361. Honey in the Chokey

This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, keep closing your news hole. Trying to find an episode of House. That I wanted to reference. Ooh, which one? I'm using I'm using the Google search engine and I think I'll I'll get to it. Um was the one with Michelle Trekker? It's one might be one of the recent Blonde episodes. We're in a we're in a stretch right now in season three where I'm pretty sure Uh so Billy was sometimes Billy and Mad sometimes watch it without me, but the last three episodes I have been in attendance for have featured a beautiful teenage blonde girl. Who teaches something house he needed to learn? One of them was Michelle Trachtenberg, who I didn't recognize.

Because Yeah, you get to the musical episode, it's really good. It's really good. Well uh it's also really good if you get to the the musical episode of well, not the musical episode of House, but it's close. She was Harriet the Spy, which is another Oh, that's a huge book for a lot of kids. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't know it was a book until it was a film because it was, I don't know, like nineteen ninety five. And Rosie O'Donnell was her mentor and it was adorable and Quite a dark movie. People forget Rosie O'Donnell had an era. Oh, absolutely. I used to come home from school and watch her. Like so many of the things that you knew before me. What I wanted to say, what I'm trying what I'm trying to say here is I know people are aware of things, but I don't think they realize that for eighteen months Everybody loved Rosie O'Donnell's talk show.

It was like a sensation. Yes. Cool. Do you remember how into Koucheballs? sh she was she would get into everything. It wasn't like Oprah's book club. Sometimes it was just really funny. Sometimes she would just be really into you know like there was a time when she got really into like this one shoot. Um, oh, oh, oh, oh, I can't say it. I think it's got a problematic name. But there was this 90s song. Oh, she got into la da di la da da, right? Didn't she just she would get really into a song and she would play it and everybody would dance? I'm gonna song. Wait a minute, that's your acusa song The I'm I'm Blue Song. You don't listen to the show. You don't listen to the show. We John and I've been going back and forth and forth about a song and um and then he finally found a link to it.

Okay, House Episode Parents. You can tell that I'm depressed because I'm on season seven and Oh my god, you're go how do you go so I mean I'm sorry. I I d I I'm not this is not feigned shock. It's just that we it's almost all we watch and we're still on season three. It it is all I've w watched probably literally un and listened to. Does he get more he gets more unethical still, right? Oh yeah, someone on Mastodon I think said I had to stop watching after a a certain thing, no spoilers, a certain thing happens. I'm like Oh, I'm glad you stopped watching then. Oh, I've had this conversation numerous times where people are like, and I wish I did a good impression of my shrink. Because now anytime I talk to a medical professional, not it's obviously this is not me trying to quote show off.

It's more just in terms of disclosure. I always want to say, and just so you know Our family's watching house a lot right now. So that's not that is not meaningful to you in a variety of ways, except insofar as it might be useful for you to understand the way that I think and say things sometimes. I feel like it's useful to say. Could you bring those in? Yes. Bring that guy in because he knows how all three of them were wrong. But it's helped them learn a lesson about love. Also, everybody becomes increasingly he's dragging everybody down in season three. Oh oh my yeah, you've seen the whole thing, right? This is rewinding. Oh my god. Okay. I think this is further than I've watched before. It's definitely further than I remember.

But we're into you know and they're it's cute. Season three, they're getting cute, right? So it's the beginning of the there's like arcs and it's like really unnecessary arcs. Like Robert M was it n David Morse from uh St. Elsewhere basically is Javert for like half of the season. Remember where he's chasing top? Yeah. And it makes no sense whatsoever. And now, you know, men like you can never change two four six zero one. Yeah. It's not but me who can intercede. I was like, uh it was just so funny because I'm like, oh dude, if you're not into If you're troubled by the idea of trauma, maybe don't read The Body Keeps the Score. Yeah, don't No no shade to that person. No no no no no not at all.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love I I watch sh the entirety of that show my senior year of uh college when I was uh actually in a very similar similar sim wow sim Maybe it's all simulation. A similar situation. I think it's all simul simular related. What if it could be uh They really don't dump down the writing in-house. And uh they could be making up truly completely Like we just saw one where a Romani kid the the spoilers, sorry. But it ends with the the kid it turns out and of course part of the game and this will be a big thing on the future podcast called Man of the House, I think, is one bit of the show is we talk 'Cause Billy's not as into this as I am, like most things, but I'm like, look, f we have to start laying down what was our prediction about all the things, all the bits, and then what like f like for example, like who who like, okay, obviously first thing.

Cold open, is it gonna be tricky? And is it gonna be tricky in what way? Are they gonna do a law and order on us? When this car crashes, does it turn out that they actually killed a truck driver with lupus? Or does it turn out that it you know, those kinds of things? I just watched the one where the blonde uh teenage girl has uh the disease where she can't feel pain. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, But you're always looking you gotta do figure out what the what the trick's gonna be. But the Romani kid and the first time we see his parents come to the hospital, and they're very traditional and don't like the way that that uh a black uh camera camera's a boat, right? What's black guy's name? Uh Foreman. Cameron's the boat.

We blonde Cameron's a boat. Foreman is the neurologist. who I need I need a Cameron is a bo I need a I need a mnemonic for this. I I don't know. He's the spine? What is he in the credits? It's just I I just need to know his name. So he so the thing yeah he is wait is he th no no um I think Chase is the s wait, Chase can't be the spine. Chase is Chase is like the wallaby. Well s hmm, I suppose spoilers for future seasons, they mix it up. And k and but that here's the thing. Cameron is always the boat. And perhaps if the boat's gone Then I was like, uh is Cameron wow, Cameron really is It's uh she's on moored. Yes, yes, but they're a and they all they're gonna be. It's the only one though, and it breaks it's funny 'cause it breaks the metaphor.

Yes. And then it goes back then the next one after that There's still one more that sticks with the bit after they show Jennifer Morrison as a boat. Mm-hmm. Anyway, this is Wow, how I well does your Kakami Meap say how far we've been talking? Seven minutes fifty-two seconds. Okay, that's cool. We're we're doing great. It's fine Yeah, well I had I had a point. I had a bit, not a bit, but I had a thing I wanted to say to you. And then I realized that a couple things I wanted to say to you. And then I realized I had a way to pivot it to being also about house. And I was trying to put that together in the moments before we started. And um Then I was I was remembering an episode episode of house. I'm sorry about that.

It's alright. It's only eight minutes. Pivot. Pivot. I'd talk about house more if you want. Cause you gotta figure out there's gonna be you know what I mean about the twist, right? Like you know what I mean. Yeah, it is the when he looks off into the distance, Uh you're not figuring you're you're not listening to me right now. And he goes, Whoa, whoa, whoa. And he's like, actually it's cardioblardizardis, and we were looking at that's not what I'm talking about yet. What I'm talking about is the cold open Well first you have to guess. You have to guess as soon as you see the establishing shot, you are required to start guessing what is happening and who it will actually be that has to be. helped by house and team.

I see. Yeah. And some and that's why I say and l listen, that's why I say it's like Law and Order. We're like on a classic like an old school, like a like a regular, mm like a typical Law and Order, and this is how they get you. This goes for celebrities too. This is how they get ya. is first it happens and it's two people first it's two people walking out of a bar and talking jovially and uh and one of them uh gets killed. But then you're like, okay, two walk out of a bar talking jovially and they see a man who's dead in a trash can. Oh no, and like that's the twist, right? And with this one it's like is this gonna be about the person who's talking right now? Or is it something that that person comes upon?

You know what I'm saying? But then you're right. Then the twists start coming hard and heavy. There's gotta be, you know, of course there's the dumb arc. Ugh in season three there's so many dumb arcs I wish they just did Cuddy just want more screen time? Why Cuddy a little Cuddy goes a long way. Oh, you're in for m I don't know how you're gonna feel about stuff. I have m had my lawyer explain to Billy that I there's a very good chance that I will bounce at the end of this season. But which you should come back at some point because there's a musical element of an episode, but there was a very large negative influence on this show because of the writer strike. Lot o like a lot of the shows at the time.

Wow. And in my senior year of college, I'm watching this and was just, you know, entranced in the way you are by something like a law and order, just a you know, brain dead procedural, except almost a little bit smarter. Like you feel it you just feel like. And then it's like, wait, really? What? There's even more of those uh the the beginning twist, like there's a kid with the nosebleed, but the sister is talking first and is looks fine. That's where I get to that toothpick thing is like part of m my main thing I want to do. I don't care if I'm wrong about everything else. I'm going to make a very game effort. to identify if you like Chekhov's gun. Like, you know, there's just all these kinds of in storytelling as as you know I know you know this and you knew this before me.

But as you know in storytelling you have to have economy. And a famous example is what's what was called Chekhov's gun. And Chekhov said something along the lines of, I know I know you know this because you know all the things. But Chekhov s purportedly said that something like if there's a if there's a gun over the f mantle in act one, it must be fired by the end of Act Three or whatever. Like don't put a gun in the scene unless somebody's gonna shoot it. Rob Roger Ebert has a thing about economy of characters. Like you can't just have every character is there for a reason, like for all kinds of reasons, including budget, right? And um and and if there's a guy who's fur in his first appearance is prominently has prominently got a toothpick in the side of his mouth That's Chekhov's toothpick.

It's gotta come up again. And so that's my my goal. My goal going into house is I want to guess early on and accurately. And Madeline creams me on this every time. Because and I say I say to her, Steinus, like because Madeline Steinus and the Steinus people are so good at guessing the plot of things and it's it always beats me and I'm pretty good at it. And then when Billy does it, I say Stynus, I say, because you're a Stynus, you're you're half Stinus. And and like you've got that gene. But I and I and I was right, 'cause didn't you remember the disappointing ending? It was a re it was a good okay, good episode. But it ends with the guy I guess swallowed a toothpick and he and his again really cute blonde uh teen girlfriend w were doing stuff in a car.

Remember then the cop comes and you're like, is it gonna be the cop? Is it gonna be the girl? Is it gonna be the guy? It turns out it's the guy and it turns out Oh my god, this was such a banana. Do you remember this episode? The kids there's all the kids got all these problems, blah, blah, blah. They're trying to diagnose them. And then and it's when House is very much like on the outs with everybody, including Cuddy. And Foreman and Foreman's getting very house in this particular episode. Because the parents are Ramani people who like want him out of the hospital and they want him to eat this soup and wear these clothes and all that kind of stuff. It's very all very rustic. There's some so many pillows.

I don't think that doesn't seem hygienic to have that many home pillows. You know? Um but but then they discover and then and so then you you'll remember this. Uh there's the one of those doctors that House hates, like one of those other doctors that he hates who's operating on the kid. And it's like everything's fine in here and they're rooting around, his guts are in there. And House, who's at this point, has decided he made a bet with Cuddy that if he can stay in a wheelchair for the whole week. He'll get his parking space back. That wasn't gonna be it's so bad. And like he's he's so committed to the bit that like he won't even get in his car right, even though he could. And it's really s it's really stupid and kind of funny because like him running into people with a wheelchair is funny.

But it's really funny. I uh But it's it gets a little silly, but then House leaps out of the wheelchair into the operating room. Of course he has not scrubbed in. Of course he's not wearing a mask. He comes in and just plunges his hands into the Romani teen's guts, the very very gifted Romani teen. uh Foreman wants to offer him an internship. And and he digs in and starts literally feeling every inch of the guy's intestines for an obstruction because he think it was missed. And guess what he finds? He finds a toothpick And the toothpick had absorbed liquid from around it and looked like the intestine on the MRI. You understand? Anyway, so he just kept working there after that. He's the best doctor every day.

