Hello Internet - H.I. #84: Sloppy Buns

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

Grady discuss more on the Trafalgar Square no fun, ambulance driver follow up, support your local radio station, UK snap election resuluts, WWDC, the 51st state and the United States flag, and a question of eating etiquette. Sponsors Squarespace: start building your website today with a free fourteen day trial and 10% off first purchase with offer code HELLO Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products - use offer code HI for $5 off Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show notes Brady at Trafalgar Square No juggling at Trafalgar Square Grey's Trafalgar Square video The other place... Future US flag designs Betsy Ross flag 51 pointed star designs

Let's just say a little prayer for this podcast. Dear podcast gods, please forgive the sins we've committed over the last half hour and let this episode actually make it to air. Amen. Amen. It seems, Brady, that Trafalgar Square is doubling down on their policy of no fun. Big time. I was there the other day.

And you know how you're not allowed on the lines and you said there was like some guard. Right. Well, now the whole line area at the bottom of Nelson's column had like this like black and yellow crime scene-esque tape around it. So you couldn't even get to within touching distance of the lines, let alone climb on them. It was like all quarantined. There was no water in the fountains.

So there was no fun to be had in the fountains. Seriously, it was crazy. It was the least fun place in all of the UK, except when you talked about Trafalgar Square and you were dissing it, and you were quite right to be dissing it, you did leave out Nelson's Column itself, which I think is one of the great sites of London. And that is still a reason to go to Trafalgar Square. And I do still love that. I guess, but it doesn't help that Nelson's Column is now in the center of this no fun zone. And on one side, you have Trafalgar Square, which used to be fun. And on the other side, you just have a massive traffic intersection. It needs a reason to be a fun place to go. But you sent me this photograph of the square crime-seemed off. It is hard to express how enraged that made me,

because the thing I was aware of when I was there the first time and saw those signs about don't climb on the lions, the thing that a bunch of people were doing, which the guards seem totally okay on, is there's two positions to photograph yourself with the lions at Trafalgar Square. There is the risky one for the adventurous types, which is to climb up onto the actual back of the lion and get a photograph there. But lots of families take a kind of classic Trafalgar Square photo, which is a dad will raise up their kids onto the paws of the lion. So like there's this relatively low area between the two paws of each of the lions. And every family loves to pack their kids in between the paws and take photographs of that. It's a super cute photo, right? It's great. And it seemed like that was okay with the guards. They weren't stopping anybody from doing that. It was just going on the backs of the lions. But now, like you said, they've put this tape around the whole thing so that you can't

touch the lions. You certainly can't put people between the paws of the lions. It's unbelievable. Like, and it makes me so angry. Like it just, I don't know. Well, before you go off on one there are two possible explanations for this that have come to mind the first and the one that i hope is true but is by far the least likely is that in a hello internet wikipedia style lockdown moment the sheer act of us talking about a topic has caused such nuisance making by Tim's that the authorities have had no choice but to essentially lock down the lions, which would amuse me no end, but clearly is not the case. The second and more likely scenario is that some kind of

work is going on, some kind of preparation. Maybe they were having to do something to the concrete up above and they didn't want things falling down onto people from Lord Nelson or they were prepping something. I mean, the fact the fountains are empty as well tells me that maybe they're doing their, you know, once or twice a year spring clean. So I think the most likely scenario is that this was a temporary measure. But nevertheless, it would be fun if it was like a Wikipedia-style page lockdown that we caused. Again, we would never promote Wikipedia vandalism. That's the wrong thing to do.

And of course, we would never promote social disobedience on this podcast. That would be wrong to do, to promote people to go and sit on the backs of the lions, to retweet people doing that kind of thing. That would be wrong on many levels. Neither of us would ever do such a thing. And as we've said, the perfect storm of the two is to go into the Wikipedia page for Trafalgar Square and fill it with photos of people sitting on the lions. Yeah, we would never encourage that. But I'm always suspicious about this because my personal experience with bureaucracies and this kind of structure is there's like a crank shift that only turns in one direction. And the direction that it turns is more regulations, more rules, and less fun. And that it's essentially impossible to turn that back in the other direction.

And so even if this is for building works let's say let's say is the best case scenario like oh we just want to polish up the lions right i can still imagine them thinking after a little bit like hey you know what this square is way easier to manage once we wall off the whole central column like now we don't have to worry about anything and then some lawyer would say hey you know what now we don't have to worry about anything. And then some lawyer would say, hey, you know what? Now you don't have to worry about people climbing up on Nelson's column, not even on the lions. There's just like a stair step thing that you can climb up on. Why don't we just leave it up? It's already been up for a couple of weeks and everything's been fine. So that's my fear is like, I can just feel the machinery of desaturating the world, turning another tick here. That's my worry.

My favorite example of fun being taken away because of safety won't mean a tremendous amount to you because you have no idea how the game of Australian rules football works, but you know, it's like an oblong, like egg shaped bowl that people kick and catch and do things like that with. And it was a great tradition at Australian rules football games that at the end of the game, when the final siren went and after the players had left the field, they would sound the siren again about five or 10 minutes later. And everyone could run out onto the field with the balls they'd brought along themselves and like just run around on the field and kick the ball and you could try and kick for the goals

and pretend to be a hero and kick the ball through the goals that your heroes had just been doing. Wow, that sounds great. It was great fun and you'd have 2,000 or 3,000 people all over the field, each having their own little games, kicking it back and forward. The probability of walking off that field without getting hit in the face by a football was virtually zero.

Of course. You would guarantee that at least once you would get hit by a ball you didn't see coming because it was just like a frenzy of balls in the face by a football was virtually zero. Of course. You would guarantee that at least once you would get hit by a ball you didn't see coming because it was just like a frenzy of balls in the air. But it was so much fun. You know, you'd line up the goals and try and kick a goal from an angle you just saw your heroes doing it. And then eventually so many people were complaining

about getting hurt by getting hit by balls in the head or like, you know, twisting their ankle that eventually they banned it and like it went away. And it was one of the great quaint traditions of Australian sport that all the kids were allowed to do this after a big professional game of sport, but gone now, gone to the professionalism and health and safety gone mad, I tell you. It's not even health and safety gone mad. It's, there's a certain kind of, I think, undue weight that boredom and seriousness and safety always have in conversations. Because it ends up being really hard to argue for

the intangible values like fun over the tangible thing like someone could hurt themselves. No matter how small the probability of someone could hurt themselves or a thing could be dangerous is, it's like, I feel like any possibility of that in all conversations, in organizations around anything, like it's always biased toward this direction. That's why I find it really frustrating. You know, now it's a long time ago, but like I was always hugely frustrated when I was a teacher to discover how many of the things that I thought were awesome, cool, fun things that my teachers had done

when I was a kid in the science lab were totally off limits. They're like, we can't do any of that. Like, are you crazy? You can't have a kid touch a Van de Graaff generator. What if they have a heart condition we don't know about? And it's like, has this ever happened in the history of ever that a kid's died

from a heart attack from touching a Van de Graaff generator? And they're like, it could happen. It's like, yes, of course it could happen. But like how we have to weigh these things. They're like, nope, it could happen. We're not going to do that. Like only things that are totally safe. And it's like, oh my God, it really bothers me. I think that's why the Trafalgar Square thing gets right at the heart of me. Just to top it off, I think this is the funniest thing I have seen, which is related to Trafalgar Square being the no fun zone. Just mere hours ago on the Hello Internet subreddit, someone posted a video of themselves in Trafalgar Square a couple of years ago, doing some juggling. And the guards at Trafalgar Square come over and tell him that juggling is not allowed at Trafalgar Square. It looks like this guy was putting together one of those videos where

he's doing juggling in various spots all over the world. He says in the description that like, he traveled to all of these various places and there was only one spot in the whole world where they told him, oh, sir, you're not allowed to juggle. And that was Trafalgar Square. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, that is also probably one of the prime spot where like, you know, professional jugglers try and busk for 20 minutes and make a bit of money. If there was one place where I thought you would get cracked down on for juggling, it actually would be Trafalgar Square. That's like busker central, isn't it? And they're like very fine tuned to people doing unauthorized busking there. Busking, I can totally understand.

Well, juggling is a busker classic as well. It's not busking if you don't have a, have a sad popper's hat in front of you with some coins that you placed inside of it to get the thing going. They clearly thought that's what he was starting to do. I need to watch the video. Don't get me wrong. I like a good juggle. You like a good juggle? I'm a very good juggler. Oh, yeah? Yeah. How many balls can you juggle at once, Brady? Well, I'm not very good at four, but I'm very good at three and I can do like behind my back and tricks and under my legs and stuff. I look forward to the Brady juggling roadshow. I can't believe you haven't been subjected to it yet, to be honest.

You know what? I'm surprised I haven't been subjected to it yet either. But I have a feeling like the next time we see each other in person, there's going to be some juggling. If there's like little kids that are bored, sometimes my wife will say, just do a bit of juggling for them just to cheer them up and it like gets them all excited so that feels very uncle brady do you pull coins from behind their ears as well do you do that do you take their noses no i'm a bit more like edgy than that i'll tell you what though a couple more things though coming back to the lions because i was reading about why they banned people going on the lines and i read quite a bit about this and how there were like structural problems.

