283. I Did a Sexism
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Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesAlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, pimp your stream deck.
MerlinIt's Do By Friday.
AlexGood afternoon. Good afternoon, Merlin Mann. Good morning. Good morning. How is the good Lady Douglas? Oh, Lady Dougie. Oh, Merlin, I won't acknowledge the listeners, but some people might remember that my landlord, Dougie, isn't the most attentive landlord. I mean, he's pretty on par with most of the landlords I've had, but I've also come to realize from people commenting on the horrors that maybe he is bad.
And I've just had a bad run of landlords. But today I discovered that Dougie has an assistant. And to protect those involved, I will refer to her as Lady Dougie.
MerlinWhat are you talking about? We've known about Lady Dougie for weeks now.
AlexOh, this is a new. Oh, this is not the landlord's apprentice? No, no.
MerlinOh, no, there's a third? There's now a third character?
AlexThere's a third Dougie.
MerlinOh, boy. and oh god it's just that one little apartment what's the big deal there no no no there are
Alexit's it is a i know it's not a three-flat but that's just what i call it and there is a building next door that's like the nice building that he also owns and operates okay but our toilet has not been working for a while but i've had covet so i didn't want i didn't we didn't we always got a reason for everything don't you uh and i am i am all right now uh tested positive tested positive
negative for for three days hooray although my voice as you can tell still real scratchy but um when when i heard that dougie's new assistant was coming over i just assumed that someone who was a man who was coming to fix our toilet. No, it was Lady Douglas.
MerlinHaven't you ever seen Rosie the Riveter? Come on.
AlexSo much so that when I got a call, I got a text saying, hey, I'm here. Can you let me in? And I went out to open the door because also our buzzer doesn't work. So you can't let people in be at the buzzer. Oh my God. And then I looked around and didn't see anybody. Or so I thought, and I closed the door and then a woman's like, wait, wait, wait.
And I was like, oh, hello. And however, then she goes, are you Mr. Cox? And I didn't know what to, I was like, ah, so we're both doing a gender oopsie. but I didn't know what to say. So I was like, yeah, I'm Matt's spouse.
MerlinNo, it's three minutes and 20 seconds in and I'm so adrift at this point. I've already made lots of notes about what you're saying here.
AlexThis is a coherent story.
MerlinNo, it's not. This is a coherent story. Okay. But the reason we've forgiven Dougie in the past is at least early on in this journey, it was your observation that Dougie seems to be kind of new to the landlord hustle, and maybe he's overcompensating in ways that he doesn't realize aren't helpful. A classic landlord problem, in my estimation, is it's very difficult to get, as you like to say in business, to get alignment on what we really want to focus on as a project.
Right? Yes. You know, like, you know, my landlord doesn't ask us questions. My landlord doesn't say, would you prefer this? My landlord, and certainly just never calls ahead. All the things that I think, you know, you would expect. Whatever. Fine. Now, what you're saying here is that Dougie has your building in another building. Dougie has the Sorcerer's Apprentice. And now there's a third person on the team. And that's Rosie the Riveter comes out because you ruined your toilet with COVID. And so somebody just – did you know that Rosie was coming over?
I'm sorry. I'm getting confused with all the names. We've got to come up with the right names for the Dermatis Personae. But did you know that the plumber they were coming to Toilet Fix today?
AlexI knew that someone who may or may not know what to do with plumbing was arriving at 10 a.m. Central time.
MerlinYou knew someone was coming. You don't need to problematize this, Alex.
AlexYou knew that it wasn't a pop-in. Oh, Jesus, you're bad at this. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Because I knew someone was arriving at 10 a.m. But I was like—
MerlinYou're never going to convince me that the way you see the world makes any fucking sense.
AlexSo stop trying. So I assumed.
MerlinI feel like I'm in a constant fever dream with you.
AlexI was like, OK, I'm going to end. And Dougie's like 15 minutes in and out. So I was like, OK, always add at least at least three times as much.
MerlinNothing takes 15 minutes.
AlexNo, nothing in the world takes 15 minutes.
MerlinNothing has ever taken 15 minutes.
AlexRight. And I'm like, OK, so an hour and a half, 10. And then the Dougie's second helper, Lady Dougie, arrives with all of her tools. And then we have that like, ha ha ha. yeah and she said oh i thought you were the husband and i was like oh does it matter uh no no she was she was lovely aren't you somewhat inclined to say what are you going to do differently now i know it was cute um okay especially because i had done a sexism and
absolutely almost shut the door in her face because she was a woman i mean it's casual
Merlinit's business casual sexism but did you like do you like a nanoway did you like hold up a fake
Alexmustache or something i no no i no she arrived at 10 30 at which i assume you know half hour late
Merlinshe does 30 is 8 30 oh this is a while ago oh yes yes and i always 10 30 is my 8 30
Alexyes and I assume of course that you know she she does not own the building like as as I know Dougie can be a little bit all over the place with his scheduling so I was like all right I I get I get it you're late but I have never heard a woman and I'm doing a saxism again I have never heard a woman swear and curse at an inanimate object in front of a stranger and oh my god
you're not supposed to do that so bad you're supposed to make it look easy so mad so mad and what did you do to the toilet alex i no no the little the little uh valve thingy um see i don't know she she did the thing that that dougie does don't do what dougie does she did the thing where she explained what she was doing so that that we could quote fix it next time is it that
Merlinit wouldn't flush it wouldn't flush properly it wouldn't refill is it the floater what are we
Alextalking about here what's the problem i don't know what the float i don't know it's the little thing that I don't know it's the little valve inside the back of the toilet that it like carries the water and it was broken so water was just spewing and so I've been using the McDonald's
MerlinYou pee in a McDonald's cup?
AlexI've been peeing at oh god that would have been a good idea but no I've been peeing at McDonald's
MerlinYou've been peeing at McDonald's because you can't, you wouldn't just go into the tub?
AlexNo. Oh, oh, oh, one, I don't have a tub. Two.
MerlinYou don't have a tub?
AlexNo, no. I don't have a tub. What the fuck? Wait. How do you take a bath? I just, oh, we've gone over this. We've gone over this. I don't.
MerlinYou pee in the sink. Do you have a sink?
AlexI do.
MerlinIt'd be a good workout for you.
AlexMarlon, Marlon, part two, though, is the day. Oh, my God.
MerlinI really thought I was in such good shape today, and now I feel like I'm just having –
AlexI need to speak my truth.
MerlinI feel like I'm in a batting cage right now, but for information. I'm going to have a Diet Coke.
AlexOh, okay. All right. So we've got the toilet, and she's showing –
MerlinAll right. So we've got Dougie. We've got Dougie's apprentice, and we've got Rosie the plumberer. Rosie comes out and is screaming at your toilet. But also the tweet that I'm looking at right now, March 13, 2018, Jill says, I despise the toilet. I'd love nothing more than to kick it through the wall and shatter into 100 shards of wet porcelain. But I need it.
So screaming at the toilet, two hours of toilet work?
AlexNot screaming. Oh, oh, yes, indeed. She has just left the apartment.
MerlinWas there any F-bombs?
AlexOh, oh, of course, of course. She was perfectly nice to me.
MerlinOh, but not a friend of the toilet.
AlexNot a friend of the toilet. And, you know, I would consider peeing in the sink, but you know those little stoppers that go into the sink?
MerlinA sink stopper?
AlexThat had fallen in so that, like—
MerlinA sink stopper fell into the hole.
AlexYeah, and the little top thing was broken, so I couldn't—
MerlinIs it an integrated stopper or is it a rubber plug you like you put in your ears?
AlexNo, it is an integrated stopper. So it would have been.
