Tomorrow - 194: Creative Solutions

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Josh and Ryan are back and more bitter than ever! This week we discuss the importance of #BlackLivesMatter, why we need to break up the big tech companies, and the bad design of the PS5. There are also the customary nice things, since we all really, really need them right now. Happy Juneteenth! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome to Tomorrow. I'm your host, Josh Whitz Bolkey. Today on the podcast, we discuss binary systems, black lives matter, and the PlayStation 5. I don't want to waste one minute. Let's get ready. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ We're back. We're back. We're floated back to this podcast on a sea of lies and failed and never and and and unkept promises to Tony that we would be.

I don't want someone like a super cut of us being like, we'll see you next week. We will definitely be here. This was real. This time it's we're really going to commit last week. I was like to two weeks last week is like two weeks ago. I'm like, or two weeks last week, it's like two weeks ago, I'm like, we're doing it every week, we're gonna bring back gas is gonna be amazing. Listen, it's hard, okay folks, I don't mind telling you,

it's hard out in the world to even wake up. Seems like every time we get our balance, the world has like another cultural earthquake. Motherfuckers just keep slipping another rug underneath my feet to be pulled out. Okay, that's what's happening. You step off one rug onto another rug and all of the rugs are being pulled out from under you. And then finally you fall to the ground and you realize that there never was any rug at all nor was there ground. And you're just falling. You're falling into a dark black pit

of sadness and despair and hopelessness. And then you realize that you're actually still in bed. And that's when you wake up from your dream and you're like, oh, I'm awake. Then you look at Twitter and you're like, I need to go back to sleep. I'm just Mr. McGuying my way through my own life. I'm gonna have to expand on that reference from me.

What does that mean? Like you're wearing a funny hat or your scrunch and your face up. Mr. McGoo. You have a big red nose. He's that character that like, I know who Mr. McGoo is. Yeah, he like trips and falls, but he never really, like it always just kinda works out.

He'll like Mr. McGoo. At the end of it. Like he'll be the guy who crosses the street and then all the cars will pile up around him and he'll get to the other side completely oblivious. That's who I'm trying to be. Mr. McGill, let's talk about Mr. McGill for a sec. First off, he has a, his eye seem to be always closed. He looks exactly like, I don't know if it's going to resonate with all of the listeners, all one listener. He looks exactly like junior, junior soprano from the sopranos.

I mean, he exactly like him. It's kind of shocking to me that I did never picked up on this. Speaking of the sopranos, I just soprano sopranos. I just finished it last night. So that's a thing. No, I've never seen it before. Oh, wow.

Is my first time ever, I mean, we watched it up to like the fifth season and then stopped. And then this time we just started rewatching it, you know, when the pandemic, we were like, hey, no better time to catch up. Anyhow, Mr. McGoo, sorry, let's get back on your thing about how he's fallen. I'll slide and all over the place.

Mr. McGoo, I believe it was some kind of stereotype, Jewish stereotype. I think maybe he's got to be something, just got to be some cancellation that's going to happen with Mr. Macgo Ageism Anti-Semitism I feel like oh oh No apparently wait. I'm actually looking now apparently there was some like really horrible like Asian stereotypes on mr. Macgo

Of course there was oh boy. I mean this is really holy shit like hold on I'm gonna share just not and now Tony you won't be able to see this because you're just listening, but I'm going to share. Oh boy, I just found it. Oh boy. Let me just drop a gif into you. This is like extremely racist. So Mr. McGoo's canceled and Goodridden's to Bad Rubbish. That's what I have to say.

Oh boy. I hate you. Oh boy. I guess that's not who I'm trying to be. You're not trying to be Mr. McGoo who is a massive racist. It's the past, when you start to look back, obviously, we're all now reckoning with a, we're all thinking about and talking about and reckoning with just rampant racism that exists in the world.

It's everywhere. It's widespread. It's not just in America, by the way. It's truly like the thing that brings the world together. It seems, is racism. Actually, it swept all of the nations, but it's interesting. I mean, it's just like, especially when you look backwards, I mean, we're now we're seeing, you know, you know, people are like, hey, and Jemima, actually, that's pretty racist. Like, yeah, yeah, let's think about it. Like, you know, at some point, the Washington red skins are going to have to fucking give it up, you know, at some point, someone's going to have to be like,

hey, guys, this actually is just a straight up racial slur. Like, we should just change the name of the fucking group, you know, of the team. It was actually a great essay. I don't know if you've read it by Tiffany Reed, who's the fashion director at the bussel on the other side of bussel on the women's lifestyle. Brands, and she wrote about this like crazy racist thing that happened to her in Paris.

And it's like, you know, just like, I just want to be clear, you know, it's like America is very bad, but this shit is everywhere you go. But it's like funny, like the Mr. McGoo thing is like, you know, here we are, like just innocently referencing Mr. McGoo, which you would think like, you know, I was making jokes about him being like an anti-Semitic like whatever. But it turns out like it's actually is a bunch of racist shit at there. It's like you really can't escape it and it's sort of insane how the more we look at it and think about it, especially when everybody is looking at it and thinking about it, the more you see how much of it is there. Like I don't know, I don't even remember Mr. McGill. I don't know if I've

even ever seen a single episode of the show, but you know, there it is. Like in the first few pages of a search. So I think it's, you know, it's, we definitely have like, we definitely have some shit to deal with in this country and around the world. And I think we're seeing that in a very big way. I think the stuff that's happening around policing right now is fascinating. I mean, for me, particularly, I think that this whole concept of reframing what the police do and who they are and how they work is, I think most of us have just never thought about it, you know. I think it's one of those things where you can say, I've said, you know, I think it's one of those things where you can say I've said, you know, the police are you know

There's obviously systemic racism within the police the way they police Communities there's obviously huge problems with the way that people are vetted You know, but you never think like well, what's like fundamentally going on like what are the police fundamentally doing? And what's fundamentally wrong with them? And the more you think about it, the more you start to see this other version of a world that could exist. And it's actually like really liberating to imagine it.

And I'm very excited about the idea that we could just rethink entire structures of power in this country. I think it's what we need to do at every level. It's like the Electoral College conversation, you know? It's like, it's always been that way. It's like, well, you know, America's a different place than it was when it was founded.

We have a different electorate. We have a completely different population mix and density. It's like, maybe it's time to rethink some of these things. And so I'm excited about, I was horrified by the state of affairs in this country, but I'm excited a little bit, or at least cautiously optimistic about the possibility that maybe this is a sustained, you know, if we keep up this sustained conversation and drumbeat about changing things and people keep going out and protesting and we keep confronting people and forcing them to look at it that maybe we can actually do something.

