Alex Cox joins the crew to talk about mental health, Raspberry Pi, the New York Times, and some awesome Grapptitude picks for the week.

Sponsor

Notion

Notion AI can now give you instant answers to your questions, using information from across your wiki, projects, docs and meeting notes. Try Notion AI for free when you go to Notion.com/overtired.

Aroundsquare

Find your next beautiful, unusual, functional item for the mind and body at Aroundsquare. Use the code OVERTIRED at checkout for 15% off.

Show Links

341

• Haptic
• Support Alex Cox on Patreon | Haptic: Reaching Out to the Human Side of Tech
• Do By Friday
• Chronicling – Track Anything on the App Store
• Faust’s Gold
• Blitzed
• swift-queer.html">Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do (NYT)
• Cicada Mania
• Daytum
• Screens 5
• BBEdit 15
• Chronicling

Join the Conversation

• Come chat on Discord!
• Twitter/ovrtrd
• Instagram/ovrtrd
• Youtube
• Get the Newsletter

Thanks!

You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network

BackBeat Media Podcast Network

Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Transcript

Mental Health Overtime with Alex Cox

[00:00:00] Brett: This episode is brought

[00:00:05] Brett: to you by Notion.

[00:00:07] Introduction to the Season Premier

[00:00:07] Jeff: Hello, everybody. This is Overtired. This is Overtired, the podcast you’ve been waiting for all year. And here we are. This is episode 341. I don’t know what it’s called yet, but I’m here with Christina. Hello, Christina.

[00:00:22] Christina: Happy New Year.

[00:00:24] Jeff: Christina Warren, for those of you who are joining for the first time because you needed something new this year.

[00:00:29] Jeff: Uh, Brett Terpstra, hi.

[00:00:31] Brett: Yo,

[00:00:32] Jeff: And we are starting 2024 with the amazing Alex Cox. I’m so excited about this. Hello, Alex. Amazing!

[00:00:41] Alex: qualifiers on how you define amazing, but so happy here on the season premiere of Overtired.

[00:00:50] Christina: Yes. Yes.

[00:00:51] Jeff: premiere! Oh yeah, let’s make it a season premiere. Is it episode 400 because

[00:00:55] Jeff: way that only we do our episode numbers? We juke stats! We juke [00:01:00] the stats, as they used to say in The Wire. Alex, host of, host of, co host of the podcast, uh, Dubai Friday, and, um, and haptic. fm. I listened to Dubai Friday, about three episodes, just to get ready for this, um, thing, and I really love that

[00:01:15] Alex: Oh, I apologize. Oh, goodness, goodness

[00:01:18] The Appeal of Conversational Podcasts

[00:01:18] Jeff: much. Do you know what it reminds me of? One of the earliest, the first podcast I listened to, I actually listened to it in order to write this article about podcasts for a magazine, uh, way, way, way, way back, and it was the Don and Drew show,

[00:01:31] Christina: my god,

[00:01:31] Alex: Oh yeah.

[00:01:33] Jeff: it this couple, was this couple in their barn, I think, and I think in Illinois, um, and they were really, um, Fucking funny.

[00:01:42] Jeff: And the whole podcast was just the two of them talking to each other. And I remember being like this format I love. And to this day, I way prefer two people bullshitting to something super produced and beautiful, like a radio lab or anything else. Not to diss any of that. It’s an [00:02:00] amazing amount of work, but it’s like public access TV, man, but it’s just a little bit better.

[00:02:04] Brett: How about four people bullshitting?

[00:02:06] Jeff: Four people bullshitting is great.

[00:02:08] Alex: my sweet spot is always the number three, so I’m absolutely ruining your season premiere. But I think with the amount Merlin talks, we kind of even out three people.

[00:02:21] Jeff: Also, four people is fun, because it’s like bumper cars. and I kind of that. So welcome.

[00:02:28] Alex: I’m so glad that I get to be here. Thank you so much.

[00:02:31] Jeff: Thank you. Well, should we? Let’s do this. What are we doing? We doing some mental health? Corner? Who wants to go to the corner?

[00:02:38] Brett: our format. That’s our, that’s our formula.

[00:02:43] Alex: I

[00:02:44] Jeff: we can refresh. What is Mental Health Corner, Brett? Hit it.

[00:02:47] Mental Health Corner (Part 1)

[00:02:47] Brett: Okay, um, what is Mental Health Corner? Mental Health Corner is three and sometimes four people describing where they’re at and what they’ve been through in the last week. In this [00:03:00] case, like the last month, it’s been a while. Um, but, uh, just like, uh, it’s a check in.

[00:03:06] Brett: It’s a, it’s a way to, I don’t know, like, I feel like we learn a lot. I get a lot of email from listeners and the one thing they always mention is the mental health corner. Like people find something they can identify with. Between all of us and our various diagnoses, uh, we, we actually relate to a large portion of our potential listeners.

[00:03:32] Brett: So,

[00:03:33] Jeff: and I think beautifully, no pressure, no expectation. Like early in the podcast, Brett and I would be talking and he’d be like, you should talk about this on the show. And I’d be like, no, or he’d be like, you should talk about this on the show. I’d be oh yeah, maybe. so, uh, there’s no pressure to do anything at length or be any kind of level of vulnerable.

[00:03:50] Jeff: It’s just, uh, it’s the corner, man. It’s a little place.

[00:03:52] Complex PTSD and Religious Trauma Syndrome

[00:03:52] Brett: corner. Um, so, I’ll kick it off if that’s cool, um, I have realized that, [00:04:00] uh, my CPTSD, um, one of the symptoms of that is black and white thinking, where I need, I need everything to be true or false, black or white, good or bad, evil or, or beneficial, and I don’t Okay, so, it’s, intellectually, I can, I can find the gray areas, and I can live in the gray areas, and like, my favorite TV characters are not good or evil, they are complex characters with, with justifications and reasons and history and background, and intellectually, I love that, but I find that In, like, an argument or in even like a simple debate, um, I need all the evidence to either send me to the right or to the left.

[00:04:51] Brett: To the black or to the white. And I’m constantly this two dimensional scale. I’m like, okay, now I believe this. Okay. Now I believe this. I’m willing to change my mind, [00:05:00] but it’s a binary and that’s not super productive, especially when you are partnered up with an autistic person who literally everything is great to them.

[00:05:11] Brett: Um, and before they can say, oh, that’s a great idea, or that’s a bad idea. They have so many questions and like, I want to start the conversation with. That’s a great idea. And here are the potential problems we might run into, but they want to start the conversation with, okay, so here’s, here’s what I see as potential issues and before I can tell you, this is a good idea, we need to solve these problems and I have this very bulldozer mentality, like if I’m faced with a problem, whether it’s a coding challenge or a work challenge or just something I want to do in my life, I just go.

[00:05:51] Brett: And I deal with problems as they come up. I solve things on the way. Half the time I end up going back to the beginning and starting over with new information. And [00:06:00] that’s fine by me. Like, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna think about it. I don’t wanna plan. I just wanna attack it head on. Um, which is Kind of stupid, um, for, for most people, but it works for me, but it all comes back to this idea of like not being able to exist in gray areas emotionally.

[00:06:21] Brett: So that’s what I’ve learned in this last month.

[00:06:25] Jeff: And CPTSD, CPTSD is Complex

[00:06:29] Brett: Complex Post Traumatic Stress

[00:06:32] Jeff: I feel like is still a term that’s only becoming familiar.

[00:06:36] Brett: and it’s not in the DSM. Like, uh, my diagnosis is PTSD, um, but the kind of like sub genre. Of that is complex PTSD as a result of religious trauma syndrome?

[00:06:49] Alex: RTS, RTS isn’t in the DSM either, right? Because that’s something that, you know, both, I think it’s being recognized, obviously, [00:07:00] in the, quote, professional, psychiatric psychological community, but Also, uh, like you and other folks I know have both the, mostly tra trans folks or folks similar to you, Brett, who grew up in that environment, and I just really applaud the folks who are coming o forward, coming forward sounds like a very, I don’t know, like a gross term, but just talking about it in a way that makes sense.

[00:07:30] Alex: unfortunately, is needed to validate it to, again, quote, professionals. And

[00:07:37] Brett: Right.

[00:07:38] Alex: thank you for sharing that because I, do you think that’s also like a byproduct of bipolar stuff? You’re still diagnosed with

[00:07:48] Brett: Vice versa. Yeah. I’m diagnosed

[00:07:50] Alex: I was curious.

[00:07:51] Brett: But bipolar is a symptom of CPTSD. Emotional dysregulation a symptom of CP as are [00:08:00] attention disorders. Um, like this all comes like my and like I said, in the DSM, I’m just PTSD. And, like, that can explain all of my other various diagnoses. So, even though that’s the one I got the most recently, it’s also the one that I feel is at the root of everything else I’m diagnosed with.

[00:08:21] Brett: Uh, which is quite the trip. When you, you, like, live your life believing, I am this, I am this, and I am this. These are my diagnoses. These are what are, uh, what, what the medical professionals have labeled me as. And then to find out, oh shit, this is all This is all stemming from a problem I didn’t realize I had until I was 45.

[00:08:44] Finding the Right Psychiatrist

[00:08:44] Alex: Yeah. I always find that sort of unhinged and shocking, the way that it’s, our diagnoses are often pushed on us in such a binary, and the reason I’ve stayed with [00:09:00] My psychiatrist of, uh, ten years. I switch, like, therapists the way I switch underwear, but which is often, I clarify,

[00:09:09] Jeff: you mean switch

[00:09:10] Christina: I was say, that lot of

[00:09:11] Jeff: you change underwear?

[00:09:12] Alex: just, yeah, just not, not so much the, uh, I suppose the, I don’t know, this only show where I would say that, say that, a lot, but I’ve been with the same psychiatrist for, gosh, like, almost fifteen years because his whole Yeah.

[00:09:29] Alex: Methodology, which is wild for a white guy in the suburbs of DuPage County, which is in Illinois, to be like, Alright, yes, you are bipolar, you’ve been misdiagnosed as depressed because people see you as a teenage girl, and these antidepressants clearly are bad for you, but let’s not label that, let’s treat the symptoms.

[00:09:57] Alex: rather than pinning down a diagnosis. [00:10:00] And that’s stuck with me, but I have seen it go the opposite way for so many folks, and I understand, like, gosh, I understand, I think, how difficult that must be because of, like, other binary terms that have been prescribed. So again, thank you so much for sharing this.

[00:10:19] Alex: I know you did on another episode, but I wanted you to explain what PTSD was again.

[00:10:25] Jeff: a big deal.

[00:10:26] Christina: It is a big deal and, and I, I, I, um, I completely relate to you, Alex. I’ve had the same psychiatrist actually for more than 20 years and when he retires or dies and, and I’m not trying to be like, uh, morbid here, but like he’s in his, he’s in his seventies. So, you know, uh, he’s at some point, I, you know, I’m, I’m hoping that he will be active until, you know, he just keels over, but like, I don’t have 20 more years with this guy and I’m.

[00:10:54] Christina: I’m like terrified of that because I’m like this is literally, uh, he’s, he’s unique in that he is a psychiatrist that will [00:11:00] also do, uh, therapy and he, and he listens and, and I, uh, for, for a white guy from the South, despite like we don’t share a lot of the same political opinions, that doesn’t matter.

[00:11:10] Christina: He’s very open minded about different treatments.

[00:11:20] Christina: It’s, it’s a, it’s a stressor to even think about, okay, like, where would I even go to start to find someone else? Right. Because, and, and, and I’m in a very fortunate position where for me, money’s not even part of that because he doesn’t accept insurance anyway. So I haven’t had, you know, like, you know, so, so I don’t even care like, oh, well, who does your insurance cover?

[00:11:36] Christina: I’m like, that’s. That’s not part of the equation here. It’s like, how do I find somebody? How long do I have to get in? Because when I started seeing him, you know, 20 years ago, I was, uh, my, because my previous psychiatrist had, uh, was hired by an insurance company. Um, uh, and I loved Dr. Baker. Dr. Baker was Great.

[00:11:55] Christina: And he was the first one that I’d found, I think after like five or six attempts when I was a, you know, starting when I was like 13 or [00:12:00] 14, um, when, um, he left private practice, I was on a wait list to get into my current, uh, psychiatrist for months. It was the better part of a year. So I’m like, and I had this guy that I used to just call Dr.

[00:12:15] Christina: Kevorkian, who would just basically like write me a script.

[00:12:18] Jeff: Friend of the

[00:12:19] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I, that, that, that, that’s literally like what called in my live journal. I was yep. Saw Dr. Kavorkian today. You know, got, got script for, for my, for my stuff. You know, just completely just, so yeah.

[00:12:31] Christina: When you find those people, it’s, it’s important, but it can also be really distressing to your earlier point when, you know, we, we don’t get diagnosed with the right things because of certain characteristics that we have. And then we, it’s like, oh, now we’re adults and, and we have all this stuff. And I’m like, well, yeah, that might’ve been useful to know earlier.

[00:12:48] Brett: I will say my, my, um, psychi, my psychi, my original psychiatrist retiring was the worst thing that has happened to me. Um. There [00:13:00] is a dearth of psychiatric professionals where I live, um, so I got pawned off from, uh, uh, an aged and well experienced psychiatrist onto some PA from Iowa.

[00:13:12] Jeff: And that was definitely pre, like, you could just get on Zoom with

[00:13:15] Brett: Yeah, yeah, they took me off all my meds, and it was, and I two years trying to get back to some kind of stasis.

[00:13:26] Christina: I mean

[00:13:26] Brett: And I lost, I lost my job. I got divorced. Like, shit went bad.

[00:13:32] Alex: would literally, I probably would die, like that is one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever heard happening to someone, it’s like, oh my god!

[00:13:42] Brett: It was, it was rough. Psychiatrists do get old, though. It happens.

[00:13:47] Alex: Gosh, I didn’t even really think about this until now, because I, he’s, he’s like, in his, gosh. It’s a little bit younger than my [00:14:00] parents, like so mid, mid to late 50s. And I’m realizing now, because I right now don’t have insurance and he, I basically have an under the table deal. I realized because of that privilege of growing up in the suburbs and I am so worried that I’m gonna just be, in order to, like, get my Lamictal, end up going to one of those, like, Uber, uh, psych doctors where you can be like, I, I, uh, Have, uh, uh, trouble paying attention.

[00:14:36] Alex: Here is your Adderall. I know that is being, uh, sort of, uh, cracked down on, but man, I am gonna start looking into that now.

