Ep. 418: "Ensuring Daddy's Slice"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Well, you know, we had a little plan, you and I.
John: And then it just, the time got away from me.
John: What?
Merlin: What happened?
John: Well, I mean, you know, we were supposed to meet up at 1130 and it's already 1138.
John: Hell, it's 1139, Merlin.
Merlin: It happens.
Merlin: It happens.
Merlin: Sometimes you got to push and then you got to push inside the push.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Push, push in the bush, bush.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: I had chocolate cake for breakfast.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Is this birthday cake leftovers?
Merlin: Still?
Merlin: You still have left?
Merlin: That was like Thursday?
Merlin: Here's the hack.
Merlin: By the way, happy birthday again.
Merlin: Yeah, thank you.
Merlin: I'll pass it on.
Merlin: Our kids have always been three years apart.
Merlin: That seems crazy to me.
Merlin: It's nuts, right?
John: Three years.
John: It seems like longer because your little girl was already a teenager when my daughter was born.
Merlin: It feels like it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's a sophisticated young lady.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: She's a very sophisticated individual.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You had chocolate cake behind you.
Merlin: You had chocolate cake, by my calculation, sometime mid to late last week.
Merlin: There's a hack, you say, just for ensuring daddy's slice?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm listening.
John: Dad's slice.
John: And that is this.
John: My daughter has always had what I would consider the worst taste in cakes.
John: When she was little, she insisted every birthday she wanted a strawberry cake.
John: And we tried everything we could.
John: We were like, strawberry shortcake?
John: Strawberry cheesecake?
John: Nope.
John: She wanted a strawberry-flavored cake.
John: She thinks.
John: She thinks.
John: Thank you.
John: I all got a lot to say about this.
John: I was like, sweetie, sweetie, you know, she's four and you can't tell her anything.
John: And I'm like, sweetie, listen, strawberry cake is the worst of all cakes.
John: And she's like, strawberry cake is what I want.
John: And so for a while, we would get her strawberry cupcakes.
Merlin: That's exactly what to do.
Merlin: It's exactly what, here, try this on.
Merlin: You think you want strawberries, have a cupcake and then see if you want nine more.
John: But she, and she's one of these young people today who will sit and choke down a strawberry cake and just look you right in the eye and be like, I am loving this.
Merlin: And you're like, I know you're not.
Merlin: Your daughter, I say this with all due respect, your daughter is willful.
Merlin: And it's because of you.
Merlin: And probably your mom, and probably to some extent your daughter's mother.
Merlin: It came from my mom, probably.
Yeah.
John: She sets her mind to something, doesn't she?
John: She does.
John: This year, 10 years old, she says, I want carrot cake.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: For my birthday cake.
John: Really?
John: And I'm like, everybody loves carrot cake.
Merlin: Why don't you just do long division?
John: Everybody loves a carrot cake, but not for a birthday cake.
John: Unless you're 85.
John: That's what you give to please a retiree.
John: But you're a young person.
John: Don't you want a fun cake?
John: And she was like, carrot cake.
John: So I looked over at her mother.
John: And her mother does this big shrug like, well, I guess we're having carrot cake.
John: That's her MO.
John: She's a shrugger.
John: Shrug, guess we're having carrot cake.
John: And I said, under my breath, listen to me.
John: You get a fucking chocolate cake.
John: We can still save this.
John: You get as many carrot cakes as you want.
John: You fill the fridge with carrot cakes.
John: But there better be a chocolate cake.
John: As some component of this.
John: Because she's self-delegated to be the one that interfaces now with the grocer.
John: Oh, that's become a role.
John: Yeah.
John: She loves to order things online.
John: She loves to drive up and have things put in the trunk.
John: Like the whole process of it, which would baffle me.
John: And confound me and I would get it wrong every time.
John: You know, when she orders 20 tortillas and they give us 80 tortillas.
John: Or when she orders 20 tortillas and they give us zero tortillas.
John: Neither thing really bothers her.
John: I mean, she gets bothered, but I would be... Can I say she probably shrugs it off?
Merlin: She shrugs.
Merlin: Oh, I'm living this nightmare.
Merlin: I live with a shrugger, too.
Merlin: You do?
Merlin: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Merlin: Why would we see if this will fit in the area we have allotted?
Merlin: Why would you try on clothes?
Merlin: Have you decided by fiat that this is our child's foot size?
Merlin: Foot size is not a fiat.
Merlin: You always try on the clothes.
Merlin: You always...
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: I'm interrupting your story, but I'm so glad they'll never do a podcast together because they wouldn't even know why they'd been assigned to the podcast.
John: She says, we'll send it back.
John: We'll just send it back.
John: The shoes are the wrong size.
John: We get the wrong size shoes in every batch of shoes.
Merlin: There's an old familiar American tradition that can help with this, which is you made your twice cut once.
John: Yeah, the Braddock device.
John: The Braddock device.
John: The Braddock device, right.
John: Nice pull.
John: Thank you.
John: Anyway, so she is fine with the, like, she gets in the car.
John: It's an excuse to drive.
John: That's another thing.
John: She likes to drive.
John: Does she like her car?
John: She loves her car.
John: Her car is very sinister.
John: She has a sinister car because she's sinister.
John: I've always found her to be a woman of mystery, albeit a shrugger.
John: She wants a car that dominates other cars.
Okay.
John: She wants a car that if you pull into a parking lot in the middle of the night, everybody scatters.
John: She wants that car.
John: The problem is the nanny state has created cars that don't... Their lights never go off.
John: You can't turn their freaking lights off.
John: Now the car is driving you, you know what I'm saying?
John: That's exactly right.
John: I like cars that shift themselves.
John: But...
John: In this case, when you pull into a parking lot, you want to kill the lights.
John: You want to kill the lights.
John: Kill the floods.
John: And these things, you can't kill these lights.
John: You pull into your own driveway, you turn the car off, you get out, the lights are still on for a half an hour.
John: If I were to buy a new car, I would take it to a mechanic and I would say, put a kill switch on this thing.
John: Get in there somehow.
John: I don't know.
John: It's probably all fly-by-wire now, but put a kill switch in there where you can kill all the lights.
Merlin: I love convenience and automation, but I have to say I'm kind of on your side, such as it is, about this.
Merlin: I worry, like you with antidepressants, I worry what happens in the aftertimes when you can't turn something off.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Absolutely right.
Merlin: I feel like it puts us in, I mean, there's like, for example, our front door has the kind of lock like a hotel room, right?
John: With a key or with a, yeah, with a card.
John: Like you bleep to get in?
Merlin: Yes, that's right.
Merlin: Beep boop boop.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But like when you go to a hotel room, if you've been to a hotel room in the last 20 years, 30 years, you know that that door, when it closes, it's not – you can't really unlock –
Merlin: Your door.
Merlin: You have to do the swingy dingus.
Merlin: If you want to go get ice and not have to bring a card key, or if you're like me and you have a chronic illness that makes you worry about bathrooms, you're always trying to cover your door by doing that.
Merlin: So I can go get the ice.
Merlin: I'm not really worried about hotel room invasion.
Merlin: But we have that kind of door where when it closes, it is locked.
Merlin: And then there's a deadbolt in addition.
Merlin: And that's a problem for people who don't live here and don't know the habit.
Merlin: But I've been considering, and I'm going to throw it back to you.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: I had a lot of coffee.
Merlin: I think we, I worry that we're in a situation now where we count on the door locking in a way that's not wholesome.
Merlin: Because you know why?
Merlin: Because you don't have to check the door.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Not every door locks, though.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So you know my ticket trick I learned in high school, which is when you get in the car to go to a concert, everyone has to hold the ticket to their forehead.
Merlin: And you look at everyone else in the car and you say, turn your key, sir.
Merlin: Everybody knows there's... I think you need things like that in your life.
Merlin: I think... You never leave the house without keys.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: That's one thing.
Merlin: You don't just leave keys somewhere.
Merlin: I mean, that's...
Merlin: How do you know?
Merlin: So we used to have a Jetta that locked automatically, and you had to have the keys in your hand.
Merlin: So basically, here's the deal.
Merlin: It's very difficult to lock your keys in a Jetta.
Merlin: And now that I kind of like.
Merlin: I feel like that's the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin: With the house, if you just count on the door to lock and you're spacing whether you have keys, you're entering a world of pain.
Merlin: So the thing I've considered socializing with my family that I already know will never work is, hey, let's move to the other mode.
Merlin: What's the other mode?
Merlin: The other mode is we throw the switch.
Merlin: There's two buttons on our – I'm probably saying too much.
Merlin: There's two buttons on our door.
Merlin: Inside or outside?
Merlin: Okay, above the – I know there's a term for this.
Merlin: The closey thingy that goes ka-chunk.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: The, like, throw.
Merlin: The lock set.
Merlin: The who?
John: The lock set.
Merlin: The lock set.
Merlin: That's not a bolt, but the little ramp thing that makes the door close.
Merlin: There's a button on either side of it on this very old door.
Merlin: And you could say when it's in this mode...
Merlin: it locks automatically.
Merlin: And when it's in that mode, it's not locked.
Merlin: Now, you could throw the deadbolt, but the little grabby thing is always locked or unlocked.
Merlin: And I have been considering socializing an idea in my family that I know will never work, which is let's go to the other mode.
Merlin: And from now on, you have to lock the door with...
Merlin: A key when you leave.
