Ep. 536: "The Garbage Czar"
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
John: Stoops, doops.
John: Doop, doop, doop.
Merlin: Stoops, doops.
Merlin: You're in a silly mood.
Merlin: What's going on in your neck of the woods?
Merlin: My neck of the woo-woons?
Merlin: Well, your neck of the woods.
Merlin: What's going on?
Merlin: What are you up to?
Merlin: What's happening?
John: Oh.
John: Oh, well, you know.
John: Yeah.
John: It's like there's a bunch of cords.
John: Everything's tangled in cords.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've been doing lots of tech things, too.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm untangling cords right now.
John: Oh, there it is.
John: I was trapped under a mountain of cords.
John: Oh, no.
John: How did that happen?
John: Just accumulation?
John: Yeah, I don't know how it happens, because I never move from this position, but somehow all the cords get braided into giant rat kings of cables, and then pretty soon my cheek is pressed against the floor.
Merlin: This seems like a pattern with you, where you don't do anything, and then your tech world changes around you.
John: That's true of my whole world.
John: Really?
John: I don't do anything.
John: I'm just the center.
John: I'm just the center of a rat king of chaos.
John: A rat?
John: Huh.
John: Okay.
John: It's all the chaoses, but then they're all together, like in a big cluster fucking.
John: It's a clusterfuck.
Merlin: The rat kings, their tails are all snagged, and that's the cables.
Merlin: Yeah, but each one of them is a chaos.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: All chaoses converge.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: And then so also, though, like the thing is, rat doesn't have a big brain, but it's got a brain.
Merlin: And that's the problem.
Merlin: They know enough to try and escape the rat king, but the harder they try to get away, the more their tails get tangled.
John: Do you remember the first time you heard the phrase hive mind?
John: Not specifically.
John: Do you remember the first time you got the concept of it related to the computer?
Merlin: I remember when I first learned about rat kings.
Merlin: That I remember.
Merlin: I remember there's a place, I think it's the Mütter Museum, where they supposedly have a rat king.
John: Do you remember the first time you heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
Merlin: I'll never forget where I was.
Merlin: I was in the library of my third grade.
Merlin: I'll never forget.
Merlin: They rolled in the TV.
Merlin: You know, I mean, there are some things I remember pretty well.
Merlin: But as far as I know, I think there's a lot of things I don't remember.
Merlin: But again, that's part of the problem.
Merlin: It's hard to know what I don't know.
Merlin: It's hard to remember what I forgot.
Merlin: That's stupid, but you know what I mean.
John: I was about to say for the last time, but for the first time the other day, people were talking about a thing, and I didn't remember it, but I wasn't sure if maybe I had just forgotten it.
John: I'd never had that before.
John: That's the first one you've caught.
John: Oh, yeah, maybe the first one I've caught, yeah.
John: People are like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
John: Remember the thing?
Merlin: And I was like, I don't think I... It's a troubling development, but it's difficult to completely ignore.
Merlin: It feels a little bit iffy to just ignore the possibility that I don't know what I've forgotten or forget what I don't know or some combination.
John: I don't even know.
John: Yeah, normally I would say, no, that didn't happen.
John: I know that it didn't happen.
John: And in this case, I was right.
John: It didn't happen.
John: But it was, it were I who faltered.
Merlin: Well, it starts to feel a little Kafkaesque after a while, where, you know, where you're like, there are things where, okay, so, okay, first of all, I want to say one thing up front, which is, yes, yes, I am aging, thank God.
Merlin: Okay, thank God.
Merlin: For now.
Merlin: Thank God for now.
Merlin: Well, I mean, as opposed to being dead, you know, somebody might have just died, I heard.
Merlin: Somebody just died?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, you know, Steve Albini was like 61, but there was somebody who just died who was like, oh, I know, it was somebody, I forget who, but somebody just died.
Merlin: The president of Iran?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: RIP to a real one.
Merlin: You think it was an accident?
Merlin: I think it was probably just an accident.
Merlin: Their infrastructure is not very strong there.
Merlin: Helicopters crash all the time.
Merlin: Helicopters crash.
Merlin: We learn this when, you know, taking those Piper Cubs around and whatnot.
Merlin: But, like, I accept and embrace, to the extent possible, the idea that I...
Merlin: forget things or I overlook things or I don't know if I ever knew something I mean and it's not I'm not doing that to sound cute I mean I'm accepting that's true but here's the other side of that this is going to be a real truth bomb to a lot of you younger people is that is it possible that also you young people don't retain information as well as you think right now
Merlin: In other words... Yeah, what about that, young people?
Merlin: Well, I'm just... See, I have this thing, I believe, which is that youth is an anomaly, and it's impossible to realize that it's an anomaly until you're no longer young.
Merlin: Because youth is all you've ever known.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And then it becomes really difficult, and you spend the rest of your life buying toupees and shit.
Merlin: But the don't know part, I mean, there's a part of me that just wonders, did I just have too much certainty?
Merlin: Did I just have too much confidence in its way for most of my youth?
Merlin: I mean, I'm just saying, yes, I do forget things.
Merlin: Is it possible that, you know, and I see these encoding errors with my family because they're always looking at their phones.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And it's like, well, you wouldn't understand what just happened because you couldn't have seen the thing that happened on the TV before.
Merlin: I'm just saying, I'm not making excuses for anybody, including us.
Merlin: I just think it's something to keep in mind.
John: I for sure know that I had too much confidence when I was young and everybody around me did.
Merlin: Is certainty a better word than confidence?
John: Well, both things.
John: I mean, absolutely.
John: I'm going to lean towards certainty.
John: You should have no certainty, right?
John: You could have confidence without having any certainty.
John: And I don't think you should have any certainty until...
John: You're 55, right?
John: About 55, wouldn't you say?
John: That's when you can say with certainty that you know something.
John: 55.
John: 55, 54, 55.
John: 48-year-olds are saying shit all the time where I'm like, oh, yeah, sure.
John: That makes sense to you because you're 48.
Merlin: Yeah, but it's sad to watch a man whose certainty and confidence are waning and he hasn't realized it yet.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Or so he, as they say, doubles down.
Merlin: I hate that phrase.
Merlin: But, you know, like, no, no, no, I'm super certain about this or I'm very confident about this.
Merlin: And it's like, are you really?
Merlin: Because maybe that's not the most wholesome thing in the world that you're so certain of so many things.
John: especially i mean i get older it's all simulation merlin how do you feel besides it's an infinite it's a it's an infinite it's an infinite spidey verse think of all the other spideys okay okay all right think of the spidey think of whale spidey on whale planet okay
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: That Spidey.
Merlin: Was he stung by a poisonous something?
John: How did he become a spider whale?
John: He got stung by a poisonous spider.
John: That's the thing.
John: It's always a spider.
Merlin: Like a nice little bowl of kale.
John: Filtering through his face.
John: I don't even know how a spider would sting a whale, but it happens because there's an infinite number of possible universes.
Merlin: We know this already from the Marvel universes.
Merlin: There's a lot of other universes out there, John.
Merlin: So many universes.
Merlin: It's a lot to keep track of.
John: They have to number them, you know.
John: I think about it all the time where I'm like, ugh, some universe, in fact, an infinite number of them,
John: john didn't just drop an egg on the floor yeah yeah and like why can't i just go to that universe for a little bit but then you know it's other it's an infinite number of other universes where john can travel between universe do you think we're more competent potentially i mean we must be there must be a universe where we're competent right
Merlin: Well, we're both confident or both competent at the same time.
