306. Time Makes Dust of Us All

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, give stage manager another try.

MerlinGood Alex to you.

AlexGood, good Alex to me and good Alex to you as well.

Speaker AAnd the rest of the day to you. Ah, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta. May the road rise to meet your broken foot. Every day you spend on the other side of the turf is a good day. Ah, ta-ta, ta-ta.

AlexI mean, that could be taken in the gay way, the grass way. Oh, that's funny.

MerlinThat's it. That's funny, Bullseye. You're saying, you're saying, um, you're saying the other side of that turf.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAre they making more of those, Alex? I feel like they're making a lot of turf.

Alexthe other kind the all caps turf yes and no there's just a name for it they've always existed like for a while max was like no they're they're like the moth man it's it's not real oh you

Merlinyou think it's like a hate chupacabra yeah

Alexwhich which makes sense because it's like why this this doesn't make any sense but uh i'm like oh you sweet precious child you're being an idiot about this um and then there was that big protest which in fact when matt and i were in london the turfs took over the pride parade and uh like the okay turfs are um basically transphobic women trans exclusionary radical feminists uh and they believe the word turf is a slur you may have seen their sub stacks there's

a lot of them that have sub stacks and they call themselves gender ridicules you may have read their popular book series uh you oh yeah uh read another book we did it made her mad uh no the uk has this is okay uh 200girl.fm we recently did an episode about this all about the history of why turfed him two minutes and six seconds and i'm already we're already so

Merlinadrift where are we alex what's happening why are you why are you promoting shows here we're

Alextalking about turfs i'm sorry my less popular show we talk about turfs and why it seems like there's been a rise of them and how it's it was born out of like a movement in the uk because the uk has just always been more transphobic than most countries more progressive with um the homosexuals not so much with the transsexuals now now maybe yeah yeah they had laws exactly

exactly that's that there was like a over it it was like when uh we started adding like pride flags to cop cars over here they're like oh we killed alan turing we killed a lot of god uh maybe sorry all the gays sorry so maybe in 50 years the uk is going to be like oh sorry no they'll they'll

Merlinthey'll give you they'll give you uh they'll give you genital surgery at one point but they will eventually put you on the money yeah didn't they do that didn't they give alan turing a stamp or

Alexsomething they they pardoned so sorry about all the drugs in surgery gov yes he was chemically castrated and then died by suicide and or an mi6 uh assassination depending on who you ask i know i know alex with three minutes 40 seconds what is happening you brought up turfs and and do we want to talk about grass instead i'd like oh we could talk about law grass grass the other

sort of turf oh we could talk about astroturf there's lots of conspiracies i could talk about with with that you know astroturf movements you mean like at the astrodome uh uh yeah that's where all the fake uh protesters go after katrina um there's so many i'm i'm too deep in all of these jokes that are going to make sense to exactly three people.

MerlinIt'll make sense, but it won't be funny.

AlexIt won't be. It's not even a joke.

MerlinIt's not even a joke, really.

AlexHappy Alex to you. Ah, ta-ta!

MerlinAnyway, now what about Ireland? Does Ireland have to take out turfs?

AlexNo, they just are glad that they don't have a queen anymore. That's what I hear, but I would get yelled at.

Speaker AOkay, well, you know, it's, yeah.

AlexI don't want to be known as the most unhinged toast.

MerlinIs it really feminism, though, Alex? My question about the TERF subriquette, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. It's one of those internet words I've never said out loud. The word TERF. Okay, radical feminization. I don't want to remember when radical feminism meant like Andrea Dworkin or, I mean, people who, like Andrea Dworkin at the time was seen as like, oh my god like this just she was very upsetting to american culture and people people like andrea dorkin like scared the shit out of people you know in the 80s and 90s um that that was at for

that time what i what i thought sounded like radical feminism or or just a kind of offshoot of what's what i used what when i was a kid what was called women's lib you know you got to the era not happening and all that stuff and then but you know radical feminism sometimes felt closer

AlexR-A-P-E-R-A.

MerlinIt seems so simple. Like, why don't we just do that? It's really simple. It's a very simple amendment. So close. But I don't know. Anyway, I'm talking way out of my depth on this. So the notion in the people who don't like being called TERFs, the notion is that they have an ideological or a values basis for saying that whatever you're assigned at birth. See, now I'm going to sound mean. But it's the way that we draw lines on which side of this you're even qualified or capable of being on.

In other words, you cannot, it's the idea that you cannot be, a priori, you cannot be a radical feminist if you were assigned male at birth.

AlexNo.

MerlinWhat's the nut of their problem with this? Like, let's do one of those things that they do sometimes on cable news where we take, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, but hang on. Just play with me in the space. Let's take away all the things that it seems like this really is, which, like so many things, is a way of trying to find ideological cover for being a piece of shit.

AlexYes.

MerlinIt's really about states' rights. It's really about those kinds of things. What is the nut of their best argument for why the rise of the number of trans people and acceptance of trans people? Give me the honest version, as far as you know it, of their credulous case for why this is bad for the world in general and feminist women in particular.

AlexThey believe that by granting more rights to trans people, especially trans women, that it will take away from women.

MerlinI'll just jump in here since I just want to make it clear to people because I get confused sometimes. A trans woman, in my understanding, that's somebody who's assigned male at birth.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd who transitions to becoming, you know, a woman, right? Am I getting that right?

AlexYes.

MerlinIt's one of those things like right brain and left brain, though, where you got to, I always constantly have to, like, reverse it in my head to get it right. And that is partly what leads them to, these are people who don't have jobs and just hang out in bathrooms waiting for my child to go to the litter box.

AlexNo.

MerlinGrooming.

Alexthat's where it the the hang-up is a lot of them say oh we're not against trans people we just want to make we just want to make sure that we keep all of our rights as quote biological women or biological females like if you see someone's twitter bio that says biological female that's

MerlinIf that's if that's accurate, it's upsetting how much that sounds a little bit like, oh, shoot, that wonderful series on Hulu. You know, it sounds like America.

AlexWe I was going to bring that up.

MerlinYeah. That's sort of like, well, pretty soon we're going to be drafted and not be able to bake cakes. And how horrible would that be? You know, golf, golf, golf, golf, golf, golf.

AlexWell, that's where the radical feminism comes in for the reason the name TERF came from radical, like second wave feminism, because as is shown in Miss America, there were a lot of activists who were like, listen, women, we can't really bring in the lesbians. because they're kind of muddling this whole...

MerlinYeah, Tracy Ullman really didn't want to do it. Who was she? She wasn't Bella Abzug. Who was she? Tracy Ullman was... But yeah, right, right, right.

AlexThere's a reason that I can't remember her name and most people remember Gloria Steinem's name.

MerlinBella... Oh, yeah, Gloria Steinem. She was the... Yeah, Bella Abzug, I think, might have been character actress Margot Martindale.

AlexOh, no, I think so. Oh, man, I love her.

MerlinOr is it the other one? Is it Ann Dowd?

AlexI don't remember. I don't even think I finished it.

MerlinShe's our new Kathy Bates.

AlexOh, interesting. Table pin in that. Pin for the show. But the good, they try to say the good faith argument is, no, we will support trans people, but we don't want biological men in our spaces. And also, now, a lot of young girls and young lesbians are being convinced that they're men. And they should they're just ashamed of being women and they're ashamed to love other women.

And this is like the best, like good faith argument that like this is the I guess the best of the best.

MerlinNo, I'm honestly I appreciate you sharing that because I'm it would help be helpful to me to understand.

AlexIt's not fair to for, you know, these biological men are competing against women in sports. even though we also ban a lot of women from the quote biological women from the Olympics for also having too much testosterone. They happen to be black women. Oh, whoopsie doopsie. And that's I mean, the argument that is seems rational. Like when you present it to somebody, it's like, oh, we support trans people.

we just want to make sure that women's rights are stay in place and then they give the arguments that you can or cannot be convinced by whether or not like uh trans people are are not a threat to quote women's rights um but then you know you get the that does that make sense at like the highest, most general, gender critical.

MerlinWell, I think among the numerous reasons talking about stuff like this gets complex is that it's difficult to talk about any, when it's an emerging or like, let's say, let's put it this way, like emergent issue in like the E.O. Wilson sense, like where this is evolving quickly and evolving multiple factors in different systems. I think it's almost always very difficult to talk about something while it's happening in a way that's kind of, you know, sort of rational. And the reason I say it here is I was about to say something that's kind of a blanket statement that, as ever,

just gets back to talking about Donald Trump, which is like something has happened. It's not because of Donald Trump. It's not because of TERFs. But something has happened, you know, in the time since Joe Biden was a happy Senate guy that the way the discourse tends to operate has gotten at least a little bit cynical. All I was going to say was I think at least Americans have kind of lost their appetite for calling out a reason versus an excuse. And I think sometimes we let things fly by us that are presented as a reason,

but left uninterrogated, I continue to believe is often an excuse. So I do believe that there are probably really smart people who say, yeah, it really is about states' rights, or really people of good conscience who are like, well, I fought in the trenches of trying to locate and protect the rights of women for 50 years. And I have a good faith idea about probably the admittedly very small number of these people, these trans people who are a problem for us.

But we just sail right past all this stuff when we're like, oh, yeah, well, yeah, we have our dumb reasons. They have their dumb reasons. And so we just bicker and argue about who killed who. I don't know. It does seem kind of weird. And really, to be honest, part of it is like that that particular a particular kind of more slightly elevated, maybe more patriarchal, but more elevated discourse with which we conducted ourselves for decades has really gone away.

And just, you know, everybody sounds like they're on Maury Povich at this point yelling at each other. But but like it's there's something.

AlexI do think that we are going to look back at this and there are going to be trans activists, quote, activists who are a little bit embarrassed about how they acted towards cis women who genuinely do not understand trans people. and just use transphobia as a catch-all term for just not understanding.

MerlinFor like just putting a big stamp on their head that says ignorant person.

AlexLike you just said, like, wait, a trans woman is.

MerlinIt would be like yelling at a villager. It would be like yelling at a medieval villager about quantum mechanics. Like, what is wrong with you?

AlexYou get this. Right. And you see a trans woman, you're like, oh, that's a woman. But you do not know all of the terms or how and they change really really quickly like i said transsexual earlier and that's a term that's sort of being like reclaimed now but even that there's like a bunch of infighting in the trans community of whether or not you can be able to say that and it's it's the problem is it's like there's four quadrants of moripovich happening it's it's like there's thank you i'll take it

MerlinI don't know I just wanted to fork Lawrence on I bet he's nice this is a comedy podcast I think part of it is

Alexit was supposed to be an incidental computer show today

Merlinwhy do you say that

Alexbecause I think it's funny

MerlinI have to be aware of my own, was the phrase in the Old Testament about, you know, kind of forgot the line, but that line about like, don't worry about the, uh, the speck. in somebody else's eye, like if you have a log in your eye, I have to look at my own

perception of this stuff and go, well, gosh, I thought all of these people, I was looking at it as a pretty simple X, Y, or like really X axis of like, okay, well, there's people who are more like progressive over here and there's people who are more conservative over there. And that used to be at a certain time in my life that made a lot of sense. And like part of that was, I thought, oh, I figured all these people were allies. I thought that, like, you know, it's a thing I used to say, and I realize this sounds stupid, but it's meaningful. Like, there was a time, just bear with me for a minute here.

There was a time where, let's say, if you were a vegetarian in the United States in, let's say, sure, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, maybe even in the 80s. If you were a vegetarian, whether or not anybody knew you were a vegetarian, the truth is that you were in the out group. And you knew that you were in the out group. You knew that you were in this weird minority of people where whatever led you to choosing not to eat animal products, you had a silent common cause with a small number of other people.

And I realize, forgive me if this is careless or poor logic, but I think the same could be true of gay men and gay women for a long time. In the sense that, well, hey, the most important thing is that we're in the out group. We are the, you know, we have common cause because everybody hates us. And, you know, there's a very small chance we'll ever be happy in life. And we'll probably die in the first act of almost every movie. But you know what I mean? Like in those instances. And like so, but if you start locating other people who are vegetarians or whatever it is in your particular out group, like it's not, it's only once you found other people that are weird like you, which is a thing I think about a lot.

