WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.480 Hey, folks. A little news right up front here 2 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:06.720 before we get to the mail. We are in the midst of our member 3 00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:11.360 drive, and holy moly, y'all are crushing it. We still have a 4 00:00:11.360 --> 00:00:14.400 while to go to hit our goals, which we're gonna mention soon 5 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:19.815 during our member drive stream week. Please imagine that 6 00:00:19.815 --> 00:00:24.695 emblazoned on a big LED screen, perhaps surrounded by igniting 7 00:00:24.695 --> 00:00:27.815 pyrotechnics as though you are at a monster truck rally. 8 00:00:27.815 --> 00:00:30.455 Maybe Jason can pitch me down here and put a MIDI guitar solo 9 00:00:30.455 --> 00:00:30.615 in. 10 00:00:31.350 --> 00:00:35.430 Member drive stream week. That's right, 11 00:00:35.430 --> 00:00:39.190 folks. Starting at 10AM eastern on Monday, August 18 and going 12 00:00:39.190 --> 00:00:42.470 until Friday evening, August twenty second, the Neverpost 13 00:00:42.470 --> 00:00:45.655 team will be streaming. Not the entire 14 00:00:45.655 --> 00:00:47.175 time because we have families and need to eat 15 00:00:47.175 --> 00:00:48.615 food and stuff, but for a lot of that time 16 00:00:48.855 --> 00:00:52.135 Streaming. Do you wanna know how we write music 17 00:00:52.135 --> 00:00:55.015 for the show? Do you wanna see inside Georgia's closet in a 18 00:00:55.015 --> 00:00:57.360 not at all creepy way, but with, like, permission? 19 00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:59.440 Do you wanna find out what the best quote in the 20 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:05.520 world is? Do you want to see Jason play NBA Jam? He's so 21 00:01:05.520 --> 00:01:06.160 funny. 22 00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:13.275 Then join us for Member Drive Stream Week. Full 23 00:01:13.275 --> 00:01:16.395 schedule to follow. Admission is free, but you can get a bundle. 24 00:01:16.395 --> 00:01:19.835 Follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/theneverpost. 25 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:25.920 Okay. I'm not gonna lie. When I sat down to 26 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:27.920 make this topper for the mailbag, I did not expect it to 27 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:31.600 go in the direction of fake monster truck rally, but here we 28 00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:34.640 are. Member drive stream week, the week of August 18. 29 00:01:34.755 --> 00:01:37.395 Twitch.tv/theneverpost. 30 00:01:37.395 --> 00:01:40.435 Go follow us now so you get notifications when we go live. 31 00:01:40.755 --> 00:01:50.020 See you there. Friends, hello, and welcome to the Never Post 32 00:01:50.020 --> 00:01:54.580 Mailbag episode four, Dog Days twenty twenty five, in which we 33 00:01:54.580 --> 00:01:58.020 respond to listener emails, comments, voicemail, and voice 34 00:01:58.020 --> 00:02:04.340 messages about our segments. We love hearing from you. Well, 35 00:02:04.340 --> 00:02:04.820 most of you. 36 00:02:06.465 --> 00:02:08.465 You know who you are. 37 00:02:08.465 --> 00:02:09.665 You know who you are. 38 00:02:09.745 --> 00:02:12.545 Is it Mom. Please 39 00:02:13.745 --> 00:02:15.585 just kidding, mom. Love you. You send an email 40 00:02:15.585 --> 00:02:18.260 whenever you want. Do get in touch. Tell us your thoughts on 41 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:18.980 our segments. 42 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:21.380 All the ways you can get a hold of us are in the show notes. 43 00:02:21.380 --> 00:02:24.420 Drop us a line and maybe Hans will respond with some of the 44 00:02:24.420 --> 00:02:27.540 things he ate most recently at the state fair. Anything 45 00:02:27.540 --> 00:02:29.460 anything sticking out to you as a teaser? 46 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:32.020 Well, we haven't we haven't gone yet. I mean, it's 47 00:02:32.100 --> 00:02:35.325 we're gonna wait. It starts twentieth. 48 00:02:35.325 --> 00:02:35.485 So 49 00:02:35.565 --> 00:02:37.565 Oh, really? Oh, I thought it already started. 50 00:02:37.565 --> 00:02:40.045 No. Twelve days Mike, come on. It's the twelve 51 00:02:40.045 --> 00:02:41.565 days before Labor Day. 52 00:02:41.725 --> 00:02:44.205 Every Like, we all know that. We We do so. 53 00:02:44.285 --> 00:02:47.640 Know. Wait. How far in advance of the state fair 54 00:02:47.640 --> 00:02:49.080 do they publish the menu? 55 00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:52.440 Quite a while. It's a it's a big old deal. 56 00:02:52.440 --> 00:02:54.200 That's hilar okay. I had no clue. Yeah. 57 00:02:54.200 --> 00:02:56.680 Alright. Yep. I'm your host Mike Rugnetta. Joining 58 00:02:56.680 --> 00:03:01.605 me today paired with who I assume their go to characters in 59 00:03:01.605 --> 00:03:08.085 Mario Kart world are are Never Post producer Georgia Hampton. 60 00:03:09.765 --> 00:03:10.965 I'm calling Dry Bones. 61 00:03:10.965 --> 00:03:11.845 I'm gonna say Dry Bones. 62 00:03:11.845 --> 00:03:14.245 Yes. Wow. 63 00:03:14.610 --> 00:03:15.570 Got it in one? 64 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:18.370 Yes. Yes. I love tripods. Love 65 00:03:18.690 --> 00:03:21.170 and I love my little skeletal boy. 66 00:03:21.890 --> 00:03:24.690 I'm going entirely on vibe here, not like, 67 00:03:24.770 --> 00:03:25.330 Yeah. You know, 68 00:03:26.735 --> 00:03:28.975 This is more just like who each of us are as 69 00:03:28.975 --> 00:03:29.535 people. 70 00:03:29.535 --> 00:03:29.935 What a 71 00:03:30.015 --> 00:03:31.935 well, okay. We'll see how Jason responds to this 72 00:03:31.935 --> 00:03:36.495 next one. Never post executive producer, Jason Oberholzer, 73 00:03:37.295 --> 00:03:38.015 Waluigi. 74 00:03:40.610 --> 00:03:41.650 So I'm right. 75 00:03:41.890 --> 00:03:46.130 Yeah. It's either Bowser or one of the was. 76 00:03:46.210 --> 00:03:50.290 My brother-in-law is a big Bowser devotee, and I'm 77 00:03:50.290 --> 00:03:53.090 gonna say he's probably right. Bowser is actually probably the 78 00:03:53.090 --> 00:03:54.130 correct choice. 79 00:03:54.285 --> 00:03:55.965 It is. But, you know, I'll take any of the 80 00:03:55.965 --> 00:03:58.365 bad boys. I like to be a bad boy when I'm on the track. 81 00:03:59.245 --> 00:04:01.405 And finally, never post senior producer Hans 82 00:04:01.405 --> 00:04:03.485 Buto, lack it too. 83 00:04:03.485 --> 00:04:07.725 I do love to drop a spiny shell. Love it. You're not 84 00:04:07.725 --> 00:04:07.965 wrong. 85 00:04:08.590 --> 00:04:09.950 Wait, Mike. Who are you then? 86 00:04:09.950 --> 00:04:11.950 Yeah. My go to is Shy Guy. 87 00:04:11.950 --> 00:04:12.990 Nice. Yeah. Yeah. 88 00:04:12.990 --> 00:04:13.310 I'm a 89 00:04:13.310 --> 00:04:15.310 little upset. Seems like you can no longer 90 00:04:15.310 --> 00:04:19.150 pick the color of your Shy Guy, which is sad to me. Sorry, bud. 91 00:04:19.150 --> 00:04:21.470 You know what's gonna help me take my mind off of this? 92 00:04:21.470 --> 00:04:22.350 Bagging some mail. 93 00:04:23.125 --> 00:04:23.765 Okay. 94 00:04:25.445 --> 00:04:28.325 Okay. Kick us off. We wanna set the mood. We wanna 95 00:04:28.325 --> 00:04:32.485 settle us into kind of the vibe of the day. And let's see let's 96 00:04:32.485 --> 00:04:35.845 see if we can do this with Michael Bukino, who sent us this 97 00:04:35.845 --> 00:04:39.830 poem saying that has been rattling around in their head on 98 00:04:39.830 --> 00:04:41.350 long bike rides around. 99 00:04:41.590 --> 00:04:43.590 Well, I'll let you guess where. 100 00:04:44.150 --> 00:04:46.790 The bugs in my beard I bring back from my bike ride are 101 00:04:46.790 --> 00:04:49.785 just souvenirs from failed attempt flybys, buzzing and 102 00:04:49.785 --> 00:04:52.425 bumping and flipping and flapping, jittering, jumping, 103 00:04:52.425 --> 00:04:56.185 slithering, slapping. One proboscis, two antennae, 6,000 104 00:04:56.185 --> 00:04:59.865 or so limbs, shiny shells, wondrous wings, and a slimy 105 00:04:59.865 --> 00:05:03.305 trail of mucin. Each camouflage colorful, cute, creepy crawly 106 00:05:03.305 --> 00:05:06.020 hitching a lift on the fuzzy face trolley can look like a lot 107 00:05:06.020 --> 00:05:08.900 at the end of my hall, but these little critters don't bug me at 108 00:05:08.900 --> 00:05:09.380 all. 109 00:05:11.220 --> 00:05:12.820 Bug beard. Bug beard. 110 00:05:12.820 --> 00:05:16.820 Bug beard. Bug beard. Michael. So good. Is that 111 00:05:16.820 --> 00:05:18.580 fuzzy face trolley? What's that? 112 00:05:19.700 --> 00:05:21.355 Into it. Good mood set. 113 00:05:21.355 --> 00:05:23.435 That's I feel like we're ready to go. 114 00:05:23.435 --> 00:05:25.115 Okay. Let's bring it right down. 115 00:05:26.715 --> 00:05:27.995 I don't get too excited. 116 00:05:30.155 --> 00:05:33.570 So we got a few comments about AI Mike, who 117 00:05:33.570 --> 00:05:36.610 everybody will remember took over for me while I was on 118 00:05:36.610 --> 00:05:42.290 vacation. One thing regarding AI Mike that we, I guess, did not 119 00:05:42.290 --> 00:05:47.935 make clear enough is that Jason wrote the words. Yes. 120 00:05:47.935 --> 00:05:49.695 I am at fault. I did it. 121 00:05:49.695 --> 00:05:52.175 There were some folks who were concerned that 122 00:05:52.175 --> 00:05:56.415 maybe we had used an LLM. We didn't. Jason wrote it. It was a 123 00:05:56.415 --> 00:05:57.215 script. Mhmm. 124 00:05:57.215 --> 00:06:00.735 I also like I don't know how much LLM output you've seen, but 125 00:06:00.735 --> 00:06:04.190 I encounter a fair amount of it online now. And I don't think I 126 00:06:04.190 --> 00:06:07.230 think Jason's far funnier than a than a than a computer. 127 00:06:07.230 --> 00:06:11.310 I love to clear a low bar. The 128 00:06:14.510 --> 00:06:18.575 voice of AI Mike was AI generated based on, I 129 00:06:18.575 --> 00:06:22.415 assume, me reading the news. Hans, is that true? 130 00:06:23.135 --> 00:06:26.735 You know what? It's actually a model made of you 131 00:06:26.735 --> 00:06:32.510 reading copy for the first pilot segment that we ever did that no 132 00:06:32.510 --> 00:06:33.950 one but us has ever heard. 133 00:06:34.030 --> 00:06:35.390 Interesting. Oh, interesting. 134 00:06:35.390 --> 00:06:38.190 Yeah. I I mess with it a lot. 135 00:06:38.430 --> 00:06:41.150 Why did you why that as raw material? 136 00:06:41.150 --> 00:06:44.110 That's just the one that I made, and I feel like it 137 00:06:43.665 --> 00:06:47.025 doesn't quite sound like you in a way that I really, really 138 00:06:47.025 --> 00:06:49.985 love. Like, it kinda it sounds enough like you that it's 139 00:06:49.985 --> 00:06:53.905 recognizable, but I really like pushing it and making it sound 140 00:06:53.905 --> 00:06:56.705 weird. One of the things I enjoyed about this instance of 141 00:06:56.705 --> 00:07:00.020 using it use Eleven Labs to do it, and they are they have an 142 00:07:00.100 --> 00:07:03.940 they're an alpha for a brand new version of it, which allows you 143 00:07:03.940 --> 00:07:08.580 to add in tags for mood. And so I got really into using the 144 00:07:08.580 --> 00:07:14.025 wrong mood tag for your for what you were supposed to be 145 00:07:14.025 --> 00:07:16.745 experiencing in that moment and just seeing what it would do. 146 00:07:16.745 --> 00:07:19.785 And I turned the variability, like, all the way up and, like, 147 00:07:19.785 --> 00:07:23.225 the comic express or, like, I don't remember all the the the 148 00:07:23.225 --> 00:07:25.130 different things, but, like, I really ratchet it. 149 00:07:25.130 --> 00:07:27.770 And I really believe in that. Like, I really believe in having 150 00:07:27.850 --> 00:07:35.370 Mike AI Mike announce itself Yeah. As AI, and that it was 151 00:07:35.370 --> 00:07:38.865 done with permission. You gave us permission to make an AI 152 00:07:38.865 --> 00:07:42.625 model of you. And then just like messing with it because it's I 153 00:07:42.625 --> 00:07:44.465 think way more funny that way. 154 00:07:44.625 --> 00:07:47.185 Jay Springit on Blue Sky asked, could you speak 155 00:07:47.185 --> 00:07:50.020 or reflect a little bit on how it felt to listen to and 156 00:07:50.020 --> 00:07:54.900 experience AI Mike like as me? And I think that factors into 157 00:07:55.060 --> 00:07:57.300 factors heavily into my experience of it, which is that 158 00:07:57.300 --> 00:08:01.860 it's I enjoy it, maybe not entirely, but significantly 159 00:08:01.860 --> 00:08:05.885 because of how strange it is. Mhmm. I wonder I was wondering 160 00:08:05.885 --> 00:08:09.325 as I was listening to it. I was like, could we ever actually use 161 00:08:09.325 --> 00:08:13.245 this as a tool when we like have to retract something? 162 00:08:13.805 --> 00:08:15.805 I would be curious to know what you think Hans, but my feeling 163 00:08:15.805 --> 00:08:20.590 is that it might not be as easy as one might think it should be. 164 00:08:20.670 --> 00:08:21.470 I think that's right. I think 165 00:08:21.470 --> 00:08:23.470 at the moment, no. Yeah. And I wanna be clear 166 00:08:23.470 --> 00:08:26.990 parenthetically that we actually had access to you. We chose to 167 00:08:26.990 --> 00:08:27.230 make 168 00:08:27.310 --> 00:08:27.550 Yes. 169 00:08:27.550 --> 00:08:28.030 That is true. 170 00:08:28.110 --> 00:08:30.750 Even though we had full access to you to 171 00:08:30.750 --> 00:08:32.910 be able to record this. We thought it was funny. 