282. The Fifty-One Percenters
2022Show notes
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Transcript
Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesAlexHello. Hello. Good afternoon. Hi. How's it going? Fantastic. I am loving this new start time. Oh, yeah? It's the first time. Yeah. Well, you know. You can be loving that. Yeah. Yeah. How are you? Is this the pre-flight? Is this the show? Yeah. Yeah. This is the pre-flight. I'm already going to keep it in. It's up to you. I like the idea of not knowing. Yes, I agree. Because I already have my pod voice on.
Merlinoh you know me right you know you know i am i do i do okay so like i'm not a i think i used to be a lot more of a long-distance star fucker than i am now but um i i've been really enjoying it sounds
Alexlike you're it sounds like your grandpa rick and like fucking a planet so so so my grandpa who Grandpa Rick Rick
MerlinLast night on Twitter I said that from now on because I'm obsessed with the TV show Severance last night on Twitter I said that from now on henceforth every character named Rick should be played by Michael Churnis who played a Rick on Patriot and played a Rickon or a Ricard or whatever his name is on Severance and he he liked that tweet I will I just went like this. You ready? Give me a second. Ready? Here we go. Ah!
He also liked my tweet about Natalie, which made me happy.
AlexOh. See, the-
MerlinNatalie is the board. She's the board.
AlexShe, oh, perhaps. Perhaps. We're not talking about Severance. We're not talking about Severance. Oh.
MerlinIn Moonrise Kingdom, you know how, goddammit, Tilda Swinton's character is named social services?
AlexYes, yes.
MerlinYeah. I think, I think- She is bored. Yeah. Her name should just be the board.
AlexOh, God. Everyone is, you know, it's like a viral load just plopped into my RSS feed.
MerlinOh, I know. It's insufferable. No, it's perfect. This is the most insufferable my friends and I have been in a very, very long time. I mean, we went from zero to the wire in like a weekend. Oh, my God. Have you ever seen it yet? cancel everything, kill your children, don't eat food, sit down.
Speaker AThat's what I did last week, Alex. I did it. I did that.
AlexI did two of those things. Well, you know what? I should just tell you off the bat because I've caused a bit of hollaboo on other shows because I didn't tell anybody, similarly to how I didn't tell anybody really that I got a concussion because it was April Fool's Day.
MerlinDid you quit your job as a pro programmer to become a full-time podcaster? You save it for me, Daddy Eats First.
AlexNo, no, I did not. I have COVID, which is fine, but it is very funny.
MerlinCOVID the virus? Because that would be a pretty name for a girl.
AlexWhat? No, I have COVID the Funko Pop.
Speaker ACOVID the Funko Pop is my name. I'm the copyright free merchandising character that you can build from source. Hi, it's me, Covey. I love you. I'm in your sewage. The government found me in your sewage. Now they know you're sick. If you want to be friends with COVID, just don't be a dick.
AlexOh, I hate this. But I'm fine. And it's been great. Vaccines are awesome.
MerlinI'm not worried. I didn't ask. I didn't ask.
AlexI have been led to believe some of my friends listen to this show. I don't know why. I truly don't know why. I know that one of my exes still listens to this show.
Speaker AHello. All my exes live in Texas. You are Colby's friend
AlexOh man
Speaker AI'm a spiky little red boy I live inside your tummy
AlexOh no
Speaker AI live inside your lungy And I'm getting hungry My name's Colby And I'm gonna ruin your life For a little while Oh Oh man If you apply a little bit of False positive thinking You never know You might quit drinking and you might just feel that COVID is enough. Don't travel on planes. Yes, travel on planes. Mask on, mask off.
AlexOh, another mask off. I got my studio display. This is all very exciting news about my personal life.
MerlinListen! Are we having latency? Are we having the worst latency? Oh, my fucking God. Are we having the worst latency we've ever had? Or am I just interrupting you? Are you being interrupted more?
Alexnot because of me. I don't know. I don't know. Should we try? Should we try Zoom? It is raining
Merlinhere. And, you know, when I'll do whatever you want to do. But I was being silly. And I had a couple songs in me I wanted to get out. But I do want to I want to hear about Covey. What would you like to do? Do you want to try Zoom and see if it's better? I shouldn't make a difference. I think I've got everything decked here. But I'm here two weeks ago. I thought the same thing. Oh, my God, My new setup. You should listen to Back to Work. I was talking about my new setup. My new setup is very good.
AlexIt is great, I would say. Well, I will say the episode, I think, is great. Kofi is...
Speaker AMy name is Kofi. Did you not listen to my pod? I say pod. I'm a disease because I call it a pod.
AlexOh, God. Listen, I've come around to... Pod.
Speaker AHi, welcome to Kofi's pod. I'm double vaxxed and topped up And I still got a little bit of sore throat Covey's throat is hurting now
MerlinThat's a really catchy song, you have to admit You'll start over? Okay, ready? Play the music Play the fucking music
AlexThis is Dubai Friday A weekly challenge podcast With Alex Cox and Merlin Mann This week's challenge, use iOS on pure Siri suggestions. Hey, kids, what's for dinner?
MerlinThat was weird. That was Michael Chernus. You know, you know, I love him as Cool Rick on Patriot.
Speaker AYou getting crumbs everywhere, buddy?
MerlinHey, remember how you wanted to go camping?
AlexI love Cool Rick so much. You have to admit, in our obnoxious corner of the internet, well... Well, I don't know. This is not the show. This is not the show. Is this the show?
MerlinIs this the show?
AlexClean break.
MerlinNo, no, no. Let's get a nice clean break. And let's also have you quit talking over you.
AlexYou're not interrupting me. Wow. I'm glad that I could get out my... Oh, God.
MerlinIt's a conversation bukkake. Yeah. Go ahead. No, isn't that what they call it? Isn't that the thing? Maybe I'm thinking of Kara Ajay. Is that the one that's fried chicken or is that the one with cum?
AlexI don't know.
MerlinWhich one am I? I think it's Kara... I want to say Kara Ajay. Is that racist?
AlexI don't know who. Or what you are talking about anymore.
MerlinIf you accidentally make the wrong kind of Asian joke about a different Asian person, is that technically not racist or is it triple racist?
AlexOh, interesting. You're colorblind.
MerlinDo you get a, I mean, sort of like, gosh, I'm spacing on what they call it in D&D. Like, you know, sort of like you have a shield that will have more hit points or, you know, maybe you can roll for like extra damage. So like if you say, you know, the problem with chicken bukkake is then you want to eat it again an hour later. Now, there's all kinds of problems with that joke that I would be happy to discuss in my upcoming e-workshop.
AlexAnd where can people find that?
MerlinRule number one. Oh, you go to 5x5.tv. You go to – what you do is – the thing is you have to learn – first you must learn, really. It is a lot of wax on, wax off, mask on, mask off. You have to learn first what you didn't understand that you didn't understand. It's like Donald Rumsfeld in many ways.
AlexKind of like how I just keep typing various letters into Google trying to spell bukkake. It's like a kid trying to find their type of porn.
MerlinThat's very much a let go and let God situation.
AlexOh, here we go. B-U-K-K-A-K-E. A sexual practice that involves a group of men.
MerlinNo, no. Hey, what are you doing, bud? Hey, whoa, whoa.
AlexShall we go to Urban Dictionary?
