I Hate This City

[00:00:00] Welcome Back to Overtired!

[00:00:00]

[00:00:01] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired, a sometimes monthly podcast. I’m Kristina Warren, joined as always by Jeff Severance Gunzel and Brett Terpstra. Hey guys, long time no talk!

[00:00:16] Jeff: Hello!

[00:00:17] The Time Warp: How Long Has It Been?

[00:00:17] Brett: How long has it been? We’ve been off for two weeks,

[00:00:20] Christina: No, like,

[00:00:20] Jeff: think I’ve been off longer though.

[00:00:22] Christina: Yeah, it’s been three or four.

[00:00:25] Brett: I have no sense of time.

[00:00:28] Jeff: I have

[00:00:28] Brett: isn’t, time isn’t real. Time is a construct. I live in the fifth dimension.

[00:00:33] Jeff: Okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. Um, mute him.

[00:00:43] Brett: That’s rude.

[00:00:44] Jeff: I was just kidding.

[00:00:46] Brett: Rude.

[00:00:47] Diving Into Mental Health and Podcast Sustainability

[00:00:47] Brett: Um, so should we start with a, a brief, a contained mental health corner?

[00:00:55] Christina: Yeah, it’s been a while. I’d love to like hear from everybody, see how everybody’s doing. Cause um, [00:01:00] uh, just, uh, we’ve all had stuff going on. Um, and also the podcast market is kind of trash right now, but mostly we’ve all had stuff going on. So we haven’t talked to one another in a while. I would

[00:01:11] Exploring Patreon and Merch Ideas

[00:01:11] Brett: really, we should test the waters with a Patreon and just see if our listeners want to support the show. Um, if you’re listening and you would be willing to pay a Small monthly fee, uh, to support the show, please write in, let us know, um, contact us on any of the various social media services, um, uh, because it would be a far more sustainable, uh, source of income than the fucking ad world right now.

[00:01:43] Brett: Well,

[00:01:45] Christina: I think, for, well, no, not I think, I know, there’s no I think about it. Like, if we’re taking money from anybody, we’re, like, at least, speaking for myself,

[00:01:53] Brett: with Patreon you can also, you can also set it up so that people pay when you publish. [00:02:00] Uh, so like, uh, like Amanda Palmer does it, like you only, if you’re on her Patreon you can only pay when she releases a song. Uh, which she does regularly. Um, but we could just charge people when we release a podcast, which would still give us the ability to take a week off if we needed to, uh, without feeling, um, like we were screwing people over.

[00:02:24] Brett: So yeah, we’ll look into it. Also, I am, I forgot to show you guys this, but, uh, we are going to launch some merch on Key Public. Um, I have some designs done, but I. I don’t know if you guys will love them or not. I might have to try again. I’ll show you them after the show. Um, if, if we get the go ahead from all three co hosts, um, check, uh, check the show notes for a merch link.

[00:02:53] Brett: Anyway, should I kick off the mental health

[00:02:55] A Light-Hearted Take on Money Laundering

[00:02:55] Jeff: hold on, I have a, I have a question. If we start doing [00:03:00] Patreon, is that an opportunity for me to launder some of my extra money?

[00:03:03] Christina: Yes.

[00:03:04] Jeff: Like the way they did in Breaking Bad to, you know, for Walt’s donation website. Okay, cool.

[00:03:10] Christina: 100%. No, I mean, like, I mean, I will say that we should probably, if we do decide to do this and you decide to do that, that we’re going to need to go back and edit this episode so that, like, any comments about the money laundering are gone. Which means, like, if you’re listening right now to this, you are hearing something that potentially might be deleted later.

[00:03:28] Christina: So, you know, save on, save, save, save

[00:03:32] Jeff: but I gotta clean my money. Somehow. I gotta clean it. I’m just sittin on it, it’s, this Zoom background is fake, it’s, if you actually were looking at my background, it’s just stacks of cash. With like a single sheet over it.

[00:03:47] Christina: Stacks on stacks on

[00:03:48] Jeff: Well, I’ll look into that some more. Do you think anybody does launder money through Patreon?

[00:03:52] Christina: Oh, most definitely.

[00:03:54] Jeff: Oh. I’m upset my family’s so tired of me talking about money laundering. I’m obsessed by all the ways [00:04:00] that people launder money.

[00:04:01] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I mean, look, look, they do it through gift cards. They do it through, I mean, you know, Bitcoin, whatever you have to do. I have to think that like Patreon and things like that are, are a source, right? It just depends.

[00:04:11] Jeff: chips. I see you, Donald Trump.

[00:04:15] Christina: probably just has to depend on like, okay, like the only thing with something like Patreon is You’re, you’re giving up like whatever fee you’re giving up to like launder the money and then you’re also paying the Patreon fees.

[00:04:27] Christina: So I guess you just need to like, you’d probably need to have like a high volume, um, to be able to like make it work. Otherwise there are probably better ways, ways to launder money. Um, she says as if she’s some sort of money laundering expert. I’m not. I’ve just

[00:04:41] Jeff: We’ve all seen Ozark.

[00:04:42] Christina: I was going to say, I’ve seen Ozark.

[00:04:44] Christina: I’ve, I’ve, you know, seen a bunch of other heists types of things. Watch Breaking

[00:04:48] Jeff: Ozark, which has, which has the most amazing, uh, like quick brief on money laundering that he gives, I think to his kid maybe, or maybe no, no, he’s just narrating it. [00:05:00] It’s early on. And it’s like the, the, the footage you’re seeing is like actual money and actual laundry machine, which is actually part of his process to sort of age the money.

[00:05:10] Jeff: Anyway, um, that’s not my mental health check in. It’s definitely not yours, Brett. Uh, so, um, yeah. See you in jail.

[00:05:19] Mental Health Corner: Road Rage and Wallet Woes

[00:05:19] Brett: I gotta tell you, so this is officially mental health corner now, but, um, I think it was last week, like I said, no sense of time, but, um, Elle and I got up early to go for a walk in the, uh, wildlife refuge, not too far away from us, um, but it was early, and I’ve been sleeping until like eight lately, which is, uh, Weird for me, but if I get up before then, I, I am crabby.

[00:05:48] Brett: Uh, and I got up before them on this fateful day. Um, and, uh, I was driving us to, we were just leaving our little neighborhood, uh, [00:06:00] which is on a two lane street. And someone came up hot on my six. Um, just riding my ass, which was annoying, but. I intentionally went exactly the speed limit, kind of to piss them off.

[00:06:14] Brett: Um, and, uh, then they, it’s a double yellow line, uh, at a blind curve, and they try to pass me. And my brain’s like, oh fuck no, so I gun it. And we’re like racing down this two lane road into a blind curve and they give up and they pull back in behind me. And I roll my window down so I can more easily flip them off when, uh, when they do eventually pass.

[00:06:44] Brett: Uh, which happens and we flip each other off and like, my adrenaline’s up but I calm down, like, I let that kind of thing go very quickly, it’s like, fun in the moment, uh, but, in the meantime, Elle is scared shitless, um,

[00:06:59] Jeff: Elle’s in [00:07:00] the car for this?

[00:07:01] Brett: yeah. L’s in the car for this, which normally, you know, for this kind of thing, I’m driving alone.

[00:07:07] Brett: But L is in the car, and they’re scared shitless. Um, and, and they’re screaming at me, Brett, no! What are you doing? What the fuck? No! And I’m not listening, I’m just saying. And so anyway, it takes, it takes them a long time to calm down, which involves like shaking and tears and like, I really upset both their nervous system and just their emotional state of being.

[00:07:35] Brett: Um, and I was so, I felt so stupid because it would have been so easy to just be like, Hey, look at this fucker. And let it happen, uh, but instead I, I had to escalate. Um, so I did some parts work after that to, to use IFS speak. Um, and realized there’s this part of me that I’ve always thought was a pretty good part.

[00:07:58] Brett: Um, that [00:08:00] believes that society functions better with rules. Um, And it’s often kept me from making some very bad decisions. It also violently reacts to other people breaking social norms and, and laws. Um, like I’m, I’m bizarrely rule based for someone who considers

[00:08:23] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, that’s like, that’s like an interesting, um, thing there.

[00:08:28] Brett: but like that, that’s the, that’s the thing is if a rule is in place, like A law in general, whatever. But a rule like, don’t pass on a blind curve, like that’s just for everyone’s safety, that’s for the good of society, and that to me is a rule that should be followed. Um, that is not to say what I did was excusable, um, it

[00:08:53] Christina: No, what you did was immature.

[00:08:55] Brett: I published, I published a DIMMspiration the same day that [00:09:00] says, I don’t believe I’m a maniac, but then sometimes I do things that only a maniac would do, which is kind of a glaring hole in my theory.

[00:09:08] Brett: Um, so anyway, like I, I found that part and I, I talked to it and I’m going to work to kind of let it, Exists without being so reactionary. Um, because I feel like it’s, it’s not a bad part. It just, uh, these firefighters come up. I’m using IFS speak. Anyone who’s doing IFS will know what I’m talking about.

[00:09:35] Brett: Everyone else is like, what the fuck? But anyway, a couple other points I want to hit.

[00:09:41] The Great Wallet Saga: A Tale of Loss and Recovery

[00:09:41] Brett: Um, I lost my wallet a week ago, and for a week I have been just stressed. Even when I wasn’t thinking about it, I realized I was carrying all this stress, uh, because we’re about to leave on vacation, and I don’t have a valid driver’s license, I don’t have any of my credit cards, [00:10:00] um, I don’t even have a health insurance card, and so I’m freaking out a little bit.

[00:10:04] Brett: Um, and today was the day. That I was going to start the process of applying for a new driver’s license and hopefully get a temporary one, and then just rely on all of my Apple wallet so I could pay with my phone wherever possible. But I, I, as a last ditch. I retraced my steps one more time, which I had already done once, but I ended up at Walgreens asking the guy behind the counter if they had a loss in found and he like calls to the manager and um, I forgot what my wallet looked like.

[00:10:43] Brett: Um, I was thinking of, uh, my previous wallet, which was tan leather. Um, so I described it as a flat tan leather wallet and they’re like, eh, what’s the name on the ID? And I’m like, well, this is hopeful. And I give him my name [00:11:00] and he’s like, just a sec. And he comes out with my. Black wallet and it has my ID in it and looking into it It’s very clearly all the credit cards have been pulled out and it’s got like compartments for each card And all of the cards had clearly been pulled out and shoved back into one compartment.

[00:11:24] Brett: Uh, which is weird because the ID is like, clearly visible on the outside. But, all the cards are there, even my, like, uh, gift cards for like, local restaurants. Which could easily have been used by anybody. And I had such a sense of relief. Um,

[00:11:44] Jeff: Ehhh.

[00:11:45] Brett: like, I didn’t realize until that moment exactly how much stress I was carrying over this, but like, it felt like, it felt like, uh, I’m gonna say like a hit of cocaine.

[00:11:58] Brett: Like, just this [00:12:00] like, elation in my body that almost tingled. Um, it was cool. It was very nice.

[00:12:06] Navigating Life’s Challenges: From Medication to Moving

[00:12:06] Brett: Um, so it, and I’m getting ready for this vacation, so I’m dealing with like meds that would have a refill date right in the middle of my vacation, which makes it like too early to refill before the vacation, and I got to figure out if I can get like a special exception, uh, On a couple of these, including my Vyvanse, uh, which is a super sticky one to get an early refill on.

[00:12:34] Brett: Um, so I emailed my doctor, but, uh, she takes Fridays off and. I might not know until Monday, but I don’t leave until next

[00:12:44] Christina: that’s, that’s good at least. Um, so, um, I’m really glad you found your wallet. Um, I, I’m also glad that like, you, you realize like what your wallet looks like,

[00:12:58] Brett: right? [00:13:00] This whole time I’ve been trashing my house and my car looking for it, because I keep it in this secret pocket on my jeans that’s right above my knee and has a zipper on it. Well, at least on the jeans I was wearing that day. And when I realized it was missing, I realized that zipper was down, which in my head only happens when I take the wallet out.

[00:13:25] Brett: And so, so I must’ve left it. Like I went to the drive thru pharmacy and I never would’ve passed my wallet to them. So I figured it had to have been on the car, seat of my car. So I trashed my car looking for it. And, uh, I could have been at my. Desk, uh, and needed to like check my health insurance card or something.

[00:13:45] Brett: So I trashed my office looking for it and I, apparently I just left the zipper down and it like fell out at Walgreens,

[00:13:55] Jeff: Man, if

[00:13:55] Brett: Just so weird.

[00:13:56] Jeff: that line was out of context.[00:14:00]

[00:14:02] Brett: Left my zipper down and it fell out at Walgreens. Um,

[00:14:10] Jeff: So

[00:14:12] Brett: but yeah, I, I don’t know. Cause I paid with my phone at Walgreens. So I don’t, I, yeah, I got lucky. I’m, I’m so glad to have it, but thank you.

[00:14:22] Jeff: yeah, it’s a little piece of us we carry with us that we forget how destabilizing it is when you lose it.

[00:14:29] Brett: Oh my, I’ve never lost my wallet

[00:14:30] Jeff: That’s actually what I’m hearing from you. So for me, I lost my wallet. I misplaced my wallet in the house, like, a week ago. And for me, what happens is I just go a little crazy because I lost something.

[00:14:43] Jeff: You know? I’m like, I should know where this is. It’s crazy I don’t know where this is.

[00:14:48] Brett: my phone, my wallet, and my keys, I never lose. Like, they’re three things that I’m always conscious of. I, like, every time I stand up, I check my left pocket where my phone is, check my right [00:15:00] pocket where my keys and my wallet are. And they never leave my person, and I just It’s, yeah, I felt really, um, destabilized for having lost

[00:15:12] Christina: Yeah.

