Ep. 368: "The Slovenian Model"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh, hey there, Merlin.
Merlin: Oh, hey.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Oh, hey.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Pretty good.
John: Pretty good.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It's a little bit snowy up here.
John: What?
John: Well, you know, somewhere along the line, I started following all the weather prediction nerds.
John: You know, predicting the weather is a thing.
John: It goes back many years.
John: People would like to know what the weather is going to be.
John: Yeah.
John: And as the technology has improved, there's more and more science.
Merlin: Science for the weather.
John: Weather science.
John: And, of course, like all science things, that attracts a certain kind of person.
John: Not just meteorologists, but amateurs and...
Merlin: prosumers and people can dip in and dip out they might get real like everybody if there's a hurricane coming or something to where you live then everybody gets into the weather right other times it's more like you know folks like your mom with all respect who are you know riding on the weather train uh that's right yeah that's exactly right there are there are um you know sometimes as you're saying there's um
John: They're amateur knights, right?
John: Where you've got a hurricane.
Merlin: Would that be a squire?
John: A squire?
John: Sorry.
John: It's a squire.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: You're trying to be a knight.
John: You're still an amateur.
John: Yeah.
John: No, it's an Epiphone.
John: It's not a full Gibson.
John: Oh, it's not a Gibson.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah, no, it's just a squire.
John: So anyway, you know, of course, I'm interested in things.
John: I'm interested in forecast models, you know.
John: But I'm also interested in the kind of people that are interested in forecast modeling.
Yeah.
John: And so anyway, I started following, you know, there's a lot of different Twitters, as you know.
John: And so I started following weather nerd Twitter.
John: just to see what they're talking about sure and there are a lot of models there's a euro model there's the global forecasting system again with the hurricanes you see a different line uh they're hurricanes not yours but you'll see a different line depending on is this the europeans is this the slovenians or whatever right right the slovenian model is always in there gumming it up anyway so there's a lot going on right now in the weather up here uh there's a big you know
John: there's a low Merlin and then there's a high and the low, uh, is here.
John: And then the high is there.
John: And the Arctic air is coming down the Fraser river Valley and it's colliding with the low that's over here.
John: And so they've been seeing this coming.
John: They've been watching it two weeks, three weeks.
John: They've been looking out into the ocean and,
John: seeing all this stuff going on and just jumping around so excited, like shaking their fists at the sky, uh, talking about all this stuff.
John: And, uh, you know, they really, the weather people, the, the weather, uh, punters, train spotters, uh,
John: you can tell that what they want is a weather disaster.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: They want it.
Merlin: They want it.
Merlin: They're so horny for the Arctic blast.
John: They really are.
John: They don't want it to be a nice sunny day.
John: No.
John: They want to see it.
John: They want to see the heavens fall.
John: And so they're just, they were, they were, they were churning up scenarios where it was going to be 18 degrees today and there were going to be four feet of snow on the ground and
Merlin: You can see it happening whenever there is one of these big events.
Merlin: And I have to monitor this because my mom is in a hurricane area.
Merlin: I want to make sure she's okay and doing what she needs to do.
Merlin: And there's such a funny phenomenon, even setting aside the person in a slicker who deliberately goes out and gets blown around.
Merlin: But then you could be there and watching it, and it's like ramping up, ramping up.
Merlin: Is it going to happen?
Merlin: Oh, my God, it's happening.
Merlin: It's happening.
Merlin: And at the moment when it stops getting worse, you can tell they're so disappointed.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It could be getting worse.
Merlin: This could be the most significant weather event this area has seen in 80 years.
Merlin: No, it's just drizzling a little bit.
John: It's just drizzling.
John: So today, it's very unusual, Seattle.
John: I think it's unusual.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: You know, I don't know what other people's usual.
Merlin: According to the Seattle Weather Blog, 16 minutes ago, it was snowing in downtown Seattle.
Merlin: This is the thing.
John: In Everett, there's like two feet of snow on the ground.
Merlin: Big flakes in Kent.
John: Yeah.
John: My voice is slow.
John: In Linwood, there's only two feet of snow on the ground.
John: And then in Edmonds, there's only one foot of snow on the ground.
John: And in downtown Seattle, it's snowing.
John: And here where I am, it's bone dry and 37 degrees.
John: And we're talking about a span of 20 miles from north to south.
John: So there's, there are, and my, this is where my mom comes in, right?
John: Because she sits up in her, in her, uh, you know, treetop area and surveys the world and is always talking about how Seattle is a convergent zone and she sees weather come in from here and weather come in from there.
John: And she can pick out, you know, she'll talk up, she'll call me and she's like at 45th at, you know, at 45th in Wallingford,
John: There's a weather line and everything south of it is clear and everything north of it is wet.
John: She loves that stuff, right?
Merlin: She's like a precipitation whisperer.
John: Yeah, it's the same impulse.
Merlin: She's a big picture, though.
Merlin: She's way up here in her area.
Merlin: She's seeing stuff over time.
Merlin: She's got institutional wisdom.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: She's got a lot of precipitation under the belt, if you'll forgive my saying.
Merlin: So she knows the big patterns and what's normal and not.
Merlin: And she knows where Wallingford is getting wet or not.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, yeah, she becomes like a farmer's almanac.
John: It's the same impulse that for, you know, there was, I remember telling you, there was a period of about two years where when dusk would fall, she would get in her car and follow the crows.
Mm-hmm.
John: Like, where are the crows going?
Merlin: You guys would chase it down.
Merlin: You'd look for the big tree of crows.
John: Yeah, and then she would position herself.
John: She would go down south to where she lost the crows the last time and wait for them to come and then chase them further.
John: Same impulse, I think.
John: All these GFS fanboys are just, they should just be following crows, frankly.
John: There is just as much to be gained.
John: Anyway, this morning, I woke up.
John: thinking, well, there's either four feet of snow on the ground and it's 17 degrees or the whole thing was bunkum.
John: Three weeks of people
John: reading the tea leaves and throwing animal bones into a fire.
Merlin: Using calipers to measure the butterfly wings.
John: And it ends up being impossible to predict the weather.
John: And that's what happened.
John: And they're so mad.
John: Weather Twitter right now, at least Northwest Weather Twitter, they're so mad.
John: They're just rattling their jingle sticks.
John: And I'm kind of hearing the lamentations of their women.
John: I'm sort of delighting in it.
John: Although I have friends that just live on the other side of town who are like, I'm snowed in.
John: I can't get out.
John: You know, I'm going to miss my flight, all this stuff.
John: And, uh, so, so there, it is like, it, it is, um, it's interesting to live where I'm living now.
John: Cause I'm in a different weather zone, uh,
John: In Seattle, there's always Seattle weather, and then there's the weather station at the airport.
John: And the two things report different worlds.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And now I'm living in the airport world instead of the downtown world, and I'm –
John: It's, you know, it's, it's a little bit of an adjustment period.
John: Yeah.
John: It's nice.
Merlin: I don't understand it.
Merlin: I mean, I understand enough to know that it's interesting, but I, um, it was pretty, so predicting the weather is sort of like trying to use polls to determine, uh, the democratic primary race.
Merlin: And I'll tell you, it's a little bit of a coastline of Scotland problem.
Merlin: So like somebody comes out.
Merlin: So you see these ding-a-ling national polls that say, you know, candidate C is like leading in national polls.
