Also Media.
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed zitron. Today. I'm joined by the wonderful Sophie Lichtorman, who will be overseeing our Q and A episode, our very first one. Sophie, thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah, I'm kind of the Q and a MC over here at Cauzone Media, as in, you need somebody to ask you the questions.
And we've had wonderful questions from all of you this this week. Thank you so much. We're going to try and do these every couple months, but I love hearing from you. Please post on the addit, Please message me. You have my email easy at Better Offline dot com And that's Easer at Better Offline dot com for the Canadians and the British who listen to this as well. But Sophie, why don't we take it away?
Yeah, I'm just going to jump through some of these questions and and good yeah, and like, thank you guys so much for them, Like we really genuinely appreciate it.
It's cool.
It's cool. It's cool that you have a podcast where people like you enough where they want to ask you questions.
Yeah, it's sick all right, I'm going to start with.
A question from Garrett Smart. Do you think AI is actually useful and any capacity even as an assistant in the areas of art or programming?
If so, why so? When it comes to art, I think that there are new functions like slightly better clone tools as well that I've heard people use. But really this is just a bridge from photoshop. I will say, for the most part, art is a not a great one because usually it's just getting rid of the creative side. Programming is a more complex ones. So there's an excellent video link to in the episode Notes from the Internet of Bucks that Carle Brown I think his name is.
I really want him on the show, Carle if you're listening, please come on where he kind of said that generative AI code is different to what software engineering is. Like software engineering, he is solving a murder or an investigation far more than generative AI is just creating code, because software engineering isn't just spooting out code and saying here
we go, we're done. We now have software. Software is a manifold series of different things you have to do, and on top of that, things break when you plug me into other things, and our internet and most software products are built in a patchwork of different things, so software development. The best I've heard is that it can be used in very controlled situations for very specific things. If you're really interested in learning what it can actually do.
I recommend Max Wolf and Simon Wilson. I'll link them in the notes as well, but those two are no AI guys. I also really recommend the Internet Bugs, which again i'll link as well. There are software developers who use this stuff. I don't know about it, and actually the Internet of Bug videos really good as well, because it breaks the whole myth of oh Microsoft and Google saying twenty to thirty percent of their code is written by AI. It's kind of bullshit, as you'd expect, because
you can't just hand off code like this. There's also vibe coding. Vibe coding in and of itself has so many problems in that. Yeah, when you create something that works in a way that you literally don't understand by definition, yeah, it's probably going to fucking break. I mean it will break at some point and you won't know how to fix it other than to poke the machine that build it and say, fix the problem. I don't understand.
It's a good answer from Falcon Underscore nineteen eighty three. I'd be interested to hear Ed's process for researching and planning his stuff. How long does it take to go from an idea to a finished article on podcast? I'm excited to hear the truth for this one.
Okay, so soph Sophie's going to love this. So the answer is several seconds, or several days, or several weeks. So I'll give you an example. I have an upcoming newsletter that's about thirteen thousand words long. I'm going to break it into probably two or three episodes. That thing started with me listening to jojo Bizarre Adventure JoJo's Bizarre Adventure music, even sitting outside just it was a nice day and a smile. It was like, oh fuck. I
started writing down like the most insane notes ever. I then sent that to my editor and my mate Casey, and we talked about it for like a day or two, and then I get pissed off, like a baby that needs to fart or burp. I sit there being mad at the idea. I message people like, what do you think about that? You ever see this? And they're like, I don't know what You're talking about ed I don't
understand what you're talking about. What do you mean? And then I'll then in explaining it to them, I'll actually come up with the idea, and then I will sit down and I will write for several hours, and I will write for several hours straight. I will research as
I'm writing. There will be stuff that I pick up along the way in my day that I'm reading and I'll go, yeah, this kind of makes me feel annoyed or it feels like it slots in, and then I will go through a full I So the thirteen thousand and one took me about three days, probably three days, about three hours each, bits and pieces, and I'm researching
as I go. That's a big part of my process, which sounds insane, but it's mostly because I'm try to explain it to myself as I go, which works pretty well. It makes the things a little long, but I mean that's why you listen to the podcast. Then there will be situations like with Giant Bomb. So the Giant Bomb episodes that came out last week, so that one came
together in a few minutes. I was like, I messaged Dan Reichert over there and said, hey, look, I would love to do an episode with you guys and just came together quickly. It same with like Karen Howe, and so it really is a tapestry of different things. There will be times when I ping friends and just say, hey, look, what do you think about this idea? And I will shoot the shit with them for a few hours and
something will come out. That's why I end up. I mentioned Casey Kagawa a lot is one of my closest friends, and we ideate a lot because we both have brain worms. So yeah, I don't know if anyone else in the world writes like this. It sound it makes me sound insane, but I really enjoy it and I feel better at the end, like it feels like I really built something.
