a copy of Calibre. I'll credit Casey Liss. It's basically every time you open Calibre and you have three updates, even if you just opened it two minutes ago, there's always more updates. And I don't... I wonder if this is like... I'm reminded of WordPress, for example, where I always wonder why WordPress would make you update everything manually. I mean, I think you could probably write the equivalent of like a cron job to do that, but like there was no out-of-the-box easy way to make WordPress update. And I always want, but you really want to keep WordPress updated, at least back when I was using it, right?

That was like serious. Like it was like, it was basically like a PHP app for zero days, which is an excellent guide by Voices album. And you want to keep that updated. I wondered if it was a liability thing. When things don't update automatically, I often wonder if it's a liability thing. Like, oh no, you just busted out software, but you click the button and then click the yes, I really want this button. but like how many times do i need to like go update my z-wave mosquito plug-in for node like can you do can you handle that for me i feel like i asked so little of you

and then you got core and you got core supervisor and you got core strap-on you have a lot of products or projects going on you don't get no sorry okay go open your home assistant go open your home assistant are you on seven right now no i have not oh they've consolidated some things time. Well, then I'll bet you dollars to donuts times to dollars. You're going to have so many updates waiting for you. Hello, Alex. Click lots of buttons and then wait for it. Now hit reload. Now go check your YAML configuration.

Now go restart. Now wait and do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. Home Assistant.

AlexHow you doing? You've got a lot of projects. So many

Merlinprojects. Did you look at the Octolight's fluorescent light covers for Classroom Office?

AlexI did. And I I think this is beautiful for a kindergarten classroom.

MerlinYes.

AlexAnd I just.

MerlinI imagine this is like the special needs class.

AlexThis is. No. Because that's where my office is.

MerlinMy office is basically it's a special needs class with a Zoom recording that doesn't work.

AlexReally? Sorry, God, if you pathologize me. I'm just wondering if you were in the gifted class. And I mean, if not, you should.

MerlinOh, my God. That's such a good pivot. I well kind. I mean, I've been in, even by the time, even at my elderly age, gifted was already kind of a controversial term for whatever that is.

AlexSmart but broken. Title.

MerlinBut for example, what was the thing Roderick was in? We used to have to go over the Skyway. After he got thrown out, he would still go back. Remember, Roderick used to be in what it was called. Yeah. It's often. Okay. All right. Listen. Listen. I'm going to be problematic for a minute, but that's. It's not me.

AlexFor a minute?

MerlinIt's America that's problematic, not me. I can't change history by choosing not to use words. Huh. But when I was coming up, I feel like it was already kind of a thing. You would have something called, say, well, say what it was. You would have, like, what became known as, you know, the mainstream or mainstreaming. You'd have the, like, you know, the regular on main classes. And then there'd be two other kinds of classes because it was always that way with the American school system. Two things. something called gifted

or gifted and talented said just right on the tin it's white kids who have their own bedroom. And then there was God, what did they call it? We eventually arrived at special needs but there was a pretty ugly term they used to use. I mean on The Simpsons there's a joke about Bart being put into the Brown reading group and for some reason that always that always sticks with me because it's like it's the equivalent of like oh you think a kid

can't figure out this clever system you've come up with for saying who is you know uh neurodiverse

Alexyeah that's the one where he's like wait so we're gonna go slow in order to catch yes with the rest

Merlinof the kids is that is that the is that the early first or second season one where i think so martin he swapped tests with Martin.

AlexYes.

MerlinIs that the one? It's like, still okay, students, discover your desks. He's like in the Montessori thing. But like, I'm trying to remember what the names for stuff were. But what's funny is, and like I said, did you ever, here's one. Did you ever have SRAs for reading comprehension?

AlexThat was certainly

Merlinbefore your time. You used this thing called SRAs and it was, you basically would go, the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, Rojibiv, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. So red was the easier ones with big letters. And by the time you got to violet, it was a tougher reading assignment. And it's basically like a big piece of cardboard folded in half and you'd open it up, you'd read something about, say, the discovery of the Cardiff Giant. And then you'd answer reading comprehension questions. You'd grade it. And then eventually you'd do all those modules and you'd get to go from red to orange to yellow to green

to blue. Right? Does that make sense?

AlexYeah, like karate.

MerlinFrom, like, karate. Yeah, yeah, like karate. from less to more difficult. Well, okay, anybody who was walking, anyone who walked into that classroom that had, you know, corrected vision could basically see how, quote unquote, smart every kid in that class was. Because if it's November and Tanya is on red whilst, you know, Alex is on indigo,

you can tell like who's, you know, more gifted than the other.

AlexYou follow?

MerlinThere's all these built in. That's why when I joke about the Brown reading group. So then I want to come back to one cause I have a sad, I have two sad stories to tell you this week. One is that, that I just found out a friend of mine died. And the other one is that, oh no, no, it's okay. It's okay. He was, he only had two kids. The, but the, the, oh, So by the time I was in eighth grade, and have you probably seen that photo of me from my eighth grade yearbook, Merle Mann Speaks at DEO Parents Night?

I'd be happy to produce it for you.

AlexPlease do. I don't think I've seen it.

MerlinOh, dude. It's such a good photo. And so when I went into eighth grade, I was – that was a long story. But anyway, I was for English, sorry, that's not English, Language Arts. In Language Arts, and by the way, this is the first school I ever went to that did not have a library. What did it have?

AlexA reading room?

MerlinIt had a media center. Meet Moop. Libraries are old and stodgy. For this new age of Language Arts, whatever the fuck that means, for Language Arts, I was in DEO. What does that stand for? Very, very cool name. Differentiated.

Educational. opportunities. And there was honestly, I could be remembering this wrong, except that this was the room that my homeroom was in, in eighth grade. There was a room that was basically the special needs room. And it was, it was like, I've talked about this before, but it was so in retrospect, you look back at that one weird room up by the principal's office on the top floor,

It was a larger than usual classroom. It had unusual sort of occupational therapy accommodations and railings and stuff. And anything that made you not completely normal could earn you a spot in the special needs class. My dad, my dad was, my dad was considered virtually our word in the early forties because he'd had lots of childhood illnesses, but also he had, oh, what's the backward letter one?

I can't read the board. Letters look backwards. Dyslexia. My father was, in retrospect, in retrospect, my dad had it all. He was dyslexic. He had PTSD from being the war in Korea. He had it all. But back then, they thought he was stupid because he couldn't see the board. And now we have so much more subtlety. It's not like we're that evolved, but we now know so much more. We could look and go like, wow, like a kid, you know, with polio, a kid with what we would now call ADHD, a kid with what we would now call spectrum disorder or whatever it's called this week.

Right. What is it about all of those things? Well, it's you know what it's like. It's like when Laszlo and Colin Robinson are trying to put the jalopy together. And remember, he says, which one's the bonus pile? like for the parts that they don't know where it goes. And at one point he's like, I think they're all a bonus pile. Bonus pile. That's what that room was. It's anybody who's not a normal white kid has to go in the bonus pile.

AlexDo you know what I'm saying? Yes.

MerlinNow, private school, how did that work? Did you have – because like would you still – would there be kids with challenges that would be in Catholic private school? I mean apart from being Catholic.

AlexI mean, that's what your parents paid for, basically. Get you off the streets. There was the, quote, special ed. Then there was, I guess, the normal reading group that didn't have any labels. And then there was the advanced reading group, and there was an advanced math group, and an advanced science group. And that was where they put the kids. Did they call it AP or advanced placement?

That was in high school because you got to take a test.

MerlinThat's what they called it at our high school, too. That's pretty common in the parlance at this point, right?

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat has a meaning even in the college admissions community, right? AP, you know what AP means.

AlexRight. I was able to get rid of my first year of college because I had taken so many AP classes in high school.

MerlinOh, we used to call that, have you ever heard of the test called CLEP?

AlexNo.

MerlinIt's a term, at least from my time, and you use it as a verb to say you CLEPed out of something. And CLEP was a way to say like, oh, I'm pretty sure I know everything from algebra two. You could take a CLEP test for certain topics and that would basically just, it was like if GRE had a master's degree. I don't know, it's not possible. But like you go like, oh, yeah, you're good. Like we can see you've been passed on without you having to go through the motions of doing this again. You've satisfied the criteria of our rubric and you can go to the next thing.

