263: A Ragnarok of the Mind

Ugh. Nanoleaf. Nanoleaf. What? You know, it's not funny, but it's funny. Madeline, we're going over our day because nobody writes anything on a calendar anymore. That's fine. And Madeline, she had a dentist appointment. And I said in the voice, I know we're not supposed to do the voice. I said, Lisa needs braces. And that was, you know, this morning. It's still real. It's still live. It's still happening. Where's my burrito?

That might be my favorite episode. It's certainly one of them. It's probably one of my most quotable. That and the first flashback, I Missed a Klinger already. Remember that one? No, what is that one? That's... Um, Bart, I think it's Lisa's first words. It's the one where they're living in the tenement district. Maggie's first words. Somebody's first words. Uh, wait. So wait, let me, you know what? It doesn't matter.

I did sleep. I took a nap, just a little big ass, so I probably sleep confused. Oh, yeah, that's fine. That Mike Farrell really boils my potato. When the working day is done. Isn't that all in that same episode? I might be confusing two episodes. It's been a while. I wish my kids would have rewatched Simpsons with me because none of my kids know The Simpsons, which is a real barrier to referencing. My kids saw all of these but was too young to retain any of it.

Yeah, I know. The two I'm thinking of, our last Dex into Springfield, which is the Union one, you know? Turn out those pockets. Atoms? It's such a Conan O'Brien episode. And then what's the other one I'm thinking of? The Flashback episode. Probably Lisa's first word. Maggie. Which one? Is it Lisa's first words or Maggie's first word?

I've got to look it up now. No, no, never mind. But it's the one. It's probably got to be. Could it be Maggie? 84? You know, the sliding timescale gets confusing. No, but remember with Krusty. With the. When the Russians drop out. Season four, episode 10. Lisa's first word, not Maggie's first word. The Russians drop out of the Olympics. Remember? It's going to really screw up Krusty's scratch-off game. We should note, though.

I should note that many of these athletes come from countries that do not have swimming pools. The other guy goes, boo-hoo, you're breaking my heart. I almost swallowed some of the juice. I had them, John. John. Kind of like how John Roderick is slowly starting to sound like his father, not in a joking way, but just legitimately, you are moving in the crusty direction. I was the handsomest boy in Albany, New York.

Uh-huh. We're using a ladder. But I recorded that and Seinfeld. Well, and Mr. Show. Yes, that and Seinfeld and Mr. Show. Those are my rigs. I recorded... Pretty much every episode. And I keep it. I do them on EP, which I mentioned you don't approve of because I wasn't made of money. Did you record an SP? I recorded on whatever gave you the most amount of stuff per tape. Oh, man. You had to. I didn't have a lot of tapes.

No, oh, that's what I, EP. Yeah, EP's the one that's lower quality. There was like, wasn't there SLP, like super long play or something? There's SP, LP, and EP. SP is whatever, like the highest quality it could do. Standard play, long play, and extended play. I guess so, yeah, but EP was... Like, yeah, I don't really care. This is just data records kind of stuff. But that's how I am able to misquote. John, let me go further. It's how I'm able to almost quote so many lines.

from The Simpsons and Seinfeld. And, if I'm being honest, Mr. Show. I would watch those tapes over and over and over. It's just what we did at the time. It was a simpler time. Did you do that? Yeah. Yeah, I taped stuff. I watched it. I taped it and I watched it. I want to get you excited about it. Can I get you excited? That's contagious. Hey, everybody. Whoa. Wait, so you did watch it. I thought you didn't watch it.

No, I've all, I'm, let me tell you something I'm not excited about. I'm not excited about going underwater. Okay. Hang on. Wait, did we see, is that part of the show? That wasn't part of the show, right? Sure. I don't know. We'll figure it out. Well, you'll let Jim know in your own secret way. You'll have your little smoke signals. You'll let Jim know what he's allowed to include in the program. Three. Hey, everybody.

It's Reconcilable Differences, and it's episode 263, and we're so happy that you're here. It's the June to Spoon. Underway. That's what it is. We have to schedule a new special, don't we? Again. Maybe. Yeah. Have you thought about anybody yet? I have. You want to take suggestions? No.

Hey everybody, it's Reconcilable Differences, episode 263, and thank you so much for visiting with us tonight. Tonight we'll be covering issues of the day. We have a little bit of follow-up. I hadn't really prepared. So why don't we get started with our top item? Credit, where credit is due. Yes. And I blame you for that. Wait, did you already talk about the Titan sub? Are you done?

No, I know you have trouble following the structure of the document, so just let me, as you say, drive. You know that I have trouble following the structure of the document. Does that give you any kind of indication about what kind of a doc might need a little bit of work? No, it gives me an indication about you. Okay, you're still adding things to the top. The document is sound. I thought this had to be... The document is weak. You're weak.

I could go out tonight with the show notes that you have. Right. What's her name, Patel? Hey, everybody. Unfortunately now, John. Okay. Okay. So here we go. Quick history. Digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. Let's do some firsts. First cassette. And I would love it if you jumped in. First cassette I ever bought with money. from a recent episode um glass houses okay by dr william joel um the um the first

I'm pretty sure the first VHS that I ever paid money for was a VHS from 1987 or 8 called REM Succumbs. And it was all of their videos on an IRS collection. I think the first movie... I remember buying commercially in a store was Glen Gary Glen Ross. That's how I'm able to misquote that movie. Well, first DVD, first DVD. Same day at Tower Records, 1999. I got that, I can never remember, Pismo or Wall Street. I had two batteries and the CD. Pop them in and out.

or as you say, optical drive. I bought Rushmore and the Saad. Radiohead documentary meeting people is easy. Those are my first DVDs. Do you have any firsts that you remember? It really bothers me that it was possible for you to buy Rushmore when you had a Pismo and or Wall Street power book because those two things do not seem like they should be.

At the same time. It's like when you hear those famous days where, I don't remember an example of this, but something like, oh, it's the day that Einstein met Freud. Or it's the day that Picasso... met the singer from of Montreal. Picasso hung out with Michael Jackson, right? Right. Actually, those timelines do work, and believe me, I check. But yeah, no, it really feels like there should be an anoregonum.

between that. And to be clear, to me, it feels like the power book is ancient history and Rushmore is like a new modern movie. Yeah, totally. Well, you know, it's funny. I still think of, when I say this, I sound crazy, but you know what I mean. You know that bit? I think we do this bit, don't we? Like, what's the new album by this band in your head? So for me, the new Wes Anderson movie is still Royal Tenenbaums. What was your new REM album? Was it Out of Time?

That would definitely be a contender. I mean, honestly, just because I was looking at other things, Automatic for the People would be very much like a new... But that's after Out of Time, so if that's new, like, did you feel like when Out of Time came out, oh, this is weird new REM? Is that what you felt like at the time? Oh, no, no, no. Dude, I thought that about Fables at first.

All right, all right. No, no, no, I'm not trying to be that particular guy, because here's the thing we never talk about. When you look at me and you go like, oh, you like all these funny bands with weird names, and you're like, I f***ing earned it. Hey, Jim. I work...

I had to learn a lot to learn about bands. It was not free. And I don't mean money-wise. I mean attention-wise, and I mean about caring-wise. And I would have to, and I would learn, A, I would learn about things out of order. B, I would get into a band based on what's on sale. Can you imagine that? Remember the nice price? Oh, we've got to find that logo. We've got to find that logo, the nice price. You know what I'm talking about? The circle with the bubbly...

the rounded style. Starburst circle? I don't know. I seem to remember it being like an orange. I'm not going to look it up. Orange and yellow. It might have been just a Camelot, but I'll bet it was just a record company. Oh, yeah. I see it in Google results, but I do not recognize this. Yeah. And also, how many bands I got into? Because it's like, okay.

Squeeze. All right. They've got that. They got that one with Tempted. They got the one with Pulling Muscles from the Shell. They got the one with Cool for Cats. I'll just buy singles, 45s and under. How many Cure records am I going to buy when I'm in? 11th grade. No, I'm not. I'm going to buy Standing on the Beach, like the cassette of the best of. So like, I don't say ghetto anymore. I came at it from a very like impoverished.

point of view so my my i mean but and yet and the part i feel like you super get right with me is like when people when my kid says stuff like when were you born 1960 30 40 when were you born i don't even know 1600 1822 yeah no it's It's funny and it's true because it absolutely is true because, like, could you have done that for, say, Bing Crosby?