Merlin: There are infinite universes where we're both.
Merlin: See, that keeps tying me up.
Merlin: I keep getting jammed up on that.
Merlin: I keep forgetting it's infinite.
Merlin: I know.
John: It's so lame.
John: It's so lame.
John: It's infinite plus one.
John: Whoa.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: It's the worst.
Merlin: I've encountered a thing for a while, you know, there's a name for this in perception, but I think it's sometimes called the threshold phenomenon or something like that, which is a fancy, whatever it is, it's a fancy way of saying, well, I came into this room to get something and I've already forgotten what I came in this room for.
Merlin: Like, I've had that for almost really decades at this point.
John: You and I both have attention deficit disorder.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't know if that's directly related to that one.
Merlin: It could be.
Merlin: It sure could be.
Merlin: Like, if I'm in the wrong dopamine state, that for sure could be.
Merlin: But the one that drives me crazy now is, like, I know I just moved something from here to there.
Merlin: Like, I was here at my little officina and doing some 3D printing stuff.
Merlin: It doesn't matter what, but I moved something that's of a size that you would see it.
John: And I'm like... Was it a hose?
John: Were you building some hose?
John: Hose?
John: Not like ladies pantyhose, but I just always assume that you're building a hose.
John: I always say broses before hoses.
Merlin: He supposes his toes are hoses.
Merlin: But he, you know, supposes erroneously.
Merlin: So you moved a piece of hose.
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
John: And now you can't find it.
Merlin: No, but here's the problem.
Merlin: I'm used to the idea of like, oh, well, I moved a thing.
Merlin: And like, I haven't stood anywhere except in this area.
Merlin: And I just put this thing down.
Merlin: And I feel very gaslighted.
Merlin: And then the thing is about it.
Merlin: I go, OK, fine.
Merlin: You know, moving on.
Merlin: Got to power through it.
Merlin: This is part of the ADHD.
Merlin: It's just so what I say to myself is I say, keep doing the thing.
Merlin: I don't know if you say this to yourself.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Remember to keep doing the thing.
Merlin: Whatever the thing is.
John: I'm moving on.
John: Is that Happy Mondays?
Merlin: What is that?
John: No, it's Bad Brains.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Happy Mondays of Washington, D.C.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: I sang a little bit from a lyric from a war song last night, and I think it confused my family a little bit.
Merlin: Good God, y'all.
Merlin: Somebody said, no, no, no, not that war.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: The punk rock band.
Merlin: Oh, war.
John: My war.
Merlin: New York's All Right If You Like Saxophones, that band.
John: I see, I see.
Merlin: And someone, you know me, somebody on TV said something about, oh my gosh, there's so many of us.
Merlin: And I said, there's so many of us, there's so many of us, there's so many of us, there's so many of us, there's so many of us, there's so many.
John: And they were like, hmm.
John: And your family just turned the clicker at you and tried to turn your volume down?
John: Mute.
John: But it never worked.
John: Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
Merlin: I was doing Marceline when she mutes the Ice King.
Merlin: She goes, mute.
Merlin: Another grape soda can.
Merlin: But no, the bad one, and I don't know, it's a bad brain, I guess, is that I had the thing, I put it down.
Merlin: It wasn't an important thing, but you know how this is.
Merlin: Okay, you know this phenomenon.
Merlin: You've certainly seen this phenomenon.
Merlin: You've probably seen this in your dad.
Merlin: I've seen it in other aging relatives, and I try to be careful.
Merlin: You stop telling an otherwise mostly pretty good, maybe potentially boring story, and you stop because you can't remember an insanely specific detail that has nothing to do with the anecdote to the person hearing it.
Merlin: Where you go, oh, Morris.
Merlin: No, that couldn't have been Morris, because by that point, he was already in the National Guard.
Merlin: And oh, dang it, who, what's that guy's name?
Merlin: That kind of thing, right?
Merlin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Merlin: Well, you know, the ADHD adult mind, I think is useful to have not a mantra, but a thing where you sometimes say to yourself, just keep doing the thing.
Merlin: Let's get back to doing the thing.
Merlin: So I got back to doing my thing.
Merlin: It doesn't matter, but it was the lid from a banker's box that I was using to help maintain a certain temperature inside one of my 3D printers.
Merlin: Oh, you were using it as a lid, like a little lid.
Merlin: Like a lid.
Merlin: It was a side lid.
Merlin: Side lid.
Merlin: But you know what a banker's box lid looks like.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
John: But now you're saying there's a banker's box lid that's unaccounted for.
John: It's gone rogue.
Merlin: And I've only been standing in this one little... Stay on target.
Merlin: Stay on target.
Merlin: And that's all I was doing.
Merlin: But now the real indignity is then later on I will see it, and it was right there.
Merlin: I don't know if you've gotten this one yet.
Merlin: Oh, so bad.
Merlin: Have fun with that one.
Merlin: Because now you're really feeling gaslighted.
Merlin: I've eliminated.
John: You love that album, Eliminator.
John: I've eliminated everything except Wallet Keys phone.
John: From the mix?
John: From anything.
John: I have just decided I don't need anything except Wallet Keys phone.
John: Okay.
John: Everything else is optional.
John: And so all I need to do is keep track of those three things.
John: Keys go in the dish.
John: So if the keys aren't in the dish at any point in the day when I'm walking around and I look in the dish and the keys aren't there, I stop what I'm doing and I go find the keys and put them in the dish.
John: Okay.
John: Approximately how often does that happen?
John: Almost never because when I walk in the door, the first thing I see is the dish and the first thing I do is put the keys in there.
Merlin: Let me save some time and say you don't want to get me started on this.
Merlin: Because I know I stand so hard for bowls.
Merlin: Like, you do not believe how important the bowl is in my life.
Merlin: But continue.
Merlin: And then you stop.
Merlin: Stop.
Merlin: And now we're going to go find the keys.
Merlin: And the keys need to be in the bowl.
John: The key.
John: And it's a green.
John: It's like a green.
John: And it is kind of a bowl.
John: It's kind of a dish.
John: A dish bowl.
John: Dish bowl.
John: And it's green.
John: And then I have a jar, a blue jar.
John: where i put all the mail put the mail in the jar i put the keys in the bowl the blue dish bowl is that a little like howard hughes i shouldn't put the cap from the milk in my left pocket no the mail goes in the blue jar yeah yeah and when i talk about green dish bowl for the keys when i talk about the mail i refer to the mail in shorthand as a blue jar
John: Like what's in the blue jar?
John: That goes in the blue jar.
John: It's in the blue jar.
John: You know, I put it in the, you know, it's blue jar is mail.
John: Okay.
John: Green dishes is keys.
John: And the thing is I need the keys to get in the door.
John: So the keys are always in my hand when I walk in the door.
John: And so they go right in the green dish.
John: There's no.
John: Is the green dish near the door?
John: Next to the door.
John: You can't get into the house without going past the green dish and you put the keys there.
John: But now we have wallet and phone.
John: And wallet is in pants, as you know.
John: Yeah.
John: Wallet's in pants, but pants change.
Merlin: I lost my garage remote for probably two weeks.
Merlin: And of course, it was just... Was it in pants?
Merlin: No, it was in a coat that I don't wear all that often.
Merlin: I do that stuff all the time.
Merlin: Gum ends up in coat.
