299. Maggie Haberman’s Toilet

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge. Watch Friday night baseball.

MerlinIs that what we're doing? We're listening to audio? when we record? Should I cue something up?

AlexI was listening to a Pokemon Go podcast, as is tradition. Welcome to Dubai Friday. Good after morning, Merlin Mann. How are you?

MerlinHello, Alex.

AlexHello.

MerlinI was just about to text you to say, that's a good distinction.

AlexOh.

MerlinDistinction between work and business. That's good.

AlexYes.

MerlinIt reminds me a little bit The one that I like that I certainly didn't invent is the difference between – I mean you could say between management and leadership. But I like putting that as the difference between a leader, a boss, and a manager.

AlexOh, that's good.

MerlinI think the Venn diagram for that, it can be really interesting. Did you want to get back to your show? Did you want to get back to your Pokey's Men? Pokey's Day? No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no.

AlexI've become obsessed with what John Darnielle said.

MerlinYou have become obsessed with something?

AlexMe? I'm fixating on something?

MerlinAll you listen to is the Mountain Goats interviews.

AlexI didn't listen. It was a New Yorker feature. But the idea of like, oh, it's not unhealthy to love work. It's unhealthy how we have framed work and the C word.

MerlinIt's all about the frame. That's two good distinctions for you.

AlexYeah, I just feel a little bit lost. I've always been described as a self-starter. I don't think that's true. It's just that I see something that needs to be started. Oh, I guess that is the definition of a self-starter. Never mind. Okay.

MerlinYou've been other described. You've been told, Alex has been told that they are a self-starter.

AlexI'm a self-starter. That's a positive trait, apparently.

MerlinSo I've been told that I don't live up to my potential, which is true.

AlexOh, well, it's good to know our limits.

MerlinShow me anyone who actually lived up to their potential. Show me. Jesus Christ.

AlexWait, wait, wait. Oh, no. He, if that were true.

MerlinIf there's anybody who was in Dutch with God and could have gotten out of it, you know, I think Job is up there too, I guess. If we're just restricting it to the Bible. You know, Paul. Now, Paul started out before the scales fell from his eyes on the road to Damascus and he discovered his calling. Wasn't he like a rich guy? I feel like I want to say. Wasn't Paul like a merchant or something? What was Paul's occupation?

AlexI'm not sure.

MerlinBut everybody in the Bible is either. Good writer. Love letters.

AlexYes. They're either rich, a temple leader, poor, or a slut. Because those are like the main occupations. Yeah, because wasn't Noah rich?

MerlinWas he like a Sadducee or a Pharisee?

AlexThat's what it's. Yep. God. The further away I get from Catholic school, the more I emotionally yield.

MerlinSomeday I will become the first pope. I will wear the first pointy hat. Do you like Jesus Christ Superstar?

Alexit's fine

Merlinmy mind is clear right now you want to hear the whole thing i'll do the whole thing for you oh the whole jesus christ superstar you are the christ you're the great jesus christ

Alexyou want to hear the whole thing i'll do it for you i don't know how to love him normally i'm happy to go in with the bits this is still abort abort that's apparently one thing jesus didn't like i love what you said because i was

Merlinthinking uh and i'm interrupting you to say that you said what i was thinking because that's what i do is that uh it's the frame that's the problem if you okay okay okay listen listen i idiotically like i do once a week i looked at my local uh my local fish wrapper i was at sfgate.com and i saw a, I don't, you know, I hate when people say this about me, either as a verb or as a noun, but a bit of a rant about Malcolm Gladwell. And what I said to you, what I said, I says to Alex, I says, I says, what'd I say?

AlexI say, I said, I said, while I dislike, this is how I read Merlin Mann tweets. While I dislike the mean slash breezy tone of this, I agree with a lot of the basics. That's you. That's what you sound like.

MerlinThat's a tweet. That's what I sound like when I tweet to you in iMessages.

AlexUh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes. Tweet, tweet. I was moving on. I was moving on. Okay. What does this mean?

MerlinAnd, you know, I don't want to get in a whole, like, thing about this with people. But, you know, and we've talked some about turns out culture here. I mean, I think as recently as last week. But we haven't done a deep dive on exactly what that is. I think there might be an episode of Rectives where we exactly talked about this. We talked about, you know, the Proust guy. Bruce was a – Bruce is a metascientist or whatever. That guy, Jonah Lehrer. But, you know, without welcoming too much of my own rant about Malcolm Gladwell, what this person in their rant said – we'll put in notes.

Fine. Fuck it. We'll amplify. We'll amplify the signal. Signal boost.

AlexI'm Maggie Haberman.

MerlinOh, my God. Did you see me on Slack? Did you see me on Slack?

AlexI did. I did. We both – table it. We'll talk about Margaret later.

MerlinShe seems like the most unhappy, successful person in America.

AlexThat's correct.

MerlinShe has a resting dissatisfaction face title.

But anyway, the point of this article, which I think, you know, is what's the word people use? It's a jeremiad.

AlexTo get clicks is the technical term.

MerlinIt's a jeremiad is an old-timey word. It's a polemic, right? It's a rant. But it's a rant that, you know, I think is not without a basis. And this fellow is saying, you know, Malcolm Gladwell goes on. He's talking specifically about this one podcast interview Malcolm Gladwell did where he, it sounds like, again, reading this jeremiad, that Malcolm Gladwell is now all about, oh, you know, Americans need to get back to the office because this is how we have a sense of belonging and all that kind of stuff.

And I don't have a super strong opinion about that with regard to Malcolm Gladwell. But the thing that irks me, I'll just say about a lot of Turns Out guys, and they're usually guys, is the using an example, using – first of all, like this guy said, like I said last week, Malcolm Gladwell is a really good writer. He's a really entertaining writer. How can you not love what he writes? He's really – he's a very good writer. But, you know, without even getting in the weeds about what his expertise is –

Well, and again, I'm not here to stipulate what this guy stipulates, which is he's an ad guy. He doesn't even have a degree in psychology or whatever. Like I'm not sure that disqualifies you. But what I do have – the part I find irksome about what turns out people in general in particular – There's the one thing, which is like a medical school or some organization puts out a press release with incredibly novel results. Have those results been replicated? They have not. Will they be replicated?

Never. But then you use that to say, well, it turns out that people who drink six glasses of lemonade every morning are 7% more successful or whatever. But sometimes it's even more like intuitively counterintuitive where you go – think about nagging, the whole idea of nagging. Like simple people like me thought I could make girls like me by being nice to them. Well, it turns out that girls like it when you disrespect them and call them a tit bitch or whatever.

I don't even know how to do it. But then they'll be like, ooh, look at that guy. Well, see, it turns out that the thing you thought intuitively is wrong. Everything you know about X is wrong. Here's seven things we learned today about this. And like the thing is, how does he – so the one part is like this whole like, okay, fine. Somebody read – there's a kind of piece on NPR even in the pre-hidden brain days where like I could tell – you can always tell it's the penultimate paragraph.

when seen in writing. It's the penultimate paragraph of the piece where they mention that blah, blah, blah organization announces blah, blah, blah results from blah, blah, blah science with a capital of Psi. And therefore, so like, you know what I mean? You get this whole like, you know, hey, it may not be working from home, may not be as good for you as you think. And then they mentioned this is actually the result of like some coalition of big pharma cigarettes and Elon Musk conducted this experiment or whatever.

But so the first part is that it really is like press release journalism with science spray on it a lot of the time. But then the thing Malcolm Gladwell is so uniquely gifted at doing is to tell you a story, tell you an anecdote. Sometimes it's about some squirrely, like everybody would like their own private Oliver Sacks. Everybody wants to discover some incredibly novel thinker working in obscurity who's figured something out that nobody else has figured out.

And Malcolm Gladwell has – he's wall-to-wall chock-a-block with these stories of this person he talked to who has this insight into something. So it's an anecdote. It's an example. It's something. And when you read it, you go, oh, well, that really makes a lot of sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

AlexYeah. He was my favorite young adult writer. I enjoyed him a lot in middle school.

MerlinI loved – I mean like this rantor on sfgate.com. Please remember to like and subscribe. It really helps other people discover the fish wrapper. He – I think he's a guy – the things that we remember – what do you remember from Malcolm Gladwell? I want to hear yours and I'll tell you mine.

Hush puppies got popular because of hipsters in Brooklyn. There's a person who can just look at a statue for a second and intuitively know whether it's authentic or not. You know, these are things from.

AlexOh, I don't even remember that.

MerlinWell, that's the first story in Blink.

AlexIs that from Tipping Point? Really?

MerlinYeah. Remember the statue? The guy who can like instantly eyeball whether something.

AlexOh, yes. Okay.

MerlinBecause in a Blink. And the whole, not the whole thesis. I haven't read it in 15 years. But that was the tipping point was the one that had the hush puppies one. What are other ones where you I know you're not a cocktail party person at the time you were very young. But when you would hear these stories and relate them to somebody, which I'm going to guess, begin by saying, well, you know, it turns out that. Do you have other examples, flashbulb moments from reading his books that stick out to you?