Merlin: And what does that do?
Merlin: That makes us, we're living actively.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: We're living affirmatively.
Merlin: And we're saying, you need to lock this door because you're an adult or going to be at some point.
Merlin: And that means, guess what?
Merlin: You also have to have your keys.
Merlin: Yes, you're not going to get any buy-in on this plan.
Merlin: Absolutely not.
Merlin: Because the door locks itself.
Merlin: We have a third lock that's one of those classic 70s aftermarket flippy things that when you're inside, you know the aftermarket flippy thing?
Merlin: It's pretty simple, but it's just the thing.
Merlin: Yeah, it's mounted up high and you flip it.
Merlin: Yeah, and you flip it, and then it goes down into a little notch.
Merlin: It's a clever bit of tech from probably the 60s.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so sometimes you say, okay, I'm going to go outside.
Merlin: I'm going to throw the flicky so the door will be unlocked for you.
Merlin: I don't know how we get into this situation, but guess what?
Merlin: Sometimes people leave the house and the flippy and now the door can't close because did you, do you have your keys?
Merlin: I have no idea.
Merlin: Did you check the lock?
Merlin: I'm going to say not, but dad looks at the spy camera and sees the front door is open.
Merlin: And that's no way to live.
Merlin: Now, we're living passively, and we're letting a big car tell us when the lights should be off, which is whenever it suits the car.
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: This stuff really gets my goat.
Merlin: We have to live affirmatively.
John: You do.
John: You have to, Merlin.
John: And I don't know what to do when you're surrounded by people that refuse to live affirmatively.
John: You know, here at this house, the house where I'm staying, the house which, by the way, or the house that, by the way,
John: I could... My house now is inhabitable.
John: I could...
John: be living there and this is kind of the first of the last that's your own version of getting out of covid yeah this is now you've got to start thinking about something that's just now becoming a possibility it's a possibility and it's and it was pointed out to me by a friend like look people get their houses redone all the time and they live there the entire time yeah get a portal lit or something
Merlin: Yeah, peeing in a bucket.
Merlin: My in-laws did that.
Merlin: They had to get a portal outside.
Merlin: That's where they would drop a deuce, was in their front yard.
John: I mean, we had it.
John: When we were fixing up my mom's house, we had a toilet in the center of the room that was surrounded by plastic sheeting.
John: That sounds like a Boonewell film.
John: It was a long time ago.
John: I don't prefer that.
John: And at the time, the way my mom and I lived, we were never in the house at the same time.
John: But anyway...
John: I could be right now really, really, really, really pushing to move into my new house.
John: And the somewhat opposite is true.
John: I am – as many of our listeners have indicated, they feel like –
John: in listening to this whole saga play out over time, that really what I've discovered is that I like to be a domestic house cat, I like to be fed from a can, and I'm never going to... All the wildness has been bred out of you, huh?
John: That's right, that's right.
John: I look like a Norwegian forest cat, but I'm really just some sort of, like an Ottoman, like a living Ottoman.
John: And this house is over there and I could be over there.
John: Now you've become one of those cats like ours.
John: You're supposed to brush it all the time.
John: Yeah, you got to brush me all the time.
John: Otherwise, you're going to get knots.
John: But here at the house where I'm currently continuing to live in spite of the fact that I have a perfectly good house over there, that I could now be – because I got a text two days ago from my contractor who said, the tub finally works.
Hmm.
John: And the tub finally works.
John: That was the problem.
John: Like, you know, how do you live in a place without a tub that doesn't work?
Merlin: Where do you put your desk in your chili?
John: Yeah, so now the tub finally works.
John: The guy that's coming to install the carpet, and the carpet is a whole saga I've left you out of.
John: Not because I don't trust you.
John: No, no, no, I'm writing it down.
John: I haven't gotten there yet, but here at this house, she, my daughter's mother slash partner, she, when she was
John: Initially fixing up her house.
John: So the real estate agent said to her as part of her like congratulations, like bouquet of white lilies that comes with selling a house or buying a house.
John: She said, I'm going to pay for your locksmith.
John: Which is a wonderful, wonderful gesture.
John: It's kind of random.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, like you're moving into a new house.
John: This house has got, what, 11 teen doors.
John: You got to get rekeyed.
Merlin: They got to get rekeyed.
Merlin: I'm going to pay for it.
Merlin: You got to think.
Merlin: At that point, you got to think a lot.
Merlin: There's a lot of decisions to make at that point.
Merlin: Do you want like a master key?
Merlin: Do you want all the different things?
Merlin: Is there maybe some good OPSEC and InfoSec and having some extremely different keys?
Merlin: Maybe something that requires like some kind of a special knock.
Merlin: See, that's the kind of thing.
Merlin: I spent a week on that.
John: The family who lived here before was one of those families that had keys hidden all over the place.
John: And so I walked through the house one time with the old man who lived here since the 50s, and he is blind now.
John: He's a former pharmacist, and he lost his sight.
John: Full of mercury?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Huff and Mercury.
Merlin: He's like the guy in It's a Wonderful Life whose son died.
John: I never saw a wonderful life.
John: Oh, that's okay.
John: Anyway, he walks me through, and we're walking very slowly because it's not like he's been blind for 70 years.
John: He's just recently gone blind.
John: Okay.
John: And so he's in his 90s and is now trying to negotiate the world.
Merlin: Oh, that sucks.
Merlin: Did he have the Don Knotts disease, do you know?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You know the thing where you start losing your sight from the middle?
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: And you can only see the periphery?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: It's called, not glaucoma, but I'll look it up.
Merlin: But it's my idea of terror.
Merlin: Imagine your eye is like the middle of the bullseye and the blindness moves out.
Merlin: I don't want that.
Merlin: That's why I used to wear those big sunglasses.
Merlin: Barney Fife.
John: Oh, right, right.
Merlin: Keeps the... But you know, God bless him.
Merlin: God bless him.
Merlin: I'm glad you adjusted your gait for the blind pharmacist.
John: Hey, listen, I, you know, you know me, I follow, I'm a follower, right?
John: So I follow him around and he's going around the house and he's like, over here up above this door.
John: And he's just like me with the cigarettes.
John: He's got keys hidden in all these, there's like a little abundance of caution.
John: There's a little nail like tacked in under the banister.
John: And he's like, here's a little, there's a little key.
John: This is the key to the back door.
John: And this is, and then his son came by one time and he's like, I don't know if you know about the key.
John: And so, and he showed me a different key.
John: I was like, we got to get this house rekeyed.
John: There are too many keys out there.
John: There's no way you can have security.
Merlin: That's risky.
Merlin: That's the opposite of security.
Merlin: A key is good for securing a lock.
Merlin: You got too many keys and they all become worthless.
Merlin: It's like backups, unlabeled backups.
Merlin: That's not going to help anybody.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Don't even start with the unlabeled backups.
Merlin: Do you want to know how many CDRs I have that have no writing on them?
Merlin: I'm guessing probably you're the sort that would drag your desktop onto a disk, and it would say... Disk.
Disk.
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Merlin: I hate myself.
Sharpie.
John: But as we were doing this, she's like, well, I need to get new locks.
John: And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
John: This is the opportunity for me to Merlinify.
Merlin: I live for this kind of opportunity.
Merlin: Down to a goddamn rental car, John.
Merlin: I want to know what kind of tech is in it.
Merlin: Don't just go rent a car.
Merlin: Let me participate in this.
Merlin: This is my work.
John: In your case, your work is helping the human condition.
John: That's right.
John: And so I said, what you need is a lock.
John: What we have to find is an electrochemical lock that can't be hacked.
John: So it's not like the Russians can come into the house in the middle of the night.
John: But it also allows us to
John: Like, see if a plane crashes on the street.
John: We'll have a video of it.
John: And also, we can unlock it if we're in France.
John: Oh, I see.
John: And all these other things.
John: I'm sure there's a thing.
John: I'm sure there's a way.
John: If we could combine Apple and Amazon and General Dynamics and Raytheon, there's, I'm sure, a lock out there that Matt Howey has already tried and decided wasn't secure.
Merlin: See, but Matt, how he's in too deep.
Merlin: This is why he can't get into his own garage.
Merlin: This is super intriguing to me because you are not a tech-first guy in many ways, but you understand the opportunities and the possibilities.
Merlin: And because you're a curious man, you say to yourself, why don't we – you say, why don't we explore this opportunity?
Merlin: And is there a way that we could bring in the McLaughlin Group technology or whatever?
Merlin: And then that enables you to be in France and see whether somebody's a Porsche pirate.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I don't want it to be an opportunity stake.
John: I want it to be like something that benefits us all.
John: So I go down all the way down.
John: I go down, down, down, down, down.
John: Into the hell of people on the internet telling you which electric doorknob to buy.
Merlin: Oh, and then there's somebody else to tell you never buy that doorknob.
Merlin: Never buy that doorknob.
John: And then there's the people that are like, well, what you really want is you need to hook it up to a system.
Merlin: And here's the system that you... This is like asking the world if you should try raisins.
Merlin: It's like the responses you get.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: Like there's certain kinds of things where you're like, I don't know anything about this.
Merlin: And it seems normal that I would ask for help with this.
Merlin: But unfortunately, this is something that is such a charged topic.
Merlin: You know, like maybe it's GIF for GIF, that kind of thing.
