Brett

[00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Brett Terpstra. We’re w w we’re on over tired. This is me with Christina Warren. I cannot do these intros. How are you, Christina?

[00:00:08] Christina: [00:00:08] I’m good. I’m good. How are you, Brett?

[00:00:10] Brett: [00:00:10] don’t I just write this down and read it?

[00:00:13] Christina: [00:00:13] I’m not sure, but you should.

[00:00:15] Brett: [00:00:15] it’s three things. It’s me. It’s you it’s over tired. It shouldn’t be so complicated.

[00:00:20] Christina: [00:00:20] It’s like, hi, welcome to overtired. I’m Brett Terpstra. She’s Christina Warren.

[00:00:24] Brett: [00:00:24] That’s yeah, I don’t. I should just w I should stop even trying and you should just permanently do the intro.

[00:00:31] Christina: [00:00:31] I actually think that’s probably the correct idea.

[00:00:33] Brett: [00:00:33] probably best.

[00:00:38] I just, I just, my mind freezes. Right? As soon as the, as soon as the intro music and my mind just goes like into a blank slash panic mode. Anyway, how have you been this week?

[00:00:53] Christina: [00:00:53] okay. Um, I’m, I’ve been good. I have, I have a yarn to tell, uh, what’s what’s becoming kind of a. [00:01:00] A typical thing for us where, you know, like it’s becoming a segment, which is who is Christina pissed off to speak on the internet, but it’s a good one. Um, but before I get into that and it involves the creator of the QCAT

[00:01:14] Brett: [00:01:14] Oh, my.

[00:01:15] Christina: [00:01:15] yeah.

[00:01:16] Uh, which, uh, we found out what, what, what he’s doing and, um,

[00:01:21] Brett: [00:01:21] I can’t wait to hear.

[00:01:23] Christina: [00:01:23] Wow. Wow. But yeah, but, but let’s, uh, before that let’s hit up, um, uh, mental health corner first.

[00:01:30] Brett: [00:01:30] Yeah. So, uh, can I go first?

[00:01:33] Christina: [00:01:33] I obviously

[00:01:35] Brett: [00:01:35] I think I went manic this morning. All right. And we’ve talked about how much I kind of. Missed yet. Yeah, I was scared. Like, I don’t want to be manic, but I’ve gotten so much done today. Uh, but what’s happening. Like I had a psychiatrist appointment yesterday and I mentioned that I didn’t think my Vyvanse was working anymore.

[00:01:58] And we [00:02:00] settled on trying a new stimulant. Uh, we’re going to try the XR version of Focalin. And Focalin has worked really well for me in the past. But last time I tried it, it sent me into a manic episode. So I assumed that it was the focal in’s fault. Turns out. Like I, I didn’t pick up my new prescription until noon today and I won’t start taking it until tomorrow morning, but I’m already manic.

[00:02:27] It has nothing to do with Focalin. It has to do with the excitement of thinking. I’m going to be able to get back to work every time I like have a rough time working. And then, uh, the, uh, there’s a solution on the horizon. I get excited. And then my brain just takes that all the way to fucking manic. Um, so that’s where I’m at right now.

[00:02:54] Oh, how are you doing.

[00:02:56] Christina: [00:02:56] I’m doing pretty good. I don’t know. I just. [00:03:00] I I’ve struggled as my mental health definitely struggled a lot in 2020, and I’m hoping that it’ll be better in 2021, but this is my first week back at work today, as we’re recording is actually my first day back and that’s been interesting and it was difficult to be totally honest.

[00:03:17] It was one of those things where I had to take an extra day yesterday because I was just like, I can’t mentally come back to work and I don’t have any problems at my job. Right. Like I don’t, it’s not like I’m. You know, want to quit my job or, or hate that, or anything is just kinda my general malaise and hating everything that kind of made, you know, there’s like anxiety and other stuff involved.

[00:03:44] That just makes even the process of just being like, okay, I got to go back to the grind after two weeks ish off, you know, like struggle with that. So. Um, but I’m, I’m, I’m sad to hear that you’re [00:04:00] manic, but at the same time, I know that you kind of were like, feeling like you needed that again. Um, I’m also glad that, cause we talked about this last week that you’re at least getting your meds.

[00:04:11] Cause I know you were worried about that. So.

[00:04:13] Brett: [00:04:13] I actually got these meds like four, four or five days after. I got my Vyvanse refilled. So I turned in my Vyvanse and got these meds. So flawless transition there,

[00:04:26] Christina: [00:04:26] Very cool. They make you turn them in.

[00:04:29] Brett: [00:04:29] Yo yeah. Yeah. If they switch your meds or you get a new prescription, you have to turn in whatever’s right. Oh yeah. Don’t you.

[00:04:39] Christina: [00:04:39] I, I guess it’s been so long since I switched. Um, Something like my deck stream, although, no, when, I mean, again though, this was, this was a long time ago, but last time I tried Vyvanse, it certainly was not one of those things where I was asked to surrender my Dexedrine. And when I went back, I was certainly not asked to [00:05:00] surrender my Vyvanse.

[00:05:01] Brett: [00:05:01] Oh, wow. That absolutely is required. And my. Uh, psychiatrist or the clinic has a policy that they can ask their patients at any time to bring in their remaining meds for account, just to make sure no one’s abusing anything.

[00:05:20] Christina: [00:05:20] Oh, that makes sense. Now, is this like a legal, like requirement from the state? Is this something that like your doctor does? I mean, well, listen, well, I mean, regardless I’m, it could be one of those things that. Like insurance, the pharmacy, or whoever could, could get mad about. But I guess in my case, especially since my doctor is out of state, he just mails me my scripts.

[00:05:39] Um, he would definitely not ask me to give mine back, I think, unless there was a concern about something like.

[00:05:49] Brett: [00:05:49] in my case, they put a note on the new prescription that says. Uh, that I have to turn in my meds at the pharmacy in order to get the refill,

[00:06:00] [00:05:59] Christina: [00:05:59] Interesting. Okay.

[00:06:01] Brett: [00:06:01] could totally do. But if he’s not required to, it never hurts to have extras on hand. I’ve learned from it. If those times, when my doctor fails to come through for me, if I had a stash to like, keep like to make it through a

[00:06:17] Christina: [00:06:17] Uh huh.

[00:06:18] Brett: [00:06:18] period, that would, that could make the difference between going mannequin, not.

[00:06:23] Christina: [00:06:23] Yeah, no, I was going to say I have a stash and I, yup. Yup.

[00:06:33] Brett: [00:06:33] lucky you that’s not going to happen for me.

[00:06:38] Christina: [00:06:38] Um, I, well, I mean, when my shrink inevitably retires and I bet that’ll be sooner rather than later, uh, I will, I will join the really like difficult.

[00:06:51] Brett: [00:06:51] Yeah, man. That’s that’s when everything went wrong for me is when my shrink of like nine years retired. And then I [00:07:00] had that couple of years without meds because everything went to hell. When I lost the guy who knew me and understood me and had like been hands-on with my medications for almost a decade, just took off and yeah, everything went very poorly after that.

[00:07:16] Christina: [00:07:16] No. I mean, and, and I mean, that’s the worst, honestly, because. Like people don’t understand. Actually, it’s interesting. I was part of a Twitter conversation. Earlier today because people were talking about like, if you have a primary care physician, people like who has that, and a lot of us were kind of chime in and being like, yeah, we have insurance, we have these other things.

[00:07:35] It’s like, what the hell is a primary care physician? Um, the closest I have to that is my shrink. But the reality is, is even when you have specialists, even when you have like consistent insurance or whatever, and you’re not switching jobs a lot or whatever, it’s difficult as we’ve talked about for years on this podcast to find people who are good and who know you and who understand.

[00:07:55] And, um, yeah, so.

[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Brett: [00:08:00] I have a primary care physician that I’ve seen. I see him about once a year, I get like a physical or in my cholesterol and blood pressure checked. Uh, but I, first time I saw him, I said, can I put you down as my primary care physician? And he said, yes. And he’s been mine ever since, even though I never go see him,

[00:08:21] Christina: [00:08:21] Yeah, that was kind of a, the case with somebody who I had, um, Uh, for, for a while. And then they left the place that I was going. And so I may, I need to find another one now, but yeah.

