264: Alphabetical Shadow

You're mad with collapsing power. You're collapsing everything. Well, you know, like white privilege. Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh, wait. Wait, did you open it back up? I opened it back up. Why? I had a collapse. I uncollapsed it. Let me fix it here. That. Why are you collapsing everything? Does Alan die behind you? Blink twice if you need help. Well, for the really powerful Pro features.

You got to dig into the interviews. You got to hide everything. Yeah. Everything's in a hamburger menu now. Keep this folded. Why? Why would you want to keep that folded? Oh, no. I just thought that would be helpful for you. Why? Why would that be helpful? Oh, that way you'll know to put an emoji on. Why do you want the topics list to be collapsed? I just thought you'd like it that way. I do not like it that way. Do you like it that way?

I don't honestly care. It really is fine. If you don't care and I want to expand it, I think we have our solution. Can this be the show? Yes, this can be the show. Okay, thank you so much. I have a thing. And you've probably seen it like a little fistula opening up out of my soul. You might have seen this in another place. But I have a thing about liking white space in a document. Like, on the one hand... Yeah, it's terrible. It's a thing. It's an affliction, I would say.

Do you lint all your stuff or do you just never add spaces? I think it's a program that can remove things like anomalies and spaces and formatting. Did I say it wrong? How do you say it in Long Island? How do you say lint? Like the chocolate maker? No! Am I losing my mind? Don't make me open prompt. I know what a linter is. I know, okay. I just like doing the show, man. I just enjoy it.

A linter would remove all of the terrible white space that you like to have. Well, when I write stuff in VS Code, which I try to avoid because it's not a very pretty app, but it's really good for certain things, like for projects. But whenever I'm writing stuff in VS Code in pure Markdown, I...

just out of weird compulsion, like hitting reload or save. I always hit command ship P. I do the, um, like resolve all markdown, you know, make, make it officially as close to markdown, you know, as I can.

You know what I mean? I don't know what that shortcut does. You write in HTML, but you've had a lot of exposure to Markdown. Back in the early days, it was like, well, you know, you can do your H's. with octothorps or you could do the setup version you know and that's it all still works for your bullets do you want them to be dashes or do you want them to be asterisks and i

Just let me save you the trouble of saying it doesn't really matter if you know what you're doing. I know. But there is also something to be said for just the visual cleanliness of saying, like, make all this stuff consistent. Take out spaces that aren't meaningful from a markdown standpoint. You know what I mean?

Does it change all your bullets? Like, does it, did you pick like a canonical one? Like I want them all to be asterisk. I've set mine to do that, but you don't, you can choose. There's all kinds of flags. It's kind of like the, you know, the little, uh,

I don't know that the hammer icon or the checkmark icon or whatever, an Apple script editor that like quote unquote compiles your Apple script and like syntax highlights it and everything. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I mean, I, I, this is almost purely, I don't think I ever had a. I don't think this is for a thought-out, rational reason, but I used asterisks forever for my ULs. And then at some point in the last few years, I switched over to dashes, partly because, like...

At heart, I'm still kind of a humane text guy. And asterisks in my head still mean something different to me. How do you feel about the fact that Apple Notes accepts both of them but draws them differently? Oh, with the new...

See, I haven't even tried that yet. Oh, no, not with Markdown. I'm saying like with not Markdown, the pre-Markdown version of Apple Notes, if you make an asterisk and then a space, it turns it into a bulleted list with little round bullets. But if you type a hyphen and then a space, it makes it into a...

Dash list? Oh, I think that seems intuitive. So right now I'm in Google Docs and I know from experience that if you're out just in the middle of nowhere and you type asterisk space, that creates one. Does that work for this? It does. But see, it shows differently, right? So in Markdown, those two things show the same. You're semantically identical, right? Well, you know, people have a... Well, that's the thing. It's like, you know, what's funny is, and I don't know if this is just my brain.

which used to encode a great deal of information about this stuff, whether you think I get it right or not. Bless your heart. Um, there was, um, did Dean, Dean did humane text, right? Or no, it was the one that Dean did. um textile textile yeah and in textile she's not see i'm not even gonna remember it now because gruber's poisoned my brain but it used to be that um if memory serves asterisks oh boy am i ever gonna get in trouble with i

Asterisks were bold, underscore was italic. Yeah, that's how Slack does it now, too. Okay, and doubles weren't meaningful. And that's because that was what I used before Markdown, right? It doesn't matter whether, you know, whatever. It's just, pick a system, right? But that was, that's in my brain, you know, so then dashes to me only ever mean lists, but.

But the problem is also, this was happening around roughly, maybe a little bit before the great, the Markdown Wars. There was the whole, like, kind of Dave Weiner. You fought the Markdown Wars? I don't recall owning a droid. Do you have a reason in your head that you're okay with him not remembering? You think he's playing off legit? Shouldn't you have taken them to a different planet?

I mean, he put the girl on one planet. Shouldn't he have gone somewhere different than... I don't think it's a problem if you just don't watch those other movies. That's true. Sorry to derail you. Around the same time.

So this was also around like this is when I was like balls deep in the whole like O'Reilly universe and like so invigorated by what was happening in what became Web 2.0. It wasn't a thing yet, but like I was going to like Danny and I like.

you know, circa 2004, did the life hacks talk at an O'Reilly thing. And it was like, it was amazing. I guess where I got to meet so many people who were like excited about wifi and they had, I've got an Orinoco card and like now I'm a big boy and this is exciting. So.

But what was happening around just before that time was the whole kind of Dave Weiner, and I'm not being mean, but you know, the XML stuff and the RSS stuff. And... kind of alongside that at the same time it was really the whole like zeldman zeldman really was the capstone to this in some ways to like hey look there's a reason to make sure your code is legit

And that's because CSS is going to change everything. Before you could do all kinds of nonsense and it wouldn't matter. And it always looked weird on a certain browser, but you know, the orange book. really taught me this idea that it's valuable to like have that all be proper. So one of the benefits of Markdown to me... And the original thing that Jack made, Jack from Twitter, originally made something called Humane Text. There was a service that wrapped both.

Aaron and John's original scripts, one in Python, one in Perl. And so command shift greater than, command shift less than, all day long. All day long, I could do that. And it always did the same thing both ways. Because this is back to the original easy markdown. I think, do you remember at the time though, one of those things were like, even like, I feel like I was very sympathetic to almost every single part of this, even when it got a little bit like weird tech war kind of boy stuff, but.

Do you remember the thing about EM versus I and B versus strong? I do remember that. And like, so you tell me, sorry, I'm talking a lot. I'm in a great mood. Tell me what you remember about. The good faith good points people made about the semantic differences between presentational versus semantic markdown. Because part of it was like, hey, this is practically a whole language. HTML and XML can be this total language, but you can't just fart around and add stuff to it.

Yeah, we're trying to, we in the web development community, we're trying to separate content from presentation because that has a lot of benefits for sort of scalability of process and cleanliness of code on both sides. It just makes everyone's life easier. It's less like spaghetti.

and we were dealing with existing html which had a lot of tags in it that seemed to shout very loudly about presentation like the b tag which says that the stuff inside it is bold that sounds like presentation and you know what b can be lower or uppercase because every browser is in this default forgiving mode where so if that's okay. It could be you don't need to terminate your break tags or your horizontal rules.

You know, there was another one that was like, man, is it really like computers like really running all this stuff? Because this is starting to sound like real code. Right. But that was it was such a big point, though, that like you just you can't have all this willy nilly hacky stuff. You can still keep doing your. you know, one pixel transparent GIF tricks and stuff like that. But in order for this stuff to like, you're going to have to start doing some pretty wild stuff with learning how.

ascendance and daughter elements work in CSS. And it's really different from TD background equals blah, blah. This is, it's a whole new world. And if your code isn't up to snuff, it's not going to style right. And it's not going to run like code should. Actually the, the.

b and i think is actually instructive because so itag was similar i the little itag was for italic and it's like oh it's presentation we should not be making markup that tells you tells the computer what it looks like make the markup tell it what the structure of the document is tell me what this is This is a title. This is a article. This is a paragraph. Yes, yes. Right.

And then you add IDs. You start adding IDs to that. And then CSS will tell you what it looks like. But markup tells you what it is, and CSS tells you how it should look. One of the problems with that, interestingly, which I don't think got discussed that much, but it was really, really a big problem. So what they would tell you is like don't use B and I. B is for bold, I is for italic. That's a styling concern that should be in CSS.

instead used their semantic equivalents. And unfortunately, their semantic equivalents were the semantic equivalent tag for italic was EM for emphasis. And the semantic equivalent tag for bold was strong. S-T-R-O-N-G. And what do EM and S-T-R-O-N-G have against them as compared to B and I? They're way longer.

They take up more room visually in the markup. They're more annoying to type if you're typing it out manually. It just makes you more likely to make an error. Like every tag that's too long or unnecessary or isn't fixable to be standardized. Well, you run it through the...

validator of course you would catch all those errors but but yeah i think the website i would go to the website a lot yeah so like a lot of that's i feel like that wasn't disgusting at least i didn't see that much w3c something like that

Yeah, I still use it. Yeah, it wasn't discussed. It was discussed like, oh, I don't want to type that. It's too long. But as only as a ha ha kind of thing. But I honestly think that is one of the biggest reasons that those tags never replaced BNI in real markup because they were just too long and too annoying to. It's, you know, I mean, I guess maybe. Especially in a field, like if you're in a text area and it's not a JavaScript.

And then people would say, well, but if strong is just the semantic equivalent of bold, like you're saying, oh, this should be strong. And then the CSS decides what does strong text look like? Well, if you always decided the strong text looks like bold, what the hell are we even doing here? And if you always say that emphasize text is going to be italic, then what are we doing here? And if I decide.

that emphasized text with EM tags should be bold and strong tags should be italic, then what does that mean? And it just, it wasn't, you know, it was a losing battle from day one. It was a battle that was lost. If you look at the web today, you'll see a lot of B&I tags. I mean, but not on the back.

On the back end, all that stuff still goes. There's nobody worth their salt. Oh, yeah. No, you can use, like, it's a thing. If you go find somebody's blog and you view source and you see M and strong tags all over the place, you know something about that person immediately. Yeah, it's true. No, no, I meant more in the sense of like...