He didn't get his space back immediately. He shamed Cuddy into the space, but He did run he is a doctor who apparently is so valuable that he can just run into an operating there's one thing fictional show. I know, but like there's two things that we say I say every single episode. And one thing that happens, the first moment that House appears on on camera in the episode, he usually says something horrible or does something horrible. And either Madeline or I go, house. You're you're like the cutties of the living room. What the heck? Like no, you're you're you gotta are you Like Wilsoning? What's what's happening? Like uh imagine instead that I'm an old southern lady fanning myself when I say, oh house.

Oh, I see. Oh house, you are caution. Now the other thing that I say, and this usually ha this usually happens around minute 40, is I say the same thing the same way every time and I do look my family dead in the eyes when I say this and I say Say what you will about house. But he gets results. And it's very funny because because of course what he's doing, you have to understand my wife. My wife's career is in the medical field. And she's like, that would never happen. I go, I guess not. I don't think you you're I your w wife is incredibly smart, but I don't know if you need to be in the medical field to know. You know s you know so many things. It's incredible how many things you know. I don't You knew about the James Buchanan dollar?

I I can't believe you knew about that. I specifically knew that uh they are now creating a dollar for every single president. Because of the dust-up around Hamilton uh almost being replaced on the ten dollar bill. You're saying all presidents matter. That was kind of the vibe. But if you go to I almost sent you the website and I didn't because you I don't like to be handed things, but it's really fucking funny. Because like the Trump one looks like they just smushed Bill Clinton's down. Like they've been doing this since two thousand ten. They I believe they were doing it since no, since twenty twelve. Okay. Because but then respond to that? No. This is a coin that was struck in 2010. They just decided to make a $1 coin of James Buchanan.

I don't think it's part of a series. Wait, hold up, hold up. No. Uh again, this is the only reason I know about this because I But then that would that would indicate that the the things that I knew were were both not unusual and that perhaps you don't know all of these things. I uh I d w what did I say when I responded to you that that is a few years? I don't even use money and I'm surprised you didn't know that. No no, this has been a really fun thread for me. I just wanted to share a fun fact and now I'm getting so much fact checking from people. I might as well be talking about No spaces versus tabs. Oh my I was I was No no you're you're part of it. You're part of the problem. You're part of my news hold.

I'm part of the solution because I was not saying did you know Now I'm saying did you know I think you're part of the solution in the sense that like water you tend to dilute. You're the universal solution. You knew that though. Anything else? I I I uh yeah. Um James Buchanan and let me find it because I can find what you said. It's right here. It's right here on my internet. And it's a thing you do though, where you we're we're l like everyone, uh I think you just you you assume that I'm I'm extremely dim. And don't have access to the same resources that you do. And just because you can look something up doesn't mean you quote knew it. What wait, what you hadn't ha so have you ever I guess I made the wrong assumption.

that you had some experience collecting coins either in a You assumed that You assumed that I had had experience collecting code. What is it? A newismatist? What am I called? What is that? Philatally is when you have real sex with a stamp. There's so many things that I need to that I not need to that I get to learn. It's very exciting. Uh the hold on the you know what I'm gonna go to the thing that you linked to I wonder I'm not saying it's impossible there was a point um when they were making uh quarters, I think it was quarters, they had every state on it. And I think those are still around. So it wouldn't surprise me if this were part of a series. I just think it's funny that I was in the hospital for my liver and I bought some bee beef jerky out of a machine and it returned to me four coins, one of which had James Buchanan on it.

I have a lot of questions about the nature of this vending machine and how much money you had to put into this vending machine to get something out. Maybe I don't know I Uh not maybe. I definitely don't know. Do you ever use the machines or do you ever buy public transit cards? Oh what Oh, you know the neat thing about Vision Pro is you just look at something and like you're doing it. So like you just you just look at the train and then you're on it all weekend. You don't even know if it's charged your card. Okay, go to the Yeah, because that means that there is I thought that was the first thing. But you know you do this, do you know that you do this? Yes. I I Uh but is it a correction? When you say things like I assume I already assumed that that would be the show art for this episode.

When you say things like that, uh that confuses me so much. And and our listeners are just gonna go, oh, there's probably some inside joke I don't know. No, there's no inside joke. Alex just says things sometimes and I'm expected to act like it's part of something that's like an integrated part of our relationship. And I I try to avoid doing that with you. And not uh intentionally. It's a very bad habit. And I I my my intention It well we talked about this last year. And now that you're this this inter uh this cross gender, you're even wonger. I know that. This is a v a really uh uh this could be an interesting challenge in terms of Uh like check your male privilege. Which was like No, but in the winter I have way more male privilege.

Because my my voice my my voice already naturally gets deeper 'cause it's cold outside and I know that the still is pretty feminine, but like it's just kinda this is my natural voice like when I'm just out outside because it's cold. And then I'm always bundled up and it I just am a big yeti person. So it is I I am always cert, just Uh uh the majority of the time especially. I mean the same way that I've always guessed that teenagers maybe don't mind masks because of their Face skin? Oh heck yeah. Similar thing for you maybe? Uh n the Well it isn't like you have to go be a bridesmaid. And like wear wear wear like uh wear like a comfortable heel and a sundress. That's another point of cont that's the one point of contention amongst family members actually is when is the surgery happening because there's these weddings coming up Oh and it's made it really awkward for them to explain that you're still getting your cauliflower diced.

It's uh it's Uh They have a guy there. We're real proud of her, him, them. We're real proud of it. So I I I love my I love my cryfted baby very, very much. Winter. Oh, in in winter though, this isn't something that happens in m more cr crowded areas w and because it's a city, you know, that does not happen a as much. But if I'm walking home at night, you know, naturally just that we're we're raised to be like, oh, we're gonna die. Like until until fairly recently it's it was like, yep. A woman walking alone, you're gonna die. It's not unreasonable. Like it's seriously not unre- Well, you guys, on the one hand, you guys had that crazy heat. I don't remember when it was, but there was the there's you guys get bad heat, but there was one in particular, um, I want to say in the last ten years or so, like where and the electric was out, air conditioning wasn't working, and like a bunch of people died from heat But you're also subject obviously to cold.

It's you're in a place that is subject to some crazy conditions. Oh no, I was talking about women just being attacked. And murdered on the street. But yes, you're correct. No, no, no, no. I I well, but now I need to be a good thing. Separate but equal. Yes. That's why look at Bojetta cars then where they want Lith a lift with just women drivers, and then it becomes A service where it's just uh stripper whales I love that show. That show's so fucking funny. I love strippable orca. Oh man. Uh I like the way the John Rafio rabbit is always uh like brushing his ears back. Oh, what a guy. What a guy. Uh oh, I I okay, this is, I promise, this is sort of a little bit more. It's a bad season. No, it's a great season for Kryptons.

Sorry. You knew that. Okay. I'm writing a different thing down now. It's a great Season for cryptids. Okay, I'm right. It's great. I've got all all of this. You and the chupacabras can just ride the end you can just ride the trains with immunity. That's what that's partially why it is uh the a lot of anxiety uh that y like I grew up with goes away because it's like no w there's no more because no matter uh okay. I'm not sure what I'm saying. And uh that e even when you have that like, oh uh, I'm ugly and gross, like you're still subjected to that. Yes. And but but now, uh on trains, anywhere winter does doesn't matter, just Do you wear a mask? Do you wear a mask when you're on a train? I mean, I'm not asking that for like health reasons, but like is it something?

Billy never had a problem with masks and I think it's I mean Billy didn't have like but it's not my business, but like I think it's just it's nice not having your face out there. You just don't want to be seen by people sometimes. I think about when I would get cold sores a lot. I wish I had a way for the world to not see I had a cold sore, 'cause whether or not that's the first thing somebody noticed about me, it's absolutely what I imagined or I uh assumed that I I thought had to be the first thing he noticed about me is like I'm unclean and have a stress bump. Well, I mean it w yeah, I mean d from that to to acne or uh it was a double-edged sw sword for some trans men though because like they would have feminine facial features except for their beard and that would be like the m the calling card for uh see look it I'm I'm I'm man.

And a lot of trans women were like, Oh my god, this is amazing and are like, Fuck ass, still masking but uh the uh uh i i in fact uh if I do wear a a mask and I'm all bundled up Uh women actively like cross the street if I am walking towards them, uh because that's what you do in uh when a man is walking down the street and you're in a neighborhood. and it's dark and you're alone. That i and uh the first time that happened. It's almost like the way that we act in elevators, which is, you know, so odd. When you when somebody who like understands these sorts of things explains Points out to you how many things are a convention about being in an elevator that you don't think about. And I think it's you know like obviously things like spread out, maximize space between people, always face the front of the elevator minimize talking to other people, you know, that kind of thing.

There's like but like I don't know, we're not raised to think about this is diff hafting. Oh no no I know I do know that but I feel like as a as a dude Um, like I wanna just s throw every shape that like I am not and best somebody who rides a scooter, this becomes important. which is I don't want to surprise anybody. I don't want to seem to be moving quickly towards somebody, those kinds of things. But you're you're talking about just like pure like what you've learned is self-preservation is go to the other side of the street and be ready to d run in a store kind of thing. Uh yes, and if you see a man uh take the initiative and cross the street to avoid you then that s that put alarm bells in th this is anecdotal between like me and my friends.

And I wouldn't be bizarre about it. It's just It would just be like, oh I'm not gonna f I'm not following you. Yeah. It w and it was like the thing of like, oh I wonder, oh yeah, he uh Still just keep f swallowing me in the parking garage, like very stereotypical things like that. And uh it And and now you're the one unintentionally doing that to women. I well now th this I learned is this I learned is the typical sort of male response is just walk slower and then let like let a woman walk as fast as the does that make sense? Like Don't increase your pace, which is difficult for uh mm I've been calling it. So what I'm getting is that no matter what I do, people will think that I'm going to assault them.

Basically Okay. There's really no way out for me apart from just not being there. Are three women listeners? They're gonna be murdered if they haven't redempted to assign listener at birth. I had a breakthrough, but I'll I'll just make this quick. The reason I was looking that up is I had a breakthrough last night. And this is again one of those things where I I wish I was still on Twitter where people would appreciate this. But um I was doing something last night, doesn't matter what, but I was you know, here at my desk. See, see See, that's that's the thing. That's like a man uh preemptively walking across the street. It doesn't matter. I was doing something. It doesn't matter what I was doing.

This is a more abstract point than people who want to jump to the point too quickly. Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead. No idea. Let's talk more let's talk more about how how everything that I do makes people think I'm gonna assault them. Let's keep going that way. You were doing something. It doesn't matter what. No, you've you've you're in curious. I am not in curious. That is the one thing. Well, forget it. I'll I'm gonna skip the useful part and I'll just tell you the funny part. I w listen, I want the useful part, you don't have Twitter anymore. So I was sitting here at my desk, and uh, if you must know, and um I'd finished recording my Syracuse, and I was doing some things and fixing to go home, and I had this thought, but as I had this thought, I also was realizing that this is just this is a thought that I kind of have.

all day about almost everything. And when I finally almost to the point where I said it aloud, but and I was alone and I'm not crazy But like I I was grabbing something under my desk. I think I was looking for looking for my sanding block. But and everything is kind of chaotic right now in here. And um For the sake of argument, let's see, I did I did say it out loud, but I thought it loud enough that it might as well have been out loud. And I found myself saying, man, there's so much stuff in here And I realize I think that about almost everything almost all the time. It's not just my desk. It's not my house. It's not a glove box. It's not the it yeah, it's all of those things. It is the refrigerator.

