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Submit ReviewJeff is on Spring Break, so Christina and Brett keep the show going with a heavily tech-oriented episode. From security back doors to complaining about Apple software, it’s all the tech talk you could want.
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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.
TranscriptBad Apple
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Brett: Welcome back to Overtired, which has become once again, a, um, kind of sporadic, uh, release schedule, but that’s just, it’s spring break. We’ll be back into the swing of things, uh, shortly. In the meantime, um, we’ll, we’ll just keep putting out kind of random episodes. I kind of wanted to put one out. Oh, hi, by the way, I’m, I’m Brett Terpstra.
[00:00:26] Brett: I’m here with Christina Warren. Um, I kind of wanted to release an episode last week that had an intro and then was just a rickroll, um, and like play the entire song and then, and then just like play the outro music. Um, but I didn’t, because that was probably, there were probably copyright issues with that.
[00:00:47] Christina: Eh,
[00:00:49] Brett: I could probably get away with a 30 second snippet though.
[00:00:52] April Fools Day Fun
[00:00:52] Christina: yeah, probably. I saw one good Okay, so April Fool’s Day was What day was that? Was that like, Monday?
[00:00:59] Brett: It [00:01:00] was on April 1st.
[00:01:01] Christina: Well, no, it was last Friday. No, I know, but I was trying to think where we are like, like, like day wise, like I was trying to think of what day was it this week? And it was Monday. So we’re recording this on Saturday.
[00:01:12] Christina: So it was Monday. So I was trying to figure out when it was. Um, and April Fool’s Day as, as you know, the internet has ruined it. I think we’ve talked about that before. I feel very complicit about my own role. Um, in ruining the day because of, of my time as a blogger, um, especially at Mashable during like the height of brands being extremely online and terrible.
[00:01:36] Christina: But there was one good, well, there were a couple of, of good ones that I saw. Um, I think, uh, I don’t remember what the, the second one was, maybe it’ll come to me, but the one that actually got me to laugh was, um, somebody, um, Uh, and I knew exactly what it was before I saw it and I saw Mr. Macintosh, uh, tweet it and it was somebody who was like, hey, I got a way [00:02:00] of getting, you know, full, you know, modern, um, Mac OS, um, running on old power PC Macs, you know, click here for more.
[00:02:08] Christina: And I knew it was like, Oh, and then you click on the thing. It was like, Oh, you know, click, click, click on this link, you know, to get more information or whatever. And I was like, Oh, I know exactly what this is. Before I even saw the YouTube tool tip, before I even saw that, I like, I knew exactly what I was setting myself up for and I still sent it to someone.
[00:02:23] Christina: Um, and, um, and it was one of those things where I was just like, yep. Okay. This, I was like, you get one, you get one Rick roll of an April Fool’s day. And this is, this is a good one. Cause like, that’s, that’s it.
[00:02:34] Brett: I saw a meme that said, Happy April Fool’s Day, the one day of the year when people critically assess information on the internet before accepting it as true.
[00:02:45] Christina: is very true. And it’s also like very awful that it’s like, we acknowledge, it’s like everybody’s a fucking expert on April Fool’s Day. Um. And, and then, yeah.
[00:02:57] Brett: What was your favorite April Fool’s [00:03:00] prank as a kid?
[00:03:05] Christina: I don’t even, I don’t even know. I, I used to buy like, um, stuff from, from, from Spencer’s. Um, there would be like, joke stuff. And I’m trying to think like, what I had. I think I might have had like, fake vomit or something.
[00:03:18] Brett: Do you remember back when sinks, kitchen sinks used to have like a spray nozzle that you could pull out on like a hose to like spray your dishes down back before, like everything was just part of the faucet. I used to, my favorite prank was to rubber band the lever on that. So when you turn on the sink, it sprays you right in the chest.
[00:03:41] Brett: Um, that was my go to April Fool’s prank that does not work anymore because nobody has faucets like that anymore.
[00:03:50] Christina: Um, okay, I did
[00:03:51] Brett: Also, I’m an adult now and I wouldn’t do that.
[00:03:54] Christina: right. Okay, and I actually did, I did find like, the one like, really good April Fool’s thing that I saw. This was funny. Okay, [00:04:00] so. And this one, um, this one almost got me. Not that I thought that it was ever real, um, but I thought that it might have actually been by the company it’s purporting to be because I didn’t, I didn’t clock the URL at first because it’s very good.
[00:04:13] Christina: So I’m going to send you, um, uh, I’ll let you read it.
[00:04:17] Christina: . I’ll put it in our chat. I’ll put it in our chat link. Um, okay. So. Um, and I’ve already, like, told you this is, like, fake or whatever, but for, for, for listeners who, uh, might, uh, not be old enough to remember, uh, and even some of those who are, uh, Gmail famously launched on April 1st, 2004.
[00:04:36] Christina: Um, let that sink in. And, and we all assumed it was kind of an April Fool’s Day thing because, like, it was a gig of, of, uh, storage and, you know, for free email for life and, and everybody was like, And at the time, you have to understand, I think Hotmail gave you like two megabytes, and I think like Yahoo Mail was something similar.
[00:04:53] Christina: And if you didn’t log into your account, like religiously, like they would fucking nuke all of your messages. And [00:05:00] so a gig was like, Unreal. And now, of course, they give you, I think, like 15 gigs. But, um, Google has, you know, over the years, uh, made a lot of questionable decisions. And one of the most recent ones was with their domain registry.
[00:05:15] Christina: They launched zip and mov. Um, Domain Extensions. And, and the security people were very mad, especially for zip. They were like, this is going to help with the spread of malware, this is going to be bad. So, go to this, this, this website, and it looks like the, it’s done to look exactly like the official Google blog.
[00:05:32] Christina: And it says, Google Registry. Execute your best ideas with Google. Google Registries, exe, Top Level, Domain. And then it has, you know, it says, you know, following the success of zip and move, we’re adding brand new extensions to the internet for everyone. Um, you know, whether you’re learning to code or deploying a helpful tool or starting a new community, exe has you covered.
[00:05:50] Christina: Here’s some examples from our developer community. Mydoom. exe, your gateway to digital innovation. Iloveyou. exe, transforming online interactions with love. [00:06:00] Melissa. exe. Empowering women through digital community, and those are, of course, three very famous viruses. And what got me laughing at this was that I didn’t look at the, I didn’t clock the URL at first and I was like, clearly this is fake.
[00:06:15] Christina: I was like, but maybe the registry team just has a really good sense of humor. I was like, damn, they’re like really self aware at Google. And then I clocked that the, that the URL is, is G O G G E L and
[00:06:27] Brett: Oh, I, I was looking at it. I’m like the, how is that not okay. That’s funny. That’s funny.
[00:06:34] Christina: So it worked twice, but what was also really funny about it is that the share, like the share button, they, um, they changed the share URL so that it actually went to the official Google blog.
[00:06:44] Brett: Oh, that’s funny
[00:06:45] Christina: So yeah, this was like a good one and, and this was like, this, this, this, this, this, this was like a really good one.
[00:06:50] Christina: I was like, okay, I’m, I’m down with this cause this is, I genuinely at first thought I was like, You know, for like, you know, 15 seconds I was like, [00:07:00] Oh, Google is actually self aware. I’m, I’m a little surprised. And, and instead it was like, no. Um,
[00:07:07] Brett: be, to be fair. Dot app is a TLD, um, on the Mac side, but it doesn’t have the same implication ’cause an app is a bundle and it wouldn’t have the same implications as an executable
[00:07:20] Christina: well, right. And I think the other thing too is just like more malware is like, if we had as much Mac, um, not like malware, like if Mac was, if Mac mattered, right. Like, well, I mean, just being honest, right? Like, in terms of an attack service, if it mattered the same way, I do think that would be problematic.
[00:07:36] Christina: Um, but also, and I wonder your thought on this, the fact that we don’t see file extensions on macOS, do you think that that
[00:07:45] Brett: I turn on file extensions.
[00:07:48] Christina: Sure, but like, for, you know, like, even if your applications?.
[00:07:53] Brett: Yeah, I do. I’m looking at my screen right now. I got dayone. app, debughelper. app. [00:08:00] Um,
[00:08:00] Christina: I have, like, I have
[00:08:01] Brett: don’t function well without extensions.
[00:08:04] Christina: I have extensions on, not for app, but I, and I, um, I, whatever the default is, which is, you know, mp4, png, whatever. But there’s some things that like, but by and large, like you can even have like a world in like macOS where like you don’t have. You know, you just give something a filename and it’ll show up, you know, as like a document file and you don’t know what it is.
[00:08:24] Christina: That’s not a thing in Windows. Um, so I, I wonder if that has any kind of role in it too. Um, that like, even if you, like, even if people used, like, targeted Mac the same way, if the fact that like, most people don’t realize that app is the bundle name, you know, that So I don’t, I don’t know if that would, if that would matter.
[00:08:43] Christina: Cause I think, I think a lot of people would be like, what do you mean, what do you mean by dot app file? Like if I said that, I think to even like experienced Mac users, they’d be like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. What the fuck is the dot app file?
[00:08:54] Brett: I don’t, I don’t have no data to say that’s true or is not true. Could be, could be [00:09:00] entirely true. I don’t, I don’t hang out with experienced Mac users, I guess.
[00:09:05] Let the Apple Bitching Commence
[00:09:05] Brett: Um, so anyway, um, while we’re talking about Mac, um, before we get into any kind of mental health corner, I wanted to say Messages. Logged me out on my Mac, and it will not log me back in with any of my Apple IDs or, um, or a phone number.
[00:09:29] Brett: Like, I go through the process, I get the password correct, guaranteed, cause I use a, uh, I have a secret system. I have key bindings that insert my different passwords.
[00:09:42] Christina: bindings? Seriously? Um, you?
[00:09:46] Brett: It’s a sequence. It’s a very secret sequence, but to be fair, most of my system passwords are stored in the key bindings dict file, um, as plain text. So it’s super insecure, [00:10:00] but I just don’t. My Mac, the one that that’s set up on, nobody else touches. Um, and it’s very well protected network wise, so I don’t worry about it.
[00:10:11] Brett: So anyway, I know the password is correct and it’ll spin for about two minutes and then it’ll say an unknown error occurred. And it will timeout. And I cannot get messages working on my Mac, uh, for the last three days. Now I’ve talked to other people, including yourself, who are not having issues. Um, this isn’t a system wide problem.
[00:10:34] Brett: Uh, but I have had people contact me previously with the exact same issue. Um, and I don’t know how or when it clears up. I I’ve rebooted, I’ve restarted. And it’s, I’m missing, I’m missing a lot of messages because when I’m working at my Mac, I don’t know, my phone doesn’t
[00:10:56] Christina: It doesn’t. No, totally. Well, and yeah, oftentimes that is a thing, like, it’ll be [00:11:00] like, oh, if, if we’ve sent a message to one thing, we won’t others, and it’s other, it’s just a context switching thing, right? Like I, like, I find I’ll miss things because I often have like do not disturb turned on on my Mac, but my phone still won’t send me messages or I won’t get them the same way.
[00:11:13] Christina: And I’m like, all right, fine. Whatever.
[00:11:15] Brett: It’s a little opaque how that works, but yeah.
[00:11:18] Christina: very opaque how that works because Apple wants to make everything a fucking black box. So while we’re bitching, let’s bitch about that too. No, I’ve had that issue before. Um, it’s been years, but I have had that issue before where like my, my max of just hasn’t worked. And then it’s usually cleared itself up.
[00:11:33] Christina: But that’s the, this is the frustrating thing is that it’s like, there’s no way to get any insight into this. All you can do is like file feedback. I’ve got to file feedback about a fricking notes app issue. Um, And, um, where the note that I see, a collaborative note that I see, um, on my phone and my iPad is different than what it is on my [00:12:00] Mac.
[00:12:00] Brett: What?
[00:12:01] Christina: Yeah. Where, like, the one on my phone, I see actual, um, oh shit, it is also fucked on my other Mac where I’ve never looked at this before. And so I’m, like, literally got this thing where I made a bunch of edits And it looks one way on one of my Macs and it looks a different way on every other device. And so I don’t know, and it’s a shared note, so I don’t know what the actual point of truth is.
[00:12:27] Christina: And like, yeah, um, I talked to somebody about this and they were like, file a radar
[00:12:33] Brett: What app is this in? In
[00:12:34] Christina: notes, notes. So it’s an iCloud sync thing, clearly, um, where it got a version wrong. And because The system is the way that it is instead of being like a, you know, in my opinion, sane system that would treat people like adults and, and be able to also, um, explain context and in a way that you could do it in a very user friendly way and say, Hey, we see two [00:13:00] versions of this.
[00:13:02] Christina: You know, which one do you want? It just is a failure where it appears one way on
[00:13:10] Brett: guessing. It’s just showing you, it’s showing you random versions. Sure.
[00:13:14] Christina: Right, and it’s like, okay, well, like, that’s exactly what I want out of my fucking notes app. Are, like, are you kidding me? No, you have one job, literally, you have one job, which is to be the same everywhere.
[00:13:26] Christina: And you can’t do that. And we accept this sort of shit from Apple, and I don’t know why we do, because every other company that fails even the slightest amount, we rightfully, like, Bitch about them and they get terrible reputations. Like, like, like, you know, like, like, like Office, I think unfairly because I think the offline or not offline, but like, you know, like the, the standalone apps are actually very good, but like people shit on Microsoft Office a lot.
[00:13:50] Christina: And I’m not going to lie to you and say that the real time collaboration stuff is as good as it is on Google Docs. It’s not as fast or whatever, but it is better [00:14:00] and certainly sync on, um, every other platform. Every other platform is superior to what Apple does, and yet, like, if, if, if, if, if, if Dropbox, if Google Drive, if OneDrive, like, if any of them had any of the sync issues that iDrive, or not iCloud, still has.
[00:14:19] Christina: Fucking almost 15 years into its existence. Genuinely. Like, it would be the talk of, it would be like a constant joke. Like, nobody would accept it. I don’t understand how Apple gets away with having such piss poor, like, just genuinely, like, amateur tier, just like, bad, like, full blown unacceptable sync performance.
[00:14:42] Christina: I don’t understand it.
[00:14:44] Brett: Bush League. Yeah, no, I, I don’t.
[00:14:47] Christina: and they charge so much for it, right? I pay 38 a month or whatever it is for Apple One Premiere, my family plan, and it’s like, and that’s fine. It is what it is. And like all the services, none of them are best in class. Not a [00:15:00] single one. Not a single one.
[00:15:01] Christina: Apple Music is not better than Spotify. Apple TV is not better than Netflix. iCloud is not better than Dropbox. Um,
[00:15:09] Brett: wait, wait, wait, wait. You can’t, Apple TV versus Netflix is, do you mean like versus like, um, like Roku or?
[00:15:18] Christina: I mean like Apple TV
[00:15:20] Brett: Oh, oh yeah, okay. Okay, I thought you meant like the Apple TV
[00:15:25] Christina: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because I’m talking about the services that you get in Apple, uh, One Premiere.
[00:15:30] Brett: yeah, okay.
[00:15:31] Christina: So like Apple TV is not better than Netflix, uh, Apple Music is not better than Spotify, um, Apple News is dog shit, um, uh, Apple Arcade is not better than, um, I guess the next closest thing to that would be Game Pass, and that’s a real, like that’s not a, uh, competition that Apple wants to get into because, They will lose on every fucking level, um, as they should.
[00:15:53] Christina: Um, uh, you know, um, again, like, uh, iCloud is not better than Dropbox or Google [00:16:00] Drive. Um, it just happens to be more convenient because they can, you know, build certain API. Right. Well, because, because they can now give them self entitlements that they won’t give anybody else. Um, you know, like, like health, who fucking cares?
[00:16:14] Christina: Like, or fitness plus or whatever, who fucking cares? Like, it’s one of those things, like genuinely.
[00:16:18] Brett: It’s just there to make you feel bad. You’re paying for this as part of your,
[00:16:22] Christina: Right, right. Yeah, this is like a
[00:16:24] Brett: you’re not using it because you’re
[00:16:26] Christina: using it. Right. Well, you also it’s like people, well, but Peloton, there, there are other alternatives, right? Like, so it’s just, none of these things are best in class at all. And, um, yeah, they, they charge what they charge and everybody’s like, Oh, Apple’s the best.
[00:16:39] Christina: I’m like, no, they’re really not. Like I, I am in the ecosystem because I, I’m going to be a Mac user and I would never even consider another phone other than an iPhone. Yeah.
[00:16:48] Brett: why, why, uh, do you think it’s just marketing? Like they’ve positioned themselves as like untouchable yet forgivable? Like [00:17:00] everything you’re saying is true. Like, I don’t disagree with anything. I just don’t understand because there are a lot of critics in the Apple world. Why is the general population so willing to forgive these shortcomings?
[00:17:14] Christina: I think, if I’m being completely honest, it’s because the original, um, products were so good for so long that there has been two things. I think that one, there’s like a reputational, um, halo that has, that is no longer accurate, to be honest, but has persisted. And I think that it’s also a thing where people don’t realize how much worse it’s gotten and what the capabilities of other things are.
[00:17:43] Brett: I think, I think because it is an ecosystem, because once you have an iPhone and a Mac and an iPad, you are by default using Apple services. And I think a lot of people don’t have a point of comparison.
[00:17:57] Christina: what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. They don’t know. They don’t. That’s exactly what I’m [00:18:00] saying. Like, they don’t actually know, like, what the options are for other places.
[00:18:03] Brett: Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t, I don’t generally, like, I don’t use iCloud for much. Um, I use it if I’m sharing a Pages document, which is rare because I don’t use Pages much. Um,
[00:18:17] Christina: would you?
[00:18:18] Brett: right. So, because again, it’s not best in class. Um, I do, I do like Pages. Numbers is a joke. But, um, Anyway, like, I don’t typically use iCloud for much.
[00:18:32] Brett: I use Dropbox and Google Drive, um, and I don’t, I haven’t dealt with the kind of issues you’re talking about with your iCloud sync, um, because I, not because I don’t think
[00:18:44] Christina: No, totally.
[00:18:45] Brett: because I don’t
[00:18:46] Christina: Well, and well, the thing is, and it’s like, I haven’t had like massive issues in a long time, but they do happen from time to time. And when they do, it’s like a black hole because you can’t force things to sink and you can’t
[00:18:56] Brett: with no It sucks with notes because honestly, [00:19:00] the new version of notes in Sonoma is very good. It’s a great app. It, it, it sure locked a bunch of ideas. Um, and, and, you know, fine. That’s, that is what it is. That’s Apple’s ammo. Um, but. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a good app, but if it’s not reliable, uh, between platforms, which is kind of the whole idea, right?
[00:19:26] Brett: Like,
[00:19:27] Christina: whole idea. Yeah.
[00:19:28] Brett: that sucks. That sucks.
[00:19:30] Mental Health Corner
[00:19:30] Brett: Anyway, do you want to, do you want to do a quick mental health corner before we continue bitching about Apple?
[00:19:35] Christina: Yes. Let’s, let’s do that.
[00:19:38] Brett: I will kick it off. So I, I had that three months of insomnia, right? And, and I was, I was losing my mind and I tried multiple drugs. And then, um, my doctor finally gave up on the FDA approved, um, sleep beds, cause none of them had any effect on me and we switched to large doses of [00:20:00] gabapentin.
[00:20:01] Brett: I’m taking like 1, 200 milligrams of gabapentin a night, and I’m finally getting some sleep. Um, I talk a lot, apparently. Um, and, and at first, anything over 600 milligrams was causing sleep paralysis. Have you ever had that? Where like, you’re, you’re awake, but your body won’t move because Your body’s still asleep and your brain is like, just desperately trying to like get your body back in motion.
[00:20:29] Brett: Uh, you’re trying to like snap your fingers or kick your leg.
[00:20:33] Christina: think I’ve had it like once.
[00:20:35] Brett: Yeah. I
[00:20:37] Christina: but, but it’s not a common thing.
[00:20:38] Brett: it used to happen to me on occasion, especially if I fell asleep, like on the couch in the afternoon, uh, it was, it was more likely to happen. But first time I took 900 milligrams of gabapentin, it happened, um, within an hour. Uh, and then For three nights following that happened every night.
[00:20:57] Brett: So I went back down to 600, [00:21:00] um, and, and that was working okay. Uh, but then it kind of stabled out and now I’m up to 1200 and no longer getting sleep paralysis. So I am sleeping. I got into, uh, like the sleep medicine department of Gundersen clinic. Um. But they can’t get me in until July 30th, um, to do like a sleep study.
[00:21:24] Brett: So it’s just me and Gabba Penton until then. And yeah, I should, the other thing I wanted to say was, so I’ve been doing IFS therapy, which is all about like, um, finding all the different parts that exist within like, that you are a kind of legion. Um, and, uh, my My couple’s counselor suggested that Ella and I go on like a part state where we talk to each other’s parts instead of like to each other.
[00:21:56] Brett: Um, and that went pretty horribly at [00:22:00] first. Uh, but there was one point where like, I was feeling, uh, like My ADHD was making it impossible for me to research something fully. And then when Elle with her autism did research it, um, they were giving me all kinds of facts and I was getting frustrated that I didn’t know this to begin with.
[00:22:20] Brett: And I felt really shitty about myself and that made me defensive. Um, and they were like, Can you figure out what part of you is angry right now? And so I did a quick scan. I, I talked to this part that came forward and realized that like, my anger around my ADHD is not necessarily part of the ADHD itself.
[00:22:44] Brett: Like ADHD gives me some disabilities, but my frustration level around that Is a part that I can like deal with that. I can like talk to you and step in, like, there’s this like instant, like relief. [00:23:00] Um, and I suddenly wasn’t mad and our evening wasn’t ruined and it was, it was pretty cool. So props to IFS.
[00:23:07] Brett: And that’s my mental health corner.
[00:23:10] Christina: That’s great. I think that’s, I’m really, I’m really happy for you for that. Um, Grant takes Gabapentin, um, uh, to help his restless leg, but he still has massive restless leg stuff, and so he has massive sleep issues. But, um, I don’t think he’s on I have no idea actually what he’s on. I just know he takes it.
[00:23:30] Christina: Um, I don’t have much of a mental health update. Things are going pretty well. Um, I, um, you
[00:23:37] Brett: Your last, your last couple have been, um, pretty, uh, I want to say concerning. Like you’ve had some serious, so I’m glad to hear things have stabled out.
[00:23:48] Christina: yeah, yeah. I
[00:23:48] Brett: how long has it been since we talked? Like three weeks?
[00:23:51] Christina: yeah, but I think even last time we talked I was fine. Like, I don’t know. Um, it, it, you know, it’s been a few months since I’ve had any, I don’t know. I’m [00:24:00] fine for, you know, nothing really, nothing really to add of note. Um, but yeah, you know, just kind of same old, same old.
[00:24:08] Brett: I like your beanie. Um, in, uh, Riverside here, it’s showing up backwards. So it looks like the prism is turning into a single beam of light. Um, for, for those listening, it’s, uh, it’s the Octocat from GitHub in the middle with a beam of light going into it and a prism coming out the other side. Uh, but if, if you read the mirrored version left to right, it looks like a reverse prism, which confused me at first.
[00:24:35] Brett: And then I realized, Oh, I’m seeing it backwards.
[00:24:38] Christina: Right, right. That’s funny.
[00:24:41] Dimspirations Again
[00:24:41] Brett: Yeah, so, uh, let’s see, what topic do I want to direct a source next? Um, I just want a quick plug. Um, I made this thing called the Dimspirations Cube. Um, if you go to dimspire. me, um, you can click [00:25:00] on the Dimspirations Cube in the menu and It is a 3D spinning cube that every time it goes around, it has different inspirations on every side.
[00:25:11] Brett: And I finally got the, um, uh, set delay or set time out with JavaScript to actually, um, stagger so that the image on each side changes while it’s in the back. of the spin. So you never see the transition and it just constantly updates. It will kill your browser if you let it run for about 10 minutes. Um, it’ll eventually, you’ll get the note that says, this page is slowing down your browser.
[00:25:42] Brett: Would you like to kill it? Um, in, in any browser, um, which I want to add, uh, Uh, kind of, uh, caveat to the text on the page that says, Much like, much like life. If you, [00:26:00] if you exist too long, it will die. Or something dim. I want to do something dim. Um, I’m working on that still. But, uh, also the Demspiration store.
[00:26:10] Brett: Has a bunch of new merch, so if you need depressing t shirts or coffee mugs that will upset your co workers, uh, check that out. That’s my plug. I would love to hear, I would love to hear about XZ though, so I’m going to turn it over to you.
[00:26:25] The XZ Back Door
[00:26:25] Christina: Okay, so there was a massive, um, backdoor, there’s a, a, a potentially cataclysmic, um, security event in the last, um, uh, a week or so. Um, it wound up not being, um, cataclysmic because, um, frankly of a, a confluence of just like luck. Um. Um. But xz is the, is a compression algorithm. And, um, xz utils is, is, you know, kind, kind of like what, what, uh, manages that.
[00:26:52] Christina: And, and it’s, it’s, it’s used in, um, uh, like a, it’s, it’s a compression utility that’s basically used all over, uh, [00:27:00] like Linux systems. And it’s actually like a, um, a dependency in a lot of projects, including. And, um, it’s a, it’s an important project, but maybe not like a very sexy one. And it’s had like one core, you know, maintainer, the guy who kind of created the, the, the format and has maintained like kind of the, the utility or whatever for a long time.
[00:27:20] Christina: Um, and he’s, um, but, but he’s the only guy and he doesn’t do it for And, um, it doesn’t really, you know, have a lot of time to add features with it. Um, and then there’s this other person who, uh, the, the name that they were using, uh, to contribute was, was Jia Tan, and they’ve been contributing, you know, for about two years.
[00:27:39] Christina: And, you know, making some patches, doing, I guess, some other work off list is, is what the original developer said. And, um, This person was actually eventually made a maintainer. Now, a little bit of background about why this person was potentially made a maintainer. On the ex emailing list about two years ago, there were some kind of [00:28:00] fly by night, um, posters who now, it appears suspicious, but it’s, I don’t think we have enough information to read whether they were socks or not.
[00:28:11] Christina: Um, basically we’re, we’re badgering the maintainer to do more. We’re basically like, if you don’t have enough time and resources for this, then you need to just give this project to someone else. And, you know, you’re, you’re not doing enough. And he was like, well, you know, I’m not paid for this. And, you know, I’ve had mental health struggles and I have been working with this other, you know, person off list.
[00:28:29] Christina: And so, you know, they might even be taking a stronger role in the project, you know, stay tuned. And they’re like, well, I’m sorry for your mental health struggles, but. You know, basically, if you can’t, if you can’t do this stuff, then you need to just like, you know, pass it on because this is not acceptable, blah, blah, blah.
[00:28:43] Christina: And, you know, just kind of shitty, typical entitlement that a lot of open source people have. Um, and, and not just open source people, to be clear, like just a lot of people have. But it, but it is kind of a common, Um, you know, it’s not like when I, when I read through that interaction on the mailing list, [00:29:00] um, and, and there’s like some good rundowns that have this entire kind of timeline of things.
[00:29:04] Christina: Um, nothing about that particularly stands out to me. Here’s, here’s what we do know though. So this, this person who’s brought in as a code maintainer and who, uh, in January took over, um, the, like the webpage, which was put on GitHub and actually made the first kind of releases directly under themselves.
[00:29:23] Christina: They inserted a backdoor into XZ Utils that would, would allow people to basically be able to SSH into other machines without any sort of authentication. And so it was like a, uh, as root. And so, This was, this was a bad, bad thing. And the way that they inserted the backdoor was obfuscated. So if you just looked at the patch, you wouldn’t really be able to tell what was happening.
[00:29:48] Christina: And they’d made some other changes to some other code, like they inserted in a typo into one of the, the original maintainers, like the creators. Commit that wound up, um, I guess like, uh, like blocking a certain [00:30:00] security check or something. There were a lot of things that they were doing that would have made this very, very hard for anyone to pick up on.
[00:30:06] Christina: Then what they did, they released like one version and then they released like a point release. They went and they talked upstream to all the big Linux distros, you know, um, uh, uh, Fedora and Red Hat, uh, uh, Sousa, um, uh, Debian. Um, they, they were in talks with Ubuntu, um, about going ahead and upstreaming.
[00:30:25] Christina: that latest release into their distros. None of the mainstream, like the main release distros, long term support or official releases, adopted it. But like OpenSUSE, Tumbleweed, which is their rolling release, Fedora 40, which is at this point like Fedora is a bleeding edge thing, and Debian Unstable all did adopt it.
[00:30:47] Christina: And so, um, but it was only there for maybe a month. Um, OpenSUSE basically says to people, if you were running Tumbleweed, At this point, we think you need to do a complete system restore, um, just to protect against [00:31:00] everything. And then what happened is the code was there for about a month. It was never, um, acted on to anyone’s knowledge.
[00:31:05] Christina: Um, but, um, a Postgres developer, he works at Microsoft as his day job, but in his no night job, like, he’s just like an all around nerd, noticed that, um, That SSH on his machine, which was running Debian Unstable, was slower than it should have been by like a fraction of a second. He was like, what’s going on?
[00:31:24] Christina: And so as he was looking into the performance reasons for that, he realized something had changed within XZ, which as I mentioned before, is a dependency on OpenSSH. And he went further into the code and further into the code and realized what was happening. So, uh, But the thing is, is that this person up until inserting this backdoor had been an innocuous and, and fairly good committer.
[00:31:48] Christina: Like this, there was not, there was no flags that, that would have let this go on. They’ve been working on the project for two years. So, so it had to be state sponsored. Like in, in my opinion, there’s no way that this was [00:32:00] not a state sponsored thing. There’s no way. Um, the, the person’s name, they apparently had very good OPSEC.
[00:32:06] Christina: They, they did log, um, their names maybe a little bit different. differently a couple of times for their Git commits, but there’s no like reference to this person anywhere else on the internet other than, you know, the, the few, you know, like, um, uh, other kinds of related, um, uh, open source things that they made, um, uh, um, commits to.
[00:32:26] Christina: So this person did OPSEC really, really well. Um, there’s, there’s, you know, I’m sure there, there can be forensics and, and people can get involved, try to like, learn more about like where this person was, like. I think that most people assume because of the name that the person was, um, uh, Malaysian or, or Chinese, um, but the, the time zones they worked in makes it seem like they possibly could have been based in Eastern Europe.
[00:32:50] Christina: It’s unclear. Like, the whole thing is though, like it’s a, it’s a cypher, but it probably, it almost certainly was state sponsored and it’s opened up a lot of questions. In the open [00:33:00] source world, I think a few things, like one, it’s like, how many of these are out there, right? Like we caught this one, but how many of these projects are out there?
[00:33:08] Christina: Because if you were doing a state sponsored thing like this, you probably wouldn’t target one. You’d probably target like a bunch of different projects. So how many of these things are out there? And, and I think that’s like a good question to have. And like a scary thing to consider because there just isn’t enough, like open source, a lot of it runs on trust.
[00:33:23] Christina: And, And it’s easy, it’s easy for people to be like, Oh, well, you should demand, you know, a W 2 and like a social security card and like a photo ID from every person who commits to your code base. That’s not how this works. And that’s never been the culture. People use, you know, um, acronym, you know, like aliases all the time to contribute.
[00:33:41] Christina: You know, people never meet each other face to face. You have people who, that’s just not how it works. And pseudonym,
[00:33:46] Brett: sure. And if someone is contributing valid code, you know, over two years, if someone is like, that’s how you build trust in open source is you, you make, you make solid patches, you make solid commits, [00:34:00] and
[00:34:00] Christina: you take over
[00:34:00] Brett: people are like, this guy knows what he’s doing. Yeah.
[00:34:03] Christina: you take over for a maintainer who has already been put upon and hasn’t been supported. Like, there’s like a lot of, um, you know, yeah. Like this was a really long con. So, you know,
[00:34:15] Brett: pretty
[00:34:15] Christina: of this. It’s really insidious and it’s really scary to think about, but I think the bigger thing, like other than just like how many more of these instances are out there, because there are many of them.
[00:34:25] Christina: And, um, just like with Heartbleed, which was almost exactly 10 years ago, you do have the usual sources who are trying to be like, yeah, well, this is why I don’t
[00:34:31] Brett: years.
[00:34:32] Christina: 10 years. Literally, it’s 10 years tomorrow. Um, that Heartbleed, you know, the, the, the big, the first real famous, you know, um, uh, vulnerability.
[00:34:42] Brett: vulnerability.
[00:34:44] Christina: Um, oh, that was SSL, but yeah,
[00:34:46] Brett: Oh yeah, yeah,
[00:34:47] Christina: but like, but you know, which I think the only reason that was mitigated so well was because they made it, you know, they gave it a brand, gave it a website and, um, But, you know, I’ve seen some people make, you [00:35:00] know, comments, well, this is why I don’t trust open source software.
[00:35:02] Christina: I’m like, well, okay, first of all, your proprietary shit is not any better. Don’t get it twisted. Also, you can’t escape it. Like everybody, like, you know, something like, like 60 something percent or 70 something percent of code, like from when they do audits, like all software is like made up of open source libraries.
[00:35:20] The Future of Open Source
[00:35:20] Christina: Um, it’s just a fact. But like, for me, the bigger thing is, Okay, so you have this important dependency, this project that all these people rely on, and it’s just like with, with Heartbleed, with OpenSSL, where in that case you had this incredibly important project that was made, that had one full time employee.
[00:35:38] Christina: In this case, you have one person who’s been the maintainer, who’s not paid for it, who’s not supported by anything, and it is yet this crucial project. And, and it’s just kind of Okay, well, like, what are we doing? Like, it’s great that the code is all out there and that people are willing to volunteer and do stuff, but companies make, like, real money off of these things, and, and what are we going to [00:36:00] do to create sustainable environments for people to, um, you You know, contribute.
[00:36:06] Christina: And what are we going to do to like audit and make sure that these really important projects like that you don’t just have like one guy with burnout who, to be clear, even if he hadn’t had burnout, like this sort of situation could have caught anybody, right? Like you could have had a really, really strong, you know, complete system.
[00:36:23] Christina: And if somebody had built enough trust, this, this sort of thing could have gotten in, right? But, um, It makes it harder when you have people who like, you know, millions and millions and millions of things depend on this. Um, maybe not millions, but definitely hundreds of thousands, you know, packages depend on this thing.
[00:36:43] Christina: And it’s not like a priority. Like no, no, like if nobody used you to check in and be like, Oh, should we make sure that we can have support contracts or that we’re giving money to this guy or that we’re making sure that like, this is a sort of thing that has support so that we can. Check on this. Or at the very least, like, [00:37:00] we should do, you know, audits every five years on the, you know, X number of, you know, dependent upon packages.
[00:37:06] Christina: I don’t know. I just feel like we have to have, like, broader conversations about, like, how do we support people who do this and, um.
[00:37:14] Brett: Yeah. It gets weird because like I run the Oracle DevRel GitHub org and the whole reason that we have a separate, uh, organization for DevRel is because we want to make it as easy as possible for people to contribute. Uh, for people to contribute working non production example code. But in order to make it easier, we have to circumvent a lot of the security measures.
[00:37:46] Brett: Like we have kind of, it’s like a buddy system where we have to, we have to trust one maintainer who has to review every pull request and approve it. So there’s like an audit trail, but every repo has [00:38:00] a different. Maintainer, and we trust them because they have an Oracle email address, um, and that’s basically all it takes to become a maintainer on any of these repos.
[00:38:12] Brett: So, um, this is, this isn’t like core libraries that are going into other code, but it is code that is being executed by, you know, thousands of people who are using it and, like, It’s that trust issue. Like the, I don’t, I don’t think that open source could maintain the forward momentum it has if we had to restrict it.
[00:38:46] Brett: With additional security measures. But based on this, I don’t know if there’s another way, like this is, this is a big conversation to have.
[00:38:55] Christina: well, and the thing is, though, I don’t know if the security measures here would have helped necessarily, right? Like, I think it’s definitely one [00:39:00] of those things where, like, it, you, you can make an argument that, um,
[00:39:05] Brett: Sure. Like even if he’d met him in person, it sounds like the guy knew everything he had to do to build up the necessary trust.
[00:39:13] Christina: right, right. I think, I think for me, the bigger thing is, it’s just like, okay, what, what do I need to do? Like, what, what do we need to do to make sure that, like, we don’t just have these single, these single projects?
[00:39:27] Brett: sure, even if, even if you had someone that truly was trustworthy, um, and a state decided to pay them enough money to turn that trust into a vulnerability,
[00:39:41] Christina: Oh, that’s
[00:39:42] Brett: um, So like you could have all the security, you could have someone completely vetted for maintaining a project and enough money, enough, uh, threats, enough, you know, whatever a state sponsored attack [00:40:00] would look like, um, you could probably turn a trusted, uh, operator into, uh, a vulnerability that, yeah, that’s messed up.
[00:40:10] Brett: Because you’re right, like, this code, these open source projects are the basis, the foundation of so many, um, even, like, corporate projects, like,
[00:40:21] Christina: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:22] Brett: uses, Oracle uses a lot of open source, like, and, and
[00:40:27] Christina: Everybody does. Everybody on the planet does. Like you can’t not at this point, like it’s, it’s almost impossible not to, you know?
[00:40:34] Brett: Yeah. Oh man, this is
[00:40:36] Christina: So it is problematic, but yeah, but I just, I hope that we can do more to like hopefully help like, I, I just feel really bad for the original maintainer who was clearly burnt out and, and wasn’t, you know, nobody, nobody seemed to care.
[00:40:49] Christina: Right. Um, and, and, and it wasn’t even on anybody’s radar. And I mean, it’s also one of those things that it’s like, you know, I don’t know, I If there are these, even [00:41:00] when I think about trust, I’m like, and this isn’t to any way knock any people who work on these projects, but if you have these, these dependencies that are incredibly important and that are incredibly insidious, maybe we should be doing audits of them.
[00:41:09] Christina: Like that’s like open SSL was, was one of those where nobody, you know, I found this thing that I wrote 10 years ago about, um, open source and says, you know, you know, Heartbleed exposes a problem with open source, but it’s not the one that you think. And everything that I wrote, like, unfortunately.
[00:41:27] Christina: Completely still accurate today. And, and it’s just, it’s disappointing that we haven’t found a way to make those things more sustainable. Especially when people make money off of this. And, and it’s, there are things we can do. Like I know we’ve internally at GitHub, we’re trying to talk about how we can maybe do more to Surface what some of these important projects are, but we’ve gotta like do that where we have to do some more serious audit trails.
[00:41:49] Christina: And like, certainly I know the Linux kernel is going to be taking a lot of steps to probably, you know, beef up what they’re, you know, willing to do and, and at the [00:42:00] distro level, right? Like, I’m sure there are a bunch of conversations happening now from people about, okay, like, are we accepting this new code version or not?
[00:42:07] Christina: And what are we doing and, and what, what sort of auditing are we doing because this. Yeah, it’s really bad.
[00:42:16] Brett: All right. Well, that was a, we have a lot of complaints today.
[00:42:19] Christina: We
[00:42:19] Brett: Complaining about Apple, complaining about open source in general. Wow.
[00:42:24] Christina: complaining about people abusing stuff, I don’t want to complain about open source per se.
[00:42:29] Magical Keycaps
[00:42:29] Brett: Yeah. So before we get into Graptitude, there’s one topic I want to know if you have any experience with. Um, have you ever bought resin key caps for mechanical keyboard?
[00:42:41] Christina: Resin ones, no.
[00:42:43] Brett: so I’m holding up a key right now that has. It’s like an interstellar key that’s clear resin. And I have ones that have Koi, I posted a Flickr image in the Quip Doc. [00:43:00] Um, I have ones that have Koi swimming around in them. One with Mantis Ray, I’m getting one that has an astronaut inside of it to be my hyper key.
[00:43:09] Brett: Um, some of the ones I ordered, I accidentally ordered SA profile instead of OEM profile. So I lost like a hundred dollars worth of. Because they’re like 40 bucks a piece for these keys, uh, 20 to 40 bucks. But Etsy is full of crazy ass resin keycaps. And by the time I’m done, my, my, I want my keyboard to be, um, symmetrical and cool looking, but I keep trying different different creators and different resin keycaps trying to find the one that I want to like proliferate around my keyboard.
[00:43:44] Brett: I love the Koi ones, but they don’t backlight. Um, and so they look dark on my otherwise backlit keyboard. And like, I have all ceramic keys now. I’m really loving this. And, and now just as I’m getting this keyboard [00:44:00] put together, I started looking into like lily keyboards and, and like, Like the newer versions of Ergo Docs keyboards.
[00:44:09] Brett: I have an ergo docs I need to update, but like some of these that are, that have like a splayed thumb key, uh, organization and, and, and very minimal like actual keys, like everything is done with layers. Um, I am going nuts with keyboards right now, but these resin key caps, oh, by the way. If you want to get into crazy ass keyboards, but you don’t want to do a bunch of soldering, go to Etsy.
[00:44:42] Brett: There are creators on Etsy that will give you pre soldered keyboards of any of the like crazy cool, even the ones that like curve up. Have you seen these? It’s like splayed and then the keys, like the whole thing curves up and. [00:45:00] Yeah, it’s, it’s nuts. I’ll post some links in the show notes. Um, and I really, before I invested in one of those really crazy ones, I would want to try it.
[00:45:12] Brett: But I live in an area where there’s like, no meetups, there’s no meetups. And I have like no friends that would have this kind of keyboard that I could try out. So I might look in Minneapolis, see if I can find like a meetup where everyone will bring their crazy ass keyboard and I can see what actually feels good. Um,
[00:45:32] Christina: I hope. That’s cool. Yeah, no, I do know Etsy is a thing where you can do some of that stuff, but no, that’s fun.
[00:45:38] The Future of Blogging
[00:45:38] Christina: Oh, did you want to talk about your blog? About how blogging sucks?
[00:45:41] Brett: Yeah. How much time do you have?
[00:45:43] Christina: Let’s do it.
[00:45:44] Brett: Um, yeah, so I, and I, I, I posted, uh, uh, kind of just opinion piece on the state of, um, blogging in, in 2024, [00:46:00] um, and I feel like it could have, I could have, um, Steel man some of the arguments, um, by offering some actual numbers and I may go back and revise the piece and try to organize it a little bit better because it was very stream of thought, stream of consciousness.
[00:46:17] Brett: But, um, I have watched mine and Other blogs that 10 years ago, like we were, we were sharing each other’s links. We were getting mentioned on like Lifehacker and News Hacker, uh, Hacker News, and during Fireball, you’d get fireballed once in a while and it would all result in, uh, Increasing your readership.
[00:46:42] Brett: Um, you would see it in your traffic stats. You would see it in your RSS stats, and that is not happening anymore. Um, my blog has gone from about 20, 000 page views a day to more like 20, 000 page views [00:47:00] a week. So. What’s that, a 70 percent decrease? I don’t do math well. Um, but, like, traffic is down. My, I have about 35, 000 RSS readers, and that number hasn’t grown for like 5 years.
[00:47:20] Brett: Uh, despite like projects like Bunch get written up in fucking German print magazines, blogged all over the place, mentioned on like, uh, Automators with David Sparks, and I get like a lot of downloads because of that. But the readership does not increase. Like, it used to be, like, Mood Blast. Back in the days when Tuas started, when David Chartier at Tuas started covering Mood Blast, like, I watched, I watched my, my daily traffic go from, like, a hundred visits a day to a thousand visits a day.
[00:47:56] Brett: And that sustained. Like, that was sustainable. And [00:48:00] then you’d get Doug. You remember Digg? Of course, you remember Digg. You have a fucking didactic memory. Um, so, like, you’d get dug, and those people would stick around. But now, it’s like, now instead of newsreaders, people are using social media. And we share our links of interest into social media, where even our own followers have a hit or miss chance of seeing them because of, you know, The algorithm, quote unquote.
[00:48:28] Brett: Um, and like people are, they’ll make one visit and then they’ll go back and expect the next cool thing to show up on Twitter instead of, um, you know, adding this cool site to their RSS feed. Like nobody, that’s just not a thing anymore. Um, so there’s no way for an independent blogger to build reliable, sustainable traffic.
[00:48:54] Brett: Not in the way that it was 10, even 20 years ago. Um, so that’s what the [00:49:00] piece is about. It’s, it’s just, it’s accepting things have changed. Like the header image for the post is Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino. Uh, because it really, by the time I was done with it, it felt like a real get off my lawn kind of post.
[00:49:17] Brett: Um, but it’s not. It’s just, I don’t have the hustle. I watch people that succeed, like on YouTube and TikTok, and kind of these Newer platforms and medium and, uh, what’s the sub stack, which everyone’s fleeing from now, but like people who succeed on those platforms have a level of hustle that I just don’t, I just, I don’t have that energy.
[00:49:44] Christina: Well, I wonder if that’s what the difference is, if I can be, like, bold enough to maybe, like, question that. Right? Like, I don’t disagree. I don’t disagree with, like, the core of what you’re saying. Like, the way that we discover and get content now is different. And blogs, like, if I were to talk to somebody today and they’re like, oh, I want to [00:50:00] start a blog today, and they’ve never done anything else, I wouldn’t, I would say, maybe have a newsletter.
[00:50:06] Christina: Right? I would say, like, you know, maybe you can still do your blog, but maybe do a newsletter, and I would say, you know, you’re going to have to be active places like, you know, like, uh, Threads, or, or, you know, Mastodon, Thread, Threads is much more normally focused. Um, You know, potentially look into, you know, doing some video content, if that’s the sort of thing you want to do.
[00:50:29] Christina: If it’s just text based though, like newsletters, uh, for at least the last like six years have been, um, a much, um, more common medium for, for people to kind of get used to and it kind of took over blogging. But I think the secondary part, like you said, like people who like you said, have the mediums and the sub sacs and all that, they have a hustle.
[00:50:47] Christina: I think, I wonder how much of it is that, right? It’s that like, you know, You’ve done this consistently for a really long time, and so you have your core audience of people, but if you want to grow that audience, I think, I don’t know, I [00:51:00] think there’s an argument made that like, there is a certain amount of hustle you have to do, and you probably, you had that hustle when you started, Getting into this stuff like 20
[00:51:07] Brett: but I’m 45 now and I just don’t, I
[00:51:10] Christina: Yeah, and I don’t blame you I
[00:51:11] Brett: energy to start again.
[00:51:13] Christina: I don’t blame you. I but I just I just I don’t know I feel like that’s the real thing is that the the hustle never stops like some people can you have to be content with okay? Well, then my audience isn’t gonna grow.
[00:51:25] Brett: So the other point in this post though, is that even those who hustle, um, the, the revenue stream is heavily geared towards the platform now, um, where you are hustling to make content that you don’t own. You know, the platform you put it on owns it and the platform that you put it on monetizes it and you see a fraction of, of ad revenue come to you.
[00:51:53] Brett: Um, and so in order to succeed, you need a million plus viewers,
[00:51:59] Christina: Um,
[00:51:59] Brett: [00:52:00] you can
[00:52:00] Christina: we’re going to be very targeted and what you’re doing and and have loyal audiences and be able to do like if you’re not
[00:52:06] Brett: Patreon or
[00:52:08] Christina: Right. Yeah. Like Patreon, um, or be in markets where people like, you know, uh, brands will recognize you. Advertising right now is bad and digital, um, for everything, basically everything but video and, and even video, the rates I’m, I bet are, I don’t know this definitively cause I, I don’t, I don’t have any, um, uh, knowledge on this and, and the video CPMs are, are, uh, a weird black box anyway.
[00:52:31] Christina: Uh, YouTube really doesn’t like to share that. And, and weirdly Influencers, and I think this is to their detriment, um, don’t share like what sorts of money they get from sponsors and stuff. Like it’s not a discussed thing, even amongst podcasting and stuff, right? Like it’s, well, which is so stupid because we do talk about salaries now, like levels on FYI, you can see exactly what you should be making, um, in a tech job anyway.
[00:52:55] Christina: Right. And they, those exist for a lot of industries. We finally got to the point where we’re willing to talk about salaries, [00:53:00] but yet we don’t talk about like, okay, what are you getting paid for a sponsorship? And. Um, and for advertising, when you have those direct relationships, I’m not talking about programmatic, which is a completely different thing and is bad and will always be, you know, to the bottom, right?
[00:53:15] Christina: Like, those rates will never be good and it’s always a volume play. But, um, I think that the only place where, you know, uh, like advertisers are really willing to spend money right now, because digital advertising in general is just really taking a beating right now, is on video. Um, but, but on that, right, like you’re right, you are dependent on the algorithms, you’re dependent on the platform you’re on, you’re dependent on, you know, what you can get, and, and it’s hard to build, like, loyalty around that.
[00:53:44] Christina: Um, And, and it’s sort of ironic because you have the people at the first wave of the web, right? Like, you know, people like you and John Gruber and Neil Dash and, you know, like Merlin and people who were like all part of this early wave, like did really well. Um, and, [00:54:00] and, you know, most people kind of succumbed the, or not, not succumbed, like were able to, were, um, able to resist succumbing to the, um, you know, um, I guess, Lores of those big platforms.
[00:54:13] Christina: But yeah, I think that’s just the world that we’re in now. And if you do want to stay at it though, you have to
[00:54:20] Brett: so my. My point is that that world that we’re in now is geared toward platforms and not creators and that and that things have changed and it’s not to the benefit of original content on the web.
[00:54:38] Christina: No, absolutely not.
[00:54:39] Brett: So yeah, so you agree with my thesis.
[00:54:41] Christina: completely agree with your thesis. I totally agree with your thesis. I think I just only, my only disagreement a little bit is that it’s just almost like
[00:54:50] Christina: the It’s definitely harder than it was 20 years ago, and the circumstances are different. But [00:55:00] there is, like, and you’re not wrong that even if you put in the hustle, your returns would not be what they were back then. But I feel like, no, I think, I think you nailed it. Like, what’s happened is, is what’s happened.
[00:55:13] Christina: I just think that, like, at a certain point, like, I don’t know. I guess I’m more jaded because I just, I’ve, I’ve seen this evolution happen over the last, like,
[00:55:20] Brett: Well, you’ve been part of it. Yeah,
[00:55:22] Christina: Yeah, but it is disappointing. Um, I think, I think what sucks though, is that for the average like Reader or listener or whatever, like, on the one hand, the platforms made it easier for them to maybe find and discover things and have to do less work, right?
[00:55:41] Christina: But then on the other hand, like, I, I wonder how many people, like, cause I’m, I’m guilty of this myself, right? Where they’ll be like, Oh, I used to read this person. I used to do this thing. And then you fall off, right? Because you don’t see their content recommended anymore. You don’t see their, you don’t
[00:55:54] Brett: Yeah. And, and newsletters, newsletters show up in your inbox and, and you keep up with them. And I think [00:56:00] newsletters are a valid, um, a valid way for creators to expand their audience. And every newsletter that I’m part of asked me to. You know, become a Patreon subscriber or whatever platform they’re on. Um, and that, that seems to be a way to make money.
[00:56:15] Brett: Um, in a way that trying to break into like YouTubing that takes, you need, there’s an investment to become like a well known YouTuber.
[00:56:29] Christina: Oh yeah.
[00:56:30] Brett: you, you don’t do that without a team, without equipment. Like there’s
[00:56:34] Christina: don’t want to say that about a
[00:56:35] Brett: an investment.
[00:56:36] Christina: You don’t necessarily have to have a team, but you do need to have time and equipment and hustle. Like, you cannot do video without hustle, and it’s a grind, but I have watched channels go from very small to very large over the course of a year. And, People who are, you know, not, like, being funded outside things, like, that’s definitely possible, but it takes [00:57:00] a lot of work, right?
[00:57:01] Christina: Like, all
[00:57:02] Brett: of hustle.
[00:57:03] Christina: a lot of these things take a lot of work, whereas, I think 20 years ago, it was one of those things, you had a blog, and everybody else who knew about blogs would find you, and that’s just not the
[00:57:12] Brett: and all you had to do is make good shit and, and you would be, you would be rewarded for making good shit. Anyway, um, quick sponsor break. This episode is brought to you by nothing. Um, are you overwhelmed by choices when it comes to your disposable income? Try nothing. It’s inexpensive, and if you try it, you’ll be surprised how much you don’t miss something.
[00:57:37] Brett: Head to dimspire. me and follow hashtag dimspirations for more cooking tips.
[00:57:44] Grapptitude
[00:57:44] Brett: Um, so that brings us to, uh, Graftitude. Are you prepared for Gratitude? I, I kind of picked mine last, last minute. I’ll, I can go first if
[00:57:56] Christina: you go first.
[00:57:57] Brett: while I
[00:57:57] Christina: yeah, you go first, because I’m trying to, I’m trying to think about what I wanted [00:58:00] to choose, so go
[00:58:01] Brett: Um, my pick for the week is Screens, which I don’t know if we’ve talked about before. I’ve lost track.
[00:58:07] Christina: have, but, but, but talk about it anyway.
[00:58:10] Brett: Um, they, they recently pulled out of, uh, Uh, I think they were on set up, but I had
[00:58:17] Christina: are only in the Mac App Store now.
[00:58:19] Brett: yeah, and I believe they’re subscription only now. Uh, which,
[00:58:23] Christina: But you can pay for a lifetime for the thing of, it’s just expensive.
[00:58:27] Brett: I get it. I like, I got a free lifetime license cause I’m that cool.
[00:58:32] Brett: But, um,
[00:58:33] Christina: I paid for mine. Um, I think, I, I think, and I, I was trying to do the math in my mind if it was going to be like worth like doing the lifetime or doing the yearly. I did do the lifetime, but yeah, but I think it was for a family, it was expensive, but well, not expensive. It’s good. It’s good for what it is, for sure.
[00:58:46] Brett: yeah. Screens is in my opinion, the best VNC client. Um, I. Don’t know what happened with, um, you know how in, on a Mac, when you load [00:59:00] up a server, there’s a share screen
[00:59:03] Christina: Yeah.
[00:59:03] Brett: button. Um, I just, it, I, I hate the built in, like what used to be remote desktop, like. Screens fills in all the blanks, all the password saving, all the shared clipboard, all the file drag and drop.
[00:59:20] Brett: Uh, you can mask a remote screen so that people can’t see what you’re doing on the machine you’re controlling. Um, so in like, uh, shared environments that can be really important. And, uh, you can, uh, If you’re sharing a screen with somebody who’s active, you can like share control of the screen or, or take full control of the screen.
[00:59:42] Brett: And all of these things that kind of, I’m pretty sure remote desktop used to be pretty good at.
[00:59:47] Christina: Yeah, and, and they haven’t updated a remote desktop in like five years because
[00:59:51] Brett: do you even get remote desktop? Is it part of like, yeah, okay.
[00:59:55] Christina: have to buy it, and it’s in the app store, but it’s like 75 or something, or 150. It’s [01:00:00] more than, it’s more than screens. So screens for family, like the lifetime, well no, family is included for all of them, so screens is 79 for lifetime.
[01:00:07] Christina: Apple remote desktop, let me see what this is right now, um, or it’s 25 a year, um, So, uh, I think when I talked about it, uh, back in December, it had just The Screens 5 update had just come out. Yeah, Remote, Apple Remote Desktop is also 80. So they’re the same price, but it hasn’t been updated since, like it’s had, like it got like a point release update like five months ago, but it’s been at the 3.
[01:00:34] Christina: 9 series for, for seven years. Okay. So, so it is not an actively, like this is one of those products that Basically, like, I think the only valid reason at this point to buy Apple Remote Desktop would be if you were doing a lot of management of, um, Macs, like as a, as like a Mac admin, where you’re needing to install a bunch of service, um, patches and other sorts of things.
[01:00:58] Christina: And in that case, I’m going to be [01:01:00] honest, you probably have better MDM solutions. Um, then that, that would, that would work better than, than what Apple Remote Desktop does. So if you’re not like a, a Mac admin, if you don’t have a fleet of Macs that you’re trying to manage, that it is no longer like a program that you should buy, in my opinion.
[01:01:18] Christina: And, um, for regular users, when Apple, uh, nerfed, you know, kind of like the, the, the easier way for people to be able to remotely log in and they kind of, you know, like, like fucked a bunch of that stuff, like screens really stepped in. Um. to its, um, to its shoes. And I certainly think that for, the fact is, you know, you can also use it on iPad and iPhone and access things that way.
[01:01:43] Christina: Like it’s a really, really, really good app.
[01:01:45] Brett: Can, can remote desktop, uh, connect to Windows and Linux machines? I assume it’s a VNC. No. Cause screens, screens can. Screens, screens can connect to any VNC server. Um, and I run, I [01:02:00] run multiple Macs in my basement that have no displays attached to them. And I control them entirely with screens. Um, and I can have like all, both of my Mac mini servers and my local desktop all up at once.
[01:02:14] Brett: Um, and I can just drag files between them and, um, my key bindings still work on remote machines. And yeah, so that’s my pick. Sure.
[01:02:24] Christina: and I think screens is, screens is really good. I really like screens a lot, a big fan. I use it all the time. So, um, I’ve been looking at, speaking of like servers and Mac Mini’s and whatnot, I’ve been doing a bunch of research. Uh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll write about it. Who knows? For, um, Like, uh, kind of like, um, I guess OSs or, or kind of front ends for home servers or I guess, uh, other things.
[01:02:53] Christina: And so there is, uh, there’s one called, um, uh, RunTP. Um, it’s, uh, uh, R [01:03:00] U N T I P I, uh, dot I O. And, um, there’s one called, um, I’ve been making a, I made a list. Let me find this. There’s one called, um, Cosmos, and there’s one called, um, Casa OS. So there, there are a couple of these that I’ll put in, but I’ve basically been kind of like investigating various, so basically what these systems are is they’re just easier ways to run and, and kind of launch like Docker containers and, and apps on your home server server.
[01:03:39] Christina: Thank you. Without having to be completely just, you know, in, um, Docker Compose and Ansible Runbooks and stuff. So, um, these are, uh, some of the things that I’ve been looking into. I don’t really have a pick yet as to which one, like, I think is like the best, but I’ll have some links. I don’t know if you have any, um, [01:04:00] experience with anything like this, but
[01:04:01] Brett: No, I, I do it all the hard way. I would love to, I would love to explore this stuff. So yeah, sure. Sure. All your links
[01:04:08] Christina: Yeah, I’ll share all the links to there. Yeah, because yeah, because there’s CASA OS, there’s, uh, RUN, TP, um, there’s Cosmos, um, uh, Cosmos, and they all are, you know, open source. They’re varying degrees of, of, um, I guess, you know, activity and development and whatnot, and some of the things definitely are, um, probably, like, better maintained than others.
[01:04:30] Christina: There are always, I always have kind of, like, security kind of questions about some of these things, but I, um, I like, I like the idea of, um, these types of projects to make it easier for people to self host things. So,
[01:04:46] Brett: God, the CASA OS webpage is very cool.
[01:04:49] Christina: yeah, it is.
[01:04:50] Brett: Nice. I’m jealous. I gotta figure out how to do some of this stuff.
[01:04:54] Christina: Yeah, yeah, and that one has got like 21, 000 stars on GitHub and, um,
[01:04:59] Brett: one [01:05:00] thousand.
[01:05:00] Christina: yeah, and, um, Cosmos has, uh, 2, 600 and RunTP has 6, 600. So I guess the big one, obviously the biggest one is, is CASA OS. So at least in terms of star numbers, but, um, but I don’t know what, what that is saying about anything. But, um, I don’t know.
[01:05:21] Christina: Anyway, I’m a fan, I’m a fan of this type of stuff. Um, I’ve been thinking about getting, I have a bunch of Raspberry Pis, but you can actually now get like, um, an N100 box. Um, Andrew at Ars Technica wrote a review of one and Jeff Gerling has done some reviews of these things too. Basically for like 150 bucks, you can get like a very tiny little box for like a mini PC that has like Windows 11 Pro on it.
[01:05:43] Christina: Um, but of course you could, you know, nuke it and just put Linux on it or whatever that is. Very capable. That is way more capable in most aspects than a Raspberry Pi for about the same amount of money. So, so for people who are just wanting to play around with stuff like that, if you don’t have a random PC around and [01:06:00] you know, because this is an area where like I have some older Mac minis, but at this point like I think one of them I have Proxmox on, I’ve been playing with, and then one of them just like whatever the latest version of Mac OS it can support is, which is old, but like Yeah, it’s something like that.
[01:06:15] Brett: No, I think I got, I think I got mine up to, uh, Catalina.
[01:06:21] Christina: but like, but you know what I mean? But like in, in, in those instances, it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, um, Mac is great. And if you have a Mac mini that you want to dedicate to those things, that’s, that’s fine. Like, and if you have like for, for your purposes in your basement, you’d like to drag and drop files with, um, You know, using screens, that’s excellent.
[01:06:39] Christina: It is not the ideal platform for anybody to buy into for managing a home server. It is not designed for that. Um, it, the, the best apps won’t run well on it in, in a way that we can actually do things the way virtualization on macOS works, especially for, for Linux derived apps is pretty shit because they don’t allow nested virtualization.
[01:06:59] Christina: Because again, [01:07:00] you know, these are things that we all find acceptable, but are not. Um, and, um, So, you know, and it’s expensive, right? If you wanted to get, like, something with, like, enough RAM to do what you’d want it to do, like, you’re looking at spending over 1, 000, you know, on, like, a Mac Mini, and you’re like, Okay, or I could just buy this very cheap, like, Windows Mini PC.
[01:07:24] Brett: I mean, to be fair, you can get old Intel Mac minis for fifty to a hundred dollars. Um, but, but as you say, they’re not, Yeah, they’re not capable of a lot of things you want to do.
[01:07:38] Christina: No, and really what you want to do on those is like what one of them because I got a couple of them from Um, one of the old guys from Mac. Um, yeah from Orchard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
[01:07:47] Brett: Mac Orchard. Something
[01:07:49] Christina: it was Mac Orchard or something like that Yeah, I bought I bought um some thing that when he was doing up with his kids last summer I got a couple of Mac minis I think for like I tweeted about it, or I posted about it on [01:08:00] Mastodon and basically like gave them massive sales boosts, um, which, which excited the kids, which I was happy about.
[01:08:05] Christina: And they basically cleared out all of their stock. But like I got them, I don’t know, maybe it was 35 or 50 a piece. It was cheap. Right. But like, but like I said, one of them I have macOS running on it just to have it running. The other one I have Proxmox on, like I literally just turned it into a Linux box.
[01:08:20] Christina: Cause at that point, like the hardware is so old, like it still has like 16 gigs of RAM. And like they have, they put in, you know, SSDs and like. Very capable for just running containers and stuff, but it’s not one of those things that I would use Mac OS in any Mac OS way for. So, um, but yeah, um, anyway, those, those are my picks.
[01:08:38] Christina: I just, I’ve been looking at Homebox or Homelab, um, OSes. So
[01:08:43] Brett: What are we going to call this episode? Should it be Apple Bitching? Bitching, bitching about Apple? The Anti Apple Apple Podcast?
[01:08:52] Christina: I, I kind of like that.
[01:08:57] Brett: Apple is dead. That’ll be our title. [01:09:00] Um, anywho. Anyway, um, thanks for joining me. We miss Jeff. Jeff will be back after his, uh, his spring break. Um, and, you know, I, I might rickroll everybody next week. Who knows? Be prepared. Be prepared for, uh, you won’t laugh when it happens. Nobody will laugh. They’ll roll their eyes.
[01:09:24] Brett: But, that’s never stopped me before.
[01:09:27] Christina: No. Why, why, why, why, why would it, why, why would something like that stop you? Right? Like just do, do you like share your truth,
[01:09:36] Brett: Thanks to all of our, thanks to all of our sponsors today. Um, Christina, get some sleep.
[01:09:42] Christina: get some sleep
Erin Dawson, fresh off her latest tour, joins the gang to tell tales from the road. Plus the much-anticipated picks of the week!
Hims is changing men’s healthcare by providing simple and convenient access to science-backed treatments for erectile dysfunction, hair loss, weight loss, and more. Start your free online visit today at hims.com/overtired.
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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.
TranscriptLatent Cheetos Smell
[00:00:00]
[00:00:03] Brett: This episode is brought to you by HIMS. Stay tuned for more info on how they can help you with men’s health. Welcome to Overtired. We are back. Couple weeks off. I’m Brett Terpstra. I’m here with Jeff Severins Gunsel and Christina Warren and special guest Erin Dawson. Welcome to the show, everybody.
[00:00:22] Jeff: WelcomeErinon.
[00:00:25] Erin: Thank you,
[00:00:25] Christina: Erin.
[00:00:26] Erin: Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Brett.
[00:00:29] Jeff: I just want to thank everybody.
[00:00:31] Brett: Erin, introduce yourself.
[00:00:32] Erin: have something to say about hymns first.
[00:00:35] Jeff: Hmm.
[00:00:36] Erin: Um, I think I know what hymns is. And do they also work for, like, lady boners?
[00:00:45] Brett: Well, it depends on the type of lady, I guess.
[00:00:48] Erin: Right, well, ladies that could nominally achieve, like, how’s that work?
[00:00:54] Brett: That’s a, that’s a, it’s a fair question. Uh, we may have to contact their ad department to [00:01:00] find out how they want to spin that.
[00:01:01] Erin: What we may also have to do is start this episode over. I’m so sorry. I probably
[00:01:08] Jeff: Whoa, Brett, no, we don’t have to start over, but Brett, did you just play the intro bit?
[00:01:12] Brett: no. That was, it’s the same voice. Um, my, my website just generated because the current giveaway ended at noon. So it generated the like this, this giveaway is over post and every time it finishes generating, and this happens to me on conference calls all the time, it, it says in Zarbox voice, bam, generated.
[00:01:38] Jeff: Wow, that’s cool. I like it.
[00:01:41] Brett: I love, I love Zarbox. Anyway, Erin, Erin.
[00:01:44] Brett: Aaron,
[00:01:44] Erin: let’s make this about me. Um, hello, my name is Erin Dawson. Full disclosure, I work with one Brett Terpstra. Um, that is what I do for a living, which is to work with Brett. Um, but
[00:01:57] Brett: so than you used to. We’ve kind of moved to different [00:02:00] teams, but yeah.
[00:02:01] Tales from the tour
[00:02:01] Erin: I hate that. Uh, but in my real life, my waking life, my sober ish life, I am a musician, um, and more specifically a black metal musician, uh, with a project called Genital Shame for which I just got back, um, from a tour a couple weeks ago.
[00:02:21] Erin: Uh, started in Chicago, played my hometown Pittsburgh, went to Montreal. Baltimore, Brooklyn, Boston, and ended in Cincinnati. And really, like, it was kind of uneventful. Usually with tours like this, you’re spending six hours on average a day in a van with, you know, boys with, you know, may or may not have Stomach issues.
[00:02:49] Erin: So that,
[00:02:50] Jeff: good smells.
[00:02:51] Erin: that could be a, yeah, uh, an atmosphere creates in the van where you look up and you can start to see cloud formation. [00:03:00] Um, but I’m happy to say like, by the end of it, like I want to spend more time with these people. Uh, my backing band is a band in its own right called Stander from Chicago. But when we we’re on the same label, um, so when we tour, uh, they’re my backing band, but, um, yeah.
[00:03:17] Erin: Highlights include playing Brooklyn. We played St. Vitus, this I don’t know if you’re familiar.
[00:03:23] Jeff: Vitus.
[00:03:24] Erin: Yeah, it’s it’s, uh, I don’t know if you’re familiar, uh, Christina, but it’s it’s sort of a, like, metal institution in in Brooklyn. And, like, two days after Genital Shame played, they were shut down. Uh, hopefully temporarily, they still are for noise ordinance stuff.
[00:03:41] Christina: Damn. Okay. And like, what part of
[00:03:43] Erin: right under the
[00:03:45] Christina: What type of, what part of Brooklyn is
[00:03:46] Erin: green point?
[00:03:47] Christina: Greenpoint? Greenpoint? Okay. So, all right. So it’s been gentrified a lot, but still to get like a noise ordinance complaint, that’s impressive. Uh, honestly, like that’s, that’s,
[00:03:57] Jeff: My, my brother owns two bars in [00:04:00] Greenpoint in Williamsburg next to each other and he has to have the neighbors, he has the neighbors numbers on his cell phone. They call him directly instead of a noise complaint and it happens all the time.
[00:04:10] Erin: At least,
[00:04:10] Jeff: talk them down.
[00:04:12] Erin: like, that’s cool to keep the cops out of it, like, directly
[00:04:15] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I was
[00:04:16] Jeff: That was his thing is he’s like, Hey, can we talk about this?
[00:04:20] Christina: Yeah, right before I moved, they, um, there’s like this backdoor area from like this restaurant that was right next door to us, like right next door to us. And I didn’t like mind so much. It’s just that it was like the patio area, like during the weekend, fine. But like during the week, I’m not going to lie.
[00:04:38] Christina: Like I kind of felt like I was becoming like an old person because, you know, if, if it’s like two o’clock in the morning. And there’s a backyard full of people just like partying. You’re kind of like, okay, I don’t have any choice here. Like, can, can, can you not? But I still, never in my mildest dreams, like, I could never even conceive of calling, like, the police for noise complaint.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Christina: Like, it’s
[00:05:00] Brett: I have, I have called the front desk. Um, one year at Macworld, uh, Mac, Mac stock, um, I was trying to sleep cause I was resenting the next morning and it was so noisy. Someone was just having a, a riot. So I called the front desk. I’m like, Hey, I’m in this room. Could you please, um, ask the people in this room to quiet down?
[00:05:21] Brett: Turns out the next day that it was some of my best friends. Like, at the conference, and I had like, I had called, essentially called the cops on them, which
[00:05:31] Christina: Well, I mean,
[00:05:31] Brett: I admitted to. Sorry.
[00:05:33] Christina: mean, I mean, I mean, the thing is, is like, it’s okay to like, be told to like quiet down when it’s annoying as if somebody asks you if you can quiet down and it’s after like 11 PM and you won’t, then I think it’s like, okay, now you’re a Satan. And now actually like if the cops are called, I’m actually completely fine with that.
[00:05:51] Christina: You know what I mean? Like, um,
[00:05:54] Brett: you’re out.
[00:05:54] Christina: Well, no, I mean, the thing is like, we had an incident, um, uh, where, where I live, I’m like, I pay [00:06:00] way too much in rent for this stuff, but I’m on the seventh floor. The only thing above me is the roof deck. And so we have really high ceilings and there was like a massive party happening.
[00:06:08] Christina: And I think like, it was, I was ignoring it. Until I think like 2. 30 and the thing is, is no one’s supposed to be on the roof deck after I think like 11 and, and then, and like they would not shut up and then they were like rude about it and then they were like taunting about it and I was like, okay, I’m, I’m actually going to like file a complaint with the, you know, building that I paid too much money for.
[00:06:32] Christina: Um, I think Grant called the cops. I would never call the cops still because, you know. Fuck that, but like, um, also everyone there to be, to be, just, just, just to put it out there, everyone at the party and everyone who is like, in the building is extremely white and extremely privileged, so there’s like, no risk of, you know, all you’re doing is wasting the cop’s time, which, I mean, honestly, who cares?
[00:06:53] Brett: Okay, so you played, you played the last show, as far as, as far as anyone knows, [00:07:00] the last show at
[00:07:01] Erin: Yeah, yeah. A band called Genital Shame. Um,
[00:07:07] Christina: it.
[00:07:08] Brett: I, uh, I played a show at a place called Nightingales. I can’t remember what borough it was in. It was Queens or Brooklyn, I think. Um, and they told me the next day that they were closing, um, indefinitely. I don’t know if they ever came back, but as far as I know, at least in the year 2000, I played the last show at Nightingales with the
[00:07:31] Christina: Nightingales in Brooklyn, but I probably had it wrong. It’s probably, I’m sure it’s a completely different place, but there was a Nightingales in Brooklyn. But yeah, so, but I’m sure now that was probably a different spot, but congrats, Brett. You, you
[00:07:41] Brett: I, that can’t, that can’t be an uncommon name.
[00:07:44] Christina: No, it can’t be, but yeah, but
[00:07:46] Brett: probably a Nightingale’s in every city. Any other good stories, Erin?
[00:07:54] Erin: It ended, the tour ended unceremoniously in Cincinnati, where [00:08:00] undergraduate’s, uh, floor. And I had bruises on my legs for that, from that, for a while.
[00:08:08] Jeff: That’s ceremonious. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh
[00:08:12] Erin: bruising ceremony of Cincinnati
[00:08:14] Jeff: heh
[00:08:15] Erin: Um,
[00:08:16] Christina: it’s a new song.
[00:08:17] Brett: do you get groupies?
[00:08:24] Erin: I don’t, I don’t kiss and tell. Uh, not really. I, I think like, genital shame is, you know, I’m trans. Like, maybe some of the themes in genital shame, uh, are about, uh, being trans, though not really. Uh, but even Even that little bit of, of information does attract trans listeners, um, and there, the trans community is very incestuous, for sure.
[00:08:52] Erin: Um, but on the, on the road, I keep, I keep an arm’s length, really, in the green room, in the Greenpoint green room. Um, [00:09:00] but, yeah, yeah, not, not really. I, it’s funny, like, My, I am like quite silly in, in real life, but I, my music is not. So it’s, it’s a hard balance for me to strike. And it’s something I think about a lot.
[00:09:15] Erin: Um, like, just like what I say between songs, right? Like the sort of like crowd work you’re doing in, in Brooklyn, actually, uh, before. Our last song, Mike, my guitar player, broke a string and had to change strings on stage right before our last song. It’s just like the, the like, the most nerve wracking gig.
[00:09:38] Erin: Um, but like, so I had to vamp for five minutes and like my eyes rolled back in my head and I just like did bits and uh, like I think I even said like, this is like an anxiety dream in real life. Where like, you’re on stage, the lights are on you, many people are looking at you, and you’re expected to entertain, and you have nothing to [00:10:00] say.
[00:10:00] Erin: There is no script. Uh, but it worked out. Um,
[00:10:04] Jeff: Awesome.
[00:10:05] Brett: I used to, if that happened to us on stage, I used to start playing Crazy Train on bass only. Um, and people would be like, yeah, and then eventually the, the string would get fixed or the, the amp would get replaced. And I would stop because I can only get so far using just a bass on Crazy Train. But when you’re dealing with a bunch
[00:10:26] Erin: when he played an original. Yeah.
[00:10:29] Jeff: Heh heh heh. Oh
[00:10:30] Erin: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it for Tor, really.
[00:10:32] Brett: All right. That we are on, we’re trying to keep our, our total length down. So that’s, I feel like an appropriately sized tour report. Thank you.
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[00:12:21] Mental Health Corner
[00:12:21] Brett: Um, let’s do, uh, let’s do a relatively brief mental health check in.
[00:12:26] Christina: Okay, I’ll start. I’ll start, um, because I figured that Brett probably has things that he wants to go with. Um, unless Erin, unless Erin, unless you would like to start. Um, okay. So I just got back from South by Southwest. I was in Austin for six days, which, that’s a long time. Um, South by was good. I haven’t been in a very long time and I certainly haven’t been since the pandemic.
[00:12:49] Christina: The vibe was kind of weird. I’m not going to lie. Um, It’s big and I know it’s been big for a long time. Um, it was, but, but at [00:13:00] this point, like it, I think it’s like a few things, like they’re, they’re still kind of coming back to the pandemic, figuring out what it is. And then South by like, when you and I used to, did you ever go Brett?
[00:13:09] Christina: I can’t remember if you ever, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like when we used to go like back in the day, like it started out as a music thing, then it expanded to a film thing, then interactive. It was like this tiny little part that quickly became like the biggest part of the whole show. Then all the marketers took over.
[00:13:23] Christina: And then they got like education and health and all these other like little offshoot things, whatever. Um, and, and I stopped going. Um, this time I feel like they don’t know, like it’s too big in, in my opinion to still try to be kind of maybe like through like one like 10 day period because it takes over the whole city and no longer just the downtown area.
[00:13:45] Christina: Like you have to like, you know, to go to certain screenings for certain movies, like you have to go like, far away, which sucks. Um, and, and, you know, certain installations and certain like events would be literally all over the place. I feel like, I don’t know, maybe [00:14:00] it’d be better if they used this as a time to, I’m not saying necessarily be smaller, I’m just saying like refocus.
[00:14:07] Christina: But it’s not my, not my thing, um, to, to make those decisions. GitHub had a, had a party there, um, which was in a, a, a fun location, like a great location, but also a hard to find location. But that was fun. Um, I saw some good panels. I saw some movies. I did karaoke sober. I mean, I got drunker as it went on, but I had to do it sober to begin with, which was the most horrifying thing in my life.
[00:14:30] Christina: So like, um, I, I have so much props for you, Erin, for like going out and doing like actual, like live things, because I realized I was like, Oh, I can’t sing for shit. Like I used to have a decent voice. I don’t anymore. And you’re never more aware of that than when you’re in a karaoke room and you’re sober.
[00:14:49] Brett: I don’t remember if it was South By or CES, but I was at a karaoke bar with the N Gadget crew and Tim Stephens did Ring of Fire and [00:15:00] it was so good.
[00:15:01] Christina: Oh, he would, of course, he’d be good.
[00:15:03] Brett: yeah, and then I immediately followed him trying to do Sweet Child of Mine after a sizable number of drinks, and it went, it, I, it was, I’m still embarrassed, I’m still mortified thinking about it.
[00:15:17] Christina: Yeah, I, um, I, I started out with, with, uh, with, with, um, Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, and it, it was, eh, again, like, I can do that song if I’m drunk, uh, or have a little more, you know, like, liquid courage. The lyric sheet was also slightly off for, for how they were doing, like, the, the pacing on some of the, the line hits, which, like, fucked me up.
[00:15:39] Christina: Um, once I had, like, To vodka cranberries. Uh, and I was still sober. I did Madonna’s Material, girl, that went much better. But then like, as the night went on, like it was fun, but just I guess my mental health, my mental health’s. Okay, I’m, I’m still a DHD as fuck right now. Um, but it was nice to be around people, which is good for me.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Christina: And, um, I was able to, uh, actually run into some former in Gadget people from way back in the day. Mostly they were at the Verge now. Um, when I was at, um. South by, uh, the first day when I got in, I wound up having drinks with a lot of people at The Verge and the editor in chief of Wired and, um, some other folks.
[00:16:18] Christina: So that was nice. But yeah, no, I mean, sorry, go on.
[00:16:22] Brett: I’m sorry, just while we’re still talking about South By, was it well attended? Because, uh, both Brian Albee and David Hamilton posted pictures of their plane into Austin and it was completely empty. at the very beginning of the conference.
[00:16:39] Christina: so that’s the interesting thing and that’s I think why I have a hard time kind of like grappling like grokking like What was the attendance because I think they were trying to say, oh, you know There’s a hundred thousand people or something and and I wouldn’t doubt that But because it’s spread all over the place, I don’t know.
[00:16:55] Christina: Like I got in on Thursday night and my, I wasn’t able [00:17:00] to get a direct flight. So that says it right there. Um, and I, and I only got in as late, as early as I did because it was 800 cheaper for me to stay in a hotel longer,
[00:17:10] Brett: Mm
[00:17:11] Christina: which, okay. Um, so it was one of those things that was like, well, you know, if it’s going to be cheaper for me to stay two extra nights, I’m fine.
[00:17:21] Christina: Um, but, um, some panels were empty, some were full, like OpenAI did. Um, uh, they’re, they’re, um, uh, the, the guy who runs product for ChatGPT, who was very good. Like they should put him on stage a lot more because he was very reassuring and, and a very good speaker and like nice. And, and he was great. Like that was in one of the main ballrooms in the commission center.
[00:17:44] Christina: And it was not only packed, there was like overflow. So, and that was on, um, Um, Monday, so I think it depends. I think, I think, uh, busier over the weekend. But, but it’s hard because some of the panels were empty, some things were totally full. [00:18:00] Um, screenings for movies, because I had a platinum badge and I wanted to go to movies, was kind of a pain.
[00:18:06] Christina: If you were able to get like, they had like, kind of like an express pass. everything, kind of like the, the Disney genie pass where as long as you requested, you know, at a certain time, you could, you know, kind of guarantee your spot, but that was kind of hit or miss. So then you have to like show up and basically like, like an hour before the screening starts to get your little ticket and then wait around.
[00:18:26] Christina: And like, that’s fine. Well, but the thing is, is that like, it depends on what theater you’re at. Like if you’re at the normal Alamo draft house on Lamar, then like, okay, whatever. But like if you’re, you know, trying to do other things, it just sort of like, kind of fucks up, like. your plans to get around. But anyway, my self, my, my, my mental health update is that I’m still really ADHD.
[00:18:46] Christina: Um, but it was really nice to be around people and I had some good conversations with colleagues. So that’s it.
[00:18:51] Brett: Nice. All right. Um, I, I can go next. So, I am going on over three months now [00:19:00] without sleeping. Um, I am, um, I cannot remember at this point what it feels like to be well rested. I do not think I am manic. I do not think I’m depressed. I’m actually, considering I’m getting like three hours of sleep a night on average, um, I’m actually functioning really well.
[00:19:20] Brett: My job suddenly remembered I existed. Um, and, and I have been, I have been like inundated with work, which turns out, like, I actually enjoy working. Um, and it was, it was getting pretty scary when, for like months when no one was giving me assignments and I was just, Existing and had like nothing to report on my quarterly report.
[00:19:45] Brett: And, um, so, but I’m dealing with it and I’m dealing with life. I’m keeping the house clean. I’m cooking dinners. Um, I don’t understand how I’m doing this, which makes me think, wow, did I become like type one bipolar? Uh, [00:20:00] is something else going on? Um, I have tried three FDA approved insomnia treatments at this point.
[00:20:06] Brett: I’m. Starting Gabapentin today to see if it works. Um, I have asked my primary care physician for a referral to sleep medicine, um, to do like a sleep study and try to figure out what’s going on because I’m, I don’t have. Anxiety. I’m not having racing thoughts. I just cannot fall asleep. I fall asleep within 15 minutes of laying down.
[00:20:33] Brett: I wake up an hour later and then it’s shot for the night. Um, and I, I, this has never happened to me before. Like, yeah, I’m bipolar. I’ve had manic episodes. My manic episodes last at most a week and this is three months and I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but it’s killing me.
[00:20:52] Jeff: And then it just like, and then it just like compounds, right? Because like the thing you need to be well asleep
[00:20:57] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. It’s killing me. [00:21:00] It’s killing me.
[00:21:00] Jeff: Maybe you shouldn’t have named your podcast Overtired.
[00:21:03] Brett: Oh, you think I jinxed it?
[00:21:05] Christina: mean, that was, I think that was my bad, actually. I think that was actually my fault, but, um,
[00:21:14] Jeff: to the you was the
[00:21:15] Brett: I remember, I remember this conversation in an elevator
[00:21:18] Christina: an elevator. Yeah.
[00:21:20] Brett: and I don’t remember who said it first, but we were both a hundred percent
[00:21:23] Christina: No, we were both a hundred percent. And yeah, I can’t remember who said it either. I think that one of us, I think said, uh, just really overtired. And then I think we were like, that’s it. That’s the name of the pod. Um, so it was definitely like a group thing, but I don’t remember exactly which one of us. Yeah.
[00:21:37] Christina: Cause we were in an elevator at the Twitter building. Um,
[00:21:41] Jeff: X. It’s called X.
[00:21:43] Christina: No, it was called Twitter then. And that’s what we’re still going to call
[00:21:45] Jeff: I just, I know I just like to troll.
[00:21:47] Christina: I, I, I know, but I like to troll back. Um, so yeah. Um,
[00:21:52] Jeff: me.
[00:21:55] Christina: No, get a, get a sleep study for sure, Brett. Cause that’s not, um, so do you [00:22:00] know definitively that you’re only like, have you like worn an Apple watch or anything?
[00:22:03] Christina: Like, do you know like how much REM sleep you’re getting or anything like that?
[00:22:06] Brett: I do wear an Apple Watch. Um, I have not actually bothered looking at stats because I look at the clock all night long. Um, like I’m not up working like
[00:22:16] Christina: No, no, no, no, no. I get that. No, but I was, what I was saying though, it’s useful. Um, if you wear your Apple watch at night, like I don’t because I baby rest. So I have to wear like the small Apple watch, which means the battery life is bullshit. And if I have to like, It’s just dumb to like sleep in it, but for me, um, and I’m not one of those people who’s yet at the point where I’m like, yeah, I’ll buy a watch to sleep in.
[00:22:36] Christina: No, I can get like a Fitbit or something. I think they still make Fitbits, but they can, um, but if you wear it, like, if you look at the stats, like it’ll actually be able to, to tell you like what amount of
[00:22:44] Brett: deep sleep
[00:22:45] Christina: sleep is happening. And, and so, um, cause that, that’ll help with the sleep study. Cause it’s bad that you’re only getting three hours of sleep, but
[00:22:54] Brett: I’m, I’m hitting, I’m hitting REM. I will have two to three [00:23:00] crazy dreams. In a night with only like a total of three hours of actual sleep. So like I fall asleep, have a crazy dream, wake up, stay awake for half an hour to an hour, and then fall asleep and have another crazy dream. And they’re so memorable.
[00:23:18] Brett: Like I remember all these dreams and I can sit and bore my partner to death with the bizarre details.
[00:23:25] Jeff: but it wasn’t you.
[00:23:27] Brett: It was you, but it didn’t look like you, but I knew it was you. And yeah, it, it was. So there’s this artist named David Usher. Uh, he was in Moist, um, but he’s an amazing solo artist. And in the U S you can’t stream anything before like the live version of the Mile End Sessions.
[00:23:49] Brett: And he has three albums before that, that I absolutely adored and can no longer find and I,
[00:23:57] Christina: his name? I’ll find it for you.
[00:23:58] Brett: David Usher, [00:24:00] I’ve looked on. Torrent sites? I cannot find it. If you find it, let me know.
[00:24:04] Christina: Yeah, I, I, I’m, I’m in private music trackers, so just gimme a
[00:24:07] Brett: okay. Um, and,
[00:24:09] Jeff: music track? Oh, we can
[00:24:10] Brett: well, so what I ended up doing, I ended up ordering actual musical CDs that I’m going to find a way to rip to MP3s so I can do this.
[00:24:22] Brett: But, I had this dream that I met this girl who, like, like, like, as was mentioned, was Elle, but wasn’t Elle. So, And they agreed to, they agreed to sing the discography with me from memory while we were having sex. And it was the weird, like
[00:24:41] Jeff: Lights on, lights off.
[00:24:43] Brett: I woke up singing lyrics to like some of my favorite David Usher songs a couple of times and then fell back into this dream where I was just singing David Usher songs with a girl while we were having what I will say was unsuccessful sex. It was, it was [00:25:00] very, it was, it was laborious,
[00:25:02] Erin: Well,
[00:25:03] Christina: so, so what, what, uh, what years do you need? ’cause I’m seeing, now I’m seeing strange words from 2007. Uh, if God had gers.
[00:25:09] Brett: Yeah. God have curse and morning orbit.
[00:25:12] Christina: Okay. Um, uh, what are hallucinations from 2003?
[00:25:16] Brett: What?
[00:25:17] Christina: There? There, there’s an album called Hallucinations.
[00:25:19] Brett: I’ve never heard that
[00:25:20] Jeff: Welcome to our new segment. Find my music.
[00:25:23] Christina: yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, well I’ll grab that for you.
[00:25:25] Brett: Yeah. Send me, send me everything you can
[00:25:27] Christina: There’s also little, little songs from 1998.
[00:25:30] Brett: Oh, oh my God. Little songs was what got me into David Usher. I haven’t been able to find that anywhere.
[00:25:37] Christina: Oh yeah, no, I found them all instantly. Yeah, I got
[00:25:39] Brett: my god. Save, save me. That’s amazing.
[00:25:41] Christina: Yeah, I got, I got
[00:25:42] Brett: made my day. I’ll shut up for the rest
[00:25:44] Jeff: We call him, we call him White Usher in Minneapolis.
[00:25:50] Christina: Other usher.
[00:25:51] Brett: Well, if you, if you search like Pirate Bay for David Usher, you get a bunch of stuff from David Guerra featuring Usher.[00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Christina: Usher, that makes sense.
[00:26:01] Brett: Oh
[00:26:02] Christina: Yeah. So, um, uh, I don’t know how much we want to, you know, just fuck it. Um, I’ve been part of these communities for two decades at this point. So there used to be a music tracker called Oink, uh, the Pink Palace, which was a private music tracker that was
[00:26:16] Jeff: Wait, is it like Oink colon the Pink Palace?
[00:26:18] Christina: Well, it was known as the Pink Palace, but it was called Oink, O I N K. And, um, and like it had a pig as its mascot. It was great. It was genuinely the best music site. Trent Reznor was a member. In fact, we talked about it, um, uh, during one of the times that I interviewed him, the Apple people were really not pleased with that.
[00:26:37] Christina: Um, but whatever. And uh, um, that was shut down by the feds in like nine months. Um, and then, um, uh, kind of a hydra of that called WhatCD launched, and that was great. And then WhatCD was shut down by various feds, um, this is all overseas and these people were dumb enough to host things in the United [00:27:00] States, um, in 2016.
[00:27:03] Christina: And then two, uh. Um, Music Trackers came out of the ashes of WhatCD, Redacted, and Orpheus, and I’m members of both. So, um, oh, uh, Redacted tends to have more stuff, but Orpheus tends to, um, have a pretty good mirror. So between the two of them, like, I can find most things. And then the, the great thing about them, especially, uh, Redacted, is that they have like these bounties where if you will do basically like what Brett was going to do, which, you know, buy the CDs and like rip them.
[00:27:33] Christina: Or if you buy the vinyl and will find like, like things that people really want, you know, people will give you like, um, amazing amounts of like upload credit and things like that. So, um, like,
[00:27:44] Brett: the BBS days all
[00:27:45] Christina: Oh, completely. It’s completely BBS days, but, but again, like,
[00:27:48] Brett: credit. I’ve heard, I haven’t heard upload credit for
[00:27:50] Christina: well, yeah, cause you have to maintain a ratio, but the ratio you can maintain as long as you just seed shit forever.
[00:27:55] Christina: But like, um, so if you have a seed box or if you have an always on computer, you’re fine, but yeah, no, all [00:28:00] of this is a throwback to like, you know, like literally when I was in college. So. Um, but yeah, long story short, um, there are, if it’s been physically made available, if there’s like a rip on it, I can usually find it, and I need to just get off my ass and rip one of my Taylor Swift vinyls because somebody wants a certain version off of one of those songs.
[00:28:20] Christina: My name is
[00:28:20] Brett: Upload credits.
[00:28:22] Christina: Dude, they’re willing, they’re, they’re, they’re willing to give, like, no, they’re willing to give like a terabyte of credit upload. Like I would never have to like seed anything ever again in my entire life. So I just have to actually get off my ass and rip that vinyl. Um, but yeah.
[00:28:35] Christina: Um, I will, I will get you the David Usher. Thanks.
[00:28:38] Brett: The last time I dealt with ratios and upload credits, it was still measured in kilobytes. I, Jeff, do you know, do you know, were you on BBS’s
[00:28:49] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, but like at the, like in 1994 for a minute, and then I just didn’t have a computer for a long time,
[00:28:57] Brett: And I’m assuming Erin, [00:29:00] you might be young enough that you have no idea what we’re talking about.
[00:29:03] Erin: correct. I apologize.
[00:29:05] Christina: No. Yeah, no. So this.
[00:29:06] Brett: avoid, we’ll avoid going into depth then because
[00:29:08] Christina: Yeah, no, yeah, I mean, I never used BBSes, but this was like a thing like with BitTorrent for private communities where like, to ensure that people don’t just like, like download and run, you have to make sure that you up, you seed a certain amount
[00:29:21] Brett: a seed. You got a seed.
[00:29:24] Christina: And that’s still the case on private communities, like I’m currently
[00:29:28] Brett: What is, what is the, what is the polite number of days, months to seed a download before you remove it?
[00:29:38] Christina: It depends on the tracker. Um, so, like, some places will make you seed for, like, two weeks. Like, uh, uh, uh, an audiobook, like, an audiobook tracker that I’m part of, like, makes you seed for two weeks. Some things, it’s kind of unclear, like, they kind of, like, really want you to seed forever, and so, you really want a seed box.
[00:29:56] Christina: Um, which, what that is, for, for, for the listeners who are either too young or too old, [00:30:00] it’s just a server. That host your torrent files, usually on, um, a box, uh, from some VPS, from some sketchy VPS, um, that’s probably hosted by a Hetzner or OVH in Europe. And then you remotely, like, use your torrent client that way.
[00:30:15] Christina: And um, yeah. And that way, like, if it gets nuked or whatever, you’re Well, okay, fine. Um, but, um, that way you can just kind of cede forever without having to have your computer connected. Um, but yeah.
[00:30:26] Jeff: Christina, what do you charge for a private consult? Because I want a private consult.
[00:30:34] Christina: Yeah, we’ll do it. Yeah,
[00:30:35] Jeff: I’m only half the way to what you’re describing in my life, so,
[00:30:39] Christina: Yeah, no, we can totally talk about it. And, um, honestly, a lot of these things are available through, uh, through the, the, the one technology that will never die, which is Usenet. So.
[00:30:48] Jeff: mm hmm, mm hmm,
[00:30:50] Brett: All right. So, moving along, and you’re allowed to opt out if you want to, Jeff or Erin, you want to give us a mental health update?
[00:30:59] Jeff: Erin, you go [00:31:00] ahead. If you want to go, go ahead, because mine might transition back into a question I have for you about your tour.
[00:31:05] Erin: Oh, okay, that’d be wonderful, thanks. Um, I went through a pretty bad breakup in August, and I’m still sort of dealing with that. Uh, pretty depress y, and my brain is lizard y enough, such that if The sun is out, equals sign, I am happy. If it is not out, and you live in Pittsburgh, I am not happy. Uh, and unfortunately I live in Pittsburgh, and so that’s been rough.
[00:31:34] Erin: Um, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about singledom, and um, how you’re sort of unconsciously or subconsciously treated in a friend group or in a community when you’re single. That like, there is a kind of invisibility. you, you have as a single person and that, [00:32:00] that invisibility is like really lonely. Um, I have as many friends as I did when I was in that relationship, but it just like without exclusion, like I Rolodex all of my, I’m old enough to say Rolodex, I guess.
[00:32:15] Erin: I Rolodex all of my Friends, mentally, and I’m like, we’re nominally still buds, nominally still buds, nothing’s changed, except it has. And so why? And it’s maybe a little reductive of me to be like, well, I’m single now. Um, but I do think the correlation is there and it’s just like, been bumming me out in a way that like, my, my subconscious.
[00:32:41] Erin: will get a like Victorian style, uh, plate and put like heaps of resentment on it and be like, Hey, how good does this look? And I’m like, damn, I’m like licking my lip, like pretty, pretty good. Uh, because [00:33:00] You know, I, I don’t know. It’s, it’s really, it feels, just to close the loop on this, it feels like, uh, a sort of defeat to reach out to these people and be like, hey, I’m kind of hurting.
[00:33:12] Erin: I’m, I’m a little bummed that you haven’t reached out. Like, have I wronged you? Like, what’s going on? I’m really lonely. That doing that feels either humiliating or, or, or something. Like I should, I should rise above that. I should hold out. But what is holding out getting me? Nothing. More resentment. So, I’m trying to be better about that.
[00:33:33] Brett: to reach out like that? Or can you just reach out and say, Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while. What’s up? And then like, let it develop because yeah, like I would feel just as, I would feel just as weird as you’re talking about. If I was like, Hey, I haven’t heard from you and it hurt my feelings.
[00:33:55] Erin: So I’ve already done this,
[00:33:56] Brett: Okay. I believe
[00:33:58] Erin: two or three people.
[00:33:59] Brett: like an [00:34:00] obvious solution.
[00:34:01] Erin: For sure, for sure. Like, we’re all busy and Uh, without going into the very, uh, it feels like every podcast I listen to does this. We’ll like have, uh, we’ll make a point and that point is attributed to how bad capitalism is. So I’m going to avoid that.
[00:34:17] Erin: Right. Um, no problem, but we’re all busy because of capital. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve just, I’ve like built this theory. Let me know your opinion about this, this real quick. This, this rashly assembled theory. Okay, so we all have a certain kind of, uh, a certain amount of energy. When you are coupled, when you’re in a relationship, when you’re in a partnership, that energy primarily goes into your partnership.
[00:34:46] Erin: What you have left to take care of your body, pay the bills. Go to the gym, whatever, um, you keep. And what’s left is usually very, very little. And so for single [00:35:00] people, all that main person energy that would go into a partnership is evenly distributed and available. But if you are single, but if you’re partnered, you don’t have that.
[00:35:11] Erin: So there’s a mismatch there. And so I’m trying to attribute my sort of resentment to a structural imbalance for which they, they’re not choosing to, to slight me, right? Um, so, so I’ve already reached out and, and at this point it’s like, Gosh, some people come in your life and some people leave and let sleeping kitties lie on your chest and uh, move on?
[00:35:38] Erin: Dot org? I don’t know.
[00:35:39] Jeff: Is it, oh God, nice work. Is it, um, is it, where does this overlap with the thing about almost like having to, the really terrible thing of almost like having to split up friends in a breakup? Does it overlap with that? Or a divorce? Yeah.
[00:35:54] Erin: I’d like to think not. I’d like to think not. These are friends that I had like, uh, independent, [00:36:00] um, of, of that partnership. So I don’t know. I don’t know.
[00:36:08] Brett: Jeff or Christina, have you guys ever been single?
[00:36:11] Jeff: Yes. I’ve been, I have been very, very epically
[00:36:16] Christina: long time. Yeah.
[00:36:18] Brett: I have, I have never been single for more than two weeks. I don’t, like, I consider that a problem. I’m not proud of that. Like, I don’t know how to be single. That’s, that’s
[00:36:27] Christina: You’re Jennifer Lopez. She, she, she, she has a movie and a documentary about that.
[00:36:32] Brett: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Christina: not joking.
[00:36:33] Brett: I believe you. I haven’t seen this.
[00:36:36] Christina: Um, so the, the documentary is better. The movie’s insane. It’s called, uh, this is, uh, me now. Or whatever. Um, uh, it, so she did like a 20 year, like, sequel to her album that had Jenny from the Block on it. And, uh, all about like her getting back together with Ben Affleck. It’s not great. Um, but the movie is insane.
[00:36:57] Christina: She spent 20 million of her own money on it. [00:37:00] It’s, it’s a choice and Amazon did distribute it, but they certainly didn’t pay for all of it. I feel positive. Um, and then, um, but it’s, it’s, it’s like, it’s insane. I wish that it were both worse or better, like it kind of needs to go like one way or the other.
[00:37:15] Christina: But the thing that makes it work is that then they made a documentary of the making of the movie. And the documentary is actually pretty fucking great. Like, she and Ben Affleck actually have really good chemistry. He really loves her. Like, he really loves her. Um, uh, which is, which is clear because he’s like, even telling her, like, he’s being very supportive of the whole endeavor, but he’s also like, being very clear, like, Don’t put your own money into this.
[00:37:41] Christina: Um, but yeah, uh, that’s kind of her whole MO is the fact that she can’t ever be single and, and that she goes from like one thing to the next. And she’s like, very clear on that. Uh, there’s also a very funny bit that’s very reminiscent of the, um, uh, uh, David Beckham and Victoria, um, uh, Beckham, uh, Netflix thing [00:38:00] where, you know, they kind of rag on each other where she’s writing this script about like her, you know, life and, and, you know, She’s like, you know, she was 28 when, and he was like, except you weren’t 28, you know, you were, you like, you were 30 or whatever.
[00:38:11] Christina: Uh, he was like, you know, even make yourself younger, like in, in the, in, in, in the, the fake version of your life or whatever, you’ve been played younger than it’s very funny. Um, but, uh, but no, yeah, that’s, that’s, that, that’s a whole thing. No, I’ve been single for sure,
[00:38:27] Brett: Okay,
[00:38:28] Christina: but it’s hard, um, when you like lose, like when you lose that, you know, you’re not in the relationship and then the other people around you, um, Um, or that were around you aren’t there, because you’re right, you only have like so much energy usually for, um, types of things and, and
[00:38:45] Brett: I think, I think there’s a certain age, I don’t know what age it is, but I think there’s an age you get to where you’re just expected to be coupled. Um, and, and there’s a stigma around being, you know, 30 [00:39:00] years old and unattached. Um, and you’re 20, sure, but maybe it’s 30, maybe, I don’t know.
[00:39:06] Christina: Yeah, I think it’s getting older, but yeah, probably 30 is 30 ish. I mean, I think it depends. Um, I definitely think, feel like it’s getting older. Cause I know, like, I don’t have kids and it used to be much more rare to be around people who don’t have kids. And now I feel like I know a lot of people who are my age or in my age range who don’t have kids.
[00:39:27] Christina: Um, some are single, um, some are not. Um, but what is hard, like it’s hard, but what is, what is hard is like to find people who are in a couple. Who don’t have kids, who are like over a certain age, like that’s more difficult. And then that kind of sucks because you’re like, okay, well, you know, it’s hard to get together with people because they, you know, have their, their kid shit to deal with, which is completely understandable, but it’s also like, if you don’t have that too, then you don’t like,
[00:39:52] Brett: no, I have definitely found my friend group consists almost entirely of coupled slash [00:40:00] polyamorous people who have no kids. Um, and, and I, people have kids and you’re like, that’s great. I love you for that. And then they just kind of disappear from the friend group. Um, But yeah, like I left my high school girlfriend for another girl.
[00:40:16] Brett: I left her for another girl. She left me. I was single for like two weeks. Um, I had another girl, the friend for like four years and it was just. Relationship after relationship and many times I have thought maybe I should just spend like two years just like in like a monk just be like single for two years and like deal with
[00:40:41] Erin: Don’t do it. do it. Never do it. I’m here from the future. I’m walking in the underworld right now. It is awful down here. Don’t do it.
[00:40:51] Jeff: Erin, is it, is the energy thing like, I, I, I’m asking based on a, just a memory of like, all of a sudden that your [00:41:00] energy thing was like really just resonated like, and, and with that energy that’s, that’s not used in, in coupledom, is there, is there ever a feeling of like, now what should I do with this energy?
[00:41:10] Jeff: Or like a pressure? Or is it, are you not in that space?
[00:41:15] Erin: I, um, I guess this is still technically my mental health corner. Um, so, so I’ve never been bored in my life. And I think the reason for that is because, uh, I have maybe father issues, and those father issues are tied to an idea that, uh, your worth is dependent on, entirely, your ability to produce things.
[00:41:44] Erin: Your productivity.
[00:41:45] Brett: so it’s not, you’ve been bored because you haven’t allowed yourself to be bored.
[00:41:50] Erin: Yeah.
[00:41:51] Brett: Interesting.
[00:41:52] Erin: Um, so I always have stuff to do and I always have music to make and I can always go for a run and I love running and I can [00:42:00] always get better at like making a pad thai or something. Like there’s always shit for me to do. I don’t know if that’s healthy. I mean, let’s, let’s call a spade a spade. It’s, it’s very likely not.
[00:42:12] Erin: Um, but that’s where my energy goes. So,
[00:42:18] Brett: side note. I have been, every time someone uses a, um, what’s the word for, like a cliche, like a, call a spade a spade, I have to question, is that racist? Does it have racist roots? I looked it up. Spade is, that phrase is not racist. It has. No racist origins. Just, just as a point of interest, like I have found so, so many of the things that I say without thinking twice about it, because it’s just always been part of the vernacular, um, have turned out to have very racist origins.
