420. Punish My Mouth

This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Worldly Man. This week's challenge on some good live music. Hello! Hello, how are you? Good. It's my favorite day of the week. Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday. It's the day when all everybody in near Pooh Corner gets their house blown away. Wednesday. That's a winning the poo joke. It's not very cool. Oh no, no, I What's your favorite day? I'm not sure. Is it donut day? Is it Taco Wednesday? Oh no, it's just that Wednesday is kind of like my Tuesday because m Monday is the day I start the week. So If it's going poorly, I still have time to turn it around. It hasn't been bad, but hey. Yeah. It's interesting. You t you take it take a minute and you r you you reflect a little bit on on how it's going.

I do. I'm I'm a journal freak and I I don't talk about it because I don't um want to be made fun of. That that's not true, I like being made fun of. Uh but Gosh, you did another mer very old school Merlin Mann thing. Ooh, I like when I do that. What I do. Yeah, yeah. Well well we we need to circle back for uh term for nis I want a term for nostalgia that isn't a bittersweet longing, but rather a th reflection on the past that brings about feelings of fondness and optimism. But anyway, you did a nice little thing in Drafts, the app that we enjoy, where it's just a really easy daily note and it's one of those things now that I actually make it? Yeah, and I was doing that anyway. But now it's much easier to search and you know it's one of those things.

Like, it's easy enough to just open a new document and type. What I liked about the one that my pal and I came up with was it creates a new file. uh with your parameters. Mine are really simple, just like, you know, today, like blah, day of the week and the date. Just something that makes it unique. But then also it adds a little section with a comment. So it knows that this is a an official like today document. And then that assisted in the second part, which is actually the the super neat part that makes me love it, is that it it's much less likely to create duplicates. Yes, that was my problem. Like I was taking it. No, anytime you hit that in your little right rail, uh it'll either create the document for today if it hasn't been created or will go to that doc I mean it's not perfect, but it's it's close enough for me.

I use it every day. I just want to place I want to place like I've got you know got this little A5 notebook over here that I write in and then I I just need a digital thing like that, you know, where it could be anything. It could be It it can be and is lots of things, you know. Like every day it's a combination of thoughts and tasks and drafts of things that I want to write and you know, little bits of stuff. My one of my ideas n uh it's which is not this is not nearly as important or useful, but I've been thinking about is there a way to automate collection of like give me the last two weeks of these, you know, and then maybe use some use some wizardry to like Like have you done the thing where you can have you done much with the writing tools thing with Apple Intelligence?

No. Neither have I. Neither have I tried. Yeah. But with limited success. So I But what's neat is you I I I had this file I created, I made a quick note. So in part of my drive to uh encourage myself to use Mac OS and you know just OS26 stuff. I kept a running Quick Note in notes and then I was trying to use I was you know trying to get in the habit of using Spotlight. uh you know to get to that note, which is not that great. But then once I'm in there, it's just I make an I'll like, oh it's garbage. Let me go find. But like you I'm sure I imagine anyway that your brain is kind of like this too. Like um Okay, like how do I search Gmail? How do I search my Gmail from Spotlight? Um an early one.

How do I get to this quick note with a key command? Uh, you know, how do I get my usual folders to show up faster? Like launch bar is so good at learning that within two or three times you've visited anything, it knows it. It was I like computers, uh, but I've been trying so hard with Spotlight. It's it's like, oh man, you're trying. It's so close. It really it really f and as as I think Jason Snell put this really well in a couple things he's written. It's kind of I first of all I absolutely agree with him. Like anything that improves the stock setup uh yeah, I I was gonna say for for whoever, but like just it improves the stock setup, that's good. Cause to me a everything new that I can do is an option, whether I use it all the time or master it or whatever, you know, it's that whole like, why do you have four calendar apps thing.

Well, you know, I like options, but it for getting to that, first of all, the power user stuff is really hard to discover on your own. it is in fact kind of difficult to get to on your own. And if you want to do the power user stuff, here's where it gets uh ironic or paradoxical, if you want to do the power user stuff, like it is it fights you sometimes a little bit. And you've got to go hit the right tab to go to the right place and you can't have a universal key command for it and stuff like that. You can only have these custom key commands for psh I think shortcuts and you know whatever tab three is. But yeah, it does kind of fight you a little bit, doesn't it? Launchboard gets it a lot faster.

Podcasters spin the world. Yeah, it's funny that overlap. That overlap is real. Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy. And uh I almost wonder, is it is it this a another instance of like um I don't know how to say sandboxing when it's just uh Apple's own features, but I I expected like my mom to I I hate saying mom, but you know, sixty five year old woman. Um who is like, ooh, s who is familiar with Spotlight and is suddenly like, ooh, what what is this? But uh she didn't discover it and I'm like, okay, how much is It kind of like iPad OS where Apple's like, uh we don't want to freak people out. We don't wanna worry people and except we do wanna mm worry people with the scare what was it called? The sc scare scare sheet?

I'll put it in notes. Uh that's funny. I mean I don't know man. I just Well there's a there's uh I'm trying to like people use spotlight now. That's wild to think about. In I mean not for the things that we're talking about, but you know, when I was showing my parents Quicksilver, uh I never thought that they would care, and now it's a normal thing. Yeah, yeah. Um I made a crack about Alan Dye earlier today, just gloming onto the meme. But I don't know if he coined this, but I the first person I heard use this phrase was uh Jakob Nielsen, progressive disclosure. Um progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error prone.

Right. So it's it's that pretty sensible thing. And again, for me I'm always coming back to the analogy of the kitchen, right? Where like a really obscure giant countertop appliance that you use once a year. Like you don't leave it there. You know, it takes up too much space. That's an active working area. Like that goes somewhere else. Whereas your forks and your paring knife and your spatula, like you really want to know where those are and be able to get to them. You know, and but like I think bus progressive disclosure or whatever it's called is a really interesting idea though because that that makes it so that people can intuitively sort of pick up how the app wants to be used and if they want to delve in further.

I mean, I feel like some apps do that w way better than others. I think Apple has seeded the awesomeness of that. W something like Things, I think, is an app where like or I guess to some extent om Omnifocus was always like this where omnifocus can just be a list if you want. Like you can turn everything off. You have maximal at least when I was using it, you had maximal uh control over like what kind of fields you wanted and stuff like that. But like with things like You it's it's one it's still it's a source of delight to me that like there's a meta keyless, like you hit a letter and it starts searching for that letter. in your context, for example, or in your you know what I mean? Things like that where like and you go, oh I get it.

That's the second way that I can do this. I don't have to I don't always have to use the menu, you realize. And then later on you go, oh, I don't always have to use the mouse And you go, well, oh, I I don't even really always have to use a keyboard with a meta key. Like you'll discover that a thoughtfully designed User experience, uh, whether that's an app or a whatever, gives you the opportunity to like not feel like an idiot and yet still have room to grow. Whenever I bought what you do in the 90s, whenever I would buy a book, I'd always look at the table of contents. And my my rule of thumb was always like there should be something here that I recognize. as something and there should be some things in here that are that I don't know.

And then you know what I mean? Like you but you if you open it up and you don't understand anything in the index or in the table of contents, that's probably going to be a frustrating read. If you open it up and you know everything in the table of contents, so like how do we make it so that people can go on a journey that will not get in the way of their work? uh as they find their way to integrating this app into their life. And that is way easier said than done. We it's easy to to slag it when it doesn't work the way you want, but like I think you felt last thing, sorry. I got up early and I had my pills. Oh, that's good. You're good like that. Well they're trying to find out some photos. I was sending up Alamine some photos from when I did a project with him this morning.

And I was trying to identify faces and photos, and I guess I hadn't done that much lately. And I would go to like, you know, the people and places or whatever, you know, and then click on Alex or whatever And I was used to seeing at the bottom like buttons. Like you'd see like in this case I this is photos of Leo Laporte. And I it had identified like five or six photos of Leo. And I know I've got a ton more. And so I was saying, 'cause you know Once I find photos of Leo, then I can find also find pictures of Sean Carruthers, which is what I was ultimately looking for. And so I go to the Leo page and there's just it's just five, you know, photos on there. And I'm like, huh. Huh. I feel like there used to be a button at the bottom that you click to say like whatever, find more photos of this person, or you know, see if I can find more photos of this person.

And I just, I was like, okay, I'm an idiot. Like what I'm going to the menus and of course there's a triple dot at the top. And the triple dot has like six or seven commands under it, including, you know, find more photos of this person. Like I don't know where that trade-off is, but like it's gonna take me a while to get used to stuff like the new camera interface. It just constantly wants to take a 48 megapixel selfie of me and I don't know why and like maybe I have preserved settings turned on wrong or something, but like It it's weird though. Spotlight's in a weird position. Jason put it really well. I'm repeating myself. It's it's an interesting thing. It's so great that this stuff is in there.

It's so great that these app intents are gonna be available. I think over time we're gonna see those in more places that instantly makes sense to people, but I would not you know I I I I do a lot I do a lot uh stuff with computers and I discovered that that Amazon thing we talked about last week. I discovered that like a week and a half ago Yeah. I mean that's and then I went to like and then I thought and you know hey this is great all the twenty sixes are out. I'll go and I'll look at the documentation and like I'm not trying to be a turd in the punch bowl, but like I as I've been saying to you for weeks, I can't wait till the documentation for this stuff comes out. Because I was hoping for like an an official Apple detailed power user way to say like, hey, you know, you like doing stuff with you know hitting command space.

Well look at all the stuff you can do and here's some tips and you know, sort of along the lines of like I have to find out every possible hex color that you can use in Apple Home, I had to go to other sites to find that. to find every conceivable command that you could use in Siri, I had to go to other sites to find that. I don't know why they're so reluctant to not just print a giant effing list of like all the stuff something can do, like a dictionary. Like I don't want to read a dictionary for fun. But I would sure like a well-organized collection of words when I want to know what something means. And it's just strange to me because they're kind of like, okay, here you go, have fun. But My theory about uh this is that it is part of their whole thing.

uh ethos of uh the t term I forgot uh progressive disclosure disclosure just literally just sent you the link there you go Yeah, yes, and uh it's like oh we don't need that because you're you uh will discover it on your own and if you get too in the weeds you're not going to use the uh the actual product the way you want it to and blah blah blah blah blah. But I mean as uh this Wikipedia page s says, uh there's there was literally an I I I feel like I knew this, but it got like pushed back in my head because it makes me sad it doesn't exist anymore. There was an Apple multimedia lab that was just researching this stuff and had a couple cognitive psychologists. Did they have a front facing did they like talk to the public kind of stuff?

Uh uh y yes, there's a whole uh oh my goodness, I'm gonna need to bother Stephen Hackett next week about this. He's not busy right now. Yeah, yeah. Uh what could he be doing Oh thank you Memphis though for the Oh we should say um if you wanna if you wanna help a really good cause go to Saint Jude S T J U D E go to Saint Jude. org slash relay and give them some money. It's a good it's a really good it's got a chocolate cancer awareness month and that's a good We'll just do that in passing. That's a it's a good cause. Hey, hey, s friends, if you forgot my breakfast, thirty five thirty-five dollars, please. Thank you. What? Uh I know I have friends who listen to the show that didn't wish me a happy birthday and they should feel bad and give Saint Jude at least $35 because I turned 35.