You know, that line about how – and the empathy for the machine adjacent line about like try to be as – you told me – you taught me this. Be as liberal as possible in what you accepted as – Postel's law, yeah. Okay.

Can we put that in notes, please? But I like that. I like that a lot. Also hotly debated whether that's a good law or not. I mean, it's... one of those things that probably should keep coming up. But anyways, so I think how I'm trying to say was, oh God, that was such a fascinating time. I was so excited and so engaged with what was happening, like to the best of my, I was just really ambitious.

to learn that's how i that's how i ended up buying all those books i never finished was like i was just really i was determined to learn about like everything about

you know, agile versus waterfall versus whatever, like all that kind of stuff. Anyways. But I think I probably was not the only person that there was a series of cascading sort of... uh concentric circles of like weird arguments about stuff that you know you had a basis but you know i remember having to sit through conversations about like you know the When you should use abbreviation versus when you should use abbreviation and acronym, right?

And they have a difference. They have a meaningful difference. But there were some people who mostly just wanted to like go into these. Please tell the audience the difference because I think most people don't know this. We want to be an educational program. Okay. I would say that an abbreviation is something like CA for California.

I would say that an acronym is something like S-C-U-B-A, SCUBA, meaning Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Yeah, the acronyms are the ones that you can say a word. Scuba, radar, laser, stuff like that. Whereas the abbreviations... don't have that property. You don't say ka.

You say CA or US or whatever. Right. The neat thing, though, and again, John, I try to be positive. I don't think I get nearly enough credit from nearly enough people for how positive I try to be about things. That's fine. That's a separate issue. Also, we need to pitch the after show, which is a different episode, but it's the same episode. But...

But here's the thing. Okay, over here, you got these guys, you know, and they are guys. And they're at some like in the hotel lobby at some conference in Austin arguing about that all day. And there's people over here who are just benefiting from that. Well, what do you mean benefiting from that? Well, guess what? Each one of those tags, not attributes, what do you call the word? Tags. Each one of those things that you deploy properly, not only it can do a lot to help you with presentation.

And it can do a lot to help you with the reasons you would want this data to be semantic. Like if I leave a tag off something in the, well, honestly, if I leave a tag off something in most things that lead to an RSS feed, it's okay because they're, you know, controlled out and it would just, would look. weird but it wouldn't break the feed but that's that stuff really matters you've got to act like it's code but the benefit of that is now you also have another thing to style so if you want your

You know, when somebody mouses over, they see a dot, dot, dot, or however you chose to style it, because guess what? They don't always have to look the same. Yahoo made us believe that blue and purple on Netscape made us believe that blue and purple are what links are, but they didn't have to be. You could change all of that, but that's in the CSS layer.

That's not in the, you know, and there was a day when my, at the time, Deskmate co-worker, when Doug Bowman first launched his new version of his site, Stop Design, where... He was like, go check source. And I was like, what is happening? Because each, he had done an ID, I think for body, I want to say, that cascaded. all the way down to every styled element in that area. So he can have a beautiful, like 18 line, beautiful menu.

of like the four or six or whatever sections with the mouse overs and everything. And because of the way that he had adopted semantics in the way that he had also done a wire to great acclaim, he was able to... Not just graphically control it in a way to be like cute about it and make your cursor turn into a golf club or something. Not that stuff. But in the sense of this blue section is my portfolio. This green section is my, you know what I mean? And that was all done.

On one level, it was really hugely accomplished by just adding one ID tag. I want to say page or body or whatever it was, that then cascaded all the way down and he could use and reuse every, it was entirely broken out in CSS. For somebody like me, I mean, I imagine it's what it's like to when Salieri was reading Mozart's score.

You know what I mean? And like hearing the music in his head. I would just look at it and go, I can't believe how efficiently you've accomplished something with so little code. And it was all because of semantic stuff working right. Speaking of ABBR and acronym tags and stuff like that, the validator gets testy sometimes. Like I'm old, so I sometimes use old tags. Like in my own blog, I use TT, the TT element a lot.

Yeah. I just want like a lot of space. So use that versus TT versus code versus. Yeah. Well, yeah. Like I'm using TT for things that were not like code, but I would use code. It was like, Oh, this is something you would type it up. Something you would type in a prompt. Like if I'm saying run the ls command, ls space dash. To go back to 2002, all three of those, to a casual viewer, do roughly the same thing. I mean, pre is different because it also...

pre-formatted right right like basically it just looks like oh that's the typewriter font on these three lines yeah and i'm going to style it anyway so i'm not doing it for the styling semantically i'm like saying semantically i think of this as tt it's like something you would type at a teletype prompt it's a command line Right? So TT.

Uh, but the validator is really angry about that these days. It's like, don't use TT. That's not a good one. You should do something different. Oh, you get like, you get the big red line and it says deprecated or something warning or like it was yelling at me about it. I'm like, I'm not, I just want my, to have a clean result. I don't care.

about TT. I'll just change it to something else. You will never guess what they wanted me to change it to, or the best one that I could find to change it to. It's not an abbreviation, it's not an acronym, it's not pre, it's not code.

Sorry, I just want to make sure you don't spoil it, but say the whole thing again. Instead of TT, it said perhaps you would consider this tag. No, I don't even think it gave a suggestion. I just went through and said, okay, well, I'm not going to use TT. Which one should I use? Yes. Oh, okay. Because there's a lot of tags now, Brian. There's tags that you've never heard of. I mean, okay, but then they're all in the official. It's a big spec. Pre, it couldn't include pre.

No, pre is no good, as you noted, because that'll be... It'll do your spaces or your tab or whatever. Code. What are the other ones I'm missing? And there's newer ones? It just makes the typewriter fun. Yeah, there's tons of them. What do I recommend?

i didn't recommend this is the one i chose out of the the the the menu that was available for me i rejected code because it's not code i rejected pre because it's not pre-formatted white space uh it's not an abbreviation it's not an acronym like i'm trying to semantically say what this is

I chose KBD, keyboard, as in you type this on a keyboard. Oh my goodness. I forgot about that. And I don't, I'm not a big fan of the KBD tag. I'm a TT kind of person because I'm old, but you know, that would be something like Cloverleaf. dash at a capital s that would that would would that be an example yeah i mean maybe i mean like no is it the commands to type or is it the like it's not what you paste into terminal

I hate how Google results for when you ever Google an HTML tag, it's always, you know what it is. What's in the top one or two hits if you Google for an HTML tag? An HTML tag, like a common one? Well, a lot of them are super name polluted. which is going to make Octothor a part. For that one, for... You would know it immediately if you had done this. It's not Wikipedia. No, I don't know. Does the phrase W3 schools mean anything to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's one of those CNET-looking pages. It looks like it hasn't been updated forever. W3Schools is no good. It's like a clone site. They have amazing SEO. I should actually go to the actual spec at what WG or WG. 3c but i'm not instead i'm getting the second best which is mdn which says the kbd html element represents a span of inline text denoting textual textual user input from a keyboard so yeah when i say use type ls-l kbd does it but anyway

In the end, it doesn't matter because I'm styling it however, but KBD shuts up the validators. That's what I started using. You know, it's good also as LS-LA. I like that one too. I love LA. Wow. I mean, so much of my, you know, so much of your life is, you know. based on formative years? No, no, no. I know. Isn't that so much of where the VI versus Emax thing comes from?

Oh, for sure. And like, just like in your regular life, but not just in your Unix life, but my Unix life, little did I know when I landed at BU in 1993 and they put me on a very strange, you know, AIX, IBM's variant of Unix. Every decision that the system administrators made for the

student-wide AIX shared computing platform, the shell I used, what was in the default dot files, everything like that, have stuck with me so long. And I kind of like curse them for it. The default settings, right? And whatever I...

did the first week i was at school learning right and one absolutely one of the things i did was make an alias for ls-l but when i made that alias i didn't make it and i didn't make ll be the alias for ls space dash l i made it ll be the alias for ls space dash l dash l capital f Because I liked how that looked better. It put the little stars after things and stuff like that. So L is do it as a list. And what is it? A capital F?

Yeah, capital F. It just changes the output of LS-L. What does it mean? Is it a formatting thing? I don't know what it's supposed to be. I don't know what the mnemonic is supposed to be. I know, I know. It's like asking me what the key command is for anything. I'm like, well, wait a minute. I can't run. That's not the way key commands work. It's not something where I have robot memory of what my fingers used to do. And in fact, I aliased LS.

To LS dash capital F. It puts the little stars after executable. I did this. I got, I got incepted by. an o'reilly book this is probably the arnold one of the arnold roth is that his name he's a retired investor arnold robbins the arnold robbins books which were my toilet books for years they had me screwing up my

my dot profiles so bad. And I had to learn the difference between... dot bash and dot bash rs oh yeah all those things and be like all these aliases that were stepping on each other and then whenever i'd say whatever it is when you say to print the path it would just be well you can imagine what you think that would look

like if you came here to say the same directories in there six times yeah yeah yeah yeah and there's a lot of colons right i seem to remember a lot of colons yeah that's how they separate i'm a regular pearl monk john in a lot of ways but yeah but without dash f the output of a dash capital f the output of

looks wrong to me i need to see the at signs i need to see the star after executables and so i've been living with that since 1993 so every system i go on i tap ll nothing happens i tap ls and and it spits out the output with no stars next to executables and i'm like what the hell Or, you know, for either of us, within one thumb difference, hitting command in the command space on a keyboard anywhere and not getting what you expected. You know? LS-LF.

L capital F. Oh, you look, because that shows all the permission stuff, too. Oh, yeah, this is old school looking. Let me try my LSLA. LS-LA. That's just the one that got in my bones. Before Linux. Before Linux existed? Before Linux was widespread anyway. I had some friends who installed Linux on their like three to six PCs when I was at school. I'm like, you got your own Unix system. Wow, LS has color output? Yeah. Oh boy, I was so envious of the Mac 2 people.

Oof, that was the kids from money. That was the oil barons and baronesses. Mm-hmm. This episode of Reconcilable Differences is brought to you in part... by Vitally. You can learn more about Vitally right now by visiting vitally.io slash diffs. That's V-I-T-A-L-L-Y dot I-O slash diffs.