The thing that gives me hope is it feels like we're finally expanding our imagination for things because like a few years ago saying that like you were pro Medicare for all was kind of a death sentence in politics. And now we've mainstreamed the idea that everyone deserves health care. And we've mainstreamed the idea that like America isn't some exceptional place where like all ideas have to spring from like a godhead like we're

able to look at the model used in other like similar nations and say like oh wow that's working really well for them and our system isn't working for us and I think the police situation is another is another case where I mean a couple years ago we had a similar like a couple of years ago, we had a similar, like, a couple of years ago, honestly, like five, six years ago, we had a similar amount of protests around Ferguson and abolished the police was not a mainstream discussion happening. Yeah. The fun to the police wasn't something that, you know, local politicians had to grapple with and say out loud. And I think like, the right has had a real ability to say, like, envision a country where gay people have to

go to camps where they get electrocuted into being straight or like, you know, a country where abortion is illegal and women are held accountable for what men do to them, vis-a-vis sexual assault. They're able to imagine this horrifying fascist state and then work towards that fantasy. And I think if we can imagine a world of equality and a world without violence and a world, if we can imagine all the people I'm trying to say,

oh wow. If we can imagine something that I'm on video being Gal Gadot. If we can imagine something that's bigger and more encompassing and more structurally sound and safer and more prosperous, like I think that that will lead us somewhere good. I think that that's a good instinct to have. To stand up and say like, no fuck you,

I don't accept that when we're handed crumbs. Years ago we would be handed crumbs like, we're gonna do an education program where police have to spend an hour hearing about how they shouldn't shoot black people. We'd be like, oh thank God, yes, change. Like incremental updates to systems we already have. And I think now we're like, you know, some of our systems are good and should be protected.

And some of them are bad. And we should just start over. And it's okay to admit that we don't, we we're not perfect. Some systems are awesome. Yes. I mean, I mean, it's it's it's truly incredible. I mean, it's truly incredible. I think that your point about the concept of creativity, creative solutions, I think it's an interesting way to think about it. It is a highly uncreative approach that we've been taking to a lot of the problems that we have. Like incremental is nice sometimes. Like it works.

Sometimes you're like, hey, you know what, this OS is great. I just really need like a copy and paste function or whatever. It's like cool. But like, you know, what you want, this is not a, I love the OS, I just need copy and paste. You know, this is like, like, nine of it works. It keeps crashing, it keeps freezing, it keeps breaking my phone.

I think that getting creative is really important. And I would actually, maybe that's the thing that I'm responding to when I think about the idea of like rethinking policing, because it is a creative endeavor to imagine a different version or a better version of what we're doing in terms of like society. I think you're right about also about health care. The other thing that happens is that people get so comfortable with the way things are that they

can't imagine that they could be different and so it's hard for them to see or to think about what that different would look like. You know, I mean, This by the way, I hate to draw a line from like society to like things as like it's seemingly insignificant as like technological innovation. But like the iPhone as an example is one of those things where for a long time you couldn't imagine a phone being anything else. And so you had to like see a radical. Yeah. It's the Henry Ford thing of like the apocryphal but wonderful quote, which is like if I had asked people what they wanted,

they would have asked for a faster horse. And like, I think Henry Ford rampant racist in anti-Semite. If I recall, I think it's a situation where like listen, I don't want to throw out the things that incrementalism and stuff has gotten us, but I do think, you know, it's similar to like, I'm not here to say that like no conservative has ever had a good idea. And we have integrated that entire philosophy so deeply into every aspect of society, psychology, culture, medicine that I do think like it's too much like we've already gotten everything we can out of the philosophy of like survival of the fittest or like the philosophy of like you know traditional quote unquote values and like religious thinking like we've gotten we we got the benefits that we could get out of that when we had a little bit of it. Now, we are so far off to the right that I think to imagine creatively means to go left

and to incorporate a bunch of the philosophies and ideas and solutions that we've demonized because we, you know, that was to be a liberal or whatever. And I think like, you know, I think this, listen, all of this stuff happening is not, it's not like worth Trump being elected or it's not worth the death of Black civilians, like at the hands of police systematically for decades. Of course not. And nothing is like worth that trade. But there is a silver lining that people are, I mean, maybe it's the perfect storm of people having time and anger because of the pandemic to take action on this stuff now. I mean, someone tweeted the other day that like now we're all retired teachers who get really involved

in their local politics because that's how everybody's operating now. And maybe there's a lot of good that will come out of that because I can for sure tell you that people that I know are involved in their local races now, three or four months ago had no idea who was running and like didn't really care, even if they said they did. It's interesting that it's actually interesting to think about it like that.

I mean, the idea that everybody's like got a hobby now and the hobby is like social justice. And being like pissed as shit about how horrible things have been for a long time. I think the pandemic is a great fucking example of the failure of a lot of these systems, right? The failure of the healthcare system, the failure of a lot of these systems, right? The failure of the healthcare system, the failure of our politicians to fucking act to protect us, the failure of, you know, even at the, you know, people like praise Cuomo,

but like New York fucked this up, really badly early on, you know, there's a ton of articles about this now, you can read about how badly this was handled at the outset of this. In like, you know, the failure of our relationships with places like the World Health Organization, the failure of the CDC to give clear guidance on things. I mean, you remember the mask stuff. I mean, it's sort of insane not to go into this, but the fucking mask stuff early on.

It was like guidance from the CDC was like, don't wear a mask. It doesn't help. There's no need. And it's like literally now every other piece of science says the opposite, which is like wearing a mask is highly effective at preventing this important, easiest thing you can do. And if they literally had issued the guidance in February and said, you know, we are highly recommending that you wear a mask when in public. We probably could have prevented a massive amount. And all by the way, Trump could have easily,

you know, way before he had blundered this entire thing, they could have easily just put out a statement saying, you know, we recommend wearing a mask. But of course, I mean, it starts with dissolving the pandemic response team in being like, we haven't had a pandemic, so we never will. And it's not worth any investment. And it starts with like, and I think people see, there was a lot of activity around having empathy for homeless families, for kids who are starving

and malnourished. There was a lot of activity in New York about what will we do if the homeless don't have anywhere to go, because not only does it affect us all, but I think people realize that like, if you're trapped in your home and you don't have a home, you know what I mean? Like then where do you go? What do you do?

And I think it's not a big jump from finally seeing those people as human and seeing those people's circumstances as not entirely earned. And it's not a huge jump to then say like, wait, nobody should be homeless. Like, wait, we have, we have, we're in the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the world

and we have tons of empty apartments and tons of empty hotels and we're not letting homeless mothers and their children have them? Like, weed them in it. And I think it's a quick, it has exposed some of the big fundamental flaws that were just easy to be like, I don't like it,

but I gotta get to work, you know what I mean? Like, I don't like it, but I have stuff to do today. So what am I gonna do? Now we're all trapped at home and we have to really look in the mirror and say like, oh shit, we probably shouldn't have like, you know, we should, we probably shouldn't have our solution to climate change have to be everyone's trapped in their homes. Like, oh no, maybe the internet shouldn't, our infrastructure for the internet shouldn't be so shitty that I can't stream Netflix in New York City

on a Friday night because everybody else is streaming Netflix. Like that should not be the case in a country whose entire economic future has now bet the farm on technology. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, look, it's an awakening. It's an awakening. The great awakening has come.

It says, Q. The great awakening is here. You can't stop what's coming or whatever their shit is what is the storm balloon storm storm storm folks. Well, this is all you know of course this you know the pandemic is just a cover-up to cover up Hillary Clinton's pedophilia. I think you know. Oh yeah, the pandemic is a hoax because of Benghazi. Yeah, Benghazi was the tipping point. They were like we're gonna have to do something bigger than Benghazi. Yeah, Benghazi was the tipping point. They were like, we're gonna have to do something bigger than Benghazi.

