286. Celery and Cum

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

Good morning, Merlin Mann.

Speaker AGood afternoon, it's Do By Friday. Your Friday is due

AlexOh wow, I got a message Reminder, I like getting messages I don't respond to them, but I like reading them Unlike you Someone has done a number of remixes Of every little bleep bloop beep bop you've done Song, that was the word I was looking for Songs you've done on the podcast Yes, yes, it's very exciting and I will send it to you.

MerlinYou've been spending a lot of time with data about the podcast, it seems to me.

AlexOh, the data about the podcast? No, no, no. That was a thing that all of our friends were sending around a website that anybody can put in an RSS link to the podcast and it doesn't give you the listener numbers. If I looked at that, I would probably unalive myself into the sea.

MerlinI mean, like you showed me a word cloud. I didn't want to see. Okay, hang on. Can we do just one thing at a time?

AlexHello. Good morning. Really, man?

MerlinIf you want velocity, I will bury you. I've had four hours of sleep. Oh, no. I rode a bike for five miles at 5 a.m., 5.55. And I will bury you in velocity. They're just going to find bones in McDonald's cups.

AlexOh.

MerlinBut, so that sounds cool. What's funny?

AlexI just realized that I have an empty McDonald's cup on my desk.

MerlinOh, wow.

AlexBut don't worry, I got some Kratom seltzer here, too.

MerlinI'm not worried. Okay, so that sounds cool. So somebody, a listener, presumably?

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinPut together some kind of like supercut of little songs?

AlexNot even the super cut. Remixes.

MerlinRemix.

AlexIf SoundCloud rappers were still cool, that is kind of the vibe here.

MerlinOh.

AlexI'm trying to, this person's name is not on this website.

MerlinWhere'd you find this?

AlexIn an email. AlexCoxFM at gmail.com. Thanks for emailing me, everybody. I like email. Well, I like email when it's through the application MimeStream. I enjoy that. But anyway, sorry for interrupting.

MerlinWow. You know like when you're in elementary school and you learn how to diagram a sentence? I wish somebody would diagram you. I just want to understand your dependent clauses.

Okay. So somebody did that. And is that something that I could find somewhere? Is it on the public internet?

AlexIt is on the public internet. But offy.com slash DBF, or you could just go to Dubai Friday dot com slash whatever episode number this is because it'll be in show notes. Yeah.

MerlinSpell that out, whatever episode number this is. And you, woof. Okay, so that's, is it good?

AlexYes, I think so. No, I'm going to tell this person.

MerlinDo you want to drop some in? Do you want to drop some in right here?

AlexYes, we do. Yes, we do. Thanks, Quinn.

MerlinBecause that would be a pretty name for a girl.

AlexWhat? No, I thought it. I'm 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 Covey. Colby, don't be a dick. Oh, I hit this up. Hello. All my exes live in Texas. You are Colby's friend. I'm a spiky little red boy. I live inside your tummy. I live inside your lungy.

And I'm getting hungry. My name's Colby and I'm calling all your life. for a little while. Oh,

oh, man. If you find 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.

MerlinOh, man. I haven't heard it yet, but I bet. That's so cool. Thank you to whomever did that. I'm sorry, Alex, who gets mail and doesn't read or respond to it, doesn't know your name.

AlexIt was yesterday.

MerlinBut I care.

AlexIt was, okay. It was yesterday. And when someone doesn't say if they want to disclose something, I don't know. I don't know.

MerlinBoy. You have a complicated rubric, don't you?

AlexLet's not go there.

MerlinHmm. You think you have a simple rubric?

AlexI do. I do. Yeah. Maybe you should listen more.

MerlinThat's a word my kid knows now because they use it a lot at school. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, can you hear that?

AlexDo you need to get that?

MerlinGet the drill? No. And just to be clear, hello, everyone. Welcome to You By Friday. It's a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and me. and that is not the noise we had before this is new noise it's happening feet away from me in what I hope is the garage unless there's some kind of like secret Knives Out Passageway I think there's some banging and there's some drilling I apologize I'm not going to try to cover it up whatever's in the show is in the show but I don't think it'll be a long time thing I certainly hope not

Alexis this separate from the project the like city municipal project where they're tearing up your street

Merlinyes sorry I put that poorly the bang bang machine of yore was and that'll come back that's going to be a two year project that I'll be dealing with oh boy it's got a big drill going but no this sounds like somebody's doing something to the building yesterday it was a lot of it didn't sound like hammering it sounded like malleting it was kind of a more earthy you know vaginal thud, not a clitoral, you know.

AlexYes. That was on your more popular program. I was like, what's that noise?

MerlinAnd I was like, what's happening with Dan? What is happening with that guy?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinIs he going in a new direction or is it just me?

AlexNo comment.

MerlinTalked about birds a lot.

AlexReally, really likes the birds, putting those birds on it.

MerlinYou know, you know, my friend Dennis, remember Dennis Gephardt?

AlexYes. Big influence on your life and now mine.

MerlinYes. and I've said this phrase before but I just want to credit Dennis oh, you're really letting your witch out and I think these work persons are letting their witch out through mallets anyways, hello it's Dubai Friday, it's a weekly challenge podcast you've got music from a person that we just listened to you've got a kratom drink you seem like you're very imbued with the life force today

AlexYes. I was sorry.

MerlinHaving a good day? Is it a good day, you think?

AlexI think so. Sorry. Sorry I'm late. But you inspired a fairly large purchase that I just made, not impulsively, but I think it's like one of those things where once you spend money, or at least I get this like anxiety rush, and then I'm like, no, I'm going to turn this into a good type of adrenaline. Oh, good for you. Yeah, yeah. Buy a bike? No, I do not buy it. No, I'm not cool enough to be a bike. You're the big bike daddy. I'm still on my little scoot-scoot just being that weirdo with a Segway.

MerlinI got both. I like them both. They're great. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh, so you got a GoPro?

AlexWell, I got a GoPro that has the 360 camera in it that has a—

MerlinThat's like full-time 360?

AlexYou can do both, and it is—

MerlinYou know what? I'll just look. You sent me a link, right?

AlexYeah. But what's fun about this, I guess I'm going to plug it before I even have it, although I've tried it. Like a lot of 360 cameras, you need to do a bunch of stuff and software to make it look not crappy. Because, you know, you need to like stitch it together. And I'm no Todd Vaziri. I don't enjoy doing that. But you don't need to do that with the GoPro Max or whatever it's called.

MerlinWait. Okay. This looks like a Hype Williams video. So wait. So it's not. Maybe I don't understand what degrees are. I think back to my dot-com days, the exciting innovation of 1999 was virtual tours.

Tours are a big deal in real estate. And I was at a realestate.com. And my mom was a real estater. I'm not a real estater. I'm the opposite of a real estater. It skipped a generation. Probably my kid will be a real estater. I know my kid will certainly be more financially successful than me for innumerable reasons. Probably already is. But anyway, and that was the thing where like you hired this company and the company would go out to the house for sale and set up this wackadoo gajillion dollar camera.

And, you know, I mean, I'm explaining this to the VR person. But the idea was you go in each room of the house, you would have this camera go do-do-do-do-do, and it would shoot in a circle. And then you could, I guess, probably maybe with Java. I don't remember. I doubt it was JavaScript. Do we have JavaScript then? JavaScript was mainly for like countdown timers. Like Bill Clinton impeachment trial in six months.

But anyhow, but you could like, you know, in your browser, you could scroll around inside of it. Now, what I'm looking at here, this looks a lot like the GoPro that I have. the 360 part is what it's capturing out of the front lens if you notice there is a front and

Alexa back lens oh and then it stitches it for you yeah oh i get it that's clever yeah that's how most cameras 360 cameras are built but again there's the software for lazy people in it also if you know you want to do those cool fast tiktok shots that i don't enjoy where it's like zoom zoom cut cut vlogging about my surfing lifestyle wing bang boom i don't know what i'm saying

Merlintalk about the that the annoying editing thing that i don't have a name for you're talking about like a different kind of like uh oh you're talking about like an action video like here's here's me ripping ripping some sick cotton on my board doing some real scrapes and stuff like that

Alexyeah yeah like if you're not good at skateboarding the kind where it's like you yeah if i just keep shooting from underneath the board, then it'll look like what I'm doing is cool and good. And to be clear, I would be that person. But I'm increasingly less of the VR person because you know what? When I put on an Oculus or whatever, the meta rift, the meta Oculus, I don't know. It just makes me sad. I saw a meta

Merlinat Target. My kid and I had a date at the mall on Sunday and I saw they've got a little end cap at the Target with a meta something on it. You can just go buy that now at a store?

AlexOh, yeah. It is like getting a Nintendo Switch, except easier to find. No, Mario. Easier to find than... Yeah, God forbid you want a PlayStation 5, but it's just this commodity that's floating around.

MerlinAre those still hard to get?

AlexYes. I don't think I could find one for less than $800 right now.

