319. The Realms of Charlene Tilton

This is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, fidget with omg. lol. Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm less bad. I'm opening my beverage. Oh, less bad than oh, that's a good question. Less bad than an animal that has its skull mounted on a wall for observation. Ah Matthew like the skulls, huh? Sorry, I'm that's our super secret. Private text channel. But Matty liked the skulls, huh? Can you can you give me any specificity on what Matty liked about the skulls? The skull segment? skull content and I do want to add to the skull content but what he enjoyed was what I found interesting. the notable skulls and the spot, the imposter, and we don't have an answer to the imposter.

We spent like a half hour trying to find the imposter online. The website doesn't give it away. You know, there's a there's a Uh I I sent you a thing. Uh there's a recdiffs that uh goes up on Friday and uh the after show member episode is one of my favorites. That's not trying to sell it, but just to say that I really enjoyed it. And uh it was to answering a question that we'd posed in the doc a long time ago. Is there anything from your and you know, interpret as ever, interpret it the way you want, but John and Merlin, is there anything from your childhood that you wish your kids had? And you know, and you can take that any way you want. And one of mine, which is admittedly a little weird, was just the whole notion of having mysteries in life.

That there's some information that you not only can't find immediately. you maybe can't find even with a lot of effort, but ultimately there's some kinds of information you just can't know. As a little kid in the seventies. And I don't know if that's good or bad or whatever, but everything gets settled with whatever the card on Google says it is now. Which doesn't feel wholesome and I think I left Matthew with a mystery. I I don't know the answers. I d what I did do is I I think with ex I don't usually look at the internet when I'm doing my work. But uh I we did find some pretty good links there. And and maybe this is an opportunity for you guys to hop on an Amtrak, come on out here and and go to the museum and see see that uh alligator while it's still alive.

Oh there aren't any more elephants. I don't want to steal Valor from Give SyracusaYourMoney. com. But is there a little bit more of, I guess, an expanded Cliff Notes summary for why you uh wish your kid would have that? Because I understand the inclination. Well John did not agree. Oh, interesting. But that's why we have a show. I couldn't find it in the dropbox. Oh, uh it should be I I also broke the dropbox pretty hard, so so never mind. I think it was I that broke the drop box. Because I was trying to get reduced doesn't matter. I I moved some stuff around and that might have if you had anything selected synced, it's probably in there and you just can't see it. Mmm. But that's because I moved things in, who knows?

Who knows? Uh I don't know, but like it's I can't it's not I don't have like a very a super strong feeling about it, but it's just that as we talked about, uh if you're hello uh You find it on the internet. Um, you um I I do think there's something there's something interesting about the pursuit of information when you don't even know if there's an answer to that information. And and I feel like nowadays you can go two different ways completely wrong, as well as other ways. But two there's just two things a couple things that can can happen, because with Syracuse it's always two things. Um can I say this? You ask me, can I say this? Yes, please. One is that you're sitting around and what the the question I posed to Syracuse, which she was more than happy to answer, um was, you know, when's the last time you were around with a bunch of people?

Or like whatever. Like, you know, back in the days when you go to lunch with people or whatever, or dinner or drinks, sprites, and then y somebody says something, blah, blah, blah, and you go, um, like let's let's even say something as simple as An honest example, I've mentioned this for over 15 years, I've mentioned this many times. I once lost my goddamn mind in the mid-80s trying to remember who played Lucy on Dallas. And I had no way at hand. And this is gonna sound very odd to a lot of you. This is before Alex, five years before Alex was born properly. I did not have a way to find out who played Lucy on the TV show Dallas. Um, spoiler, it was Charlene Tilton. But that's the point is she was like a celebrity and everybody who knew her name.

But Alex, there was no way for me to easily find that out. This is back in the day when you would call the library if you had a question about something. Right. And the there's like a pu public desk at most libraries where they would try and find an answer to a question for you. There was nothing to look up unless you had like an almanac or I guess a Leonard Malton guide or something at hand. Um So on I guess the the the two ways I see that being interesting, the mystery part is well first of all, there's some level if we joke about stuff like, oh, you know, the biases or Google this and Google that, but the truth is I bet you if I go right now and search for who played Lucy on Dallas, it'll say Charlene Tilton, right?

And the thing is, w if you're sitting around with a group of people. And and somebody goes, Oh, god damn it. That show Dallas, you know, with Larry Hagman, that's J. R. Like, who was that woman? She was really famous for like eighteen months. What was is there anybody at that table? Let's assume six neurotypical people. Uh was there anybody there who has a one thousand relate. I don't think I've ever been to who has a one thousand dollar phone in their pocket if not on the table, if not in their hand already. So anybody at that table that could tolerate not knowing that fact. And in fact, truly like prisoner's dilemma, you want to be the first one to find it and announce it, because that's how it works today.

It's like you go and you find the thing somebody doesn't know an answer to. And admittedly, that's that's really good. If you want to know the atomic weight of beryllium, you can look that up and that's really good. But think about that for a second. I don't think anybody could tolerate not knowing that for very long right now and the incentive to be the first one to find it. I mean this is the already like kind of a funny bit on TV shows. like network comedies, right? Which is fine. But I do think that's an instructive moment to go, we can't tolerate not instantly knowing something anymore. But that's fine. That's neutral. That's just an observation. The the slightly more concerning one is w if as soon as we get what we regard as the answer, we tend to stop looking.

Because all three ans all three questions have been answered. There is information out there. The answer can be found. And it is in fact something that is knowable. So as soon as you see Charlene Tilton pop up, you're going to tend to go, okay, well, that's settled. I win that one. Unless you're gonna be that particular person and like go, oh no, well actually, you know, Dick York and uh Dick Sargent, you know, the switchover in those two roles on Bewitched happened in the second season or whatever. You know what I'm saying? It's just that like on the one hand, we can't tolerate not instantly knowing something. I feel like I'm like that a lot of the time. But second, I don't think the curiosity that leads a young person to wonder if something and you understand what I mean like sort of not ontologically um Not teleologically, epistemologically, Greekly.

Greekly. Isn't there isn't isn't there some part of us now that because we know how much is knowable and can be known quickly? we've lost a little bit of the real actual curiosity to pursue, you know, I know you and I, sure, I go down rabbit holes all the time. What I'm saying though is Like we tend as soon as we feel like we've satisfied the criteria for knowing that something is knowable and being the first one to get it, do we continue to explore beyond beyond the uh realms of Charlene and Tilton title? My answer is a hard yes. Which I don't know uh uh one I uh Think that there it isn't necessarily a drive to suddenly be the first one to answer a little bit of trivia at a table because We all know that we can find it within seconds.

You're such a fucking liar. You're such a fucking liar. I am not a a a liar. It There's a d well okay. So you're a deliberate deceiver, like all of your types. Guess which parts I have. It's different when easy. A actor or or like someone's uh like i is or isn't someone alive, or, you know, which edit of Star Wars is is the correct one according to what was out that year? That's maybe something that's easily found and it's a fun little dinner thing, but when it comes to something of substance, I hope Yeah, everyone's gonna go to Wikipedia immediately and then read the first paragraph and then immediately scroll to the bottom. to go to the n no no to to go to the references because I think there's a desire At least now you've got to be wonderful No, no, no.

There's an immediate desire to be like, okay, who brings you to the body. Not just the well actually guy, but the is really true, and maybe it's just for folks on both sides of When I say both sides of the spectrum, I mean both politically and probably neurologically. Which ends which spectrum? Yikes. I'm I'm serious. If someone goes a and also there's a game frequently played now where a bunch of people stack their phones on the table and the uh the it it it's like okay whoever You need to get out more. You're fucking nuts. No, whoever picks it. It's a funny bit, but it's not real. It what do you mean it's not real? I am quite a hermit. Have you ever seen people Yes! Unfortunately. No. It's not I'm not complaining about it, but I think you are stating something that is empirically counterfactual right now.

Well, okay, what makes it like saying I'm not gonna look at my watch. I'm not gonna know what time it is. You know? No, but it is it there's a difference between looking up a fact and having uh like a a binary fact of okay wow when was a I consider myself a non-binary fact Oh fake binary news. There's a difference between when did this show premiere and when did it get cancelled. versus like okay what uh uh uh who did Socrates teach and did he really teach was he even a he why am I doing this big answer to that it was Alexander the Great I have I don't know if this is a bit no idea. And yes, I do have the desire. I have a desire. I I'm not I'm not Greekly like most You're not as Greekly as I am.

Yeah, I was gonna do a really funny bit and I was gonna trick you and lay my trap and have my cage fall on you, but but I'm not I'm not even gonna do it. No, trap, trap, trap me. No, no, now that I told you that there's a trap coming, I think you're gonna be probably more likely to anticipate it. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I won't fall for it, because I don't think like for the thing. Just disagree with the premise that people are less curious. Because I'm not saying that we have cu I I'm not saying they are devoid of curiosity. I'm saying there's a difference between being uncomfortable with uncertainty and having a sort of restless curiosity. But there's so many uncertain things, and now we know that we don't know so much more in terms of the universe.

You need to start TikToking on a different account, buddy. I don't I know you only have three. Last la uh last well no three whenever we recorded last whenever my lived experience of time was I sh I showed you saying it I showed you that TikTok wasn't even on my like top. It's so hard to get to apps on a phone. I hardly even look at my phone. I'm so busy stacking it and talking about feelings. No. Uh stacking the table where no one looks at their phone all night. Uh no, no, no, no. The first the person who ha uh who picks up their phone first has to either like um pay pay for drinks or like do something. Yeah, so that's a sad sad jenga. A strips phony strip. Th I don't know. I think the Yes you do.