Merlin: Like a fresh pack of gum, you had a couple sticks out of it, and now the rest is just in a coat?
John: Well, then it's like, where's the gum?
John: And I realize gum is optional.
John: It's not wallet, keys, phone.
John: It's gum.
John: But your brain likes to know where things are that you think exist.
John: Where's the gum?
John: I had a whole pack of gum, and gum is in coat.
John: And coat is in closet or on chair.
Okay.
John: And so I buy enough gum.
John: Eventually I buy enough gum so that every coat can have gum.
Merlin: I do that with utility knives.
Merlin: I just deploy them around the house anywhere I might want a knife.
Merlin: How many utility knives do you think you own?
John: Nine probably.
John: Yeah.
John: And there's kitchen utility knife.
John: There's living room utility knife.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Like, you know, the term a box cutter, right?
Merlin: One of those little triangle sticks out.
Merlin: I got a whole bunch of those.
Merlin: And like a pen, it's something I often want.
Merlin: And I deploy those in strategic locations.
Merlin: And I'm sometimes chided for it.
Merlin: Last week, for example, I was chided.
Merlin: I was chided because I had affixed rare earth magnets to the side of our table, and there was an open utility knife magneted to the table.
Merlin: And my wife said, do you think it's a good idea to have an open utility knife like right here where our hand goes?
Merlin: And I said, well, it's a mixed bag.
John: It's the openness of it that made it bad, not the knifeness of it.
Merlin: Also, my wife just, I think, doesn't so much love me attaching magnets to things and deploying it.
Merlin: And then I say, that's an experiment.
Merlin: I ask her any questions, she says, I'm just tired.
Merlin: She asks me any question, and I say, that's just kind of an experiment.
Merlin: Okay, I like that.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Now, wait a minute.
John: And it helps us both avoid the real problem.
John: You just are kind of, you got me going here now.
John: You are using magnets to deploy magnets.
John: magnetical things around the house, like, oh, I might need this here, I'm gonna magnet it.
Merlin: Oh, yes, I have.
Merlin: Why has this never come up?
Merlin: I have entire boxes.
Merlin: You know, over time, the system evolves and it doesn't really get better, but, you know.
Merlin: It's an experiment.
Merlin: But here's another great example of the Merlin problem, which is that I once heard somebody make a distinction between being organized and being tidy.
Merlin: And I think that's such an interesting distinction.
Merlin: I'm pretty... I'm theoretically organized, but not at all tidy.
Merlin: So, like... So, for example, like... And then those overlap, and it's confusing.
Merlin: But, like, what happens?
Merlin: I find... Like, you know the thing with finding scissors, like, in your kid's room?
Merlin: It used to be when my wife would clean Billy's room.
Merlin: My wife would find, like, five pairs of scissors.
Merlin: Like, oh, that's where all the scissors went.
Merlin: Well, as I find... And tape, too.
Merlin: As I find...
Merlin: sort of disused, deployed but disused utility knives, I dropped them all into the same little bin.
Merlin: I do this for AirTags.
Merlin: Anytime there's stuff where it's like, oh, I have a million of these, I should get organized and put them in one place.
Merlin: You can see where this is going.
Merlin: Yesterday, I discovered a cache of five utility knives that I had, quote, organized, but then I had mislaid.
Merlin: So I had succeeded in hiding all the knives from myself at scale.
Merlin: And I held them up and I said, here's where all the knives are.
Merlin: But yes, I also, I have a box at my office, a box at my house called adhesion.
Merlin: Adhesion!
Merlin: A box!
Merlin: I'll just briefly say that I have a box called adhesion.
Merlin: And it changes over time at the most basic level.
Merlin: Adhesion where anything goes that sticks a thing to another thing.
John: In an alternate universe, in an infinite number of alternate universes, that's a Johnny Cash record.
John: But it's robot Johnny Cash.
John: Adhesion box?
John: Box of adhesion.
John: The box.
John: Box of adhesion.
John: It sounds like Love and Rockets.
John: That's what the world is today.
Merlin: Box of adhesion.
Merlin: And in that goes command strips.
Merlin: Uh, I vary on tape.
John: What's a command strip?
Merlin: A command strip is a 3M product that produces, you get this little strip about half an inch wide, maybe two or three inches long, and they can either be strictly adhesive or they can be, uh, uh, Velcro like.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Oh, where you stick and unstick, stick and unstick.
Merlin: Yeah, so like if you want to click the clock on our wall, you can get different amounts of command strip adhesion.
Merlin: And then also then I just literally this morning was using something called, you've heard of Gorilla Glue.
Merlin: I also use Gorilla Tape.
Merlin: And Gorilla Tape can do 15, 30, 60 pounds on a, like whatever they, it's rated for like a certain amount of tape, theoretically holds this much stuff.
Merlin: Any of that stuff can go in the adhesion box.
Merlin: You know what else goes in there potentially?
Merlin: Magnets.
Merlin: Because these are things that stick things to other things.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And so I used to be the sort of person that would think, this has been a breakthrough for me, John.
Merlin: I don't know if this will help you at all.
Merlin: But it probably can't.
Merlin: But it occurs to me, like, okay, well, I could have a box called tape.
Merlin: I could have a box called magnets.
Merlin: I could have a box called, I could have one for scotch tape.
Merlin: And I could have a different one.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing, though.
Merlin: It's like sometimes all I know is I want a thing on another thing.
Merlin: And this is good project management.
Merlin: I'm thinking about the outcome I want rather than the implementation details.
Merlin: And so I pull out the box of adhesion and I see what my options are.
Merlin: So like, for example, I 3D printed a little hook so that we can have, you know, those little tiny step stools, you know, like the, you know, you just open it up.
John: You hook the step stool to the wall?
Merlin: Well, you know how you like, you like, they're like origami.
Merlin: You unfold them and they turn into a step stool, but they're flat when they're stored.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: We use that enough that I got approval to 3D print technically two hooks because I wanted it to be even.
Merlin: And then I attached that with Gorilla Tape.
John: to the wall and it's a gorilla tape that's rated to hold an origami it's stool rated i see and uh what i'm trying i'm really asking for your admiration for what i want what i want to know about magnets here here's my question about man how do they how do they work but second yeah how often what percentage of the time do you use a magnet to stick a thing to a metal surface
John: Versus the number of times that you use a magnet to stick a metal or magnetizable thing on two.
John: So, for instance.
Merlin: So, is magnet as adhesion and magnet as medium, kind of?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're using the magnet as the thing that it gets attached to, kind of?
John: if you have if you have a piece of child produced art or a grade card and you want to put it on the old-fashioned refrigerator yes you use a magnet we do yes we are big fridge and magnet people uh and you'll know uh probably maybe you don't know that stainless steel fridges do not accept magnetized child art
John: It's one of the craziest things.
John: They made a whole world of stainless steel appliances without ever checking with people.
John: How important is it?
John: That's like having a church without pews.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's a really odd thing.
Merlin: Like, have you really thought about what this is for?
Merlin: I mean, sure, it's for keeping your milk from turning, you know, but it's also a place to put your kids, you know, a pork cart or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: When I moved into the farm, it had a stainless steel refrigerator, and I was like, eh, whatever.
John: Stainless steel, you say?
John: Not aluminum.
John: Stainless steel.
John: Stainless steel.
John: And then I had a child.
John: You know, when I moved into the farm, I didn't have a child.
John: But then I did have a child.
John: And the first time she produced some sort of finger paint, you know, chaos on a piece of paper...
