293. Why Alex Don’t Exist

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, log stuff with your voice.

MerlinHello.

AlexHello.

MerlinHow are you?

AlexI'm all right. How are you?

MerlinI'm great. I'm great. I'm trying to gauge your energy. Just trying to match your energy.

Alexoh really hmm i right before we started this call i did feel a bit naked because i wasn't wearing an apple watch and it was very upsetting and that's the first time that makes that makes you feel naked yeah and there's that whole anecdote and going around yeah oh my god that One anecdote. After Steve book. Oh, no.

MerlinOh, God. Yeah, I know. Oh, my God. I mean, that TikTok's so real, fam.

AlexNo. Oh, my God. No. There's a book called After Steve. Yes, Queen. After Steve. Sacristy?

MerlinWhy is it called Sacristy?

AlexAfter Steve. All of your friends are talking about it. That would be a pretty name for a girl. Yeah. Sacristy.

MerlinSacristy.

Alexoh but tim cook got in not tim cook i believe it was i don't need you for this week if you want me to do it no no oh i'll get your energy it's i just like this story of okay so sacristy goes in to see tim apple when tim apple took over apple he was concerned as were a lot of people that if you didn't want

to leave the house without your apple watch then it was kind of a failure like he asked someone asked one exact like what would you do if you left your phone at home well of course i'd go and get it what would you do if you left your watch i guess i'd just get it later and now i am i would go back for both. It's very strange. Are you that person now? Kind of. Gosh, where did we go

Merlinrecently? As usual, we were. Oh, yeah, I think it was when we went to, oh, God, lovely Father's Day dinner with my family. And as always, oh, God, that day I had a huge realization because there's this thing that happens when the three of us leave the house together. And honestly, there's not that many places that the three of us go together on the reg, not like when our kid was younger and you know there's just anyway situations right uh or as i like to say situation uh so so i'm wandering around doing all the stuff i gotta do before i leave um because partly like

i'm a little tightly wound about doing all my things make sure everything's the way i want it to be got all my things and there's this thing happens where i'm like hey are you guys downstairs and they're they're downstairs outside and i was about to say in the stern tone that i'm trying to leave behind um do you guys just like not say you're going outside and then i realized i'm the weirdo because when the two of them because when the two of them do some well no no no it's it's part of reading the room it's a version of reading the room which is like oh when these two are

together they're always like oh believe me they've they forget shit fucking all the time and don't worry about that but so like they're outside because my kid can't get anything done fast enough. Even things my kid does not want to do, I'm always the hold up because I'm doing stuff like, oh, I don't know, getting money and keys and things like that. Anyway, so that was a breakthrough moment for me. Happy Father's Day. And then I was walking up to the automobile and I felt, hmm. And then I did this. And I touched my left wrist and I went,

oh, I forgot my watch. I like to wear my watch. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not doing a lot of stuff with athletics right now, but I still like to have my watch on. Well, no, no. What I'm trying to tell you is it's not for any purpose other than I like to have my watch on. Why? I guess my answer to that would be, I sound like Tim Robinson, why did you have the guy

Speaker Acome in and take huge dumps and act like he did it? Well, I guess you could just say I wanted to.

MerlinI just like having my watch on. And then I got the scowl, of course, because you can't leave the house fast enough as far as these two are concerned. I don't know. Maybe they have something planned. Maybe there's like hookers and bombs coming and I don't know about it. But anyway, so yes, sometimes for no reason apart then I like having it on, I think. But that was a teachable moment, a learnable moment, a watchable moment.

AlexYou know what? I'm glad that you all decided to listen and learn and grow as a family and to do better next time.

MerlinI wish they would do that. I wish they would do that too. Yeah. Wow. It's Wednesday. And the last thing I typed, well, the last thing, the very last thing I typed was doing a bit about this TV show I'm obsessed with. But the penultimate thing before we started talking, I've had a lot going on this morning. Sorry. Well, yeah, morning. My time.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, one thing that I wrote down in drafts, because I'm trying to learn and grow as a person, is that I need to start really thinking about when it is, when there is a Tuesday night that I do rectives and there's the Wednesday hello that I visit with you, I realize there's things I need to do to prepare the way. To make my, our experience, I hope, more pleasant and to make sure that I'm all set up. And that takes the second order thinking of planning ahead. So just for what it's worth, in addition to massacring so much with our Google Calendar and Google Docs today, because I had it.

Part of it is I'm coming in and I'm like, ah, ah, ah, everything's all fucked up. You know, I begged Alexandra. I said, Alexandra, this is not your fault, but it is your problem. Every invitation that Google, some people say invite, every event on which I am a guest, host, whatever, I should be able to change. Anybody on it should be able to change it, right? Correct. Okay, but here's the thing. Why isn't it like that? Because America, because corporate culture, which is like there's a meeting boss and then there's all the people who – because like, oh, that would be like insubordinate if you change the time of the meeting.

We can't let you do that. We might as well let you go to lunch when you feel like it, right? I think that's why it's like that. And I had said to you, I said to you, I said, hey, you know, for what it's worth, I can't change the time of events. And like a lot of the best podcasts, the two hosts are going back and forth, like soothing one another, like giving handies like bonobos saying like, let's push, let's push. And you go back and forth and you do a thing. Right. And if so that John Roderick doesn't matter because he doesn't look at his calendar. I'm his calendar. I'm the calendar now.

But please capture that. But with you and me, me and you, you know, we are calendaristas and we're always doing the calendar. We live the calendar. So like, you know, when I'm doing an event with John Roderick, we push half an hour. I change the event to half an hour later. It doesn't matter if he sees it because that is not only a – it existed before as a deal with my future self and it exists now as a record of my past. I'd like to know what time it started because that might matter someday.

and it takes the tiniest bit of effort even if I'm the only person using the calendar. Because you'll get this way someday. I said this to John Sarcisa last night. I never in a million years would have imagined that Gmail and photos is how I, if I can't remember something and I don't have Prevagen, you know, originally found in Jellyfish, if I have to remember something, I use a combination of Gmail and Apple Photos. Do you ever do that?

AlexYes, and I feel like I'm in everything, everywhere, all at once because I just heard you saying that to another one of your co-hosts on a more popular show. Don't do that.

Speaker AThat's my bit. Don't do that.

MerlinOh, oh. Do you do that, though? You ever go like, I did this. I can't even tell you how often. A Twitter friend and friend friend, a non-para. What's the episode of para? Real?

Speaker AA friend.

MerlinHe got his under fives vaccinated, and one of them was so sad. And I wanted to DM my friend Jason. I wanted to DM him a photo of when our kid had gotten taken to the hospital for a check-in and had to get a booster. If you can imagine, you know how cute my kid is? Imagine that little baby like three years old in one of those little blue paper apron dresses. Just sitting on an exam table with that horrible crinkly paper and like looking like this. Oh, no. I couldn't find it though because I think before the age of good geotagging, it's tears and rain, Alex.

AlexAbsolutely.

MerlinSo here's the thing. And this leads into something that was going to, was my third, my second runner up, which I think means third, my second runner up for a challenge I feel very strongly about this week, which is this app Bearable that I keep going on about. You haven't responded, so I figure you're mad.

AlexNo, but it is, I'm looking at the app right now. It is open. I'm very excited to use it. I don't want to break with tradition and go too far into the challenge because I'm so horny for the challenge this week. So I'm just, you know, going. You don't know the challenge.

MerlinOh, the talking challenge this week.

AlexThe one that we did.

MerlinWe did that.

AlexYes.

MerlinSo I have, you probably heard this on my more popular show, but I have a calendar that's just me and it's called Journal. And that is where for, I don't know, at least a couple of years probably, that's where I write down anything I, it's not. So what kind of stuff is it? Like stuff I don't want on my calendar calendar because, you know, QED, CF, you know how I am about calendars. QEDCF. Yes. I don't want that clogging up on there. So I do have a calendar. I know this sounds weird. I don't care, you guys.

I have a calendar called Environment where I put stuff I might want to know about, but I don't need to do anything about hardly ever. So that's where I pipe deliveries, for example. Because Environment is just like the shit in the world that I'm kind of keeping an eye on, but I don't need to do anything about. There's nothing actionable that ever goes in Environment. But what else is that good for? environment is great for, hey, Alex is going to be in town for eight days. Show me that range. Well, what's actionable about that? Nothing. I want to see Alex, but there's no specific action

when the time comes. So Alex told me in the future, a year from now, they and Matt will be in town for a week. Do I need to do anything about that now? No. But once that time approaches, I'll either look at that and I'll say, okay, I either need to do something about this or delete it. And if I want to do something about it, that's the time that I propose. Am I going to propose a day and time to hang out a year from now? Probably not. I would think that's an odd request. That's environment. Journal. Is this making sense? Do you do anything like this? Yes. I have a calendar

Alexcalled Ambient that is actually... I like that. I love the word Ambient a little too much. I got called out for it today and I'm like, you know what? You got called out for it. I love it. Yes. By called out, I mean, I was in a text message thread and someone's like, you really like that word. Is it because it start with A? And I'm like, huh, I never thought about it.

MerlinIt sounds really kind of more like an observation than being called out.

AlexOh, I was canceled real hard in the school.

MerlinYou've cleft on to it.

AlexYeah. Okay. But it is a like a mix of what you're saying of like either when something like, okay, I know my family is traveling, stuff like that. but also events and conferences I know are happening, but it's one of the things.

MerlinRight, right. Because it used to be when you put that on your main Alexandra Cox calendar on Google, I'll bet that was a little frustrating. Again, with me, it's like, sorry, I can't go on about this enough because like I want to look in exactly one area to know exactly what's in there, right? I don't want my cutlery to move overnight. And in that instance, I want to know that there's nothing in on my calendar that's not something that has to be done today. And if I see something like, oh, what's that camera I just bought?