MerlinWhy would you do that? Alex, why? Oh, my. lebsters defines a joke as laven all right um i really enjoyed severance um
Alexyou think you have covid you know you have covid oh i know i've had covid since sunday um it was one of those situations where i the only reason i took a test was because i was going to see my itty bitty nieces who can't get vaccinated and i was like oh bad bad allergies right and then i'm like oh oh and so i mean i guess yay vaccines oh uh my spouse matthew who still doesn't have covid
Merlinis saying hello slash goodbye same as dr fauci dr fauci doesn't have it either he's never had it
Alexthere has been a couple articles going around of how some people are or it seems at least like folks who are exposed in lab settings over and over they just keep dropping the viral loads into them and they can't get it. It's very interesting. That's fascinating.
MerlinCan I also ask you to please stop using the phrase viral lip? I love
Alexit. For droplets? Talk about a Fauci cocky.
MerlinFauci cocky? That's definitely racist. Just because he's an old Italian man doesn't mean he comes on people.
AlexItalian-American discrimination. Jeez, Merlin. Comes on you quickly.
MerlinYou can't discriminate against an Italian. That's crazy.
AlexI mean, are we really phobic of
Merlinthe Italians? And their little cars, rubber banding back onto the road, going through the haunted house. They don't even know how to spell cart.
Is that a joke? Is it a joke? Is it Mario with a K?
AlexCart? Yes, yes. Oh, so that was a funny joke. Yes, it was.
MerlinAll right, so who have I covered? I got the Asians, which we break down at least so far. There's a lot of Asians I haven't touched yet. We've touched on the Italians a little bit. That's no good, boss. Yeah?
Speaker AYeah.
MerlinAnd I guess now we should start the show. Again. Okay. Hello. Ivan.
AlexI'm only allowed to do that this week.
MerlinWhat?
AlexSpewing those droplets.
MerlinI don't like to hawk a loogie.
AlexI don't think I ever have.
MerlinWell, it's a thing you do. And eventually, I don't know. I think it's like using Carmex. You become dependent on it.
AlexOh. Hmm.
MerlinI'm sorry. My uvula swore.
AlexBut I couldn't even find it until I was college. So I'm sorry. What?
MerlinOh, nothing. If you get your uvula removed, that's called hysterectomy.
Speaker AChuck one up for the 51%.
MerlinNow I've hit them.
Speaker Aum
Merlinthe 51%
Speaker Atruth
Alexoh man I I wonder so what would this pot this would this make our podcast like a 70%? I truly don't know my percentage.
MerlinOh, that's a good question. The other day I was, as I think you may be aware, it doesn't matter if you're aware, I have been doing a lot of tech updates and one of them is a massive update, including a new Synology and new drives in the Synology and trying to do a migration on the Synology and as of 1 a.m. tonight, I will finish my four days, ideally, knock on wood. I can't believe I'm saying this. I will complete And I put that in a thread so it wouldn't all clog up the tech channel. But asking questions about the best way to do a migration.
But yeah, almost four days of migration. And hopefully, I am hopeful that that will be done tonight. And then I'm going to have a big old butt ton of Synology space. But the point was, I looked and I saw that. So the estimate was, what was it? Oh, so when you do a migraine, you know, sometimes when you're healing, when you're repairing an array, you'll get like, okay, it's going to take, you know, two days. And that's step one of two.
And then a few days ago, a couple, you know, maybe over like Sunday or Monday, it said step two of three, 66% done. And I suddenly melted down because I know, okay, I know somewhere in my brain, I know how to do two thirds times two thirds. But there's another part of my brain, perhaps a more recent forebrain part of my brain that said, nah, nah, nah, nah. You don't need to know that. And you don't want to go have to remember how to do two thirds times.
And I swear to Christ, if anyone contacts me at all for a cool trick, especially if you're a goddamn math teacher, don't do it. Keep your maths in your pants.
AlexNo, no.
MerlinNow, what percentage of people are math teachers?
AlexHuh.
MerlinHuh. I think we're filling out the pie pretty nice today. Is there anybody you'd like to hit? Do you want to hit some clears?
AlexYeah, well, I think I already have. Not like with a car. Oh, man. Now every time I get in the car, especially because, you know, I have a – my car is like a 75% electric car too because it has –
MerlinA 75%er. You know, the higher it goes, the funnier it is. Up to a point. I think once you get to 87%er, stop there because 88 is Hitler.
AlexWell, that's a power bottom, I think.
MerlinAnd the devil is six and God is seven. This monkey's going to heaven.
AlexHave you ever driven an electric car, Merlin? Because it's basically a toy and I'm just kind of hyper aware now.
MerlinThat's why you like to say vroom vroom? Zoom zoom?
AlexRight, yeah. No, no, no. It is a beep beep. There are no vroom vrooms because can't rev that engine. So I'm like, yep, this is a toy that can kill anybody I want.
MerlinI hope I never have to take the capsule out of your brain with a drill at a funeral. my goodness me take my hand we're off to Never Neverland she's a real good guitar player
Alexoh my god so the thing is
Merlinyou have a vroom vroom can we go back to Covey?
Alexyeah
Merlina thing that had come up before I don't know, I don't like to make as much as I'm fine with presenting everybody else I don't like to make light of what I perceive to be your medical shit. But I think this is okay on the record. You said that, you have said in the past that you have an inkling that you might have gotten COVID a long time ago, in part because antibodies that normally would, especially in a body
as withered, your withered body that you have, your medical state in which you live for now, that you would have antibodies you didn't expect. So it seemed like you had COVID visit a long time ago.
AlexOh, yeah. Like January 2020. If it was, I believe now there's like a number. Oh, before it was cool. Yeah, yeah.
MerlinLike me and Michael, not Michael Chabon. How many Michaels are there in the East Bay? Okay, add that to the list. Filling out the pie graph. All the Michaels. They all have beards. Wonder boy. Okay, so.
AlexOh, also, I found that I am emotionally attracted to, I think, anybody named Mark, but in a way that I know that I could slap them and no one would ban me from the Academy for 10 years. Like, Marks should be like, especially like Rent Mark, who I'm often compared to. Like, yeah, no, someone could slap me and I'd be like, yep, I deserve that.
MerlinWait, OK, is Rent Mark the red haired kid?
AlexYes. Anthony Rep originally played him.
Speaker AOh, is he the one that had experience with Kevin Spacey?
AlexYes, yes, yes. And Andy Dick. He's just... I'm trying to think.
MerlinWell, that says it right on there. Yeah, yeah. Because it's a total Andy. Total Andy. Yeah.
Speaker AMm-hmm, mm-hmm.
MerlinHe's an 88 percenter. No, that's Hitler. Shit. Okay, so wait. If man is five and the devil is six, you thought you had... You know what? This is a terrible show. I'm refunding my own money.
AlexWell, I'm enjoying it.
MerlinOh, thank you for being here. I'm so glad you're here. And so Sunday, did you do the nosy test? The usual nosy, not PCR, but antigen test. And it came back. Tell me your COVID story. It's like a birth story. But for COVID, delivering COVID.
AlexI mean, as we did or didn't talk about on this show, got a mild concussion April 1st. Went to the doctor twice.
MerlinIs that a known concussion? Did somebody write that on a form that it is an actual concussion?
AlexYeah. Because I had to do a fine. It was fine. It was fine, but I had to do like a follow up.