AlexYeah, that that was basically it. Or at least that was what the advanced placement tests were. And then I didn't have to do math in college. It was awesome. So if you could have to take the classes that helped prepare you for the test, because, you know, they teach the test. which is a common thing that we think about now,

you also, if you could pay for the tests, then you saved money by not having to take a class that your parents could definitely pay for in college.

MerlinOh, that is so interesting. The rich get rich and the poor keep getting poorer. Am I right? No, no, no. But I am actually kind of being serious. It's very economical to be rich.

AlexYeah, it was truly horrifying. Even at the time, it was horrifying.

MerlinYou don't, I mean, like, you know, the classic from my time was smoking. Like, if you smoked, this is, I know this is a silly example. Sorry, Syracuse. If you smoked, and everybody used to smoke, most people, I think, including my parents mostly, you would buy a pack or two packs of cigarettes at a time. And when I was younger, a pack of cigarettes generally was around a buck, something like that. But if you had the means, you could buy a carton of cigarettes. Like, you know, like in the movie Goodfellas. And I think that was, I don't even remember now.

I think I bought one carton of cigarettes in my whole life, Chesterfield Kings. 10 or maybe 12 packs. But in that instance, the price goes way down, right? It's just like Costco, you guys. It's Costco of cigarettes. But if you live on the streets and you ain't got no money, you certainly ain't got no folding money, what do you do? You illegally buy single cigarettes for like a buck.

So you can spend a dollar for a cigarette, a dollar for a pack, or like, you know, $10 for all the cigarettes you'd need for a week or whatever. That's to me what it means in some cases to have means. It's all about cartons.

AlexTitle.

MerlinBeing poor is expensive.

AlexYeah.

MerlinDo you want to hear my sad story? Do you want to hear about Ruby the dog, which is also a sad story?

AlexYou have two sad stories. Go ahead with your sad stories.

MerlinYou haven't talked much. I've been talking a lot.

AlexYou know, I don't want to pathologize you.

MerlinOh, my God. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for that.

AlexMerlin off leash.

MerlinLeash. Okay. I was, oh, Syracuse and I were talking, you know how everybody was posting those photos of their old computers and media setups on the Slack?

AlexIs this the sad story? Yes. I remember that. Yeah.

MerlinI, in a somewhat related thing, I was sending Syracuse a picture. I'll be happy to send you. uh a syracuse setting a a photo of my uh computer setup this is a really long story that's not very interesting until it gets to the sad part um this is me in september of the year 2000 at my little so you got the deo parents night photo and then there's me in in a second in uh in september of the year 2000 at my desk at my dot-com job in a flaming lips shirt you can see my giant you can

see my power book not power book my what was it before it was a power book what was it called yeah power book yeah yeah and you could see my my my beautiful sony monitor and you could see my jerry lewis uh picture and you could see my model for filling the cloud with dollars i was way ahead of my time and i was saying to syracuse oh i got this my haircut in this is so bad i've got to add this to the um what's called merlin's awkward hair odyssey set on flicker which is a kind of a fun silly set of like some of my various terrible haircuts.

The chronologically oldest one in there is from September of 1973. And I was just looking at this and I'm clicking, I'm downloading. Anyway, it's a, I'm sending it to you in a sec. It's a picture of me and my pal Robbie. Robbie was my best friend in first grade. And the reason I thought of it was that we were in this interesting, weird Cincinnati school system experiment. which is one in one class at my school in Cincinnati.

They, it was a small class.

AlexSo it was gifted,

Merlinbut it was like a handful of smart kids from first grade and a handful of smart kids from second grade. And we were all taught together little house on the prairie style, but then also like got individual attention. So on the one hand we got, you know what I mean? And we would put on shows and we, we got to do all the like, you know, kids from fame kind of stuff. Does that make sense?

AlexYeah.

MerlinOkay. So this is from our first grade yearbook. And that is me and my best friend, Robbie. Look how cute we are.

AlexOh,

Merlinactually, I look pretty good there. It kind of looks like me, doesn't it?

AlexWell, honestly, it's like, you don't, you age. I know.

MerlinNo, no. I appreciate the compliment. I don't age, but I do age.

Alexyou turned 16 and then you just stopped but how cute how cute are we right first grade best friend

Merlinsmart kids in smart class and the one of the ways i remember robbie was that um when we go to the bathroom together. We do that thing little boys do where you see how far away from the urinal you can get and still get your pee into the urinal. How adorable and disgusting at the same time. I discovered some years later, next photo, I discovered some years later, hey, oh my God, look at that. Look at that guy. You see the photo? That's Robbie. His name is Rob Dessitel. Rob Dessitel, a writer whose work includes Buffy the Vampire Slater. He also produced that 70s show.

AlexOh, shit.

MerlinI'll send you his IMDB link. I didn't discover until not very long ago that my friend Robbie was kind of a big shot. And then he contacted me because he'd heard of the website. I was like, wait a minute. Is this Robert Desetel?

AlexHe's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Mrs. Jackson's class, 1973.

MerlinSo we had a nice phone call. We caught up. And I saw that photo. I looked it up, and I just discovered he just died a few years ago. He had a heart attack at 52. Isn't that a bummer? Have you had that? I know you get everybody you know dies of COVID, but if you had people who were your peers, are you at the point yet where peers have passed?

AlexNot of natural cause. I mean, yeah, I have had a lot of friends who have died.

MerlinBut you haven't had so many heart attacks or cancers or stuff like that?

AlexNo. Pretty much all the self-harm gays. That's how they go. Oh, for real?

MerlinLike friends from school or people you met after college and after?

AlexBoth.

MerlinUh-huh.

AlexYeah. These are sad stories. Yeah. Mostly sad story friends.

MerlinThere's a reason you don't like the photo widget.

AlexYeah, pretty much. That's pretty much it.

MerlinI'm sorry. I wasn't making light. I don't know. It's not a huge deal. I mean, obviously, we're not close. We were very good friends for one year. And we reconnected maybe twice. And we visited a little bit, talked about family stuff. But it was just weird because I had that, you might know this kind of sensation. Well, yeah, you're an anxious person. You'll know this sensation. Which is I went and I looked and I saw that it was like I saw dates. And the date said 1966 to 2018.

And I go, oh, is he retired? Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. and I did the thing like looking through my fingers and I was like, yeah. Had a heart attack, leaves a wife and two kids.

AlexOh, fuck.

MerlinNow listen, I know it's the wrong week to talk about what we've learned from Robbie Desotel. I'm sorry he gave Ashton Kutcher and the sexual assault guy from that 70s show, I'm sorry he gave them a platform. Bad on him, but the man could pee from very far away at a urinal. And that's the speech I would have given at his wake. man has a strong strong stream and a good heart oh you okay no i'm fine uh that was weird i don't

the thing with ruby ruby the dog is actually a happy story and i'll save it for the after show but did you like the photos of ruby the dog she was adorable isn't ruby a sweet precious angel

Alexyou can't send pictures of dogs without the disclaimer of not my dog because i assume it's your dog just assume all dogs are not mine oh no this is okay i'll tell you real quick and

Merlinthen we'll be done we'll do it i want i want you to talk for a while please um what is this a chihuahua right i think so yeah like a toy not a teacup probably but a teacup or a toy what do you think a toy these are two photographs my wife has given me um that she received yesterday that had set their uh whatever it's called office 365 teams has set teams on fire for her group This is a sweet, precious angel. You ever seen the bit where like, is this a chihuahua or a blueberry muffin? That image?

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, you've never seen it?

AlexNo. Oh, okay. Is this a chihuahua or muffin? Or muffin. Oh, first.

MerlinThere's another one for poodles. Oh. And now once you've seen that, you can't unsee it. All chihuahuas look like muffins now.

AlexOh, God. I want to lick its face. Oh, that's delicious.

MerlinThis is a very sweet. This is a very sweet looking dog. It's got the little bad ears. It's got such a sweet face. And in both of these, it's wearing a sweater. I'm going to get through the sad part fast. They were fostering this dog, my wife's co-workers, because it had been very badly abused. It had many broken bones. Its tail had, quote unquote, snapped off. It had all kinds of problems. It was all fucked up. and they're like, well, of course we'll foster it. And also, Alex, the dog's always cold.