[00:15:13] Brett: Uh,

[00:15:14] Christina: Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. Yeah. I, I always had like this mantra that I, that I stole from, um, the TV show Broad City, um, that I think, I think how Lincoln says it is slightly different, but in my mind, I always say like phone, wallet, keys, because that would be like a thing that he would always like tell like Ilana to, to check before she would leave.

[00:15:31] Christina: And so I always have them like, okay, phone, wallet, keys, phone, wallet, keys. And then sometimes I’ll add in, like, if I’m going on a trip, like Phone, wallet, keys, pills, right? Make sure, like, before I leave, like on a trip, that I’ve got, like, my meds, that I’ve got, like, my phone, my wallet, you know, whatnot. Um, no, I lose sunglasses. with surprising frequency. And, and I’m not talking like cheap sunglasses. I’m talking like, like 200, 250 sunglasses. I once lost like three pairs of Ray Bans in like a six week period. It was obscene. It was dumb. And [00:16:00] like at that point, um, and, and I’d had such a good streak up at that point, I think it’d been years.

[00:16:05] Christina: And, and since I’d lost a pair of Ray Bans and then, um, No, I, I, to my knowledge, I’ve never lost my wallet. I’ve lost parts of things before, like I lost my passport card, not my passport. I did, I didn’t bother getting it replaced because it was just the passport card and I was like, fuck it, whatever.

[00:16:23] Brett: What’s a

[00:16:24] Christina: that is, it looks like a, um, uh, ID, like just looks like a driver’s license and you,

[00:16:30] Jeff: Like a global

[00:16:31] Christina: Kind of, except it only works in Canada and the U.

[00:16:33] Christina: S., so it’s also sort of pointless. But I had it for a while because I didn’t have like a state ID, and so my state ID was expired because it was from a state that I didn’t live in anymore, and so until I got like my ID ID, I would use, I would carry my passport around, but like that’s kind of annoying, so I would carry my passport card.

[00:16:51] Christina: I did lose that in 2019, and um, God, passport renewals right now are such a pain in the ass. I’m [00:17:00] still waiting on mine. I, like, sent in for it forever ago. Digress.

[00:17:04] Brett: You probably paid for expedited

[00:17:06] Christina: I did. I did.

[00:17:07] Brett: Expedited is still like a

[00:17:08] Christina: It’s more than a month. And the thing is, is that it’s like, I would pay, like, Do I have to fucking go to San Francisco to go to the fucking consulate to get, like, a same day thing?

[00:17:16] Christina: Because in New York, at least I could do that. I could pay, like, 600 bucks and, like, get it, like, The next day if you needed to, um, because somebody would actually like hand walk it to the embassy and like, you know, get your docs back. But the thing is, is that like Seattle doesn’t have an embassy. So the closest consulate is fucking San Francisco.

[00:17:32] Christina: So anyway, I hate this. I fucking hate this state. I hate this town. I hate everything about it. Anyway, I digress. But I mean, I do. I fucking, I fucking hate living here. I do.

[00:17:41] The Seattle Rant: Love, Hate, and Everything In-Between

[00:17:41] Christina: Um, that’s my mental health corner. I fucking hate Seattle. Um,

[00:17:45] Jeff: You’re like, the Pearl Jam albums aren’t even

[00:17:46] Brett: I, I did not know that. I thought, I thought you enjoyed

[00:17:50] Christina: no, I don’t. No, I’ve tried. I’ve like, I’ve like kept it in. I’ve like tried for seven years and I fucking hate it. It’s a shitty, shitty, shitty state. It’s a shitty, shitty, shitty [00:18:00] city

[00:18:00] Jeff: Why did you, why

[00:18:01] Christina: because I got a job.

[00:18:02] Jeff: you end up there? Seven

[00:18:03] Christina: I got a job.

[00:18:04] Jeff: had the job. Okay, got it.

[00:18:06] Brett: so, so what’s the plan then? It’s not, it can’t, it can’t be mentally healthy to live somewhere you

[00:18:12] Christina: No, but like,

[00:18:13] Brett: to use your words. Yeah. Oh, that’s rough. I feel for you.

[00:18:20] Jeff: Extracting yourself from a city. It’s not so easy. Unless you’re like 29.

[00:18:26] Christina: So, but it’s just, it’s just as expensive.

[00:18:29] Brett: they won’t

[00:18:29] Christina: No, they would, but I mean, it’s not just, it’s not just about me. Like I have other, anyway, I, I, I can’t, I don’t want to get into all that, but like, it’s, it’s not just, um, my decision. So.

[00:18:40] Brett: hate

[00:18:41] Christina: Yeah, no, but it’s a shitty, shitty, shitty city. It’s a shitty city full of shitty people with shitty weather, um, and, um, expensive as fuck, um, for not a good city.

[00:18:51] Christina: Like, you don’t have the amenities of an actual city, but you pay actual city prices. It’s a fucking shitty place. Seattle fucking sucks.

[00:18:59] Jeff: [00:19:00] I think you should take, I think you should take all this to the Chamber of Commerce, because it’s, if they start putting that up on

[00:19:04] Christina: Oh, the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t give a fuck. In fact, the Chamber of Commerce, or not the Chamber of Commerce, the, the fucking City Council, the fucking City Council is like so anti anybody who actually gives them money, they’re like, oh no, let’s, let’s, let’s, um, Ray, let’s, let’s create a fucking Uber tax so that every single delivery service has an Uh, has to pay an average of 25 an hour for delivery drivers.

[00:19:28] Christina: Which, look, I’m all for fair wages, and I’m all for like, if you want to set the minimum wage a certain thing, fine. I think it’s kind of fucked up that people who dr who like, deliver for DoorDash are getting paid more than like, people who like, work. Like, in, you know, as like, uh, it, it, you know, a lot of people have like, actual jobs, you know, who work in like medicine and, and things like that and, and are, are doing things that frankly, like, take a lot more skill than, um, doing a poor job delivering food.

[00:19:56] Christina: Like, so anyway, the, and the net [00:20:00] result is nobody orders delivery anymore because the, the prices are so insane. Um, not to mention the sales tax, not to mention the fact that they, like the, the city sucks. Like they, they just got rid of the gifted program because of equity. Um, which all that means is that all the smart kids who are mostly, you know, uh, white or Asian or whatever, you know, people have money.

[00:20:19] Christina: Like the, the, the families that have money are just going to put their kids in private school. And the smart kids who don’t have. Parents who can send them to private school are, like, those kids are fucked. So, anyway, this city sucks. That’s, that’s my mental health corner. Sorry, didn’t mean to take yours over, Brett.

[00:20:34] Brett: No, that’s, that’s,

[00:20:36] Jeff: segue.

[00:20:37] Brett: yeah, I, uh, I, I definitely with your permission, am titling this episode, like why Seattle sucks, um, or fuck Seattle.

[00:20:50] Jeff: You just generalize, this city sucks. Then everybody, then everybody comes in wanting to know which city.

[00:20:56] Brett: There you go.

[00:20:57] Jeff: Minneapolis, Seattle.

[00:20:59] Brett: for sure. [00:21:00] But Minneapolis, I love. Do you love Minneapolis, Jeff?

[00:21:07] Jeff: I love Minneapolis. Our mayor’s a twerp, but I love Minneapolis.

[00:21:10] Brett: I love, I love Minnesota. I love my city. I love my little town. I, it, it hurts my heart to hear that someone has spent seven years living somewhere that they hate so much.

[00:21:22] Christina: Well, I didn’t, I didn’t always hate it. And like I said, I’ve like, I’ve like tried, right? Like I’ve tried to like make it better, but it’s just, it’s just shitty place. Um,

[00:21:31] Jeff: Where would you, what, where would you live if you had had a choice? New York, yeah, that’s easy. I still have dreams that I live in New York again, but the dreams are just that I’m standing on a sidewalk in New York and I’m the happiest person in the world.

[00:21:46] Brett: I’ve only ever,

[00:21:47] Jeff: sidewalk.

[00:21:48] Brett: I’ve only ever been homeless in New York, but it was still a great city. It was still like one of the best places I’ve been homeless compared to like Baltimore. New York is amazing [00:22:00] for homeless

[00:22:00] Jeff: competition in Baltimore. You got, it’s a little more like, uh, you got a lot more space in New York to be homeless. You can find your, your little communer people, or space.

[00:22:10] Brett: Well, I, I was fortunate enough to be like part of kind of a punk world that Everyone couch surf like half the kids there were homeless and you could find a couch to sleep on in the summer You could find rooftops that people would let you throw a sleeping bag down and all the bars Offer like free food, even if you’re not buying drinks, not all the bars But if you know where to go

[00:22:35] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:22:36] Brett: It’s actually a pretty easy place to be.

[00:22:38] Brett: For me, for me, a white male, it was a pretty easy place to be homeless.

[00:22:44] Jeff: always find a stinky couch. Yeah.

[00:22:48] Brett: Anyhow. Yeah. Okay. Do you have anything, anything else you want to add to your mental health corner? Christina

[00:22:56] Christina: well, the fact that I just went on that unplanned, like, unhinged, like, [00:23:00] rant about how much I fucking hate this city, uh, probably means that I need to talk about. Some of my rage issues with my, uh, with my therapist, um, and it’s not even rage issues. It’s just, I think I’ve probably been bottling stuff up, um, frustrations for various things.

[00:23:19] Brett: Yeah. Well, like it’s so fascinating to me that I had no idea you didn’t like Seattle, which means you have bottled that up for a long time. . All right. All right. Jeff

[00:23:37] Jeff: Uh, Jeff, well, I added to our, um, show notes to, uh, follow up on anarchy after we’re done with this. I just have a couple of, uh, good bits, good bits from my life about anarchy. Um, very short. Uh, uh, but, um, yeah, I, I’ve embarked on a writing project and, um, kind of a [00:24:00] comprehensive writing project. And, uh, and as a start for that, I kind of started gathering all of my writing over the years, uh, that even have anything related to this topic.

[00:24:13] Jeff: And it’s like things I’ve published, things I’ve written and not published, journal entries, like transcripts of interviews I’ve done over 15 years and 20 years, maybe, uh, trainings I’ve given, all this stuff. And, um, and I just, I had it all transcribed. I mean, just did AI transcription. Um, and it was super interesting.

[00:24:35] Jeff: Cause like, I basically realized that everything I want to say Or that I think I want to address has been, I have said or written in ways that every time I encounter it, I’m like, Oh, that’s a good point. I agree with that. Oh, I like how he said that. And so, uh, it was really just fun to kind of go through all these years of writing and speaking, um, and just see what has changed and [00:25:00] what threads are like common throughout.

[00:25:02] Jeff: Um, Like I actually took, I took whole chunks of stuff from different years and put it through three AIs, through Claude, through, uh, through Gemini and through ChatGPT, just to say like, do a thematic analysis. It’s so interesting to see not just the difference between the three of them, but obviously the similarities, but then also the similarities across years.

[00:25:24] Jeff: I was like, okay, I’ve been on this trip for a long time. And, uh, so anyway, it’s just really, that’s been really fun. And, and just a nice way to, I always like my life feels so scattered and my career feels so scattered and, uh, higgledy piggledy as they say somewhere. Um, then anytime I have like a opportunity where I can actually see kind of a straight line through it, even if it’s a curvy thing, um, like a sine wave, you put, uh, that always feels really good.

[00:25:52] Jeff: And, um, makes me feel a little more whole. Uh, and so that’s been really nice and really fun. [00:26:00] Um, and, uh, and just, yeah, just an unusual experience. And, and part of how it came to be is that I ended up with a gap in contracts. I am a, we’ve talked about this before, but like I’m a member owner of a collaborative research and evaluation collaborative until last year, I always had these huge contracts for like five years, really great budgets, a lot of Create new things and new ways of handling things.

[00:26:24] Jeff: And, uh, then that ended last year and I was in the world of small contracts and that’s just not, it’s not my gift to manage those things properly, to manage the scope of my efforts inside of them. I invariably burn through my budget when the work’s still not done and then I’m working for free, um, just to complete it.

[00:26:43] Jeff: But basically I ended up with that, through, what is it? Six pay period gap where I’m making a sixth my normal income, which is not good. Um, I’ve been able to claw back some of it by going out for some new [00:27:00] contracts, but even that, what was cool about this is that, well, one, I reframed it right away. My wife and I had like a meeting where we’re like, okay, so that’s this number of dollars that I have to kind of figure out how to fill because we’re already like, things are tight and we’ve got a kid going to college and we’re paying some of that.

[00:27:14] Jeff: And, um, And, and we were, had this meeting where like, I just created this like narrative of like exactly how much money I’m missing per week and what I need to make up and all this stuff. And, uh, and at some point in the like depths of it, where I’m like, okay, when we come out of this right now, we’re just doing the logistics and we come out of this, it’s gonna, it’s gonna sting when the reality hits.

[00:27:36] Jeff: But then instead of that, I was like, you know what, this is. It’s a muppet caper. It’s like, they’re gonna close the theater down if we don’t raise 15, 000. Well, let’s go! Woo! And like, someone ends up in jail, but like, Yul Brynner’s the jailer, you know, and like, and, and so once I framed it that way, both of us.

[00:27:56] Jeff: And my wife has, tends to be way more, she can get way more kind of anxious [00:28:00] about money than I can for better and for worse. Um, all of a sudden we were like, Oh, that’s great. This is delightful. And, and I went about the work of like finding new stuff. What was great about the opportunity in the end. I mean, I’m in it very much in it is like, it allowed me to shake loose from really what was kind of a work rut.