It's it's the rule. Yeah. I know there's like Marco's Law or whatever, but I don't have fancy pants friends. I just I see the floor. No no no no no. Um this um I'm I'm trying to I mean there's there's there's lots of I feel like there's lots of like pretty good examples of this but I I don't know. I feel like this is something I don't again, I I I doubt he invented this idea, it doesn't really matter, but I think of this as being a very John Syracuse point. is that, you know, um boy, I never use the word belies correctly, so I shouldn't use it. But sometimes w we try to make something You know, what what do they say? Try to make something as simple as simple as it needs to be and no simpler, or as simple as it can be and no simpler, or whatever.

But like the problem is if you make an overly simplified design for something that then actually does require you to have more control than that simple design offers, it's not it may not be successful. So like An example of that, and uh forgive me, is HomeKit and Home. We're like it's very i unless you've got like me, unless you've got third party apps that help you with this, it's really diff difficult to figure out why something's not working the way you expected. Because, you know, you see it on TV and you go, it's a light bulb, and you plug it in and then you can control. And it's like, well, okay, but like I have a hue light bulb. in the bedroom that refuses to cooperate with the rest of the room in the most like frustrating ways.

So like I I've told it like okay you're part of this group and do this thing and adaptive lighting please adaptive lighting for God's sake until they fix that. Adaptive lighting turned off. I wish you could pick your own range of colors for adaptive. It's always too blue for me. But you know, anyways, so all the other the four other lights in the room are all behaving very nicely, and know that when you hit the button at this time of day, this happens. Well, first of all, it doesn't participate in that it participates in that system if you manually hit it. But then stuff happens like all the other lights are really pretty at five o'clock and the one light by my bed is like bright blue. And then sometimes and I I don't know if it's accidentally connected to like the wrong thing, but then sometimes at night Madeline's turn the lights off and I'll go to just kind of check in on her and look in and that light's just blazing blue.

And we we've got a we've got a greedy green. It just will always turn on. It's always green. Don't know why. Don't know how it's I'm not saying that that is and because again, w we have to control for who's our friends who are listening to this and who are probably people who like computers uh at some point in their life. But like it that's not a great experience and while I appreciate the idea of the simplicity of the Apple Home app in its various platforms. Like if you have to do anything at scale, uh including troubleshooting, it's really, really frustrating. And in my case, if I'm dealing with, I told uh Syracuse about this last night, dealing with these nanoleaf lights where I had to re-add, I delete and re-add all of my nanoleaf lights through the app.

Home kit, if I put it in home kit and then try to do on iOS in in the on iOS and The problem then was well, you're doing the thing where it's oh you're on the device list and we keep resorting it and like oh this is not available and they all have different names is coming up with different names for things and finally I'm I'm like a fucking cuck I'm renaming all of my lights using the unique ID at the end of the name so I can figure out which is which and I gotta rescan I gotta scan every code twice. The problem is if I put it in through HomeKit. The nanoleaf thinks it's a duplicate and like won't play nice with it and use scenes or do like all the functional stuff that works in that system.

So so I had to delete every like over twenty, if you include light strips, light bulbs, those hex those douchebag hexagon things, over fifteen of those I had to just delete and start over and then reconfigure and then re like make new scenes for all of them from scratch. My my eyes are like watering up just thinking about squinting at all of the little QR codes on the side. Ironically enough, my my eyesight's not great. So like I I w eventually got to where I was y I turn other lights on really bright and I just take a photo of every device. And then like in in Apple Photos, I like identify you know if I can't, if it's not obvious from context what that device is like which room quote it's in and stuff like that.

I write that down. And so at least then I can go back and just scan the photograph rather than having to because I don't know if you know this, but like th those um nano leaf shapes that for which they first became famous. They're really cool, but they're clever in some ways. They're not super well made. But there's the cable with a weird dongus. And that goes to this little controller that clips onto one of the six sides of any hexagon. And then all those other hexagons have these little, not bridges, but uh little joiner things so that the Yes this was our one of the I was gonna say the one bane of twenty twenty. But in in the Uh j just that what the the one, um uh for some god, I I have a pile.

For some reason I quote needed it for work. Not not this work, like actual work. And the fucking little they they look like um The things you put on when you get stitches, right? That type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you gotta do it really carefully and you can't do it on the floor and then pick it up because they fall apart and they don't stick to the wall that well. That I mean I told you for l for the longest time before I went to the higher grade of guerrilla tape, like every when the streetcars go by, like one of them would fall off the wall. But here's the thing, the code that you have to scan And so you're familiar with the shapes? Yes. Okay, so you've got a hexagon. Let's say you start with just one, because you only need one really to do it.

So you have one on that hexagon, one side of that hexagon. has the po has uh g connex I gotta look real quick. Yeah. One side of the hexagon, like the power goes into one of those six areas. And then you've got the little controller that goes onto it And then that's affixed to your wall, right? You know, you can remove it, but this code you have to scan is on the back of the controller. So you have to take the hexagon, dismount it from the wall, or at least lift it enough so that you it's not elegant to do at all. And it's like You know, the the for the longest time there's so much stuff where in HomeKit it would just, you know, whatever you scan in HomeKit, and then it uh will also conversely then show up in Eve.

I'm a huge fan of Veeve products, partly just because it all works so well together, but that kind of stuff is frustrating. Yeah, and it and it gives you stuff you don't get other places. Like it exposes thread network stuff and matter stuff and things like that But just so folks know, if anybody struggles with this, um I Yeah, that's it. Exactly it. You just sent me a photograph. That's exactly what I'm I I just sent Merlin Mann a photo of one of the a I I don't know, they're like aspirational dinguses on my desk where I'm like, I'm gonna fix this, but I know I won't and I should just throw it away. 'Cause if you put it away, then you wouldn't know it has to be a good thing. But it's also confusing because did you ever notice that there's they seem to think so you've got oh God you've got the power thing for for the strips in particular.

You've got like and so they they do light strips that I I I think are are are good in some ways. Um you've got to You've got like the strips of lights and they're pretty that they don't really stay in the little the pins will not stay into the connector thing, so I've had to like hot glue those to keep it from just falling apart. But on the hexagons, did you notice your your power plug has a home kit code on it too? Yep. But and if your cat bites through the cable and you need to buy another one and then you don't have to do it. But you can use but you can use the thing is you can use a different power supply with a different dongus and it'll work fine. But if but which is good. That's what I'm saying.

But then you go if you go and photograph if you go photograph the code that's on the plug, that's not going to match the code on the dongus. Yes. Oh but I'm not sure why I'm I'm bitching about all of this. Um because this is a thing that we love about computers because it makes our personal spaces a little bit more special and delightful and fun. And it like fulfills a pr silly promise that we've at least I've been making to my friends and family of uh of hey, you can make your Personal spaces. Special, delightful fun. And then it it it's kind of like the with the trancing. It was good for a while. Like it was uh you know, you s you talked to Amazon's lady. Oh my god. Almost every day for a while.

Almost every day I find myself saying aloud to my wife Honestly, like generally it has to do with the voice stuff or with just general like automation stuff. I'm just like, I can't believe we've had the lady in the tube for ten years and it seems like it got better and better f like all like so much voice assistant stuff either stayed the same or got better for a few years. And it feels like there's been like this five year regression ever since. And now voice to me I use like I've said before, I use voice and my family uses voice for reminders. My kid does a lot of cooking and a lot of baking, so he talks into his watch a lot. I do a lot of you know, to my Google friend, I'll yell out, you know, here's my tip to you.

Don't say st don't never say set a 10-minute timer. That's insane. You say set a 10-minute rice timer or set a 10-minute pasta timer. Or like say what the thing the timer is for is. Why? I'll never forget that. Well, first of all, you will. Second of all, sometimes you need two timers for something. Sometimes you need to like check on something and then an upper limit timer for when to take it out. But also, if for some reason like you like had a heart attack and died, wouldn't it be nice for the person who gets the alarm to know what it's for? I was gonna say I wish that I was the sort of person who ever had the kind of confidence to think that I would remember what a timer was for. If if you're that person Well, and you know, and but then it's on us as as Generation ADHD.

It's also on us to like remember to do that and to oper as Max would say, operationalize that. consistency. But speaking of ADHD, like I I I I've thought uh about this not a lot consistently or at length, but you know I mean you got you got ADD, right? I mean you've got you've been comorbidity with ADHD and SNMP. I'm on Adderall at the moment. Okay. It's partly for our listeners. Uh uh a thing that's sometimes a little bit one of the numerous things that's a little bit difficult, the subtleties about ADHD that's kind of difficult to explain to people. In my case, not that anybody cares, but in my case, I my garden variety ADHD as diagnosed and I don't know how it's progressed or changed or whatever, but uh is that I have the most boring, like non-sexy version of ADHD.

Like I don't gamble I don't bone down. I don't do those kinds of risky things. In fact, I'm if anything, I'm probably a little bit risk-averse. But uh my primary problem is not that I can't pay attention to things, it's that I don't do a great job of exercising executive function to focus mindfully on the thing that I would like to focus on or I should focus on or whatever. That used to be my main thing. And I get flustered. And then you end up like maybe like you feel today with less sleep. Like what's the word is one thing it's great to feel relaxed and energetic. You know it's not fun is to feel anxious and exhausted. And and when you have ADHD, you feel anxious and exhausted a lot. But here's a funny thing.

This is the actual thought. Um I don't this is probably obvious, but I think there's really something to, and this this this bumps up against our ChatGPT stuff as well. I think there's really something to uh being able to collapse on a on a problem, a project, and to like really kind of get absorbed in a in a project and you know I think if you have ADHD, there can be something very enervating, something very buoyant about disappearing into a project where you get to follow your nose and make a series of small decisions. and improvements and you know what I'm saying? Like it's I think for people like like you know, or for me with ADHD and procrastination, like, uh, like that's I don't want to do that that uh that big thing.

I don't even know where to begin. I don't even know how to like you know, eat the whole elephant or whatever, or swallow the frog or whatever. And it's like, um Pause, pause. No, there's a book called Eat the Frog. Okay, alright, thank you. And it's it's by I mean, I it's fine. But it's it's you know, it's one of those like Anyway, it's not my it's not my way of dealing with procrastination, uh my more like clinical way, but like I think there's something to that. I'd love to talk about something I did this weekend that perhaps only you would care about, but um Uh from an ADHD standpoint, and I can't speak for other people, unlike some of my friends, I won't project what other people's version of ADHD is or when they grew up.

But um I I do find that Actually, part of the the success of things like Omnifocus and GTD in my life was learning how to turn that liability of mine into, if not a superpower, at least something manageable. And that involved things like breaking projects into pieces and pro applying some uh some somewhat rational rigor. to like, okay, are you really gonna do this guy? Because nobody ever asks themselves that, because they don't need to ask themselves that. Of course they'll do it. That's why that's why that thing sits on your desk for years, just because you're definitely going to do it. You're gonna definitely answer that email, right? All that stuff. Well, like I don't have the luxury. I don't have the luxury of doing that.