It's all of those things. But it's also my Python setup. It's it's like everything. Everything I try to do, I find myself going Man, there's so much stuff in here. And I do you ever do you ever find yourself like you've got you know a limited amount of space where you live and work, right? Do you ever find yourself just thinking like there's just too much stuff here? Yeah. But I d and again, please let's not just make this about being tidy. I'm talking about it took looking under my desk for my sanding block to go to realize how often I think, man, there is so much stuff in here And then that the uh like a little light went off and I was like, I actually feel this about a lot of things that are not physical, including my mind.

Man, yeah, there is so much stuff in here. As soon as I read your uh uh tote, I kinda I uh I thought it was a very funny tote and also the thing of Like th that is all of my physical space and my m mental space. And mental and emotional and technical. And really just every every there's nothing in my life w where I don't where I have never thought Man, there's so much stuff in here. Mm-hmm Have you ever walked into whether it be your office or your mind palace and after the man there's so much stuff in here go ha ha You know, my natural next thought is how do I get this stuff out? And then I get distracted by another Yeah. Then I get distracted by an another. Okay, now at the risk of upsetting an apple card about what people know here.

Um Because I am in the business of being vulnerable and everybody else should be in the business of not being a dick about it. Here's the vulnerability that I want to share. It's like I I'm smart enough to know how to, you know take a shit and and wash my glass, but that doesn't mean I have everything figured out and a funny thing that I will never stop thinking about and asking other people to remind themselves about is just because you know something doesn't mean you do something. Right? Just because you've read a book doesn't mean you're operationalizing it. Like there's all kinds of ways that if people were a little more curious and vulnerable, they would find themselves much more frequently asking, instead of just being the person who goes, Well, I know that fact about coins We'll go like well is it possible that I said that thing about James Buchanan being an inconsequential president?

Because if I said somet a fact that I know we Which is that he was always considered one of the worst presidents, that that might actually turn now into a debate about who the worst presidents are rather than talking about a fun coin fact. That's interesting. Like, okay, because that's how the world works. Like I we have to connect things we know to the things that we do, which we do so much more rarely than most of us are willing to con literally confront. all the things we think are a good idea that we don't fucking do anything about. And so here's my vulnerability that I wanted to share. Two facts that I have to hold in in the world. Which is, I think, man, there's so much stuff in here and a lot.

And over here, I saw I I very often think, man, I need to get rid of a lot of stuff. And yet. I wouldn't have the first problem if I'd solved the second problem. So maybe they aren't quite as connected as I would like to think. Because I would like to think that the moment I go, there's too much stuff in here, I would immediately do something about it. Or I would later do something about it. I'd create a placeholder for doing something about it. Especially if it comes up, as I think I just stipulated, all day, right? I mean I can't make homebrew have less stuff in it. I can't make a library have less stuff in it, but like there's a lot of ways in which your access to something is controlled by you and very your attention gets very like regulated by that.

But y it's a really good point. How is it that I could keep wal walking into areas of existence where I feel like there's too much stuff and I only if you looked at it as a pie graph The slice of pie that's dedicated to doing something about addressing having too much stuff is surpassingly narrow for me. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. But yeah, I think it dude, I I think it I think it like fucking all the time. And like like right now, and I can't say this to my family, but like I there's like four places I ask for in the fridge that are like such a small footprint. Like the most important one is I need a place where my seltzer goes. And just because there's not seltzer, like if I ran out of seltzer and there's not seltzer there, that does not automatically make it a place where other people can put stuff in the fridge.

Right? Of course I'm not gonna make a big deal about that. I wouldn't even say it publicly. But that also means that like this is the area where I go for the seltzer, so The eighth of a tomato that you saved and wrapped in nine cents of plastic wraps you can throw away in a week, don't put that right next to where I grabbed the seltzers. That's like, you know, that's like and I just want to blow like Syracuse and wants a place to put his phone. And I'm like, I feel like I really don't ask for that much. Lit literally everywhere else. Don't put things that are short in the area for tall things, because we need that for tall things. That this is that I have the kind of mind that does think about the world that way.

I mean I have operationalized a lot of thinking about the systems in my life, but that is a long way from then sort of consequently like doing something about it. And then, you know, usually it's like I I reach the end of my rope or, you know, sometimes I'm better than others because, you know, life's a game of, I don't know, spinning plates or whack-a-mole. You you don't get to be great at everything at the same time and people who seem great at everything at the same time are either lying or have a lot of help. But I thought that was I thought that was useful. And it leads to the house joke in a minute. I uh I wanna pull on that a l uh a little bit more though. I just also can I say something?

Our latency doesn't seem bad, but I don't uh you are very quiet, so when I'm Talking over you this week. Hi. Welcome to When I'm Talking Over You This Week, starring Merlin Mann. It's because I I and I think I broke the wrong knob and I can't change the mix, but that just so you know, I'll try and be better, but please continue. Hmm. Oh no, it's a me problem, not a you problem. Boop boop. Yeah, for oh man, that's very when my internet started working and it went because it went above twelve degrees, it was one of the most exciting days. But uh with uh your thought of uh man, there's uh stuff everywhere when you open the fridge. And you don't necessarily do anything about that. Like like you said, you have another plate over there to take care of right now.

Yeah. You can't just stop what you're doing all the time to fix something that's annoying you, even if it's something that's been annoying you repeatedly and potentially for a long time. That's what I call a mosquito task, right? Like it you put it on the mosquito task list, but you can't stop unless you really do have either terrible ADHD or too much treatment for terrible ADHD, you rarely should stop what you're doing and redo your bash profile if you're late for the bus. Have uh you know, uh uh after that revelation you had, which seems to be like t you know, it's only like t twenty-four hours. Partly about stuff, partly no, but again, it's a thought I think all day, right? And and just to be clear, and the whole reason I tried to frame it this way and why I'm gonna talk about house in three minutes.

is that it's about it really it's just that the ho house or sorry home m m the edifice in which I live and work, like that's just where you can see it most. But what about your iCloud drive folder? I don't know about yours. Like yours is probably real well organized. I've got lots of stuff in mine, including folders called out 2021-10, right? Places where I've just dragged a bunch of stuff just to get it out of my line of sight, but it still shows up in search. And why am I getting dot h results in spotlight? I don't need development headers and like when will I fix that? There's so much stuff in spotlight. There's so much stuff like everywhere. And and then of course there's so much against like just don't want to get too far away from making thinking it just about being tidy.

Although that's important. But like it is also just about the entire landscape of things where our I have not figured out how to squelch down the amount of stuff in a way that's wholesome. Or my relationship. Stuff that is elsewhere like you you don't are so you're also thinking about the fridge when you are thinking about your bash profile? No, no, that's that's a good really good question. But no, I don't I didn't really mean it so much that way. I just meant that like I think the thing it and it's helpful you're saying it this way. Because I think the thing that made it click a little bit, and again, there there are there are more things like this that like uh would one imagine this is the first time in the last ten years I've had a thought about something related to this?

Oh my god. Absolutely not. But I think it was the f the thinking should I get on my hands and knees and scurry around under my desk at nine thirty? thought and and and realizing that I was thinking, man, there's so much stuff in here is it it was actually useful, the a physical thing that then made me go, oh you know, this is actually kind of a pattern you're dealing with. Did you uh scurry under the desk or did you scurry home and watch house? No and no. What did I do? was looking for. It was something that I needed in my desk area. And so I do this thing, and this is unfortunately a habit I started doing so long ago. It's like I've always been a very messy person and Uh I used to be way messier in so many ways, but like a thing that a lot of people who are messy, a lot of things w we do that is we just need to clear the deck.

And so you grab a box and you sweep your arm across a desk or a table or whatever, right? You just sweep your arm across something, throw it in a box, and then move the box aside. And And this is, you know, again, why in the wisdom document I'm saying like piles can be good, but piles tend to stay piles, right? So like a bunch of stuff that's not organized and by organized I just mean in the sense of like I don't even know what's in this box. That gets complicated and real when you start to realize how many of those boxes you have in your life. I have so many boxes of stuff in my life that started as my arm sweeping across a table. And now and then but that builds up. And then you need a system for like storing all the boxes that have stuff in it and you're not sure what's in it.

And and like, you know, I try really hard to be or organized in the sense of like here's where all the air air tags are actually pretty easy because I keep all the air tags in one place. And there is an active air tag in there. That's it. I have an I have an item called extra air tags. No. And you don't? Like, why would you not? Like it's the No, I I would if I had that many air tags. I that's the I finally yeah, I've telling Circusa I finally they they finally uh officially said A, like how many official trackable items you can have, and then B, what you can do about opening up slots. Like for example, AirPods Pro count as three slots out of the 32. Yeah. So getting rid of I didn't know I did not know this because I don't know everything.

Sorry. No, no, I was saying obviously I didn't the the only reason I ran uh up to to that is by using uh or or like checking holiday uh air pods for family and then all all my air checks didn't didn't work. But do you have so many airta like uh what pushed you over the threshold? Oh yeah. I mean I mean I would have all of the air tags. Like when aircat air when air tags get to be not as costly as they are now and get a little smaller, or whatever replaces air tags in the world. I mean it's it's it's crazy not to have dozens of those. Oh, if I could, I w I would have one. Oh yeah, yeah. No, but it's really not well I hadn't find it that difficult to bump up against 16 at all. At all. I mean, we've got one in the spare key, we've got one in the emergency bag, we've got one in each suitcase, we've got I've got one on my keychain, I've got one on my bike, I've got one on my bike keychain.

Um, do I need all of these? Yeah, if you don't, that's okay. But why would I not? I have the money and I could really benefit from that. It's just another one of those things where you're like Okay, like if something happened and uh just I'm not I'm really not trying to catastrophize this, but it really is it's an apt example, which is like if I haven't seen the keys to my bike for two months and I have no idea where they are and somebody comes up and says, hey, for 20 bucks, would you like to know where your keys are? I would say, absolutely. Right? Or where's your suit? I don't know. I don't I don't know, but whatever they are, hundred dollars. I would pay a hundred dollars to know where my kid's suitcase is.

The this is let me go. I mean I've got uh there's just I'm not gonna do I was trying to tee you up for house and now I'm all Jazz up about the moral panic of oh they're so it's so easy to stalk people. Oh yeah, I can't control any of that. Um, but like but for example, one aspect of for example, one example oh my god, for example, one instance of quote organization that has bitten me so many times. This is not a bit But like I got a little organized for a while. You'll remember when I was into those Aiken Mills bins you got me into? I still am. I still love them. I still use them. But mainly now I just use them for like storing. things. You know? It's like the difference between like I were learning in the nineties, the difference between archive and backup.

I think yep. And like in that instance, like these these lightweight Kanban style components of a Kanban style system, like just become a place where screws here's a bunch of screws and I don't know what they go to. Oh great. That's cool. It's nice you have that all. Which is fine. Whatever. As long as I can, you know, but then I get into things like I got a lot of folding knives and leathermen. I've got a lot of flashlights. And I don't need every flashlight to be deployed into service at the same time. How about this utility knives? Those little Gerber utility knives that I swear by that I I don't even know how many dozens of those I bought over time. Flashlights, air tags, um you know, utility knives, then I think I'll be real smart and I'll get organized and I'll keep these all in one place.

