25: The Breakout Viral Podcast of the Year

Welcome, Brian. Number 25. My God, that's a long time. Yeah. Remember when you were 25? Remember when that seemed like a big deal, that age? I was driving to Los Angeles when I was 25 to

start my career in the web industries. Exciting stuff. I don't even remember where I was, but it's funny because I have a bunch of kind of younger, I wouldn't say Facebook friends. We all know what that means. And this whole year, I guess a lot of them have turned 25, which is kind of weird. So that's a lot of that little, oh, we hit the half century, blah, blah, blah, or quarter century. Quarter century. Apparently they can't do math at 25 anymore. Well, I mean, most 25-year-olds

can't anymore these days, you know. So have you been playing with the Circa app? I've been using it off and on. Now, I personally, the feature I was most excited about was the follow-up stuff. And maybe I just didn't, I'm not interested in very interesting stories or something because all the stories that I had tagged, and not very many, I haven't seen a single update yet on any story I tagged. You must be picking dead stories because I get updates

all day long. So far, it's the only problem I've had with it, and this is something, I don't know if it's an iOS 7 bug, but it definitely hangs and crashes a lot. I haven't seen that. It hasn't crashed for me. But I mean, Wall Street year-end bonus story, link spam on Facebook, Mars One mission. You'd think there'd be some updates on those since, what did I do this, August 28th? Nothing. Anyways, whatever. I still, I like the app. I like how it lays out stuff. What

I've really discovered about it is that I just do not read news on my phone. I can't, if these guys had the iPad app, I'd probably use that all the time sitting on my couch. But I'm just not big on reading, trying to read serious stuff on my phone. My phone is basically, well, I wouldn't say it's for phone calls. I never do phone calls. It's for texting. It's for checking my email and, you know, playing stupid apps and tracking my movements. That's about it. I just never sit down and read

news on my phone. I've found that I don't use it that much. But when I do, it's still good. So I still recommend it. And I just brought it up because you said you weren't getting any updates. And I have found that to be completely opposite. I do get updates, not every day, but like every other day, I'll get a few. So it works. It definitely works.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll just have to, I'll go through it again today and pick some stories that I know should get some updates. And just because I'd like to even see what it looks like when it happens. And I can't believe I haven't yet. So yeah, I can turn on notifications for it. Okay. I do have one other thing that I said last week about the iOS seven updates, the, the app updates, how they were, how it was so fantastic that it was automatic. Yeah. Well, I finally I got the

golden master, which sounds like a porn video. But it's, it sounds very German. It, it turns off automatic updates by default. So a pro tip, uh, when you get iOS seven, which everybody should be getting next week, I'm assuming it comes out. Yeah. Uh, just pop under settings and then iTunes and app store. And then under the automatic download section, there's just a little toggle switches.

So make sure that the update slider is set to green and you're golden and the trap is clean. Yes, exactly. Excellent. Oh man. I'm my, I'm my jaw hurts right now. I saw, um, I saw the world's end jokes, jokes, jokes, jokes. I saw the world's end, which is, which is the new, uh, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost movie directed by directed by the ever talented Edgar Wright, which is, you know, the third and final

film of the Cornetto trilogy. I have not seen it yet, but I'm beyond looking forward to it. So you are a Shaun of the dead and hot fuzz fan. I am a huge fan of both those movies. Uh, hot fuzz, not as much as Shaun of the dead. Shaun of the dead is probably one of my, one of my favorite go-to movies of all time. In fact, I actually kind of use it as a litmus test with, with friends or people I've met. Uh, if you saw Shaun of the dead and didn't think it was great, I'm not going to get on with you. Yeah. Yeah. Same here. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've seen that movie at least 75 times

because I used to just put it on in the background and let it play while I worked. Yeah. And it is hands down one of my all time favorite movies. It's, it's right up there at the top. It's amazing. Yeah. Hot fuzz. I kind of had the same thing. I went into it and it was just so different from Shaun of the dead that it took me a while, but like I, on my third viewing, it all clicked and I love it.

I love the movie, but I have to say world's end. I look, it's going to be a hard one. I have to see it again because I laughed a hell of a lot more than I did at Shaun of the dead. Really? I thought it was, I, it was as good if not better than Shaun of the dead. Excellent. Well, I can't wait to see it. I mean, I do think it probably would be more appropriate because from what I've read about it and not doing any spoilers, it's just more kind of like, it definitely hits our kind of age group there and

the whole like midlife crisis, see kind of like now, you know, we're older and we've done just about all this stuff and what's happening with our lives sort of thing. Oh yes. The Simon Pegg character. I, I really, unfortunately, uh, he resonated with me a lot. Yeah. I heard that's not supposed to be a very good thing. No, it is not. And, uh, but it was, it's, I, I, I don't want, I definitely don't want to give

any spoilers. So I'm just going to say, go see it for sure. And if you haven't seen Shaun of the dead or hot fuzz, which shame on you, if you haven't shame on you, indeed, you shouldn't even be listening to us. Um, yeah, I mean, Shaun of the dead, it's one of those ones where like every time I'm on a plane and it's, it's one of the movies available, no brainer. I just put it on and watch it again. The single best scene of all time is when he's trying to decide which records to throw at the zombies and which ones to keep as a, you know, it's a huge music fan. It just, it slays me every single time. Great movies. Uh, can't wait to see the new

one. So I'm glad to hear that, uh, you give it such a good review. So I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Hands down. And I'm trying to think what other movie I saw this week that I want to talk about. Oh, now you see me. It's, it's making the rounds now on, I didn't see it in the theater. It wasn't a real big, you know, they didn't do a big press pusher and I just don't see that many movies in the theater. It takes something major like this to get me out. Yeah. But I caught it on pay-per-view and I got to say it was a fun popcorn

movie. I highly recommend it. Uh, I've, I've heard the name. I don't really know who's in it. Um, the kid that played Zuckerberg and the Facebook movie. Oh, right, right, right, right. Okay. I think I saw a trailer for it. So you liked it. Okay. I'll check it out. Yeah. I, it was fun. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's really stupid. Don't get me wrong. It's really stupid, but it's got Morgan Freeman in it. I'm down with Morgan Freeman. Um, and it's, it's about magic and con artists and stuff