Because otherwise then actually n nothing would ever get accomplished. I don't, you know And I I I think a benefit for people who have attention issues or dopamine-related issues is to think about context you can provide for yourself. And again, I'm not trying to turn this into some kind of like article in Teen Vogue or something about like your ADHD superpower. I'm not saying that. It sucks. It really sucks. I wish I didn't have it. But Why not try to in the same way that I would say learn when you have energy in the day and schedule your stuff around that, like like an adult. Oh that's must be nice. Well yeah it is nice. It's called being an adult. It means like if I'm exhausted, I'm not gonna tuck into some new project.

that requires a huge amount of attention up front. I'm gonna try and cut it into morsels where like in the Getting Things Done methodology, you would say I've broken this up into what he calls contexts. which means yeah I've got projects which are goal or things I want to achieve and um the projects have constituent tasks and tasks if I choose to have constituent context which means I've thought about the result that I want which is a big noun, and then I thought about the things I need to do to make that theoretically happen, which is a ton of tiny verbs. And if I make those verbs tiny enough and say where the verbs happen, that gives me a lot of flexibility. and freedom because then I can say classically and I'm just you know paraphrasing David Allen like if if I need to go drill a hole in my house well no matter how much I want to drill that hole if I'm at my office I can't do that So it doesn't make a ton of sense for me to be fretting about that.

And I don't fret about it. I might fret about it that it's taking longer than I wanted, but that's in this other segmented uh compartmentalized area over here. Like, that's I'm not working on that project right now. I'm not working on the these tasks right now. And I don't have access to these contexts right now. Well Is there any project that like particularly like needs a uh a plate spawn on it today? Well what are the little verbs for that? Like I can I can manage that. And I think that that's a that's a healthy way to look at these things and an integrative, not a great word, an integrative approach to figuring out the role technology can have in improving your life. I love old Merlin Man.

Not old Merlin Man. Oh, thank you. No, I I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I uh Oh god, I almost said it. I like the ones where you don't prepare. I uh am really glad that I got more here. I wrote more. My my thoughts on the challenge this week are gonna be all over the map, but I did write down some tech some computer things to talk to you about. This is well, I c kind of connected In in the way my brain works, the whole um just idea God, uh, of progressive uh disclosure and uh this week's challenge. I don't know if we want to talk talk about it yet, but like software is So much of software f uh I mean this in a good way, can be initially a performance uh by the people who made it or the people who use it?

By the people uh well I mean both like but it's by the people who make it. Like when you open um audio hijack for not even the the first time, but like I open audio hijack and it is showing me what I have done in the past and what I can do in the future. Like both of those things are available. It feels like the perfect amount of setting the stage for whatever i is going to happen. And I think the way that Apple does this with the Tips app Which like I I was excited. When I saw that, I'm like, oh, this could be really, really cool. Like the initial you know uh tutorials can be really really good. Just like uh if you have it yeah, it Man, g it gives me a few years. Especially the time and the interest.

I I usually take it when I get a fresh one of those, like I just got one in Things where it pops up and says, Hey, we're ready for twenty six. And I'll usually do a screen grab of that. But like sometimes though you have to find that right mix, right? Like with like versus the sort of turgid onboarding experience in some apps where they're like, well, if we force you to look at these 11 pages, then you'll never bug us for support. And it's like, well no, I just want to go see if your app does the thing I need. So skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. You know, that kind of stuff. But it's it's hard it's hard to get that balance. Don't you think it's hard to get the balance of that right? Yeah, that's why I guess Lane Maxwell should write more documentation for Apple because I wouldn't be against that.

Yeah. You have to know just like you want to know where all the hex codes are. You want to know what brand of mouthwash to put in the guest bedroom. Can't stop thinking about the scope that uh that she puts in there. Why? That's so strange to me. I mean, can't that just be a preference? I don't think it is though. I really don't You think she just buys scope because she thinks it's less less costly? I a little bit. Or that there's something. She doesn't want to waste Jeffrey's money. She or she wants to punish someone because scope isn't It's not it it's if someone out there likes scope, I would love to hear from a scope. I like Listerine personally. Yes. And and you know there's um it punishes me and I deserve it I know.

Well, the first time Uh yes yes. Title. Well, punish my mouth. Uh I sent you uh a screen grab of uh a page that I made a couple weeks ago. Um because I just wanted to have all the stuff I needed in one place. And so I'll mention a couple this is when I was troubleshooting some home stuff centering around uh nano leaf and it's too much to go into. But I'll just mention a couple apps. This I think these are made by the sane p people or person. Um one of them the th so if if you have let me put this way. So if you're sometimes like, ah I'm confused, like what is going on? Why is my stuff being weird in Apple Home? Um Uh not every maybe not everybody needs this. I I I I do think a lot of this stuff is not made to scale up even to like a power user.

Like if you have to do something to a lot of things, there's not easy ways to do that at home. Just think think of like what you have to go through to create a scene. Creating a scene. It is not made for millennial dads, which is a very good thing. There's no dragging. There's not much right-clicking. There's not an escape key. There's not an easy way to select all. I mean I can't believe how many places I'm trying to make myself use fucking Apple Mail. 'Cause I haven't used it since Christ was a corporal and it works everywhere and people like it. Th And I I'm trying to make myself use it, but like there's just all kinds of things that even compared to the Gmail like iOS app, like I I just I feel like my fingers have been like wrapped in duct tape where I'm like like I know if I'm in Gmail on the web I can hit uh I can hit asterisk A.

I have to type it. I can't write it. I type. Asterisk A capital I E. That selects all the email in my inbox, marks it as red, and archives it. Beep boop boop. That's all I did. Just does things. No Medicy. No Medike. There should be a name for that. And it just does all of that. Whereas like, I'm like, oh, how do I tell it that all of these Things that have been sitting outside of my well-filtered how how like like Gmail will let me like unsubscribe with a click right at the top. It finds that for me. Like in Apple Mail, it's like, well Here's lots of stuff. You're like, uh how do I make all of this do something different than what it is? Okay, so first of all, so this company. Um I think this is all by the same person, by the same developer So check out if you're having trouble scaling up your home experience, you might look into an app that I like called, an iOS app called Home Care.

Are you familiar with this app? I no. I'm familiar with the other one, not HomeCare. Yeah, same people. So you know Home Pass? Well I'm doing this. Do you tell people what Home Pass does? Mm, it holds all of your home kit stuff that you like when you need to take a picture of the QR codes. on your nanoleaf and th before you glue it on the wall, it just beats the big thing. or home kit code again. Like someday you will. I mean, unless something goes catastrophically wrong in the next week, and I'm very sorry to hear, like you're gonna need all of those codes again. And you're going to forget if it is. But it's easy enough to handle that onesie-tosie when it's a light bulb. or a light strip or a thermostat or whatever it is, I guess.

Like it's easy enough because you just go, oh I got anything. Beep, I'm done. But like if you've got five, ten, fifteen, fifty of those. Uh that doesn't scale up very well. You're gonna need all that. And go first of all, so this is what it looks like. Uh I I've opened uh home uh home care and you can see here it scans my network and it finds it looks at all of my home kit devices It tests whether the HomeKit hub, which in my case is one of my iPods, I think. Average response time network. It checks your bridges, your devices. You can run through and test your scenes. So if you're having a scene that's not working the way you want, it'll walk you through there's 95 steps in this and I'll show you each step of this.

It'll do the entire thing. And this was um instrumental to me in being able to fix my shit. Because I could I could see like there's fifteen things that aren't showing up. And then you change it. You do it again. Like, okay, and now there's eight things that don't show up. And now there's twenty things that don't show up. And like Having to do that by just hitting a button on your phone at home and waiting is like it's just it's excruciating. You know, um so and yeah, so home pass and uh home care. Uh home pass you put all your stuff in. If you're a big home kit boy, I think that's a good idea. And if you're struggling with some of your home stuff, I think um I think home Home lights is the other one is home lights.

Oh look at that. Ooh, this is something that's answered. There are two, you're thinking of two companies or or at least two people. There's Pier Pierce Media Limited. Uh hey Pierce. Uh he does the home uh Home uh sorry. Home pass and home care different people. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But there's a bunch of there's You're friends with Pierce. Is he related to Greg? Uh huh. There's a uh one that I like, I don't know if you've tried it, but home log that it it it does Something it doesn't do the I don't think you can t oh wait, yes, you can test scenes. Okay, yes, this does something similar, but it's Christ What? I just did a search in spotlight on my phone for home. You do not believe how many apps I have that do this.

I've got home scan, home run, home plus, home dash. Home Assistant, Home Widget, iHome Control, HD Home Run, which of course uh you know, uh scene flow for home kit. I uh I've got a lot of home things. I'm happy at home. Yeah. It's uh it's it you know what? Home kit is great for if you have a trick house or trick apartment, like you just document all of the things. I think I think home oh there's so much Apple stuff that's like There's so much stuff just in general and boy this is so mean. Uh it's perfect for an Airbnb that people you hate stay at. Like that TV and that remote, that'll be fine if you hate the people who stay in your Airbnb. This all all of this stuff, hey you put a lock on the closet, it'll be fine.

Make sure you clean up before you leave. Fucking idiot. Um the but like I I wok I couldn't live with a lot of that kind of stuff. And I mean like I still struggle with this. I was telling Syracuse last night I'm this close to just buying a Hoobs box Because I stopped using Home Assistant a while back, as I explained, because as much as I love what it did via my Synology, uh Home Assistant basically How do you describe it? It's it's part of a if you're not I'm sorry, this is may not be interesting to people, but if you're interested in like how you could bring all the ecosystems together and then exercise ridiculous amounts of control over it There are things like home assistant and hoobs, which is uh like home assistant in a box.

And there's other ones too. There's another one people like who do you spell hoobs? It's like boobs with an H. The okay mm why is it But Home Assistant the idea is whatever you're like Home Assistant it's an open source project Where like instead of just having, oh god, I was talking to John also about Yolink, how where I'm like, I've got so much shit that just doesn't fucking work and it doesn't have a hub. It was easy to buy and shit to use. And I'm more and more inclined to say, like, hey, how about a hub for this? How about a hardware thing that knows what the fuck these things are? Because as dumb as the Hue system has stayed for a while It at least works. And it's got, I mean, I can't figure out that mystery mystery meat bulb I've got, but I'll live.

But like, uh, you know What Home Assistant attempts to do, and I think very successfully does, if you're if you are a nerd, if you are a dork, oh boy, is this ever a project. This is like, I imagine this is the living in-a house version of building Linux from source. Like you get this thing and all it is is just a framework kind of not off, but like it's a pl platform. Okay, now what do we do? Okay. Uh you want me to do all your home kit stuff? Yes, please. Get the right plugin for it, and all of a sudden all your home kit stuff works in Home Assistant. Awesome. What about Amazon stuff? No problem. ring doorbells, whatever. You but then you can also integrate stuff like geolocation via devices.