[00:28:18] Jeff: Um, and like, I got really burned out on my Juvenile justice. And then I just took a lot of contracts that were just doing the kind of work that like, wasn’t that exciting to me. There was no room. I really liked to create and there was just no room to create. It was just like, get it done. And, um, and I was like, I don’t want to die like this.

[00:28:37] Jeff: Like I’m 49. I’ve, I’ve like managed to stay in a place where like, I’m. I’m basically doing something I really care about and I’m passionate about with a team of people. We talked about this a couple episodes ago, but like with a team of people, I really just like feel a, a sort of like soldier’s bond with.

[00:28:57] Jeff: Um, and, and so all of a sudden that was [00:29:00] over and I was like, Oh, this is great. I can just sit here and think about the things that I like to do, the things that I’m good at, and get out of this thing where I’m saying yes to things I’m good at, but don’t like doing. And it’s a huge privilege to be in that situation, but I will mind, mind you, I’m on unemployment.

[00:29:16] Jeff: So like, it’s a, it’s a qualified privilege. Right. Um, but it really opened me up. And one of the things was just wanting to do. Some writing, and so now, finally, I’m kind of like, doing that. So it’s like a blessing, the Muppet Caper’s a little bit of a blessing, but I haven’t ended up in jail yet, so

[00:29:31] Christina: Well, that’s good. That, that, that’s like an, that, I mean, you know, cause like that’s, that’s the one part of the Muppet caper that like, you know, when, when Fozzie and, uh, and Kermit wind up in jail, uh, you know, like that’s, that’s always one of those moments, you’re like, Oh God, you know, who’s going to have to bail them out

[00:29:46] Muppet Jailbreak: A Hypothetical Dilemma

[00:29:46] Jeff: Who, I think I know the answer for all of you, but who would you rather be in jail with, Fozzie or Kermit?

[00:29:52] Christina: probably I don’t know. I, I don’t know. Cause yeah, Fawzi probably, cause Kermit would be super anxious. Kermit would be [00:30:00] super anxious and that would make me anxious and, and you don’t, like, that’s just not good. But, but Fawzi could be kind of annoying.

[00:30:08] Jeff: But I am

[00:30:09] Brett: Fa Fa Yeah, me too. Fa

[00:30:11] Jeff: That’s what I realized. I thought I was going to choose Fozzie. It was like, I fucking am Fozzie. We’re never getting out of there.

[00:30:15] Brett: Fozzy is clearly ADD. Um, and like, I, the way I relate, the way, like, especially in a, um, captive situation, um, I relate best to people that think quickly over, like, the surface without diving deep, and Kermit would want

[00:30:35] Christina: would want to dive deep. I, yeah. Now I’m, I’m going to tell you, I don’t know who I’d pick between them. I’d tell you who I would really want. I’d want to be there with Gonzo. Gonzo,

[00:30:45] Jeff: Hell yeah.

[00:30:46] Brett: Also

[00:30:46] Christina: Yes, but he’s like the good A DH adhd, like Fozzie is like, like he’s the a DH adhd, which would be useful in jail.

[00:30:52] Christina: Like Fozzie Iss. Fozzie is the type who’s gonna make the joke at the wrong person, like, like the wrong Muppet. He, he’s gonna make the joke to the wrong Muppet [00:31:00] and it’s gonna become a whole thing. Um, whereas, whereas Gonzo is gonna have some good awareness, he’s gonna know the lay of the land. He’s gonna maybe be able to have a scheme of things.

[00:31:09] Christina: Gonzo’s, who you want? Kermit, I think. Yeah. Kermit is Kermit’s too anxious. Kermit’s gonna, to your point.

[00:31:16] Jeff: But here’s my argument. If we’re only choosing Toon my argument for Kermit is that there’s a show title in here somewhere. My, my argument for Kermit is that, um, you need someone, A, that’s small enough that you can, you know, Push him through the bars, if you have a plan, uh, or the little hole you’re able to dig.

[00:31:34] Jeff: But also Kermit is, you never suspect Kermit, right? Like if you could get Kermit on board with some kind of scheme, he could

[00:31:42] Christina: no, this is correct. Here’s, here’s my follow up question for you. Do you realistically think that you could convince Kermit to like go along with your scheme? Because that’s my big thing. Like, it’s like, you’re, you’re right on all of that. If you can convince him to go along with you, no one’s going to suspect him.

[00:31:57] Christina: He’s going to be able to get through the bars. He’s going to be meek. He’ll be a great [00:32:00] patsy. Can you actually convince him to do that?

[00:32:02] Brett: one, no one will suspect him because no one would believe that Kermit would be willing to break the law or do a

[00:32:11] Jeff: Here’s the scenario where that works. You’re like a year in, which you don’t want, never happens in the movies. My version of this is it’s just overnight, you know? But if you’re in for a year, you could definitely at some point be like, yo, dude, you know, we could get out of this and Kermit would be like, I’m

[00:32:27] Brett: So the argument would be you could do more for society. Um, if you weren’t in this prison, like you could.

[00:32:37] Jeff: Piggy has to be in there, too, as a

[00:32:39] Christina: Yeah. I mean, well, is she a parent or is she a deterrent? Like, like what, what, like, like how do they feel? Because like, I’ve actually. So

[00:32:49] Jeff: can’t he’s smothered by

[00:32:51] Christina: I had this realization with a friend, we were talking, I’m not even shitting you, we were genuinely talking about Miss Piggy and Kermit like five days ago. And, [00:33:00] um, uh, I, I think the context was, was, was Taylor Swift.

[00:33:03] Christina: I’m not gonna lie. But, um, oh yeah, it was because somebody on TikTok did some sort of Muppet thing. And then I realized, I was like, we were all as kids, like, taught to believe that she sucks and she’s the worst. And now I look back and I’m like, he’s such a fucking asshole. He hates her, he doesn’t want to be with her, he leads her on, she loves him so much, and he’s a fucking coward.

[00:33:26] Christina: Like, fuck Kermit, honestly.

[00:33:28] Jeff: You belong in jail, Kermit.

[00:33:30] Brett: I would put coward before

[00:33:32] Christina: both, right?

[00:33:33] Brett: he, okay, but he gets like railroaded and he doesn’t have the balls to, to make

[00:33:41] Christina: to just be honest.

[00:33:42] Brett: doesn’t have the balls to just say, yeah, that’s what I

[00:33:45] Christina: but I think make her stop, I don’t like that framing, because I think that it like

[00:33:49] Brett: Okay, so I believe, I think we’re saying the same thing, but like, if he was clear, if he was honest with her in a way that he’s too scared to be, [00:34:00] if he were honest, she could make the decision to

[00:34:05] Christina: Right, or,

[00:34:07] Brett: And that’s

[00:34:07] Christina: I agree, but I also think it’s an asshole ish thing to say you know someone’s so into you and you’re a coward and you won’t do it and you lead them on and you don’t, like, that’s an asshole thing to do. You know someone’s, like, desperately in love with you and you’re too much of a chicken shit to step up and do it.

[00:34:22] Christina: You’re a fucking piece of shit if you do that. Like, genuinely, like, like, fine, be scared or whatnot, but, like, that’s the most selfish, self centered thing you can do. If you know someone feels about you. a way that you don’t feel about them and you refuse to tell them that because of your own cowardice, you’re a fucking dick, like, male or woman.

[00:34:43] Christina: We are, I just, the only, my only quibble was make her stop, because I don’t think that it’s on her to stop, I think it’s on him to make it clear I’m not into you, right? Like, she’s, she’s only doing what, like, you know, she’s doing what she’s doing, but like, she’s, like, [00:35:00] he’s making the decision to continue to go out with her and to be with her.

[00:35:03] Christina: So,

[00:35:04] Jeff: You know what this is? Wait, wait, you know what this is? This is, this is, I’m just picturing this awesome thing where it’s Christina and Kermit are in jail together, and you’re just giving him this lecture. You know? Like, I love that so much. And by the way, here’s the thing we’re not factoring in. I was thinking limited, like, it’s just Fozzie and Kermit, or it’s us, or one of them.

[00:35:24] Jeff: But then you gotta remember that over at the jailer’s desk are all the other Muppets. Right? Like, and that’s a beautiful feeling. And that kind of is why the Muppet Caper felt good in general. It’s like, no matter how crazy everybody is, you’ve

[00:35:36] Christina: They’re all gonna show up, they’re all gonna show up, but like an E.

[00:35:39] Jeff: They’re all going to show up.

[00:35:41] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:35:41] Brett: And Jeff, you’re, if, if we have more options than just Kermit, Kermit and Fozzie, Jeff, you are Gonzo, not Fozzie.

[00:35:50] Jeff: No, I mean, if I had, I’m saying of the two of them, I’m fuzzy, but I’m definitely, definitely Gonzo. Yeah. I love Gonzo so much. I mean, it’s probably why.

[00:35:58] Brett: given all the

[00:35:59] Jeff: [00:36:00] Gunsel, Gonzo, Gunsel.

[00:36:01] Brett: right? Given all the options, I still think I’m probably Fozzie. Um, I, I’m the guy who makes, who loves stupid jokes, who makes them at inappropriate

[00:36:12] Jeff: true. That’s a good point. That is you, you’re fozzy. Christina, what are you?

[00:36:17] Muppet Character Comparisons and Memories

[00:36:17] Jeff: Like, if you had to self identify as any Muppet.

[00:36:22] Christina: I’m trying to think.

[00:36:24] Brett: Who’s the stoner chick?

[00:36:26] Christina: Yeah, exactly, I was gonna say, yeah, with the braids, I was gonna say, yeah, that, that, that I kind of began to, yeah, I, I, yeah, exactly, that’s, that, that, that’s probably, yeah.

[00:36:36] Jeff: Amazing. Amazing.

[00:36:38] Brett: Her, her name, I don’t, I don’t remember ever even hearing her name. She was just

[00:36:43] Jeff: She hangs out with the saxophone dude.

[00:36:45] Christina: she’s, she’s the groupie. She’s great. Um, or, um,

[00:36:49] Jeff: Saxophone dude would know all the

[00:36:51] Christina: no, I was trying to think like, just like, uh, I, I knew like, uh, um, uh, who, who are the, the, so now I’m just thinking Muppet babies. Who are the twins? I [00:37:00] don’t even remember if they were like actual, like the Muppet characters.

[00:37:03] Christina: Um,

[00:37:05] Jeff: Muppet babe.

[00:37:05] Christina: uh, there was like, there was like Scooter and, um, and, and, and he had a sister. Um, But, but she might have only been created for, um, Janice is, is, is who we were thinking of. Yeah.

[00:37:20] Brett: I, I, now that you say it, I absolutely have heard her name. Yes. Skeeter.

[00:37:26] Jeff: you know what else you need is the Rolodex of Saxophone Guy. Not that he has a Rolodex, he’s got a big old, like, bunch of papers spilling out of his wallet with the names of exactly the kind of people you need to get out of jail. Skeeter. Scooter

[00:37:42] Brett: twin sister is

[00:37:43] Christina: Okay. And, um, I, uh, okay. Yeah. Now I would also say Scooter kind of has a thing too, because doesn’t he heckle? I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m one of the hecklers. Like,

[00:37:56] Jeff: You know what, you’re in the peanut gallery? I love those two. God, I love those two. [00:38:00] Oh, they’re the best.

[00:38:02] Brett: oh, I can’t remember their names. Um, Statler and Waldorf.

[00:38:06] Christina: Yeah.

[00:38:08] Jeff: Is that their name? You know what’s funny? I don’t think I ever realized their names and I was in love with them. I mean, it was just, well, think about that, what that layer of the show gives you, right? They’re also like, what did people say about Han Solo? Like he’s the character in Star Wars that’s looking at the whole movie and he’s a stand in for you going like, when it’s stupid, you’re like, he’s like, this is stupid.

[00:38:26] Jeff: And I feel like those guys are the ones that allow you to pull out of just the wackadoodle world of the Muppets and be like, no, actually this is crazy. I love

[00:38:34] The Legacy of Jim Henson and the Muppets

[00:38:34] Brett: Did I ever, have I ever told you, like, I grew up in a house, we were only allowed to listen to classical music. Um, and then my parents let me get a little, like, record player, suitcase record player. And, and I got a Muppet Baby’s Rocket to the Moon record. And that was, that was the first time I had heard

[00:38:56] Christina: my god,

[00:38:56] Jeff: That’s the

[00:38:57] Brett: Um, I’m like, I’m like, [00:39:00] Maybe five years old and had never heard just like a backbeat before. And all of a sudden I hear Rocket to the Moon and it opened my eyes to all of the music that I love today is, is, was inspired by Muppet Baby’s

[00:39:19] Christina: amazing. I mean, honestly, like, Jim, Jim Henson, I, I am so mad that, like, he didn’t just fucking go to the doctor for his, um, pneumonia and that he died so young because, like, between,

[00:39:31] Jeff: Oh, is that why he died?

[00:39:32] Christina: he had, um, he was sick and, like, if he’d gone to the fucking doctor, like, they would have been able to, like, because he was sick for, like, a while, like, like, a week or two, and, like, if he’d gone to the fucking doctor, like, it became a bacterial infection and killed him, and if he’d gone to the fucking doctor, like, he would have been fine, but he didn’t.

[00:39:46] Christina: So it was like really sad. Um, that was like my first like celebrity death. I was like five or six and um, I like had the people magazine that he was on the cover of with Kermit like for, for like my whole life. And, but, but that was [00:40:00] like devastating for me because Sesame Street was like my first fandom and um, and, and by extension the rest of like the, the, the, you know, extended Muppet universe.