They did like surveys of the lions and found that people were starting to wear them away and stuff. Well, of course, yeah. Yeah, but like fix them then, because this is part of the experience. It's like saying we're going to ban people from throwing coins into the Trevi Fountain because occasionally coins hit the stonework and cause little chips. Well, yeah, and the Trevi Fountain is old and famous and important and shouldn't be chipped, but it's way more important that you're allowed to throw coins into it. So this kind of damage and wear and tear is part of the story of the lions. So if they get worn away and you've

got to give one of them a bit of back surgery or reinforce one or do some work on them. Okay. Do the work, but you've got to take the hit, you know. I'm with you 100%. And I think this is another example of where there's an easy argument to make, which like with the pigeons as well, it's like, you can put a number on how much damage does pigeon poo cause in Trafalgar Square every year in terms of dollars, right? You can say like, it costs us X amount to clean this thing every year. You can also say, oh, the lions, if we need to strengthen up the backs every decade, it's going to cost us X amount. And like, that is a real clear bureaucratic argument. But what I just feel like is the intangible thing on the other side is, but you know, this is why people come here, right? You have to have touristy, interesting things for people to do. And if you continually crank this dial of having

more and more of them, more and more off limits, like what is the point of all of this? It's like, yes, I'm sure it costs a lot of money to clean up all the pigeon poo in Trafalgar Square, but people come from the world over to see the pigeons and to go on the backs of the lions. And surely hundreds of thousands of tourists a year pay through tax revenue and buying stuff and supporting the local economy. Like they pay for that upkeep.

Like there's no way that it doesn't. But I feel like somehow the preservationist side and the cost side of the argument is just the de facto winner. And it's like impossible to try to be on the side of these intangible things. And I feel like, again, I'm totally with you on this. It's like, hey, look, guess what? These lions, being outside wears them away. Everything erodes over time. You're going to have to update them anyway. Why not update them more frequently and also let people enjoy them? We could just put the whole thing inside a gigantic plastic box, right? And there's like, oh, well, there's also sun

damage getting through that box. So we can put it in a gigantic opaque box, right? All around Trafalgar Square and nobody is allowed in. It's like, is that what you want? Now it'll last a really long time, right? But nobody gets to appreciate it. Like that feels like the logical conclusion of where this ends up. Well, that wouldn't be good, would it? A big black box around Trafalgar Square. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that, except someone going like, well, you know, it would save us a lot of money every year on maintenance costs. Like, yeah, I'm sure it would. I'm sure it goddamn would. It's funny that like the last thing I just want to mention about this is the juggling guy reminded me of something that I haven't thought about in years. But as soon as I saw his video, I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about this event. So this is something like maybe

seven years ago now. My wife and I thought that we might be leaving London permanently. We weren't sure. This is the time in my life where I sort of ended up living in Hawaii for a little bit. But we were thinking there's a good possibility that we're leaving London and we won't come back. Obviously, that didn't happen. But we thought that at the time. And now, the place where my wife and I met each other in person for the first time was Trafalgar Square. If you are standing at the National Gallery and you are looking toward Nelson's Column,

we actually met right beneath the paws of one of those lions, and it'd be the lion on the left-hand side. That is where we met for the first time. And so when we were leaving London, we thought, you know, what might be nice is let's take some really nice photographs of ourselves in Trafalgar Square as just like a little memory and memento of here's a city that we really like, and here's the place that we met. So my wife and I, we got dressed up all nice and fancy. My wife had a bunch of very high-end photography gear. And we got up super early in the morning and we went out to Trafalgar Square. And we thought, okay, we're going to take some photographs of ourselves at sunrise, right? Like we get there, there is nobody in Trafalgar Square. The place is totally empty. It's just my wife and I, and she sets up her camera on the tripod so that we can take some pictures of us in various locations. And we're there for mere minutes before out of nowhere,

a guard comes along and tells us that we're not allowed to be taking these pictures in Trafalgar Square. It's like, are you serious, man? Like, is this something that's really happening right now? He goes, yeah, you're not allowed to do commercial photography. And I'm like, okay, but we're taking pictures of ourselves for ourselves. Like, this isn't commercial photography. Like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, okay, but we're taking pictures of ourselves for ourselves. Like, this isn't commercial photography.

Like, what are you talking about? And he goes, well, you have a tripod with that camera, so it must be commercial photography. There's no tripods allowed in Trafalgar Square for taking photographs. It's one of these things where it's just so crazy making. You feel like you're in this bizarro moment of, wait, like, presumably you don't want tripods in Trafalgar Square because they take up a lot of space and there's a lot of people here. But there's only three humans in the world in Trafalgar Square right now. It's like my wife, myself, and this guy telling us that we're not allowed to take these pictures. It was just like this incredibly

frustrating back and forth where we're trying to convince this guy, like, we're not taking commercial photographs. And he's like, well, why are you dressed up all nice? It's like, he just wouldn't let it go. And he's like, no, you can't do this. You got to go. You got to get out of here and not take these nice memento photographs of yourself bothering no one at 6am or whatever in Trafalgar Square. How did that end? Did you walk away with the tie between your legs? Or did you stand up for your rights and sock him once? I didn't punch him, if that's what you're saying. Oh, right. Well, here's an interesting thing, which is that we knew in advance that Trafalgar Square

is one other place in the UK, which have really strange rules around photography inside of them. They're super harsh on commercial photography and getting filming rights and all the rest of this. Yeah, because it's a revenue stream. Yeah. And it's like, again, also for doing like filming stuff there, it makes total sense because you see movies and TV shows being filmed in Trafalgar Square and they have to close the whole place down. It's like, yeah, of course that makes sense because it's a big hassle. Like it takes up the square, blah, blah, blah. But I think it's a very big difference between that kind of thing and two people who are just like, no, we're taking photographs for ourselves.

Like we don't have a crew here. There's just two people. And we've come at a time that's bothering no one. The problem is you two are so damn good looking. He probably thought you were both models. Yes, I'm sure that is precisely what it was. He's like, oh, look at these amazingly good looking people. They must be models. But so all we did was like, the dude was super frustrating. And we went up the staircase and sort of by the National Gallery and just waited for a little bit. He wandered around and then seemed to disappear from somewhere. So we just went back out and took a bunch of photos and then left. It's just like with the lion as well.

It's like, okay, sure, Mr. Guard. Like, I know you're going to stand here and you're going to take the camera if we leave it on the tripod and try to take some pictures of ourselves. So I'm just going to wait until you're further away and out of eyesight and then just do it again and then leave. But it's like, yeah, Trafalgar Square, no fun zone for a long time. And the ratchet is only getting turned up. The whole professional photography thing also, it must be getting just impossible to police because any amateur these days, you know, has a tripod and a posh camera and a nice lens. But also, you could be there just clowning around on your iPhone. And you could be some YouTuber making a video that's going to get watched by 30 million people. How they're policing that I got no idea.

It doesn't make any sense. I think especially with YouTube, the whole notion of commercial is very strange. Because I took some videos of the signs in Trafalgar Square, and I put that up on my second channel. And the second channel does have ads that run on that video. So like, was I commercially filming in Trafalgar Square on my iPhone? It's like, I guess by the letter of the law I was, but by no reasonable person's definition, would you say, oh, that was a commercial filming operation. Lock him up, lock him up. It is very funny because you also see when i was there on that day i did see a bunch of people with what i think of as like the

the casey nystat filming setup where they have a very impressive looking canon camera with a little road microphone attachment on the top and the gorilla pod stand to hold it in their hands. And it is, it's this funny thing of like, is that just some kid filming stuff for himself, right? Or is that a vlogger with millions and millions of subscribers? Like you don't know. And then is that a commercial operation or not? It really is crazy and it's unpleasable and it's frustrating. I was actually alerted to this situation by a couple of Tims who I think had gone to the square. They're from San Francisco, but they were holidaying in London. It was a married couple and they'd gone to the square, I think for a little bit of grey inspired civil disobedience. And they obviously saw this

roped off area and realised they couldn't get up on the lines. So they took like a photo and posted it on Twitter sort of saying, look how unfun the no fun zone is now. And I saw this and I just happened to be on the train on my way into London where I had meetings that day right near Trafalgar Square. And I felt so bad. I felt like I had to do my bit for London and for the UK. I didn't want them leaving thinking so terribly of Trafalgar Square. So I did message them on Twitter and I said, I tell you what, if you're in that same place at six o'clock tonight, I'll come and say hello and let's take a better photo. So sure enough, I went later on and they

turned up and we did our own little photo shoot. And funnily enough, I think that photo shoot may have been with your love lion. Because as I think about it now, it was that line on the left nearest the gallery as you look down from the gallery. So I think we were doing our little photo at the grey love line. We didn't get stopped. By the way, kudos to the first person that goes onto Wikipedia and refers to that line as the love line. Brady, you're just encouraging Wikipedia vandalism there. We don't promote that on the show. Don't do that. You wouldn't want to cause Wikipedia problems. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. You're so good to the Tims, Brady. You really are. Taking photographs in Trafalgar Square, manufacturing shoes, getting vinyl records printed. You're very good to posted another picture as well, where they had been at the San Francisco baseball stadium,

sitting like near where I sat when I went as well. So they'd been good Tims, like rewarding good Timage. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Squarespace is everything you need to create a website of your own. Even if you know nothing about making websites. If you have an idea you want to create a website of your own, even if you know nothing about making websites. If you have an idea you want to show off, if you have a business you want to start, you're going to need a website and Squarespace is the place to do it. They offer award-winning templates that are the most beautiful way to present your ideas online. And with Squarespace,

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So Gray, in the last podcast, I talked about how traffic responds to ambulances and people getting out the way of ambulances. And that caused lots of interesting discussion and there was lots of legal debate and things like that. And there's no need to go over all that again. I think it's been well and truly thrashed out on the Reddit. But one thing I said that caused some controversy was I referred to the drivers of ambulances as ambulance drivers. And I don't know if you have seen some of the reaction this caused. I said at the time that a lot of people who work in ambulances listen to the podcast, and that was proven to be true, because they all got in touch.