AlexAbsolutely not. In fact, I remember thinking I never want to talk about a Malcolm Gladwell book because I don't want to be called. No, but back when he was the guy.

MerlinBack when we all loved him.

Alexright no but specifically because i don't want to be a tit bitch i don't want to like rain on someone's parade and then get the like side eye like well actually that's i'm gonna start

Merlinnagging you yeah like oh hey hey hey tit bitch uh exactly nice nice haircut smart nice haircut is it supposed to look that way cool shirt do they make him for they

Alexyou you read a lot don't you it's you read too much i think is what you think i said one time

Merlinno i that was i love books oh i love books me and my kitties get together we just look at my books books unfortunate smelting accident um the thing is he does the stories he does those things i mean

AlexThe 10,000 hours thing was always my favorite.

MerlinThat's the one that has made me most long-term angry. The example of the Beatles, right?

AlexYes. And it's exhausting. I don't know. That was the time.

MerlinBut like when he says that, don't you go, oh, that explains everything in a way that I did. I mean, when you first read it or hear it. And if I remember correctly, this is from memory. But the example in, is it Tipping Point? No, it was in one of the later ones, right?

AlexIt was, I think this was actually, it became big because it was an excerpt.

MerlinLike a New Yorker article or something maybe?

AlexYeah, it was like a preview for his book.

MerlinBut the idea is that, roughly speaking, forgive me, Dr. Gladwell, if I'm saying this wrong, but I think the original idea was that for somebody to get to like an expert level, to get really good at what they do, they have to spend 10,000 hours at it. Now, I bet if I went back and read the entirety of whatever he said, there's a lot more to it than that. But the basic idea, the sticky, which is part of the problem, the sticky part of the idea was saying that if you look at people who are very successful at what they do, they didn't get great at it until they'd spent 10,000 hours at it.

And that the example, if memory serves, is the Beatles didn't just arrive on a plane in the United States in 1964, having been together for a couple of weeks. They played in the, you know, in the bars. And it is actually legit crazy what the Beatles did. I mean, what the amount of time they would play sometimes eight hours a day.

AlexAnd I can't believe I forgot the name of it. The book was Outliers because.

MerlinOh, there you go.

AlexYeah, which is, you know, because the Beatles are perfect.

MerlinBecause statistics. Well, okay. I'm sorry. I'm going on a rant here. I had pretty good sleep and I've had two iced teas. But, you know, like you think about that for a second. Oh, so the most interesting part of that in some ways is that there's a semi-quantifiable amount of time that somebody has to do something to get good at it. Now, a version of that same observation that's a little less fancy that I heard in high school and I still think about all the time with regard to guitar, it's not how many years you play, it's how many hours you play.

And I think that's really smart. That's true for everything. Like if you've quote unquote done something for 30 years but haven't done it like numerous times per week, if you haven't had a purposeful sort of mindful practice of getting – practice the noun of getting better at it. Okay, when you go like, oh, I see. And then – so then that leads to this idea of like, huh, it seems like there might be some kind of a magic number out there for people, you know, to get good at this. But the – because of the implication. But the implication – and he might have said the opposite of this, but what a lot of people I feel like took away from that was if you do something for 10,000 hours, you will get good at it.

And there are people who have played a musical instrument for many more than 10,000 hours who still suck.

AlexYep.

MerlinAnd you've never heard of them. The Beatles are probably, on the one hand, they are probably the best example of that that you could find. But on so many levels, it's the most misleading example of that that you could find.

AlexThat's what made me start to feel gross about Malcolm Gladwell, because we're used to people selling ambition with MLMs and stuff like that. But he was selling ideas with a mix of ambition that were misleading. And that is what made it feel really gross.

MerlinBut deliberate or not, I mean, I think the – I feel like the on-the-label attraction of his stuff is what I will probably unfairly call cocktail banter. It's the kind of thing where you could be in a group of people. You go out and you're having dinner. You're having drinks. And somebody says something. And you say, well, I heard a thing recently that blah, blah, blah is blah, blah, blah. The classic turns out story. The thing everybody intuitively believes is incorrect. This counterintuitive explanation not only is the opposite of what you thought, but on a certain amount of reflection, you go, oh, I get it.

And this is a good place to look at – what's the word Max used to use? The advantages of having money, for example. Like one reason I got kind of my own problems with that concept of grit is I wonder how much it controls for who your parents are and how much money you have. Because the exception that proves the rule, because then you always highlight, of course, you highlight this incredibly talented, you know, African-American girl whose father's in jail and the mother's a drug addict.

And she became a doctor at age seven. And you're like, oh, wow, I guess she had grit. and it's like okay but and that applies to everybody mostly how and and i feel like the same thing happens here where it's like then if you just think about that more think i mean the snarky example i just gave which is that people who've done something for 9 000 hours and they haven't gotten good well they just go do another thousand hours well what if they've done it for 40 000 hours and they're still not good and not famous and not whatever and i guess you could say Well, that's not what he's saying. But that's what people took away from it.

And the slightly, not slimy, but cynical take from a Malcolm Gladwell will be, well, you know, that's just an observation about this thing and it doesn't apply to everybody. It's like, well, that's the fucking problem. is like you can if you use canny examples that make an emotional connection with people our our our minds i won't say brains but i think our minds are uniquely tuned to specific stories about specific people and because that uh gets on a level both of the heart

and the mind you make a connection with that you tend to you know what i'm saying like it's Stuff is easy to remember. I mean, not to make it dark, but that whole thing of like, well, why are we still talking about Anne Frank? Well, because like talking about six million people is difficult. But talking about one person hearing one story is understandably like incredibly moving. And in that instance, you know, yeah, that's why we try to personalize things like, you know, somebody who was killed in Ukraine while trying to take their kid to find water or whatever.

Like, that's not cynical. It's a way of telling a story.

AlexSee, you went really dark. I was thinking of, yes, like why we get so angry at a single random person for working at Lockheed Martin, who seemed like a total bitch. But then that person becomes the representation of of hypocrisy versus Holocaust.

MerlinBut there's so many, so many Holocaust hypocrites out there.

AlexYou know what I'm saying? Oh, and Frank had white privilege, so she doesn't matter anymore.

MerlinWell, you know, she was Dutch, so we have to overlook that.

AlexYeah, not everyone's perfect. There's one line in here, though, from Malcolm Gladwell that is, I don't know, like he seems to circle around this, the rant whore, as you said. But Malcolm Gladwell says, I'm really getting very frustrated with the inability of people in positions of leadership to explain this effectively to their employees.

MerlinThe idea that work from home is not healthy.

AlexRight. And I haven't listened to this interview, but I saw this popping around. Oh, good Lord. And I assume that there's more context to that.

MerlinOf course.

AlexBut of course you can't.

MerlinBut he knows what he's doing. That's the thing.

AlexI don't know if he knows what he's doing because if he, okay, if he was so smart, wouldn't he realize that he's kind of making like blink and outliers and tipping point? All of like all of his turns out have been turns out because at that cocktail banter now, you can be like, wait, that sounds wrong. And you can search for it. And oh, yeah, it is wrong. And that was a weird anecdote. But he's right in that, of course, a boss or a manager can't explain why it's valuable because they don't know how—

MerlinIt doesn't benefit them to figure it out, let alone talk about it.

AlexRight. And they do not have the experience, I assume, or at least I assume that's what he's talking about. These people don't have the experience of what it feels like to be home with kids or in a tiny apartment or any of that stuff. They're like, but we can collaborate on effective ideas.

MerlinAnd right, right, right.

AlexBecause actually the penultimate article of God, what what did they actually call it? The fish wrapper. Did people did you make that up? Is that what people called newspapers?

MerlinNo, I love the San Francisco Chronicle. I used to line my birdcage. Fish wrap. You have fish in a paper or a website.

AlexYeah, that's a you learn a new. See, I don't even believe that's a real phrase. And if I was not recording a podcast, I'd be like, people didn't say that. Anyway, the last Gladwell quote he uses is, if we don't feel like we're part of something important, what's the point?

MerlinWhich is true in obscurity.

AlexYes. And the rancher goes, right? Don't you feel pointless at home? Aren't you just a waste of life who lacks the wherewithal to interact with the world via any other avenue outside of paid work? Don't you want to go to an office where the copier is always busted, the food sucks, the boss is gropey, and the company forces you to watch Malcolm Gladwell speak at a company assembly? Isn't that a basic human need you're depriving yourself of? Which, sure, all of that is true, but that is not what Malcolm Gladwell is saying.

And this guy, as the Internet says, kind of tells it tells on himself by specifically mentioning the company forces you to watch Malcolm Gladwell speak at a company assembly. That is not the majority of American jobs.

MerlinYeah. Why don't you bring it? Why don't you bring me in jobs?

AlexYeah. Like I'd be like, OK, I'll get that job.

MerlinLike I don't need that many one hundred thousand dollar talks this year. If I got five, I'd feel pretty good. But I don't think the message I would like to give in the year of our Lord 2022 would be very attractive to the kind of people who want to hire Malcolm Gladwell.

