Ep. 172: "Gain Stages"
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Merlin: Build it beautiful.
John: If you were feeling loose...
Merlin: I was feeling loose.
Merlin: I'm thinking maybe like a sloth.
Merlin: Just because it just seems very laid back.
Merlin: A sloth seems loose.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I could see myself being a goose.
John: Not as loose as a long neck goose.
John: That's the standard of high looseness.
John: You sound good.
John: Your voice is very full.
John: Oh, more fuller than can be accounted for by my microphone setup.
Merlin: It always sounds full.
Merlin: I got a new mic.
Merlin: I'm still getting used to it.
Merlin: How do you like it?
Merlin: I think I like it.
Merlin: Unfortunately, I think it sounds bigger, but it brings out a range of my voice that I can't hear very well.
Merlin: I got that Bob Mould problem, you know?
John: Elaborate.
Merlin: Oh, well, you know, it's a problem you probably should have, but I think I've lost some part of the range of hearing accounted for by very loud electric guitars and female voices.
John: So, yeah, you've got a little V-shaped divot there.
Merlin: There's one thing, when I go back, I really like the Sugar albums, but when you listen to them, they reflect the production of somebody who kind of can't hear mids very well.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
John: Oh, I do.
John: I do.
John: I deal with it all the time.
John: All the time.
John: A lot of my people cannot hear the mid-range.
John: Especially the kind of the high-mid.
John: And do you account for that by rock shows, or would you say you lost more hearing listening to loud music on headphones or speakers?
Merlin: I think it was mostly from rehearsals.
Merlin: From band rehearsals?
Merlin: Like two or three nights a week of having an orange amp in my face.
John: During a time when it was understood that you needed the biggest amp you could afford...
John: Right.
John: And everybody in the band agreed that they needed the biggest amps they could afford.
Merlin: You know, it's funny when you put it that way.
Merlin: I mean, the, you know, I don't know, one of the guys, the other guitar player, main guitar player in the band was kind of a gear nut.
Merlin: So he was always getting new things, but he mostly played with an orange half stack.
Merlin: And I always had some kind of janky, you know, portable amp just mic'd up.
Merlin: But, you know, for most situations on stage, you just don't need, you know, we all grew, I think part of it is we came up with stuff like Van Halen.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: And so you will remember a time in the 80s where what you wanted was a Marshall stack.
Merlin: That you needed, what is it, like two 410 cabinets and a JCM head?
Merlin: 412 cabinets.
Merlin: 412?
Merlin: Like, who needs that?
Merlin: Who really needs that?
John: Well, you know, we believed that all the way through the 90s.
John: And looking back at it, I don't really understand.
John: And the thing is, I was there.
John: I remember very distinctly feeling like my 120-watt Sound City head through a 412 cabinet was like the bare minimum.
John: of what I needed to perform.
John: That's just your traveling gear.
John: Yeah, to perform unsalted butter in a room for 350 people.
John: And later, I traveled with a 15-watt amp.
John: Right.
John: And still had sound men in far-flung places say, like, can you turn the guitar down a little bit?
John: Like, I don't know.
John: It was a mass delusion.
John: I went on that first tour that...
John: The Western State Hurricanes did with Death Cab for Cutie back in 1999.
John: I took a Fender Pro Revert, which is a 35-watt, 212 amplifier.
John: What's that way?
John: I mean, it's heavy, and it's also... I mean, they're wonderful, wonderful amps, but I routinely...
John: Felt like I was underpowered, couldn't hear myself on stage, tipped the amp back, pointing it right at my head so that I could...
John: so that i could monitor myself and it's like what was it was a it was a collective insanity where i was standing up there thinking to myself this is this is an impossibly small amp and i only brought it on tour because we didn't have room for the full rig and now i'm at a disadvantage here with only 35 watts
John: And it's nuts.
John: It's bananas.
Merlin: Especially because if you're in a situation where you're not trying to – I mean this isn't like the era of Cream where – I guess the conventional wisdom that I've heard is that one thing that made Cream big was that they could fill the auditorium with their sound but also that it was the first time the PAs were getting pretty good.
Merlin: So you could play loud and you could – they could hear you and you could hear yourself.
Merlin: And that was supposedly a technology of the time.
John: I mean, the original idea, of course, right, was that you didn't mic the amplifiers into the PA.
John: The PA was struggling just to get your voice loud enough.
John: And so if you wanted your guitar to be heard in the back of the auditorium, you needed a big amp to fill the space.
John: But by the time I came along...
John: I mean, it wasn't like PAs are a thousand times better now.
John: That's a technology that has evolved with leaps and bounds.
John: PA equipment is so much better now than it was when I was starting out.
John: And yet, even then, it was more than loud enough to mic a small amp.
Merlin: Especially for a club or playing in a bar.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: My understanding is that Neil Young has been playing through a five-watt amp for the last 40 years.
Yeah.
John: And he has all those amps on stage.
John: He does have that one super big amp that he only turns on sometimes, but most of his tone is coming from like a Fender champ behind a curtain.
Merlin: You could put that in a station wagon.
Merlin: That's how I understand it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it's funny.
Merlin: I don't want to overstate this because I don't have a strong feeling about this.
Merlin: But it's a little bit like – I remember having this feeling where the other guy in the band had this – he always had much better equipment than me.
Merlin: He had more money in access and he cared more.
Merlin: So he was always getting like new Gibsons, get a new Dan Electro, get a new whatever.
Merlin: But he always had great, great amps.
Merlin: So I at one point had settled into – I had a –
Merlin: I want to say a SovTech head with this little crummy old Gibson amp that I was using as a quote-unquote cabinet.
Merlin: But it was dinky on stage.
Merlin: It was on a chair.
Merlin: And it didn't feel... Again, I don't want to overstate this.
Merlin: I don't want to make this strictly a penis thing.
Merlin: But if one or two guys in the band have a giant... What's that cool bass amp?
Merlin: Custom?
Merlin: What are those big, cushy...
Merlin: You know, like the big bass amps that have the padding on them?
John: Yeah, those are custom amps.
John: I would hesitate to call them.
John: I mean, they're very cool looking.
John: I wouldn't say they were super cool.
Merlin: But it looks good.
Merlin: It looks very rock and roll to have something that looks like a cross between a cabinet and a couch.
Merlin: And I've got this little Galen Kruger-sized thing on a chair.
Merlin: They have the same visual impact.
Merlin: But, you know, but the Galen Kruger is a funny example because when that came, I remember first hearing one of those at Thoroughbred Music in, what, 85, 86?
Merlin: And there were like these little amps that could produce such a range in such a great amount.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's like the greatest amp in the world, but I think it didn't sell with the rock and roll guys because it just didn't look impressive enough.
Yeah.
John: You know, all of this knowledge that we have of 80s and 90s and in some cases 70s and 60s and 50s, guitar and bass and vocal and drum amplification and technology, all this knowledge is just useless now.
John: It feels so... Like, I...
John: An entire room in my brain is taken up with shelf after shelf after shelf, just like the Matrix, except instead of machine guns, it's just shelves and shelves of knowledge about our guitar arcana.
John: And I spent so much time thinking about and... And now it's lost like tears in rain.
John: Well, like, what am I supposed to do with it now?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I mean, there was a time when I... I usually played... Sometimes I play with one distortion pedal.
Merlin: For a while, I played with two distortion pedals.
Merlin: And for a time, I had three.
Merlin: Whoa!
Merlin: Well, I could tell you... Well, I had, like, the distortion... Okay, but I could explain why.
Merlin: Yes, of course.
Merlin: I could explain why.