like that. So it's, it, it does get a little wonky, but it's, it's fun. It just go in there, not expecting a whole hell of a lot and you'll come out smiling. Excellent. I'll have to watch that too. Uh, I have not seen any movies. I, wow. It's been a long time. Yeah. I, I hardly ever go to theaters either anymore. I don't know why that is. I mean, it's gotta be like, like you said, it's gotta be a big deal. It's gotta be a, and it has to be kind of a blockbuster too. I'm not going to go to a movie theater to watch, you know, two people talking philosophy anymore. Um, I guess

that's just the way we are now. We don't really do these mass culture things anymore. We're, we're all so insulated and it's so easy to watch a bit torn on our iPad. Why bother? Well, well, yeah, well, the theater experience has never been good. I mean, it's always suck. You got, you got people on their cell phones talking, you got popcorn, which smells like feet, which I cannot stand. I mean, the only place to ever see a movie is the arc light in Hollywood because you have assigned seating, you know where you're going to sit. You don't have to like get there and rush to get your seat. They kick people out for talking. Yeah. And

if you go on like the weekend evenings, you can bring your cocktail into the movie. I mean, there's, there's nothing better in the world. Cocktails are the vast improvement that has been made, but I would argue that the theater experience used to be good. It's, it's obviously changed a lot because we're now stuck in this me, me, me world where people have to pull out their phones and Facebook the movie that they're watching and they're talking and nobody shuts up and everybody just assumes that, you know, it's their world and the rest of us are just in the way. Yeah. I, I had a friend who used to bring a cell

phone jammer to, to movies, which was very nice, very nice. And you have to get there early though, because if you brought it in right when the movie was starting, then people would be looking at their phone when the movie started trying to figure out why their phone didn't work. But cell phone jammers, I think should be mandatory at movie theaters. Give it, give, if you're a doctor, give it to the front desk and say, come get me if somebody pages me and they need a spleen replaced or something. But otherwise, otherwise like, you know, suspension

of disbelief, get into it. Don't, don't like sever those ties with reality and just close your eyes and well, open your eyes. Kind of defeats the point of a fucking movie, but yes, that would. Oh damn. I was, I was trying not to swear this time. Oh no. Try, trying to, you know, be a little more family friendly, a little more family friendly. Did, did we get some bad feedback? No, no. I've just been hanging out with a bunch of people in the Midwest who

aren't as liberal with their sailorisms as we are on the West coast. Oh, okay. I would have figured there'd be more cussing. What do you know? No, it's actually quite, quite the opposite. I was very surprised. And it's not like these are, you know, teetotaling church going people. These are people who, people work at wineries and in, you know, like manual laborers, but they're just like, they're family people. So they, they tone it down and they're used to it. Yeah. I got to start doing that too. Actually, I realized that I'm just a, I'm

so used to my bubble of my particular group of friends and, and, you know, just kind of general lifestyle that when I'm actually around kids, I find myself slipping into things very easily. It's, it's a weird situation. Less cussing. Let's work on that. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Fuck yeah. You lose, you lose. Damn it. Oh man. Speaking of this. Oh wait, no, no, no. We got that for another, we'll talk about the Jimmy Kimmel thing in a little

bit. Oh yeah. I've got a lot to, a lot of comments on that actually. Oh man. Okay. That's all I got. That's all I got for followup. Yeah, me too. I haven't really, uh, followed up on anything else we've talked about. I think we actually, yeah, last show, it was the best feedback I've gotten pretty much from everybody. So nothing to really, uh, kind of follow up

with. So let's, uh, not, let's not. We're done. In the news. I've always kind of been known for kind of having kind of a very specific, uh, horrible memory. Um, I'm very good with faces. If I've seen you before, I will recognize you and know that I've, I've met you before, but I'm horrible at placing names to faces until I've met you a couple of times or, you know,

there's some kind of major reason why I should remember your name. Um, so I, I've, I've been really interested in kind of making my memory better recently. Um, as I mentioned in the past, I've been doing Lumosity and I've been doing that kind of daily and I've seen my memory scores go up and unfortunately I don't really meet a lot of people all the time anymore.

So I can't give you any update on progress if I'm a lot better or not. But I did see a story, uh, about memory and memory pinball, uh, is the title memory pinball and other reasons you need a nap. What kind of a sleeping habits do you have, Jason?

It depends. Uh, for the past two months, it's been terrible, right? And I'll, uh, I'll tell you what I'm doing to fix that shortly, but it, um, I know that I've read several studies that there is a correlation between sleep and memory because when you sleep is when memories are cemented from short to medium term to long term.

Yeah, this is definitely what this article is talking about. It's, it's definitely, these guys are kind of drooling down and finding out that memories are cemented during sleep and it's absolutely critical for your memory. And I know a lot of people that have this problem with faces and names. I'm, I'm one of them. And there are tricks that you can do when you meet people like, you know, when you shake their hands, say their name three times, that helps. It, it, it definitely helps me personally. I'm still not good at it, but I've had, I've had to meet a lot of, um, my

mom's new neighbors and, and I've tried that trick and it's worked. Um, so there's, there's definitely that try the, try the thing, shake their hand, look them in the eye and say their name like three times in a very short succession, just so it doesn't sound weird, but you know, work it in.

Yeah, I'll definitely have to give that a shot. And it's interesting because Lumosity does have a specific game that's, that's about facial recognition and name, name memory. So it's a, I've been doing that as well. Um, for me, the interesting thing about sleep is I'm actually a very, very good sleeper. I just don't sleep a lot and I'm starting to wonder if I need to up it because I generally will only sleep five to six hours a night.

It's solid, good sleep, but, uh, I don't think it's enough anymore. No, you need eight. You need, you need eight. I've, I've forced myself like when I hit 35, I really started to just, you know, clear my schedule, get eight hours. Um, I think you may have the same problem that I, I still have, even though I get that many hours, right?