AlexYeah, I don't know. This guy seems very almost just as out of touch as Malcolm Gladwell. And the same way that I am out of touch as a human being who doesn't go to work at a place where I've never worked at. Well, that's not true. In my the past five years, I've never worked at a place long term that didn't have a professional tit bitch career in my professional tit bitch career. Typically, there's air conditioning.

Typically, it's physically safe. A large machine was not going to crush me. That's not true. A projector did crush me and it broke my hand. Anyway, that was on me. um but like yeah i struggle with a not a lack of purpose but sometimes you're like man i really hate being alone for 12 hours a day and that sounds so very obvious but people just don't

Merlinbut is the but like and that's that's a true fact stated i totally i feel the same way a lot of the time uh not lonely but lonesome sometimes i don't know rarely gonna circle back to that because i

Alexdon't know what the distinction is what other than the adverbiness of it in the in the rules

Merlinof thumb book it says that when you're a guy in a bar trying to pick up a girl you should look lonesome but never lonely what's the difference a cowboy versus an incel all right proceed i'll allow it okay proceed all right but i don't know it but keep an eye on it counselor i got my eye on you mr jones this isn't your show i would like i would like to cross-examine pappy mcboyle charlie day background bird law um i um i i i okay okay i've stolen your world i apologize

i now give back no no i was about i was about to snap on this new petard that i could hoist myself on because there's a piece I have in front of me now. It's in, uh, put in show notes. Uh, this is a piece from the Atlantic in 2010. And, um, well, first of all, let me, let me do another one first, real quick. One of my favorite things Malcolm Glewell ever said, I talked about this on the folder site. I think this was a New Yorker piece and it was a very turned out piece, but as it happened, Hey, isn't it funny how cognitive biases work? Like when you're, your confirmation bias tends to really light up when somebody says something you agree with. And he said the smartest

fucking thing. I don't know if it was he or the quote that he chose, but it was about, I think it was essentially, okay, so Malcolm Gladwell, probably a New Yorker, something like the myth of the paperless office. And you're probably too young to remember this, but there was a time when it was like, this is the year of Linux on the desktop. It was like, we're always like this close to the dream of the paperless office. But of course, You know, we continue to have to have things on paper. And the kind of thing that makes me think that he is a little bit cynical is his insights are so good sometimes that I think he does think about this stuff.

So he said that he read this really good piece on why it's been so – why it is so challenging. You know, classic. rather than just saying stuff like, why don't you just, well, how about we look at why this problem is difficult rather than why your easy solution you just came up with didn't work. There's a lot of reasons why paper is still around. But I think it was the last paragraph. It was something along the lines of, blah, blah, blah. It's not that we need to use less paper. It's that we need to save and keep and file less paper.

And I was like, that exactly nailed it. The real problem is like dealing with paper as a thing that is your truth, that you have to file and keep in places and some kinds of things like that you'll always have to deal with. But okay, that actually becomes good advice in some ways. Like to me, he maybe didn't mean it this way, but I think it's good advice to say to somebody, stop worrying about a noun called the paperless office and start thinking more about how much paper you actually need to process and save. See, stuff like that is like so smart.

And anyway, that's why I feel not that bad saying I think he's a little cynical. This is an article, number two, and then I'll throw it to you. This is from The Atlantic, November 2010. And like I say, I might be petarding myself. Why don't we say that anymore? I might be hoisting myself on this one because this guy is like a low-key hero to me in some ways. But I think – I don't know if he's problematic. I think he was initially like – he was in the Elizabeth Holmes documentary and it seems like he was kind of into Theranos a little bit. There's this guy, okay? I think he's at Stanford.

Is that right? Anyway, this guy named, I've talked about him before. His name's John Iannatus. And he, have we talked about this before?

AlexI don't think so.

MerlinYou can find, it's in the doc if you want to click. So there's this piece in The Atlantic about this, you know, this guy who heads up a group, a school. And the name of this piece is called Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. And so basically this guy, John Iannatus, I think I'm saying that right. He has this group of people whose sole purpose, at least at this time, was to go through and find all of the, like, I could just read this paper and I can tell there's an error.

He can find an error in almost every part of any research project. Like, I haven't read this in a while, but it was like he and his group will go in and all they do is meta studies. They do studies of other studies and they look for problems in methodology in particular. And like once you read this, talk about the road to Damascus, you're like, oh, I see. Like there's so many – and I'm not a scientist, so give me a break. But like it was really illuminating to me. It was around the time I was very interested in, you know, contra turns out culture.

And I was very interested in things like – you've heard the phrase file drawer effect?

AlexNo.

MerlinFile drawer affects a wonderful phrase that describes some gray to black hat research stuff where every time you get the results you didn't want, you put it in a file drawer. The way I was saying to my wife about this is like –

AlexWait, this is confirmation bias basically, right? Or sorry, not confirmation bias, the replica crisis.

MerlinWell, that's what this is. This is ultimately what his whole group is about. But for example, a really cynical example would be, hey, here's a new paper that just, hey, check this out, hidden brain. Turns out that if you use a 1975 nickel and you flip it 100 times, it'll come up heads 72 times. And here's science to show that. Well, if you threw out every result that wasn't the one you wanted and only kept the ones that were the result that you sought, that's called the file drawer effect.

And I think it happens in big and little ways. And it can happen at many levels. So what the, what the, what the neonatus and his group does is they go in and they do stuff like look at, like just the very, like the way you framed a given, you know, study could be a problem. Look at like where, how did you decide who's going to be in this study? Did you control for this? Did you control for that? How did you come up with that P value? All of this stuff. And it's just that ever since this idea got in my head, because Alex, I grew up like anybody else saying if the New York Times or NPR says there's science about something, I go, hmm,

I guess I should drink more coffee, or I guess I should drink less coffee, or I guess I should put wine on my snack wells or whatever, because it helps my heart. Oh, it turns out, turns out that put the dip in your snack wells in red wine makes your heart bloat. Oh, thank you, Shankar Vidanyan. Thank you very much. Super interesting, turns out. I don't know. Once that idea got in my head, though, I've gotten skeptical enough to, at least with my meager ability sometimes at least go read the abstract for something. And of course, I still rarely understand it. But, you know, in some ways, the bottom-ish line is that if we have a hot take

for something and then cherry pick a result and then support it with an anecdote about a lovable old man who lives in a lighthouse, that becomes a very sticky idea.

AlexMm-hmm. Literally a picture. Even this anecdote about an anecdote.

MerlinOh, hello. Hello, Malcolm. Welcome back to the lighthouse. Can I make you a tea? Turns out tea makes your heart smaller. And he has a beloved three-legged dog named Gus. Oh, I like that anecdote. I'll tell that anecdote. That's good. Thank you, Malcolm.

But it is a good distinction because like in addition to the – going back to the beginning, like the whole like leader versus boss or house, work versus office, those kinds of seemingly meaningless distinctions. It's like just because somebody is a great boss does not make them a good leader. A great boss is –

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinWell, no, but think about like, well, who's the one who decided that boss is great? The main way that person wants to be a great boss is in a way that makes their boss manager or leader happy. It's like that day you figure out that HR works for them, not you.

HR is basically like junior lawyers. You know, they're like – they're basically just there to protect the company. But they do it in a way of making it look like they're there to like make sure your vacation days are used.

AlexThat's why I think it's fascinating that not every, but a lot of the game scandals are like, ah, this place didn't even have an HR group. And it's like, well, yes, that's just stupid because they're a small, dumb company. But if there was an HR group, that isn't good for the employees. That's not going to help them.

MerlinIt's not like getting to choose an intimacy consultant. I mean, there are people who are there to make sure that it's difficult to sue the company and win. That's what HR does.

AlexThey're there to cover up the bullshit.

MerlinThey didn't even have an HR department. Yeah, because, you know, the culture of HR department, it's a lot like an ombudsman. It's mostly an independent office. They just walk around and like, you good? You good?

AlexYeah. You know what? Yeah. It's like having, yeah, your, what is it? Your academic counselor is there to like manage your emotions. No, no, no. They want you to get out of the school and get a job so that you can have a – like so the statistics can say, yeah, 98% of our class graduated. Yay.

Claps for you.

MerlinWell, and if you get more people to apply to your college, your acceptance rate will get more selective. And the way you get more people to – I mean, you know, like New College was anomalous in a lot of ways. And one of them was that our, the college I went to, the acceptance rate and new college, I imagine this has gotten even more crazy over the years. Well, yeah, it was a good school for what it was. But, you know, like I say, when I went there, there were 520 students, 42 faculty members.

So we did have approximately 9 to 1, you know, 10 to 1 student-faculty ratio. That hits high marks. But here's the thing. Once we were in 1985, probably, in U.S. News and World Report as, you know, they do the annual college things. Anyway, there was one year where New College.

AlexOh, do I.

MerlinWell, New College was featured heavily as the best public college in America. And here's why, blah, blah, blah. And it was all the stuff that makes people love New College, like, you know, or interested at least in New College. academic contracts, no grades, independent study project, write a thesis, baccalaureate committee, all that stuff that attracted me in part. But you've been in U.S. News & World Report and they say, wow, this school, they have this acceptance.

