Yellow Sock Time
Casey:
Are either of you watching new Top Gear?
Casey:
No.
John:
What?
John:
Why would I do that?
John:
I still am, but just very slowly.
John:
I watched episode two.
John:
I think I'm on three.
Casey:
Two is no good.
Casey:
Three is where it starts to take a turn in a good way.
John:
Two is the one where they review the big yellow Ferrari, right?
Casey:
Yes, I believe that's right.
John:
I like the Ferrari.
Casey:
Well, yeah, but the episode was still no good.
Casey:
However, the three through five are much improved.
Casey:
Worth watching.
Casey:
So Marco, definitely don't even bother with one and two.
Casey:
Three, 50-50, I would say yes.
Casey:
So 60-40.
Casey:
Four and five, definitely.
Casey:
If you have time, worth watching.
Marco:
I think I'll just start with season this plus one and just tell me if that's good.
Marco:
Fair enough.
Casey:
We should probably start with some follow-up.
Casey:
And is it Linus or Linus?
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
Torvalds had some things to say to you, John, of all people, about HFS+.
John:
It wasn't to me, really.
John:
This was the thing I was looking for last week.
John:
I said that Linus Torvalds had said unkind things about HFS+, because he had had a run-in with it as he relates to the Git version control system.
John:
And I Googled for it and I found this exact URL.
John:
But, you know, it's like ad banner blindness.
John:
I had Google Plus blindness.
John:
This is a Google Plus page.
John:
I'm like, oh, that can't be it.
John:
I thought he had a blog post or something.
John:
And I just ignored this Google Plus thing.
John:
It turns out that his little I don't know if this is the origin, but this is.
John:
Another place where he complained about it is in a comment on a Google Plus page.
John:
So it's basically invisible as far as the civilized world is concerned.
John:
Anyway, I think I noticed it because I think he did what the equivalent of at mentioning me there.
John:
And I probably got some notification in Google Plus back when I was still paying attention to Google Plus.
John:
And we'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
Remember, when you go to the link, there's no way to directly link to his comment, as far as I could tell.
John:
You just have to scroll until you see his name.
John:
And the substance of it doesn't really matter that much, as we talked about last week.
John:
It's more if you want to see the things that people both love and hate about the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, and just those communities.
John:
How he just says everything in sort of a rude, dismissive way, like the HFS Plus is actively designed to be bad by people who thought they had good ideas and they should just they're paste eaters and they have no idea what they're doing.
John:
It's very rude.
John:
Like you can say all the same things about being rude.
John:
And that's a topic that's come up a lot in open source communities like.
John:
Some people enjoy that.
John:
Like, it's raw.
John:
It's keeping it real.
John:
And other people are like, I don't want to hang out with a bunch of people who are jerks to each other, right?
John:
Can we not talk about technical issues without calling people names?
John:
My stalwarts can't.
John:
That's too bad.
John:
Anyway, there.
John:
So just following up from last week and closing the circle.
John:
on why HFS Plus makes people angry.
John:
And you can see it's basically about he really doesn't like NFD, the decomposed, normalized form from Unicode, even though HFS Plus doesn't use the exact NFD form.
John:
It uses actually a variant.
John:
But he really hates that entirely.
John:
Like he thinks that just shouldn't exist and no one should ever use it.
John:
And he doesn't like the fact that it normalizes.
John:
And he doesn't like the fact that it's case insensitive.
John:
So he's really got a lot of complaints about HFS+.
Casey:
Go figure.
Casey:
Is he like the king of not invented here syndrome?
John:
Not invented here.
John:
It's just like he's totally, I would imagine he would be in the camp where it's like, why is the file system doing anything to my file name?
John:
Why is it trying to do something stupid?
John:
It should not be messing with my file name.
John:
It should just be simple and Unix-like and sort of worse is better.
John:
Oh, if your system call fails, just try it again.
John:
You'll get an error code that tells you that.
John:
You better check the error code.
John:
Just check it.
John:
It's so simple.
John:
I think that's, you know, it's a bag of bytes.
John:
Just put whatever bytes you want in.
John:
You don't know what it means?
John:
That's your own stupid fault.
John:
Now I'm doing my weird pretend I'm Linus Torvald's voice, but that would be my guess.
Marco:
You have a voice for that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Philosophically, he seems to be in the camp that things should be simpler and it's kind of a violation of the contract for the file system to take your file name and do something weird with it.
John:
Fair enough.
John:
Tell me about Integrity Checker.
John:
This is the program I was trying to think of, the already existing longstanding program that will wander your Mac disks and write out a bunch of checksum files and then check that your files haven't changed.
John:
It's from DigiloidTools.com.
John:
from Mac Performance Guide.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
I believe it sprinkles a bunch of .ic files all over your disk.
John:
A lot of these things that do checksums do something like this.
John:
They'll either want to modify your files by adding an extended attribute or they'll want to sprinkle a bunch of files all over your disk with checksums in them.
John:
And there's advantages and disadvantages to that.
John:
The advantage is that
John:
you can't lose like all of your checksums at once.
John:
Like the checksums go along with the directory.
John:
If you move the directory, the checksum file goes along with it.
John:
If one of the files gets corrupted, you don't lose all of your checksums.
John:
Like it has advantages over a central database.
John:
But the disadvantage, of course, is that you get a bunch of these little 30 files sprinkled all over your hard drive.
John:
So you'd be hesitant to point it at just an arbitrary directory tree because you'd be like, am I going to make some program angry or confused by putting a bunch of these files in the directories that they don't expect to be there?
John:
But anyway, you can check it out.
John:
It apparently uses SHA-1 checksums.
John:
And in my quest to remember this tool, lots of other people sent in other tools saying, is this the one you were thinking of?
John:
Is this the one you were thinking of?
John:
Integrity Checker was the one I was thinking of, but a few other ones came up.
John:
There's ChickBit, which is a...
John:
A node module that does something similar, and apparently they ran out of vowels, so it's C-H-K-B-I-T.
John:
We'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to use JavaScript to do your checksumming.
John:
I hear your snark there.
John:
Yeah, well, it's not bad.
John:
There's a bunch of tools around PAR2.
John:
It's based on the P-Archive format.
John:
and part two is just a second version of it and this is uh sort of a next step up where instead of just writing out checksums it will write out parity files to uh correct errors that it finds so it won't just write the checksum so you know there's an error it'll essentially do sort of like the same thing that like a raid 5 uh does well not not the same algorithm but more more fancy algorithms for adding parity information so that if you do
John:
detect some corruption you can correct it and you just tell it what percentage of your disk space you want to dedicate to parity information so you could dedicate say five percent of the of your disk space like if you have a directory that's 100 megs you can say okay i'm allowing you to use five more megabytes just to store parity information so that you can recover from one or two or three bit errors or whatever that you find in corruption so that's that's again it's like a user space version of uh the kind of protection that raid might provide you or
John:
Or something like ZFS where they duplicate the data and duplicate the checksums and all that stuff.
Casey:
Now, so if you hypothetically have ever found a file that's fallen off the back of a truck, you might have seen PAR2s associated with that, depending on which truck you happen to have found that file on the back of or falling off the back of.
Marco:
Well, only if you found it on the back of a really old truck.
Casey:
Yeah, very, very old truck.
Marco:
We're talking like Model T. Even though those old trucks are still running and no one really knows about them, and that's amazing, but it's a really old truck.
John:
That is true.
John:
You're just talking about pirated files on Usenet.
John:
Why would they use the original PAR?
John:
Why would they use parity information?
Casey:
Are they trying to... I know nothing of this, John, but if I did know something of this, I believe it's PAR2.
Marco:
I mean, and I believe the rationale is suppose you split up your file on a whole bunch of little ancient trucks.
Marco:
You're missing one truck.
Marco:
One truck didn't make it.
Marco:
So you have like 400 other trucks and you have like two par trucks.
Marco:
And the par trucks can replace any of the missing other 400 trucks.
Marco:
So then you can put back together your really big truck that you're trying to assemble so you can finally watch the new Top Gear.
Marco:
Barbaric.
Casey:
Barbaric.
Casey:
This is the best.
Casey:
I love you guys.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
What did Tony Gray have to say?
John:
Tony Gray tweeted that he apparently is in the process of trying to make a HFS checksum utility as well.
John:
So when he heard us talking about it, he's like, hmm.
John:
So this is, again, I said it's not a new idea.
John:
There are existing applications that do it, and there are even applications that have not yet been released that do it.
John:
And, of course, all of which makes me even less inclined to even start this project.
John:
But I can tell you that all these different tools that I've looked at, none of them does it exactly the way I would want to do it, but that doesn't mean I'll ever actually find the time to make this program.
John:
But we'll see.
John:
how is it possible that like i'm gonna be a mac programmer before you are well i i did programming on uh with the mac toolbox back in the day and made silly little programs that did nothing so i think i beat you to it you're probably in what elementary school anyway yeah most likely you have to yeah the handle window dragging yourself you didn't get it free as part of the framework it's like oh you want your window to be draggable well you better catch the drag event talk about barbaric
John:
Otherwise, you'd launch your application, there'd be a window on the screen, and you couldn't move it.
John:
You'd grab it by the title bar, and it wouldn't budge.
John:
Mac Toolbox.
John:
Yay!
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, kids.
Casey:
We did not cover all of the Apple platform file system.
John:
No, stop saying platform.
John:
It's just Apple file system.
John:
Why is that still alive?