Merlin: I'm like, that's a national presidential poll is about as useful as a national weather report because that's not how elections do.
Merlin: The way an election works is like you get – when you're trying to measure that coastline of Scotland, remember on that terrible November evening in 2016 where we were zooming – we weren't just zooming in on Michigan.
Merlin: We weren't just zooming in on one district in Michigan.
Merlin: We were – I think if memory serves, it was crucial – was it crucial Waukesha County?
Merlin: Maybe that was Wisconsin.
Merlin: But you end up zooming all the way in on one polling station that hasn't come in yet.
John: Some poor little old lady standing there with 40 reporters around her.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, because let's be honest, in some places, your vote, because of the way the electoral system works, and I'm going to pull this all back together in a second.
Merlin: The way the electoral system works, well, it's a nightmare.
Merlin: But, like, you know, you get two senators no matter what state you're in, and everybody's – somebody's vote could be worth about 10 votes in another state.
Merlin: Like, you know, I'm going to vote either way, but my vote does not mean nearly as much as somebody in Pennsylvania or what have you.
Merlin: So all I'm trying to say is that, like –
Merlin: As you get better at measuring that, you know what I'm talking about here, the coastline has got a problem.
Merlin: The more precise your measuring device, the longer the coastline gets.
Merlin: And so in this case, like you say, okay, well, it's the weather in Seattle.
Merlin: Well, there's a lot of weather in Seattle.
Merlin: And also the weather in Seattle is just the weather in Seattle right now, right?
Merlin: Can I blow your mind a little bit?
Merlin: By the time you report the weather, it's already old weather.
Merlin: And I think that's part of the problem.
Merlin: And that happens here.
Merlin: So I'm looking here at something called Dark Sky, which does hyperlocal forecasts that are generally quite good.
Merlin: And I'll see something like on Thursday, it's like we're going to get over an inch of rain, which is a lot of rain for here.
Merlin: And it's because we just can't handle rain here and everything floods and it's terrible.
Merlin: But I'll bet you Dimes to Donuts, by the time Thursday gets here, it's going to be less than that.
Merlin: It's rarely more than that.
Merlin: But like, you know, you make your plans around that.
Merlin: But again, what about what?
Merlin: Okay, so you know my neighborhood.
Merlin: Up here, the weather's going to be like that.
Merlin: Down there, the weather's going to be like that.
Merlin: From a climactic standpoint, that's true.
Merlin: In the mission, it's going to almost always be sunnier than it is in my neighborhood.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Three different blocks on my street are going to have different threats of flooding because I live on a hill.
Merlin: So now, tell me about that.
Merlin: Tell me about that.
Merlin: You're on that middle block.
Merlin: What's the flood situation going to be like for that?
Merlin: Well, we don't know.
Merlin: Factors.
Merlin: You got calipers and butterfly wings, and we're still trying to figure it all out.
Merlin: It's a mess.
Merlin: I don't know who's going to win the election, but I know there's no such thing as a national poll.
Merlin: You could have a national poll, but that's not going to be a national result.
Merlin: That's not how polls do.
Merlin: No.
John: You know, there are seats in Congress that you can get elected to with 50,000 votes.
Merlin: You can become the mayor of Bowling Green with 8,000 votes.
John: But there are other seats in Congress where you need 500,000 votes to get elected to that seat.
John: That is profound.
John: Really astonishing, right?
John: I mean, because I got, what did I get?
John: 30,000 votes.
John: That's a lot of votes, John.
John: You draw a lot of water in this town.
John: You know, let me run down some acronisms.
Merlin: Okay, run down some acronisms.
John: Here are some of the models of weather forecasting.
John: You've got the ECMWF high-res.
John: which is a good tube.
John: It's plus or minus nine kilometers.
John: Plus or minus nine kilometers.
John: You've got the ECM WF EPS, which only has a resolution of 14 kilometers.
John: You've got ICON, which is a 13-kilometer resolution, and GFS, which is the one I kind of stay current with, which is the global forecasting system, which only has a resolution of 23 kilometers.
John: You have the GEFS,
John: which is a much broader picture, 46-kilometer resolution.
John: Then you have the UKMO.
John: Then the Gem.
John: You've got Access-G.
John: You've got RPEG.
John: Are these all real?
John: Yeah.
John: Then for America only, you've got the NAM and the HER, which is H-R-R-R, H-R-R-R, which is really, those both have like three kilometer resolution.
John: Okay.
John: And then in Europe, you've got Super HD and you've got the Swiss EU 4x4.
John: You've got A-Rome and Cosmo-D2.
John: You've got Euro 4, Icon EU, HER-LAM FMI, and
John: and HERLAM KNMI.
John: Okay.
John: All of these models are currently giving different interpretations, different forecasts and projections of what is going to happen in the weather, a thing you fundamentally can hardly predict.
Merlin: No kidding.
Merlin: Because they're using you to get different means and methods producing different results, like notional results.
John: Yeah, because you've got stuff coming and you look at it.
Merlin: That we know.
Merlin: We know something's coming.
John: Something's coming.
Merlin: Something's always coming.
John: You look at it and you go, something's coming.
John: Now, what's it going to do?
John: What's it going to do?
Merlin: What's it going to do?
John: Isn't that – that's got to be the third –
John: most common thing that goes into a human being's head, what's it going to do?
Merlin: Yeah, a lot of people know something happened, but not everybody knows why.
Merlin: And even fewer people know what that's going to mean.
John: If you walk down to the end of your block, well, you don't even have to.
John: Your office is there.
John: If you walk out the door of your office and you turn left and you turn right, you're going to see something in your field of vision that's going to inspire your brain to say, what's that going to do?
Merlin: What's that going to do?
John: Is that going to crash into me?
John: Or is that going to cross the street and want to talk to me?
John: Or is that going to fall off of where it is?
Merlin: Car ran into a building last year.
John: Really?
Merlin: Yeah, down by the handjob place.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: They fixed it, but they still haven't painted it.
John: Don't be creepy.
John: I told you the thing where I was driving by the airplane museum and the car in front of me just slowly drifted
John: Over across the lanes in front of me and and and smashed into the airplane museum right into the elevator.
John: There's like an out one of these glassed in outdoor elevators that only goes up one floor.
John: And it and the thing the car just went straight.
John: straight into the elevator shaft.
Merlin: So straight into it sideways, though.
Merlin: Like, it slid.
Merlin: Did it hydroplane?
Merlin: Was the person texting?
Merlin: What happened?
Merlin: The driver passed out.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: That's no good.
Merlin: No.
John: And the car just, like, slowly... I watched it kind of just slowly... It looked like it was making a turn, right?
Merlin: There's no way for that to be protected by her...
Merlin: Or the Swiss 4x4.
Merlin: They don't have any way of knowing.
Merlin: 4x4 has very good traction if you have it turned on.
Merlin: Most people don't even need it.
Merlin: But nobody knows when you're going to smash into a glass elevator.
John: The Swiss EU 4x4 has a resolution of 4 kilometers, plus or minus.
Merlin: Resolution.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: Well, you know, like I'm not sure exactly what – I'm saying resolution, but I'm not sure exactly what the little – No, I understand.
Merlin: Well, go ahead.
Merlin: I got something on this.
Merlin: Go ahead.
John: Well, no.
Merlin: I mean I want to hear what you have because –
Merlin: and how precision, distortion, various kinds of noise end up having an impact.