You have a few drinks before you go to bed? Uh, some nights, uh, not always anymore though. I definitely have cut out the, uh, the need to booze it up before going to bed every night. So I can't place it all on it being like boozy, not hitting full REM sleep anymore. Yeah. Cause booze has definitely a, a major factor on quality of sleep.

Yeah. So, you know, if you can, if you can, if you can, if you can go to sleep sober and get eight hours, it will definitely help your memory. And if you're in, you know, like if you're, there's something that you need to remember, just review it beforehand and taking notes also helps like physically writing it down. You've got a moleskin, you, you physically handwrite things.

So that helps too. Yeah. Um, and you can also, when you meet new people, you know, write their name down in your little book when you sneak off to the corner of the party or whatnot and just write their name and like just a little note or token about them. Right. That's what that Evernote app.

Hello that I mentioned last show is supposed to be good for, but I just don't want to pull out my phone when I'm meeting somebody new and say, smile. And can I, can I, can I get your NSA profile, please? Exactly. Yeah. That's a bit weird. I'd love to see a study about the difference between actually physically writing things down versus typing them in. Um, I will send you a few.

Okay. We have some follow up for next week. Damn it. Yeah. I'll put some follow up in there. There's definitely, when you physically handwrite something down, it's creating, you know, stronger pathways towards memory than it is when you just sit there and type it. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. One, one point for the moleskin. Yeah, definitely. So in the speaking, speaking of the sleep things, like I said, I've been having some problems sleeping and I remembered like going through my, my limited amount of worldly possessions. I found this thing that Tim

Ferris recommended to me years ago when I told him I couldn't sleep right. It's a, this little box, this ridiculously expensive little white box called a, uh, Phillips go light blue. I remember when you bought this, I remember you telling me about it. So, so tell me more.

And basically what you do is, and God, gosh, darn it. I, I'm, I'm trying not to say basically anymore too. I listened to the last episode and I wanted to stab myself in the throat every time I said it. Um, it's a small box with a bunch of blue LEDs in it that simulate sunlight.

Right. And for a long time I used it at work. I'd have it next to my monitor and I'd go in and use it at work just because I was getting there very early. I was, I like to get to work at least an hour before everybody else. Cause I need my me time and it worked great because my office didn't have any windows. Right. I was in one of those black box offices across the hall from the people that had the nice windows. And it really helps at night, like getting

to sleep faster. Right. So I pulled it out. It's next to my computer. This morning was the first time because it just dawned on me when you sent me that article to, for this week's show. I was like, Oh man, I, I know I seen it recently. So I pulled it out. This morning was the first time I had it up for half an hour while I was reading the news and, you know, downloading illicit materials from the internet and, uh, it will, we'll see. I'm going to give it a week and next week I'll tell you if it's really helping or not. Yeah. I'm interested in

this. The thing that I find fascinating is that it's, it's the blue light, which we studies are telling us that we shouldn't be seeing before we go to sleep. No, no, you do not use this before you go to bed. Okay. You do it during the day. This will keep you up all night. You do it first thing in the morning. Cause I did see that there are some marketed ones that are out there that you're supposed to put by your bed, which I don't, all the studies I've read say that that's actually really bad. Um, yeah. Now this is having spent a lot of time, uh, especially in the last

six years on the East coast. I mean, I know a bunch of people up in Toronto that have basically, you know, sunlights for winter because it gets so dark and depressing and they swear that it helps with their mood. Not so much sleep. They never mentioned anything about that, but definitely like I get bummed out even here in California. If we have overcast for like four days in a row, I'm like, God damn, I need some fucking sun. So this is, uh, this is basically simulating that just kind of with blue light because I, you know, the, the sunlights that I saw in Toronto were these

kind of older things, ancient, weird looking pieces of crap, but this is a higher tech version and a higher price one. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can get it, uh, the link for Amazon that I'll put in the show notes, I think it's for 92 to $98 and they range to up to one 30. I've got the older versions or the newer ones have alarm clocks and stuff. And I don't need that because it's not, I don't like having clocks in my bedroom period. Clock clocks in general tend to freak me out.

I don't like knowing what time it is. Well, you should move to Vegas. No, no, no, no. I don't want to have cancer in two years. Oh, they have cut down on the smoking. But anyway, I did it this morning and I, I actually did it before I got my coffee to see what kind of change it would make. And I, I do remember this does wake me up. I need less coffee in the morning to get going. Right. It really does. And the crazy thing is when the light, when the blue light,

cause it's on a timer and when the blue light turns off, everything is bathed in this orange because your eyes counter compensate for it. And everything is this like awesome glowing orange. And I don't know. I, I do remember, I forget, I think I stopped using it because they, uh, threw somebody in my, in my office with me and I had to share an office and it annoyed them.

I'm pretty sure that was it because I was using it religiously for a long time. And I, it, it, it helps you get to sleep faster at night because that's one of my problems is I can't get to sleep fast at night and I stay up for two hours just staring at the ceiling with my own thoughts, wanting, wondering if I need a psychiatrist, psychologist, or a lobotomist at some point. But yeah, the few times I do have trouble sleeping, that's, that's the same thing.

I just kind of lay there and you can't stop, stop your mind going. So trapped in your own head. Exactly. That's when the booze does help. Yeah. I found a, I, I use my grandmother's a secret weapon for, for not being able to sleep, which is she would get up and do a shot of Jaeger. And then she said out like a light every time. So, and that was at like 92 years old. So go grandma. God, Jaeger. Oh, Hey, you know, German family. It's, it's, you know,

it's true. It's in the blood. It's in the blood. Uh, my, my other trick for like physical things, you just get up and take an ice shower. Like if I, if I was, if I had to get up the next morning and I couldn't fall asleep, just jump in for a 15 minute ice shower. Right. Oh man. Out like a light, slept like a baby up on time.

See, that sounds counterintuitive to me, but maybe I'll give it a shot next time. It works. It really works. I know Tim takes ice baths, but I don't have that kind of, you know, level of, uh, commitment to go out and get bags of ice to jump in the tub every night. Right. That's actually supposed to be really good for weight loss as well.