John:
Because there's a P in there.
John:
It's Apple.
John:
M-A-C-O-S and Apple file system.
John:
Nicholas Cage.
John:
Come on.
John:
You don't get that.
John:
Don't pretend you get that.
Casey:
Anyway, tell me about space sharing, John.
John:
While we talk about these last remaining APFS topics, you guys should think of something for the rest of the show.
John:
Otherwise, we're going to do how to handle email or screen time for kids.
John:
We can talk about Top Gear some more.
John:
I think we did actually talk about these in the post-WWDC thing, but I've thought about them a little bit more.
John:
Space sharing is the first one where I forget the terminology.
John:
I think I make like a container for APFS, and you can put a bunch of different volumes in it, but you don't have to partition it.
John:
um you just make one big giant container and then you can make as many volumes as you want and every single volume sees the entire size of the container uh which seems weird but it's it's great so that you don't have to do you know in unix parlance the old thing of how big should i make the user partition how big should i make the slash partition um you don't have to think ahead of time about how much room something is going to take up if you have a large volume and you want to divide up between multiple uses
John:
You just let them go at it, and they will find their natural equilibrium.
John:
Or one of them will grow too fast, and you'll be disappointed, and you wish you could partition it.
John:
But I think you'll still be able to make multiple containers, like old-style partitions.
John:
I haven't tried it.
John:
But anyway, that's interesting from a UI perspective, because it's got the same problem as Drobo had, like where Drobo would...
John:
show you how much space it would show a much larger amount of space than it was actually available like for example to time machine if you're doing time machine to a drobo and as time machine ran eventually you know the drobo would just run out of space but time machine can't predict that because they can't really get an accurate read on how much space there really is because of the similar space sharing type thing that was a multi-disc situation but anyway i don't know how you show
John:
space sharing to the user do you just show them and i'm assuming like oh i've got one terabyte drive with three volumes on it three one terabyte volumes and if you get info on each of those three volumes they all say yep i'm i have one terabyte volume and i have this much free um i don't i don't know how you can show that in a sensible way but i'm glad the future exists because i like the idea of not having to think about it ahead of time and make fixed size partitions although i'm not sure that's a thing people do anymore do either one of you have any of your discs partitioned or do you have more than one disc
Marco:
I do have more than one disk.
Marco:
I don't have them partitioned at all.
Marco:
And I think one way you can do this maybe is with network drives, at least.
Marco:
They have the quota system.
Marco:
This is how Synology's time machine hosting module works.
Marco:
And I should point out, again, I think I've said this before, but
Marco:
I've done many different ways of Time Machine backup from direct-attached disks to a Mac Mini server running OS X server with Time Machine server on that to the Synology thing.
Marco:
I've never used a Time Capsule, but otherwise, everything else I've done.
Marco:
And the Synology system is by far the most reliable with Time Machine.
Marco:
I've never had to, like...
Marco:
Format the whole partition and start again because Time Machine kept thinking it was full.
Marco:
That happened with literally every other method I've tried.
Marco:
Never happened with the Synology one.
Marco:
And what I have is what seems like a pretty complex setup, which is a single, I believe, 8 terabyte volume that is split between me and TIFF.
Marco:
And each of us connect to it with a different username.
Marco:
And each username has a 50% space quota on that volume.
Marco:
And we both fill it or become very close to filling it much of the time.
Marco:
And it's fine.
Marco:
It has never errored out.
Marco:
Time Machine always keeps it to date.
Marco:
So I know this is a complete diversion, but huge recommendation for using the Time Machine thing on Synology is because it's amazing.
John:
I'll do one better.
John:
I have the same.
John:
I have not a single volume, but I have a time machine volume.
John:
And I think Synology only lets you have one time machine volume.
John:
I think that's actually like a RAID set at this point because it's bigger than any one of my single disks.
John:
And I have three or four different computers backing up the time machine.
John:
And I don't do anything with quotas.
John:
i just let them run interesting they just kind of fight it out i don't know what they're doing all i know is it never bothers me the backups complete successfully you can recover files from it i i think they just you know when one of them sees that the thing is filling they trim their old backups you know like it's as far as i'm concerned it's magic yes i don't do anything with the quotas it's just it's a free-for-all it's just like whoever whichever time machine backup ends up getting close to the end of the disc it says oh it's time for me to trim some old backups and it does that it's cooperative time machining
Casey:
Yeah, I would double down on what you guys said as well.
Casey:
I have two physical disks that are joined in whatever the RAID is that is non-redundant because it's... Zero.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
And so I have two disks joined RAID zero.
Casey:
I do the quota thing that Marco's talking about.
Casey:
I have yet to have an issue outside of a disk failure, which is beyond Synology's control.
Casey:
But no, it's worked really well for me.
Casey:
Well, how did we get on this subject?
Casey:
Oh, John asked if we partition stuff.
Casey:
I have not partitioned any Mac I've owned ever to the best of my recollection.
Casey:
I've never done even boot camp, which you would think I would have given my prior profession, but I always just use VMs.
Casey:
I used to aggressively partition my actual physical Windows machines in the past.
Casey:
I remember since ever I would have like my OS drive and then my like
Casey:
data drive and then an applications drive, thinking that if I ever wanted to put on a different OS, like a new version of Windows, whatever, then all that other stuff could just remain where it was.
Casey:
And in reality, that has never been the case ever, ever, ever, ever.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, with Windows, I would do the same thing because if you're a Windows power user, you get into the habit of like just maybe once a year, you just reformat your system drive and put it all back and start clean because it's
Marco:
With Windows, you basically have to do that to have a well-running system.
Marco:
Once I moved to Macs, I think I've done that literally since the time I started using Macs in 2004.
Marco:
I think I've started clean twice in that entire time.
Casey:
Yeah, I think my first time since 08 was when I got the iMac.
Casey:
And then I was much more piecemeal about it rather than just transferring everything.
Casey:
Well, you know, like doing a migration assistant style thing.
Casey:
But anyway, yeah, so that was an extraordinarily long answer to the question that John asked, which was, do you guys partition your drives?
Casey:
And John, I'm assuming you did say you do or you're going to say you do, I assume.
Yeah.
John:
yeah i do i mean not my main drive but i have so many drives hooked up to this they're all split up into little pieces mostly because the drives are so big it'd be a waste to dedicate like i'm not going to dedicate one terabyte to boot camp right so that drive is split up and other drives like are just divided into two pieces and i i've never done the separate user uh directory a lot of people do that like they have their home directory and all their files on one drive and then like
John:
basically a boot drive uh with the os on it and their applications and i never quite understood that split and anytime i ever try to split like that back in the old days of very tiny hard drives i always got it wrong like you try to guess how big everything is and give room for growth and if you guess wrong on the operating system is like you know system 7.5.5 comes out and it's a little bit bigger and you know just it's so easy to get that messed up uh so you know i i'm
John:
I think I will use a system like this because I have things partitioned now.
John:
And I realize if I ever got close to my space constraints, I would have all this wasted space.
John:
And you can resize partitions to some degree, but it's not as flexible as you'd want.
John:
So I think I will use space sharing.
John:
I won't be confused by the size stuff.
John:
And I suppose other people, normal people who would be confused, just never partition anything.
John:
So maybe it's a non-issue.
John:
But speaking of Time Machine, there's an APFS thing related to that.
John:
First of all, you can't even use Time Machine with APFS right now, but that's obviously a temporary condition.
John:
APFS doesn't provide any particular new features that make it easier for you to answer the question, hey, what's happened since the last time I ran a backup?
John:
I mean, a little bit, but basically it's still going to have to use something like FS events, where any IO that goes through the kernel is logged in some fashion, and then you can find out what has changed since the last time you ran, probably with the same APIs, but in a similar fashion.
John:
So it doesn't have something like ZFS's give me the block diff since last time.
John:
And even if it had that, even though that's super efficient, it doesn't quite work with Time Machine's UI because Time Machine lets you exclude things.
John:
And if you do anything at the block level, you can't be excluding as easily as, you know, based on file path or whatever.
John:
So APFS doesn't give any advantages to Time Machine in terms of that kind of efficiency, but it does give lots of advantages in terms of making a consistent backup.
John:
We talked about this before in the WWDC show with snapshots where
John:
Time Machine can take a snapshot of the drive as it exists in a certain state and then just slowly back up from that snapshot.
John:
So it won't have to worry about like Time Machine ran for three hours.
John:
And when it started backing up, it backed up these files.
John:
But these files, it backed up three hours later.
John:
So you have this weird mixture.
John:
of different time periods.
John:
It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge or whatever.
John:
You got to go back to the beginning and find any tiles to change.
John:
You're waiting for this period, this sort of period of quiet when things have settled down.
John:
Don't have to worry about that with snapshots.
John:
Just take a snapshot, back up from there, destroy the snapshot when you're done.
John:
That'll be great.
John:
Um, and also for the purpose of this gets into the next thing for the purpose of making multiple backups where the files that haven't changed are the same sort of the time machine models.
John:
You can go to the finder and browse your backups and they all look like complete copies of your data.
John:
But of course, they're not storing the unchanged data multiple times.
John:
They're using hard links.
John:
So they have hard links to files and hard links to directories, but you're gross and weird.
Um,
John:
You don't have to have those anymore because of the copy and write stuff that APFS has.
John:
And you can do clones where you can clone an entire directory and say this entire directory tree, make a copy of it, but not really.