If you don't know, you can look it up and then you're happy. Do you think someone is happy when they are the first person to know some This is a difficult conversation because it's totally a spectrum of what curiosity is. versus what knowledge is and I am not Greekly enough. You're teaching me an important lesson today, Alex, which is that I should never answer questions that you ask me in good faith. You asked if you could answer and I was really excited to answer. I'm gonna say here's I'm I'll do I'll perform my answer now. You know what? You're right. It really is a golden age of curiosity. where people will will pursue the existence of information in a way that can be really buoyant. And I think what a lot of people do, like, you know, you can see this in the way that people, when they're by themselves and not bothering anyone, will look at footnotes on Wikipedia.

And you can really see how that leads to a deeper understanding. Uh of truly, a truly Greekly word, epistemology, existence. You know? Yeah. As a person of hermitage Uh you you say I I don't go out, but what's your basis for thinking that people immediately, especially like younger people Will n I I d I don't know. Like What's my basis? My basis is I am like that, but you guys are super like that. That's my basis. And why do you I have I have saved keyword searches Alex, I have saved site colon searches for so many websites, it would curl your hair. I cannot, if I know something's there, I want to be like David Sims. I want to be, I would when I need to, I would like to be like David Sims. I'm blank check.

David's always blowing my mind with how quickly he gets straight to an answer on something. I don't know if that's canny editing. I just suspect that he's a serial Googler. Like he cannot stop looking things up. And there there there's that part. But no, but I I do feel like, you know, we don't have to keep going on with this. I I I I get what you're saying. And I I mean I'm all I was trying to say was like I do think they're There's something, I don't know if it's valuable. Certainly, obviously, it's better to have all of the world's information in your pocket. There's nothing bad about that. You don't have all the world's information in your pocket. That's just a little bit more. What what what what do you what do you you know?

Uh I think Skull You also value, uh, I shouldn't say that You definitely value when someone is fast, but you often comment when when someone is fast. I like fast. And yes, you like fast and uh Not everyone i is like that. There are so many uh this is a- There's a there's a there's what's that there's a podcast Fuck. I still don't understand why you w wish that kids had that. You said the the It was the question at Syracuse. What I love is subtlety and I love listening to the part that I'm saying, not the part you think I heard. I uh uh Claire cla okay, okay. Um well give Syracuse your money dot com. I don't know if I have Alex, I don't like it I want people to pick up people pimp things too much on a podcast.

And I don't want you pimping on my behalf, please. I'm not pimping on your behalf. I'm pimping on Syracuse's behalf because I bet that he's a big thing. clothes and like the impact that they've had on like you you go and you look at something like the history of like preppy clothes or you could look like You're setting the trap, aren't you? You're setting the trap and I'm so name of that show. Oh God, you're setting the trap. God damn it. And I think is it a slate show? I wish there was some way to find out. I have no way. Yeah. and uh and and curious that you'll wait till later to look that up. Or you'll say, you'll or you'll say, Merlin, that's Avery Truffelman. And I'll say, mmm. I'm not sh I I don't I guess it could be.

And you'll say, Merlin, you know it's Avery Truffleman. And I'll go, pfft. Oh And you would be like fuck it would be like fucking okay corral. You would get your goddamn oversized joke phone out of your pocket so fucking fast to stick it into my face and prove that you just found out that that's Avery Truffelman. There's a reason I would do that. You knew it and you proved it and now you're double reason. I would do that because it's it's not the Avery uh truffelman part, it's because you said You're like, oh, I think it was a slate show and something this isn't too dunk on like no no no no CC, that that's the thing. I think of very valuable parts of your own. And I'm gonna say there's no such thing as PRX.

No, uh uh the reason I Admire Avery Truffelman's work as well as articles of interest is because it's a completely independent show. Uh which and that's which is why I would indeed at all. I think I think it's very amusing that we're playing a role here, and I like that, but you know in your fucking black Catholic heart that I am right. And it's and it's sickening to me that you perform this nonsense when I try to make an extremely nuanced point. about ontology, epistemology, and Greek ecology. Cool. I barely know what these words mean, and you're right. I am I I do wish that I could uh go to Wikipedia right now. I'm like, mm, that doesn't sound right. That doesn't uh that sounds uh not to like prove you wrong, but you're right.

I want to to know because no one wants to feel like the dummy. That is I agree I agree. I understand that. I just don't know What there's just there's so much it's so nice to see so much restraint. For example, if it's something around guns or the Supreme Court or disease. It's so nice that like there are people who have been sitting on deep Deep expertise about these issues for their entire life and career. Sometimes it's it's what they do for a living. And they have remained stubbornly silent about it until the week it's suddenly in the papers. And then only then do they release the entire jizzy ropey spray of their expertise on everybody who's on the internet. And I just think that takes a lot of it takes a lot of restraint, you know, and subtlety if I'm being honest.

like God's existence, right? You learn about Descartes, right? You learn about, you know, uh you got the teleological, you got uh my favorite is the oncological, which just says that gos to God must exist because cancer exists. That was a really long way for a joke. Unc oncological? On uncological oncologists. It's about uncles who get cancer. And I that's become gods. Hi. My name is Uncle Cancer. Hi. It's very nice to meet you. You are my family and I love you. I'm your uncle, but I will be dead soon. I am Uncle Oncology. Uncle Coll. I think everyone doesn't. Let me start over. 3-2-P-R-X. Hi. I'm Uncle Cology. Hi. I'm anti cancer. I am excited to listen to this episode of Reconcilable Differences.

Please don't. I'm expressing my own opinion. I sent it to you and now you you keep talking about it. It's like, yeah, okay. Like, yeah. Yeah. Said said said what? No, because I think it's good. I think it's good. Johns are really good. Johns are Johns are really good. Um Yeah. I am lost my mind. No, I lost my mind a long time ago. Oh, it's going to be if you want it'll be out. I haven't done the ads yet. Um it'll be out on Friday, but I'll I'll make I'm writing it down here on a piece of paper. I bet that I will also disagree with Syracusa vi violently. Perhaps not as violently. That's because you're a creepy stalker, dude. I wouldn't say that you you gen up fake arguments with all of the people on ATP because you love them.

But I I do. I I l zoom in to all of Casey's. Casey list has not earned an enemy. I don't want a friend. Kidding. Alex. Hi, Casey. Rec diffs. See, this is the thing. This is like how you can see things on your screen that happened at other times with people playing roles. This is why I have so many TikTok accounts. I have one where I pretend to be an uncle with cancer. The Marlborough man died of cancer. Yeah, it's called Munch syndrome. He was alive. Ha ha ha. Much, much, munch. How are you today? Are you well? Well today is uh today's Wednesday. It is January 18th. It is I don't dispute that. I'm glad. I I am glad w uh we can ag uh agree on the d agree to disagree. See, this was supposed to be a Uh I was trying to do a bit about Counterpoint, and now I can't remember if that's even the name of the show.

I think that's the one. And you're right, it's driving me crazy. The oh I see see you're right you're uh oh god you set another trap you set another trap I hate it oh I hate it Uh no, cause it let's see. Uh what's the um uh it's like doing the show with you, it's fun. I like skulls a lot more than I thought. So that is a real thing. Why did I never get the line right? And he loves trains. What's his name? Um my name. Are you just setting intentional traps? Because th I d I don't know. I don't know his name from pat I do not know the name of the younger son from Paddington too. I just know that he loves trains. My my father is Paddington. Call me Paddington too. You know what I was doing when you um connected the call?

Uh I was listening to Silkworm. uh whom you do not like enough. And I was playing with some other things made by Neemnik. The maker of this week's challenge. I think he has a name. Have you looked at his other stuff at all? No, in fact, I have uh m uh many not bit questions about our challenge. Did you make it at all? Last time I checked, you had nothing up. No, I don't think I very much almond buttered. Oh, that's okay. No, no, no, you full on peanut buttered, as far as I can tell. No, no, no. If you go to my thing, you unsalted buttered. This is okay, so I'm gonna send you something. What I would like you to do, if you would uh play with me in space for a second, is I want you to go. So this is a person, I'm sorry, I I'm not trying to be cute about this.

And well, of course I'm trying to be cute about this. It's what I try to do. But um this is a person. Uh Neat Nick, N-E-A-T-N-I-K. I'm gonna stop saying that'll be in show notes because obviously I'm just missing it a lot of the time. And But Adam, Adam Newbold appears to be this person. person's name and he does something called Nick Nick. So what I would like you to do please is to go to so he makes all these little like Uh part of a theme for my talking about omg. lol is that it it really it's really wholesome. And it's wholesome. It's wholesome. I it didn't occur to me like w when I was trying to think about like if you asked me what it is that made me do this or like this or or somebody an imaginary person goes, why would I pay twenty dollars a year for this?

I was, you know getting my um my lance and mounting my steed and being ready to ride into battle. And it's just it's it's a I don't I almost want to say it's a throwback to simpler times to like web two point oh days. after the boom and then the bust and then flicker, you know, and like people just made cool stuff. And I think this I can't say, but I suspect that this fella probably enjoyed that time too. And he's been around doing this stuff since 2001. So he's got a bunch of these neat things. One that I think is really cool, this is just the most basic shit. I love it so much. He's got a thing called calendar, right? So for example, go to Neatnik You know, this is real simple, but I love everything about the way this guy does everything that he does.

I'm not doing that to suck up or shine a skirt. I'm just saying that like this guy is really in my wheelhouse in terms of execution and purpose. This is cool. May I read this? Yeah please, please do. Because what you're getting basically you get this weird, you see a grid and then there's a there's a message on it. Yeah, good. Hello! If you print this page, you'll get a nifty calendar that displays all of the year's dates on a single page. It will automatically fit on a single sheet of paper of any size. For best results, adjust your print settings to landscape orientation and disable the header and footer. Take in the year all at once. Fold it up and carry it with you. Jot down your notes on it, plan things out, and observe the passage of time.