Anybody of your parents' or grandparents' generation don't know one being, you know, several, or Frank Sinatra. They know Frank Sinatra. Well, most celebrities have the decency to die young because they all smoked and drank. That's why we're living now, for now, in Levittown. They're closing all the discount cigarettes down. All the factories in Levittown, yeah, they're closing those down. I made a joke about Long Island Railroad today. Is that considered a bad way to get places?

L-I-R-R. It's not great. Yeah, it's kind of a pain. You know how people say the name of that railroad, people who are from there? Lear? No. What? Lear. L-I-R-R. It's kind of an interesting construction. I like that. I'm into that. I'm into that. What was the point we were talking about? Don't forget the follow-up, believe it or not. No, no, no, we weren't there yet. I was saying one more thing about what? What was I talking about?

Oh, music. First things you bought, what's a new album? Okay, but you know what it's like when you were there as it was happening. And again, this is all segmented off from the rest of what you people talk about. This is the real stuff, okay? This is not the discourse. This is real stuff. If you were there, what's the example for you? So, like, you got into U2. You weren't there at the very beginning for U2. I was not. Well, are there any bands that are precious to you?

Not because of fandom and status, but where you kind of felt like you were with them a long time and from kind of the beginning? No, because I wasn't into music a lot. I don't think there's a single band that I kind of got it on the ground floor of, ever. You seem to have like a... like an eight to 12 year, not a gap, but it seems like you really picked up on a bunch of stuff that was really good from eight to 12 years earlier.

Yeah. It's not shocking. It's not like I was getting into obscure. No, but that could be me and Elvis Costello. Like there was nothing that, I mean, the Elvis, by the time that I was in, well, I got into Elvis Costello in high school, but. The point is, if you were there for it, okay, let's make it even easier. You're one of your six best episodes of Hypercritical, the wrong guy. Well, you were there.

And it's not just that you know there's no space in OS X. It's that you understand what the acquisition of next. No space. You're just getting exactly backwards. It's fine. I got exactly backwards. And you remember when I told you, you got mad at me that I did that. And then I told you I went into my SQL PHP, my admin on 43 folders and did a final replace. Remember I told you about that.

I changed OSX to OSBaseX. But you follow me, John. God damn it. Why can't I curse on this show? Sorry, Jim. It seems like you can. Tropical f*** storm. That's just gratuitous. That's true. Bleep. You found a bleep, didn't you? Speaking of bleep, did you find a bleeped Apple message that I see? Someone else. I didn't find it. Somebody else sent it to me.

Someone sent me a timestamp link to a YouTube video that appeared to be an official Apple piece of marketing material in which a person narrating said a curse word which was bleeped. And I just assumed it was somebody doing like a parody of like, oh, take a bunch of Apple footage and talk over it or whatever. But no, it was legit. I'm imagining like somebody, like a low-key African-American. um, woman going like, and you've never seen surfaces. So be pink. Cool.

No, no. I mean, you can see the link. But anyway, I'm... What's the word they bleeped? Speaking of the discourse, as I say, I posted this. First of all, I screwed up the link the first time. I actually deleted the question mark because editing text on your phone is terrible. Blue Sky doesn't let you edit at all. And so that didn't send people to the timestamp link. So people were just watching the whole video and they were flipping out about the whole video.

they were all mad about something or other about the whole video about how it was strange or weird. And it was like, Oh, when I fixed the link, I'm like, no, see, this is what I was trying to point out. I haven't even seen it. And I know Steve wouldn't like trying to point out the curse word.

And then people flipped out about the curse word. Oh my God, John, not everything is everything. How do you help them understand not everything is everything? Yeah. What do you have against curse words? You're missing the point. They're not understanding the point of the exercise. I just talked to Alex about this for two hours. I thought it was interesting that a company with such a squeaky clean Disney reputation as Apple would have put out a...

an ad with the curse word in it that they then felt like they needed to bleep because they're still kind of squeaking. Well, especially since when Craig's talking, Craig's, there's no way they had time to do this, but Craig in particular always sounds so heavily ADR'd to me. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? There's just something about, wait, he really gets going. He's just well-miked. You think it's close-miking like a snare drum? And they've cleaned it up in post, you know. Yeah.

That's my guess. I mean, there probably is plenty of ADR too, but a lot of times they're real close on his face and I think the lips match. Oh, so anyway, the point is you're there. Like, you know, you know the stuff about Next. If you would just let me agree with you for once. Like, that's one of the wonderful things in that.

uh, hypercritical episode, especially when you get nitpicky in part two, that was kind of the gold, but like, um, I don't, I don't listen to your show. The, uh, the ability to say like, look, like these are not like, this is what drives me crazy. When I'm watching, I know nobody else cares and it doesn't matter, but somebody else is, somebody's watching a movie that like has, has been specific enough to make it clear that it takes place in a certain, let's say even season of a year.

Right? Like, okay, this is supposed to be like Christmas 1985. Right? Well, that, you know, I was about to say Wang Chung, but it's a bad example. Like, maybe that Aerosmith song wouldn't come out for another year or two. And there's no way that that would be just appearing eidetic, eidetically in the, you know, in the thing. And it drives you crazy because you're like, well, no, to you that doesn't matter because that's just, quote, some 80s song. But I can...

Tell you, you go look at my playlist on Spotify and I don't recommend it. You look at my 1979 list. There's a lot of specificity. I can tell you like specific recollections of waiting in line on pancake day. while the long run by the Eagles was playing. Like, that record did not come out in 1982. It definitely came out in 1979. But when you see somebody else, it's okay. Other people, they don't care. But when you know how it should go, you notice when it's wrong. Yeah, plumber problem.

This episode of Reconcilable Differences is brought to you in part by Terminal. You can learn more about Terminal right now by visiting useterminal.com. That's U-S-E-T-R-M-N-L. .com slash go slash diffs. You go and you check them out. If you've ever opened your phone to do something simple like check the weather and then found yourself doom scrolling 10 minutes later, well, there's a single purpose device that you might want to check out.

It is an e-ink display that connects with hundreds of popular apps to show you information that you want to see without distracting you like a cell phone or a tablet. Most of their hardware and software is open source, and there are no subscription fees, so you buy it once and then you own it forever. You don't have to write any code to use Terminal. but they do have a simple developer platform with an in-browser plugin builder. Over 3,000 developers have already built 6,139.

Custom plugins. You know, I don't have one of these, but it sounds really cool. I would love to have one of these if they sent one to me. Because I like having things that show me things without having to look at a different thing. I think that's kind of the future. You know, you ambiently suck up information from the world and then you ambiently push it out to places where people need it. And I think that's a feather in your cap.

Terminal also, it's compatible with Apple Shortcuts. How cool is that? They have a few community recipes, templates, and help docs that'll get you started. But basically, you can build a plugin by setting up a shortcut to ping their webhook endpoint. And that will generate screens that show up on your device. No requirement to host anything yourself. Terminal turns your Apple product into your own personal server. Earlier in 2025, Terminal was given a shout out.

by several YouTubers, including Snazzy Labs, and they have been sold out until this week. So if you want help staying focused without cutting yourself off from the world, check out Terminal. Head over to useterminal.com slash go slash diffs. That's U-S-E-T-R-M-N-L dot com slash go slash diffs. That's D-I-F-F-S. Use that offer code diffs for... $15 off your order for one week only. Let me give you that URL again. It's u-s-e-t-r-m-n-l.com slash go slash diffs, D-I-F-F-S.

with the code DISCDIFFS for $15 off. And then you own it forever with no subscriptions. Our thanks to Terminal for supporting Reconcilable Differences and all of RelayFM. I want to apologize. I actually don't want to apologize, but I'm going to be gracious and just say, hey, thank you to a listener who I forgot was kind enough to send me a very detailed explanation of the apparatus some time ago.

And John, would you please pass that along to our listener? This was, when was it? Last year, I think? Yeah, in April 2024. Katie on violin sent you a annotated diagram of the apparatus. Uh, you were the only one at mentioned, not me and not at rectif. So I didn't see it because of course, if I had seen it, I would have remembered. Look, look, look, look down your journey buddies down there.

Where's my journey, buddy? Scroll down. Jesse. I did scroll down. Okay. I thought it was... Not journey. Not journey. What's the night down game? Jesse's saying you're a hero. Yeah. So what do you play with him and Lopp? You play Fantasy Man? I've played Destiny with them. Okay. You're my destiny. Thank you so much. But, you know, we get back to this bigger issue, which is I kind of don't want to know. And also, again, I can't.

you can, you can, there's an analogy for this and I don't have time for it, but, but, but like, I can't keep focused on, it's the mystery of all the different parts of this. Here's the thing. Here's what I'm not at. I'm not, this is not directed at the violinist.