Merlin: And this is why I'm fascinated by the idea of lenses on a camera.
Merlin: And this is part of my larger Weltanschauung about creativity that I won't get into right now, but here's what I'm going to say about this.
John: Is this on 43 folders?
John: Is this something I can buy?
Merlin: I should write a book probably.
Merlin: Can I follow a link to an Amazon?
Merlin: Hmm.
Hmm.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Health IQ.
Merlin: You'll learn more about Health IQ right now by visiting healthiq.com slash super train.
Merlin: Hey, listen, do you average eight hours of sleep at night?
Merlin: Yeah, check.
Merlin: Do you eat a quality plant-based diet?
Merlin: Of course you do.
Merlin: Do you exercise four or more times per week?
Merlin: Well...
Merlin: then basically you're doing everything right to ensure you live a long life.
Merlin: Isn't it time for you to be financially rewarded for your commitment to a healthy lifestyle?
Merlin: Well, look in the mirror.
Merlin: You look good.
Merlin: You're doing everything right for your health today.
Merlin: But if you're not planning for the what-ifs of tomorrow, then it's time that you do...
Merlin: problem is that historically and you know rather ironically the health conscious have overpaid and subsidized those who are less health conscious it's not a conspiracy it's just how life insurance works introducing health iq health iq uses science and data to secure lower rates for people like you on their life insurance so if you're a runner or a cyclist if you're into crossfit or another type of athletics even if you're just a committed weekend warrior
Merlin: If you're a vegetarian or a vegan, then you deserve to be rewarded for your hard work with more affordable life insurance rates.
Merlin: Health IQ can save you up to 41% because physically active people have significantly lower risks for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Merlin: And Health IQ is not just a lead generator.
Merlin: They take the customer through the entire process of applying, and the policy is underwritten by one of their top insurance partners.
Merlin: These savings are unique to Health IQ.
Merlin: You won't find them anywhere else.
Merlin: But you must qualify to get a special rate.
Merlin: Now, to see if you qualify, go to healthiq.com slash supertrade.
Merlin: You're going to take their proprietary Health IQ quiz.
Merlin: Depending upon your score as well as the other related factors, you can save up to 41% on your life insurance premiums compared to other providers.
Merlin: Once again, that's healthiq.com slash supertrain to let them know we sent you.
Merlin: And to start the process with the Health IQ quiz, there is no commitment, and you'll learn even more about potential opportunities to be rewarded for your commitment to living healthy.
Merlin: One final time, that's healthiq.com slash supertrain.
Merlin: Our thanks to Health IQ for supporting Roderick Online and all the great shows.
Merlin: Just take the whole thing down.
Merlin: Just take it all down.
Merlin: Just burn it to the ground.
John: Somebody posted a thing the other day that was a link to somebody who was like, inbox zero.
John: And they were talking about it like it was their idea.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, well, it's a movable feast.
Merlin: Yeah, and then there's the occasional semi-annual takedown about why the thing that isn't the thing is not a thing.
Merlin: I'm very interested in this idea, though.
Merlin: So I've had a camera.
Merlin: I've had a camera with a chassis.
Merlin: You've got a lot of cameras.
Merlin: Like a chassis and a derrick.
Merlin: You've advocated to me that I buy a couple of different cameras.
Merlin: You don't need it now.
Merlin: You're good.
Merlin: Just get a nice iPhone.
Merlin: Seriously.
Merlin: No, but this has always fascinated me.
Merlin: And I'm not – I'm a very – I'm a piker.
Merlin: I'm a –
Merlin: I'm a Piker.
Merlin: I'm a Riker.
Merlin: I'm a Midnight Striker.
John: You've taken some great photos, though.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Well, that's because you learn about lenses.
Merlin: And let me tell you what I know about lenses.
Merlin: Let's say you've got a chassis or a derrick.
Merlin: Now, let's say you've got three different lenses, right?
Merlin: You've got that probably kind of crappy, super plastic...
Merlin: not really zoom, but zoom that people like to use.
Merlin: It's kind of like the iPad Chinese mom zoom.
Merlin: You deal with the fingers where it's not really zooming in, but you get, you get the lens that comes with your camera, right?
Merlin: And you know, you're walking around chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.
Merlin: Now let's say you buy two more lenses.
Merlin: One lens you're going to buy.
Merlin: Let's keep this simple.
Merlin: Well, okay, let's do it this way.
Merlin: Let's say you get a 50 millimeter, sort of like a prime lens.
Merlin: You've got a lens.
Merlin: Now you've got a lens that is,
Merlin: will be very specific about the field that you are capturing.
Merlin: Specifically, it is basically like, imagine it's what the human eye sees.
Merlin: It's pretty undistorted.
Merlin: You get that nice fuzzy background a little bit when you get good with it.
Merlin: That's one kind of lens.
Merlin: And that lens is close to the truth.
Merlin: That's close to what your eyes see.
Merlin: Let's say you get another kind of lens that's like a Beastie Boys fish eye lens.
Merlin: Let's say you get a very low millimeter lens, like even sub 20 millimeter lens.
Merlin: You got that lens.
Merlin: And then you got another kind of lens, like a macro lens, where you can zoom way, way in on something.
Merlin: Now, those give you three very different versions of the truth.
Merlin: One of those versions of the truth is when you're walking around with your 50 millimeter lens, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, you don't have zoom.
Merlin: Your zoom is your feet.
Merlin: You move to where it can be in focus.
Merlin: And that's kind of like life.
John: Your zoom is your feet.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It's like sneaker net for eyes.
Merlin: And you get to where, and that's a lot of my best photos are taken with like a pretty okay prosumer 50 millimeter lens.
Merlin: Okay, now let's say you get your Beastie Boys lens because you want to get everything in the picture.
Merlin: Now what happens?
Merlin: Well, you're going to get this obviously distorted and spherical looking thing.
Merlin: You don't talk about, you don't talk about like a fish eye.
Merlin: So you see all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: But it's super distorted.
John: Right.
Merlin: So you're seeing more things, but they don't look like the thing.
John: It's like real estate photography.
John: Have you ever spent any time with real estate photography?
Merlin: You mean like, well, there's a Tumblr I follow called Terrible Real Estate Agent Photos.
Merlin: And it's stuff like it's just like a toilet in a room with a clown or something.
John: No, that's one thing.
John: But the great real estate photography, the ones that they pay pretty astronomical attention
John: costs to they pay costs to professional real estate photographers and they have lenses that enable them to show the scope of a room without it appearing to have fisheye distortion but what it does is subtly distort
John: They absolutely distort the proportions of the room so that they take a picture from this angle and you're like, wow, that living room is huge.
John: And then they take a picture from over here and you're like, that living room isn't huge.
John: It's tiny.
Merlin: I feel like I've seen that in B&B-ish photos of like, we're going to go rent this cottage and you go, wow, that's pretty spacious.
Merlin: And then you get there and like, wow, it's kind of a lot smaller than it looked in the photographs.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a lens or something.
Merlin: They do this with movies too.
Merlin: You got anamorphic and not anamorphic and that's all way above my pay grade.
Merlin: But I think I know what you're talking about.
Merlin: Just to finish this real quick.
Merlin: So you got your regular, your 50 millimeter, like you're walking around taking photos and things aren't distorted.
Merlin: You got another kind where you get a fish.