John:
Like you can do it like basically in constant time.
John:
You're not actually copying everything.
John:
You're just saying now there are two of these and they are independent copies.
John:
If you were to go into the copy and modify a file, you're not modifying the file in both places like you would with a hard link or something.
John:
It's copy and write.
John:
So as soon as you modify one of the change files, then they start to diverge.
John:
But the actual copy operation is just a clone operation.
John:
It's very, very fast.
John:
It's one of the demos they did in the WWDC session.
John:
That has some people paranoid because they're like, well, frequently when I'm working on something, I'll go to the finder and duplicate it and put the other one off to the side, like poor man's version control.
John:
You ever do that where you just make a copy of a folder just in case and put it to the side?
John:
All the time.
John:
and it's like well but but sometimes i do that like what if one of the things gets corrupted because there's a bad sector on disk well if my clone is an actual clone the bad sector on disk is going to blow away both of them or you know corrupt both of them because they're they share the same storage under the covers well apfs doesn't dictate that every single copy is a clone there'll be two different apis and i'm not sure which one the finder will use i'm assuming it will use the fast one um but even if the finder doesn't offer this feature there will be a way
John:
I'm sure from the command line, but if not, you could write a program to do it to say, no, do like a regular copy where you just copy it.
John:
Don't do the clone thing.
John:
So that's another UI nuance that Apple will have to decide how to navigate and that users will get to take advantage of.
John:
And honestly, I think it's good to have both features.
John:
Sometimes I do want to make a clone of this gigantic directory tree for free in constant time.
John:
And other times I want to say, no, I actually copy every single one of these pieces of data to a new place on disk because that's what I want.
John:
So I look forward to, hopefully it's like a modifier key you can hold down or something.
John:
I look forward to that being exposed in the Finder, but I am resigned to the fact that I'll probably end up having to do it from the command line.
John:
And the other fun thing about clones, this is sort of for Apple's purposes, again, this whole file system is for Apple's purposes, is that it can be atomic.
John:
Apple has a lot of things in the system, including some file formats, quote unquote file formats, that are actually directories full of files, like .rtfd is actually a directory full of a bunch of other things.
John:
And in a simple application like... I was going to say teach text.
John:
Jeez.
John:
What the hell is it called?
John:
TextEdit.
John:
Yeah, on macOS.
John:
TextEdit can make RTFD quote-unquote files, which are really directory trees.
John:
And when you save, it's trying to do like a safe save where if the plug gets pulled in the middle of your save operation, you either have the new version of the file or the old version.
John:
You don't have like half and half.
John:
So the atomic save operation now will do like... This is also in the...
John:
the wc session uh if i recall correctly it will like write the new version of the file to a new location rename the old one to a weird name and rename the new directory on top of the old one but there's still a period in which things are inconsistent when you rename the old one to to a new name but you haven't yet renamed the new one on top of it now you have two files neither of which is named like the old one and they might both be hidden because you don't want people to see this weird stuff going on um
John:
So that's not great.
John:
In APFS, you can do an atomic clone.
John:
And so you can sort of in one operation, one atomic operation, you can completely do it or completely not do it.
John:
You have the old file, you have the new file.
John:
And of course, it's super efficient and all the other stuff.
John:
So that's that's going to be it's going to be for people writing applications.
John:
If they have similar file formats, it'll make those file formats more tenable because before it was just kind of such a pain.
John:
And you knew you had this race condition where things could be in a weird situation.
John:
weird state for a small period of time you can even see it in the finder sometimes because the finder is now actually reactive to changes where if you watched when like text edit saved you'd see these weird temporary files and a double file and a rename on top of the other one and with cloning hopefully that will go so fast that you won't see it anymore
Casey:
Yeah, my favorite is, since I've been doing a lot of Swift development lately, just like Marco, I've had a Playground on my desktop, and every time that the Playground goes to save itself, or if I save it, it'll flash from the Playground icon to the generic folder icon, and then back to the Playground icon once Finder catches up and realizes it's one of those bundles.
John:
That's actually, I remember when that feature came to the Finder, like having an efficient way to sort of tell the kernel, hey, I'm interested if anything happens to any one of these files.
John:
So if anything changes one of these files, I don't care what process it is in the whole system, let me know so I don't have to poll.
John:
Because the old model was like, if you had a Finder window open and other applications were changing, it's like the Finder window could poll periodically.
John:
And if it was polling, you would never catch a change since that's fast.
John:
But because it's using KQ or FS events or some other system,
John:
that is uh you know that's not polling that the kernel will notify the finder it's fast enough to catch almost any change in fact it might still catch the clone but hopefully uh it will only like flash briefly and you'll see the old file and then blink and then the new file and never will you see the the weird uh ivory name this to not be an rtfd anymore or not not be a dot playground anymore or whatever um and i guess the final item is snapshots that we already talked about
John:
I wonder if there'll be any UI to that.
John:
Probably not, because it's more like a programmatic thing.
John:
Time Machine will be creating and deleting snapshots behind the scenes, but you don't need to see that.
John:
Programs like SuperDuper might create snapshots to backup from, but you don't need to see that either.
John:
It'll probably do it through an API.
John:
There will be a command line, I'm sure.
John:
But I can't envision any particular reason for there to ever be a GUI for doing snapshots.
John:
So I guess another third-party opportunity.
John:
Because it's a straightforward API, and you can make a cool third-party thing that lets you view and create and destroy snapshots.
John:
I'm not making that app, but that's another idea for people who want to make an application that three people will buy.
Marco:
You know, John, there's a lot of app ideas that I'm like, you know, I would love for this app to exist.
Marco:
And you look around and it just doesn't exist.
Marco:
And at some point, you're a programmer.
Marco:
At some point, you've got to be like, you know what?
Marco:
Fine, I'm going to make it.
John:
Well, I...
John:
I imagine someone will make that snapshot thing like you ever see like backup loop or those other time machine browsing things that let you like look at your time machine backups that or like there are fancy interfaces to the TM util command line.
John:
There's lots of GUI apps like that.
John:
I'm sure someone will make one just because if an app like this is easy to make, all you're doing is making it more convenient to do stuff that you could do from the command line.
John:
Someone will make it.
John:
So I feel like just by talking about it, it will it will come into existence.
Marco:
Yeah, but you know what else, though?
Marco:
Even if somebody makes it, they're not going to make it your way.
Marco:
Truth.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
So you have to do it, John.
Casey:
It's obvious.
John:
I'll say I don't understand when I would do any of these things.
John:
It's not like I have a lot of time that's not occupied with other stuff that I would rather be doing.
Casey:
Brian Ash in the chat just made an excellent point.
Casey:
He said that underscore is listening and he just completed it, which is probably accurate.
John:
But he made the iOS version, so it's not good for me.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Are we done with APFS?
Casey:
Is that it?
John:
Yeah, I think so.
John:
These are things we already talked about in the WWDC thing.
John:
I don't think there's anything new.
John:
We didn't have many questions from listeners about it, so...
John:
Although I did, no one has yet called me on the mistakes I made about ASCII, 7-bit ASCII versus 8-bit ASCII and UTF-8, but I guess no one cares.
John:
That's fine.
John:
I know I made the mistakes.
John:
People who know know I made the mistakes.
John:
It's really not mistakes.
John:
It's just errors of omission because it doesn't make any sense.
John:
I kept saying 255, but obviously if you're going to use all 255 combinations of 8 bits, you have no way to implement UTF-8, and that's obviously not how it works.
John:
So anyway.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
The handle is... I got that orange one.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Marco:
I have some important follow-up, actually.
Marco:
Surprise follow-up.
Marco:
I think you missed that part of the show, but go ahead.
Marco:
I have follow-up on HDMI CEC, your favorite topic.
John:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Are you an HDMI CEC unicorn or no longer?
Marco:
ever since i got the new apple tv so what was that october november whatever whenever that was i my tv is very old it's like a 2006 ish panasonic plasma the apple tv was not able to do anything else to it except any input given to the apple tv remote it would it would automatically switch the input over to the apple tv so it was able to like steal the input the video input from the tv and
Marco:
so which is really fun like if tiff was like playing a game on the playstation and then you like brush the remote and all of a sudden the input switches that was fun yep but so that and it couldn't turn the tv on but it could turn the tv off which was really nice every night you know we're done watching tv hold down the home button for a few seconds you put you hit sleep and both things turn off it's awesome and that worked flawlessly
Marco:
And now it just doesn't.
Marco:
And it's so much worse.
Marco:
And I've tried power cycling everything.
Marco:
I have no idea what to do.
Marco:
Nothing changed.
Marco:
It's exactly like what you said.
Marco:
It'll work, and it'll just stop working.
Marco:
And you have no idea why, and nothing fixes it.
Marco:
It just stopped.
Marco:
And it's so frustrating.
Marco:
Once you have that convenience to have to then go back, and now I have to turn my TV off separately, which means I have to have the remote out and everything.
Marco:
This is like the worst first world problem ever.
Marco:
But I just wanted you to know, John, that HDMI CEC, that your prediction came true, that it never works all the time for everybody.
Marco:
And if it does, just wait.
John:
Well, the good thing that news is it'll start working again eventually, too.
John:
That's all part of the experience.
John:
One day, who knows what it'll be.
John:
You'll disconnect it, or you'll reconnect something else, or it'll start working again.
John:
Back when we were discussing this, I did hear from a lot of people like, CC works fine to me.