I was watching this David Bowie video last night. I kept thinking about all the kids in England who got to see somebody who was weirder than them for the first time in their life. And how transformative it is to see, in the case of David Bowie performing Starman on English TV in the 70s. Like, that's the first time, I'm quoting myself, but that's the first time you might have seen, if you were sitting in some, you know, living room in Wales, that might be the first time in your life that you ever experienced entertainment that was made for somebody weirder than you.

It shows you that there's a bigger world than all the rest of the stuff that lives in your TV. And that might not be a transformative moment, but discovering that you are weird, but you're not alone is so instrumental in the lives of people that I care about, including me. I do care about me. I do that. but once you've found other people the clock starts ticking for the amount of time before you not maybe realize but discover that you have common cause on this one thing but that by no means makes you

allies in whatever your version of the future should look like so if you're into you don't buy leather because you think it's wrong to kill cows you got on a vegetarian diet in the 70s because of heart problems in your family or Or, you know, there's all these or maybe you just you live you live on a farm, like whatever, whatever it is, all those different things. I still tend to think on that X axis until I'm dissuaded from using that model for everything. Like, oh, there's Democrats and Republicans. There's progressives and there's what's the episode of a progressive?

I guess Tucker Carlson. But like good question.

AlexThat could lead to another episode of Maury with eight quadrants.

MerlinBut that is perhaps precisely the kind of cultural blinders that a person of, I wouldn't exactly call this a privilege thing. I would call this an exposure thing. The thing is, if I met, you meet one gay, and there's the five gays you meet in heaven. There's like, you meet a gay, and then you meet other gays, and you're like, oh, I thought all you guys were like this. I figured, and like, well, you wouldn't say that about, you wouldn't say that about pharmacists or meter maids.

Like, just because you've met two now, you think you understand all those people. But that's all you had been exposed to. So there's this part of my brain that still breaks a little bit where I think that, and again, coming up in that, forgive me, I'm not trying to like steal valor, but the class on gender that I had in college.

AlexOh, take it. I will give it.

MerlinWell, it's just it did have a big impact on me just because it was probably the one class in which I was a lot of classes where I felt really stupid, mostly because I didn't have the background in humanities. But then there's a class, there's a class like the gender class where I'm like, whoa, dude, no, you have no idea how much you don't understand about how much you don't understand. And I'm not trying to sound as Ron DeSantis says, woke. I'm trying to say that that was a really important class that reading that Kessel and McKenna book was so important in understanding, look, there's not a single axis here.

There's so much complexity to the things. All the stuff is table stakes for, if I could say, somebody like you of your age, of your generation. It's table stakes to understand that sexual stuff and gender stuff and presentation stuff. All those are really different things. and I could choose to be bewildered about the world not understanding that it needs to fit on my x-axis but it might be a little smarter to say like what did that x-axis really buy me for all of those years and is it is it maybe better to start with looking at like what's actually

happening rather than how comfortable I am binning these people into these different groups So in my head, at the end, at 21 minutes and 52 seconds, I don't think there's blanket statements you can say about who is necessarily or probably an ally. And I know it's confusing to me. And if it's confusing to me, can you imagine how confusing? I'm not trying to excuse it, but it is a reason. That's why a lot of people are so fucking, hey, pick a lane. What are you? like are you are you going to be like a like a suzy quattro kind of like uh like a presumed

lesbian are you going to be a swinging at the fences again it'll be a little lipstick lesbian like all the ideas of people that people like me grew up with and instead you go like well yeah what if all that was actually kind of just a form of slightly advanced bullshit and you misapprehended all of this because you were paying attention to the things you knew how to bin rather than the collection of individual things that were out there and not that that improves the world 100 but it makes me more capable of being able to navigate the world if i understand that unbending

people is a good start toward understanding like what's actually happened is happening and is

Alexlikely or potential to happen someone's been reading more judith butler or more contemporary

Merlinjudith butler perhaps you can talk about yourself like that do not talk do not talk about me like that do not start doing this whole you have heard that alex has been learning don't do that what if i'm reading oh last night i started reading um i couldn't find a the anthony bourdain mean book isn't out yet and so i finally started reading um the anthony bourdain like original famous anthony bourdain book he's a very good writer it's called uh kitchen confidential i think oh yes it's his book about you know working in kitchens it's very well written huh that's what

I'm reading. I'm reading that. I'm reading the Buddhism book. What else am I reading? I'm reading some other things. I would like to get more Judith Butler. I'm really good at downloading Kindle samples of Judith Butler.

What does that make me? Come on, run with it. What does that make me?

AlexI have no bits.

MerlinRetire the bit.

AlexI don't know.

MerlinOh, negative comedy points. It's Feminist Pennyworth. That's my pull-down today. Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then? Batman, what's all this then?

Speaker AHe was assigned a robin at birth and he became your ward.

MerlinYou're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. She was only 16 years old. okay let's just hang let's just stop for a second here ready feeling good yes just me and you me and you hi hi hi you know a lot of this stuff though i mean you know it's like the pig and the chicken

Alexoh no you know you know about the pig and the chicken yeah yeah yes the bacon and the egg okay

Merlintell me the joke. Do a great job. No, no. Don't be cute. Don't give me a John Syracuse joke in four bullets. I'm not. It's not a joke.

AlexIt's a joke.

MerlinOkay, so here's the thing. A chicken walks up to a pig on the farm. He says, hey. She, they, they chicken says, hey, you know what? We should start a restaurant. People around here love breakfast. We should start a restaurant. And the pig says, no, no way am I getting involved with you in a restaurant. And the chick says, why not? People love breakfast. And he says, well, the problem is that, like, you're involved, but I'm committed.

AlexIt's not even a joke, though.

MerlinNo, it is. It's a very good joke.

AlexIt's not a, it's a story.

MerlinWell, it'll teach you a lot about life, you piece of shit.

AlexYeah, but it's not a good joke. Because the chicken, do you understand? It's a story. Do you want me to explain that? Oh, I should tell it to you in bullets. No, I've seen, oh, my God. There's a farm. Well, it's like saying the scorpion and the frog is a joke. Like, aha, the scorpion and the frog.

MerlinI call that more of a fable, Alex. I call that a fable. What about the Fox and the Grapes or the Fox and the Hound or the Great Mouse Detective? What about those?

AlexWhat about Don Bluth? What about Don Bluth? What about Ray Liotta and the Cocaine Bear? What?

MerlinHe always wanted to be a mobster. So close. He's always... And you know the day that those boys carried home his mother's groceries? Do you know why they did it?

AlexWhy?

MerlinWhy'd they do it? Respect. You ruin all these tablecloths. Into the oven.

AlexWhere is my Zoom? See if I had stage manager. I'm sure I could find Zoom.

MerlinWhere is my Zoom?

AlexOh, man. 20? How many minutes are we in?

Merlin26, 28.

AlexOh, not bad.

MerlinCharlie Babbitt. Squeezing and pulling her in my neck in 1988.

AlexOh, my God. Have you still been taking the meds that you're not supposed to be taking? Still on that Vsauce?

MerlinIs that a joke? Is that supposed to be a joke?

AlexNo, no.

MerlinWhat's going on there?

AlexI was just curious.

MerlinBethphunter.uk? What?

AlexWhat? What's happening?

MerlinI can do this all day. I can do this all day. You want to do this?

AlexI know. I know. You say that you're fast and not smart, and I disagree that you are very smart, but sometimes I think you just like to be fast because it's fun, and you like to run and run.

MerlinLet me ask you a question, Alex. If you had a superpower, would you sit around being sad about it, or would you be out there just fucking doing it all the time? See, if I could run fast or if I could, I'll just stay away from the J.K. Rowling stuff. But if I could do something that was a cool mutant superpower, a cool one. I'm not talking about adding an electrical charge to an ace of spades. If I had an actual cool power, it's not cool.

AlexWhat's an actual cool power?

MerlinWell, that's the problem. At least in the universe of the X-Men, I mean, it's kind of a curse a lot of the time. Do you know about Kitty Pryde? she's sometimes called Ariel or Sprite so if you go back to the original the OG comics she's just a Jewish girl in Chicago and it is basically something starts happening around the age of 12 or 13 and she starts falling through floors and walls, do you understand? because mutant superpowers

in the X-Men universe tend to happen around the time of puberty, that's when they tend to come out so it's implied the Catherine Pride, as I call her, has started to menstruate, and that's why she keeps falling through Chicago floors. Did you ever do that? If I had her powers, I would be using them all the time. And the powers that I've got, it is a curse, however I am. It is a curse, I think we can all agree. But sometimes I just want to go out and step into the speed force.

Like the great Ezra Miller. Remember that? Remember when Flash entered the Speed Force? Do you remember that?

AlexNo. What? The Speed Force?

MerlinIt was the single greatest moment in DC movie history. Remember that?

AlexDC movie history. Okay. DC as in Detective Comics?

MerlinDC is a big scene. They had bad brains. They had minor threat. But you were in Chicago. Oh, literal DC.

AlexOkay.

MerlinNo. No, no, no. Did you know any Jewesses who menstruated?

AlexNo.

MerlinUsually tough from their horns.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinI just want people to be happy. Did you guys start watching the dog show yet?

AlexThe dog show?

MerlinThat I recommended to you and Matchy via...

AlexThe dog show.

MerlinYou didn't start watching Dog House UK. You haven't started watching that yet.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinFor Matchy, it might be a bit of what we used to call Bussman's Holiday. Like, I'm not sure after a day of broken dogs, maybe you don't want to, you know, kick back and watch English dogs be adopted, but a rehomed, as they say there. They got a different word for everything there.

AlexOh, they really do.

MerlinYou should watch it. It's really good.

AlexJust got to suck on some fags, and then you feel better. Or, in my case, a fanny.

MerlinSee, that's what happened to Paul's grandfather from A Hard Day's Night. You know, he was on the English version of what became Sanford and Son. Did you know that? Really? What's his name? Wilford Brimley? Wilford Mark Bramhill? What's his name? And Wilford Brambling, the guy who plays Paul, he's a very clean old man. You know him in A Hard Day's Night, the excellent movie A Hard Day's Night? Nope, nope. Have you ever seen A Hard Day's Night? Nope, nope. Would you capture that, please? Well, see, he was an English actor on a very popular show called Steptoe and Son, which later on, the American rights to that would be purchased by Mr. Norman Lear,

Norman Lear, and that became what's called Sanford and Son, which is one of my favorite shows as a kid. Except in England, it's a white father and a white son. But as it turns out in real life, what's his name is, Bramberry, Buckleberry, Wilfred Brimley, whatever that guy's name is, you know, he was, he was, they don't say closeted there. They say wardrobed. He was a wardrobed gay man. And he did something like the, you call it cottaging. Same kind of thing Brian Epstein did because that was the only way to meet other people. And that broke English law because guess what?

It used to be totes gay. It used to be totes illegal, I mean, to be gay in English.

AlexOh, Freudian slip. Are you saying that gays break the law? No, like the fannies. Oh, well, it depends.

MerlinIt's a bundle of sticks. Well, maybe it's like on the DL, you know? Like maybe we both get to be straight tonight.

AlexI almost want to do this episode's show notes in Obsidian with what they call graph view or data view.

MerlinThat's a challenge, Alex, for you to catch me up on this app.

Alexyou love your brain is just going full speed your brain's going at a speed nowhere near full speed i didn't say i didn't that's what i'm afraid of when i enter the speed force you're gonna smell

Merlinit for weeks much like nightcrawler when nightcrawler teleports it smells like a fart did

Alexyou know that when it goes bamf it goes bamf is that not a bit is that what nightcrawler is that If thing.

MerlinIn the Munich circus, he was known as Nightcrawler. What?

AlexOh, I don't know. Is there anything I can do for you today? How are you doing? What's your viscosity?

Speaker ANo bits.

AlexNo bits. I'm just melting, apparently, in the man heat. I don't know why that phrase came to my head. I don't know. I'm doing great.

MerlinWhen you smelled one set of farts, that's when I was carrying you.

AlexOh, my gosh. Why? I haven't caught up with everything. in the Merlin Podcast universe, but I know that you keep doing the Jesus story and I'm wondering... You don't know that.

MerlinThe Jesus story? Oh my God, how many lesbian sisters, as you used to call them, how disappointed would they be to know that you're talking about the quote unquote the Jesus story?