It's it's cool. I like doing it. The monologues are insane in that those usually take me about ten minutes of pacing around thinking and then about twenty minutes of writing. Then I record straight because I like the monologues. The monologues I think I have more fun with than anything else because they're so low, they're low velocity, low pressure. I love doing them, like and I always I'll just do five minutes that comes out as ten, Oh, I really should do a monologue this week.
I love your monologues.
Oh they're the best. I really do it.
I love that you were like, yeah, I'll try it, and then you were like, I had so much fun doing this.
It's because it's low pressure.
You can tell them, but you can tell. That's why they're so That's why they're so good, because if you were doing them out of like, oh obligation to rant, as opposed to like I actually like doing, and then it's just not as interesting in my opinion.
Yeah, you can tell.
You can tell as like as like a podcast of a producer of many podcasts. You can tell when somebody's phoning it in.
Yeah, I don't think I have it in me to phone it in. I guess, Oh you don't, I get. I mean the man who killed Google search? Do you know from last monologue? Sorry two monologues back. Even when we're recording. This was literally that came from me being pissed off about like I was trying to phone in as shean newsletter. It was like soup not she in newsletter podcast and it was super early and better offline, so I had no process. I was just like war
just constantly worried every week. Not anymore though, Now I feast on content.
Yeah you caught the podcast illness.
Oh yeah, the Evans madness.
Let's do another one from Logan. My question is, how do you see the copyright lawsuits playing out and its effect on generative AI in the tech industry. Do you have faith that creators will win and copyrighted content will need to be pulled from these models, severely hindering their performance.
I think that it's going to be it's a good question. It's going to be weird and confusing right up until it isn't.
So.
I don't think you're going to have like a un lateral win in any of these cases. It's never that clean, it's never that easy. But I think what is most likely to happen is there's going to be a win
and then there will be a massive settlement. But that settlement will be used in the future to break these machines if they lose these things, and there is ever like a precedent set that says and I'm not a lawyer, I realized, but and they say, okay, this is the thing where this this proves that feeding into the models is a violation of Copyrea. Let's just say they can't untrain these things. They cannot do it. You cannot untrain a model. Once a model is trained, it's done. There
are stages to them. They could probably revert back to from what I understand, but you can't just be like, Okay, remove all pictures of Scooby Doo, remove all pictures of Garfield. It's they And another important detail is the model developers don't really understand how these things work themselves. They're still working it out. It's why there's so many questions they have.
When it's like they get where, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, it just be very complex to remove the answer is they don't know how open AI like a year ago, said they were going to make a media central thing we could opt out of stuff just never happened. No one checked. On the less fun level, it will probably be a big settlement. On the funny level, will be the judge says, yeah, you have to amend your models.
There is no amending these models. They will have to spend tens hundreds of millions of dollars to retrain anything that is used there. There will be some that refuse to. I would not be surprised to be elon musk if even order just goes, oh oh yeah, that's that's not epical. Bits they're not going to do it, and no one is gonna like, no one's going to outsue him. Open Ai is far more scared of that, anthropic, extremely weak
to that. And on top of that, any of these lawsuits prevailing will fuck open AI's nonprofit situation, which is already pretty fucked like that. There are so many weak points in these companies that people don't realize, and there's always there's always hope, never get we've.
Up hope that these assholes can get crushed, all right.