And because George Soros paid us to go to those black lives, matter protests because the pandemic wasn't working to cover up the pizza conspiracy that Hillary does. It's selling her child. Where can I, where can I purchase the child? That's all I wanna know. Okay, beyond the list for the for the auction, the auction. I'm sorry, Republicans truly,

some of the dumbest, biggest dumbest group of people I've ever seen, I mean, it's just a gigantic group of absolute fucking dumbasses. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know you're supposed to respect everybody and you know, we have our differences in all this shit, but I'm sorry, if you're a fucking Republican, literally everything you stand for and every opinion you have is just this shit. But I'm sorry, if you're a fucking Republican, literally everything you stand for

and every opinion you have is just absolute shit. And I'm not saying this, like, I'm a hardcore liberal Democrat, like whatever. I'm open to like talking about being, you know, beefing up the military. Tell me about all the reasons why we need to beef it up. I'm all ears. Talk to me about the reasons why we should fuck up,

you know, our trade agreements. Like, I'm happy to talk about like being, like the conservative ideas about the economy and the military and everything else. I haven't seen any of those motherfucking things working. The only thing that has happened, your economic growth is all stock market growth does not have any basis in reality to any of the people who live in this country, through a very small percentage. So it's like, you may be brilliant at making more money for the absolute richest people who live in this country through a very small percentage. So it's like, you may be brilliant at like making more money for the absolute richest people who already are on top in the short term.

But I don't think that's a, I think that's a really good recipe for like a violent civil war and revolution that will make the protest look pretty chill by comparison. At any rate, so like probably just absolute fucking ass hats. I mean, just I just think listen, again, and I don't want to be the person that's like demonizing because they don't think that that's productive, but I also don't want to demonize anybody. But at a certain point, like, you know, Trump is now pushing an agenda that would keep gay couples from being able to adopt. Like they would, you would have religious exemptions through adoption agencies, which, you know,

if you don't know, in the US are highly controlled by religious organizations. So if you really want to adopt in the US, this is why a lot of gay couples go outside the country. But if you really want to adopt in the US, you kind of have to go through a religious organization. And some of them, like the Betsy DeVos family fucking adoption stuff is very close to human trafficking, but that's for another day. That's a whole other podcast. Trump wants to push this idea that it would be legal to turn down couples for being gay. And I think we're just like, of course Republicans have always had things that I found disgusting and believes that I found horrible. And, but I'm now personally at the

point where like, if you even entertain the idea that Republicans are reasonable people that we should hear out or you're like, I'm an independent. I'm not voting blue no matter who I got to hear the issues. If that's where you're at right now, I just don't want you in my life. Like I'm not at this point. Like I'm just I'm not speaking to family members at the moment because yeah, I just nothing good will come from a relationship where someone fundamentally says like, I'm okay with you being harmed. I'm okay with you never having kids. I'm okay with, I'm okay with you losing healthcare protections, which is another thing being pushed. I'm okay with you, specifically, this person I know

that I can put a face to. If you can't give empathy for me, I can't expect you to understand empathy for races of people you don't interact with and groups of people who you don't understand and religions that you've never heard really about. And so why would I continue engaging with someone that's like at that level? I don't think that's the majority of people in the country, but I do think there is a court

Trump supporting group that I just don't think it's worth us obsessing about anymore because right. They're not the majority and they don't speak for everyone, you know. I mean, I think it's it's right. I mean, obviously the Supreme Court ruled this landmark, you know, LGBTQ bill, which basically is like something you would imagine is kind of unbelievable that we need to even have a Supreme Court ruling on it, which is like, it's illegal to discriminate against people based on their, based on like who they sleep with.

You know where they're gender identity like it for their gender identity. I mean to work and they're like, hi, I'm female presenting, but I have to go to my doctor's appointment and they're you're like, oh, what doctor do you go to and you tell them and then they're like, oh, well, you're probably a trans. So we can't have you work here anymore. Like that is now an illegal thing because in 35 states, it was perfectly valid to be like, oh, you're dating a dude or oh, you used to be a dude. That's it. Like you're done.

Yeah. You don't longer have a job. I'm insurance. So it's like essentially like, you know, imagine like civil rights, you know, this, you know, imagine like businesses that at a point, where at a point where in this country, where you could say, well, oh, you're black. Like, I don't want you working here, right? This country was like, no, that's not something that we're going to allow. You can't just be like, oh, I don't like your race.

So you can't work here. I don't like your religion. So you can't work here. It's literally, there's laws, right? You would think like, it's a foregone conclusion. You might think a foregone conclusion that like, you can't work here. It's literally there's laws, right? You would think like, it's a foregone conclusion, you might think, a foregone conclusion, that like you can't fire somebody, you're discriminating against somebody

in many other ways because of their, gender designation, other. Because it has no impact on their ability to do the job. Right, it's just nonsense, but like it had to have a fucking supreme court. And there's a group of people in the country, Trump included who would prefer that we could discriminate against people because they're fucking gay. Like just just put it there because it's the easiest for everybody to understand because literally everybody

has someone in their family who's fucking gay. Okay. Whether you know it or not, trust me. And like just think about it. Most people know it and are aware of it and don't care. Most Americans don't fucking care if their cousin is gay or trans or whatever. They're like, that's my cousin. The vast majority of people. But it also just comes down to basic civil rights

and for the group of people in this country that croed on and on about personal responsibility, get government out of my responsibility, get government out of my bedroom, get government out of my backyard, the government can't tell me what to do. My employer can't tell me how to spend my money. I don't wanna be taxed for the group of people that was all about individualism.

To then turn around and say like, oh wait, but if you're gay, that's gross. So we're gonna make sure you don't have access to a doctor and you can't get a job Like it's just it's it doesn't even it's not even it's the hypocrisy obviously. It's about like I protect the civil rights for people you don't like because like There are people who don't like you and so so if you want the ability to get a job, like what if one day they turn around and they decide

whatever thing you are is the thing that we don't like, you blue-eyed people all of a sudden, we found out that blue-eyed people have studied, came out that blue-eyed people tend to be less productive for whatever reason. And then suddenly, but actually, it's like an absurd pseudo-science thing. And I mean, it all comes down to like,

phrenology stuff, which is just like, we used to think that people's skull shape would tell us how good they were at their job. Now we know that isn't true, but what we should probably start with is at an assumption that no matter what shape your skull is or what color you are, or who you like jerk off to, nobody at your job is gonna care.