This new camera comes out. There's this new, I pre-ordered, I got on the invite list for that cool black camera, and it just released. The Oma, the Una. Oh. I think the Oma might be the thing in Nausicaa. But I ordered it. Now, what do I want? Do I want to see an event on my calendar that's three weeks and says, camera release, question mark? money clip engraved question mark you can pick it up at any haberdashery I don't want to see that what the fuck does that mean what is there to do about this

Alexreference not acknowledged money clip

Merlinagain again I really it's so important to me that you actually sit down like a fucking human being and watch all of the John Mulaney special that I'm always referring to it's a Chicago reference you never get it it's about J.J. Bittenbinder he was a man most acquainted with misery he could look at a child I didn't know the price of their coffin. He still had blood on his shoes.

AlexOh, goodness. Money clip. Oh, goodness.

MerlinAnd then you get journal. We'll start in a minute.

AlexOkay, okay. And you get journal.

MerlinNow, here's the key. Let me go pull up. This is the show. We've got nothing better to do. Because I have a feeling, nudge, nudge, that this challenge is going to carry over. Not least because I had a very difficult time understanding what was happening with it and what you were doing with it. You went dark on me a little bit.

AlexWhat?

MerlinWe don't say dark anymore. I did my part, and then I didn't see any public activity where you were collecting this or putting it anywhere. I don't know what I have thought on the challenge.

AlexOh, all right, all right.

MerlinI make the spec, and you manage the project. Wasn't that – hadn't we made a parlay?

AlexYes, but I thought the challenge was going about the – how our experience – or rather how my experience went.

MerlinOkay, so let's call part one spec. Part one spec, part two.

AlexPart one spec. Part two. Part one spec.

MerlinEvaluate.

AlexPart two problematic fail. Part two evaluate. No, no.

MerlinHey, come on. No, no, no. Now comes like the cat fashion show. Like now we get to watch all the pageantry and we'll judge and put big blue ribbons on all the good kitties.

AlexI mean, spoilers. Like I don't want to make people feel bad, but wow. Oh, no, people did great. This is a difficult. Oh, Apple really just kind of slapping our butts real hard. My God.

MerlinWhose fault is it though? Like I said, Syracuse, it's my fault because I was the big – what's that horrible term you use? I was the pay pig, whatever that means. I guess I'm the person who got those greedy hogs saying, and it should do this, and it should capture my emotions from my blood pressure as I ride a bike where there's no internet. I fucked up. We'll get to that.

AlexI disagree.

MerlinIt's the movies that got small. It's the developers who fucked up. Is that what you're saying?

AlexNo, no. I'm saying that I think that while the spec you wrote was detailed, none of it was unreasonable. And it felt like these are all features that should be possible. Oh, I see what you're saying. But maybe not in, you know.

MerlinI was benchmarking it against creating a reminder.

AlexLike I said, and here's what I'd like to do for this week. We should probably talk about these specs before.

MerlinI saw so much to tell you about my journal.

AlexI know. First tell me about your journal. then we will actually do it. No, I want to hear about your journal.

MerlinYou don't need my good energy for the challenge. You need my good energy for the good part.

AlexI want the good. Give it to me good, Merlin.

MerlinWell. I also figured out my perfect Popeye's right there. And it's sitting here right now and I can smell it. It's driving me nuts.

AlexI'm so fucking angry. I'm so...

MerlinI figured the right...

AlexWhy are you flexing your Popeye privilege? I can't...

Merlinthe right combination of food to order. And this is not like near nearby. The two Popeyes that deliver to my place are both like, it's not local, right? So I had to figure what is going to be satisfying and yum, yum, good. Okay. Even just for me, right? What's going to be yum, yum, good? Importantly, what's going to travel well?

AlexYes.

MerlinRight? That's a big component. People don't get this. once you're a delivery food cook, you've got to start learning what travels well and what doesn't. And like, you know, CFQED, like McDonald's fries. I heard a whole podcast about Japan French fries

Speaker Aand how all the effort that-

MerlinWait, where? What? Planet Money. It was Planet Money about the new kinds of potatoes and new techniques and the new delivery because people are bananas for French fries. And it's a notoriously difficult food to get right if it's not- And it's almost like the difference between a brand new fresh off the line donut versus a one hour old donut versus a day old donut. There's so many differences. They're all good. But a fresh donut is like your first orgasm. It's fundamentally different. You're chasing the dragon for the rest of your fucking life.

AlexThere's hot oil dripping into your mouth and just sugar plating your entire tongue.

MerlinAnd this is why you need to watch this program with me. I've pulled up my calendar. Hello. Everyone, welcome to the show. And so, for example, under environment right now, I'm going to tell you the things that are on, that I'm popping up for my command two view. You can barely hear a beep outside. Well, guess what? When I got the notice on my office door, yeah, I wrote down the one month that there would be the next round of construction. There's night construction. There's some day construction. It hasn't been bad at all. But that isn't what, where does that go? Environment.

I don't want to have that pop up with a goddamn alarm every day. there's construction outside. I know. That goes in environment. It goes, shh, shh, shh. It quietly sits there. And listen, I'm going to say something in a second and please don't say anything. I have here that the amount of time that we are offering Reconcilable Differences shirts for order, that, and it has a little shirt icon next to it. Do I need to do anything about that? Well, I personally want to check in and make sure my shirt is still beating Syracuse's shirt in sales. That's what matters. But I just need to know. And so when that starts running down,

you make the best of what's still around. You deal with that. Yesterday, we received the Art of Nausicaa picture book. You know, like cool. You know, like the Miyazaki books. I got the nice heart cover of that for Junior because we're both obsessed with Nausicaa right now.

Speaker AAnd I got my fourth copy.

MerlinWell, let me tell you about this. I am a sticker connoisseur. And I'm trying to move from being a sticker connoisseur and artiste and enjoyer of stickers to a user of stickers. I'm trying to become more egregious in my use of stickers.

AlexWait, hold on. You there. This is important. Write it down.

MerlinWrite it down.

AlexPin. Pin. Pin in it. Pin in it. Pin, pin. What's the difference? Because you were very wise when you told me stickers are for sticking.

MerlinStickers are for sticking. You got to use them. You don't. He who dies with the most stickers loses. They. Stickers.

AlexRight. The they who dies with a sticker. Do they ever stick at all? Who knows? But what are you changing?

MerlinWell, I'm going to say this. And I'm not worried about this anymore. because I've now acquired enough copies of this particular book. I will put this in show notes. I'll put this in show notes. I found the best Marvel sticker book that there is. Now, understand, the problem with the Marvel sticker books, and there are many good ones. This is that DK company usually. They make the Star Wars stickers. If you've gotten a book of stickers at a bookstore for your kid or yourself, we've got inches and inches and inches, piles of these. It used to be kiddies in ballet. Then it became Pixar.

Then it became Star Wars. Okay, this is not going to mean a lot to you, but anybody who's my age, God bless you, who's still alive, will remember, time was in the 70s. You could buy, like Topps baseball cards, you could buy these packs, or wacky packs, you could buy these packs of Marvel cards. But mainly it was you got some gum and you got a Marvel sticker. And the sticker was obviously produced by somebody who did not know anything about any of the characters, and they were hilarious and asinine. so like your

Mr. Fantastic sticker like a reed it would say it would have him all stretched out and it would say I'm the long arm of the law

Speaker Ayes

Merlinwhich is definitely a thing that depending on your universe that the smartest man on earth says all these different ones like in Thor with his hammer and they're all but they're all glorious like you know at least Silver Age, like gorgeous stickers of these.

Speaker AOkay, so that's awesome. That's really, that takes me back.

MerlinYou know, like the little corner box on all comics, but like on a Marvel comic box, like if you get an X-Men cover in the upper left, it'll have the faces of the characters on it. You know what I'm talking about? I think they call it the corner box. Stickers of a bunch of those for different Marvel comics.

Speaker AOh! Ooh!

MerlinComes with that. There's so many stickers and they're not just, the problem with the DK books is It's intended to be a sticker book where you take the stickers and you put them in the book. Now, of course, I want to put those on my phone charger. I want to put those on my laptop. But they're not made for that. They wear down real fast and they fall right off. But I don't care if I get enough stickers. I'm not going to worry. You with me so far?

AlexOkay. So you're just like chaotic sticking.

MerlinI got one more. I got one more. This particular sticker book. And I don't know. Whoever they gave this to at DK, Marvel, or both, thank you. It comes with fold-out, four pages folding out into a two-by-two poster, and it comes with a bunch of posters of the characters. Like you get a Silver Surfer poster, you get a Fantastic Four poster, and they are really, really good. So what's that have to do with the environment? Well, I'll tell you. It says right here there's a checkmark next to the art of Nausicaa

of the Valley of the Pony of the Cliff. And it says right here, Marvel Classic sticker book, check, because environment is hooked up to the delivery things. Journal is where you say, here's the day I got my bike. Journal is where you say, here's the day I changed my medication. So journal, and you could say, or journal like me, here's the day I got a junk pickup at the office. So if I ever want to, I can go back and see how often I'm doing that. Is this cost effective? Right? So you've got to work the calendars. That's what I'm saying.

And now that bearable app is going to help with this because it lets you do things like say, here's where I borrowed my friend's unicycle. Here's where I broke up with so-and-so. And then you can compare that against your factors.

AlexMerlin, if someone hasn't listened to all of your other podcasts, what is the Bearable app?

MerlinI think we should talk about it today.

AlexI think, do you, oh, do you, I haven't even opened it. Although, see, I stuck to this challenge.