And Vitaly is bringing in a new era for customer service productivity with their all-in-one platform. Vitaly's collaborative workspace combines your customer data with all the capabilities that you expect from today's project management and work platforms. With Vitally, you can measure the effectiveness of OKRs and operational strategies on customer outcomes at scale, thanks to their goals feature. See, the goals allows you to track the progress of your accounts against target metrics.

meaning you can standardize goal setting across the board so you know exactly how effective your processes really are. Best of all, it's designed for today's customer success team, and that's why Vitally operates with unparalleled efficiency. It improves net revenue retention and delivers best-in-class customer experiences. And right now, check this out. Vitally is offering a free pair of AirPods Pro for every Reconcilable Differences listener who books a qualified meeting.

Wow, nothing wrong with that. So if you're a customer success decision maker, schedule your call by visiting vitally.io slash diffs. That's D-I-F-F-S-V-I-T-A-L-L-Y dot I-O slash diffs. I'm going to say it one more time because we're talking about, you know, you could get yourself some AirPods Pro here. Vitally.io slash diffs. Free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting. A thanks to Vitally for supporting Reconcilable Differences.

and all of RelayFM. Hey everybody, it's Reconcilable Difference. This is episode 264, recording on the 24th of June. in 2025. And this is, for now, the system holds. This is an even-numbered episode. And what does that mean for our beloved listeners, John? We got extra stuff for our members in the main show. We're going to talk about some stuff, but then the show will keep going. If you are a member, you will hear us talk about the 1982 film.

Correct me on that year. 81. 81. 1981 film Das Boot, which I had never seen before. Yeah. And so it's a it's it's a it's a it's a movie about a submarine. And I was looking at our little prep for this here in this document, which still could use a lot of work. And I looked at the this week section, John, and I thought this is like the back tour pilot for some new specific dad vertical podcast.

Just look at it. No, no, no, I'm not complaining. And just so you all know, we're going to talk about that movie. We had discussed discussing. Or as they say on the relay shows we'd spoken about, perhaps doing the Titan submersible thing. And John had talked about the fact that that's, you know, got to be up there in terms of an accumulation of things he would prefer not to do.

being on a boat. I would prefer not to even watch a thing about doing it. That's what I was getting to. Yeah. And then I said, well, heck, have you ever seen this, this, this movie called Das Boot? And anyway, I don't want to, I have some, I have some, I don't have an opening statement, but I have some things to say about it. Here's one fact that's interesting. Did you know that's the most expensive German movie ever made? Did not know that. Yeah. And it's about a...

Creeks Marine U-boat team and what they're doing in the North Atlantic in 1941. And John and I are going to talk about that. And if you're interested in hearing that and to do other things to keep John and I in business, you can go to relay.fm slash RD slash join. And it's really easy to sign up. to just give us a few dollars a month. I mean, I know every little bit hurts, but, you know, we need money too. We're not made of stone. Right, John? Are you made of stone?

That RD stands for rec diffs. That's what's in the URL. In case you want to say slash RD, what are you saying? We're not saying RDRR. RDRR. Did you discover your desktop? It's relay.fm slash letter R letter D slash join. Every time you say it, I hear it. Every time I say it, do you hear it? It's a weird URL. I mean, it makes sense. You don't want people to be typing up. People don't type URLs in their web browser anymore anyway. Like, honestly.

There's people that get so obsessed with domain names, their URLs make no sense. But Relay.fm is short. R-E-L-A-Y.fm. I don't know. It's short enough you could type slash RD and then slash join. You'd be there. It's not that fast. And you can do that on your computer if you have a computer at home or you could use the one on your phone. And that gives you access to lots of stuff. We don't like to overdo pitching this, but, you know.

I think we're getting up to that time where there's going to be lots of specials coming out. So it's a pretty good time to sign up and you can listen to all the old specials. You can hear every year we do a special episode with a friend of ours. Anyhow, that's relay.fm slash rd slash join. It probably should be diffs. D-I-F-F-S. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But that's hard. That's hard. No, John. God damn it, John. I'm agreeing with you. It's strong. It's like strong.

Yeah, it's hard to spell. It's a sibling. If you're not like a program where you don't use the phrase diffs, send me the diffs. That's not a thing that comes up a lot. Whoa.

No big diff, maybe from the 80s, but for old people. Okay, I'm not ready to commit to this, but I think I just said a big one. I never put that together. What didn't you put together? I never put it together. It's nothing to put together. It stands for differences in both cases. Whoa. We just watched an episode of King of the Hill that had a pun on irreconcilable differences in it.

It's a really good program. So that's what we're doing. And wait, did I have a final thought? I think that's everything. We don't have any follow-up. What was the other thing we were talking about? Is that everything? Anyway, thanks everybody for listening. That's what we're going to do. And whether or not you listen to it, unfortunately, right this second.

I don't feel like looking this up again. I'm not sure DOS boot is available that many places. I'm pretty sure. I'm not even going to say, I'm not even going to say. Cause like. Well, first of all, guys, relax. I bought a lot of copies of this movie. But I know I've got it somewhere, but I'm not even sure where to watch it. But if we find a link for where it's available, I would not be surprised if it's on Canopy.

Do you ever spend time on Canopy, John? With a K? You can rent Das Boot on Apple TV, and it's also on Fubo. Fubo! You can rent it on Amazon. That's one bad hat, Harry. That's fantastic. Yeah, my kid just asked. Apparently there's a TV series from 2018. Yeah, I saw that. I don't think it's Wolfgang Peterson. Oh, you should Google Wolfgang Peterson to see other stuff he was in. Oh, you might have seen my online.

posts about this but have you do you recognize the captain's face from other things i know who the captain was we'll talk about it in the after show

Do you still like doing the show? I mean, apart from all the money you're making from this? I'm trying to maintain order here. Like a captain on a ship with an unruly crew. I'm trying to maintain order. You're the unruly crew. You know what you learn from these movies is sometimes you've got to make an example of somebody. You're the square-jawed Popeye unruly. No, but in particular, though, I'm thinking about when that fella, okay, when that midshipman gets disrespected in the film.

And Russell Crowe is all like, hey, dude, you've got to deal with that. This is the Navy. You can sail the seven seas and put your mind at ease. But if you screw around and bump into this nebbish of a midshipman, you're going to have to get your ass beat. Remember they put a coin in the guy's head? Do you remember when Vision did that? Vision put a coin in the guy's skull. Do you remember that? You ever see that movie Master and Commander? First up.

I got sniped by Roderick again. I mean, people don't know, probably in the recording schedule, but my understanding is that Roderick Online records the day before we record. Is that correct? Roderick Online records... With, you know, with exceptions, but like every Monday at when John feels like it 30. No, no, no. Come on. I'm kidding. We record promptly at 11 a.m. Huh? It doesn't listen to this. It's fine. Say whatever you want.

I don't know, man. Sometimes I'm not sure. You know, he's on the internet now. Did you know that? I know he's on the internet. He's on Blue Sky. He's just talking about his eBay sales with people on Blue Sky. He's not listening to this podcast. eBay sales. Huh. But...

But yeah, and then so that's on every Monday and then we record every alternate. And you had texted me something. I'm not going to look at the date, but I think you texted me something. Because was it you that I had talked about this issue with or was it Alex? Yeah, you texted me about it and I wrote a reply, which today when I went to send you whatever I sent.

you earlier today i texted you something when i went to send you that text earlier today i opened messages went to the thread with you and i saw the my reply to your text that i'm about to talk about that i had never sent oh darn it

I got you. But anyway, if I had sent it, what that text said was basically calling dibs on this topic for our next recording. But instead... No, no, don't worry. You recorded a show with Roderick and you mentioned this and I feel like you kind of stole it. No, no. Oh, God. Oh, John, come on.

I'm still going to talk about it again. Zen Mind Beginner is mine. They're different shows. I don't think anybody listens to the shows. Don't worry. Okay. Anyway, what you had texted me. Yeah. Was that you had a situation in your house that reminded me of a dorm room situation of like a first time living with people kind of situation. Yes, yes, yes. It takes time. And it's also a workplace situation. And that is.

someone making something stinky in a microwave this is very very fast i was talking about this with someone I thought I think it might have been Alex, but I was saying something about how my kid and this is not a criticism of my kid and how he rolls in the sense of like, you know, there's some kids who like need still need their sandwich made for them. My kid has three summer jobs and makes.

his own everything and buys his own clothes. And he's just basically, he's a bachelor bachelor man and, uh, title, but, uh, Every morning he gets up and he gets it all together and he usually brings something to eat, but often he microwaves some kind of an interesting frozen meal from someplace like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or whatever. And he...

My kid likes somehow went from like, you know, zero to 40, being very interested in all kinds of like pretty interesting foods and different kinds of foods. And I was complaining to somebody how, like, I don't want to be a dick about it, but, like, I really hate smelling some of these things in the morning. And the one I sent you, this is nothing against the food. I'm sure it's delicious.

And I don't feel at all comfortable saying any of these words. This is from a company called Trader Joe's. It's called Jap. It's called Jap Che. Korean street. potato glass noodles so many street potatoes they're sweet potatoes oh that's an adjective a korean sweet potato glass noodles and vegetable stir fry and first of all doesn't that look horrible

Doesn't that make you sad? The picture looks appetizing. The noodles look, oh, I don't know, man. They're glass noodles. I know what a glass noodle is. I'm not from Spain, but like, look at that green pepper. What are we doing with that? Fancy San Francisco. get a rope and so the thing is though I'm sleeping and I'm not I'm not like a fancy duchess but like man the way I phrased this to Roderick the other day I think was sometimes it feels like somebody sacrificing their last goat like this is

wow, does this place ever smell like that now? So is this because it's a smell that you don't like or is it because it's a smell you would like but don't want to be smelling while you're sleeping? Well, I'm not going to be...

like a person on TV and be cute and say both, except insofar that it is both. On the one hand, she's on any crap like this. Are you kidding me? There's no food in that food. Like, what is that? What about this? Do you not like everything in it? You look, there's a food that you would love it. If you would put a pin.

in that because i would love to talk about you know i'm the guy who invented internet ramen like i eat a lot of prepackaged food and i'm great at it that's one of the things i'm great at now docker compose is the other thing i'm great at now thanks to casey but um but

No, no, it's fine. It's fine. But, but you know what it is? It's that it's not the kind of thing that I would like, but also just whatever it is, you just don't want to smell a lot of something. I'm assuming you, what do you object to is not the right. I'm not going to complain to him about it. I'm just going to complain to the world. I'm not mad at him. He's making his own meal. What could I possibly object to?

