276. Unfinished Art

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

MerlinChecking to make sure it's recording. Checking, checking, please say something.

AlexHere, here's my new energy drink. Starbucks is back baby Baya Energy

MerlinI should hire someone to fix this for me Dubai Friday Dubai Friday

AlexIt's a weird Wednesday I don't know This is like a bad morning zoo voice I'm doing How are you Merlin man?

MerlinGood Real good I am learning that Leaves of Grass Was published on July 4th 1855 That's kind of cool July 4th

AlexGod bless America Yeah.

MerlinGod bless Walt Whitman.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. Ask.

AlexWas it by? Was that a coincidence or was, I don't know.

MerlinI think he was probably aware of the importance of the date. I'm just saying at least when I was coming up, he was regarded as a very important American poet and American-wise.

AlexYeah. I mean, fucking Thoreau. Fucking Thoreau. I'm sorry. I don't want to trigger anybody who really likes Thoreau.

MerlinThoreau is basic.

AlexBasic and a hypocrite, which I'm fine with.

MerlinWhat? A Buckridge? What is he?

AlexHypocrite.

MerlinOh, hypocrite lecteur, m'ensemble, mon frere. I read too many poems in college. I read too many poems. Oh, I can misquote Elliot all day. I think it was Walt Whitman that said that. that's almost funny um good afternoon it's so nice to visit with you our wednesdays are getting um how what are they what are our wednesdays getting woolly what does that mean oh woolly like in the

Alexmammoth way i like that word it's cute but in the good way woolly adjective your brain is so

Merlinimportant in my life. It really helps me develop insight. Bless your heart. Wooly, I think is nice because Wooly, I could say it's chaotic. I could say it's like there's increasing numbers of delays because as you know, as a fellow retired project manager,

Alexdelay breeds delay. I haven't been fired yet. Possibly retired manager. You're retired in place. I'm retired from home. I mean, if anybody

Merlinasks. You're not working from home. You're retired from home. I love that.

AlexWell, it's sort of an understood agreement that for Wednesdays, wild, wacky, willy Wednesdays, my employer knows that I will be out from 1130 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. I don't know. No one checks on me.

MerlinWhen you put that as a codicil in your contract, how did you spell grrrr?

AlexI just over recorded a meeting. I just went.

MerlinMake sure you get the right words or your baptism is invalid.

AlexOh, gosh. Can we talk about this briefly?

MerlinWe can talk about anything you hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hello.

AlexI'm sorry. Hello.

MerlinNo, why are you sorry? Why?

AlexGod. Because I don't want to.

MerlinI can't afford your loyalty right now.

AlexAn energy suck or an energy.

MerlinDon't worry. Don't worry about energy. this is all going to take care of itself. I actually feel gratitude for the willingness of this particular day. It's not fun to talk about the show on the show, probably. It's not fun to hear about it, I imagine. But as I'm certain, really this whole episode, except for the stupid challenge, can probably actually be about things that have happened in the last few hours.

Speaker AOh!

MerlinWell, Alexandra, I'm having an Amadeus moment right now. I'm just not sure which Amadeus moment it is. Maybe I'm playing the piano backwards and blindfolded. Maybe I'm chasing Stanzi under a table. Or maybe I'm writing a requiem for a fake ghost. I don't know. But a lot of ideas are coming together. I'm not sure it's wholesome. But examples of things that we think about a lot actually have all become germane this morning. And that's led to, it's leaded to willingness.

AlexYes. And I don't know. You know what? I am going to go with you. This morning slash afternoon has been a gift in reflection.

MerlinOh, I love this. Thank you.

AlexI've been watching a lot of Marianne Williams.

MerlinOh, for a second, I thought you were talking about the New England poet. Oh, this is the lady that you had to get the right kind of bottle of water for?

AlexYes. And I would like to make a public apology on behalf of my attitude.

MerlinAlexander is about to publicly apologize. So everybody, please, please put down your work. I need two eyes up here.

AlexI am breaking my silence.

MerlinOh, you're breaking your silence. I am.

AlexI am breaking my silence.

MerlinAre you quietly announcing your apology?

AlexPersonal news, as they say. Exclude. I have stated many times that I was really annoyed by Marianne Williamson because on her podcast slash live show something that I had to produce.

MerlinShe went to... Can I help with this? She was at an event that you were helping to manage. Is that a good start? Yes. She was scheduled to appear at an event that you were helping. But see, people aren't going to know what you're talking about, Alex. They're going to think you're talking about you heard her on a podcast. I was going to do context. Okay.

AlexOkay. Okay.

MerlinContext costs nothing. 2016. What did this meal cost everything.

Alex2016. Alex is at their office and their boss comes up to them and says, hey, would you like to help run an event for Marianne Williamson?

MerlinYou're going to be the Williamson Wrangler.

AlexOh, luckily, thank God she had a Wrangler. I was just like the Mike Wrangler. But then her Wrangler came to me and said, excuse me, we can't have bottled water on the stage where Marianne Williamson will be. Bad optics, as they say. Yes, yes. And I was like, okay. And so I brought her a jar of water.

MerlinPlease serve me my water in a small black child. This is Rufus, and I love him very much. Log, log, log, log.

AlexIt was an artisily made mason jar? What are those?

MerlinTo be fair, she did not ask for the mason jar. those were in the office but but it's a hipster affectation it totally works yeah i mean it and

Alexthen i kind of had a stick up my butt i was like you could have dropped out if you know that you're gonna support bernie why are you here there's you're just distracting us also you made me get you water in a weird and rude way was she was she known to be a little bit as a less kind person

Merlinwould say a little bit woo wasn't she at this point already kind of known to be a little bit

Alexuh wackadoodle this is post wackadoodle though because she had a very you know oprah crystal phase and now she just kind of talks about progressive politics and good vibes but i don't know i see her little motivational things and i'm like

Merlinwine mom in search of a book club

AlexI haven't.

Well, she just I was like, you know what? If I were to be running for president, especially against a man that I have admired for a long time, his name being Bernie Sanders, you know, maybe I wouldn't have a great day either. And having to worry about the fact that people will make assumptions about me because of what I am drinking on stage, that can't be fun. So I apologize, Marianne Williamson and Marianne Williamson's handler.

I don't think you knew that I had a stick up my butt about that.

MerlinThey couldn't see the stick up your butt owing to your choice of pant that day. But you feel bad in your heart that. and and does how does that evidence for you right now that's not really a verb but when you think about that now is that you feel like do you feel like you get it more because like another way to put that is like oh you find out you agreed to do this panel because you owed somebody a favor like you're gonna do a panel at j random conference because your pal asked you to do it and then you find out like you didn't find out till later like not only like what the

a sensible topic of it was, but maybe like, especially like who else was going to be there.

AlexYeah, no, 100% she didn't know what was going on either.

MerlinAnd then like, as we used to say in the South, you judge the bitter by the sweet. And like, and no, but that talk about context, like a given, when you hear like a given person is going to speak somewhere, you go, oh, that's really cool. I have this particular feeling about that person. But you could really come up with a fun lineup of any given three other people. And that really changes how you might feel about the event and that person.

AlexYeah.

MerlinRight? Yeah. Because you would go like, oh, I'm up here with, I don't know why, I've been watching that Anna Delvey series, which is trash, but good.

AlexNo, it's, okay, I'm sorry.

MerlinOkay, please write this down. Please remind me to talk to you non-publicly about Neff. I love Neff.

AlexOh, Neff. Neff? Oh, Neff, Neff, Neff. Okay.

MerlinYou're familiar with Maria Bamford's one-hour comedy special Merlin. You're familiar with that, right? Yep, Merlin. The John Joed. Yes, for Christmas. Yes, yes. The horseback militia. I'm going to say one sentence, and then we can talk about this another time. I'm too blessed to be stressed.

Ness sounds exactly like the way that Maria Bamford talks to the operator that she calls. Okay? No, you'll never unhear it. Like the character is so great. I just got up to, I don't know how far in your arm. I think, of course it's Netflix. So the entire, the number of episodes in total runtime is about half again, what it needs to be. I'll be finished with an episode. I'll go, Oh boy, this has got to be the second to the last one. It's like, no, there's three more, but I just got to the, have you gotten to the one that's more like Neff centric and with the

background on her and Neff?

AlexYes. And I understand, you know, spoilers for real life. that seems to be the episode that is most accurate to what actually happened.

MerlinRight, because there's a lot of stuff that's like Nora's not real. Like Nora's not even like a Ramana Clay. Like Nora is a made up person. I don't think, I can't believe I Googled this. There's not a single person who lost $400,000 on credit card fraud.