It's completely nuts. I mean, this is what I'm saying is that like, it's obviously huge that now we have like protection, there's a protection from the highest court in the land around this, but like that the question had to be asked at all that it wasn't a foregone conclusion and that there is a group of people that would prefer it the other way,

that would prefer it, that you could say, oh, like, you're not like me. I don't think you should have this job. Like just think about the fucking levels, the many, many levels of, I mean, I don't want to say evil because again, I don't really believe in the concept of evil. I just think the levels of ignorance and fear and stupidity that are required to make to make to say, what is it? What is it? Is your religion? Your religion is like discriminating against people because you, because like that's the only reason I can think of for somebody to believe it is something that is totally irrational. Like, because you believe in a book of stories

for children that are made up about people that never existed or versions of them that didn't exist where magic happens, you think like today somebody should not be able to earn a living or get healthcare. Or get healthcare to I mean, it comes here. To the founding fathers myth, where in this country we've created this beyond just religious stuff,

because obviously we're always going to have to fight against this obsessive, this is the exception. You can, there is no, this is the incontrovertible thing, undeniable, most powerful thing is that I'm religious. Like, we're always gonna have to fight against that because like, those people truly believe that they are sent on a mission from the creator of the universe. And so, we're gonna have to constantly argue against, like, prioritizing their ideas,

because they're gonna be the most, like, obsessed with it, because they're gonna call. But like, I think, you know, beyond that, we just love mythologizing things because this country doesn't have a history. This country's history is not very long, and it's mostly bad, and it's mostly things where we should be ashamed of. So the things that we're proud of, we really overcompensate, and that's how you get

Christopher Columbus or the founding fathers, who were rapists and slave owners. It's not. It's not. Because we'reists and slave owners and it's not like beat their promise of us nuts. I mean honestly, Christopher Columbus stuff is like really when you look into it, it's crazy how this weird ass myth about who Christopher Columbus is and was rather that it's perpetuated so deeply in the culture of America that no one ever... You bake in the idea that a white guy had to discover a country in which, how do you discover a country

in which like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people already live? Like, you bake into the idea that history is about white people when you say that this country was discovered because one white guy happened to be, and he wasn't even the first white guy. Well, fucking weird. I mean, how are you Vikings?

I mean, the weird thing is that we celebrate this anniversary of America that's like completely, it's like not real, it's nothing. It's actually nothing. It's like a holiday that shouldn't even, I mean, it's like not real. It's nothing. It's actually nothing. It's like a holiday that shouldn't even, I mean, it's like, I mean, of course we can talk about the founding of America, right, by the founding fathers or whatever,

but it's like, what does it mean? Even that language of like father, it's mythologizing. It's like paternalistic and it imbues them with the same power that we give God. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Obviously the founding documents of the established, like, you know, what America is, the United States of America are very important.

But like, but that's a part of, it's like a lineage of things that have happened here. I'm not saying we have to rewrite history. We actually need to like write it correctly because it hasn't been established like in any meaningful way to the people who live here. It's like, you think that we have the show to us now to do a better version of history,

which is the job of history. The job of historians is to try to get us close to the truth so we can analyze the facts and what worked and what didn't work and know how to move forward. And when you decide that you don't like historians and you don't like the truth because you prefer though George Washington Cherry Tree story because it's really easy to tell kids. You've decided that like, talking to fairy tales for children in that moment in kindergarten

is way more important than like abolishing racism as a thing. Well, to be fair, that is exactly it, isn't it? I mean, it's like, it is easier to tell the fairy tale version of the fucking story than to tell the reality of it. But like, you know, I think just like the, just like the thing we're talking about with like the police and rethinking how policing works, we need to stop doing, I mean, I think the lesson here is like, we need to adapt to reality much faster and much better than we have done. Like, we need as a human beings, we need to go like,

the other way is bad and isn't working or it's only working for a select set of people. And like we are not adapting to this moment as rapidly or as meaningfully as we need to. And like I do think it really does come down to this like need for radical, a radical reconfiguration of what we think is the right way to exist in this world. I mean, it's so insane, but like, we've just been like, you know, on this fucking treadmill. I mean, when I was a kid, when I was in elementary school, there was no indication, I mean, just a very light indication that the Native Americans had any place in history larger than being like the people who greeted the pilgrims like literally that's the story

You know, yeah, and it's like that's not the fucking story Well, it's also just like if we as a nation can do something as culturally and I don't laugh at this I think this is an important thing. If we can, as a nation, tear down the image and the cool zeitgeist and the obsessive marketing and the entire economic structure of just something like smoking, if we can, as a nation, rethink our dynamic

with something that was so every day and so, just a beloved part of the American mythology, every cowboy had a cigarette in their mouth. If we can stand together and say, oh wait, the science is saying this is killing people, lots of people, and it's really bad and there's no benefit to it. We should stop doing it.

If we can do that with something that, I think, is an addictive substance, we can certainly do that with programs that I think is an addictive substance, we can certainly do that with programs that are murdering people, like that are actively harming people systematically. And I get that like yes, several years ago, we were all sort of like, you know, not all of us, but many people who are now part of these discussions,

including myself, were a little less, like we were a little less quick to jump to the, like, complete revolutionary version of things. Like, I voted for Bernie both times. I was one of those teenagers that almost registered as a green party member. But, of course, I was also the person who was like, I think Hillary Clinton is like a good person. You know what I mean? And now I'm like, I think that she's part of a system that, you know, I don't think she operated from a place of malice her life, but she participated in a system that heard a lot of people and her inability to like break out of convention is really harmful.

And like, having that more nuanced take and that more honest and frank, like evolution of like how you think about these figures and how you think about these systems and how you think about the things that you took for granted. And even just the idea that like, oh wait, like just like neoliberal economics might have worked great in the 90s and part of the 2000s, but like maybe we shouldn't do it again

because we keep coming back to it's really easy to take those apart. Like it's really easy to slash regulations and taxes for corporations and then just start over again. And it's sort of like, a system that can't be taken apart that easily. Right, it's sort of like, it's sort of like the all the shit with Trump,

where it's like, oh, like, well, this is what all the presidents have done previously. So, you know, the norms where it's like, oh yeah, you have to turn over, like this evidence that Congress is asking for, and he's like, no, I don't. And everybody's like, yeah, I guess like he doesn't, because like, what can we do here? Like, oh, he just took it, you know, just replaced it, you know, the attorney general with another person who will just back him up on this. And they're like, oh, I guess that can happen. So we need

to go away from this whole idea that like, this is just what's, how it's always been done. And there's no protections around like making sure we don't have like an absolute like collapse of our fucking democracy. We need to like go from that to like there are actual laws and ways of like doing things that protect to your point that protect like when we when we move forward, it isn't just a partisan decision. That literally everything, that's one of the big problems in this country and many countries is that everybody sees change as partisan, some version of progress

has to be the owned by the left. And it's like, is it possible that we're just going to evolve? That we're just gonna learn new things and have better ideas? I mean, we've talked about this before, but it's in the name, conservatives, okay? Like, they don't want to change. They don't want to adapt.

They don't want to evolve. They want things to stay the way they were, you know? And it's like, or the way that they imagined that they were. It's sort of like, you know, nobody called for abortion wasn't an issue until it was ginned. Well, I mean, there's always been a religious, there's always been a religious view of abortion that is, you know, the woman is not in control of her body once she has a one single cell of a, of a infant. That's not even necessarily true. There was,

there's definitely, there's, there's's there's strains of Christianity that always took that sort of stance, but that wasn't necessarily true. And the idea that religion and abortion were a one in one lock step issue are is is a new thing. And it is a thing that people imagine is reality. It's sort of like, you know, the idea that America was conceived in the 50s, and we should always be trying to get back to that. You know, it's the idea that like, well, all those men came home for more,

and they said, I'm gonna make a family, and I'm gonna, you know, do this thing. Without taking into consideration that like, the middle class was constructed by government, deciding to give people a, a, soldiers, a, particularly white soldiers, returning from more like a home and an education and like a chicken in every

pot and it was constructed by essentially by socialism. Yes and so they're trying to return to this mythologized sort of like I keep saying that but this sort of like nostalgia which is like you know a yearning for a time that doesn't exist, and their whole thing is that they love that idea. They're so in love with the idea that they deserve everything that they have, and that they all become rich one day, because they're inherently smarter and gooder than anybody else.