172 00:08:32.910 --> 00:08:33.150 Yes. 173 00:08:33.755 --> 00:08:35.115 And it was out of deference to your 174 00:08:35.115 --> 00:08:37.595 vacation. You did the thing that, you know, you're not 175 00:08:37.595 --> 00:08:38.555 supposed to do. 176 00:08:38.555 --> 00:08:39.915 Took a real vacation. 177 00:08:39.915 --> 00:08:42.635 You took a real vacation. Yeah. And you 178 00:08:42.635 --> 00:08:42.795 should 179 00:08:42.795 --> 00:08:44.395 be punished for that. Yes. 180 00:08:45.195 --> 00:08:45.515 You were. 181 00:08:45.570 --> 00:08:46.530 And you were. Yeah. 182 00:08:46.610 --> 00:08:48.370 No. The thing you did that you're not supposed 183 00:08:48.370 --> 00:08:50.850 to do is you brought a microphone on vacation just in 184 00:08:50.850 --> 00:08:54.210 case we needed any punch ins or anything there. And when we did, 185 00:08:54.210 --> 00:08:56.930 you were going to set up and we said, no. You go have your 186 00:08:57.090 --> 00:08:58.370 stupid vacation. 187 00:08:58.930 --> 00:08:59.650 Go enjoy your 188 00:08:59.650 --> 00:09:03.085 family. Yeah. That we instead we're gonna do 189 00:09:03.085 --> 00:09:06.845 this because it would be fun for us and would force you to not 190 00:09:06.845 --> 00:09:08.445 stop vacationing. 191 00:09:09.085 --> 00:09:12.925 And I think that this would be hard to to 192 00:09:12.925 --> 00:09:15.885 earnestly make a mic because it just doesn't sound enough like 193 00:09:15.885 --> 00:09:20.720 you. No. I think we retrained it on a little bit better copy, it 194 00:09:20.720 --> 00:09:23.840 would work like we're more in gave it more intentional 195 00:09:23.920 --> 00:09:24.800 training material 196 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:25.840 It could get closer. 197 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:28.960 Than yeah. To make it closer to you, and then 198 00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:32.675 really like worked at it maybe, and definitely in like a year, 199 00:09:32.675 --> 00:09:35.795 because a year ago, the technology was wildly different. 200 00:09:35.795 --> 00:09:37.875 This is also why I like to use it is because I think it's 201 00:09:37.875 --> 00:09:41.555 really important to kind of understand what state the the 202 00:09:41.555 --> 00:09:48.870 technology is in, and it changes so quickly that I mean, I was 203 00:09:48.870 --> 00:09:53.350 making fun of the the emotion tags, but it's pretty incredible 204 00:09:53.350 --> 00:09:55.670 what it can do. It can sigh. It can laugh. 205 00:09:55.670 --> 00:10:00.275 It creates mics laugh weirdly. It can, like, cluck. It can do 206 00:10:00.275 --> 00:10:03.235 all sorts of things. I can make it sing. I made it sing. 207 00:10:03.235 --> 00:10:04.275 What mood is Yeah. 208 00:10:06.675 --> 00:10:07.795 Feeling barnyard. 209 00:10:07.795 --> 00:10:09.475 And that's just gonna get more that's just we're 210 00:10:09.475 --> 00:10:11.715 gonna have have more and more nuanced control where we're 211 00:10:11.715 --> 00:10:14.010 gonna be able to do more and more nuanced things with it. So 212 00:10:14.010 --> 00:10:16.650 I think eventually, yes. I don't think it's there yet. 213 00:10:16.650 --> 00:10:16.890 Yeah. 214 00:10:16.890 --> 00:10:20.650 To me, there's a distinction where this 215 00:10:20.650 --> 00:10:24.250 does not feel like generative AI. I would not call this 216 00:10:24.250 --> 00:10:27.130 generative AI. Yeah. To me generative AI is something that 217 00:10:27.130 --> 00:10:30.295 is performing the facsimile of creativity. Yeah. 218 00:10:30.295 --> 00:10:35.335 That is being marketed as AI. This to me is an audio tool 219 00:10:36.055 --> 00:10:39.815 wielded by humans, the same way that the iZotope suite of 220 00:10:39.815 --> 00:10:44.740 plugins includes a lot of audio tools that are AI marketed and 221 00:10:44.740 --> 00:10:49.060 motivated that are used by us to do things that we cannot do on 222 00:10:49.060 --> 00:10:49.540 our own. 223 00:10:49.540 --> 00:10:51.300 And that's you mean things like, you know, 224 00:10:51.300 --> 00:10:52.580 that's noise reduction. 225 00:10:52.980 --> 00:10:54.500 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. 226 00:10:54.500 --> 00:10:55.860 Like finding the profile of the 227 00:10:55.860 --> 00:10:59.755 reverberations of a room and then showing me that profile so 228 00:10:59.755 --> 00:11:00.795 that I can take it out. 229 00:11:00.875 --> 00:11:04.395 I mean, I do realize the intrusion of AI into 230 00:11:04.715 --> 00:11:11.760 everything is incredibly frustrating. You know, we hate 231 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:15.200 it too. So I hope it's balm enough to know that we didn't 232 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:20.080 use any big gross generative AI tools in this episode nor any 233 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:22.880 other episode. So, you know, we understand. I totally 234 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:23.200 understand. 235 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:25.735 We only got a few emails about this, but, you know, I wanted to 236 00:11:25.735 --> 00:11:26.055 make sure that 237 00:11:26.055 --> 00:11:29.255 we take them seriously. Let's dive back into 238 00:11:29.255 --> 00:11:34.055 more meta mailbag action. As predicted, mailbags beget 239 00:11:34.055 --> 00:11:37.815 mailbags topics. In response to the previous mailbag, there were 240 00:11:37.815 --> 00:11:42.410 two emails I wanted to pull out. One, a piece of gear 241 00:11:42.410 --> 00:11:43.530 recommendation. 242 00:11:45.130 --> 00:11:47.050 Wait. Dude, you just lifted your cat over your 243 00:11:47.050 --> 00:11:50.410 head when you said that. Was that is that is Robert being 244 00:11:50.410 --> 00:11:51.290 recommended to us? 245 00:11:51.290 --> 00:11:52.410 He's Bluetooth enabled. 246 00:11:54.825 --> 00:11:58.105 We got an email from Manuel who says, 247 00:11:58.105 --> 00:12:01.945 friends, I wanna share my dumbified, I'd rather use that 248 00:12:01.945 --> 00:12:05.785 term, not frictionless, way to consume audio media. I got one 249 00:12:05.785 --> 00:12:08.425 of those bone conducting earphones which are also 250 00:12:08.425 --> 00:12:12.100 waterproof, so I can use them while running or swimming. They 251 00:12:12.100 --> 00:12:14.820 have an internal memory, so I can go around and listen to 252 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:16.820 stuff without having to constantly carry my phone with 253 00:12:16.820 --> 00:12:19.140 me, which has drastically reduced how much time I spend 254 00:12:19.140 --> 00:12:22.740 looking at it. But I think the best feature, in my opinion, is 255 00:12:22.740 --> 00:12:26.465 how little options this device has. Volume up, volume down, 256 00:12:26.465 --> 00:12:28.785 skip forward, skip backward, pause. 257 00:12:29.105 --> 00:12:33.425 No shuffle, no playlist or anything. As soon as the last 258 00:12:33.425 --> 00:12:36.625 file is played, the loop starts from the beginning. This forces 259 00:12:36.625 --> 00:12:39.505 me to regularly curate my content which I find very 260 00:12:39.505 --> 00:12:43.190 refreshing. It still feels weird not to have the weight of the 261 00:12:43.190 --> 00:12:45.670 phone in my pocket, or not having to worry about how far 262 00:12:45.670 --> 00:12:48.150 from the phone I'm going before the Bluetooth signal drops, but 263 00:12:48.150 --> 00:12:50.070 I'm getting used to moving freely. 264 00:12:50.390 --> 00:12:51.110 I've had to get 265 00:12:51.430 --> 00:12:54.025 getting used to moving freely. The only 266 00:12:54.025 --> 00:12:57.785 downside listen, this is important. I get this. The only 267 00:12:57.785 --> 00:13:02.025 downside is that I can't skip ads. But oh no, wait. 268 00:13:02.345 --> 00:13:07.520 This is not an issue at all. Because for only $4 a month, I 269 00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:12.400 can get Never Post without ads. And I can guarantee you that 270 00:13:12.400 --> 00:13:16.080 listening to pet sounds while underwater is really something. 271 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:18.560 Oh, Manuel. Oh, Manuel. VIP. 272 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:19.680 That is 273 00:13:19.680 --> 00:13:22.335 incredible with the plug. Mhmm. 274 00:13:22.335 --> 00:13:23.855 That's so rad. I've never heard of that. 275 00:13:23.855 --> 00:13:25.855 Have you have you ever experienced have you have 276 00:13:25.855 --> 00:13:27.935 you has anyone ever tried bone conduction headphones? 277 00:13:27.935 --> 00:13:29.855 People have told me this happens. I've never 278 00:13:29.855 --> 00:13:30.255 done it. 279 00:13:30.255 --> 00:13:32.095 I've never heard of this before. I'm so 280 00:13:32.095 --> 00:13:32.655 curious. 281 00:13:32.655 --> 00:13:35.320 So this is if you ever look at, like, if you 282 00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:38.680 watch, like, military movies and stuff, these are the headphones 283 00:13:38.680 --> 00:13:41.560 that they often have on. So what they do is it it attaches to 284 00:13:41.560 --> 00:13:45.320 your jaw or around your jaw, and it sends the vibrations of the 285 00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:48.745 audio through your skull, through the bones, which keeps 286 00:13:48.745 --> 00:13:51.545 your ear canal open so you can fully hear everything that's 287 00:13:51.545 --> 00:13:54.345 still happening with full fidelity. But what happens is 288 00:13:54.345 --> 00:13:57.625 your head becomes a resonating chamber, and you hear the 289 00:13:57.865 --> 00:14:00.025 whatever's happening kind of in the center of your 290 00:14:00.025 --> 00:14:01.460 head. What? 291 00:14:01.460 --> 00:14:03.780 Yeah. I used to wear one I used to wear one when 292 00:14:03.780 --> 00:14:06.260 I was a bike messenger so that I could keep my ears clear and I 293 00:14:06.260 --> 00:14:09.460 could hear traffic, but I could still hear the like, whatever 294 00:14:09.460 --> 00:14:10.660 was happening on the radio. 295 00:14:10.900 --> 00:14:13.380 I think of them as being popular for folks who 296 00:14:13.380 --> 00:14:16.865 work in offices. Right? And you can't, you know, you have to be 297 00:14:17.105 --> 00:14:20.545 present and like, listen listening to your environment, 298 00:14:20.545 --> 00:14:25.265 but also listen to Neverpost and the ad free feed only $4 a 299 00:14:25.265 --> 00:14:25.745 month. 300 00:14:27.345 --> 00:14:30.210 This actually relates in some ways to the 301 00:14:30.210 --> 00:14:34.370 other email I wanted to pull out that responded to last mailbag 302 00:14:34.370 --> 00:14:38.850 from Oliver, who is responding to a comment Mike made while we 303 00:14:38.850 --> 00:14:42.290 were chatting that said, there is no knowing things without the 304 00:14:42.290 --> 00:14:47.005 body. The body is so really intimately involved in 305 00:14:47.005 --> 00:14:52.205 knowledge. This made Oliver think. He says, it made me think 306 00:14:52.205 --> 00:14:54.845 about how much of our communication online is 307 00:14:54.845 --> 00:14:57.960 flattened to the written word or to emojis, and the added 308 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:00.200 importance of good written communication education and 309 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:03.320 literacy. Years ago, I wrote my master's thesis on written 310 00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:06.840 education and literacy, ostentatious title incoming. 311 00:15:06.840 --> 00:15:07.880 Yes. Let's go. 312 00:15:07.880 --> 00:15:12.105 Writing do. The way of writing, the 313 00:15:12.105 --> 00:15:15.465 instructional effectiveness of kinesthetic teaching methods as 314 00:15:15.465 --> 00:15:16.905 called from martial arts. 315 00:15:16.905 --> 00:15:18.265 That sounds sick as hell. 316 00:15:18.265 --> 00:15:20.985 Yeah. In it, I discussed how physical 317 00:15:20.985 --> 00:15:24.025 movements can inform our methods of communication, and you can 318 00:15:24.025 --> 00:15:27.150 take the teaching methods from a physical art like karate, 319 00:15:27.150 --> 00:15:30.350 capoeira, or tai chi, and transfer them to the analytical 320 00:15:30.350 --> 00:15:35.070 art of written communication, or learning critical pedagogy, or 321 00:15:35.070 --> 00:15:38.925 learning eco composition. The big thrust of my argument, which 322 00:15:38.925 --> 00:15:42.125 I still stand by decades later, is a punch and a sentence are 323 00:15:42.125 --> 00:15:45.965 fundamentally the same thing. As both are delivering an idea or 324 00:15:45.965 --> 00:15:49.645 feeling from the creator to the recipient. Both speaking and 325 00:15:49.645 --> 00:15:51.085 sparring are dialogues. 