That's why they have to dress it in clothes. It shivers. So they always put it in things like this shark outfit. And now that's Ruby and they've officially adopted Ruby. And Ruby has a forever home.

AlexIsn't that a sweet dog? And that's a beautiful dog.

MerlinWould you share this with Mathieu?

AlexYes. I wish that was his name. Then I could put him in a little ball and be the very best.

MerlinEverything's all up in the air. with you guys you get to decide well here's my name today so what's up with you no no nothing i

Alexam just along for this ride wherever it may go swear to christ you're you're silently pathologizing me and I'm very, very, very happy to be your friend. I am what is called vibing today, I think. And I'm just sending you good vibes.

MerlinOh, I was prepared to vibe on you.

AlexWhat? Well, that sounds like something West Elm Caleb did. I want to hear about your prayers. I know it's not a, what would you say? a good week to talk about prayers.

MerlinOkay, Alex. Okay, okay, okay. Let's get it out of the way. I don't know why you have to bring the big world into our little world. There's so many other places for the big world. Why is Caleb in our little world? Why are we talking about West Elm Caleb?

AlexWhy are you bringing in Joss Whedon and Stalin?

MerlinThis is the fourth time you've mentioned West Elm Caleb. I read a piece about West Elm Caleb and why this is a problem, and you've got Couch TikTok Man and all those things, and this is where I learn about these things and West Elm Caleb is tell me what West Elm Caleb is because I think I know but just it's a big deal it's another one of these oh I figured you out and now you're canceled on

AlexTikTok right is it one of those things yeah there was a guy in New York oh he ghosted a girl dating wise right okay yes and then they doxed yes he was dating a number of women and one woman on tiktok just talked about like what a shitty date she had someone replied oh is it west elm caleb and then it started off like a chain of videos about this guy who worked at west elm and was

dating multiple women at the same time and sent a unsolicited nude to someone he was dating which doesn't seem that weird for a dating he sent he sent a dick chair picture he he did yeah and a dick chair and uh now the people who he did go on dates with have all said guys can you please stop um trying to figure out who this is but at that point it had been too late and tiktok had doxed him and good job everybody yeah yeah so it was but no but why why are we talking about

Alex everyone knows who West Elm Caleb is

Merlinyou've mentioned it at least three I believe four times which leads me to believe you're thinking about it talking about it you've when you're not sure what to say and you pause for a second you then mention West Elm Caleb so I'm guessing it's on your mind

AlexI mean there are a lot of things on my mind

Merlinno because you get a different internet than I do and this is the kind of thing you zoom in

Alexon well what internet do you get what do you see on the internet that I don't know it makes you excited What are you most excited about on the internet right now?

MerlinRight now? Well, I mean, so to be slightly adolescent about this, because I believe adolescents mainly define themselves by what they're not. I don't look at a lot of, like, my lady friend knows a lot more than me about who's married to whom. Or, importantly, is no longer married to whom and why. Because she looks at things like the people of the magazine. So I'm not super aware of stuff like that. The most lurid thing I run across is usually whatever bullshit and wordle nonsense is on Twitter or what's in Google News.

It's because I do look at Google News. And then sometimes, like I say, I watch cable news. But I avoid a lot of things on the Internet by design. Not because I'm an ostrich man, but just because I think you are what you eat. And so there's a lot of stuff where I'm like, I know that this is, it's like me eating Popeye's. Like I love the taste of Popeye's, but it makes me feel really bad. So as much as I want to eat Popeye's or feel like Popeye's would make me happy, I'm now wise enough to know that no, actually that's something I do not call this.

Like you're not allowed to have certain kinds of foods because you want them, but that is not in proportion to how it will actually make you feel. And the point of food is to give you energy to have a life. so while I'm pissing from the high ground I'm just saying like I now that I've turned down my Twitter usage a little bit it just very naturally has resulted in oh my goodness what is that and I'm not trying to be like I don't own a TV guy but like there's just so much stuff where I'm like

oh my god you all seem so okay with how sad you are all the time you seem so not you but like Twitter, political Twitter You seem so okay with like how much you've given up and you think this shit is real and you're a grown ass person with kids. What are you doing? I'm just not sure what I would want to do differently next week based on knowing about West Elm Caleb. And so I get a red flag on that and it says that's not even fun for me. What's the fun of that? The fun of that is learning about how terrible we all are to strangers in a way that keeps us, keeps the demon dogs at bay.

And that ultimately depresses me. because it doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter to me what other people are doing, especially strangers. And like, I don't know. These are not pro wrestling characters. You're really fucking up somebody's life. Even every time you say their name, you're like, you're keeping alive this whole idea. Like everybody's screeched now.

AlexThat's why I don't want to talk about West Elm Caleb because all of the internet knows about this man. And I'm good, I think, at not getting Popeyes, specifically the biscuits from Popeyes. So good.

MerlinOh, there's somebody in my house who loves them a biscuit.

AlexOh, they're so good. But the problem is people who love me bring me the Popeyes biscuits. And then it's like, okay.

MerlinWell, you're like Walter Hudson. You're like Uncle Pappy. People come and just bring you food. And that's why you weigh 1,400 pounds.

AlexI don't know this reference, but that's lovely.

MerlinWalter Hudson was a guy who had to be cut out of a doorframe in his house in Brooklyn in 1988.

AlexOh, it was, ah, no, I know that guy.

MerlinHe would braid his hair like his Indian ancestors?

AlexYeah. You know what he had for lunch?

MerlinWhat his family would bring him for lunch? Four Big Macs, four double cheeseburgers, eight large orders of fries, and a quart of Coke.

AlexOh, my stomach hurts just thinking about that. Oh, dear.

MerlinAnd then Dick Gregory got him on one of those powders.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnd he took it off for a while. Now, when I was a kid, the heaviest man was always Robert Earl Hughes, who weighed 1,069 pounds and was buried in a casket the size of a grand piano. I love Popeyes, but it doesn't make me happy.

AlexNo, I don't want people to bring me Popeyes, but it just happens. You don't be rude. I love, no, I'm fine with that. But now I know about the thing. Now I know about the poor fat guy who had to be cut out of his house. And I don't like that was scrubbed clean of my mind a long, long time ago.

MerlinHe used to. He had a sponge on a stick and he would swab inside the folds.

AlexI know that from a Simpsons reference.

MerlinYeah, that's a Simpsons reference, but it's based on Walter Hudson. Anyway, Caleb. Now, West Elm is a store. I've seen their catalog.

AlexAre we talking about this? No. I really like their couches. Oh, everybody, go to Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday so I can get a West Elm couch. They are very, very pretty.

MerlinWest Elm is no, isn't West Elm one of those, like, I remember when I first learned the Rat King of, imagine my hand moving up at three levels. Now my hand's at the lowest level, and then it's going to move up a level, and then it'll move up another level. Okay? Like, I remember when I first learned that there's Old Navy and the Gap, and finally now my hand's moving up another level. Banana Republic. They're owned by the same company, but they're different brands inside the same company with different levels of fanciness, price, clientele.

AlexYeah. And it's all this same stuff.

MerlinIs West Elm? Well, like, which one's like CB? Oh, CB2 is Crate and Barrel, right? Is that right?

AlexYes. That's supposed to be the cool brand for millennials.

MerlinI hate to say hip, but the more like hip.

AlexIt is. Yeah. And it looks like West Elm is owned by William Sonoma, which is like the fancy cooking store, I think.

MerlinYeah, that's my, I have a family member who works at William Sonoma.

AlexIt's lovely. They have walks. That's where I found out what a walk is.

MerlinYeah, but boy, imagine working at William Sonoma and having to tell old white ladies that they have to put a mask on. Over and over and over and over. Can you imagine that?

AlexYes, I think about it every day. Especially now that Cook County has a, officially now has a, you need to show your vaccination card or you cannot eat in this restaurant or shop in this store. Which now means my mom, who's a real, real big idiot, just can't go into Cook County anymore. Which is good. I am glad.

MerlinOh boy. I got a feeling this is all going to get a lot worse before it gets a little better.

AlexOh yeah. No, I still think five years.