He's like, he's great. How do these meals arrive in the house? Sunday afternoons and whenever it occurs to them, they go to Trader Joe's and restock on all kinds of supplies. for the Billyverse. Why don't you go accompany them on the trip and subtly influence the selections. Oh, no, no. He also makes overnight oats a lot. It involves a lot of... Those don't smell. That's fine. No, it is, but it's fine.

No, but here you're getting at something, though, and this is always why it's a cliche, the thing about somebody who reheats fish for lunch at the office or somebody who... Burns microwave popcorn. They don't realize they're burning microwave popcorn as much as they are. I think one part of microwave popcorn in particular, if I could say, I think people have very different reactions.

to what they think burnt popcorn smells like. And that's not on them. But they do still have to have the desk right next to the copy machine by the... popcorn room and it's the worst popcorn is also filled with microplastics or something oh that's fine i love watching something about that i like that i like that old-fashioned movie butter one i get that but but but but the

It says movie butter. John, you ever buy movie butter? I understand why that product exists. John, you ever buy movie butter? It boggles my mind. I would never choose to have. It's bad. Movie popcorn tastes bad. Yeah. Okay. Well, but this episode is definitely, I think going to be called movie butter. Cause I have all kinds of things in my mind that I feel like movie butter with a, what's her name? Maria Menounos.

Yeah, you should try this new, what's it called? The Microsoft Splurge. It's their new gaming tablet. You know, she got treated for a disease and then came back from it. So I say good for her. Now, Maria Menounos, I imprinted on her, not simply because she's a pretty woman on a screen that you can't look away from, but because Maria Menounos did the pre-show for...

Pretty much every movie I saw with my kid during our prime movie watching times. For sure. Do you know what I mean? And stuff, dumb stuff like that. You have a running joke and stuff. I'm sure you've got those too. But here's the thing, whether that's Janice having to sit near the popcorn or me trying to overcome my anxiety and be able to find some solace in the world, the worst thing about a smell is its inescapability.

Right before I came to join you, I was watching the new poop documentary on Netflix about that cruise with the poop. And it's a really entertaining, it's a very entertaining movie. Is this like a norovirus thing? Do you remember the poop cruise? It was a few years back and there was this little easy cruise that was going to be Galveston to Mexico and back in I think two or three nights.

And just real easy, like not like a super fancy line, like it's like Galveston cruise lines or whatever. But they had a fire in the engine room. We find out later that they've had a big problem with fires in engine rooms. A small fire in one of the six diesel generators, but long story short, they completely lost power. They have no locomotion. They have no air conditioning. They have no refrigeration.

And saliently for what becomes the title of the program, none of the toilets work anymore. So they have to figure out what they're going to do about that and how... They don't have wireless or cellular anymore, so you can't call people. There's a satellite phone.

that one guy's in charge of. It's called Something Poop Cruise on Netflix, and you should check it out. Another example of a documentary about a thing that I would never do that I don't want to watch. John, I swear to Christ, I had a different joke that I would... working on at the time on blue sky so i didn't want to pollute it with this joke but by me i thought was like seriously like for for i did think of you but i thought of me like just how uncomfortable i am

in groups of people. And as much as I loved so many of the people on the JoCo cruise, the one cruise I've been on, my family is just not great having to go to these kinds of things. It was so stressful. And the girls like there used to be ice cream machines and we could have food. And now they just give us wet tomatoes on bread and everybody sleeps on the deck. And then you poop into a red bag and they collect that. Best part though, is when the tugboat comes to start tugging, tugging it.

And it takes it sort of off beam where it's no longer exactly upright as a ship. And if you picked up, I know you have a glass of water probably in another room right now. If you picked it up, imagine picking up that glass of water and turning it about 15 degrees. Yeah, no. Except I ain't water, John. Right. They also told him to start peeing in the shower. You pee in the shower, right?

So, you know, I feel, I mean, I kind of understand why they didn't do this, but like if it was a smaller boat and filled with, uh, with people who are used to being at sea and not the quote unquote civilians.

You can just poop in the ocean. It's right there. But obviously everyone would fall overboard if they did that on a cruise ship. 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. Does your team deal with a load-bearing spreadsheet? You know, one that still technically works, but it threatens to collapse or maybe even does collapse?

despite being incredibly important? Well, maybe get one that gets mangled when it's edited by the whole team because everybody 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 this spreadsheet so that you can collaborate.

In real time from anywhere, build drag-and-drop dashboards, 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 is for your eyes only. The secret is that Grist is a spreadsheet slash database hybrid. Gives you the benefits of a proper database without losing the interface that you and your coworkers know and love. Fun fact about me.

I love spreadsheets. I mean, I spreadsheet everywhere. I've been, I've been, I've been spreadsheeting since, since back in the day. And this is, this is a beautiful, easy to use app and it's cool that it's easy to use with your team. So, you know, you should get into spreadsheets. You know, here's another thing. You're in control of your data.

You understand what this Grist, okay? Wherever it lives, whether that's on their SaaS or on your desktop or even on your own servers, because Grist is open source and fully self-hostable. So do me a favor. Go give your load-bearing spreadsheets a break without breaking them or breaking down. You can get Grist for free at getgrist.com slash diffs. That's D-I-F-F-S.

Getgrist.com slash diffs. Join me, you know, in the spreadsheet lifestyle, which is a thing I just made up. Getgrist.com slash diffs. Our thanks to Grist for supporting reconcilable differences.

and all of RelayFM. You know, there's a thought that I had, John, and I don't say this kind of thing because I feel like I already don't get credit for how positive I try to be. But there's a lot of funny things you could say about the showers on cruise ships. We can't really get into that. Remind me to tell you later a really funny thing about a cruise ship shower. But if you're not prepared to urinate in a shower, maybe you shouldn't be doing adventure travel of any kind. If...

I understand and accept and internalize how much all this stuff working right leads to my enjoying the trip. But part of Merlin's problem with travel is I also can never get out of my mind. Please get my back on this. The things that could happen if everything doesn't go exactly right. Whether that's me forgetting to bring a cable and somebody yells at me or like I brought the wrong thing for the thing. Or I left my underwear at home. You know what I mean?

you you find out it's i would not thrive in that environment personally especially when it started to tip that would bum me out and i'm not even as weirded out by poop as most people yeah i was kind of thinking of remember when we talked about those uh Two women who are rowing across the Pacific in a boat? Yes, yes, yes. They're amazing. I still think about that a lot. People tell me they think about the...

the Waffle House marker system a lot. I think about the practice of rowing across the ocean with two people per boat with the whole idea of two hours on, two hours off where you sleep for two hours, row for two hours. It sounds like definitionally like a... Honestly, like a kind of torture experiment. Yeah. And, you know, not like for one or two days for like a month. But anyway, what was their bathroom situation? It was a bucket.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm not trying to criticize because I'm the same way. Especially if I've paid for an upgrade on a flight and I don't get it. because the flight changed or something, that's crazy frustrating. Like, you know, even if you didn't, if you got like a free upgrade or whatever, but like when you feel like, oh man, I did it. I pulled it off. I paid more. I gave him $200 more and I get like a halfway decent seat with power.

or whatever it is and if you don't get that you're kind of like that's hey or like that person got steak and I didn't like you can't help but be a little bit of a carrot a little bit because you paid for luxury I know this is a controversial point of view but I think we oughtn't be quite so simple as to say anybody who pays for an upgrade is a bad person and should suffer. But it was not particularly deluxe. It's a good first cut as a rule.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to ask yourself, you know, is this really where I want to go for my bachelorette party? They drank a lot. And then they're slipping and sliding in the hallways. At one point, they opened the bar for free. There's no ice or anything, but they let people drink as much as they wanted and it didn't work out. Sounds like a great plan. There's a phrase you hear in bars as policy and as, you know, recited to the people like, I'm sorry, sir. I'm not able to.

serve you right now, we have a strict policy against over-serving people. Which is, I think, as euphemisms go, is a pretty good one. I'm not usually a fan of euphemisms. Over-serving is a good one. John, imagine if people... who haven't even haven't been able to use their phones or, or take a dump outside of a red bag for several days, get the opportunity to drink on a cruise. Woof.

There's a lot of people that got over-served. They over-self-served. I did that when I was 14. And what was my point about that? I was tying that back to the smell. Not only is it the most evocative of our senses, well, depending on how horny you are, but honestly, I think smell is, people talk about this, like you smell something like old books or mothballs or like the way.

like an old people home smells or a hospital. Those are very, very evocative, and there's nothing worse than a smell that you can't escape. It's... That's why it's hard to be Janice. Well, you're in San Francisco in the summer. Can't you just open your windows? If I pooped in it? No, like a stinky smell in the kitchen. Fine, just open those windows, turn on the fan. Oh, no, no, no.

See, I mean, with respect, John, you're being a little bit like Alex right now, where you're taking a thing and trying to inflate it into something bigger than it is. It's funny that I sent you the Jap Che.

Do you guys have Trader Joe's there? We sure do. You got stop and shop. And they don't have parking lots here either. Oh, you got to like wait outside in a line. Yeah, the Trader Joe's thing is they find real estate with the smallest possible parking lot and then it becomes a nightmare. Oh, John. Oh, oh. John, dear me. Oh, John, are you provoking me? There's a Trader Joe's in San Francisco that is legendary. Like up near Geary.

where the parking lot will not accommodate, probably barely accommodate the staff. They're all like this. And so people line up on the street, in a lane of the street. I have secret parking strategies of where I can illegally park to go to Trader Joe's. Those are so important, John. And then you meet people who are slight about how important those kinds of things are, and that's really frustrating. I'm like that with Roots.

I got roots and I'm not a driver anymore, but I get very frustrated about how other people take roots. And honestly, the more I go to this Trader Joe's, and we go a lot because my daughter really likes it, the more I start to think that actually... The parking lot may be appropriately sized for the size of the store because inside the store, talk about keep moving, get out of the way. Yeah. It's just.