MerlinI talked about this, I did not realize until Dan texted me that I was going, he hadn't told me he had an out, but I got a text from Dan into my rant about this class of apps, not rant, but my discursive delivery presentation about tracking and self-quantization apps. And I didn't realize, and he kept going like, uh-huh. And that way he does, but he was really weird yesterday. But I did talk about, I don't think, he claims to have watched the unbearable weight of massive talent.

He claims to have, he claims watched it and hated it and turned it off quickly, I cannot see any indication at all that he watched any of it. I think it's a goddamn shame. Pedro Pascal, look it up.

AlexI don't have any idea what you're talking about. The Nicolas Cage movie?

MerlinIt's called The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. And it's a recent film where Nicolas Cage stars as himself.

AlexYou're doing a lot of things with bears lately. My goodness.

MerlinOh, I got two bears. Yeah, yeah, two bears, no waiting. And we'll talk about that. Hey, we write that down. where you write down a Cage movie? Yes. There is a scene where an age-reversed young Nicolas Cage, the one who's like the devil on his shoulder, there's current Nicolas Cage and young Nicolas Cage intensely make out.

AlexSpoilers! Jesus Christ!

MerlinAnd did I mention that Pedro Pascal is in it?

AlexI get, yes. Oh my. See, I was going to go. I have two very important pieces of homework for you. I want to watch him kiss so bad.

MerlinWell, you can watch that as soon as you've watched the first episode of The Bear. It's critically important you watch The Bear as soon as we hang up.

AlexIs it in Chicago? It is in Chicago. I feel like I'm going to be sad because people get Chicago things wrong.

MerlinOh, no, you're not going to be sad. You're going to be incredibly fucking stressed out. It's an incredibly stressful TV show. And one of the best TV shows I've seen in five years. Okay, so it's on Hulu. You probably already paid for it.

AlexOh, probably. I have the stupid, fancy, expensive kind.

MerlinAnd then on top of it, so it's going to be deliverable. It's going to be stuff I love, yum. Okay? It's going to travel well. Now, here's where it gets hairy. With my Popeyes, I, my gut, well, almost everything but my gut, tells me to order the same thing that I have always ordered.

Now, there's a reason that when I was in a band with the two guys that owned the cowhouse in Tallahassee, Florida, there's a reason that who used to be in a band called Darth Vader's Church, which is a death metal band that toured Germany. So it was my acoustic pop songs, my three-chord pop songs, and the heaviest rhythm section in North Florida. And it was amazing. And they owned the cowhouse. And we used to rehearse in the afternoons where the air wasn't on. And they just ran with one of those giant, like, five-foot fans. And guess what? We were across the street from Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits.

So pretty much every day, 23-year-old me would walk across, I think, Gaines Street, get a three-piece spicy white meat with red beans and rice, Cajun rice, and a large cup. And that's how the name of our band became three-piece spicy white meat.

AlexOw. Ow. How was your gut at this point?

MerlinI was little then. I was real thin, and I had a Mac. But here's the thing. Everything about my gut tells me, hey, bud, do not get chicken off the bone. Don't go, oh, it's treat day.

Every day it's treat day. And you get all that. I've learned it. And now here's the thing. You ready? I'm going to really blow your mind. Now, this is going to be different for every person. And yet, I do believe there is a perfect Popeye's order. Now, here's the thing. What are the other wrinkles to this? Okay, what can I get that I think or know or suspect that my kid will like? I know my kid likes biscuits. I know my kid likes red beans and rice. And I know my kid likes the least important part, of course, is the protein.

But there's that. You ready for the new wrinkle? It needs to travel well and it needs to refrigerate well because I want leftovers. What is the combination of the Popeyes I crave that travels well, that I like, that my kid likes, that doesn't make me feel sick, that can be refrigerated and reheated? And I finally figured it out.

AlexAre you just going to leave me hanging? Are you ready? Come on, please. No, no, no, no.

MerlinThis is like the Rifleman's Creed, right? This is my Popeyes order. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Are you ready?

AlexWell, yeah, but it's like looking at someone's search history. You just want to know.

MerlinOh, oh, well, don't do that, please. You're going to just see so much stuff about CPAP machines. So here's the thing. You ready for this? They have a meal deal. There's a meal deal combo, you know? Did I get the best of chicken parts? No, my kid's not into that. Oh, okay. Did I get the, like, the seafood and fries? No, it doesn't travel all at all. You know what I got? I got a meal deal. Four sandwiches.

Speaker AFour sandwiches with your dispensation of spicy or regular.

Merlinby the way RIP they discontinued Cajun Rice but they do still have you get four sandwiches you get a large red beans and rice which is not that large but is a perfect amount for my kid and me you get four biscuits and I think that's it and they deliver it to your place and you only eat the one sandwich here's the thing you don't need to gobble it up there's a plan in place to have a leftover that you eat that night do you understand? Alex maybe this should be a challenge

AlexThis is something I think about all the time.

MerlinIt's going to take a while. It's a long, it's a long. Well, especially, doesn't the travel part matter, really?

AlexThe travel part matters, especially when you're using an app like Postmates or DoorDash when there's different locations. But you know what?

MerlinYou know what? You don't know. Yes, yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've had so many drugs and I'm so fucking tired.

AlexNo, it's okay. But have you ever put in an order and then for like a specific.

MerlinOh, I'm going to take that and I'm going to, as they say, double down. Yes. Turn it, turn it. Is it going to come from this McDonald's or the Rock and Roll McDonald's or like the Buffalo Grove McDonald's? I don't know. And you know what? Can I add a little wrinkle to that particular sheet of paper? You don't know where your driver is right now.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinMy kid likes that shitty Panda Express food and so I get it for the kid. Easy. Yeah, but like I don't know if it's going to come from the mall a mile from our house or if it's going to come from the northern part of San Francisco. And then on top of it all, this is what happened with my order the other night. I had a little local order for something coming, and the dude was in, like, downtown. He had to get from downtown to south of where I am and back. It's not, you know what I'm saying?

AlexYou've got to account for that. If I have made that ride, it is quite a trek for a fast food run.

MerlinIt's longer than it seems for such a small area.

AlexYeah, yeah. And you have to go on non-walkable roads, I believe.

MerlinOh!

AlexYeah.

MerlinYeah, you're stroding. You're stroding around town.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinStrode chode. Give me those chode jeans. Okay. Okay.

Speaker AOh, boy.

MerlinOh, shut up. Now, anyway, I challenge find your – because, you know, you see why it's fun, though. You see that this is like a trench run, right? Like, this is one of those – like, there's so many different factors that we have to account for here. And, like, it's almost certainly a self-harm run.

No, sorry. Sorry, let me try again. It's almost definitely a self-harm mission.

We got a lot to talk about. How are you doing?

AlexWell, I want fast food so bad right now, but there's an issue.

MerlinWell, you know, why don't you set your baseline? Why don't you set your baseline by order on Popeyes and just see how it turns out and make notes?

AlexWell, because I tried doing that the other day, but you don't know if your gig economy driver is going to read the notes that say, please take the food. Please, my order is very sick. No, no. Well, there's no way to go. Please, sir. I am literally on crutches and cannot go downstairs to pick up my food. And so the other day I was like, it was not a good day.

MerlinCould you say you're stuck in a bathtub or something?

AlexI do.

MerlinHello, this is William Howard Taft, President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And I can't get out of my bathtub. I want Popeyes.

Alexhey apparel pals uh the foot's still broken i can't go up and down out of my apartment without some assistance so i i ordered mcdonald's and i was so excited i'm like i'm gonna get a treat i'm gonna get it i got chicken mcdonald's and i had in the specifications of the order you know

Merlinit's like special notes or whatever which some apps which some apps handle so much better than other apps.

AlexMm-hmm. But it feels like there's been some regime changes because Postmates used to be good at it.

MerlinWell, it depends on whether they... Postmates just scrapes stores without any relationship. In my experience, Grubhub is the best app and has the best menus and seems to actually have usually, not always, some kind of a relationship with the restaurants. I can't even tell you how bananas... I got to show you this one restaurant, Squat and Gobble, that we like a lot. It's the most fucking crazy menu I've ever seen in my life. you can get you can get a chicken patty as a side you can get almost anything as a side it's like my dream it's like an eating disorder museum it's like i can get the crazy food exactly the way that i want it like no i don't want to have to order that i just want a piece of salmon

and a chicken apple sausage and three leaves of salad and that's all i want why are you being weird with me but then there's some where like normally on one app you can enter special and say this is for a kid i think postmates just scrapes stuff and then goes there and they're expensive and they're i don't like postmates my wife uses and i hate it i mean i haven't found

Alexa postmate driver yet who will buzz up to my second floor apartment to bring me well and to bring me my chicken mcdonald's and but i'm in the tub i'm in the tub i however however i've completed enough of my why am I being vague? I've done enough healing that I can go up and down the stairs now by myself however, still can't yeah, still can't carry anything though because I have

crutches so yesterday I ate chicken McDonald's on the sidewalk oh no

MerlinRemember, were you wearing like your typical, like your weird shoes and short pants and a collared shirt with a pattern on it?

AlexOh, no. That's what I wear around people. I was wearing football, European football shorts and a subtle T Cortex brand T-shirt like I always wear. And I sat on the grass and ate my chicken.

MerlinBecause you didn't want, because your chicken McDonald's would get cold while you were trying to, could you put it in like a little backpack, a backpack?

AlexI didn't order enough. So I expected they would put it in one of those like nice big bags that like has a handle, you know, so I could just put it on the side.

MerlinYeah, and ours, they put like the yellow seals across the top so you know nobody licked it.