MerlinYou know, we're sick of COVID. we're so sick. We're so darn sick of this. I'm sick of this. I've had enough. I'm done brushing my teeth and washing my butt. It's just too much work. I'm done with this.

AlexHow do you deal with news then? Because I don't, I try not to let that stuff in. Like I don't want Bill Maher to be in my head, but he has been.

MerlinWell, I have a very, I have a very admittedly privileged approach to this and admittedly pointy headed. meta approach to this. And on my better days, unsurprisingly, forgive me, this is going to be a flex. I think a good way, one good way to conduct your life, regardless of how much power you have or think you have, is to say, what will I, well, you know, my array, my cascade, right? Like, if you perceive differently, you think differently, you decide differently. And like,

Like there's – anyway, I should write this down. But you know what I mean? Like it's all fuel. Like you fuel your – certainly you fuel your anxieties. Like this is what CBT is about, learning to accept and metabolize the fuel of life differently and more assertively, right? Isn't that kind of a point of CBT or your dialectical thing? is like, okay, I have a minute here where I get to be the conductor who decides what that outside stimulus means in terms of my life for a minute, right? Am I going to be mad? Am I going to be sad?

Seven dwarfs of bad emotions. Like, Alex didn't say hi to me, so therefore I am despised, right? That CBT is going like, hang on, tiger. Is that really true? Well, I think that's another way of saying, how does the food of information get metabolized in my life? Like in my case, I have sometimes fairly extreme anxiety. And like I say in my document, sometimes it feels like the only way to feel a sense of evenness or relaxation is to think you have all the information and all the

information is up to date, which is a fool's errand because you quickly realize the more you know, the more you don't know. And so when, is this making sense? So in the same way that because I'm sad, I'm going to eat Popeye's is not a good approach to that particular fuel. Getting more information about something that causes me anxiety is, well, that's basically Popeye's, you know, for your brain or your soul, Popeye's for the human soul and the teen soul and the Catholic

soul and the pederast soul. Um, but so privileged, it's not privileged. Is that the right word? It's definitely fancy is like, okay, well if I take in, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in such a good mood today. I think I'll treat myself to a 12 pack of, uh, uh, Popeye's spicy white meat, two sides, large Dr. Pepper, get the whole nine. Um, like, and does that mean that if I bought 24 of those pieces of chicken, I'd feel even better. No, quite the contrary. Like if I bought one piece of chicken,

I wouldn't feel that good, let alone four, eight, 12, 24. But the lesson didn't change. The lesson is still the same, which is, hey kid, you could eat Popeyes whenever you wanted when you were 19, but you're not 19 anymore. And you need to learn that eating Popeyes not only doesn't make you feel good, it actively makes you feel bad and has a harmful impact on your life, right? So moving away from the metaphor or the analogy, I think what you put in your head has an impact. And

I think that in a very, I know this sounds a little bit weird, but like, so what I perceive, what I, you know, what I, what I see affects my cognition. My cognition affects my thinking. And if you like rumination, my thinking affects my decision-making. Each one feeds the other, but they all have to start with what came in the brain part. So like however the machinery of my mind is, I can tell you that there are some things that are wholesome foods and other things that are not wholesome foods.

And that when I have the unwholesome foods, it would be very rare for that to make the body electric better. so i don't watch snuff videos um i generally good lord well let's start it let's okay pick another one like yeah is west dome caleb helping right now no no so okay but you see do you take my point which is like and this is why i say it's fancy but because this is the year of the

of the chicken problem, I feel very confident saying like, I, I, I think it is extremely cool to have less than no opinion about something. And that means that even if you know about something, it's really okay to not have an opinion about it. There's so much shit you do not need to have an opinion about if you're a fucking adult. Uh, and if you're surrounded by people who think you need to have an opinion about everything, uh, you will eventually develop an opinion about everything. But now guess what? You're keeping company with a pretty shit bunch of people and you feed each other the equivalent of Popeyes all day long and then talk about how funny and sad it is that you eat Popeyes all day long. I want to avoid that. And I'm not trying to become a monk. I'm not trying to become any kind of like an ascetic or an artist in a garret. It's so much simpler than that, which is eating Popeyes doesn't make me happy.

And every time I go and I peek in on this world of information that's so imperative that I keep up with, if I'm in the right state of mind, I say to myself, what will I do differently today, like this evening, tomorrow, next week? What will I need to think about doing differently based on this new information? and if that's a non-wholesome fire hose of excrement basically i sometimes i'm fancy enough

to go i'm good just gonna check out on that like i'm not even mad i'm not mad i'm not it only comes up when it comes up but the truth is like i cannot have a unintentionally substantive part of my diet be excrement because as funny as it is to talk about how silly it is to eat excrement all day That's what a lot of folks are doing, and it's not making them happy.

So that's what I think about that. And that's why for me, and again, I'll fall back on the chicken problem. I'll fall back on the fancy position, which is like, gosh, I hope everybody else out there develops the ability to get a little fancy too and to go like, you know, maybe excrement will be a cheap food for me, and I'll only have it once a month with good friends. But I don't need to feel guilty about stepping away from the excrement trough in order to conduct my life in a way that makes me feel whole.

AlexThat is where I'm at. And to the point, I think I would love to become a monk. And I'm in the position of, yes, privilege. And I think that you should use your privilege if you have it. Like right now, the only way I am, well, I'm trying to only interact with the internet.

MerlinJust that privilege has become like the draw four card. Like you just hurl the draw four card at somebody. You go, privileged, and you're like, okay, I'll be quiet. Sorry.

AlexWell, I... Stupid turn. See, that's... I don't even know. Are you referencing the meme or the TikTok?

MerlinI'm referring to the card game Uno. Uno is the only good game.

AlexI wish I were to prefer Uno. The only way I'm interacting with the internet mostly is through RSS. And the...

MerlinThat's manifestly untrue.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinAbsolutely. Right now it is true. What? Maybe maybe this hour. What are you talking about? Don't make me pull up your Twitter. I'll do it.

AlexWell, okay. That's what I'm trying to mostly interact with the internet solely through RSS. And I've been slowly realizing that there are people who like eating excrement all the time that are very, very close to me. And that's where it becomes an issue. And cutting out those people slowly and deliberately is difficult.

You know, it's like moving away from a neighborhood that only has Popeyes and you're surrounded by the people eating shit. And they didn't always eat shit. They used to be a nice human.

MerlinOr like think about living in Flint or the equivalent. Like if you're living somewhere, Syracuse got that joke from Penny Arcade. Did you eat a lot of lead paint as a kid? And the other guy goes, you mean wall candy? Like, if you're somewhere where you're surrounded by lead pipes and pollution, the sort of like, you know, Marvin Gaye 1970 version of America when the ecology movement picked up. Like, it's not that fun to, like, be around pollution all day. And, like, maybe one nice thing about privilege is that you don't have to choose to go sit in the pollution for eight hours a day.

Talk about privilege. That's a good kind of privilege.

AlexYeah. Almost everybody I interact with on a daily basis is sad and angry the majority of the time.

MerlinRight.

AlexAnd they, well, or at least that's literally what they tell me.

MerlinBecause nobody, there's nobody in America who feels more in control of their lives than they did five years ago.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd the less control you have over your life, understandably, the more frustrated and, let's say, angry you get. If you don't have control over your life, it sucks. But there's not anybody in America who feels like they have more control than they used to. And it's really, that's not a criticism. It's just, it's true. I mean, even setting aside the pandemic, like all of that stuff, there's nobody. Like the thumbs and the chuds feel like they have less power. Fucking Mitch McConnell feels like he has less power.

Like everybody's, oddly enough, Chuck Schumer feels like he has less power. Like everybody feels like they have less power and aren't sure what to do about it. And then that leads to lots of different things, you know?

AlexAnd you know me. I am Archduke Agency. And I like that. And I like my RSS.

MerlinIt was your assassination that began the last world war. Sarajevo, baby. It's not just a river in Egypt.

AlexWhat? Okay.

MerlinI'm trying to keep it light. I got heavy and I didn't mean to.

AlexNo. Well, it's, I'm going to pathologize you because I think you're in a mood today. And I don't know what it is. And I'm trying to figure it out.