It is. It is. When I did that, that fast back in my teens, I would take a ice showers every day. Yeah. I actually, uh, I actually throw, um, I've got one of those, uh, strap on kind of ice pack thingies that you can put across like the flat, you know, your back and your shoulders. Cause so you hit the major muscles. And then I usually throw that on for 10 minutes after a workout. So cool. Little tips. Yeah. I just use this when the air conditioning

goes out in the Valley in California. Yeah. That's pretty brutal too. So another thing I saw this week was this a new site called oyster books.com, which is, which is, as they say, Netflix for books. Exactly. Or Spotify for books or whatever, you know, depending on what industry you want to go with. Uh, yeah. Great idea. Unlimited books for just nine 95 a month. They're in a kind of a closed beta right now. You have to get an invite. So I haven't, haven't been in yet,

but I saw, uh, I believe an Ars Technica article on it. Yeah. Um, yeah. I signed up for it to get into, um, you know, it's basically a library for your iPad, I suppose. Uh, currently it's only iPhone, which kind of sucks. Yeah. That's again, I'm not entirely sure why the, why they would go that route because I hate reading on my phone. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. I do prefer

my iPad mini, but if you have a, like an iPad three, which I think you do, um, you can up res an iPhone app to on an iPad three and it looks gorgeous. Oh, cool. Yeah. If you do the two X on an iPad three with a retina display, they've got, they've got enough processing mojo where pretty much any app looks gorgeous. I will definitely have to check that out then. Um, yeah, I mean, I'm excited about this, I guess I, I don't know. There's something old school in me that likes

ownership and that doesn't like paying monthly fees, um, for stuff that I may or may not ever use. I mean, I remember I had Netflix for like two or three years and I realized I wasn't using it at all and they're just siphoning money off me every month. So I quit it. Um, but books is something I tear through all the time and the nine 95 for me to be able to feel like I can get a book and get two chapters in and go, you know what? I'm just not digging this, but I didn't pay for it

really. So I'll just stop reading it is a nice feeling. Well, yeah, I mean, it, but you do spend, I mean, since you do spend more than nine 95 a month on it, I mean, you can't even get a single book on Kindle anymore. They jacked the price up over nine 95, nine 95 or nine or whatever it was. Sorry. Um, so it's worth it even if you get one book out of it per month. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I spent, I spent $30 a month on audible.com for two books. I think it's

absolutely fast, fantastic for consumers. I would love to see what they're, what, how they're paying back authors and publishing companies. I want to see rates and, uh, because I mean, that's the same problem I have with Spotify and audio. I mean, now I've got to push that for my, for music clients. And I think every musician needs to be on it because it's really the only game in town, but it's, uh, you know, I'm just seeing again and again, good things for consumers, bad things for content creators. Yeah. And I mean, Spotify for, for musicians is almost just like

promotion. Now it's not for money making. Yeah. You, I mean, most musicians have given up hope of ever making any money off of a, off their actual music anymore. I mean, unless you're, unless you're already a Gaga or a Bieber and you've got more money than God, then you'll keep making money. But if you're a small to middling musician, no, you're dead. And I, and you know, I think that this will see the same thing where Stephen King is making a good amount of money doing this sort of stuff, but up and coming young authors, nothing. Yeah. It's kind of, and they don't have the tour thing

to kind of make up for it. It's not like you're going to go see some guy read a book at Hollywood bowl and pay 35 bucks for it. Yeah, that's true. Cause yeah, musicians do have the tour on the back end. This is kind of a failure of the long tail. I think I agree. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, I think it's absolutely fantastic for consumers, but I think that we're just seeing this happen more and more and it's just, you can't, it's getting to be impossible to make a living being somebody that's a creator, which is, I guess how it used to be too. You know,

you would work in the fields and then come back home and play your loot. I don't know. I see, I mean, I see a lot of cottage industry authors coming out. They, they, they set their audience up, they get their audience online. They, they, you know, cultivate their audience. They have more contact with their audience and they don't sell as many books as, you know, Tom Clancy, but they sell enough books to make a living. You know, they make enough books to support themselves and their family. Well, that was like that, uh, Hugh Howey guy, the book wool that I talked about a couple episodes ago. I mean, he did that

himself. And I, I don't think that, I think he had a day job. I don't think he was just full-time writing, but he did eventually end up selling the movie rights, which I'm sure made him quite a lot of money. So yeah. And most, most of these cottage industries, you know, you start in the evenings and you work your way up to it and then you get to a point, you get to the inflection point where you can make the change. Yeah. This is, it's a common story. It's a common, it's a, one of the, you know, standard stories of the internet. It's the 10,000 point. You hit 10,000

followers and you can sustain yourself in theory. In theory, in theory. I think some of these guys have more and it depends on your price point of the product that you're selling. You know, if you're selling a 299 ebook, not as easy. If you're selling a $10 novella or novel, a little easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see what happens. I mean, I'm excited. I signed up for it. I'm definitely going to check it out when they finally actually let me. So this next one that just

fascinated me, it's a story in the Atlantic called what witchcraft is Facebook. It was, it's been kind of making the rounds, but I haven't seen it all over the place yet. It basically is talking about how social media is a factor in mass hysteria. Yeah. In psycho, in mass psychogenic illness and mass was it's a sociogenic illnesses, which is basically, you know, what, what was

the, what started the Salem witch trial. Yeah. And it's, it's a really interesting thing. I remember we went over the Salem witch trial specifically and in great detail way back when I was in college and went to my psychology classes. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of a thing that seems to hit more women than men. And, uh, basically it is just, it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop and Facebook definitely creates that.

Yeah. Cause then they figured it out from this one woman who there was a, there was an outbreak of it and it was all young teenage girls all in the same social circles. But this middle aged woman came down with it because she was following the, the story on Facebook and she had her own, and it comes from trauma, like past trauma that, and not dealing with the trauma. And it's, it's, I highly recommend reading the article because I'm not going to be able to do it justice. You're the psychology guy. So feel free to chime in on it.