Merlin: You were just about to explain why.
Merlin: Well, the fuzz box and the rat and the...
Merlin: cool little uh what was a little orange pedal where you could simulate feedback uh what was that called feedback simulator yeah but i mean it was it was a pretty cool distortion pedal and if you held it it made a really obnoxious fake uh feedback sound but they were all for different things in your hand no no it was a it was a it was a stomp box it was made by oh i see if you if you put your foot on it and held it down i think it was a roland pedal but the thing was but it was a pretty okay like it was probably third hand distortion box but
Merlin: but everybody i could explain circa 1998 like they were all for different reasons and you would use them differently together and like everybody who like cared about like having a guitar sound would go oh yeah i'm not just going to use always use the built-in distortion on the amp i mean that's kind of muddy and weird with this i could use this fuzz like this big was a big like russian was a big muff is that what it's called
Merlin: Probably a SovTech.
Merlin: It was a SovTech.
Merlin: Yeah, it was a big SovTech.
Merlin: That was great for a fuzzy sound.
Merlin: But if you wanted to just kick in for a slightly piercing guitar sound, you hit the other pedal, which would boost the signal a little bit, add a little bit of high.
Merlin: So, I mean, honestly, why do you need three distortion effects?
Merlin: You don't.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Unless you do.
Merlin: Yes, you do.
Merlin: Yes, and the order that you put them in.
Merlin: If you're going to have a phaser that you use once during the show, you put that last.
Merlin: You would not put that before the distortion.
Merlin: I'm not even good at this stuff, and I know this.
Merlin: I have no one to teach, and no one cares.
John: Yeah, you're describing a signal chain, and specifically you're describing the gain stages of a signal chain.
John: Ooh, I'm listening.
John: Tell me more.
John: I have spent a lot of time thinking about gain stages.
John: Because the thing is, I like to use a clean boost.
John: My sound is... This was one of the tragedies for me, was going out on tour, listening to a lot of bands, really envying guys that had a real fuzzy sound.
John: Not a surf had a very distorted, very saturated, we call it, sound.
John: But for the guitar parts that I played, my particular sound required a very clean, boosted sound.
Merlin: And for your style, for your songs, and for your guitar.
Merlin: You have a guitar that benefits from that sound.
John: That's right.
John: A very clean sound.
John: And if I got a really nice, very satisfying, saturated sound, then as soon as the band would start playing, it didn't have the articulation that I wanted.
John: I couldn't hear that pling, pling, pling that I liked.
John: Yeah.
John: And so my gain stages, I always had... Well, not always, but I tried to also have three.
John: But two of those were really kind of just a... They were just boosts, which is to say they... And so it was...
John: It was very important to know how you wanted to arrange those boosts.
John: Because if you boost the signal into something that has a ceiling, something that's compressed...
John: That boost just kind of goes in there and gets compressed by the compressor further down the line.
Merlin: It undoes what it's – I mean for a layperson or somebody who doesn't care, it's a little bit – think about like the order you do the dishes in.
Merlin: Like you don't dry the dishes before you clean them.
John: Come on.
Merlin: You couldn't have said it better.
Merlin: There's an order you do them in that's optimal, and you get good at that.
Merlin: And that's kind of what you're describing here is knowing what it is you're trying to accomplish at each stage of that and not having it work across purposes.
John: You don't dry the dishes before you wash them.
Merlin: That's pretty good, huh?
John: Right.
John: And the thing is, that goes all the way to the amp.
John: That goes all the way to the front end of the amp because some amps have a master volume, and the master volume is a kind of like limit, right?
John: on how much the head is going to light up, and some amps don't.
John: And so if you send a boost into an amp with a master volume, you're going to get a very different response from the head, from the tubes inside of your head than if you send that boost to an amp that doesn't have a master volume and is just sitting there waiting...
John: to get all this added hot signal sent to it.
John: And that's why I ended up, you know, I love, I've tried every kind of amp.
John: I can name every kind of nut.
John: But, you know, you end up going back to those Fender amps, just those simple Fender amps, because if you send something into the front of a Fender amp, it's going to, like, lift, and it's going to send all this beautiful, shiny.
Merlin: It's going to literally amplify the sound.
John: That's right.
John: And it will accept... A Fender amplifier will accept additional...
John: power coming into the into the channel like it will it just embraces all this hotted up electricity and it's just going to send that right back to you in the form of rock and roll fenders a gracious host exactly so so much time thinking about this and i and all that time and to people who are not in bands and who have probably already turned off this program
John: You know, what you end up doing is you're sitting cross-legged on the floor on a section of dirty carpet in your band's rehearsal studio while no one else is there.
John: And you are chaining together all your effects pedals and switching them around and putting this one in front of that one and that one in front of this one and imagining if you only had one additional pedal, how different it would be, how everyone would finally understand what you were trying to say with your guitar instrument.
Yeah.
John: I mean, hours and hours and hours in these darkened, musty rooms, figuring out this stuff, which now...
John: I feel like I should be sitting in front of a room of 20-year-olds, all sitting cross-legged on the floor, all trying to hook up their boxes, and I would be pacing around the front of the room saying, now listen, you have to remember, if you send a stereo signal into a mono input, you're going to get a summing, and that's going to create a... You're going to lose a lot of the... And they would all be wrapped.
John: They're probably taking notes.
John: I bet they have a notebook.
Yeah.
John: They have a notebook.
John: They're stopping what they're doing right there and like, oh my God, was I about to do that?
John: And it's just like, okay, here's what we need to do.
John: I think the last thing, so do you have a compressor pedal in your chain?
John: This is a big question.
John: It's a subtle effect, but I ended up using the compressor pedal a lot.
Merlin: At the end?
John: or the end of my career i'm sorry i mean at the where do you put it in your uh oh no you don't i don't think you want to put it toward the yeah i don't think you want to put a compressed sound going through the distortion and uh yeah you want it you want some compression in there because what is distortion merlin if not compression right what is distortion if not compression or what does compression produce if not distortion
John: But you don't want that, you know, you put that at the end of your signal chain and all you're doing is you just... Squeezing it through a toilet paper tube.
John: Thank you.
John: So, I have this knowledge.
John: I feel like a Saturn V engineer who is wandering around NASA headquarters during the space shuttle era trying to talk to people about the Saturn.
John: And no one cares anymore.
John: They're like, that's great, you got us to the moon, Gramps.
John: But you know what?
John: Now we're up here with a multicultural cast of astronauts.
John: No more of the short-sleeved white shirts.
John: Nope.
John: Take your pocket protector out and go gently into this good night because we don't give a shit anymore about your dumb guitar knowledge.
John: Nice pivot.
John: You know, and you think about it.
John: It was one of those things that from 1977 to 1997...
John: We were building on a body of knowledge and that entire time it seemed like this will always be relevant.
John: That's the amazing thing about reaching middle age.
John: You see like, wow, we had 20 years there where it never seemed like that knowledge was going to stop being useful.
John: It seemed like you were building on it.
John: And I was not alone.
John: Tens and tens of thousands of people were also building up tremendous, like, guitar knowledge.
Merlin: It goes for so many technologies, though, because, I mean, to a large extent, it's also really true for computers.
Merlin: Like, of the corpus of data and pseudodata about using Macs in particular that I have in my head, the end of that also kind of represents shh.
Merlin: I would say the mid to late 90s is when I feel like I didn't know the most technically specifically down to the metal about those computers, but I knew a lot about making them work better or what software to use to make this thing happen.