Yeah, I think I said this few weeks ago, we're just gonna talk about it or we wanna talk about. And to me, there's no more pressing topic. It's not just about talking about politics. I know there are people who are like, I hear from them and see them all the time on the internet. They just wanna hear, they want you to stay in your lane and whatever, but this is the lane now.

This is reality, you know, this is life. I mean, my lane is not a survival. All this stuff is connected, man. It's all connected, you know. It doesn't fucking matter how great the new PlayStation is if we're living under a fascist dictatorship. You know, I don't fucking care. You can't abstract yourself from the reality that you're living in. You know? And I think it's important to balance these realities. Like that there is the stuff that we love and enjoy.

I want to, by the way, have a great, nice thing to talk about on this today later. But there's also the reality that we all live in and that we have to, we have to help construct. And I think a big part of that construction right now, a big part of that project is, is making a better, more peaceful, more calm existence for, by the way, for everybody, by the way, what we're talking about is like, we don't want war. We don't want injustice. We don't want bombings. Like what people are asking for right now

is not take the pain out on someone. It's not steal money from someone. It's not hurt, physically hurt someone. It's like we're asking for less violence. We're asking for more humane policing of the populace or even just a complete rethinking of the concept of what policing is. We're asking for people to have health care, right? We're talking about giving a asylum to people who are escaping places far worse than America and need our help.

We're talking about giving a pathway to immigrants who want to come to this country who maybe, you know, didn't have all of the opportunities to get here the quote unquote right way. Like the things we're talking about, we're not talking about trying to destroy white people in Ohio, right? I think people think that because of the fear that Republicans, the way Republicans have crafted their message, such an amazing message to all of the scared white people. I mean, what they've said is that it's zero sum. Anytime anybody else gets something, it's taken from you, which is not true. It's really like generally the opposite. And when other people get stuff, it benefits everyone.

Get stuff be meaning have human rights. Right, just like not be killed. Be get stuff, maybe continue to live and not be shot by the police for no fucking reason. But the way that Republicans have constructed that fantasy is they're here to take your stuff, to hurt you, to all this bullshit, all this bullshit that is not true, that is statistically, scientifically, provable.

I mean, if anybody, if any of those people paid attention to science, but I get it. It's like a great scary myth that's been constructed, but the reality is like what people are, what I feel like I'm fighting for and asking for every day and don't any money to and promoting messages about is like more peace, more life,

like more of the good stuff that makes like existence on the planet worthwhile, and less of the stuff that everybody hates. And it's like, I don't understand, like I just, it's like, I don't want to sound like a fucking hippie, but like, you know, I don't know. I mean, literally, the idea of progressivism

at its core is that like if there's a problem that our current society has, like homelessness, hunger, wealth inequality, no healthcare, murders by our, you know, the state on behalf of whims made by people who've six months training. Like the idea is that like, if that's a problem, let's get some people in a room and come up with something

else and try something else and keep iterating. So that eventually we can get to a place where everyone can be happy and healthy and innovate and we can see like the future. And that it's like bright and exciting. And we can go to Mars and we can, the promise of humanity can be like fulfilled. Like, that's the central idea

and I don't, I really struggle with like what, at its core, bothers people about that. Like, how do people like, like outside, like when you put aside all the like, you know, us versus them and the like fucking ginned up hate and the, you know, God decided that this is the way that things should be like when you just fundamentally say like, should we try something new because one in five American children are malnourished? Yeah. Like can we try something? I don't understand

that they put impulse to be like, no, it's fine. It's just fear. What the fuck are you talking about? It's just fear. I mean, it's just fear. It is fear that gets turned into hate, which is born out of ignorance. I mean, it's very simple. And it's like, it's the tool that people in power, you know, really bad people in power

use to get more of what they want, which is, you know is money and power. It's like really straightforward, but it's also really hard to break the cycle of it. And hopefully, I mean, I hope we're getting somewhere, you know, I believe that we can get somewhere. I do think it starts with, I do think like, I do think like there is something revolutionary happening. I really hope that we don't stop. I hope that people don't stop from now, obviously through November, which is where we've got

like an extremely important election with obviously a lot of trade-offs to be made, but we've got a fucking get rid of Trump. Like that just has to be the place where some of this starts, where we need to just have a figurehead that isn't all about all of the absolute wrong ideas. But like, I think that I hope that what people are doing now continues beyond the election, whoever, I mean, God willing, even with a Democrat in the White House

Because it's still gonna you're still gonna need to push those people to the left way to the left and I Need to push into the left is even the wrong way to describe it I think like this idea of left and right demanding sanity or like demanding accountability is the way that I'm trying to think about it It is like I am demanding that you don't is the way that I'm trying to think about it is. Like, I am demanding that you don't capitulate to oil companies because they donated to your super PAC. I'm demanding that you take climate change seriously because it's the same thing to do right now.

Like, that's the only option in any kind of like mentally sound thought through situate. Like, the only option is to be like, we have to find a solution. These are the climate change because we're all gonna die. I think that we need to, if there's a great rebrand that could happen,

it would be this idea of left and right. And it's like, there needs to be like a fact-based, science-based, humanity-based way of thinking about things. And then to look at everything in relief of that, everything in relief of that, right? Meaning, if it's not about helping humanity, you know, helping people, you know, the population, find work, keep work, feed their families, house their families, live in a healthy way, get the healthcare they need, live on a planet

that is healing and not being destroyed. And then there's the alternate, right? I understand this is all like degrees of specificity, but like they're the alternate version. The other side of that is like it's more about serving corporations and serving, uh, fucking the pursuit of, of capital, you know, generating capital for a very small percentage of people. Like we need to stop thinking about this as a partisan issue. The, the, the, the shit that the people want who are white people, blue collar, white people in Ohio, and people who live in coastal cities.

I mean, they're largely the same thing. They're very simple. And I'm not saying that like, can we all just get along or whatever? I am saying that like there is just like pursuits that serve the, your, your, your, the people in power and there's pursuits that serve people. And we need to start to separate those out

and talk about them less as partisan goals and more about fucking goals of humanity. Like, are you for, like, an improvement in the lives of the population? Are you for an improvement in the lives of the people in power? And that should really be the defining question of our age. Yeah, like what's more important to you,

having a power fantasy where you get to protect yourself into Trump and say like, yeah, he's white and he fucking loves being white, non-white. So I like that he's fucking doing all this shit. Like is that instinct, that feeling that you get, more important than like, again, one in five children in America is malnourished. Like we have to decide that like one of those things is a totally acceptable, like, in fact, encouraged belief and the other one is insane

and weird and that we're not going gonna sit around and take it seriously anymore. I don't know why like, I feel like there's this whole section of, I mean, beyond the New York Time op-ed page, there's this whole section of people who are like, we need to take the all right seriously, we need to listen to their ideas. And it's like, and that has existed like the intellectual dark web, Joe Rogan's whole like, let me just hear them out thing. Like, no, we don't have to do that We do not have to listen to people explain why they think all Mexican people should die or all gay people should be tortured Look I mean

What it's like I don't have to listen to that no no It's definitely there is a point where the argument is if the argument is like I mean a What we're talking around by right by right but let me just throw this in there before you say what we're gonna say, what we're talking about is fundamentally the problems going on at Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg right now. And you did write an amazing piece about how Mark needs to quit.