MerlinNo, Alex. I just, sometimes you talk to me and you get access to a different slice of the pie.

AlexNo, and I don't want it. I do not want that pie. And as you start distancing yourself from the pie, you realize just how lonely it is.

MerlinAre you talking about the pie or the trough or the Popeyes?

AlexI've lost the metaphor. Is the pie the sad part?

MerlinNo, I'm trying to say, like, you seem to keep finding these new alcoves to my personality, and I'm just trying to tell you, like, no, this is how I am.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinSome days I'm a little more silly than others. And then sometimes you start talking about West Elm Caleb for five times, and I feel like I want to say, you know, it's okay. Maybe just have a bite of chicken a couple times a month.

AlexOh, no. I don't want anything.

MerlinOr get a food tube from Cinco.

AlexGod damn it.

MerlinI've got a beautiful set of chompers.

AlexOh.

MerlinMe hungry.

AlexChallenge.

MerlinIn my tummy.

AlexIn my tummy. Okay, we've got to. Pizza, pizza. Keep it pretty tight. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge.

MerlinChallenge. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge. Challenge.

AlexChallenge. This week's – oh, God. Oh, I haven't even opened the dock. Wait. Yes, I have. This week's challenge was to identify repeating tasks.

MerlinYeah. The challenge is mine. And the idea was – well, it's kind of – I backed into this one because it was something I'd already been doing. And so just real quick before we get to our – and again, like as I said in the after show last week, it's not just like, hey, here's tasks I should do on a regular basis. I would love for you to talk about if you learned anything about yourself from doing this. I'd love to hear about that. Because I learn a lot about myself when I do things like this. The idea is there's certain kinds of things we know we need to do on a regular basis. A classic

example. For example, boy, I hope this is never one of those things they change because it's going to screw me up so much. It's like when they change Daylight Savings Time and then Celebrated Summer by Husker Du didn't make sense anymore. You know that song?

AlexNo. Love and Hate.

Merlinin the air like pollen from a flower. Somewhere in April time they had another hour.

AlexOh yeah, there we go.

MerlinDaylight savings time? Daylight saving time. Whenever you change your clocks,

Alexchange the 9-volt battery in your smoke alarm.

MerlinNow, there's probably a turns out there. There's probably a Shankar Vedanya about how every single part of that's a bad idea. What am I on? But the point is, that's a great heuristic. Now you don't need to remember that every six months you should check and just change your smoke alarm battery. We know we should do that. We know we have to pay the rent once a month. We know that we brush our teeth before bed. There's a bunch of stuff where we've already got, we've come up with a sense of when things must be done. The idea here that springs out of something I was already doing,

which is, huh, start noticing things that you would like to do more often. Potential, or you'd like to do, sorry, on a repeating basis. The part about this, the first part that's interesting is once you start thinking about that, now, yes, that could be for the purpose of scheduling those things. I'm not even that interested in that. I'm more interested in, like, what do you learn about how you want to live when you figure out what you should be doing, what you should be committing to doing on a regular

basis. Do you get the reframe?

AlexMm-hmm. Yeah. Does that make sense?

MerlinLike instead of saying like, and this is why I do joke about this. I, you know, this is again, a joke from the wisdom document. Like the other night, my wife says, oh, I have to take out the laundry. And I said, no, you don't have to do anything but die. And it's interesting in life when you realize that you don't have to do anything but die, really. And instead, what if you said, I choose to brush my teeth because that's who I want to be. Or in my case, I choose to remember that I need to clean the filter on my dehumidifier because that means it'll dehumidify, it'll make me happy.

And you know what? I won't have demon dogs wondering if there's a thing I forgot to do. I think there's a lot of handles on this suitcase. The challenge this week, identify tasks that you would like to do on a repeating basis.

AlexDid it make sense? Yeah. No, it did. It did. And I got a sense, actually, that I have most of my repeating tasks set up pretty well.

MerlinYou didn't discover new ones as you looked for new ones?

AlexNo, no, I did. No, no, I did. And most of them were the sort of thing of just boring ass administrative tasks. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the ones that if they, like, tax stuff, like if they don't happen, it gets real bad.

MerlinOr it could be sort of like stock and flow things. Would it be things like, like in my case, I like to make sure like, and God, if there's anything that's just really just print this on my forehead, remember to remember. If I learn that in Latin, maybe it'll sound smart. Remember to remember, right? And so there's a million examples of that. Well, obviously the remember to remember that you do need toilet paper. Remember to remember you will not always have toilet paper. Remember to remember that the times you remember to remember toilet paper are not the times when you're usually at a store. remember to remember memento mori memento or something uh but i found i found it so interesting

how one of these provokes another where again something like once you it's you know once you open your mind to this i would go like oh oh check in every like once and i haven't got a repeating number for this yet but like how often do you remember to open eve or similar and see which smart devices need to be recharged right now. Like answer for me, whenever I'm there for something else, right? You know what I'm saying? Like that's the kind of thing where like,

I would never think to do that. Now what, do I need to sweat that? No, that's the point. The point is if you remember to remember, you won't have to forget that you forgot.

AlexWhenever I do this, it kind of feels like falling up the stairs. Like it feels like it doesn't make sense.

MerlinYeah, when it feels like a super, it feels like a superpower.

AlexYeah, yeah. Kind of. And, no, totally. And there are so many, I guess, fiddly things that we complain about in terms of smart homes and...

MerlinMe? I do that? Me?

AlexNo, no.

MerlinNo, I do, I do. I'm full-time bitching.

AlexIt's amazing that I never need to worry whether or not I turned out all the lights in the apartment. Yeah, it is. I mean, like I have a repeating task every six months to check all the pipes, check the smoke alarm, check the carbon dioxide thing. and it's really great.

I don't know.

MerlinWell, I've known for a long time. Let me take it to this. This is the kind of thing that very much started occurring to me in the days of my productivity website, but absolutely became, as Max would say, operationalized when OmniFocus got good. Because when OmniFocus got good, it did things I'd never seen anything else do so powerfully and yet so lightly. For example, and I don't want to go too in the weeds here, but there's so much that was to me original and perhaps unique about OmniFocus that included things like start dates, due dates, patterns of repeating.

Like so you could just say do this every Monday. You could say do this, start making this something I could do six months after I completed it originally. Like, I don't go in the weeds, but do you remember how powerful that idea was?

AlexIt was a game changer.

MerlinThat, like, when this thing starts versus when this thing is due, you know, brain exploding emoji. Like, I could start doing this. I can't start doing this until this given date that is completely separate from when this thing is due. That's a very new idea to have an app that could help you identify, like, I can't start doing this because this is currently a waste. waiting on task in a project because a part that I need has not arrived to do this thing. So as much as I want to do this right now, very GTD, I can't start doing this until this part

arrives, which means, guess what? In my system and David Allen's system, that means I don't have to think about this. I don't have to think about this for another week. When I do a weekly review, I will notice that this is still a waiting on. Did it arrive? Nope. Hasn't arrived. Okay. What are you going to do? Nothing. It's not critical. Let it go. Okay. Another week goes by. What do going to do about it? Well, it's kind of weird that it hasn't arrived yet. I'm going to change that task from a waiting on to a specific contact, the parts supplier about this part. But in any case, no matter how much I will it into being, like David Allen says, or me, probably David Allen,

I can't mow my lawn when I'm on a plane flight. So why would I let that stress me out? If I can't start this project until this date, why would I want to think about it? Unless I need to think about it. And then if I need to think about it, then that becomes a different task. This all obviously goes back to GTD, but that was such a powerful idea. So for example, uh, uh, getting a haircut. Conventional wisdom is most men anyway get their haircut every six weeks. Well, okay. What does that mean? Well, it means, um, I just got my haircut and then six weeks. Okay. Well,

if you don't get your haircut exactly six weeks after, does that mean you can never get it cut again no okay so it's not really a due date oh true so like i wouldn't want to get my hair cut the day after i got it cut but by the same token i don't have to get it cut do you follow what i'm saying that's a powerful idea of like don't even like concern me about this until five weeks have passed and don't bug me about it till eight weeks have passed like that's such a powerful idea and

And I think that unlocked a lot of what leads to things like this for me, which is like, okay, like if I can put this on autopilot and it's something I don't need to think about, that's great. But the process of dredging yourself through this, making yourself go through the like what, you know, what needs to be done in my life part is I think it's a powerful – it teaches you things about how you might want to live and then what you want to worry about and what you don't want to worry about.