Above all else, be kind to others. People might say this is cringy. I love it. Alex Uh we need to drop the cringe the cringe thing. It's really that needs to stop. It has I think it ha it stopped for me. I'm uh Yeah, but we need to stop then we need to also stop talking about it. Because we're we're we're we're passing on a mind virus uh uh about acting saying that people should act in real life like they do on Twitter. And I mean I have a stand against that. Here's what I'm gonna say about this. This kind of shit right here, it's all in the details. I mean I haven't printed this out yet because currently my beloved HP printer has been telling me I've got tickets to see David Wayne. The kid and I are going to see David Wayne's um band on Friday night.

And I'm trying to put up. Oh shit, cool. Yeah, the middle-aged dad band. I didn't even know this existed. Joe Lo Trujillo. Singing. Weird owls sits in sometimes. And um anyways, I was trying to print my tickets, but it says that my printer cartridge can't move and I've been trying to fix it for three days. But I the devil's in the details, right? Anybody could make a grid but like I haven't looked at this but I'm gonna guess this is probably some pretty smart and cool CSS that enables this to be what it is and the care of going like oh hey all you gotta do is print this out and like Is he asking for a tip? Is he saying follow me on on uh you know on on Glab or whatever? That's just a community I just made up.

It's called Glab and I love it. Follow me on Glab. Stay safe. Ukraine. Um but he but no, this is just a cool thing. And you know what, Alex? This could be like a pen uh or a uh a USB thumb drive. You could print out six of these and just put them in different places in your travel box or your travel folder. I can almost promise you you will find a use for this, those six sheets of paper. Someday you're gonna really wish you had the entire calendar for a year in front of you and this would be so goddamn handy. Isn't that neat? It's neat Nick. It's it is. I wonder if his name is Nick. So he's got a bunch of these and they're really cool. Can I send you just one more and then we'll do the program?

We'll start the show. Yes. This is the This is the program. Yes, please send it. Um this is at uh you know what, just to make it easier, because this is hard to type, this is called Steganographer. So just click on neatnik. net, right? Oh sorry. Browse our products. You know what? I'll just send you a link. It's just easy enough to send you a link. Charlene Tilton. Tilt Tilton. Tilt Don. Tilton. Um, I just sent you that. And would you put on that stenographer thing? It's such a neat idea. He's got a few little like funny things for like little Things where a nerd makes something kind of cool and funny for you and even though you don't know how it works, it seems to work and it's kind of a neat idea.

Alright, did you go to the stenographer thing? Yes. This is really cool. So you can go in and um like Put do messages. Okay, I just sent you a message. And this may not work, but put could you please copy the text of what I just sent you? I just sent Alex a message that says all is well remain calm. Oh no. And I would like you to please go to steganographer and you're going to scroll down to reveal. Type in public message. Oh no. D sate it. I hate it. So it says all is well, remain calm, and then you hit destaganographize. Did you see anything different? Oh, private message. Is your card the two of hearts, Alex? Holy fucking shit. I I you know I don't even you know, well, okay, here you go. Here's a mystery for you.

It just feels like magic, honestly. Explain it to me so quickly. I know what invisible characters are. I understand those kinds of things. I don't want to know. This I just like it be a magic feels I mean cool. It is explained right underneath and I'm still like, I I don't Yeah, well it's explained. It doesn't mean it's understood. Oh that's good. Oh I know it's good, Alex. This is why you should listen to me. Wisdom. Subtlety. Oh gosh. How many hours a week do you think I hear your voice? Uh if you hear it less than I do, you're lucky. Oh, I should track that. I can track that in overcast. You're very, very lucky. I I am lucky. I'm drinking salt water here, buddy. I I gotta do this is my instrument.

This is all I've got. I don't have any other skills that people would give you know, I I couldn't even get Confederate script for for what I do if I didn't if I didn't have this. So you've got to keep doing the show and try to put it out when you can Is your is your card the two of hearts, Alex? Isn't that kind of cute? It's not just cute, it's wholesome and interesting. Oh, so look at the look at look a little guy. Oh, he's got a little guy. Look at the bottom of the picture. Yes. It looks like a Pokemon in a top hat. Kinda. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cute. Is that neat, Nick? Oh, oh. I think I might love him. I might love him Mm. Adam Newbold. I love your neat Nick. Oh, and that and that Nick sure is neat.

Should we start the show? I'm so excited about this. This is so cool. Are you and so your your peanut buttering is just from like the way life goes, not from like you didn't find it interesting to do? Uh, not the way life goes. The way m m I th the way I'm mad and the way I fucked up. Um, but it's I I've spent all morning playing with it. Not like all the things. Let me look. No, hold on. Let me know. Oh, there you are. It says your name Oh look at that. Yep, see? It's got an example link. Oh my god. Wait, but here is actually. This is actually something I want to try. I wrote I could do it right here on the show together. Yes, I'm going to the dashboard. Oh no, I'm not. That's You gotta just go to just go to plain omg.

lol. Can I while you're getting ready and setting up and getting your tabs and stuff, can I give my pitch on what this is and um just the basics of like kind of how I got started with it? Please do. Thank you very much. Digga digga digga challenge. The challenge this week is to use I I don't know if I'm pronounced this correct. O-M-G. lol. And so so what had happened was I was like like I said, actually, Alex, the reason we started late today is I was laying on the couch and I liked it. And so we started fifteen minutes late. Remember I said that to you? Yes. You said that I was laying on the couch and I was comfortable? Yes. I love laying down. It's uncomfortable. I've heard it's not good for my health.

I'm not gonna look it up. Not a fucking monster. Charlene Tilton. Talking like Maria Bamford fucking. Um yeah I was laying on the couch in my repose. Uh blah blah blah weekend before last. just 'cause I can I do remember this. And I was as like I do, I was reading my my my feeds and one of my one of my favorite feeds for many, many years is uh by friend of the show, Andy Bayo. I don't know if he's a friend of yours. I I don't even know if he's a friend of mine anymore. I don't know. I haven't seen him in a while. I'm not gonna look it up. He and his wife did one of the nicest things that uh anyone's ever done for me. Told you so yes. Uh it's a Buddhist gift, is that Robin Williams says. What they do.

Oh, they give they give you a free beef for so so? Uh uh uh Oh no, I it it doesn't it doesn't matter. No, I was done a bigger favor by none other than Mr. Bond Reagan. If you go to Ronald Reagan's Wikipedia page, you can read about it. Because it's true. Well, I tried, did the best I could for Merlin. I I told him he was wrong. Wait, was that actually closer to Danny Carvey's George Bush? I don't know. I was trying to bit wouldn't be prudent. So I was laying on the couch as one does and I was reading my feeds in the Net Newswire and I love Andy Bayoswaxy. org. Wax I mean gosh, what do you say? He's he's one of the OGs. Like He was started blogging right around the time I did, and I kind of met him through Matt Howie.

And uh he's he's a great guy. I like um Andy a lot. He's talk about curious. Wow. Um anyhow, and he had linked to I put it in notes for this episode, or I put it in the link in, January 16th, 2023, OMG. lol. This is in his sort of remaindered, what Kotki I think used to call remaindered links. omg. lol, surprising number of small but useful services for only twenty dollars a year made by a single dev. And I says to myself, I say, huh, services, I wonder what that's all about. And I'm understand now, where am I Alex? Right. Is it the weekend or is it a working weekday? I believe it's a working weekday. Am I very, very lazy as a person? Yes. And so I'm holding the iPad in my hands and I clicked and I go, oh, this looks kind of fun.

I wasn't sure exactly what it was, but because at first it it's not garish exactly. But by modern enterprise bootstrap website standards, it's pretty colorful, you know? And I was like, hmm, wonder what the deal is. Long story short, like within a few minutes, within like I basically clicked and I saw the list of features. And I went, ooh, this is something I enjoy playing with on the iPad as I lay on the couch right now. And you know what? I did. I loved it so much. And the why is the iPad part important? Because it's like I said last week in our after show. I think last week, I said it's kind of like a L pure Chrome. You know, Chrome used to have a meaning before the browser. You would talk about browser Chrome or you talk about interface Chrome.

Like the ways that in like Microsoft Word in the mid-90s you could create you could almost fill your entire VGA screen. with just menu bars. That's Chrome. And so when I say Chrome, what I mean here is like it's it's nothing but shit that you configure that's cool. And it's I went into it going one reason I love this is it has absolutely no purpose and now that I've been playing with it for a week and a half If it ends up that you like this by the end of the episode, I'm gonna make a bold and brave statement that's gonna make your dick fall off. May I uh make a statement please. th the beginnings. I think you are just at the beginnings of why this is so cool. I just pasted in the little markdown thing that I I wrote and the my little my little OMG.

lol or or my oh my god Dot lol I don't know how uh barely but but yes and it's I like I I I want you to go through all of the things that make this so m magical and just like delightful because I and no see I'm I'm not doing any of this, like he g he made this. Uh wait, what what's my new friend's name? Nick? No. Neat Nick. David? Nick Nick. Lauren. The developer of this app, who's named Charlene Tilton. um made this for us as a gift. And yes, it's it's and yes, I'm paying for it. But like and I'm using it like a gift. Like sometimes the coolest gift is as they say, something you never would buy for yourself. Like I this the when I say it's like a fidget spinner I just mean like this is all stuff I actually kind of like doing that some people hate.