It's gridlocked with indecisive humans. You ever go to that Sunday at 11? Anytime. The aisles are too small for humans to be in. Oh, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I know. And you know what? Put a pin in that. The point of the story is that I'm not mad. And I'm not even like, I'm not upset. It's just more like, ew, this is gross. The house smells. And I just mentioned that to a couple people.

And in a way, it's kind of what Jenna Maroney might call a backdoor brag, because actually my kid's really cool and I don't care. But have you dealt with this? It sounds like you've dealt with this in the past. Somebody who either doesn't know or isn't concerned. about what they're bringing into the house smell-wise with the food.

We don't actually have that big of a smell problem here. I guess because everything- The floor is a bigger problem. The closest we have is me. I'm the closest to being a smell problem in the house because of my garlicky pasta that I make. Hope you don't like seafood.

I have to wait until my family leaves town to eat seafood. Yeah, no one in our house does that. Garlic? Is garlic yours? Yeah, garlic is my garlic-y pasta thing. It's the closest thing that we have to an objectionable smell in the house.

maybe also i'm kind of i kind of really don't like the smell of beyond burgers you know the beyond meat i really don't like that smell but but it's not that bad and it's like is it soy or it's like non-meat and i don't know what it is but it doesn't smell it doesn't smell good

This year's weird. I've cooked so many Beyond Burgers, I've resigned to it at this point. But it's not bad. It's certainly not like fish. It's not burnt popcorn. It comes and goes pretty quickly. We don't have a bad smell situation here. Good. But in the past, you've dealt with this. Yeah, I mean, sure. Burnt popcorn in the microwave. What was the one from your co-living youth?

I was referring to actually my daughter. She did a summer. She spent a summer at BU. Remember when she did that program at BU? Not the whole summer, but a couple weeks at BU. They stayed in the dorms together and everything. Yes, I do remember that. Her roommate would microwave ramen-type noodles.

Yeah. And I don't think it was overcooking them or anything, but just now she can't stand the smell of ramen noodles just because if you're in a tiny room where someone's microwaving ramen noodles over and over again, it really permeates the air and she is totally off that smell. I can I. bounce off that with, again, this is not a thing I'm mad about, but it's just an observation that I'm curious if you have this. Okay. So like I'm from Florida and I've had a lot of food from 7-Eleven.

In fact, one of my favorite things, my friend Sam and I would go out and we'd drive around in the car listening to Styx. We'd drive around in the Toyota minivan listening to Styx. And then we'd go to the 7-Eleven to hang out with the guy that worked there. And we would always get a big gulp. I would get a big gulp of Mountain Dew, the super big gulp that I would drink at about 11 or 3 or whatever it was.

And Sam and I would get those, and we'd also get what's called a biggin. Now, there's an apostrophe on the un. Big un. And that's their giant-ass frozen cheeseburger that you can make. Have you ever made... It's just a wonder you're still alive. You know, John, you have no idea.

I mean that in the nicest way, like everything else about that entire story. And you take the thing you really walk away with is the, is the burger. It's buying, buying a burger. Is it seven 11? Yes. And hanging out with the guy who worked there. He told me about how one time in New York.

jersey he cut a guy with a bottle and another time in new jersey he told me about he and his friends would go to the beach because they were from near where bruce springsteen lived you understand and what they would do is they go to the beach and smoke marijuana they would get shake weed

Just like lids. Little bits of weed. And he says, but then the next day you go back to the beach, you smoke a cigar, and it makes you high again, is what the guy said. And we'd hang out with that guy on Saturday nights. And then we'd drive home and we'd listen to Styx. Or Steely Nan. We'd also listen to a decade of Steely Nan. Is there gas in the car? Yes, there's gas in the car. Have you ever prepared a food via the microwave at a fast food place? Or at a hospital?

Maybe even work, but are you aware of the way a microwave smells after it's had 7-Eleven-style food in it? I can only imagine. I think of an institutional, an institutional, probably old school microwave. The microwaves in all of my work kitchens for 25 years, like the ghost of burnt microwave popcorn could not be exercised. It was there. all the time in every kitchen sometimes stronger than others but like

But did you ever find that it could be reactivated by a different smell? Oh, yeah, because people would, like, every few years, every few years, they'd have a sign on the wall, there's been X number of years since someone burned microwave popcorn, and you just reset the sign.

And compared to that, people microwaving fish, that's a one-day problem. Microwaving fish is a one-day problem. You're a super taster. You seem like you smell things pretty well. To our listeners then, especially to our listeners who lived in Central Florida in the... early to mid eighties, you know that there is, this could be the microwave in a hotel lobby. This were institutional microwaves, but especially, especially, especially.

The microwave's out of place like 7-Eleven, Little General, which we called Little Genital, or Circle K, or what have you. That's a very specific smell. And sometimes that is how our microwave smells. And before you respond, let me just tell you, I clean this out of our microwave constantly. I run, I run vinegar.

I do the whole thing. I do dehumidifying beads. You would not believe the gentle caresses that I have given to our microwave over the years, but still sometimes, and did you see how I picked up on that fact about the... Sometimes it smells just like it's brought back out of nowhere. Sometimes everything's fine. And you're just heating up your noodles. And then sometimes there's just a blast of biggin'.

It would be interesting to figure out what is the chemical compound that's setting you off, because I'm assuming no one is microwaving 7-Eleven hamburgers in your house. Not on the rig! No, I mean, we're not even making gross food. I told you my family eats food that's not made of food.

I'm the only person who eats food. Well, so is that 7-Eleven burger, probably. Okay, a lot of what I eat is on the, I'm sorry, forgive my saying, I hope this is not hurtful, on the spectrum of food that will or will not likely kill you. I'm much further down.

toward that right side. Like I will, I will eat some brutal stuff. I've discovered a shepherd's pie that I can get through Instacart. You get beef. You're having glass noodles with vegetables and sweet potatoes and you're like, shepherd's pie.

But the shepherd's pie, see, I heat that up in the oven because I think the experience of that is so much better. At one point, just so you know, I was walking out the door to come here. I'd opened the garage door. I was walking down our steps. I had the headphones in my ear and I had the Netflix playing on my phone.

to keep me company because I'm sad and lonely. And at one point, the head chef on the poop ship, because there had been a rumor going around that there were bathrooms that not that many people had been in yet. Supposedly, you know, it's like, it's like the green place in Matt and Fury road. I heard, I hear tell that somewhere over the horizon, there's turtles. The people ain't.

You know where there's toilets that people haven't been in? Just put your butt over the railing. Don't fall in. They have a funny infographic about that. You should watch the show. It's really good. But this fellow who's really funny, he's a fellow from India. He's really delightful. I know that just because he's talked about how when you work on a cruise ship, especially in the kitchen, you can expect to easily work 70 hours a week.

Like, it's a lot of work and a pretty wonky schedule. And apparently, according to this Russian lady that was there, a lot of people are having intercourse with each other. When things went wrong and the lights went off, that lady was with one of the engineers. He had to pull on his overalls and head out. But this fellow from India, he said, I didn't realize that it was going to be, I don't mind hard work, but 70 hours. And what he said was he'd heard tell.

Somewhere over the horizon, there might be a toilet that nobody made in yet. And so he went there and the trouble is people had made so much in this toilet. And so what they started doing. was putting down layers of toilet paper, and then other people, they would poop on top of that toilet paper. And the man, I was very specifically on the sixth step, walking down the steps of my house, when this man said it was... like a lasagna. Because in my head, I had already created the eldritch image.

of layers of poop and toilet paper. I'd already mentally, I was mentally prepared for him to like, I mean, Vianetta would be more obscure. Lasagna was exactly perfect. You gotta admire the, uh, the discipline and structure. To create such a thing? As opposed to the typical public restroom sort of wad-shaped alternative?

Yeah, but, you know, there's there's I don't know. I sometimes wonder if people are as big hearted about public toilets as I am, because, you know, I think everybody, for example, doesn't want to seem like the one who left left the mud pie. Or the smell.

And, like, there's a problem where there's, like, a line of three people. You show up for this, okay, this should be, Stanford should be doing stuff about this. You get up, you go, oh, where's the bathroom, please? Oh, you go back through the, woohoo, the big plastic swinging doors. You go back, and somewhere in the back of the bathroom, there's two people in front of you.

I wish Dan Benjamin was here for this. Let's say, let's say it's a, it's a, it's a skinny lady and a businessman and you and somebody else comes out, skinny lady comes out. And like, when you go in, you can tell that somebody left a mud pie recently. And now, let's be honest, it smells like you're the one who left the mud pie. Nobody knows who left the mud pie. It could have been the blonde. Do you follow me? But I try so hard. I make sure the seat is cleaned off.

The seat and the rim are not covered with urine. I grab a wad of paper. I clean all of that off. I close the top. I wipe all of that off. As far as the smell that I, I just want to be super clear, the smell that I did not leave or the mud pies. I can't do anything about that. And so when I walk out, I kind of make a little kind of shrug, like, what are you going to do? But I clean that toilet to the best of my abilities because I think that's what it means to be an American.

I'm not sure that's what it means to be an American, but it's very nice of you. Do you have a shortcut for describing that? Being an American? Is there a way you think? Something like, um, it's a lot. You know what? I'm sorry. It's a lot to ask. I came by it honestly. It's one of those miraculous things like accidentally conjuring an orb. I've discovered my meaning and the versatility and drive of this country. Smells can be really bad. And sometimes it's difficult. Hey, John.

You ever have to work close enough with a person who has an odor? Have you ever had to work with somebody with BO? And you know BO, right? Sometimes I've been that person. Okay, but like, there's a certain kind of like, like when I catch myself and go, woo, because my rule of thumb is, and I should put this in the document, if I can smell it, other people can smell it, is what I figured. Good rule.

Yeah, well, it's like in reconnaissance. If you can see them, they can see you. I mean, unless you're covered with Razzle Dazzle, which is, you know, Hakuna Matata. Good for you. You can fit into the background when you're near Stalingrad.

You get nothing but my respect. I'm saying sometimes I go, oh, hey, geez. Like I got to really make sure that everything's up to date, you know, and keeping all the decks wiped down. I'm talking about the thing where they smell so much that it's almost like urine. There's a lady who used to work, God bless her, a lady used to work at the toy store in West Portal that my kid got all our Thomas the Tank Engine stuff at. She was nice enough, but every time she swept by.