From Mela, I think it's Mela, me e La. I'm sorry if it's not Mela. Question I'm a teacher. Any thoughts on AI being implemented in the classroom, specifically in public schools. We talk about it pretty often because it constantly getting marketed as a tool, but it is mostly in the context of students learning on it to write research, but not about how it is being marketed to schools.
Yeah, so I don't know this subject in depth, but I'll say this, I've heard of people using it for lesson plans. Teachers and if you're not a teacher and you hear this, teachers have to like buy all their own shit and they need to do all their own work. They get basically no support. So I wouldn't be surprised if the if open AI or one of these companies stru to push in and be like, oh, it's a teachers the system and it's a rare case where like
maybe it kind of helps. But I think after a certain point, if you're making a lesson planned with CHET GPT, you're no longer fucking teaching. I think you're just you were just representing someone else's information and hoping it works. I worry about administrations in poorly funded education departments just being like okay, yeah, let's just shove this in here.
I think the worries that people have over over the whole, like oh, kids are just going to be handed at GPT and told to go nuts, I don't think that will happen, just because well Google's already trying to do that with Gemini. They're already trying to give Gemini to kids. I don't think that that's going to last as long as people think, because at some point a child is going to hurt themselves because of one of these things
or hurts someone else. And as much as we love our restrained, unrestrained capitalism in this country and the world at large, there comes a point where that kind of stuff you in Europe, like Europe will unhinge their jaw and swallow open AI whole. And the same with Google. If they do anything with kids and AI in a way they don't like over here, you're gonna see some tests. But the fund about the thing is it can't do the teaching part. It can do the hi I want,
like finish my homework for me, but the actual lesson instruction. No, And nor is there a situation where they're just going to sit kids down in front of it, Because I don't know how would that even. I mean, sure, in some dystopian future we just handle a laptop and chat GPT and say go nuts. But on a practical level, I just don't see that happening. And if I guess you could say, then there are the doomers out there will say, oh, the Department of Education could force GROC
onto everything. Ah. If you think in that way, if you constantly pull yourself in the Dumerius direction, yeah, anything can literally happen. Ever, anytime anything terrible can happen, I think you are going to see a lot of departments push teachers to learn this stuff. To the point in your question, I think when it becomes student facing, that's when things are going to get a little bit weird
and a little bit crazier. Because another thing to think about, how well do you think conservatives will react to their child being plucked in front of chat GPT or Grok or what have you, and Grok or chat GPT tells them that like black people should have the same rights as white people. They're gonna hate that. They're going to be furious at that idea. They're going to say that
they're being given a woke education. And there is only so much amendments you can do to a system prompt before you entirely break it, as proven by the fact that Grok talked about white genocide or the boas at nauseum the other day shout out to Kylie Robinson and went on, Chris has to talk about that. But yeah, I'm it's a mix. It's really it's a question of how far this hype cycle goes and for how long, because if it lasts another two or three years somewhere
it's going to happen. But I don't see that happening at all.
Yeah, I know, it's really kind of gnarly for TEA when they can, when they can so easily tell that students are just using AI to turn in homework. I mean, somebody's going to create something that is like a plagiarism tracker, but it's like an AI tracker at some point you'd have to imagine.
And those already exist, and they're already dinging students for And I think that there is a wider problem with our chat GPT essay writing thing, which is we don't teach children to write correct. I remember when I was at Penn State, I had a group project. If any
who you're listening, I'm very sorry you're writing sucked. I had a group project with like seniors and juniors, and I was a sophomore at the time, and he was like an eighteen page, eighteen page double space essay, and everyone's writing was different but the same kind of bad, and it kind of mirrored the shitty writing of chat GPT. It's the kind of intro body conclusion slot we taught people to write like this and we graded them based on this writing. We don't because we think, oh, not
everyone can write. Actually they can. I fully believe they can if given media to consume and encouragement and have good writers teach them. Because we do not prioritize communication as in fact, I think it is a word of thing. It's we don't prioritize teaching people communication at all. People are using chat GPT to mediate conflict because we don't have any kind of institutionalized mental health I don't mean like institutions, I mean like making people do mental health stuff.