MerlinJiminy Christmas.

AlexYeah.

MerlinWow, that's nuts.

AlexWhy don't they make more?

MerlinOh, supply chain.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIs it because supply chain?

AlexSupposedly. And scalpers because they have the fancy tech to track.

MerlinI don't think we say that anymore.

I'm listening to your photograph. I took, there's a photograph, it's not that interesting, but it's a photo I took at 5.35 a.m. today, and it's a picture from atop, there's a reservoir not too far from here, and it's at the top of a hill, and this is kind of a pretty photo of a famous bridge. But I was in a hurry, and it was cold. It was like 42 degrees, so isn't that pretty though? Look at that bridge.

AlexOh, that is actually gorgeous. You sent me some gorgeous short films and some gorgeous photos now. Oh, my goodness.

MerlinIt's like – so I got this GoPro for exactly the purpose you'd imagine, which is like I've never had – well, I don't want to say I've never had – okay. I'm going to put this as clearly as I can. I've personally never had any interesting GoPro because I associate it so much with like skateboard ding-a-lings and people of extremity as we call them now.

AlexI call them fuckboys, but yes.

MerlinOkay. What's the opposite of extreme? Me. That's what I am.

AlexExtreme doesn't mean.

MerlinI don't need – I mean just have a macro lens so you can just see the bags under my eyes. That's how extreme I am. But I thought it would be fun to be able to strap this to the bike and do some time lapse and stuff. And you know what? My goodness. I was thinking yesterday about how I explained e-bikes to you in the after show last week. You don't need an e-bike explained to you. And I thought, boy, that was really condescending of me to act like you or the listener doesn't know what an e-bike is. But then I thought, you know, the truth is, I'm telling you this because I didn't know this three weeks ago.

AlexI was going to say, I hard disagree.

MerlinI mean, I thought that maybe you were talking to listeners. They are. The concepts are very confusing. And it's the thing that I was – give us your fucking money.com. But the thing I was trying to say was like it is a – I mean, as I ride this thing every day, I'm learning more about how those pieces work together. And, you know, I took like a six-mile ride yesterday to go pick up my prescription. And my dear sweet wife was so worried about me because I'm going through a part of town that's, you know, pretty busy.

And it's up by the hospital on Parnassus. And there's like a lot of traffic. And it's just the – let's put it this way. You would not build a hospital, a series of medical facilities in this location today because it's so busy since there's a hospital there. It's crazy. So there's people pushing medical records around. There's, you know, people absentmindedly crossing the street. And probably a lot of them are sleep deprived and like cars are pulling in and out and deliveries going in and out and like buses and, you know, the like shuttles that take you around, you know, UCSF.

But it was it wasn't as fun as my super long Sunday morning ride where nobody was out. It's so much more fun when you don't have to worry about cars. He said condescendingly. But but but I was able to say, hey, you know, I'm OK. I made it back. I didn't die. And the neat thing about having, for example, that combination of throttle and pedal assist that I described last week, which is called e-bike, it makes it so much easier to, like, get into traffic.

Remember the beef for a long time? You know, people would say, oh, you've got to get a big car. It's the only way to be safe. You go. And, like, oh, I don't want to get an electric because I won't be able to pull into traffic fast enough. And it's like, well, my understanding is with, you know, hybrids or electric, that's not your problem. Your problem's not – I mean, you get – let's put it this way. Most automobiles you get today, like, are pretty good. There's not that many truly terrible cars today as against, say, when I was growing up where there was a whole –

AlexI mean, philosophically terrible.

MerlinNo, no. I just mean in terms of, like, performance and reliability. And, you know, the cars that America made in the 1970s were not particularly distinguished. When you compare them to like what people were doing in Japan and Germany. This is not new.

AlexDo you remember the first time that you had a seatbelt in a car?

MerlinI think so. Well, what I can say is I definitely remember the first time we had a seatbelt in the car that made a noise if you didn't buckle it.

AlexOh, nevermind. So this is way.

MerlinMy pediatrician, my pediatrician, even in the early seventies, I have so many famous Cincinnati doctors. My pediatrician was telling us to wear seatbelts like in the seventies. He's like, I've seen papers, presentations about this. It really makes a difference. And, you know, then you get into the 90s and all of the whole, like, I'm not going to wear a seatbelt. This is America. And you're like, well, it's the single biggest thing you can do to not die in a car. But my mom got a car in 1975, Pontiac Catalina.

And it made the beeping noise if you didn't buckle your seatbelt. so she promptly took it to a mechanic who unhooked the noise so she could yeah she could enjoy her cigarette and ride unencumbered by safety but um but but but no but like i guess all i'm trying to say is that like i i'm not a driver anymore but i i know what that like for example me in my 1970 VW bus. You know, an air-cooled

engine that like, let's put it this way, even as light as that thing was, comparatively it had no pickup compared to my e-bike or compared to probably your hybrid, right? Like if you need to like get, you know what I'm talking about? Like you're in that lane, you're fixing to like join traffic and there's not like a traffic jam but maybe it's rush hour, everybody's going fast. You've got to be able to really zip in there or you're going to at best be disruptive, at worst be dead. And it's so cool with this to like be able to handle all these hills.

And I'll get you a bespoke video of just how this thing handles a hill because it's crazy. But like you just, I just step into it, start pedaling, but hit the throttle as I'm stepping into it and zip, I'm going right into the traffic. And it's so much safer than the whole like timid tent. I'm not saying don't be careful because I'm making eye contact with everybody. Like I'm a, I'm a veteran pedestrian. Like I, I know the inside of a car people are not actually people anymore. Per that article I sent you yesterday. You become a monster. But you know, it's really neat to be able to like, even if you're on a little bit of a hill.

I mean, one problem is like, I'm just so, I try to be so careful about like making sure that I can be seen. And like, if there's cars parked on the road, like there always is, you've got to like start nosing into traffic a little bit. You got to, like, I never wear headphones, AirPods, whatever. Like, I really need to be listening and hearing and, you know, really using, like, a variety of senses to know when it's safe to do things and when to know, you know, like, whether I'm visible to other people.

It's like, that's the biggest thing I worry about is, like, you know, do I remain visible? And it's neat to be able to, like, kind of zip. I want to say zip into traffic. What I really mean is, like, when the light changes or, like, at a four-way stop. I have an article of faith that I think my life partner and I may disagree on this. I think a four-way stop is a real test of the human heart. It is. You must not be timid at a four-way stop because timid feels safe, but it's incredibly unsafe.

So there's a rhythm, right? At a four-way stop, there's a rhythm of like, okay, we always go. Whoever got there first goes first. If two people got there at essentially exactly the same time, the one on the right goes first. The one at the next quarter hour over goes first. But if you're too polite about it and you wave in at people, you go ahead. It's like that Portlandia sketch where the two people can't get past the stop sign because they keep trying to let the other one in.

AlexYou throw off the vibe.

MerlinYou throw out the vibe, but you also create indecision and you wreck the rhythm of a four-way stop. And there's a rhythm to a four-way stop. In the same way that going 20 miles an hour on a highway may feel safe to you, but it's not safe. Because you're the weirdo now. You're not driving in the same way as everyone else. And you see this especially in other countries. I think of cities like Boston or Miami. where like if you can't get with the way people drive in Boston and Miami, you're the problem.

It's not my favorite kind of driving personally, but like at a four-way stop, like if you can't always be waving people. And like even on the bike, I'm always like kind of shaking people off and you try to be friendly about it, but like no. And something I tell my kid in the early days of their pedestrian journey was like never let other people – how can I put this? I forget exactly what I said, but some of the lines of we go when it's safe for us to go. We don't go when other people think we should go.

And that counts for all kinds of things. The rhythm of crossing a street downtown, a lot of people start crossing when it's still don't walk. We don't do that. We go when it's time to go. But when we do go, we know it's our turn. You go decisively. Again, you're communicating. You're making eye contact with people. You can't just walk around your own little bubble doing what you think is safe or right. You've got to know that you're part of a community of people. And some people aren't going to do the right thing.

Some people are going to miss a stop sign or whatever. We go when we think it's right for us to go. And right can mean safe. But it also takes decisiveness. At a four-way stop, you don't dither. You don't wave. You don't do all the stuff. You go. And when you go, you really go. You know what I mean? You don't go, like you're not sure which pedal you're hitting. because then, I mean, just to state the obvious, that throws off the person whose turn it should have been. It throws off the person whose turn it's going to be next.

And I think it throws off everybody who's like looking ahead a little bit, somebody who's had driver's ed and knows to be watching, you know, higher up than you think. Like, you know, like I said in the wisdom document, if you want to know where people are walking, don't look at their eyes, look at their feet. If you want to know where the general traffic pattern on a sidewalk is, don't look at feet. Look above heads. Look for patterns. Like when you're driving, look for lots of brake lights. Like don't be accelerating when everybody else is hitting the brakes. I'm sorry I'm going on a rant here. I didn't mean that.