[00:08:34] Brett: [00:08:34] can I tell you about my kitten? Oh, my God ma so bod is unfathomably cute. And she just started growing into her face. Have you ever seen a long haired kitten? They, they have this main and then taking up about a quarter of their main is their tiny little face with big eyes and their pink nose [00:09:00] and the rest of it.

[00:09:01] It’s just like, it’s like, I’m the monster from monster zinc. The actually

[00:09:07] Christina: [00:09:07] Oh, yeah. I’m I’m looking I’m I’m uh, I’m I’m looking at this now. Oh my gosh.

[00:09:11] Brett: [00:09:11] what’s the, the phone company that has monsters for their commercials. Uh, a mobile carrier, like not mint mobile. Um, I forget anyway, there’s a character on there that reminds me a lot of bod. Um, but she’s finally like over the last couple of weeks, it started growing into her face. And she, it, I, I will miss her being a kitten, but she’s so unfathomably cute.

[00:09:40] Now. I have every reason to believe she’s going to make the best looking adult care.

[00:09:46] Christina: [00:09:46] That’s awesome. I love that. You need to send me photos. Okay. That went,

[00:09:52] Brett: [00:09:52] young.

[00:09:53] Christina: [00:09:53] that went dark super quick,

[00:09:55] Brett: [00:09:55] so I’m still in a place where I have this level of

[00:09:58] Christina: [00:09:58] I’ve been again.

[00:09:59] Brett: [00:09:59] Yeah. [00:10:00] Like, I feel like I should still be mourning Finnegan, and yet I have this new kitten that I love to death and there’s this conflict that happens for me, where I feel guilty for not still being completely in mourning.

[00:10:16] And I it’s, I wrestle with it like I do mourn for Finnegan, and that is, uh, a tragedy in my life. But also I love bod. I’m glad bod showed up.

[00:10:31] Christina: [00:10:31] Well, I mean, that’s the thing, right? I mean, I think that, I think that’s normal. I think most people, when they lose someone, if, when you feel any sense of moving on, you feel like, Oh, I should still be upset, but it’s like, At the same time. What good does that do? It’s not like being happy about something else in the Gates, the fact that you were in pain or are in pain about something, it just means that you’ve been able to emotionally get to a place where that’s not all consuming you and that’s a good thing.

[00:10:58] Brett: [00:10:58] Yeah, I guess so [00:11:00] that’s what my therapist says.

[00:11:04] Christina: [00:11:04] Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it’s a good thing. So, um, I I’m, I’m happy to hear that that bod is, uh, Continuing to be cute. How is, uh, how, how are, uh, is a she and the other cat? How is that going?

[00:11:18] Brett: [00:11:18] Um, we’re still isolating them. Uh, today I will get a package from Amazon that will have pheromones, uh, like a plugin thing that, uh, emits the pheromones, that cats, Mark things with when they’re comfortable, that’s supposed to help ease transitions for households with multiple cats. So once we have that up, then I have to rig up.

[00:11:44] Some kind of screen, uh, so that they can eat their meals and see each other without actually going into each other’s territory. The problem being bod can climb just about anything. So I either need a [00:12:00] floor to ceiling screen, I need to come up with some cool contraption with paper and cardboard that she can’t, uh, climb over the top of.

[00:12:12] I have to make like a, a border wall for her.

[00:12:15] Christina: [00:12:15] I was going to say this, this is seeming at which actually is, is a good segue into, uh, uh, Christina pisses people off on the internet. But yeah, you need to, you need to come up with some sort of border wall situation, some sort of prison wall situation for bod.

[00:12:34] Brett: [00:12:34] Yeah. Um, so speaking of, um, grieving over kittens and mental health and all of these things we’ve just been talking about, and I even mentioned therapy just now. I would like to introduce, uh, one of our sponsors for this week. We’ve talked about them before. I’ve been talking for a while about how therapy has been really good for [00:13:00] me and, uh, working with my ADHD and just for life in general and the way I’ve been getting my therapy is through better help.

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[00:14:53] Christina: [00:14:53] Thank you better help.

[00:14:55] Brett: [00:14:55] So yeah, let’s move on to, um, uh, QCAT [00:15:00] discussion.

[00:15:00] Christina: [00:15:00] Yeah. Okay. So last week there was this insane hearing in the Georgia state Senate about the election. And people testified about whether the vote was, you know, uh, once again, trying to offer proof that the vote was. Uh, stolen, which you know, is bullshit and, and which the three state audits have proven is completely inaccurate.

[00:15:26] And as the, the phone call that I think we might talk about, uh, that leaks, which was kind of stunning an hour long phone call between the secretary of state. And, um, the president and his, uh, soon to be, you know, former president, but, uh, still as of today, uh, president of the United States and his chief of staff where he was basically all, but kind of quasi threatening them to just find a way to make the votes count and to just, you know, restate who won the election.

[00:15:56] Um, so they had this insane hearing and, and this guy in [00:16:00] this hearing. Was brought up as this tech expert and his name is Joe Bon Hutton, Hewlett, sir, it was not his, his real name. He changed his name, but, but that’s what he goes by now. And he was talking about how he can use some sort of kinetic, um, or kinematic, uh, you know, like, um, uh, Uh, method of ascertaining, whether the ballots were real or fake and where they were printed and whether humans filled them out or, or, um, you know, computers and, and all this other stuff.

[00:16:28] And he talked about how he has all these patents that are used on billions of devices all over the world. And he’s this expert in all these different areas. And then he also claimed during the hearing that he successfully hacked into one of the, um, voting machines in Fulton County. So I’m watching this and, and, and, and this guy just, you know, all of my red flags go off, I’m like, who the hell is this guy?

[00:16:54] And it was like, I don’t know, two o’clock in the morning, one 30 in the morning. And so I [00:17:00] started doing some Googling. And, uh, I’m just going to read you my Twitter thread, a brief thread on Joe van Hutton. Culet sir, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County.

[00:17:15] Nineties kids in tech aficionados might remember Giovan as the inventor of the QCAT the dumbest gadget of all time. You remember the QCAT Brett.

[00:17:24] Brett: [00:17:24] I still have one.

[00:17:26] Christina: [00:17:26] Yeah. Yeah. Um, also for anyone who wants to claim the Giovan Hutton, Pulitzer, um, not his given name, but one, he changed legally at the QCAT debacle invented QR codes.

[00:17:37] He did not like that other right wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email Giovan did not invent QR codes because this was a big thing that he’s been claiming. He’s like I had done it. QR codes. No, you invented the QCAT. Uh, QP QR codes were invented by the Japanese about six years before the QCAT came out.

[00:17:56] Um, and you have a patent that they’re [00:18:00] from other research I’ve done. There was some actually validity, even at the time, some, some claims that it might’ve been fringed upon something about scanning a certain proprietary code and going to a website. But you didn’t invent QR codes. Uh, I’ll continue my thread.

[00:18:14] He did invent the QCAT a product that somehow raised $185 million freight tethered, barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers. So you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked. However, Oh, that’s another thing. When QCAT was a thing, it systems were hacked.

[00:18:36] I guess that’s what makes Giovanna security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and wildly mocked. He’s a genius in recent years, Giovan pivoted to being a treasure Hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on cursive Oak Island, because the man is insane. This is true. He actually pivoted to becoming a treasure Hunter who claimed to have found a Roman sword [00:19:00] in Nova Scotia and that he was on the verge of finding the Ark of the covenant.

[00:19:05] I wish I was making this up. Um, anyway, this is the man will finish up my thread that, that, uh, Rudy and the gang are claiming as a tech and security expert. Uh, these at these Russia hearings, someone at Gizmodo or at Berge needs to block this because this is hilarious. Um, his LinkedIn wants you to know that he’s taken free online classes at Harvard and Stanford.

[00:19:27] Yeah. Also, I found an interview with him where he blames Mark Cuban being mean about QCAT for his wife, divorcing him. He also amazed them insane claims about Walt Mossberg that I won’t dignify. Um, but he seriously, this is the guy who is Rudy’s tech expert. This is how efficient this is. Um, uh, now officially hilarious someone please block this.

[00:19:47] Well, the verse did blog it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The verge as did Gizmodo. Thank you guys, Modo. And, um, it, it went, uh, more viral than I assumed that it would, um, uh, [00:20:00] 1,400 likes 496, retweets, 205 quote tweets, and a whole bunch of activity from both people who are saying, and, and remember the QCAT and thought this whole thing was hilarious as well as people who were, you know, flat out crazy and believe all the nonsense that this guy.

