288. Time Junkie
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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, develop new muscle memory. Hello. Good morning, afternoon. Mid morning, I suppose. Good morning, Marlin Mann.
MerlinHi, Alex. How are you?
AlexI'm doing all right. How are you doing? Do you want to reschedule? No, no. I just have, like a lot of people, a bad case of what I am starting to think of as the doomies. Like, you know how sometimes cats and dogs just, they need to go and just run around your house and be chaotic just for chaos's sake? I know that staying up all night, reading takes and looking at political discourse is not necessary, is unhealthy and just just can be avoided with proper things like mental health.
I hate the term mental health walk.
MerlinAnd I hate Governor Abbott just said there's a mental health crisis right now.
AlexOh, yep. I mean, I'm very concerned. Walking proof.
MerlinWell, that's a little not walking.
Alexbut yeah i wasn't gonna do it you did though you did that anyway anyway uh sorry about that but you're you're up late huh i yeah and then i if i was like hey can we go can we push recording back to 12 30 and i was and you were again very gracious i said i said fuck off yes you were like fuck you and i said i cannot take this abusive relationship i'm gonna step away you did you did say that and uh and here we are 15 minutes later because i was again late because i think i am
addicted to time i am addicted to the rush now of cutting it close and this has never been a thing in my entire life and i'm addicted to time it's i i have heard of people doing this like they procrastinate and it's almost like they they get a rush is that a thing you've ever experienced
MerlinOh, yeah. Oh, no. I mean, it's it's I wasn't going to say anything because I've said so much about this. But so if you got ADHD, like there's lots of things that go on. But one of the things is that your body has a difficult time.
I mean, I'm not a doctor, believe it or not. I'm not even a master. I'm just a bachelor. Bachelor Man has heard it said that ADHD, the symptoms that we recognize as ADHD come out of an inefficient, insufficient or insufficient, like proper amount of dopamine in your system. And that, you know, that when you take stuff like, you know, the reason they put you on those speedy drugs is because that can help to better regulate or increase your dopamine.
Again, not a doctor. But as far as what that means in practice, well, that's what procrastination is. You're probably a little young for the Peanuts TV shows. But the way that the teachers, that the adults always sound in Peanuts, that's every voice in my head about you really need to get going on this. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. You hear a lot of wah, wah, wah about, oh, your project's going to be due soon. you got an extension on this and you still haven't even started it or all of these things.
And I don't want to pathologize here, but I think that's true for me. And I can tell because sometimes there's just not enough of something. I'm going to guess it's probably dopamine. But one thing is that it's hard for you to get the executive. It's difficult to get the executive function that you need to do the thing that you need to do. And I mean, I guess that's at the heart of a lot of problems that people have, the various addictions is like, you know, God,
who said this? Somebody said this in the last, I heard this anyway, in the last year that, you know, the addictions that we think of as addictions are things where we know that something is bad for us and we do it anyway. And so if you don't have that addiction or you don't have that affliction, you may not be very sympathetic to that. And I think a good example of that is, as I like to say, people who don't procrastinate, utterly not understanding people who do procrastinate and thinking that they do it because it pleases them. Or like, you know, do you think hoarders are happy about their house? Do you think that like degenerate gamblers
are happy about their, the fact that they can't stop gambling or, you know, doing online shopping or whatever. And it's, uh, the reason I know it's true for me in a lot of cases is because when I really do need to focus and that, well, again, what I'm going to guess is dopamine gets to the right level. I'm incredibly focused, but it's still peanuts grownup voices up until the moment where it's practically a panic. So you take that and now you're ready to shake this up in your cocktail shaker, like take ADHD plus anxiety. And it's like, you're anxious about
all the things that aren't happening or that you aren't doing. And then when the rubber really meets the road, when it gets very serious, then, you know, as I like to say, you get all like, ah, ah, ah, like I've got to do this thing. I got to do this thing. And then like, you're able to focus. And I don't know. I mean, I think there's probably a lot of cognitive stuff tied up in that too. It's not, I don't think it's merely just chemical in the behavioral or, you know, neurological sense, but there's also like, there's just other things too, like with procrastinators
or people who are avoid, have avoidant behavior. Like procrastination is a way of like unintentionally rewarding yourself for getting away with something. And the more you get away with it, I don't think one doesn't want to be this way, doesn't choose to be this way, but one way you might, one might feel addicted to time is there is a quickening. And so what may be middling to semi-poor time management skills suddenly become very pointed in their badness. Because I do this all the time now,
and I don't know if it's a COVID thing. I don't know if it could just be a me thing. But where I'm like, I know I've got five minutes until this thing happens. I've got a giant clock here. I've a giant clock. There are clocks everywhere. I know what time it is. But there's like no number of clocks and alarms that can make you more cognizant of how long things actually take to do and what you need to not do in order to ensure that you do that thing on time. I don't know.
AlexThat was a long rant, but I'm beyond sympathetic. I think you're confusing rant with poignant take.
MerlinAm I? I'm confused is what you're saying. Thank you. That was a lovely compliment. You're good at that. You're really good at a backhanded compliment. You're so gracious about telling me ways that I'm wrong or don't understand. And I'm grateful for that.
AlexIt's a theme amongst your co-hosts lately. And I apologize. I don't know.
MerlinIt's amazing, though, that you've also given me an unintended opportunity to say something out loud that I've been thinking for the last, I don't know, the last little while. But I'm just going to toss it out to you, if I may, real quick.
AlexYeah. Yeah. It's almost like you're right. It's almost like I was teeing you up for something that I hope you would talk about.
MerlinWell, a lot of things are almost like other things. It doesn't make it good. But, you know, so this is like a theme that keeps coming up in my world in the MPU is just things along the lines of like, like we talked about back to work the other day. Like, you know, I think it's valuable to distinguish between meditation and relaxation because there's a Venn diagram where there's overflow. But I think the goal of meditation probably oughtn't be relaxation. And we shouldn't think of relaxation as being equivalent to meditation.
Anyway, CF, that's all covered on there. But I was thinking about how, like, we talked about a couple weeks ago, like the whole, like, running away from a traumatic or bad feeling and running toward resolution, all the dashing, dashing, dashing all the time. And with regard to, like, you're talking about what happened in Texas, right? when you talked about why you were up late last night and getting hot takes?
AlexI don't want to say why I was, like, it was all of my own volition, but I don't want to make it sound as if, like, I think there's sometimes a difference. Like, sometimes there is something, something happens that is so traumatic and so upsetting. Like, the millennials like me cannot even. But this was much more morbid and unhealthy. It was like a dopamine chase in a very unwholesome way.
Like there was no knowledge gained or empathy or not empathy felt. Does this make sense sort of?
MerlinBut you didn't undertake that deliberately or with any goal in mind. You just found yourself, a phrase I love, You found yourself up late, as the youth say, doom scrolling, right? And like getting the hot takes and all that. Here's the thing though. So like I think a case can be made, in my case, a case can be made that when I'm feeling anxious, I'm running away from something, running towards something as previously stipulated. But like what's at the heart of that? What's at the core of that tendency or habit to like try and flee from the thing you feel is causing you anxiety? I think a way that a four-year-old could put it is I want to feel better. I want to not feel bad anymore.