Like you're not You're not stuck with just, oh, my canary camera turns on when somebody's on the premises. You can get incredibly specific about when this person is in that location this happens. It's not just when somebody's here or gone. You can do you can say like when my kid arrives at their friend's house, do this, if you wanted to. You could do all that. And so it brings all that in. Basically, everything you could ever imagine, you know, you know how open source projects work. Think about like Chrome plugins or Chrome extensions. Anything you could conceivably want to do with your world of the house, there's probably a way to do it in Home Assistant. And I loved it. I was I used it for quite a while at home and at my office in separate instances.

I really I really liked it a lot. But you know what happened? I started using Home Assistant because of the limitations of the Home Kit platform. And because, you know, if if all you ever want to do is stuff with Google and Alexa, everything will work. Like you can get whatever, you can buy something from Pork Shao Mai and install it on your network and it'll work fine I don't know what the company's called. But but you know, if you want it to work with HomeKit, like if you want a camera that works with your HomeKit stuff that's not a Logitech camera. and you want secure video or you don't want to have to pay a subscription fee to UFE to get or whatever. You know, home assistant will do all of that.

And here's the sad thing. I did or the bummer is that I put all that together, I maintained it, I I I love doing it because I have ADHD and that's my kind of project. But it eventually got to where I could no longer tell I keep coming back to Chernobyl and the meter that only goes to three Ronkin. I I I mean I I it got to where it got to where so many things would up I'm gonna phrase this so carefully. It got to be where so many things appeared to be broken altogether or appeared to be working what's worse than broken is it's just sometimes it doesn't work. And if things are relying on other things. It just sometimes doesn't work, and I don't know why. And uh the the I I was like I was like a regular old middle-aged man that just like tears the wires out of his wall because his wife doesn't like him or something.

I just I I had to turn off home assistant and go back to just pure home kit Because I could know everything was so broken I could no longer tell which broken thing was causing which broken thing. And my meter only went to three Rotken. So I I couldn't even tell. You know. They they wouldn't even give us the good meter. And those rods, the rods are going in, baby. I guess it's long enough. They pinned it all on that one guy. He wasn't a very nice guy But you know, I'm not sure. Yeah, but yeah. I uh w I wanna know about the the boobs with the a H, why haven't I heard of the There's I Well, you know what this is? This is adjacent. This is very I feel like this is very and forgive me because I don't know anything about what I'm about to say.

So forgive me in advance. for I have sent. Um this is very related to the Raspberry Pi phenomenon. So in my initial attempt to get home assistant on a on a chip H A O C. Um was my first attempt to do this was through a Raspberry Pi. And oh boy, is that ever a fun hobbyist project that is not how I want to spend my time. Where I got the thing where it's like a computer and a keyboard. I got the two hundred dollar one with the computer and a keyboard and it comes with a little hard drive and you gotta wire stuff together and it's like no thing. You went all in. Oh are you at are you at hoobs. com? I am indeed at Hoobs. com, and it sounds like exactly what everyone should have. And w so so why not?

How how how do it do? Well because there's the thing is and I I I I apologize. This m is this not Home Assistant? Is Home Assistant do I thought Home Assistant was what ran on hoobs. It might might no longer be Home Assistant. But yeah. Uh Google Home. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not like that. Home assistant Um what's the word people use? Uh home assistant alternatives? Why Hoobs is the ultimate smart home solution. I'll s let me send this to you. Because I'm like the okay this this is the promise of home bridge. Home bridge. That that that's a good easy one you can set up. Yeah. I think that's one that a lot of people use. But you know, the thing is like I say, it's uh it's I don't know what what you call this in computers.

I want to call it a platform. And the idea is, well, we made you a platform. And like that's not a thing that, you know, you don't like push a button and platform does thing. Well, people develop things like plugins for that, or they develop the underpinnings closer to the home metal, I guess, that let those things operate together. But once it plays well with home assistant or whatever, once it plays well with that the music just goes around and you hook up you you know you're just hooking cables to cables well to think you know uh metaphorically it's really powerful but it was just a sad it was a bummer for me because I was like Uh, I finally got to where like you know how it is when you have to talk to the lamp and your family's like, what is happening with the house?

And you're like, but it was mostly happening at my office, which was even that was a little frustrating 'cause it wouldn't like stuff like I have automations to turn off fans and things like that. So like now I've got to go find out why the fan didn't turn off and blah da blah. And uh, you know, you You really have to commit it helps to commit to one of these, but even if you commit to one of these systems, you never it outside of home system or or whatever home control stuff. It's difficult to know whether you've made a good long-term decision about how you're gonna be able like Wimo, okay? I bought a ton of Wimo stuff, Belcan Wimo stuff, because it was a great way of having ad hoc. I've recommended it to people, right?

For years. Good Belkin's a good company. And Wimo made these mostly I bought smart plugs. Right? And so you you get it on your thing and you can put it in um Apple Home and stuff like that and it's great. And now you've got a way to control your plugs. you know, without having to like, you know, make a digital lamp or whatever. Um, they just EOL'd, I think, everything they've ever made. Like uh like all your Wimo stuff you bought for your Airbnb. I mean if it still works, Hakuna Matada, but I wouldn't expect a ton of like technical support on that. Oh, is that why my sunlamp isn't oh it could be wrong. Huh. Um crap. I saw some I just saw I wasn't paying attention because I I I've I phased those out for Eve Energies over time Oh shit, dog.

Oh no. Wimo is dead. All support ended. After careful consideration, we difficult decision to end technical support for older WiMO products. Effective genuine. Our amazing journey. By older I mean existent. Mmm well, it's like sunset in this. I was trying so hard to find I've been trying to find um You know, like those energy vampire things, like a killawatt, kill a watt, those things where you can like see what the energy usage of something is. Like I've got one of those on our house that connects up. like through Pacific Gas and Electric so I can see our energy usage at the house level. Whoa. But you can also then have that control if you choose and you get by more hubs. You can also control that down to like the appliance level, but now you're all in the whatever that dingling Emporia, I think the company is V Emporia View, VUE.

You're in their system then I mean, apart from Lutron Caseda, everything else in the world is garbage. Like, I don't but like like so I I looked into these plugs and I was like, I was asking the dingus, like, I like my Eve Energy and it's cool enough. They don't I wish all the data would update without me needing to, you know, go manually update it, but I find it very valuable to have stuff for like, you know, years of data about all kinds of things. I think it's neat. But um I bought these Shelly a company called Shelly. S H E L L Y. Yeah, and I I think somebody contacted me who listens to stuff. Hi hi Shelley friend. Uh and their stuff's the the hardware's pretty good And the software is really trying, but it kind the software really looks like it's from 2009.

It's got it's it's very um What's the name? Scott Forestall. It it's it looks very much like like you're controlling your plugs through like some kind of a bound photo book or something. It's got that weird old everything's got a curve to it and a bezel or a bevel. Anyways. They're all out there and they all do stuff. This is so boring. I'm sorry. I talk too much. I got a burly and a headman. You should maybe I should talk about the afternoon. Shh you should see what I did this weekend. That's really cool. I uh this is not gonna mean a lot to other people, but it means a lot to me. Let me go. I'll just send this to you. Maybe we could talk about it if you think it's interesting but in the repo for this I was able with my friend, the way I spent Saturday was very productive.

And this is this is gonna sound random because it's absolutely random. But I've been thinking about things I would like to do with a project of mine, including making it more, if you like, publishable in one way or another. And I knew A couple things. One is that whatever I eventually publish this project with, I want to use these fancy fonts that I bought from a guy called Matthew Butterick, who's uh my favorite font designer almost. Well he's up there. He's definitely up there. He's a he's a typography lawyer who also makes beautiful typefaces. And I one day I had a bad day and I bought all his typefaces. Shut up. And I've been looking for a place to use them. So what but what are the No, hold on.

No, they were costly, Alex. They were costly. I d oh y yeah, because we don't make me look bad. Please don't make me look bad. I try to want to get by fast. Please don't make me look at it. Oh no, I w I would like to put this in notes because you supported a uh an amazing artist and I don't see the chance. The I don't know then. It's not helping with the people who go see three figures for fonts and think. So anyhow, I knew I wanted to utili What? Not insane thing. I knew I wanted to utilize these fonts. I've been looking for a place to use Valkyrie I've been looking for a way to use uh that uh the Super One. I've been looking for a way to use Concourse. I've been really wanting to use these typefaces.

And but while I was at it, I was also thinking Uh hey, I should update my marked uh style sheets to like have those because I've no I've I've noodled around myself to get it to fake like an okay good. Butterick style sheet. But I wanted to do what I wanted to do was I wanted to figure out Using I I I had ChatGPT generate a multi-markdown file. I said I want a multi-markdown file that uses everyone. you know, extension and functionality of multi-markdown, because I'm gonna use this to like test style sheets. And it made me a really nice, you know, like a specimen, you know. And um and then I I started making style sheets and it vary I said here's marked like this is what the marked starters spreadsheet looks like or um style sheet looks like give me one of these with uh with these typefaces.

Work to treat. Works great. That works great and marked. But then what I was also doing was I also wanted to incorporate a combination of my Zotero bibliography with Pandoc citations. So boy. So that because I it matters to me. Like when I live my main workflow these days, I've turned off Instapaper at this point because it was I don't know whatever. I just send stuff right to Reader. That's all in Reader That's cool. I can find stuff in that pile if I need to. It's not the easiest thing in the world. But if it's a book, then I know I'm gonna want to cite. Or if it's a book that's in my collection that's important. I always put that in Zotero and I've got a Zotero account. It syncs. I use the Zotero.

Zotero, sorry, is a bibliography. uh it's one of your options for creating bibliographies and it plays nice with a ton of stuff including lots of different standards including LaTeX and you know whatever you want to do. So the thing is, like I'm on a page, I'm just looking at something, and I hit the extension in Safari, and that gets added to Zotero. If Zotero's not open, it it sends it to Zotero via the web. Which I think is kind of cool. And then I got all my stuff in the Zotero database. You can have subsets of those. That's really cool. And so by the end of the day, Saturday, I think it was Saturday, what I was able to do was I created a specimen of I I I I basically figured out how to do this Pandoc cite citations thing to get an updated bibliography for whatever it is that I'm working on because I like bibliographies.

Everything's in proper MLA9, it's all formatted, and it all looks great with these beautiful Matthew Butterick fonts. So ever Did I publish a book? No, I did not. But like I got over the hurdle on several technical things in a way that was extremely satisfying to my ADHD. I'll send you a link. Anyway, isn't stuff like that kind of cool? And you can just not kinda cool. It's extremely cool Even though I still can't find where it becomes. The um what I keep I uh someone I think in good faith the other day asked me, um, because I'm doing a lot with LLM stuff now, obviously to people listen is like, but why didn't you just learn how to code? And I'm like Bro, come on. Like that it's such a s that's such a common.