It was like a little zephyr, a zephyr of ammonia every time she went by. You ever work with somebody who has that kind of BO, John? Worked with? No. Yes. interesting okay i'll stop you there thank you but you know you know there's a difference you know there's a difference like we have mutual friends that are sweet people and you're like oh man like it's rough like

you're there and it's, it's bad, you know? And you're like, you ever have to, have you ever tried to deal with that? Have you ever been dealt with about that? No, I just I mostly just endure or avoid it. Like when I had my roommate, like it was obviously like a health issue thing with my roommate. So I never complained about it or just it wasn't nice to be in there. And when it was smelly health issues, he found it particularly challenging to stay.

You know, it's like the character in Slaughterhouse-Five, Roland Weary. And I believe what Kervonigat said about Roland Weary was that no matter how much he washed, he still smelled like bacon. I wish someone smelled like bacon, but yeah. Now that's a nice way to wake up. That would be a nice way to wake up.

The thing about my smelly roommate was he was constantly showering. He was doing everything he could. Like it was not his fault. And so I'd never said anything bad about him or it was just, it was what it was, you know? So I just try to, you know. Be as accommodating as possible and then get a single next year. That's probably mostly the show. Isn't it? Sure. That was funny, right? Wasn't that good?

i mean it's it's weird and we didn't hit hit our items but actually what you know we're we're barely at an hour i can throw this one in just towards the end oh no that'd be fantastic no keep this in too my only request would be we'll keep this in

You understand? Did you see I changed my icon for you? Did you see that? No, I didn't see that. What am I looking for? Did you get that in? I didn't see an icon for you. How small your window is in Zoom. Yeah, it's too small. I don't want to make it, but let's see. It's okay. It's okay. It's the captain who got the award at the party. Wasn't that guy great? All right. All I ask is that I have an opportunity to urinate and get another seltzer.

And I think our listeners shouldn't have to listen through that part. What do you think? You need to do that now? I don't know if I need to do it now. I'd like to do it now. Is this a test? Jim will fix it and put in some soothing music here. Don't say Jim will fix it. Do you know what Jim will fix it is? No. Really?

Okay, you got to be careful. It's like when you say nonce. You know, nonce is a kind of verse type. Yeah, I know that one. Yeah. Yeah. Jim Will Fix It was that Jimmy Savile guy on BBC. Oh, I didn't know that. Sorry. Jim Will Fix It, he would put a button on the kids. Jim, please insert some music here. Hello. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. It's Reconcilable Differences.

It's all the same episode. That's right. We're still not even to the after show part. I know. I'm having fun. I'm having fun. So last week. I think a lot of people are finally starting to accept and understand that we are a results based Program? Results-oriented, yes. Results-oriented, yeah, yeah. No, I'm sorry, I get confused. I keep reusing the mission statement when I eat ribs. I apologize. We are people-centric. We are mission-first.

Mission focused. Mission focused. We're energy independent. And we're results oriented. Last week, I talked about my camping results. I put more photos on the internet. I don't know if you saw. You could see the stars. It was so beautiful. and suggested that people check out the auto camp. And so I had vacation results, and you had prom results, but it looks like, John, you've got another set of results to share with us this week.

I got graduation results. I don't know if I talked about it when my son graduated, but for some reason this one feels more momentous because it's the second and last kid. So this is the last high school graduation of my kids. And it's the little one, right? Yeah. You know, the youngest has graduated high school and the graduation ceremony. It's kind of weird. Like my son's graduation ceremony was kind of towards the tail end of COVID lockdown.

but it was it was it was supposed to be outdoors but the weather was bad so it ended up being like basically inside the gym and i remember it just being incredibly stifling and i remember like one of my uh Some other parent that I knew had one of those CO2 measurement devices that everyone bought around lockdown time. Remember that? You mean the thing that would tell you what your blood oxygen level is? No, it tells you what that is. Or just in the air.

It tells you how much CO2. Oh, God, what a terrifying instrument to have. What PPM of CO2 is it? Everyone had one of these. It was some kind of like maker type Arduino thing. We just found out this one only goes up to three Ronkins. Yeah, right, exactly. That was just a max on the device. Anyway, I just remember being in an incredibly hot gym and watching that device tick up past 1,000, past 2,000, thinking like, I have to blow the tanks, John.

Yeah, so that was that. Alert, alert! This year, I was like, well, we're not in lockdown anymore, and the weather seems nice, so maybe it'll be outside. But no, it was in the same gym, but I think they... It didn't look... I mean, the lighting was not very flattering.

yeah it was a pretty dark gym and but they must have got the air conditioning and the like the air filtration stuff better because it was not stifling it was not hot it was not stifling oh good good good it took so long but there's a lot of kids I just heard. So I still have another imprinting for me. And to call this a trauma is a little silly. I would instead maybe call it something I absolutely still remember hating was I had to go.

I think it was at Xavier High School in Cincinnati in about 1975. My mom and I went to a friend's kid's graduation. And, John, it was like election night. Remember election night where there's nothing else on TV and everything sucks? It was just a dark auditorium where people I didn't know were walking slowly.

And it felt like it took like five hours. And you're not supposed to fidget and run around. Yeah, when you're a kid, everything takes longer. I still remember a trip I took with my parents. They had to go someplace, like do something. having to do with insurance, like life insurance or something. And the insurance building was the boringest place I'd ever been in my entire life. I still remember that trip. Because of my maternal family, whom I love.

intensely. It was very crafty. We were forever going to places like today you would call it Joanne Fabrics. Back then it was Ben Franklin or Woolworths or stuff like that. Do you remember having to go to the fabric store? As a child? No. At least the hardware store. The hardware has stuff you can sit on. But like, what are you going to do with the section called notions? At least there's something there. The insurance place, there's nothing. Was it just a waiting room?

It was just a building where people do insurance stuff. So there was like chairs and offices. But the thing is, okay, if it was like, I'm asking, is it like different from like, say, a severance building? like a big hospital type thing where you could like at least run around. If it's just a series of little Warren's hallways and each hallway had doors. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's wearing a suit.

And also those environments already, no matter what, make me stressed out. I get very stressed out. They smell like old burnt coffee. Of course. And the popcorn. No, no popcorn back then. No microwaves. This is pre-microwave. That's true.

But you went, and despite... I'm glad it wasn't hot. I was going to say that on Your Daily Lex, which is a podcast that I listen to by Lex Friedman, not that one, a different one. He was talking about going to his son's middle school graduation and they had an announcement that said, we're going to read these people's names. We want to get you out here quickly. So do not applaud after each person's name will have designated applause. Good luck.

Because they wanted to read the names fast. All it takes is one person. And they're like, oh, screw that. I'm going to be cheering for Janine. They want to read the names one after the other with no pauses, which gets you through it faster.

And what's the point? What is the point of doing that? If you can't, if someone applauds at John Smith, no one will hear the next name. So it'll be John Smith and it'll be Jane Doe and you won't hear it because someone's clapping and no one heard. Once again, you're living in someone's alphabetical shadow. Yeah. Anyway.

Um, in this graduation, uh, they did not do that and they should have because they read each person's name and then everyone applauded. And let me tell you, after like an hour and a half, two hours of applauding after everyone's names, everyone's hands are tired. How many are we talking about?

200, 400? I don't actually know. It seemed like a lot. It was definitely more than 400. Maybe it was exactly 400. Anyway, it seemed like a lot. 400 is so much. I mean, 100, if you really think about it, 100 is so much. And you're doing stuff like, at least in my case, I'd always be, this is so sinful for me to admit, but if there were events like this, whether that was sanctuary, going to church on Sunday or...

things like this, or, you know, I would always just be, or going to the symphony, I'm so humiliated to say, I would always be looking at the program and trying to figure out like, are we halfway there yet? Are we like, oh, and this one, or like, okay, they, this is out of order and they changed that. But like, does that mean we're close to the end? And you're like, oh, you see like offering and you're like, oh, come on, come on, come on, let's get through this. Because you're not there.

You're not there. You are at best there for, on some level, up to a dozen people. There's no way. I mean, you're there for your family. You're there for your kid. Maybe you're there for your kid's friends. But in no way are you interested in what's happening with hundreds of people who are having one of the biggest days in their life. Yeah, more than 400, I think, because I'm just counting up the chairs.

But yeah, there was applause breaks between each one for people to go woo and yay and do all the things. So. That made it take way longer. And of course, you're just waiting for the one person's name, but it was fine. I was so happy that the temperature was controlled, that the air seemed to be circulating. I've always been disappointed by the applause my kid gets. Always disappointed.

The only downside was that we were on bleachers, so you're on a hard plastic seat with no back for two hours. Yeah, I mean, you were basically in basketball bleachers, it looked like. Yeah, that's what it is. I mean, it's just a gem. My parents came out for it, too. They got the designated old people who need to see with a backseat. So it was good for them. Oh, nice. I'm sure they're also bored out of their minds. That's that. Yeah.

I had to call and say, Hey, my, you know, my mom can't see. Yeah. Mom is legally blind. Uh, and so, and she can't, they can't go up and down. She's been healthy her whole life, but she still can't see very well. Yeah. So, uh.

They did that, the whole reading of the, and the other thing is that's a challenging environment. It's so boring. And it's, John, but it's, is it alphabetical? Yeah. Because honestly, you're not, you're not giving me any credit for this, but isn't part of it the like, oh my God, the M's take so long. And you're like, okay, B-E. Well, it was alphabetical by house. You mean like Gryffindor? Yeah, exactly. It's four houses. Is that right? Yeah. I don't understand the joke.