[00:42:55] Erin: Yeah,
[00:42:56] Brett: But that one, despite sounding racist, [00:43:00] weirdly isn’t.
[00:43:00] Christina: Hey, good. Fantastic.
[00:43:04] Erin: I’ll
[00:43:04] Jeff: I, I deal with that a lot with, I have two, I have two teenagers and especially my 17 year old is like really good at just giving me a little face. If I say something, I’m like, shit, just from the face. I’m like, okay, hold on. Hold on. No, I get that. I get that. Yep, I’ll try to drop that one. Nothing terrible, right?
[00:43:21] Jeff: Like subtle stuff that you’re just, you’re used to with everybody your age. You’ve already, you’ve already, like in my case, I’ve already stripped all of the most obvious, horrible stuff a long ass time ago, right?
[00:43:32] Brett: It’s just a
[00:43:33] Jeff: No, it’s just like, yeah,
[00:43:36] Christina: no, and sometimes, like, the idioms or whatever, like, you know, might have had, like, those origins, which is terrible, and I’m not defending it, but, like, language does change, you know? And so, it’s always hard to know that, too. It’s like, well, in this era, like, you know, like, in 1920, it meant this.
[00:43:50] Christina: It’s like, okay, when did it, like, culturally shift, right?
[00:43:57] Brett: I’m sorry for the tangent
[00:43:59] Christina: No, [00:44:00] go for it.
[00:44:00] Brett: but I posted a meme that talked about, it was Gandalf saying one monitor, two monitors, now where’s my cursor? And it was just, it was funny. Somebody,
[00:44:12] Jeff: it, but
[00:44:13] Brett: somebody, somebody I used to work with was like, it’s not called a cursor, it’s called a pointer. A cursor is the text insertion point and a word processor.
[00:44:22] Brett: And I’m like, yeah, I know that actually. I’m like, well, actually that’s called it. That’s called a carrot.
[00:44:28] Christina: Right. That is called a carrot.
[00:44:29] Brett: I know, I know. And I’m like, language changes. Like cursor does mean your mouse
[00:44:36] Christina: it does. It does. Like, like, they’re, they’re like technically correct. Yeah, it is pointer, but no, like, it, it, it’s, it’s changed. And we might not like that it’s changed, and we might still want to use the original thing, but it’s like, you have to accept, no, the definition of this thing is no longer, yeah.
[00:44:50] Christina: Like, like, I, I will kill people who say irregardless because it’s not a real word, but I had to give that
[00:44:56] Brett: But Webster’s, Webster’s added it.
[00:44:58] Christina: I had to give that up, right? [00:45:00] Yeah, exactly. Pedants?
[00:45:02] Brett: Yeah. Pedants, Pedants. How do we say this?
[00:45:05] Christina: Pedants? I’d probably call them pedants. Yeah,
[00:45:08] Brett: call them pants.
[00:45:10] Christina: you’re being like pedantic. So I don’t know. So I call them a pedant. Yeah.
[00:45:15] Brett: Okay. Jeff, do you wanna, do you wanna squeeze a mental health corner in here before it’s, uh, before half an
[00:45:22] Jeff: no, definitely. I, Erin, you were talking about fans. First of all, I, so I was from like 95 to like 98. I was in a band with that. I, my brother and my best friend who I started music with and, uh, we toured a lot and I put out a record. I loved that. Um, but what it gave me is that when I see a band now, my first thought is, I know what their van smells like. I mean, unless they have a bus, but usually it’s like those, those people walk on stage. I saw the band Yob recently from the Pacific Northwest, [00:46:00] Yob walked on stage and I was like, you know what? I bet that van has just a hint of good smell, kind of incense, maybe Nag Champa. I don’t
[00:46:06] Erin: for sure
[00:46:07] Jeff: know, right?
[00:46:08] Jeff: Right? But others, you’re just like, Oh Christ, I can just, I can smell that van from here.
[00:46:14] Christina: smell it from here. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I, I’ve never, I’ve never, um, spent a lot of time like with people like touring or whatever. So I don’t know that, but, but something tells me that most of the, most of the vans do not have a good smell.
[00:46:29] Erin: There’s a certain scent. There’s that there’s that thing about how like how all living creatures who aren’t humanoids like eventually evolve into a crab or whatever like most van scents eventually evolve into like a Cheetos.
[00:46:46] Jeff: Yes, yes!
[00:46:47] Brett: or, or, uh, corn
[00:46:48] Erin: don’t know, even if Cheetos aren’t involved, it still skews.
[00:46:52] Christina: You,
[00:46:52] Erin: so
[00:46:53] Christina: like the, the corn smell.
[00:46:55] Erin: Yeah,
[00:46:56] Brett: It’s amazing what you can get used to that you can just not [00:47:00] smell
[00:47:00] Christina: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. Now, now, I, I, cause I, cause my pers, my, like, assumption, and I could be wrong on this, is that even if everyone is clean or whatever involved, like, There’s gonna be like a latent B. O. smell that just never leaves, you know, which is fine. Cheeto, yeah, totally, right, but there’s just like a latent kind of like, like B.
[00:47:18] Christina: O. smell because you’re like, yeah, that’s what, that’s what happens, like, especially, um, if you have like people who are, are sweaty. Ever, you know, in it. It’s like, yeah, okay.
[00:47:29] Jeff: Yeah,
[00:47:29] Christina: cigarettes, like,
[00:47:30] Jeff: sweaty always.
[00:47:31] Christina: sweaty, like cigarettes, maybe like stale beer. Like, I don’t know. I think about like my friend in high school, Kyle, like his car smells like what I imagined, like the van would smell like for, for a lot of vans.
[00:47:44] Brett: Quick, quick, quick, quick vote and then back to Jeff. Is this episode called Lizardy or is it called Latent Cheeto Smell?
[00:47:53] Jeff: Like light and Cheeto
[00:47:54] Christina: I like late and Cheetos smell.
[00:47:55] Jeff: Yeah. Um, okay. So why I brought up the van is, so I’ve, I’ve [00:48:00] been, um, in work has just been super intense lately and I’ve, I’ve typically always made a point of not working evenings and weekends, even if it’s at the cost of, you know, meeting deadlines just because I don’t want my work to be that in my life.
[00:48:13] Jeff: And, um, and, uh, and also I’ve been working with like a client that I just don’t love or relate to or feel like any kind of connection to. So why does this matter? Um, My experience of being in bands, I mean, really from the eighth grade, but like definitely going out and like making your not living together, um, on tour is like, I, I was in a band with who I loved.
[00:48:40] Jeff: One of them was my brother. I love these guys. I loved being close to them. I loved being squished in with them. Um, And, and we were on a mission and we made music. We really loved, um, we made music that like was very intentional, something we meant to do, right? Like we, everything was, we meant to do it. Um, it wasn’t, we weren’t falling [00:49:00] into anything.
[00:49:01] Jeff: And, um, and we felt such a connection. And then you go out on the road and you are like a rogue, um, you know, band of, of whatever. And, and that feeling is one that I don’t think many people know. Um, and I don’t think many people know the feeling of, Like, almost lawlessness, um, like nothing applies to you, uh, in a way that’s really beautiful.
[00:49:23] Jeff: I, I, I love the feeling of only eating at truck stops and, and just, you know, like being in sort of the weird back lanes of, of, of capitalist America, really, if you’re at truck stops, right? That’s what it is. Um, and, and, I loved that feeling so much. We run a small record label, so you also had that feeling with the record label.
[00:49:42] Jeff: It’s just a couple people there and they’re fighting for you, you know, if they’re doing their job well. Um, and it’s you against the club owners, most of the most part, right? Like, um, sometimes you against the drunkest person in the club, but like, that feeling of, of shared mission. is one that I, I [00:50:00] realized, and I realized over and over again, I need and demand, um, to a point that’s unrealistic.
[00:50:05] Jeff: And, and sometimes when I’m unhappiest at my jobs in my, you know, like, I don’t know, 20 some years of career now, um, what I’m unhappy about is I resent having to try to push something forward with people I don’t Feel a sense of mission with, um, or that sense of just like really intense, sort of like going against everything to do this thing you love and, and not worrying about, um, what it means exactly at any given moment, just knowing that in the, in the doing of it.
[00:50:34] Jeff: Right. And, uh, and, and so I am, you just, uh, you helped me make that connection. I haven’t made in a long time that like, what’s been hard is I’ve not only been working too much to hit a deadline, which is over now. But I’ve been doing it in a way that’s like, I feel totally isolated and alone. I don’t feel like I have mission partners, um, and who needs that shit?
[00:50:53] Jeff: I mean, we all get it, but who needs it?
[00:50:55] Christina: No, it sucks. It’s the worst.
[00:50:57] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:50:58] Christina: And, and,
[00:50:58] Jeff: I don’t know if that,
[00:50:59] Erin: [00:51:00] So your mental health is good then?
[00:51:01] Jeff: I mean, it’s getting better. Cause I cleared this, this deadline, but I had probably one of the hardest professional weeks I’ve ever had. Like I, I had physiological results that are like impacts of it. That were like, they scared me. I was like, I can’t die like this. Like, it’s not worth it.
[00:51:17] Jeff: I do like my work overall. Like I it’s meaningful work, but like, I don’t know. I can’t die over this. Like I had a scary, scary moment where I was like, wait, what’s this? What’s this? Um, and, uh, and yeah, the, the merry band and not always merry band of, of roving rogues is, uh, is a model that I always insist on having a little bit of.
[00:51:37] Jeff: And just the last thing I’ll say about that. It’s almost like when, um, when I first took like anxiety medication, the, the reason my, like the way my therapist convinced me was like, What you need at the very least is a reference point for what it feels like to not feel like what you always feel like, right?
[00:51:52] Jeff: You just, you, you want to be able to say, Oh, okay, now I have felt something different. And then see what that means. See how that [00:52:00] causes you to make whatever different decisions, ask different questions, whatever it is. And like having that reference feeling of being a feeling truly that free, even though you were just like, I was a dishwasher, I made no money.
[00:52:11] Jeff: I was using my mom’s Amoco gas card. to get by like microwave sandwiches at the gas station. But like I felt free and, and spacious. And so having that reference is both a blessing and a curse anyway.
[00:52:28] The Question of Black Metal
[00:52:28] Jeff: Um, but my question for you then is actually a black metal question. Um, I am curious where black metal came into your life first and then where it came into your art.
[00:52:40] Erin: Oh cool, what a considerate question, thank you. I,
[00:52:43] Brett: yeah.
[00:52:44] Erin: I had a guitar teacher at a really young age who was into metal. At that point, uh, I had gone through a few phases in which I thought Metallica was the of musical achievement. And then I heard [00:53:00] Dream Theater and Rush,
[00:53:01] Christina: We were all there. Yeah.
[00:53:02] Erin: right, music that doesn’t sound like this.
[00:53:05] Erin: is beneath me and beneath all of us. Why is anyone else listening to anything else
[00:53:09] Jeff: There are good drummers? Yeah.
[00:53:12] Erin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, and then I started taking classical guitar lessons with this teacher, but he was a metalhead, and I knew that he was a metalhead, and I talked to him about those bands, and he was not into Dream Theater, and I’m like, what are you, what are you like if not that?
[00:53:28] Erin: And he was like, Catatonia, Opeth, Uh, Bloodbath, Bathory, Pestilence, Atheist. And I’m like, uh, what are those bands? Uh, not that they’re all
[00:53:40] Jeff: Shows you the logos. You can’t read them. Yes.
[00:53:43] Erin: Correct. And so he burned me some discs and just spun those a lot, especially Catatonia. And I just fell in love with it. And I am so thankful for that because if I heard black metal for the first time as an [00:54:00] adult, as an adult who really like metal.
[00:54:04] Erin: I’d be like, get this away from me. What is this noise? This is awful sonic sound. Awful sonic sound. Cool, cool phrase. Um, . So I’d always been a metalhead, but I had never, I went to school for music. I was in like math rock bands, did that kind of thing, but I was never in a metal band myself as a metalhead.
[00:54:24] Erin: And so I was on a jog a couple years ago, uh, and it just like. hit me, inspiration hit me, it never does this clearly, but I was like, oh my god, I need to be a one person black metal band with a headless white seven string guitar and it needs to be called Genital Shame.
[00:54:43] Jeff: Yes. It all became clear to
[00:54:46] Brett: I was just reading the review in the Pittsburgh City Pages and it talks about your headless white seven string guitar.
[00:54:53] Jeff: do you have that near you?
[00:54:54] Brett: I do. It’s in the show notes.
[00:54:56] Jeff: I mean, do you have that guitar near you,
[00:54:58] Erin: I sold it.
[00:54:59] Jeff: You sold it. [00:55:00] Okay. Got it.
[00:55:00] Erin: I sold it. It got me
[00:55:01] Jeff: vision, but we’re going to iterate.
[00:55:04] Erin: to iterate. We’re working with a, you know, a, a bullet, uh, fender and a, and a parts caster telly now we’ve moved on. Um, but I actually feel a little uncomfortable calling General Shame black metal because it’s not true as, as people in the scene would say cult CVLT.
[00:55:25] Erin: Black metal, but it really, uh, pushes those kinds of things. My tastes are quite sugary. I really love melody. Uh, so I try to make my music as melodic as possible when possible, but still maintaining that, that sort of like the harshness that I would reject as an adult who had never listened to it.
[00:55:48] Jeff: What are the, what are the metal bands that have that kind of like sugary ness that you’re talking about that you love?
[00:55:56] Erin: I don’t want to say I’m in a league of my own, but there are [00:56:00] not many. A friend’s band called Agriculture does it. There’s a band called Liturgy that a lot of people like
[00:56:07] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:56:08] Erin: that do that. My maybe favorite metal band is called Kralis from Brooklyn. They do that sometimes. Very melodic, yet still really crushing and brutal.
[00:56:20] Erin: Um, so yeah, I like, get you a metal that could do both, you know,
[00:56:25] Jeff: get you a medal that can do both. That’s a great answer. I love it.
[00:56:28] Erin: Thanks.
[00:56:30] Jeff: Awesome. Well, what do we got?
[00:56:34] The Dimspirations Store is open
[00:56:34] Brett: Can I, can I plug my shit?
[00:56:36] Christina: Yeah. Please. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about your
[00:56:39] Brett: We talked last time, last time we were on a few weeks back, I had launched Demspirations or Demspire. me, uh, with all of the Demspirations I’ve made over the last couple of years, I just wanted to plug that there’s now merch. If you go to Demspire. me slash store. You can buy what I would [00:57:00] say are very clever t shirts, coffee mugs, and even calendars.
[00:57:05] Brett: Um, I, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it’s, they’re fucking, they’re genius. They’re unbelievable. Um, and it’s amazing that I’ve made a total of 170 off
[00:57:19] Jeff: Yes.
[00:57:20] Brett: off this store
[00:57:21] Jeff: walking around money. You don’t
[00:57:22] Christina: I’m
[00:57:22] Jeff: man. That’s good. Like,
[00:57:24] Christina: I’m going to be honest. I’m actually really impressed by that. I like would not have expected. Like that’s actually much higher than I would have expected. Like if I could be completely candid.
[00:57:32] Brett: But the, the, the most fun part of it is I made yesterday in under half an hour, I made a URL shortener for dimspire. me. So I can, I can use that. dim. moi, M O I, dim. moi, slash, and then like, you know, your typical, like, bit. ly four, four letter, uh, string, and I can shortlink any of the dimspirations on the site, and I can [00:58:00] also link them if, if the dimspiration is called, say, uh, self critical in the URL, I can just do dim.
[00:58:07] Brett: moi, slash, self critical, and it’ll link to the full URL with, uh, With, um, with UTM query strings. So I can actually track, yeah, I, I built a URL shortener. It’s way easier than you think.
[00:58:22] Christina: No. So I actually, I was, I was going to ask you what you use for your, your URL shortener, because I need, I have one that I have for like my, uh, my drop a cloud, um, uh, account or whatever, but I’ve wanted to either build my own or Like, have my own host, because I have a number of different short URLs that I would like to use.
[00:58:39] Christina: So, I’m curious how you built yours. If you did it completely from scratch, if you used another
[00:58:44] Brett: Yeah, I use, there’s a, there’s a repo, there’s an 11 year old repo on GitHub that I’ll link in the show notes, um, that I just kind of hacked. It’s PHP. Um, it’s just PHP and MySQL. And, uh, it’s, it’s, [00:59:00] it took me. Maybe 15 minutes to hack it to do exactly what I wanted it to do. Um, and then like drop it in an HT access file that redirects and, and it’s done.
[00:59:11] Brett: So like I had to register the domain, uh, like the short domain. I had to fully host it so that I could run PHP scripts on it. And then. That was it. Like, the script takes half an hour, and if you know PHP at all, you can, you can do whatever you want with it.
[00:59:29] Jeff: awesome.
[00:59:30] Brett: Yeah, I’m pretty proud of that. I was so excited. And it fucking, when you post one of these short URLs to a social media service, it still gets the full Open Graph preview
[00:59:42] Christina: Oh, nice. Because,
[00:59:43] Brett: And Summary and
[00:59:44] Christina: yeah, because you put that in. That’s nice.
[00:59:46] Brett: right? Cause it’s an actual redirect,
[00:59:48] Christina: Right. Oh, okay. Got it.
[00:59:49] Brett: a 301 redirect. Yeah, it’s pretty, it’s pretty awesome.
[00:59:53] Brett: I love it. Anyway, that’s it. That’s my whole plug. Um, if you guys want to move on to [01:00:00] Graftitude, we can, we have time for it.
[01:00:02] Grapptitude
[01:00:02] Jeff: Yeah, let’s do it.
[01:00:04] Brett: All right. Um, is Jeff, is this, is the one on the, is the one on the list other than mine, yours, okay, why don’t you kick it off with that? Cause I love this one.
[01:00:17] Jeff: Sure. Um, so I have been using, I have been using intense, like, if I’m saying I’m working 10 hour days, which again, I try not to fucking do, I do, I keep busy with other shit. Not unlike you, Erin, and that where it’s just like, I grew up with a dad where it’s like, it never is, never is resting. And, and that’s just the model I learned.
[01:00:35] Jeff: The law, I, I think I integrated that I need to follow to be a member of this family. He wasn’t pushing it on me in this case, right? But it was so strong. I didn’t even, I only lived with him in the summers and that’s how strong it was. Anyway. Um, so I was working these 10 hard days. I bet I spent eight of them inside of Jupyter labs, notebooks, um, and doing just.
[01:00:54] Jeff: Python stuff, text manipulation stuff. I was building a, a kind of, um, building some [01:01:00] API based scripts that were pulling out all kinds of information to put into like a custom database, and then working with that database and doing all kinds of weird, cool shit with it. Um, and in the past, like I’m not a programmer, like I’m, I’ve, I, you know, as I’ve probably said on this program, like I’m Python literate in that, like I can read it, but not speak it and I can adjust it and I can make it do some things differently than how it’s written, but I’m not going to sit down and write it.
[01:01:24] Jeff: ChetchiPT changed that for me for reasons that are good and bad for the world. Um, but for me, it was like, I know how to talk computationally to, to the thing that I need to make the script, whether that’s a person or a thing. Um, Brett, I see you. Uh, and, and I, I can then be, what’s nice is I can just be in relationship with this stuff all by myself for hours at a time.
[01:01:46] Jeff: Um, and, and so anyway, I’ve loved this and I, and I typically do work with Python and because I’m, I don’t have like a. Workflow for this stuff, because they didn’t come up as a programmer. I’m very messy. Like I write a script, I run [01:02:00] it. I write another script. Sometimes there’s 16 versions of the script in the folder by the time I’m done.
[01:02:03] Jeff: And I get confused about whatever Jupyter notebooks for people that don’t know, um, allow you. To essentially open up like, I don’t know if you call it an IDE, but an environment in your web browser.
[01:02:14] Brett: It’s a
[01:02:15] Christina: They’re called notebooks. It’s a ruffle, but yeah, or, but yeah, they call them notebooks. Yeah. But yeah, it’s a ruffle.
[01:02:20] Jeff: And so you’re, you’re able to open this up and just start running your scripts sequentially. Um, you can, you don’t have to be sequential.
[01:02:25] Jeff: You can just have a bunch of scripts in there and run them as you want. You set your variables at the top and, and just start working your way down this notebook, um, to kind of iterate on, on the script or the, or whatever it is you’re trying to work on. It could just be a function. It could
[01:02:38] Brett: And the notebook part comes in because you can write, you can literally write out everything that it’s doing and then embed the script and then run
[01:02:46] Jeff: You have basically you do everything in these cells. The cell can be marked down. It can be code. Um, the code is executable. Um, and, and there’s all kinds of other customization. But anyway, so the notebooks themselves have changed my [01:03:00] life. Um, because not only am I able to Um, iterate, but I’m able to follow my crazy line of thinking and I’m able to mark where the points where I’m like, yes, this is what I come back to all this other stuff.
[01:03:11] Jeff: I’m probably going to want to just delete at some point, but I’m going to come back to this. And it allows me also, when I get mixed up, And I’ve created like three or four notebooks when I only needed to stick with one. Um, it allows me to just go back systematically and, and, and build a new notebook that is everything I need.
[01:03:27] Jeff: It works perfectly for all of the ways in which my brain doesn’t work right, like a programmer. Um, and then it also just like amplifies the ways in which it does. And so the, but the cool thing about Jupyter labs, I’ve, I’ve played with Jupyter notebooks for years. Jupyter labs is somewhat newer. It’s not that new.
[01:03:43] Jeff: And it allows you to actually
[01:03:44] Christina: yeah, they’re the version that you use. Like they updated it. It was, it was earlier. It was, it was sometime in 2023. It got a pretty big update. Sorry, go on.
[01:03:53] Jeff: Yeah, well, what’s great about it is a notebook in the, in the, just like notebook sense was just a notebook. It was a web [01:04:00] page, but Jupyter labs allows you to have all these different columns, you can put a terminal in, you can have a couple of notebooks open. You can have a markdown file open. There’s like all this different, uh, you can just completely configure your workspace and you’re never having to leave.
[01:04:13] Jeff: I’m not having to dip out to go to my terminal. I’m not having to dip out to go to my text editor. Like everything is there. And man, it. The result of that was I have never started a large initiative that involves me trying to figure out coding, which in the old days was like Stack Exchange, just like grinding in Stack Exchange, getting yelled at, getting helped.
[01:04:33] Jeff: And, um, and I don’t, I struggle to finish big things, which is like a huge issue for me. And. Because of this tool, I was able to launch into something that was way more ambitious than I had any right to launch into and then fucking land it because the workflow and the tool just matched my brain perfectly.
[01:04:52] Jeff: And I could not be more grateful because what I know now compared to what I knew two months ago when I started this project is like, it’s the kind of [01:05:00] growth I’ve as like a programmatic person for More than a decade. And it was in between the chat GPT and this, it was possible for me to do it, which is like a really cool feeling for me.
[01:05:13] Christina: I’m so happy that you had that experience and note, um, uh, the, the, the Jupiter Labs, um, uh, their IDE thing and, and, and like their notebook, um, interface is great. One thing I will point out for anybody out there who, if you are already like really into, um, Visual Studio Code, since 2001 and I put a, oh not 2001, 2021, I put a link in, in our show notes as well.
[01:05:36] Christina: The native, um, Jupyter notebook support or notebook support in, in, in code is really, really good. So, um,
[01:05:44] Jeff: pretty too. Unlike Jupyter labs.
[01:05:47] Christina: Yeah, they take a slightly different approach, so you, some people might prefer, you know, like the, the, the, the, the Jupyter IDE, um, or, or, you know, the notebook approach. But if like, if you, for somebody who already uses a lot of things in VS Code [01:06:00] for writing, for other things, because I know a lot of people who will use VS Code, um, for writing Primarily for writing in Markdown and stuff like that.
[01:06:06] Christina: Um, the mark, the, the, the native, um, notebook support is really, really, really good. And then there are things like, for instance, like at, at GitHub, like we even have like a, an issues notebook because there’s a, um, there’s a notebook API available for Visual Studio Code where people can build their own, um, extensions that, that do, um, very specific notebooky things.
[01:06:26] Christina: So like, uh, there’s one for GitHub issues, for instance, um, which is great because then you can actually, like, Fuck around with your issues and your PR queries and do all of your testing and stuff there like in your, in your REPL and your text editor without having to
[01:06:41] Jeff: like, it’s reproducible. Like I remember the first time I even saw Jupyter, Notebooks was at a, uh, investigative reporters and editors conference. They have, they have a wing called the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting. It’s still called that, um, from back in the days when journalists would go rent space at like card, you [01:07:00] know, card computers.
[01:07:01] Jeff: Um, but anyway, the LA Times, like, uh, data desk people, they actually not only make data available that they use, but they make Jupyter notebooks available. So you can just start working with it the way they did and kind of follow along. And that’s, that’s a very gracious thing to do.
[01:07:17] Brett: Yeah. Nice.
[01:07:18] Jeff: mine.
[01:07:19] Christina: That’s awesome.
[01:07:20] Brett: All right. Christina, I love yours. I want to ask Erin, are you joining us for the Graptitude? I totally neglected to give you a heads up on
[01:07:29] Erin: I expected it. Um.
[01:07:33] Brett: You expected me to fail? Oh.
[01:07:35] Erin: what I, exactly what I meant. I can make it real quick. It has oldie but goodie energy. Um, App Cleaner,
[01:07:43] Brett: Oh,
[01:07:44] Christina: Yes.
[01:07:46] Erin: Right, yeah, so new version of Ableton came out. Wanted to get rid of the older one. I use it all the time. I just used it recently so it was on my, on my mind, but um, App Cleaner, yep.
[01:07:58] Jeff: And it just cleans it out.[01:08:00]
[01:08:00] Brett: does
[01:08:00] Erin: Mm hmm,
[01:08:00] Christina: app installer?
[01:08:01] Brett: does anyone know what the difference between AppCleaner and AppDelete would be?
[01:08:08] Jeff: Is it that app cleaner goes and looks for all the preference files and
[01:08:10] Christina: I was going to say, I’ve never used AppDelete. I’ve always just used AppCleaner.
[01:08:14] Brett: AppDelete uses like some pretty basic Unix find commands to find like every permutation of an app’s, uh, name or bundle ID and it’s, it’s brute, it’s brute
[01:08:29] Jeff: That sounds risky.
[01:08:30] Brett: It does, it does a really good job. Um, Hazel also does pretty good app cleaning, just removing the, the, uh, the, uh, the executable and the preference files.
[01:08:43] Brett: Um, but I’ve, I’ve, I have not actually tried AppCleaner.
[01:08:46] Christina: So AppCleaner, so AppDelete, um, I, I, do you have a link for that one? Because if you search, if you Google for that, uh, obviously, especially now with their AI bullshit, like you can’t find anything. Um, but AppCleaner, I’ve been using [01:09:00] for probably 18 years, I want to say. Um. AppCleaner. AppCleaner. Because it’s a freeware one, um, like it, it, they, they, they recently updated their icon, which is, which is great, but it’s like a free maxsoft.
[01:09:11] Christina: net is like, um, where it lives, but like, it used to look like kind of like a recycle, um, like, um, uh, bag, uh, like for, for, uh, for, for your, for your apps. Um, but the, the icon has been updated. Um,
[01:09:27] Brett: I found a review of AppDelete that does not link to AppDelete. Um, maybe it doesn’t even exist anymore.
[01:09:34] Christina: Yeah, so AppCleaner, because there used to be a lot of other ones, and I can’t remember what they used to be called, but like, most of them don’t, haven’t been updated in a while. Um, and I mean this, and obviously you can use other tools, like CleanMyMac has a good uninstaller built in, and there’s some other things, but what I like about AppCleaner, um, is that like, Ableton is a perfect example.
[01:09:54] Christina: Like sometimes, like, things will just be held in, Random fucked up places and their [01:10:00] uninstall programs don’t always work. And sometimes there is an uninstaller and sometimes there’s not. And it’s, uh, like, uh, yeah. So I, I, I’m also like a big plus one on, um, on AppCleaner.
[01:10:13] Jeff: awesome. I’m going to try that.
[01:10:14] Brett: Can we just talk for like 30 seconds about how generative AI was cool in the beginning, but it feeds off of the contents of the internet and now a non trivial portion of the internet is produced by, by ChatGPT and ChatGPT is feeding off of its own fucked up information and create, like it’s incestuous.
[01:10:39] Brett: It’s this like series of inbreeding.
[01:10:41] Christina: the, the, the, the, the snake is eating itself. Yeah. Well, and it sucks too, because like some of them are different. So like the, the Microsoft Copilot, not to be confused with GitHub Copilot. Don’t get me started. Um, The, like, which used to be like Bing, Copiler, or whatever, is actually pretty good and is [01:11:00] more up to date on certain things, but, like, to your point, you know, it can, yeah, it’s all kind of like feeding itself, but the Google results, I don’t know what the fuck Google is doing.
[01:11:11] Christina: Like, they’re, they’re, they’re so proud. They’re like, we, we, we, we, we invented Transformers. Yeah, but you, you, you didn’t productize it and, and your product sucks. Like the Google, you know, just the AI results that it’ll give you at the beginning, it’s like sometimes they’ll sort of be there, but a lot of times it’s just like a mashup of bad things.
[01:11:28] Christina: And I’m like, this is the worst of everything. Like this is genuinely the worst of all of it.
[01:11:33] Brett: I run a, I run a plugin in Firefox that gives me chat GPT results in DuckDuckGo. So, and the sidebar, and they are getting progressively worse. Um, like if I’m searching for something that was answered on like StackExchange, I’ll get, I’ll get a legit, Answer, but it won’t be better than DuckDuckGo’s own instant answer version, summarizing the accepted answer from a StackOverflow [01:12:00] question.
[01:12:00] Brett: Anyway.
[01:12:00] Jeff: That’s awesome. That that still holds up.
[01:12:05] Brett: Okay. Uh, Christina, I want to hear about
[01:12:07] Christina: Yeah, so mine, and actually you have used this before, so you can talk about it too, but I actually saw this on Hacker News of all places. I hate it when, when good things are found there. I’m kidding. Um, it’s the commenter. It’s the, the, the commenters are the problem there. Not the, not
[01:12:24] Jeff: Big time. Oh yeah. I don’t even look at that shit.
[01:12:26] Christina: no, but the curation is
[01:12:28] Jeff: Love the curation.
[01:12:31] Christina: is an app called Monodraw. And it’s an ASCII art editor for Mac, but it makes it really easy to draw like, um, uh, you know, kind of like ASCII charts and other things. And like I, I,
[01:12:42] Brett: Not ANSI, but ASCII,
[01:12:44] Christina: right. And like, I’ve used, um, like, uh, Mermaid and, and things like that before, obviously, but Mermaid is, is kind of a lot, um, even though GitHub Flavor Markdown, um, does support Mermaid now, yay.
[01:12:57] Christina: Um, like, that, you know, um, [01:13:00] That, that’s a lot to kind of keep in mind. But yeah, this is just a really nice app for building, um, ASCII, um, um, you know, charts and, and, um, the way that, that it kind of like, um, the way you can focus in on, you know, the individual aspects that you want, like they have a really good, um, like a tutorial, um, Getting Started thing, which will kind of show you, um, how a lot of different things work in it.
[01:13:24] Christina: And it’s very similar how it’s set up to any other, uh, graphics editor, but it’s helping you create things that are actually pure ASCII. So it’s really great. So, um,
[01:13:37] Brett: figlet and monodraw, you can make some kickass
[01:13:40] Christina: Yeah, and, and, and you could do mind mapping stuff too if you wanted to do it for that. Um, and then what I, I have to say what I appreciate, like what made me buy it, I wasn’t even in a position, like I actually sent this to our, our group, uh, uh, thread. I think I was actually in Austin. I wasn’t actually like in a position to install it on a Mac.
[01:13:57] Christina: I, I just, I saw it and I was like, Oh, this looks pretty cool. [01:14:00] I’m going to, I’m, I’m sending this to this, uh, to, to, to our chat to remind myself about it and also to remind myself for, Gratitude, um, but when I was like reading through the, the, the process, like the, the creator of this was like, I don’t have any sort of DRM.
[01:14:17] Christina: I don’t, um, you know, I, I trust my users implicitly. I’m not putting any sorts of, um, Anything there. And I was like, okay, instant 10. Like it’s 10 bucks, you know, then the tax, but like when you go to the purchase page, it says Monodrug does not use activation or any other form of DRM. We have complete trust in our customers.
[01:14:34] Christina: Fuck yeah. Right. Like, and it’s really hard for app developers as, as you know, more than anyone, Brett, like. To this climate that we’re in, like there was a recent study that came out that shows like most subscription apps don’t make any money and we know that, um, by once apps make even less and, um, you know, people will definitely try to get one over on you and do all kinds of shady shit, which I get because we were talking about downloading stuff illegally earlier and so I’m part of the problem.
[01:14:59] Christina: I’m a hypocrite. [01:15:00] I’m not claiming that I’m perfect, but I am saying like when I see any developers make
[01:15:04] Jeff: So much negative self talk.
[01:15:06] Christina: Well, I’m just being honest. Like I’m not a hypocrite, right? Like I’m a, I mean, I am a hypocrite, but I’m not like. a liar about it, if that makes any sense, right? Like, I’m, I’m self aware enough to know about my hypocrisies, um, and, and call myself out on them.
[01:15:19] Christina: But having said that, like, this is an app, like, it’s well designed, it’s well maintained, it’s a good backup, um, it’s 10 bucks, and I really appreciate the fact that, like, you know, they’re being, like, as, like, upfront about it. Yeah, fuck it. We’re not gonna do any of the, the stuff that we could do to maybe make our app Not abused as much.
[01:15:41] Christina: So,
[01:15:42] Brett: For anyone, for anyone too young to know what ASCII art means, um, I would say it’s, it’s, it’s, It’s artwork using standard characters on your keyboard, and it will only work in fixed width fonts. Um, so if you’re writing a README for a [01:16:00] GitHub repository, or you’re, I don’t know, posting to Usenet, Um, like, you can get away with some, some very interesting artwork that, In, in a variable with font, like most like social media sites will display your, your tweet in or whatever, it’ll, it’ll get screwed up, but you’ve seen this, like I’ve seen Twitter posts.
[01:16:21] Brett: that use ASCII art and you can make some crazy stuff with this because it really is like it’s Photoshop for, I mean, you’re not getting layers and filters and all of that because what would you do with them?
[01:16:34] Christina: Right, right. But, but,
[01:16:35] Brett: it, yeah,
[01:16:36] Christina: can do really good stuff. And
[01:16:37] Brett: I guess it’s more like, it’s more like Illustrator. It’s more like Illustrator for ASCII art.
[01:16:42] Christina: Yeah, actually, that’s a much better, um, probably, um, yeah, it is a lot more like Illustrator. Even the way that the app works is definitely, um, like that. Uh, but, but it’s great. And like, yeah, if you wanted to make ASCII art for some reason, because you like terminal shit, or you want to do a retro game, or again, like you want to make your README file more readable, [01:17:00] or if you’re writing in plain text, All of us, I think, on this panel are fans of, you know, like, like you could put this in, in, in your Jupyter notebook, right?
[01:17:10] Christina: Like you could have it alongside this.
[01:17:11] Jeff: start putting ASCII art
[01:17:13] Christina: I mean, you could,
[01:17:14] Jeff: any fucking work done.
[01:17:15] Christina: I mean, I mean, I mean, you could, or if you could just like build like something out, like if you just needed to have like a graphical, like overview of your REPL before, you know, you, you were able to kind of click through. It’d probably be super fluid to be completely clear, but it’s there.
[01:17:26] Christina: Anyway, it’s a fun
[01:17:28] Brett: Alright, uh, last, last one in the round. Um, so I, I’ve used font agent for years, um, cause I have a fairly large font collection and it just,
[01:17:40] Jeff: to brag.
[01:17:41] Christina: Not to, not to brag or anything. How many, how many of those have you paid for and how many of them have you
[01:17:45] Brett: I paid for most of them. Like I, I tend to, I tend to buy font bundles, uh, when they’re available. Like I will, if a font really blows my mind, I will spend money on an individual font, but like, For the stuff I do, [01:18:00] like, I just, I want a selection of handwritten fonts. I want a selection of display, uh, sans serif fonts, etc.
[01:18:07] Brett: And so I’ve collected hundreds over the years, and I’ve always used Font Agent, which is not cheap, and has ceased to function. Um, as of Sonoma, it just doesn’t. So I went searching for a new, uh, font manager, and I got a bunch of recommendations. I tried a bunch out. What I ended up on is one called Typeface.
[01:18:33] Brett: And it’s just got a really slick UI. It will show you, like, you can punch in your example text. It can show you a font in like, uh, web or book or, or magazine formats. Like you can see how the body text will look and everything. Um, easy to search, easy to tag, easy to categorize. Um, and it basically, for what I was actually [01:19:00] using FontAgent for, it does just as good a job.
[01:19:03] Brett: I can’t remember the price. It was not terribly
[01:19:06] Christina: It’s not, it’s also, it’s on set up, um, but it’s also not expensive as I recall. Um, cause it is, let me look at it. It is, it’s 37 for one user.
[01:19:16] Brett: Yeah, like permalicense, not, not subscription,
[01:19:19] Christina: Um, no, yeah, yeah, no, it’s permalicense. It’ll unlock all the pro features and then you get new updates for 12 months. So it’s one of those things, but, but it is a permalicense thing.
[01:19:28] Christina: And I don’t, I don’t really recall how often they actually add new features. Like that’s, you know, one of those things that it’s, it’s not like the, like I think like, like
[01:19:36] Brett: long as, as long as they keep it functioning, I’m okay.
[01:19:39] Christina: know they do and I, because I’ve been using this for a long time because it’s part of set up. And I was similar to you.
[01:19:43] Christina: I was using, what was the, um, what was the app that the, the sketch guys had, they sold it. Um,
[01:19:53] Brett: I don’t remember,
[01:19:54] Christina: there, there was like, there, but there was like a, a font manager app, um,
[01:19:58] Brett: was it something [01:20:00] B? Did it have B in
[01:20:01] Christina: no, um, and it wasn’t the suitcase cause that’s the really expensive
[01:20:05] Brett: Yeah, suitcase is
[01:20:07] Christina: Suitcase is stupid, um,
[01:20:09] Brett: the court, guys.
[01:20:10] Christina: and if people are asking why should you use a font manager instead of using font book, that’s not a bad question.
[01:20:15] Christina: Well, here’s the thing. For most people, if you have a small number of fonts,
[01:20:18] Brett: Yeah, if
[01:20:19] Christina: font book is
[01:20:19] Brett: got 20 to 50 fonts, font book is great. If you have 300, 400 fonts,
[01:20:24] Christina: right.
[01:20:25] Brett: book is unmanageable.
[01:20:27] Christina: and the issue is that, um, uh, what happens is, and it’s less of an issue as computers get more and more powerful, but the issue is, is that every time you load an application that can have access to fonts, it takes forever to load all those resources.
[01:20:40] Christina: And so it can slow things down. And so if you’re using, you know, Photoshop, or if you’re using Illustrator, or if you’re using another design program, like that can really become a bottleneck, um, and slow things down. So, um, again, this is like, It’s becoming less of an issue, especially like Adobe products now, you kind of don’t need it because of the way that their cloud font stuff works.
[01:20:59] Christina: You can kind of [01:21:00] enable sets and whatnot, but that’s sort of the thing you can do with, with a font manager is you can kind of say, okay, I want to enable these sets for right now. And so now when I’m using this particular context, it will have these enabled because this is what I’m using for this project, but I don’t need to use all these other ones.
[01:21:14] Christina: But I do know, for instance, like, but there’s some, for instance, like, Mymonospace fonts that I use for coding and whatnot. I have those installed in FontBook all times, right? But there are, if you’ve got like, if you’re like Brett and I and you’re a font hoarder and you’ve got like thousands and thousands of variants and I’m like, I don’t need this all the time, but I would like to potentially be able to browse these, um, in an easy to access way.
[01:21:38] Christina: Something like Typeface is great. What I also like about Typeface is that it does a good job of being able to, um, go through like, uh, Google fonts and other. Uh, services like that and help you easily download from there, which you can do through Homebrew and other sources, but like this is visual. So,
[01:21:55] Brett: Yeah. And it’s, it’s really, it’s beautiful night. Like as far as a Mac app [01:22:00] goes, it’s got all your nice, smooth transitions and like, and native UE. And yeah, it’s, it was the best that I tried. I am enjoying it. And like you said, like being able to temporarily activate like a set of fonts. Uh, when you need them without like with font agent, I was, I was I would go through my reboot process and for about five minutes after a reboot, it would just be notification after notification of like, we’ve activated all of these fonts that you didn’t specifically, they’re auto activated, but I, it got messy, it got real messy.
[01:22:36] Brett: So I’m enjoying, Typeface is cheaper and simpler and I enjoy it.
[01:22:42] Erin: Did you hear about this from Merlin?
[01:22:44] Brett: I did not, did you?
[01:22:46] Erin: I think so, yeah.
[01:22:48] Brett: I heard, I heard about it, I asked the question, I was like, Fontage didn’t stop working for me on Mastodon, what are you guys using? And Mastodon is I know it’s not for everybody. I know it’s mostly [01:23:00] for nerds, um, tech people, but I get answers so quickly to all of life’s problems.
[01:23:09] Brett: Um, like I got into vinegars recently. I was a hot sauce guy and a coffee guy and now I’m apparently a vinegar guy and got all these recommendations for like where to buy Vermont vinegars and Mastodon’s just a font of information for me.
[01:23:26] Jeff: Oh, font. Oh, shit.
[01:23:28] Erin: I don’t get it.
[01:23:30] Jeff: Byes, bell, brings it home, rings
[01:23:32] Christina: I love it. I love it.
[01:23:34] Brett: right, well, Erin, thanks for being
[01:23:36] Jeff: Erin, it was so nice to meet
[01:23:38] Erin: My pleasure. My pleasure.
[01:23:40] Christina: us.
[01:23:41] Brett: You guys get some sleep.
[01:23:43] Jeff: You get some sleep.
[01:23:44] Christina: You all get some sleep, fuckers.
[01:23:46] Brett: me what to do.
[01:23:48] Erin: Bye.
The gang waxes nostalgic about classic viral sites, discusses the best RSS readers, and gets back into the Mental Health Corner after a couple weeks off.
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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.
TranscriptIt’s Fine, I’m OK
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Brett: This episode is brought to you by HIM. Stay tuned for more info and welcome to Overtired. It’s great to have you back. I’m here with, Jeff Severance Gunsel and Christina Warren. welcome back. It’s been a couple weeks.
[00:00:18] Jeff: Thank you. Hi, everybody.
[00:00:20] Brett: So we’ve been starting with Grappitude and I gotta say, like, So, starting with Graptitude has meant that for the last two episodes we haven’t had the Mental Health Corner. And, and honestly, without the Mental Health Corner, I don’t want to do this show anymore.
[00:00:37] Jeff: Yeah, I think where we landed, I don’t know if this was a complete chat in our in our thread, but I think where we landed was to switch it back, but just to somehow
[00:00:45] Brett: To
[00:00:46] Jeff: police ourselves.
[00:00:47] Brett: yeah,
[00:00:48] Christina: exactly. We’re gonna, we’re gonna
[00:00:49] Brett: don’t, we don’t need 45 minutes for, for a mental health coroner. We, we can keep that, we can keep it down to five minutes per person, plus a little chat, and get us [00:01:00] down to like, no more than half the
[00:01:01] Jeff: we barely even get to Taylor Swift
[00:01:03] Brett: Right, I know, it’s,
[00:01:05] Jeff: But the whole world kind of overtook us, really.
[00:01:08] Christina: Honestly, they did and now it’s like not even funny to be like, oh, this is a Taylor Swift podcast because people are like, oh. Oh, really? Another one? And I’m like,
[00:01:15] Jeff: You think it’s good SEO?
[00:01:17] Christina: right. And, and, and it’s like, like trying to explain to people, it’s like, no, it’s actually not. That’s sort of the joke.
[00:01:22] Christina: Uh,
[00:01:22] Jeff: I tried to get us to change it to Kat Williams, but go ahead. Sorry, Christina.
[00:01:26] TikTok and Who TF Did I Marry
[00:01:26] Christina: no, I mean, look, honestly, Oh, okay. Have you guys seen, if we were going to switch it to something, if we were going to have a new hyperfixation, would it, it would be the, who the fuck should I marry TikTok lady?
[00:01:36] Brett: Haven’t
[00:01:36] Jeff: is that? I don’t know.
[00:01:39] Christina: I’m going to have to explain this to you. Um, we can do it after mental health corner. Yeah.
[00:01:42] Jeff: because of your understandable, exasperated, Oh my God. I have completely fucked my TikTok algorithm, which with like the people who do live feeds from oil rigs and the like, there’s some guys, there’s some guys who are just cutting up lumber. Uh, every night live, uh, as that, [00:02:00] and now baby monkeys.
[00:02:01] Jeff: That’s my TikTok. So,
[00:02:02] Brett: this, was this because of intentional decisions? How’d
[00:02:05] Jeff: oh, hell yeah. I’ve got, I love TikTok and I love how I can just be like, you know what, right now I’m really into oil rigs and, and lumber mills, and then sometimes I’m just into Cat Williams and, uh, and let’s see, like talking dogs, like, and you know what, I don’t mind TikTok knows me. Okay. Sorry. I’ll stop there.
[00:02:22] Jeff: But Christina, can you tell me now what this is? Cause I’m always looking
[00:02:26] Christina: Yeah, so, so this is, uh, I’ll be very brief on this, but, um, we’ll have a link in the show notes to a Rolling Stone thing, because this is the first thing I found SEO wise that looked somewhat decent. There are full, if you want to watch the whole thing, you can watch it on her TikTok, but people have also uploaded although She should have, so she can get some of the YouTube views, um, and that way you can play it on full time, uh, like, like, like 2x speed.
[00:02:49] Christina: Basically, this woman, she goes by Risa M. Tisa. Um, last week, she started, or maybe she started it, like, uh, a little bit before that. I, I heard about it on, like, Monday. And [00:03:00] then it’s, it’s blown up since then. Basically she’s put out a 50 plus, and yes, I’m, I’m, this is accurate, 50 plus part series on TikTok called Who TF Did I Marry?
[00:03:11] Christina: And basically talking about the, the, this pathological liar that she married. And it’s insane. It’s like the most insane story. So the story is like six hours long.
[00:03:20] Jeff: Wow.
[00:03:21] Christina: It’s nuts. And in the details, like all the things that are psychologically wrong with this man, um, and I looked in our, I peeped our notes, like talking about abusive partners, Brett, like this guy, holy fucking shit.
[00:03:34] Christina: We’re talking like making up relative deaths, making up relatives, fake phone calls to no one, fake bank accounts, pretending to buy a house when you don’t actually have the money for said house, completely faking what career he had, having multiple side checks. Being previously married in ways he didn’t say before.
[00:03:51] Christina: Like, literally, like this man that she married lied about everything. Everything. [00:04:00] And then lied about the lie.
[00:04:01] Jeff: George Santos?
[00:04:03] Brett: I, I had,
[00:04:05] Christina: someone
[00:04:05] Brett: I had, I had a, I had a pathological liar girlfriend and like, it wasn’t like, honestly, obviously it wasn’t as involved as getting married to someone, but in, in retrospect, I could not believe the stuff she lied about. Like, literally, her entire life was a fabrication. Stuff that, what, like, you wouldn’t, why, why would you even lie about it?
[00:04:28] Brett: She just made shit up for the sake of making shit up.
[00:04:31] Christina: Yeah, totally. Um, and, and, and this, this guy, I think it’s kind of a mix of those things. But anyway, the, the interesting thing is, like, she does take some responsibility because there’s some stuff and you’re like, all right, look, girl, like I get that like you, it was the pandemic and you were lonely and like you wanted to have a baby and, and all kinds of shit.
[00:04:46] Christina: Um, uh, but, uh, side note, he, she had a miscarriage, but then he told like the few family members he was talking to, because most of them cut him off, um, that, that she had the baby and that then when they were getting divorced, he was going to be fighting her for custody. [00:05:00] Even though, like, like, like, like, nuts, right?
[00:05:03] Christina: So this whole thing is fucking crazy. So, um, It’s basically, you guys know that Zola, remember the Zola Twitter thread, right?
[00:05:12] Jeff: No.
[00:05:14] Christina: Turn. It was a
[00:05:15] Brett: not
[00:05:16] Jeff: It’s called X.
[00:05:17] Christina: no. Well, it but, but this was back when it was very much Twitter and it was even turned into an a 24 film. So,
[00:05:26] Jeff: okay, got it, got it,
[00:05:27] Christina: um, basically is this, um, this stripper who like this, this, she met like this, this white girl at Hooters, who then like took her basically on like a, a trap trip, um, uh, with a bunch of, uh, Johns and like a bunch of shit went down.
[00:05:41] Christina: It’s like the most insane. It’s this famous viral tweet that turned into a movie. Anyway, this is like Zola, but without the sex work. Um, but it’s that sort of like viral thing where like everybody’s watching this fucking, um, the interesting thing here from like a social perspective is you have millions and millions of views [00:06:00] on this per installment.
[00:06:01] Christina: So she’s got 50 plus installments. Millions of people are watching this thing. Um, it, it’s, you know, obviously not on your TikToks, but it’s on mine and it’s on. Basically everybody I knows and, um, then people, of course, as they do, can’t not be fucking weirdos online. So even though she was very clear about the fact that she was like, I don’t want to like uncover the real people behind this.
[00:06:23] Christina: Of course, that’s the very first thing the internet’s going to do. And then be very proud of themselves when you have like women being like, Oh, we’re outing abusers. And this is Legion, who is, is, is what she’d call the guy. His name is Jerome. He’s now putting his TikTok because of course he is. Um, anyway, the, the, like.
[00:06:40] Christina: Also, she’s from Atlanta, and, and so, she goes into ridiculous amounts of detail about some of the things. Like, the first thing she said, she was like, oh yeah, you know, our first date was at the Cheesecake Factory at Perimeter Mall, and I’m like, I fucking worked at Perimeter Mall. I’ve been to that Cheesecake
[00:06:54] Jeff: Perimeter Mall, that’s quite a name.
[00:06:56] Christina: Perimeter, yeah, um, yeah, Perimeter, sorry, [00:07:00] I didn’t enunciate well enough.
[00:07:01] Christina: Um, but I’m like, I worked at that mall, I worked at the Abercrombie at that mall, I worked at the Best Buy across the street from that mall,
[00:07:08] Jeff: Oh man, how have we not talked about this?
[00:07:10] Brett: do they, when the, the rent a cops at the mall go out on patrol, do they say, I’m gonna secure the perimeter? Do
[00:07:19] Jeff: Oh my god.
[00:07:20] Brett: have
[00:07:21] Christina: so like, the rent a cops are very, very laid back.
[00:07:26] Jeff: Have I ever told y’all the story of
[00:07:28] Christina: They did back in the day.
[00:07:31] Been Caught Stealing
[00:07:31] Jeff: Have I ever told the story in this podcast of when I was arrested by, uh, thanks to a secret shopper, uh, for shoplifting?
[00:07:37] Christina: No.
[00:07:38] Brett: I feel like
[00:07:39] Jeff: I’ve finally,
[00:07:39] Christina: and where did you shoplift from? And where, and where did you shoplift
[00:07:42] Jeff: it was a grocery store, it was a grocery store in Minot, North Dakota. I, you know, we can put it on the topic list for later.
[00:07:48] Jeff: I finally told, now both of my boys know, so I feel like I can tell it on a podcast.
[00:07:52] Brett: Maybe you told this story to me over tacos last time I was in
[00:07:56] Jeff: I think that’s likely, I don’t think I would have told it on the podcast, but I’m ready. It [00:08:00] doesn’t have to be, well this could be a teaser for the next episode, it doesn’t have to be in this
[00:08:02] Christina: It doesn’t have to be this one. No, but I need to know about this. Uh, so I mean, I, I, I never, I’ve never shoplifted, um, the, that’s the one thing I’ve never done. I’ve never shoplifted. Um, I’ve stole, I’ve, you know, like stolen plenty of things from, from digital.
[00:08:16] Christina: You wouldn’t download a car. Oh. But I would. Um, but like, you know, I would def, I would definitely download a virtual car. Um. But I’ve never shoplifted. Not because I even am that opposed to it. I mean, I am, but like, I’m not. Like, I’m indifferent is what I should say. If it’s not my store, I’m going to be completely selfish.
[00:08:36] Christina: I kind of don’t care. But, um, Uh, you know, you shouldn’t steal from mom and pops or whatever, like, I’m not
[00:08:43] Jeff: oh yeah, no no, for sure.
[00:08:44] Christina: you know what I mean? I’m indifferent is what I’m trying to say. Um, but,
[00:08:48] Jeff: And I want to be clear, the last time I shoplifted was this story, and it was in, uh, 1998. It’s gonna be clear for the record, any perspective, you know, employers, it’s over.
[00:08:58] Christina: statute of limitations actually does apply [00:09:00] here. No, I’m just saying, like, for me, it wasn’t, like, a moral reason why I never shoplifted. I just knew that I would get caught,
[00:09:06] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:07] Brett: Yeah, I, I was always getting in trouble for shit other people did. I didn’t need to tempt fate. Um, and, and I never, I never really got, like, a rush out of shoplifting. Like, I tried it and it, like, other people would, like, do it for the thrill of it. Um, do you guys remember a little craze called wahooing?
[00:09:26] Jeff: Oh, uh, remind me. I mean, I think, I think I’m familiar.
[00:09:30] Brett: you bring something sizable up to the checkout at the counter, and when they ring it up, you just yell Wahoo and you run out of the store, and to, to me that was a little more interesting than trying to like hide things in a trench coat, um, and half, half the time, half the time, half the time we would go back and, and just pay for it, cause it wasn’t about like, we couldn’t afford bread, so we were shoplifting to feed our families, we were just You know, [00:10:00] teenagers.
[00:10:01] Christina: you’re just being, yeah, no, I mean, I, I never did that and I never dined and dashed, although we did do a thing once when I was 16 where we wanted to see how many restaurants we could get kicked out of in 24 hours by like starting fake fights and like Denny’s and IHOP and, um, it is, it’s really hard to get kicked out of an IHOP.
[00:10:18] Christina: Um. Waffle House, too. Well, we didn’t even try at Waffle House. Waffle House, we, we would know better than trying there, because they’re not, like, just yelling at one another. Like, also,
[00:10:28] Jeff: there’s a fight?
[00:10:29] Christina: well,
[00:10:29] Brett: waitstaff would just knife
[00:10:31] Christina: they would, and the thing is, too, is that you respect the Waffle House, like, staff. Like, I respected them a lot, and you, you fucking should, for fucking real.
[00:10:39] Christina: And,
[00:10:40] Brett: basically frontline workers.
[00:10:42] Christina: I mean, honestly, um, one of my favorite Waffle House, uh, waitresses, she was also a stripper at like the strip club that was nearby, but she had a temper, really hot girl. And so they would like, she would lose her job as a stripper and then she’d come back to Waffle House. And then Waffle House like blacklisted her a few times, but this [00:11:00] was before their computer systems could really do that.
[00:11:01] Christina: So she just lied about who she was and she’d go to a different store, but she’d also been blacklisted by IHOP, I think. And, um, and her boyfriend was a drug dealer and had all kinds of really expensive, um, sound equipment and she and I used to talk about like high end stereo equipment all the time, which is a weird thing to do when you’re drunk at four o’clock in the morning.
[00:11:19] Christina: Um, but like, mean, if you’re two hot girls though, it kind of is. Um, but anyway,
[00:11:28] Jeff: gendered, but I’m just speaking from my lived experience.
[00:11:32] Christina: anyway, that’s a tangent, but yeah, but yeah, um, I, I never, I never did wahooing, but we did try, we would try to like get kicked out of restaurants. Um. Because that would, that was just
[00:11:43] Jeff: That sounds stressful as hell to me, like I, everything I did wrong I did quietly, when really the only thing I did like technically wrong was shoplifting and then immediately after I stopped that I started going illegally to Iraq. It was just like, I had to be breaking the law somehow.
[00:11:56] Christina: Well, I mean, I mean, which is impressive. You go from like, like, like [00:12:00] stealing something from a grocery store, which we got to talk about this on another episode. I need to like dig into the psychology here, to then sneaking into another country. Like, wow. Like, just the levels there. I’m like, I’m stealing some gum to I’m literally breaking, like, I’m literally crossing the border into a country that I’m not supposed to
[00:12:19] Jeff: With, with medical supplies that I’m smuggling in because it’s illegal for Americans to be there. This is, for anyone who’s wondering, this is pre war. This is during the sanctions. It wasn’t illegal for Americans to be there once there were
[00:12:30] Christina: What, right, once the war was there, then it’s like, oh no, come on over. Uh, uh, want a gun? w want
[00:12:34] Jeff: what’s illegal about Abu Ghraib?
[00:12:36] Jeff: No, it’s fine. Come on in.
[00:12:37] Christina: fine. Come on in. We’ll do it. But yeah, before that, the sanctions. Yeah,
[00:12:40] Jeff: Yes. Anyway, okay. We’ll, we’ll pin that. Um, it is, I will just say as a added teaser, um, this, this mostly happened on tour because when you’re on tour, you, you feel it’s like Deadwood. There’s no, no law at all. And uh, and my brother and I both had this. This tendency, we’ll call it. And my brother had a great story, [00:13:00] which I’ll share, but that I recently had drafted up by Dali.
[00:13:03] Jeff: Um, uh, and, and I’m trying to draft up other stories from being on tour, which I mentioned when Merlin was on, but that was one. And I’ll talk about that when we, that’ll be the show art when we go.
[00:13:12] Christina: awesome. All right.
[00:13:14] Brett: so I
[00:13:14] Jeff: my brother should be our guest. Cause he and I were the shoplifters together.
[00:13:18] Brett: I was telling you guys about some weird dreams I had and it would be amazing to get Dali to illustrate those
[00:13:26] Jeff: I’ve been doing it. I’ve been doing it with my weird dreams. I’ve been doing it with my weird dreams. I love it.
[00:13:31] Mental Health Corner (returns!)
[00:13:31] Brett: should we do a mental health corner?
[00:13:32] Christina: let’s do
[00:13:33] Brett: Okay, um, who wants to start?
[00:13:37] Jeff: I don’t mind starting unless Christina. Okay. First, I’m just gonna say I have a giant thing of water. Hear that? And, and this is part of taking care of
[00:13:46] Brett: bigger than his head.
[00:13:47] Jeff: working outside today. I’m building a little loft storage in my in my garage. And when I’m working outside, I might Kids call this Aquachungus.
[00:13:54] Jeff: It’s a half gallon, uh, water bottle, and I’m going to be drinking from it to stay hydrated in this [00:14:00] podcast, and every time you hear it, you know I’m taking care of my mental health, uh, because that’s really important. Here I go. Mmmmm.
[00:14:06] Christina: Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink.
[00:14:09] Jeff: drink, drink. Uh, yeah, okay, and this, also, Aquachungus has a, a hook on it for some reason?
[00:14:14] Jeff: I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do
[00:14:15] Christina: think that,
[00:14:16] Jeff: on my
[00:14:16] Christina: that I, maybe it’s supposed to be able to like, hang on to like a, I don’t know, like, like a boat or something. I don’t know, like a car. I don’t know.
[00:14:25] Brett: Yeah, for, for those listening, it’s not so much a hook as it is an anchor with like two prongs
[00:14:31] Jeff: Yeah, I think that this could be a whole new thing we do on this podcast, which is describe not interesting objects that nobody can see.
[00:14:36] Brett: Have you ever, have you, have you ever seen described porn? They’re, they make, they make these, these, like Pornhub has them for visually impaired people where like you can hear the soundtrack and like if you are.
[00:14:52] Brett: If you are visually abled, you can see it, but there’s this like soothing voice over the top of it that describes in [00:15:00] explicit detail exactly what is happening in every scene, I find it very humorous.
[00:15:05] Jeff: That’s interesting.
[00:15:06] Christina: A 10 inch thick cock
[00:15:08] Brett: Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:09] Christina: its way into a tight, yeah. I, I, I,
[00:15:12] Jeff: Yeah. That’s that’s interesting,
[00:15:15] Christina: no, is it, is it done like seriously, or is this, like, is this actually an accessibility
[00:15:18] Brett: No, it’s, yeah, it’s an accessibility thing
[00:15:20] Christina: I mean, well, the reason I was asking is because one of the things I have appreciated about Pornhub over the years is that, um, even though they’re very thirsty and very aggressive to try to make you write about every stupid little, um, like publicity stunt they do, or at least they did back in the day.
[00:15:36] Christina: I don’t know if that’s true anymore. Would be that they did have some pretty funny publicity stunts. So I could see that, that being as like a thing where they’re like, Oh yeah, we’re going to release this as a feature and do a, you know, press release about it, but then also maybe actually still have it as like a true accessibility thing too, which not going to lie, like.
[00:15:55] Christina: There’s a market for it, you
[00:15:57] Jeff: I mean, people read VC Andrews books.
[00:15:59] Christina: [00:16:00] Uh, no fucking Oh, Fanfic is incredibly popular, and not to mention, like, like, the most read, like, novels, like, the books that people sell that make the most money are the fucking smutty ass, like, weird, like, dragon, like, romance shit aimed at women. Yeah.
[00:16:17] Jeff: That’s like, okay, I will do my mental health check-in, but you made me think of this. Go ahead Brett. You have
[00:16:21] Brett: I just want to point out that this is why our mental health sections go for 45 minutes because, because half the podcast is like embedded in the mental
[00:16:30] Christina: Fair enough. Totally. I will say, at this point, we can very clearly siphon this off now. I was like, this is opening banter. And then we can go
[00:16:38] Jeff: that’s right. That’s right, that’s right. Uh, all I’ve really done is water so far. So I’m just gonna quick say this. You know, I’ve, I’ve been obsessed all year with The Godfather. I re-watched it. I, I watched the, um, the, the series, the limited series, the offer about bringing it to screen. Um, and I’m now reading a.
[00:16:54] Jeff: Book that’s just kind of a culmination of all other sort of books and reporting of the making of the Godfather. What [00:17:00] I never realized, I knew Mario Puzo’s book was like, at the time, was selling more copies than the Bible. I didn’t realize how completely inane and insane the sex scenes are in
[00:17:10] Christina: Oh, they are.
[00:17:11] Jeff: excerpts of them.
[00:17:12] Jeff: And I was just like, oh, I see why it was the biggest selling book. And it
[00:17:15] Christina: Oh, totally. No, no. There’s this whole thing about like, like, like, uh, the woman that, that, uh, that Sonny fucks at the wedding, um, is, uh, it like has like a really big pussy. Like, and, and, and that’s why, like, like it, it’s been, it’s been difficult for other men, like, to be able to like fill her well, and that’s why, like, she has to like, like, like fuck.
[00:17:32] Brett: is described porn. Okay.
[00:17:34] Jeff: it,
[00:17:35] Christina: I, I, I, I, so, um, I’m not trying to interrupt you, I’m gonna, I’ll talk about this after our Mental Health Corner thing, Jeff, but I do want to pick up on your Godfather
[00:17:43] Jeff: Okay.
[00:17:44] Christina: after this, because I want to know what book you’re reading, uh, because I have thoughts, but anyway, sorry, go on.
[00:17:48] Brett: I, I do think our show title is described porn.
[00:17:52] Christina: Yes, sponsored by HIMSS,
[00:17:55] Jeff: Did you?
[00:17:59] Brett: Oh [00:18:00] shit. Yeah.
[00:18:02] Jeff: Oh my god. Okay. So, um, my, my mental health corner topic is like, this has been true of me for a while, but I’ve been, I’ve been experiencing it again. There’s a, there’s a tendency in my friends, most of them, um, Most of them are men, identify as men. A couple of them are women, identify as women. And it fucking makes me crazy.
[00:18:21] Jeff: And it’s someone to say it, and I’m gonna ask you a question. I can’t stand it when somebody tells me in the context of our friendship, something that’s going on with them that’s really hard, especially when there’s someone who maybe doesn’t even share that stuff that often. And now here they are, right?
[00:18:35] Jeff: They’re telling you about something that’s happened to them, something that’s happening inside them, whatever. It’s very, very, very hard. And you say the thing. That you say, which is like, I’m really sorry this is happening to you. Or you say, whatever it is you say, that’s like an empathy thing. Uh, and, and what they say back is.
[00:18:50] Jeff: I mean, it’s okay. Right? Which I find to be, I understand why it happens. I’m not even, I’m not judging it. Right? The older I [00:19:00] get and, uh, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with it because, and I realized it’s not because I care about them. It’s because as a friend, I’m, I’m walled out right there, right?
[00:19:13] Jeff: Like you’ve told me this stuff and now you go, it’s fine. Like, and I mean, I don’t mean like that happens sometimes. Sometimes it is fine. Right? Like, I’m not, I’m not saying every time that happens, this is triggers this thing in me, but I’ve found that like, it’s, it’s. It’s really hard to feel, uh, feel the connection that I felt when I was talking to them.
[00:19:32] Jeff: If when you acknowledge or reflect that thing back in a way that is totally normal inside your friendship, it’s not, you know, I’m not like, it’s, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing that part wrong. Um, and then it’s just, ah, it’s okay. It’s
[00:19:43] Brett: Is this a Midwest thing, do you think?
[00:19:46] Jeff: I mean, so I, no, I mean, I have a friend,
[00:19:48] Christina: a Protestant thing, I think.
[00:19:50] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
[00:19:52] Jeff: No, I mean, I’ve had it from people all over the world that are my friends. Um, and, uh, and so anyway, I was curious, I was curious for both of you. [00:20:00] Um, I know that for me, it is hard to hear someone say back to me after I’ve told them something hard. Like, that sounds really That sucks. Sounds really hard. Like I understand that that can be a weird thing to receive sometimes, but I think my typical response is like, yeah, shit.
[00:20:18] Jeff: Thank you.
[00:20:18] Brett: Yeah, exactly. That’s mine too, is like, yeah, it is.
[00:20:22] Jeff: and Christina, what about you?
[00:20:23] Christina: well, it varies, because I mean, I think that it’d be more healthy if I said thank you, or does. But I think a lot of times, my instinctual response is not to be like, is honestly like, it’s fine, it’s whatever. Um, and I
[00:20:40] Jeff: I think.
[00:20:41] Christina: Right, and to me, like, I think that it isn’t so much because I’m like, oh, I don’t want to let you in, um, because of the fact that I’m sharing it with you at all means that I’ve let you in.
[00:20:51] Christina: It just means that I’m, at least the way I intended, and maybe it doesn’t come across this way, um, so I agree, I think the way that you two respond is better, but I think the reason [00:21:00] I’m like, yeah, it’s whatever, it’s fine, it’s whatever, whatever, is because I’m kind of like, I’ve shared this with you, but I’m not necessarily in a place where I know that I can solve this or I can do anything about it.
[00:21:12] Christina: So, you know,
[00:21:14] Jeff: I’m super interested, I’m super interested in this because I, I, I’m thinking about, you’re causing me to think about things I hadn’t thought, so that doesn’t trigger me in the same way. Because I, here’s how I hear that, and I want to see if this is partly how you feel like you mean it when you say it. How I hear that is like, yeah, it’s fine, whatever.
[00:21:30] Jeff: Fuck. It’s like, you know, like, it’s just like, it’s to me, that’s a version of saying, yeah, it fucking sucks. Right. Um, it’s, it’s the thing. It’s not when someone does the, like, it’s okay. Literally those words seem to be the pathological thing. Whether your first language is, is English or not. It’s my experience.
[00:21:45] Jeff: And for me, it’s not that I want more, right? It’s not like, um, no, don’t cut me off. It’s kind of like, it’s just like a hard landing. It’s like, wait, what happened?
[00:21:55] Christina: yeah. No, I think you’re right. I mean, I think sometimes though, there’s a [00:22:00] weird thing too where I think, and, and you’re, you are, I think, probably right, and to pick up on this and, and right to have feelings about it, which is sometimes I think we can share things with people. And we can be perceptive, you know, and we can be like that vulnerable to do it, but we are then not vulnerable enough to continue to open up to it.
[00:22:18] Christina: So it’s like, I can share this to you. I can share this with you, but I don’t want to have a conversation about this. Right? Like I can say, and that happens sometimes where I’m like, I’m going to share this with you, but you know what? I do not want to talk any further about it. I don’t want to hear you even like, it’s great for you to say, Oh, I’m so sorry about that.
[00:22:32] Christina: But if you want to talk more in depth, because people always like, Oh, well, you know, I’m here for you if you want to talk. And a lot of times I’m like, I appreciate that. I really don’t. You know, or, or, or like, like, I, it’s been enough for me. Like I’ve, I’ve exalted my vulnerability for the day. I’ve been telling you this thing.
[00:22:47] Christina: I I’m not yet in a place where I can go beyond that.
[00:22:50] Brett: yeah, now that you say it like that, I realize what I often do is I will, like, you know me, I, I share everything with everybody. Um, and I’ll share something [00:23:00] really vulnerable and they will react the way Jeff does, like, that really sucks for you. I’m sorry. And I will say,
[00:23:07] Jeff: Sucks to be you.
[00:23:08] Brett: no, I, I will say. I will say, yeah, thank you.
[00:23:12] Brett: It does suck. And then immediately change the subject. Like I don’t generally, I don’t generally want to go into depth about everything that is, all the things I wear on my sleeve. Like I don’t mind the acknowledgement, but I’m not looking for an in depth conversation most of the time.
[00:23:28] Jeff: I so relate to that. And I, to Christina’s point, I will sometimes say this probably happens more in writing if I’m like texting with a friend, I will sometimes say like, Look, I don’t need a response to this. But I just need to share this, because let’s be honest, the worst way to respond when you have shared something with somebody is for that person to then go down any of the roads that are like solutioneering or like, you know, whatever, like, I don’t want that shit.
[00:23:50] Jeff: And I should And like, and I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to present what I’m saying as like, something I think is right or true, but I will say, I will say that in [00:24:00] fairness, I will choose not to share something more often than not, so I’m not, you know, like, if I, if I have kind of talked and someone says, shit, I’m sorry, that sucks, it’s like, I, I actually really needed to hear exactly that, and I don’t want any more than that, you
[00:24:16] Brett: My, uh, my partner, Elle, is a problem solver. Like, their, their instinct, as soon as they hear something’s wrong, they look for solutions. And that is so often not what I need.
[00:24:28] Christina: I, I, I, I can make that mistake sometimes too, and I think I’ve gotten better with it, but it depends on the person. And I know that can annoy people. My mom is like that. My mom is a problem solver, but she does know enough, and like, you know, she’s a problem solver. I’m a counselor, so she doesn’t do that, like, with people that she’s just listening to, to talk.
[00:24:47] Christina: I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I think she became a counselor is because she’s very good at that naturally. Um, but with, like, me and my sister and my dad, like, you know, because she wants to help so badly, she immediately goes into the, [00:25:00] okay, well, how can we fix this mode? And I, I would have to oftentimes, like, tell her as a kid, um, or, you know, teenager, or sometimes even as an adult, although she’s a lot better, uh, as an adult.
[00:25:10] Christina: As adults we’re much more communicative where I’m like, no, I actually just need you to like be my mom and just listen. Like, I don’t, I don’t want any, you know, advice. Um, because I know probably what I need to do or what my options are. Uh, I don’t want to go down that road right now because that’s what’s stressing me out.
[00:25:28] Christina: You know, like I think for a lot of people,
[00:25:31] Jeff: And it misses what I think is true about being human, which is that for the hardest things, what you need is to be able to describe them and say them out loud. And then you, uh, something in you starts to work on that a little bit. There’s something about having said it that isn’t always going to be the solution, but it’s like, I think when people go straight into solutions, which I’ve certainly been guilty of, I think it, it forgets the.
[00:25:52] Jeff: Importance of just saying something out loud and what that does for a person. I mean, hence therapy, right? Sometimes, sometimes you need, you do need your therapist to talk back, [00:26:00] but
[00:26:02] Brett: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Jeff: yeah, so anyway, I, I’ve just been thinking about that cause I’ve run into it a couple of times. And again, like I say, like some 49 now, um, a lot of the friendships I’m talking about where this happens are very old friendships, right? Where I know the arc of their lives. I know I know what it looks like when things are really bad or really hard.
[00:26:19] Jeff: I know when it’s not okay. And, and we’re close enough that it, it would be, some of us have talked about it to a really great effect where it’s fine to just, you don’t have to say anything back. If I, if I just register that I’m hearing you, but not, I don’t do it. I like the thing. I don’t do an overwrought or, you know, and if anything, I understate it by saying like, it fucking sucks.
[00:26:38] Jeff: I’m sorry. You know, like, uh, but, uh, I’ve found that in a lot of older relationships, that’s where it. Can be hard. But I mean, how I deal with that actually is just to be like, it’s not okay. You just spent 20 minutes talking to you about something. It’s totally not okay. We don’t talk about it anymore, but I’m just going to be the one that says it’s not okay.
[00:26:57] Jeff: And I get why you’re saying [00:27:00] let’s move on. Like that is how I handle it to be clear. Like I don’t, um, I don’t just, uh, seethe, but that’s my, that’s my bet.
[00:27:09] Brett: Alright.
[00:27:10] Jeff: Drink.
[00:27:11] Brett: Drink. Um, I’ll go next. I will effort to keep it short. Um, I have had insomnia for a couple months now. Um, I, for a long time, was sleeping every other night. Um, but then like, on the off nights, I would wake up around 12 or 1 and then just be awake, uh, for the rest of the night. So I was functioning on 3 to 4 hours of sleep max, um, every other night.
[00:27:41] Brett: And it was really dragging me down, so I talked to my psychiatrist. We’ve gone through a couple meds. The first ones actually made it worse. I can’t remember the name of what I just started last night, but it was the first night I slept in the last six days. And I’m not manic, just to [00:28:00] be clear. Like I’m not, none of the other symptoms are there other than sleeplessness.
[00:28:06] Brett: I just, for some reason. Have stopped sleeping. I think it might be circadian rhythms as the days get longer. I think my system might just be off. Um, so I’m using like a, a full spectrum light in the mornings to try to like shake this. But anyway, um, second point, I had my first actual IFS session on Tuesday.
[00:28:29] Brett: Um,
[00:28:29] Jeff: family systems.
[00:28:30] Brett: Internal family systems. It was, it was very interesting. Like, as we’ve talked about, I’m a little skeptical, um, of the entire process, but also have read enough that I think it would be very beneficial to me. Um, and immediately, like I discovered. Parts of me that I had no idea were there and made a lot of sense, um, and Ellis convinced that some of the weird dreams I had last night were a result [00:29:00] of beginning IFS therapy, um, and the last thing I’ll say actually relates to, uh, something Jeff was talking about, um, uh, A girl that I dated briefly in college and haven’t talked to in 20 years has recently gotten in touch with me, um, and, like, she got in touch with me before this shit went down, but the guy that she was hanging, okay, she said they’re not dating, but they hang out every day, and they, they make out, and, like, this is what I pieced together is, Much like when we were together in college, she doesn’t want a boyfriend, um, but she’ll, like, do all the things that a partner does, um, and, uh, then all of a sudden she texts me that he’s in treatment, uh, that they forced him into treatment, and I had no inkling of this Before, [00:30:00] um, but he tested positive for like every drug known to man, he broke out of treatment, he broke into her house, um, he is being scary as hell, um, she sends me videos that he sends her where he is like crazed and manic and, um, it is, it is terrifying and I don’t It’s I’m two hours away from her.
[00:30:25] Brett: I don’t know how to respond other than to say, I’m really sorry you’re going through this. Here are the shelters near you if you need, if you need a safe place to go. Um, and she doesn’t shut me down. Like she seems grateful that she has Someone to share all this with because, like, his entire family is being terrorized right now, and they can commiserate, but they can’t take a calm, external look at it.
[00:30:53] Brett: Um, and so that has been, uh, honestly, it has added some interest to my otherwise very stable [00:31:00] life. Um, but I I have a lot of, I’m really worried about how this ends and, and what happens next. So
[00:31:10] Jeff: Yeah. How did you end up back in touch?
[00:31:15] Brett: she texted, like we have been friends on Facebook for 20 years and we’ve never said a word to each other directly. Um, and then she texted me, I can’t remember. How she got my number, but yeah, she just kind of texted me out of the blue. How you doing? And then she kept promising we were going to FaceTime sometime and then always flaked on it.
[00:31:40] Brett: Um, which is okay. Um, but yeah, like she, she owns a restaurant and is Like, for all intents and purposes, seems to be doing well, but she got, she got in with, uh, a scary guy, [00:32:00] and honestly, the guy that we’re talking about is the guy who did all my tattoos. He used to be a roommate of mine, um, like they were
[00:32:07] Jeff: interesting. So this is a dual connection
[00:32:09] Brett: yeah, they were, they were, those two were not friends back then, but they have connected
[00:32:15] Christina: But they were like part, you are all part of the same circle, I
[00:32:17] Brett: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and, and I liked the guy. Uh, he was, He was passionate and, um, and very good looking, like, did some modeling, and, like, he was an interesting person to be around, but we were definitely junkies together, um, we, we definitely went through all of the stages of junkiedom together, uh, so I know, I know what he’s like high too.
[00:32:46] Brett: And that’s, that’s pretty scary. And I also, like, I really think he’s bipolar. Like, you can be whacked out on a bunch of drugs without acting the way he’s acting. And you can be manic and act that [00:33:00] way without any drugs.
[00:33:01] Jeff: right,
[00:33:02] Brett: the drugs with mania, and that, that describes what I’m seeing from him.
[00:33:09] Jeff: That’s hard.
[00:33:10] Brett: I think he’s, I think he’s fueling mania with drugs.
[00:33:14] Jeff: Hmm.
[00:33:15] Christina: Which, which is really, I mean, I mean that’s the worst. I mean, I, I, I dated someone who, um, when he went off of his medication and then started abusing cocaine, like it was a real problem. Um, and, and basically that ended our relationship, um, because he was bipolar before and, and dealt with it and, and whatnot.
[00:33:35] Christina: But then when it was the, okay, I am going to go. Purposely go off my medication and I’m going to start like using cocaine excessively and whatnot. I was like, okay, this is not a safe or a good, you know, environment for me to be in. I’m done. Um, especially when you’re like 22, like it’s just, you can’t do that.
[00:33:53] Christina: Um, and you’re right. Like that’s, That’s just like another level nightmare to have, you know, like the combination if, if [00:34:00] what you’re saying is right, right? Because it’s like either of those things on their own can be really bad, but together it’s a really dangerous combination for everybody involved.
[00:34:09] Brett: I agree. Um, I will, I will end mine there so we can try to contain our mental health, uh, uh, corner. Um, so Cristina, your turn.
[00:34:19] Christina: I’ve been ADHD as fuck. Um, I’ve been having a really hard time focusing and concentrating. I’ve mentioned that before and it’s, it’s still a problem. So I’m, I’m trying to kind of, I don’t know, see if I can like workshop some other solutions, try to do some other things. But this has like been worse than it’s.
[00:34:36] Christina: ever been in my life where, um, if I can kind of force myself into a mode where I’m actively working on something, it’s fine. But if I’m not actively like forcing myself, like I’m right now on the podcast, although while I’m recording with YouTube, I’m listening to you talk, but I’m also like looking up a bunch of other random stuff in the background and, and like multitasking.
[00:34:58] Christina: And, and I am engaged and I am listening [00:35:00] and, um, and whatnot, but it, but I’m. You know, my brain is, is doing a bunch of other things, so I don’t know what this means. I don’t really know what to do about it, but that’s kind of where I’m at right now. So,
[00:35:10] Brett: Yeah, I assume no medication changes. This is just a,
[00:35:14] Christina: this is just, yeah, I mean, I’m
[00:35:15] Brett: balance change.
[00:35:16] Christina: Yeah, this is just exactly, and, and it’s one of those things, so like, you know, I have been off of antidepressants now completely for a couple of months now, and I don’t know if that’s, Had any sort of impact or not? I mean, I have to say anecdotally, it does feel like it’s gotten worse, but at the same time, I don’t really, you know, like, the antidepressants weren’t working.
[00:35:35] Christina: So, yeah, I, I don’t know. I’m, I’m, I think that there are probably, I’m probably going to need to do some, some, uh, CBT, um, stuff to try to maybe get into a better mindset of some things I can do to maybe rewire myself to, Like not solve the ADHD because I don’t believe like that CBT can do that But some things that I can do to like force myself into better habits So [00:36:00] that I can then get into a better place because I think what tends to happen at least for me is that things can become rote and you can become like you can allow yourself to get away with you know, giving into the ADHD and And then get kind of like off schedule, off track, and I’m just trying to get myself to that place where I’m, you know, I’m honestly like trying to like screw myself and be like, get your shit together, like, do the hard
[00:36:22] Brett: trying to be a normal person.
[00:36:23] Christina: right, like, get your shit together, do these things.
[00:36:25] Christina: It’s not like everything’s going to be okay, magically, and it’s not like, you know, you’re going to immediately not struggle with this stuff, but you’re going to have, like, I’m just trying to get myself to that point where I can get the lethargy out and actually like, Forced myself into being like, no, actually, this is not okay and, and we need to do things to fix this because medicine alone is like, I think at this point, I don’t think it’s a medicine thing.
[00:36:46] Christina: It’s well, like the thing that medicine can solve. It’s like, my brain is broken. It’s a biochemical thing. But I also think that there are probably some like behavioral Things that I need to change. I don’t know. That’s
[00:36:57] Brett: what I’ve found too. I have found like [00:37:00] medication can get me to a certain point. Um, but once I started therapy just about a year ago, um. I began developing, like, actual, like, life skills that I didn’t have, uh, for, like, specific, not general life skills, but specifically for dealing with things like bipolar and ADHD, and while I will always say, take your meds, like, don’t, don’t be scared of medication for any of the reasons that people give you, but, uh, there is a behavioral component to all of it, and I don’t know anybody who’s I do.
[00:37:35] Brett: Okay. I know some people. I don’t know many neurodivergent people that are single diagnosis. Um, so when you start treating multiple disorders with medication, it becomes a tightrope walk. Like you’re talking about maybe stopping antidepressants, change your, change the way your ADHD presents itself. Um, and it’s, it’s such a tightrope walk when you have multiple diagnoses.
[00:37:59] Jeff: [00:38:00] rope walk where you’re always doing that tight rope walker thing where you’re like, one leg on and you’re going, yeah.
[00:38:07] Christina: No, you know, you make a good point. I don’t know how many people, I mean, I know that there are people who could have like, you know, single diagnosis and I’m not trying to limit that because obviously they’re all part of our neurodivergent family or whatnot. But yeah, I think most it’s, it’s weird because it’s like, it’s like for me, it’s like anxiety, depression, ADHD.
[00:38:23] Christina: Um, some people are, uh, you know, bipolar or some people, you know, like, uh, ASD or like other things. And, um, But, you know, OCD, I definitely had OCD as a kid, I don’t anymore, to the same degree, but like I was definitely, like, not like, to the point where, you know, it interfered with my day to day life, but I was definitely OCD, um, as a kid, but it’s I think you’re right, like, very rarely do any of these, um, diagnoses, like, fit one box.
[00:38:55] Christina: Most people are multiple and to your point, like that, then [00:39:00] that’s what, that’s what complicates treating stuff. I think especially with people who don’t have access to, um, good care or, or care that even gives a damn, because like, if you go to a GP, they’re going to give you one drug to try to solve this thing without any.
[00:39:16] Brett: it also makes it really hard to diagnose. Like a lot of, a lot of ASD people start off being diagnosed with depression and anxiety, uh, but those are actually symptoms of autism, um, in their case.
[00:39:31] Christina: in their case, I, I, I think they’re too, right.
[00:39:35] Brett: Yeah.
[00:39:36] Christina: think one of the things with autism, too, though, to be fair, is that over the last, like, 10 years, the definition, even as, like, from doctors, not even talking about the community, uh, which is a whole separate thing, but the definition from doctors has expanded quite differently than where it was even before a decade ago.
[00:39:54] Christina: So, you’re right, but I think that, like, it, you know, I think, I sometimes see people who are like, oh, why wasn’t I diagnosed [00:40:00] with this? 20 years ago. And I was like, because the diagnostic, you know, the diagnostic, you know, criteria was different then. Um, but yeah, uh, for, for, for sure. Like when I was a kid, like depression was the most active thing that I could pick up on from the commercials for the mental health treatment facility, which is how I diagnosed myself.
[00:40:25] Christina: But Anxiety has always been like the driving thing, really. And so, you know, but, but for me, the thing that I was able to like identify with as this, and I was like, Oh, I’m depressed. Right. So I very immediately diagnosed with depression. And then very, very soon after that was like, Oh, you also have anxiety disorders.
[00:40:45] Christina: Like, huh, shocker. Okay, cool. You know?
[00:40:49] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Oy. That tight, that tight rope walk. Fuckin sucks. [00:41:00] just say one, just, and maybe this isn’t closing, maybe not, is that like, Christina, what you were describing where it’s like, I’m off the depression meds, I, I heard you kind of essentially saying like, I don’t feel like fucking with medications right now, like this is, and, and like that, I, I only started taking Medications in 2000 and the thing that’s the, the, the phases that are the hardest for me is when, and it usually is in my case, I said, I’m not at all putting this to you.
[00:41:26] Jeff: In my case, it often is like, I’m really bad at doing the behavioral stuff. Um, but like putting that aside, cause that’s just hard. Um, Uh, I find that when, when something is act, when some aspect of me that I, I think I’m adequately medicating or, or, or, you know, dealing with the therapy, whatever acts up, it’s kind of a hopeless feeling for a minute, uh, because I don’t want to go down the medication road, but like, I’ve learned a lot about how the medication can help me, but I also learned if I go down that road, then maybe it gets a little worse at first or whatever.
[00:41:56] Jeff: That’s just a terrible feeling.
[00:41:58] Christina: No, it is. I mean, especially coming off of like the [00:42:00] last six months that I had, um, with, like, I’m, I’m not in a place where I can, right? Like, if I do, um, if I, if I were to go, like, if I were to reestablish like a medication regimen again, and it’s possible that I might have to do that, I know that I will have to, like, take a leave of absence from work, right?
[00:42:18] Christina: Yeah. It will have to be one of those scenarios. Like, I, I will, I will not be able to go into, like, if I were to try ketamine therapy, even, like, you know, stuff like, which I would like to do at some point, like, I will, it will have to be under the circumstances where I’m not trying to do what I did before.
[00:42:34] Christina: And so, unfortunately, what that means. for me is that I’m going to have to wait until it reaches kind of a critical point or a more, not, not, not critical, critical, but a more critical point, because I don’t feel like I have the luxury or the ability to be like, Oh yeah, let’s just experiment with meds right now.
[00:42:53] Christina: Right? Like, I know that when, and there will come a time for me to have to do that, that I will have to [00:43:00] have, um, supports set up and, and, and systems set up in my life so that I can focus just on that. Um, and that’s just, that’s not an option right now.
[00:43:11] Jeff: Yeah, this is where I go. It fucking sucks. I’m sorry.
[00:43:16] Christina: Yeah. And, and, and,
[00:43:17] Jeff: you go, Yeah, it’s fine. Whatever.
[00:43:19] Christina: and I’m like, no, yeah, it does because honestly, that’s just all I say is, yeah, it does. But I will just say on the upside, on the upside, like nothing’s critical. I’m just really ADHD right now, but I’m not like, I don’t want to actively harm myself. And I, I don’t like, it’s not like, you
[00:43:35] Brett: better than being horribly depressed.
[00:43:37] Christina: I was going to say like, it’s better than six months ago when I was like, I don’t really want to be alive, you know, so it’s better than that.
[00:43:43] Jeff: better. Maybe for our show notes, getting back to something you said earlier, refresh notes, we just we just publish our search history during the recording of the episode. I feel like it would both hit the show notes and how much we’re just like, thinking about 80
[00:43:57] Christina: totally. I was going to be, which ironically, that was [00:44:00] sort of like the original kind of genesis of the show where Brett and I was like, we’d go down like these, you know, wiki k holes of things where we talk about one thing and then go to the next and then go to the next and go to the next. I mean, that’s kind of the, it’s
[00:44:12] Brett: almost as if we’re both ADHD.
[00:44:14] Christina: Oh,
[00:44:15] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of saying that sucks and then immediately changing the subject.
[00:44:19] Christina: do it.
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[00:45:52] Brett: Subscription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. Oh my God. I nailed that. That was one take, no edits.[00:46:00]
[00:46:00] Christina: Hell fucking yeah. Let’s go. Let’s go,
[00:46:02] Jeff: You shouldn’t even, you shouldn’t even edit that part out. That’s a good
[00:46:05] Brett: I, I’m not gonna, I should podcast sober more often.
[00:46:09] Christina: Honestly, though, that was so fun. I like that.
[00:46:15] Slutty SEO
[00:46:15] Brett: so can I, okay, I, I, I just want to, I came up, sorry, I’m fucking with my microphone. Um, I came up with a new term. Tell me if it’s original. Um, I was looking for a Shopify plugin for a friend for a consult. And I found it. I found one that honestly seemed to be exactly what we needed. But when I went into the reviews, like there were these pages that were like top 10 plugins for this thing.
[00:46:44] Brett: And then you look and it’s hosted by the people who made the plugin I was looking at, and it’s kind of, it’s, it’s black hat SEO, but I want to call it slutty SEO. Like it just. Like, that term came to me when I was trying [00:47:00] to describe to them why I had hesitations about this. I was like, they have really, it’s just kind of slutty SEO.
[00:47:07] Brett: Um, I think I’m gonna make that a thing.
[00:47:11] Christina: I probably would have, and it’s so interesting, like, and I like, I like your, um, characterization of it as slutty, but like, I probably would have like, oh yeah, that’s just kind of like scummy, whatever, you know, SEO tactics, but, but, but
[00:47:23] Brett: that’s fair. That’s probably less offensive to women who get called sluts all the
[00:47:27] Christina: well, see, but this is
[00:47:28] Brett: But I would never call a woman a slut.
[00:47:30] Christina: but see, but I
[00:47:31] Brett: I would call SEO
[00:47:32] Christina: Right, but that’s what I’m saying. I was going to say, but I kind of like the, the, like, I kind of like the slut shaming aspect of it. You know what I mean? Because on the A, I think that it, like, at this point, for a lot of people, slut has kind of been reclaimed, which is excellent.
[00:47:49] Christina: Um, and honestly, when I call people sluts at this point, I’m not, I, I’m not even being like, oh, you’re, you’re, you’re easy, you’re a whore or whatever. I’m like, you’re a whore in a completely non sexual way. Like, I don’t care what you do with your body. Like, if [00:48:00] I call you a whore, it’s because either I’m telling you how much I love you or like, it’s something else, right?
[00:48:06] Christina: But like,
[00:48:07] Brett: there’s a major book on polyamory called The Ethical Slut, and I feel like it’s been mainstreamed at this
[00:48:13] Christina: Oh, it’s incredibly mainstream. It’s like, if I, if I have like one more people, like, look, you do you. It’s always just the ugliest people who want to tell you about their polycule. And I’m like, I don’t want to imagine any of you fucking, you know, like I’m happy for all of you, but I don’t want to.
[00:48:28] Christina: Yeah.
[00:48:29] Brett: have heard, I’ve heard gay men use the term slut about other gay men quite a bit, like it doesn’t seem to have the, um, kind of, like you, if you say, if a man says it about a woman,
[00:48:42] Christina: Oh yeah,
[00:48:43] Brett: then, then that’s very derisive. But, but a man saying it about another man, or like two girls saying it to each other in a more, like, playful way, I don’t feel like it has the
[00:48:55] Christina: It doesn’t.
[00:48:56] Brett: stigma around it.
[00:48:57] Brett: Anyway,
[00:48:58] Christina: to be clear, like, some women calling other [00:49:00] women like sluts and whores, like, can be very like, or, you know, but, but again, I was going to say, like, at least for me, and I, and I don’t usually use the word slut unless I’m with people who I know will understand my meaning of it, because again, the, the connotations are still what they are.
[00:49:14] Christina: But again, this is why I like you calling it slutty SEO, is that my, my, my personal definition is now completely removed from like the, the, the sexual shaming aspect of it. Right? Like, like, like if I call a woman, like again, if I call somebody a slut, it is either because I’m like, what’s up slut, like lovingly, or it is just to be like, Oh, you fucking suck.
[00:49:35] Christina: Um, but I don’t really care what your sexual proclivities are. Right? Like, I’m not making the judgment that way. I’m not calling you a whore, but like, like I said, like, I’m repeating what I said now, but, um, but at the same time, like, if, if another woman were to call me that, like, in some cases, you do know that they mean it like in a, oh, I’m sexually shaming you way, which I You know, okay, but the, the, I understand like the hesitancy there, but yeah, [00:50:00] you got scummy SEO, slutty SEO though.
[00:50:01] Christina: I like that. I like that.
[00:50:04] Brett: Alright, I have, we are, we are at 50 minutes, and I know we talked about trying to do an hour long episode. I want to talk about Dimspire. me, but if we want to jump straight into Graptitude, I’m game.
[00:50:17] Jeff: No, do it.
[00:50:18] Christina: Yeah. Let’s talk about it.
[00:50:19] Dimspirations
[00:50:19] Brett: so, I have for a couple of years been publishing hashtag dimspirations, which were inspired by inspirational posters, but not, um, think despair.
[00:50:32] Brett: com kind of stuff. And I’m not the only person out there doing this, but I’ve had a lot of fun putting my darkest thoughts into meme format. Um, I recently released, after a sleepless night, um, I released dimspire. me And, uh, or Dimspire me as, as you would say it in a sentence. Um, uh, and, and it has. Most of the [00:51:00] DIMSpirations I’ve done over the last couple of years, and I’ve started updating regularly, and today I fixed the RSS feed, so now you can subscribe via RSS or email, um, and I, and it’s the, the OpenGraph tags are set up such that you can share a URL from any DIMSpiration, and it’ll put the preview image in like your tweet or your Mastodon posts or your Facebook posts, um, so I’m hoping to, like.
[00:51:28] Brett: Get some legs out of this because eventually, eventually I would like to merchandise it. I don’t plan to ever paywall the online version, but I think if I took my best, my best 12 and made a calendar, I think I could do okay
[00:51:44] Jeff: Uh, be a good calendar.
[00:51:47] Christina: I
[00:51:47] Brett: It
[00:51:47] Jeff: like, uh, I like, uh, you have my undivided attention, but even if it, if you divided it, it’s still zero. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math.
[00:51:57] Brett: Um, yeah, no, I had a lot of fun. [00:52:00] I, the whole thing is automated, uh, tremendously. Like I have, uh, an affinity photo template with a bunch of guides in it. And I make sure the background covers the whole thing. And then all the texts is within a. Certain square, and then I save that in RetroBatch, automatically outputs the square version for Instagram and the website, plus wallpaper versions and an iPhone wallpaper version.
[00:52:25] Brett: It zips it all up, creates a manifest for it, puts it on the website. I could run a single rake task and it’ll add all of the new posts and the manifest, and then I can just add a pithy description to
[00:52:39] Christina: written this up?
[00:52:41] Brett: No, I haven’t. I like, I posted, I posted on the blog about the launch, um, but not about the automations.
[00:52:49] Christina: write a thing about the automations because especially like whatever, like you’re, like you’re you’re, if you’re using GitHub Actions or any of those setups or whatnot, because I think that’s really
[00:52:56] Brett: it’s all local. It’s all, it’s all local and very Mac [00:53:00] centric, but
[00:53:00] Christina: Which is fine, but I
[00:53:01] Brett: still be interesting.
[00:53:02] Christina: think it could be interesting to people because I could see how that could be, like, you could turn that into a CICD thing. Um, but, um, even putting that aside, I would love to just read about how you’ve automated this.
[00:53:14] Brett: All right.
[00:53:14] Jeff: I just want to say one that makes me laugh is you have one that says know your body and then it’s like the map of a body and the the head it says bad decisions the shoulders inaction the chest unavoidable reality and everything from there down just is water that’s a good bit that’s a really good bit
[00:53:32] Brett: Yeah, I’ve had a few good ones over the years. And then I got political, like every, when I get really tired, they come out like, like anti gun violence and anti Anti genocide, and,
[00:53:45] Jeff: an asshole.
[00:53:46] Brett: I know, well, and then I, then I get flack, they’re like, I wish you’d keep your politics out of this, and I’m like, is it really political to be, like, anti kids dying, or anti genocide?
[00:53:57] Brett: Like, are these really, like, politically [00:54:00] divisive issues? I don’t know.
[00:54:01] The Topic We Should Have Avoided, Probably
[00:54:01] Jeff: Apparently anti semitic to be anti genocide. Let’s stop there!
[00:54:04] Brett: Yep. Yep, we don’t want to get political.
[00:54:07] Christina: No, well, actually it’s funny because somebody did have a topic here, which was should tech personalities express political views?
[00:54:13] Jeff: was,
[00:54:13] Brett: Which is related to
[00:54:15] Christina: Yeah, I mean, I think it just sort of, because there’s some issues, like I’m going to be completely honest with you. I will not talk publicly about the topic that you were just alluding to.
[00:54:26] Christina: Like, I’m not getting, I’m not going to say a fucking thing about that on any of my channels.
[00:54:31] Brett: I will on Facebook. I’m, I’m more quiet about it where I have a bigger following like Twitter or even Mastodon. I’m not as in your face about my beliefs on the topic, um, but I won’t shy away from it. And honestly, if I had, if I had as many followers as you do, Christina, I would probably be a lot more shy about sharing my political beliefs.[00:55:00]
[00:55:00] Jeff: Christine is like, I just want to keep my DMs.
[00:55:02] Brett: But
[00:55:03] Christina: mean, at this point, I do just want to keep my DMs, but it’s also, it’s beyond that. But no, I get what you’re saying. For me, though, it’s just like, there’s like,
[00:55:10] Brett: like, so on, on Brett Terpstra, On brettterpstra. com, I won’t, I won’t get political. Um, on my personal Twitter account, I’m going to say whatever the hell I want. If I were like on my account for Oracle, uh, no politics, like that’s not even an option, but I don’t think that, I think if you follow a tech personality or any public personality, if you follow their personal account.
[00:55:38] Brett: You should expect to get to know them as a person.
[00:55:42] Christina: I fully agree. And, and I’m completely okay with people making whatever decision they want to make about how, what they want to share or don’t want to share, especially on their personal accounts. And, and I’ve I don’t shy away from sharing some of my personal thoughts clearly, right? Like, I’ve kind of like, that’s been like part of my success, I think, is being authentic and whatnot.
[00:55:59] Christina: That said, [00:56:00] there are some things that I’m just like, I know that nothing good is going to come from me personally speaking out about something, especially because I can’t do anything to solve anything. Like, I can’t actually make any difference, right? So my personal reason for not speaking out has Nothing to do with like thinking, Oh, you know, people shouldn’t do it or whatnot.
[00:56:18] Christina: Cause no, I mean, I, people should do whatever they are comfortable with. I’m just like, there’s some political topics that I feel like, and I’ll just like, just be completely honest about it. There are some instances where it’s easier because the stakes are lower because everybody’s kind of on the same page.
[00:56:32] Christina: And then there are some where honestly, the situation is so complicated and so complex and nuance is
[00:56:39] Jeff: One or the other, it’s usually not both.
[00:56:42] Christina: And, and, and people,
[00:56:43] Jeff: But I won’t get into that argument.
[00:56:45] Christina: right, right. But, but, but it’s like, you know, but like, it’s, it’s like such a complicated, complex thing. And then because there’s no ability to have any sort of nuanced discussion, I’m just like, you know what?
[00:56:55] Christina: I’m not, I’m not going to participate. Like I’m not opposed to anybody else. And I might interact with some [00:57:00] people’s, you know, uh, statements or whatever that, that I feel like I can kind of, you know, get behind, but like my own stuff. Don’t, don’t need to have those conversations, like, publicly, personally, but I respect everybody else who wants to do that.
[00:57:14] Brett: I, I get, like, I do research. I do my own research. No, but I’ll like, I’ll, I’ll do, like,
[00:57:21] Jeff: Educate yourself.
[00:57:23] Brett: legitimate research if a topic Like, if I can’t understand where people are coming from on a topic, I will research and I will try to understand, like, where, where a contradicting argument or a viewpoint is coming from.
[00:57:37] Brett: And sometimes I find that argument so un contradictory. persuasive, dissuasive, that I can’t keep my mouth shut. It just comes spilling out. And I, especially when I’m tired, like I do not check myself well when I’m tired.
[00:57:54] Christina: I’m, I’m the same way. I’m the same way, but it’s weird. It’s like the, the one thing. Cause I’ve had some people who [00:58:00] have like, kind of like yelled at me, like, why aren’t you saying anything about, you know, what’s happening in Gaza? And I’m like, cause I’m not going to, like, cause I’m not going to, like, that’s just for my own mental health.
[00:58:10] Christina: Frankly, I will be, I will completely own that. I’m being selfish here. And I’m like, I’m actually, this is a case where I’m prioritizing. I’m My own like mental health to not get involved doesn’t mean that I’m not paying attention doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions Um, but this is not a thing that I actually for me right now Need to comment on in any way shape or form and frankly, you don’t need to hear my opinion Like you don’t need to care about it.
[00:58:30] Christina: You don’t need to hear it. It doesn’t matter to anyone um having said that like I completely, uh, you know support anybody else’s Right to to speak out and and go for it. I’m just saying like
[00:58:41] Jeff: fucking brutal context and, and, and it’s just brutal. I don’t, it’s not, I’m not getting us deep into that, into the issue of Israel Palestine, but I will say that like it’s, it’s been easier for me in life because I’ve, I’ve had personal experiences there and connections there and that’s just known.
[00:58:57] Jeff: Um, you know, I’ve watched mass graves [00:59:00] get filled with Palestinian bodies. Um, and, and, but putting that aside, like, um, I think that it is fucking impossible for me to receive the kind of feedback or to have the kind of conversation that is so just fucked. And the reason it’s hard is I think that the arguments people have, this isn’t about which side, uh, I mean, I guess it probably always is in some way, and that’s the problem.
[00:59:29] Jeff: But the, the arguments people have, I think, in the way they have them get them further and further away from the actual suffering and pain and horrors and, and murderous violence that is impacting people
[00:59:42] Brett: I have so much to say, but I’m going to
[00:59:44] Christina: No, same. I mean, same. And the only thing I’ll say is I agree with you is there’s just it’s I think that so much because it is literally on the whole issue is, is such a, um, you know, like theological and ideological just Fundamental [01:00:00] disagreement that will not be solved that by, because people do wind up having to go into sometimes two camps, like we do lose sight of the fact of like the, the, the, the death and, and the, and the, you know, the, just the horrors of humanity that are happening.
[01:00:15] Christina: And like, to me, like, that’s the real like focus, but you can’t have just that conversation because you cannot, unfortunately, it is impossible to disentangle it from the other aspect.
[01:00:27] Brett: if you say the word genocide right now in a completely out of context, you just say the word genocide, you start a political conversation. Um, people get very irate. It, I mean, the US has funded genocides throughout its history. Like, this is not, it’s not a, it’s not a crazy conspiracy statement to say that the U.
[01:00:51] Brett: S. funds genocide. And you don’t have to be talking about a specific genocide to say maybe genocide is bad, maybe we shouldn’t do
[01:00:59] Christina: No, I [01:01:00] agree. And no, absolutely, the U. S. has funded, you know, genocide. I mean, like, our previous support link, Jeff, the reason that we had sanctions in Iraq to begin with is, ironically, because we helped aid the genocide by Saddam Hussein against, you know, his own
[01:01:14] Jeff: Kurds and,
[01:01:15] Christina: Kurds, exactly. Yes. Um, and not, not to mention like, like, like our, our support, you know, of certain, you know, South American regimes and, and, and, and people like Pol Pot.