AlexRight.

MerlinRight. But it's representative of a thing. But, oh, that's so interesting. So she really was passing out hundreds like that.

AlexOh, oh, absolutely. Yeah.

MerlinShe's tipping Benji's.

AlexOh, absolutely. And Neff continues to be on her Instagram and they're still buddies.

MerlinShe's certainly a very loyal friend in a way that the girl in the electric sauna, a woman, so sorry, is not. And so we were talking about this and why did I mention it? because oh oh oh poor Anna uh I can never say her name the woman from Veep and My Girl um like who I think is very much based on a real person I love that Manhattan Magazine is styled exactly like the logo for New York Magazine um oh my god and the what are they

what are they called the corner full of people that don't get sunlight all the like retired in place writers that they don't like uh Scriberia Scriberia that's it that's so good um but what I'm saying is like, then on that same episode, spoilers for everything, who cares? It's TV. Shut up. Like when they find out when the guy from, I think the guy from daredevil, isn't that who that guy is? The, her, her editor who like used to be her friend is like, you know, the story is going to come out. Do you want an opportunity to like get interviewed about this and like have

your say about it? Like in that case, her project of rehabilitating her reputation obviously is going to be going to be damaged by this hit piece. But one part that makes it so damaging second is that she's up against like the UVA lacrosse guy or no, no, the other ones. But the, but anyway, her story that got something wrong, she ends up looking the worst. So like if you just knew her work and what she's doing, she could rehabilitate. But now she just got stuck on a really bad South by Southwest panel.

AlexYup, yup, yup, yup. Oh, Merlin, you're pulling at me. This is going in the challenge sheet because I have so much to say.

MerlinAnn Chomsky is really not on the scenery, isn't she? She's kind of got one gear in this show.

AlexYou know what? If we were to continue this conversation in the after show, wait, what? There's an after show? Where could you find that, Merlin?

MerlinOh, thank you for asking, Alex. We do an after show and it depends. Like there are weeks, like I want to say last week, where I think you posted your weird time tracking thing. When we record this program, we record the one that you're listening to now. Thank you for listening. And then we also record another episode. And like if you look at it in terms of total talk time, sometimes you get, you know, two to four hours of this very important content. And if you enjoy it and would like to help support it and give us money, you can go to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday.

but I would prefer that you go to give us yourfuckingmoney.com and you can give us a dollar or five dollars, whatever, per month which is actually not a bad value if you like this if you don't like it, it's not a good value also I suspect, you see I'm using emoticons now, you're not in the doc also it looks like we both were on the same page it looks like Stalingrad Douglas and the Energy Project may be discussed in that And I'm very keen to talk about that.

AlexThis is one of those times where it freaked me out. Well, one, you freaked me out because you did the thing where you asked me a vague question in our super secret text channel.

MerlinI annulled the question. I didn't even divorce the question. I annulled the question. No, no, no, no, no. I typed a really obnoxious thing to you because I was, God damn it, Alex.

AlexIt wasn't obnoxious.

MerlinIt was obnoxious. No, this morning I overslept this morning because I'm dealing with energy. And anyway, the point is that I texted you and I still had not defecated. I still had not prepared my iced tea and I was late. You kindly acceded to, I hate when I do this. You kindly acceded to, is that the word? You agreed to delay the start time a little bit, which I always am grateful for. And all I had said was because I, but what I wanted to say, I didn't have time because I hadn't defecated or prepared my iced tea.

What I wanted to say was, oh, there's this thing I'm doing called the Energy Project. and like I was looking for a way to grep you out or grep the audience out of this, something I very easily could have done on the show just by saying, do you know what I'm talking about when I talk about the energy? Instead I posed it like a piece of shit and I said, is there any, I said something like, is there any chance that you heard yesterday's back to work? What did I say? Exactly. I said, I said, I said, okay. Okay. I said, I said any chance, and I misspelled that cause I was, you know, T any chance you heard the last part of yesterday's back to work?

No pressure, just curious. No pressure. And then I said, that was a dumb question. Forget I asked it. I'm working on a new idea I think might interest you. That's all. I annulled it.

AlexIt's like, hey, you know what? I had a story, but you don't want to hear it.

MerlinBut no, I'm part of the problem, Alex. I'm part of the problem. This is all part of an omnibus effort. This is all part of my Amadeus moment because it's all related, is that now I'm putting something onto you. you know there's there's an anecdote about this that i am not going to share that has given me a

Alexlot of clarity oh my god i'm sorry continue no okay so there's an anecdote that you have but

Merlinyou're not going to share remember the thing i quoted this earlier i a moment ago maybe eight minutes ago or so i quoted my wonderful uh ex-boss giles and the phrase that he said to me was i can't afford your loyalty right now a version of that is also okay here's one uh all of you magnificent and bastards who were very worried about me when I pushed that poor woman on the plane. And as I've said, in a way that nobody could ever understand, that was a very difficult day where I had to manage a lot of things.

And on top of it all, I had my friends going, you know, on one end, you go, oh, are you okay? Yes, I'm okay. Thank you. Oh, I can't wait to hear about this. Oh, what happened? Oh, I'm worried for you. You know what? The last fucking thing, God bless you all. The last thing I needed that particular afternoon in Detroit, Michigan, was to be managing relationships and communications with people who were trying theoretically to be helpful. And I know this is a different point of view from you young people who love to communicate about everything all the time. I cannot manage all of these relationships.

I have so much to deal with right now. And each one of you has no idea how much you are crowdsourcing my pain in a bad way. It's like a kickstopper for pain. Like, everybody fucking calm down. I cannot manage all of this. And then, you know, sometimes, and this is in the document as of yesterday, you know, sometimes the worst thing that you can do when you're trying to be helpful is to go,

Speaker Bis there anything I can do?

MerlinYeah. Hit me back in two weeks. That's what you can do. Right? So I did that. I did that to you. I put that onto you and said oh hey can you let me know if you're listening to a podcast that came out 12 hours ago

Alexare you updated with the Merlinverse?

Merlinand I annulled it and I apologize and I owe you an amends I owe you a Williamson

Context is important, though, because, but, like, I feel like maybe in a way, I can't speak for you, but in a way I wouldn't have appreciated even, what was that, two, three, four years ago? When did that happen, the Williamson Affair?

AlexOh, six, because it was before Trump.

MerlinOh, my goodness, before the election. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, I mean, I, again, and again, I'm sorry, I'm so, my head is so up my ass with this goddamn project. But like, you know, I really now more than ever appreciate that kind of weird context of like, I don't love the fact that Marianne Williamson will be dragged for having a plastic bottle on stage. But poor Marianne Williamson knows enough to know that if I get up there, there's going to be a bunch of fucking ding-a-lings.

The hypocrisy police are all going to show up to drag me because there's plastic near me. And I feel like I don't like, like I said in the document, there's a difference between understanding something and liking something. You can continue to not like something, but that doesn't mean you needn't understand it. And I don't like that, but I really understand it.

AlexYes.

MerlinIs that, I mean, and I'm avoiding putting words in your mouth. Is that part of your mea culpa?

AlexI think so. Yes.

MerlinShe's a woman and people are going to say she's a piece of shit because there's plastic on a table.

Alexyeah well at least i didn't shove her so that's good yeah i mean well she was in first class

Merlinfirst class so um uh patreon so we'll talk about that we'll talk about the energy project we'll talk about douglas and maybe that will be the point at which we talk about the show on the show we mentioned that now douglas has an app sorry dougie i call him dougie dougie has an apprentice is that right now the apprentice surprises you yep yep your landlord has uh

Alexhelper who also now just shows up for some reason well okay i i know that you're slack zero so you probably don't know the story which will be in the after show but there's there's been a fridge

Merlini should subscribe hit that bell sub stack it really helps people discover the show maybe you know we should do we should get um reply all to to do an announcement about us and this program.

AlexOh.

MerlinWouldn't that be useful? You probably got inroads there.

AlexThat would. I get.

MerlinRemember that podcast that used to exist? That I used to like? Yeah. Well, this is the feed for that. We don't really do the show anymore, but we do make announcements about the show and we do let you know about other shows that really by implication we think should be doing better.

AlexMm-hmm. Yep. Hey, we wanted to let you know that everything's okay. No one asked, but everything's okay.