They have houses in our high school. Four houses. What'd that mean? It's just like it does in Harry Potter. They divide the class up into four houses. I mean, you know what that reminds me of a little bit is in military school. I was in the junior high version where everything sixth through eighth grade was all in one company called fourth company. And we had the purple shirts, but everybody from.

ninth grade and up was in one of three other companies. First company, second company, third company. You follow? So like all the high school kids were first company, second company, third company. We were fourth company. But there was so much like overblown competition between first through third company.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Like where you would be like with Gryffindor probably. It's like color war as it can. But like, but here's the thing. Like if you're in, like they just put you in this group arbitrarily.

see also goals and accomplishments like now you're in you're in second company oh man second company's not the good one you like find out like oh no but like harding is gonna get this promotion and he's gonna be our guide on and that's gonna be really cool and that'll raise the status

of Second Company, because now we've got somebody cool, whereas you've got Guerra over here in First Company, who's this test-turned-Latino guy that's like 6'8", and he's got a cool sword. You know what I'm saying? But it becomes a competition. It can't help but be a competition. They do a little bit of that.

The theory behind the houses is to try to take a large class and make it fewer smaller by making smaller cohorts of people. And those, the houses have like essentially homeroom with only other people from that house. Do you guys call it homeroom or do they call it something else? No, they call it advisory. Ours is called, my God, John, ours is called advisory. And every time he says it, which he said hundreds of times, I'm like, that's like homeroom, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what are you doing there? Well, it is, but it isn't. But yeah, but they stay in their house for the whole year. So they did house alphabetically. There's four houses. Each house goes one house alphabetically to a second house. So how are they called? Sorry. How are they called or named?

We have, let me see, the Wheeler House, which is what my daughter was in. Yeah, I mean, if you're uncomfortable saying, just tell me. Goodwin or Godwin? I think Goodwin. Okay, so they're named after, like, benefactors, probably? I have no idea what they're named after. Probably people, yeah. Say it again. You get Godwin. I got to look it up now. Yeah. Godwin Wheeler. Wheeler. I know Godwin's law. I don't know Wheeler's law.

Let's see. What were the other two? Both my kids were in Wheeler, so I don't remember. Cutler and Goldrick. There you go. That's them. Are there some that are seen as more posh or... Well, they do have a house competition thing, but honestly the kids aren't super into it. This is a school that also doesn't do class rank. The house competition thing is very Gen X. You can tell. That's why J.K. Rowling likes it. It's like us having what they used to call field day.

where all the kids in different classes remember field day did you know i had the elementary school record in standing long jump i did not know that did you know fourth grade i had the the the ann weigle elementary school uh record If they had records in elementary school for sit-ups during the president's physical fitness test, I would have been up there on that one. Can you do a lot? I'm sorry, back then. When I was a kid, I could do... How many? Could you do 10?

No, how many setups could you do in 60 seconds? It was part of the president's physical fitness test, right? Oh my God, six. No, in 60 seconds. Six. No, when I was a kid, you'd have someone else holding your feet. Well, that must have looked obscene. If you did more than that, you would have been moving too fast. And then you had to cross your arms over your chest. I understand, John. I'm going on Sora tonight, and I will be making this.

You doing fast setups is a thing I will be making tonight. Yeah. Anyway, I could do... I could push up to 80. Whoa! Your core is insane! Mid-70s, high-70s, maybe reaching 80 once or twice. I did the standing long jump. I jumped six feet, two inches. Yeah, there you go. Standing long jump. Anyway, there's no competition these days. My kids' high school doesn't even do class rank to stop the kids from killing each other in competition. Thank you.

Yes. So they don't do like a valedictorian. Somebody saw Heathers. They do not publish a class rank at all. Yes. It just, it takes that, it's kind of like what people say about school uniforms. It like takes away the competition of outfits or whatever. Except for the shoes.

yeah well the shoes i mean like how how clean are your clothes and how are your shoes don't get me started on shoes but but like in terms of like applying to colleges like there's no valedictorian from our school right so that kind of but but you know colleges know about that anyway

So anyway, there is some competition. If you're Hufflepuff and you apply to read, you're probably in good shape. So I had to listen through all the names and that was fine. I couldn't take good photos because I was far away in the bleachers and the lighting was terrible, but I did what I could.

uh it was also very late in the day i don't know if you saw what time those pictures i sent you were like but it was like i think a graduation started i think of those kinds of things being on a saturday at like 11 and yeah it was like on a tuesday at 5 p.m for you yeah right right right

anyway um but the good thing about that was afterwards well afterwards everybody left they had pretty good system for getting everybody in but one time came time to get everybody out the teachers got out and the students mostly got out but then when the parents tried to get out You make it sound like an active shooter. It was basically the end scene from Carrie, but without the fire. Oh.

That's still a good movie. You know, even without the fire, that'd still be a pretty good movie. Well, the problem was, let's talk about keep moving, get out of the way. Yes. As the parents exited the gymnasium.

They met their students two feet away from the door. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Keep moving. No, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. That's not what this is. John, you know, we call it here. I got to put this in the document. That's an active working area. This is not a place where we store things like relationships. to have people from the school with essentially cattle prods saying, keep moving. Keep moving. John, it's a human strode. Don't stop here. Human strode.

This is supposed to be a road and you're treating it like a street. Yeah. So they basically clog the exits with people. It took me so long to get out of that building. What about you? Did your parents get out early? They were also in the clog with us, but it was fine. But once we got out, we had a prearranged a meeting area, which was good because the Wi-Fi was down. We do that. There's no cell signal in high school because.

Nimbism. We've got, John, when we went to the protest, I not only had a plan A, I had a plan B, and I had a fallback. A fail safe. If nothing happens and we don't contact each other within one hour, here's what to do next. Which everyone probably forgot except for you.

Oh, my God. I tried to show them. I had a tutorial for how to lock your phone in your pocket without taking it out. And there was no gratitude. I bet they didn't even politely nod when you showed it to them. They just looked away and forgot immediately. Oh, no. They barely looked up at all. We all wore a band.

bandanas because of gas. We were worried about gas. So I'll send you a photo of them on the train. They're terrible people. Once we all got out, the gymnasium emptied out onto the athletic field. But you shouldn't be pausing. You should be able to have a moment. You've seen Satan.

anything, go out to some grassy area with trees and take some photos with Diane Court. Don't do it on the road, do it on the street. Mere feet away from the exit was an opening and a fence and then green fields as far as the eye can see. That's how people die. My cousin Bob and my cousin Dave were at the Who concert in 1979 in Cincinnati where the doors opened in.

You know what I'm saying? Let's learn some lessons from this. And you get the memory that you need, but you need to move over to the memory staging area because this is an active working area. Yeah, so we eventually did make it out to the green fields. And the good thing about a graduation that lasts several hours and starts at 5 p.m. is that guess what time it is when it ends? Bed? Golden hour. Oh, so that must, if you get the light right, I bet a lot of people, because...

John, people still shoot into the sun all the time. Oh, yeah. People had no idea what they were doing. They were trying. It literally empties out into the parking lot. And they were like, this is the best place to take the picture. Four feet from the door that we just came through in the parking lot.

Let's all gather up, circle around each other. Here's my rule of thumb on this. Well, my general rule of thumb that every photographer has learned since daguerreotypes is keep the light behind you. If you're having trouble seeing people's eyes. when you're framing the shot ask yourself why there's one reason you can't see their eyes which is they're shielding them or closing them

because you did keep the light behind you, but it's too bright, so consider an angle. And the other one is you can't see it because it's too dark. You can't see it because you shot with the sun behind them, and they look like fat silhouettes. That's no way to remember it.

I, I, if you're, I'm, you got some, sometimes you got advanced techniques. Take a look at what I just sent you here. Okay. All right. That's what I'm talking about. Oh, see, that's what they call a hair light. Oh, she's so pretty. John, I love this photo. That's like, you know, that's what I remember during the COVID. I learned about hair lights. I learned that to do a good three camera shot. Why is my phone on that? You got to have, she looks so pretty.

As one of my, one of my daughter's friends, I was, I was mad with power because like they're all out there. They didn't know that they look like this, but I knew. And I was like, I'm, I'm grandpa. Oh, and you know, and like John, I don't even say it anymore.

never say anymore, but I, and I realized I don't need them to care about the same things that I do, but like, there are times where I actually find myself saying to them, admitting to them. I was like, you're going to be really glad I took this photo someday.

Like, not today. Like, I understand. Like, today, you just think you look fat and have zits. But you're going to be so happy this photo exists. Or somebody in your life, when you meet somebody special and you show them this photo, look at this beautiful girl. Oh, man. See, John, you're doing the Lord's work. Oh, look at that. Is that her on the right? Yeah. She's so pretty. Oh, that girl in the middle. What a great group. Oh, I bet these girls are good in school.

Yeah. Yeah, you did the right thing. I'm sorry, this is a podcast and I'm sending Marilyn pictures that we're not going to publish. What are you shooting here? My daughter's friends and everything. What's your camera?

this is my uh not everybody listens to atp john yeah um it's the uh sony a7 uh really old one and you can get good lenses on that right it's a fairly expensive zoom lens on it i would have i had brought my prime lens with anybody didn't have time to change lenses but point is once we got out to the green field

It was a field day for me, huh? I got them all lining up. They're terrible at posing. They're the worst posers ever. Did you bring one lens for this? It's my everyday lens. It's my very expensive one everyday lens that is very flexible. for taking pictures of people that you're fairly near. What's the range? It's 24 to 70, I think. Oh, that's a great walk-around lens. Yeah, it covers most normal distances.

And so I took tons of pictures of them on the green field at golden hour. And, you know, that was the, that was the, the payoff that I got. One thing I did notice is that a lot of the students were smoking cigars, which was, I don't know. What? Most of these kids don't smoke. It's not like when we were in high school. No, but a cigar in the same way that you just had a baby kind of cigar. Like a celebratory. Like a joke cigar.

I mean, they all, they all smoke pot and stuff, but that's not, but cigar, like it was so smelly. They're so smelly and stinky. I hate, I know you like them. I hate them. No, no, no, no. Oh no. John, come on. The thing is the person eating the popcorn doesn't know how bad it smells. You know what I'm saying? No, no, they're real bad. They're real bad. And the associations are bad. That's interesting. They're having fun with it.

but you did a good job with this, John. These are so pretty. Yeah. Her, her and her friends like discovered that I'm a photographer and were asking me to take a pictures of their family and stuff. So I took pictures of other people. So good. And you're really working the backlight really well here. There's still a lot of detail in the people. And because you fuzzed out the background and done it at an angle, you're not getting creamed by the backlighting. That's so beautiful.