I'm sorry.

AlexWell, you're a bike guy, so you should go on a rant. I hate crying. I'm going to push back against the jaywalking situation, though, Because in Chicago, if you are downtown where most people don't drive because they're in the Futurama. Yeah, it is the loop. It's the Millennium Park, the Magnificent Mile, all of that crap.

MerlinOh, it wastes all this money on avocados.

AlexYeah, it's the meh part of Chicago. But if you don't start walking when everybody else starts walking, which is before.

MerlinOh, that's how you get picked off.

AlexWell, then suddenly you're walking when the sign is still flashing. Like, hurry up. Do they have that in San Francisco? Like, there's the walk sign and then the flash, flash, flash. You get honked at.

MerlinYeah, as with yellow lights, I think there's a rule. Well, there used to be a rule of thumb. Again, I learned this in driver's ed in Florida in the 1920s. But it used to be that the amount of – shoot, I'm going to get this wrong and I'm going to get Syracuse-ed by somebody. But there used to be a formula of like the number of – there's some kind of an equivalence or better put ratio between the amount of time between red and green and number of miles per hour in tens. I want to say that it's a second per 10 miles per hour, but I'm not sure.

But you're accommodating the speed limit to account for – if you had that change too fast, you could see some really bad situations. But you're also describing something that I think is discussed in this upcoming rectif. This is a temple of parenting to me is minimize rules.

Don't create rules just to make rules because then you have to enforce the rules. But also, like how do you make somebody have common sense? Well, I mean, I don't know if I have common sense. Probably not. But you have to have situational awareness and you have to adjust what is proper, right, safe to like what the situation is. I mean, the way you act, like for example, if there's a poor woman standing in the door of the plane, you got to push them. Move out of my way. You know, you got to hit that throttle, you know.

AlexI mean, common sense is not profitable. You need more signs and more rules so that you can pay more people to enforce those rules, especially in Chicago.

MerlinI mean, like kidding aside, though, this I want to say common sense. That's such a like a dumb dad thing to say. But what I mean here is. Well, what I mean here is the kind of much longer game that gets beyond. I mean, there's no I'm not a computer programmer, but it's my understanding that like if you do think too much about just making programming by rules. rules, it could be very uninteresting and certainly inflexible, and it might break in ways you never anticipated. I guess what I'm trying to say is, at least in life, I think it's useful to focus, if

you're trying to, in this case, help a kid or a new driver or whatever, there are rules of thumb, somewhere between a rule of thumb and an ethos for dealing with the world. A good example of that is a phrase, again, from Driver's Head, defensive driving, which is an unfortunate name for what that actually is. Like when you learn defensive driving, I mean, it sounds like you're touchy.

AlexWe don't say that anymore.

MerlinThat's right. I'm driving. Why are you criticizing me? Stop being so defensive in your driving. Now, what it really means, I think if you had to boil that down, at least to what I took away from it, is that like, don't ever assume that anybody else is going to do the right thing. And to further extend that, don't assume that other people are paying attention to what you're doing and that when they do stuff that's not the right thing, you have the defensive part is you have to be thinking in terms of like contingency plans. And again, to use that phrase,

situational awareness, like what's happening around me and how does that leaven my approach to doing this. So again, now the nice thing about a rule of thumb is that can be pretty handy a majority of the time, except when it's exactly not the right thing. I think we should get rid of

Alexrules of thumbs. Increasingly, I feel like no one has the same thumbs or they don't have thumbs at all. And I don't know. The reason I don't like defensive driving. This is kind of like trying

Merlinto debate a vending machine, right? You're throwing out rules of thumb because people,

AlexAre you being ableist? No, I just said, yeah, fuck the no thumbs. But okay, what would you say is a rule?

MerlinWhat are you going to do? Hit me with your nunchucks? Fly out of your hand? Yeah, just slap me. Throw a ball at me? Thumbsless?

No, keep going. Keep going. No, you're doing a bit, but I'm curious where it's going.

AlexNo. What is a rule of thumb? Let's not even go nationally. Just in the city or like a California rule of thumb.

MerlinI've got one for you. The one that jumps straight to mind, the gas company, Shell, had this driver safety series that they did in the 70s. And they'd have pamphlets you could pick up at the filling station. But they also had these TV commercials. And I mean, again, I don't know if this is still true, but it worked for me. when you're in traffic and to be safe,

you should try and keep approximately two car lengths between you and the person in front of you.

AlexBut how would I know that? Because I was not around in the shell time.

MerlinWell, no, I mean, it's also things like there are a lot of these things that involve basic ratios you know about you know things like you know how to be how to like be smart about be smart i sound like axios be smart about like you know blind spots um which used to be a much huger deal in 70s cars like you know a blind spot at least in my driver's education driver's ed was there is a spot where usually especially i guess off your back right fender or quarter panel whatever it's called

Like you were like, you know, especially remember they didn't used to have mirrors on both sides. Time was you had a mirror on your driver's side door and you had this giant, very wide mirror. And, you know, you got to work those mirrors. It's all about the mirrors until it's not about the mirrors. Like when you're backing up, according to the driver's side, you always put your arm on the seat and look backward. Right. Again, this is 80s technology. But the problem is at least then and I think to some extent still now, there is one spot where you are least likely to look for slash notice a car.

And it's right in a spot where there could easily be an entire car very near you that you wouldn't or couldn't see. But at the very least are unlikely to see. And that's off that back right corner. That's the spot you're probably least looking for traffic. I mean, like, I've got a mirror on my bike and I use it constantly. It's like, oh, my God, it's all that keeps me sane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, yeah, it's great. So that way, I mean, I can see, like, you know, I'm using my ears for hearing and I'm using my eyes for seeing.

I'm using the mirror to augment that. I'm wearing glasses like a gentleman and I can see stuff coming. But, I mean, anyway, the point was, I'm not sure why Shell did this. There was probably some financial reason. But they socialized a lot of pretty good ideas about how to be a less careless or dangerous driver. And those kinds of rules of thumb, you know, I think can be handy. Do you think they're too reductive, rules of thumbs?

AlexNo, super handy for the people who have those thumbs. But it's kind of like when math changed and suddenly, you know, parents helping kids are like, what the fuck? How do you do math now?

MerlinOh, I felt that.

Alexdriver's ed is totally different i really felt that yeah yeah and i did not learn how to parallel park in driver's ed i did not learn that you uh have to uh what is great rules of thumb there's great rules of thumb for that there but that's the thing you don't learn that like how are you supposed to know that in driver's ed but no no but driver's ed is not a nationalized program it's different in every single state

and sometimes different to every single county.

MerlinAnd it's always taught by the gym teacher.

AlexYeah, well, no, and I had to go to a private driver's ed course that cost like $1,000. Even your driving school was driving? Yes, yes. Was it Catholic? Be honest. I mean, everybody.

MerlinThat would be so cute if you had a nun with a ruler up there.

AlexDude, literally everybody.

MerlinThis is how we do a K-turn.

AlexWe did prayer every time we went off on practice drives.

MerlinWow, I've never unbuckled a dead nun. Those movies were really something. I mean, the Simpsons were not kidding. Like driver's ed movies in 1984, 83 were just unbelievable. And truly, like it was our driver's ed class was taught by the football coach. And in retrospect, you know, in-school suspension was the soccer coach. They would give the coaches these jobs. Either you teach a gym class or in the case of our, well, I don't know what we say. I need a nice politically correct term for this.

our horizontally capacious.

AlexThe sexy time education? Is that what you're going for?

MerlinOur 350-pound football coach. I will get you a photo because he looked like Jabba the Hutt. Not in a sexy way, but yeah. And he'd improve your grade if you brought him Chicken McDonald's.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinAnd if you brought him an egg muffin, he would sit there and he would use his tummy as a table.

AlexOh, no, no.

MerlinThat's fine. He would eat an egg McMuffin off his guy.

AlexAt school? Like, oh, oh.

MerlinA museline way back. No.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinAnd so, but in the classes, of course, you've got the football coach of the Gulf Comprehensive High School Buccaneers teaching driver's ed because, you know, I think there's some kind of a jam up there. There's something with, there must be something with, not apportionment, but like, we can pay for this kind of position by calling this person a teacher. I don't know. I always wondered. And then you just show movies. You just show movies. You show movies. That's all you do.

AlexI did not see a single movie in Driver's Ed except for an example of how to drive a bus if you wanted to go for a commercial.

MerlinOh, really?

AlexYeah. Not a single one. A how to bus video. Yeah, a how to bus video. There's also competitive bus drivings in Illinois, apparently. And that was the video we watched of my instructor doing a bus competition and driving around. Was there music?

MerlinWas there like Yankee Sax or anything? No, not circus music. It's amazing how music can change something.