You can understand why somebody would say that, yes? I I d so like uh I'm not putting this well because I don't have sleep, but like that's a that is a common question that like uh you would ask like anyone I think it is a common question that's not a particularly thoughtful question But I do understand why people who program for a living ask it. But no, this person doesn't. Also, this person knows that I am a a nerd. And I'm I'm like I dude I my brain. Let me ask you a different question. I'm really hungry today. I'm really hungry today. I think I'll go get a hot dog. Well, if you really wanted a hot dog, why didn't you become a farmer work in a slaughterhouse and then learn how to produce hot dogs.

And it's like, well, I haven't Because I have to eat different foods at a lot of times and I don't want to commit my life to having to go make one dish that I want a couple times a year. That's ridiculous, but that's ridiculous, but that's when people say that I'm like, because you can put why don't you just in front of anything if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It What what if I what if what what if I don't want programming today? What if I want a hot dog? Or what if I want to know what if I want to know how to do this thing that I don't ever need to know again? Why would I go spend a year learning how to code something that I'm only gonna use once It's so short that part is so short-sighted to me.

It I think I'm I I'm struggling to put this uh this well because I because I love computers so much, I If I could have made hot dogs, I I would. I uh tried very hard in middle school and then in in high school to give yourself an ulcer when you were a child. The no like there's only I could only get so far with objective C and I'm like I I know that this will not make me happy and that I like auto. Oh yeah and then so you pick up the phone, you call that person a year from now and so hey just so you know person who doesn't know me and doesn't really care about my life, I learned a code This we good? Fucking ridiculous. But that I think people are being unintentionally hurtful and still feeling.

They're being unintentionally privileged is what they're being, let's say it I I I well it's not a good thing. Why don't you learn every detail of the thing that I decided to care about? Because that really underscores how important I am. Yes, um I'm like m uh I I just gosh I've I feel Oh God, I'm gonna say I feel so empowered lately and feel less ooh, when I say less alone, it's not cause I'm talking to the chat bot. I it's speaking I do know. I I it's not gonna help. f when you say that, but I totally agree with you. It's it's like I don't need a friend. I need somebody who's better me at uh better than me at stuff I don't know about. And And if they're better than me at stuff I don't know about, even if they're not perfect, guess what?

They're still better than me. And I can still because I am a grown-ass man, I can still go out and check stuff that's important But like what uh if you go look at this directory I'm about to show you like I couldn't I I I probably could have come up with a lot of this on my own with Googling, but I don't think I would have gotten this far along so quickly and made it so integrated into what I'm doing if I was just hacking around and forgot how I did it later. Hello. Okay, now here's the thing. Now don't don't just start clicking around. Follow me, okay? Okay. No just I'm looking at the beautiful structure. Uh please. It's not it's just a lot random. But uh go to third to the last MMD style demo.

Oh yes. Okay, now that that's the that's the document that it produced for me. With and I you can see I tweaked it a little bit with some of Stalgeti, but like that that's the document that it created for me to be able to test my style sheets. And if you but if you scroll down past the stalk and you go to the bottom, look at that uh lava. Sorry, that's you studied French. Um you g you go down to the bottom and um look at that. Huh. That list of citations. That's kinda cool. Where'd that come from, right? And they're all fancy MLA. We'll go back to where we were before and click on MLA. No, that's Oh, this is cool. Well, doereferences. bib and there you'll see that is the output of Zotero. Where I tell Zotera to output the the one I use is a plugin called better.

I don't sorry I don't the names all look the same to me. Bibli is it bibliotech? Text tech bibliography? But you know it's LaTeX meets bibliographies. Um, or as you say latex. And in this case, look at that. Look at that. It's all my citations in like uh like a a JSON-e, not JSON, but you know, in a structured format. That's all pretty cool. Um, two more. Then click on demo. pdf. And you can see this was my first attempt to get something set. in one of those typefaces I like, which I really think looks like a beautiful book from the 50s. That's a that's a I was gonna oh I would uh This is an audio program. So this is the one called Demo. Uh but isn't that pretty? This is I really like this. Okay, and then finally, this is my last thing.

I really like this. And this is good. This is the part where everybody gets mad if if they know how I did this, um click on how to. md. See if you can figure out how I got that. See if you can figure out how I got that. Um I mean Okay, so it's called Pandock. To Zotero to XE LaTeX to MLA nine with the I think it's Zelda, yes. Zelte Uh it's and it's it's the subhead uh the deck, a c a complete reproducible workflow for fonts, styles and troubleshooting. This document shows you how to Collect and verify book data in Zotero in an MLA-ish style, my word. Export a stable dot bib through better bib tech. Um wire Pandoc and Site Proc plus MLA C S Ling together. Produce a clean work site and use Equity as the textface.

Diagnos common. And then just start scrolling down. And guess what this is? Can you can you guess what? Can you guess how can you guess how this got made? Uh your please in great in in great detail, please document everything that we accomplished today and please present it in a way that somebody of my intelligence level could pick this up knowing nothing about it and be able to reproduce it. And you know who that person is, Alex? It's me. Did it induce any psychological? It's me, because it me. Because I want to be able to know how I did this. I don't know what happened. But like I had it spit this out for me. If somebody else wanted to do it, you know, well, I guess you could do it. You know, good luck.

Have fun. But like this is for me. Cause like I spent so long in Uh and it was great. It was a wonderful day. I had a great day. It was very fun. It really was a puzzle piece that fit my brain for that day. But like, you know, by the end of it, I had all this stuff going. I had I uh chat GPT, prompt, BB edit, and notes all open. Oh, the other thing I was gonna say in notes. The the writing thing, I don't use any of the AI writing stuff, but one thing you might want to do is just put a bunch of bullshit into a note and then ask it to organize it for you. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I was yeah. That's the thing I was gonna suggest. But this is the result of like, you know, great success. Like I I did all this stuff.

And it kept would tell me like here's the thing, let's go check to see if this worked. And I would say there was it generated an error. I'd select that line and prompt and say go look and prompt. And it would say, well, here's what that means and how to change that. And sometimes I would yell at it And I would say stop giving me the same bad advice over and over. But um d I mean like again, this is not something that anybody could look at and go, oh, Merlin has a future in any of these fields. Why don't you just learn everything that's involved in this? Why don't you just learn everything that's involved in Yeah, yes. Why don't you learn La Tech from Labotum or Lab, as we say? Wait, wait, wait.

Yeah, yeah, you can hear Ah, they're so cute. Um Oh, oh, hello. That's a big one. It always frightens my dad. A big child or a big noise? But this touches a bunch of stuff. I mean, is this gonna help the wisdom project get quote unquote done? Well, it'll never be done, that's the point. But this touches a bunch of stuff that matters to me. If I'm whatever I make out of this, I would eventually like for it to look good. I would like to find more ways to start integrating. When I say bibliography, that sounds weird, but I I wanna Hold up why? That's a Well, I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a write I'm not an author who like needs to have a works cited list, but I think it's kind of cool. to have a way to know what something is called and have a record of it and to be able to share that with somebody so that they could find it.

But I think the s people m well, an example, uh some of your favorite YouTube people, they provide great uh not just work cited, but sometimes fully formatted bibliographies and I i it's cool and I think it's I think it's cool and I love I love lists but Like let's just I mean there's so many weird things about you, Merlin. This one's But just to gloss over like if you just like just to gloss pat you know over like all all the parts that this touches. Like I used to do CSS I'd I I not don't say this with any pride because I wasn't good at it, but I did that professionally. I was a web developer. Like I I made my bones, like with the the Zeldman book. And, you know, XML and like all like all of that stuff.

Like I I read the fucking Zeldman book and I still couldn't do it, guys. Well like that's here's the thing though, like that and that's that's a real skill. And like if if I needed like military grade CSS title, I I would hire a military grade CSS author and I might hire a different person to do the JavaScript and a di a different person. But like this touches again, this touches um mm, you know, LaTeX and Matthew stuff. This touches Pandoc. This touches like let alone all of like just getting all this stuff installed and like it's that's easy enough, you know, installing it with homebrew or whatever. But like I know just enough to keep each of these things in motion. but I certainly don't know enough to do it all on my own.

I don't know exactly how to deploy which font, like do I use the WAF or the OTF or the what you know, which one of these do you use in these different circumstances And like it's neat though because it touches on a lot of my interests without exhausting all of my resources. Oh well that's that is a very good succinct way to put it. Oh that's I am I'm trying to Yeah, yeah, yes. Well it doesn't have to be that. No, please, please. It sounds it sounds like it sounds like you you didn't sleep much. But like you it sounds like you're a little you're having a tough time, like feeling a little frustrated with the expectations. Uh it it again feels weird to say the word ableism because I do think it is d overused and weaponized in Spanish.

Bad faith. Yeah. It's being it's being insensitive to other uh to that other people have other people are different from you. Other people have different skills and interests and resources than you do. And they other people have made different decisions than you. And none of that stuff makes either of you bad unless you try to turn it into something where one of you has to be bad. Which is I'm finding not a particularly fruitful direction in the discourse. Dinglings talking about Dinglings. talked about and then I always edit it out of of robosm because I get afraid of getting in in trouble. But the thing is when I like why don't you just use Google? I have just been using Google system. Google existed and most of the not most of, but so much of the stuff someone like me wants.

Like really niche queer stuff or really niche health stuff. Uh SEO it's not exactly pushing that to the top. It is difficult to Fine. Even for stuff that seems really straightforward, it's getting pretty hard. And like fine, get get rid of like the the tr trans stuff. The like orphan diseases are a thing people are learning about that I did not know about until the past couple of years. Uh if people don't know it's that's diseases where both parents died? The Yeah, there was a b so when you come out of the You know what Oscar Wilde says Losing what was left the line? Well losing one parent is a tragedy, but losing both feels like carelessness. Um So annoying. Go ahead. What a bit. Um the l like if Google sucks now.

It has sucked for a while, but it's also been difficult even then. It's just it's funny though that like, oh, there's all these people that we uh like and admire and they're they're they're like, why do you use that that terrible thing? Why don't you just use Google and you're like is your Because being taken down and you need to fucking go. Is your experience of Google just vastly better than mine lately? Like why are you so why are you so gay bones for Google over other options and aren't you pr applying a lot of the same critical skills to Google results that you would want to apply to the thing of mind that you don't like? Like I I understand you knew about SEO and were able to make your website visible.

uh on Google a decade ago, but there are things on the internet from a decade ago w that really smart, talented people put there and uh there was no incentive for anybody to see it because uh th obviously and you're talking about like back in the day When like uh finding like queer zines from the nineties, you can still do it, not through Google, and I uh like oh the the web is dead the way No, I have been more successful in finding things and I'm not saying that you this is how you should use uh LLMs, but I have been so much more successful in finding things and finding people and um I know other folks who have who found com community, uh not talking to it, but just being able to do research in uh i in something society doesn't put value on.