Merlin: I knew a lot of that stuff, and that's all tears and rain.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know, by and large, there's all kinds of things where you could be a wizard by knowing, obviously start with something like turn it off and on, but then you also get to something like, oh, you know, rebuild your desktop on the Mac or throw out your TCP IP prefs, you know, out of the system folder.
Merlin: There were all these little things where like, there was all these little wizard things where you had this array of stuff.
Merlin: I think that's true for guitar stuff.
Merlin: I think it's true for, certainly got to be true for stereo equipment.
Merlin: I mean, how many people even like own an according to Hoyle stereo anymore?
John: I remember the first time you told me,
John: To turn my computer off and then back on again.
Merlin: You do?
John: Yeah.
John: Because I was like, well, what's that going to do?
John: And you were like, listen, trust me on this.
John: Sometimes it works miracles.
John: And I was like, okay, I'll turn your computer off.
John: Whatever you say, Berniak.
John: And then it was like, beep.
John: Okay, here it comes.
John: Coming back on.
John: And then it worked.
John: And it was like, what happened, Merlin?
John: How did you know that that was going to work?
John: And you had this long explanation about like, well, you know, sometimes they just need to rest.
Merlin: Sometimes the computer gets confused.
John: Yeah, and it just needs to reestablish all the...
John: All the phone calls.
Merlin: Estabish all the phone calls.
Merlin: Rewire all of the electrodes.
John: That's right.
John: It needs to just rewrite the encryption.
John: It needs to... Get a hack into the mainframe.
John: It needs to repair those permissions.
John: It needs to un-jack and re-jack the matrix.
John: And so, just do it.
John: And I was like...
John: And that became, wow, go-to problem solver kit.
John: First thing, first tool in the toolbox, turn the computer off.
Merlin: That's humbling.
Merlin: It's very humbling.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I kind of feel like turning this computer off right now just to see what would happen.
John: It hasn't been off in weeks.
John: Oh, really?
John: That's nice to hear.
John: Yeah, I decided, I don't know, a year or two ago that I just was going to stop turning my computer off.
John: I was just going to put it to sleep.
Merlin: That's fine.
John: And it seems to be fine.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I feel like, you know, people like I think in the Unix community have always had a certain point of pride about like what their uptime is.
Merlin: Like I haven't had to restart my computer in six months or whatever.
Merlin: But like even with my phone, like now that I've got phones that have Touch ID and stuff like that, I don't like restarting the phone.
Merlin: There are times where I go, ugh.
Merlin: This thing's not working.
Merlin: My kid's game is not working.
Merlin: And I know, I know, I'm Merlin man.
Merlin: I'm the go-to gizmo guy.
Merlin: Like I know that if I hard reset this phone, if I hold down the home key and the sleep button and make it restart, like it will probably be fine.
Merlin: But then I've got to reenter password sometime.
Merlin: Did you literally restart your computer?
John: What happened?
John: While restarting, all of a sudden, your voice went all robot, and then it all went to shit.
John: And I felt like it was a clear case of the ghost in the machine hearing us and feeling like it was going to show us exactly how to repair some permissions.
Yeah.
John: It just shit the bed.
Merlin: Have you tried running the wireless diagnostic?
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John: Oh, the wireless setup assistant.
John: Yes.
John: He comes in a little tuxedo holding a tray, and he says, is your modem on?
John: Well, I can't help you.
John: Thanks for trying.
Merlin: Boop.
Merlin: Your frustration with the wireless connectivity troubleshooter is one of the delights of my life.
John: It makes me so mad.
John: I don't see how anyone could defend it.
John: If I worked at...
John: Apple, whatever job I had at Apple, I would immediately request a transfer into the diagnostic department.
Merlin: You call a meeting, everybody in here, everybody into the conference room, please.
Merlin: Let's go.
John: So things are going to change around here.
Merlin: I would say, what exactly do you think your product does?
Merlin: Oh, you'd have a John Roderick as Steve Jobs moment where you would say, what is your job here?
Merlin: What is this thing supposed to do?
Merlin: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: And now what does it do?
John: What is it supposed to do?
John: What do you imagine people turn to your product to do?
Merlin: Well, I think it's to help people diagnose whether their wireless is working properly.
John: Oh, I just thought that it was... And I would be like, fired, fired, fired!
John: I could go out into the street and get 25 people, random people walking around a mall, and they would have a better understanding of how to build a diagnostic device.
John: system than you dandelings who have been working here since the dawn of time.
John: I feel like it's probably the last refuge of scoundrels at Apple.
John: All the guys that have been there since the 80s, they end up at diagnostics because it still works exactly like the computer.
John: It still works like my Mac Classic.
John: Just like, oh, well, boy, I'm having some problems.
John: I don't know what the problem is.
John: Let's go to, oh, diagnostic.
John: That seems like that word means figure out problem.
Merlin: For folks who are just coming out on this right now, it seems like in summary, what happens with you is you say something's not working, so you go to the diagnostic tool, and then the result of the diagnostic tool is that what you just checked is not working.
Merlin: That's right.
John: It is always the same, which is here are the six steps we understand, which...
John: All involve turning something off and on.
John: And when that inevitably does not solve the problem...
John: There's no further information.
John: It's impossible to glean anything from this tool.
John: It doesn't say anything specific, although it knows more.
John: That's what's frustrating.
John: The diagnostic tool has to know more than it is revealing.
John: And so you wonder, whose side are you on diagnostic tool?
John: Do you work for me?
John: Do you live in my computer?
John: Are you my friend?
John: Do you belong to me?
John: Are you my advocate here?
John: Or are you collecting information?
John: which you feel like I'm either not ready to hear, not able to understand, or are you collecting information on behalf of someone else?
John: And you're just a functionary in a train station on the Slovakian border who has one stamp
John: And if you cannot put the stamp in the passport, then there's no further conversation to be had.
Merlin: It's almost as though you have a technology, an extremely sophisticated technology for finding your lost car keys.
Merlin: But in order to use it, you have to have your car keys in your hand.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It works flawlessly as long as you have the key in your hand.
John: That's right.
Merlin: As long as it's not actually lost, it works fine.
Merlin: As long as you say, what do I do?
John: Oh, I had them here the whole time.
John: Thank you, diagnostic tool.
John: But if it's like, golly, I'd really like to figure out what could possibly be wrong.
John: Because this is what's amazing to me.
John: There can't really be that many things wrong.
John: Like the computer is never going to come to you and say, there's too much salt.
John: In the water.
John: Or the computer's never going to come to you and say...
John: no one ever loved you as a child.
John: Like, the computer is only going to say a few things in addition to the things it says, right?
John: It's going to say, like, here's the amount of signal I'm getting from your modem, and here are the type of signals that I like to get, and here are the ones I don't.
John: This is what this signal is telling me.
John: But, you know, what you're doing is you're sitting in a room, you're looking over at your...
John: wireless thing which is which again it only has five lights and those lights are blinking and so so that machine to the best of its ability is telling you i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine and then the computer is sitting right i mean within within like it could it could reach out and touch the other thing
John: And it's telling you, like, can't help you.
John: Don't know.
John: Don't know.
John: Don't know.
John: And somewhere between those two, there's more information available.
John: And I feel like it may be a situation where I need a dongle that has some additional lights and the dongle is going to...
Merlin: Maybe some kind of a dashboard.
Merlin: Maybe – see, it seems to me like you want something that goes deeper into the human issues.
Merlin: That it would be nice if – like let's take an obvious one.
Merlin: Results of the diagnostic, Comcast sucks.
Merlin: Like if it could say to you, for example, like, oh, I went and I checked on the internet and I found out that there's an outage in your area.