Let's see. I'm going to see if this – I think this is a real thing. I've never unbuckled a dead man.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinTrooper Bob. Let's see. Death by seatbelt. Painful lesson about seatbelts, seatbelts, seatbelts. But there were these videos that were just – Okay, so did you ever Dane sit your ass down and watch season two of I Think You Should Leave?

AlexYeah, we did a challenge.

MerlinWe don't have challenges. We have topics.

AlexOh, yes. The topic of the shirts are more expensive because of the patterns. Yes.

MerlinWell, that's a complicated pattern.

AlexYeah. I'm tired.

MerlinEat your wife's wig. come on down to Dan's

AlexI stand by it season two better than season one

Merlinnot that season one is bad especially certain sketches I mean Dan Flashes the one I think about constantly is Claire's

Alexoh god it's so dark and I just saw

MerlinI just saw the you know the guy who's like I already know this just I want to get my ears pierced that guy I saw him in something else recently. I was like, oh, my God, it's that guy. But one I do think about a lot, of course, with that woman that I adore, the tables.

Speaker ARight?

MerlinAnd showing the Driver's Ed video, poor Tim Robinson. It's the same actress. I don't know if it's the same person. And she's so mad about what Eddie Munster has done to her tables. And she's distracted and texting her, like, you know, being on the phone. Like that – I mean that's very – I know you know that's the joke, but that's what Driver's Ed was for us. Tons of these movies of like really grisly, like gross stuff.

This is also around the time of the ascendance of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And so there was a wrecked car like parked in front of our school with a mad sign on it.

AlexWhat?

MerlinOh, is this one of those things?

Alexwhere they staged, like they would try to fake kids out and it's like, oh, your friend got in a car accident and there would be bad makeup and there would be a kid pretending to be a corpse?

MerlinNo, no. Well, I don't know about that. I could see, yeah, the kids who wanted to suck up to the mad moms. And by the way, I just want to say something. I just want to point out, sometimes something can be very funny even when it's inappropriate. And I don't know if everybody out here knows that. But I think, you know, it was very funny. Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Huge, huge, huge thing started in the mid 80s, at least where I was really kind of caught fire. And, you know, there were kids that were just good. Like nobody. Drunk driving used to be a big deal. And I guess it still is. But somebody had come up with some fakey group called like, you know, mad is mothers against drunk driving.

And somebody come up with a group called damn drunks against mad mothers. That's funny. Do you get it? No, I don't get it. Well, look, because the mad, they're referring to them, drunks against mothers against drunk driving mothers, drunks against mad mothers, damn. That's so funny on so many levels.

Speaker AIt is. It is very, very good.

MerlinThat's the kind of thing where if you smoke weed or do edibles, you get one of those every 18 months. Oh. That's that good.

AlexI mean, I'd say every six years.

MerlinYou know what I mean? Where you get some kind of crazy orthogonal thinking and you get an angle on something like, damn. Anyways, a gravely wrecked car was at some point parked in front of the school. What a golden age. We also had, as you know, we also had, you know, this was discussed on You Look Nice Today. This has been discussed extensively on Mabim Bam, but the like strictly religious or vaguely religious groups that would come and do presentations at your school. I know this is a played topic at this point.

We talked about this on You Look Nice Today over 10 years ago, but somebody who can throw a Frisbee through the basketball hoop or rips a phone book in half. It's a lot like Kelvin's man team of Jesus warriors. But it was such a weird time. All this weird third party art, the woman who has tried to put the puppets into her Ford Focus. Did you watch all of the John Mulaney specials so you get my references now?

AlexI have seen all of them. I just haven't seen all of them 16 times. Matthew has.

MerlinOne of the quotations I want to correct, he was a man most acquainted with misery. That was the line. Anyways, rules of thumb, it can get in your way too. But I guess the bigger point I'm trying to make so poorly is that you can't, I don't know, what is common sense at this point? But that phrase, situational awareness, is so meaningful to me. Keep your head about you. Like you cannot, in the same way that you can't protect yourself or your computer or your stuff, your data, like a thousand percent, you can at least latch the screen door.

And I think common sense and situational awareness is a similar kind of thing. Because like when people get into groups, whether it's groups driving on a highway or it's groups trying to get into a concert or like whatever it is, we all just get so fucking weird. And like make really poor decisions that we would never make in another situation. Do you know what I mean?

AlexYeah, your reality completely changes. The very good article that is obvious, but not obvious. Oh, the hashtag brave article about like you just you enter.

MerlinSlow down. Say that again. Hashtag brave article. Hashtag brave. OK.

AlexUh-huh. About just becoming a different person and just having a completely different reality.

MerlinAre you talking about the thing that I sent to you yesterday?

Alexuh is that the one it was the article i believe about just driving and how we are completely

Merlindifferent people yeah alex perrine talking with yeah yeah yeah it's um yeah so we'll put this in show notes i sent alex uh an article yesterday and like i i i just i don't want to become like an issue guy it's like it's so dreary i really don't want to become an issue guy but this was something somebody linked to yesterday uh this is on alex perrine's um substake it's called the indignity of automobile dependence and before you like roll your eyes um i mean clearly these are so

it's alex perrine and tom i don't know how to pronounce the guy's name but i like his writing a lot tom scotia no way no idea doesn't he also have a substake yeah no it's a nice it's well it's just a nice dialogue between two of them talking about so here it is the the indignity of automobile dependence uh these two guys reached out recently to ask if i'd like to engage in some car talk and they're just talking about like you know just kind of catching up on all the stuff happening with cars include there's just so many different things and again i don't want to become a one

issue person i i i i don't rant about this in other parts of parts of my life but like the fact that there are ways in which for example the kinds of giant suvs people get where the bumper is these are cars that are practically designed to kill pedestrians like there's stuff like that there's just the whole way that like we continue to like push back at any idea that the way to get around could be anything except a private vehicle and this touches on stuff like how during covid lots of people started who never drove in manhattan

before I started driving private cars around, which is nuts. But I just thought, and the reason I mentioned it here at all, and I mentioned it to you, like I said yesterday, is it's not insane. Like, they're saying stuff, and they've got a point of view, but they're not being histrionic. But that's what you're talking about. You're talking about, we'll put this in notes, the indignity of automobile dependence. Now, what were you going to say about the hashtag brave

Alexarticle? No, I just think it is a good idea to think about how you're brain and reality change when driving a car that that's it like not just the different rules you follow but the way your brain actually starts to think how you like how you react and when when

Merlinyou're driving around and like let's let's for a moment just leave out stuff like are you having a bad day you know um are you late let's leave that out for just a second but just the basic table stakes of a person by themselves in a car, other people by themselves in cars. I think it's not controversial to say that for better or for worse, the way a lot of people not just drive, but act and respond to life when they're in a car can be vastly different from how they would respond in

almost any other situation. It's almost, it's almost, not quite, but it's almost analogous to, you know like let me just let me take some subtext and make a text when i make fun of people on twitter who are who are being dicks um it's like i i really actually do try pretty hard a rule of thumb that i've had on twitter since the beginning and this is a version of punching up and punching down but like there are things that i will unless somebody is a wildly well-known

public figure, I prefer not to take personal swipes at personal people, whether that's punching up or down or sideways or whatever. I just don't think that's very nice. So but the thing is, if I say something that's about a large group of people and somebody responds by attacking me in particular personally, like I think that's kind of that kind of sucks. Like I wasn't attacking you. I wasn't really attacking anybody. But your response in that instance, you the Twitterer, is to like attack me personally because I guess I said something that hurt your feelings and you felt attacked and it went from being something that could be about millions of people who are admittedly probably not the greatest people sometimes to you take that, as they say on Mr. Show, the velveteen touch of a dandy fop.

You take it personal and make it personal. And now you're attacking me personally. Whereas I was making a statement, I don't mean to whine here, but I think this is instructive. And so somebody I've never met in my fucking life who I guess I go look and they follow me so they know something about my sensibility. Like out of fucking nowhere, the first thing you've ever said to me on the internet is to be a dick with me. I mean, is that how you are in the rest of your life? Do you find yourself on the reg

like saying incredibly weird, vituperative shit to people that you don't know. Well, but you would do that on the internet. And I think, if I may, perhaps analogously, there are extremely nice, God-fearing people in cars who do shit in cars that is mostly at odds with how they conduct the rest of their life.

AlexAnd if, you know, I'll be the weird devil's advocate person. I am way, way more just coordinated in a car. I mean, God, knock on all of the fake wood I have in my...

MerlinI would love to see video of that. That would be a very good idea of that.

AlexLike, it's absolutely fucking wild.

MerlinAre you drifting and stuff? Are you doing tricks?

AlexNo, I mean...

MerlinAre you doing car pranks?

AlexThink about how many...

MerlinThose guys I do car pranks with. Why is that line so funny to me? Those guys I do car pranks with.

AlexCar pranks. But I am that person who is using CarPlay and responding to people and doing all of the legal things.