AlexIt's okay. It's out of the Bible. It's a poem that people made up for to put on a bookmark and it's a very lovely little thing.

Speaker AWe should do that. That should be a challenge. Write poems for bookmarks.

AlexOh, that's... That would be a good... It's a thriving industry, bookmarks. They're very, very popular.

MerlinListen. Oh, no. Do you hear it? Do you hear it?

AlexOoh.

MerlinThe bitch is back.

AlexIt's a ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.

Speaker AIt's a ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.

MerlinYeah, the bang-bang machine. It sounds like it's back.

Speaker AOh, the Irish bangers are here.

AlexI'm very excited. The Irish bangers.

Speaker APut a banger in your lorry.

MerlinThat's cuttiny rhyming slang for Hugh Laurie.

AlexDing! Are you going to keep going? just go full speed. I think.

MerlinI could stop this all day.

AlexOh, man. There were news in top. Well, no. In our show doc, I really like having only a single show doc. I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit.

Speaker AI'm of two minds about the Alex Jones stuff.

AlexOh, we don't need to go into. No, we can.

MerlinBut I think posting that video was, I wouldn't want somebody doing that to me

Alexwell who would it doesn't seem like it caught on though we're talking about the same thing the Alex Jones compilation

Merlinwell there's two different Alex Jones things

Alexyou sent me something

Merlinoh my god sorry go I'm gonna stop talking now now you're going to stop talking oh I'm sorry did I not start did I not did i not stop talking in a way that you found confusing or did i you you remember what i said

Alexabout doing this all day uh you sent me a video uh or rather imagine how i feel can you imagine

Merlinhow i feel what it's like to be like this all the time can you imagine what it's like will you try to imagine don't imagine i i don't want to at the moment i saw something on the internet um and it's one of those unfortunately again see also the discourse we're like aha somebody i don't like was humiliated that must be good for everybody and like i mean boy i'm not here to defend alex jones but somehow somebody got what appears to be like surveillance footage from inside the place

Alexwhere he operates it's it's his office his studio slash office you i don't know that okay i mean do okay do we know that uh it looks fairly familiar like alex jones has done enough

Merlinyou know alex jones's office more than i if somebody posted a bunch of shit of me a bunch of shit of me videotaped from shot inside of a place where i am and posted that about me i'd be pretty bummed about it and i would hope that other people see that and go regardless of whatever that guy was doing in his weird office it's kind of shitty to post stuff up like that have we even said what it is don't you think i mean like i are we so are we so far away from all of this we can no longer that we can no longer have any empathy for somebody who had some bullshit pulled on him

Alexyou know what let's pretend that there's a couple people listening to this that don't know that we You're talking about a compilation of Alex Jones.

MerlinIn 1979, we'd be coming up into a big election, and Jimmy Carter was having a pretty rough time. And then on top of it all, there was a lot going on in Tehran, and the Ayatollah came back from out of his being in France, where he'd been exiled, and then there were all the hostages. And ever since, nothing's been the same.

AlexDid you just go to the Iran-Contra scandal? Which is...

MerlinThe Iran-Contra scandal is in 1987. This is 1979.

AlexDropped a decade, like you guys say.

MerlinSkipped a decade. I hurt my neck in 1988.

AlexAlex Jones was... Apparently, there is...

MerlinI'm making a joke because how do you begin to explain fucking Alex Jones? Well, one way of explaining Alex Jones is to do flashbulb, Alex Gibney-style flashbulb memories of four or five points in American history where we didn't know at the time how much it would change us forever. 9-11? Kind of. But really, the 2000 election. That was a huge one. 1979 and the fall of Jimmy Carter and the rise of Ronald Reagan. How do you even begin to talk about how that changed America?

Right? How do you get Alex Jones? You gotta break a few tomlets.

AlexOh, boy. Anyway, Alex Jones was, quote,

Merlincaught drinking all day in his office apparently security footage off of his own camera somebody hacked into cameras if we follow this line of questioning i think quote hacked in this case

Alexis a disgruntled employee decided to put this footage up he should change the password the I don't know. You keep saying you're not here to defend Alex Jones.

MerlinAnd I mean, like, are we so far away that like we no longer appreciate that fruit of the poison tree is not admissible? Well, but it's fucked up. If somebody if somebody doxed you in that particular way, would you be like, oh, ha ha, you got me.

AlexBut I don't think anybody who is, quote, on our side cares that Alex Jones was drinking all day. Like, I would also be drinking all day if I was being sued by a number of people. I guess we should say what it is. What is?

There was footage of Alex Jones that was leaked. Oh, there was footage of Alex Jones leaked, and it's like a supercut of him rolling.

MerlinThe Daily Dot, which is a website, I guess. The Daily Dot. It's a generous term. David Kovuchi said, scoop from me, someone is spamming. This is what a wild sentence. Someone is spamming InfoWars. As long as we're doing the Norton annotated Alex Jones here, InfoWars is the name of his omnibus brand of firebrand right wing anger. Spamming InfoWars with a super cut of surveillance footage of Alex Jones drinking through his workday.

And so what we see here is I didn't like I was too embarrassed to watch more than a second of it.

AlexIt's not that bad.

MerlinIt was it was just he's seen hiding something, which makes me uncomfortable.

AlexNo, he just seems to be throwing.

MerlinWhat bottle is it? At first I thought, is it a beer bottle? Anyway, it purports to show that something that is apparently, as they say, an open secret inside the circle of people who know Alex Jones is that apparently the fellow drinks quite a lot. And drinks quite a lot, reportedly, like almost all the time, including like through the day. They made it sound like, if I read this correctly, and I did read it, I didn't want to look at it. If I read this correctly, they are implying that in the course of what most people consider an Austin business day, that he would drink a 750 milliliter full bottle of some unknown liquor.

But like before like one or two.

Speaker AThat's a lot.

MerlinI drink a lot, Alex, and I don't know if I could do that more than a couple weeks in a row. That's a lot. Do you really? Oh, that's no, no, no. I'm kidding. That was a joke. I do drink. I do drink a lot.

AlexBut that's a crazy amount of alcohol to be drinking at work. Do you drink at least once a week? I truly don't know how much adults who, I mean, I am an adult, but I no longer.

Speaker ADid you hack into my canary?

AlexI don't know. I don't know. Well, but okay. Anything else you want to know about me? You have seemed to be really affected by this Alex Jones drinking thing. But I think we've kind of gone full circle with the empathy on Alex Jones. And it's like, well, who cares that he was drinking all day? Like, whatever. Do your thing.

MerlinI'm going to tell you what I tell all my kids, Alex, which is that there's a terrible affliction in America where we have been habituated to think that if it doesn't bother us, it oughtn't bother anybody. No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. If you've got nothing to hide, why are you worried about this? And I'm not worried about a hypocrisy thing here. like i got a lot of fucking problems what i am saying is that if you repose that question to somebody you say like oh is it hilarious that there was there was hidden camera footage of alex jones doing something that makes him look like an idiot let's transpose that to any other

person in america and let's make that anybody was like stolen footage of their shit like and like ah that's that's hilarious look at this look at this kid who comes home and cries or look at this

AlexOh, that's hilarious. I'm saying that this was someone leaked, again, quote, hacked and spammed InfoWars. Someone tried to hurt Alex Jones.

MerlinAnd tried to make him look foolish.

AlexYes. A lot of people tried to make Alex Jones look foolish.

MerlinHe does fine on his own. We'll get to Exhibit B in a second.

AlexI mean, yeah, I don't know. Like, I am surprised by how much this has affected you and how much the— What are you talking about?

MerlinI haven't said a single word to another person about it, except I sent it to you yesterday, and now we're talking about it. I would just think that you would be somebody, given your own history, that you would be sensitive to the idea that there ought to be areas that shouldn't be public even if somebody gets it. That's all. Oh, no, it's terrible. Anyway, he drinks a lot.

AlexIt sucks. yeah no i it it sucks the the guy sucks i don't think that you should leak office footage of people on i i have to assume that right now is the like alex jones is currently having the worst time of his life based on or at least in in public like uh things are he's got a lot A lot of stuff to keep track of right now. Yeah. A lot's going on.

So.

MerlinMust be hard to really unwind.

AlexLike, yeah. I think in my position, I would be drinking a whole, whole lot.

MerlinI would definitely be pretty nervous all the time.

AlexDid you? I should have actually insisted you watch the interview.

MerlinExhibit B. That's Exhibit B, right? Because then you sent me something this morning that's pretty wild.

AlexIt's not, though. I think that that's actually an exhibit of him wild, but it's sad because you see that this man is like, he's like lost everything at this point. And now he has nothing.

MerlinOh, I think he still has plenty to lose.

AlexWell, but.

MerlinI mean, he's got a place to sleep.

AlexYeah, but it's kind of like, it's kind of like.

MerlinWhat, he's lost his standing in the community of strong thinkers? He's a fucking weirdo who's been making millions and millions of dollars off of lies and misery on purpose, which is really not a great thing in my book.

AlexAnd as it's pointed out in this interview, when he was, like famously, he was, I guess, the first of the great deplatforming. uh i tim he's like tim cook kicked me out of the apples door and then it all also you sent me a short clip of of oh sorry go ahead well and then uh he famously made i think it was the most profitable year for info wars because he was able to say oh i'm silenced and the people who

watch info wars most of them aren't even watching it on youtube or listening to it on apple podcast They are at the Infowars website. So he made a ton of money because his supporters were like, oh, gosh, he's being silenced. And so it's it's I mean, I don't know. I thought this was an interesting interview just because this man.

MerlinI'm sorry. Can I clarify something? I'm so fucking stupid. I think I feel like you sent me like a 20 second loop of an interview. Is there a longer interview that I should be reading? Well, you sent me a thing where he says, yeah, I did the Sandy Hook killings. That was me.

AlexThis is the 18-minute interview with Channel 5, which is Andrew Callahan, formerly of All Gas No Breaks. And Andrew Callahan's whole thing.

MerlinOh, I see. I see. I see. Oh, 18-minute interview. Okay, I get it. I get it.

AlexNo, and he goes all unhinged. He's like, I did it. I killed all the Sandy Hook children. I killed it. Oh, man. It was crazy.

Merlinoh this is the jokey interviewer guy

Alexbut it's but he's not a jokey interviewer typically like he doesn't do like gotcha

Merlintalking to people who are idiots and letting them just keep talking

Alexyes and then sometimes they start to act like real people and then you start to feel things for them like there's this one guy specifically I forget his name it's like something Kelly and he is totally Q Q pilled. He was at proudly one of the sixers as he calls it. Like he was at January six. He couldn't get in, but he wanted to. And you realize that this man,

like he has now appeared in many of these channel five interviews.

Speaker AWhat is channel five?

AlexYou know, sorry. All right. Channel five is just a YouTube channel with Andrew Callahan. This is again of all we talked about this guy before.

MerlinHe had a different haircut, but he was interviewing ding-a-lings at like a CPAC thing or something.

AlexHe is that guy. Yeah, he he interviews ding-a-lings, but he interviews. He just like lets them talk and then it becomes it becomes something of almost.

MerlinThey get hosted by their own petard kind of thing.

AlexIt started as performance art kind of of just interviewing the ding-a-lings and letting them talk themselves into a hole. And he would also interview people stoned out of their minds at fish concerts or he would go to the alien, he would talk to flat earthers. And it's like, oh, there are some flat earthers who believe that the earth is flat because of convoluted science.

And there are other people who believe the earth is flat because Jews like it's just in. I don't know. I really like his conversations or lack thereof by giving people a voice that like they're the critics of giving like giving these wackadoos a voice is like, well, you're platforming them. But when you truly just give them a microphone and let them talk like.

MerlinYeah, I mean, that was sort of what ended up at some point being interesting about some of the Sacha Baron Cohen stuff. Right, exactly. You accidentally told on yourself-ness of people.

AlexYes. But then there's like, oh, you see that there are these working class people who have gotten caught up in this absolutely, this thing that is bigger than them. And I mean, the biggest, I think, revelation for me was the people who were part of the truck caravan. Like, none of them really knew what they were doing other than they were around people who weren't making fun of them.

MerlinOh, this is the thing where you go to D.C. to disrupt something. What was it?