AlexRight, right. But I could not, it was in too small bags, so I couldn't even like scrunch it up and like put it on the side of my crutches. Like it was a poor, it was poorly planned and executed on my part. Yes. Exactly.

MerlinI kept thinking about the Four Seasons Total Landscaping woman a lot. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. I'm just trying to match your energy. It's still so – how could a bit that was funny one day still be so goddamn good? That comedian is so funny. Four Seasons Total Landscaping, not the hotel. I only don't have events.

Well, you know, there's a – but she nailed it. She was like, well, there's a crematorium across the street. One time we let him use our mulcher. Okay, well, let me write that down. Ultimate order. I think life is complicated like this. Again, a thing we talked about on Rectifs is just the topic sort of for last night was – God, of course, he's correcting me about this. I've had something in the notes for a few weeks, which is something like, is it the end times? Or is it the after times yet?

Have we got – I mean, some people – I think that's an interesting question. because some people are going to say totally other people say what the fuck right like you where it's like um do you feel differently than you have in the last say year where like do you really feel like it's tipped over to where now you can go do stuff and do you feel confident making plans and stuff like that and i the thing is as with some of my favorite topics we've actually kind of got to that briefly but i felt the need to proceed that with like uh 30 minutes of like

yeah, but the problem is fucking everything's crumbling. Everything's crumbling and crumbled. And now when you make a plan, what I'm trying to say is, Alex, when you make a plan for anything, whether it's dinner or a family camping vacation, you need, it seems so sweet now to call it a fallback policy or a plan B. Like you need to be fully prepared for not just this thing to go wrong, but for the very act of having planned it to cause a different problem you didn't expect. You know what I mean? Like there's stakes to how – this is, again, a wonderful phrase Derek Thompson, as far as I know, coined in The Atlantic, which is everything's – what is it?

Everything's broken syndrome, something like that. Oh, I don't know. Well, he just said – I found this the other day via Dickerson. And it's like, oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, I'm not identifying a quantifiable problem that you could do scholarship about, but I do, I definitely feel fucking crazy in how much talking to a cop about a man who lives in a car feels related to, I can't get my bike fixed because it has proprietary parts plus nobody likes e-bikes. There's all these things that feel very related in the sense of, you know, in some ways, obviously, I trace it back to July of 2015 for certain reasons.

But I also feel like I can kind of trace it back to like, you know, it's weird. I could never get my old Segway tire fixed. I could not find anybody who would fix a tire. And the tire is just a tire. There's nothing Segway about the tire.

AlexIt doesn't use the – I'm sorry. I guess that's not your point. But I was told by a fancy-

MerlinIn a town full of scooters and automobiles and bicycles and motorcycles, there's nobody I contacted who was willing to look at whatever that is, a 12-inch wheel that had a slow leak. Each one of them treated it like it was bubonic plague. And that's an old one, but that's one where I was like, boy, this really seems, if there's any city, well, that's not totally fair, but it really does feel like, I'll say Bay Area, if not San Francisco. but like if there's any area you could live in in america where it seems like somebody would know

how to fix a segue tire like it might be the bay area or like and but you know that bike thing for example all those bike stores all of this shit is totally related and i know i sound crazy everybody okay so everybody got through covid some people moved to different places but we all know for example, to the big problems, staffing and supply chain, right? It's really difficult. Apple's having problems with this on their products, right? It's so hard to get the supply chain. And then so,

but it all keeps going around like that, like a really, a terrible malignant recycling symbol. The three arrows just keep pointing around. It's like, oh shit, we got to make these phones. Well, we can't make the phones because COVID has led to short staffing and the short staffing has led to cutting back these kinds of things. And then that kind of supply can't get to this place. and pretty soon you're like the Russian army who didn't plan for what what you do with a truck in

Alexanother country and everything's the arrows of the apocalypse oh that's good do you write this

Merlindown but like for example like in this case like okay first of all the bike i got which i really like i didn't know when i bought it that even in e-bike communities people hate this bike they hate this company because apparently they a lot of their shit is proprietary i love it i really like it oh i'm so mad i'm so mad well okay but here's the thing like it's a bunch of his proprietary. So I took it to four different bike shops. And when I took it in, Alex, what did I want? Did I want them to do something with the engine or the motor? Did I want them to do

something? You know what I wanted to do? I wanted them to look at my brakes because my brakes weren't working. And they are admittedly hydraulic brakes, but they're hydraulic brakes that lead to a brake with brake pads. And pretty much, there were four places I went to that wouldn't even look at it. Like, I will not put this on my bench here. We don't have the tools for that, blah, blah, blah. And I finally did get it resolved in a wonderful way at this great bike shop. But that's one where I'm like, am I losing my mind? Because already this bike has worse parts on it than it was supposed to have. Anybody want to ring the bell for this one? Supply chain. The

nice Shimano derailleur I was supposed to have, not available. So they had to source something else. It's not as nice of a bike. But wait a minute. Okay. So does that make it easier or more difficult to fix? Well, first of all, I have to find a place that has staffing and will accept my e-bike and then i'm gonna have to source a battery i'm gonna have to source a part i'm gonna you know what i mean and it all does feel weirdly related i don't think that that's crazy i mean

Alexthere's a million think pieces that it's not normal but it's not totally crazy like but like

Merlineverything and it's just that it's okay so like for example speaking of recycling we've all heard i imagine if you're a fan of podcasts non-fiction podcasts you've heard some podcasts in the last five years, whether it's Planet Money or This American Life or whatever it is, about realizing that the ideas we have about recycling are so based in an unreproducible time and economy. In the same way, I'm going to say the word, it's an economy. The idea of recycling that we had for

20 years was based on an entirely false economy. In the same way that if you use the early 60s in Detroit as your benchmark for success amongst African-American people without a college education? That was a false economy. We were growing, growing, growing. Our economy robs Peter to pay Paul. We're dumping mercury into the lakes because it's cheaper. That was a false economy. That was unsustainable. What about all the VC-funded companies that are now finally going tits up?

Well, guess what? VC-funded companies? False economy. Amazon has kind of mostly gotten away with it but i think they're the exception that proves the rule and now today um i don't know it's it's like you know recycling used to be it was only because oil was you know you know me know about this right everybody just throws away recycling now you know that right that like dumps

Alexjust throw it away yeah i don't know it's if it's even fair to call it a false economy recycling was a grift from the beginning.

MerlinBecause the whole idea was that, I think especially in, I want to say China, but countries in Asia had a need or were willing to take our, an important word here, our clean recyclables. So if you had an empty Coke bottle, they could find a use for it. Well, guess what part of that? Well, the hugest single piece of that, cheap fuel. Cheap fuel is what enables you to put literal garbage on a boat and drive it to Asia and call it recycling. Guess what? What are they going to do with it once it gets there?

Has anybody ever heard that thing about how plastic is really difficult to recycle, even in the best of circumstances? How do we take it to a country where they're willing to do that shit that we don't want in our backyard? False economy. There's all of that. And then on top of it all, nobody wants our peanut butter jars.

Speaker AIt's become too difficult.

MerlinAmericans don't know how to do this. They started throwing fucking everything into the trash. And now cities like San Francisco made a really game effort to say, hey, we're going to have people on a line looking at this and figuring out what things to get that are high value and what needs to be cleaned out and all that. That was like human beings doing that. It's basically like a mechanical Turk for trash.

Title.

AlexI mean.

MerlinAll false economies all the way down. And so many of the things we've come to rely on, many of them VC funded things. You see what I'm saying? All this shit is so related to this false economy. COVID comes along, fucks everything up. We had no plan for how to deal with it. And I think we're going to spend the next five years figuring out what comes next as we mop up from the collapse of numerous false economies. And alongside what I like to describe as losing the recipe for America.

AlexOh, that's a that sure is a horrifying and accurate way to think about it.

MerlinI thought I had it here.

AlexI was, oh man This thing, I'm trying to match your energy Because my energy is just

MerlinI'm sorry

AlexPrimal scream No, no, no I, ugh It's, I just The internet's bad, I don't like the internet What happened to the internet? Oh, I mean, there was this little abortion Thing that happened with abortion Abortion Abortion

Speaker AI'm going to abortion. I don't know what I'm saying.

AlexWell, think about, you know, talk about Plan C. But unrelated to the Hill, like Midwest, and I'm totally going to plug, Midwest Access Coalition, which is the local abortion fund for Chicago, but a.k.a. the Midwest, because that's going to be the only place you can get an abortion probably.

MerlinWhen you look at that map, when you look at that map, it's just, it really starts to come into stark relief. The places that automatically the trigger laws, the places within all the other places, fucking half. I know you know this, but fucking when you really sit with this for a minute last week, you could get an abortion if it was available almost anywhere. And like within a very short period of time, half of the states will not allow it. And you could go to jail for trying. That's a lot to take in.

AlexWell, and let's say you've been working with these folks and suddenly on social media, stuff starts to get taken down when you're just sharing posts about where to legally send abortion pills because that is still legal. Facebook and Instagram have been taking down. At first we thought it was just us, but multiple people and organizations' posts have either been taken down or banned for talking about abortion pills.

MerlinWell, because – why? For policy or law?

AlexOh, policy. Facebook's policy.

MerlinIt's not that they're breaking a state or federal law. It's that Facebook has a policy about, oh, about selling drugs of any kind, I bet. Or offering drugs? What's that reason?