John:
sometimes i would hear from them again a couple months later go oh it stopped working um exactly but not always i bet i like i just like their tactical wizards there are cc unicorns who just have never had a problem um and so like you know if they if their luck continues it's possible to to live a life where a cc always works it just seems highly unlikely to me like i've never met one of those people but i'm sure they exist somewhere i mean someone wins the lottery too right
Casey:
Serious question, Marco.
Casey:
Have you gone into the settings to see?
Casey:
Because I could swear that in settings it has an option whether or not to use CEC.
Casey:
Of course, it's not labeled that way, but it's like turn off the TV power when the Apple TV power turns off or something like that.
Casey:
And not to say that you changed it, but maybe like a software update flipped that on you or something like that.
Casey:
And maybe that's what did it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Can you just check to make sure it's plugged in?
Marco:
Not to say that you unplugged it.
John:
just take maybe take out the plug sometimes sometimes there's dust in the plug yeah you just want yeah just blow on the plug yeah you're the worst here here i have try to help you and that's what i get fine i actually haven't checked the setting there for the power thing though isn't there ir still in the remote yes yes so you can't just do use that for the power like take cc out of the equation just use the ir for the power for your tv
Marco:
I don't think there's a way to tell the Apple TV, like, send the IR thing now.
Marco:
I think it only works for volume control.
Casey:
That's what I thought, too, but it might be worth looking into.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Joe Steele loves his Apple TV.
Casey:
You can ask him about it.
Marco:
I mean, honestly, I'm very happy with the Apple TV in most other ways.
Marco:
Like, yeah, the remote's stupid, but the software environment, yes, there are many flaws.
Marco:
However, having used the other TV boxes that are competing with this, and even compared to the old Apple TV...
Marco:
uh i this is still the one i prefer and i still use it for you know very very heavy use every day and it's unfortunate that it is not perfect of course but uh nothing ever is that it can't be complained about good try good try yeah well so my world i mean you i don't know if you remember you've seen my table with a thousand remotes my cc is against my religion i do not have it everywhere
John:
uh and i also have a thousand remotes and i don't have a universal remote uh but here's the thing about a thousand remotes they never don't work and i use the correct remote to do all the things they always work and there are never any weird interactions and the boxes don't know each other exists and that's the way it should be um i did enable it at one point for like my entire setup but my setup is way too complicated for like i could barely get it to work momentarily and i'm like this is this is untenable and i would see it break like
John:
within minutes because of me not turning things on in the right order so i immediately turned it off everywhere which is a shame because there are a couple of features that i would like but i get by pretty well with all my remotes knowing how to do ir stuff so i can do volume up and down on the tv and power on the tv from a bunch of different remotes but ir and learning uh is fairly stable technology not like the cec stuff
Marco:
I think I'm on your side in regards to what appears to be your position on universal remotes.
Marco:
We have a Logitech Harmony something or other and we bought it a few years ago to try to combat this issue and
Marco:
We've never found a universal remote that is actually worth... It's actually a net gain.
Marco:
It's almost like the XKCD comic of all these standards are a mess.
Marco:
What we need is a new standard.
Marco:
That's kind of what... I have too many remotes.
Marco:
What I need is another remote.
Marco:
And then you just have more remotes like and it and you can't actually get rid of all the remotes because you still need them sometimes to do certain things.
Marco:
And sometimes the universal remote like gets like unsynced with the state of the things.
Marco:
And so it thinks things are in a certain state that they're not in.
Marco:
And it's just such a pain.
Marco:
And then my now my remote has firmware that needs to be updated and needs to be on my Wi-Fi network.
Marco:
And then it's just like it's just a pain.
Marco:
It's it's such a pain.
Casey:
I couldn't agree with that more.
Casey:
We had a very old Harmony or equivalent, I don't know, three, four years ago now.
Casey:
And I didn't understand how it could possibly work until I realized that it was tracking the state of the system as best it could.
Casey:
But just like you said, it can't actually know the state of the system.
Casey:
So it was constantly losing track of things.
Casey:
And when it worked, it was brilliant, but it almost never worked.
Casey:
And it was very frustrating.
John:
I continue to believe that a good universal remote would actually simplify things, especially for the members of my family who are not me.
John:
But as we discussed at some point about car stuff, I'm a climate control micromanager in the car.
John:
I want the individual controls for fan speed and temperature and which direction the air is flowing.
John:
And I'm exactly the same way with TV.
John:
I have a million remotes.
John:
I know what all of them do.
John:
I know which things I want on for which shows at which time, depending on my mood.
John:
i you know it's exact it feels to me the part of my brain is activated is exactly the same part of my brain is activated when i'm messing with climate controls and car and so i don't pretend this is an optimal setup but it has the advantages of being completely understandable to me uh and deterministic and i you know i micromanage it i i just you know when do i want the big speakers on or the little ones do i want surround decoding or is this thing stereo and then i want to turn on the dolby digital thing and
John:
Do I want down to like the Apple TV apps?
John:
Like, do I want to use Infuse to try to get it to send the unmodified DTS and do the decoding on the Apple TV?
John:
Or do I want to let the iMac do it and do it through Plex?
John:
And that's that's how I wish it was simpler.
John:
I wish there was one app in one box and one interface and all my stuff was in one place.
John:
But that's just not the case.
John:
And so since things are in a million other places.
John:
having a million remotes and a million things to adjust seems like an honest representation of the reality of where the hell my media is and i don't think it's unlearnable i think i'm trying to see who who is the second place person in the family who understands the system it's probably one of my kids maybe my youngest i don't know nobody really understands it fully except for me which is potentially a problem maybe i should write something down like if i get hit by a bus here's how to watch tv but it's not that bad
John:
and you make fun of me for vinyl oh something i can do with vinyl this is just the interface wise like like i said i've i've never bought a universal remote but i assume i assume it would make things easier um especially if you have a universal remote and you turn on cc everywhere then maybe you would have a way to detect and it could repair cc screwed up in this but who knows maybe not i've i still do have devices that are ir only and so you have to have like ir blasters and other crap like that so
John:
oh you just like it for the ceremony it's a terribly inferior standard but you just like it's not it's not about ceremony it's all just like it's there's no ceremony to micro uh managing the climate control of the car it's just like well i know how high i want the fan speed and i know what i want the temperature set to and i know if i want it coming out the top vents of the bottom vents are both a defroster i know all those things so i can just set them directly
Casey:
I'm so happy that I don't stress about those sorts of things.
Casey:
You know what I do in my car?
Casey:
I hit the auto button, and then I usually hit the all button that Marco wishes Tiff's car had, and then I set a temperature, and then I don't friggin' think about it anymore.
John:
It's like the automatic transmission of climate control.
Yeah.
John:
but you know case if you manage it yourself then it would just it would it would feel warmer and less artificial it would remind you of your childhood this note there is no vinyl analogy to be had here there's absolutely no connection to vinyl whatsoever because it's not like the the the video or sound changes quality depending on what remotes i use you understand this is the vinyl analogy is no good
John:
Just throw it out the window.
John:
You can't even throw it back in Casey's face to make fun of it because it makes no sense.
Casey:
I can try.
Casey:
I'm envisioning, you know, well, you may not, but the emoji of the woman with her arms like in a cross in front of her face.
Casey:
I'm envisioning John doing that sitting in front of his computer.
John:
That's exactly what I look like.
Marco:
We are sponsored tonight by Amazon Music.
Marco:
Now you might not know that if you have an Amazon Prime subscription to get fast shipping and stuff, they have Prime Music.
Marco:
And Prime Music is Amazon's music service that you get unlimited access to over a million songs, curated playlists, and ad-free stations for all Prime members.
Marco:
And they have created a little kind of like a trial playlist for you to hear it yourself if you want.
Marco:
It's kind of tied into the rest of Amazon Music so that you can purchase songs individually.
Marco:
You can stream from most devices, iPads, iPhones, Android phones, even Sonos players.
Marco:
Of course, Amazon's own Fire devices.
Marco:
And of course, Amazon's own Echo.
Marco:
In fact, they've created a cool playlist.
Marco:
Now, if you go to AmazonSongsOfSummer.com,
Marco:
That's AmazonSongsOfSummer.com slash ATP.
Marco:
They've created a playlist called Songs of Summer.
Marco:
And you can go there to hear it.
Marco:
Or if you have an echo, Alexa, play Songs of Summer.
Marco:
And you'll start hearing it then.
Marco:
And what they've done is they've gone out and they have commissioned a whole bunch of artists.
Marco:
to create critically acclaimed new songs and unique covers of existing hits.
Marco:
So they've come up with this eclectic playlist of exclusive original songs and covers of various summer themes, and these appeal to a wide audience.
Marco:
Now, this is perfect for summertime listening.
Marco:
In fact, I listened to it, Tiff and I listened while we were cooking dinner tonight because it is summertime.
Marco:
I said that to my Echo and it started playing and it was great.
Marco:
You can check it out too with Amazon Prime Music or just go to that link, amazonsongsofsummer.com slash ATP to hear it for yourself.
Marco:
If you want to try out Amazon Prime Music,
Marco:
nice and easy to do that there too uh check it out they have a bunch of cool stuff there like i think they have all of weezer which is pretty cool they have like their entire collection i think um and of course you know if you have an echo it's even better and this this is one of the biggest reasons to get an echo uh so check it out today go to amazon songsofsummer.com slash atp to listen to the entire songs of summer playlist thanks a lot to amazon music for sponsoring our show
Casey:
Anyway, are we talking about email?