Which makes a ton of sense, except What if I don't know when I was getting organized? What if I don't remember that when I was getting organized, I don't know where I put all the Gerber knives? So somewhere in my world there might be hundreds of Gerber knives because I was organized, but I can't put my hand to them. When you need them. And when you need them. You need 'em when you need 'em. Like a a utility knife is not something you plan to need in two weeks. If I could say a flashlight is not something where you think I bet I'll need that next year. It's something you need now. That's why I bought a bunch of them. And you know, whatever this says about my personality, I don't frankly I don't care.

But but like why would I not want let's not call it my I will call it an air tag for the sake of the conversation. I'm not cleft to the 2020 f the January of twenty twenty four idea of what constitutes the ability to find things. I know that tile got creepy and costly and weird and ineffective and I don't miss those. I think Airtag is way better at that. And if I could have hundreds of those, I would be deploying them. I would put an air tag into the box or the the bin of um of flashlights or or whatever. There's so many things where you like you just how when how can you put your hand to it? And if somebody else in the house moves it, the system falls apart. I couldn't find my sprinkles last night for my ice cream.

Somebody moved my sprinkles. Oh I put an air tag on that. I I I am very uh wet for Apple's U1 chip, which is also I don't uh yeah, that's it the one in the air tags. And it's also now or a a version of it is in the iPhone, which is what lets you get really close to something. So if you, you know, have your big wall of screws and Yeah, you can go bleep bloop. Here is my Okay, can I just while you're while you're describing this, can I just throw in another one that might help your what you're doing? We've all for for as long as Madeline and I have been a couple living together. I think, especially if as long as we've been a like pretty committed official couple. We've had this weird little like um travel travel style zip envelope, like a mesh little envelope.

And that's where we put all of our stuff like passports, birth certificates, social security cards. like all the the the documents and we always keep it in the same place. We never have trouble finding it unless we do. But you know what? I stuck an air tag in there because why wouldn't I? Right? Like that isn't that isn't that kind of an example though of like it's not my key. Absolutely. But but you what you're describing with that chip, I I'm not I mean I don't know the details of this, but But it is true, there's like if you and don't be afraid to swing your phone around in a wilder way. Like don't just hold it up in the air like you're trying to take a selfie. Like move it around, change the angle of your phone, walk around, change all of the axes.

and coordinates of your phone. So like if you're saying find my Gerber knives, right? The thing is it'll say far Right. So you gotta stand up, you gotta walk around. Isn't that your experience? Like don't just stand there like a mannequin. You've gotta like you've gotta help it out by like giving it changes in coordinates to like figure out to triangulate Yeah, you need to do it. But it does work. Oh yeah. I I mean it the the failing of it is I think more in the physics of almost like the gyroscope in the same way that it w messes not the chip, but the Wait that sometimes three D scans get a little wonky with uh like the lidar works, but there's something with the other. What the elaborate gesture I have to do if I switch between portrait and landscape.

I do this very elaborate, like very theatrical Broadway gesture with my phone that's it it looks almost like a like I'm introducing like I'm a I'm a woman introducing an automobile on a game show. I do this like very elaborate flourish. I'm switching you to landscape. Oh, thank you, Van. Thank you, Van. Like yeah, yeah, it it would be dumb right now to strap on a multi-thousand dollar thing on your face to find s your AirPods. But l Let's say you have something with the side of the case. Alex, let's act like it's okay for you to talk about that here. Yeah, okay. Let's just pretend because it's really fucking I cannot spend the rest of my life preemptively apologizing for everything I say and I wish you wouldn't either.

You're excited about it. I don't want to change anyone's mind. I um am excited about No, the the the the vibe that I have been enjoying about The Vision Pro with some folks is uh the like I'm not gonna read all that, but I'm excited for you though. But in A sincere way, not the sarcastic meme way. Yeah, yeah. i in even the slightest way like go have fun with your costly bullshit. Not at all. Like I think it's I think it's awesome. Yeah. There's I the same way it feels with a lot of folks who actually feel uh it it's similar to I think how before you started with LLMs, you're very curious and uh excited about what The Schnordinary Holden Caulfield. No no if that's a good one. But it's really good.

St use use your strap on and then suddenly you know where everything is in the same way that uh you know. I would love to just be able to say, hey ding is lighted up. Yes, exactly. And it's like, well, why would you I I am s okay, I'm not, I'm not. Uh but like what just reducing that cognitive load and that tiny bit of stress And if you did have one of those, wouldn't you be kind of bummed if like if you knew that like, you know, we were gonna put that feature in, but we thought it might make uh Alex's friends roll their eyes, so we didn't include it. Yeah, we're afraid people would think Alex is weird if they could find their air tags. No, like give me all those things. That's and it's useful.

Like the new thing, a subtle thing that everybody else for this for a million years. It's in there. Do people know this? that you now do have a way to like find your remote like from for your TV from your phone. Oh it's so great. It doesn't need an air tag on the back. It's always in my butt. Like and well, if the butt if my butt is the you know, it's like the I sit on like a crevice in the couch and then it's it's always there. And you're writing that down. That is a very odd thing to do. I avo I've always avoided the crevice. I I like the crevice. I don't like it as well. Do you like the way it pulls your cheeks apart? Is that it? No, it just maybe. Have some remote fallout easier? Maybe I do.

Imagine you're wearing a towel, just a towel. Ah, ew, ew. Oh, you took the towel off. You took the towel off and you sat on the crevice and your clichonk I'm sorry Tim Cook, your remote just fell on my crevice. Or crevasse, as you say. What's bad about that? I th I I walked into it. I walked into it. I think this all relates to the challenge which this was we're not there. I'm keep keep going. Keep keep going. Just so we're clear here, you're not gonna be the one that tries to keep us on track, is that Well I was I really wanted you to tell you another house story because uh you you had a friend. I never told the original house story. Oh my Merlin, we're not going to be able to do that. But you knew that.

No. Because you pay attention so well. Um so so but here's another thing that I say a lot. And this look there's things where I just walk around and I say things. I don't fucking care. Like it's just the thing that I say. Every night around 8 o'clock, I say to Madeline, I say, do you know what time it feels like right now? And she says, 9. 30. I said, it feels like 9. 30. And every night at almost exactly eight o'clock I have found, I say to Madeline, you know, it feels like nine thirty right now. I say that a lot. And then there's times when I I I say, and I said this two days ago, I say, uh, I say, I want to get rid of half of everything we own. Well or like if I'm gonna try and be more more uh I don't know, make it about making a me statement.

Like I I wanna get rid of half of what I own, but no, no, I really want to get rid of half of what's in our world. And then I was I've said that so often that then I was thinking about like didn't you say something that Matthew is empowered to get rid of stuff and not tell you? Yes, which is why I thought that's a good idea. I've done a similar thing with Madeline. And it's uh pretty official, even though I still get mad if I find m my single shoe tree in the garbage or whatever. You need both, dude. Well well if I find the other one, what'll I do? Um but uh yeah. You know, Madeline's empowered to do that and she sometimes does do that. And a lot of times it'll be like like a very formal, like I'm gonna leave the house while you she calls it purging.

I'm gonna purge this area. Wow, it sounds so ugly now. Um, but um but then that reminded me, of course it reminds me of Solomon, and and then but it reminded me of this episode of of House. It was so ham-fisted. Did you see the one where the where the parents couldn't agree on the girl's treatment? And like And they go to the judge. Oh, there's that that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's just this amazing last third act of this episode of House where I I I and somewhere in the back of my mind, not anywhere near as certainly as you realize things. But something in the back of my mind, I was going like, oh no, are they about to do what I think they're about to do? And what happened was the Something was wrong w obviously they didn't know what it was, but it part of it was she was very, very ill.

She's dying, this their teenage daughter, and she's very, very sick. I think one of the things at one point is when you argue in front of her, she gets an allergic reaction. That was part of it. But like the left half of her extremities, her left arm and her left arm I'm sorry, her left arm and her left leg are just like covered with these horrible like sores or boils or scabs. Like half the left side of her body is really sick. Lots of rashes on that show. Lots of rashes. And so if you're a doctor, like and you're at the end of your rope, what do you do? What do you do what do you do to save this girl when half of her body is all fucked up? We're gonna have to cut off her left arm and cut off her left leg.

And I was like, I cannot believe you are literally doing the story of Solomon and the baby. And and the thing is, I think people know the the cliche or the, you know, the oh yeah, the wisdom of Solomon or you know about cut the baby in half. And like the thing is what what's great about that that an yet another horrible Old Testament story, what we got from Solomon and the reason we consider him wise in this instance, was he had a pretty funny trick. So what had happened was, two different women come to the king and say, You've got to help us settle this. They're both well I guess, you know, there's already kind of a tell. One of them's especially angry, the other's especially sad. I don't know why the angry woman wants the baby.

Maybe she's planning to sell it in the aftermarket. But like, but they go to Solomon say, and the the the angry woman says, This is my baby. And and the sad woman goes, This is my baby and Solomon goes, Well, whose baby is it? And they're like, Ah, we uh it's a we can't prove anything. It's a baby. And the angry woman's like, No, no, I'm totally gonna take this baby And the sad woman goes, No, it's my baby. I wanna take the baby. And this is why we think That's my baby. And then Solomon does something that we we now regard or had regarded as very wise, which is, okay, I think I know how we'll settle this. I'm gonna have one of my big dudes come in here with one of his giant fucking Old Testament swords.

How about this? We'll just cut the baby in half. Down the middle. We'll start at the head, go straight down. One of you gets the left half, one of you gets the right half. That's the only way we can settle this argument. is to cut that baby in half and you each get a half. Now, I worry that there are people out there who don't know th th the further the rest of the story. And think th thinks that th threaten that the the the cutting a baby in half is what made him wise. It was not cutting this is I'm I'm not saying I agree with this, even as a twice-told tale, but what then what happened was the angry woman said, sure. I don't fucking care. I want my half baby. Cut that baby in half. Give me give me, you know, it's like a kip that can't have the case.

Just give me the 12 pack. Except in this case, it's literally half of a a then deceased RAP baby And the sad woman says, no, no, no, no, no. She can have it. She can have it. Don't cut the babe. Don't cut her baby in half. And Solomon goes, aha. What'd you say? R. A. P. baby. R. A. P. W way too soon, baby. And Solomon goes, aha, well, you know, actually I can tell that baby b belongs to the sad lady and not the angry baby. Because no mother would want to settle this by cutting the baby in half. That's what made him seem wise. And, you know, let's just say, House does stuff like this all the time. Like threatening like a kid remember the when uh the African American woman comes in with her kid who doesn't like going to school and he like threatens to to cut him, you know, with a scalpel and to see if he actually has a sore throat?

Stuff like that all the time. Yeah, he he does uh he sticks a lot of needles in in people. Needles scalpel we gotta put this in your butt if you wanna stay. But um there is a point toward the end of the third act where I was finally catching on. And what is the name of the episode? The name of the episode I think might even have been a tell. Um but uh th th the you know the the thing they do where they like use a Sharpie and they're like right on on the on the leg that's gonna get amputated they they write amputate this leg and then on the other one they write don't amputate this leg Like they started making I think actually a a with a sharpie might have if I can find this. If this exists, I will find it.

They started making a large scored line at her shoulder and like hip. To like look like you were making a doll to show where they would cut off half of her body. Mm-hmm. And it was just all because the parents couldn't agree. And then at the last minute they figure out what it is and everything's fine. She said, Yeah, yeah, I work with doctors all the time. I was like I I was like How come I never hear stories of about one of your doctors who just sometimes like it starts out as simple as using a cane cane as a prop and then eventually that esc escalates? Like I would just love Madeline to come home one day and go, ugh This one doc just drives me crazy. I was trying to leave his office, but he used his cane to block me from leaving and then tripped me.