Right? Like I don't and like th resetting my Apple TV last time was kind of a pain 'cause there's been some regressions with that stuff. I don't always love setting things up. But I do there is a part of me that does really enjoy Okay, I'm gonna make this sound smart, so bear with me. Mihai, Chick Sent Mihai, in his idea of flow talks about um a graph where you can think of two axes, one of which is level of difficulty and the other of which is level of expertise, which breaks down into these nine sub qua quadrants, nanotrons, I don't know what they're called. The y it's like a tic tac toe, right? And it's it's his contention that when you are when a high level of challenge to you is met by a high level of expertise by you, that's where you're most likely to be able to get into what he calls a flow state.

But you know so and there's all I mean I've had this hanging over my desk for fifteen years. To not to not much, you know, um It hasn't been that useful. It's not his fault. But anyway, but then there's some things where he's like, okay, well, what about stuff where you've got a high level of expertise but a fairly low level of challenge? Like that's relaxing. That's you know, I mean maybe that's like some people like video games, some people like Wordle. This is my video game, Alex. When when I honestly really seriously like I've played video games, I've been good at video games, Alex. I don't talk about it because who fucking cares? I'm 56. But I was pretty good at Stargate. I was pretty good at Tet not Tetris, but um um Robotron.

in some of the early like you know the Williams games and and I played, you know, 2600, I played in television. And I'm real until they changed the fucking mechanic, I was great at wee bowling. But I I don't for whatever reason I don't hate video games. I don't hate people who hate video games. If anything, I admire video games. You know, when you look at something like I mean i there's if there's one thing that Roger Ebert turned out to be very wrong about, it was his bullshit about video games. But I don't enjoy them and I'm glad other people do, but I think this helps me to understand why people like uh f particularly like iPhone video games. Yes. This uh connects with my brain. What I'm trying to say is that this connects with my brain in a way that I suspect is similar if they could if you could pinpoint like what it is about a casual iOS game that a person enjoys.

Like C threes even, not which is more challenging than this, but still. It feels like play in the purest. The true like Stuart Brown like sense of yeah exactly. Yeah. And that's why I was uh I mean I'm I'm I basically fidget I'm basically fidgeting with it r right now because I didn't realize that you can do icons. Oh no, which is oh my gosh. Oh dude does. You had the little robot for our okay Alex, be aware that There's a reason I don't run shit like timery. I don't want to know how many hours I spent on this past Saturday night. Actually, I don't care. I'm happy with who I am. I I hope you can all live with it, but I like who I am. I know that's considered counter-revolutionary to say, but It was fun.

My family went to bed and I fucking sat around and I went to the font awesome site under the area and by which is a great site. This will all be hopefully in notes. I've already like got a lot of this gathered. Just haven't put it in the document. Font Awesome is where they get those icons from. And and um and they've made a few. This is okay well. This is also such a such adorable, playful site. Oh gosh. But what's neat is there's fine awesome ones you can buy. What you want to do, if I could say, you want to go to free? And then try just going to free and then like sort by feature. Oh, there's anime. She did it all. And on top of it, Neat Nick has also made some custom ones of his own. But this is the kind of thing, and I I guess we'll get into it.

But like we you have the your main the main thing of omg. lol, we haven't really talked about what this thing is yet. It is in some ways I've talked a lot about the what it feels like to make it. Let's talk about what it means to eat it. It's a po what's a profile page at the most basic at the most basic level. It's like the page that you would get on any social media service mostly. Um maybe not so much something like Spotify exactly, but that you would get on I guess I guess Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and it's stuff like here's your name. If you want your pronouns, you put your pronouns, like what what's your job? Where are you? All that kind of stuff. Which is cool. And then you can do things like add links to stuff.

Whatever stuff. Like your stuff, you know, where you worked previously. Um and uh what's neat is that it's all in the you all do it all pretty almost well I think pretty much you could say LS everything in this is done in browser through Markdown, an extension of Markdown. And not the usual, not like GitHub, not multi-markdown, but an extension. I could not find if this if this is a thing, and I think it is a thing, he's got to be basing this on something. But whatever it is, you go in there and you write markdown using typical, you know, classic group or basic ass markdown, and then all it does all the rest for you with CSS, but it also introduces something I had not seen. I don't think this, no, obviously it would not be YAML.

But the thing with the with the curly braces, so like when you drop in a URL, let's say you drop in example. com, HTTP calling example. com, and then space, um, open curly brace house. Closed curly brace. If that matches the name of any of the icons in the font awesome free set, it makes that the bullet. Whoa, geez, that's great. Hey, hey, guess what? It's uh it's 2003 and Maryland's discovered CSS. Yes, yes. But what I'm saying is I don't I you don't have to know CSS to do this. That's very clever. In a similar way to holy fucking shit, Benjamin Trot, what have you made with this movable type? You made like a language inside of a language. You've made it easy and fun for me to decide how I want my stuff to look.

I loved setting up movable type and and type pad and all I I always loved all of that stuff. I got I mean the whole hmm I mean the reason I have a career in some ways, the way I tell the story anyway is cause I learned to make web pages in nineteen ninety-five, right? But another big part of that was when Ben set up my a pair doc my pair dot com shared account set up movable type for me for forty bucks, I think it was. And I had to learn the terminal. I'd never had to use the terminal for anything more than getting onto the internet and checking my email, right? Like I had a Telnet account back in Florida, but I never had to go in and learn what seven seven seven and chone and C D and all that stuff mean.

I never had to learn that before. Um yeah, so that's how I had to learn that stuff. That's when I started buying O'Reilly books, really. That's when I for my my technologist, my technologism first became seasoned. I love stuff like this and I I cut you off. Yes, but so it's all done in the browser, but there's a lot of nice little additions. So yes, in some ways, if you want to think about what this is, I I uh uh I would ask that you please not stop at this factoid. What omg. lol, what it is on the face of it, is a profile creator. But boy, is there ever a lot of stuff inside of that and something the part that I will get to with the w that will make your dick fall off at the end if I end up saying it.

I'll say it now. What uh what I want something between this and Blot. I want them to work together, and I know there's already the beginnings of a of a as I say I call it now a federation here. But like boy, if there's anything that I've ever wanted to be federated, it's the ability for all my friends to have a page like this plus I I would say personally something like blot for the blog part. I don't love doing this stuff in a browser. for blogs. But you know what I'm saying? If I had if I got to if I got to be the the the fairy they mother if I got to be the fairy God they I and I would wave my wand and say I w wish it were easy, not free, because it should be paid for, but I wish everybody I know could have shit like this and then I could go to a page and say go find the Alex thing.

Oh, here's Alex. That's canonical Alex title. And um what do you want from them? Oh, I want Alex's status updates, I want Alex's blog updates, I want Alex's slash now page, I want whatever it is, all the stuff you want, you would click that and that would go into your version of I don't know, it could be a fire hose, it could be a garden hose, it could be a straw from a malted, however much or little information you want from a whole bunch of people. Like I love the Federation. I I kid about Mastodon. I just don't get enough laughs there for it to be worth my while. And I what I would like though is something mature and scalable. I know this is a pipe dream, Alex, but After a week of using this.

I don't think it I don't think it After a week of using this, I was like, how much would you love everybody to be able to have something like this? And then for you to pick Everything in here is a fucking API. Like its APIs out the ass with this stuff. It doesn't seem like it would uh scale is a separate issue, but I think at getting it it would require probably more than one person working on it. You know, like Blot that that guy's got folks working with him on stuff. I see it in his, you know, updates. But That ability, what I really I mean, it's not I don't have anything against master. I don't think anything against anything. It's just that we keep trying to recreate a social network based on a social network that no longer exists or functions in the way we'd like.

And I I I feel like there's this part of me, and I know this is really pie in the sky stuff probably, but I think it would be very promising for something even as basic as this profile page generator that we'll we'll in a minute we'll get into how it's more than that. Um for that to be something that you could syndicate. Um maybe in a really simple way. But also, My favorite thing that I read this week uh is a piece. I won't go I I don't need to go into it. I read the most amazing piece this week and I I love this woman's writing and I was thinking hmm It's weird. Like I don't really have an easy way to just go show me everything this woman writes. Like not in a creepy way, but like I don't subscribe to the New Yorker anymore for my own reasons.

Like I don't there's a lot of stuff like stuff that she writes for. I don't have a subscription to the London Review of books. Like And I was just like, it it does make me think though, there is a problem to be solved here of like I want to keep up with a certain kind of stuff from people. And yes, yes, it would be neat to eventually get to a point where feedbin like you could make sort of your own personal regex for like, I don't want to see any post that has the word sponsor in it. Or any headline that begins with this or a prime number. But but you follow what I'm saying? Like can you imagine going and you go you go to the Matchy Cox page and there's a bunch of tick boxes? And you could say, I want blog, I want updates, I want now, I want whatever, any one of them.

You could pause for a while and then you just slurp that down into however you like consuming it. You could send it to Reader. You could send it, I guess you could send it to paper. You could s absolutely send it to the Net Newswire. Like I that's that that's the part. Like I had fun fucking around with this. But s I swear to God, in the last couple days I've been thinking, there's in mentally for me at least, there's nothing I c it's easy for me to exert effort on another people's part, but I don't see any reason that this couldn't be the beginnings of something that has the better aspects of Mastodon and Twitter and RSS. So does s oh okay so you can't subscribe to the web oh wait uh sorry I'm uh I'm on the dashboard and then we're the part I'm dreaming about is the federated part.

And yes they I I did I did sign up on their instance I got an account there. But what like what I'm talking about is like in the same way that well I guess uh maybe a poor example or a great example, I don't know. How the iTunes, how how podcasting became something that Apple Apple kind of like wrote the book on podcasts because of the fact that they had the the comprehensive directory as far as people were concerned, where people like You know, Marco, Marco will be the first one to tell you that to derive the hundreds of thousands of feeds that are processed in Overcast, he's using Apple's structure and system and really their whole directory, right? But like I think everybody even Spotify they st well stolen.