MerlinBut you feel like you're in the zone. You know what you're doing. You feel confident.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIn a way that you maybe don't when you're walking down the street.

AlexNo, absolutely not. I've never gotten a concussion driving a car. Yeah. but and it's because i have like the fear in me because i am driving a death machine so i feel like i i'm just i not even anxiety but it's like if it's like there are times when i've felt

anxious and have decided not to drive. And I'm like, that might sound ridiculous, but for someone who knows how I act when I'm extremely anxious, that is not a time to be driving my death machine, no matter how safe it is for me. And the same is even true for if you are driving a car from 2003 versus 2020, like what I do, it is a completely different experience. So all of those rules of thumb like now it is i believe like the 10 and it's 10 and 2 or whatever like wherever you put

your hands yeah that changed because power steering changed so oh it's like how you had

Merlinto stop learning to pump the brakes yeah yeah because when i when i was when i was coming up you always pump the brakes and i i'm also a brake pumper on my bike you know because you don't want the lock up right but now with today if i understand correctly the way an anti-lock brake works is it's doing the pumping for you at rates, right? It's going like, right? And like, if you pump the brakes on top of the ABS, like you're gonna you're gonna be in a world of pain.

AlexIs that right? Yeah, the first time Maddie drove a new car, I like, he pumped the brakes and it was like, like, it was like, really? Oh, no. Well, no, but that's kind of what I mean is like, even if you are pro yay car like suck that my boyfriend's problematic elon dick it's like it's just a different reality and i don't know i'm getting very factory settings and secret rss feed but

Merlini don't want you to lose that earlier thread though so but when you're driving you feel competent when you're driving yes and i'm not trying to be unkind but sometimes well okay sometimes you're like pretty hard on yourself about life right and like but you feel like when

Alexyou're driving like you kind of feel like you know what you're doing yeah which is very strange and i think it is uh because i that situational situational wow situational awareness of like everybody is doing something completely different and it's probably the anxiety of how when i am walking you can see people doing things that are completely different so i'm like oh god i don't know i don't know whereas in a car there is that slight twitter anonymity so i assume oh absolutely

Merlinbut even just like the body language and the sneering and like like here's one this is so embarrassing and i worry about this all the time in a way it's a little bit off brand for me but like like i i i mean i try to conduct myself like a decent person because that's who i want to be I say that often enough that I hope you realize that whether or not I always achieve it, I am trying that. But like you've been walking around and you see somebody that you know.

AlexAnd run and hide. Yes, I've literally done that.

MerlinOh, my God. The whole time we're at the mall, my kid's like, oh, my God, I hope I don't run into anybody here. I'm like, well, like, let's walk through that. Like, what would happen? It would be awkward. And it's like, oh, I can't talk to that person. Like, it's fantasizing these fake people that aren't even there. that level of social anxiety. But what was the point? The point was you ever see somebody you know and like it's like a candid moment where you see somebody

okay, let's take an easy example which is like somebody you know a little bit in my case like from the neighborhood. But it could even be somebody that you like know. It could be like a teacher from school and you see them and they look I don't know really pissy or they just they look mad and they act kind of mean and then if you did say hi to them they go well hi and they become the person that you know and I'm always like huh people in their repose what are they like you know like because that's really what happens when you're in

that cockpit baby like you're doing stuff you just wouldn't do before I have a series that currently is a very limited series but it's enough of a series that I hope this will be an enduring series, which is, well, first of all, I'm going to send you a couple of photos.

This is, okay, so my family and I live in San Francisco, where it's pretty easy to get around many different ways. You know, car, scooter, bike, walking. And like I have now one of the ways, one of the relatively few ways, one of the ways I've become like a San Francisco person. I mean, one is that like I've come to just expect that there will be food that I can get and will like. Maybe even like – even in the pre-food delivery app times, you can just order Chinese food or pizza and it arrives and it's pretty good.

Like the time that I went, my mom got surgery and I helped her out for a while and like I showed up. I got – my plane came in late. I had to rent a car from Tampa to get to Pasco County. I got there and I thought, oh, I'll just get some Chinese food.

AlexNo.

MerlinAnd she was like, you're going to – we're going, what? Where are you going to get Chinese food? I said, I don't know. I mean, you got any menus? She's like, do I have any menus? And so I opened up the Yellow Pages and found a place called something like Asian Panda Bamboo Garden. Like it's got one of those like incredibly generic strip mall. and they did the delivery and like it was the most objectionable food I've ever paid for in my life it was basically it was like

celery income it was so bad listen listen do you understand when you put celery in your Chinese food do you know what that says about you do you have any idea like carrots even when they're cut cute do you understand what that says about you it says that you're cheap and shitty and came in my dinner and it arrived and it was terrible. So one way I've become a real Bay Area cuck is like I'm super spoiled on the options for food,

even though the entire city basically closes up at 8 p.m. As my family used to say, they roll up the sidewalks at 8. There's that way. And the other way is having grown up in Florida, it's asinine that I've become like this. But I just kind of assume that you can walk to wherever you want to go. Like you look at something on a map and say, like, okay, for example, like the photos I'm about to send you are from trips to New England. And last time we were there, our terrible, terrible August trip, I needed to get, oh, you know what it was?

I needed like a charger. And I wanted like, okay, so I got to do my research, find out where places are. And like, oh, look, it's only like a, it's like a mile to that Best Buy. I'll just go there and get it. And it's like, what the fuck is wrong with me? You can't just walk places in New England. No. It's mental. So now this has become a series between me and a friend of the show, John Siracusa, which is whenever I'm in New England and run into a situation where I find myself thinking, what made me think I could walk in this area?

These first two are in Braintree, Massachusetts, where we were like, my wife was feeling really, she gets like travel sickness. And so we ended up staying at this hotel, like, you know, shitty little, like, travel lodge type place. So what I'm sending you right there, Alex is looking at photos of me walking to pick up dinner. Okay, so here's the thing. There's a place. Like, I'm an idiot, right?

AlexTalk about situational awareness.

MerlinI'm from California, right? What do I know? I look at a map, and there's a Five Guys or similar, and I'm like, oh, I'll be the hero. I'll walk the mile and a half to the five guys, pick up dinner and bring it back. And what I've sent to Alex are pictures of how you get to the five guys, which is you, you walk on a literal highway where you can't see what cars are coming. There's no sidewalk. There's no nothing. And it wasn't until I had committed to this path that I realized this is

really dumb. This is, I am essentially just like walking on a highway. This one's not as good. This one is in Rhode Island, probably in Warren. Warren? Yeah, I think of Warren.

AlexI also enjoy the American flags that are on the side of the road that don't – like who put those? Someone had to walk.

MerlinWell, it says the Braintree American Legion put them up. It's the Memorial Bridge, you cunt. Show some respect. If you want to go straight or in the right lane. I'm proud to be an American. Let me side to my feet. that's uh but isn't that isn't that funny how you like i don't know i mean i'm not a i'm not a holy stupid person but there are definitely blind spots speaking of blind spots

where i'm like i guess i really hadn't thought that through you can't just walk a mile no that

Alexyou can't walk across the street in ohio i don't i don't know if you the last i know that you're

Merlinfrom ohio but but in certain communities it really is like in like i can sit here and piss and moan and go it's so hard because we only have bike lanes like every six blocks oh it's really hard like you saw in that video that like time lapse probably noticed on the ground like that is one of the bike routes like it's like you know um designed to be safe and accommodating and like

Speaker Abut like and so i piss and moan like oh god cars run everything but then i go anywhere else and

MerlinAnd I'm like, oh, my God, I totally understand why people are the way they are. I get I but it's just there's something so comical. It really feels like a I don't know, like independent animation from the 70s where like you don't even have to go out of your house. You open a door to the room where your cars live. And then you go into the room where the cars live, which is like to make a circa 90s friend style joke. Like this garage is bigger than my apartment building. like you go into your multi-car garage and you get into your automobile and the door lifts up

when you hit a button and you drive somewhere and then you go park somewhere else or like in the case of my mom who has mobility issues and you know is an old sick lady but like when she used to like drive to different parts of the strip mall okay i've absolutely no it's funny it's funny but The Publix and the Eckert drugs are over here on the far west side of this one parking lot strip.

Now, understand. When you think of a strip mall, this is like an L.A., even like an L.A. style strip mall. Like, you know, I mean, like where Walter Sobchek's security agency is in L.A. Like, this is not a mall. It's like 16 storefronts.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinYeah. And 16 cheerleader storefront. Anyway, got to have voices. But she'd go and get her stuff over here, and then she'd get in the car, and it was so hot. She'd drive to the east side of the parking lot to pick up her vitamins.

And that's the sensibility I grew up with.

AlexSo did I. But the like turns out is a lot of strip malls in the suburbs don't even have a sidewalk to like cross between stores.

MerlinI mean, like who's walking to the strip mall? Like teenagers and the unemployable.

Speaker AYeah, yeah.