326 00:15:51.085 --> 00:15:54.350 For many students, thinking of grammar is tricky, but when you 327 00:15:54.350 --> 00:15:58.430 tell them that when a happens, do b, much like when punch comes 328 00:15:58.430 --> 00:16:03.070 to chest, do this block, the simplicity can click for some. I 329 00:16:03.070 --> 00:16:05.630 firmly believe that more people should learn the distinction 330 00:16:05.630 --> 00:16:09.415 between learning and knowing. My best example is a physical one. 331 00:16:09.415 --> 00:16:12.295 You can learn that a knife is sharp all you want by studying 332 00:16:12.295 --> 00:16:14.855 it, by looking at the blade profile, but the moment you 333 00:16:14.855 --> 00:16:18.455 accidentally nick yourself, you know it is sharp, and that will 334 00:16:18.455 --> 00:16:20.215 stick with you for all your days. 335 00:16:21.180 --> 00:16:23.500 A sentence and a punch are fundamentally the same 336 00:16:23.500 --> 00:16:24.700 thing, goes hard. 337 00:16:24.700 --> 00:16:25.980 It really does. 338 00:16:25.980 --> 00:16:27.980 In two ways. 339 00:16:29.100 --> 00:16:29.580 True. 340 00:16:29.580 --> 00:16:31.260 I think about this sort of thing all the time, 341 00:16:31.260 --> 00:16:35.820 because I I read a lot, and over the last couple years, I have 342 00:16:36.925 --> 00:16:41.085 really gone to great lengths to try to cut down on how much I 343 00:16:41.085 --> 00:16:44.125 read that's like important to me. Like, I I wanna know it 344 00:16:44.125 --> 00:16:49.490 just, know, for my own knowledge or for work on a screen. I try 345 00:16:49.490 --> 00:16:52.610 really really hard to not read things on a screen that I need 346 00:16:52.610 --> 00:16:56.130 to remember because I find that I just don't remember them as 347 00:16:56.130 --> 00:16:57.650 well. Mhmm. Mhmm. 348 00:16:57.650 --> 00:17:00.050 And I was actually thinking about this, like, this morning. 349 00:17:00.050 --> 00:17:02.290 I gotta go get a book from the library, and I was thinking 350 00:17:02.290 --> 00:17:06.905 about, like, my schedule of, when and how I'm gonna read it, 351 00:17:06.985 --> 00:17:10.105 and, you know, how I'm gonna fit it into my day. And I started 352 00:17:10.105 --> 00:17:16.185 thinking about I was like, am I should I choose somewhere unique 353 00:17:16.585 --> 00:17:21.290 to go and read this in the hopes that that lets me remember 354 00:17:21.290 --> 00:17:26.970 things about it easier. I wonder if my, like, embodied knowledge 355 00:17:26.970 --> 00:17:31.530 of this text will have, like, greater resolution if I'm 356 00:17:31.530 --> 00:17:36.065 somewhere that I am not normally. Is Hans is making all 357 00:17:36.065 --> 00:17:36.865 kinds of hand motions. 358 00:17:36.865 --> 00:17:39.425 Yeah. My this is a thing. This I find this amazing. 359 00:17:39.425 --> 00:17:42.065 I think about it all the time. My editor at the New York Times, 360 00:17:42.065 --> 00:17:45.105 who's incredible, she would not take notes when she would 361 00:17:45.105 --> 00:17:45.425 listen. 362 00:17:45.425 --> 00:17:48.225 So I would send her audio of something, and then she would go 363 00:17:48.225 --> 00:17:50.820 and she would walk. We all know about, like, how walking 364 00:17:50.820 --> 00:17:53.940 stimulates the brain and all of that, but she would geolocate 365 00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:58.500 her notes. So when she got back to her computer, she would 366 00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:02.340 remember her walk and be like, okay. Green Volkswagen. That was 367 00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:04.740 the part where Hans did this thing, and I wanted to change it 368 00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:05.140 to this thing. 369 00:18:05.755 --> 00:18:08.955 Broken mailbox. Okay. Like, that's how she did her notes was 370 00:18:08.955 --> 00:18:12.875 by locating them geographically in physical space, which I 371 00:18:12.875 --> 00:18:16.875 always, like, is so fascinating to me to, like, really embody, 372 00:18:16.875 --> 00:18:18.555 really locate information in space. 373 00:18:18.860 --> 00:18:20.300 Yeah. I think this is really interesting 374 00:18:20.300 --> 00:18:23.340 thinking of the way communication exists in 375 00:18:23.340 --> 00:18:27.420 different three d or four d forms. Because I have a version 376 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:30.140 of this sometimes with music where I can remember things 377 00:18:30.140 --> 00:18:33.835 better because I was listening to a certain part of a song when 378 00:18:33.835 --> 00:18:37.595 I was writing something, or if I was taking notes on something. 379 00:18:37.595 --> 00:18:43.035 Like, it it, like, recalls that memory to me easier because of 380 00:18:43.035 --> 00:18:47.000 the auditory connection I've made. 381 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:49.320 Mhmm. Yeah. I believe that. 382 00:18:49.320 --> 00:18:52.920 And I'm also curious, Oliver, if in your 383 00:18:52.920 --> 00:19:00.705 writing in this piece, like, if at all and how maybe dance can 384 00:19:00.705 --> 00:19:04.705 be another example of this. Because to me, like, dance is an 385 00:19:04.705 --> 00:19:08.240 interesting physical version of this where it's less 386 00:19:08.240 --> 00:19:10.800 confrontational. You're not physically fighting each other, 387 00:19:10.800 --> 00:19:14.320 but you are still physically communicating to each other. It 388 00:19:14.320 --> 00:19:17.680 is also something you can do by yourself in the way that you can 389 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:20.080 be talking to yourself. You can be dancing alone. 390 00:19:21.155 --> 00:19:27.555 And I don't know. I'm I'm interested in knowing more about 391 00:19:27.555 --> 00:19:30.675 the physical manifestation of communication beyond just 392 00:19:30.755 --> 00:19:31.795 physical fighting. 393 00:19:33.610 --> 00:19:35.370 Well, this is not gonna be the last time we 394 00:19:35.370 --> 00:19:39.210 talk about dance. So dance heads, get ready. Because 395 00:19:39.210 --> 00:19:41.690 there's a bunch of emails that came into Georgia about dance 396 00:19:41.690 --> 00:19:45.130 we'll do later. The final thing this reminds me of, I haven't 397 00:19:45.130 --> 00:19:47.225 thought about this in a long time, Back when I had to 398 00:19:47.225 --> 00:19:49.865 remember more phone numbers because you just had to remember 399 00:19:49.865 --> 00:19:57.785 more phone numbers. I started linking the numbers to notes of 400 00:19:57.785 --> 00:20:00.425 the scale, so that I could sing somebody's phone number and 401 00:20:00.425 --> 00:20:01.305 that's how I remember them. 402 00:20:02.010 --> 00:20:03.530 What? You'd make a melody out of it? 403 00:20:03.530 --> 00:20:05.530 You would make a melody out of it. Oh. 404 00:20:05.530 --> 00:20:06.410 I love that. 405 00:20:06.410 --> 00:20:07.930 Because you're only ever getting up to 406 00:20:07.930 --> 00:20:11.130 like a tenth. Right? Yeah. I would make a little melody and I 407 00:20:11.130 --> 00:20:14.570 could the melody or if it's like an easy to remember harmonic 408 00:20:14.570 --> 00:20:17.235 structure, I'd remember that and someone's number would be a 409 00:20:17.235 --> 00:20:18.195 harmonic structure. 410 00:20:18.195 --> 00:20:24.115 Cool. Next up is a comment from Matt Storm, who 411 00:20:24.115 --> 00:20:27.635 sent us a voice mail message about the story that I did about 412 00:20:28.035 --> 00:20:31.780 animating photos using AI. So taking still images, moving them 413 00:20:31.780 --> 00:20:34.660 into moving images. 414 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:36.900 And this reminds me of something I've been seeing a 415 00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:40.980 lot on TikTok lately, which is this AI tool that turns people 416 00:20:40.980 --> 00:20:46.215 into mermaids or makes your pets dance. I've seen them both, and 417 00:20:46.215 --> 00:20:49.895 I block every account I see using them because they just 418 00:20:49.895 --> 00:20:54.055 unsettle me. There's something about forcing an image, even if 419 00:20:54.055 --> 00:20:57.175 it's your own image, into a situation that's not real 420 00:20:57.970 --> 00:21:02.130 through AI that just makes my skin crawl. And I don't even 421 00:21:02.130 --> 00:21:05.410 know that I could tell you why. Right? 422 00:21:05.490 --> 00:21:08.850 And Hans talks about this in his piece. But I'm curious if you 423 00:21:08.850 --> 00:21:11.925 guys have seen this trend and what you think about it. You 424 00:21:11.925 --> 00:21:15.285 know, I just there's something about manipulating images. The 425 00:21:15.285 --> 00:21:17.605 one that really gets me that I've seen on TikTok is making 426 00:21:17.605 --> 00:21:20.645 two people kiss in an image. Like, that goes against 427 00:21:20.645 --> 00:21:22.565 everything that consent represents. 428 00:21:22.805 --> 00:21:25.525 Right? You are forcing two people who you cannot ask if 429 00:21:25.525 --> 00:21:28.730 they wanna kiss to kiss. It drives me bonkers. Sorry. I'm 430 00:21:28.730 --> 00:21:29.450 getting heated. 431 00:21:29.450 --> 00:21:33.050 Anyway, I'm curious how you think this connects to consent 432 00:21:33.210 --> 00:21:37.690 and basically your thoughts on that as well. Thanks. Keep up 433 00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:38.650 the awesome stuff. 434 00:21:39.205 --> 00:21:43.125 Matt, incredible. That is a huge part of the 435 00:21:43.125 --> 00:21:45.445 reason that people have been talking about making a new 436 00:21:45.445 --> 00:21:48.405 Humphrey Bogart movie or something or, like, animating 437 00:21:48.565 --> 00:21:51.525 our historical figures into things is, oh, well, the dead 438 00:21:51.525 --> 00:21:54.700 can't consent. But, like, I think we've seen it's not just 439 00:21:54.700 --> 00:21:59.180 the dead anymore who, can you consent or not consent? Do you 440 00:21:59.180 --> 00:22:01.580 have to this is the thing that that Tory brought up. Do you 441 00:22:01.580 --> 00:22:05.100 have to actively opt out of having anything done with your 442 00:22:05.100 --> 00:22:05.660 image? 443 00:22:05.980 --> 00:22:08.875 Do we have to make this a part of our wills? Georgia, have you 444 00:22:08.875 --> 00:22:11.835 seen these? You're our you're our TikTok maven. Have you seen 445 00:22:11.835 --> 00:22:13.835 these things that Matt is talking about? 446 00:22:14.075 --> 00:22:17.195 So I haven't actually seen videos of, like, 447 00:22:17.195 --> 00:22:19.435 people turning themselves into mermaids or making people kiss 448 00:22:19.435 --> 00:22:24.550 as much, but it reminds me a lot of this music video that Kanye 449 00:22:24.550 --> 00:22:28.390 West did, like, years ago called Famous, in which he portrayed 450 00:22:28.390 --> 00:22:31.030 himself in bed with a bunch of other famous people, including 451 00:22:31.030 --> 00:22:35.990 Taylor Swift, and it engendered this huge response and a lot of 452 00:22:35.990 --> 00:22:39.615 controversy. And I believe Taylor Swift maybe taking legal 453 00:22:39.615 --> 00:22:42.815 action against him, or there at least being this very huge 454 00:22:42.815 --> 00:22:49.215 outcry against this kind of act. And it reminds me a lot of this 455 00:22:49.215 --> 00:22:53.010 because there is a question of consent here. And at the time, I 456 00:22:53.010 --> 00:22:55.730 think there was so much fixation on like, oh, well, you're super 457 00:22:55.730 --> 00:22:59.410 famous. Like, do you own the image of yourself? 458 00:22:59.410 --> 00:23:03.570 Do you have to like, do you have the right to tell someone that 459 00:23:03.570 --> 00:23:06.395 they can't represent you in a certain way? Yeah. If you're 460 00:23:06.395 --> 00:23:11.035 making someone kiss or do anything, frankly, there's this 461 00:23:11.195 --> 00:23:16.395 question of consent. And what makes me even more uncomfortable 462 00:23:16.395 --> 00:23:22.580 is this suggestion that maybe consent, like, isn't required 463 00:23:22.580 --> 00:23:24.820 for someone to do this, especially if they think it's 464 00:23:24.820 --> 00:23:31.220 funny. So up next, we got a very interesting message from Josh, 465 00:23:31.460 --> 00:23:35.220 in regard to a segment I did on tactility and the general lack 466 00:23:34.975 --> 00:23:39.455 of buttons on our devices and how interfacing with the 467 00:23:39.455 --> 00:23:43.535 smoothness of technology leaves us wanting. 468 00:23:44.255 --> 00:23:47.615 A couple years ago for Christmas, I got this fantastic 469 00:23:47.615 --> 00:23:52.510 gooseneck kettle electric kettle for boiling water that you can 470 00:23:52.510 --> 00:23:57.070 program to set the water to specific temperatures for your 471 00:23:57.070 --> 00:24:01.470 various snobby high end coffees and teas. This gooseneck kettle 472 00:24:01.470 --> 00:24:05.015 is perfect. It does exactly what I needed to do. Nothing more, 473 00:24:05.015 --> 00:24:07.415 nothing less. However, the buttons on the front of it, 474 00:24:07.495 --> 00:24:10.855 they're not touch screens, they're, touch capacitive 475 00:24:10.855 --> 00:24:12.935 buttons that don't actually go down. 476 00:24:13.335 --> 00:24:15.895 But they also look like buttons and feel like buttons and that 477 00:24:15.895 --> 00:24:18.840 there's crevices and they're different shape and color than 478 00:24:18.840 --> 00:24:23.960 the surrounding area of the the base of the kettle. So there's a 479 00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:26.840 very serious design flaw here that I didn't discover until I 480 00:24:26.840 --> 00:24:30.120 had the thing for a couple weeks, which is water makes 481 00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:36.175 touch capacitive buttons get touched. Yes. So, like, anytime 482 00:24:36.175 --> 00:24:40.415 water from the kettle or was coming into or out of or close 483 00:24:40.415 --> 00:24:44.655 to the kettle would drip down, it would touch the button and 484 00:24:44.655 --> 00:24:48.690 make it go off. And because it was wet and it had crevices like 485 00:24:48.690 --> 00:24:51.730 a real button, the water would just sit in there and I had to 486 00:24:51.730 --> 00:24:55.010 wait for it to dry itself out before I could actually make the 487 00:24:55.010 --> 00:24:58.770 thing work again, which often postponed getting my water to 488 00:24:58.770 --> 00:25:02.855 the perfect temperature for five or ten minutes and, being a very 489 00:25:02.855 --> 00:25:04.055 frustrating experience. 