Like that is phenomenal. It makes me so happy. It makes a lot of people happy and I just I I mean I don't know I at at this point why it if I think people are I don't know if people are being intentionally hurtful anymore and I don't want to think so. Also people are lonely and so We're all lonely. And one way to find community is agreeing who the folk demon is. And this is this is who our folk demon is now. And we're just we're on the wrong side of history for now. I'm like That's I mean that's kinda I don't just think it's kind of what it is. I mean we're like people who mate. Uh yeah, you don't see it. You can get it if you try. You won't like it, but you'll get it. Well the thing is well what I get you are doing a yes, you are being a just going about a reactionary playbook that you know is wrong, that you've seen how it plays out.

You've had people do it. All those people have had people do this to them and they hated it. Yeah. All these people who are now like very comfortable in this field of technology where they're able to like buy shoes for their kids because they know about computers, like they have a very short memory for the time when they were considered Um a lot of us were a loser and out outsiders. Like in the out group in some ways. An ugly loser and a creep who was lonely on their computer. Yeah, fucking freaks. Hey, there are still people like That was see, what I was saying, what I said was unkind. And I you spoke in general. Now somebody's gonna take that personally, but you can't change that. You know you can also have your Zotero you can have your Zotero upload to Caliber.

The what uh You can have your cow you can have your caliber suck down all your Zotero. I did know th that because you talked about it like a decade ago and that's the only thing that I've used uh Zotero for the U. Uh if you prefer it and if you don't want an app, there's a really good website. It's like Biblio something. But can can I take my last time? Biblio something. One thing, if I just said a thing that made you feel sad, I didn't mean to, and I never want y anyone to feel lonely and like a Fucking weirdo creep on a computer if you're just trying and being happy. All right, I'm off my soapbox, possibly button on the computer. There's nobody today that feels like they're playing offense.

Everybody that I see day to day feels like they are really trying on defense. For a lot of reasons. And that's a sports analogy, just so you know. But like, I guess it could be a war analogy, but that's not how I roll. But like, I think almost everybody who's being a piece of shit th they think they have their they they have their reasons and they feel like they're just trying to defend something. And sometimes that the thing that they're defending is I mean it's a very often extremely laudable goal. Like you think you're defending truth. Like the idea of truth in the midst of all these times with fake news and blah dah da blah, the last thing we need is something that's generating things that aren't pure truth.

I don't agree with that, straw man I just made up, obviously, but I do I think I absolutely understand and I don't think that's a bad person who who thinks that. I think you're a bad person if you exclude the experiences of other people and trying to evaluate whether they're as good as you. And y'all need to fucking knock it off. Because it's a it's a shitty look Everybody you hate has been doing that for years and now you're joining in because you think it's time for you to defend yourself. And like just don't be a piece of shit about something that you don't really need to be a piece of shit about. That's kind of what it comes down to. I feel like I uh I uh it makes me sad, but uh a couple of friends told me that it makes them really scared.

And I'm like, God, people I used to respect. Oh, the reac no, no, no. Uh the reaction of uh how they sound when they say that. And um like it's it's s scary thinking like this uh Because you're because when you say things like that, you're probably closer, folks. You're probably closer to- sound like a reactionary. You're closer than you realize to saying you're you're not a real boy. Yeah. You're closer than you realize when you when you've decided that you have an exclusive contract with the truth. that you're defending. Well, thanks thanks first of all, thanks a lot for defending the truth. That's really cool of you to do that. But um that's the kind of thing uh like a school shooter would want to do when they're 12.

Like you're a grown person. You're a grown person. And like if you don't have the social skills and the amount of contact with people who aren't like you, it's gonna be difficult for you to realize that your attempts to make it with your in-group can also can also make you into perhaps a I'm trying to put this gently could could turn you into a person you never meant to be And when you tell other people that what they're doing is wrong and that they don't understand what the truth is and don't honor the truth in a way that you do, you don't sound that different from a lot of people a few channels over. And uh I think worse, I mean you you might sound like a a dick, but also to frighten the people You're putting you're putting our fucking flexibility to the city.

Come on. But the people you're white nining for, right? Yeah. But uh yeah, it's it's w worse than that. It's it's like Uh uh like no one yeah, I guess just white knighting. I and I uh don't uh Like I just hope the past like all of the just tr the everything from the past like week, I hope folks notice that like all of the uh manipulations of of tr tr truth. It didn't exactly come uh Like the boogeyman wasn't a computer. And that's a really that's a really I see what you're saying. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Like the only the the only uh part I think that uh so far uh generative AI has played in in uh m the many American tragedies we experienced uh every day is really bad meme images and that that really Just very upsetting images.

But you know, everybody it's like farts and poems. Like everybody loves their own and hates everybody else, secretly hates everybody else's. But the But they're not being secretive about it. Are is there anything that you're positive was true a year ago or five years ago? that you're you've been open to changing your mind about and might have even changed your mind about. And maybe in one or two cases you've completely flipped your belief on something. To like, oh, there's this thing I used to think was the truth. And sometimes you can even look back on it and go, oh, I thought that was the truth because I was raised in Ohio. Or I went to school in Florida, or you know, or you know, my my friend's a hippie.

Or like I believed those things and but like Well, I'm I'm avoiding saying the really mean thing, which is when's the last time that you rejected one of your own truths because you learned a better truth or a truer truth? 'Cause if you haven't done that in the last year, you're probably full of shit. Um, because that's what happens. If you really are seeking something called the truth, well, that's that's a journey, not a destination. You don't arrive at truth. If you think you've arrived at truth, well, tell me where you want to go for your 15th birthday Like, you're that is not a something that a grown person says if they're thinking rationally. And it's certainly not something that a well-rounded well read, well learned person says is to just make announcements about what other people are doing wrong because they're hurting the truth And it's it's like, you know, whatever.

I understand. Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit out there and it really sucks. And I it's it's not my day to watch it. Like I can't control any of that. But like all of this friendly fire that is visited upon the people that you are theoretically that you theoretically like or that you have a c in in your community, it's it's oft it's it's often so unnecessary. And I wonder if in a year or so y will some of us will look back on that. Um with the same kind of confidence that we have today. Because we always knew what was true. I've always been right. Everybody else has always been wrong. Whatever it is that I believe today is right and true. And what other people believe can be wrong and can be the opposite of the truth.

Well, why is that? Why is that that my truth is so much more special than this other person's truth? Well, there's only one truth, and that's the truth I get it. Do you want to go to Farrell's for your 11th birthday? You're a grown person. Everybody believes what they believe. And in some cases, they believe their bullshit a lot more than you believe your bullshit. Does that make your bullshit less bullshit or or vice versa? I don't have an opinion on that, but like when you try to piss from the high ground about what other people are doing wrong to to to to build up the carapace around yourself to like develop your own little turtle shell and and be invulnerable. Like you mainly just come off sounding like a very old angry person.

I would hope that people think about what they're certain of in life and what they've always been certain of and just Just make a list, guys, and it'll probably be short. And it's really it's scary and it's I was certain until I was 18 years old. that abortion was murder. I know that this sounds like I'm fucking extra I until I was 18 years old I thought I was going t to hell because of the people I was attracted to. Like fully And I knew again it sounded like a lot of people. But in your certainty about how you felt Or, you know, how you are, if you like. That's the thing. I I your certainty about that also like that just makes those train cars clamp together because you're just as certain about what you've learned for the previous part of your life.

Whether you love every part of it or not, you definitely know the rules. And you've broken the rules with how you are. But I w I wasn't that's the thing, I wasn't certain about how how I was in your back. That was my trick. Like Jimmy Carter. It was the I'm having a crisis of confidence Jimmy Carter said. He quit the Navy. He could he quit a promising career in the Navy. when his father died. He was one of the leading nuclear engineers, or as you say nuclear engineers in the Navy in the in the early fifties, right? He'd come out of the Naval Academy. He was a he was one of the leading um submarine nuclear engineers. And it's g gets confusing because a lot of people say nuclear submarine. You think that means a submarine that has nuclear weapons.

Generally what that means is it's a sub that runs on nuclear power so it doesn't have to come up as often. That's a whole thing. But yeah, his father died. So you hear these stories, oh Jimmy Carter, uh peanut farmer, because he's so fucking stupid and simple. Uh yeah, except he graduated from Annapolis, was an engineer. was one of the had the mo one of the most promising careers in the Navy for a person of his age and he resigned his commission Because he needed to come home for after his father died. And he felt that he needed to, let's put it a different way. Let's put it the real way. He needed to attend. to the unfished unfinished business in his father's life, which included his father's businesses And one of those business happened to be a peanut farm that he owned.

So when we say shit like, oh, uh, Jimmy, Jimmy Carter, fucking peanut farmer, uh, that's another one of those things. That's another thing you're like, oh yeah, read a fucking book Like all I wanted to say, and then I want to talk about music, but all I wanted to say was um we did a very good rec diffs last night, followed by a member segment that I'm so happy about. I I'm I've persuaded John to let me release it as the whole up the put it all out as one episode next week. So I have a lot of work to do on that. But one of the things we talked about, among other things, was Stephen King and his book On Writing. uh which uh is a book that I love and which audio book that I love. And I I I did the the the dorkiest, gayest hat on a hat thing in the world and I read him the segment that Stephen King reads.

From Cormick McCarthy's book Blood Meridian, and we got talking about it. I'll send you a copy. Remind me. Thank you. Yeah, please remind me. Um, but but but here's my point is like so I'm like okay okay scanning scanning scanning and listen listen I bought this I've got hard copies I've got copies okay I've got a hard copy of on writing I've got I bought the audiobook. Anyone mad about that is gone. But it's on Audible. So I went and I got my own copy of the audiobook. Because I wanted to find that and send it I sent that to three people today. I don't know if I sent it to you did I sent it to you? I sent it to Billy and I sent it to Syracusa. Because I said to Billy, hey, just if you're curious, you could upload this to your overcast and listen to it if you don't, you know, if you want something to listen to when you're not reading that book.

And um, because I'm I've persuaded him to take a look at that book. And um And I wanted to send that to Syracusa. So you know what I did? I downloaded the MP3. It's like seven hours and 58 minutes. And again, what are my options? Well I have options. I could go and search by Word in the book app. I could go and like grep it in prompt. But I thought, you know what's even better? Here's a fun thing that lets me learn new things. I took that MP3. Low res piece of shit, you know, audiobook, MP3. And I dropped it on to Mac Whisper and it transcribed eight hours of speech in just over three minutes. Jesus fucking Christ. What the what do you Can you even can you even imagine that? And it's pretty good.

It's like pretty good. And it even got speakers. Like it got that this is Stephen, well, not it didn't say Stephen King, but it would say like, oh, this is there's three speakers in this. There's one speaker who speaks a lot. There's a speaker at the beginning and the end because it's an audiobook. But yeah, that was about three minutes. And then just to make sure it wasn't, as Lockpicking Lawyer says, to show it wasn't a fluke. I did it again and timed it and looked at the logs and it was it's around three minutes for an eight hour audio file. All right, to be computer versed is this an M Four? What the I'm uh I'm on uh M1 Mac. I don't precisely know what any of that means, but I will tell you everything I can.