AlexTB, I return null at this moment. But probably there is an article, I believe. An article with it. But yeah, I mean, having all of the plans assumes that people even are acknowledging that said false economy even existed. but it's as if like to go back to like the bike thing if you're trying to get now um paper or

sorry not paper straws like uh and any sort of i don't want to say scarce item but any sort of like small novelty item it's like oh we we could not produce that and we never could like oh yes you could you never got an abortion and never could i don't this is even more out of the scope of like crazy that you're talking about but it feels not talking about like a like a i'm so i'm just

Merlinreally trying to follow somebody is dishonestly claiming that they can't do something and never could and that's abortion uh no i'm sorry i'm trying to talk about parents or what are you

Alextalking about no i am just um frustrated by the amount of time it seemed to take folks not just like welcome to the revolution at any time people come along yes yes you're talking about like like

Merlinonce we knew we've always known this was in danger but in the last month we've really known Like, are you saying like the Biden administration and all the different, I don't know, NGOs or whatever, like, now is our last chance? This is your final warning shot before shit goes down? That kind of stuff?

AlexThat kind of stuff. Like, from, you know, codifying laws to saying that chips are probably going to be – computer chips are probably not going to be super available. Like that's all known, but just not disseminated. And it's very disheartening. And I, my brain just like a lot of people's broke with sort of the dishonesty.

And I guess, I don't know. Getting a fucking text from Nancy Pelosi on Friday just really, really fucking hurt. Oh, just send her $15. Just it really has put something in my brain.

MerlinAnd listen, I also said this in the good slack, but there was that tweet that went really went around hard over the weekend. There was this reporter saying that, oh, that wonderful woman I like, Kareem, the press woman had like basically the way it was phrased in this tweet that people like me, you know, bad on me. I retweeted this. But the way it was phrased in this tweet was like, holy shit, Biden's spokesperson just like shut down the whole idea of like any solution. Like we're not going to we're not going to do court packing. We're not. I hate that phrase. We're not going to get more justices. We're not going to do the filibuster. You know, Mr. Biden, sir, does not want to do any of those things. And people like me widely retweeted that. According to my wife, there are journalists who have said that that was a mischaracterization of what was said. And so I feel bad if I helped spread that incorrectly.

But with that said, when this went down, and I understand Biden had plans to go to Europe, you know, and that's a big deal. Like, I understand. Like, it's that in itself. There's no single fact amongst all of these things.

AlexYes, we have plans to fix the supply chain. There's always a plan.

MerlinBut, OK, guess what I'm saying is, like, that in itself is not weird or bad that he had a plan to go to Europe and went. It's not – by itself, it's not a huge deal that – again, understanding in context that he made some remarks on Friday and then bounced for Europe. That in itself is not – the fact that there was no real public opportunity to question anybody and that what you would get is media availability hits by like Kamala on CNN with a nice tight shot of her saying,

oh yes, we're definitely running in 2020, whatever. All this, none of this stuff in obscurity. But then, and again, Nancy Pelosi, ask her whomever, ask the person claiming to be Nancy Pelosi, ask him for $15 by itself, not a problem. Let's put all of this together. And you know what you get? I said this in the Slack. It's like Biden and every other centrist Democrat is fucking breaking down, begging for an insurgent progressive woman to run for president or something.

starting today. I'm kind of surprised there aren't five right now that everybody's talking about. Somebody between Bernie Sanders and AOC type, like somebody coming out of the fucking woodwork, the way that, like, I'm not saying I like these people, but the way that, say, Ron Paul or Ross Perot or Ralph Nader or whoever comes along and, like, totally energizes people who feel like, oh, my God, finally, win or not, this is somebody who cares about the same thing I care about. But when you put all of those together, you knew this was coming.

Roe v. Wade got dumped. You didn't fight fucking hard enough on fucking anything. You didn't use the power in any useful way. We haven't used – Democrats have not used the power they have. And they do have power. They're just scared to use it. And people like fucking Joe Manchin makes them want to set their pants on fire. They kowtow to the most simpering, centrist, bad faith bullshit that's not even centrist really. I mean, he's basically, you know, the way corgis look so cute because they look like little retrievers. That's Manchin except for being a Republican.

AlexHe's more Republican than a ton of Republicans.

MerlinYou know? He's a rhino in everything only. He's a ryo. And then what? And then, okay, so then Nancy, you just got through all that and you're sitting there fucking, I can't tell you how many people I've heard say my husband and I just sat and cried today. Like I – we both have a very dear friend whose wife had to terminate a pregnancy because the kid that that family wanted more than anything, if they survived birth, and they probably wouldn't, would have the most miserable – every second that kid was alive would be misery for everybody including the family.

and like and when you look at when you say this shitty stuff to families especially women obviously and so you're like do you really think that they haven't thought about this do you really think that they just want to harm these sweet precious angels you refuse to give health coverage to like you care so fucking much about every kid until the moment it's a human being and that's when you bounce right wing but you get that and then you get nancy and then you get the media hits and you get all that stuff and then you get that uh gosh i'm sorry if i helped feed this, but the whole like, oh, you know, oh, just to be super clear, just so you know here,

we're never going to help militarily with Ukraine. And also, we're not going to upset anybody by, you know, because, you know, if we get rid of the filibuster, so will they, which implies that they won't get rid of the filibuster the second that they can. Are you fucking kidding me? You don't, you need to get points on the board, guys. You can't just hope that everybody likes the way you look in your uniform you got to do the work and like all that comes along and it really feels like they're begging fucking it could be somebody who's a total like um charlatan some kind of like

lyle landley but i can't believe how much it seems like they're begging somebody to like eat their lunch from the from the even the not even far left doesn't it feel like they're just fucking

Alexgiven up yeah i would like to say yes but that implies that they were trying to do something in the beginning other than to win elections and at this point they could afford not to even pretend at this point what are you doing i nothing is the answer being fucking cowards is the answer and like david reese says as a coward i'm pretty comfortable saying that at at this point like i shouldn't be helping my friends in indiana who have had miscarriages and used abortion pills

like to figure out whether or not they could possibly be retroactively tried i'm like i'm not a fucking law i i don't i help people get to drive people ways i don't fucking know and the idea that like uh yes the democratic party did not know this was coming it's like well we knew for a month. We didn't just know for a month. We knew the second what's her name? Collins came out and was like, no, no, no. Brett told me. He said it's all good. He told me. She's very concerned. She's concerned about a lot of things.

Yeah, don't worry. He told me.

MerlinCatholics can't lie. It hurts them physically.

AlexYes, indeed. I'm bleeding right now. I'm sorry. I got into a mood. No,

MerlinI'm sorry. I'm full of beans. Five minutes before you started talking to me, I was practically brain dead. And then I guess my pills kicked in. I got to find Derek Thompson. Nothing works. I'm making notes here. Losing the recipe for America. Popeye's orders. I want to figure out how to make my desk into a standing desk. Do you want to talk about the challenge?

AlexI would love to talk about the challenge. Merlin, what was the challenge this week? Because it was you inspired, and then I kind of took it and did not turn. oh god I became a twister I think you took it and left it what was the challenge oh my god

Merlindo we need a transition here or can I just go go go go go a challenge this week in short is that something I mentioned somewhere else is that now hello I ride a bike I hope you're not sick of hearing about that I ride a bike and something from the early times of riding the bike and I've compared this to showering or urinating like you have ideas on your mind things you wish you could write down your most you have your most um i don't know mental fecundity like when you're out doing something that where you don't expect to think of things alongside i had this desire to

like go oh god this happened to me yesterday uh i had that early morning bike ride and there's this one fucking stretch in golden gate park that that uh oh by the way never use apple maps for biking it's really wrong um but you google google yeah it sends me into areas that are very much overtly no bikes allowed here and I feel like a real piece of shit. And I'm like, I'm following the directions. But Google's better. The point being, like I always end up because it's going to...

AlexWhat? It's got Forrestal's fault. No, it's fine. It's fine.

MerlinLook at the leather binding on my bike.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt's not real. But anyway, the point being, there are so many times where I'm like, I don't want to ride

Speaker Aon this again. Like I feel like

Merlinmy life is in my own hands. The point is that I always find myself, you know how it is, like when you're thinking of a thing and then the situation changes and you're not thinking about it anymore and you forget about it until the next time you're doing that thing.

AlexYou know what I mean?

MerlinYou only think of toilet paper when you're on the shitter.

AlexYeah. And you not only remember, you get mad at yourself for not remembering.

MerlinIt happens to me all the time. It's part of just, I think, getting older and doing edibles is it like I just drop bits. I drop bits a lot. But what finally occurred to me was I think what I'm looking for, I've been looking for, is a way to use Siri. And I can kind of use Siri under different conditions when I'm biking. The problem is I swore to my wife before I ever got the bike that I would not ride with AirPods on. She's already terrified I'm going to get killed on this stupid thing. And so I'm very careful. I've got a helmet.

I've got a light. I've got so many lights. I look like a mod, like going to Brighton Beach. Sorry, schizophrenia. Quadrophenia. Quadrophenia. Can you see the real me? I can't. I can't.

Oh, my God.

MerlinAll right, that's funny to two people.

AlexOh, at least three and a half.

MerlinWhat I want is an ability to – so here's – and I wrote a little shitty spec for this. We'll put in notes. It's up on the GitHub. I want to –

AlexHey, Parapels, it's not shitty. It was a very good spec, and I wish more people would write more documentation like this.

MerlinI don't know why you break the bit to talk to the audience, but hey, Alex's friends, it's not good, but I did my best with what I could do on a Sunday.

AlexWell, I'm writing this down. Why Merlin thinks things are bad. Okay, you wrote a shitty spec.

MerlinBecause it doesn't do what a spec should really do and it's not written in the right format. Okay. Well, hmm. Oh, my God. I'm going to die at this desk. Which I probably will. But that's neither here nor there. It's better than dying on a bike, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I got a light on my helmet and a thing on my butt. So what I want as a guarantee, I want to be able to yell into the air, hail. Hail, Siri.