MerlinWe just really want to spread our wings this season and get out there. I know you guys don't like any of us that hosted the show, so now we have a new guy who's really charming. So like him, like the show, and we'll just use the same name because it had the kind of brand recognition that allowed us to obtain millions and millions of dollars to not make podcasts. Hakuna Matata. tipping benji's

Speaker Athe john joeid

Merlinyou know because she couldn't she couldn't stand up do this with my fingers oh baby baby baby baby that is one of the great things with burton blasi i'll put that in show notes uh maria bamford's uh one hour was it one hour christmas special

Alexis that what it's called i believe so yeah it's it's such a gift yes

MerlinI made this for you.

AlexWell, I think about that a lot, how it's on Vimeo, which is another.

MerlinI downloaded it and put it in my system because like it is it will show up as a movie with the right metadata. And I like it so much. I don't want to like so many things that I grab with Downey. I don't want to trust that this thing will always be there because things aren't always there. But yeah, it's just on Vimeo. You can just go watch it.

AlexWell, the reason I think that it's important to note it's on Vimeo is that she has made presumably no money from this. There's no algorithms recommending this to you. And it's, I don't know, I watch it every Christmas and it makes me really, really happy.

MerlinMaria Bamford, for those who don't know, and welcome. You're in for such a treat. She's just a wonderful, wonderful comedian and person who, as you'll learn and especially you may know from Target ads one year, But you might know her from Comedians of Comedy. I would say some of you weirdos out there like me also may know her from some amazing Tim and Eric sketches.

Speaker AOh, yeah.

MerlinHave you ever seen the ones where she's hosting the cat show with her ex-boyfriend?

Speaker AOh, yeah.

MerlinAnd she's really playing into her OCD, like her legit OCD.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinAm I a murderer? Am I a raper? where she keeps running the hell back over the car. So much hair on so dirty.

AlexYou know what? I'm going to do another flex.

MerlinShe said a sentence to me once and it made my year.

AlexShe spent a brief evening with – she didn't spend an evening with me, but she performed at one of our Cards Against Humanity shows years and years and years ago. Did she have water requirements? No. And you know what? I was tasked with being her handler at the last minute.

MerlinOh my gosh, really? You got to be around real Maria Bamford?

AlexOh my God. What a nice human being.

MerlinWell, what's my new catchphrase from the NIDW show? Talk more words about that.

AlexSay more words. Say more words. Oh gosh. And I don't know. Both of us, I think, have done the weird flexes where we've had run-ins with celebrities and some great, some not so much. And I believe that Maria Bamford is a celebrity because she's a human being to be celebrated. And wow, you don't have to be nice to a 24-year-old glorified stagehand, but she's the kind of person who was at least for one night and it really made my day.

MerlinSame thing as that poor, poor woman, Marianne Williamson. And it's like, you show up and you got to do shit. And it's like, the same way that I used to like think that contract writers were really a sign of like self-involvement. Because I played in a band with some guys who ran a bar in Tallahassee. And we would all sit around and laugh looking at the, like Tuesdays was always like call day about booking shows. And they'd go, oh God, Pixies. Like Cheap Trick wants a golf cart and 200 towels. Pixies want, of course they couldn't afford any of these bands.

pixies want vegetarian food served on real china plates which at the time we would all roll our eyes because basically there was a tiny little closet with cocaine on the floor that was the green room and that that's what they had they did not have golf carts towels or china plates here's the thing you travel you go on the road and like what's going to happen the promoter is going to throw up a two-hour old pizza on a table do you want to live like that for months it's like you know it's like you know we we take the humanity out of these people because you know

we think oh relative privation empathy for the machine empathy for the machine which of course i'm using wrong i just found a picture a childhood photo of maria bamford's family and it's so

Alexgoddamn funny with her sister yeah find them on petfinder.com don't be crazy oh no remember that

Merlinyou remember the bit she's biting her finger what about this one find them on petfinder.com oh look how cute they are um hey what do you want to talk about we have a lot to talk about

Alexthis week it's a wooly week i'm very wooly you know i have taken a lot uh how many how many minutes have i have i monopolized uh 28th alex please please can we not please can we not i can't afford your self-deprecation right now i'm not self-deprecating i would like to think that maybe people enjoyed it.

I don't want to add to the groan or compilation.

MerlinI didn't find as many as I expected, but I did find a lot of good mouth noises.

AlexThat one's for free.

MerlinWe could talk, the two easy ones. Well, it's always the house seltzer. The followups really fast and not interesting. Oh, okay. So there's the Catholics. We have got to talk about relative probation. We've got to talk about it on main. I feel like. Did you follow any of those links?

AlexOh, yeah. Yeah. Yes.

MerlinYes.

AlexJust the...

MerlinThat's just the owl's egg.

AlexIt's more than... Oh, appeal to worst problems. Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker ANot as bad.

AlexThis makes no sense. I'm just reading words in a document no one can see. Oh, it's okay.

MerlinNo, no, no. This is mine. This is mine.

AlexGo, go, go.

MerlinIs that okay to talk about a little bit?

AlexPlease do.

MerlinSo an ongoing project, a follow-up. And yet I did officially get that sound. Yes, in general from the 80s. But as I watch more and re-re-re-re-watch more and more Mr. Show, it's obvious to me that I'm totally stealing that fake 80s drum. Not roll, but a drum fill.

You know, people know that's what Dugga Dugga is, right?

AlexI always thought, no, I continue to believe that is the noise that occurs on competition reality shows.

MerlinOh, really?

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinSay more about that. Now I'm doing John Mulaney. I was eating triscuits with my mom because that's the point we're at in our relationship. You ever see a ghost?

AlexMonkey, monkey, monkey, man.

MerlinMonkey, monkey, monkey, man.

AlexI just when it's like right before a challenge was to occur on Top Chef or it's usually cooking shows. There's like the intense music where it's like and then flames come up.

MerlinYeah. Bracket music intensifies.

AlexYes.

MerlinYeah.

AlexBut you know what? Both both things can be true and not true. I think Walt Whitman said that or maybe Mark Twain.

MerlinWell, I'm on the horns of a dilemma because I'm trying to decide whether I want to quote the most quoted line of Walt Whitman ever, even though it's pretty basic.

AlexWas it people contain multitudes?

MerlinOkay, here's a quickie for you. This is not the full thing. Sending you a link. I will rip out this audio and put it in notes. This is from what may be on the ill-fated Monday episode of Roderick. We talked about this. This might be my favorite episode of Mr. Show. It's definitely up there.

Speaker AOh.

MerlinI mean, it's like, you know, the gang squashes their beef level of good. I'm sending Alex a link. And in a second, you're going to hear audio. There's a thing where they're giving awards, public relations awards, to the, like, PR firms that have represented really problematic brands. And this one actually comes in second, so to speak, behind Nambla, We're Not Killers. And this is the PSA for the new Ku Klux Klan

AlexOh Jesus

Speaker AHey check us out Have you seen us lately We're the new Ku Klux Klan And we're 100% hate free We're back to stay And we're here to play here Fishing Cooking Bam

MerlinAnd my kid has kindly agreed to watch that show sometimes. And they really like it. But like that one, I was like, we were watching that one. And like, oh, it's so funny. because in the bit right before that, because it's fun to explain jokes and bullets,

there's a black man who very much looks like he might be in Nation of Islam. Like he's, you know, this very like tidy academic looking black man with a bow tie who is the grand wizard of the KKK. And talking about, well, aren't they against, you know, your entire like race? He's like, ah, no, no, no, no, don't play me down that route. But, and then that bit runs. And my kid says, geez, can you imagine taking a walk in a park, presumably in Los Angeles?

Can you imagine taking a walk in the park and Bob Odenkirk and a bunch of people are jumping around dancing and playing badminton in KKK robes? I would cancel stuff to watch how that turned out.

That's where I think it comes from. Now, I've derailed this again, haven't I?

AlexOh, you were going to talk about not the KKK. Okay.

MerlinBefore that, the drum sound. I was making the drum sound. Oh, do you want me to talk about relative privation?

AlexPlease do.

MerlinOh, yeah. There's a thing that we talk about on here on the program. Hello. Welcome. For now, our placeholder name is The Chicken Problem. And the way I look at it is it's the, at this point, compulsion that I feel to provide a preamble or brackets for anything that I say where I, like, go, look, I know I'm privileged. and I know that I'm blue. So like that, I mean, that's stupid. It doesn't help. But also it literally doesn't help. As in like anybody I claim to be concerned about,

it doesn't help. I am mainly trying to protect myself from other shitty white people on the internet and it's not helping. Would you have any color to add to that?