Now, setting aside for a minute, whether it is useful, healthy, wholesome to think of running away or running towards as any kind of a useful solution. The theory that I have that I couldn't begin to articulate, especially this week, is sometimes I think we don't want to feel better. I think sometimes we need to feel worse. and I think sometimes there, at least for myself, I get a disconnect in my brain where it's like, I, you know, again, the things that we do that feel safe or used to feel safe or used to be
reliable and like feeling like you have information feels like a solution to an anxious person. So you like use information, information, information. We got him this time. Finally, everything's going to be normal and be okay. And as long as nothing else goes wrong and only this one thing happens, everything will be fine. And that's not the way it goes. And looking at stuff like social media really attenuates you to how much stuff is not right or how many people are mad or whatever. But the part about feeling worse is like sometimes I need to feel this more. Like what is mourning? And mourning, in some ways, mourning a death is a way of choosing to allow
yourself to feel bad. And I actually do think that's very wholesome. But I mean, sometimes you need a good cry. Like, you know, sometimes I'll just want to watch once because I want to cry a little bit. And that's really helpful. And then when you cry, you end up crying about stuff you didn't expect to cry about because, oh, guess what? That's all been welling up inside of you and you never had an opportunity or avenue for letting that out. So I'd like to know what you think about that. Isn't it possible that on a night like last night, you kind of wanted to feel worse. Like you wanted to feel it more acutely. You wanted to have it be so real. Again, speaking
for myself. There are times where I want it to feel so much worse and so much more real that it becomes more sensible, which again, you could argue is just a different kind of running away and running toward, but like I have this bad feeling, but maybe I need to feel this bad feeling more. Maybe that will make the world seem more real to me. And I will, I don't know. I mean, maybe you feel like it could make you a better person. I don't know, but isn't that part of it? Isn't it part of it that like, sometimes you're like, there's a disconnect in my brain between like, why am I not, why am I not more upset? Like, you know, I mean, we, we marched after the
Barkland shooting, but like, I guess that didn't do it. I guess we got to march again. Is that enough? Who am I supposed to be mad at? What am I supposed to do? Why do I feel like it's so, why do I feel like any effort in this is, is so pointless and people will be mad at me if I feel like it's pointless, but isn't that part of it is you're like, fuck what, you know, like this is, this is the worst. This is all these things that happen are just beyond like inexcusable or shameful, or I'm a father of a daughter and all that kind of stuff. And like, but like, it's still not enough.
Like what's enough? Well, I don't know what's enough, but maybe one of the things that's enough is me feeling even worse about this. I can't go to bed. Like, and it isn't masochism. I don't think, unless it is, I don't think it's like self harm. I think it's just like, I need to settle the accounts between my brain and my heart.
AlexI think there's a really, really fine line. And that's a tight rope that I am walking. And to just keep going into overusing metaphors.
Speaker ABetween what and what?
AlexBetween trying to feel something to make sense of the sadness and grief in my head versus a sort of masochism and a sort of, okay, if you run your finger through the flame, you can see it, then they can't hurt you.
MerlinOh, I get that from you. I don't consider that masochism. I consider that a kind of self-defense.
AlexI hope. I mean, I sure hope so.
MerlinI'm not saying it's good, but it's definitely real.
AlexThat's something for my tombstone. What's real?
MerlinYou don't deserve a tombstone.
AlexNo, I'm really not.
MerlinLook how happy you are. No. That, yeah, but also, I mean, another part is just feeling so overwhelmed with all the different levels of, you know, just, it's sad on so many levels. and it's I mean if you don't know what I mean I'm not sure I can explain it but it's frustrating that like every everything civic seems to be getting worse and more venal and more cynical and like and even the fact that people could say like I don't want to be political right now it's
like well the fact that you would even consider that a political thought right now that you shouldn't be able to turn 18 and go buy two weapons that are specifically designed for killing people. Those, those weren't deer hunting rifles. Like, okay, how did that happen? I don't know. It's really the second amendment and there's all these different things. And I hunt deer with my family. It's like, you know, baseball with killing, you know, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I get that, but it's, you really do start to feel, it feels again, like the early days of the, if I can make it about me, um, it's like the early days of the Trump stuff
where you're like, am I taking crazy pills? Am I the only person who sees this and goes like, what is happening? You know, but like, don't provoke him. Don't make him mad. Don't make Putin mad. Don't make Trump mad. Don't make Ted Cruz mad. Because boy, you sure wouldn't want to see, or Mitch McConnell. Don't make any of those people, don't provoke them because you're being political and they have their reasons for being how they are and will just agree to disagree. And in every instance, it constantly feels like somebody else is defining the frame for your reality. And that's a really crummy feeling.
That's one of the downsides. One of the downsides of COVID is that for two years, it really felt like we, I at least didn't feel like I had a lot of control over the frame and what was allowed to fit into it. And I think that eventually makes you feel crazy. I don't know a better word than just you feel like there's like an ongoing, like slow motion, long-term cognitive dissonance. And it's, you know, it's difficult to know what to do about it. You stayed up late watching Twitter. I spent this morning cleaning machine parts because I think this is the kind of week where, and feel free to disagree with me, listener, but this might be the kind of week where you do kind of want to get off the, you know, I anyway don't want to spend a lot of time on the bird site.
And I do want to control a small area. So like if I can, if I can clean the screw that I found on the street, like that'll give me something to do. Is it going to fix the problem? No. But like, is getting mad in real time going to make things better? as one spends less time on the bird site or the news sites. I mean, I find myself in the, with a version of the chicken problem, which is like, I feel like I'm supposed to be as sad and mad as everybody all the time. And I'm being counter-revolutionary if I want to have any mental health about not,
not constantly finding something to get madder and sadder about. And I'm not, I hate that I have to even say this. I don't think that means you're being an ostrich. I think it means like, like I said to Madeline the other day, like, you know, when I go in, I, I couldn't sleep very well last night. And I ended up waking up at four and doing a, like a 14 mile bike ride this morning and in the dark, which was awesome because nobody's out and it's really, really great. But, you know, a side effect of this bike stuff, which at some point I will start talking less about, but a side effect of this is I ride my bike every day, try to get at least eight miles every day.
It's an e-bike. So again, asterisk. I'm not biking with my legs for eight miles, but I'm getting out there. Went up to the top of Twin Peaks today. Went to Upper Market. Looked at the city in the dark. It was really, really nice. It's relaxing. An unexpected side effect of this is I do not wear AirPods or any kind of headphones when I'm riding a bike because it's not safe primarily. But I mean, because really, if this were Merlin of, you know, even a couple months ago, the idea of riding on a bike is like, oh, that's cool. I can listen to my podcast. It's like, well,
I still like podcasts. I still, I still love podcasts and music and love having this oral, aural stimulation. But like, an unexpected side effect is if you bike for an hour and a half to two hours without having anything in your ears, it is a really nice break from those things. And I know people, there's people in the world who like, oh, it's my podcast. Like, that's what I do you want to walk my dog? And like, I get that. I understand that it's washing dishes, whatever it is, but, and I'm not, I'm not giving this as advice. I'm just saying an interesting side effect
that I've noticed are unintended, um, unintended consequence of the bike thing is, and given that I don't wear audio devices when I'm doing that is I do get a break, but then what happens when you take a break? When you come back and you all just go look at Twitter and you're like, Whoa, man, And this is – it just sounds like thousands of people screaming in an oubliette all the time. And then you make a joke about, oh, this health site and I can't get off.
And everybody, you admit it, you're addicted too. And it's like, oh my gosh, you're an adult. What are you doing? Like take that break. Come back. I'm not saying you should do anything except be aware. And like in that case, the being aware is I come back in and it's like – The thing I said to Madeline is privately because I don't want to get canceled is like if you're not sad and mad all the time, along with all the other sad and mad people all the time, it's like you're now you're an ostrich. And the thing, the question that I posed was, can I just catch up on being sad and mad a couple times a day or do I actually have to reject everything else in my life to be seen sitting in the latrine screaming for 20, 22 hours a day?
I'll use the word. I don't think that's wholesome. I can't function as a grown person. If I'm, on the one hand, if I'm feeling emotionally overwhelmed by stuff, then I don't have to choose to be overwhelmed by all the time or right this minute. But then I also, back to the chicken problem, I also hate that pressure to feel like the being mad in real time is somehow more effective at improving the world than being sad and mad a couple times a day.
AlexI would go further than saying it's unwholesome. I think that if you are a private citizen in anywhere in the country, really, sitting, being sad and mad, it's worse than unwholesome. It's just useless. and then you have weirdos like me who start to get sad and mad because I feel like I'm not sad or mad enough.
MerlinExactly. Exactly right. And I'm like, no.
AlexAnd I didn't know this actually until this morning where I did put my phone away and listened to your more popular show and didn't realize how often you were – well, yes, how often.
MerlinWhat are you talking about, back to work?
AlexYeah, so back to work and how far, how long and far you've been riding your bike. And this is a dead serious question. What do you think about when you are...
MerlinThat's a really good question.
AlexAnd it's not just you. I think about every... When I see someone riding a bike, I'm like, what are you thinking about? Because I'm so broken that I need the stimuli.
MerlinWell, I'm really glad you asked. And I'm somewhat sorry I keep talking about this, but it is really fine. And mainly what I do is like, well, here's the thing, like what I've at least at this point, and this is still very early in the process, I will tend to try to get in usually a ride, like I described, I guess, of like, you know, go out to the Great Highway, go through the park, go see the bison. and then come back. It's about anywhere from like 40 minutes to –
and sometimes I'll like stretch it out. But try and like – like I say, like at least – my most basic beatable goal is 21 miles a week, but it's really more like this morning, like I say, it was like, I don't know, over 14 miles.