Oh, my God. Oh my god. Hang on. Hang on. Holy crap. I may have just discovered something.

Speaker AOh my god.

MerlinHail Siri. What time is it?

Speaker AIt's 12.16.

MerlinYes!

Speaker AOh my god.

MerlinOh my god.

AlexHail Siri. Where are my AirPods? Okay, well, my Wi-Fi might be out again.

MerlinHail Siri.

AlexYeah.

MerlinHail Siri, where are my AirPods? oh, I went away. Oh, you know what it was? It was Brigadoon. One time a year it works. I want to be able to yell into the air. I want to be able to hail my dingus. And I want to be able to say, the way I would describe this is, I want to be able to say basically a short sentence along the lines of, I think the example in the spec thing was 40th Avenue between Judah and Kirkham is really rocky. Or the first time on a Friday, I thought, ah, I'll go down to, you know,

the Great Highway at Ocean Beach and I'll take a ride. I did not look at the weather and it was not even gusting. It was pretty steadily 15 to 20 mile per hour winds. And I'm about to get pushed off my bike by weather. In addition to which, I'm getting fucking ass blasted in the face

Speaker Awith sand.

MerlinSo take 15, 20 miles per hour and now add sand.

Speaker AAnd I'm like,

MerlinAnd this is before I broke down and I decided it's okay not to have dignity. And I started wearing goggles all the time because they helped me. I don't need canes. I'm strong.

AlexI like your goggles. They're cool. Anyway.

MerlinSo yell into the air a short sentence that started with the desire to take note of a bad piece of road. But let's just say, I'm sorry, that was not about a road. No, you should be able to yell anything when you're on a bike and like a good idea, funny idea for a podcast. And I thought it'd be neat if it did. Again, like what if I only have a second? I don't want to die. Wouldn't it be cool if I could say, hey, ding, it's bad road? How would it know? Well, one of my numerous requests, because I'm a pig, is I said it'd be neat if it gave me geolocation.

It'd be nice if it was lat long and address. But then so the important, you yell into the air. Here it is, one sentence. I want to be able to yell into the air, have it noted into a log file. It's basically like a CSV kind of file. And I want it to tell me the date and time that I yelled that into the air and exactly where I was. And that's pretty much all I need. If I described that better, you would go, that doesn't already exist. That's not already the first shortcut they show you.

because it kind of seems like, but like there's, and I tried to document just a little bit in the dumb, not spec. Like here's things I've looked at that are close to doing what I want. But the reason I haven't done this is I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to make the shortcut. I don't know how to like just operate the shortcut. I think I want, and I don't even know how to change somebody else's shortcut because if it does what I want it to do, there's going to be enough conditionals and things I don't understand that it kind of fucks up. but that's what I wanted was like and then Alex I think we talked about this even last week

I'd fucking use this all the time bike or otherwise I use I use my voice to create reminders all the time and it's actually one of the one of the most useful and one of the most one of the things I can most count on with the lady and they in a tube is it actually works if I say hey dingus remind me to say hi to my kid when I arrive in my house in two hours like for many reasons not worth going into that's extremely powerful and it works so i use that as kind of a benchmark and like you but like you i don't like putting stuff into my reminders list that's not a

reminder i don't want to like clog that up with like you know may i mambo dog face with a banana patch in addition to which reminders do not and i actually had to make a shortcut had to i chose to make a shortcut that does this months ago where it writes down like what time i made the reminder because I don't know why it doesn't capture that. It's so important to do that.

AlexWait, wait, it doesn't? Holy shit. Does it? I trust you. I guess I assumed it did.

MerlinI would allow that potentially shortcuts, if it exists, and I don't think it exists. I don't think it's in the same way that there's all kinds of shit about your cool stuff, about all of your smart home devices. You'll never realize how many things your smart home devices can do until you get another app on top of HomeKit. If you're not using like HomePlus or, you know, Home, any of those things, you'll never realize there's all kinds of stuff in there that you can be keying on to make better automations. But they don't, it's not revealed. So like, is that possible to do?

Guys, I love you so much. I don't want to know what it's possible to do. I want a way to know that I said something, it got it, and it told me where and when I said it. That's the entire thing. and like it's surprisingly thorny to get that the way i want including using stuff like i was going out and trying to find like direly is one that came up day one comes up and yes they have shortcut support but the shortcut support that they have is for using day one like day one which is like oh it's like my fucking butterfly dream journal where i talk about my engineering and imaginations

and like it's like and yeah but like i want something where you know what i mean that's written out into a line. Let's go back. We discussed this last week. Let's go back to a previous project of mine that's kind of famously successful, which is in the sundowning days of my use of Evernote. That's how I found an office. I walked around. Every time I saw for a lease or rent sign, I took a photo on a basically two-mile stretch of a street nearby. Took a photo of the sign in the window, which usually had a phone number on it.

And that all automatically got geolocated. on a map in Evernote. And I could make notes. I've used this for lots of fun things. Like whenever my kid and I are on some kind of, like when my kid was little, we'd go on like little like sort of treasure hunts to like try and find like the trees in our park each have a numerical tag on them, like a dog tag. And we'd go around and try to find every tree in order. And with Evernote, I could actually make a fun map out of that to find the one, here's the ones we found. Here's areas we haven't explored yet. I want that. I want to be able to get, this could turn into a map.

This could become something that gets pushed into, someday, gets pushed into a tracking and activity app. Like, wouldn't you use something where you yell into the air and it writes down where and when you set it?

AlexThe reason I thought that Reminders did capture when you talk to it was because I use often the inbox feature with OmniFocus that takes it from Reminders and puts it in OmniFocus and OmniFocus tells you when.

MerlinOh, and so it knows the time it got it. I see.

AlexYeah. I just wanted reminders. Nope, you can't find out when you created something. Awesome.

MerlinCool. I have to, if I'm being honest, like, okay, so first of all, vast amount, if I go to shortcuts and I look at it and I haven't trimmed it lately, I finally just created an area called trash where I could drag stuff just to, like, fucking clean it out. I mean, this is only a little easier to clean up than your Apple TV screen. but like if in its own in its natural state most of my shortcuts are you ready for this are called like new shortcut 97 because it's something i tried and abandoned and then never got rid of and tried again and abandoned and never did anything about so first of all i got to get rid of all of the new shortcut and shortcuts then i got a bunch of stuff i've gotten from other people

and i can't remember which is which i can't remember if whether when or where it works the handful of shortcuts that I've made that I, that aren't just do one thing, like find my kid's phone. I finally just made into a shortcut that could be executed different places. I know you can yell into the air. Not everybody knows that. Paying my shrink, right? So I made something where when I'm done talking to my shrink, I say, pay name of shrink. And it opens up the app I use to pay that person. And I pay them like there's that. But like a couple that I just, I had me one call

charge my watch and I made one called charge my scooter. And these really, I'm not, this is not a flex at all, but so like charge my watch, get the current date, add 85 minutes. It's arbitrary at 85 minutes to the date and then add, get my Apple watch to my reminders with alert at time adjusted date. Charging my scooter. Here's the thing I hate about my scooter. If you charge my scooter too much, it overcharges and then like won't ride right. And it goes. So I never charge my scooter to 100%.

AlexOh, what? Your Scoot Scoot? The Segway?

MerlinIt's such a piece of shit. It doesn't properly... Oh, they had plenty of time to add funny R2-D2 noises and a fucking remote control, but they couldn't be fucked to make it something that doesn't overcharge. And when it's overcharged and you step on it, have you ever done it on too much of an incline or too hard of a turn and you get that mong, mong, mong?

You know what I'm about?

AlexI find those, yes, I find those noises comforting.

MerlinOh, I do too. Especially like the two Chinese ladies across the street looking at me. Hello. Monk, monk, monk, monk. What is wrong with him? We'll never know.

And so I got one called Charge My Scooter, and it's also got an NFC tag. So when I go and I plug in my scooter, I'm just bragging. This is what I'm trying to tell you. The reason I'm telling you all this, this is the extent of my abilities. apart from the same way I learned HTML, which was stealing other people's HTML and learning how to make the break tag, or sorry, make the bold tag, the B tag close. So this one, charge my scooter, current date at 65 minutes, not too much. And then I get a reminder to unplug it at that time.

And I also made an NFC tag that hangs next to it where I put it so I can hit it with my phone and that does it. That's it. That's it. If I go into one of Matthew's or Federico's and I'm looking at it and it says, oh, you know, add a new food to your bar. 137 steps. I'm like, oh, yikes.

That's the setup. Where do you want to go from here? I've got remarks. I've done some testing. What do you want to say at this point?

AlexOh, so did you, well, then I guess I got a few.

MerlinA couple people texted us. I have identified you on the public internet. as the they person. The point they? The point they. The point they. I was about to say point man, and I stopped because you are neither fish nor fowl. There's no such thing as an Alex.

Speaker ATitle!

MerlinOr Alex do not exist? Is that better? Title.

I mean, perhaps unsurprisingly, I had dicked around with this and then I wasn't spending a ton of time. But one person did respond to you and me. And I opened. Oh, fuck me. What's the guy's name? I'll have to find it. I hate not crediting people. It's so ungrateful. I got one and I opened it up and I was immediately like, first of all, I opened it up and I was like, oh, oh, shit. Oh, shit. This does all the things. And then are you ready for this? And I remember I was sitting on my Mac at home. This is not anyone's fault except mine. But I'm sitting there and I clicked on the play button.

I did it. It went boom, worked first try. When's the last time you opened somebody else's shortcut? And apart from permissions, apart from permissions, it worked flawlessly the first time and wrote it to the root of my iCloud directory. Are you – no, sorry. It wrote it to the shortcuts. It wrote it to the shortcuts directory. That's it. But holy shit, it fucking worked the first time. I'm going to find his name right now while you're talking. I tried that and it works great. I'll have more to say on this in a second about why this is my fault, but tell me more about what you received, what you played with.