But I just want to say aloud, like, I don't need you to hold my unit for me. Like, I don't actually need you to give me an answer for this. And this is why we're all rereading Wittgenstein right now. It's like, sometimes you've got to let the mystery be. Like the more that we try and clamp language around these things and turn them into something that seems sensible to other people. I want to see the Doctor of Divinity.

I'm trying to come up with like a garbage pail kid kind of card for you. That's like the knowledge hater or something. Excuse me. What? Wait, well, I'm sorry. I missed, I missed, I missed, is this a game, a game mechanic? No, Garbage Pail Kids. You're familiar. That's a little bit after your time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Wacky Packs. Yeah. Yeah. The Knowledge Hater. Yeah. Either that or maybe... I'm not... I'm not... I'm not... I'm...

See, you do this. Or maybe like a David Blaine thing. Stop sticking knowledge in my brain. Look in your sock. Stop putting these cards on me. He looks at the camera. That's such a funny bit. You're talking about the fake one, right? The street magic one? Those two guys are so funny. But you know what? We can't get into that. We don't have time for that. But I'm glad people are engaged with it.

You know, but you know, again, we get back to the whole like David Letterman or the plumber problem thing. Right. I always think of it as the David Letterman problem where David Letterman, as I said, the first time you talked about the plumber problem, I talked about my favorite thing where Letterman would have.

people in to do movie reviews but it's people you know who like are in a position to like understand like in this case this guy came in and did um so you know i'm not even gonna probably say the name of his job right I was going to say a welder. But remember what Alex is in the film, in Flashdance, is that she dances. She's a steel-town girl on a Saturday night, which she is. Mm-hmm. Born and raised in South Detroit.

She took the midnight train going anywhere. Did you like the ending of Sopranos? Yes, I did. I like it now. I was a little confused. That's how you end a series. That's how you end a series. Oh my God.

John, we got it. I do not want to get you started. John, can I ask you please not to get me started? So here's what we're up to now. And I just said this to my wife, who I love. I said this to my wife last night. We watch it most nights, the three of us kind of, but Madeline and I both really enjoy it. And we are up to, we're an S6E. We're right in the thick of, we're right. Well, it's a, well, no, no, no. Okay. So we're at, you know what we got coming up? We got.

Cersei and the Sept coming up. We've got Battle of the Bastards coming up real soon. We're about to hit that run of three, I believe, I want to say it's three episodes in a row that might be the apex of this show. as it developed from where it started to how it developed and we're in the season now it's the faceless man one where aria cuts off adolescence's face and puts it on the post that's adolescence i say that every night no one laughs

Because, you know, that's the lady from adolescence. She's the waif. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the nameless men, the nameless men. Mm-hmm. A girl is not your appropriate adult. Mm-hmm. You get that joke, right? Okay. Hey, you know what? First of all, thank you for playing violin. I assume you're not stealing valor. Thank you very much for that, Katie. I do like these things. I don't keep track of all of these things.

I can only talk about one thing at a time. So the thing that I'm talking about right now is all social media is very difficult. It's hard for me to find things. And I don't always know things. And things go by. And I apologize that I was not respectful enough. Can I also just point out? if I may, and I will. This appears to be from April, from the year of your Lord, 2024. I said that, didn't I? Hey, John, what is it now? It's June. So this is what, we're only at 14 months?

Yeah. March, April, May, June. Look at that bell. Look at that bell. Shiny. Shiny and new. Are you the one that said this to me? Are you talking about love? Mm-hmm. Exciting and new? Come aboard. They're expecting you. We're expecting you. Yeah, yeah. All right. Um, you said something probably last week and I keep thinking about it. Was it you or someone else? No, no, it might've been somebody else, but somebody was pointing out.

When I was one of us or whatever, somebody was saying like how beat up, how beat to crap this thing looks for being two years old or however old it is. And I was talking to you and I said, oh, do you think it's from salt? And didn't you say something like.

In San Francisco, things rust from the top down. Yeah, in the Southern Hemisphere, they do the opposite. It was somebody else saying that, yeah, because of the salt. Explain that to our audience, because I keep thinking about it, and I think it might be smart. Because of the salt in the air, things rust in the opposite direction than you would expect because the rust comes from the salt settling on the top of it. Where you live, it's your undercarriage. Yeah, something like that.

I call the comparison was unlike on the East coast where blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you know, we have salt spray on the East coast too. We have a whole ocean over here. I mean, there's a million things where like, I mean, just, just based on my incredibly blinkered.

narrow understanding. I mean, for example, there are things, let's just all sing along, about the climate of San Francisco that are unique to very specific areas. One is that a lot of air moves in and out every day. That's why we have clean air.

It's also why where I live has fog because we're inside the belt where the fog sometimes doesn't make it all the way clear to the water. But I've been thinking about that. And I've been thinking about how I've always noticed for years that older cars like old Toyotas. Cause we're on the third floor and we look down on cars, like how the tops of like old cars get that. I don't know what you say. That's just the paint wearing off. In general, California is very kind to cars. See, you're not Alex.

I don't notice the sides and bottoms of a car having that same kind of wear pattern. Well, it's because the sun is beating down on the roof, and once it gets through the clear coat, then the paint deteriorates. In the Sunset District of San Francisco?

Yeah. I mean, obviously you do have the salt situation there in San Francisco. All right. Forget it. I thought it was smart. I was trying to compliment somebody. Thank you to a listener. I want to say Katie on violin clicking. Someone else pointed it out to us. I forget who it was. I also couldn't find the salt spray person.

Well, for whatever information I have received from anybody in a way that I'm able to understand it, according to John, thank you to anybody who deserves it. I think we might have a new thing. It took me too long to realize. Yeah, it's pretty prototypical. It's the reason I put this in here. I think this is arguably... There's no way this is the only person who's ever thought of this. I have a couple of quibbles about this one. I'll tell you why I have to read this. Do it straight first.

believe requested to be anonymous they either requested to be anonymous or i felt so bad for them that i made them anonymous but either way anonymous rights uh on episode 261 you talked about on episode 261 you talked about a book slash musical i have heard people talk many people talk about my entire life all caps my entire life that i thought was called l-a-m-e space, I-S, the word lame and the word is. I thought it was called lame is.

Lame space is. Almost like the way you would say, you know, I could say lonely is as lonely does or whatever. Sorry, that's a DB song. But like you would say, like, lame is. Or like love is. Lame actually. Right. Upon looking at the show description, I have realized that the musical is not, in fact, called Lame Is. It looks so different than you'd expect. But is called Les Miserables, often abbreviated Les Mis, L-E-S space M-I-S.

I was, as they say, two years old. Yep. So... here's my quibble with this particular took me too long to realize so i like the fact that this person for their entire presumably long life and they're now an adult thought this was some ridiculous thing which is just the fun part of how something

absurd can get cemented in your head young when you don't think it's absurd and you never revisit it you never re-examine it until someone tells you the unicorns aren't real or whatever yeah um so that happens but the thing about this is like thing it took me too long to realize i feel like is more the the canonical sort of prototypical one is a thing that is obvious to everyone else but not obvious to you and this one has the twist of like

But no one else is thinking that it's L-A-M-E space IS. That's some weird thing that just you did. And yes, it took you too long to realize that that false thing is not the case, but a better example would be... I don't know that it's, you know, everyone knows that USA is the United States and you don't think it's anything else. You just thought it was like, you didn't think it stood for anything. So it's not some kind of like a mass misunderstanding, like, you know, cut loose like a douche.

or something yeah yeah like it's not it's not kind of weird it's just a it's like this is a you thing like you know it's not i mean right yeah so but it's still a pretty good one and it i think it is an extra fun thing because lame space is doesn't really make that much sense. I know we're trying to make it make sense. Okay, but then that's why it's so very funny to me because then let's say you thought you don't care, right? If you cared, you'd find out.

But lame is, lame is. But no, it just makes enough sense to them. They're like, yeah, that's what it is. But then somebody shows you what the real one is and you would be like, what in the hell? How do we get from L-E-S space M-E-S? It's like when young people learn about how to spell hors d'oeuvres. Oh.

Horse Dovers. Yeah, I mean, usually we really anglicize, they would say, but I don't like that one. You know, we go full petty for and we just never look back, but it's like, no, we're going to keep the French spelling. That one sticks in your craw. But we're going to say it the way we feel like saying it. I'm not going to look it up off the dome. What does hors d'oeuvres mean? Oh, I have no idea what it means in French. I had a...