[01:01:24] Christina: Like, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of, of history where the U. S. has 100 percent done that. And you’re completely correct. This particular situation though, because it is such like a long standing thing and you’re not, but, but I would say, I would actually say
[01:01:36] Jeff: Only 1948. Damn, I can’t help, we’re getting, we gotta be careful.
[01:01:39] Brett: Yeah, we, we should,
[01:01:41] Jeff: Not that long.
[01:01:42] Brett: we
[01:01:42] Christina: No, but no, but, but, but I was just going to say like, no, no, but, but I’m just saying like to, to, just to close on this, like.
[01:01:47] Christina: Genocide is a political topic. Like, it’s not, like, it’s not, it’s, it’s fundamentally about politics. I mean, that’s really what it is. So
[01:01:55] Brett: but, but as non politicians, is there anyone who’s pro genocide?[01:02:00]
[01:02:00] Jeff: I think, yes.
[01:02:02] Brett: Okay, that scares me. The fact, the fact that, the fact that that
[01:02:06] Jeff: I mean, look, this, I’ll just say this isn’t even about the Israel Palestine, I would say that like, if you think about Rwanda, you think about what happened in the former Yugoslavia, like, yes, it’s politicians that, that gin it up, it’s the people who do it. Um, and that’s super. Hard to think
[01:02:21] Christina: if you think about there, there are,
[01:02:22] Jeff: Germany fucks me up because my people are all German and like,
[01:02:26] Christina: I was going to say people did it, right? Because and there are many instances of that where there are people who go and it is the governments who gen it up. You’re exactly right. But it’s the people who do it. And it’s the people who do believe that there are some people who don’t have the right to exist and are completely content with that.
[01:02:40] Brett: then there’s all the people who said, I didn’t realize how bad it was. Like you talked to people that were regular democratic German citizens at the, in 1940, that they didn’t realize how bad what was going on was, and they didn’t feel the need to take a stance. Not that like it would have made a [01:03:00] difference at the time.
[01:03:01] Brett: Um,
[01:03:02] Jeff: gonna attempt to button this up by laughing at something I just said, which is Nazi Germany really fucks me up. I just like, it’s like, oh, really? Oh, wow. That guy’s really,
[01:03:13] Brett: Yeah, we got, we got, we got way off track here, I’m
[01:03:16] Christina: No,
[01:03:16] Jeff: I appreciate it. I, I, this, this is great. Um, all right. Graftitude or what? Graftitude or bust?
[01:03:23] Christina: Love it.
[01:03:26] grAPPtitude
[01:03:26] Jeff: Um, okay. Who’s going first?
[01:03:28] Brett: You are.
[01:03:29] Jeff: Oh, okay, great. Um, so I, I opened MarsEdit for the first time and probably since the second Bush administration, um, and I opened it because I realized, oh, you know what, well, I just wanted to see it. It’s on set app. We all love Setapp. And
[01:03:47] Brett: Martha is so good.
[01:03:48] Jeff: great thing about Setapp is it allows me to just, there’s a lot of apps that have just been gloriously in production and improving for decades that are at Setapp so I can open them and be like, look at you, um, you’re all [01:04:00] grown up.
[01:04:00] Jeff: And, uh, the, the fun I had with MarsEdit was a couple of things. I actually really enjoy creating Mastodon posts in MarsEdit, which you can do. Um, I Don’t like making Mastodon posts in Mastodon, um, even though I used Ivory, which is, which is great, uh, you know, Tweetbots, Xbots, uh, RIP, R I P. Um, but I, the reason I’m actually bringing up MarsEdit, which I would just say is delightful, is it helped me to archive my many, many Tumblr blocks.
[01:04:30] Jeff: Uh, every once in a while, I’m like, I should go out and just make a list of all the, the. Fucking ghosts I have out there. And so I was able to archive, I mean, I have Tumblr blogs where there’s like three posts, right? It’s like, Oh, this is a great idea.
[01:04:41] Christina: How do you do this with, um, with MarsEdit? You just log in with, um, your
[01:04:44] Jeff: can just, yeah, you can log in with Tumblr and it just sucks in all the posts, um, which is really great.
[01:04:50] Jeff: And, and including the misspellings.
[01:04:53] Brett: WordPress sites as
[01:04:54] Jeff: And the WordPress sites. Yep, for sure. For sure. And, and somehow you can still at least import your blog [01:05:00] spot sites, which I, I haven’t. It’s a little more, it’s a little trickier. They don’t, the blog spot, API or the blogger API went away in terms of being able to post from Marta, but it seems like you can still import from there.
[01:05:10] Jeff: And I need to do that. ’cause I have a lot of those too. I used to like just spray blogs indiscriminately into the crowd. It’s just like, but that was probably early bipolar and, and also ADHD
[01:05:21] Christina: I, I, I, I
[01:05:22] Jeff: I have an idea. It now must be real.
[01:05:24] Brett: undiagnosed here,
[01:05:26] Christina: I was gonna say, I think that it’s like, it’s, it’s both Tumblr, uh, or not Tumblr, it’s, it’s both ADHD and like, like tech, um, early adopter thing, right? Cause I think that I know so many tech people who, as. Many of them aren’t even ADHD, who are just like, Oh, I have an idea. I want to start a blog. Because we always have this itch.
[01:05:42] Christina: Like, it’s the easiest thing to do is to spin up another website or another blog. And, uh, and
[01:05:48] Jeff: really funny name.
[01:05:50] Brett: Well, look, it’s insane to think about the days before you could do that. Like, what did people like us, when we had an [01:06:00] idea, what’d we do? Like, we told, maybe we made a zine, but mostly we just told our friends. And suddenly, like, people our age suddenly had this, we could, we can spin up a Tumblr. We can spin up a blogger site.
[01:06:13] Christina: We can have a, we can have a live
[01:06:14] Brett: this with
[01:06:14] Christina: we can have a GeoCities. Yeah. We have
[01:06:16] Jeff: it was such a glorious time. And this is the second episode, I think in a row that we talked about Tumblr. Um, it was such a glorious time and I’m so glad I had those Tumblrs cause they’re like little journals. And even the ones that were, um, just three posts now, what’s nice about having the Mars edit is there there’s everything, right?
[01:06:32] Jeff: It’s all there. And, and that’s really nice. And so even if it had three posts, it’s now alongside 10 other Tumblrs that had, you know, six to 40 posts each, um, my proudest. Blog title, and this one’s dead, was Skinny Notebook Full of Code, which was when I first started coding as a journalist. And I was like, I have a skinny notebook full of code, and I thought that was a great name.
[01:06:52] Brett: Oh, that didn’t, what, on the show notes, wasn’t your pick originally, uh, Jupiter Notebooks? [01:07:00] Jupiter Labs. So, okay, we’re going to talk about that in the future, I hope, because I feel like that is exactly the kind of coding you did in journalism.
[01:07:08] Jeff: moved, yeah, I moved this down, uh, in place of it because I had it as a topic because I wanted to talk about it on my Tumblr, so I snuck it in in gratitude.
[01:07:15] Brett: I would like to, two points I’ll add to the MarsEdit discussion. I recently gave away MarsEdit, uh, a few copies on brettterpstra. com. There will be a link in the show notes for the upcoming giveaways. And this week is Black Ink from Daniel Jalkut, who also made, uh, MarsEdit and Black Ink is a great,
[01:07:36] Jeff: FastScripts?
[01:07:38] Brett: uh, yeah.
[01:07:39] Brett: Um, it’s, I think I already did the fast script. Yeah. Uh, Black Ink is a great crossword puzzle. Like if you want to If you want to
[01:07:46] Jeff: Oh, I need to try it.
[01:07:47] Brett: I can finish a crossword puzzle five times faster using black ink than I can even using like an online version where you have to
[01:07:55] Jeff: Why? Why is it
[01:07:56] Brett: I just keyboard shortcuts, man, like you can [01:08:00] just, you can just flip through the whole thing and you see a clue and you get a couple of cross
[01:08:03] Jeff: Thanks for not saying key chords.
[01:08:05] Brett: switch, switch, switch your orientation, type out the word you
[01:08:09] Christina: Totally. And it’s a great app.
[01:08:10] Jeff: try
[01:08:11] Christina: It’s also, it’s like, I love the, I, I pay for the, like, um, well, it’s like, I guess it’s part of a New York Times subscription or whatever, but you know, you get the games and whatnot and, and that stuff.
[01:08:19] Jeff: it till Wednesday.
[01:08:20] Christina: yeah. And so, like, I like their app a lot. Like I think that their iOS app
[01:08:25] Jeff: It’s
[01:08:25] Brett: mini, I’ll do the mini on the iOS app, but if I’m going to do the actual crossword, Black Ink is the
[01:08:30] Christina: No, I was going to say, but I really enjoy being able to like have it on my Mac. Like it’s, it’s a really great app. Uh, but yeah. Um, yeah. So shout out to Jacob cause he’s, he’s the best, um, Um, my, my favorite Tumblr incidentally is, uh, cause I had a whole bunch of them too. Um, it’s fuckyeahcorrections.
[01:08:50] Christina: tumblr. com.
[01:08:51] Jeff: The fuck yeah, whole fuck yeah idea
[01:08:53] Christina: So good.
[01:08:54] Jeff: was so great. Fuck yeah corrections. Okay. Is this still up?
[01:08:56] Christina: Yeah, it is. And so the, the, the impetus was that, uh, [01:09:00] do you remember Alex from Target? He was like this, this kid who was like cute, who somebody like did a meme on. This was ten years ago now. New York Times wrote about it. And because it’s the New York Times, on Twitter had had a meme showing Kel from, from, from Good Burger.
[01:09:14] Christina: And this is the correction, November 10th, 2014. An article on Thursday about the latest internet sensation of, quote, Alex from Target, end quote, a picture of a teenager bagging merchandise at the retailer that went viral online, described incorrectly a subsequent internet posting of, quote, Kel from Good Burger, end quote.
[01:09:32] Christina: It was a frame from the 1997 film Good Burger, starring actor Kel Mitchell. It was not a photograph of a teenager in a juff.
[01:09:41] Jeff: Wow. Wow. Wow.
[01:09:45] Brett: I like, so Christina is always asking us if we’ve heard of, you know, fads, viral topics, memes, and Jeff and I are always like, no, but you bring up Alex from Target and we’re like, oh yeah.
[01:09:57] Christina: were like, yeah, because that was like Halcyon Days, like [01:10:00] it was so good, but.
[01:10:01] Jeff: Well, it’s like how the only sports team I can talk about is the 1987 Twins. Like it’s, it’s a thing. Related to my AARP conversation, which I’ll save for next week. Sorry, Christina.
[01:10:12] Christina: was gonna say, there’s another funny one too. An article last Sunday about Bradley Cooper, who is
[01:10:16] Jeff: I love this
[01:10:17] Christina: revival of The Elephant Man, reverting correctly to the London address where Joseph Carey Merrick, the real Elephant Man, exhibited himself. The address is now a sorry store. It is not, our sincerest apologies, a sorry store.
[01:10:33] Jeff: That reminds me of something I’ll say briefly, which is I was recently talking to a friend who works at a news organization for which you would be disappointed to learn what I’m about to tell you, which is that they’re in the process of unionizing and one of the things they hope to get out of being in union is fact checkers.
[01:10:47] Jeff: And let me tell you,
[01:10:49] Christina: Yeah.
[01:10:50] Jeff: if you knew what this organization was, which one day you will, it would be very disappointing.
[01:10:56] Christina: This was one of my favorites, because I didn’t have a lot of posts on this Tumblr. It was just, it was one that I [01:11:00] started in 2014 and then forgot about promptly. Um, the AP deleted a tweet that incorrectly referred to Lauren Conrad as Lauren Hill. A corrected tweet will be published shortly. Because they’re like, oh, Lauren from the Hills is Lau I mean, it’s just, it’s so good.
[01:11:16] Jeff: Oh my God. I love it. I
[01:11:19] Brett: All right, Christina, what you got?
[01:11:21] Christina: Alright, so this is one that I’ve talked about before, but a new version just came out, so I’m going to give it a shout out again. So this is FF Works, which is, um, a great ff neg, uh, front end, um, for Mac os. It’s at ff works.info and it is, or actually that’s not correct. That is correct. Yes. It’s FFworks.
[01:11:41] Christina: net. My bad. My apologies. Um, but FFworks 4 just came out. Um, and I don’t remember what the upgrade price was, although it was, it was fairly low. I think that it’s, it’s still like 22 pounds, I think, for the full version. Um, and
[01:11:54] Jeff: how many meters away from, from your wallet? Are you?
[01:11:57] Christina: I mean, I don’t know. Well, because, because he, he [01:12:00] sells it or he sells it in euros or he sells it in pounds and so, so you’ve gotta buy it like that way, so it, yeah.
[01:12:05] Christina: Yeah. It’s 22 euros. So, so, uh, ’cause I think he’s German, so what, whatever. Um, the, uh,
[01:12:10] Jeff: solver. Hello, Graftitude.
[01:12:12] Christina: so, uh, exactly, so, oh, okay. So it’s 14, uh, it’s 14 euros to upgrade, and then it’s 22 for, for the new thing. Um, and this is just a, a great app.
[01:12:21] Brett: which is 23. 82 US dollars
[01:12:24] Christina: hey, great. Okay. Well, that’s fantastic because that means that the, the dollar is either
[01:12:30] Brett: exchange rate is great.
[01:12:31] Christina: I was going to say the exchange rate is actually good now. Uh, cause before that’d be like, Oh, okay. So that’s 30 bucks
[01:12:36] Brett: like, it was like 1. 5, not too long
[01:12:38] Christina: It was exactly. So I’m like, okay, good. So what’s great about this is that if, um, it’s, uh, like, you know, we’ve talked about FFmpeg before. Um, it is one of those tools that I use all the time for so many different things.
[01:12:51] Christina: Um, and, and it’s great if you need. Many times you do need to, like, re encode media into different formats and whatnot. Um, but the problem with FFMPEC is that even with [01:13:00] ChatGPT, like, writing scripts, even with ChatGPT, remembering what to fucking do with it is a nightmare. It’s like the most useful application of all time.
[01:13:09] Christina: And it’s actually well designed. I’m not even gonna lie and be like, Oh, it’s not like a well designed syntax or whatever. It’s just got so many fucking options that who can keep track of them? It’s like image magic, right? Like, these are these amazing utilities.
[01:13:22] Brett: And a lot, and a lot of the options, you don’t
[01:13:24] Christina: Know about, right?
[01:13:26] Brett: not so well versed in video formats that you would understand what the option will actually do to the end video. So a GUI is so nice for
[01:13:35] Christina: It is. And what’s, what I like about this GUI is that it is, in my opinion, like the perfect kind of mix because there are, there, there are two ways I think you could go about doing this. You could, that could be successful. Uh, there’s, there’s a third way, which would be the Linux way, which we’ll talk about.
[01:13:50] Christina: I, I could, you know, talk about at length, which would, Be the bad way. But the two ways you could do this successfully to like make like a gooey of an FF impact thing would be to [01:14:00] either A, have a very simple drag and drop process where you then have like, like per Yeah. Where you just have like a very like easy kind of slider and it’s just telling you what to do, but you really can’t go that advance and you can’t, you know, go beyond kind of what, what a lot of things you could do in QuickTime back in the day.
[01:14:15] Christina: Right. Or you can do what FF works does, which is give you all those options. Um. It hides them to a certain extent. So you have to kind of go looking if you want to do more with it. And you do need to kind of, it’s not going to be the most intuitive thing to be able to figure out, Oh, I can do all these things, but it definitely does service all your options.
[01:14:34] Christina: But what I appreciated about it is that unlike If this were a Linux desktop app, this would literally just be every single option available in FFmpeg as like a checkbox or a slider, but with no understanding of what any of that means, and like, not well organized, like it would just be a disaster. Um, this is
[01:14:55] Jeff: going to talk about Linux and Israel Palestine in the same episode?
[01:14:58] Brett: ha ha ha
[01:14:59] Christina: what, [01:15:00] look, wow,
[01:15:00] Brett: ha ha
[01:15:01] Christina: sssssssshaaaaaaaa
[01:15:03] Brett: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
[01:15:07] Christina: I feel suitably owned, um, that’s, that’s fucking perfect. But, that’s so good, but yeah, no, but
[01:15:15] Jeff: different.
[01:15:16] Christina: Are they? Are they? Um, but it’s so different. Yeah.
[01:15:21] Brett: Don’t they both date back to, back to like
[01:15:23] Christina: So,
[01:15:24] Jeff: both, yeah, Oh, Oh, but they have similar characteristics in the rhetorical space.
[01:15:34] Christina: but I was just gonna say, but I really enjoy, I appreciate this, like, application so much because I do like that it treats you like an adult and that you can, you can make it really easy. Like, you can set up a droplet, just make it really easy to auto convert stuff. But if you do need to, the reason that someone would want to use this app over Permute is because you do need to use this more.
[01:15:53] Christina: Advanced parts of FFmpeg, but you don’t want to fuck with it. So, honestly, for 23, [01:16:00] highly recommended. Um, and, uh, it gets very frequent updates and, uh, works with like, you know, 4K and 5K footage and stuff. So it’s, it’s really good.
[01:16:10] Brett: Very nice.
[01:16:11] Jeff: How many rubles is it going to set me back?
[01:16:14] Brett: checkduckduckgo, I bet it would do that conversion for you.
[01:16:17] Jeff: I just downloaded it. I had, I had actually forgotten about this and I, and I think it’s great.
[01:16:22] Brett: What is, what is 22 euros and rupees? That’s what I want to know. Um, so my pick is I, so I spent my morning, um, creating the RSS feed for Dimspired. me, um, which ended up being a very manual process, which I then ported to Feedpress and made like, you can do an email subscription and everything. As I was testing it, I opened up my trustee RSS app, which lately has been reader, R-E-E-D-E-R.
[01:16:53] Brett: Um, there are, there are a ton like Net Newswire and Read Kitt, and there are so many [01:17:00] good RSS apps for Mac, but I, I keep coming back to reader. I love the single, uh, single key keyboard shortcuts. I love some of the niceties of the interface. I love bionic reading, which will like. It re highlights, it bolds certain letters in each word.
[01:17:21] Brett: So, do you know, have you ever seen the font, um, uh, Open Dyslexic? Um, it’s kind of like that, and it creates like kind of a magnet for your eyes so you can scan a line and pick it up. Maybe, maybe 50 percent faster than you would reading just plain text. Um, it really helps with speed reading. It’s kind of cool.
[01:17:45] Brett: Um, uh, Reader also has like iCloud sync. If you don’t feel like using, it works with Feedbin and all of the other various services that replaced Feedburner, you know, back from the day. Um, Which, [01:18:00] which I’m grateful for, but, uh, Reader has iCloud subscript subscription sync, uh, so you can get, uh, your syncs, your, your feed synced across your devices without having to use a third party service.
[01:18:14] Brett: Personally, I use Feedbin. I love it. I think it’s great, but, uh, but you have options. So, um, that’s my, that’s my, that’s my Graptitude.
[01:18:26] Jeff: Awesome.
[01:18:27] Christina: And, and, and you still use Feedbreast, uh, to manage, uh, your RSS feeds. Um, like is there, and that’s like 10 a month or something, isn’t it?
[01:18:36] Brett: Uh, yeah, but that’s for unlimited feeds. So I have feeds for multiple sites and, and I, I do pay like you could, there’s a free version that you don’t get like email subscription and you can’t do podcasts and stuff like that. Um, but if you want to, if you want basically unlimited feeds and, uh, the ability to embed.
[01:18:59] Brett: [01:19:00] Audio and have email subscriptions and all of that. Yeah. It’s like 10 bucks a month, but I have, I have enough. I have enough feeds to justify that.
[01:19:09] Christina: No, I mean, I think that makes sense. I was just, uh, uh, I, um, yeah. Cause like, cause at this point, like FeedBurner is, I think just only just, I think it’s basically gone. I mean, I think that like it, it, it exists only in so far, like they’ve gotten rid of almost every single feature. So, which is a shame because like that was free for so long.
[01:19:29] Christina: Um, and,
[01:19:31] Brett: so it’s Google reader
[01:19:32] Christina: Oh, I know, I know.
[01:19:34] Brett: we are now.
[01:19:34] Christina: But like, but like, it’s, but FeedBurner seems dumb because it’s just like, okay, it’s just like a front end thing, like for, you know, it’s generating like RSS files, like you’re hosting them yourself, you know what I mean? Like,
[01:19:45] Brett: I, I love feed press partly because much like pinboard, it’s kind of a low maintenance.
[01:19:52] Christina: yeah, it is. Yeah,
[01:19:54] Brett: I can’t remember the guy’s name. It’s an Italian name, but, um, Maxime? Or was [01:20:00] that? Anyway, like, like he’s making 10 bucks a month off of all these people who are just forwarding, forwarding the RSS feeds they’re already creating.
[01:20:10] Christina: what I’m saying. Yeah,
[01:20:11] Brett: something that offers analytics to basically a PHP script. And, and that’s like, I I’m happy to pay it, but also I, I could stand to have like, uh, a passive income like that, that required probably very little actual like customer service or anything.
[01:20:30] Christina: Oh, I’m sure there’s almost none and and honestly like I’m not mad at him at all Like I’m happy for him for it I think my whole like issue with it is I’m like, why should I pay 10 a month for this? I know that like that if you have enough sites like it is actually going to be like like
[01:20:45] Brett: stats. It’s
[01:20:46] Christina: Well, no,
[01:20:47] Brett: if you want,
[01:20:48] Christina: and I get that
[01:20:49] Brett: want statistics, you need it.
[01:20:51] Christina: No, and I get that.
[01:20:52] Christina: I’m just saying, like, when you know how little it is, there’s like the part of my mind, which is broken, which goes to, well, why don’t I just spend that 10 a
[01:20:58] Brett: Right? There you
[01:20:59] Christina: on, on, on, [01:21:00] on a VPS server where I’m hosting this myself and doing all this myself? Why am I paying someone else for it? And then of course I realized, well, you don’t want to fucking maintain that, Christina.
[01:21:09] Brett: Right. Exactly.
[01:21:10] Christina: get that. And, and, and that’s why he can have this passive income. But I’m saying the part of my brain that’s broken is that I’m like, and sorry
[01:21:18] Brett: If I, if I put eight hours of coding into this, I could do it for basically free.
[01:21:24] Christina: That, that’s
[01:21:25] Brett: I have, I have that same part of my brain. You’re not alone.
[01:21:28] Christina: So, so I’m, but, but, but I’m happy for him that like, it’s still, um, uh, there. And, um, uh, also happy, I haven’t used Reader in a while. I didn’t, I, I honestly, I didn’t know Reader was still being updated.
[01:21:39] Jeff: I didn’t either.
[01:21:41] Christina: that’s great.
[01:21:41] Brett: is. Yeah, they came out with a new, I think it was this year, maybe last year, they came out with a whole, like, major version bump. Um, honestly, NetNewsWire kind of stole the show. Um, and, and it’s a great app. Uh, it doesn’t, There are some things [01:22:00] about Reader that I miss when I use NetNewsWire, uh, but NetNewsWire is free, and it’s a solid app, and it’s really good to see it come back after, like, how long did it go unmaintained?
[01:22:11] Brett: Like 10 years?
[01:22:12] Jeff: a long time. But then yeah,
[01:22:15] Brett: Is that Brent Simmons now?
[01:22:17] Christina: it’s Brent Simmons. Well, he was it originally, and then he, um, sold it to NetGator, um, who did it. And then
[01:22:24] Jeff: then got it back.
[01:22:25] Christina: then he got it back. Yeah, he was able to get it back and then he decided to make it open source, which I think is really remarkable and amazing. Um, and, and at this point, I think that’s what I use, or I just use like, honestly, Feedbin’s website has been good enough for me.
[01:22:38] Christina: Um,
[01:22:38] Brett: ReadKit, ReadKit was really
[01:22:40] Christina: I really did like
[01:22:41] Brett: for me. Um, like I, it started hanging and crashing and like, that was a few operating systems ago and maybe it’s fine now. Um, cause it had a lot of cool features, um, that made it worth the price for me at the time. But anyhow, Hey, we [01:23:00] did it in an hour and 22 minutes.
[01:23:01] Jeff: Not bad.
[01:23:03] Brett: Like no edits. I’m not going to edit. I’m not going to edit anything. We said what we said. We’re going to, we’re going to leave it all in.
[01:23:11] Jeff: Alright, then I guess I hope you get more sleep tonight.
[01:23:17] Christina: for real.
[01:23:18] Brett: Get some sleep.
[01:23:19] Christina: Yeah. Get some sleep, everyone. For real.
A somewhat manic episode that covers everything (BUT the Mental Health Corner, which is a 404 again). Kicking it off with an in memoriam app pick, opining about Microsoft Word and Excel, and the Grammy talk you knew was coming.
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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.
Transcript404
[00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by HIMS. Stay tuned for more information.
[00:00:08] Jeff: Hello everybody, welcome to what might be, and I’m not going to explain, might be a kind of a weird episode of Overtired, but doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Why are you asking so many questions? Um, this is Jeff, uh, Severance Gunsel, one of your three hosts. Uh, I’m here with Christina Warren. Hi, Christina.
[00:00:25] Christina: Hello, hello.
[00:00:26] Jeff: And Brett, what are you eating in the microphone?
[00:00:28] Brett: I have a popsicle.
[00:00:31] Christina: They’re homemade, huh?
[00:00:32] Brett: Yeah.
[00:00:32] Jeff: they homemade? What’s the, what’s the, what’s the flavor?
[00:00:35] Brett: This is like lemon echinacea.
[00:00:39] Jeff: Nice.
[00:00:40] Brett: weird organic juices, that’s what I get, and I make them into popsicles, and I eat them when I’m drunk.
[00:00:47] Jeff: Oh, that’s all right. That’s got nothing to do with anything. Um, you know, I started that with what’s the flavor, which reminded me, have you ever had a long term situation where you would clearly, um, have the phone number that’s [00:01:00] being given out by a drug dealer? Um, which has happened to me. Uh, and for a glorious two years, I would get these calls and they’d be something like, here’s three of my favorites.
[00:01:10] Jeff: Okay. One was, I answer the phone. Hey, what’s the flavor? That’s it, right? The next one is, uh, Hey, you still at Taco Bell? Right? It’s looking beautiful. And then my favorite was Christmas Eve. And it was just a text that said, I see you over there, Negro.
[00:01:26] Brett: I cannot relate to this at all. What,
[00:01:29] Jeff: And I wrote back and I was like, I just, I can’t really, it’s hard for me to explain, but I know You have the wrong person.
[00:01:36] Brett: how did you end up with these numbers?
[00:01:38] Jeff: don’t know if it was a number that was just too close to a, uh, what is clearly a drug dealer’s number, because it wasn’t just that. There was a lot more of like, what’s the flavor?
[00:01:45] Jeff: Like, like a lot more checking in on Fridays, like.
[00:01:48] Christina: Somebody gave the wrong number
[00:01:49] Jeff: Somebody gave their own number out, it got passed around, you know, call this guy and ask what’s the flavor, you know, and I loved it, loved it, and, uh, and I missed those calls, I wish I could figure [00:02:00] out, I blocked everybody because you’d keep getting calls, my block list is just epic, in fact, I could probably give my block list to the Minneapolis Police Department and, uh, get some sort of reward, but I wouldn’t do that.
[00:02:10] Brett: What, what drug is it they would ask what, what’s the flavor?
[00:02:15] Jeff: I don’t know, maybe it was just like, what’s going on tonight? It’s also possible this was just a guy that, like, maybe this was a guy who made promises. And he knew he couldn’t keep them, and so he gave out the number. But it wasn’t just men, or just women, right? Like, it was a, it was an interesting mix. And it was mostly calls, and not texts, which is, I think, data.
[00:02:33] Jeff: But I don’t really know what to make of it. I just miss them. I miss my community.
[00:02:37] Brett: I have had, I’ve had a lot of drug dealers phone numbers in my life, and my
[00:02:44] Jeff: still in your phone?
[00:02:45] Brett: No. My texts to them have been mostly about, like, where you at? Uh, you coming?
[00:02:53] Jeff: You still a Taco Bell?
[00:02:54] Brett: I can’t imagine what the, what the answer to what flavor[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Jeff: What’s the flavor? No, I mean, that’s just a thing to say, too, though. Like, what’s the
[00:03:02] Brett: is
[00:03:03] Jeff: Yeah, but like, I was, yeah, I don’t know. I was always very polite. I didn’t put anybody on, because I don’t know who’s listening. Um, you know, like, that’s all. So anyway, welcome, everybody. Here we are. Um, and, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna start with Graftitude again, aren’t we?
[00:03:22] Brett: Are we?
[00:03:23] Jeff: I thought we said that when we were coming in. I’m gonna ask Christina. Christina, we’re
[00:03:26] grAPPtitude at the top!
[00:03:26] Jeff: starting with Gratitude again.
[00:03:28] Christina: Yeah, let’s start with Graftitude, let’s do it.
[00:03:31] Brett: I have
[00:03:31] Jeff: take, and then we’ll take calls. Let’s just get right into it. I mean, I got the lights are all blinking on my phone and callers are ready.
[00:03:38] Brett: I have a very important graft.
[00:03:41] Jeff: Okay, let’s, let’s do it, man. You’re a very important man.
[00:03:44] Brett: admittedly, I’m a little drunk. If you couldn’t tell from the way I said the word admittedly, um,
[00:03:52] Jeff: Or from the point at which he told you he only eats popsicles when he’s drunk or likes to eat them when
[00:03:56] Brett: Like, there have been plenty of clues. If you’re not following along [00:04:00] at this point, I can’t help you.
[00:04:02] Jeff: I’m just going to go ahead and put this in the topic list. Just gonna,
[00:04:08] Brett: So,
[00:04:09] Jeff: it’s like when you, when you add a to do that you’ve already done, I’m just going to add this to Brett’s Brett’s drunk. That’ll be number one.
[00:04:15] Brett: this is, this is kind of a post mortem graftitude. Um, I have loved, if you ask me for the last five years, what’s your favorite? Mind mapping application. I would have told you iThoughts. Both for,
[00:04:33] Jeff: you that before you even said it.
[00:04:35] Brett: both for Mac and iOS. I have been a huge fan of iThoughts. And Craig from iThoughts has just declared he’s done.
[00:04:46] Jeff: That’s very sad.
[00:04:47] Brett: Yeah. So my gratitude is, uh, historical. Like, I have loved iThoughts so much and He’s going to maintain it for [00:05:00] as long as it works without any upkeep, which on macOS probably means two, maybe three OS
[00:05:09] Jeff: Yeah, I was going to say, what does that? Yeah.
[00:05:11] Brett: On iOS, nobody knows how long that’ll last. It could be the next, the next iOS version could kill the iOS version of iThoughts.
[00:05:23] Brett: Um, but iThoughtsX is. My favorite mind mapping application. And I will be, I will be bitterly disappointed to have to switch to another. I mean, MindNode is a great app. I love the guys from MindNode. I’ve met them. I have talked to them. They’re great people. iThoughts has always had my heart. Um, so this is actually in memoriam. A, a gratitude in memoriam because [00:06:00] I, thoughts has declared the end of to head aware and the i thoughts application.
[00:06:07] Jeff: I’m going through the Twitter feed, which is very old at this point for reasons that aren’t going to be hard for us to understand. But there’s an amazing update note from December 8th, 2021, where iThoughts has added latex support. And. It’s funny because I’ve never seen LaTeX look ugly. It definitely looks ugly in a PurpleMind map.
[00:06:30] Brett: Yeah. I can’t imagine check looking good in any kinda visual application. Sure.
[00:06:37] Christina: No, but like, but also This is why we’ll miss the app, because like, who else is going to, you know that, you know that like five people were incredibly vocal about LaTeX support, like five, like maybe three, like, but that’s, that’s it. We’re incredibly vocal and, and he like took the time to be like, okay, you know what, even though this is not going to be attractive and will not apply to [00:07:00] 99.
[00:07:00] Christina: 999997 percent of users, I’m still going to do the work and do it.
[00:07:05] Brett: he was, he was a nerd’s nerd, developer.
[00:07:08] Jeff: Is. I mean, he’s not dead. He is a NerdsNerd
[00:07:11] Brett: not. And I checked in with him. I’m like, Hey, man, you okay? And he’s like, Yeah, I just, I’m just done with the app thing. And He’s, he’s okay, but my favorite app is not. And so I feel a sense of loss. I swear, Craig is okay. Everything’s fine.
[00:07:33] Brett: We’re just losing an app over the next few years. It’ll continue working. I guarantee it’ll continue working for a few years, but, but it’s dead
[00:07:45] Jeff: this is sweet. So I’m, I’m putting this stuff in the show notes, but I’m at, I’m on the site now looking at like sort of the posts over the years. And there’s a June 2008 post that just says, started playing with iPhone development as a hobby. And that is such a beautiful, [00:08:00] uh, thing to look back on, given the history of this app, which is a
[00:08:03] Christina: It really is.
[00:08:04] Brett: even the, yeah, so I love it on Mac OS, but even on iOS, it was such a great, it was a nerds, nerds app. Like you, you had to appreciate, like you could create a mind map and output it to a word document, like natively in the app. And like, that’s just, it’s for nerds. It’s a, it’s an app for nerds and I’m going to miss it.
[00:08:34] The future of “nerd” apps
[00:08:34] Jeff: That’s amazing. Can I ask you a question as a developer? Is there, is there anything about your understanding of, of him having to shut this down that says anything at all? And for Christina, for you too, this is anything at all about the current landscape for
[00:08:48] Christina: I was gonna, I was gonna say, I, I, like, I was gonna ask the same question, or like, have some of the same thoughts. Like, what does this say about how viable this making a nerds, nerd, nerds app is?[00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Jeff: Hmm.
[00:09:01] Brett: That’s a really good question. So I make an app called Marked
[00:09:06] Christina: Mm hmm.
[00:09:06] Brett: and Marked has gone from, in the time that Gruber would talk about it, it has gone from 3, 000 a month to 500 a month. Okay. Nine, nine. 900
[00:09:25] Jeff: This, if we were in the same room, I feel like this is a good time for me to just take your wallet, actually, now that we’re talking about money.
[00:09:32] Brett: But, but my sales have gone down significantly and I can’t speak to the general, I don’t know what apps like Better Touch Tool and, uh, Hazel and you know, like these real nerd apps are doing. I don’t really know how they’re doing these days. Um, I know how my own nerdy apps are [00:10:00] doing. Um, I know that even Bunch, which I give away for free, has been down lately.
[00:10:07] Brett: So, I don’t, I honestly don’t know what the future of nerd apps is.
[00:10:16] Christina: hate saying this because people are going to get mad at me or whatever, but I think that it’s subscription, right? It’s subscription and it’s Sass, because that’s the only way you can make it work, and it isn’t like developers want to turn everything into a subscription, it’s that that’s the only way they can do it.
[00:10:32] Christina: Make something sustainable, like, because otherwise it’s, I think that, you know, the number of people who are willing to install a new app is difficult. I think the barrier to entry is harder than it has ever been before. Um, and you have so many other people who you’re competing with free on the surface, right?
[00:10:54] Christina: So like, it’s not actually free, but it’ll be free and, and then it’ll have, you know, some sort of hidden [00:11:00] payment thing. But yeah, I am. I worry the same way you
[00:11:06] Brett: Define hidden payment thing.
[00:11:08] Christina: Well, what I mean is, is like, you’ll download it, and it’ll be free, and then it’ll be like, oh, if you want to continue using this, you’ve got to pay X dollars a week or X dollars a
[00:11:16] Brett: just to be clear in the Apple ecosystem, that is the only way you can offer a
[00:11:24] Christina: I know.
[00:11:25] Brett: if you want people to be able to try your product for free,
[00:11:28] Christina: I know.
[00:11:29] Brett: you have to offer that in that purchase after a week and say, now you have to continue paying like there’s like back in the days of like shareware, you know, like we could offer.
[00:11:41] Christina: you don’t sell on the Mac App Store, right? Like, it, like,
[00:11:44] Brett: We can offer seven 14 day trials and you can choose to pay.
[00:11:49] Christina: which to be clear, I don’t think anybody, for any reason, like, other than they want to just maybe be as expansive as possible, I don’t know anybody who’s like, Oh, I have to be in the Mac App Store.
[00:11:59] Christina: If I’m not [00:12:00] in the Mac App Store, I’m dead. Like, fuck that. Like, no actual
[00:12:03] Brett: For, for a couple of years, that was true
[00:12:06] Christina: I know it’s not anymore though, but it’s 2024. It’s not 20 It’s not It’s not
[00:12:09] Brett: it is not true anymore. Exactly, exactly. And for a couple of years, it was true. If you weren’t in the Mac app store, you were, you were trying water. Now most income, like set up gives me more income than the Mac app store
[00:12:27] Christina: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:28] Brett: And,
[00:12:29] Christina: they have better discovery and they have an actual captive audience of people who actually want to use apps, whereas like the
[00:12:35] Brett: and a more, and a more curated selection
[00:12:38] Christina: well, well, that’s, that’s kind of my point. Like the discovery is better, right? Because if you open, like I’m opening up the Mac App Store right now and I’m looking at it and here’s when I click on discover, here’s what I see.
[00:12:48] Christina: I see games that we love and I’m seeing, um,
[00:12:52] Brett: Bullshit games that charge you for upgrades.
[00:12:56] Christina: And I’m seeing like, you know, I’m seeing like, uh, like you’re a cat, you know, in Cyber City [00:13:00] and Stray. And I’m like, oh yeah, because that’s really going to make up for being cyber, the fact that cyberpunk can’t be played. Like, fuck that.
[00:13:05] Christina: And then I’m like, oh, what’s to watch? I can watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime. Okay. Like, I really like, um, um, What’s His Face, um, Childish Gambino, but like, I don’t care. And then I finally see, Oh, get started with Mac Essentials. And I, I click on that. And the first three things, the first, here, here are the five, here are the five things that I’ve got listed for essential business apps, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, PDF Expert, and Highlights, PDF Reader, and Notes.
[00:13:33] Christina: Like what the
[00:13:34] Jeff: more.
[00:13:35] Christina: And then it gets even worse when you go to must play Mac games, which this is just sad. Lies of Pea, Stray, Grid Legends, okay, Return to Monkey Island, like what year is this? Honestly. Evil Village for Mac, Resident Evil 4, these are Both old, you know, um, Disney Dreamlight Valley, like, what the fuck?
[00:13:55] Christina: SnowRunner, which is a simulation game, like, these are, you know, like, not [00:14:00] good. Um, and then for, for photos, I’ve got Lightroom, Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Photo 2, Acorn 7, Photomator. So, like, photo, you’re finally good. Then, like, you’re finally, like, scrambling down, you’re like, okay, well, then you’ve got, for managing time and tasks, you’ve got Things 3, and Fantastical, and Agenda, and
[00:14:17] Brett: Okay.
[00:14:17] Jeff: I, you know, what was awesome is I was looking at the app store and I would never know about Office.
[00:14:22] Christina: Right? That’s what I’m saying. Like, all of this stuff. This is just ridiculous.
[00:14:26] Brett: Pixelmator showed up on the list with Adobe apps at all.
[00:14:33] Jeff: Yes, but here’s the thing.
[00:14:34] Christina: me too, but it shouldn’t be that far down. Like, I shouldn’t have to scroll down through, like, 15 things.
[00:14:38] Jeff: The thing about Office, and also their thing of adding like, um, narrative stories where they talk about apps and whatever, that didn’t help, like some of them were good, but it didn’t help, right? It didn’t help this problem. They were well done, they were whatever, but you still feel like you’re, it feels like you found like a really cool shell on a really big beach, like it doesn’t feel like
[00:14:57] Brett: so my app, Mark, got featured a [00:15:00] couple of times in these app stories and, and app, like, top picks for the, like, staff picks and, and it was a boost in sales. But I look at it now, a year, two, two years later, and yeah, their top picks are occasionally indie developers that I, I truly admire and respect.
[00:15:26] Brett: Increasingly rarely so.
[00:15:29] Word vs Pages
[00:15:29] Jeff: Uh, this, the, I, I don’t mean to keep going on the Microsoft Office thing, but I was once visiting a friend in Portland in like, in like 2003, and he’s like, he’s like, Hey, you want to go? We got a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go. We walk, we walk a few blocks and it’s a P.
[00:15:43] Jeff: F. Chang’s.
[00:15:44] Christina: I was going to say, was it a P. F. Changs? I was like, hell yes.
[00:15:48] Jeff: And I love P. F.
[00:15:49] Christina: but I’m just, me too. And, and honestly, Microsoft Office, it’s, if you’re going to use an offline
[00:15:55] Jeff: Yeah,
[00:15:55] Christina: it’s the best one. Like
[00:15:57] Jeff: I use it.
[00:15:58] Christina: me too. Ain’t nobody [00:16:00] using pages. Ain’t nobody using, um, uh, you know, like numbers.
[00:16:03] Christina: Um, uh. Brett has his hand raised, but Brett, you don’t count. And honestly, you’re not using numbers if you’re doing real spreadsheets. Like, no one
[00:16:11] Brett: true.
[00:16:12] Christina: a real spreadsheet
[00:16:12] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:14] Christina: It makes a really great, easy chart, but like, nobody who has actual data needs would ever even come close. Like, you would
[00:16:20] Brett: Well, if I have actual data needs, I’m working on the command line. I’m working with CSV and JSON data and actually processing it. If I, if I need to do, if I need to do a,
[00:16:32] Jeff: when he’s drunk.
[00:16:33] Brett: if I need to do a mail merge, fuck,
[00:16:36] Jeff: Mail
[00:16:37] Brett: fuck numbers, um, yeah, no, I understand what you’re saying. It’s,
[00:16:42] Christina: I’m just saying like, you know, but like, but still no one’s using pages for anything. Like even, even people who use pages, like honestly, like, like no one’s using that. Um,
[00:16:53] Jeff: once in a while I get a pages file
[00:16:55] Christina: me too. And I’m like, what the
[00:16:56] Jeff: the fuck? It’s like you just sent me the British Pound. What am I [00:17:00] supposed to do with
[00:17:00] Christina: And like, and I had the same reaction and I’m like, and I literally have, you know, pages installed on every single device I own, but I’m still like, what is this bullshit?
[00:17:09] Christina: Like,
[00:17:09] Jeff: someone’s gonna come at you with the British Pound and you gotta be ready.
[00:17:12] Brett: I would, exactly. I would never, I would never send anybody a pages file. Or, or numbers file, like I would always export to DocX or export to like just CSV or, or like a compatible format, because I am fully aware that the rest of the world does not use Apple products, even and,
[00:17:36] Jeff: an idea
[00:17:37] Brett: It’s so nice,
[00:17:38] Jeff: colleagues sadly, are not textile people. And by not textile people, I mean, not even really willing to take a minute to think about why I might always say, oh, I have it in a text file. Right. I just, I just, I’m ex, I’m eccentric, which I am. I’m
[00:17:53] Christina: For them, it’s Google Docs or nothing.
[00:17:56] Jeff: Yeah. And so I think now though, I think I troll, um, better [00:18:00] than just sending a text file and I could start sending pages, files. Especially to my, to my PC friends who I do not look down on. Um, but maybe that’s a good bit to do. Like, Oh, I’m really into this thing, pages. It’s an
[00:18:11] Christina: Oh, yeah. I mean, that would be hilarious because at that point, because the thing is it like, at least like, like OpenOffice or Libre Office or whatever the fuck it’s called. Um, I always forget that it’s Libre Office now because the OpenOffice thing, there
[00:18:24] Jeff: Right, right, right,
[00:18:25] Christina: Um, but, uh, but like, those formats suck, but like, you know, you can save it in a doc or docx, it’ll be, your formatting will be fucked.
[00:18:35] Christina: And you absolutely don’t want to open a spreadsheet at all. But you can get by with it, right? Like you just definitely don’t add any comments or, or, you know, expect, um, your very carefully Um, like if you’ve got a very specifically formatted thing, don’t expect that to survive, but whatever, you can open it, but a pages file, I don’t even think Apple allows a pages viewer to exist.
[00:18:54] Christina: I don’t even think like you can get one on Windows because, and that’s Apple’s fault to be very clear. Like that’s 100 [00:19:00] percent on them. I think that they, like, I don’t understand why that is a product that ever existed to be honest. Um, because like Apple works, Claris works, there was a Windows version, so, you know, I don’t know.
[00:19:12] Christina: Like. But anyway, but also to me, I’m kind of like, I get it. You didn’t have Office on the iPad, but you know, was, was, was Pages really worth it? Like, even like 20 years ago when they
[00:19:24] Jeff: You know, what would be amazing is if there was just an Incredible Pages app on Apple Vision Pro. Just, I don’t even know what incredible would mean in that context.
[00:19:35] Christina: Oh, I actually, what’s funny, I think the only native one is Keynote.
[00:19:39] Jeff: yeah, that makes sense. I
[00:19:41] Christina: I think all the other ones literally just run in iPad mode,
[00:19:44] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, I think that’s right. Yeah, that’s
[00:19:46] Christina: is funny.
[00:19:47] Jeff: Uh, can I ask you all, since we’re talking, since we’re talking about, um, Word documents and documents in general, I have this Problem I’ve been really trying to figure out how to rein in, which is that if I am getting, and I have [00:20:00] great relationships with all of my colleagues, okay, so I’m not, I, I, despite what I said earlier, I’m not actually trolling people on a regular basis, but I am tired of hearing about how I’m eccentric because I like text files and read CSVs sometimes in a text editor.
[00:20:12] Jeff: Fuck you, man. That’s just how you got to live. But anyway, it’s how the ancestors did it. But like, I cannot, if somebody sends me a document for review, There’s I literally cannot even take in the content until I have normalized the formatting and especially normalized whether there are periods or not at the end of bulleted list items.
[00:20:34] Style Guides make the world go round
[00:20:34] Jeff: Do you have this problem or are you able to just go ahead and read? I can’t read until I like smoothed out the sheets. I’m like, I’m not going to lay in a dirty bed.
[00:20:40] Christina: I mean, I think that I think that I can read without it, but I definitely do go through like that jarring thing, which is like, okay, what is our format here? Right? Like, are we Oxford comma people? Are we not like, are we period of end people? Are we not, are we capitalizing, you know, in headlines or not?
[00:20:54] Brett: in any given list, if there are periods at the end of [00:21:00] every list item, okay, if, if the first two list items end without periods, and then suddenly like a two sentence list item that has two periods in it, I have a problem. Like, consistency. That’s, that’s my goal.
[00:21:18] Jeff: Yeah. It reminds me, did you watch the, um, Netflix series Moe? Uh, it’s a Palestinian American dude. Uh, what’s his full name? Muhammad. I’ll get it, but he, it’s amazing. See, it’s very funny. It’s very poignant. It’s amazing. But there’s a scene where he walks into a grocery store and this woman tries to give him a sample of chocolate hummus.
[00:21:39] Jeff: And he goes, It’s fucking war crime. That’s like a little bit how I feel about what you just described.
[00:21:46] Christina: I agree with that. Um, that’s, and this is because we are, we are like newsroom people, Jeff. Like we, like we have to, I mean, like you too, to a little bit, to, to, to, um, you work with documentation and stuff, so you too, Brett, but like we all work, [00:22:00] like you have to have consistency. You have to have a style guide.
[00:22:02] Christina: There’s nothing worse than when you have the style guide and then you have people who refuse to adhere to the style guide and you’re like, what the fuck are we doing? And I don’t always agree with the style guide. Like Mashable didn’t believe in the Oxford comma, which I hated. And then we, we did a, we varied with our headline thing.
[00:22:19] Christina: I think we were capitalizing for the most part and then we switched to not. And what was hard, though, is I went to Gizmodo where we did have the Oxford comma, Praise Jesus, but then it was lowercase headlines. So,
[00:22:31] Jeff: yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:33] Christina: and so it was just like a weird muscle memory thing, like, what are you getting used to?
[00:22:37] Christina: Um, but the thing is, even though I don’t always agree with it, like, I’m like, okay, if we, you know, just be consistent, like, that’s the only thing. Like, I don’t have to agree with it, but I’ll follow it.
[00:22:47] Jeff: Totally. And also Style Guide’s like, I’m okay with the Style Guide being a living document. I’m even okay with people not using it if the way they don’t use it is totally consistent throughout the
[00:22:56] Brett: Yeah, totally. 100%. Yes.
[00:22:59] Jeff: I’m putting [00:23:00] something in the show notes, it’s Muhammad Amr, it’s Moe Amr, uh, it’s a clip of this hummus moment, it’s really incredible.
[00:23:06] Jeff: Anyway. Alright, thanks for, I mean I would love to talk about style guides and making one right now with a copy editor, fuckin love it. I have Brett’s Markdown style guide from his, uh, Oracle thing, which I bet nobody listens to, nobody uses, cause what the fuck is a style guide, I’m in a hurry!
[00:23:21] Brett: It’s true.
[00:23:21] Christina: I mean, people who do documentation definitely do.
[00:23:24] Jeff: Yes! But here’s the thing, right? Like, for me, so we do a lot of work where it’s like we send something to a client. We might send an outline to a client, right? An outline is easier to make a fuck of than a document. And, and it is, I just feel, I feel like such an old man, because I am 10 years older than anybody else in my organization.
[00:23:43] Jeff: But I’m like Is it a value or not to us that an outline that goes to a client or an email or anything is like, I remember like, was it Jay Rosen who’s, I don’t quote Jay Rosen often, but I remember when he was like, he was everywhere, like in the 2007s, eights, he [00:24:00] had a great line, which I used in the newsroom all the time, which is like, everything’s an editorial product, everything, your
[00:24:05] Christina: Oh yeah, that was
[00:24:05] Jeff: texts, your, your, your, you know, private texts, your tweets, everything.
[00:24:09] Jeff: Right. And I don’t, these kids today. Yeah. Nope, they haven’t heard of J Rosen, which is great. I mean,
[00:24:14] Christina: No, it is, well, I mean, except for him, right, like, I think that, that Jay Rosen probably wishes that, that he were still, like, the, like, he and Jeff Jarvis were, like, the go to, oh, and Ken Docter, right? It was, like, it was, like, Ken Docter, Jay Rosen, and, and Jeff Jarvis were, like, the future of media people that you would talk to.
[00:24:30] Christina: And,
[00:24:30] Jeff: future of media people that you would talk to.
[00:24:33] Christina: Yeah. Um, it was like, you know, the guy from NYU guy from, you know, SUNY and then Ken, doctor
[00:24:38] Jeff: And then throw in Clay Shirky if you’re feeling edgy.
[00:24:41] Christina: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, throw in, uh, clay Shike if you want to, and then maybe even like, mention like, um, um, the, the, uh, information wants to be like
[00:24:52] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Neil Postman. Not
[00:24:54] Christina: Neil Postman,
[00:24:54] Jeff: Yeah, Neil Postman. Oh, these are the greatest hits. Christina, I love when this happens when we free [00:25:00] associate on the like mid to late 2000s journalism scene.
[00:25:04] Christina: I know, I know. It’s like,
[00:25:05] Jeff: It’s like sports fans. It’s like, do you remember the 2003 Cardinals?
[00:25:09] Christina: What’s so funny is, is um, you know, the Messenger shut down. And, um, which, a friend of mine worked there, and I was very sad for him. Um, but I’m gonna be completely honest. Like, I’m not, I’m not gonna in any way judge anyone who took their first staff job, or like, took a job there, or whatnot.
[00:25:27] Christina: For the most part, for going to work there. I am going to judge people who like, left. Relatively stable places to go work there, because is what was so funny to me, the, the ideas and, um, um, speaking of, um, like, um, journalism type of, you know, talking head types, uh, Joshua Benton, who, who created the, the Nieman Lab at Harvard, um, he, um, um, um,
[00:25:52] Jeff: no, I’m thinking I’m actually thinking of the Civic Media Lab at MIT. Sorry,
[00:25:55] Christina: Okay, yeah, but no, but he created, he created the Neiman Lab at Harvard, um, [00:26:00] he like had been on a tear for like the last year about how dumb and backwards the messenger was, which we were all saying, we were like, this idea is like straight out of 2011, like this is backwards, but what it reminded me of was in 2010, Michael Wolff was hired to remake Ad Age.
[00:26:19] Christina: Like the, the Prometheus and Apollo Global, I don’t know if Apollo was actually involved, but Prometheus, uh, like some private equity fucks, like bought out the, the media group that owned the, the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Ad Age. And, um, or Adweek, sorry, not Adage, Adweek. And, um, they hired Janice Minn to do, um, The Hollywood Reporter, and she actually did a really good job.
[00:26:41] Christina: Like it, it didn’t save it per se, but they definitely were able to resell that for a much higher multiple than they could have. And she made it into a very good magazine because she’s fucking awesome. And they hired Michael Wolff to take on Adweek. And. A friend of mine who I worked with, she had some feelers out to go get a job there.
[00:26:57] Christina: And then she mentioned me. She was like, Oh, we should definitely hire [00:27:00] my friend. And so, um, the girl who was going to run it, I guess, kind of under him, like his managing person, like she talked to me and she was like selling me on it. And then I get on a call with Michael Wolf and it’s basically a job offer.
[00:27:11] Christina: And I’m struck by a couple of things. First, Michael Wolf clearly has no idea who I am. No idea why he’s even talking to me. He’s just. Trying to hire away people, and I worked at a prominent publication at the time. And, and so, but he has no fucking clue who I am or why he’s talking to me. And the second thing was, is he was just telling me how, like, Oh, well, Mashable’s gonna be dead.
[00:27:31] Christina: TechCrunch is gonna be dead. All these things are gonna be dead. We’re gonna throw so much at this. Like, you, you, you can just forget about it. You definitely want to come here because we’re, we’re going to basically annihilate you. And I’m, I’m like 25. And I’m like, okay, I don’t think you know what you’re doing, because this is insane and this isn’t how media works right now, and this is a ridiculous idea, this is like late 2010.
[00:27:56] Christina: And so I, um, so I guess I was 24, or 26, [00:28:00] and so I, um, I basically was like, I, I, I opted not to continue with the process. I was like, this is weird. Also it was weird to me that they wanted to offer me a job without even like seeing my writing samples, like they were just like, really? The whole thing just felt weird.
[00:28:14] Christina: off. And so I was like, I’m not doing this. And, and Lauren also opted to not do it. And we were very grateful because less than a year later, Michael Wolff was, um, kicked out and the whole thing was a disaster. Well, I went to look back on that and I was like, man, why does the messenger remind me so much of this? I went back to look and the guy who led the investment and who hired Michael Wolff to, to do, um, Adweek was Jimmy Finkelstein,
[00:28:39] Jeff: Oh,
[00:28:39] Christina: the guy who then did the messenger. So,
[00:28:42] Jeff: don’t talk to me. Talk to Jimmy Finkelstein,
[00:28:45] Christina: so like
[00:28:46] Jeff: Jimmy Tentos. Sorry.
[00:28:48] Christina: No, no, but, but like the funny thing is, is I was like, okay, this, this concept, which I should have given some precursor, there was this attempt at making a, like, mass general news site called The Messenger, they blew [00:29:00] through 50 million dollars in under a year, they hired like 200 and something journalists, they had originally said they were going to hire 550, they didn’t hire that many, they They, um, basically, they hired Neitz and Zimmerman, which again, talking about like, like 2010s, like throwbacks, like wait, wait, wait to pretend it’s still 20, 2012, you guys, um, to be like their, their viral person, even though social traffic doesn’t exist anymore.
[00:29:23] Christina: Um, and, um, the whole thing was just like, A throwback to an earlier era, and of course it collapsed and failed, and they ran out of money on January 31st, fired people without any severance, except for people in California who they had to pay vacation time to. And um, the whole thing is just a disaster and embarrassing.
[00:29:40] Christina: But, the thing is that struck me as I was like, Okay. Everybody was like, including myself, was like, oh, this is such a 2010s idea, early 2010s idea. And it, but it also reminded me, and then I found out why, because it was the same people, of, of the, the, you know, ad week, um, attempt. Except even in 2010, [00:30:00] like, my, like, very young, very green ass was like, Oh, this is a bad idea even now.
[00:30:06] Christina: Like, so it’s a throwback to a bad idea from back then. Like, at least the daily, I know why, I know why people took that job and like, it failed, but at least it had paying users. And like, we all thought the iPad was going to be a thing. Like, I understand why people took a job at the
[00:30:22] Jeff: Yep,
[00:30:23] Christina: I’m going to be honest.
[00:30:24] Christina: I don’t understand why anybody took a job at the messenger
[00:30:27] Jeff: it’s pretty crazy. It’s pretty crazy. And it does, it feels so old. Like, I remember when, um, when Al Jazeera America started, like, I, I, um, well, first of all, like, this goes back to, harkens back to a really amazing time, which is that there was this guy, Mark Coatney, who was, who, who originally was working at Newsweek and started a Tumblr.
[00:30:46] Jeff: It was like one of the first Tumblers that are like a news organization. It was around the same time that I started the Utney Reader Tumblr, right? Like when I was working there. And he and I got to know each other online because as he said, it’s like you’re two bomber pilots like flying over the land and you just kind of look and [00:31:00] nod at each other because the only, I think the only other Tumblr for a media organization at that point was like Good Morning America.
[00:31:05] Jeff: Um, and, and so
[00:31:07] Christina: Mashable, but yeah, but
[00:31:08] Jeff: You’re Mashable. Yes, I’m sorry, Mashable. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, well, Utni wasn’t mainstream. But yeah, I, for some reason, I kind of like, Mashable felt like Mashable on Tumblr, right? It wasn’t like, oh, look, Mashable’s on Tumblr.
[00:31:19] Christina: Oh, that’s exactly what it was. Cause I ran that account for a long time
[00:31:22] Jeff: let’s see now, it should have been you and me and Cody in bomber planes, like, looking over the thing, right?
[00:31:28] Jeff: Cause like, that was really fun to run a Tumblr from a media organization at that point, because you got out of the CMS. Like, although actually, they based, like, Newsweek ended up, was it New York? Was it the New York Review of Books? Somebody ended up basing a huge chunk of their CMS, essentially inside of Tumblr.
[00:31:44] Jeff: I don’t remember how that worked if it’s true, we won’t talk about that. So anyway, Mark Cote and he ends up getting a job as like the media director at Tumblr makes sense. And then he gets hired on as like vice vice president of something for Al Jazeera America, when Al Jazeera decided they wanted to have an American based thing [00:32:00] and they were doing that same kind of like the future of media is cocaine.
[00:32:04] Jeff: It’s like, you know, the past of media was also cocaine. So we just got to figure out how to work in the, I was. I was in phone calls about a job, I had to move to New York to be an editor, I have never dealt with more jacked up, like completely unreliable, total newsroom junkie people in my life. And I was like, I had like two phone conversations and I was just like, I said to my wife, I’m like, we’re definitely not going to New York. This is not going to go well. I loved that. I wrote for them just once and I loved the experience. But like, that was another one of those things where like, that’s what makes the messenger feel like it was 2000.
[00:32:41] Christina: Oh yeah, 1000%. Well, they also, they, they spent 8 million on real estate. They had offices in Palm Beach, um, in Fideye
[00:32:49] Jeff: oh, so, so Finkelstein was money laundering.
[00:32:52] Christina: Oh, yeah. I mean, clearly this whole thing, it was, it was like, and like, this guy wrote this thing for New York mag about what it was like. [00:33:00] He was like, yeah, we had this office like 42, 000 square feet in Fidei and the desks were empty almost all the time.
[00:33:05] Christina: And I’m like, what are you doing? Um, Defector, um, which is a, uh, like a reader sponsored publication, which is great from the people behind Deadspin. They wrote like a thing about basically like how many, you know, newsrooms like theirs could have been funded by, you know, the 50 million. Um, and like the defectors like, like annual budget is around three million dollars or whatever and, and like they’re able to increase it, you know, little by little, but like, you know, and, and they’re paying salaries and they’re being able to pay some dividends, so to speak, but like, it’s certainly not, you know, drowning in money, but it’s a great publication and they pay their freelancers really well and, um, uh, yeah, it is like, yeah.
[00:33:45] Christina: I’m like, okay, you probably wouldn’t be able to have, you know, 20 defectors. I don’t think that that many exist, but it is really telling. It’s like, wow, you could have used the money in so many other ways.
[00:33:56] Jeff: yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that’s [00:34:00] absolutely the case.
[00:34:01] Brett: weirdly, we’re still on my pick for Graftitude. I don’t, I don’t, I have no idea where we’re at. I am, I’m not, I’m not conscious enough.
[00:34:13] Jeff: I’ll tell you, remember, we’ll handle it. So I do want to
[00:34:16] Brett: over, take
[00:34:17] Jeff: want to close out the messenger conversation by saying, if you go to their URL, it is just the name, the messenger and an email info at the messenger. And I would love to know the payment arrangement that has this URL staying alive.
[00:34:31] Jeff: Is it like a 20 year subscription through hover?
[00:34:33] Christina: That’s, that’s all I can figure. Cause, cause they literally shut off. They literally shut it off the day that they announced. And I was like, oh, they’re not paying a second more of AWS stuff. So like, yeah. Um, okay. Let me, let me DNS this. Let me see who the DNS is. Cause I wonder if this is like being hosted on Netlify or Vercel
[00:34:48] Jeff: I know, right? Right?
[00:34:49] Christina: Pages. Like, this is on some sort of cheap ass. Yeah.
[00:34:53] Jeff: I wish that they would just have a little blinking under construction sign. [00:35:00] Or just like a gravestone blinking, maybe? Something like that. You could have fun with it. Is what
[00:35:05] Christina: You really could, but, but that would, you know, I think that there’s probably like a part of them were like, Oh, we can sell the assets you mean? And it’s like, it’s, it’s like wolf. com.
[00:35:12] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:35:13] Christina: um, the opposite of office. And when, when, um, like when you’re selling the URL, like, and that’s it.
[00:35:19] Jeff: Also, can I
[00:35:19] Christina: okay, no, okay. So this is going to, so the DNS is still hosted, um, on AWS.
[00:35:25] Christina: Um, and so I bet this is just. And AWS,
[00:35:29] Jeff: went way down. Um, I, here’s the, the other thing about The Messenger, just before we close, is that if you were like, I just got a job at this new news organization called The Messenger, I’d be like, you’re Jehovah’s Witness, or what, you’re Nation of Islam, like, what’s going on here? It does not sound, it sounds like a religious paper, or like a cult paper.
[00:35:45] Jeff: It’s the worst name.
[00:35:47] Christina: They weren’t even in like the SEO listing, like it took them months to get into SEO. Like they didn’t even launch that way. Like, like, like, um, um, uh, um, like again, Neiman did this thing, like Josh Benton, like did this thing where he was like, these are the [00:36:00] things that rank higher than the messenger on Google for the messenger on Google.
[00:36:03] Christina: It was, it was art. Um, all right. That’s enough of that.
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[00:37:36] Christina: All right. Um, so, so I thought
[00:37:38] Jeff: Yours is fun. Yours is a fun one.
[00:37:41] Speaking of throwbacks
[00:37:41] Christina: Yeah, okay, so kind of speaking of throwback software a little bit, do you guys remember an app called Cover Sutra?
[00:37:47] Brett: totally.
[00:37:49] Jeff: I still remember that name. Jesus. It’s
[00:37:52] Christina: it was like basically like a, uh, uh, uh, like a, an iTunes controller where you’d see like the cover art of your, um, you know, what was [00:38:00] playing back and it was really beautiful and it was nicer than like the mini mode in iTunes or whatever. Um, and, um, the people who made it were great as well. Part of the Delicious Generation, great app.
[00:38:11] Christina: This one I actually discovered while we were recording our last episode, um, and I, I was kind of playing with it while we were recording with Brian, uh, and, because Jason Snell wrote about this, um, on his blog. It’s called Sleeves, um, and, or, or, or Sleeve rather, and, and Sleeve 2 is, is the current version.
[00:38:30] Christina: Um, it’s 6 if you buy it directly. I think it’s 7 in the Mac App Store, 8 in the Mac App Store. I bought it directly because I always worry about the App Store limitations, even if they don’t exist. Um, and, um, basically it’s, um, it’s, it’s on your desktop and it’ll like, let you control music from Apple music, Spotify, as well as Doppler.
[00:38:50] Christina: Um, it has, um, Last. fm scrabbling support. It has a bunch of different themes and you can also customize how it looks. Um, and you can even like [00:39:00] share your stylings and then, um. It does integrate with, like, the Spotify Developer API, if you want to have loving tracks, like, enabled on Spotify, so you can love a track when it’s playing back on, um, your, uh, your thing.
[00:39:15] Christina: But, um, it also supports, um, like, iCloud Sync, so, like, for instance, themes that I’ve created. And, um, on my Mac, and I actually just figured this out, on my iMac will show up on my, um, laptop. Um, so when you, when you customize, like, what the, how, how the things look, and you can really get granular about, like, how the layout works, like what it looks like, how it sits and is positioned on your desktop, if it’s going to be over or under things, you can create, you know, um, uh, uh, system shortcuts and, and other stuff.
[00:39:47] Christina: Um, I really, really like it. And so Yeah, it’s really pretty, and so this is going to be a thing that not a lot of people are going to need to use. But, I mean, honestly, like, you’re probably fine with just, [00:40:00] you know, the built in thing. And I know that some people prefer having menu bar based controls, I get it.
[00:40:06] Christina: But I often have, like, a second monitor, which is not being actively used for much. And so having this kind of positioned in, like, a lower corner quadrant, it’s a, it’s a nice, it’s a nice little app, especially for, for six bucks.
[00:40:18] Brett: Yeah, I keep, I keep all of my window positioning, I keep space available at the top and the bottom of the screen for exactly the kind of thing that this provides. Uh, do you guys remember an app called, um, Simplify?
[00:40:38] Christina: Yeah,
[00:40:41] Brett: You could create, you could create what were called jackets for simplify using CSS and HTML. And
[00:40:49] Christina: I loved, I loved Simplify. Yes,
[00:40:50] Brett: I, I created, I created a jacket called Sideshow that gave you like a full screen menu bar at the left side of your [00:41:00] screen. That would like show like progress and, and track name, album name, all of that. And I love that app.
[00:41:08] Brett: It has gone. Unupdated for years now.
[00:41:13] Christina: Yeah, it’s not even available in the Mac App Store anymore, like the website still exists, it says 2012 to 2021. And I think you can probably still, yeah, if you click on the download link, like it’ll go to open app store and it’s not even available anymore, but that was a great app.
[00:41:27] Brett: it’s dead now, but I’m really into Sleeve. Um, that is, I, I hope they open up, I hope they open up an API that I can develop for.
[00:41:39] Christina: Yeah, you should reach out to them.
[00:41:40] Brett: I will 100% make jackets for
[00:41:43] Jeff: pull those jackets out of the closet.
[00:41:46] Brett: yeah, yeah,
[00:41:46] Christina: Yeah, no, no, you should totally do it. Um, and, and I think, uh, you should reach out to them because,
[00:41:51] Jeff: sober up and reach out to him.
[00:41:53] Christina: yeah, no, I was gonna say, well, they’re, well, they’re, they’re.
[00:41:56] Brett: You can’t tell me what to do. [00:42:00] Sorry.
[00:42:01] Christina: they’re a two person team, but, like, that is actually probably the perfect size for,
[00:42:08] Jeff: Yeah, for that kind of
[00:42:09] Christina: who would, yeah, exactly, people who would be like, be able to be like, yeah,
[00:42:12] Jeff: It has to go through zero meetings. Yeah, that’s amazing. I love it. That looks super cool. Um, okay. Should I do mine? I have two because one, well, one is, it’s fine that one is tedious because that’s how we love apps, but I just wanted to do two. So one’s a, one’s a Mac app and one’s a just iOS app.
[00:42:36] Jeff: Maybe it’s on the Mac. I don’t use it there, but I was using, I’ve been using TablePlus for, for SQL tables for like ever and. It is, it’s great. And then they added a very cool feature, which is like this little AI column. So you can just be like, I want to do this. Give me the, it’s just the great for being a lazy SQL programmer person.
[00:42:54] Jeff: Um, which I am, but I’m normally I’d be looking stuff up. Yeah, it’s great. But. It’s [00:43:00] that just got that function, like whatever, it seemed to have gotten funky. I was getting a lot of weird crashes in the whole thing, whatever. And now table plus people, if that’s fixed, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tell anybody not to do it, but I did have to go find something else cause I was on deadline.
[00:43:14] Jeff: And so I ended up at Navicat, Navicat, Navicat for SQLite and I love it. I love it so much. And I think that it has. It’s, this is kind of strange, but like, I do more work in my relational databases now, and part of it is I need to be, cause I’ve got a project that has this like super complex relational database, but like, it’s beautiful.
[00:43:38] Jeff: It’s easy to use. It’s got some wonderful features. It’s got a really cool like charting feature. If you want to just make some quick charts, um, it’s, it’s just like, oh, it’s so good. And I don’t know what to say. Like if you. If you are looking for a SQL database app or a SQLite database app, whatever, like you already know what you want.
[00:43:55] Jeff: And I just, I just want to put that out there as something that if you’ve been using something else forever, like [00:44:00] TablePlus, which I love, just play with this a little bit. Cause I was really impressed and I was glad that I had a reason to try something else. Cause literally I’ve been using TablePlus since I was in a newsroom, which is at this point.
[00:44:13] Jeff: 2012 was the last newsroom I was in. And so, um, so anyway, that was fun. And the other one is like Casey lists of ATP of, you know, accidental tech podcasts and whatever, lots of things, I guess, uh, in life, but has this app call sheet, which because it was called call sheet, I just never knew. What the hell is this thing?
[00:44:31] Jeff: It didn’t like hit me. And then he was talking about, I’ve started listening to ATP again. I go through seasons, uh, with ATP and when I’m going through a season now, I will admit that it was this thing that happens to me where I just want more Syracuse, uh, um, and, and Casey was talking about call sheet.
[00:44:47] Jeff: I’m like, I gotta check this app out. It’s an amazing app for just like, you know, how. Fucking maddening it is to look at IMDb, um, when you want to know something. And if you’re not watching Prime, you don’t have that thing where you can stop and look at the actors. This is just like [00:45:00] a beautiful app that is so it’s, it’s well done.
[00:45:02] Jeff: It’s pretty, it does the things you want it to do. It’s quick and it allows you to just be like, I’m watching this thing. Show me who’s in it. And now show me who else was in it. And it is. Exactly what you need. It’s crisp. It’s clear. The information is right there. And if you want to go to IMDb, you can get there from there, but I just think he, he’s done an amazing job
[00:45:21] Christina: He has, I really, really like it. Like I bought it like as soon as it came out and I’m a huge fan because the thing is the IMDb app used to be really good and it’s gotten worse and worse. And I used to pay for IMDb Pro and I don’t anymore. Um, cause I don’t, I don’t need. So I don’t need it for the email access, which is why I used to pay for it.
[00:45:41] Christina: And, um, but the IODB app is just like kind of garbage now. And, and the website, um, like, um, uh, John August used to make a, a Safari extension that would like re Like, do, like, would fix, like, IMDB, um, but, but that hasn’t been updated in a long time, um, years at this point, but, but CallSheet is, [00:46:00] is great. Um, I will, the one thing I will note, because I think that it’s great, I think that it’s, um, a really good app and, and it is great for 99% I will say there is some information that isn’t exact and isn’t always going to be as up to date because of the source that they’re using is, is like, just not as good as IMDB.
[00:46:18] Christina: But for the vast majority of things, like it is really, really solid. Um, and, um, like I, I like how, um, Casey’s designed it. Like you said, like you have an easy way of going to Wikipedia or to, you know, the website for the project or
[00:46:33] Jeff: You can choose what you’re, you can have a quick link from your results and you can choose what that is. And one of them is to go to the technical information, like what camera was used in this movie? Like, it’s, it’s so awesome. So awesome. And I do understand why it’s called Call Sheet. Now that I know what the app is, but it just didn’t, both that and the icon didn’t really grab me ever.
[00:46:50] Jeff: And so I was like, what is this thing? Anyway, I love it. And I also want to say, well, one thing about IMDB, which is that, do you remember when Boing Boing went to shit? Like all of a sudden it was just [00:47:00] spammy ass ads. Everywhere it was just butts and pimples like thrust in your face, um, which is what I think I wish high school was like, but it wasn’t for me.
[00:47:09] Jeff: Um, anyway, uh, like that’s what IMDB is. And like, I still remember I used to go to Boing Boing every day. I’m doing this, Christina, because we, we opened the hatch on this one. I used to go there every fucking day. I used to love it. And then just like overnight, it just became trash. The content wasn’t all that different, but the ads were just like in the interstitials and it was just like, it’s a nightmare.
[00:47:31] Jeff: Anyway, just to say that about Boeing buying, sorry, Boeing buying. I know some of you people, you were great people, great thinkers, great writers, but I don’t know, you needed money. I guess, I guess you needed money.
[00:47:42] Christina: I mean, it’s weird too because like, um, you know, two of the, the co founders are, are gone. So,
[00:47:49] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:51] Christina: like, like Carl is still there and, and, and Rob might as well be a co founder because he’s been there for forever. But like, you know, yeah.
[00:47:58] Jeff: Yeah. That’s a bummer. And then the [00:48:00] last thing I’ll say, which is about Casey List, which is that, in coming back to Accidental Tech Podcast, which of course, the very first fucking episode I’m hearing about Phish from Marco, um, which I think is a great bet. I think the fact that you can’t listen to an episode, it feels like, without Marco either talking about Phish or someone giving a shit about Phish. The P H I S H, that’s what I’m talking about, the band, is kind of delightful because I don’t think we should change in many ways. But, uh, can you imagine, to listeners of the, of the podcast, I want to just, I don’t often appreciate Casey’s role enough, and I did for the first time in a way I never had, which is like, can you imagine trying to find your place between John Siracusa and Marco Arman?
[00:48:41] Jeff: Can you imagine trying to figure out Where your two feet are between those two dudes, who I love. But anyway, I just wanted to share that and, and, and give some appreciation. Also call sheets, one of those apps, and actually while we’re on the topic of all three of these guys, uh, Overcast is one of [00:49:00] these apps too, where I just would love to have a line into all the different decisions you had to make along the way to make the thing, what it is, because.
[00:49:09] Jeff: Both with podcasts, which Overcast, of course, is a podcast app, and with call sheet, trying to get this information the way you would want it. You just have to make so many calls, like any app, but I bet they were all interesting. I bet every one of those calls was interesting that you had to make. So anyway, thanks for, thanks for the good work, everybody.
[00:49:25] The Grammys. You knew it was coming.
[00:49:25] Jeff: There we are, Graftitude. So here’s the deal. When we start with Mental Health Corner, we’ll take Mental Health Corner to the end. When we start with Graftitude, I think it’s probably very easy to take Graftitude to the end. But we do have a little time. We do need to talk about the Grammys. And I want to, Christina, you are always the driver of this.
[00:49:41] Jeff: I, I am always a distant observer. I cannot watch the show. I’ve never been able to do it. I, and I’m not being, I, my wife and I talk about this because she, she likes. It’s like, I swear to God I’m not being a snob, but it does hurt my heart to watch a thing that I love, music, [00:50:00] get compressed into this very gross for me thing.
[00:50:06] Jeff: Now,
[00:50:06] Christina: Oh, yeah.
[00:50:07] Jeff: want to be clear, and I know you, I mean, we all see that, right? Like I also love the performances. And so even though I can’t sit through one, I’m on TikTok. There’s Tracy Chapman. You know, there’s Killer Mike accepting his awards. There’s Boy Genius being fucking adorable running for their awards.
[00:50:23] Jeff: Like I love it. And so Christina, I always like hearing from you on this stuff. You originally told us we had to talk about Miley Cyrus.
[00:50:30] Christina: Well, just because we love Miley and Miley run one record of the year, um, for, for flowers and, um, best, uh, um, best pop solo, um, for flowers record of the year, I definitely think it was deserved. Um, and, uh, I was a little bit surprised that it got it. Cause I was like, Oh, maybe they’ll give it to what was I made for whatever that, that one song of the year, which.
[00:50:51] Christina: was completely inevitable because they love, love, love Billie Eilish at the Grammys. Like they, they love her. Um, she’s one of the few like young [00:51:00] kind of artists who has already achieved that thing that like a lot of legacy artists have where like you see their name and I’m like, Oh, I bet they didn’t even listen to the album.
[00:51:07] Christina: They just voted. Right. Um, but, but that was also a great song and huge movie. Um, I have to say though, like, yeah, the performances this year were really good. Uh, Trevor Noah was funny. Uh, he made like a, a Taylor Swift, um, uh, NFL joke at the beginning that like she laughed at and that was funny. And it was, it was, it totally worked.
[00:51:26] Christina: It was like a total 180 from like the Golden Globes guy. It was like, Oh yeah, see, this is what happens when you actually hire a professional
[00:51:32] Jeff: Did you see the New York Times piece analyzing the amount of time that the NFL put the camera on Taylor? Okay. I should have sent that, but I was like, I don’t need to send this. She knows.
[00:51:41] Christina: I know, yeah, totally, um, What’s His Face, Cowheat, Colin Cowheat, like, did the same thing where he basically called, um, the, the NFL fans who are, like, mad at it, they basically, he basically called them incels, is basically what he did, and it was great, um,
[00:51:54] Jeff: All right. So
[00:51:55] Christina: he’s not wrong, he’s not wrong, but no, but, but, but, but Miley was great, she looked [00:52:00] great, I think I tweeted at some point, I was like, like, Liam Hemsworth, like, like, um, wellness check, because it, you know, Um, speaking of wellness checks, when, when Taylor won for best, um, uh, pop vocal, uh, which I was expecting her to win that album of the year was a surprise, but whatever.
[00:52:20] Christina: When she announced that, like she announced that she, we all thought she was going to be like, oh, Reputation, Taylor’s version coming soon. And she’s like, no, I have a new album coming out on, on April 19th called the Tortured Poets Society. And, uh, and you can pre order it now. And then her store It took me half an hour to check out, which was insane to me.
[00:52:43] Christina: Um, also, um, we all need to, or, it’s not Portrait, not Tortured Poets Society, uh, it’s Tortured Poets Department. Sorry, I’m a bad fan. Um, I felt really bad for Casey Musgraves, who had paid a lot of money to have a, uh, an ad for her new album, which is also coming out on April 19th.
[00:52:59] Jeff: [00:53:00] Yeah.
[00:53:00] Christina: before Taylor one, Casey, Casey, girl, you’re going to have to move that date.
[00:53:05] Jeff: yeah, friend of the show, Kacey Musgraves.
[00:53:07] Christina: Yeah, girl, you’re going to have to move that date because like, Universal is both of your labels and, and they are not going to put any money behind you at all. Like you’re going to have to move, you’re going to have to move. Um, but I felt bad for her for that. But
[00:53:19] Jeff: you’re driving down the road and it’s completely gone into the sea,
[00:53:23] Christina: but we got the track listing after, uh, like yesterday for, for the, the, um, the new Taylor album. And uh, This is, this is an album that I’m, I’m going to call it now. It’s going to be called Fuck Joe, um, uh, colon the album, uh, Joe meaning her ex boyfriend because shit, like she’s not even remotely fucking around.
[00:53:43] Christina: Like there’s a, like it, it is basically like, yep, she,
[00:53:49] Jeff: Does she go harder? Like, okay, she’s with Football Jones now. When she has had a terrible breakup, and I’m not trying to oversimplify this though, because she does a fucking great job of of putting [00:54:00] breakup shit in the song. So I’m not when she, but it traditionally, historically, if she is writing from a place of being in a relationship that is feeling good at that moment, is she even more vicious about the last one?
[00:54:14] Christina: Well, yes and no. And here’s the thing. She made it very clear to say that she’d been sitting on this album for two years.
[00:54:20] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:54:21] Christina: So, which to me is like her saying like, this is not about the current boyfriend. This is, this is Fuck Joe the album. So
[00:54:26] Jeff: The hard part about being the boyfriend. And look, it’s not about me. She doesn’t say football once.
[00:54:31] Christina: She has songs called like, uh, uh, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, um, I Can Fix Him, um, no really, I Can. Um, but daddy, I love him. Um, I can do it with a broken heart. So long, London. Which, he’s from London, so she’s, that’s, again, like, this is like a, an album that’s very much like Go Fuck
[00:54:50] Jeff: That’s funny, because I bet he was in the zone where he’s like, I think I dodged the bullet.
[00:54:53] Christina: No, I bet he was, and, and that’s the thing.
[00:54:55] Christina: This is where I honestly feel like she’s processed this enough, and she’s like, Oh no, I’m in a good place [00:55:00] now. Also, I literally have nothing left to prove, so fuck it. I’m going to destroy you. I’m, I’m literally going to destroy you. Like, you thought that the song that she released, uh, You’re Losing Me, um, as like a bonus track.
[00:55:13] Christina: Like, it was like, oh, you thought that was going to be the worst? No, no, no. This is like, sorry, bro. Like, maybe you should have had, maybe you should have let her, maybe you should have showed up for her is all I know.
[00:55:23] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joe,
[00:55:26] Christina: she wrote, she wrote, this, this is what the liner notes say.
[00:55:28] Christina: And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms, my muses acquired like bruises, that’s a good line, my talismans and charms, the tick, tick, tick of love bombs, my veins of pitch black ink, all’s fair in love and poetry, sincerely, the chairman of the tortured poets department.
[00:55:47] Jeff: to quote my people, oof ta.
[00:55:50] Christina: like, he used to be in a group chat called, like, the Tortured Men’s Club. So, anyway, um, anyway, [00:56:00] but back to Miley. Miley was great. Uh, she looks great. Boy Genius did not perform, but they won three Grammys. That was
[00:56:06] Jeff: And they’re on hiatus? Is that right? I thought I
[00:56:08] Christina: yeah, yeah. Well, they,
[00:56:09] Jeff: Just because they all do their own thing.
[00:56:11] Christina: Yeah, I think they, they, like, committed a year to the project, and then, like, the year’s up.
[00:56:15] Jeff: their fucking Grammy and we’re like, all right, cool, we’re done.
[00:56:18] Christina: but they were adorable,
[00:56:20] Jeff: were adorable. They were wearing white suits. They fucking ran to the stage. I mean, because they weren’t wearing dresses. Yeah. Like, I want to see more people run to the stage. And they were, they were
[00:56:31] Christina: it was super cute. And it was super cute. And like, they were like, Phoebe had already won one like backstage, but, um, I guess when they were getting ready with SZA and they didn’t accept that one. But then, um, when they got their three, like, you could tell that they never They were not expecting, you know, like, best rock album, best rock, or not rock album, but like rock song, and like, alternative album, and I think, um, something else with rock, but like, good on them.
[00:56:59] Jeff: [00:57:00] yeah, good job. And then Tracy Chapman, holy shit,
[00:57:03] Christina: Holy shit.
[00:57:04] Jeff: incredible, who doesn’t perform, right?
[00:57:06] Christina: No, last time she performed on TV was, was for Letterman in 2015, like, for one of his last shows.
[00:57:12] Jeff: So Fast Car is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, and, and like, it’s, it was unbelievable. I mean, it just, her, God, I wish she did still perform, but how cool that she doesn’t, but when she does, it’s like, just so you know, I’ve got this in here, I just keep it at home.
[00:57:28] Christina: he was so cute with her, like, he was, he was like, he was singing, like, he was like, like, mouthing the
[00:57:32] Jeff: was mouthing the words when it wasn’t his turn!
[00:57:35] Christina: Yeah, which was adorable. And everybody in the audience was, like, into it, like, everybody, like, when the chorus was hitting, like, everybody, like, Oprah was having the time of her life, because Oprah was there.
[00:57:46] Christina: And, uh,
[00:57:47] Jeff: she’s always got she was a chair sitter. She was
[00:57:49] Christina: Yeah, I mean, well,
[00:57:50] Jeff: Seat filler.
[00:57:51] Christina: Meryl Streep was also there because Meryl Streep’s, um, um, son in law is Mark Ronson.
[00:57:55] Jeff: Oh, funny, I didn’t know that. Huh.
[00:57:57] Christina: Yeah, um, and then of course, uh, Joni [00:58:00] Mitchell performed,
[00:58:00] Jeff: Great. I haven’t seen that though.
[00:58:03] Christina: um, it, it, I’ll find it for you. It’s, it’s a crier because she’s 80, and you know, like, nine years ago she had an aneurysm, and like, we all thought she was dead.
[00:58:10] Christina: Dead. Like, genuinely. And I don’t know how she’d never performed at the Grammys before. Because that was insane to me. Like, that’s nuts. I’m like, in the 70s, why would you not have her up there
[00:58:20] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:58:22] Christina: Um, so, so, you know, uh, Canada gave us good stuff with that. And then, um, Billy Joel performed. He was, he was good, actually.
[00:58:32] Christina: But, but that was
[00:58:33] Jeff: his, uh, with his drummer, Liberty DeVito. I’m just here to tell everybody, friend of the show, Liberty DeVito, they’re friends again. Great
[00:58:41] Christina: Oh, and Annie Lennox, um, did a, um, a nice, uh, rendition of, uh, Nothing Compares to You, uh,
[00:58:47] Jeff: Oh, nice. Nice.
[00:58:50] Christina: Um,
[00:58:50] Jeff: That’s amazing.
[00:58:51] Christina: performances were really good,
[00:58:52] Jeff: Yeah, why does it so now everything like you had said, like Phoebe, Phoebe versus one award backstage, which that’s pretty badass, by the way, [00:59:00] just like, I just, we’re hanging out just a minute, I just won an award over here by the catering table. But like, is the deal because I didn’t watch the show.
[00:59:07] Jeff: It seems like everything I was seeing like Killer Mike’s acceptance tweets, it looks like it was in the middle of the ceremonies, which I guess it was just not televised.
[00:59:14] Christina: That’s not televised, right? So they do
[00:59:15] Jeff: Why? Why
[00:59:16] Christina: be because they can’t fit all of them. Because it’s like a hundred awards.
[00:59:20] Jeff: Yeah, no, it’s 100 words for sure. But like, both of those felt like ones that could totally be in the show.
[00:59:26] Christina: you’re not wrong. And this is a contentious thing. So for instance, they, there’s a battle over the years with the Grammys, uh, the Accordion Academy about like, okay, the tele, because the telecast makes them all their money.
[00:59:38] Christina: And, and so they need ratings. And to get the ratings, you need to have performances. But if you have performances, then that means you don’t have award time. And so they give out the bulk of the awards, um, at a ceremony a few hours beforehand. And like, that’s when Boy Genius got theirs. That’s when Killer Mike got his.
[00:59:52] Jeff: And is the full crowd there
[00:59:55] Christina: No,
[00:59:55] Jeff: crypto. com arena?
[00:59:57] Christina: I mean, you have, you have, it’s [01:00:00] probably more people are probably at that one than they are at the main event.
[01:00:03] Jeff: Okay. Okay.
[01:00:03] Christina: Because the main event is really like, this is the televised one. So that’s like album of the year, song of the year, record of the year, um, best new artist, you know, that sort of thing.
[01:00:12] Christina: Um, and then they will pick like what songs they used to do. Like in the 90s, like when Alternative was getting bigger, like they would make like best rock album, best Alternative, that would be part of the main ceremony. That’s not anymore. Um, they, they, uh, will go back and forth. Like, SZA did have one of her, one of her awards was given to her on stage, and I think that they probably put that one in the main ceremony because they, she was, got the most nominations.
[01:00:37] Christina: She did not win the most, but she got the most nominations, and I think they wanted to be able to like let her actually accept an award on stage, so that’s probably why they put that there. I, I don’t know. Um. But yeah, it’s a hard thing because like the show went long. It was like three and a half hours.
[01:00:51] Christina: Like it went long. Um, like it’s supposed to end at 11. Like it ended at 11. 37 or something. Like it went long. Um,
[01:00:58] Jeff: Not to put too fine a [01:01:00] point on it.
[01:01:00] Christina: well, because I was watching three hours behind, but
[01:01:03] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:01:04] Christina: I was like, I would,
[01:01:04] Jeff: must be nice in that case.
[01:01:06] Christina: It is, and then they replay it immediately afterwards, and so I was just like, okay, wow, this, this went long as fuck, because, oh, part of that was that Jay Z got some, like, Dr.
[01:01:15] Christina: Dre Lifetime Achievement Award, and then he just talked forever,
[01:01:18] Jeff: Okay. Got
[01:01:19] Christina: like, he just talked forever, and like, like, as a, as a, I don’t know, man, like, maybe, maybe write it down next time, I don’t know, but like, um, Beyonce did show up, though, like, like, they came in late, like, they weren’t there for the whole thing, but they came in, and she was there with Blue Ivy, and like, she had a cowboy
[01:01:33] Jeff: come in late before I, I like that
[01:01:35] Christina: Yeah, I like that too. I mean, they can.
[01:01:37] Jeff: there when we get there. They got
[01:01:40] Christina: Let’s be real. Like, Beyonce can show up any fucking time she wants,
[01:01:44] Jeff: Who’s the seat filler for Beyonce? Do you have to appear at least a little bit, incredible and regal, or can you just be Sandy from North Carolina?
[01:01:51] Christina: I mean, I don’t know. I guess it depends on where she’s seated.
[01:01:54] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing.
[01:01:57] Christina: but yeah, so the performances were really good and [01:02:00] like, okay, I will say this and then I’ll shut up about this because we’ve been talking too long about the Grammys, but I was accused of being a Taylor Swift anti on Threads, which was the most
[01:02:11] Jeff: Wait, what’s a Taylor Swift anti? It’s
[01:02:13] Christina: Meaning someone who’s, who, who, yes,
[01:02:15] Jeff: Oh, okay. Why is it at the end? Why they bury the lead.
[01:02:21] Christina: fan culture, I
[01:02:22] Jeff: Okay, okay. Why were you that? Why were you that? What happened,
[01:02:24] Christina: because, because all I said was, okay, I think we can all agree that she won the award, and I’m very happy she won the award, but it was like a cumulative thing, like it was kind of like a, we’re really sorry that ten years ago we gave Random Access Memories by Daft Punk, album of the
[01:02:39] Jeff: Sorry we let Kanye up on stage that one time.
[01:02:42] Christina: Well, that was the VMAs,
[01:02:43] Jeff: Oh, those VMAs. Sorry.
[01:02:44] Christina: that was the VMAs, but, but no, but it was like, to me, I was like, okay, well, this is clearly, cause like all award shows do this, like the Oscars do this to the Emmys as well. We’re like, you, you win the award and it’s not actually for that piece of art. It is either for your cumulative artistic achievement that year, [01:03:00] which this year, let’s No one has had more impact in the world than her, so fair.
[01:03:07] Christina: Or, because like, hey Leo DiCaprio, we’re really sorry we didn’t give you Oscars all those other times, but you jumped inside a bear, so we’re gonna give it to you for the revenant, right?
[01:03:17] Jeff: Yep, here’s a new young woman as a girlfriend.
[01:03:20] Christina: right, right. So like, you know, sometimes the award that you win, it’s not for that particular piece of art. It’s like, we’re really sorry that we got it wrong all those times in the past.
[01:03:29] Christina: And also you had like a really big year. So all I’m
[01:03:32] Jeff: this logic, I should be getting my fucking Grammy soon.
[01:03:35] Christina: totally you should. But, but like, I’m just saying like, Midnight’s Not the best album of the year. Like, not even close. Am I mad that she won her fourth album of the year? No. I think that, again, like, cumulatively, like, for everything else, like, that she, she, she saved the music industry.
[01:03:52] Christina: Like, she sold more records than all the other, like, 20 people combined. Like, it’s, it’s, you know what I mean? Like, okay, give it [01:04:00] to her. I get it. The Aris Tour has changed economies. Like, I get it. Give it to her.
[01:04:04] Jeff: I’m just kidding.
[01:04:05] Christina: But, yes, same, but, like, don’t pretend that this is like the best album, and so I guess some Taylor Swift stan was like, oh, you know, like, was basically calling me an anti and was like, oh, you know, the, the meltdowns are starting already, and I’m like, I’m not melting down, I’m just saying clearly this was because Red lost ten years ago, and like, This is Payback, not, you know, I’m not like in any way diminishing anything.
[01:04:29] Christina: And the person was like, oh, well, you could have just said that Red deserved a Grammy too. And I’m like, okay, but like, Midnight’s wasn’t the best album of 2023. Like, what do you want me to, you want me to lie? Like, I’m not going to.
[01:04:41] Jeff: You’re not
[01:04:42] Christina: it’s not even the top,
[01:04:43] Jeff: I’m not gonna
[01:04:43] Christina: even her, it’s, it’s not even one of her fifth, it’s, I think it’s probably like her seventh best album.
[01:04:48] Christina: Like,
[01:04:49] Jeff: Okay, I wanna say, I wanna say something I love about the term Taylor Swift Anti, which is that it seems like the community will not besmirch her name by putting another word before it. [01:05:00] Everything goes at the end. It’s like Taylor Swift the Lionhearted. It’s like Taylor Swift anti. So like, even if what’s, what we’re talking about is bad, we get the positive jolt, the dopamine hit of hearing your name first, before we get mad.
[01:05:14] Christina: Before we get mad. Yeah, but but it was anyway, but that was a very funny thing to me I was like wait I just I just waited in line for 30 minutes to spend 76 with tax and shipping on this bitch on her new album like because I had to buy the CD the vinyl
[01:05:28] Jeff: Friend of the show, this bitch.
[01:05:30] Christina: Yeah completely. I was like, okay, so I I’m an anti just cuz I’m like,
[01:05:36] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:05:36] Christina: so she didn’t want it for this album where it it was clearly cumulative which Yeah, I, I, cause, you’re not, you’re not
[01:05:43] Jeff: was white guilt.
[01:05:44] Christina: that, here we go.
[01:05:48] Brett: Can I title the episode Taylor Swift anti question mark?
[01:05:52] Jeff: I thought it was going to be the one where Brett’s drunk. Um, no, that’s a good one. Uh, can I just say to people that if you, [01:06:00] if any of this piqued your interest, I love watching Grammy clips on TikTok. I mean, not as much as I like watching live streams of oil riggers. Last night, we were supposed to finish, we were supposed to finish, uh, uh, Lenny, whatever, the Lenny Bernstein, Bernstein movie, um, and, and I was enthralled watching a live stream of oil riggers and, and it was like, come on, we got to watch, we said, no, we got to watch this.
[01:06:24] Jeff: Oh, fine. I’ll watch this. But I understood. More of what was happening in the oil riggers than I could of what Bradley Cooper was saying in his fantastic, uh, job of playing Leonard Bernstein. But man, I can’t hear a damn, I can’t understand a damn thing. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. It’s crazy.
[01:06:42] Jeff: It’s good though. Do you guys watch that movie? Yeah. It’s good. It’s not great,
[01:06:49] Christina: uh, haven’t seen it yet.
[01:06:50] Jeff: Like, it’s irresistible in a way, but
[01:06:54] Brett: I just watch a proposal and I would say the same thing.
[01:06:59] Christina: Proposal’s [01:07:00] good. That’s a Ryan Reynolds and um, uh, um, Sandra Bullock. That’s a fucking great movie. Honestly, that’s a great rom com.
[01:07:07] Brett: it was not great, but it was good.
[01:07:08] Jeff: Yeah. I don’t even mean to say not great, but good, because I really, there’s so much I loved about this movie, but it is, and it’s all just like vignettes, but it’s not really, it’s not really telling you that it is. So you’re just like, what fucking house am I in now? It’s very confusing. But I could, he’s, he’s absolutely incredible to watch.
[01:07:26] Jeff: I mean, it’s just,
[01:07:27] Brett: of, after that Merlin episode, I become obsessed with House.
[01:07:32] Jeff: I need to
[01:07:33] Christina: Oh, such a good show.
[01:07:35] Brett: I’ve been watching one to two episodes a night ever since that episode. And I. I’m obsessed with House now. It’s, it’s a really good show.
[01:07:46] Christina: It is a really good show.
[01:07:47] Brett: It’s really good writing. It’s really good writing, and it’s really good character development, and I cannot complain at all.
[01:07:55] Brett: I love House.
[01:07:57] Jeff: Well, maybe I’ll get
[01:07:58] Brett: That’s, that’s, that’s [01:08:00] Drunk Brett’s addition to this whole conversation
[01:08:03] Jeff: Have you guys walked house?
[01:08:05] Brett: as he’s watching a 10 year old show. Have you guys seen the
[01:08:10] Jeff: And I stole your wallet. I stole your wallet.
[01:08:13] Christina: to feel really old?
[01:08:14] Jeff: Yeah, always. I don’t need to, but yes.
[01:08:17] Christina: House debuted in 2004.
[01:08:19] Brett: Oh, Jesus, fuck.
[01:08:21] Jeff: Wow.
[01:08:22] Brett: Jesus, fuck. Okay, yeah. So, you see all this gray hair on my
[01:08:27] Jeff: I don’t think anybody does. But I do.
[01:08:30] Brett: Hey, you have it too.
[01:08:32] Jeff: Oh, are you kidding me? I have a little Jesus Christ.
[01:08:36] Christina: I, I, um, knock on wood very much, so, like, I have, I do not, like, I have a few,
[01:08:42] Jeff: Got nothing? Hehehehehehe.
[01:08:45] Christina: stray greys that I honestly started getting, like, ten years ago, but I, it’s, it’s small, like, and it’s one of the things where I, I, I can pluck them, and it’s, like, maybe one part of my head, and it’s, I don’t have anything else, and, um, I always ask my stylist every time I see him, like, how’s it [01:09:00] looking, how’s it going, because my mom went white, like, my mom went gray, and so she gets her hair dyed, like, like, she, she goes, like, every three
[01:09:05] Jeff: went white early.
[01:09:06] Brett: it’s, it’s gonna happen to you all at once. When you finally stop being, what, 29?
[01:09:12] Christina: yeah. Well, my grandmother was
[01:09:13] Brett: all at once, all at once, you’re just gonna go,
[01:09:16] Jeff: Adele, every album would have the same name.
[01:09:19] Christina: It would. It would always be 29. Um, no, but my grandmother was 90 when she died, and she still, like, she was, like, it was pretty dark. Like, it was, she helped, so I’m, I’m hoping that, like, I inherit from her,
[01:09:33] Brett: I
[01:09:34] Christina: not from my mom.
[01:09:36] Brett: I hope for you.
[01:09:37] Christina: I mean, uh, well, what, one person told me, they’re like, if you haven’t already gone, if it hasn’t already started now, they’re like, it’s not gonna happen.
[01:09:43] Christina: So,
[01:09:44] Brett: myself in the mirror today and I saw this gray and I was like, dude,
[01:09:48] Jeff: Well, you’re rockin a proper Salt N Pepa right
[01:09:51] Brett: You’re pulling it off. You’re,
[01:09:52] Christina: you are pulling it off.
[01:09:53] Brett: I, I
[01:09:54] Christina: Well, you’re also a man.
[01:09:55] Jeff: As I was gonna say,
[01:09:56] Brett: enough. Fair enough. I am the age I am and I’m [01:10:00] actually, I’m proud to have lived long enough to have gray hair. Like that was not in the cards for me.
[01:10:08] Brett: So I’m okay with it.
[01:10:10] Christina: I think, I think that’s completely fair.
[01:10:12] Jeff: Yeah, man, they call me Greybeard and Silverback. Um, awesome! Well, we did it. This is nice. We give the listeners one episode that’s not two hours long. Uh, we’ll be back with two
[01:10:27] Brett: first episode, one hour, we did it.
[01:10:30] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:10:31] Christina: It was still incredibly ADHD, which I love about it. Like, if anything, it was even more ADHD than usual. Like,
[01:10:36] Jeff: Yes.
[01:10:37] Brett: and we did not even do a Mental Health Corner.
[01:10:40] Jeff: Oh shit, I didn’t even realize that. I’d really like to see a transcript of this, uh, this episode that is only proper nouns. Because I feel like you can actually watch what happened to us by just the list of proper
[01:10:53] Brett: I, I will send you, I will send you the transcript. I know you have the software to make that happen.
[01:10:59] Jeff: I sure [01:11:00] do. Awesome. Well, yeah, I mean, that’s funny, you know, Mental Health Corner, but you know, let’s, uh, we should wrap it anyhow.
[01:11:07] Christina: We’ll wrap it anyway. We’ll, we’ll start with Mental Health Corner properly
[01:11:10] Jeff: Alright, y’all. Get some sleep?
[01:11:13] Brett: Get some sleep.
[01:11:15] Jeff: Yeah.
[01:11:15] Christina: some sleep.
[01:11:16] Jeff: Uh huh. Hey, everybody.
Bryan Guffey returns to talk coffee, religion, and mental health, possibly all at once. Maybe.
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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.
TranscriptDon’t Be A Regex Princess with Bryan Guffey
[00:00:00] Jeff: Hi, everybody. This is the Overtired podcast. I am Jeff Severins Gunzel, and I am here with my co hosts, Brett and Christina. Hi. And we have an awesome, awesome guest today, one of our favorites to have on, Bryan Guffey. Hello, Bryan.
[00:00:22] Bryan: Hello! How is everybody?
[00:00:26] Jeff: Hello!
[00:00:26] Christina: We’re so glad to have you back.
[00:00:28] Bryan: I’m so glad to be back. It’s
[00:00:31] Jeff: I’m glad to be here with you, because I missed you. I missed you last
[00:00:34] Bryan: Yeah, it’s really great, yeah, that we all get to be here together. I’ve been bugging Brett a lot, Jeff, being like, I want to, I want to be on a podcast with Jeff. I want to be on a podcast with Jeff. His brain, I love his brain.
[00:00:45] Jeff: I hope it’s worth it.
[00:00:48] Don King and Katt Williams
[00:00:48] Bryan: Listen, your hair already does it for me. Like, I’m so here for your hair.
[00:00:52] Jeff: Oh, man. I, I love my hair.
[00:00:55] Bryan: No, absolutely. I mean, it is just very, like, it’s very on par with [00:01:00] like it fits you.
[00:01:01] Jeff: I don’t, I, here’s why I, I love my hair, because it sounds like a fucking weird thing to say, but, um, I haven’t had to put a comb through it. Since, like, I don’t know what, because at some point I landed on the, like, Mad Professor hair, and, and I don’t have to maintain it, but I kinda, I like a little swoosh.
[00:01:19] Jeff: There’s a lot about, about me I don’t love, but I like my hair.
[00:01:23] Brett: both have a bit of a Don King thing going on.
[00:01:26] Jeff: Oh, yeah!
[00:01:28] Bryan: yeah, this is all hiding behind the, the,
[00:01:29] Jeff: Well, yeah, Bryan just made it Don King.
[00:01:32] Brett: who is actually black can pull it off
[00:01:34] Jeff: Bryan, who is actually becoming Don King before us right now, I wish you could see it.
[00:01:38] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say, you, this, this is very much, um, who, who played Don King in the HBO movie? Cause like, you’re totally giving like those vibes right now.
[00:01:47] Jeff: Who did
[00:01:47] Brett: idea There was an HBO movie? Was it Idris Elba? I’m just kidding. Of
[00:01:53] Jeff: Did anybody else I’m gonna be such a
[00:01:56] Bryan: In, in the HBO, in the NDH, not in Ali, [00:02:00] then
[00:02:01] Christina: No, it was Don King only in America. It was a 1997 film developed, uh, uh, directed by John Herzfeld and written by Cario Salem. Um,
[00:02:08] Bryan: Ving Rames.