Merlin: And there's always going to be the doorknob skeptics.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: And you got to get a filter.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: The thing is, I've been eating a lot of raisins lately because I've gone.
John: No, I've gone back to trail mix after years.
John: Oh, you make a gorp?
John: Yeah, yeah, Gorp.
John: Actually, I said the other day, I was going through the airport.
John: They pulled my bag aside.
John: I'm like, yeah, it's a big bag of Gorp.
John: And the guy goes, Gorp.
John: And I said, Gorp.
John: And he said, Gorp.
John: And then the woman that was running the machine said, Gorp.
John: And I was like, Gorp.
John: Gorp.
John: And I pulled it out and I was like, Gorp.
John: And they were like,
John: Trail mix?
John: And I was like, no, Gorp, where are you guys from?
John: You think it's a regionalism?
John: This is what I was trying to find out.
John: I turned it immediately into that.
John: Like, okay, we're going to stand here and say Gorp at each other.
John: Let's have a conversation.
John: You there.
John: You there.
John: Where are you from?
John: I was like, where are you from?
John: You guys obviously aren't from up here because we call this Gorp.
John: And the guy goes, I was born in Marysville.
John: And she said, I'm from Everett.
John: And I was like, well, you guys are from here.
John: How do you not call this Gorp?
John: And they were like, well, we don't.
John: And I realized, oh, it's not.
John: I call this jacket an anorak.
John: It's not a regional thing.
John: It's a class name.
John: Gorp is a class name.
John: My sweater's a jumper.
John: Well, that's it, right?
John: If your parents were members of REI in the 70s, you called it GORP.
John: Oh, that's so good.
John: But these people, he was growing up in Marysville.
John: He was riding dirt bikes or something.
John: He became a cop or a TSA.
John: So he was on a path that did not have GORP in it.
John: Whereas the path of good intentions was paved with GORP.
Merlin: Carl Marx said that.
Right.
John: That's what they call it in London.
John: So it's got a U in it.
John: So I start researching doorknobs and I'm like, listen, what we need is a doorknob that's connected to a set of video cameras that record locally.
John: Uh-huh.
John: That are infrared, that also are motion sensitive, but also are connected to like a whole – so what we need is basically – we need a hard drive, like a big one, like basically a rack in the basement.
John: Where we, where we're, when we go away for 10 days.
Merlin: Oh, that's smart.
Merlin: You can start your own knock down there.
Merlin: Network operating center.
Merlin: You get some blades.
Merlin: You put them in there.
Merlin: And then you got the blinky lights.
Merlin: Like a Vanderslice kind of situation.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's like a dozen.
Merlin: It starts with the doorknob.
John: All the companies that want to sell this to you, they all want to charge you $25 a month.
John: Oh, yes.
John: You get this feature.
Merlin: Oh, that thing you bought.
Merlin: Guess what?
John: We changed it.
John: They want to store it on their servers.
John: And then if something happens, if you want to look at it, then you have to pay them extra.
John: And then you have to wait for somebody in customer service to agree to find.
John: I had a storage space that got broken into, as you recall.
John: And they wouldn't let me see the tapes.
Merlin: They had tapes.
Merlin: You've heard of electric eels?
Merlin: Well, guess what?
Merlin: Meet electronic eels.
Merlin: Electronical eels.
Merlin: Electronical eels.
Merlin: And it's really, really gross.
Merlin: Now, you can get certain kinds of cameras where you put in a little SD card.
Merlin: Like the kind of thing, sort of like the SIM that you put in your, not the game, but the SIM you put in your phone.
Merlin: There's ways around that.
Merlin: But I hear what you're saying.
Merlin: And you're new to this.
Merlin: You're new to this.
Merlin: You know, once there was a doorknob, then there was no doorknob.
Merlin: But that all connects to the knock.
John: You go to Costco, and there's a huge box that's got eight cameras and 42 lenses, and it's like, this thing can see around corners, and this thing can tell you what mice are thinking.
John: And you're like, I want that.
John: I want to know what the mice are thinking.
John: Oh, boy.
John: I created a whole panopticon just to see mice.
John: If you buy a box at Costco that tells you it's going to do a bunch of stuff, boy, I've got a couple of those boxes that never fully...
Merlin: No, you got a new thing to store now because that's not going to work.
Merlin: But you bring in some kind of technology that makes you wonder, like, how will this fit into my life?
Merlin: All I wanted was a doorknob, and now you're trying to sell me an electronical eel.
John: When I was trying to sell my GMCRV, a guy came to look at it.
John: And everybody that came to look at the GMCRV until the people that actually paid me for it and drove it off, every one of them was like, hmm, I don't know.
John: And I was like, no, no, no.
John: These are amazing.
John: And they're like, yeah, but I don't know.
John: A lot of systems on this thing.
John: And one guy was like kicking the tires, hemming and hawing.
John: He'd come by.
John: And I was like, what do you do?
John: You seem to be really, you know, like, are you an engineer?
John: Are you into these systems?
John: And he said, because, you know, I was always trying to sell it as like, this is the RV of engineers.
John: And, uh, and he said, I install high end security systems for homes with cameras and doorknobs and stuff.
John: And I was like, oh wow, you're the one I want to talk to.
John: Like, why don't you just take the RV?
John: Why don't you install like a, like a whole, like map my whole property with, with cameras and 3d rendering and whatnot.
John: And he was like, he looked, he just kind of looked across the farm and he was like, yeah, I, I work on projects that I think are a little bit
John: Maybe out of scale for this property.
John: Whoa, he's big-timing you a little bit?
John: He was big-timing me on the house security, but he struck a note in me, you know, that there was a...
John: That there were technologies, there were server farms in Bill Gates' house that were just recording like every time somebody touched a doorknob, the lights went, you know, the whopper went.
Merlin: When you walk through the hallway, the paintings change based on, it's like the Haunted Mansion.
John: It's really wonderful.
John: You could, if you went to Bill Gates' house.
John: Every room you went into would be playing Sloan again, and it would start over, or Brighten the Corners, like you'd go into the bathroom.
John: Ooh, I would love that.
John: It's playing Brighten the Corners in the bathroom.
John: How did it know?
Merlin: I go in to drop a duke, and I'm going to hear some pavement.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But I don't have a sheet around me.
John: So what happened, what had happened was... Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
John: I come to my daughter's mother slash partner, and I've got all these sheaves, and I've got all these tabs open.
John: And I'm like, look, if we combined, what you can't do is buy an off-the-shelf thing.
John: If you hand it over to Apple, then Uber's going to have your password or whatever.
John: What you have to do is you have to get one of these, combine it with one of these, then you have to get a special HDMI cable to connect it to this one over here.
Merlin: They're always doing that.
Merlin: They're always doing that.
John: This is, this is lightning three.
John: It only works with lightning three.
John: It doesn't, it's not backward compatible to this, but then we put it off the, and she's like, and you know, she works in internet security and she says, I'm not having any of that on my door.
John: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: Does she remind me?
Merlin: I'm probably concatenating my friends like I do, but does she have a strong position on voice-based home assistance?
Merlin: Remind me.
Merlin: Is she anti-pro lady in a tube?
John: She has what I would describe as a very lackadaisical shrug attitude about the fact that there's a little hockey puck in this room right now listening to me, and if I say the word computer, it will light up.
John: And it didn't do it that time.
John: Computer.
John: Computer.
John: Oh, I unplugged it.
John: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Screw you.
John: Shrug at that, baby.
John: No, somehow she's fine with that little, with Alexa sitting and listening to her all day long.
John: But so all of a sudden, she uses this get out of locksmith free card that she got from her real estate agent.
John: And there's a locksmith here.
John: And the locksmith is installing a knob that has a keypad.
John: Okay.
John: And I looked at it and I was like, and it's not even a keypad.
John: Like it's a, it's like, um, it's old fashioned buttons.
John: Like, like buttons that you push in like a chunk, chunk, chunk kind.
John: It's not even electrical.
John: It's like mechanical.
John: Okay.
John: And I'm like, what the hell is this?
John: This is the type of thing that you would,
John: That you would operate a few of them.
Merlin: This is like when my wife rents the car that has the, like, you know, name of name brand.
Merlin: Like, this one's got the Honda system, but it doesn't have CarPlay.
Merlin: It's great, great.
Merlin: Now we're going to have 800 miles of me trying to use the four-way device to spell the word restaurant or Popeyes.
Merlin: It's like, why don't we just, you know, get me involved.
Merlin: Invite me to an earlier meeting, please, and let me have a vote.
Merlin: A keypad feels like a very 10 years ago way to handle that.
Merlin: I understand it as a backup.
John: It is a thing where if I was at Area 51 and my job was to drive like a Chevy S10 pickup around the outside of the fence.
John: And check all the gates that they have like way out in the desert where they let UFOs in and out who are like who are drunk coming back early in the morning and they come in through these back gates.
John: Those would have these kinds of like click, click, click, click kind of keypad openers.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: And so all of a sudden there's one on the front door of this house.
John: oh my god just whoa whoa whoa so like it wasn't even there wasn't a conversation about oh by the way we're getting a new doorknob well this isn't my house i don't know there's no conversation i just i had all the the binders full of like all right now i don't understand this technology because she's an av girl right she can always make the thing work you could have a you could have a television in a hotel room that was completely bricked and within within five minutes oh she could flash the bios oh
John: Oh, she hums and hums.
John: And then all of a sudden her phone is controlling it from down the hall.