A lot of pictures of people that I just realized I took all these pictures of people who are not in my family. I can barely post pictures of people who are in my family. I have to get special approval. Oh, I've heard. Yes, yes, yes. That's fine. But the people who are not in my family, I can't post at all. But I got a lot of good pictures and I enjoyed it.

And in terms of the graduation results of this being the last high school kid, like I'm really thinking a lot about when I will be able to turn off all of the faucets of information from my kids high school.

Because I had two kids go through the same high school. So when the first one graduated, nothing got turned off. But there's still some, there's stuff that still might be relevant. They email me, they text me. The only reason I'm staying in now is like for like final transcripts to be sent to, to colleges and stuff. You know what I mean? For sure. But as soon as that happens.

I need to, like, you know, type stop in all the text chats, log out of ParentSquare, never log back in, unsubscribe from all the million lists. Oh, man. Parent, the ParentSquare parent view. Like, I don't know. These wonky apps. When you told me about the thing where you were trying to sign up for those sessions for her and having trouble logging in and all that, I just always think about these apps and the like.

how half-assed the entire thing is. I'm not going to miss that. It feels like having a job. You know, I want Marco to have to, wouldn't you be honest, wouldn't you kind of like Marco to have to use apps like these? No. Because Mucker's like, oh, I'm just going to buy a restaurant and build my own island app. And it's like, yeah, yeah. But like the problem is you still have not had your ass kicked enough. I know you've been – we've all had hard times, but –

Marco needs his ass kicked a little bit more. He doesn't. His ass is fine. Do you really think so? Do you think because Ohio's rough, right? You feel like he made his bones back there? To quote Matthew Cuthbert, Merlin. We got no call to raise her as cheerless as we was. We got no call to raise her as cheerless as we was. That's right. That's Matthew Cuthbert. Well, you know what Flannery O'Connor said? Flannery O'Connor said, the misfit says, she'd have been a good woman.

If it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. Yeah. Do another one. Do another one. I was trying to say that was apt. It was basically saying just because you suffer doesn't mean Marilyn has to suffer. I believe in America.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, how did, in as much as you're comfortable saying, how did she, how does she feel about the day in general? Like, not just the like, oh, I got a thing, but like. You know, I prefer to think of it more as like, you know, the experience of the day. Like how did it, you know what I mean? How did it, did she handle it okay? Was she satisfied with how it went?

yeah i mean they're all they're all smiles during the pictures having fun with all her friends but i mean it feels there's a certain finality and like a weirdness it's like you know i used to i've talked about this before but that feeling of like going to parents night with my mom at school and being in Miss LaFive's class at like, you know, seven o'clock and we can show people our lockers and walk around and go to the bathroom when we want, like felt very, very anarchistic in 10th grade.

Did she is she making the beginnings of the break? Yeah, I think I think so. Like she's still doing like she's got. A bunch of stuff that she wants to do for the summer, like she already took a trip with my wife to Europe that she insisted on having. I don't know how she finagled this, but she's like, of course, after I graduate high school, we'll take him into Europe. And it's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. But she like remembered and held us to it.

And so Tina took her there? Yeah, those two are traveling buddies. Do you think she's a gambler? I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Tina's a compulsive degenerate gambler. Do you think she goes to Monica or something? No, she just likes to travel way more than I do. I know, I know, but I think that becomes...

I wouldn't call it, it's not an intervention, but on some level, don't you start to wonder if she's like going out and buying milk in other countries? You know what I mean? Like going and checking in at some of these places? Because she loves that Pokemon. She didn't catch a lot of European Pokemon, but yeah, I've been trying to encourage them to take pictures with their camera phones, and then I edit them back here at home, and so I...

I salvaged a couple of reasonable pictures from the scant number that they took with their phones. And these are another example. I'm sorry you folks can't see this. These are wonderful photos of John's beautiful daughter with different people. They do that thing. They're just like good random photos. I know everybody knows this, but here's another thing is like, take photos before you take the photo.

Like, it's so useful to make a big deal. Start by going, okay, you guys, big group photo. Everybody get together. Like, ah, I don't want to do a group photo. The second you've announced there's going to be a group photo, start. quickly snapping photos of people just walking around. And obviously, when you take the group photo, if you take the group photo, take five to seven of them. But then also get them when things break up. Like, get people, like...

Pausing like a John Singer Sargent painting. Somebody pausing with a hand on somebody else's shoulder or like just smiling openly. Those are the best photos. Those group photos are bull****. But like getting those candids like these, John. with motion the fourth to the last one where they're looking at like a tablet it looks like that's their uh that's their uh what do you call it diploma why is it so little that's how big it is i don't know is this a peter jackson thing

It looks like they're looking at a Kindle. Yeah, that's how big their diplomas are. You sure this is real? Because Kate's hands are encompassing a larger area. No, they all posted them. So she's holding up her diploma.

Her diploma is like the size of something you get from the Kiwanis for showing up for something. They get bigger when you go to college, I guess. That's true. That's true. What do you think when you see people put their graduations on the wall? How do you feel about that? I always feel like it's a little like...

Like when doctors do it, you're like a fine, you're a doctor. I'm in the room right now with my college degrees on the wall behind me and my wife's undergraduate and master's degree are also on the wall behind me. Okay. So I sent you another picture of this, how big the diplomas are. You can zoom in on them if you want to see.

These two in this photo are twins, by the way. Okay, but can you see the size of these diplomas that it's asking? They seem normal to me. Okay, that's... How big was your high school diploma? This looks, it doesn't, it's not, no offense. I'm sure the education was terrific for all the houses, but this is the size of something that reminds you that you need to change your oil or, or this, this is like the magnet someone sends you.

The emergency magnet for your water heater, it's smaller than that. It's fine. It's just fine. It came with an attractive little case with embossed letters on it. Can I do one last thing? Just if I may. This is terrific. Did I say I'm trying to move my family to A5 paper? Have I told you about that? Stop that. A5 paper?

Yeah. Have you ever done A5? A4 is the one that's like eight and a half by 11, but it's too tall. That's too big. No, but I've been using, I didn't realize for a long time, overtly, that my favorite notebook, this Japanese notebook, is technically an A5 notebook.

So I've been using A5 for years and have all those notebooks. I didn't even realize it. I've discovered A5 and it's the perfect size for things. And I got to tell you, if anybody out there lives in one of those countries with normal paper sizes. This diploma, these children, these beautiful, beautiful, God made them, these beautiful children, it's basically the size of an A5 piece of paper. It's basically the size of a public notice.

It's fine. Shouldn't it be bigger? Shouldn't it be more like A4? I think it's fine. I think it's fine. It gives you something to aspire to. When you go to college, it'll get bigger. And they use the German black letter, like a gothic font.

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, that's the problem with the lighting is a lot of the text on the diplomas got washed out. But, you know, you got to expose for the faces, not the diplomas. Did you notice how German these names are? Yeah. Did you notice the twins have the same middle name? Isn't that cute? It's super cute, but I'm worried about that amount of Black Letter Gothic on two A5s in that same house for now. You know, that's the kind of thing at Nuremberg they bring up.

These are really, really beautiful kids. And Golden Hour. My weather app, Carrot, tells me when Golden Hour is. And more importantly... Magic Hour, I guess they would call it in movie business. Well... Do you ever look in Carrot and scroll all the way down? No, I don't use Carrot. Okay. If you scroll all the way down in Carrot, it'll tell you how good your view of the sky will be tonight. I look at that every day. And then right above that is the thing that shows you all the golds and blues.

like when the different golden blue times happen really good app oh this is such a sweet photo see my family won't be photographed they hate it can you tell where this is just from looking at the picture without looking at location cafe The only, oh, wait. Oh. Okay, sorry. The guy at the next table, that's the tell, right? That's right. That's why I sent it. This looks like it's in Paris. That's right.

Is there any chance that this is a cafe in Paris? Look how cute they are. They're eating a croissant. I love these too. They must have had so much fun. Little round table outdoors on the street. But to their left is someone sitting at a table two feet from them. With some fancy French cigarettes. Smoking a cigarette like it's 1982. This is... I am not allowed to take pictures of my family anymore. So I have to take creep photos.

That's us on the way to the protest. You can't tell because I'm not in the photo. Were you on the floor when you took the photo? No, but I believe that you need to get on the floor. It's like an upskirt shot of your own family. That's not a problem. That's not unwholesome. What do you think of the Red Sox hat? You like that? I don't know. That's confusing to me. What's the deal with that? Oh, it's a team in Boston, Massachusetts that plays baseball. Yeah, but why is your son wearing it?

Well, I mean, he went to a Red Sox game. Oh, is it like a Rhode Island thing for your wife? Yeah. I mean, they went to Fenway, right? With the green monster and whatnot. I still feel like this is lovely. I kept asking them about the green monster. A little bit of a poser with that hat on in San Francisco. No, but did I send you the promposal?

The promposal? Yeah, yeah. And who was he in the promposal? I don't remember anymore. Boston Rob. Boston Rob proposing to Amber in the promposal. This is all really complicated. We didn't need the bandanas in the end. It worked out okay. What's the next step for you guys? I mean, will she be around for the summer? Yeah, well, so she's still trying her hardest to die. um, before technically leaving the house. So she'll be going on.

like she did last summer, she'll be going on a trip with a bunch of these friends that you saw in this photos. They, they've gone to trip up to Maine and stay in one of their, their parents' houses. And there's a chance that she does that. She might die. Is that right? Yeah. Cause it's a long car trip and she doesn't know how to drive on the highway.

Oh, and that's just what you know about. Yeah, hours away from civilization. But, like, you know, if you follow me, like, you know that that's already a problem. But then it's like Donald Rumsfeld says, then you also got the unknown unknowns. Yeah.

And last year they took the bus, which I'm like, fine, that's probably safer than you driving, but they don't want to take the bus this time because they need another car. And normally she doesn't take her car because she's the only one who can drive her car because all her cars are stick shift.

And so she won't be able to share the driving. So she's going to take her friend's car so they could share driving and shifts as they go up there. But if they can't, she'll be in her car and she'll be driving the hallway. You know what you should do? Tell them to get a Sharpie and write their social security number on their arm.

on the left arm you know so i worry see if she can make it to freshman year of college alive but we're almost there you always have the photos in that tiny tiny diploma sorry graduation It's appropriately sized.