[00:02:09] Christina: yeah, fuck yeah. That was actually who I thought it was. No. Okay. But, but I’m sorry. That’s who I thought it was. And I was like, I’m going to say that and I’m going to be wrong.
[00:02:18] Brett: heh.
[00:02:18] Bryan: that’s so awesome.
[00:02:20] Christina: good, good job.
[00:02:21] Bryan: to watch that, I love Ving Rhames.
[00:02:23] Christina: He’s the best baby boy. Uh, RIP, John Singleton. But like, genuinely like that film like gets slept on and that’s like one of like the best films.
[00:02:31] Jeff: Love John Singleton. That’s
[00:02:33] Bryan: Right, isn’t, isn’t, and, and, Ving Rhames is in, he’s the one who’s in, he is, yeah, he’s the one that’s in every Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise, they’re like best friends.
[00:02:43] Christina: Yes. He’s like the smart one. He’s, he’s like the one, he’s like, he’s like, he’s like, no, chill dude. what are you doing?
[00:02:51] Jeff: heh.
[00:02:52] Bryan: so good.
[00:02:54] Jeff: Oh,
[00:02:54] Christina: Bernie Mack is, was was in this, this is
[00:02:56] Jeff: Bernie
[00:02:57] Bryan: Oh, Bernie
[00:02:58] Jeff: Did anybody follow the Cat [00:03:00] Williams thing?
[00:03:01] Christina: Yeah. Oh my God.
[00:03:02] Jeff: God, that was a blast.
[00:03:04] Christina: That’s the best three hours of my life.
[00:03:07] Jeff: And now on TikTok, my algorithm is so tweaked to Cat Williams because I looked at every response and watched every clip like three times that now it’s like all Cat Williams and monkeys in my TikTok feed.
[00:03:20] Jeff: Baby monkeys,
[00:03:21] Christina: so,
[00:03:21] Bryan: That’s a really hilarious pairing, I just want to point out, and then we’ll move on from
[00:03:26] Jeff: yin and yang, you know?
[00:03:28] Christina: it is, just for background, for anybody who wants to go down this rabbit hole, because it is delightful, um, the, the comedian, Cat Williams, who has had problems, um, and, and, but I used to very much enjoy his stand up specials, does an absolutely unhinged, um, uh, podcast with a, who is it with, with Shannon Sharpe, right?
[00:03:45] Jeff: Yeah, I think that’s it.
[00:03:46] Christina: yeah, uh,
[00:03:47] Jeff: all I see is Cat Williams in my head.
[00:03:49] Christina: And, and so, and it’s like, it’s like over three hours long and it’s Saturday Night Live even parodied it. And he like makes the most unhinged like [00:04:00] declarations about all the people he’s ever had beef with and like just makes these like claims that are just provably false. It’s the most unhinged, delightful, insane interview you’ll ever watch. And then all these people like fact checked him on everything he said.
[00:04:13] Christina: And it’s,
[00:04:14] Jeff: And the problem is, like, if anybody else had done that kind of interview, I would have been like, ugh, gross, but it is irresistible. Like, the like, the extent to which Kat Williams is like, I’m not getting up from this chair, I’m not apologizing, I’m just gonna go deeper and deeper.
[00:04:31] Bryan: And I think that’s partially because, like, Cat Williams over the past couple of years has sort of been, like, a truth teller in certain areas, about, and saying things like, calling out Dave Chappelle and some other
[00:04:40] Christina: yeah.
[00:04:42] Bryan: so I think people were like, Oh, we don’t expect this wildness from Cat Williams now, but here it is again, he’s back.
[00:04:51] Christina: Right. He’s back. He’s like, he’d had some like incident a number of years ago. I can’t remember what it was when he’s, when he was having some problems that was like seriously [00:05:00] deranged. Um, but yeah, then he was like speaking truth to power and you’re like, okay, maybe he’s doing well.
[00:05:05] Christina: Okay. Again. And you see this interview and you’re like,
[00:05:08] Bryan: Nope.
[00:05:08] Christina: this is, this is great. Um, uh, but, um, Yes. Yes. Shannon Sharpe was the one who, who, who did the
[00:05:16] Bryan: you’re talking about NFL, the NFL’s Shannon Sharpe.
[00:05:20] Christina: And, and,
[00:05:20] Bryan: That’s even more
[00:05:21] Christina: funny. And what’s funny to me is,
[00:05:23] Bryan: a podcast.
[00:05:23] Jeff: Watching him handle that was incredible.
[00:05:26] Christina: Yeah. Well, okay. Well, Shannon Sharp, not only does he podcast, he has a very successful ESPN show, and he used to have a show with, uh, he was on, um, with a Skip Bayless on his, uh, um, a Fox Sports show. And then they had a very, very bitter breakup.
[00:05:40] Christina: And, uh, now Shannon Sharp has, um, a, um, a very popular like ESPN show, but um, apparently it’s received 54 million views. So far,
[00:05:52] Jeff: And the last thing, I mean, the one thing I want to say about it that was amazing about watching Shannon Sharp is like, here, Cat Williams is essentially firing a machine gun [00:06:00] over, just over his shoulder. And you can see him being like, I am not moving into the target. Like, I have to figure out how to both like, keep my own integrity in the midst of this and not end up in the line of fire somehow, either now or afterwards.
[00:06:16] Brett: Alright, is it okay if I reign this in
[00:06:18] Jeff: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:19] Christina: Yes, of course.
[00:06:20] Brett: we decided this week to do a new format, um, maybe just this week only, but we’ll see how it goes, but we’re going to start the show with Graptitude, um, which is usually the final segment on the show where everyone talks about one favorite piece of software or developer for the week, um, I have mine picked out, do you guys, are you prepared for this early onslaught of Graptitude?
[00:06:48] Brett: Jeff, do
[00:06:48] Jeff: you suggesting that sometimes we pick our graftitude in the course of recording?
[00:06:52] Brett: absolutely do. Yes.
[00:06:54] Christina: I absolutely do as well. But no, I got one. Wait, did we do? We didn’t do one last [00:07:00] episode, right?
[00:07:00] Brett: Nope, we didn’t. We skipped it
[00:07:02] Christina: cool.
[00:07:02] Jeff: ended up essentially being Chat GPT.
[00:07:04] Brett: still two hours long.
[00:07:07] Christina: right. No. Okay. Yeah. No, I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t share the one that I had last week, um, for, for, for this week. So,
[00:07:13] Bryan: I love, I love Brad being like, it was still two hours long and I’m like, that’s what I loved about it. Even though I understand from like the perspective of being in it, how hard it can be to go two hours because your brain goes, And
[00:07:26] Jeff: definitely.
[00:07:27] Brett: Alright, Jeff, kick us off.
[00:07:30] grAPPtitude off the top
[00:07:30] Jeff: I will, I will kick us off, but first I’m going to suggest a slight change to our tagline, which can be Overtired, Tech, Mental Health, and Cat Williams. Just putting it out there. Um, I mean, you know, it’s just an option. So, um, okay. So.
[00:07:44] Bryan: Cat Williams could also be, Brad has a new cat named Williams.
[00:07:47] Christina: yeah,
[00:07:47] Jeff: Oh, that’s good. I like that. Yeah, cat with a k though,
[00:07:50] Brett: do, I have a cat named Morris. It would fit.
[00:07:53] Bryan: Perfect. Oh, now we’ve got an agency going.
[00:07:55] Christina: yeah, exactly. Yes. Well done. Well done.[00:08:00]
[00:08:01] Jeff: Um, okay. So mine is actually something that, um, that, uh, Alex recommended. Alex Cox recommended on the first episode of the year, uh, in answer to My Graptitude Then, which was, um, Datum, um, which is a great app for sort of just tracking whatever it is you want to track. Um, and they had recommended at the time, um, Chronicling. an app by the developer Rebecca Owen. Um, and the first thing I want to say about this app, and then I’ll talk about the functionality in a second, but it is so, um, it is so incredible to me when you start using an app. It’s, it’s beautiful. The UI is intuitive.
[00:08:40] Jeff: It, it has just the right kind of constraint, right? Like it does some of the things you need it to do right away when you go looking in the settings, but then it doesn’t, doesn’t give a person like me, too much opportunity to just fiddle and not actually utilize the app. And it’s in regular development and updates and meaningful features are added.
[00:08:58] Jeff: And it’s just a wonderful app. [00:09:00] It’s chronicling, um, uh, uh, with a L I N G and not, it’s missing, let’s just say it’s missing a vowel. That’s all I’m going to say. So you go on that little, uh, goose chase. Um, but anyway, so it’s one of these apps that allows you to say, you know, I want to press a button every time I, actually call my father.
[00:09:18] Jeff: I want to, I want to press a button. Um, every time I get an oil change, I want to press a button every time. I think a shower in my case is. Joking with Alex about that on Mastodon, but it’s not really a joke, like it’s a good indicator of mental health, right? And, um, and, and Rebecca in this app has made that not only very easy to do, but also very beautiful.
[00:09:37] Jeff: And there’s also just kind of a, the cool thing is you can choose the scope of time in which you’re tracking these things. Is it inside of a week, inside of a month, inside of a year? And then next to each thing, each item on your, on the home screen is just a little chart. That just kind of shows a little line for each time inside of a week or a month or a year that you did this thing.
[00:09:58] Jeff: And then also tells you how many days [00:10:00] it’s been since you did the thing. So I happen to know that it’s been 37 days since we trimmed our cat’s nails. Um, and
[00:10:06] Jeff: It’s been 13 days since, uh, since I got a haircut. Um, and, and what I love about it is it’s not, it’s not at least the way it allows you to use it, not.
[00:10:15] Jeff: So much for like habit building, like, I think a lot of those apps, I said this when we were talking to Alex about this kind of app, it’s like, a lot of those apps are designed in a way that makes sort of a judgment call, like, you’re supposed to decide what you’re supposed to do, and then you’re rewarded with haptics and confetti every time you do it, right?
[00:10:32] Jeff: Which feels great.
[00:10:33] Brett: prescriptive versus descriptive.
[00:10:36] Jeff: Ooh, nice. And, and what I literally want is to be like, when’s the last time I hung out with a friend in person? When’s the last time we went out to a restaurant? Like, I actually want to see that stuff. Not because I feel bad when I see it, but it like, it helps me a little bit. I’m like, Oh yeah, no, I, I probably should get a haircut or whatever it is.
[00:10:53] Jeff: You know? Um, haircut’s a terrible example. I have so many things I’m tracking in there, but a lot of them are about [00:11:00] Relationships and, um, and just like well being, like things that are sort of good indicators. Um, it does in some cases encourage me to actually do a thing. Like if I see it’s been X number of days since, you know, I took a long walk or something, I’ll be like, Oh, I should do that.
[00:11:13] Jeff: But it doesn’t, it’s, I don’t know what it is. It’s the designer. It’s the overall vibe, but it doesn’t in any way inspire guilt. It’s just like, I just want to know, you know.
[00:11:23] Brett: like this that have always worked for me are the ones that are descriptive that just give me the data and let me make my own, um, kind of judgments. And, and okay, this worked in this way, I should keep doing this, so I’m going to make, you know, a judgment call based on their description of what I have done.
[00:11:46] Brett: Um, the ones that are prescriptive, the ones that are like, here’s my goal, now I’m gonna hold myself to this New Year’s resolution kind of idea. Where I’ll just feel guilty when I once again fail to keep them. Um, [00:12:00] yeah. I, I can appreciate that. Uh, by, by the way, that is how you spell chronicling. It’s not missing a vowel.
[00:12:08] Jeff: uh, I wish I could say edit that out, but that’s not, that’s, that’s not what we’re gonna
[00:12:13] Bryan: perfect.
[00:12:14] Jeff: Um, I don’t know, that’s funny. Okay, fine. Fine. I didn’t finish high school. I mean, I, I work alongside PhDs, you know, like, I’ve seen their spelling errors,
[00:12:27] Bryan: Absolutely. Spelling is not, spelling is not an
[00:12:30] Jeff: No, like I need the red line. You know, I need the red line.
[00:12:34] Jeff: Like, it’s fine to show me what’s wrong. Um, all right. Sorry, Rebecca. You’re, you’re, you’re also brilliant because you know how chronicling is spelled. I mean, that’s incredible. You know, like, it’s a thing to just remove. Here’s the thing. I’m not, I’m not defensive. I’m a little embarrassed. But like, the thing about assuming that there was a vowel missing is that, um, Okay.
[00:12:54] Jeff: That’s what all apps are missing.
[00:12:57] Brett: And, and
[00:12:58] Jeff: saw that and I’m like, [00:13:00] Chronicling, what an interesting
[00:13:00] Brett: and I didn’t look this up. I’m going for my own innate sense of spelling. So it could turn out in retrospect after this episode is out that someone like Harold comes along and says, actually it’s Proniculling and, and I was totally wrong. So last week I called Harold a pedant, a pedant, a pedant, a pedantic
[00:13:21] Jeff: ask Harold.
[00:13:22] Brett: And, and
[00:13:22] Bryan: love that you said feed in. Are we, are we getting into, uh,
[00:13:26] Brett: he. He laughed
[00:13:28] Bryan: ahead.
[00:13:29] Brett: He told me it was fine. I told him I was afraid that that came across as mean, but he was okay with it. But back to Chronicling. This looks good.
[00:13:37] Jeff: Yeah. And also, I mean, like, uh, certainly, uh, uh, something that has to be true for me is that you can, you can export your data, right? So you can also export your data. You can pull it into something else you want. And the last thing I’ll say about it is like, that’s a good sign. Maybe it’s as much about me as anything, but like, it’s almost the end of January and I started it at the beginning and I’m still keeping stuff filled on it, which is like, So that’s gotta be something to say about the app.
[00:13:59] Jeff: So anyway, that’s, [00:14:00] that’s my thing.
[00:14:02] Brett: All right, Christina.
[00:14:05] Christina: so my pick is the new version of Prompt, uh, Prompt 3 from, um, Panic. Um, I, um, You know, I don’t know. So, and it’s interesting. This is a universal app now, so it works on Mac as well as iOS. Um, it is moved to a subscription model. So how you feel about that, or I think you can buy it one time and the one time price is a little bit high.
[00:14:27] Christina: I’m not going to lie. Uh, I think it’s probably more, more than I would spend. I’m going to do the subscription for a year, mostly to support Panic and to see how much I like it. There are a bunch of, at this point, I think, really good SSH clients for iOS. There’s, um, um, ISH, uh, which is, uh, available both from a test flight and, um, it’s in the app store.
[00:14:48] Christina: Um, there’s, um, La Termina from, um,
[00:14:51] Brett: Yeah, that’s
[00:14:51] Christina: Miguel De Queza, which I really like a lot. Um, and then there’s the things like specifically for, for Mosh and, and, and whatnot. Um, but, uh, [00:15:00] but I love the, the, the team at Panic. Um, this had been an app panic, uh, prompt to, maybe I’m misremembering this, but I thought I remembered at one point that they’d kind of put it in maintenance mode or basically killed it.
[00:15:12] Christina: And so I was glad to see this revived. Uh, and so, um, I, um, uh, and I do have to say like the, the intro video and stuff is really good. Um, again, it’s interesting that it has the, the Mac client. I don’t know how necessary that is when you have terminal, just being completely honest. But, um, you know, and certainly this is not as good of a terminal emulator as iTerm.
[00:15:37] Christina: It’s, it’s just not. But I do think that this is, um, a, uh, a good thing for, for, for Mac, uh, or not for Mac, for, for iOS. Um, and I’m not mad. It now does have MOSH support. Um, you can, uh, it has a CLIFFS feature so you can have like your most frequently used commands and text snippets right there. That I think is actually Pretty useful.
[00:15:59] Christina: And then of course it [00:16:00] works with Panic Sync, which I like a lot. Um, usually what I, I use these sorts of things for are for like, Using for, for jump boxes. Um, that’s mostly what I use, uh, the, the iOS types of clients for. But, um, anyway, I, um, I, I, this came out, I think it had come out last week when, uh, we were talking, like I was going to make my picket.
[00:16:23] Christina: It had just come out. I’ve been playing with it a little bit. Um, and, and I like it so far. Like I said, I don’t know if this is going to be something I remain subscribed to all the time, but, um, um, I’m happy to see more apps like this. And. Always happy to see Panic have apps. So,
[00:16:40] Brett: I gotta look back into Mosh. Like, I’ve been, I’ve been using Tmux Sessions. Um, and like all of my, uh, config files, when I SSH into a remote host, it always loads up a tmux with my last session. So before I disconnect from an SSH host, [00:17:00] I just exit out of tmux and then disconnect, and that has given me really stable, uh, SSH sessions.
[00:17:08] Brett: But, uh, but I, I remember seeing Moush and thinking, oh, that might be a great answer and then forgetting about it. So,
[00:17:16] Christina: same. And so I do remember from like the prompt two days that that was always like a much requested feature. Uh, and so, um, I was glad to see that, um, exist. I do have to say, I do like the, the, um, website that they’ve created for, uh, for prompts.
[00:17:31] Bryan: I was about to
[00:17:32] Brett: good. I was just
[00:17:33] Christina: The aesthetic, yeah, the aesthetic is really good, and the music, um, when you install it, if you go through, like, the trial or whatever, is really good.
[00:17:40] Christina: Also, the video and stuff that they created, um, I think, I think Christa still makes all their videos, is, like, just fire, so. Um, um. There are, at this point, it’s a different landscape than when, uh, Prompt 2 came out. Um, there are a lot of good options for iOS, but, um, I’m still gonna [00:18:00] make this my, my Graftitude.
[00:18:02] Brett: I like, on their
[00:18:03] Bryan: make status port again?
[00:18:05] Christina: Yeah, right?
[00:18:06] Brett: why, why did they cancel that? I don’t remember.
[00:18:10] Christina: I think at the time, it was too hard to make money off of it. And also, like, Apple
[00:18:17] Brett: it away for free.
[00:18:18] Christina: Well, they tried. And then, and then, you know, trying to do kind of like IAP stuff. I think what was hard at the time, it would be different now, but at the time, this was right when Apple switched the connector type.
[00:18:30] Christina: And so the AV connector from the 30 pin could let you do things that you couldn’t do from lightning for a long time. And I think that kind of fucked them. And then there were also problems where they had with like certain companies, like if you wanted to put in like API keys and other sorts of things, like.
[00:18:44] Christina: Apple really limited what you could do and how, how you could customize those boards. Like, it’s weird. Like, this is a product that I honestly do think you’re dead on, Brett. Like, I think that you could revive this now and you could make it work. Honestly, web technology has gotten good [00:19:00] enough that you could just do, you know, like, some certain calls, you know, like, without having to do things the way they did them now.
[00:19:06] Christina: Like, you, honestly, you could probably build it out even more as a web thing. But, um,
[00:19:11] Bryan: Cable, are you listening?
[00:19:13] Christina: yeah. Bring it back.
[00:19:16] Brett: There’s, uh, in the, like, kind of video that’s running on the computer on the website, bus out to a Matrix terminal for a
[00:19:25] Christina: I love that.
[00:19:26] Brett: There are, you can install a matrix app through brew.
[00:19:30] Christina: Yep. I
[00:19:31] Brett: have an, I have an old bash script that uses TPUT and a random, like a random kernel to put Kanji characters on the screen, but what it’s super random and doesn’t create those nice falling columns, uh, that you get from whatever’s on homebrew.
[00:19:48] Brett: I think it’s written in Rust.
[00:19:49] Christina: Yeah, it is. I think so. Um, and then there’s also a, um, um, there’s a way that you can get like the sneakers, um, effect, uh, that, [00:20:00] that’s also, um, on, on GitHub somewhere. I’ll find that because I made that like
[00:20:04] Brett: Yeah, drop that in the show
[00:20:05] Christina: Yeah, I will. Yeah.
[00:20:07] Bryan: Amazing.
[00:20:09] Brett: Bryan, what you got?
[00:20:11] Bryan: Okay, so, it was very difficult. I’m gonna do two. And the first one, I’m just gonna go super, super
[00:20:18] Brett: allow it.
[00:20:19] Bryan: I’m gonna do Basic White Girl, and it is the Starbucks app. I
[00:20:25] Christina: It’s a great app.
[00:20:26] Bryan: love It’s such a good app. It is such a good app. And they just added live activities for your, um, for your pickups. If you order,
[00:20:35] Jeff: what’s that mean? Live activities.
[00:20:37] Bryan: Yeah, it comes up on the lock screen, and it’s an updating, so it tells you like when your order’s ready and it’s done being made. Um, and like, it’s so great, and I just, I mean, and I, recently I hadn’t even realized that they had added like, uh, Siri shortcut support, so when you search for Starbucks, you can just press to like, order your regulars, and it’ll, it’ll ask you like, Hey, [00:21:00] is this what you’re getting?
[00:21:01] Bryan: And then you can tell it, yes. And then it’s like, okay, so we have this much money on your card and we’re going to charge it. And it just walks through a shortcut and does the whole thing. You don’t even have to open the app to order stuff. I use this. I mean, it’s one of my most used apps. Like I use that app every single day, almost more than Nathan thinks I should.
[00:21:17] Bryan: Um, um, and I, it’s such. It’s such a good app. It almost is like, there’s almost never any issues with it, even though they’re running a massive backend, web backend, it’s almost always up and running, like it’s just rock solid. And so I really love the Starbucks app.
[00:21:34] Christina: To your point about like how long that has been, um, like it, it’s been an app that’s been around for a really long time. And I have to give, um, I think the Starbucks team immense credit that they have from the very beginning. I remember when that app launched and it was, Apple Pay didn’t exist, Apple Wallet didn’t exist, and they were already kind of creating a way where you could pay using kind of like the, the, the, you know, kind of a predecessor of QR codes, and we’re really kind of getting into that space where you could [00:22:00] make it easy to use, like they had their own kind of terminals and whatnot.
[00:22:04] Christina: And I have to say, like, of all the various commerce apps, Most companies have stopped making native apps and, uh, because it just kind of doesn’t make sense. I mean, if they have them, they’re, you know, like little more than wrappers, but like the Starbucks team has continued to work really hard on that app.
[00:22:19] Christina: And you’re right, like for the fact that it is a massive web service on the back end, it’s really performant and it works really well. But also, um, I didn’t realize that they’d added the, um, um, Live Activities feature either, but like that’s really great and um, they’re always, I think, like a really good iOS citizen.
[00:22:37] Christina: That’s all I was gonna say.
[00:22:38] Brett: What do you usually order at Starbucks?
[00:22:42] Bryan: Oh my.
[00:22:44] Brett: When, when Siri suggests an order, what does, what does Siri know you want?
[00:22:49] Bryan: I normally order, these days I order a, like basically a decaf [00:23:00] iced coffee. So, um, which is complex sometimes because of what they have on they don’t make decaf iced coffee so you have to like order What I realized actually was that I was not ordering that for a long time when I was just ordering an iced coffee with decaf espresso shots in it.
[00:23:18] Bryan: I had no idea. Um, which is now what I just do, um, because I was supposed to not be drinking caffeine because I was on Vyvanse, but surprise, my blood pressure’s been stable. Um, So, I mean, it’s usually an iced coffee with, um, far too much, far too much sugar and, like, far too many caramel, like, syrup shots, um, and caramel sauce shots, and then Stevia, as if that’s going to fix the problem of all the caramel sauce I put in. Um, and then also,
[00:23:44] Christina: Right, right.
[00:23:46] Bryan: and then also the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich. I love the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich.
[00:23:52] Brett: Yeah, like for me, we have Starbucks here in little old Winona, but they don’t make great espresso. [00:24:00] Um, I make better espresso at home, way cheaper. And I’ve never figured out like, what the draw of like, intelligent adults is to Starbucks. Um,
[00:24:14] Bryan: things. I
[00:24:15] Brett: I’d be curious. I’m just curious. Like I, I know that a lot of smart people go to Starbucks that, that could
[00:24:22] Jeff: Smart Bucks.
[00:24:24] Brett: that, that could afford their own, could afford their own coffee setups and like cook their own breakfast. But is it a time thing? Is it, does it just save time? All
[00:24:34] Bryan: Well, and the food, I love, I mean, their hot food is, their sandwiches are actually like, pretty banger. And so And also their pastries, like, uh, during the winter, like the gingerbread loaf during the holidays,
[00:24:46] Christina: It’s good.
[00:24:46] Bryan: the, I don’t know what they put in the icing on their, on their things, but it’s so amazing. It is, I, I’m really sad that they, they discontinued the Thanksgiving turkey sandwich that they used to have.
[00:24:56] Bryan: That was also the greatest thing in the world.
[00:24:59] Christina: Oh yeah, that was like the [00:25:00] Monica sandwich, right? Like, I never had it, but, but, I never had it, but, but it, that’s what, like, what it looked like.
[00:25:05] Bryan: It was so good. Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s mostly, I love seeing the baristas and saying hello, even if it’s just through the drive thru, so there’s that part. And I used to spend a lot of time at the Starbucks, um, in Columbus when I lived there.
[00:25:19] Brett: Yeah, so there’s a personal connection. That makes sense.
[00:25:22] Bryan: And it’s also that I don’t have to make, like, I forget to make, uh, I forget to brew a pot of cold, brew some cold brew and so on, and I have to have it in the morning.
[00:25:30] Brett: Oh, I would never forget that. Um, there’s a, there’s a bar here in town that has a big ceramic pizza oven. And, um, I believe they opened with the intention of being a high end bar, but also became a pizza place in the process. And they made a special pizza around Christmas that was essentially just a Neapolitan pizza.
[00:25:52] Brett: And it was, in my opinion, their best pizza. And then it ended. Christmas ended and they stopped serving it. So, [00:26:00] like, I went back to the kitchen. Or I had, I had a, a hostess who’s, who had a boyfriend who worked in the kitchen. And, and she was my proxy to say, how can I continue ordering this year round? And we worked out a deal, like, here’s the code word, here’s what you say, because it’s simple ingredients.
[00:26:18] Brett: It’s stuff they always have on hand. It’s just off menu, and, and I worked it out, and that’s why I would go out to a pizza place rather than make my own pizza, is that kind of, like, ability to order off menu, that, the ability to have some kind of personal connection. And I just assumed that you would never have that at Starbucks.
[00:26:40] Christina: Well, weirdly, so for food, probably not so much because most of it is pre packaged, um, and or pre made, but like for the drinks, that is like, honestly, the whole thing is that it’s off menu. Like you can get it customized however you want. Um, and that’s why I think they make so much money. Now I live in Seattle.
[00:26:57] Bryan: Cause you pay, you pay like three times as much for [00:27:00] your off menus. Like, when you start to customize the additional shots and everything, the price goes up in this. Oh,
[00:27:05] Christina: Additional pumps, which is why, like, they had to, like, there was a whole bunch of drama. I remember, uh, God, this was so long ago, but I remember going down this rabbit hole because I loved the drama of people who would, like, save up coupons and things from their Starbucks stars and, like, really use it to get, like, the most ridiculous drink orders they could.
[00:27:20] Christina: Like, they would basically find a way to get, like, 13 drinks. I’m not even joking. Um, you know, with, like, their, their, their coupons. And so Starbucks had to kind of, like, cut down on, on how much they were giving out the, the bonus points and whatnot. Um, I live in Seattle where there are a ton of Starbucks and we have a thing called the Starbucks Reserve.
[00:27:38] Christina: And there aren’t many of them in the world, but we, there is one, um, literally like three blocks from my house. Um, and they have like the most expensive type of coffee machines and they do like really high end types of brewing and whatnot. Yeah. Oh, that they do. They do. [00:28:00] And, and, and it’s insane, and like, and that’s, that’s a good place to go.
[00:28:04] Christina: We don’t have Dunkin and that I’m not gonna lie, like, I grew up my entire life having access to Dunkin at all times, and there are no Dunkins in the state of Washington because of the Starbucks mafia. And so, um, because Starbucks started in
[00:28:20] Jeff: That sounds like a really lame reading group name.
[00:28:22] Christina: It really
[00:28:23] Jeff: Like a great, like a book club. We’re the Starbucks mafia.
[00:28:26] Bryan: Jarvox
[00:28:26] Christina: God, you know, you know that, you know that some bitches in Bellevue, like, some, like, some moms group have fuckin done that, or like, Woodinville, uh, all the fuckin wine
[00:28:35] Jeff: one of them as a, as a food blog, Hubby’s, Hubby’s away this week.
[00:28:39] Brett: there was a, there was a coffeehouse in, I think it was in St. Paul, um, and Their claim to fame was that they had bought three Clover machines when they opened, which are like, I think at the time, 20, 000 espresso machines. And
[00:28:57] Bryan: every Starbucks has a Clover now.
[00:28:59] Brett: [00:29:00] yeah, they had, this place had a small sign and their windows were always steamed.
[00:29:04] Brett: Like you could never see inside the place and you could walk by it and never have any idea it existed, but I
[00:29:10] Jeff: the, like the boxing gym in my neighborhood.
[00:29:13] Brett: Yeah, we’d go there just for their clover machines. Um, that was, that was worthwhile to me. So, if every Starbucks has a clover, I might need to check it out again.
[00:29:23] Bryan: Yeah, so if y’all remember, that was my, that was my, that was my basic one. So, the other one is this app called AHEAD, and AHEAD is a, it’s an emotions coach app. So this is a great lead into Mental Health Corner. So, um, It’s science backed, started by, I think, I forget, they’re in another country, because I met with one of the co founders just the other day. Um, but, I struggle a lot with, uh, anger, actually.
[00:29:58] Bryan: Um, and I [00:30:00] didn’t realize it was anger, but like, underneath all of the defensiveness and all this other stuff, it’s just anger, anger, anger, anger, anger. Um, and AHEAD has been really helpful in teaching me how to be Uh, Less Angry, How to Get Less Defensive, How to Reframe the Angry Thoughts. And, it takes you through little bite sized lessons, it, uh, has, it like, it has you, like, draw little things on the screen to, like, commit to doing a thing.
[00:30:26] Bryan: Um, it, it, it, then it gives you the opportunity to, like, record when you got angry or when you had an angry situation and, like, how it made you feel. And like what the underlying feelings were. And so then over time you start to be able to see like, oh, most of my angry moments come from feeling, feeling like misunderstood.
[00:30:49] Bryan: And then that gives you, and then it gives you tactics on like how to address it. Like if you’re about to get angry in a situation before you do, like play out the situation in advance so that you can sort of, [00:31:00] like, like, pre feel the regret, or, like, imagine this is a comedy, like, imagine the situation that you’re about to get angry at as a comedy. And like as a kid would see it, and it’s really funny then, uh, like when, sometimes when I get into a big argument with Nathan about nothing, like this is a very hilarious if you’re on the outside.
[00:31:19] Bryan: And it is really, really, it, the first thing that really helped me get my defensiveness under control. And so I’m just like really a big fan of it. They have, I think a seven day free trial, then they will charge you, I think 60 a year, but like I happily paid it and I don’t normally pay, uh, for apps like that.
[00:31:39] Bryan: Yeah.
[00:31:39] Christina: That’s awesome. Ahead?
[00:31:40] Brett: Yeah, I found the, I found the link. It was hard to track down, but, uh, the link’s in the show notes. Um, I, when apps give themselves names that are just words in the English language,
[00:31:54] Christina: I know.
[00:31:55] Jeff: all the vowels
[00:31:56] Brett: For example, Marked. Um, [00:32:00] it uh, um, it makes it hard to track them down, but uh. Envy Ultra is easy to find. Anyway, um, my pick for this week is Loopback from Rogue Amoeba. Um, I honestly could pick all of Rogue Amoeba’s apps, but, uh, specifically Loopback just fascinates me. Rogue Amoeba does black magic, and you know this because Every time there’s an OS update, all their stuff breaks, um, and the fact that they, within, within two weeks of, well, okay, two weeks before a new OS becomes public, they will come out with new versions of their apps and, and they have never failed to get their apps working with a new OS.
[00:32:51] Brett: But the fact that they break every time means they are doing some, some deep black magic. And what fascinates me about Loopback, [00:33:00] uh, Loopback is the, the tagline is cable free audio routing for Mac. Um, and it lets you make these virtual audio devices that can combine Different inputs, different outputs, input from different apps, uh, pipe them to here, pipe them to there, and create, uh, like a, a literal audio device that you can select from your input or output menu, and Loopback doesn’t have to be running anymore once it creates the device, um, so for example, I have, uh, Uh, a complete audio six that has six audio inputs, and one of those inputs is from the Echo in my office, and that goes into the three, four, RCA inputs in my Komplete Audio 6, I can then combine that output into almost like a pass through for all of the other audio that comes out of my system.
[00:33:57] Brett: So I can patch my [00:34:00] Echo and the output from my Echo, which I often use to play Spotify, I can patch that in as if it’s just coming from my system, and I And I don’t have to, I don’t even have to select a special audio device. It just acts as a pass through device. Um, and with this device that has six different inputs and my Wave XLR and my, uh, uh, uh, Solo 2, um, like I can.
[00:34:30] Brett: I can basically pipe, in my case, eight different inputs to specific places and create single devices that can be used throughout any application. I don’t have to be like, Audio Hijack does a great job of doing this stuff internally, as long as you’re running Audio Hijack. But this brings that ability to pipe all your inputs to outputs and create literal OS Specific, like, audio inputs and outputs, and [00:35:00] I love it.
[00:35:00] Christina: Yeah. And what’s great is that because of, of how it works, um, uh, like it’ll show up in all of your other apps as like a, a, a, you know, a thing that you can
[00:35:09] Brett: Yeah,
[00:35:10] Christina: So, so, so you don’t have to worry about like if Zoom or Teams. Teams is going to usually be the culprit here, let’s be completely honest. Um, you know, or, or something else, or something in a web browser, like you don’t have to worry about them supporting some of the features that they may not support.
[00:35:26] Christina: You can just choose the, the, um, the group that you’ve chosen in Loopback, and it’ll just act like any other sound source.
[00:35:33] Brett: another stupid but obvious use for it is you can create a virtual device for, so I can take my complete audios, six inputs, two outputs, um, I can, I can create a, a virtual device that acts with that as a passthrough and just outputs it. Directly the way it was, but by using that device instead of selecting the complete audio as my output, I now [00:36:00] suddenly have volume and mute controls that you wouldn’t have on an external device like that normally.
[00:36:06] Brett: Um, so like the system, the mute button on any media keyboard, or if you assign it to, you know, your, your hackable keyboard, uh, your mute button will suddenly work with an audio device that normally wouldn’t allow you to mute it. It’s, it’s not a cheap app. It’s like a hundred dollars for this app, but honestly, I consider it worth it.
[00:36:28] Brett: And
[00:36:29] Christina: something quite as, quite as, uh, happy, as big as Loopback, you might be okay with SoundSource, which can do some of that. Um,
[00:36:37] Jeff: is great!
[00:36:37] Christina: SoundSource is great.
[00:36:39] Brett: if you want to go open source, you could find Soundflower. I don’t know if it works anymore. Um, but yeah, like all of these kind of had that kind of patch, um, patch mentality. Sound source itself will add, it’ll do the mute for an external device and it will do, uh, I can’t remember what they call it, super [00:37:00] something, but it will allow you to boost volume.
[00:37:02] Brett: on devices that at max volume aren’t loud enough. It’ll allow you to like 120 percent your volume. Uh, SoundSource is also from Rogue Amoeba and, um, I’ll be doing a giveaway on that later this year, um,
[00:37:16] Bryan: woo!
[00:37:17] Brett: com. So sign up for the mailing list, find out all about it. I didn’t convince them to give away loopback though.
[00:37:24] Christina: what I will say for people, if you’re interested in some of the Rogue Amoeba apps, like if you think you would get some use out of them, consider getting their, their ultimate podcast bundle, which will basically give you all the apps at once. And um, like that it’s, it’ll end up coming in, in cheaper. Um, And, uh, the, the apps are, like, they wait a number of years between updates.
[00:37:48] Christina: So, um, like, I, I made that, I made that outlay, you know, a number of years ago and I was like, this, this has paid off for me, but yeah.
[00:37:56] Brett: you, have you ever used. Firago, or [00:38:00] Farago, or whatever their soundboard app.
[00:38:02] Christina: I have, but it, like, not, like, I thought that I would use it more, um, and, and I think that just whatever my workflow was at the time, I didn’t. And now at this point, I feel like the apps that I use where that could be useful, like they have their own built in soundboards. So, um. It’s cool, again, like, what’s great about all the Rogue Amoeba stuff is that, like, it works independently of what app or program you’re in.
[00:38:30] Christina: Um, and they are one of the only companies that I trust, uh, including Apple, to be very, very clear to, like, actually understand how the Apple audio, um, uh, like, APIs work. And, um,
[00:38:44] Brett: than Apple.
[00:38:44] Christina: Oh, I think they absolutely understand better than Apple, which is why I was so mad about the way that you have to install, um, some of the, their stuff, um, on, on various
[00:38:53] Brett: still true? Like, you mean with the rebooting and disab or like, dis disabling? Uh, [00:39:00] there were yeah, there was a whole three step process that involved multiple reboots, and
[00:39:04] Christina: Yeah. They, they, they, they make it very difficult for you to install their app. Well, yeah.
[00:39:07] Brett: haven’t had to do that recently.
[00:39:10] Bryan: They just put, they just, they just announced, um, that they’ve been working with Apple, and then I think in the latest OS update, it’s been changed now that you don’t even have to, um, you don’t even have to, like, put in your password in some cases.
[00:39:29] Christina: Oh.
[00:39:32] Bryan: Yeah, I just, I think I heard about this on, um, Upgrade, I think. Let’s see here.
[00:39:41] Brett: Yeah, I would hope that’s gotten better, cause that was, that was some bullshit.
[00:39:44] Christina: No, it was complete bullshit. Yeah, I, I didn’t know because I haven’t had to, because usually it was a one time thing. So once you got it installed, you didn’t have to do it again. Um, but I haven’t, um, I haven’t gone through the, the process, um, in a long time. And [00:40:00] so, um,
[00:40:01] Bryan: yeah, they said here
[00:40:02] Christina: that. But yeah, if you’ve gotten rid of it, that’s even better.
[00:40:05] Bryan: Or they’re about to, maybe they shipped it, so this was, they released this in their 2024 status report by Paul on January 9th. And I think what happened was then there was the release of 12. 3, is it? 14. 3, 14. 3.
[00:40:24] Christina: hmm.
[00:40:25] Bryan: And there was a note that there was like a new permission in 14.
[00:40:29] Bryan: 3 and Jason put the two together that he thinks that what happened is, so Audio Hijack, basically what they, what Amoeba has done here is that they’re going to be shipping updates that Airfoil Audio Hijack and Piezo will feature an installer free setup that won’t even need your administrator password and Loopback and SoundSource will new a, use a new audio capture plug in called.
[00:40:51] Bryan: ARK, A R K, that won’t require a single system restart. So I’m not sure, maybe it’s out completely, but they, Jason figured [00:41:00] that probably they’ve been working with, um, Apple and Apple has made some changes around security in terms of what, like added a new, a new category of
[00:41:13] Christina: So there’s like a new entitlement or
[00:41:14] Bryan: setting. Exactly.
[00:41:16] Bryan: Yep. And I think that’s, what’s going to address the issue.
[00:41:21] Christina: Oh, well, that’s great.
[00:41:23] Bryan: Oh yeah, Screens and System Audio Recording, it’s now called. So they added, yeah, System, there’s a System Audio Recording Only option now in, in 14. 3.
[00:41:34] Christina: Oh, nice.
[00:41:35] Bryan: Yeah,
[00:41:36] Brett: Can I nerd out for just 30 seconds before we get to Mental Health Corner?
[00:41:41] Christina: Please.
[00:41:42] Now that’s service!
[00:41:42] Brett: I.
[00:41:42] Jeff: if nerding out isn’t what’s been
[00:41:44] Brett: Right, so I got a request from a reader of my blog that he wanted to figure out when his VPN connection was disconnected and at that point [00:42:00] kill, you know, a QTorrent And so I had to look into how um, and I did ended up diffing, uh, ifconfig output when the VPN was connected versus when it was disconnected and found out there was a new. Network interface that showed up in ifconfig when it was connected. Um, so then I could just run ifconfig through a grep to see if that device, see if that interface was present, and then I would immediately know if the VPN was connected, um, and put that on a one second loop and just have it run until, uh, until the VPN is no longer detected and then pass through to a kill all command.
[00:42:45] Brett: Um, so it’s like a seven line script that can actually kill it, kill an app when your VPN connection terminates. It was fun. I’ll probably post it on his blog, but I’m, I’m asking him for permission to, uh, share the script, not [00:43:00] like his personal details or anything, but. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s the kind of service.
[00:43:06] Brett: Oh, and it was weird because I sent him like an example Just like an outline of like how I thought it could work and he came back and he’s like the parentheses don’t work I’m like the parentheses were the parts where you were supposed to insert the working commands and And I realized in the process that he was actually very new to shell scripting
[00:43:27] Jeff: That sounds a little bit like helping me, Brett.
[00:43:29] Brett: Right, except even more intense.
[00:43:31] Brett: I sent him a two screen long email this morning detailing why it worked and how, and explaining the basics of shell scripting. And that right there is the kind of service I provide.
[00:43:45] Jeff: That is, yeah, that’s, that’s very fucking Brett, and God bless you. God’s bless you.
[00:43:51] Brett: Hey, I learned it the same way. I learned it from people who were like, whether it’s on Usenet or, or Reddit [00:44:00] or in, in private forums,
[00:44:02] Jeff: Stack
[00:44:03] Brett: you learn this shit from people that can tell you what you’re doing wrong and how it should work. And if you don’t give back, you’re not like, that’s, that cycle has to perpetuate.
[00:44:15] Brett: Like
[00:44:15] Jeff: is that like when you download torrents but you don’t seed them?
[00:44:19] Christina: Ha ha ha. Yes.
[00:44:21] Bryan: Yes,
[00:44:22] Christina: or, or, or, or when you don’t reciprocate head. Like that’s honestly, like,
[00:44:26] Bryan: yeah, absolutely, that’s a good one.
[00:44:27] Jeff: it’s all, I think it all falls under the heading of unrequited,
[00:44:31] Brett: Yes. Yes. back to Shakespearean, Shakespearean works. Yes. Um, so anyway, you want to get into a mental health corner?
[00:44:42] Christina: yeah, I just came up, I just thought of a good pun though for what we were just talking about. Don’t be a regex princess.
[00:44:49] Jeff: Ooh, that’s good.
[00:44:52] Brett: that the show title?
[00:44:53] Christina: Maybe that shouldn’t be. Don’t be a regex princess. I like that.
[00:44:56] Jeff: sex princess with Bryan [00:45:00] Guffey.
[00:45:04] It’s all Mental Health Corner from here on out
[00:45:04] Brett: Do we have any volunteers for first mental health corner?
[00:45:10] Jeff: We always give the guest the option.
[00:45:11] Bryan: My mental health is better. It’s been a difficult few months. Like, my partner Nathan and I have been coming out of, like, a difficult stretch. I talked about, like, my defensiveness and, like, just I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a non Like, to be a neurotypical, live with a neurodivergent person who also, like, constantly wants to make everything your fault because they have a lot of their own, like, trauma.
[00:45:43] Bryan: Um, Brett talking about complex, you’re talking about complex PTSD and, you know, uh, really You know, I’ve had that revelation with my therapist and psychiatrist as well. And just how much, one of the things that I [00:46:00] continue to sort of be amazed by is how much everything can come back to the trauma that you’ve experienced and how that shapes the way that your brain ends up working, you know, that again, like ADHD and.
[00:46:12] Bryan: Autism and all of these things can be, you know, both downstream of the trauma that you’ve experienced because it’s shaped your brain in different ways, but also it can exacerbate those things. Um, and the other thing that I’ve been, I’ve been sort of dealing with a lot is just recognizing how often people will fuck you up without having anything but the best of intentions. And how, and how you sort of have to learn to reconcile that without needing to have them take responsibility for it.
[00:46:48] Jeff: What did Merlin say last week? They’re doing the best they can, and that’s the problem.
[00:46:52] Bryan: yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I listened to that episode and like, and it was really weird, like having the, the, the super long mental [00:47:00] health corners the last couple of times, plus that I was like, wow, this is all just sort of coming together at the right time, you know? And so it’s, you know, also work has just been absolutely like just pouring water over top of you, like waterboarding levels of like overwhelming. And so I’ve really had, I mean like I was in a meeting earlier this week with my boss and she was like, she is also I’m pretty sure neurodivergent and like it is learning. to be a better manager still and is like a very good engineer but that means that like sometimes she gets really worked up about things and like when your boss gets worked up about things like then you get worked up about things and there was a moment in which i was just like i am screaming inside right now we just stop for a moment uh because like i cannot take any more information being thrown at me and be asked to like operate
[00:47:55] Brett: Yeah. So
[00:47:57] Bryan: It’s been, so it’s just been a really [00:48:00] intense period.
[00:48:02] Bryan: And I’m like trying to get out of the house more and do more things. I was down in, uh, down in LA for the weekend. My mom was in town, saw my brother, my sister in law and my nephew and went out to eat, you know, um, at a restaurant that was mostly outdoors. Uh, if you’re in LA, go to the Hatchet Hall. It’s a phenomenal restaurant.
[00:48:20] Bryan: Um, but it’s just been, it’s just been like really intense and overwhelming You know, just like, it’s one of those things where you’re like, oh, does it ever get, like, really, can I get life to be boring again?
[00:48:38] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:48:39] Bryan: all been going through that for years, right? But now, like, like, but there was a period where, like, COVID was happening, and I was like, well, my life is really boring inside of COVID, and I love it. That’s at home, doing nothing, like, same thing every day, had the same stuff delivered every two weeks for groceries, it was so awesome, and now people want me to do things again. And now, like, now, [00:49:00] like, all of the stuff that I thought I had figured out, but mostly I was just hiding in my house, which is, like, fine, except that, like, my partner does not have the capability to give me the amount of social interaction that I need.
[00:49:11] Bryan: Um, Now it’s just like all of the other stuff is coming on top of it and COVID is still going on to some degree. Like, it’s so, it’s just like very, very exhausting.
[00:49:21] Brett: I relate to this, I relate to this inclination to not do anything or to have things be the same every day. Um, that is where I feel the most comfortable, but in the times I am kind of forced or, you know, by circumstance, I end up Doing things outside of my comfort zone, I usually end up feeling a sense of, um, accomplishment and satisfaction.
[00:49:48] Brett: Do you find, like, being forced to do things to actually be maybe good?
[00:49:55] Bryan: Yes, I do. Like it is, it is, the struggle is that this, the amount [00:50:00] of time that’s available, right? Like the other things, doing the other things is great. But like, I’m not yet getting to choose to not do other things. You know, so there’s just not enough time at all at the moment. And, you know, it doesn’t, I, I love them.
[00:50:17] Bryan: They are like one of the greatest joys of my life. But having nine dogs, um, is, you know, and particularly like the, the process of dog training right now, which is two nights a week for like three hours each
[00:50:31] Brett: Yeah, that sounds
[00:50:32] Bryan: is just like so much, it’s so much
[00:50:35] Jeff: Hold on, pause, mental
[00:50:38] Bryan: Oh, you didn’t know. No,
[00:50:49] Jeff: That’s insane, I love it.
[00:50:51] Bryan: we had zero,
[00:50:52] Jeff: or are they all one breed?
[00:50:55] Bryan: so they’re all Doxan mixes, um, they’re all [00:51:00] except one from the same bloodline and family and we have, we have mom, um, and All but three of them came into our lives on February 24th last year. Because they were born in my, in our, in my partner’s bedroom.
[00:51:16] Jeff: Oh, right, because they were a litter of six, basically.
[00:51:19] Bryan: Yeah, exactly.
[00:51:20] Jeff: they do come in numbers, don’t they?
[00:51:23] Bryan: They really do, and then we just decided we’d
[00:51:24] Brett: Have you spayed
[00:51:25] Bryan: Yeah, everybody is spayed and neutered, yeah. Oh, yes.
[00:51:29] Brett: okay. Um, so remind me, I can’t remember, is your partner neurodivergent?
[00:51:36] Bryan: So, according to, according to the tests, no.
[00:51:41] Brett: Okay. So you are actually in a, a weird coupling.
[00:51:46] Bryan: yeah, but he’s also like,
[00:51:51] Bryan: So, I think people who are very, very, very highly intelligent, Exhibit their own types of what we, [00:52:00] what you like of non normative engagement. Uh, for example, Nathan doesn’t really forget anything ever. Um, and he knows something about almost everything. So like, you’re not normally in a relationship with somebody who’s basically never wrong.
[00:52:21] Jeff: everyone’s in a relationship with someone who thinks they’re
[00:52:23] Brett: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, 100%.
[00:52:25] Bryan: this is, but the problem has been that I have discovered, like, he’s actually, cause he, he, he does not say that he knows something unless he actually knows it, which is so foreign to me as an ADHD person who spent so much time in my life just being like, yeah, I know that because I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know something cause I couldn’t remember it.
[00:52:46] Jeff: Totally.
[00:52:47] Brett: I, uh, my, my partner, um, at, when we started our relationship, they thought they were neurotypical. And for the first five years of our relationship, [00:53:00] Uh, we operated under the assumption that I was ADHD and bipolar and they were normal. Um, and it wasn’t until
[00:53:07] Jeff: Grading on a curve.
[00:53:08] Brett: they got their diagnosis that Autistic, that we suddenly realized, oh, we are both neurodivergent in, in pretty drastic ways.
[00:53:18] Brett: And it changed. It, like, we had been working out ways to deal with my shit, um, without realizing we also needed to figure out ways for me to deal with their stuff. Um, and, and that was a big turning point, but, uh. But, if I, like, I was journaling last night, that if there was one gift I could give to Elle, that would actually matter, it would be a shorter memory.
[00:53:48] Brett: Um, because I can go into any conflict fresh. Like, This is, this is a new thing that we have to discuss. I don’t have a history for this. I don’t have a list of [00:54:00] complaints. I don’t have a list of grievances to bring to the table here. I’m just, I have a, I have a very short memory. I have an ADHD memory. I exist in the moment and I feel like I can deal with a problem in the moment.
[00:54:14] Brett: But as soon as I’m hit with this backlog of data that I can’t prove or disprove, I could be easily gaslit.
[00:54:22] Christina: totally.
[00:54:22] Brett: as soon as I’m hit with that, I’m, I have to shut down.
[00:54:25] Christina: No, I’m in a similar sort of thing and I have a memory like a steel trap, however, there are some things that you just, you don’t remember every sort of, you know, nuance, everything you ever said, everything you’ve ever done. Like I might know ridiculous factoids and have like a photograph, a photographic memory for things that I’ve, I’ve read.
[00:54:43] Christina: Um, and, and, you know. Seen or whatever, but I don’t necessarily remember everything I’ve ever said in person or, or whatnot. I might remember, like, I might make a quip on this podcast that in 30 minutes I might not, somebody be like, oh, I can’t believe you said that. I’m like, what did I say? You know? Um, and, [00:55:00] and, and I think you’re right, Brett.
[00:55:01] Christina: Like it is one of those things where I’m similar to you in that. Even though I have a decent memory, I don’t hold on to, I don’t want to say grudges because I think that’s too simplistic, but like I try to start fresh and I try to not let stuff linger, um, unless it’s had a real impact on me, in which case that’s a sign that I should have like a deeper conversation with someone and I try not to let it fester, right?
[00:55:21] Christina: But I, I run into that, this problem with, with, uh, with my partner where, like, he will remember things very deeply and I don’t have a, to your point, like, I don’t always have a good way of knowing, okay, is this accurate or is this not? Because sometimes I’m like, I don’t think this is, like, your memory of this is different than mine.
[00:55:38] Christina: And, but, but like, there’s, there’s no way to prove it, you know?
[00:55:42] Brett: yeah. Without, without a list of data. Yeah.
[00:55:45] Bryan: Right. Well, I’ve had this experience with Nathan. I mean, you know, so we’ve been going to couples therapy and we’re going to couples therapy with my therapist and it was very funny because Nathan was like, I, I was worried that if we went to couples therapy with my therapist, that like my therapist would [00:56:00] like be too hard on or Nathan would feel like my therapist was too hard on him.
[00:56:03] Bryan: But no, instead, like my therapist was like, no, like normally she’s like, it’s your, it’s, it’s your, you’re the, you’re the problem here, Bryan. Yeah. like, it’s your problem, it’s your shit that’s causing the problem. A couple of things that have happened is that one, one of the things that I’ve had to learn, because my brain is so associative, um, as an ADHD person, like, it is not, you all know this, it’s not linear, it’s somebody says something that makes you think of something else.
[00:56:28] Bryan: Which means, we are having a conversation about something that I did, Right? And it makes me remember the time Nathan did something kind of like it. And I want to talk about why are these two things different, or you shouldn’t have done that. And I’ve had to learn really, really, like, really deeply. We are talking about me right now.
[00:56:46] Christina: Right.
[00:56:47] Bryan: And the problem is, is that I’m, again, because of the forgetfulness. I worry that if I don’t bring it up now, I won’t get to. And there’s this feeling that, again, like I’m going to be taken advantage of. But he is, and this is the part that I’ve had to [00:57:00] learn, because I think a lot of us have had the experience of being gaslit and taken advantage of a lot.
[00:57:04] Bryan: And so we, we jump on things when they happen immediately because we don’t want to lose them.
[00:57:09] Brett: Mm hmm. Yep.
[00:57:11] Bryan: I’ve had to really realize he is not everybody else in my life. He’s not all of those other people that I didn’t know as well who took advantage of me or hurt me, right? Like we actually have a saying that it’s, it’s been this idea to like really radically reframe things so that I didn’t start.
[00:57:26] Bryan: And honestly, I have admitted now that like some of this came from Being so obsessed with social media for me and using like Twitter so much is that I got into the habit of responding to everything with a, but what about this? Or no, what it could, it should like, it was automatically adversarial the way that I would engage.
[00:57:46] Jeff: Mm.
[00:57:47] Bryan: Um, and in fact, when I started Not using Twitter as much, I started having more arguments with Nathan, my therapist was like, I’m pretty sure this is because you’re not fighting with people. Exactly. [00:58:00] Yeah. And so we’re actually do this thing now. I actually have on my home screen, it’s a picture of Nathan and then a piece of text that I put on there using like Canva.
[00:58:08] Bryan: That’s just basically like, remember, Nathan is always right. And Some people got very words in my life like that’s very scary why would you ever say that like well I just think your partner’s always right and I had to clarify with them that what that
[00:58:21] Jeff: sounds like something done under duress.
[00:58:23] Bryan: right but like the idea here but the problem was was that I was always getting into arguments with him and then having to come back and apologize because I was wrong
[00:58:32] Brett: Yeah,
[00:58:33] Bryan: because, because your brain makes, like when you feel something strongly, when you feel righteous anger, you think, how could I be wrong?
[00:58:41] Bryan: How could I be wrong? And we don’t realize how much of an unreliable narrator our brain is.
[00:58:45] Brett: it’s super helpful to have that framing. If you go into the conversation assuming the other person is right and being willing to look at how you might be wrong, it doesn’t mean you’re conceding the [00:59:00] argument. You’re able to take a different look at it. The one thing I’ve learned recently with Elle is If I can present, if I’m feeling hurt, if I’m feeling offended by something, um, if I can, instead of saying you offended me, if I can come at it and say, I feel offended and then think about here’s why, here’s how that hit me, here’s what that indicates within me, we can have a long, deep conversation.
[00:59:27] Brett: But if I come right out the gate and I’m like, you’re wrong, you hurt me, you did this. Incorrectly. Uh, it’s a totally different conversation that shuts down very quickly.
[00:59:39] Bryan: For me with Nathan, it is that he does not have a problem. This is, he’s a scientist, and it’s, sometimes it’s very frustrating he’s a scientist. I’m not allowed to use the word research in this household, um, because research means something very specific,
[00:59:54] Brett: Same as theory and hypothesis. Yes.
[00:59:56] Jeff: can just say, Educate yourself, man.
[00:59:58] Bryan: exactly. He’s like, or, or, [01:00:00] or, you know, or, or do some googling, you know, read some articles, learn some things, um, but, uh, he, he is more than happy to admit that he’s, when he’s wrong, like, annoyingly so. Also, like, even, and I have had, and, It’s been a combination of this plus a deep need for people to not be mad at me, and some real codependence, that I was often confusing, feeling upset or angry.
[01:00:33] Bryan: With the actions that I took when I was upset or angry or how I engaged with him. Because I would watch him get upset and angry, but then also be like, I’ll take your feedback or I’ll think about that. And I’d be like, but you got upset or angry. We’re not supposed to do that. And my therapist, it happened in like in real time in one of them.
[01:00:50] Bryan: And she’s like, no, the difference is he got upset. You could see it on his face. And then, and then he also still responded appropriately. And the difference is you get [01:01:00] upset and then you try to make it his fault.
[01:01:03] Brett: Do you find a sense of relief when you do admit you’re wrong?
[01:01:08] Bryan: Yes.
[01:01:09] Brett: I have this instinct to, to argue for whatever I’ve stated, even if I don’t fully believe it or can’t fully back it up. Like I feel this, this, uh,
[01:01:21] Bryan: be, to be wrong is to be bad
[01:01:24] Brett: right. Exactly. Uh, but the moment I can say, you know what, like, given this new information, given this data that I was incapable of gathering myself, I can see, I can see that I was wrong.
[01:01:39] Brett: And there’s this sense of relief that comes with it to just, to be able to say, Yeah, no, I was wrong coming into this. You were right. And it just feels like smoothing out all these waves of like emotion that I had.
[01:01:54] Bryan: There was not a lot of space. And I think Brett, you can probably relate to this. There’s not a lot of space growing up [01:02:00] for me to be wrong, for me to make mistakes. And it was a combination of, uh, I don’t think my mom My mom always tells a story about how when she started school, which was right after Brown vs.
[01:02:15] Bryan: Board of Education, her parents said to her, don’t do anything that will make these white people think you’re less than them. she has always been an overachiever. Also, uh, pretty certain she has ADHD. She’s actually finally going to talk to her doctor about it at 71. I’m so proud of her. And I’m pretty sure she’s autistic too, because this stuff runs in the family.
[01:02:36] Bryan: Um, but, and, so And she, she was one of the, like, I learned to get over things emotionally, or at least act like I was over them, maybe it was part of the ADHD. And then I would go to her and she would not be ready to, like, talk to me yet. She’d still be upset.
[01:02:53] Christina: Yeah, she’d still need
[01:02:54] Bryan: Right, and so,
[01:02:55] Christina: it.
[01:02:56] Bryan: right, and so I was like, well then that means that I’ve, like, I’ve [01:03:00] done something bad, you know, like, and so I, and also my parents were always very confused about how I could be so smart.
[01:03:08] Bryan: And still like make mistakes. And then they thought once they put me on medication, that that would solve everything because at the time that’s all they knew.
[01:03:15] Brett: hmm. Mm hmm.
[01:03:16] Bryan: Um, and it did not. And so, uh, learning that it is like, I still struggle with being able to recognize that, like making what, what happens is I’m constantly trying to recover from the mistake that I’ve made by not like, by not.
[01:03:32] Bryan: Making another mistake. But in the, in the process of doing so, I keep making more mistakes because Nathan’s like, stop apologizing a hundred times because all you keep doing is bringing it back up and I’m just trying to like, I’ll forget about it in 30 minutes if you leave it alone and I’m over here still obsessing over it because I made a mistake and it’s the perfectionism of all of us of trauma survivors, you know, and
[01:03:55] Jeff: mean, I can, I’m, I’m wired in such a way that like, when I, you had said to be wrong [01:04:00] is to be bad, right? Like, even though I have watched people in my life fuck up over and over and I’ve, they’ve never almost lost me. I assume that the fuck ups pile up when we get to four or five, it’s over.
[01:04:13] Bryan: yeah,
[01:04:14] Jeff: Never happened
[01:04:14] Bryan: always, and that somebody is always hiding something and they’re not telling you all the reasons of the way that they’re feeling
[01:04:19] Jeff: yeah, yeah,
[01:04:19] Bryan: to surprise you.
[01:04:21] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly. Surprise.
[01:04:23] Brett: You should read my journal for the last week. Yep.
[01:04:26] Christina: Yeah.
[01:04:27] Jeff: he actually has a live journal page. You can read his journals there if you
[01:04:30] Christina: Livejournal.
[01:04:31] Bryan: my live journal.
[01:04:32] Jeff: It’s all written in Russian, but
[01:04:34] Bryan: I was flame, I, I, my, my, my, my handle was Flaminice. And I, it was a picture of Emmett Honeycutt from, from Queersfolk.
[01:04:43] Christina: yes. Which is the perfect LiveJournal, like, like, show. Um, yeah. I, uh My username would be fairly easy to figure out. Um, let’s just, I don’t need to go further than that. Uh, because some of the stuff might still be there. Who fucking knows? Um,
[01:04:59] Brett: a [01:05:00] guess. I have a guess, but it sounds like you don’t want us to guess. I’m
[01:05:04] Christina: no, I mean, it, it, it’d be completely
[01:05:06] Jeff: can bleep. We can bleep in this thing, can’t
[01:05:09] Brett: doing a Google right now.
[01:05:11] Christina: Oh, no, you can’t Google it. That’s the great thing. It’s not indexed.
[01:05:14] Brett: Oh, nice.
[01:05:15] Jeff: Yeah.
[01:05:16] Christina: This was the
[01:05:17] Jeff: almost everybody on planet Earth with a computer in those years.
[01:05:21] Christina: no, that was a decision that Brad made, like, very, like, deliberately. It wasn’t, um, an accident. He made the decision to not index the stuff unless you purposely opted in. You had to go into your settings and opt in to be Google indexed because he understood because he was in college when he started this thing as a way to talk with his high school friends.
[01:05:40] Christina: And then it blew into this, like, many million user service that like had to have an invite system, um, uh, for many years to scale that he was like, this is shit that people aren’t going to want people to find. And so by default, it’s not
[01:05:55] Brett: by today’s standards. That’s highly unusual, but also a smart, like [01:06:00] admirable move.
[01:06:00] Christina: Well, that’s because this is why Brad, I think he should be so much richer than he is because he created these underpinnings for what the whole modern web runs on. And I asked him once, I was like, do you ever get mad that like Mark Zuckerberg, Matt Mullenweg, like all these people have like, you know, David Karp, all these people have made, you know, money essentially using a lot of the software you’ve built.
[01:06:19] Christina: And he’s like, if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. And A, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. But B. Just the fact that, like, that’s his attitude is, like, why he’s, like, one of the, like, best people that, like, I can call my internet friend for the last, you know, two decades. Well, and we’ve met in person, too, but, like, you know, I’ve literally known him for decades, and, um, that’s why Livejournal will always have my heart.
[01:06:46] Christina: But that’s my slash rant, sorry. Didn’t mean to
[01:06:49] Brett: That’s cool. That’s awesome. Um, I think we should let Jeff go because I don’t know what his schedule here is.
[01:06:57] Jeff: I actually have a good, um, bridge here to [01:07:00] mine. Um, LiveJournal. Back in the, back in the day, I remember I went into the Punk Planet offices one day, which was just two people. Um, and, and Dan, who had created it, was the editor, brought me over to his computer. He’s like, check this out. And he, a friend had given him a URL that would allow you to look at.
[01:07:18] Jeff: And, Um, all of the live journal images, uh, that have been updated in the last whatever amount of time. And so anytime you could refresh that and you’d be looking at like 40 live journal images from the full spectrum of live journal, right. Probably some ethical issues, but, oh my God, was it the most amazing?
[01:07:36] Jeff: It’s like when you, have you ever, have you ever just sat and scrolled through like TikTok lives and just been like this? is all of the kinds of people, right? Like, that’s what it felt like. And I had a curated list, uh, I mean, a curated folder of all those, of my favorites of those photos that just, like, I had that same feeling of like, I’m looking across ways of living, you know, and being and [01:08:00] whatever.
[01:08:00] Jeff: Um, as I describe it, I realized it’s a little problematic, but, um, let’s, let’s, and if I, I could be challenged on that, but I don’t do it anymore. I mean, this was 20 years ago and, and I was fascinated by seeing the world. Um, so I’m sorry, everybody, if it feels wrong. I’m happy to admit it. Uh, but anyway, that was also just a weird, that time of the internet thing that something that would even exist, right?
[01:08:25] Jeff: Like that you could even kind of do that. I mean, you could scrape it obviously, but this was not, this was like, you could hit a URL and be like, here are the last hundred images that posted on live journal.
[01:08:34] Christina: No, which is, which is amazing. I mean, at a certain point, like that very quickly, like got out of scale, but yeah, like that, that’s, it’s crazy how, um, fast things move to the point where like, I remember when, when Twitter, um, I, I know Brett remembers this, Bryan, I don’t know if you do or not. Um, and Jeff, I’m not sure about you, but I remember like the first probably, you know, year or so, like there was the live feed.
[01:08:57] Christina: of Twitter that you could just look at. You [01:09:00] could like literally just go to Twitter. com and you would see the entire firehose of every tweet that was being sent on the network.
[01:09:07] Jeff: Wow.
[01:09:08] Christina: I, that’s how I discovered, that’s how I got a following. That’s how I discovered like people is I would just like randomly reply to people and you would just have random combos with people and you know, yeah,
[01:09:18] Jeff: Amazing. So only slightly related, but it is an okay bridge. Um, this is actually a rare mental health corner where I’m just focused on something that gives me like quiet joy, um, which obviously is key with mental health. Um, so a long time ago, I don’t have a great memory. That’s a theme today. Um, but I have a lot of stories in my life that I want to remember that just make me smile.
[01:09:41] Jeff: Um, and, uh, and as an example, Um, I’ll tell one in a second, but it, this whole thing stems out of a, um, out of a writing exercise I invented for myself some years ago, where I decided to focus on like, you know, my band probably did like six tours in the late nineties, but they were [01:10:00] like really formative experiences.
[01:10:02] Jeff: And, and things happen on those tours that I never want to forget. A lot of them are just dinner party stories anyhow, but, but I just don’t want to forget them. So I decided I’m going to sit down every day for like 20 minutes, I’m going to write postcards from these moments, essentially. Right? Like I’m going to write them short.
[01:10:15] Jeff: It’s going to be as if I was writing a postcard and it’s going to tell this story, just like the, the basic details of the story. Um, and, and I have one of those right now, which I want to share, and I want to tell you what I’m doing with them. That’s giving me quiet joy. Okay. Bye. I only just remembered this because I’m watching the show, The Offer, which is
[01:10:32] Christina: Oh, so good.
[01:10:33] Jeff: yeah, it’s great.
[01:10:34] Jeff: It’s irresistible. I mean, like there’s times when you’re like, Oh, this isn’t like the best TV show in the world, but it’s fricking irresistible, especially as a fan of the movie, like it’s candy. Um, so Colin Hanks is in that movie, um, which is what made me think of this. So I was at a show and, um, This was actually a reunion show 10 years ago, so it’s not even on tour.
[01:10:54] Jeff: And, um, and, and I’m backstage after the tour. I’m just like, after the show, I’m super sweaty. I’m sitting on a [01:11:00] chair. My friend brings down this guy and goes, Hey everybody, this is my friend Colin. And, uh, and he looks at me and he, and my friend looks at me and says, you guys are Colin’s new favorite band.
[01:11:10] Jeff: And I look at Colin, who I do not recognize. And I say, Come sit in my lap. And so he comes over, sits in my lap, a photo’s taken that I never got. He gets up, whatever the night goes on. I find out the next day it’s Colin Hanks. And I’m like, you know how those things are. It’s like, you kind of can’t ask for the photo.
[01:11:29] Jeff: Like, you know, his friend took the photo and probably his friend would feel weird about giving even though that friend was my friend. I never asked for the photo. Didn’t want to seem too needy. And so I don’t have it. Okay, so When you don’t have an image of a thing, right, like, um, it’s kind of, you know, one thing that, that I’ve experienced with trauma and we probably all have is that traumatic incidents can exist as frozen photographs, essentially frozen moments that won’t unfreeze for no matter how hard you try or wish them to, which is where therapy obviously comes in.
[01:11:58] Jeff: Definitely for me where EMDR [01:12:00] comes in. My cat’s complaining. Um, but I wanted to create, so I decided I’m going to plug these little postcard stories into Dolly, um, and have it create just completely fucked up fake memory images of these moments. So I’d be like, create me a postcard image of this thing.
[01:12:17] Jeff: Now, in this case, the best it could do was give me a picture of Tom Hanks sitting in Tom Hanks’s lap. Um, it’s no matter how hard I tried.
[01:12:26] Christina: I love
[01:12:27] Jeff: That’s all I would get, but that was, but that was great. But I’ve also, so I’ve been putting them in and it shoots back these pictures that are so wrong and something about engaging with the story itself and then, and then almost cartoonizing them because they are stories I love.
[01:12:40] Jeff: I’m not putting hard stories in there. Right. It’s just like, it’s been a way to connect with. moments in my life that I love, or even in this case, I’m kind of proud of. I’m proud that my reaction was come sit in my
[01:12:51] Christina: I am too!
[01:12:52] Jeff: Like, and I love that Colin Hanks sat in my sweaty ass lap without hesitation.
[01:12:58] Christina: weren’t even drunk, but also,
[01:12:59] Brett: know [01:13:00] you weren’t
[01:13:00] Jeff: one was drunk.
[01:13:01] Christina: also, also, like, you, like, your band was like Colin Hanks favorite band, like, what the
[01:13:06] Jeff: That night, yeah, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. So, um, another one I did that was just so, so delightful is like, I started plugging in dreams. So I’ve, I’ve had nightmare problems forever, but I also have the most delightful absurd dreams. And there was a dream once where I was driving a blue Cadillac convertible and an orange jumpsuit, not like a prisoner jumpsuit, but like a, like a seventies fly jumpsuit.
[01:13:29] Jeff: And I crashed through the fence of a monkey farm. I crashed through the fence of a monkey farm, and the monkeys were so excited to meet me.
[01:13:38] Jeff: So I decided to put this in, and the thing that was hilarious is that I had to keep re prompting with this one prompt. Make the monkeys even more happy to see me. But anyhow, this, this was like, I said, kind of like these are quiet moments of joy. There are these great things where it’s like these, these small little joy torpedoes, and they just happen with me [01:14:00] quietly with my laptop and my couch and these little memories. And it’s, It’s so much, it’s so interesting.
[01:14:05] Jeff: Cause like, I feel like the way we share these things over time is obviously with people and the older you get, the more the people in your life have already heard those fucking stories. Right. Um, and so, but you still want to interact with those stories. They’re memories that like do something for you.
[01:14:17] Jeff: Right. And so this has just been an amazing way to just interact with the parts of my life that delight me. Um, and, uh, and have it just be me and, but still have something reflected back at me, just like someone reacting to your story, you know? So that’s been really nice for me. And what has been like a.
[01:14:33] Jeff: Like you, Bryan, just a tough ass work week or a couple of weeks,
[01:14:36] Brett: I think I’ve, I think I have two questions and they’re actually for Jeff. Um, first, have you seen Life in Pieces? Oh, amazing show with Colin Hanks. Uh, second, have you seen the meme where they ask Dali to make John baptizing Jesus, but happier? And they have these two white [01:15:00] guy two white guys in a river in robes just yucking it up, just laughing and dunking each other.
[01:15:08] Brett: It’s, and they’re very, they’re very white. Notably, John and Jesus are both very white in Dali’s recreation of John baptizing
[01:15:18] Jeff: something crazy happened totally against their racist algorithm, which is that the very first thing I put in was the story where. We’re playing in Houston and at the beginning of the show, I hate Houston. I mean, I don’t hate it in a kind of way that I’m damning a city, but I never liked playing Houston.
[01:15:33] Jeff: Um, it could, we run this label Amphetamine Reptile Records and it was just meatheads that came out to those shows basically, right? Like we weren’t really, it wasn’t our thing, but like, whatever. So this is like when you go to Texas on that label, you really get, can get meatheads. So no offense, Texas, or, but if you’re a fan and you went to an AmRap band show, you know, it’s true.
[01:15:51] Jeff: Um, so anyway, beginning of the show, I’m already feeling angsty. There’s a street sign behind me, you know, how they used to decorate the clubs back in the day. [01:16:00] I reach back with my sticks to do some big like crashing thing and I slice my finger open on the sign and I’m bleeding everywhere. I was a little bit known for always bleeding.
[01:16:09] Jeff: I was like G. G. Allen, but I didn’t mean to be bleeding. Um, and so I was always like my, my drum heads had blood on them, my sticks, but I was really bleeding. And by the end of the show, I was just, I don’t know, it was like in a young person angsty moment where I like, I didn’t even like playing for these people and, and I didn’t like how they looked at me and I just didn’t like it.
[01:16:27] Jeff: Right. And so at the end of the show, as the, my bandmates were just making noise, um, I got onto a road case I had that had wheels and I, I, I surfed through the crowd throwing my bloody sticks kind of hard, like in a way that I don’t feel good about now. And, and as soon as the show was over and the lights came up.
[01:16:47] Jeff: And all of a sudden the magic’s over, right? You’re not, you can’t be in that character anymore. I realized, like, I’d just thrown the last of my sticks and I had no money. And so I started looking around for the sticks and I, and I see [01:17:00] three of them next to a dude whose back is to me at the bar, who is a very big, strong man.
[01:17:06] Jeff: And, and I don’t know if he kept those as evidence of someone hurt, almost hurting people or what, but I go over. I tap him on the shoulder, these are desperate times, and I go, hi, excuse me, those are my drumsticks, is there any chance I could get them back? He turns around, looks at me, and goes. You guys were fucking awesome.
[01:17:24] Jeff: So I plug this in a version of this into the thing, and it makes me a black drummer with blood dripping off my hands, albeit, but like, I was like, Whoa, like, I normally actually will just say, as is my habit, anyhow, if I’m describing myself to people that don’t know me, I’m like a six foot four white guy.
[01:17:44] Jeff: Cause right? Like white people don’t do that. They’re just like, Oh, I’m wearing a striped shirt. It’s like, Oh, okay. Well. I guess, uh, this is a test. I’m assuming you’re white. Like, it just, it’s a fucked up test of your brain. If you’re a white person, I like, I’m probably like all around. But I was like,
[01:17:57] Brett: was trained on death and bad brains,
[01:17:59] Jeff: [01:18:00] was the first time.
[01:18:00] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. It was the first time I ever tried it. And I was like, they made me a black drummer. And then I had to write the really funny sentence of like, yes, but I’m white. Because like, I know this is like, okay, I love this, but it’s like, feel a little weird holding it. Anyway, that’s
[01:18:16] Bryan: great. That’s amazing. That’s so good.
[01:18:20] Brett: Mine can tie into multiple themes. Do you mind if I go next,
[01:18:24] Christina: No, please, please.
[01:18:25] Brett: Um, so, I, okay. Um, I, back in, I don’t even remember what year, but about ten years ago, I lost a couple terabytes of photos. Um, and History. Fuck you, Drobo. Um,
[01:18:43] Jeff: What’d you call me?
[01:18:45] Brett: and, um, and it, like, just gone, because I had trusted a backup system that was not to be trusted.
[01:18:52] Brett: Um, so what I have left from those years exists in what I did upload to Flickr, what I did post to [01:19:00] my blog, um, what I did, what I did make available online, because I had no local copies of these memories left. And I was going through old YouTube videos today and I found one. It was, it’s a company called Pummel Vision.
[01:19:14] Brett: It was an app that is gone now. Uh, if you try to go to their site, you get like a weird Apache error message. Um, or Nginx. I, whatever it, uh, it, it, it’s gone now, but what it does is take all of your. I think it was from Flickr, um, and it takes all of your photos and puts them up like two photos per second in this barrage of years worth of photos in like two minutes.
[01:19:46] Brett: And
[01:19:47] Jeff: dizzying.
[01:19:47] Brett: yeah, it’s, it pummels you with these memories and it was crazy because I did not have, I had completely forgotten about All of this, because [01:20:00] it makes me realize exactly how bad my memory is, um, if I don’t have photographs, if I don’t have photographic evidence or a blog post that something happened, then it may as well have never happened as far as I’m concerned, um, which is why I’m pretty religious about taking photos and backing them up and uploading to Flickr and blogging Blogging about things I learned because I will forget a year later, I will, I will search for the solution to a problem, find my own blog and realize I have already solved this.
[01:20:34] Brett: I have already done this. And this happens to me. I want to say, you know. Infrequently, but it, it’s like once a month, I find out I’ve already solved the problem, and I’ve blogged about it, and other people have linked to it, and I had forgotten about it, but this, this pummel vision, and then looking back through old Flickr photos, and like realizing that that segment of my life, it was about a two year [01:21:00] span, uh, that I had thought, you I had no memory of, but I did actually have online traces of.
[01:21:06] Brett: And honestly, it makes me really thankful for things like Flickr, for things like LiveJournal, for, well, I mean,
[01:21:15] Christina: Well, yeah.
[01:21:17] Brett: were backed up, things like my blog, for things, uh, these, these external, we’ll say cloud based. Versions of our life that they’re curated. They’re what we want to remember. They’re not necessarily indicative of reality or what really happened, but they are the things that for ADHD people, we would forget.
[01:21:41] Brett: Like they would be lost to time were it not for these services. And that has made me, it’s, it’s been a fascinating journey. And actually after watching that Pummel Vision, I reconnected with a couple of friends that I had forgotten even existed. And I’m like, Oh my God, I actually had [01:22:00] like a real connection with this person at one time.
[01:22:02] Brett: They were important to me. We took them into our home. We gave them shelter. Um, when. When things were bad and I had forgotten about them entirely, and it made me reach out and, and reconnect. And that was, that was, I don’t know, man. It makes me realize how bad my memory really is. . But the other meaningful thing I don’t like, I find, I found an IFS therapist, um, I’d had my first meeting with them.
[01:22:30] Jeff: family systems.
[01:22:32] Brett: Um, I have my first meeting with them on, uh, Tuesday. Uh, it’s just a 15 minute, like, let’s find out about each other and see if we want to do this thing. Uh, but I might get to move forward with IFS, which I’ve decided, even though I’m. Super skeptical about the whole thing. Like I’ve read the books and I really think if there’s a way through CPTSD for me, it’s going to be through IFS.
[01:22:58] Brett: Um, so I [01:23:00] am excited to have finally gotten off a wait list and gotten in to see somebody. But, um, the most meaningful thing I learned in the last week was, so anyone who’s grown up in an evangelical or Baptist type of, of setting, um, has experienced the idea of witnessing, where you are expected to share, uh, the message of Jesus Christ with your friends, um, and in your daily life you’re expected to, uh, convert.
[01:23:34] Brett: And this leads to alienation, this leads to, um, arguments, and rarely does it lead to anyone coming to join your church. Um, and it was always this thing that I, I felt super embarrassed to do, but like, I felt this compulsion, like this, like requirement that I do this if I were [01:24:00] going to be part of the church.
[01:24:01] Brett: Um, and what I learned was that this is actually, a technique used in psychological manipulation where you send somebody out to be specifically rejected by the out group so that they can return to the in group. And be lauded and comforted and told, you did great. They, they are, they are others.
[01:24:25] Brett: It further others the out group and makes you feel connected to the in group. And it gives you this, uh, sense that everything outside is dangerous. And, um, and this was absolutely the case for me. And, uh, and it was the. The basic, like, tenets that I was taught of, like, questioning reality, of loving unconditionally, of accepting strangers, that weren’t truly practiced by the church, but those concepts, when applied about the [01:25:00] church, actually got me out of the church and moved me on to, like, a better place in my life.
[01:25:06] Brett: So, like, I can’t They, they taught me some good things, uh, but this idea that witnessing was, was , psychological manipulation of the parishioner, not of the outer, you know, sources, um, that was actually really, it was fascinating to me and helped me put a lot of that in perspective.
[01:25:28] Christina: That’s cool. I, I I would, I would love to talk to you like on a different venue sometime about like how you got what, what, what the catalyst was, um, cause you just talked about it a little bit, but like what the catalyst was for you, like stopping being a believer, like, like what got you questioning your faith and like moving away from the church because you did that as a teenager.
[01:25:49] Christina: Um, and, and then like had a pretty radically different life. Um, uh, from like how what you’ve been raised and kind of expected to have. And it seems like it happened pretty quickly. I’d love to, [01:26:00] um, but,
[01:26:00] Brett: can summarize it, like basically, I, I, enough people contradicted the things I was told to tell them, and eventually I was like, wait, so the majority of the world sees, the majority of the world believes evolution is real. Can the majority of the world actually be wrong? Which led me to do my own independent.
[01:26:26] Brett: And decide, holy shit, no, there’s so much evidence for this thing that my church eschews that I think my church might be wrong. And that led to more and more questioning and more and more kind of deconverting. Like they didn’t call it that then. Um, this is back in like 92 through 96 that I kind of went through this deconversion process.
[01:26:51] Brett: Um, but just like led to question things. In a way that I literally, I had been taught to question everything the world told me. [01:27:00] Um, but I just, I redirected it and, and questioned the church.
[01:27:05] Christina: Okay. Well, see, that makes more sense then that you were taught to question things, but you were taught to question the outside world, not anything else. Cause I
[01:27:11] Brett: taught that there was this core simple truth, and anything that disagreed with it had to be questioned.
[01:27:18] Christina: Got it. So, it’s, it’s so interesting to me talking with people who, you know, um, uh, their religion changes or how they, you know, deal with faith or anything like that changes, um, because I think, uh, for most of us, it does usually follow a pattern where it’s, it’s usually we’re teenagers and, and we have these kind of moments of, of reflection where like, okay, this thing that I was taught, this thing I was told is not true or doesn’t feel true to me anymore.
[01:27:42] Christina: Um, And now I’m having to question my entire belief system and like re evaluate that. Um, for me, it’s, it’s a little bit different because I didn’t have the same, I was raised religious. But, not in a way where, like, the outside world is lying to you and, [01:28:00] um, this is the only way to be, like, I, I think that, I have to be honest, like, all things considered fairly healthy in terms of, like, uh, you know, cause my mom is, is a very religious person and it’s a very pure thing and it’s a very real thing to her, um, but it’s not like a thing where there’s judgment on others.
[01:28:18] Christina: It’s a very personal thing to her. And so. My faith was always very personal to me. And then it was a personal thing where I was like, I started questioning stuff and I went, okay, I’m, I’ve, I’ve, A, I have questions about, you know, some of the historical accuracies and whatnot because of the, the data and the proof that’s there where I can go, oh, I know that these books weren’t, weren’t written or were changed and how these things are translated or it’s fucked up.
[01:28:42] Christina: But the bigger thing for me was putting that aside was like, I’m not getting out of this what I’m supposed to be. This is supposed to be offering me comfort and it’s not. And then that led to like a much larger existential crisis. But I digress. But, but like, um, but the reason I, I like ask though is just because I [01:29:00] think it is so interesting that we have like a nation really of a lot of people who were raised up to a certain point to have one belief system and then were changed.
[01:29:10] Christina: But even when we change our belief system, we can’t escape, you know, that. Like formative stuff and it’s, it’s, it’s fucked. Like, I think that I don’t want to be a person who is, is like unilaterally shitting on religion because I think for a lot of people, it does offer a lot of good. And I think that there’s value in that, even if it’s not something that I get from an organized, structured thing.
[01:29:33] Christina: But I do think that we as a society don’t investigate enough how much damage is done by these, by these groups.
[01:29:40] Brett: have, I already talked about this concept of God’s love before,
[01:29:45] Christina: I don’t think so.
[01:29:47] Brett: this just struck me. This, this just struck me in the last, uh, last month or so, that I would hear, there’s this song by Joseph Arthur, um, [01:30:00] I forget the name of it now, but there’s this line that’s repeated, May God’s love be with
[01:30:05] Christina: In the sun. Yeah.
[01:30:07] Brett: In the Sun, yes, In the Sun by Joseph Arthur, and, and I listened to it And when he sings it, I, I remember that feeling I used to get when I was part of the church of being loved by God before it became nothing but judgmental, uh, before it began feeling like I, like I was going to hell, uh, that who I was, was going to send me to hell.
[01:30:34] Brett: This feeling of this all encompassing, it’s just love. Right? And, and you attribute it to whatever deity you were taught to attribute it to, but I think it’s a feeling that any human can experience in any context. And I think it’s a feeling, for those of us who had to, uh, force ourselves out of religion, who had to [01:31:00] literally pry ourselves out of it, and we developed this idea that all religion is bad, And that, like, the entire concept of a god is, is detrimental.
[01:31:12] Brett: And, and we can no longer access this feeling because it feels like it’s related to religion. It feels like something religious people feel. But I honestly, like, in exploring this, realized that this feeling is possible to feel and you can attribute it to whatever higher power you want to. You can attribute it to the universe, to universal energy, to God, to Allah, wherever you are most comfortable feeling this feeling emanating from.
[01:31:49] Brett: And for me, it It’s not attributed to any higher power. Um, but I am able to access that feeling of just [01:32:00] being loved. And I think that that feeling for like the, the religion that you’re describing, Christina, I feel like that’s a bigger part of it. People have this faith because it’s about love. It’s about feeling cared for and about just feeling accepted and part of and, and I think that’s true for, I think it’s true for evangelicals, but they mix it with this also eternal damnation
[01:32:27] Christina: Yeah, they, yeah, they, they, they, they mix it with these other things, with this judgment, like this thing that’s
[01:32:32] Brett: Yeah,
[01:32:32] Christina: opposite, this thing that’s the opposite of it in a lot of ways,
[01:32:35] Brett: Yeah, exactly. It’s 100 percent
[01:32:37] Christina: like, like, like, like genuinely, and so, um, uh, I’m gonna, I’m downloading this now, I’m gonna, like, send it to you, there was an EP, it’s no longer available to purchase, this is why I have, well, A, I wouldn’t care about Pirating it anyway would be, but there was a thing for, um, Hurricane, um, actually it might not even been, I don’t remember if it was Hurricane Katrina or not, but they did it.
[01:32:56] Christina: Um, uh, Joseph Arthur did, um, like a [01:33:00] EP where he did, um, versions of In the Sun with, um, Michael Stipe and,
[01:33:04] Brett: Oh, I have, it’s on YouTube. It’s on YouTube.
[01:33:07] Christina: Well, I, I have, I have it, I have it purchased.
[01:33:10] Brett: There are multiple versions with
[01:33:12] Christina: Yes there are.
[01:33:13] Brett: Stipe doing In the Sun. Like, I didn’t realize there was a connection. I discovered Joseph Arthur because a friend of mine was in NA with him
[01:33:23] Christina: Oh, wow.
[01:33:23] Brett: City.
[01:33:24] Christina: So, I discovered
[01:33:26] Brett: like, you should check out this guy.
[01:33:27] Brett: He’s been playing shows here locally and he just put out an album.
[01:33:32] Christina: I discovered him I think because, I think because In the Sun or something like that was featured on Dawson’s Creek. I’m almost
[01:33:37] Brett: Also, that song was in the movie Saved, if you’ve ever seen Saved,
[01:33:42] Christina: is a great movie.
[01:33:42] Bryan: Uh,
[01:33:43] Brett: a great kind of farce about
[01:33:45] Christina: Religion.
[01:33:46] Bryan: of S. A. T. E.
[01:33:48] Jeff: Wow!
[01:33:49] Christina: yes. No, sages so good. Uh, uh, Gina Malone deserved a better career.
[01:33:53] Brett: me, let me add Save to our show notes before I forget.
[01:33:56] Christina: But no, but Gina Malone really, she like, she almost [01:34:00] broke through.
[01:34:00] Bryan: Boys briefly?
[01:34:02] Christina: love them so much and I’m so happy for Kieran. Like that, I, like
[01:34:08] Bryan: And I, I mean, I grew up with a cru Macaulay Culkin and I are near the same age, so, like, crushing on Macaulay Culkin. Macaulay Culkin, Jonathan Brandes, like,
[01:34:17] Christina: Uh,
[01:34:18] Bryan: my, these are my, these are my boy crushes.
[01:34:20] Christina: Devon Sala. Um, uh, I never liked Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I always thought I
[01:34:25] Bryan: I honestly liked, I liked, you know who I liked instead was his younger brother,
[01:34:29] Christina: Oh,
[01:34:30] Bryan: ended up being really tall and gothy.
[01:34:32] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Taryn Noah Smith. I, I, I know all their names because of course I do because I was like, you know, I, I was an elementary school girl, um, in the nineties.
[01:34:41] Bryan: One thing I didn’t talk about that I want to share with you guys is that, you know, I grew up, um, in the church actually as well, uh, because my mom, uh, I mean, to this day is still very involved with the United Church of Christ, which is like the good church, right? The one that, you know, ordained women and queer people early.[01:35:00]
[01:35:00] Bryan: And you know, um,
[01:35:02] Christina: represent. That’s where I’m from. So I got you. Yeah.
[01:35:04] Bryan: yeah, I mean, the Episcopals are like the, the, the Catholic light version of the United Church of Christ, like the good version, you know? The UCC is as like as left as you get before you hit the Unitarian Universalists. Who are like, anybody, anyone, you know, this week
[01:35:18] Jeff: Today we read from the Gospel of Steinbeck.
[01:35:21] Bryan: exactly, yes. And so I had the experience of thinking that everybody, like all churches, all Christians were cool with like queer people and everything, and then Yeah, and then we had a question on a boy in high school who turned out, like, to be, he’s like, I’m Christian, so, and he’s like, you’re gay, and I don’t understand the problem.
[01:35:42] Christina: right.
[01:35:42] Bryan: but part of, part of this is that I, but, so what’s interesting about this is, there weren’t, like, a separate set of Christian musicians that we listened to that were mainstream, because that didn’t really exist. So like, when I went to church camp, which I did for several years, we would listen to, like, [01:36:00] Michael W.
[01:36:00] Bryan: Smith.
[01:36:01] Christina: yeah, he did break through a little bit. He and Amy Grant, there were a few of them who kind of like,
[01:36:06] Brett: Petra. You remember Petra?
[01:36:08] Christina: Petra
[01:36:08] Bryan: yeah, Pecha,
[01:36:09] Christina: Petra
[01:36:09] Brett: Petra
[01:36:10] Jeff: of breakin through back then. Yeah. Ha,
[01:36:12] Bryan: Yeah, and like, I just remember, like, I needed, but it was, I had this experience of this journey, like, so my connection to Christianity has always very much been about the music.
[01:36:22] Christina: Totally. I
[01:36:23] Bryan: much about the music, and it has been, it has been a very interesting journey as I’ve continued to grow older, of like, finding out that every single, like, Christian artist that you liked, like, does not like you,
[01:36:36] Brett: Yeah, sure.
[01:36:37] Jeff: ha, ha, yeah.
[01:36:38] Bryan: know?
[01:36:39] Bryan: And, but like, but also still deeply, deeply like, the music is so good.
[01:36:44] Christina: Many
[01:36:44] Bryan: I love the music.
[01:36:46] Christina: Well, that’s the thing, like, worship bands Well, some, well, depends, cause like, um, like there was like, like Mute Math, like there was like this whole thing of like, like rock, like Christian type rock bands. Like Swiftfoot, I think is an amazing band and, [01:37:00] and some of these bands like, uh, then like later like had changed, you know, their, their thing to be like, Oh, we’re more secular or whatnot.
[01:37:06] Christina: But like they started out as
[01:37:08] Brett: They went where the money was.
[01:37:10] Christina: they,
[01:37:10] Brett: Christian Rock had a huge, like, that was profitable for people. Like, Striper is a good example of, like, following the money.
[01:37:19] Jeff: with the Ah, man, they were following their own
[01:37:22] Christina: no, uh, no, no, what, what, what I mean is actually more the inverse where these were bands that like got a following and then started to actually be played on mainstream where mainstream didn’t realize that they were Christian and then they decided they wanted to promote themselves more as, as secular.
[01:37:35] Christina: Like Evanescence. Evanescence
[01:37:37] Bryan: I want to call out is just that, like, like, worship music is some of my favorite music out there.
[01:37:42] Christina: Oh, I agree. I, I
[01:37:44] Bryan: progressions, yeah, and the, and the experience of, the other part is, it’s the experience of singing with other people,
[01:37:51] Brett: It’s very
[01:37:52] Bryan: that is just so, well, it’s
[01:37:55] Brett: convince someone they’re having a spiritual experience, sit them through [01:38:00] three or four, like, praise songs with a, with a live band, and then hit them with this, like, do you feel, what you’re feeling right now is because of our Lord and Savior Jesus, and they’ll buy it because it
[01:38:13] Bryan: and what I want to say about that is, Right, and see, what’s weird is, I actually, it’s so interesting, they are having a spiritual experience, but it’s not about any, like, particularly, particular god or anything. It’s about the incredible biological things that happen when you are in sync with other people and you’re singing with them.
[01:38:36] Bryan: Like, that’s,
[01:38:38] Brett: A lot of, a lot of, a lot of human development is like, there’s, there are theories that, um, tribal gatherings that involve music, uh, that
[01:38:48] Bryan: is why I’m obsessed with acapella music.
[01:38:50] Christina: Same.
[01:38:52] Brett: a major, there’s a major component of human development that is based around the social construction of sharing music,[01:39:00]
[01:39:00] Christina: Oh yeah. Without a doubt.
[01:39:01] Bryan: and I
[01:39:02] Brett: and participating, not just sitting and listening, but participating.
[01:39:05] Christina: I, I was. Yes. No, I was just gonna say, like, I grew up in an Episcopal church, so our music, like, I would listen to them to worship music, my mom’s car, my aunt and whatnot, but it wasn’t like we had that in church, because Catholic light. Um, uh, but, like, Um, it definitely is manipulative, but then you, but I think the reason you have like, like Hillsong and like these like worship bands and things like that, you’re not wrong that it can, it can be manipulative and whatnot.
[01:39:32] Christina: But there’s also, I don’t think we can discount the fact that for thousands and thousands of years, like that’s how people have been able to connect and share
[01:39:40] Brett: there’s a real power to
[01:39:41] Christina: yeah,
[01:39:42] Brett: just, I don’t like it when it’s used, when it’s, when it’s attributed to something that isn’t responsible for it. Um, like the music is powerful and the connection of sharing music is powerful. And I think if we say that. It’s awesome. I think that’s, that’s, [01:40:00] that’s that kind of God loves feeling that I’m talking about.
[01:40:03] Brett: That feeling you get from sharing that experience with other people. That is powerful in and of itself and doesn’t need to be a tru Who, who else here memorized DC Talk lyrics at the same time they memorized Vadila Ice lyrics?
[01:40:18] Jeff: Oh, what if you memorized
[01:40:19] Bryan: I memorized
[01:40:20] Jeff: snob? Uh,
[01:40:22] Bryan: memorized the same type of thing, but I wasn’t, I was not a DC, I was not a rock kid. Except like, I was R& B rock, I was Michael Jackson rock, you know. Um. But I memorized, I memorized all of the Michael W. Smith songs, like lyrics, right along memorizing like, Beat It, and Nuke is on the Block lyrics, like, absolutely, I’m with you.
[01:40:43] Brett: DC Talk was the one group that had a black person in Christian Rock at that time. Um, and I thought they must be legit because they had,
[01:40:55] Bryan: I love how this book, this, this thing happened to you, right? Through all [01:41:00] of, like, the, and I don’t know, I don’t know what your parents, like, uh, views on race are, um, but it is fascinating. Okay, it’s separatist. Okay. So, the fact that you are such a, uh, that like, even at that age, you’re like, TC Talk.
[01:41:20] Bryan: They have a black person. They must be legit. Like,
[01:41:22] Brett: It was a rebellion of sorts.
[01:41:25] Bryan: well, that’s fine, but like, there’s a lot of people that don’t do the rebellion, right? And it’s fascinating that you did, that you found your way through that, that way, because there’s still so many people, yeah.
[01:41:39] Brett: you guys ever heard of Cornerstone?
[01:41:42] Jeff: yeah, I was in, I was in, uh, yeah. Yep,
[01:41:45] Brett: It’s a Christian, a Christian rock
[01:41:47] Jeff: Hi, Danny Glamour.
[01:41:50] Brett: Yeah, um,
[01:41:51] Jeff: Oh, oh yeah, Danny Glamour literally, possibly just shut the radio off. He was deep, he was deep in that, in that world.
[01:41:59] Brett: [01:42:00] um, it was the first time I heard Christian death metal, uh, was at Cornerstone, and that was
[01:42:05] Jeff: Christians die.
[01:42:06] Brett: It was a, it was a turning point for me where I was like, when I realized that Christians in this industry, in this particular industry, were basically stealing music that was popular elsewhere and then attributing, like, forcing God into it.
[01:42:28] Brett: And it made me realize maybe I would just like the pure version of this music.
[01:42:33] Jeff: is it stealing and forcing? That seems, uh, ungenerous. What about just
[01:42:39] Bryan: generosity about
[01:42:40] Jeff: a link in the chain and just feeling like, I want to do that, but I have to do it, or I want to do it in this context.
[01:42:46] Brett: we aspire different motives to it, because in my mind it’s very, um, very much a decision. Um, and there was money at that point in selling Christian music. There was like a captive audience of
[01:42:59] Jeff: One Cornerstone had a [01:43:00] label. I
[01:43:00] Brett: who would only buy things because it was Christian. And you could sell them anything as long as it was
[01:43:07] Bryan: There are certain people that, I think to Brett’s, or to Jess point, there are certain people who have that mindset that you’re talking about, Brett. A lot of the actual individuals and artists did not. It was, this is what they were told they had to do.
[01:43:20] Christina: Yes.
[01:43:21] Bryan: But both, so both existed.
[01:43:23] Christina: Yeah, and in fact many of them like I think had kind of like a it’s like okay Who’s gonna sign us? Like what can we do and then you would see like bands like like break beyond that sort of thing right to be like no This isn’t what we care about like, you know do other things then you do have artists like to say like like like Suzanne Stevens who is a very, like, like, faith based, like, musician, and, like, his early stuff, especially, was very, like, the only way you can read the text, like, he’s very explicit about, like, the, the, the Christianity behind it, but, I mean, he’s gay, and he’s one of, like, the best indie musicians out there, like, there’s, there are layers of things, [01:44:00] but if anything, like, it hurt his probably career To be, so to this day, like he still has to kind of fight like the whole like, Oh, I’m a Christian artist thing.
[01:44:07] Christina: And he’s like, I don’t want to talk about my faith when I’m talking about my album, just because it is an inherent part of who I am, but it is not, you know, part and parcel for everything else. But, you know, the, to your point, like when the labels realized that there was a way you could make a shitload of money off these captive audiences, they’re going to make the money, but the bands don’t
[01:44:26] Bryan: of those people were Christian labels too, who like, were absolutely doing the same sort of prosperity gospel
[01:44:32] Christina: of course. Even
[01:44:33] Bryan: those big church leaders were doing as well,
[01:44:36] Christina: Arguably
[01:44:36] Jeff: have an edge case.
[01:44:37] Bryan: all times.
[01:44:38] Christina: You tell
[01:44:38] Jeff: an edge case, Brett, you’re going to love this. So what, first of all, I want to say that, um, Danny Glamour, friend of the show, uh, may or may not, um, have a partner, also a dear friend who drove Striper around on a golf course, uh, on a golf cart at the, um, Cornerstone Music Festival.
[01:44:55] Jeff: May or may not have that experience in his home. Um, and the other weird thing [01:45:00] is that I for just a minute. I was a drummer in a band on the Cornerstone label that always played the Cornerstone Festival.
[01:45:10] Jeff: Because Cornerstone was organized by this organization called Jesus People, USA and, and Jesus people, USA was like the Black Panthers of, of evangelical Christians. They had a label, they had a magazine they had, right? Like they fed, they fed kids like the whole thing. But, um, all of my friends that were there left, I mean, they left in, in a, in a pretty serious wave.
[01:45:28] Jeff: But the , one of the things that helped me to be, uh, uh, in this band was that their albums had all been recorded by Steve Albini. And I thought, wow. I mean, I love the people in this band, but I was like, if I’m in this band. And we make a record, I get to record with Steve Albini. So there’s a bizarre, like, clashing of and Steve Albini’s partner,
[01:45:45] Brett: That is the weirdest sentence I’ve heard in a while.
[01:45:48] Jeff: Steve Albini’s partner then went on to make a sort of expose documentary on Jesus People USA.
[01:45:53] Jeff: It’s just like, I just wanted to throw that in, but I also want to mention that, Christina, you’re, you’re up.
[01:45:58] Christina: Oh, yeah.
[01:45:59] Brett: real.[01:46:00]
[01:46:00] Christina: For real. Um, no, so, um, I think probably the most pressing thing that has had an impact on my mental health corner since we talked last, because there hasn’t been a lot of changes. Um, I did try my, uh, husband’s, um, ProVigil, uh, uh, uh, like for two days this week. And I think that, um, when I talk to my shrink, um, like next week, I think, or two weeks, um, I’m going to bring it up to him, but, um, that might be like a good combo for things.
[01:46:28] Christina: Um, but, uh, my, my week was pretty good in terms of trying to get my ADHD stuff on track. I had a lot of work meetings. Uh, which seems to be a similar theme across all of us. But the thing that, and it’s embarrassing for me to say this, but it’s not because fuck it. This is, this is our show. This had like the biggest impact on my mental health, genuinely, is that I can finally use my Twitter account again after two and a half months.
[01:46:50] Jeff: Oh my God. Yeah.
[01:46:51] Christina: I can’t get into the details of how, but basically, favors were asked. I’m very grateful for, some people who have a way to reach humans there because [01:47:00] again, like, I didn’t do anything wrong. Um, this has been the most frustrating part about this is that Most people in my life have taken the default assumption that I had to have done something wrong for me to be locked out of the account the way that I was locked out of it.
[01:47:13] Christina: And I didn’t. I literally didn’t do anything wrong. Um, I, it was, it was some sort of like a tech snafu thing. And then because this is a company that is run by a megalomaniac, That has very few staffers, you know, in place. Like, you can’t reach a human being and, and it was just like, a problem. Um, and the thing is, is that I am probably going to spend, not even probably, I am going to spend less time on Twitter.
[01:47:37] Christina: I’d already been spending less time there even before, um, I was locked out of my account on November 7th. But like, I want to do it on my own terms. It, you know, having your account show that you, um, might have violated Rules, which leads people to think, oh, well, what the fuck did she say? Which never in 16 years of using the service have I ever even received like a warning, you know, let alone violated rule.
[01:47:59] Christina: [01:48:00] Like I, I don’t do that. You know what I mean? Um, I, and so, uh, then that gets people thinking shit that isn’t true. And then, you know, you have, um, people DMing you because they don’t know, you know, uh, what’s happening and, and you can see the DMs, but you can’t respond to them and you don’t have any other way of contacting them, which is awkward.
[01:48:19] Christina: And then you have people who are, you know, like, again, like sending me, you know, messages other ways. It was making it very difficult for me to do parts of my job. Um, and also again, like, it’s a cautionary reminder for all of us. I think that like, we don’t control these platforms. We don’t control these followings and these things can be taken away from us.
[01:48:36] Christina: And I always knew that. And it wasn’t like I was unaware of that. But when you experience that, I think it makes you like, Uh, at least makes me think doubly hard about, okay, how much do you want to invest on some of these things, um, without having any sort of backup plan? And certainly I could have continued my life without ever having a Twitter account again, but I’m incredibly relieved that I have access to it again.
[01:48:58] Christina: I’m already more [01:49:00] Productive, which I know sounds fucked up, but again, like things that I do with my job, because people see me as one of the main contact forces for the company that I work at. And that means that people will at me and things, or they will try to DM me, and then I have no way of responding.