John: You know, like she just she just puts it all together.
John: She's she she understands how the series of tubes works.
John: Yes.
John: But in this case, she wanted this low tech mechanical thing.
John: But it's but it's but it's these buttons.
John: And so we're all in the habit now.
John: Oh, but here's the thing.
John: Unlike the Merlin Mann doorknob, this doorknob will not lock unless you put the code in and turned the clunker.
John: You've got to be kidding me.
John: So every time we leave the house, we turn around, re-enter the code.
Merlin: That does not feel like an improvement to me.
Merlin: You know what I could, you know, so I don't know anything.
Merlin: I'm not the doorknob technologist that you are, but you know what I would allow?
Merlin: I would allow my near field communications on the phone a sense that I'm near the doorknob and I'm walking out and it sends Colonel Potter's official okie dokie and says, you're good.
Merlin: And then it goes beep boop, a certain kind of maybe a special pattern to say, John's leaving and I know it, you're good.
John: You want something more?
John: Biometrics?
John: I need to know from our listeners what the solution is here.
John: Because...
John: I now have the opportunity to move into my own home.
Merlin: This might be what drives you out, John.
Merlin: Maybe this is the universe telling you it's time to get away from that doorknob.
John: But it's been here for the whole time.
John: It's been here for a year and a half.
John: I mean, I'm completely used to now.
John: I can operate this thing in the dark and in the rain.
John: I can operate this thing on a train.
John: I know this doorknob really well, but I don't want one of these.
John: First of all, it doesn't look very cool.
Uh-uh.
John: What I want, what I want.
Merlin: What do you want?
John: No more attacks on my father.
Merlin: Please come back to the cake at some point.
John: Well, see, this whole show is powered by cake.
John: But what I need.
John: There's cake inside.
John: I want something.
John: So I want something where my entire house is like a...
John: like a faraday cage right i just want i want oh there's electronics but it's not leaving the cage i want it to be like nothing gets in nothing gets out but i want this is the problem with all this stuff i want to be able to be in paris france on my phone and see who's coming in the door and lock the door behind them or whatever
John: But I don't want to, A, pay any internet service for the privilege.
John: I don't want somebody monitoring it.
John: I don't want somebody's proprietary software that when I stopped using them, I can no longer access my doorknobs.
Merlin: Well, I'm here to tell you, brother, you might have discovered this in your doorknob research, but there is now a company owned by Amazon who makes doorknobs.
John: They're very nice.
John: Amazon is a very nice company.
Merlin: Well, I'm not going to say, but I'm just saying that company that they acquired is basically a cop machine.
Merlin: Like, first of all, it's real, I don't know if you have Nextdoor there, but it's very much like the Nextdoor crowd.
Merlin: They share videos from their doorknob.
Merlin: Oh, fun.
Merlin: And go like, oh, look, there's a black here.
Merlin: He says he's with the utility company, but I called and they said no one's supposed to be in the area.
Merlin: And I'm in France on Lafon.
Merlin: And like, what do I do?
Merlin: And like, it's a real like suburban dick kind of system now.
Merlin: And unless you opt out, I believe your doorknob video might get shared with the cops.
Merlin: The cops can just go in and say, could I please have their doorknob video?
Merlin: The cops!
Merlin: the cops they have a tab in the app called neighborhood which sounds friendly enough but it is like it's like a tab in the app little one says roll over okay anyways and but like this is the kind of thing you want to know john are you telling me that you've had to punch a keypad keypad to lock the door on the house that you don't own for months
Merlin: To come in and go out of this house, I have to punch the keypad.
Merlin: Does it make a beepy noise?
Merlin: Every time.
Merlin: It does make beepy noise.
Merlin: Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Merlin: I like the feedback of a beepy noise.
Merlin: When I turn off my alarm, when I arrive at the office, I like the beepy noise.
Merlin: But I would not want to have to do that just to leave.
John: This is going to make you insane.
Merlin: Oh, I hate your doorknob already.
John: The keypad is lit.
John: The keys are lit from behind.
John: Blue.
John: They're blue.
John: But only when you press them.
Merlin: So there's not like an ambient light sensor.
Merlin: So in the dark, when you touch the thing.
Merlin: It just assumes there's no one there until something.
Merlin: That seems like a design flaw.
Merlin: You want a doorknob that talks, you know what I'm saying?
John: Well, but what's crazy is in the dark.
Merlin: If you hit it wrong, now you're going wrong.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's invisible.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I totally get it.
John: What you end up getting to do, what you end up knowing is just in the dark where the fingers should go to push the numbers that you think are the right numbers.
John: Right?
John: There's no, the lighting is,
John: has no function because you don't need a button lit after you press it you need a button lit before you press it that's like having a smoke alarm that goes off whenever a fireman arrives at your house but the the other thing about the shruggers here the mother shrugger and then she definitely passed this down to her daughter the daughter shrugger they just don't lock the door because it involves an extra step and why would you why do it yeah
John: So I have become the crazy – I've become the Howard Hughes who walks around.
John: I lock that door 40 times a day.
John: Oh, no.
John: I think they walk by and unlock it just to give me something to do, to give me purpose in life.
John: Oh, John.
John: Because they unlock it and then it's just like, hey, all you have to do is lock it.
John: It's just you're right there.
John: Your fingers are already on it.
Merlin: That's not okay.
Okay.
John: So for my house, I want a system.
John: I don't want Amazon to know about it.
John: I don't want my neighbors or the cops to be using my video to socially engineer.
John: But I do want to see – I do want to have the ability to see if a plane crashes on my street.
John: And I want to be able to be in Paris, France and unlock the door or lock the door.
Merlin: It seems so simple.
Merlin: What your doorknob needs are sophisticated, but for our times, is this not something that we can accomplish?
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Without it also being a total security breach.
Merlin: Yes, stay in my Faraday cage.
John: And then additionally, what I want is that my daughter will be a teen not really soon.
John: Sooner than you think.
John: Sooner than I think.
John: And then, of course, having been a teen myself, I know that teen boys – teens in general are a plague, but teen boys especially.
John: I didn't start –
John: coming in coming into the bushes and throwing little pebbles at girls windows bedroom windows in the middle of the night until i was 16 15 16 it was the first time i was like hang you know throw a little and then she opens window i was like what yeah that didn't happen until i was 16 but as a father i want to get ahead of this oh totally i want the technology in place
John: And what I think I want is the ability is to have very small speakers outside around the house.
Merlin: Like the things that don't look like speakers.
Merlin: Maybe it looks like a rock or a rose bush.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: That kind of thing Disney World would have.
John: That's exactly right.
John: A little Disney Disney World rock or a little spigot or something that looks like just an innocuous thing that allow me to in the middle of the night when somebody is throwing rocks in my daughter's window to go, hey, hey, buddy.
John: And and then the kid, you know.
John: gets real scared and looks around and i'm like hey buddy it's me over here it's your conscience that's right are you sure this is where you want to be right now in life uh-huh uh like i i want that power and ideally in a perfect world i would have those speakers all over my ravine i would be able to talk to the raccoons in the middle of the night i'd be like yes hey hey hey buddy you sure that you sure that's
Merlin: And just to be clear here, like, sometimes, I mean, like, obviously, one thing this opens up is if you are in France, and you happen to be, you know, at the doing your Sean's Lyce on the phone, it would be nice if you had automated things that could detect certain kinds of things.
Merlin: And it runs the routine called a scare teen boy away.
Merlin: But it's also not going to be if you are doing it manually with your manual voice.
Merlin: It's not necessarily could it could be a greeting.
Merlin: It could be it could be you just say, I see you crow.
John: I see you, Crow.
John: That's all I need, but I need it, right?
John: It's like it seems small.
John: This is not weird at all.
John: Right.
John: And I would like also to have potentially, I want a station in the basement where I can monitor everything.
Merlin: That's kind of like.
Merlin: Oh, so you're Ozymandias or like the guy in Hot Fuzz and the neighborhood watch.
Merlin: You want to have all of your monitors, your panopticon available to you.
Merlin: That's right.
John: It's right.
John: Right.
John: I don't want anybody to know which camera is on.
John: All cameras are always on.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's Foucault.
Merlin: He says, you know, if you, you know, hit your hit the team boy every day.
Merlin: If you don't know what it's for, he will.
Merlin: Or you, or, or a crow.
Merlin: And now if the crow is going to get mad at anybody, it's going to be a speaker and not John Roderick.
Merlin: You don't need that.
John: No, that's right.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: These teen boys are never going to, I'm not, I'm not going to be like, hi, it's, you know, Hey, it's dad.
John: I'm going to be like, it is a disembodied voice from a rock.
John: And that, and frankly, all these, all these, these biddies that are, that are posting on next door.
John: I can put a rock in their yard too.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That would be the dream.
Merlin: Nothing you're ever going to act on.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: Like, the thing is, a lot of people think that information must always lead to some kind of a change or behavior or an act.
Merlin: I don't know if I'm using this phrase right, but I heard this phrase once.
Merlin: You know, it's not performative.
Merlin: When I ask you that question, I'm not asking you that question because I want you to do something.
Merlin: I just want to know the information.
Merlin: In this case, I need to know what's going on in that biddy's yard.
Merlin: Now, then you can cross-reference that information with your own personal Faraday cage next door to make your own decisions about how you feel about your neighbors and maybe introduce two or three more cameras.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, we get to a point where you get the inexpensive rock camera, maybe disguised like a Disney World trash can.