[00:20:16] Has sprouted who were calling me every name in the book and, and sending me gross emails and with their real phone numbers, which smart, um, and, uh, you know, just, just claiming that, that I’ll never be as successful as this guy. So to which I think I glibly responded to one, well, at least I have a Wikipedia page.

[00:20:34] Um, the joke there being that, not that I have a Wikipedia page because who cares? That’s irrelevant, but. This guy so badly wanted a Wikipedia page that he created like three or four different sock puppet accounts to try to get himself one. And when that didn’t work, he created like, I’m not even joking, like five different websites, um, like just like Blogspot or WordPress blogs, where he tries to maintain his own [00:21:00] hagiography of, of why he’s relevant.

[00:21:04] Brett: [00:21:04] This is amazing.

[00:21:05] Christina: [00:21:05] Yeah. Yeah. The QCAT guy, the QCAT guy, like this was the thing that was just stunning me. I was like, why? I mean, how is anyone taking anything that he’s saying seriously? Also people kept pointing out well, he has all these patents. That means he’s successful. And I’m like that beans, nothing. It just means the guy has a ton of free time on his hands because he’s never worked another job as far as I can tell.

[00:21:30] And, um, Files patents all day that somehow get approved, even though most of them are idea patents and don’t actually have a mechanism for anything. Like he claims he invented responsive design because he has a patent that for that doesn’t have any mechanism involved. But, but that basically says a website will look the same on multiple different types of devices.

[00:21:52] It’s like, yeah. Yeah, genius. Um, I didn’t even get into the thing is that people were like [00:22:00] accusing me of, of, uh, you know, uh, well, the funny thing isn’t, they’re accusing me of Slater and I was like, no, if anything is libel slander spoken, um, what I’m doing right now w would, would, would potentially be slander except that in both libel and slander truth, uh, trumps all of it.

[00:22:17] So I’m completely fine. Uh, but they were like saying, Oh, you know, you’re, you’re, you know, taking cheap shots and dah, dah, dah. And I’m like, I didn’t even get into, and I didn’t get into it, these people because who cares, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just share. I didn’t even get into all the insane stuff that this guy has done.

[00:22:34] Like his, um, life before the QCAT he was an infomercial producer and he, again, then like got into it. Huge fights with people who laughed at him in the whole treasure hunting community. I mean, just let’s just think about this for a minute. This guy is so bad shit that the treasure hunting community, which is [00:23:00] not a community that I’m going to be honest, I think is really all there.

[00:23:04] Um, that, that the people who, uh, participate in and watch a show on history channel about people who think that they can find buried treasure. Even, they were like, yeah, this guy’s nuts.

[00:23:18] Brett: [00:23:18] Yeah, there’s like three different topics here. At least. Like first, we could talk about the QCAT second. We could talk about like the, the political side of the responses. And third, we will, obviously, we’re gonna talk about, uh, uh, impeaching Trump again, but first I, I really do what was the original purpose of the QCAT?

[00:23:45] Well, let’s, let’s say what a QCAT is for anyone who’s who’s young enough to not know.

[00:23:50] Christina: [00:23:50] Sure. So it was a barcode scanner that, um, was actually then I guess, modified. So it couldn’t scan general barcodes, but what [00:24:00] it would do is if you had a magazine or newspaper or, uh, or whatever that had the special type of code. When you’re on an ad or accessing an article, and the idea would be rather than typing in a URL, you would take this thing that was connected to your computer, using a USB or a PSU cable.

[00:24:19] You would scan the code, you would have their special software installed, and it would then take you to a website associated with that code. Usually, you know, it’s going to be associate with an ad. Sometimes, maybe it would be a specific article or something else, but rather than typing in a URL, you would go through this convoluted process of having to scan something into your computer.

[00:24:43] Um, it was what, with a special device and it was widely mocked, like Walt Mossberg, who this guy has a major hangup on to this day basically called it, you know, uh, you know, um, A solution searching for a problem and talked about [00:25:00] how it was an elegant and that it assumed that you were going to have to be wanting to read whatever you were doing in front of your computer, which made sense.

[00:25:07] And, um, people figured out that it was tracking all of your web browsing behavior. Like you had to give them your address and your name and stuff like that. When you got thing, right. And it would then kind of track what you were doing. They were hacked. And so databases of people’s activity was leaked and you know, it was a mess, but the, the, the reason they ran out of money, they raised all this money, like $200 million, which is insane, but then they blew it because they sent these devices out to people for free.

[00:25:36] So you could go to radio shack and get one. You could get, like, they came with wired magazine. I think Forbes had them, or you could just like request one and they would just mail them out to people. Uh, they were just assuming that people would just. Love these things and would absolutely want to scan all of their ads and, and interact with things that way.

[00:25:54] And, and that, uh, you know, the, the profits would just soar in that didn’t happen. People were [00:26:00] just like, why did I get this thing? What am I going to do with it? Why do I need this thing connected to my computer? This is dumb. And quickly people figured out how to kind of reverse engineer things to maybe, you know, clip, um, certain.

[00:26:15] Wires or whatever, and to get it to work with Linux or to make it just a general barcode scanner. And when people did that, like the company threatened to Sue them and all kinds of other stuff, it didn’t work with Mac, like had all these issues. Um, and so when the company went bankrupt and they like went bankrupt makes up like chapter seven bankrupt, uh, library thing bought, I think like.

[00:26:37] A lot of them, cause they still had like over a million of them that were unsent out, uh, for like, like one or 2 cents a piece and has been selling them for the last decade, plus for, you know, $10 a pop. And then you could use it with software that you would use to maybe organize your books or your DVDs or whatever.

[00:26:59] Um, [00:27:00] But the, the general purpose was genuinely stupid. It was like, it’s so hard to type in a URL that you have to scan this, this link to do it, which to me like misses the, the next major technical advancement. Right. Because on the one hand you can say, yeah, it is hard to type in these really long URLs, you know, from a magazine that’s really awkward.

[00:27:23] Well, Rather than coming up with a solution to type in that URL. Maybe you should think about what the real solution to that is, which is I’m going to be reading this article on a website and use a hyperlink that will take me to that, that destination and that the print magazine or newspaper that I’m reading is going to go away.

[00:27:45] Like. I don’t know, maybe just, maybe it’s just me, but to me, that seems like if you’re really going to be like forward thinking, that’s the real thing you should think about, which is yeah. URL type. Having to type in a long URL is not going to be a [00:28:00] problem in the future because people will just click the hyperlink.

[00:28:04] Brett: [00:28:04] can I tell you a secret?

[00:28:05] Christina: [00:28:05] You can

[00:28:06] Brett: [00:28:06] I still read wired on paper.

[00:28:09] Christina: [00:28:09] get a subscription from them on paper. Cause it’s cheaper than doing it online, but I, um,

[00:28:14] Brett: [00:28:14] bathroom reading.

[00:28:16] Christina: [00:28:16] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get that and I get vanity fair in print. Um, but I think I usually read them like even in PDF form or whatever, like on an iPad.

[00:28:28] Brett: [00:28:28] Yeah. I mean, I, I, I referenced a lot of weird articles on my computer. But I do still read the print version.

[00:28:37] Christina: [00:28:37] Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

[00:28:39] Brett: [00:28:39] ever see an ad that I think, you know what I want to follow up on this. I need to type in a URL. If, uh, if, if a company has branded at all, well, has any kind of reasonable URL? Uh, it has never been something where I thought I wish I had a device that could get me from this page to their [00:29:00] website.

[00:29:00] Christina: [00:29:00] Exactly or, you know, even in the case of, okay, you like to, you still like the, the, the print experience, which is fine. If there was something that was like LinkedIn, that, that you wanted to check out when you’re opening up your web browser, what makes more sense to having to like track down that URL, which may or may not be that long or, um, I don’t know, just going to the website for that article and clicking the link.

[00:29:25] Brett: [00:29:25] I can’t remember what the app was called, but there was a really good like library app for Mac

[00:29:34] Christina: [00:29:34] Delicious library. Yeah. Yeah, that was great. And that was actually, I think I bought one of those cute cats that had been declawed and that’s what I used it for.

[00:29:45] Brett: [00:29:45] Yep. That is exactly why I own one. I’m just thinking if there’s still a web page because the app’s gone, isn’t it?