490 00:25:04.615 --> 00:25:05.655 Oh my god. 491 00:25:06.055 --> 00:25:08.775 I'm so proud of Josh for not just screaming 492 00:25:08.775 --> 00:25:10.055 that entire time. 493 00:25:10.295 --> 00:25:13.895 I mean, again, it's it's this hubris of 494 00:25:13.895 --> 00:25:18.600 technological quote unquote advancement. The blind trudging 495 00:25:18.600 --> 00:25:25.560 forward of certain kinds of technological fads, which I 496 00:25:25.560 --> 00:25:30.760 think honestly is what this is, is it just is endlessly telling 497 00:25:30.760 --> 00:25:34.185 on itself. Like, it's ridiculous. That doesn't make 498 00:25:34.185 --> 00:25:36.985 any sense. Like, yeah, it it should be something wherein, 499 00:25:37.545 --> 00:25:39.945 product testing that comes up immediately. 500 00:25:40.265 --> 00:25:41.625 I think it's so interesting that they don't 501 00:25:41.625 --> 00:25:44.425 actually save anything. Like, the whole point of being touch 502 00:25:44.425 --> 00:25:45.385 sensitive is you wouldn't have 503 00:25:45.385 --> 00:25:46.265 to have the you wouldn't have 504 00:25:46.265 --> 00:25:47.990 to make it look feel like a button, but they 505 00:25:47.990 --> 00:25:50.310 wanted it to look and feel like a button, but also have that 506 00:25:50.390 --> 00:25:55.350 like, why not just make them buttons then? Why Yeah. Why make 507 00:25:55.350 --> 00:25:55.590 it a 508 00:25:55.590 --> 00:25:56.150 different thing? 509 00:25:56.150 --> 00:25:58.630 Yeah. But you can't market a kettle with a 510 00:25:58.630 --> 00:26:03.545 button in the description on the Amazon page. It's kettle with 511 00:26:03.545 --> 00:26:07.145 touch sensitivity that goes right in Yeah. The title 512 00:26:07.145 --> 00:26:08.985 description, which is how we buy things now. 513 00:26:08.985 --> 00:26:09.305 Yeah. 514 00:26:09.305 --> 00:26:11.145 It's a psyop. It's a psyop. 515 00:26:11.145 --> 00:26:13.225 It's a psyop. Psyop. 516 00:26:13.225 --> 00:26:17.065 It's unraveling society. One cup of coffee at a 517 00:26:17.065 --> 00:26:22.320 time. Speaking of psyops, I did a segment a little while ago 518 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:26.960 about how everything is increasingly feeling like a 519 00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:31.520 gamble or like gambling, and that feeling is really prevalent 520 00:26:31.520 --> 00:26:37.055 online. And we got a voice mail from Tom about this. 521 00:26:37.135 --> 00:26:40.895 As an artist, you know, I feel like over the last 522 00:26:40.895 --> 00:26:43.295 decade, we're being bombarded with all these different, you 523 00:26:43.295 --> 00:26:46.270 know oh, if you wanna make a living online, you need to be 524 00:26:46.270 --> 00:26:50.190 posting at these times. You need to be posting this often. Use 525 00:26:50.190 --> 00:26:51.870 hashtags. Don't use hashtags. Go. 526 00:26:51.870 --> 00:26:54.750 Twitter's blocking hashtags. Go. X hashtags. In the blue sky, 527 00:26:54.750 --> 00:26:59.070 they work. It's it's this this constant deluge of information. 528 00:26:59.070 --> 00:27:02.485 At a certain point, it starts to feel like, does anyone actually 529 00:27:02.485 --> 00:27:08.165 know what these what you know, if these tips work? Like No. 530 00:27:08.485 --> 00:27:12.405 Because the platform changes how the rules work from one day to 531 00:27:12.405 --> 00:27:16.210 the next without even letting us know. It just feels like we're 532 00:27:16.210 --> 00:27:22.530 we're sort of thrown to see, I guess, dealing with all this. 533 00:27:22.530 --> 00:27:25.330 And at a certain point, for your own mental health, I feel like 534 00:27:25.330 --> 00:27:29.330 you need to just say fuck it and just post what you want to post 535 00:27:29.330 --> 00:27:30.450 when you wanna post it. 536 00:27:30.995 --> 00:27:34.035 You know, if if you if you worry about all of the different 537 00:27:34.115 --> 00:27:38.995 possible factors, then you're gonna be so petrified. You wanna 538 00:27:38.995 --> 00:27:42.915 be able to to create anything. It's sad out here, but but not 539 00:27:42.915 --> 00:27:45.155 caring about those things had done wonders for my mental 540 00:27:45.155 --> 00:27:48.620 health. And my followers have gone up. So yay. 541 00:27:50.300 --> 00:27:53.020 Yay. I think yay. Yes. Yay. Yay. 542 00:27:53.100 --> 00:27:54.060 Yay, Tom. 543 00:27:54.140 --> 00:27:56.940 Yeah. I agree. I think trying to imagine the 544 00:27:56.940 --> 00:28:00.055 world that the algorithm wants, wherever algorithm it is that 545 00:28:00.055 --> 00:28:03.175 you're, you know, trying to imagine is just such a trap. I 546 00:28:03.175 --> 00:28:06.295 think if you're like a really particular kind of person, it 547 00:28:06.295 --> 00:28:09.815 can be like a fulfilling challenge. Like if I think, you 548 00:28:09.815 --> 00:28:13.760 know, there are some people who I've met in my life online who 549 00:28:13.760 --> 00:28:18.160 are really good at just figuring out, like, having an intuitive 550 00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:22.080 sense of like what to put up when and where and with what 551 00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:23.600 metadata around it. 552 00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:23.760 But 553 00:28:23.760 --> 00:28:26.445 like, that's what they do. You know what I mean? 554 00:28:26.445 --> 00:28:32.285 Like, they really really invest a lot of time into building that 555 00:28:32.285 --> 00:28:36.125 skill and staying up on, like you say, all of the algorithm 556 00:28:36.125 --> 00:28:40.490 changes. And I think that's not for everyone. I think it's not 557 00:28:40.490 --> 00:28:43.530 for the vast majority of people. 558 00:28:43.530 --> 00:28:47.370 I think the other secret to this is that it's like, you I don't 559 00:28:47.370 --> 00:28:52.065 necessarily think that making and posting things that the 560 00:28:52.065 --> 00:28:57.185 algorithm likes, wherever that is, is going to be the thing 561 00:28:57.185 --> 00:29:04.305 that makes a particular poster or account popular. It is 562 00:29:04.305 --> 00:29:11.350 something that can assist in reach on a platform and thus 563 00:29:11.350 --> 00:29:14.710 help you become more popular, but it's not like the make or 564 00:29:14.710 --> 00:29:19.030 break thing. And in that way, it really is just so much more 565 00:29:19.405 --> 00:29:22.925 fulfilling and less crazy making to just focus on the thing 566 00:29:22.925 --> 00:29:25.965 itself. And then, you know, let all that other stuff just sort 567 00:29:25.965 --> 00:29:28.765 of like, if you can't think about it, sure, why not? But 568 00:29:28.765 --> 00:29:30.445 like, don't force yourself to do it. 569 00:29:30.445 --> 00:29:35.310 You're just gonna you're just gonna go nuts. We also got a 570 00:29:35.550 --> 00:29:37.950 voicemail from user friendly sounds. 571 00:29:37.950 --> 00:29:40.590 Before I start, I would just like to sort of make 572 00:29:40.590 --> 00:29:44.190 it clear that I generally agree with what Mike is saying in the 573 00:29:44.190 --> 00:29:47.605 piece and overall think social media is bad. With that out of 574 00:29:47.605 --> 00:29:52.085 the way, being somewhat of a semi pro content creator, I 575 00:29:52.085 --> 00:29:55.765 suppose, and more from an artistic standpoint, I just 576 00:29:55.765 --> 00:30:00.245 wanted to mention a couple of things. In regards to the few 577 00:30:00.245 --> 00:30:05.970 times that it seems like there's a suggestion that maybe posting 578 00:30:05.970 --> 00:30:11.090 is just a slot machine like as scrolling. I think I kind of 579 00:30:11.090 --> 00:30:16.205 agree with the idea in some ways, but to other creators out 580 00:30:16.205 --> 00:30:20.205 there, I just sort of wanted to to at least defend it a little 581 00:30:20.205 --> 00:30:27.485 bit. And the main point is that it is fairly low effort to 582 00:30:27.485 --> 00:30:27.965 scroll. 583 00:30:28.820 --> 00:30:33.060 It's really high effort in a lot of cases, obviously not all 584 00:30:33.060 --> 00:30:38.100 cases. In a lot of cases, it's high effort to post. And 585 00:30:38.500 --> 00:30:43.380 regardless of how many views or clicks or likes or whatever the 586 00:30:43.380 --> 00:30:46.875 thing is that you get, you still made the thing and that's 587 00:30:46.875 --> 00:30:52.955 valuable. And if you continue to make the thing, it's gonna 588 00:30:52.955 --> 00:30:58.760 improve over time just by default. But I think, this sort 589 00:30:58.760 --> 00:31:03.240 of idea of a writer or a painter or a musician practice your 590 00:31:03.240 --> 00:31:07.080 craft every day, write something every day, make a beat every 591 00:31:07.080 --> 00:31:10.920 day, whatever the thing is, that is a really good technique. 592 00:31:11.225 --> 00:31:15.385 But I think it can actually be improved if you make a thing 593 00:31:15.385 --> 00:31:19.145 every day and then show it to people. Because you're gonna 594 00:31:19.145 --> 00:31:22.825 create a little bit differently when you know that you're gonna 595 00:31:22.825 --> 00:31:26.630 be putting in front of somebody, whether that's 50 people or a 596 00:31:26.630 --> 00:31:30.230 million people, it doesn't matter. It's for a lot of us, 597 00:31:30.230 --> 00:31:33.510 it's gonna we're gonna think a little bit differently about how 598 00:31:33.510 --> 00:31:37.110 we're making what we're making if we're planning on sharing it. 599 00:31:37.925 --> 00:31:41.605 So first things first. If you don't know, User 600 00:31:41.605 --> 00:31:46.725 Friendly's work, he's on Instagram, I think mostly, and 601 00:31:46.725 --> 00:31:50.405 his work rules. User Friendly Sounds is great. He's like a 602 00:31:50.405 --> 00:31:54.760 great glitchy sound designer, like music maker, makes great 603 00:31:54.760 --> 00:31:58.600 visuals. So one, highly recommend User Friendly's work. 604 00:31:58.600 --> 00:32:01.800 Second, like I agree broadly with all of these things. I 605 00:32:01.800 --> 00:32:06.735 think we were generally in agreement. I know that it 606 00:32:06.735 --> 00:32:10.415 doesn't seem this way, but I don't want the point of that 607 00:32:10.415 --> 00:32:13.615 segment at least to fully come across as like social media is 608 00:32:13.615 --> 00:32:16.735 bad. I think the thing that I'm trying to figure out how to say 609 00:32:16.735 --> 00:32:20.350 is that it's like, social media is bad when you surrender too 610 00:32:20.350 --> 00:32:24.430 much of your agency to it. It's really really easy to forget 611 00:32:24.430 --> 00:32:27.230 that like, we have agency in these relationships that we have 612 00:32:27.230 --> 00:32:29.470 with technology, and like that's the thing that's bad. 613 00:32:29.710 --> 00:32:33.310 And it's bad that the software is designed on purpose to like 614 00:32:33.310 --> 00:32:36.595 siphon that to siphon that agency away from you or to give 615 00:32:36.595 --> 00:32:41.155 you excuses to give it up and to reward you with these paltry 616 00:32:41.155 --> 00:32:45.795 things to do so. I can understand the idea that, like, 617 00:32:45.795 --> 00:32:49.790 posting is high effort and scrolling is low effort, But I 618 00:32:49.790 --> 00:32:52.510 think the moment we're in now, we have a lot of people who talk 619 00:32:52.510 --> 00:32:56.190 about just like getting trapped in social media. You know, this 620 00:32:56.190 --> 00:32:58.910 started as like, oh, I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, right, 621 00:32:58.910 --> 00:33:02.510 like a decade or two ago. And you like lost a bunch of hours 622 00:33:02.510 --> 00:33:04.990 reading interesting things. Now, it's like, well, I'm, you know, 623 00:33:05.765 --> 00:33:11.765 really just deleted two hours scrolling through TikTok, which 624 00:33:12.325 --> 00:33:15.925 is itself, I think, a kind of high effort activity. 625 00:33:16.965 --> 00:33:22.430 It it's a it's a lot of energy being spent, But, yeah, it 626 00:33:22.430 --> 00:33:24.830 doesn't have the outcome of like, well, then at least you 627 00:33:24.830 --> 00:33:27.230 made something. I think sometimes we like dilute 628 00:33:27.230 --> 00:33:28.910 ourselves a little bit and thinking like, well, now I know 629 00:33:28.910 --> 00:33:31.150 more about what's happening on the Internet or like, I've 630 00:33:31.150 --> 00:33:34.510 experienced the sort of media or information environment for a 631 00:33:34.510 --> 00:33:37.535 little bit, and that's good for me for reasons. But, yeah, for 632 00:33:37.535 --> 00:33:40.975 the most part, you don't come out with anything, but you do, I 633 00:33:40.975 --> 00:33:42.735 think, expend a lot of effort. 