[00:14:48] Brett: I I will, I will try to come for you insofar as Lamictal is, like, even your average MD, uh, like general practitioner [00:15:00] will prescribe you Lamictal. it’s not a scary drug for most prescribers. kind of Yeah. And it’s, it’s solid. It’s proven. Um, and if you, if you find yourself without a psychiatrist, you can often go to a general practitioner and say, look, I have this diagnosis.

[00:15:18] Brett: I need this med. And, and they’ll fill that for you.

[00:15:22] Christina: Yeah.

[00:15:23] Alex: is so common that perhaps I’ve acquired it in a different way when my has been out of town, and I irresponsibly, which is, I mean, another thing that is important about having doctors who are willing to learn, grow, and change, because when I was younger I was on lithium, which most, was most common, yeah, and

[00:15:46] Jeff: there.

[00:15:47] Alex: as soon as, as soon as possible, it was like, hey, there’s new thing, Lamictal,

[00:15:52] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[00:15:53] Alex: yeah.

[00:15:54] Alex: Oof.

[00:15:55] Brett: Did you have a bad reaction to lithium? Oh, here’s Lamictal. Why didn’t we start with to begin [00:16:00] with? I don’t

[00:16:00] Christina: Or, or, or,

[00:16:01] Alex: a patent longer is the answer.

[00:16:04] Christina: yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. One is, one is cheap, one is not. And it makes sense. Well, it’s funny because when, um, uh, I was, I was misdiagnosed with, with being bipolar because I pissed off that psychiatrist. I mean, that’s actually what it

[00:16:16] Alex: Oh, you mean you were a little, you were a woman and you were angry,

[00:16:20] Christina: Oh, No. Well, and she was, no, she was a woman too, but, but I, I spoke really fast cause I was mad about something and I, she was really insistent that I stay on a certain antidepressant. I was like, you’re getting paid with the drug companies. This is why you’re prescribing this for me. You’re, you, you refuse to get off, you know, this bandwagon.

[00:16:34] Christina: I’m telling you it no longer works. It was working. Now it is not working. I need to go on something else. And she was just refusing to do anything. And I was like, you’re clearly getting, uh, you know, paid by the drug companies. Turned out I was actually correct. Um, but she was upset about that. So she was like, oh, well you’re bipolar.

[00:16:47] Christina: Yeah. And, um, and so, uh, put me, uh, first on, on, on Lithium and then on Lomyctol. Neither of those were, I’m not bipolar. So it was not a good for me. Um, but to that point, [00:17:00] you were saying about being able to get like a, a, you know, regular doctor to prescribe. I think this is, uh, just a, you know, And Christina is like, you know, FYI for anybody out there, note, get something in your file, get some sort of diagnosis from your psychiatrist so that you can keep it for your own records so that if you are in a situation where are there your insurance changes, your psychiatrist retires or they go off somewhere else or whatnot and you have a hard time getting your records and it’s not as easy to get our own medical records as it should be.

[00:17:27] Christina: You have something so that if you are in one of those scenarios where you’re like, shit, I have to get my ADHD meds. I have to get my antidepressants. I have get. know, whatever,

[00:17:36] Brett: no GP will prescribe ADHD meds unless you have an official diagnosis on your record. Um, and that diagnosis requires testing, um, and, and psychiatric approval. Uh, once you have that, most doctors are willing to kind of. Um, I guess Ben, like there’s, there are a lot of rules [00:18:00] that GPs have to conform to around things like Adderall and Biobans.

[00:18:04] Brett: Um, and, and the one thing that will tip the scale in your favor is having that official diagnosis. If you have, if you’re going to someone who accepts insurance, when they file Their claim to the insurance, it has to include your official diagnoses. So going to someone with insurance kind of guarantees that you have that on your record.

[00:18:27] Brett: Going to someone off insurance, you may have to pursue, uh, and make sure that they have a clinical DSM approved diagnosis on your record.

[00:18:38] Christina: right. Yeah.

[00:18:39] Alex: you guys are my favorite podcast. in past, it was sort of the Opposite for a lot of people, like, I was locked down, like, I don’t want any GP, anyone know that I’m bipolar because I turning, yep, well, not even that, because I was turning 26

[00:18:57] Christina: Yeah. And you were like, oh shit, I’m not going to get health insurance because[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Alex: eh, right. And I was so worried also about getting a job like, yes, HIPAA, but people get around that.

[00:19:09] Alex: Luckily, I found I was employed by people, a bunch of weirdos like me, so it was not a problem whatsoever. And, uh, Now, like, I’m, we’re like, you know, going through health. gov and I’m, you know, one of those obnoxious Bernie Burrows who really wants universal healthcare, but at least Obamacare, uh, or whatever it is called now, it’s like, oh no, we, like, it is good, we have your pre existing conditions, which is Is something I did not know until, like, a few years ago, and was still masking it as much as possible.

[00:19:44] Alex: You guys are just the best podcast. Oh,

[00:19:47] Brett: when I did my intake for Oracle, um, bipolar was listed as an accepted disability. Um, and they didn’t make you declare, they just asked you, are you, do you have a [00:20:00] disability? And then they all the possible things. So I checked the box for yes. And that gives me a certain amount of protection.

[00:20:07] Jeff: like, I also think of this as a superpower.

[00:20:10] Brett: sure, but, but like, if, if worse comes to worst, I can say. Look, I have a disability and this was clearly defined in my intake. And that’s kind of new for me because I did always bipolar a liability when taking a job because I knew my bipolar could fuck with my ability to do my job. Um, and now I have a certain amount of protection, um, legally,

[00:20:38] The Affordable Care Act

[00:20:38] Christina: Yeah. No, is, is really important, which is really important. And, and, and, and, but it is, it’s one of those things that obviously varies where you work and, and all that stuff. And there is still stigmas there, uh, but it’s decreased a lot. And yeah, I mean, with the, uh, Obamacare or, you know, whatever the, whatever it’s called, um, uh, ACA.

[00:20:56] Christina: Yeah. Um, like that was a, for all the [00:21:00] critique that I think a lot of them are, are correct. Um, you know, there’s

[00:21:03] Brett: On both sides. I

[00:21:08] Christina: no, not, not

[00:21:10] Alex: by both sides you mean Democrats and obnoxious progressives like me, sure!

[00:21:16] Christina: well, yeah, yeah, but, but exactly,

[00:21:17] Brett: mean, people who support single payer, I guess, have the, have the most beef with

[00:21:23] Christina: right, well, and they’re, look, they’re very valid things to criticize it for, because it did make things worse for some people, and it, and it did make things more complicated, and I’m not going to

[00:21:31] Alex: website didn’t

[00:21:33] Christina: The website awful.

[00:21:34] Brett: It got capped

[00:21:35] Christina: Of course,

[00:21:36] Brett: the Republicans then, who could hold it up and say, look, it’s not working these,

[00:21:42] Christina: no,

[00:21:42] Brett: riders we slid

[00:21:44] Christina: No, you’re completely correct, but I’m just saying, like, even putting all that aside, what I always say to people, because, you know, we have like friends of ours who will like talk about, it is ridiculous how much I have to pay, you know, for health insurance and, and, and whatnot, and, um, you know, through the, um, uh, the, the various, uh, marketplaces and whatnot.

[00:21:59] Christina: And they’re not [00:22:00] wrong on any of those things. Not that that’s the ACA’s fault, but yeah, the website didn’t work and whatnot. But the one thing I will defend that forever is I’m like, look, that got rid of the preexisting condition. B. S. that for me, when I, you know, I was, I was able to stay on my insurance for a year longer than I should have been able to, and I don’t remember why, but they basically, we were able to get something done.

[00:22:20] Christina: And then when I was 27, it was basically, uh, you know, I was like, okay, well, my meds at the time I was, it was taking ProVigil, which was not generic then. And it was like 1400 a month. And that was, that was like. You know, with the insurance discount. And, um, then I, you know, like, Cobra, I think, was like 1100.

[00:22:41] Christina: So I was like, well, yeah, I’m gonna have to pay for Cobra. Because my med cost is higher than that, right, but I couldn’t get insurance any other way and, and because of where I was working at the time, like, we didn’t have insurance yet, and so it was one of those things where, like, I had to wait until the company got big enough to get, like, proper health insurance, and then, fortunately,

[00:22:58] Alex: Yes.

[00:22:59] Christina: passed, [00:23:00] you know, but, like, and I wasn’t in a unique

[00:23:03] Alex: position.

[00:23:03] Christina: So, so I was like this weird position where I’m like, you know, like 25 and I’m like healthy and I’m, I’m white and I’m a woman and I have, I’m thin, like all my health stuff is like perfect. Like I’m like the cheapest person to insure, right? And like I can’t get insurance because I have, you know, I was diagnosed with, with depression when I was 13 and you know, and it’s just like, okay, great that America is excellent.

[00:23:25] Christina: Um, but

[00:23:26] Monafadil and More

[00:23:26] Brett: you ever, did you ever explore black market Manafeddo?

[00:23:30] Christina: I did and, and I remember talking to about it

[00:23:32] Jeff: Tom Waits song.

[00:23:34] Alex: Christina, help me. What, what

[00:23:35] Jeff: That’s a really good Tom Waits song.

[00:23:37] Christina: Yeah.

[00:23:38] Jeff: black

[00:23:38] Alex: it sounds like a hot Natalie Portman movie to me.

[00:23:41] Christina: It does. Oh my God, really does. Black Market and Modafinil. It really does. No, so Modafinil is the actual drug that is provincial, which is now generic. But yeah, but Brett, you used to buy it off of like Amazon. No, you used to get it off of, um, uh, uh, the, um, um, whatchamacallit, uh, the,

[00:23:59] Brett: dark [00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:00] Christina: Didn’t you get it off of, uh, Silk Road?

[00:24:03] Brett: Yeah, basically with, with, I bought it with Bitcoin and like this is during the two years after my psychiatrist retired and I was just fucked. And I was looking for way

[00:24:15] Christina: account is locked.

[00:24:17] Brett: exactly. Well no, that’s because I tried to buy Vyvanse on the black market. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s when, and that’s when my pay, my Bitcoin wallet was like, okay, you’re out.

[00:24:30] Brett: Um, but the Monafidil.

[00:24:33] Jeff: Because Bitcoin has

[00:24:34] Brett: never got in trouble for the Monafidil, um, and that, that, that was, it was alright. Um, it was not, it

[00:24:42] Christina: was not

[00:24:43] Brett: a stimulant, um,

[00:24:45] Christina: Well, yeah, when Modafinil’s not as similar, I mean, it is and it’s not, it’s controlled, but it’s not the same thing. So, like, it, it’s, like, I used to do the two of them together. I used to have Dexedrine and, Modafinil together and, and I’d like to have them both back again, but it is expensive.

[00:24:58] Christina: My husband recently was prescribed [00:25:00] Provigil, um, in lieu of his, um, Adderall. And, and he’s, he’s liking it, but, but he’s also, I think, kind of having a hard time with it a little bit because he’s like, I don’t get that speed. I’m like, no, you don’t cause it’s not that.

[00:25:13] Brett: awake for fuckin

[00:25:14] Christina: Right. Yeah. Cause it was originally a narcolepsy drug and then it turns out it also gives you a tremendous

[00:25:18] Brett: it was originally, originally developed for the army, allow soldiers to not sleep.

[00:25:24] Christina: Correct. No, genuinely. Like,

[00:25:26] Alex: our version of, yeah, if folks have read the book Blitzed, which I, it’s a book about Nazis and meth, and it’s

[00:25:37] Christina: Oh

[00:25:38] Alex: to Nazis in any way, but it also goes into, like, the American drugs versus, yeah,

[00:25:44] Christina: Yeah. Well, no. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember this. Um, there’s another one. Um, cause like all these things, um, so are wind up and, and this is what winds up ruining it for us who are trying to do it correctly is that all the athletes wind up using this stuff. And so it winds up fucking people who need it for [00:26:00] real reasons because athletes figure out how to like drug themselves to, to perform better.

[00:26:03] Christina: So like. Provigil was used that way and a bunch of other things and a bunch of other hormones and other stuff, which is difficult for regular people to get because, you know, uh, Balco, uh, um, that’s a throwback and, and other people were doing that, but, um, um, there’s an interesting book. Um, I’ll try to find it for the show notes.

[00:26:20] Christina: Uh, Blitz is a good one, but also about like the East German doping regime, um, it, for the Olympics, like during like the, the Cold War era. It’s freaking insane, um, all the shit that they would do and like the ways that they would dope, um, their athletes to perform well, um, it’s like insanity. But yeah, um, I, I contend that one of the reasons that insurance companies don’t to this day, like, Cover, Modafinil, um, as well as they should, like they’ll put caps on it and certain things and make it hard, is because, uh, What’s Her Face, who, who had like, she won a gold medal for, for Sprontane and some other things.

[00:26:58] Christina: She was like a really famous, um, [00:27:00] runner and then she was like, ProVigil was amongst some of the drugs that she was found to have in her system when she was, when she was doping. Um, and,

[00:27:08] Jeff: like, family tree slash, um, intersecting histories that surround every single mental health drug is kind of amazing. Like, we originally made this to stimulate bats to like, it’s just like a weird the other day, this is I just, while we’re on the sort of like, the border of like, Vyvanse and meth conversation, or like, Vyvanse and hard drug conversation, like, the other day, I’m off of Vyvanse now, I was taking like, 40 milligrams, which I never should have been, it was my own fault, I asked for an increase, but it was just, I was developing like, a twitch, and it was just not good, and I also realized like, I was having like, a prolonged manic episode, and it didn’t occur to me that it might be the Vyvanse, but anyway, I decided I was going to try to like, Break that dosage down a little bit.

[00:27:52] Jeff: And even though years ago, Brett taught me how to do that with water, which I forgot, I tried to like cut it like cocaine, which is like cutting [00:28:00] cocaine on a dollhouse coffee table. Like, it’s just like, it’s that just this little bitty amount and you just kind of, how do I get, you know, I was trying to make a 10 milligrams out

[00:28:07] Brett: Not, just to be clear, not to snort it,

[00:28:10] Jeff: No, no, just to throw it in some water and take it. Um,

[00:28:14] Brett: because snorting Vyvanse doesn’t work, I

[00:28:16] Jeff: no, it doesn’t. That’s the

[00:28:17] Christina: No, that’s the whole point Five Ants.