Merlin: Or maybe – I know this is all just blue sky solutioneering.
Merlin: What if it said something like you just need a new cable for this?
John: There you go.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Or you forgot to turn off Dropbox, and that's taking all of your bandwidth.
John: Taking all your bandwidth.
John: Precisely.
Merlin: Bandwidth is a word that a diagnostic could use.
John: These are simple.
John: This is a simple additional level of diagnostics.
John: Like I remember back in the early days of the long winters when Wi-Fi was still very much an exotic and wonderful thing.
Merlin: Where you needed a special card that you jam into the side of your computer.
John: Right.
John: Yes, Eric Corson, bass player of The Long Winters and former employee of the Apple Store.
John: I'm sorry, the Mac Store.
John: Former employee of the Mac Store.
Merlin: Oh, he worked for an off-brand, a third-party place?
John: He worked for a third-party Apple distributor.
John: Eric had a Wi-Fi card antenna thing, but he also had some kind of program.
John: which I never took the time to develop an understanding of.
John: Didn't seem important at the time.
John: And we would drive around in the van in the middle of the night because we would invariably be showing up in some town in the middle of the night.
John: And he would have his computer in his lap and his little antenna, and we'd be seeking Wi-Fi signal.
Merlin: I think what you're looking for here is what's called a Wi-Fi sniffer.
Merlin: It was a sniffer!
Merlin: A sniffer.
Merlin: It's putting its little electronic nose up in the air and saying, is there Wi-Fi?
Merlin: Can I sniff it?
John: That's right.
John: He was sniffing, and we were on the hoof.
John: driving slowly, van in gear just idling through these towns.
John: I remember one night in... That's not creepy.
John: A van going very slowly by your house while a Slender Man is hunched over his computer and looking at your windows.
John: We were in Des Moines one night.
John: And Des Moines is a town, I don't know the last time you were there, but Des Moines is a town that really rolls up the sidewalks after dark.
John: And so it's kind of a big town.
John: But at night, at least in the early 2000s still, at night, there is nothing going on.
John: It's just big open streets of a western town and not a car in any direction.
John: And we're driving through this town and Eric's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: I'm getting something.
John: I mean, it felt like we were ghost hunters.
John: And then, you know, but his little sniffer...
John: had more information about the signals he was getting, and it was more useful information than any sort of diagnostic tool on any computer I've ever had.
John: He was just like, turn right, turn right!
John: And I don't know whether he was pretending, whether he was faking, and I was gullible and on the hook.
John: Like a storm-chasing crew.
John: Yeah.
John: But we would eventually pull up in front of some strange little motel that would have like really hot Wi-Fi signal or a Panera Bread in a strip mall somewhere that was closed but was still broadcasting unpassword protected Wi-Fi.
John: And we would sit there in the parking lot.
John: All of us crouched over our old laptops.
John: Wi-Fi-ing.
John: Oh, those were thrilling times.
John: And that's what I want.
John: I want my diagnostic program on my computer to be a kind of sniffer.
John: That's sniffing out problems.
John: That's right.
John: And saying like, you know what the problem is here?
John: The problem is...
John: injustice.
Merlin: Or the problem is you didn't want it enough.
Merlin: Or shouldn't you be doing something else?
Merlin: Something extremely specific that goes way beyond just bits and bytes.
John: Yeah, right.
John: All the diagnostic, the only solutions it offers you are turn your modem on and off, turn your computer on and off.
John: Is there a third option?
John: No, I think that's it.
John: I mean, it asks these questions like, is your computer plugged in?
Merlin: I hear you asking whether this application might actually be a prank.
John: I do feel like it's a prank because there's got to be, I'm thinking of one infinite loop now.
John: No, I'm thinking of one Cupertino Plaza.
John: That's where they send the people that aren't one infinite loop anymore.
John: Yeah.
John: One Cupertino Plaza, which is kind of a 60s style police headquarters.
John: They just call it the Brown Building.
John: And upstairs on the 14th floor, there has got to be a section where the frosted front glass door says, you know, lost and found property section diagnostics.
John: And you go through that door and there's a big long desk and it's like a scene out of the movie Brazil.
John: But there have got to be 20 people working there, right?
John: 20 people, let's say, working in that section.
John: It's not just one, you know, like harried person in a green visor.
John: It's a team, and they have done nothing.
John: They have done nothing.
John: They are sucking off the teat of that Apple largesse, and they... They're sucking off a teat of largesse.
John: Yeah, and no one else... Apparently, no one in that company ever uses that because they know... The last time they tried to use it was 1998.
John: It didn't do anything, and so they, unlike me, never tried again.
John: They don't keep going back...
John: trying to get a different result out of the same dumb tool.
Merlin: Maybe they console themselves by reading your bug reports and reading the log files about how frustrated you are.
John: Here's the thing.
John: I never submit a bug report.
John: I never submit a bug report because that's how they get their hooks in you.
John: That's how the NSA figures out that you're a complainer.
John: And they put you in a special file.
John: You get pegged as a bellyacher?
John: You're a bellyacher.
John: You're sending these bug reports, and they're like, we got a live one over here.
John: And there are plenty of people out there who are submitting informed bug reports.
John: But my bug reports would all be, what the fuck is wrong with your stupid-ass company?
John: And I'd get on some list.
John: My mom's been saying this to me my whole life.
John: Don't get on a list.
John: Yeah, you don't want to be on a list.
John: Don't get on a list of bellyachers.
Merlin: You think there's lists of bellyachers?
John: I personally don't.
John: My mom subscribes to a worldview where there are lists of belly acres.
Merlin: Oh, so I understand.
Merlin: So it could be something where you call into Comcast and say the diagnostic says nothing's broken.
Merlin: What's going on with your internet setup?
Merlin: And suddenly your account is flagged.
Merlin: You're a belly acre.
John: Yeah, and then from then on, every time you call to complain, they route your call through some special bank of operators who are there to deal with problem customers.
John: Now, my mom's worldview is a little bit more paranoid, and she believes that there's some list at 911 or the police department where they're like, we don't send cars out to them.
John: They're crazy.
John: Oh.
John: But I know enough people in the police department and with the EMTs where they do, the EMTs do say, we go to that person all the time.
John: They are.
John: I just restarted my computer.
John: There's nothing open.
John: Not even Safari is open.
John: I'm not even looking at pictures of old cars.
John: Google Drive has been trying to get me to do something.
John: I don't know what.
John: Sign back into Google Drive.
John: That's probably not it.
John: Apple Drive, whatever their Apple Drive has been for the last two months.
John: Every time I go into my Apple Mail on my phone.
John: Let's see what the thing pops up here.
John: And it says, I go to reply to somebody's email.
John: And then it says, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: Sign into iCloud.
John: The Apple ID password.
John: This is on your phone.
John: On my phone.
John: And at some point, I don't know how I got signed out of iCloud.
John: I think maybe I changed.
John: I don't know.
John: I changed something.
Merlin: Sometimes there's a bug that went around recently where sometimes you have to sign in three times.
John: Right.
Merlin: And at a certain point, the first...
John: First time it threw that flag up, I tried to sign into it and nothing happened.
John: And maybe I tried a second time and nothing happened.
John: And so I just closed the window and realized that I could continue to send email.
John: I didn't have to be signed into iCloud to do any things that my phone wants to do.
John: And so it became another thing that I just ignore.
John: And it throws up that thing, sign in to iCloud, and I go close, and then I send.
John: It's just one more step, one more vaguely irritating step.
John: And I don't know what's happening, whether that means that none of my stuff is being backed up to the cloud.
Merlin: Your connection right now is really, really bad.