I have seen very much of this as well. Yes. And basically, to summarize their argument, I supposedly have done them a disservice by referring to them as ambulance drivers, as mere ambulance drivers, because they are trained paramedics, and they don't take well to being called ambulance drivers. And I was wondering how you felt about this, how you felt to this admonishment that I received. It's a funny thing because I feel like there is a presumption from the people who are paramedics about a thing that we're saying, which we're not, because when I say something like ambulance driver, which is a phrase that I also used, I feel like in my mind, you can translate that into like a hero among men, right? Like that person is doing like awesome, cool, dangerous driving down the roads.

Like they're going to literally save lives. They're going in all of these dangerous situations. There was no suggestion they were not trained to do it as well. Yeah, what I'm not here is like ambulance driver does not equate to like Uber driver, like dude with a car, right? Who's just doing a thing. That is not

the comparison in my mind. Like I can totally understand from the perspective of a paramedic, like you go through a whole bunch of training and then you have a title that you are a paramedic. That means a particular thing in your mind. Whereas when we're talking about it, at least in my head, it's all kind of mushed together where it's like, oh yes, of of course, ambulance drivers and paramedics, like, these are just people who are saving people's lives. And they are incredibly valuable members of society. And they do great things. We got a lot of feedback, because I can understand why from the perspective of a paramedic, they might feel like being referred to as an ambulance driver is less than what they are. But that is by no means the feeling in at least my head, and I presume your head when you are discussing what

these people do. Well, yes, can I second what Gray just said? But can I also add with all the love in the world to those paramedics, get off your high horse. Whoa. Because I accept that you have this incredible training and knowledge that I don't have. And I'm so thankful for what you do. And I think you're heroes. And one day one of you might be leaning over me to save my life. And I hope you're not still angry at me at that point. And the words he will say as he's putting the mask over your face are, you're Brady Heron.

Yeah. How's this on your high horse? But no, the thing is like, yes, you have all this medical training, but at that moment in time, when you were driving the ambulance, to me, you are an ambulance driver. And that also is important and amazing and well-trained and brilliant. But a person driving an ambulance is an ambulance driver, kind of like by definition even if they've stolen it they're an ambulance driver at that point in time and if like say someone drove into the front wall of my house tomorrow and knocked over the wall and i was

upset at them and i was like here on the podcast complaining about it and i said oh great you're not going to believe it like some car driver drove into my wall and knocked it over yesterday they're not going to call me up and say, well, actually, I happen to be a brain surgeon, and I'd prefer it if you'd said a brain surgeon drove into my wall yesterday. Like, yes, maybe you are a brain surgeon, but at the time you were driving the car and knocking over the wall, all you were to me was the driver of a car. Likewise, when someone is driving an ambulance past me at high speed, just go and save a life. At that point in time, you're an ambulance driver. And I think that's

a fair description of what you are. And trust me, if I'm out in the field making one of my videos and a little kid says, mommy, mommy, look at that cameraman over there. I'm not going to turn around to them and say, excuse me, I'm a trained journalist and I have interview skills and I also do the editing and I've also put things together and I'm going to create a lovely narrative out of this story. I just think, okay, I'm a cameraman at the moment. I accept it. Oh my God. Okay. A few things. I feel like I cannot go down this line of reasoning with you. The thing is, I would bet so much money in real life that you would turn to that kid and be like, excuse me, I am a trained journalist. Like everything I know about you, everything about

our private conversations to me, like are all arrows pointing in the direction of, yes, Brady would tell that child that he is a trained journalist and not merely a cameraman in that moment. No, you've got that wrong. You've got that wrong. But putting that aside, the ambulance driver thing. Okay. So if you were in that field, filming a video about ambulances, and they let you drive the ambulance, would you say that you were an ambulance driver in that moment? No. Okay. You've caught me out there. Perhaps using the notion of someone having stolen the ambulance was maybe me taking a little bit of a dramatic license for the amusement of our listeners. But I do think it is fair to call someone who is earning money while driving the ambulance

an ambulance driver. And yes, they also have an even more important role to play. But in the context of my story, all that mattered was that they were an ambulance driver. So here's the thing that I'm a little bit foggy on. So the preferred term is paramedic. I feel like I don't understand very clearly the boundaries of this word, because do paramedics only exist in some form of transit? Like I'm thinking about, right, a paramedic is coming in an ambulance, or a paramedic is coming in a helicopter. Do paramedics operate inside of the hospital?

Or do they operate exclusively outside of the hospital in transit back to it? Like, I don't understand actually very clearly where the boundaries of this are. You're asking me. I'm already in trouble for not knowing this. So you don't ask me. Okay. I'm looking it up now. While I look this up, I have another question I want to throw out there to the paramedics. If you're a paramedic and you lose your driver's license, like say for drink driving, I'm assuming you can't now drive the ambulance. Are you still a paramedic if you can't drive an ambulance? Who drives the ambulance? Are there any just bespoke ambulance drivers? You know, I drive the ambulance, but I don't know nothing about the human body. Like, I just get the paramedics there. Do those people even exist?

That's a very interesting question. I feel like economies tend towards specialization. I feel like somewhere in some country, this has to be a clear division of labor, that there does exist someone who is an ambulance driver only, who's trained on racetracks, and like pretend villages to be able to drive around corners. Because that seems like a very different skill set from being able to stop someone from bleeding to death in their kitchen. I don't think those necessarily overlap. So there must be someplace that has this division of labor. I'm sure we'll find out from all of the paramedics. Well, we're not going to find out from the paramedic Wikipedia page because that's a

little bit nebulous. I was looking over that too and I'm like, I'm getting no help from you, Wikipedia page. This is not what I'm looking for. Oh, please, please, please, nuisance Tim, make the term ambulance driver redirect to paramedic. Brady, you are such a troublemaker. It's a thing I have to, I disapprove of greatly in your personality.

So these are the questions. Are there people who are ambulance drivers only? And do paramedics only exist in transit from location? Are paramedics, do they not exist inside of a hospital? I feel like this is what we need to know. Please go to the Reddits and have a big angry discussion about it. I'm feeling a bit bad about this Wikipedia thing. I'll tell you what, if you are a Wikipedia mischief maker, not only are you very naughty, and we don't approve of that, but I hope at least once a year you make

a donation to the Wiki Foundation to support them. Because Wikipedia is pretty important. It's one of the few things that when I get pestered about donations on the internet, I will sometimes say, you know what? I like Wikipedia. I'm going to chuck them a few bucks. That is the same in our household. Because yes, it is. Ooh, Wikipedia.

It's super fun to mess with. And it is also maybe one of the most important things for civilization that has emerged in the past 20 years. It's on both sides of those scales. Support your local Wikipedia, people. Was that an NPR joke? I don't know what that was. I feel like I've heard that phrase, but I wasn't intentionally making an NPR joke. Because like, this is something that's been on my mind lately, and you've just brought it up by accident. But I don't listen to NPR radio because I live in England. Right. But I do listen to lots of NPR podcasts.

And NPR podcasts are obviously supported through like the NPR pot of money. And I think they've gotten themselves into this weird antiquated situation now where there's obviously some turf war going on. And there's a lot of politics involved. Because whenever you're listening to the podcasts, they always say, if you want to support the podcast and give money so we can keep making this excellent podcast, go to your local radio station and give them money because some of that money will find its way here and that's what keeps the podcast going.

And I understand the situation that has come about and why this has happened. But I think at some stage NPR are going to have to say do you know what like our podcasts are really popular now and people want to give them money but they don't want to do this like indirect weird thing where they have to go to their radio station and prop up the radio station so they can keep getting their podcasts yeah so I think NPR needs to soon revisit this situation where their podcasts are saying, hey, go to your local radio station and give them money. I understand the

politics. I can see what's happened. There's old media versus new media thing going on within the one organization. But it's very strange to me. And it's starting to sound strange. That makes no sense to me. So you're listening to an NPR podcast. Yeah. So I'm listening to it. And they say, if you like this and you want to give us money, here's what you do. Go to your local NPR radio station and give them money. Okay. So I am Joe Johnson listening in Boise, Idaho. And I like a podcast- From Washington about Washington politics or something. Yeah. Right. It's not about Boise. It's some NPR podcast broadcast to everybody.

And in theory, the thing that I'm supposed to do is find Boise radio BQRX 103.2 and hand them an envelope full of cash. Like, that seems so crazy. I don't even understand how that mechanism is supposed to work. That is so weird. It's a bit like us saying, if you like Hello Internet and want to support Brady and Gray, give money to my best friend's cousin's sister's brother, because I owe him money for something I borrowed from him six months ago. And that will really help me out. People go, no, I don't want to do that. Yeah, I would never do that. They need to set up crowdfunding for the podcasts.

That seems like what they should do. And clearly, I mean, I can see what's happened. Obviously, this is the huge radio infrastructure, which is probably crumbling in some way because of everyone's listening to podcasts instead of radio. And the radio people are like worried that they're going to cease to exist. They should totally be worried because they are on the way out. And you don't need to explain to me that the journalism

of the radio stations feeds into the podcast. I understand all that. There's a New York Times podcast I listen to sometimes, and they always say, hey, people always ask how to give money. The best thing you can do is get a subscription to the New York Times, because that's the journalistic engine that keeps this podcast going. And again, that's true, but it's that extra layer of abstraction that I think makes you resistant. The New York Times one is at least to me a much straighter arrow.