We don't have any kind of classes to teach people conflict resolution. And we also don't teach people how to fucking communicate. We romanticize, especially in college, this kind of overstaffed architect in the matrix style indubitably bullshit, which is about making yourself sound smart rather than actually communicating an intelligent point. This is a natural weak point for things like chat GPT, which is entirely about sounding smart without
being smart. So I mean, I'm actually shocked that teachers can't tell that chat when chat gpt is writing, because I've been able to one hundred percent not it's when I get that slob. It's a really certain kind of echoing. Nothing behind it, There's no there is no I'm not even being kind of condescending. I mean there is a way it writes. There is a way that Claude rights as well. It always goes like that's a really good point.
Yeah, there's usually some kind of like indeed that is great. Yeah, is there some like really strange or like an unusually awkward punctuation as well.
That you can just tell and it doesn't feel right? And but again, if we have teachers that don't know how to write, who don't know what good writing is, they just and again that is a well not again I didn't say this yet, but there is also likely not the institutional support for teachers either. So it's just we create these weak systems that get exploited. And none of this is a business model for chat GPT either. Like they got sixteen point five million I think from
cal State University cal State University system. It's like that's still losing the money and already people are trying to get rid of it. It's just it's also sickening.
It's a mess. Let's go to a fun question from Nora. Do you have a piece of tech you wish had been successful but wasn't, or that you wish was widely influential but didn't turn out that way. I would love to know your answer to this question.
So my one is the PlayStation Vita. So the PlayStation Veta was this little gaming console that Sony did. It was PlayStation three era, I think it was. It was so cool. It was like a step up from the PlayStation Portable. The graphics were good. It had this weird touch screen on the back that you could use. It really wasn't a great idea, but it was like they were trying stuff. It was also just a great form factor,
great weight, great games, really great. Same with the PSP and I get why it didn't take off, and I think we are getting there. There's the GPD Win four, which is like a little gaming PC hand held. It kind of feels like it, but it's too chunky. I think in the next few years you might actually see growth in this because good lord is that like I love the mobile gaming PCs. And for the show, actually I'm playing with an Asus rog ally X, which is
really cool. We are probably five to ten years away from what I'm dreaming of, which is a super thin one that's kind of like a Nintendo Switch but a powerful gaming PC. But I wish the PSVA had done better because we would have seen this quicker. We would have seen a push for smaller silicon for batteries, like there would have been just more money going into it. But again, maybe it didn't get there because the tech wasn't ready. I still loved it. I still really loved it,
and I really love that form factor as well. And the big thing I guess I'm saying is it's not just do these things exist. It's like Sony is very good at ergonomic stuff. I love their controllers, like that was what really made it as well. It was just the I missed. I missed that, and I'm sure there's some If you are a listener who played with the PlayStation portableand PlayStation Vita homebrew scene, love you please email me up, love to talk about it. I miss it
as cool as shit. Raymond Wong, who used to write in verses, did a lot about it as well. It's just I guess the part of tech I'm missing is well that never really took off, is these powerful port but handhelds, and we're so close we're so close. I can I can feel it. I can feel it, I can feel the cosmos. It's gonna be wonderful when it gets here.
There was an article that I read a couple days ago from Vice that was probably, you know, not an original piece from Vice no offense device, that was like, your pets could one day be able to talk to you with AI. And I just like that to me was what you've been talking about. And there's a question that talks about the AI bubble burst, which is what this is leading into. You've talked about that. That is such an indicator to me that I'm like, come on, come on, yeah, come on.
Part of the joy of pets is that they can't communicate with us, and we have to show them extra love and affection. I know we have to understand their needs without fully understanding them. That we have to be empathetic and caring about them. The idea that also, I don't want to hear what Babu thinks of me. I think he loves me, but he loves me. I think, how is the one my cat who kind of like stays in my office mostly he is the one who I think he's probably got some mean things to say.
He loves me, but he also hits me in the face sometimes, So.