MerlinDid you sleep for two days before finding out whether it's concussion?
AlexNo, I went right after I fell and they were like, I'm sorry, I'm outing you.
MerlinWe could use your help with the cause, but it's not up to me to out you. 89%.
AlexI fell. I returned to the scene of the crime, actually, the next day where I slipped and fell at the park because I don't know where else am I going to go for a walk?
MerlinOh, pyromaniacs do that too.
AlexYeah. And then Monday I just had to go. I just had to go for a follow up. And I have an inkling that that could have been where I caught it, but only because...
MerlinOh, because you were in a doctor's-ish office?
AlexYeah. Or...
MerlinOh, shit.
AlexOr Matthew is... My spouse is one of those freaks who can't get it because now a bunch of his clients tested positive around the same time I did. So we're all just... Can't get it? Yeah. There are some people who continue to not be able to get COVID.
MerlinIs that the wording that was used by somebody who got an American medical degree? Can't get it?
AlexWell, I believe it was UK. I'm sure this is bullshit, but I don't know.
MerlinI'm more than willing to sell you people powders or corrective boots or any kind of a medical device that operates technically outside the auspices of the FDA, technically. But I don't want to give bad medical advice. It's in the sense of like, is it more like a doctor looks at it and goes, huh, that's pretty wild. It seems pretty crazy that you're out and about and you do things and you've never gotten it. A little bit of a Fauci. Or is there some kind of a superpower?
Are we talking about an unbreakable type situation where Matthew has some kind of special way of throwing off viral load?
AlexOh, this is pure speculation. Okay. That's thank you. Continue. To be clear.
MerlinSorry. Sorry.
AlexPure speculation, although, and the only reason I think.
MerlinPure uncut speculation.
AlexYes, just, I'm told that straight women don't notice, which good for you guys, I guess.
MerlinStraight women don't notice.
AlexThe uncut situation, depending, some can't even tell the difference, which I find weird.
MerlinIn terms of scoring, in terms of scoring cocaine?
AlexWe'll just let the audience's imagination go whichever way they want.
Merlin90%. We're up there. Okay, we're getting there. We're filling up. Our little bar is at least it's got red to yellow.
AlexYeah, no, I was feeling like sort of crappy over the weekend, but I just thought it was.
MerlinDid you have a sore throat?
AlexNo, I still. Really?
MerlinIsn't that still the predominant signal for boosted people?
AlexFor me, it was. Well, that's the thing is I don't know because I constantly have allergies. So it's like, yes, my throat technically hurts, but it's like how much of this is drainage and how much of this is COVID?
MerlinMadeline had her second top up on, I think it was, God, no, that wouldn't be right. Okay, so here's the story. The story is second top up. This one, I think, was the first Moderna. I've been really wanting Moderna. I got J&J and then Pfizer, and everybody says Moderna's the good shit. Anyway, Madeline got topped off with Moderna, and I got half a day. Half a day, I think it was on, might have been on Saturday. She was leveled. Like, one of the times, apart from the incident a few years ago, one of the times she was sickest she's ever been.
AlexGod, that sucks.
MerlinAnd, like, it was just, like, real bad. Didn't get out of bed for 24 hours.
AlexYeah.
MerlinSo, okay, but, like, here's the thing. I mean, that's got to be almost definitely the vaccine, right? But, like, half a day? Oh. Isn't it usually, like, next day?
AlexOh, I don't know.
MerlinI wonder if she had COVID.
AlexInteresting.
MerlinBecause that's the thing that's fucking us all up is because it was – used to be – remember in the beginning it was like, oh, even like they didn't have enough tests to test people, let alone have a vaccine in a few months or whatever. But you know what I mean? But there was the thing of like, oh, my God, we all live in such grave fear of the thing that killed Meemaw.
Speaker AYeah.
MerlinAnd then like over time that became more of, oh, well, you know, you become like Bolsonaro and you just get it – it's like changing your pads, 91%. Bolsonaro just gets in there a couple times a day. And I'm going to put you in the nose tube myself. I'm good at this now.
AlexHe's got a lot going on. Just a lot going on.
MerlinDavid Roth's coverage of Bolsonaro is so fucking funny. For real. Anyway, and then now it's the point that where everybody's like, people now say stuff like that sound, would have sounded mental two years ago, right? Yeah. Like, I think I had COVID. Or, oh, yeah, I've got COVID. I'll see you tomorrow or whatever. like in your case you're recording assuming this goes out if we fill our pie our pie of offense that you're doing a podcast while you have COVID
could you ever imagine that?
AlexI mean no I remember when Marco we all thought he was going to die
MerlinI was just going to say he was so embarrassed I felt so bad for the little guy he felt so bad about it and like so guilty about it
Alexyeah that was
Merlinalso he had to buy a battery for his battery
AlexI have a battery for my battery. I've got a big battery that charges my little batteries.
MerlinYou're talking about Hitachi? No. What are you talking about? No. Oh, interesting. 92. Okay. And so you – and did you go then – so you – is it a thing like a pregnancy test where you like go, ooh, whoopsie-dipsie? Because, you know, these things are a little bit whack. We give our kid one a lot, you know, because of school. Yeah. And like every weekend you're supposed to do it on like, you know, Sunday, et cetera, which I'm sure everybody's doing.
AlexYeah.
MerlinBut anyway, whatever. But no, but you so did – and then did you go, what, what, what, what, and do another one? Did you go to a doctor? Okay, so you instantly just popped out another binax.
AlexOh, no, no, sorry. I did one, and it's one of those – Well, that's the thing. It was one of those that –
MerlinI mean, you know what? Bad on me. Do you even need to go to the doctor now?
AlexWell, this is my thing.
MerlinFor all I know, you could just go volunteer somewhere while you have COVID. I still have old COVID brain.
AlexYeah. Okay. Well, that's the thing is I was like, what do I do? Do I do anything?
MerlinWe don't even say this person got COVID anymore. We say they tested positive for COVID, which seems like a subtle non-difference. I think it's neither subtle nor non-difference. But when we say something like Jen Psaki tested positive for COVID, it does sound a lot better than – I mean it's similar. Similar. I'm not a physician, but it's similar to strikes me as similar to saying today, press secretary Jen Psaki was formally diagnosed with coronavirus.
Interesting. I don't know. Sounds so much more onerous and scary.
AlexOh, yes. I agree. Yes. I mean, it depends. I think like I remember when it used to be the virus like that. That was very, very upsetting.
MerlinAlmost like the way, one of those ways that we would talk about AIDS in the early days.
AlexOh, absolutely. Like I remember.
MerlinIn a coded sort of way.
AlexYeah, yeah. I never realized, because in my life it's always been HIV.
MerlinYou just say, you know, where's Ed? Ed's sick.
AlexYeah, yeah.
MerlinAnd everybody knew what you meant.
AlexYes. Oh, man. The first time I watched one of my favorite TV shows, I like Severance more, but one of my favorite TV shows, Pose, when they're like, oh, he's sick. I was like, what? Oh. I know. Oh. Because it's been HIV. It's like, yep, he's HIV positive. And it's only until like 90.