Merlin: I know you might have another kind, like say like a macro lens and a macro lens is something where you're able to like, I say zoom in, but like you could take a picture of something very, very, very little and like small with a lot of detail, but it's going to look real good, but you're only going to see a tiny little bit of truth.
Merlin: This is life, John.
Merlin: This is life.
Merlin: Cause every decision you make is,
Merlin: You're moving up and down some axes.
Merlin: So if you want to be able to see everything, it's got to be distorted.
Merlin: If you want to be able to see something in huge detail, it's going to be very limited.
Merlin: If you want to see everything, it's going to be distorted.
Merlin: It's going to be distorted.
John: If you want to see detail, it's going to be limited.
John: Plus there's also time.
John: Okay, let me write all this down here.
John: You're getting this?
John: Okay.
John: You got a detail.
John: Details, yeah.
John: You're going to have limitations.
Merlin: And I think that's how weather works.
Merlin: I think that's how polls work.
Merlin: People don't think about time.
Merlin: That's another thing.
Merlin: So you say, okay, here's where Hillary was in 2016.
Merlin: Well, that nine bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
Merlin: Boy, I'll say.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Pokemon go to the polls is what I say.
John: So now we got detail, limitation, everything, distortion, and then time.
John: What does time give you?
Merlin: Oh, well, time is the cilantro you didn't know you had.
Merlin: Because the thing is, okay, well, that's your snapshot, if you like.
Merlin: So I go out, and maybe it's flooding, maybe it's not, but it won't be flooding later.
Merlin: This goes straight back to Heraclitus.
Merlin: Heraclitus and Parmenides disagreed about this.
Merlin: Then you got Xeno, right?
Merlin: But Heraclitus is saying you never step in the same river twice.
John: I thought that was Siddhartha.
Merlin: Oh, no, I think you're thinking of Wes Anderson.
Merlin: Now, Wes Anderson uses a 40 millimeter lens.
Merlin: You'll notice there are very rarely straight vertical lines, especially slightly off axis.
Merlin: There are very few straight vertical lines in a Wes Anderson movie.
Merlin: And once you start noticing it, you can't stop noticing it.
John: Uh, so if you're looking at a building from a distance in a Wes Anderson movie, it's going to curve.
John: Well, you know, he likes the center stuff.
Merlin: So like you walk into that hotel, you know, with the Nazis and, and, uh, the other guy and the, and the bell man, you get anyways, you'll, you'll see it.
Merlin: So anyway, I think this, this applies to lots of things.
Merlin: We're not even getting into time.
Merlin: We don't have time to get into time, but you get a 50 millimeter.
Merlin: Perfect.
Merlin: Don, I take a picture of my kid.
Merlin: Well, guess what?
Merlin: Now she's older.
Merlin: So at the time it wasn't older.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Time.
Merlin: It's still marching on time.
Merlin: Time.
Merlin: You dropped a little teaser into what you were just saying.
John: You said something about – did you say sneaker news?
Merlin: Oh, sneaker net.
Merlin: Oh, sneaker net.
Merlin: And so back before we had – when it was less –
Merlin: common to have perhaps when you were in one of your colleges and you had to type up a paper and you want to you want to take it somewhere you won't print it like it back then it was less likely that you would have uh ethernet especially but you probably didn't you may not even have apple talk you maybe had no way you had to go to a different building to print so you put it onto a floppy disk and you walk it uh-huh
John: And that's what you call sneaker net.
John: Yes.
John: Why did I never, you know, either.
John: So this is an example of either I never heard that before or I heard it a thousand times and I had no idea what people were talking about.
John: Without context, very few things are meaningful.
John: Sneaker net.
John: Sneaker net.
John: See, that's hilarious.
John: See, people don't give computer people enough credit for being funny.
Merlin: No, it's true.
Merlin: There's something called the jargon file where you can find a lot of these.
Merlin: So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is whether you're talking about weather or floppy disks or photographs or elections, you have to understand what you are trading.
Merlin: If you want extreme specificity, you're going to get a very limited picture plus time, right?
Merlin: If you want to have everything, oh, it's an international poll.
Merlin: If people in the Swiss 4x4 voted for Hillary, who would win?
Merlin: And you're like, well, okay, fine.
Merlin: But you give away – no matter what you choose, you give something away.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the thing about truth.
Merlin: I take a picture of my daughter or I take an award-winning photo of her orange crock on the street.
Merlin: Well, guess what?
Merlin: That won't fit on her anymore because time –
Merlin: Because time, right?
Merlin: Time.
Merlin: And the thing is, it's not perfect because the background's got what they call a bokeh.
Merlin: It's slightly distorted in the background, which can be very nice.
Merlin: You can do that now with what's called portrait mode.
Merlin: It will simulate that with software on your phone.
Merlin: But it still won't look good as a regular lens.
Merlin: In any case, it's just blur.
Merlin: It's blur.
John: If you put your photos on a 2 gigabyte SanDisk memory card, the SanDisk Ultra 2,
Merlin: uh time is uh is eventually going to make uh those photos uh impossible to access oh brother isn't that true oh isn't that true how many memory discs how many memory cards do you have merlin ask me ask me about my cds because you know what you got and you buy a copy of rem's murmur that's going to be on a cd that was burnt out of place now if you if you got that off limewire and burnt it at your home all you're doing is distributing ink on plastic and guess what
Merlin: If you go and get that LimeWire REM murmur and pop it in right now, you know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or it also goes for reckoning.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: They crowded up to Lenin with the noses worn off.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: So you put that in and guess what you're going to get?
John: You're not going to get back to Rockville if you know what I'm saying.
Merlin: You know, it's not as though I really need you.
Merlin: If you were here, I'd only... So wait a minute.
John: You're saying that those things won't play?
Merlin: Guess what redistributed the ink on the plastic.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Time.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Time!
Merlin: There it is again!
Merlin: Time!
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: So I think that's the thing with weather, too, probably.
Merlin: So when you tell me it's got 14KM resolution, what'd that mean?
John: what that mean.
Merlin: I mean, think that it means, um, that, uh, the sample size of the area it's dealing with is a, is a 14 kilometer diameter.
Merlin: Diameter is the one across, right?
John: I think it has to do with pixels.
Merlin: Oh, it's pixels.
John: I think it's, I think it's pixels or it might be bits and bytes.
John: Um, I have a, I have a, uh, an app here called my radar, um,
John: And, you know, when I got my radar, it seemed like it was the hottest thing going.
John: But now it seems like radar is table stakes now.
Merlin: You see that everywhere.
John: Yeah, everybody's got radar.
John: But my radar, you can sit and watch me.
John: I'm not going to say real time.
John: But but fairly, you know, within the last hour, like my radar right now is showing me a loop of what the weather did from 9 a.m.
John: to 1025.
John: So it's within five minutes because time because of time.
John: Right.
John: And so I'm so it puts a little dot puts me on the map.
John: And then it shows me like real-time radar weather Doppler, you know, double Doppler.
John: Double Doppler, sure.
John: Yes.
John: And it's pretty cool.
John: Like when big storms are happening, you can look down and be like, whoa, check it.
John: And right now it's showing, yes, that I'm not.
John: I'm basically in a little tiny window of nothing happening.
John: Yeah.
John: But I have no idea, like when I zoom all the way in, what's my resolution here?
John: Okay.
Merlin: Pixels.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, my radar seems to be showing every individual raindrop.