You're such a rascal. He really wants that parking space. He got it. It was fair. It makes sense. Uh lines in the sand, informed informed consent, Cain and Abel, Wack-A-Mole, Finding Judas, Words and Deeds. Uh oh here we go. A gr uh we don't say this anymore, boy from a Romani family, so not long before that. I'll find it if I can. are often the tell, which is I I try not to l look at or when I was watching the DVD Uh God, whoa, oh that uh that aged me. Wow. I was watching uh how was originally I like digital disc On uh that I was has anyone seen my digital video disc of house? There's there's so much stuff in here. We have the DVDs of Gilmore girls. And I have so much bullshit that I will not ask Maddie to take away.

To get rid of her Gilmore girls. Wow, I misgendered him! Oh, yeah. I have portions of three different collections of Game of Thrones. I have one where I bought a bunch of the seasons on Blu-ray and then I rebought all of the seasons on you know four K UHD Blu-ray. Plus I think I have some spare seasons here and there on Devode. Um This is gonna drive me crazy now that I can't find this. Oh god. The the the the whole s uh str streaming kerfuffle is Uh like I it's gotten so bad that i I y you ignore most of my email that's sent to the uh what is it called? iCloud privacy masking whatever and that and that's where like when when you when you create an account some oh you're using it also just for like making a fake email right?

For well for s subscriptions and stuff. Yeah yeah that's that's me too. Yeah and I can always tell 'cause it has my wackadoo made up name at That's and such. Yeah, and and but now the only way I can tell uh that his subscription has like expired is suddenly there's a ton of uh uh pi there's a lot of pixelation in uh a Netflix show and I'm like, huh Oh oh did they drop you to the free plan or something? Or on Hulu an ad will pop up and I'm like, it this isn't one of those shows. Is this one of those shows? No, no it's not. They just plop ya down now. And the the only reason that I think this is related to the Dev It is is it is now almost I I'm like, is I think I'm at the p the Marco breaking point of Oh, really should just get on used net and pull a Casey with this.

Not not even because of Well yes, it's because of the cost. But because of the it used to be more conve convenient and and It still is in some cases. I'm gonna make it even more annoying for you, which is I download stuff how can I put this? I think it's what you're describing. I download stuff that I continue to pay for. Yes, mm-hmm. Exactly. Because I am not gonna watch Survivor with commercials, Hulu. Like are you kidding me? I'm paying you ninety dollars a month f for uh over the air access and like it seems like every week more stuff suddenly has to have commercials in it. Yeah. And it's i i it's really not about I like one like number one, yes, it i it is about the cost, but but two, it's it's just the degradation of the product wouldn't be.

And you can tell like they really want you to get on the ad plan. They talk about the Julia and Jason talk about this. Like that's where the money is at this point. Yes. And there's no particularly it isn't like I would sit around like a lot of uh old middle class men and go like well I'm probably their prime their m prime I am probably their most valued customer because I pay the most for this thing and I've always paid the most and when they raise the price I continue paying it and it all those kinds of things. But in terms of I'm not going to use any of those dumb acronyms they use, but in terms of the value that you get out of a given person, especially the addressable market of people who are willing to get a service but not willing to pay or aren't willing to pay a lot.

That addressable market, that's a much bigger addressable market. than of like old men who want to pay twenty doll are willing to pay twenty dollars a month. And and I think it's more pound for pound, at least in terms of growth, it's gonna be way more profitable for them. Which sucks. Because I hate it. I am terrified of the code. I've been listening to I've been listening to a a podcast I really enjoy from Uh this is this is not in any way unique to them, the aftermath. Uh by Lawfair and something called Goat Rodeo And the show starts with a 30-second pre-roll of like, hey, are you sick of your favorite news podcast being interrupted by ads? Go to Amazon for bla blah blah blah blah and like get listen to all your get all your news without ads.

And then the first time I heard this I thought it was a joke. You know the fast talking thing at the end of a radio ad? You know? Yeah. Um three percent API no more. And I listen at 1X so I can verify this was how it's how it was meant to sound made by professionals. And it says something like You have to subscribe to the service, pay for the subscription to get this. Also, some of the podcasts will still have ads. No, but okay, so Hang on. The ad was about how I want to be able to listen to the podcast without ads. And then the fine print just mentions lightly at the end at 7,000 words per second that the podcast will still have ads. And then it's even funnier when they do it for comedy. Are you sick of your favorite comedy podcast getting interrupted by blah blah blah blah?

It's like, it's so, it's so these ads are so bad. Those are That's run of network ads. That's not an ad anybody ever cared about. Fr no, what's not that that's not the most frustrating to me because those ads at least that's their main job is just to get as mo the m most attention and the most money, like whoever made that ad, I mean. What i uh uh d depresses me the most and makes me the most anxious, I think, about podcasting in general is th the standards that we've accepted uh uh for, you know, just just making things. And I mean, I I I don't know how much thinks cost a anymore, but host red ads have gotten to the point where it just sucks my soul. Like I I rather have one of those Oh it does.

It breaks my heart when someone I love I mean there's ads that I have to do or ads on shows that I do that I don't love, but it really breaks my heart to hear one of my friends read a VPN ad. It i it I I I like I and the thing is I And like and but they're expected to do it as like a basically like a recommendation is what really bums me out. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to like make myself a hero, but like, no, I'm not going to tell you to go get that VPN. I know that the two VPNs that advertise are a bad idea to have as your VPN. And If it's a comedy podcast, maybe you can get away with that. Maybe you'll feel okay about it. But like that's I don't know, man. There's some kinds of things where I'm like, oh man, this is this is what's left.

And they really want you to lean into how much you love it. Yeah, I I worried too like um s Search engine, which is one of my new favorite shows. Uh I love it when he says we'll be back after these ads. I love it when he says I'm like, thank you. Thank Christ. But now I ha have you noticed the uh he and his producer pr producer wow producer uh shreuthi have uh joined uh Jigsaw, I had never heard of this production company, which surprised me. Jigsaw Productions, which is was acquired by Acast, which is a company that I know because they're big production house and uh suddenly I'm like, wait, why did you do this? And I don't know them enough or like a sort of thing. You ever try to link to one of their shows?

You ever try to link to an episode? Yes. It does go well. I link to the fucking ACAST page because and I need the I think the closest thing I've seen to canonical is on a substack. Oh, that that used to be where it was, but they're leaving now with most people and no comment. And the but uh uh even before that it was Sure, you link to the s substack, but you're not linking to the uh you can't link to the audio directly or the RSS. I mean some of my favorite podcasts. It's very unclear where they want you to link at all. If you wanted to like give them I think of it as like a lot of times I just link the overcast because that's what my the people I care about listen to. You'll figure it out. And it's so much easier to do.

Yeah, just sending somebody to a page that it might have an embed on it or whatever is it's fine and I'd like to give them the juice. Like if it's a podcast I really admire and love, like I would love to give them the juice of sending to like their preferred page. It's just that there's so much pollution of like I have to choose which of these like literally sometimes like ten different sites. that are I I don't know, some like like a link, not link, not even LinkTree. But just like just all these different things. You're like, what are all these well how is there podcasts on all these different places? And I don't want to link to the Apple Podcast page for my own reasons. It's just it's it's just it's really weird.

They don't they kind of don't want you to love the show. They want you to listen because you don't know how to unsubscribe. Yeah, and there are a number of smaller n networks and I get w where they're making money and and how and why, but But yeah, your point is really good though, which is like if you had just gotten out of Spotify and you know, PJ and and uh and Truthi, uh whose name I don't know how to pronounce, but PJ and Shruthi are out of the world of Spotify. And it's just like it's I I was saying this to Syracuse because we you know what? We're your cream dream audience in one way. We're a small dem an integrat interesting but very small demographic, which is two influential post podcasters.

want to talk about two episodes of your show on our show, which I think for a lot of people would be seen as kind of a get. Like I'm not saying we're a big deal, but like we're popular than most podcasts. Not say much, but but like if Syracuse and I want to talk about two episodes of Search Engine, well one of the first things I want to do is like link to it. And it's it's pretty confusing. And sometimes the things that I would link to makes it feel like I don't have very good taste. And and I I my I I I do have good taste and I assume the good tastes of people in my life and I don't link to garbage And like if you'd just gotten out of Spotify after all of that, after the debacle, I don't know.

See, I don't know. I don't I haven't walked in their moccasins. It might have been an easy fit. for what they wanted to do. They want like like me. Like I'm happy to have other people take care of almost everything except the part I care intensely about. And maybe that's how they look at it. So I don't I'm not trying to criticize but like started that way. I they they know better they know better than to go down a route Right. Yes. And Uh not I uh there's a lot of speculation as as to to why. Especially when I have to imagine there's a lot of speculation about why these two people have a podcast somewhere. I it is it's staggering to me to imagine how much speculation there is about that. Where's that where's their speculation uh about that, Alexandra?

I mean new well the Google Uh uh no comment. I can tell I'll tell you later. Um but the big question is usually sorry listeners, but uh do you can trust Alex that there's a lot of speculation about this? If you It's talking about like amongst people in the industry, they're kind of like going, huh, wonder why they did that. Well, there's a lot of like, huh, why would you do that? Because a the a lot of times the answer is health insurance. And that's why I'm like, yep, go with God if it has or Gimlet if it has blue cross blue shield. Go with Gimlet. That's that's what it Pushkin Uh Pushkin, I I I that's a really good point and I do agree. But that that's but uh when it's never lupus, but it's usually insurance.

But it's that but when it's not, that's what's that's like what is happening? What that's that's what confuses me about A lot of I'm like, where is this ad money going if not to the hosts and not like who? The servers? Like what is it I It feels like that it's too easy just to say like the VC. It's a bummer that podcasting is no longer an easy money machine for people who are almost famous It really is a bummer. It used to be so easy to phone it in and be somebody who was utterly uninterested in the history and richness of podcasts. You know, where you you you could just walk in, uh put your ass on the crevice, talk for a few minutes, and and then pretty soon people are getting NordVPN delivered in a food box.

It really helps people discover the show. Yeah. They didn't even need to put an Apple TV remote up their ass. Challenge to ga duga? It this does I think relate to our challenge, which is the the the strange fact that I now get most of my new newsy sh newsy news from podcasts that I almost sort of respect. Uh uh because I people for a long time would say I get my news from Twitter. I very like a normal thing people used to say ten or fifteen years ago, right? It's like if I don't need to follow the news because if it becomes important about if it becomes important enough, I'll hear about it from people I respect. I yeah. And that used to be the case when there was um chronological and or reverse chronicl uh chronological timeline, whatever your f uh fixes.

But uh or or it was YouTube and I mean like I think a a general pattern is it was more it was more useful when it When when Twitter was a place where you had a much better handle on managing what it is you saw at all. Whether that what order that's in, who it is, what it is. that was something that was I think one of the defining great well apart from having apps, letting people build apps for it, the another defining part of what made Twitter great for me and I I suspect a lot of my friends. was that you had nearly endless control over how what you saw and how you saw it. Right. And And when you don't have that anymore, it stops being a place where you're gonna trust and respect a lot of opinions.

Yeah, and I downloaded a whole bunch of apps that I used to have on my phone. Like uh where what the challenge is, Alice? Uh the challenge this week was continue to plug your news holes. Um close your news hole, but close. Close You can plug it too. I I wanted to You want to caulk that crevasse. I don't know my remote. Oh, I just got uh a breaking news It's still fine Oh no, my rocks. That's my wife's keychain. It's still her keychain. Oh no, my rocks. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, my HDMI cable. It's still funny. Max, somebody tell Max I miss him and love him. So anyway, and you're talk so we're we're talking here about like and uh this came comes out of a kind of an ongoing discussion. And I think I kind of kicked it off just with talking about like, ah, so frustrating and like new stuff and like I need to find a more wholesome way.