Yeah, I mean, like I think Anderson would not trade me for a piece of string cheese, but my newest rescue dog, Truman, I mean, I'd love for us to know when she'd be like that. I'm scared of that. But also, uh, I don't want to hear that she would trade me for a piece of string cheese, which I'm pretty sure she would at this point, and I understand it.
What if my dog's racist?
Yeah, I mean, come on, what if your dog has like really bad taste in television?
Yeah you're Oh, what if your dog is just annoying? What if your dog just like hums Yeah? What if your dog's sitting there like are going hm mm, just like makes like weird mouth, Like there's just otherwise, Like, my pet's are beautiful and wonderful and I love them so much and they make my life so good. They really are angels.
Yeah exactly, can you imagine?
I know I don't need to well, I mean, Bobby talks to me anyway.
I can understand almost everything that my dogs communicate to me, and that's great, and that's where it needs to stay.
I think BOBU can understand me for sure. Yeah, because I have tons of videos to be saying, Bobby, what you want and he mAbs at me. I'm saying really, he goes now it's okay. Yeah, we're talking. That's what I'm telling myself.
Like Anderson Can, She's right behind me staring at you.
A legend, the legend. Ye.
Yeah, she's perfect. But like I think she is more self aware about what's going on in the world than most humans.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah.
Anyways, from justin this was leading into the A bubble burst thing. As the AA bubble bursts, what will become of the many mediocre customers with overly reliant on it for just about everything. That's a great question.
I think the first thing they're gonna find out is they're not reliant on it at all. But that is the the first thing they're going to discover is that they will never reliant on this stuff. I also think that in the event that they were reliant on it, they'll choose one of the many open source models. And because large language models are not going to disappear, it's not like open AI dies tomorrow. Large language models will
not the hype cycle dies. They will not die. They are on device models that videos putting out like a three thousand dollar gy think it's the dgx box they're doing that can run large language models of a certain parameters. Like it's very doable. And there are gonna be people who just go, I don't I never really needed this. Yeah, there are gonna be those who say, oh, well, I use chet GPT for this, that and the other chat GPT dot com all forward to copilot, Like you're gonna
have access to one of these fucking things. You're just going to find out what happens when people are not told to use this stuff, when people will naturally use it. And I think you can kind of see what will happen there. Based on the user numbers for these companies outside of open Ai, they can barely muster up the combined active users of like a free to play game that sells your information to the Chinese. Like, I think that so much of this demand is artificial too, And
I think that it's curiosity. People are like, oh, I hear about this constantly, I should try it out, and then yeah, people are ultimately a bit lazy. I know I can be and they're like, oh, I'm in an argument with my mate, what do what do about it? How do I deal with the argument with my friend? Chat gpt? And there will be that people use it for that, but I also think that again, that's not a business model and people will not care for that.
So I think the future will be large language models with heavy usage limits and premim ones that no one pays for really that are just way more expensive. And I really do think open Ai eventually cops it. I think get absorbed into Microsoft because we don't really have antitrust right now, so I.
Think they'll just get paying for premium.
Sadly, so they're paying. Open Ai gets like billions of dollars through this, but it's like people organizations buying it, and you have people think about it like this. If every single news outlet everywhere forever for two sorry not forever, for two years straight or more has said chat GPT AI generative AI, chat GPT, Yeah, billions of billions of dollars of revenue. Sure, people will shove money into something
if they are told to. And on top of that, you have tons of business idiots who are just like, yeah, I need to put AI in my business, and I have the podcast that's coming up. I actually believe our economy is run by a lot of people who don't do any work, so this shit seems like magic. Of course they'll buy it for their entire organization. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Yeah, sure, put chat GPT in everything. That's how that works. Oh, here we go.
And I think that when it goes to way, we'll check GPT does. I think that we'll probably see just the kind of very boring large language model industry and it just it just won't It won't be as prevalent, you won't hear about it as much, and it will actually be better for the tech. I think.
All told, and we're back from p I'm going to try to get this right. P eight N T B A l l n x J. I think I did that. Yeah, I think they're trying to say paintball and an ex J. All right, the question is ed, what are your favorite activities that have nothing to do with the tech?