Merlin: I think you might be on a bellyacre list.
John: Do you think that I should restart my modem?
John: This is so bitterly ironic.
John: Should I open up the window of my office and shout, I'm mad as hell!
Merlin: And I don't want to take it anymore!
Merlin: All right, let's disconnect again and see if we can fix it.
Merlin: I'm going to restart my modem.
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Merlin: I've restarted everything.
Merlin: You sound pretty good.
John: Did it?
John: I mean, I checked my diagnostic tool, and it said restart your modem, restart your computer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, you know, we'll give it a spin.
Merlin: Welcome back, everybody.
Merlin: It's great to be here.
Merlin: John has run the diagnostic.
Merlin: I can't prove this, and I'm going to have to do some experimenting to prove this, but I'm pretty sure I've been banned by a Thai restaurant.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I think I'm on their bellyache list.
John: How?
Merlin: So walk me through it.
Merlin: Okay, I'll give you the facts and evidence.
Merlin: Facts and evidence are that there is a restaurant, so we use this app, Eat24.
Merlin: It's like one of those online delivery apps, which, as it turns out, most restaurants hate because it's a real pain in the butt for them.
Merlin: If you have a restaurant at this point, you have to have five iPads running all the time to see all the orders coming in.
Merlin: They hate it.
Merlin: They're like, please just call us.
Merlin: Please just call us.
Merlin: But I've been using this place.
Merlin: It was really easy, and it makes it easy to, like, reorder what you've gotten before.
Merlin: So you just say, like, reorder what I got next time.
Merlin: It's this Thai place that we really like.
Merlin: I mean, like, you know, the food is really good.
Merlin: The delivery is pretty spotty, but okay.
Merlin: And we used to order from them, like, constantly, like a lot, like, you know, sometimes once a week.
Merlin: And, you know, like I say, the service and delivery was spotty.
Merlin: So I had a little bit of a bee in my bonnet.
Merlin: So what about the service was spotty?
Merlin: sometimes they didn't come sometimes sometimes have you ever had an experience with delivery or even at a restaurant let's let's let's make it easy like let's say you go to a restaurant and it's not the greatest service in the world but the food's pretty good and you say hey you know we ordered you know 25 minutes ago right is how's everything going and like you know it'll be out in a few minutes how you doing back there and then it's three hours later and they're still saying like oh it'll be out in a few minutes
Merlin: You know what I mean.
Merlin: But the thing where we're like, just actually just give me the report.
Merlin: Like if dinner's not going to happen tonight, just tell me and we'll have something else.
Merlin: Right.
John: And it's nice, you know, the difference between a place that's like, you know, here's an appetizer.
John: Sorry for the problem.
John: Or like your coffee's on me even is a small thing.
John: But those places that come...
John: that, you know, that bring the thing like an hour later and it's cold and it's got a booger on it.
John: Yep.
John: And then they're just like charge you the full price.
Merlin: It's not really so far off from a kind of United Airlines experience of like, well, you know, if the plane's going to be delayed, I had this coming, actually heading out to Portland on my last flight where it's like there was something wrong.
Merlin: I told you the story.
Merlin: It's really a boring story.
Merlin: But basically it's one of those things where you're like, look, if it's going to be six hours, tell me.
Merlin: If it's going to be canceled, can you just tell me?
Merlin: Like, just tell me if it's canceled.
Merlin: That's okay.
Merlin: But they don't want to cancel the flight.
Merlin: In this case, they don't want to cancel the order.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm certain everybody's had experiences like this.
Merlin: So in the case of this one place, I guess I don't even remember the details.
Merlin: It's kind of foggy.
Merlin: All I know is they really ate the booger one night, like big time.
Merlin: They screwed up the order.
Merlin: They weren't responding.
Merlin: Maybe they did that thing where they took it to the street instead of the avenue.
Merlin: That happens all the time.
Merlin: But it was a total clusterfuck.
Merlin: And I called and I was like, what is going on?
Merlin: I was really mad.
Merlin: It's Friday night and we're watching TV.
Merlin: It's like it's eating night, right?
Merlin: It's time to eat.
Merlin: This is the one night we eat.
Merlin: This is the night we eat.
Merlin: We have television and there's like $40 worth of Thai food somewhere, presumably.
Merlin: And I have to say, I am not so much this guy anymore, but I can still kind of sometimes be this guy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If I'm super mad and I got a bunch of hard-earned money going into Thai food that might be somewhere, that makes me frustrated at a certain point, especially when I feel like I'm not getting the whole story.
John: Oh, now, wait a minute.
John: And this is through an app, right?
John: So the money's already gone.
Merlin: You've burned the money.
Merlin: remember there's been so many problems with this place there's things like we didn't have what you wanted and you didn't call us to say you wanted to substitute the computer went down and we had no way to call you there's all these different things that happen you know a lot of it's probably the fault of these middle persons so usually you deal with the middle persons yeah you're in a messaging window talking to them long story short all you need to know for this story is i'm sure i was at least half a dick with them but they did really screw up
Merlin: And they were – and anyway, it was just – everything about the experience was really poor and they handled it badly and to some extent probably I handled it badly.
Merlin: I was not as kind as I can be.
Merlin: Yes, you can be very kind.
Merlin: I'm actually – you've seen me.
Merlin: I'm a polite and kind person.
Merlin: You're very kind and you're very polite.
Merlin: Especially with strangers.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: My friends I got no time for.
Merlin: But so flash forward, I think we might have ordered.
Merlin: I feel like we may be ordered again, but all I know is another Friday night comes along and we're like, oh, well, let's give it a throw again.
Merlin: We get the order.
Merlin: We say, repeat this order.
Merlin: Everything's going fine until I get to the checkout and it says, we can't deliver to this address.
Merlin: The app tells me that.
Merlin: The app tells me that.
Merlin: Can't deliver to this address.
Merlin: So maybe they change their coverage area.
Merlin: I'm thinking I might try ordering today even from... Have it delivered to my office and see what happens.
Merlin: See who's so fucking smart.
Merlin: I have a feeling I got put on a list as a bellyacre.
Merlin: I think it's ramifications.
John: You got put on a bellyacre list and now they don't deliver to your zone.
John: I think I've been de-zoned.
John: I've been redlined.
John: Wow.
John: So...
John: Do you use the Uber service?
John: Yes.
John: And as I understand it now, from following along the Twitter machine... Yep.
John: There's two reviews going on.
John: Uber rates you.
Merlin: You rate Uber, Uber rates you.
John: Okay.
John: Now, how is your rating as a customer?
Merlin: I'm so embarrassed by every aspect of this story.
Merlin: I'll avoid the apologetics and shame.
Merlin: I think Uber's a terrible company.
Merlin: Unfortunately, I've had maybe two cabs ever come to my house because of where I live.
Merlin: So I end up using Uber.
Merlin: Or in the case of being in Portland, it was just the super easiest way and I feel like a bad person.
Merlin: Let's save that for another episode.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, here's my problem, and I've talked about this other places, but if I'm rating my own music, if I'm rating anything, I treat five stars like a serious thing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You're not going to give five stars to just any old – Oh, my God.
Merlin: Well, no, here's the thing, and I've had to really think about this because I think it should be like a bell curve.
Merlin: I think most of the reviews for stuff is probably going to be a three.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: So here's my rating in the past, and I'm going somewhere with this.
Merlin: In the past, my feeling has been if everything went as well as could be expected, plus or minus 20 percent, well, plus or minus 10 percent, I'll give four stars.
Merlin: If everything went as well as could be expected, if they just did their job, it's a three-star because it's average.