MerlinYou were born. 90. Like setting aside when you, yeah, so setting aside when you became more sentient and iPhone centric, like you still, so like even in 1990, that was still a very act up-y sort of time. It was still sort of considered, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I'm honestly not trying to make this about me except insofar as I wanted to share a personal feeling, which was like when I had learned, understand, new college, right? 520 people. Like, you know, 100 people in my graduating
class. It's a pretty dang small school. And I remember when I first learned that some people I was acquainted with had it and were pretty far along in some cases. And then I learned that like a pal of mine had it. Like, a pal of mine. Like, not just, you know, the really nice guy that works in the cop shop or, you know, the TA for this class, but, like, one of my friends from orientation week. Like, your friends from orientation week are special, like, to me.
Like, that's, of course, when I acquired my first monogamous girlfriend. But, you know what I mean? Like, you've got your pals who are, like, you know, load-bearing people in your experience of something. and even if you drift apart you still have that weird bond of like a certain time oh we did jury you together or we got arrested at this protest together whatever anyway um and i it was just it was so odd to me maybe in a way like i guess i've started calling this the uh the aunt the uh the aunt joe problem i hate lesbians but i like aunt joe and her friend yep you know where it's like
in that same way we first learned well you know aunt joe's totally a carpet muncher right like You know she's totally going downtown and bringing bags. Sorry, I'm just making stuff up now. Like in the same way of going like, oh, this is not an abstract thing that's like a line graph on TV. This is like – and it was like – I don't know. I'm not trying to like over-personalize this, but it really was like a chill down your spine of like, oh, this is really McReal. Real, real, real, real, real. Like this is my friend. And like, I don't, I mean, you have to understand, circa 87, 88, I mean.
AlexDeath sentence.
MerlinDon't, you know, be careful about the timeline and scope of your plans, even if you're 20 years old.
AlexIt's wild now. And I remember in college.
MerlinThat's terrible.
AlexWhy am I talking about this? Well, because, no, no, it's, I mean, that is awful. But for me, I remember in college, like some I had a friend who's like, oh, yeah, I'm dating this guy who's positive now. So I got to go. I got to start prep. And I was like, what?
MerlinAnd now I don't want to say it is not a big deal, but it is prep prep as in like taking precautions for an intimate intimacy.
AlexIt is not preparation preparation age. It is. I'm a bad friend. I don't know what it is called. HIV-1 Prep Info. But it is this, I believe, antiviral... Oh, is it along the lines of a contraceptive type thing?
MerlinWhere you put this on to icy minimum? So you're just improving your chances taking the edge off.
AlexNo, no, no. It is pre-exposure prophylaxis. Basically, it's a daily pill that helps prevent HIV.
MerlinI have never heard of that. I'm so ashamed I've never heard of that until now.
AlexI did not know that existed. holy shit i i one of one of my favorite um you know when cards did the pride pack like there there were a lot of prep jokes and there were like you could there were certain cards that just weren't made for straight people and that that was one of them uh but but yeah it it is pretty much again it is just so different so that it's it's like race and gender it gets weird comparing them But it is absolutely a normalized thing in a, I guess, what you could call a good way.
So, yeah, lots of sex workers are on it, too, or people who are at risk for intravenous drugs.
MerlinForgive my ignorance. Is it a – do you take it orally or is it like a topical thing?
AlexI believe –
MerlinIt must be oral.
AlexYeah. Everyone I know is a pill popper. What? It takes a pill every day. So, yeah.
MerlinHoly shit. Okay. Hang on. Hang on. Holy shit. Oh, okay. The commercial's on MSNBC. Is it Rebelsons?
But there's the one where it's like I think it's a commercial and it's like the most diverse commercial you've ever seen. It's got, you know, it's got gay kids and lesbians and a big tall trans person dancing with a little person. It's really cute. You know that Rebelsis? Is that what it is? I forget. Anyway, but is that a similar kind of thing? I have no idea. It's a medication you take that makes you less likely to transmit it?
AlexI have no idea, actually. I got a lot to learn. I do not watch MSNBC.
MerlinRefresh my memory. Did you like or hate or have a feeling about Angels in America? I still haven't seen that.
AlexNope. I know. I know.
MerlinSaving it for prison?
AlexNo, I'm saving it. It's a potential challenge. And listen, I- Your potential challenge. Not potential.
Speaker AThis is- No, no, no.
AlexNo, no, no. There's no amount of antivirals that can prevent that.
MerlinWhat a good mood. They stopped fixing the road. I cleaned my office. I mounted my bins. I got a lot to catch you up on. How are you feeling as we say right now?
AlexI am shocked at how not fine I feel. But like.
MerlinI know exactly what you mean. It's not that difficult for something extremely mysterious that may or may not exist out of fucking nowhere to level you for a month.
AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
MerlinAnd yet you got COVID. You're good.
AlexYeah, it's very strange. Ain't that ironical? Oh, yeah. I would, I don't want to say that. No, I'll say, like, if someone was like, okay, you have a sinus infection pill and you have a COVID pill. Both take this red or blue and neither will kill you or give you long-term side effects. COVID all the way. Like, the fever was, like, bad for a while, but I didn't even know I had a fever. I just thought I felt really like bad. And I mean, yeah, this is so I guess I think I got the Omicron.
So but I truly was like, wait, what do I do? Do I tell like Matt, like let his work know and stuff. But I'm like, well, I just won't go outside until I test negative. So ordered more tests.
MerlinSetting aside that Matt is impervious to disease. Theoretically. Are you doing any special arrangements? Like as far as staying in different rooms or anything like that? Matt's not worried, huh?
AlexThat's the thing. Is like we kind of can't.
MerlinDid Matt go and visit the baby by himself?
AlexNo, no. Because we were like, let's not. And both of the kids have had COVID. And that was the emergency room trip. That was bad. But they're all good now.
MerlinYeah, that's scary stuff.
AlexYeah, yeah. And so it's just very strange. And, like, my parents keep checking up on me. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm, poof, this is not, like, a sinus infection. Or, God, walking pneumonia was, like, much, I don't know. I say this not to make light of COVID. Like, this is not really me even chicken probleming. Like I am genuinely surprised of like, oh, oh, this is great. Like, that's great.
MerlinBut no, no, no. But I totally get. And you can hear it in the way. I mean, this whole conversation, not this whole conversation, but elements of the conversation we've been having for the last few minutes really highlight how I have not caught up with a lot of the realities of COVID in particular. because I still think of it as being like, well, what? Like a canonical, oh, I love this word I learned from Matchy, emergent health event. Like it's got to be, I think of it as being like, you think of a heart attack or a stroke or one of those things
where you're like, oh, yes, we're going to quote unquote rush you to the hospital as opposed to amble you to the hospital. That's fine. But we're going to get you to the hospital real fast because you've had a fucking, we think you had like a fucking heart attack or you were in a car accident. And of course you're going to go to the hospital. It would be like after two years of people being in car accidents, they said, oh, well, you know, it's really up to you whether you need to go to the hospital. I'm going to walk it off. A heart attack. Yeah.
Speaker AYeah.
MerlinI mean, really, it's you may not even realize you've had a car accident.
AlexYes. It truly feels it truly felt like that. Like I it was.
MerlinThat's crazy.