Alexwhat kind of clicked again for me is I don't even want to think about what I don't need to think about right now a thousand percent and that's what I used to say about as you know it's only

Merlinfairly recently that I've kind of stopped using OmniFocus please make the joke go ahead

Alexwhat's the joke I thought you loved OmniFocus you don't I thought you loved I don't have you

Merlintried TikTok no no no but like but but like up until all through that and and the thing I would always say, which was true, is like, I just put it in different places now, is I never want to have to think about watering a plant again, let alone worry about whether I've captured the watering of plants. That's a crazy way to live. If you don't have that affliction, hakuna matata. But if you're like me, it sometimes feels like you haven't squozen all the anxiety out until it's all on a page in an external system.

And that's what you're talking about, right? Get it into an external system where it's not on me to be an alarm clock or a whiteboard.

AlexI, yeah, exactly. Because the more you can look at, the less serendipity you have. Well, by you, I mean me. And less, it felt as if there were fewer and fewer things that were coming into my life that were, oh, oh no. Oh, dear. Oh, Zoom quit.

MerlinI've lost Alex hopefully Alex will be back oh wait me total crash standby okay I'm gonna you know I'm not gonna talk because I've talked enough I'm gonna stop thus endeth part one hello hey buddy I lost you after the word serendipity.

AlexOh, no. As I was going through all of this, I realized the fewer tasks I have just on repeat, the less I'm able to have serendipity in my day. So whenever I'm doing...

MerlinWhich relates to the trauma book. Yeah. Because, you know, right? I mean, you're living in the past, you're living in the future.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinIf your attention is split on things, I'm sorry to keep quoting myself, kind of, but not really. It's difficult to be in the moment if your attention is divided about things you're not doing. Spending a lot of time thinking about what you're not doing right now, if you're feeling bad about, well, let me make it worse. if you're feeling, in my case, anxious about what I'm not sure I'm not doing.

Like if I'm not doing it, I want to know I'm not doing it. You know what I mean?

AlexNo. What do you mean by that?

MerlinLike a waiting on task in GTD. That's a wait off because you go like, oh, I don't need to be thinking about this until this time.

AlexRight. And that's why I don't even want to see it in a to-do list, which is where the contacts stand or whatever. It's called this week.

MerlinWell, a starting date. Starting date is so powerful.

AlexYeah. And I don't know. I just went through my list of lists.

MerlinYeah. I put that in. I have several things to talk to you about just on the time. I'm sorry. Hello, para-pals. We had a tech problem. And so I wrote down some various things. I learned there's a new Pedro the Lion album I didn't know about.

AlexIt's negative 15 here. Oh, boy.

MerlinAnd I wanted to ask you about your list of lists. I'm very curious about that. That's a lot of characters. We can talk about it in the after show.

AlexOh, yeah. After show. We'll talk about my, like, how many words did I write this morning? Like 10,000? I don't know. Well, that's the thing. You can't.

MerlinYou wrote 10,000 words this morning?

AlexOh, yeah. They're not good words.

MerlinFrom scratch?

AlexYeah. What's wrong with that?

Merlin10,000 words is so many words to write in a day. 5,000 words is like amongst the best days I've ever had.

AlexWell, again, they're not good words. And the only reason I'm good at being able to puke all of that out is because of doing NaNoWriMo for so many years. And I mean, this is very much from Stephen King and Anne Lamont.

MerlinWow, weird flex. I'm very envious.

AlexNo, again.

MerlinI have 5,000 words in my total fucking document at this point, and it feels like it should be so much more.

AlexBut again, this is very Anne Lamont's shitty first draft.

MerlinShitty first draft. Yes, I was just thinking that.

AlexAnd that's the only way I can think is if I am living in that moment. And to live in a moment, I just need to get everything out.

MerlinYou have to be able to unhook from all the stuff you're not doing.

AlexYeah, and I am not very good at it, but I am getting better.

MerlinIt's like meditation, man. Being bad at it is the point. It's the keeping doing it that matters.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou know, a friend of the show, John Dickerson, who shares my interest. Well, he's probably not as embarrassed about it as I am, but I think he enjoys things like that, you know, books about writing, things about writing. And he linked the other – I'll find it for notes. You link to a post on that one site, Brain Pickings or whatever.

AlexBrain Pickings? Is that what it's called? I'll find it for notes. I don't know.

MerlinIt's a list of all these really good books about writing. And yeah, I actually responded to him. I was like, man, that's a really good list. You know, stuff like Bird by Bird. I don't know if Writing Down the Bones is in there. On Writing by Stephen King is in there. A lot of the really good ones.

AlexOh, oh, I just read this. I forgot. Hold on. Fuck, where'd it go? Oh, Life Isn't a Support System for Art, It's the Other Way Around, which is page 101 from Stephen King's On Writing. And I was like, oh, fuck, man.

MerlinOh, that book is so good. It plays tricks on you. You're like, how is this a book about writing? Why is he talking about a bumblebee hive? Like, that's weird.

AlexOh, I got hit by a car.

MerlinHit by a car. He's back there. He went into town to get some of the Maz's bars. Remember? he went in with the dog wanted to get back into the cooler with the meat

Alexoh yeah oh god it's an amazing chapter

Merlinfucking amazing like that whole book is so god damn good then Stephen King is taking a walk is hit by a pickup truck his glasses shatter his legs shatter it's such a sad and amazing story but then when he talks about like Tabby setting him up a place where he can sit and type with his broken legs and you're like oh fucking Stephen King 5,000 words man that's nothing for that guy

Alexyeah that has stuck with me since high school of just I don't know

Merlinbecause that's what he does you don't even want to say is it a job yeah it's a job but it's like no it's just who I am I'm a person who writes a lot and boy I'm not that person so I really admire it when I see people who figured out how to do it

AlexI mean, the thing is, there's no figuring it out. It's just doing it and doing it over and over again.

MerlinThat's why I say that about meditation. I used to think I was bad at meditation and therefore shouldn't be meditating. And it took me so many tries and getting back on the meditation horse title to make me realize that that's the point. The point is being bad and doing it anyway. It's like life. Let's wrap this up and then get to other things.

The thing I want to get out of this that I'm champing at the bit to say is that saying to myself that the challenge this week is to discover things that are tasks I want to do on a repeating basis. I mean, to me, yeah, that's kind of interesting. I started this list. Look, God, of all things on January 1st, where I realized, for example, like there's stuff where I'm like, oh, there's a bunch of stuff I could easily dump out of like I've got an ice machine.

of my office where you have to manually refill the water hopper. I want to do, I want to remember to do that every day because then that makes ice. And then as soon as I think that, I think, hmm, do I want to do that in the morning? Do I want to do that at night? Like, whereas a moment ago, it hadn't occurred to me that is an official repeating task. As soon as I realized it should be an official repeating task, even if, like I say, even if it's not like scheduled, but like at least the first, one of the earlier steps, a previous step to like getting good at this

is writing it down. An earlier step before writing it down is realizing that it exists. And then, you know, once you realize it exists, you're in this fun liminal space where you're like, hmm, does this make me think of other things? Like I want to empty the, again, fill the water for the ice machine. This is all very mundane, but forgive me. I want to empty the water in the dehumidifier, whether it needs it or not. Fridays, I know that on Fridays, I like to clean my office. It centers me, gives me a nice feeling of like, here's something I know how to do.

It makes me happy and improves my environment. And it provides a nice, you know, admittedly dashed line between like the working week and the less working weekend that is valuable to me. and then I go, oh, oh, oh, shit. I always have to be reminded by my Mac that my keyboard or touchpad is out of battery. Well, should that be a repeating thing? It's like, yeah, you can charge it whether it needs it or not. Modern batteries are cool.

So do I want to do that? How often? Yes, I want to do it every week. What's a good day to do that? How about when I leave the, like I'm usually in the office a little bit on Saturday and Sunday doing whatever. Hey, you know, when I go home on Sunday, that would be a good time to remind myself to plug in my keyboard, my touchpad, right?