Okay, so I have a local basketball court I've been going to on my own, and I've been playing basketball on my own, which sounds very sad, but no, it does. It I do a shit ton of fitness, so last year lost a ton of way. I'm down like buck sixty five. Now muscle it's great, so I work out a lot. The reason I don't bring uplifting is because that's tech, Like my tone is a tech thing. Basketball is not. It's me, my music and hoop him. And I'll tell you I am one of the worst shooters
of all time. I am so bad at it. But I really like rebounding. And I really like the cardio thing because I needed a cardio level to go because my boxing was kind of stalling. So I really enjoyed just like running around for half an hour, like catching a ball in the air and shooting it. And then I play.
Basketball with you.
You will demolish men. I have the cardio. I have the cardio, but I am like, how tall are you?
I'm five three on a good day.
Okay, yeah I might, I might be all right there, I'm five nine.
I was.
I was captain of my varsity basketball team.
Oh then you'll demolish me. Then, okay, you will, you will say, and me to hell. You'll be able to actually get the ball in the hoop, which is my one problem. But I really like that, and I really like barbecue, so I have two pellet smokers, which I realized to some listeners who do like the wood chunks is kind of considered harahm. But fuck you, you purist bastard. But I love making ribs. I love making tritip. I hate making brisket. It was a few years ago. I
really I love try tips. My tried tips incredible as well. I really enjoy that I do use some tech things. I have a combustion thermometer, but really is just a giant's steel thing full of smoke that I watch and it's great, and it honestly has been really good for me, and it allows me to cook for people, which I love doing. And yeah, and when I'm waiting for stuff to cook, I will stand watching TV outside bouncing the basketball around, catching it in the air. I just I
have some weird habits, as you can probably guess. But I really enjoy like being bad at basketball. Honestly have not enjoyed.
Do you like watch basketball?
I'm getting there. I'm still learning. The people I know that like James Harden is constantly at strip clubs or being traded.
I hate him. My brother played against him. In high school. It's been an asshole since he was a child.
Yeah, and he seems to like enjoy like tricking people into doing fowls. But I just I'd like him more if he was ruder, like if he was more of a heel, if he like, like was like the fans a bit.
I mean, okay, prop Ian and I can teach you.
I would love to learn basketball.
You're a Lakers, by the way. Cool, it's good you've been assigned.
Baseball as well. I really enjoyed baseball or going to baseball a few years ago. I really enjoy going to baseball. Don't really enjoy watching it on TV like I can, but I need to like have a reason name there, Like it needs to be like a like an LDS or something. I'm like a Dodger's padres Mets fan. It's a whole mess. Really, I'm more of a game. I'm like the Rob Low wearing the NFL hat guy. I'm just like, I'm here for the game. But I really do.
I really enjoy baseball, And with that in mind, I also enjoy but I haven't been for a while going to a batting cage. I really enjoyed batting cages. It's just especially when you're on the computer all the time, you're looking at screens of the time, and you just go and you hit a ball that's like thrown at you at seventy miles an hour. It's very difficult, but again, really enjoy it.
How do you feel about like mini golf and like the driving range?
I do. I like mini golf. Never done a driving range, though, I like.
Mini golf a lot. Mini golf is great, you know, I don't. I don't like that like what's it called the like yassified like driving range where they're oh top golf. Yeah, I really don't enjoy top golf.
Oh it's just I've never like really known where you'd go. I guess it just felt like a driving range to me. And it's like, I like mini golf. I think minigal's fun and silly.
I like like a really like old school minigol of course that you know has been there.
Forever and like, yeah, it's kind of shit.
It's shit in the town and there's like no tech. It's just like really bad like wood in wood in art, and it's just hilarious.
I'm not sure if it's meant to go in the certain place you keep playing anywhere. Bowling no, So I have a coordinational disability call dyspraxia, which is really weird. I realize basketball has honestly beat an exploration of how prevalent that is in my life though, because I could not dribble the ball when I started, like I physically could not, I would get maybe three or four bounces
before I drop it. Now I can run at full speed up and down the court, dribbling, changing hands, I can turn around, I can grab the ball in the air. So it's been this weird exploration. So bowling might be one of those things where maybe if I try it more.