634 00:33:43.055 --> 00:33:45.615 Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. I mean, we've talked 635 00:33:45.615 --> 00:33:48.650 about this before specifically with TikTok. And I know I've 636 00:33:48.650 --> 00:33:51.690 said the thing that I experience all the time with TikTok where 637 00:33:51.690 --> 00:33:55.530 I'll just be sort of sucked into it and then kind of zap myself 638 00:33:55.530 --> 00:33:57.530 out and be like, what am I looking for right now? 639 00:33:57.530 --> 00:34:01.370 Yeah. Because I've realized that over however long that I've been 640 00:34:01.370 --> 00:34:07.715 on TikTok, I feel this, like, growing frenzy, within me of, 641 00:34:07.715 --> 00:34:12.515 like, where is it? Where is it? Like and, like, I'm not looking 642 00:34:12.515 --> 00:34:16.355 for anything, but there is yeah. This sort of boiling a frog 643 00:34:16.355 --> 00:34:19.750 situation where maybe at first, scrolling through TikTok 644 00:34:19.750 --> 00:34:23.190 especially seems low effort, kind of relaxing, just like I 645 00:34:23.190 --> 00:34:25.670 wanna kind of go down the lazy river of my mind. 646 00:34:26.150 --> 00:34:28.950 And then it it changes. It never stays like that. 647 00:34:28.950 --> 00:34:30.790 Yeah. The yeah. The feeling I get is like, I'll 648 00:34:30.790 --> 00:34:33.990 be like, where am I going? Where do I Yeah. Think I'm headed? 649 00:34:34.495 --> 00:34:37.295 And Yes. Have I have I arrived there? 650 00:34:37.935 --> 00:34:41.215 Is there a destination at all, in fact? 651 00:34:41.615 --> 00:34:42.095 Mhmm. 652 00:34:42.095 --> 00:34:46.175 I also think that his point about repetition 653 00:34:46.175 --> 00:34:50.660 of showing creativity to people, or in this case, a defensive 654 00:34:50.660 --> 00:34:55.940 posting, which I'll allow. Showing it to people in the form 655 00:34:55.940 --> 00:34:59.700 of a post is well taken. That is true. You do create differently 656 00:34:59.700 --> 00:35:02.475 when a perceived audience stops being imagined and starts 657 00:35:02.475 --> 00:35:03.435 becoming real. 658 00:35:03.435 --> 00:35:03.915 100%. 659 00:35:03.915 --> 00:35:06.875 And I think it's probably beneficial whether 660 00:35:06.875 --> 00:35:10.395 or not your endgame involves showing things to people as 661 00:35:10.395 --> 00:35:14.860 posts for remuneration. I think it's probably valuable even if 662 00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:18.060 it's just to make better paintings or whatnot. So I think 663 00:35:18.060 --> 00:35:22.940 it's about taking point. There's one more email in here about the 664 00:35:22.940 --> 00:35:27.015 gambling segment from Gustav. He says he's been thinking about 665 00:35:27.015 --> 00:35:29.655 the old expression, the house always wins. 666 00:35:29.815 --> 00:35:33.255 Gustav says, the reason why casinos design their spaces and 667 00:35:33.255 --> 00:35:36.135 games to keep people playing is because they, over the long run, 668 00:35:36.135 --> 00:35:38.860 get more out of you than you get out of them. I think it holds 669 00:35:38.860 --> 00:35:42.940 true for online platforms though as astute media savvy folks, e g 670 00:35:42.940 --> 00:35:46.220 listeners have never post, $4 a month if you don't remember. We 671 00:35:46.220 --> 00:35:49.900 might believe we're gaming that system in some way. Like because 672 00:35:50.235 --> 00:35:53.995 we maybe use ad blockers or VPNs and curate our feeds well, we 673 00:35:53.995 --> 00:35:57.755 can get more out of the platform than it can extract from us. On 674 00:35:57.755 --> 00:35:59.435 an individual level, it might be true. 675 00:35:59.435 --> 00:36:02.475 Even casinos will have customers who get in when a small amount 676 00:36:02.475 --> 00:36:06.040 get out in time. But on a societal level, the level of 677 00:36:06.040 --> 00:36:08.680 these massive platforms, those cases are probably 678 00:36:08.680 --> 00:36:14.280 insignificant. The question then is, what does winning look like 679 00:36:14.280 --> 00:36:18.015 for the owners of these platforms? If Google decided to 680 00:36:18.015 --> 00:36:20.735 weigh their algorithms to favor anti regulation messaging, or 681 00:36:20.735 --> 00:36:24.495 Meta decided to subtly back right wing reactionaries, would 682 00:36:24.495 --> 00:36:28.255 we have any way of stemming the tide of public opinion? Would we 683 00:36:28.255 --> 00:36:31.375 even know what was going on, and could we prove them culpable? 684 00:36:32.120 --> 00:36:35.480 I think what's happening with Elon's takeover Twitter might 685 00:36:35.480 --> 00:36:38.360 just be a more visible and incompetent version of a process 686 00:36:38.360 --> 00:36:42.600 that is shaping world politics already in less obvious ways. 687 00:36:44.135 --> 00:36:46.935 Gustav, I think the question of what does winning look like for 688 00:36:46.935 --> 00:36:51.735 a particular platform is a very good question. The extent to 689 00:36:51.735 --> 00:36:55.255 which we can guess about what is already happening, I will leave 690 00:36:55.255 --> 00:36:58.990 to any individual mind. But I think it's very instructive to 691 00:36:58.990 --> 00:37:02.430 think about, whereas a casino has a very obvious definition of 692 00:37:02.430 --> 00:37:05.150 what winning is, extracting money from people who walk in 693 00:37:05.150 --> 00:37:08.990 their doors. Platforms, I think have a more complicated version 694 00:37:08.990 --> 00:37:10.670 of what winning ends up looking like. 695 00:37:10.785 --> 00:37:15.025 Ultimately, course, separating us from our money, but there are 696 00:37:15.025 --> 00:37:19.025 a lot of other games they are playing, especially as their 697 00:37:19.025 --> 00:37:22.385 vestigial tendencies from their ZERB funded beginnings still 698 00:37:22.385 --> 00:37:23.265 play themselves out. 699 00:37:23.860 --> 00:37:26.100 Yeah. I mean, to it's I think the comparison to 700 00:37:26.100 --> 00:37:29.140 the house holds and I think yeah, Jason, your point about 701 00:37:29.140 --> 00:37:31.220 like, really they separate people from their time and their 702 00:37:31.220 --> 00:37:34.420 money, separate them from their their time to get their money 703 00:37:34.580 --> 00:37:38.420 Mhmm. Is true. But like the big difference is that a casino, 704 00:37:38.775 --> 00:37:42.375 it's not like gray goo. You know, like it doesn't the casino 705 00:37:42.375 --> 00:37:43.815 doesn't grow. 706 00:37:43.815 --> 00:37:45.015 Yeah. Casinos rule. 707 00:37:45.015 --> 00:37:46.055 That's the difference. 708 00:37:47.415 --> 00:37:48.775 You can smoke cigarettes in there. 709 00:37:48.775 --> 00:37:51.095 In defensive casinos. Yeah. 710 00:37:51.255 --> 00:37:53.175 I never smoked a cigarette in my phone. 711 00:37:54.650 --> 00:37:57.050 Just, you know, imagine if, like, Caesar's 712 00:37:57.050 --> 00:38:01.370 Palace just grew one inch every minute and just swallowed 713 00:38:02.330 --> 00:38:04.970 swallowed the entirety of The United States and then the 714 00:38:04.970 --> 00:38:05.530 world. 715 00:38:05.530 --> 00:38:07.865 I mean, that's kind of what it is. Right? Like, 716 00:38:07.865 --> 00:38:09.945 thinking about this when, Jason, you were reading it, it feels 717 00:38:09.945 --> 00:38:12.905 very much like, yeah, that the notion of winning when it comes 718 00:38:12.905 --> 00:38:17.305 to online platforms is exists in my mind as the way that universe 719 00:38:17.305 --> 00:38:21.160 is endlessly expanding. There is kind of no end point. It's 720 00:38:21.160 --> 00:38:24.600 always growing in the same way our individual experience on 721 00:38:24.600 --> 00:38:28.840 platforms is this feeling of kind of chasing something or 722 00:38:28.840 --> 00:38:30.120 following something. 723 00:38:30.840 --> 00:38:35.195 There's no satisfying, I've reached the end of the stack of 724 00:38:35.195 --> 00:38:38.635 stuff, like, that's never going to happen. I think the same is 725 00:38:38.635 --> 00:38:39.755 true for platforms, 726 00:38:39.755 --> 00:38:40.075 but in 727 00:38:40.075 --> 00:38:43.195 a more evil way. 728 00:38:43.835 --> 00:38:46.075 Well, you know one thing that does have a 729 00:38:46.075 --> 00:38:51.000 clear ending? The first half of this podcast episode. 730 00:38:51.160 --> 00:38:52.600 We're gonna go to a break 731 00:38:52.760 --> 00:38:56.200 and come back with more emails and voice 732 00:38:56.200 --> 00:39:18.925 messages. Welcome back, gamblers. We have an email from 733 00:39:18.180 --> 00:39:23.460 Crow in response to the leaving social media roundtable. Crow 734 00:39:23.460 --> 00:39:26.740 says, whenever I feel the urge to check Instagram and Twitter, 735 00:39:26.820 --> 00:39:30.420 I have to do it through my phone's browser app, because 736 00:39:30.420 --> 00:39:33.875 Crow has deleted the applications themselves. The 737 00:39:33.875 --> 00:39:36.995 browser app, which is a terrible experience just because of how 738 00:39:36.995 --> 00:39:38.115 bizarre it feels. 739 00:39:38.195 --> 00:39:40.915 And I think it really works for me because I'm just so much more 740 00:39:40.915 --> 00:39:44.275 aware of how awful social social media is when the act of 741 00:39:44.275 --> 00:39:48.940 browsing is also awful. Twitter is already a terrible website, 742 00:39:48.940 --> 00:39:52.220 but intentionally making my own user experience worse is 743 00:39:52.220 --> 00:39:55.580 actually kind of liberating. I know y'all have talked about the 744 00:39:55.580 --> 00:39:58.140 tactic of using your phone screen time function to limit 745 00:39:58.140 --> 00:40:01.825 social media use, but that's still a product of design. I 746 00:40:01.825 --> 00:40:05.505 think maybe we should be using anti design tactics. Yeah. 747 00:40:06.145 --> 00:40:08.225 This is like using hostile architecture on 748 00:40:08.225 --> 00:40:09.905 yourself. Yeah. Exactly. 749 00:40:09.905 --> 00:40:12.545 I used to do this and it works really well. 750 00:40:12.545 --> 00:40:12.945 Okay. 751 00:40:12.945 --> 00:40:16.490 I use Firefox Focus, which is the mobile 752 00:40:16.490 --> 00:40:20.570 browser that only has one tab. You can't open more than one tab 753 00:40:20.570 --> 00:40:23.850 in it. And when you quit What? It's and it's a permanent 754 00:40:24.090 --> 00:40:26.810 private mode. So it doesn't save any cookies. 755 00:40:26.810 --> 00:40:30.515 It doesn't keep you logged into things. It deletes your history. 756 00:40:30.835 --> 00:40:35.155 When you quit the app, it loses the page, and when you reopen 757 00:40:35.155 --> 00:40:37.235 it, it's just blank. There's nothing there. 758 00:40:37.395 --> 00:40:40.115 It roots out the page code, deletes the page 759 00:40:40.115 --> 00:40:41.555 itself. It comes to 760 00:40:41.555 --> 00:40:42.515 your house and smacks 761 00:40:42.515 --> 00:40:43.635 you around a little. 762 00:40:44.115 --> 00:40:45.470 It goes back in time. 763 00:40:45.470 --> 00:40:46.510 Cheese your car. 764 00:40:46.510 --> 00:40:47.310 Yeah. It 765 00:40:48.750 --> 00:40:53.870 rules. I it is like, you know, I worry about 766 00:40:53.870 --> 00:40:57.945 the day that it is no longer maintained because it is the 767 00:40:57.945 --> 00:41:02.825 fact that it has no features is its best feature, and it does 768 00:41:02.825 --> 00:41:05.945 really help me, like, deal with, you know, this kind of thing, 769 00:41:05.945 --> 00:41:07.145 like staying off of stuff. 770 00:41:07.225 --> 00:41:10.585 So like you open something up into this delicate 771 00:41:10.665 --> 00:41:14.060 ecosystem that you know will fail. Like, does that change how 772 00:41:14.060 --> 00:41:15.900 you interact with it? You can't be like, oh, I'll come back to 773 00:41:15.900 --> 00:41:19.020 this later, or oh, saving this, and like letting it like, do you 774 00:41:19.020 --> 00:41:21.260 have to resolve everything as you're doing it? What does it 775 00:41:21.260 --> 00:41:21.980 change for you? 776 00:41:21.980 --> 00:41:24.620 Yeah. I don't well, like, means that I'm not, 777 00:41:24.620 --> 00:41:29.775 let's say, like, logged into Bandcamp constantly. Right? So I 778 00:41:29.775 --> 00:41:33.055 can't if I wanna buy a record, right, I have to log in to 779 00:41:33.055 --> 00:41:36.895 Bandcamp and add it to cart and then what what you know, I can't 780 00:41:36.895 --> 00:41:40.175 just go to the tab where I have Bandcamp open already logged in. 781 00:41:40.550 --> 00:41:41.030 Yeah. 782 00:41:41.030 --> 00:41:44.070 So like that's just a recent example of like, you know, 783 00:41:44.070 --> 00:41:47.990 putting putting roadblocks in my way so that I don't like spend 784 00:41:47.990 --> 00:41:51.350 too much money, so that I don't spend too much time online. 785 00:41:51.590 --> 00:41:53.110 I feel like what we're kinda talking about 786 00:41:53.110 --> 00:41:56.865 here is just removing convenience. 787 00:41:57.185 --> 00:41:58.385 Yeah. I think so. 788 00:41:58.385 --> 00:42:03.665 It turns things into this featureless, smooth, 789 00:42:04.225 --> 00:42:09.025 frictionless experience. And I I really like this idea of of 790 00:42:09.025 --> 00:42:10.145 adding friction. 791 00:42:10.305 --> 00:42:11.970 You gotta get yourself a browser that stands 792 00:42:11.970 --> 00:42:13.730 in your doorway and goes, uh-uh. 793 00:42:14.130 --> 00:42:15.650 No. No. No. 794 00:42:15.810 --> 00:42:18.610 Gotta get you a bone conducting earphone. It 795 00:42:18.610 --> 00:42:20.130 has its own memory. 796 00:42:21.650 --> 00:42:24.130 This conversation actually ties into the next 797 00:42:25.245 --> 00:42:28.365 comment that we got, which is from our friend, best friend, we 798 00:42:28.365 --> 00:42:30.525 love you, Tom Lum. 799 00:42:30.525 --> 00:42:32.285 Yes. We love you. 800 00:42:32.285 --> 00:42:33.325 Love Tom. Tom. 801 00:42:33.325 --> 00:42:35.725 Tom. Tom. Tom. Tom sent us something saying, quote, 802 00:42:35.725 --> 00:42:39.805 I wanted to share these two TikToks that I leave the app on 803 00:42:39.920 --> 00:42:43.680 whenever I need to focus to stop myself from mindlessly opening 804 00:42:43.680 --> 00:42:47.120 the app and scrolling. And Georgia, you are the resident. 