Merlin: It's a B minus.
Merlin: You succeeded at not setting the house on fire.
Merlin: Three stars.
Merlin: Three.
Merlin: Be happy with three.
Merlin: And then I found out that if you're an Uber driver and your rating consistently drops below 4.7, you get fired.
John: You go right into the shipping container?
John: Yep.
John: And then they hit you with rubber hoses and pour cold water on you.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And they send you a bill for it.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: 4.7.
Merlin: 4.7 is a lot of stars.
Merlin: So you know what I do now?
Merlin: And also, yes, because I now know they review me, I just give everybody five stars.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it tears my heart apart.
Merlin: Yeah, it feels so wrong.
Merlin: But I know they're rating me.
Merlin: I know whatever.
Merlin: It's a dumb company.
Merlin: It's just it's it's a mess inside of a mess.
John: So what do you do?
John: Well, see, I don't use Uber.
John: I have used it a couple of times.
John: I've spent more time in Ubers that were called by John Hodgman.
John: than I have spent in Ubers called by anyone else.
John: Because Hodgman loves it, or at least he did.
John: I don't know what his feelings about the politics are.
John: But early on, he was an early adopter.
John: And, you know, he does that thing where he's like, oh, we need a car.
John: And he, you know, bleep, bleep, bleep.
John: And then all of a sudden a stretch limo pulls up.
John: And you're like, what the fuck is this?
John: And he's like, I don't know.
John: It was the closest one.
John: You're like, wow, you get in these things, stretch limo?
John: Come on.
John: So, you know, he's living high on the hog.
John: I spent a lot of time in these things, but I have never raided anyone.
John: And as far as I know, maybe there's a rating of me.
Merlin: Oh, I think I've never asked because I kind of don't want to know.
John: So I do not tip additionally because I feel like that is against the principle.
John: Oh, God, no.
John: And of course, I'm very chatty because I want to know all about everybody.
John: I'm one of those people that starts talking to the cab driver right away.
John: And if they indicate to me that they don't want to talk, then that's fine.
John: But like...
John: I want to hear their life story because it's always interesting.
John: And I've told you, right, that I had a cab driver in Washington, D.C.
John: one time say to me, like, you know, here's the thing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: He wants to hear what your story is.
John: Yeah.
John: He's like, I tell my story 25 times a day.
John: I'm like Eritrean or something.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: He was from Eritrea and he's like, I want to hear your story.
John: That's what's interesting to me because, you know, like that's how I learn.
John: And my customers are interesting.
John: I don't want to just tell my dumb story over and over.
John: And I was like, oh, huh.
John: That's yes.
John: All right.
John: I'm not doing you a favor by asking you to tell me your story.
John: I should get in the cab, sit down and say, let me tell you about my day.
John: And that would be interesting to us both.
Merlin: I just feel like there's something here that's not the opposite of an eel, but it's a complement to the problem of the eels.
Merlin: Do you use eBay?
Merlin: I used eBay once.
Merlin: And it was in the 90s.
John: I screwed up.
John: I made it all the way to 2013 without ever having used eBay.
John: And in the early 2000s, my girlfriend at the time...
John: would was pretty big on ebay she was kind of a big deal and we would go to thrift stores and she would buy all these things that were inexplicable to me like air jordan's you know she would find all this stuff that was not for her
John: And I was never a thrift store person that went looking for stuff not for me, right?
John: I would find really cool stuff, but if it didn't fit me, if I didn't want it, I would just throw it back into the pond.
John: But she would see some old Nikes and be like, oh.
John: Oh, as in I could sell those.
John: And I would go, why are you buying those?
John: And she's like, never you mind.
John: Hmm.
John: And then she would put them up on eBay and sometimes sell them for a ton of money because you could still find – Because somebody out there is going to want them.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And you can still find really – and I think you still can if you're that type of person.
John: But it used to be –
John: early days of ebay you could still find incredible stuff just lying around and sell it to people for hundreds and hundreds of dollars so she had this whole sideline going and her nature was to be a little bit secretive from me so she i was all you know i'd look over her shoulder and be like what are you selling those on ebay and she's like yeah never you mind like don't don't worry about it i've
John: That's my business.
John: That's not for you.
John: But then in about 2003 or 2004, I remember having one of those hilarious conversations that I reflect on now where she's like, oh, eBay used to be great, but it's shit now.
John: I don't even want to be on there.
John: I don't even want to do it anymore.
John: Sucks.
John: And not having ever been on there at the time, I was like, wow, too bad.
John: I missed the time when eBay was great.
John: And now it's 2004 and eBay sucks.
John: And so I never learned anything about it until 2013.
John: And I decide, I'm going to figure out eBay.
John: And I go on there.
John: I'm like, oh, look, you could get a whole set of wrenches here.
John: It's only, like, this is 10% less than wrenches at a store.
John: And these are old.
Merlin: But it's also a game.
Merlin: It's a game.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, no, I don't mean that in a pejorative.
Merlin: I mean, in the sense that, like, the gaming aspect of eBay must be part of what makes it addictive.
John: Well, and it's part of what makes it suck, too.
John: But there's a whole...
John: So on Craigslist, I'm sure you know about the Craigslist lectures that people have in their item, you know, where they're like, for sale, one iPhone.
John: No flakes, no, you know, I will sell this only to a person with high moral integrity who comes directly to my house and stands there contrite with hat in hand and asks me for permission and calls me sir.
John: And I will not, I do not support, do not call this number with any solicitations.
John: You know, like all these guys who are just...
John: who are taking out their anger and frustration in their Craigslist ad, trying to preempt
John: what they imagine is a world of scammers and lowlifes and doorbell ringers.
Merlin: The only effective way to keep those people away is to offer a stern lecture ahead of time.
John: Do not call this number if you have not have prior military service and proven your love of America.
John: And it's just like, fuck you guys.
John: Like,
John: Eat shit.
John: I want to call this number and hang up now.
John: I wanted to ring and dash or whatever.
John: Like, I want to put a burning bag of dog shit on your doorstep, and it's not even Halloween.
Right.
John: But on eBay, there's this subclass.
John: There are plenty of people on eBay who have similar lectures, but there's this subclass of ad that extremely pedantically, I would say even eBay-splaining is the term, explains that anything less than a five-star rating is
John: you might as well be pissing on their face.
John: And so if you cannot give them a five-star rating, then say nothing.
John: But they do not want your four-star rating.
John: They do not want your third-star rating.
John: If you give them four stars, four of a possible five,
John: It is tantamount to a scarlet letter.
John: It's tantamount to putting them in the public's docks.
Merlin: And it makes you sort of a, to use a disabused term, it makes you a little bit of a raiding prick tease.
Merlin: It's like you took the time to do it, but you didn't do what you were supposed to do with it.
Merlin: You didn't give them the five stars that you're supposed to give like a gentleman.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: So like, yeah, exactly.
John: And I know there are, I'm sure the exact same guys that are writing those Craigslist ads are also out there giving three-star ratings to people.
Merlin: That is perceived.
Merlin: You know what that is?
Merlin: That's also similar to like the way I use periods in texting and it makes me seem mean.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Instead of exclamation points.
Merlin: I read about this on the internet that I'm not supposed to use punctuation anymore because it makes me sound angry.
Merlin: Same here.
Merlin: You're doing the right thing, which is saying, you know what?
Merlin: It was fine.
Merlin: It arrived fine.
Merlin: The packaging was fine.
Merlin: Everything was fine.
Merlin: It could have been better.
Merlin: It could have been worse.
Merlin: It was fine.