John: I was like, oh, it goes right up on the fridge, and I stuck it with a magnet, and the magnet just fell to the floor.
John: I wonder what ours is made of.
Merlin: Could it be brass?
John: Probably old-fashioned.
Merlin: Oh, it's very old-fashioned, for sure.
John: Just metal.
John: Probably made of iron.
John: Anyway.
John: The iron fridge sounds like a wrestler.
John: But then you're also saying, here's a knife, and let's say I want it in the kitchen.
John: Let's say I'm going to
John: here's my idea, I'm going to put a magnet on the fridge, then I'm going to stick the knife on the magnet.
John: Yeah.
John: So what percentage of the time is it one versus the other?
Merlin: I think, well, I won't get into it, but a big reason I'm so balls deep in magnets has to do with 3D printing, because there's all kinds of things where magnets are involved with 3D printing for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: But to take your actual question, I think...
Merlin: pound for pound most of the time i use a magnet to hold something onto the fridge or similar and i'm trying to think of all the instances where i where i do that deployment we're talking about yeah but i mean it's always an option once you once you adopt the the box of adhesion lifestyle the world's your oyster you can stick an oyster to the fridge i mean as long as it's not yours when i was i was in los alamos one time
John: And I went to some sort of thrift store or some kind of junk shop.
John: Maybe it was probably not a thrift store.
John: It was probably a junk shop.
John: And the person there had a bunch of, there was a Bastic full of super strong magnets.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You got to be careful with those.
Merlin: Like pretty good sized ones.
John: Well, they were the size of Hershey's Kisses, but they were incredibly dense, like really heavy.
Merlin: That's the kind that I get.
Merlin: And when they arrive shipping, like the first time I ever got rare earth neobidium or whatever it's called, the first time I ever got serious magnets.
Merlin: was shipped to me i i way over ordered and i got magnets that were insane and what's interesting is when they arrive let's say you buy three magnets there's three magnets and between each there's like somewhere between eighth and a quarter inch of wood just to because like these these could break your bone they will definitely pinch this shit out of you because they will they will seek each other out in ways that the magnets of my youth would not
Merlin: Do you follow?
Merlin: You're talking about one of those, though.
Merlin: One of those crazy, like, get anything near it, and they both move toward each other, that kind.
John: Yeah, and, you know, there was some sense of, like, oh, well, these were used at the, you know, they're made out of depleted uranium or something.
John: You know, like, they felt like military-industrial.
John: And I really loved them, of course.
John: They're beautiful, and I love super strong things.
John: And so I did get some, and they are on the fridge.
John: And taking one off the fridge is a real effort.
John: You have to really work to get this thing off of there.
John: But I want to know, when you order these,
John: Do you think that they are wiping people's personal computers everywhere they go?
John: Like as they go through the post office, as they go in the delivery truck, are they just screwing everybody's hard drive forever?
Merlin: Essentially like ammunition.
John: Yeah, right.
John: It's like you could almost do industrial espionage, just mailing giant magnets or super powerful small magnets, just mail them places and everything they touch, it's just like they just make a divot through technology.
Merlin: They just zero out everybody's mail.
Merlin: yeah yeah so like if they get so i mean like uh i'm gonna act like i know these things and i don't um i i don't i know back in the day that was a way that you could like you know it would screw up a hard drive i don't know if that's still the case i also know that i'm pretty sure you can screw up like an atm card with a magnet i think oh really oh i think i mean isn't that magnets
Merlin: I got into an argument with some airlines.
Merlin: What I'm saying is if you send some of these kisses out, you send enough of those in the mail, and a lot of people's debit reward cards are going to come up blank.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, Sean Nelson and I made a recording with Bob Weston, recording partner and bandmate of Steve Albini.
John: He was in Shellac, right?
John: Many years ago.
John: He produced Action Park, right?
John: He was Shellac.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And on the way home from Chicago, the Windy City, I was carrying the two inch tape and I tried to put it under the seat in front of me.
John: And one of the flight attendants came and said, you can't put that under the seat in front of you.
John: And I said, it's exactly the size of a carry on bag.
John: And she said, yeah, but it's hard.
John: It's a box.
John: It's a hard sided.
John: It has to go up above in the, in the overhead compartment.
John: Right.
John: And I said, well, you know, it's the, it's the master tapes of a, of a record and I'm worried about it.
John: And I, I, you know, I, I'm, I, I'm not being argumentative, but I just would like to understand better why it can't just be here at my feet.
John: And it was one of these exchanges where the person was like, sir, sir, it needs to go up.
John: I've already given you all the explanation you're going to get.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And so I turned to the people sitting around me.
John: And I said, just curious, how many of you have a laptop in your bag in this apartment up here?
John: And like three people raised their hands.
John: And I was like, so there's three laptops up there and this is magnetic tape.
John: And I'm just saying that I feel like putting the magnetic tape next to a laptop is something I've been told not to do because of magnets.
John: And she actually made the people around me move their laptop bags to clear out a space in the overhead compartment where they wouldn't touch my two inch tape and made me put it up there.
Merlin: With your locally produced wisdom about magnets?
John: I was like, look.
Merlin: I don't think there's magnets.
Merlin: There's not that many magnets in the actual computer.
Merlin: You're just saying proximity to a computer could erase the tapes.
Merlin: Why take a chance?
John: I don't know about magnets.
John: I don't even know.
John: I don't know anything about them, and I don't know how many magnets are in a computer.
John: I don't know a lot about C4.
John: That doesn't mean I want it next to my Bob Weston tapes.
John: That's right, and the thing is, I know that recording tape is fragile, and if you run a magnet over a two-inch tape, you just screwed up your record.
John: I do know that.
John: Yeah.
John: So, but it was also back in the day when I was like prepared to spend as much time as I needed to, you know, argue with anybody about anything.
John: I don't do that anymore, Merlin.
John: Now I'm just like a placid cow now.
John: People say things and I just go, moo.
Merlin: I wish I could have enjoyed the window, the brief window that I imagine existed between becoming somebody who does what everybody says and then them being nice to me as a result.
Merlin: What's funny is I now do what everybody says.
Merlin: I have no dignity and they're still not happy with me.
John: yeah you can't please people john that's this is a feeling that i have anyway maybe i can't please people well i've noticed um i've noticed now uh when people snap at me and i think i didn't used to notice because people snapped at me all the time and you know and i was pretty famous for clapping back pretty hard snap at me and i will clap back
John: Snap and clap.
John: Snap and clap.
John: John calls it.
John: That's right.
John: The young people, you know, they say clap back.
John: We didn't have that phrase back in the day.
John: No.
John: And so there wasn't a name for it.
John: Well, the name for it was John is John is an asshole.
John: John is a John was a dick to me.
John: But usually it's because somebody would, you know, snip at me and I would then I would clap back.
John: Well, now I don't.
John: Now somebody snips at me and I just go, moo.
John: And people send me text messages that are passive aggressive or that are, you know, and I just go, moo.
John: But the other day I noticed that someone was snapping at me a lot and it was nothing to do with me.
John: You know, that's when you notice people snapping.
John: then you can also, when you stop caring.
John: Oh, this is a really good point.
Merlin: It's so true, so true.
John: You start to notice, oh wait, that has nothing to do with me.
John: This person has snapped at me three times in the last two days, and so wait a minute, there's a pattern here, and it's not anything I'm doing.
John: They're just upset.
John: They're upset about something.