And it's like golf. A lower acceptance rate is considered. It makes you more selective is the term. And we were on par with Harvard. But Harvard has thousands and thousands and thousands of those poor son of a bitch undergrads that are funding all the other programs. Well, in New College, there's 520 students. And so if you're in U.S. News and World Report, guess what? The next year, your acceptance rate has gotten even more selective because now they've heard about you. You know what I mean? It's like the denominator changes in some ways.

Is that right? Yeah, the numerator is always 520 or whatever. Nice.

AlexYeah, 520, please.

MerlinAnyway, enough about that. Malcolm Gladwell, I'm sure he's a nice guy.

AlexHe seems like a...

MerlinHe's a person of color. You shouldn't make fun of him.

AlexI didn't know that he... I think most people don't know that he's black or whatever he wants and comes up.

MerlinCanadian blacks, they call them. They put a U in it. B-L-A-U.

AlexCanadian bloke.

MerlinTo quote my kid at age three, that's not funny. That's not even a joke.

AlexOh, children are – it's upsetting when children are smart. I don't like it. Don't like it. Don't like it when my niece says something profound. Because I know it's – she doesn't mean to be profound. But I'm like, no, no, don't like that. Don't like that.

MerlinI was thinking about that this morning. I was thinking about it this morning because I was quote-teating the tit bitch Isaac Chotner, who's writing I love and who's writing terrifies me, about how to just get this thing out of me. Because he was saying, oh, there's this crazy thing Trump said. And he's like, everybody's so credulous when Trump says something. And I was like, I think about this every day. And I especially think about it every time anybody says and you do remember during the debate. When Mr. Trump said, proud boys, stand by and stand down, he was addressing them and telling them to stand by and stand down.

OK, well, first of all, stand down means don't do anything.

AlexAll right. I'm going to be the well actually person. He did not say stand down. I hold on. What's he say?

MerlinMy point is that he did the thing, Alex. He did the thing where he started talking and didn't know what he actually wanted to say. Yes, right. And he was sundowning and he malapropped. And he said this thing that makes no fucking sense. And yet to this day, like Andrea Mitchell will be there very credulously saying, well, you know, there's history with the Proud Boys. He's telling these – sending them secret hand signals through the debates. And it's like, no, he's not. He's losing – he's lost his fucking mind. His brain is like tapioca.

And so when he barfs out something and then people – you ever notice like even on cable news, people would not read his tweets verbatim. They would correct. They couldn't stand to read his tweet as illiterate as it was. The guy is not hooked up right and we make him seem like he's better than he is when we glide over what's obviously just him. Oh, you remember the one we used to talk about, the and thing he does?

AlexThe and where he just keeps saying things.

MerlinHe reads something. Yeah.

AlexAnd then he adds something to it.

MerlinHe says the wrong thing.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYeah.

AlexSorry, go on.

MerlinLike, you know, very, very, very important time. Gosh, I can't even do it. I can't even emulate it. But he'll say something like, you have to read something like, you know, Tubes, both toilet paper and fellatio and fallopian. Like he just adds the correct word after the word and and keeps talking like he didn't just fuck up. Like nobody heard him just say the obviously wrong thing.

Oh, Mr. Trump, he read good.

AlexMost good. Most, most good.

MerlinGet a toilet and not even a little fart would fit in it. Come in and they're jumping around saying to the turbo team. And they say, don't run. Walk. You're not on the turf between me. Go to your room to try and read your art book.

AlexI don't know. That's not funny. That's not even a joke. That's not even a reference. What is happening? No.

MerlinWhat's that a reference to? I don't know. I have no idea. Jesus fucking Christ, Alex. I have no idea. I've reached the end of my rope with you. The challenge this week is going to be to watch everything John Mulaney has ever done and to watch every episode of I Think You Should Leave because that's the very first sketch in the very first episode of I Think You Should Leave. Has this ever happened to you? The two guys come over and they take, for two hours they go in on the bathroom, taking turns taking mud pies? And then you find a receipt from Home Depot and they replace your toilet with

a joke toilet? Not even a fart would fit in? Has this ever happened to you? Call me now, please.

AlexI can only keep so many toilets in my mind at once.

MerlinThe toilets of my mind.

AlexMaggie Haberman's toilet is currently in my mind.

MerlinOkay, I love that band.

Alexwait so along with your sympathy for alex jones i was talking about the torn up documents you

Merlinwant to talk about torn up documents i didn't want to talk about the torn you put it in you

Alexput it in the doc i just wanted to talk about the toilet it was a funny picture of a toilet

MerlinYou wanted to prove to me that you use pin board. I get it.

AlexNo, I like that. Wait, what?

MerlinYou?

AlexI wanted to prove that I used. Oh, probably because I pin.

MerlinShe's got a mayonnaise egg thing going there. She calls it a mayonnaise egg. What can I do by Friday? Where Alex points out that I like things. I'm a fan, first and foremost.

AlexHer? I like how Arrested Development is under retro TV shows on Netflix. That made me feel real good.

MerlinDid you ever watch the Mitch Hurwitz version of that bad season where he supposedly redid the episodes? Did you ever watch that?

AlexNo. Like when it was the Netflix exclusive and it wasn't very good.

MerlinWell, they had their comeback one, which was weird and not good.

AlexOh, yeah, because it was each character.

MerlinIt was per character. It didn't really work. Well, supposedly he went and re-edited that season not in that style. I'll find out.

AlexThe linear cut. Okay.

MerlinI like that you're using Pinboard. I added a challenge this week to rediscover Pinboard.

AlexOoh. You said something that I really, really liked about Pinboard.

MerlinGood.

AlexTo the point that I thought that I had screenshotted it, but I didn't. Oh, messages. You are not syncing.

Oh, I just read this. Parentheses. I have driving focus mode and so I was driving yesterday

MerlinI like that you've got a robot responding to me

Alexyeah and it sends hello Alex here I'm driving with do not disturb while driving turned on I'll see your message soon and they said hello Merlin here I'm reading your message about driving I support your driving

MerlinI want to be an ally

AlexI don't like how driving is used twice in this and I want to be able to edit it, but you can't anyway. File to radar slash feedback.

MerlinWell, mine or yours?

AlexNo, mine. I hate how it says I'm driving with do not disturb. Excuse me. Turn on.

MerlinI'm driving. Show some respect for my journey on wheels. My lived experience behind the wheel.

AlexI hate that guy.

MerlinWhy does he talk like that?

AlexOh, you called pinboard pure, which I didn't necessarily read it as angelic because you and Roderick talk about words mean things.

MerlinOh, I could have written more because I mean, yeah.

AlexBut it's it is. It's so pure because there's just so little to it. But the thing – yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

MerlinExactly. But like there's a thing Jeff Veen said a long time ago that struck me as smart. I think this might have been on the interview we did with him and me and Dan. But I don't know. He said something about the way they developed. I don't know if this is a Google or a Chartbeat or where it was. But they – at least I'll probably explain this wrong. But I remember hearing about a thing in the early 2000s where you write the documentation before you make the app or the – Oh, yeah. But I don't know if that's true. But what he said that was so smart was what we do is we build the API first and then make the web page.

Today you look at that and go, wow, that makes a lot of sense. But one thing that's neat about – I don't know. I can't – I don't know. Do I want to pin this on or credit this to Web 2.0? But one of the things, you know, we got into where people were doing, you know, in order for Web 2.0 or Ajax, if you like, to do its thing, you had to have a web page that, you know, validated. You need to have, understand what you're doing with names and IDs and all that kind of stuff. But one of the things I feel like, thank God, Ajax and Web 2.0 brought this along is that URLs are not just meaningful, but they're hackable.

and to this day like i mean you know if you have you ever like wanted to go find a like say a tweet that somebody had and so you go twitter.com slash and then start writing in the name and like you know at any point you can change anything in that path to get something different like i i love the beauty of an api where it um what's the word i'm looking for exposes what's happening in the url So if I go – what's an example recently? So we've got – I'm not encouraging you people to follow this at all, but Alex and I are trying to use Pinboard for collecting links.

And so we made up, as the English say, a nonce tag. But you get T colon or like U colon. U colon is the username. T colon is the tag name. But you don't need to go and do a search on a web page to change that. But if you understand that the way the API works is, well, not works, but the way you interact with the API is not just through a web page. But you can also just, you can know with confidence if you change this path in the URL, you know you'll get this result.

When I say pure, I mean, it really is about doing this one thing. But there's so much smart technology behind what makes that easy and what makes that simple. But it's, you know, it's like the guy, Shay, I guess, is that how you pronounce it? Like he knew what he was doing here, man. Like it's still up. It still works great. And it is very pure in that way.

AlexI don't know how much. Oh, God. You might be able to hear a Tamagotchi beeping in the background because there's a lost Tamagotchi in my room that hasn't died yet.

MerlinOh, no.

AlexMy Tamagotchi. I can't find it. So it literally. It's like I'm sick. Feed me. Feed me. And I don't. I can't find it.