MerlinOf course you throw trash at them. Ha ha ha!

AlexA challenge. I believe this week's challenge was Merlin's. It was a joint.

MerlinIt was the Lord gave us this challenge. Yeah. To, what was it? To rediscover, explore, do something with Bunch. Yes. And Bunch is an app by a friend of the show, a very dear friend of the show, Brett Terpstra, that does some neat stuff. Oh, my fucking God.

AlexI would say unprecedented. Like, I mean, this thing, I don't know.

MerlinLike, we don't have time to even really get into, like, how, I mean, I am such a fool for good documentation. Yes. He is such great.

AlexWe literally talked about this on Saturday. Yes. It's so fun. Sorry. I'm very horny for this documentation.

MerlinHe did a really nice job with it. Yeah. Well, I mean, the app, there's so many layers to this onion, but in a nut. So Brett has came up with this app called Bunch. I don't know if it's based conceptually on other. I've never seen an app quite like this. And here's what it does. Bunch does stuff. Well, what stuff does it do? It does a bunch of different stuff. And here's how it all works. You have these text files with the suffix .bunch. And it really is just a plain text file, like, you know, like Markdown or Test Paper or whatever.

And then you have lines that use a simple but extremely powerful syntax. and each line in your bunch is meant to do something or cause something. So it could be something like, when I launch this, I want you to quit Dropbox and open this folder, go to this URL, help me out, other examples, turn on, do not disturb.

But just the basic concept is that it's just a text file with just lines in it, But the lines all, you know, each begin with meaningful things that do that lets bunch know what you want to do. So like, you know, to launch a URL to, like I said, open a folder to, I mean, that's just to get started. Then what's needed. So that's that lives in a folder in your, you know, application or your library. And then you get a menu item or you can open the app.

And so, for example, the whole reason I started using this, and in fact, spoiler alert, the way that my vision about this became so constrained is I just thought it would be neat to use this app to do podcasts. So, use case. I've got my menu bar, I pull down a bunch, and now listen, this is not the proper way to do this, as I have learned. I'm really whacking at it with this, but I have a bunch called Start Podcast. and when I do that all you need to know is just with lines of text it knows too quit Dropbox

quit Maestral um turn on do not disturb open Skype open audio hijack real ham and eggs shit but like it's so fucking great to just have this thing I click and like that's going to open Skype and all the things and then when I'm done I hit end podcast what does that do it relaunches Maestral It sends an API call to my media stealing machine to say it's okay to steal media again. It turns off Do Not Disturb. And I know this all seems pretty basic and the ones I'm describing are lamentably basic.

AlexBut not to most people then. But that's why the documentation is so, so fucking essential.

MerlinAnd he does a pretty good job of explaining. Okay, so I think it's very approachable but it also goes pretty deep. But that's the idea. The idea is there are things you want to, if you like, automate on your Mac and in your world. And just to get your head around the basic idea and with a click, you want a bunch of stuff to happen. But the stuff that can happen is wild and has grown so far beyond what I initially learned.

And as I sit here today, I'm almost overwhelmed by what this app can do. And I'm going to say something crazy, which is there are ways in which I find this almost as powerful as shortcuts and definitely a lot easier to understand. I don't have to wonder about stuff with this. You can just test stuff out in like a little test bunch, see if it worked, hello world kind of stuff. And the thing that's going to be the thing I want to talk about after I hear you who actually did the challenge properly.

Speaker AI mean, I did the challenge.

MerlinWell, no, no, I did the challenge. But just to be clear, a lot of this was reacquainting myself with what it can do and then mapping out what it is that I want to do. And for the second part of that, what I want to do depends heavily on the fact, the most wonderful thing. You can use Bunch to launch another Bunch. You can have nested Bunches. So like, you know, we'll talk about that more in a second. But it's a really neat app. Brett's a very smart guy. And the way he put this together. I mean, God, you go to Brett's project. We'll put it in notes, of course.

But go to look at his projects area and the stuff. Between him and Rogue Amoeba, there's just so much I use every few minutes that's made by Brett or Rogue Amoeba. For Brett, that's his – well, I think it's technically called Markdown Services. But his services stuff is crazy. You could just install this big old bunch of services to do stuff like turn this into a bulleted list or, you know, strip HTML out of this or whatever it is you want to do.

He's made services for all of that stuff. Other big Brett ones. Oh, you know, Envy Ultra. He does Marked. You know, he does all these different things that are just so wonderful. You know, Paul and Rogamiba are like my audio saviors. And Brett has, for years, been one of the most important, like, make it powerful, easy, and fun to use my Mac. Sometimes to a fault. Like, I installed his key bindings, and I was like, what is happening?

Have you ever used his key bindings file? Have you ever seen it?

AlexI've seen it. I've tried to use it.

MerlinHe has the most wacky new key bindings you can set up. It's nuts. And it all kind of works together. So that's my pitch on why I was excited to talk to you about Bunch.

AlexI also want to put in show notes some of his appearances on podcasts recently, like Automators, where it's just the stuff he does is so wild. And it's not just...

MerlinIt's next level. A lot of it is what you might actually say is legit next level. You're like, you did what?

AlexWell, and it's not just the sake of making something work just for this. I'm just going to make this work because it's a cool flex. The way that he comes up with use cases that are not just brilliant, but just come from such a weird broken brain that I adore. It makes you think about other things in a very different way.

MerlinHe's a fellow traveler. At one point, we discovered through a podcast interview that we were on almost exactly the same slightly obscure medications for ADHD. He's the first person besides me I knew that took Lamictal.

AlexYeah, same, same.

MerlinHe did it before. It was cool.

AlexI know, I know. I'm going to plug.

MerlinBut we're both publicly broken persona.

AlexI'm going to plug Overtired which is his show that's mostly about being broken and being tired that I was lucky enough to be on on Saturday

MerlinOh that's right of course you were Oh yeah please please

AlexBig medication update All of that

MerlinGiant scroll of scripts

AlexScripts and scripts

MerlinThat should be a site Scripts and scripts.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat's not good. That's going to be terrible for SEO. Scripts and scripts and scripts.

AlexOh, God. Part of my favorite thing with Bunch is it's called advanced scripting, but it's really just integration with other services and software that I use so regularly. It does scripting for ding-a-lings.

MerlinCan you give me an example?

AlexLike Hazel, which watches, folders, and also most of this stuff, Bunch can do itself. It's just if you already have it set up, then you—

MerlinYeah, I feel like he's come a long way. I don't remember having this many integrations. And like I said, the thing that initially brought me back to this—I'm sorry to interrupt, but real quick. He's got stuff—if you've got the right kind of dongus, it can do stuff with HomeKit. Like if it's got an API, he can make that a line you drop in to do something.

Alexthat simple yeah um my my new favorite is the integration with moom which i think has been there for sorry moom is what window management yeah and automation i just basically i trained trained uh moom you can take a basically take a screenshot of how your windows are arranged and It's so bananas. Yeah, and it's fantastic. But I had only been using it on my laptop and not an external display.

And it's just –

MerlinYou take a screenshot. I've played with so many of these window managers, and they all end up making me feel insane. And I saw that in the integrations part where he said something like blah, blah, blah, something based on screenshot. Is Moom the one that you like and use, if you can say?

AlexYes.

MerlinI've had it. Where did I get it? Was it on setup?

AlexIt's been around forever.

MerlinI feel like I got it. I don't know if I bought it. Okay. That's so sexy. I mean, stuff like, you know, I know Casey's a big fan of the, whatever it's called, the thing with the multiple windows and four-finger swipe to get to the next one.

AlexOh, I mean, same.

MerlinExposé? Not Exposé. Works.

AlexIs it Spaces?

MerlinYeah, something like that. But like I always end up getting really frustrated with that stuff because I'm like, oh, like, you know, it's actually better on an iPad in some ways where you can have different pairings. But like I don't want NVL to just live in this whole other world. Like that's pretty blinkered from my point of view. But the ability to integrate that for certain kinds of work and even his sample bunches that he gives you are like a really good jumping off point. Like here's a good podcasting bunch. Here's a good streaming bunch.

Here's like when I'm ready to code bunch. And it is, it gets into some obscure stuff, which you can at any point comment out very easily with just adding a octothorpe. But yeah, no, it's, it's come so far.

AlexMm-hmm. Like, what I'm really using it for, well, I was trying to set up my beloved, in theory, beloved focus modes for iOS and now macOS. And it just is kind of a trash fire. Like, I try to make focus modes work, and they don't work. Like, I don't think it's...

MerlinIf I eventually got rid of just all of them but do not disturb and sleep.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinAnd I think my lady friend still does not know how often she has do not not. I mean, I can't say and I haven't asked because like I, you know, she only wakes me for the important meetings. But like she's on do not disturb a lot. And I wonder if she knows because she's not generally the kind of tinkerer that would try different things like that. Because I mean, I think just the way it just seems to randomly turn on at times when you didn't want it or the way it seems to allow things at times you don't want it to allow things. It's utterly perplexing to me. But you're mastering that now.