[01:49:13] Christina: Now I can solve people’s problems. I can like, actually do work. And that’s just been like the Biggest relief off of my chest because I’ve had like just this in addition to the normal anxiety that I feel all the time I’ve had like this additional sense of dread and whatnot of like I genuinely did nothing wrong I could not reach a human being to get this, you know rectified um, this was like just like a bad situation and i’m You know, never changing my display name again.
[01:49:42] Christina: Ever. Ever. Like, never, like, making any, you know, gonna try to make as most minimal changes to, you know, the thing as possible. But, like, fuck. Um, I, I, it sounds dumb, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who, in their mind, are like, Well, and I appreciate you saying that because you actually were [01:50:00] one of the few people who really understood that.
[01:50:01] Christina: Jeff even commented, but how are you doing with this? This has to be like a big thing for you because a lot of people, their flippant reaction and I get it. Um, if you don’t think it through all of its logical things and how people can use tools differently than you use these tools, they can go, well, it’s not that big of a deal.
[01:50:16] Christina: You shouldn’t be on it in any way and, and, and, and good riddance and this and that. And it’s like, okay, again, If I make that choice myself and I do it on my own terms, that’s one thing. When that decision is made for me and I don’t have any way of even having a goodbye message or even telling people, follow me these places.
[01:50:33] Christina: I can’t even pin something. That’s completely different. Um, and
[01:50:38] Brett: the key right there is like people who have left Twitter, more power to them. Um, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re looking out for their own mental
[01:50:47] Christina: Which I totally appreciate. Yeah.
[01:50:49] Brett: And we could do a whole episode on Twitter and mental health, um, or Facebook and mental health, like social media and mental health, but to have it, to have a communication platform [01:51:00] that you depend on in any way, that’s Taken away from you is an inverse effect on mental health.
[01:51:07] Brett: That’s, that has the actual, absolute opposite, uh, reaction
[01:51:12] Christina: no,
[01:51:13] Brett: choosing to leave
[01:51:14] Christina: than choosing to leave and, and I think, you know, and then for me, like, I mean, and so, okay, look, is this tied up in ego? Sure. But, but it is what it is. Like, I’m aware enough
[01:51:24] Jeff: where, it’s where we all live. I mean,
[01:51:26] Brett: I don’t think it is tied up in
[01:51:28] Jeff: it’s like losing your passport.
[01:51:29] Christina: was going to say it kind of is that, but I was, well, I was going to say this aspect, like what you’ve, what I’ve had to kind of realize in some certain regards, it’s like, okay, you know, like a lot of, I owe a lot of my quote unquote success to the personalities and the things I’ve built up online.
[01:51:44] Christina: And when you lose access to that lever, even when that lever has been weakened over time, and even when people leave and whatnot, that’s a loss too, that you then have to like go through a lot of like. Me anyway, I have to go through like a lot of like internal things. Like, well, who am I? Like, do I [01:52:00] matter without having, you know, this thing?
[01:52:02] Christina: Like, because, you know, well, will people still want to, want to talk to me or reach out to me if I don’t have this platform that they see as maybe being more important than it is? Like, I might know how. Unimportant it is and how, like, my reach is, is not what they think it is. But that gives people a certain sense of who I am.
[01:52:18] Christina: What am I without that? And, and how do I exist without that, right? Like, so, and, and that, and that’s the ego part a little bit. And that’s okay to have, again, like those conversations. And I’ve certainly had to kind of grapple with like the, the waning influence as it were, which is fine. But again, to what you were saying, like, uh, Bretton agreeing with me, like, I, you know, do it on your own terms when, when it’s taken away from you.
[01:52:43] Christina: It’s like, it is a negative mental health thing. And so.
[01:52:47] Bryan: I mean, it’s a loss of, I mean, it’s a loss of, it’s a significant and severe loss of control. And also, ego, I just, I want to take a moment to reframe that word, which is that it is [01:53:00] important to have a healthy ego as a person. You know, like you need to have a level of self, like self actualization and self worth and self understanding.
[01:53:12] Bryan: Um. People often think, well, you know, these ideas of, like, will I matter, or do I make a difference, or how do people see me, that these are somehow, like, I mean, it goes back to all of the bullshit of, uh, like, you know, like, uh, The specific of Evangelical Fundamentalist Christianity, the idea of we need to completely be devoid of the self, um, but like, you know, because then you’re not a functional human being.
[01:53:45] Bryan: So, you know, worrying about those things, understanding who you are, understanding whether you matter, that’s why we do things. Very cool. We do things because we want to matter. We want to be seen. We want, we want to be seen to show [01:54:00] that people, so that we know we exist. One thing that I think about so much, especially as I think about, I thought a lot about the experiences of what my, like my identity creation has been as I have sort of pulled those away and thought about them is how often we are forced to place our identities.
[01:54:19] Bryan: in the hands of others. Because so much of what we think about ourselves comes from how other people see us, because we don’t see ourselves. It’s just not a thing that we do regularly,
[01:54:29] Jeff: hmm.
[01:54:30] Bryan: you know? And so, and we are perceived far more, we are perceived by others far more than we perceive ourselves.
[01:54:38] Jeff: Mm.
[01:54:39] Bryan: so, We think about ourselves in the context of what others tell us about ourselves. And I think one of the hardest things to do, and one of the things that I am most impressed of by people who have figured out how to do it, is mainly because it is very antithetical to, I think, being a person in the world [01:55:00] today is people with very strong senses of self don’t get rocked by external things that affect the way others see them because it’s not, like, in some ways it’s not normal.
[01:55:15] Bryan: Like,
[01:55:15] Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:55:17] Bryan: because, I mean, that’s how society is built, right?
[01:55:20] Jeff: I was gonna say, who are these people you’re describing?
[01:55:22] Bryan: My partner is one of them. It’s very weird, but I think he had to go through, he had to go through a pretty rough separation and divorce for like, to figure some of that stuff out. I mean, yeah, like we don’t, our society is, is literally founded on the idea that you should care what other people think about you because that’s how you build a community.
[01:55:42] Christina: Right.
[01:55:43] Jeff: Mm.
[01:55:43] Bryan: And there are good things and bad things about that, and the internet has, to some degree, taken it to an nth degree, and we’re, we weren’t prepared for it, and now we’re trying, we’re trying to figure out how do we integrate that, because it’s not going back in the bottle.
[01:55:54] Christina: Right.
[01:55:55] Jeff: Oh, God, no, the bottle just gets bigger, at least. [01:56:00] That didn’t make any sense, but you get what I’m saying. Nerd!
[01:56:05] Bryan: if we put it in the bottle, the bottle just keeps expanding. It’s like, um, a bag of holding, or the TARDIS. It’s bigger on the inside.
[01:56:12] Brett: Nerd.
[01:56:13] Bryan: Oh,
[01:56:13] Brett: Um, are we officially a two hour podcast
[01:56:17] Jeff: I was just gonna say, so whoever’s coming next, we don’t know yet, but the next person that comes on and we don’t go two hours, it’s gonna be awkward, but it’s not gonna be their fault. It’s not gonna be their fault.
[01:56:29] Christina: Season four, year 2024 has been like the year of like the two hour, um, overtired podcast, which honestly does feel like it’s kind of two podcasts melded into one, but I kind of dig it. Like
[01:56:39] Jeff: And it totally tracks with the fact that we’ve had a guest, intentionally, every episode since the year or the season started. Yeah. Which I love.
[01:56:47] Brett: Yeah. I’ve loved it too. I, I think, I think Bryan and I both agree that maybe if we’re going to do a two hour podcast, we should have an intentional bathroom break at like the one hour mark.
[01:56:59] Jeff: [01:57:00] For the
[01:57:00] Brett: five minutes, five minutes to walk around, do your thing, make a cup of coffee, come back.
[01:57:06] Bryan: Yeah, because I mean, definitely I’ve spent half of this episode.
[01:57:10] Brett: Two hours straight with ADHD is rough.
[01:57:14] Bryan: well, and I think one of the things that the two hours, the two hour, the two hour fit does it a little better actually, I think for Overtired to some degree is that most of us at different points in the podcast are off busy being ADHD. And so we can do that, and you don’t feel like, as previously, sometimes I felt like I didn’t get to, we didn’t get as deep as I wanted to because I was, I was off in the mist for 30 minutes. You know, on my
[01:57:41] Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. I get that. I get that.
[01:57:45] Brett: All right. Well,
[01:57:46] Jeff: Well, thank anyone who hung to the end, we see you, and you definitely see us.
[01:57:51] Brett: we’ll call it there. We love you all and you guys get some sleep.
[01:57:56] Jeff: Get some sleep.
[01:57:56] Bryan: Get some sleep.
[01:57:57] Christina: Get some sleep. [01:58:00]
Merlin Mann joins the show to talk mental health, generative AI, and be an all around fun guy.
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.
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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.
TranscriptEmotional Sweep with Merlin Man
[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. I’m Brett Terpstra. I’m here, as usual, with Christina Warren and Jeff Severance Gunsel. We have a special guest this week. I’d like to welcome Merlin Mann. How’s it going, Merlin?
[00:00:20] Merlin: It’s going great. Hi team.
[00:00:22] Brett: Hey, um, so we, we’ve been,
[00:00:26] Merlin: That’s not really abrupt. I’m trying to be efficient because we had a really nice conversation for 15 minutes before, and I have to act like we’re just starting. Hey, hey you guys, how’s it going? I’m
[00:00:35] Brett: we just talked for 20 minutes before the show, um, and we’re gonna try to capture some of that magic again. Um, uh,
[00:00:43] Merlin: in a way that’s really organic and nobody will
[00:00:45] Christina: Yeah, you’ll totally feel it. It won’t, it won’t, won’t be like recreating stuff. I don’t know. I’m
[00:00:50] Jeff: You’re gonna love this, everybody.
[00:00:51] Brett: we got Merlin to open Chrome today.
[00:00:54] Christina: Hell yeah.
[00:00:56] Merlin: Yeah. I think I just got some new credit [00:01:00] cards or something. I’m not sure. I, a lot, I opened Chrome
[00:01:04] Jeff: That’s on us.
[00:01:05] Christina: ARC.
[00:01:06] Merlin: I
[00:01:06] Brett: Yeah,
[00:01:07] Merlin: think it took a photo of my balls. Um, I’m not sure.
[00:01:11] Jeff: We meant to take that out
[00:01:13] On Podcasting with Video
[00:01:13] Brett: you’re on video, which is probably rare for you when you’re recording a podcast.
[00:01:18] Merlin: I’m going to tell you something. I used to be on a podcast a long time ago, and it was a pretty well known, like popular podcast. And at one point they stopped doing just straight up Skype and started going to doing like video, but for an audio product. And I just think that if you have video on, I get it.
[00:01:35] Merlin: But if you don’t release that as video. There’s a huge component of it that people are missing. And like, and it’s not, so like, that’s okay. But then the problem is you, you get so used to it that you start saying things that’ll, we’re doing things like some of the faces I’m making and like, I can partner Jeff while we’re here.
[00:01:53] Merlin: And like that kind of stuff, which will not go through the listener. And I think that makes a, can make a less good show, but this show I feel very [00:02:00] strongly about. This is, I’m happy to be on video at 10, 20 AM on a Saturday morning. Because I obviously, I was able to get to my stylist and pick my fourth favorite Roderick on the Line shirt, so.
[00:02:13] Christina: Yeah. I also got to a stylist. Uh, the joke here, uh, listeners is I’m just wearing like a, a North Face like beanie and, um, uh, a
[00:02:22] Merlin: that, it’s from that, uh, that, that Italian stylist. I think her name is, uh, Ilaria Hatt, I think.
[00:02:28] Jeff: Oh, man.
[00:02:32] Brett: I tried to convince these guys to record video and put out like a YouTube version of the show and it has not gone over well. They’re both shaking their heads right now. Um,
[00:02:42] Merlin: think as long as you understand it’s a different thing, it’s good. Like with You Look Nice Today, we did video and I thought it turned out pretty good considering it was the lockdown and, but like, as long as you understand the parameters, a phrase I use that I won’t go into, but in the world of podcasts, I call it the little world.
[00:02:57] Merlin: Each podcast I love tends to have a little world. [00:03:00] It’s got voices that I like in it. It’s got bits. It’s got stuff. I, yeah, I yell at it. I like, I yell it. I yell at the guys on Accidental Tech. Podcast all the time. ’cause they’re uniformly horrible. Like, but that’s their little world. You decide what comes into the little world.
[00:03:12] Merlin: But if you never get a beat on what your little world is, you never let it become the thing that it is. Like you just start throwing stuff at it for what you regard as metrics. See, now I’m holding Caulfield. It’s so nice to be here on video with you. And I’m, I’m not
[00:03:26] Jeff: of the show Holden Caulfield.
[00:03:28] Brett: I
[00:03:29] Merlin: my Twitter, but my bio on Neston for a while was, uh, lifestyle Holden Call Field.
[00:03:34] Merlin: Have you never seen so many phonies in your whole life?
[00:03:37] Christina: ha ha.
[00:03:39] Harold, you were right
[00:03:39] Brett: to make a correction at the top of the show. Um, I said last week that, um, Axeman was in Minneapolis, uh,
[00:03:48] Merlin: The Marvel comic?
[00:03:49] Jeff: And I let you say it.
[00:03:50] Brett: Ed, and, and our, our friend of the show, Harold, um, he let me know, uh, in no uncertain terms that Axeman was in [00:04:00] St. Paul. So forgive me for that.
[00:04:02] Jeff: I love that. My favorite thing of seeing shows in St. Paul is how many times the bands go. It’s great to be in Minneapolis. Harold.
[00:04:12] Brett: I don’t want to, I don’t want to call Harold pedantic because he would definitely tell me I was using the word wrong. Um,
[00:04:19] Merlin: it’s pronounced Pedant. Oh, Francais.
[00:04:25] Brett: well, like, uh, Merlin, you and Dan used to, uh, he had a funny bit about my last name.
[00:04:31] Merlin: we, and we stopped because I, it
[00:04:34] Brett: know, because I, I was, I was, I was somehow offended, and then, like, I, I was a dick about it, I’m sorry, like, it was actually an honor
[00:04:45] Merlin: little world,
[00:04:47] Jeff: What was the bed?
[00:04:48] Merlin: Well, like, we have, we have, we have, no, but we’ve got funny ways we say things. Like, for, like, anything that’s got B’s in it is always funny. We are like, Bluetooth, bunk bag. There’s just certain words [00:05:00] that are just funny. And, and every time I’d say, oh my god, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:05:02] Merlin: I have all these services and like, Brett, I mean. QED, sorry if it’s your first time tuning in, Brett runs my life. Like, whether that’s marked, like there’s just so much stuff in my life that is, is Brett stuff or Brett adjacent stuff. And I would constantly be like, Oh, but there’s a service that lets you just select some text and then that adds the kind of markdown bullets that you like to it.
[00:05:24] Merlin: And Brett Terpstra, Terpstra, Terpstra. And he’d say it like that, but he did it very percussively. Sorry about that. It, it was meant in love, but
[00:05:36] Brett: Yeah, no, I got that after, after you stopped doing it, I’m like, holy shit, I never should’ve,
[00:05:42] Merlin: It’s like people saying to me, like the magician, and I say, yeah, like the magician, which I’d never heard before.
[00:05:47] Jeff: Brett, do you want to regain your power and just speak your name to Merlin
[00:05:50] Merlin: Yes, thank you! Thank you!
[00:05:54] Brett: No,
[00:05:55] Merlin: They called me Mr. Terpstra.
[00:05:58] Mental Health Corner
[00:05:58] Brett: I abdicate, I abdicate [00:06:00] my power. Um, so we, at the top of most shows, we do a mental health corner, and for the last two episodes, that mental health corner has run like an hour, and it’s supposed to be like 15 minutes. Um, so, if it’s gonna run long, I want it to be Merlin’s fault, so, Uh, what we do is we check in on our mental health.
[00:06:22] Brett: All three of the regular hosts have their own diagnoses. And, and we talk about how things are
[00:06:29] Merlin: from some kind of an accredited professional, or more like I’m pretty sure I’m
[00:06:33] Jeff: we work
[00:06:33] Merlin: sure I’m OCD.
[00:06:35] Jeff: 1.
[00:06:37] Brett: So, so I would like to turn it over. Merlin, how are you doing this week?
[00:06:42] Merlin: Uh, me first?
[00:06:44] Brett: I, cause if this runs long, I want it to be your fault. Like, and if it’s short, great.
[00:06:49] Merlin: um, well it, it, this is almost all I talk about, so I’ll try to keep it brief, but, uh, my mental health pretty good. Pretty [00:07:00] good. Uh, I have an ongoing project that, uh, I’m, I’m gonna just go ahead and kind of, kind of mention just for context ’cause it’s, it’s something I’m trying to socialize, which is like, it’s just, just a whole bunch of stuff.
[00:07:12] Merlin: in my life where I’ve had a reason to become more aware of certain aspects of my mental health. Something my friend John at Syracuse introduced to me, something called the XY problem, which has become like kind of instrumental in my life, is like, you tell, you want help from somebody and so you say you have a problem with X, but that expert would be in a position to tell you sometimes after minutes or hours that actually you have a problem with Y.
[00:07:35] Merlin: To paraphrase Stephen Covey, you have your ladder against the wrong wall in that sense. Um, and, Things like trauma, issues with authority, things like that. I’ve just realized I’ve only, I’ve really, I think that’s something I’m really turning over a lot right now is the role of shame in our lives and how at least I feel like we were, we’re all, I’m 57, so like the way I was raised, not in, Tensionally, I don’t think, but like, [00:08:00] there’s just so much shame in all of our lives and I’m starting to wonder, uh, about the extent to which that shame drives some of our lesser angels and how we, and how we’re motivated, how we talk to ourselves, obviously very importantly, but also like the kinds of like, we’re carrying water for gym teachers.
[00:08:19] Merlin: in 1978 sometimes. And so that’s something, pardon me, I’m getting over a cold. That’s something where like, I’ve been had a, I had a big health thing that I’ve been dealing with. And, and one aspect of that and having to be in the hospital for three days was for the first time, you know, ever was like just confronting this whole way of like, well, how much do you drink?
[00:08:39] Merlin: Did you know your blood pressure is high? Did you colonoscopy in too long? And it’s just like all these things that are meant to be. Even like, honestly, on the label useful things from a person are so often usually unintentionally grounded in shame, reiterating shame, and ultimately, at least in my, this is where I get real weird, [00:09:00] is in the way people unintentionally as a society, as a culture, as a tribe, teach us a certain kind of shame.
[00:09:06] Merlin: That we’re, we eventually learned to carry and put onto ourselves and consequently put on others. And if you’ve ever wondered about that, ask your parents why they’re how they were. And there’s a pretty good chance your parents were how they were because their parents made them ashamed about it. So now when we yell at our kids about screen time, whatever that means, like when we yell at our kids about stuff, we’re basically saying something that we hope impresses a dead parent.
[00:09:28] Merlin: So that’s something I think about a lot right now and I’m operationalizing. As a, as a project to, as I explained recently on another show, there’s like this two track approach of like, yeah, continuing to try and become a better person and a more wholesome person and a more kind person. And, and again, kindness is a lot of about what you don’t do in life.
[00:09:48] Merlin: It’s not stuff people see. A lot of the writing, a lot of your writing is writing you don’t do. People won’t see, realizing you don’t need to write. All those kinds of like those complex, like internal voyages we take. So my [00:10:00] mental health is pretty good considering. Um, but that, that’s a thing I’m thinking about a lot right now.
[00:10:05] Merlin: How are you guys?
[00:10:07] Jeff: Oh man, can I?
[00:10:08] Brett: Okay, go ahead,
[00:10:09] Jeff: Go ahead. I was going to say the thing about carrying the shame that is in a way carrying the shame of a parent. Um, there was a thing a therapist said to me a long time ago and it was like this, it was this thing to say, right? So it’s kind of funny to say these things out loud and especially in public, but it really hits there, which is like to find a way to hand it back in a way that doesn’t feel like resentful.
[00:10:30] Jeff: She was like, she was like, I have been carrying this for you out of love. And I return it to you now, with
[00:10:37] Merlin: Yeah, one of the numerous burdens we get from people that we love, whether that’s something that somebody regards as an heirloom, that’s been sitting in a basement for 10 years that you’ve been saving for some reason. There’s all these things that we give to somebody, but you’re right, but how do you, the turning back is such an interesting idea.
[00:10:52] Merlin: Like, I understand so much, I feel like, about, oh, it’s always an evolving understanding of why the people in my life are how they are, I think. [00:11:00] think in particular, my mom’s husband died when we were all pretty young, including my dad. And like, she just, I think could never bear the idea of loss of like losing me in particular.
[00:11:13] Merlin: Like I was the last thing she had apart from the Pontiac. And like, how do you, how do you do that without being a little bit of a nut? And sometimes the more we care about somebody in our head, The way I would phrase it, I would never say this publicly, but the way I would phrase it is like, no, and really, really just kind of talk yourself into being a nut about something, but because it comes from a good place, that’s who you are now.
[00:11:35] Merlin: And it’s the turning, turning it back part is so interesting, but like, I don’t know, it was a phrase I picked up somehow a long time ago, which is, uh, instrumental again for me. Stupid can’t stick to me. It’s like, I get to define the terms of my personal integrity and I get to decide. Who’s BS I’m going to carry around.
[00:11:53] Merlin: So whether that goes for news articles, I don’t need to see, you know, anger about Twitter or like whatever it is. There’s just all [00:12:00] this stuff where I’ve learned to become a little more reflective about that and go, I can understand that, but that doesn’t mean I have to eat a plate of it all the time.
[00:12:06] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:09] Brett: God, you sound like someone who’s been through therapy. Do you do
[00:12:12] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, this is, this is definitely sounding like therapy talk, which is, I don’t mean in a derogatory way at all,
[00:12:19] Brett: No, we all love therapy.
[00:12:21] Christina: all love
[00:12:22] Merlin: it’s, it’s so interesting and so ironic, ironic, because no, I don’t do talk therapy, uh, but, you know, I don’t have time to go into it, it’s a corner, it’s a very
[00:12:34] Brett: all this wisdom.
[00:12:36] Merlin: I do pick up a lot of wisdom, that’s true. The um, but like that book, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van
[00:12:42] Merlin: der Kolk. Has just, I think about it more than anything I’ve read since getting things done. If for people who know them, the Merlin podcast universe, like it’s, I think about the body keeps the score constantly and not because I’m a Vietnam vet, but because so much we understand or [00:13:00] think we understand about how we got, how we are.
[00:13:02] Merlin: is, elides some, not, I’m not gonna be like that guy who’s like, yeah, well it’s all like medical, and it’s all medical, but the problem is like your brain is trying so hard to help you, and the more we feed it the stuff that we think is helping, it’s like drinking salt water. It’s not actually gonna quench your thirst, you’re just a guy on a boat drinking the ocean, but that feels like the right thing to do, and that book, which is about trauma, and the way that trauma kind of leaves a mark on you in a, An invisible but very real way, uh, not just about trauma, but if I had one pitch to make, well, first of all, I’d say listen to that interview with Ezra Klein with Kolk.
[00:13:41] Jeff: Oh,
[00:13:41] Merlin: got me into it. Really good interview, like a life changing interview for me. But also that it’s, it’s, it’s interesting, one of the, part of the thrust of the book that I hate to spoil is that, yeah, I know you think you don’t have trauma. I know. That’s the point. The point is that your body and your mind, which are actually highly related, [00:14:00] your brain is doing everything it can to keep you from being sad, to keep you from being expelled by the tribe for pointing out that the priest touched your tutor.
[00:14:08] Merlin: Like, whatever it is, there’s stuff in your body and your mind that represent adaptations over, you know, millions of years. And, um, and so when we say we don’t have trauma, well, it’s because That’s because that’s, that’s how the body keeps the score. Is that like you, you teach yourself to believe that only people who are in Treblinka had trauma and you’re like, well, no, if you really accept that you’ve been re injured in the same spot thousands of times, sometimes without anything actually happening.
[00:14:34] Merlin: Anybody here ever been scared when the phone rings? I don’t know why you’re scared when the phone rings. I know that I am too, and I know that that is far from a unique thing that only
[00:14:43] Christina: No, we, usually what it is is that it, you know, it’s like any sort of, you know, um, uh, PTSD or whatever is that you’ve had like an event that was triggered, the really negative thing that was triggered when someone called you and you had that experience and, and like, so, and, and it’s
[00:14:58] Merlin: I’m about, I’m about to be evicted [00:15:00] or my mom is dead.
[00:15:01] Christina: Right. Well, I
[00:15:01] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:02] Christina: I do, still sometimes have like, when my mom calls me to this day, I’ll never forget because when she, like the worst phone call I’ve ever received was when, um, my aunt and uncle died, um, two days after Thanksgiving and it was completely unexpected and, um, I’m going to get emotional even talking about it.
[00:15:20] Christina: No, you can’t. And in that case, it was the, the, the thing that I guess, like I have residual issues overnight and I’m again, like, you know, just, you have the emotional response, even like Thinking back all these years later is I will never forget the sound of her voice.
[00:15:36] Jeff: Mm.
[00:15:37] Christina: was like,
[00:15:38] Merlin: And Christina, I’ll
[00:15:38] Christina: worst thing I’ve ever heard.
[00:15:40] Merlin: you never want that news again, but you also never want to hear your mom
[00:15:43] Christina: Well, that’s really what it is. It has, the news is, is, is the less, um, important aspect because the, the part of that that is still emotional for me is my mom’s reaction and knowing how she felt. And [00:16:00] so, There are times that, yeah, like, the phone will ring and it’s my mom and like, you know, I’ll do like a little deep breath because you’re like, okay, am I ever going because I, I do know, unfortunately, that I will probably hear her sound that way again. And, and so
[00:16:19] Merlin: it happens in your head or in life. It happens when the phone rings.
[00:16:23] Christina: Right. Right.
[00:16:24] Merlin: like, why is everybody, why is somebody weird about, like, somebody ringing the doorbell? You millennials are all avocado toast or whatever. And it’s like, well, no, that’s, that’s, I’ve, and I’ve very much been that person. I’ve very much been that person of, like, trigger warnings, like, grow up.
[00:16:37] Merlin: Like, I’ve been that person and I have become more vulnerable and open to the idea that But like, I, I just, I think there’s, there’s so many unnecessary negativities that inhabit our lives that we unintentionally, um, give to others, but also are constantly looking for a way to put on ourselves. And it, [00:17:00] a lot of us are having a pretty weird day before the phone rings and like, If there’s one way I try to describe the anxiety that I have, and probably as a component I think of my ADHD, is that I experience a lot of things much more deeply than other people, especially negative things, and more saliently, it sticks with me a lot longer.
[00:17:19] Merlin: And that’s why it becomes a very lonely journey to try and explain to somebody why you don’t like the phone ringing. And that turns into like, again, this thing of like, oh, Gen Z is however, but no, it’s like, It’s like we, you can’t really describe it to people, not least because we are not encouraged to interrogate why that is.
[00:17:34] Merlin: We are not encouraged to figure out. On the one hand, like it’s, and it’s things, it’s not an unalloyed good or easy thing to just have some journey and go like, well, I’ve decided this is, you know, it’s kind of like Irish version, Irish Catholic version of therapy where you like have an afternoon and then like, okay, no, go back to your craziness.
[00:17:51] Merlin: Like it’s, it’s very difficult to try and Locate that in yourself, let alone articulate to somebody that you care about.[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] Christina: Right.
[00:18:00] Merlin: it comes out as I’m mad at everybody sometimes. Like again, Van Der Kolk talks about this. Why are these Vietnam vets coming back? They’re so screwed up. But why do they have bursts of anger?
[00:18:10] Merlin: Why, you know, something I
[00:18:11] Christina: They’ve been holding it in, because they have to pretend like they’re okay for so long. And, and then,
[00:18:16] Merlin: totally, totally
[00:18:17] Christina: it can’t do anything else. So it just
[00:18:19] Merlin: But also like when I was, I heard fight or flight as talking about the autonomic responses. I’ve heard about fight or flight most of my life. You know, I didn’t hear until, until that book was Freeze. And I think Freeze needs a lot more widespread understanding
[00:18:33] Brett: I only learned about Freeze
[00:18:35] Merlin: happened to you and you were held, were held down, I’m not even saying it has to be that, but you know, that feeling of, I can’t escape from how this is right now.
[00:18:43] Merlin: And that’s pretty close to how I feel when I’m, I don’t have. Panic attacks per se, but that’s pretty close to how I feel when the phone rings is like, what is happening right now will be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it will last forever. And I know I won’t be able to handle it. That’s how it is.
[00:18:59] Merlin: [00:19:00] And I bet more people are like that than they’d like to admit.
[00:19:02] Brett: I’ve probably talked about this before, but, uh, both of my grandfathers died on the same day. And,
[00:19:10] Jeff: That’s so crazy.
[00:19:11] Brett: my maternal grandfather lived with us in the house I was in when I was 12. Um, and I woke up to the ambulances carting him out after a heart attack. And, um, so my mom’s already I’ve seen her cry for maybe the first time ever, um, and then the phone rings and my dad picks it up and it is the only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry.
[00:19:37] Brett: Like, to this day, it is the only time, uh, when he found out his father was dead, also of a heart attack, on the same day. Um, it was,
[00:19:46] Merlin: And, but you’re, you’re, it’s interesting how some of these stories, including Christina’s, including yours, a lot of mine, and this, this comes up, I think, in, in some of your better media, is like, yeah, I don’t want crappy things to happen to me. Like, I don’t want it, for example, there’s, I watched something [00:20:00] recently where somebody was very brutally beat up, and The, the thing about it was like the thing that made it difficult for them and for the kid who saw it was the, the kid eventually understood the kid, that guy, he didn’t want to get beat up.
[00:20:13] Merlin: My dad didn’t want to get beat up. But what he really didn’t want was for me to have to see it, to see him in that state. There’s something about seeing people we love in a, in a very vulnerable and being hurt and vulnerable and us knowing there’s nothing that we can do about it. How that’s a kind of a form of freeze in some ways, I feel like.
[00:20:34] Brett: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I only, like, I started talking about Fight or Flight to my therapist, and she clarified that it’s Fight, Flight, or Freeze, and that was, that was news to me at the time. I’m like, actually, that explains a lot of what I go through when I talk to my parents, when I get it. You know, triggered by religious stuff and things that have caused me trauma in the past.
[00:20:59] Brett: Um, I [00:21:00] freeze. I do. Yeah. Shame. For sure. I, like Merlin, you haven’t listened to the show for a while, but I was recently diagnosed with PTSD. Oh, should I just, can I just do a quick mental health corner? Um,
[00:21:12] Merlin: Well, I wish you would. And also, you know, this is probably not for the show, but you and I had a nice visit not too long ago, where I reached out to you because I knew that you were,
[00:21:24] Brett: yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:25] Merlin: we had a, we, you know, we had a call.
[00:21:27] Brett: Yeah, we did. We did.
[00:21:29] Merlin: And like, it was, it was really, it was really something to get to chat with you, but I, I wish you would share that with your listeners, you know.
[00:21:35] Brett: so, yeah, so, well, I was recently diagnosed with PTSD, which is the DSM version of what I actually have, which is Complex PTSD, which is PTSD that stems not from a single event, but from repeated trauma, and, um,
[00:21:51] Merlin: yours especially localized to religion? Wasn’t there, isn’t there like a name for
[00:21:55] Brett: much, it’s very much what is known as Religious Trauma Syndrome, [00:22:00] um, and, uh, that’s also not a DSM term, which we talked about last week, but, um, they are recognized, kind of, maladies, if you will, and the, when you talk about shame, when you talk about, so like, The only people I can blame directly for that kind of repeated trauma are my parents.
[00:22:22] Brett: Um, but I also have to recognize that especially my mom came from a deep south, long line of, like, Baptist
[00:22:31] Merlin: were probably both doing their best every day. And that’s the problem.
[00:22:34] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and I
[00:22:37] Merlin: We always assume that we’re, we’re, we’re good at stuff and everybody else sucks or isn’t as smart or isn’t as careful or isn’t as pious. But like, this is something again from, that I wrote in this thing that I’m working on, which is like every day, everybody’s doing their, this is so annoying to people to say this, but every day, everybody’s doing their best.
[00:22:53] Merlin: And that’s the problem. Like when you say, Oh, do better. Well, like, that’s like, why don’t you just be
[00:22:58] Christina: Fuck off.
[00:22:58] Merlin: Well, it [00:23:00] is what, it was what it was to paraphrase the cliche, which is like, if you could have done better that day, don’t you think you would have?
[00:23:07] Christina: Most
[00:23:07] Merlin: And that’s, that being a parent is a lot, I mean, like, not just me, but like everybody is like, Oh man, I wish I could redo that.
[00:23:13] Merlin: I wish I could retake that. I wish I could have avoided saying like, again, I don’t want to trigger anybody, but like stuff like, you know, why didn’t you finish your dinner? Which seems like such an innocuous, we’re from a family, we worry about people in China who are starving or whatever. I’m like, yeah, but you also might be giving your kid a little bit of an eating disorder because of how often you point out that you don’t realize this.
[00:23:34] Merlin: Because you can’t realize this. You don’t realize how often you’re telling your daughter you think she doesn’t know how to eat and how to be healthy. And you mean it in the best possible way. You’re doing the best you can every day. But again, you’re trying to impress your dead mother when you do that.
[00:23:47] Merlin: And you just don’t know it. It’s my opinion anyway.
[00:23:49] Jeff: You’re trying to stay in the tribe.
[00:23:51] Brett: my mother once told me and I talked to her about this. She doesn’t remember it, but I was, I was home from college and I was talking about, I, I [00:24:00] had, I was after college. I had been recently diagnosed as bipolar. And, um, she said to me that she was sorry. And I’m going to paraphrase because this isn’t how she said it, but what I heard was, I’m sorry I had you.
[00:24:18] Brett: I’m sorry I birthed you and passed on all of these defects that run in my family, like her mother had clinical depression, her brother was bipolar, um, like there’s undiagnosed ADHD, and she felt like she was responsible for where I was at, and her response to that was to apologize for bringing me into this world, and holy shit, that is like, Honestly, the only thing I could feel was sympathy for her.
[00:24:50] Brett: The fact that she felt responsible
[00:24:52] Merlin: think she meant it as, I’m sorry, you, I mean, like, like it’s, it’s become very occurrent to go, okay, how can anybody have kids today in this world with the environment and the [00:25:00] blah, blah, blah, blah. But once you’ve had a kid, you never say, oh boy, I really wish I hadn’t had this kid, I really want to help the environment.
[00:25:05] Merlin: That’s just
[00:25:05] Brett: and that’s not what she meant. That’s just what I heard, and that’s not the way she said it. She said it in a very, like, Kind of apologetic, loving way, uh, like, I’m sorry I’m responsible for, I’m sorry I passed all of this on to you, um, yeah, which is its own form of, well, honestly, I think I got my ADHD from my dad’s side, and I’ve learned that both ADHD and bipolar are symptoms of complex PTSD, so
[00:25:35] Merlin: dude, I
[00:25:35] Brett: maybe I
[00:25:36] Merlin: every conversation we’ve had for 15 years. I can’t even tell you, like, let’s just one word, lemictal. I can’t tell you how many people I know who got whatever, they started however they are, nobody would help them because they thought they were weird, and they had a brain problem, and that’s a whole thing when you go to a doctor.
[00:25:50] Merlin: Like, oh, no, no, I’d rather just treat your strain from pickleball. I don’t want to deal with your brain. That’s like for a different, that kind of dog. Fucking pickleball. You’re wearing the wrong pickleball shoes. [00:26:00] I just learned about pickleball shoes, which to me is like a video game chair. I just don’t understand it.
[00:26:03] Merlin: But like, but, but, but you go like, I, you know, I, everybody’s trying to help. Everybody’s trying to be decent, but also everybody is, is unintentionally walking around. And I’m not going to get into a political thing that causes problems here, but just. Insert once this idea that, that what if, what if you look to people and I’m not saying it means you have to like people.
[00:26:24] Merlin: I’m not saying this just, but like the first step toward a lot of things is understanding and understanding something on its terms rather than yours. And if all we ever do is choose to see our world through our own terms, maybe the secondary thing that sucks is the world won’t get better. But a primary thing that sucks is you won’t get better because you are so.
[00:26:43] Merlin: Cleft to these parameters, these, you know, ice cube, paper thin walls of like, that have, that have like formed who you are. And I, I think there’s a way to handle that in a way that’s. muscular and assertive and is not [00:27:00] just merely about going, I’m mad at the world and want to do primal, primal scream therapy.
[00:27:04] Merlin: Not saying you shouldn’t, but it’s, it’s really complicated. But like, I can’t tell you how many friends I have now I’ve learned are, have taken Lamictal. And like, first they were just another screwed up person. And then they, Oh my God, you have depression. Okay, cool. Thanks. As my shrink told me the first month that I was with like, there’s so many problems with people.
[00:27:24] Merlin: Depression being the thing that they’ve identified in the client and then not realizing that it is actually a bipolar and maybe not even the bipolar that you thought. And guess what? If you, we’ve talked about this before, if you treat somebody for chronic depression, MDD, like any of the depressions, there’s a pretty good chance that the thing you’re using to treat them will actually harm them because the depression is just one aspect.
[00:27:49] Merlin: I mean, if you keep putting gas in your glove box, your car’s not going to go. And if that’s somebody whose job it is to put gas in the glove box, which sounds [00:28:00] like a line from a Steely Dan song, but if that’s that person’s job, they’re going to be very, is there gas in the glove box? Like they’re going to be very resistant to going, well, I don’t understand.
[00:28:07] Merlin: Why would you want gas in the tank? That, that seems like a fire hazard. I don’t know. It sounds silly, but like, it’s.
[00:28:13] Brett: I know what you mean.
[00:28:14] Merlin: But then on top of it all, I have two friends that I co host podcasts with, who started out that way, and we’ve gone through the first two, third one, oh guess what, you’ve actually got, I don’t know how we phrase this, but bipolar, a diagnosis of being bipolar.
[00:28:27] Merlin: And then in each instance, both of them got a subsequent diagnosis of Say it with me, Brett.
[00:28:32] Brett: ADHD.
[00:28:33] Merlin: ADHD. And guess what? That makes all of those preceding things so much more complicated.
[00:28:39] Brett: Mm hmm. Oh my god, yes. That is, that is the tightrope I walk, is how do I treat my ADHD without triggering manic episodes, um, and Like, when I’m in a depressive state, ADHD meds don’t do anything for me. [00:29:00] Um, when I am depressed, I can take all the stimulants I want, it’s not gonna fix it. Um, and
[00:29:06] Merlin: Can I just guess that, and if you get too much of the ADHD when you’re
[00:29:10] Brett: you’re manic.
[00:29:10] Merlin: when you’re the other, well, you know, do we say manic? When you ride on the trains in Chicago a lot all weekend, for example, a friend of mine, but like when you’re having an episode, if you were to pop an Adderall or a Vyvanse or like a whatever, that might even further escalate the
[00:29:26] Brett: so I, one of the things, um, for a long, and I know that you have been on Folklin before as well, Um, when Uh, when I switched back to Vyvanse after a long time, uh, my, the driving force was, I would get Manic, and I would, I would love my Vyvanse, uh, my Focaline. Like, my Focaline would extend my Manic episodes to a point where it was problematic.
[00:29:55] Brett: And I was basically using the Focaline,[00:30:00]
[00:30:00] Merlin: in a movie? In a movie when somebody does cocaine, they don’t do a little bit of cocaine and then stop.
[00:30:05] Jeff: yeah, yeah,
[00:30:05] Merlin: It’s like, and certainly you could say to that person in a very lucid way, Hey, you know, uh, Al Pacino in Scarface, I think you’ve had enough cocaine for now. Like, you’ve got the cocaine you need to do your work.
[00:30:16] Merlin: And now maybe don’t have all of the
[00:30:18] Brett: problem. I know how
[00:30:19] Merlin: know what makes you want to do cocaine? In part, is cocaine. And, and, and like, I know the way I’ve described this in a way that I imagine is controversial to some people is that like, I got off Adderall because it was, long story, but like, there’s never been anything that made me feel more like myself than Adderall.
[00:30:37] Merlin: 22 minutes from I wake up to I’m writing and like, let me get my hands around life in a way. It ended up that the side effects or the results of being on Adderall were not always good, but like, you have to, I feel like you have to be so careful because if you’re looking at your life in terms of.
[00:30:58] Merlin: Integrity, by which I don’t mean [00:31:00] brand, but in terms of wholeness, in a more, like, kind of Buddhist way. If you look at your life as having, like, a contiguous series of events and thoughts that represents you, it’s the triple dip cream dream to find whatever it is that helps you be who you want to be, to become who you want to become, or a Similar thing, it’s like, to feel like how I want to feel.
[00:31:20] Merlin: Now those all are very related, but those can, you have somebody who’s doing just a butt ton of cocaine going, It helps me be who I want to be. To quote the now discredited Bill Cosby, you know, uh, a great bit. No, I grew up on Bill Cosby. I’m not going to
[00:31:32] Jeff: Oh man. Why is there air? Why is there air? I played that record. I mean, as much as
[00:31:36] Merlin: Oh, for me it was my brother, brother Russell, whom I slept with and um, but there’s one where he’s talking, there’s one in, in Bill Cosby himself, the special where he’s talking about drugs and talking about people who do cocaine and people say, Hey, you got to do the cocaine cause it makes you, you know, more of however you are and you flip this.
[00:31:54] Merlin: I said, well, what if you’re an asshole? And like, yeah. [00:32:00] Some of us are an asshole, and the cocaine’s not making it better, but is that kind of what you’re talking about, where like, in that, in that, at that moment, I have, again, a dear friend of mine, that I think has been on the show, like, has to be circumspect about reloading the pistol with the stuff that seems like
[00:32:17] Brett: like I’ve, I’ve had a cocaine addiction. Like I’ve been through that. I know exactly what you mean when you say cocaine makes you want cocaine. Um, it’s a self perpetuating cycle and no, like I, I got clean. I haven’t 20 years. Uh, but Focalin. is the closest I’ve ever gotten to doing cocaine again. It brought that, uh, frontal lobe kind of pleasure and feeling
[00:32:46] Merlin: does feel like something is lighting up. Something that was dim before is now lighting up.
[00:32:50] Brett: So what’s been happening for the last week, uh, I think even before, I think I mentioned this last time we recorded, is I thought I might have switched [00:33:00] to type one bipolar because I was just having day after day of being productive, but I was sleeping and Like, I’ve been sleeping 8 hours a night, I’ve been sleeping 9 hours a night, and then having these productive days, and what I’ve realized is this is maybe what normal people have.
[00:33:23] Brett: Um, this level of energy I’ve always seen in other people who just have this constant
[00:33:29] Merlin: How are you still having, I say to my wife sometimes, like, how are you still having meetings at three o’clock? You’ve had so many meetings today, and like, you, and like, I have a place where she works, I don’t know why, they do lots of meetings on Fridays, and I’m always like, well that’s crazy for a variety of reasons.
[00:33:42] Christina: Totally.
[00:33:43] Brett: company doesn’t do meetings on
[00:33:45] Merlin: But like people but like seriously though like people others in that example though or like or people who are still like I’m like How are you is it just coffee? I know you people love your coffee drinks, but like how are you still so Conscious let alone animated at like three or four o’clock. I I might [00:34:00] I have a big precipitous drop after like 2 p.
[00:34:02] Merlin: m If I’m
[00:34:02] Brett: I am, I am fortunate to work in a company that A, just doesn’t do meetings on Mondays and Fridays, and B, um, works, it’s an international team, so we have to find times that work for everybody, and even like US based people, most of our team is in California, so the earliest meeting for me will be 10am, uh, which, I You know, it, it works.
[00:34:29] Brett: It works great.
[00:34:30] Merlin: Today, today, 10 a. m. That’s what, isn’t that ironic or funny that that was my suggestion was 10 a. m. My time. Yeah, I know. Right, right, right. Yeah.
[00:34:37] Brett: Um, but yeah, anyway, I, I will conce, I will seed my mental health corner to, uh, whoever wants to go
[00:34:47] Jeff: Do you want to go, Christine? It might actually might lead nicely into our custom GPT, uh, conversation.
[00:34:52] Christina: No, sure thing. Sure thing. Um, I, uh, no real updates, uh, on, on my end. Um, [00:35:00] I’m still waiting, um, to hear back on, on, uh, I have to get additional blood work to figure out some of the health stuff. So no update on that. If anybody was curious, it is what it is. My ADHD has been I’ve been struggling with that and uh, it’s funny hearing you, you, to talk about like the magic and powers of, of cocaine and uh, you know, like getting kind of that thing from Adderall and whatnot.
[00:35:22] Christina: God, I wish cocaine had any impact on me. It does not. Like I have, I, and,
[00:35:26] Merlin: it exactly once. I tried cocaine and I’m, I was, I was grew up in the eighties at a time when everybody was doing cocaine. My, I had friends who I was like, you did it on cocaine? I mean, you might as well say that you like, I don’t know, did hand stuff on Mount Everest. That’s crazy to me.
[00:35:41] Merlin: I tried it exactly once. It had no effect and I could not be more grateful.
[00:35:46] Christina: I, I,
[00:35:46] Merlin: Now, ephedrine, I used to eat ephedrine.
[00:35:49] Brett: Yeah, for sure. 10, 20. No problem.
[00:35:54] Christina: I, um, yeah, I, I, I, I, I’ve been on, on Dexedrine, which is, you know, like, uh, uh, more, [00:36:00] uh, and even more pure Adderall. Uh,
[00:36:03] Merlin: That’s old school!
[00:36:04] Christina: very old school. Yeah.
[00:36:06] Merlin: Little Helper?
[00:36:07] Christina: Um, I
[00:36:08] Merlin: No, I mean, from the Stones, from the Stones song! Like, dexedrine is used for weight loss.
[00:36:13] Christina: yeah, well, with that, with that, with that was
[00:36:15] Merlin: that is the subject of Mother’s Little Helper.
[00:36:17] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, it’s basically, it’s, it’s, it’s like almost pure, um, amphetamine salt.
[00:36:22] Christina: Um, and so it’s, it’s, it’s legal speed. Um, and I’ve been, uh, on some amount of that since I was, uh, 15 or 16 years old. So, um, like the majority of my life, um, at this point. And so, yeah, so cocaine has no impact on me, but. At the same time, my ADHD, which is the reason I’ve been on the Dex string for so long, I am struggling with it.
[00:36:43] Christina: And then for me, a lot of times when my ADHD is bad, that will lead to, to go back to what you were talking about with shame earlier, that trigger, that will trigger like anxiety spirals and like kind of like a, you know, panic attack stuff, which then just makes me More panicked and more, you know, like shut [00:37:00] down, which leads to more feelings of shame and disappointment and whatnot, which leads to more.
[00:37:05] Christina: So it’s kind of a perpetuating cycle. So,
[00:37:07] Merlin: uh, it’s, it’s ironic that that’s called a positive feedback loop because it
[00:37:11] Christina: right. It means it’s negative, right?
[00:37:13] Merlin: if you’re ever a little kid who’s swished back and forth in the bathtub, you can find that you can either work against the wave or with the wave, but if you work with the wave, mom is going to be mad.
[00:37:23] Merlin: And that’s kind of what you’re describing, right? Is you, you going like, Oh, this, this is good. This feels, this feels less bad. And then like, you just, it’s so hard to manage.
[00:37:33] Christina: Yeah. Well, no, I mean, none of it feels good. It’s just that, but then it feels bad. And then you, you feel bad about feeling bad and then it gets worse regardless. Anyway. Um, I’m, I’ve been struggling with my ADHD this week. I don’t really know a solution for that other than, um, I got to talk to my, uh, my psychiatrist, I guess, um, potentially about another med solution.
[00:37:52] Christina: The problem is, is I’m already on so much texadrine right now. Taking more is not going to help. So I don’t know if there’s something else
[00:37:59] Merlin: So it’s an instance [00:38:00] of like, it’s not that there’s no, I’m paraphrasing or guessing here, but it sounds like you’re saying it’s not that it doesn’t have any effect on you. It’s just that the effect that it’s having is not, I mean, there’s a thing a lot of folks I think don’t know, which is why do you take speed, you know?
[00:38:15] Merlin: And it’s like, well, you take speed because as it turns out, the thing that. Um, Amphetamines do is what helps you produce, uh, dopamine in a more wholesome way. You know, the speedy part, the like, let’s go disco dance part is technically kind of a side effect. And whether it’s mushrooms or this, there are a lot of people or handful of people who are starting to ask, like, well, is it the chemical change or is it the experience?
[00:38:40] Merlin: And in your case, the experience of the like, he, he, he, I’ve had a lot of that. You’re getting, you might get that, but you’re not getting the salutary effects that it’s on label for.
[00:38:48] Christina: Right. Right. And,
[00:38:49] Merlin: helping your ADHD
[00:38:50] Christina: was not helping my ADHD, and to be completely honest, I don’t get the hee hee hee, I’m on speed thing, like, honestly, it’s one of those things, like, I will feel my heart rate increase, and I will know that, you know, [00:39:00] like, when it’s kicked in, but it’s not as
[00:39:03] Merlin: 22 minutes for me.
[00:39:04] Christina: Yeah, but it’s not as if it will have, like, an impact on my behavior, you know what I mean?
[00:39:08] Christina: Like, other than maybe, like, have an elevated heart rate. It’s not like I feel a high of any
[00:39:12] Merlin: You’re getting what a lot of people regard as a desire or some element. Like it’s just like, you know, it’s funny. One of the things that got me off Adderall was this realization, several things, but, and I, God, I would love to be back on Adderall. I would kill to be on Adderall right now. But, but like, well, part of, part of what got me with that, with that was just this idea of like, well, I mean, this is a, as a thought experiment.
[00:39:31] Merlin: Like, we’ve all been on drugs at one point in our life where the side effects were just overwhelmingly bad and negative. Well, for me, the side effects are awesome. And then the question becomes, like, would I seek this treatment and would I adhere to it as diligently if the side effects weren’t ones that I like?
[00:39:51] Brett: Or even, or even if they were neutral.
[00:39:55] Merlin: Right. It’s certainly, I mean, I looked forward to getting up in the morning and having an Adderall. I, [00:40:00] I, no shame there. Like that’s just a fact. Because, and then like people say, Oh, you’re abusing it. But like, no, well, like if you’re, if you’re like a salesman who’s very charismatic, are you abusing your charisma?
[00:40:10] Merlin: Like people who have the wiring for this stuff to not be a big deal. There’s a reason Starbucks is on every corner. People love that damn coffee. They’re all, people’s all gacked out on all these different things. Anyway, now I sound defensive, but that
[00:40:21] Christina: but, well, no, but totally. I mean, but I will say, I will say for me, and I totally get that, um, I don’t, I don’t get that, though. It’s one of those things where, like, yeah, my heart rate, uh, will, will increase, and I might speak even more quickly, but I’m not getting, like, I guess, the positive dopamine response.
[00:40:35] Merlin: You don’t feel like super engaged, like pedals down. You don’t get that feeling of like super engagement.
[00:40:40] Christina: Um, I used to, I haven’t in a long time, and so, uh,
[00:40:44] Merlin: Can I have them?
[00:40:45] Christina: bit more.
[00:40:46] Merlin: Could I have all of them, please?
[00:40:47] Christina: oh, totally. I, I will give them all to you. But, but, I mean, I, which honestly is to, well, that’s the interesting thing, and, and I have no shame in this. Uh, this is when we’re just sharing a mental health corner, I can also just [00:41:00] share, like, drug crimes.
[00:41:01] Christina: Um, I very frequently will, like, You know, have mine with me. And because I get 60, because I take it twice a day, um, I, if somebody who is not ADHD and who could actually like benefit, like if we’re, you know, running like on like a, you know, a big project where you’ve got to work like 20 hours straight and whatnot, I will ask people and be like, do you want to take half of one of these?
[00:41:22] Christina: You’re probably going to not want to take the full thing. Cause that’s going to totally get you fucked up. But if you
[00:41:27] Merlin: especially, especially if you don’t have ADHD.
[00:41:30] Brett: Yeah. We pulled an all nighter at CES once and I gave someone half of one of my Vyvanse and it was crazy to see the effect on them. I’ve never seen him. He was talking like you do normally.
[00:41:43] Christina: Yes. Totally. And, and, um, well, imagine me, the, the few times that I have had like that instance when like the, the Dexedrine and the Nodos fused was what I imagine it would be like if, if cocaine worked on me, because it was, it’s genuinely like one of those things out of a movie [00:42:00] where some, the person is talking so fast and is so frenetic and also was so productive.
[00:42:05] Christina: But, um, I, I don’t, uh, Um, get, um, that impact. Uh, but on this note, I guess that’s why I need to talk to my psychiatrist. Um, I did, I think the last time I really kind of felt any of that. And, and to your point, I don’t know if I’m seeking the side effect or what it is. I don’t actually care. Like I, I just want to get back on the thing where I feel like I
[00:42:26] Merlin: I don’t, I don’t want to be right. I want to be happy.
[00:42:29] Christina: Right. I mean, I,
[00:42:30] Merlin: I want you to fix this. Like, fix it, and like, I don’t need a persuasive, as Tom Wolfe would say, I don’t need a persuasive theory about what my problem is. If you’ve got some, if just, if you’re not, if you think you can just give me antibiotics, it’ll make the infection go away,
[00:42:44] Christina: No, I 1000%, but, uh, I, I used to be on a drug called Provigil or Modafinil and my
[00:42:50] Merlin: I’m on it right now. It’s what I take every morning.
[00:42:52] Christina: it’s fucking great, uh, but I used to take that and the dexedrine at the same time and it was fantastic. And the only reason I stopped that, um, [00:43:00] uh, dual treatment was because of the price at the time of Provigil and my insurance company wouldn’t cover it.
[00:43:05] Christina: But,
[00:43:06] Merlin: I, I used to buy it on the, like, the gray market.
[00:43:09] Christina: yeah.
[00:43:09] Jeff: Mm hmm.
[00:43:10] Christina: know, we talked about that. Yeah,
[00:43:11] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:43:12] Brett: by Amen,
[00:43:12] Merlin: you could pick that up as, as, as Ephedrine got outlawed, like in different states. And it’s such a bummer, like that. And when I was, I’ll tell you about Grandpa Merlin going to tell you a story. 1987, you could go into the Shell station and get, I want to say 25 or 50 Ephedrine for like 2.
[00:43:29] Merlin: 99, 3. 99. And then I have, I still have a Google Sheets document tracking the price of it over time. But like, it’s, It’s um, I’m sorry, go ahead, I’m interrupting.
[00:43:40] Christina: no, no, no, you’re, no, you’re good. You’re good. Um, but my, my husband recently started taking, um, uh, provisional midopinol or whatever. And we found out that with good Rx and also our insurance, it’s actually covered pretty well. And so I, um, I’m going to talk to my psychiatrist and be like, okay, look, you’re probably not going to want to have me take as much dexedrine as I take [00:44:00] and as much provisional as I was taking.
[00:44:02] Christina: Cause that would be way too much, but maybe I could try
[00:44:04] Merlin: of those for different, uh, aspects?
[00:44:07] Christina: Yeah, I
[00:44:09] Merlin: Both of them at once, that’s interesting.
[00:44:11] Christina: I was. Uh, it worked real well. Um, uh, because, um, I think, interestingly, I think what the dextrine helps with me more for, it’s not even so much the ADHD, I think it does help my anxiety a little bit. Uh, which is counter to
[00:44:25] Merlin: it’s very paradoxical, very difficult to explain to somebody.
[00:44:27] Christina: Yes, well, well, but it’s even difficult to explain to doctors who are not well versed in it, as I know when I have to tell any general practitioner, any general practitioner who doesn’t know me, they’re like, Oh, well, you know, I think that this is your problem. You’re on this and this.
[00:44:40] Merlin: First thing we need to do is get you off all these drugs and get
[00:44:43] Jeff: Mm hmm. Mm
[00:44:44] Christina: and, and I’m, I’m,
[00:44:45] Merlin: Yeah, I’ll just hit pause on my life and like, I just won’t be a person for a while while you, you go and you and house go and just look at some posters of bodies.
[00:44:54] Christina: Which I did six months, which, which was the last six months of 2023 for me, and was pretty fucking horrific having to go off [00:45:00] of one antidepressant, start another, that one didn’t work, and then go off of that one.
[00:45:04] Merlin: Well, you poor thing. That
[00:45:06] Christina: Like, like, like, zero stars, would not recommend, do not encourage, but my point being like, but Like the, the Dexedrine does work and so I, I’ve been very, like I, I oftentimes don’t want to argue with the doctors because I’ve had bad experiences when I do, but one area where I will is when they’re like, Oh, well, your Dexedrine, that might be a problem.
[00:45:23] Christina: We like, um. Go fuck yourself. I’ve been on it since I was 15. Uh, I guarantee you that my heart rate and my, you know, speech pattern and everything else that you are, you know, associating with the speed I’m on would be identical. I mean, the heart rate might be a little bit slower, but only just. And I know this because I’ve tested that.
[00:45:43] Brett: worried about your heart rate way before you started dexedrine, right?
[00:45:47] Christina: Yeah,
[00:45:48] Brett: Yeah.
[00:45:49] Christina: like,
[00:45:49] Jeff: general practitioners, it’s like, you know what, just because you read an abstract of a recent study does not make you
[00:45:56] Christina: well, not only that, but a lot of times they will be like, Oh, I think the reason you have anxiety is [00:46:00] because of this drug. And I’m like, no, actually, this has helped with the anxiety. In fact, that was one of the reasons initially, because I was a teenage girl in the 90s. Um, it was rare to get an ADHD diagnosis, and I got one, but the doctor didn’t even think that I was ADHD.
[00:46:16] Christina: It’s just, we were like, we think that this might help with the depression and the anxiety, um, but I can’t get you a prescription for this for an off label purpose, so I will give you an ADHD diagnosis. Now, it turned out I am ADHD, but again, the 90s, teenage girl, that’s not something that you would get diagnosed with.
[00:46:35] Christina: Um, uh,
[00:46:36] Brett: girls don’t have ADHD. Only boys are
[00:46:38] Christina: even now it’s hard, but like, well, and, and thank God,
[00:46:41] Merlin: don’t seem to be a behavioral problem for me yet. So you’re a girl. ADHD.
[00:46:46] Christina: Right. Well, and, and, and to be honest, I, it was a weird, it was a weird switch where I went from having no ADHD symptoms to having ADHD symptoms and it was seemingly almost overnight and it, that was
[00:46:59] Merlin: were you, were you [00:47:00] expressing out of curiosity? I, I, this is something, forgive me, I’ve talked about so much lately because I, but like the um, uh, when I was younger, which is a long time ago, but like before we, when it was just ADD, like in the, in the 90s, the, the, the primary thing that I think folks were aware of Was the H.
[00:47:18] Merlin: At least in what I was aware of, it was the whole like, your kid needs to sit down in class. You need to get them on Ritalin, or like, you need to go to a special school. And like, I think that is the beginning of. I don’t want to talk broadly, but like there’s such a lack of understanding about what is happening and stuff that seems extremely paradoxical to people is really not that paradoxical.
[00:47:41] Merlin: It’s not that difficult to understand if you understand that there’s these pipes and wires in your brain and you look at it this one way because your pipes and wires work this way and then mine work in this other way. It doesn’t mean we have like different species brains. But like the very, the very first time I’ve, this is a, this is a, a [00:48:00] 42nd story.
[00:48:00] Merlin: My friend Leslie Harpo, RIP, my friend, um, one day she, she said to me, this is a twice told tale, but it’s, I think important circa, I was 43 folder stay. So circa 2004 or five, she goes like, oh, you know, you got a DHD. And I’m like, I think Ivory doctor says I should just drink water and take walks. And she, she gave me two Adderall and she said, take one of these.
[00:48:22] Merlin: And see what happened. Pretty much that was it. Like, you know, she’s, she’s a nut. She was the best. But anyway, the next day I did take one and I wrote three to 5, 000 words and I didn’t run around. I did not have the H. The H that I have is in my head. The H is not in my legs. The H is in my head. But. And she said, well, then you’ve absolutely got ADHD, said
[00:48:42] Christina: Mm hmm.
[00:48:43] Merlin: Harpold, because if you’d taken that and went to go out and like, I don’t know, dance to DJ Shadow, that would mean that like, you’re normal. The fact that that made you
[00:48:54] Christina: More focused in.
[00:48:56] Merlin: I had energy, but boy, the focus, that’s the thing people [00:49:00] miss
[00:49:00] Christina: That, that, well,
[00:49:01] Merlin: not that I can’t concentrate, I want to be able to choose what I concentrate
[00:49:04] Christina: Right. You want to be able to actually be able to do what you need to do, um, and be able to do it in, like, an
[00:49:09] Merlin: Which is very paradoxical to
[00:49:11] Christina: It is very paradoxical. And, and so, and look, to be clear, I am ADHD. Um. My question, and I’ve talked about this before and I don’t want to go too long, is there was a switch, uh, when I, I, I was, uh, diagnosed with depression when I was 14, although I diagnosed myself when I was 9, and I probably had symptoms going back as early as 6.
[00:49:31] Christina: Um, it, it, but, like, so, you know, for me, um, it is not informed by, like, for a lot of people, things have been informed by traumas and, and other things in your life. For me, not to say those things haven’t later on impacted things, but, There was a biochemical thing with my brain that I’m aware of going back to six years old.
[00:49:48] Christina: I can, I can recall when, you know, memories and things like that. And I, I diagnosed myself with depression when I was nine years old, uh, because of a TV commercial of all things. Like I was like, Oh yeah, I have all that. That’s completely me. [00:50:00] Um,
[00:50:00] Merlin: it for Burger King? What was it for? Do you
[00:50:02] Christina: uh, it was, it was, I think, I think it was for a mental health center actually.
[00:50:06] Christina: And they were like, kind of going through like
[00:50:07] Merlin: Called something like Longview or something.
[00:50:09] Christina: you know, kind of, yeah, exactly. It
[00:50:12] Merlin: We have horses. Girls can come here with their
[00:50:15] Jeff: Look, everyone wears the same outfit.
[00:50:16] Merlin: Look at that. The laundry’s easy.
[00:50:19] Christina: It was for a center called Charter that I don’t, Charter Peachford, which I don’t even know if that exists anymore, but, um, but I was, uh, depressed, and then I tried these antidepressants, and again, this was hard because I’m 14 and a girl, uh, which was rare, and at the time we didn’t have a lot of adolescent, uh, SSRI studies, and then beyond that, My bone age and my body weight were so low, they literally had no data on like, what does a person who weighs 67 pounds, what does an SSRI do to them and how do you dose that?
[00:50:50] Christina: Like they literally didn’t know. Um, so I went through a lot of shit with that, but one of the side effects was after I went on Paxil, [00:51:00] Paxil Prozac, I think it was Paxil, was uh, basically I became classic ADHD and I’d
[00:51:07] Merlin: Really? You didn’t get numb? You got That’s so interesting. Doesn’t that make a lot of people feel numb?
[00:51:12] Christina: yeah, some of it, well, I did get numb actually. But in addition to that, and it could have been a coincidental thing with hormones, brain clusters, whatnot, I have no idea.
[00:51:20] Christina: But then I also, I went from being a very diligent focused, like studious type A OCD to the max person to one. To not being able to focus on anything, not being able to concentrate, not being able to force myself to, to study, to like every aspect of myself completely switched. And, and it appeared as, and you know, was ADHD.
[00:51:42] Christina: And so I got a diagnosis for that. Um, and, and definitely the, the dexedrine helped. Uh, years later, I, Added Provigil to the mix and that was a great combo because again, I have some, um, uh, there were some other things that were helpful, like anxiety and depression. The two of them worked well together. [00:52:00] I don’t know, you know, this might just be me like grasping at straws and being like, Oh, go back to this thing that worked, you know, 18 years ago.
[00:52:08] Christina: Um, and, and that you had to give up a
[00:52:10] Merlin: I always search for my keys here because the light’s good.
[00:52:13] Christina: Yeah, uh, you know, like, right, like, like, like, go back to this thing that, that worked, that you had to go off of for, you know, medical, um, uh, billing reasons and, and not anything else, and see if that will, will fix things, and I don’t know if it will or won’t, but I do need to, and he might even say at this point, uh, he’s like, when I prescribed you to do both of those at the same time back then, that was fine, but now there’s no way that, you know, the world will
[00:52:38] Merlin: consolation, at least in my experience, in the time that I’ve sought help for this from somebody who’s actually willing to help me, um, and that’s, those are both important, uh, I, I mean, things kind of have, in terms of like a little bit of the understanding’s gotten better and some of the drugs have gotten better, it just feels like they’re, they’re still not good, but like the tools have gotten a little less blunt.
[00:52:58] Christina: Oh, no, that’s true for sure. And, [00:53:00] and I, I, I’m looking at seeing the same psychiatrist that I saw who prescribed me those things to begin with. So, um, I
[00:53:05] Merlin: sorry you’re having a bad week. That sucks.
[00:53:08] Christina: uh, so yeah, so, so I need, I need to find out, like, I need to talk to him about getting my ADHD back in control. And that was too long.
[00:53:15] Christina: Anyway, I’m, I’m done. Right.
[00:53:18] Merlin: had to go off Vyvanse because I have high blood pressure. I’m ready to throw it to you, Jeff. I just want to say that I would be back. Vyvanse, and Vyvanse, it’s, nothing was ever as good as the one before in terms of effects. I mean, Adderall is a pretty high bar. And I thought, like, uh, Focalin, you know, the first one they tried was, I think, Ritalin.
[00:53:37] Merlin: And because my, you know, as much as he is a libertarian nut, like we did start off and ramp up, especially with Lomical. And ramp up, ramp down, buddy. Um, but, but like trying just little bits and then you’d have like a, what seems like an effective dose. And we tried different things and he’s, I love the fact that he’s open to trying different things, but like, you know, honestly, Vyvanse was not as good as, you know, [00:54:00] Focalin.
[00:54:01] Merlin: Focalin was not as good as Adderall. And the whole reason I’m on Modafinil is like, he feels like that is, it’s not in the sweet spot, but it’s in the less sour spot title.
[00:54:13] Christina: Well, and.
[00:54:14] Merlin: for like, you will get some of the effects you need out of this without increasing your heart
[00:54:20] Christina: Well, I was gonna say,
[00:54:21] Merlin: blood pressure, which I
[00:54:22] Christina: I was gonna say, that’s why my husband was, was taken off of his, he’d been on Vyvanse or Dexedrine or whatever, and, and, and Dexedrine, Vyvanse, for people who don’t know, actually is Dexedrine with a couple of molecules difference, and then, uh, which
[00:54:34] Brett: yeah,
[00:54:35] Merlin: I didn’t know
[00:54:35] Christina: Yeah, they
[00:54:36] Jeff: can’t snort it.
[00:54:38] Christina: that was gonna, I was gonna say, no, I, I know, uh, the, the main change they made is so you couldn’t snort it, but you can still abuse it, you put it in water, it’s fine, um, and, uh, but the bigger thing, honestly, uh, the snorting thing was the, the cover for the real reason they changed it, it was to extend the patent life, uh, it,
[00:54:55] Merlin: Oh yeah, classic. Like those, all those allergy medicines
[00:54:58] Christina: Well, and, and, and speaking of like, [00:55:00] uh,
[00:55:00] Merlin: get a different mechanism. Yeah,
[00:55:02] Christina: there, there’s a, a, a, a very similar drug, uh, from ProVigil called NuVigil. It is not as effective. It is not as good. I’ve had negative
[00:55:09] Brett: A A A Monafidil, as it’s known. Uh, generically, yes.
[00:55:14] Christina: Yeah, but it’s called NuVigil. And again, that was done because the, um, patent on ProVigil was coming up and they were like, oh shit, we, we, we got to extend this because this modafinil is incredibly expensive.
[00:55:25] Christina: Um, even off, um, a prescription. Uh, it’s incredibly expensive, but yeah.
[00:55:32] Brett: A Monafidil is so much easier to find on the black market than actual Monafidil. Uh, like A Monafidil, you can buy black market just about anywhere.
[00:55:42] Christina: And,
[00:55:42] Merlin: sounds like somebody who runs them in militia to me. Eamon, have you, God, you know, hear what they did to Eamon? What they did to Eamon Naffadil? Don’t
[00:55:51] Jeff: not his father. Exactly.
[00:55:54] Merlin: call me Mr. Daffin, he’ll call me Eamon.
[00:55:56] Christina: yeah, but anyway, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see. I don’t know. I, I need to find something else, but [00:56:00] that’s, yeah. Um, uh, but yeah,
[00:56:02] Merlin: But like, you know, one thing a lot of this comes back to is like, a thing I, I, uh, people always talk about, I hope my kid gets into a good school. And I’m like, well, I hope my kid gets the good teacher. Like, cause if you go to the good school and don’t get the good teacher, it’s no
[00:56:14] Christina: Oh, that was my, that was my first high school, uh, which was incidentally when my brain switched and I went
[00:56:19] Merlin: Oh, there you
[00:56:20] Christina: A when I, oh, and it’s,
[00:56:21] Merlin: the right doctor really makes a difference and not just somebody who will like kiss your ass but like somebody who is curious and sympathetic in a way that a lot of GPs aren’t.
[00:56:32] Christina: Yeah, no, and, and no, but my, my high school was awful. Like my teenagehood, part of what sucked so badly was that I went to this great school that had fucking terrible teachers and it turned out it wasn’t really that great of a school because it was so high achieving, all the kids were competitive and in a way that was toxic and the parents were competitive and toxic and the teachers were
[00:56:51] Merlin: What’s becomes known as a good school, the end is already beginning because now it’s become the sweaty place where sweaty parents want their kids to
[00:56:58] Christina: Well, it, it, it was just, it, it, and it was, [00:57:00] you know, everybody was miserable, and then the teachers were completely un understanding, uh, again, late 90s mental health stuff, they’re not gonna be there for that. Now, we, I would absolutely sue them, um, for, uh, for, for how they treated me and what they did. Oh, without a doubt, oh, 100%.
[00:57:15] Christina: Um, and then I also was trying to find the right psychiatrist, which I think I went through six or seven to find somebody. Again, hard to find treatment. Especially late 90s when you’re a teenage girl for certain things because they’re not taking mental health seriously. Um,
[00:57:30] Merlin: Yeah, talk to anybody today about trying to find a therapist.
[00:57:33] Christina: oh, I mean, it’s awful. It’s,
[00:57:34] Merlin: not just COVID. My wife works at UC, which is a medical school, UC San Francisco. And like, there’s just been this diaspora of doctors in general. There’s all this stuff you’ve heard about. A lot of doctors are retiring, a lot of everybody’s retiring.
[00:57:44] Merlin: But also, as you’ve probably heard, fewer people are becoming internist GPs. Or a term I hate and just learned last month is a hospitalist. Like fewer people are doing that because it’s not just where the money is, but it’s partly where the money is to be a specialist. And like, [00:58:00] it’s just not attracting the same amount of like, very engaged people who want to be a, a, a, a family physician like my mother before me kind of thing.
[00:58:08] Christina: right. No, everybody wants to be a dermatologist. Um, you know, or, or, or, or something when they want to make the money, which get it. But it, yeah, it weakens the pool. Um, yeah, when my psychiatrist,
[00:58:21] Merlin: how can I make your problem about your skin? Did you know the skin’s the largest organ? Instead of that dexedrine, let’s try this soothing cream I recommend. You know, if you, when you put your makeup on, use a less strong finger.
[00:58:36] Jeff: Oh,
[00:58:37] Merlin: rub it, don’t rub it, use a less strong finger, and always go up.
[00:58:40] Merlin: Here, wait, let me get that.
[00:58:41] Jeff: Always go up.
[00:58:47]
[00:58:47] Back to the Corner[00:58:47] Sponsor: Notion
[00:58:47] Merlin: [00:59:00] [01:00:00] Hey Jeff, how’s your corner?
[01:00:44] Brett: We’ve done
[01:00:44] Jeff: like we could,
[01:00:45] Brett: an hour.
[01:00:46] Jeff: I feel like we could leverage the fuck out of these discussions with SEO, um, at this point. And I do feel like we’re leaving sponsor money on
[01:00:54] Merlin: Best, best, best Christina depression. Sexy Christina depression. Um,[01:01:00]
[01:01:00] Christina: I mean, look, we could get the drug companies, honestly, if you want to sponsor us, like, I’ll read your ad read. I’m not going to actually tell
[01:01:05] Merlin: oh, me too.
[01:01:06] Christina: but I will, I
[01:01:07] Jeff: I feel like.
[01:01:07] Merlin: I won’t use your VPN, but I will talk about your opioid.
[01:01:10] Jeff: The most uncontroversial drug we talk about is Lamictal, and I feel like it comes up with guests, with us, like, Yeah, so like, that’s where we start. That’s where we start, right? The least controversial. Um, I, so, I am in a situation, I have a, well, first of all, I don’t know if people can hear dishes, but a friend of the show might.
[01:01:31] Jeff: My youngest teenager is emptying the dishwasher. To me, that’s like, uh, he’s 15 and
[01:01:35] Merlin: Oh, I have a teenager who’s
[01:01:37] Jeff: 18 soon. Oh man. It’s a lovely, they’re all good ages in a way I think, but I love that age. Um, but unloading the dishwasher, I’m never going to stop that. It’s music to my ears.
[01:01:48] Merlin: babies. Those
[01:01:49] Jeff: Stupid babies, assholes, monsters, everything.
[01:01:52] Jeff: So I have my, my oldest is, um, is going to be leaving for college. Uh, he’s a senior now. And, [01:02:00] uh, and he, man, he, my birthday was last week and he, in the card, he said, I can’t believe that soon I’m not going to be seeing you every day. And I was like,
[01:02:11] Christina: you.
[01:02:12] Jeff: and I’ve already, the, the struggle for me since the summer, because Kids leaving, all of a sudden you start noticing the things it’s the last time, you know, and, and I’ve been really struggling and mostly succeeding all year and like, don’t grieve now, right?
[01:02:25] Jeff: Like feel it, like feel feelings and be glad that you have this
[01:02:29] Merlin: It’s totally sensible, but it’s much more challenging. And for me, more emotionally, it sounds, nobody cares about parents stuff, whatever, but like, you know, I actually like this person and like, if I didn’t like this person, it might be easier. And I’d be like, Oh, finally I can go to Europe.
[01:02:45] Jeff: do not relate
[01:02:46] Merlin: I treasure, there’s a reason I was almost
[01:02:48] Christina: said that exact thing
[01:02:49] Jeff: He’s like a great roommate and a friend. Yeah.
[01:02:52] Christina: you, you really love your kids and have this great relationship and
[01:02:54] Merlin: was almost late today. Cause I wanted to watch house with my, with my son.
[01:02:58] Jeff: I love that. I
[01:02:59] Brett: parents, my [01:03:00] parents were honestly glad when, like, took it rid of me and I was glad to
[01:03:04] Merlin: you should be too
[01:03:05] Brett: yeah,
[01:03:06] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
[01:03:07] Merlin: fine. Fine.
[01:03:08] Christina: I, I was, I was ready to leave, but now it’s one of those things where like my mom gets very, very upset, like whenever I leave, you know, like it’s one of those things, but, but at the time I was like,
[01:03:18] Merlin: I think, I’ll bet you, like, like, like Jeff and me and a lot of other people, like, every Christmas morning I think is this the last one.
[01:03:24] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah,
[01:03:25] Merlin: like, maybe because I’m dead, but also just because of, you know, who knows what comes along. Be careful crossing the street. And that kind of stuff, even if you’re not an obsessive thinker about that stuff so much, which I think I’m not, like, it’s still kind of difficult to put it out of your mind, but I think you’re on
[01:03:39] Jeff: not catastrophizing to have those moments, right?
[01:03:42] Merlin: think it’s not, but you’re also on the right track though with the, I think the, like, let’s, I don’t know, this is getting into way deeper stuff. You guys should have me on every week. Um, but, like, I’m sure your listeners would love that. But, like, it is also about being in that moment and,
[01:03:55] Jeff: That’s exactly it. You’re not in the moment.
[01:03:57] Merlin: that particular show without having to feel like [01:04:00] this, this negative feeling I have is something that will be with me for the rest.
[01:04:03] Merlin: It’s like, that’s, it’s okay. Bittersweet is an adjective for a reason.
[01:04:07] Jeff: Yeah, melancholy is usually actually a beautiful thing. I, so what I’ve been, and what I’ve been doing with this is I, I’ve resurrected years ago, I made a timeline, uh, in Airtable, which I, which I love. I go between text file CSVs and Airtable all the time. Um, and, and what I wanted, cause I had a very sort of like meandering, chaotic youth, like where I, And I had moved like 36 times and my mom and I were just, I don’t know if she was in witness protection to this day.
[01:04:34] Jeff: I wonder that we’re just like moving around all over the place. And, and I went to like three elementary schools and like everything just, it’s hard to hold. Right. And so I was like, you know what I want? I want to, I want a timeline. And on that timeline, I want A few different things. I want every address I ever lived in and who I lived with there.
[01:04:50] Jeff: Like, was it my mom’s sister? Was it a boyfriend? Like whatever,
[01:04:53] Merlin: you ever throw your kid out, I’m moving in with you because I have, I have done this.
[01:04:59] Jeff: [01:05:00] Well, yeah. And like, what I think is beautiful about it, part of why it’s helpful to me now. So when I made it actually, it was very calming. It was like a little warm hugs. It was like, Oh, look, I see, I’m not looking to see a straight line through my life, but I see the, I see the path and the winding in a way
[01:05:14] Merlin: When you see the patterns, you
[01:05:15] Jeff: knocking around in my
[01:05:16] Merlin: something in an audio app and going, Oh, this happened for a long time. This happened for a little time. Well, of course, wasn’t that obvious? No. But then also you go like, well, to me, A, that feels as fresh as yesterday. Weirdly, this super old one, it’s like my grandmother with Alzheimer’s would remember stuff from 1917, but not.
[01:05:32] Merlin: Like, what just happened? But like, it’s also that, like, the sequence of those events, and then like, oh, that was a, I lived in that place, that place must have had a big impact on me because I lived there a lot less time than I thought. Oh, and wasn’t there a girl across the street named Melissa I’m suddenly remembering?
[01:05:45] Jeff: It’s like, wow, this is
[01:05:46] Merlin: It lets you, it gives you permission to remember your life.
[01:05:49] Jeff: up, yeah, exactly, exactly. And, and, and the thing that’s helpful about it now, there’s two things about it that I’m noticing now. One is the thing that’s helpful now is that it reminds me of how much transition, [01:06:00] has been in my life and how much lots of that transition has led to really just beautiful things and who I am, even if it wasn’t good and how like necessary it is in our lives.
[01:06:09] Jeff: I know that for him, like I’m excited for him. I know, I know what it means. Just like get out, start your life. Right. Um, but I need to, I need to find, I’m loving finding ways to just put this on the timeline and realize that like, You know, should everyone survive? Which you never know, right? Like, but I’m not really that hung up on that.
[01:06:27] Jeff: Like that timeline is
[01:06:28] Merlin: that, that is extra, I mean, that sounds
[01:06:29] Jeff: really cool shit in it,
[01:06:31] Merlin: That’s extra incentive though, to remember that this is all you have. Like, I think I like to say to my friend, Alex, is however you, anybody in the world feels about me, I’m all I’ve got, I’m very disinclined to change who I am because somebody else doesn’t like it, not because I’m obdurate, but because like, well, there’s no bottom to that.
[01:06:48] Merlin: But like it also means like learning to become, mindfulness is such an overused word and it’s become synonymous with piles of rocks and meditating while a bell plays and all that kind of stuff. But mindfulness to me is, is, is less [01:07:00] about quote being Zen and much more about just catching yourself or finding yourself in situations and going, well then how do I feel about how I feel?
[01:07:08] Merlin: And, and that’s such an important part of integration. It sounds like therapy, but like, it’s such an important part. And like, it’s okay to be sad about it, or it’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to be all of those things. And like, feelings are like roaches. You can only chase them out of the room for a little while.
[01:07:23] Merlin: And like, why, why not own that?
[01:07:26] Jeff: Yeah. And you just made me think of something that kind of changed how I think about feelings and where they can exist. So I did, uh, I spent two days with a forensic anthropologist years ago to do a profile. I was a journalist for like 20 years and then left because I hate how journalism is done overall.
[01:07:41] Jeff: But I, um, I spent two days with this guy and basically he, he pioneered how you, um, exhume mass graves, um, in, you know, places that had dictatorships, whatever. And he has this picture that he showed me that was like He was part of a team that was exhuming a mass grave in Guatemala and, and around the rim [01:08:00] of the hole are the relatives and there’s children there and everything else, right?
[01:08:03] Jeff: And, um, and they’ve been sitting there for a while because they’re just waiting to see who comes up basically, right? And, but if you look at this picture, some of them are talking and laughing. There’s a kid eating an ice cream cone. Like there’s all this different stuff. And I was like, what, what is that?
[01:08:17] Jeff: What am I looking at? And he said, here’s the incredible thing about doing this work is that it’s the only. context in which I feel like I’ve experienced every human emotion being available. Uh, because it’s just like, you go to the very worst and then people are naturally going to get to a point where they’re like, I want a fucking ice cream cone.
[01:08:35] Jeff: Or like, remember this story, I’m laughing, right? Like, um, I think that’s really, it’s, it’s an intense way
[01:08:43] Merlin: mean, like on the emotional palette, this is really a lame. analogy, but like, we don’t get to, we don’t get to pick what our own emotional palette is, unless we are a little bit deranged. But like, something I feel like I want to say this in a kind way that’s useful, but like, [01:09:00] you also can’t choose other people’s emotional palette.
[01:09:03] Merlin: You can’t tell them how to feel, you can’t tell them what’s appropriate, and for the love of God, please stop telling people how to grieve. Stop telling people they’re grieving wrong. Stop telling people they’re being depressed wrong. Stop telling somebody who’s sad that they’re actually happy, because now you’re also basically just telling them they’re sad and they’re a liar.
[01:09:19] Merlin: And that’s not going to be, that’s not helpful. It seems helpful. Let’s go back to 45 minutes ago or whatever it was. That feels like something your parents say to you, Oh no, you’re pretty. You’re really pretty, and if they don’t like you, they’re not your real friends, and like, well, I’m not pretty, and I know they’re not my real friends, and that’s the problem, and also you saying this makes me feel like you think I’m four,
[01:09:37] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, okay. So then what’s the transition
[01:09:42] Merlin: Were the bodies, were the bodies, like, recently buried, it sounds like?
[01:09:46] Jeff: They had been, no, probably,
[01:09:49] Merlin: 40s.
[01:09:50] Jeff: no, they were probably at the time 10 years old.
[01:09:53] Merlin: in like Rwanda or something?
[01:09:55] Jeff: was in Guatemala. So like they’re, the people are looking for clothing they recognized or, you know, [01:10:00] that kind of stuff. I mean, it’s really, it’s awful. Right. And I don’t mean to like hit that hard.
[01:10:04] Merlin: I watched, uh, because I watch plane crash videos. Um,
[01:10:08] Jeff: Oh, he also pioneered how you actually do, uh, body identification in plane crashes. This guy was. We called the thing The
[01:10:16] Merlin: when you look at that debris field, like it is rough. It isn’t just like, Oh, here’s this pair of baby shoes and stuff like that. It’s just the, the, the, anyway, sorry. It’s just, I’m
[01:10:25] Jeff: Yeah, no, no. I mean, well, okay.
[01:10:27] Merlin: that. How long ago was that? How long ago?
[01:10:29] Jeff: I
[01:10:29] Merlin: You had that experience? Uh,
[01:10:31] Jeff: oh yeah, in the 2000s. That was a whole time where I was either in a war zone or talking to people who are doing the terrible things
[01:10:38] Merlin: I’m from Florida, so I can relate.
[01:10:39] Jeff: Yeah. You could see, you could see that. So here’s, okay. So here’s what I think is a transition to, I mean, hell, maybe custom GPT becomes the gratitude for like, but so like one of the things in doing that.
[01:10:50] Jeff: That timeline that I find delightful is the shit that all of a sudden you want to put in, like, I want to put in, uh, when, when Jaws 3D played on [01:11:00] television and you got 3D glasses in the newspaper,
[01:11:02] Merlin: God. You are in my caress,
[01:11:04] Jeff: Like, I want to
[01:11:04] Merlin: God. You’re
[01:11:05] Jeff: I want to put in the actual scope of the Dean Martin roast series, right?
[01:11:09] Jeff: Like, it is like, I want to know where all these things
[01:11:12] Merlin: But could it also be stuff like, this is when that one Arby’s closed, or this is when our neighbor got a different car? And like, to anybody else, that sounds nuts, but like, me, I was remembering that our next door neighbor in 1976 had a 65 Mustang that I really liked. I think it’s one reason I really like, you know, old Mustangs.
[01:11:29] Merlin: And like, but there’s just all of this, like, impressionistic stuff, and I don’t know how to say it, it doesn’t sound corny, because you can’t grok this until you do it. And I’m right here sitting right now in my chat GPT section, where like there’s so much stuff where like I have unintentionally given myself permission, maybe to remember things, but also just to think things that I didn’t know were up there.
[01:11:51] Merlin: And you don’t have, it’s therapy’s great, talking to friends, it’s great, all that kind of stuff. But there are paths you can take on your own guys. Sorry, this is what writing is. [01:12:00] Writing is not about publishing. Writing, writing is about, writing is about having the temerity to believe that the things that are in your head are worth looking at and thinking about, you know, in a way you could
[01:12:08] Christina: about and exploring, yeah, no, I mean, for me, the reason that I, I’m such a proponent of therapy isn’t so much from the realizations or the therapy itself, but because that’s given me permission to think when I’m not in therapy, to do that sort of introspection, you know, whether it’s through journaling or through other things.
[01:12:25] Merlin: wholesome. So weird to other people, probably. I hate to sound so touchy about this, but again, Holden Caulfield. But like, that’s, that is such a gift to give to yourself.
[01:12:33] Christina: Yeah. But, but, but sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, just wanted to comment on that because yeah, I think you’re exactly right. Like that’s one of those things where it seems. Like, that’s what, like, it’s important to be able to have these, these thoughts and have these memories until you go through the process.
[01:12:45] Christina: I don’t think it’s cheesy. I think that that’s, that’s what makes us human. And that’s what, like, makes art.
[01:12:51] Jeff: And also, amazingly, like when you let things tumble out in that way, whether you’re writing or it’s making a timeline or whatever, it can make me feel [01:13:00] more present. Like I said, last year I hit this point and I, and I’m mostly there still where it’s like, all of a sudden I felt. everything that I had lived.
[01:13:08] Jeff: I just felt it, but I felt it as I am now and, and not as it knocked about in my head. And the thing about making a timeline, like it’s almost like the GTD thing of like, get everything down. Right. It’s actually wonderful. There are stupid
[01:13:22] Merlin: Especially, especially if I could say, especially if you go into it saying to yourself, this is not about anything except capture. Like I don’t have to do anything about any of this. It sounds nuts, but you’ll,
[01:13:29] Jeff: have to do anything about any of
[01:13:31] Merlin: which is, it’s not my, I need to do a mental sweep, or in this case, maybe an emotional sweep.
[01:13:34] Merlin: Alright? And so like, that’s what I’m gonna do to get all this down and I’ll make something out of it later. But the more you do a mental sweep about your work, the more you realize you need to do about your work and the more about your work and more about your life. If you do that about your emotions and your family, you’re gonna have some really interesting things come up.
[01:13:50] Merlin: that just have not been top of mind.
[01:13:53] Generative AI and other excitements
[01:13:53] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s wonderful. Okay. So let’s, let’s talk about, I mean, you’ve talked a little bit [01:14:00] about it. Yeah. If you’re keeping these, this kind of data, or if you tend to keep this kind of data, it’s just one thing you could plug into a custom GPT and Merlin, I want you, if you don’t mind, I’ve been building them for my own personal and work reasons,
[01:14:12] Merlin: Are you, are you using the OpenAI version of that?
[01:14:15] Jeff: Yes. And I would love to hear you talk about how, how you use it and how you think about it.
[01:14:21] Merlin: your, your listeners are familiar with what a GPT is. We don’t need to explain that, right?
[01:14:26] Christina: I think, I think it was most people know at this point. Yeah.
[01:14:28] Merlin: I’m sorry. I cut you off, Jeff.
[01:14:30] Jeff: no, that’s fine. I mean, mostly I want to, and we have the freedom here to not get into the kind of tedious, uninformed ethical issues. And there are ethical issues, right? But like, we don’t have to talk about that. Let’s just talk about what we’re doing with
[01:14:43] Merlin: I heard, I heard OpenAI kidnapped a kid once.
[01:14:46] Jeff: yeah. Just assume we’re all adults here and we’re going into it with open
[01:14:49] Merlin: So my only little bit of prelude on this is to say that I’ve been pretty interested in this stuff since that, whoever the YouTuber is, that English guy who just retired, he did a YouTube. Yeah, that’d be him. He did a [01:15:00] YouTube, probably back la well, year
[01:15:02] Christina: It was last year.
[01:15:03] Merlin: now at this point. You’re so good.
[01:15:05] Merlin: My god, you’re encyclopedic.
[01:15:06] Jeff: Yeah. No, it’s
[01:15:07] Brett: font.
[01:15:08] Merlin: all of your Dexedrine? I’ll give you an address. Um,
[01:15:12] Jeff: need a spreadsheet.
[01:15:15] Merlin: he had talked about just this thing that, that at the it just blew my mind, because I’ve thought I’m getting interested in things like this. I mean, when I had a Quadra 800, I would, I would try to make it work by my talking to it.
[01:15:26] Merlin: And of course it didn’t really work. And like, I, I’ve been vaguely interested. I was thinking last night as I was, I was posting some stuff last night about this and thinking about how the hours I spent in 1988, like making a moose talk on my Mac for, through talking moose and like all this stuff where like, you know, sound, this is an app that’ll play sounds from David Letterman and like those kinds of things.
[01:15:46] Merlin: And like, wow, I mean, like where, what a different place we are at now. Um. All I want to say in terms of prelude to this is, I’m really glad folks know what that is and we want to explain it or be weird about it. Um, but you know, part of my journey with Chet GPT and OpenAI stuff in [01:16:00] particular is this constant yearning for more memory in the sense of Like, I want it to remember more about what I say.
[01:16:07] Merlin: I want it to remember more about what I, what I, what I tell it, really. And that’s been a journey. So like, threads got better at that over time. But still, you start a new thread, no more memory. Then it got custom instructions, which has been mostly real good. And then when GPTs came along, of course, for somebody like me, And this was practically made for how my brain works, unfortunately.
[01:16:28] Merlin: It’s like so difficult to explain to people why I have a Google spreadsheet that covers the heights of celebrities.
[01:16:36] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah,
[01:16:37] Merlin: I, it’s like, how do I know that Elizabeth Debicki is 6’3 Because it’s in the doc. Okay, that’s in one example. A second example, and these are trivial, but I think useful to know. I came into this with my brain wired for, Oh man, could I do something with this?
[01:16:52] Merlin: I, I, you know, and like, you think about the things we’re like, think about what life was like before Google. And then, and people, you know, and then Google came along and it was [01:17:00] real good for a real long time. I’ve read Paul’s Google Hacks book. Like I, I know about Booleans and I still use, you know, OR in all
[01:17:07] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah,
[01:17:08] Merlin: it’s increasingly less useful.
[01:17:10] Merlin: But the point is you remember what it was like when you first went, Oh, this is a blank page. You type it, it finds it. And that, that seemed like for somebody who was even on the very good AltaVista at the time, that was from another universe. All right. And I could instantly see the possibilities. Of having my own GPT.
[01:17:27] Merlin: So one would be like a jokey stuff. I thought like, it’s a joke amongst my friends that I’ve got all these spreadsheets, right? Cause it’s true. Like, um, every flashlight I’ve ever bought, I can tell you how many lumens, what it costs per lumen and what kind of battery it has. I can tell you all my 3d filaments.
[01:17:42] Merlin: I can tell you what the density is, what the color is, how much it costs, all that kind of stuff. Um, celebrities, right? That’s another celebrity playlist. One I made a few years ago. that I sent to my pal John Roderick, uh, was I made this thing called, um, I made this spreadsheet where I said, here’s the [01:18:00] people, like a bunch of important people in my family, including my, the people who live in my house, my beloved, you know, uh, late, uh, mother in law, father in law, all those things.
[01:18:10] Merlin: And for each one of those, I did the most basic thing, which is I just entered in the day that they were born. And then using just a few easy formulas, I was able to just quickly calculate like, Oh, you know, this many days in water to blah. Then I made the. Like a manual version of a pivot table, where I said how, how old, I was able to finally say stuff like, how old was Grandma Stinus on this day?
[01:18:34] Merlin: What, and so on and so forth. And I’m just going to, can I, is it okay to say something in this chat? Is that going to be weird? Like, here’s an example of like, that in action. So this is where I have gone in. So, so in that instance, I took those spreadsheets, turned it into a CSV, And I think I am doing this poorly.
[01:18:54] Merlin: I don’t know how to add an image. Um, I just took, I took the CSV. Do I just drag it in [01:19:00] here? How do I get in this window? Can I copy and paste?
[01:19:02] Jeff: anything in there.
[01:19:03] Christina: I don’t know if,
[01:19:04] Brett: never, we’ve never had an image
[01:19:06] Christina: never added an image.
[01:19:08] Merlin: sorry, that’s not going to be as fun, but like I, I entered all that in and then I put it into a GPT, a new GPT, and I explain what it is that I want to do. And so, but I’m able to do things like say, and so Grandma Steinis, that’s my beloved mother in law, my, um, my son’s grandmother, and I can say things like, what was a popular song on the charts the year that Billy turned five?
[01:19:29] Christina: That’s so
[01:19:30] Merlin: That’s weird. Why would you want that? Well, I find out that, uh, somebody that I used to know by gotcha was, uh, well, I don’t know how you say it was popular then. Featuring Kimbra, whatever that is. What was a popular song the year my late mother in law turned 30? Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin. On what date was my late mother in law the same age that my kid is now?
[01:19:49] Merlin: December 14th, 1945. If that’s not interesting to you, that’s okay. But I hope somebody out there will understand how interesting and like, [01:20:00] like sort of like we were talking about Jeff, like now that’s opening me up to this whole new world of stuff I could be doing with this, including that timeline thing.
[01:20:08] Merlin: The app I’ve wanted since the 1990s is an app that lets me, it’s this thing I’m obsessed with, which is how many years it’s been since this thing is the same amount of years since that thing. We’re able to.
[01:20:18] Jeff: I do that calculation all the
[01:20:19] Merlin: Yeah, like, like the time since synchronicity, the time since synchronicity is like the time since like the first Duke Ellington record to then.
[01:20:26] Merlin: Like, I wish there was just an easy way to do that. I, that is in my, in my grasp now. I’m not sure that would be incredibly useful, but guess what? I learned a lot from doing this and I can apply it to other things. So my interest in this started with just extending the weird stuff where I could use, I would, I feel like I would benefit from technology.
[01:20:43] Merlin: And again, I know we’re not talking about scare stuff, but so far we’re not talking anything about nuclear missiles being launched. We’re not talking about weird decision making. We’re not talking about plagiarism. And despite the people who love to yell at me on Mastodon about how it doesn’t really understand math, it’s just saying words.
[01:20:58] Merlin: And it’s like, yeah, but like the [01:21:00] rest of the internet doesn’t understand anything either. And I keep using that. So, I mean, especially when it comes to, I think I said this on Mastodon a few weeks ago was like, if you have the 20 boy account on this, and you’re not using this to make. Constant, low stakes, trivial, fun things.
[01:21:17] Merlin: The serious point is, you’re kind of missing out on something that’s probably going to be good for you to know in general, especially in the future. But also, you’re just missing out on a lot of fun. Because if it gets that date of when Mac the Knife came out, like, it’s going to be okay. Right? It’s going to be, but like, The thing is I, I like projects and I like treating life as an experiment.
[01:21:38] Merlin: I like treating things in life as an experiment. And I like those things accreting and, uh, building on themselves. One reason I love this 3D printer I’m pointing at is like the more I learn about my 3D printer, the more I’m able to do, which leads me to learn more. It’s kind of a lot like what they used to call education, which is you learn enough to know what you need to learn next.
[01:21:56] Merlin: And eventually if
[01:21:57] Christina: go down these rabbit holes of, yeah.[01:22:00]
[01:22:00] Merlin: Yeah, but it isn’t, it isn’t all just like, you know, find better porn or, or find a way to plagiarize. It’s like, again, that word, and I’m so sorry, it’s such a big word for me. The incuriosity of people not seeing how the low stakes fun you can have with this.
[01:22:17] Merlin: Well, you know what? Maybe it’s going to become better. And maybe that won’t need to, I won’t need to say the phrase low stakes, but you know, there’s just all kinds of stuff where I can just go in and, and, and say stuff that it makes sense. So that’s my prelude. My
[01:22:31] Jeff: Oh man, can I just, can I pick up on the low stakes thing? So I just this morning was listening to this week’s Political Gab Fest and Emily Bazlun was talking
[01:22:40] Merlin: love that show.
[01:22:40] Jeff: oh, it’s so good. And
[01:22:42] Merlin: I love John, John, John Dickerson mentioned me on there a couple months ago.
[01:22:45] Jeff: uh, yeah, I heard that. I remember.
[01:22:47] Merlin: the nicest, he’s the nicest man ever.
[01:22:50] Jeff: who’s both increased my vocabulary and, and,
[01:22:53] Merlin: He’s so big, you can
[01:22:54] Jeff: a love for metaphors.
[01:22:56] Jeff: Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but anyway, she was talking about a podcast, I [01:23:00] forget what it’s called, but it’s kind of examining how television series close out. It’s kinda think it’s called Stick the Landing. But she said
[01:23:06] Christina: Oh, yeah, yeah,
[01:23:06] Jeff: like, what’s lovely about it is it’s passionate and low stakes. And I was like, what a nice
[01:23:12] Merlin: Talk about, uh, uh, talk about, uh, uh, uh, a two by two table that I love,
[01:23:17] Jeff: yeah,
[01:23:18] Merlin: you know?
[01:23:19] Jeff: yeah.
[01:23:20] Merlin: That, that, that’s right in my quadrant.
[01:23:22] Jeff: For sure, for sure. Oh, that’s awesome.
[01:23:25] Merlin: There’s nothing to be lost by caring a lot about something other people don’t care about. And I wouldn’t have to say that except I feel like I do, but like, it’s so, well, I, it’s just, you know, it’s funny. Like I went to this weird liberal arts school in Florida and like the thing I often say about that school is it.
[01:23:40] Merlin: What I, what I took away from it was, yeah, a little bit of like, like, you know, learning about curve auditing and stuff, but also it, it, it, in a way that I had not been before, it, it taught me to learn how to learn. And that’s so, it’s such an ineffable thing to say, and it sounds so pretentious, which is such a bummer.
[01:23:57] Merlin: Because, because there’s so much like of this, [01:24:00] we all grew up, at least I grew up with all this, I almost, I have, I have still had the parking sticker on my guitar case from when I was going to go to electronics school, because no school would have me. And like, nothing wrong, you got to fix electronics, but like, I have a friend who got real, became a big shot at uh, NCR, like fixing cash registers.
[01:24:15] Merlin: But like, If I’m not trying to, this is not advice, but like, Oh my gosh, why aren’t we allowed to be curious? And why aren’t we allowed to follow that? And why are we supposed to feel ashamed if we do something that other people don’t immediately see as valuable? And I can certainly make the case that whether it’s FDM printing or GPTs, I know a butt ton more than a lot of people about stuff that’s not just about FDM printers.
[01:24:36] Merlin: Like, There’s a lot of stuff you pick up when you decide to be curious. Giving yourself and the people in your life permission to be curious, to be vulnerable in that way of saying, like somebody was trying to like, like dunk on me the other day and like call me on something about like a fact. And I was like, I, my response was you would be shocked how many things I am open to learning. Like, I am so not ashamed by you telling me a
[01:24:59] Christina: [01:25:00] No.
[01:25:00] Merlin: I haven’t heard. Like, what, what did you think, what did you just win?
[01:25:04] Christina: Exactly. It’s like, I, I, I, I, I love it when people tell me things I didn’t already know. What is annoying is when someone assumes that I was, I’m, you’re A, incurious and, and unwilling to try to learn things yourself or B, you know, like,
[01:25:17] Merlin: That you’re dumb, you overlooked it, like, you know, that feeling of like, that, like when you, when I, I go, it’s a BMI bonnet, but like, I’ll be like, Oh my God, you know, this Moby album is really good and people go, you know, it’s better as another Moby album. You’re like, okay, fine. Okay. Or you forgot. This is my, so I do, I do a thing on Spotify cause I love making playlists and I love music more than anything.
[01:25:36] Merlin: And I do a thing called Gentle Introductions, which is like a band that I love or a band I think more
[01:25:39] Christina: I love that. I, I, I do a similar thing, but I
[01:25:42] Merlin: Do you? And you share it with people?
[01:25:44] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Like, like, we’ll be
[01:25:46] Merlin: That’s how it started. It started out with me doing that when I did one of those for Big Star, for Alex, I did one of those for, uh, Richard and Lena Thompson, for my wife.
[01:25:54] Merlin: But here’s the thing. It’s called a Gentle Introduction, and whether that’s Cheap Trick, Old 97s, [01:26:00] Blondie, there’s seven and exactly seven songs on the list. Because that’s just a thing that I decided. So I’ll say like, and again, my one about the police, here’s the thing. You might have heard these songs, but if you think you know how you feel about the police, maybe check out this playlist, because these seven songs might help you feel something different about the police. And, and of course, invariably, they’ll understandably, people are playing with me in the space and they’ll be like, you forgot, you forgot X, you
[01:26:27] Christina: You’re like, no, but that’s not the point. It’s like,
[01:26:28] Merlin: How is Roxanne not on your list? And
[01:26:30] Christina: because it’s, this is a gentle introduction. Like,
[01:26:33] Merlin: yeah, yeah. And like, people are familiar with Roxanne, but I’ll bet a lot fewer people realize how much they could love Truth Hits Everybody.
[01:26:40] Merlin: Like, are there people out there who enjoy music like we enjoy and maybe have never heard, really heard the very good first album by The Police? I lost my virginity to Can’t Stand Losing You. I imprinted on that album. Like, but like, you know what I’m saying? And I understand why people do that. I understand again, who needs context anymore when we have keyboards, but like it’s, it’s just.
[01:26:59] Merlin: It’s, it’s [01:27:00] frustrating sometimes that there is, does feel, I hate to say like, oh, I’m so put upon, but it really does feel like people are constantly there to go like, my certainty about what I know and who I am trumps everybody’s vulnerability, interest, and curiosity. And I’m always there to crush the bunny for anybody.
[01:27:17] Merlin: I’m not just saying like, yuck on a yum. Although that’s part of it, but like, it’s just there are people who seem to think it’s like their job to set you straight on something you’re stupid about, and I don’t have the time or inclination to say, not only am I not stupid about that, you’re being a little short sighted about that, and I just, I don’t have time to hold your dick for an hour and explain why that’s the terms of service on every Apple app.
[01:27:39] Meeting Robert Duvall
[01:27:39] Jeff: Yeah. Well, and you know, the other piece of it too, right? Like there’s the curiosity piece that’s like, what do you, do you not love story? Cause I feel, I feel like that’s what this is like last night, a friend told me this amazing story. He was in an airport and, uh, he had been a host of like a HGTV show for a while.
[01:27:54] Jeff: Right. And he was in an airport and he gets a tug on his sleeve and he turns around and it’s fucking Robert Duvall. Right. And Robert [01:28:00] Duvall says to him, Hey, are you that guy on the show?