[00:28:19] Jeff: molecule so that you can’t snort it like

[00:28:21] Christina: exactly. That’s, that’s, that’s the only thing is Dexedrine, but with one thing changed, so you can’t abuse it. So they took like literally the thing that had the patent that had retired, like that had been retired earliest. They didn’t even use Adderall, they used Dexedrine because that’s the one that the patent like expired like in the 70s and they were like, Oh, what’s the, how can we get the most value out of this?

[00:28:39] Jeff: Dexterdine is the one that used to be over the counter, right? Like, for

[00:28:42] Christina: No, no, no. That was Dexatrim. Which was, which was

[00:28:45] Jeff: in ninth grade, and I didn’t eat for like five and I lost all kinds of weight, and then I was like, I think I’m starting to

[00:28:53] Brett: that same, uh, wasn’t that, uh, what’s in Sudafed?

[00:28:57] Christina: yeah, exactly.

[00:28:58] Brett: that they use meth?

[00:28:59] Christina: Ephedrine or[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Brett: Ah, Fedrin,

[00:29:00] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Dexatrim, I think was ephedrine. Yeah. But

[00:29:04] Brett: you also used to be able to buy a Fedrin at gas station,

[00:29:08] Alex: Merlin loves to talk on Dubai Friday about how much he misses a veteran. And I’m like,

[00:29:12] Brett: I used to

[00:29:13] Jeff: Oh man,

[00:29:14] Brett: I used to do like tabs

[00:29:16] Jeff: uh, what, but what’s the, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the brand? What’s the brand from? No, no, when we were kids, uh, there was, uh, Nodo’s.

[00:29:26] Brett: was caffeine.

[00:29:26] Jeff: That was just

[00:29:27] Christina: It was just caffeine. Although, you know what? I did find this out the hard way. Um, if you took, you, you timed it just wrong and you took your Nodos and then you, you know, it maybe didn’t kick in for a while and then you took your Dexedrine, the two could fuse. And the end result was basically like being on, on like a massive Coke vendor.

[00:29:50] Jeff: Yeah, the end result was basically Jackson Pollock

[00:29:52] Christina: I mean, I have video of me somewhere, this happened to me twice, and it was like, it was insane. I’ve like, I, like, my friends, I [00:30:00] remember the first time it happened to me, I was like 16, and they were like, what the fuck? And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m like, I think my dodo’s and my dex is being infused, and now I’m magic, and I can do anything.

[00:30:09] Christina: And I was like, and they were like, they like took me to like, I’ll never forget this, we went to Long John Silver’s, so like they could, they were trying to get like food in me to see, you know, like if that would sober me up. It did not work. Um, and I was like trying to like act low key, like not. Completely out of my mind, like, wired on meth or whatever, like, all day, did not work.

[00:30:28] Brett: I would like to offer the disclaimer that everyone on this show right now is currently a responsible drug user.

[00:30:36] Christina: I mean,

[00:30:36] Jeff: I’d like to offer the little piece of history that without being able snort Adderall, Adderall, I never did, but without being able to snort it, you would have never had like Power Pop.

[00:30:46] Christina: That’s true.

[00:30:47] Alex: Powerpuff Oh, oh, okay, there we go.

[00:30:50] Christina: you’re not wrong. I mean, look, uh, but rock and roll wouldn’t exist without cocaine. There’s a lot of things we could say that, like, wouldn’t exist without some of, uh, our, our,

[00:30:58] Jeff: and roll wouldn’t exist without Little [00:31:00] Richard.

[00:31:00] Alex: mean,

[00:31:00] Christina: I, I agree.

[00:31:02] Jeff: cocaine in Little Richard.

[00:31:04] Brett: Right,

[00:31:04] Christina: that’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying, man. But yeah, no, we’re, we’re responsible drug users and, and everything I take is either prescribed for me or legal in the state of Washington.

[00:31:12] Christina: So there’s that

[00:31:13] Brett: Because we’ve grown up. So we’re, we’re at 30

[00:31:17] Alex: mean, I still, I’m too, I’m just too afraid. I’m like, I’m

[00:31:20] Jeff: Same. I remain too afraid. I remain too afraid. I’ve never done, except for some gummies recently as my first drugs.

[00:31:28] Alex: Oh, yeah, I guess

[00:31:29] Christina: Oh wow, you’re straight edge.

[00:31:30] Alex: uh, yeah,

[00:31:31] Jeff: wasn’t straight edge and I wasn’t disposition. I was just, it was just where I was at. All my friends were either throughout my life, like including people I dated, they might be junkies. They might be like, they might be giants. Um,

[00:31:41] Brett: was to, that

[00:31:43] Jeff: of drug. But, but what happened was people just knew this about me without me telling them.

[00:31:47] Jeff: So no one did drugs around me. there were people I didn’t know were snorting Coke before every show when I was in a band, but they were just like, let’s Jeff doesn’t have to see I’m I’m not a little porcelain, like.

[00:31:57] Christina: no, well, no, see, love how we have the full [00:32:00] spectrum because like, like Brett has been in rehab and is like recovered and like had like a serious like addiction. Like you have never done things, Alex, you’re saying the same way. And then I feel like I’m like the person who’s just like a minimal but casual, like I will do edibles and stuff.

[00:32:13] Christina: Experimental, but not even that so much as, but it’s just like, yeah, you’re at a party and like you’re in college and people like want to do drugs and you’re like, absolutely. You know? I mean, but it’s not a regular thing. It’s not a habit. You

[00:32:22] Brett: yeah, but then you don’t go home, don’t go home and like find a dealer hook up on the street corner.

[00:32:29] Alex: yeah, that’s what I’m afraid, well, I would get offered cocaine at parties, but then people would just assume I was on coke because I was manic, like,

[00:32:38] Jeff: Oh, that happened to me all

[00:32:39] Alex: I like a habitual coke user, and like, no,

[00:32:44] Christina: like, I wish.

[00:32:44] Jeff: When I was, when I was in eighth grade, I had a cafeteria table intervention by two of my friends who said, we, we think you’re taking speed. And it was not long after that Family Ties episode

[00:32:55] Christina: Oh yeah.

[00:32:56] Jeff: Keaton taking speed. And I think that’s where they learned the [00:33:00] symptoms. I was so shocked.

[00:33:01] Jeff: Cause I was like, no, I’m not. And then once I was diagnosed bipolar, I was like, Oh, it’s that

[00:33:07] Brett: all

[00:33:08] Jeff: don’t realize, what is Pepsi? Anyway, I have a good transition to

[00:33:12] Brett: What, okay. Can, because we’re at the 30 minute mark, can we take a quick sponsor break? And then we will come back to what is probably going to be a full episode of Mental Health.

[00:33:23] Sponsor: Notion

[00:33:23] Christina-1: This episode is brought to you by Notion. And Notion is one of my favorite apps. I’ve been using this for years. It’s a really great way to take notes, keep things around, plan things. You can even host websites on it and stuff like that. And so I kind of use it as a catch all for a lot of my different documents.

[00:33:40] Christina-1: And one of the great things about Notion is they recently introduced some AI tools. And Notion AI is a way that kind of, in some ways, it’s kind of creating like a custom LLM. Based on all of your data. So, uh, for instance, I have all the different deals that are available to me as a Microsoft slash GitHub [00:34:00] employee, and rather than having to search through the many, many, many pages and weird web clippings that I’ve put into this folder, I can just kind of ask Notion AI and it’ll show me.

[00:34:11] Christina-1: You know, this is your discount for Sonos and what you need to do. So Notion combines your notes, your docs, and projects into one space that is simple and beautifully designed. And the fully integrated Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds.

[00:34:28] Christina-1: Like I said, I don’t have to search through a bunch of documents to find out that Sonos discount. Uh, one of the things that I’m actually going to be focusing on doing in 2024 is making a catalog of all of our Gratitude Picks so that I can have a website for us. I’ve been promising that for a while. And what I’m actually going to do to help me aid in that process is I’m going to be bringing in all of our show notes into Notion so that I can very easily just be like, okay.

[00:34:54] Christina-1: Show me, you know, has this app, you know, been a gratitude pick? And, um, I [00:35:00] think that the Notion AI is going to help me get that process up, um, and going much, much easier. So, um, big fan of Notion and Notion AI. You can try Notion for free when you go to Notion. com slash Overtired. That’s all lowercase letters.

[00:35:15] Christina-1: Notion. com slash Overtired to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you’re supporting our show. So again, that is Notion. com slash Overtired.

[00:35:28] Sponsor: Aroundsquare

[00:35:28] Brett-1: This episode is also brought to you by Around Square. You know that experience of learning something new that would have been so useful last week, or finding something special that you hadn’t realized you’d been missing all these years? Well, today might be one of those days. Around Square is a company that you’ve Probably never heard about, but for certain people, the brand, the products, and the ideas just really resonate.

[00:35:51] Brett-1: Since 2007, AroundSquare has been designing and producing beautiful, unusual, functional goods for the mind and body. Their specialty is [00:36:00] a range of intriguing little objects for everyday carry. Many of these are things that could be called skill toys, dexterity trainers, or fidget toys, but they really don’t conform to these labels.

[00:36:11] Brett-1: And none of them really do the products justice. They’re striking, minimalist objects more akin to jewelry than playthings, but they’re also serious tools designed for creative exploration and peaceful manipulation, things to keep the hands busy and the mind at ease by providing just the desired level of stimulation.

[00:36:30] Brett-1: AroundSquare’s eclectic range goes way beyond this and includes stationary, jewelry, functional clothing, and much more. at www. aroundsquare. com and use the code Overtired for 15 percent off. That’s AroundSquared. com and use the code Overtired for 15 percent off.

[00:36:52] Mental Health Corner (Part 2)

[00:36:52] Brett: Okay. Bye. Back to you, Jeff. Ha ha ha

[00:36:55] Jeff: to say, I looked something up while we were talking because I was again, marveling at the [00:37:00] failure of healthcare. gov. Um, and how that launch was such a disaster. And I was like, how does this line up with what we learned from Edward Snowden about the technological capabilities of the NSA? And it’s the same year.

[00:37:12] Jeff: And it’s a really funny thing to put next to each other. Like the utter failure of a pretty, not simple website, but not un Tried. Technology. the NSA was able to do.

[00:37:24] Christina: Well, and you know how they managed to fix it? And this is true, uh, so, um, Uh, I can’t think of his name right now, shit, it’ll come to me, but, uh, cause he recently retired, but, um, he led all of our, um, COVID, all of Microsoft’s COVID response, really good guy, um, who’d been, like, at, uh, at, at Microsoft for a long time, like, left Microsoft to go to the government and fix their website, and then after that, he, like, came back to Microsoft as, like, the, as, like, the chief strategy officer.

[00:37:52] Alex: literally, thank you for your service. My god. Oh, I

[00:37:59] Christina: uh, but [00:38:00] yeah, he was, he was a great guy. Um, uh, well is a great guy. He’s, he’s retired now. I can’t think of his name, but, um, he, um, uh, yeah, basically like, um, uh, um, Ray, I, I want to say his name might be maybe, maybe Kurt, one of those. Anyway, um, he, uh, I think, I think, I think it was,

[00:38:15] Jeff: His ears aren’t burning until we say his name.

[00:38:17] Christina: I think his name was Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, uh, Kurt Delbigny.

[00:38:21] Christina: There we go. Kurt Delbigny. Um, and, and,

[00:38:24] Jeff: Curdy D!

[00:38:24] Christina: And no, but he, he’s a great guy, but like, he literally,

[00:38:27] Alex: Friend Kirti D.

[00:38:28] Christina: Kurt B., no, but great. Well, honestly, like the one like comforting part of the pandemic, like I have to say, we got these amazing weekly like reports and then they became bi weekly and then eventually kind of went away.

[00:38:39] Christina: And then when Kurt retired, someone else took over and that person did not do a good job, but we would get these amazing like updates about like what the spread was at, where things were globally, where things were with the offices, what the Washington state situation was. And like, they were. He was collecting all this data and, like, working directly with, like, the Washington State Department of Health and all this stuff.

[00:38:56] Christina: And, like, it was, it was a very, very, we had, like, a very [00:39:00] robust command center. In some ways, I think it was probably better than the federal government’s, uh, command center, uh, was at that time, uh, with that administration. So, um, like, I, uh, it was, uh, definitely, uh, uh, helpful to have that, um, Kerr was a good guy.

[00:39:17] Jeff: Love him.

[00:39:18] Christina: Yeah. So, so,

[00:39:19] Brett: that wr That wraps up, That wraps up Brett’s Mental Health Corner.

[00:39:26] Christina: Yeah. I don’t have much to add. I mean, I’ll just, uh. Okay.

[00:39:29] Brett: I said it would be short,

[00:39:31] Christina: was not sure. No, that went into a lot of other things. No, no, it’s good. That went on a bunch of other things. Um, we do have like one topic that, uh, that other than mental health that, uh, um, Jeff and I have to talk about because

[00:39:42] Jeff: Well, that involves definitely your mental

[00:39:44] Christina: Well, it definitely does. Maybe, maybe this as the segue for that. Um,

[00:39:48] Jeff: it as your mental health corner.

[00:39:49] Christina: oh, you know what? I

[00:39:50] Alex: I I have feelings about that too.

[00:39:53] Christina: you was gonna say yes. I gonna say, Alex, I was talking with them on threads about this, and we both were like, what the fuck? [00:40:00] Like, and okay, and okay, but to tie back to Mental Health Corner for a second, so, Um, my long running podcast, Rocket, ended last week.

[00:40:08] Christina: Um, so if you are listening to this, uh, podcast for the first time because you’re a Rocket listener, hi, thank you. Um, uh, we love you. And, uh, that was, like, that was the end of a nine year, um, you know, Project. And even though it was our decision and like it was our choice and it was just time, um, you know, endings are hard and um, like there was a lot of emotions involved, but um, I’m actually, this is a good thing.

[00:40:32] Christina: So I haven’t been on any antidepressants since basically Middle slash end of October, uh, when I came off of the new antidepressant that I went on, um, which I went on in hopes of kind of getting me out of a major, major depression that I was in, um, earlier this year that was pretty debilitating. And, uh, at first it was working really well and then it was not and I was having some really gnarly side effects, so I went off of it.

[00:40:56] Christina: And um, so now I’m not on anything. Um, but I was talking [00:41:00] about this with my psychiatrist yesterday. Like I, I’m feeling good. I think that the one good thing of that medicine was I think it did like click me out of that like very deep, like kind of suicidal, like bad place depression. And um, I feel like almost like my brain like reset.

[00:41:15] Christina: And so I’m not on anything right now other than my ADHD meds. And, but, but what’s affirming about this is that like, I went through like this, you know, like big end of a thing. Um, and, uh, which again, like it was our choice and it was, uh, time to do it. And it was, you know, for the right reasons, but it’s still, you know, endings are hard and it’s a lot.