John: So maybe... You know, 2020 is 2020.
Merlin: You can look back and say, this is where radar went.
Merlin: That's because that time is already kind of, it's a fixed moment.
Merlin: You can show where the weather already happened.
Merlin: Remember that in all the president's men?
Merlin: You want to buy this for the Washington Post?
Merlin: Yesterday's weather report.
Merlin: And he said, sell it to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: Because nobody needs yesterday's weather report.
Merlin: San Francisco Chronicle apparently does.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's got Jason Robards.
Merlin: Can I potentially blow your mind?
Merlin: I hope I will blow the mind of at least a few listeners.
Merlin: My whole life I've grown up.
Merlin: Now, whatever your model is, almost every model, there's going to be something about you might get into your high pressure and low pressure areas.
Merlin: But there's a couple of things you'll get in almost every weather report, which is we think it'll be this temperature, usually expressed as a high and a low.
Merlin: Which, you know, they admit that's a prediction, it's a guess.
Merlin: And what's the other one you get?
Merlin: The probability of precipitation.
Merlin: There's a 20% chance that it's going to rain tomorrow, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I think that's gotten better, but let me potentially blow your mind.
Merlin: I'm on the National Weather Service site, and I'm going to, in their FAQ, what is the meaning of probability of precipitation?
Merlin: Because when I learned about this, when I very first learned about this,
Merlin: Uh, it curled my hair.
Merlin: Forecasts issued by the National Weather Service routinely include a probability of precipitation statement, which is often expressed as the, quote, chance of rain or chance of precipitation, right?
John: Wait a minute.
John: Those are different?
John: Well, you know, rain's a kind of precipitation.
John: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
John: It could be something else.
John: It could be precipitating.
Merlin: Now, here's what I think a lot of folks may not be getting.
Merlin: If you're getting this, I apologize for talking down to you.
Merlin: So what does this, quote, 40% mean?
Merlin: Will it rain 40% of the time?
Merlin: Will it rain over 40% of the area?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Get ready.
John: Is this a 50-year flood?
John: Is it a 500-year flood?
John: Right.
John: Is it an 80-year hurricane?
Merlin: Is it a 5,000-year flood?
Merlin: The probability of precipitation simply describes the probability that the forecast grid slash point in question will receive at least 0.01 inches of rain.
Merlin: Now, your mind's probably not blown right now, but can I point out?
Merlin: That is the percentage chance that it will rain.
Merlin: Over a given area.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, the more general you get, you know, I bet there's probably a 30% chance of rain that it'll rain in the United States.
John: Sure.
John: I mean, probably.
John: Isn't there a 100% chance that somewhere in the United States it's raining?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But what I'm trying to get at is, first of all, when they say it's a 40% chance of rain, that doesn't mean it's a 40% chance of rain at your house.
Merlin: It means that over the area that's being covered, do you know the area that's being covered?
Merlin: That's the percentage chance that it will rain.
Merlin: And guess what?
Merlin: Over time, over that period of time, you get into some pretty specific stuff here.
Merlin: And so really, you realize like what a wild gander it is when we talk about the chance that it's going to rain somewhere.
Merlin: This is where Dark Sky comes in, because it tries to be hyper local, like super duper local to where it'll say, beep boop, notification, it's going to start raining in a few minutes.
Merlin: All I'm trying to say is the part that blew my mind is they would say, okay, Cincinnati, Ohio, there's a 10% chance of rain today.
Merlin: And it's like, yes, but like 10% chance of rain in the city of Cincinnati?
Merlin: Like, how about you today?
Merlin: What's your percentage chance of snow at your house?
John: I mean, the city of Cincinnati is, as we know, 1,000 square miles.
John: It's a very big city.
Merlin: Yeah, it is.
Merlin: It's bigger than you think.
Merlin: Yeah, you got Lebanon, you know, you got, what is it, Berea, you got different places.
Merlin: Anyways, I'm just saying, like, factors, factors, factors, and then you still got to think about Tawn.
John: Well, you know, here someone says that the average global rate of rainfall is on the order of 10 to the sixth meters cubed over S. Oh, okay, S. And the residence time of a water molecule in the atmosphere is about 10 days.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
John: So that's going to suggest that it's always raining somewhere.
John: Exactly.
John: Right.
John: So that's a fisheye lens.
John: It says here that there are 2,000.
John: No, no, no.
John: There are 2,000 thunderstorms occurring at any given time.
John: And 100 lightning strikes per second on Earth at any given moment.
John: Now that's a lot more lightning than I would have thought.
Merlin: So you feel pretty safe saying there's probably some thunder somewhere right now.
John: Somewhere you're going to listen to the thunder.
Merlin: Listen to the thunder, what the thunder said.
John: That's right.
John: Well, and bless the rains.
John: Oh, down in Africa or elsewhere?
John: Elsewhere.
John: Okay.
John: I mean, when I think of, well, I mean, the first thing I think of,
John: when we're talking about these weather reports, is Jaco Pistorius.
John: But the second thing I think about is how does this affect me?
John: Yeah, Al Demiola is another thing I think about.
John: Well, I think about Al every morning.
John: I saw him in concert once.
John: No, did you?
John: Yes.
John: The most enjoyable.
John: Oh, wait.
John: Oh, you sent me a thing.
Merlin: Can I show you what I'm talking about when I talk about lenses?
Merlin: Are you seeing this?
John: I am.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: If you want to make up.
Merlin: So you ever heard that that old that old saw about how television adds 20 pounds?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, it's not just because you got successful and could afford food.
Merlin: It's because the kinds of lenses that they're using are closer to when this man's face seems larger.
Merlin: So what I'm showing, John, here, you've probably all seen this before, but it's a real-time demonstration of what different depths of lens do to a human head, a human face.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Isn't it kind of dramatic?
John: It is.
John: And the way I hear about this phenomenon more often is I hear about skinny mirrors.
Merlin: Oh, that is so a thing.
John: Skinny mirrors.
Merlin: They sell them now.
Merlin: You can actually buy a mirror that you know is skinny.
Merlin: You can.
John: And in fact, there are lots of...
John: I live in a world where mirror buying decisions are based largely on how they perform according to the skinny mirror tests.
John: Right.
John: The skinny mirror.
Merlin: Are you able to hold up like a sample sheet of paper to see whether there's any distortion?
Merlin: How do you determine if a mirror is secretly skinny?
John: It is 100 percent a season to taste effect.
John: Like, you know, I don't know what pornography is, but I know it when I see it.
John: Yeah.
John: And so a skinny mirror is a mirror that you look at and you know that it's a skinny mirror by.
Merlin: I've been in hotels where I'm like, no way do I look like that.
Merlin: And I call my wife over and say, look in this mirror.
Merlin: Does this seem like it's accurate to you?
Merlin: I don't even coach her on it.
Merlin: And she'll be like, no, that's not a real mirror.
Merlin: uh i i feel like um i i feel like just instinctively i don't want a skinny mirror no that's all i see that this is oh john could there be any better example of how you and i as much as we are similar in so many ways we differ i would love a skinny mirror i do not see you ever abiding a skin i see you breaking a skinny mirror give me seven years bad luck i don't care get it out of here
Merlin: Yeah, I don't want... It's like Theraflu for your body.
Merlin: You don't want it.
Merlin: You would not prefer it.
John: No, I don't.
John: I want the hard varnish truth.