[00:29:53] Christina: [00:29:53] I mean, I think it’s technically still around, but I think it’s on like life support.

[00:29:56] Brett: [00:29:56] It’s on the, on the Mac app store. Huh? [00:30:00] I thought it died years ago.

[00:30:02] Christina: [00:30:02] Well, I mean, I think it basically did. I think that it’s basic, I don’t think it’s basically been updated. Um, like if you went to delicious monsters website, it still looks like it’s. 2009. Um, I mean, I, I did kind of like feel bad for them a little bit because Apple completely ripped off the design with the first eye books.

[00:30:25] You remember that?

[00:30:26] Brett: [00:30:26] Yup, totally.

[00:30:27] Christina: [00:30:27] Um, but.

[00:30:29] Brett: [00:30:29] like the, one of the major breakthroughs of delicious library was there, um, scanning, uh, kind of technology. Like it could read a barcode so fast. You wouldn’t even have time to hold it up. Like it would just be done. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Apple has gotten that down.

[00:30:49] Like if you go to scan in the back of your, uh, like iTunes gift card you even get it up to the screen, it’s already done, like

[00:30:57] Christina: [00:30:57] Yeah, no, it’s good. Yeah.

[00:30:58] Brett: [00:30:58] solved it. And [00:31:00] like, when they first started doing that, there was talk that they had sherlocked, uh, some of delicious libraries capabilities there.

[00:31:08] Christina: [00:31:08] No, without a doubt. And I think the big thing for them was at one point they had some sort of partnership with, with Amazon or something where you could, you know, like search for things within Amazon, or they’d try to get affiliate links or whatever. Amazon shut that down. I don’t remember all the, all the, um, Ram now, but yeah.

[00:31:25] It’s been awhile, but yeah, the app, the app was, was a thing, I guess it’s apparently still updated for big Sur, which, you know, that’s, that’s cool.

[00:31:33] Brett: [00:31:33] has a four star rating.

[00:31:34] Christina: [00:31:34] Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things that I, I mean, I haven’t used it in years. Um, and I think, you know, it’s such a niche thing. Um,

[00:31:45] Brett: [00:31:45] was great for cataloging all your hard copy books that, that are becoming a rarity themselves.

[00:31:51] Christina: [00:31:51] Yeah, no, exactly. Right. I mean, it was, it was great design. Like I think the design actually kind of helped inform a certain era of, of Mac development, which I really appreciate, [00:32:00] but yeah. But, but regardless, like I said, my threat I’m like, yeah. So there’s the secondary market for this device, but the original purpose.

[00:32:07] Was a colossal failure and the company went out of business hard. Like I, you know, the guy obviously must be a good bullshit artist because he was able to convince all these companies, um, most of which are now extinct like radio shack to, to give him lots and lots of money. But I mean, it’s just the dumbest freaking idea.

[00:32:28] In fact, I think I will. And, and the reason I stand by saying it’s the dumbest. I think the device has cost them like six 50 a piece to make. And they made like, you know, a couple million of them and mailed them out to people. Uh, and yeah, it’s like, okay, that, yeah, you’re going to blow through all of your funding that way.

[00:32:48] Um, especially if you don’t have anything else to kind of, you know, pick up with it and it’s it’s um, the only device I would say might have been dumber. But I’ll give this one slight benefit of the doubt because Sony did actually mail me a [00:33:00] check with my money back. Um, was there was the stupid Sony device.

[00:33:04] I, I’m going to try to think of the name of it, um, to add to the show notes, um, after the episode, but I’m not going to able to think of it right now, but it was this stupid device. Where they had this web server, that monitored radio stations all over the country. And so the, the problem that we’re trying to solve is what song is playing on the radio right now.

[00:33:23] And this is before radio stations were digital. And before like in-car systems would have, you know, like a scrolling marquee of what song was playing. And so you click on this device and it was basically a timestamp. And the other end was a USB and he’d plug it into the USB and it would take the timestamp and it would compare it with the Arbitron stuff or whatever was on Sony’s website.

[00:33:43] And it would tell you on this station, this was the song that was playing, but you, but there were a couple of problems. Like there were only a couple of stations that you could have dedicated as your favorites and, you know, could only store a certain order of these time codes, but it was a really kind of simplistic thing, but it was like 20 bucks.

[00:34:00] [00:34:00] And I bought one because a friend had one, this was, this was 2000 and I use it a few times. Cause at first I thought it was maybe more impressive than it was. I think when my friend showed me, I’d assumed that it was maybe like a Shizam type of thing. It was not a Shizam type of thing. It was literally a timestamp that was then just querying, you know, logs of radio station playlists, and coming back with results.

[00:34:24] Um, Sony very quickly realized that this was dumb. And sent emails, uh, or, you know, and I wound up getting something in the mail to everybody who bought it and was like, we’re discontinuing this, here’s a $20 check for your money back. Like they act. But, so the reason I will say, cause like in theory, I will actually say that’s a dumber thing than the QCAT.

[00:34:50] But the reason I say that it’s not was because Sony actually refunded my money. And as I recall, like, I didn’t have to do anything other than after I’d [00:35:00] registered it. The first time I got a check in the mail, like it was one of those things and it, and it was actual cash. It wasn’t like a certificate or anything like that.

[00:35:08] Like they actually like sent me a check in the mail. Cause I remember this cause I wasn’t 11. Great. And I was like, okay, um, thanks. So. Yeah. Um, so anyway, yeah, the QCAT really, really dumb. I wound up like, just doing hard research on how dumb this guy is, but yeah, we should talk about the political side of this because the fact that th these are the people that they can get to show proof, um, of, of, you know, um,

[00:35:41] Brett: [00:35:41] that these are the experts that they hinge everything on. So, About this call. Um, I watched, uh, a link. There was a legal Eagle. Um, you ever watched that guy?

[00:35:55] Christina: [00:35:55] I love him.

[00:35:56] Brett: [00:35:56] He’s awesome. Um, but he did a thing [00:36:00] on the Georgia call and whether or not it was criminal and B, whether it could be impeachable and, uh, it was yes to both.

[00:36:08] Uh, he does really good research and was able to list all of the statutes that that call potentially broke. Um, but, uh, In the slate article about this, uh, this infamous already infamous after a couple of days. Yeah. Georgia call. They did mention quote in the unlikely event that Congress were to make him the first president ever to be impeached twice and impeachments can happen.

[00:36:38] Even after elected officials leave office, then he could be disqualified from running for high office again in the future. And that’s why I think we should impeach the fucker again. Right quick.

[00:36:50] Christina: [00:36:50] Yeah, no, I agree if that actually is like, if, if that would actually stand with the president of the United States, that they would say, okay, if the president United [00:37:00] States is impeached again, then he will, um, not be able to run again. Like if it’s out of office I’m, I’m in favor of that. I think that. Part of me, I think my general kind of Malays against any of that is that I worry that it’ll just be yet another distraction that still focuses attention on him when I would actually rather us just get to a place as quickly as possible, where we don’t even talk about him, where he’s not part of the conversation where his every move is not part of the new cycle, because I think that the

[00:37:33] Brett: [00:37:33] until 2024 when he comes back again.

[00:37:36] Christina: [00:37:36] well, and again, I’m.

[00:37:37] Brett: [00:37:37] if we could dedicate just enough, more mind space to make sure he can’t run again, I’d be way

[00:37:44] Christina: [00:37:44] it, I mean, I would too. I just, I think it’s going to depend on like the Senate makeup. Cause right now we wouldn’t get the votes to impeach him. It would be like what happened before. So if you’re not going to be able to successfully do it, I don’t think you should bother. And the reason I say that is [00:38:00] because again, I just feel like that prolongs us talking about him when I would like to get to the point where, and I think this is, I think I mentioned this before.

[00:38:08] I would really like the media to be in a place where, when he’s no longer president everything he says and does is no longer a news story. And.

[00:38:18] Brett: [00:38:18] think we’re already getting, I got your C like he S. Bill comes up way more frequently than he should, but there’s a definite sense of peace around. Like, we can just talk about boring old Joe Biden now.

[00:38:32] Christina: [00:38:32] Right. No, totally. And, and, and I agree with that and I also feel like. If he’s just threatening to run or whatever, like that’s not newsworthy. And until a campaign really kicks off, which would be late 20, 23 at the earliest, I feel like the media should just take it upon themselves to be like, this is not viable stuff that we need to be reporting on right now.