John: I don't know what.
John: Their marriage is ending, or they have seasonal affective disorder.
John: I don't know.
John: They haven't had a good poop in four days.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And the plus side is, oh, okay, well, I don't have to... I already was trying not to take that personally, but now I just am not at all.
Merlin: Now I just go off and... For me, it's taken a lot of practice.
Merlin: I'm still not great at it, but it's...
Merlin: It does take a lot of practice, but the benefit of that, just to repeat what you just said, is to realize, I don't know, the real, like, to me, the real, like, master level.
Merlin: There's the one level where you're like, you're being an asshole to me, and I'm going to snap and clap.
Merlin: The other level is, the next level is maybe like, you're being an asshole to me, but I'm not going to snap and clap about it.
Merlin: And then, like, to me, like, the really highest level is, like, I'm just not going to have emotional responses to other people unless there's a place for it.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
John: Yes, but now I'm... Not to suggest that there's a fourth level.
John: Oh, I love levels.
John: There's always another level.
John: I've just recently, just recently, just in the last, you know, within observable memory, I have started to be able to say, hey, I've noticed you've been, like, snapping at me lately, and I just want to say, you know, like, if there's something getting at you...
John: Like, let me know about it.
John: Let me change what I'm doing so I'm not, like, causing you to get rattled.
John: But also, you know, I just kind of want to shine a little light on it and say, is there something going on that you, you know, that you are...
Merlin: yelling at me about little stuff and not confrontational but you're taking a step out of the moment and the emotion you know what i mean kind of right you take like a half step back you get a little bit higher up in in the existential view of things and say like hey you know you make a little tea with your hands and say time out right like it seems like it seems like there's something that's changing or different or i'm getting a vibe from you which is different from just like oh you suck and what and that's the thing at what what i feel like makes it a fourth level is
John: I'm on the other side of taking it personally.
John: I'm on the other side of being able to be made upset about it.
John: And now all of a sudden I'm on this side of like, hey, I'm on your team.
John: What can I do to help?
John: Because I know snapping at people feels bad from inside.
John: You don't like to snap at me any more than I like to be snapped at.
John: Like, I care about you.
John: Like, how do I, you know, how do we get, it's no longer entirely centered on me being, responding to being snapped at or, you know, because it was not that long ago, honestly, that if somebody snapped at me, I'd be like, oh yeah, well, your fucking mom
John: And the process of getting to, like, moo.
Merlin: But you're like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse.
John: They've given you a reason to fight.
John: I love you.
John: Like, I'm on the other side of moo.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I think I'm starting to think we are.
Merlin: I think we are having slight Internet problems.
Merlin: John Syracuse thinks I'm having Internet problems.
Merlin: We're not actually talking over each other.
Merlin: It's the Internet.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: It is the Internet.
John: Yeah.
John: And one of the one of the moo cow things I've been learning is that in this particular new Zoom format we have, you will disappear.
John: I won't be able to hear you.
John: But instead of saying, Merlin, Merlin, are you there?
John: Yeah.
John: Can you hear me?
John: I just sit in placid contemplation.
John: Moo.
John: And then Zoom will bring you back in.
John: Playing really fast.
John: All right.
John: I'll figure it out.
John: It generally catches up.
John: So that by the time it gets to where I would have something to say, I've heard everything you've said.
John: It was just really compressed and you were like a little chipmunk.
John: But it's moo.
John: I'm mooing the whole time.
John: Moo.
Merlin: It's difficult and it's a practice.
Merlin: It's something where I feel like for me, I really do have to remember that that's a thing I'm trying to work on.
Merlin: But the results, the improvement opportunities come along pretty quickly.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: For a lot of things.
Merlin: It's just, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I agree with you, though.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: It seems like everybody's performing this weird aggression or this weird, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: People are always doing a thing.
Merlin: And it's like, who am I talking to here?
Merlin: Who am I dealing with?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I saw some... I was thinking yesterday.
Merlin: I saw some local gals.
Merlin: I'm guessing around probably, I don't know, 1920.
Merlin: And they're having fun.
Merlin: They're out having fun.
Merlin: And they're out in their sweatpants and their Ugg boots.
Merlin: And I think they went to get some snacks and come back.
Merlin: And on the way back, they're doing that thing young people do.
Merlin: They're screaming and yelling and doing all these things.
Merlin: But they were also like...
Merlin: Like very deliberately like throwing litter on the ground.
Merlin: Like one gal whipped out her Slim Jim and tossed the plastic on the ground like right in front of the house where she lives.
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: As a child of the 70s, I am aghast.
Merlin: Everybody must pitch in to clean up America or it won't be America anymore.
John: Have they never seen an Indian, a Native American man cry on the side of the road?
Merlin: An Italian American dressed up like an Indian.
Merlin: They'd never seen it.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: And I was thinking about that.
Merlin: And I had one of those little moments, though, where I was like, you know, sometimes you reap and sometimes you sow.
Merlin: And in that instance, I had a moment where a bunch of different things came together.
Merlin: That kind of made me frustrated.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Because, I don't know, it was several things.
Merlin: One was the like, hey, maybe don't throw your plastic on the sidewalk in the place where we live.
Merlin: Yeah, what about the whales?
Merlin: Where you live.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: What about the whales?
Merlin: But then there was also this part of me that was like, and I know that in another time in life, I can tell you what I would have said.
Merlin: It's my classic passive aggressive slap and clap kind of thing might have been like, you know,
Merlin: You know, something as stupid as, you know, do you want me to get that for you?
Merlin: Or like, will your mom be by later?
Merlin: Or, you know, that kind of thing.
Merlin: And I didn't because, you know, I just, when they were, once they were gone, I picked it up and it wasn't performative.
Merlin: But like, and I was just thinking about how, remember everybody tells you terrible twos, like when your kid's two?
Merlin: Like it's the worst.
Merlin: And I found that, I mean, I thought when my kid was two, my kid was actually like a lot of fun.
Merlin: I think the time that was a little more difficult was three for my kid.
Merlin: And I talked to some other, some of the other moms about it.
Merlin: And a lot of people like, I don't know, it's not saying they agree with me, but there are a lot of people who say, you know, actually three can be a lot more challenging.
Merlin: For one thing, they're stronger and they got bigger lungs and things.
John: I agree with you 100%.
John: That was our experience.
John: She was delightful at two.
John: And then at three, she was absolutely a living person.
Merlin: My takeaway from that Slim Jim co-ed was, though, I was like, you know, everybody talks about teenagers and the teens and they're always having their rainbow parties and doing all this stuff.
Merlin: I think people in their early 20s might be worse than people who are teenagers.
Merlin: In terms of their impact on society.
Merlin: Oh, it's absolutely true.
Merlin: Maybe I just like my teen.
Merlin: But like, you know, I was thinking about that.
Merlin: And so I walked away with that.
Merlin: I have not said that to anybody.
Merlin: I have not announced what a hero I am for picking up a Slim Jim rapper.
Merlin: Like, that's just what you do, right?
Merlin: It's like, it's that kind of, you know, adulthood without gratitude that we all live with.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, but like, and then I was just thinking about that.
Merlin: And like, I kind of had a little chuckle to myself about that.
Merlin: Cause I was like, you know what?
Merlin: It's funny.
Merlin: Cause that is kind of not childish behavior, but you know, cause not a lot of adults are babies too.
Merlin: But like, it was just funny.
Merlin: Cause I was just like, you know, actually the, I don't have as much trouble with the teens.