Yes. This is the parent organization, the New York Times, give us some money to support the podcast. It's very interesting from a big organization perspective of like, if you want people to give you money, how to do it. I feel like in that situation, let's say there was a podcast from the New York Times that I was listening to and that I liked and I how to do it. I feel like in that situation, let's say there was a podcast from the New York Times that I was listening to and that I liked and I wanted to support it. Like I would feel a little bit of a weirdness giving to the New York Times as a whole

because I feel like, but I want to give it to this exact podcast. But you can see that the New York Times organization wants the money to go to the parent organization, not to the podcast in particular. And of course, like money is fungible for an organization like that. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. But I'm thinking like if NPR was doing crowdfunding, I think the institution's instinct would be to do the thing that would probably get them less money overall, which is to have one gigantic contribute to NPR fund, as opposed to setting up a whole

bunch of contribute to this particular podcast funds. Even if they had some little disclaimer like, oh, you're contributing to Podcast X and 50% of the revenue that goes to Podcast X goes to the parent organization as well. Like I'd be willing to bet they would make more revenue overall by asking for donations to particular podcasts than to the parent organization. But I'd also bet they would never actually set it up that way. No, probably not. Speaking of big organizations, let me tell you a funny thing that happened to me yesterday. I went to my local gym. I just wanted to sit in the jacuzzi actually. So I went along and I sat in the jacuzzi

because that's just what I wanted. All right. That's what I wanted. And where my sort of gym is, is sort of connected to this posh hotel and guests of the posh hotel use the same facility. And this hotel always hosts like away days and weddings and stuff like that. Right. So I was sitting in the jacuzzi for probably half an hour. And there was obviously this big away day happening at the hotel. They were all men. All these men who were at this away day for this business came and sat in the jacuzzi around me. So there was like probably eight of us and seven of them worked for this business. And they were talking about their work. And then a few of them got out and then a couple more came and then a few of others got out and a

couple more came. And over the course of half half an hour probably 16 or 17 people that worked for this business sat in the jacuzzi with me and they spent the whole time talking about their work non-stop the politics of how bill's lazy and isn't pulling his weight and this email and that email and this report i had to fill out and this thing I had to do. They never stopped talking about their work the whole time, the whole half hour I was in the jacuzzi. And it was only at the very, very end, it suddenly occurred to me, after listening to these people talk nonstop about their work for half an hour, I had no idea what they did or what their business was. Not one single thing gave away what their business was. And it made me realise how universal people complaining

about their work is. Like I even said to them at the end, guys, I've been listening to you guys for the last half an hour. I have no idea what you do. Like what's your business? Like and they all laughed and like they realised. Like at certain points I was like I thought I'd figured it out and I was transposing different businesses onto what they did oh they could they could have been a bunch

of journalists seriously they could have been they could have been accountants at one point i thought they were like estate agents and things like that i couldn't figure out what they were doing listening to them talk for half an hour part of it made me miss working because they had such camaraderie and you know but another part of me made me realize, wow, working in an organization is pretty crappy. Yeah. You're always getting sucked up in the politics. As soon as you get past maybe five people working together, it's like politics starts to happen. It's just a natural side effect of the way humans are. So what was the business? I have to know now. Even when they told me, I still didn't know what they did because apparently they worked in operations for a retail organization.

Oh, God. Okay, yeah. So I don't know exactly what that means. Does that mean they're like head office for a shop? I don't know. This scenario, when I'm talking to somebody and I get an answer about their job. That's what you should say your job is when you don't want people to ask questions. Because as soon as they said operations for a retail organization, I just shut up.

Yeah, you know what? That's not a bad idea. I work in digital operations. I mean, the thing I wanted to say when they said that was what retail organization, but I was a stranger and I just basically had told these people I've been listening to you gossip. I would have looked like some kind of industrial spy or like investigative journalist if I said, what organization? Give me names. You bring out a little waterproof notepad to write things down and you go, hmm, yeah, that's interesting. I think what's happening here is there is like a larger

and larger portion of the economy which is not directly involved in doing the thing but is instead involved in managing doing the thing yeah and i feel like this is why it is an incredibly common experience to run into people and it's like everybody seems to be like so what do you do exactly like i don't understand so you're not making a thing you're overseeing people who make a thing or you're overseeing departments of people who make a thing it just feels like the economy leans more towards layers of management and i'm not even saying that those layers are unnecessary like i think as the economy gets more complicated it shouldn't be surprised that more and more people are involved in what you could broadly call like management or logistics like that becomes more and more vital as a thing to do.

But I do have this, let's call it like not really great pro-social tendency that in these moments when somebody gives me an answer like that, I have a very hard time not like drilling down with the person precisely what it is that they do. It almost always ends up in this thing where it's like, oh, if I'm meeting with someone on a friday the conversation will bend towards be like okay look i still don't understand this morning when you went when you went into work it's like 9 a.m what was the thing that you did and it's like this line of questioning makes people really uncomfortable um yeah it would have made them more uncomfortable because our bare legs were touching underwater i could see yeah that that definitely encourages a little bit of social awkwardness.

I love the fact that you're chatting with a bunch of other guys in the jacuzzi after spying on them for a while. It's like, oh. I wanted to go out with them. They were planning their night out. It sounds like they were going to have a big night out. They were talking about what pub they were going to go to and go out drinking.

And I was like, oh, yeah. That's fantastic. And then these guys are wondering, who the hell is this hanger on? No, from the way they were talking, they'd probably just think I was one of them. Like, I don't think anyone knew who anyone was. Like, who is that guy? I don't know. He must be in. I thought you knew who he was. I don't know. He seems to fit in. You could have totally blended right in. This is like an American psycho situation

where none of these guys really know who the other guys are anyway. So what does it matter? This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Audible. Audible is a leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet. You can get a free audio book with a 30 day trial at audible.com slash Hello Internet. That's where you should go right now. Audible.com slash Helloet to get a free audiobook with your 30-day trial. Now Audible, as always, likes for us to recommend a book. So I recently read a book that I can highly recommend and it's Tribe by Sebastian Junger. He's the same guy who wrote

A Perfect Storm, if you ever read that. It's a little bit of a difficult book to describe, but I can briefly say that it is a little bit about people in war, particularly men in war, and how that affects them. It talks about some of the difficult things, like why is it that some soldiers really find solace in being in a group in war, and why they can have difficulty reintegrating into society afterwards. That makes the book sound like it's a huge downer, but I actually found it a fascinating non-downer read. And it's also very short, which is a thing that I really appreciate in books sometimes. So if you're looking for a book to try, maybe something that's a little bit different than what you would normally do, give Tribe a try on audible.com.

So if you want to listen to it, Audible has it. With an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, which is something that they have started now, news, comedy, and more, you'll always find what you're looking for. Once again, get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hellointernet. That's A-U-D-I-B-L-E dot com slash hellointernet. I remember when Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the UK, well, she's Prime Minister as I'm speaking now. I don't know what the situation will be when this podcast goes out. The Prime Minister who called the snap election to consolidate her power, as we discussed, and I couldn't resist on election night when it all went wrong for her and she lost her majority

and it must have been one of the less enjoyable evenings of her professional career. I couldn't resist going back to your tweet from when the election was first called where you just had the Jurassic Park meme of clever girl. And I remember you talking about it on the podcast too. You talked about what a genius move it was. People had to vote for her.

She cornered them in such a clever way that they had no choice but to vote for her and increase her power. For those who don't know, that's not how it played out. And she went from having a small majority in the House of Commons to having no majority in the House of Commons. How are you feeling now? Are you feeling sheepish? So I didn't follow the election at all between that tweet and then when somebody sent me a message about like, oh, there's a coalition government in the UK now. Like, as far as on my radar, like the whole election disappeared and then just reappeared several weeks later. Yeah. It's interesting.

And from my perspective, I have no idea what happened in the intermediate time. What's happened is she's obviously in the minority. She hasn't got enough votes to get anything through. Okay. But what she's doing is rather than forming a coalition, which is what happened a couple of elections ago between the conservatives and the liberal Democrats. Right. What she's trying to do, as we're speaking now, which is what happened a couple of elections ago between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. What she's trying to do, as we're speaking now,

it hasn't actually been signed and it's causing controversy for some other reasons that I won't bore you with, but what she's trying to do is broker a deal with a political party, the DUP from Northern Ireland, who have some handful of seats in the Commons but they've got just enough seats to give her a majority. So what she's doing is she's trying to broker a deal with them where they're not in coalition and they don't have to support her laws and all her votes and everything she does, but they do agree to support her on two important things, confidence and supply. So if there's no confidence vote, they agree to support the government so the

government can stay in government and if there's something that's going to block up the money and the budget supply they also will support the government on that so it's not a coalition they don't have like you know oh they're not part of the government it's just an agreement to support them on those two crucial things and everything else is going to be just chaos. And what they're going to get for that deal is yet to be finalised. Like, you know, are we suddenly going to get lots of shiny, new, gorgeous infrastructure in certain parts of Northern Ireland as a result of this? I imagine that might happen, yes.

But, of course, the problem is Northern Ireland is deeply, deeply divided between its own parties like the DUP and Sinn Féin. We're obviously not going to go into that. But obviouslyUP and Sinn Féin. And we're obviously not going to go into that. But obviously, like Sinn Féin and these other parties in Northern Ireland are like, hang on a second, you're the UK government, you're supposed to, in some ways, kind of keep out of the Northern Ireland mess. You know, there's agreements here that have been made. And now you're like buddying up with just one of the parties to get their votes. So more messes to come. As we speak now, this agreement

hasn't been signed. That's very interesting. I thought she had formed an official coalition. This is a much more interesting situation. The UK government sort of kind of taking a side in the Northern Irish politics. Like, boy, that sounds like a whole bunch of not fun. I like this idea that there's a coalition that is like an unofficial official coalition is what's happening here, which is amazing because it sounds like maximum instability now. It's like coalitions. People always worry about them being unstable and now to not even have a coalition is unstabler. That's fantastic. I don't know what the betting markets are saying at the moment, but a lot of people are saying that there'll probably be another election this year.