MerlinThose can be those can be very difficult. The entire all of this plumbing stuff you're describing. It's so funny because I know just enough to be dangerous. And because, you know, see also a relationship with landlord. I do fix and repair and replace and do a lot of the stuff myself because I just I don't want something. a class of repairs or fixes I've come to call punitive repairs, which is like, oh, oh, oh, oh. You want tile in your shower? I'll give you tile in your shower. And then it becomes punitive. Like the time that they decided, oh, and they arbitrarily
to put in a different runner, like the sound dampening rug strip on the steps. And it looked like something from Levitt's colonial collection in 1978.
AlexDidn't ask. Just showed up one day.
MerlinOkay, that's like a quality of life issue for us, but sure. But you know what's funny is like everything you described, like I've had to do a lot of toilet work in my time, and I've done a lot of sink work, vanity work. And things, if you go and you look at the mechanism that closes up your sink, it's pretty primitive and yet oddly, it's primitive yet vulnerable. Because it's basically like this long length usually of this, you know what I'm talking about? It looks almost like what you tear off the sides of computer paper in the 80s, except it's made out of stiff metal.
AlexYes, now I do.
MerlinOkay. And that attaches down to your dingus. But if you get that wrong, I mean, and again, this is a whole thing I never ran into until I lived in this hovel, which is things like the person who came to, quote, unquote, fix our oven, who then broke our oven. And I found out our oven could not be replaced. The parts are no longer made to fix it. And on top of it, owing to changes in laws over the years, the kind of oven we had is now forbidden. You can't have the kind of oven we had. And so to cut a long story short, that's why we now have an oven with an extension cord that's been there for five years because he never got us the right kind of oven.
Punitive. And with the toilet, with the toilet now, like the vanity that I installed, had installed, actually I installed this one myself years ago, with the faucet that I installed, we had a plumber come out because it was dripping, hot water's dripping. And they said, we can't fix it. And I said, what do you mean you can't fix it? Could you just, do we have to just tear the whole house down and start over? And they're like, well, no, you'd have to. And then went into this long discussion. And like, basically we do have to start over from the vanity up because there's something with the stem. and like so now we just don't get hot water in the bathroom in that part and it's just all the
stuff where it's like i do feel like i'm losing my goddamn mind like i'm in some kind of like a first draft of a kafka story that's just going to be about turlets and it's like can anybody fix anything anymore is there and again taking into consideration my thing and i think front of the show john stercuse disagrees about this because he's like that but i think most times when you have a tradesperson come to your house in a stern lecture plumbing whenever somebody comes to your house they're mainly there to they see you as a lead for different work so like in the in my case
the fact that are not the septic tank but the part where the poop goes backs up twice or three times a year we get roots i've told you this story we get roots that cut through the terracotta pipe that goes out and takes the poop out and so it backs up and we get a garage full of poop and then I get that routed out. And every single time, I get the stern lecture from the person who says, well, you really need to replace that terracotta pipe. I said, yeah, well, I'd like to be tall. That's not going to happen. This is just, we need to just keep the, you know, eventually you're going to like, I'm
not going to eventually do anything. I don't own this very costly house. The people who own the costly house don't fix anything. And therefore, I must have a way to, because now it's my fault if there's poop in the garage. The neighbors are like, hey, there's poop in the garage. And I'm like, yeah, there's poop in the garage. And then I call, and for $300, somebody comes out, sees me as a lead, and they're like, well, let me just give you the number anyway because you really need to replace that terracotta pipe. And it's like all along the way, I'm like, it's the classic. It's not my fault, but it is my problem.
It's just that – is there no one competent who can come out and fix your floater? You know what I'm saying? Is your turtle at work now?
AlexIt does. However, I have been – no, I haven't. I took a lovely pee. However, the sink, it is functional. Little stopper is out. She undid the pipes to, like, you know, push it out from behind. And she has a fix of, hey, this clearly isn't the right one. So I'll pick one up from my garage and bring it. But in the meantime, and she pulls from her pocket what I think are like cuticle clippers.
Because, again, I did a saxism and this is a lady. And I'm like, this is a pair of, like, they're curved at the end. Do you know what I'm talking about?
MerlinYeah, I do.
AlexAnd she's like, here.
MerlinAlmost like the form factor of like a thing for curling your eyelashes. It's got that weird curve to it.
AlexYes, yes. And she said, but this does a good job of prying it open.
MerlinOh, but you're talking about they look almost like little pliers. They're like little pliers that are also little knives on them.
AlexYep. So –
MerlinAnd wait, now, what did she or they fix with the cuticle hammers? What did they do?
AlexNo. She just used that to prop up the thing in the sink. And so that's where I'm at right now is when I wash my hands, I prop this up. And yeah, that's about that.
MerlinThey'll probably eventually bring you in a power cable, get you an orange extension cord so you can make biscuits. That's a good feeling. You feel really like you've arrived when you're in your mid-50s and you have to plug in your oven to use it.
Because then I get a lecture about how one time I told you they put a mattress against the furnace and that caught on fire. And then he got sued. And I was like, what does this have to do with me and the poop?
AlexThere's always stories about the other bad tenants.
MerlinYes. They love telling you about other tenants.
AlexI'm like, I know that you're –
MerlinI'm like, what am I going to draw from this? I know. Are you telegraphing a concern that in all of my years – and I've calculated what I paid in rent on this place over 20 – coming up this November will be 23 years.
AlexOh, Lord.
MerlinOkay. And it's fine. No, we live in San Francisco. You accept that. Like, I'm not going to own a bunch of houses. That's – I don't – see, that freaks other people out. I'm like, it's life, man. You make decisions. You do stuff. It's like there's a lot of benefits. Anyway, long story short, it is really frustrating to me. It's like, look, dude, I've been here for a real long time and I do pay the rent. And whether you want to acknowledge or realize, has it ever occurred to you how seldom you have to come here to do anything?
AlexYes. Yeah. Joking aside.
MerlinBecause that's because I take care of it all. I don't have a way to fix the roof. I don't have the resources to replace the roof. I have no doubt in my mind that this is the same roof on our house that existed before the Roaring Twenties. I really doubt that they suddenly said one day in 1978, hey, let's make a nice new roof for the rental house.
AlexYes.
MerlinBut like, never are you so incurious about this? You don't wonder why you can just show up here with some arbitrary task in mind, usually destroying the backyard and clearing out all of the living plants of the backyard that we never ask you to do. When it's more like, you know, hey, you know, could you fix these other things? And then I get a lecture about a mattress on a furnace, la, la, la. It's like, are you – what is it you're worried you're going to discover about me 25 years into our relationship?
Alexmaybe he finally got netflix and like watched breaking bad and was like i don't know i don't know the the thing with landlords because it is in fashion right now to shit on landlords but you know we were doing it before it's fashion huh yes it is it is um i
Merlini'm heard people on the paris runways people are just out there going like oh this door is not thick enough
Alexwell that's the thing is I unfortunately because you live in a house it can be like I live in part of the house yeah yeah but there's fewer people so it's like well it's one of you and I mean because right
Merlinit's like do you think I'm I mean like really put all the pieces together because I find I mean I like Orlando well enough and they're nice people and stuff But like it's they're utterly inscrutable in the way that makes me most crazy, which is with my best efforts, with assuming good intentions, there is very little about the way they conduct themselves that makes any sense to me. And when I encounter that, I tend to like sort of like break down, but where it's like I get really scrambled and I'm sort of like it's the equivalent of like does not compute, does not compute.