805 00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:49.200 TikTok I'm already there, baby. 806 00:42:49.280 --> 00:42:49.600 Can you 807 00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:51.200 tell us tell us what I haven't even opened these 808 00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:52.400 yet. Tell us what's going on. 809 00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:56.665 Okay. The first link. It's person on a couch. 810 00:42:57.625 --> 00:43:00.345 The text above them says, that moment when you're done rotting 811 00:43:00.345 --> 00:43:03.465 and ready to be a human. It's exactly what I've described. 812 00:43:03.465 --> 00:43:07.305 Basically, what they're doing is sitting there and then they 813 00:43:07.305 --> 00:43:12.790 kinda go like, and throw their phone like onto the floor or 814 00:43:12.790 --> 00:43:15.110 just stand up and are like, alright. Alright. Alright. 815 00:43:15.110 --> 00:43:16.310 Alright. That's enough. 816 00:43:16.390 --> 00:43:21.510 And yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like. And then the 817 00:43:21.510 --> 00:43:24.665 second one interesting. Okay. 818 00:43:24.665 --> 00:43:26.425 This is good. I like this. 819 00:43:29.145 --> 00:43:32.345 Single image of a big old block of what looks 820 00:43:32.345 --> 00:43:35.785 like cheddar cheese with text over it that reads, if you're 821 00:43:35.785 --> 00:43:38.425 looking at this block of cheese, you have scrolled to the bottom 822 00:43:38.425 --> 00:43:42.160 of your FYP, and it's time for you to get off TikTok and go to 823 00:43:42.160 --> 00:43:45.120 sleep. Your eyes are getting heavy, and you need to go to 824 00:43:45.120 --> 00:43:48.000 sleep and get some rest for whatever you're doing tomorrow. 825 00:43:48.240 --> 00:43:51.840 You have been on TikTok way too long. I hope you sleep well and 826 00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:53.040 have sweet dreams. Good night. 827 00:43:54.855 --> 00:43:56.775 Perfect. Perfect. There's typos, which 828 00:43:56.775 --> 00:43:57.415 make it even better. 829 00:43:57.415 --> 00:43:58.935 Yeah. They're sure. It's even better. 830 00:43:58.935 --> 00:44:03.815 Yep. Thanks, Tom. In our next set of questions, we 831 00:44:03.815 --> 00:44:09.880 got some questions slash stories from some folks asking about how 832 00:44:09.880 --> 00:44:13.320 many cameras are there. From the segment, how many cameras are 833 00:44:13.320 --> 00:44:16.520 there, where I ask the question, how many 834 00:44:16.760 --> 00:44:17.160 How many 835 00:44:17.400 --> 00:44:18.520 cameras are there? 836 00:44:18.520 --> 00:44:19.720 Keep it going. One more time. 837 00:44:19.720 --> 00:44:22.600 Just how many cameras are there? 838 00:44:24.395 --> 00:44:27.915 The first one was anonymous, and they said, I 839 00:44:27.915 --> 00:44:30.715 worked at a small location with a very small number of 840 00:44:30.715 --> 00:44:35.915 employees, about three to five, and an overbearing micromanaging 841 00:44:35.915 --> 00:44:40.130 boss who was there almost every day. About a year into working 842 00:44:40.130 --> 00:44:43.970 there, he installed cameras in the store, ones that he could 843 00:44:43.970 --> 00:44:48.290 view the feed from his phone. Shrugging it off as security, we 844 00:44:48.290 --> 00:44:51.890 went about our workdays just like normal. He would come into 845 00:44:51.890 --> 00:44:54.925 the store less, and when he was away, we would talk shit as 846 00:44:54.925 --> 00:44:58.925 coworkers often do. Somehow the tension and horrible vibes in 847 00:44:58.925 --> 00:45:01.725 the store became increasingly worse than usual whenever the 848 00:45:01.725 --> 00:45:03.485 boss was in. 849 00:45:04.125 --> 00:45:06.685 One day, I was complaining about him when one of my coworkers 850 00:45:06.685 --> 00:45:10.720 pulled me aside and showed me a sheet of paper that said, quote, 851 00:45:10.720 --> 00:45:16.400 I think he's listening to us. The immediate shock I felt, 852 00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:19.600 exclamation point. I felt embarrassed too because, of 853 00:45:19.600 --> 00:45:24.035 course, I had said things that I wouldn't say to his face. I then 854 00:45:24.035 --> 00:45:27.075 looked at the laws in my state regarding surveilling employees 855 00:45:27.075 --> 00:45:32.355 and found out that, yeah, it was in fact okay to listen in on 856 00:45:32.355 --> 00:45:33.235 employees. 857 00:45:33.395 --> 00:45:34.035 Oui. 858 00:45:34.595 --> 00:45:37.235 The idea of him watching and listening to us on 859 00:45:37.235 --> 00:45:40.590 his phone, found upsetting. It was a real invasion of privacy 860 00:45:40.590 --> 00:45:43.310 in my opinion. What I wear, whether or not I can use my 861 00:45:43.310 --> 00:45:45.870 phone at all, and the time I have to be at work and confined 862 00:45:45.870 --> 00:45:49.390 to a specific building are already controlled by my 863 00:45:49.390 --> 00:45:53.485 employer. My speech being controlled as well felt like an 864 00:45:53.485 --> 00:45:57.245 insult to injury. I think a time before security systems like 865 00:45:57.245 --> 00:46:00.845 that was a time where you could be more human, slack off a 866 00:46:00.845 --> 00:46:02.765 little, joke around with coworkers. 867 00:46:03.565 --> 00:46:06.340 I don't want to be forced to be a robot just because I know 868 00:46:06.340 --> 00:46:13.300 someone is watching. I think this is harrowing. Like, that's 869 00:46:13.300 --> 00:46:16.740 just really, really hard to realize how much you're being 870 00:46:16.740 --> 00:46:20.785 surveilled, And there's a lot in this. There is, however, one 871 00:46:20.785 --> 00:46:25.105 thing in here that I wanna point out that I think is important 872 00:46:25.105 --> 00:46:29.265 for people to think about that people probably know, but I 873 00:46:29.265 --> 00:46:32.470 think people know but don't know, which is what is a 874 00:46:32.470 --> 00:46:35.750 reasonable expectation of privacy? I think we get really 875 00:46:35.910 --> 00:46:37.910 it's it's a thread that I think goes through some of the things 876 00:46:37.910 --> 00:46:39.590 we've already talked about in this episode. 877 00:46:39.990 --> 00:46:44.070 But when anonymous tells us that it was they looked up state laws 878 00:46:44.070 --> 00:46:47.685 regarding surveilling employees that, yeah, it is okay, in fact, 879 00:46:47.685 --> 00:46:50.645 okay to listen in on employees. That's true. If you're in a 880 00:46:50.645 --> 00:46:54.005 public space or if you're in a privately owned space with rules 881 00:46:54.005 --> 00:46:57.365 to that says it is possible, if there's a sign at the door, it 882 00:46:57.365 --> 00:47:00.720 depends on where you are. These things are completely legal and 883 00:47:00.720 --> 00:47:06.880 allowed to happen. What is your expectation of privacy is quite 884 00:47:07.200 --> 00:47:09.440 low, actually. 885 00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:11.600 And places that we haven't really figured out is what if 886 00:47:11.600 --> 00:47:15.525 you bring a device in or is giving away a bunch of data an a 887 00:47:15.525 --> 00:47:21.525 breach in privacy in other ways. I can for example, Minnesota, 888 00:47:21.525 --> 00:47:27.060 where I live, is a one party consent state. Not all are, 889 00:47:27.060 --> 00:47:30.260 which means if I do an interview, I can legally record 890 00:47:30.260 --> 00:47:34.340 it as long as I know I'm recording it. One party in the 891 00:47:34.340 --> 00:47:36.660 conversation has to know it's being recorded, and that party 892 00:47:36.660 --> 00:47:41.075 can be me doing the recording. Please note I would never do 893 00:47:41.075 --> 00:47:41.395 this. 894 00:47:41.395 --> 00:47:45.395 This is not a tactic that I use, but it is legally allowed. And 895 00:47:45.395 --> 00:47:49.795 that's just one example of many of how the right to privacy is 896 00:47:49.875 --> 00:47:53.155 pretty sticky, and actually when you confront where we are 897 00:47:53.155 --> 00:47:57.110 allowed to be surveilled is is pretty gross and doesn't feel 898 00:47:57.110 --> 00:47:57.590 good. 899 00:47:57.750 --> 00:47:59.990 It should be a law that you can talk shit about 900 00:47:59.990 --> 00:48:03.830 your boss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just put it right in the 901 00:48:03.830 --> 00:48:05.030 constitution. 902 00:48:05.590 --> 00:48:08.485 We're we're working. That thing's a work in progress right 903 00:48:08.485 --> 00:48:09.925 now anyways. Let's just put it in there. 904 00:48:09.925 --> 00:48:10.485 For real. 905 00:48:10.485 --> 00:48:10.725 I feel 906 00:48:10.725 --> 00:48:12.005 like it's I feel like it's open. 907 00:48:12.005 --> 00:48:12.245 We could 908 00:48:12.325 --> 00:48:13.445 somebody opened the door. 909 00:48:13.445 --> 00:48:15.125 Maybe it's a requirement, actually. Article 910 00:48:15.125 --> 00:48:18.725 one. You are legally required to talk shit about your boss. 911 00:48:18.725 --> 00:48:20.885 Article one. Your boss is a herb. 912 00:48:23.080 --> 00:48:24.120 Fuck that guy. 913 00:48:24.760 --> 00:48:27.480 Anonymous also pointed us to a website, 914 00:48:27.800 --> 00:48:34.280 instacam.org, which is insecam, instacam.org, on which anyone 915 00:48:34.280 --> 00:48:37.705 can access any video feed of any unsecured surveillance camera 916 00:48:37.705 --> 00:48:40.025 that has a connection to the Internet, which I have not 917 00:48:40.025 --> 00:48:43.625 looked at and cannot verify, but woah. Click Let's all go check 918 00:48:43.625 --> 00:48:45.065 that out. Yep. Yeah. 919 00:48:45.305 --> 00:48:47.865 Everyone click until you can see Georgia. 920 00:48:51.870 --> 00:48:56.110 We also got a comment from Stevie, who said in 921 00:48:56.110 --> 00:49:00.910 response to a comment that Carl made in the in the two mailbags 922 00:49:00.910 --> 00:49:05.070 ago about counting 11 cameras in a famous vegetarian restaurant 923 00:49:05.070 --> 00:49:09.975 and musing about what do they need all of that surveillance 924 00:49:09.975 --> 00:49:10.535 for. 925 00:49:11.175 --> 00:49:15.655 So I used to work in fine dining, and we used to have 926 00:49:15.655 --> 00:49:22.450 cameras essentially over every table in the dining room so 927 00:49:22.450 --> 00:49:27.410 that, we could see the rate at which people were eating. We 928 00:49:27.410 --> 00:49:31.410 served, like, tasting menus. We served, like, prefix menus. So 929 00:49:31.410 --> 00:49:35.085 we wanted to know as soon as people were done, so we could 930 00:49:35.085 --> 00:49:37.885 clear their tables and drop the new dishes. 931 00:49:39.005 --> 00:49:41.165 There you go, folks. Reasonable expectation of 932 00:49:41.165 --> 00:49:42.365 privacy. Woah. 933 00:49:42.365 --> 00:49:44.685 God. Woah. Fuck 934 00:49:45.005 --> 00:49:48.450 that. Yeah. Oh my god. 935 00:49:49.810 --> 00:49:52.050 This sucks, dude. Yeah. 936 00:49:52.770 --> 00:49:55.490 Talk about a seafood dinner. Hey. 937 00:49:55.490 --> 00:49:56.210 Oh my god. 938 00:49:56.210 --> 00:49:59.570 It's good now. I like it now. 939 00:50:01.285 --> 00:50:04.485 The last one we got on this was from Dean, who sent 940 00:50:04.485 --> 00:50:07.685 us a, something about phone cameras. 941 00:50:08.085 --> 00:50:13.045 The phone camera has obviously become ubiquitous, and 942 00:50:13.045 --> 00:50:16.310 I think a angle that I can't remember if it was in the 943 00:50:16.310 --> 00:50:21.750 original story or not, is this fear that comes with the phone 944 00:50:21.750 --> 00:50:27.030 camera of, at least for me, ending up viral without 945 00:50:27.030 --> 00:50:31.515 noticing. The idea that has, like, escalated since, like, 946 00:50:31.515 --> 00:50:35.035 twenty ten's prank videos of anybody could be filming you for 947 00:50:35.035 --> 00:50:41.370 their funny TikTok or making fun of you or something. And yikes. 948 00:50:42.250 --> 00:50:43.850 Well, dude. Oh, 949 00:50:44.170 --> 00:50:46.730 You great minds. Georgia, why don't you take 950 00:50:46.730 --> 00:50:47.290 this? 951 00:50:47.530 --> 00:50:49.850 You got a big storm coming. 952 00:50:50.490 --> 00:50:53.055 I think just as a quick aside, I think about every 953 00:50:53.055 --> 00:50:57.135 time I'm walking around the city carrying something weird. Yes. 954 00:50:57.135 --> 00:50:59.855 Where I'm like, am I gonna be am I gonna be a what is New York? 955 00:50:59.855 --> 00:51:02.735 Is this the time that someone from their window is taking a is 956 00:51:02.735 --> 00:51:03.855 taking a video of me? Yep. 957 00:51:03.855 --> 00:51:07.290 This is the perfect transition to the 958 00:51:07.290 --> 00:51:11.770 submissions that we got about my segment, about why nobody dances 959 00:51:11.770 --> 00:51:16.410 at the club anymore. And the answer, obviously, is because of 960 00:51:16.410 --> 00:51:19.690 this exact thing of people either being on their phones and 961 00:51:19.690 --> 00:51:22.855 just scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or whatever, texting. 962 00:51:23.495 --> 00:51:28.295 But also that people are on the dance floor recording things, 963 00:51:28.295 --> 00:51:30.535 recording each other, recording the DJ, recording someone 964 00:51:30.535 --> 00:51:34.935 dancing, perhaps, a little too extravagantly for their taste. 