[00:40:10] Christina: Um, but, uh, Yeah, like, they did great shit. Like, they were really genuinely punk in a way that was fun and like, it was

[00:40:19] Jeff: Ugh. They were

[00:40:20] Christina: so good. And then you had like the the mishmash between like the genuine like children’s television workshop stuff, which was about like teaching preschoolers, but then you have like the adult oriented but still safe for all ages like Muppet Show and and kind of you know the mishmash in between and like you have like these genuinely like hippie kind of like punk guys, you know, like being fucking puppeteers.

[00:40:42] Christina: And, and, but, but so cool. And genuinely,

[00:40:47] Jeff: And what’s, like, the amazing universal truth you learn from the Muppets in 5 minutes is everybody’s messy.

[00:40:54] Christina: yeah, everybody’s messy. Everybody’s a little bit of a monster. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s great. Um, I have to say, [00:41:00] like, the, the highlight, like, of my, like, life was, um, I got to meet Carol Spinney, who is, who is Big Bird and, and, and Oscar. And, um, and, and I, um, Got to like, basically like, I had just come off of a red eye plane, so I like, literally like, I’d flown from San Francisco to New York, and then I didn’t even go home.

[00:41:17] Christina: Like, I went straight to the office, and they had a closed set because he was there, and they were kind enough to let me come and meet him, and I sobbed like a freaking baby. baby with that man. I was like, thank you for my childhood. I also met the guy who played, um, Bert, um, at a different occasion. I had like a similar experience.

[00:41:34] Christina: I didn’t cry quite as hard. And he wasn’t even my Bert. Like he, he, he was, he was like, he, he,

[00:41:39] Jeff: That’s He’s not my

[00:41:41] Christina: but he, um,

[00:41:42] Jeff: So many

[00:41:43] Christina: Right? He, uh, he, um, he was like kind of a, I think like an assistant for, um, for, you know, the, my Bert, um, but he took over the role like in, in the, um, uh, mid 90s and, um, nicest guy, like nicest, nicest guy.[00:42:00]

[00:42:00] Christina: Uh, everybody I’d met associated with Sesame Street was great. And, and obviously the Muppet crew is very closely related to all of that. So, you know.

[00:42:11] The Tragic Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster and Its Impact

[00:42:11] Jeff: Do you know that Big Bird was supposed to be on the Challenger, uh, space shuttle that exploded?

[00:42:17] Brett: What?

[00:42:18] Jeff: put a link in the show notes. I only learned this, I learned this from watching, uh, uh, For All Mankind, the Apple TV show, but I just, I looked it up and the thing that, this is what’s so goofy. So the thing that saved them was that the costume is too big, but here’s two things about that.

[00:42:33] Jeff: One, did Spinney? Like, I feel like, I mean, I. It makes sense, but like, but then also you can’t just like find someone who has a smaller kid. The point was the symbol of Big Bird, but Jesus, I, there’s no thank God

[00:42:46] Christina: Right. Right. Wish it was a t shirt.

[00:42:48] Jeff: there’s no thank

[00:42:49] Christina: No, but, but like, but it would have,

[00:42:51] Jeff: can, but just imagine this alternate history where Big Bird, actual Carol Spinney Big

[00:42:56] Brett: but for those of us who are like in second grade,

[00:42:59] Jeff: [00:43:00] was in

[00:43:00] Brett: At the time. Um, yeah, that makes sense. Uh, like I was, I was, it was surreal to me. Like our class had it running. We had the TV in the classroom and like the tragedy happens and it was surreal. If you had said that Big Bird had also died in that, it would have

[00:43:22] Christina: I was gonna say. I was going to say it’s already one of the most tragic things. I was, I was too little. I was two when that happened. And so, um, I don’t have any memory of it. Um, what is fucked up is that when they had another, like the, the next space shuttle launch or whatever, which, which took place, I think in like 89 or something, um, they showed that in school, which in retrospect, I’m like, why would you do this a second time?

[00:43:47] Christina: Right? Like you already knew what happened. Cause like the thing that’s heartbreaking about. Like what you have, what happened with you, Brett, and it happened with my sister too. Like she was, they all watched it in school. Like the whole thing is they sent a teacher to space and she went through the training program and all of that.[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Christina: And the woman who was her alternate actually then went through the full, full, full space program and like became an actual astronaut and actually, and actually did orbit, um, and, and go on, um, you know, um, uh, a number of missions. Um, and she was inspired to do that because of, What had happened and she’d been also a teacher.

[00:44:17] Christina: Um, but like, because they’d had a teacher in space, like that’s why it was a thing where like everybody was watching, you know, not just the family, but like her, her class, like all little kids, like they, cause the whole thing, I mean, that was also sort of the tragedy. They pushed for them to go when the conditions weren’t good and the rocket boosters were frozen because of all the fucking publicity.

[00:44:39] Christina: Because they were like, we, we, we can’t lose this again, we already had to cancel once, we can’t do this again, it’s too important, we got, we gotta go. And like, nobody fucking cared about the fact that like, you know, okay, cause, cause it’s one thing when, not to say that it’s ever, um, okay when, when there are space disasters, but like, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit different when it’s a civilian involved, [00:45:00] right?

[00:45:00] Christina: Like I think that it’s like a, it’s a,

[00:45:01] Jeff: Yeah, you came up through the military otherwise, you’re like, you’re deep into,

[00:45:05] Christina: you, you know that there’s a, you know that there is a big risk, right? You know that this is not like getting on an airplane. Um, but that’s, that’s not how they sold it to civilians or to the public. And then they didn’t do the work. Um, there’s a, there are two great things on that.

[00:45:20] Christina: There’s the, the Netflix, like there’s like a three part documentary on the Challenger thing, but there was, um, a made for TV movie that the BBC and I think, The Discovery Channel, like, joint ventured, um, called, uh, let me find this. Uh, it was, it was a narrative thing. The Challenger disaster, um, that, uh, goes into a lot of the details with that.

[00:45:44] Christina: And, uh, cause Richard Feynman like led the, um, the board that did the investigation that basically, you know, Castigated them and called them into account. And it turned out, this only came out after she died, but Sally Ride had been one of, um, the informants, um, that [00:46:00] got, like, um, him a lot of, like, the inside papers about how many things NASA, like, rejected and, and whatnot.

[00:46:07] Christina: And it’s one of those things where, like, it’s not a conspiracy. Like, there’s actual, like, documented stuff of all the fucked up shit they did. No, but the reason I say not a conspiracy is because some of the stuff that you see, you know, that the government did, like, it, it does almost speak to it. seem like fake.

[00:46:22] Christina: You’re like, there’s no way that they would, they would make these decisions. Oh no, they did.

[00:46:26] Critique of the US Space Program and the Value of Space Exploration

[00:46:26] Christina: Um, and, and it’s, it’s, this is one of the reasons why I kind of have a hard time I guess, like, defending the US space program. Like, I’m fine if, if, honestly, I’m okay if private companies want to do space exploration.

[00:46:41] Christina: Um, but I’m kind of like, like, I don’t know if I, people are like, oh, we need to give NASA all this funding. And I’m like, do we? Do we? Because honestly, like, as an organization between that and Columbia, like, there’s a, there are, you know, massive histories of them just not doing due diligence or giving a fuck or doing the right things.

[00:46:58] Christina: And yet they’ve been given, you [00:47:00] know, trillions of dollars to do this. Over, you know, uh, 60 years. So, like, I don’t know, like, do we actually need to, uh, pur pursue, like, you know, space stuff? Like, it’s great, and it’s a great scientific thing, but I’m kind of, I’m also kind of like, the government really has fucked up a lot, so.

[00:47:18] Brett: So, I think, I think things like the James Webb Telescope are more important than going back to the moon. Like, We’re not, I don’t know what we gain. I’m sure there are reasons that they want to get back to the moon, but I don’t know them. All I know is like James Webb telescope, I guess, like what we’re reliving the

[00:47:42] Christina: so.

[00:47:43] Brett: race again,

[00:47:44] Christina: No, I agree with you.

[00:47:45] Brett: Like, the James Webb Telescope is providing so much more interesting and useful, like, in the field of astrophysics, the amount of information we’re gathering about the beginning of the fucking universe, um, [00:48:00] is more important to me

[00:48:01] Christina: No, I completely agree. And that, like, I think is where the funding should go. And I guess maybe, probably, to go back on what I was just arguing, there’s probably an argument to make that you can’t get the funding for that unless you have, like, the pomp and circumstance of the space stuff. Which, fair. But, I also still feel like, you know, I, like, I

[00:48:20] Brett: What if, though, what if it were a mission to Mars? Would you be interested in

[00:48:26] Christina: Yes, but, but again, like, I think that’s, that’s a completely different thing, right? And, and I think that’s one of those things where, you know, now that the technology is what it is, like, it would be such a long time before we would do a manned mission. Like, we would be doing unmanned things and whatnot, right?

[00:48:41] Christina: Um, versus, you know, Like, when they’d sent, you know, the Challenger, you know, in, in, um, you know, 86 or whatever to, to go, like, what, what we were doing, we, the only reason they did it was because they wanted to send civilians into space. Like, there was, there was nothing they were getting of [00:49:00] value out of that mission.

[00:49:01] Christina: And, and the, the, the shuttle was already not, you You know, it was already kind of like not doing super well and they, there were some problems with, with how it was designed, but like, yeah, no, I think, uh, um, eventually a man’s, you know, mission to Mars, 1000 percent would be in favor of looking at that. But like, I, I’m not as anti private companies getting into some of this because I’m like, A, let them pay for some of it and do some of the, take on some of the risk and whatnot.

[00:49:27] Christina: Uh, and B, I’m just kind of like, I’m with you. Like I’d rather. spend our budgets on telescopes and, and, you know, rovers,

[00:49:36] Brett: If. If,

[00:49:37] Christina: oh, we’ve got to go back to the moon. Fuck off.

[00:49:41] Brett: Musk and Jeff Bezos want to, tomorrow, launch themselves on a manned mission to Mars, I’m all in. Fucking go for it. It’ll be, what was that

[00:49:52] Christina: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:49:54] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:49:55] Christina: um, the, the, um, except it wouldn’t be because they would be Sadly, I think [00:50:00] they’d be smarter than that, right? Like, the submersible thing, what we wound up learning, was that the foremost expert in that entire field, like, in the entire world, is James fucking Cameron.

[00:50:13] Brett: Ha ha

[00:50:14] Christina: Like, genuinely, like, that man knew more than anybody else, like, and he was smart enough to not, to not. Well, not smart enough. I mean, I’m sure they were legal and other requirements, but like, he didn’t talk about it until they, uh, officially confirmed that it had exploded underwater. And that, that was the sounds they were hearing were not people knocking, but, but, you know, they had already perished and he’d already known that.

[00:50:34] Christina: And so he then like got a hotel room and like just did a media blitz, like talking to every single like television outlet and newspaper and explaining how all this works. And, and you realize, oh, okay, this is a rich guy. But he’s actually also genuinely the foremost expert in how these things work. And, and when he outlined just like how badly that whole thing was from the get go, you’re just like, holy shit.

[00:50:59] Christina: Like [00:51:00] this is, this is dumb.

[00:51:02] Jeff: He’s like, I watched Leo die.

[00:51:04] Christina: Exactly.

[00:51:05] Brett: ha ha.

[00:51:06] Jeff: just a quick thing, cause I know we gotta get Taylor, uh, and I just want to say two greatest songs about the space program, Whitey on the Moon by Gil Scott Heron, The Commander Thinks Aloud by The Long Winters, which is a song that still makes me. Oh, so before you, I mean, listen to it, but if you want, listen to the song Exploder first because it’s an unbelievable introduction to that song.

[00:51:29] Jeff: I put it in already and I put the

[00:51:31] Brett: Oh, okay.

[00:51:32] Jeff: But the song is truly a song that I get goosebumps and tears every time I hear it. Um, incredible. Whereas Whitey on the Moon, I’m just like, mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm.

[00:51:41] Exploring Anarchy, Personal Security, and Societal Issues

[00:51:41] Brett: Do you wanna, do you wanna quick hit your Anarchy follow up before, uh, before we do this fuckin Taylor?

[00:51:49] Jeff: just, I was just, I was reminded of a quote from a believer article I read like 15 years ago and I went and looked it up and it’s this guy in a pacifist commune in like Denmark and he says, [00:52:00] Anarchy is a beautiful thing if people have very fucking high morals. Um, and then the other, the other bit is like, I sometimes think, I’m not an anarchist, but I definitely, uh, like modeling ways that, uh, where we don’t have to rely on the authorities that, uh, that our, our lack of high fucking morals make possible.

[00:52:21] Jeff: I mean, it’s so much more complex than that. Right. But like, I have this thing where like, if I, if there are kids walking down the street at night, trying doors on our cars. First of all, I. I generally believe that it’s like an unwritten contract. If you leave your door unlocked, it might get messed with. I know that’s a very controversial feeling.

[00:52:38] Jeff: Um, but, uh, last night, so I usually go to the window and I just whistle happy sounds and then they, they run off cause they’re very confused. But last night I woke up and I could have sworn I was hearing someone downstairs like banging around or something. And, you know, and maybe I’m just, Too old at this point to grab whatever highly insufficient weapon is nearby and like charge down the stairs.

[00:52:59] Jeff: And so instead [00:53:00] I put my iPhone, I put Welcome to the Jungle on as loud as possible on the kitchen, uh, home pod.

[00:53:06] Brett: ha.

[00:53:08] Jeff: Cause I just felt like if that came on and I was breaking into a house, I would get the fuck out of there. Cause I don’t know, is this like the, you know, like a WWF, like walk up music, like what’s happening?