[00:38:54] Just ignore it. Um, let

[00:38:57] Brett: [00:38:57] man shouting at his television.

[00:39:00] [00:38:59] Christina: [00:38:59] Completely completely. You know, I unfortunately do not agree with some people tend to believe in and I hope they’re right. I hope I’m wrong that he will be, you know, banned from Twitter. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Uh, I don’t think that Twitter has the balls to do that once he’s not president anymore.

[00:39:17] I just don’t think they do. But I feel like as soon as the microscope. Is off of him and he’s not getting any and you’re right. It, it has been less and less of him being covered. But as soon as like, you know, he’s no longer the focal point and center of attention, that’s that’s, to me, you’re always going to have your zealots and, and your populous, who are gonna love the guy, but it, it makes it a lot harder for him to be part of the conversation and be part of the discourse.

[00:39:47] So,

[00:39:48] Brett: [00:39:48] Um, have you seen the Twitter account parlor takes. Speaking of banning Trump,

[00:39:56] Christina: [00:39:56] I have not, but I’ve seen the, the subreddit, [00:40:00] um, that is similar. Um, but I’m now going to cover, I’m now going to follow rather the parlor takes Twitter account. That’s great. Cause, cause I’ve wanted to, I’ve I’ve been curious about parlor, but I’ve, I think we’ve talked about this. I refuse to give them my phone number and I don’t even, and I don’t even want to give them a Google voice number.

[00:40:17] Like I don’t want to, I don’t want anything that could be associated with my actual identity to go there.

[00:40:21] Brett: [00:40:21] So this, this Twitter account has kind of, uh, I’ve let go of the idea of like trolling parlor and I just follow parlor takes on Twitter and their bio is simply, I look at parlor, so you don’t have to, and they basically kind of track the, uh, the crazy on parlor and show parlor apparently has downvotes.

[00:40:45] Instead of just likes it has downvotes which accounts like parlor takes, can use to see what the most, most trollish things on parlor are. Like, it’s like an automatic identifier [00:41:00] for this. These are the things that most piss off parlor users. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot of crazy. There’s a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, conspiracy theories.

[00:41:11] I think that I. If people would leave Twitter and go to parlor and isolate themselves there, I think I’m fine with it. Uh, if, if Trump decided that parlor was more worth his time than Twitter, I’d be fine with it. Uh, but I don’t think Twitter is going to force that to happen.

[00:41:30] Christina: [00:41:30] Uh, no, I don’t think so either. And the subreddit by the way is called parlor watch, which is a similar thing, um, which I appreciate,

[00:41:42] Brett: [00:41:42] Yeah. Anyway, fuck

[00:41:44] Christina: [00:41:44] um, I’m so I’m so happy that we’re almost over this, this whole thing is almost over this ride is almost over.

[00:41:53] Brett: [00:41:53] Uh, as of the time, this comes out, Georgia will be voting on their [00:42:00] runoff elections. I, I really, I hope they come through. I don’t, I don’t love the Democrats these days. Or probably for the last 40 years, but, um, having them completely hamstrung again by Mitch McConnell is not gonna make any forward progress at all.

[00:42:20] So I, I do hope that we can get at least a, a vice president tips, majority in the Senate. And we can have four years of actually like trying to push legislation.

[00:42:33] Christina: [00:42:33] Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And I, um, I’m not confident that Georgia is gonna be able to pull it out. I th I feel like we, I feel like might get one. Um,

[00:42:44] Brett: [00:42:44] help. It’s

[00:42:45] Christina: [00:42:45] I know,

[00:42:46] Brett: [00:42:46] all or nothing. My

[00:42:47] Christina: [00:42:47] I know, but I, um, Sadly. I lived there for too long to really have a lot of hope, but you know what? I was wrong about the presidential election. I never thought that Georgia would go for Biden.

[00:42:58] So

[00:43:00] [00:43:00] Brett: [00:43:00] God damn close, but. Yeah. I mean, considering everyone’s impression of how Georgia would vote. Very surprising.

[00:43:08] Christina: [00:43:08] yeah, I just see this in the news. On the New York times, Tyler Perry didn’t get his absentee ballot. So he flew home to Georgia to vote in person. Good man. Tyler Perry. Um,

[00:43:18] Brett: [00:43:18] That’s what I’ve always said about Tyler Perry. Good man.

[00:43:21] Christina: [00:43:21] I mean, yeah. Also rich as fuck, because he owned a lot of the studios that, uh, all the film companies ran out. Now. He built first before all the tax breaks, but all the other, you know, uh, production companies there. So mofo is, is like Medea, Medea got paid.

[00:43:48] Brett: [00:43:48] Nice.

[00:43:49] Christina: [00:43:49] yeah. Um, so speaking to Twitter stuff, D is this now maybe we want to talk about, uh, uh, Roderick.

[00:43:58] Brett: [00:43:58] Yeah, I guess we should, [00:44:00] because that kind of, it fits into the theme being dad. I’ll tell this story the way I understand it. Um, John Roderick, uh, who we both love, uh, We know him from many different places, formerly with the long winters and actually still, maybe, um, and Roderick on the line. And apparently he has some like more mainstream God casts that he does that I don’t even follow, but he’s been a guest.

[00:44:30] He did a four-part series on systematic with me. I he’s a good guy. I,

[00:44:35] Christina: [00:44:35] is a good guy. I’ve met him a number of times and yeah.

[00:44:38] Brett: [00:44:38] but. Uh, I don’t know exactly when this happened. Uh, I didn’t hear about it until this morning. He, he tweeted a long, uh, tweet storm. What do they call those these days? Uh, a thread, a thread, um, he tweeted a thread about how he, his, his daughter had wanted, [00:45:00] uh, beans, uh, uh, baked beans.

[00:45:03] And he found out that she didn’t know how to open a can. So he started teaching her how to open a can and they decided that, or he decided they wouldn’t eat until she could open the can. And it took her six hours to learn how to open a can at which point they ate. And he tweeted this as like a, a dumb dad story. it didn’t go over well with Twitter. Uh, it, it triggered a lot of people’s, uh, kind of abuse. Detectors. And, uh, people immediately, uh, saw him as a, uh, an abusive parent and, uh, that went viral, like all over the news, uh, hashtag bean dad. Um, and then people started digging up old tweets of his, that came across as [00:46:00] homophobic and antisemitic and yeah.

[00:46:03] And so I will link his kind of his apology. He, in the meantime, uh, gut reaction deleted his Twitter account entirely, uh, went off the grid. Uh, then I think yesterday published an apology post kind of explaining his take on things. And it, it, it, his, his apology makes perfect sense to me. Like everything he says rings true for me.

[00:46:33] I think people would have to read it for themselves it aside, but, uh, like as far as the old tweets go, he, he, he had this, uh, hipster persona that he thought he was, it was woke enough that he could casually mock racism, sexism, homophobia, and, and use the language of the, uh, disenfranchised groups to, [00:47:00] to be an ally.

[00:47:01] But out of context, those absolutely come across as him just being those things. So I I’m not, I can’t justify, like that was stupid. There. They

[00:47:12] Christina: [00:47:12] it was, and yeah, I’m, I’m not going to justify any of the, the language that he used and, and I’m not even going to justify it by saying at the time Twitter was a different place during that. Cause it wasn’t like it’s never okay. In my opinion, to use the N word ever. Um, in any context, um, like. I, if you’re a white person, it’s just not like, uh, you know, when, when you read it in, in, in, in, you know, books, magazines and things of that nature.

[00:47:41] Okay. Whatever, but like to, to use it in a tweet, even, even if it’s with whatever the context is, it’s just, it’s not okay. And the other stuff he said, even knowing the context, it’s like, yeah, that’s, that was edgy too, for the sake of being edgy. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t, you know, Um, age well, but [00:48:00] even then, you know, I think it’d be one of those things that like, I wouldn’t have used those words then, but that said, I, I do know him and I know what his intentions were and it doesn’t change.

[00:48:11] Um, the fact that that people could be offended by it. But I think to me, what bothers me, and I’m curious on your take on this, I read as apology and it’s not look, it’s not up to me to accept it or not because I’m not somebody that he harmed. Um, but I am bothered by the disingenuousness. Uh, people searching through this is similar to the James Gunn thing where, you know, people will, will be, will be mad at somebody about something and will then search through their past to find a reason to justify their anger about this one thing.