Like that's so small, but it's really cool. Like I have a bunch of aliases in a folder.

AlexIt's not so small though, because every time you think about that.

MerlinIt feels slight, but it's, it is, you know, every dollar is made of dimes. Like life is made out of little shit and getting better at the little shit is, is a nice precursor to getting less terrible at the big shit. The big shit. I have a folder full of aliases that, why can I never remember this, that Bunch opens for me when I do my end podcast workflow. Sorry. There's a really cool app by Brett Terpstra called Bunch

that can, it's like you put a bunch of stuff in a text file that you want to do at certain times or certain occasions. So when I start a podcast, I want you to open Skype. I want you to open Audio Hijack. I want you to turn on Do Not Disturb. I want you to super quit Dropbox, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I want you to shut off my movie stealing machine because that's going to take up bandwidth. And then when I'm done recording, I want you to turn off Do Not Disturb. I want you to turn on the movie stealing machine. And I want you to open a folder full of aliases called Post Podcast.

And so like right now, I don't know if you – do you do something like this? How do you remember to put your files on Dropbox for an editor? You just remember mostly?

AlexNo. I mean, I do most – I remember, but it's part of the checklist.

MerlinI think I remember mostly until every other Tuesday when Jim Metzendorf says, I don't think I got your files. And I go, ooh. So I've got one called Rectifs, one called Back to Work, one called Dubai Friday. I still have the California King one in there. And so that folder of aliases opens and I then do what we do. And you know what? This is another thing. I would like to talk to you about a shortcut or similar for generating folder hierarchies.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinWouldn't that be handy? Like, for example, I've noticed you do this thing that is a little odd to me, is you put all your files in the root, the Alex's audio file, and then you later put it into, at that point, usually I've made a folder for that episode and you put it in. I want one that'll create name of episode or sorry, episode. It'll say E, what's today? Two something, 260 or whatever. It'll say E260 and the date. Inside of that, I want one called Merlin's Audio. Inside of that,

I want main show after show. I now, as you know, create a folder called Media where I put anything that could be a good image for it or YouTube downloads for Quinn or whatever. Don't tell me. Save it for the show. But do you have a way that we could generate stuff like that out of, say, a shortcut or a Hazel?

AlexNot be a shortcut. I have a Hazel rule. And that just is triggered when I turn Dropbox back on. So the cold air, I would like to think, shut off Zoom.

MerlinYour three degrees Fahrenheit?

Alexyikes oh it's been a day um but yeah so it's set to go to the root folder because if uh i would get errors in case the um i get it i get it i get it that makes sense so i need to figure out yeah you're right like i would need to figure out how uh like look for a folder with the current date

Merlinor something okay but to that point though here's one that i am not proud of because it requires manual effort that I could probably automate. But nevertheless, I go through and on an irregular basis, I remember to go through folders that tend to get big and hit selective sync, change things to online only in Dropbox, right? Because that really accumulates for all these shows.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinEspecially if you feel like with Adam, like the assets for the whole episode could be in there. and so i've made so i realized that needs to be a weekly thing it doesn't need to be more than a week and it probably shouldn't be every month it doesn't need to be every day but once a week or so i should go in through all of my folders that tend to get big and do a selective sync right to like update that stuff um that goes in there and then just so much dumb shit in here like clean my Roomba like once a month,

clean my ice machine once a month, which is, as we say in the parlance, a whole thing because it takes like a couple hours to really clean the ice machine. But it's nice for it to be clean. But then what's interesting also is I have all these ones now. The most interesting one is I have a daily, weekly, monthly, annually. So monthly, an example of monthly might be once a month, break down cardboard boxes, cut it, break them down, make them into a block of box and put it out on the curb to be collected. All right? Weekly, mop the office bathroom floor

because it makes me happy. Daily, remember to take your nasal court. Squirt, squirt. Because I always forget. But then the most interesting one, Alex, is the one at the top, which is currently called Unknown. Which is like I haven't decided how often these need to happen, but I know they need to happen some often, some kind of often.

AlexMm hmm. Yeah, I have like a run X list, much like that of like, I have a what was the Oh, dry, don't don't repeat yourself. When I find myself repeating a thing. I'm like, Okay, why am I repeating this? And how do I make it stop? And that is something I look at fortnightly.

MerlinRight, right. I've got one called mosquito tasks. I've got one called to-dos. And then if it gets specific enough, it'll become like its own run X of to-dos and mosquito tasks. Like here's all this, now that I'm balls deep in GitHub and Visual Studio Code, like here's a bunch of stuff I want to, you know, do with that or learn about that or fix about that. And I don't need to do anything about it now, but I will later. dust off my desk, clean off my desk, make my desk happy.

Do you air out your, first of all, so you have some Eve things, right?

AlexMm-hmm. Yeah.

MerlinSo do you have an Eve room?

AlexNo.

MerlinOr an aware? Do you have any sensors that detect air quality, humidity, and temperature?

AlexNo, I should, though.

MerlinWell, I don't know if this is strictly, essentially necessary, But in the past, when those have not seemed accurate, I've noticed a pattern where it's – this is really – so this is only for you. Shh.

AlexNobody else listen to this because it's really weird.

MerlinI first ran into this with Canary and have since run into it with other ones, which is – it's a good idea. Anything, especially air quality, but including temperature and humidity. It's a good idea, if the day is fair, it's a good idea to, every once in a while, take all of your air quality, temperature, humidity things and put them outside on a nice day. In my case, I kind of put them in the sun and where the air is moving.

And what's crazy is I've shown this by doing before and after photos. um so like i'll take evare the aware you know like a standard like amazon.com um you know humidity and the ones you've seen me have the humidity and temperature ones and when i put them out in the sun i'll take a photo and of course the photo has a timestamp and then i'll come back two hours later take another photo and then i bring them inside where they where the funniest thing happens they they get better they get better they get more the same let's put it

that way. The taking them outside, you see a difference. It's when you bring them back in and they reacclimate, it kind of forces them to, I'm probably, this is not technically correct, probably, but it kind of forces them to recalibrate. Oh, interesting. I could do that once a year, but I like to do it more often. I haven't decided how often yet, but it's not difficult to do. I just stick them in a lid of a box and put them outside, you know, but stuff like that, like that makes me happy you know but in the corollary for so many of these i feel like is if you get we

we have fun and max used to like to to joke about you know mike curly and all of his reminders for reminders but i do think that there is a point where you can overwhelm yourself with this it's a compost in the crisper problem where if you have too many repeating things that you're just ticking off or deleting without doing them that's a sign that you might need fewer of those or better of those because do you ever find yourself getting overwhelmed with too much you know reminding yeah

Alexand that becomes another sort of form of stress yourself thing well i mean and one of that's why during my weekly reviews i can see oh i did not complete that i deleted that so why did i delete it and then i realized i either don't need to do it or i need to change the way I'm doing it.

MerlinI discovered the smart, I was so smart when I figured this out. I still think this is one of the smartest things I ever figured out. Back in the days when I cared about my music, I used to be very into iTunes playlists and in particular smart playlists. And I mean, not everybody's a John Siracusa. Not everybody has reviewed in a meaningful way every song that they have or every album that they have. but if you've even done a little of that that's pretty cool like how much how do i know which

songs i really like two easy ones when you're using a smart playlist hey uh did this song less useful as did this album get five stars is that does this song get five stars that's useful you know what's more useful is how many plays has this had so for me for years uh with an asterisk it was Everlong by Foo Fighters. And so far, Story Checks out. It's a five-star song, and I've listened to it over 200 times.

But guess what is also on that list? You've Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story, or The Dryer Sound, or Harry Potter, Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 3. In each of those instances, well, my kid and I used to listen to Toy Story a lot. The Dryer Sound would help my baby sleep, so of course it played on repeat on an iPod Tiny. and then to go to sleep when she was a little older, she would always listen to Prisoner of Azkaban. Just look at the state of his robes. I would listen to Jim Dale's wonderful Prisoner of Azkaban.

Okay, so now I'm running into a little bit of a problem. So does five stars or four stars, is that meaningful? Kind of. But unless I've rated a lot of songs, it's difficult to know. Okay, well, then let's go to repetitions. Like how many times have you listened to this? yeah, you've got a friend of me, you know, some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am. Like, it's a really good song, but that's kind of not exactly my thing. You know what is one of the best, with a little bit of help in a smart playlist?