AlexNo, no, I'm not. But because I don't need to anymore, since Bunch doesn't have necessarily integration with, like, there's a little post about it.

Oh, so Bunch does a good job with enabling and disabling, do not disturb, but the process is a hack that involves nested settings and plists, data, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lots of words that Alex does not understand. I don't love that I have to do that, but Apple provides no API. I haven't found a way yet to extend that hack to work with focus modes, so here's the solution. And then he provides a solution that I don't understand, but it involves basically just running shortcuts in a bunch, so I don't even need to use focus modes.

MerlinYeah, let me go look. I've got, because I saw that and added that to mine a few weeks ago. So, oh, yeah, I've got user bin shortcuts run DND on. So you make a shortcut, and then all you have to do is have the path to the shortcut. Like bash or fish or whatever. Yeah, slash user bin shortcuts run DND on.

AlexAnd what that does for me is I just changed. Hold on, let me find it. I have bunches scheduled to run. So then I just turn do not disturb on and off versus, you know, running a million things at once through focus modes and through shortcuts, which I do. I still adore shortcuts, but it's one of those things where you can tell when the resources aren't like not even just the resources of the whole team are scarce, but like resources on one specific action or whatever isn't being fixed.

MerlinOh, where you would expect the dictionary to be broader for something?

AlexYes. And when you're still.

MerlinYou don't even talk to a GoPro?

AlexNope. Didn't. Well, maybe I will.

Merlinthis afternoon. No, there's a bunch of, check it out. There's like a bunch of commands and it, so far, I haven't used it extensively, but I, luckily it's not like, you know, life dependent stuff, but yeah, you know, you just say GoPro blah and like, you know, highlight, do a highlight or change to this mode or whatever. And so far it works pretty well.

AlexOoh. Ooh. Oh, well, and the thing that I discovered when I was being rightfully chided by Brett for not doing the Stream Deck challenge that we had a few weeks ago because Bunch works with really great integration with Stream Deck. Oh my god, really?

MerlinI gotta get back on Stream Deck. I put mine away.

AlexMine is right here. I've just been on this stupid office quest, which I should have known would take forever, but it's been not one week,

Merlinlet me tell you that. I need to just start from scratch in this in a similar or same way as like i used bunch because of podcasting i got and used a stream deck because of home assistant and podcast to some extent but like i kind of want to just start completely fresh and go like okay time to look at as with bunch show me what this does like which is not not normally the way i like to do things i mean unless i'm trying to learn how an app thinks or how a service thinks generally i prefer to start with something i'd like to solve

but honestly if you're going to do even a medium level dive i think it's useful to like dive into what the thing does before you like start implementing you know what i mean like like show me what this thing can do before i spend forever like you know trying to solve this one thing and like yeah i don't know if that makes any sense it does in fact i would say that if you've

Alexbecome overwhelmed with all of the, I mean, I mean the awesome amount of both awesome in like the colloquial and the literal sense of like, I am inspiring. Yeah. Like all of the stuff that you can do with the stream deck. And you're like, I don't need, I don't even know. Just go to Brett's page with the bunch integration because immediately there are practical uses. There is a way to.

MerlinI'll do it today.

AlexYeah, and it just, if I was a good person, I would have done this already. But again, the documentation is so good.

MerlinThere's so much you can do with this, you know?

AlexAnd it's explained in basic human terms, if you are not. And from what I know from friends who do know all of these things, thank you again, Jay Miller. It's not condescending. So if you're like, I know how all of these things work, it's still really valuable.

MerlinMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I want to tell you what I'm planning to do, but did you find yourself trying anything new for the challenge? Did you learn something new that you've implemented? What do you have to share with the class?

AlexInstead of, I actually, I don't think I'm using key, what's it called?

MerlinLike the metadata key values?

AlexNo, I'm not using Keyboard Maestro with anything anymore, just because I'm using Bunch and Moom to move something around. And I have different bunches that now, like, I trigger a bunch within a bunch because I have different podcasting. It sounds fancy.

MerlinThat's, you're hitting it, baby. Yes. I'm trying to abstract the pieces of podcasting by, like, general environment, show that I'm doing this for. and then like I still I think there should be a way for example to have Audio Hijack name sessions for me automatically I don't know how to do that yet but like trying to abstract that into like three parts like here's the general environment where like I always want Dropbox off or Maestrel or whatever right like that's table

stakes I want Do Not Disturb on that goes for all of them but then like is this going to be a show we do with Zoom is this a show that we do with Skype and you know concomitantly like if Audio Hijack can't help me out like bring up the right session and name things certain ways and all that stuff but my my reckon is there's probably three levels to that and i'm just trying to figure out the way to like it's not coding but like the way to abstract that into in the right fuck it i'm gonna say well

Alexwhat is coding like you're putting it you're using in syntax well it's just a coding coding

Merlinreally closer not to refactoring hi sirkusa but whatever it's called when you're trying to find the most efficient way to do something without over-engineering it. Like, I could probably do this all with one big, kludgy bunch, but it strikes me that it makes more sense to keep these in pieces and say, well, this environmental thing, what I'm calling environmental is like, you know, a peaceful environment with lights that I like and do not disturb. That's one thing. Doing stuff with Alex, well, that's going to bring up a certain kind of, like, notes in NVALT and URLs

or, like, tab sets or any of that stuff. And like I just – I get the itch here that before I dive into this – this sounds like an excuse and maybe it is. But the reason I haven't implemented all this is I really do feel like it's smart to think all of this through. And then you could save yourself so many steps and so much aggravation and making debugging so much easier. With each one of these things, you could – you know what I mean? You could just comment out a line that includes a different bunch and just see if it works on its own. You know what I mean? The kind of thing I can't get my kid to understand, or for that matter.

Nobody in my house understands this but me.

AlexI mean, well, but that's the thing is I barely understand it. But what is great about bunch is the – I feel like we're underselling the fact that it is plain text. I mean, yes, it ends with dot bunch. But it –

MerlinYeah.

AlexThe way –

MerlinIt's kind of very – there's a very basic syntax you can get for VS code just for what it's worth.

AlexOh. Oh. Well, well, well.

MerlinBut then you can also then set the, you know, what do they call it now? Whatever it's called this week. Like, always opened up lunch in this. Like, I don't want to. Like, I don't know. I mean, like, a lot of stuff is defaulted to Nova. And I like Nova for some things. But, like, I mostly want if all the things being equal, if it's plain text and you have to guess, either do it in BBEdit or VS Code.

AlexI am a ding-a-ling. What is the difference between VS Code and Nova? Is it just the integrations and sort of the way you want to do things? I've been told to use Nova. I don't need to.

MerlinI mean, there's – no, no, no. I mean, but, like, you know, everybody's got their own preferences for things. Like, you know, BBEdit remains a pillar of the community, at least because, like, you know – I mean, you could be somebody who does all that in VI, but maybe you like a full-on Mac interface. and you know and bb edit is pretty geeky in a lot of ways but all that geekiness is exposed in a way that is you know really understandable enough nova uh product by panic for i i i imagine it was

Alexdesigned for doing html but it does other things too i think it's also used for a lot of um play 8 stuff, which is their gaming platform.

MerlinYeah. And part of the beauty of Panic is, I don't know, the way that they plan, design, and implement in sort of concentric circles around their core competencies. In a lot of ways, it's kind of like Omnigroup. Where like Omnigroup, everything's an outline, sort of. That is a great comparison of those kinds. If it doesn't look like an outline, but they work together. And in the case of Panic, I've been using Transmit. Before Transmit, I was using Fetch. which would date this to at least probably the early 2000s.

I've been using, whenever Transmit came along.

AlexYeah, I don't even know what that is.

MerlinI'm using it that whole, I used it before people were stealing the truck, you know? But having that Transmit, and again, like Omnigroup, they've got a sync service. So like, Transmit is an FTP, or it used to be an FTP app. I don't know what you'd call it now, but it's an app for like saying, okay, here's local and remote things, and I want them to talk to each other. And the classic example for me is SFTP, which means you pull up this – I'm sorry. It sounds so condescending.

AlexWell, no, but I mean the answer is essentially –

MerlinThat's really core to everything they do is it's integrated in all of their apps. Is it like all the shit you've put into all your keys, like people like Jason Snell who's gay bones for his SSH keys.

He mentions that almost as often as how fast he types. But like that's all stored. It is impressive. I would mention it if I could type as fast as him. He's also got the Nerf brain. He's got the dryer. He's got the bag.

AlexOh, maybe you lost the bag, yep.

MerlinKeyboard under the desk. You know, this guy over here. But the idea, like, Transmit, I mean, I couldn't say. I'm not a historian of Panic, but, like, that was, I think, their tentpole app for a long time. And even as the need for FTP is not as much a part of our lives as it was, at least for me, from 1995 to 2005 or whatever, it's terrific. It remembers all your creds. And it just does really beautiful.