Were you shepherding these submissions? And so basically we've said, what I said was, and I didn't mean to be snarky about this, but what I said on the public internet was, hey guys, just to be clear here, for what it's worth, like it does not help me to know that there is a way to do one part of what I'm asking for somehow.

Okay, because, you know, that's the typical Reddit guy kind of response.

AlexWell, you can't do this, but if you want to do this.

MerlinThat's been available in Android for years. Wow. Well, you know, that and a sharp ax will lead to your death. Thank you. What I said was I am looking for, I'm being much more lazy, we are being much more lazy than that. I am looking for a, I said something like a kind and competent baker. I don't want to thread on places where wheat might be grown. Just give me the fucking bread.

AlexWell, even after you appointed me the point day, I think only two people got back to us that at least that they worked on the public Internet. It was, oh, gosh, I don't know.

MerlinThe first one I received was from a Twitter user, Andrew, I want to say Litteken, L-I-T-T-E-K-E-N. That's the one that did pretty much fucking everything I wanted, right? So the one that I was able to run quickly on my Mac and it worked flawlessly. And that is one I then tested out on the road alongside my own version of this and alongside Reminders. Is there one you tried, Alex?

AlexI believe that is the one I, oh, no. Is that Metal Mat?

MerlinMetal Mat?

AlexYes. The first one I tried was Metal Mats. And then the second one I tried is the voice log. We'll put links to both of the shortcuts in there. And like Merlin said.

MerlinWhen you say the voice log, are you talking about Andrews?

AlexYes. Oh, yes. Andrews, it was voice log. And Metal Mats was bikes.

MerlinOh, and I saw you responding to Metal Mats because you were asking about the pretty theme, right?

AlexWas that you? Yeah. You did that. Yeah. I do remember that. And then we talked about Sublime Text. Bike log.

MerlinI'll add this one.

AlexAnd so, like you said, both of this applied to both of them. They worked immediately out of the box other than saying, yes, give me.

MerlinAnd again, you know what it is, Alex? It's the Cupertino syndrome. We're like, oh, this worked great on this. This worked great on my three month old laptop. And it was like, seriously, it was like, it was like, oh, I can't wait to try this out on the road. where certainly my results will be exactly the same because I'm such a fucking hog.

AlexOh, see, I didn't use it on my laptop at all because I thought there's no way that that will be a good lip mistess.

MerlinWell, I mean, I am perhaps unlike you and this is not going to be one of those Casey yells at you things, but I would rather be on a Mac anytime and that's when I'm checking things like this and looking at things like this. That's where I get it. You know what I mean? So it's evening, I get this toot. I click on it, I open it, and it works. And so I just want to say off the dome before we say another word. And we're not going to say anything mean about you guys. We're going to say mean things about Merlin and probably Alex.

AlexWell, speak for yourself.

MerlinOh, okay. I would like to say.

AlexFuck you, Andrew. Thank you.

MerlinSpeak truth to Andrew title. I just would like to say to the folks we've gotten from, and see, this is where I think you did your job poorly. And I probably did my job poorly, which is we should establish for this next week, if people want to play with us in the space, Here's where that will be. Also, we should establish if I need to say something about a change in the spec so we don't fuck people up. I mean, it's GitHub. So I guess I could replace it with a new one and the old one will still be there.

AlexYeah. We had, you know what? I love being, I do not love being the problem, but I love accepting that I'm the problem. It's the fault of your start.

MerlinYou do that.

AlexWell, because you said want to talk about the, oh, wait, where is this? this wasn't even a beta problem at all.

MerlinYeah, it's one of the times you went dark on me. I remember this.

AlexIt wasn't. I went dark on everybody. Thursday night, lost all internet access. Did you see that tweet? Yeah. Thursday night, lost all internet. I mean, I live with a lady girl. You got a lady girl.

I misgendered and made a bad trans joke at the same time.

MerlinDid you get a time at? You got a time at. time time at time matt doesn't lady boys isn't that a thing in thailand oh thailand no no no

Alexbut uh i be this has happened to us before um where we'll be recording an episode of dubai friday and then suddenly my internet dies and it turns out oh i've used up all of my quote unlimited data from comcast uh you really don't want to see i mean really when you see an asterisk

Merlina tiny asterisk that's the word unlimited or free that's a really important as they say on political Twitter the asterisk is doing a lot of work I have trouble saying the word asterisk

Alexask her what time is it

Merlinfuck it oh oh oh other side of the room got it

Alexthank you

Merlinso you went dark on me we talked about Kristen Stewart using a voice

Alexyou usually dark on me sometimes

MerlinOh, there's a picture of Warren Jeffs and his bride. I didn't put that in notes.

AlexBy dark on you. I mean, I mean, by going dark on you, you mean me being in a place without internet access or cell reception. That is the going dark. Wow. Oh, we don't say going dark anymore. No, we say. Oh, you say, is it okay if I put.

MerlinWe say black American.

AlexOh, God. I realize we never talked more about we're doing this. We're going to take this dirty laundry, just going to show all the streaks. Do it. Do it. I realize we never talk more about the voice blog.

MerlinAre these your cum stain jeans? Is this your period bra?

AlexIs that a bit? Wait. Do women have period bras? No. You don't? We all have undies. Oh, did you?

MerlinI mean, when you were. When you were.

AlexWhen I was a lady. No.

MerlinNo, I'm kidding. I'm joking. I was trying to do some kind of shitty show tune. I've never heard the song Ring of Keys, but I should. I have the book. I have the book, Ring of Keys.

AlexYou still haven't had fun? I've got it.

MerlinI've got a nice, perfect bound edition of it. I don't know if it's perfect.

AlexOh, really? Oh, I'm jealous.

MerlinI keep trying to get Junior to read it. Fuck you, Junior. I finally have your first time. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

AlexI realize we never talked more about the voice log challenge and what we're doing tomorrow. Want to talk today? And then you link to the Google Doc. And then you texted later at 9.45 a.m., okay, officially adding this is the challenge. This bearable app is really our shit. And then the bearable, oh.

MerlinSee, now I would choose to go back to Saturday at 2.40 p.m. where I said, okay, I finally have a first draft of the voice log spec. It's currently in Markdown. I love arguing with you on the internet.

AlexOh, oh, and then look, I said, wait. Let me talk about money. Well, first, it was me repeatedly failing to pay you. Wow, failing to pay you. And then, oh, God. Joke's leaving the room. So sorry. But then you say, is it okay if I put my spec on my GitHub? And I say, of course.

MerlinI put it on our GitHub. I'll pray on it. We're watching Nausicaa. There's bearable.

AlexBut that was after I said, of course. So you said, cool, I'll do to the repo. Or it actually makes sense if the DFF repo, we don't have a Dubai Friday GitPub. Yeah, we do. We're on GitPub. Wow. Here we do. Wait. Do we? oh all right well you're on it um let's see here this is my fault and my problem no no no no but

Merlinyou know as long as you decided to um conduct this little intervention let's keep going let's okay i sent you i sent you poochie i sent you poochie he says here you're extreme uh he has to get back to his home planet uh i said i said so i okay so what i'd said to you what had happened

Alexwas. Oh God, I love the Simpsons so much. Okay. So I said Tuesday at 4.46 AM. Yikes. I said,

MerlinI realized we never talked more about the voice log challenge and what we're going to do tomorrow. Do you want to talk today? Nothing, nothing. I sent you the doc. I sent you bearable, nothing happened. And then later on at 8.53 AM, you said yes, but I don't know how long I'll be

AlexYes, later that morning, later that morning, I responded.

MerlinTo what?

AlexTo your message. Which one? How did I respond? To the...

MerlinWhich one should I infer you're replying to?

AlexYeah, to... But wait, wait, fuck you. I realized we never talked about the voice challenge. You want to talk today? And then I said yes, but I don't know how long I will be at physical therapy

Merlinbecause as you know, doctors are a scam. I'll save it for the show. I thought you were saying that you were going to be at, that you're always at the doctor. I thought you were going to be at the doctor Wednesday, which is today. And I said, no problem. Just pick a time to reschedule. And you said, wait, did we have something scheduled for the day? And I said, nope. I thought you were talking about tomorrow. And then you said, all set for tomorrow. And then you told me about your internet. You changed the topic.

Speaker AI love my faster internet.

MerlinAnd then I said, so previous confusion aside, when you get a sec, can you let me know where we are with the challenge and how you want to talk about it tomorrow? a new message like, are you collecting and testing submissions or what should we do? And then as a joke, to seem less like a dick, I said, I am managing.

AlexSo

Merlinwhat were you doing with the challenges?

AlexAnd then, because You kept a list. Do you have a list? Is that right? Yes. This might be your performance

Merlinreview, so keep it in mind. And compare

Alexto your specs, have you tried any? I'm wondering if it would be fun for you to test them on air. Spoilers. Not really. I'm doing dumb things. I like doing dumb things while recording it likes things feel kinetic like what we're doing right now so i was right about that uh and i told you you should be a project manager and then you did respond to that except to say short version everything is way too slow and then i sent you a screen grab from

Merlindrafts which i thought was kind of funny well because i was gonna i was trying to figure out because and at this point i'm up my own asshole i'm up my own rabbit hole if i'm being honest which is like oh should i make a new spec or like hey dingus you're using fucking git do you branch this do you whatever and i've been up since 4 a.m i'd slept three hours and so i already wasn't with it but i started to write something that i thought of could be an addendum but to be useful it means we need to replace the whole document and then go back to the old one if they want to right but i said i like writing it's been said that no plan survives contact with the

enemy and this is this is just me speculating i didn't post this but this is me starting to write something about oh boy i think i'm a hog it's been said that no plan survives contact with the enemy and i found this citation for that quote investigator and boy has that ever been proven true today when i took an early morning spin and tested out a few versions of the log some from talented listeners alongside a couple homebrew attempts of my own tldr wow none of these are fast enough and that's all my fault because my requirements are too much i'm out by it occurred I mean, once I was already out and, like, driving up, you know, the Great Highway, which is just a long, straight, beautiful stretch of beach-adjacent riding.