[00:48:41] And then to retroactively, without any sense of context, without anything else, take them down. And as somebody who, you know, has had people come after my job, come after me and lots of ways, because of something I tweeted fuck white people, which is standby. Um, Years later when the [00:49:00] context, what, you know, for a completely different purpose to be, because they were mad that I congratulated somebody on getting the job.

[00:49:08] Like I have some sympathy for that. And obviously what’s happened to me is, is way less than what’s happened to so many other people, but, you know, I’ve, I’ve had that experience and, and I’m somebody who tries to be thoughtful to the point where I’m like, I’ve searched through past tweets and like, try to make sure that.

[00:49:24] You know, if you search for certain words or certain things that like nothing is going to come up. Um, and, and usually that’s pretty easy. Cause I don’t tend to say, um, like stuff that would, rankle those sorts of things. There’s just certain words and phrases that I’m not going to use online, um, or in my personal life.

[00:49:44] Um, so I’ve been lucky that way, but. I bothered when people will go through somebody’s entire history again, to like confirm their reason for being outraged. I also am really bothered by like, look, do I, did. I think it’s the bean tweet storm was [00:50:00] funny to be honest. No, I thought that it, it, it seemed fake.

[00:50:04] It seemed like elongated, you know, telling this yarn that at first I think people like were enjoying it at least in the sense that I got. Cause I saw it after it was deleted. But at least looking at the like count and things like that, of each thing, it seemed like it was playing well at first. And then people got, you know, quote, unquote triggered and reading the whole thread.

[00:50:27] Look I’m, I haven’t been abused and I’m not trying to speak over any people who have, but if reading a thread from this sort of persona of somebody is going to take you into a place where you’re saying this is child abuse. When someone is being performative on Twitter for likes and is trying purposely to be like folksy.

[00:50:48] And I don’t think it played that well, I don’t think it was that entertaining, but it certainly didn’t strike me in any way as abusive. Like I feel like taking it to that place [00:51:00] is just a complete and like ridiculous overstatement and, and moreover, I feel like it, it discredits. Actual abuse. Like, I feel like, you know what I mean?

[00:51:12] Brett: [00:51:12] well, that’s the thing is he, he acknowledged in his, his apology that the language that he used. For people who had actually been victims of abuse, or even currently are victims of abuse. The language that he used did it was triggering. Uh, and if you’ve been there, it, it’s not hard to send you back there.

[00:51:40] Christina: [00:51:40] I guess, I guess my only thing is I think a lot of the people in a lot of the discourse around that were not from people who are victims or were victims of abuse, but by people who are just taking it upon themselves to say, this is triggering,

[00:51:54] Brett: [00:51:54] Twitter threads.

[00:51:55] Christina: [00:51:55] agree with that. But, but this is my point. I’m like, I feel like you can say that, but I mean, I’m [00:52:00] looking at that.

[00:52:00] And I just, I feel like the, most of the people who are outraged. Don’t even have a director, reason themselves be outraged. They’re just outraged for outreach sake. And that honestly does bother me. And I feel like it, it to me, like it makes it the whole thing. The whole discourse blowing up for a lot of people, I think just makes it eye roll worthy, which to me, this then like makes actual abuse lessons by using this as a comparative point.

[00:52:33] Brett: [00:52:33] I, uh, I don’t really have a lot more to say about it. I think that Twitter justice is almost always misguided, uh, public shaming, uh, fails to understand any nuance at all. Uh, like for myself, uh, if you were to dig back in my tweets, like I’ve never, I’m not homophobic racist, sexist. I’m none of these things.

[00:53:00] [00:53:00] But when I have. When I, when my follower count was smaller and I felt like everyone knew me and I felt free to be sarcastic. Um, I’m sure I, I haven’t looked, but I’m sure there there’s at least one tweet that if you don’t know me and you don’t know that I’m kidding and you don’t take it as sarcastic, it could probably make me look bad.

[00:53:27] Uh, challenge to over-tired listeners, dig up some shit on me. Uh, see if you can get me fired.

[00:53:36] Christina: [00:53:36] Yeah, no, I mean, I have to say what this, all, all this stuff happens and this happens, you know, several times a year with people is it just makes me think and I haven’t done it frankly, out of like internal spite, but it does make me think, no, I should just archive and then delete all my tweets. And part of me, what I would kind of like to do.

[00:53:57] I mean, this would. People, if they [00:54:00] w it wouldn’t stop people from being able to go through anything I’ve said and try to cancel me or, or, or whatever, but it would make it more difficult for them is that there’s been a part of me. Who’s like, okay, I’m going to delete my tweets every three months, but I’ll download the archive.

[00:54:13] And then I’ll host the archive on my webpage or something so that people really want, they can search through the Jason file.

[00:54:22] Brett: [00:54:22] and then you can sleep well,

[00:54:24] Christina: [00:54:24] Yeah, because there’s, there’s, there’s like a weird part of me that just hasn’t wanted to delete stuff. Cause I’m like, this is in a lot of ways, kind of my blog and kind of my online history and identity. And I don’t want to have to delete stuff just because people don’t know the context or want to get mad at something, but yet I see it happen so frequently than like, yeah.

[00:54:41] You know what? Fuck it. Like blow it up. I was actually concerned when I was doing the New York times podcast, I was concerned for a time. I was like, shit, if something blows up, if I do something like people will come at me and, um, that’ll be a problem. Fortunately, nothing happened and everything was okay.

[00:54:59] But [00:55:00] I was at a point where I was like, am I going to have to mass delete all my tweets? And I was very seriously considering it. Um, and now I might just do it, you know, just again, it’s one of those things it’s like, I don’t want to be. I don’t want to have to, um, have people disingenuously taking things that I’ve said out of context.

[00:55:21] And I’m not saying that the stuff that, all the stuff that John said was out of context, because. There’s some of that stuff I’m not going to defend and that I wouldn’t have tweeted then, and that I wouldn’t tweet now and that he’s apologizing for, and he’s gonna have to deal with, you know, the, the nature of those things.

[00:55:37] But I think to your point, it’s also true that, you know, Twitter, I think the way people have used it has changed. I’m not going to say that, like that negates using certain words, but yeah, you’re right. Like we did a decade ago, use it in this way. That was smaller, more insular and, and you. I felt like everybody who followed you or who saw you knew you, [00:56:00] and that’s not the case anymore.

[00:56:01] And, um, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t begrudge any public figure, uh, of however public you want to call that and even, you know, like trickling down to people like you and I from being like, yeah, I don’t have time for this. I’m going to delete all my tweets. Fuck it.

[00:56:19] Brett: [00:56:19] Yeah. Do you want to hear from our second sponsor?

[00:56:22] Christina: [00:56:22] I do. And then I want to hear about, um, email.

[00:56:25] Brett: [00:56:25] Oh shit. Yeah. Um, so we talk a lot on this show about sleep. Uh, w we actually often talk about the lack of it, but there’s one thing that has been helping me get a lot better sleep. And that’s my helix mattress. Helix sleep has a quiz that takes just two minutes to complete, and it matches your body type and sleep preferences to the mattress.

[00:56:49] Perfect for you mattresses. Aren’t a one size fits all type of thing. And helix knows that. So they have several different mattress models to choose from. They have soft, medium and firm [00:57:00] mattresses. Mattress is great for cooling you down. If you sleep hot and even a helix plus mattress for plus sized folks.

[00:57:07] I took the quiz and I was matched with the midnight mattress because I wanted something that felt medium and I sleep on my side. And, uh, after a few months of sleeping on it, I can tell you that I absolutely made the right choice. My previous mattress was one of the other ones that comes in a box, but it was too soft for me.

[00:57:26] And I had to add gel layers to it, just to stop from sweating. My helix mattress on the other hand is exactly the right firmness for me. And it stays cool all night with no extra help I’ve been sleeping really well. Helix is awesome, but you don’t have to take my word for it. He looks was awarded the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ and wired magazine.

[00:57:50] So if you’re looking for a mattress, take the quiz order, the mattress that you’re matched to and the mattress will come right to your door, shipped for free. You don’t ever need to go to a mattress store [00:58:00] again, just go to helix, sleep.com/overtired. Take the two minutes sleep quiz and get matched to your mattress.