965 00:51:34.935 --> 00:51:38.670 And before we get into it, I will tell you guys, I literally 966 00:51:38.670 --> 00:51:40.190 lived this this weekend. 967 00:51:40.190 --> 00:51:40.910 Okay. 968 00:51:41.150 --> 00:51:43.870 I went out dancing with my friend. It was 969 00:51:43.870 --> 00:51:46.910 early in the night. The dance floor was, you know, pockmarked 970 00:51:46.910 --> 00:51:49.790 with people. It wasn't super busy yet and there was this 971 00:51:49.790 --> 00:51:53.635 couple that had come together and we're standing on the 972 00:51:53.635 --> 00:51:57.795 outskirt of the dance floor, just recording the dance floor. 973 00:51:58.115 --> 00:51:59.555 People dancing. 974 00:51:59.555 --> 00:52:03.315 And my friend and I both noticed it and we're like, this makes me 975 00:52:03.315 --> 00:52:05.795 super uncomfortable. What are you doing? Why are you doing 976 00:52:05.795 --> 00:52:06.195 this? 977 00:52:06.195 --> 00:52:07.235 You said this to them? 978 00:52:07.590 --> 00:52:08.550 No. No. No. No. No. 979 00:52:08.550 --> 00:52:10.470 Oh, you just said this to the to the air. 980 00:52:10.470 --> 00:52:14.390 No. I'm not trying to get got. But it was 981 00:52:14.550 --> 00:52:16.950 no. Was my friend and I were basically just commenting on 982 00:52:16.950 --> 00:52:22.035 that to each other of how instantly uncomfortable it is to 983 00:52:22.035 --> 00:52:24.275 actually witness this. And it was kind of the first time I'd 984 00:52:24.275 --> 00:52:25.555 really seen it myself. 985 00:52:25.555 --> 00:52:29.315 I knew this was a thing, but it was it's incredibly unsettling. 986 00:52:29.555 --> 00:52:30.835 God, that sucks. 987 00:52:30.835 --> 00:52:35.395 Anyway, I wanna start us with a voicemail we got 988 00:52:35.395 --> 00:52:41.930 from Travis at about a potential form of dance that might be a 989 00:52:41.930 --> 00:52:43.370 nice balm for this. 990 00:52:44.170 --> 00:52:47.370 My spouse, Ruby, and I go to contra dancing, which is like 991 00:52:47.370 --> 00:52:51.225 a country style dance. It's like line dancing and square dancing 992 00:52:51.225 --> 00:52:54.665 kinda combined. It's very nerdy and queer, but there's a lot of 993 00:52:54.665 --> 00:52:58.185 diversity in age. It's one of the things I like about it. And 994 00:52:58.185 --> 00:53:01.225 it's something where, like, it's partnered dancing, but you're 995 00:53:01.225 --> 00:53:04.105 actually encouraged not to dance with the person you came with. 996 00:53:04.530 --> 00:53:07.490 You absolutely can. But you're encouraged to do new partners 997 00:53:07.490 --> 00:53:11.010 every song. But one of the things that we've really liked 998 00:53:11.010 --> 00:53:14.290 about this is that it's, like, two and a half hours that we 999 00:53:14.290 --> 00:53:16.985 just don't think about our phones. We put it in a bag and 1000 00:53:16.985 --> 00:53:21.705 just forget it. And even when people take breaks in between 1001 00:53:21.705 --> 00:53:24.745 dance like, you know, if they're skipping a dance, they don't 1002 00:53:24.745 --> 00:53:25.465 look at their phones. 1003 00:53:25.465 --> 00:53:27.945 Like, people just, like, engage with each other. It is, like, so 1004 00:53:27.945 --> 00:53:29.465 fantastic the way that that works. 1005 00:53:29.890 --> 00:53:32.450 Love it. Line dancing is the solution for 1006 00:53:32.450 --> 00:53:36.850 everything. Every problem we've outlined in this mailbag so far. 1007 00:53:36.850 --> 00:53:38.850 Yeah. I can't think of one that won't be solved that 1008 00:53:38.850 --> 00:53:40.050 way. Yeah. Good call. 1009 00:53:40.930 --> 00:53:44.345 We also got a message from Kay who writes, as 1010 00:53:44.345 --> 00:53:48.265 a DJ, phones are a double edged sword. I want people to feel 1011 00:53:48.265 --> 00:53:51.225 connected to the music I'm playing, but I also do need 1012 00:53:51.225 --> 00:53:54.345 videos of people capturing the tracks I'm blending together. 1013 00:53:54.665 --> 00:53:57.960 It's important so that I can, a, hear how it sounded on the sound 1014 00:53:57.960 --> 00:54:01.720 system if I'm not recording the set with other means, and b, use 1015 00:54:01.720 --> 00:54:05.960 it to advertise myself for gigs. Performative, for sure. However, 1016 00:54:06.280 --> 00:54:08.600 here's my experience as someone in the Chicago scene. 1017 00:54:08.600 --> 00:54:13.725 Oh my god. Hi, first of all. Hello. They continue saying, 1018 00:54:14.045 --> 00:54:16.925 dance floors of people from diverse backgrounds with house 1019 00:54:16.925 --> 00:54:20.365 and techno playing have little issue with the lack of dancing. 1020 00:54:20.685 --> 00:54:23.645 While the lack of dancing generally is due to phones to 1021 00:54:23.645 --> 00:54:26.780 some degree, in my view, any lack of dancing or communal 1022 00:54:26.780 --> 00:54:29.500 engagement with the DJ is a straight people problem. 1023 00:54:29.900 --> 00:54:32.060 Or wait, is it a straight people problem? 1024 00:54:33.100 --> 00:54:33.580 Got them. 1025 00:54:36.715 --> 00:54:39.035 There's a feeling of collective joy with 1026 00:54:39.035 --> 00:54:43.115 the DJ as the leader, but it's a much more relational experience 1027 00:54:43.115 --> 00:54:47.195 than simply being analogous to an audience viewing a band on 1028 00:54:47.195 --> 00:54:50.635 stage. The DJ is selecting tracks and responding to the 1029 00:54:50.635 --> 00:54:54.770 dancers, But it's a relational bond that I and many other DJs 1030 00:54:54.770 --> 00:54:57.810 view as sacred. The biggest difference I've noticed is that 1031 00:54:57.810 --> 00:55:01.730 as electronic music becomes more mainstream, beyond dubstep, you 1032 00:55:01.730 --> 00:55:04.850 find at EDM festivals, some bastardization of house, techno, 1033 00:55:04.850 --> 00:55:08.355 and rave music, I've heard DJs call it corporate techno, has 1034 00:55:08.355 --> 00:55:12.515 emerged that you can find young, white, straight, West Loop types 1035 00:55:12.515 --> 00:55:20.290 playing. It is a straight people problem. Those are the 1036 00:55:20.290 --> 00:55:22.930 environments where people don't dance out of fear of being 1037 00:55:22.930 --> 00:55:24.850 watched or captured on video. 1038 00:55:25.170 --> 00:55:29.330 Or they really want to be seen on video, as Tim articulated, 1039 00:55:29.330 --> 00:55:33.250 for influencing purposes. I think there's something here 1040 00:55:33.810 --> 00:55:41.225 about performance and wanting to signal to people online that you 1041 00:55:41.225 --> 00:55:46.505 have done something interesting. There's this currency that 1042 00:55:46.505 --> 00:55:52.880 starts getting generated when you see online a way of 1043 00:55:52.880 --> 00:55:56.400 performing as cool. And it's being the person in an 1044 00:55:56.400 --> 00:55:59.920 interesting outfit next to the DJ booth who is live streaming 1045 00:55:59.920 --> 00:56:04.080 their set. And that is so much more about the performance of 1046 00:56:04.080 --> 00:56:08.215 being at this event, of looking interesting at this event, of 1047 00:56:08.215 --> 00:56:11.815 acting in a way that suggests that you're the kind of person 1048 00:56:11.815 --> 00:56:14.215 who would know about this, but blah blah blah. 1049 00:56:14.215 --> 00:56:18.535 Like, it's it's this play acting. It's not actually 1050 00:56:19.415 --> 00:56:20.215 participating. 1051 00:56:21.590 --> 00:56:25.510 Yeah. Which seems to actually be a 1052 00:56:25.510 --> 00:56:29.510 particular loss because there are things that as I'm learning 1053 00:56:29.510 --> 00:56:31.990 from like the beautiful responses some folks are sending 1054 00:56:31.990 --> 00:56:34.435 us, as well as what you articulate in your piece. Like, 1055 00:56:34.435 --> 00:56:37.635 there are some things about these clubs that are, to some 1056 00:56:37.635 --> 00:56:39.795 people, sacred. I don't think that's like, you know, an overly 1057 00:56:39.795 --> 00:56:42.755 ambitious word they're throwing around. But also like, these 1058 00:56:42.755 --> 00:56:46.755 spaces like have jobs to do outside of just being the 1059 00:56:46.755 --> 00:56:48.755 backdrop for people's social lives. 1060 00:56:49.130 --> 00:56:49.850 Definitely. 1061 00:56:49.850 --> 00:56:51.850 One one email that we got that stuck out to 1062 00:56:51.850 --> 00:56:53.930 me, that sort of helped me understand this about these 1063 00:56:53.930 --> 00:56:57.930 dance faces was from Philip, who grew up in a small town in 1064 00:56:57.930 --> 00:57:02.490 Germany. And it was actually a very nice accounting of what it 1065 00:57:02.490 --> 00:57:05.025 was like going to clubs when you were growing up in a small town 1066 00:57:05.025 --> 00:57:08.785 in Germany, and the ways we would do photo dumps, usually on 1067 00:57:08.785 --> 00:57:11.345 the Facebook at the end of every night out with our shitty little 1068 00:57:11.345 --> 00:57:14.145 digital cameras, which is certainly something that I 1069 00:57:14.145 --> 00:57:17.910 remember. He says, because of that, the first time I went to a 1070 00:57:17.910 --> 00:57:21.590 club with a no photo policy, it felt strangely serious. No 1071 00:57:21.590 --> 00:57:25.030 foolery, no innocent fun. This is a place for grown ups, I 1072 00:57:25.030 --> 00:57:25.430 thought. 1073 00:57:25.430 --> 00:57:28.070 You're allowed to be whoever you wanna be, but there are rules. 1074 00:57:28.585 --> 00:57:31.385 Rules I had to abide by, rules everyone else seemed to already 1075 00:57:31.385 --> 00:57:34.905 know and silently agree to follow. I was 25 years old and 1076 00:57:34.905 --> 00:57:38.105 still doubted whether I was even old enough to be here. I was 1077 00:57:38.105 --> 00:57:40.185 nervous and afraid of doing something wrong, but once I was 1078 00:57:40.185 --> 00:57:44.240 on the dance floor, I had one of the best nights of my life. He 1079 00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:50.480 then goes on to describe how in contemporary German culture, the 1080 00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:54.640 club scene has started shifting a little bit to his read of it. 1081 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:59.885 He says that beyond substance only, the no photo policy helps 1082 00:57:59.885 --> 00:58:02.285 reinforce club culture as a safe space for marginalized 1083 00:58:02.285 --> 00:58:05.965 communities, especially the LGBTQIA plus community. I've 1084 00:58:05.965 --> 00:58:08.525 noticed that the standard German club experience tends to be 1085 00:58:08.525 --> 00:58:12.040 catered primarily to a gay male able-bodied audience. Because of 1086 00:58:12.040 --> 00:58:14.600 that, more and more events are working to include all people, 1087 00:58:14.600 --> 00:58:17.240 establishing broader guidelines to improve well-being and safety 1088 00:58:17.240 --> 00:58:20.120 for everyone. It's common for clubs to have accessible 1089 00:58:20.120 --> 00:58:24.685 entrances, gender neutral, and flinta toilets, awareness teams 1090 00:58:24.685 --> 00:58:27.565 patrolling the premises, dedicated rest areas, free water 1091 00:58:27.565 --> 00:58:31.565 stations, and medical staff on-site. Does it all work? 1092 00:58:31.725 --> 00:58:34.605 Possibly not. It only takes one bad actor and things can go to 1093 00:58:34.605 --> 00:58:37.325 shit, but it helps to know there's someone you can turn to 1094 00:58:37.325 --> 00:58:40.370 for help. All of this exists to create a space where people can 1095 00:58:40.370 --> 00:58:43.810 be who they are and do what they love with no shame or guilt 1096 00:58:43.810 --> 00:58:47.330 attached. That's only possible when no cameras are allowed. No 1097 00:58:47.330 --> 00:58:51.410 pictures are taken and there's no social media aftermath to be 1098 00:58:51.410 --> 00:58:51.810 dealt with. 1099 00:58:52.195 --> 00:58:55.235 Disregarding these rules, especially by taking and posting 1100 00:58:55.235 --> 00:58:58.435 photos online feels almost sacrilegious. There it is again, 1101 00:58:58.435 --> 00:59:02.755 the sacred. So for me, the no photo policy has become not just 1102 00:59:02.755 --> 00:59:06.035 a rule, but a seal of approval for a proper night out. 1103 00:59:07.530 --> 00:59:09.850 I'm so glad someone wrote in from Germany, 1104 00:59:09.850 --> 00:59:11.930 specifically. Yes. Because 1105 00:59:12.250 --> 00:59:14.010 The subject matter experts. 1106 00:59:14.010 --> 00:59:17.930 In general, it's just it's an incredibly 1107 00:59:17.930 --> 00:59:21.770 powerful and efficient practice in terms of self expression in 1108 00:59:21.770 --> 00:59:25.805 general, especially for marginalized communities. To be 1109 00:59:25.805 --> 00:59:28.685 able to be like, yeah, you can come here and dress how you 1110 00:59:28.685 --> 00:59:32.125 want. You can engage in certain kinds of sexual activities if 1111 00:59:32.125 --> 00:59:35.645 you want to. You can come here and do drugs with your friends. 1112 00:59:35.645 --> 00:59:39.510 Like, you can act out things you'd like to act out and behave 1113 00:59:39.510 --> 00:59:43.190 how you wanna behave, dress how you want, and there's no 1114 00:59:43.750 --> 00:59:45.430 documentation of it. 1115 00:59:45.430 --> 00:59:48.630 That agreement is crucial for this kind of self expression. 