AlexRight. It was like Canada to D.C. Oh, because it was a it was a nominally a covid lockdown reaction, even though it was months after there'd been a covid lockdown. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's and this guy went around like basically chased the these truckers down. And a lot of them, you know, would not give interviews because they were framed as idiots. Well, a lot of them were.

But so many of them were just like, I am amongst my people and I don't feel alone, which is a feeling that I can empathize with quite a bit. Even when it's like you said, you found. Right. And even though, you know, there's and that's why that's what the right sort of has on us is they will be at the Maury Povich show together and they won't they'll stick together. And at least when they look like idiots, they have their friends to be like, oh, man, we really fucked that one up.

and you might end up being like your friend might end up being an anti-Semite but at that point it's like you know that they're kids and you'd know that they like how much they're being underpaid and I I don't know it gets to a not a populist place but you the more I watch interviews of and not just interviews with um uh Andrew Callahan but just interviews with people who are from

like there's a guy on CNN that does a similar thing who's really who's good at doing a similar kind of thing yeah and but it's really like once you like let them off their leash you realize that a lot of them don't really have a far leash and most of the time it's like I mean it would be

Merlinlike going to a Yankees game and asking people why they're there. Like, and, and, and like the, the cynical part of this is that, uh, is that you go to one, let's say you go to a ding-a-ling rally and you're going to like, you know, maybe like a kind of a Donnie O'Sullivan type assignment where you're going to go out and say, um, how do you really believe that, you know, Jews have horns? And then you get like one soundbite that you can use and you get a picture of, of two old ladies in Trump clothes saying crazy shit. the more fascinating thing might be to talk to them for as long as they will talk to you

and wait long enough for you to see that mask slip or that like the sound bite falls off the you know slides off the interview and then like you're really just a person talking to another person and you're both really weird and like that becomes very much more ultimately revealing and useful than just going out and shooting ding-a-lings in a barrel

Alexand even i'm even if you get to someone who is like truly a horrible person and has very dark and well good and evil who is saying things that are incredibly evil and racist you start to see their logic and why their logic is appealing to so many people yeah because my dad liked the yankees

Merlinit's it's really it really does come back down to a certain kind of a form like who needs to explain that like just you know what i mean like i'm sorry i'm not trying to like really be reductive here but like when we try and get in these oh like you know we're liberals you know who are really smart and really tuned into a wide range of media that you know goes from msnbc to cnn and we know all occasionally i even look at the nation and i know all of these things and hmm i'm gonna go out there and be like fucking sherlock holmes in my deer stalker hat trying to figure out what's wrong with all of these fucking people.

And it's like, well, there's a lot. I mean, you know, there's the problem with health care being tied to employment. There is the problem of you've got a BA in life and you're going to do great or you don't have a BA and you're not going to do great. There's a whole lot of answers to a whole lot of things. It's basically tribalism plus another thing you've never had to think about.

AlexYes.

MerlinAlex what is the best way what is the best way to understand another person who does things that you don't understand is there any part of their life you think you might want to think about and look at that would make it easier for you to understand how they got how they are

Alexwell I think you might want to think about what they're doing and whether it has to do with money and or fear

Merlindo the other one

Alexwhat's the other one

Merlinwhat was way more difficult for them in childhood than it was for you

Alexyes we have talked about that But that is definitely, I think, some, that is something people talk about a lot and be like, well, they had or did not have a privilege. But I think so few people are willing to admit what they had to deal with in childhood that it obscures.

MerlinThis is partly why this is so random. And I'm sorry, we should talk about something fun after this.

AlexEveryone's gone now. It's just us.

MerlinOne reason I really can't help but keep thinking about Dope Sick, because Dope Sick was like, I'm such a fucking idiot. It took this stupid goddamn TV show for me to have any empathy at all for people that, if I'm honest, I thought were just a bunch of idiotic,

like, let's just go all the way in. I thought these were a bunch of hillbillies with no self-control. so of course they're all addicted to drugs but then you see like like you know apparently the Sackler family shit was about as bad as it looked and then on top of it all but like that was that that's what made that show so good and hooray for uh for Batman getting um an Emmy for that oh did he I think he did yeah but the but like the the thing you get away from that is like hey you watch that and like uh well a you start understanding a little bit more that like these

are human beings but like everybody's got their fucking reasons the things are how things got how they are is because people like dr batman had been pushed these drugs he pushed back against those drugs but still so much pressure to do this and then i love the like the various points of view in that of like here's what it's like to be a successful sackler salesperson who's you know scrapping and trying to make girls like you yes and but then also here's what it's like to be a gay kid whose mom will fake it, but his father hates her. There's all these different parts,

and it's like, oh man, if you end up, a show like that or any kind of media like that can be so successful that when you walk away, you end up going, I hate how everybody turned out in this. I hate everything that happened in this. I hate the way everything in this went. There's no heroes

Alexof this it was i i think the best way to not just represent even like the opioid crisis but just what poverty is in in appalachia appalachia okay we'll never say it right sorry nevada nevada i

Merlinknow what you want to say what you want to say is apalachicola which is a city in florida It feels real. It's got a great mouthfeel, Apalachia.

AlexI, uh, God, I'm trying to find, uh, this interview or the, or this like radio piece about a queer person who was doing harm reduction in the area. So just people who, um, like they basically opened their home and, uh, provided a bunch of safe or clean needles. and very quickly all those people stopped giving a fuck whether or not they were trans because it

was like oh you are also poor you have also been fucked over you made it very you've made it difficult for me to decide how i want to hate you about yeah yeah they're like oh we we share this childhood trauma oh okay cool yeah it was literally like you know when like you you suddenly don't care whether or not a person uh has a blue a blue hair or a mohawk and and on the other side you suddenly don't care that someone uh really likes guns because which is a really scary thing to

think about but when you realize that someone that a lot of people just like guns because they're fun yeah that that might make it seem more disturbing but it makes so much sense we get away from this

Merlinworld where like one black ball about a person like disqualifies them to be seen as a human being like i've got this one angle and let's go back to the binning and the idea of like deciding what pile people belong in you're like oh you're that kind of person like nope sorry won't do it won't do it which is an understandable heuristic for getting getting through day to day in life but that's boy talk about some residual evolutionary biology bullshit that kind of like instant tribal reaction what was like this is driving me goddamn crazy i just watched something and it was something really sad.

But it was another one of those, it might have been a series on somewhere. I'll look it up. But I was watching something. I was just, I can tell I've really enjoyed something when I come out of it going, oh boy, nobody looks good in how this turns out. Because that's really how it is in life. That's the dirty little secret of so much stuff in life is like if you scratch at something long enough, you will find a problem with it. Sometimes less scratching is required and sometimes no scratching is required. But like everything, I mean, It's like the city of Rome,

like just so many layers of like bad decisions that we're all still living with from the past. Lord. All right.

AlexDon't scratch. Get some lotion. Yeah.

MerlinI got my calamite lotion, baby.

AlexReference not acknowledged.

MerlinVelvet Underground, a song by Velvet Underground called Foggy Notion.

AlexOh, I should have known that one.

MerlinI think it's on V. I'm disappointed. it's pretty weird that the best VU album came out what 15 years after they were no longer a band VU and Another View both very good albums I love music

Alexyou do you love music to a point that makes me wonder why you don't do more music or don't don't create more music

Merlinyou love reading books why don't you write more

AlexI do I just don't show or tell Alex why don't you write more books question yeah uh no i have well because they're different things yeah well well yes but you also

Merlinyou like driving why don't you build cars okay okay hold it's a good point it's kind of hard not to i'm on the precipice of a project uh to complete uh this is this is not for any like john roderick style reason but like i finally put a thing in place where like podcasts episodes automatically get downloaded to my Synology because I've been so bad about that in the past. There's so many source files. Not that it matters, but it's pleasing to me to have it around. But yeah, I'm pretty close to doing that with my music

where stuff I've done before. I'm a little bit hung up on how to present it, but I would like to at least collect it all into one organized place. And then with the goal being, just put it all in a big folder somewhere. If anybody wants it, get it. Here's a zip. Get this thing. Get this thing. Get this thing. And again, that's mostly for me. It'll be for a few other people, and that's all I need.

AlexAnd that would make, I think that would make you very happy, and it would make...

Speaker AWhat would it make up to five people happy?

AlexI think it would, if it makes more than five people happy, which I think it will, it will just make them so happy that I think it's worth...

MerlinYeah, but if it makes me happy, game over. Like, it's already done. And, like, no, that sounds self-involved, but, like, it's not, there's no demand for this. nobody's saying oh my gosh please put up a band camp where i can give you 85 cents for something

Alexlike i don't fucking care but like please put up a band camp so i can give you 85 cents to for uh bacon ray albums you know yeah now someone has done it yeah there we go uh but you you say often that you just want people to be happy and it's a bit but it's not really a bit because

MerlinIt's not a bit at all.

AlexYeah, it's not a bit.

MerlinNo, it's only a bit when I say it because somebody's asked me some kind of incredibly, made a remark or posed a question that is incredibly misguided in most cases. And it's clearly trying to just be a little bit publicly brusque. And that's when I tend to say, as a bit, I just want people to be happy. But the truth is, I really do just want people to be happy. And I also want people to not expect me to be another person's penis lawyer.

I also want my clients to be happy. You may be entitled to compensation.

We have, as a program, as an institution in America, taken a stand for many years against what some people call call-out culture. and yet I do feel like you might have just committed some time theft.

AlexOh?

MerlinYeah.

AlexOh? How so? How so?

MerlinOh, so you're not going to talk about it.

AlexOh, because of my period?

MerlinYeah, yeah.

AlexYeah.

MerlinDid you clock out for that part? Maybe you just decided you wanted a little break and wanted some time to yourself in the bathroom to look at your phone. That makes it sound like... And you made a sound of cotton being stuffed into your drawers to cover for it. But that's costing me in time.

AlexOh, good lord.

MerlinIs it a bad one?

AlexHere's the problem. Oh, gosh. I don't have good ones.

MerlinWell, do you get... I've had more than one...

AlexYou can say lady... A period person, I will not be upset.

MerlinOh, I can say that? Thank you. I was going to say a fully... Fully Empowered Woe Mine. I've been with Fully Empowered Woe Mine, because that's what I call it, who have told me that it tends to be like it comes from this side or it comes from that side. Like every other period is kind of worse than the other one. Do you get that? Do you get like we're more like odd and even numbered months or whatever? I don't know what your cycle is.

You filled all that out in the form when you applied to be on the show. I have all that here in front of me. But do you get like are they all bad? or have you ever had that pattern of every other one is kind of more bad?

AlexI need to update the form because that is very much a thing. But through various parts of my adult life as all children, once they bleed, are goddamn, once you're able to be bred, you are an adult.

MerlinThat's right. Every time a bell rings, they got their period.

Alexit has to it's the the women in my family have never had uh like you either have very much baby bearing hips and produce a lot of children or none at all and so the the reason that matters is it seems like even if you have a bunch of kids

or you have no kids, your period is still completely inconsistent with my family. And in some cases, that leads to cuter and cancer.

MerlinYou mean like, I'm sorry, per sufferer, like it still feels kind of like random and chaotic about whether this is going to be a bad one or is it just a paint job everywhere for everybody?

AlexWell, it's a paint job for everybody until you have a kid. And then suddenly, like, it's like, all right.

Speaker AOh, Mary blesses you.

AlexThe Catholic God now gives you a regular monthly situation and it's all good. But for the non-bearers, we, it's, yeah, it, it sucks.

MerlinYeah.

AlexYeah.

MerlinBut it's like it's screaming at you almost. Like, don't, don't, don't blow your fecundity. Get out there and get some of that sweet Catholic D in you and make some progeny. progeny otherwise i could make this pretty disruptive for you exactly it's like oh you

Alexwasted another one you wasted it you just gotta let it go from there you're like you're like you're

Merlinlike a girl onan spilling the location for seed wow what book is that we should look that up that should be a challenge no no boy let's find out where the son of onan comes from i feel like it's It's got to be the Old Testament.

AlexOh, I, yeah.

MerlinI'm going to guess pretty early on.

AlexI bet a number of my eggs on it that sin.

MerlinI don't see it as a sin. I think of it as a lifestyle.

AlexIt helps me sleep.

MerlinOh, gosh, Onan's right there in Genesis. Don't sleep on that one.

AlexOh, right out the gate.