[00:53:17] Jeff: Right. Uh, so I put it really loud. And then after a little bit, I just backed it down real slow. And then I watched my ring camera to see if I flushed anyone out. But it was the wind.

[00:53:26] Brett: So, I will say that with age, a lot of my anarchist ideals have, um, tarnished, faded, um, but I do believe that a lot of crime would be solved by giving people a Basic, um, things like healthcare, a universal living wage. Um, it just reduced the poverty level. Um, a lot of the things that people are like, Oh, people are awful.

[00:53:55] Brett: And, and, and no one like we could never sustain this [00:54:00] if. Everyone were comfortable. I think it’s a slightly different story. I don’t want to get into it. I

[00:54:07] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:08] Brett: Um, but, uh, but yeah, okay. Let’s, let’s hear about Taylor News.

[00:54:14] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:54:14] Taylor Swift’s Latest Album: A Deep Dive into Heartbreak and Anger

[00:54:14] Jeff: Walk us through what this means to you. We know it’s like a cultural thing. Cause it’s, it’s, she’s a cultural thing. Holy shit. Still happening. Now we’re getting the saturation articles. You knew it was coming. Uh, it’s the, the, the laziest, the laziest kind of journalism. Um,

[00:54:29] Christina: When the New York Times is literally

[00:54:30] Jeff: but you,

[00:54:31] Christina: and TikToks, like, in their article about Is she Is she overexposed? I’m like I’m like I’m like, really? Really? Um, okay. So So

[00:54:39] Jeff: Okay. So you, but you’ve been waiting on this thing. It lands. Tell us about it. Your relationship to this thing.

[00:54:45] Christina: Girl needs to go to therapy, but I am so fucking glad she doesn’t. Like, she, she famously, like, told the new, well, not maybe famously, but like, she, she told Rolling Stone, and, and last time she did an interview with him, that she’s like, no, I’ve never done therapy, and like, I don’t need to, or maybe she didn’t say I don’t need to, but she was like, I,

[00:54:59] Jeff: It’s like, I’ve gotten [00:55:00] really rich

[00:55:00] Christina: well, I mean, maybe that’s, like, you know, I, I don’t think it’s that, No, I, oh, I, oh, I know, I know, I know.

[00:55:05] Christina: Although it was funny because I made a joke on Twitter about that and I had people who totally didn’t understand the joke and people were like, no, everyone needs therapy no matter how, no matter who they are. And I’m like, you completely missed the point. And then you had other people who was like, well, she’s clearly doing it because she makes money off of it.

[00:55:19] Christina: I’m like, fuck off. I’m not saying that. I’m saying like, if you look at the lyrics on this album, like it is unhinged, like, like she is like unhinged on main, like, like she is like sharing shit that like you should never share in public about the things that she’s feeling.

[00:55:33] Jeff: if I’m not mistaken, she had basically already decided not to release this or she just, you know, she had a chance. It was back in the queue, right? Like, is this

[00:55:40] Christina: No, no, no, no, no. This

[00:55:42] Jeff: okay. Sorry.

[00:55:44] Christina: but she’s a liar. She claims she’s been working on this for two years, and I don’t know, maybe, maybe like, maybe instrumentals and things have been already percolating. I think most, based on the subject matter, most of this came together between August and, um, you [00:56:00] know, when, when this album was released.

[00:56:01] Christina: So, um, because, because almost all the songs, like, It’s, okay, so, a few things. First, she announces the album, and it’s a surprise, and we’re all like, what? And she’s like, it’s called the Tortured Poets Department, and we’re like, Oh, is that a dig at your ex boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, who, um, you know, was, was part of a group chat that was called like the, the, the Tortured Men’s, you know, Department or something?

[00:56:24] Christina: No,

[00:56:24] Jeff: Nah, no relationship.

[00:56:25] Christina: it actually turns out not, not so much. Yeah, actually kind of, because it turns out, I think he gets one, maybe two songs, um, on the album, which, oh, also, it, there are 31 songs. She released one album, um, at, you know, midnight Eastern time. Um, and, and then there was like. Four different bonus tracks on different vinyl variants because she does that insanity, um, and greed, which I participate in, so I’m guilty of it, but it is too much Taylor.

[00:56:54] Christina: Like, honestly, you need to stop. Um, but then at, then at 2 a. m. she [00:57:00] announces 11 p. m. my time. She’s like, oh, by the way, I actually made this a double album. Here are 15 more tracks.

[00:57:07] Jeff: So it’s like a two hour

[00:57:09] Christina: Yeah, but the whole thing is 31 songs in two hours and five minutes. It is, it is a lot of Taylor. Um,

[00:57:16] Brett: So, so before anyone even had a chance to finish

[00:57:19] Christina: you, you, you, you. You’d listen to it and you, you, you’re absorbing it. You’re trying to figure out what this is about, right? Because you’re still absorbing it, but you’ve got, it’s been an hour between maybe if you, you know, started listening and stopped. You’ve had like an hour, but you’re still absorbing it.

[00:57:36] Christina: You still don’t know exactly what you heard. Plenty of people have gone to bed, which fair, right? And then she’s just like, no, here’s 50 more songs. Um, insanity. But the thing is, and this is. Why I kind of love this record. It’s really, it’s received, I would say, it’s been polarizing, um, the, the reception. I actually really like it.

[00:57:57] Christina: I, for a lot of reasons, I think that, [00:58:00] um, sonically, uh, it’s very much in the vein of evermore and folklore with some of the, um, kind of sensibilities from Midnight’s. I didn’t really like Midnight’s as a record, her last record. Um, I liked, um, the 3am tracks, um, and I liked, um, uh, like the, the lead single Antihero.

[00:58:17] Christina: Um, and I liked the song Mastermind, but a lot of the songs, I just, it didn’t connect with me because it didn’t totally feel authentic. It felt like, and now I think it comes through, that’s probably exactly what it was, but it felt like I was like, I don’t know, man, like this, this just feels like she’s Holding something back, she’s not maybe being like the, the, the Taylor we, we know and love.

[00:58:37] Christina: This is much more A, in my Sonic Wheel game, because it is again, very much like Vocalore and Evermore, which I, which I love and, and read. It’s a heartbreak album, it’s an angry album. She’s fucking awesome. Pissed. She’s so mad on so many of the songs, which is great. But again, it’s like the unhinged mental illness.

[00:58:53] Christina: Like she’s just not even holding back, which is kind of remarkable because like, just as an artistic statement, [00:59:00] you have the most famous person in the entire world, who’s yes, known for diaristic content and whatnot. And, and she’s obviously played into this, but like everybody’s for, for years, try to figure out like, who are these songs about?

[00:59:10] Christina: And then she plays coy, which is bullshit because she feeds into it too. But like, you know, she’s trying to kind of be like, Oh, I’m not going to tell you who it’s about, or I’m going to try to limit this. And then she even released some albums, which she claimed were, you know, largely fictional. In this album,

[00:59:24] Jeff: and the poor, and the poor three candidates who it is not about when she doesn’t say what it’s about. They’re like, I don’t think this is Travis Kelce. He’s like, everything’s fine.

[00:59:32] Christina: In this case though, there’s really no question. The majority of the songs are about Maddie Healy from the 1975, who she was in a relationship with for like, a month. Um, but apparently, based on the text, uh, and by this case I mean, you know, the, the, the lyrics and whatnot, that’s how I’m referring to the text, the text implies they’d been, Well, we all knew that they fucked in 2014.

[00:59:55] Christina: We all knew that. But it seems they probably were [01:00:00] texting and friendly and like, had a flirtation while she was still with this other guy. Um, and then by the time she broke up with that guy and she got together with Mattie Healy, like, he, like, Went full on where he was like, oh, I’m so into you. I love you.

[01:00:13] Christina: This is great and whatnot And then he just kind of got canceled while he was with her. She didn’t care Uh, what she says as much like literally in the lyrics. She’s like fuck all of you fans who are telling me uh who to date like there’s a line where she says, you know, like, um, uh, like, uh My name is mine to destroy or something like that.

[01:00:32] Christina: Um, I need to, I need to find it. Um, uh, but, but, uh, um, the, the, the lyrics on this, um, some of them, uh, probably like the New York Times says she needs an editor. That’s, that’s not wrong at the same time.

[01:00:45] Jeff: It also means nothing coming

[01:00:47] Christina: true, but also, I, I, I love that she didn’t have an editor because genuinely, like, I, this is, in some ways, what’s kind of remarkable, like I said, is she’s not being coy at all.

[01:00:59] Christina: Like, [01:01:00] everything is incredibly, incredibly, um, like, transparent about, like, what this stuff is about. And, um, She just goes off, like she admits she was like, you know, like, um, I, I, you know, made me want to die. Like I, I, I wanted to, to kill myself because, uh, like for, you know, because of what you did to me.

[01:01:21] Christina: Like, it’s just like, it’s, it’s a lot. It’s, it’s really, Really, um, I love it for, for just that alone.

[01:01:32] Jeff: a question it raises for me. If you, if you inspire two hours of hateful verses, are you still a muse? Do muses, do muses, is that, does that count as a muse? Like, could he say like, I’m her muse? I am right now her muse.

[01:01:49] Brett: I believe, I believe the

[01:01:50] Christina: Okay, this, this is, this, this, this was the lyric I wanted to say. I’ll tell you something right now. I’d rather burn my whole life down than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning. [01:02:00] I’ll tell you something about my good name. It’s mine alone to disgrace. I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing. And then she does, she has a song that is very clearly about Mattie Healy called, um, uh, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, which is the angriest song she’s ever put out. Like it’s, it’s way worse than Dear John, which I didn’t think was possible. Um, let me just find this. Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?

[01:02:30] Christina: Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy? In 50 years, will this all be declassified? And you’ll confess why you did it and I’ll say good riddance. Because it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden. I would have died for your sins, instead I just died inside.

[01:02:47] Christina: And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time. You’ll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars. You crashed my party in your rental car. You said nor Yeah, you said normal girls were [01:03:00] boring and you were gone by the morning, you kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing, but, but like I would have died for your sins instead I just died inside and you just, and you deserve prison, but you won’t get time.

[01:03:13] Christina: Like holy fucking shit.

[01:03:15] Jeff: Jeez. Uh, what is the great Nico Case line, The next time you say forever I will punch you in your face? I feel like we’re in that

[01:03:25] Christina: completely are. Like, it’s just, it’s like, it is basically, we all thought it was going to be, fuck Joe Alwyn, the album. No, it’s not. Like, he, I think, gets two tracks and it’s relatively private as their relationship was. And most of this is just, she got taken for a ride. She even says in one of the things, like, I, you know, I should have seen this coming, you know, I should have known better.

[01:03:50] Christina: But like, girl went through it and then just decided. Yeah, fuck it. Again, rather than go to therapy, I’m just going to release a two hour and five minute album and get [01:04:00] it all out on main and make no pretenses about who this is about. Like, I have no idea how she’s going to, like, incorporate some of this into her tour.

[01:04:07] Brett: So, what, what do you think the album about Travis will be like?

[01:04:13] Christina: So he did get,

[01:04:16] Brett: I mean, he’s obviously gonna hurt her.

[01:04:17] Christina: probably going to get hurt him

[01:04:19] Brett: she seems to

[01:04:20] Jeff: sports metaphors are so, so

[01:04:23] Christina: and her, okay, and she already has a few. So she has a song about him called So High School, which is sort of sweet, but the lyrics are not some of the best. Um,

[01:04:34] Jeff: It’s a warning shot to him, it’s just like a

[01:04:36] Christina: no, it’s not. It’s not. It’s a sweet.

[01:04:38] Jeff: I don’t even hate you

[01:04:39] Christina: no, it’s a sweet song. Here’s the thing. I think Travis Kelce, I think she’s gonna hurt him. Uh, I, I think that, I think he’s gonna be a Taylor Lautner who gets like a, a, a back to December style song.

[01:04:49] Christina: Cause the thing is, she, she has terrible taste in men. She likes assholes. She really, really likes assholes.

[01:04:55] Brett: I didn’t, I thought, I thought you would fight me on that if I said it. [01:05:00] Um, like, just, it seems to me, like, I don’t know anything about Travis. Kelsey, is it?

[01:05:07] Jeff: Oh, I saw him drunk after the Super Bowl. The second you saw him drunk at that, like, trophy ceremony, I was like, Oh, this guy’s a fucking problem.

[01:05:15] Brett: But I know from her history that she chooses It’s almost like she chooses guys she will eventually write songs about. Um,

[01:05:25] Christina: she’s just attracted to a certain type of guy, like, Who, I, you know, is probably not gonna be into her the same way that they’re, you know, that she’s into them, to be honest. This is kind of how I read it. But anyway, like,

[01:05:40] Jeff: it, could it be that she’s a super intense partner?

[01:05:42] Brett: ha

[01:05:43] Christina: is my point. This is my point. I think you’re absolutely right. I think that she’s a whole fucking lot.

[01:05:47] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:48] Christina: like on, on this, on this album. So one of the, one of my favorite tracks on the album is the second track is the title track, The Tortured Poets Department. And it’s kind of, you know, thinking about like talking about kind [01:06:00] of like the early days of their relationship and whatnot.

[01:06:02] Christina: And, um, but also a little bit I think kind of written like after it was over. Um, and um, The Bridge is really great. Um, sometimes I wonder if you’re going to screw this up with me, but you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave. And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen. Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be.

[01:06:23] Christina: Because we’re crazy.

[01:06:26] Jeff: she get ahold of my

[01:06:27] Christina: Right? Totally. Totally. Like,

[01:06:31] Jeff: That’s mine.