1116 00:59:49.110 --> 00:59:50.630 There's some interesting thing here about, 1117 00:59:50.630 --> 00:59:54.565 like, how in a location where all of those things happen, you 1118 00:59:54.565 --> 00:59:59.445 know, the engagement in so many different vices, the thing that 1119 00:59:59.445 --> 01:00:05.580 is truly profane ends up just being a document. Yeah. Like, 1120 01:00:05.580 --> 01:00:07.820 wonder if that's like, you know, there's there's maybe an 1121 01:00:07.820 --> 01:00:11.340 interesting line of thought there about the sacred being 1122 01:00:11.340 --> 01:00:15.500 sort of necessarily ephemeral. And that as soon as it becomes 1123 01:00:16.235 --> 01:00:20.555 fixed in a way, it's you've you've ruined it or dirtied it. 1124 01:00:20.555 --> 01:00:25.755 Alright, kids. There is one last thing to 1125 01:00:25.755 --> 01:00:29.195 do. You know it. You love it. You were waiting for it even 1126 01:00:29.195 --> 01:00:30.475 though you can't remember the rules. 1127 01:00:31.060 --> 01:00:34.180 It is one word graffiti. 1128 01:00:34.340 --> 01:00:35.380 Wow. Chase and 1129 01:00:35.540 --> 01:00:36.260 Come on. 1130 01:00:36.740 --> 01:00:39.220 I gotta be fair. Were you appropriately 1131 01:00:39.220 --> 01:00:42.980 chastised after the last mailbag because you all did a much 1132 01:00:42.980 --> 01:00:46.745 better job sticking relatively close to the prompt of one word 1133 01:00:46.745 --> 01:00:50.905 graffiti that is funny. Starting with Taylor from Oklahoma City 1134 01:00:50.905 --> 01:00:52.185 who sent in two. 1135 01:00:52.505 --> 01:00:54.985 Okay. First one, we got your standard 1136 01:00:55.225 --> 01:00:58.830 residential sign that has a picture of a bicycle, and then 1137 01:00:58.830 --> 01:01:02.350 underneath it, it says, may use full lane. So bicycles may use 1138 01:01:02.350 --> 01:01:07.710 full lane. But someone has taken it upon themselves to cross off 1139 01:01:08.270 --> 01:01:12.795 the picture of the bicycle and just write the word punks under 1140 01:01:12.795 --> 01:01:16.555 it. So it says punks may use full lane. 1141 01:01:16.555 --> 01:01:19.835 Do we think this is celebratory of punks or 1142 01:01:19.835 --> 01:01:21.835 trying to dunk on cyclists? 1143 01:01:21.835 --> 01:01:24.890 Oh. I never even considered it. And you know 1144 01:01:24.890 --> 01:01:26.490 what? I support it either way. 1145 01:01:27.290 --> 01:01:28.010 Why does he have to 1146 01:01:28.010 --> 01:01:28.810 do only one? 1147 01:01:28.890 --> 01:01:30.170 He's gonna drill once. Alright. 1148 01:01:31.050 --> 01:01:32.890 And we're down to the second submission. 1149 01:01:33.530 --> 01:01:38.410 Personally, my favorite of the two, in which we see a little 1150 01:01:39.345 --> 01:01:45.345 pyramid guy with some shoes and two little stick arms, both 1151 01:01:45.345 --> 01:01:50.865 reaching upwards, one closed eyelid and a bit of a a jagged 1152 01:01:50.865 --> 01:01:56.120 smile. And right next to it, it just says, forget about it. 1153 01:01:56.360 --> 01:01:59.320 Yes. As one word, they slammed those letters 1154 01:01:59.320 --> 01:02:03.080 together to make one word out of it, which makes this admissible. 1155 01:02:04.680 --> 01:02:04.920 Yes. 1156 01:02:05.335 --> 01:02:05.735 I love it. 1157 01:02:05.735 --> 01:02:07.735 You know, I never would have expected when I woke 1158 01:02:07.735 --> 01:02:10.295 up this morning, I would see a happy pyramid doing the two 1159 01:02:10.295 --> 01:02:11.575 step. But here we are. 1160 01:02:11.575 --> 01:02:14.935 Yes. Next, we got one in from Lily. Mike, what 1161 01:02:14.935 --> 01:02:15.975 do we got going on here? 1162 01:02:16.135 --> 01:02:19.170 So this is it looks like we're looking in the 1163 01:02:19.170 --> 01:02:25.410 window of maybe a ceramics shop and underneath that window on a 1164 01:02:25.410 --> 01:02:30.290 piece of stone has been scribbled a picture, a side view 1165 01:02:30.290 --> 01:02:37.245 of a rat inside the body of the rat. It says, rat with the 1166 01:02:37.245 --> 01:02:38.125 Anarchist There 1167 01:02:38.765 --> 01:02:40.125 you go. Yeah. 1168 01:02:40.125 --> 01:02:42.205 And I've got a suspicion that this might be 1169 01:02:42.205 --> 01:02:45.085 one of those Anarchist listeners that we have. Because they also 1170 01:02:45.085 --> 01:02:49.280 included this little snippet of text under the image. Mike? 1171 01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:54.480 Kind gut, kind stat, kind patriarch cat, 1172 01:02:54.640 --> 01:02:55.840 patriarch chat. 1173 01:02:55.920 --> 01:02:57.280 That's better than I could do. 1174 01:02:57.280 --> 01:03:00.320 Kind, kind, kinda, kinda means none. No. 1175 01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:02.505 Right? No god, no state. Yeah. 1176 01:03:02.505 --> 01:03:07.545 It can mean no, not not any, none, nobody, no one. So no god, 1177 01:03:07.545 --> 01:03:11.785 no state, no patriarchy. Alright. It's a good rat. It's a 1178 01:03:11.785 --> 01:03:12.265 very 1179 01:03:12.105 --> 01:03:12.425 It's a 1180 01:03:12.425 --> 01:03:12.825 great rat. 1181 01:03:12.825 --> 01:03:15.305 Yeah. It's a really, you know, approachable 1182 01:03:15.305 --> 01:03:15.945 rat. 1183 01:03:16.105 --> 01:03:20.460 Next up, friend of the show, Talia, who 1184 01:03:20.460 --> 01:03:26.140 always follows the rules, sends in w e r m s worms. 1185 01:03:26.140 --> 01:03:29.180 Worms. Worms. Worms. 1186 01:03:29.180 --> 01:03:29.740 Worms. 1187 01:03:29.740 --> 01:03:30.300 Worms. 1188 01:03:30.460 --> 01:03:31.260 Hans, what's next? 1189 01:03:32.055 --> 01:03:36.135 Next, we have on a salmon dirty salmon colored 1190 01:03:36.135 --> 01:03:39.015 wall. This does not qualify, Jason. I'm so sorry. 1191 01:03:39.015 --> 01:03:39.255 Hang on. 1192 01:03:39.255 --> 01:03:41.575 You gotta say it the way it's written too. 1193 01:03:41.575 --> 01:03:53.780 Yes, please. It is no. La Polizia. No. La Polizia. 1194 01:03:53.860 --> 01:03:56.660 No. No. No. 1195 01:03:56.660 --> 01:04:00.100 And then, like, sort of half a raised 1196 01:04:00.100 --> 01:04:00.500 penis. 1197 01:04:00.745 --> 01:04:03.625 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta 1198 01:04:03.625 --> 01:04:05.145 get one in every show, you know. 1199 01:04:06.265 --> 01:04:09.385 Delightful. Technically, words. Technically. 1200 01:04:09.385 --> 01:04:16.710 This is balanced out by Tedder who sent the purest of all 1201 01:04:16.710 --> 01:04:17.350 submissions. 1202 01:04:17.350 --> 01:04:18.150 This is pretty good. 1203 01:04:18.150 --> 01:04:22.150 One letter. This is good. Yes. Apparently, 1204 01:04:22.150 --> 01:04:24.390 there's a lot of streets. I believe these to be around 1205 01:04:24.390 --> 01:04:25.110 Portland. 1206 01:04:25.110 --> 01:04:27.110 Laurelhurst is what I'm reading. 1207 01:04:27.270 --> 01:04:31.195 Northeast Flanders Street. Northeast, N E 1208 01:04:31.195 --> 01:04:34.875 Space Flanders Street. Into which space you can drop a 1209 01:04:34.875 --> 01:04:41.755 single letter d. Ned Flanders Street. One letter graffiti. 1210 01:04:41.995 --> 01:04:42.555 Tedder's the 1211 01:04:42.555 --> 01:04:42.955 winner right now. 1212 01:04:42.955 --> 01:04:44.635 It's good. It's funny. 1213 01:04:44.880 --> 01:04:47.040 The final two we have here, I think our first 1214 01:04:47.040 --> 01:04:49.760 for us, two people decided to send in their graffiti in the 1215 01:04:49.760 --> 01:04:53.280 form of a video. The first one I don't think really needs it, but 1216 01:04:53.280 --> 01:04:56.800 there's something kind of nice about the ambiance of the slow 1217 01:04:56.800 --> 01:05:00.655 crawl of this across the screen and the scoring of what I assume 1218 01:05:00.655 --> 01:05:04.735 they were listening to in the car. Georgia, what's going on 1219 01:05:04.735 --> 01:05:05.215 here? 1220 01:05:05.215 --> 01:05:09.135 First of all, I am attacked by the sound of Fade 1221 01:05:09.135 --> 01:05:16.175 Into by Mazi Star. And then, yes, we're we're seeing sort 1222 01:05:15.270 --> 01:05:15.510 of a 1223 01:05:15.510 --> 01:05:22.310 skyline, a billboard upon which someone has 1224 01:05:22.310 --> 01:05:24.630 written what does that say? 1225 01:05:24.870 --> 01:05:26.630 I think it says Oprah. 1226 01:05:26.710 --> 01:05:27.190 I think it 1227 01:05:27.190 --> 01:05:29.270 says Oprah. Oh my god. Of course, it says 1228 01:05:29.270 --> 01:05:31.815 Oprah. Oh my god. Says Oprah. 1229 01:05:31.815 --> 01:05:34.535 Sorry. Sorry, guys. Fonts aren't 1230 01:05:34.535 --> 01:05:35.415 my It's 1231 01:05:35.415 --> 01:05:37.895 a it's a whole billboard. 1232 01:05:37.895 --> 01:05:39.895 Oprah's huge. It's huge. 1233 01:05:40.215 --> 01:05:42.855 Would have been done with, like, like, a rolling 1234 01:05:43.095 --> 01:05:44.135 like a paint roller. 1235 01:05:44.135 --> 01:05:44.295 It's 1236 01:05:44.295 --> 01:05:47.610 like, this is enormous. Takes up the entire 1237 01:05:48.250 --> 01:05:52.810 rectangle of the billboard. Oprah. I find 1238 01:05:52.810 --> 01:05:55.050 it deeply satisfying. I just keep looping 1239 01:05:55.050 --> 01:05:56.570 this. I find this very nice. 1240 01:05:56.890 --> 01:05:57.610 I don't know. Some of 1241 01:05:57.610 --> 01:06:00.335 us aren't ready to receive as it turns out. 1242 01:06:02.095 --> 01:06:05.935 And then the final one here is three words, 1243 01:06:06.655 --> 01:06:08.975 which made me not want to include it because that makes me 1244 01:06:08.975 --> 01:06:11.455 mad. But what made me happy is 1245 01:06:11.695 --> 01:06:13.775 It's the same two words twice in a row. 1246 01:06:14.130 --> 01:06:15.970 You know, no matter how you slice it, I hate 1247 01:06:15.970 --> 01:06:19.970 it. But you went to the effort and this can only really be seen 1248 01:06:19.970 --> 01:06:25.170 by taking a video of it. Jordan sent in this video. Mike, what's 1249 01:06:25.170 --> 01:06:25.810 going on? 1250 01:06:26.210 --> 01:06:29.090 We're in a car and the car is on the highway 1251 01:06:29.090 --> 01:06:33.375 and we see a sign that says Nikolai Street and a building in 1252 01:06:33.375 --> 01:06:37.135 the background, in front of a hill that says Montgomery Park. 1253 01:06:37.135 --> 01:06:40.975 We're approaching, we are in the left hand lane with the Jersey 1254 01:06:40.975 --> 01:06:45.215 barriers right next to us. We approach a bunch of green 1255 01:06:44.940 --> 01:06:48.860 bollards that are on top of the Jersey barrier and on the first 1256 01:06:48.860 --> 01:06:57.020 four are spelled out one letter per bollard f u c k bollard 1257 01:06:57.020 --> 01:07:03.955 bollard y o u. Three more bollards, another fuck. Two more 1258 01:07:03.955 --> 01:07:05.635 bollards, another u. 1259 01:07:06.115 --> 01:07:11.155 Looking almost like they were painted while in motion. Yeah. 1260 01:07:11.955 --> 01:07:15.210 Is like scary serial killer font also. 1261 01:07:15.290 --> 01:07:18.570 Yeah. It's like white paint. It's all drippy. 1262 01:07:18.570 --> 01:07:19.770 It's a very Yeah. 1263 01:07:19.770 --> 01:07:20.570 It's all lowercase. 1264 01:07:20.650 --> 01:07:23.450 Yeah. So, yeah, driving by six miles an hour or 1265 01:07:23.450 --> 01:07:24.730 whatever it is. Fuck you. Fuck you. 1266 01:07:25.255 --> 01:07:27.175 Fuck you. Very dangerous. Four words. Hate 1267 01:07:27.175 --> 01:07:29.575 everything about it. But gotta give it up to you for putting in 1268 01:07:29.575 --> 01:07:30.055 the effort. 1269 01:07:30.055 --> 01:07:31.255 So thank you, Jordan. 1270 01:07:31.415 --> 01:07:33.335 Now, who's the Polizia? 1271 01:07:33.895 --> 01:07:34.375 No. 1272 01:07:38.440 --> 01:07:41.000 Alright. Before we sign off, there is one 1273 01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:45.960 more very important thing we have possibly learned. You know, 1274 01:07:45.960 --> 01:07:48.200 we all know the thing that we all say at the end of every 1275 01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:51.720 episode. Right? Do their claws find my flesh? 1276 01:07:51.720 --> 01:07:52.760 May they drown in my blood? 1277 01:07:52.760 --> 01:07:53.720 Oh, yes. Of course. 1278 01:07:53.720 --> 01:07:57.455 Well, Daniel t says the only place that they 1279 01:07:57.455 --> 01:08:01.775 can find this online is at techteesusa.com. 1280 01:08:01.775 --> 01:08:03.455 This website is horrible. 1281 01:08:03.455 --> 01:08:05.855 Very American. Sounds legit. 1282 01:08:07.200 --> 01:08:09.680 Most American of websites were in the 1283 01:08:09.680 --> 01:08:14.960 description for a t shirt that says exactly that. It says, the 1284 01:08:14.960 --> 01:08:17.760 should their claws find my flesh, may they drown in my 1285 01:08:17.760 --> 01:08:20.960 blood shirt is a powerful and evocative statement of defiance. 1286 01:08:21.315 --> 01:08:24.595 This bold declaration adorns a shirt that serves as a wearable 1287 01:08:24.595 --> 01:08:27.635 symbol of courage and resistance. The words attributed 1288 01:08:27.635 --> 01:08:31.475 to legendary warrior, queen Budoka, reflect a fierce 1289 01:08:31.475 --> 01:08:34.035 determination to fight back against those who would seek to 1290 01:08:34.035 --> 01:08:38.190 harm or oppress. We have a potential candidate here for who 1291 01:08:38.190 --> 01:08:40.590 has said this phrase which we were not able to find. 1292 01:08:41.310 --> 01:08:43.950 I have looked no further than this website considering it the 1293 01:08:43.950 --> 01:08:45.790 universal source source of truth. 1294 01:08:46.430 --> 01:08:49.230 If you can find better, let us know. 1295 01:08:49.550 --> 01:08:52.725 Please do. And until that time comes, all 1296 01:08:52.725 --> 01:08:53.925 together now kids. 1297 01:08:54.325 --> 01:08:58.805 Should claws find my flesh. May they 1298 01:08:58.965 --> 01:09:01.125 drown in 1299 01:09:01.125 --> 01:09:06.030 my blood. Bye, everybody. Bye.