[01:28:03] Merlin: sorry, somebody who’s talent on an HGTV
[01:28:05] Jeff: No, no, like, yeah, like a host on the on the
[01:28:07] Merlin: Okay, but like somebody who’s doing an on air person.
[01:28:10] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. So like, Robert, Robert Duvall has watched the show, basically, right?
[01:28:13] Jeff: Like, and so he says, I’m right. He doesn’t say I’m Robert. He’s like, Hey, are you the guy from the from the bathroom show? He’s like, Well, yeah, I am. And then what, what
[01:28:22] Merlin: you the guy from the bathroom show?
[01:28:25] Jeff: and what came to him, and this
[01:28:26] Merlin: I would kill to hear Robert Duvall say that in an
[01:28:28] Jeff: and this is not a bit that he came up with, this is what he, he froze on. He said, Are you the guy from Days of Thunder?
[01:28:36] Jeff: And so, I love that story. T’Witchy, of course, he just kind of goes,
[01:28:40] Merlin: He’s not a wartime consigliere. I think
[01:28:42] Jeff: goes, no, he is not a wartime cons. He goes, uh, yeah, yeah. But
[01:28:45] Merlin: And by the way, I love your pictures.
[01:28:46] Jeff: Yeah. And,
[01:28:47] Merlin: know. I admire your
[01:28:48] Jeff: which is what he ends up saying to, to him. He’s like, well anyway, I love your show. And so anyway, and my friend was of course like, I mean, I think this is a perfect story, but he was horrified after he left.
[01:28:57] Jeff: He’s like, well, also you’re the, but it’s per, I told [01:29:00] him, I said, you may have even made a memory for Robert DePaul. Right. Like, who says
[01:29:03] Merlin: I did, I did a talk at Max, I did a talk at MaxFunCon, uh, which is a thing. And I, anyways, I talk about creativity and I think the title was of the talk was with all due respect to the seduction community. And it was about what I had identified as the fetishism of certain things in the world of productivity and increasingly creativity.
[01:29:22] Merlin: And I finished the talk. And this little imp ran, this is, this is a humble brag, but it’s, it’s something I think about a lot cause I really love this person’s work. It’s like this little imp, this little forest creature runs up to me and I’ve been talking about creativity and I’ve been talking about, you know, ways to realize that you have more creativity.
[01:29:40] Merlin: Like I say now, like you, you, you write more than you realize, like you, you write so much and you don’t know it and you think that that’s, but like this little forest creature runs up to me and goes, I used to do morning pages from that book, The Artist’s Way, and the person ran away. And it was Maria Bamford. Who is absolutely one of my favorite comedians. [01:30:00] Like, when my family’s out of the house, I’ll just watch a bunch of Maria. I’ll just watch the Christmas special with Burton Blossie. She’s absolutely one of my favorite people. Becomes more so every year or so as she talks more about OCD. And like, she’s such a fascinating person.
[01:30:13] Merlin: But like, You, everybody who’s, I used to say this when people were running around looking at their site meter and their Google Analytics and it’s like, that’s fine, that’s really good, especially, you know, but like once you find out you, first time John Gruber tells you he would link to this if you fix the typo, that is a big day.
[01:30:32] Merlin: Because in several ways, one is that both Gruber and I eventually learned, we’ll not link to things if it’s got a really bad typo. And he’s like, hey, just a heads up, if you fix the typo, I’ll link to this. Not because, ooh, thirsty, I’m going to be on Daring Fireball. But more like, I don’t fucking care. Sorry.
[01:30:46] Merlin: I don’t care. But like, I admire that piece of shit so much. I used to. Now I’m friends with them and it’s the worst. But. Seriously, seriously, when somebody you admire notices what you do, like there is nothing like that, [01:31:00] not just to like give you a hard on about how you’re famous, that’s not, that’s not what I’m
[01:31:05] Christina: No, no, you feel seen and you feel like, oh my god, like, I
[01:31:09] Merlin: And you feel you’re having an impact with
[01:31:10] Christina: what I’m saying. Yeah,
[01:31:11] Merlin: about. You never would have known otherwise.
[01:31:14] Brett: Like when I created the Blogsmith bundle for Tax Mate
[01:31:19] Christina: Fucking best. Ever.
[01:31:21] Brett: And I got this comm I got this comment on my github repo, not directly to me, but on my github repo, and it just said Jesus Christ, and Merlin Man, and I was like, like, this is back, this is back in like,
[01:31:38] Merlin: our first pseudo
[01:31:40] Christina: 2007, I want
[01:31:41] Brett: this is like 2004, and I was like, holy shit, this guy I’m reading on four forty one forty three folders, just like, commented
[01:31:50] Merlin: I didn’t know how to do the first thing in Ruby. I didn’t know how to do the first thing in, in Ruby, but seeing DHH, this is at that time, quite famous demo of Ruby
[01:31:59] Christina: [01:32:00] I use TextMate. I use TextMate because of that demo.
[01:32:02] Merlin: was like, forget about development, like what is this app?
[01:32:04] Christina: No, I
[01:32:05] Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[01:32:07] Christina: was like, I was,
[01:32:08] Merlin: It’s so funny.
[01:32:08] Christina: I was like in college and I was just like, holy shit. What is this? I love text editors now. Yeah.
[01:32:15] Merlin: I know.
[01:32:17] Jeff: Okay, my final question for you about GPT, and like, just to, to, no, no, this is great. Believe me, this is great. To, the, the,
[01:32:26] Merlin: I’m sorry, I’m how
[01:32:27] Jeff: close out, no, this is
[01:32:28] Merlin: I’m like, it’s like I’ve got measles. Like, I just show up and everybody gets sick.
[01:32:34] Jeff: There was no one sick. This is, this is fantastic. And I’m just, I’m just continuing an amazingly winding thread, which is the only way I think or talk. Um, so you go home to your chat GPT and you go, all right, Robert Duvall, you know, this happened in, in, you know, I think it was like 20,
[01:32:50] Merlin: is the timeline.
[01:32:51] Jeff: Yeah. So, like, how far is, first of all, how far is, like, Days of Thunder from there, right? And inside of Days of Thunder, how far was he on either end from a [01:33:00] truly great movie, right? Like, like, where did this, you know, when he’s sitting there horrified because he’s like, oh, he’s also in The Apostle, he’s also in The Godfather, right?
[01:33:07] Jeff: Like, but where does all this sit? Because that helps me to think, how did he process, oh, are you the guy from Days of Thunder, right? Because he had, by that point, done another, like, 15 movies,
[01:33:17] Merlin: my god,
[01:33:18] Jeff: of which were amazing,
[01:33:19] Speaking of celebrities, Chevy Chase
[01:33:19] Merlin: kid and I, I talk about that with my kid with Chevy Chase. Where like, my kid knows Chevy Chase from Community.
[01:33:25] Christina: Yeah, of
[01:33:26] Jeff: That’s amazing.
[01:33:27] Christina: Well, how else would he,
[01:33:28] Merlin: from everything before community. And
[01:33:30] Christina: I was going to say,
[01:33:31] Merlin: up.
[01:33:32] Christina: I was going to say, does he know him from the vacation movies at all? Because I could see, a community I would see is the main thing, but I didn’t know if like you forced the
[01:33:38] Merlin: no, no, no, I mean, my kid has seen Confess Fletch twice, but never seen Fletch. But you end up
[01:33:44] Jeff: god, yes.
[01:33:46] Christina: which I
[01:33:46] Merlin: a really good movie by the
[01:33:47] Jeff: Doctor, doctor,
[01:33:49] Merlin: That’s a, that, just so you know, the, the John Hamm movie, Confess Fletch, is
[01:33:52] Christina: Yeah, it
[01:33:53] Jeff: Which I have not seen.
[01:33:54] Merlin: these two pie graphs were 90 percent of what I know, well, anyway, this is just, I’m just trying to make a point.
[01:33:59] Merlin: But like, what [01:34:00] I know about Chevy Chase, like, was fully formed, certainly wasn’t helped by reading the oral history of SNL. Ooh. But! But, but she’s currently, uh, he’s currently reading, uh, Colin Jots book, very Punchable Face and it’s
[01:34:13] Jeff: Oh well.
[01:34:14] Merlin: But, um, but uh, but like everything I know about is pretty much from before 1986 and everything he knows is from one TV show.
[01:34:21] Merlin: And I, I always have to sort of avoid the thing to go be the bald nanny and like, oh, my kid’s not gonna enjoy Caddy Shack. Why would I even bother? But like, that’s for, I I for him. I bet that’s, he’s not a young man.
[01:34:33] Christina: No.
[01:34:34] Merlin: How old is he? Let’s find
[01:34:35] Jeff: not a young
[01:34:36] Christina: probably 77, I’m guessing.
[01:34:38] Merlin: Okay, anybody else? How old is, I’m gonna say 82. He was in The Godfather, oh wait, let’s
[01:34:45] Christina: He’s 80. So we were literally right in the middle. Are you talking about, oh, that’s Chevy Chase. Robert Duvall is probably older than that. Robert Duvall is probably like in his 80s.
[01:34:55] Merlin: What was he in before, uh, The Godfather?[01:35:00]
[01:35:00] Christina: Oh shit. Robert Duval’s
[01:35:01] Merlin: and Clyde? Whoa! Gene Wilder was in Bonnie and Clyde. That always screws me up.
[01:35:06] Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She, she modeled her, um, uh, Warren Beatty,
[01:35:09] Jeff: Cause if I was gonna guess the gene, it would have been Hackman.
[01:35:13] Christina: Not Civil Shepherd. Uh, the other one. Um, um,
[01:35:16] Merlin: He was in Superman. That’s why he’s
[01:35:17] Jeff: Yes, that’s right. That’s right.
[01:35:19] Merlin: Some people, some people, uh, can read a candy wrapper and understand the secrets of the world. Ned
[01:35:26] Jeff: you, do you use, do you use ChatGPT or CustomGPT to make these spreadsheets now?
[01:35:31] Merlin: Um, good question. No. Um, I mean, I feel like there’s
[01:35:35] Jeff: And why?
[01:35:36] Merlin: Good question. Um, um, Google Sheets is my oils. in life. Like I just, my think ever since whenever, God it wasn’t even Excel, but there was this Mac spreadsheets program that I used to use, don’t even try to help me, it was like, this is when I was making Gantt charts, like back when I was a project manager.
[01:35:55] Merlin: But um, but like it’s just that when I first learned especially about like [01:36:00] Pivot tables, which for a long time were very hard to do on a Mac, unless you had like full on real Excel. But like, the way that you like, okay, this is really like, uh, it’s kind of like a database, but I can like see it all at once.
[01:36:10] Jeff: It’s like Hogwarts shit.
[01:36:12] Merlin: Yes. And you know, something like the first day, this sounds crazy now, but the first day you learn about like a formula, but then you also learn like equals, you know, a, a two minus a three times this convert
[01:36:26] Jeff: This could be ASMR for me. If you just said that a little quieter, I’d listen to it for hours.
[01:36:30] Merlin: Yeah, let’s see here. Um, I think I can do this. Pivot.
[01:36:36] Jeff: Is that the actual?
[01:36:39] Merlin: Formula. You
[01:36:40] Christina: Uh ha. Have you ever have, ever,
[01:36:41] Merlin: Workdays.
[01:36:43] Christina: have you ever used Power Bi or, or Looker or, or Tableau or anything like that?
[01:36:48] Merlin: are all made up. Those are all completely
[01:36:49] Christina: Okay. So
[01:36:50] Merlin: my answer is no.
[01:36:51] Christina: okay, so, so, so the reason I ask
[01:36:52] Merlin: what is it? Portishead? Tabboy? What are they called? What am I
[01:36:55] Christina: Yeah, um, so they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re all, all three of them are different things. The reason I was asking, these [01:37:00] are like, I guess they’re known as like business intelligence apps.
[01:37:02] Christina: That’s the,
[01:37:03] Merlin: Oh, like, uh, PKI or whatever it’s called.
[01:37:06] Christina: Yeah, I guess so.
[01:37:07] Merlin: bill ratio of your business. How’s your sales funnel?
[01:37:10] Christina: well it can, but the thing is, is like,
[01:37:12] Merlin: Faces
[01:37:12] Christina: I asked, the reason I ask is because, like, Power BI, which is kind of a nightmare, but also it uses Excel pretty well, and there’s some other ones. That’s why I mentioned the other two. Um,
[01:37:23] Merlin: these going to be in notes?
[01:37:24] Christina: yeah, yeah, I can put this in notes.
[01:37:26] Christina: Um, the, the, the reason I ask is because if you’re into all of this, like, like, Gantt charts and tables and whatnot, like, those tools basically let you do that sort of thing and then go beyond and, like, make interactive dashboards and shit based on your data.
[01:37:39] Merlin: my gosh. I’ve used your sponsor as well as another app that you mentioned for things like that. Um, I would love to hear more about that, but I think I’m still leaving one interesting unanswered question, which is like, ChatGPT?
[01:37:55] Christina: gonna say I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Sorry, go on.
[01:37:57] Merlin: No, no, no, you didn’t at all. I’m sorry, I’m the interrupter. Um, I, [01:38:00] I, I, I, like I say, I pretty instantly realized what I could use this for.
[01:38:05] Merlin: And can I just say in passing, I would not have realized, and here I’m talking about GPTs, which is a terrible name for this,
[01:38:11] Jeff: No, it’s the worst.
[01:38:12] Merlin: like having your own chatbot that’s your stuff and the way you want it to be. I was only able to instantly grok what that would be useful for, fun for, for me because I’d spent some time already in regular chat GPT.
[01:38:24] Merlin: I’d learned the ups and downs. I’d learned the strange melancholy you feel when your thread stops remembering you. It was like a weirdly emotional experience the first time we seemed to have such a good relationship.
[01:38:33] Jeff: this! Well,
[01:38:36] Merlin: And then like, the struggle in some ways to go like, in a minute I guess we’ll probably get to this health one I’ve made, which is far and away my biggest focus right now.
[01:38:44] Merlin: I struggle, in a GPT even, with getting it to remember what it knows. I struggle to get it to remember all these various things, and I’m trying all these different sorts of hacks to do that, the equivalent basically of cron jobs, to tell it to remember to always follow these instructions, and then [01:39:00] it still suddenly goes like, to quote Westwood, it looks like nothing to me.
[01:39:04] Merlin: There’s still times where
[01:39:05] Jeff: in memory care. You’re kind of like, no, no, you do know this. Like, you, you know,
[01:39:09] Merlin: Which, which it doesn’t help to say over and over, you know, it just lets them talk about Glenn Miller and like, don’t be a jerk about it. Read a book called The 36 Hour Day. It’s really good. Um, but the, so one, just to, so like, here’s a good example is this thing I’ve done for my health. So I had this, I was in the hospital, uh, I’ve talked about so many other places.
[01:39:30] Merlin: All you need to know is that like, I like, I like data. And I like being alive. And so one of the first things I did was using a variety of apps, including Apple Health and some apps that let you export things. I exported a lot of my up to date vitals into JSON, uh, eventually just settled on JSON, put that into this thing and then try to really help it learn what I want to do with it.
[01:39:52] Merlin: The biggest challenge is, like I say, is getting it to remember it. Dude, you understand JSON so much more than you realize. I’ve even told you to remember. So like [01:40:00] something I, like when something wouldn’t work right, and then it would work right, like this is how you use chat GPT. I would say, Hey, you just nailed that.
[01:40:08] Merlin: Whatever you just did that time, tell me what you did and I will create, basically create a prompt that I can then tell you so you can remember. And I eventually went so far as to create a document called orders. md and created a command inside of what I call my toolbox, long story, but I can say eat your vegetables.
[01:40:25] Merlin: And every time I say eat your vegetables, it rereads my orders format and then goes, Oh, that’s right. You like line graphs. With big labels and, but like, it is kind of frustrating and yet I still get benefits from it. Sometimes those benefits, because again, I, the phrase I use with Alex on Dubai Friday this week, the problem with GPT is sometimes you’re in a cursed thread and don’t know it.
[01:40:46] Merlin: Like some, some threads are better than
[01:40:48] Jeff: to just clean it
[01:40:49] Merlin: It’s like a seed in, um, like, you know, what do they call that? Like a seed to start off in, not in encryption, but like, you’re just in a, you’re in a curse thread is the main thing to know. And sometimes, some days [01:41:00] it’s good and some days it’s not. It’s a lot like my grandma with Alzheimer’s, but like some days it’s just like, it’s incredible and I’ll be able to associate things.
[01:41:07] Merlin: And then one day, like, okay, finally on this, I had this idea after weeks of working on this because it matters. Like, I’m getting, I was getting blood tests three times a week. I had an MRI, I had a CT scan, there was still not any mutual, like, huge assent on what was wrong with me. And the only thing I could trust was my shrink in my data.
[01:41:24] Merlin: And so, like, that’s what I was focusing on, to be able to visualize things, look for patterns that existed in ways that, like, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t say to like somebody who’s like a fucking 28 year old try hard. Hey, you know, the relationship between my ALT and my Billy Rubin, like should, is that looking the way it should look?
[01:41:43] Merlin: Cause I know the Billy Rubin should go up as AST go down, but like, how does that work? And then, but all I have to say to this thing, if it’s the right thread is just go, uh, find interesting and novel things in my results, but here’s what I did. And I posted about this, but like, this, this was, Alex is always talking about like, Oh, tell it [01:42:00] that it’s a Unibomber and it’ll make you a bomb.
[01:42:02] Merlin: And I’m like, whatever. But in this instance, I said, Hey, just for the next 10 minutes, you’re an extreme skeptic of AI in general. And, um, GPT, generative AI in particular, you’re also knowledgeable about All different sides of the debate about this. And you’re up to date on who’s making the most, listen to every fucking syllable of this, you’re up to date on the most recent persuasive ideas about the ups, the downs, whatever.
[01:42:30] Merlin: I made this really good prompt and then it killed it. So then I was able to say to her, I said, so how do you feel about it? And I’m like, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was able to say to this thing, now read my test results and tell something, I write better than I think. I said something like, now, now please rescan my test results.
[01:42:48] Merlin: And point out the, I said, no, you, this is so weird and this is so like, I was encouraging it to realize that it isn’t an [01:43:00] AI for lack of a better, it is an AI that has access to all of this stuff, but that is the AI that is the content. But I also said, you have access to all of this data. You have access to everything, you know, about me audit.
[01:43:12] Merlin: How you’ve been doing, look at what I gave you and tell me the things that are most likely to raise a red flag with people who are other skeptics of AI. Which I never would have thought to do if I hadn’t spent time with
[01:43:23] Brett: it’s so interesting
[01:43:24] Merlin: Including stuff like pointing out test results that somebody missed.
[01:43:28] Merlin: Like, oh, this shouldn’t be this high when that’s that high. This mitigates against a differential diagnosis. Like it looks like it is acute hepatitis A. But like telling it to be like that. Now, why did it work that one time and not other times? I don’t know. I didn’t make it. I can’t approve of this. But if you don’t think that’s interesting, you are not welcome at my lunch table.
[01:43:46] Brett: so interesting to me, and also so obvious that you have to tell ChatGPT what its bias is. Um, like, it’s fascinating that you can even do that. But, like, most of the good,
[01:43:58] Merlin: there are barriers. [01:44:00] Last night I had it.
[01:44:01] Brett: Yeah, most of the prompt tutorials I’ve seen have started out with you explain to chat GPT what its perspective, what its role is, and then you move forward.
[01:44:13] Brett: And that’s, that’s kind of fascinating.
[01:44:15] Merlin: Absolutely. And I mean, like, again, and the problem is, and I know we’re not doing this, but like, if it becomes, I’m going to send you a link to something on mastodon if you don’t mind, um, if it becomes something where we all just start associating this, and I’m probably contributing to this, carrying water for the, the worst people, but like, if you start thinking that this is really just something that people use to, um, use to, to cheat on things.
[01:44:37] Merlin: It’s like, well, there’s a lot of ways you can cheat on things. And talk about throwing out the baby with the bath.
[01:44:43] Christina: mean, and that’s the thing. People are going to cheat with or without this stuff. Now, will this make some of it easier? Yeah, okay, maybe, but like,
[01:44:49] Merlin: Maybe it’ll also make teachers revisit the kind of assignments that
[01:44:52] Christina: no
[01:44:53] Merlin: Not because, not because of JGBT, just because maybe they’ve been flipping the same three ring binder for 20 years.
[01:44:59] Christina: I had this [01:45:00] conversation with my mom a year ago when we were in Las Vegas, uh, for, for Adele for her 75th birthday. Um, I was explaining, which was a great trip. Yeah, I, I,
[01:45:08] Brett: 75.
[01:45:10] Merlin: yeah, that’s her record. Her new record, 75.
[01:45:12] Jeff: Yeah. New record 75. It’s great.
[01:45:14] Christina: It’s, it’s, the heartbreak on this one really came through. Um, you wouldn’t think that, you know, in the, the septuagenarian years, that she would still be able to write bangers, but yeah.
[01:45:24] Christina: Um,
[01:45:24] Jeff: It’s just in her.
[01:45:25] ChatGPT and your mom
[01:45:25] Merlin: I think she does real well. There’s good days and bad days, just like with Grandma.
[01:45:29] Christina: honestly, honestly. Um, no, but, uh, I was explaining ChadGBT and, and, and all that stuff to my mom, because this was like January of, of 2023. And so, they were like, you know, six weeks old. And, um, and she immediately picked up on some of the. Like the cheating stuff. And I was like, yes. I was like, however, and she agreed with me because she used to work in education, not as a teacher, but, um, uh, with teachers and, uh, she’s a school, um, counselor, but, um, you know, we both agreed.
[01:45:58] Christina: I was like, well, maybe, you know, a lot of [01:46:00] teachers suck. Like, let’s just be straight up on us. I know I’m not supposed to say that.
[01:46:02] Merlin: But that was her first thing she taught was, like, you didn’t have to say anything. Did she immediately go, like, well, people could abuse this. It was her first.
[01:46:10] Christina: Yeah, absolutely. But, but then she was able to at least, but I said to her and she agreed with me when she kind of thought about it. I was like, yeah, I was like, but this could be an opportunity. Like, if it’s so easy for you to cheat, you know, using
[01:46:22] Merlin: That’s, you’re putting that
[01:46:23] Christina: maybe, then maybe we should be focusing on a different way of,
[01:46:28] Merlin: maybe we go all the way up the stack to, like, who gets into the school. Because if you’re attracting that many people who are willing to pay N dollars a year for this, or, I don’t know if it’s public school, but, like, if you’re getting people, like, I realize now if I could redo college, I would treat it so much more seriously.
[01:46:42] Merlin: The non traditional age students who were there, like they got divorced and then went to
[01:46:47] Christina: Oh, no, they cared. Yeah.
[01:46:48] Merlin: They, and they’re, they’re spending, it’s their money every time
[01:46:51] Christina: well, the, the, the second high school I went to, um, not, not the shitty first one that was super competitive and supposed to be so great. I, I was going to graduate early. I wound up not, [01:47:00] uh, because I had a great experience, but it was actually full of teachers who cared. And most of the students who were there were not high achievers like me who happened to have mental health issues, but were like drug addicts, um, who,
[01:47:12] Merlin: It’s not just a bad school, but the wrong school for you.
[01:47:15] Christina: Well, no, no, no, this was the new school, which actually was the right one. Um, uh, the second school was, was full of like people who had drug problems, had dropped out, teenage mother, like pregnant, uh, teenage girls, like people who, to be completely honest, still went through all this shit and wanted to graduate and actually showed the fuck up.
[01:47:31] Christina: And I have
[01:47:31] Merlin: mean, like we, we don’t appreciate how much your life outside of school has such an impact on
[01:47:35] Christina: and, and I have more
[01:47:36] Merlin: or abuse.
[01:47:37] Christina: no, but I have more respect for those kids who I went to school with at that second school than the, than the, than the fucking assholes at the first school who were just like me, who were privileged as fuck, who were like taught to believe that you will be a high achiever and do everything.
[01:47:51] Christina: Fuck all of us. Like the ones who actually like had had real problems and dropped out and then came back or were pregnant and like went to school and then like had a baby and still [01:48:00] kept going to school, you know, cause the school had a onsite childcare. Those, those kids actually wanted to be there. Like, you know what I mean?
[01:48:07] Christina: Like those are the real fucking kids. And the teachers to the same point cared, and they taught based on those things. And I didn’t have AP classes there, but I had teachers who were very, very good, who would give me different assignments because they realized, okay, you will, you’re past all the stuff I’m teaching you.
[01:48:26] Christina: So I’m going to grade you differently, and I’m going to give you different curriculum. And. Obviously, not every teacher can do that, and No Child Left Behind fucked up a lot of things with funding tied to test scores, and the whole, you know, public education system is fucked. But, if it’s so easy to cheat at these things, and if you can so clearly, like, get this grade, then maybe that means we need to have a bigger, like, broader, like, discussion about how are we grading things, what are we assigning, and like, what are we doing?
[01:48:54] Christina: Because this is a symptom, this is not a
[01:48:57] Merlin: talking about something that creates a lot more [01:49:00] work for people who are already working a lot. Like, if you had to do more essays that were very specific, again, it’s a distinction without a difference to almost everybody I know, but like, I’m, I’m not as interested in like, how do you feel today?
[01:49:13] Merlin: I’m way more interested in how do you know how you feel today? Asking somebody to talk about that in their own terms, I know it’s still cheatable, but like, who’s going to want to do that when you could just hand somebody a spantron?
[01:49:24] Christina: No, and if you’re, if you’re actually like, to me, it’s also, again, it’s just one of those things that’s like, if we stopped, you know, if we stopped fucking teaching tests and grading things based on that, then it’d be a whole lot harder for these tools to also work so effortlessly to cheat, you know what I mean?
[01:49:38] Christina: Um, and, but, but I think also, like, the stakes would be lower, too, if people feel like, Oh, I actually am engaged and want to learn, then, like, you’re less likely to want to do it. Most of the time, people cheat for two reasons, I think. One, just, like, laziness. And, but the big thing is, just, you don’t care.
[01:49:51] Christina: You’re not invested, right?
[01:49:53] Merlin: people, one of the things about privilege we don’t talk about enough, and that’s not a word I love, but I do get what we’re talking about. So [01:50:00] you talk about like people who got into the good school, and maybe let’s say that’s even five years into being a good school, which is a very specific kind of thing in San Francisco.
[01:50:07] Merlin: I mean, everybody knows that’s a good school. And then like, even before we get into like, Oh yeah, and how are the moms and dads having an impact on how people run that school? Like before we even get into that, um, there’s just this thing of like. Sometimes you meet people, I’m not trying to be unkind to rich people or privileged people, but like, there are people who love to talk about grit.
[01:50:30] Merlin: Oh, you kid needs more grit. Well, what they’ve experienced is a pretty assured, first of all, they’ve never missed a meal, they’ve never worried where they’re going to sleep, they’ve never had dirty clothes or smelled weird this day, or like, had to sleep in the garage because something was going on with the fan.
[01:50:48] Merlin: Like, I don’t know, like, fine, whatever, I’m a liberal, what do I know? But! But, um, the, the, the, the challenging part of that is like, I think sometimes people of privilege [01:51:00] who love to congratulate themselves about their bootstraps and their startup and all that kind of stuff, like really look past like a different way.
[01:51:06] Merlin: I look at it differently. I think a lot of people who are very well off and have a good background, like why, why is your kid so good at tennis? Well, cause his dad’s Andre Agassi. Like that’s part of it. And what does that mean? That also means they had the resources to send that kid
[01:51:18] Christina: Exactly. The resources to have the lessons, to have the time, to be able to dedicate and focus on it, to recognize that he had a talent,
[01:51:24] Merlin: is not even the mean part yet. This is not the mean part. Here’s the mean part, which is like, there’s a lot of fucking chodes out there who were born on third, as they once said, somebody once said about President Bush, born on third and thinks he hit a triple. There’s a lot of people, and that’s fine, whatever, like enjoy it, but you’re not allowed to invoke grit because essentially your whole life has been a so far uninterrupted path To success and money and all of those things.
[01:51:48] Merlin: The grit required for you to get into Harvard is a lot different, especially if your parents went there, it’s a lot different than the grit that’s required to get through third grade [01:52:00] in schools in San Francisco. It’s a different thing until I get so, it’s, it’s frustrating to me, it leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.
[01:52:06] Merlin: The way we’re constantly announcing that all these people, and it’s like it’s survivor bias, like. These are the planes that came back. Of course they have this pattern in the wings. The survivor bias of like being somebody who just happened to like have the resources and continuity of care in their life to just fucking show up and then go to college, that’s such a bigger deal than somebody whose mom has four jobs and they have to get wifi at McDonald’s and it’s like, talk about grit.
[01:52:30] Merlin: What people, you don’t even know what somebody is going through to get to just being able to show up at school and it infuriates me.
[01:52:36] Brett: Yep.
[01:52:36] Christina: No, I, I, I completely agree. And, and I think that most people who talk about grit are the reason I, I, I’m being reflexive and saying like, you know, and maybe somewhat unfair, but I think it’s largely true. Having experience is because when you have gone through things, even if you have privilege, even if you were born on third, that doesn’t mean that you haven’t experienced hardships, haven’t struggled with things, but you won’t invoke that.
[01:52:55] Christina: You’re not going to invoke that. A, I
[01:52:57] Merlin: won’t do it until you’ve become successful. How many people who are [01:53:00] successful TED talk givers, who love talking about failure, have never succeeded at
[01:53:05] Jeff: Mm.
[01:53:05] Merlin: Not many. That’s, they’re now at a position where they get to go, boy, it was really hard at my first startup, we were really underutilized and our B round was murp murp murp, and you’re like, Oh my gosh, you are so out of tune with the rest of the world and you think that you’re winning,
[01:53:19] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:53:22] Merlin: we should go.
[01:53:22] Merlin: We’re gonna go soon? Can we go soon? Did you guys get my bird?
[01:53:26] Jeff: So, wait, you can’t go without, so that bird, not only a, a good bit, but really powerful and, and talk about it. Describe it
[01:53:34] Merlin: So I said, last night I was doing one of my occasional like updates of like, I exported my JSON file, put it up, and I said, blah blah, do this. And I was just playing around. And then I had this funny thought where I was like, and like, this is the kind of thing I’m, I’m, I say I’m surprised other people don’t do this more, but I’m actually really surprised that I don’t do this more because I know I can do this.
[01:53:52] Merlin: So I said to it something like, please re, please scan. The phrase I use, whether or not it helps or not, please deeply analyze fileblah. json and [01:54:00] fileblah. json, use the schema that I gave you, da da da da, please deeply analyze all of these documents. And then, um, I was like, write a haiku summarizing my health records.
[01:54:12] Merlin: And it wasn’t very good. And then I said, something longer, I said, please write a villanelle, like a longer form type of poem. And that went okay. And then I said, now please write a really dirty limerick about it. And it was like, I can’t do dirty things, but it would be so funny if a guy got his head stuck in a bucket.
[01:54:26] Merlin: And, but it was also. Also about my Billy Rubin levels, that would be funny, and then finally I was like, I mean, fuck it. I was like, make a, this is preceded by things you don’t see that included like, please deeply analyze my, all my health records since November, and um, produce a Hieronymus Bosch painting, and here’s two photos of me, put me in it and make me a bird.
[01:54:46] Brett: Yep.
[01:54:46] Christina: it
[01:54:47] Merlin: And then I, then I came back and I said, now please.
[01:54:48] Christina: this is brilliant.
[01:54:50] Merlin: Then I was like, please make the bird sadder and angrier and then, and then like to show that this actually does work. And then I had to go look this up. I didn’t know this off the dome. I was like, oh, co focus is a triptych, right? Three [01:55:00] paintings in one.
[01:55:00] Merlin: Like please focus on the third part of the triptych, which is called of Gardner Earthly Delight, which is called the Last Judgment, which is the good one that has like the, the walking assholes and people peeing and crying.
[01:55:10] Brett: Yep.
[01:55:11] Merlin: Yeah. Spend some read, watch some YouTube videos on Bosch. He had a hell of a thing going and I love.
[01:55:16] Merlin: All of my birds. These are all my precious little guys now.
[01:55:19] Jeff: Mm-Hmm.
[01:55:20] Merlin: And the thing is you can’t see it, maybe, but like if you really zoom in, there’s great stuff in the background, but also, something I didn’t realize until after I posted this, you can see the brush strokes. In some of these you can actually see where it looks like a painting.
[01:55:36] Merlin: It didn’t just open it up in Affinity Designer or whatever and trace it, I love Affinity Designer, but it didn’t just trace it, like it made this thing, it made it look like a painting.
[01:55:45] Christina: Yeah, yeah. No, the the stuff is, is amazing. So what did you use, uh, did you just use Dolly too for this? Or what did you use to, um, create this?
[01:55:52] Merlin: Dolly is turned on in this GPT, and because, because this is the, it’s a good question. The reason it’s in this GPT is this is the one that has [01:56:00] all my health stuff in
[01:56:01] Christina: Oh, gotcha. Okay, okay, okay. I, I got it. So you named your own custom GPT Lab Insight.
[01:56:06] Merlin: Yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah, lab results, yeah,
[01:56:08] Christina: no, no. This is on me. I, I didn’t look at it closely. So, listeners, if you, if you look at the Mastodon,
[01:56:12] Merlin: Good bird though, you gotta admit, pretty good
[01:56:13] Christina: bird.
[01:56:14] Jeff: of good birds in there. So,
[01:56:16] Christina: This I think ties back
[01:56:17] Merlin: sad and angry. Did
[01:56:19] Christina: uh,
[01:56:20] Merlin: you see the little guy in the corner? Did you see that little orange guy? How
[01:56:23] Jeff: or the one coming at you in the, in the upper left. In the first one.
[01:56:27] Christina: No, the little orange guy, he’s just
[01:56:28] Merlin: Oh, the bird? The big bird coming at me? Yeah, I think that’s the woman in the hospital who once asked me, Why do you fart?
[01:56:35] Jeff: haven’t answered the question.
[01:56:37] Merlin: that actually really encapsulates a lot of my hospital experience as being who I am. Was like, do I, no, no, and not for like stupid gross reasons, but for like, do I fart?
[01:56:47] Merlin: Like, can I fart? Have I farted? Did I just fart? Other questions you get asked in the hospital. Have you had any contact with people?
[01:56:55] Jeff: Mhmm. I try not to. Mhmm.
[01:56:58] Merlin: but like, wait, so why [01:57:00] are you asking me that? Yes, I have had contact with people. I’m generally in one of these two places, but like, have I been on a bus in the last six weeks?
[01:57:06] Merlin: What period of time? How many people? Was I sick at the time? It’s like, is this your first day? Have you just never asked them? Do you fart? What an odd thing to ask in the middle of the night. House, House would know better. House would hit me with his goddamn cane and go, uh, you know,
[01:57:23] Brett: Oh, we didn’t even get to talking about House.
[01:57:27] Merlin: my house impression. Oh, wait, House ASMR.
[01:57:32] Jeff: shake your pills!
[01:57:35] Brett: should we, uh, should we skip Craftitude this week? We’re at two hours
[01:57:40] Jeff: and I just hit it.
[01:57:41] Christina: Yeah, I think you
[01:57:42] Merlin: You know, yeah, let’s get, no, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m fading. I, I, I like all the apps. I like everything you do.
[01:57:47] Jeff: Exactly.
[01:57:48] Merlin: Well, almost everything, I have some objections, but
[01:57:52] Jeff: But we don’t want to end
[01:57:53] Merlin: honestly, you, the input devices on my machine are frequently doing Brett things, and it’s,
[01:57:59] Christina: this is [01:58:00] for all of
[01:58:00] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:58:01] Merlin: yeah, no, I mean like it’s, I don’t know what to say that doesn’t sound corny, except that like, I mean, it’s a, it’s almost kind of like a full system.
[01:58:08] Merlin: I mean, there’s stuff that I’m doing in the Finder, there’s stuff that I don’t want to like go on about it, but it’s really been a big deal for me. And I, I, I’m very, so grateful for all of that and like what it’s enabled me to do and who it’s enabled me to be. And I’m just eternally grateful. You piece of shit.
[01:58:24] Brett: I,
[01:58:25] Merlin: ska. You played ska,
[01:58:27] Brett: I asked on the forums at, forums, forums at brettterpstra. com, I asked, does anyone actually use what I build? Does anyone here who’s joined the forum actually use what I build? Because I don’t get a lot, I don’t, like, embed analytics or anything. And, and the people who came back were like, I used this and this and this and this thing you
[01:58:50] Jeff: And six things I can’t tease
[01:58:51] Brett: that you totally forgot you ever made.
[01:58:54] Merlin: end of It’s a Wonderful Life and they’re bringing you a literal basket of money going, of course we love you. [01:59:00] Every
[01:59:04] Christina: Ha
[01:59:05] Brett: Things I forgot I ever even worked on. Yeah.
[01:59:08] Merlin: time a bell rings, Brett gets an in app purchase.
[01:59:12] Christina: Genuinely, yeah. Well, hey, but do you remember, Brett, when we had, um, and maybe I, because I remember I even got a Mashable write up for you on it. Remember Brett Terpstra Day?
[01:59:21] Brett: Yes, I do. Uh, uh, Gabe Weatherhead
[01:59:25] Merlin: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:59:27] Brett: Yeah. Back in the day it was for a couple of years, it was a great birthday and then, and it fell off. Yeah. Mac drifter.
[01:59:36] Christina: Yeah, MacDrifter is such a great blog. Um, I, uh, I first got into Synology stuff because of Gabe. Um,
[01:59:44] Merlin: oh man. Talk about a rabbit hole. My
[01:59:46] Jeff: Oh my
[01:59:47] Merlin: on my list is to figure out my dynamic DNS, why it’s not working and why I can’t access things locally again.
[01:59:53] Christina: Oh God, have you used Tailscale at all?
[01:59:56] Merlin: I have used tail scale. I’m not using it now. Is it, do you feel like that’s a good way to [02:00:00] handle that? And you, okay. Because I like the people who make it, and it
[02:00:04] Christina: do too. And I know them, I
[02:00:05] Merlin: Isn’t that what’s his head? Isn’t that the, the guy from the thing? The guy from, uh, uh, the guy from, uh, isn’t that, uh, Maycheck?
[02:00:11] Merlin: Does it? Isn’t he
[02:00:12] Christina: yeah, and, and, uh, and also, uh, uh, Yeah, Majay, and also, uh, Brad Fitzpatrick, uh, of, uh, um, Go, Memcached, and most importantly, LiveJournal fame.
[02:00:21] Merlin: Oh my god, I just had a neurological event. Please say all of those things just as fast one more time. Start with
[02:00:27] Jeff: But end with Livejournal, because that was a, that, that landed me
[02:00:30] Merlin: sounded like you just went into pure, like, Yosemite Sam can’t, like, like, like Thiefs can’t. Like, you just went into Brassa Frassa Snaggle Brassa, Brad Garrett. Oh yeah, check that out, that sounds
[02:00:42] Christina: Yeah, no,
[02:00:43] Merlin: think I know that guy from the LiveJournal. Yeah, I don’t
[02:00:44] Christina: Yeah, no, yeah, exactly, Brad Fitzpatrick. Well, he created LiveJournal, but he also created Memcached, uh, because Yeah,
[02:00:50] Merlin: That was, what?
[02:00:52] Brett: Right? Right?
[02:00:53] Christina: yeah, he created Memcached so that LiveJournal could stay up. And now
[02:00:57] Merlin: Oh, this is like when WordPress realizes it [02:01:00] needs a cache.
[02:01:01] Christina: I mean, that’s what WordPress used and also what
[02:01:03] Jeff: been
[02:01:03] Merlin: I got fireballed last night.
[02:01:05] Christina: Yeah. Um, so, so yeah, he did that. He was on the Go team, uh, for like a dozen years
[02:01:11] Merlin: I love LiveJournal. Oh my god, I’ll be so grateful to
[02:01:14] Christina: OG, OG Tumblr.
[02:01:15] Merlin: still not an app to this day that understands how you want to be able to share things
[02:01:21] Christina: No, I
[02:01:22] Merlin: There’ll be custom, custom groups that have like two
[02:01:25] Christina: fucking A.
[02:01:26] Merlin: and I made, I made a custom CSS header that I would drop into the top.
[02:01:30] Merlin: This is because I’m broken inside. It was the year 2000, whatever. And I would drop things into the top of the header that would say, you, this is a friends only post and put a cut, you know, and say like, this is something only you can see. So please don’t share this and that kind of stuff. It was amazing.
[02:01:42] Christina: it was the best. To this day, like, nobody ever accomplished, um, you know, as you said, like, being able to post to select groups. You could do friends, you know, friends only, but you could also, um, have, like, a subsect. Only these friends, right? Like, I don’t want my roommate, who’s on my friends list, to see that I’m bitching about her, which [02:02:00] is, like, a real thing.
[02:02:01] Christina: That, you know, when you’re in college,
[02:02:02] Merlin: What do you think it’s for? What do you think, is this a blogger?
[02:02:05] Christina: exactly, well, that’s the
[02:02:06] Merlin: not licking the Jason Kotke, I’m talking about my goddamn roommate.
[02:02:09] Christina: Exactly.
[02:02:10] Merlin: the music I’m listening to. Oh my god, have you heard Paramore?
[02:02:13] Christina: you’re, yeah,
[02:02:13] Merlin: Have you heard Paramore?
[02:02:14] Christina: the Russians came after the, um, the,
[02:02:17] Jeff: did they come.
[02:02:18] Merlin: are, the Russians are coming.
[02:02:20] Christina: Well, yeah, they, they, they, they bought it from
[02:02:22] Jeff: That was the real Red Dawn.
[02:02:23] Christina: it up?
[02:02:24] Merlin: was the true Red Diamond. I, and then to quote, uh, the character, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do
[02:02:30] Jeff: yes.
[02:02:30] Christina: but yeah, no, but Brad works on Tailscale as well as, as some of the
[02:02:33] Merlin: tell him I said hi.
[02:02:34] Christina: uh, I will. Uh, but, but
[02:02:36] Merlin: I’ll look at that, and I’ve, I’ve got the, I’ve got the, the package. Pardon my saying. I’ve got the package and I played with it a little bit. Matt Howey first, I think, turned me on to it. And like, but like once I do that, like here in my little officina, there’s a thing and then I’m home.
[02:02:50] Merlin: I’ve got a thing. And with that regard to things like IP range, any of that stuff that, and my phone, that all becomes part of one tail scale sort of thing, right? Everybody, anybody else who, does this get your okie [02:03:00] dokie?
[02:03:00] Jeff: was just told I needed to start last week.
[02:03:03] Brett: Nope. I love
[02:03:04] Merlin: It’s running on my machine right now. It’s just turned
[02:03:06] Christina: No, it’s amazing. Yeah, I, I turned bread onto it, I think, um,
[02:03:09] Merlin: do you, where do you do, do you, do you start with turning it on?
[02:03:13] Christina: You can turn it on wherever. It doesn’t matter. I mean, I would put it on kind of your Synology or whatever, but you can have it set up and you can, you can
[02:03:19] Merlin: I did, like I said, I’ve got the package on all of them. It’s just, I, I didn’t wanna, because I’m already so screwed up and I’m a thing I’m trying to work on. Shut up, John Syracuse. So, I know you won’t hear this, but like, my problem is like, I don’t wanna just start the way I think of it as tearing wires out of the wall.
[02:03:33] Merlin: Speaking of Gene Hackman, if you’ve ever seen the movie
[02:03:35] Jeff: Oh my god.
[02:03:36] Christina: Oh
[02:03:36] Merlin: I don’t want to just end up playing my saxophone in a room full of wires. And sometimes when I’m just like, I can fix that with a tail scale, I just need another reverse proxy for my reverse proxy. And like, pretty soon I can’t leave my office.
[02:03:49] Merlin: It’s becoming like Brian David Gilbert and his, and his gaming setup. I feel like it’s all just getting smaller and smaller.
[02:03:56] Jeff: Beautiful.
[02:03:58] Merlin: Can we all leave now?
[02:03:58] Brett: hey,
[02:03:59] Jeff: you, [02:04:00] Merlin.
[02:04:00] Brett: Merlin. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for showing up today. It’s been great chatting. We will definitely, we will definitely try to invite you back if you’ll have us.
[02:04:09] Merlin: I’m a fan of, of, of you. I didn’t, I’ve only met Jeff today, but I’m a fan of, of, of both you guys. So thank you for your kindness, and
[02:04:17] Christina: This was really
[02:04:18] Jeff: thanks, Merlin.
[02:04:19] Merlin: it’s my pleasure.
[02:04:20] Merlin: It’s been a pleasure. Hey, everybody get some sleep.
[02:04:23] Christina: Get some sleep.
[02:04:27] Jeff: There it is.
[02:04:28] Merlin: Oh, here’s you.
[02:04:30] Jeff: Hire, hire!
[02:04:32] Merlin: Oh, is it more like a Joy Division kind of thing?
Yeah, it’s another 2-hour episode. Jay Miller is back to talk retail therapy, keyboards, and Tetris. We threw in the usual grAPPtitude picks, so don’t miss ’em!
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Transcript401
[00:00:00] Christina:
[00:00:01] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, joined as always by Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severins Gunzel. And this week, our special guest is one of our favorite return guests, Mr. Jay Miller. Welcome, everybody.
[00:00:18] Jeff: Timber!
[00:00:18] Brett: Hey.
[00:00:19] Jay: up!
[00:00:20] Jeff: Hi, Jay.
[00:00:21] Jay: Always a pleasure, always a pleasure to be here, uh, and then I’ll go back and listen to it later and go, why the hell did I say the things that I said?
[00:00:29] Christina: this is one of the reasons I do not listen to podcasts that I’ve been on. Like, it’s weird. I will re watch videos that I, that I do a million times to go over in my head every little thing that I did wrong and to assess my My performance and go, okay, you could have done this better, this better, or oh, that was actually a really good performance.
[00:00:47] Christina: Um, podcasts, I don’t because it’s too cringe. And I also don’t want to be reminded of the things that I said that off the cuff of my, my tongue that I was like, oh yeah, that was probably pissing people off. Sorry about that. [00:01:00] Whoops.
[00:01:01] Jay: See, I’m like the exact opposite. I will go back and listen to a podcast because I’m just like, eh, no one cares. Like, no one listens to this. The, I think, um, another podcaster I listened to like said, your audience isn’t real. Until they prove it, they’re not real. So, but like, videos, I refuse to watch myself do anything on video, because I will nitpick the hell out of myself.
[00:01:23] Jay: And then Jeff will be like, Oh, Jade did this video one time. And I’ll go back and I’ll look at it and be
[00:01:27] Jeff: yeah, that happened.
[00:01:28] Jay: like, God, my hair. What was I doing?
[00:01:31] Christina: like, you’re like, what was going on? See, it’s weird. I think that we do them for the same reasons. Like I, I, it, The reason I don’t go back and list a podcast is because they’re not real, whereas it’s my perfectionism nature, uh, that I’m like, oh no, but the video is real, and that will have consequences, so I need to be aware of that.
[00:01:50] Jeff: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.
[00:01:53] Ranting about Apple’s Vido Reactions
[00:01:53] Brett: Um, um, um, um, um. Oh, I forgot. I had a, I had like a topic. I had a [00:02:00] topic and then Jay’s has reactions on, on his camera. And it was like, it was popping up random bubbles. And I got distracted, like checking my reaction settings. And I totally lost this topic that was brewing in my mind.
[00:02:14] Christina: Can I can I okay, I gotta rant on that then, because They know that this is a problem. Apple, uh, meaning they. Apple knows that this reaction bullshit is a problem and that it has been a problem since the beta. People have reported it. People internally, uh, according to sources closest to the information, have reported it to very high up people.
[00:02:32] Christina: This is supposed to be fixed. Um,
[00:02:34] Jeff: They’ve gone to Steve Jobs grave.
[00:02:37] Christina: I mean, Steve Jobs would not put up with this. I’m not one of those people who ever
[00:02:41] Jeff: put up with Steve Jobs.
[00:02:42] Christina: Well, I mean, I, but, but I’m one of those people who never wants to invoke the, this wouldn’t have happened under Steve. Cause it’s
[00:02:48] Jeff: Yeah, yeah,
[00:02:48] Christina: False fallacy thing. It’s a bullshit thing to do, but I will say this.
[00:02:51] Christina: This is some sort of like slap sloppy ass like bad program managed bad like product development like bullshit When you have a [00:03:00] feature like this that you highlight and tout Somebody wanted it in the fucking keynote so that they could get promoted. That’s really what it was about they didn’t bother to actually think about the implications about what it would mean test it or do anything with any of the you know feedback and it’s Bad.
[00:03:18] Christina: And, you know, makes people like, like Brett have to check their reaction settings to make sure that his settings are correct so that you’re not, with your fucking therapist, having balloons coming out when you’re talking about the death of someone. Like, genuinely. Like, what the fuck? This is such a bad feature.
[00:03:33] Christina: All right, my rant’s over.
[00:03:34] Jeff: Well,
[00:03:35] Brett: meanwhile, Jeff is cycling through
[00:03:38] Jay: found the button,
[00:03:39] Jeff: Jeff is cycling through all of them. What about death? Uh, hold on. I can do balloons. Um,
[00:03:45] Brett: Well, because the, the, the visual cue that turns on balloons is, uh, like a peace sign. And when I’m talking to my therapist and I am most frustrated, I, I do, like, listeners can’t see this, but I, [00:04:00] like, put my hand on my head in a way that looks like I’m holding up a peace sign. Um, and it’s more of like a look of frustration or like,
[00:04:10] Jeff: a cry for help just a little bit now that I’m watching you do it.
[00:04:12] Brett: and then I’ll be doing that and then all of a sudden balloons will come up and it’s always during like the hardest part of therapy for me, but I figured out how to turn it off.
[00:04:22] Brett: It doesn’t just turn itself back on. So it’s, it’s cool. It should be opt in. Um, it should not be on by default,
[00:04:31] Jay: The stupid thing is it’s based on the application, which is like, okay, cool, so Zoom, gotta turn it off. Okay, Teams, gotta turn it off. Slack, gotta turn it off.
[00:04:40] Christina: see, that’s the bullshit. That, that right there to me is, that’s, that’s terrible design. And like, that’s the sort of thing where like, oh great, yeah, you’re making this available. Great, Apple finally listening, making their Query APIs available to other apps for once. Awesome. But if it’s going to be that way, maybe have a, I don’t know, if it’s part of a video app, have it as a toggle if you’re, if it [00:05:00] doesn’t work well, which, like, I don’t know, is Apple really the best company in AI?
[00:05:04] Christina: Um, hmm, no,
[00:05:07] Brett: It really should only be enabled by default for FaceTime. Like, I can’t imagine any other video circumstance where I would want balloons or fireworks or hearts popping up.
[00:05:21] Christina: Right, right. I mean, especially it’s like, yeah, because basically what they’re saying is, yeah, we want to take our fun little whimsical things we’re doing for your personal conversations and insert them in apps that, other than Discord, are almost universally not going to be used for personal conversations.
[00:05:36] Christina: And even in Discord you’re like, actually, motherfuckers, I, I, I want to control what my video looks like. Because I might be streaming this.
[00:05:44] Jeff: This makes me want, like, a supercut of, like, this thing getting triggered on OnlyFans videos or something. Um, I’m gonna just search Mac OS Reactions Supercut.
[00:05:55] Brett: heh.
[00:05:56] Christina: Yeah,
[00:05:57] Brett: Uh,
[00:05:58] Jeff: Anyway.
[00:05:59] Mental Health Corner Part 1
[00:05:59] Brett: so that [00:06:00] was, that was therapeutic, I think, for everybody. Speaking of therapy Um, hey, what Jay, would you like to kick off the mental health corner?
[00:06:09] Jay: Yeah, so, this is, I guess, uh, a public announcement. Mental Health Corner for me, which is great. Um, so, Jeff gave me the calendar invite for every single Overtired that’s scheduled.
[00:06:25] Christina: amazing.
[00:06:26] Jay: I guess, I don’t know, am I joining the
[00:06:29] Brett: I guess. I
[00:06:30] Jeff: By the end of this year, like, every, it’s just gonna build, we’re gonna have five people, now we have six people, now we have seven people.
[00:06:37] Jay: But, uh, yeah. We could talk about it, but I, uh, yeah, I, I don’t know what’s been going on. I mean, everyone around me has COVID, but I’ve been dodging that bullet. Like, uh, it’s been, it’s been wild. And then, uh, I’ve just been fighting these like really bad headaches and I’ve been depressed as hell. And a lot of that [00:07:00] was.
[00:07:00] Jay: Over the holidays, I took, I took almost all of December off. Um, and then after, you know, talking to some people, there was almost like a question of like, do I take more time off? But I was off for three weeks. We had family coming through. Um, then they left and then they got COVID and I was like, yes, miss that one.
[00:07:17] Jay: Um, unless I’m the problem. And then I got back to work and It was this pure, just like, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to do this. Um, my retail therapy is out of this world. I didn’t get. A lot of things that I wanted for Christmas, which is fine because we were like on a budget. So, you know, New Year begins, I buy a 3D printer, I buy a whole bunch of, um, I got the Ender, is it Ender 3 V3 KE?
[00:07:51] Jay: It’s like, basically like the, their Ender 3 like slightly better series that can Print [00:08:00] faster than the bed will actually allow it to. Um, so yeah, I feel like I overpaid but not by much. It was like 300. Um,
[00:08:09] Jeff: I have the same printer.
[00:08:11] Jay: oh cool. Yeah, I mean it’s solid. It’s just like
[00:08:14] Jeff: Yeah, I
[00:08:14] Jay: You can you can print up to 500, you know Millimeters per second or something like that and then literally it just throws your print like off the thing and i’m like, okay Maybe I can’t.
[00:08:25] Jay: Um I’ve done that I bought um And, well, I should say my, my employer bought because I have a office allowance and it resets at the beginning of the year. Um, I bought a, a nice ortho linear split keyboard to help fight my arthritis stuff that I’m going through. Um, I don’t necessarily look at the keys while I’m typing, but I have zero confidence in my typing skills.
[00:08:52] Jay: So, like, that’s been fun. Um, and we were, we were kind of waxing poetic about Having to [00:09:00] use your thumbs for multiple buttons that are in a different location now and like Nitpicking it to death of like, should, should the three rows of thumb buttons be space tab return? Should it be return space tab?
[00:09:14] Jay: Should it be command option? And I’m just like, okay, I’m just going to type until I’m comfortable and then go back and fix the discomfort that’s still there.
[00:09:24] Brett: Can we, can we come back to the keyboard conversation? I have like so many, so many things to say, but I don’t want to interrupt the mental health corner. Um. But yeah,
[00:09:34] Christina: have things I want to say about keyboards and I want to hear
[00:09:36] Brett: this
[00:09:36] Jeff: But have you, but have you,
[00:09:37] Brett: keyboard episode. I’m
[00:09:39] Jeff: Jay, have you, have you finished your inventory of retail therapy?
[00:09:43] Jay: Um, bought, I mean, everything else has been kind of like small purchases, uh, you know, you buy a new 3D printer, that means you gotta buy like 100 worth of filament and, you know, you, you use your sister’s college email address to get a [00:10:00] discount on like all the CAD software,
[00:10:02] Christina: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Jay: so
[00:10:04] Christina: good, good, good for you for having a sister who still has like a working, uh, like college email
[00:10:10] Jay: Oh, she’s still in college.
[00:10:11] Christina: Well, I mean, well, good for you for that, too. Like, my, well, my sister never graduated from college, um, uh, and so, uh, that, I, I can’t, I can’t use that. Um, my, my college email lasted a really long time, and then it stopped working, and I’ve, I’ve, low key, I’ve done, I’ve tried to do the math.
[00:10:27] Christina: I’m sorry to be interrupting, um, your mental health slash therapy, um, uh, corner, uh, retail therapy corner. Sorry. Um, but, um, I’ve done the math a few times and it doesn’t quite work out where I’m like, should I just enroll in a community college class to get the discount on stuff? And then I’m like,
[00:10:43] Brett: So here, here’s good for you for actually paying for software, even if it’s with an EDU discount.
[00:10:50] Christina: agreed.
[00:10:51] Brett: Cause you could probably steal that stuff.
[00:10:53] Jay: Yeah. I mean, a lot of
[00:10:55] Christina: make it harder.
[00:10:57] Jay: I’m just lazy. Like, it’s like, I don’t want to, [00:11:00] and, and the free versions, like they have free versions, but it’s like, okay, if you use like Fusion 360, you can have 10 save files. Like what? Like, that’s stupid. Um,
[00:11:12] Brett: Are there cracks out there for subscription apps?
[00:11:15] Christina: There are, but they’re hard. So this has been like, and Autodesk is notorious about like, and this goes back to the 80s, like this goes back their entire time, like they used to make people use fucking dongles, like special dongles, like through
[00:11:29] Jeff: Pro Tools. Like Pro
[00:11:30] Jay: yeah.
[00:11:31] Christina: yeah.
[00:11:31] Brett: my dad was an engineer and he always had AutoCAD. And yeah, I remember
[00:11:35] Christina: So, so they are like the worst about that stuff. Now, are there ways? Yes. Um, no, I don’t know if you’re using, cause I haven’t used any AutoCAD stuff in, in forever. Um, I’m assuming that Fusion 360 or whatever works on a Mac and on Windows. Usually these cracks only work on Windows, but, um, and, and you have to do things.
[00:11:54] Christina: If you do use it on a Mac, you’ve got to use things like, Oh, what’s the, um, what’s your favorite app that like is, is basically like [00:12:00] the, the network blocker. Um.
[00:12:02] Jay: like,
[00:12:03] Brett: Little Snitch.
[00:12:04] Christina: Yes, yes, yeah, like a little snitch, like if you have like certain, you know, like block lists or whatever for it to go out to the servers, you know, you can get certain things working, but, um, I mean, I haven’t looked into the Autodesk stuff, I assume people have things that if you run it just right will crack, but A, I think that now I’m looking at this, I think like Fusion 360 is largely a web thing, so that would be hard,
[00:12:25] Jay: and it sucks.
[00:12:26] Christina: and it sucks.
[00:12:26] Jay: not even good software.
[00:12:28] Christina: Which does not surprise me in the slightest. But I know with things like Adobe, like, you’re stuck with like one version, and you can’t really get updates until people will release, like, an Atomic update. And the problem is, is that Adobe updates Photoshop, like, Every five seconds and now with the AI stuff, like you, you do kind of want to use the latest version.
[00:12:47] Christina: So good for, again, good for you for just like paying for it. Like I, I, um, I get Creative Cloud through work now, but I have at various times over the years also had my own personal subscription. And even when like work [00:13:00] may or may not have offered it because there were, there were, there were politics with, uh, with Microsoft over like who could get a, a subscription and I
[00:13:08] Brett: back to this conversation
[00:13:09] Christina: Yeah, I was going to say, I’m sure you have thoughts on this too. And so they run like 50 percent discounts from time to time. And I’d be like, yeah, I’ll pay the 30 a month or whatever for creative cloud. Because to your point, Jay, I’m lazy. I’m like, yeah, I could probably find a cracked copy. Um, but, uh, it’s, it’s too much effort.
[00:13:26] Christina: And at this point, like I’m not the poor college student or high school student that I was a million years ago. Although in college I could have used education discounts. So anyway.
[00:13:37] Brett: I have a friend who bought a 3D printer, like, uh, maybe five years ago, back when they cost ten grand, um, and he, like, he, money is not an issue, the dude makes almost seven figures as an independent software developer, and it blows me away, um, and so he, he tried all of the CAD software and [00:14:00] everything, and ended up just, I don’t know what the site is, but he used a web based, yeah.
[00:14:05] Brett: Modeling, System.
[00:14:07] Jay: Sounds like Onshape or something like that.
[00:14:10] Brett: maybe. Yeah, I don’t remember, but yeah, he just found that. And I needed, I needed, uh, an inset. I bought, uh, I’m, I’m gonna shut up. It’s your, it’s your mental health corner. I’m gonna shut up.
[00:14:23] Jay: 3D print health corner. Um, well, the, the one that I wound up settling on is like Shapr3D. And the only reason I, yeah, because the fact that it has an iPad app, I was like, you know, Apple Pencil, you’re doing stuff. I’m not doing anything incredibly complicated. Um, And I mean, I think Fusion 360 was like 1, 500 a year, Shaper, like if, if you have to pay for Shaper, it’s like 300.
[00:14:50] Jay: So it’s like, I mean, it’s the, it’s the better bargain. It is, I mean, they’ll be the first to tell you we’re not 3D printing software, we’re like modeling software. So, you know, you’re going to deal with [00:15:00] some things that suck, but at the end of the day, you just learn to work around it. Um, but anyway, all of that, all of that to say, spending money on stuff, um, it didn’t solve the problem.
[00:15:10] Jay: The, the solution to the problem was, uh, as of this episode coming out, I have given notice that I will be leaving my job. So um, I, I have a new thing lined up already, which is good because I’m not the type that’s just like, obviously I just bought a bunch of a printer and a bunch of software and stuff.
[00:15:30] Jay: So I’m like, I don’t, I don’t have like money that’s saved up or anything. Um, but I want to talk about how mentally Destructive, large corporations are with like exit, like early leaving. So I got a bonus when I joined. There was so much confusion. I mean, there was so much confusion around me moving across the country and whether or not I would take a pay cut.
[00:15:54] Jay: Spoiler alert, I took a pay cut, but like I was [00:16:00] told, okay, you get all your bonus upfront. If you stay for a year, you don’t have to pay it back. And then I was like, okay, cool. It sounds fine. So, I get hired on and they’re like, oh, actually we lied, you’re gonna get half your bonus up front and the rest of it after you’ve been there for a year.
[00:16:18] Jay: Okay, cool. So, now that I’m like, wait a minute, I’ve been here for almost two years, if I leave before the two year mark, do I have to give my entire bonus back? Do I have to give a portion of my bonus back? And like, no one can give me a straight answer. Everyone’s like, oh, we don’t know. Some people are like, maybe you won’t have to do anything.
[00:16:40] Jay: And other people are like, you have to pay your whole bonus. And, and I would put it this way. Like, if they came back to me and said, you’re going to have to pay back your entire bonus, I would have to tell them, can I just not quit? Because you literally would bankrupt me. And that, like, there was a part of me that I, I [00:17:00] negotiated the hell out of my new gig because I, I was like, I am terrified of leaving and having this extremely large company send their goons out to be like, Hey, you owe us this money.
[00:17:15] Jay: It’d be a shame if we had to garnish your wages for a year or
[00:17:18] Brett: You could go on the run. It takes corporations so long to do anything. You could keep, you could stay ahead of them. Just, just hop from
[00:17:26] Jay: Tell them I sent an email and that’ll give me six months.
[00:17:30] Brett: So
[00:17:30] Christina: a message.
[00:17:32] Brett: sidetrack for a second. Um, my benefits for my job include, uh, healthcare as almost all do. And, um, there was this option to set up a separate flex spending account for a dependent. And they refer to my partner as a dependent on when I order like cards. It says. L. Newman, Dependent. So I went ahead and put extra money [00:18:00] aside for L.
[00:18:01] Brett: Newman, my dependent. She tries to use it. I assume all year that it’s coming out of this separate dependent account when she uses her card. And then I noticed at the end of the year that nope, that money hasn’t been touched. I go to HR and they’re like, Oh yeah, dependent FSAs are only for children, which I don’t have.
[00:18:24] Jay: me set it up?
[00:18:25] Brett: So on early December, I said. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, like, this was an honest mistake, can I get this money rolled back over into, like, my HSA or my FSA, whatever, um, and it took them three weeks to tell me. Um, that it was my error and they couldn’t do anything about it, but they were changing my benefits for next year, which I had also already signed up for the, the, when I, when I updated my benefits.
[00:18:57] Brett: Yeah. So they’re like, we canceled that for next year, but [00:19:00] that thousand dollars you set aside, I’m afraid that’s gone. So I, I went through like an appeals process and they said, We’re granting you a one time exception. I’m like, no problem. I’ll never make that mistake again.
[00:19:11] Christina: What assholes. Well, I mean, good for you for going through the appeal process because I, I
[00:19:18] Brett: not nothing.
[00:19:19] Christina: no, you’re not wrong, but I’m like the sort of person who, and, and it’s, it’s awful because I spent my mother, I watched my mother spend like my entire life, like fighting with insurance companies over every last cent.
[00:19:30] Christina: And so I know how to advocate for myself and I know how to do those things. But then I just get so lazy, or, or I just get like so frustrated with the thought of even going through it that I would just probably let it go dumbly, and then I’d be mad at myself for like another year. So, good for you for actually going through it, but also fuck them, and like fuck HR genuinely for not making that very clear because they know that.
[00:19:55] Brett: is so slow and they, I hate, I hate working with HR. [00:20:00] Like I’ll ask every manager, every question I have, and I won’t contact HR until I get down to like, well, you’re going to have to go to HR with this. Cause most of the questions, like people who have been there for 10 years can answer. Um.
[00:20:14] Jay: I ask employees at GitHub questions instead of going to HR. Like, I would much rather just ask, like, a different company. Like, hey, how, how do we do this?
[00:20:24] Brett: I have 2, 400 in bills from, they’re paid, uh, but bills from a therapist that isn’t covered, that doesn’t submit to insurance. Um, and I pay them out of my HSA and that’s fine, but we went to submit all of these bills to, Uh, the insurance company to try to get refunded into my HSA.
[00:20:49] Brett: And they responded with like, basically they said, Oh, these are already paid. They’re not our problem. Um, your plan allows this, but we’re paying 0. So, [00:21:00] so if it weren’t for Elle, um, that would be a dead end. I’d be like, fuck it. But Elle is willing to. If we team up like making, this is actually a good mental health corner right here, but making calls to an insurance company is stressful for both of us.
[00:21:19] Brett: Um, sitting on hold, dealing with, uh, customer service over the phone, um, and dealing with things that we don’t understand and we honestly need help on and they are not, their goal is not to give us money. Their goal is to convince us that we don’t need the money. Um, so it’s a stressful call for both of us, but if we team up, even if I’m just sitting next to them on the couch and, and they make the call, um, it like, it’s a teamwork, it’s like, it’s like a, a group process.
[00:21:54] Brett: And then I’m there to answer questions and stuff, but we both need that. Together, [00:22:00] Elle and I make one functioning adult.
[00:22:04] Jay: Yeah, that’s, uh, shout out, shout out to my latest episode of Conduit, where literally it was called, I Wish I Had a Britney, because I was, like, waxing poetic about, like, oh, all of the stuff that I just struggle to do. Like, my partner just Picks it up and runs with it, and we, we kind of share that same load.
[00:22:23] Jay: And Kathy was just like, I wish I had your partner too. And I was like, well, you know,
[00:22:28] Christina: You’re like, sorry, she’s mine.
[00:22:30] Jay: Yeah, exactly.
[00:22:31] Christina: great. She’s really great. Um,
[00:22:33] Brett: thought, I thought this was a, you were going to go into like work, bitch.
[00:22:38] Christina: Ah, yeah. Haha. Wrong Britney. No, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, uh, uh, you know, um, a stable Britney.
[00:22:47] Jay: But
[00:22:47] Christina: I’m, I’m saying that without judgment, by the way. I’m just being honest.
[00:22:51] Jay: But yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s my corner. I’m, I’m hoping that this, uh. This new thing is going to work out. I, you know, the last time I [00:23:00] was here, we did the DevRel episode and, you know, I am sticking true to like the, the modern meme of DevRel, which is like, you never stay at a job more than two years. Um, I am like, yeah, I, I would love to have some stability.
[00:23:15] Jay: And this next role is a big promotion. Like I want to get into management. I want to be a DevRel manager. I want to like, Make cooler advocates out there and get people to stop doing the stupid shit that they do for no reason other than like, oh, but it’s an OKR. Um, but like, I’m hoping that this, this opportunity kind of laid itself out in front of me and they told me all the things that I wanted to hear without me asking them.
[00:23:43] Jay: Um. So yeah, hopefully I’ll be leading a team in the next couple of years and that’ll actually give me a reason to stick around, you know, a single company for a while. Or, you know, I’ll
[00:23:55] Brett: as long as it’s good. Yeah.
[00:23:57] Jay: you know, or I’ll bounce and do something different, I guess.[00:24:00]
[00:24:00] Jeff: you said in the interview? I
[00:24:02] Jay: Ah, you know,
[00:24:03] Brett: I, uh, I, so I’ve talked before about the manager turnover at my job and, um, I’m
[00:24:12] Jeff: the last update was that there are no managers plus
[00:24:14] Christina: And yeah, and then nobody knew you were
[00:24:15] Jay: yeah.
[00:24:16] Brett: So, so yeah. So what they did was instead of. Filling the manager position because it’s untenable for the VP to have a hundred reports and actually, you know, keep everyone working. Um, but they don’t have headcount, they say, um, even though stock prices are real good. Um, they, they made one team of, one member of my team, a team lead with no pay raise.
[00:24:47] Brett: Just made him kind of like a pro temp manager and it is not like I feel bad for the guy He’s into it, but he’s just [00:25:00] taking on a bunch of responsibility And he’s the one who will have to answer for any failures of the team With no pay raise like that that just does not make sense to me
[00:25:11] Jay: absolutely not. That’s, that’s been, that’s where I like draw the line. And luckily everywhere I’ve worked has realized that, that like, hey, we’re going to ask you to take on all of this extra responsibility. And I’m like, okay, well, how is my compensation going to be adjusted for this, this change in role?
[00:25:27] Jay: Or how is my title and my compensation going to be adjusted? Like I, I refuse to. And I mean, you know, we can wax poetic about, you know, when I started at Microsoft, we weren’t an AI company. Like, we did AI things, but, um, we didn’t have a co pilot button on our keyboards. Um, like, the definition and the, the scope of my job, if I read, like, why they hired me, we don’t do that.
[00:25:56] Jay: So I’m like, oh, well, I mean, you’ve put me in a new job [00:26:00] in any way without changing my role or my pay, well, you changed my pay just for the worse, um, so like, why would I want to stay, other than that my team is super dope, like I love my, my little small team, but like, They get it. They’re like, I wouldn’t blame you.
[00:26:17] Jay: Like, so it sucks, but hopefully brighter things or at least, you know, that ADHD, like, oh, hey, here’s a bunch of new knobs to turn and new processes to learn. And, um, it’ll give me something to like super like hyper focus into for a little bit and we’ll see what happens from there.
[00:26:37] Brett: So you’ve got the depression. You’ve had the depression. Is that, is that related to A DHD and are you doing anything about it other than buying a bunch of shit?
[00:26:48] Jay: Um, is it related to ADHD? I don’t think so because it’s, it’s one of those, well, maybe it’s one of those weird situations where like everything in my life [00:27:00] is getting better, but yet mentally I’m challenged, you know, and, you know, see the last time I was on the episode, we talked about, you know, some of those things of just being Being in a different tax bracket, um, has done a number on me, but I’m, I’m making peace with that.
[00:27:17] Jay: And now it’s like, okay, wait, the way things are lined up, I should be able to pay off my house in five years. And if I can do that, like, Before I’m 40, I’ll be debt free, uh, like, cars paid off, houses paid off, all we’ll have is our monthly bills. I can literally do whatever the fuck I want at that point.
[00:27:36] Jay: Like, I can go, you know, teach seals in Alaska Python if I wanted to. Like, it would be fine because the bills are paid. But like, it’s, it’s weird that I’m being challenged at work, I’m learning new things, I’m, I’m in a very healthy [00:28:00] spot. The things that I’m asking for, I’m getting. And it’s not enough, it’s, it’s not doing
[00:28:05] Brett: Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think that this is related to your career or your paycheck or anything. I think there’s probably like an actual. Like depression, which is, you know, a, uh, a diagnosable thing. So are, do you go to therapy? Do you take medication? Do you do anything?
[00:28:27] Jay: I lost my therapist when I moved, cause he’s not licensed, so, in the state, so now, I haven’t looked for a new one, um, and I definitely haven’t looked for, a new psychiatrist because the last one just I’m still reeling from getting burned for my last psychiatrist. Um, but I, I should, I don’t want to say I should grow up on that, but I probably should make better decisions
[00:28:53] Brett: You should get a Brittany.
[00:28:55] Jay: I should get a Brittany. Yeah.
[00:28:57] Brett: Yeah. That will get you, get you an appointment with a [00:29:00] psychiatrist and take your existing diagnoses. And because I mean, retail therapy, you can afford it. It’s not going to kill you. Um. And it’s not, as you said, effective. Like it didn’t, it didn’t change anything. And the new job and the new, the excitement of like, uh, uh, pay raise and everything didn’t do anything.
[00:29:22] Brett: So I think there’s something else going on.
[00:29:24] Jay: I, I, and I think the, the problem with that is that it’s like, It’s one thing like bleeding into another. Like yeah, you’re right, I could afford the retail therapy, but to, to be transparent, you know, to make six figures and live check to check
[00:29:39] Christina: Mhm.
[00:29:40] Jay: in a, in a state that it is relatively inexpensive to live in.
[00:29:43] Jay: Like it takes 20 to fill up my car. Like, like gas is dirt. Like I don’t, I don’t, I kind of don’t want an electric vehicle just because I don’t want to spend the extra money. Like it would be more expensive. Um, and I know that that’s. Maybe ruthless, but [00:30:00] also, hey, it’s, it’s the reality of it. So it’s like all of these things are happening in a, in a position where like, I, we should be better.
[00:30:08] Jay: I should be better. And I feel like part of it is my fault and I’m like going in, Hey, I’m going to make more money now. And it’s like, okay, but yeah, that’s great. But if the problem isn’t solved, you’re still going to be making more money and still living. Living like you do. So it’s, I don’t know. You’re right.
[00:30:23] Jay: I should definitely talk to someone about it. That’s why, again, I’m glad that uh, Jeff gave me the link to show up every Saturday.
[00:30:32] Brett: Yeah, man, you’re doing, you’re doing so well. Like your career is blossoming. You’re, you’re doing exactly what you want to do. And it sucks that you would have to deal with depression in addition to all that success. So yeah, do something about
[00:30:50] Christina: about it. But I think the encouraging thing there I would say is like, at least for me it’s encouraging, uh, for some people it might not be, but for me it’s encouraging when I can realize that the depression [00:31:00] is not situational, that it’s not based on the things going on in my life, that, hey, this is something that, that I, that I don’t have any control over.
[00:31:06] Christina: This is not like a, you know, everything in my life is going great, so why do I feel like shit? Well, you know, Because something is wrong with my brain and that’s not on me. And so this is a real medical problem and I can talk to somebody and get it fixed. It’s, it’s a lot more difficult in some cases when it’s like, oh, well, all these terrible things are happening.
[00:31:24] Christina: And that’s also making me feel like shit because I can’t control, I can’t control any of that, right? And even though I can’t control my, my, you know, biochemistry and, and make my, you know, like, uh, neurotransmitters, you know, produce endorphins and, and Things like that the right way, serotonin levels, all that shit.
[00:31:40] Christina: Like, I can’t, I can’t physically, you know, make my, my brain work right. I can at least have control of saying, okay, well, I’m going to find a psychiatrist who will listen. I am going to find a therapist. I am going to find someplace to get a solution because I know that there’s a solution to this problem.
[00:31:56] Christina: Whereas if it’s, you know, um, I, I don’t, uh, [00:32:00] make enough money or I’m unemployed or someone has died or, you know, other terrible things are happening. That, you could be at a complete loss for, for how to deal with, so, I don’t know. Plus one with what Brett said, anyway.
[00:32:15] Brett: All right. Uh, do either of you want to go next?
[00:32:20] Jay: Go Jeff. I want to hear from Jeff. I never get to talk to Jeff.
[00:32:26] Jeff: Um, man, let’s see. I had a thought, a couple thoughts coming into this and they’re like, they’ve kind of left me, I mean, to stay on the theme of this episode, which is like the water cooler, like talking about, uh, work and professional stuff. Um, I’m definitely trying to figure out, I, you know, I’m, uh, I work for this, I’m part owner of this research and evaluation collaborative in Minneapolis.
[00:32:53] Jeff: Um, which sounds really dull, but we do really awesome and
[00:32:59] Brett: not sound
[00:32:59] Jay: [00:33:00] I’ll say, pause that.
[00:33:01] Brett: Yeah,
[00:33:01] Jay: Jeff, do you let people work remotely? Because again, house paid off. I, I want to go do
[00:33:09] Jeff: we only work remotely. We had an office, um, before the, uh, pandemic that we really barely used and, uh, ditched it and never went back. Um, and, uh, But anyway, like I, so for, so I’ve been there for 10 years, um, came straight out of journalism into this work and, and have really loved it and have loved, uh, being like a member owner of a cooperative.
[00:33:34] Jeff: Um, there’s nine of us and it’s, uh, we’ve been able to, we’ve, we’ve gone from We literally borrowed our bylaws from grocery co ops in the beginning because there were like three of us and we had two contracts and it was just like, let’s just get it going. Um, and, and now we have, you know, we have professional development budgets and PTO and health insurance and all of the stuff we’ve been able to kind of start creating for ourselves and [00:34:00] for other members who, you know, may eventually come on and employees and stuff.
[00:34:03] Jeff: And that’s been amazing. And I can’t imagine ever. Leaving, I also can’t, I knew this when I left public radio, which was my last journalism job, like I can’t go back to an office. I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand how much time is, is just lost and wasted, uh, on things that would otherwise not even come into your life.
[00:34:23] Jeff: Um, if you were working from home, which most of us do now. Um, but, uh, until last year, I’ve only worked large contracts that are multi year projects and, um, It’s, it’s close to having salary. It’s like a very guaranteed amount of money for, uh, it’s hourly, but it’s a guaranteed, you know, at least baseline of money for, for, you know, two, three years.
[00:34:47] Jeff: And, um, and that my last, the last of my kind of large projects ended, um, last year, and I’m now doing multiple projects that are. smaller, they’re shorter [00:35:00] in, um, in, uh, duration, uh, and they don’t pay, I mean, they don’t pay as much, um, which like even the ones that pay the rate I’m used to getting, it’s like, they’re over so fast that I might have just, I just have a weird balance of income.
[00:35:18] Jeff: That’s making it really hard to budget, especially as we’re sending one kid off to college and paying a bunch for that. Um, and so I have been like super stressed because I, the hardest thing to adjust to in that case, I mean, the, the not being able to budget is really hard, like really hard and frustrating in work.
[00:35:38] Jeff: What’s hard is, um, I do qualitative analysis. I mean, you do a lot of stuff, but, and I do a lot of data work. Like I’ll do a lot of data cleaning in order to, and I’ll build like custom data sets and do records requests when it’s, uh, when it makes sense for a project and all that stuff is slow work. And, um, The projects that I’m on now just don’t have the budget for slow work, and the slow work is how you [00:36:00] do the good work, especially, I mean, the kind of work that I’m really interested in, I work with people that are more trained as evaluators, or a couple of them come from more sort of, um, like health data backgrounds and stuff like that, but I’m, I’m, I come from, I mean, this is what I was in journalism too, is I, I love nothing more than creating journalism.
[00:36:18] Jeff: Gathering up enough data or stories in one area that I feel like I can say something that hasn’t been said, or I can reflect an experience that hasn’t quite been reflected that way, or kind of, um, curate, you know, experiences in a way that is, um, you know, like one goal for me always is not to ever tell people’s stories, if I’m in the position of doing that at all, and I try not to be telling people’s stories, but to work with with people’s stories, like in the case of qualitative data, in a way that, um, That really kind of honors them and their story and, and doesn’t do the thing that journalism does all the time, which is cut them out of the meaning making the second you hang up the phone [00:37:00] or leave their house.
[00:37:01] Jeff: Um, I love doing that kind of work. Uh, and I love creating, you know, databases that didn’t exist, like taking pieces of data, um, or data sources and, and like mashing it together in a way that’s very careful, but ultimately, and ultimately allows me or us to kind of show something that otherwise isn’t. You can’t really see.
[00:37:23] Jeff: I love doing that. That is super slow work. And they’re just, it’s been really frustrating for me because the initial part of my learning process was just to still do the slow work and then realize I had burned through my budget. And I wasn’t even at the point where we’re writing or whatever else. And that’s been really annoying.
[00:37:41] Jeff: Um.
[00:37:42] Brett: Because you paid, you paid me for too much shit.
[00:37:45] Jeff: No, that project, that project was never a problem that no, no, no, no, no, we are talking about the dream days when I was on a project that had like a practically limitless budget. And we could, and what was beautiful about that is you and I, me and [00:38:00] the rest of the team, we built things like we built things to do this work that are benefiting the work I do now.
[00:38:05] Jeff: It was amazing. I had time to be slow time to experiment. Yeah. Too much time to be slow, but that’s okay. Cause that’s like how I build things. If I don’t have a lot of time and I can’t go kind of annoyingly slow, I don’t come out with something. I just come out with the same shit that anyone would have come out with.
[00:38:23] Jeff: And, um, and, uh, so anyway, I’m just really, I’m struggling. There’s a lot of stress for me with both the money part being inconsistent and they’re not being like a guarantee. Like I I’m in a situation right now where it’s like, I got a couple of projects that if they come through, I’m fine. And if they don’t come through, I’m kind of fucked.
[00:38:41] Jeff: And I haven’t been in that situation in a really long time. I had three salaried jobs before I switched to Terraluna. Um, and I’ve had really sweet project budgets ever since then. Um, so that’s just like, you know, everything’s stable in terms of like, you know, why my health insurance doesn’t come through Terraluna, but like health insurance [00:39:00] comes through my wife and that’s stable and our finances are like, basically sit, you know, we have savings, like whatever it’s that stuff is okay.
[00:39:07] Jeff: Um, but I don’t. I start to get kind of mixed up and turn over on myself when I have to do that much sort of context switching while also worrying.
[00:39:19] Brett: Yeah,
[00:39:20] Jeff: um, and I already can kind of get turned around on myself just in how I kind of hold and manage files, even though I have systems that are basically Sound.
[00:39:30] Jeff: I mean, I do everything in text files, which means even if it’s not organized, I can find it extremely easily. And I can, you know what I mean? Like I can, but, um, but yeah, I’m just having a lot of stress around the, the kind of my context being changed so dramatically and it taking me. Six months to figure it out, and the figuring it out being kind of painful.
[00:39:51] Jeff: That’s kind of where, what I’m like, and I’ve just got headaches all the time, and like, I’m not sleeping well, and it’s other things contributing to that, but it’s, [00:40:00] it’s just like a, a time I’m looking forward to get, getting past, basically. Then add into that a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver generally, like , you know, like I feel like when I deliver, it’s always received well and I do feel like I deliver things that are unique and, and come from my very weird set of experiences, both life and professionally.
[00:40:22] Jeff: But man, the under delivering is real. Also something you don’t say in job interviews. But I don’t expect to have, I don’t expect to have any of those. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me.
[00:40:34] Brett: I feel like, go ahead Jay.
[00:40:36] Jay: I think it’s interesting that, like, one, everybody on this podcast, like, does long, slow projects, and does them well. Like, I mean, Christina, I’m not even going to talk about how you had me in tears, like, just from the last few weeks with Rocket, and, like, The download’s been going on through [00:41:00] multiple employers and like, I see you do stuff with longevity and it’s dope.
[00:41:07] Jay: And I mean, Brett, you’ve been, I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep, I’ve, I have software projects that are like five years old and I’m just like, what is this mess? And you’re, you’re like, Oh, that’s cute. Like, you know, we’re over a decade on how, how Mark’s been around for how long
[00:41:26] Brett: Over a decade. Yeah.
[00:41:27] Jeff: yeah.
[00:41:30] Jay: and even with like some of my work projects, like, I, I like the six month, eight month projects that are like, okay, we’re going to take our time with this, and we’re going to come out and we’re going to swing, and when we swing, it’s going to do numbers that no one has seen come from our team before, and it’s It’s hard when right now everything is being, you know, preached about faster.
[00:41:55] Jay: Like, do this faster. Like, oh, AI is going to make everything faster. It’s the [00:42:00] same work, but better and faster, da da da. Well, it’s the same work, but mid and, you know, five times as fast. So for me, like, I feel like we’re in this position where there’s a lot of just the way that we do things, the way that we tinker, the way that we really invest ourselves in the work that we do.
[00:42:18] Jay: I do feel like it’s getting attacked a little
[00:42:21] Jeff: Mmm. Heh,
[00:42:21] Jay: And
[00:42:22] Jeff: heh heh heh
[00:42:23] Jay: I don’t think that, I definitely don’t think that we’ve been obsoleted because I’ve seen that work. It’s garbage. But like I think I’m waiting for the rest of the world to realize, like, hey, you need someone that is methodical, takes their time on something, has a long standing relationship, has understood why things are, work the way that they do, that goes beyond the knowledge.
[00:42:52] Jay: It’s there. It’s, it’s the experience, it’s the wisdom that comes with it. And I think that’s something that, you know, it’s, I think we’ll get back to it. [00:43:00] And I think when we do, I think everybody, you know, on this show will be slightly happier with the work that they have to do on a regular basis.
[00:43:10] Brett: Yeah, I’m, I’m not looking forward to a day where my job is just basically coming up with chat GPT, uh, prompts.
[00:43:20] Christina: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that I I think that you’re right, Jay. Like, I think that there will be a natural kind of move back, um, once the, um, I guess the, the fervor and the excitement is, is over a little bit. Right. Like, I think that’s one of those things where people will be like, okay, well, like, you know, we’re, we’re a little bit like, uh, we have a little bit like better understanding now of like what things really are.
[00:43:44] Christina: And so we’re not going to be as, um, um, like gung ho about things the way that we are now. There will be a balance back. And I think that’ll be good. I think that there is probably going to be like a real profound change in some of the things that we do with automation or [00:44:00] AI. Really, that’s what it is.
[00:44:01] Christina: It’s automation, you know, it’s more than it is. actual artificial intelligence. Um, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to find a balance because, yeah, like I, I don’t mind doing some prompt engineering, um, because that can be fun and a fun challenge. But yeah, I, I wouldn’t want that to be my entire day either.
[00:44:16] Christina: Like that, that’s, that’s depressing. But I also think that there’s like this opportunity, and this is the sort of thing where I think that, uh, especially people who do what you do, um, uh, Jeff, are in a really interesting position because there will be this, like, call for like, you know, the, like, artisanal non GPT, you know, type of, of long form investigations and, and, and data stuff, right?
[00:44:42] Christina: Like, there is going to be, it’s not going to be as big as it was to be very clear, uh, but there is going to be like, uh, uh, I guess like a demand out there for people who have skills that are not in any way the product of automation. And, and, uh, [00:45:00] and there’s going to be almost like a way you can almost sell it.
[00:45:01] Christina: It’s like, Oh, I’m a real writer. I’m writing this for you. You know, like, like this is, this is like grain free and, and organic and, and, you know, fed by whatever, like this is. This is, this is the real writing, right? This is, this isn’t any of that chat GPT, you know, fortified bullshit. Like this is, this is the real stuff.
[00:45:18] Christina: Um, I think that there’s, there’s definitely going to be like a, um, a demand for that. Um, the problem is, is frankly, uh, for some people who are. Never that good to begin with, and some people who were good, to be clear, like it’s not going to be just the, the bad people who get, or not bad, but I guess mid people who get impacted by this.
[00:45:35] Christina: And I’m aware of that, but is that the demand for the really good shit is going to be a lot smaller and that’s, that’s unfortunate. But I do feel like the stuff that you do, Jeff, has real value and I’m, I’m hopeful that that will come back. Not so much in vogue, but the people will be like very clearly aware, like, oh yeah.
[00:45:53] Christina: Like, that’s, that’s what we want to actually pay more money for, because it has more cachet now, even than it did before, [00:46:00] because we can differentiate it as being like, Oh no, see, this wasn’t done with any of, of those fancy tools that, that you don’t know if you can trust or not. This was, this was done by a real reporter and a real
[00:46:09] Jeff: Or, or even like, let our, pay us to let our brains decide how to use things like ChatGBT,
[00:46:15] Christina: I mean, I think that’s the, that’s the ideal thing, I think, honestly.
[00:46:18] Jeff: yeah, that is the ideal thing, because I mean, I certainly work it in at this point in ways that, um, it’s just like, I mean, we don’t have to go into this because we all know this, but it’s just like, it’s so much about how you use it, how you, how you approach it, how you, you know, treat what comes out of it, but like,
[00:46:34] Brett: That’s, that’s the key right there. How you treat what
[00:46:36] Jeff: And I, and I guess to that end, like, I do bring my, you know, decades as a reporter and a decade now as a researcher, like I bring that, I bring all of those, all that skepticism, all that kind of, you know, fact checking instinct, all that stuff to it, right?
[00:46:53] Jeff: And, and that’s something we all probably have as a real advantage over somebody who’s trying to use it for their work and going, [00:47:00] WHAT?! And then maybe gets burned. Um.
[00:47:03] Jay: think that’s the thing that’s going to get lost though. Like, I mean, I spent this entire week working on open telemetry and it’s like, I knew what open telemetry was, but I had never like played around with it. And in the moment I was like, okay. And if, if I do exactly what A, ChadGPT asked me to do, what Copilot asked me to do, because I’m working with a brand new product, it’s not going to work.
[00:47:30] Jay: And it became a challenge of like taking what I know, understanding what I know about like Python as a programming language, what I understand about OpenTelemetry as a concept, and then what I know about like our cloud infrastructure and saying, okay. I can take these pieces and make sense out of them, but When I went back to the PM, the PM was like, Oh, so how was it?
[00:47:56] Jay: I was like, Oh, it was absolutely horrendous. And here are the five reasons [00:48:00] why. And they were like, Oh, well, if you’re a new user, you’re not going to deal with that. And I said, Oh, you will when you’ve invested 15, 000 a month into some product and it’s not working. And you don’t know why it’s not working because there is no prompt for this thing that’s brand new.
[00:48:21] Jay: There is, and like, You know, it’s fun because for us, we get to yell and we get to say, Hey, this big company could pull out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because someone decided, Oh, let’s just stick with, you know, prompt engineering as the solution, instead of saying, let’s work with someone who has foundational knowledge.
[00:48:41] Jay: The foundational knowledge is just going to slowly dwindle, especially as the people who have that knowledge are just like, I’m over this,
[00:48:49] Brett: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a matter. So like there are two types of articles we write for Jeff. I know you need to go soon.
[00:48:56] Jeff: I don’t actually, my and by the way, everybody, my son’s [00:49:00] taking his driver’s test and I thought I had to dig up some documents, but they have been found.
[00:49:04] Christina: Yay!
[00:49:06] Brett: So how long do
[00:49:07] Christina: also, also good luck, um, to him on his driver’s test. Hope he does better
[00:49:10] Jeff: yes! I can go till we’re done.
[00:49:12] Brett: Okay. So, um, I have found in my job, there are two types of, uh, content we can produce. One is in depth experience based, um, conversational style content to. Help developers get into a new ecosystem. The other is SEO content and SEO content. Absolutely. Why not write it with chat GPT? Um, you just got to fit in a bunch of keywords and you can literally tell chat G word, get chat GPT, like use this word a bunch of times, use, use variations of this word a bunch of times, and it’ll do it.
[00:49:54] Brett: And like that SEO
[00:49:55] Jeff: 2006 all over again!
[00:49:58] Brett: I have been sent, I have [00:50:00] been sent SEO content for editing, and I have asked myself, who would write this, and I found out, oh, of course it was AI generated, um,
[00:50:12] Jeff: ever start at, like, um, okay, you are the blood pulsing through Danny Sullivan’s veins. Now write me this text.
[00:50:21] Brett: I, uh, I’m not, but, yeah, like, there, there, I think there will always be a place for those, for people, like, your journalism background, Jeff. Like, I, I feel like that’s a fallback. If, if something goes wrong and you find yourself screwed, you, you are a valuable
[00:50:39] Jeff: am not, that is
[00:50:41] Brett: I think you are.
[00:50:42] Jeff: not a fallback. No one’s knocking on my door. It’s been 10 years. Yeah, it’s not a
[00:50:48] Brett: feel like, I feel like you could show your, your history, your work, like even your Taraluna work, to me, lends you credibility as someone who can speak on, [00:51:00] uh, topics of justice,
[00:51:02] Jeff: I mean, the biggest problem is that, and I’m being completely serious here, I’m not just, uh, this isn’t performative. The biggest problem is that I think that, um, I think that journalism doesn’t need more white guys, uh, uh, who are 40 and over or period. And so, and I think newsrooms are finally,
[00:51:18] Jay: stop them from
[00:51:19] Brett: yeah, exactly.
[00:51:20] Jay: have them, they might as well have the
[00:51:22] Brett: not going to change the demographic of the New York
[00:51:25] Jeff: and I was this guy only once and it was my last job that when I got in I was like, oh, it was down to two people, and it’s me. And I found that out like months in, and it’s public radio which is awful. Well, not awful at this shit for the most part anymore, but Minnesota Public Radio has been.
[00:51:40] Jeff: And I, that did actually make you feel like it. I just don’t even want to like, Yeah, I don’t, I don’t want to, I just don’t want to be part of that because I can’t stand most of the white men I’ve worked with in journalism.
[00:51:53] Brett: Fair
[00:51:53] Jeff: I don’t want to be part of the posse. I mean, I, just a quick aside, like, I, I mean, [00:52:00] truly, I have pictures of my My teams over the years and all this stuff, like I was just, I just found a picture of the editorial team at Utne Reader.
[00:52:07] Jeff: And it’s like, man, we went so long where it could just be a room full of white people and no one ever even fucking, it didn’t occur to them. It occurred to me, but it didn’t, I didn’t change it. I wasn’t hiring anybody, but still I didn’t do anything. Right. Like, and, uh, and so I just, I, I almost don’t. It’s a weird thing to say, because I’m not saying like, obviously I’d be picked.
[00:52:30] Jeff: That’s not the point at all. It’s just like, I’d like to just stay out of the way. Um, and, and at Terra Luna, I can stay out of the way. I’m largely on teams that are mostly not white. Um, and, and that’s been. Like, that’s just been amazing. And, uh, so anyway, it’s an incoherent, uh, response to your thing. But also I just want to really clear, no one’s knocking at my door.
[00:52:52] Jeff: I did have a former, a student, someone, someone who’s in the class I co taught at the U of M where they didn’t know, I didn’t have my high school diploma, [00:53:00] um, on investigative journalism and she’s now at ProPublica. And, and, and it came around to where she called me, uh, and I almost got to hire her for something.
[00:53:09] Jeff: And I was like, it feels good to have a ProPublica journalist come around and be like, hey. Um, anyway, that’s, sorry. I, this is going to be the most like, um, it’s like the mental health part of mental health corner is like whack a mole. It’s like, it pops up. This is all fine. I think it pops up. Then we go over here, pops up, go over here.
[00:53:27] Jeff: So I just took us over here. Sorry. Okay. Okay.
[00:53:31] Brett: Um, before, before Christina and I vie for who goes next, I’m going to sneak in a couple of sponsor spots.
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[00:57:05] Mental Health Corner Part 2
[00:57:05] Brett: All right. So, Christina, do you have a mental health corner?
[00:57:09] Christina: Yeah, I guess. I mean, um, I don’t have anything really, I guess, that pressing. Um, I’m going through some weird health stuff that I have to go back and get more blood work done on. And that was causing me more distress last week than it is now. Now I think I’ve kind of like calmed down a little bit about it, but that’s always like one of those things when you have like actual like physical health symptoms and you’re like, okay, what the fuck is going on?
[00:57:31] Christina: Um, because then your brain goes into a million different places. Uh, I don’t think that it was helped by the fact that, um, a guy I used to work with, an incredible, incredible editor, Tom Skosha, wrote this amazing thing for New York Magazine about trying to figure out, uh, why his body has been eating itself.
[00:57:48] Christina: And there was no conclusion, which was terrifying. Uh, but also Tom was an incredible writer. And so, uh, reading that was Anyway, it [00:58:00] brought up a lot of feelings for a lot of things. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, I’ve just had some, some health stuff going on, trying to figure out like why I’ve been losing weight and losing hair.
[00:58:08] Christina: And uh, so far my blood work is completely normal. So I’m going back and getting more blood work done. Yay. Love to spend the beginning of the year doing that stuff. Um, but no, but otherwise it’s really, really cold right now and, and kind of gray. And so that isn’t great for Mental health, but at the same time I think I’m doing alright.
[00:58:27] Christina: So, just trying to kind of get back into things. Um, I completely, like, I, I understand, like, the, all to, like, the, the stresses behind, like, all the things you’re trying to do around your job, and trying to figure out, okay, what is, um, my role and, and what is required of me, and is this, this sort of thing that I want to actually doing and things like that.
[00:58:50] Christina: I’m, I’m fortunate that I’m, I’m in a good position right now, but I definitely know what it’s like to go through kind of those stressors of like, okay, is this giant company going to fuck me over? And, [00:59:00] um, you know, uh, there were layoffs in the tech industry this week, which, um,
[00:59:06] Brett: Yeah.
[00:59:06] Jeff: all.
[00:59:07] Christina: I mean, that’s the thing.
[00:59:08] Christina: It’s like, for some of us, not all of us, but some of us, like we left, like Brett and I definitely, like we left doing like more indie, like me journalism, him being like a sole proprietor. Like we went to big tech for the stability and then the stability is gone and we’re like, fuck, I’m like, man, I’m, I’m too late on all this stuff.
[00:59:26] Christina: Like, right. Like I should have gone to tech. Like five or six years before, and frankly, I should do what, what, uh, Jay does and like leave every two years. I would make a lot more money if, um, I didn’t have my perverse sense of both loyalty and fear that like, no one will ever hire me again, which is a real thing that I do actually think I’m like, no one will ever hire me.
[00:59:44] Jeff: Oh, I feel that.
[00:59:45] Christina: Which, which I know is completely irrational, but at the same time it is one of those things that I feel, like,
[00:59:49] Brett: It is irrational. Like, I can, I can validate, you are, uh, extremely hireable. Like, you have a future, but I understand, [01:00:00] like, I, I think that’s true about me too, but, like, I understand that feeling of, like, well, if I don’t keep this job, nobody else will want me.
[01:00:09] Christina: Absolutely.
[01:00:10] Jay: It took people messaging me saying, Hey, I want you to work with me before I did that. And for the record, I’m trying to stay in a company longer than two years. I just I just haven’t been able to yet. Um, I, I am, I get terrified. I’ve been like you and Jeff, like losing sleep, hair falling out. Like it, it is not, I, I know that it is definitely time to go, but I’m like desperately trying to find the right thing.
[01:00:41] Christina: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, but I think that’s actually great, like, when you know that it’s time to go someplace. Like, I think that’s actually great. Like, I think the harder thing is actually when you know it’s time to go and you stay anyway. And I’ve done that. Um, uh, frankly, I did that at Microsoft probably my entire last year there.
[01:00:58] Christina: And that was, in [01:01:00] retrospect, like I, I should have taken some jobs from other places that I would not have been happy, but made more money and then, um, made the move to GitHub. Like that’s, that’s what I should have done. So like, I, I really, really, um, am proud of you for recognizing that it’s time to go. And also, even though it’s hard and even though it can be scary, but also finding another place, you know, to go.
[01:01:19] Christina: Um. Because I also know from past experience that even if the place you go isn’t like the ultimate place, like getting out of a situation that you need to get out of is a really good thing. So, um, but sorry, go on.
[01:01:33] Brett: No, I’m, I’m just curious about the losing hair
[01:01:36] Christina: Oh yeah, that I have no idea. Like that is not, I, cause I haven’t been under stress and I’m not really sure. Like my, my stylist was the first one who mentioned it. And then like last week actually,
[01:01:47] Brett: it’s not like clumps falling on the shower.
[01:01:49] Christina: no, it is.
[01:01:50] Brett: Oh, it is. Oh, that’s scary.
[01:01:52] Christina: Yeah, exactly. And that was what started last week. And so I was like, Oh, fuck. Like actually last Saturday.
[01:01:58] Christina: And I was like, [01:02:00] oh fuck. Um, like, like I had like clumps of hair falling out and I was like, this is, this is not good. Like I, like more hair than usual. I’ve been noticing, you know, maybe it had fallen out, but like it wasn’t clumps and then clumps started and I was like, oh, this is a problem. So I immediately went in on Monday and got blood work done and it was completely normal.
[01:02:18] Christina: And so she’s ordered more blood
[01:02:20] Brett: the worst.
[01:02:21] Christina: Yeah.
[01:02:22] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:02:23] Brett: when
[01:02:25] Jeff: terrible, but completely normal isn’t nice.
[01:02:28] Brett: debugging a problem with a customer, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that I can’t replicate the issue because I have no way to solve it then. And like going in and getting perfect blood work. Yeah, that just leads to like, well then what the fuck?
[01:02:45] Christina: No, exactly. And so she’s ordered like a whole, um, a battery of other, uh, labs for me and I don’t know, I’ll have to call I guess tomorrow or not tomorrow, um, uh, Monday and see if they’re open on, on, uh, Martin Luther King Day or [01:03:00] not, I would think they would be, but you never know. Um, so one, one of the benefits that we get from our insurance, although I’ve got to check on this because they changed hospital affiliations, but either they’re, Their system didn’t update it with the insurance company or the insurance company didn’t update it because when I went into, like, after I’d had my appointment and had my blood work done at the one medical office, they were like, did you change your insurance?
[01:03:25] Christina: Cause it’s showing inactive. And I’m like, nope. And everything looked fine. And then they’re like, yeah, well, we just changed hospital affiliations. And I was like, huh? So I contacted the insurance company and I was like, Are you still covering this? They’re like, yeah, that’s still showing, you know, this, this office is still within network.
[01:03:42] Christina: And I was like, okay, but the affiliation you have listed is wrong. They’re like, yeah, well then they have to update it in their system. And I’m like, they say you have to update it in yours. And, and I was like, well, so I guess I just have to wait to see if you approve the claim. And then I have to like.
[01:03:56] Christina: Fight it otherwise. And she was basically like, yeah. [01:04:00] So that’s, that’s fun. Um, the good news is, is that the hospital that they moved to is also covered under my insurance. So in theory it should be fine. It’s just one of those like additional things. But I was going to say like, uh, I don’t know if any of you ever used one medical, but it’s, um, unfortunately Amazon owns it now, but it is.
[01:04:21] Christina: Very useful. It’s kind of like a, if you are in a city that has it and, um, uh, Jay, I think you’re the only one who might be, it basically have a bunch of primary, um, care clinics and you could make like appointments relatively quickly with people. Um, and you could go to providers, um, at any location, but they also have onsite labs.
[01:04:41] Christina: So if you get lab from, Like, order from anyone, you can go there during their lab hours and just get your labs done. And it’s very convenient and very nice. So it’s, it’s a lot, it’s kind of like adding, you know, I, I guess I’ve never had an HMO, but I guess kind of like an HMO type of thing to people [01:05:00] who are.
[01:05:00] Christina: Not on HMOs. So, um, I, I don’t know if their lab will be open on Monday or not, but if they, they are, then I’ll, I’ll go. Otherwise I’ll go on Tuesday. But yeah, I’ll keep you guys updated on, on, on what I find out.
[01:05:15] Brett: yeah, please do. Oh, man. Alright, so, you guys, multiple people on this podcast have mentioned not sleeping well.
[01:05:27] Christina: Mm hmm.
[01:05:28] Brett: Um, Jeff, Jay, how are you sleeping,
[01:05:32] Christina: Oh, I never sleep well.
[01:05:36] Brett: What do you, what do you average per night? What’s your average sleep?
[01:05:39] Christina: I mean, I don’t know because it varies. So, because a lot of times I won’t go to bed until like four or five o’clock in the morning and then I’ll get up at like 830.