AlexColor. I would argue that it's not only not helping, it's adding a layer of almost performative and expected hypocrisy. I don't really know how to...

MerlinOh, I totally agree. And it is, as part of what I'm calling the one sub-part of the energy project, the Salongrad problem, which is like, oh, you're getting shot at for weeks. Oh, you're so lucky to have a pile of bodies to hide behind. A lot of people don't even have a body to hide behind.

I learned about this. I'm not going to say why I learned about this because it's one of those bullshit, like, here's some interesting Rex Chapman-type shit from the internet. But I learned this new term, new to me term that I'd never heard before. Had you ever heard the term per se, relative privation? Not at all. Because I feel like there's an old joke in advertising where they, I think in the 60s, maybe somebody said, we know that when we buy television advertising, I'll mangle this, but when we buy television ads,

we know we're wasting half of our money, but we don't know which half kind of thing. I feel like this might be half of the chicken problem, and I'm not sure which half, and I'm not really sure what the other part is. But the second part of the chicken problem, I think, has to do with relative privation, which is, again, now I've got a name for something that I've been aware of, but now it's got a name. And this notion of relative privation is framed as a logical fallacy, which I think is interesting.

AlexSo horny for those. That's, oh gosh.

MerlinWell, you got to be careful. There's one I did not put in notes because it's from one of those like, well, actually, I'll defeat you with logic sites, which Rational Wiki kind of is. But this is the closest. Okay, so I'm just going to read this from the internet.

Fallacy of relative privation. Colon, all problems are relative. Iseo wants to convince his co-worker, Tozuki, that their company needs to focus on reorganizing their marketing sector. Their ads are played at terrible hours. This is really not good.

It tries to bring up these points. Tozuki only replies, come on. There are companies who don't even have marketing departments. Okay? Now, the problem is that rebuttal is that since their market sector isn't as bad as it could be, i.e. non-existent, these complaints are not worth being addressed.

So relative privation, this is one of those things where I can't believe I'm even having to explain what this is because it's so obvious on the face of it what this is. And here's how I'm going to put it. This is how I described it. This morning my wife said to me, you sleep okay last night? And then I talked for five minutes. This is why I've begun saying to my wife, are you making a friendly conversation or do you really want to know? because then I went into a five-minute sermon about some of the stuff that you and I are going to talk about at some point today.

But relative privation, I'm going to put it this way. So you're not allowed to have problems because I can imagine people, listen for the word imagine. I can imagine people who exist, and I imagine that they are less privileged than you, And I can imagine them having problems that are worse than yours. So any of your things that you've stipulated as being actual struggles you have in your life are beyond meaningless.

Because I can imagine a series of situations that involve people who can't even get to that problem. Now, this is also a bit in the wonderful, well, it's not technically Mining Python. It was a different show before. But, you know, the four Yorkshiremen where the four rich guys sit around and talk about how impoverished they were. and you've seen the sketch.

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, boy. We've got to watch that. No, but like, it goes like, oh, you know, these, who would have thought when we were there, they're from Yorkshire, from Northern England. So they all sound like, you know, like, you know, Yorkshire men. Oh, who would have thought, Obadiah, when we were kids, who would have thought that we'd be sitting here, sitting here drinking Chateau de Chasselet and be like, ah, we were, our family didn't have anything. We were raised in a one room house and the other guy goes, oh, you had a house? You know, we lived in a cardboard box. You had a cardboard box? We've been thrilled to live in a cardboard box. We lived in a corridor.

Oh, we were evicted from our corridor. We had to live in a septic tank. And, you know, we're always outdoing each other. I don't know if this is what it's called, but I used to call it plateauing. When you get into a thing with somebody where you keep trying to outdo each other on how good or usually shitty something was. And relative privation is just this, I think one part of it very much is, the interesting part about relative privation, as I understand it, is that you can either take something and compare it to the worst case scenario, or you can take it and compare it to the best case scenario.

So this can work. Do you follow what I'm saying, though? This can actually go both ways. And at this point, I'm going to break my rule, and I'm going to read you what this dingling Rex Chapman shovel blogger said, because I'm not going to credit the person because I'm dragging them here. But this person said, it was one of those threads of, here's 160 things you need to know about. And the person said, because they actually put it pretty well, and I'm scrolling because Twitter is a trash fire, relative privation, an all-too-common fallacy where people dismiss a concern because something else is worse.

How can you talk about X when Y is happening? By this logic, how could anyone ever talk about anything other than literally the single worst thing in the universe? doesn't that feel related my addition my addition to this i'm sorry my addition to this is the imagine part because i think that's where this gets stupid when white people go i'm the white knight like i can imagine a poor black child who has many more problems than you i don't know a black child that has many more problems than you but because i can imagine that your real suffering

or difficulty or pain or just humanity is inconsequential because I can imagine somebody who has problems that I imagine are a lot worse. And even if it's real, even if you say, there's a hilarious Doonesbury comic when I was a kid where it's a very funny bit about the thing people used to say. You finish your food, I don't know if you ever got this, but eat everything on your plate because there are children who are starving in China was the thing that everybody heard when they were a kid. And that country has changed over the years. Certainly, the starving African child became the poster diner for that.

But then the last panel of the comic is so funny. It's almost exactly the same scene, but with Asian people. And it says something like, you know, Xiaomi, finish your duck feet. There are children in Georgia starving to death. Anybody can do this about anything. and it so what's the point of all that well i think that imaginary part becomes important but the other important part back to our first principles claries is like who's that helping who who are you helping the people you imagine have that problem when you tell other people

Alexnot to have a bad afternoon i am gonna fight back and not fight what a weird word i i don't even know if people imagine anymore it's an assumption and imagine feels like too generous it seems like

Merlinit's become virtually automatic i know i hear the voice the whole reason one of the reasons behind the chicken problem is how easily you can imagine what people are going to say when you say this

Alexyes sorry i'm not uh everything's fine go on go on go that's pretty much it i mean i faced it

Merlinliterally this morning. And this is, this is, this was such an orgy of bad faith, but there was an election. Yesterday was an election day across the U.S. in a lot of places. And in San Francisco, the primary, there was some like elected official stuff, but the hugest part of yesterday's election, such as only like a hundred thousand people voted. But the big thing on the ballot was the recall where there are three school board members where enough signatures were gained to ask for a recall of the school board members. And, you know, they each are kind of crummy in a way. There's one that I

think is like objectively super crummy, but there were three. You could vote for them separately. And the idea was to get those folks recalled because of TK reasons. And people like me and very much my wife, my wife like worked on this. She canvassed, she got signatures, she went around and hung things on doors. And I'll come back to TK reasons, but the point is that the election happened. And given that it was, you know, if this were down ballot in a presidential election, who knows? But this is one of those elections that I'm sure you entirely understand where

the people who do turn out, it's going to be a small number, but the people who do turn out are generally there because they have been incentivized to vote on something assertively, which is like the current state is, there are these ding-a-lings on the school board. The state, the way we want to change that is we want them off the school board. And if people do turn out for the election, they're much more likely to be there to vote those folks out rather than be there to say, yeah, I want things to stay the same. Coming back to TK reasons. And by a big margin, all three folks were voted out.

And then, of course, now that that's happened, it's become a little bit of a story. People are talking about it. My lady friend, of course, like me, was not happy but relieved that this was going to be taken care of. long story short this uh j random twitter guy goes um like serious question um like why why are why is this such a big deal like why are you voting these people out oh fuck well wait because because it's like you know so fine i'm gonna trust good faith okay and so i um

the person responded to my wife's tweet and said well what's a serious question like what why And I sent that person because they asked, Alex. And I assume good faith now. Right? So I'm going to provide. I send along this article, this timeline. And it's just, if you followed this as, like, you know, like, I don't have the time or the inclination to get into a thing with you here. Because that's not a thing that I do. Especially at, like, you know, 10 o'clock at night.

But, okay, you wanted to know.

AlexAnd on the Byrd website?

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sending you a link to what this thing was. And like I say, this article, which was published yesterday, is like, well, hey, if you're just catching up, if you're coming in from another state, for example, and are wondering why this happened, well, here it is. And there's a handful of things that most people know about.

But there's not always the context and texture to let you know everything that happened. And I'm not going to go into all of it here, but some of the major things were that I think one of the biggest things was that the school board began with not addressing a ridiculous budget shortfall. We're talking like millions and millions of dollars. And they just kind of avoided the issue. And now it's really become a problem. OK, that's that's one like your basic job is to like get the monies to keep school going.