I had one of these that came up as I was preparing and looking at the notes. Do you have a way to type something and look at text on screen? Just for yourself, just for yourself. Open up your stack. Open up one of your buffers. going to buffer open buffer open type the name um the the name of the famous um california national park yosemite

Now, my nephew, whom I love, who now has two kids who are so cute. It's so crazy. He was the cutest little kid. You thought this was an Australian food product? Oh, that's good. Like Vegemite. No, I get it. No, I totally get it. No, at first I thought this was...

I'm going to do it anyway. I don't care. But it was so sweet because, you know, this is one of these, the lame is, makes me think of little kid things like this, you know, like Mrs. and Mrs. or something. And because, you know, they're from, at the time, Walnut Creek.

And they would go and visit that wonderful park. And we always talk about we're going to Yosemite. Are you excited to go to Yosemite? And he says, I love going to Myosemite. Could you please alter what you've typed to have it say Myosemite? And then please read it aloud. All right. Okay, because I did this. And once I saw that I had written down, yo, Semite. Mm-hmm.

do people say that is that a thing do people say yo semi i don't think they do is it like my n-word no no not a thing i hope it's not a thing no um Our thanks to Anonymous for having the courage.

You remain anonymous. I'm kidding. I'm doing a bit. I'm referring to more than my own bits. I'm sorry. But no, I love hearing that. And I don't think it's weird at all. I think John is not... Listen, I'm speaking to you, Anonymous, and I know you know who you are, even if I don't. That's the important part. or as John says, and so I'm just glad you're here and I'm glad you're sharing that. And I don't think it's weird. I think lame is, is a totally crumulent misunderstanding. Misunderstandling.

I fell asleep on the couch last night, John. I fell asleep on the couch at 10 p.m. watching Nazi videos. And I woke up at midnight. Now, you know me. Like, I don't get stressed about sleep anymore. But I was up until three. Me too. Really? Really? I was closing out all my old connections from May and June in the New York Times app. I wasn't doing that. I get in a groove.

The thing is, I do them in a certain order. I could do the puzzles in a certain order. Otherwise, I get all effed up, as you say. Did you prove your love to me? Prove your love to me. Final films? You get into a groove. Oh, I see. Inspiration. Remember how popular she was? Very. Wait, you were born in 74, right? Yep. So you were around 10 when she got big.

Yeah, no, I saw every video. Yeah, but here, when we think about our delta, and let's really, let's go back to first principles, Clarice. Why do we have this program? Well, we need the money. really.fm slash rd slash join. But another reason we have the program is I love doing it and John does it.

And I think our deltas are interesting. I do like to think about differences in age because in a way, differences in age are also differences in time. It's like differences in height, but with time. I love that too. And now I can manipulate that stuff directly. You know, like one does. Where by directly, I mean talking into a text box and something else does it for me. Meet Morp. Yeah, right. That's me. I'm always talking into a text box. Help me cheat on my essay.

I love having robots write for me. But I, you think about, okay, here's an example. I can say this. Yeah, yeah. So I have a pal named Ben. And people who are familiar with the broader MPU will know Ben from MacBreak, MacBreak Weekly. He produced The Merlin Show. Like Ben Durbin, he's in a bunch of phone guy videos. He's my friend with the glasses. He looks like a dork. He's amazing. And Ben did, Chris Glass designed the 43 folder site, but Ben skinned it and made it all for Drupal.

Ben's the best. And Ben had a wonderful little kid. Not long after I had a wonderful little kid. And I look at, excuse me. And I look at these photos of our little kids. And I had a probably four-year-old. And he had a probably two-year-old. And I see them in a party holding hands. And it's like, you know where I'm going with this, right?

like with your kids or with other dyads of kids, there's times where that difference in age is so profound. And then before you realize it, it's no longer profound for obvious reasons. But I got to say, you being 10... And me being 18 has to be one of the bigger Delta times. What do you think our biggest Delta time was? Eight year difference. Tell me I'm 80 years older than you.

When do you think our biggest Delta was? What year? I would say when you were 16. And you were six? Because that's still so firmly kid, and 16 is so firmly not kid, you know? Yeah. You're kissing girls. I don't know what a girl is. I was kissing. I kissed two, two, two girls. I've seen double. Mm-hmm. Remember that one? He says she's four crusties. By the way, real-time follow-up for you. Yeah. Outside the work.

is what hors d'oeuvre means in French, according to Wikipedia. See, I wasn't going to look it up. It's like knowing what... Not part of the ordinary set of courses in a meal. Huh. No, I like that. I like that. I like that fine. You know what confuses me a lot sometimes is the Turkish. They get a lot of sedias. They got a lot of delights, though, so that's fine. This episode of Reconcilable Differences...

is brought to you in part by Grist. You can learn more about Grist right now by visiting getgrist.com slash diffs. Hey, does your team ever have to deal with a load-bearing spreadsheet? You know, one that still technically works, but it threatens to collapse, or maybe does collapse despite being incredibly important? Well, maybe it's that one that gets mangled when it's edited by a whole team because everyone has their own unique approach.

Well, it could be that you're trying to do modern work on old tech. And that's why Grist is modernizing the spreadsheet so that you can collaborate in real time from anywhere. You can build drag and drop dashboards. You can analyze data using spreadsheet formulas or Python, and you get to control access to your data. So the wrong people don't see that column of notes. That's for your eyes only. Shh, that's just for me.

The secret is that Grist is a spreadsheet slash database hybrid. Had you thought of that? Pretty cool. Gives you the benefits of a proper database without losing the interface that you and your co-workers know and love. I don't know if you know this about me. I don't suppose it matters, but I'm a big spreadsheet boy. Big fan. I've been running my life with spreadsheets since Christ was a corporal.

Big fan. This is a beautiful app. It's very easy to use. And I think you should go check it out. But there's more features and benefits I want to tell you about. Like, for example, you're in control of your data wherever it lives, whether that's on their SaaS. on your desktop or even on your own servers grist is open source and fully self-hostable so give your load-bearing spreadsheets a break without breaking them or breaking down

You can try Grist for free right now. All you gotta do is go to getgrist.com slash diffs. That's D-I-F-F-S. Getgrist.com slash diffs. Our thanks to Grist for supporting Reconcilable Differences. and all of RelayFM. Thanks to everybody for listening and for writing in. And welcome to my Semite. Please put your food in the bear box. Actually, speaking of which... Follow up? No, we did. Now we're on the full topic.

Yeah, actually, I'm going to rotate this down. We're going to do some shuffling here. Ready? Watch this happen. No, I'll do it. I'm sorry. John, I'm having fun. I enjoy it. I know you don't like it. I like doing this program with you. I know you're busy with all your computer stuff.

Oh, boy. What do you think of this? Have you noticed how Safari and all the other apps flash? Have you seen the flashing? Have you seen the turning into dark mode? I've seen flashing. Have you seen the fields? Have you seen what happens in the text fields, John? Wouldn't believe.

Really? Sea beams off the shoulder of Orion? No, it's the first one. I'm here for the adventure. Like, I know, we were podcasters. We were going to say, I have to do this for my work. Well, I'm doing it because life's too short, and I want it on the things. Try turning reduced transparency on and off. I turned it, I finally on my phone. On your Mac, I mean. Okay. After probably, oh, oh, oh, oh, geez, dude. I mean.

I thought, like Casey, excuse me, like Casey, I thought I'd be fine. But I'm reminded, was it Leopard? When was the one where they first introduced that and then like you would see? Yeah, Leopard was the one where they tried to do the almost entirely transparent menu bar.

I don't know. You know what? Save it for your popular show. Oh, by the way, some more quick follow-up from something you said before. You mentioned your 43 folder site and Ben and blah, blah, blah. Your 43 folder site is down. I'm sure you know this. Oh, I don't. Everyone wants me to tell you.

Oh, I don't. They started charging me a lot for it, and I'll probably just let it go down. Well, there you go. Yeah, I need to work on that. Thank you. Thank you for telling me that. So we're going to do... You know what we are, John? We are a results...

Well, we're results oriented results. Well, I, what I was trying to get, I was trying to get to the good stuff first, the really soften them up a little bit. Like we are very, first of all, I think we're a very people centric podcast. I think we're very forward thinking. I think... We're people-centric in that I'm a person and you're a person. I know half of that's true. And so, but we're all really ultimately about results. We have a lot of concentricity.