MerlinRight out the gate. Yeah, you got the seven meats, the three cheeses. you take a rest, Cain and Abel, blah, blah, blah. What else you got in Genesis? You got Abraham, if you remember, is in Genesis. Moses and Aaron don't come along until Exodus. I think Genesis, also Genesis, I think you got, do you have Tower of Babel in Genesis?

AlexNo, I think that's later on.

MerlinIs that later?

AlexIt's not an OG. It's not canon.

MerlinGenesis is kind of like the wire where you're amazed how much was in the first episode. It was all there the whole time. Give you all the clues, Mr. Policeman.

AlexThat's the thing. that original sin is Omar's coming but the original sin

Merlinevery time you hear somebody whistling Farmer in the Dell Onan's about to come and do an absolute paint job

Speaker Awhere'd Onan go? shut up mom

Merlinoh religious humor is funny even when you're not observant religious humor's funny funny all day long i didn't know that there

Alexis a i don't i don't know how much your youngster shares with you of what's going on tiktok but it seems like the younger folks have like some hyper fixations on catholic uh like image like old school catholic imagery and it's becoming more and more of a special or or uh maybe not becoming more of a special thing but people are sharing their special things in involving catholic imagery and you know i know like special thing in my sense of that phrase yes yes um where because

Merlinoh okay so like you i thought you were talking about like iconography like the what's called blessed heart what's the one we got the bloody heart but you're talking about where somebody

Alexhas a special thing about that mary that that is like you know it goes beyond the i would say traditional like you know nun or priest kink like no it's like we want to get like that doubting

Merlinthomas priest kink sounds like a really good 90s band from ireland priest kink okay i get it i so so boy i love that phrase special thing yeah so like the way that i am about maggie on the walking dead somebody might be about like i don't know abraham and sarah fanfic no no no no like jesus

Alexand Mary and like an

MerlinJesus and Mary slash fiction?

AlexOr yeah because it goes into the incest thing or at least you know she's a virgin. Exactly so it's like you know the endless possibilities and then like the apostles I wish this was a bit but I guess there is some slash fiction involving the apostles and Jesus.

MerlinThe apostles are a lot like let's be honest a little like I don't want to say the X-Men but certainly like some kind of a super team and personalities emerge when you read the four extremely different uh gospels by four extremely different people but you're saying like you get like a luke slash peter type situation i mean i'm not familiar or a peter slash simon peter oh the oh oh

Alexinteresting well that's dear penthouse i never thought this would happen to me you know the the apostles had the og chosen names so they they you know they had the the gentile they changed to gentile names because wasn't uh uh you're saying this is the worst

Merlinpodcast no it's not it's good were they gentile eyes because i'm pretty sure they spoke aramaic yeah they spoke like they spoke like spoke like super jewish like aramaic is like is like i think it's like uh being jewish in difficult mode um or as as you say in your slash fiction it was hard and so you guys i don't think i could do them all off the dome there's always one i'll forget

Alexwas there an andrew was there an andrew no there was definite well there might have been in paul an og and wait paul wait no paul was later there's paul's and p wait no paul was paul and og no paul comes later well so to speak uh it depends on what it depends on those dirty letters to the yeah yeah have you checked out my second galatians no oh god challenge uh this which we could still

Merlinoh god my so what we got here is what we what we got here what we got listen listen listen listen chapter 38 verse 8. I come across. Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her. Raise up offspring for your brother. But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went into his brother's wife so that he could not give offspring to his brother. Oh, he was literally cock-blocking.

What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord and he put him to death also. Spoilers! absolute paint job challenge

Alexdick doug challenge this week's challenge which i committed to if this was a bit i was fully fully like I did not break, was to give a stage manager another try. Stage manager. Go.

MerlinI just want to give. I'm worried that like now that I'm simping for Alex Jones, I also feel like I feel a little bit. I want to do a little bit of a opening statement here, which is to say that it's my understanding that stage manager, which we are going to talk about in a second, is a feature that is only available in beta versions of Apple software, correct? Is Stage Manager in production on... It's still in... First of all, I should admit, I've got a meta Onan to do here,

which is that I've got betas on all kinds of shit. Not on my main computer, but almost all the other things are on some form or fashion of beta. So I just want to clarify, though, is Stage Manager is not a publicly available feature of macOS or iOS at this point. Is that correct? It's a fact check.

AlexWell, it is on the public beta. So, you know, you don't you no longer need a developer account.

MerlinBut it's not like it's not but it's not the aunts and uncles that have it right now.

AlexCorrect. It is not. So we are using a beta.

MerlinI guess you could say, I mean, technically, I guess it's still a beta feature. But I just want to clarify, like, this is because I don't have that many extremely nice things to say on giving this a second try. But I also want to be fair, as fair as we can be, in saying that, like, it's not done yet. And they did have a pretty hard pivot recently to try and change it and make things better. And I would love you to cover all of that. But is that would you allow that that I just it's just fair to say, in fairness, this is not done yet. And they've said so.

AlexCorrect. Correct. This. Yes. Yes. I feel like we're almost chicken probleming. Like, well, it doesn't.

MerlinI'm not trying to change anything either of us has to say. Well, I bet like I it would be I would be really bummed if I spent lots of time working on like, you know, I always try to imagine it because this is I study liberal arts and I'm broken inside. Like I imagine people like working on a project, maybe it wasn't even a project they wanted to be working on and like, oh God, I would have implemented this so differently. And like I've been stuck on working on so much shit that I had to do for a job that I did not believe in, that I didn't think was good. Or sometimes maybe I did believe in and I did think it was good. And like in the same way that I don't necessarily want to see lots of footage of Alex Jones, you know, drinking his milliliters.

I also just don't want to bag on this unfairly in that like there's it's not really done. I don't think that's going to change a lot of what either of us has to say about the extremely, like, the basically poorly designed feature.

Speaker ABut that's just my opinion. That's just my opinion. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with this.

AlexIf there is a single person who is responsible for this, the entire design of it.

MerlinIt's a Muslim woman and her name is Stage.

AlexWhat?

MerlinYou're so mean. You're so mean.

AlexNo. But I doubt that this is a project that one person took on, let alone a feature that one person designed. It seems like a lot of people probably really cared about this.

MerlinTouched a lot of parts. You would have to, like, there's a lot going on in doing what they're trying to do. And anyway, okay, enough said. Enough said about that. And I'll throw to you in a sec because you're the pro from Dover on this. But the reason I say or we ended up saying give it another try was like, I think like everybody, you see a feature like this announced and you're like, gimme, gimme, gimme. This could really change the game for me. Because you've seen a demonstration on stage and it's like it seems,

okay, first of all, any kind of new feature that does something really, really unusual can be very exciting. and you're like, oh, I could imagine that being great. And then you see it demonstrated, usually through some kind of like Craig Federici thing involving, I mean, he seems to plan a lot of canoeing trips, but you watch like their weird version of like, oh, and I can just drag this into pages. And it's like, yeah, but you do that all the time. You know what I mean? And you're like, oh, I guess that makes sense.

AlexI love pages.

MerlinYeah. See, one thing I'm going to come up with, spoiler alert, is like, God, just, you know what? Fuck it. Anyway, so enough said. So the reason we're saying trade, give it another try. Is this something that was in an earlier beta and then robble, robble, rhubarb, rhubarb, there was some rethinking of how to do it. And it would appear that we are now seeing – and I don't follow the trades, Alex. But it seems to me that what we are seeing now in the current betas on primarily – I guess I'm thinking of this as something that's most interesting on iPad.

I mean, am I wrong?

Alexlike it's i mean that's where the primary excitement is coming from and it's not as like

Merlinit is not as necessary or potentially world-changing on a mac because a mac is a computer that you use with your hands and type on and stuff and have keyboard commands but um which will hopefully get so okay so just for context then the reason to give it a try again was like okay let's see what's happening with this can you imagine like how how you could or would use this and and and then and finally finally you hope like alex has been like so gay for ipads for a really long time and i think you and i have both like since the m1 laptops at least we've both been pretty like low-key like oh

i yeah like last night i read an anthony bourdain book on my ipad in bed but i i i use my laptop at home like okay at work you know um i'm at my big fancy computer and i love it but like at home like i my laptop i plug it in like the instant i get home and i'm using it all night um so so my usage of my beloved ipads has gone down i would be interesting to go and look at the numbers on it but like my usage has dropped by at least half in the time since i got a fancy m1 laptop then i i

I will say your words, but isn't that kind of similar? What happened with you?

AlexOh, yeah. I was super gay for the iPad because for a while, Apple was super gay for the iPad.

MerlinIt seemed like the future. It seemed like they were putting all their wood behind that arrow. Like maybe not today, but like, oh, boy, I can see how Apple, like they're so excited about what this thing's going to do. Like since 2010, we've been like, OK, when are we going to get to the fireworks factory? When are you going to use this magical piece of glass to do something that's so paradigmatically different? Rethinking of how we do computing when we hold a piece of glass in our hands and we're still waiting for him to get to the fireworks factory in some ways.

AlexThere was so much excitement that, I mean, this isn't for those that follow the trades and the more popular shows know that the Apple really kind of let the Mac languish. but they put so little effort into mac os and arguably mac hardware that they had an apology

Merlinparty. Well, they grabbed some ios feature as a redheaded stepchild and pulled it over.

AlexWell, but do you remember there was basically the mac os apology tour where they brought in like gruber and everybody and like all the big apple uh columnists and journalists it was like okay everybody calm down it's gonna be okay it's all right we're still doing the mac yeah we're going still a product in our lineup what's a computer we still make those uh and i think that's sort of when i don't want to say i don't know as soon as apple silicon came out it was like

oh this ipad that was as fast as my uh my laptop with a butterfly keyboard it's no longer uh this ipad is no longer as fast as a macbook air so i would like to go back to that please because still despite being an ipad pro i don't use any of apple's pro apps on an ipad because they don't exist and who knows if they ever will logic i don't this is an honest

question um nope okay hard nope any logic nope nope so in this instance i'm not trying to be

Merlincynical or nope i'm not trying to be cynical or drag but in this instance pro means nicer it's not really it's it's not like this is designed to be something that i mean pro i mean really in pro pro in some ways means rich guy like in some ways it's like the nice version of things it's got the extra features for people who will pay a little bit more and i i think it's it's a little cynical to drag them constantly about the word pro but you know there are people i remember all those various times that mike hurley has like i could feel in his heart of hearts how much he was going to go at one time all in on apple watch all in on

ipad to ipads to the what are they called the dual ipad lifestyle or whatever and it's like and i i've been kind of following the fumes of that for years going like yeah me too like there's times where it does make a lot more sense but like even with the very costly keyboard for this thing the whatever the fancy one is like it's still the magic keyboard wants to fall over in my lap and it's got the weird angles and it's like i i would not want to use this thing all day as a quote unquote computer it's just it's not it's great for what it does but i think that what i suspect

or I predict that what we're both going to run or are running up against are some of the limitations, very much including input devices and how we manipulate things on screen. We're like, this thing's so great. So we looked at it again. And you spent some time on this. You fully committed.

AlexNo, well, for a few years, we talked about this. My iPad really was, I mean, my phone still is kind of my main computer. My iPad was.

MerlinYou love your phone the most still, right?

AlexMost, oh, I love it so much.

MerlinAnd not just because it's the Purple Boy, you've got the Grimace phone, but also just in general, you have a special affinity and connection with using an iPhone more than you do other kinds of devices, yes?

AlexMm-hmm, I mean. But your eyes are good. Well, the iPhone, like a lot of people, was my, I guess the first computer I got to use unsupervised. That makes it sound like I got, that was like my porn computer, but it was truly the first computer of like, yep, this is, this, there are many like it, but this, this one is mine. And it, I mean, it was, it was super, super magical

when I was, you know, 17 and watching, you know, was zooming in and out of the stupid, failing New York times. That iPhone presentation, still super horny for the original iPhone announcement. It is a brilliant...

MerlinAre you getting this? Are you getting this?

AlexYeah, it's a brilliant demonstration of storytelling, let alone a product introduction. And today I watched the original iPad keynote with a very sick looking Steve Jobs. It was very sad. But the whole idea was, hey, this...

MerlinThat was just like doing head math here. But that was only like a year before he died, right? Didn't he die in 2011?

AlexYeah.