OK, that on its own is like, oh, man, you're like not very good at your job. I mean, another one was that then the schools had to close because of COVID and it was not a high priority for them to deal with that assertively. And like, I mean, so did we want the schools to be open? Yeah, we did. We wanted to be open safely. But, you know, there's a lot to it. All right. Another one. And this is the one that made this a bigger story.

I'm not saying this is the main thing, but it certainly seems reflective of some cultural problems on the school board. San Francisco is a very progressive city. And I think with a good heart, people in San Francisco are doing what they can to learn and improve and grow and evolve. But the timing was kind of bad when they decided, they decided the school board basically approved some ideas about an exploratory committee for deciding what names of San Francisco schools, could be in use of an update.

A really good example in California, across California, that I do not have much of a beef with at all, is when you get the real story about what happened with the actual missions, starting hundreds of years ago. The people who came here on Spanish, or I think Spanish missionaries, treated people really, really badly, and in lots of ways. Am I doing a good job of sounding like a normal human, like thoughtful person? I don't sound like a nut, do I?

AlexNo, not at all. In fact, you're almost chicken probleming because there are people like, ah!

MerlinBut I'm trying to be like very, I'm trying to be like, well, here, I'm avoiding a lot of editorializing just to say like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like a road that everybody around here drives down is called Unipro Serra. Another one is like you've got, you know, you've got, you've got the, there's just so much stuff involving the missions where you're like, there's so much shit here that's named after basically the monks who were either actively involved in genocide or were pretty helpful in keeping it rolling. So we got your land, we got your land, and now you're Catholic.

Have some blankets, right? But the point is, like, so like on the face of it, this seems like a neat idea. Like, should we make sure that there's not stuff that we've, again, where we've allowed, like, this is how it goes. So now there's a stasis that's really horrible for a lot of people to have to live with. I mean, we don't have a school named after Ted Bundy. Like, we don't have, you know what I'm saying? Like, we don't have, you know, Fox and Rex.

AlexTed Bundy is much less problematic.

MerlinBut if you discovered, like, for example, like, look at it this way. What if they decided that those murals of the Wama pokes inside city hall at an, oh God, what's the name of the town? Pawnee.

AlexPawnee.

MerlinYeah. Like those are pretty gross. And it's funny. But that is like how we've been for a long time. It's like, so basically, long story short, a commission was formed to like deal with this. The commission by design avoided input from topic experts on this. And they just kind of went with their gut. And they decided that approximately a third of schools in San Francisco needed to be renamed, including Dianne Feinstein Elementary School.

AlexHistory's greatest monster.

MerlinLike a lot of people were like Lincoln. You had to rename anything named Lincoln because of how he treated indigenous peoples because their array of theoretical criteria, again, not vetted by topic experts was like if you're associated with any of these like six things, slave holding, like genocide of, you know, First Nations type people. if you've ever said anything that harmed a queer person, it's going to be renamed.

Now, okay, there's a lot about that that's kind of shitty. Like they did not want input from people who actually knew about this stuff. And that was a whole thing. There were lots of Zoom meetings about it. Did I mention that this was all happening while all of San Francisco's schools were closed? No plan had been put in place for how, when, under what conditions schools would reopen. And in fact, during some of these, on one particular, I think, four to six hour Zoom call, the topic of reopening schools was ninth on the agenda.

AlexNo. Oh, I feel like I've known a lot about this story, but that's, oh, God.

MerlinYeah. And it became a little bit frustrating. This gets better. And so the primary woman, whom I won't name here, but this one person, doesn't matter, she's a woman, but she, well, let me just go through the array. She and her husband have been fined and potentially will receive a civil suit because they illegally turned two fancy apartments into one giant apartment. People found lots of tweets from her in the past where she compares Chinese people to slaves.

Everybody I know who's ever met her says she really is a piece of shit when you meet this very much like, you know, Marin performing wine mom kind of shit. All of that stuff. And then, but I mean, there's more and more and more of this. But like, if you wanted to know the basic texture, here's what it is. and so that person when I when I sent them that again 10 o'clock at night I'm not going to get into a whole thing but you know I sent that to the person and the person said so basically you're

just angry that schools couldn't open during a pandemic oh my god and how shall I respond to that well I mean am I there's so much about that I hate to be the word guy here but well it's not that I'm angry, friend. It's that the job of the school board is actually fairly well defined. And even if you don't know the definition of what their job is, you could probably infer that there are aspects of this that involve helping the schools. And in fact, if you take this in sum,

there are a handful of people on the school board who are not helping it stay funded. They're not helping it stay open. They're focused on performing an utterly ill-informed and unnecessary make-work project in the middle of this. Oh, so you want to fire them because you're in the bag for Dianne Feinstein? Well, no, that's not it either. You know what I'm saying? No, no. But this is the kind of thing where you're like, I mean, there's so much bad faith in this. And we don't have to agree on this, but I understand, again, I don't like, but I understand why the following thing

is happening nationally. Oh boy, here's just another instance of hysterical parents freaking out at school boards. This is essentially the same thing as people who show up and threaten to shoot people over mask mandates. These parents today are so fucking crazy. I don't like that people think that. I don't think it's true, but I understand why people think that. But if you're asking, if you have the curiosity to learn why this is something you might choose to learn more about, um as uh maybe basho said you know i'm i'm pointing at the moon and you're looking at my

finger like in this instance um you ask what the big round thing in the sky is and i tried to tell you and you said you should get a manicure like i i don't even that kind of thing is frustrating to me and i guess maybe if anything it just shows here's the stalingrad here is that like i know you get shit like this probably 150 times more than I do. But when it comes along, usually the presence of mine in this case, my response to that was stay curious friend. And then I blocked them. But that's the kind of thing that makes me feel a little nuts sometimes

because, but that's the implication because the implication, the implication is like, Oh, here we go. You know, you know, Oh, you know, California is like a bowl of cereal. what's not flakes is fruits and nuts, which I always thought was a very funny remark. Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but everything feels related. I'm having an Amadeus moment, and it's really exhausting to feel like you're not allowed to occasionally

Alexhide behind a pile of bodies so you don't get shot. I am surprised and almost saddened you decided to engage with this person because i i think they got exactly what they i thought it was good faith i thought it was good faith i i've i i think i've stopped assuming any sort of good faith on twitter because twitter is not the place but hallix wouldn't that be a bummer if you changed

who you are because of that wouldn't that be a bummer no no that's the thing is i it's It's not... I mean, okay. There are different places on the internet where, and unfortunately less, there are fewer places on the internet where you can have interesting conversations. and I've accepted that Twitter has changed

and it's not the place where I used to, you know, hang out with my future spouse and it's not the place where I've made a lot of people, friends of a lot of people who, you know, I'm very close to. And I mean, I don't know, that person wanted to have some brownie points and wanted a screenshot or a quote tweet

MerlinYou feel like you got that from that first tweet?

AlexYes. Well, did you send me a...

MerlinNo.

AlexI mean, I'm not going to look at it.

MerlinNo, no, no, no. It's not important. It's not important.

AlexAnd I'm not saying that you should snipe at them, but I mean...

MerlinWell, this is another example of the old joke about, hey, everybody, look what I almost stepped in.

Speaker AMm-hmm, mm-hmm.

MerlinI don't want to amplify the shit or throw it into a larger fan. and it's and again because like and and it's not obvious from my statement a few paragraphs ago i don't want to change who i am because i encounter situations where there are misunderstandings deliberate or accidental like that's the the problem with the chicken problem is that we have started changing who we are and it doesn't feel good it doesn't feel wholesome and and it's not helping uh people but like if if we all recede into this i don't know a little like foxhole

of certainty to avoid the like kind of spending too much time with world war ii like if you're in the ardennes and the battle of the bulge is happening like you just want to dig your foxhole and get into it and as nice as some of those people manning the artillery on the other side of the ardennes as nice as those people might be as nice as those tank commanders might be your only way to survive is to get you and your buddy into a foxhole and stay there. And I understand that when it's Germany's last gasp in World War II, but like, I don't want to

live like that permanently. I mean, certainly part of that begins with I'm spending less time on Twitter, but like, no, that's still a fun thing for me. But no matter what I do, the way you act oughtn't change how I act. We brush our teeth because that's what we do for us. If you only ever brush your teeth for other people your your teeth will fall out you brush your teeth because it's the right thing to do you know and that's that's what i feel like i struggle with you

Alexmentioned that i have to deal with this more often which is true but it's that also that i've always come at thing i i come at things not in assuming bad faith but just in a way that's more guarded because, I mean, I reference Gamergate all the time, but...