I don't know the sticking your fingers into dirty holes thing is I can.
We all been there, but it's it's it's one of those things where six months ago I would have said no. But the basketball side again on screens all day. So like my achievements are all typing, but like being able to grab a ball out of the air, being able to actually rebound successfully, it's thrilling. I really enjoy it. And it's like something where I can't look at a screen. I have to look at where I'm going to miss.
Next I'm telling I'm going to text Ian and prop right now. We're going to give you a full basketball education.
I would love that. I would genuinely love that Casey could go off. Friends of the Show got me into baseball in the same way that's how I get into sport. I also do watch the NFL, but I think saying I like the Raiders is a stretch. It's like attending a year's long class action suit.
That was the weirdest thing that's ever coming out of your mouth. The Raider, I know, locationally sure, but like to actually like the Raiders, you have to be a specific type of person, which you are not. Well.
The funny thing is is Arifasan from sixty Minute Drill Football podcast I Do laughed at me once because he asked on the part he said, why'd you get in the Raiders? I was like, Oh, I lived in Oakland at the time and the season tickets really cheap. But he just goes, you got into a football team because of market conditions, And that is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life because it's true. However, the team might be good this year, maybe yeah, but
I haven't had hope before so who cares? Yeah. Oh, and also the show JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. That's another thing I really like. I don't want to get me talking.
About that, is that the question about Jojo.
Is, yeah, there's you can skip that.
I was like, I don't know what that is. I'm not gonna I.
Would have to explain a bunch of stuff.
I'm not like that one over in my head. I'll ask one more serious one and then we'll do the cats.
Sounds good, all right?
Um, I just wonder if I want to ask that's serious?
Eh?
This comes from Eric. How the fuck is anyone supposed to make anything cool and make a living out of music anymore? I quit touring to be with my kid, but all the avenues I was going to explore and crumble under my feet. I think that's a good question. I think that's like music, but it's also just like, how the fuck are you supposed to create anything anymore?
I think the thing that the problem is that it was never really a good way of making money before, and the Internet had this explosion of where it was good to it was good to make money for a bit, but there were only so many people who could I mean iHeartRadio, and cool Zone came to me and I did the podcast because they could pay like I wouldn't have done. Like the idea of starting a podcast and like building an audience and selling ads sounds nightmarish to me.
I can't imagine being a musician right now. It seems the way that musicians I know are making money are skipping streaming services, doing a shit ton of touring, doing much like kind of old school measures. I know. These aren't really good answers I have. I can only sing. I can't play any musical instruments I wish I could. I've never toured with anyone or have experience with that. But my general thing with creators right now is and the only really good advice I've ever had is find
whatever is easiest to do that. The reason I do my newsletter is though they're very long, I enjoy doing it and it isn't its work, I guess, but it comes very naturally. I don't do anything that doesn't. I find ways to streamline things that I don't like doing, like I think anyone does, and I obviously like run like a poff them and another thing, so like I need to make sure my time is used well. But the big thing is is I don't know how anyone
does anything independently anymore. The newsletter, I think I could have monetized, but the best advice I got there was from Drew Drew Fairweather. So I'm married to the sea the shares. I was just keep creating stuff, which I know is deeply unsatisfying. But the mistake that people get pulled into is they're like, Okay, so I've got Patreon, I've got this, what platforms am I on? I'm on the platform on this platform, my posting to social my posting to LinkedIn, on my own my own Instagram? Do
I have Instagram clips? To have this? All of that time could be spent making something. And indeed, this is advice that I got from Sophie and Rob failure. Just fucking record, just go for it. You will never be perfect, you will never be able to do a flawless episode of flawless product. What will come through is that you care about doing it and you're actually fucking doing it.