[00:58:08] They have a 10 year warranty and you get to try it out for a hundred nights. Risk-free they’ll even pick it up for you if you don’t love it. But honestly, I I’m. I’m quite sure you will. If you use our link helix is offering over-tired listeners up to $200 off all mattress orders and two free pillows. So just go to helix, sleep.com/overtired.

[00:58:33] I swear you won’t regret it. I’m sorry. You don’t have a helix mattress to talk about Christina.

[00:58:39] Christina: [00:58:39] I’m sorry, I don’t either. Cause I could use a new mattress. So thank you, helix. Um,

[00:58:44] Brett: [00:58:44] them really well, they’ll send you one.

[00:58:46] Christina: [00:58:46] I mean that would be awesome.

[00:58:47] Brett: [00:58:47] I seriously love mine.

[00:58:50] Christina: [00:58:50] That’s that’s awesome. I’m really happy for you. That’s fantastic. Uh, and I’m glad that you have a place to get like good sleep, because that is kind of the point of the show.

[00:58:59] Brett: [00:58:59] Yes. [00:59:00] Yes it is. Um, yeah, so I. I I’ve been collecting email addresses for, uh, both marked and NV ultra, uh, with the intention of sending out a mass emails. And, uh, I’ve gotten up to each list. Respectively. I passed the 10,000 Mark and I had been collecting them via MailChimp, who I will note has never been a sponsor of this show.

[00:59:31] And I’m free to say what I want to. Not that I’ve ever looked that stopped me. But anyway, like I couldn’t for, to send an email to all of these subscribers. I couldn’t afford to send one single email if I had to pay out of pocket up front. And so I started looking for alternatives and, uh, I had a guest on systematic, uh, Tyler Hall who pointed me to Sendy.

[00:59:59] And [01:00:00] w the, an email that would have cost me, uh, about $250 to send with MailChimp. I can send with Cindy for about a buck 25.

[01:00:10] Christina: [01:00:10] That’s awesome. I’m really curious to hear your experience about this. Cause I’ve been looking, I’ve looked at Cindy, I’ve looked at some of the other services. There’s one called like octopus or something. Um, I’ve been, cause I’ve been wanting to start a newsletter and I’ll probably just use sub stack.

[01:00:23] But then part of me is like, I don’t want to fucking use sub stack. So, um, I’ve looked at Cindy, which is like a self hosted kind of front end for SES, which is Amazon’s email thing. Right. Um, what is your experience been like in terms of spam or, uh, like, like you getting marked as spam or undeliverables or, or any of that stuff I’m curious about since you moved from, you know, MailChimp to this, have you had any, any issues.

[01:00:49] Brett: [01:00:49] okay. So to be clear, I sent my first email yesterday and, uh, just finished updating my list today. So I don’t have a [01:01:00] ton of data to work from. I can tell you that, uh, one of my lists, uh, dates back 10 years. So I sent out, uh, a short email saying, Hey, I’m just checking to see if you still want to receive emails.

[01:01:14] Uh, click here to unsubscribe. And that has gotten me, I mean, a fair number of people unsubscribed because they hadn’t heard from me for 10 years and forgot who I was. But, um, as far as bounced emails go, uh, 312 out of 12,000 and my, uh, spam rate is 0.0, zero, 2%. So I, it seems pretty good to me.

[01:01:46] Christina: [01:01:46] No. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

[01:01:49] Brett: [01:01:49] Uh, like, and setting up the hosting took about, uh, if you have any idea how to edit a config file and, and FTP some, a folder, uh, it takes [01:02:00] five minutes to get it set up and it costs $70. One time, no subscription. And it has an awesome interface. Like it it’s, it’s an easier to use interface by far than MailChimp’s like, it’s better built simpler.

[01:02:19] Maybe, maybe lacking, maybe, maybe there parts of MailChimp I wasn’t using. But as far as I can tell it does everything MailChimp could do. And it does it after you pay your 70 bucks for like, Oh, a buck per cent.

[01:02:37] Christina: [01:02:37] That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. Um, I’ve yeah, I’ve definitely like looked at this because MailChimp prices or any of the email, uh, hosts for. You’re doing transactional or a newsletter, email stuff. The pricing is insane and it’s, the markup is crazy. And like, there used to be some certain services you could use, like Twilio bought nail gun and ruined their free plan.

[01:02:58] And you know, there, all these [01:03:00] things and you’re like, I just want to send some damn email, like don’t, don’t charge me. All of this money for it. Um, so yeah, so it was, if you were, if you were, so you, you were spending $50 a month and now you’re spending like a dollar 25. I mean, that’s massive.

[01:03:16] Brett: [01:03:16] Yeah, like there was this, there’s a small list that is just for the. And be ultra beta crew and it’s, uh, about 1500 people. And that went out, had 0% marked as spam, uh, 0.08 per one, one email bounced. Uh, we’ll figure that out. But, uh, four, it was a small, like recently curated list, but absolutely no problem getting through to people and a 97% open rate. This is good stuff.

[01:03:52] Christina: [01:03:52] That’s very good stuff.

[01:03:53] Brett: [01:03:53] aye. Aye. Aye. This is what I’ve been doing for like two days straight now. So it’s all I’ve been [01:04:00] thinking about. Uh, so it’s, it’s fun to talk about, but I guess there’s not much more to say other than if you’re doing a mailing list and you have more than 10,000 subscribers get off of MailChimp.

[01:04:14] This is so much. I don’t understand why I would ever consider paying hundreds of dollars to send out a, an email campaign.

[01:04:24] Christina: [01:04:24] Yeah. I mean, I think that like the, the difference would be, and even then it would be worth looking into would be like, if you were some sort of big brand and you were running AB tests and you had some of the other features that MailChimp does. And some of the other stuff, like if you had really customized design-wise emails that you wanted to test against.

[01:04:42] You know, a lot of different services and whatnot. Like I think that that’s where your campaign monitors and your MailChimps and whatever the hell Adobe’s is called. I think it’s called Marquetto or whatever would come into place. But for regular people,

[01:04:55] Brett: [01:04:55] for, there are people who wanted to do AB testing. You can segment your [01:05:00] lists. And you, you do get pixel tracking and all of your emails, so you can tell who opens and what they click. So, I mean, there’s no category in the menu called AB testing, but you could easily have two campaigns sent to different segments that you could compare results to.

[01:05:19] Um, so yeah, it’s, I, I, like you said, if you’re a huge brand, I’m sure you have your reasons for going with the big guys. But for the rest of us, Cindy rules,

[01:05:33] Christina: [01:05:33] That’s awesome.

[01:05:34] Brett: [01:05:34] don’t have anything to compare it to though. I don’t know what you’re talking about with like octopus and stuff like that.

[01:05:38] Christina: [01:05:38] Email octopus and they’ve changed their pricing, but it’s a similar type of thing where basically it’s a front end for STS and they’re trying to kind of take on, um, MailChimp. Um, but, but it’s, it’s a software as a service thing, but I do like about Cindy is the fact that it’s a self hosted thing because we don’t see that very often anymore.

[01:05:57] Um, either like that’s, like, I [01:06:00] always think back about, um, you know, the, um, Uh, uh, Sean and men who made like, like mint and fever and things like that. Like I loved those, those apps, but those things don’t really exist anymore. People tend to just make software as a service sort of stuff, which is fine. Uh, but I, I like when there is kind of a self hosted option that you have a lot more kind of, you know, uh, control over and that in that is seems more reasonable.

[01:06:28] So that’s, that’s cool.

[01:06:30] Brett: [01:06:30] There’s a, there’s a Mac app called whoosh, w H O O S H. That is kind of like the most bare bones SCS implementation. You’ll find, uh, you import a CSV into like, not just hosted, but like a local app that will. It will spit out in, in batches, through SES, uh, your, your batch email, but I always found [01:07:00] it a bit, uh, a bit too bare bones.

[01:07:03] Christina: [01:07:03] yeah, I’m looking at that now. And that definitely does seem a bit too bare bones. I mean, the thing is, is that I think that if you’re willing to go through the stuff with your, you know, DKM and SPF and all that stuff records, you know, with your setup for SES, if you’re willing to kind of roll up your.

[01:07:17] Your sleeves and do some of that stuff, which I think Cindy does a lot of that kind of for you or whatever. I feel like, um, that seems like it’s a good solution. So

[01:07:30] Brett: [01:07:30] how much time do you have today?

[01:07:33] Christina: [01:07:33] I’ve got time.

