Episode description

TOPIC: You can't perfect life.

This week opens with the carnage of today's Amazon S3 problems and why so much of the internet seems broken. A brief history of outage monitoring is provided and a praxis for improving the process is proposed.

Dan and Merlin debate what can be learned from how kids and other non-olds use technology "wrong." Should they be learning from us or should we be learning from them?

This leads to some deeper ruminations on how we can choose to get better at doubting our own perceptions and correcting our own weird thinking. The future still isn't here yet—and that's kinda what makes it the future.

After some discussion of mental health and creativity, the show pivots into yet more discussion of emerging technology, and how it consistently scares the crap out of people until…it just doesn't.

Dan and Merlin wrap by answering a listener's question about whether it's better to be good at writing or at speaking.

Links for this episode:

• Ungainly X-Mann Meetup #16 — Merlin Mann
  MERLIN MANN (Back to Work, Roderick on the Line, Reconcilable Differences, Do By Friday, You Look Nice Today, et al.) invites you to drop by Two Cats Comics on the evening of Thursday, April 27th to hang out, talk about comics, and just say, “Hi.” It's free and it's fun.
• Ep. 179: The Battle for Tech Supremacy With Ben Thompson by The Bill Simmons Podcast | Free Listening on SoundCloud
  
• Pixies - Wikipedia
  
• 4CP
  
• This obscure desire for beauty
  
• Amazon AWS S3 outage is breaking things for a lot of websites and apps | TechCrunch
  
• Politics and the English Language - Wikipedia
  
• George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
  
• 'River On Fire' Explores Genius, Madness And The Poetry Of Robert Lowell : NPR
  Kay Redfield Jamison's new book describes how Lowell's manic-depressive illness influenced his life and work. "His manias tended to lead him into writing a fresh kind of poetry," she says.
• Bipolar And Creativity: A Study Of Poet Robert Lowell — Fresh Air — Overcast
  Author Kay Redfield Jamison’s new book describes how Lowell’s manic-depressive illness influenced his life and work. “His manias tended to lead him into writing a fresh kind of poetry,” she says. Lloyd Schwartz reviews a reissue of ‘Chimes At Midnight’ starring Orson Welles, and jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album from saxophonist Miguel Zenón.delete
• Netflix - instantwatcher - The Eighties / Season 1
  
• The Eighties | Netflix
  
• Pessimists Archive (@PessimistsArc) | Twitter
  
• The Walkman by PessimistsArc | Pessimists Arc | Free Listening on SoundCloud
  Travel back to the 80s with us, where the portable cassette player was accused of turning people into “wind-up non-humans,” laws were passed to keep them on the streets, and one New Jersey man risked jail time for his right to walk with headphones.
• shopgoodwill.com - Welcome
  
• 5by5 | Back to Work #38: Sorry. You Can't Have a Candle.
  On improving presentation culture.Dan and Merlin talk about bombing the deck, advancing the slides, and striving to improve the self-perpetuating bad culture of presentations.Slide?!?
• Steve Martin's Dirty Trick to Play on a 3-Year Old Kid - YouTube
  
• Origins of "May I mambo dogface on the banana patch?" - Straight Dope Message Board
  
• Urban Dictionary: Mambo dogface to the banana patch?
  
• Amazon S3 Outage 2017: how to watch it online - The Verge
  
• They Might Be Giants "Dr. Worm" - YouTube
  
• Man, It's So Loud In Here-They Might be Giants - YouTube
  
• Another Day of Sun - La La Land (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - YouTube
  
• Waking in the Blue - Poems | Academy of American Poets
  Cock of the walk, I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey before the metal shaving mirrors, and see the shaky future grow familiar in the pinched, indigenous faces of these thoroughbred mental cases, twice my age and half my weight.

• Mott and Bow (Visit MottandBow.com and enter the code BACKTOWORK at checkout for 20% off your first purchase!)

• Blue Apron (Check out this week’s menu and get your first three meals FREE—with FREE SHIPPING—by going to BlueApron.com/backtowork.