Merlin: It's, it's the, it's the certainty and confidence of the early twenties.
Merlin: We were talking earlier about certainty and confidence.
Merlin: They really got it all figured out.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, when they're 20.
John: I think I did.
John: If I had had any money, power, authority, access, ability to communicate or ever be heard, I would have done the most damage to the world in my early 20s.
John: And the only thing that kept us from being able to do any damage is that we had no money, power, audience, access.
John: Yeah.
John: you know there was no one listening to me and i was just a just a person in his early 20s screaming into the void while the rain came down and that was extremely frustrating to me yeah uh and i believed the world was unfair and i believed that everything was rigged and i believed all these things but nobody cared because nobody could there was zero opportunity for me to say that to anybody but other 20 year olds screaming you didn't have a you didn't have a platform
John: Didn't have anything.
Merlin: Apart from the backseat of your friend's Nova, in my case, like I didn't really have a platform for all my big ideas.
John: And so I couldn't do any damage to the world except for my very localized community where we were sitting around, you know, scraping each other's bongs and talking about how the fucking man is listening to us through the radio.
John: Yeah.
John: And I think it's just, you know, part of the problem now is that if I were 22 right now, I would have 700 different opportunities to, to broadcast to the world.
John: and i would be monitoring those broadcasts and i would all my paranoia all my frustration at not being heard and understood would seem to be a i mean it seemed to be a huge crime to me then but i would have the i would have the flawed feeling that i sh
John: I don't know.
John: I mean, I think it's obvious.
John: It's hard for me to describe exactly how bad it is to give people the illusion that they have an audience, that they're broadcasting, that their opinion matters.
John: I mean, it's one of the main things around my daughter's school.
John: where i think i think it's very commonplace to say listen we are we are absolutely listening to your opinion but we're going to make adult decisions and so your opinions are being recorded in our file of teenage opinions and then the adults are going to make decisions and really not based on your opinions unless
John: Those opinions coincide with adult ideas, right?
John: You know, like my daughter, it's got 50 opinions every day.
John: And I'm like, that's nice.
John: I'm not condescending to her.
John: I'm like, I'm listening to your opinion.
John: Here's why I'm going to do an adult thing now.
John: i can't imagine well we talk about this if we had if we had cameras when we were in our 20s think about oh i know garbage think about the garbage that would be online forever i know if i had a twitter account when i was 19 20
John: Think about the stuff.
Merlin: I mean, to me, to me, a big one as we sit here today would be something like and I'm not on Instagram, but like if I had if we if Instagram had been around when I was in college.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, there's a lot of things about that that would have to change.
Merlin: But, you know, I'm saying like to be in college with Instagram in any number of ways seems pretty fraught.
Merlin: To me, and I'm very grateful that there's a part of me that wishes, like, I wish there was more video and photos of my friends doing things, but I'm not, but I'm also very sympathetic to people where that's...
Merlin: And I cannot understand it.
Merlin: I cannot, as you say, grok it, because that's not my generation.
Merlin: It's not my thing.
Merlin: It's not my circus, not my monkeys.
Merlin: But just from a remove, it does seem like quite a lot of pressure, a lot of platform.
Merlin: And what was the word you used a minute ago?
Merlin: I mean, there's just, there's a lot of...
Merlin: There's a lot of broadcasting out there, and I'm glad I didn't have that ability to broadcast.
John: So glad.
John: All I have to do is find my notebooks from 1991 and 2 and 3 and read those words and go, this person, 23 years old, maybe my mind was as sharp as it ever would be, right?
John: And when I was 23, maybe I was as smart as I could ever have been.
John: But this is bad writing.
John: It's bad writing, and it's got bad ideas.
John: Bad writing, bad ideas.
John: It makes the person writing it seem like a bad, bad child.
John: And I'm so glad that it is confined to this spiral bound notebook.
John: It exists nowhere else.
John: I've never transcribed it.
John: It just is in this notebook.
John: I could burn it right now and no one would ever know.
John: And I probably should to spare my child ever knowing how I thought and felt when I was 22 years old.
John: And I only keep it because I'm a hoarder and it's a
John: I should burn it.
John: I'm looking at it.
John: I should get up and burn it.
John: There are 200 notebooks, Marilyn, that I should burn.
John: Because there's nothing good in it.
John: But at the time, if you had said, I'll publish this in a format that everyone in the world can read, it will be accessible to people in every country of the world if they only find it.
John: And then all you have to do, John, is make enough of a hullabaloo that people find your little cave of writing.
Merlin: uh i would have said absolutely put it out there and i'm gonna go down the street handing out flyers telling people to go because there were there were gatekeepers and there were gates and the idea of like having the ability to to a phrase that i think that i like to use that i think you can use pretty broadly for a lot of things is the ability to publish independently but also know that it will reach people
John: That's the thing.
John: Richard Hugo House, Merlin, you'll love this, has an entire library.
John: It used to.
John: I don't know where it is now.
John: An entire library of zines.
John: A massive room of just self-published zines from the 90s.
John: a photocopied a lot of sophisticated layout sometimes you know perfect bound like zines and to be in that room and to look at that wall of zines is overwhelming the number of of stabs people took at making something with the with the idea that they were going to be heard
John: And it's a wall of zines, you know, like they don't exist anywhere else.
Merlin: A lot of effort, right?
Merlin: Really starting, you can even look at like Punk Magazine in New York in the 70s, the Legs McNeil Magazine.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then through into the 90s to like, I think you were working at the bookstore.
Merlin: I know I was forever going to this one bookstore and...
Merlin: in tallahassee that had all of them you know had grand royal and might and beer frame and like all all the things that and of course you know things like eight ball like comics too but like stuff i you know like to hear i was a big i know it's awfully glossy at my zine standards but i loved my magazine so much and now my kids in the beastie boys so i've been trying to find them an old copy some of my old copies of grand royal that i've got around
Merlin: Oh, you've still got old copies of Grand Royal.
Merlin: That's... I know I've got the Scratch Perry one that looks like a Wheaties box where Ad-Rock goes to the Guitar Institute of Technology in a mullet wig.
Merlin: I know I've got... I know.
Merlin: But I was like, yeah, now that you like the Beastie Boys and... Like, here's the thing.
Merlin: It was like, Beastie Boys were so interesting because they'd done this big pivot after their first album.
Merlin: And like, I still had a lot of like, I don't know about these guys that kind of seem like assholes.
Merlin: But like, and then they put out a pretty good magazine.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They were an interesting group of people, their whole thing.
Merlin: But I agree with you.
Merlin: I was so ready to be recognized for something.
Merlin: Like, ideally something where it made sense and where I had tried and it worked out.
Merlin: And in my sort of, like, the creative fantasy league in my head, like, there were a lot of things that would just line up.
Merlin: If I got an essay in The Atlantic, I just imagined there would be all of these things or whatever.
Merlin: Like...
Merlin: it's, it's, it's pretty complicated stuff.
Merlin: And I don't want to come down too hard on this or on these people or on young people or platforms or anything like that.
Merlin: You know, the people I tend to come down harder on are the older people who act like they're actually all that different now.
John: Oh my God, I hate them too.
Merlin: Where it's like people who are always wanting to tell you like some lesson that they've learned.
Merlin: And it's like, it's just a, it's just a different kind of shitty certainty a lot of the time.
Yeah.
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: If you ever want to go back to Magnets, too, I'm always here.