And, you know, there's nobody there. It's so fucking early. And I tried it out. I yelled out. Because, like I said, I tested it on Wi-Fi on iOS. And, like, on Wi-Fi with my phone, right? Not a Mac. With my phone. Like, they weren't blazing fast. But I thought, oh, this is well within parameters, right? So I finally got down to the water. And the truth is I have not done a lot with Siri when I'm on the bike because it just doesn't work a ton of the time. One accommodation I do sometimes, and I hope this isn't disloyal to my partner and her concern, is I will sometimes have one AirPod in one ear with transparency on.

And then I wear this really part of my dorky getup is I also wear this, what do you call it, a balalaika, a baklava. I wear one of those things that's like a woolly hood because it's so windy with my goggles over that. So it's protected a little bit from the wind, right? Because normally, God, if you were in transparency mode on a bike with an AirPod, woof.

AlexOh, it just blasted.

MerlinThat's so handy. And I tested it out just a little bit. So again, in fairness, here, this is me. This is me now. I have an AirPod in my ear in transparency. I'm on a safe stretch of road. I pulled over to do this. I said, okay, time to really take this for a spin. And since the thing I'm going to say about everything is identical, I'm not singling any person out, including me. But I hailed the dingus. I said the phrase.

And then that little constellation just kind of turned for a minute. Did I mention I'm way out on the westernmost part of San Francisco? Where like there's cell coverage and stuff. But like it's, you know, I'm not on Wi-Fi. Constellation. What do you call that? What do you call the Siri dingus? You know what I mean?

Alexa little like animation to let you know i'm listening oh i don't know i've always the siri

Merlinicon it's spinning around and it's doing it's doing its thing and again i'm gonna protect the innocent here and it's like hey hey butthole what do you want to say and i say this is test number

Speaker Aone and it's like okay i'm working on it i'm working on it i'm working on it or you know

MerlinAnd then it's continuing to work on it. And then at some point, probably at least 20 seconds later, like 30 seconds later, I get the, again, anonymizing here, I get the acknowledgement that it got it. And I was like, huh, huh. And then I tried another one with very similar results. And then I said, hey, dingus, remind me to say hi to my kid when I arrive at my house in two hours. And that was about, I'm going to say, I don't, just in terms of like how it felt, which is important, it felt like two seconds.

Boom. Gone. Done. Got it. Got that. So, but then, and what I hadn't done, so there's so many things that I had not done here that in retrospect, this is why paper prototypes matter. It is so valuable, especially when you're stupid like I am. It helps so much to just make a thing and try it and then make a thing and try it. Don't plan a thing, plan a thing, plan a thing, plan a thing, plan a thing, plan a thing, plan a thing, make a thing and then realize it failed. Try a thing. See if it goes bad. So I already can tell you, even knowing fuck all about how this stuff works, I can identify at least two or three things based as being somebody who uses Siri dozens of times a day.

Like I can tell you already like what the cause of some of this is. Far and away, I imagine the biggest cause was I asked these poor bastards to do some computationally and data intensive stuff, right? Like even if, and just to be clear, I did take, what was the gentleman's name? My guy.

AlexYour guy, Andrew. Well, I'm sorry, Andrew. I keep calling you Andrew Litton because it's a Pokemon.

MerlinI took Andrew's and to the best of my ability, knowing what I know, I went and, which again, Andrew's worked great. But I went in and ripped out as much as I could of all the different things. And I think I left it with just capture this text and do lat long. I mean, like, I thought, what if I took everything out of this? And you know what? Surprisingly, it worked really fast on my Mac. But then when I was out and about during the day, I tried it a couple times. It's still not quite there. And I don't think it's his fault.

I think I don't, there's something about this we're going to need to, like, maybe somebody who's really smart about this stuff will be able to say, well, one thing you're trying to do here, you know, let's just think about the kinds of things that I use when I use these things. Things like, you use a get, right? Like you'll say, control this house, or you'll say, get this device. Do you know what I mean? Like, I would not be surprised. I could not find a way to benchmark this. I was kind of surprised because I think even like Automator has that. I was kind of surprised there wasn't a way to say, yeah, and this took this many milliseconds.

This took that many milliseconds. But I would not be at all surprised to learn, if you ask me to estimate using relative numbers, right, not to give like an exact unit, But if you ask me using relative numbers to say how computationally or temporally expensive this is, I bet I would get over half of them wrong. Like I don't know what takes more or less time. I don't know what causes like a – what do you want to call it? A log jam? I don't know when the gating factors come in.

Are there things that could be done in parallel? Are there things like that? But like I'm more actually fucking more pumped than ever to do this because now it feels like a challenge, like an actual capital C challenge.

AlexAnd you answered basically my main question for you was going to be, did you find a difference? Because if like after you stripped everything out, because the difference between Andrew's voice log and Metal Matt's bike log is like 20 actions or so. And so I thought maybe, okay, Metal Map, maybe this will work.

MerlinReally, if one of those, if it ends up that one of those is solving a large prime number, just because it's one action doesn't mean it's going to be fast.

AlexRight. They're not all created equal. That's the thing is I don't, right, right, right. But I figured there must be like something maybe. But no, they –

MerlinI refuse to do any work. I refuse to do any work about this. I want to ignite. I want to excite. Here's the one bit of work that I'm going to do about this, you and I are going to do about this, which is this. First, principles, Clarice. Let's take a step back. All of the things being equal, straight off the dome, don't overthink it. If you had to say something out loud and have a way to see the written version of that later, how would you do it right now?

AlexI would say remind me.

MerlinI'll cheat and say, let's go to the first one. I would make a reminder. I would say, hey, dingus, remind me to try a thing. That is the first way I could think of to do that. And what are we not getting out of that, or what are we getting that we don't want? This is a rhetorical question. I mean, the answer to the rhetorical question is, it really would be useful to have that data was captured stuff. Well, then in that case, well, if you could do this with a reminder, why don't you make the reminder like one of my fancy shortcuts reminders that does stuff like, you know, says when it was created.

Like I've created reminders that are like cooking reminders where it does write down. Have you ever done this? You don't realize this until it's too fucking late, which is like if you create any kind of a thing about a future time or event without taking note of when it went in. Let me count the ways you fuck yourself. If you use your sous vide cooker or really any kind of cooker, but especially a sous vide. With a sous vide cooker, if you didn't write down what time it went in, you're going to be so fucked. Because you know what happens? Sometimes for whatever reason, it loses a connection. Sometimes it turns off.

Sometimes somebody accidentally unplugs it. Sometimes something happens. If you have no idea, like, when it was going to be done or when it started, how do you even, how do you fix that? And with a reminder, if you say, if you, you know, the thing is, this is all so easy to use if you use it often. Like, you could really, what's an alarm? What's a reminder? What's a timer? Well, they do mean different things. Like, sometimes by accident, because I'll use one kind of, you know what I mean? Sometimes for the Google product, I'll say this or for the – you know what I mean?

But the one I tend to do across voice devices for food is I tend to say to whatever, hey, dingus, set a 10-minute pasta timer. Now, another way to say that is – or like me when I'm making my iced tea here at the office, hey, dingus, remind me about iced tea in four minutes. Well, now that's a reminder. That's not a timer. But then what's another way to do that? oh shit, I put the turkey in, I know it needs to come out at 4 p.m. This is where I want to strangle my wife and my love.

My wife and my love will create something and say, set an alarm for 4 p.m. I'm like, oh my god. Really? Set an alarm for 4 p.m.? Sweetheart, what is the alarm for? Oh, I'll know.

AlexOh no.

MerlinWhat if anything goes wrong? That's not going to show up on the screen, whereas If I say that to the Google device, not only will it show up on the screen, if I say set a nine-minute pasta timer, not only is it on the screen, but it gives me a delightful image of pasta and plays a little racist Mario song.

AlexOh, my goodness.

MerlinDoes it ever do it? It plays the dun-da-dun-da song.

AlexDying American.

MerlinLet's see if I can generate it.

AlexYes, please. Let's see.

MerlinHey, Google. Is that a one-minute pasta timer?

AlexOkay. A one-minute timer called pasta. Starting now.

MerlinOkay. I will take a photo. I've now got a little bowl of pasta with little memados. So you've never done this or gotten this? No. Oh, my God. I'm so glad to be here for this.

AlexI don't have a Google Mini or a...

MerlinIf you want an actual voice device that hears you and works, it's far and away the best.

AlexBut I don't...

MerlinI know. You want your like, you like your chappy tubes.

AlexI do.

Merlin30 seconds, 29 seconds, 28 seconds. It's ticking down. I'll send you this picture. And by the way, if I say, for example, scallop timer, it shows a picture of seafood. Now I want to make sure I get this nearby and have it nice and loud because if it plays the song, I think it's gonna, we might want to ding out after this. Is that okay?

AlexYes, please.

Merlin10, 9. Okay, come on, Mario. You can do it. Three, two... Your pasta timer is up.

Hey, it's an ogul boss!

293. Why Alex Don’t Exist

Show notes

Transcript

293. Why Alex Don’t Exist

Show notes

Transcript

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