Again, asterisk with help. What do I think about – well, here's the thing. Okay, so there's a lot to learn. As I described yesterday, there's a lot to learn about just the mechanics of not falling down. Here's another thing to learn is that, and I knew this going in, was that I want to be safe in how I do this. And that's, for example, like why I don't have AirPods in, even though it would really appeal to me.
Because I got to keep my head on a swivel. And if I'm doing that afternoon ride almost anywhere. See, also, my previous thought that like it's crazy to live in my neighborhood because not only do people blow through stop signs a lot, But people heading west, which is to say from the eastern part of town or wherever else, there's this funny pseudo-perfect storm, perfect-ish, blue-perfect storm of like people in a hurry to get home in a neighborhood where people are sometimes a little lax about stop signs.
There's the fact that like, you know, in the sunset, there's a stop sign almost every other street except when there's not. It's really confusing. There's accidents. But what is the thing we're missing in all of this, especially in, say, winter, is that you're driving west. And what's west? The sun. And the sun is like pointing at your face. The sun is in your eyes. I know this sounds nuts, but I really think this is true. I really feel like impatience, habit, and in this case, like lights and maybe being a little bit tired, sun in your eyes.
I really got to pay attention. I never assume anybody can see me. you know I really you know and again like we talked about with the driver's ed thing like there's ways you can be too cautious though like if it's actually safer for you for me to hit that throttle and go through the stop sign rather than participate in some kind of a four way thing with these people like if they're waiting for me to go I maybe I should go that might actually be safer I'm still learning that but the point is like for especially an afternoon ride on a weekday
I really need to pay attention. So that means, gosh, you're going to be so sorry you asked. What am I thinking about? I am thinking about when is the next stop sign? What is happening? I'm always looking at my rearview mirror, which I love my rearview mirror. It's such a good rearview mirror. I'm listening. I'm very much listening. I'm trying to get better at hearing cars, which is difficult now that some cars are so quiet with the electric and whatnot. But I'm also getting a little bit, just the tiniest little bit of a mutant superpower of like utilizing weird stuff like okay i can't
see a car right this second but i'm pretty sure i saw something that looked like it might be a car coming from because it's all street parking here and like you may not see things clearly but i'll utilize like reflections and windows and stuff like that and combining all of that
AlexOh, God, you're becoming Sherlock. That's incredible. See, it's like you are, you're man, Max, man. And that was kind of something I'm still fascinated by is like, what do you think of like, ah, yes, that may or may not be a car. Like, does some.
MerlinWell, but this is, I'm getting to the good part. I'm getting to the good part. Okay, go ahead. I'm so excited. I love it. I love it. But you asked me what I think about. And what I think about is riding a bike because I have to any moment. So like really almost any time, especially in the afternoon, you know, really also the roads are shit around here. There's all kinds of construction, as we know, but also just even in the actual bike lanes, it's just brutal. And there's just there's ruts and there's holes and there's like unexpected like where they've cut like on a perpendicular to the road.
They've cut into the road to like replace a pipe or something and they've filled it in mostly. But now there's like a one foot wide, like inch and a half deep divot in the road. If you hit that wrong, even in the best of circumstances, there's traffic calming. So you need to be careful with the traffic humps. You've got to like – so all of these different things make this – it's not clear here. Make it into something where like I can't think about anything about what I'm doing right now. And if I am in Golden Gate Park and I'm on JFK and it's pretty much a straightaway, I'm still going to be thinking about things like, oh, this is really dumb.
But especially on the bike paths or anywhere there's traffic calming, which is a formal attempt to get people to calm the fuck down in residential neighborhoods through combinations of traffic circles and traffic humps and stuff like that. But there'll be like, especially on the downhills, like if you're on 20th, which is my main bike path around here, you're going downhill. There's usually two traffic humps per block. And what's cool, I'm so interested in how this got operationalized. There'll be cuts about a foot wide in the traffic humps so that somebody on a bike, especially on the side where you're going downhill, can slip through this little keyhole to not have to deal with the whole hump.
Does that make sense?
AlexI can't get past traffic bumps.
MerlinSo imagine going downhill and there's humps. Well, they call them humps, not bumps now. The point being, they're trying to get the cars to calm down. But so like let's say I'm going south on 20th Avenue downhill. On my side, on that west side of the road, there's still traffic humps. But on the side where you'd be going downhill, there's like a little cut in the hump so that a bike rider or whatever can like slip through this area that a car couldn't slip through. Ditto on the sides of the traffic humps. So I'm thinking about like even if I'm going through Golden Gate Park and it's really quiet, I'm thinking about like watching for the cuts, watching for the holes, watching for all of these things.
And do I feel confident enough in my shitty bike riding that I can be going 18 miles an hour and successfully navigate this relatively small space between a curb and a traffic hump? Do I even want to tempt it? Like all of those things. And so get ready because here comes the big finale. When am I doing this? I'm doing this at the famous around 4 o'clock, usually between 3 and 4. And what does everybody in Merlin's life know happens around 4 o'clock?
My brain fucking melts down because, like, all ADD medicine has officially worn off. Like, I've concentrated on things all day long. I'm real stupid and a little bit, like, annoyed, you know, just the way you are, the way one gets. It's almost like coming down from caffeine in some ways, along with just bone tiredness in some cases. So that's turned out to be even it's not fun because there's so many people being car people, which is understandable. You know, I was a car person most of my life.
But, you know, I'm saying like if I go out on that trip and I will I do know I'm going to need to really pay attention to everything happening around me. This is before we even get into like people open and get endured, as they say, like really watching out for all of that. And people who like the second they see a bike, they have that or it's pedestrian and that split second decision of like, do I want to piggyback on this person? So like I don't know what's called in the trade. I call it piggybacking. Like you're somebody, somebody in front of you at a four-way stop, waits, they get their turn, they go.
Do you want to piggyback on their turn?
AlexOh, okay.
MerlinSo like somebody at the stop sign, like you see this. Again, I've experienced this so much as a pedestrian here. You really got to watch this. Usually a guy alone in a car, if he's in a hurry, obviously, and he's right behind somebody who just got their turn at the stop sign, he'll sometimes piggyback and try to like climb on to somebody else. Same way you blow through like a yellow light. Well, that's really good for me to know. I need to watch for all of those things. But it's neat because I get to get a little bit of exercise. I get to feel the sun in my face, the wind in my face.
I get to go tool around this dumb fucking city. And if I do that in the afternoon, I do it right around the time when my brain is normally going to be useless anyway. And the physical expenditure, minor as it may seem, combined with the change of scenery, like I think that's really good for me. And then the whole other thing that we don't need to get into is why would you get up at 4 in the morning and take a bike ride? Like 4 a.m. today or like 5.15 on like a Sunday. it's real quick it's so much more fun to do all of this stuff when there's nobody out and about
we're like i can go down like a main street like today you wouldn't know this but like portola between like um twin peaks and west portal i got passed by a total of two cars where normally that would be bumper to bumper for that almost one mile stretch of road and you know bumper to bumper on a busy road is no fun and now you've got to look at the at the stoplights. What are people going to do? In the afternoon, I benefit from the busyness. When it's practically the middle of the night, and I have many, many
lights and many reflective things. I even got a flashlight on my helmet. That's fun because I could say, well, could I go uphill to Parnassus? It's Sunday morning. It's 7 a.m. If I'm going to try it, I might as well try it now. Or like today, I went to the top of Twin Peaks, the big hills in the middle of town. I just did it. Just went up there, rode back down. I didn't even take a photo. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I totally did it. It was fucking awesome. I'll send you the video if you want.
AlexYour bike makes me so happy. I have, like, shot and bike. It's just...
MerlinShot and bike!
AlexYeah.