Yeah, he should quit. He fucking sucks ass and he's completely ill-equipped to deal with what's going on in his platform. But like, yeah, like, you know, I get, like, it's cool, like, you can just, like, the internet has a platform for all opinions. You know, if I was in charge of a platform, I would want the best opinions,

and I would seek them, I would seek at them out hard, and I would be like, if it's even looks a little bit like a Holocaust denier, if it even looks a little bit like a person who's like gay people shouldn't exist, like, I don't need that on my platform. You can go start your own website. You can go on to someone else's platform. You can go on fucking gab, AI, or whatever, and try to spew your shit. But like, yeah, the idea that, the idea that all opinions are good and equal. Now I understand the argument, by the way, a lot of these so-called intellectuals and their arguments are really not intellectual,

are like, it's wrong. I can't believe, look at all these liberals and these progressives and these left-wing people trying to, free speech and silence the open exchange of ideas by saying that we shouldn't be able to confront and think about and talk about Tom Cotton's editorial about sending the troops into the streets. It's like, no, dude, Tom Cotton should absolutely be able to write his thing about sending in the troops, which he did on Twitter, which would be gladly published by garbage piles like the daily color, or probably the Wall Street Journal. But it doesn't have to exist in the New York Times. And that's the same point that we're making about Facebook is that there are platforms for all sorts of shit that you can find. If you want to, the daily stormers probably still hosted somewhere, you know, I'm not going

to say the daily stormers shouldn't exist on the internet. Like I can't control every website on the internet. All right. There are plenty of things that I feel personally. No, I think that people should be allowed to in their own homes, say whatever racist, horrible shit they want to say into their mirrors, but when you go in public and start making Threats and using slurs which isn't currently a threat Loudly and publicly. It's okay to ask you to leave like right? You're not entitled to coming into every space and saying that I should die

Right, you don't get to sit in a restaurant saying race a shit and continue to sit there and eat. And nine times out of 10, I would imagine you're asked to leave. You want to go in this street and yell that and whatever, we'll decide if what you're saying is a threat. And threats are not like free speech is not, you're not entitled to be heard all the time. But even, but even, right, but even beyond the concept of free speech, there's a question about you, can you say it? Yes. Are you, are you, are you, are you gifted a platform on which to say it? No, no, it doesn't fucking matter how big the platform is. It's a pride, Facebook continues to be a privately owned and operated company. They can literally do whatever they want in terms of what

is acceptable speech on their platform. And there is no law in the country that can force them unless we want to basically end the first amendment. Okay. There is no law in the country that can stop them from making a decision about what they will and won't allow on their privately owned and paid for platform. Okay. It's a bookstore. No one will force you to put mind-conf on the shelves. on their privately owned and paid for platform. Okay, it's a bookstore. No one will force you to put mind-conf on the shelves. There's no law that forces that you could take it the fuck, you could take them to court. You say, I published a novel

about how all black people should be killed and I want it sold at every bookstore. Take the bookstore as the court. It's not there, it's not within your rights to demand that your book is sold at those stores, okay? And that is the only thing that I need to, I need Mark Zuckerberg and everybody else in these platforms to think about.

And it is the only thing the New York Times needs to think about when it makes decisions about what it publishes because talking about like an open exchange of ideas, great, talking about basically endorsing the ideas by giving them the gravity of your pages is a different thing altogether. The ideas are already out there. They're well known. They're well documented. They have been, they are platformed all over the place. The question is, what a New York Times decides to do or what a Zuckerberg and Facebook decides to do when it's their turn to make a decision about what is good for their platform or bad for it,

and what their platform gives credence to and gives promotion to versus what it doesn't. And so it's not hard to me, it's not hard. You know, it's like there are probably some edge cases. There are probably some things that do veer into actual debate. I'm sure there may be, you may be able to say, well, the theories say the whole, there were six million peeps, six million Jews died in the Holocaust. And I have a, a theory that I've been working on as a historian that it was actually four million. Like, okay, you're probably fucking wrong and you're probably a racist. But I will allow that you're not denying that it happened. You're saying maybe you have some new information that's going to change our framing of it. Like, there are probably gray areas like that. That's fine. I don't think we're talking about the gray areas.

I don't think we're talking about the, you know, when the looting starts, the shooting starts is not a fucking gray area. It's not everything is a slippery slope. Like you have, you do have to draw a line somewhere. And clearly they do because you can't put porn on their website. When a person, when a president says the Democrats are engaging in massive voter fraud or whatever, you can say, this is statement as false. It's known. It's a knowable thing. It's just, it comes down to I okay I have a theory that the entire government is run by magical elves who make cookies and I believe that if you don't put me on Television to talk about this then you're silencing my voice and my theory and in fact if Facebook doesn't promote my idea Alongside the other ideas you are not taking me seriously and you're strickting my speech and it's not fair. And like, that is absurd. And so, whatever fantasy you want to pedal, it is on you to like produce

evidence that makes this newsworthy. Because at the moment, you're just saying things that aren't true. You never produce any evidence that journalistically claims anything you're saying. And so, what bothers me is that like, you know, people stand up and they say, like, well, Facebook is the new town square. Even though, obviously, we don't want a private company to own the town square. Like, if the Facebook is the town square,

it should be state run, or it should be publicly owned. I think, yeah, I think that government should start its own social network. They should call it town square. And it should be anybody can say anything they want. Let's see how successful it is. I think that government should start its own social network. They should call town square. And it should be anybody could say anything they want. Let's see how successful it is. Let them moderate it.

Let them police it. If they want to have a publicly owned, globalized town square that is free of censorship that can make a claim that it is not a for-profit, private business. I mean, give it a shot. See how it goes. I'm open to it. I mean, I won't fucking use it, but that's just one man's opinion. Anyhow, listen, the point is Zuckerberg has shit for brains, and he should quit Facebook immediately and let somebody who

has a much deeper understanding of history and humanity and has empathy and can process information, not like a robot, that person should be in charge of Facebook. That's my recommendation. My official recommendation. Well, I mean, I think the most egregious thing about all of that, and then let's end on this, is that, you know, Zuckerberg and his wife paid hundreds of scientists to do a private study of whether or not allowing hate speech and violence speech on Facebook is actually harmful. And whether Facebook is pushing people towards extremism and the scientists

unequivocally said that it is. And they penned an open letter begging Facebook and specifically Mark Zuckerberg to change their mind on this because it was doing unimaginable amount of harm to society and Mark Zuckerberg's response was, agree to disagree. They were on his payroll. So like, I think let's just like leave it there

because I think like at that point, at that point, like, there's no reasoning. There's no amount of arguing that I don't really know the way out of this besides people don't use the service anymore or somebody steps in. I don't know how we get. I mean, the best thing, you know what I say this with Instagram open in the background while we're talking, but the best thing we can do is to abandon. I don't think we can all,

frankly, I don't think it's feasible or reasonable to say to people, just quit Facebook, because for some people, it really is the only way they can connect with certain people in their lives or with certain services they need to use. I mean, it's very hard to say to put the onus on all the users to say, you do better and don't force this company

to take any responsibility. But I do think like lessening the amount of time and lessening the amount of focus we give to it can go over the world. But if there is a private service that we can't avoid using, that like so many people have to use, and we've decided it's so central that we need to, you know, it should adopt the tenants of a government. Maybe we should break that business up.