John: Or no, I want the unvarnished truth.
Merlin: No, I want... You want to varnish your own truth and burn your balls.
Merlin: Make me fat as fuck in this mirror.
John: What I want is give me the truth and then varnish it.
John: Right?
John: Like, give me the unvarnished truth.
John: I think you want it sanded.
John: And then, well, no, no, no.
John: I don't.
John: No, don't sand the truth.
John: Give me the unvarnished truth, and I'll varnish it.
Merlin: Oh, no varnish.
Merlin: Okay, so don't put varnish in the first place.
John: Don't give me varnish.
John: You want unfinished mirror.
John: And then I'll put varnish on it.
John: Mentally?
John: You've got to put varnish on it, right?
Merlin: Do you do it in your head?
John: Well, you can't look in a mirror at the unvarnished truth and then just walk out into the world with the unvarnished truth.
John: That's like, you know, I'm mad as hell and I don't give a damn.
Merlin: Okay, so it's like the great Scottish philosopher Charles Barkley.
Merlin: Now we're talking, we're post-Descartes, and we're talking about perception.
John: You have to look out for your chicken.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You have to look out for your chicken.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Keep the chicken out of your corn and don't varnish my mirror.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Can I get a different room with a different mirror, an unfinished chicken mirror?
Merlin: You get to choose the varnish.
John: A lot of people, the only varnish they put on it is a hat.
Merlin: That's like putting a hat on your coffee table.
John: okay well it's like putting a hat on your chicken i don't want to walk out into the world i put a helmet on a chicken i wouldn't put a hat don't put a helmet on a chicken yeah come on really you don't think so at all no a chicken what if it's an heirloom chicken and you want to pass it on to the next generation if you think okay if there was a chicken that we did an episode of the omnibus on a chicken that had been uh
John: that had been beheaded, but somehow just enough of the ganglia.
Merlin: Oh, people say, people say, so we all know a chicken will keep living for a while and run around.
Merlin: There are people who claim that chickens can continue to live after they've been decapitated.
Merlin: I've seen things about this.
John: Well, it's not claim.
John: It's Mike the Headless Chicken is a chicken that lived for a long time.
Merlin: I feel like I heard this episode.
Merlin: Okay, Mike.
John: His name is Mike.
John: Mike the Headless Chicken lived for 18 months without a head.
Merlin: That's a really good Warren Zevon song.
John: The thing about Mike is you had to put something because the rain would just go right down Mike's neck and drown him.
Merlin: You've got to put on like a sink stopper or... Some kind of helmet.
Merlin: Like a swim cap, okay.
John: Yeah, like a swim cap, right?
John: Or like a... How does he eat?
John: yeah well his owner put little food down his oh like a rudimentary paste you would pour in like you're like you're feeling a moped okay yeah you just kind of he would just he just kept feeding him and i think mike would have lived for longer but uh what i forget exactly how mike died um let's see oh he he choked
John: on a kernel of corn.
Merlin: Oh, that's terrible.
Merlin: What a shame.
Merlin: Because chickens don't chew to begin with.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Okay.
John: No.
John: Chickens, well, they peck.
Merlin: Well, I mean, given the materials and the tools, yeah.
John: We're right at the edge of my knowledge of what a chicken does.
Merlin: No, no, it's fine.
Merlin: Well, I know a little bit about chickens.
Merlin: I know my chicken.
Merlin: You got to know your chicken, right?
Merlin: So you got a chicken, and what a chicken do is it pecks at the ground, and it gets some food bits and corns,
Merlin: And then I think it also gets some gravel things probably.
Merlin: And then it's got, you got the, what's the part?
Merlin: What's the organ people eat?
Merlin: Gullet, gullet.
Merlin: You got a gullet, but then don't you also have like a super strong pre-stomach?
Merlin: Like a gizzard.
Merlin: You got a gizzard.
Merlin: Gizzard.
Merlin: Something like that, right?
Merlin: And the gizzard grinds the food with the dirt.
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: I think it's sort of like a rock tumbler for a chicken.
Merlin: I think you're right.
Merlin: I think you're absolutely right.
Merlin: So you just got to waterproof him or water-resistant.
Merlin: You got to figure out what his water resistance is and then give him the rudimentary paste.
Merlin: Mike, in a lab condition, Mike could have lived longer probably.
John: Well, you know, the thing is they were making money off of Mike.
John: They were poor.
John: And it was like, hey, let's take Mike on tour.
John: And people were excited to see him.
John: And what happened was I think they –
John: I don't know how he got that kernel of corn in it.
Merlin: I rarely get the food that I would like when I travel.
Merlin: I have to imagine it's much worse for a chicken, especially if he has something like a celiac or something, and all you're getting is those triangles of plastic sandwich at the airport, and that's going to be hard for a chicken to digest, even with the right rocks and tumbling.
John: My mom did not have a lot of kind words for chickens.
John: Well, she still does.
John: I think if we got her on the phone right now, I think that she would denigrate the chicken...
John: as a creature on God's earth.
Merlin: I think she doesn't... She doesn't give it any special... Well, so somebody like a city slicker.
Merlin: Well, nowadays, all kinds of people have chickens.
Merlin: That's a thing we know.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But still, when you don't have... Boy, this is going to sound racist.
Merlin: When you don't have proximity to a certain population, it's easy enough to always assume the best.
Merlin: But then when you're living cheek to jowl with somebody like, let's say for the sake of argument, a chicken, you see them... They are unvarnished chickens.
Merlin: And you see them as they are.
Merlin: They're letting their chicken hair down.
Merlin: And then you might be seeing the worst of chickens.
John: You know, Dave Bazan's wife, Anne Christine, she has chickens that she cares for like they were cats.
John: She cares for them like, I mean, they're cats that live outside.
John: But she really cares for these chickens.
John: She loves the chickens.
John: I think I know a lot of people, actually, that pet their chickens and cuddle their chickens.
Merlin: It's a big thing in Oakland.
Merlin: There's a lot of Oakland chickens now.
John: Oakland chickens.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: They don't have the Warriors anymore.
John: Well, that might be where we get the care for your chickens meme from Oakland chickens.
John: Okay.
John: But I have found in interacting with chickens, although they're fun to pet, to hold, I do not see in a chicken's eyes any recognition of anything.
John: Right?
John: You don't look into a chicken's eyes and see...
John: Which you would describe as consciousness.
John: Although I'm sure we're going to get a lot of letters.
John: From chickens.
John: Well, from chicken friends.
John: Chicken companions, yeah.
John: Who say, no, you're wrong, chickens.
Merlin: Yeah, my chicken can tell when I'm sad and it comes up and cuddles and has curiosity in its eyes.
John: My chicken has curiosity.
John: I think we're probably going to get some letters that say, I have seen chickens cross the road for no other reason than to see what's on the other side.
Merlin: And then come back and do like a short story about it.
John: Yeah, come back and talk to the other chickens.
John: Or, you know, when I taught my chicken sign language, then that chicken taught its children sign language.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: In the same way that the monkeys can throw the clams off the cliff, the hundredth monkey, you're saying in this case, it becomes like a generational trauma or an improvement.
Merlin: It gets passed along the same way that like a raccoon or a roach will get a lot smarter.
Merlin: Like a raccoon will start off not understanding your fence and then eventually it becomes master of the fence.
John: Master of the fence.
John: That's right.
John: And it's one thing to teach Cocoa.