MerlinI'm sorry. I went on a thing there, but again, I'm not trying to like recommend this or it's not a flex. It's not, I just like, it's so wild to open Apple health and see that for the last year, read out the last two years, I go and I look at like exercise minutes in Apple Health
over like say six months. And it is really, really ludicrous. We're now it's, you know, I mean, it's been like four minutes a day, seven minutes a day. And now it's more than that. And like six, five or six times more, five or six times more of everything, five or six times more of calories, five or six times more of exercise minutes. It's, it's pretty wild. And the fact that it's fun, it's not like a rowing machine or I don't know, dunking tank or whatever CrossFit is like, it's just, it's, it's, you just get on a bike and you go places. And like, I woke up,
I woke up this morning and like, I was like, I could sleep more or I could get an app. I could get a nap this afternoon on my four hours of sleep. But if I go out now at 4am, it'll be dark and nobody will be out there. And I can explore the city. I went down Market Street, like Upper Market, to like go down to, like you're not going to know a lot of this, but Market Street, if you go up from the Castro, there's that big steep hill and that kind of leads out to my neighborhood. But there's this wonderful, on Upper Market, like there's this beautiful view of the city from there,
all lit up. You can see the boats out on the water and it's all just lovely. Also, I hadn't expected things like smells. Like going through different neighborhoods and different areas and smelling the food that people are cooking like, you know, on like, you know, Clement Street or like – I think I mentioned that I took a turn a few days ago. I was like, oh my God, it really smells like sesame oil here and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm having some kind of a neurological event. But it's a full like sensory experience and I get to have my legs moving and I get to go really fast and it's just neat.
I find excuses to need to go places, which is something that I haven't done for a very long time.
AlexThat makes me so happy. And it seems like you found literal and figurative momentum.
MerlinUnless I die.
AlexWell.
MerlinYou should see my knee. Woof.
AlexOh. Oh.
MerlinLet's see if it's still got it. Hang on. Look.
Speaker ALet's see here.
AlexOh, that's a lot better. Oh, good.
MerlinYou know what I should do for you, though? I should get you a photo of at least my face and head when I'm in full regalia.
AlexOh, yes, please.
MerlinBecause, I mean, well, too soon to mention this, but I do look like some kind of a tactical dad.
AlexWell, it's not like anybody would shoot you anyway. They'd be like, uh-oh.
MerlinMy weapon of choice is the e-bike. I turned 18 and bought two.
AlexBeep, beep. Oh, fuck. do this is actually i think quite relevant to the challenge this week because oh i love the
Merlinchallenge this week i prepared for this one alex i prepared oh i'm so i i i had a kind of hoped
Alexslash sorry I am turning do not disturb on I do not care clang clang machine thank you Jim for helping me make my microphone so you can't hear the
Merlinbang bang so that was that outside your window that you had a bang bang machine oh
Alexyes that was pretty bangy it was to the point where I there were like multiple recordings that I had to reschedule because it I just could not be on them since it was so loud.
MerlinYeah, it's not like taking out an electrical, you know, oh, we talked about this. It's not like you can't just throw this at iZotope and be done with it, you know, in the time it takes to render.
AlexWell, not just even that. It was just so loud that other folks could not hear me talking and it would be if I was like, oh, sorry. But no, it's much better. I was hoping that you would talk about your bike and now I want you to talk about it even more.
MerlinWhy are you so annoying? No, it's so annoying. I'm that guy now. Like, I don't want to be that guy.
AlexYou don't want to be like a San Francisco dad, I am feeling.
MerlinI don't want to be a lot of things. I'm a refusenic, you know? I'm just so temperamentally difficult as a person. it's you know one reason i admire so much admire people like you know like like i said in that talk where i cried like talking why i like bob dylan is is well i mean i like bob dylan because he does good songs and stuff but i also just love the fact that that like he's he's so resistant to anybody telling him what his deal is and like it's no fun to be a that guy because then when you're
Alexthat guy like your deal is you know you're that guy everyone is some kind of guy though like get
Merlininto crypto guy.
AlexYeah. I am a VR
Merlinguy. You could be, oh, homebrewing guy like Teddy on 9-9. You could be like, you know, some kind of just bad boyfriend.
AlexYou can be climbing Alex guy. I love free solo guy.
MerlinAll right, all right, all right. I saw the link and I looked at it. That's for the after show. Give us your fucking money.com. Also, I did look at your butt plug site. It's very fascinating. Oh,
AlexSo let's also save that for the show.
MerlinWe can talk about that here. Okay, all right.
AlexI'm fascinated by this butt plug project.
MerlinI guess I didn't realize how many different kinds of – well, you never know what's actually going to happen. But Alex has found an open source project for like fuck toys. And you can do – it's an open source like software project for doing stuff with fuck toys. And I did not realize, I guess, that there were so many varieties of things called a fucking machine.
AlexI did not either. And I do not want to steal valor because I was...
MerlinI mean, it kind of looks like something from a farm.
AlexWell, and I did not find this.
MerlinIt's a piston with a dingus on it.
AlexYes. All of these frighten me. But this site...
MerlinIt seems like there's a lot that could really go wrong.
AlexWell, I...
MerlinHow much do you trust your fucking machine?
AlexWell, that's... A group of queer nerds passed this along, and I've been laughing about it since then.
MerlinOh, no, just to be clear here, I'm not yucking on a yum or anything. It was fun to arrive on one of those fairly vanilla-ish, vanilla in the sense of, hey, that's an open source project. But in the same way that I have to do those ad reads with all those names, it supports Adalassian and Slack and Zabogabog. And this one does the Phlembot fuck dingus. And you're like, oh, that's cool. They're working on support for that. Oh, it's going to be on mobile, too. that's cool
Alexoh god there was one it's like yep here's our github repository I'm like this is I this is the
Merlingithub suppository
Alexno
Merlinthat's not even a bit that's not even funny no we might talk about that but you were talking about there's a climber boy no it just made me laugh givefuckingmoney.com
Alexyes patreon.com slash do by Friday
Merlinwhat was the other thing uh schadenbike we should probably get to the challenge soon can I mention one thing challenge just i had a few in here yes please uh and this is really really obvious but i have to share this because i can't believe that this worked on the first try so we talked i guess wait yeah last time last time was like reacquaint yourself with bunch yes and i talked about that thing where like on the stream deck like you can use the website what are those called the the things you drag in to do stuff with oh oh uh in the stream what's it called the field i suffer
for four hours. The thing where you go over and say, oh, I want my OBS thing here or I want to change the input, drag that over, whatever it's called, the plug-in. Plug-ins? Plug-ins? Plug-ins?
AlexProbably.
MerlinI bet they're going to have lots of plug-ins at buttplug.io is the thing that I'm guessing. Yes. But the plug-in for website, as we mentioned last time, is really cool. So like, oh, God, sorry, I'm so in the weeds. But there's an app called Home Control and that app, so basically anything you've got on HomeKit can be controlled on your Mac through this thing called Home Control, and I learned about this from six colors.com is that for any scene, any device it generates or interprets.
It doesn't matter a URL, an automation URL. I had no idea this existed. And it's kind of like, I guess like a call. I don't guess we don't talk about callbacks anymore, but the idea is like, so like, here's the thing. When I do my bunch to start a podcast, I would like it to, it does all kinds of stuff we talked about, like turning on a focus mode. But one of my really dumb ones, just dumb little small itch that I wanted to scratch, is turn off my fans, which is already a button on the Stream Deck. But guess what? You take that URL, you drop it into your bunch, Bob's your uncle.
Any of those home automation URLs that you get out of home control, you could just – have you done this yet? No. I know it sounds obvious, but if you have a scene or a device that you want to control and you just copy that URL, you just paste it into your bunch. I just tested it right before we started, and it successfully turned off my fans, and it made me happy.
AlexOh, I lied. Yes, I have. Yes, I changed this.
MerlinThe skeleton key here is that per earlier, maybe it's not quite up there with shortcuts, but there's so much stuff you can do with Bunch that isn't just about recording a podcast. There's just so much automation stuff that you can do, and all that requires in this case is this pretty inexpensive app on your Mac, and it's doing stuff for you. So I wanted to share that. It's a, so you have done that.
AlexI, yes, it just right now, quote, just,
Merlinis it home control that you use to control scenes and devices?
AlexYes. Because of, uh, six colors.com.
MerlinSix colors.com. I'm a member.
AlexOh God. Yeah. I just, uh, I found out about the secret podcast they have. I don't know why we, I fucking Jason and Dan. Um,
Merlinthey're delightful.
AlexI love their secret podcast. Uh, but I am bad. And now sometimes I take notes and get links together during the show. Not often, but I'm like, yes, I do.
MerlinSo you're doing their show notes too?