MerlinWell, you have more vulnerabilities that are easy to identify.

AlexAnd easy to distort. And I mean, I don't know. Like, there's been a lot of...

Speaker AIt's about fairness in women's sports

Alexin regards to letting, you know, trans kids swim and play football at schools. And no, I don't want to say no one, but I have yet to come across someone who's actually curious about the pair of vowels. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's a lot of like, let's say, brouhaha over whether or not.

MerlinYou can't let assigned male at birth people, regardless of their current condition, you cannot let them participate in quote unquote girl sports because they have an unfair advantage. And in fact, let me just imply that they're pretending to be a girl so they can win at sports. Now, if we say it that way, it sounds a little crazy.

AlexYeah. It's almost as if you just hate trans people.

MerlinI'm going to win in the giant slalom. yeah and well and then that's not really what happens but okay and yeah i could see i could see how you imagined that but that's not actually how it works and if you think all these people are crazy is it possible it's because we've made them crazy you ever notice how many trans people are crazy yeah i do and you know why because we fucking made them crazy oh 44 um and now there

Alexare a lot of boys who are coming trans boys who are coming forward so uh signed female at birth and we're like, yeah, so I play football and I mean, what's wrong with that? And suddenly, oh, it's about fairness in all sports. Right.

MerlinActually, it's about ethics in female sports.

AlexYeah, it's about ethics in video game journalism.

MerlinThat was the joke.

AlexI know, I'm sorry, I put a hat on the hat. There were too many hats.

MerlinWhen I said that's the joke, I was impersonating Rainier Wolf Castle on The Simpsons. Simpsons is a TV show on Fox.

AlexI'm sorry. Am I the Casey now? I'm the Casey.

MerlinVS Code, baby.

AlexVirtual Studio? Are we going to talk about that instead of queer?

MerlinIf you would spend more of your time listening to my podcast, you know how gay bones I am.

AlexI have yet to install it because I...

MerlinIt's an attractive nuisance. No, it'll take your time. That's why I until this year hadn't even spent more time that opening Keyboard Maestro, because it scared me so much. Keyboard Maestro, like Better Touch Tool, it's like, oh, I know how I am. I cut you off. Hi, Casey, we love you.

You're a friend of me. Oh, I know, it's a bit.

AlexWell, I've had in, you know, offline conversations with people who are like, hey, actually, couldn't this be a real problem? Like, what if, you know, what if someone gets hurt or like, Because, you know, let's say a let's imagine that it's true that some man has pretended to be a woman in order to get in the bathroom and find your kid. Yeah. And yeah, that's the best way to attack a kid.

MerlinLet's unpack some of the things that are implicit in what you're saying here. Because all queer people are child molesters. And therefore, the only reason you would get into sports is to cheat and fuck a kid.

AlexYep. Yep. Yep. As it is known. But like, if you're like 70 years old and are genuinely like, well, what the what the heck? And you like walk them through like, no, your grandkids are okay. They're going to be they're gonna it's gonna be fair. and and then uh you realize oh that this person talking to you actually has a and has someone in

their life who is a trans boy and they're worried about being like well is he ever gonna be able to compete and with the implication of like he might be done being weird well no no no no i mean yeah

Merlinno but like are you eventually gonna look like judy garland or something when we're gonna wrap

Alexthis up no i mean i i mean they they've got a uh a fab kid who is like oh well there's no place for him to play football fair it's like yes exactly right right yeah i yes here we go and that's i

Merlinthink the place where you assume good faith yeah and but also it's like the implication is we've We've tolerated how you are as a tribe and haven't killed you, and yet you don't show us gratitude. The other part of this is that-

AlexWe stopped dragging you across the road in our pickup trucks. What more do you want?

MerlinRight. We stopped crucifying you on a rail or burning you for witchcraft.

AlexYou're not dead in a ditch. Come on. It could be worse.

MerlinIt could be worse.

AlexThere's people starving in Africa.

MerlinYes, yes. There's a wonderful, at least part of the American mythos that I think can be a pretty great thing. this is an Overton window involved in this of like, okay,

figuring out who you are. And sometimes the figuring out who you are as an American person, it leads you to now fairly classic ideas of like almost like Horatio Alger stuff, like how you become an entrepreneur, like Andrew Carnegie comes here from Scotland and becomes ridiculously rich. And like, he figures out this stuff and it's like, that's, there's, there's a very, a rich, if slightly bullshit idea in America of, you know, one way we're different from a lot of other countries is, you know, I think this is, this is, I apologize in advance to people that aren't in

America, but like the, the story Americans like to tell themselves, I think is that we're the only country in the world where it's not inconceivable, not that everybody's going to become the president, That's silly. But it's not inconceivable that any person in America, regardless of where they were born or their station in life, could move up two to seven levels in social class. Like the classic pulled up by your bootstraps kind of thing. My parents are from Ghana. And now I'm a TV star.

That kind of thing. And because built into a lot of systems elsewhere are like, just forgive my saying, a long time ago, God said that we should be the royal family. And we don't have that here. So we love, we're very invested in this idea of figuring out who you are and then becoming that. So even getting beyond this idea of, wow, things sure are different today than when I was a kid, I think a question worth asking is, you know, what are the stakes that are involved? Regardless of the time, like, but, you know, given the context of a given time and era, what are the stakes that are involved in figuring out what your deal is or figuring out who you are?

Right? So like in the case of JFK, I mean, I think it's pretty well known. Elvis Costello got in trouble for using a very impolitic word about this once. But when Irish people came to America or even Irish people in like other parts of the UK are frequently seen as way lesser. But if you're JFK, you know, who's I think maybe grandparents came from Ireland, like, you know, but his father was incredibly wealthy.

He got to figure out who he was, went to, was it not West Point, maybe went to Annapolis or Harvard? I guess he went to Harvard. Anyway, the point is, then he became like an officer in the Navy. Then he became a senator. Then he became the president. Well, in that case, the stakes for figuring out who he was were fairly low in context, again, relative probation. But like he got to be the president and the path to that was probably not the most difficult anybody's ever encountered, right? different times, different things. But like, let's try, let's just, without getting into

too many specifics, you're trying to figure out what your fucking deal is. What are the stakes of even trying to figure out who you are? Like if you're trying to figure out, if you know, let's say for example, in the abstract, you know, you're just some kind of queer person, but you don't even know what it's called. Let's say this is happening in the fifties or sixties. There's big stakes to anybody finding out that you're trying to figure out who you are, even to just have that journey, let alone where that takes you. Like, you know, we're all unfinished art in a lot of ways, title.

But like, you're becoming, you have a journey, you're becoming different people, you're figuring out different things, you're trying on different jackets in life. And like, what are the stakes of figuring that out? And what are the stakes involved if you end up becoming something that a lot of other people despise? like there's pretty big stakes to that and it's it's just that when you see somebody at whatever part of that you choose it's going to be fairly easy especially from a distance to see those

people and go you do not belong in this tribe and the very fact that you're out there doing things like you are obviously a tall man with large hands and women's clothes you are not in our tribe And we need to excoriate your entire existence because of how poorly you fit in and your revolutionary approach to becoming something that I won't like has made me mad.

AlexAnd you're scary for some reason.

MerlinScary and threatening. Yes.

AlexThink of the children.

MerlinAnd again, if this were, I don't know, Sesame Street or Electric Company, the word of the day would be imagine. Like what people can imagine about how you are, who you are. Without any kind of context, history, whatever it is, just a snapshot. Like one person you see on Muni can have a huge impact on how you think everything's falling apart. Because look at everybody else on here doesn't look like you. everybody else everybody else on here isn't breaking the rules and being weird and like

when i given that i am uh i'm i'm some fucking thumb that loves sports the only way that i can imagine this weirdo would be doing this is not because this is really in some ways the next step of what began as title nine in a lot of ways title nine if memory serves you know title nine was just a way of saying hey you can't give all the money to boys sports you gotta give money to girls sports too. Well, like what if we gave money to everybody's sports? I don't care about sports personally, except in so far as it touches these parts of my life. But I think that's what you

deal with sometimes. That was really depressing. No, it wasn't depressing. We all like JFK. I think

Alexwe can agree. Yes. Love JFK. No, no complex or controversial feelings about that. Cause of

MerlinDeath, gunshot wound.

AlexDefinitely, definitely.

MerlinOh, God, I'm getting all true and on.

AlexNo, no. Supposedly.