And like so I just don't know how to proceed. I don't feel like we've ever arrived at a relationship that makes a ton of sense. And so like so many of my ongoing relationships, I just choose to not pay attention to them. That's the best way. Don't ask questions because then they'll just say things. And then now you're involved.
AlexNo, no, no. That's why.
MerlinDon't tell me anything about your life. I just don't want to know any of that. It's maddening though. I mean, Libby Watson, and I won't be able to find this on my TL because of my deletions. TL? Libby Watson.
AlexWhat the fuck's it?
MerlinThat's how I'm like.
AlexOkay, Zoomer.
MerlinI remarked on this to something Libby Watson said a while back about landlord brain. And there is a certain kind of thing that really feels like landlord brain where you're like the way that you think has a certain kind of internal logic to it. But to call it logic is really giving it too much credit. It's almost, I mean, it's like the logic of like a Wolverine or something where you're like, oh, I get it. Like you want to kill and eat everything. But like that doesn't make you good at, you know, fixing sinks. but you know there is this sort of landlord brain
of like just always assuming that somebody's screwing you
Alexoh I mean I don't
MerlinI bet they got reasons I bet they got plenty and I've heard this since college since the first time I ever rented anything you just hear constant horror stories about like oh I rented these three girls and they shat on the walls and then they left and it's like well sorry is there something you'd like me to do about that
AlexI am trying not to go well Sally Socialist on this, but the logic I –
MerlinOh, you hate capitalism. I definitely get that. It really bugs you, capitalism.
AlexThe only thing I can sort of relate to is like, okay, these – like landlords, this is their house. They do not see it as your home and I mean it's not.
MerlinI don't know if it's their house. It's their property.
AlexIt is. Well, that's the thing. It is not their –
MerlinIt's not their house though.
AlexWell, that's the thing.
MerlinWell, it's not their home. Let's put it that way.
AlexThat's what I'm saying. If you're going to do in the OmniFocus context, it's different. The home is the project. House is the context. And I have sort of encountered the same thing with people who are like tech admins and who I have been. of like I don't know because I have all in the way of like always assume people are going to abuse the resource yeah I'll always assume like there's this assumption that everything is going to happen
in bad faith and that someone is going to break something or lose something and not care about it
Merlinbecause it's not there and maybe try to get away with something right and I I tried to explain this
Alexto my bosses like if you want to put tracking software on here like and it was not hard to convince them that no this is an absolute terrible idea it's like you are like people you need to understand that people are going to find a way to use these computers to masturbate to no matter what you do and like it's and they had a problem with that in theory no no no the the is it the
Merlinmasturbation part or they're not disclosing the masturbation probably the form for that if you
AlexYou can't think of these as your laptops. You need to think of this as basically a rental service. These are seadoos going out.
MerlinWell, like any resource, like a desk. We call this your desk, but it's not really your desk. It's the desk where you do work for us, but that doesn't mean you can strip naked and sleep on it when you feel like it.
AlexI mean, right. And there needs to be, I don't know. And I have fallen into that trap of both thinking that this this is, quote, my thing. And also being the person who's like, oh, that's not your thing. Oh, you're getting Cheeto dust on that on that butterfly keyboard that I'm definitely going to have to take to the Apple store because it's going to get in the key.
So I don't know. Dougie.
MerlinYeah.
AlexYeah, there it is.
MerlinLibby Watson. and I'm endlessly curious about landlord brain. Anyway, okay, I'm sorry about that. That's frustrating. You know, I think people – never mind. I think people – there's like that basic pleasure and pain principle that drives so much of our weird decision-making is that on the one hand, yes, we would prefer to seek out the things that make us happy, but I don't think you have to be a learned sociologist to say that the other impulse is
much stronger, which is loss aversion. It's the fear of losing something that you have that you feel like you deserve or in danger of losing. And it's very much a case of like, I don't want to feel that feeling again. I know I talk about this all the time, but I think there's a lot of human motivation that goes down, comes down to like, I don't want to feel that feeling again. I don't want to feel alone again. I don't want to feel excluded again. I don't want to feel screwed again. And think about how many interactions that tend to go wrong in just normal life nowadays
comes down to a very appointed feeling about, oh no, here it goes again. Like you're talking to a customer, like, okay, for example, and this is, okay, okay, okay. Go home.
Alexdumb bitch.
MerlinOkay, so just about six weeks ago I know you know this, but I'm just giving you an example of what I'm talking about here. Okay, about six weeks ago in the middle of the night, three in the morning on a Saturday night, I believe it was somebody hit our car where it was parked in front of our house. You're aware of this, yes?
AlexYeah.
MerlinOkay, we have a car. Fine. Whatever. We have a car. It's not a fancy car, but it's a car. And the car got hit. And in hitting the car, it was kind of dicey looking because the bumper had fallen off a little bit. But like it wasn't it wasn't explainable as a typical San Francisco hit, which is like, OK, you're parked on, say, like 19th Ave. And like you have two wheels on the curb, two wheels off the curb and somebody like hit you when they were passing by.
This is more like this is it wasn't really explainable by a parking error unless it was a very grave parking area. And it wasn't like explainable by a somebody hit it at 30 miles an hour. It just didn't make a lot of sense. But to cut this very long story short, that was six weeks ago. We filed, we got a police report that day. We contacted the insurance company that day. As of yesterday, Tuesday the 19th, having paid a $1,000 deductible on this thing that is not our fault,
paid the $1,000 deductible to the insurance company, and it was yesterday that we got what appears to be the approval that the insurance company has now sent money to a body shop to fix it. It's been six weeks that we have a car held together with a length of climbing rope. And my wife, who is fucking amazing, gets a zip car every single morning to be able to drive our kid to school.
Because it doesn't feel safe to drive this car around.
AlexWith the fucking climbing rope. And I'm sure that this insurance company is going to reimburse you for the cost of the zip car, right? Right?
MerlinBut you can put yourself in. Right, no, no, no. I mean, but you know, whatever it is, as they say what it is. But the part of this I'm trying to get at though is to like, you know, sometimes you have an experience with a customer service person. It's very pleasant. and you feel very taken care of. My Apple Store genius trip the other day went really well. Stuff like that. But isn't there, with customer service in particular, customer service in general, but then specifically with just trying to get a problem addressed. How can I abstract this?
You're talking to somebody who's in a position to help you with a problem that you need addressed and you feel that it is their responsibility to take care of it. So whether that's a landlord or Apple or our dumb insurance company, if it goes poorly or like you get into that feeling of like, oh, no, no, no, please don't hang up. I can't do this all over again. Please, please, please, please, please. Where you become insane to every person. We've talked about this. You become insane to every person that you talk to. Don't you think some of that, I mean, obviously there's the part of like, look, I can't spend all day begging the insurance company
to take care of something that's their problem. It should not take six weeks. It's difficult to understand a system where it's normal for it to take six weeks. Oh, and by the way, the part that they're paying is apparently almost six grand to fix this. Because you know how it is with the car. It depends how many parts of the car it touches. There's the bumper, there's the quarter panel, there's the side, there's the door. If it touches any of those, it vastly increases the amount. But anyway, disposably they're paying for that. But I do feel like if I'm being honest,
a lot of that frustration comes back to this whole, like, I don't want to feel screwed. I don't want to feel, I don't want to feel ripped off. I hate that feeling. And I think that kind of motivation is one way we've all become a little bit hardened. Because it often feels like it's us against the world. It's not just us against the insurance company. It's us against everybody who is deliberately or unintentionally trying to wheeze our juice all the time. Like, why won't you do the shit, man? Do the thing.