John: Yes.
John: You know, shit, she just taught Locomoco to sign, and Locomoco's signing at us now.
Merlin: This is the problem with machine learning and AIs, too.
Merlin: Did you see that thing this morning of the AI pizza maker?
John: No.
John: Somebody wrote an article about, like, check out this AI pizza maker, and it was just a pizza maker.
John: Oh.
John: There was no AI about it.
John: It was just a machine making pizza.
John: It wasn't even a good machine.
John: It wasn't making good pizza.
Merlin: It was trying to – see, I know just a little bit about AI, and I know that AI – to be an AI, it mostly is a black box.
Merlin: You feed it information, and you look for the ones that are giving you the results that are what you're looking for, and it learns –
Merlin: Look for, look for the helpers.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Look for the helpers.
John: So is it trying to reinvent pizza somehow?
John: No, it was what it was, was somebody had invented.
John: So what happened was, what had happened was first you were in a helicopter and then you were in a hovercraft.
Okay.
John: No, what had happened was somebody invented – so all I can guess is that it was a young person.
John: Let's say a person between the ages of 25 and 35.
John: And they thought that no one had ever invented a pizza machine, which is characteristic of that period in a person's life, right?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, it's the way like when Elon Musk invented subways a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
John: Like, why don't we just build a tunnel?
John: You know, if you're 28 and the idea of a pizza making machine comes into your head, why would you go look to see if there already were pizza making machines?
John: The first thing you would do is try and get funding.
Merlin: Oh, well, I think the first thing you try to innovate and then you disrupt.
John: Right.
John: You're going to want to market it before you make it.
John: You're going to want to brand it.
John: You're going to want to put it.
John: You're going to get an app together.
John: And then you get a pizza machine.
John: Well, so how hard is a pizza machine?
John: Pizza machine's pretty hard.
John: Not the putting the stuff on the pizza.
John: That's not hard.
John: But taking some wheat and some water...
John: And whatever else you put into bread, eggs and tomatoes.
Merlin: Eggs, cheese.
Merlin: Cheese.
John: You've got pickles right out of the jar.
John: But I'm talking about just the bread now, not the stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, the pizza.
John: What do you think of as the dough part of the pizza?
John: The dough.
John: You could put salt and yeast and MSG or whatever flavorings.
John: How do you make that ball into a pizza shape?
John: Like what we need an AI for is a pizza throwing machine.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Now you're getting kind of like a Rube Goldberg thing with arms.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Would you pay money to watch a robot throw pizza dough?
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, if it was part of a larger package, if you wish to make a pizza first, you know, you must first invent the universe.
Merlin: That's what Carl Sagan said.
John: And so, anyway, this machine, basically what it was was these preformed stuff.
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: A lot of pizza throwing is sense of feel.
Merlin: So you're not only inventing apple pie in the universe, but you're also inventing sense of feel.
John: Sense of feel.
John: Sense of feel.
Yeah.
John: Sense of Feel Pete.
Merlin: Sense of Feel.
Merlin: Yeah, and you named the robot Pete, and now you got funding.
John: Fuck you.
John: The thing about this thing, though, was that the hard part was already done.
John: The dough was just laid out somehow by, I don't know who, by people or some other machine.
John: And then this video was just showing this dough come out, and then a little arm went out and squirted sauce, and then another arm put... And the arm was moving exactly like...
John: a uh like a um what like a one of these 3d printers right it went out and it was like okay extruding kind of yeah it was just it was just but it was just instead of extruding plastic or instead of making anything it was just squirting sauce onto a but it wasn't even doing it in a circle it was just kind of going across it's zero difference from a robot and not even a good robot because somebody else on the thread posted a picture of the
John: Costco pizza making machine which was like splork pal splork pal like really jamming but this article the writer was like it's an AI pizza machine but presumably because it has an app or because the person that invented it was 28 something there was no AI about it that I could tell
John: But I felt like it was emblematic of a kind of future world where, yes, this machine is going to make pizzas.
John: Within a year, you won't be able to find a pizza made by a human.
John: All the love has gone out of pizza already, except for the rare occasion.
John: Do you have a place where you get love pizza?
Merlin: Pizza made with love, I mean?
Merlin: I mean, there are certain pizzas that I like.
Merlin: uh, that I dislike less than others.
John: Okay.
Merlin: I don't, I don't think you're a pizza eater, right?
Merlin: Your family eats pizza.
Merlin: We eat pizza, but like increasingly, well, you know, my, my, not my concept, but the concept of like the ceiling and the floor, right?
Merlin: The problem is that like pizza, pizza has a very low floor.
Merlin: Like if it's bad, it can be super fucking bad.
Merlin: Now, sometimes when we get pizza, quote unquote, I will get meatballs because meatballs are a high floor item.
Merlin: It's hard to fuck up a meatball.
Merlin: Do you follow me?
Merlin: Well, is that true?
John: Because I feel like I eat fucked up meatballs all the time.
Merlin: It could be, and it differs by area and time, right?
Merlin: So it all differs.
Merlin: But no, no, I mean, to answer your question, I mean, like, the pizzas of my childhood, I miss.
Merlin: And the pizzas of other places, I don't think San Francisco is a good pizza town.
Merlin: Maybe we just need more robots.
Merlin: Sorry, not robots.
Merlin: AIs.
Merlin: We need machine-learned pizza.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I agree that love has gone out of it, though, because, I mean, like, there are still places where you can go and get a really fucking good hamburger.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I had a quarter pounder.
Merlin: I had to go to the Apple store yesterday, so I went to McDonald's as a reward.
Merlin: The quarter pounders are really good.
Merlin: You get a fresh quarter pounder.
Merlin: They're using fresh meat now.
Merlin: Fresh meat.
Merlin: Fresh meat.
Merlin: It's not frozen.
Merlin: I paid with Apple Pay, and the whole thing was great.
Merlin: Come on.
John: You're not using fresh meat.
John: What does that even mean?
Merlin: Look it up.
Merlin: Go to the website.
Merlin: It says quarter pounders.
Merlin: It says right on the website.
Merlin: Limited availability, says the asterisk, but the love has gone out of pizza.
Merlin: I don't think people have their heart in it anymore.
Merlin: I think it's become a low ceiling, low floor endeavor.
Merlin: There's not that much great pizza, at least where I live.
Merlin: Also time.
John: Are you ready for me to blow your mind?
John: I would love it so much.
John: Best hamburger.
John: Best hamburger.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Full stop.
John: Yeah.
John: Better than your $50 San Francisco hamburgers.
Yeah.
John: Better than something with artisanal pickles on it.
John: Better than... Eat the pickles out of the jar.
John: Don't put them on the burger.
John: Eat them out of the jar.
John: Yep.
John: If you want a pickle.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Better than the hamburger that your mom made back when moms made hamburgers.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: Yeah.
John: Better than the hamburger made by the guy with the apron that says, kiss the cook.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Better than a hamburger from a hamburger truck.
John: John, you're talking about a pretty good burger here.
John: This is the burger.
John: Are you ready?
John: Yeah, I think.
John: Denny's.
John: Whoa.
John: Denny's.
John: Denny's burger.
John: Denny's has the best hamburger that you will have this year.
John: Oh, my.
John: I want to write that down.
John: I want to go to Denny's now.
John: Go to Denny's and get a double hamburger.
Merlin: Double hamburger.