Is that a word that you had heard a lot before, let's say earlier this week? No. I never heard it at all. Is this about Squirtle Jail? First of all, I'm going to say... Is the Finder icon in the Switcher supposed to look like that? It's supposed to have that band around it. The band around it. Did they break their own jail? And they reverse the colors. I'm going to say that I don't actually know if concentricity is a word. No, no, it's got to be a word. It's got to be a word.

It is a word. Okay, so concentricity is a word. Having the property of being concentric, which is... Sure. Sure. It sounds like one of those words is kind of like, well, you can imagine this word existing because concentric. That's me. I wouldn't look it up. I wouldn't. But, you know, you got to look it up to be sure. That's true. They are so excited about this concept.

And I want them to stop being so excited about this concept because... Well, did you see that? You saw what I texted you probably 20 minutes in. Three texts. Stop saying liquid glass. They really get attached to an idea, don't they? They're allowed to say that. No, I know, but they're trying to control. They overspent their concentricity budget. Was this in Sessions? I didn't remember that in the keynote.

Oh yeah. It's just, it's, it's there a lot. If you watch a lot of the liquid glass session things, it's everywhere and it's too much. Look, it's a beta. It's the first beta. And I just want to be super clear. I'm honored to give them my money to be in this program. I know what I'm in for, in for a penny, in for a pound. Like, I've weighed different factors and decided that it's probably worth it. It might not be in the end, but...

Just to be clear, I'm not saying anybody else should put any beta on anything. Whatever. You're supposed to say that. But I got to say, scrolling in Safari, woof. It is kind of the worst of both worlds. It's first of all, the Gaussian blur at the top and bottom is no bueno. I do not like that. And I don't, I don't, if you're going to do it, why don't you just fully commit and have that dumb bar at the bottom.

disappear when i'm looking at it ditto in apple news in apple news why in the hell would i want a persistent round n news icon in the lower left like a bug on cable TV. Why would I want that on screen the whole time? If you're going to do it, do it like commit. Right. And then if you'd like anything else, like if you want to do anything.

With the location bar in Safari, you got to move a little bit sometimes or click directly on the bar. I think if you're going to say, hey, I'm committed to this world where this stuff just goes away, have it go away. And then when you touch your scroll, it reappears for that time. like it would on any other normal app. But boy, what they've got right now, it's not fun to look at. Yeah, it's bad. Okay, so who goes first? Yeah, because you mentioned you were up at 3 a.m. last night, which...

My impression is that it's out of the ordinary for both of us, but maybe it's a little bit more common for you than it is for me. It's at this point very unusual for me to be up at that time. I used to be a night owl, but as I get older, I'm less of one. Certainly, I'd never choose to be up that late. But last night was, or yesterday, was my daughter's senior prom, high school prom. A Tuesday night?

Yeah, one of the reasons I didn't go to WWDC the other reason being I wasn't invited but oh well Anyway, because I wanted to be there and take pictures of her prom because I like taking pictures and that's the thing that I did I took photos With very uncooperative teenagers who were not doing what they needed to do to get good pictures taken of them. But I struggled through. And the weather wasn't great either. And just there.

Anyway, I just tried, you know, whatever. I did what I could. I encouraged my daughter and her friends. to take pictures when they're at their prom. Every single one of these kids has a camera on them. But they only ever take joke photos. Kids take joke photos. That's all they do. Take just literally any pictures to show that your prom existed. Just a snapshot. Like you wanted a wedding. Just take a photo at the table.

I think people were even, I didn't go to my prom, so I don't know, but I would imagine people who went to prom when I was in high school actually brought film cameras with them and took pictures at the prom. Yeah. Plus, plus, plus you get the, I went to two proms and they take your photo professionally and they give you a glass with the name of the song the prom is about on it. There you go. Do you have any pictures of either one of the proms that you went to? Yes.

Then a shoebox somewhere, maybe? no i i think i've got on my on my computer that's pretty nice yeah so like it seemed i i just tell my kids you know the thing is these kids who grew up with cameras around them all the time take it for granted and just like they don't bother taking pictures or rather my daughter insisted on taking my

ancient canon like two megapixel point and shoot camera yeah my kid's the same way my kid loves my kid just asked me the other day because he's basically completely off social media at this point and it's like can i still get an ipod And I was like, I think that'll be pretty tough. We could probably find you something like an iPod. My daughter asked me for an iPod like two days ago as well. I mean, I don't know what happened. I mean, I don't know. I think whatever, it's life. But Billy is...

like out of the information centrifuge. It's fascinating. Yeah. They want low quality audio and they want low quality photos, but then it's so fine. I gave her the camera. She took it with her. She took like five terrible pictures. None of them at the prom. Well, on the one hand, and again, it's just one hand, but on the one hand, it's nice that like, it wasn't like she had to shoot a crime scene or something. But on the other hand, you know, it's like, uh, you know, I like.

Can we just have a moment? Can I just remember what you looked like and how tall you were? Yeah, no, I've got that covered for the pictures that I took. I did the best I could. But, like, she's going to go off with all her friends to the prom. Maybe take, like, one picture of you at the prom. You think it's your kid or it's a cultural difference? Just not interested.

She's just not interested in it. She doesn't think... But it sounds like her friends didn't or she didn't share them with you, right? So I don't get to look at the group chat anymore. I don't get to see... We don't throw to the TV to see what happened today like we used to. We used to...

We used to throw to the TV. Whoa, you need to back up a little bit. I didn't know this was happening. That is quite a parenting maneuver. You know what else we do? You know what we used to do? You also say hello and goodbye. That's how you build a culture. John, if you want to change the culture. Let's throw the group chat up on the TV and review the day. Oh, no, no. They're dorks. Don't worry. They're really cute. No, they're all overachievers.

My kid has, I think at this point, a three-year streak on Duolingo in Danish and claims not to speak a word of Danish. Kid said two years of Spanish, claims not to speak any Spanish. I say something like, And my kid goes, I don't understand what any of those words mean. Stupid goddamn kid. But you're right. But you know what? I still, I can't help but admire them. I can't help but admire them. I think they're on a different level. You're just jealous of their youth. It's not admiration.

Oh, you think it's just, it's just nothing. There's nothing admirable. No, no, no, no, nothing. Nothing admirable about these callow youths. We're just jealous of their. bodies and hair and skin get closer to the spikes honey i want to get a picture of you by the spikes Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so she went out and the prom, like the thing they try to do is they try to herd the kids after the prom to some kind of school sanctions activity where they can try to stop them from drinking and stuff.

This is a very, it's not a very new phenomenon. That's a secular, a secular lock-in. Yeah, no, exactly. They've been doing this, you know, since I was a kid, so it's nothing new there. Yeah, but the Catholics invented it, man.

Yeah, so they went to the prom, which was in downtown Boston, and then they came back to their high school for like an after thing. In between, they stopped off at people's houses, got changed, did whatever, probably did drugs and drank, and then went to the school thing, and then came back.

from the school thing but then you gotta have the after after party and anyway wait a minute wait a minute we're getting past midnight here we're getting past one here we're getting late yeah I mean so the thing is I was just like you know I'll if you

just tell me when and where you want me to come pick you up and I will come pick you up. Right. Wherever it is you are, however you got there, whatever, whatever your condition is. Right. And I would text her through, you know, I text her maybe around 11 to see where things are going. Text her around midnight.

No response whatsoever. Oh my God, this is the point. Absolutely nothing. It's so hard not to be miffed. Maybe around one, a message comes through and the message says something like, we don't know what we're doing yet. Or something like, oh, I'm just getting something like, why am I in this car, lol? You're like, what? Like, that's probably really funny right now. But then I find out later they try to get seven kids in a Waymo.

And the way the camera turned on and told them to get out. Right? You're just like, look, it's just, I know, you know what this is. I know what this is. We need to have a separate piece about this. Just every once in a while. After a certain hour, just say something that lets me know that you're okay. I don't even need that. Here's what I need to know. Okay.

When to pick up. When can I plan on being able to go to sleep? So if you say- I'm putting that on the calendar, it sounds like. Right. You could, because one of the options was, I'm going to sleep over my friend's house. Please tell me that before 3 a.m. If you're going to sleep over your friend's house, fine. Sleep over there. No problem. Because that means I can go to bed. I don't have to go pick anybody up. But that's information that I would love to have before 3 a.m.

You know, in an ideal world, it would be nice to have it the day before. Oh, that's madness. No, I know. Day before we don't even know if prom will exist. Nothing is known a day before. Object permanence? Take a dirt road. Prom? What is prom? Is there a prom? If there's no photos, there's no prom. I can prove it. We can't plan that far in advance. We're playing it by ear whether or not the prom exists. Yeah, Dad.