It makes me feel bad that I have this problem and you're not taking care of it in the way that I'm pretty sure you're supposed to take care of it. And that's, I think, part of why our – well, we might get to this – why people are getting weird, why we've become so hardened about things. I don't like that feeling and I don't want to feel it again. I don't want to feel like a chump.
AlexI had this realization yesterday of Merlin is, I think, more correct than he knows about how weird people have gotten. No, that's not true.
MerlinOh, you mean our ongoing conversation about my hunch that people are getting weirder?
AlexI mean, people, I think, are getting weirder.
MerlinPeople and things. Things are getting weirder, too.
AlexThings are getting weirder. And that idea of not wanting to be screwed, I think, has always been true just in terms of how America has come about.
The British are screwing. The British are screwing.
MerlinAnd the. If I land, to it by sea. If you hang up this call, you're dead to me.
Alexand in a lot of cases um folks feel as if the they're against the world because in some cases it is in a lot of cases it is true and i i feel as if i have gone sort of the opposite way of the way I'm getting weirder is I'm just full on like cuck soy boy exposing my belly.
Like, look, can I can't I'm sorry, I can't like when I was talking to the Apple customer service person who was trying to or I was trying to get my display delivered, not in June. I wanted it delivered you know at the time it was supposed to
Merlinwhen they said they were going to deliver it
Alexwhen they said they were going to deliver it mid-April and no beginning of April and I was like listen I think I said I am at your mercy my boss is going to be furious which technically wasn't a lie because now I'm technically my own boss even though Merlin Mann says that even Bono has a boss which I contend with but the I was like Oh, I apologize. He wants to be known for one thing. I just was like, I can't. I'm at your mercy. I don't know what to do. I'm so sad.
MerlinI mean, for me, it's exhausting to keep that up as far as like the showing your belly part. It comes pretty naturally to me. And this might be because I'm not like a real testosterone, mostly not a very testosterone driven like alpha guy. But I've had more than one exchange with another man, even in the last six months, where I feel like I need to pop out of the situation they're trying to frame.
AlexWhat do you mean by pop?
MerlinWell, sometimes guys, guys don't know how to deal with their emotions, I think, in general. and I've said this before and I don't have a paper to pull out about this but I think for most men and we've talked about the seven dwarfs of bad emotion but like all these kind of negative feelings that we have tend to arrive eventually at anger for most men in America. Anger is the default eventual response to almost anything. Whether that's like a girl you have a crush on not liking you right or not liking you
fast enough or not liking you in the way you anticipated or like it's some neighbor with a beef about, you know, like Mrs. Selvig is screwing with the garbage cans and doesn't understand that recycling night and garbage. You end up becoming aggressive with people because maybe in your mind you've built this up to be something where they're just fucking with you. Right? And I've been as guilty of this, I guess, as anybody. But there have been a number of times where I've, I mean, I don't think it's exactly the same as exposing my belly, but it kind of is where eventually
Somebody will be really aggressive. I'm trying to abstract this. We'll be aggressive about something. And I'll say, hey, hang on a minute. Like, do you think that I'm like messing with you or something? And like, I'm not. And also, like, the tone that you're taking right now is extremely aggressive, given the stakes of what we're talking about. Like, there's a way that we can talk about that. You know, you seem really, really angry and almost like hostile right now. I feel like you're being very hostile right now. And I don't, I don't know why that is,
but I can assure you that it is making me extremely uncomfortable. And I'm not sure that this is going to bring us to a better relationship on the other side. Where sometimes I just feel like I have to say to people, I mean, variations on I'm not your enemy. I'm not your servant. I'm not your employee. I'm not your anger sink. Like I'm not here to just be the person who sops up all your sad feelings because you can get away with it. That's not cool. That's not what adults do. Like legitimate, real adults. You can go to somebody.
You can ask for the thing that you want. Could you please not slam that door because it's really loud? Could you please put your trash cans in the right place, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know.
AlexCome on, Mrs. Selvig. Maybe it's just, it's recycling.
MerlinCome on, Mrs. Selvig. Oh, man, when he calls her a different name in that last episode.
AlexNot going to talk about the role.
MerlinAt first, Madeline didn't catch it. I turned and I looked straight in the eyes.
AlexI yelled. I yelled.
MerlinI know. I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. What have you done? Anyway, that's, I don't know. Guys are so fucking broken. And the way that men in America act has had such an influence, and certainly a lot of ladies are pieces of shit, too. But I do feel like it's that sort of – macho is maybe too strong of a word, but that bellicose, angry, sometimes entitled approach.
I mean, it's – this comes together kind of with the Karen problem in some ways with the whole like I – I'm not going to say this, but I've become extremely frustrated about something that may have nothing to do with you. But you're about to bear the brunt of that frustration and that anger. And that's why I say it comes together with the Karen thing. Because in both cases, men, women, anybody, non-binaries, whatever, what it comes down to is like, I'm out of options, but I'm still mad. And now I need to turbo this by like needing to speak to your manager, whoever that is.
And I don't know. We all just feel so powerless, whether it's our kids in school or, you know, parents that we can't help in the way that we'd like. And COVID, COVID, COVID. And a toilet you can't kick because you need it. like everybody's so fucking mad and frustrated i think to state the obvious that's one reason people have gotten so weird i don't think it's ever the people oh it's also like the online bullying thing from the the angry purple hair crowd like people who used to be bullied turn into the best bullies it's i've lost my mind because they well like yeah like the way the
way that like well what is a bully ultimately well i mean a bully is somebody who expresses hostility and aggression towards someone who can't do much about it. And yes, we all know that most bullies have been bullied that thousand percent. But when you have trouble understanding that the kid who is terrorizing you in junior high might be getting diddled by dad or something, it goes for everybody. You learn who's vulnerable and what you can get away with.
Alexand that is catnip to a bully i continuously think about the story rob mackalini mackal mackal sexy rob told on the it's always sunny podcast yeah where he i love that story almost when when someone was basically i think he uh there was another car waiting in line in a draw
Merlinat a win and out burger and somebody thought that they were going to pull in in front of him yeah
Alexand it was and he has both his sons in the car yeah and and he thought like okay i i'm not gonna let this bully just cut in front of every it's not just me it's it's everybody and he's being a dick should i get out of the car and and like fight him and i was like wait what what the fuck
Merlinlike and and and the fact that they kept it was but it's also such a perfect topic for those other two guys who have such a different pov about how you interact with other people and and he wasn't
Alexeven doing it like he was doing it in a macho way but it completely like missed the the thread in the like i don't even realize what i'm doing it feels unhinged at least to me um hey go look at
Merlinmy this will be gone probably by the time this well it might be up it doesn't matter just go go look at my, my Twitter and look at last night. Um, so 13 hours ago, whatever that is, I was watching YouTube. Oh my God. Everybody shut up.
AlexI'm unplugging you. Don't bitch.
MerlinI was watching YouTube and what popped up? Something. Once again, once again, my recommendations on Apple TV are complete shit. My recommendations almost everywhere else are good. Yes, I'm logged in as me. It just it keeps wanting me to watch some video about the most misunderstood joke of all time involving Max Headroom on Letterman.
I can't make it go away no matter what. I get weird recommendations. I forget how I landed on this. But oh, you know what it was? I was watching Don't Talk to Cops videos.
AlexI mean, those are. OK, you need to describe what this is, because I can understand how Don't Talk to Cop videos led you to this.