MerlinYou're kidding, that kind of rifle? Like, ordered from a magazine from that far away? That's one magic bullet.

AlexIt's about ethics in assassinations.

MerlinReally, the words of the day are ethics and imagination. Imagineer and engination. I remember what we were talking about. Yes, hello. Hello, Alex. How are you?

AlexNow that you're done depressing people. No, you're not depressed. If this really depresses people, I think that's not a good thing. But it challenges them to imagine something. Imagine all the people. God, I hate that word so much. I don't know why. Oh, I don't like it. I don't like it.

MerlinTalking about your parapals?

AlexHey, parapals. If this is depressing, that's okay.

MerlinIn the parapal Olympics? That's okay.

AlexHey, hey. This week's challenge was mine. Oh, sorry.

MerlinHey, check us out. We're the new Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker AOh, God. Better call Saul.

MerlinI might mention this in the after show last week, but a very funny thing happened. Speaking of context and things out of context, two seemingly unrelated events suddenly became related a week or two ago, which was that you had mentioned – had you actually mentioned in previous weeks that you were using this thing? All I knew was you were using some kind of a thing where there's an app thing where you could make a photo appear in a widget on somebody's iOS device.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd had you talked about it on the show or where had you talked about it?

AlexI think I just mentioned it in the after show weeks ago, just in the list of all of the random things I was proposing.

MerlinI don't even think it was a challenge. No, it was just something you were doing. The point being that the then seemingly wholly unrelated event is my kid goes, oh, hey, can you approve a purchase? I need to approve things before my kid can get stuff off the App Store. And I was like, oh, yeah. And because I'm that particular guy, I was like, can I ask what it is? And I said, oh, it's this thing called Lock It my friend and I want to do where you install this thing and then you can send photos to your friend's phone. And I'm like, oh, sure.

Speaker BThat sounds great.

MerlinAnd I think it was a day or five before I went, oh, that's the thing Alex was talking about. Tell the people what Lockit is and why it interested you.

AlexWell, us aging millennials and the Zoomies apparently have been using this app called Lockit, which if you're not familiar with iOS widgets, you should be. They're great.

MerlinGet familiar.

AlexYeah. Oh, yeah. You don't need any honorifics for this. They want you to be familiar. But you just add a little widget onto your phone. And it's not just that people can send you photos that show up in the widget. You can only take and send photos from the Lock It app.

MerlinIt's like an Instagram of old. You can take and send a square photo, but you do have options. You can do it from this camera or that camera.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd anybody where you've got mutually swiped on each other, you can – for me, that was you and my kid. I locketed both of you. And is it intended as a way to go like a status update, like a name, like, hey, here's what's going on with me? Is that the idea of why you would do this?

AlexI don't know. people that have been doing it with I don't know it's just a fun little thing that is like you said Instagram of old like you can't really do anything fancy or special it's just like here is a square very compressed photo of something that

MerlinI mean you could do the classic you could send your dessert with one bite

AlexI sent you a picture of my rice

MerlinYou sent me a lot of terrible cats.

AlexI sent a picture of myself. Oh, I sent capitalism can suck my little ass dick. Little ass dick. Oh, there's Ness looking at her poop sphere.

MerlinIs he a rapper from maybe New Orleans? Little ass dick? Little ass dicky? Oh, let me guess. He's got face tattoos. Little ass dicky. Hey, let's bring him up. Little ass dick.

AlexComing around on face tattoos. um but the i i didn't even realize this before i installed it but you can't uh you you cannot select a photo you must take it i did not know that either and it was really annoying it's it's

Merlinbut isn't it fun because i had things i thought would be fun to send you i thought the first one

Alexi sent you was just me grimacing yes yes um a great grimace and then a great um on underside a chin photo. Oh, I made a meat beard. Yeah. Yeah. I called it

Merlinthe Scott Simpson. Oh, look at this baby.

AlexYeah. Oh, yeah. I went. I saw my nieces. Look at them. Look at them.

MerlinThese little bald babies with these big eyes. I see why you like it. Bowl of rice. You got a giant, giant stream deck.

AlexOh, my God. This stream deck. Oh, and there's my Arceus writing Mr. Rompers or Roomba.

Merlinokay okay hang on that was that was mouth salad what listen arceus mac rumours okay okay i can

Alexexplain that i have a figurine of arceus which is one of the mythical legendaries of pokemon that's technically the god of the pokemon world it's a mythical legendary unlike the actual historical legendaries yes there well there's mythicals there's legendaries there's mythical legendaries and they're pseudo legendaries. Will it fit in your mouth?

No, I wish. And my Roomba's name is Mr. Rompers and I thought it would be funny to... Oh, it's so cute.

MerlinOh, look at that. Now am I allowed to click on it and zoom in so I can see Mr. Pokemon? No, no. I don't think I can zoom. Wow, this is really stupid.

AlexIt is and I love it. It's so useless. It is just...

MerlinYeah, no, that's good. Delight, right?

Alexit's it's one of these things where i think again um i i don't know like with instagram i god i used to love it so much it's the fun little constraints of things it's it's like

Merlinthere was a point where it seems like it got so good there are very there are a lot of things in this world especially in tech and especially maybe social media where the promise of something is is really intriguing and it so rarely reaches its promise before it becomes something shitty and Instagram I have to say it kind of like it had a lot of rules and there was no like you couldn't look out on the web and all this stuff but like I think that one Instagram is about as good as it gets in terms of like reaching its promise

and not getting shitty for a while you know if Facebook hadn't shot all over

Alexit for a while yeah I actually Snapchat is kind of it went the opposite way. Like it had a promise of you're not going to really like to engage with this maybe, but you can send pictures that disappear.

MerlinI thought that was like for sending dicks and boobs back in the day.

AlexIt used to be, but then...

MerlinIt's like you can't, if you screenshot it, it lets somebody know it's been screenshoted? Is that it? Yes, which is

Alexstill awesome. Like intentionally kids use it because they can know that and most kids are smart enough to realize yeah anything that i send like it is now out in the ether forever but with something like snapchat it's way harder to make it public which i i don't know i think is great but i more and more crave smaller avenues for tiny social

Merlinnetworks the same way that i like test paper for what i can't do with it right what i like Ulysses for what I can't do that I have to do in task paper. I'm very intrigued by the constraints. And that's maybe arguably, I mean, for a while, wasn't Instagram just iOS?

AlexIt was just iOS. And I think you could only use their, I'm not sure if you could only use their

Merlincamera. No, no, it was only their app. Well, yeah, yeah. But like also like there's just so many constraints. It had to be square. It had to be this. It had to be like a new photo,

Alexright? All that kind of stuff. Yeah. And of course there were all those terrible pictures, but I look back at my earliest Instagram photos and it's like, Oh, this is of a time. And it makes me happy. Yeah.

MerlinIsn't that ironic that I would just, I would now out of the know as somebody who is how I am, would, would describe Instagram, Instagram as being, you can tell what I do. The Instagram is being harmless. Like today, just look no further than that wonderful storytelling in the Anna Delvey show, where so much of the storytelling ends up social media is almost like another character. it's used to like and like but you know before you even get to the whole like oh my god my thighs are so big shit like i never get to photograph my feet on a boat i'm so sad like the harm that

instagram causes now academics tell us uh apart from how fucking obvious it was yeah we we wouldn't

Alexlisten to young girls we had to get a bunch of tweed patch did you jacket patch where i'm boss hog god the the academic hogs are like oh well actually this really seems to be harming the mental health of the youth oh no you don't you don't think so uh i mean i well let's go back

Merlinto my my my brother-in-law and like no good can come of it where it's like or again referring self-referring to the wisdom document ask yourself what's the best conceivable thing that could happen with this and for a lot of stuff in this world if it's just a medium what could mean lots of things you know oh egyptian spring or whatever but like there is stuff where like increasingly as this app because of the way it is being used and the way in which the culture oh you're referring

Alexokay i'm like egyptian yeah those twitter's like oh but the arab spring we did the arab spring yes

Merlintwitter did the arab spring yeah there's a there's a very funny um you know i love that uh stewart oh god what's his name Stuart the comedian in London Stuart Stuart Lee there's a very funny Stuart Lee bit where Chris Morris is interviewing him there's the stand up part and then there's the part where Christopher Lee God fuck it doesn't matter the point is he's saying the internet should be

Stuart Lee's like the internet should just be abolished he's like so if I understand you're saying that despite all the ways that power can be unseated through something like social media like you want it destroyed because it's an inconvenience to you and he's like yeah i mean of course i do um okay so so uh and you've been doing this for a while and it's yeah i get you though the narrowness of what this is for and what you can do with it is not a terrible idea

AlexIt was just like a fun excuse to be like, ah, let's spam Merlin with some pictures.