I will open Mac Whisper. And then we'll talk about music. Um my computer is a Mac Studio from 2022. I have an Apple M One Ultra from 2022. So I mean it doesn't that doesn't mean a ton to me. Um I just I make a b at the point where I'm about to start crying I realize I've spent enough and that's the one I got. And I'm using Parakeet V three. The uh un unfortunately that does it is wild how Apple Silicon works because Parakeet uh basically freaks out on an M1 uh m MacBook um Pro or sorry, MacBook Pro M1 Max. And uh that was like the names are so bad. What? Well, no, it's not you, just the name the names. Like when we're talking about an ATP, like, yeah, it's funny because it's true. Like it's fucking insane that they make a computer called Mac.

the puller of which is Max. And then they also have computers things and phone things that are called Max. But it's spelled different. And maybe I'm not from Long Island, but like I pronounce this pretty much the same way. The Mac m the the The maximum Mac max That's what Mac's got. It's not even you can't even make a joke. It's too that's an it's so it's an M1, so it's an early M series and uh at at kind of the middle range, so it it we're gonna be smart up. It was the highest at the at the time there was M1 uh sorry, there was no uh ultra. Um so It is bonkers great still at um this this was the broken the well touch ID still doesn't work uh but it's still incredibly fast with Any sort of editing and processing of um compression.

But but huge, huge asterisk Apple the an M2 MacBook Air, Mat Maddie has the uh b base model M2 MacBook, maybe like one up of uh RAM. It can transcribe most stuff faster and uh just uh that's just all black arts to me. I don't understand any of that stuff. I don't know what any of those words mean. I don't know what the cores mean. I don't I just it doesn't particularly interest me and like No, no, no. I just meant in the sense of like this just makes my eyes glaze glaze over because I'm like, if you ask me a question about any of that It like it's like think about like the kind of stuff where you could say like, oh, you know, should I watch this show or that show? I pretty feel pretty qualified to wader you in a way where I could to a person where I could say what which one of those I think is better for you.

But all of those words you just said I mean I know about the M series. I know the I uh there's R's and there's there's I guess there's A's. And and John's uh John's John's Mac Pro is now less powerful than iPhone. The yes, that's what is the honestly, that is you put it the single thread. That's kind of all uh Like an animal. I know that's not how he said it, but it can Oh, you're talking about in the original? I mean he said it he He's pretty close to that. Cause he's talking about the Tiva. 'Cause he kinda did he did it a little bit more godfather like like Like an animal I can't do it. No, I sound like I'm a few. Yeah, it was like s a little bit squid rooty and a but with the threatening mob tone.

I'm I'm thinking of like the TiVo from Hyper Critical, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. One of the greats. I might uh might have gotten the wrong guy. Um something I transcribed actually. Oh, and you how many interviews rubber Robert Moses and um and Robert Carrer had together? Two. A lot fewer. Then he kicked him out of his office. He made him look at a map, look out a window, and kicked him out and said, We're done here. It's now you you buy me lunch, he said. Buy me lunch and I'm gonna eat my car. I'm gonna eat my car. Buy me lunch. I love my car Did you oh did you listen to the Robert Carrow book on writing? It's not called on writing, but it is a No, I've got the I've got the bookie I've got the ebook of that, but I haven't read it yet.

Um I did watch the documentary about him and his editor one time. Oh, uh, Pro Keros had the same editor for a really long time. And they have a very special limit. And that guy's a really big deal in the world of editing. Like, you know, Robert Carey's a big deal in the world of, you know, history and biography, but his editor is really big in the world of editing. What one of those behind the scenes kind of people. I uh uh we have linked to this twice before and I still haven't seen it. That's how I know that I should really go see something. Thank you bases. Uh weapons. Cracker Oh it took twenty hours to download the uh file you sent me and it was worth Everyone's gonna be a little bit more than a little bit.

I'm sorry it took so long. No, no, no, no. Oh my god, I I those open I'm again those opening sequences with the kids on the streets, those the w that I'm always I'll always remember the rain, like the s the like shiny streets Oh my god. Yes. And I am That was Amy Madigan. That was fucking y you're not gonna know Amy Madigan, because you're not old enough to know. But w w uh uh Marge, Madge, Gladys Uh uh crap, yes, yes. Oh my god. She's like an actress. Mm-hmm Well I mean this is one of those crazy roles. This is this is one of those like you've got to be fucking kidding me. Where like once Madeline told me, I was like, oh well of course I see it in her eyes. But The the first time I saw her on screen, it was just in a dream.

Uh well it I I wait, I should say The first time I realized I yeah, the first time I realized I had seen her on screen, I was like, oh, oh, oh no, I hate I hate that. Oh my god Oh, I don't like the dreams. I really don't like the dreams. I spent like uh twenty minutes thinking what's a Good challenge involving weapons because I just want Merlin to talk about weapons for as long as he wants. I wanna I'm gonna spread the gospel on this. I'm gonna get the word out of it. Yeah, it's crazy. What do you guys what are you doing this weekend? Oh I got a Krager Kegger. I'm gonna do a Craig's stand. I think that's a joke that he would uh make, or at least Trevor Moore would make. I just like his work. I don't need to be his friend.

Um I didn't s I didn't s I don't know if he'd want to be your f your friend Do you didn't think the PCP the I'll be probably pretty busy. Did you see the uh did you ever watch the P PCP sketch from Whiteest Kids You Know? Nope. All right. Well Is it about Donald Trump? You know what I'm not gonna um I'm sure it's very funny. I'm sure it's very funny. I like I like to laugh. I like comedy. Love to laugh. Do you want to do that? I laugh more than you. That's not true. Oh well, I mean I I laugh legitimately more than you. You giggle nervously more than I do. You often don't understand what you're laughing at, which I think is one reason people love you Uh the uh yes, but I don't try to hide that.

When the not knowing or the laughing. Okay, good. I uh no no no. I I uh See this I'm not gonna hide the nervous laughter of what I'm not sure then I'll like wait wait Did I stick it? It's been an hour and thirty-seven minutes. Uh is it fine fine live music you like? What do you what what what do you call the challenge? I called it share your f favorite live performances, I think. Oh I worded it. And then I I believe I texted you, uh, or however you want to oh we I was mainly asking for the voiceover part. Um I uh uh d just wanted to uh Ask you. Well, I I started because I told you I had this list I made on YouTube because I'm always going on, you know, I'm always talking about music. And I realized at one point that I think this is how it kind of started, was I realized at some point that like I'm forever Trying to get somebody to look at me for a minute and like pay attention to something that's not other things.

And like, hey, check this out. Like this performance of A quick one by the Who from the what's it from? Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus circa 1968. I think it's one of the greatest rock performances of all time. I think Talking Heads live in Rome in 1980, the entire show is one of the greatest rock performances of all time. And then like I started thinking, like, wait a minute, you know, actually I I've got a lot of these. And what's funny is like I it still keeps occurring to me that there's other ones I I I don't say should, but certainly could put on the list. It didn't occur to me till this morning. when I was singing listening to Queen and singing Queen songs, um, I don't know I don't have any Queen on that list, which is crazy.

But yeah, the idea the idea was Merlin's uh Gabe Bones from Music and these are a bunch of live live performances that he thinks are good. And I think part of the interest you you wanted to talk about like what it is that makes for a good live performance. Yes, I thought that this would be uh i i easy because I'm like I uh have a lot of uh l live performances of um mm Not not just music, or rather I I thought from your play this like, ah yes, music this will be easy. And uh I do have a list of some of my favorites, but I started to be like, why exactly are these why do I like these. What makes these memorable to me or what makes these special to me, right? Yeah. And for most other forms of I I guess art or f like the more I thought about it, most other performances, I can kind of talk about in some semblance of a coherent o way.

Bailing out. Um the I I know why I like it. And for for this, uh, you know, I'm I'm just all o over the place. And the only thing I can um Yeah, uh so like l my probably my favorite band, uh Ludo, a s a small like pop uh uh indie pop band from St. Louis. Um they uh I I don't know, they were uh like really formative high school year uh obviously um But they now per do one performance once a year um on Halloween. That's special. Just to Yeah, and um I was going back in and uh twenty twenty two, the Ludo Wien concert where they played all of Broken Bride as w which is their rock opera, and then an entire second uh an entire second concert of like their m normal stuff. Uh one of the things that's a little bit more than a little bit of a luckily.

It was And they'll cover a whole album or something, I think. They're a really good band. Yeah. And that's uh been kind of a uh so but here here's why it felt different. That's kind of been like a another Midwestern emo trend lately of as the ten, fifteen, twenty year anniversaries of a lot of formative albums like Jimmy Eatworld's Clarity, they'll come and play the whole album, which is k usually pretty good. Yeah, yeah, because they're and like you can you can like kind of like Cheap Trick did that. I think Weezer's done that where you can like sort of like I hate to say sell it, but you can sell it as like, hey, you know that album you loved when you were fifteen, we're gonna play it all the way through.

Yeah, and it is So here's what I started like a g I'm going through my list uh and most of my favorite concerts, whether it be uh or uh like per performances, whether it be something I took on my iPhone illegally at the Metro in Chicago uh twenty years ago or um a Green Day Stadium concert and and from Chapel Rhone just earlier this year at Lollapalooza All of those people aren't just having fun, but they are putting on a show the same In a uh when I say theatrical, I I mean they are like putting I don't even want to say it like that because yes, there is a lot of spectacle to um the stuff I in enjoy, like uh weir I love the weird burlesque stuff that, you know Panic at the disco. Oh, and that uh My Chemical Romance dude.

Like love the weird ass pageantry uh stuff, but they all um Like I love when they put so much care into a set list. And uh even when it's something like really like if it's a basement show and Uh like even some of the basement shows I've been to, i it's you can tell when someone has really thought of their uh as We've talked about, but not exactly the same thing. They're they're on stage versus their their offstage of like, hey, we are uh yeah uh Yes, th thank you. Like, okay, I'm I am drinking uh PBR and now I am like across the uh threshold of gaff tape and I am putting something I'm showing you something special. that I made. And I'm not I'm not saying that like, you know, ha hanging out and um like playing songs from your uh fr I'm chicken problem thing.

I'm sorry. Uh this is my personal opinion of the things I like is when someone puts together something that they really care about and you can uh and it's successful. That's I know that that doesn't sound Like that sounds d uh obvious, but I didn't realize just a- I think it's cool. I mean somebody I've all I'm often saying that even with my dumb playlist is like, hey, I'm here's the thing I made for you. And a band can do that too. With like, hey, here's a little here's a special thing I made just for you. Yeah, and I I literally want you I hope you will like it. Yeah, I I literally found a performance from a um my high school talent show that a my f friends did like a tiny little set and they just put so much care into like how they transitioned between those four songs if you know and I'm like Damn, that was really special.

And I rem it was a high school fucking talent show and I remember the other bands that played. So uh that that's all I got. And then I had a fun time um watching uh in in defense of Green Day. Um they I I've seen uh um um I've seen uh other than the mountain goats because I only listen to the mountain goats, I think I've probably seen well Ludo Mountain Goats. I don't know, I've seen Green Day like five five times. Um and they're the only like stadium sort of band uh like band band I've s seen. Um but uh that is a full on spectacle. And they And and they're they're probably so good at their material at this point and all the stuff you're talking about, like set lists, all of that, like knowing what what makes people happy.