But I mean So what I'm saying is I know podcasts exist for any variety of reasons that aren't on that store. But if you want to, there's probably no better place to find out if a podcast exists. than going to the Apple Podcast thing, right? It's where I would go, for example, to find out how many people already had the name of a podcast that I wanted to name something. Yep. Right? And so well I want that, but for people's stuff. And then I get to decide what people and which stuff and how it's delivered. That could accommodate a lot of different things. Yeah, what you're describing is Linktree if it was good and what Is Linktree just for putting links to stuff? Yeah, but and that is what you could like post blog stuff on there?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So it's just it's for making pages of links, yeah. I I do not like going to those pages. I think Blank Check has one and I went I'm always trying to figure out like Blank Check, I love you guys. Where the fuck is your actual home? Could you please pick a make a page like this? Because there's like six different things that look like the official homo blank check. And I don't think it's a red bubble situation. I think those are all things they've made in the past and maybe just abandoned or whatever. That's fine. That's fine. Whatever. Like I uh believe me, I've got plenty of technical debt out there in the world. It's just that like it would be really neat if Everybody got to be independent and like the thing I feel like maybe it was Michael Lop first first said it that I heard it was like there's no reason to ever see anything on Twitter that you don't want to see.

And people can like Syracuse, I think, continue to feel this way, which is like I'm there to see the posts from all of my friends in order, except for the things I've muffled. And like anything that takes me away from that is making this less of a good experience for me. But my and there was a time though when Michael Lop that seems downright quaint now, but he was right. Like if you didn't like following that person, you can unfollow 'em. And it didn't used to be quite the, you know, Michigas that it is today. But like 'cause you understand, like, it's not that I don't like you, it's just that right now I don't have a place for this in my life. like your stuff, whether that's you at South by Southwest or you know you being having public arg arguments with your, you know, wife or whatever.

Um and that would be neat. I would like that. I would like that, and because I think this is fun to do, and I think it would be good for people. It's not again, not the first thing in the world to ever do this. But it's fun and it's cool. It doesn't suck. And I I really I based on what I can tell about the neat Nick, like this isn't something he's looking to flip. Oh no, I I'm pretty sure it wasn't in the waxy Yeah. I yeah, yeah. Uh I don't know if it was in the waxy logo. I think D script is gonna have a Spotify logo on it. Within it very, very soon. Yeah. I liked Anchor for like a week. Well, and anyway, the reason Link Tree is so popular is because pretty much everyone who's a content creator is afraid of having their stuff taken down.

Yeah. From whether it be TikTok, YouTube, uh Twitter, wherever. And I mean uh like with Feedburner, Feedburner was a godsend until it stopped getting updated in when it became a kind of a nightmare. Or like me getting on the beta for Gmail in two thousand whatever that was, three or four. Like I love Gmail. as previously stated, but if I had known how instrumental my Gmail account would become in my life, I never would have I I never would have used it so extensively and honestly exclusively. Well because if I lose that account, I'm screwed. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm not gonna get help from Google if something goes wrong with that account. count. Okay. I've tried. Yeah. I oh this is another thing that I d feel like we're living in a different universe because I I know a lot of uh but not just know, but see a lot of people worrying about that a a lot as more folks make their um living being content creators.

But not even just that, but I know, I know. We've got to stop saying it as a joke. If you go to Now Now Now, which is the collection of slash now pages, I almost want to read you some of the job titles, the the jokey job titles in there and what people say. People actually say things in there as they're sitting there like you know doing a selfie in front of a cliff. They talk about how they love creating content. And I'm like, if you just if you say you love creating content, you don't know what almost any of those words mean. I refuse to I love your content. Ever I I can't God I might as well just call it coal. Just call an attention, Cole. Yes. Every trick is is uh for practical purposes identical.

Even though they are every brick of coal, every piece of coal, anthracite, whatever, like each one of those is actually different. Probably even more than a snowflake. They're different sizes, they're different shapes, but nobody fucking cares because it's just coal and it's gonna burn in a minute. Yes. I love creative coal. I uh I I don't uh fight with my spouse publicly on Twitter, but I'll I'll fight with them publicly on a podcast, even though we have now come to this uh agreement. But it he was very much like, yeah, there's nah like, you know, we need more queer content. We should make more queer content. I'm like, no No, no, no, never call it that again. I will not make content. I I underst Yeah, I I understand affiliated link.

That's not true. I do I am fine with a lot of affiliated l links. But uh I'm like What does that have to do with Making YouTube videos or whatever. Because it's a way to no, it's a uh a a lot of people it's a way to make money on the internet and uh a lot of times it's like. Content and affiliate links? No, no. I've I've convinced him to that the word content is just harmful for the internet in general, I think. And that might seem like harmful for is people who like making stuff. Yeah, I if you could just it would we not not be I'm not I know it's not a very pretty word, I know it's not felicitous, but like if I could just incur and cause I've actually done this in ad copy I get There's a lot of times where I can't do it.

And if you don't want to say stuff, then still. But that's what you're talking about. Because it's undefined. It's just the content says undefined, plus I don't care. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's d for somebody to consume it I don't even think it it it's uh coal. It's uh it is failed fast food because yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that's that's even better. Yeah, it's not you're right, right. At least it at least you're getting like some enjoyment. And it's like, yeah, I'm glad that my hands are greasy, but it's tripods inside of a pizza box that look like a tiny table. I love making those The uh they're so plastic. I I I uh I have lost a lot of respect for people who have started calling their stuff content and I don't know why it I well to me I don't it's you know, there's nothing that Hmm.

There are a few neologisms that grind my gears more than when people say pod, when they mean podcast. And it's it's something that a bunch of people like those dinglings from the White House who had that podcast. Remember those guys, the the Tommies and the Johns and the those guys? Whatever they're called. Yeah and before Is this another trap? I don't know. And before that I was keeping it sixteen hundred And um they were former Obama guys and those guys were almost like the political podcast equivalent of serial, I feel like, in some ways. We're like, you know, we tried Air America in the past. We tried these things and like we could never get like, oh, the thing the liberals want and Um and and then they did and they were like, ah, they were cool guys and like ah I wouldn't assault you but I'd compliment you.

Ah that kind of guy. Hey, hey, I'm uh I like uh I love women kinda thing. And and like just that one guy with the teeth he b I'm tired of seeing his house. And but then when they say pod. And now that's really caught on. And even people I love say pod. And it's just I can't tell you why exactly it grinds my gears. It is the it is the fake. casualness of it and it's not really that much uh but but don't call it's not a pod. Don't call it that. I mean pod's a good word. There's things you could do. Anyway, but creating content, I'm not gonna say I dis I I disrespect people for it because it what I'm saying is if you have any fucking sense, stop saying it. And you don't have to correct other people, but if you actually care about the shit that you make Unless you're me.

And I will continue. Okay. I mean you should do you. But like what I'm saying is like these things do matter. How you think about what you do matters. And if you keep telling the world that what you make is attention coal, don't be surprised that they only can appreciate it with a a small invoice and a shovel. Calling YouTube videos content. And it's not a good thing. The nickels that they will give you for whatever is because they want your content. They don't care what you have to say. They don't care about your videos in the machine. Yeah, and uh I this is why I Well making this happy event sad and I didn't mean to do that. No no no. I uh that's that is why I find so much joy and wholesomeness in this site, it's because it is about sharing your stuff in a way that I think is more accessible than I initially thought.

And when you uh they they updated there was like the classic editor and now there is the uh what it's advanced editor. It says but it's I but I I I'm surprised it went from you put your URLs in a form field. Like a not a text area, but a text. uh you know, just the basic like one line thing. Yeah. Um it went from that to like, no, no, you know, this is actually not that big of this is not actually that much more useful. Just do it in Markdown. If you're here and you're doing this stuff, you could probably handle adding a dash in a space. Well and that just little example box is I think just as uh Oh giving you like the pre-populated Here's what you need to change in this. Yeah, and there's a live editor right there.

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, it's really anyways. Um that I've I've really already shot my wad on this. That like I I I'm not saying this. Sounds very Mitchell and Webb. I'm not saying this, but like this. Something like this. Like a shark, but not a shark, you know, but anyway, yeah, a shark, but not a shark. Something like a shark. Um something like this, because let's let's talk about it. Let's uh talk about something important. Let's get into some of like the what this stuff is. And we don't I don't want to take you on a whole like goddamn death march through this. The most vital piece of information I can give you today, it's very vital. I've been told uh by the government that it's very vital that you go and when you sign up for this, you use my affiliate link, everyone.

Yes. And oh this is another thing. He makes it easy to uh uh like I was like oh crap uh Merlin I have already created mine, but I was able to go and I saw you gave me credit. I saw that. Yeah. And I really that's a really considerate that this is reflex a kind of what I have to guess is a I I hit I don't love that phrase, full stock developer. But I think the fellow who made this understands a lot of stuff about a lot of things. I'm guessing probably went to school or something. But like understands a lot of stuff about like, for example, you don't have to get as into reading the documentation as I have, but like there's a lot of cleverness in the way that this has been implemented Including I'm and it's still it's still you know it's still happening, it's still getting started.

Not everything is done, but it's the pace is very rapid. But stuff like the way you can kind of generate different kinds of URLs. is really thoughtful. Like you can find things in different places and yet it's not too confusing. I think stuff like that is really neat. Oh, if you uh would uh like to, I would love to go on a uh d death march through this because it's a it's a it's a I think a joyful uh march because There are are so many things that I don't uh understand about this just because I t haven't set up a a lot of pearls and I don't I'm like, do I really need a DNS? But there's so much joy in in this site. Like I I I can see the thoughtfulness in some places. And I'm not saying other Things aren't thoughtful.