AlexWell, no, now I went to Six Colors and saw HomePod, all the things, and this is going to go in after show notes. Maybe not for this week, but oh my God, what a good time to be an Apple user.
MerlinThey had a great segment on that on Upgrade this week. I like my favorite kinds of and this is I feel like I sometimes unintentionally really annoy Jason and I don't mean to Jason the reason I know fucking anything about you is because I really like you I like you before you had any idea who I am pump the brakes I love you but my favorite you know the rumor stuff and the sheriff of rumor town and all that okay fine like I get why we do that but what I love on Upgrade in particular did you listen Upgrade where they're talking about the HomePod stuff and like what it could mean is it going to be more
this direction or that direction
AlexNo, I'm saving it because they also talk about all of the rumors that I don't.
MerlinThey get like not intense exactly, but you can hear them like thinking about it.
AlexDo they fight?
MerlinNo, no, no, no, no. No, no. I'm just saying my favorite things are like when they put their heads together to try and figure something out from their different POVs and continents and stuff. And I love that. And the discussion of the HomePod is really good.
AlexI like it when they fight. That's not true.
MerlinOf course you do.
AlexIt's the only way you can feel anything That's true I'm going to get a seltzer, keep talking Oh, hello everybody This week's challenge was What was it? To Marlins making just noises in the background
Speaker AThis week's challenge was to develop new muscle memory.
AlexAnd I initially thought that I was going to get a, because I returned the big boy stream deck that we talked about last week, and another little one has arrived, and I thought that that was going to be my new, like, okay, I'm going to be touching these buttons and not have to look down, touch type with the stream deck, basically.
MerlinRight.
AlexRight. And I predictably did not do. I mean, I started that. But what had happened was.
MerlinI think it's important to clarify here. And I have I have a huge clarification on mine because I took it and I turned it. But I think there are various ways that one can do not do succeed, not succeed at the challenge. And like if you did the challenge but ended up with something very different than what was on the label, I think that's still a success.
AlexOh, I agree. I am not calling peanut butter.
MerlinAnd if you did the challenge and failed, like you can you can fail and still have done the challenge.
AlexYes. This is this is this is a lot of behind the scenes, but quite quite philosophical in terms of trying. And again, what you talked about, not just trying and failing, but practicing and rehearsing.
MerlinAnd that was so good.
AlexYou're having a I feel like you're having a good week and I hope you're having a good week.
MerlinI'm probably going to die soon on that bike. Do not play that at the funeral either. We found the video of him falling off his bike. Maybe he should have listened to podcasts.
I have a question for you, though. A critical question. Yes. A very obvious question. Is that this is just yet another occasion over the past, I want to say, a couple weeks where you keep bringing up muscle memory. And so I have to ask because you made it a challenge. But really, before it was a challenge, you've just been talking a lot about muscle memory. And I'm curious what has put that on your radar screen.
AlexIt's sort of always been on my radar because at one point there was a website I liked about like 47 folders. All right. And maybe you weren't the first person to say this.
MerlinYou don't have to do that.
AlexOkay. But I still remember hearing for the first time.
MerlinI feel dead when you talk about me like that. There used to be a guy who lived in a folder and said things that help people. Nurses and doctors, children and babies.
AlexAnd the 48th folder is love. There's a guy.
MerlinMy God, you do sound like a stalker. You know, there's a guy that I find very interesting.
AlexI like him a lot.
MerlinYou've made me confused about my sexuality in ways neither of us anticipated.
AlexThere was a guy whose skin I want to wear.
MerlinI've got to go get my buttplug.io. In, out, in, out. this is do my friday a weekly butt plug no uh muscle memory uh i i this might have been
Alexmaybe you didn't say this for the first time but you definitely said it at some point and i heard it why don't you just put your backpack by the front door and i was like oh dear god oh oh
Merlinlord david allen says if you put your briefcase literally in front of the front door such that you cannot pass i i do this alex i do this all the time and i still screw up i all but like if you put your backpack or your briefcase or whatever if there's something you don't want to forget like and you know there's a lot of ways to do some people do this with like i put i i would like deliberately put my car keys in the refrigerator because I have to remember to take, you know, of course that that's his own problem. Because if you don't remember who put your car keys, you're probably not going to think to look into the refrigerator.
AlexAir tags are a game changer though. Oh, that's another.
MerlinOh, they can be. They're not quite as, I don't know. Some of the findability stuff in Apple stuff I think is really not quite there yet. Sometimes I'm very near my AirPods or my Air tags. And anyway, but like, for example, make it the whole, the point of this, the, if you had to like turn this into like a, what's the guy's name? Christopher, the guy who does a pattern language. Like if you had to really, I love that book. If you've got to really boil this down, you're going to, here's, here's, here's the pattern. The pattern is make it virtually impossible to forget something by putting it somewhere where you have to interact with it.
It's not a guarantee. Nothing in life is a guarantee. but you know if you put a note on your steering wheel Alex I've done stuff like you know how you can do reminders for arriving and for leaving so like you know remind me to text Alex when I arrive at the office in 20 minutes another one is and nobody would think to do this because you're smart right you're smart and you don't need stuff like this remind me to go back remind me to go back and pick up
the thing I forgot when I leave the office in 40 minutes. Like when you leave the office, you will get after you've left, like you're so fucking smart. Well, did you forget anything this week? I forget shit every day. And like, that's one way to do that. But like, yeah, the whole briefcase or backpack thing is like, make it so that you have to touch or deal with this thing in order to. So the non-default behavior of remembering this thing can be improved, can turn more into what you're describing here as muscle memory by making it so the default behavior cannot, you cannot participate in your default behavior until you've interacted with the exceptional behavior.
AlexI mean, right. Like I wanted to make things like that the default in that I it would feel weird leaving the house without reaching to the hook to get my backpack. And I try to do that with everything to not just leaving.
MerlinThat works most days. But if there's a day where like there's a potluck or something and like this is the funny part, like you would never forget your phone. You would never forget your backpack. You would never forget your keys. You'd never forget any of those things because if all you have to do for your default behavior is grab that shit and get out the door and you have half a brain, you're like, yeah, OK, like all that stuff is in the same place for me mostly. But you know what the irony is or the fucked up part is like if today is potluck day and you're like, ha ha, I remember to get the macaroni and cheese. You might very well forget your backpack.
If my wife is really busy, she forgets her phone. She loves her phone. Why would she forget her phone? But if she but she remembers the exceptional thing and then forgets the default thing.
AlexAnd I don't I don't want that. I want my body to be like, ah, no, no, no. And I mean, I.
MerlinIf you hide your dildo on top of a pole, then you have to get exercise or dance.
AlexI even have now my entire like wardrobe, which is a weird thing to call all of my T-shirts and two pairs of jeans, but in drawers so that I do not need to look at them and I can just get my-
MerlinOh, one-handed and in the dark.
AlexYeah. Like genuinely because it just-
MerlinThis world would be so much better if people would understand, acknowledge, and internalize. And again, as the word Max taught me that I can't get away from, operationalize. One-handed and in the dark. I can't even get people to understand why that's useful.
AlexWho doesn't understand why that's useful?
MerlinOh, I got people. I got people. Because are you ready for this one? Oh, here's a great one. This is always the beginning of a wonderful paragraph of life title. Why don't you just... Dot, dot, dot. yeah why don't you just dot dot dot like why don't why don't you just remember why don't you just stop procrastinating why don't you just shit in the morning why don't you just like well
Alexwhy don't you just show up to your podcast on time what the fuck but but but like that's but
Merlinthat's the i mean if it's not a problem for you people well maybe it should be like it's like the muscle memory part of this really in some ways is like like i i've mentioned before how i i don't This could be a privilege, but I like the small number of keys that I have. I have a key for my house, and I have a key for my office, and that's it. Well, guess what? I got a bike, and now I need more keys. But does that mean I put those all on my two-key keychain? It does not. I'm a fancy lad. I started a second keychain, and I put a, not a 12 South, but a Elevation, one of those
little holders for an AirTag on it. And I've got a, obviously, I've got the key for my bike lock. I got the key from my bike battery. And guess what? I slapped an extra house key and an extra office key on there. So I leave my normal two key set at the office and I take, when I go out, and I take the new one with me. I mean, it's still essentially the same number of keys that I need. But, like, why would I turn that into one giant jailer's ring? Oh, I'm not a lesbian. I mean, how many keys do I need to have with me all the time?