AlexYeah. So I, you know, keep in mind, I am sitting in front of powders, but I would still encourage people to get vaccinated. because, oh man, I don't know. It's just very strange to be like, I texted my friends who've had it multiple times. I'm like, should I go to the doctor? And then texting friends that are doctors and like, no, just don't be around people. And I mean, try to-
MerlinBecause at this point, the goal is really to avoid getting it so that you don't get sick or make others sick. But then if you do get it far and away, take care of yourself, but don't give it to somebody vulnerable. I just always think of it as the beginning of, I think it was in Mission Impossible.
Speaker AYeah.
MerlinI know it's in the movies openings too sometimes, but where you light that fuse and that crackly, you know, fuse fire goes down the fuse. And, you know, it's like, I always, I have felt for a long time that COVID in particular is, feels like a fairly relentless predator where it's going to keep attacking. It's going to keep attacking until it finds something, a body that will die because of it. I don't think COVID thinks that way. Cause COVID probably don't think we'll have to interview Covey in our
Alexnext segment yeah exactly exclusive to spotify kobe did not respond to comfort my tuesdays with kobe i don't know man it's pretty complicated the fire virus says you need in heaven can't get it
Speaker Afrom drinking out of somebody else's glass but still man be careful well i well i left a viral
Alexload in your bathroom i matt and i were like oh oh i guess we can't can't that's oh i guess yeah Okay. So it's just kind of been like separate, sort of like separated from each other. But even now it's like.
MerlinHey, you really are becoming a married couple.
AlexYeah. Oh, God. I will have been married six. No, wait.
MerlinSix?
Alex2016. Yeah, fuck. Six years. You were worried about Trump. Yep. I mean, honestly, now I'm kind of like, yep, that was a good choice.
MerlinBut it all worked out, you know?
AlexYeah. But, oh, God. Nine to fucking year. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Now who's a serial monogamous? Gee. Well, is it serial if it's just one for a long time? Or do you have to jump around?
MerlinWe're talking about Lucky Charms?
AlexYeah. Oh, oh, oh. Talk about magically delicious.
MerlinNo, like you give a series A bukkake.
um moving on i don't want to go too long two days so we have time for the after show um things to talk about oh yeah i got my oh yeah i updated my i have two items of follow-up that we can skip
Alexbecause we should probably get to the challenge no no oh i should open the dock i was just really enamored with kobe and making everybody pay attention to me hey guys eventually all my
Merlincharacters become this character it's also very close to the library elf and um and heidi from um
Alexyou know top dress uh no i don't know i do not know i do a really good five syllable uh sorry sorry i didn't i didn't have noir on one of my favorite uh safari plugins that i just opened up the dock and the studio display blinded me oh my god sorry sorry for interrupting y'all
Merlinare hearing this on twitter because i posted it here it's because that's the weirdest sound i ever heard.
Speaker AOh, God.
MerlinMy red nose. And just so I'm clear about this, I don't know if this is the COVID talking, but you made that noise because your screen was brighter than you expected?
AlexI was being an inattentative co-host. I apologize. I went to open up our doc.
MerlinYou were inattentative?
AlexHe's shaggy.
MerlinPortmanteau, party of two.
Speaker AOkay.
AlexOh, I guess I should replace my mic, my pop filter, too. Oh, yeah. Right? I'm like, what do I do?
MerlinWhat were we talking about a second ago before you screamed?
AlexI opened the Google Doc and made the strangest noise you've ever heard. And you were going to talk about follow-up items. Oh, Segway Miles.
MerlinHuh?
AlexSangue Miles.
MerlinOh, yeah. You can come back to that later.
AlexOh, all right.
MerlinSo if you like what we're doing here, and this is what we do for work, such as it is, and it's how we pay for things. So if you enjoy this, and I believe fervently that it takes a while to decide whether you even could love a podcast, but if you're at a point where you don't hate us yet, congratulations. So to Kakuna Matata, you're in the 7%. And if you'd like to help us, if you're a 7%er and you haven't given up on us yet, you can Bukkake over to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com or patreon.com slash dobyfriday. And you can tie this. I recommend $5 a month or $10,000 a month,
whatever works for you. And that's really it. That's all I had on that was that. I don't know what we'll talk about in the after show. Yeah, I updated my total segue miles. Long story short, I have a silver for this, of course. I hadn't checked in in a while. I'm over a thousand miles now on total segue miles.
AlexNice.
MerlinAre you really thinking about that? That's Cincinnati to Tampa.
AlexI assumed it was. Wait, is Cincinnati. That sounds like it is. You could ride across a state with your or did ride across a state with your Segway. I don't know.
MerlinThose are real different states because it goes Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama or Georgia, Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, Tampa. Anyway, a thousand miles is a lot of miles. That's one twenty fourth around the globe.
Alexyou're doing more math did I get that right I don't know I'm not doing math either
Merlinentertainment 720 you know because we go around the planet twice for our clients oh and the other one was my bin lifestyle wait no so did you listen to yesterday's back to work it's okay if you didn't
Alexno I did because I'm like oh I gotta catch up I don't
MerlinI like the ones where I get full of beans about a philosophical component and I like when I yell at people about not throwing junk away. It feels kind of good, doesn't it?
AlexThis morning, I literally turned because I was in the kitchen and Matchy is sleeping on the couch because we're like, I guess we shouldn't be in clothes. I know, I know, poor kid. Oh, gosh, yes. Thank you for his service. I was just listening back to work through my phone speakers like a monster, apparently, and I turned it down. You were yelling so
loud, rightfully so, and I was like, I needed this episode at this time in my life. I thought all the things you need to
Speaker Adonate. Don't throw it away. You gotta donate it.
AlexDonate it. Well, I'm like looking at this monitor.
MerlinYou can have my back on this,
AlexAlex. Hasn't there been... Oh, yes.
MerlinAbsolutely. The whole like fucking donate bullshit, where it's easy enough to say to anybody how dare you throw that thing away. You're filling the dumps with dump. like you should donate it it's like i don't know i just remember like so i i okay it would be emotionally and existentially dishonest for me to say that the marie kondo ish moment in america it touched our family too um and some of that is probably just coincidence because really my my grounding is in the much more philosophical teachings of the great uh aussie um peter walsh
but we did probably our maybe really pound for pound our largest purge we ever did it was the first purge we did I mean with our kid involved and we did go to Goodwill there was like a line do you remember this do you remember hearing like Goodwill was like please if you cannot we don't have room for you if you wanted to drop off like a jag we don't have room for it if you want to drop off the fucking Hope Diamond we don't have room for it because all these kind people brought us their socks and Mr. Mr. Seedys.
And it's like, yeah. And it's like, well, I think a lot of people have a misapprehension about what Goodwill is, including me sometimes. But Goodwill is primarily an organization that helps train people to be able to have things like retail jobs and to do like all kinds of different jobs. But it's my understanding Goodwill is in some ways like, you know, this term has become broader than it used to be, but what do they call it? Occupational therapy. Like it's, you know what I mean? occupational therapy used to mean you know learn how to be a housewife but then it also came to
mean like you know how to deal with your spectrum stuff and like how to how to like you know realize how you seem in the world and how to do things and how to like tie a tie and all that kind of i don't mean sound condescending but goodwill let's put it this way oh no no i'm so i didn't know that actually goodwill is not a dump with a good logo yeah it's not it's not it's not a dump with a logo it's a place that trains people how so like when you go and drop all your shit off their i mean they're making money off selling that stuff i mean the truth is they make a lot more money shipping the best stuff to like places in new york that's a whole different thing
Alexbut the point is it's not a place for your don't i mean i feel oh but like don't all i'm trying to
Merlinsay is like i really think and and this is a classic example of i needed to hear this the reason i keep yelling about this is because when i say don't be shamed by people on social media about like calling a truck to take or renting a dumpster. I'm really talking to me because I live in constant fear of somebody thinking that I'm being a privileged wastrel.