Merlin: I don't know how it works.
Merlin: I haven't researched it.
Merlin: But, like, then you can deploy your technology in a way that keeps everybody safe or at least everybody, you know, informed.
Merlin: And by everybody, I mean you.
John: I got a pamphlet, not a pamphlet, a newsletter in the mailbox the other day at my new house that said, hey, everyone on the block has been – is –
John: We have gifted you all Nextdoor membership, nextdoor.com membership.
John: And so here's your login.
John: It's like the Tupperware KKK.
John: Go in and log on.
John: And I was like, I don't know what that is, but I've heard Merlin talk about it, and it doesn't sound good, so I'm not going to go.
John: But then I got another pamphlet.
John: That said, you're signed up for Nextdoor.
John: What?
John: That's where we're all hanging out.
John: With your name?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Anytime I join anything like that, if I join anything like that, I flood the zone with incorrect information.
Merlin: Because most of these folks out there, this generation Facebook, loves getting in there and putting in their name and the photo of them sitting in their car or whatever it is.
Merlin: And now somebody knows that, you know.
Merlin: You have a car.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, Jane Rowe lives at Dingle, the corner of Dingle and Dingle.
Merlin: I don't love the idea of a system where I let everybody know where I live and what my name is.
John: Well, this was one of those things where when I first started – when I first moved into the house, I was standing out front.
John: You know, a lot of my neighbors are – This is your old new house.
John: This is the new house.
John: This is the new new house.
John: This is the house at Avignon.
Yeah.
John: yeah that's right this is the this is the house of papillon and um you build a raft out of coconuts and and you're a raft out of coconuts and the the neighbor comes over and says hey there how's it going there young fella and i go hey there mr neighbor he's like well you know we got a good old group of here and all these people you know over here ben used to be a live library scientist and
John: and janine up there used to build rockets for and you know and i'm like oh isn't that interesting well what about the one with the you know what about the one with the hair and oh well he's a character and i got to know all of them because they all come by all the time and a lot of them now come by and say your mom sure works hard and i'm like yeah yeah yeah you're just not over here when i'm working hard sure you're all up at six o'clock in the morning but it's all in good fun
John: It's fun.
Merlin: We're having fun.
Merlin: You just give each other a little bit of the business.
John: That's right.
John: And then it was like, well, we got an email chain where we all, everybody is on the same email.
John: So if somebody, you know, if anything happens, you know, we're all, we all know each other.
John: Can I add you to the email?
John: And of course I want to be on the email.
John: I want to hear all the neighborhood news.
John: And so I get on this email list of 25 neighbors who all live around me who are just out there at 7 o'clock in the morning shouting across the street to my mom like, you sure work hard.
John: And she's like, okay.
John: and because she doesn't want to socialize your mom is not a fan of idle chatter well oh the guy across so there's one guy in the neighborhood that everybody is like well that guy look out like the block captain he no it's the it's the other way around like the block captain lives across the street from me and his yard is impeccable it's like he it's like it's like a motel about black sheep here the guy next to him is this guy who uh who built his own house and it looks like
John: The temple at Delphi.
John: Like, it's just this crazy house.
John: Every time he opens the garage, a new – a different car comes out.
John: I've never – I don't know the limit of this guy's cars.
John: I've talked to him.
John: He's a self-made man.
John: He bought his first rental house when he got out of the Air Force in 1950, and he parlayed it into –
John: 20 rental houses and then that turned that into apartment buildings.
Merlin: Anyway, everybody – But of all the houses that he has in one way or another, this is his primary domicile.
John: Well, so what he says is his wife wanted a house.
John: His wife wanted a big house.
John: He didn't need one.
John: He could have lived in four plexes the rest of his life.
John: But she wanted a big house and so he built this house for her.
John: And he's got a lot to say about his wife.
John: Is that his current wife?
John: His current wife, yeah.
John: But I don't see her.
John: I hardly ever see her.
John: I think she only comes and goes in the car.
John: But he's out all the time.
John: He's one of these guys, once he starts talking to me about Vietnam or how to lay ground bark.
John: Like he was talking – he had a dispute with a neighbor one time where –
John: There was some kind of property line dispute, and in the middle of the night, he built a wall between their properties that effectively – the neighbor had been cutting across his property to get to their garage.
John: They built a home where the garage was oriented in such a way that they actually had to go across a corner of his property.
John: And he built a wall in the middle of the night.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Now the neighbor couldn't get in or out of their own garage.
John: This guy's all business.
John: Oh, he's incredible.
John: And he's telling me this story.
John: He's just loving it.
John: You can just see.
John: They didn't know who they crossed with this.
John: Oh, no.
John: The glimmer in his eyes when he watched in the morning as they came out and couldn't get the car out of their own garage.
John: And it was like he poured this wall.
John: This was not something that he was like, okay, just kidding.
John: It was like, Oh my God.
John: They had to cut a new hole in the garage.
John: So he, I love him.
John: Right.
John: But the rest of the neighborhood's like, you gotta watch out.
John: He's a little bit.
John: And so one time my mom got done doing whatever the heck it is that she does between the hours of five and 15.
John: And she said she was standing out front.
John: It was raining.
John: She was going to take the bus at that.
John: At that point, she was trying to see if she could exclusively use public transit.
Hmm.
John: I mean, she's always – She's trying it on like a jacket.
John: She's trying it on to come all the way out to my new house, which is not – she uses public transit exclusively in the city.
John: Are there any transfers?
John: Oh, there would be a lot of transfers.
John: In fact, you'd be transferring between two different metros, two different metro systems, right?
John: Seattle and then the county.
John: She's a brave lady.
John: So you'd have to –
John: Yeah, you'd have to make some switcheroos.
John: So she was doing this and she was like, well, I had to walk all the way up to the, and it was raining and I didn't want to go wait in the bus.
John: So she stands out in front of me, she sticks out her thumb and she's walking up the street, 87, you know, with her thumb out.
John: And this guy who she'd never met, my across the street neighbor, who's also 87 and is like out building concrete walls just to watch his neighbor squirm.
John: He's driving along and he sees this lady hitchhiking.
John: He's like, well, shit, of course I'm going to pull her over.
John: So he pulls over, get in, cutie.
John: And she's like, you know, I need to go up to the transfer station.
John: He's like, I'll take you anywhere.
John: And so they strike up this fast friendship.
John: Neither one of them knows, you know, my mom's, by the time he picked her up, she was blocking a half.
John: She'd been walking.
John: So he didn't know, he didn't associate.
Merlin: Oh, didn't associate with the hardworking lady.
John: He's always out there at 5am.
John: And she didn't, whatever she's doing.
John: She didn't know he was the guy across the street from me.
John: So they just strike up this friendship, you know, Oh, that's the hitchhiking lady.
Merlin: And I think I'm afraid – That could be an Oscar contender on Netflix.
Merlin: This is what I'm worried about.
John: I think that he likes her more – he likes my mom more than he likes his wife is the impression I get right now.
John: And what he doesn't understand is that he has –
John: If he's pursuing my mom, he is on a Nantucket sleigh ride because that's not going to fucking end up.
John: Uh-huh.
John: He's going to get dragged to the bottom of the ocean and the whale will resurface and he will not.
John: Yeah.
John: I need a system.
John: I need an overall system that starts with...
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: We cover so much ground on this program.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But her mind's not – she's had enough, right?
Merlin: Just to clarify for new listeners.
Merlin: Your mom's had enough.
Merlin: She's had enough of everything.
Merlin: And she's real no-nonsense.
Merlin: And the last thing that she needs is an Air Force veteran in her life.
Merlin: In 1977, she had had enough.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: But she's definitely, she's not out hitchhiking.
Merlin: And she's not, just to be clear, your mom's not, like, mean.
Merlin: She's not a cross person.
Merlin: Oh, no, she's wonderful.
Merlin: She's wonderful, and, like, she has such a big heart, but she's also, what's your phrase?
Merlin: She brooks no truck.
Merlin: Like, she is not a sufferer of fools.
John: No, and she doesn't, I was thinking about this the other day.
John: We talk about this so much in the world now, not just you and me, but everybody's talking about it all the time.
John: Like, oh, it's,
John: What's your personality?
John: Can you boil it down to four letters?
John: Can you put it into a box?
John: Can you put me over here and you over there?
John: And this explains why I'm like this and you're like that.
John: And, you know, I realized, like, I talk about being an introvert all the time, but, you know, I'm emotionally introverted.
John: I'm actually socially very, very super social.
Merlin: That's an interesting distinction.
Merlin: I was watching a documentary about the Bee Gees yesterday, and Robin was talking about, like, once you get to know Robin—
Merlin: I mean, they're all great guys.
Merlin: You know, you got Barry, you got Morris, you got Robin.
Merlin: But Robin, you know, he says in one of these older interviews, like, he has to be around somebody.
Merlin: He's the kind of introvert where, like, he has to be around somebody for a pretty long time before they get to see sort of the real him.
Merlin: But then everybody who knows the real him says the same thing, which is that Robin's a riot.
Merlin: He's really, really funny.
Merlin: You just don't know that when you first meet him.
Merlin: Do you feel sort of like that?
John: Right.
John: Well, what I guess I was trying to solve for is all the people in the world that I think of and who think of themselves as very introverted, socially introverted, but they're in relationships where they're –
John: Where they're with someone all the time.