It took me years to realize this even existed as something to, you know, make a list out of, a program against, if you like. Skip count. Are you aware of skip count?

AlexOh, yes. and I utilized it a lot.

MerlinOkay. Now you take a song like something like, well, I was going to say Godspeed you Black Emperor, but I do listen to that a lot. There could be, let's take, okay, here you go. Almost every album that I love, love, love, love, love has one song on it that I either don't particularly like or actually actively hate. Like Odyssey and Oracle by the Zombies is one of the great albums, but it does have this one very strange song on it that's about world war one called like the

butcher's tale or something like that and i always skip it or worse there's like an intermission track oh my god like on like wu-tang fine i can handle the skits on wu-tang because they're very funny um but like there's a lot of hip-hop records where like i just want to skip everything that's a skit i mean i know that's part of the experience but like i just want to hear i love it when you call me Big Papa. Like, I don't want the whole thing. I don't want... So then what do you do? Skip count fucking rules. How about this for a playlist? Show me a list of all of my music

that includes everything... Let me do it this way. It's all of my music that... All of my audio files that are not spoken word, children's music, or soundtrack. Any of those. You come up with your own array, but make an array of all the stuff that's like, no, no, I'm probably not going to want to hear the dryer sound. I'm probably not going to want to listen to rainfall. That would go somewhere else, right? Oh, that's pretty good. Okay, so now I've got to listen to a bunch of songs.

How do you sort them? I'm going to sort them by, you can do it by star rating. You could do it by play count. But the secret sauce in all of that is skip count. And skip count is iTunes noticing when you change, you didn't listen to the whole track, essentially. Like, you started to listen to this, and then you listened to something else. Like, talk about personal quantization. Like, you think that's a five-star song? Okay, well, then why is the skip count 38?

You think you like this. You think you like this. You think this is five stars. Then why are there so many skips? Well, at the very least, that tells you this is something that oughtn't belong on this list. You might just uncheck that one. But that's what you're talking about, right? When you can go into OmniFocus and if you go into one of those firehose archive views, you could see, oh, my God, there's so many repetitions of this. There's been so many times that I – and aren't there ways using, like, perspectives to go and say show me things that – aren't there ways to find your bad habits in OmniFocus with perspectives?

Like how often did I just tick this thing off or –

AlexYeah, well, and that's why I delete tasks is because you can see what you deleted. I should, this is on my list of things to do, is I have like a, so show me things that I deleted, like repeating tasks that I deleted, not like individual tasks. Because, you know, there are things that are deleted for a reason.

MerlinBut help me identify where this is not what I think it is. Maybe most saliently, help me identify things where this is not as important as I once planned it to be. And like, okay, you want another example? Like, oh, God, it still drives me nuts that Gmail on iPhone will not let me mark something as unread.

AlexReally?

MerlinThat's so odd to me. I know it's not the best habit. But like if I accidentally, I mean, the classic one is I'm checking my morning mail. And yeah, there are some things I'm going to snooze till later because I don't have time to do it now. But there are some things like what I look at just now. Oh, you know what it was? Movies Anywhere occasionally wants you to go back in and like re-authenticate with the different services. And yeah, I do want to do that later. Why can't I just mark that as unread? And yet, wouldn't you love to know if you're somebody who's a little bit on board with the Merlin program?

Wouldn't you like to know if there's an email that you've snoozed or marked as unread more than twice?

AlexMm-hmm. Oh, God.

MerlinBecause, like, are you going to do it next month? Are you just going to keep – are you going to just keep churning through and marking as unread or snoozing? Like, that should teach you something. I feel like. Like at least, okay, so even if you don't choose to make a change or delete a thing, it would be valuable to know basically it's like a procrastination filter. Something that shows you where you keep dealing with this thing without dealing with it.

Like so why are you doing that? Does it make you happy? No, I just suck. I just really don't want to write back to this person because it's going to be a whole thing. And yet I can't let go of it. You know what I mean? I've seen a lot of this stuff, whether it's tasks or emails or anything like that, you can't make yourself care differently. You can choose to act differently, but you can't make yourself care differently. And it's all, it's in the same way that basically it's a skip count.

It's a way of going, well, if this is as important as I claim that it is, how come this keeps happening? That's a teachable moment. You can have some learnings about that.

Alexit's hard to, it's hard to accept, but typically most of the machines in your life know more about

Merlinyou than you know about yourself. But, but yeah. And like, you know, I don't say in a good way, but in an instructive way, you know, like, you know, being able to identify patterns that you're not aware of that to me was one of the, I mean, OmniFocus in my head will always be way in front, at least chronologically. And in terms of functionality, way ahead of other stuff. We're So with some care and some upfront planning, you can have the map and the territory be closer than they used to be. Obviously, the map is not the territory.

But if there is a territory, there ought to be a good map. And that includes things like, I don't know if you remember this, but this is one of my hot tips was like, if I'm visiting somewhere and I know I'll be back. Like there's a comic store in Walnut Creek that I really liked. We go and visit my in-laws when they live in Walnut Creek. and I really liked this and I'd forget to go there. And so I would give myself a geo tagged, only remind me about this when I'm within five miles of the comic book store. That could sit there unlooked at for two years.

Or like when I'm in Philadelphia, remember to go to this thing, right? So in the same way that I don't want to be reminded about a low priority purchase at Walgreens until I'm at this particular Walgreens, I don't need to be thinking about this comic book story unless I'm there. I've got a really dumb reminder to wish my kid happy birthday at the exact moment my kid was born.

AlexOh, that's cute. Oh, that's really good.

MerlinAnd like, I don't have to think about it until it comes up. But I guess what I'm trying to get at is I like things like this because it is on the face of it. I think it's a little bit of a Trojan horse. So in this instance, identifying potential repeating tasks. It's a little bit of a Trojan horse because it forces just enough of a change of POV from almost any angle you choose to look at it, you can't help but learn something about yourself. What you're not doing, what you're not doing as much as you'd like, what you're thinking about too much without doing anything. But like to find the balance

or the secret, the Coca-Cola secret formula between doing the things that you think are valuable, you can't make a decision about something until you know it exists.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinSay something funny.

AlexNo, no. Ding, ding. That's a fine place to ding. You don't need to be funny. There's no, not that there's nothing that's funny about this. But there are.

MerlinThis morning I reinvented prayer.

AlexOh my God.

MerlinI woke up and I had a really good night's sleep. I should show you my sleep has been so weird lately. Just weird and uneven and like, I don't know. I almost posted my auto-sleep circle from Sunday with a Ben Wyatt. Do you think a depressed person make this with 13 hours of sleep on it?

But I woke up this morning, and I kind of made that little noise. I went, ah. Because I really like our bed. I really like our bedding. I like my pillow. It's one area of life where I feel unusually fortunate. We have a Casper bed, doesn't matter. But I like her sheets, I like my pillow, I like it all. And I like the whole experience of being in my bed. And I woke up this morning and I went, ah. And I kind of turned over and I tucked myself in a little bit,

laying on my side, sitting there. And I found myself saying out loud the words, thank you. and it was not to anyone in particular, let alone the Lord, let alone a white guy in a chair who lives in the sky. But I realize, I've heard people say that, isn't it then somebody famous say that? Maybe it might've been in the Annie Lamott book, but the only real prayer in life is thank you. No, no, there's two prayers in life because it's always two things. Usually it's like,

it's your personal I want song, you know? It's your not throwing away my shot song to have a prayer like you know but uh the purest kind of prayer is like ah whoever hears this thank you because i felt good so i think i i think i uh i think i reinvented prayer that's really good say something funny no i don't have the reason you're a squid in the google doc is because uh you are a you're a crypto you're a crypto chimera is there something you prefer to be

who if you could pick your emoji what's your emoji oh i mean on everyone well not everybody

Alexnow i'm a robot in most places or i'm the like non-binary i think it's called a like gender neutral rock star i don't know what it's called where's jeremy neutral rock star hold on they're

Merlina star they waiting in the room Oh god

Show notes

Transcript

273. The Bonus Pile

Show notes

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