Oh, really? Interesting. I think not. Why do you think not? Because, I mean, one of the reasons this election went so pear-shaped, I think, for Theresa May was like election fatigue. And I think people are sick of having elections all the time and they thought she was having another one to be a bit greedy and people wanted to give her a bit of a bloody nose for that. Well, they did for whatever reason. So I think if there's another election this year,

it will be one that's kind of forced upon them. Certainly, I don't think the Conservative Party would risk holding it, but I don't know. What do I know? I don't know much. Your bet is that if there is another election, it would just be simply because the government just falls apart. It essentially dissolves and we have another election.

Interesting. It just falls to pieces. It's interesting because, again, I didn't follow any of the things going on, but the reason I thought it was such a clever move is because I did have this feeling like, boy, you're really boxed into having to support Theresa May because, like my feeling is the result we have now is kind of like the worst of everything. Because if Brexit is going to happen, even though I am not in favor of Brexit, I would still want the UK government to be in the strongest negotiating position

for Brexit to occur. Otherwise, it feels like cutting your nose to spite your face. And so that's why I thought like, oh, man, this election is locked down because everyone else is going to make this kind of like same game theory calculation like, well, we don't want Brexit to happen. But if it's going to happen, like we might as well make our position super strong. And now it feels like, oh, God, here we go. Like the UK is wandering into Brexit with a real bloody nose before the negotiations have even really begun. I feel like this is not a good situation. I'll tell you one thing that's interesting, though. I mean, I know you and I are not,

you know, we don't talk a lot of politics and stuff, and especially you aren't particularly interested. But this does mean that if Brexit goes ahead, which it seems like it still will, you being so wrong about the general election does mean you're probably more likely to be right now about your Brexit prediction. And that is everyone seems to agree now that soft Brexit is much more likely than hard Brexit. We seem to be drifting towards a hard Brexit before this election.

And now soft Brexit seems like the more likely scenario. Yeah, I don't know. I still feel like with all of this stuff, there's some weird part of me which still thinks like, this will just never be resolved, right? That this will just go on forever and ever, even though I know that it can't like Article 50 has been triggered. Yeah. There's some part of me which just can't let go of the idea of like, man, people can stall forever sometimes. And are we just going to be left in a limbo that just never ends? That's a Remainer fantasy then.

That Remainer fantasy suddenly became a little bit more possible. I think it's still a fantasy, but I obviously was hoping we would stay in the EU as well. So the idea of it falling apart delights me, but I don't know if it'll happen or not. But yeah, I think it won't. I don't think it will fall apart. Something happens or endless negotiation happens, but those are different from it won surprising. It is interesting. And I don't like the position

that the UK is in now because I feel like it's a worse negotiating position. But maybe if it ends up being a softer Brexit in the long run, that's better. I don't know. Who knows? Only in the future will we know. Current us recording this now has no idea. So there was another piece of news I wanted to bring up with you. This is one of the times where the fact that our podcasts are so far apart comes in handy or works against us. I don't know which. It's summertime, Brady.

You can't have a lot of podcasts in the summer. Everybody knows that. Well, you certainly can't. There was big news that I couldn't wait to tell you. It's not bee related. We haven't actually had the buzz this week. Is there going to be a buzz this week? There's no buzz this week, Brady.

Okay. There has been a lot of bee news. In fact, did you not see the story about the vice president of the United States has put a beehive at his house? This sounds vaguely familiar. It was like presidential buzz news. In the summertime, Twitter is also very hard to do. So I haven't been keeping up with the Twitter as much because it's warm outside. The second lady has installed a beehive at the vice presidential residence. It's to raise awareness of the dwindling honeybee population.

Well, now that we've gotten some honeybees in the vice presidency, there's only one place to go. Presidential honeybees in the future. Imagine that, like a big White House of bees. Yeah. That'd be awesome. White House or bust for bees. So after that accidental piece of buzz, let me tell you more importantly,

what I thought was going to be Mount Everest news that I couldn't wait to discuss with you, but I think it's been snatched away from me. Because there was this story during the rounds a few weeks ago that this really famous feature on Mount Everest called the Hillary Step, which is a sort of rocky outcrop and it's the last bit of technical climbing you have to do before you get to like the summit of Everest, had like collapsed, had fallen apart. Apparently it was shaken apart by the earthquake that happened

a couple of years ago and because no one had gone and navigated it since because of problems on Everest, all the climbers were going back for the first time. And they were like, it's not there anymore. There's just all this snow and the rocks falling apart. And my impression was it had become actually easier now to get up past it and go on up to the summit. And there were like these before and after pictures doing the rounds. And it looked to me like it wasn't there anymore. And I was really excited.

And so just before the show, I was like getting everything ready to tell you about it. And now there seems to be this second story where climbers are saying, no, no, no, no, no, we think it's still there. There's just been a lot of snow and you can't see it properly. And it's covered in snow at the moment. But the Hillary step is still there. So the jury is out as to whether or not this famous feature, this beloved feature on Mount Everest may not even be there anymore.

It's not often you get geological news, is it? That works on a pretty slow timescale. So the idea that we have like a new piece of geology to tell everyone about, like was quite exciting to me. But now I don't know. Yeah. So we have to wait a bit longer. Issues of the buzz might come out on a monthly basis.

But I feel like the Geology Now magazine maybe comes out once a year. Geological news happens on a geological timescale. Yeah, but like of all the things that could change, like all the geological features in the world that could change, like there's only one geological feature like higher than the Hillary Step, and that is like the summer of Mount Everest. So short of the summer of Mount Everest disappearing, which I don't think is technically possible,

the Hillary step disappearing is like big news. It's the second highest named thing in the world, I think. So anyway, there you go. There's Mount Everest non-news or maybe news. Let's wait till the snow thaws. But I have been hearing you, Tims. For those 400,000 Tims that alerted me to this news, I did receive your emails and tweets.

Thank you. So you went to WWDC. And I know you've discussed this on detail in the other place. But I do want to find out what it was like. Was it good? By the way, the other place is like a politics joke. If people don't know how parliaments work, you don't name the other chamber and stuff. My learned friend in another place is what you sometimes stay instead of the House of Lords and stuff.

Really? Is that like a question time thing? I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Yeah, it's like a parliament thing. Anyway, was it good? Did you have a good time? I always feel kind of funny going to a conference like WWDC because I don't really have any reason to be there. I'm not a developer. I don't have a software business that has any reason to be in WWDC. This is for me just totally an extension of really my professional interest in Apple as a user of their products. And particularly interesting to go after what feels like has been a long time where there haven't been any updates

in their products. So I went. I really enjoyed it. I feel like they had a whole bunch of exciting announcements, which it's kind of nice to be there in person for that and to be around people when that's happening. Well, it's nice to be in person because when you're watching the announcements, you can see other people's reactions to things.

And you know what other people care about and what you care about. And this was a really good show because everybody got something that they liked. And then the other reason I do like to be there in person is when Apple announces that they have new products, like this year they have new iPads, they give out review units to some of the people who are there. And there are circumstances under which maybe a person like me can get their hands on the brand new thing to get a first look at it for brief periods of time. And that's the kind of thing that you could only do if you are physically at where the conference is happening. It's just plain exciting. Like it's super fun and super interesting to see the brand new thing that was announced the day before, which hasn't gone on sale yet. So I really quite like that.

Who would have thought that you of all people would like get a thrill from that? Because, you know, you're going to get it in a few weeks and you buy everything new anyway. So you are going to get it in a few weeks and you buy everything new anyway, so you are going to have one. Who would have thought that that kind of cheap thrill would penetrate your rational exterior? Don't get me wrong. It would work on me because I like cheap thrills. But who would have thought that you would be so susceptible to the cheap thrill of, oh, I'm getting to touch this a few weeks before everyone else. Is that a cheap thrill though? I mean, the joke is always like Apple has this reality distortion bubble that they announce things and it seems like it's amazing in their presentations.

But there's a really big difference between seeing and handling something in person versus just seeing it presented on a stage. Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. Oh yeah, no, I understand the difference between saying a picture of it and actually getting to use it. I just could have imagined a scenario in which you said, well, it's going to be in the shop in six weeks anyway, and I'm going to buy it. So the fact that I've touched it for 15 minutes, six weeks before is really irrelevant. I'm going to come to grips with it soon anyway. And I will know in six weeks whether it's good or it's bad. And it's basically just that kind of, not that you would boast about it, but that kind of boastiness

of I got to touch it before everyone else, I would have thought would have little impact on you. I feel like you don't understand at all the joy that I'm getting out of this, right? It's not that I get to touch it before other people do. It's I want to pass it through my own evaluation filter as soon as possible. So it's impatient. You're want to pass it through my own evaluation filter as soon as possible. So it's impatient. You're impatient to see it. No, you always use such funny words. It's like, I want to know if the thing is as good as they're saying it is.

But you are going to find that out. Like, you're going to find that out whether you're at WWDC or not. Like, you're going to find out when it's in the shop if it's as good as they say it is. Yeah, I just like to find out sooner. It's fun to find out sooner. Hence my word impatient, which I think was the ideal word for that to describe that. I want to find out sooner. I guess, but somehow Brady, when you use the words, I feel like I have the shape of some like Brady thought in my mind, which you seem to be expressing, which doesn't match up with my own internal experience here. Because if I was in London still, I don't think

I'd be feeling like, oh man, I can't wait to see the thing. Like I got to get my hands on it. I would just be waiting until it was available. But if I can go to WWDC and I can see the things ahead of time, I would prefer to do that. And so it's like impatient seems like such a funny word to use, but maybe you're right. Maybe it is the best word in this circumstance. I mean, WWDC, like, isn't that like fueled by impatience? Like people's enthusiasm to see the stuff as soon as humanly possible? Like, that's why everyone's there. I know there are other reasons like collaboration and, you know.