Because so many people get obsessed with the social media of it, or with the push it like with the I must hit content every week in this way, in this perfect way, with all these clips that I must resemble another content creator, when what really comes down to is just push it out. Try stuff. Another great bit of advice I got was some oneerful Matt Weinberger. You speak business inside, a great editor, great writer, and he said,
look to hit singles rather than home runs. You want to just keep putting stuff out regularly enough you get feedback that you get the natural feeling of what bangs before you even finish it. That way, it will have more mass appeal because you'll learn more from people's reaction and from creating stuff than you ever will from doing a perfect social campaign, from following the right people, from having enough ree tweets. In this the beginning sucks. When
I started, I already had somewhat of a following. Ironically, from pr I can, I can only recommend just creating more. I realized this is kind of an unsatisfying answer, but there are no good ones here. Discovery sucks on everything now.
When I started his podcast, he was like, I'm terrible, and I'm like, keep doing it.
Now they have to tell me to do less.
It's true. Last question from Carolina. They say I have an underlying curiosity to hear what your cat's favorite toys are and if they like chuu is that how you pronounced that?
Yeah? Judo? Is this last?
Yeah?
This goop? I have yet to give my cats the goop. So Babu pokey Howl doesn't really like I am his toy. He comes and sits on me. He bites my hand occasion, he purs the lies down. He's a big, big softie. Same with Tingis Pingers. Tingus Pingus doesn't really play pokem Barbou's favorite toys each other. They chase each other two bengals. They just bolt around the house. They don't do it much. I have one of those cat wheels. Baboo will go
and run on it for fifteen seconds. He will walk over meow, run on it, get ahead of steam and then stop and then sit down on him. They like the classic dangly toys. They like to jump Babo. We have like a river in the wall where we put something very high with like one of the Dangly ones, and Bubba will just do these insane like six foot tool jumps. He loves oh, he loves it. He loves it. And yes, of course boxes. Anytime I get a box they get they want to get in that. They want
to play in the box, the twist tie things. I get cheap toys for them because they seem just as happy. Another thing is, this isn't really a toy, but I got one of these donut beds for the cats and they didn't use it for a year, and then one day I found, in the space of twenty four hours, all three of them trying the doughnut hole in the middle. Now Pingus mostly uses it. I have never tried giving them turu. I am now going to get some turu and try, just because have you.
Tried one of those like glove brushes my best friend's cats. I go to their house and I just sit there with the brush and they're just so.
I get one of them and I use it a few times, and it never seems to there is always more hair. So I think I need to get a deeper groom.
Not even for the brush, it's not even for the grooming or they love it.
They love it. Yeah, I pull that thing out sometimes when Pingus, I don't know, he looks particularly cute, yeah, and I just go and pick it. I go and pick him up and sit down and start like grooming him, like blowfeld but with a giant kind of like blue spiky glove. Looks very sinister, but he really, he really, Pingus is the sweetie. He's the sweetest of them, all of them is. I'm blessed my beautiful cats and my friends as well, but my cats. Really, I genuinely believe
that cats echo something about their owners. So if you have someone with like super dysfunctional cats as a reason.
Yeah, right, yeah, I feel that way about my dogs. They are me and I am them.
Well, they're wonderful dogs. I've yet to meet them, though, wonder how will you have to make it? Yeah you will, but yeah, I am going to get Churu off to this.
I actually have some because they gave it to me.
To thought you were going to say you were eating some.
No, somebody gave somebody and when I when I they was like trying to it was it's like a in like a like a for like pill pill hiding for pets. Somebody gave it to me as like a thing. But turns out Truman will eat it, eat it, eat a pill out of my hand, just all a cart. She doesn't need the true perfect dog. She's an angel. She's a good girl. Well, yeah, you did the you did the mailbag. You did did.
The mail bag. I will do another one of these in maybe a month or two. I love doing this. I love hearing from all of you. And genuinely thank you to all the listeners who reach out regularly, because if I say so much as something negative about myself, you are all very reassuring and you refuse to accept it. I love you all genuinely. I'm blessed to have you, so thank you for listening. And yeah, until next time, Sophie, thank you for being on with me.
Of course, of course I can't wait to teach you more about basketball, prop and Ian or are the group chat has decided You're You're in the club. You made it.
Hell yeah, I'll look forward to it. Thank you for listening, everyone, Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O s O W s ki dot com. You can email me at a Better offline dot com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course
my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's youread dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.