John: They have their love.
John: The two of them cuddle.
John: They go to movies.
John: Their feet intertwine in the bed.
John: They love their dog.
Merlin: They like having their feet touched.
John: And they are not what I would call introverted at all because they are doing things that are incomprehensible to me.
John: That amount of emotional...
John: closeness yeah but i can be out in the center of a dance floor and you know and and blowing on my trumpet and everybody come on but then you know like if i get in the elevator with you i'm gonna stand on this side of the elevator and you stand on that side of the why are you standing what there's a line in the middle of the elevator and if there are only two people in it you each have a side and if there are three people in it then you have to make a third
John: Yeah.
John: Quadrant, right?
Merlin: Americans in an elevator, I don't know if it's just Americans, but it is said, and there's probably a name for this, but Americans, like you get into an elevator, you stand in the middle, like you're not a weirdo, right?
Merlin: Then another person gets in and each person that gets added to the elevator, people try to always compensate with the maximum amount of distance between one another.
Merlin: There's a new middle.
John: Each new person has a new middle.
Merlin: A new middle, and I think that is out of a certain – I mean, I know, for example, like I learned a long time ago, like especially as somebody who rides a Segway, you don't sneak up on people.
Merlin: You don't get too personal with people, and you always cut somebody a wide swath so they know that you're not a weirdo.
John: Right.
John: And that is true for me in a bed.
John: If I'm in bed with you, then there's a new middle.
Merlin: Regardless of size or partner, everybody, let's honor the new middle.
John: But that whole business of like, we're always trying to figure this out.
John: And I have been ever since the whole concept of like- Yeah, what box am I supposed to put you in?
John: Yeah, when Kristen Cosmas said, you're the most introverted person I ever met.
John: And I was like, what are you talking about?
John: I'm in a rock band.
John: And she rolled her eyes and laughed.
John: And I was like, what does that mean?
John: Now what do I know about myself?
John: But understanding that like-
John: And I think part of the confusion is all the people I've met over the years in the nerd community who are like, I am a super introvert.
John: And I look at them and go, oh, wow.
John: You absolutely are, right?
John: Like you don't want to be around people.
John: You're shy.
John: You're whatever.
John: But then I watch them.
John: Go climb in the lap of their significant other and you realize like, wow, they're furries and they only have one costume.
John: One is the front of the horse.
Merlin: That's the new middle.
Merlin: They split a costume.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: What you're describing here is facets.
Merlin: I think you might have been the first person who – I don't know if you were the first person who said this, but you did very much redefine my idea of what it means to be extroverted or introverted.
Merlin: But I continue to believe that the best fast, if you want a little box to put someone in, is –
Merlin: How much are other people a source of energy versus a drain of energy?
Merlin: And so somebody like me, I have boundless energy for other people for a while.
Merlin: And as you know, this is why I always stand by the door.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you do what they call a French exit.
Merlin: There's just a time, though, when I need to bounce.
Merlin: And I think the facets are very, very interesting.
Merlin: What you're saying here is you could be a prepper.
Merlin: You could be like Dan Benjamin living in a cabin, la, la, la.
Merlin: But now you're sharing, I don't know, like a bunny costume and touching feet.
John: It's very hard for me to...
John: To look at someone who is saying like, I'm an introvert and accept that they are if they are completely entangled emotionally with another person.
John: But they're not a loner in that sense.
John: Right.
John: That's my weird version of it.
John: Right.
John: And my mom is both things.
John: She does not want to be in the center of the room playing a trumpet.
John: She does not want any attention paid to her.
John: And also, she does not want you to touch your feet or be –
John: On her side of the elevator.
Merlin: So she's another aspect of this and you could tell me you could adjudicate this.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know, you know how I am, right?
Merlin: The assumption of familiarity.
Merlin: I feel like I feel like a real weirdo about an issue or a personality type or an assumption.
Merlin: Please don't assume too much familiarity.
Merlin: I'm very friendly.
Merlin: I think I'm very friendly.
Merlin: I hope.
Merlin: And I hope I'm not a weirdo.
Merlin: But I also never – I don't like – I'll speak for myself.
Merlin: I don't like assuming familiarity with other people.
Merlin: And that's just really a nice way of me saying I really despise people assuming familiarity with me.
Merlin: Now, that could be to chip your server who squats down at the TGI Fridays, or it could be like a salesperson on the phone, or it could be somebody who like wants you to owe them a favor.
Merlin: Don't do it.
Merlin: Like there's all these things, though, where I'm like, you don't like it when ATMs talk to you.
Merlin: I don't like when my microwave talks to me.
Merlin: I don't like when ATMs talk to me.
Merlin: And I just, I don't like this thing of like, you know, one thing people say about like Americans versus, you know, English people, German people, all French people, all different types of, you know, especially Europeans is like, there's always these sort of bounds where like, I remember I read this wonderful book years ago called Kiss, Bauer, Shake Hands.
Merlin: And it's about doing business in other countries as an American.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: understanding, first of all, let's start, what's the baseline?
Merlin: Well, the baseline is, let's start with the assumptions about Americans.
Merlin: And like, you may be surprised to know that in Japan, you're going to go sit in hot water for three days.
Merlin: And if you ever bring up business in those first few days, you will mark yourself as a rube because that's not what people do there.
Merlin: Whereas it was said, at least in places like England, like you would always call people by their honorific.
Merlin: And you would not just, it would never be assumed that you would like ever even like
Merlin: meet their spouse, let alone go to their house for dinner.
Merlin: And I'm not trying to be like an outsider here, but like, I do think there is something we lose when we assume that it's okay to just, when we assume familiarity and that everybody has that same comfort with, you know, with that.
Merlin: I grew up at a time where you called everybody by an honorific and
Merlin: And you said sir and ma'am.
Merlin: And it's not because we were crazy weirdos.
Merlin: It was maybe a little bit Cincinnati.
Merlin: But I think that's nice.
Merlin: I think it's nice to call somebody Mr. or Ms.
Merlin: whatever until they say, no, just call me Sally or whatever.
Merlin: And I think you should call people sir and ma'am.
Merlin: I don't enforce that with my kid.
Merlin: But I do enforce the please and thank you because she's not a monster.
Merlin: But do you know what I mean?
Merlin: The assumption of familiarity.
Merlin: We have not negotiated how tight we are here.
Merlin: And you're not only behaving and communicating in a way that assumes familiarity, but I have to imagine that that goes further than just what happens when you meet somebody at a coffee place.
Merlin: I think we lose something with that.
Merlin: And that's one of the many reasons I honor your mother.
John: Well, you know, I was raised to just address everyone as your honor.
John: Oh, or counselor.
John: No, it's like two versus usted, right?
John: Right.
John: Until they hit the table with their gavel and said, you know... You got the law on your side, hit the law.
John: Parade rest.
John: At ease.
John: But, you know, my mom doesn't stand on ceremony.
John: That's the thing.
John: She's very... She's no nonsense.
John: But she doesn't care if you...
John: She's not – she's one of that generation who at a certain point felt that progress –
John: and equality were advanced by... I mean, my mom is... Oh, like pointless rituals.
John: My mom wants to live in a classless society.
John: She does not like heirs.
Merlin: And so, although she would never go to... She wouldn't want to be, say, governed by a family who believes that God wants them to run the country forever?
Merlin: No, she doesn't want that.
John: But also, like...
John: But because she's a woman of a certain age, she's not going to go to the symphony in a hoodie.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: She knows that when you go to the symphony, there are ways to – it's a performance.
John: And although she doesn't want – she never wants the spotlight on herself, but she does want the opportunity to wear pearls.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And she recognizes this is where you wear them at.
Merlin: People say etiquette is what we do to put other people at ease.
Merlin: It's not to make other people feel bad.
Merlin: But also when I say things like, just to be clear here, when I say things like I prefer to call somebody sir or ma'am or miss or whatever, and that's obviously more fraught than it used to be.
Merlin: I don't do that because of you.
Merlin: I do that because of me.
Merlin: Maybe I do it because of me in the sense that I do want to be respectful to you.
Merlin: But I also, I don't think we have the familiarity for me to call you Gus.
Merlin: And like, I would not want to just start calling you Gus, especially if that leads you to believe, you know, that we're going to be sharing a costume now.
John: Right.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: And mom would never correct someone else in those.
Merlin: Oh, like you used like a hillbilly elegy, you used the wrong fork type situation.
John: Or to say like, I can't believe you wore those shoes.
John: Like she would, that's not her thing at all.
John: In fact, she despises that.
Merlin: Turns out that's the worst kind of etiquette.
John: But she would never call you by your first name without having been begged to do it, right?
John: Like the guy that's across the street who has told her a hundred times that he wants her to call him Jim.
John: She's like...
Merlin: Jim, like, you know, she says it through like, Mr. Jim, like when you have a little kid, you refer to somebody by Jim, but that's Mr. Jim.
Merlin: Say hi to Mr. Jim.
Merlin: And thank you.
John: I was out.
John: I was out with a group.
John: My little girl was riding her bike.
John: I don't know if I told you this story.
John: And there was a group of kids and they were all standing too close to each other.
John: This is a little bit earlier in the pandemic.
John: And I rode over to them on my bike and said, hey, you kids.
John: Break it up.
John: Disperse.
John: Break it up.
John: Yeah, split up.
John: You're too close to each other.