Like they they they probably they're probably really on top of that. And I bet they're more grateful than they've ever been that it all is together. Yeah, which is just wild. Like uh we was watching um a uh uh a video from two thousand and and four. Um of the Amer uh the American Idiot tour and uh then they you know, there were other uh shows shows in between and then they brought it uh back and the God, the production design that goes into this stuff, like if it uh God, I just think about what Taylor Swift has to do on a fucking Yeah, and and like God, watching this fifty-year-old man run a back and cross this huge stage like all for two hours and it was and now he he has to sit down uh in the like revamped.

ver version, which I thought was like very s sweet. Like there's uh a longer solo for the bassist so that he can sit and drink more the front man can sit and drink more water. And I I I don't know, like, but it's it it was just uh I like when there are uh acts to those stadium shows as as well. And uh I I don't know. Um Really appro he's shading Taylor Swift today now, huh? That and that's all I got. I think it's really good had a good morning. Uh for my channel. I just just go look at my list, people. Like it's that's whatever. I can't tell though. What what to you makes these I I I I I don't This is not directed at you. I don't think it's interesting or fruitful to intellectualize things like this.

But I will do my best. I'm gonna send you this is the link to mine if you want to put it in notes. Um I thought about it a little bit. Uh I don't I mean this is a part of my life that doesn't need intellectualization. It's fine the way it is. I mean, it's like it's like overthinking an orgasm. Like if that makes it better for you, do it. But like whatever it is, like, you know, there's just certain kinds of things that are special and like I don't I don't think need to be turned into something that people who don't fucking care about it could be made to understand Here's the things I think about. The really obvious one, a live show. Um, you know, sometimes just just the band is tight. They're really Like they're a good band and in the case of something like this, I don't even know how to describe this as somebody who's from outside of this community, but like this one on the list, uh the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard performance of Iron Long on KEXP is just I I can't even tell you how many does literally like dozens of times I've watched it like dozens and dozens of times and it's it's a 10 minute song Because as somebody who used to play in a band, that that that I'm not saying that to like trans like a celebrity.

I don't mean it that way. I mean it when I say playing in a band, I mean I was in I've been in school bands since elementary school. I've been in choir at church. Like when I was a kid, I was uh in choir. I learned to play guitar and I played in those kinds of bands. But more than anything else, I'm a fan of music. None of this would mean anything to me if I weren't a fan of music. But like having played in bands, the the the thing that's so special, the spark I want to pass on to somebody else who's played in a band is look at the shit these guys just pulled off here. Look at the incredible thing that they just did here. And like there's some kinds of performances where the more you watch it, and again, this is just all into the ages of, hey, they're a good band.

That's a tight show. But it's more like look at it. There's one of these on this list, Bebop Deluxe Made in Heaven, that song. Um it's pretty far down. It's right above B52s. Um I Uh something I I I've watched this one dozens of times too, and it may not be a cup of tea, but what I want you to notice, this song starts out with this very distinctive. whammy bar flourish, you know, a vibrato bar, it's like bow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow bow one gets it's a thro it's power trio right you gotta Guitar player, yeah, bass player god drummer. A really inadvisably huge amount of whammy bar for 1975. And you can barely see it, you're gonna have to watch it several times to catch it. Guitar But before the the singing has even begun, the guitar player breaks a string.

And what his guitar figure his guitar figures are fucking crazy. They're the basis of the song. Plus he's gotta sing. And now on top of it all, he has to readjust his fingerings around the fact that one of his strings broke. And nobody would notice that. Like in a million years, you never notice that, right? Because he does a really good job with it. But like once you have noticed that The the the the b bill from uh Bebop Deluxe Brook String at the beginning of this song on like UK television You're like you can lock into this like the rest of the song is becomes even more miraculous. So that's one of the kinds of things where and that gets us to the second thing. The first thing is like, yeah, it's you know it could be just like it's a really tight performance or an impassioned performance or whatever.

Um but then the the other one is like like what is it about this that makes this performance special? Which is be is really ineffable. It's really hard to put your finger on. Maybe it was just kind of like the right night. I'm gonna deintellectualize this a little bit. It helps a lot that it's music you like or it's music that like thrills you or whatever, but Sometimes you get to listen to a band at the height of their powers, and they don't know. they're at the height of their powers. We know that because we've had 20, 30, 60 years to look back on something. But for my sensibilities, I like a lot, I like a lot of talking heads. But to me, talking heads in Rome, like touring around like a I think it was it was probably it was before uh their famous album, but it was like After Fear of Music.

It's when they had done like the uh you know there was like the e Zimbra era with Adrian Balou on guitar. Oh sorry, what you okay Yes, uh it's on the list. Uh there we go, yes. Um and like I just they're one of my all-time favorite bands. I mean I like stuff on burning or on um burning down the house is on whatever that 82, 83 record is. Speaking in tongues. I really like some stuff on speaking in tongues. And I really like some stuff after that. But up through Remain and Light is my stuff. Like particularly more songs about building in food building some food through Remain and Light, but especially those Eno Those Eno records and the ones that Adrian Bellew, my one of my favorite guitarists, played on.

Adrian Blue is with them in Rome, playing live on this, doing the most if you just listened to Adrian Blue, what the fuck is he doing on guitar? But then you're like, oh yeah, yeah, you know who that guy is? You might have heard something he did. It goes like this. If you've ever heard Genius of Love or the Mariah Carey song fantasy, that's Adrian Ballou. He's a rich man because he got sampled on fantasy by uh Mariah Carey and didn't even realize it for years. But that's Adrian Bellew. Uh just uh and you can go back and you can watch Adrian Bellew with Bowie uh in the 70s when he's talking about this young man he's a young man from you know georgia or whatever. But seeing all those people together and then you've also got Bernie Worrell.

from P Funk is there. You've got um I'm sorry it's escaping the w the name of the woman, African American woman who's singing with them. Um but like you know I I do you know talking heads much? Ye not that I would note the African American. Oh no, no, but I mean it's not like the Zimbra. And she sing along and like and fucking David Byrne? You ready for this? He's a really good guitar player. He's and like the thing is like when we think of good guitar players, we think of Eddie Van Halen and I have him playing Unchained here. But when we think of good guitar players, we think of like the spoodly-doodly, like um wanky, you know, solos and stuff, and I love that stuff. I mean absolutely I love that stuff, but Boy, not few things are more satisfying than watching a good rhythm guitar player.

And if you watch Talking Heads live in Rome in 1980, you're gonna see three of the greatest living rhythm guitarists playing on stage together. David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, and um Adrian Balou. And you're gonna see all this other stuff too. So yeah, it's it's good. You like the song, whatever, blah. But it's also And and it's I'm not trying to make this like overly fucking magical because like I don't know if this version of Suffer for Fashion is technically of Montreal at the height of their powers. But did you watch that? Have you watched that Suffer for Fashion of Montreal show? No. Okay, so just watch that like like we're out on break. For example, it's just an example though. Like I just really like that song.

A lot of people you you you're not gonna believe what you guys know of Montreal from Um, because it seems like a fever dream or a barenstein bear, but uh they had a song in an Outback Steakhouse commercial with lyrics that had been rewritten for Outback Steakhouse. But the other reason you might know of Montreal is their music is featured heavily in the wonderful documentary The September issue about making Vogue magazine with Anna Wintour. Um, but they're just a really fun, queer band from um the sort of elephant six stuff area. I mean they're kind of like adjacent to Neutron Milk Hotel and stuff like that. And they were they were a big part of like their album um Their ear early couple albums where I imprinted on of Montreal were very much in the style of like um Elephant Six.

But like just go and watch that. And like first of all, it opens with this amazing drumming. Like, and you're watching, you're watching, watching, and you're just like, oh my god, it's building and it's building, it's building. And just Go look at the the Asian guy singing back up. I just I want to be in this band. I want to like I just want to be in the energy of of Montreal playing uh Suffer for Fashion. You know, we we suffer for fashion or whatever. Um I think that's another part of it. And then sometimes it's just sh like it's it's just the the best you've ever heard of this. This Leah Salonga is my favorite version of On My Own. Raul Sparza is my favorite version of Being Alive. Um, this live version of fucking common people, pulp's common people at Glastonbury is in nineteen ninety-five, is I think justifiably very famous.

And then there's some shit like just fucking Rock Pile, just being uh the most amazing live rock, solid rock band you've ever seen. Foo Fighters playing on Letterman's last show. I like I just cry watching because they play over the montage of David Letterman's career. They play Everlong over for like the fourth time on his show. Play it over a montage of Dave's career. And I grew up with that. I've watched it so many times. Oh my god. So I don't know. I don't I don't have an intellectual uh basis for this except like I I I may not know art, but I know what I like. But like sometimes you you just like oh this one's a little bit special. I'll tell you another one. Uh sorry, uh REM, that REM doing harbor coat.

Um, that is to my taste, this is not a fact, it's a an opinion, that is REM at the height of their powers. That is my REM at the heart of heart at the height of their powers. The art what I like best about REM is on that stage when they're playing Harpercoat, which is my front my one of my favorite songs from my favorite REM album. when he had long hair and they were like still like my absolute favorite band. They crowded up to Lennon with their noses worn off. Handshake is worthy, but it's all that you've got. It's um they crowded up to Lennon with their noses worn off. What a great way to begin your second album. Oh my gosh. Um but then you go and you listen to it and like, I don't know. So I I don't want to overintalize this.

Uh Broken Social Scene 74 Shoreline on Conan. Uh this one goes on and off the internet sometimes, but like it's my favorite version of this song. And it's also just frankly just super fucking sexy because it's all these Canadian people playing amazing rock music in 7-4 time. But it's also got you got you got Leslie Feist uh and you've got um Ah Metrix Singer is named The blonde girl from Mexico. No, I'm not gonna google it. Um why don't you just uh no um uh I know her name, but I just don't know it. Uh the the girl from um, you know Uh Chendo, you know dun dun dun dun You know so she she she did the Scott Pilgrim song, Emily, Emily Oh Emily, yeah, you're right. Uh Emily Metric, yes. They did all they did all the song bunch of the song not well I mean Beck did a bunch too, but they did some they did like the um you know, that song that uh And the Adams sings, that's metric.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Anyways, um so that's the name of that tune. Sutton Foster performing show-off. Very good. Oh my god, this version of Candy's Room, Bruce Springsteen, the last third of that song just peels the fucking paint. Jesus Christ, rock music's good. Oh yeah, that was really intellectual and not you just sharing the b good parts of what you like of the way that you expressed it. You express encouragement for me by making fun of me, which is a novel approach. Uh no, I'm s I I might have sounded sarcastic, but I No, you were absolutely very sarcastic. Uh the But I appreciate the support, even though it comes in the way that it does I don't like the way I come sometimes. You watch Duck Soup?

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