Well, just enough. Except when I don't. But you know what I'm saying? like that, there's those kinds of things where like I can pull that two key key chain out of my pocket and because I'm really, really smart and really, really good and really experienced. And given that it has literally two keys, a big one and a little one, I can in my pocket, grab my keys, know which key I want to use and even have it in the proper position such that when it goes out of my pocket, I don't even have to look. I know exactly which key I'm putting in
and what it's doing. That is an example of one-handed and in the dark.
AlexAnd that is a type of muscle memory that feels like a superpower to me. And it's also one that I achieved.
MerlinI just don't understand why more people don't want that. Why don't you remove all... It's like overpacking. If you know you're going somewhere for one night, I understand the... It's confusing. On the one hand, you don't want to bring nothing. and on the other hand you don't want to bring everything so you choose something in between right it's just that they're still even having said that oh gosh that's really smart well yeah but you also don't need 80 down the curve of everything you need what you need not everything
that you could ever want and like that's if you don't understand the whole why don't you just why don't you just like do things that require lots of light in two hands because life is short like if you had to like relearn how to wipe every time you took a shit wouldn't you be bummed? I can wipe in my sleep man I'm gold I know what I'm doing I just want more things in my life and just to go back in case that reference or that phrase is not familiar the canonical example in my house is I should be able to grab
in particular grab a plate with one hand and in the dark out of the cabinet I should be able to get so I've got like you know me and my bag in a bag I should be able to get my, well, easy one. I should be able to get my iPad out of my backpack with one hand and in the dark. I should also be able to get my Tom Ben little mini bag out with one hand in the dark. Well, why don't you just look? Why don't you just dot, dot, dot? What I want to be able to do is like not have to, I have plenty of shit to think about and worry about in my life.
And the more, let's use our phrase this week, the more muscle memory that I can introduce, the more that I can clarify the behaviors that support the life I want and don't have me wasting time on shit I don't want in my life. Why would you add that? Why would you add that? There's the styrofoam packing peanuts to your life and allow it to stay there. That's insane.
AlexBecause some people just do not think about that. And I still don't know if it's because they're not broken or because, yeah.
MerlinIt's so frustrating.
AlexThis whole thing gets darker, though, because another reason that I've kind of always been obsessed with muscle memory and never realized it is maybe a form of ableism in that I since I've been little, I have feared slash expected that I will lose a limb or a sense or something. And I, for a long time, practiced using my phone with my left hand because I just assumed that at some point something bad is going to happen to me.
MerlinI think quite the opposite, Alex. I'm not in a position to adjudicate whether something is ableist, but I think you're really moving much closer in the direction of what I would call accessibility.
AlexThat's what I hope, at least.
MerlinWell, yeah, I'm practicing these different kinds of things. And a thing that I say to my stupid kid, whom I love so much, is that you've just got to deal with the fact that your old man used to be a project manager. There's so many things about project management that I was really, really bad at operationally, but my comportment is very project manager-y in some ways. So the thing I have to say over and over, I choose to say, and even though it's not useful, is we don't – So like when we leave the house or when we do whatever, it's really not a good idea to plan for the best this can go.
Oh, God, no. I can't even imagine. Well, here's the thing. It's not always sensible or sane to prepare for the worst that it can go. But there's somewhere in that fat part of the curve where you could imagine the weather might change. The weather might change and it might get cooler or it might rain. or you if you're going to go on a long car trip through long stretches of highway like what if something happens to your car well the car is fine i know the car is fine now but that's why it's planning planning is figuring out the especially the things that require minimal effort
to provide you know like maximum uh usefulness like why would i have a spare tire all four all four of my tires are fine well that's poor planning we don't we don't plan for what everything going flawlessly, we plan for the things that we could anticipate not going flawlessly, right? I mean, if you have, but again, you can go crazy with this because if you have an emergency kit in your car, it's probably a good idea. You got your tire jack, you got, maybe you got a blanket, probably a flashlight, real good idea. And maybe even road flares. I don't know, like those little signs,
things you get from your AAA. But that doesn't mean you drag an entire mechanics shop behind you. But it also doesn't mean that I don't even check how much gas is in the car. I just start driving and it always turns out fine. There's a place in between that will satisfy your demon dogs but also provide the minimal amount of preparation and planning that you could expect from an adult.
AlexI worry about falling back into the productivity, life hackiness in the way that I used to be like, I am doing these things because I can get more done. But no, it ended up being, well, oh, someone said the words late capitalism on another podcast. Bam, I am creepy, but it's because I just listened to Back to Work.
Speaker AI like your hair like that. You should wipe different.
Alexit's nice um but i'm like oh no having this i can help you with that i'll help you wipe
Speaker Ano i don't want to sound creepy but i can help you wipe i could smell i could smell your hair well i hope i don't want to be creepy about it but i know where you live so i could come in and smell your hair while i help you wipe better I like it that you're dirty, but I don't want you to be filthy. One handed in the dark.
AlexAnyway, I ended up needing a lot of distractions this week and I started.
MerlinIt's really sad. It's really sad. Do you know what's going on in the world? Why are you not more engaged?
AlexI know. Exactly. I'm not more on the bird site. Can we stop calling it the hell site? It's nice sometimes.
MerlinWhy aren't you pointing out everybody else's hypocrisy? That'll help.
AlexExactly. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, I'm a fan. Yeah, me not tweeting about it means I like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah. Anyway, I can put on my Oculus Quest or whatever it's called. No, my meta quest or whatever. with one hand.
MerlinOh, that's good.
AlexYeah, I don't know. It just started happening. And I started practicing.
MerlinGive me some of your muscle memories, memories of muscles that you've enjoyed. What worked for you this week?
AlexOh, I mean, I started making a list of things that I have a muscle memory of, I guess.
MerlinOh, you're going to steal my idea. You're going to steal my... I thought I was going to do it, turns out. I thought I was going to be the one who takes it and then turns it. But you're way ahead of me.
AlexWell, I also kind of had a list of muscle memories that I do not have that I want to develop. And part of that was just putting a headset on and off without looking like a dumbass. And now I can do it with one hand. I got a little...
MerlinYou have AirPods Max, right?
AlexI do, yes.
MerlinCan you get them... Have you gotten to where you can put them in the holster for a try without looking?
AlexYes, but I cannot put them on my head the right way without feeling the – like, I don't know. A lot of headphones, I can tell.
MerlinI've got a real sexy way I put them on. I feel the same way. The way I slide on headphones are different for different kinds of headphones. I still find so much about those perplexing. Like I said to a friend of the show, Brian Hamilton, I do feel – I love my AirPods Max, but it's a little like having a fancy car that you can only shut off when you pull into the garage. And just this one garage, that's the only way you can turn it off.
But even getting them in the holster, I always have to remember, they turn this way with the button on this side. And I mean, I guess I could flip it over and say, well, where's the little notch for the lightning cable? That's mental. You shouldn't have to look at things to put them in things. That's nuts.
AlexYeah, and I am a rebel now and rarely use that case because it fucking turns off Find My. And that's what I want. I want to, yeah, so I take the battery drain.
MerlinI just don't, I mean, like, it's just the Sonys make, like, the Sonys are frustrating just because it's like, you have to do the long press and all that kind of stuff. But, like, the Sonys do stuff like, you know, you can, like, have them associated with two devices now, which is great. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean, like those, my office headphones are really just for my iPhone and my iPad. And sometimes I want to just lay on the couch with noise-canceling headphones so I can take a nap. I might listen to a relaxation thing or a podcast, but I don't know. I think the AirPods Max, it's maybe not up there with the mouse with the port on the bottom, but it's, they need some love.
AlexThey do, along with the HomePod. But the reason I will always swear by them is because they don't make me feel weird with the noise cancellation. It's the only headset.
MerlinI like that I can lay on my side and have them on. They're the only headphones I've got, including AirPods, including the Sonys, including... I got a lot of headphones from history. But they're the only ones I've got where I can comfortably lay on my side and it doesn't screw up the sound. then it doesn't screw up my body.
AlexSame here. They are my nightly headphones.
MerlinI mean, like the Sonys are like, they feel like they're like the size of a cupcake. It's like sleeping on a cupcake. With these, they're dumb and they're ugly, but at least they're flat.