John: Oh, I know.
John: And Magnet Magazine, too.
John: They've been a great supporter of my career all these years.
John: Oh, Magnet was a good magazine.
John: It still is.
John: They're still online.
John: They fave my stuff all the time.
John: They have these couple of articles that they're constantly recycling.
John: Like, remember that article about John Roderick?
John: Here it is again.
John: john roderick's met galo looks over the years it's probably just a bot you know but but i'm grateful to the bots thank you bots no i'm wondering i wonder about this right here you and i are men in our 50s broadcasting and broadcasting in a way where basically it's a z basically we're putting out a zine
John: and we started it in our 40s we had already by 1950s standards we were already uh 20 years into our careers at ibm and we were on our you know headed by 50s standards we were the age that people were having grandchildren
John: yeah that's right yeah and we started this we start you know you started this zine format of like hello and then roped me in and i'm and i'm eternally grateful my famous zine hello hello there hello i'm merlin man
John: Hey, everybody, look at me.
John: And I have to think that a lot of what appealed to me about this and appealed to me about Twitter in those early days was all that energy in my early 20s that I wanted so desperately to...
John: be able i wish i i wished at 21 years old that there was a twitter and that there were uh podcasts because that was what i was put on earth to do right and those things didn't exist and by the time i was 42 and should have had enough dignity to have a real job and be a be like a grandfather i was still so hungry for that audience
John: for my just thoughts, you know, not nothing we've ever done has had any kind of
John: not not only not a script but no governing idea you know we start every show with just like and that was true of twitter too i spent exactly one second thinking of what i was going to post and that was what i felt like i was meant to do and you know here we still are and i wonder if we had had those things at age 20 well almost certainly we wouldn't be doing this
John: Because we would have been screaming into the void back then when we were dumb and nobody would have cared.
John: And we would, I'd be working at Guitar Center.
John: And you would be, yeah, you'd be coding for some company that John Syracuse owned.
John: Yeah.
John: About carburetors.
John: Some company.
Merlin: It's so complicated.
Merlin: I think we, at least I think about this the most when I think about anything having to do with the future.
Merlin: futurism and the idea of like, if you like predicting the future, I think that's even putting it too strongly.
Merlin: But I think we've, at least I have warmed up to the idea that there's a lot of reasons it's difficult to know the future.
Merlin: And a curious person can prod that a little bit and find some interesting things about the present, right?
Merlin: So like, one thing about the future is,
Merlin: The example I use probably way too much is, you know, you see in old sci-fi, you'll see tons of stuff about all kinds of like, you know, light speed travel and Stargates and all these different kinds of things and aliens.
Merlin: And yet there are still like a lot of sci-fi things where like they don't have the equivalent of the internet.
Merlin: You can't just talk to everybody in space at the same time when, you know, when they get the messages in 2001, like, you know, it takes so long for the message to get there and the message to go back.
Merlin: It takes several minutes, whatever.
Merlin: Anyways, that's one example, though, of like, there was not a way to know that the technology that would arise and be disruptive wouldn't be, as people say, jetpacks.
Merlin: It would be the Internet.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, and so I think at least I've made my peace with like, oh, it's difficult to know things about the future because then you start adding in other things like, well, I don't know what the next thing like the Internet is going to be or I don't know how this is going to change.
Merlin: And there's just there's it's the butterfly wings thing where you're just like, it's so difficult.
Merlin: And it's such a fool's errand to try and predict the future.
Merlin: And you don't realize it until you try to.
Merlin: And once you try to predict the future, you realize how.
Merlin: burdened you are with your ideas of the past and even your ideas of the present.
Merlin: But I think it kind of goes for looking back, too.
Merlin: So when you say, I agree with you, I'm glad I didn't have the equivalent of Twitter, but also who knows what would have been different in that time, in that way, in a way because of what we didn't have, in the same way the future's going to change because of what we don't have or what sticks around longer than we thought, like fax machines or whatever.
Merlin: But going back, like you might have gotten, one of us might have gotten, like, as they say, canceled, but
Merlin: But who knows?
Merlin: Maybe that wouldn't have been such a big deal back then.
Merlin: And you, you know, not cancel, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like just all the stuff where you're like, I'm glad I didn't say something really stupid on like, I don't want, you don't want to be the main character of the day on TV either.
John: But maybe everybody back then would have been saying those things and it wouldn't be a thing.
Merlin: It's difficult, it's so difficult to know, but my gratitude remains.
John: I was saying, I was trying to explain to my child yesterday about Arab Spring.
John: And how... Was that 2011?
John: 2011?
John: Yeah, a very short, yeah, the early 2010s.
John: A very short decade ago...
John: There was a moment where the internet, specifically social media,
John: uh spawn specifically twitter specifically twitter yeah spawned uh revel peaceful uh overturnings of fascist governments and what appeared to be a sweeping democratic populism that was going to transform the entire arab world into this blossoming culture of art and democracy
John: and we sat and watched it and rejoiced and then uh that's not what happened yeah but for uh for a moment it really and i and i when i look back
Merlin: Can I add something particularly here?
Merlin: I think it's implicit in what you're saying, but if it's not, you can tell me.
Merlin: And if it is, I'd like to call it out or surface it.
Merlin: And so they were able to, was it Mubarak in Egypt?
Merlin: They got out.
Merlin: And on top of that...
Merlin: Twitter actually had a big role in that, but it also seemed to imply, so the ability to communicate with other people and have it not be censored and to spread the word on all this kind of stuff, any myriad of ways where this is a new platform, a new technology, and people are embracing it to do something that they consider very positive and useful.
Merlin: But I want to just really bubble up that, and it's because of Twitter, ergo, wow, what's next?
Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, where you see something where you're like, oh, my God, there's been this.
Merlin: And there's a confluence of several things happening around that time, the way they're reported.
Merlin: But, you know, it's the part that's sort of frustrating in retrospect was, well, was that because of Twitter?
Merlin: And it certainly wouldn't be because of the Twitter or X, if you like, that exists today.
Merlin: It's another one of those weird things.
Merlin: But wasn't that part of it?
Merlin: It was like, yeah, and it's all because of these people, but with this new tool, my God, what can we do next with this?
Merlin: You can't jam this down and just turn off the servers and act like nothing's going to happen anymore, although that does still happen.
Merlin: But you see what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: It wasn't just that, wow, it was neat that we were able to coordinate this over MySpace or something.
Merlin: It was that, well, wow, what's next on our checklist of things that we can change?
John: this was a confirmation that what we had built and what we were we were engaging in at that moment was going to transform the world and arab spring was just the first of many steps and i think a lot of us immediately turned our attention back to the united states and said we are about to over overturn all these institutions of control everybody wants democracy
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: The Iraqis wanted that.
Merlin: We just may we could do that better next time.
Merlin: Remember that idea, though, of like everybody wants American democracy and this could be our tool for doing that.
Merlin: And that boy, is that ever complicated in practice?
John: Well, and the and the thing about that was and maybe it'll happen organically in their own language.
John: Like we're not exporting money.
John: democracy, they're just finding it because it's the natural result of people talking to each other.
John: And that's gonna happen here.
John: All the institutions of oppression and suppression, we're going to not even be able to see at first
John: That we're able to destroy by just talking to each other in real time across all economic boundaries, social boundaries.
John: Like I'm talking to Keanu Reeves right now on Twitter.
John: And so it's this leveling, this incredible democratizing leveling moment.