[01:06:31] Christina: totally, you know, but like, but even put that out there that it’s like, no, no, no, I felt seen, because I too would kill myself without you, and you’re like, oh my god, girl, girl, chill, but also thank you for not, like, thank you so much for never going to therapy, thank you so much for giving us this very public dissection of a relationship that the public hated, and she basically tells them, we hate you, or not, not that we hate you, but I hate you for

[01:06:55] Jeff: she goes, if she goes to therapy, if she goes to therapy, it’s going to be like Bob Dylan’s [01:07:00] Evangelical

[01:07:00] Christina: fuck no. Yeah, Taylor, stay away. Never go to therapy. Never do it.

[01:07:04] Brett: I, I don’t know. I don’t, like, listening to that stuff, all I can think is, she could solve this with a little therapy, with a little internal work, like, and that, that makes it hard for me to listen to it when all I can think of is

[01:07:21] Christina: No, and you’re not wrong. Um, and, and that might not be for you. I think that, like, sonically, like, some of the, I think, again, I think you would actually like the album because you liked Folklore and Evermore, and Aaron Desner does a lot of the tracks. Um, I would say the back half especially is, is gonna be more your bag.

[01:07:36] Christina: Um, although I do like some of the Jack Antonoff songs. Um, There is this song that she has called I Can Do It With a Broken Heart that is kind of upbeat, but it’s, um, it’s going to become a, it’s, if they release a single, it’s going to be a hit. We’re all going to hear it everywhere. But, um, I relate to it very, very much.

[01:07:53] Christina: Like, the, the whole conceit of the song is that she’s listening to stuff inside her ear as she’s performing on the heiress [01:08:00] tour. And the whole thing is, is basically, like, I can do my job, I can do this whole Taylor Swift thing, even when I’m suffering, even when, like, I’m in pain, even when I want to die.

[01:08:09] Christina: Okay. I can still make it look like everything is fine. And, um, like the, the, the pre chorus, uh, is, um, um, like, uh, cause I’m a real tough kid. I can handle my shit. They said, baby, you got to fake it till you make it. And I did. Lights, camera, bitch, smile, even when you want to die. He said he’d love me for all his life.

[01:08:32] Christina: Um, and, and then, um, it goes on from there, but then the chorus is, I’m so depressed. I act like it’s my birthday. Every day. I’m so obsessed with him, but he avoids me. Like the plague. I cry a lot, but I am so productive. It’s an art. You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart. And I, as,

[01:08:52] Jeff: I was really hoping fart

[01:08:53] Christina: right?

[01:08:54] Christina: That would have been great. That would have been good. But no, I pers

[01:08:58] Jeff: could, she could pull that

[01:08:59] Christina: [01:09:00] But I personally, like, as somebody who is incredibly good at appearing fine when I’m absolutely not, I’m like, oh no, this is going to be like my new, like, Go to, like, before you go do something and you feel like you want to die song.

[01:09:13] Christina: Um, not healthy.

[01:09:15] Jeff: Yeah. I’m sorry. Actually, I’m sorry. I stepped on that. Cause you were landing the thing that you’re saying is like, you’re

[01:09:21] Christina: I, I,

[01:09:22] Jeff: fart in there, which is,

[01:09:24] Christina: no, but, like, you’ve been taking, like, broken heart part. Like, no, but, like, but, like, the, the line, like, I, I, I’m so depressed that I act like it’s my birthday every day. I’m like, that’s That’s so, that’s so relatable. But yeah, no, I mean, but I, I hear you, Brett. She could solve so many things with therapy, but I’m personally glad for the art that she doesn’t.

[01:09:43] Christina: Um, also she has enough resources. Well, I mean, I have a feeling the reason she probably doesn’t have a therapist is she’s like, can I trust anyone? And it’s like, girl, just pay someone a million dollars a year to be your therapist and your therapist only.

[01:09:58] Brett: I mean, to be [01:10:00] honest, putting out the song she puts out is therapeutic on its own. And I have a feeling, I have a feeling she works through a lot of problems. It’s just that she goes and repeats them.

[01:10:15] Christina: that’s the thing, right? I mean, and she even says, like, she said, I think, so the final song is called, um, on this very long album, it’s called The Manuscript, and it’s actually a great song. Um, and, and one of the, um, the, the final things is, um, um, The only thing that’s left is the manuscript.

[01:10:35] Reflecting on Artistic Ownership and Evolution

[01:10:35] Christina: One last souvenir from my trip to your sh uh, from my trip to your shoes.

[01:10:40] Christina: Now and then I reread the manuscript, but the story isn’t mine anymore. And like, that’s kind of like what she’s always said, is that like, the songs start out as hers, and then when she performs them and puts them into the world, they become everyone else’s. And then other people can interpret them.

[01:10:54] The Emotional Journey of Taylor Swift’s Performances

[01:10:54] Christina: So I think you’re right, like she works through this stuff and like, you know, she used to, she used to cry performing All [01:11:00] Too Well live, like during the Red Tour.

[01:11:02] Christina: Now she does a 10 minute version of that like every night and like the entire crowd screams this very, very sad, like torturing, amazing, like her best song ever, Far and Away. I think the, the five minute version is better than the 10 minute, but regardless, like it’s her best work. And like the whole crowd literally screams for 10 minutes.

[01:11:21] Christina: Every single lyric, and like, everybody in the audience is feeling it, and it’s an amazing experience. But like, at this point, there’s no way she thinks about Jake Gyllenhaal when she sings that, right? Like, she’s, you know, thinking about the audience, and

[01:11:33] Brett: Yeah.

[01:11:34] Christina: it’s not her song anymore.

[01:11:34] Brett: not

[01:11:35] Christina: And everybody relates to it so much because it’s like this perfect, perfect, perfect song about like, being 21 and having your heart broken, like, devastatingly for the first time.

[01:11:44] Anticipating Future Performances and Album Tours

[01:11:44] Christina: Um, but, um, it will be interesting to see how she performs these. It’s too long, she couldn’t do a tour just to this album. It’s also too depressing, and it’s too angry, but I’m curious to see like, what song she does perform. [01:12:00] You know, if she brings this set into the Ares Tour, I have a feeling she will. But, um, yeah.

[01:12:06] Christina: I do feel like she

[01:12:08] Jeff: All the lights go out and it’s just a single red

[01:12:09] Christina: Yeah, I mean, or just like, because again, like the anger in some of these songs is just like, so, like, stark.

[01:12:17] Critiquing and Appreciating Taylor Swift’s Anger in Music

[01:12:17] Christina: Like, there’s another song called, like, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, where she goes after her, her favorite, um, villain, where, well, she does her favorite thing where she’s Taylor Swift the victim.

[01:12:25] Christina: I’m rolling my eyes, but, but it is what she does. Um, and then she goes after the media. Which is like, okay, I get it, but also, you know, but I, but I love her, but I love her, but she, she, it’s this fucking angry. It’s so angry. And it’s like, it’s, it’s, again, it’s, it’s unhinged. Um, it’s, it’s great. So I, anyway, I, I’ve talked enough about this.

[01:12:51] Personal Recommendations and Creating Playlists

[01:12:51] Christina: I do actually think, um, you’ll, you’ll like, uh, especially like if you listen, like I say, like track, like, uh, uh, [01:13:00] 9 through, like, 24, Brett, I think. Um, no, the whole, because the whole thing is 31 songs, so if you just go, like, Or, I might, I might even just, I might even, like, make you a playlist, like, of songs I think Brett will like.

[01:13:15] Jeff: Oh, yeah.

[01:13:16] Brett: Okay. I would

[01:13:17] Christina: I’ll, I’ll do that too.

[01:13:18] Brett: I’ll do it. I’ll do it.

[01:13:21] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:13:22] Transition to Tech Talk: Introducing Conductor

[01:13:22] Brett: Do we have time for Graptitude or does everyone need to get going?

[01:13:26] Jeff: I’m okay, but I

[01:13:27] Christina: No, go on, go

[01:13:27] Jeff: Oh, go ahead, Christina. Do you have time? Uh, I would love Brett for just a quick bit on Conductor, before we

[01:13:33] Brett: Oh, sure. I’d love to.

[01:13:36] Deep Dive into Conductor’s Features and Capabilities

[01:13:36] Brett: Um, I published a project on Thursday. Um, that is, so my, my app Mark, which is for previewing Markdown files and it updates every time you save, et cetera, et cetera. Um, it has the ability to handle custom processors. Um, and. That makes it possible to, instead of it’s [01:14:00] built in, uh, it has multi markdown and discount built in.

[01:14:04] Brett: But if you wanted to use, say, Pandoc or Cramdown, you can do that with the custom

[01:14:09] Jeff: Wait, has that always been true with the Pandoc thing? Or is that That’s not what, uh, Conductor Fuck me. Okay.

[01:14:14] Brett: So, so, um, like you’ve always been able to specify one custom preprocessor that happens before the Markdown conversion, where you can like mock, like, for example, Wikilinks, you could turn Wikilinks into links back to whatever application you’re creating them in. And then the processor, which would Markdown or.

[01:14:39] Brett: Whatever, ASCII doc, whatever you needed into HTML. Um, but you were only allowed one. And if you wanted multiples, you would have to keep changing your custom pre slash processor. So I built this thing called conductor, which serves as. You just set your custom processor to [01:15:00] conductor and then with a yaml file you can create conditions like text contains this string, or text contains this regex, or extension is this, or path contains this, it even has tree contains which Uh, you can use to search for the existence of a subdirectory or file in any, any parent directory of the current file, which for like, for testing, if you’re in an Obsidian vault, Obsidian puts a dot Obsidian folder in the root of the vault.

[01:15:33] Brett: So if you put tree contains dot Obsidian, it will find that in the, in any parent directory, no matter, No matter how many subdirectories deep you are, it’ll find the obsidian directory and let you know that you’re in an obsidian vault. And then I recently did a pull request side note, um, that got accepted to a Full on Obsidian to Marked [01:16:00] preprocessor.

[01:16:01] Brett: Um, and now it can create like links. Uh, it can turn your wiki links into links back to Obsidian documents and it can handle tags and everything. So anyway, Conductor makes it easy to branch. It’s a train conductor. The idea is like a train conductor, uh, and, and the, they’re called tracks and you can set up tracks and you can nest tracks and you can use Booleans and you can create basically a hundred different processors based on.

[01:16:33] Brett: The content that Mark is loading. Um, and it will, it will always use the correct processor if you write your predicates well. Um, and yeah, uh, it solves, like I’ve always meant to add like a whole Xcode style, multiple, you know, Processors with predicates and everything, but I get bogged down every time every time I try to implement it So this [01:17:00] is this is my alternative and you don’t have to know Scripting you could just have if this file exists in this folder then run it Through Pandoc with these arguments.

[01:17:12] Brett: Or if this file contains YAML that has comments are true, then run it through Cramdown. Um, you don’t have to write a single script. All you have to do is edit a YAML in natural language. So that’s

[01:17:26] Christina: That’s so cool.

[01:17:27] Exploring the Potential of Custom Processors and Community Contributions

[01:17:27] Christina: So do you have like in, in your repo anywhere, do you have any place, um, where either you have any like set, you know, uh, YAML files or where other people can have their own to contribute?

[01:17:39] Brett: Yeah. I, not yet. Um, I am publishing, I will be publishing my, uh, my tracks. yaml file, uh, in the repo. Um, I’m still kind of refining it, like. I, my, I had a custom processor for Mark that forked on all of these different, [01:18:00] because Mark sets environment variables for like extension and stuff. So my very long Custom processor forked on at least 10 different, um, uh, kind of criteria and ran different processors.

[01:18:15] Brett: So right now I’m splitting that up and like, I have, I have like, if it’s, if it’s a readme. md file, Run GitHub, pre-processor and then run GitHub processor. If it’s from Bear run this processor, if it’s from obsidian, run this process. So I’m, I’m building that out right now, and once I have it finished, I will publish it.

[01:18:37] Brett: And all of the pre and post pros processor scripts, um, it’s, I don’t have like a plugin architecture built, so it doesn’t make sense to have

[01:18:46] Christina: No, that makes sense. That makes sense. But yeah, I was just.

[01:18:48] Brett: But, but I, I, I will make a directory. People can pull requests, uh, anything

[01:18:53] Christina: awesome. Yeah, I know. Cause I was just thinking, I was like, cause I’ve always, um, I knew about the custom processor part of Marked. I never [01:19:00] used it in part because, um, of what you said, like you can only kind of have one and, and it’d be one of those things like, okay, well then I got to have to like maintain all these things, you know, and it’s just like, okay, I’m in more, most, and the thing is, is that in most cases, um, what you have built in is, is fine.

[01:19:19] Christina: So, um, Like, unless it was kind of like a very specific one off thing, uh, like, I don’t think I’ve ever touched it. Um, but this having like, basically having variables that can say, okay, if it has this or, or whatnot, then, you know, it, it’ll depend, like, cause that would be great. Cause like, for me, Like a, a frequent thing is like, I obviously, um, write a lot of things for GitHub and, and, you know, in GitHub flavor markdown, but I also write things that aren’t necessarily going to be published in that style.

[01:19:47] Christina: And so that can have like different rules and whatnot. And so, yeah, like, like you said, like having like their read me thing, like that’s, that’s awesome. This is so smart.

[01:19:56] Brett: Yeah, I, I think I’ve added, I think I’ve added all the [01:20:00] criteria that you could possibly need to determine whether you were working on a GitHub flavored markdown file for work, or whether you were writing for your blog, for instance. Um, And I think it’s super natural language now, you don’t have to know how to script at all.

[01:20:17] Brett: Um, and you can install it as a gem, you just run gem install mark conductor and then, uh, set it up as a custom processor. And I think it’s, I think it will be useful to scripters and non scripters alike.