[00:41:34] Christina: And I think that I had like the right emotional response, but also what it didn’t, you know, take me into any other bad places or anything. So, um, that’s, that’s my brief kind of update. Things are good.

[00:41:46] Jeff: I, I cried when I listened to your,

[00:41:48] Brett: it was it was tearjerker.

[00:41:50] Jeff: headliner

[00:41:51] Christina: Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I meant everything I said about that. And, um, you know, all that emotion was real, which was evident in my voice and all of that. Um, but [00:42:00] yeah, you know, it’s just, um, it’s hard, you know, as we all know, sometimes when things come to their logical conclusion, and it doesn’t mean that, like, you’re, you don’t, aren’t grateful for everything that happened and all of that, but it can be a lot.

[00:42:13] Christina: And I’m just glad that that didn’t, that, that In some universes could have had the potential to trigger other things, and so far, like, hasn’t. So that’s, that’s a good thing. Uh, the thing, though, that, uh, Jeff, Alex, and I do have to just, like, scream about, though, and this is, this is the reason I brought up Rocket as a segue, was that now that I don’t have a long running podcast that would have given me time to yell about this, I, I apologize for using Overtired as my soapbox here.

[00:42:42] A Little Bit of Taylor Swift, but also Journalism Critiques

[00:42:42] Jeff: you do have a podcast with Taylor

[00:42:43] Christina: I

[00:42:44] Alex: genuinely like a mental health thing for so many

[00:42:48] Christina: Oh, God, you’re so right.

[00:42:50] Alex: Oh gosh.

[00:42:51] Christina: so the background is, is that the, the New York fucking Times, the New York Times, the newspaper of record, ran, um, uh, [00:43:00] a guest opinion column from one of the opinion editors. So this is like a staff editor, like at the New York Times who wrote this thing. And Jeff’s going to talk about that.

[00:43:07] Jeff: host Christina

[00:43:09] Christina: Yeah, exactly. It’s so weird. Called, Look What We Made Taylor Do, which goes full Gaylor. And if you’re not familiar with Gaylor, that is the conspiracy theory. And yes, I will use that word very like that, that term very specifically because it is that Taylor Swift is secretly gay and she has been sending her fans, um, coded messages for 10 years about her, her, or longer than that.

[00:43:30] Christina: Some of them claim going all the way back to 2006, she’s been sending fans coded messages that she is. I’m actually not into boys named Drew and Steven and, um, uh, you know, Joe Alwyn and, and her current boyfriend or anybody else, but she’s actually, uh, a, a, a woman loving woman and is very queer and is, is, we are all just too blind to see it.

[00:43:50] Christina: Um,

[00:43:51] Brett: absolutely belongs in a Mental Health Corner. mental health.

[00:43:55] Christina: yeah, because this, this theory has been going on for at least a decade. I’ve been watching some of these people [00:44:00] online for a decade plus at this point, and these are genuinely some of the most like, unhinged and unwell corners of the internet I’ve ever seen, like genuinely. And, and I, I don’t say that with affection.

[00:44:10] Christina: I say that with like actually a little bit of like disturbance because then it’s made its way YouTube and all these other things. And like young people are taking it as actual fact and it’s, it’s not. It’s, it’s, this is like QAnon, but for, you know, fandom stuff and

[00:44:27] Alex: hmm.

[00:44:28] Christina: genuinely. And That was platformed this week by the New York Times in a 5, 000 word essay.

[00:44:36] Christina: Um, 5, 000

[00:44:37] Alex: Felt longer. so much

[00:44:39] Christina: It’s so long. It’s like,

[00:44:40] Jeff: so much longer. I counted it towards the end and I was like, oh, that is still long, but

[00:44:46] Brett: Jeff called it exhaustive and exhausting.

[00:44:49] Alex: Mm hmm.

[00:44:50] Christina: yes. That’s exactly what I said. It’s exhaustive and exhausting. Definitely needed a better editor. Um, it, and it, it really, really, really wants everyone to think that Taylor Swift is not just gay, but has been [00:45:00] sending this, as I said, hidden messages, expressing her gayness for years. And, and I, I’m both kind of amazed.

[00:45:06] Christina: I’m mostly upset about this, but I’m also kind of amazed. I’m like, how in the fuck did this Tumblr discourse get into the New Times? Like, what the fuck?

[00:45:18] Alex: I feel Mm. I don’t want to say I know, because I don’t want to go into the other conspiracy side thing of, uh No, it is true. Like, the New York Times does New York Times Oh, I apologize, that was a phone. Um, the New York Times doesn’t exactly have a stellar history of covering queer people, and so when they need, uh, like, they’re they’ve got some tokens around and sort of just plop something in, and like, this is palatable.

[00:45:52] Alex: Right? Right, right, right? This is, oh, Times Person of the Year,

[00:45:57] Brett: ha ha,

[00:45:58] Alex: And reading this piece, I [00:46:00] was just, again, shocked at not just the Tumblerness of it. It was kind of funny to read a Tumblr post with the New York style. It’s Ms. Swift, Ms. Swift.

[00:46:12] Christina: Yes. It’s so funny. so You’re come on now. Yeah.

[00:46:15] Alex: Oh, gosh. Um, and I know the Gaylor stuff has happened for a while and it came to fresh off the wonder I mean, you would know more

[00:46:28] Christina: One Direction. Yes.

[00:46:29] Alex: but yeah.

[00:46:30] Christina: That started it. Larry.

[00:46:32] Alex: God, yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah,

[00:46:34] Christina: then that, that,

[00:46:34] Alex: book that. It was

[00:46:35] Christina: that’s the portmanteau about uh, uh, uh, uh, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, which, um, alleges that they were in a relationship together. And, um, that, that, that led up and included the fact that, that, that Louis actual child was a fake baby.

[00:46:48] Christina: There was a person on the internet who I used to follow, like, I hate follow, but still, who like literally bought baby dolls that she would try to dress up and make to look like the pho like recreate the photos of Louis Tomlinson’s actual child.[00:47:00]

[00:47:00] Jeff: Oh my goodness. That’s moon landing

[00:47:02] Christina: Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, 1000%. And, and, and the thing is, is that, yeah, but you’re right, it started with, with, with Larry. Uh, and then the Taylor thing, like,

[00:47:10] Jeff: It always starts with a Larry.

[00:47:12] Christina: does, and what happened,

[00:47:13] Jeff: suit Larry. Larry. Larry.

[00:47:14] Christina: then Taylor

[00:47:15] Jeff: Larry Page.

[00:47:16] Christina: Taylor Swift started dating Harry Styles, and so the only way that the Larry fans could explain that was that not only was she his beard, but that he was also her beard.

[00:47:26] Christina: So they were bearding for each other, and she was in a relationship with Diana Agron, who was on the TV show Glee at the time, which had a bunch of unhinged and young queer fans. Not to say that all queer fans were unhinged, but to say all Glee fans were unhinged, yes, absolutely. I am saying that. And I watched Glee,

[00:47:42] Alex: It was, uh, my favorite show to hate watch.

[00:47:45] Christina: I’m, totally,

[00:47:46] Alex: uh, I have a question So

[00:47:49] Brett: okay. So I’m completely outside of all of what you’re talking about. Um, are the people who are, um, kind of promoting these conspiracies of [00:48:00] Taylor Swift being gay, are they also queer and hoping for some like extra connection or are they straight and hoping for another reason to dislike

[00:48:10] Christina: Oh, it’s mostly, uh, wanting the connection. And it’s a mixture, I would say. It’s mostly, the most visible ones are queer, but you definitely have plenty of straight gaylers as well. And I definitely don’t think that it’s a to dislike thing. It’s a, I think it’s two. I think it’s one, to your point, hoping for an extra connection and wanting to view things through a queer lens, which I support.

[00:48:29] Christina: And I think that all art should be able to view through whatever lens you want. I think it’s completely different when you take an actual human being. And you start putting your own conspiracy theories and interpretations on their life because it’s like, she is the biggest star in the world. She’s also a person.

[00:48:43] Christina: And that’s why I think this article was so gross, was that it did not at all acknowledge that this is a real person. It literally treated it like fanfic, which I think was just completely dehumanizing, um, on, on, on every level. But I think that the, so I think some of it is,

[00:48:56] Alex: yeah, not just to her, but the queer community in general. [00:49:00] As being queer is just a s a way to stand the same sex situation. Like, it was so odd. Ugh.

[00:49:07] Christina: the whole thing.

[00:49:08] Brett: curious about

[00:49:09] Christina: No, no, the motivation is usually I think to be close and I think the secondary motivation is we know something you don’t know and we have the truth and which is the same with a lot of conspiracy theories. I know what’s

[00:49:19] Brett: conspiracy theory

[00:49:20] Christina: Yeah, I know what’s really going on and you don’t look at me, come to me and whatnot and

[00:49:24] Brett: your research.

[00:49:26] Christina: exactly, and, and I think that, um, but I do think that,

[00:49:29] Alex: Educate yourself.

[00:49:30] Christina: but I think the primary But it’s interesting, because Gaylor’s interesting, because that was a great point you brought up, Alex, like it did, it was a spinoff of Larry, and Larry is almost completely heterosexual women who ship that, like that is almost completely straight women who were part of that, and I don’t even know if that’s a thing anymore, but that was almost 100 percent young, um, Straight girls who were really into these, you know, two hot guys together, which is a fanfic trope in and of itself.

[00:49:56] Christina: Um, but then, you know, uh, Gaylor, which originally was, was, you [00:50:00] know, with Diana Agron, but then it really took off with, with Karlie Kloss, Kaylor. That was like more, more queer centered women, you know, at least, um, the vocal proponents of it.

[00:50:10] Alex: Mm hmm. That’s when it really got to me, like, before, because I am not in, oh gosh, I have such a compli complicated relationship with Taylor Swift. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it with you, Christina, but pretty much, especially with 1989, in the way that I interpret and love that album in a way I know she didn’t write it, and, but has been like, oh man, I, like, that’s very much as a real, like, for, for me, it’s Odd because I started, I started listening to it at first, but my mom was such a huge country music fan that when I was a kid, it’s not that like I hated Taylor Swift, just like,

[00:50:47] Christina: She me

[00:50:48] Alex: Tim McGraw, come on.

[00:50:50] Christina: right? Like it the music that on on the radio your mom would, you know, made you listen to I don’t like

[00:50:56] Alex: Right. And it like, and she was like around, especially like, I’m [00:51:00] like, I don’t want to hear the song about 9 11 and then there’s like this woman. Okay, fine. Um, and you know, um, and then watching this young, I’m a little bit younger than her, but like seeing her progress and especially like 1989, that was, oh God, that was when I, God, I, I don’t think there’s another A parasocial relationship I have that has one of like, God, so much respect and like, iconic, just even if I didn’t enjoy any of her music, just the amount and stamina of her work is shock, shock.

[00:51:42] Alex: People who’ve listened to this podcast, I know that you’ve said this many

[00:51:46] Christina: No, I love hearing you say too.

[00:51:47] Alex: It should be repeated, not just because it’s like, oh my god, there’s this, whether you like it or not, there’s this iconic art, but there’s a, uh, I don’t even want [00:52:00] to say a single person making this, I mean, like, yes, exactly, it is a single person that is Um, article is speculating on with fanfiction and it’s going to not just deeply affect her, because it’s the fucking New York Times, it affects her entire business.

[00:52:17] Alex: Like Taylor talked about how she is a business in a really, I don’t know, I think like in a wholesome way, as odd as that might sound. And I, it’s just another commoditization of not just a woman, but an entire community. And it’s, Once again, affecting folks livelihood who just want to go about their lives, who have nothing to do with this, who just don’t It’s so It’s just another instance of the New York Times making life more difficult for people I know.

[00:52:51] Alex: Like, it’s so messed up that Oh, you can swear. It is avid in the show, right? Right?

[00:52:56] Christina: yeah, you totally swear. Absolutely go for

[00:52:59] Alex: just [00:53:00] shocked how fucked, like, this national newspaper continues. To make, like, God, like, I know that saying an article about Taylor Swift is similar to its trans coverage might, is, is, it is different, but in the same casual way that it’s presented, and it’s like, well, it’s an opinion piece.

[00:53:25] Alex: It’s just an opinion. We’re just asking the

[00:53:27] Christina: just asking you questions. Well, and then what’s about this one is that that it came from, yeah it is, to me what honestly makes this a little bit worse in some ways, um, well not worse, but I guess different. I don’t want to say worse, but different from the trans coverage, is that this one’s coming from inside the house.

[00:53:42] Christina: Like,

[00:53:42] Alex: Oh, I think it is, it is worse. It

[00:53:44] Brett: And that’s super fucked

[00:53:45] Christina: that super fucked up. Like, this isn’t something that someone pitched and that like an un, you know, knowledgeable editor stupidly let through. Like, this is a

[00:53:52] Brett: or somewhat of somewhat of notes submitted and they felt obligated

[00:53:56] Christina: no, this, this is a person who works as an editor in the opinion section who [00:54:00] is probably, you know, the way I see it, they don’t have any extremely online people who are between the ages of 30 and 45 working in opinion.

[00:54:07] Christina: Because if they did, then there’s no way this gets published. Because I would think that any extremely online person between 30 and 45 would be like, Oh no, this is insane, and, and, this is taking literally conspiracy theories from the most insane people, like, let’s put aside the fact that, let’s say this is true, and you’ve now just outed someone and basically told someone, on no uncertain terms, you have to come out for visibility because it’s important to us.

[00:54:31] Christina: Oh, and all you other queer artists, which is amazing that’s happening right now, none of you matter. The only one that matters, and the only way that we will have any visibility that matters at all, is if the biggest star in the world lives up to these, these notions that we have, which are completely unfounded.

[00:54:45] Christina: But like, putting all that aside, like, I think that you would have, if you’d had like, Actually, you know, online connected people working in the opinion section, they would be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The people that propagate these theories are actually very unwell and are not healthy. And, and no matter [00:55:00] how you want to interpret things yourself, putting out an essay like this is, is promoting the wrong things.

[00:55:05] Christina: But you’d Don’t, I’m assuming. And so I, this is just conjecture on my part, is you take somebody who’s like, oh, well, we have this, this queer, uh, you know, editor and, and she already wrote this, you know, weird Harry Styles thing last year that got a lot of traffic. So she’s got this idea. It’s person of

[00:55:20] Jeff: Oh, that was her too.