MerlinI'm more than happy to put these in notes because I made my kid watch these. I'm forever recommending these. history. Okay. So the most famous one of these that I'm aware of is this ridiculously fast talking guy named James Dwayne. Don't like when people have two first names. Regent law professor James Dwayne gives viewers startling reasons why they should always exercise the Fifth Amendment rights. So this is a video from a few years ago that's had 17 million views. I'll put it in show notes. It's called Don't Talk to the Police. Last night, not realizing this is
the same guy. I watched another one of his videos where he talks even faster called, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent. Now, you know, when you watch this, be aware, this guy's a little bit, this is at the Cato Institute, and this guy's a little bit, you know, he's a defense attorney. He's a, you could say, I guess he's a civil rights guy. He's really a Fifth Amendment guy, but he's a little bit, you know, right-wingy, but that doesn't change the fact that what he has to say is really lucid. And then I guess what came up next, I can't believe I Click this. From a channel called The Charisma Matrix.
AlexJesus Christ.
MerlinFrom a channel called The Charisma Matrix, I found myself watching part of a video called How to Speak Like a Veteran Lawyer in 11 Minutes.
AlexOh, Jesus. Oh, sweet baby Jesus Christ. Oh, no.
MerlinAnd I thought, oh, this is pretty wild. It's really kind of not my tempo. And I just got kind of a feeling, you know. I'm going somewhere with this. So I ended up going to his website, which we'll put in show notes. It's at charismamatrix.com. And it's mainly a visual joke. So I risk kind of ruining it by explaining it. But the website, so the kind of hero image at the top is him. And then in front of it, you can see the word, transform your life.
Get the social confidence you need to get anything you want out of life. And then you scroll down a little bit. And here's his main offering. this is the talk like a lawyer in 11 minutes guy three of his major charisma matrix course number one the social invincibility program which I'm not going to click on second one the vocal power boot camp and new the third one the quick and witty comeback boot camp but then when you explore a little more some of his other ones
and I couldn't help but put this on the internet because It's the combination of so many different horrifying bullshit charlatan things all in one. And so these are some of his other videos that he's posted to on his website. They all include that YouTube style, like somebody pointing or screaming thing that people do.
AlexBlowjob face.
MerlinWhich just instantly plummets. What?
AlexGo on. No, never mind.
MerlinDo you think that's what a face looks like doing blowjob?
AlexNo.
MerlinThe recipient or the offerer?
Alexofferer you know what to be fair i don't know the giver is that the book oh they killed the babies that was not a book i should have read okay so the blowjob guy all
Merlinright all right anyway it's mainly visual but one is how to get a deep voice instantly and he's like oh in the image he looks like a king screamy white face another one um the image is him making a face that says that's my chair bro that one's titled how i handled a quote drunk bro at a new year's eve party and then one the last one is the word creep with an arrow pointing to him and the title of that video is how i recovered from creeping out my new neighbor in the hallway and i i don't know you know i'm not a i'm not a good person i thought this shit was funny
Why am I telling you this, Alex? Because this is what I'm talking about. This guy, if you're going to be a guru charlatan, it really helps if your bit is something you can just, you basically offer to teach other people. Like, I'm a lazy piece of shit. So let me teach you how to be a lazy piece of shit. Like, I'm a guy who's really scared about his masculinity. So let me teach you to be a guy who's really scared about his masculinity. It's all these life lessons for losers and incels about how to go out and deal with the aggression that's being visited upon you.
Really, this could go straight back to the Charles Atlas ads in comics when I was a kid, you know, where the skinny guy gets sand kicked in his face. And so he gets all bulked up with the Charles. Oh, dude, we got to find this. It's this, try Charles Atlas comic ad. I might be remembering this wrong, but.
AlexOh, boy. uh just from the tiny thumbnails usually a full page ad in comics of my oh yeah there you go
Merlinoh no oh no oh no so here's the one of the classics um the insult the insult that made a man out of mac it says and uh it's it's a uh a multi um panel comic um hey quit kicking that sand in our face and the girl that's with him is like that man is the worst nuisance on the beach and then the the big muscular guy says to the skinny guy listen here i'd smash your face only
you're so skinny you might dry up and blow away and the boy goes that big bully i'll get him someday i'll get even someday and then the woman with the boobs says oh don't let it bother you little boy. And then the panel that I always remember. It's him like his entire all of his surroundings are turning to chaos because as he reads this book a lamp is falling off a shelf. He's kicking a chair and he says, darn it I'm sick and tired of being a scarecrow. Charles Atlas says he can give me a real body
alright. I'll gamble a stamp and get his free book. Cut to just merely later where he is now ripped. He's gay ripped. He's Abercrombie and Fitch gay ripped. boy it didn't take Atlas long to do this for me what muscles that bully won't shove me around again next panel he punches the man in the face at the beach his lady with the boobs they're all wearing the same swimsuits but now he's bulky he says what you here again here's something I owe you and he hits him in the face
Alexthis is absolute
Merlininsanity and then the lady says oh Mac you are a real man after all and then the sky says hero of the beach and then other people say gosh what a build he's already famous for it this would
Alexbe a shit post on instagram there's no way i would come across this and think it's it's that
Merlinis a real thing oh right like it's a it seems like a parody of something that you've never seen
Alexi'm sure it's been heavily parodied but not even that just like this is in every comic book i had as a child. Ridiculous thing. Really? Yeah. Okay. So you would... I didn't even get the conceit. You'd send away... Did you see the picture of
MerlinCharles Atlas on TV? You can tell it's Charles Atlas on TV because it says Charles Atlas on TV. Yep. Yep.
AlexOh, I see that. I see Charles Atlas and then Charles Atlas in the corner
Merlinwin this valuable trophy. It's a major award.
AlexOh, God. So this in this full page ad, there's a little cutout, I believe, So would you send that away? Okay.
MerlinA little coupon you cut out and you send it in. Might as well, you know, it's worth the chance. You know, I guess I'll risk a stamp. Is that what he says?
AlexRisk a stamp, yeah.
MerlinI'll gamble a stamp and get his free book. Later.
AlexDid you ever do this?
MerlinHe's just sitting around ticking chairs like a cuck.
AlexOh, no. I hurt my toe on a chair. Did you ever do this?
MerlinBut, I mean, this isn't this in some ways. aren't we seeing a new take on this same flavor of toxic masculinity bullshit?
AlexOh, yeah. I mean, this is...
MerlinThe only way I can make myself feel better is to get muscular and punch people because I'm tired of being pushed around. And that's also how you can get a deep voice in 11 minutes.
AlexI mean, I...
MerlinFix my oven, you fuck. Hero of the beach. Is that God? Who's speaking when it says hero of the beach in the sky?
In humanist sans serif, all caps, it says hero of the beach. Thank you, Jesus. Peter, I can see your house from up here. Also, I just got a note from Xfinity that says, their cable may be slow, but I'm fine. Let me prove I can make you a new man, is what I say.
AlexJust gamble a stamp.
MerlinDid you watch the Abercrombie & Fitch documentary?
AlexNo.
MerlinIt's pretty good. Really? I mean, I watched it once yesterday, and I didn't think it was that good, but I was telling Madeline she should watch some of it. And I was like, you know what? This is actually a pretty good documentary. yeah about just the history of Abercrombie and Fitch the like the Les Wexner reboot of Abercrombie and Fitch and the crazy dude who ran Abercrombie and Fitch and the most interesting part probably because it was the part I knew the least about was the like I mean pretty much institutionalized
racism of the way they ran the company where like if you're black you can sweep up at night but you have to keep it's almost like Microsoft for hot people where you have to keep firing people who aren't hot enough at your store. It's pretty wild. I'll put it in show notes.
AlexI saw it on Netflix in its wonderful UI that just didn't want me to continue watching better console.
MerlinEverybody's ganging up on Netflix today.
AlexWait, why? Do people not like Netflix anymore?
MerlinYou're not on the internet today. Never mind.