Like a Facebook is so integral to every part of the internet. Maybe it shouldn't exist. There's no question that we need to regulate these companies. We need to regulate Facebook. We need to regulate Facebook We need to regulate Apple around its app store policies which are absolutely horrendous. Oh my god that this week I can't even I mean Facebook is Facebook is too Fucking big it should not own WhatsApp. It should not own Instagram. Those should not be integrated services It should have to

separate parts of its business. Potentially, should Facebook's newsfeed be an integrated part of its core business, of photosharing and messaging and, and, and fucking video, you know, promotion and whatever the other shit as a Facebook does, I don't know. You know, should it also be a news source? Like, I'm not really sure. Should Facebook be engaging in the publication of news? Should it take political advertising? Should it not label things that are known falsehoods?

Like, it needs regulation by intelligent regulators who know what's going on. Yeah, there are multiple companies and I think we all know which ones we're talking about, like Amazon's, Apple's, Facebook, that it is so great that we have a country where such innovation could exist. And we also have a country that had to break up steel monopolies and had to break up telecommunication monopolies and had to break up. And that is what has enabled things like Facebook to exist. Facebook would not exist if AT&T was allowed to own all telecommunications in this country.

Facebook would not exist. We broke them up. And yes, they reformed slowly over time and that is inherently a problem. But we just need to re-break them up. Like this is a process of whack-a-mole that we're gonna have to do if we've decided that we want a free market economy.

And, like, you know, I don't understand, like, I don't understand why that's like, that's not a radical thought. That was totally conventional wisdom for a century of business in this country. Like, and honestly, for the entirety of modernity. So I mean, and honestly, we should probably talk about the PS5 because I think, you know, that's another market where like game consoles, I get it that there's a lot of competition in gaming. Like there's a lot

of different ways you can play games. You can play games on a computer. You can play it on your phone. You can use a streaming service. But the actual console business is like a triopoly. And even if you're think of Nintendo as being part of that, which it kind of isn't like they're in their own lane for the most part, it's interesting that Sony is this one global company that pretty much dictates what happens in video games.

Like, we're getting closer and closer to that because Microsoft has no presence in Asia. They've got barely a foothold in Europe. And, well, what about Nintendo Switch? But that's handheld. Like, that's a handheld, like, I mean, that's a different lane. It's a little less pressing.

I'll be honest with you. I'm a little less worried about that that I am with Facebook. Gaming is the biggest money making entertainment medium in the world. And it is a way that people spend obsessive amounts of time. And I do think that like we should get concerned about stuff like that. Now, rather than when Sony keeps-

Well, we should have VR. We should have a governing body that keeps, that has tech regulation as a active and thoughtful part of its existence, which we currently don't have. We don't have any kind of seemingly, any kind of sanity around these topics within our current government. So hopefully as we progress to whatever the next stage of existence, you know, as we get closer and closer to

reuniting with Zeno, we will figure out how to actually regulate these fucking businesses. Now, on that point, on that note, I really, we gotta wrap this up. Unfortunately, I did wanna talk about the PlayStation. We'll give him some more. I'm so into thoughts. Some quick thoughts. I don't know. Here's my main prevailing thought

on all of the new console stuff, which is like, I think one, I think the PlayStation 5 design is like, not attractive and also inefficient for what it actually does. I think that most technology like that, what the box looks like is so deeply secondary to what it needs to do.

I think that Microsoft took the right approach in making something that's basically innocuous. I think, unless you have a truly beautiful, here's the thing, I think it's possible to design a game system that looks truly amazing, but Sony did not do that. They designed like sort of a half-assed, like it's different, but not really good sort of thing. So I think from a physical perspective,

I'm looking at it going like, I really don't wanna show this off. It looks awkward to put in various places. It doesn't jump over, leap over that sort of like presentation level that it needed to go to to get to like, wow, this is truly like a talking point in a work of art. It is not that. If they wanted to make it that they needed some much better industrial designers on the case. I think Microsoft's approach to industrial design in this case is right on, which is like, kind of make it disappear. And I believe in the next 10 years, what is going to

happen is the box is going to largely disappear from console gaming. And I believe in the next 10 years, what is going to happen is the box is going to largely disappear from console gaming. And it is going to be about a very small box that is like largely like a hard drive and some really, really fucking great internet components and some other pieces of like much more minor equipment to like bring a stream in appropriately, but that's like any higher bandwidth future. But I think like so just on a physical level Underwhelmed for sure the games they showed off for They're sort of like these are our launch titles or these are our like you know ps5 like exclusive titles I largely underwhelming to me. Obviously I'm excited about horizon Zero Dawn sequel. I'm excited. I was sort of anticipating and was going to be excited about the new resident evil. I felt the trailer was like

did nothing for me. I'd seems like not very good or interesting from at a first glance. Like I'm not really into like the resident evil franchise being like this weird gothic like like European gothic story. like even though Resident Evil 4 is really good, and it was kind of this crazy departure, but it needed to take a crazy departure at that moment. I don't really feel like, I feel like that's also a place where it kind of lost its plot, and I plan to the two and three remakes kind of bring me back to what was so great about the original Resident Evil games, which is like the settings of those stories. So anyhow, I actually was much more impressed with what I saw from the Xbox launch titles

than the series X launch titles than with the PS5, but I'm sure it's gonna be, I'm sure they both gonna be great. But here's my central question. And now I'm rambling a little bit. But my central question is like, I built a pretty decent game PC. I think I can make it even better with a with a better GPU which would cost me you know I'm not insignificant amount of money, but like I've already sunk costs into it. I'm constantly playing that

Instead of my PS4 now and in fact if I could like Take all of my PS4 games and like put them on my PC and have my save states and everything be where they were I would probably never touch the PS4 again or the Xbox. I haven't turned my Xbox on in like a year probably. And which is like sad, but like, I just stop playing it. And I think this is sort of what's happened. It's like I kind of like switch from playing the Xbox to the PS4 for some reason I can't remember exactly why.

And now I've moved from that to the PC. And it's like, I think the PC performance and optionality and game selection is just so much more interesting and exciting. My big thing is like, does it even make sense? At this point, obviously the exclusive titles are gonna be the hook, but like, how much better performance am I gonna get

from the PS5 or the Xbox Series X than my PC? Where are the trade-offs? What really is like, I really want to know how much better it's going to be. And I think until we actually are living that, at that point where you're playing it, it's impossible to know. One thing I'll say is like everything that they've shown about the PS5 and the Xbox around loading times is a huge deal to me. And I think that is going to massively change

the way people develop games. And that could be the thing that really separates PC gaming from console gaming right now, is that like crazy throughput they have in terms of data. And the fact that you could hypothetically make a game that is infinite in size, because it's able to load new content so quickly that it's seamless.

So that's like pretty exciting. Anyhow, it's seamless. So that's pretty exciting. Anyhow, that's my ramble on the PS5. I agree with everything you just said. Wow, wow, incredible. All right, should we wrap up? Yeah, sure, let's do nice things. Let's do nice things. I started to explore things beyond my typical hobbies, building a PC or doing this podcast.