MerlinI'm going through the opposite of that right now where there's a Hue – let's see. Well, there's an Eve room somewhere in our hallway that I can't find. And there's a Hue sensor somewhere in our lounge that I can't find. And I've done things like – but the Hue still registers like light, like how many lux and stuff. So I've tried turning lights on and off and using a flashlight because there's no find my for these things. Like I want it back.

It's out there collecting data. And then eventually the battery will die. And it'll be like tears and rain. I'll never find it again. It's probably organized somewhere.

AlexI have all the serial numbers for all of my home devices.

MerlinMe too. But I didn't know where they are. Me too. I've got it all in home. Which one?

AlexHomelogger?

MerlinHomelog? Homelog?

AlexIt's a purple. Fuck. It's a purple.

MerlinYeah, that's purple. Do you ever have trouble? So like I just installed a new smoke detector that has HomeKit integration. And like it was kind of a pain to set up just a little bit. But, you know, okay, you get a new device and you do it through HomeKit. And then like you can say, okay, I'm in Home Pass now. And I would like to add that to my corpus. I want to know the, you know, HomeKit number for this and the serial number and all that stuff. So if you say add existing, it usually works.

Do you ever have problems scanning the code with your camera and it not working? Is that just me? Oh, gosh. Because the other great thing is you can do it. You can do it. You can start. The thing is, again, APIs. You can go into HomeDash with a new device, and it'll say, do you want to add an existing device or do you want to add a new device? And I've had this work before. So you've got a brand new device. You just took an Eve something out of the box. You can scan the code inside HomeDash. It will add it with the serial number and everything to HomeDash.

They have reports you can print out. That developer is so cool. And then that will get added to HomeKit. But I don't know why sometimes the camera doesn't go.

AlexYeah, I can't figure out. Sometimes you can't even enter it with your fingers.

MerlinIt's weird.

AlexOh, I've never had that. Huh.

MerlinYeah.

AlexI always assume it's my fault. Or at least it is indeed always my problem. And often it is my fault. So I'm just like, all right, we'll just put this in my hand. Kind of like how when for years I know that we always go back to Evernote and the one time I do truly feel old is when I'm like remember when Evernote was good. But that's I thought for years that it's like oh no I'm just using it wrong. And it's because I've been so spoiled with apps that like Marco makes.

I mean Instapaper I know he has not had something to or anything to do with for a long time. But we should talk to that guy.

MerlinIt still works. And there's still, as much as I'm loving Matter, which you turned me on to, there's still stuff that works a lot better in Instapaper.

AlexYeah, yeah. Like Matter is an awesome service. I really like their app. But sometimes it breaks.

MerlinI wish it could automatically keep pulling down my Instapaper stuff. It does the initial sync eventually. But I kind of wish it would go to both places. And I love that Instapaper, you can send it to Kindle. You can pipe it into Pinboard. So everything I bookmark in Instapaper automatically gets added to Pinboard as private and read later. Just because it's always there if I ever want to search against it.

AlexIt's so cool. And I wonder, and this is Marco and underscore, very good at this in Under the Radar, I think.

MerlinGreat show. It's almost never longer than 30 minutes. I love that David has to say that every time. Almost not.

AlexMost programmers and developers, I think, don't necessarily describe the brilliance of their work and not necessarily out of humility. It's just hard to articulate why something is so good.

MerlinI can't even imagine being David and having my head in that development stuff on so many different apps and so many things, so many different states. I would find it very difficult to be able to talk intelligently to a consumer about that at all. I think it's amazing that he does it as well as he does.

AlexYeah, which is why I find Under the Radar so fascinating. Because even if I don't know what they're talking about, they can articulate when it is like a normal – like why something is good for normal means.

MerlinIt's a secret. Well, it's also a secret feelings podcast.

AlexYeah.

MerlinBecause, I mean, I don't think they intended it to be that way. I imagine for people who are developers, there's all kinds of ways it's useful. But even a whacker like me who doesn't – I'm not a developer. I don't really have any interest in becoming a developer. But I like hearing the stories about how they think about their work. It's still – I mean, I wouldn't want to – I hate to say that it's useful. But it's useful. But it's really fascinating. It is. It's like Masterclass. Like, I don't know if you need to subscribe. No.

AlexI mean, yeah.

MerlinOh, my God. I love that they gave me a free subscription. And what I love is, like, what I don't want to say to people in the ad reads or otherwise is that if you watch the David Lynch things, you'll become a filmmaker like David Lynch. What I will say is, like, Alex, this is my, what do they call it? My stake in the ground. My stake in the ground. I like hearing almost anybody who's good at what they do and is excited about what they do. I love hearing anybody in that position talk about what they do.

AlexYeah. We are both fans of competence porn. Yeah.

MerlinYeah, that's fair. Yeah, I think that's true.

AlexBut I'm not saying like it's a bad thing. Like porn, I think I said, I don't know where I said this, but like porn has a time and a place.

MerlinWell, I also like competence. No, it's okay. Don't dwell on it. I also like competence porn movies. Like I'm not immune to that. I enjoyed The Martian. Like, I like that he figures out how to grow potatoes on Mars. Like, I love that kind of stuff. Or, you know, again, another space one. Think of something like Apollo 13. But I like competence porn as a genre.

And, but it's, I don't know. I feel like we learn so much. There's this website I used to be obsessed with that I think is long gone. I've tried to find it. I don't know where it is. But there's a site in the 43 Folders.

AlexDoes it have folders?

MerlinNo, but in those days, that's funny.

AlexThat's funny, Bullseye.

MerlinBack in the day, there was a site, and I don't know if it was one per day or how it worked, but it was just a website where somebody with a pretty specific job tells you the best trick about their job.

AlexYes! Holy shit, yes! Oh, God.

MerlinI learned so much from that site.

AlexHold on, marker. Hey, Parapals, seriously, if you can find this website, please, please send it. Also, the website that talked about app screens, it was Coxmas before Coxmas. Anyway. Oh, I blacked out there. What was that, Merlin? I want to find the website. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it was so good.

MerlinHow do you want people to contact you?

AlexJust, I don't, who cares? I am now very online.

MerlinShouldn't you provide an avenue for that? You just threw down a marker.

AlexCall to action. Call to Twitter.

MerlinTalk to me on Twitter. Okay. And make sure you mention them.

AlexAt AlexTalk on Twitter.

MerlinIt really helps increase engagement.

Alexoh i got accused of that the other day when i asked um someone dm me because i was like do you know what pushing rope means and someone's like i know you're trying to get your twitter numbers

Merlinup by getting more engagement what twitter number does that help wait what twitter number does that

Alexhelp is there a twitter number i'm not aware of because apparently it's like oh this makes the algorithm go show your tweet more which is probably true but most of the people follow me on twitter

MerlinBecause the old man at Twitter who sits on a throne goes, it appears that Alexandra is getting more engagement. Let's give them more of whatever we have here.

AlexYes, give me more of this.

MerlinHere's the two I always remember. Customer service person. I know this is at this point kind of old, but when I first heard this, I was like, this is the fucking smartest thing I've ever heard in my life. Customer service person in a kind of tech-adjacent customer service role, you know the thing where you ask somebody – and I click you haven't heard this. Play along. Okay. So customer service person says, have you tried – let's start with turning it off for a few seconds and then turning it back on. Well, you know, okay.

Well, they're going to say they did that. Okay. Well, let's try this. Try unplugging it and then plugging it back in after a few seconds. people will say they did that. Okay, here's what the person says. No, here's what you do. You say, look, I know this is a long shot because you've already restarted, but it never hurts to try. If you ever had a Nintendo, you'll know about this. Could you do me a favor? Could you pull out the plug and could you lightly, just very lightly, blow on the prongs of the power pig, the cord,

and then just wait a few seconds and plug it back in? It probably won't do anything, but it might help. and miraculously it fixes the problem because why because you told them to turn it off and on and they said i already did that you told to unplug it and plug it back in but you gave them something extremely specific to do that ensured they unplugged it and plugged it back in how brilliant is that and they get to salvage their dignity they don't have to you know because people are i think a little bit i'm defensive sometimes with customer service people it's like hey

Hey, listen, I'm a seasoned technologist. Don't tell me to do stuff with plugs. I'm smart. Isn't that a good one? Blow the dust out of the prongs.

AlexThat genuinely, I think, has helped me with nearly a decade of any sort of troubleshooting in my life, whether it be tech support for my parents.

MerlinIt works for so many different things.

AlexLet's say you have a boss who doesn't like to admit he's wrong, but you know exactly what it is. And it's like, listen, this is, you know what?

MerlinYeah. Or a family that refuses to look for anything except in the places they claim to have already looked. Well, then I guess we've solved it. To find something, you must look in the places you have not looked yet, which includes under, behind, and near things. Can I tell you my favorite obscure one?

There's an obscure one, but I love this one. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Oh, gosh. Oh, no, I like it. Well, I'm not drinking. Quinn has on the DL mentioned.

Quinn can hear me putting down my seltzer can. It's apparently very loud to Quinn.

AlexOh, yes. It's like I guess I'm going to be a Marco Cuck this week. Like how he can very much, he knows the lines of Casey's air conditioning when he edits ATP.