Casey:
Are we talking about parenting?
Casey:
Pick your poison.
Marco:
Oh, man, that's a tough one.
Marco:
We did get a lot of feedback.
Marco:
In the last episode, we kind of joked in the after show that if we run out of topics, we're going to have to talk about those things.
Marco:
And then we got a lot of responses from people saying, please talk about one or the other of those things.
Marco:
I think if I had to take a guess, I think parenting might have come out ahead.
John:
I think so.
John:
It's not parenting.
John:
It's specifically screen time for kids.
John:
That's right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Very, very old piece of follow up.
John:
And I think that was the one that's in the most.
John:
It's not like there's not stuff below it, but Intel making chips for phones and Chromebooks outselling Macs and letter price moving off Game Center.
John:
There are other things, but I feel like I don't feel like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel for this.
John:
I think this is just a better topic than those other ones.
John:
Both of these, I think, are better topics.
Casey:
The request was what exactly?
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Peter Beardsley wrote in.
Casey:
We still have this?
John:
I was joking.
John:
He is no longer listening to the show, but a year and a half ago, Peter Beardsley wrote in.
Marco:
He has since retired and no longer even uses computers anymore.
Marco:
His kids are in college now.
Right, right.
Casey:
That's very true.
Casey:
He had written in and said, John has been talking about playing Destiny with his kid.
Casey:
Marco posts pictures of him playing games on an iPad.
Casey:
The topic of, quote unquote, screen time is a controversial one in my household.
Casey:
How do you determine what is an appropriate amount?
Casey:
My wife has her opinions and I have mine, but I'd love to hear yours as well.
Casey:
So at this point, this is when we really anger anyone who we haven't angered yet in the entire course of the show.
John:
No, most parents don't get angry.
John:
Like, I think most parents are beaten down by reality and eventually realize people have different parenting ideas.
John:
So it's a tiny minority of parents that are all high and mighty.
John:
But having kids is the best thing to teach you that you don't know the first thing about having kids.
John:
But as for the framing of this topic, like, I don't really, like, not that I don't accept the premise, but the premise itself contains...
John:
uh, some opinionated information, which is that screen time in quotes, which is a phrase I think we've all heard from either from ourselves saying it or other parents and stuff that, uh,
John:
There is a category of activities that your kid can do that involves them looking at a screen, which is basically an electronic thing that shows moving images on it.
John:
That is a valid categorization.
John:
We don't talk about yellow sock time.
John:
How much time do you let your kids wear yellow socks?
John:
How much time do you let them touch the floor?
John:
Floor time.
John:
It's screen time specifically, and encoded in that is sort of a...
John:
an unquestioning demonization to some degree of technology in that like why is reading a book not screen time if you read a book on an ipad does it become screen time because it's on a screen like that screens themselves like again i don't think this it's not it's not like a heavy message but in in this in this word in this phrase in this entire concept in this question that comes up the idea that looking at a screen is a
John:
I mostly reject.
John:
And the book one is the best example because, you know, these days, like, oh, my kids are reading a book.
John:
It's so wonderful.
John:
I feel great about it.
John:
But if they're reading that same exact book on their iPad screen, suddenly they're rotting their brains and they're just going to become little zombies and they're just staring at screens all the time.
John:
Same activity, but one has a screen and one doesn't.
John:
So...
John:
at least for me i don't categorize activities based on the piece of technology they're using i would more categorize it as like what is the activity are they watching video what kind of video is this fiction and non-fiction you know and sometimes you throw something like oh they're watching youtube but there's really just shorthand for categorizing the types of things that are on youtube in general they're not watching a feature-length movie on youtube and they're mostly not watching like serial tv show style things on youtube so youtube is you know as kind of a definition but
John:
reading books watching movies many things happen in front of screens writing my daughter writes a lot and you know word processors writes fiction and writes down lists and stuff that's also in front of a screen i categorize that entirely differently than her watching you know ever after high or whatever so that's that's my that's my opening statement i guess on screen time and how do you guys feel with that is that a phrase that is used ever in your house or is it how you think about things at all
Casey:
Some.
Casey:
So it's a little bit different for me as compared to you guys, because Declan is just today, actually 20 months old.
Casey:
And so he's not even two years.
Casey:
We generally speaking avoided show.
Casey:
Well, he'd had no interest in the TV for a long time.
Casey:
And once he started to show an interest, we we avoided having the TV on when he was awake and around.
Casey:
That's still mostly the case.
Casey:
We have started or Aaron, because I'm at work at the time, has started showing him Sesame Street every day, which he very, very much enjoys.
Casey:
And then we have my old iPad mini that we have put a bunch of Daniel Tiger and Sesame Street episodes on.
Casey:
And we'll use that only in desperation scenarios, typically only when we're in the car because he doesn't particularly like the car.
Casey:
But other than that, he's very rarely looking at a television screen or an iPad.
Casey:
And I'm not saying that that's right, but it feels for us like we should probably avoid it at least for now.
Casey:
But again, it's a little weird because he's only 20 months.
Casey:
I mean, he isn't into it like Adam or like your kids would be.
Marco:
For us, Adam, my kid is four.
Marco:
We don't really draw the distinction.
Marco:
We don't use the term screen time or any other replacement term for that concept.
Marco:
I think it's like so many things in parenting, it depends on your kid.
Marco:
In our case, we never specifically glorified things with screens or made them a forbidden thing or a thing that was saved for only special occasions.
Marco:
It's like one toy of many in the house.
Marco:
And Adam could choose to play with the iPad or can watch TV for a while or he can do other things.
Marco:
And we haven't really had to set limits because the kind of kid he is, at least so far, he treats it like any other toy.
Marco:
So he'll be happy to play with the iPad for maybe 20 minutes, half hour, and then he'll want to do something else.
Marco:
And I think that's kind of a healthy attitude for it because our philosophy on this, if it ever came to having to put any kind of limits in to maintain healthy balances...
Marco:
Our philosophy is this is a world full of screens that we live in.
Marco:
It's only getting more in that direction as we move forward in time.
Marco:
So Adam is growing up in a world full of screens.
Marco:
To try to keep him from that or limit that artificially in a way that would make it weird to deal with screens for him or to make it a rebellion of sorts or only a special treat...
Marco:
It doesn't really seem like that fits into the world we actually live in today.
Marco:
I get the idea of why people want to limit that and what people want their kids to do instead.
Marco:
I guess be social or go outside or whatever.
Marco:
But I think if you already have a reasonable balance of activities for your kid, having screens and things with screens be a part of that, I don't see it as any different from any other toy that he has.
John:
So as kids get older, like you said, it really depends on your kid.
John:
Kids will start picking up more of their own interests.
John:
Like especially when young ages, you can basically control everything they do.
John:
You control the toys they play with because you buy them the toys.
John:
You can even control by not bringing them down the toy aisle that you don't want them to see the toys that you're not going to buy them.
John:
Like when they're very young, you have a lot of control.
John:
And so you can sort of provide the balance simply by providing a balance of things that you all approve of.
John:
But of course, kids get older, start getting minds of their own.
John:
And depending on your kid, they have different, you know, different preferences and they will gravitate towards something.
John:
And then no matter what they gravitate towards, maintaining what you think is a healthy balance may require some intervention.
John:
But again, I would say that doesn't specifically apply to screen.
John:
So, for example, if your kid starts getting older and becomes really into books and all they want to do all the time is go up to the room and read.
John:
You're like, oh, I would be overjoyed if my kid read all the time.
John:
But at a certain point, they need to learn how to deal with other people and be social.
John:
That's part of growing up, too.
John:
So you may find yourself limiting book time because you need your kid to socialize with other kids to learn how to deal with other people.
John:
Like you're trying to find the right balance for your kid, which the balance isn't the same for everybody.
John:
But most people would say.
John:
Like learning to deal with other people as part of growing up and you can't avoid it, even if you're really, really into whatever it is that you're into.
John:
It's making models or reading books or all these activities that people think are like are healthy.
John:
And, you know, oh, that's a good thing to do.
John:
Like that's that's why I hate the screen categorization of screens like there.
John:
Certain activities are just accepted by most parents on a continuum of evil, right?
John:
So reading is one of the best you can do.
John:
Making models is kind of in the middle.
John:
Making models that have electronics may be getting a little worse.
John:
Anything that involves a television...
John:
Bad.
John:
Anything that involves computers could be good, but probably also bad.
John:
Video games, universally bad, right?
John:
And that sort of continuum that we all sort of agree upon before we begin talking about balance, I totally disagree with, mostly for the reasons Marco said, like...
John:
We live in a world with screens, we live in a world with television, we live in a world with recorded music, like, oh, don't listen to those recorded music, it's live music or nothing, you'll rot your brain, like, you know, the novel was condemned as something that would be the downfall of humanity when it was introduced to, so...
John:
Through the lens of history, it's obviously ridiculous to think about things in that way.
John:
But all of those mediums have things that that can provide your kid with something.
John:
So if your kid is only reading, well, it's hard for me to find, like if they're only reading the same kind of simple story over and over again.
John:
they're not really growing as a reader, right?
John:
If they're only watching the same kind of television show over and over again, they're not really growing as a viewer of, you know, of moving pictures or whatever.
John:
Like, and if they're only playing the same computer game over and over again, they're not expanding outwards into the, like, every medium and every form of input and activity has, like, your kid should be crawling up that ladder and becoming more sophisticated and learning and growing in all the activities that they do.