[00:55:22] Alex: Mm hmm.

[00:55:23] Jeff: Okay, I have a leading question for you, Christina and Alex. If it were true, isn’t it worse? I mean, it’s terrible as it is, but if it were true, isn’t it worse in a way?

[00:55:34] Christina: All of it is tolerable. Yeah.

[00:55:37] Alex: it, it just, God, and because a She is queer, right? The person who this. I wasn’t, I was so angry that I, um, like it, it just continues the narrative of tokenizing queer people and, uh, like, oh, see, look, it was by erasure. It was by erasure. And, [00:56:00] and, and there, God. And I think, Christina, this It’s You can answer this question more, but it again tries to put like, it tries to paint it as if like, well, she could be bi, but also like maybe not.

[00:56:14] Alex: And also, you know, but she is a lesbian, but you know, uh, remember when she was a token? She’s not a token. It’s poorly written. It has a bad argument.

[00:56:23] Christina: So poorly written. So poorly

[00:56:24] Alex: I I mean, I don’t know, Christine, like, yeah, how did that make you feel as someone who just, you’re a bi woman and like watching this just weird binary proclamation, like this woman is saying things as if it just applies to an entire community about a single

[00:56:45] Christina: About a single person? Yeah, well, the bi erasure thing is always a common thing in the, in the Gaylor kind of universe. And because, you know, there’s, because the whole theory really hinges on, we know more than you, and you’ve been lied to, and we know the truth. And so nothing can be, you [00:57:00] know, Um, uh, Real, right?

[00:57:02] Christina: It has to all, all of it has to be a snow job. For reasons that make less and less sense. It’s like, even the article, which was very poorly written, talks about how, how many strides, you know, queer artists have made, but then still like, lives up to the basic conceit that the most powerful woman in pop culture couldn’t come out of the closet if she wanted to.

[00:57:18] Christina: Like, come on, of course she could. And, and, and, and it,

[00:57:21] Brett: could seriously

[00:57:23] Christina: would be good for her business, if you think about it. Like, right now, to be, like, a, a young, like, queer musician, like, female musician, that is, like, brand catnip. Like, you almost have to be. Like, it’s almost one of those things, like, if you’re not, that’s kind of a problem, to be completely honest.

[00:57:37] Christina: Like, it, it works, right? So, she, and Taylor Swift loves money more than she loves anything else, so she would get more sales, she would get more streams, she would get, like, whatnot. Like, I, I can’t, there’s no universe that

[00:57:48] Jeff: she loves Johnny football?

[00:57:50] Brett: Okay,

[00:57:52] Alex: I did not know about that until Merlin Mann told me, like, Go with God, Taylor. I don’t know who that guy is. And it’s, [00:58:00] I just am, I don’t know, like, It would be so much, I get it. I, this rando on the internet, get yelled at for not talking about being gay enough. It’s, it’s weird. is gonna sound

[00:58:13] Brett: super out of character for me But I think Taylor Swift honestly loves creating more than she loves money. has been very fortunate to, she has gotten a lot of money out of the deal. Um, honestly, as I’m a stand her by, I don’t really give a shit, but it seems to me like she gets paid for doing what she loves and what she loves is creating.

[00:58:40] Christina: and I would agree with that.

[00:58:41] Brett: don’t think she makes a bunch of money grabs. I think she tries to own her work.

[00:58:45] Christina: no, I mean, I would

[00:58:46] Brett: Like, all of her re

[00:58:48] Christina: Oh, totally. No, no, no, I with you. No, no, you’re, you’re not wrong there. I’m, I’m being flippant, but I’m just saying she knows how to maximize, right? I think she, she creates first and foremost. She’s the creator, but she knows how to maximize for profit. And I, and I [00:59:00] cannot see someone who has very deliberately and I think in a, in A good way, like mind her personal life, you know, for her art and, and I don’t say that derogatorily at all.

[00:59:08] Christina: I’m actually really respectful of think it’s an amazing thing that she’s done, um, as we talked about last episode, but I cannot see how like in this environment where that would get you more accolades, more streams, more sales, more whatever, that that would not be something that in the last five years would not have been part of the narrative if it were actually, if any of this had any actual basis in reality.

[00:59:29] Christina: But the fact of the matter is, even if it does, it’s none of our business. And you know what I mean? Like, it’s, it’s, it’s gross to me that we’re even having this conversation. A, the biracial stuff I think is gross, but, you know, whatnot, but it, but I also, uh, love your opinion on this too, Alex. Like, the binary in all of this, which is, oh, well, if you act this way, then that is indicative of you being this type of, of, of person, and your sexuality has to be this.

[00:59:53] Christina: Like, I’m sorry, weren’t we supposed to be getting away from that? Like, what the fuck? Like,

[00:59:57] Alex: I worry about the fallout [01:00:00] now for Boy Genius, because they’re already fetishized for, and they openly celebrate their queerness as their

[01:00:07] Christina: and they openly will shit on their weird ass fans, which, which I appreciate. Like, they will actually speak against it and be like, it, because, like, uh, apparently, like, last year

[01:00:17] Alex: Stone, and I’m like, oh, I love you all.

[01:00:20] Christina: totally, totally. When Phoebe was basically like, yeah, some of you assholes, like, bullied me, had my profile picture and bullied me on my way to my father’s funeral, if you do that, I fucking hate you and you are not, you know, don’t listen to my music.

[01:00:32] Christina: Hell yeah. Um, Taylor Swift is not that artist, but no, I agree with you. I worry for, for, and the, some of the Boy Genius fans are insane, but, but I think that band deals with it a lot better. Um. But also, you know, Taylor Swift shouldn’t have to answer for any of this, but it’s, uh, the, the, the CNN clapped back through a person close to Taylor Swift, um, a.

[01:00:52] Christina: k. a. her publicist, G Pain, um, and basically, let me find the, let me find the, uh, um, Let me find the quote. So the [01:01:00] headline is Taylor Swift’s Associates Dismayed by New York Times Piece Speculating on Her Sexuality, Invasive, Untrue, and Inappropriate. And then I’m just going to read this. So this quote is, there’s some shade here that I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I kind of like it.

[01:01:13] Christina: Um, it says, um, uh, this article wouldn’t have been allowed to be written about Shawn Mendes or any male artists whose sexuality has been questioned by fans.

[01:01:24] Alex: Hell

[01:01:25] Brett: sure.

[01:01:25] Christina: Which, which is both true and also kind of a, a speculatory, is that, is that kind of like asking us all, I mean, is that kind of an invitation to be like, write about the real homo?

[01:01:34] Christina: I don’t know. Um, and,

[01:01:38] Alex: Who’s to say?

[01:01:39] Christina: who’s to say? I don’t know, but

[01:01:40] Jeff: feel like they decided to like get into the game. Yeah.

[01:01:43] Christina: a little bit, a little bit, but yeah, no, but this is funny that a person close to, to, to Taylor Swift like spoke with, with CNN, uh, so AKA again, her publicist, but like, yeah, uh, the whole thing, it’s just, I don’t know how this got published and it’s, it’s insulting on.

[01:01:58] Alex: the New York Times. Like, I [01:02:00] feel like I probably have the least amount of respect for the paper than folks here. And I, I mean, Especially because of the staff thing, and Christina, I was gonna disagree with you of like, um, this wouldn’t have been published if there were folks on staff who were at that age, but then you said like, people who aren’t online, because I do think the New York Times pretty much hires a very specific type of person, but then Has them write about things that you, we don’t know, this woman might not have wanted to write, like, that’s not an excuse, but, okay,

[01:02:40] Christina: she was made

[01:02:40] Alex: oh, right, I keep

[01:02:42] Christina: no, no, no, no. she’s extremely online and she’s into all this stuff. She doesn’t have social media, which is probably good for her. Um,

[01:02:49] Alex: yeah,

[01:02:50] Christina: her name, but you know, she’s in every Reddit, TikTok, whatever.

[01:02:53] Christina: Like she’s, she’s part of this, right? She’s deeply online, but that’s unlike most of like, I think that like most of them At least, [01:03:00] this is my experience, and I’m probably, you know, being too broad here. But most of the people I know who work at the New York Times who are millennials are not extremely online.

[01:03:07] Christina: Now, I think that for Gen Z, I think it’s different. I think that, like, the Zoomers that are hiring probably are more online. And I, I, but I definitely, the reason to me is like, if you had anybody on staff who was able to make decisions about stuff like this, who was extremely online, They would have been able to tell you in a second, this is a bad idea for x, y, z reason.

[01:03:28] Christina: But you didn’t have that. So you get like this boomer mentality. Oh yeah, this is what the kids like and this will be fine and this will give us representation. There’s nothing offensive about this, even though the entire conceit is offensive and disrespectful and dehumanizing, um, uh, whether it’s true or not.

[01:03:42] Christina: Um, uh, and, but, but it’s because No one, like, running the ship, in my opinion, is like, you know, unhinged in, in a way that’s necessary if you’re going to run things like, or like, stop things like this from running, I guess.

[01:03:57] Alex: Yeah, there’s there’s not like, as [01:04:00] someone who is pretty unhinged myself at times, like, at least I know when I’m missing the hinges. you know,

[01:04:06] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, right,

[01:04:06] Alex: gotta be like, Ah, yes, let me just screw this one in a little bit more, whereas there isn’t anyone there who can

[01:04:12] Jeff: I just pictured a door running off like you lose your hinges and you’re door running off. Can

[01:04:18] Alex: as a dork. One trim. I’m sorry.

[01:04:23] Jeff: I just add like the one thing that’s kind of separate from all this that I found just deeply, deeply problematic, which is the very first in which they describe they are. Yeah. First, talk about Taylor, year she released her first record, and then describe a suicidal act that is, if you don’t know the person who’s named and don’t know whether she went through with it or not, which I didn’t.

[01:04:46] Jeff: Is it she? Is it they? I,

[01:04:48] Christina: it’s, it’s she, and not, don’t make that

[01:04:50] Jeff: and she did not, which I learned later, but. I, this is a trope. This is a trope in true crime. And it’s a, and it’s something terrible that they did in this article, which is to take a [01:05:00] person you don’t necessarily know, put them in a suicidal act scene and not tell you what happens as a way of investing you, but also as a way of setting stakes that are never explained.

[01:05:11] Jeff: I mean, they’re, they’re explained. I understand happening there, but what a horrible thing to do. And that was the part where I had not read that this guest opinion person was. An opinion editor, even though it’s right there. And I spent the rest of the article being like, Who is the fucking editor for this?

[01:05:28] Jeff: Only to get to the end and be like, Oh, it’s like your friend. Like, I get it.

[01:05:35] Alex: threads, like I’m not even that much of a, not that I don’t know that in a lot of cases trigger warnings are important and there’s a time and place for them, but I’m not like a huge trigger warning person, but I’m like, the very first sentence gives a very graphic description too, and I’m what is happening right now?

[01:05:56] Jeff: as

[01:05:56] Christina: Gratuitous shit and grotesque when you consider, like, you’re taking a real [01:06:00] person’s real situation about her actual life and about something that she went through, which was difficult for her to come out as a country music artist, to tie into your fan fiction theory where you fetishize a real person as, like, not real so that you can, what, like, play paper dolls?

[01:06:14] Christina: Like, this is, this is, uh, uh, the whole thing is

[01:06:17] Jeff: And having, having read the whole thing and been like, wow, this whole thing sounds like a really intense, hurtful version of the moon landing theories, like, where, like, you can imagine someone reading and being like, well, now that you say Um, but like, the crazy thing to me was that, that very beginning for me should have meant that for, I didn’t read anymore, right?

[01:06:38] Jeff: Like, except I really wanted to read this. If it, if you weren’t saying, Christina, I want to talk about this on the show. I would have been like, Oh, fuck you. I’m not another word. And then instead I got 5, 000 words of, Oh, fuck you. I’m not reading another word, but I’m reading the next the paragraph.

[01:06:55] Brett: this is intriguing to me because, like, some of the [01:07:00] people that responded to Christina talking about Overtired are like, I like it, but I don’t like the Taylor Swift. this isn’t really about Taylor Swift. This is more about the New York Times and, and they have a history, like their opinion section has a history of letting a lot of bullshit.

[01:07:20] Brett: get into print. And so I’m gonna, I’m not going to label this episode as a Taylor Swift episode because that’s not

[01:07:29] Christina: really

[01:07:29] Brett: about, about bad

[01:07:32] Christina: I, I would be as offended, I might even be more offended, frankly, if it were a less famous person, right? Like, I

[01:07:36] Brett: If it were about

[01:07:37] Christina: oh yeah, I mean,

[01:07:38] Brett: seriously,

[01:07:39] Christina: I mean, I think

[01:07:39] Brett: it’s a hit job, matter

[01:07:41] Christina: I mean, I think, honestly, the only kind of saving grace you can make at all about this in terms of just it’s, I mean, I think it’s bad to platform these ideas and to get this stuff into fruition and, and maybe encourage it about other people.

[01:07:51] Christina: And like, it’s, it’s problematic and, and, and disturbing in a lot of ways. But I mean, the only thing I can kind of say about this is that like, okay, this is the most famous person in the world. Things are going to be said and [01:08:00] whatnot, you know, so, so it’s, it’s, I, I don’t worry about any harm to like Taylor Swift as a person, right?

[01:08:05] Christina: Like, whatever.

[01:08:05] Brett: But in the New York

[01:08:07] Christina: But in the New York Times, like, do we really need to, as I said, take some of the most unhinged and unhealthy people I’ve ever observed on the internet, not the most, but some of the most, and like, let’s just platform all those opinions, and like, let’s just bring this into a conversation.

[01:08:20] Christina: Yeah, let’s just talk about this. What the fuck? This is like, again, this is like QAnon shit. Like,

[01:08:28] Brett: Yeah,

[01:08:28] Alex: asking the questions! It’s the opinion section. that’s like twi that’s like, Musk’s approach to Twitter of

[01:08:36] Brett: like it’s a, uh, what, uh, free speech absolutist. We say whatever we want. But it’s coming from the inside, as Jeff said. And it’s so messed up,

[01:08:46] Jeff: And let’s not forget to mention the more than a dozen ads inside of that article.

[01:08:53] Alex: got

[01:08:53] Jeff: And they,

[01:08:54] Alex: blockers.

[01:08:55] Jeff: of money

[01:08:55] Christina: was gonna say, I was gonna say, UBlock Origin works real well for me, and I pay for the New York [01:09:00] Times. Um, so, you know.