MerlinI always remember because we did that thing with 5x5, and I remember recording that thing. It was really sad. Yeah, it was really sad. I recorded it at the Apple Store, my Steve Jobs memorial. I remember. I don't.

AlexYeah. Yes, I do. I remember the cadence of your voice where you were like, I am recording this on a device.

MerlinDon't embarrass me. But the lore goes that they started with the iPad idea, realized it was not doable. Is that correct in the lore anyway? I don't fucking care. But they had the iPad idea first, but that the iPhone was going to be something that for some of the extremely obvious reasons was much more doable.

AlexYeah, and it's no longer conjecture. It is canon. After that book Creative Selection came out, just there were famously kind of like the Apple 2 versus Macintosh back in the 80s. It was kind of like, okay, there was two competing mobile OSs inside of Apple. Sounds like Microsoft. yeah it was we can't decide which one of these you want to fail faster well but it was it was

like okay which of the what is like the future of mobile computing and and it was like okay is it a big is it basically a tablet or a phone and ended up being a phone but the introduction

Merlinbecause there was no product there was no product i mean the joke that is i think it's a good joke because it's true is that like people like me like i love every almost everything about my iphone except using it as a phone ha ha ha but that presentation could not have been that presentation and all the work that led up to that presentation would have been for not if they hadn't figured out a way to say okay here's a computer and we're calling it a phone we're calling this little computer like you've bought phone you know how you like phones for stuff and how you buy phones

well like what if you bought a phone but it was also like a real computer not some kind of jacked up like i say like not something on microsoft like you know uh mobile uh whatever their mobile system was but like you know even using like a blackberry like i used to say whenever i used to see people constantly using like like jeff winger just constantly using a blackberry i always said it looked like it was about as much fun as draining a wound like like they it was just like their shoulders were always up around their ears doing email, email, email. And, but it did have those great hardware affordances that were tuned for, for like very important businessmen to do email

on that device. But it was, I mean, yeah, it was a phone, but it was kind of an email machine. Whereas what they took a lot of, you know, it took a lot of guts to call that an iPhone, right? but with an iPad you'd kind of be leaping a little bit too far let alone that probably the touch stuff and the rubber banding all that kind of stuff would have been so much more difficult probably on a screen that size running OS X boy Syracuse I better never hear this I will never hear the end of it

Alexthis is going to be yeah

Merlinoh gosh didn't they originally say I think Steve says in that 2007 presentation I think he says specifically and most amazing of all, it's running on OS X. Isn't that what he said? Something like that?

AlexOh, yes, yes. It was like, yep, yep, yep, this is the same.

MerlinI'm going to try and impersonate Syracuse here. I won't nail it, but is it?

Speaker AIs it OS X? Is it? Is OS X what it is? Is it really OS X? You sure that's what it is?

AlexI mean, I'm sure the underlying technology is the same, but really. uh the uh but that's what made me excited because i hated uh like i had a prepaid like i didn't even have a phone at the time because it was yeah like i had one of those prepaid things that was like hey stranger danger yeah no we went just like on an had on an would

Merlinalways use you know on the wire you'd always use

Alexbut the um the the reason i uh i still feel that connection to the iphone and what i have oh god i'll i'll save it for another show but the reason i have such a strong affinity for iphone

cases and just iphone accessories is because it is the most personal computer it is the thing in my life i touch oh i can't the thing in my life i touch the most i had moving past all of those jokes that we made oh boy um yep yep uh the but the the ipad when the ipad was announced oh i skipped class to watch the keynote i'm such a freak um the the whole thing was steve jobs like this is a third device this is the third thing and there's literally a slide he showed that it's

iphone ipad and then the mac and with the like ipad in the middle and the at this point the lore is that maybe that little like fancy couch chair that he had on stage was because he was too sick to stand for an hour but it was like this is also to show you how you would use this right like this is the lean back can this is the a lean back device is how what he called it if

Merlinyou're that generation that generation at uh whatever that that group that came in through the halo effect like you came in through the ipod this ipod seems cool right like at least the story goes again more lore but that that was the gateway drug for a lot of people was like that ipod seems kind of cool and then like oh and this so this you know um uh macbook or what do they call it like the power, not power book, but a, uh, what are the toilet seats? What are those called?

AlexThere's iBooks.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. There's an iBook and a power book. But you get into it, but like, there's probably a pretty good chance that a lot of those people, that a lot of people in the world who were, who used apples in their life had like, say a family computer, which is a thing that we used to have in life. They probably had an iPod and maybe an iMac. But like, if you were sitting back and watching, I don't know, whatever TV show was in Law & Order, like you weren't on the computer.

AlexBut I think a lot of the nerds, like me for sure, absolutely were. And that was what was so exciting about the iPhone.

MerlinYou'd be looking at an iMac while you were watching TV?

AlexMy PowerBook, my little 12-inch PowerBook.

MerlinBut what I'm trying to say is that for the closer to the middle of the bell curve, the extant Mac users, we're not talking about people with PowerBooks mostly. I don't think. The iMac was like such a phenomenon. But I think what he's trying to say with that couch, I don't remember it specifically, but like the way that you and I have used it for years, which is like, oh, this is amazing. I can look at Twitter and I can look people up on IMDb and I can do all that on this beautiful piece of glass.

AlexIt brought, or at least, you know, it continued the iPhone trend, which is the reason I think that we, not that I think, I know, you talk about, you know, Mac-ass Mac apps, which is, you know, what fostered the love of Mac OS X. Mac OS X. I called it Mac OS X for so long, sorry.

Speaker BSorry, John.

Alexuh but mac os 10 and even though that wasn't really what was on the iphone it suddenly was like holy shit this thing i love and adore is now going to be it is the the new it could be the new ipod because like you said everyone had an ipod and it's like holy shit this is the new

Merlinyou can instantly imagine like giving one of these to grandma yeah yeah and it was very my

Alexgrandma had the first iphone because it was easier to use than a regular phone and when that uh so like you know the ipad was after the app store was released but that what was so exciting then was like oh cool yeah the a lean back device and the big joke was like uh yep it's a big iphone it's like so what it's a big iphone that's fucking awesome big iphone well yeah and that's pretty much what it was in the beginning with the exception of that uh keyboard that you would put

in the 30 like it was a 30 pin dock that you would put the ipad in in portrait mode to type which was just very right it was adorable and i loved it so much uh but then you know time time makes dust of us all and um you know the ipad was this i don't know why is that so funny

Merlintime makes dust of it all it sounds weird when you say profound shit it's weird it's not profound

Alexit's just a thing that happens uh but dust isn't bad um anyway the the reason i think we got all wet for the iPad it wasn't just because the Apple was like just slowly turning away from the Mac at the time but it was that that was where the at least for me that's where the exciting software was the reason I was always so excited about the iPhone was there was constantly new software that was not just uh financially accessible but accessible to nerds yeah nerds

but you could share it with your friends. And suddenly, you know, I mean, even the Facebook app was good at one point, believe it or not. And then slowly but surely, the iPad, because it was a bit more powerful than the iPhone, iPhone-ish type apps were on the iPad. And I don't know that that's where, I mean, our beloved editorial, RIP, but not really, the zombie that it is i don't know all of that became very exciting and when the ipad pro was

Merlinannounced it was like oh it was so ridiculously overpowered for what anybody could even imagine

Alexdoing at the time and arguably the ipad is still ridiculous ridiculously overpowered for the software that's available because the the mac you know we can they've they've bottle they've kind of batting down the hatches with sandboxing and all that but you can still get all up in there with the rogue amoeba stuff and uh even you know uh omni groups well i can i

Merlinjust to state the really obvious using that ai diffusion app on my office computer versus my extremely good very recent laptop it's no contest i mean oh yeah because it's it i it's doing a lot It's doing a lot. But I see what you're saying, though. It's like the software, there's never, it hasn't, we say software, so we talk about the OS, and then we talk about the various Apple apps. But it did seem, remember there's that weird period also

where you start seeing these strange enterprise apps that would show up on the App Store that were like $1,000 or whatever. And I think for at least a brief period of time, it was like, oh, well, this will be a thing. People will be selling, yeah, they'll be selling $0.99 apps, But they'll also be selling like you could go buy like a 50 seat license for this thousand dollar app that's really important in your industry. I guess. I mean, I don't I can't think of an example off the dome, but that software feels like it never or hasn't arrived for the iPad kind of in the 11 years or so that it's been around. We still haven't wait 12.

Alex12. Yeah.

MerlinBut we still there's like still not a surpassing number of things made by Apple that are putting all of those bits to good use. And so we look to things like improvements in, how do you describe it? Improvements in the OS that allow you to do more stuff with all your apps. It isn't like there's going to be the one killer app, the iPad app. But it's nice to look forward to the improvements that make that personal device, you know, such a great fit for certain kinds of tasks.

And I'm not made of stone. Seeing Stage Manager demoed, I was like, because was that demoed the same time as the continuity multiple Mac thing?

AlexYeah, continuity, camera.

MerlinBecause I'm in the bag for that. When Craig sat there, I said this before, but right now in front of me I have three devices, three different screens running. And I'm using my touchpad to move between. So I've got my Studio Mac, you know, my main computer. On my left over here, I've got this, I guess, 16-inch MacBook Pro. And over on my right, I've got the big, I think, second most recent. It's an M1 iPad. And the fact that I can cursor between the three of those, again, spoiler alert,

like that is a big deal for me. Like how quickly that went from, oh, that's an interesting idea, to like I really like use this like a lot for whatever I'm doing. Like it's really, it is like magic. It is like magic. So when you see things that like, and again, that's, I guess that's kind of the point I'm going to end up struggling to make is that there is stuff out there. There are apps out there like notes that like, I feel like we've only really just begun to get at what notes can do if they wanted to, if they wanted to.

you think about what a world would look like where there was deeper integration between stuff like shortcuts and notes, where it became trivially easy to.

AlexOh, I think about it.

MerlinWell, because it's already so good. We have, October's a big month at our house. Oh, I'd just like to announce today, happy third bandiversary to our lizard, I just want to say. But October's a big month. There's a lot of stuff that's happened in Octobers in our life,

including the birthdays of the two other people in my house. And so, like, this is that time of year where we start having a shared note for, you know, mom's birthday is coming up next week. Junior's birthday is coming up later in the month. And then pretty soon we'll be doing the Christmas list. And, like, nobody uses this feature as much as I do. But, like, I, and unfortunately this is breaking now in new versions of the Mac. But I have keyboard maestro things for, like, a key command to add this page to notes or to add this to reminders.

like that should be that should be something everybody knows about and is using because the way that it adds a card to your note is great okay and i'm a shout out about this but this is important like notes fucking rules except for the parts of it that are complete horseshit it's insane to me that notes is an app that does not sync until you open it that is crazy that should be that should be updating as fast as in my opinion anyway that should be updating as fast

and in the background as like drafts yeah where i don't even have a sense of saving you know but i bet i'm not the first person who ever got onto a flight open notes and realized that it hadn't synced in two days right so but like for example but okay so you can do stuff and federico uh had a good shortcut about this, but boy, is it ever arcane to get it to work. Where you can, like generally when you add something to a note, for example, from Safari, it adds it to the bottom of the note, which totally makes sense. Except that, what if you're doing what we're doing,

which is multiple people, let's say, let's say we are legit, like planning a trip. Well, there's an area that's for this kind of stuff. There's an area for that kind of stuff. And because I don't really have easy options for adding new cards to it, the bottom of the document is always inbox because that's where stuff goes. Right. But like how much more is there? And I feel like there's probably a way to do this. There's probably a way Federico could do this or Matthew could do this. I don't know how to do this. I don't know a way to say, hey, look, I use the semantic titles, headings, subheadings.

They're semantic, right? They're basically like H's. I as somebody who grew up doing trying to get, you know, good XHTML to validate. I know that H's mean things. Title. And so H1 is the title of the document, right? And you've got H2s and H3s.