Anyway, the point is I was up until 3 a.m. I was never called upon to come pick her up. She arrived back at the house. She just trotted in. Yep. She just came in and I'm like, okay, well now I can go to bed. Now at least I know I can go to bed. And so I did. So that was prom. I got some good pictures. Kids are not cooperative and they're not communicative and they don't care that their dad is ready to go to sleep. Yeah, you just.

You're not a main character anymore. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. I just asked for so little. She could have said, hey, I'm going to need you to pick me up at this place at 4 a.m. I would have said, fine. That's a thing I can do.

Right. I probably would have gone to sleep and set an alarm and woken up and go, but whatever, that's on me. Just, I need the information. But the information was not forthcoming. At no point during the night was anything communicated to me about whether or not I needed to pick anyone up from anywhere. Turns out I didn't. I'm very tired.

I'm glad you shared that here on your feelings show. Yeah. And I'm ridiculously sympathetic in a way I never would have anticipated as a human being. Woke up at 7 a.m. today. Really? Because of... Well, because of events? Because the house wakes up at 7 a.m., and that means I wake up at 7 a.m. Oh, yeah. Well, I fell asleep on the couch last night, so I got to be around for the big breakfast preparation.

Yeah, well, that's the problem with the falling asleep on the couch is because the couch is not secluded in any way. No, no, no. Ours is right next to the kitchen, yeah. Yeah, that's not a good sleeping place. No, but... I know it's a different story, and I don't mean to seem like I'm digging, but just to interpolate, it sounds like, to quote Sylvester the Cat, I think it was Sylvester the Cat.

It might have been the mouse. But somebody said, no casualties, right? No casualties? Went okay? Everything's fine. Was there any heartbreak? No. Interesting thing. I don't care. This generation just doesn't care. When I was taking pictures of all the kids, there was a big group of kids over somebody's house.

I'm taking pictures of them. I know most of them. Some of them I know less than my daughter. But anyway, I think in the group there was only one romantic couple going to the prom. John, yes. I hear about romantic intrigue, but nobody has they friends anymore. You know what I'm saying? I mean, here's the thing. I know a lot of these. All I wanted in life was a girlfriend. Girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend. I know a lot of the personal lives of my daughter's friends group.

at various times people have been dating, but the prom is not seen as a venue to, that is romantically related. It's not like they didn't have boyfriends and girlfriends and go on dates and do things, but it's like, like for me, a dance or a cotillion. It's from that, like, you know, uh,

Whatever, like Paradise Under the Sea or whatever kind of feeling. Right. Like the idea that that dance is that part of the romantic world is not a thing, even if the people are still romantically involved. Like they're not, you know, they're not. they are dating and doing stuff with each other it's just that the prom is like oh what does that have to do with romance there's nothing to do with that yeah

That was weird, but it's fine. I didn't take as many couple pictures, lots of individual pictures and group pictures where no one would look at the camera. Did you get a chance to nap today? No, I'm not a napper. You know I'm not a napper. You're not a napper, Jerry. Yeah. I mean, as you noted, it is a skill that must be acquired. I have not acquired it. No, I mean, it's... I don't have it. I don't have it in me yet. Right. So you're on four or five hours of sleep now, huh? Yeah.

No sleep, Jerry. No sleep. No sleep. You're talking about Kenny Rogers' Roasters. Yeah, it makes a pretty strong bird. Mm-hmm. The red light that he's got going through the window. One of the streetlights on a street that's near my house. shines directly through like the window, the window of my room. It goes right into my eyeball at like pillow level. You know what I mean? And like, what is it? He loses his, or he can only see red. What is it that happens? It ruins his vision.

Anyway, so the great thing about the streetlight and the pillow is you only notice it just as you settle down, put your head on the pillow. And then the light is piercing you in the eye because to get rid of it, you have to go to that one window and make sure the blind is all the way down. This is the sun in the afternoon.

For me, my place on the couch. We all love it to be bright and be able to see the sunset out the window. But it's funny. It is really like God is like, screw this particular aging man. Because if you have any kind of window covering and it's open like two millimeters, the full force of the sun will go through that two millimeters. That's the power of the roaster. Yeah. Could you mind quick? Yep.

Okay, this is a segment we do called Vacation Results, where we talk about how things went. And I, even before we went on this little short sojourn, I already knew I'd want to talk to you about it. Okay. So real quick. Cool. Okay. Um, Madeline, uh, booked us, meaning me and her booked us a night at this, um, I think called auto camp.

And they have these at Mysemite. They have this at Russian River. They have it in several different places. And it's basically where they've converted these fancy Airstream trailers into a trailer that you can stay in. Sometimes it's near a national park or whatever. In the case of Russian River, I mean, it's just a place lots of people like to go. It's a wonderful area. But no, you can go look up AutoCamp if you want to see what it looks like. Are you trying to say the word A-U-T-O?

How to? Because you pronounce that word the same as O-T-T-O, and it confuses me. So what is the name of this camp? Oh, wait a minute. This might be even more interesting than our topic. I don't want to marry you, but I'm just going to tell you. A-U-T-O and O-T-T-O are pronounced exactly the same. Not in New York. They're not. So like, like I know, like in German, I want to say, you would say like Autobahn. Yeah, no, that's not.

It's like Sauron. Otto. What do you say? Otto. How do you say it? Otto and Otto. The other ones you couldn't even say. Hi, what can I tell you? There are millions of us. Janice, you're Janice. And they're not even counting your jersey. Whoa, easy. Jim, cut that out. So I know we're going to go. So it's A-U-T-O. Yeah. Auto camp. I mean like automobile. I won't do it. Alto. This really seems boring now. Keep going because I do have a question related to this.

Is it going to be where you make fun of me about something? No, you're going to explain something to me. Good. Okay. And so, hey, you know, Billy, Billy, you know, could always use a little time to himself to hang out, you know, small house. We're all, you know, he's got a what he called season the cast iron.

when the family's out of the house. You know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. You gotta season the cast iron, you know what I mean? So for context, we did this once before. I had a great time. But, you know... You know how I am with going places? I do. You know, but you know, there's all kinds of facets of how I suck at going places. And has your wife considered like knocking you out, not physically, but like chemically?

Like the way you try to get B.A. Baracus in the plane? Exactly, yeah. You'll just wake up and you'll be there. Don't immediately dismiss the idea. I'm not dismissing it at all. And I can always use a good night's sleep. You have really good health care. They probably cover this. Why don't you go to the doctor? We're insured for you being knocked out. You can just ask them for this.

What if Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty just kept me on a cot with a mosquito net? No, but I wouldn't even need air conditioning because I'm out. Right, yeah, no. You don't even need air in there. They just have to moisten my lips and clean my stools. I mean, it's not that far away. But it's a vacation. I want them to have fun. Well, next time you're napping on the castle, just scoop you up.

Put you in a car? It's for family. It's so hard, Merlin. It's really difficult to transfer. That's a baby joke for you, all you parents out there. Oh, yeah, when you got to do transition times. Transfer. Transfer is tough, man. But you think the baby's asleep, and then you got to get it to actually be on the flat surface. Some babies don't transfer. My kid.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Um, I'd walk the kid around and we learned, you know, pretty early on or discovered or made up the idea that if you go, you can see, can you see me bouncing just a little bit like you would that worked really well.

And, but when the kid was especially like having a tough time, I'd be like, you know, trying to let Madeline sleep on that side of the house. And I'm walking the baby on the other side of the house. And I have such recollections of being in our lounge and like just. trying just like oh my gosh i'm really i really should not be upright at this point you know you know it is and i try to like lean against the fireplace

I mean, it sounds like the SS is invading. Let the klaxons go off. If I leaned, let alone sat down. Obviously, I cannot sit down. But if I even leaned. the kid would start screaming. It was like something from a Warner Brothers cartoon. We did this once before for Mysemity, and we had a really good time. But it was for, I want to say, I think it was two nights, which is...

Kind of an odd, depending on how you are, that's either an awesome amount of time to camp or a terrible amount of time to camp. Being how I am, four days would be like... I'd do better with four days than two days because I'm going to basically prepare for two days like it's six days. And I'll prepare for four days like it's six days. Do you follow me? So I've got everything thought out. I've got the coolest stuff. I've got all this going on. I've got all this stress.

about all the preparation. You know, there's been times where we just even can't even fit everything in the car that I think we need because who am I, John? Who am I? I'm Diana Ross. I have to be able to dress to suit the many moods of George. What's his current look? Morning mist? Uh-huh. We know that about you. You know that about me? You know that I stress about travel and I over-prepare and I...

get all psycho about it. Madeline told me about this a month or two ago. Hey, I got this one night. We'll go to the Russian river. It'll be fun. Um, and I made a little quiet decision just, just to myself. And you know what that decision was to run away. I'm going to run away. Once the potion is worn off and I'm out of my Cinderella case. Is that him? His hair's grown. Are his ears bigger? See, now I'm imagining them just preserving me like Tootin' Common in my own little sarcophagus.