I just don't understand. No no no. It's it's just that I am not smart enough to s to see it. Or uh I'm not contradictory. The what what? Huh? I said I'm not contradictory. Oh god. I and shuffle me. There's so I think there's so much here that is like you you set up your little uh you uh set up your landing page and uh there's so much here that I uh want to get into be because it sc screams independence and it screams uh uh I mean not just federation, but I wouldn't I'm I'm not worried about this going away, but I feel like it would be easy to get everything out and put it somewhere else. And I want to hear what else you're excited about other than the profile page. Because it's Absolutely awesome.

I think you've sold it. It doesn't mean I'm not gonna talk about the profile page because that's where I want to get into some of the cleverness is the like I say, the stuff like the font, like you could really miss how those things are being selected and showing up and not understand that, oh, hang on a minute. There's actually hundreds of these icons that you can choose from. And if you aren't the sort of person that I bet a lot of people who are doing this are the sort of people who read these pages. So they won't miss it. But let's just let's go through like like the the basic stuff. You sign up. There's a link in show notes to go to. I don't wanna I'm not gonna read it over the air. I'm not a monster.

But um if you're interested in this, is there even is there a free version? I bought I bought it so quickly I don't even know. I'm not sure, but I would see it as a red flag if there was a free version and it's already It it the amount I it's like what twenty bucks? It's comparable to what you get on link tree and more with I love Linktree. No, I don't love Link Tree. It's just that pretty much No. No, I think that just because I talk about it a lot doesn't mean that I uh enjoy it. It's just what most people use as a landing page now because uh y people think it is difficult to set up a blog, which in some cases it is i it it is unless you find something like blot or omg. lol I really want to know how the guy pronounces it.

I d You're you're right, you're right. You're right. I can't stand not immediately knowing. It's gonna be worse. And honest honesty, if honesty f if honesty felt good, we'd do it more. Wi wisdom. Are you sitting with that? Are you really thinking about it? No, I am. No, yeah, but mm, this is oh after show. Because I disagree. I think when I think when i uh it being Hmm. Hmm. Oh god. This is something I could think about and talk about forever because I don't really know the difference uh the difference between honesty and transparency and the what Yeah, no, yeah, but y I mean you're right. You know, transparency is the performance, the apparent performance of honesty. Yeah, yeah. Because transp uh transparency doesn't really tell what you're being transparent about and whether you've given everything, but there are ways to Yeah.

Make it look like it. Um there is not a free version. I just bought a different name. Um so yeah, when you go in, the first thing it's gonna prompt you to do if you're interested in this is to pick the name you want for your thing, your handle basically. Your It's n it's not precisely a URL, but it's your, you know, your name, like Alex Cox, right? Um and uh it is you do it and it's 20 bucks and you buy it. And I there is not a sign, as far as I can tell, a free version. Which I think it's important to tell people. Because otherwise they'll ask. Well people will ask. People will be like oh so you did a thing where like you you want me to do this thing, you're making me do this thing at $40. Oh yeah, you're right.

Yeah. Yeah. Because deliberately misunderstanding people and then having other people make a straw man out of something they never said is a thing that we do. You do that. No, no. Take me take take me on the joy march. Ah you good? So okay, so you go in, you get your dashboard, and you click on your username, and so are you on you're you you know you're on that main page, right? Mm-hmm. The main area you're gonna spend time on this is webpage. And that's just where you go and you'll have your little markdown editor where you can put stuff in. Like you can it's basically just a I was kinda about to erroneously call this a WYSIWYG editor. It's not. I mean, it is in this, it's got it's a live preview of Markdown, but it's not what you see is what you get.

Um, put whatever you want in there. Um and so on the face of it though, especially as of last week when they when they had the classic editor versus the advanced editor, a person could be forgiven for thinking, oh, this is the entire thing. Right. The entire thing is you go in and put some links. And that that's a big part of it. But I also while we're here, because this is the m the in some ways, I think you could argue the main page, the main representation of yourself on omg. lol, I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, yes, most of what you're doing in this little, you know, you type in an editor on the left, there's a preview on the right in your browser. Um and yeah, most of it is just straight up Markdown.

Anybody who's ever used Markdown, they're gonna be very familiar with this, but I want to point out a few other interesting things. There is no YAML exposed in this document, but There's some YAML-like metadata and key key value pairs that you can create. So, like for example, on so at the very top, well, there's those curly braces again. What is that? Well, that means that it's a What's the word I'm looking for? A um oh shit. What's the computer term? Variable. It's a variable where you put in curly braces, it's got the generic name of a thing. And then when this gets rendered into a page, it takes that generic thing and says, okay, we'll show the Merlin version of this. So profile dash picture inside of curly braces.

Well, unsurprisingly, whatever I have uploaded as my quote profile picture is that will show it there. You don't have to hard code it. That's cool. Hey, it gets more markdown, markdown. But then what's this? This is where we get into some of the the cool metadata-ish things. A pipe, a space. A word, a colon. One hand, one heart. You can go in. Here's a link to my pronouns. These are key value pairs. And the pipe is just saying that this line represents a metadata key value pair. Location. What is the name of the name of your location? And you can make your own of these. Right? Some of which get a custom icon, others of which don't, but this is all stuff that will get turned into HTML metadata, like header metadata.

Right? That is now, guess what? Why am I saying this? It's machine readable. So machine readable type things, like there's stuff that's This is turning it into what does uh m if if someone didn't know what machine readable meant, what what does that mean? Well you think something like I don't I'm not a an expert on this by a long shot, but I think an example from back in the day is XML. A more modern example might be something like JSON. Where if you open a JSON file, and it's important to say, like this is pretty different from how things used to be. JSON files make a pretty good amount of sense just on their own. You open it up and you see again it's all key value, mostly key-value pairs, like, you know, house, colon, and then like an address or, you know, whatever.

The same way you would do metadata in blot or whatever. But the machine real part means that things mean things. So if you said don't you want the robots file, robots. txt file for this to have a um a no no index, for example. Like there's a way uh in a in in a good System, there's a way to type that where you aren't typing HTML like your fucking John Syrakisa. You just type in some stuff and it knows what that means because You are the way that you're typing stuff in. I'm sorry to be talking to you people like they're idiots. You all are smarter than me, I'm sure. But like the the the thing that makes this a neat machine readable thing is, for example, Those metadata attributes in headers are how a lot of the web has worked for a long time.

So that can be things like things that used to be more useful, like metadata, like keywords. You know, so you could have, you know, uh in the head of head of the document, sorry, right head, right? Head. Yeah. No, I think I'm saying header in the fucking Head but whatever. Wait, real real talk. Head versus s so head of the like where the the YAML would normally be versus the markdown header? Where the YAML would be rendered. So in HTML, you've got the part at the top, you know, above the body inside the less than and greater than the word head, and then a closing tag for head, and that's all stuff. That's stuff like your CSS, you know, links to your CSS files. It's your again, any importantly, any of that metadata, which for most of us, I mean, especially once Google got good.

a lot of that stuff became less important. There was a time when you could trick the shit out of Alta Vista with keyword stuffing or with all that SEO black gray and black hat stuff, right? But so what does it mean to be machine readable? Well, what that means is that like when that's oh I'm talking so far out of my depth. But when that's loaded up in the browser, things are happening. So back in the day that used to be things like, okay, we've got we've got stuff in the head that's gonna trick Internet Explorer into rendering this correctly. or like I say you load up a style sheet, all that kind of stuff. But then the machine readable part can also mean like here's how I want you to treat this page.

Here's what to do with this page. It's the equivalent of sort of like operator instructions for a browser. But that also means, as in the case of something like XML or JSON, that means truly machine readable in the sense of like, yeah, you can look at it if you need to, but it's a way of in a hu a humane way of having information turn into stuff. So if you've got a JSON file, well the. json on its own is not going to be the best way to deal with that. But you know what else is the best way? Like literally every conceivable other way where you can deal with a JSON file. I'm maybe a maybe a more down-to-earth example is CSVs. Like where if you get a . csv and you look at it in Text Maint, it's not gonna be as useful or easy to read as if you open it in Google Sheets or numbers.

Why? Because that's kind of what it's for. Like it's you know, and like a spreadsheet is just kind of it's a it's a database that only has like this one listing in it, sort of right? Like if you think about what a spreadsheet is, a spreadsheet kind of wants to be a database in some ways. A simple implementation of that would be something like a pivot table. But when you get what I'm trying to get at so poorly here as this is it's fun to use, it's easy to use, but what you never need to know is that there's building blocks here. for this doing very interesting things. If you just want to go in and just type and go, here's my Facebook page, boom. Here's your 20 bucks link to my Facebook page, you'll you'll be fine.

Uh if you're like me and you don't care about your family, you could spend Saturday night dicking around and seeing what happens. Back I couldn't figure out what the icon for back to work should be Should it be a briefcase? Oh gosh, I don't think it should. The briefcase is what your aunt in the suburbs would pick. I pick something nobody's gonna get, which is a rug. I I did not get it. It doesn't make any sense because it also doesn't really I don't care that somebody gets it, but if you know back to work, you would understand that that this is a valued rug. I still don't get it. I'm a fake fan, I think. Just throw in the coffee. Just finish the coffee. Um for the wisdom project, they don't they don't have an owl, unfortunately, and so I used a little wizard hat because they have a wizard hat.

So you know what I did? I fucked around and I went to Font. Like the wizard? Yes. And I went to Font Awesome and I discovered things that they had. And sometimes I just look for icons that I thought were cool and figured out where I could use them. So you that's how you get a robot for due by Friday. I I was very excited for the little little robot. And so on the one hand, if I I don't know why anybody needs this at this point. They don't probably need it. I mean if you I would spend money on f twenty dollars on food before twenty dollars on website, but you know, they'll leave you to your own devices. But if you do decide to do this, like you're gonna you're gonna want to do it because it's fun to dick around with What I'm trying to say is like I think that this developer has done a very good job so far of making something that is easy and fun to do, at least for my chick sent me hype chart in my head.