Just off the dome, why do we need thousands and thousands of different notes documents? I should be able to have a document called Home Chores. And I should be able to throw to a section of that. I feel like I should be able to say, in a notes document that has like five headings in it, I should be able to say, first of all, add this to this note. Second of all, add it to this area of the note, meaning this semantic section called chores. And further, I think I should be able to do append and prepend

inside of that zone, not just to the end of the document. It's great to be able to append and prepend using stuff like Quicksilver or whatever, but notes is such a powerhouse waiting to get really, really good, and it still feels bloated and weird and not optimized for somebody who actually fucking uses it for their work. It still feels like a joke app. It still feels like one of those Mac apps where it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

we can say we have an Office 365 competitor in this suite of goods. But why do I say that? Because I know resources are limited, but when I spend my time with stage manager, as I have previously and in this last week, it feels impossibly broad and impossibly shallow and not at all, and again, it's in beta, in fairness, but I wouldn't trust this thing as far as I can throw it. And I think Federico, from what I can gather,

has written a lot about this, the frustration or people getting springboard crashes so easily. But for the amount of utility that this offers versus the stability of how it works and persists across sessions and all that kind of stuff. Let's put it this way. If this were a third-party app or third-party ability stage manager, if I saw that, first of all, A, I would be like, holy shit, you've done a Dropbox here. You've done something unbelievable to integrate something wackadoo into a lockdown system.

But if I open this up as a third-party app in this state right now, I would go, that's cute. Hit me up in a year when this thing is done. It's not done. It's very much not done. And it's not just done and, like, we're putting finishing touches on it to release in the month of October. It's like, who is going to use this for work they care about?

AlexI am surprised that you would think that a third-party app would.

Speaker AIf it did. No, no, no.

MerlinIt's just a thought experiment. It's just a thought experiment to say. And it's a little bit of that what if Obama did this kind of bullshit that I hate. But it's a little bit of that where it's like, okay, this is this thing where Craig got up and told us about this great thing. and they can't wait to see what we do with it. But what I'm trying to say is that, like, if this was from a company that you trusted on the level of, say, the way I feel about Affinity products, like Affinity Designer, especially on the Mac, or the way I feel about Pixelmator Photo on iPad, like, really top-notch apps that do something astonishingly powerful,

astonishingly well. Let's say one of those companies put this thing out and said, oh, this is just a crazy, like, a little concept we put together. I'm sure Apple will lock this down. but we call it a sturge or whatever. They put it out. You open it up and you go, oh, that's clever. But my first thought would be, why isn't it better integrated into the system? Which is how it feels right now. Like it's just go into this weird, go into this. Now you've got your horizontal dock and guess what? Now you've also got a vertical dock.

Confused yet? Try dragging. What does it do? I don't know. Try dragging. Treat it like a fun house.

Alextry try the keyboard shortcuts they definitely make total sense and uh does it not work because

Speaker Ayou're using the wrong one i'm pulling out the ipad because i think alex is about to lift into town i can feel it okay i'm on i'm clicking and what are do you want to do like a little bit of

Alexa demo here or do you want to talk more i mean i don't know like that's the thing is the demo is exactly what was shown on stage.

Speaker AIt feels like you're reporting a bug when you're using it.

AlexRight. Like, I wasn't that excited when I saw it on the iPad because at this point I am like all back on the Mac and very happy and excited because along with Apple sort of breathing life back into the Mac, a lot of the developers that I have, you know, all the greats, all the devs that we know and love had started to either port or make new apps for the Mac. And I was like, oh, this is super cool.

Yay. Hooray. And I saw the, especially drafts. Honestly, drafts is probably, if drafts had come to the Mac earlier, I probably would have used my iPad a whole lot less.

MerlinThat app is just, I don't even, I don't have words for drafts.

AlexOCR. OCR?

MerlinIt's a great honor of my life that I'm quoted on the drafts homepage. That's how I know I've arrived. Yes. Because it is really like one of the greatest iOS apps I've ever used, and now it's one of the best Apple-related apps I've ever used. But it's difficult to talk about this because we're talking about visual things here. Do you have one nearby you could pop?

AlexI do. In fact, I went out and because it's for my work, I like to take advantage. No. Although that's a... I bought 14 and returned 12. well i i i bought a uh a m1 what is this the 11 inch m1 ipad pro and a macbook air to try

ventura on it and to try um to try what to try the what's ventura ventura macbook ventura the new

Merlinoh it sounds like you were doing a hipster like new zealand shortcut i thought you said you were

Alexgoing to want to try the try the tru the because uh ventura is has stage manager as well like the cool thing is like hey look it it's on the ipad i am on the mac um and uh the great 14 day return policy it because you're so fucking weird it is unbelievable how weird you are why what i'm not going to keep both of these very costly machines exactly that's fucking bananas alex you do the weird as shit that's unbelievable why is it weird i want you just went and bought two thousand

Merlindollar devices you plan to return i do this all the time that's so fucking weird in syracuse because it's weird that i have multiple beverages in the movies i'm here to tell you buying buying computers that you know you're going to return is like that that's some that's some bananas like hospitalizable shit that's crazy what no okay as someone who has been hospitalized

Alexno you people do this all the time they and you return it after uh i've already uh returned the ipad um but the macbook air is really nice uh but the i was trying the ipad and this morning

Merlinit's like going to be dalton and like going like or whatever it's a bookstore barnes and noble and

Speaker Agoing like hey can i um can i check out this atlas that's a five thousand dollars and they go no no

Merlinno, we're a bookstore. We sell these to people. So if you would like to buy that, we would sell it to you. No, I just want

Speaker Ato play with it for a while.

MerlinAnd then you go like credulously, you put a finger under your nose for a mustache and go, hello,

Speaker AI'm definitely buying this to keep forever.

AlexYep, yep. Oh, my store knows that I do this.

MerlinYour store knows that you do this?

AlexYeah, yeah. This is the story you get recognized at Yes Oh boy if I got updates for you

MerlinI'm getting noticed Holy shit When we get to the part that you're most gay for Where we're going to talk in the after show About how I've caved Let's just say I wore a shirt I wore a shirt And I was not noticed at all

AlexWell Lucky you Give us your fucking money dot com give us your fucking money.com please I won't spend it on computers don't worry that is not even plausible as a joke no but okay here's the other thing it's like the people who do the airplane miles thing where in order to keep them they fly around the world this is way less crazy than that because then you also get the

apple cash for it so technically not a scam oh look at me i'm alex i got good credit

Merlincheck me out i'm buying stuff and returning it and flying on my miles

Alexjesus no i don't no i don't the worst american i've ever met how because i'm gaming i'm only very slightly you're a gamer you game

Merlinanyway you buy you buy five thousand dollars worth of computer equipment to return so that you could use twelve thousand dollars you want to get on

Alexworth of compute i'm on the churro and then i okay this morning i returned the the ipad to great relief um because the thing that got me excited about because i saw the uh uh i saw stage manager i'm like that's cool it's gonna be really cool for the people who like um when you agree i

Merlincan imagine i can imagine this solving problems that i have in a in a one window environment i could look at this and i also should say in terms of my bona fides i have never understood how even with the three dots i still understand how i'm supposed to use all the different pullovers i'm always accidentally making a new weird window somewhere and i'm like i don't know how to get rid of that what is this it's but that's that sense of like well you could have one window but it's almost like using a an ide or like in vs code there's all these options for how you can

split your windows so like i might want a markdown on the right markdown preview on the right but i might want a mind map below and you can drag those windows around what's all still pretty much one window you're just creating little uh little how would you describe it many windows enter windows inside of it but like stage manager appeared to be on the face of it on the one hand well second yeah you get the equivalent of really almost like actual like windows that you can manipulate on an ipad but but i think the seemingly huge pitch at least from apple was yeah and you get to make these

cool piles that will associate tasks and windows that will there's a sensible mac like way or apple like way i mean tell me if i'm wrong but like i'm working on this kind of task and i need all these windows over here so it's it's a way of doing the equivalent of piles on an ipad and then being able to access all those things that won't so isn't that kind of like the big appeal of it yes with

Alexthe addition of full monitor support and then i was like oh explain what that means please hello

Merlinoh uh i know it got pulled but describe but what was what was it when it was there what what was

Alexwhat what does that mean monitor support you would plug it into a monitor and finally finally You can use the iPad, like, instead of having those, the black sidebars as if you were watching The Simpsons on your giant screen TV.

MerlinIt understands I'm hooked up to a monitor, and now what appears on your screen, it's not simply just mirrored or something. Like, we are using your monitor in a way not dissimilar to the relationship between your Mac and your monitor, correct? and you can still manipulate stuff on the screen, but like, right?

AlexYes. And you still couldn't use it in clamshell mode, which, all right, fine. Not that that's a real term. You had to keep your iPad open, but whatever. It honestly worked pretty, like when Stage Manager was initially released in the first beta, it's like, okay, this is very much a beta, but I like this. I see where it's going, kind of, sure. and then it kept changing a whole lot

and I do not envy all of the guys who have to write about this and describe what is happening visually on the screen.

MerlinI'm looking at it right now and I still don't understand what's happening. To be honest, I don't understand what is happening. I understand. I feel like I understand this is bad on me because I'm old and I'm weird and I have ways I like to do things but as I'm looking at this right now with all these windows over on the left and this window in the middle like i'm really i'm not really sure whereas i used to look at this and go like i could imagine how i'd use that i'm looking at it right now and going like this i don't understand what i'm supposed to do i do like the new draggies i think the draggies are cute the way you can change the size of the window and stuff and it

makes it clear you grab here to change that that's kind of cool but then what if i go over here what happens how is this any different than just having a bunch of windows so weird uh well with

Alexthe sort of kind of snap to grid type thing that, you know, cause you can technically resize the windows, but they're still kind of like weird preset sizes.

And the, with the idea of like, okay, uh, the way that we had the split screen app, it's like the two apps in full screen, but they were paired together. Well, now you can have, have up to four. And then those piles go over there. How did you use that? The split screen all the time.

MerlinJust to give a use case, because I've never understood how to do it and what I would use it for. But a use case, my curly style use case is I've got some things happening in Safari on this side of the screen. And I've got some things happening in Notes on this side of the screen. So it's not that Safari, the app, is associated with Notes, the app, correct? It's that this web page is associated with this specific Apple Note. that that is a pairing you've established that you can come back to right well you can come back

Alexto until it runs out of ram and then you have to like repair it like you you couldn't it's not going to be like syracuse's tabs that just live forever right and it it wasn't even like um like The most common use case for me was to have a Safari page open or a book open and then have drafts or obsidian on the side.

And then in the little slidey pullover, I would have either another drafts because you could have multiple windows.

MerlinSo you have three window-like windows on an iPad.

AlexRight.

MerlinBut just to describe what you're describing here is you've got two, according to Hoyle, well, I don't know if they're called Windows, but you've got, like you said, you've got this over here, you've got that over here, and then there's that third, like, mystery meat hanging thing that you can swipe in and out to have it appear or slide away, right?

AlexRight. And it's very confusing and difficult to do, like, every time because if you're using a trackpad, it works one way. Yeah. And so that would be like messages, Slack, and Discord, along with sometimes another either like OmniFocus to do it.

MerlinMessages, Slack, and Discord. Yeah. Wow.

AlexThe messaging apps plus this.

MerlinYeah. That would be great for me because I love communicating in three different apps at the same time. That feels like a great use of my time.

AlexI should say this is when Alex is on a phone. Okay. No, this is not that uncommon. Not at all. But then, oh my gosh. Turn it. But the, and I really liked this in theory to the point where I started using Spaces more on my Mac, which I know.

MerlinI didn't mean to do that. The only thing I use that for, I don't even know if I'm technically using Spaces. Like if I bring up something in my VNC, you know, screens, like I'll have that go full screen. And I hope we find a way to talk a little bit about a test principle of this stuff, which is my test principle for a lot of this is, hey, show me every gesture you know how to use on iPad and iPhone. I can't believe how many people I see who don't know a gesture that I use all the time. So four finger left to right.

Switching. Yeah. So if you're on an iPad, four finger left to right is like take me to the previous or this works on a Mac too. But like so I brought it up in screens. It's on its own thing. It's in that second like in the hanging up above thing. And four fingers left and right takes you between spaces. And ditto here, four fingers left and right on an iPad takes you between, well, what we used to think of it is taking you between apps. I don't know what we call it now. But like how many people know about the five finger pinch? Tidal.

I mean, I don't use it very much because it's kind of pointless. But hey, anybody right now sitting with your iPad, put your five fingers on the screen and then draw them toward each other and watch what happens. How often do you use that?