John: This isn't some French kissing party.
Merlin: Did you blow a whistle?
John: Well, you know, I have the referee costume.
John: You got a footlocker.
John: I just have such a dad vibe in those situations.
John: And the kids are all like, they all snip, you know, they snap to grid, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Some little boy who's not any older than my daughter says, yes, sir, you're absolutely right.
John: We'll see to it.
John: Whoa.
John: And I was like, who are you, young man?
John: Oh, he's going to do well in life.
John: And then he called me, sir, again.
John: And I pointed to him and looked at all the other kids and said, in Washington, in Washington, your leader, follow him, follow him.
John: This is how you talk to a grownup.
John: And the other kids were all snickering.
John: And the kid was like not looking at the kids.
John: He was looking straight at me.
John: And he was like, you know, he wasn't doing it for clapping.
John: No, no, no.
John: He was like, as you wish, sir.
John: And I was like, whoever your father is, he might be he might be that guy in the Twisted Sister video.
John: But I, I believe in him because I believe in you, young man.
John: And then I had another encounter with him where he was both very polite and also extremely helpful to me as a grownup in understanding what was happening.
John: I was like, you, 10-year-old boy.
John: America, please help identify these kids and support them.
John: Yeah.
John: The problem is that what will end up happening is he'll go into the military or he'll get a corporate job.
John: Maybe get in ROTC.
John: Because the world doesn't realize that, no, we need young people like that across the board.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: Don't let the military hoard this boy.
John: Yes, that's right.
Merlin: We need him deployed in the field.
Merlin: There's plenty of leadership in the military.
Merlin: We need him in other places.
Merlin: We need him at the place that repairs copy machines.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: If you're minoring in Russian lit, you want to walk in and say like, hey, I'm trying to audit this class.
John: And the person there is like...
John: Let me help you with that.
John: And you go, wow.
John: Let me help you with that, sir.
John: And it's like, sir?
John: Well, thank you.
John: Yes.
John: I want to meet this kid.
John: Me too.
John: I want to meet him again.
John: I want him.
John: If he came by my house and threw pebbles at the window, I would
Merlin: I would – What would you say over the speaker if you identify – because listen, here's the thing.
Merlin: Now, the doorknob you get eventually – we should circle back to this.
Merlin: The doorknob you get eventually is going to be extremely sophisticated.
Merlin: It's going to be doing some real-time 3D modeling.
Merlin: It's going to be exporting via Perl to SVG.
Merlin: You're going to be able to say, leader, boy, has arrived with pebbles.
Merlin: And you're going to be – will you address different kinds of message to him?
Merlin: Do you have a sense of when this bike boy shows up, sir?
Merlin: Do you have a sense of how you will greet him over your garbage can speakers?
John: I feel like this is maybe the one thing about fatherhood that I'm really kind of focused on.
John: I'm focused on laying the groundwork of learning.
John: I don't think this is a thing I can learn yet.
John: I need to lay the groundwork to learn it.
John: Which is that sometimes, just because there's a speaker in the rock, doesn't mean you have to talk into the microphone.
Merlin: Again, the best smoke alarm is the one that never goes off.
Merlin: Well, except when it's supposed to.
Merlin: But I agree with you.
Merlin: I know, shut up.
Merlin: But after I had a kid, I started thinking about terrible children differently.
Merlin: Because there are terrible children.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I realized that every one of those terrible children has God-willing parents.
Merlin: Or they came from somewhere.
Merlin: They might have hatched some of them.
Merlin: But I used to be very sarcastic with kids because I can be a little bit wilting when I want to be.
Merlin: It's something I've been working on for 35 years, 40 years.
Merlin: But I realized I want to do the same thing.
Merlin: I would like to lay the groundwork for a lesson that would be lost on you today.
Merlin: But I would like to be...
Merlin: I would like to be a little grain of rice in your bowl or something where like when the opportunity does come along and you have that aha moment, you will have enough preparing the way already in your genes or similar where you will go, oh, it really does pay to treat other people with respect and not fake respect.
Okay.
Merlin: But to honor other people, but also to realize what leadership means.
Merlin: Leadership is not following the rules.
Merlin: You get a good Rottweiler.
Merlin: And the thing is, my friend whose dad was a cop used to say the thing about a Rottweiler is not only are they smart enough that they will run your house unless you train them otherwise, but a Rottweiler is like a Marine.
Merlin: It knows when not to follow orders.
Merlin: And that's where we need Bike Boy.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: That's leadership.
Merlin: Leadership is not I did what my boss told me to do.
Merlin: Leadership is knowing the right thing.
Merlin: It's a lot like that movie Moana.
Merlin: Like she knows she's not supposed to get in the boat and leave the reef.
Merlin: But like she understands that we are seafaring people.
Merlin: It's in our bones.
Merlin: And in order to save the island, get rid of these rotten coconuts, no spoilers, I may need to break my dad's rule.
Merlin: And the only way, if I become the one who runs this village, I'm going to have to be the one who gets in a boat and then goes to figure out where to rock the Dwayne Johnson to fight the volcano.
Merlin: She's a Rottweiler.
Merlin: Does that make sense?
John: It does.
John: But in this case, I'm also talking about training.
John: I'm also talking about laying the groundwork of learning for myself as a dad.
John: Okay.
John: In the sense that – You're growing.
John: Well, and I'm putting cameras and electric doorknobs and talking rocks all around my property for the fun of it for myself and also because –
John: with a 10 year old imagining her being a 14 year old and thinking about uh you know like how much fun it's going to be to talk to her boyfriend in a bush and tell him has he really thought this all the way through i also recognize the problem which is that one day she's going to want to kiss her boyfriend somewhere and not have the threat of
John: or possibility of me somewhere in france looking at my phone yeah and knowing that you got your own kiss cam so you would not only not see it but you might not maybe you don't know about it although you probably will know about it because parents know right and this is the problem like how do i how do i have fun with the security system lay this out get ready for all the all the hee-haw laughs and stuff and not
John: Not either succumb to the temptation of overprotectedness or protectiveness.
Merlin: Just thinking that getting more information will always improve your life.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Or improve hers.
Merlin: Yeah, to protect this now 10-year-old kid.
Merlin: So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And to build into whatever I'm building.
John: And the thing is, it's not a technology architecture.
John: It's a mental architecture that I'm trying to already...
John: Understand that at a certain point in life, I'm going to have to let go and let go of her and let her do her own thing.
John: And you both have to practice.
John: Yeah.
John: And all of these things like, well, every time somebody comes in and out of the door of my house, I have their social security number right here on my phone.
John: Is that going to – it almost certainly one day will be more information than I want.
Merlin: I can tell you this is something I have not talked about publicly.
Merlin: But like as somebody with anxiety – because I haven't thought about this enough to make such a bold statement.
Merlin: But I'll give you the rough draft, which is for somebody with anxiety, it feels like you always – or somebody even with OCD, let's put it that way.
Merlin: You feel like you will always benefit from more information.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: but you will never have complete information or timely complete information.
Merlin: And therefore, if you are looking to push back your obsessiveness or your anxiety by the addition of new information, well, get ready.
Merlin: If you just invited three times, five times more information into your life
Merlin: Ask yourself how much more information has helped in the past.
Merlin: Did that make you a better person?
Merlin: No, it actually made me more anxious because I realized how much more there is to know.
Merlin: And that's a fight you don't want to fight.
Merlin: But this also gets into something we've talked about here, I think.
Merlin: And I know my wife and I talked about when my kid was looking for more independence and wanted to walk to school by herself and everything.
Merlin: For a while, we were real creeps.
Merlin: Not only would we like watch her on the phone.
Merlin: She didn't have a phone at that point.
Merlin: But, you know, now you can always stalk your kid with a phone.
Merlin: But also it was like we sort of like when she was in the park by herself when she was really little, we'd like do this and ticka, ticka, ticka, kind of like hide behind a tree and like see what she's doing kind of stuff.
Merlin: And, like, you can tell yourself accurately, well, she's practicing independence.
Merlin: But the real practice is you practicing their independence, which is, like, you could do a lot more to try and make yourself feel like you're secure and that your kid is watchable.
Merlin: But, like, the real rehearsal is you not even exploring what would help you get more information, let alone installing the Panopticon.
Right.
Merlin: That's hard.
Merlin: That's hard, but it's real.
Merlin: You both have to rehearse.
John: It's hard.
John: It's hard because, you know, there's going to be a day, right, where where it's not just like, oh, I'm giving her the space to make her own mistakes.
John: It's going to be there's going to be a day where I'm like, I don't like that kid and I don't want him around here.
John: Totally.
John: And then my phone goes bleep, bleep, bleep.
John: And I see that kid on one of my electric rocks.
John: And I go, fuck, I don't want to, you know, like she's going to learn her own mistakes.
John: I trust her.
John: Like, what do you do with a kid?
John: You raise her and you hope that you did a good job.
John: And then it's up to her to have a bad boyfriend.
Merlin: This is you straight back to Moana.
Merlin: It's about learning.
Merlin: It's like you have to like you're you're you're failing for the right reasons.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like failure is not bad.
Merlin: Like if you're not successful, that can be really good because now you're learning how to problem solve.
Merlin: You're learning how to bounce back a little bit.
Merlin: And if I'm constantly there, you know, dithering around trying to create some, I've got a bunch of people in like green screen suits trying to hold you up.