John:
and if they're not that's you know something you have to be aware of but there's nothing inherent i believe in any of the specific activities that makes them better or worse like i would rather my kids watch a youtube video like a science youtube video than uh like read a silly uh a book about fairies and rainbows that is two years below their grade level that they've read 50 times before like
John:
One of them uses a screen and one of them is a book and supposedly like the perfect thing that we want our children to do.
John:
But you can't view them that way.
John:
You can't slot them in by the media.
John:
So that's definitely how I look at things.
John:
And I'm really with my kids mostly looking at what they are drawn to and figuring out what I have to put limits on based on what if I didn't put limits they would just do obsessively.
Yeah.
John:
And it's not always watch a television show or play a video game.
John:
It could be any activity they do obsessively.
John:
One of my kids always wants to go and hang out with her friends, and my son mostly will stay inside and not see anybody.
John:
So we're trying to push one out of the house all the time, and the other one trying to get to calm down a lot.
John:
So every kid is different.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know what we're going to do in the future.
Casey:
I think it's funny because I was very resentful of my parents or extended family putting limits on our screen time.
Casey:
Like I think Marco and I have talked about, although maybe it never made it in the show, when we were kids and we hung out.
Casey:
So we were, I don't know, 8, 10, 12, something like that.
Casey:
We would meet up and we would hang out and then my grandmother would inevitably or Marco's mom would inevitably tell us, OK, you've played enough on the computer.
Casey:
It's time to go outside now.
Casey:
And I remember being really, really resentful of that because we were having a great time.
Casey:
And we were in some cases doing things that you could argue were productive.
Casey:
Like I vividly remember spending hours on the world's crappiest choose your own adventure visual basic 1.0 game.
Casey:
And it wasn't always Transport Tycoon, although damned if we didn't play a lot of Transport Tycoon.
Marco:
Yeah, that might have been more than half of it.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I remember being so resentful of the get outside schtick.
Casey:
But here I am now, a parent, and I feel like I'm reverting into that same mindset of, oh, you probably shouldn't be playing on the iPad constantly, which, again, he doesn't because he's so young, but I could see it happening.
Casey:
You probably shouldn't be on the iPad constantly.
Casey:
You should probably go outside.
Casey:
And I feel like now is the time to instill within him that he needs to be a well-rounded person, right?
Casey:
But I agree completely with what both of you said, that the reality of the situation is that part of being well-rounded in today's society is being comfortable in front of a screen.
Casey:
So I don't know what the right answer is.
Casey:
And obviously, Aaron and I will have to kind of fake it till we make it.
Casey:
Well, I guess you never really make it in parenting, but you know what I mean?
Casey:
And we'll see how it shakes out.
Marco:
Fake it till they go to college.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
We'll see how it shakes out as he gets older and perhaps starts requesting these things.
Casey:
But it's nice because, like John had said, we have that control now where he doesn't ever really see the iPad.
Casey:
And so he won't know or ask for it unless we say to him, do you want to watch Daniel Tiger or do you want to watch Sesame Street or what have you?
Marco:
I think it's also worth pointing out that we as parents, the kids can look and see what we do.
Marco:
And it would be awfully hypocritical of us to say, you need to limit your screen time while we sit there using screens for way more time during the day than that.
Marco:
And they know that.
Marco:
They can see that.
Marco:
They're not going to respect a rule or the parents making that rule if the parents themselves are blatantly violating it all the time.
John:
Yep, I'm guilty of that.
John:
Well, like I said, you looking at a screen doesn't mean you're doing the same thing.
John:
I think my kids do differentiate it roughly.
John:
They know when I'm working.
John:
Sometimes I'm working.
John:
They can tell the difference between me working versus me reading Twitter versus me watching a YouTube video, which I might invite them to join into.
John:
It's this specific activity that's the issue.
John:
Casey mentioned it in terms of them becoming competent with screens.
John:
For the most part, I don't think that's something we need to put an effort into because it's
John:
It would be very unless your kid like really doesn't like them at all.
John:
And then you might want to make sure they have some minimum competence.
John:
But I don't think there's any effort we need to make.
John:
That's just going to happen.
John:
Right.
John:
They can't help but be competent because they're surrounded by them because we have a million of these devices at home and then they'll see them at school.
John:
So that's going to take care of itself.
John:
But really what I'm thinking of is.
John:
What are they doing?
John:
Like the fact that the screen doesn't doesn't is not a factor as far as I'm concerned, because I don't think there's magic radiation rotting their brains coming out of like backlit screens.
John:
It's what are they actually doing?
John:
Are they learning something?
John:
Are they reading Wikipedia pages?
John:
Are they if they're watching some kind of video?
John:
Is it.
John:
is it a television show that i approve of in terms of uh you know is it constructive in some way or are they playing a game that is teaching them something instead of you know just being is you know is it age appropriate as a lot of you know is it should you be watching this television show this movie this youtube video whatever what are you getting out of this are you watching the same kind of thing over and over again are you playing the same kind of game over and over um and of course as you'll see this as your kids get older i imagine this will not be a thing that goes away but anyone who has
John:
uh kids in double digit ages knows the thing of like multiple screens there my son is forever uh has his ipad playing youtube videos you know in a loop based not in a loop but like with on autopile like he doesn't pick the videos he just accepts whatever plays next this is the amazing power that youtube has over our children and
John:
listening to that on headphones while playing a video game on the television or on uh on like the playstation on the monitor like so he's hearing audio from a youtube video while playing a video game and then i guess occasionally glancing down at that thing and then his phone is also on the desk and so he's getting texts from friends at the same time
John:
How do you even parse that?
John:
But that's a thing that people do all the time.
John:
Kids do all the time these days.
John:
So now you have to look at, like, the three things that they're doing.
John:
Is he communicating well with his friends?
John:
What are the YouTube videos that are playing?
John:
Are the YouTube videos related to the game that he's playing and he's trying to learn strategies and then implement them?
John:
Like...
John:
for people who demonize video games that may be like, oh, that's double bad.
John:
He's playing a stupid video game, which I don't like.
John:
And he's watching a video about how to play the video game.
John:
What an incredible waste of time.
John:
But essentially what he's doing is like skills that come in handy, not just for schoolwork, but for regular work, like where you have to learn how to do something sort of on the job while you're doing it.
John:
And you want to be able to do the thing that you're doing better.
John:
And so you're essentially doing research and
John:
I mean, it's very similar to programming and then just like going to the website and looking at the documentation and having the code in another window and having the web browser open over there.
John:
Like, we all do that all the time.
John:
The video game thing is the equivalent of that.
John:
And, I mean, it really helps if you're a gamer and you understand that these things aren't just all mindless, that they're actually...
John:
fairly complicated and you know i mean you know from transport tycoon like you learned things about you didn't have the internet probably in those days where you could look up uh awesome strategies for transport tycoon and stuff but they're surprisingly deep and the skills you learn are able to like juggle strategies and write things down with a pencil and paper and use them to excel in this thing you're doing which is you know granted kind of pointless but that's exactly what play is like it's supposed to be a sort of a trial run in a safe environment of skills that will come in handy later in life and
Marco:
more important situations or you become a game developer and they transfer exactly so and you know I would argue like school is pointless like most of what you do in school is pointless but the reason you do it is that it's it's an educational exercise to develop your brain in certain ways and games are often that same thing
John:
And even like things like television show and movies, like a lot of what I want my kids to learn when they watch media that hopefully is constructive in some way is you see interpersonal relationships.
John:
Like you have a certain amount of interpersonal relationships that you get to try out when you go to school, when you hang out with your friends.
John:
But you also learn from the media that you see.
John:
How do people relate to each other?
John:
What are the various anti-patterns of how they relate?
John:
How will I be treated if I act like this?
John:
A lot of fiction sort of plays out those things, especially kids' fiction where they show the kid who's too conceited or the kid who's shy or bullying or like, you know...
John:
And very a lot of media for children eventually gets into all those topics and they're just like, oh, I'm just watching a TV show.
John:
But I think people don't realize how much people and even reading books and stuff like that, like fiction provides a way to try out activities that you're not going to actually try yourself, but to see pretend people try them out and see the consequences, which is why you have to keep your eye on fiction, because.
John:
If you fed your kids the wrong kind of fiction, they could definitely get the wrong kind of idea about the way the world works.
John:
So you have to, that's why you have to sort of be on top of what they're looking into or whatever.
John:
And that's why, you know, when you're young, it's easy.
John:
But later on, they will start picking things on their own.
John:
You have to sort of take an interest in what are you watching?
John:
And you will have to watch a bunch of episodes of shows that you're not actually interested in because they're for kids.
John:
But if you don't do that, you'll have no idea what it is they're learning and taking away.
John:
Yeah.
John:
um they you know the same way they watch you to learn how interpersonal relationships work they also learn that from fiction i i think back to the number of things i learned about learned or mislearned about human nature from television and movies and books from my childhood and it's a surprising amount perhaps more than i learned from uh you know my parents actually telling me in sort of the sort of traditional parenting way of like let me tell you why you should not be a bully and why you should be nice to your sister or whatever
Casey:
Well, it's funny you bring all this up because just the other day, Erin sent me an article she had found, and we'll put it in the show notes.
Casey:
And the title is Research Shows Preschoolers Who Watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Develop Social and Emotional Skills.
Casey:
And this is a study by Texas Tech University, apparently.