And really news, Apple News Plus is what kind of pushed me over the edge. Um and so the the notion was go in and like How how would you describe it? I I would I g I guess I feel like it's like uh you know, figure out how to like I don't know, how would you d y you describe it because my take on this has ended up being so different. How would you describe what it means to close your news holes? Uh initially it was don't look at anything except what's in your RSS reader. And then and and for me is Net Newswire and uh sometimes uh matter, which Is different than Reader, which is my um ReadWise Reader, which is a very, very good Read It Later app. Yeah, I think it it's the first one that's has stuck for me that since the matter has so much great stuff in it, but boy, is that ever a garbage fire as an organization.

Oh I mean in the sense that like oh man this place is going this already go this is very like double pop collar feeling to this company already. But there still everywhere I go, I'm like, can you just give me an easy way to select some text and turn it to a into an image I can post? Matter made that so easy. But then it got so fucking weird. And they really, they really they're they drove to the net on wanting exact money for from some fairly modest services very quickly. Yes. In my opinion, in my opinion. Yeah. W which is why I don't use it for pretty much uh anything except th their algorithmic service that they st initially sort of advertised as what if Twitter but but not the Twitter you d without the discourse.

And uh i it it pops up, you know, r writers I uh f uh you can follow writers and It it it was fine and uh for the long uh th my like quote solution for the longest time was article uh n or sorry, artifact which was slash still almost is, but is going to be shut down uh a news app from the guys who made insta uh Instagram before it was bought by uh Meta And they quickly learned that only giving the news that people wanted to read wasn't very profitable. And so after a year that it they I that's that it really is a different and smaller business. It's really I mean, it's like it is it is very sensible, but it is a that is more a bespoke content delivery service rather than a a classic either really either scalable subscription or ad-based system.

Certainly not an ad-based system. Yeah, it was really depressing, especially when their uh press release was basically like No one wants to invest in this because it doesn't make any money. And I'm like, all right, you guys made Instagram. And just y yet yet another example of something that is such a a mean and unkind thing for me to say, but it's related to something I think a lot. Which is that's that's a company that does not love or use the thing that they're not they're like selling. Like nobody there uses that app in that way. And if they are, they're an idiot. You know what I mean? There's just those those kinds of things, you know, where you're just like, oh man, you hate your users.

Like it's it's like you would never have if you this ever started as something you made for yourself. as a geek to scratch an itch. Like never in a million years would we are where the place where we are now is nowhere near like where this began. And you just you you might as well just actively hate the people who use your app. It sure feels that way sometimes. It it y yeah, and it's it's really uh interesting to watch the founder of um or not the f founder, sorry, the guy who's in uh the head of Instagram right now, he would talk He would talk about threads, which is their Twitter clone, on Instagram because there was no way to talk to people on uh via video on threads. It was a It it sure is a like, listen, we w we won we love you.

We love that you click on things, but we want you to use this in the right way and you're not using it in the right way. Um and and that's how for uh me, Twitter was even after it got pretty bad, the one feature that I really liked was why I signed up for the original Twitter blue is that it would just um Yeah, absolutely. As well as a list of uh uh links shared by the people they followed. So great. And it was awesome. And that was a- what was the thing they bought that was like that that I used to love? Yeah, Nuzzle. That was terrific. Yeah, that that's where it came from. That's that's so handy, that like friends of friends thing, which I I I know I've heard about that with Facebook, I guess.

But like that that's such an interesting idea of like I do not want to follow a bunch of tech people because it all ends up with Mark Andreason at some point. But like if I follow a bunch of tech people I like and I follow the people that follow them, like that's that's different than me just sticking a fire hose in my mouth every morning. Yeah. And That is ki that's kind of what Artifact was, but without ads. The god all the views names. This is this is the app that is soon to be uh d s it's sh being shut down. Um that was okay, yeah, you hear you do the standard thing where like an Apple News or anything. It sounds to me, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but it sounds like you're trying to be like a very um measured commentary pundit right now.

And that there's I'm guessing there's something where there's hot jive about this that everybody's talking about. Am I am I gleaning correctly that this is a dust up in the tech world? Because it sounds like it. No, no, it just it makes me sad because it was Oh good, okay. It was built it it felt like the kind of gross way you sign up for any news app where you select what you're supposedly interested in as if that means anything. And it would surface all of the garbage. But then as folk would folks would sign up sign up, kind of like with Nuzzle, you would uh follow them and it was pretty good at surfacing what you would actually want to see and surprisingly th those weren't stories or links that had a ton of ads in them.

which is why it shut down. And it's just a really b big bummer because th th that idea continues to f to be shut down, whether it be Nuzzle which was acquired or Twitter blew that I I don't even know if the if that's available that feature is available anymore where you can see what your friends are linking to. Like over and over, it's just, oh, this doesn't make enough money, so i why even do it? Which is why I just was uh this past week decided to download all of the uh breaking news apps that I used to have way way these these apps are like. So apps apps you've tried may or may not have found valuable, stop using for one reason or another. Let's bring those back like just kind of like partly just to see how they've changed over time.

Yeah. And I'm like I know. Yeah. If only just the reason of like I there's one that got my attention more, so this one got my attention less. But like part of it is the like let's plunge back into the deep end of the uh news alert pool. Yeah, yes. Is especially with Newsbreak, which I remember being really good for a while. And this is a sort of uh I I don't really know what to compare it to, I guess Apple News or Google News, but it's main thing is okay you we're we're going to alert you to things that are urgent or have just happened And I I r I remember th this now, like thinking about it, uh I mean it still would mostly push depressing things like uh get got off the plane. That's how I heard about the pulse shooting, which is such a fucked a moment in my life.

Or you would learn about uh just something, usually something bad, but also l it would give you actual breaking news that would sometimes be interesting. Like the DeSantis campaign ending, which was c as you've said often shot in front's overrated, but it was a little bit like, alright, that was a little fun to read about. Because just you just know the humiliation would get so much worth. He let us he let his health go. Like it would just be so funny. Marilyn or whatever her name is would like obviously take a lover. probably a woman with with prescription drugs. Like it there's just so much to it. Well then like like having an office like pretty near the the the the um what are they called the bible keepers the sex people in Florida, you know, who run the uh who are running the GOP party till recently.

Oh yeah, there were sex people in Sarasota. He's married to the woman who started Moms for Liberty. Oh cool. Cool. And he he was accused of assaulting a woman they were in a three-way relationship with at her house. Oh that's uh oh So they didn't charge him with that, but he did finally step down. You know, for the good of the party. Yeah, the good uh the the uh now you can fuck women and sob on boats with complete freedom. Ooh. Oh my gosh. See what I'm missing? This oh I miss Twitter. Miss Twitter sometimes. I miss it so much, my god. Anyways, you're saying about your apps. Oh, uh so this I sent you some uh screenshots, which I don't know if you saw. Breaking news. Uh I see presidential dollar coins Uh uh up a it it's just like a s uh I I'm gonna put a lot of you screenshots in show notes.

Oh I see these are oh so the thing you sent me that's a big ass screen of notifications. Yeah. Okay, got it. Oh my gosh, look at that. Ah no, this is real bad. It wasn't just I like that you can do this now, though, and and it'll automatically stitch your Stuff together interview. Alex has sent me survived this dumb thing. Alex sent me on Saturday at 9 22 A. M. Pacific Time. I received a big screenshot full of notifications. And it's it's it's comically long. It's like you know long cat is long. Is it oh oh yeah. It's so depressing. Well in and So you're getting a uh what's the squiggle? Headlines is the app? He uh no. Breaking news is the app and there are two separate things. There's Headlines, which is their the their own.

This is the first time hearing about Snoop Dogg's daughter. I'm sorry, I hope she heals well. I I n didn't really know about any of the things that I've got to do. I didn't know who he was until until the Taylor Swiss died. I've watched the last two Chiefs games and he's really good. I'm I'm I'm glad to hear it. Good good friend It helps that you got Patrick Mahomes. That guy's got an arm. The uh the I don't know if you're kidna That's the thing. I have this could be to like running team. Uh but also, um, you know, Mahomes isn't afraid to get his hands dirty a little bit. I don't know. He'll he'll get in there and make the conversion. Like he'll do that he'll do that. Patrick Mahomes is not afraid to like go, fine, screw it.

Like I'm it's not a quarterback sneak. He's got he's got there's great coverage, but they really need to improve their field position. And so, you know, to do that, he he's not afraid to run. And then when you run out of bounds, that stops the clock. That's called good clock management. God, you could make so m I mean I know that I I feel like I know that you know this, but like God, you can make so much money bullshitting. I think I'm gonna use Yeah, this is pretty good. Gentleman idiot. Oh oh, you know what we should do? You should Usu Oh my god, for Matilda uh uh the the stupid app that'll never be released, uh my my app Matilda. Um the Vision OS What for the stupid app that'll never be released, Matilda, I should do what?

Uh you can What is Matilda? Matilda is an app that I started working on way yeah when the Vision OS was released. Because met my my dream has always been too much. Yeah, yeah, well to no, to have to uh not not have Miss Honey be my parents. But I I don't want her to be my parent, but I'm interested in the party. Uh no, I She's so narrow. Listen Uh Matilda is the same thing. The bunchy, the stubby, the spiky? I would go in the chokey with Miss Honey in a heartbeat. Oh, that sounds like a very old song from maybe Alabama. Oh, honey and the chokey. Do you ever get honey in the chokey? We need to finish it. She's only, ugh! It's very dark in here. I'd say I know. I brought my cake. What's left of it?

I was eating a cake like a goosy scoop. Yeah, honey and the chokey. That's gonna have to be a thing I write, I think honey and the choky. Oh my god. Anyways, she's a good actor. I think she's from England. Um And um every every person from the nineties um uh uh tried to do what I call a Matilda and if you don't know what I'm talking about That's when you where you uh carry your books in a wagon. What is a Matilda? What does that mean? Oh my god. And thought for one second, they didn't think, oh, I can move it with my mind and go into my hand. Oh, like manifesting an orb type situation. Yeah, yeah. Like a a very like t a telekinesis thing. Like that's her whole bit is that she's like, I would do it for for minutes and hours and I would just think you don't even have to like move the way I want, but just it's change something about it that lets me know that even if it's a leaf Like, let alone a class.

I just want to know that I have some agency in the world to change physical objects with my mind. It's not a big ask, as you say As when and when you are an eight-year-old child and you've just watched just the di Danny DeVito get fucked over because of J just because just because Mara Wilson m willed herself to have some agency in the world, you just you're not sure. Is there a Mr. Dotfire? It's just and just move a little bit. Just move a little bit. And you'd think that there would be a lot of good apps for that on the MetaQuest Pro and anyway. Would you Yes, yes, because everyone tried to Matilda, but with without foveated without foveated rendering, it's Almost impossible. Like, oh my god, that's so funny.

I have so many apps I can't do because I don't have phobiated rendering. No, no, no, it's cool. It's cool. This is a safe space you wish. Because we are too dev kid. in English speaking human history. And then you find a way to make it about a computer thing that actually doesn't go toward anything at all And so we're talking about news consumption. No, we're talking about news bread. Honey in the chokey. Chicken in the bread pan, picking out dough. Oh, good. Honey in the chokey. So uh basically the Oh no, Palm Star's lead Rick Harrison's son Adam dead at thirty nine. The news alerts I got were all But literally not one was useful, and then I tried to tune it more to just be like, Okay, just Chicago.