[01:09:03] Brett: I, I, okay. Uh, si side note. I have two

[01:09:07] On Depression and Suicidal Ideation

[01:09:07] Brett: side notes. Can I, I, I’m gonna interject.

[01:09:10] Jeff: One right, one on the

[01:09:11] Brett: I know Jeff, Jeff has to leave soon,

[01:09:13] Jeff: I’m okay.

[01:09:14] Brett: number one, I finally got my raspberry pie for, and I’m gonna set up pie hole for my

[01:09:22] Christina: Oh, hell yes.

[01:09:23] Brett: Side note. Second side note, I talked in a previous episode about my own suicidal ideation.

[01:09:30] Christina: an update from you on that.

[01:09:31] Brett: And Christina said, this is clearly a med problem, and it turns out it was. I talked to my psychiatrist, I did a special session with her outside of her regularly scheduled sessions, upped my lamictal a little bit, and Honestly, like, all of that ideation is gone. I am back to, I am back to my normal, slightly depressed, but not suicidal self.

[01:09:57] Brett: Um, so anyone who was following [01:10:00] that, I got a lot of letters after that episode. Um, for anyone who’s following that, I am okay. Everything is Like, when you’re okay, those kind of, those thoughts, those ideas seem so distant. Um, you can’t imagine, yeah, exactly. And that’s what’s so scary when you’re in it, it feels so real.

[01:10:22] Christina: real and can’t remember what it’s like outside of it. I mean, I think that’s why depression is such a mindfuck because when you’re in it, it’s a black hole is how I always describe it. When you’re in it, you can’t remember what it’s like to not be depressed. But then when you’re not, you underscore like how bad it is and, and you don’t, it seems so far away.

[01:10:38] Christina: And so creep up on you suddenly, like slowly. And then all it’s, it’s, you know, everything, everywhere, all at once, uh, you know, to quote last year’s best film. Um, and, and, and you’re like, what fuck, you know?

[01:10:49] Brett: Yeah. Yep. But I’m okay. Thanks to everyone for your, your letters of support and concern and checking in on me. Um, Brian, friend of the [01:11:00] show, checked in on me multiple times. All of my Facebook friends checked in on me. I get emails. It was, uh, heartwarming and I just want to let everyone know I’m okay.

[01:11:10] Jeff: It’s fantastic.

[01:11:13] Alex: That’s another reason I love this show, is because you are able to talk about these things and not, I don’t want to say not cause a panic, but because there is such a stigma around talking about suicidal ideation and attempts, it’s so easy to be labeled as suicidal. The suicide person. And, uh, it’s, and, I, I mean, that, because I’ve been in those situations, so many, like, it is difficult to talk about because I think, Brett, because you talk about it so often, people know to check on you and to take care of you, but with a level of respect and don’t take away your [01:12:00] agency as a person, you know?

[01:12:02] Alex: And, uh, thank you for talking about that and adjusting your medication.

[01:12:09] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. I do the best I can.

[01:12:14] Back to the Raspberry Pi

[01:12:14] Jeff: Ugh. Yes. Did you make this is a hard, hard turn, but it’s still one of your side, uh, quests. Did you mean Raspberry Pi 5 or 4?

[01:12:26] Brett: It’s a four.

[01:12:27] Jeff: Okay!

[01:12:27] Christina: I

[01:12:27] Brett: know there was a

[01:12:28] Christina: there was a, I had this,

[01:12:29] Alex: know those five

[01:12:30] Christina: oh, Jeff, I had the same question in my mind, I,

[01:12:32] Jeff: insane! It’s like, basically now,

[01:12:35] Christina: it’s like a full computer. Yeah,

[01:12:36] Brett: I on, I was on a waiting list for

[01:12:39] Christina: yeah, yeah, they were able to make them,

[01:12:41] Brett: for a

[01:12:41] Jeff: dude, I had five of them here. I should have sent you

[01:12:43] Brett: Jesus. So, one finally showed up, and I already had cases. Oracle gave us, like, as swag, they gave us, uh, V4 cases. Uh, or whatever. Four. It’s something four. Um, and I had the case, so I wanted the four to fit [01:13:00] in the case.

[01:13:01] Brett: Um, I don’t know if it would change between 4 and 5, like literally this is my first Raspberry Pi. Um, I’m exploring, I’m watching a ton of YouTube videos and all the shit I can do with it. I’m gonna set up home assistant and pie hole are my, my plans for it. Um, but now that I know there’s a five, I gotta get on a waiting list for that now

[01:13:22] Jeff: Honestly, I feel like the five takes away a little bit of the fun as much as I want

[01:13:26] Christina: Yeah, I have a few

[01:13:28] Jeff: it was always going get to the point it’s like, okay, well now it’s like a Chromebook, but better. Like the, whereas like the four was the very edge of that when it started getting like eight gigs of memory

[01:13:39] Christina: and I have, I do, I do have a number of fours, um, I have like two, two or three of them. Um, and I got them, like I got most of them like before the pandemic and then that was the thing. Nobody, they couldn’t produce them enough. And I think that’s actually the main reason why like the five is kind of even a thing is like, okay, it was actually net easier for us to just make a new thing than to try to like get the supply or, you know, [01:14:00] organized for, um, the, the, The four.

[01:14:02] Christina: Um, they are backordered a little bit from some of the retailers, but it’s like a mid January thing depending on, on when you’re wanting to, to get them, depending on who you’re getting it from. So they’re not, it’s not impossible the way that it, that it was with the fours. Um, but, um, that’s a good segue for you, Jeff, and I don’t know if you have time to talk about your Synology stuff because a lot of the things that, you want to do in your Synology are things that Brett wants to do with his pie.

[01:14:26] Brett: But we didn’t give Alex a shot at the mental

[01:14:30] Christina: Oh, sorry about that.

[01:14:32] Mental Health Corner (Part 3)

[01:14:32] Alex: Oh, God, I, mwah, uh, no, uh, I mean, from, like, Jew by Friday, folks, listen, most will know that it’s been, like, 2023 was probably, like, I describe it as not the worst year of my life, but definitely the loneliest year, which I didn’t know until the end, and definitely self inflicted [01:15:00] loneliness with the, uh, This is a weird way to say something was a highlight, but from January to April, we, I was like taking care of my cat who has now passed away from cancer, and that was kind of what grounded me and gave me, it pushed away a lot of that.

[01:15:26] Alex: Suicidal ideations and plans and was like, oh, someone needs me again. This is, um, yeah. And then after that, it was a big crash. This is also the first time I’ve lost a pet not from old age. And I think, yeah, Brett was even in town and I couldn’t see him because I’m like, oh, that was kind of like when she was really like, oh, it was time.

[01:15:52] Alex: Um. And, uh, it, yeah, it’s, it’s, but, you know, she was Uh, well, I mean, obviously the best [01:16:00] cat in the world, but, um, being able to main like maintain a member of my family’s quality of life for as long as possible was something that really gave me an intense amount of meaning that I didn’t expect Thank you very much.

[01:16:18] Alex: To be gone afterwards, expected grief and relief, um, and it was, you know, inside, like, grief and despair. And you can see the, like, decline of everything I made from, like, it was really good when my cat had cancer and then it just plummeted from April until really, really now. Uh, and it was Another one of those things where I mentioned being, having that self inflicted loneliness, but also the, again, desire to not take Lamictal to [01:17:00] get that high of not being depressed and, you know, just finding a way to get up in the morning.

[01:17:08] Alex: But in the past, I didn’t have like a manic episode and get a new cat. I promise people were worried about that. But we a friend of mine was like, Hey, um, this I found this cat and she’s been returned multiple times to the shelter. But I think she is perfect for you. And so so we got a new cat who is a little terror and and perfect.

[01:17:32] Alex: And it’s not I don’t want to say that this cat like totally improved my mental health, but it reminded me. How much? It is, one, unhealthy to need to be needed, and that is, like, I, I know that my partner, like, needs me, and I, when I am sane, I rationally know how heartbroken people would be with But, [01:18:00] um, accepting that I have a desire to need to be needed, whether that be at my former job, with my relationships, or, uh, now, I’m like, okay, I want to channel this Into something that, uh, yeah, I got this little kitten, um, that I am taking care of that has made me get out of bed in the morning, but I’m going about it in a healthier way, realizing that, oh, this is a great way to focus on mental health, but I’m not going to let it devolve into, I need it.

[01:18:43] Alex: that meaning in my life just because I want to make people happy. Like, it makes me happy to make my family happy, not the, the other way around. Which has led to me, I think, [01:19:00] again, making I know it’s gross to call podcasts art sometimes, but I’ve been back to making and making, uh, just, just, uh, different weird art stuff.

[01:19:10] Alex: Not because I want to please people and not because I’m so afraid of letting them down, which I feel like I’ve let everyone down through all of 2023, despite everyone saying that the opposite, even though I am difficult, when I say difficult to deal with. Um, people, I think a lot of folks know what I mean in the way that when someone is very depressed, it is difficult to deal with them just because they don’t have expectations of themselves, and you don’t know how to handle that, and like, You don’t know if you should put expectations on them or when someone’s manic and they either exceed expectations or just completely blow them off.

[01:19:59] Alex: [01:20:00] It’s a rollercoaster. Which is why I’m sort of having Uh, hard time putting this into a cohesive

[01:20:10] Christina: you’re

[01:20:11] Alex: mental health corner type of thing because it’s like I am slowly emerging from my mental health corner and exploring the whole room, uh, in the past, in the past few weeks, but I’m doing really well, less months.

[01:20:27] Alex: I’m not happy to hear that Brett was going through what Brett was going through next week, last week, or a few weeks ago. And I don’t know, I’ve just been reaching out to folks as well. And again, being like, I know you don’t need me, I just like that we are friends. And, uh, I’m starting to like myself a little bit more, which is such a cliché thing [01:21:00] say!

[01:21:00] Alex: Oh, but Mm

[01:21:01] Brett: talk about how hard it is for people to deal with depressed people, but I feel like when you’re depressed, you feel so hard to deal with, and you just assume that no one else can deal with you. Because, like, I found myself in that position, um, in my last round of depression, just like, Who the fuck could stand me right now?

[01:21:24] Brett: I am unlovable. I am, am a piece of shit. Like, who could love me? Um, and it may not be as hard as you think for the people who love you to deal with you as it seems when you’re in the middle of depression.

[01:21:41] Alex: Yeah, I, I go into the binary thinking that you were talking about before, of like, of course it’s, uh, dealing with, not, not even dealing with, like, having and maneuvering relationships with folks who have any sort of mental illness or [01:22:00] disability, and pretty much everyone is difficult, but they’re so, they’re so, So much nuance and there’s, you know, a difference, not just for every person, but for every situation.

[01:22:12] Alex: But, you know, you, Christina, like you said, you’re just in that depth that you don’t remember what it’s like when you’re above the water. You just have the binary thinking of the bottom of the ocean.

[01:22:26] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:22:27] Alex: Uh, it, I don’t know, past few, I’m, I’m trying, though, this is, this is another thing that it feels gross when you’re bipolar, is sometimes people will assume when you’re doing better it might be a manic episode, and

[01:22:47] Jeff: yes, is the thing, this the thing.

[01:22:49] Alex: That, yeah, that’s that’s sort of my main thing now is being like, look, I am measured.

[01:22:54] Alex: I’m not taking on too much. This is not like

[01:22:57] Brett: we know when we’re stable. We can tell [01:23:00] we’re stable.

[01:23:01] Alex: see, I don’t always know So I yeah. So it’s

[01:23:06] Brett: That’s interesting. I’m very aware of that myself.

[01:23:09] Alex: Yeah, it’s I think that’s because it’s one of those things where. Because being bipolar is sort of my main thing, or my main diagnosis that other symptoms stem from. My brain is just wired in a certain way, um, and this also can vary from folks who are Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2.

[01:23:35] Alex: Like, because of the Bipolar 1 ness, that it

[01:23:43] Alex: For me, I know when I am ramping up or like

[01:23:46] Jeff: Yes.

[01:23:47] Alex: down, but I don’t, in the midst of it, know it all. Even realize

[01:23:53] Brett: bipolar 1,

[01:23:54] Alex: yeah.

[01:23:55] Brett: and Jeff is bipolar 1. Okay, you got you guys have more in [01:24:00] common than with me. Okay.

[01:24:02] Alex: it’s a fun one. That’s why people think that you’re on cocaine. And you’re not. Just, I have a lot of Diet Coke. love that. And, oh man, Aspartame. If they took that away from me, like, understand people who are addicted to nicotine. Um, like, If Aspartame was taken away from me, I would, oh god, I would be creating my own, uh, Silk Road, just

[01:24:30] Jeff: From your, from your, from cold dead

[01:24:33] Alex: yes. That’s, that’s it. Thank you for That’s

[01:24:39] Brett: you, That was really good.

[01:24:42] Jeff: That’s super helpful. Man, that’s a good one.

[01:24:47] Brett: I don’t know how much time you have, Jeff, but do you

[01:24:49] Jeff: I’m, I’m, I’m in it for the gratitude. You kidding me?

[01:24:52] Christina: yeah. Hell yeah.

[01:24:52] Brett: right. Oh,

[01:24:54] Synology as Step Dad

[01:24:54] Jeff: And the Synology topic, we’ll, we’ll hit another time, but I’m going to ask Alex this. So I’ve had a [01:25:00] Synology for a while and I, I wrote in the show notes, a little thing about this, which is like using my Synology feels a little bit like, like if you had a new stepdad who was like kind of forward thinking, but kind of locked in the Microsoft universe with just a little bit of flirtation with Linux, like that’s how it feels to me to be using.

[01:25:16] Jeff: Uh, whatever, DSM 7 or whatever it’s called. Not DSM.

[01:25:20] Christina: dss,

[01:25:20] Jeff: Is it called DSM?

[01:25:21] Christina: think it called

[01:25:22] Jeff: operations?

[01:25:22] Brett: correct.

[01:25:23] Alex: Yeah,

[01:25:24] Jeff: By the way, I have a therapist friend who recently told me he was reading DSM 1, and I was like, is that like reading the Old But anyway, um, but, but, uh, I, I met Brett and Christina told me about something called download station, which I know everyone knows about.

[01:25:39] Jeff: It seems like if they have a Synology as a way of doing my torrents that I don’t have to keep my laptop open. And I was like, it’s one of those things where I’m like, wow, I have a Synology and I wasn’t using it for this. And I need to figure out all the other ways to use it. Um, while also letting my stepdad know he’s not my real dad. And so Alex, just a lightning round here. What is like two, what are two things that like you [01:26:00] use your Synology for that you’re like, wow, my life would be very different without these things. My technological life.