AlexDo you really?
MerlinYou do. I mean, we both do.
AlexOh, that's the chicken problem. Not anymore. I think.
MerlinOh, God. Also, the fucking. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Studio display box. You have my back on this.
AlexWell.
MerlinCan you believe that box? That box weighed like 20 pounds.
AlexYes. But I think I couldn't tell you like your tone of I think it was.
Speaker AI cut it up and there's boxes inside of boxes. It was the wildest. All the soup. Did you cut up your studio display box?
AlexIt was insane. But but I as we talked about the the way things are delivered to my house is not wholesome. So I am now very confident with for a while.
MerlinYeah. So if I keep all this shit for the rest of my life, then I'm a good person.
AlexNo, I'm saying that I think the...
MerlinNo, no, I'm saying that.
AlexWait, see, I thought the box was perfect. The box is perfect because there's not a ton of shit.
MerlinNo, no, I'm sorry. I should have made the beeping noise that I was slightly changing topics. I just wanted to get my back on the insane design and build quality of the studio display box. That's all.
AlexI think it's amazing.
MerlinI couldn't believe it. Once I had the monitor out of it, I was like, this monitor weighs almost... This display weighs almost nothing. This is almost all box.
AlexOh, yeah.
MerlinAnd the way the sides, the sides butterfly down.
AlexYeah.
MerlinBut like I kept opening it and going like, wait, is there like two pounds of Krugerrands in this area? How is this so heavy? Oh, it's because it's another solid box inside of here. You've got box. When I say box in box, what I'm saying is they've built this redundant system with using a combination of cardboard and space that makes it a very, very tough box to ship something in. As opposed to my four 16-terabyte hard drives that arrived loose in a box last week.
AlexCute.
MerlinFour 16-terabyte hard drives loose in a box. You understand? Now, when I say loose in a box, I'm talking about like a box the size of like an Amazon box, like a 10 to 12 inch high, maybe eight inch wide box with four hard drives in it. Clack-a-clack-a-clack. It was like sad castanets.
AlexNow, when I order things from Amazon, there's like a 10% chance that bubble, like just the, you know, the, do people even use bubble wrapping? Like the big bubble plastic thing. Yeah, that they will just be like already popped. So I'm like, I appreciate this cardboard.
MerlinOh, you think they went in full? I've never thought about that. Why there's always a couple that are empty.
AlexOh, yeah. I think it just gets smooshed.
MerlinYeah, I mean, I'm trying to be real in a couple ways here and trying to not be fake in a couple ways. I'm trying to say something real, but I'm also trying to say something real. So the thing that I'm trying to say that's real is that I don't think and there's long-term value in hanging on to stuff because you feel bad about having it. I think an argument could be made by a smarter person that the more you feel bad about having something, the more that's a pretty good candidate for something you probably shouldn't have anymore. But I also want to say something real. And on top of that, or allied with that, which is even at our most private moments, in my most private moments, I still hear this din, this Greek chorus of just savage judgment from the world.
And I don't like it. I don't like having it in my head. I can't blame anybody for that but myself, except for all the people that are doing it.
AlexI'm like, well, there could be a few billion people.
MerlinThe lasting impact of drive by judgy culture, it leaves a mark.
AlexYeah.
MerlinAnd like, this goes all the way back in some ways to that's fine for Merlin, which, you know, ha ha, but not ha ha, was this idea of like, well, yeah, I mean, have the temerity to think your life is valuable. if you've decided that the only way you can appear to strangers as an authentic person is to pretend your life can't be improved you know that ain't working you know you can play the guitar on the mtv like you want to become like one of the guys in the money for nothing video who's just bitches all the time and like nobody's ever allowed to be happy or succeed that can become a very toxic
and privileged way of thinking about the world but it can also be a way to look for little slivers of light in situations that may not seem immediately hopeful to say like you know um i don't know this is this is i had to google this immediately because it really screams bullshit but the guy the interesting uh fbi guy the hostage negotiator guy he he was uh i watched the talk he did last night and he did that thing about how if you have a positive outlook in life
you have a 31 better chance of succeeding which is exactly the kind of shit i would have reblogged on 43 folders in 2005. Here's the thing. That sounds like bullshit. That sounds like a turns out bullshit thing to me. But the truth is, side B, I do know that how you sort of choose to look at things can have a huge impact. And even how you word it. Here's the funny thing about me. When my lady friend was sick from her
double dose, she was really ill, I said the thing I always say to people who aren't feeling well, which is, or that are grieving, which is that I hope it becomes less bad soon. I hope you're feeling, so like, you know, she still uses the old tongue to say things like, oh, I'm feeling better. And then I don't, in a way that hopefully is not a Hector correction, Hector corrector, I say, oh, so less bad, huh? Because less bad is not the same thing as better. When we say better, better can mean, I'm probably getting the name of my dumb essay,
is that I want to get better at this. Better as a noun. Hey, are you all better? Better. When we say better, we're implying that we're done.
AlexOh, man.
MerlinI was really hungover, but I'm better now. Well, you're better in the sense of you're less bad than you used to be at being a big drunk, or what do you mean better? Oh, I mean I don't feel hungover anymore. Okay. So you feel less bad than you did earlier.
I think that's a lot of the human journey is that – and so why am I saying that? because I don't think you have to be a Pollyanna optimist, but I think it very much benefits us to realize when we're being a Debbie Downer pessimist.
AlexYeah.
MerlinBecause whether the glass is half empty or half full, it is ultimately the same glass. Also, why do you care so much about this glass? I don't know if that 31% thing holds any water. It sounds to me, that sounds very much like one of those twice told. It's practically a folk tale, those kinds of facts. You only use 10% of your brain.
AlexIt's a very secret, yeah, manifesting this.
MerlinBut I do, I do, there is, that doesn't make it false. Because if you, but like, to me, the corollary is probably easier to prove. Or the, or the opposite, I don't know. But like, when you go like, uh, yeah, nothing can ever be better. I'm a sad tomato. I don't have clinical or situational depression, but I might as well. like for the way that I look at the world I'm basically perma-fucked and nothing will ever be good and blah blah blah and like I'm not saying
inclining yourself away from that way of seeing the world will make your life better but it's not a bad start and I can't promise you it'll be 31% better but I think all of that is true and I think if you find a way if I find a way to quiet or at least turn down the volume on some of the the voices the the judgy voices that are removed that can't help make my life better
Alexi think that or at least i used to get like about this stuff because i would get hung up on the word success and what that meant like very much like oh okay those kinds of words have such a valence
Merlinand it can be so toxic you've lost somebody as soon as you use a certain word right and it's it's
Alexnot because uh it's not the person saying it in that moment it is just what a culture has made made me feel about a certain way like my relationship with uh work has changed drastically over the past five years i mean obviously over the past two years especially but i mean that's severance hits too close to home which is probably why man severance hit me hard in so many different ways oh god like oh it's so punishing in the best way uh to talk about bukkake just oh watch that
waffle okay i will the uh i mean the the the thing that 94 i 90 i'm i just i don't want to get to 99 but we'll see we're gonna i think we're gonna we're gonna land this plane
Merlinlike right exactly on top of the second tower no sorry 96 96 Oh, God.