I've been down that route, I know. Literally Everything, just Chicago. And then it basically became the citizen app where there was just like straight up racism. Like it was like a black person walking down the street street. Uh oh. Like it's like someone it there there was literally a headline I'll I'll try I think I might have uh swiped away. There's a black man in a suit in my neighborhood. Black men don't own suits. They said no one was supposed to be in the area. Yeah. Yeah. Basically the it was basically the it was so so gross. So now I just have gone back to Net Newswire. Oh my god, Brett, I can't uh uh anyway, uh not Brett, Brent's anyway, I've gone back to net newswire and just the I've gone back to just subscribing to um basically m like Uh uh I'm sh shot.

So I'm sorry, just just to just to get through the point of the uh of uh of the pixelated um mind control, to get past that for a sec. So the point is you did try a bunch of these apps. And so your your take on your updated um feeling about them is like, yeah, indeed, it just it produces a lot of noise. Is that fair? Not just new. So what was the what was it you're saying about all these apps you got? It is a an anxiety machine. So is the home so is the Front page of the New York Times, dude. Yeah. And uh what was m most obnoxious is after uh again, like after turning off everything except like breaking news, like this is like the not just the Like you would think too that maybe breaking news I like I expected to get an alert when Trump uh won Iowa or uh won New Hampshire Because that's like US breaking news.

But no, it was like I I did not get that because that apparent it isn't like it's Scary enough, I don't I don't know. And it's kind of a question of like I mean 'cause in order to evaluate not saying you have to do this, but like in order to sort of evaluate what this source of information brings into your life, it's useful to say like what was I expecting, what was I hoping for? And like do you have like a bar for that apart from like, oh, I'm already really annoyed by like having to set this up. And so but like did you have so you but you had an internal barometer of like I'll get the I know I'm getting these notifications, but like part of this exercise is to find out how how I feel, not just about having received the notification.

But like whether I think it's doing a good job of being something that could help me improve my life, kind of. I yeah, I'm just gonna do it. Well, I w I n I think I knew how it would Mm, not I thought. I I knew how it would make me feel before trying to turn the dials down. Right. But I I I really thought maybe if I turn the dials down just t to these services that are like specifically for being pop-ups. And I accepted like, okay, like in certain focus modes, you know, I I can have it turned off. So uh whatever. I really thought maybe like Br uh breaking news on some of the local Chicago websites that are really like hyper specific to neighborhood, that'll be like, oh, guess what? This should at least take down the volume and possibly increased.

Yeah. And also you're a person who cares about like you've said for a long time. Something I really admire about you is like, you know Not simply as a way to deal with being angry or feeling helpless, but like you it's important to you to help in your community, uh in the things that you care about. So that's germane to how you think about your world, right? Well y yeah, but uh but I mean even well yes, but even when I say that, I I'm when I say like I want actionable items, I don't even mean just like what is the d the death toll in Chicago this week because it's so cold. I mean I mean, I wanna know when this uh place has the lease has been bought, when a cool restaurant is opened, and I wanna try.

Like things that apply to me that I get to do that make me happy. Like give me something that will make me happy. And what continues to make me happy is unsubscribing from all of this and just following the people that I uh respect and enjoy uh and have for years on uh via rss and even on subsack you can still follow people on rss and YouTube. They have not broken that somehow. Like so every most of what I watch on YouTube is is still through the YouTube app, but I follow the folks on um I I follow their RSS feed because I just broke my recommendations somehow. And uh just the the local Chicago blogs, I kinda just once a week scanned the headlines again via RSS because it's the simplest way. Like if there is breaking news that I n that is like some sort of emergency in Chicago, literally there will be blaring sirens.

So I don't uh need that. And if there's a funny story about Ron DeSantis that I want to read, they'll talk about it on Chapo Trent House. I don't know about that. See, I just wanted to be a little bit more than a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of Oh he s he signed off from the campaign with uh and this is I don't know, so I I I I feel like it's it's a running bit. on lots of things I do is like is the joke about like when you quote something and then you get it wrong and you go like, oh that's Mark Twain or that's Winston Churchill. Oh There's so many things that are misattributed to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill in particular.

And so when he did his big, you know, Anne Hero sign-off uh f from his campaign on Twitter, he used uh something that Winston Churchill never said. I mean it checks out. Yeah, top par for the course. Yeah, but say but like you'll it'll it's like Wait, sidebar. Have you noticed that whenever uh Donald Trump talks about him now, in when he says something positive, he always starts with uh his uh w wonderful, beautiful wife Casey. Oh no, really is he doing that? I love it. Oh that's so he can't stop it. He can't I mean the judge is right. He can't control it He can't cover it up. He cannot like and and listen guys, the quote from The Simpsons, if memory serves, just it's really important that people, if they're gonna say this a lot, especially on TV, start getting it right.

What I believe what Homer said was I said the I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud. But like he didn't it Homer Simpson, as far as I know, has never said I said the quiet part out loud, not least because that doesn't make sense. But he is like that. Boy, that's annoying. And and but like he is so Trump cannot I sometimes I you know I I don't follow him like I used to. But uh I try super hard not to, but that's understandable. Do you not have a friend? Wait, Merlin, do you not have a friend? No, no, let me finish. Do you not have an ex-correspondent Do you want an ex-correspondent? Okay. Never mind. Do I want an ex-corresp is that a wait, is that a series of unfortunate events joke?

No. No, that's that's a person who sends you the best of what you don't want to see on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But but like in the bits that I do see of him, he does seem pretty preoccupied with these trials and all those sorts of things. And you know it's fine. Like that's his audience loves that. They love hearing it. That's okay. But um it is just funny though, like what just what he can't keep in. And and then like you can hear the part that's always one of the things that's always amused me about him since 2015 is the way that you can tell as much as his brainworms have destroyed whatever's up there, there is still this part of him that realizes He f he feels some residual shame about something and needs to like cover up what he just said and change it to something else.

Like it could be the residual shame if he hates people telling him that he's wrong and incorrect and some part of him knows he is. And so he tries to find some way to sudn take this incredibly specific thing he just said and broaden it. And that's where you come up. We talked about this with the Max days. Him catching himself and going, many people are saying, like he'll he'll like add these like rejoinders to what he's saying. But you can tell I don't know if he's a horn dog exactly. Certainly not as much as like, you know, uh the Christian people. But But you can tell and he's he's uh and then you know and like like like the like uh Luce Page and Peter Strzok, you could tell he was angry and horny about the fact they even had a relationship.

And and then he would try to be sound sarcastic and say, and the lovely Lisa, his uh, you know, his lover Lisa Page, right? And you could tell, yeah, but he is kind of a attracted to her, you can tell. And like he's an obsessive thinker in some ways. And like there's just stuff that he can't keep in. And so he has to say the quiet part out loud, as people say. See, you uh you don't need a correspondent. I don't see or hear about That's weird. You usually know about things before I do. Can I send you some hot pictures of Miss Honey? Oh yeah, some cool coins. That's yeah, that's Can I send you some hot pictures of Miss Honey? Uh yeah. Okay, forget it then. You don't get any. Wait, how old was she?

Wait, wait. Why does that mat what does that matter? Wow. Wait, I don't know. Oh well Wow. Well now I'm just gonna send you pictures of Taylor Holland. And then when you go, Oh my god, she's so old. I'm gonna go that's totally I know, neither you always know. And then I'll say that's totally Sarah Sarah Paulson's uh what what do you what do you guys call in the in the community, a Winkelheimer? Like she likes older ladies. So like Sarah Paulson's uh lady friend is is an older lady. She was on Bosom Buddies with the actor Tom Hanks. And Peter Scalari, if I'm being honest. Yeah. Oh, good for her. Oh. Yeah. Nurse Ratchet was underrated. Did you know? So I won't send it to you now. I won't send it to you.

Here's one where you can almost see her boobs. This is the one that she signed. Here's her uh wearing ladies' shoes. Um as opposed to not wearing ladies' shoes. Why is it so complicated for you? Do you even know what you're fucked up about? I wish all you people would pick a lane, because I can't always get my my kid to to to talk to me about Like whether somebody's hot. And so finally I I have gotten to where I'm like, can I just start guessing people that I think you might think are hot? And he's like, that's fine. And like I I made some guesses. And I think when I said Robert Sean Leonard, it hit a little bit too close to home. I can I can understand that. I can tell because he makes fun of it.

He makes fun of him a lot. Uh yeah, well he is uh he's a little weasel boy. How can you make fun of him? Wait a minute. Did you invent that? Because that's what he says. He calls he calls Robert Sean Leonard my little weasel boy. No, no. That's literally what that's literally what Billy calls Robert Sean Leonard. It's why we watch Dead Poet Society. I think so. Oh shit dog. Fucking hey, today's Wednesday. Today's Wednesday. I get to do the meme. Oh I forgot it last week and now this week I'm gonna do the meme. I'm gonna send you the meme. Are you ready for the meme? Uh uh, I'm ready for the meme. Don't ask me about my news. I I I would I would like to ask you about your news. Um so I I I I prefer to keep this short 'cause it's not very interesting and on topic except in my usual kind of weird dumb way.

Um which is I came at this from the angle of I'm clicking and I'm pasting. I'm sending this and I'm going to put this on my Mastodon, which is where I post my Mastodon posts. Um Uh close your news hole. He sends he sends me this every Wednesday. Every Wednesday I get this. And I I'll be so I'll be so sad the Wednesday I don't get this anymore And then and and then we we read it aloud we read it aloud to each other several times. So it's a so if you can imagine it's Robert Sean Leonard in a coat and tie with his hands on his hips And it's got kind of this weird pink background with butterflies. And it's a gif is a gif. And in sparkly letters, it says, Sparkle on! exclamation point. It's Wednesday.

Don't forget to be yourself. And we'll just keep reading that to each other. Sparkle on. It's Wednesday. Don't forget to be yourself. He's also got that the way he has his hands on his hips. Yeah. It's a little bit not like a little bit of a big thing. Because he's got his pants are riding a little high and he's got a little bit of a Dilbert boss tie going on. I okay. Uh you're right, because I'm resizing it and smooshing it and and just distorting it and what's the topic? Uh Oh sorry, the the photo of a little bit. Despite distorting the image, his pants are always high. Like they're always riding up there. Yeah, following you, except their pants and they're high. Park alone. Because I'll just to try and keep this simple is like I I've had my own frustrations with uh uh inputs that uh and like my relationships with the inputs in my life we'll just leave it at that it's a lot of things that includes email that includes news it includes all the ways where I have opened a port um and said it's okay.

I don't know if I have port forwarding on, but I've definitely opened a port and that port can be pinged. Um and I struggle with that uh in general, but to keep this short and fast and easy As discussed at length on the most recent reconcilable differences, I have this idea that Apple News Plus. especially in Apple News Plus on my phone, could be a playground for experimenting with some ideas about a new way of looking at news And um I that seems pretty crazy to a lot of people probably. I don't care. Oh no, I'm just gonna go get another news app because why? Well, my idea was, well, this has ways to tune it. It's got thumbs up. It's got thumbs down. It's got these different things. You can subscribe to things.