It's beautifully designed. And then the point I'm trying to make poorly is that so it makes sense that they would release the app that they use for their development. And, of course, it's integrated with transmit-like functionality.

So anyway, it's a very pretty Mac-ass Mac. I mean, VS Code is a platform. It's an app. It's a platform. Like, I've got VS Code running on my Synology.

AlexAre you kidding?

MerlinAre you kidding? Yes. Internet communicator. uh he's doing car pranks with starbucks um but but uh but but but that's you know and and so like vs code like it does all the things and you can trick it out with all it's got a huge community i will just repeat myself at this point i would never have guessed in the year 2022 i would be such a fan of a microsoft ish product but i really really do like i still can't get it pretty enough for my liking. So I don't write in VS Code.

I know there's ways, but I can't get the line wrap how I want. I'd rather write in NVL to Ulysses or something.

AlexNo, you did. You answered my question and expanded upon it. So thank you, Merlin, man. That's essentially why I barely, but I do use Visual Code. The reason I use MarsEdit just because I can bother Jelkin. If I'm like, I won't go to WordPress.

MerlinThat's a great app.

AlexWhy?

MerlinBut like, yeah, amongst my many misquotes and misapprehensions about things, a couple of things I remember helping the whole idea of Unix and Unix-like systems make more sense to me was the famous phrase, small pieces loosely joined.

AlexI have never heard that. That's so good.

MerlinYeah, I forget who said it, but it might have been Stallman. I don't know. But small pieces loosely joined. But the other part of it is that like, I'm sure there's more to it than this. But in Unix, like, what you need to know is that there's basically apps and text. You got binaries, and then you got buffers, and your buffers are your text files, and you do stuff with them, and you manipulate them. And the beautiful part, the small pieces, and I have been playing with Phish. Don't tell John Siracusa. But, like, I'm sure I'm using the wrong, you know, terminal app.

But Phish is a really neat app that's an alternative to, like, It's really good for people who use Bash, but want something that's a little bit easier to use. But I'm just playing with it. I mean, as far as I'm in service, don't exist. But think about when you first learn about the concept of pipes. And it's like, wait a minute. So today you would think, okay, if I want to see recent log entries, I'm going to open bbedit and use bbedit to open this file. And I'll scroll down to the end. But you can also just use tail. And you can say the output of tail, this many lines, pipe into a file called this.

then you can automate it. You can make a shell script. And that's what part of what, those are building blocks that make Unix so powerful to where you can do, and Unix-like systems. There's so many things that you can do with all of those things. And that's intoxicating. And like when I very first got my first O'Reilly books and was like learning enough about Unix to be dangerous, that was really intoxicating to me. Just this idea that like there's all these different pieces. And that's kind of not dissimilar from what I perceived to be Brett's philosophy. Like he's providing a big old canister of Mac spackle, like things to spackle all these little things together into like little rubber bands and scotch tape to make these pieces work together.

And, you know, another, I think, in some ways, again, I don't know if he would say this, but think about the way, well, at least how I felt about Quicksilver in 2005.

AlexOh, fuck. That's another thing. Real quick. That's another thing.

Speaker ADid you know Syracuse still uses, you know, he still uses Quicksilver?

Alexsurprised.

MerlinIt's on my list for today. I had no idea it was still around.

AlexBunch works with Alfred. I don't know how long this has been true. I just didn't know that. It works with Alfred and LaunchBar. Now I'm just launching it through Alfred.

MerlinThat's how I learned about CleanShot. I learned about CleanShot because my LaunchBar dude, the guy whose LaunchBar stuff I follow on GitHub, he had made one for CleanShot. I was like, oh yeah, just put this in, blah, blah, blah, LB action. And now any of your clean shot stuff is available under LaunchBarn. I was like, hmm, clean shot? What's that? And I love it so much now. But what Nicholas was doing in the early 2000s is mental. Like how a completely insane Quicksilver got. The power of that right arrow was like, I mean, it was an essential,

almost otherworldly blood magic Mac experience to pull something up and you go, oh, I brought that up. Oh, that's cool. I can launch this app. What happens if I hit the right arrow? Wait a minute. I can see recent documents. I can drill into this. I can pipe this into that. In the same way that right now, for example, in LaunchBar, something I do a lot because I'm a pay pig, let's say I'm on a page at Amazon or wherever and I want to add a tracking number.

You just select, and this is LaunchBar I'm talking about here, select on the page the tracking number. And in my case, I hit option, option. And option, pan, pan. Option, option sends that to LaunchBar.

And without having to type anything but letters, I just type the letters DE. And it knows that I want to send that to deliveries. Or I want to send that to USP. Send that to USPS. Send that to UPS. So option, option, select. Option, option. Type two letters. And I'm tracking something. And I hit enter. I'm tracking something. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here. It's like I know there's a way for these two things to talk to each other. And like how do I afford those kinds of things? And like, you know, so, you know, the deeper levels of Bunch, which are way beyond my pay grade, but like are like it's just so powerful.

But even the most basic like turn off Dropbox, you know, change this parameter. He's taking care of like a lot of that stuff right inside of Bunch. And it's, I think once you learn some basics, it's difficult not to want to try some fairly ambitious stuff.

AlexI will not speak for you, but I will speak to Brett because he said it last week.

MerlinOh, look at me. I get interviewed by Brett Terpster.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MerlinThat's fine. It's funny. It's really fine.

AlexIt's really funny.

MerlinJust don't get him started on pit bulls. He gets real mad if you talk about pit bulls.

AlexI love pit bulls. No, no, no. systematic god i i re-listened to my uh systematic episodes and they're just the worst but then it made me feel better about some work i do now and i'm like ah hey cool but i was talking to him and christina about like how the reason i love brett's app like if you did not understand most of what merlin was talking about in the past two minutes that is okay because you can still Neither did I. Don't worry. You're good. I know nothing about Phish except it's a band that I secretly like.

But the powerful parts for me, sure, along with the tech, is how it works with my brain. And Brett's like, yeah, it's almost like I built things for people who also are bipolar and have ADHD. And that is why it's just so – yeah, I'm trying to hold back.

MerlinWell, you think about something, you ideate something, and pretty quickly you're like – you want to execute on it. Like if you will it, it is no dream, Theodore Herzl. You start to imagine this thing could work with that. How hard would it be to snap these two pieces together? And you're like, well, it wouldn't be impossible, but it would take this amount of work. But when I do that, like we used to say in the VW community, like, you know, if you're going to pull your engine to replace the gaskets, you might as well service all the other parts while you're doing it. If you're going to go pull out those wires and do all that stuff, now you start thinking at a slightly larger scale, as with me and these dumb podcast things that I want to do.

Like, I at least know enough to know now that, like, it's okay to be ambitious in your ideas, but then you have to be relatively practical and specific in your implementation. But that's perfect for people with ADD.

AlexI mean, I've had to really go all like like get getting all those 40 ish folders out to be like, OK, no, no, no. Don't do the fiddling. Don't do the fiddling because you're not going to use it and then you're going to break it.

MerlinThis is why I never wanted to work with keyboard maestro. It just seemed like what an attorney would call an attractive nuisance in the sense of like that could be six months of my life in that app. And I can tell just looking at it that like if I just pop the lid open on that, who knows how far I'll go.

AlexWell, that's why I don't play with, I mean, use Transmit, but don't use Nova. Because with VS Code, I am like, I need to.

MerlinIt was on sale. It was on sale. I bought it a while back.

AlexOh, yes. I bought it because I like throwing money at Panic and I still mourn the death of Status Board at least once a week.

MerlinBring it back, you fucking cowards. You cowards. You have all of that goose money.

AlexYou've made those video games

MerlinYou made a pretty and comma perfect app Fuck off you guys No I love you I love you in your founders room Oh look at me I'm happy

AlexOh man I make stuff with my best friend and I run a happy healthy company

MerlinI like candy and fireworks I'm broken inside

Speaker AMy job is to bring joy to people

MerlinLook at me I got a building I y'all.

Show notes

Transcript

286. Celery and Cum

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:21

0:24

0:31

0:59

1:02

1:22

1:30

1:33

1:52

1:53

1:59

2:03

2:05

2:07

2:15

2:17

2:21

2:25

2:26

2:32

2:33

2:37

2:39

2:54

3:07

3:12

3:25

3:34

3:38

3:40

3:43

3:45

3:48

4:02

4:32

4:44

5:05

5:16

5:17

5:18

5:27

5:33

5:36

5:39

5:43

5:53

5:57

6:28

6:35

7:08

7:12

7:14

7:15

7:18

7:18

7:19

7:24

7:27

7:30

8:01

8:03

8:05

8:39

8:44

8:52

8:54

8:57

8:58

9:20

9:38

10:12

10:35

10:53

11:20

11:33

11:59