AlexI was on the internet yesterday and was like, oh, God. but I,
Merlinthey had their earnings and everybody's mad. And it's one of those days where like, uh, you know, to, to quote Max, I never thought that. And I thought he was funny anyway. It's like today's everybody's day to come out of the woodwork and talk about their own hot takes on Netflix and why it's bad. And like,
thank God for Joe. Joe Rosenstiel is the only sane mind on the internet anymore.
AlexI would, I was just, okay.
MerlinDon't worry about it. You don't need to know. You don't need to know.
AlexI know I don't need to know, but it's like, I didn't need to know what libs of Tik TOK was. but now I know what Liv's TikTok is. I still don't, so please no.
MerlinDon't, don't, don't. I mean, you're the one telling me don't learn about stuff?
AlexDon't, don't worry about it. Don't learn about it. I mean, I don't see anyone mad.
MerlinIt's like the person of a Polish persuasion who walks into a room with a handful of hot dog shit and the person of Polish persuasion says, hey everybody, look what I almost stepped in.
You're Polish. Look what I almost stepped in. You have a lot to make that joke.
Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a challenge. The challenge.
AlexTick-tock challenge.
MerlinChallenge this week is to pimp your stream deck.
AlexSo Merlin, I hear that you're doing a lot with computers lately.
MerlinYes, I've been doing a lot of stuff with computers right now.
AlexAnd I just thought, you know what? I really want to give Merlin the space to break his silence.
MerlinI appreciate that. I peanut buttered harder than I've ever peanut buttered. I didn't even touch a stream deck this week. I peanut buttered 1,000% this week.
AlexFuck. I opened it this morning. I'm so confused.
MerlinCOVID is bad.
AlexNo. I have never.
MerlinI'm doing other stuff with computers right now. It's not really on my radar. I'm doing exciting things with my Synology.
AlexIt wasn't even like depression or mania. I just didn't do a thing.
MerlinI'm kidding. You know what's arriving today? Did you hear the last ATP? The latest ATP?
AlexI'm halfway through. I'm with the streaming part.
MerlinOkay, toward the end, when they get into Ask ATP, they get into the how is Team R meant dealing with.
AlexYes, yes.
MerlinI got that Lenovo arriving today. What? Oh. Because remember, the chink, as you like to say, in my system was, I don't need two. I don't need two. I don't say that. I don't need two 27-inch monitors on my desk. But like having a little boy that I could use sometimes for $235 American, I'll take it.
AlexUh-huh. Oh, I'm very excited.
MerlinSo my Lenovo. Lenovo arrives today.
AlexSee, I don't think this is... You know, I said that we should interpret this any way you want, and I think your desk is really like your deck, right? Oh, one moment.
MerlinYeah, no, no, it's true. Oh, Jesus Christ, what is it? Alex is really having a day. Is it just me, or are you guys realizing Alex is really having a day? First Alex tried to kick the toilet and then took a shit in a sink. Great, you too. Thank you so much. Oh, boy. Oh, thank you.
How's it going?
AlexAll right. Lady Dougie actually is very, very nice.
MerlinOh, good. We know this is plumber lady?
AlexThis is, yes, yes.
MerlinWe really need to work on this because, Alex, I have to say, just in passing, at this point, there's no reason to believe that we're done seeing the cast of characters. I think there will be a fourth and a fifth.
AlexWell, she's still fixing the lights downstairs.
MerlinOh, so she's a plumber and an electrician.
AlexYes.
MerlinShe can bring home the bacon.
Alexsome maintenance fried up in a pan yeah yeah uh she does have one of those uh studded belts that like i i had from hot topic in like high school you know what i'm talking about i think it's cool with the kids i do any any uh ring ring of keys on there the i well no oh here's enough i just i
Merlindidn't just just have hand signals to identify yourselves to each other no no okay okay so she
Alexhad a hanky in her what we would call a uh in the community a a red hanky in the back and so i just assumed i don't i don't i have no idea um well it depends on which pocket which one pocket is you
Merlinlike to bleed and the other one is like the cause bleeding like to be bled like to be bound to be
Alexbound i i truly don't know but i saw that and was like probably not but maybe and and so i did a homophobia as well as
Merlina sexism. You did a homophobia on top
Alexof a sexism? Yes, because then you're like, oh, my husband's calling. You're so bad at queer. Yeah, I know. She's like, my husband is calling. I'm like, well, fuck. Oh, she's straight. And I'm like, oh, she could be bisexual. I'm the worst. I am the worst. Take my queer power.
MerlinYou should do that thing where you make a little V symbol with your middle finger and your index finger and you hold it up to your mouth.
AlexYou go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
MerlinWhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You really misinterpreted what I was saying, Lady Plumber Doug.
Anyway, peanut buttered hard. My desk is my deck.
AlexYou were doing things with computers. your desk is your deck and I still think that you're going to become a Twitch streamer at some point but I you say
Merlinit's a great way for everyone to spend their time oh boy I'm going to come back to this eventually but it's also that well I'm not trying to make an excuse but I'm trying to give a reason we're like in trying to strip everything down and get back to basics one thing I did was like I've turned off a butt ton In some ways, God, where do I say it started with? But I'm having an interesting time right now. I'm very happy with my progress on several fronts of improving how I do things. And jump anywhere in the chain here.
But one is that I realize I still have so much shit because I'm a migration assistant boy. I still have so much stuff that gets carried over from one thing to the next. I'm pretty close to being – I'm almost at the point where I feel like I can delete Dropbox. Because I've got Maestral working in a way I'm happy with. And per the recommendation in front of the show, Casey Liss, I am going to take a shot at doing Synology's version of Dropbox.
AlexWait, does Maestral do the thing? Like, do you, what am I trying to say? Oh, because now the Dropbox client, which they've said, Dropbox has said many times, like, it's broken, but we know it's broken, where you can't upload or do anything unless it is.
MerlinThe changing between offline and online for a file is apparently pretty dicey even on the This Works for M1's version.
AlexRight. Exactly. So does Maestral just keep everything on there or –
MerlinI mean I have not had those problems that I'm aware of with Dropbox. It really felt like a – what's the opposite of a flex? It felt like a – Apple is being mean to us. But maybe they are. I don't know.
AlexOh, yeah. It was.
MerlinOkay.
AlexIt was –
MerlinYeah. Yeah, like Apple's incompetent and mean, and they're trying to get up in your shit.
AlexYou're going to break the oven. Man, you look like a mattress on fire. You can't replace your oven.
MerlinUse this cord to make food. I always get sued by my tenants. So as a previously stipulated maestro I learned about from Marco, and it utilizes, it applies the Dropbox API, but to an open source app that the way I would summarize it is Maestrel, so far anyway, takes care of the stuff that made me love Dropbox initially, and then by not doing the stuff that's made me kind of despise Dropbox more recently.
So it still has stuff like Selective Sync. You're not going to get all that cool right-click stuff that you get with Dropbox in the Finder, but I'm fine with that. It's definitely been worth an experiment. And I think I, one thing though, is when I started over with Maestral, I think this is not unwise, is if you've got like, you know, some backups of your Dropbox stuff, you're not that worried about it. I mean, one thing I did was everything that was at the top level in Dropbox that I'm not actually, actually using. You may notice this in our folder.
I had a bit of a cleanup last week with a whole bunch of folders in different places where I created a folder called everything else and dumped everything that's not useful live stuff. I just need a way to say don't sync everything else.
AlexRight.