MerlinOh, right.

AlexThere's a little seltzer spike. It's just there. Oh, Jesus.

MerlinPlease don't tell me this. Please don't tell me anything about myself. It's so vital for my continued living a life that no one ever mentioned anything about me.

AlexYou were the original please don't perceive me. I bet if your tweets weren't deleted, you would have said.

MerlinI would love to not be perceived. I would just, it's whatever the opposite of famous is, title. That's what I want to be. This is, again, from before your time. But, you know, malls used to be a different thing. Used to be, time was you'd go to the mall, you know, all the things. And it wasn't unusual at all for there to be like a store that sells pianos and organs. And like a Yamaha store or something. And people of my age will remember there was a time when as you walk through the mall, you'd hear organ music.

And that's because there was somebody, a salesperson there in a necktie, like standing there and playing the organ by the entrance to the store. Did you ever experience this at all?

AlexI don't think so. In stores that try to be fancy.

MerlinIf you want to sell a keyboard.

AlexOh, wait. So you're not talking about how in Macy's and Nordstrom's there's a brand of Duke Lank?

MerlinNo, no, I'm not talking about the Nordstrom piano. No, no, no. This would be a sales guy, usually with a mustache.

AlexOh, okay, okay, yeah.

MerlinPlaying the organ by the entrance. Okay, this is the best trick ever learned by this person who used to have an organ salesman job. If you think you see a mark, you think you see somebody who might be a good lead to, like, come and buy your organ, you know what you do? No, no, no, hang on. Crank it? What? You guesstimate. in your brain while you're still playing. You guesstimate how old they are.

And then you start playing a song that was popular when they were 18. Now, for me, that would be 14 or 15 or whatever. But like if I'm walking through the mall and somebody starts playing Wave of Mutilation by Pixies on an organ, I'm not made of stone.

I'm going to come in and I'm going to sign on the line that is dotted. Give me that Pixies organ. Challenge! Challenge! Hey, you know what? Actually, pause. Can I go refill this? You can hear it. Listen to my eyes, how low it is.

AlexI know, I know.

MerlinNow, I can do this fast. You know what? Why don't we do that thing where I mute, and then you do that really lame thing where you talk to the audience, or Quinn, or whomever.

AlexAll right.

MerlinYou do that? How should I let you know that I'm back or should I just wait till you're finished?

AlexOh, jiggle the ice. Jiggle the ice. I love it. Or slam a seltzer can.

MerlinOkay, well, it'll sound different because it'll be full. Okay. Standby. Go.

AlexHello, friends, countrymen. Thank you for your ears, I suppose. I'm really wishing now that I had a Diet Coke because then I could also do the slushy thing with ice it's just an enjoyable sound not as enjoyable when it is a plastic container but still nice I think I have some nostalgia around it like when you were oh I know what it is

like when you're at the movies and you're finishing the last bit of a gigantic ass drink that you have and you really need to pee, but you don't want to pee because you're at like the climax of the movie. Kind of not. I didn't do it. I didn't make a sex joke.

MerlinYou're welcome.

AlexOh, it's back.

MerlinAnyway, I like movies.

AlexNo, I was just thinking about movies.

MerlinYou're talking about a drink. Is this the Pam Beasley thing where you wait long enough and you give free second drink? Is that what you're talking about? Where it melts? What are you talking about?

AlexNo, no, no. I was talking about how there, for some reason for me, there's something like a little nostalgic about the noise of ice jiggling. And I really.

MerlinOh, my God. Alex, I'm so glad you said that. I have one. I have one of those that is so fucking mental. But it's still. Go on. Oh, it's going to. It's so fucking weird. As previously stipulated, I drink a lot of salty water from cans. and that means that multiple times per day I open a can of seltzer and I drink it, right? To this day every time I hear the sound of an aluminum can opening

it feels like I'm on an airplane flight.

AlexOh, now is that a good sound to you or is it just something that's in the back of your head?

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it means the beverage cart's coming and I'm going to get a treat in a minute. But isn't it funny that like 99.9% of the time I've ever opened a can was somewhere not on a plane? Like how many cans in my entire life, how many cans have I ever audibly, noticeably heard open on a plane? Let's even say 100. Let's say 200. And yet I drink a lot. I mean the percentage of times that I've opened a can and it wasn't on a plane is so much greater. and yet I still have that association of the person,

the air waiter, walking up and down with that cart and saying, like, yeah, you want a Sprite? You want a Bloody Mary? Like, what? I still, especially when I'm making myself a beverage at night. I always think of being on a plane.

AlexIsn't that weird? No, I don't think so.

MerlinIt's cool. I think it's cool. I don't dislike it.

AlexYeah. Mine, as I was just thinking about it, it's movie theaters, And when you have finished your gigantic soda that is mostly ice.

MerlinOh, my God. I got a large Mountain Dew at Nope. And it was insane. I could barely lift it.

AlexIt's a good feeling, though, to have the heft in your hand. It's like, I'm like, yeah.

MerlinIt does, but I also felt kind of bad because that's a lot of sugar.

AlexYeah, and that's a lot of sugar. that's gonna...

MerlinGod, our movie theater fucking sucks. It's only been open, like, the first... After it had opened, the first movie we went to in the COVID times, my kid and I went to see the very good movie, Free Guy. And I was excited because it's a brand new theater, opened at our mall, which we go to because it's our mall. It's less than a mile away. And it's got an Apple store, and it's got a Target, and it's got a Trader Joe's. And it's, you know, but it's also a pretty gutted mall, like all malls. Anyway, they opened this movie theater, and I was like, okay, great, let's go on in.

And the thing you got to know about me is I'm a multiple beverage man. I like to have, when I'm having beverages, I'll have three, four beverages. So like when I go to a movie, my preference would be a large Coke and a non-dasani bottled water and a coffee. I usually get a coffee when I go to them movies.

AlexFucking Dasani hates. Whoa, wait, wait, wait.

MerlinJust regular coffee in a cup.

AlexHuh.

MerlinI drink that first.

AlexOh, I mean, that makes sense.

MerlinSo we go to this place and we get in there. Whatever, it's fine.

AlexNo, this is a new technology. I'm going to try. I mean, I'm not going to drink coffee. Oh, okay. Sorry, go on.

MerlinThey must have some kind of deal because this also evidences itself in the Maria Menudo's part and in the other ads is that everything's Pepsi. All they got is Pepsi. Which means not only no Coke, it means no Dr. Pepper. None of the things like a Coke and a Dr. Pepper mix is my go-to movie drink. No Sprite. No Sprite. The closest thing they have to something I would ever consider putting near my body is Mountain Dew, which I'm like okay. I'll drink it three times a year. But get this. They also have this little like fakey bar area.

It might as well be like a bar run by robots on the Enterprise. It's got those like beep beep dispenser things and like you can get a like a – I guess theoretically get a mixed drink there. I'm like fuck. And I was like, oh, can I also please have a small coffee? And like, you know what they said to me? They said, we don't have coffee.

AlexI mean –

MerlinWho doesn't have coffee?

AlexA lot of –

MerlinYou keep it around. It's like Mr. Bookman says. You keep it around. It's full of crystals. You just keep it around. You can have it when people want it. Fucking ridiculous. And there's this man, the man who always scans or takes the ticket, Jim. He's – because we saw Nope there last week. What else have we – we've seen a few movies there now, you know. and Jim Jim I would cast Jim as the guy in Rime of the Ancient Mariner Jim's fucking amazing

Jim looks like a character actor he's probably 70 and he's hunched and he's got a really long beard and he tells you how he's like this is your first 4DX movie I'm like yeah it's our first 4DX movie oh it's great it's not great by the way it's terrible I'll never do it again but I'm glad for the movie I did see what was the movie you went for We saw 4DX version of – fuck, not nope. That would have been funny.

AlexThat would have – ooh. I mean I have yet to see it.

MerlinWe saw – oh, you know, shit dog. We saw 4DX of Thor Love and Thunder. It was hilarious.

AlexOoh. That's weird. Oh, man.

MerlinI love Jim. I love Jim. Jim almost offsets the lack of coffee.

AlexChallenge! Oh, Jim. This week's challenge was to watch Friday Night Baseball.

MerlinFriday Night Baseball. baseball not friday night lights that's a different program i know that's a that's a show

Alexthat was really good except for the season with a serial killer it's so weird the way they went from first season to third season yeah wow where'd that second season go Friday Night Baseball came on my radar because Apple TV now has an excuse excuse me Apple TV

plus now has exclusive rights to MLB games that are on Friday. And I really enjoy them because the UI that they use to project like the scores and the other terms for the UI that I couldn't find, but like where the, the little box, a digital box that says where the pitch might go or the little chances of

Merlinsomebody getting on base. Oh God.

Alexthat's so funny yeah well and it's just it's so different than watching a regular baseball game whether it be local or something that's on espn or whatever and i've unfortunately had to do many of those because my friend really enjoys baseball not unfortunately the founder of cox's cox cara yes we're talking about cara fagan and the reason i say unfortunately is because i didn't want to say

Merlinnow i feel bad about saying her last name because i keep thinking about the standby board oh cara Hey, we don't say Kara anymore. Okay.