Take it, take it, take it, take it, take it, take it, challenge.
AlexOh, boy. I hated this challenge. The challenge this week is mine.
MerlinI hated it.
AlexYou hated it?
MerlinFuck you.
AlexMy challenge was great. It was very challenging. That is what I will say.
MerlinDid you do it on different devices is my question.
AlexYeah.
MerlinI get different sorts of results on different devices. Good challenge. There's a challenge this week. It's mine. And there's a neat thing in iOS. I guess it might exist on Mac. I don't know. But anyway, there's a thing called widgets on iOS. And one kind of widget that's really cool, a thing that you can put either in your Today View, which is that little slide over on your left, or you can put them onto most pages in modern versions of iOS, is something called Siri Suggestions. which doesn't really give full credit to like how amazingly useful this is.
Like, like many widgets, you can pick different sizes of this, but at the heart of it, like this became from very early on, if I'm being honest, this eventually surpassed the photo widget as my favorite widget. And it's this, it's a widget you add in my case to my iOS, you know, home screen. And it's a, it's a block of four, four icons wide, two icons high. and it's just what it says, Siri suggestions. On device, it is watching and learning from you to the best of its ability, I think,
and then presenting you with apps that for a variety of different reasons that include stuff like time of day, frequency, et cetera, things it's pretty sure you might want to use right now. And we talked about this a little bit in the app show last week about how clever this is. So my challenge this week, because I had done this as a lark, was to create a, I created a page on my phone and two iPads that were nothing but widgets. And on the phone in particular, it was just three sets of serious suggestion widgets, yielding me 24 icons of guesses
about what it is that I'd like to do. Why did you hate this challenge?
AlexI have ludicrous and completely arbitrary opinions about home screens, mostly because my life just revolves around muscle memory.
Speaker AYou couldn't set that aside for a couple days though?
AlexOh, I did. No, for seven days.
MerlinI changed mine. Basically, I changed for the first time since the day this appeared in a beta. I made a DND, like a focus screen. So what I did was, and I've been trying to run DND a lot more because I just don't want to hear anything. Yeah. So basically on all my devices, I made that the DND screen is the whoops all widgets version. So it's kind of forced me to use that.
AlexOh, interesting.
MerlinAnd your arbitrary opinions are partly – how much is aesthetics? How much is functionality? What's the thing that really when it grinds your gears that somebody's home screen – jokes having left the room. What is it that you look for or dislike in a certain home screen?
AlexWell, I mean this is –
MerlinIf you can say.
AlexWe do this every year with cocksmas where I just – Coxmas, yeah. I just yell at people for no reason about how I think they're ugly. But mostly my obsession.
MerlinYou should read that short story by Shirley Jackson called Watery.
AlexMy thing is mostly. We're getting close. We're getting close.
MerlinWe're getting so close. We're so close. You know there's going to be a ding. I'm going to give you a ding on 99. I'm not going to let you finish. I'm the opposite of Kanye West. 98.
Once and whether, where does your strong feeling about that come from? You've been using these devices for a long time, and I honestly can't tell because it seems like a joke that's not a joke. I know I've felt a little bit affronted. The very first time I saw somebody who had arranged their library by color, their books by color or doing the thing where the spines, you know, going in instead of out.
And when pressed, I'm sure they have a quote unquote reason why they do that. But it just bugs me and I can't tell you why.
AlexWait, in instead of out? What? Wait, hold up. Hold up.
MerlinYou ever seen this?
AlexNo.
MerlinYou know the thing about color, right? Yes. And you see this all the time when people are doing their news hits on MSNBC and you'll see they're like, here's my yellow books. Yes. Oh, cool.
Speaker AThat's awesome.
MerlinWhere's your copy, your five copies of The Power Broker, please? But then the other one, yeah, this is a very, I think, kind of a Dwell magazine sort of look. So you know how you usually have a book and it's on a shelf and it's got a spine pointing out?
Speaker AMm-hmm.
MerlinNow imagine flipping it around so that the pages-ish part are going out.
AlexWhy? Okay, so I was right when I was imagining. Why?
MerlinLet's do it. Okay, let's – we'll pause here. We'll pause here. So how do I do this? Book, shelf, books, facing in?
AlexBecause I understand the color thing because it's just how, well, some people like to be on cable news segments and some people like to make their shelves pretty, which I'm fine.
MerlinI'm the same way. I alphabetize my spice rack. It makes it so much easier. I alphabetize my shoes. I alphabetize my letters. I did bookshelf, books, facing in. Try that.
AlexNo.
MerlinDoesn't that look psychotic? Isn't that like a Mike Baker thing to do?
AlexI don't understand at all.
MerlinI mean, if he had things on his shelves, but she doesn't. He and Nicole are going to get married. Did you know that?
AlexOh, no. Hooray? That's going to be weird.
MerlinWell, she's got enough personality for both of them. I was on the way. What are we on, 98 or 99? We're not on 98.
AlexI would say 98.5.
MerlinOkay, 10 minutes to Wapner. And then you've got all the, isn't that crazy looking? It's kind of cool looking in a way, but it looks like you live in what we used to call an adult bookstore.
AlexYeah, it looks like a copyright file or whatever the fuck it's called. What the fuck is happening? What?
Speaker AWait, do you hear that?
MerlinThat's somebody searching for something on Find My.
AlexMatthew, what did you? Okay, well, I guess. Sorry.
MerlinDid you find it?
AlexOh, no. No, I don't know what it was. It just, it immediately stopped. Is that what it was?
MerlinAm I wrong? That struck me as a Find My sound.
AlexI think you're right, but I don't know where it came from. Maybe my backpack?
MerlinMy spam calls have really ticked up in the last couple weeks. So that if I don't have my watch on, it's actually like if my second watch is at the house and in our bedroom slash my wife's office.
AlexMaybe if it's a good watch. Sorry, what?
MerlinOh, yeah. Normally I throw things away when I have two of them. I only need one shoe at a time. The other one I donate. $99. Anything else? Because I want to leave. And then I want to have a fun after show.
Alexjust i the only reason i didn't like this really was muscle memory and i think that it doesn't
Merlinquite get it yeah like having stuff not where you expect camera was not where i expect settings was not where i expect but like i just for what it's worth in our folder for this week i already made the folder um you can see i did screen grabs roughly the same time on three different devices and i do think it's just real quickly i do think it's interesting like the most useful and again this changes here's the neat thing this changes like through the day right but like uh oh shoot i gave you accidentally my real home page but like on the ipad that i have on the side here as my like
tv and like sidecar ipad hanging up here like that had the least not gonna say the worst but the least useful least evolved results for i'm guessing a million reasons that make a lot of sense which is For weeks, or now for months, I've mainly just had this hanging here and using it as my office iPad. Like, I don't do stuff on it in nearly the way that I do stuff on my 10-inch iPad. And the 10-inch iPad, even though I love it, love it, love it.