MerlinAnd so in this instance, like I've just had all this shit hanging around. How many times have you installed something and there's a Dropbox app for it that you use for an hour? How many times have you done this one? You get all this cruft and shit. and like somebody you can't people can share a project or share a folder with you without your approval so like you know which is fine like hey do you want to collaborate on this music well yeah but not right now and also i don't want that on all my computers so all that stuff now all the stuff that i actually need on dropbox is in a few top level folders i'm working on the same thing
with icloud does that matter it does because just going in and seeing all that cloud of stuff i don't need, it's like keeping garbage. Like why would I have all of that occlude my vision? It makes everything dumber and more costly. It makes searching in LaunchBar a pain in the ass. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say in the LaunchBar index, don't include anything in everything else? I still want to be able to get to everything. I don't need to see every drafts back up. I don't need to see every busy cow back up. I need all that stuff to like pump the brakes.
So Maestrel is fine for that. And so far it's working, as far as I can tell. But I did start over with Maestrel in the sense of saying start everything online only.
AlexOoh, that's a good idea.
MerlinRight? And so, I mean, the thing is, when I instantiated my multi-Samsung SSD system in the last little while i've mentioned this that like i all of my dropbox stuff is already every single thing on dropbox is already on an external ssd so it is in some sense quote unquote backed up right i i in
Alexthe same way that i want i want my main mac to have all my script running that or is it just do a drag and drop every so often what are you talking about to back up your dropbox oh um i do
MerlinI back up my Dropbox and Google Docs to my Synology through – never make me name anything in Synology. It's either Cloud Sync or Hyper Backup or Drive Sync or Drive Server or Vault Share or Vault Cloud.
AlexI think it's Cloud Sync. That sounds familiar.
MerlinAnyway, I know I'm doing it and I check on it periodically. But, you know, it is very – the way they name stuff is crazy. but like hyper backup is the thing for backing up. So like I have hyper backup running all the basic configuration stuff for all my synologies back up to other synologies, which I think is smart and that's not very costly in terms of space. And in this instance, like you go into, I think it's called cloud sync, but you go in and you say like, okay, connect this to my Google docs or Google drive rather download all that connect this to my Dropbox,
download all of that. So that's all still being synced in real time or downloaded by directionally in real time to my Synology. But once I've decided probably in the next couple days that I'm good, I can always turn Dropbox back on. I could always reinstall it. But what was my point in all of this? In trying to pop up and get more efficient about all of this stuff, I did find myself using stuff like CleanMyMac to go in and say, hey, uninstalled, all of these, so much shit gets installed
in like either launch demons or in just the, you know, the basic login folder. It's just all this shit like camo. The reason camos is the reason such a, one of the reasons it's such a pain in the ass to use zoom, as you said, is it knows camo is installed somewhere and therefore keeps asking me if I want to do video. I'm like, no, I never want to do video. What are you doing?
So, but having deleted all that stuff that also then made me very aware of like, okay, how much other stuff is just floating around in here that I probably at least don't need but and you know some people really don't like clean my mac which is fine but i do i think it's a nice all-in-one place where like i just want to go take care of a whole bunch of stuff some some lightweight script running stuff i want to remove these launch things i want to at least disable some of these launch things that makes it all really easy i want to go just run the basic
Alexstuff that makes me feel like i'm clean i truly have a like a blind spot in in this area like what is the issue with some people and clean my Mac or any sort of, what was it, like clean X or something? It's like people who are like, I want to roll my own papers instead of using a, I don't
Merlinknow. It's weird. I don't, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to throw a dear friend of the show onto the bus, but, but, but there is somebody that I also do another podcast with who I can at least very much imagine saying, I don't trust anything to delete and move stuff around on my computer. I could very much hear John Syracuse, for example, going like, I'm not going to run anything that I don't know every single thing that it's doing.
AlexFair. Fair. Fair. But I feel like he's smart enough to know what the...
MerlinWell, don't make it about John. Make it about people who don't like cleaning my Mac because don't make that leap.
AlexThat's what I'm... Syracusa, what's wrong with you?
MerlinOh, God. After talking about severance last night, I'm just, I'm so mad at John right now.
AlexOh, this might be.
MerlinI'll send it to you. I'm going to skip. I'm so angry. He's never been wrong about anything. And so my desk is my deck. And the Lenovo, was there a point to any of this?
AlexWell, you're pimping out everything. You just haven't gotten to the stream deck yet.
MerlinWell, I'm pimping and I'm also un-pimping.
AlexYeah.
MerlinI mean, a lot of it is like I'm getting rid of my stretch pimpy Cadillac and realizing I'd be very happy with a Toyota Camry.
AlexYeah. You want to focus more on your bottom bitch and you don't need the excess. Yeah.
MerlinOkay. My bottom bitch. Yeah. Who is that? Is that somebody I know?
AlexThat's your main profit earner.
MerlinOh, I see. That's funny. Okay. That's funny. Okay. But did you do it? Did you do it? You didn't do a thing either.
AlexNo, no.
MerlinThe elements that encompass things like Stream Deck are appealing to me. Oh, sorry. Now I remember. And so one of the things I did was, you know, Stream Deck, you know, in the previous incarnation of my setup, Stream Deck was attached to a little rat tail dongus attached to the back of my LG Ultrafine. And of course, that means that it was subject to the whole like, oh, things just disconnect sometimes. So sometimes Stream Deck just would disconnect and I'd have to like reboot everything.
Oh, and by the way, the app that I mentioned last week that I couldn't remember the name of that works alongside Stream Deck is called Companion. And Companion is a really cool app that, very interesting app. It's really just more of a demon. It just kind of lives there and you look at it in a web browser. But it's what enables you to do a lot of nice integration stuff that links stuff like Home Assistant with stuff like Stream Deck. So if you get the companion plugin running on your Stream Deck, that opens up whole new worlds of like being able to set scenes. But, you know, in a different time when HomeKit was running better,
I would have sweated that more. Here's another one, Alex. I went through and deleted every single scene that I have. I've got several different apps for getting, you know, there's the behind the scenes apps of stuff like Home Plus, stuff like Home Dash. There's one called Controller for HomeKit. that gives you lots of options for things like maintenance. You go to the maintenance tab and it says, hey, did you realize you have a room with nothing in it? Did you realize that all of these things are below 20% on battery? It's really handy.
But it also then can expose every scene, including the ones that are sort of hidden away inside stuff like Home Plus. And I finally, to be honest, reached the end of my rope with HomeKit and I just deleted everything. I did everything but start completely over.
AlexOh, that's so wild. That is actually what I spent most of my week doing because Matthew is out at a house babysitting another broken dog. And I was like, oh, this is a great time to unplug everything and live in the dark.
MerlinYes, exactly. It's like me seasoning the pans. There needs to be no one else in the house when this happens. Yeah, yeah. And like, but like, you know, the limitations, I have to imagine that improvements to just, even just the home app have got to be coming at some point.
AlexI think it's a Mac situation now where they're like, it's fine, right? People like it, right? And then it's like, oh, no, we fucked up.
MerlinYeah, it's not actually that useful to anybody. But, you know, it's a little bit broken for everybody. But, like, here's a really common thing is, like I say, I've got a couple scenes. The big scenes in my office are fans on and fans off. Like, I want to be able to turn off the fans because I'm really into circulating air. But I don't want that on during the podcast. So that needs to work, fans on, fans off. I've got a scene called bright. I've got a scene called warm. I've got a scene called cozy. Alex, I can't believe how often I hit one of those scenes, very simple scenes.
It's just basically all of these lights I want to be at, you know, usually like let's say for bright. I want them to be bright white and 100%. And like is there an easy way to do that? I mean one way to do that is to delete all of your scenes. Then create the scene you want perhaps with your Siri voice where you could say something like. Remember that page we looked at a million years ago that has every color available for Siri?