John: I get stuff in the mail, and the only way you could describe it is fine.
John: That's fine.
Merlin: There's really only three reviews on the contemporary internet.
Merlin: It's either five stars, one star, or null.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So either you give it the full five stars, you give it one star because you're mad, or there's nothing to be said.
Merlin: Right.
John: And that offends me because I have in my soul a full panoply of star ratings.
Merlin: And give me more than one vector, more than one aspect.
Merlin: Five stars of what?
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Like this kid in the radio that I had a ride on the Uber the other day, and the kid was playing super loud rap music.
Merlin: He had all the windows rolled down.
Merlin: He took a crazy route.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: I gave him five stars.
John: Oh, he deserved two stars.
John: Two stars.
John: I think this is the Facebook thumbs down problem, right?
John: Facebook finally needed a thumbs down because there's just too much desire to thumbs down stuff.
John: And so I still haven't seen it.
John: I haven't seen the thumbs down.
John: I don't know if they've rolled it out yet or if it's just – I haven't even looked at Facebook.
Merlin: I deactivated my account.
Merlin: I haven't looked at it in years.
Merlin: But I'm going to just go ahead and arbitrarily predict that this will be the thing we remember as the end of Facebook.
Merlin: I think you may be right because –
Merlin: It's a capitulation to something that's... I think there's a whole lot of grenades rolling around on the floor at Facebook that we're not going to hear about for a while.
Merlin: I think a lot of the real name stuff is super fucked up and bugs me a lot.
Merlin: But anyway, I don't go to the site, but I'm just telling you, as soon as I heard about the thumbs down, I was like, you're going to make it a little bit too real.
John: Yep, it's going to get end timesy out there.
John: But here's my question to you.
John: Now, this has always been the big question on Facebook for me.
John: Somebody's post...
John: Somebody you know, but not well, and their post is, my mom died today.
John: Oh, do you star it?
John: Do you give that a thumbs up?
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: But the Twitter version of that, where somebody's dog died, do you star it?
John: Do you star that?
Merlin: Or do you send a response to somebody I've never actually met?
Merlin: I'm sorry for anybody whose dog died.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That's the worst.
Merlin: But I don't know them personally.
Merlin: I didn't even know they had a dog.
Merlin: But having your dog die sucks.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So do I send a response and get into a conversation about a dead dog?
Merlin: If I star it, that seems a little weird.
John: Well, but so here's the additional complication.
John: You're on Facebook.
John: My mom died today.
John: And then you look, and it has 385 faves.
John: So now you know.
John: If you do friend it or if you do smiley face it,
John: You're in good company, right?
John: 385 other people have felt like that was the only appropriate response.
Merlin: It's a little bit like a high five or a hug.
Merlin: It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.
John: That's right.
John: And since I'm not even sure if you can still poke somebody on Facebook, and I shouldn't be asking you.
Merlin: I know at a time you could get something called super poke.
Ha ha!
Merlin: There was poke, and sometimes somebody poked me, and I'd poke them back.
Merlin: I didn't understand why we were poking each other.
Merlin: But then I saw there's a thing you could get from their little download dingus store.
Merlin: Yeah, from the store.
Merlin: You could buy people fucking popcorn, and you could get something called super poke.
Merlin: Super poke.
John: Well, and this is the thing.
John: If I had a fucking dollar for every super poke I've given, you know what I'm saying?
John: How much would you have?
John: I would be a professional gigolo instead of a sort of a hobbyist.
Yeah.
John: But my question is, like, you can't poke somebody when their mom died, or I guess I presume that that's one possible response.
Merlin: It seems a little glib.
John: But now, if Facebook has thumbs down options...
John: When somebody's mom dies, do you thumbs down it like that?
Merlin: So like if somebody says, hey, my mom died and somebody goes, boo.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Like, OK, so are you are you booing the news and saying that sucks?
Merlin: Are you saying your mom was kind of a dick to begin with?
Merlin: Or on a more like, I don't know, Roland Barthes level, are you like criticizing the fact that they're talking about it on fucking Facebook?
John: Exactly.
John: Are you thumbs downing the whole idea of like this conversation?
John: Like, this fucking sucks.
John: Like, don't clog my feed with your fucking sorrow.
John: So on YouTube, right, where there was always a thumbs up and a thumbs down, it was established pretty early on.
John: You could put a video of Thomas Jefferson himself reading the preamble to the Constitution, and there would be 17 people that thumbs-downed it.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
Merlin: And then a huge number of people remarking on those people.
Merlin: Yeah, like, who would thumbs-down this?
John: 17 people have no heart.
John: Have no heart, right?
John: But that's at least that's baked into that dumb interface.
John: And the fact is, you know, we have like the ability to communicate now in real time, three-dimensional augmented reality.
John: We do?
John: Yeah.
John: I do, because I'm hooked in with the special class.
John: Oh, we almost do, right?
John: You could almost have, I could appear on your desk and say, Merlin 1 Kenobi, help me, you're my only hope.
John: And then I would go, and you'd be like, wow, we're there.
Merlin: We are there.
John: It's, you know, a long time ago now, in a galaxy far away, except it's now and it's here.
John: And yet, we are still communicating with, like, semaphores, basically.
John: And we only have two semaphores.
John: A giant up thumb and now a giant down thumb.
John: Maybe we need some more fingers.
John: I feel like you experienced this with your period, right?
John: There has never been, like...
John: We have all this emotional top end to our punctuation, exclamation point, hyphens.
John: But there's this artificial floor of the period.
John: There's no punctuation that goes below a period.
John: So the period has become the default lowest rating.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's such a shame because when I'm writing something informally, like right now just typing down little notes and title things and where the Skype call died, I don't feel the need to put a period at the end of every line.
Merlin: But to me, when I see something that doesn't end with a period, I kind of read it as an inchoate thought or as a title.
Merlin: Especially if it's in title case.
Merlin: But if I see something that's meant to be a sentence and it doesn't have a period, it bothers me.
Merlin: It's like leaving the cap off the toothpaste.
Merlin: It's like that should have a period because it's a sentence.
Merlin: And, like, I don't know.
Merlin: Now, for example, I am also one of those people.
Merlin: I mean, I don't have a super strong opinion.
Merlin: But I do think – I still think it's funny when people use two spaces after a period when they're typing.
Merlin: You think that's funny?
Merlin: I think it's a little funny.
Merlin: I don't have a strong – I don't get mad about it.
Merlin: How are you educated?
Merlin: Well, when you typed on a typewriter, you had to because of the way the typing worked.
Merlin: It was the only way to really visually set it off from the sentence before.
John: But at what point did you make the –
John: At what point did you make the transition to working on computers from typewriters?
Merlin: Pretty early.
Merlin: 1987, 88.
Merlin: But I think I probably still – I'll bet you if I look at stuff I wrote in the 80s and even most of the 90s, I bet I didn't stop doing two spaces.
Merlin: I think I read a book on –
Merlin: I think it's called The Macintosh is Not a Typewriter was the name of the book.
Merlin: Or it could be the Don't Steal Sheep book.
Merlin: But one of those books on typography for laypeople and how digital stuff is different from typewriter stuff.
Merlin: So I probably didn't officially start doing it until the 2000s at some point.
John: Right.
Merlin: But you see it.
Merlin: You can see it in somebody's... That's one way you can tell if somebody wrote it themselves.
Merlin: It's like if Robert Evans is out there, you know, first of all, his sentences already make almost no sense, which is why it's great to follow him.
Merlin: Do you follow Robert Evans on Twitter?
Merlin: I did not know that Robert Evans was still alive.