Um, yeah, I mean, it basically, it's just saying, like I said, it's kind of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. It's, it's, it's built into our brain and, and our brains aren't really ready to handle the kind of influx and just mass amount of information that we're getting. And the fact that we can actually self-select and self-edit the information that comes to us. So, you know, if you're just sitting here and you're just reading the same kind of stories over and over and over again, it's bound to affect you and, and your world outlook and,

and basically cause this to kind of happen. And I mean, even thinking, thinking about it, there were all of the cases of, um, uh, not repetitive stress, uh, uh, shell shock. What's the new common word for shell shock? PTSD. Yeah. PTSD. After everybody was watching the, uh, news on nine 11, watching the planes go into the towers over and over and over again. And it, you know, it causes like nationwide case of PTSD. I mean, you remember the scene from Clockwork

Orange where they, you know, hold his eyeballs open together and just force him to keep watching things over and over again. We're doing that to ourselves now. We don't, we don't even need an overseer to do it. We, we self-select our news. We check in and, you know, and all the algorithms on these sites are built to help with that because the more you look and click in certain things, you'll start to be fed ads about that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's, uh, there's something to be said for having a wide breadth of information and knowledge and come things coming from different sources and completely different things coming into your

brain. Uh, when you do this to yourself, it's bound to cause some pretty fucked up things to happen to you. Yeah. And I think it, I think it's interesting. Uh, this, uh, professor at Yale, the Yale school of medicine, Steven Novella, he's, he said, uh, most people underestimate the ability of our brains to generate physical symptoms, which, you know, I, I totally know what it is from just years of incredible stress, what it can do to you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most, uh, I think most,

most illnesses and things, our brains are incredibly powerful. We can create and solve and fix most things. Not, I'm not going all Jenny McCarthy here. I mean, there's definitely physical things that happen and you need to do things, but, uh, never ever vaccinate your, vaccinate your damn kids. Yeah. Don't be stupid. Um, I actually, there was new stories about that. I was thinking about bringing it up. You said measles are starting to come back because people following Jenny McCarthy's stupid, idiotic beliefs. Well, you know what, you know what we call

that? Culling the herd. Self-selection. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, you know, this is scary stuff. And like I said, I just don't think our brains aren't ready to handle what we're doing to ourselves right now. The first thing I thought of when I saw the story was the, uh, basically the neuro, I said it again, damn it. The, uh, I'm going to smack myself every time I say it, even though it'll, it'll, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Um, the neuro

virus and snow crash, how they crafted a virus that was just a visual virus that got into the brains of programmers because programmers brains get hardwired in a certain way after so many years of coding, which I thought was genius when I first read it, because something definitely happens to your brain when you're programming. I turn into this logic machine. It's either, you know, on or off black or white, no gray area. There's, there's that speech at the beginning of, um, uh, antitrust

that he's talking about. You know, you're either a winner or loser. It's black or white. You're on or off or whatever. It just totally reminded me of that. And, and just thinking of these people are being physically affected by things that are happening. And by just reading things on the internet, it's like, oh, we're getting closer and closer to snow crash now. Well, it's, we're, we're wiring our brains literally as, as we do this and reinforcing the neurons that are being laid down. The more you see it, the more you see it, the more you see it, the stronger and stronger

it gets. I mean, I think because like you were saying, being a pro programmer just makes you become a logic machine and the years of programming that you and I have done, we probably, I find a, I find it very difficult to turn off that like black or white logic X, Y, Z in my real life, because we're just conditioned to think that way.

And that's, what's been an interesting experience being around people that aren't programmers for the past couple of months. Um, you know, just normal people and things aren't, things are ambiguous. There's gray in the world. There's a lot of gray in the world. Yes, there is. And, but you know, we, that's, I think we see that, you know, the Fox people who watch Fox News versus CNN, it's the same kind of thing. They become, this is why there's no middle ground

anymore. Even in politics, everybody is just conditioned Fox News. I'm so far on the right CNN. I'm a lefty, blah, blah, blah. There's no middle ground anymore. And, and we need that middle ground. We need that gray in our lives. Yeah, not, nothing is black and white. I don't know anybody. I've never met a single person that is either Republican or liberal. You know, there's always a mix and a mash, but we're getting way off topic. Yeah, we are. So anyways, I don't, I definitely don't want to talk politics. I have

not, I am. It's above my pay grade, but this is fan. I mean, I find this beyond interesting that, that this stuff is starting to happen. And I'm not surprised the more we, we are just living our lives on Facebook and just choosing certain viewpoints or certain stories and just going down the rabbit hole with them. And it does wire your brain. It changes things.

You know what I have to say about that? Choose life.

Hit style. Hit the balls. TechCrunch Disrupt was going on last week. Uh-huh. And, uh, I know this is the Kickstarter segment and this is kind of proto Kickstarter. So it's in, it's in the realm. It's in the realm. This is, uh, it's called Alert, which is a belt buckle, a wearable belt buckle. Well, of course it's a wearable.

It's a belt buckle. A levitating belt buckle that follows you around on its own jetpack. It, uh, warns you if your kids leave the yard. Okay. Uh-huh. Now, it, it, these people have to have a very small yard because in the, the description it says the device has a range of five to ten meters.

Yeah, didn't they have those little, uh, things that you could just hook on that had the rope? Yeah, the leash. It's a leash. Yeah, it's a leash. It's a digital leash. So, it, I mean, how big is your, it's a 30-foot range. Yeah. To start with. So I just want to talk about the logistics of it there.

Hey, you got a belt buckle on your kids who are going to probably break it in 20 minutes. Probably. Or they could just take it off. And do you want, like, batteries and Bluetooth radios around your kids' junk at that age? Actually, yeah, that's a good damn point. That's supposed to be super bad for your, for your balls.

Exactly. Well, I mean, you might have your, your girl balls in there, but I don't know. Still, it's... Girl balls? What kind of clubs are you going to? Oovaries. Jesus. Um, so they're going to Kickstarter it. Mm-hmm. There, it's this Mexican team, uh, Alberto Garcia and Tenoch Gonzalez, uh, from Mexico City.