No, no, no, no. The primary thing with WWDC is Apple's announcing all of their new software changes so that all of the developers who are there can get their apps ready for when the software is officially released. Like there has to be a big period of time between which Apple reveals, here's all the new things we've been working on here, all the changes that we've made. You need to adapt all of your programs to work with this new paradigm. Like there has to be at least a several month gap before. Yeah, before then Apple says, here, we're now putting all of these changes on everybody's iPhone. Impatience isn't the correct word to describe that. It's just like we need a buffer period where people can adapt their stuff to the new way things are going to work.

And that is why essentially everybody is at WWDC. They want to find out what's happening. And more importantly, software developers can actually get in touch with people at Apple and ask them questions about how to change their software. That's why I always feel like really out of place. You're the one guy there that wants to just touch an iPad before everyone else. Yeah, exactly. Everybody else is there for like serious business work. And I'm there going, tee hee hee, let me look at the thing. So that's why it feels a bit funny to go. But it just so happens to have worked out in the past two years that WWDC combined with other things and family stuff, it's worked out that I can roll it up into one gigantic ball of traveling for the summer. It happens to have worked out

this way, but it's not the kind of thing like I wouldn't fly over only for WWDC most likely. I need to like wrap it up in a whole bunch of other stuff to do. Because again, I have no real reason to be there. Except in patience. Are they releasing anything that I should be excited about? I would say the thing that you should be excited about is new iMac Pros. Yeah, I did hear there is one and it excites me. I went to the Apple store today, but obviously it wasn't there because I wanted to find out what it was all about. It's not coming out until much later in the year.

It's coming out in December, supposedly. But yes, this is for you and I, for the work that we do, probably the machines that we should get. And it's also very nice because they're making it in black, which is nice, instead of the silver, as a way to distinguish like this is their professional thing. But yeah, it's coming out in a few months. And I don't know about you,

but my iMac certainly could use a bit of horsepower update when it comes to exporting videos and editing podcasts and all the rest of that. Definitely. Please tell me it's going to have like some ports in it, please. They're not going to like just have like one hole in it for Apple stuff only. Like, is it going to have like, am I going to be able to plug stuff into it? It's funny you mentioned that because I'm recording right now on my MacBook Pro, which I brought with me for this trip. And the lack of ports is just killing me.

Setting it up today, it's like I have four USB-C ports, but of course the microphone that I'm using isn't USB-C, it's USB-A. So I need to have an adapter. And it's like all of the hard drives I have also need adapters and i'm sitting here over the past few weeks realizing like i don't have enough adapters to work with this thing and even when i went out and bought like a big bag full of adapters there's

still only four ports and it's like i need to plug in more than four things when i'm doing professional work on the road and the lack of s SD card slot is just killing me on this trip. I just had this today. I went to the Mac store today and I was looking at the MacBook Pro and I was just like, I was looking for an SD slot in it. Just then the lady from the shop came up to me and said, can I help you? And I basically just turned to her and said, you guys are having a laugh and walked off. I was so disenchanted. I got to say, of all of the things that they've done, okay, switching to USB-C ports, I can get on board a train that's driving to the future. Fine, right? Reducing the number of ports, I guess I can live with it. But cutting out the SD card slot so that you can

pull footage off your camera fast, like, isn't that the definition of pro? Like, how is this not in the laptop? It has killed me so many times on this trip. It is such a pain in the butt to not have that. I do know that the new Mac Pro does have USB-C slots and has USB-A slots and has Thunderbolt slots. I don't know if it has an SD card slot or not. But it seems like they've reversed a little bit on their decision of, we will just go with two beautiful USB-C ports, because how could you possibly ever need more? So it does look like their black iMac Pro will actually have a bunch of slots. But it kills me on this laptop. Like I swear to God, if Apple released the exact same laptop, and they only changed one thing, they added an SD card, like I would buy it because it's

so important. You reminded me with this SD stuff, because obviously you're taking photos on your trip. What percentage of the photos that you take have you in them? Have you taken any photos with you in them? Okay. I'm going to estimate 5% of the photos I take have me in them. Oh, that's more than I would have guessed. That might be a real overestimate. But here's the thing, Brady. The only reason that I take photographs with me in them is because I know that my parents and my wife

vastly prefer photographs that have me in them versus just photographs of things, which I could totally understand. But if for some reason, my family did not want photographs of what I'm up to, I think I would have essentially zero photographs with myself in them. I go a little bit back and forward on this, because don't get me wrong, like I love taking like a nice photo for the sake of just a photo. part of me does think like if you're not taking any pictures with you in them what's the point of taking a photo at all i guess like why not just like buy a postcard by a photographer who would have taken a much better photo from the same spot i don't agree with that

i think there's something about taking a photograph of a spot that you have taken like obviously of course any any notable landmark of any kind if you go to there will exist better photographs of that thing but i i think there's something kind of nice about taking a photograph yourself of a place even if it's not a as good of a photograph as it could possibly be i also think though if you go somewhere significant you should like take a photo of yourself there like it's kind of like your flag on the moon it's just like yeah i i was here you know i was there when you look back at it like if you go somewhere really amazing and don't and have no photograph of yourself there i think you could

regret it later i'm mentally running over my last 10 years of taking photographs and i feel like i don't really regret not having photographs of me in any particular places i feel like i'm totally fine with a photograph of the thing but it is mostly that other people are much less fine with solely photographs of things. They want photographs of people, which is completely understandable. In further fun election news, we have another election that took place recently. And this was the Puerto Rican referendum on whether or not Puerto Rico should become a state of the United States. Right. Puerto Rico has existed for a very long time in this in-between land as a territory. And the U.S. has this very strange system of territories, which was obviously designed for the 1800s when America was adding a whole bunch of states and was not intended to be

a thing that would just go on forever. But Puerto Rico has ended up being a territory for a very, very long time. And there has been a debate for ages about whether or not Puerto Rico should become a state of the United States, if it should become an independent country of its own, or if it should enter into what is called free association with the United States, which is, I guess you could describe it

as independence light, where it is functionally an independent country, but a bit under the aegis of the United States. These are the options that have been opened to Puerto Rico and they just recently had a referendum on it. And Puerto Rico has voted for full statehood as the option that they wish to pursue. All right. There are a few things coming to mind and a few things to talk about that you're going to want to talk about. But just to start me off here, you're talking as if this is entirely their decision, which I find hard to believe.

Like there's a whole other party here, isn't there? Which is the other 50 states. It's not just their decision, is it? It's not like you and I could decide we want to form a state of the United States and vote on it and then tell them, all right, we're in. This is the beginning of, even under the best of circumstances, what would be a very long dance between Puerto Rico and the United States. I don't know offhand what the exact procedure is, but yeah, it is not the case that if Puerto Rico decides that it wants to be a state, that it is just immediately accepted into the union given its status as a territory. Right. So given that, is it a known thing? I assume polling's been done, but I don't know whether this is a common knowledge or not. Is it a well-known thing how the greater body of the United States feels about this? Do most people think, yeah, let him in? Or do most people think, no way, we don't want him? Like, what's the general temperature

of the United States in relation to this? I have never seen any polling data on it. I would be curious, but I would bet that if you asked Americans about Puerto Rico, you would only get one of two answers. And it would be people who think it is a separate country and people who think it is already a state in the United States. No. I would wager an enormous amount of money on that, that most people would not be able to answer that Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, right? Most continental citizens. Yeah. I agree with part one of what you said. I just cannot believe part two. I cannot believe

you could find people who think Puerto Rico is one of the 50 states. You always have such a high opinion of people, Brady. I find it really charming. It's like, I know too many things about how people in New Mexico have a hard time getting deliveries to New Mexico in the United States. Like I've run across too much of this stuff where people just don't understand what the states are. I'm not even confident that more than 75% of adult Americans would know that there are 50 states exactly. I've run into people who are like, oh, it's 52 states, isn't it? For some reason, like this seems to be a number that lodges in people's heads. I can see where that confusion comes from, but yeah, okay. So that's why I would be very willing to bet that most Americans think it is already a state or

think it is a separate country and just don't really have any opinion on this matter at all. But what I think is a really, really interesting snag in this, because as we said, this is going to start a dance between Puerto Rico and the United States. But I think there's interesting parallels with this to Brexit because just like the Brexit turnout was lower than expected, the voter turnout in the Puerto Rican referendum was hilariously low. 23% of the population turned out to vote in this referendum. That seems to me just like a real snag, perhaps, in this because, again, it's like a non-binding referendum. But I feel like it is really hard to call that a clear victory that Puerto Ricans want to become an official state in the United States when only 23% of people

turned out to vote in the actual referendum. I mean, I'm no expert on this. I've only read one article about the story at all. But in that article, I did read two important pieces of information that feed into that, though. One is they have voted on this before. Yes. Yep. It's not the first time. Yeah. And the second thing is this particular election was unique because there was this like call for a boycott. Like there was a political reason for that low turnout.

It wasn't that people don't care and things that was like the low turnout was in itself part of the politics of it. That's exactly right. That I didn't follow the exact details of it, but the two other major parties and options boycotted the referendum, which when you look at the voter turnout makes it even more hilarious because 23% of the people showed up to vote. But of those 23% who showed up to vote, 97% of them voted for statehood. It's like, okay, this is not any kind of normal election result whatsoever. So I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up going nowhere. I just don't know.