Merlin: Do I follow Robert Evans?
Merlin: Do I follow Robert Evans?
John: You bet your ass I do.
Merlin: I'm embarrassed to say I did not know he was still alive.
Merlin: Well, it's funny because, you know, he's like 80-something.
Merlin: And he'll just occasionally just show up.
Merlin: And he's like a Markov chain or like some kind of a bot.
Merlin: He just spews out this combination of words and memories and spaces and some names.
Merlin: And it'll just be some random memory.
Merlin: He'll quote himself.
Merlin: It'll just be some Friday night where suddenly he just has 10 toots.
Merlin: And it's really funny.
Merlin: That's great.
John: You know, the president of Kazakhstan is kind of like that.
Merlin: Oh, nice.
John: He only tweets very periodically.
John: But when he does, it's always like a total tweet storm.
John: Except generally, the tweet storm is like, Kazakhstan still is leader of corn harvest.
John: And he'll do like 10 or 15 tweets touting the fact that Kazakhstan has the greatest human rights record and is the only country in the world that is still processing saffron
John: on a on a like a industrial scale and i really think thanks kazakhstan this place is amazing this place sounds incredible uh but he's obviously never no one has ever um given i mean no one's ever read him his at replies well yeah like he has he probably has yeah exactly and he certainly hasn't had any kind of like a uh half day course on on social media no and he's also always writing in english
Merlin: Not in... I bet his English is better than my whatever they speak in Kazakhstan.
John: I think it is, yeah.
Merlin: What about the Turkmenistan guys?
Merlin: He's still around.
Merlin: He was quite a character.
Merlin: He was.
Merlin: What a kook.
Merlin: What a character.
Merlin: I think he's still... I don't know.
Merlin: Didn't he change the names of the months to his family members?
John: I mean, who hasn't done that at one point?
Merlin: At least mentally.
Merlin: Welcome to the month of Madeline Brewery.
Merlin: Madeline Brewery.
John: Ellen August.
John: I feel like the two space, one space thing, and I know you don't want to get into this.
Merlin: I don't mind.
Merlin: I just want to say I'm not here to go like, oh, everybody who does that's an idiot.
Merlin: Everybody who thinks it's bad is bad.
Merlin: Three stars.
John: Three stars is right.
John: But I feel like it is a thing
John: That someone wrote in a book, right?
John: Somebody was sitting around in the 80s and they were like, hey, computers aren't typewriters.
John: And then they had some sort of like knowledge of kerning or something that they informed their thesis with.
John: Like because computers of kerning have type fonts and also something and a theory.
John: And now I have created a problem that didn't previously exist.
John: So somewhat capricious.
John: Yeah.
John: Or arbitrary.
John: They wrote a book about it, and all the people that read the book initially were all of a class, which is to say people who are reading computer books about kerning.
John: About typing.
John: And they were like, yeah!
John: And then that's the first gen of people who decided that that was where they were going to plant their flag.
John: And then it became a thing where it's like, oh, you haven't read the book?
John: Nobody's even told you about this?
John: It's like everybody in the computer world loves that kind of shit.
John: Where it's like, it's not a question of, oh, hey, you should read this.
John: It's a question of, oh, what, you didn't read this?
John: And so then it turns into that.
John: So all the second generation adopters of it are already adopting this new theory based on a premise that you're an idiot if you haven't done it.
John: And then somewhere along the line, when the nerds took over the world somewhere in the early 2000s, it's this it's this thing that you can get upset about where it's like, why are you still doing that?
John: Yeah.
John: And it all just started with some it was just somebody's like herp derp.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I mean, like another one, like Giff and Jiff.
Merlin: It's GIF and GIF.
Merlin: GIF and GIF.
Merlin: People get pretty passionate about that.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, GIF and GIF.
Merlin: It's clearly GIF.
Merlin: I realized I was on the wrong side of history at a point, and I started saying it differently in the last year or so.
Merlin: Do you say GIF now?
Merlin: No, I've always said GIF, but I've been told that's incorrect by more people.
Merlin: The tide of history has changed, and we used to say GIF, and now we say GIF.
Merlin: And so now my daughter refuses.
Merlin: She corrects me.
Merlin: She says, no, it's animated GIF.
John: so now i've ruined my child too oh now she says jiff she's going to be an outcast she's going to be out there putting periods on her on her text messages and yeah my understanding was always and this is what's so confusing about it was that this that the the smart people the insiders said jiff and the dummies and the and the like tourists and the moms said gif and i was firmly in the gif camp and i also the the dress was was gold and whatever and
John: Like I was always on the wrong side of these things.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: But I still... I thought the dress was gold.
Merlin: I saw gold and white.
Merlin: Yeah, but we're old.
Merlin: But then I looked down on an iPad and I saw black and blue and I felt like I was crazy.
John: I never saw black and blue except when somebody did like, here's what it looks like black and blue.
John: I was like, I see that.
John: But I do two spaces after a period because I learned to type on a typewriter and I can... On Twitter you do that?
Merlin: I feel like I would notice that.
Merlin: That really reads as man over 50.
John: Here's the thing, though, right?
John: The app, if you touch the space bar twice, it puts a period in.
John: But it's an automatic function.
John: I'm glad you knew that.
John: So precisely... Do you know what Return does?
Merlin: Does it go down?
Merlin: Nothing in the Twitter app.
Merlin: Is it like a carriage Return?
Merlin: The Twitter app is completely capricious about when you can use Return, and it drives me crazy.
Merlin: Because I like Whitespace.
John: I like Whitespace, too, and I use... But the thing is, I use, like, five Twitter clients on my five different devices, and there's no...
John: There's no consistency between them.
John: But the fact that predictive text understands that two spaces equals a period, like I don't care how much white space they put in there.
John: It's a reflex.
John: It's like click, click, and then you begin a new sentence.
John: And the predictive text understands that, and that's how it works.
John: And so I continue to use two spaces happily because it puts a period in there magically.
Yeah.
John: But if I'm typing on a typewriter, yes, I do two clicks.
John: Are you typing on a typewriter much these days?
John: I mean, if I'm using a word processor.
John: Oh, if you're on... Okay, a word processor.
John: If you're on your Mac.
John: If I'm on my Mac.
John: But I learned to type, what, 1980, 81?
John: On an IBM Selectric.
John: And I continued to use manual typewriters all the way through...
John: The 90s.
John: I only had a computer, but it wasn't connected to anything.
John: If I wanted to write something and hand it to somebody else, I would type it.
John: I did that all the way through the 90s.
John: So...
John: I was still typing even after, and I still type.
John: Frankly, I have a typewriter at my house that I'll type things on.
John: But anyway, it feels like I do want to wade into that and say that I am on a side.
John: I am on the side of two spaces after a period.
Merlin: I think if you're typing, it makes absolute sense.
Merlin: If you're on a typewriter.
John: But then, you know, I am not going to have two separate typing styles, one for my laptop and one for a typewriter.
John: It's one skill.
John: It's a single skill.
John: It's not like I'm on skis and if I'm on red skis, I suddenly am doing back scratchers and on green skis.
Merlin: We are terrible with metaphors.
Merlin: I was going to say I wash my hands better after I wash chicken than carrots, but I realize that that doesn't make any sense.
John: Listen, I wash my hands better after I wash chicken, too.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: You're breaking up.
John: Oh, no, really?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You're fine.
Merlin: That's going to be my new ace in the hole.
John: Sorry, John.
Merlin: You know who's going to love this episode?
Merlin: John Sirkin.
No.
Merlin: We're out of here.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: Stop it.
Merlin: I can't take any more.