AlexBut I say unfortunate because a lot of times I sort of know what is happening with the sport because I know how the sport is played. But there's a lot of numbers and symbols that I'm like, what the fuck does that mean on the screen? And it makes it very confusing and less enjoyable.

MerlinYou're talking about like outs, balls, strikes, inning, pitcher, up arrow, down arrow, home versus, like all the little – you're talking about in that primary box.

AlexYeah, but it doesn't say that.

MerlinNo, I know. And I think Jason Snell has talked and written about this well. Even people who are familiar with baseball, it can be difficult sometimes to quickly grok what means what.

AlexI keep calling it UI, but the overlay for –

MerlinKeep going. You're doing great.

AlexOh, the overlay. I've never seen a good overlay on a sports show except some NFL, like, locally broadcast games.

MerlinOh, they give you a running count of who won't be able to cut their food in a couple years?

AlexHow likely is this?

MerlinWant to see my ring? Want to see my Super Bowl ring?

AlexThis is the statistics for how likely this man is going to murder his wife.

MerlinI keep it near my helmet.

AlexOh, God. But I just – I enjoy now.

MerlinYou like the geeky aspect of like the stats stuff.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinYes, it is. It's very geeky.

AlexOkay. No, no, no. It is geeky. I like how baseball is very geeky.

MerlinLike the pop-ups about betting?

AlexOh, yeah. That – I –

MerlinI don't love that. There's a lot I did not like about this.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI'm trying – I want to pursue this. But like I'm wondering if – you know, like for example, when I used to go to baseball games, I keep score, you know? and it kept me more it was more fun to watch the game and stay involved in the game if you're keeping score you know what I mean like have you ever done that at a game?

AlexWhat? No like every game you keep score. Wait what is happening?

MerlinWell it's I don't know

AlexLike you in your head or like

Merlinyeah. No it's difficult to describe but there's a formatted like page in a spiral book usually and there's slots for the players on each team and each at bat, you write down what happened. So like if they struck out, you write K. If they were, if they grounded out to the second baseman, one, two, three, four, you would say like, you know, four to three. So the second baseman through to the first baseman, et cetera.

And it's just, it's just, you know, it's, it's something that there's always somebody who's keeping score on. And like, that was just a fun, a fun thing of, I guess what I'm trying to say is that Like on the one hand, well, first of all, office supplies. Love that. Like I get to use a pen and a paper. But also it kept me more engaged in the game. I'm just – so you don't think it's geeky or you think you're – I don't mean that as a criticism. But isn't that kind of the appeal of the – what you call erroneously the overlay? All of those things and the pop-ups and all of that, isn't that part of what keeps you engaged geek-wise?

AlexI think if you are a sports geek, absolutely. Absolutely. And you don't care how it is displayed.

MerlinBut it's giving you insight. Like I can't I could I still don't really understand the rectangle for the strike zone. Like I don't totally get that. I understand it's the width of the base. But what I remember barely is that it's from the numbers like from your chest to your knees and the width of the plate. But it doesn't look like it conforms to that. But it's really cool to see that 93-mile-per-hour cutter or whatever. Like, I don't know what the fucking pitches are. I don't even understand what a curveball is.

I guess I never understood how balls curve. Well, you know, you see a doctor about that. But I like that it will show you, like, here's the four kinds of pitches this person has and, like, where they tend to land in the strike zone. I find that very engaging. And like we talked about last time, in the same way as knowing where the line of scrimmage and the 10-yard thing is in football, you know, superimposed. I think that's really helpful as somebody who's not a huge baseball enthusiast. Like that kind of stuff keeps me engaged in like what's happening right now.

Because not only for that at bat, for like what's happening with that pitcher. Like this guy's already had 39 pitches. I think he's getting tired. You know, he's still throwing heat, but it's outside the strike zone. And like what does that mean for the game?

AlexYeah, no, I agree. I just think often it's not done very well that can add to more confusion. if you don't know what is happening.

MerlinLike what should I be paying attention to kind of feeling?

AlexYeah, it's just, oh man, it's one of the things that you need a name for, like the Photoshop problem. Like all of these things are equally displayed, but you don't know what you should really be using or what should really be in the forefront of your mind.

MerlinWell, and as Jason and others have said in that overlay, I mean, like my kid knows enough about baseball to be dangerous, but because I had to do this for the challenge and my kid happened to be sitting there wondering how long it'll be till we get to watch new girl or community um the um i was like well you know like a foul ball is kind of a weird thing to explain where it's like well yeah if you hit if you hit a ball if you the ball is if your bat touches the ball but it's not in play

and it's not caught by usually the pitcher, that's a strike. Unless there's already two strikes, in which case you can hit foul balls all day. Like that's the kind of thing that's kind of weird. I don't mean to be all George Carlin about this, but like baseball is kind of weird in that way. You've seen at-bats where there's somebody who keeps connecting. They've had two legitimate swishes, like they totally like miss the ball, And then they can somehow stay alive by hitting at something in the strike zone.

And even if it isn't in play, it keeps them alive for more pitches to hopefully either get a hit or get a walk. But it's sometimes difficult to look at the dots and know, okay, like, is that strikes? Is that balls? Is that, I mean, inning is usually, usually I think inning is like a number. And then I feel like, I might be wrong, but like an up and down arrow for which team it is.

AlexExactly. Top, bottom, verse, all of the great positions.

MerlinBut, you know, there's a thing. This is kind of like my point about the dark-haired, large-eyed actresses. We're like, if I show you all the dark-haired, you know, the dark-haired, like, big-eyed actresses, you, the intelligent consumer, can go, well, obviously, that's Una Chaplin. To which I say, yes, obviously, that's Una Chaplin. Unless you see one of these gals in a TV show, like one of those gals showed up on New Girl yesterday.

And because we're super familiar, my kid never would be like, oh, my God, that's Lizzie Kaplan.

AlexOh, look at that gal over there.

MerlinLook at that. Well, you can do that when you've got side by side for comparison. But this is a problem I think a lot of people don't think about, which is like, are you able – like right now, the one thing in the world you will never forget is that you have a screw in your hand. and that that screw of this size is used for this thing on this device? Well, first of all, in two minutes, you're going to be confused if you didn't keep track of which screw that is. Because out of that context, now it's just another screw. Think about a year from now. If you have to find that screw or a replacement for that screw,

where do you go? Where do you find it? Because your entire experience of that screw was about it in isolation. But in this instance, can you glanceably look at that overlay and instantly know what each of those things mean? Well, you go, well, no, it's process of elimination. If you see four circles, you go, okay, maybe that's balls. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying, though? I think it's a UI problem in lots of places in life is the thinking that you'll be able to figure something out because it's in context.

Like once you take that thing out of context, will you still be able to? Like if somebody shows me Ariel and Helvetica, I can kind of know the difference. But if you just show me a typeface and say, what is that? I might say Helvetica Noi. I might say Ariel. I might say, I don't know, some humanist font. I can't tell. I can't eyeball. And if it's current differently, it's sort of like that where you like test your ears with MP3 encoding and everybody always just picks the louder one.

AlexI don't think we're as good at that stuff as we think.

MerlinAnd when you're glancing, don't you feel, though, you glance at those things? And unless you're familiar with the way that they do it, I don't know. I'm ranting. Nobody cares. I like the geeky stuff, kind of.

AlexBut you are bringing up the, like, turns out that I realized when I was, I'm not going to put them in show notes because I don't know where to put photos on the internet anymore.

MerlinI know. God, Dropbox really ruined everything.

AlexIt did. It used to be so fucking easy. I want pinboards. Let things be pinboard and Instapaper.

MerlinWell, but with Dropbox, I have so many – not that it matters on my currently busted site. But like I used to use Dropbox hotlinking for everything. And then one day they said, we're not doing this anymore, and it just died. It's like, what am I going to do? Put on Imgur? Like one of my seven?

I don't even know how to say it. Did I say it wrong?

AlexImgur? Imgur?

MerlinNo, Imgur. How do you say I-M-G-U-R?

AlexImgur. How do you – do you say read receipts or read receipts?

MerlinDid you say bread receipts?

AlexRed receipts or reed receipts?

MerlinNo, no, no, no. Are you talking about the reed robin?

AlexOh, God. I am very nervous about-

MerlinAre you talking about lead or lead? Dawn?

AlexOkay, patreon.com slash Dubai Friday is where I've decided I'm going to ask you questions about blot because I've been using Dropbox. Wait, why not?

MerlinBecause we'll forget about it. We'll talk about dicks or something. And then you'll have made somebody pay us $5 so they could hear about dicks. You know what? I take it back. Come listen to us talk about dicks.

AlexYeah. My favorite thing.

MerlinGive us your fucking money. Dot com.

AlexYes. Oh, the RSS thing worked. Sorry. I got.

MerlinOh, did it get fixed? Wait, no, no. Are missing images?

AlexWhat now? Oh, no.

MerlinWhat are you talking about?

AlexNo, I'm just. I was.