That's an amazing story. You know the story about how they found that thing out in the Valley of Kings? You know about that? Howard, what's his name? What's that guy's name? Howard, what's his name? Who's the guy who discovered Tut? Not Howard Hughes, I don't know. No.

It's an amazing story. And the guy who's funding it, he'd been paying for it for, I think at that point, at least seven, eight years. And they finally decided in 1922, this is the last year that the Lord, what's his name, is going to pay for this. And that's...

when he made the greatest archaeological find of all time. And then the Lord guy, he died a couple months later. You know how he died? I've been thinking about this for two weeks. You know how he died? Choking on meat. Worse. Infected mosquito bite. Oh, infections should have known. See? 1922. It's going to take out all the sort of rotund grave robbing British people. That's absolutely true. And I think it's...

You know, those riches, there's over 5,000 items in there. He had like three sarcophagi. He just stacks, stacks and stacks. So I said to myself, we're going to go to auto camp at the Russian river. You know, I shouldn't even say this. I've got things I say to myself. And, you know, like I remember from the back to work days, one of those things is stop. Like sometimes I really need to say to myself, stop or reset.

Or like, you know, let's go back to first position. Let's going to reset. Sometimes that involves things like quitting all my apps. Sometimes that involves standing up and walking around a little bit, but I make little breaks to make a cognitive fence.

You ever do a little gymnastics routine? I walk with, you see on my hands, when I walk, I walk like a gymnast. I'm saying, part of the process. Just, if you can imagine me like pushing my wrists up into the air, alternating, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, Or an Olga Corbett. You like an Olga Corbett? You like that? Yeah. Chicken moves. So you know what I said to myself? Stop. Don't overthink this. Just have fun. You know? But...

Ultimately, I went so far down on it. You know what I said to myself? You know what I'm bringing? Clothes on my back. And whatever can fit in my backpack without... No, not whatever. Sorry. Clothes on my back. and a handful of things in my backpack. And I mostly did it. It was incredible. I hope you know me well enough to know how bloody insane it is that I don't have all these different crates of dry goods. I've got paracord to be able to hang a bear box.

You imagine my brain when I go anywhere. It's an absolute, it's apocalyptic. It's like a Ragnarok of the mind title. And I have a hard time with that. But what I said to myself was, hey. Just go and have fun. Make it fun for her. You know, don't be that guy. And clothes on your back and a backpack. So I'll pause here to say, what do you think?

I mean, I'm assuming it went fine. It went great. It went great, but don't you think it's kind of an interesting little challenge to give myself, given who I am? Once you got there and you were like, what?

What changed about upon arrival, knowing that you don't have all this stuff? Like, obviously it may be helping the lead up because then, you know. Yeah, you have less anxiety at the prep. You're not doing anything. You've already decided what you're doing in the lead up and it's not much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's nothing. So once you get there, how's it different? It's still like I spent two days thinking about it.

what the clothes on my back and the backpack would be. That's not going to change. But the part that's not interesting to people that don't have to deal with these kinds of feelings... these intrusive or invasive thoughts that like about like, Oh, what you got to do? Like it's, it's hard to appreciate why this would be a big deal for me. Um, but just look at every other vacation where I've been like, Oh, I just did not have enough control over this situation.

But, so yeah, that absolutely did help with that part. The part that's not that fun or interesting or a good ending is like, oh yeah, and so when you got there, you didn't need any of this stuff, did you? No, I didn't. But I knew that.

before I went anywhere. I know that they sell belts and toilet paper everywhere. I know that USB cables are sold everywhere. I know there's almost nothing that is irreplaceable. And in fact, if it were irreplaceable, I wouldn't want to bring a camping. That's dumb. I know those things. This is an irrational how I am kind of thing. But it ended up working great. What I ended up taking into the asterisk.

or double dagger, as Casey says here is. We did actually end up having a second backpack, but still a backpack. Not like a backpacking backpack, like a Tom Binn bag. I'm all in on Tom Binn. I got my regular Tom bin bag, which is insane. It's the, uh, it's the, what is it? The, the big brain or something. I've got like the biggest backpack they make and it's the best backpack in the world. Um, but then I have this other one that's a little sexier, uh, fewer leaders.

But no, all I did was I brought that stuff. I only brought one Leatherman. I didn't bring any cooking tools. We did have one Instacrate. They sell these at Costco, guys. You should all buy these. These are not quite up to the level of the 19-gallon Fracta bag from Ikea, but they have this thing at Costco called an Instacrate where the sides collapse and it just drops down into being almost a flat plane, but can be an instant box anytime.

We had that in it with like a bottle of wine and I think some potato chips. Oh, sorry, the Keurig. We did bring around Keurig because that's important. But you know what? It went great. And I was proud of myself before I ever left.

I think I don't want to ever have to travel again. But if I do, I might be able to get better at like, I've just proved to myself that you can do this. You can do this without being a weirdo about this. And I can only speak for myself, but I think we had a pretty good time.

Potato chips and wine, do they go together? It's called a pairing. John, you there, did you have a question? I think you had a question about having something explained to you. Yeah, I think you were posting this online somewhere or maybe just texting me. Anyway. Your description of it, you know, the shiny Airstream trailer that you go in, it's in a nice in the woods or something. You described it as glamping. G-L-A-M-P-I-N-G. It's a terrible word. What the hell is glamping? Glamping is a term.

that must have been around for some amount of time. I heard about it in, you know, the main place I heard about it was Parks and Recreation. Although I also significantly saw it in an episode of Top Chef. And glamping is just glamorous camping. It's like where you go and there's like, if it's, it might not even be a tent, but if it's a tent, boy, is it ever going to be a fancy tent? It's got all the mod cons. It's got wifi.

It's a terrible term, but glamorous camping, I guess, is one way to say it. Yeah, so I gathered that. But my question is, what's glamorous about it and what's camping about it? I'm glamorous. The camping stuff is a lot of the, I was about to say superficial, but that's not right. The fun stuff of camping. I'll send you a couple of photos. How many photos have I sent you? Did I send you a lot? Remind me. I sent you some photos.

Maybe, yeah. I do remember the Airstream trailer thing, but maybe we had the same conversation before. Who knows? We're both old. I thought, well, the problem was my Wi-Fi sucked, so I couldn't send this to you. I'm sending this to you right now and say that this looks like a Peter Jackson.

practical shot but we had this beautiful trailer so oh yeah sorry the glamping and the camping um well the thing is basically they take these old airstreams this is like a whole business you turn airstreams into you know A place where somebody can come and stay. And they're super nice. And they're very, like, tricked out. If you go and look at the interiors. Do they have running water? Mm-hmm. Well, they've got, you know, camper running water.

They've been fixed. It isn't like they just got an old camper and changed the locks. It's been very fancied up. Everything about it is pretty nice. So the glamorous part is, for example, I mean, you can drive to the Russian River, park your car at this lodge, and then you get a little wagon to just, you know, roll your stuff.

They also have tents for groups. It's really neat the way they do it. If you go and check it out. I think they do a good job. There's a big Yeti in this picture. That wasn't listed in your inventory. Oh, sorry, that's my Yeti. I did bring the Yeti. And what I do with the Yeti is, you know, if you own, if you are like the bear and you've got your own freezer, best thing is to freeze your Yeti. Also, the Yeti, I think, is one of the most overrated brands in the world.

Carrying this thing empty makes me angry. America's test question just did a test on it, and guess what? That Yeti thing has more insulation than its competitors, which is why it keeps things colder longer. No substitute for cubic inches.

I've been preparing for this my whole life. Same way I know how to get a house cool before it's hot with this. Ideally, seriously, what the pros do is you take your Yeti, you freeze it in an industrial freezer or a kitchen freezer. That's the only place that it's going to fit. Yes. To like 20 below. Like.

you know, but I don't have that. So what I do is the day before I put in these ice packs, there are these really, they sell them on Amazon. There's these really, they're not like the smooshy ones. These are solid. They look like a little radiator. I mean, I guess by design to distribute cold, but like they're, they're imagine like a, something the size of a cafeteria tray about an inch thick. It's full of a fluid. Literally a radiator. Yep.