Merlin: Like that's not good for anybody.
John: But if I'm right now building a home security system because I'm having fun with the bleep bloops.
John: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: And I'm really hoping that one day I catch a cat burglar who's like inept.
Merlin: and is sneaking around in my yard and i can talk to him through a rock and say like hey buddy you sure you're making the right commercials in the commercials it's somebody who's like dressed like the hamburglar hanging out on their porch and they're always like don't even think about it and you're like oh god it's like my mom used to you know want to carry uh carry a pistol when she would do the uh drop off for her company i'm like mom the criminal wants it so much more than you
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Just give them the bag.
Merlin: Give them the bag.
Merlin: Just give them the bag.
Merlin: But, you know, that's not – again, like – and I want to – before we leave, we need to circle back to this.
Merlin: But in the same way that a little kid thinks they want a strawberry cake, there's a lot of people who have planned out, like, how they're going to win the fight in the alley, even though they've never been in an alley or fought.
Merlin: But finish your thought.
Merlin: You're – I'm trying to – How does the doorknob figure in your education?
John: That's the thing.
John: I'm trying to build in some –
John: blind spots into a system that i'm intentionally building to not have blind spots so that i don't at when she's 10 right set up a system that when she's 16 is just doesn't is intrusive or doesn't allow her to be her own person that's bad for both it's bad for both of you yeah and at that point i've already got all the key commands memorized absolutely well i'm over here in paris i might as well just take a look at the you know to see who's been in and out in the last and it's just like damn it
John: Now, now I feel like I got to fly home because because Charlie Sheen from Ferris Bueller is hanging out and it turns out he's a sweet kid, but he looks like such a ruffian.
Merlin: But like if you think the camera rocks are there to find the bad in people.
Merlin: then, or, you know, I don't want to make a straw man out of this, but I do think there's a thing where like, whatever your intentionality going into something is one thing.
Merlin: What you end up putting together is another thing.
Merlin: How your habits and cognition change as a result of those things, that's fucking next door, dude.
Merlin: Like all those people started with the, presumably with, well, a lot of them are racists, but a lot of it does start with this idea of like, I'm just tired of people stealing shit from my porch, but pretty soon you're fucking Wile E. Coyote and you're getting acne doorknobs that blow up in your face.
John: Well, the number of people in the suburbs who believe that mail theft is the greatest crime affecting America today, that somehow packages are disappearing off of doorsteps.
Merlin: They're 20 years away from being the people who thinks the Jamaican nurse moves the remote and steals their medicine.
Merlin: You get a lot of packages delivered at your house.
Merlin: What percentage of them are stolen?
Merlin: There's a giant novelty-sized asterisk here, but it's very low.
Merlin: Now, for example, though, I did leave – I left a plan outside my office accidentally over the weekend, and it's gone.
Merlin: But that's understandable because I think – That's on a main boulevard.
Merlin: Well, easy text.
Merlin: When you see something on the sidewalk in San Francisco, there's one thing that everybody knows, which is this is yours now.
Merlin: You can have this.
Merlin: If you leave something on the sidewalk –
Merlin: I mean, if it's not obviously part of, like, your garden or something.
John: Right.
Merlin: Right?
John: But I... But, I mean, if you see something on the sidewalk of a street that also has a streetcar running on it... Yeah.
John: It is not... That's not a... You know, that's not a side street.
Merlin: But to your male theft point, like, I get it.
Merlin: And, like, it's... But part of it is... So much of it does come down to this...
Merlin: We don't have time to talk about all the social complexities that go into this, but you feel like somebody's stealing this thing or somebody's intruding in my life and there's nothing I can do about it.
Merlin: And I know that's extremely general, but it explains a lot of the five...
Merlin: to last five to 200 years of American existence is the feeling that like I have loss aversion, whether that's about culture or my electric bill.
Merlin: And I don't like the idea that somebody can just roll up and wheeze my juice.
Merlin: And I not only like, I can't stop it, but I also don't even know about it.
Merlin: I don't know when my terracotta pot disappeared over the weekend, but it's gone.
Merlin: You know, you let go.
Merlin: Just open your hands and let it fall.
Merlin: Somebody wheezed your juice.
Merlin: They wheezed my juice.
Merlin: But don't you think that's part of it?
Merlin: Whether that's somebody who thinks they should be the lieutenant colonel of coal mines in West Virginia or the person who doesn't want their paper towels stolen off the porch.
Merlin: It's loss aversion and the sense that I don't know how to protect myself from a thing that's really bugging me.
Merlin: I feel like that's what makes you Wally Coyote.
Merlin: For me, 85% of all of this is for the lulls.
Merlin: No, no, you're doing a capital P project, as Merlin would call it.
Merlin: You're having fun.
Merlin: It's not a hobby.
Merlin: That's dismissive.
Merlin: But like I spent most of my morning trying to figure out how to rename all of the files that I have from the Blu-ray that I ripped of the conversation in the 1974 movie.
Merlin: And I want to make sure everything is named in the proper way and in the right directory so that when I watch it at home, that all shows up.
Merlin: Do I need to do that?
Merlin: I do not.
Merlin: But it's a fun thing that I do.
Merlin: And it's one of my projects.
Merlin: It's not hurting anybody.
Merlin: You're doing it for the lulls.
Merlin: You're like the 35 Chan.
John: But also, like, as somebody who, like, at a certain point, I have a bomb shelter, right?
John: Why not?
John: dress up the bomb shelter with old Geiger counters that people send me from the internet.
Merlin: Of course I'm going to do it.
John: Make it your own, yeah.
John: Why not also then update it and put security cameras all around so that in a crazy scenario, I can run down to the bomb shelter and be able to see with my cameras, you know, and cameras hidden in rocks that I put in my neighbor's yard.
Merlin: And they're also not going to trick you.
Merlin: So what's a bomb shelter?
Merlin: It's also a safe room.
Merlin: You're not going to get tricked into throwing the latch and Jodie Fostering your way out.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Right.
John: But the problem then is that the next logical step is, well, if I know all this, then I need some stuff to be able to do something about it.
John: And the preppers are filling that bomb shelter up with Gatorade or whatever it is preppers think they're going to need.
John: Yeah.
John: And then there's the flip side of, well, what if it all goes sideways?
John: Then I should have a gun or I should have a gun.
John: I should have a system.
John: I should have a plan.
John: I should have – and my mom, of course, has – if the big one hit right now and a million people died, my mom would be standing on top of the pile of burning bodies with her – with a giant flag in one hand and some kind of 87-year-old man clutching at her ankles.
John: looking up at her you know and it's like take the dog and fin the human wow oh my god but oh my oh this i don't know that changes you seen that program no you don't even have a tv just let her just let it ride just i'm on some we're on somewhere something else
John: But my problem is if I get a gun into this equation, as you're saying, right?
John: Now you're going to want to use the gun.
John: Sure.
John: You're looking at next door.
John: You're like, that guy's stealing my packages.
John: And then instead of for the lulls, I'm out patrolling already in a bathrobe with a sword.
Merlin: You are already neighborhood watch.
John: I said to the guy, the guy with an infinite number of cars who's picking up my hitchhiking mom, I said, if you ever see me out in the middle of the night in a bathrobe swinging a sword, don't be concerned.
John: That's just how I maintain my property.
John: How do you respond?
John: He nodded like it was the most natural thing he'd ever heard.
John: Like, oh, sure, of course.
John: You've got a bathrobe and a sword.
John: I mean, I wouldn't see anything weird about that.
John: You get a bathrobe, you want to use it.
John: Now, you're going to end up on Nextdoor, but since you're not on there, nobody's going to notice.
Merlin: John, how do you ensure your slice?
John: What I did was say, here's how I try to ensure my slice.
John: I say, the best cake is yellow cake.
John: Now, no one agrees.
John: I have yet to find a single person that agrees that the best cake.
John: Is this a we can all agree on cheese situation?
John: Nope, nope.
John: I'm not trying to get anybody to agree.
John: But I am putting down my chalk line and saying the best cake is yellow cake.
John: Okay.
John: Now, as I watch the people line up against me, and this is how I used to live on the internet too.
John: Say the best cake is yellow cake.
John: And then you watch the people line up against you.
John: And you have established the boundaries of – you've established your cake boundaries, right?
John: So that when a yellow cake does arrive, it's not that I'm trying to – it's the opposite.
John: What I have is you all on record saying yellow cake is bad.
John: So now we have a yellow cake.
John: Oh, all of a sudden everybody wants a piece of yellow cake.
John: And that's interesting.
John: Considering that I have signed affidavits from all of you right here.
John: I have it right here, sir.
John: A signed affidavit saying that Michael Corleone's father wasn't in the olive oil business.
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And then somebody says, well, wait a minute.
Merlin: Your brother's in the audience.
John: Your brother's in the audience, right?
John: Who is that?
John: He's just here to show support.
John: He's wearing that cool tie and looking very concerned.
John: And so what happens is we get a big shrug about carrot cake.
John: Everybody is trying to treat it like it's the most natural thing in the world that a 10-year-old wants a carrot cake.
Merlin: Why are we not talking about this?
John: And I say, listen, that's fine.
John: You guys shrug your way to Bethlehem.
John: I am going to have a chocolate cake at this birthday party, and it's going to have a frosting on it that says, happy birthday, darling, from daddy.
John: Don't touch this cake.
John: It's so important to have boundaries.