[01:20:35] Jeff: I’m super distracted by two things. One is that you just fucked my afternoon. And the other one is that going back to even something that’s existed, which is the ability to use Pandoc because it wasn’t like named in there. And I never really needed it. I only actually just started. My need for that came up two weeks ago and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to try to figure out how to, you know, have Mark

[01:20:55] Brett: Yeah, one of the, one of the most common things I deal with in [01:21:00] Mark support is people who want to use Pandoc with bibliography and

[01:21:04] Christina: was going to say that would make sense.

[01:21:05] Brett: Um, which, which is possible. Like you could always do that with Mark and I’ve worked with a lot of people to make that, uh, function. This will make that process like you could have multiple citations and bibliographies depending on what project you’re working on.

[01:21:24] Christina: No, that’s great. No, and that’s so cool too.

[01:21:26] Jeff: Brett Terpstra strikes again!

[01:21:28] Christina: really cool. Um, and it obviously has like a, a niche kind of, uh, audience, but we are all part of that niche. And like I said, like once you have that repo where people can do PRs or whatever, like I think that’s where we’ll become really useful so that like people can just be like, okay, I can install this if I need to make some modifications I can.

[01:21:46] Christina: Um, but it’ll automatically determine,

[01:21:50] Brett: So with stuff like this, like I would love for people to contribute, but it’s stuff like this is tends to be so, uh, personalized and not generalized. [01:22:00] Um, I, I have built, like I have a repo for sharing, um, custom styles from art. I have repos for, um, doing plugins and they get actually very little usage because everyone is designing things that they don’t think.

[01:22:19] Brett: Everybody needs. And, and that’s like, for me, like, as, as I got into development, uh, starting in like the year 2000, um, I started learning how to take something that was a hack to, to make something work for me. And through the process of mood blast, actually, I learned how to make personal things generally useful.

[01:22:46] Brett: Um,

[01:22:46] Jeff: What the hell is

[01:22:47] The Evolution of Brett Terpstra’s Developer Journey

[01:22:47] Christina: Oh, move last was his, that was OG Brett. No, no, tell him, tell him.

[01:22:52] Brett: Yeah, that’s, that’s my, that’s my developer origin story. I wrote a,

[01:22:57] Jeff: what, I didn’t come online with you until about [01:23:00] 2008. BADAM!

[01:23:02] Brett: app in like, uh, Cocoa and Apple script that could update Facebook and Jaiku and, Twitter, and Addium, and like all of the places you would have a social status at the time. Uh, and, and like half the things that could update are gone now, but, uh, there were a total of 12 different services at its peak that it could update with.

[01:23:31] Brett: You could just type in your status and, uh, And hit a button and it would update everything all at once. And

[01:23:40] Jeff: looks amazing! It makes me so sad for the way that landscape has changed.

[01:23:45] Brett: to, to avoid like repeating yourself, there were all this, there was all this like syntax you could use that would be like, post this to Twitter and post this to Jaiku.

[01:23:55] Jeff: Things we Things we know without knowing about the features of something you’ve created.[01:24:00]

[01:24:01] Brett: and, um, and that got picked up by David Chartier

[01:24:06] Jeff: Yeah, I was just running into that. There’s a lot of Ars Technica stuff around, like, version 2 and 3.

[01:24:11] Brett: Yep. And, and he got me my job writing for 2AW and Mood Blast got me into, uh, publicly releasing software. And it was absolutely my origin

[01:24:24] Jeff: I love it, and I can’t believe it’s totally alien to

[01:24:28] Christina: it was great. Yeah. Cause, cause, um, cause I was already at two, uh, um, but I hadn’t been there very long when Brett joined and, um, but yeah, I knew, um, uh, uh, Mood Blast cause I think 2. 0 would just come out when you, uh, or

[01:24:43] Brett: Well, David, David wrote about like, Every

[01:24:46] Jeff: Yeah, it really

[01:24:47] Brett: I would get a, I would get a two hour article. And every time I published an update, my blog readership, like my traffic would go up and like, it just kept growing. And so I just kept updating cause I had that [01:25:00] like positive feedback loop going

[01:25:02] Christina: it was great. It was great. I wish that, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take us on a detour. I do have gratitude picks, but like, I know that the way that the Twitter API now works means that there wouldn’t be easy ways to do this. Do you think there would be a way to trick something through like, I don’t know, with some sort of, Um, uh, like screen, uh, background, like, kind of process to automate something like this, like, where you could potentially, like, launch in the background, like, a browser window and go into, you know, a, um, the, the status box and enter in the text and, and do something like that, like, do you think there’s any way, I’m not saying you, but I’m saying, like, someone in general could, could create something like that, because I, I, I wish that I had something like this for threads and Twitter and Mastodon.

[01:25:49] Brett: yeah. Yeah, well, Threads has always promised to implement,

[01:25:54] Christina: Yeah, yeah,

[01:25:56] Brett: uh, Pub, uh, whatever,

[01:25:58] Christina: are, they are syndicating now.[01:26:00]

[01:26:00] Brett: um, Twitter, it, are

[01:26:04] Christina: on.

[01:26:05] Brett: Okay, Twitter, Twitter’s a black box, um, I, I don’t know if it would be feasible to do, like, a scripted, um, Like Chrome browser that would do it. I, I don’t know, it would be so much hackery to be fair.

[01:26:22] Brett: Like at the time Mood Blast

[01:26:24] Christina: Right, right, yeah.

[01:26:25] Brett: didn’t have an API. Um, and, and it did really hacky curl calls, uh, to kind of like, I hacked, I hacked their submit forms in a way that would let me post, um, now they have a public API, but you can only use it for pages. Or, um, I think it’s only for pages actually.

[01:26:50] Brett: And, and Instagram, Instagram only allows posting if you have like, uh, business account, business level account. And all of these [01:27:00] APIs are pretty closed off to the average user, um, in a way that makes it even more difficult than it

[01:27:07] Christina: Yes. Yeah. No, I, well,

[01:27:08] Brett: era. Um, I would think, I would think if it were possible,

[01:27:13] Christina: mean, so I don’t know. Cause I, the reason I ask is, so I use this, um, I use this NPM extension called, um, um, SnapTweet, which will basically take like a screenshot of your, um, uh, tweets. Um, and so what you do is it’s a CLI tool and, um, you enter in, uh, like, you know, SnapDashTweet and put in, um, uh, The URL, um, I actually probably should submit a pull request to, uh, include the x.

[01:27:45] Christina: com URLs because right now it’s set up to do, um, it for Twitter. And then what it does behind the scenes, and it’s worked for a long time and he hasn’t updated it in, in years. So it’s, it’s still working is that it basically, you know, launches like a, a puppeteer instance because you already have to [01:28:00] have Chrome installed.

[01:28:01] Christina: Um, and then basically, um, we’ll. You know, select in the CSS things, you know, kind of like in the background very quickly. Okay, I’m going to, I’m going to capture, um, this, uh, bit of, of logic and then style it in some ways. And you can, you know, um, with various parameters, you can set it to like, make the width, uh, different and you can make it dark mode or light mode or whatever.

[01:28:23] Christina: And then you can also choose like if you, uh, want to do multiple at once and you can even do threads. It’s, it’s very cool. It’s a very, very cool tool. Um, and, and I’ve used it for, um, a long time, um, but like, I’m thinking, okay, if you can do something like that, in theory, and I don’t know, and again, I’m not asking you to do this, but I’m just kind of thinking out loud, like, there might be a thing where, if you already had a, a cookie, Installed or whatever, where you might be able to, you know, uh, program in, okay, this is where the, the tweet box is, and this is where the, the send thing is.

[01:28:55] Christina: And so I can go ahead and just, you know, programmatically put in the text and then [01:29:00] send,

[01:29:00] Brett: Have we,

[01:29:01] Christina: it out. I

[01:29:03] Brett: we, uh, remind me, have we talked about CurlyQ? So, I have a side project, another side project called CurlyQ.

[01:29:15] Christina: yeah. We have talked

[01:29:16] Brett: web scraping

[01:29:17] Christina: tell us more.

[01:29:18] Brett: Um, yeah. And, well, in a recent update, I added JavaScript execution

[01:29:25] Christina: that’s what it’s using. It’s not using puppeteer. It’s using Selenium. Sorry. Go on.

[01:29:28] Brett: So, Yeah, so you can target like a CSS query selector and execute JavaScript on the page, um, from a curly queue call. Um, I don’t know.

[01:29:44] Brett: I mean, it’s, it’s just a, it’s a layer above Selenium. So, yeah, I, I’d be curious. Can you, can, will, will Twitter handle, A JavaScript submission. I feel like [01:30:00] if they knew what they were doing, they would deny that

[01:30:03] Christina: Totally. However, I also don’t think they have a lot of people who are like, like, who are watching, right? Cause that’s, that’s the thing, like, cause, cause the snap tweet thing, right? Like, and obviously I know it’s different and that’s a much easier thing to do, but it makes me think, but there are some other tools, like, I can’t think of the name of it right now, but there’s like an archive, I think it’s archive box.

[01:30:22] Christina: There are some tools that still, even without the API things can scrape tons of tweets and even get like the, you know, the, the text from them and whatnot and, and do it like. Fairly well. And I think that it’s one of those things that’s like, it obviously goes against what Elon is trying to accomplish when he cut off the API, but I also think he just doesn’t fucking know what he’s doing.

[01:30:45] Brett: wait, hold up one sec. Wasn’t the, they closed the API.

[01:30:50] Christina: Well, they limited aspects of it, but then, but you, but you could still do things. So for instance, you could still have like, you know, Twitterific could work. And the thing is, is that if you were an [01:31:00] individual, like, like, and if you were an individual, You could sign up for one and you could build like, you could have built something like Mood Blast and you could have said okay, as a user you need to enter in your own API key, right?

[01:31:13] Christina: You know, you would say I’m not going to do this but you as a user can enter in your own API key, I’ll show you how to set up an app, whatever, fine. Um, When they removed, when they started adding kind of restrictions on that and were like, no, you can only do like a thousand calls or a hundred calls or whatever it is, you know, for, for the lowest tier, like that kind of kill back.

[01:31:29] Christina: Cause there was like a cross posting tool for Mastodon on Twitter that, that, um, lived in, it was even a web hosted, uh, there was a hosted version and I even like self hosted my own and I looked at like, well, what would it take to like. Continue to maintain this and people just didn’t want to, um, continue doing it, which is fair.

[01:31:46] Christina: Um, but, um, that was what he did is he, he changed it from, okay, like anybody can, you know, still create these things and have like a, a valid free tier to know. Now the minimum amount of money you’d have to spend [01:32:00] would be like a hundred dollars to do anything basically. And, uh, if you wanted to, you know, do something even for the public, um, to be more like.

[01:32:10] Christina: It’s going to cost you, you know, enterprise money. So,

[01:32:16] Brett: speaking of APIs, did you know that Google has a search API now? Like this was something that was always missing in all of the old, like my, the text, the text mate, uh, The blogging bundle, the blogs, no, it actually used Google, but it would scrape the page for the results and Google made that impossible.

[01:32:42] Brett: But I just discovered while working on SearchLink, another one of my projects, um, that Google has an API and I’m doing the thing you said where people, if they want to use my Google integration with SearchLink, which typically uses, um, [01:33:00] Uh, duck, duck go. Um, if you wanna use the Google integration, you have to get your own API key.

[01:33:06] Brett: Uh, but if you enter an API key in the config, it can do an actual, like legit API Google search, um, which avoids like paid, uh, or you can avoid, uh, like sponsored links and everything. Um, which is

[01:33:25] Christina: think I actually,

[01:33:26] Brett: It’s tits as like as the

[01:33:28] Christina: I actually did know this only because, so I’ve used We’ve talked about it before. I think it was one of my picks of the week or maybe it was yours Brett, but like, um, because it’s on, um, a setup. It’s called TypingMind. And it’s like, uh, uh, uh, OpenAI or another model kind of front end for stuff.

[01:33:45] Christina: And they have extensions now. And one of the extensions is like a web search type of thing or like web scraping thing. And to get that working, you have to set up an API, um, thing in your Google account, [01:34:00] which, um, I went through the process of doing and like, I hadn’t known that like that was going to be, um, yeah, plugins is what they’re called.

[01:34:07] Christina: Yeah. So they have like a, um, a web search thing. And to get that working, you need a search API key. And I went and I, I created that and it turned out that I already had something for some reason. So I guess I did know this, but I didn’t. Um, and, but they, they do the same thing that you were talking about where they’re like, this plugin allows the AI assistant to search for information from the internet in real time using Google search, search API key needed.

[01:34:28] Christina: So I did know this, but I only learned this like a month ago.

[01:34:35] Brett: Nice. Um, okay.

[01:34:41] Jeff: Great.

[01:34:42] Brett: I think we’re done. I think we’re done with my

[01:34:44] Jeff: Gravitude, Lightning Round.

[01:34:46] Brett: Yeah.

[01:34:46] Jeff: All right. You only say like three sentences or something. I’m just kidding. You can do whatever you need to do. I can’t say three sentences about anything. That was not a real,

[01:34:59] Brett: All right. I can [01:35:00] start, I can make it, I can make it real fucking short.

[01:35:02] Graptitude Picks: From Tech Tools to Music Apps

[01:35:02] Brett: Um, I’m going to pick Textra, um, which I don’t think I’ve picked before, but I, uh, I have a, such a short memory, but it’s a command line utility written in Swift, uh, that interfaces with. Mac OS’s built in OCR and transcription capabilities.