John: And I think that you will walk out of that Denny's and you will say.
John: It's got everything.
Merlin: It's got it's got it's flavorful.
Merlin: It's got the right seasoning.
Merlin: It's prepared the right way.
Merlin: It's got good mouthfeel.
Merlin: It's the whole package.
Merlin: The whole Shagilla.
John: And the thing about a Denny's is like there's a lot.
John: As you and I both know, people our age have been up and down with the Rolling Stones, except in this case, the Rolling Stones is Denny's.
John: When you were young, I'm guessing, you had a certain feeling about Denny's.
Merlin: I used to smoke at Denny's.
Merlin: That's where I went to smoke.
John: Right?
John: You go to Denny's and smoke.
Merlin: You sit up with your friends all night long.
Merlin: Split of Moons over Miami and then have unlimited coffee and Marlboro Lights.
John: You can get pie at Denny's.
John: You can get ice cream at Denny's.
John: But then we went through that phase in the 90s where Denny's was racist.
John: This was before even things were called racist.
John: Oh, because of Sambo?
John: No, no, no.
John: Sambo is a different thing.
Merlin: Are you sure it's different?
Merlin: I mentally concatenated Denny's and Sambos.
Merlin: We had a sleeping Mexican man outside of our Sambos well into the 80s.
Merlin: Full shizzle.
John: Oh, were you sure he was Mexican?
John: Wasn't he a little Indian boy on top of an elephant?
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, was he?
Merlin: I might be concatenating my racisms.
Merlin: No, yeah, I think it's... Oh, Little Black Sambo!
John: Wow, Sambo, yeah.
John: I have a couple of coffee cups from Sambo's.
John: They have Little Black Boy on it?
John: The little child, you know, he's sort of a Mowgli character.
Merlin: I might be thinking of a Mexican place.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: Sambo himself was not Mexican.
John: He was from India.
Merlin: But Sambo's was... Right.
Merlin: Well, it's like after 9-11, we thought anybody with any kind of head covering was a terrorist.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: He had a... No, that guy's Sikh.
Merlin: Like, you know?
John: But he... I think that they stopped... Well, you know, I collect a lot of old weird stuff, and I have some coffee cups.
John: But I think that they...
John: I think that they turned into Baker's Square.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I remember that coming up around the time that Boston Market was getting popular.
John: And I think Denny's did buy some old Sambozes and turn them into Denny's.
John: But no, Denny's was racist in the 90s because there was a...
John: I think an expose that revealed that at a management level, they were giving different service to African Americans.
Merlin: Okay, and now in my head, I'm unconcatenating this from Cracker Barrel discriminating against the gay.
John: right because that wasn't that also a thing we didn't like Cracker Barrel for a while yeah and I think Cracker Barrel was like up front about it or you know like Denny's was like no no no we don't do that oh they like ran a Chick-fil-a kind of thing yeah that's right yeah but then I think Denny's cleaned up their act a long time ago good for them man I want that burger buddy
John: But it was for a long time.
John: Remember, we didn't eat Domino's because he was an anti-abortion.
Merlin: That's when I was in high school, or excuse me, when I was in college.
Merlin: No, we never got the Domino's, except when we did.
Merlin: If you're high enough and it'll be there in 28 minutes, you're going to break your abortion rules.
John: Sure.
John: I took two Domino's to a Willie Nelson concert one time, and I was the hero of the night, at least for the five people that are standing around me.
Merlin: My friend and I, who are both familiar with your work, our families went out.
Merlin: We went bowling, and we went out to dinner, and guess what we got?
Merlin: pizza for the table pizza for the table oh see it's the technology that keeps on would it surprise you to know that it was a huge hit uh i cannot believe that pizza for the table would not always be a huge we did get a cheese pizza we all agreed on cheese and it arrived and it was great and the kids were very happy then they went outside and played and i had an old fashion i had two old fashions oh mr party guy yeah it was nice to be bold yeah
John: Let me run.
John: Let me just run this one more time up the flagpole and see who who spits.
John: But you all because the thing is, Denny's.
John: I don't know if you can be in America and not find a Denny's.
Merlin: We've got a Denny's.
Merlin: There's a famous Denny's downtown near Metreon on, I want to say Howard.
Merlin: And then there's a Denny's.
Merlin: It looks like there's a Denny's maybe on mission.
Merlin: There's one in South San Francisco, one in Emeryville.
Merlin: My primary Denny's would be the very colorful one downtown.
John: I think that I'm not sure.
John: I'm not going to I'm not going to say there are there's a Denny's in every American state because who knows what happens in some of those.
John: It's like a weather reporter in election, John.
John: Yeah.
John: Let's talk about Rhode Island.
John: Yes, there's a Denny's in Rhode Island.
John: But Delaware is Delaware even big enough to have probably based in Delaware.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Yeah.
John: If you go into a Denny's, now, I have not eaten a hamburger in every Denny's.
John: And a lot of them are franchises, so it's possible that some franchise owner is short-cutting it.
John: But I've been to a lot of Denny's and comparison-tested these burgers.
John: And you know, Merlin, nobody's more embarrassed than me that I even went into a Denny's in the first place, let alone ordered a hamburger.
Merlin: It's not the kind of thing you want to brag about, usually.
John: No, but I'm bragging about it now because I feel like
John: I feel like the only other people in Denny's are people that have to be there.
John: And I'm there by choice.
Merlin: It's like a DMV with eggs.
Merlin: It's like a DMV with eggs.
Merlin: Nobody's happy to be there, but luckily there's eggs.
John: Except that once you get into a Denny's, once you start going to Denny's, you realize that people that are there are actually happy to be there.
John: Because it's the last place you can get a burger, a milkshake, a pie, fries.
John: You can't smoke anymore.
John: Every chance that your server is going to have like
John: multiple piercings or ear gauges or whatever.
John: Oh, that's interesting.
John: Okay, yeah.
Merlin: Denny's has come all the way, right?
Merlin: Denny's sounds like far from what we were dealing with before.
Merlin: It sounds very diverse.
Merlin: It's extremely diverse.
Merlin: I love that.
John: The things that are happening, at least in American Denny's that I've been to, is it's like real microcosm.
John: It's a melting pot.
John: And what they're doing is melting delicious cheese.
Merlin: I just found the America's Diner Double.
Merlin: I sent you a link to this.
Merlin: American cheese, caramelized onions, all-American sauce on a brioche bun.
Merlin: Oh, God, this looks good.
Merlin: It's got some kind of a sauce, the all-America sauce.
John: Yeah, so you know what?
John: If you scroll down on that page.
John: Oh, Double Cheeseburger?
John: Yeah, the America Diner's Double is like if you want to get special with some sauce.
John: I see what you're saying.
John: But the Double Cheeseburger.
John: Does it look anything like this?
John: This looks so good.
John: It looks, not only does it look like that, but it tastes better than it looks.
John: Fuck me gently.
John: I want this so much.
John: What this is, it's a 40 napkin burger.
John: You take a bite out of it and then you have to like basically take a shower.
John: You have to wear a raincoat when you eat it.
John: Except it has, but except it's a grease coat.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: We also might be a flasher.
Merlin: I mean, everybody's welcome at Denny's.
John: If you eat this hamburger, I think that the Swiss Euro 4x4 model is going to predict tremendous precipitation of your taste buds.
Merlin: I'm getting a little wet in my zone right now.