MerlinOh, I thought you were talking about our missing images on Patreon. Sorry about that, everybody.

AlexOh, no. I'm so mad. I might do the thing that I hate doing.

MerlinWe didn't do anything. Oh, you're going to do Martha or who's the other one?

AlexNo, I might tweet about it. I might. Oh, nice. I know. I hate it, but it always works, though.

MerlinI hate it. Wait, let me give you a first draft. Oh, I hate it. I have been a fan of what, Patreon? Patreon for some times, but alas, I would have to find another website. No, I do the thing. Open letter to Patreon. Oh, no.

AlexI do the thing where I say, I do the thing that people do where they go.

MerlinAnybody know anybody at Patreon?

AlexNo, they do. They do instead of just the at, you do, hey, at whoever.

MerlinOh, sorry, everybody can see you doing it.

AlexExactly. And then people retweet it.

MerlinI just took a shit and you can see it.

AlexYeah. And I don't, I just get, we, I think, especially you.

MerlinBecause you feel like, let's just be clear, you feel like you've exhausted. Don't talk about me.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinYou've exhausted the resources at Patreon. You've asked both the people that work there.

AlexYeah. Oh, I'm sure there's more. But isn't it?

MerlinMaybe you guys should consider charging a usurious amount for a really simple service. Oh, wait.

AlexBe nice. Be nice. This is how.

MerlinWe would be charging you by the 404 era.

AlexPlease. Please. But isn't it nice to see the main show and then the after show right next to each other? You're the one who pointed that out to me. in overcast. Oh, you gotta do it. I always wait. It's really satisfying. Yes, yes, same.

MerlinFucking ATP always slips in somehow in like two seconds between.

AlexI make so mad.

MerlinWe talked about John's TV last night. Fucking show.

AlexOh, they beat you. Oh, they, you're, man.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's, it's, you know, it's additional. It's additional. It'll come out in a few weeks. It'll be fun.

AlexIt's additional content.

MerlinBaseball.

AlexAll I have to say about the baseball thing is like what exactly what you said but what i did not realize until last night of sure this is a really simple overlay and i know exactly what it's saying but it doesn't provide enough information doesn't get geeky enough and i was like holy shit is this the apple problem with baseball because it's hard to determine just how much apple's involved and so that that's where for example

Merlinyou see like this person is you know they're two for four tonight or something like that or in home games this person is xyz that kind of fact yes whereas this it's very it looks very

Alexpretty um a lot of san francisco a lot of yes uh the font yeah i've i've been i thought it was just me but the announcers suck they suck so much i'm not i'm not gonna say hardly anything about

Merlinthis challenge. I'm going to find only nice things to say about this challenge.

AlexThe people?

MerlinThe before show thing was excruciating. I've been sleeping and so I slept through the beginning of the two games, the first game. And then I woke up and I was like, oh, then the second game is going to be the Reds, which was my team as a kid and that'll be fun.

Go ahead. I don't want to say anything. I'm just going to say mean things. So you go ahead.

AlexI love how they tried to shoehorn in the woman announcer and there's that pause oh especially this you like those airpods pro oh god that the very first game was it looks like some kind of a medical prosthetic yes so so uh pretend people don't know what we're talking about instead of having the regular headset that sports people wear when they're like talking to someone there's the giant one for when

Merlinyou're in a roaring crowd and then there's the one you never see because it's just a simple in earpiece like a normal newscaster but in this case there's a lot of ipads a lot of airpods max

Alexa lot of uh a lot of apple going on pink airpods max just on a baseball field is funny and and the

Merlinthing is baseball that's good that sounds like you're describing somebody's family crest

AlexBut once again, I will assert my thought that baseball is not just the geekiest sport, but it is the sport most like Pokemon. There's literally also a trading card game for both. And they all are basically cosplaying. They don't need their uniforms to look like that. Like their uniforms are not designed to make them play baseball better.

The old timey uniforms are modified so that they are better at playing baseball. Like, no.

MerlinI still, oh, fuck. I have a lot of problems with the pants that look like flares. You should have the socks with the stirrup socks. Like you should be wearing, if you're not wearing those, you're not playing baseball.

AlexWell, I am 100% in favor of cosplaying while doing sports.

MerlinOkay. What are they cosplaying as, Alex?

AlexAs a sports player.

MerlinPokemon?

AlexAs players. No, as players who.

MerlinNo, but they're not. That's what they do, Alex. That's their vocation.

AlexNo, no, no. They are cosplaying as people who play a sport that was played in the early 1900s.

MerlinOh, so they're more of time players than cosplayers. they're okay you come out you dress like raleigh fingers or something or you know or catfish hunter anyway i like baseball hats though or another or another relief pitcher i can remember think hey listen do me a favor will you think of something funny to end with um hey hey here's the thing this was not this is not for me um i i did not have fun uh i only made it two innings and i was like okay i get the idea um i thought the commentator and listen

listen listen because i've told you in a nice way that this is not for me you're not allowed to tell me what i got wrong or didn't understand about this i'm making this about personal preference and if you like this i'm not going to yuck on your yum but yeah well it looked good like in terms of the quality of the video but okay here's my hot take i did find all of the san francisco words on screen to eventually be a little bit overwhelming and annoying. And my second point will underscore why I feel this way personally.

So I'm going to hear about preferences and opinions. I thought it was a bit much to where I finally found myself going, who is this for? I guess it's for Alex. I thought it was, but, and like just to be a real old man for a minute, Vince Scully, the Dodgers, famous, wonderful Dodgers announcer passed away. And like, you know, it's weird how many people have such warm feelings about Vince Scully, not least because that's who Harry Shearer is impersonating on The Simpsons. Oh, doctor.

Boo hoo, you're breaking my heart. I actually probably know that better. But no, Vince Scully is amazing. And like there's this audio going around that I thought was amazing. And it's like the whole thing is like 10 minutes. But it's him calling the game the last inning, I believe, of when Sandy Koufax had a perfect game. And it's so amazing. He's talking. I mean, he's not talking incessantly. But everything he says is wonderful, first of all.

And like I said in that tweet, he's just woven pure poetry for over seven minutes. And then when the last strike is thrown, he stops talking. And all you hear is the sound of, I guess, Dodger Stadium or wherever it was, just people cheering. Now, he could have kept talking and could have, like, kept providing facts. And there could have been a pop-up overlay about, you know, Koufax, known Jew, throw strikes. But whatever. But, like, and I know this is not a fair example.

But the yammering, the, to me, useless fucking yammering of these three people. And the one guy who didn't talk at all but just stared at the screen and smiled. That was weird. But, like, there was so much fucking yammering. And then the thing that really drove me nuts, this is just an impression, and I don't know. My gut is that this is about small screens. The shots of everything were so tight. There's, like, you really, you could see every detail of, I guess, what in cinema you might consider a medium shot.

But in baseball I would consider a tight shot. Like somebody walking from the batting circle to the plate or whatever. Tight shot, tight shot, tight shot, yammer, yammer, yammer, yammer, yammer. And it's like, oh, I, I, it was just, I, I would like to see personally in a baseball game. I would like to see more long shots. And if you're going to talk, I would like it to be good, but not quite that incessant. You know, another thing you keep scoring a game, the other thing you do, and this was true back in, um, I would do this at the games in Cincinnati. You should bring a transistor radio and you like, you watch the game, but you listen to

like marty breneman or whoever was doing the call you know for the game because those people are so good and it's not like they're i imagine they had producers feeding them facts but nowhere near it is today where somebody that's still well but like okay yeah but like when some guy when some guy who probably can't cut his food at this point goes well an interesting fact is that amongst ballplayers who are six foot one that were born in daytona beach florida he's fifth and you're like yeah you just knew that right but like i wish there was more air in it and that's what makes

me say that's not for me there was i didn't feel there was a lot of air in this it felt dark it felt brooding it felt tight and it felt yammery in a way that i found a little overwhelming i

Alexyeah the reason that i'm specifically harping on the announcers is because every other game i've seen was in an environment where i was either like with i was with founder of uh Cox's Cux, Cara Fagan.

MerlinBig Cux fan.

AlexYeah, she's explaining what is happening in a way better way, so they're way turned out.

MerlinThe man with the stick wants to make the spherical thing go over the green area.

AlexOh, anyway.

MerlinDoctor! Will you continue watching these, Alex? You enjoy it enough to check in sometimes? Is it appointment viewing, or if it's on, you'll watch it? What's your feeling now? On a go-forward basis, as you say.

AlexIt has actually been a, like, when, not just care, but if one of my friends or family is like, oh, there are teams that I like, I'll be like, oh, cool. That's a, it's going to be on Apple TV Plus. And then inevitably we hang out because I'm the only person that has Apple TV Plus. And it's not, it's not a disappointment. I know, right? That makes me feel worried.

MerlinThat's good anecdote.

AlexYeah. did you know 10 000 hours tell me more let me put my cocktail down and give my notebook

Merlinwhat else

299. Maggie Haberman’s Toilet

Show notes

Transcript

299. Maggie Haberman’s Toilet

Show notes

Transcript

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