MerlinOh, yeah, no, no, totally, totally, totally.

AlexAnd then I was like, oh, this is something a lot like a pass.

MerlinI don't hate it. I don't hate it. It's not for me, but I don't hate it.

AlexYeah, and my favorite part is there's no way to get alerts.

MerlinOh, it just has to be something where it's either on a screen

Alexthat you see or somewhere else that you find. Yeah. Yeah. And I miss stuff like that. And sure, you can technically do that with Instagram, but it's real, real, real hard to.

MerlinWhere did I read this? I'm sure I must have mentioned this to you. It might have been, I forget where I read this, but it was a description of the hacking mindset. And the idea, like, you know, first of all, set aside the hacking and cracking are not the same thing, but what does a hacker do? Or even like a penetration tester. Like that, I was just in a definition of hack. Okay. Okay. Let's keep it friendly. Do you ever do any penetration testing? Candle nights. Oh, challenging. Um, no, but the idea that, um, the hacking mindset is that regardless. Okay. So I just thought this was so fascinating. It kind of blew my mind open.

It's like that, that when you make something like an app, a service or whatever, let's just look, but let's even just keep it to technology that like you have a, like maybe have a spec, you've got a whiteboard and you say, we're making this thing that does this thing. We're going to build that. And then people will use it to do mostly X, some Y and a little bit of Z. But, you know, in the, in the way that you design and implement something, especially in the early stages, you're mostly focused on like in my day, what we would call the spec,

which is like, it needs to do this. Like we've defined the functionality of it in these ways, you know like a ux or ia person has like talked about the flow of how this works but you're almost for for so much of the first two-thirds of a project uh i think you're mostly thinking about how you get this to do the thing that it's for and the hacking mindset is a way of saying hey bud whatever you thought this thing was for my job is to figure out what you missed in terms of what i could do with this that the hacking mindset says like okay but you know you miss the fact that

i mean i guess a really obvious one as syracuse likes to bring up occasionally is the the good faith of unix and the idea that it was never implemented with a need for passwords on email or whatever because who would do that like yeah you don't need a vault on your bathroom door at home because why that would be weird like you live with a bad family if you need a vault but then you eventually discover like there's all these ways that I can do things with this that you never intended and you probably don't even realize that I can do with this that's that's the thing I

mean a great example again involving young people and Paul Manafort that amazing trick I was so impressed well I was so impressed to learn about this you remember when we first or at least when I first learned like I've used gmail there's a reason I have such a good name um you know my lady and i were on the betas of the permanently beta gmail very early i felt so cool for having it but but you got it you got a drafts folder that you don't really think about because like you just send an email but like you could be working on something and as you go you're saving

it as a draft and then you send it and you're done it's out of the drafts folder that do you remember i remember well i don't know specifically but i remember first learning that a cool thing people were doing was sharing a gmail account whether they were like you let's start with the use case you want to communicate with each other in a way that can't be observed either by a a typical informal user or say your parents so you make a gmail account you share it with your friends do you know about this and then oh i do all your communication and no shit tell people about this

you do all your communication in drafts that you never said right and and it reminds me different emails and drafts or do you do it in one long like the way that Syracuse and I do the show and it's like do you have separate emails but like you have basically a thread with somebody

Alexinside of a gmail draft right yeah it would almost be um like a slack uh room like we would have different drafts like a private conversations yeah yeah and each of us just had a color oh

Merlinthat's so interesting by like topic or person oh my god yeah like we would there was one for

Alextalking about web comics and then there's one where we would talk about the top stories on dig that oh god um and then there was you know the secret one where all the girls we we we gossiped about the the boys and uh i was like yeah they're hot um and it it reminds me a lot of how now kids will talk in the comments on google like in google docs oh i see yeah yeah like oh that's interesting Yeah, have you? Oh, God, I don't want to.

You know what? What I'm going to say, all parents, don't listen right now. But a lot of teachers have finally realized this. But in class, when you were looking at a Google Doc that a student, like a teacher, would send everybody, that you had viewing and edit access.

MerlinI'm sorry. Were you using Google Docs in school?

AlexNo, no, no, no. That was like.

MerlinNo, the youth now.

AlexYes. And so you would have the ability to comment and view and comment, but not edit. So kids would chat with one another in their Google Docs.

MerlinThat's so wild.

AlexYeah. And I don't know. It's stuff like that where I'm like, good for you.

MerlinI know my kid does stuff like this where you go to the bathroom to be able to use the phone or to watch Squid Games in a stall with your friend, I hear, which I think is great. I think you should break those rules because they're stupid. And I applaud you. But like the – or like what was my kid – my kid had to look something up and was sending some kind of Ryan Reynolds, Andrew Garfield thing because there's jokes about jokes, about meta jokes, about celebrities that I guess is a thing. And – but like my kid says, oh, yeah, I found this at school today.

Yeah, I found this site that was not blocked where I could find this. Like you're finding ways, when I say penetration testing, that's an unfortunate way to say like we're trying all these different things. But even think about Twitter in the early days of Twitter when it was just the logo that looked like snot and you're sending SMSs. The reason, as everybody knows now, the 140 character limit came out of SMS limitations. You can't have attachments. It's 140 characters of text. And there was something, I mean, as much as early Twitter on SMS was insufferable and I demanded they delete my account. but like then think about like hashtags or think about like question of the day and all that

horseshit think about like at responses those all came organically out of how people used it and i'm going to abuse the word here hacked twitter in the sense of you never intended this to be for this even though this is even though at even though like at responses to people weren't i think weren't a thing initially even though hashtags weren't a thing i could i could then go and only the fact that a hashtag has now become a tag i can go and find things you know and then that becomes you know officialized but um i don't know i'm just really interested in the

idea of like it's and maybe like a form of ethical hacking or ethical development is like not just how do we keep this safe for man in the middle attacks or buffer overruns but how do we anticipate ways that this could be used that we didn't anticipate i don't want to say abused although that certainly is part of it but like how do i figure out how i could use this for something and then once a culture has built up around using it a certain way i can't blame instagram for the shittiness of the people on there but i think that they very much are interested in responding

to the shitty people who would like a larger audience of other shitty people but like if all you can do is send somebody a photo that goes in a widget that they can't zoom in on well for

Alexnow that's that's cool that's pretty harmless but there's other ways to i think not i guess tinker would be a better word for example like uh doing a project or uh writing a book with a text editor when you don't really need all of that but it uh you know it's a cool and creative

Merlinthing that i think more people should try and do can i um we're running a little long can i point out to you i just thought this was so fucking funny the latest last the last photo i will send to you in this um so yesterday oh as a qed my kid is obsessed with ryan reynolds and we both i mean i i love free guy i don't love free guy quite as much as my kid but i think it's a deeply underrated movie that's really fun and knows what it is what the shit have you seen it no i i should

Oh, fuck you. You gotta see it.

AlexAfter Dairy Girls.

MerlinRyan Reynolds is more homework. Ryan Reynolds is a character in a video game. And that's why you need to know.

AlexAnd, spoilers, Detective Pikachu. Oh, so good.

MerlinI love the one where Kubo hits the man with the stick.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinHe loves his mommy. His dead mom. That's an ancient legendary. But we got a 4K. I ordered a 4K Blu-ray. Just because, you know, I love, I'm a size queen at this point. And anyway, I got home yesterday, a package arrived from Amazon. I opened it up. We popped it in. I make my kids stand right up in front of the TV. And the code word to make fun of dad in this instance is crisp. Look at that. Look how crisp it is.

Speaker BLook at the ultra high definition. It's so crisp. You can't see a single pixel. So crisp.

MerlinI get home yesterday and one of those basic little envelopes from Amazon is there. I slice it open and say, here you go. It wasn't until this morning that I looked at it, and this is an Amazon package style I had not seen before. Did you see the photo?

AlexNo. Oh.

MerlinIt says on the outside of your package, knock, knock, I'm here. I hate it so much. Which is like, I mean, pretty close to Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinAnd so I did that. So my wife and I were laughing about this. And then all morning, I was like, I'd come up. She's making coffee. I go on the refrigerator. I go, knock, knock. I'm here. Oh, creepy. Don't put that on a bag. What the fuck's wrong with you?

AlexHow much time do you have? Oh.

Show notes

Transcript

276. Unfinished Art

Show notes

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