[01:35:25] Brett: And, uh, you can basically run Textra on any image and it will spit out the Like ASCII text for whatever text exists in that image. And it is real damn good, um, for something that’s, you know, just built into the operating system, uh, but gives you command line access and it can also like trans, uh, transcribe like MP3s.

[01:35:53] Brett: Um, it doesn’t do as good a job with MP3s as like Whisper. Does, um, but it [01:36:00] does a perfectly passable job. And I use Textra every time I publish a DIMMspiration, Textra generates alt tags for the DIMMspirations automatically. And it is, I would say 90 percent accurate, uh, depending on what font I use. If I use a crazy font or I like make it like slightly invisible at the background, um, which I am want to do.

[01:36:25] Brett: But, uh, Uh, it will do an amazing job of, of picking up the text and writing my alt tags for me. It’s free. It’s free. Even if it sucks on some stuff, it’s, it’s, it’s worth checking out.

[01:36:43] Jeff: I played with that a long time ago. And also on the GitHub repo page, their example is, is using it on the Mueller report, is like, made me feel old. All of a sudden also made me check the change log. [01:37:00] It’s like, um, Well, I can go quick. Mine is this, I actually just changed it to this because of our conversation is texts, uh, which is a app that like, it’s

[01:37:10] Christina: it is ADM. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:37:13] Jeff: Audium, how’d you say?

[01:37:13] Jeff: Yeah. It’s like, I, I’ve got my, I’ve got all my messages from LinkedIn, Twitter, uh, Instagram, WhatsApp, and you can do Apple messages. It makes me a little nervous. Um, you can do signal. Yeah, but you can, I don’t know. I don’t understand. I heard about this from,

[01:37:30] Christina: Um, there, there’s some ways. Yes, it was.

[01:37:33] Brett: that’s what Beeper was doing

[01:37:34] Jeff: and they got whooshed.

[01:37:35] Christina: was the old model was doing exactly what text. com does. And then for they, they started doing something a little bit different for their, um, uh, Android version. Um, when, when the kid reverse engineered the thing is slightly different.

[01:37:49] Christina: Um, and interestingly, Automatic who owns text. com bought Beeper and, and, and Eric,

[01:37:56] Jeff: Bought the yeah, yeah.

[01:37:57] Christina: running the whole [01:38:00] thing. So he’s going to be like text and Beeper basically are eventually going to merge.

[01:38:06] Brett: Okay.

[01:38:07] Jeff: and it’s amazing because, I mean, like, come on, the LinkedIn messages, like, I don’t want to see them really, but I also don’t want to miss the one or two that I wanted to see.

[01:38:16] Brett: I, I check, I check LinkedIn like once a month and, and there will be messages that I missed a month ago, um, that are no longer relevant and would have been nice to see in the moment. Uh, but I never remembered to check

[01:38:32] Jeff: I also would have missed this one from Instagram. Hi, I’m Hannah, a girl who believes in fate and the soulmate whom I have been seeking for years, but I didn’t get to meet the right person yet, sad emoji. So I have been thinking this would be fun to send a message. To you, like spinning a wheel of fortune and telling you, I mean, I missed that.

[01:38:46] Jeff: Damn it. It came in like two weeks ago. She’s found someone by now. Uh, and also the second I loaded all this stuff in, I had all of my messages going back 17 years for these services. And, uh, and, and it’s, [01:39:00] it’s.

[01:39:00] Brett: the search?

[01:39:01] Jeff: I haven’t even tried the search because I just needed to make sure I didn’t miss people. Hold on.

[01:39:05] Jeff: Let’s

[01:39:05] Brett: I would be, I would be, it would be infinitely useful if you could search all of those platforms at the same time with any kind of accuracy.

[01:39:18] Jeff: It’s interesting. I have to play with it more. I’m doing it right now. Um, but yeah, so anyway, it’s great. And even the kind of cute thing is even through change logs, they become their own inbox message in the midst of all this stuff. So along with Riley, who’s looking for a soulmate, I’ve got, um, their latest, uh, you know, change log message.

[01:39:34] Jeff: So anyway, it’s super cool and you can add signal and stuff, but again, I don’t really understand, well, Brett, you just

[01:39:41] Christina: your, uh,

[01:39:41] Jeff: old VCR. Error. Video.

[01:39:44] Christina: That’s very, very

[01:39:45] Jeff: That was amazing.

[01:39:47] Brett: I look fine to me, so I don’t know what you guys are

[01:39:50] Christina: Um, yeah, no, um, uh, I haven’t used text. com, but I have used beeper for years and it’s the same, well, and it’s soon going to literally become the same thing. So plus one on this, um, [01:40:00] some of the services, uh, uh, the way at least beeper worked, I don’t know if text is the same as that it was using matrix under the hood.

[01:40:06] Christina: And so there were some bridges that people made and that’s how signal and other stuff worked. Um, uh, a lot of that stuff is, was, um, Open sourced, and um, uh, I expect that with Automatic being the, the joint owner, um, those things will continue to be, assuming they’re open, will be open. Um, okay, so, but yeah, no, great stuff, and like, I miss ADM every day.

[01:40:28] Christina: And I miss OpenAPI’s every day.

[01:40:30] Jeff: Oh my god. I missed that cute little frickin, uh, oh god, adorable. That one, if you had that in Cyberduck open, it was like,

[01:40:38] Brett: right?

[01:40:39] Jeff: like

[01:40:39] Christina: It really

[01:40:39] Jeff: at a Scottish Fold

[01:40:40] Christina: was. Okay, so, so, no, no, you’re great. So my pick, so I was bitching on Threads, which is a terrible platform, I should add. Threads is, Threads is the worst. It’s normies.

[01:40:50] Brett: Agreed.

[01:40:51] Christina: It’s terrible. It’s normies. So you see like two day old hot takes and like others.

[01:40:56] Christina: People are like, well, you just, I, I, I, I don’t see two day old stuff. You’re just not using [01:41:00] enough this and that. I’m like, fuck you, honestly. Um, you have people who’ve never grown up on the internet who then just like, you know, Feel like they should just be responding to, to Rando’s comments and I’m like, this isn’t Twitter and you weren’t raised here and you don’t know the culture and you’re just being dicks for no reason.

[01:41:15] Christina: Case in point, I was Sorry, go on.

[01:41:17] Brett: Can I? Oh, I was just going to interject. The thing that kills me about Threads is I don’t see the people I follow. It just shows me queer people looking for followers because apparently it’s pegged me as a queer person and all it shows me are people I’ve never heard of, never followed, and,

[01:41:40] Christina: No, I agree. The following

[01:41:43] Brett: no

[01:41:43] Christina: tap on the thing so that you can see like your following thing, like that’s better, but it’s still, but it defaults every single time to, um, to their attempt to, you know, be TikTok, but they’re not as good as TikTok. And also it’s not real time like Twitter is, like even Twitter’s For You page, like it’s, it’s, [01:42:00] It might not be the latest thing, but it’s more relevant.

[01:42:02] Christina: Like, Threads, literally, it’s two day old shit that you see. Um, it sucks. Threads, Threads is, is not a great place. But I, but, but, I will say this, uh, the one good thing about Threads is I was I was harassed by a bunch of dickheads who were defending Apple Music, um, on the Mac. Uh, because I, I, look, and I didn’t even say what I really wanted to say.

[01:42:24] Christina: What I really wanted to say is that Apple Music for Mac is an abortion of an application. Um, that, that could be a show title. Um, uh, it probably shouldn’t be, but, but that is actually what I wanted to say.

[01:42:35] Jeff: But we have

[01:42:36] Christina: But Apple Music for Mac is genuinely one of the worst applications that exists on the planet.

[01:42:41] Christina: It is a bad application. It makes a mid range service that has good audio quality. Look, I, I, I pay for Apple Music and I use it on, um, my phone, but it’s, it’s terrible on the Mac. Like it is literally, it is fucking awful, especially if you have a decent library size. So, um, Somebody was asking, well, if I want a [01:43:00] local music playback, like what should I use?

[01:43:02] Christina: And I had like, um, a couple of suggestions that I was going to give them. And then somebody, I, um, I did some research. I was like, is there anything I’m missing? And I came across an app that I think I checked out a while ago, but I hadn’t checked out in a long call, a long time. It’s called Swensian. And it is basically what iTunes was.

[01:43:20] Christina: Before the Apple Music integration, but more modernized and also plays back FLAC and, um, and other types of, you know, files that iTunes never did.

[01:43:30] Jeff: Cause Jesus

[01:43:31] Christina: and so it’s, it’s 25 as a one time purchase. If you download the version that’s on their website, that’s like a version 2, it, it doesn’t have dark mode support, but if you then press the option key and do check for updates, you can get the beta, um, of version 3, which is updated fairly frequently and like the most recent version I think came out like a couple of weeks ago.

[01:43:51] Christina: Um, and that supports dark mode and stuff. It is still a Rosetta app, um, but I haven’t noticed any performance things. So, you know, if you’re a purist for some [01:44:00] reason, like I’m just pointing that out, but it’s, it’s really good. Like if you’re somebody who wants a local music playback for whatever reason, because maybe you’re like me.

[01:44:08] Jeff: Flack. I

[01:44:09] Christina: that’s what I, that’s what I want. Cause I have, I’m not joking. I have like 80 something gigabytes of, of downloaded, like FLAC files. And so, and I would like to get a Rune, but Exactly. Exactly. And I, and I would like to get a rune or something, but that, that’s expensive. It’s 15 a month. And I might do that eventually, but I’m, but I’m not there yet.

[01:44:27] Christina: So in this circumstance, I’m like, okay, actually, um, this is, this is a good, a good thing. So, so Swensian is, is my, um, Graftitude.

[01:44:39] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:44:40] Brett: Yeah, I’m gonna check that out.

[01:44:42] Jeff: ruin.

[01:44:44] Brett: I don’t have, as, I don’t have nearly as many local files as you do. I rely mostly on

[01:44:49] Christina: but I like having, I’m a

[01:44:51] Brett: I, I’m still having, I’m still having that, I’m still having that problem. I, on my Mac, where Spotify, if [01:45:00] I play songs with Spotify on my Mac every 10 seconds, the playback cuts out

[01:45:07] Jeff: Oh yeah! I’ve been having that problem too.

[01:45:08] Brett: I, I am, I am not the only

[01:45:10] Jeff: the problem on my hump pod.

[01:45:12] Brett: I’ve been on the forums and Like a bunch and Spotify has like no response to this. Um, it is apparently pretty common, so I can’t use, but what I can do is with my whole loopback setup and everything, I can just, I will stream from my phone or I can have Alexa, sorry, shut up, Alexa. Um, I can have her play.

[01:45:39] Brett: Um, using Spotify and it pipes through my computer. And then once a song is playing, Spotify has such good sync between platforms. I can use the desktop app to fast forward and rewind, but the playback is actually coming from my.

[01:45:56] Jeff: And the mere fact that that Rube Goldberg bullshit setup [01:46:00] is what you have to do proves Christina’s initial point. Cause this should be really

[01:46:04] Christina: Yeah, well, he’s using Spotify, but still, yeah. But

[01:46:08] Jeff: I know, no I know, but I do that

[01:46:10] Christina: No, no, you’re not wrong. Right? You

[01:46:12] Jeff: Apple Music. I go through all this weird shit.

[01:46:14] Christina: It is such hot garbage that I’m like, do I wanna launch this on my Mac? Fuck no. Are you kidding me? Somebody was like, I’ve never had any problems. And I have a really large library.

[01:46:22] Christina: I have 12,000 tracks and, and dozens of playlists. And I was like, that’s what I

[01:46:27] Jeff: Sit down, child.

[01:46:28] Christina: dozens of

[01:46:29] Jeff: Dozens of playlists? Jesus Christ, how old are you?

[01:46:32] Christina: files. And I was like, I was like, that’s cute. I was like. I had more than that on my iPod 20 years ago.

[01:46:42] Jeff: I had dozens of quote unquote playlists by the time I was

[01:46:46] Christina: to me, I was just, I was like, okay, right. But I was like, congratulations. I was like, that’s not a large library. Oh, I think it’s a large library. It’s actually not. Um, and people were like, well, well, how do you listen to 100, 000 tracks? I’m like, you don’t. But if the whole idea is you [01:47:00] can be a music library, then let me have a fucking music library.

[01:47:03] Christina: Don’t make me have to go through.

[01:47:05] Jeff: Also, it’s called being a music fan, Sonny Boy Williamson.

[01:47:10] Christina: the,

[01:47:10] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Can I just say my, my new favorite kind of playlist is I go back on that,

[01:47:16] Christina: yeah, yeah, setlist,

[01:47:17] Jeff: database site is, which I’m forgetting right now. Yeah. Setlist. And I make playlists that are the songs

[01:47:23] Christina: there, there are a couple of apps, there are a couple of apps that actually will do that for iOS, yeah, they

[01:47:29] Jeff: Oh yeah. Cause they have an API and they’ll, yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

[01:47:32] Christina: no, totally, I, I used to do it artisanally, but like, when I realized that there was actually like, iOS apps, I

[01:47:38] Jeff: No, but why? Yeah.

[01:47:40] Christina: so,

[01:47:42] Jeff: Yeah, for sure. That’s great. Thanks for that tip. Awesome.

[01:47:47] Brett: All right. Wow. We did another two

[01:47:49] Jeff: Yeah, but we did it without a guest, and, and with a very contained

[01:47:54] Christina: and we hadn’t had an episode in like, a month, so,

[01:47:58] Jeff: Yeah, it was a lot. The pipes were [01:48:00] clogged.

[01:48:01] Brett: Bring it on. All right. Thanks you

[01:48:04] Jeff: Thank you. Get some sleep.

[01:48:06] Brett: Get some sleep.