I don't know what are the interests of all of the parties that are involved in this. I don't know if the United States wants to add an additional state. Is that advantageous over the situation with Puerto Rico now? I'm not sure that it is. I just don't know. It's just yet another in the past year of elections of like, an election about a very important thing. And the election itself, the results are unexpected and strange. So if you were made like boss of the universe tomorrow, and the people of the United States and the people of Puerto Rico said, Gray, we don't know what to do. Can you just decide for us? If you had to decide tomorrow

and no one would complain about your decision, they just said, Gray, just decide it for us, man. What would you do? There's many complications here. What I was going to say is, I guess if I could snap my fingers, I would make Puerto Rico an independent nation. Because in general, I prefer for political power to be in smaller, more local groups than in larger blocks. And this would like accrete more power to the level of the federal government and away from Puerto Rico over time, which is what happens in the United States. But I guess the problem there is there's an enormous number of Puerto Ricans who live and work in the United States. It's a

perennial problem for Puerto Rico that there's a bit of a brain drain of many of its talented citizens saying, well, as a Puerto Rican, I can live and work in the United States. And so I'm moving to New York or I'm moving to San Francisco and I'm not going to stay down here on this island. So I don't think those people would be super happy. So I guess, I don't know, I guess maybe the optimal solution is really for Puerto Rico to just stay as a territory essentially forever. Because I think one of the only major downsides of that is like an inability to vote for president. And I think there are a few tax implications. But maybe for Puerto Ricans, the best thing to do would be to stay as a territory forever, to be slightly arm's length

from the federal government while still having all of the advantages of American citizenship. I don't know. Just thinking it out loud, maybe that's what the result really should be. Soft Brexit. Soft territoriality. I would say, though, that if I was in charge of everything tomorrow, I would declare this referendum just totally invalid. I'd be like, no, do it again. If you get 23% of the people to show up, like, I'm sorry, we're not making any decisions based on that. Like, this is no indication of what people actually think. You've got to try again with your referendum, Puerto Rico. I mean, of course, this being

Hello Internet, matters of sort of governance and voting and immigration pale into insignificance when compared to the discussion that must be had about what to do with the American flag if Puerto Rico becomes a state. I know, I know. This is the most exciting part. This is the most exciting part by far. It's been so long since we added a star to the US flag.

And what makes this even better is 51 is such a terrible number. There's no good way to arrange 51 stars. So this to me would be the most exciting thing about Puerto Rico joining the United States is we would have to have some kind of decision made about what our options would be for 51 star flag. And there's some institution which has mapped out possible designs for like the next 10 stars to be added, which I think is a little bit optimistic about how many states you're going to add. But this is the thing that people like to think about and i'll send you a link to what are some of the top options for 51 star flag designs okay 51 let's have a look here maybe no no maybe maybe maybe no no okay so be careful the link that i've you, the first three are 51 star designs.

And the rest of them are- Then it's 52. Then it's 52 and 53. Okay, so you're right. Of the three 52ers, I'm saying yes, no, no. So only the first one there is acceptable. So basically one of them kind of at first glance looks like the current flag, but a little bit disjointed kind of a little

bit kindle not justified but acceptable yeah if you just add one more star and try to keep the rose in the way that it looks right now i feel like this is just a nightmare of a flag it just looks wrong the rows are unsymmetrical from top to bottom yeah this is totally unacceptable as a flag. But then if you're not going to do that, you have to try to find a way to aesthetically pleasingly rearrange the stars. Well, you've got one that's kind of like some kind of like, it kind of looks like a optical illusion cube or some kind of weird... It's like if you took a hexagon, but you made the top, you stretched out the top and bottom. So it's a longagon hexagon is what it is. It looks like a regular hexagon that someone has sat on and squashed. Oh yeah, that's good. That's also good. Yep. That's correct. Yeah.

And that again, no, because that leaves all this excess blue in the bit in the corner. Yeah. That's totally not good. I've tried to arrange them in kind of, are they concentric circles? I don't know, but it just creates weird shapes. And apparently this is the one proposed by the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. I think the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico is not listening to enough Hello Internet and not getting the right to get them with flags.

There is a way to arrange 51 stars into roughly a sphere by putting one star in the center and then you have to be very careful about how you put all the other stars around it well it's not a sphere a sphere is three-dimensional but that would be an awesome flag i think the reason why i said a sphere is because when i look at this thing full screen like a full screen image of the 51 star circular flag, there is almost like an optical illusion. Yeah, it's like an optical illusion that it almost feels like the first star is closer. It ends up reminding me very much of the giant ball at Epcot in Disney. That's what it looks like. It looks like they are different distances apart,

because in order to try to make it a filled in circle, you have to change the distribution of distances between the stars. So what I think is so fascinating about the idea of Puerto Rico joining is the US flag, we've said before, it's not my favorite flag. But all of the options for what on earth can you do with 51 stars? I think they're all terrible options. They're not great. If I had to go with one, I would actually go with the sphere of stars. Oh, no, Gray. No, no. But here's the thing. Here's the real problem with that one. At smaller and smaller sizes, it looks worse and worse. And at larger and larger sizes, you have this optical illusion effect.

But something about my desire for order cannot abide by the uneven rows of the 51 stars. I can't look at that. So I have to mark that one out. And then the only option is between the squashed hexagon and the circle. And neither of them are great. But if I have to pick one, I'm going to pick the circle over the squashed hexagon. Because at least- The circle's terrible. I'm not saying the circle's good, but at least the circle evokes the Betsy Ross flag.

So I feel like I can go along with that. Right. You can, I can go along with that. Right. I can go along with that. No, you're wrong. Okay. What do you go with then, Brady? It also, the circle has like these lines forming in it. Like your mind creates these weird lines, like a sort of a weird person doing a star jump or something. I totally see what you're saying. Yeah. And that looks worse and worse at smaller sizes.

I would go with the first one. The first one with your Kindle justification I could live with because you say it looks disordered. But to me there is order to it, there is method to it, but I could live with that because it's most like the current flag. I'll tell you one thing though. I think a lot of people in the US would be reasonably indifferent to the idea of Puerto Rico becoming a state until you told them it would involve changing the flag. I think the fact that it will involve

changing the flag is the biggest barrier to the people of the US letting Puerto Rico in. You know what? It hadn't crossed my mind, but I think you're totally right. You could run an anti-Puerto Rico campaign that simply took the squash hexagon flag and said, this is what America will look like if Puerto Rico joins, right? And it's like, boom, 97% disapproval of Puerto Rico joining America. Like, I think that would just be over. It's the stars and stripes version of flaggy flag. Now, if I had to pick, I would go with that circle one. If you had to pick, you would go with the uneven ones.

I do think there is one option, which I would highly approve of, if you're going to 51, is to say, look, the hell with this, the hell with all these stars. Let's just go back to the Betsy Ross flag with the 13 stars. I think that would be a much better decision to say, we're going to stop this uneven star business. This was fine in the 1800s when we were drawing graphs of how many states we keep adding every year.

And isn't this a fun thing to do? But we're well beyond that now. It's been, what, 60 or 70 years since the last state joined the union? I don't even know. It's been forever. If you had to choose, I would be a big proponent of

go back to the Betsy Ross flag with just the 13 stars and we'll leave it like that and we won't ever have to mess with this again. I think that's option one. Option two is the 52-star flag looks pretty good. And I think at a glance, you could totally not even notice that it's different from the current US flag. And so I think option two is Puerto Rico can join, but we need to find somebody

else as well, right? We need an additional state to join the union so that we can make it 52 stars. Those are my courses of action. You mean the first 52 star version on this page I'm looking at? Yeah, there's the first 52 star version. It's still a little uneven, but there's something about its unevenness, which is less bothersome than the 51 star version. Okay. Right. The 51 star version is just terrible. I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. So here's my thoughts on that. First up, like I agree,

the 52 uneven looks better than the 51 uneven. I agree it is a bit more pleasing on the eye, unquestionably. But obviously you're being a bit of a silly Billy and we can't like have an extra state in for flag reasons. So I'm going to rule out that joke. That is not a joke. I am deadly serious about that. Like if we have to annex somewhere, like we'll annex somewhere. No, you're just being a mischief maker. Watch out British Columbia. Let's go to a situation where we do have to have 51 states. I think that the Betsy Ross flag is a very good looking flag. I think it would be a lovely flag to have. But that I think is also completely untenable because of the politics

and the history involved with what the 13 stars represent. So you will never be able to push that through. So even though I have no great attachment to all that history, you know, anyone can see that that's going to be an insurmountable problem. Yeah, 100% I agree with you on that one, because every state is just going to run the campaign of, can you believe they want to remove Nebraska's star from the flag? Like that's outrageous. And so you're never going to win that one politically. I mean, clearly the best solution is to have one star with 51 points. The classic 51-pointed star. I wonder if a 51-pointed star exists.

Someone must have done this by now. I feel like I need to open up Inkscape and do the thing where you can dynamically generate a 51-pointed star. I'm sure someone's done it on the Flare Vexillology subreddit at some point. I can't be the first person to have thought of this. I don't know, Brady. It's so crazy. It just might work. Well, then it would be called the Brady Heron Flag and I would be up there with Betsy Ross. I just generated a 51-pointed star in my animation program. Wow. You are fast, my friend. How can you do that so quickly

and put out so few videos? Animation is not the hardest part. Let me just quickly put it on a blue background so you get the real experience, right? Can you chuck it on with the stripes as well while you're there? I want the first time I see it to be the full experience. You know what? Actually, I can do that. I can do that pretty quick. Give me two seconds. See, this is the business we should have, Gray. I just sit here coming up with ideas, and then you make them a reality for me. Is that what you want? You're the ideas guy, and I'll do the implementation? I am the ideas guy, and you're like logistics and, you know.