Casey:
And what they did was they had preschoolers watch like a nature show for a couple of weeks or watch Daniel Tiger, which if you're not familiar, it's the spiritual successor to Mr. Rogers, which I assume is
Casey:
relevant even to like brits as well but uh mr rogers was like an institution for kids in the u.s well anyway so they the key quote here is in the study which will be published an upcoming issue to the journal of children and media 127 preschoolers watched 10 episodes of either daniel tiger's neighborhood or nature show over two week period children who watched daniel tiger exhibited higher levels of empathy self efficacy uh basically confidence in oneself and social situations and the ability to recognize emotions uh
Casey:
or better ability to recognize those emotions than the kids who watch The Nature Show.
Casey:
There's a kicker, though.
Casey:
In order for the kids to benefit from watching the show, their regular TV watching experience has to be accompanied by frequent parent-child conversations about the media content, which is the part that I found most interesting was, yeah, the show may not be a complete disaster in and of itself, but for it to really sink in and hit home, it's up to Aaron and I to...
Casey:
Pay attention and talk to him as best as we can with a 20-month-old about what he just saw.
Casey:
And that's something that we've taken to heart.
Casey:
And although he hasn't seen Daniel Tiger in a couple of days since we found this article, it's still something that we plan to do in the future and something we're going to try to be better about.
John:
uh the parenting institution of reading an article and then deciding this is how we have to parent differently because the article says so it's a fair no it's a fair criticism but it's not a criticism we all do it like yeah because we all do it because we're all looking for we you know we're looking for help right it's like does someone have some ideas that i haven't tried i'll try those like we did exactly the same things like and speaking of the same same things about all the studies about how you shouldn't show your kid any sort of video very early in life which always made sense to me i mean we didn't need articles to tell us that for the most part but like
John:
When your kid is changing from a little squishy larva into, like, you know, that does nothing and just poops its pants all the time and can barely hold its head up, like, they have to learn how to interact with the world.
John:
And if...
John:
kids very very young can be distracted by moving images that's taking time away from them learning like where is the floor where is his ceiling what are these things poking out of my body and how do i control them right uh and so that's why i would imagine part of the rationale behind don't show very very young kids uh television or movies or other things that are irresistibly attractive and yet don't teach them anything about how to exist in the world because you
John:
you're distracting them from important developmental milestones.
John:
But once kids can actually walk and talk and do stuff like that, then, uh, moving pictures are just part of the, part of the same world as learning to read and learning to absorb information.
John:
And speaking of discussing things with your kids, it doesn't have to be after school style.
John:
Like I remember a lot of the shows I wanted my kids to watch were shows in which characters were similar ages and facing similar challenges.
John:
Um,
John:
I know everyone hates Caillou, but I would always be like, remember that episode where Caillou found his shoes and tied them himself?
John:
I would reference things that I know he's seen on TV to give him a framework.
John:
He would have to, as the first child, and you both have your first child there, you have to grudgingly admit that
John:
yes i suppose it is it is reasonable for a child my age to be able to do this whereas depending on your kid they may be like this is an injustice i can never put on my own socks this is not a thing that happens my entire life you've been putting on my socks and all of a sudden you want me to put on my socks that's ridiculous and he's like well caillou does it and he's your age and they're like like it's them caillou is as real as anything else in the world right
John:
so you discuss like discussing what you've seen but referencing what you know they've seen uh in a way that's like it's like shared culture with your child you know or stories you know they've read like it just like in this book when that happened that we can apply this to your life not that they'll listen to you and say like oh you're totally right dad but at least you know you make your point and so if you just keep doing that eventually it will sink in any other thoughts on screen time
John:
Well, so it sounds like none of us are in the camp of like, oh, I really limited and it's really important.
John:
And I think it's worth saying that like like so many other things in parenting, if people decide to do that in the grand scheme of things, I don't think that makes like I don't think that's that's harmful.
John:
Like, oh, you know, we limit our kid to one hour of screen time a day in the grand scheme of things.
John:
That's probably fine.
John:
Like it.
John:
Everyone has something that they have a hang-up about.
John:
Everyone thinks the correct balance is a different balance.
John:
Obviously, you can go too far by demonizing it and making it a treat or whatever, but bottom line is, in the world we live in, unless you are Amish and live away from everyone else and don't have electricity, there's nothing you can do to stop your kids from...
John:
learning to learning to use screens, wanting to use screens.
John:
They're going to be forced to use them in most schools.
John:
Even public schools have integration with like Google Docs and stuff.
John:
They're going to use computers.
John:
They're going to use smartphones.
John:
They're going to want a smartphone.
John:
They're going to get a smartphone eventually when they're adults.
John:
Like there's nothing you can do to stop them from... It's like trying to stop your kid from learning how the wheel works.
John:
Like you can't do it.
John:
Like it's going to happen.
John:
So...
John:
I don't much mind people who have particular policies about how long any activity should be doing.
John:
How long should we spend on homework every night?
John:
No screens after 8 p.m.
John:
No bringing your cell phone into your bedroom.
John:
One hour using screen time as a reward.
John:
You know, there are many things you could do to...
John:
any activity to demonize it or to make it the forbidden fruit or like, and it all really depends on your kid.
John:
Like my parents never let us have soda.
John:
You would think, ah, they hid soda from you.
John:
When you become an adult, you'd be a soda fiend.
John:
Nope.
John:
Don't like it.
John:
Don't have it.
John:
Right.
John:
Don't have any soda in my house, but a different kid being raised in exactly the same way that I was could have come out of that and say, Oh my God, as soon as I get to live on my own, I'm just going to drink soda all day.
John:
Same exact parenting, different kid.
John:
So as with everything in parenting, there's only a series of, uh,
John:
Differently wrong answer is there's no right answer.
Marco:
You sure you don't have like 37 or so tiny cans of Sprite in your house?
John:
I think I still do have 37.
John:
You know why?
John:
Because I don't drink them.
John:
I have to check if they're still in the basement.
John:
But believe me, if I wanted them, they would be gone like the Samoas were gone.
John:
Because those I do want.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Casper, Harry's, and Amazon Prime Music.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
John:
not caramel delights like samoa's better firmly in the samoa camp see the samoa's they're they're good but they're just i think there's a little bit too much coconut too much coconut it's all about the coconut the samoa's have darker chocolate and the coconut is roasted a little bit darker too and they're actually round and not octagon
Casey:
I don't remember what these are.
Casey:
I've certainly heard of them, but I know I don't like dark chocolate terribly much.
Casey:
I don't like coconut terribly much, and I don't like caramel terribly much.
John:
Yeah, this is not the cookie for you.
John:
No, definitely not.
John:
These are Girl Scout cookies, by the way.
Casey:
Oh, yes, that's right.
John:
People who are not in America, Girl Scouts is a – how would you describe Girl Scouts?
John:
It's a thing little girls go to to learn stuff.
Casey:
That sounds dismissive, but it's actually a reasonable summary.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway, they sell cookies to raise money for their Girl Scouting.
John:
And those cookies are made by different manufacturers.
John:
And cookies that look almost the same have different names and are made by different makers in different parts of the country.
John:
And...
John:
Yeah.
John:
And you would think it's like, oh, whatever gross cookies you grew up with, those are the ones that you'll love.
John:
But I don't think that's entirely the case.
John:
I think you just have to A, B test every single one of the cookies and see which version you like.
John:
Because it's not a clear victory for either one of the two manufacturers.
John:
But Samoa is definitely...
Marco:
everyone kind of like obsesses over them but it's more of like an artificial scarcity situation where like you can only buy them certain times a year like that's like and the reality is like almost all of them are delicious because they're really sugary unhealthy cookies like so of course they're gonna be delicious like people obsess over certain flavors like i know um i if i had to guess i think the most popular ones are probably thin mints followed by samoa's um and followed by those what are the peanut butter ones
Marco:
Is that the Tagalogs?
John:
Tagalogs, I think, yeah.
John:
They may have different names.
John:
Those are very good, too, but... There's not much scarcity in my house, I can tell you.
John:
The artificial scarcity is like, oh, they're only sold certain times of the year, but if you buy a billion boxes, they never run out.
Casey:
So according to Wikipedia, it's Thin Mints at 25% of the sales.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Caramel Delights... I'm sorry, Samoas, my bad.
Casey:
Same thing, just different name.
Casey:
Samoas are 19%.
Casey:
Do-Si-Dos, which are peanut butter sandwiches, are 16%.
Casey:
And peanut butter patties, which are Tagalongs, are 13%.
Marco:
Which are the ones that is the cookie and the peanut butter with chocolate wrapped around it?
Casey:
That's Tagalongs.
Marco:
Yeah, those are good.
Casey:
Tagalongs.
Casey:
Crispy vanilla cookies layered with peanut butter and covered with a chocolatey coating.
Marco:
Those cold are amazing.
Casey:
My particular favorite is the one that nobody ever buys or likes, which is the shortbread cookies, which are trefoils or trefoils.
Casey:
I'm not sure you pronounce that, but... I like those.
John:
Yeah, those are good.
Casey:
Oh, I love those.
John:
Although I think all of them... Like, I don't know.
John:
Am I a cookie snob now?
John:
I think all of them still basically taste like prepackaged cookies.
John:
They do.
John:
The only ones that I think come close to being elevated to the level of something you might buy, like a handmade thing in a bakery, are the Samoas.
John:
And even those still...