I just got this woodworking book, this huge, it's considered the bible of woodworking. I've started to put together a list on Amazon of woodworking equipment, which is I now realize, men are, I mean, this is very manly things, like woodworking is this a traditionally like a guy alone in his workshop. But it's definitely like, there's something wrong with men, at least like my generation of men,

where we're always like tinkering with shit. You know, like always like looking for some fit project. And I will say there is something about, like I feel this tremendous desire to like make something or build something or like do something that's like you know isn't like life isn't like out here in the world is something else. Anyhow so like the idea of like building things out of wood actually this is born out of my PC thing which is like I've been looking for cases for my PC.

I hate, I don't hate the one that I bought, but it's like, is this whatever, it's a fine box, but I don't love it. And I was like, God, it'd be great if there was like a really beautiful sort of like around this PlayStation conversation. I'd be like, it'd be great if there was like a really beautiful piece of like, design that I could put my PC into. And you look at all these cases,

there's some nice modern ones that are like sleek and console size and whatever, but they're all sort of like, they look like really techy. And I was like, maybe I could build one. And then I started to research it and I was like, oh, actually, I maybe could build one. And it's like, so I started getting this idea that I would build a wood case,

wood and copper case for my PC, which I may actually try to do. Then I started looking into woodworking, and then I got into this whole rabbit hole of the concept of it. Now I'm just sort of starting to think about what I haven't done in a while, exploring a new hobby and truly investing time and effort into it, to build some things with my hands, which I think would be very satisfying. And so I'm kind of excited about that. I feel like I've started on a path towards something that could be very satisfying

and very fulfilling. As you know, I'm a huge interior design and furniture nerd. I think there's stuff there that I wanna explore just from a design and materials perspective that can be really interesting. And so yeah, I'm like, I'm embarking on a new hobby,

and I'm very excited about it. Love it. Yeah. You had a nice thing? Yeah, so I'm gonna write about this, and so keep an eye out because I have a lot more thoughts than what I can put here, but I picked up a book on Kindle because I upgraded my,

I know there are open e-readers, but I just wanted the Kindle Oasis, don't judge me. And so I upgraded to that and it's really nice. And Fuck Jeff Bezos break that company up, but they made a nice little gadget. And so I picked up a few books, but one of the ones that I picked up is called Code, the Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software,

developer best practices. Is the Oasis the waterproof one? Yes. Yeah, I was just talking about this the lower I was thinking about getting one of this. Yeah, reading in the back. Yeah, these are fucking expensive. Holy shit.

Yeah, and then you got to pay to get the ads off of it. That's the whole thing. Oh my God. I know. But you can trade in an old Kindle and get a really significant discount. Yeah, you got a pretty significant discount. Oh, okay. So it's by this guy Charles Petzold who wrote this book. It's from like 2000. Basically, it is about code. But it's about like I understand, obviously, I'm like, I understand how to code things. I do understand that, like, you type this in and then the computer does this and you have

to build a system of logic, like, I get it. But I never really fully understood, like, conceptually, I could explain with metaphors how a microprocessor works, or I could tell you, like, all the parts of a computer and why they're there and what they do, but I couldn't tell you like literally how they work. Like on an atomic scale, what is happening? Or like literally the architecture of a processor. I know the difference between different architectures and I know the effects of having a different kind of architecture, but I couldn't tell you fundamentally like I can't picture it in

my mind. And it felt like this giant thing that I was missing that other people understood and it gave them an ability to understand technology and the space that we're in in a way that I wasn't. And so I picked up this book being like, you know, I'm probably going to get two chapters in and then get confused and frustrated and bored and then move on. But it's in fact so captivating. know, I'm probably going to get two chapters in and then get confused and frustrated and bored and then move on. But it's in fact so captivating. So in this book, he starts off talking about basically like, what if you were in your bedroom as a kid and across the street was your other friend in their bedroom and it was nighttime and you guys still wanted to talk, how could you do it?

Just like what's the most basic way a kid could get a message across? Like, one of the easiest possibilities would be like you have flashlight. Every kid is a flashlight. And so what do you have if you have a flashlight? You have the ability to turn on or off. And basically you have that binary choice. How can from that binary decision, could you basically create a way of talking to someone in a way that was like like low, the frictionless. And so it goes from like this flashlight thing

to how would you build a telegram and just like the lights would turn on and off in their room and you wouldn't have to be sitting at the window. And how could you build a system that would auto translate that? And basically it goes from flashlights to the British invasion to like actually how code breakers broke codes and then eventually how computers understand things even though they're based on ones and zeros like a binary system.

And it basically explains how like, because that is the smallest amount of information you can get, which is like a yes or a no, you can then use yes and no to build everything else out. And I never really knew how we got there or like how that happened. I just knew it was possible. And I now understand binary math

and I understand a whole bunch of things And I now understand binary math and I understand a whole bunch of things that I probably should have learned in high school, frankly, or college. And this book is, I have to say, completely approachable, probably great if you have a nerdy teenager in your life. I wish I had learned it when my mind was more malleable because I probably wouldn't have to reread certain chapters. But it was, it's fascinating. It's super interesting. It's changed the way that I think about like what my abilities are. And like, you know, like I think like in another life, had I been given this information earlier and like able to do what I wanted in college, I maybe

could have gone into like a STEM field. Because when it's explained on your level and someone takes the time to make sure that you fully understand the concepts and doesn't condescend to you, it makes a huge difference. And as someone with ADHD, it's really hard for me to learn things in the traditional setting.

And so this has just opened something up for me. And it's reopened my mind to the idea that there's a lot left to learn. Like I always felt like I was incidentally learning by like watching a Netflix series about a topic I didn't know about or, you know, I read this nonfiction book because I was by a guy I liked and then I ended up learning about some topic

that he was interested in. And like I felt like I was just picking up information my whole life, but I never like purposely was like, I want to learn this and set down other than like a couple times I tried to learn a language because I was traveling. I never like set down and was like I want to know something and from the inside out completely educate myself on a topic that isn't like essential to my day to day life and it feels really good

and it in fact has made me like a better person in other respects. So anyway I'm going on and on but I really love this. Wow you are really you really are going on about this but I will love this work. Wow, you are really, you really are going on about this. But I will say you've made me very curious about it. I can't wait to read what you're going to write about it. And I actually feel very similarly that I, there are concepts that even though I've like talked about and written about and you know, thought about the stuff for a long, long time, almost my entire life, there are elements of it that I feel, you know,

I'm still, I still don't fully grasp, you know, I still don't fully get. And anyhow, I think it's, I think it's a fascinating way to come at it. It's really interesting. Like, we all use computers all day long. We should know how they work, you know? Yes, I agree. All right, we got to wrap up. Okay. It was great talking to you again. We're gonna be back next week stronger than ever. Tony. We're here for you We'll never let you down, probably, with more tomorrow. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best. And I'm so happy to report that your entire family has gotten into woodworking. They've crafted a beautiful boat and their requests that you get on the boat and sail away far away from them for reasons that I don't

fully understand, but hey, families, am I right? on the boat and sail away far away from them for reasons that I don't fully understand but hey, families, am I right?