[01:07:34] Brett: [01:07:34] Okay. My girlfriend is going to be home in five minutes, but I really want to talk about this tab Fs. Let’s let let’s do it. Tell us about this.

[01:07:45] Christina: [01:07:45] Okay. So Tabitha’s is I saw this on either Twitter or hacker news, but it is a Chrome extension is pretty great, uh, that the sky, um, Omar Rizwan made and it basically mounts your browser tabs [01:08:00] as a file system on your computer. And so. Out of the box, it supports Chrome and the Chrome variants, like, you know, uh, brave and, and, uh, uh, EDS and things like that.

[01:08:11] Um, it also supports, you know, Firefox to a lesser extent and I guess could probably be converted for Safari now, too. Um, and basically it maps each of your, of your, um, Tabs is mapped to a folder. So like you would have a folder like of your tabs, like by title, where each folder would then be, you know, a link to each thing that’s open.

[01:08:32] Um, you could also like look things up by, um, ID or by window or what extensions you’re using. And then like when you go into the folder itself, it’ll show you, you know, Some of the difference, um, items within it. Like, like if like, like the title DRL, if there’s any text that’s associated with it, uh, and you can then use this to call tabs, like any other file, which I kind of like, this [01:09:00] was one thing I was using it for.

[01:09:01] So like, if you know that you want to close all tabs, but certain ones, you could do that. Or if you want to. You know, um, save, um, text of, of all the tabs to a file. If you want to run scripts, if you want to get images, it’s pretty impressive. And, and there’s a bunch of stuff on his to-do list, um, which, uh, still, uh, you know, uh, We’ll be coming, you know, so that you can import data or wash expressions or, or, you know, live editor, running web, running webpage, like that’s, um, um, all, um, on the to-do list.

[01:09:34] But right now, you know, you can grab images, you can run scripts, you can like, for instance, you know, retrieve what music is playing on YouTube or whatever. Um, I haven’t even scratched the surface of everything you can do with it, except to say that it’s, it’s pretty cool. And I liked the concept of just being able to basically.

[01:09:54] C w every tab I have open and then interface with it [01:10:00] in a terminal where I can do things like, okay, I want to close all of these tabs or even open a new tab, you know, from a terminal. Um, I, I don’t hate it. I, I like it.

[01:10:14] Brett: [01:10:14] Yeah. So like the idea behind it is insanely cool. I don’t see it being something I would build like a lot of automation around. Cause it seems fragile, but like, I mean it does things like every folder, every, so every tab gets a folder. Then inside that folder, there’s like an HTML file for the page and a test.

[01:10:40] Text file that. And this is, I’m reading this from the webpage. I haven’t tried this, but apparently you could copy the text of all open tabs in a shell script and do whatever you wanted with it. This is it’s crazy. You can run scripts from the shell in the browser. Yeah, [01:11:00] no, this is nuts. I, I it’s brilliant.

[01:11:02] I can’t imagine. Uh, this would be, I would have to be manic for a while to pull something like this off. I have to try this out though.

[01:11:11] Christina: [01:11:11] Yeah, you definitely have to try it out. I mean, I haven’t played, I’ve only played with it a little bit to just kind of see, you know, um, like what I could kind of do it, then I was impressed and it’s interesting cause already, you know, Um, people have been submitting, you know, pull requests and stuff and doing more things with it.

[01:11:28] And I really feel like that is interesting. Um, somebody had this as a suggestion, which I like, which is to make bookmarks accessible, um, via tab Fs. And, and I like that idea a lot, um, because if I could, you know, directly interface with, with the bookmark list, you know, directly from that, um, you know, shell interface would be cool.

[01:11:51] Uh, I don’t know. I just thought it was really neat. It was one of the things I saw it and I was excited to talk to you about, like, it was like, this is something that Brett would like to take, uh, with, like to play with.

[01:11:59] Brett: [01:11:59] you know, all those, [01:12:00] when you click enough zoom meetings, how you get all those leftover zoom, uh, tabs, this would let you run from the command line. You could run RM. Mt slash tabs slash by title slash star zoom star. And it would close all those tabs for

[01:12:18] Christina: [01:12:18] Sure. Could.

[01:12:19] Brett: [01:12:19] That’s cool.

[01:12:21] Christina: [01:12:21] Yeah. And I mean, that is the sort of thing that you could script where if there were certain things you always want to close, you know, you can skip that or even just make a text expander think from

[01:12:31] Brett: [01:12:31] I have an Apple script that does that for me, but yeah, I got to test this out with Firefox. See if it actually works.

[01:12:38] Christina: [01:12:38] Yeah.

[01:12:39] Brett: [01:12:39] Cause I’m all Firefox now.

[01:12:41] Christina: [01:12:41] Oh really?

[01:12:42] Brett: [01:12:42] Oh really?

[01:12:44] Christina: [01:12:44] Huh?

[01:12:45] Brett: [01:12:45] if I didn’t need it for testing websites, I would delete Chrome entirely. I don’t use it at all anymore.

[01:12:53] Christina: [01:12:53] Yeah, I use edge, um, because I find that that is like a good mix of compatibility and then not feeling [01:13:00] totally, um, uh, creepy. Um, but,

[01:13:04] Brett: [01:13:04] for Microsoft?

[01:13:05] Christina: [01:13:05] well, I do work at Microsoft, so that is definitely, you know, uh, not, uh, uh, uh, like. False part of it. It’s not, well, it is kind of a small part of it. Cause I do actually genuinely like it.

[01:13:18] It’s one of those things that even aside from my work stuff I would do weirdly, I don’t think that my work stuff would work on Firefox, at least on, on Mac there issues on windows. I think it’s okay. But on fire for whatever reason, there’s something with some sort of way that Firefox implements a protocol that our, our work stuff doesn’t like, it’s stupid, but Safari is fine.

[01:13:37] Uh, all the Chrome variants are fine. Um, But no, that’s interesting that you’re all in on Firefox,

[01:13:43] Brett: [01:13:43] Yeah. It’s so much faster than Chrome and so much less CPU and memory.

[01:13:50] Christina: [01:13:50] which I think is important. Yeah, for sure.

[01:13:53] Brett: [01:13:53] Yeah. Anyway, the thing that, that it was work Kona, have you, have you used work Kona? [01:14:00] That’s the plugin that I was using on Chrome. And it was the one reason I couldn’t leave crumb cause were Kona was only available for Chrome.

[01:14:09] Christina: [01:14:09] No, I haven’t used for Kona and I’m looking at this now, but this does actually seem like something that is completely my shit.

[01:14:15] Brett: [01:14:15] It is the best tab manager for people that have hundreds of tabs open at a time. It is the ultimate way to organize kind of like sessions and be able to switch between sessions and closed sessions and bookmark within sessions. It’s awesome. And it’s finally available for Firefox and they have indicated.

[01:14:36] Safari coming soon. Um, but yeah, whether you’re on Firefox or Chrome, we’re Kona is definitely worth a look.

[01:14:45] Christina: [01:14:45] That’s cool. Uh, yeah. Um, I, I just went into their website and, and they immediately were like, It’s for edge too. And I was like, okay, because that’s the browser I’m in. Um, do you just use the free version?

[01:14:57] Brett: [01:14:57] Um, they, I don’t think they actually have a [01:15:00] paid version yet. They, they talk about like it coming soon. And when it does, I’ll probably pay for it just out of respect for how awesome it’s been. But thus far they haven’t, there’s nothing that is actually limited in the free version. I don’t think am I already paying for something? I don’t know. Crazy. It’s crazy. All right. Well, I should, I should go try to empty the dishwasher before Al comes home.

[01:15:31] Christina: [01:15:31] Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

[01:15:33] Brett: [01:15:33] I try, I do my best.

[01:15:35] Christina: [01:15:35] That’s nice. That’s nice. Well, Brett, uh, empty the dishwasher. Um, try to enjoy the productivity without hopefully the madness going to, you know, manic on you. And, uh,

[01:15:48] Brett: [01:15:48] I’ll sleep on my helix mattress tonight.

[01:15:50] Christina: [01:15:50] I was gonna say, get some sleep happy new year.

[01:15:55] Brett: [01:15:55] Oh, yeah. Happy 20, 21.

[01:15:57] Christina: [01:15:57] Yeah.

[01:15:57] Brett: [01:15:57] Get some sleep.

[01:15:59] Christina: [01:15:59] All right. Get some sleep, [01:16:00] Brett.