AlexThat's so why I could make a sexist joke, but then didn't. Good for you. You're growing. Yes. You're welcome for my service. do you find that you can put your airpods pros that's the that's also what you have right can you put them in and out of their case without looking yes and gruber taught the world that i
Merlini think well there's the well the trick for getting them out i still use the gruber trick of like you know how you pop them out but no i i mean it's way easier with the airpods pro i think because, you know, they got that. They look like those. Oh, God, I'm such a bad fan. They kind of look like those spinny head monsters from the Miyazaki movie a little bit.
You know, like the ones that live in the trees. No, inspirited away. No, no, it's in Nausicaa or the other one that's like Nausicaa. Oh, I'm a big fan too. Anyway, but these are easy. I mean, to me, it's much more intuitive how these fit in. Also, I just always remember that the big black stripe points out.
AlexOh, that's good. That's good. I just have different textures on each one, like a little silicone cover, and each one has a different color and a different texture. Oh, my goodness. Well, I really expect one of my senses to go, whether it be—
MerlinIt's smart. It's smart to prepare. Get ready for that.
AlexIs it, though? Is it smart or just more unhinged than usual? I don't know.
MerlinI don't want to provoke you, so I'm just going to try and keep you calm.
AlexThe thing is, though, even if it is unhinged, it's never, I think, hurt me. It's only, you know, been another thing that causes a little.
MerlinI mean, it's it's it's weird within normal parameters.
AlexThat's the title.
MerlinThe concept I've tried to socialize over the years with Syracuse and he never allows it. Like I think adding the phrase within normal parameters, like you can take something that is not – how can I put this?
You know, like there's shit in life that's like not what everybody does. But like there's a difference between – not to make everything about sex. But, you know, well, actually I don't want to make it at all about sex because that's weird. But whatever your deal is, your deal can be unusual, but it can be unusual within normal parameters. Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once?
AlexOh, yes. Twice in theaters now. Holy fuck.
MerlinOh, we talked about this on The Good Slack, right?
AlexI don't know if maybe.
MerlinWell, I want to say for the record, I pre-purchased this.
AlexSame, same.
MerlinA long time ago. And I mean, what can one say about this? wow treat yourself oh really really really treat yourself but you know there's actually i feel like i shouldn't even say anything i don't think you should i take it all back yeah okay anyway butt plugs um but the um but the thing i was gonna say though is about uh something with her the within normal parameters part is like okay she's no i shouldn't say anything but like there's stuff
that happens that you could kind of expect to have happen like oh it's the rainy season so it rained okay and like but you know if it rains during the dry season i mean that's not unheard of or like when it rains in la or something or when it's cold somewhere where it's rarely cold and like your file card on this location is it's always x and just for this one day it's not x or it's the opposite of X. But it's, you know, to have a sort of biblical, like what, Exodus level,
like rain of frogs is outside of normal parameters. Rain is, rain in rainy season is to be expected. Like it would be weird if it didn't rain. Rain in dry season is not expected, but it's definitely within normal parameters. But like, you know, I'm not going to spoil it. But like a plague of frogs. for example, would be outside of normal parameters. And I think that's really valuable. And I think it's totally fine to be weird within normal parameters.
Maybe it's okay to be weird without normal parameters, too.
AlexThis is very Rickon.
MerlinI don't think you're bad, Alex. I think you could wipe better, but I think you're doing a real good job.
AlexWhat did you do? Because it sounds like you are still ahead of me in terms of muscle memory stuff. No, no, no.
MerlinOh, no, no, no. You know what it is? Okay, so I thought this was really clever, and it's really not. So what I thought I would do was – let me pull up my thing here.
AlexOh, and I finally got control center down in a way that I can navigate it without looking at it. Control center on iOS, like pulling it down on the right side. No?
MerlinOh, you mean on an iOS device?
AlexYeah, yeah, yeah.
MerlinOh, you just got to start in the corner.
AlexWell, no, no, no. Like all of my buttons that are, quote, buttons, touch targets, whatever, I can do that without looking at them, which is difficult.
MerlinI think difficult to do.
AlexNo, like you don't. So when you pull down control center, do you have to look at it to trigger something or open an app?
MerlinI do, yeah.
AlexOkay.
MerlinAlso, when I drive, I look through the windshield. What are you talking about? Can you use your computer without the screen?
AlexNo. For example.
MerlinYou're saying like you want to be able to hit flashlight without looking.
AlexYeah. And now I can.
MerlinThis is sort of like along the lines of your whole like, oh, God, who are we talking about? Oh, Sherlock. Like you want to be able to type without looking on a phone.
AlexYes. And I'm slowly getting better. I can type faster with two hands on a big phone, but can type. I cannot type with two hands on a small phone. But I'm also bad at typing with one hand on a small phone. And it does sound. it does sound super bonkers until you realize that there are many, many people that actually have this.
MerlinNo, no, no, no. I'm not about, I'm not about to allow myself to slide into that camp of why don't you just dot, dot, dot people. No, I, I, and I actually, if there's anything I need to do on my control center, it's like, you know, all the things you flip on just to see, Oh, what does that do? Like, I need to turn a lot of that off. I want everything to fit on the screen. I don't want to ever have to scroll. to get down to battery emergency mode or flashlight or whatever. That's my main thing. But I honor that.
AlexI actually took all my HomeKit stuff out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for letting me stand in my controlled troop. What did you do this week, Merlin Mann?
MerlinWell, you know, obviously, perhaps, the thing that came straight to mind was like, okay, I got the Stream Deck working. Like, it's doing stuff, and I really like it. And, you know, it's a little frustrating sometimes that, like, my computer has to be, like, open and unlocked to, like, interact with it because I still don't like my button situation title at the office. I still, now that I took away my Eve, you know, room and I just don't trust. I just, I get so mad at myself.
We're right back to this is becoming canonical. I told you how crazy it is. Like, you do a search on Siri on the Apple TV and you see that this is available on Amazon Prime. At which point my kid and I look at each other and go, you know, they're going to want you to buy it or rent it. And it always happens. And I click through anyway. And then I'm mad and I feel cucked. And it's the way everybody has felt since Siri came out. Since anything, like it works off. It's like Muni. It works often enough to mostly work. And then when you really need it, it doesn't work. And so I say, hey, Denga's office lights off. And it goes, which room do you want me to turn off?
Or like, okay, Denga's lights off. But it always has like a follow-up question. We're like, how do I just tell you there's lights and I want them off? Every light in the place, turn it off. Like, how difficult can it be? Very difficult. Very difficult is the answer because it just doesn't fucking get it sometimes. And I want a fucking hardware button, like, from the 1920s that I hit to turn everything off. You know, why don't I just do that all the time? Well, I can't do that all the time because, like, there are numerous benefits I get out of this smart stuff.
but you know i'm also smart enough bear to realize when i just want a fucking light switch i want all the upside of addressable network connected lights but i also want the i crave the convenience of a 1920s light switch um and so i thought i would be following up on what we talked about with stream deck stuff previously um and i am i still i think there's ways that i could arrange these buttons to make more sense like so many things in life you know like like people who
you know organize their books by color it's like i get that i get the aesthetics first approach but the aesthetics first approach is also what gets gets me to where i can't grab a plate yeah yep so the i i need to like and it's kind of related to what i did but i need to think about like what i want to actually accomplish instead of how to make the buttons look pretty on here I thought that's what it would be. And then the other ones, little ones, again, a bike thing, is like as soon as I get back from a ride, I plug in the battery on my bike and I also plug in, recharge my lights because I've got, you know, or the GoPro.
There's the GoPro, the lights, there's the light on my helmet. I've got like four things I can plug in each time. And I'm just trying to get better at remembering which way this particular Mini goes.
AlexOh, no.
MerlinThe Minis I seem to get wrong even more often than a USB-A. partly because it doesn't really fit at all. It really feels like using an old rusty key in an old rusty lock.
AlexWait, mini or micro?
MerlinOld rusty lock, we call them. I don't know, whatever the one is that I've got.
AlexNo, the only reason that this is...
MerlinNot the Android one, but the skinny one.
AlexOkay, yeah.
MerlinIs that micro?
AlexYeah, because I think the distinction's important only because I think the little trapezoid is easier because that's something that I can like.
MerlinYou mean when we say little trapezoid, you mean like an Android phone connector?
AlexYeah. Yes.
MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. The little slender skinny ones that you would use to charge something like, say, a bike light. It's like you got to, I mean, like I said, there's a lot of things where now I've just, I've used a Sharpie to just marker the side of this that is quote unquote up for whatever that situation is. I know what up is. I know the right way something goes, but I need to make sure that the thing that I'm plugging in will accommodate the way that's going to go. And it's just, there's nothing more humiliating. Well, nothing. I don't feel great when I've gotten it wrong three times.
And now I've got to get my glasses and turn on a light so that I can plug it in. So that's what I tried to get better at. But okay, let me just get through this quickly because it's not that interesting. But like, okay, so this is what I ended up with, I think, is a combination of two Merlinisms. One hand in the dark, But also combined with the really big one is put a trash can anywhere your primary hand wants to let go of trash. Okay? So you combine this together.
Now, what does that mean? Well, I mean, it's figuring out like accepting that you should probably store something where you just look for it. Like there's people, I bet I've changed a few lives with that one. But I bet there's tons more people who are like, what are you talking about? my yellow book goes with the yellow books. Like, but your car keys should go wherever you just looked for your car keys. Your garbage cans go wherever your right hand, in my case, wants to drop trash. Like, why is that such a big deal for me?
Like, why is that not a big deal for you? That's mental. Like, if you start with, you know, let's just, not to disparage the aesthetics thing, but like, oh, this room's really pretty and we have one tiny little, like, 80s bathroom-sized trash can for this entire room. Well, fuck that. I buy five gallon buckets and I have them deployed all over the place because this is my office. There are many like them, but anywhere my right hand wants to drop trash is where this goes. And I do actually constantly tweak that.
So like if I get a new area where I'm doing a certain kind of activity in the office, like for example, I have a table like, you know, kind of the front of the office now. That's a lot of like the staging area for like where I put my stuff and charge my stuff. but it's also where I do stuff like I mean anything that needs a little project where I take out a bin and do some stuff I often do at that table and I kept realizing just the tiniest this is so key you guys so critical just when you feel that like where's the trash can like where's the trash can if you feel that more than twice and you don't
address it you're out of your goddamn mind your brain and your hand wants to let go of trash here put the trash can there unless you can't which is fine. So I'm trying to kind of, instead of saying like what muscle memory should I go learn, I'm trying to get better at listening to my heart, my brain and my habits about maybe a muscle aspiration, whatever the opposite of a memory. I don't know. But like, you know what I'm saying? Like I, and so for me, that means stuff like,
well, let me put it to you this way. Okay. So like if you were going to master Photoshop in the nineties, like you would have to really like memorize the commands. It's a fairly recent phenomenon, I think, for regular civilians to get to pick their own key commands for stuff. Like part of, I guess, you could argue that part of the appeal of the Mac originally was, yeah, you get menus. Yeah, you get the mouse to click. You get, you know, all that stuff. That's great. But like you need to learn, I mean, table stakes, right? Command X, command C, command V.
Like if you learn those key commands, I can pretty much bet you that unless you have your reasons it's nice to have the menu, it's nice to have options but selecting from the menu will almost always be slower than using the keyboard. You know that, I know that.
AlexI forget that the menu, that it even exists unless I don't know where a thing is in preview.
MerlinBut then over time, I just want to establish a baseline here there was a time where to get good in an app in particular like on a computer, you had to learn the key commands and or the menus. So then what comes along? Well, then the big evolution for me is Quicksilver and today LaunchBar. And what's neat about those? Well, it can do all the stuff. I don't have to memorize anything. And even more interesting than that is it learns from me.
Instead of me learning from an app, LaunchBar, Quicksilver, Alfred, Butler, Boy, whatever, they all learn from you. So if you type the most wackadoo misspelling of something, but then you select MS Word, guess what? You don't need to learn the command for opening MS Word. It learns that that's what your dumb brain wants to type when you want to open Word. And does that need to make sense? It totally does not need to make sense. But instead of you having to learn a thing, the things learn from you, right?
And I think that's a very powerful idea. so rather than having some kind of news resolution style arbitrary thing that i like want to learn or a muscle memory i want to create um that's the other part but then let's go to me like so that i mean how do you get more exciting than quicksilver that's a big deal but how about this um conductor and descript which is command k you hit command k this is now i think i think these are kind of known as everything keys but i'm not sure but a lot of the way launch bar does that
apps like Descript, you hit command K and start typing. If I type command K 6, there's a pretty good chance the top thing is going to be, do you want to jump to minute 6? I use that constantly. I don't need to memorize that. I made a note here that there's a ding and a potential commercial break somewhere around 6.30 or whatever the minute count is. But then you can also insert anything. You can insert a gap clip here. You can insert an audio file. And it's all from command K.
I mean, the first one I remember doing this was like, I want to say text made sublime text. One of those text editors is one of the first ones I ran into this with. And now you're seeing it more and more places and I couldn't be happier about it. So command K for Descript, show all commands in VS code, right? Command shift P shows you everything that you can do, all of your commands in one place. You know, here's one that I think a lot of people may forget about, command shift question mark lets you search like you hit command shift question mark and start type on your mac start typing and anything under the menus will show up you don't have to learn you don't have
to click all you have to remember is command shift question mark and then you start typing and like why would you want to memorize where those are so you can click them like a monster like why wouldn't you use that um and then what's the other one oh fucking one password does this now. 1Password has its own little like launch bar style thing in it now. So like you can be anywhere out in the world on your Mac. You don't have to be at a login and the commands are always the same. So you bring it up, you search for the thing and then command C is grab the username,
command shift C of memory serves is grab the password. Like any of that, you can just do that so fast just through 1Password. And then although 1Password and launch bar do not play well yet because LaunchBar hasn't adapted to it yet, eventually all these worlds are going to start coming together. So why am I doing this RAM? I'm doing this RAM because, first of all, hey, go check it out. There's ways to do stuff where you don't have to learn their system. But also that's what I'm trying to do here, and that's the way that I'm approaching this, is to try and find more things where I want –
I don't even have a clever way to say this. I don't want to have to learn or instantiate a new muscle memory. I want to cause my environment to adapt to what my body, my brain, and if you like my heart, wants to do. And I think that's smart.
AlexIt is. I got nothing. I got nothing. Good, good rant.
MerlinSay something funny. What the fuck's wrong with you?
AlexNo, no, it's...
MerlinAre you looking at the butt plug site right now?
AlexNo, I'm typing. I'm just pushing keys in Descript. I think that the combination of macOS and iOS becoming more like one another made key commands cool again.
MerlinWell, and also like, you know, if a lot of people who get iPads, like the last thing in the world they're going to think about is doing some pseudo Mac like things on their iPad. but whatever the name of the good keyboard is with the touchpad on it, like I'm still kind of waiting for my wife who has an iPad Pro with a good keyboard on it. I'm still kind of waiting for her to really like get as excited as I am about it
because Command Shift, like on your Mac, yeah, it's been Spotlight forever. You can remap it to different things. That's cool. I mean, it's weird. It's fine. It's Spotlight. It feels like it could really use a refresh. But Command Shift, or sorry, Command Spacebar, I apologize. Command Spacebar on an iPad with a good keyboard on it, that's your new everything key. It could be a website. It could be an app. Whatever it is that you want, you don't have to take your hands off of the keyboard.
Wait a minute. I didn't buy an iPad to use a keyboard. Yeah, well, you know, why don't you just dot, dot, dot? Well, if you do that, though, you hit that Command Spacebar, God, the whole world opens up. It can find your music. It can find, it's your anything key. It can find whatever it is that you want. And like the most you're going to have to do is hit the up and down arrow key. Like if you don't want the default app that was selected, and there is a default app. Like if you want to open Dropbox and you type command space bar DRO, there's a pretty good chance that it's already selected and all you have to do is hit enter.
I mean, would you rather be dragging around on a screen to do that? I wouldn't. I don't want to have to enter some kind of a two-factor code in order to watch HBO. I want this to be as intuitive as it can be, to, again, a phrase that we banged around in the lifetime of a certain productivity app, to reduce the path from cognition to completion.
AlexMuch like the butt plug software.
MerlinCompletion! See, now that's funny. You can't allow that.
AlexOrgasm.
MerlinTo do another take?
AlexOrgasm?
MerlinOrgasm? What are we... More like a... Oh, shit. Okay, third take.
AlexChlorgasm?
MerlinChlorgasm?
AlexI don't know. I'm making alien noises.
MerlinThese fucking machines.