Okay, there you go, Brady. I've just sent a team over iMessage. For people listening, Gray spent two hours on this. Oh, no, no, you haven't done it right. Oh, I'm sorry. How do you want it? The spikes need to be more spiky. That just looks like a circle with a few hours on this. Oh, no, no, you haven't done it right. Oh, I'm sorry. How do you want it? The spikes need to be more spiky. That just looks like a circle with a few spikes on it.

Yeah, I can give you a more spiky version in two seconds. Longer spikes. Again, you're the ideas guy here. I'll implement your ideas until you are satisfied with the spikiness. Keep that as version one though, Gray. So when they write the book about us, they'll be able to show like the evolution of the process. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, I will do that. No problem at all. That was version one. Version two on the way. I can make it even more spiky. Yeah, more spiky. I don't want there to be a circle in the middle. Well, yeah, okay.

But see, it looks really weird if you take out the circle, but I will go for maximum spikiness. And then we'll put all three there and people can decide. Okay. Do you know what? I said that as a joke and it actually looks better than I expected. But anyway, let's see what the final version is like. I'm not saying it's the

solution, but... Here's the problem that we're getting into, Brady, is the number of pixels that are even available to show that there are 51 spokes. So here is about as spiky as I can make it where the spokes are even still visible. Okay. I don't want excuses, Grae. What results? I'm just telling you, man. Okay. Yeah, I see the problem you're having there.

There's something else I can do, which I kind of like. Hold on. I know how it is in your head, but this is just a problem of 51 is so many that there isn't enough space to actually do it. Yeah, I get it. Right?

But it's like I have that same flag in my head, but you just can to actually do it. Yeah, I get it. Right? But it's like, I have that same flag in my head, but you just can't really reproduce it. Yeah. I'm going to call this one the buzzsaw version of 51. No, great. Buzzsaw's not happening. No, of course not. It looks terrible.

No. Yeah. I think the only one that even remotely looks good is the first most chunky one. But then what that looks like is you've stuck one of those as seen on TV labels on the flag, right? That's what that looks like. I think the second one had potential, but yeah.

I know what you're thinking, but it just looks really weird, very fast adjusting the number of spikes. There's just not enough space. I don't want to get too carried away because I i only said it as a joke anyway but there we go we'll put them in the show notes so people can take a look at our our brainstorming what a 51 star flag looks like i know i love that we did a bit of live flag design on the podcast you don't get that every day folks how many other podcasts do you listen to where you get to listen to two guys designing a flag live or one visionary suggesting flags and one like,

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that occurred. I'm traveling this summer, and I'm out on the road, and I'm trying very hard to at least vaguely stay healthy and to not balloon up in weight while you're in America, which is hard to do because the streets are paved with donuts. And hot dogs, man, and hot dogs. How much do I love hot dogs? They always smell good when you're walking by the hot dog vendor. You're like, that seems like a good idea, even if it isn't. I love a good hot dog. I love a good hot dog. So I have been trying to stay as low carb as possible, which is actually, especially out in

California, is way easier to do than you might imagine. Like lots of places are used to this. And one of the easiest ways to just be able to stay low carb anywhere is to just order a burger and just eat the burger part of it, don't eat the bun. So I was out having lunch with a few people and I ordered a burger and everybody else is eating. And now I'm the weirdo who's taking the top off of the burger and I'm using a knife and fork to start eating the burger itself. You are a weirdo. I have no time for people who order a burger and don't eat the bun. But anyway, I see what you do. You see what's happening here. So before the story continues, I just need to specify something that this was a breakfast burger.

So it was a burger that had eggs on top of it, and it also had a kind of Eggs Benedict sauce on top of it. So it was an unusually messy kind of burger. Okay. Right, with eggs and sauce on it. It's not just like, ooh, I'm neatly lifting the burger out of the bun. So I'm eating the burger. I finish the burger. Do you remove the bottom bun first or do you treat the bottom bun like it's the

plate and you're like cutting into it? I treated it like it was the plate and I was just cutting the burger on top of it because it would have been more trouble to try to remove this very messy burger from the bottom bun. I left the whole bottom bun intact. So I didn't cut through it. I was just cutting it like it was the plate. That's some precise knife work. That's like surgical cutting through the meat, but stopping before you go through the bun. I'm impressed by your knife skill. I've had much practice in doing this. So have the picture in your head. I have eaten all the meat. Yep.

But there's a lot of like burger juice and egginess and sauce that's in the bun. And I took the top bun and I put it back on top. Sloppy, sloppy bun. Yeah. It's a total sloppy bun. As I'm sitting there and I'm done with this, the guy sitting across from me takes one look at what I've done. And then he says, no, can I eat your buns? Can I eat your sloppy buns? Yeah. Are you trying to get this podcast flagged? This was one of these moments in life where I feel like a situation is so strange and unexpected that my brain just doesn't, like it has no previous experience here and goes into like a weird autopilot mode of

how is it appropriate to be social in moments when you don't know and just err on the side of nice. So I think my brain just like flipped into that mode because it had no idea what to do. And so I said, sure. And I slided the plate across and this guy then ate my sloppy buns. With a knife and fork or by hand? By hand. He ate it by hand. Here's the thing. I'm very sorry if the person who you were is listening to this podcast,

which there is a non-zero chance about this. Like, I'm very... That's what I'm thinking. I'm very aware that the person who did this may be listening right now. And I'm sorry to bring this up. But here's the thing. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this for more than a right now. And I'm sorry to bring this up, but here's the thing. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this for more than a week now. This happened at least 10 days ago. And I find myself at random moments coming back to this thought again and again, like,

the guy wanted to eat my sloppy buns and I gave them to him. So here's what I keep coming back to. If they had been French fries, if I had ordered a burger and it came with French fries and the guy had said, can I eat your French fries? I would have said, yes, of course. Like, why not? There's no reason not to, except if I was some kind of really antisocial weirdo. Like, no, I bought these French fries. I'm not going to eat them because I'm on a low carb diet. I'm just going to throw them on the ground, right? So nobody can eat them. Great. You had no choice. I understand what happened. You had no choice but to surrender the sloppy buns because clearly you weren't going to have them. And like, how could you say no? Either you had to say no and eat them yourself or you had to give them up. The thing that you did

that surprises me is you didn't like confront the person who had it saying, are you serious? Are you going to eat those sloppy buns? That's ridiculous. Like you're a crazy person. Like I can't believe you didn't like call them out on it. That's what you should have done. You should have said, sure, if you want, but you're crazy.

You seriously want to eat my sloppy buns? I was just so taken aback that I just did this automatic reflex. And then I just, it can't, it will not leave my mind. The reason why I can't leave my mind is like, okay, the fries are unambiguous. But there feels like, I don't know how to describe it. It almost feels weirdly personally invasive that this person ate these buns. It doesn't make any sense, right? Because we're not sharing them,

right? I'm done with them. It's not like he was gumming them and then giving them back to me and I'm going to eat them again. It's done. They're just going in the garbage. But I feel like weirdly violated in this situation in a way that I just cannot describe. I think it's all on him. Because I know you're pretty big on like, you know, germs and sterility and like the chain of custody of saliva and stuff. Right, right, yeah. And I think you're safe here. Well, clearly you're safe here.

Yeah, that's exactly it. There is no germ objection that can take place in this scenario. It's just a bit of a, yeah. But the other person, I think, does have questions to answer in that respect. But they're probably quite comfortable with it. I mean, the buns had clearly reached a point where they had been sufficiently sullied that it seems strange that someone was willing to touch and consume them. But that's on them. But you probably wouldn't be having these problems if you just discussed it at the time. I think you would have gotten it off your chest.

Maybe that's what it is. I feel like I just, I didn't clarify enough with the situation and my brain is treating this like an open loop that it just keeps coming back to and back to. But the problem is, I do kind of feel like in the future, I would say no because I can't put my finger on it. But it just, it feels like some kind of personal violation has occurred. Were there other people besides you two at the table? There were other people at the table.

Were glances being exchanged at the time? Or did anyone speak up? Or like, was it just treated like normal? Or were people looking at each other going, did you just see that? He just took that guy's sloppy buns. So the way things happened is I was so fixated on what was occurring. I don't know if there were glances being directed around the table. And it just so happens that the two other people who were there, I didn't have a chance to revisit this topic with them after. The way the group broke up, it just didn't work out. And so I've been discussing this with like every human being that I have met.

What do you think about this situation? What's been their consensus? There's universal consensus that it's weird to ask, but that it would be wrong to say no. That seems to be the consensus. I keep circling around this idea, like if I'm ever in this scenario again, I'm going to have to make sure to stand up for myself and say no.

Like, no, I will not give you my sloppy second buns. This is an inappropriate violation of my personal space in a way that French fries are not. What if the person says, why not? Like, you're not going to eat them. Why do you mind me eating them? It's wasteful. But this is it. I have no good answer other than. Well, now I'm asking you for an answer. You're in the situation. I'm challenging you on it now. What are you going to say? I think I've asked you, you've said no. I've said why. Now what do you say? You need to gain this through, man. My only answer paints me as a crazy person, which I think I will just have to bite the bullet on this one. But the answer will be no. I paid for these buns and I'm uncomfortable with

the idea of you eating them. No, you can't. That's unacceptable. Why is that unacceptable? Do you know what? You actually have the acceptable answer now because of this, because of this catharsis that you've done here. You can say, do you know what? I know I should say yes, but this has happened to me once before. And after it happened, it became such a difficult thing. I even made a whole podcast episode about it, which you can listen to if you like. But for that reason, for that reason, and how it affected me the previous time, I'm going to have to respectfully and regretfully say, keep your hands off my sloppy buns.