John: And all we just needed was each of us to have our own megaphone.
John: And none of us at the time could have predicted, first of all, that Assad would burn his country down and that the Arab Spring would.
John: I mean, you could have looked at it.
Merlin: The guy in Syria?
John: Yeah.
John: He's a bad actor, if you ask me.
John: He's pretty bad.
John: You could look at it and go, well, there are a lot of still very bad authoritarian police institutions in these places.
John: So let's not count our chickens before they hatch.
John: But especially when we turned it back here to the United States and we're looking at each other like, what's next?
John: Like, what kind of amazing post-racial society are we going to construct starting now?
John: There was no way to predict that the next wave of people joining Twitter would be there to go, actually, that's not how a swimming suit is worn or whatever.
John: You know, that broadcasting that everybody has a voice thing, at least in my opinion,
John: just turned into that narcissism of minor differences because it wasn't much later.
John: 2015, 2016, I felt like everything I put online, somebody was yelling at me.
John: And that is not the same as now we can all talk to each other.
John: Now you're Mubarak.
John: And we're going to, yeah, we're going to overturn.
John: You're the new host.
John: That's right.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Sure.
John: The long winners, you know, why don't you just not suck?
John: It's like, why did you get a microphone?
John: Who the fuck are you?
John: So I really do feel like you're absolutely right.
John: There's no way to predict the future.
John: You cannot look back and, and really make any kind of statement about the past.
John: That's effectual.
John: All I know is I'm glad that you cannot search my name and read my journals from 1994.
John: And also, God, you're right.
John: I was walking down the street and I was like, you know, right now there is some penny stock.
John: There is some crypto.
John: There is some person tinkering away in their garage that if I knew about it and put $1 in, I would be a billionaire.
John: But I have no way of knowing what that is.
John: And to think about it is dumb.
John: But also right now there's, and I, you know, I think we all think that it's these AIs who are like, hello, Merlin, it's me, your friend, John, except I am an AI.
John: And you're like, oh, fuck.
John: Well, I do kind of want to know what John would think about this.
John: So I'm going to ask him, even though he's an AI.
Yeah.
John: That's what seems obvious is going to ruin the world.
John: But who knows what it's going to be?
John: It might be Ad-Rock, frankly, in a trench coat.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And also the way that... You know what?
Merlin: I don't want to get into it.
Merlin: But I mean, there are a lot of...
Merlin: historical inequities that we patch long enough to get through an election.
Merlin: You know, it's just a historical thing that's always happened, which is in this case, like the party that I happen to belong to loves to like, at the last minute, run up and placate all the black people who vote for them in every election.
Merlin: That's not going to happen this time.
Merlin: Get really butthurt if they...
Merlin: like, don't want to do that.
Merlin: And it's just that we don't... There's so many things we don't really fix and they keep.
Merlin: It certainly creates a lot of noise in the signal chain if we're not getting to these deeper things.
Merlin: See, I shouldn't have gotten into it at all.
Merlin: What I want to say to these girls...
Merlin: But I want to say to all... The garbage girls, the Slim Jims.
Merlin: Well, I got a different set of garbage.
Merlin: I mean, I deal with a lot of garbage girls.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You can't put a bag of trash into the compost can.
Merlin: Don't do that.
Merlin: You don't do that.
Merlin: I mean, don't do that because, you know, first of all, we're all living in this illusion that all those things go to different places.
Merlin: They don't really go to different places anymore.
Merlin: But still, the bigger problem is that doesn't change whether the garbage man will take the trash that you have put in the compost.
Merlin: Then you get mad, and you stuff more in there, and I don't understand.
Merlin: At home, the trash always goes away, and here I keep jamming all of my takeout containers and things into this compost in a 13-gallon hefty bag, and then you just keep doing that.
Merlin: I see that, and I have to admit, it does bug me a little bit.
Merlin: It bugs me a little bit, and I do find myself falling into this pattern of like...
Merlin: Oh, you know, why can't you learn how to adult kind of things?
Merlin: Does somebody else just take care of that for you at home?
Merlin: But, like, we all have been through that in one way or another.
Merlin: And, like, I don't know.
Merlin: Sometimes I just take the trash and put it into the garbage can because I don't want to have to, like, have a whole thing with somebody.
Merlin: It's not my job to be the garbage czar, except I am the garbage czar.
Merlin: You're the silent majority.
Merlin: It still drives me a little crazy sometimes, though, where it's like I do feel that old man thing of like a very tiny slice of the pie graph is I feel sorry for how hard life is going to be for you.
Merlin: As a child of privilege who gets to have an apartment and go to college, you haven't learned how to take care of your own trash yet.
Merlin: But taking care of our own trash is something we all have to learn how to do in one way or another.
Merlin: And it changes over time.
Merlin: And sometimes it's illogical.
Merlin: And sometimes I keep putting stuff in the recycling because they want me to act like they still recycle things.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And but like, there's a lot of levels to that and a lot of truth telling to be generated about that.
Merlin: But at the end of the day, it's not my circus.
Merlin: It's not my monkeys.
Merlin: It's not my job to go out and pass my wisdom on to people in an assertive, first person, transitive, wisdom passing way.
Merlin: And sometimes that's... I'm still kind of shaking that off a little bit.
Merlin: That's a part of my past that still hangs around is being a white knife for whatever bugs me.
John: Well, I was saying this to my mom the other day.
John: I always return to the realization I had when I was running for office that I really wanted to contribute.
John: I really wanted to be part of my community.
John: I really wanted to...
John: to offer and add what I, what I could offer an ad.
John: And I came out the other side, you know, very disappointed and then realized, wait, I have those, uh, I have that.
John: I mean, I'm able to talk to Merlin every week, reach a lot of people say what I, you know, offer what I have to offer.
John: And know that in a lot of ways, it lands.
John: It lands on receptive ears.
John: And that's not a thing that my dad had, right?
John: And that's not a thing that my dad's world had.
John: Right.
John: So wisdom and adulthood and all these things used to be only transmittable by old men standing in the street with their pants pulled up over their belly buttons, shaking their fist and going, we live in a society.
John: but now i mean i did not win my election and i did not sit on the seattle city council and get quoted every week in the newspaper saying these damn kids or whatever i would have that would have been as your pants slowly crapped up my pants going up and up and up but you know we do have this and so one of the ways that we can't know
John: Is that 50 years from now, are people going to look back and go, thank God for the podcast of the 2020s.
John: That's how our institutional memory was carried on.
John: Like, that's how people, although nobody was listening at the time, and although...
John: Gen X men on the West Coast felt like nobody was listening to them.
John: In fact, it turns out there's an incredible record of what they thought that a lot of people were listening to and that that was shaping.
John: You know, I've heard from a full handful, maybe not two handfuls, but one full handful of people who have run for office in their local municipalities.
John: And they write me and go, listening to you talk about running for office was part of the process of me deciding to run for office.
John: And I go, wow, that is not a thing that I could have known.
John: And only one of those people has to become a despotic leader for me to be, for my name to be carved in stone in their center.
John: That show was all worthwhile.
John: Just one despot.
John: Yeah, all one despot has to do is going to Paris at the head of a column of tanks and have a little picture of me in his wallet.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: What at the tip of the spear is a photo of you.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: And so maybe I never do, but he's broadcasting an AI representation of my voice like, hey, everybody, keep moving.
Merlin: Giant stadiums full of people in tubas singing the John Roderick lead.
Merlin: Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.