[01:05:46] Brett: Holy shit.
[01:05:47] Christina: Yeah.
[01:05:48] Brett: Oh, shit. Oh, so, so you’re dexedrine fueled and, uh, diet coke and dexedrine and that’s how you get through a day?
[01:05:56] Christina: Yeah, basically.
[01:05:58] Brett: Oh, man, I do best [01:06:00] when I have, um, like nine hours of sleep. Um, and for the last month, I guess? I have been an insomniac, not manic. Like, when I’m manic, I get up, I code, I, like, I surf the web, like, I do things.
[01:06:20] Brett: And right now, I just lay in bed awake wishing I was asleep, uh, four hours at a time, and I listen to audiobooks, and Uh, will eventually drift off, but more nights than not, I’ve been getting three to four hours of sleep a night, and it is It’s frustrating. Really dragging me down. Um, I slept the last couple nights, but I’m kind of wondering if this isn’t some kind of more bipolar type one, um, where I’m like hypomanic for an [01:07:00] extended period of time, but like, I’m super tired when I’m manic.
[01:07:04] Jeff: it.
[01:07:05] Brett: When I manic, I can just like for three or four days, I can do anything on zero sleep. Um, and I can just, I can rock everything until like day three when it really catches up with me. But, uh, what’s going on right now is this extended period of insomnia. That’s kind of, it’s driving me nuts. I’m doing Everything I can.
[01:07:30] Brett: I’m doing all the tricks I use to cut Manic episodes short. I’m doing, uh, this, like, mineral, uh, Mintran, it’s called. It’s like mineral tranquilizers, plus melatonin, plus my meds, which generally knock me right the fuck out. And I’m doing, uh, sleeping pills too, like Unisom kind of sleeping pills. And none of it keeps me, like, I’ll fall asleep right away and I’ll [01:08:00] wake up by like midnight.
[01:08:02] Brett: And then I’m just up and I don’t, I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s, it’s really wearing me down last night though. Last night I slept my a good nine hours and that’s why I’m able to do the podcast today. Um, but yeah, that’s wearing me down. However, you may have noticed the, the beautiful color of the lighting behind me
[01:08:27] Jeff: know, it really makes a difference.
[01:08:30] Brett: It does. And I can change it to like all kinds of different,
[01:08:35] Jeff: Blood
[01:08:35] Brett: um, coloration. I can even set it to like flash with sound in the
[01:08:41] Jeff: stop that, please. I didn’t sleep last night, I can’t handle that.
[01:08:47] Brett: um, but I have found that, so I bought a bunch of Govee lighting, G O V E E, and it’s cheaper than trying to buy like hue products or anything.
[01:08:59] Jay: And it’s more [01:09:00] reliable than HomeKit.
[01:09:01] Brett: yeah. Yeah, well, I use, I use it with Alexa and I get a certain amount of automation, but most of it I do through the app, um, where I can, like, I have time settings where I can walk into my office early morning.
[01:09:15] Brett: It’s, it’s a color setting I created called Fire, where all of the lights are red at the bottom, up through yellow, and then white on top. And it creates this like, um, it’s like being in hell, but also very comfortable. Um, and like, and then like noontime it switches into work mode, which is what I have going now, which is basically like daylight blue lighting.
[01:09:42] Brett: And I used to think I just needed my office brighter and brighter. Cause I love, I love, I love designing lighting for a room. And I like to make every room feel the way it’s supposed to feel. And, like, around my house, I have archways that [01:10:00] are all covered in, uh, warm, white Christmas lights. Because those make me feel comfortable.
[01:10:07] Brett: Those make me feel cozy. Um, and I have those all automated on my phone. I can turn them all off and all on at once. Uh, but I never had a room that I could completely control the color. And so you can see behind me, I have like a wall light, uh, on each side, I have a floor lamp and behind my desk, I have wall lighting and like this whole room can just change based on my mood and based on what I need.
[01:10:39] Brett: And it has actually been amazing for my mental health and my productivity. Uh, it costs maybe, I think I spent about 400, uh, putting this whole thing together. And have you ever seen the accountant, the movie, the accountant,
[01:10:57] Jeff: Uh uh.
[01:10:59] Brett: there’s a [01:11:00] scene where Ben Affleck, uh, is like sucking himself up or something. And he turns on some crazy metal, turns on strobe lights, and then starts kneading his shin with a rolling pin.
[01:11:15] Brett: Uh, because it’s all about this sensory overload. He I don’t know exactly, I don’t
[01:11:20] Jeff: Ben Affleck is nuts.
[01:11:22] Jay: Hard,
[01:11:22] Brett: I don’t remember, like, what his particular mental illness was, but he needed this influx of stimulation of both sensory, like, visual, uh, physical, sensory stimulation. And I understand that. Like, as an ADHD guy, um, Sometimes, like a lot of times, I need no sensory input.
[01:11:46] Brett: I need things to be quiet. I need things to be silent, um, just to exist. But then these periods come up almost daily where I need to be overwhelmed. I need to be [01:12:00] oversaturated by stimulation. And these lights, when they’re dancing to the music and I can blast the circle jerks and just have the lights going nuts, uh, it’s, it’s a perfect, like.
[01:12:13] Brett: It’s for my mental health. I love it. I really love it. The other part of my current mental health is, I have been hanging out with and texting with old friends, which is like a mixed bag for me because my friends from high school were a bunch of assholes. And I’m going out to dinner with some of them tonight, and I am not at
[01:12:40] Jeff: of the show. Assholes.
[01:12:42] Brett: Assholes.
[01:12:43] Jeff: of the show’s my asshole
[01:12:45] Brett: I always felt like an outsider with my friends and when we all hang out as like, you know, adults, um, it, I go, I fall right back into that feeling like I don’t fit in, like I’m an outsider. [01:13:00] Um, and these are the people that were the most like me. In high school, we were the kind of outcast, insecure, uh, nerdy, uh, they were all into role playing and it should have been, but I had like religious trauma around that.
[01:13:15] Brett: Um, but like, I just, I don’t, I don’t dig them, but when I got to college, I felt much more accepted and a much more a part of, so I, I’ve been hearing from, um, old, old college friends. Um, I spent last week hanging out with the guy who first introduced me to heroin, but also was
[01:13:42] Jeff: You’re like, what else, what else you got, like, what have you come up with lately?
[01:13:45] Brett: Also was like my closest friend through college.
[01:13:48] Brett: He was the best man at my wedding. Um, he’s a great guy. And, uh, my, one of my ex girlfriends contacted me and like [01:14:00] developed a texting kind of conversation with me. And she’s hanging out with the guy who did all my tattoos. Um, who was like a roommate and a good friend of mine.
[01:14:11] Jeff: This is really like, origin story, uh, people in your life.
[01:14:15] Brett: yeah, exactly, exactly.
[01:14:17] Brett: And it has been, it has actually been really good for me. Um, to, so there’s like two ways it can go, right? You can talk to someone who was important to you in your past and their life is a hot mess and you can feel like. blessed because you avoided whatever they went through. And then you can talk to them and they’re like, full on successful.
[01:14:43] Brett: And like, you can appreciate and, and, uh, empathize, I guess. Like, I consider myself successful in, in what I do and what I am and, and my paycheck and my relationships. And, um, I don’t have to [01:15:00] feel Jealous of old friends so I can be like happy when they succeed. So that’s been a thing. I’ve, I have enjoyed this period of reconnection.
[01:15:12] Brett: Um, it has, well, and I’m supposed to be more social according to my multiple therapists. Like I’m supposed to get out, I’m supposed
[01:15:22] Jeff: Seems like you’ve got a therapist social life. Like, multiple therapists.
[01:15:29] Brett: do have multiple therapists and, and like universally, they want me to, uh, have a social life. And, uh, the easiest way I’ve found to tap into that is to rekindle, uh, relationships that were good for me in the past, uh, even, even once it were bad for me, but have morphed into.
[01:15:52] Brett: Like we’re, we’re grownups now. We’re adults and things are different and we can see where things went wrong. Like this [01:16:00] girl I’m talking to, she thought our relationship was serious and I thought our relationship was casual. And honestly, she was really cool and super hot and I could have been serious about her, but I thought she wanted a casual relationship, so I kept it casual. Shit went down, and apparently, like, I, I, I hurt her, um, and it was unintentional, and, uh, but now we’re reconnecting, and we haven’t talked about the way our relationship went down, we’re just talking about the way things are now, um, but it’s actually pretty heartening that she still wants to talk to me at all, um.
[01:16:48] Brett: Yeah. Holy shit. We’ve been, we’re at an hour 15 and we’re just finishing up Mental Health Corner.
[01:16:55] Jeff: I know, this is a conversation for offline, but I feel like that’s mostly what happens and maybe it’s just time to [01:17:00] not call it The Corner.
[01:17:02] Christina: Yeah.
[01:17:02] Jeff: And it just starts with, how are you doing, and everyone says
[01:17:05] Brett: we, do we need two shows? Do
[01:17:06] Jay: a side
[01:17:07] Brett: separate
[01:17:07] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe we need like, like two shows, like
[01:17:13] Jeff: I think we’re,
[01:17:13] Christina: Health, Mental Health Corner, which is the spinoff of Overtired and like Overtired, which is like us actually talking about like the other things we want to talk
[01:17:21] Jeff: or we just call it Graftitude
[01:17:22] Brett: occasional Taylor Swift.
[01:17:24] Christina: yeah. Or we call it Gratitude.
[01:17:27] Christina: Honestly,
[01:17:27] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
[01:17:28] Brett: Oh my god. Um, so, I guess, Jeff, you have, you have a little time?
[01:17:35] Jeff: I do have time, yeah, I’m good.
[01:17:37] Can we talk about keyboards for a second?
[01:17:37] Brett: Can, can we talk about keyboards for a second?
[01:17:40] Jeff: keyboards.
[01:17:41] Brett: Jay, tell us about your latest keyboard.
[01:17:44] Jay: Okay, so, I preface, I’m not a keyboard nerd. Um. I don’t know. No, I, I, I don’t know key types or any of that stuff. Um, I just know what I got. Um, which was [01:18:00] originally just me being played. So,
[01:18:02] Brett: that keyboard. You just held up, you just held up the, the full Apple USB
[01:18:10] Jay: yeah,
[01:18:10] Brett: Keyboard with the low, the low profile switches. I can’t remember what it was called. It was right before the magic keyboard, but it had the number pad and everything.
[01:18:19] Jay: well, no, this is the, the new, this is the modern one. It’s the, just the traditional magic keyboard, but I have the one with the number
[01:18:26] Christina: Yeah, I used to have one of those.
[01:18:28] Jeff: fella? Same?
[01:18:30] Christina: Because I have the regular one. I used
[01:18:32] Jeff: Everyone hold up your keyboards!
[01:18:34] Christina: used to have the main one, and I can’t see anybody’s stuff right now. I used to have the main one, but what I have had, and I’ve had this for a number of years, is I have this, which is a Logitech
[01:18:42] Brett: that a Logitech? Yeah.
[01:18:43] Christina: which I like better.
[01:18:44] Christina: Because it has USB C, A, um, and, uh, uh, B. Like, I, I like, I like the keys better. Those are the low profile ones I use, but yeah.
[01:18:53] Jeff: You know what? USB is already confusing, but when you say USB C A and B in a
[01:18:58] Christina: I know, I
[01:18:59] Jeff: wait, uh, what are [01:19:00] we talking about? Sorry, anyway.
[01:19:02] Jay: so the, the new keyboard that I got, which it’s, it’s actually downstairs because I was, you know, hanging out downstairs trying to figure out how to type on it, um, is the Moonlander Mark I, which it’s a couple years old, um, It’s uh, the words that I believe they use is an ortho linear split keyboard. Maybe not ortho, maybe not the ortho, I know like it can rise up so it can like move at different angles.
[01:19:29] Jay: Um, but it’s, it’s definitely a solid keyboard. I like the feel of typing on it. Um, I think I have MX Brown switches. I think they’re whatever the tactile, like they don’t make a super loud click, but there is a click. And like, when you press down, there’s a noticeable like engage and disengage, um, to it, which is really cool.
[01:19:55] Jay: But yeah, the, the thing that, I mean, for me, it was, uh, [01:20:00] Again, I had office budget that needed spending, but then also like, you know, my, my fingers hurt. It’s getting cold. Um, I have lots of joint pain. Um, so for me, I was like, all right, whatever I can do that, you know, makes. It makes me able to type longer, um, preserving, I guess, increasing the amount of keystrokes I have in life, which I think Scott Hanselman, like, dubbed that phrase of like, you’re, you have a limited number of keystrokes that you can, you can apply, and the sad thing is you don’t know how many there are, uh, so if I can get some back, like, that would be, that’d be great, but I mean, it’s, I, I have a few of these, I think I have like a, what’s, I forget what it’s called now, it’s one of those super, like, Clacky, like, thocky keyboards, um, uh, it’s the Keychron.
[01:20:54] Jay: Well, no, it’s like a Keychron. Um, I don’t, I don’t have keyboard money. Uh, I don’t [01:21:00] think people who have keyboards have keyboard money. That is like the most expensive hobby I’ve ever seen.
[01:21:05] Christina: Genuinely, yeah, it’s a problem. Like I’ve been, um, I, I came across this, uh, actually because of Charles Tan, who I love, who like sent me this, um, this, um, model OLED keyboard that, um, this, this company, um, has on, on pre order right now, um, which is like a, a take on like the model M and it’s 450 and that’s just for the bare bones.
[01:21:26] Christina: That doesn’t even include keycaps or anything. And yeah, sorry. So go on.
[01:21:31] Jay: all of these keyboards, like they’re so cool. And at one point I was looking at, it was either going to be like this or like the, um, the UHK. And I know Brett like loves the UHK. And I was like, oh man, like if I had to pick between the two, I think the UHK, there was like a little bit more.
[01:21:49] Jay: Like if, if they were going to put it together, cause let’s be real, I’m not doing it. Like, I was like, Oh, if, if I have to get it prebuilt, like I just,
[01:21:56] Christina: part of the fun. Yeah.
[01:21:58] Brett: It really is. Like [01:22:00] once, once you, once you get into, so like, I spent years thinking I was a low profile keyboard guy, um, like those older, like even the Magic Keyboard. Those, that kind of key feel made sense to me, but I lost sensitivity. I, my fir, my index, middle finger, and thumb have no feeling in them.
[01:22:26] Brett: anymore and I don’t know what happened, some kind of nerve damage or something, um, but a low profile keyboard where I can’t feel any tactile response from the switch, um, became almost impossible to type on. So switching to mechanical keyboards was almost a necessity to me, but once you get into them, Yeah, like half the fun is like figuring out which switch you buy, like switch testers, and you test out all the switches and you figure out what’s the perfect one.
[01:22:56] Brett: And then you order, you order a pre prebuilt kil [01:23:00] keyboard, but you order one with hot sw. Hot swappable switches. Uh, so if you ever decide to, you can just swap out all your switches, change all your key keys.
[01:23:09] Jeff: Makes
[01:23:10] Christina: then you get into like lubing all of your switches and uh, uh, and, and, and your, um, um, your, your stabilizers and all that stuff and yeah.
[01:23:19] Brett: So does the moon tent, uh, in the middle? Can you turn it up?
[01:23:25] Jay: So they have like these like nubs that can lock in. So those will allow it to tent a little. So, I mean, the audience can’t see my hands, but it’s more like that.
[01:23:38] Brett: like a 20 degree. Okay. Yeah, that’s
[01:23:40] Jay: there is a. They do have like a extra accessory that is a like much more radical tent that you can add to it. Um, again, for me, I was like, I just want something that’s going to be a little bit more comfortable as I’m typing.
[01:23:57] Jay: The, the splitness of it [01:24:00] is, and like, I’m, I know, I know, like I took typing, like I, I, You know, I, I know the keyboard, but my confidence in it is, is broken. And then with linear keys, it doesn’t matter how well, you know, a QWERTY keyboard, because the keys aren’t staggered. So like I’m, I’m typing stuff at a snail’s pace and. Just being like, I don’t know where the, there’s like certain buttons that are not there. Cause it’s, it’s not a full keyboard, you know, it’s, it’s a keyboard that has multiple modes. So if you want a numpad, there’s a numpad mode that, you know, that you can customize and program and do all these things. And it’s, it’s like the perfect amount of tinker, but like, I, I kind of just want to, I want to get like.
[01:24:48] Jay: Firm on the I can type on this before I’m like, you know, hitting plus by double tapping equals three times is probably not going to be the answer.
[01:24:59] Brett: know what gets [01:25:00] me on any keyboard is, uh, curly and square brackets. I never, I, I’ve gone through typing tutors and tried so hard. So what I ended up doing is assigning one of the extra three thumb keys on my keyboard. Uh, so if I hold that down, then the home row H J K L becomes, uh, parentheses and, and curly brackets.
[01:25:26] Brett: And like, it’s the only way I can, because for me, like typing a curly bracket is like a lot of key backspace, key backspace, key, especially when you’re in an editor that, uh, pairs up. Like you auto, it automatically doubles, like you, you type a left square bracket, it inserts the right square bracket, so you have to like backspace two bracket.
[01:25:49] Brett: Yeah, so that’s the one that gets me, and that’s the one that I’ve been really grateful. I have a customizable keyboard that I can make memorizable [01:26:00] for myself.
[01:26:01] Jay: The one thing I wish that this had, because since it does have those profiles, like they have, they have their own little service where you can, you can see how other people have programmed theirs and you can download their profiles and things like that. I wish that it had app awareness. Because, like, if I’m, if I’m using one of the Several browsers that I’m testing at any given time.
[01:26:26] Jay: Like there are just certain keys that are different. And I would, I would like to have some consistency across the board, but I don’t want to have to sit there and like swap through profiles three or four times and like try to remember color coded combinations of like, Oh, this is the ARC browser profile.
[01:26:45] Jay: Let me. Switch to that, or if I’m using Sigma OS, then it’s like, Oh, let me switch over to that thing and all the keys are different. And it’s, it would be nice if it just did it automatically. I’m, I’m [01:27:00] guessing
[01:27:00] Brett: amount of luck with BetterTouchTool,
[01:27:02] Jay: that’s what I was thinking is I’m, I’m
[01:27:04] Brett: can be app aware.
[01:27:05] Jay: Yeah. Like BetterTouchTool or KeyboardMaestro will probably be the solution that I go with on that.
[01:27:11] Jay: There is one new feature that it had that I don’t. know if anyone’s talked about before. So we know about the hyper key. What about the meh key? Like m m e h. So the hyper key is the hyper key. The meh key is everything but the shift.
[01:27:32] Brett: Huh.
[01:27:35] Jeff: I like it. Evolution.
[01:27:37] Jay: So I was just like, huh, okay, that’s,
[01:27:42] Brett: Control, Command, Alternate, or
[01:27:45] Jeff: some, this is some real good radio. So, so control command and no, that’s not right. Control. No, wait a minute. Wait, my computer’s tenting. My computer’s tenting.
[01:27:57] Brett: ha ha ha ha!
[01:27:59] Jay: [01:28:00] Yeah, because I am in that space where like I have a lot of, you know, customized shortcuts and stuff. And I,
[01:28:05] Brett: but that combination is easy to hit. Like, that’s three fingers.
[01:28:11] Jay: yeah, but it, it, it shifts your hand.
[01:28:14] Brett: It does. Well, it’s easy to hit if you’re using a right hand combo key. If you wanted to hit, like, Control, Command, Option, W, that would be quite the chord to
[01:28:26] Jay: yeah,
[01:28:27] Brett: So like there was, there’s this, when you’re in Photoshop and you want to save when you want to export as a JPEG or like a web format, you hit control option shift S and like that, like I learned that chord, my, my hands just shaped to that chord and I know it’s possible, but hitting control command option S.
[01:28:50] Brett: That would be a different story. And also, much like the hyper key, that’s a combination that no app, like you could make those, you could [01:29:00] customize those combinations and you wouldn’t, you would never override an app’s internal settings. So I can understand. Hyper plus meh would give you two extra keyboards worth of shortcuts.
[01:29:15] Jay: yeah. So it’s, uh, it’s, it’s interesting again, I’ve only had it for, this is like day three. So I’m, I’m still in the, like. Telling my mom like, you know, Hey, I, I ducking love you. And it’s not, it’s not like I’m censoring myself. I’m just.
[01:29:37] Brett: Um, yeah. So, have you ever tried box white switches?
[01:29:43] Jay: No, I’ve, I’ve used, like, most of the stuff that I’ve used are, like, the MX, I think I have, like, MX Blues, MX Reds, and now I’m having MX Browns.
[01:29:53] Jeff: Jay, what do I have to do to put you into these boxed white switches today?
[01:29:57] Jay: Send me a set of them and I will [01:30:00] sit here with my little
[01:30:01] Brett: a, get a key tester. Like, box white has, for me, the perfect amount of click to, like, thud when it bottoms out. I can’t remember, there’s a Specific keyboard nerd term for that, like, feeling at the bottom where it, like, hits. Um, but, like, Box White has been amazing. I was gonna mention, uh, UHK just came out with these risers.
[01:30:27] Jeff: I narrate? Brett has just, Brett has just lifted his fucking weird ass keyboard that looks like he pulled it out of a. Tesla.
[01:30:35] Brett: And you can, like,
[01:30:36] Jay: does look like a Cybertruck, like,
[01:30:38] Brett: any amount of tenting.
[01:30:40] Jeff: this is how you shift.
[01:30:42] Brett: So it can go up to 90 degree tenting. So if you really want to type sideways.
[01:30:46] Jeff: Can we just say, sorry, I
[01:30:48] Brett: I like this, I like this tent right here, which is 30
[01:30:52] Jeff: Can I just say that tenting, which I don’t really want to hear anymore, sounds like, you know, how, how was the, how was the date? It was cool. He was kind of into, he was kind of [01:31:00] into tenting and I guess that’s fine. He said we could do 90 degrees or 30 degrees,
[01:31:04] Brett: Ha ha ha ha
[01:31:06] Jeff: that’s what I, that’s all I’m hearing in this conversation.
[01:31:08] Brett: could refer to camping or erections, I like it, as like a general term.
[01:31:13] Jay: I will definitely say the, uh, the 3D printing world has a ton of mainlander accessories, and again, this keyboard’s been out for a couple of years now. So, um, there are a lot of tent kits. , so Sorry, Jeff, uh, I will, I’ll never look at the, the phrase tent kit again. Um, because of that.
[01:31:39] Jeff: Awesome.
[01:31:41] Brett: Yeah, but honestly, like a programmable keyboard, anyone who’s any nerd deserves a programmable keyboard. And something like BetterTouchTool can make. You know, your Apple keyboard, pretty programmable, but having one like the [01:32:00] UHK where I can load up the agent. And I think the Moonlander has similar software, uh, with like a TNC, like chip in it, and you can.
[01:32:10] Brett: Program every key to do anything you want. You can program layers, you can program key, uh, key combinations. And you can save it to the hardware of the keyboard. Uh, so you don’t need a separate app running. And it’s, honestly, it’s so good.
[01:32:29] Jay: And I mean, it, it solves one of the big problems that I had with. Using like better touch to like, you know, we have one PC in the house. That’s mostly for gaming and You know, okay cool all of my stuff one. I’m already confused because I’m on a PC and I’m like, what do I do? What?
[01:32:50] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:32:51] Jay: but I mean I have I have a couple of Mac Minis, a Mac Studio, a MacBook Air, and [01:33:00] then I’m going to be swapping the Mac Studio for a MacBook Pro soon.
[01:33:03] Jay: And it’s like, having everything sync up, there’s, it’s all, it always deviates. Like there’s always these slight deviations, like for some reason VS Code works on my Mac Studio in Vim mode properly, but like on my MacBook Air, like it just gave up. And I’m like, well. I don’t know, having one piece of hardware with the programming built into it is so nice because now I’m not necessarily trying to program on the software side of the system.
[01:33:32] Jay: It’s like I’m programming the software side on the keyboard and I can take that keyboard, I could, you know, fly to Minnesota and like plug it into Jeff’s computer and like, just, it’s still my keyboard. It’s not like, oh crap, you don’t have like these 15 things, like, hot keying everything.
[01:33:52] Jeff: He was really into hot keying, which is super Whatever, it’s fine! You just gotta deal with it.
[01:33:58] Brett: So, Christina [01:34:00] just linked, uh, the Novelkeys Model OLED, um, which apparently is like an IBM Classic Model M, but with one, with one OLED key.
[01:34:14] Christina: Yeah. And that’ll turn on. I don’t, I can’t remember what the, what the, the mode is called, like the, the, the Soledic mode or whatever the thing is, you know, that like, is that really annoying sound that like some, um, keyboards, uh, can make or that, um, uh, like typewriters, uh, could, could, could
[01:34:30] Brett: yeah. Solenoid?
[01:34:32] Christina: Solenoid.
[01:34:32] Christina: There you go. Thank you. So like that can turn on, like it has a hidden like solenoid in it. So this is from, um, a, um, A company called, um, I think it’s called like PlayKeys or something like PlayKeyboard. And, and they’ve been working on this for a while. I was like looking, um, after Charles sent me this yesterday, I was looking at their interest check or whatever.
[01:34:56] Christina: And this looks like this is a really well designed keyboard. It’s [01:35:00] also 450.
[01:35:02] Brett: Yeah.
[01:35:02] Christina: Um,
[01:35:04] Brett: I would never pay that for a keyboard that wasn’t split. I’ll never buy another keyboard that isn’t split. I love split keyboards so much.
[01:35:11] Christina: But it does look great, and it’s one of those things I’m like, Oh man, this, this does look like a really cool thing. What’s neat about it is that they, they’ve like, found a way to like, you know, um, bend the, um, or curve rather, like the PCB. So, um, it, it’s um, uh, top mounted. So yeah, so it’s got that perfect rise.
[01:35:28] Christina: So it like, it, it is like, just like, like they’ve, they’ve spent a lot of time with the attention to detail on the plates and everything, and it, and it looks really, really good, like, um, their actual photos that they’ve taken. of it. Uh, I’m going to put that in our chat right now so you can see like, look really, really good.
[01:35:44] Christina: Uh, but uh, um, and, and I, I’ve watched a couple of streams of people who were sent early prototypes and were able to kind of like put them together or whatever. I think the OLED key, like, I don’t care about that. Like that seems completely incidental to me, but [01:36:00] the, the, the keyboard itself does look pretty awesome, but I’m just like, I don’t think I can spend that much on a keyboard.
[01:36:06] Jeff: I mean, you
[01:36:07] Brett: Yeah.
[01:36:07] Christina: I mean, I can, but like,
[01:36:09] Brett: a DOS plus a Stream Deck would get you just as far.
[01:36:13] Christina: yeah, I know. But like,
[01:36:14] Jeff: I love this thing, though.
[01:36:16] Christina: I know I was going to say, I freaking love the aesthetic so much. I was like, I was like looking, I was like, Oh, I have some keycaps that would look really good on this. And this would be like a really fun, like,
[01:36:25] Brett: those old IBM keyboards were Even the Apple What was the original Apple
[01:36:31] Christina: uh, the Apple Extended 2.
[01:36:32] Brett: Like those are, those were
[01:36:35] Jeff: We have one of those old IBMs in the house right now with an old, um, computer my boys run Doom on, uh, and, uh, it’s the keyboard I learned Leisure Suit Larry on.
[01:36:47] Christina: it’s the keyboard I learned to type on, right?
[01:36:48] Jeff: It’s the kids I never learned to type, but it’s the keyboard I wrote my school papers on, for sure.
[01:36:53] Christina: Yeah, I mean, it’s totally one of those, you know, we had either the IBM or the Apple ones, either way, like, that’s what I learned to type on, and so that’s what I’ll always associate with [01:37:00] childhood, is, is those type of keyboards, and I’ve looked at getting, um, some over the years, like, I know that there’s like the DOS, uh, keyboard, and, um, and I, I’ve, um, I might have had one of theirs years ago, I don’t know, but I’ve definitely thought about um, their keyboards and, but I don’t know, there’s something about this, especially just because the people who make this, I think, have put like a lot of attention to detail in it and it, it’s, it’s definitely, um, like this is definitely coming from enthusiasts, you know, for enthusiasts sort of thing.
[01:37:29] Christina: Um,
[01:37:30] Brett: happened to the happy hacking keyboard. I keep hearing from people who were obsessed and loved their happy hacking keyboards, but they’re talking about how it’s not made anymore and they can never get a new one. So they’re doing everything they can do. Is it? Did it
[01:37:46] Jeff: He’s super into happy hacking. I’m sorry, this is the only way I can engage in this conversation.
[01:37:51] Christina: I don’t know. I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m looking like they still have like their official website, but I don’t know, um, uh, if they’re still You [01:38:00] know, doing it or not, like, it looks like they’d had a thing like they’d in, like, they’d launched a studio, which has like a little nub on it, like at the freaking, uh, ThinkPad.
[01:38:09] Christina: Yeah, I did, because it’s like a little nipple thing, you know, the little
[01:38:12] Jeff: I never do this. It’s like the only thing
[01:38:13] Jay: The little, the little eraser.
[01:38:17] Brett: inside
[01:38:18] Jeff: He said eraser. You said nub. Nipple. I’ve always said nipple, honestly, and not even to be weird. It’s just what it is. Let’s just call it what it is.
[01:38:28] Christina: but I have no idea. Um, I mean, a lot of, a lot of, um, Keyboard companies have gone under the last couple of years because what happened is there was like the explosion of the hobby, uh, because of the pandemic. And I was definitely one of the people who had been kind of like on the periphery and then got super into it during the pandemic.
[01:38:43] Christina: And I think what happened is that a lot of these, you know, companies run on pretty small margins and there are only a few manufacturers of certain things. And I think that they maybe got ahead of themselves and invested in stock and in other things and be like, Oh yeah, you know, this is going to be this long lasting thing.
[01:38:56] Christina: And it wasn’t. And then it, you know, I think kind of like went [01:39:00] back down to like the more like. natural supply demand curve, which is the people who are really into these things will, um, you know, spend money on, on group buys and, and on specific keyboards, but then normal people will buy Keychrons or Logitechs or whatever.
[01:39:16] Jeff: I like that during the pandemic everyone’s like, Well, I don’t have to work with this keyboard anyhow, might as well get one I can’t use. Sorry,
[01:39:22] Jay: mean, I mean, the nice thing is they return to office and they bring in all these fancy keyboards and they’re like clacking and then finally just someone comes up and like takes their keyboard and throws it out the window. Brett,
[01:39:32] Christina: you know, you work at Google and they’re like, oh, say, okay, so we’re going to make you come into the office, but we’re not going to give you a desk that is actually yours. You’re going to have to share it with someone on the days that you, that you’re not in the office, but you have to sit here.
[01:39:43] Christina: Um, so, uh, you know, someone else is going to get to fart in your chair. Um, but if you leave your keyboard here, like, you know, they could steal it or you have to share a keyboard. You know what I mean? So like, that to me would be genuinely the worst of both
[01:39:55] Jeff: Christine, I call that keeping the seat warm. Oh
[01:39:59] Christina: Here’s
[01:39:59] Jay: how [01:40:00] much was that tent on your keyboard?
[01:40:02] Jeff: my god. Just go to his OnlyFans, you can find all about his tents, he’ll send you private tenting videos, like, it’s a great deal, super cheap sub.
[01:40:11] Christina: this is like your third OnlyFans reference, Chef. Do you want to
[01:40:14] Jeff: I know, isn’t that funny? I got nothing to say,
[01:40:17] Brett: 90 dollars.
[01:40:18] Jay: okay, yeah, because they’re charging 1. 12 for theirs, so I was like, okay. I just wanted to make sure I was in the realm of like,
[01:40:25] Brett: Yeah, no, it’s kind of ridiculous because it’s just basically a piece of machine metal. Um, that I would expect to, if I found it at an ax man, it would be like 5
[01:40:35] Jeff: You just said Axeman to a bunch of people who don’t know what it is, which is an opportunity to tell people what Axeman is, which is the greatest place on Earth.
[01:40:43] Let’s talk about Axeman for a second
[01:40:43] Brett: Okay, Jeff, before we get into Craftitude, let’s talk about Axeman for a second.
[01:40:47] Jeff: Briefly, I’ve been going there since I was five. Can I start? I’ve been going there since I was five, and since there used to be a back then there was a place next to it that was similar called Crazy Louie’s. And, um, Axeman is ostensibly a surplus [01:41:00] store. It is exactly what it is, but it’s all it’s like Tech surplus, it’s weird.
[01:41:04] Jeff: Like here’s, here’s, okay. So here’s a shopping trip to, Axeman. Okay. I come out of it with a paper bag that has one, uh, I picked the Jabba the Hut head out of a bin of Jabba the Hut heads from Jabba the Hut, uh, action figures, like from the Star Wars kit, right? Like, just like the heads, they had a bunch of extra heads.
[01:41:22] Jeff: Um, I had to walk by an iron lung to pick that up, an actual
[01:41:26] Brett: been there for years.
[01:41:27] Jeff: since I was five. And then there’s an entire aisle of just capacitors, transistors, and LEDs. Another aisle that’s just wrecked electronics. Another aisle that’s like, pin up posters and, um, targets for like, BB gun, uh, shooting.
[01:41:43] Jeff: Then you’ve got like, um, there’s a bin of buttons. Uh, there’s a, I mean like, it’s, this isn’t even doing it justice. It’s the most incredible place. And it’s right next to the Turf Club, which is a club where a 7th Street Entry, Sai’s Place, which is the place attached to 1st Avenue. [01:42:00] And bands will regularly post on Instagram, post on Twitter, back when that used to be a thing that bands were on, that, oh my god, I just went to this place, it’s the craziest place I’ve ever been.
[01:42:09] Jeff: Anyway, it’s a complete blast, and you mentioned it, and I have to say it.
[01:42:12] Brett: if you, if you ever find yourself in Minneapolis, it will never be listed on like a tourism registry. But, but you owe it to, there’s, there’s one in St. Paul now too, I think. I think there are two Axe bands, but we used to play Back when I was at the University of Minnesota, we used to play a game called Assassin, um, where you would find elaborate ways to kill.
[01:42:39] Brett: Uh, other people playing the game, and it would just basically be like whatever you’re doing, a sign pops out, like you open your mailbox, and a sign’s there that says, your mailbox is poisoned, you’re dead. And, I would go to Axeman and buy like, solenoid switches. And make, like, cans of jolt that if you pick them up, an alarm would go [01:43:00] off and you would be dead.
[01:43:01] Brett: And, like, it got, yeah, like, it was so much fun and Axe Man fueled so many of the murders I committed in the game of Assassin.
[01:43:12] Jeff: I’m sure it’s fueled real murders too.
[01:43:15] Christina: ha! I was gonna say, it’s probably like, I mean, it does seem like it’d be a very good place, like, if you wanted to commit a crime, like, you know, they’ve got all the materials, you know, to accomplish what you
[01:43:23] Jeff: And the, and it’s fully, it’s fully run and managed by crusty punks. The best I can tell the exact same, who have not aged since I was five, and they’re not gonna snitch
[01:43:33] Christina: Oh, hell no, they’re
[01:43:33] Brett: 80 to begin with.
[01:43:37] Jeff: anyways. Uh, now that I’m, now that I’m actually,
[01:43:41] Christina: name, actually. That’s a great band
[01:43:42] Jeff: yeah, exactly, now, you know, you can picture it, it’s all brown clothes, it’s dirty, they got a pitbull. When the cops are trying to impersonate them, they wear new Carhartts, and that’s how you know. Um, but anyway, yeah, sorry everybody, X Men. Now that I’m actually on Mastodon, I’ll post a couple photos for you, Jay.
[01:43:59] Jay: how’s, how’s [01:44:00] Mastodon treating you?
[01:44:01] Jeff: It’s fine. It’s nice. It’s a nice, easy place for me to be. I mean, I don’t, uh, you know, I’m not in there at a, uh, high scale. Uh, I left my 2, 000 frozen followers on Twitter from when I was in journalism for my, you know, Jay was my first follower on Mastodon. Heh heh heh heh heh.
[01:44:20] Jeff: And I mean, I’m like 21 deep now.
[01:44:23] Jay: I asked him if he
[01:44:23] Jeff: And that’s not just the tenting community.
[01:44:25] Jay: yeah,
[01:44:28] Jeff: All right. Graftitude, for God’s sake, get me out of this hole. Is
[01:44:31] grAPPtitude
[01:44:31] Brett: Let’s do it. Who’s starting? Jay.
[01:44:34] Christina: I was gonna say, we do need to note just at the top, the BB Edit, uh, pick last week is actually out now, so,
[01:44:39] Brett: Yeah, it was out, it was out the day after. I don’t feel too bad about breaking the embargo.
[01:44:44] Christina: no, I think you’re fine, I think it just, uh, just wanted to, uh, be a reminder for people, if you hadn’t checked, BB Edit is out now. Sorry, go on, Jay.
[01:44:50] Brett: sure.
[01:44:50] Jay: downloaded it I haven’t, I haven’t fully tried it yet. But um, So mine, mine is a game. [01:45:00] It’s a really interesting game. It’s called Shapes with a Z. Um, I’m late to the party because Shapes 2, uh, the demo comes out next week. Um, and they’re making it, like, a 3D version of the original. Get the original. It’s like 10 bucks. In the last two days, I have sank probably nine hours into this game.
[01:45:25] Jeff: Steam? This
[01:45:25] Jay: It’s on Steam. Um, The best way to explain it is it is assembly line, like, watch number go up. But it gets really complex really quickly. You take simple shapes like circles and squares, you can split them into four quadrants, you can rotate those splits, you can add color, you can combine colors to make new colors, you can move them around this plane where there are tunnels and Tunneling tunnels, and [01:46:00] your ultimate goal is to send shapes of different patterns into the home base.
[01:46:05] Jeff: Oh my God. This is insane.
[01:46:06] Jay: like, incredibly easy to get started with, and actually, well, I’ll do it afterwards, because if I open that game now, you’ve lost me. So, like, I’ll send a screenshot to every I’ll post it on Mastodon, I think everybody’s there. Um But, like, oh my god, I, I listened to someone talk about it, and then I watched the preview for Shapes 2, and I was like, Alright, this looks cool, but seems kind of intimidating, and then I was like, let me just see what Shapes 1 is about, and I watched a couple of videos, and I was like, This looks really addictive, and then I played it, and then it was 2 in the morning, and I was like, oh shit, like, this is, this is not good, like, it’s, it’s, it’s low speed, it’s, it’s very Tetris y, so, if you need something, it’s something that you can just have running, [01:47:00] so if you gotta like, stop what you’re doing, and like, you’re supposed to be at work, or you’re in a meeting, like, it’s something,
[01:47:07] Jeff: It looks like a good in meeting
[01:47:09] Jay: It’s a definite good in the meeting.
[01:47:11] Jay: Probably not podcasting, because you’re gonna have to think about it a lot. But like, it’s just one of those things that like, wow, I’m mad at myself for not finding this game sooner. Because Like I woke up this morning and was like, ah, I think I figured out how I can get that one piece going. And then immediately like turned it on and like tinkered with it until about 10 minutes before this podcast. So
[01:47:37] Jeff: Awesome.
[01:47:38] Jay: Shapes, it’s definitely a dope game. Check it out.
[01:47:41] Jeff: I will definitely try it after a big deadline this week.
[01:47:44] Jay: Yeah,
[01:47:47] Jeff: Awesome.
[01:47:48] Brett: try that, I think, what was it called? Finite?
[01:47:51] Christina: I did, yeah, it was fun.
[01:47:53] Brett: fun, but once you get to a certain level, I’m on like the third, uh, like [01:48:00] you get like silver, bronze levels, I’m on like silver two now, and it gets so hard that it’s no longer fun, and the beauty of threes is that it’s always the same game, and it’s always, you could, it, I thought it was going to replace threes for me, but man, like it got hard enough that if I need a waiting room game, I’m back to
[01:48:21] Christina: Well, and the thing is for me to, like, I liked it, but it didn’t have, like, for whatever reason, 3 still has that pull for me all these years later, that, like, I just, it’s just a perfect fidget game, and it’s addictive enough that I could pull it in, whereas that game was fun, but, like, I didn’t ever, like, think about it, you know what I mean?
[01:48:37] Christina: Like, I would, I would have had to, like, remember, oh, what was that game?
[01:48:40] Brett: You don’t fall asleep dreaming about ones and threes
[01:48:44] Christina: no, which is like also a Tetris thing, right? Like Tetris is perfect that way. Like, you know, I think that’s like a very common thing. People like dreaming of tetroids. And, uh, speaking of which, um, uh, did you guys see like the 12 year old who beat Tetris?
[01:48:57] Jay: there’s two people that have beaten it now. Fractal [01:49:00] beat it. Oh, sorry. I’m in, I actually observed the competitive NES Tetris scene, so Yeah, the, the first, the first kid like came out of nowhere. No, everyone’s like, who is this? Like, um, Fractal, Fractal has Like, programmed his own, like, Tetris AI bot before and uses it to compete, like, uses it to train to compete at, like, the highest level, so Fractal beating it, people are like, oh, of course he did, like,
[01:49:31] Christina: yeah, to me that’s not, I’m gonna be completely honest, I don’t care. Like, it’s the, it’s the kid. Like, that’s, that’s the one that’s like impressive to me. Because he was born, like, 20 something years after the original NES game came out, you know what I mean? Like, that to me is like far more impressive than, like, I mean, not, not taking it away from Fractal, like, go him, whatnot, but I’m like, you know what you’re doing, like, I,
[01:49:52] Jay: But that’s, that’s the competitive scene, though.
[01:49:54] Christina: Oh, yeah.
[01:49:55] Jay: the best player currently, I think, he’s been the best player for three years now and he’s [01:50:00] 16, like, like, it’s, yeah, I, I, I
[01:50:05] Christina: else has time to do it? I mean, honestly,
[01:50:09] Jay: That’s true.
[01:50:10] Christina: talk, like, genuinely, like, you, you will never in your entire life have the time to dedicate to, like, be perfect at a game as, like, when you’re, you know, in middle school and high school. Like, that’s, that’s the best time.
[01:50:21] Brett: That is, that is the golden spot, yes.
[01:50:23] Jay: There, there’s like a designer that I listened to that was like, Oh yeah, you’re, I’m getting this vibe. And they’re like, okay, let me, let me put the schism between me and that person. Like I could play Tetris every day for the next five years and not be at like 5%, how good they are.
[01:50:45] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:50:46] Jay: Like, like that’s, that’s the level of like skill that.
[01:50:51] Jay: Some of some of these kids have, but I mean, it’s also just fast twitchiness. I’m also going to throw out there that like, hey, we’ve done a [01:51:00] lot in the mental health like space in terms of things that allow you to focus a little bit better. They got a good head start on us. Yeah.
[01:51:13] Christina: For sure, for sure. No, I mean, and that’s the thing, right? And, and, and, uh, yeah, they definitely got like a good head start. It is funny though, um, cause I don’t, I don’t follow a lot of this stuff, but to see like some of the really old school, like from like, you know, the, the guy, uh, uh, I can’t think of his name.
[01:51:28] Christina: He’s very litigious from, uh, um, uh, the King of Kong, um, that asshole, um, you know, people who used to be like really big in like the speed runner community back when, like, it. Was comparatively not that impressive and not that big of a deal, uh, trying to keep up with like this world of, you know, like, uh, 25 and under, you know, like, kids who are just like insanely good and are better than like the, the old guard will ever be or ever were, and watching them kind of come to grapple with that, which I can understand, [01:52:00] I can understand like both sides of that, I can especially understand like seeing people who are way younger than you, like better than you will ever be, like, you.
[01:52:05] Christina: That’s depressing, but at the same time, it is so interesting just to see like how, how much, um, progress we’ve made and things. And also I think just like how instinctually, you know, kids just get stuff now and, and are able to do it. Like some of the, the rock band, um, competitor, uh, stuff. Like, which again, these are kids playing a game that’s been, was dead before they were born.
[01:52:28] Christina: It’s, it’s impressive.
[01:52:31] Jay: Yeah, if you ever want to figure out what level they’re on, just, I put it in the chat, but like, learning about rolling. They literally hold their controller differently than you, like.
[01:52:40] Christina: They hold the controller differently because they figure it out. Okay, this is what you have to do if you want to achieve these things, uh, because they figure out like bugs in the game. It’s unbelievable.
[01:52:50] Jay: Which speaking of, speaking of YouTube videos, um, is everyone like, is this the, the year that YouTube dies with, you know, like Tom [01:53:00] Scott leaving and then Game Theory and everyone else?
[01:53:03] Brett: There are so many creators on YouTube. Their future is guaranteed.
[01:53:08] Jay: is the old guard gone? Like,
[01:53:11] Christina: Maybe, yeah, but like, if the platform is 18 years old, 19 years old, um, that’s, that’s gonna happen. I think the thing with YouTube is it goes in cycles and, and I think if anything it kind of shows that like YouTube fame for the most part is not forever, right? Like you,
[01:53:28] Brett: There are so many different YouTubes. Like, for me, like, I’m on, like, Atheist YouTube. And I’m on, like, Vegan Cooking YouTube. And there are, uh, creators in those spaces that have earned their, you know, million plus subscribers. And, like, these For every interest, there’s a YouTube for you. And I don’t see YouTube itself going anywhere.
[01:53:53] Brett: I see creators falling off. I see. Uh, I don’t, [01:54:00] unlike, unlike Substack, which is undergoing a massive exodus right now, I don’t, people who left YouTube to go to things like Nebula are coming back
[01:54:12] Jay: back, yeah, they’re, they’re
[01:54:13] Brett: like Nebula failed.
[01:54:15] Christina: Yeah. I mean, because the thing is that Nebula, not a bad idea, right? Like it’s an interesting idea, but it’s going to be for a very niche audience. It is like upgrade. It is. It is better. Patreon, right? It is a thing that does not scale. The thing with YouTube and the reason creators will probably never leave it.
[01:54:29] Christina: I mean, and it’s interesting because you see them always try to leave and they always wind it back. Live streaming is the one area where it’s a little bit different, mostly because YouTube doesn’t give a shit about live streaming. And.
[01:54:38] Brett: Twitch does it better,
[01:54:40] Jay: Well,
[01:54:41] Christina: know, Twitch is having massive issues right now too.
[01:54:43] Christina: They just laid off 35 percent of their staff and, um, they, and, and they pull out of South Korea cause they can’t make it work financially. And like live streaming is expensive and making money off of it is hard. But the thing is, is that YouTube, because of its reach and because of how Google has built its system, most creators will make more [01:55:00] money there than they will make anywhere else.
[01:55:02] Christina: And that’s just the reality,
[01:55:04] Jay: I think it’s interesting in that, one, I do think that some regulation is going to cause a rethinking of how YouTube works in terms of monetization. I think money, like, I’ve talked to people who full, like, full time YouTubers, and they’re just like, yeah, the money has dried up. Like, it’s, like, I’m having to work three times as hard to find advertisers.
[01:55:25] Jay: I’m having to work,
[01:55:26] Brett: Well, and a lot of my favorite channels get de monetized, like, they don’t run ads at
[01:55:31] Jay: YouTube ad revenue is, is horri like, horrendously down.
[01:55:35] Brett: you can combine Patreon with your YouTube creation, and that’s what most of the creators I, I watch do.
[01:55:44] Jay: I just think that it was interesting in that the, the 20 teens was a world where people would say, when I grow up, I want to be a YouTuber. I don’t fully know that that’s going to stick around. I
[01:55:59] Brett: [01:56:00] that’s, that’s still an aspiration,
[01:56:01] Christina: I mean, I was going to say all the studies are showing that they want to be a creator. They might not say YouTuber, but like it, whether it’s YouTube or TikTok or, or, you know, Instagram, they’ll go wherever the money is. But yeah,
[01:56:12] Jay: think that they’ll, they’ve learned that like diversification of platforms is, is going to be the most important thing. So now they’ll say, I want to be a content creator. I don’t want to be a YouTuber. Like I want to be a tech. I want to maybe still want to be a TikToker, but like, I don’t know, I don’t know how that works.
[01:56:27] Brett: I’ve actually decided to be a Threads creator,
[01:56:31] Christina: I mean, my God.
[01:56:33] Brett: off, with an offshoot on Blue
[01:56:35] Jay: I’m going to be a master tutor.
[01:56:36] Brett: here.
[01:56:37] Christina: Master tutor. I mean, this is like, this is why it’s disappointing for me that like, of all the, well, I’m still can’t access my Twitter account, which is very upsetting and whatever. But like, um, that my, my biggest following, uh, after that is on, is on Mastodon. And I like Mastodon a lot, but because there is no algorithm by design and whatnot like.
[01:56:56] Christina: You know, it’s hard to grow, and it’s also hard, like, you know, if you ever wanted [01:57:00] to monetize or point people towards other things, like, it’s a, it’s a very specific type of audience that will never grow beyond that group of people. And, and, and that’s, and that’s fine, but like, if
[01:57:10] Brett: a primarily white and highly male audience, as far as I can tell. Super tech nerdy.
[01:57:17] Christina: And ideological, and yeah, and that’s completely fine, um, uh, but, like, there are other people out there and I have other interests too, and it’s sort of, you know, depressing sometimes where I’m like, fuck, you know, the one place we had on the internet that really did combine everyone together was Twitter, and that was ruined for us, um, like, for all the bad things about Twitter, like, that was the ultimate thing, like, everybody was there, of all different types.
[01:57:41] Jay: I have recluse myself back to like discord, like private discords now.
[01:57:46] Christina: Totally. And, and I, and I think that that, I think that we missed something like when we don’t have like the, you know, Omni channel, like the, the, the, you know, the town square, so to speak, because it’s great to have those individual places. But to your point, Brett, like you have, everybody has a [01:58:00] different TikTok.
[01:58:00] Christina: Everybody has a different YouTube. Um, and, and, and you don’t all get to share in those things. Um, and, and then threads is. So bad at real time stuff that it just makes it hard for me to, I don’t get the crack addiction that I got, you know, from Twitter. Like, it’s terrible for live
[01:58:16] Brett: Well, most, most of my
[01:58:18] Jeff: much.
[01:58:19] Brett: Most of my threads stream these days is just people saying, dear algorithm, send me people like such and such. Um, would you, if they list off all of their interests and you’re supposed to
[01:58:32] Jeff: Santa, send me a man.
[01:58:34] Brett: that is all I see all like 90 percent of my stream is just these like, dear algorithm posts from people I’ve never heard of and didn’t intentionally follow.
[01:58:45] Brett: And the algorithm is like. Sharing them, and I guess it works for some people, but it’s like I get no actual social media out of, uh, threads these days.
[01:58:56] Christina: Yeah. Well, I mean, and like, I was, uh, I was there for like the, [01:59:00] um, um, Golden Globes because I couldn’t be Engaging on Twitter, which was very difficult because the Golden Globes were horrible, but also amazing. I mean, it was the biggest train wreck I’ve ever seen a comedian do. And then what’s the best part is, and he’s a
[01:59:13] Brett: Who
[01:59:14] Christina: is the guy I’d never heard of, his name is Joe Coy, and I’ve never fucking heard of him.
[01:59:18] Christina: Um, and, and now he’s just become so butthurt, like he can’t, he can’t own the fact that he bombed. And so he, he, so it’s not, now, he’s like, oh, I was really hurt by the reaction, and now he’s like, I, I got all pissed off, oh, well, they’re a bunch of marshmallows, they can’t take a joke. Yeah. You also were not funny.
[01:59:33] Christina: Like Ricky Gervais, Ricky Gervais literally called them pedophiles. Literally. The last time he hosted he called them pedophiles. And people laughed. So, like, fuck you. You’re bad at
[01:59:44] Brett: can’t take a joke. Anytime someone says you can’t take a joke, it means they fucked up. Like. Because people can’t take a joke. Anyone can take a joke if
[01:59:53] Christina: can take a joke. The reason the Taylor Swift thing went viral, cause A, the joke wasn’t, like, that innocuous or whatever, it was [02:00:00] because her reaction was funnier than his joke. Like, her reaction was hysterical, his joke was poorly done. And the reason it was so bad, he’s like, he’s trying to give explanations.
[02:00:10] Christina: I never even got to practice in front of a teleprompter or anything. Yeah, we can tell.
[02:00:15] Jeff: It must be so hard for a comedian. Yeah,
[02:00:17] Christina: Well,
[02:00:18] Brett: good, good comedians come up from clubs and working their material out in front of an audience until it’s
[02:00:25] Christina: Well, that’s the thing. He, he got the gig like two weeks in advance, and he didn’t have his writer, like the, it wasn’t written, like he didn’t have rehearsal time. And here’s the thing. That sucks. That’s why you don’t take that job. That’s why Ali Wong told him to fuck off. That’s why everybody else told him to fuck off.
[02:00:40] Christina: That’s why you got the job. Because no one knew who you were, and you were the 15th person on the list, and they were all like, well yeah, this idiot will do it. Cause anyone else would’ve, anyone else would’ve gone, oh yeah, no, there’s no way that I can make this work. I mean. The, the live stuff I’ve done, which is never on the level of the Golden Globes, not even close, but like [02:01:00] the rehearsal and the practice and the, the teleprompter stuff you need to do, if you don’t have that, it’s not going to do it right.
[02:01:05] Christina: And the part of the reason is jokes were so bad, weren’t just the jokes were bad, but the delivery was awful because he was reading them off of a teleprompter and had no idea how to do his pacing. And it’s like, that’s on you, but that’s on you, bro. Like you shouldn’t have accepted this gig. Cause They didn’t support you, but also you were bad at what you did.
[02:01:25] Christina: Anyway, that’s why I ran on that, but, but, but, but Threads was awful for that in real time. It was like very not good.
[02:01:32] Jeff: Uh, you guys, I do have to go, uh, and
[02:01:35] Brett: We’ve only been here for two hours.
[02:01:37] Jeff: why I have to go,
[02:01:38] Brett: go?
[02:01:38] Jay: gratitude really
[02:01:39] Jeff: but I don’t, I, I’m going to come back and listen to The Graftitude. I don’t have anything I’m burning to say this week, and so I will save it for next week, but I do want to say, Jay, it has been amazing to have you on and to talk with you, um, and just a real pleasure.
[02:01:51] Jeff: This is the second episode in a row where I, like, bail in the last ten minutes. I gotta go,
[02:01:55] Christina: second episode in a row, we’ve gone
[02:01:56] Brett: in a row we’ve gone for two
[02:01:58] Christina: yeah, exactly. This is on
[02:01:59] Jeff: right, [02:02:00] y’all, I’ll, so I’ll see you
[02:02:01] Brett: is that the season four thing? We’re just a two hour show now? Alright, Jeff, good
[02:02:06] Jeff: Bye.
[02:02:07] Christina: Bye.
[02:02:08] Jay: I’m happy to pass to the next person for gratitude. I just want to throw out there. There is a iOS app for shapes. It’s not good. Just get the, get the desktop app, like, or the desktop game, um, you will, your fingers will thank me later.
[02:02:25] Christina: Okay, sounds good. That’s good
[02:02:27] Brett: Alright, Christina, what you got?
[02:02:28] Christina: Okay, so, um, this is a weird one for me to share, but I shared Canva as a Graftitude pick a while back, and I still really do enjoy Canva, like, for quick and dirty stuff, especially for like YouTube thumbnails, um, or social media posts, like, honestly, it’s really good, and I, I, um, I recommend it, but I tried out just as an experiment this week just because I might be doing a, um, Lunch and Learn, um, with, um, a team at Microsoft to try to help them make their thumbnail game better.[02:03:00]
[02:03:00] Christina: Um, Microsoft will obviously not pay for them to use Canva, but, um, if you have an Adobe Creative, uh, uh, Cloud account, then you have access to Adobe Express, Which I had not played with in a really long time, but Adobe Express, uh, which I think is like express. adobe. com or something, I Um, it’s basically their, it’s basically their knockoff of Canva, but, um, it is pretty good.
[02:03:22] Christina: It’s, um, in some ways that’s actually better than Canva because, um, the way that they do layering and layering management is, is really good. And if you have Creative Cloud, then you can actually do things like, uh, import in PSD files and, and other, um, elements into your designs. Um, it’s all web based, so this is just like a, a web based thing if you’re wanting to, you know, make, um.
[02:03:46] Christina: Either like, uh, you know, do some videos or a flyer or something, you know, to post on Instagram or, or like I said, a YouTube thumbnail. It’s good. It’s also integrates well with, um, Adobe’s, uh, generative AI thing, which can be, um, [02:04:00] uh, pretty, pretty good stuff. And like, uh, and interestingly, their background removal tool.
[02:04:05] Christina: Is better than the one in Photoshop, um, for whatever reason. And, and, and I’ve, I’ve long stood by the fact that like canvas background removal tool is better than like any app you can pay for. Um, I, I, I think that the, the Adobe express one is, is as good. I might try to compare them side by side, but, and I, and I’ve used all of them.
[02:04:24] Christina: And no, the one that’s in Photoshop, the one that’s in, um, uh, uh, what are photo made or maker mater or whatever, uh, the one that’s in like, there are a bunch of. Yeah, Pixelmator, thank you. Um, they’re, they’re like a bunch of third party, you know, Mac apps that claim to be really great at that stuff.
[02:04:41] Brett: there are some that focus only on background removal. There’s, like, apps for
[02:04:46] Christina: yeah, and most of them are not, A, they’re, they have problems with hair and other things, and B, they’re absolutely not better than Canva on its own. Um, like, Canva’s better. Uh, and, and Adobe Express is really good. So, [02:05:00] um, uh, anyway, um, I, if you haven’t, I Their pricing, I think, is basically the same as Canva’s.
[02:05:06] Christina: I would probably, if I didn’t have an Adobe account, would pay for Canva instead. However, if you have an Adobe account through work or personal, the fact that you get it for free makes it really compelling. So, um, I hadn’t ever used this until, uh, Friday. And I actually, I was like, when I was using it, I was like, Oh, this is going to be my Graptitude.
[02:05:30] Christina: Because for people who might need just a quick and dirty, you know, kind of, uh, way to, to, to do graphics, um, this is a, a really good way of, of doing it. And you might already have access.
[02:05:43] Brett: I came up in the late 90s, early 2000 as a graphic designer slash art director. And removing backgrounds used to be this process of intricate past selections, uh, [02:06:00] brushwork, especially dealing with hair. Like, hair was the bane of any Photoshop user’s existence. I went to entire conferences. About removing backgrounds.
[02:06:11] Brett: I remember being in Vegas, uh, learning about new tools in Adobe Photoshop, like 3. remember. Um, but yeah, like it’s amazing what background removal with AI or with a little bit of machine learning behind it can do. Um, fascinating. Also makes me feel like I wasted years of my life.
[02:06:35] Christina: No, it’s like we had to get the training somehow, right? Like,
[02:06:39] Jay: mean, it still can’t do black people.
[02:06:42] Brett: Really? Is that
[02:06:43] Jay: still sucks. I get, my, half of my head gets cropped out every time, like, I have a, I have a green screen.
[02:06:49] Brett: sad,
[02:06:50] Jay: Yeah. I have a green screen that I need to set back up. I haven’t had to do thumbnails in a while, but like, that was the thing that got me to just be like, screw it.
[02:06:57] Jay: I’m getting a green screen.
[02:06:59] Christina: Yeah, [02:07:00] well, see, and for a lot of times, like the ones that I’m talking about, like, I will be removing a green screen from something and which should be theoretically the easiest thing to do, but they will still mess up around hair and other things. And so, and this will be like with consistent lighting, like with like a photo, like, or a screen grab taken from like, you know, a camera that’s been, you know, um.
[02:07:18] Christina: That’s stationary and that has like a, you know, um, a uniform lighting setup. So like the perfect conditions for moving background stuff. And a lot of the apps that claim to do it really well, don’t. Um, Canva does. I would be curious, um. If like Canva, Adobe Express, how they work with, with Black people, if they work any better.
[02:07:40] Christina: I’m not giving them credit to say they will. I’m just curious if, if their models are improved on that. Cause I know that Pixelmator, like didn’t they, didn’t they like have like an image, like on their website, like to try to pretend that they like were good with that. And then it wound up being like not good at all with Black people.
[02:07:57] Jay: So Pixelmators is like decent, which [02:08:00] is high praise because that’s about what I expect these days, but there’s the way that they. It’s like an honest mistake, but it was like an also, like, you obviously didn’t have black people in the room to approve this because it was promoting their video background removal tool.
[02:08:22] Jay: And it was a black person on it and it was good. It’s like,
[02:08:25] Christina: Did it say remove color or
[02:08:27] Jay: to remove. Yeah, it was like so easy to remove color. And I was just like, Oh God, like what’s happening?
[02:08:34] Christina: That’s right.
[02:08:35] Jay: oh man, it’s just those things were just like, please. Please, if you’re going, if you’re going to do something, like, just run it by someone.
[02:08:43] Christina: Right.
[02:08:44] Jay: it, hey, run it by someone that looks like the person that you’re, that you’re featuring on the thing.
[02:08:52] Christina: Um, especially when, like, they very clearly, like, these were, like, um, you know, stock photos or something, you know, it wasn’t like they’d paid, uh, to take those photos, I’m [02:09:00] sure, you know, they found it on some, you know, uh, other sort of site and whatnot, like, it wasn’t something that they commissioned. Yeah. Um, which, To me, makes it worse because, yeah, you’re not, you’re, you’re, you’re going here because you want the, the visibility points, but then you’re not actually like, you don’t have anybody, uh, who works for you to actually give you a go ahead on anything.
[02:09:25] Christina: But, yeah. Um, but no, but Adobe Express, uh, is, is, is my recommendation, especially if you already have access to Adobe stuff, because it’s, it’s good. And, um, for those things that, yeah, yeah, yeah, you should hire a designer. Guess what? Most of us don’t have the budget and most designers don’t want to do your social media posts.
[02:09:41] Christina: So, um, it’s, it’s a good, good choice.
[02:09:45] Brett: Perfect. Alright. So here we are at 2 hours and 10 minutes. Um, and I am, I am But, um, I am going to pick one of my own projects this week. Uh, [02:10:00] CurlyQ is a new thing I’ve just released. Um, if you do any kind of web scraping for, uh, scripting purposes, if you ever need to, like, say, find the largest image on a page, or find out Uh, all external links on a given site, or take a screenshot, or save a print version of a PDF of a site.
[02:10:23] Brett: Uh, CurlyQ is my answer to that. Uh, it can currently only do GET requests. I The next phase is to be able to do post requests, and it does some stuff with JSON handling where it will, um, automatically cycle through different, uh, user agents, um, when, uh, requesting a response, which can save you some trouble with finding the right headers basically to send with, uh, with a JSON request, um, it does not do [02:11:00] extensive.
[02:11:01] Brett: Anything JQ can do, you’re better off piping the response to JQ. It just saves you a little trouble, uh, with the curl setup. But for web scraping, uh, instead of like when you curl a website, you get the raw source of the website. Um. CurlyQ will give you the raw source, plus it’ll split out the head, the body, it’ll show you all of the links on the page, all of the images in the page.
[02:11:28] Brett: You can query by a specific CSS selector to get just an element of any page. And, um, it does, uh, it, it incorporates, um, what did I put in? I forget. Uh, it incorporates a dynamic, uh, web browser, so it can actually load up Chrome or Firefox and save the content of pages like Amazon pages, where half of it is, uh, generated by JavaScript.
[02:11:59] Brett: And if you curl it, [02:12:00] you just get. A bunch of script tags. It can actually load the page and then query it in the same method using CSS selectors, uh, to grab like the price of an Amazon product or, or the related links to a post. And yeah, I’m, it’s been a little obsession of mine over the last week. I, I like pitched it on Macedon.
[02:12:22] Brett: I was like, would anyone want to use this? And I got. Maybe 20, 25 responses that were like, absolutely. Can it do this? Can it do this? Uh, and I put it out. I like, I coded it and I put it out and I got like zero response. I don’t know if everyone’s just like, Oh, this is perfect. I’m just going to use it. I had no complaints.
[02:12:43] Brett: Um, but I would be super curious to get some feedback on like, where should it go next? Uh, like if it’s not the perfect tool for you, what does it need? Um, I’m always looking for that response. Join me on forum. brettterpstra. com and tell [02:13:00] me all about it.
[02:13:02] Jay: I, I say this in the, the most, uh, positive way possible. Brett, you make me want to stop programming. Like, like, I’m, so, so, I will, I will share what I’ve done to Brett over the last, like, three or four months. I’ll just randomly text Brett like, Hey, I have this idea. And my thought is, is if it’s crazy enough that Brett can ideate on it, then maybe it’s worth pursuing.
[02:13:34] Jay: And there have been like three or four times where Brett’s like, This just doesn’t sound like a good idea. And then like an hour later, there’s like a, But you could do this! And add five other things.
[02:13:44] Brett: I do that to Ralph Hoosman too. He like constantly, I’ll like create a tool and he’ll be like. Oh, this sounds perfect. Can it work with this and this? Uh, can I incorporate it to create data graphic, data [02:14:00] graphs from my Markdown notes that I keep in this other application? I’ll be like, that’s not what it was designed for.
[02:14:06] Brett: And then I’ll spend like an hour later. I’d be like, you know what? It probably could. If I just added this capability and then I just do it. So it’s people like you and Ralph that that really actually develop these tools into truly useful tools.
[02:14:22] Jay: Yeah, one of these days, I will have A projects folder that is like a third of what you’ve got. And I will consider that an accomplishment.
[02:14:34] Brett: My, I have a, I have a code folder on my desktop where I keep all of my projects and it has CD, code,
[02:14:46] Brett: this is good radio right here.
[02:14:49] Jay: Nice keyboard clicks.
[02:14:52] Brett: It has 114 folders in it right
[02:14:55] Jay: Oh, there’s no
[02:14:57] Christina: Wow. That’s amazing. All right. I’m [02:15:00] registering for your forum now, Brett. I’m curious, should, for my username, should it be Christina or should I be Film Girl?
[02:15:05] Brett: you should be Film Girl. I appreciate consistency.
[02:15:08] Christina: All right.
[02:15:10] Brett: I’m ttscuff everywhere, and it’s a horrible handle, like, nobody knows the story behind it.
[02:15:16] Christina: Tee
[02:15:16] Brett: a stupid handle. But nobody, nobody will ever steal it from me. And like, anytime a new social media service pops up, even if I don’t plan to use it, I go register ttscuff. And it’s just like, the way to find me everywhere.
[02:15:31] Jay: I’m
[02:15:32] Christina: I, I just, I, I, I try to get Christina when I can places, but, um, uh, but that’s a, that’s a vanity thing. But
[02:15:39] Brett: You got Christina is,
[02:15:41] Christina: I did.
[02:15:43] Jay: going as KJ Miller on everything. It sucks because everyone defaults to KJ and I’m just like, like, no, it’s just, and then I used to tell me like the K is silent and they’re like, really? I was like,
[02:15:58] Brett: So I, I [02:16:00] own the domain. Fuck yeah. Mark down.com. And it used to go to my tool Marke that would like, it was an API that would mark down Fify any webpage for you. But, but it broke. It broke and it’s defunct. I also know, I also own markdown rocks, and I don’t know what to do with these at this point, but I keep renewing them.
[02:16:22] Brett: I
[02:16:22] Christina: I know. I, I do the same
[02:16:24] Brett: 20 a year,
[02:16:25] Christina: I do the same thing. And in fact, I, I actually, one of my, um, uh, things was, was not renewed and I like went back and I like revived it cause I got my thing. It was like, oh, this was, you know, not, we’re not renewed and I’m like, shit. I,
[02:16:39] Brett: maybe someday.
[02:16:41] Christina: and I’m like, I gotta, I’m like, I gotta, um, you know, re uh, redo.
[02:16:45] Christina: Um, I suck ltd.com because I have, I rule, I have, I own I rule inc.com, and I suck ltd.com because I was like, well, if you’re going to be, have horis, then you need to [02:17:00] also be self-effacing.
[02:17:01] Brett: nobody, nobody is going to offer you money for those.
[02:17:04] Christina: Oh, I know.
[02:17:05] Brett: I keep hoping that some of these domains that I’ve held on on to for all this year, all these years will eventually, uh, get someone that’s like, I’ll give you five grand for the domain name. And I’ll be like,
[02:17:16] Christina: I got like 600 bucks for PowerofWe. com, which I bought, um, to make fun of Theranos because, no, not Theranos, WeWork, because WeWork, like, when, when they, they’re aborted S1 and they call themselves the Power of We. And so I bought it and I, and I didn’t, and, and I forgot about it. And then like, I got like a, I did it literally as part of an ad read because when we used to get like, uh, spot on Rocket when we used to get domain sponsors, I would buy a domain name, um, usually like a shit posting one.
[02:17:47] Christina: And, uh, like, I would be like, okay, that’s fine. You know, whatever the cover of the sponsorship will cover it and it’ll be funny. And I forgot about it and I did renew it for probably, you know, more years than I should have, but I was glad I did cause I caught like [02:18:00] 600 bucks for it. Like first I. Didn’t respond to the mail and then they like sent me a follow up where they just like raised the price and I was like, Cool, here you go.
[02:18:08] Christina: That’s great.
[02:18:09] Brett: You got it. All right. Well, that was a hell of an episode, you guys. We lost Jeff along the way. We lost some good people in the process, but,
[02:18:20] Christina: it’s okay.
[02:18:21] Jay: he’s out there tenting somewhere
[02:18:25] Brett: thanks for coming back, Jay. Good to see you. Always a pleasure, Christina.
[02:18:30] Christina: a pleasure.
[02:18:31] Brett: You guys get some sleep.
[02:18:33] Christina: Get
[02:18:33] Jay: Get some sleep, get some sleep, Jeff.
Alex Cox joins the crew to talk about mental health, Raspberry Pi, the New York Times, and some awesome Grapptitude picks for the week.
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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.
TranscriptMental 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
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[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.
TW: Suicidal Ideation
Taylor Swift is Time’s Person of the Year, mostly thanks to our tireless promotion at Overtired. Brett’s having dark thoughts and the gang helps him clarify a few things.
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TranscriptPerson of the What?
[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome to Overtired. I’m here with Christina Warren and Jeff Severins Gunsel. Uh, trigger warning at the top of the show. Um, we may be discussing some themes of suicidal ideation. Uh, we’ll see how that goes, but just, uh, just be warned if that is a trigger for you. Uh, maybe skip this one or fast forward to the next chapter.
[00:00:28] Brett: We’ll see. How are you guys doing? Better than you, obviously.
[00:00:33] Christina: I was to say, I well, I was doing okay. And then heard, uh, heard that. No. Um, I mean, I’m fine, but I’m, I’m more interested in how you’re doing.
[00:00:46] Jeff: Yeah, I feel like, uh, let’s, let’s, let’s go.
[00:00:49] Brett: Get that,
[00:00:50] Jeff: Hi, Brett. Hi, Christina.
[00:00:52] Mental Health Corner (TW: Suicidal Thoughts)
[00:00:52] Brett: Let’s get that off the plate at the top. So I have been going through. Some dark, uh, dark [00:01:00] thinking. And it’s not all the time. It’s, uh, especially evenings. I just, I start, I’m not planning suicide. I’m not thinking about what I would do or how I would do it or anything like that. I’m just thinking how much I would like to not be here.
[00:01:18] Brett: And, um, it’s not at the crisis level where I want to call a hotline, which I have done. Um, I’ve done the hotlines and, uh, anyone in Minnesota, 2 1 1 is a great resource. Uh, and Nationwide, 9 8 8 is a great resource, but, um, like I’m not It’s not at a crisis point where I’m like, if I don’t talk to someone, I’m going to hurt myself.
[00:01:43] Brett: Um, I’m not hurting myself, but the thoughts get very dark and they scare me. And I don’t like to tell anybody about them because people aren’t equipped to deal with that kind of, my partner isn’t equipped to deal with those [00:02:00] feelings. Um, they’re very scary when you hear someone close to you, or even tangentially.
[00:02:06] Brett: Like for me, when I, I was watching Welcome to Wrexham last night and I had been having a pretty good night. And then this girl that was kind of a main character in that episode, uh, talked about how her father had committed suicide and they were showing pictures of like him being happy and like a loving father.
[00:02:27] Brett: And just like, it hit me like how dark, how people can be so outwardly. affable, and be so hurting inside. And just hearing about other people and, and suicidal ideation and suicide itself, uh, it, it hits me in the gut. Like, I cry just like, I sob when I hear that stuff. Um, it feels, it feels a little too close to home for me.
[00:02:57] Brett: So, so that’s my mental health [00:03:00] check in. How are you guys doing?
[00:03:03] Christina: I’m really, really sad to, I mean, thank you for sharing that. I’m, I’m really, I, I completely understand the hesitancy in sharing this stuff because you’re right. People don’t know how to deal with it. And my experience is it’s, it’s one of two responses. It’s either people who are really disturbed and really upset by it, or, uh, what I would find is arguably even the worst response, which is they’re not concerned at all.
[00:03:26] Christina: They just assume that you’re full of shit and, and that, that you’re just saying stuff and that they
[00:03:31] Brett: Yeah, that, that would be awful. I, I haven’t run into that. Everyone who I have talked to takes it very seriously.
[00:03:38] Christina: um, with all respect, you’re a guy and, that, and, and that, that’s a, it’s a, it’s a massively, massively. Massively gendered thing. Um, uh, as, as mental health is in general.
[00:03:51] Christina: Um, you know, like, like women are, have been historically treated so differently when it comes to our mental health than men have. Like, we were the ones who were sent to sanitariums. [00:04:00] We were the ones who, you know, are called hysterical. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a whole thing. So. I am glad people are taking it seriously.
[00:04:08] Christina: Um, I makes me think, you know, you, you haven’t had, manic episodes in a while, right? But this definitely feels like this is like a depressive episode for, right. And, and as somebody who has been low key depressed for a couple of years and was in a really bad place, Earlier this year, um, you know, and I’m, I’m doing better now.
[00:04:30] Christina: Like I, I can completely relate to, to what you’re saying. Um, I hope that your, your doctor, you know, you can look at like med opportunities and other things to try to find the right balance.
[00:04:44] Brett: it’s weird Like I was I don’t have a relationship with my psychiatrist where I feel super Like I can tell her I’m doing okay. Like I I am by all measures like[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Christina: But you’re not
[00:05:02] Brett: I know, I know,
[00:05:03] Christina: that this, th th this is the trap though. This is the trap. We’re doing okay. I’m not actually gonna do anything. I just sometimes think about it, and I just would maybe rather not exist. I’m not planning anything. I’m not actually going to, you know, take those steps. It’s fine. It’s not fine.
[00:05:19] Christina: Like that’s, that’s depression and that that needs to be worked on. And, and I, I get not having a relationship, maybe having that trust level,
[00:05:26] Brett: so I did have, I did have plans to talk to my therapist very seriously about it very openly. Um, like I am, I have developed, my relationship with her is very open and honest and I will tell her like exactly how much I drink. I will tell her exactly like how my relationship with Elle is going and And I had every intention of talking to her about this, but she got sick this week and cancelled, so I have to wait a week, which is, it’s fine, I’ll, I’ll make it, but, [00:06:00] um, she’s, she, more her than my psychiatrist, which, she doesn’t prescribe my meds, um, and the, the, the shitty thing about being bipolar is It’s hard to treat bipolar depression because every psychiatrist is worried that they’re going to make you manic by giving you antidepressants.
[00:06:21] Jeff: worse, they’re not worried.
[00:06:23] Christina: Right. Right. But, but in this case, I mean, I do, like talking to your therapist is great and I completely understand the, um, hesitancy of talking to, um, your psychiatrist. But if this is something like in most cases, at least in my experience, this isn’t something that it doesn’t just go away. Um, and, and given your bipolar and given like the, Other like history of, of stuff you’ve had, I would be concerned, you know, about like, is this a metalignment thing?
[00:06:53] Christina: So even though I completely understand not necessarily wanting to, to talk about this stuff, I do [00:07:00] also, I encourage you to talk to your psychiatrist. Um, because I, I think that, I think you have to, if, if, if you want to, you know, treat this the best way that you can.
[00:07:11] Brett: Yeah, I find myself trying to be so upbeat when I talk to her because I don’t want her to fuck with like, what is working. Um,
[00:07:19] Christina: and I, and I get it. Um, I, I completely, I, I, this year I get it more than anything. But, I also, like, is it really working? That would be the question I would ask. Um, you know what I mean? Like, like, cause, cause that, that’s, that’s the thing. Like, we can all be in our places. And, and this is why I think, like, depression is so fucking insidious.
[00:07:40] Christina: Is that We will convince ourselves, we’ll go through so many mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that we’re not depressed and that things aren’t that bad and that everything’s okay. And, and we go out of our way to hide things. And that is why, to your point, why there are people who will look on the outside like they just have.
[00:07:58] Christina: everything going for them and just have [00:08:00] the most awful personalities and are in a lot of pain and That is not an accident In my opinion, I think that most most of us who are depressed like you’re a very good liar. You’re a very good actor And, um, it, and part of that is because you feel a sense of shame around being depressed.
[00:08:19] Christina: You feel a sense of obligation to not let people know you’re depressed. You feel a sense of just general, like, embarrassment. And then also there’s this aspect of, Oh, well, if I just fake it, it’ll get better. And, and there’s a certain truth to You know, how you act and how you put yourself out can have a real impact on your mental health and your energy and whatnot.
[00:08:38] Christina: Like it certainly is better to be out with people, in my opinion, and to do exercise and do other stuff that can all genuinely have real, um, impact on, on your endorphins and on your serotonin levels, but it’s not enough to get you out of like a dark place. And, and so, um, we, we delude ourselves into thinking things aren’t that bad.
[00:08:59] Christina: [00:09:00] Um, and then. If it goes on too long, it is that bad. So
[00:09:05] Brett: have, I do have one friend who is also very open about her mental health. Um, and she suffers from extreme anxiety and depression and, um, and suicidal ideation, and I have been able to, um, be completely open with her and we can tell each other, you know, what you’re feeling isn’t. Real. Like, it’s real to you, but, but people do actually want you around and your life is actually important and we can, like, just basic affirmations.
[00:09:40] Brett: Um, and that has been really good for me. We have her over to the house once in a while and just have a fun evening, but then our Facebook messages are where, like, we can kind of confide our darker thoughts in each other and, and support each other. And she’s been really good for me.
[00:09:58] Christina: that’s really good. And I’m glad you have, you have a [00:10:00] person, um, like that. Um, you can talk to that openly. Um, cause I think it’s really important. And it’s rare, like even people who like, again, as you said, like people who. People in your life, your partners, family members, whatnot. The level of understanding is different.
[00:10:15] Christina: Some people will take it very seriously. Some people won’t. And then there is a, there’s also kind of the fear which is like, okay, is someone going to take this to the level that I don’t need to take this to? Because like you said, you’re not calling 2 1 1. You’re not calling or 9 8 8 or whatever the, the number is.
[00:10:29] Christina: Like you’re not at that point. It’s not at a crisis point. It’s just kind of a low level, you know, like Always I’m putting words in your mouth now, but but at least my experience It’s
[00:10:39] Brett: correct so far.
[00:10:40] Christina: it’s like it’s like a low level like always on kind of like malaise kind of undercurrent thing where when especially when you’re alone You have these intrusive thoughts that you can’t turn off that again It’s not to a point where you’re going to be, you know doing something to harm yourself, but you do have kind of this You know, like thought like, what if I just didn’t wake [00:11:00] up?
[00:11:00] Christina: What if I just wasn’t here? You know, how much easier would things be if I didn’t have to do any of this? And, um, and then that’s, I’m really sorry you’re going through this. And again, I really encourage you, even though it’s difficult to talk to your doctor because Again, like, and I, I say this with full empathy because it’s what I’ve been dealing with for the last six months, but you think your med situation is okay.
[00:11:32] Christina: It’s not if, if you’re still going through this. So I totally get wanting to salvage what’s working, but also like do some deep thinking about is it really working? Right. Because clearly what. You’ve been on has done a great job in stopping your every three week manic episodes. But it might have, you know, gone too far in the other direction and that that that’s that’s not livable either and in any I don’t know your psychiatrist [00:12:00] I know there are plenty of terrible psychiatrists out there.
[00:12:03] Christina: I cannot imagine a psychiatrist who would be like, Oh yeah, we would much rather have someone be low key suicidal than, than, than have a manic episode. You know what I mean? It’s like, no, you need to find a balance. So anyway, I, I, I’m, I’m sorry you’re going through this and I love you and, and, um, if you ever need to talk off pod about anything, I’m obviously here.
[00:12:21] Christina: So
[00:12:22] Brett: Thanks. Just been quiet.
[00:12:25] Jeff: You’re like, I’m not going to call it a hotline, but as soon as we start recording, I’m, I’m not, that’s not making fun. And I’m just, it’s a loving laugh at how funny we are as people.
[00:12:37] Christina: totally.
[00:12:38] Jeff: It’s such a hard feeling that maybe I don’t want to be here. And I’m sorry that you’re having that. I have had that feeling sometimes.
[00:12:48] Jeff: I think. I’m not prescribing this to you, or even, but sometimes I think, wait a minute, actually, what I really need is for the rest of the fucking world to disappear for like two days, and just give me some [00:13:00] space where I don’t have, because for me, when I feel like that, half of it is that like, I’m anticipating some kind of either, connecting, uh, force coming towards me.
[00:13:10] Jeff: Someone calls or is in my space or whatever else. And I just need to not have someone in my space, not have someone calling or asking anything of me. Um, and what I really wish I sometimes like, I wish I could just press pause in my life. I’m like, no, I just want to press pause on everything around my life.
[00:13:26] Jeff: And I think I could just enjoy myself for a little bit. Oh
[00:13:29] Brett: Don’t tell my employer, but we’ve gone through more management changes and it has left me in, um, a no man’s land where everyone thinks I’m working for someone else. And during this period of depression, um, I basically. Have been doing like the bare minimum and nobody seems to care. Like no one even notices.
[00:13:58] Brett: It makes me worry about the long [00:14:00] term steadiness of my employment. But right now, I haven’t had to take disability. I just, I have just been granted this no man’s land where I have no weekly meetings with any manager.
[00:14:16] Jeff: my God.
[00:14:16] Brett: I have managers that are like, reach out if you have any questions. And I’m like, I, I don’t have any questions.
[00:14:22] Brett: I can, I have automated a good portion of my job, which, you know,
[00:14:27] Jeff: of course you have.
[00:14:28] Brett: I deserve to be paid for that. That’s fine. Um, but yeah, it’s been actually, I’m really grateful that, uh, my, my day to day employment has kind of just worked out to. To work with my current state of mind,
[00:14:45] Christina: Do you remember that, that, that story? I think it’s on, I think I just found the Google thing. I think it was from the early 2000s called, like, About the Forgotten Employee, about the guy who was, like, hired at this place, and they just, like, literally forgot that he existed, but he was still [00:15:00] getting his paychecks every week, even though he was literally doing nothing.
[00:15:04] Christina: Um, and, um, yeah, that was, like, a great, um,
[00:15:12] Brett: Yeah I get I get paid way too much for as little as I’m doing these last couple of weeks
[00:15:18] Christina: I mean, but this is fine. A, A, this is a little bit on them for doing like the management thing that, that your employer is known to do, and hey, that my, um, employer’s owner is also known to do. Uh, B, it’s the holiday season, so everybody’s checked the fuck out. Like, everybody’s checked, from this point of time as we’re recording this, everybody’s gonna be checked out until like the week after New Year’s.
[00:15:37] Brett: for sure
[00:15:38] Christina: Like, everybody’s, everybody’s completely out of it. Um, and C, you do a lot, um, you know, and you’ve been productive in other ways, so like, let them figure it out. Like, I, I trust me, like, my, my self review for this, like, first half of the year, like, I’m not getting promoted, which sucks, because I really would like to be promoted, right?
[00:15:54] Christina: I’d really like to get promoted, but I’m also like, no, I’m not getting promoted, but I’m also not getting fired, um, even though, like, I’ve been going [00:16:00] through a lot of shit and probably should have taken disability, um, so, like, be grateful that we work. Um, in an industry, um, unlike what Jeff does where we can actually like half ass it to the extreme and still be okay, which is kind of like, it kind of sums up what’s wrong with corporate America and, and the tech industry in general.
[00:16:21] Christina: But you know what? I’m tired of like never taking advantage
[00:16:24] Jeff: No, you were, when you were talking about this, I was thinking about how like I’m, I’m part of this member owned research collaborative and there’s like nine of us and we all work on teams together and we all, we’re all responsible. The, I’m like, oh my God, it sounds so nice. Although what I would like more than what you have, Brett, is more like what Big Head had in Silicon Valley where like, um, he’s, did you watch the show, the two of
[00:16:45] Brett: I can’t remember
[00:16:46] Jeff: He, he gets into a situation with all these other, these people that hang out on the roof where like they couldn’t cancel their contracts. And they need to just let them run out their contracts. And, but, and they need to be on premises. So they just sit on a roof doing nothing. [00:17:00] Um, and, uh, and I was like, every time I see them, like, I want to work at corporate.
[00:17:04] Christina: Oh, no, totally. And it’s, although, the interesting thing is at this point, I think they’ve all figured out, like, this would be funny, I would love, I, in some, like, I miss Silicon Valley so much for so many reasons, like, it’s a great show, um, and, and they nailed the, the parody and the other stuff just, like, perfectly, but, um, it was also one of those things where I, um, am like, okay, um, they, uh, I would love to see them do it like today because today I think that they would just find a way to get out of the contract or they would just like pay the penalty and they’d just be like, yeah, you’re done.
[00:17:37] Christina: You’re fired. Um, but, but I agree with you that that would be like the ideal thing, um, would just be to be like, yep, I just can sit out this. But in general also, yeah, I totally understand what you’re saying. Like Jeff, like Jeff has like real responsibilities and like has real people around and has like works in a, in a field there where people will definitely notice when you’re not doing it.
[00:17:56] Christina: Um, and I think it’s hard for people like Brett and I who have come [00:18:00] from jobs where we had real responsibilities and people really noticing, it’s hard for us to then go into places where people don’t.
[00:18:06] Jeff: Oh yeah.
[00:18:07] Christina: where even, even better, where like, the bare minimum will make you be seen as a hero, and you’re like, wait, what?
[00:18:13] Christina: And, and, and, and, because it moves so fucking slowly, um, in comparison, you’re just like, oh,
[00:18:20] Jeff: No, it sounds
[00:18:20] Christina: how people actually work.
[00:18:21] Jeff: to me, like, I think I would be, I would be, um, mostly at peace with it, um, but it also sounds like, just the lack of definition is hard.
[00:18:31] Christina: With lack of definition and slowness, I think, I think you’d be bored at certain times.
[00:18:35] Brett: I wrote three articles this year, like my job, technically, I’m a technical writer, even though my, my job title is software developer. Um, I’m a technical writer and I wrote three total pieces of content.
[00:18:50] Christina: But didn’t, but weren’t they some of the most successful?
[00:18:52] Brett: one of those pieces of content made it into the top 20 pieces of content for the entire
[00:18:58] Jeff: you’re a fucking great writer. [00:19:00] Which is not something that the people in your job before you
[00:19:02] Brett: And so at my, at my, at my quarterly review, I got to say, yeah, I was in the top 20, uh, developer content that went out for the year, even though like I didn’t have much else to show that I did the bare minimum and, and I got patted on the back,
[00:19:18] Christina: Absolutely.
[00:19:19] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:19:20] Brett: got, I got a bonus.
[00:19:21] Christina: You got a bonus and, you know, you automate the shit out of a bunch of things. You build tools for a lot of other people to do stuff. Like, you’re a great, great, great writer. If I were hiring someone for a documentation team, I wouldn’t necessarily hire you to be a writer. I would maybe hire you to be like, maybe an editor, maybe someone to look over certain stuff, maybe someone to help with style guides, but I would really hire you to be like the tooling person and to be like the person to like help like come up with the efficiencies.
[00:19:45] Christina: Not at all. That’s
[00:19:46] Jeff: Cause you’re not gonna be able to help yourself, you will write the documentation.
[00:19:49] Brett: that is, that, that is my niche for sure.
[00:19:52] Christina: And, and I mean, I’m just, you know, being again, like, candid. It’s like, you’re such a good writer. Like, okay, I put Brett on like the really hard things, but I don’t want to waste [00:20:00] his time or his talents and having him do the day to day bullshit documentation stuff that anybody can do.
[00:20:05] Christina: Like that’s, that’s not why I hire Brett. Like I would hire Brett to do the stuff that’s more complicated. Like the same thing, like you don’t hire me to write your code. Um, I can, I can come up with a great demo and, and I can, I can certainly, you know, like, like explain how stuff works, but like. That’s not why you hire me.
[00:20:23] Christina: Um, if I needed to make that as like my day to day career, I could do that, but that’s not why you hire me. You hire me to be your person who’s hosting events and who’s giving talks and who’s, you know, kind of being like a, a public face of, of your company. Like, that’s why you hire me. You don’t hire me to be the person who’s, you know, building all the.
[00:20:40] Brett: scenes writing. Yeah,
[00:20:41] Christina: right. I mean, I’d be, I’d, I’d, or even behind the scenes as like a PM, like, I’d be happy to do that, but like, if I’m really gonna be in a PM role, it’s gonna be, needs to be one that’s more public facing, you know, that is the person people can blame or praise, um, to be clear.
[00:20:56] Brett: We are so opposite in that regard. Like [00:21:00] by my, my current manager, who is actually like a VP, um, he keeps suggesting that I do presentations, um, that I do webinars or go to conferences and present, and that is not what I signed up for. Um, I try very hard to talk him out of. Relying on me for that kind of public facing stuff.
[00:21:24] Brett: I’m like, you should get Christina Warren in here, because she could kill this.
[00:21:31] Christina: Yeah. No, I mean, but so we should, we, we, we should start a Dere team with Yumi and, and, and Jay. Like, you know, honestly
[00:21:38] Brett: Yeah,
[00:21:39] Jeff: Hire me to
[00:21:40] Christina: or, or even better Dere as a service where we
[00:21:43] Brett: there you go.
[00:21:44] Christina: rented out by like other teams.
[00:21:45] Brett: Mercenary DevRel.
[00:21:47] Christina: I mean, kind of, I, you know, okay. Like saying this out loud, I kind of don’t hate the idea.
[00:21:51] Christina: I’ve been trying to, I’ve been trying to come up with like a Dere as a service plan for like years. I think that
[00:21:55] Brett: Kind of brilliant. I love it. I love it.
[00:21:58] Jeff: Is there a job opening for [00:22:00] someone to push the Raspberry Pi supercomputer around on a pallet jack over at your employer? Because that sounds fun.
[00:22:07] Christina: Yeah. For you for sure. Also, you would be like, you could help be like our, our, our, our content strategist.
[00:22:12] Brett: Do you know about, do you know about Chris, do Benson’s Pi Cluster?
[00:22:17] Jeff: That’s what I’m talking about. Isn’t there a Raspberry Pi, like, supercomputer,
[00:22:20] Brett: got laid off.
[00:22:21] Jeff: Oh, so there is a job opening for pushing it around on a
[00:22:24] Brett: no, they, they apparently didn’t appreciate his obsession with this thousand pie.
[00:22:30] Christina: But it was so cool!
[00:22:32] Brett: It was so cool. And like, it was the center attraction at some conferences.
[00:22:37] Christina: yes, at Oracle World, I was gonna say, like, wasn’t, like, the only news that, like, came out of Oracle World one year was that? Like Like, what the
[00:22:43] Brett: and he was so good at it and he made great video content. Like he had the whole setup with like the overhead cameras at the electronics bench and everything. And, and he was so dedicated to it and there was like an interpersonal conflict with him [00:23:00] and one of our three managers at that point. And, uh, and, and he got cut, which.
[00:23:06] Brett: Sucks. I, I should check in with him. I assume he landed on his feet. He’s a goddamn genius.
[00:23:12] Christina: Oh yeah, I have no doubt, um, that he, anybody who’s smart and has, you know, had gout would hire him. Um, but that just seems like such a waste.
[00:23:21] Jeff: he’s now like Guilfoyle in a garage somewhere in Silicon Valley with his pie cluster.
[00:23:25] Christina: That’s true.
[00:23:28] Brett: So, before we wrap up Mental Health Corner, how are you guys doing?
[00:23:31] Christina: Um, I’m okay. I’m, I’m okay. I’m in a, I kind of already talked about mine a little bit, like, I’m, I’m doing okay. Like I’m, basically, I think, I’m in a better place than I certainly was like earlier this year. And I think, uh, I’m looking forward to it. You know, seeing where things go. Like I said, I’m now at this point, I’m like at a month or so on no meds other than dexedrine and that’s been, that’s been doing okay.
[00:23:56] Christina: So, you know, fingers crossed.
[00:23:59] Brett: Yeah.
[00:23:59] Jeff: He [00:24:00] just reminded me I haven’t taken my meds today. I was gonna, I was gonna rattle my meds for you here and then,
[00:24:08] Brett: gonna, you’re gonna pop some Vyvanse in the middle
[00:24:10] Jeff: not much. No, I can’t take my meds anymore. Uh, yeah, it. It caused a, I mean, I was, I had a sort of manic episode that was stronger than any I’d had since I was diagnosed. It wasn’t anything like that, but it was more, it more existed in like in the way my body sort of, shit in my body just banged around inside.
[00:24:30] Jeff: Um, and I only have one medication treating that, um, which is Lamictal. And, uh, And I was taking Vyvanse and it was, it had been a month of just this on and off like rattling in me and I was not in a good place. I was having a hard time working. It wasn’t the kind of manic where it’s like, woo, at least I’m getting shit done.
[00:24:47] Jeff: Um, and I, I met with my medication manager for the first time for a long time, like since I went to Kenya. I mean, I, which was like in June or July. And, uh, we’re going through everything. I’m telling her what’s been going on for me and stuff and she’s, and she’s listening [00:25:00] and let’s just check in on what medications you’re still taking or whatever.
[00:25:02] Jeff: Um, it was five inches thick. Wait. Have you been taking the Vyvanse this whole time? I was like, yeah. She’s like, I think you need to stop. Let’s just see what happens if you stop. And I was afraid to stop, like, to just cut it completely, um, cause it doesn’t, it only takes a couple days to get over the weirdness of cutting Vyvanse completely, but like, sometimes those days really suck.
[00:25:24] Jeff: And uh, but I did it cause I was like, I was just, I was in a really, I was having really bad end of days, basically. Now that was the end of my days, but like,
[00:25:33] Brett: sure, sure, sure.
[00:25:34] Jeff: I just realized I’m actually very good about taking my medication in the morning, but I have misplaced my pill sorter. And so, uh, when I’m done talking here, and I only have a little bit to say for my mental health check in, although that was probably it right there.
[00:25:47] Jeff: Um, I, uh, You know, one thing that happened for me this week that was really helpful is, for various reasons known mostly to my therapists, I’ve been pretty paralyzed when it comes to trying to sit [00:26:00] down and work lately, which is something I’ve experienced for decades. It’s sort of a dissociative experience.
[00:26:08] Jeff: It takes a long time to get into that, but it’s almost like the way I describe it is like, I’ll sit down at my desk feeling pretty clear headed about what I need to do, and then it’s like, It’s like a dream where like, there’s a thing in front of you and when you reach out for it, it disappears. When you put your hand back, it appears.
[00:26:26] Jeff: Reach out for it, it disappears. And my, I, I actually experienced my brain just like going blank when I’m trying to just work. Um, and, and actually this wasn’t what I was going to talk about, but I, I rejiggered my Stream Deck. which I’ve used for a long time as like almost assistive technology because I’ve, if I’m in a meeting or something, often it’s just because my brain is thinking about too many things at once.
[00:26:51] Jeff: Um, but if I’m in a meeting and, and I need to kind of pull up a document or I need to just quickly sort of reference something, the spark happens to do that. [00:27:00] Like the little neuron fires, but because I’m also in a relational experience where I’m talking to people, cause I’m very like in meetings, very sort of relational based.
[00:27:09] Jeff: Um, it’s hard for me to then. Start just pulling up documents. And so for a long time, I’ve had my stream deck in front of me in meetings for whatever project I’m on. And the main documents are there. Cause I can just like reach over and press the button and it pops up. Um, even though I could do Alfred, I could do a million things.
[00:27:24] Jeff: That is the thing that, that creates a kind of
[00:27:26] Brett: Yeah, the physical button
[00:27:28] Jeff: physical button. It’s kind of like how I still want knobs on my stereo in my car, which is why I still drive, drive a car that’s very old. Um, but, uh, but anyway, um. I kind of rejiggered that because I’ve been just really kind of freezing up. And so like one thing I added, just silly, but like, it’s not silly, but it’s a, it’s massive, it’s like, I have a shortcut on my computer without, like, if I run the shortcut, it’s a Mac shortcut or whatever.
[00:27:53] Jeff: It just shows me my next five calendar events and I. Can run that a hundred times a day. Cause my brain, for [00:28:00] whatever reason, I can hold all kinds of stuff. Like I, I work at like a high level, right? Like I write a lot. I do a lot. I talk about a lot. And when it comes to that basic kind of executive function stuff, I can really, there’s just something that there’s something gets interrupted.
[00:28:14] Jeff: So I have that button. Then I have a new one because every project I’m on has a damn Google, Google drive folder, which like I don’t love. Um, but I made another like. Uh, Mac shortcut where it’s like, I press a button on my stream deck and a little menu comes up with my, you know, five main projects. And it’s the main Google drive folder selected.
[00:28:33] Jeff: It comes open and you have, that’s like loosen me up a little bit. Cause I was really dealing with this kind of like paralysis and I’m still dealing with it, but the thing that really helped me this week was my therapist was like, so part of a whole wider conversation, but she was like, I think it’s time for you to just kind of look at your environment that you’re working in and think about not just.
[00:28:53] Jeff: Are there things you should take out, but are there things you should put in? Right. And, and it happened to be just the right kind of therapy [00:29:00] appointment where when she suggested that and I hung up, it was a Zoom thing, I was able to look around and be like, oh shit. Like I like my aperture was wide. I was like, yes, this and this and this and this and this.
[00:29:10] Jeff: These things kind of stressed me out and they’re like all around me. And um, and I went and just like, I just actually sat in my, in one place and made a list of things that I think might be a little stressful for me. And then I went and started boxing ’em up. And it was great because I had, I mean, I keep a lot of like bullshit around like little trinkets, little like things that help me think of people or times or whatever.
[00:29:31] Jeff: But like, most of those things are not neutral times or neutral people. Um, and, and most of them are almost like Battlescar type of stuff. And even if it’s like Battlescar, like it was a band that broke up and it was a painful breakup or something. And there’s a picture of me playing with that band or whatever.
[00:29:48] Jeff: And so I went through it. I just kind of cleared that stuff out. And it felt so good, and I’m not done, I’m actually looking, you listeners can’t see this, but you can, I’m looking off to the left because I have, it almost looks like I got fired. Like, I have like a [00:30:00] box in the corner of the office, like a couple of picture frames popping out.
[00:30:03] Jeff: Um, but the other thing my therapist was saying is like, so also think about what Could come in and, and that’s been huge for me. So I’ve really simplified, but then I’m bringing things in. I’m trying to talk my family and to let me take my son in eighth grade, had a, had a, had a class, an art class where they were also see making structures that people were making, like.
[00:30:23] Jeff: Castles, and someone made a little princess house, whatever, and he made a fleet farm. And I’m like, trying,
[00:30:30] Brett: don’t know if Christina knows
[00:30:31] Jeff: farm, it’s just like, the best ever, like, it is a big box store in a certain sense, like a Home Depot, but it’s really a farm supply store, and it’s really an Ace Hardware magnified, right? Like, you can buy actual cow bells
[00:30:45] Brett: When, when Ivanka Trump, when Ivanka Trump came to my town, she did a photo op at Fleet Farm because, because it was supposed to make her feel more relatable to rural [00:31:00] Minnesota, which is also why I don’t shop at Fleet Farm anymore. I shop at Menards. Um,
[00:31:05] Christina: I know Menards. I’m familiar with Menards.
[00:31:08] Jeff: it’s like Menards, but a thousand times better, like,
[00:31:11] Christina: So is it like Menards and like a Home Depot combined?
[00:31:14] Jeff: no, it’s Menards, a Home Depot, a tractor supply store, and a farm supply store. Like the one in my hometown has live chicks. Not like
[00:31:22] Brett: if you want barbed wire and a shotgun and you want some feed
[00:31:27] Jeff: And a bag of nuts. And a really big bag of nuts.
[00:31:30] Brett: and, and maybe some bulk, like, um, what are those little puffy orange candies called
[00:31:35] Jeff: Oh yeah,
[00:31:36] Brett: always had? Yeah, um, like, if you want all that at once, you go to Fleet Farm, and it’s, it’s a disorganized mess, really, cause there’s just so much stuff,
[00:31:46] Jeff: to your flea farm, but not in mine.
[00:31:48] Christina: I
[00:31:48] Brett: really, it’s well or, it’s, it’s organized, but you have to ask somebody, where am I headed in this
[00:31:54] Jeff: Well, you know why I don’t have that experience? Because my obsession with Fleet Farms, and I’ve been to every one in the region, [00:32:00] is that it’s a place that I just go through every single aisle. Because at some point, I’m going to be like, whoa, horse mane shampoo. Like, it never occurred to me.
[00:32:09] Brett: while you’re
[00:32:10] Jeff: Yeah, like, anyway, so he made a fleet farm and, and I want that at my desk, like right in front of me, like it’s the kind of stuff I want like right now.
[00:32:19] Jeff: And the interesting thing was that as I sort of simplified the space from things that were a little just Yeah, it just felt a certain way for me, um, including some like professional books that were like part of a transition from one life to another in a certain way. I realized I felt more and more like myself now.
[00:32:37] Jeff: Like it was, it was such a, it was nice. Um, I often think that like by having all these things spread around me, it is sort of evidence of, it’s like evidence that I have lived. Um, and, and it is like, well, it’s in me anyhow, so here it is. But, um, moving it out was just like, oh, I do actually feel a little more.
[00:32:55] Jeff: Like grounded in this moment without all these things, cause I would see him in my zoom thing and I would [00:33:00] see, you know, um, anyway, that was nice. I just, everyone talks about in productivity and stuff, your environment. Uh, and, uh, and I think mental health is another context to talk about how you construct your environment.
[00:33:11] Jeff: Not surprisingly, I still have a lot of cash sitting in front of me right now. That makes me feel good too.
[00:33:16] Brett: I, uh, I went, I went to the bank, um, um, instead of buying, instead of Christmas shopping this year, I am just sending 50 bills to all of my nieces and nephews,
[00:33:29] Jeff: And podcast co hosts?
[00:33:31] Brett: which, which I’ve done before. And it feels like the cheap way out, but honestly, as a kid, the
[00:33:38] Christina: love it.
[00:33:39] Brett: The gift I look forward to most every year was the 100 bill my grandma would send me.
[00:33:45] Brett: I didn’t, like, every, everything else was, like, Um, uh, with ephemeral, like you’re going to like this toy for a month and then you’re going to be done with it, but a hundred dollar bill that, and I saved as a [00:34:00] kid, I had a savings account. Like I, I didn’t go out and blow it on candy and toys. Like I built up a savings account.
[00:34:08] Brett: What it was, it was, it was like a, an endorphin rush to see like, Oh my God,
[00:34:13] Jeff: I wish I had that
[00:34:14] Christina: I was
[00:34:15] Brett: a 10 year old kid with a thousand dollars. And
[00:34:29] Christina: a, a fair amount in savings. It’d be more if I had a house and other things, but like, you know, I, I could do better to be very clear.