John:
more or less tastes like just manufactured cookies.
John:
In my old age, I get even more expensive tastes.
John:
And now if it's not like handmade in a bakery, I kind of like, well, I think in the sense of do I want to spend my calories on this cookie or do I want to spend it on the most expensive ice cream I can possibly buy?
John:
The ice cream.
John:
those incredible wasteful wasteful gelato things in the hard plastic containers who came up who came up with that idea i i feel terrible every time i buy one of those terrible because they cost like six bucks terrible because they come with a hard plastic shell that i try to find some reason to use in the house yeah by the way don't put those in the dishwasher yeah learn that you can use them to i guess maybe i don't know that maybe the kids will suffocate on them i was like you put kids toys in them or something or the the jar itself could be a kid's toy but kids can probably suffocate on them and that'd be bad
Marco:
We have a few of them around the house that we've washed out and just used for containers.
Marco:
But the problem is it's kind of like when you order Thai food and you get four or five of those black circular containers with the translucent white lids.
Marco:
For a while, we would wash those out and save them and reuse them for things.
Marco:
But the problem is like the rate at which we would order Thai food dramatically outpaced the rate at which we could find use of these.
Marco:
And we have a similar problem with Italian gelato containers.
Marco:
We probably empty roughly one or two of those a week.
Marco:
So there's basically no way we can find enough uses for them around the house.
John:
i i seriously i seriously don't buy that because of the container like that is the container is literally stopping me from buying that product more right that and a couple of their their flavors i feel like could be improved but that but i i go to the store and i'm like i'm kind of in the mood for that but i don't want that container it just feels wasteful it's like speaking of buying takeout like when i get food from one of the local chinese food takeout places and they give you like a giant styrofoam container from the 80s i'm like i didn't even know they still made these just like a
John:
big white giant thing of styrofoam this is not good for the environment i mean maybe it's better now maybe it's all made from like cornstarch and stuff and it's not like the bad styrofoam from when we were kids but it just feels wasteful like yeah you know that's if the people from talia india are listening make more environmentally friendly containers and you will sell more of your incredibly overpriced ice cream to me
John:
Wait, what is the name of this ice cream?
Marco:
It's Talenti.
Casey:
How do you spell that?
Marco:
T-A-L-E-N-T-I.
Casey:
Okay.
Marco:
So I'm actually making an environmental statement by buying Ben & Jerry's most of the time for myself.
Marco:
Because Tiff is mostly Talenti.
Marco:
I'm mostly Ben & Jerry's.
Marco:
You would.
Marco:
You would.
Marco:
Ben & Jerry's has the dioxins, right?
Marco:
You know, the problem is, like, I am happy to try other ice creams, but Ben & Jerry's is... I just always go back to that.
Marco:
Like, it is just so much better tasting to me than almost everything else.
Marco:
And not just any, like, one particular flavor.
Marco:
Like, just, like, their base ice cream is better tasting than most of them.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Whatever chemical they're putting in is addicting you.
John:
Like, I am...
John:
I do not have a particular brand, but I think Haagen-Dazs is probably – I think I'm probably more into Haagen-Dazs than most people, and it's specific flavors.
John:
But Haagen-Dazs, I feel like if you said who has the best vanilla, if you just had plain vanilla ice cream, I think Haagen-Dazs has the best vanilla.
John:
Yeah, I'd go with you on that.
John:
And so vanilla Swiss almond, which is basically Haagen-Dazs vanilla with a little chocolate-covered almonds, is one of my favorite things ever.
John:
But Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, Haagen-Dazs has no flavor that competes with that.
John:
So I'm equal opportunity overpriced ice cream eater.
Casey:
So I have a controversial opinion about this.
Casey:
I know you're surprised.
Casey:
Dryer's slow-churned, low-fat vanilla ice cream is the best vanilla I've found.
Casey:
And I should say that—what is it, Bluebell?
Casey:
I think it's Bluebell ice cream recently arrived in Virginia, which I think started somewhere south of here.
Casey:
And it was one of those things like—
Casey:
Well, Cheerwine, which doesn't mean anything to you, but Chick-fil-A is a better example.
Casey:
So Only in the South, Crawling Northwards, or Sonic is another great example.
Casey:
And everyone I knew had known someone that had had Blue Bell and swore that it was the best ice cream in the entire world.
Casey:
And I've had a few flavors of Blue Bell ice cream, and I actually don't find it to be particularly tasty.
Casey:
The dryer slow churn vanilla, as stupid as that sounds, I mean, hey, I love Diet Coke, so I know everyone's surprised.
Casey:
Love that stuff.
John:
I think my only ice cream snobbery is, and it only extends so far, is that I don't like ice creams that have things in them other than ice cream.
John:
And I know Ben & Jerry's falls into that category.
John:
It should just be like the old Breyers commercial said, and I really do like Breyers.
John:
Milk, cream, sugar.
John:
There should be no guar gum.
John:
There should be no other things.
John:
And I know Ben & Jerry's has those.
John:
It's another reason I give a little bit of a nod to Haagen-Dazs, and Haagen-Dazs has them to some degree as well.
John:
But a lot of the non-super premium brands have all sorts of crazy-ass fillers in them, and I can't stand them.
Marco:
No, I mean, like Haagen-Dazs is really good for keeping the ingredient count down, but usually only for their basic flavors.
Marco:
Like once you have like, you know, fillings and like, you know, like other objects in the ice cream, like almonds and stuff or, you know, or the flavors get more complicated, that ingredient list climbs pretty fast.
Marco:
And to follow up briefly on Casey's Bluebell thing, I have not tried Bluebell, but I have tried Jenny's, which is, I believe, the Ohio version.
Marco:
It's J-E-N-I apostrophe S. It's also like a boutique ice cream maker.
Marco:
And you can actually order them to be shipped to you in a frozen box.
Marco:
And I had them originally in a store in Ohio when I was visiting there a few years back.
Marco:
And the stores are just amazing.
Marco:
Their flavors, though, are really weird.
Marco:
And so we ordered them one time for something special.
Marco:
I think it was Valentine's Day a couple years ago.
Marco:
We ordered some to treat ourselves and to try to bring back the experience of going to the stores.
Marco:
And when you order little pints of premium ice cream to be shipped to you in a truck...
Marco:
It gets pretty expensive.
Marco:
It ended up being something like eight or ten dollars a pint.
Marco:
So, you know, and it just wasn't like some of the flavors were great.
Marco:
Some of them were just kind of weird.
Marco:
So just like it wasn't really worth it.
Marco:
If you can go to a Jenny's store, I recommend it.
Marco:
But I would not recommend ordering fancy ice cream on the Internet because it's just not worth it.
John:
so dryers as i i don't not that familiar with that name but looking at the packaging i'm like that's one of the ones that i had filler i can't find the ingredients list for your particular slow churn thing but dryers grand vanilla bean milk cream sugar skim milk looking good so far corn syrup cellulose gum mono and diglycerides not good guar gum dextrose like lots of i don't i don't need all that crap you can you can make good ice cream with just milk cream and sugar and vanilla bean um
John:
And like I said, like Marco said, Ben Jerry's does it too.
John:
I know they all do it.
John:
And as soon as you start adding like fillings, like, oh, there's Heath bars in here.
John:
Heath bars are just full of crap, like obviously.
John:
And then it goes in the ingredients list because guess what?
John:
There's Heath bars in there.
John:
Even just the sugar always has some weird stuff in it.
John:
But I try to limit that.
John:
That's why I've always been a Breyers fan.
John:
Breyers, for the most part, especially if you don't do like...
John:
extra creamy or light or any other type of thing where they need to add fillers to try to make the texture back to normal if you just buy plain old full fat ice cream or make it yourself we have an ice cream machine to make it occasionally like seriously you just need you just need milk cream and sugar and it makes ice cream and it's really good and vanilla beans um so there's no reason for anything else unless you start taking stuff out or
John:
want to make it seem creamier than it actually is.
Casey:
This is from a grocery store.
Casey:
This is for my slow churn vanilla bean, nonfat milk, cream sugar, corn syrup.
Casey:
And I think that at this point I'm out.
Casey:
That's all it takes.
Casey:
This is the corn syrup.
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
Well, I mean, you know, it's just sugar, but you can keep going.
John:
It's the other fillers that I think are more objectionable.
Casey:
Corn syrup, whey protein, buttermilk, molasses, acacia gum, carob bean gum, guar gum, natural flavors, ground vanilla beans, and... Whoa.
Casey:
Carrageenan?
John:
Yeah, that's the red stuff they squeeze out of red bugs.
John:
Oh, weird.
John:
That's kind of gross.
Casey:
Anyway, that's the entire ingredient list.
Casey:
So does that... Real-time follow-up.
John:
Carrageenan is from edible red seaweed, not from red bugs.
John:
There's a different thing that comes from red bugs.
John:
Important research on ATP.
John:
That's too much.
John:
Try Breyer's Vanilla and just see what you're missing.
Casey:
I'm sure it's good.
Casey:
And I'm not saying that this is the best ever, but this is like my go-to ice cream.
Casey:
Partially because it is slightly lower fat.
John:
You could change your go-to ice cream.
Casey:
I could.
Casey:
I could.
Casey:
You could start drinking Sprite, you know.
Casey:
I mean, Saturn used to be your go-to car, right?
John:
Oh, those were the days.
John:
Until the wheel fell off.
Casey:
It was a great car until then.
Casey:
Great stereo, too.