Like on the face of it, it kind of seems neat. I won't go into all that. You can listen to that episode if you choose to. It's one of those a public episode. But what but my takeaway from that was that one way in which Syracuse is right is like, well, first of all, a lot of these things where it appears to give you an affordance for how can I want to break this down appropriately. So a thing like a thumbs up or a thumbs down, it brings assumptions. Like if the elevator has a down button, Our assumption is that when you click the down button, it tells the elevator machine to bring the elevator to where you are because you want to go downstairs. And you know, there's a lot more to it than that, but like that's what it seems to do when you press the button and you say I want to cross the sidewalk.

And you assume that I press that button because I do want to cross the street. And then there's assumptions in that. Often incorrect, but like our assumptions include things like when I want a thing, I've learned I can do this. So I want I want to go down on the elevator. I want to cross the street. Um I want to see more news articles about the movie Poor Things. Whatever that is, like I've expressed a desire about something, and I think that it's worth being a little bit s not semiotic, but a little bit first year you know, social studies major here to break this down into pieces. Well we have to remember there's a button to push. Okay, fine. And but we would never even we would never repeatedly push that button unless we believed, usually, that it did something.

Right. And so we believe that when we push the button, we're telling it something about what we want or don't want. Okay, that's remember the button. A number one. Number two, um, when you push the button, you expect it to do something. And then three, so we expect that having pushed the button will then cause something to change or be different or happen. And perhaps in a way that's not reasonable sometimes, in a lot of those cases, we expect it to remember that we push that button a lot. You can't do that with an elevator across the street. But like if I've thumbs up a bunch of stuff about poor things, just for example, like Is is it nuts for me to assume that at the very least it will show me more things about poor things.

I bet I'll also see more things about Emma Stone. And Willem Dafoe and Jorgos Lanthemos, I wouldn't be and I wouldn't even be surprised if, you know, I don't know what's happen- here's the thing. This is the point. I know there's a button. I know you can push it. I expected to do something, and then I expect it to learn from that. That's a lot of assumptions to walk around with, but that's what a button implies. Right? Forgive me. This is like the way my mind works, right? Like yeah, don't just talk about pushing the button. Because you know what? The down button just doesn't work on a lot of elevators. It's never not hooked up to anything. Or the door, the door close button is like not hooked up to anything.

When you cross the street, like, you know, there's all kinds of things that like this just it the button is there because it's a thing people like to hit. And you never figure out that it doesn't do anything. But for the sake of my decision making here around Apple News Plus in particular, Four things, right? Button, press it, expectations, remember. And um I would even not be surprised, especially as someone who does not understand how these things work. but has seen similar things, I would not be surprised if I started seeing more things about uh movies or about indie movies. or about awards season. Eventually now you're getting to the wider world of entertainment, and you're getting red red carpet looks.

I'm not surpr I would not be surprised if I saw an increase if I were to test this out and only Say show me more poor things. Whatever. You know what I'm saying? You get the where I'm going with this, right? I would not be surprised if it had other ramifications because I don't know what the big soup looks like. Well, I press the button and it goes to soup somewhere. I don't know what happens. I have no way of knowing. But agree with me or otherwise, I I think it is sensible to believe that when you thumbs up something you'll see more things like that. When you thumbs down something, you'll see fewer things like that. When you block something, that means you won't see that anymore. So if I hit block on a golfing douche yacht life.

Like I don't want to see anything else from there. And in fact, if you wanted to infer something about my taste as a result of having hit that, that would I would not be surprised if it did that. Well, it didn't take more than uh a f a couple days, really, for it to be very obvious that almost every assumption inside of this, apart from the existence of a button, was inaccurate or incorrect or Full loaded with assumptions on my part, right? Yeah, there's a button. I can't tell what the button does, and I don't think it's helping me. And for every one of those, I could give you a pretty good example. One that I've already hinted at is Maybe it's because of what news is at this point, which is our topic.

But stuff that I have historically really enjoyed reading. Um for ways that I can imagine, have become about kind of about what that topic used to be, but mostly about celebrities. So I mean women's fashion has always been adjacent to celebrities and movie stars and stuff, but it's not movie stars wearing dresses that interest me. It's like what's happening in fashion. But that's okay, right? Because you would expect that. But it goes for everything else too. Just be I mean, is it because why is it that I see so much stuff about Taylor Swift? Well, Taylor Swift is really, really popular. So even though I've said not not and again just to be clear it doesn't matter what my feelings are I just don't want Taylor Swift in my Apple News Plus I don't want it in my Google News if I want to learn about Taylor Swift I could go to any of the places where that information exists, which is everywhere.

But let's take Taylor Swift off the table. Let's talk about uh Emily Ratskin Kowskowski. There's this there's this model. Her you got her. You got the Kardashian family. Um I'm trying to think of other people. I don't really know a lot about these folks. Is other than Taylor Swift, don't know any of those names. I don't really literally don't care. But the point is, those people are everywhere in Apple News Plus. And if you were being honest and looked at Apple News Plus, I'll bet you'll see a fuck ton of Emily Ratskin Kowskiowski and the Kardashians. They're fucking everywhere And I have no way of understanding, apart from the guess and gander I can make as a fucking idiot, that it's just because they're popular and people will click on things about them.

but like it's everywhere, you can't get rid of it. And any amount of tuning that I say th like I wanna send it the message and eventually I'm inside my own head because I'm going like well I'm interested in electric bikes but not really like bikes in general. And I'm not interested in biking shoes. And it's weird, like I'm not really that interested in biking shoes, so that I'm also not really that interested in this season's must-have comfy boot. or this season's coziest slipper, and it's just fucking ev these these kinds of things are they're so dumb. And I'm glad I'm resigned to the fact that that's something somebody wants, but there was no amount of tuning that that could make this into what I wanted, which is a place to go for something besides politics and tech.

Yeah. Well yeah, I found a way to dial down on that. Oh, and then on top of it all, like like so many services, there's no way to actually ban or Uh what was the word I use? Block. There's no way to block stuff on the quote like homepage. Yeah. Like you'll just see a thing that says you block this channel. People magazine is actually a pretty good example. Um I mean there's there's there's a lot like that. Yeah, yeah, right. You just see this gray block that says you blocked this, but there is not a way to do that. I don't know if you ever notice this. I blocked a ton of stuff on Google News over the years, but you'll still see f I'll still see not to pick on Fox News, but I'll still see Fox News articles even though I blocked Fox News, Fox Business, Fox, a lot of you know, like so many things that I just would prefer not to be part of my diet.

Um it they'll still come up and when I go to click to block again, and there's no option to block. Because if it's in a featured section or you know, s related news like catch up stuff. You can't get rid of it. Whatever. That's all just to say that like but that what what I just described to you and the frustrations of that are like what brought me to this challenge. And uh brief briefly just to get the fuck out of here, here's what I realized is like this is not a technical problem. This is not a content problem. The way that I framed this to you and to a lot of people, which I think is a is a a pretty accurate way to put this is like I want to be able to manage the news that I get. Like I don't want to look at news all the time, but when I do look at news, I want to be able to like catch up on what stuff that's going on.

And the starving African child I tried out at this point is always what's going on in Gaza. Because as it happens, I do care a fuck ton about that and do want news about that. But When I was really honest with myself getting getting ready to like think about how to address this challenge, it just it became so frustratingly obvious that I look at all this stuff because I'm bored for a second. I'm not catching up on anything. I'm not catching up on anything. I could like I mean s there's people out there who just pick up The Economist once a week and if you've never read I know The Economist, you're not supposed to like that. You ever read the International News Summary of The Economist? Well, if you still have newsstands, go and pick up a cop if they still do it, go and pick up a copy of The Economist and read the first like six or eight pages and Never tell me because you you already know everything, but you'd be surprised how much stuff is going on in the world that you never knew about.

And checking in once a week is probably plenty enough to know what's going on in the world. Not for everything. But how is this any different from how I felt in 2016, Alex? Like I don't need to know what Donald Trump's doing every second of the day. It's not helping me. It makes me sad. It causes stress. And certainly we've seen clues over time, whether that's the jittery New York Times needle or just the way that everything gets turned into a narrative about what you think you know and what you don't know about a thing that's gonna scare you. But at the end of the day, it's fucking it's me. Anytime I have an idle second, I don't look at Twitter anymore. Yeah, I look at Mastodon. But I also still have this weird habit of like I've just finished doing a thing.

I've done my mopping up work. I've done the things I need to do. I'm gonna go look at my phone for a minute. And I o I pretty much I don't feel proud about this. I pretty much compulsively look at Google News, New York Times. um as well as uh NetNewswire and my feed in reader. And I just had to really confront that and go like it's an XY problem, buddy. Like you do this because you're fucking bored. And if you were honest with yourself and willing to be vulnerable in a useful and generative way, you would realize that the problem is not with the news. The problem is with you. We need to talk about this in the after show. You're uh I'm fascinated and we but we this is g going long, but Well I can't promise we'll talk about it in the after show, but I'm happy to talk about it.

No, I'm I'm very uncomfortable telling people to go buy something because we're gonna talk about it. But I'd be happy to what I will say is I'd be happy to talk more about it whenever. Yeah. Was the oh man, you are You know, you're not popping Vicodin, but you're doing a lot of things just because you're bored. And I don't know. And like you, we I think we unintentionally seek out the thing. I know, and we unintentionally seek out the things that make us feel things. Uh, I think, I feel, you know. It's something I've told you this before, and it's a kind of a hurtful thing that and I've ended up turning into a less hurtful thing. I got I got some interesting advice at one point in life which said, you know, you gotta be careful around women in particular because they tend to confuse their strong emotions.

And at the time I heard that, when I was, I don't know, nineteen or twenty, I remember thinking, you know, that does seem kind of true In my head, that explains several things about women I find co found confusing, not in romantic relationships, but in just life. It's like why why sort of like we talked about with trauma? Like why does she keep going out with guys like that? She must have confused her strong but like here's what I do have to say about that now is I think everybody tends to confuse their strong emotions mostly. And when you're feeling if it's 2016 or 2018 or 2020 whatever, and you're feeling this combination of dread, anxiety and deadness inside. There's always this part of me that says, Well, maybe you just need to go check in, maybe for good news, maybe for bad news, but whatever it is, sometimes we need to press the bruise.

In order to make it feel real. And um I think I unintentionally un unintentionally built a I don't not a physical habit, but like a pretty like strong emotional or mental habit of like whenever I'm whenever I'm quote unquote bored for a second, whenever I have an idle second, there's these certain things I deal with my phone. It's not my phone's fault. It's not the news's fault. It's not Twitter's fault. It's nobody's fault. And it's not even really my fault. And fault is really not what makes this interesting. It's habituation. Whatever got me here, no, you know, very few people smoke their first cigarette expecting to, you know, die from emphysema. And the the things that bring us into something for all of the right reasons and I don't know, it's just it's uh and we like to dress ourselves up in these really fancy garments about well I have to know about this.

This is an issue I care about. And I'm like, well, tell me six things you've done in the last month about that issue you care about that aren't just typing online. Well, yeah, I'm an activist. Well, okay, well really you're just mostly s mostly somebody very distracted, bored, and angry, who's willing to type? If you type even. Yeah. No, it's a it's a black square. It's black square. What do I mean? Oh that's right. You don't you you weren't there for the b the black square solidarity in of twenty twenty. Oh right. Oh you're talking about the green the green um green icon Where we saved Taran? Oh yeah, that yes, yes. Remember Darfur? Oh. I saved that if memory serves. I think so. I think I might have watched something uh for on PBS for a minute about that and I I'm pretty sure that saved them.

No, no, seriously, I am the hero, but it's so sweet of you to call me that. You know, Tim Ferriss uh taught a bunch of those kids how to break dance Is that true? No. But it should be. One very obscure rule that'll show you how to win at Darfur. raw transcript