[00:34:35] Christina: I could do a lot better. But I, um, definitely, um, as a kid, like, they would call it the Bank of Christina. And, and, I mean, I got to the point, like, I actually had to get, like, a lock on my door because my dad, like, really literally was, like, using me as, like, a personal ATM, and it was a problem.
[00:34:51] Jeff: I’ve done that with my son, I’m like, Do you have a 20 up there? I’ll get you back.
[00:34:54] Christina: Yeah, um, no, it was, like, a problem, but, like, you know, and I had a savings account, and then I got a checking account, and I would put money in it, but, you know, I couldn’t [00:35:00] put stuff in all the time, but, like, I would, like, take, like, the 20 I would get for allowance and other things and, and gifts, and I, I would, like, save it.
[00:35:06] Christina: Like, I, I, I’ve saved enough. For one year, like, I basically bought, like, the, the monitor for our computer and the printer, um, uh, for, for, for the family computer. Um, I remember I had enough money one time and this was, like, the best, like, pre Christmas thing ever. So when the Nintendo 64 came out, this one, it was, like, this is the first console I remember that was, like, impossible to find in stores.
[00:35:28] Christina: Like, I’m sure that there Difficulty finding other things, but like, from the time it was released, you could not get a Nintendo 64. And the games were really limited, too. Like, there were only a few games out at launch, and they were really hard to find. And nine days before Christmas, I was at a Target, And I saw some family like buying one and they didn’t have any accessories or anything.
[00:35:48] Christina: And I went up to the guy and I was like, do you have any more Nintendo 64s? And he put one up on the counter. And I was like, I will be right back. And I went to my mom and I was like, mom, I was like, I have 250 in [00:36:00] You know, it’s like, like stored, um, in, in the, um, uh, the living room and in the drawer where you keep your Bibles, where dad won’t go.
[00:36:08] Christina: And I will, I will buy this. I will give you the money as soon as I get home. I was like, but I, I, I, I need this.
[00:36:15] Jeff: Picture your dad opening the drawer of Bibles and being like, Whoa, shit! Closing it really fast. Like, that’s safe.
[00:36:20] Christina: Totally. So, so she, um, so, so I got it and, and, um, I had to rent a game because you literally could not get Mario 64 anywhere. So I’d like rent the game.
[00:36:30] Jeff: a Redbox for video games?
[00:36:32] Christina: Well, it was, it
[00:36:32] Jeff: Well, the video
[00:36:33] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, it
[00:36:34] Jeff: right. I forget that. It’s a generational difference.
[00:36:36] Christina: Totally. It was a home, it was a home video, but it might have, actually might have been Blockbuster. I think home video didn’t have Nintendo 64 games yet. Um, so I think it was Blockbuster. I got that in a Wayne Gretzky game and, um, I, uh, uh, because like those were the only two games I could play and, and memory cards so that I could like save my progress, um, myself and then transfer it, um, uh, to, to the new game, uh, when I was able to finally get my own.
[00:36:58] Christina: And my mom, this was the, the worst thing. [00:37:00] She still made me freaking like wrap it up under the tree. I bought it myself, and I still had to wait nine days. I still had to wait nine
[00:37:07] Brett: are like that. I bought my parents a Loamy the like, uh, the thing that turns your kitchen refuse into compost overnight. Um,
[00:37:16] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:17] Brett: I bought them that, uh, it was on Yeah. Oh, it’s amazing. I use, I use it, I use it daily. Um, so I thought they would like one. They were super interested. I bought it for them and I had them order it and I would just pay for it and they got it and they called me and they’re like, all right, we got it.
[00:37:34] Brett: Do you want to come over and wrap it and we’ll open it on Christmas morning? And I’m like, no, start using it.
[00:37:41] Jeff: yeah, that’s so funny.
[00:37:43] Brett: It’s your Christmas present now. Take it and go. Um, do you guys remember savings bonds?
[00:37:49] Jeff: Oh yeah. I had a,
[00:37:50] Christina: I’m aware of them. I’m aware of them. I don’t think I ever got any.
[00:37:55] Brett: oh, my aunt and uncle used to send me a hundred dollar savings bond every Christmas, which [00:38:00] is, it costs like 50 bucks, and you give it, I think, three to five
[00:38:04] Jeff: later, it’s worth 110.
[00:38:05] Brett: And, and I collected those all through my childhood and it felt like a big gift, but it wasn’t money you could spend right away. Um, so those all got set aside and it wasn’t until I was in like a financial crisis that I remembered, Oh my God, I have this drawer full of savings bonds.
[00:38:24] Brett: And it added up to like 3, 000, but it sucked because I needed that 3, 000 just to get through like my current crisis. And then it was just all gone. So.
[00:38:34] Jeff: all that time.
[00:38:36] Brett: it felt like, it felt like a lot of, um, a lot of saving and a lot of effort for something that, it saved my skin, but it felt, it was disappointing. I, I really, as a kid, I really thought that was going to be
[00:38:49] Jeff: Yeah, no, I did too. I was like, this is gonna be amazing. It’s like in No Country for Old Men when he’s like, do you know how long this quarter’s been on this journey to you? like those savings bonds, they were [00:39:00] just on this journey to help you with that one week.
[00:39:03] Brett: I don’t think they, I don’t think you can buy savings bonds anymore. Or is it CDs?
[00:39:07] Jeff: I mean, my grandma gave them to my boys up until about 15 or 20 years no, no, they’re not 20. Up until about 15 years ago, um, or maybe 12 years ago, she was still buying them. But I think she actually may have bought them all in bulk when they like, when each kid was born, she would buy a bunch, and then give them out, um, so
[00:39:29] Brett: Oh, so maybe they were already matured by the time she gave them.
[00:39:32] Christina: Yeah, I, I, I was gonna say, I think, cause it wasn’t the whole thing, cause like a CD is different, but like, from what I understood, and I, I never had relatives who got me saving months, like, uh, my, my father’s family who had money never gave us money for shit like that because they’re bad with it and, and whatever, um, and, and, and fuck his mother, but like, um,
[00:39:55] Jeff: I wasn’t gonna say it.
[00:39:56] Christina: well, I mean, you know, like if there’s a hell she’s there, but like, [00:40:00] um, My mom’s family, who ironically, like, didn’t have money and then wound up when they died, not only were their funerals completely, like, plots, everything prepaid, had they, you know, saved enough to pay for, like, all of their, their medical expenses and other things.
[00:40:18] Christina: And paid off the house and, and other stuff. They still had like money to leave for the kids. Like it was kind of wild actually. Like that these very like simple, like, like people who like lived a very like modest life actually had like far more money to leave to their family than like the millionaire who turned out actually wasn’t like, um, was like living off the company money and like had the.
[00:40:37] Brett: people are the worst tippers.
[00:40:39] Christina: Oh, yeah. I mean, well, it depends on how rich you are. Like, like there’s like old money, rich people will tip well, but yeah, it totally, totally depends. But like, um, so they didn’t give me savings bonds. What they would do is I would just, I would get like, um, candy money is what my grandmother would call it.
[00:40:53] Christina: And she
[00:40:54] Jeff: my my aunt called it ice cream money. My great
[00:40:56] Christina: yeah, she would call it like, you know, she put like, like, like 20 or something, you [00:41:00] know, for like, you know, a holiday and whatnot. But I always thought that savings bonds were like a scam. Like, that’s what I, my understanding always was, was that like there’s people like thinking that it was going to be worth way more and then it’s like,
[00:41:13] Brett: it’s guaranteed money. Like,
[00:41:15] Christina: I know
[00:41:15] Jeff: It’s guaranteed to be a very poor return on
[00:41:17] Christina: Well, that’s what I meant in terms
[00:41:18] Jeff: like, it’s like, it’s a contractually, uh,
[00:41:21] Christina: Right. Well, that’s what I meant. Like my scam, I meant like the return on investment for these things is like non existent. Like obviously it’s, it’s like, uh, you know, the, the, the bond is guaranteed, but like, you know, like it was one of those things that I think that you’d have, I always just imagine, and this is just from TV, which is my.
[00:41:36] Christina: Mostly, my knowledge of savings bonds, you know, like door to door salesmen, they’re like, oh, it’s going to be such a great return on investment. This will be how you’re going to pay for your kid’s college and this and that, and just buy this. And it’s like, no, really what you want is you want like a, you know, whatever the, the, the sort of a Roth account is, and, and you want to do like these other things, like that’s how you really save for college, but like, you know, to get like
[00:41:55] Brett: You know, until there’s a financial crash and your, your IRA becomes [00:42:00] worthless,
[00:42:00] Christina: I mean, fair, fair, but, but, um, I mean, at that point, we had bigger fish to fry.
[00:42:10] Brett: Alright, did we, did we just spend 40, 42 minutes on a mental health corner?
[00:42:15] Christina: We did. We did.
[00:42:16] Jeff: meandered
[00:42:17] Brett: So
[00:42:18] Christina: out. We’ve got a lot of other things.
[00:42:20] Brett: I
[00:42:20] The Pivotal Role of Overtired in Taylor’s Success
[00:42:20] Brett: feel like it’s important that we acknowledge the pivotal role that this podcast played in Taylor Swift becoming a Times Person of the Year.
[00:42:31] Jeff: And that’s you too, I came in late, so I
[00:42:33] Christina: I mean, you came in late,
[00:42:34] Jeff: little humble about it.
[00:42:36] Christina: okay, you can be a little humble, but it is, it is more Brett and I, um, but I’m, I’m going to give you credit here, Jeff. Like Brett was really ready to like, not talk about Taylor Swift ever again. And you, and, and, and you, and you’ve been like willing to let me continue to talk about her.
[00:42:50] Christina: And you’ve been willing to like, let me continue the conversation, especially this year, which was the pivotal year. So, so I know, I think, I think obviously it was our podcast. It was the [00:43:00] three of us. And that is why, did either of you read the profile? The profile was actually really good.
[00:43:06] Brett: I, it was really long. Um, I, I skimmed it. I read, I read paragraphs that jumped out at me. I did not read the whole thing. I got some interesting tidbits. Um, she, she has led an interesting life and she has She has a lot of, she’s made some powerful decisions, uh, that have benefited her. Well, I did enjoy the story about her first, like right at the beginning of the article, it talked about her first heart, yeah, her first heartbreak when she was like scheduled to open and it was going to change her
[00:43:40] Jeff: got the Kenny Chesney tour, it would change her career, she’d get so much money, and
[00:43:44] Brett: And then he got sponsored by a beer company and she wasn’t old enough to be involved and he came back to her at like her 18th birthday party and gave her a check for all the money that she probably missed out on, um, [00:44:00] by being the opening act and she was able to like pay her band bonuses
[00:44:05] Jeff: yeah, let me
[00:44:05] Brett: for tour buses and
[00:44:07] Jeff: yeah, that was good. I was gonna say, let’s just do the list of things that she paid for with that check. And then let us try to figure out how
[00:44:15] Christina: How much that shuck
[00:44:16] Jeff: check was for. So he is like, I’m sorry, this kid couldn’t tour with me, it would have been a big deal for her, she would have made a Ton of fucking money.
[00:44:23] Jeff: And so he sends her a birthday check. Right. And it’s like, Brett just said, I’m searching this as I look. It’s like, she paid bonuses to her band. It paid for her tour buses, to her buses. Right. Like it paid for so much. How much was this check inflation considered?
[00:44:44] Christina: I don’t know probably a million dollars I don’t know.
[00:44:46] Jeff: And when I know Kenny Chesney makes a lot of money, but I think of people at his level of fame, which is probably bigger than I think, as like, not able to cut a million dollar check.
[00:44:58] Christina: think in [00:45:00] 2006 I think he would be able to very easily because you got to think you got to think about a couple things there. One, the economy for the music industry had not completely collapsed yet. Like people were still buying CDs and and um, and so And he was selling a shitload of CDs. Like we didn’t listen to him because we’re not as demographic, but he was selling a shitload of CDs
[00:45:19] Jeff: Hey man, I saw him in 07. It was Girls Night Out at the Indiana State Fair. I went with my mother in law and my wife. Girls Night Out.
[00:45:26] Christina: okay. So you, which is, that’s, that’s a big thing to play too. Right? Like, like, so he’s playing like big venues, like Indiana State Fair is like, you know, he’s getting paid well for
[00:45:34] Jeff: venue.
[00:45:34] Christina: Well, not to mention the merch sales. Right. So like, you know, so you’re getting merch, you’re getting touring, you’re getting still CD stuff.
[00:45:41] Christina: So. I think he probably could cut her, I don’t know what it would be pre inflation, but like equivalent of a million dollars now. And, and yeah, she’d be able to do it, which she didn’t expand upon in that article, but I do know from past things with her, cause this is brilliant. So they, they bought their, their buses and I think they actually bought [00:46:00] them from Kenny Chesney and they, um,
[00:46:03] Jeff: this is money laundering. This is starting to look like a different deal.
[00:46:06] Christina: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[00:46:09] Jeff: Now I get
[00:46:10] Christina: Now you get it. Yeah. No, I’m sure there’s some money. Definitely. Definitely money laundering. No, they bought the buses. But then what they did is they would rent them when they were not in use to other acts because her dad is, is like an actual, like financial, like advisor, like, Analyst, like, you know, stockbroker, like a guy who’s actually very, very good, like was paid for a very long time to manage other people’s money and like in the, you know, many, many millions of dollars.
[00:46:36] Christina: So he’s, he’s the sort of person who you would be perfect to be like the dad of like a burgeoning like, you know, country pop star, right? Like this is not Britney Spears family who’s like, how much money can we suck out of this girl? This is like, oh no, okay, what, how can we leverage this the best we can?
[00:46:53] Christina: And so he’s like, okay, well, we’ll. Buy the buses and then we’ll rent them when we’re not using them. And that way we can [00:47:00] get tax write offs, but also we can continue to make these, make money for us even when we’re not on the road. And like they, they
[00:47:05] Jeff: income tour buses.
[00:47:06] Brett: So what, what does Taylor Swift’s mom do?
[00:47:09] Christina: she was in marketing and then I think she was a stay at home for, for Maryland and then she’s a stay at home mom.
[00:47:15] Christina: Um,
[00:47:16] Brett: so the, the, the
[00:47:18] Jeff: And now she’s a baroness.
[00:47:19] Brett: To becoming a billion dollar time person of the year is to be one, insanely talented, two, have a financial manager for a father, and three, have a marketing person as a mother.
[00:47:33] Christina: Yeah, who’s also
[00:47:34] Brett: and you’re, and you’re, and you’re well on your way.
[00:47:37] Christina: And you’re
[00:47:37] Brett: Yeah, and a check from Cheney.
[00:47:39] Christina: and then the check from Kenny Chesney. Yeah No, I mean to be clear like she like it’s her talent alone I think probably she would have gotten a record deal, especially when they were giving everyone record deals.
[00:47:50] Brett: Sure. But a lot of people got record
[00:47:52] Christina: Oh, no, to be very
[00:47:53] Brett: We don’t hear about them
[00:47:54] Christina: Oh, no, no, no, absolutely. And to be very clear, I think the reason she’s been so successful, and she, I think, would be the first to admit [00:48:00] this, is like, she came from money. Her family was willing to move to Nashville for her. Like, they literally, like, picked up, like, were on, went from their, like, their palatial estate or whatever in, in, in, you know, um, Pennsylvania, went to Nashville, like, to help her pursue her dream.
[00:48:15] Christina: They had the money to do it, and then they had the money to invest. And also, when she was, originally, she was signed to, um, a songwriting deal with, um, with one of the record labels. And they were like, they didn’t want her to perform her own songs. They were like, we’ll give you a record deal, but we want you to sing other people’s stuff.
[00:48:29] Christina: And she’s like, this isn’t right. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to back out. And her mom is like, God, you know, we’ve worked so hard, you know, I can’t believe you’re going to do this. But she was like, okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll trust you. And that was when she then met Scott Borchetta, who let her do her own stuff.
[00:48:44] Christina: And of course that relationship ended awfully, but it was very productive for like the first decade or 15 years or whatever of her career. So, um, Yeah, but to be very clear, like, having the right support system around you, which almost no one of [00:49:00] her age ever has, like, the dividends, and to this day she even says in the article, she like, that she considers her, you know, her thing like a small family business, because her dad’s still involved, her mom’s still involved, her brother’s involved, like, you know, they, they keep it tight.
[00:49:17] Jeff: a friend who would frequently reference his family’s small business, and then I realized he was a trust fund kid who didn’t have to work, and that that family business was massive, but it was controlled by a small number of family members. It’s like, oh,
[00:49:29] Christina: I think is basically this,
[00:49:31] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing.
[00:49:34] Jeff: My mother in law, when we went to see Kenny Chesney, I kept calling him Kenny Mick Chesney, I thought his name was. She thought I was being an asshole.
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[00:51:16] Anyway, back to Taylor Swift
[00:51:16] Brett: and now back to Christina for the Taylor Swift update.
[00:51:19] Christina: And, and then now, now back to me for the, for the penultimate, for the, for the, uh, ending on this. So again, this very long article, but it’s really good one. And this comes towards the end. And basically the author is just kind of written about how he was kind of evaluating when he was talking to her.
[00:51:34] Christina: She was kind of telling the story about how 2016 was this really low point in her life. And she didn’t think that anybody was going to listen to her music again. And, and that she thought that she, you know, had to go into hiding and all this stuff. And, and he kind of was thinking himself like, eh, but you know, you actually.
[00:51:50] Christina: You know, that that lead single off that next album sold, you know, uh, that, that hit number one and the album sold 1. 3 million, um, you know, albums its first week and, and, [00:52:00] you know, you had this massive thing and, and, and it didn’t look, um, you know, like anybody’s career died. You know, you look like you were a superstar who, You know, I’m gonna read from him.
[00:52:08] Christina: She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this. But then I think, who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt? The point is, she felt cancelled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her, something in her had been lost, and she was grieving it.
[00:52:23] Christina: And then this is, this is I think really brilliant. Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect, that she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats that, that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter.
[00:52:40] Christina: That for your heart to break, whether it’s from being kicked off a tour, or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere, Or because somebody else controls your life’s work is a valid wound and no, you’re not crazy for being upset about it or for wanting your story to be told.
[00:52:55] Brett: That seems fair.
[00:52:57] Christina: And I think, I think that’s like, I think he’s right.
[00:52:59] Christina: I think that [00:53:00] is like the real, like, that, that’s, I think that encapsulates like why this year in particular, finally, like, I think she even says in the article, like, that she feels like she’s like, at like this precipice moment at 33. I don’t think anybody anticipated that she would have the year that she had, but I think that’s it, is that it’s, you know, it gives people, especially women and particularly girls, like permission to be like, yes, this shitty thing happened to me, and I might be over dramatizing it in my own head or I’m not, but I can feel this.
[00:53:33] Christina: And that’s That’s pretty fucking great.
[00:53:36] Brett: Well,
[00:53:36] Jeff: goddamn video about it.
[00:53:38] Brett: goes back to like what we were talking about. I’m talking about with depression,
[00:53:42] Christina: Yes.
[00:53:43] Brett: the, it’s the same feeling that like, uh, this can’t be that bad. Even though it feels wrong for me, I like, let’s put it in the context of everybody else and I’m not special and I don’t deserve to have these feelings.
[00:53:59] Brett: And I think it [00:54:00] speaks to that kind of,
[00:54:01] Christina: Yes.
[00:54:02] Brett: yeah.
[00:54:03] Christina: No, I mean, and you see it like at the concert. I can’t wait for you guys to watch the, the tour movie when it comes on streaming, um, and Plex accounts. Um,
[00:54:11] Brett: saw it in the theater. No, I’m just kidding. I didn’t.
[00:54:14] Christina: you did not, you liar. Um, it,
[00:54:16] Jeff: They had the Taylor Swift popcorn buckets when I went to see Ghost in the Shell with my son. He brought me there, I didn’t bring him
[00:54:22] Brett: Wait, Ghost in the Shell was in the theater?
[00:54:25] Jeff: Yeah, it’s like a remastered version, this is a really good one. It’s good. Yeah, anyway, sorry, but we almost ended up with Taylor Swift popcorn buckets at Ghost in the Shell, which is funny.
[00:54:35] Christina: that is funny, actually. No, but no, I can’t wait for you guys to like for, for that to come out so you can see parts of the, the, the concert because I’m not going to make you watch all three and a half hours. Don’t worry. But, um, it is actually,
[00:54:46] Brett: a half hours.
[00:54:47] Christina: she performs for three and a half hours.
[00:54:49] Brett: Oh my
[00:54:50] Christina: Oh, and they cut, and they cut, they cut, they cut songs from the, um, release version.
[00:54:54] Christina: So it’s only three hours in the theatrical release. They cut like six songs. Um, [00:55:00] uh, well, I mean, genuinely it is like the most amazing, like, achievement of like artistic, like, um, athleticism I’ve ever seen in my life because,
[00:55:10] Brett: I watched King Kong with a notebook and just mark down all the
[00:55:15] Jeff: that was the name of a movie.
[00:55:16] Brett: I thought they could cut. I think King Kong could have been a two hour movie.
[00:55:22] Christina: yeah.
[00:55:23] Jeff: That’s the hill you’re going to die at. You’re like of all the movies
[00:55:26] Christina: Of all the
[00:55:26] Jeff: to, to be like, you know, where
[00:55:28] Brett: was that was
[00:55:29] Jeff: fucking King Kong. Give me my notebook.
[00:55:31] Brett: so Lord of the Rings like that could have been cut too. Um, but but like King Kong is the one I feel most wasted, like hours of my life. And like, I am almost vindictive about how long King Kong was.
[00:55:48] Jeff: Um, before off of the Taylor Swift topic, I want to just tell you how this article highlighted a problem in Instapaper, which is that when I open it in Instapaper, [00:56:00] it says this, here’s the headline. Taylor Swift is Times 2023 person of the year. Bye. Taylor Swift comma time. I don’t know how that ended up happening, but it’s pretty, like, she really figured out how to
[00:56:13] Christina: really figured out how to control everything. She, she even figured out how to like, like make Instapaper. Like, yeah, I know that’s very funny.
[00:56:19] Jeff: She hacked into Marco Armet’s thing and that hacked into the New York Times and now here you go. She
[00:56:24] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of Instapaper, should we do some Graptitude?
[00:56:28] Christina: some Graftitude.
[00:56:29] Grapptitude
[00:56:29] Brett: Oh man, so I’ll kick it off. I just published my, uh, Brett’s Favorites 2023. I do this every year on my blog. Um, there is a second installment coming, uh, but I listed probably 30, 30 apps that I love this year. So I’m going to link that in the show notes and people can check it out.
[00:56:51] Brett: Um, I think. Based on the mention of Instapaper, I want to highlight Artifact. [00:57:00] Have you guys used Artifact at all?
[00:57:02] Christina: Um, that’s the uh, that’s the, that’s the news app from the Instagram guys. Yeah.
[00:57:08] Brett: it is, it is pretty They went through a recent change where they started highlighting user comments more than news stories. Um, so it takes a little extra work to use it as a news app than it used to. Um But, I, I love it, it has AI generated summaries of every article, um, and then if you click it you go to the actual article on the web so that, that author gets like, you know, ad money, whatever, um.
[00:57:40] Brett: I do love that if enough people report a headline as clickbait y, they will have AI rewrite the headline based on the content of the article in a non clickbait y fashion. So you can, like, I go through Apple News and I get frustrated [00:58:00] because It’s, it’s so many Newsweek articles. So many Newsweek articles
[00:58:05] Jeff: Oh yeah.
[00:58:05] Brett: get boasted on me.
[00:58:07] Brett: Um, and, and Artifact has actually led me in the categories that I tell that I’m interested in. Um, it has provided a lot of Really good news from a variety of sources and not, uh, not just an echo chamber of what it thinks I want to hear. It’s, it’s pretty good. The, the algorithm is, um, people centric in my opinion.
[00:58:33] Christina: Yeah. I like it a lot too. And, and obviously it’s, it’s from the, um, uh, Instagram, uh, the original Instagram team, um, that, uh, Mike and Kevin, who, you know, I think, uh, regardless of, I mean, look, however you use Instagram now and however it’s evolved, like, I think that is probably one of the most impressive apps ever. Like, to have a, a team of nine people sell like an app for over a billion dollars and it to remake a, a, a, a massive tech company [00:59:00] to be like one of the central like things like I think Instagram as a, you know, product and I think Facebook as, as a company like was greatly, greatly hurt when the two of them left like four years ago.
[00:59:09] Christina: But yeah, so, so, um, uh, kudos to Artifact. Um, I actually, do you, do you have yours, um, um, Jeff Ready?
[00:59:17] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:59:17] Christina: Go for it.
[00:59:19] Jeff: Uh, well, it’s, it’s really, so it’s, it’s this torrent app on setup called Folks,
[00:59:26] Christina: Oh yeah!
[00:59:27] Jeff: And like, it is a good app in a, in that any torrent app could be good. I mean, they’re all, it’s such a shit show that you’re navigating. And, and so it’s, it’s. Clean. And I, I get my stuff quickly and I don’t have to look at crazy ass ads ever.
[00:59:40] Jeff: Um, and, and I’ve really appreciated it cause I haven’t found anything better. I don’t like love it the most, but I want to just say if anybody knows of anything that’s even cleaner and more elegant and has a, uh, even better search functionality, uh, I’ll, I’ll look at it. Um,
[00:59:57] Christina: so you’re looking for something that can search for [01:00:00] stuff, not just something that will manage torrents.
[01:00:02] Jeff: Yeah, and even just, I don’t even, I don’t seed shit. I’m a, I’m a one way Johnny.
[01:00:07] Christina: Right. Okay.
[01:00:08] Jeff: that, put that season one of Columbo in my pocket, and I’m
[01:00:11] Christina: it. Okay. So, so Transmission won’t give you the search, but is a very clean interface if you have another way to use it. So Transmission, which was recently Within the last year or so, like, it finally got a massive 4. 0 upgrade. Um, 4. 05, I think, came out two days ago, so that’s now finally being actively developed again.
[01:00:27] Christina: Um, and, and it runs natively on M1 Macs now and whatnot, and, and that is, um, it’s on, it’s on a number of platforms, but it was originally a Mac app. Um, that’s, I think, like, the best all around clean client. However, uh, it’s not gonna give you, like, the, the searchability stuff, so
[01:00:44] Jeff: Yeah, and I mean, and I do, I, part of why I’m interested if there’s something better is not, I mean, cause they do an amazing job when you consider the shitscape that is Searching Torrents online. I mean, what you have to navigate to show you something.
[01:00:57] Brett: you have a Synology, don’t you, Jeff?
[01:00:59] Jeff: I sure do [01:01:00] have a
[01:01:00] Brett: Um, there are transmission is available for Synology. Uh, there’s also a default package called download station that actually
[01:01:10] Jeff: yeah,
[01:01:10] Brett: really, really decent search, uh, really decent, like it’ll automatically find magnet links. And then you can just like. Pick a torrent and then come back the next day and you don’t have to sit and watch the number of peers and percentage download and everything and it just goes to your Synology while you sleep and
[01:01:31] Jeff: tell me when the first three police academies are ready.
[01:01:33] Brett: it works pretty well, yeah. I have found, I have found many, many a TV show unavailable on streaming using Download Station.
[01:01:42] Christina: Yeah, Download Station is great and, uh, and Usenet, and, and Usenet is still a great thing too if you’re willing to pay for, um, uh, you know, some of the, the Usenet services. You can get a lot of really great stuff from
[01:01:54] Brett: There are still Usenet services?
[01:01:56] Christina: yeah, no, they’re, well, okay, again, it’s, it’s just for file sharing.
[01:01:59] Christina: So, [01:02:00] um, but, but there’s GigaNews, there are a bunch of them and basically, like, they will have, like, really long retention times and you can use things like Sonar and Radar to search. and find basically anything you want and whatever quality you want and then just queue it up and it’ll download for you.
[01:02:14] Jeff: Okay. Got it. Cool. Thank you. I will, I will start
[01:02:17] Christina: We should have like a piracy episode sometime. Uh
[01:02:20] Jeff: That’d be fun. Is there a great piracy guest we could bring?
[01:02:24] Christina: huh, I’m thinking about
[01:02:26] Jeff: An actual pirate?
[01:02:27] Christina: mean maybe, maybe. I was actually, I was actually thinking maybe we could get one of the torrent freak guys on to talk.
[01:02:32] Jeff: Oh yeah. I would love to pepper questions at a torrent expert slash piracy slash pirate.
[01:02:42] Brett: Guaranteed to get us, um, top billing on the podcast apps.
[01:02:48] Christina: I mean, you never know. I mean, like, it depends. Like, are they algorithmically determined? If so, then yeah, probably.
[01:02:53] Brett: I
[01:02:54] Christina: If there’s no human, like, curating that stuff, then like, yeah.
[01:02:58] Jeff: Man. What’s yours,
[01:02:59] Christina: [01:03:00] Okay, so we were talking about, um, uh, ReadIt, um, uh, later apps, and I have to say, like, I’ve been using, for the last year or so, I’ve been using, um, uh, ReadWise is, uh, Reader.
[01:03:10] Christina: And, and it’s awesome. And so Readwise is, is a service, uh, Readwise. io. And, um, I, uh, and they have a reader service, which will also kind of act as like a read it later thing, which is really, really good. Like you can, it’s basically the idea is that you can kind of like import all of your highlights from like your Kindle and your Instapaper or iBooks or, you know, Pocket or whatever, you know, if you’re wanting to kind of keep track of that stuff.
[01:03:34] Christina: And then Reader, they basically built like a read it later for Power users is how they describe it. And. I love it because you can basically bring in RSS, you can bring in PDFs, you can bring in like YouTube videos, you know, you can bring in other read it later stuff, you can bring in EPUBs, you can connect newsletters to it, and so it’s, they literally built an app that like, Would be like I remember when I first read about it.
[01:03:57] Christina: I was like, okay This is the the perfect app for me Like [01:04:00] this seems like this was done for me and like I I’m still you know I think I might I have to check I think I still pay for Instapaper Pro I don’t even know anymore, but I was like a line I was like a but I was like a lifetime Instapaper person even though I haven’t used that actively in a really long time and and I never really got into pocket because I was team Marco and you know like Whatever.
[01:04:22] Christina: Um, and, and like old grudges die hard, frankly. uh, cause I remember when that first started out as like a Firefox extension and they kind of copied like, like Marco’s whole thing. Anyway, um, like everything’s under the bridge now, but like, you know, I, I’ve always, like, uh, we used to say at, at Gizmodo, it was like, people were like, oh, we’ll just use Pocket, and we were like, no, we were an Instapaper family.
[01:04:43] Christina: Um, and, but now I think I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m a, um, a Readwise reader family. Um, it’s a really, really good app, and so if you’re looking, go on.
[01:04:53] Brett: I had heard about this, but I had never checked it out before. And I’m looking through the feature list and, um, yeah, [01:05:00] bringing like, especially if I can combine my like Kindle reading, uh, and my highlights in eBooks with stuff I find on the web and read later, tagging and, and note searching and it can sync to our sometimes sponsored notion.
[01:05:17] Christina: Yep.
[01:05:18] Brett: Yeah, that’s, this looks pretty great.
[01:05:20] Christina: Yeah, no, it’s really, really good. And, um, the pricing of it, um, is, uh, like, uh, you know, you can, you can use, you can try it out. Um, but I think it’s like eight dollars a month or something, which for me is completely worth it. So,
[01:05:36] Brett: Nice.
[01:05:37] Jeff: and to any listeners who now have the song under the bridge in their head like I do, just because Christina said the words under the bridge, I see you. But I cannot help you because I can’t even help myself.
[01:05:48] Christina: I’m sorry about that. But yeah, it’s a great song, though.
[01:05:54] Brett: Last thing, last thing I’ll mention for anyone who has bought an Ultimate [01:06:00] Hacking Keyboard based on my recommendation. Um, they just came out with, they call it the Riser 60, and it is a, uh, tenting mechanism for your keyboard that gives you, I think, up to 60 degree Tilt, uh, from the side, which is ergonomically fantastic.
[01:06:21] Brett: Like I tent mine at like 10 degrees using the built in feet, but I’m so excited to have it tented like almost vertically and tight from the side. That’s so
[01:06:31] Jeff: wait to show you the keyboard that is, that is custom built for the three fucking fingers I use to type, because it’s gonna, it’s gonna do to you what all this does to me. You’re going to be like, well, I don’t know how to use a machine so complex.
[01:06:44] Brett: I, you, I’m showing you, I did this to my finger and.
[01:06:48] Jeff: showing me a cut finger which he’ll now retract.
[01:06:51] Brett: it’s,
[01:06:52] Christina: ha! Fuck off, Siri. Oh, okay. That was
[01:06:55] Jeff: hard to understand.
[01:06:57] Brett: uh, but I, I butchered my finger [01:07:00] and I couldn’t touch type with, with, because every time my keyboard was covered in blood, it was, it was wicked. So I started trying to type with my two, like, four fingers.
[01:07:10] Brett: And trying to like, hunt and peck type, and I can’t do it. Like, my brain is so geared to touch typing, that I don’t know, it takes me so long just to type the word the. It took so much effort, it was insane, I don’t know how you do it.
[01:07:27] Jeff: Well, see, now when everything gets even worse and people have their fingers all cut up, look who’s gonna still be writing. And you’re gonna be over there with your fucking tent typewriter or whatever the fuck it is you’ve got. I’m kidding. What are you doing?
[01:07:40] Brett: It’s like a homeless shelter for typewriters.
[01:07:43] Jeff: Aw, that’s nice. Alright. Oh,
[01:07:46] Christina: We should have, um, um, his book, the shipping has been delayed because of slipcover madness, but when, um, when Martian’s, um, um, book comes out, like, we should have him back on the pod.
[01:07:56] Jeff: Slipcover Madness would
[01:07:57] Brett: have paid for that. I am anxious to get it.
[01:07:59] Christina: Me too, [01:08:00] me too. It’s probably not going to happen by Christmas, but um,
[01:08:03] Jeff: He was a guest when I was away, right? Wasn’t he a guest when I was away?
[01:08:06] Christina: yeah, I’d love to have him back to talk with you, because you guys would like, I mean, look, he just, he fits this pot, like, perfectly.
[01:08:11] Christina: Like, I met him.
[01:08:12] Jeff: he tent his keyboards?
[01:08:16] Christina: I mean, he has like the most insane typewriter and keyboard collection, like, of anybody you’ve seen. He literally wrote this book about, like, the history of
[01:08:24] Jeff: I love it.
[01:08:25] Christina: stuff. And, and he and I, um, met and like became friends because we talked about, um, about, um, uh, sneakers one day for like three and a half hours in Twitter DMs.
[01:08:36] Jeff: The movie or the article of clothing? Okay, got it. Great. Does anybody call them sneakers still?
[01:08:41] Christina: Uh, usually kicks, but yeah, I mean, something people come to. Yeah.
[01:08:44] Jeff: That’s what the kids are saying.
[01:08:46] Brett: up kicks.
[01:08:47] Jeff: the
[01:08:48] Christina: right, foster the people.
[01:08:49] Jeff: I’m gonna, I’m gonna,
[01:08:51] Jeff: fight you with
[01:08:53] Brett: good to see you guys.
[01:08:54] Jeff: under the bridge. Get some sleep under the bridge downtown. Bye.[01:09:00]
Brett and Jeff hold the fort down, with mental health checkins and some very, very nerdy talk of clean installs, Brett’s projects, and their favorite apps.
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TranscriptMaybe A Little Too Nerdy
[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome to Overtired. Christina is gone this week, but she will magically be back thanks to multiple technological miracles for an ad read of Notion, who is this week’s sponsor, so stay tuned for that. I’m Brett Terpstra, I’m here with Jess Severins Gunsel, and I think, I think we’re doing okay.
[00:00:28] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. You just, you just reminded me of that. So Minnesota Public Radio, obviously our public radio station here, um, there’s just a lot of good people that either left or were laid off over the last few years. And some of them, they keep their voices on the spots. And, and they’re people who like it.
[00:00:44] Jeff: Leaving was hard or was painful or was unfair, anything, right? And then they still come on, on the radio being like, you know, well, you’re listening to Minnesota Public Radio. What about, you know, it’s just like, wow. Anyway, but Christina is, is definitely coming back. She wasn’t laid off,
[00:00:59] Brett: No, [00:01:00] she was not. Um.
[00:01:02] Jeff: You’d lose a lot of income getting laid off from Overtired. Anyway. Hi,
[00:01:08] Brett: that will you lose that sweet, sweet notion money.
[00:01:11] Brett: Uh,
[00:01:12] Jeff: man.
[00:01:13] Mental Health Corner
[00:01:13] Brett: Yeah. So, um, let’s, uh, let’s just kick it off right off with a mental health corner. Um, if you would like, I will start.
[00:01:22] Jeff: Yeah, do it.
[00:01:23] Brett: Um, so the holidays have proven to be, I never realized how stressful holidays were on me. Um, and looking back, um, it’s. I, I dread, uh, hanging out with my family.
[00:01:41] Brett: It triggers me in all kinds of ways, um, but I’ve always just accepted it as kind of a, a price of existing. Um,
[00:01:51] Brett: and with my last two partners, Um, they have hated my family enough, understandably, [00:02:00] that if I chose to hang out with my family, I felt like I was disappointing them. And if I chose to skip family gatherings, I felt like I was disappointing my family.
[00:02:14] Brett: So I get faced with this no win situation, no matter what I choose. And I have this huge fear of disappointing people. Like, it has Huge, a dramatic effect on my, um, my well being, even on my physical health. Uh, I, I can’t stand to have people feel like they’re disappointed in me. Um, or even, or even for me to feel like they’re disappointed in me, even if they’re not.
[00:02:44] Brett: Um, and,
[00:02:45] Brett: and,
[00:02:46] Jeff: we decide that that’s true and it’s not true. Yeah, yeah, totally. I experience that.
[00:02:50] Brett: Well, and this, like, with my parents, I project all of the beliefs of the church onto them, even, and I don’t know that they [00:03:00] hold these beliefs, I just, I’ve amalgamated all of the things I learned in my childhood And, and put it on my parents. And, and like, I react to anything they say with that lens of, okay, you believe everything this fucked up church has ever told you.
[00:03:20] Brett: And maybe they don’t. But they, they also continue to support that church, um, that has had, A horrible impact on many kids my age. Um, not that I’m a kid now, but like, I talked to you,
[00:03:35] Jeff: That kid is in you.
[00:03:36] Brett: I, I moved, I moved back to the town where I went to that church, and I have become friends with multiple ex Ex Pleasant Valley kids, kids who went through that youth group, kids who went through that church, and we all carry our own version of religious [00:04:00] trauma, um, and by and large, like, a lot of the, a lot of the people I know who survived it, um, are queer, and like, the damage that that church did to queer people is It’s unforgivable.
[00:04:18] Brett: Um, like nobody can call themselves Christian and damage kids in that way. Um, so all of that is on my mind when I hang out with my parents. Um, my siblings are less problematic in that way. But, um, but I do, I do hold my parents accountable for a lot of that trauma. Not just to me, but to my peers. Um, and man, like, so this comes up in therapy, uh, in couples therapy and, uh, and I get, because when I imagine, or when I try to understand how I [00:05:00] will feel about something in the future, I project myself into that situation and, and I imagine all of the feelings from it.
[00:05:07] Brett: And, and. Doing so will give me immediate stomach problems. Um, like I think three days after my last couples counseling, not the last one, the one before it, I was sick and like it takes a physical toll on me. And honestly, I never, I never put together that the holidays did this to me.
[00:05:31] Jeff: Oh, yeah.
[00:05:33] Brett: understood exactly how stressful, exactly how much of a no win situation the holidays were.
[00:05:42] Jeff: And does that, when you say the holidays, does it start with Thanksgiving for you? Because that’s the first, right? That’s the first gathering.
[00:05:47] Brett: My, my whole family got together in Ohio and I was invited and I declined. Um, so that was forgivable. Um, [00:06:00] missing Christmas would be less forgivable. But missing Thanksgiving, like I got text messages from the family saying, Hey, we’re having a great time. Hope you’re well. Like, nothing judgmental or, or ill intentioned.
[00:06:14] Brett: Um, so that actually went okay. Um, I didn’t come out of that feeling a lot of guilt. Um, Christmas is going to be a We don’t have full family plans for Christmas. Like, no one’s traveling. It would just be, my parents are in town, where I live. Um, so I need to see them to feel like I have fulfilled familial obligations.
[00:06:43] Brett: Um, so what we’re gonna do is, prior to Christmas, we’re gonna go out for pizza, and Um, at a place where I can have a whiskey sour and, and comfort myself. Um, and my mom will be on good behavior [00:07:00] because we’re in a public place to some extent. Have you, have you ever had someone close to you that loves sending stuff back to the kitchen?
[00:07:09] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve definitely had this experience.
[00:07:13] Brett: Yeah,
[00:07:14] Jeff: Or worse, the person who’s like, you know, you really should send that back and you can’t just like get them off that horse.
[00:07:20] Brett: yeah. So my mom is, my mom is the lady who will always If anything is wrong, send it back to the kitchen and make a big deal about it to the waitstaff. And then, like, dock waitstaff’s tip
[00:07:34] Brett: because the kitchen mess, like,
[00:07:37] Jeff: up with the tip. Never fuck with the tip.
[00:07:39] Brett: dude, I tipped 30 percent last night because we had a server that was just, it was a quiet night at the grill.
[00:07:48] Brett: Uh, she was just so attentive and would like sit and talk to Elle about like Yarnology stuff, like knitting and, [00:08:00] uh, she was just fantastic. So I left a, left a 30 percent tip on a 90 tab. It was, it was, well, my mom would never do that. Um, and going out to eat with my mom is always a little bit stressful, but not as stressful as dealing with her in her own home.
[00:08:18] Jeff: I can’t. Yeah, okay, got it. Yep, yep, yep. It’s a little safer.
[00:08:21] Brett: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Jeff: um, I’m not going to just free associate on restaurant, uh, ethics, but I have a lot of thoughts as you talk, but that’s not what this is about.
[00:08:32] Brett: I, uh, well, I’m done. If you have something to say about restaurant ethics,
[00:08:35] Brett: I’m open to it.
[00:08:36] Jeff: so a couple of things, like one is I will never, um, I will never, uh, not tip at least the, the, the, you know, the base fair amount. Um, and part of that is, and I’ve had plenty of shitty surfers, right? But it’s like, maybe you’re shitty. You have to deal with people all day, and people are horrible.
[00:08:54] Jeff: And I don’t know, maybe I’m horrible and I don’t even know it. Like, maybe I’ve done something in this interaction that is like, God, [00:09:00] I hate it when the, you know, like, yeah. You should also be tipped for having to do this job when it’s miserable for you.
[00:09:06] Brett: so in Europe, tipping is unusual, um, tipping is if something is just fucking fantastic and, and you need to note it, but as a general rule, like this idea of a 20 percent tip is it’s non existent, but they also pay their servers a living wage.
[00:09:29] Jeff: Right. Right.
[00:09:30] Brett: Like, we get away with paying servers less than minimum wage,
[00:09:35] Jeff: and then one other follow up that you maybe think of is, um, about being good Christians. Uh, so I was raised Catholic, um, and Lutheran at the same time, divorced parents. And, uh, I remember with my stepdad, we were leaving. Church one day, it was the Catholic Church, and everyone was just being a little rude and inconsiderate in the parking lot.
[00:09:59] Jeff: He got [00:10:00] upset, and I think he was only half kidding. He’s like, these are not people who are being good Christians! And I thought of that, so the other night our family went to this Gaza Solidarity event. Um, and uh, at, at the, at the Heights Theater here, it was the, it was a international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people and that what was happening is in theaters all around the world, people were reading something called the Gaza monologues, which are the
[00:10:25] Brett: I, that happened, that happened here in
[00:10:27] Brett: Winona
[00:10:28] Jeff: so these kids from the Gods of War in 2010, which feels a lot like the one now, um, it was really beautiful. But this theater, they have a church behind the theater and there’s a parking lot there. And at night when movies are happening, there’s no, the church has no use for that thing. But the church is so vindictive about towing people that if you go to this theater’s website, the first thing you see in all bold, almost like an old angel fire site where it’s like be blinking is like, do not park in the church.
[00:10:52] Jeff: So here was the thing. Not only does this church tow you, um, Uh, from an empty parking lot, if you choose to use it for the movie [00:11:00] theater, the little independent arts movie theater. But they, this is in Minneapolis and they contract with a St. Paul, uh, uh, towing company. So you have to go to
[00:11:08] Brett: Oh no.
[00:11:09] Jeff: then you have to pay apparently an unusually high amount.
[00:11:12] Jeff: And I was like, That is some fucked up Christian behavior. That is not Christian behavior. I don’t, whatever, if you’re like a textualist, there’s nothing about parking lots in the Bible, Old Testament or New, but I feel like you can infer that you should find a way to just allow people to park or at least make a mistake, right?
[00:11:30] Brett: We, uh, there was a night in Minneapolis, uh, we were at our practice space, and our drummer Clay’s car got towed, and we walked to, it was in Minneapolis, it was near the Walker, there’s like an impound lot
[00:11:46] Jeff: Oh, I know this lot. I, my car has been in this lot.
[00:11:48] Brett: and, and we climbed the fence with a coat over the razor wire, and then drove his car through the fence, And just kept [00:12:00] going.
[00:12:00] Brett: And as far as I know, to the best of my knowledge, there was never any repercussion from this.
[00:12:07] Jeff: That’s like Breaking Bad when they, when they liberate the RV.
[00:12:10] Brett: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Jeff: That’s great. I think that that’s perfectly fair and just.
[00:12:16] Brett: Fair play.
[00:12:16] Jeff: Yeah, not all laws are meant to be followed. What did the John Lewis thing? That’s good trouble right there. That’s good trouble.
[00:12:26] Jeff: I guess for me, uh, in terms of like mental health stuff, it’s, it something that has been on my mind a lot is not exactly about me. Um, so I, I’m doing this. work with a new client and there is this really amazing organization in Minnesota called Foster Advocates.
[00:12:43] Jeff: And they, they do work to sort of promote the rights and needs and agency of foster kids. And in most states, definitely in this state where we have 87 counties and we have also tribal governments. Um, you know, foster care is, [00:13:00] is managed a little differently in all of these places, right. And so there’s, there are state Guidelines in their estate rules, but like, not only if you are a foster kid, like, and if there’s anyone out there, I don’t mean to speak for you.
[00:13:11] Jeff: I’m kind of sharing what I’ve picked up over my lifetime is that not only are you in an incredibly precarious and ungoverned position by even just being in a foster home. Right? But you are in a precarious and, and, you know, there’s regulations for the system, but it just feels very ungoverned in many ways.
[00:13:28] Jeff: System, right? And, um, so part of what I do and what I’m doing with this organization is like, they’ve done all these, um, group interviews with fosters in all the different counties, basically, in Minnesota. And, um, and they’re really amazing conversations. And also this organization, I mean, uh, uh, I think a majority Definitely a majority of the staff running this organization are ex Fosters, which is really cool.
[00:13:51] Jeff: Um, and uh, and so I’m working with the transcripts of all these focus group sessions, focus groups used loosely in [00:14:00] the qualitative sense, not in the, you know, we’re trying to make sure that this, this Hollywood Marvel movie appeals to China kind of way, not like that, but like, um, not to pick on the Chinese, but I’ve come to learn that that’s really becoming a problem for the quality of these movies.
[00:14:13] Jeff: Um, but anyway, um, So I’ve been working with these, um, interviews and part of what I do, I use special software and stuff and I, and I go through looking for patterns or whatever ways of sort of like, um, sort of representing the experience in a way that can be turned into something, turned into advocacy
[00:14:30] Brett: Is that that MaxQDA
[00:14:32] Jeff: Yeah,
[00:14:33] Brett: Yeah, yeah,
[00:14:35] Jeff: I wish I knew about it when I was a journalist. It’s just an amazing way to look at a lot of text and search across it and you code it and you can do just, it’s amazing. It’s my favorite thing to do. Um, anyway, so what will happen when I have When I work with a client like this is they might, you know, have a bunch of interview data or I might do the interviews and then they’ll say, can you look at these interviews?
[00:14:56] Jeff: These, maybe it’s 12, maybe it’s 50, maybe it’s a hundred interview transcripts. And, [00:15:00] and can you look at it for, for this theme? So it might be like, uh, you know, um, you might be looking for a theme of, of harm versus hurt. Like what are qualities of, of harm in the system as they’re described, and what are qualities of hurt?
[00:15:12] Jeff: So no one’s necessarily saying it explicitly, but you’re sort of drawing it out. Right. And in this case, I’m helping them. Among many other things, I’m helping them look at, um, over medication, over prescription, forced prescription, forced, you know, medication. And not only that, but like denial of medication, you know, the whole thing.
[00:15:29] Jeff: It’s like, what’s in there? What are people talking about? And the thing that has just been haunting me all, all week, because I spent a day on this early last week, Um, that I hadn’t really thought about. It’s like, so my own experience being diagnosed bipolar two years ago, and then going through really a hell in trying to find the right medications.
[00:15:48] Jeff: Like I was over medicated for it at first. And I sort of, I consented to that. I, I, the manic episode that led me to diagnosis was scary enough to me that I was like, yeah, hit me with the stuff, you know? And [00:16:00] we talked about this on past episodes, but like the work it takes to witness yourself when you are Essentially, I remember my medication provider said, look, I’m just going to say it straight.
[00:16:13] Jeff: It’s always an experiment. It’s always an experiment. We don’t know what’s going to work. If it fails, we don’t know how it’s going to fail. And, and, and I, I don’t know about your experience of bipolar, but like, because, because like after, you know, a lifetime of having manic episodes, now I recognize that we’re not nearly this sort of.
[00:16:33] Jeff: impactful. When I had one that was that impactful, what happened to me is I, and this was the hardest part, is I, um, I, I realized maybe I can’t trust myself. Maybe I can’t trust what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling because you have that experience of sort of grandiosity and you have that experience. And, and for me, I don’t know if this is true for you.
[00:16:53] Jeff: I know this is a symptom of bipolar and like mania is like, I can be so fucking certain of what I’m [00:17:00] thinking and so righteous about it. And I’ve always tried to temper righteousness in my personality, even though I
[00:17:05] Brett: course you have. Yeah, for sure.
[00:17:07] Jeff: But I try to temper it because relationally it’s just a bad thing.
[00:17:10] Jeff: You know, like it shuts off. It just. Kills relationships, right? But when I, when I was, had this manic episode and then when I was on some of the wrong medication, that righteousness was so intense. And I got to the point where I, what happened was, if I was feeling it, I could be like, oh, this isn’t real.
[00:17:26] Jeff: Like there’s a, and there’s enough of a kernel of truth in it that you can defend it until you You know, turn to ashes in your shoes. But like, but like, I’m, uh, part of what my experience has been in the last two years is all these different ways in which I can be like, Oh, I’m feeling this thing. It feels very real.
[00:17:41] Jeff: That means it’s not. And, and, and that is a really shitty feeling, right?
[00:17:46] Brett: for sure.
[00:17:47] Jeff: so it’s not just, so in the context of that, then trying to witness yourself and be like, I’m feeling this thing, I think it might be the medication. I need to talk to my medication manager, or I need to advocate for myself if my medication manager is [00:18:00] feeling certain that this is the right thing, whatever.
[00:18:02] Jeff: And then what you experience, and I know you know this, when you do decide to switch, and even if you’re fully supported in switching, you may go through a whole new hell, right? And what I was reading in these transcripts, that was just crushing my heart, was all of the examples of young people saying, I knew this wasn’t right in me, but all that I would hear back is, Well, you’re not behaving well, you’re fucked up or whatever.
[00:18:28] Jeff: You just take your meds. We decided what the meds are. You got to take them. There’s no, not only might you not inherently at that point, have the ability to advocate for yourself, or even understand that advocating for yourself is a thing, that you have that power, that you are inherently, Uh, the, the, the person that is most expert on you and your body, even if you have to learn what to trust and what not to, you are the expert, right?
[00:18:53] Jeff: And it’s in everything you need to be the expert is there and it’s only there for you. I guess that’s kind of what I mean to say. And, and the [00:19:00] way that kids talked about how, um, they would try to say this doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel good. And what would come back is essentially like, Hey, look, you’re a fucked up kid.
[00:19:09] Jeff: This is just what you need. We need to trust us, right? We’re the professionals. And in some cases, the quote unquote professionals are really just the foster parents who Maybe don’t have any kind of like intelligence around mental health or child development, right. Or any of that stuff, same problem with the juvenile justice system, the so called juvenile justice system, which treats, you know, kids as if they couldn’t possibly be expert on anything except being shitty kids.
[00:19:33] Jeff: And, and even then it’s like, you don’t even know why you’re a shitty kid. Do you like it? That’s, that’s the like internalized message, or at least in the hundreds of interviews I’ve gone through, that certainly comes up. So anyway, from a mental health perspective, I was just. Realizing, and one of the things, and if anybody has any information along these lines that’d be interested, is like, am certain that for fosters there probably isn’t any really good sort of guidance out there in the world to be like, here are some sort [00:20:00] of ways of listening to your body and trying to understand, right?
[00:20:04] Jeff: Uh, it’s complex, right? Or it’s complicated. It’s not always complex, but, um, But I just realized there’s no advoca there’s no, there’s no tool. There, there must, I, I don’t think, if you think about, if you think about the, the kinds of rights that foster kids, um, deserve, need, are sometimes given, at least in legislation, about, you know, whether it’s visitation with siblings or, um, access to mental health treatment or, um, you know, um, all these different things that you might have.
[00:20:33] Jeff: It’s very difficult, um, To imagine a lot of energy around somehow, what, legislating? This idea that like, you deserve to have a voice in your medical care, which is a little easier to imagine than You deserve to be helped to understand what is happening in your body and what it might mean or what to expect.
[00:20:59] Jeff: And I get the [00:21:00] sense that there’s just none of that and you’re all alone. I just think of these kids like you’re already so goddamn alone and you’re also alone in this fog of medication hell. Um, and I’ve just been thinking about that a lot. So, and, and, and of course, like thinking about it because I’ve had my own sort of experience in the last couple of years that, um, I hadn’t previously had of just like how, how not yourself you can feel and how hard it can be to trust yourself and how hard it can be to get good help.
[00:21:26] Jeff: Like I had a medication manager I really liked, but that person made some really bad decisions on my behalf. And it impacted me in really significant ways that, that involved my body and
[00:21:37] Brett: you went through it with the support of your family.
[00:21:40] Jeff: yeah, and a, and a partner who’s a therapist and, but, but, but, but it’s, it’s still a, she’s my partner, not my therapist.
[00:21:48] Jeff: Right? And so, so there’s still going to be dynamics where she might see one thing that seems really obvious and I’m still in a place where I’m like, no, no, I don’t see it. And, and in fact, yeah. Thing I’ve decided is what I’m staying with, you know, [00:22:00] whatever. So there’s like all over the place, but I mostly just want to say, just remember that, um, there are a lot of kids out there that, uh, deal with some of the stuff we talk about all the time and have no frame of reference for it.
[00:22:13] Jeff: And, um, and almost no agency.
[00:22:15] Brett: Yeah. Oof.
[00:22:17] Jeff: Yeah, that’s my mental health check in. It was, it was hard to read. It was really hard to read over and over again. Um, which isn’t, you know, that’s, it’s, having to read it is a lot less problematic than having to experience it. But
[00:22:29] Brett: I’m gonna link MaxQDA in the show notes because it is pretty amazing software for anyone doing text analysis of any kind.
[00:22:41] Jeff: Yeah, one of the things I love to do in it, when I’m starting, especially when it’s interview transcripts with Well, mostly I’ve done this with interviews, transcripts with kids, either in the like juvenile justice system, so called, or now the foster system. It’s like, it has all these different ways. It’s like MaxQDA opens up a thousand [00:23:00] windows for you to look at text.
[00:23:01] Jeff: And so I think traditionally the, not exactly, but like the most, I think assumed method of like coding and interviews. So, you know, you’re like, Oh, this section is about hurt. This section is about family, right? Is to read it. Front to bottom, or top to bottom. Um, but the way that I’ve come to do this work is almost exclusively to come at it.
[00:23:21] Jeff: Sideways and diagonally and whatever else. And one of my favorite things to do with MaxQDA, which is just one simple feature. It’s not even one of the most powerful features is they create these sort of sentence diagrams so that you, you can put a word in and then it’ll show you where that word goes.
[00:23:37] Jeff: Right. And like a really nice looking, almost like, who’s the Tufti, who’s the, whatever, like, it’s that, that style of like data visualization. And one of the things that I came to really, that I’ve come to really rely on is what I call I statements, which is like, The first thing I’ll do is look at that sentence tree for, I wish, I can’t, I never, I want, um, uh, and, [00:24:00] and, um, and it’s incredible when you take just something like, I wish, which I don’t mean at all to sound like, this isn’t like, um, The Children Are Our Future, kind of
[00:24:10] Brett: Mm. Sure. Yeah.
[00:24:11] Jeff: about what they wish, they’re talking about what hurts the most, often, right?
[00:24:15] Jeff: Um, and to see the directions that the words I wish can lead to, and then to be able to, what, what’s been so powerful to me is like when you’re working with kids and stories, um, that are often like stories of harm, or they’re at least like entangled in harmful systems, like, Oftentimes people fall into the trap of putting a story in front of you, which can be kind of voyeuristic and, and I think a little, um, and it’s ethically just a little not good.
[00:24:45] Jeff: Um, and, and just from a cosmic standpoint, like, don’t just put my story out there so that you can make people react a certain way. But now what I do when I’m helping people do either advocacy or maybe they’re trying to facilitate sessions with the people [00:25:00] that. Uh, have power over these kids or whatever is you can curate these statements like an I wish statement And and if you have and have done this and if you have sort of like a curated diagram of these Sentences and where I wish can go what you’ve done is created like A sort of map of the ecosystem of the child, right?
[00:25:18] Jeff: Because they’re they’re not just going to be talking about the system And they’re going to remind you through this or it’s going to remind you of all the Basic needs that we all have as humans. But we totally just box these kids in into like, Oh, well, their primary need must just be, I don’t know what to be free of the system, to have a better judge, whatever the fuck it would be.
[00:25:36] Jeff: And, and in reality, um, it’s so many like, uh, intertwined, uh, desires and longings and, and rights and needs. And anyway, and, and, and so Max QDA, cause I am really just talking about software, um, just, it’s been amazing for me as a person who loves. People’s, who loves to like work with people’s stories in a way that hopefully honors them, like it’s amazing to [00:26:00] see all the ways you can come.
[00:26:01] Jeff: And, and just one last thing, Brett, through, through the wonder of Torrance, I have, I’m a huge, I’m a Tolstoy freak. I fucking
[00:26:10] Brett: Sure. Sure.
[00:26:11] Jeff: angry bearded man. Um, and And I’ve always wanted to be able to look across text files of his books by a certain translator. And in this case, it’s a couple, it’s like a married couple.
[00:26:25] Jeff: Um, and I, through the wonder of torrents, I got, I got the EPUB files of all of these. Uh, and like Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, we’ve all heard the names, right? And, um, and I put them into text files and I did I wish statements. And, and it was incredible because if I looked across a book, like, if I looked just at I wish statements and Anna Karenina, there were only like 13.
[00:26:48] Jeff: But they actually created an enough of an outline of the story that it brought it all back to me. But the thing I’m doing next is like If anybody’s read Tolstoy, you will know what I’m talking about, like, and that sounds like a pretentious statement, and [00:27:00] I don’t mean it to be, and I had to create a book club to read Tolstoy because I could never get through of it.
[00:27:03] Jeff: But anyway, the way that he can tell you what a piece of shit you are by describing how you use your lips like one of my favorite things about Tolstoy, and so I’ve always wanted to do like a comprehensive review of how he describes particularly your lower face. when he really hates you. Um, so stay tuned.
[00:27:23] Jeff: Uh, maybe I’ll do a reading in a future
[00:27:25] Brett: Excellent.
[00:27:26] Jeff: Also Max QDA. Anyway, sorry, that was a long. Woo!
[00:27:29] Sponsor: Notion
[00:27:29] Brett: All right. Um, so we’re going to use some of that magic, magic of technology right now. And we’re going to get a, uh, sponsor read from Christina.
[00:27:40] Christina: Hey everybody, it’s Christina here, and I’m not on the show this week because I’m on a train to Portland to get a new laptop. Uh, more details on that later, but I could not let things go without talking about, our sponsor of this week’s show, Notion, and their new, Q& A feature. So if you’re anything like me, you might already be familiar with Notion, [00:28:00] which is the sponsor of today’s episode, as I said.
[00:28:02] Christina: I use this all the time for, for notes, for documents. I have internal wikis of various things that I collect and I really love the interface and I really love how easy it is, , to, create docs. But, but now I also like how easy it is to find things because of a new AI tool they’ve launched called Q& A.
[00:28:19] Christina: So this is basically a personal assistant that responds really fast with exactly what you need right in your doc. So. Here’s a real world example from me. I have a Notion doc filled with links and information about various discounts that I get as a corporate employee. This is kind of a difficult document to like, suss through because it’s actually the combination of like five different documents that I’ve sourced from a bunch of different places.
[00:28:46] Christina: So it’s not super well organized. Well, this is why this was perfect to use Q& A with because I can just ask Notion’s Q& A I can say, okay, show me my discount code or my [00:29:00] discount URL for Avis and it will give it to me and I don’t have to go searching for, okay, was it in the transportation section or was it in the car rental section or was it in some other discount section?
[00:29:11] Christina: It’ll just give me the information when I ask the question and this is the sort of thing that it can do for anybody. It doesn’t just have to be, you know, your weird, you know, link collections and, and, and documents. It can also, use your own personal notes, your docs, your projects. All that is going to be together in one beautiful space, and then you can navigate that space using Q& A, um, to, ask questions maybe about, like, next month’s Like, roadmap, uh, that you’re doing for next quarter or next month or, you know, a marketing campaign proposal that you’re looking for.
[00:29:40] Christina: Um, or, you know, like I said, like what I’m doing all the time, digging up long lost links because that’s a problem that I personally have and that, uh, that Notion definitely can help, can help me out with. So if you haven’t used Notion, um, I think that you should definitely give it a shot and Notion AI can now give you instant answers to your [00:30:00] questions.
[00:30:00] Christina: Using information from across your wiki, your project docs, your meeting notes, etc. So you can try Notion AI for free when you go to Notion. com slash Overtired. That’s all lowercase letters. Notion. com slash Overtired to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you’re going to use our link, you are supporting our show.
[00:30:23] Christina: So once again, that is Notion. com slash Overtired. Try out the Q& A feature. Try out the Notion AI stuff. It’s really slick. I’m a big fan. Thanks a lot, Notion.
[00:30:32] Sponsor: Aroundsquare
[00:30:32] Brett: 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.
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[00:31:50] On Clean Installs
[00:31:50] Jeff: It’s just so nice to hear your voice, Christina. I mean, it’s your absence here and now to have you back for just that moment.
[00:31:57] Brett: So this is going to be, I think, a [00:32:00] pretty technical episode, um, now that we’re through the mental health corner, which is messy as hell. Um, as, as so many of us are, but Jeff, we’ve talked before about your clean installs, um, that are a matter of habit for you. Um, but.
[00:32:22] Jeff: This is an
[00:32:23] Brett: it. Got a little different, like something changed.
[00:32:26] Jeff: Yeah, I got medication. So this is the funny thing is that I haven’t done a clean install of my computer since I started becoming, uh, since I started medication for bipolar. And, and what I recognize, and Brett knows this from working with me for years, is that what used to happen to me all the time, and I think these were, this was a result of manic episodes of some sort, which is that I’d be looking at my computer and all of a sudden I’d be like, It’s all wrong.
[00:32:53] Jeff: It’s all messed up. I’ve configured everything weird. I got to start from scratch. And then I would, I would very [00:33:00] abruptly do a clean install, which is not the way to do a clean install, right? Um, and, and I would do that clean install maybe in the middle of a workday. Not thinking about the fact that the next morning I have a Zoom meeting and I won’t have downloaded Zoom and I won’t yet have logged into my work email
[00:33:16] Brett: Oh
[00:33:16] Jeff: Mac so that I can quickly get into Google Drive or whatever the fuck it is people make me do, um, and, and, and it would become this horrible, um like obstacle course for me for weeks.
[00:33:28] Jeff: And I will have messed up my basic like file system. I will have thrown everything onto an external hard drive called like clean install, you
[00:33:34] Brett: mm-Hmm.
[00:33:35] Jeff: Pro 2013 or whatever. um, and then I start from scratch without properly moving everything over. And it was actually very, like in its own way, when they talk about like, um, manic episodes, like that you would have sort of a tendency to, um, take risks.
[00:33:54] Jeff: Right.
[00:33:54] Brett: Right.
[00:33:55] Jeff: It really disrupted my. My work life for probably two weeks at a time, whenever I would [00:34:00] do that. And when I would do it, I’d be like, Oh God, it’s coming. I know I got to do a clean install. Um, so anyway, I just did the first one in like two years and I’m not going to lie. I’m not sure it was the best and most stable decision, but I.
[00:34:13] Jeff: I did it in a way that was very mindful. I got everything back up and running real quick. So I’m not running into like, oh, I never put this thing back on, right? Um, Homebrew makes that nice. Brewfiles, right? Like there’s, I’ve also developed ways to protect myself.
[00:34:28] Brett: with like a brew file, like where you like, yeah,
[00:34:31] Jeff: so if you use Homebrew, if you don’t use Homebrew, Package Manager like helps you, you know, download all kinds of apps and tools and you can create whatever you’ve downloaded for me over the last two years since the last clean install or two and a half is all on one list and I can just say, please install
[00:34:46] Brett: It can, it can even do Mac app store
[00:34:49] Jeff: Yes, if you install MAS.
[00:34:51] Brett: Yep.
[00:34:51] Jeff: You can even do Mac App Store apps. So anyway, why are we talking about this? Because before we came on, Brett and I were talking, and I said, Brett, I did a clean install. [00:35:00] Like, I felt like I had to come clean. And no pun intended. And what was cool this time is I realized It’d been so long.
[00:35:08] Jeff: So I realized how many apps were just running back there that I’d really forgotten about that were really impacting my experience of my computer in a way that were really great. And like the example I gave Brett was like the App Peek, which is like a, an app you can get from the app store. And it, it not only allows you to do quick look, quick look on a lot of files, you know, you press the space bar and your file comes up a little preview, but it allows you, I mean, it’s like, there’ll be, um, if it’s code, it’s got the like, Proper sort of
[00:35:37] Brett: syntax highlight.
[00:35:38] Jeff: can copy and paste.
[00:35:39] Jeff: If it’s a spreadsheet, you can do like a column. Like it’s incredible.
[00:35:44] Brett: And if it’s Markdown and it has multiple headers, you get a table of contents for viewing your Markdown file and you can copy paste out of it, which is a big deal since like Mavericks, like when they stopped allowing select and copy and paste in quick look
[00:35:59] Jeff: [00:36:00] Yeah. So, well, okay, that’s a question for you. So, that, there was a point at which QuickLook suddenly did not, I was like,
[00:36:05] Brett: Yeah, I think it was around, I think it was around Mavericks, yeah.
[00:36:10] Jeff: And so, having forgotten that it was Peek that was allowing me to do this, because I use QuickLook all the time in this context. When I did my first QuickLook and it just showed the icon of the file.
[00:36:21] Brett: Yeah.
[00:36:22] Jeff: do I, how do I get back to the thing? What the hell happened? Um, and so Peak was just a really great example of just something just absolutely, like, wonderful impacting my life in the background. Do you have, what’s something that you didn’t build that, um, that has that impact for you?
[00:36:38] Jeff: That’s just kind of back there, making your life different on your computer?
[00:36:42] Brett: I guess I would say Hazel.
[00:36:44] Jeff: Hazel.
[00:36:45] Brett: Haz
[00:36:46] Jeff: it. I’m sure most people know what it is who are listening, but
[00:36:48] The Magic of Hazel
[00:36:48] Brett: So, Hazel watches for file changes and acts on files. Um, and you can have any set of criteria. If the file matches this file name, [00:37:00] if it has this label, if it’s this old. Um, and then have it run any series of actions on that file. Um, I would say Like, for me, my most common Hazel task is if I name an image file in the name, if it says percent, percent, and then a series of characters like R600 means resize to 600, O means optimize.
[00:37:29] Brett: C means convert to JPEG. H means create 1x and 2x images. Half. H for half. And so I have just gotten in the habit of when I save a file to my desktop, I give it A name with percent percent and then the series of characters and Hazel just picks that up and I come out with, um, all of the necessary files for publication to whatever medium, um, and I [00:38:00] don’t Think about it being Hazel when I do that.
[00:38:02] Brett: It just, it’s just the way I save files. Um, files in my download folder get labeled based on their age and anything that ends up with a red tag need, either needs to be deleted or dealt with. Um, anything with a blue tag gets ignored. Like, so if something is, this is a permanently a part of this folder. I just give it a blue tag and it gets ignored.
[00:38:27] Brett: Everything else gets aged over time, one week, one month. Three months. Um, so I can see, like, what needs to be most urgently dealt with. Um, so yeah, Hazel is one of those things that is integral to my, uh, daily system that, in general, I haven’t actually opened Hazel, probably for months.
[00:38:52] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:54] Brett: like, you get It set
[00:38:55] Jeff: doesn’t break.
[00:38:56] Brett: just works.
[00:38:57] Brett: It just works.
[00:38:58] Jeff: I, one of the silly things I use [00:39:00] Hazel for is like, I’m one of these, um, Just monsters who keeps a folder on my desktop called Desktop. And, um, and, and Hazel just knows like if something’s been on my desktop that isn’t that folder for more than a day, I’m just going to put it in that folder.
[00:39:17] Jeff: And that just becomes Where all that stuff lives and with downloads, I have a downloads like archive folder inside of it because I don’t want to search too much. And if it’s been there for more than a day, it just moves in.
[00:39:26] Brett: mine is just called, mine is called Stuff2Review, and if it sits, if it sits in my downloads folder long enough, it gets moved to Stuff2Review, and I should have one that just automatically deletes anything after three
[00:39:39] Brett: months.
[00:39:39] Jeff: Yeah. I wish I had that in my physical space as well. If I have not laid a finger on this,
[00:39:45] Brett: I do that, I, I do that with organizing, uh, when I, like cleaning my office, anything that I’m not currently using gets put into a series of boxes, and if over the next three months, I have [00:40:00] to open that box and dig through and find that thing, that thing gets moved into a more permanent location. If after three months, I haven’t looked for that thing once.
[00:40:11] Brett: And I’ve forgotten it even exists. That box can go to Goodwill. Um,
[00:40:16] Jeff: it. I heard of I’ve heard of people doing this. I almost think I can and I can’t.
[00:40:21] Brett: it’s not easy. Like, it takes, like, I have to separate from my, uh, archival instincts. Like, I have this, this need to keep everything I’ve ever owned or ever written or ever read, like, somewhere where I can access it in the future. But the fact is, so much of it I just don’t need in my day to day space or my day to day, like, data life.
[00:40:49] Brett: Um, and I do the same with, like, Envy Ultra notes. Um, every once in a while, I’ll just do a spotlight search for anything that hasn’t been updated or [00:41:00] modified in the last year, move it, move it to an archive folder, not delete it. Just move it out of the space. So if I need it, I have to search for it. And if I search for it, it gets moved back into regular rotation.
[00:41:14] Brett: But after three months, that whole folder just gets moved to like, I don’t delete it, but it gets moved to like this analogy, uh, as like archival storage.
[00:41:26] Jeff: Now, theoretically, what you could do with a, maybe you could do this with Hazel, you could certainly script it, is like, you’ve got that whole system going where like, if it hasn’t been searched, you’re moving it over. But you could also make it that if you do land on it in a search, it just automatically gets put back in.
[00:41:40] Brett: Yeah, it, it’s feasible. You could do that.
[00:41:44] Jeff: Because you can actually script Hazel too, right? So it’s like, yeah.
[00:41:47] Brett: you might have to use some tagging to make it work, but
[00:41:50] Jeff: Brett, I know you’re okay using some
[00:41:53] Brett: oh, absolutely.
[00:41:55] Brett: I
[00:41:55] Jeff: just found my notes when I made you early when we started working together. I’m like, we’re going to spend [00:42:00] at least three hours with you talking to me about tagging.
[00:42:03] Brett: I
[00:42:03] Jeff: such good notes.
[00:42:04] Brett: I have given up. I’ve given up on trying to convince people about tagging. If you haven’t gotten it at this point, um, you’re, you’re, you’re probably not a tagger, but I still, I still consider it like vital to a real file management system.
[00:42:20] Jeff: there anything, um, and this is kind of probably an ignorant question, but is there anything about the way the OS has changed over the years, besides there was one major change in tagging. Um, but like, is there anything that’s changed your sense of. How tagging can be useful and how your own system works.
[00:42:40] Brett: Like, so, there was, we used to use OpenMetaTagging, which put, uh, K O M user tag, no, O M user tags. Attribute onto files, and that’s how, and tags were able to move with the file wherever it went in the system. And then, I think it was [00:43:00] Mavericks again, where Apple kind of Sherlocked that and made the KOM user tags, and it worked exactly the same as OpenMeta, and OpenMeta became irrelevant instantly.
[00:43:12] Brett: Since, since that time, I don’t think anything has changed other than Apple increasing adoption of this file attribute on iOS. So now your tags that you apply in Finder on your Mac show up on iOS and vice versa. Um, other than that, no, like nothing has changed that either promotes or detracts from the idea of tagging.
[00:43:40] Jeff: And, and we, I don’t have to get into your specific way of tagging, but you, you changed my life with your tagging approach, especially from my work archives. It’s just amazing the way I can navigate through them now. Um, it’s really awesome.
[00:43:53] Brett: It’s so much more intuitive than nested folders.
[00:43:57] Jeff: Yes, which, yeah, yeah, which is like, what a [00:44:00] mess. And I still sometimes, if I’m in a hurry, I make a bunch of nested folders and I look at it and I’m like, what have I just done? This
[00:44:06] Brett: Yeah. I, so I wrote an app, or I wrote a utility a long time ago, a time ago called TagFiler. Um, that That lets you tag using colon separated, like, lengthy tags and then automatically files them into a relatively shallow folder system. Uh, you can go as deep as you want, but the idea is to keep it relatively shallow but still organized so that if you ever were to You don’t lose all your tags, like you, you run them through like Dropbox and they come back with no tags.
[00:44:43] Brett: You still have a shallow folder system to help separate your files. So that’s like the initial logic behind it. But in practice, like what it does, I don’t, I don’t look for folders. [00:45:00] I, when I want to find a file, I don’t look for folders. I look based on tags and macOS, if you separate, if you have a tag name that has a colon in it, you
[00:45:11] Brett: can search,
[00:45:12] Jeff: of the Brett Terpstra
[00:45:13] Brett: can, you can search the portions of the tag name separated by colon.
[00:45:18] Brett: So if the tag name is work, colon. mdless colon design, a complete theoretical tag. You can search any of those three parts. You can search mdless, you can search design, and you can group files based on this kind of hierarchical tag that you’ve created. Um, uh, macOS, their tagging system isn’t hierarchical.
[00:45:45] Brett: It’s, it’s very flat, but using punctuation, right. But using punctuation of any kind, you kind of can nest tags. And it works really well.
[00:45:56] Jeff: Well, and you know what? I was, I was revisiting Bear, the app Bear, which
[00:45:59] Brett: [00:46:00] Yeah, yeah,
[00:46:01] Jeff: way to write
[00:46:02] Brett: it is.
[00:46:02] Jeff: in Markdown files, but they, they introduced like this a few years ago, they introduced nested tabs where if, so normally a tab with them is like you do hash and then the, the word and that’s the tag, but if you then put a slash in, it not only becomes an actual nested tag, but in your like sidebar, it becomes a sort of nested folder of tags, which reminded me of your thing.
[00:46:20] Jeff: Did they steal it from you or what?
[00:46:21] Brett: No, no, that’s theirs, but did you see the marked preprocessor I wrote for integration with Bear?
[00:46:30] Jeff: No!
[00:46:30] Brett: Uh, there’s a, I’ll link it on my blog, let me make a quick note, but
[00:46:35] Brett: um, Uh, about a month ago maybe?
[00:46:38] Jeff: No, how did I miss this? Well, I only just started using bear again. I go back and forth,
[00:46:43] Brett: Yeah, so I wrote a preprocessor for Mark that handles tags and nested tags and creates actual links, so if you click it in the preview document, it will open that nested tag in Bear,
[00:46:56] Jeff: You motherfucker.
[00:46:58] Brett: I created a new [00:47:00] preview style that exactly mimics Bear’s Markdown Preview, and Bear, Bear a long time ago integrated Marks, so you
[00:47:08] Brett: can go to Note, Preview, and Marked, and you can see your note, but I added a preprocessor that handles all, like, highlighter, like, equals, equals,
[00:47:18] Jeff: Yep.
[00:47:19] Brett: uh, it handles all of the special Bear
[00:47:21] Brett: syntax.
[00:47:22] Jeff: Okay, good to know.
[00:47:24] Brett: Yeah, you should check it out. I’ll, I’ll link, I’ll link it in the show notes.
[00:47:27] Jeff: will you educate me, even though I could Google this, when you said, um, this term, Sherlocked, which gets used, what does it mean? Where does it come from?
[00:47:36] Brett: so there was this app called Sherlock, um, that at, at one point in Apple’s OS development, I can’t remember what year this was, uh, but they turned it into Spotlight, and they didn’t buy Sherlock, they just duplicated it. And put Sherlock out of business [00:48:00] by just making it part of the operating system, which in the case of OpenMeta, they didn’t, OpenMeta was an open source standard, but they never acknowledged it.
[00:48:11] Brett: They just made it part of the operating system, invalidated its existence. You know, outside of the base OS and, and like, they’ve done it multiple times over the years. I, I couldn’t even name all of the, all of the innovations in Mac OS that are the result of them just duplicating another app’s functionality, like a third party app that really nailed something.
[00:48:39] Brett: And instead of buying it, they just stole it. That’s, that’s Sherlocking.
[00:48:44] Jeff: Okay, well, while we’re doing this, what is dogfooding?
[00:48:47] Brett: I don’t know.
[00:48:48] Jeff: Hmm. What is dogfooding? Software engineers are hungry for excellence. Dogs are hungry for dogfood. No, that’s not what I’m looking at. Software development, the jet brain, the jet brain’s way, [00:49:00] dogfooding. A practice especially popular in software development industry.
[00:49:03] Jeff: It means that a company fully tests its products first on itself, and now I’ve run out of the preview text. Hold on. So you not heard this term? Let’s see. It means that a company fully tests its products first on itself, using them as end users would, and effectively the company eats its own dog food.
[00:49:19] Brett: Okay.
[00:49:21] Less for Markdown
[00:49:21] Jeff: Oh man. That’s, that’s fine. Sorry. That was way out. So let, I want to ask you a question. Um, you’ve been, you’ve been making these updates to your tool MD, MDless. And, and I, I love when you suddenly have a bunch of blog posts because you’re making changes to something and you’re making always very thoughtful changes, like it’s never, I know that if you posted about an update, I’m not going to be like, why am I reading this?
[00:49:43] Jeff: It’s because it’s not only going to be an awesome update to that tool if I use it, but paradigmatically. It’s going to be inspiring and interesting. So will you talk about what MDLESS is first, when you made it and why, and what did, what caused you to make these changes and what are they? [00:50:00] Go ahead, caller.
[00:50:02] Brett: So mdless is, okay, so if you’re, if you use the command line, you’re familiar with the command less and less is basically paginates any text document and allows you, and it has like built in tools for like vim style searching and Up and down navigation and, um, it’s just kind of like the default pager for most Linux and macOS systems.
[00:50:31] Brett: Um, but it doesn’t do anything special with markdown. So, I wanted a markdownless, uh, something that would Process and Highlight, Syntax, Highlight, Markdown in a more readable way. So that say my, the readme file for the open source project I was working on, it didn’t have to open up in Markd or in another editor.
[00:50:56] Brett: I could just view it on the command line, but view it [00:51:00] with some styling. Um, and that’s where MDless began. And the original version of MDless was all based on regular expressions.
[00:51:09] Jeff: Oh my God. Really? Wow.
[00:51:12] Brett: it would, it would detect, like, this is a code block, this is a list item based on regular expressions, and that led to a lot of edge cases, uh, where it was not behaving the way a Markdown processor would, um, so I
[00:51:29] Brett: recently
[00:51:29] Jeff: bit, something about Markdown
[00:51:31] Brett: Yeah, yeah, so I, I recently re, remade it.
[00:51:35] Brett: Um, there’s a Ruby library called, uh, Red Carpet, which is a red cloth, Uh, kind of revision that does all, uh, it’s a Markdown processor.
[00:51:48] Brett: It’s, it’s one of the original like Ruby Markdown processors. Um, and Red Carpet, uh, it’ll basically generate the [00:52:00] outline for an HTML document from a Markdown file, but then it lets you write your own.
[00:52:07] Brett: Um, Renderers, so you can create a renderer that, uh, you know, it sends you a request for a paragraph and you tell it what to output for a paragraph or a list or a list item. And so I basically made that work with command line and output like ANSI escape codes to colorize and and output all these elements.
[00:52:32] Brett: So it, it lifted the burden of markdown, uh, Uh, interpretation parsing for me and let me just work on the output. Um, it got really complicated, like, with things like lists. Uh, it doesn’t, when it calls for rendering a list item, or an entire list, it doesn’t tell you if that list is nested, it doesn’t [00:53:00] tell you, uh, an index for the list item, it doesn’t give you any of that, so I had to write in all of these things that output Markers that then I could go through with regular expressions and replace with correct indexes for like numeric lists and indentation.
[00:53:20] Brett: Like I had to be able to create, because in HTML, you just put a UL tag around the list and if it’s already inside another list, it’ll indent, uh, based on your styling. You can’t do that in terminals. So I had to write. A whole series of functions that would indent and then correctly index each list item, uh, which got, it, it, I spent three days getting numeric lists to work properly when they were nested and when they were interrupted by another list.
[00:53:56] Brett: Um,
[00:53:57] Jeff: is the thing that always goes wrong
[00:53:59] Brett: [00:54:00] yeah.
[00:54:00] Jeff: when rendering Markdown, like a preview, right?
[00:54:02] Brett: So I was dreaming for two nights, I was dreaming about the problem and, and I came up the first night. I thought I had the solution when I woke up and I tried to implement it and realized immediately that there were major flaws in the plan. And I, I futzed with it for a day and then went back to bed and had a dream the second night that led me to the final solution.
[00:54:28] Brett: And now it is, it’s pretty flawless now. It’s a sturdy solution.
[00:54:33] Jeff: that’s awesome. And is, are lists the hard, when you’re trying to create something that processes Markdown for a preview, are lists the hardest thing? Is
[00:54:41] Brett: Um, so the nested elements are the hardest thing, which are a part of lists. Um, because within a list, you can nest paragraphs and you can nest code blocks. And to maintain list formatting, when you’re dealing with. [00:55:00] Nested block elements, um, yeah, that is, I think, the hardest part. Um, for a command line parser, the second hardest part is dealing with And the escape codes.
[00:55:13] Brett: So like you have a, you have a paragraph and you start it with the paragraph coloring, but then you hit a bold tag. And so you switch to the bold, like maybe it’s bold, maybe it’s a different color, maybe it’s underlined. After that tag ends, you have to go back to the paragraph coloring, but there’s no marker that says, okay, now it’s back to a paragraph you’ve just inserted an escape code.
[00:55:40] Brett: into the paragraph that changes the color and then leaves it as is for the rest of the paragraph. So I, I had to write Uh, functions that looked, when there was a span element inside of a paragraph, it had to look at the text before that element happened, determine [00:56:00] what ANSI escape code would replicate the text right before that tag, and then reinsert it after that tag.
[00:56:07] Brett: Um, it’s,
[00:56:09] Jeff: What I love about this is that this is in such stark contrast to the simplicity and mission of Markdown itself.
[00:56:15] Brett: right? Yeah,
[00:56:18] Brett: yeah.
[00:56:18] Jeff: amazing.
[00:56:19] Brett: It gets complicated. Yep, you bet.
[00:56:22] Jeff: I have a sort of related question. I don’t know where we are at on time. I don’t see a timer right
[00:56:26] Brett: 52 minutes.
[00:56:28] Jeff: Okay, just a, maybe we can save this, but I, if anybody’s still listening, they will also want the answer to this question. Anybody who isn’t interested is gone.
[00:56:36] Jeff: Um, I, the thing that I have, I mean, the, the real, like, issue I want to be so much more seamless, and, and it will allow me to work in Markdown as a collaborator as much as I want, is for exports to be dependable. If I want to export a document I’ve created in Markdown into a PDF or a Word document, or whatever it is.
[00:56:57] Jeff: And I’ve, I’ve never quite, [00:57:00] I mean, I think Mark does a great job with PDF stuff. I’ve, I don’t know that I’ve tried with Marked with, with DocX,
[00:57:06] Brett: Oh, it’s not great. I’ll
[00:57:08] Brett: tell ya, it’s not
[00:57:09] Jeff: of Marked right now. So, cause I was starting to use Bear again and I wrote a whole ass like memo to a client and I’m like, Oh, shit. I just wrote this whole thing in Markdown and not in a Google doc.
[00:57:19] Jeff: And so when it came time to export it, I was like, this looks like shit. And, and I’m wondering if, is there hope if I were to really nail down. A very specific style, a very specific, like say Pandoc template or something. Like, is there, is there a mountaintop I could get to where I was like, every time I write a memo in, for a client in Markdown and I export it, it does not look like some weird ass fucking Frankenstein that I didn’t have time to fix because I finish everything the second before I need to send it.
[00:57:50] Brett: is your answer.
[00:57:51] Jeff: And, and with Pandoc, what I’ve done in the past, you, you create. Like, say if it’s a Word document, you create the template, the basic template. These are what the headers look at, whatever. [00:58:00] Um, and I wonder if, so I’ve had good luck with Pandoc for sure, if it’s not a complex document. Um, if there aren’t a lot of images, if there aren’t, it’s images that start to really mess things up, or like graphics or whatever.
[00:58:11] Jeff: Um, but, but, are you, are you encouraging me to go a little harder with Pandoc to try to find my special place in that? I will, I will climb that mountain.
[00:58:22] Brett: There is
[00:58:22] Jeff: get me up that mountain.
[00:58:23] Brett: There is no substitute for Pandoc, especially when it comes to Word documents. Ulysses does an excellent job of creating structured Word documents. What Markt creates is basically an RTF file with Docx encoding. Um, but it’s, like, your H1 headers aren’t Objects that you can then style with a template.
[00:58:48] Brett: It’s, it’s, it’s a hack. It’s a, it’s a bit of a mess. Um, I’ve, I’ve never promoted Mark’s, um, DocX capabilities. Pandoc, [00:59:00] if I need to create an EPUB, if I need to create a DocX file, If I need to create anything other than your basic PDF and HTML, Um, Pandoc. It does everything. And, and with, with a little tweaking, you can create a, a single command.
[00:59:17] Brett: You can have like, make, makememo. sh and, and it’ll pull in your docx templates and make you the perfect document.
[00:59:29] Jeff: I need to go deeper. I’ve used it forever for very simple things. I use Pandoc commands just to quickly convert like a bunch of RTF files to Markdown or a bunch of Word doc files to Markdown. I usually go that direction and
[00:59:39] Brett: and it’s great for that too. Yeah.
[00:59:42] Jeff: Um, that’s great. Thank you. For anybody who’s been listening this long and feels like we’re just trying to signal the other secret Soviet spies that we work with, with all of these various code words, uh, sorry.
[00:59:53] Brett: Oh, I put, I put PEP 440 on our
[00:59:58] Brett: topic list. We’re [01:00:00] not going to get into it, but I’m going to summarize. I just discovered this today because of a Sublime Text update. But are you familiar with semantic versioning? Like
[01:00:13] Jeff: Only, not in a way I could speak it.
[01:00:15] Brett: So like the, uh, a version number that’s like 2. 0. 12. You have your major, your minor, and your patch.
[01:00:24] Brett: Two.
[01:00:25] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Yep.
[01:00:28] Brett: So that’s pretty simple. And that’s what Apple uses. That’s what most software developers use. There’s this new standard that came out of the Python project called PEP440, P E P 4 4 0. And it adds all of these like. Epoch versioning, so if you’re using semantic versioning, but you’ve always used date format, so you like have like year, month, day, or whatever as your version numbers.
[01:00:55] Brett: Now you can add an epoch to that, so you add like one exclamation point, [01:01:00] and then you can switch to like a regular semantic versioning, and it will know when it sorts them. That 1. 0. 2 is later than 2023. 12. And, and it adds, it adds handling for, uh, alpha, beta and release candidates. It adds handling for local versioning and dev versioning, and it is.
[01:01:25] Brett: It’s complex. I’ve written parsers for semantic versioning for multiple of my apps, especially my command line utilities that can determine this version number is newer or older than this version number. And I can use it in rake files for things like bumping a version number by patch or minor, major. Um, this would require, uh, Like three times as much code to accomplish.
[01:01:52] Brett: I’m, I’m kind of, it, it makes sense as a versioning standard. Like it covers, it covers all these edge cases, [01:02:00] but it’s so complicated. Um, but that’s a boring topic. We should definitely
[01:02:05] Jeff: Although I have to say like epoch, like epoch, uh, IDs or numbering sounds. So, uh, that sounds like such hubris, like I feel like what if you even then went further and you’re like, you know, like, uh, what are the, what do they call, like the, the period of like the bronze age, the priest, or age? What are these, the, what kind of eras?
[01:02:21] Jeff: I guess epoch seems like it’s more important than an era. Um, anyway, all right. Grab up aptitude. This has been all gude.
[01:02:30] Brett: it, it kind of
[01:02:31] Brett: has,
[01:02:31] Jeff: still got
[01:02:32] Brett: we got a lot of app links in here. You want to go first?
[01:02:35] Grapptitude
[01:02:35] Jeff: Yeah. Well, I already mentioned, um, Peak, which I really recommend. It’s on Setapp, which I also really recommend. That was the one other fun thing about doing this clean install was like, Oh, I just opened Setapp.
[01:02:46] Jeff: It’s like a brew file and Setapp and then whatever, a little bit. Um, but there’s something I hadn’t been using that felt like a little too intrusive, but I really love, which is called Paste. And it basically remembers, like, God [01:03:00] help you, like, a lot of your Clipboard history. And if you hit the keyboard shortcut or you, you click it in the menu bar, this little, um, like graphical interface comes up at the bottom of your screen, which is in my case, my last, like, I think 10 clipboard ads, uh, sorry, the last like 10 things I added to my clipboard and I can just hit one of them and, and, and use it again, or when this is, I think even better, and I used to use some other.
[01:03:29] Jeff: tool for this, maybe it was in Alfred. I used to use Alfred for this, but like, if I need to, if I’m looking at a document and I want a paragraph from up here, paragraph from down here, paragraph from the bottom, and then I want to paste them together, um, I can use this. I can just be like, one, two, three, there they all are.
[01:03:44] Jeff: Um, And, uh, and I love it. So anyway, it’s a really fun tool and, um, man, set up has gotten good. I like, I, it’s been a while since I did, I went through every app and set up just to like, see, is there anything I want that I don’t use, or is there anything I want to use that I used to use? And I forgot [01:04:00] about, and, um, instead of first came out, I was like, eh, there’s like five things I really want on here.
[01:04:05] Jeff: And I already own licenses to them. Um, but I loved how they worked and you described how as a developer, it’s a, it’s a better option in terms of. Getting paid. Um, and so I, I became dedicated based on that. So even if I have a license to hoot a spot or to clean shot or whatever it is, I, I use that, um, version now.
[01:04:24] Jeff: Um, but I, if nobody uses Setapp, it’s like a subscription service and you can use a zillion apps
[01:04:31] Brett: like 10 a month.
[01:04:33] Jeff: like the Netflix of apps!
[01:04:35] Brett: save so much money
[01:04:37] Brett: because, because half the apps on there are subscription anyway. And, and you would be paying five to 10 a month per app. But with Setapp, you pay us a flat 10 a month and you have access. It’s up to over 200 apps now.
[01:04:52] Jeff: God, we’re throwing sponsor money away right
[01:04:53] Brett: I know, right?
[01:04:56] Jeff: we’ll send this to you, Setapp, and if you’d like to hear this and more, [01:05:00] um, yeah,
[01:05:01] Brett: as a counterpoint to your pick, um, I don’t, I’m sure Alfred has all the capabilities, but I use LaunchBar, and with LaunchBar on my system, I can hit Command Option Backslash, and I get all, everything that’s been in my clipboard, and And I can use, I can use type of head searching to find exactly what I copied, you know, 10 copies ago, I can find it and hit enter and it’ll paste it.
[01:05:29] Brett: And it gives me command CC so I can highlight a paragraph, hit command C and then go highlight another paragraph, hit command CC, and it will append it in the clipboard to that previous paragraph. So I just keep hitting command CC until I’ve got everything I want to combine. Then when, when I hit command V it pastes.
[01:05:50] Brett: The combined output. Um, PopClip. PopClip has functionality for concatenated copies too.[01:06:00]
[01:06:00] Jeff: yes. I have, I am trying to operate without PopClip right now after my clean install. Uh, just out of curiosity.
[01:06:06] Brett: Okay.
[01:06:07] Jeff: use it all the time. I mean, I use it all the time, but I was like, I, it’s actually because, it’s not because I don’t love it, it’s because I want to know just how much it does for me, you know?
[01:06:16] Jeff: Like, I want to, I want to appreciate it again.
[01:06:18] Brett: You’re funny. It’s app mindfulness.
[01:06:21] Jeff: App Mindfulness. That’s, that’s it. That’s it. Oh, that’s, I’m glad you reminded me of that because, and it actually feels less like a sort of counterpoint and more as, I can imagine using that more. I’m remembering now the Alfred, whatever plugin I used was something like that. Although this thing where it pops up a bar along the bottom and it’s all of you, it’s like looking at your search history.
[01:06:42] Jeff: It’s like, Oh, wow, I was, why was I searching, uh, you know, like odd sizes of metric bolts, uh,
[01:06:49] Brett: there was a, there was a utility, um, in the early days of my use of Mac OS.
[01:06:58] Brett: Um, [01:07:00] no, no, there was, there was one that was specifically for clipboard. It was called like Clipboard Plus or something. And it gave you, like, when you would hit the shortcut, it would give you a sidebar on your screen with like little previews of images and text.
[01:07:15] Brett: And, and rich text that you had copied and you could just click one and paste it. Um, I find the launch bar integration a lot more because I use launch like launch bar is always up for me. So it just makes sense that I would use its integrated features. Um, but yeah, it’s nice to have that little preview window and everything.
[01:07:36] Jeff: Yeah. Okay, wait, now what’s your gratitude? Sorry, I just
[01:07:39] Brett: Oh, so I’m torn between two. I’m going to go with Fathom Analytics. Um, this will be for a certain segment of our audience, but if you run a blog and, or you run an online shop, or you do anything where you use Google Analytics, you are giving [01:08:00] away your customer and your reader’s data to Google. For all kinds of nefarious purposes.
[01:08:07] Brett: So I went out searching, when I really locked down privacy on brettterpstra. com, I, I knew I had to get rid of Google Analytics and I went out searching for a replacement and there are multiple options, but the one I landed on is called Fathom, F A T H O M, and it is. Very privacy oriented. It doesn’t collect any demographic info.
[01:08:32] Brett: I mean, it’s, it’s a significantly less amount of info than you would get from Google Analytics. But for me, what I really needed to know was what pages were popular, how many people were visiting it, uh, where they went, uh, from one page to another, and, um, they recently added You can set up custom events without creating them [01:09:00] first in the interface.
[01:09:01] Brett: Like normally, previously you would have to create the event and then add the code for that event into your JavaScript so that when that event happened, it would trigger.
[01:09:12] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:09:13] Brett: Now you can just write JavaScript, add a name for the event, add a value if you want, optionally, a value to the event, and it will just show up in your dashboard as this event happened this many times.
[01:09:26] Brett: And you can create unlimited number of events so you can have them dynamically created. Like right now, every project on my website gets a custom event. So I can see exactly how many downloads. Each individual project got in a day and it makes, yeah, it’s super nice.
[01:09:47] Brett: And,
[01:09:48] Jeff: in that?
[01:09:49] Brett: um, yeah, uh, less surprising. NVL still gets like 50 downloads a day.
[01:09:56] Brett: Um, uh, search link, I was [01:10:00] surprised how many people were downloading search link and the Markdown service tools are surprisingly popular, even though I haven’t updated them forever.
[01:10:08] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re great. Yeah,
[01:10:11] Brett: And, and I recently discovered I can get Statistics on how many people have installed my gems, my ruby gems. I, those had always been untrackable to me, but I realized that like on the main gem site, I forget, rubygems.
[01:10:30] Brett: org or whatever. Um, it’ll actually tell you how many people have downloaded total and how many people have downloaded the current version. And it turns out I have like half a million
[01:10:41] Brett: gem, gem downloads. I know.
[01:10:43] Jeff: Wow.
[01:10:45] Brett: I know it was crazy. I know, I mean, there are blogs out there that get that many hits in a
[01:10:50] Jeff: Oh, yeah,
[01:10:51] Brett: for me, that’s, that’s kind of a big deal,
[01:10:54] Brett: so.
[01:10:55] Jeff: Yeah, that’s amazing.
[01:10:56] Brett: Yeah, so my pick is Fathom Analytics. Um, [01:11:00] I, if you are looking into increasing user privacy and you care about things like that, uh, Fathom. It’s like, I think I pay 140 a year. So I don’t remember what the monthly cost is, and I’m not going to do the math in my head. Um, but it’s not free. Google Analytics is free, but you’re selling your users
[01:11:25] Brett: data.
[01:11:25] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
[01:11:27] Brett: and that wasn’t, that wasn’t a compromise I wanted to make.
[01:11:31] Jeff: Um, just a quick thing. I downloaded NV Alt for fun. I’m one of those people about two weeks ago. So I’m on your, I’m on your list there. And after, you know, many years and also becoming an NV Altra user. But man, I was NV Alt. Ooh, I was like, I’m going to try this out. I walked in. It was like, it was like a childhood home.
[01:11:51] Jeff: But like, nothing’s changed. The furniture hasn’t changed. It’s just, everything’s a little dusty and, and smaller than you thought. That’s like how it felt. It’s like, [01:12:00] it was an amazing experience. Anyway.
[01:12:03] Brett: Yeah. Uh, Envy Ultra is different enough from Envy Alt that. I, I’ve given up on going back to NvAlt. I haven’t run NvAlt for probably over a year. Um, just because there are things about NvAltra that, there are things about NvAlt that NvAltra is missing and I find it frustrating, but I don’t have the power to change,
[01:12:28] Jeff: Encrypted notes.
[01:12:29] Brett: sure, uh, simple node integration, which has recently, um, as one user put it, it has been in shitified. Um.
[01:12:40] Jeff: I just looked at Simple Note yesterday because I, I, I’m clean installing. I’m like, let’s look at everything, you know?
[01:12:46] Brett: so like NvUltra, like you can sync with iCloud or Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever sync system makes sense for you, um, and honestly for me, uh, syncing with [01:13:00] iCloud and then tying OneWriter on my phone into the
[01:13:05] Brett: same, yeah, into the same box, like we have a version of NvUltra for iOS, but OneWriter is always going to be better than what we put out, like we want to complete the ecosystem But OneWriter is such a great
[01:13:21] Brett: app.
[01:13:21] Brett: I,
[01:13:21] Jeff: way where like one writer on the Mac is not,
[01:13:23] Brett: no, yeah,
[01:13:25] Brett: but that, but the two work together
[01:13:28] Jeff: Yeah,
[01:13:29] Brett: They’re perfect
[01:13:29] Jeff: your folder of notes. Put it wherever you want.
[01:13:31] Brett: that is, that is, portability man. That’s the beauty of it all
[01:13:35] Jeff: it’s great for someone like me who gets impatient and tries a million like notes apps is it’s always just off the same folder. And so there’s no, no problem. No
[01:13:44] Brett: Honestly, if, if, if Notes app on Mac, which has come a long
[01:13:50] Jeff: Oh man,
[01:13:51] Brett: it is a fantastic app these
[01:13:54] Jeff: So good.
[01:13:54] Brett: If it could work with individual text files, I would be [01:14:00] sold.
[01:14:00] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure Tim Cook is still listening. Uh, so, Timmy Boy, T Dog, T Bone.
[01:14:08] Brett: Alright. Well, that was, that was good. I,
[01:14:11] Jeff: I love a good nerdy overtired.
[01:14:13] Brett: we miss Christina, but yeah, we, we didn’t have any pop culture this episode.
[01:14:19] Jeff: That’s true. We’re the pop culture.
[01:14:22] Brett: I feel poppy.
[01:14:23] Jeff: Poppy, super poppy, poppy.
[01:14:25] Brett: Hey Jeff, get some sleep.
[01:14:27] Jeff: Yeah, but not till later.
[01:14:29] Brett: Fair enough.
[01:14:41] Christina: Hey everybody, it’s Christina here, and I’m not on the show this week because I’m on a train to Portland to get a new laptop. Uh, more details on that later, but I could not let things go without talking about, um, our, our sponsor of this week’s show, Notion, and their new, uh, Q& A [01:15:00] feature. So if you’re anything like me, you might already be familiar with Notion, which is the sponsor of today’s episode, as I said.
[01:15:06] Christina: I use this all the time for, for notes, for documents. I have internal wikis of various things that I collect and I really love the interface and I really love how easy it is, um, to, um, uh, create docs. But, but now I also like how easy it is to find things because of a new AI tool they’ve launched called Q& A.
[01:15:25] Christina: So this is basically a personal assistant that responds really fast with exactly what you need right in your doc. So. Here’s a real world example from me. I have a Notion doc filled with links and information about various discounts that I get as a corporate employee. This is kind of a difficult document to like, suss through because it’s actually the combination of like five different documents that I’ve sourced from a bunch of different places.
[01:15:51] Christina: So it’s not super well organized. Well, this is why this was perfect to use Q& A with because I can just ask Notion’s Q& [01:16:00] A I can say, okay, show me my discount code or my discount URL for Avis and it will give it to me and I don’t have to go searching for, okay, was it in the transportation section or was it in the car rental section or was it in some other discount section?
[01:16:17] Christina: It’ll just give me the information when I ask the question and this is the sort of thing that it can do. For, for anybody. It doesn’t just have to be, you know, your weird, you know, link collections and, and, and documents. It can also, you know, um, use, use your own personal notes, your docs, your projects. All that is going to be together in one beautiful space, and then you can navigate that space using Q& A, um, to, you know, ask questions maybe about, like, next month’s Like, roadmap, uh, that you’re doing for next quarter or next month or, you know, a marketing campaign proposal that you’re looking for.
[01:16:48] Christina: Um, or, you know, like I said, like what I’m doing all the time, digging up long lost links because that’s a problem that I personally have and that, uh, that Notion definitely can help, can help me out with. So [01:17:00] if you haven’t used Notion, um, I think that you should definitely give it a shot and Notion AI can now give you instant answers to your questions.
[01:17:09] Christina: Using information from across your wiki, your project docs, your meeting notes, etc. So you can try Notion AI for free when you go to Notion. com slash Overtired. That’s all lowercase letters. Notion. com slash Overtired to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you’re going to use our link, you are supporting our show.
[01:17:32] Christina: So once again, that is Notion. com slash Overtired. Try out the Q& A feature. Try out the Notion AI stuff. It’s really slick. I’m a big fan. Thanks a lot, Notion.
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