Alexbe uh honestly not any me not as much but like for like like for a common one for me is four

Merlinfinger four finger drag up on on on ipad to four finger drag up to get into the switcher mode and then um then uh to or like whatever just the standard floop is to like kill an app like oh you never need to do that well unless it's twice a day and you're used because hulu just died for some reason and you need to reboot it never need to do that you never need to quit an app um but but

Alexlike you know there's so many of those things like you should never have to quit an app

Merlinbottom of the iphone screen sliding from left to right um i don't think my lady uses that at all really oh my god i think she's still in j swipe bring up switcher flip flip flip oh my god oh you know no i'm telling you alex right now i'll bet there are and i'm just not i don't mean this as a slag because if anything i'm showing you how far down the left side of the motherfucking bell curve i am to go i don't even understand how you want me to misuse this but just look at what you can do with those gestures and of course it's annoying sometimes because it varies from app to

app or whatever but like gestures are so powerful and people don't even get that they or like it has not trickled down to where people understand how powerful gestures can be for this stuff and then on top of it all now though now you've also got your second doc called stage manager so fucking

Alexweird well and my big thing is the ipad what uh the other part that was appealing is it really got down to sort of the minimalist mac phase i had and still kind of do do really was just like okay here's the thing you focus on this there you go you've got it but with stage manager it's i'm like wait so you have these piles but so you can switch between them and then you i you know

Merlini'm like command tabbing i'm definitely doing something wrong i i know in my heart of hearts i'm doing something wrong because i am i supposed to be able to drag stuff and have it go into another pile like on a Mac? Exactly. I mean no seriously I feel like I am seriously deranged Alex. I've played with this on the Mac and I've seen oh I get it it really is a second doc or it's close to like there used to be an idea of this in on Macs called there's been a million ideas for this even going back to the pre-OS 10 days of like ad hoc collections of things and you

see that evidenced in stuff like view by sort by clean up by see those kinds of things you see you know the ways like if anybody ever like right clicks or you know whatever it's called on or like to get the like you click on something in your dock and oh i didn't realize all those options were in there for doing this show this is a fan show this is a thing like all those different kinds of things this is an idea i think that has existed in one form or another for a long time it's just that like as i sit here and stare at this it really just feels like dock 2.0 and

Alexnot in a good way no no and it another one of these things where i'm not just like what is who is this for but also why would someone use not why would someone use it i i don't know it just feels like it takes away what is appealing about the ipad without without replacing what's good

Merlinabout the iPad was something that's good on the Mac.

AlexRight.

MerlinIt has a pose or a intention of doing that, but the implementation of it just makes your iPad weird to use.

AlexAnd again, like they're multitasking on the iPad has been done a bunch of ways. And I do think it will get better, but it's more of for me, like, okay, we have a more complicated ui but still don't have the apps that's true that are to use them like like that's the other thing with stage manager is i'll be using it and it works for a

while and then for some reason i'm like wait did slack crash or is it just that like the electron app like it i can't use it in full screen in this but you lose your you use your sense you lose your sense of place and not just that like the um i did what i did had before and sort of had like different modes of like okay here's like my emails and like the my messages and all of that and okay here is where um the the same sort of thing safari is here um and with the to-do list

and stuff like that but then command tab still works to switch between apps but it doesn't have any sense of which window you want to be taken to and i'm like wait am i supposed to know this

Merlinmy god i got two i'm looking at drafts and i got two different windows open and the three dots are at the top of each one i am officially getting old and super stupid no i don't know this is

Alexeverybody Merlin like because I was going around like this week watching videos and watching how

Merlinbut I can't change the front one I can't I can only drag it I can't move it what is happening

AlexI think so I should I should have returned it tonight and not earlier today that was sorry gang uh I fucked up um yeah wait why are you shaming me when you have all of the things

Merlinlike I inhabit that Alex okay all right it's one thing to do something it's another thing to be ashamed about it i inhabit that uh if you put if you keep if you keep you keep this up and you're not going to get what i caved on and you want to know you want to know i do want to know because

Alexthere's one thing i really want to cave on there's one oh yeah well listen to this can you hear how big this thing is you know how big that is how rugged it sounds no oh that's not something that Oh, oh, oh, okay.

MerlinWell, three, three, three, three, three.

AlexOkay. Hey, Alex, you want to play your cards right?

MerlinYou want to play your cards right? Are you going to fuck with me? You're going to fuck my shit up.

AlexListen, listen.

MerlinHey, guys. Okay.

AlexPatreon.com slash Dubai Friday. No, I'm going to do this because I.

MerlinNo, do it because you want to give us the money because we need it for all this horseshit we're wasting our life on.

AlexNo, well, I'm going. There is one thing that I don't want to. I should see if I can get my rent back. I should see if I can get my rent back. Your rent back?

MerlinWell, like you go in and you walk out with a piece of computer electronics and then you bring it back later and go, nah, I think I'd rather have the money. I should do that. I should say, do you remember that time I paid you rent in January of 2006?

AlexCan I get that money back? But if you didn't live there in, okay. Well, this is something we know that Dougie, my landlord, has been iffy on some things. Okay. So we've talked about this where it's like, okay, he'll be like, okay, so you get a discount on rent because the electricity didn't work? Yes, that's true.

MerlinWhat about him just constantly barging in? Did you ever implement my plan to make that upsetting for him? Because I'm super into helping with that. I could wear a disguise and be on the other side of some kind of a really strange Zoom call. I could be there in some kind of very upsetting dark. I was going to say, if it'll get you to Chicago, I'll come down for anything. He walks in and you're dressed in some kind of a very unusual way. Maybe you're dressed like some kind of a wildflower, but you're definitely cranking your hog. And I'm on the other end doing a meditation session with you. You flick a bean?

AlexAnyway, so stage manager.

MerlinSee, vegetarians used to have so much in common.

AlexI know.

MerlinThey love to eat downtown. I tried. Go ahead. Keep talking. You're getting further and further away. Maybe I'll only tell you about one thing I got. Maybe I won't tell you about the three things I got.

AlexOkay. Oh, okay. All right. Here. Oh, we're ending the episode. No, we're not. I'm just saying you fucked around and you found out.

Speaker AYou think you're going to treat me? I know. You're going to treat me like the Apple store on the loop?

AlexI know.

Speaker AI'm no loop.

AlexNo, no, no. No, no, no. But, uh, beep, beep.

Speaker AThis is stupid, but I love it. Thank you for doing this with me.

AlexIt started. Listen, it started as an actual.

MerlinHey, guys, I'm going to break the bit for a minute. This shit is really fun to do. I love talking to Alex. We're being a little silly, but I look forward to this. I just say, I'm saying yesterday, the little lordling, Billy goes, how was your day today? I said, well, thank you for asking. I said, my day was really good today. I said, I had to get back to work. I think Dan was in a little bit of a mood, but it went pretty well. And I said, we had probably one of my favorite rec gifts we've ever recorded. I said, I feel like I've had a really good day.

and uh and uh and i i said uh i said uh and he says oh so you talked to alex today i said no no alex is my wednesday alex is really my wednesday between thinking about the show from the time of thinking about the show to the time we are this is a show you don't like stop recording you just abandon a recording like you just walk away because there's other things to do or you have to urinate or change your pads. And I said to my kid, I said, I love my time with Alex so much.

I'm going to go back into the bit for a minute where we needle each other. But I just wanted to say that this is a joy to do. It sounds like I'm dying, but really we're all dying. It's a joy to deal with you and I hate your stupid face.

AlexI hate your stupid face. Everybody go to patreon.com. Stage manager. Any closing thoughts

Merlinon stage manager?

AlexWe have a lot of fun here. So we don't have to get a job. You still want, you guys all want, hey pair of pals, you want your wednesdays or thursdays fridays um anyway the the thing with stage manager that made me the most frustrated is because it is clear there are people working on this that both love

Merlinthe ipad and love the mac totally but and probably had to fight really hard to like do a cool thing

Alexlike they're heroes yes and but and i think that's the problem is the reason that there's so little software parody anymore i not a hot take but i don't think apple knows what the fuck the ipad is for anymore like it's is it are they like still it's a combination of who it's for and what

Merlinit's for like what is it what problem does it solve sort of yeah because it's like fuck we

Alexmade this apple silicon and people still like you know they clung to those macbook airs for a decade reasonably so amazing machines and we thought the ipad was going to be this cool thing so did i mean it was you know me and modularity so horny for modularity yes are you fucking kidding me piece of glass then it's on a keyboard then it's in a stand and it's so fucking cool and then it's connected to a monitor which was really great but then they're like oh actually um i bet that was

Merlincomplicated i bet there's edge case bugs out the ass and something like that you know i'm saying like honestly like to get that to work it's one thing to say like well i mean i obviously i'm not a seasoned technologist but like it's one thing to say okay we're gonna plug this thing in and it's gonna mirror this i mean maybe in a way somewhat similar to what is the name of the feature i keep not knowing the name of not continuity universal control um yes thank you which is which is again i just want to stipulate thank you to anybody who even just went to a meeting about universal control it's fucking magic and i'm so grateful that it exists and i use it all

the time but yeah there are these times where you're like well this kind of feels like a shitty

Alexway to do something i don't need to do right sorry i got distracted because my spouse walked in um hey matchy i said hi hi hi matchy thank you also please don't match you walking around without a shirt off fuck you get out of here um anyway also thank you for the basset home pictures Oh, thank you for the Basset Hound pictures, Matchy. Oh my God, those Bassets are so stupid.

MerlinAnd so he volunteered to drive around the Bassets who are too tired to walk anymore?

AlexYes.

MerlinWhat's it called?

AlexIt's the Bass...

MerlinWas it the Poop Puppy Patrol or something?

AlexWait, Matchy, come here real quick because the show is off the rails anyway. So real quick here, put on your... We call them cans. Tell Merlin what the Basset thing is called.

Merlinreal quick hey merlin hi matt oh so it was like uh you sent those wonderful photos of the basset hounds at the basset bash or something like that was it yeah that's what would you call the thing where the little legs are too tired and it can't go on anymore and you put it in a golf cart what

Speaker Ayou call that the pooped puppy what a time to be alive i did not name it i love it oh my god

MerlinI would take that in a second. Hey, hey, listen, parapal. No, you're my pal. Get Alex to watch the Dog House UK, please, on HBO Max. I know you deal with broken dogs all day, but they're English dogs, and they're really sweet. And Staffordshire Terriers, right? Really, really.

Speaker BDoes that mean that they have British accents?

MerlinMm-hmm. Yes. English dogs? Sorry, bad pun. They have British. Yes. Wait, I missed your pun.

Speaker BIt's a happy podcast.

MerlinYeah. Never mind. Okay. I think we're stealing valor. Thanks, Matt.

Speaker BYeah. I don't know, man. I'm going to put you back to Alex.

MerlinOkay, thank you.

Speaker BIt's nice to hear your voice.

MerlinNice to hear you, too. I love hearing your voice. Yeah, sometimes I hear Matt's voice in videos, and I think, that's a cool voice. I wish I had that. I sound like somebody trying to break a saxophone. I don't love it.

Speaker BWe're making fun of your voice. No, not really.

AlexI mean, as you should. And the laugh.

MerlinJust so you know, I think they might be menstruating. Just so you know. Thank you, Matchy. I'm pretty sure they're menstruating, so be aware.

AlexYeah. No, no, he knows. He's a good, good boy and makes sure to get the correct.

MerlinHas that intuition to walk into a room and go,

Speaker Await a minute, someone in here is spilling their blood upon the Onan.

AlexLike, I hope.

MerlinMenstruation bukkake, is that a thing?

AlexAnyway, I showed Matchy's stage manager, and he was like, wait, why? Couldn't you just do this on a Mac? Which is what normal people think.

MerlinA totally neuro-correct person would say.

AlexYeah, and he's not. So that's really saying something.

MerlinBut it is kind of one of those things where you're like, well, why don't you just do the other thing that already does the thing?

AlexWhich is like, you know, because I really don't like

Merlinwhen people say that. Like using a Tesla as a watering can. Where you're like, well, you know, we already have something for that, you know? actually kind of works pretty well and also it supports carplay

Speaker Augh

306. Time Makes Dust of Us All

Show notes

Transcript

306. Time Makes Dust of Us All

Show notes

Transcript

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