Alexsupposedly, yeah, yeah.
MerlinWell, they do, but I mean, here's the most efficient way that I've seen to get this to work, and I'll get to the problem in a sec, but I will say something like, you know, see, now I'm going to confuse myself. But I don't say turn office lights on because that is a scene. What I'll do is I'll say set lights to 100% or whatever, and then I'll say set lights to white or whatever. And everything seems to be working fine at that point. So what do I do? At that point, I say, create a new scene. This is the most intuitive
way I know of to do this. Once everything is set up the way I want in the office, and I look, and everything's fine. It's all the right color. It's all the right brightness. That's when I go and say, create a new scene, which is a little bit of a pain in the ass, because now you have to go in and select each one of these that you want to be turned on. And let's also remember, you also need to select any lights that you want turned off or changed.
AlexYeah. Saying it's a little bit of a pain in the ass is quite an understatement. It's like dragging your apps around.
MerlinAlex, I mean, like in my dumb brain, the answer for this is a little thing we used to call save as. Like I wish, in my opinion, there should be a way in the home app to, a catalyst, wonderful catalyst app to say, hey, you know how everything is right now? Save as. Save that as bright.
AlexI mean, the way that shortcuts implement, just duplicate shortcut, duplicate this scene. Like, why not?
MerlinWhy not?
AlexIt's a game changer.
MerlinWell, and like trying to do, but now here's where we get to the good part. And so now, hey, this is great. I must be happy because I did it and I tested it once and it seemed to work. I turned all the lights off. Next time I turn them back on, three of them are the completely wrong color and brightness. This light is now green. This light is red. This other one is also red. In this array of three nanoleafs that are a group, two are bright white and one is orange. Why? I don't know. I guess I better go check.
Okay, right-click on the bright setting. Go and look, dee-dee-dee-dee. According to HomeKit, they should all be... The HomeKit scene that I am looking at is correct. But the lights are not correct. So now I have to go in like onesie twosie and like go fix them again and try it again. And I don't think at this point there is almost anything that could be stepping on it. I could be wrong. I could be wrong and I'll learn more. But it's all just like pretty much pure HomeKit and it's still a train wreck.
But if you have to do anything more than that, the onesie twosie of like, oh, don't you love that thing where anything you add to HomeKit, it like frequently adds it as a favorite?
AlexOh, yes.
Merlinuntil you have like 35 favorites. And then you're like, how do you unfavorite this? Can I just select all and say unfavorite? Nope. You have to open each one separately. You right click. You go to settings, not controls. You go to settings. And then inside of setting, you have to do this for every single one of those. There's absolutely no scale. It's like you ask for a shovel and they gave you 47 teaspoons.
AlexAnd it's so difficult when you're trying to evangelize this thing.
MerlinWho's that good for? Who is that working for?
AlexYeah, I'm trying to convince like I've almost gotten my parents off of all of the Amazon stuff and back to HomeKit. Also, just because we have nieces now, so I'm just like, yeah, get it. icky. And it was the favorites thing where my mom's like, so I don't want these as favorites because it's, you know, I accidentally tap them. How do I get rid of it? And like, I do the thing.
MerlinIs it easier to change this on the iPhone, the iPad or the Mac? Answer, none. They're all pain in the ass. It's technically, if you're really good and fast on an iPad, that's probably the fastest
Alexway well and her question was why is it like this and like well uh you know resources a different software department she's like well it's apple why why is it like this something i said syracuse
Merlinand i were talking about um home like you know security cameras and facial recognition and what you'd want to do with that and not just to have the gee whiz but like what do you want to use this for and anyway i won't go into the whole thing but but one thing i said to john this sounds so mean and so callow, but like I do sometimes get the feeling with certain features on certain platforms, certain computers that it's almost like a product manager said, get this to the point where we can demo it on stage and people will go, ooh. So like, hey, look, now we have facial recognition. So it can tell you if you've arrived at home or whatever.
But anything you would actually want to do with this at anything, even like, let's even leave scale out for a second. If you want to do anything actually useful with this, you just can't do it or you just can't do it consistently. You just can't do it easily. And I feel like in the year of our Lord 2022, we ought to be reaching, getting near a point where we can and should expect more out of these things. It's one reason why I've transitioned my family mostly out of the Amazon family of products. is the return on or the like, the value of what we get out of it
is just not there anymore, especially given the ramping up of shittiness. Like Amazon still like hears well, but like everybody says, like why do you keep suggesting things to me? Why do you, stop asking me things. Stop being so thirsty all the time. Just do the thing. This is where Google Home Hub leaves everything else in the dust. If I ask Apple to do something, if I ask that lady in a tube to do something, I constantly get, wait just a sec, That's taking longer than I expected. All of that stuff. I get that with Siri.
With Amazon, I get, would you also like me to tell you hockey scores? And it's like, no, I never want you to tell me hockey scores. Also, stop putting ads on my screen. All of that stuff. And Google, you ask Google practically anything, it answers instantly. Anyway, I wish I didn't feel like I'm being so needy to expect these things to improve in ways that don't just build their platform, but actually enhance my life in real ways, rather than leading to endless numbers of tradeoffs and frustrations, because I just
keep wishing on a star that it eventually gets good.
AlexIt's similar to, I'm going all Sammy Socialist again, but-
MerlinI think it's Sally.
AlexSally, Sammy, who knows what gender-
MerlinYou're doing a lot of sexism today, a lot of sexism.
AlexLots of seconds. I mean, if when the UPS guy says he's going to be there at a certain time, you expect them to be there a certain time. Or when Apple is like, hey, I am going to help you out. But while I'm helping to find this product that is lost on a truck, would you like to check out this music service? iTunes is great.
MerlinOh, yeah, your message.
AlexI don't want to ever disparage people for finding utility out of any of the Amazon or Google things. But I can't help but continue to think, well, making Siri better doesn't really improve Apple's margins. And the one thing that we know about Jimmy Cook is he really, really likes those margins. like they don't sell any home kit products except for the home pod mini and i you could argue
Merlinipads but i mean you can get you can get the eve device for letting you know that water's leaking
Alexthere's that but you can't but apple's not oh no no no they're selling it in the stores but
Merlinthey're not making it not and i said this i said this to my friend at the my genius at the apple store, I said to her, what I've said to you, which is as long as Apple is releasing new hardware that's consistently better, in the case of the MacBook Pro, I mean, how do you not see that as a grand slam home run? I mean, the bar was pretty low, but nobody liked the touch bar, I don't think, mostly. If you want a touch bar, you can get it and you'll be fine. But the ports, yeah, I love the ports, all that stuff. That's such a good feeling. But it does sometimes feel like, I wonder
if, you know, who cares?
AlexBut like, I don't...
MerlinWhat I love starting out, being an Apple fan today, probably not as much.
AlexOh, no, no.
MerlinI'm in it because I'm in it. And like I said, you know, like, who was it, whatever, Benjamin Franklin or probably Winston Churchill or Mark Twain said, you know, democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. Like, Apple has the worst computers except for all the others. I mean, do you get a Chromebook?
Mmm. Oh, it shows websites, huh? That's cool.
AlexThat's really great.
MerlinI'm tired and I don't want to talk anymore.
AlexYeah, no, we're just...
MerlinSay something funny. Oh, Father Marky Mark. Father Marky Mark, did you end up praying with him?
AlexNo, I didn't. I'm downloading that app.
MerlinAll right, save it for the after show.
AlexYep. Okay. Hey, everybody, go patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. Oh, it ended with an ad.
MerlinYeah.
Thank you.