Don't they got some bigger problems to solve down there? Yeah, I guess not. They're coming to San Francisco where everything is vapid and trite. So, uh, they're going for the vapid and trite VC round. Okay. And they're going to Kickstarter it. Now, here's the thing that gets me. They have a, they have a, uh, page up where you can, uh, a launch rock website. Uh-huh.

A launch rock is also one of those funny ones that kind of makes me chuckle. It's like, okay, we're going to start our company by giving you a one-page website and an email form. That's all launch rock is. And that's an actual startup. Right. Anyway. God damn. So, this is, it's a Bluetooth radio that you have an iPhone app for.

Right. Now, on their page that they're getting ready to start their Kickstarter for, um, it says, introducing Alerter, uh, Alerter is a, is the wireless safety rod. Okay. Yeah. Spare the rod, spoil the child. That allows you to locate your child anywhere instantaneously.

Within 30 meters. Or feet. It's, yeah, it's basically what you, what happens is you lose contact with your kid when they go out of range. Yeah. How are you going to be able to locate your child anywhere instantaneously? Well, yeah, there's that.

So, there's that. I'm also reading. Okay, go. There's another side to it. They have, they want to team with, so first they say you can, it's for your kid if he leaves the yard. Yes. But the second use case is if you're at the mall and the kid runs away, then all the stores in the mall are alerted when a kid runs away.

And then they can chime in that, hey, we've got your kid. Now, hey, if I, those, those zombies that work retail at the mall, I used to be one of them. I get an alert that somebody lost their kid. I'm like, good, maybe he's stuck in the escalator. Yeah, I'm not going to count, I'm not going to count on the, you know, 17-year-old girl working at the Piercing Pagoda to actually pay attention to this.

Yeah, it's, the whole thing is, is ridiculous and the grammar is terrible, but they're, they're from Mexico, so I give them a little. Well, yeah, there's, that's where I was about to go with this because the writing is ridiculous and even the concept. I mean, the, the follow-up paragraph on their one pager is about, about hide and seek.

Now we have to be worried about hide and seek. This feels like those, like, late night infomercials that make it seem impossible to make pasta unless you have their 9.95 bullshit thing. Oh, are you talking about the pot with the strainer lid? Yes. Have you ever had trouble making pasta and then all of a sudden they drop it and it goes all over the place and scalds grandma?

It's ridiculous. I got one of those at a yard sale for 99 cents. It was the best pot that I ever owned. I'm not kidding you. Okay. For making pasta, those things actually work. I'm just saying the commercials are ridiculous. And this is like, this is great. Little childs tend to play hide and seek everywhere, even in the mall when you're shopping.

We know that this innocent game could become the biggest scare for a parent when you suddenly stop seeing your little one. Fucking hide and seek. God damn it. We got to man it now. No, not anymore. With, alert her, discover where your child is, even if you can't see it.

It. It. I know. This is awesome. They really need a better writer. Oh, well. Good stuff. Another great Kickstarter soon. Now it's just a launch rock. Yeah. We're finding it before they even hit Kickstarter. That's how tapped in we are. Good stuff.

Well, speaking of TechCrunch. Yeah. Well, there was some good news. That was awesome. Yes. And I can only preface this by saying Tempest in a teapot. Because if you weren't in tech, you never heard of this and you didn't care. Yeah. And even if you were in tech and heard of it, you probably still didn't care.

I agree. Except, well, go ahead. Why don't you explain it? So, they have basically a hackathon. Yeah. I said, basically. I've been to the hackathon. That's where Ruinous Bastard came out of. My tweet bot that is supposed to ruin movies for your friends or your enemies.

These guys stayed up all night. Two Australian developers, Jethro and David. I didn't know they had Australians named Jethro. But now that I've seen the scope of the project, now I understand why we have Australian Jethro's. They came up with an app that was a joke.

It was a complete joke. They were never going to make the app, but it was called Tit Stare. Yes. Which is an app of pictures of dudes looking at girls' boobs. That was it. And the uproar over this was ridiculous. Everybody was screaming misogyny.

I know there is a definite gender imbalance in technology. There is. And things like this don't exactly help. Now, I agree with you that this is a lot of sound and fury over nothing, really. Except, you know, there are things that you do when you're – and I particularly love the term that they use for them, bro-grammers.

There are things that you do with your bros when you're sitting around at the bar and you're shooting the shit and your girlfriends aren't around and there's no chicks around and you make some horrible jokes. The thing is, you don't then take it to the masses. This isn't a bar idea that should have stayed at the bar and not been done as a presentation.

Yeah, absolutely. It was probably really funny when they were staying up all night drinking and having a good time. Oh, it was probably hilarious. But you don't get up on stage and say this. You just don't, especially in this field, especially when we're trying to encourage more women to get involved in tech.

Yes, it's just dumb and it's not a big deal. But still, it was incredibly stupid of them to go up and say this. Yeah, I'm just floored by the reaction. The reaction was just over the top. And TechCrunch was saved because a 9 or 11-year-old girl, I can't remember how old she was, basically stole the show with her app that she designed, developed by herself.

And I think a lot of the case was that these guys went up and there were a bunch of kids in the audience. And it's like, well, kids know people got boobs. And I don't know. I think, like I said, Tempest in the teapot, but it was one of those things that I just, it drives me crazy when people go overboard about stupid shit.

Because it was just stupid shit. We know that news does that. I mean, that's just, that's the reality of our age right now. We live in, it's not even a 24-hour news cycle anymore. It's just, we got to sell ads. We got to put things up. We need stories, stories, stories, stories. We got to manufacture outrage. Yeah, this never should have left the room.

It should have been like, oh, God, what a bunch of idiots. End of story. Yeah, the only thing that really got to me was the, like, 30 tweet in a row arguments that people were getting on. Like, I'd pop into Twitter after this, and that's how I found out about it, was these people just raging against the machine.

I was like, oh, geez. Guys, it wasn't, A, it wasn't very funny. No. You know, and B, all you're doing is giving them more press. Just let it go, shut up, and don't hire these guys. That's all you got to do. Yeah. Problem solved. Seriously. Oh, well.

At least they're not Kickstartering it. It's just going away. Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy. Oi, oi, oi. No, seriously? Are you shitting me? So, let's move on to a company that didn't even need to go to Kickstarter to get their ridiculously dumb fuck idea done.