But also, like, I do feel like there's some groundwork here. Hooks is a term of art, but there's some stuff in here where like I could see this going to some interesting places. But at the heart of it, you're gonna want to go to this page and you go and you you put in your stuff and you basically make a little web page. And you could say to yourself, oh my god, well I could go to my beloved Squarespace. Squarespace is a WYSIWYG editor. Squarespace is like it's really an all-in-one platform that lets you do whatever you need to do with your business. But but what I like about this is this text-based approach. It's the same, it's similar to the why I glommed onto Blot, right? Mm-hmm. Just by the way.

And I again I think it is important to emphasize that y you do not need any i it can just be a straight up m markdown, like write it in drafts, copy and paste and and put it in there because I do think this is well designed from a UX standpoint where like you don't really need I don't know what what screen you're on on my screen Um I can see the editor and the preview, you know, that are kind of next to each other vertically. And then I see the save and publish button. And then under that I see that there's some other stuff. You don't ever need to go below the fold. Right. Right. But but if you like this, I would say you should maybe look below the fold, because guess what? Oh, that's where I put my profile picture.

Cool. Uh what about a theme? Oh they have themes? Yes, you go and you pick a theme. You can get a thing. That's mine. It's called gray purple. There's a gray purple. The two best colors. Puochin latte is mine. I and you can mod the themes in a way that I have not figured out. But I want to tell you any of this until you're ready to see it. You don't even know that any of this exists. until it would be interesting for you to know it. And then you learn more usually somewhere else. But to do the basic shit of like, okay, I understand how this works now. And and it goes from the most general everybody needs it. This is why I say it's good UX in my opinion. Is that like all the stuff you need, user experience, all the stuff at the top of the page is the stuff you're gonna use the most and then it gets a little m slightly more obscure obscure and slightly more interesting as you go down.

So get oh wait, this is interesting. Page metadata. So you can just call the page make sure that the again, that machine readable code that The reason that your browser has a little name up in the bar, that's because of page metadata. And you get to decide what that is. Well, that's great, Merlin. Welcome, welcome, welcome to 1993. But then you keep going down, and guess what you got down here? You've got additional head content. So if there is extra stuff that you want to drop in as HTML, you can do it there. And there's even an area where you can just go in and add your own little custom CSS. Like say you want a certain style for underlined unvisited links. or whatever, or this entire ID, you want to have this fonts or whatever.

You can you can do all of that here. And that's that's the that's the bread and butter. Um profile page. Any thoughts at this point? Web page they call it. What thoughts at this point? And then we'll move on. The you you're you're saying things like well Merlin, it uh that yeah, th that's from nineteen ninety-seven But uh that's also not something that you can find in many places anymore. Like I am happy that you can go to dinner and Google something. Uh but it's hard to find something Alex. No. Okay. This is the 1997 doesn't exist, but go on. What what what wait you're saying suffocate finds? W if you there is not I think anything comparable to this that is as accessible, which yeah uh uh you s emphasized uh u X versus UI.

There's nothing experience you couldn't find in Facebook, but do you really want to find in Facebook. Exactly. And uh given that machine, I don't want my stuff to be readable. Right. This this is also $20 a year, which I don't like. Yeah, compared to Lim Tree's fucking five. What did you spend on your last hysterectomy? I mean be honest. This is twenty bucks is nothing. And they don't even take away your pussy your your pussy womb. No go go on. My again, my thoughts are so surface Are are I I don't wanna say s I mean they're they're like surface as in uh I'm mostly excited. about how you d don't need to scroll to the bottom, which uh I I now ha have, but Like, I I I wish more people would not even necessarily use this, but use something like this, and I think this is the most accessible version of it so far.

Even more than one. It would be a tough match in terms of interest and skill. But for some reason this reminds me of uh if I could quote myself, this reminds me of something I said a bunch of times about Synology And why I in particular like a Synology. I mean, the th okay, so a Synology does a lot of stuff, right? It does a lot of stuff. And to me, the thing that makes this analogy powerful is exactly the thing that would drive people at other ends of the spectrum completely nuts, which are things like packages. Um so a package is basically where there's something for Synology, something that's been it's an you can think of it as an app, if you like. So like if you want something that rep tries to replicate Dropbox.

or you want something for photo management, or for that matter, if you want to run from the communities, you want to run Plex. Plex might be on main, but I'm not sure. Anyway, you get a package. Now The thing is you get a package and there's gonna there might be people again more straw men. I'm I have an endless supply of straw men. I I get them two-day delivery. Um one one straw man side of that is oh really can I just get a big hard drive? And you're like, yes, you you can get a big hard drive. And that will almost probably work out fine, especially today. As long as you have backups, I would say. But you know, if you want to just do what Margaret did, go from Synology like a big hard drive, you'll be fine.

I would try to have some redundancy to that, but there are but that's not why I want this. I do I don't just want the big hard drive. I want These packages that enable me to do all this through a really pretty s once you learn it, a pretty simple interface. Now let's go to the other straw man at the other side of the room. I could just go buy a toaster off of OWC and drop some naked drives and it's like, yes, you could. You could also make your own ketchup every time you decide you want to eat French fries. I don't want to do that. I don't want just a big hard drive. I don't want to roll my own. And honestly, Uh Docker is incredibly powerful, but it's it can be a little frustrating and wasteful.

It's a lot sometimes. It's really a lot, a lot sometimes. Configuring it is not easy. Um, I had this thing that is like so in my wheelhouse. There's no package for it yet. It's only on um what's it called? Frogger. You know what's it called? Look up, what's it called? What's the thing with the fish? What's it called? Docker. It's only on Docker at this point. There's so much environmental again key value pairs, so much shit you have to go in and get right. Is it on the right network? It's a thing that does this amazing. It's a it's a it's a plug-in thing, a Plex adjacent app. For being able to do media management stuff. And I just gave up because that's too far down the other end. I did not get a Synology to learn to master Docker.

And I didn't get a Synology just to be a big hard drive. Well what I get it for. I got it for exactly what it's made for. Learn how the app wants to be used. Learn how the hardware wants to be used. And what that hardware wants. Anytime you find yourself going into it, I'm not saying you never need to go into the terminal ever, ever, ever, but if you find yourself needing to go into the terminal often for stuff on Synology, like basic day-to-day stuff, like I that's worth looking at over time. Unless you enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, that's fine. What I'm saying though is you could why don't you just go to the other end and fucking get a Linux box in the sky somewhere if you want to do stuff in the terminal?

I don't want to do that. I want to install a package on Synology that then gives me a web interface for doing AI detection on my photos privately. I think that's really neat. So that's what I find that's really it's actually pr it's actually pretty good. I all that's why I like this. This is the perfect non-fit For almost everybody and no one. This is gonna be too much bullshit and money for people who already have a Facebook account and for somebody who like looks down their nose even at GitHub. For somebody who like does their own, rolls their own everything, this is asinine. This is the kind of thing where like John Zirek Usa could probably replicate the basics of this in a long weekend. You know, on I mean, I'm I'm not even kidding.

Like what we have here is not difficult, but that good ideas are not hard. Implementation is difficult. It's how does this get out there? How does this scale up? How do you avoid innumerable security problems? And If you're a one person group, how do you avoid having regressions and the code and all that kind of stuff? So I don't know if that comports with what you're thinking, but like this is a fun just A phrase that's fallen out of favor that I used to love, I have always considered myself on the Mac, I've always considered myself a power user. I've never considered myself a pro. I've never considered myself Packer. I've considered myself more than a whacker, but not a lot more. Well, you know, it's the opposite of a hacker's a whacker.

Somebody thinks they're a hacker, right? And so, but I'm a power user, which means like I like I always the one of the very first things that I do in an app Probably like a lot of people. Command comma. It's always the first thing I do. Command comma is gonna tell you a lot about that app. Especially if nothing happens. Especially if nothing happens. Preferences are not available in this app. Help is not available in this app. Well, you know what? My attention is not available for. for this app. Finish the app and then I'll look. No, no, I understand. Everybody, you do what you do. But going to preferences is gonna tell you so much about that app. It's gonna tell you so much about how this person or this team planned this, how it again, that phrase, please really pray on this.

how this app wants to be used. Are you utilizing this in the way that it was intended? And not that you have to, but it don't be confused if you've never bothered to read the documentation or check the preferences. Because preferences also will then tell you a lot. Even if it's a very good app, it's gonna tell you a lot about what they hadn't accounted for up front. It's gonna tell you a lot about like it's something where like I even said this at the academy la uh a couple weeks ago when we were there. It's like If you want to really understand what happens at any office, look to the ad hoc signage because ad hoc signage will tell you so much about how people thought the space would be used versus how it's actually used and abused.

Ad hoc signage is where you tell people, you know, stuff like, you know, don't stick this in your eye. I know you think you won't stick this in your eye, but everyone picks this thing up and sticks it in their eye. Don't do that. Or it says like the bathrooms, the bathrooms, somebody ruined the bathrooms down here, go to the third floor. Or whatever. Or like door opens, a funny one on that wired one. I think it's on wired. The door that opens the wrong way. Oh, and there's one that Marco had uh it was like please don't throw ins instead of just putting a trash. But there's one and they talk about it's a design video. It might have even had Don Norman in it. But you talk about and Don Norman, I th I think the guy who, if not invented, popularized the word affordance for describing it which sounds like a fancy word, but what is an affordance?