And yeah, and so what I do is I start freezing the cooler the day before. But all we brought, dude, all I brought was a few seltzers. We brought, and we didn't bring anything. Got stuff there. We didn't even pack it home.

So you've got stuff there that implies that you can easily go shopping. Oh, absolutely. And there's a lodge, John. So this is still glamour, more glamour. You've got this lodge thing where you can go in and buy their fake wood because you're not allowed to burn wood. You can buy, obviously, shirts and wines. And they have a frozen section. Wait, what is the fake wood made out of? Fake wood's probably real wood. What? Fake wood. Where?

That's a real tree. That's a real tree. You're not allowed to burn real wood, so you have a little fire pit. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It basically, I don't, see, don't ask me to defend it. You get these hunks of sawdust that burn. And it's not as cool as wood, but it doesn't release the stuff that's bad for the environment. Really? I'm intrigued by the idea that by taking wood and grinding it up. Oh, sorry. Here's the fire.

If you're going to engage, screw you. Here's what the fire looks like when it's burning. I can remember specifically, I was listening to the very, very good top five episode of Strong Songs about... Every Little Thing is Magic by the police. I listened to it twice in two days. Did you listen to it? I think I've heard that one before. No, it's brand new. It's brand new. I don't think it's technically out yet.

It's really good. Here's the thing about Every Little Thing is Magic. Yeah. I've always thought that the production on that song is super messed up. Like it's not good. There's several demos of it. Well, the way they made it was pretty weird. The sound of it, there's something sounds like hollow or something. Yeah, it sounds like someone did a good recording of a song and then they played it back through a socket and they recorded that and they put it out.

Are you being straight with me? Yes. Okay. Well, can I tell you something that you'll learn when you listen to that episode? Okay. Sting did a really good, really mature demo. of it. And they ended up using that as the basis and recording over it alongside with it. So that might be part of it. Yeah. I feel like this should be like a remaster. You know? Yeah, I feel that about a lot of stuff. And it's very funny you should say that because, oh my gosh, I've forgotten about this. Circa.

86. Like whenever it was that people first, like normal people that I knew first started buying CD players, probably around 85, 86. You know, like, yeah, you could buy them before that, but like that's, and like my friend DJ. had spent 200 bucks or whatever it was he bought a cd player and it was at the time it was mind-boggling how much better some cds sounded than others

And one of the ones, honestly, one of my all-time favorite albums that sounded the worst was Outlander's D'Amour, the first Police album. It sounded, and I don't even remember how it sounded bad, but if High Fidelity is not your friend, if it's not a good master. Yeah, those are early CDs. A lot of them did like hard clipping at like 22 kilohertz or something. Yeah, and they probably did really basic compression.

Because of the dynamic range of a lot of stuff. Instead of it rolling off as the sounds went outside the range, they just hard clipped them and it left the sound really weird. That's a really good one. But I feel good about this. I like how it went.

Oh, so the camping part. So the camping part is, it's got, they give you all the stuff. You've got a fire pit. Yeah, you get a fire pit that you can cook on. They sell you charcoal. How many people's bones do you think are in that fire pit? You mean the cremains? Yeah.

Did you watch that? Did you watch that? Are you watching The Mortician? No, I've seen the ad for it, but no, I'm not watching it. It's really good. You know what else is really good? Can I tell you something that's really terrible that you shouldn't watch?

What's it called? The couple in England with the people under the terrace. George and somebody West, I think it is. Is this another true crime thing? Absolutely. I don't watch that stuff. You know, it's really good on Netflix. Have you seen the one about the Titans of Merciful?

I will save that for a future show, but I'm never, probably never going to watch. It's one of the most upset. I just want to say it had not occurred to me. I'm not being funny here, but like, but I, but like, you know, I don't like. Where do butterflies go in the winter? I don't know. Where do submersibles go when they're not in use? Do you want to know?

You told me already. Oh, I told you. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I already told you. They were stored, these submersibles. And like, I've watched a couple of videos before this about what happened. And you'll know this, maybe you'll share with our listeners, but it is pretty fascinating. But like what that guy tried to do was sew bananas and like making a carbon fiber. submersible the way he did with the caps titanium caps on the end the way i heard it was that

You know, what's the term, like, Grady uses? Like, you've got the kind of, like, there's this, like, in a bridge. There's the strength of, when something's compressed, how it deals with that, versus the strength of being bent or being pulled, like, tensile? Tension and compression, yeah. But, like...

That stuff is really good at one kind of compression. It's good at tension, not so good at compression. That might be it. But, John, it hadn't occurred to me. In addition to, first of all, we've got... Well, first of all, how does John Syracuse get to the submersible? What do you mean? Well, okay, so John's on land, and there's a submersible. How does he get there? Oh, we should take him over on the boat. Ready? Hop on the boat, John. You ready to go to the submersible?

I won't be going in any submersals. You get there, and it's a tube with like a Logitech game controller and some... Super fine screens. And a toilet. You can toilet in there. Yeah, and that last time there were five people in that tube. And they just close it up and they seal you in. Even though there's 18.

bolts possible they were only bolting four bolts on i mean like i'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination and when i watch this stuff i'm kind of like yeah so that is not your thing but then what gets really good This is a discovery. So this is a Zaslav thing, right? This is technically, I think it's a discovery. I want to say. In any case.

There's a guy who does one of those dumb cable, well, I don't want to say that, but there's a guy who does one of those shows. It's like Explorer Man or whatever. It's one of those, he goes out and he goes to the most extreme places and sees crazy stuff that people are doing and he puts his life on the line and, you know, whatever, goes over the falls.

in a barrel or whatever the the you know the portfolio is so he went to this dude uh who has a very very what was his name his name's really funny His name's like Steadfast Structure or something. He has one of those like white guy names. Who's the guy who believes the submersible thing? Can you find it for me? Titan submersible guy. Stockton Rush. Wait, is that it? CEO of OceanGate. Yeah, I guess that's him. So this guy goes out and...

there's several things about what this guy's trying to do that's really interesting and ambitious. And like a lot of his type, let's be honest, it's all going great until it's not. But anyways, I, yeah, maybe it's not for you. Did you ever watch Das Boot? I don't think I've ever seen that. I know it's summer of subs right now, so I might actually watch it. Well, I can give you a link. I've got a really good copy, and I bought myself a Blu-ray for Father's Day.

I'm sure I have it. I subscribe. No, but like, you know what? Like, it's not something I'd show my family because they can't sit down. No, that's not, it's not, it's not appropriate viewing for, uh, no, but it's, it's. You know what? I'm doing this for me. I'm not doing this for you. I'm going to send you a link to Dustboot. Okay. Watch it with subs. Literally. Get it.

Get it. Kieran already made that joke. He said, do you do sub subs or sub dubs? I do sub doms. Oh, he's like fin dom, like where you got to give her money. I read about that. I read about that. That's where you step on somebody's stamps. I've read about that. Mm-hmm. So this guy from this discovery show. It's Tech Dom where I fix your computer.

Or you can hack. There's one where you can pay a lady. Speaking of tech dom. Do you know you can hire a lady to hack into your computer for sex? Speaking of tech dom and intrusive thoughts. I hate so much that you're saying these words. I hate it. This is like an Alex thing. I hate you saying this. All right, all right. No, keep going. No, I love it. Keep going. Yeah, tech dom and intrusive thoughts. One of the, it's not really an intrusive thought, but it is a thing. Yeah.

is an attractive let's say it's an attractive nuisance to use another one of your favorite things when you have the tech episodes with john roderick which if i am not extremely vigilant i will in fact entertain fantasies of visiting him and fixing all his computers I gotta be honest with you. It's a thing that happens in my head. Here's the thing. B, I know you never would, but A,

Absolutely. How can you not? How can you not? And it's the equivalent of like- Because I can fix it. No, you're talking to your family. It's like the people who write the letters to the people in jail. I can fix him. I know, exactly. You could be his tech bride. Like, I could actually fix it. Part of the process might be putting him in the cremation machine from that show afterwards, just so he doesn't mess it up again. No, you gotta put him in my vacation box.

right but like eliminating him would in fact be the final step because he's just going to mess it up again so we just remove that variable survives contact with the user yeah i come i fix the computers i eliminate

The problem. Do you change his mind, John? Do you do anything to help him look at it differently? He could be in a shipping container in the desert. It doesn't have to be cremation. It doesn't have to be cremation. It's not just cremains. Oh. You know what? You know where retired CIA directors are? What? The cemetery. That's where they are. This program does not constitute a physical threat to John Roderick.