Jason, you found this one. I know. We talk about the quantified self a lot, and this one is just over the top. Good. I love it. Okay. Tell us about it, Brian. Well, it's called Whistle. And actually, they got whistle.com, which, you know, being an old domain spotter like you were, probably didn't come cheap.

Well, they got the domain, and this is a hardware product. So, they've got backing. They've got a lot of money involved. And this is something I would expect to see on Kickstarter, but it is not. They have the money. Anyways, it's for your best friend. Your best friend? Your dog. Oh, I thought your wife was your best friend.

Oh, you'd be in the doghouse. Oh, clever. Yes, it is a Fitbit for a dog. I don't even know where to go. They've got pictures of these stoic pooches on their website with their Fitbit collar, or I'm sorry, whistle collar, and a beautiful iPhone app that is very – oh, it's even got a picture of the dog as the background with the statistics.

For Duke, they're laying down. He doesn't look like he's being very active lying on the couch right there. Pretty much tells you when they walk, when they play, when they rest, and what are their other activities. Oh, a quick swim or abnormal behavior in the night, and time together. Humping. So, I don't know if they've got a metric for that.

They should. You just track how quickly the leg moves, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Well, they wear it on the collar. Well, you can check in from your phone. You can share memorable moments with family and friends, and send detailed reports to your veterinarian. Okay. And it's got a 10-day battery life.

Not bad. Waterproof, so they can go swimming. Wireless sync via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. This is a fancy piece of equipment. It is. This is why the terrorists hate us. You dog. How much money has been sunk into this? We have cancer here, people.

We can't get a Fitbit that really works too great. Well, you like your Fitbit, but we can't get an app that works great for humans, but we've got to spend a lot of money to put these on our dogs. People are loving their pets way too much. I love pets. I love animals, but I kind of go humans first, even though I hate humans.

Oh, my God. This is a 20-person team. I know. I just looked at that. That's what's starting to – this is why the terrorists hate us. This is ridiculous. Every single one of you needs to go out and do something else with your life. Well, these people come from Amazon, AOL, Apple, Bane. I don't know – I know Bane from Batman, but Google, HP, Mike.

Oh, my God. This is like a dream team of product development, and they're making a Fitbit for a dog. And they made a Fitbit for a dog. This is what they came up with and are obviously getting a lot of money. And this is actually a nice little website too. I like how they designed it. Definitely no lack of money being spent here, so I think – Oh, my.

There's one that – a dude has a cat. A couple people have cats. Uh-oh. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe they're trying to sabotage the project. They're bringing the cats in. Dogs and cats living in harmony. I don't know what's happening anymore. Yeah. Oh, God.

This is crazy. This is absolutely insane. They'll fund anything nowadays. They will fund anything nowadays. Doesn't this just get to you back in the day when we were building things and trying to come up with stuff? And if you would have known that 20 years later, somebody would create a tracking device for a dog and make a ton of money doing it?

It still makes me a little sad. I probably just would have shot myself in the head. Okay. Well, can't I just get the whistle and put that on my kid instead of actually going and doing that one Kickstarter for the Mexican guys?

Yeah, seriously. And why aren't these people playing with their dogs? Why are they at work all day for 20 hours making something to know if Fido's running around the block? If Fido's running around the block and they're not there, they've got a bigger problem. That's true. They should be playing with their damn dogs. That's all I got to say.

I guarantee you they bring all their dogs to work, too. And I would hate to be in that office. No offense to people that have dogs. There are times and places for them. My restaurant, my supermarket, and my office space? No. Agreed. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers.

So to kind of circle back on the sleep thing, I want to talk – one of my favorite apps that was just a Mac app and finally got ported over to iOS a couple years ago. It wasn't too long after iOS started having apps, but it's called Pzzzz. And it's basically a sleep tracker.

Not a sleep tracker. See, when I say basically, I get thrown off. I can't help it. I'm trying. I'm trying. It makes you go to sleep. It's got bioral sounds and waves and a dude talking to you. It sounds so cheesy, and every time I play it for somebody, they're like, that is the stupidest thing I've ever seen until they try it.

And they're like, oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. It's a horrible name. Pzzzz. Pzzzz. They still have the Mac app. I think they have a PC version, and they've got a couple different iOS apps for sleeping, napping, energizing type of thing. Right.

They're really – the Mac app is expensive, but it generates a new program every time. So do the iOS apps. It takes a little bit to generate it. They're really good. If you have headphones on or speakers by your bed, it's – I mean, the bioral stuff is really good if you have speakers because it goes back and forth.

Yeah. The guy who does the voiceover stuff, they generate a new track every time, so it's not the same. And he's big into – he's like an NLP legend, which is neurolinguistic programming. Right. Which I still call bullshit on. But this guy puts me to sleep, so maybe I'm wrong.

Okay. It's one of my great sleep apps, for sure. What kind of music is it? Is it electronic? Is it, like, guitar-y? I mean, what's – No, it's very ethereal. Okay. So it's like putting on India. Kind of. Kind of. Okay. And it changes moods and tones, and it fades in and out, and it really just lulls you to sleep really fast.

And the Energizer one, the Energizer one is really good because it's built for, like, quick 20-minute naps or, like, 20- or 40-minute naps. You can set it for different lengths, but 20 is a good number because it's just right before REM, and that's like the – if you have a cup of coffee before you take an Energizer nap, that's when the caffeine hits you.

You get up, and you're ready to go. Yeah, okay. That one sounds more like a Tim Burton soundtrack, which I like. That's pretty cool. Like if any and Tim Burton had a kid that could play a synthesizer. Right. Well, I mean, this is – I mean, I've always used to listen to music to sleep, and it always helped.

I've kind of weaned myself off of it, and I don't need it anymore, but I used to, like, you know, throw in Brian Eno's music for airports or something like that. And if you want to give it a shot, there's – Brian Eno has actually created some really interesting apps for music creation. It's very ambient, and they actually have, like, automated modes where they just kind of – it's very ethereal, ambient, very boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, nice and relaxing.