Well, an affordance is something you deliberately provide somebody that affords a functionality. And a a doorknob or a door handle is a kind of affordance. But you draw information about how that door opens, you may, by looking at the affordance. You may also know things. There's a there's a phrase I learned first learned at New College. All doors open out from Hamilton Center. Our student, which you I guess you call it student union, like where you get your mail and the cafeteria and stuff. It's called Hamilton Center, Hamp Center. And all doors open out from Ham Center. And it's it was just this funny rule of thumb that you realize that well building codes require most doors, ever since the Who concert in seventy nine, require most doors to open out, because otherwise that's bad.

And so you get those doors that have the the pushy thing on it. But like if you have a door, you're gonna have real f first s first bit on um I think you should leave. Remember what Tim Rod's a reason that that first there's a reason that that first sketch line is just it it does both killed me. It does I've I've excluded it a bunch. I think what he says is it does both. And then at the end the spittle coming out of his mouth. It does both. Um and that but if you go and look at preferences, sorry, I'm on a fucking rant. I'm in a good mood this time. No, you're on a joy journey that I am I am just a But I also like talking about my feelings and why I think I feel the way that I do. And when I say go to preferences, preference you go to preferences because Because you want to see if you can God Jason Snell.

Jason, as my friend Dennis would say, sometimes Jason really lets his witch out on uh the after show for upgrade. And uh I enjoy it. I because I think I think Jason is much angrier as a person than he realizes and it's funny when that gets proven. And and he was going off, King, about how in Obsidian you can't just change the font. And he went on such a glorious rant. And I really I felt it. I was like, I love Jason Snell and I was like, I know exactly what you're talking about. This is why I never created Sublime Text because you open a Sublime Text and you're editing inside of a text file. It drives you drives the person crazy. I think he is very wrong about a lot of things, l like Obsidian and like the After Steve book.

But he does such a good job of expressing the visceral it's it's transparent and I think it's honest. But it's i and it's apropos of what you said a minute ago. I think that's part of what made me love him as a writer, even though Well he had spent so much of his con career constrained by being a a worker and manager inside of a pretty big, not very nice company. Yeah. So I think he's eaten his feelings a lot. But anyhow, what I'm trying to what I'm trying to do here so poorly is say, like, yeah, you're right. If you hit command comma and you expect to see preferences and it's not there or like where else would you go to change the font? Well I imagine it would be in preferences. When when and like and I'm I'm not trying to be a s a school mom about this But like one of the things that made the Mac the Mac, I feel like, was the menu system.

That there's a there were pull-down menus. File meant file, edit meant edit, like all this a window, like eventually windows, not initially, but like you know, um it wasn't in there. We didn't have the window stuff. as much till later. But anyway, well I guess I'm thinking of like uh what's it called multifinder. Multifinder um Lulu Dallas multifinder is when you could have multiple things happening. But anyhow I don't put shit in the wrong place. Like obviously the worst insult is it's not there at all. Like there's nothing under help except to say there's no help here is like, oh, that does grind my gears. But like put stuff where it belongs. Can we all decide on where check for updates goes?

Because increasingly 80 plus percent of the time it's under f app menu, but sometimes it's under help. Anyways, it tells but it then what I'm trying to get at though is then if you look at something like I One of the one of the few feedbacks or radars or whatever is that I that I did about multi-markdown or sorry, NV Ultra was I said, I love the guys that I love that you guys do tooltips. when you mouse over some of the boxes. I said my only suggestion would be I find that really useful and I would love to have tooltips on all the things you mouse over. And And the thing I didn't say, but the reason I'm even telling them that is I have so much more, I have so much if I if I say to myself, huh, I wonder if I mouse over that clickbox, I wonder if I'll get a tooltip explaining what this thing will do.

Not I'm not talking about blah blah text. I'm not talking about iOS style two paragraphs of blah blah text under something. I'm talking about almost nobody does this, I imagine. If you mouse over a not just an image on the web, but if you mouse over something in preferences, a really good app, in my opinion, will have a tooltip, meaning an explanation of what will happen if you do this or undo this. And I and one of the reasons I said you said that is because I love you guys and it wouldn't it would make me respect you even more if that were consistent everywhere. But knowing how I am and knowing the Syracuses of the world, I bet there's somebody out there that would also respect. I would go well as far to say it is uh not just a UX thing, but an accessibility thing and it shows I mean yes it's But that that's where we get into the ad hoc signage part because I don't know fuck all about app development, but I have read some books.

some very old books. One of them was, gosh, I want to say it was Rapid Development. Rapid I think it was Rapid Development. They've had that one amazing stat about the cost of change in these five different stages of a project. And you could tell people this all day long. And it will as a project manager, I can promise you, it will still not really sink in until it's too late. A change, quote unquote, that you make to your product. in the design process is orders of magnitude less costly, maybe for obvious reasons, than making that change after it's been deployed, implemented. Shrink wrapped and sold, right? I I guess that is obvious. Again, I'll speak to myself, my straw man me. Hmm. Um O Merlin, that's obvious.

It's like yes, it is obvious, but here's the thing. You you there's doesn't take a lot of subtlety to go that before when a thing's not a thing yet, it's cheaper to change because it doesn't exist than after it's already on a pallet in Omaha. Yes, you get that. What you don't get is like when we ask you to sign off on this spec or this design document or whatever it is, we've very clearly highlighted to all of you, all of the stakeholders, that this is a this is a critical part of what we're doing and that We have to commit to what it's sort of like Dan with Selena on Veep, where he almost he we just like screaming, just pick a position on abortion. I don't care what you think. But you have to it you have to be incredibly clear to me right now.

Are you for this or against this? And of course Celine's getting the great advice from the lady who never has an opinion and and eventually like he gets her very but like that's what it's like. And it's like, well the thing is you told us that or another funny example pretty funny show right now that people do superstore do a pretty funny show called American Auto I think Anna Gastar is very good at. She's this sorry. She's it's it's pretty much what you'd expect. But she's very, very confident, but then we'll also like change her mind at a point when it's been made very clear you cannot afford to change your mind at this point. This is how you get like at the homework car that she makes and stuff like that.

Um never works for anyone. How many times did you try to explain that to stakeholders? It it it's maybe maybe it's just that I am and have been always a fairly in ineffective communicator in certain situations, but you want to really say to people Th when you make this decision, there's really no going back. In the sense that like any progress we've made up to this point at this gateway or at this milestone, like this we call it a milestone for a reason. Like it's a really important point on our journey where we we've um I don't like to use this word, but I think it does occasionally work. Where we've all we've uh got an alignment on the thing that we're making and importantly in terms of the actual word alignment like we've picked a direction that we're all gonna take And you know, by a voice vote and mutual acclaim, we all decided that's what we're gonna do.

You're not allowed to change that in stage four. Because boy, does that ever get expensive? Why am I saying all this? Preferences. If you couldn't figure out that it was a problem when you were designing the app, you try to fix it in preferences. And if you're really shitty, like like I was, you try to fix it in blah blah text. Where you try and explain some dire thing. One of my favorite things in any app is like I think drafts has this. There's several apps. Where if you go way, way, way, way, way, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into the app, you see a lot of red letters. And it's like, don't touch anything on this page unless Greg personally told you to do this. I swear to God, I'll know if you did this and I will be mad.

Don't do this unless Greg said hit the giant red reset button. Don't even look at this. Leave. Don't you're not allowed to look at this One get out of here, right? Because then sometimes you've got to just blast the cache, you know what I'm saying? But that's but preferences will tell you about the design of the app. And it will tell you about how the developer thinks, how their thoughts are organized. Right. And I I And if it's good it tells like again it tells their values, but there is a lot, it's a he's already in alignment. Like a lot of times a really good app has really good preferences and sometimes an app that's fine will have preferences that are not very good. because they reflect disordered thinking.

And they reflect or not just not that sounds really mean, but like if you couldn't fix it in the app, you try to fix it in the preferences. And how many times have has one of us dingling said, oh Apple, why don't you just let me select a box I can hit that does the opposite of the way you think it should be? And it's like, well, you know, there's a lot of people in the world. And if we made one of those boxes every time somebody didn't like something, it really wouldn't be our app anymore. And it really wouldn't be an app anymore. It would be more like a sad Zen garden with no rake. That's probably enough. But we still have so much more to talk about. I'm sorry. I uh I talked a lot. I'm excited.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you only turned uh uh w website d development into an entire metaphor for life. That I think was uh beautiful and uh I would talk more about it in the after show too, because I I do think it'd be fun to talk about the nerd stuff like pass keys and things. And I would love to hear your uh what you're doing and what you think and stuff. Um I'm excited for charm. No, I I like to do that. Oh I love charms. I'm gonna send you a doc. Oh, it doesn't mean you let it just slide right off you like a duck's back. But that's I I think that's a another beautiful thing. doubt that someone like you is going to use a charm, but it's so much. I remember two things about Facebook that made me love it.

When I first got on Facebook, the first thing I loved about Facebook was like it looked So fucking good. Like it look the color, the blue color, I still think is such a pretty choice for the primary color. primary color for their main color. Um but also I I I I I love the typeface on Facebook. It looks so much better. than every other website. And you could tell we're looking at, oh, this is one of those fonts. I bet this font, this is a long fucking time ago. I bet that font looks as good on Windows as it looks on my Mac. But differently, if it looks good on my Mac, I'll bet it looks really good on Windows But then you know what I loved? I I I th I always thought poking was a little silly, but I liked it when you could send people popcorn.

I thought that was nice. I mean poking is a cute idea. You should be allowed one poke per year. was my thought. But like I just like when you could say like you could send somebody popcorn. And I was like, oh I kinda I want to send Alex a duck. I think that would be nice. I would like a charm. Like I like a good duck. There's there's an ending there. Oh no, there yeah, there is. It's just not a very satisfying. No, I disagree. That was very very good. It wouldn't be my First inability to satisfy. Oh no. raw transcript