[01:26:05] Alex: Honestly, the biggest thing for me is just the, the backup and storage. I underestimated how much I would use, I guess, the dumb features of Synology that aren’t big fancy VPN Casey less style stuff. But I will say the second feature is possibly the best feature of Synology, which is having Friends who also use synologies and can, uh, give you advice for when you inevitably break it, or give you ideas on cool things to do with it.

[01:26:42] Alex: And I previously for Oh, I also use it for, uh, Plex, but I had A use net account was, uh, I forget what I use. So sonar or, and radar and all, all that good stuff. But I tr or all [01:27:00] the, all the extra Rs. Oh, is that because it’s pirate? why they, there’s an extra r.

[01:27:04] Brett: it? Is it? never of that.

[01:27:07] Alex: Oh, that’s amazing.

[01:27:09] Brett: That just sounded on at least two of us at the same

[01:27:12] Christina: That’s adorable. Yes.

[01:27:14] Alex: Oh man. And, uh, I, as much as I, uh, adore transmission, I was listening to an older episode of Overtired and I was like, wait, what’s down? What, what, what? And so I am daning with that because it’s more. Or at least it’s more in my wheelhouse, so I don’t need to be texting Casey at 10pm being like, Hey, can I use your Plex to watch this concert you got, please?

[01:27:43] Brett: has great search capabilities. That’s what that’s what differentiates it

[01:27:47] Christina: Totally. I totally agree.

[01:27:49] Brett: Finding.

[01:27:50] Alex: Yeah, so I, I guess that I am a, uh, like, I’m more distant from my stepdad, I, I suppose, but I’m [01:28:00] trying to, like you, build up that relationship.

[01:28:03] Brett: use for, what do you, how do you back up to your synology? What do you use?

[01:28:08] Alex: I don’t even know. In fact, I, and I can’t even look because my current, uh, or my MacBook Pro is at, Uh, Apple, right now, torn apart for a reason, I know. Uh, but I have to say, my friend, let me borrow a, uh, M2 MacBook Air, and other than for encoding and, and doing, um, 3D, 3D video editing, even like 4K editing is pretty solid and without, uh, like, without using proxy media and stuff.

[01:28:38] Alex: So, yeah, I don’t remember.

[01:28:40] Brett: I will say,

[01:28:41] Alex: me it up.

[01:28:41] Brett: I use, I use Synology Drive to backup my entire user folder, I use Arc to backup specific, uh, external drives to my Synology as a, as a double backup, and I use Time Machine I use MySynology as a time machine [01:29:00] destination. Um, so between the three, it has saved my ass just in the last couple months.

[01:29:05] Brett: Uh, few times I’ve been able to find revisions and versions and, and save external hard drives. Um, just from having this like triple backup MySynology.

[01:29:17] Alex: I didn’t know Time Machine Counted, that was my original thing, but I need to know I also just drag my alternate home directory into the drive. I don’t have it automated yet, and I

[01:29:30] Jeff: I totally do

[01:29:31] Alex: I know that I should, but I’m just like, let me just Um,

[01:29:35] Jeff: do that.

[01:29:36] Brett: This can be automated.

[01:29:37] Alex: Mmhmm.

[01:29:39] Brett: All right, should we do a gratitude before Jeff has to take

[01:29:42] Grapptitude

[01:29:42] Jeff: Yeah, can I go first in case

[01:29:44] Brett: Yeah, yeah,

[01:29:45] Jeff: in the midst of it? Um, okay, so mine is Datum, D A Y T U M, uh, which is both a website and an iPhone app. Um, and I, um, I love it and it’s a way, [01:30:00] like, what I like about it, it’s a way to track all kinds of stuff, but it’s stuff that you decide you want to track.

[01:30:04] Jeff: And Um, and so for instance, like I’m tracking a lot of stuff that is like, if I’m not doing these things, it probably means I’m not doing well. Um, and so I’m so far in the first week of 2024 doing a good job of like tracking that stuff. But it also involves like, I’m tracking like contact with my parents.

[01:30:21] Jeff: Cause I kind of tend to disappear from my parents a little bit. I don’t really want to. Um, and so if I’ve like been physically with my mom or like have been on the phone with my dad, who doesn’t live here, like I just kind of mark it. So I’m going to see like, wow, it’s been a long time. Cause I think time.

[01:30:35] Jeff: This is something I think maybe goes along both with some sort of dissociation stuff I’ve dealt with most of my life, but also bipolar, which is like time disappears. Um, and it’s really people. so hard for people you’re in relationship with to believe that and understand it. Right. And you have responsibility, but it’s like, not like that.

[01:30:53] Jeff: It’s not. Such a simple thing as responsibility. Stepdad. Um, but, uh, but anyway, what I [01:31:00] really love about Datum 101, like my requirement for any of this stuff is that I’d be able to export my data in like a CSV somewhere, right? Like or whatever format. Um, but so every other tracking app is, is designed in a way that every design choice is a value judgment.

[01:31:16] Jeff: Like as soon as you start making an app pretty, which this one is not, you’re making value judgments. You’re either making a value judgment of a color that suggests, yay, nice work. Right. And maybe you’re getting worse and you’re putting fucking confetti on there and haptics and shit. But like, but,

[01:31:32] Alex: haptics are good, but

[01:31:33] Jeff: haptics are great.

[01:31:34] Jeff: I mean, I love it. No, don’t get me wrong. I’ve used those apps where when I marked like that, I took a shower. like, yay.

[01:31:42] Alex: Oh,

[01:31:42] Jeff: yes, I did a great job today. Um, but anyway,

[01:31:45] Brett: need that.

[01:31:46] Jeff: I appreciate, no, I love that. But appreciate that this thing feels really steady because there is no value judgment.

[01:31:53] Jeff: It’s just what you assign to the thing. Right. Um, and I think there are accidental value judgments in design. Right. Of course. [01:32:00] Like, and so. I have just loved it for that. And you know, it’s like updated enough. It was like twice last year and like four times the year before, like, um, and it also seems like the kind of thing that could probably like live quite a while past the developer deciding to update it.

[01:32:15] Jeff: Cause it’s like simple enough.

[01:32:17] Alex: Yeah, he had not abandoned, but he had it had been like not languishing for a while, but it was inactive. And it sounds like you you started when like development had picked up again.

[01:32:32] Jeff: I started this week.

[01:32:35] Alex: the guy who makes it is really cool, like, he designs it to be like, if I abandon this, I want it to be able to go on, which is great, yeah.

[01:32:45] Jeff: it’s, it doesn’t just seem that way. It is that way. That’s fantastic. Fantastic. That’s my choice.

[01:32:51] Brett: Awesome. Have you ever used, um, shit, what is it? Um, oh, I totally [01:33:00] blanked and I can’t remember the name of it. We’re just gonna make it pointless. Uh, Exist. Exist. io,

[01:33:06] Alex: Exist. io!

[01:33:08] Jeff: no. Oh yeah. I remember exist. io.

[01:33:11] Brett: they let you set up like custom tags to, it’s not, it’s not going to be equal to data. I’m not suggesting it as an alternative, um, but you can track all kinds of metrics, uh, on a daily basis and it reminds you to basically journal with tags. And the, and the tags add ticks to whatever metric you want to track.

[01:33:36] Brett: Um, it’s a pretty good, like, and then you get like weekly, monthly, and yearly reports from it, which I appreciate.

[01:33:43] Jeff: One thing outside of like life tracking I do with this that I like is like, so in the last two weeks, our oven, our fridge. And our washing machine have broken. And so I have a, I have a thing. I have a I have a I just called broken. I have, I created item called broken, uh, but it’s really just for [01:34:00] when break and there’s one fixed for when things, which could also be used for mental health, I guess, but like, um, but I’m using it just to be able to track like, wow, that a lot of shit broke this year and it took us like this long to fix it, but like we got through it

[01:34:11] Alex: Oh, that’s such a good idea.

[01:34:13] Brett: bought a new fridge.

[01:34:15] Christina: I

[01:34:15] Brett: Um, I need, I need a new washer and dryer. I understand.

[01:34:19] Jeff: yeah, we’re, I’m leaving to buy a washer after this podcast. So anyway.

[01:34:23] Christina: Have fun at, fun at Lowe’s.

[01:34:25] Jeff: Thank you, yeah. go? Cause I have to soon and I want to make sure I hear yours.

[01:34:30] Alex: I, well, very similar to yours, I think when I was on this, uh, around the last time I talked about When Did I, which is an app that just reminds you, or rather it does not remind you, you just make a note of the last time you did something. So I would be like, yep, called my mom, today I called my grandma, uh, this is, used it to track how often I need a haircut, which is very, very often.

[01:34:58] Jeff: I’m tracking my haircut in [01:35:00] datum. Yeah.

[01:35:01] Alex: yeah, yeah, yeah, and, uh, just because it was more, uh, it was simpler than Datum, and when I was having a real broken brain time, I just needed something new. So simple, the kind of way that, you know, like datum, I would get into the weeds of myself and, but what was great wi with, um, what, uh, when did I, is I could then import it to datum.

[01:35:30] Alex: And so the thing that I am super, uh, gr fi gr uh, I’m very yeah, very gr.

[01:35:42] Jeff: Very graptiful.

[01:35:44] Alex: For, um, a new ish app called Chronicling, uh, from Rebecca Owen, that’s based pretty much completely off of Swift, and I think it is pretty, but it really [01:36:00] Thanks Is sort of bare bones in sort of like the default iOS, well I guess not, the crossover of iOS, macOS, um, and iPadOS. And I’ve just been experimenting, yeah, I’ve been experimenting with it as another way to track data but more importantly a way to experiment with bringing the datum info in and my when did I Info, and looking at the different correlations and whatnot.

[01:36:35] Alex: Plus, it is the easiest way to, for me, it’s been the easiest way to get that information out and put it into chat GPT and find correlations, just the way the exporting, it just works with my

[01:36:50] Brett: Correlations are the thing. Like what’s the point of all this data we collect if we can’t create the correlations, which exists as a decent job of, but [01:37:00] I’ve always, I’ve wanted more control and I’ve never gotten into like creating like our. Programs to like create these like very custom correlations.

[01:37:10] Brett: So anything that create easy correlations and, and if you can incorporate chat GBD and create those correlations, that’s awesome.

[01:37:19] Alex: Yeah, that’s, that’s my, like, custom. I guess I’m very, very Grappy that people are making a lot of custom GPTs specifically for this and that’s what I’ve been working on just for myself And it’s already been, been huge. Thanks

[01:37:40] Jeff: that was inspiring. Thank

[01:37:41] Brett: super grappy about

[01:37:42] Jeff: everybody, I have to leave. I’m gonna come back and listen to the other Graptitudes. Uh, I am graptiful to you, Alex. It’s been wonderful having you. Um, you’re just the best. So thank you, everybody. I’m gonna Like duck out

[01:37:57] Brett: We’ll it. We’ll

[01:37:58] Alex: BP1 buddy.[01:38:00]

[01:38:00] Jeff: That’s right. PP one buddy. Bye.

[01:38:04] Brett: Um, Christina, do you want to

[01:38:06] Christina: Sure. All right. So my pick is, um, Screens 5, which is the, the latest release of, of Screens. So this came out, uh, last month and I didn’t even know about it at first. Uh, I think because, um, uh,

[01:38:20] Brett: it didn’t show up on, on Setapp. They, pulled out of Setapp.

[01:38:25] Christina: leaving Setapp. It is now a Mac App Store only, um, app. And so if you have screens on Setapp, it’ll still work.

[01:38:31] Christina: But if you uninstall, um, at a certain point, it’ll, it’ll stop, uh, being available to re install for you and whatnot. So it’s, it’s going away, which is a shame. Um, but I do understand, like, you know, They got to make business decisions that they’ve got to make. Um, but, but Screens 5, I did go ahead and upgrade to that.

[01:38:47] Christina: And, um, and I like it. I think the new design is really good. And I honestly, I just really wanted to support, um, uh, Adobe, uh, because, uh, this is an app that I’ve used for a long time. If you’re not familiar with it, I think this is the best way to basically be able to remote [01:39:00] into another Mac, um, from wherever you are.

[01:39:03] Christina: Like, obviously you can use things like tail scale and you can SSH in and you can have, you know, remote, um, uh, you know, um, uh, Uh, Access set up on your Mac and all that, but it, it’s still kind of a hassle. I think that Screens is like the best kind of all in one way of doing it.

[01:39:18] Brett: need your VNC. Yeah,

[01:39:20] Christina: totally. And so you can use it.

[01:39:21] Christina: Um, it’s now a universal app, so it’ll work on, you know, Mac on Windows, Mac on, on, iPad and iOS, all part of the same subscription. Or you can buy like, I think it’s like a hundred bucks is I think what it was to basically say, I want to buy like a lifetime for the lifetime of version five. Um, and it has family sharing, so, you know, you can share it with people too.

[01:39:40] Christina: But, um, I, I really liked the design. Um, like I said, I went ahead and I think it had been. You know, like, like, like four or five years since version four had come out. I definitely, uh, was one of those things where I was like, well, I definitely got like my money’s worth, even though I had it through set up, you know, I think I might’ve bought one of the mobile versions or something.

[01:39:57] Christina: Um, that way, um, [01:40:00] if you have set up, if you have it already, if you’ve bought it in the past on, on any platform, they’re giving you like 50%, and I think even through set up, they’re giving you like 50 percent off your first year. Um, for, for the subscription. So that’s actually, um, pretty great. I went ahead and did the lifetime thing.

[01:40:17] Christina: Just, I took the gamble that it’ll be X number of years before it’ll be a major release again. And it might not. I might have, you know, done better to just pay yearly, but

[01:40:26] Brett: it’s a lifetime only for the current

[01:40:28] Christina: I’m pretty

[01:40:29] Brett: It’s not that’s not lifetime. That’s version time

[01:40:32] Christina: Actually, I don’t

[01:40:33] Alex: gonna, no, I’m going to defend that because it’s, I’ve used screens for, for so long that I would have paid, I think a hundred Wait, well, I don’t know. I was like, God, how long has it been around for? But I, I almost, I kind of want to ask, it’s like, Hey, what’s the best way to use your app that you get the most money?

[01:40:53] Alex: And and I never know.

[01:40:55] Christina: No, totally. actually, and it’s 75. I was wrong. So it’s 75. It’s [01:41:00] 25 for the yearly subscription, 75 for lifetime or 3 a month. Um, and, um, and like I said, includes family sharing in with it, which is good. Um, if you’ve got like, you know, uh, other people that you’re wanting to do it with, um, And you’re right.