But, you know, as I think with you, now that I've got this laptop that I'm gay bones for, like, I don't use it as much as I use the laptop. And I still, I use the phone, of course, a lot, a lot, a lot more. and on like throughout the day. Like I may look at my iPad, my 10-inch iPad like in the afternoon, usually in the evening. But like my phone, I'm kind of using all day long. I'm unlocking stuff. I'm setting scenes. I'm, you know, doing all kinds of stuff. And perhaps unsurprisingly, my best
and most relevant seeming results were on the phone. I think this is, I think it's smart and I think it learns. And I mean, like if this isn't obvious why this is cool, to me anyway like it indisputably picks up on if there are certain things you do with certain apps at certain times i'm positive so like there's things i used to do like every morning with google sheets and google sheets would always be down there like right now autosleep autosleep is always in the suggestions because i tend to look at it in the morning right the one that really
blew me away though is when we had returned our fifth return to uh you look nice today and we're recording on Thursdays, camo started appearing on Thursdays around 10, 30 or 11.
Because I needed it for video. I knew it. And I don't think it's pulling that out of, you know, calendars. I think, I don't know. I would love to know how it works. Did you see anything either interesting and or useful in this experiment, the serious suggestions experiment?
AlexI thought it was going to perhaps steer me away from or rather I expected it to steer me to social media and messaging apps. And I'm like, OK, I'm not in denial. I know that I will go on Slack for way too long and look at Discord. But it just felt like, I guess, my vice apps, I guess, never really popped up. But the useful stuff, like camera and Amazon never really appeared.
They kept putting Overcast away. And then I realized, oh, is it because I have Overcast into widgets? And I don't know.
MerlinThat is part of it. And this is why, well, actually, in this instance, if you do go to our Dropbox, the one that I accidentally put in is my real iPhone homepage, which I happen to think, for my own purposes, is perfect. And just for the purposes of this experiment, I did. So basically, I've got eight, what do you call them? Do you want the icons? I've got eight icons. And I don't want to say apps because one of them is a folder, right? So like settings, Gmail, messages, camera. It's like settings must always be upper left.
Camera must always be upper right. Second row, reminders, home, overcast, and then home assistant folder. And then you'll see, and the trick here is to look at the shade of the letters on the apps. and you'll notice that when they're darker like that that's a serious suggestion um but like it's it's pretty canny like a fair amount of the time but like honestly then one if you were to go look at any of those other dumb ones you'll see the one that's the really wild experiment where
i'm trying to go all whoops all widgets on ipad just for fun and i honestly and given that this also is the week where i've been being banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to do how to mount an iPad for a HomeKit controller.
AlexOh, yeah. That's, oh, boy.
MerlinI've been thinking very much in, you know, given that we've now had iPhone and iOS around for, I don't know, coming up on 15 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 14, really, but yeah. But the thing is, though, it still bears reminding that there are elements of how we use these devices so much that when you first saw the pinch and scroll in New York Times and ordering Starbucks, when you first saw that, I don't know. I sure couldn't have imagined
how much that would now be part of almost every interaction that I have somewhere, where basically the convergence of, say, a touchpad and my fingers. My fingers use a touchpad the same way my fingers use an iPhone. That's weird. I thought I'd be typing all the time and using a return key but the point being that like um you know it's what's fascinating about a stream deck for example if we look at this the stream deck that you maybe you buy a stream deck because it lets you hit a button to do something or change something you could say thanks to your
followers you could announce a thing you could play an air horn sound like right like the on label purpose for a Stream Deck, understandably, is that you can program this, if you like, so that when you hit a button, something happens or something changes. Okay? Now, I'm going to say one of those things, like talking about the iPhone, it's going to seem really obvious until you really sit with it for a second. But the powerful thing in some ways about a Stream Deck is that the button, what it displays, what it's showing you, is relevant.
Like, it's not just an affordance, a physical affordance for changing something. I mean, a thermometer, if it works properly, is giving you information about the air temperature. And then you may go do things about it. But like if you've got like a John Syracuse thermostat, it's also an affordance for physically changing the environment. So when your thermostat says to you, hey, it's 63 in here. Do you want to turn the heat up? Like it then gives you a dial or a button to do something with that.
That's a big deal. If you think about it, like in your car, you can't in your in a car from like my life. You've got things that display to give you information and affordances for doing something. And they're rarely the same thing. They might be sort of linked, like the way you change the radio station on a car radio. Is this making any sense? Oh, it's amazing to me how that like I think we can really lose it in the lights. How amazing it is on iPhone. Like, unfortunately, one of the most common ways you'll see this is, yeah, that's a big button.
It's a big button. And when I click it, the app called Phone opens. But wait a minute, what's that little red circle? That red circle is how many calls or messages or what have you that you have. And it also can give you notifications in another place. It's a whole suite of functionality associated with each thing that these apps do. And it's very rich and well-documented, mostly well-documented API for how you do all those things. But I think we can really lose it in the light that it's really a modern marvel that we have devices that not only let us do something, but also then can reflect change in the moment.
When I change the channel clicker on my old TV, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, going around on that dial to get to the three stations that we could get. I mean, that's hardwired. This is channel three. This is channel five. This is channel nine, et cetera. But there's something worth sitting with from time to time, which is how amazing it is that these devices, and you'll realize this. If you've ever picked up a phone or picked up a device and maybe you're in bed and you set your phone down for a minute and you just kind of grab and you forget that the entire front of your phone is not just a button but millions of buttons.
The whole surface of these devices. It isn't funny though like when you accidentally cause something to happen. You're like, oh my God, I guess I forgot this entire thing's a button. But it's also a source of feedback. It's also a source of dynamism. If you use something like that, a cool meditation app where you move your finger slowly and it makes a little trail, like who could have imagined that when BlackBerrys were popular? Like it's giving you feedback on what's happening as you're doing it. It's telling you how well you're relaxing just by dragging your finger around on a screen. It's such an improbable world.
And so what I'm finally at length trying to get at is, given that this is the week where I'm banging my head against the wall trying to do a HomeKit controller for an iPad on my wall, I'm also thinking a lot about, I don't just want buttons to mash on. I also want my own bridge of the enterprise to help me collect and process information.
And this is the funny coda to all of this is if you are running a whole bunch of different widgets, including Siri shortcuts, if you choose to notice it, you're going to learn stuff about yourself by what appears there. Not just your bad habits or whatever. But like there's a lot of – and it's going to make you think. It's going to make you go, wow. Do I really need, I mean, for me, between, God, Spotlight and Universal Control, like, how much do I need to manually organize buttons anywhere anymore? Because I'm using my keyboard a ton of the time.
Command, command, spacebar, type, click. And I can get to any of hundreds of apps, millions of websites, right? It's like NVALT. We've got this one field that you type in to do anything. So does it make sense for me to bend over backwards trying to make an aesthetic and well-utilized series of buttons on screen? What if some of that real estate is better used by just giving me feedback input updates and then combining that cannily with then there's other kinds of things like, for example, HomeKit stuff where it's telling me something.
And then I can also click on that thing that's telling me something to do something with it. That is miraculous if you really think about it. And I don't even know if this is making sense, but it's miraculous.
AlexOh my, I mean, I am fully severed and just, oh, oh, that was really good. I'm just salty because my muscle memory was gone. I dropped my phone and then I had to buy a new phone. That's all. That's all. All right. No, you are right about everything.
Speaker AWe're going to figure out what's for dinner.
MerlinOh, I don't have a funny out. Oh, sorry. 100%.
AlexUgh.