[01:41:16] Christina: I mean, the app is called Screens 5, so I don’t know when Screen 6 comes out if they will just like put like a different version in the app store or what. I don’t know, but to Alex’s point, like, I’ve gotten enough value out of this that I honestly just of want support them, right? So,

[01:41:30] Brett: use I use screens almost every day like I have multiple headless minis in my basement and Like I don’t attach monitors to them. I

[01:41:40] Alex: multiple headless minis in my base.

[01:41:43] Brett: I I screed I use screens to control all of my extra machines

[01:41:47] Christina: know, that’s

[01:41:48] Brett: I use screens when I’m on the road and I want to get to, like, I can, you know, manipulate my Plex through my home studio, my Mac studio on the road [01:42:00] using tail scale and screens.

[01:42:01] Brett: And yeah,

[01:42:03] Christina: And that, and that’s, that’s of the new things that are going to be, it already works with Tailscale. You can already get it working, but that’s one of the things that, uh, is going to be coming with the Screens Connect 5 is that it’ll actually work even better with Tailscale because they know a lot of people that.

[01:42:14] Christina: So anyway, I’m, I’m, I’m happy, uh, with this app. It, it, I use it all the time too. Like it was great when I was, um, uh, Visiting my parents over, uh, the holiday because I needed to get something off of my iMac. Um, uh, for, uh, we needed to check something basically. There was a file that I was like, Shit, I forgot to get this and I haven’t uploaded this anywhere.

[01:42:35] Christina: So I was able to connect to my iMac, upload the file, you know, remotely to Dropbox, and then, and then grab it off. Um, and, and like that’s something that like otherwise

[01:42:45] Brett: It’ll always help you in a That’s when it’s

[01:42:48] Christina: That really is, and that was one of those things where I was like, I don’t know how I would get this file otherwise. Like, and like, it’s, it’s possible if that hadn’t happened that the, the final episode of Rocket that also included for Rocket Boosters, uh, a three hour bonus [01:43:00] podcast of Simone and I watching the movie Her together, that might, that wouldn’t happened because the audio of me, of my recording, um, Simone’s recording, Simone, uh, like Riverside had my audio on it, but the problem was I’d also recorded the audio of the movie and I was like, That’s an important thing to be able to have to intersect here as we’re like watching this together and I didn’t upload this and I’m a dumbass and how am I going to get this?

[01:43:23] Christina: So, uh, screens, screens for the win. Um, and, uh, and congrats to them. Um, I, I think now they’re at like 13 years the app has been around and so, um, uh, you know, definitely like we all remember those days when Apple used to have a pretty good native built in solution. Yep. Uh, well, not even that,

[01:43:43] Alex: I don’t remember When was

[01:43:45] Christina: Like, like, pre OS, like, Lion, they, they, like, they had a lot, like, there were those things and also if you had the server SKU, like, you could get it server tools, like, they were some built in stuff that was really good and then they just slowly over the years have, like, neutered the hell out of [01:44:00] that and, um.

[01:44:01] Christina: And so, oh, one thing I will say too, um, and I think this is free and they renamed it, it’s called Screens Assist now, but if you’ve ever got a family member who’s got something going on with their Mac and you’re like, I don’t know how to help you and I cannot, with you right now, to make you enable, you know, sharing and all that stuff and try to find a way to log into your, get you in a salt tail scale, like, this is going to be a disaster, you can use Screens Assist, which will basically, They’ll download something.

[01:44:26] Christina: It’ll set up the right settings for them. They’ll get a generated link that’ll, you know, they can then share with you and then you can use your screens app to log into their, you know, machine and help them out. And that is fucking great.

[01:44:40] Brett: It’s the, uh, Clipboard Sharing and the Drag and Drop File Transfers are like, it’s rem I feel like a remote desktop in the past was able to

[01:44:52] Christina: It was. I think it was. I think it was. Yeah, I think you’re right.

[01:44:56] Brett: with screens, honestly, I can drag a file from my [01:45:00] local desktop onto a screen’s desktop and it’s just there. It’s done.

[01:45:04] Brett: I don’t have to handle any file transfer stuff. I can copy something I can copy a link from my web browser locally and then just go to my screen’s desktop and paste it into Safari and have it on that remote machine. It’s, it’s perfect. Seamless. Smooth. I love it.

[01:45:23] Alex: Getting screens 5 right now, didn’t I? I’ve been using 4.

[01:45:28] Brett: I’m still on, I’m still on four and I’m working with them to set up a giveaway on BrettTerpstra. com Which I currently have booked out through next September But yeah, I have so many devs on board But yeah, like I’m hoping next year. We’ll do a screens one year license giveaway, but

[01:45:51] Christina: Hey, ask him, ask him, um, ask him if they have any interest in maybe doing something for Overtired. Maybe we could do an Overtired giveaway.

[01:45:56] Brett: a sponsorship?

[01:45:57] Christina: Sponsorship? Yeah.[01:46:00]

[01:46:00] Brett: I’ll ask. I’ll see. They seem hesitant to do sponsorships. see.

[01:46:06] Christina: saying. Even, even, even a giveaway. I mean, I’m, I’m just saying, like, whatever.

[01:46:09] Brett: Alright, so my pick for the week is, uh, BBRH15, which may be out as this episode is published, but as of today, it is not yet. Um, it depends on the weather. I’m told. Um, I had a chat, I had a chat with Rich Siegel. Um, it was fun the, the woman who does press for Rich, uh, Naomi is married to Sal Segoian.

[01:46:39] Christina: Oh, yeah. Amazing. doing? That’s

[01:46:44] Brett: good. He seemed very good because like Rich was late and Sal had just come home from like running to the pet food store or whatever. Um, because not because they have pets, but because they feed the squirrels and birds. Um, But,

[01:46:58] Alex: Feels like such a

[01:46:59] Brett: but I [01:47:00] had, I had con I had conversation with Sal like off screen.

[01:47:03] Brett: That was, it was, it was, it was heartening. I, it was fun. I love hearing from Sal. Um, but I talked to Rich and we talked about like the major features coming up in, uh, BBEdit 15 and one that was of particular interest. I don’t know if anyone here has used BBEdit 14, uh, but it has this idea of worksheets, Um, and it has like, it loads up almost an RAPL, like a REPL for like terminal.

[01:47:32] Brett: And you can just type in commands and get the output on the page. And it’s like a, an interactive interface. And he set one up for chat GPT. So you can have a conversation in a document. Literally, like, the document just kind of writes itself, and you can ask it to write you code, you can ask it questions, you ask it to summarize things, and then you and it has, like, it, it defaults to [01:48:00] outputting as markdown, so all of the code it outputs for you has angle brackets as quotes, uh, but b, bbedit has a specific feature for copying text without markdown quotes, so you can just turn that right into code you can copy paste.

[01:48:15] Brett: Um, Yeah, it has, plus he’s adding, um,

[01:48:18] Alex: Oh my

[01:48:19] Christina: yeah.

[01:48:19] Brett: he’s adding cheat sheets, uh, so like it comes with like a markdown and a bbedit clippings cheat sheet, but these are configurable with JSON files. So he’s going to build tools that let you build your own cheat sheets that can be available anywhere in bbedit. mean, bbedit honestly is the most venerated editor, even more so than TextMate.

[01:48:42] Christina: way, way more. mean, it’s totally different, right? It’s OG. Like, it’s been around for 30 years. I don’t

[01:48:48] Brett: it has continually gotten

[01:48:50] Christina: It has. I don’t use it for everything and it’s not even my primary, but I buy it. I buy it every, you know, two years or however long that base come out. That one that I always get because there’s always something I need to [01:49:00] do that only it can

[01:49:01] Brett: The one, the one thing that you could sell anybody on is if you have a 5 megabyte text file. If you have a 100 megabyte file, BBEdit will open and it will fly through

[01:49:14] Christina: you need to edit a

[01:49:15] Brett: other text editor can

[01:49:17] Christina: Yeah, if you need to edit a plist, if need to edit But yeah, I was going to say, my main thing is there will be files that will either be weird, or be big, or it’ll be something, but usually it’s a size and it’s like, I use VS Code for almost everything, um, but there you know, and it does pretty well with you know, normal sized files A hundred megabyte text file, it is not going to do well with, and um, most text editors, TextMate did not do well with that and um, you know, Sublime, none of those, but But

[01:49:44] Alex: was, whew, disaster with the big

[01:49:45] Christina: absolutely.

[01:49:46] Christina: But BBEdit will. And, and, know, and it’s still, um, innovating. And, and I, I have like, when, uh, you know, I think the company turned 30 or whatever, like I bought one of their shirts. It was like, still doesn’t suck. And it’s like, fuck yeah.

[01:49:59] Brett: And [01:50:00] between, between 14 and 15, the LSP, the Language Server Protocol, has improved, um, in, in significant ways. So, things like code completion and code highlighting are also, like, like one of the reasons to use VS Code or Sublime is the LSP. Um, and, and BBEditor has gone to great lengths to, to incorporate that kind of code completion.

[01:50:27] Christina: I was trying, I was trying to, like, get them, like, officially, like, partnered with, with, um, um, Copilot, um, and, and that’s just, uh, we’re, I, I think that the, the, the focus is just on, you know, JetBrains and, like, other big things, but, but Vim, because NeoVim, rather, you has like a copilot integration and people have taken that LSP and been able to use it for other things.

[01:50:48] Christina: So I sent that to Rich. Um, I’m pretty sure, um, I’ll have to follow up again and be like, you didn’t see this, right? Cause that’s actually open source. So there are some copilot like things, you know, that you can bring in, even if you are not on, [01:51:00] you know, like a, a giant, you know, platform where, um, uh, the engineering resources and, and other things like, you know, Make it tenable to make that stuff accessible.

[01:51:10] Christina: But yeah, I’ve been very impressed with the LSP support that the BB Editor has been getting over the years because that has been, um, it’s weird. It’s like 15 years ago, the whole, or more than that now, God, um, you know, TextMate, it was all about, you know, like the extensions and like the packages and like plugins.

[01:51:26] Christina: And like, that was the thing that like made that, yeah, right. Extensibility, right. That was the thing that made it like the game changer for all of us. And now that’s kind of table stakes, I think, for a lot of editors. But the real thing is LSPs, like that’s now the, that’s now the thing is like, okay, what’s your LSP situation like?

[01:51:45] Alex: And like me, and you don’t need that at all, it’s still, like, I, I’m, I’m biased because Tex Wrangler was my first, uh, text editor since, it was like, this is the free BB edit! And is what I, [01:52:00] I, I just know and love and it,

[01:52:03] Brett: Also champ with huge

[01:52:04] Christina: also wish I had huge great. Great, great

[01:52:07] Alex: I think it still, uh, is around, but like, uh, if, if, if, I think if you’re 30, buy, buy B Edit.

[01:52:15] Alex: It’s, it’s so, I, I love VS Code, but I’m such a, a, a noob with all of this, and especially like, with Swift stuff and opening X things from and putting in X code, I’m just like, ah, oh no, and um, And there’s lots of mech nerds who can tell you how to use BBEdit if you’re, again, like me, and I’m like, help

[01:52:38] Christina: No, there’s tons of them. And Text Wrangler is gone. But what you, what they have now is they have a free version of BBEdit that has all the same features that Text Wrangler had. So, but Text was amazing back in the day.

[01:52:49] Brett: And, and BBN is still available for direct purchase. Um, the price has gone up slightly, uh, to 59. 99 for a direct purchase, [01:53:00] but it’s also available on the app store at a subscription, uh, like in app purchase. So there’s a free version you can download, um, and then, uh, sign on for the subscription.

[01:53:12] Cicada Explosion

[01:53:12] Brett: Last note, and this may be of particular interest to Alex, because I’ve been in Chicago when the cicadas have come up, um, and, it been loud, so there are 13 year and 17 year cicadas.

[01:53:28] Brett: Um, that, and they’re all in sync, every 13 years, the 13 year cicadas all hatch at once, they fly around for a day, and then they die. Um, and then there are 17 year cicadas that do the same thing on a different cycle. Only every 221 years do they hatch at the same time. 2024 is that year. The 13 year and the 17 year cicadas will come out all at once.

[01:53:56] Brett: It will be noisy, and it will be crazy, and the [01:54:00] trees will be covered in the husks of dead cicadas. And I’m actually pretty excited for it. This is going to be an event.

[01:54:09] Alex: I mean, not, not gonna lie, it is, to me it’s absolutely horrifying when it happens, cause I’m like, oh boy, and it, it, also the two different kinds have a different crunch when you on afterwards. Cause they’re everywhere, um, so I’m excited to go and take a fancy mic out and record one of

[01:54:29] Brett: There you go.

[01:54:30] Christina: God. The ASMR stuff is

[01:54:31] Alex: spite, they’re already dead, yeah, I wonder, I bet

[01:54:35] Brett: consider, though, the evolutionary advantage of, so, like, every, it’s, they’re 13 years they’re underground, they’re impervious to predators, and then they all come out at the same time, so no predator could possibly take down any significant portion of the population. So, from an evolutionary perspective, this is like an invincible species.

[01:54:59] Brett: That [01:55:00] will just continue to exist in like these 13 and 17 year caps. Yeah, I think

[01:55:06] Christina: Like, like, like, like, that’s the thing, like, we’re all gonna

[01:55:08] Brett: survive. They’ll survive the

[01:55:09] Christina: Like, no matter, no matter what we do to this, to this planet, like, no matter what we, what we try to do to destroy it, like, short of us being able to, like, literally, like, pull like a Superman and, like, blow up the core from the inside, like, like, the cicadas will, will remain.

[01:55:24] Alex: Yeah, general AI, like, no, no, no, AGI to take out those cicadas. No, no.

[01:55:31] Brett: Yup.

[01:55:32] Christina: like, we laugh right

[01:55:34] Brett: Well, thank you both for this almost two hour episode. Thanks Jeff in absence.

[01:55:40] Christina: don’t apologize. You were amazing. Thank you so much for joining

[01:55:42] Brett: Yeah. No, you, you sat through an insanely long mental health corner. I, I appreciate you.

[01:55:49] Alex: No, this is, uh, I think the only show I ask directly to be on and I really appreciate you having [01:56:00] me.

[01:56:00] Brett: Oh, we love you,

[01:56:01] Christina: We so much.

[01:56:02] Alex: You are the best.

[01:56:03] Brett: All right. Hey guys, get some sleep.

[01:56:05] Christina: Get some sleep.