And they'll create their own patterns and stuff like that. There's an app called Bloom and an app called Trope, both created by Brian Eno, both for your iPad or your iPhone, and really relaxing, interesting stuff. And you can actually play around with it and create your own music, too. Cool. Yeah, so just something you might want to try, too, if you want some nice, relaxing sounds as you're going to bid.

If I'm paying the money, I don't want to have to make it myself. Well, they do have, like I said, the Brian Eno apps. They're not real music creation, so I can't imagine anybody's ever actually done that. And they have automated modes. But it's also fun to just kind of play around with it because it's just, like, touch. Like, you make little cool colors, and the colors make different sounds, and they change over time, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, that sounds kind of nice. Yeah, they're actually fun to play with. So I'll actually throw that in the show notes so people can check out those apps. They're pretty cool. Yeah. I have heard that Brian Eno album. The Paziz stuff is very similar, I think. Yeah. Very cool. So they need to just tie that in with your Fitbit or something like that.

Or my whistle. Put my dog to sleep. Yes. Put your... Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Let's start a new ad called Paziz on a Fire Truck. And it'll be for dogs to sleep. No, I just... I don't want to tell anybody I'm putting my dog to sleep because that's a little different than having my dog go to sleep.

I just made that connection. Whoopsies. That's a completely different app. So you got something, don't you? I do. I just actually installed it, so I haven't been able to play around with it yet. So it's definitely something that I'll do some follow-up on. But as I've mentioned quite a few times, I'm a big biker.

I love biking. I go out, try to go out basically every single day and get a little bike ride in. And I'm not terribly mechanical. You know, as most of us who are programmers and computer guys, we don't really get into the gears and mechanics of things.

But we're software, not hardware. Yeah, we're software, not hardware. So don't take that wrong, ladies. We can be hardware, too. I know. It's way too much tea today. So there's an app called the Bike Doctor. It's a UK company. So that's going to be the interesting thing to check out is just to see if there's anything that's kind of weird with all metric stuff or whatever.

Wait, do they put the chain on the wrong side of the bike? No. That would be funny, though. So I just kind of got fed up with like every two to three weeks because I ride my bike so often. I basically need to go in and get a tune-up, and I want to figure out how to start doing this myself. I mean, I've got the basics of like changing a tire or a tube down, but I wanted to start learning more about this since I'm always on it.

And I'm tired of paying money and having to take my bike in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is basically just an app that is all about bikes and how to maintain them, how to change things, how to fix things when they break, what you should do, how often you should do it, all that sort of stuff.

And it looks really cool and just like compact, easy in one place. So we'll see how it goes. I'm going to check this out because I just took my bike out of storage and took it for – I had to take it in to get a flat tire fix. And they changed the flat tire. It was like $18. Yeah. Went for my first ride, got six miles down the trail, got off to take a picture, and I hear this – what sounds like a snake chasing after me.

And it was my tire just deflating like instantly. And I wasn't even on the bike. So now it's like instead of taking it back to that crappy shop, I'm going to take it back and say give me a free tube because you guys screwed something up. Well, that's the other thing too. It's like there's no – customer service just sucks now.

I mean you can get lucky. Like I'm really lucky that I have a couple really good bike shops in the area, and I know when I take it in, they actually take care of stuff and they do it right. But you're riding along. I'd rather do it myself and know I did it, and it's done correctly. Yeah, I definitely need to kind of get my bike chops down too because I have a great bike, and I'd love to ride it.

It's just taking it to the bike shop and waiting for it and getting the tune up because my bike falls out of tune pretty quick too. I think the cables are just too stretched or whatnot. So I'm going to check this out for sure. Yeah. I mean it looks really good. I mean it gets really deep into it. I mean talking about like replacing disc brakes and all that sort of stuff and things I just want to start being able to do myself.

Go to the store, get the parts, come back, and just that sense of pride of like, you know, I use computers every day. I know how to take them apart and replace things. I use my bike every day. I don't know how to do a damn thing on it, so it's time to learn. Yeah, it's good, and it's fun. Fun to do that stuff. Get hands on.

Yep. So I'll let you know how this goes. I'm going to check it out throughout the week. All right, cool. This week, false advertising. I avoid viral videos like the plague. Thankfully, the, you know, forwarded emails and all that sort of stuff that was the scourge about 10 years ago have stopped.

It's been replaced by Facebook, of course. Every time that there's, have you seen this video yet? I just roll my eyes and go, no, and I probably won't until it reaches like a critical space where I have to. So worst twerk fail ever video that was doing the rounds, what, started about two weeks ago, Jason?

I saw it a couple days before the big reveal. Right. I basically waited until a couple days before as well. I also have a fairly sophisticated bullshit radar, and from first viewing, I was like, this isn't real. There's no way this is real. I kind, I, it was one of those things where I was, yeah, it was funny that she caught on fire, and she was screaming.

Yeah. But the other side of me was like, she fell through a bottle of liquor, a shot glass, and a glass table. All conveniently placed in frame. Well, I've seen what kind of damage that can do to people. Yeah. And there was no, there was no blood. Right.

She should have been on her way to the emergency room with a blanket wrapped around, or basically saran wrap wrapped around her to keep her intact. You go, you go through plate glass, it's not like it is in the movies. No. That was, that was the only thing that threw me off. Yeah. But I still thought it was funny as hell, so I, I shared it.

It was definitely funny. And, you know, I just, I just had a feeling, and I, there was a couple debates with friends and who had forced me to see it. And I was like, that's not real. Yeah, it's real. It's real. It's real. How? And then my other thought was like, if it is real, why would you put a video of yourself up looking that stupid?

Have you seen YouTube? Yeah, I know. That's what YouTube is. The follow-up was, that is YouTube. And I, and I see it every day and it drives me insane. Like when I go take my bike rides, everybody out in Venice has got their little GoPros and they're, they're setting up their shots of what they want to do so they can put it up on YouTube and hopefully get a viral video hit.

My point now is, this is jump the shark. All of, almost all of these have got to be fake at this point. People are trying to make this happen. Yeah, and? My point is and, so? I'm fine with it except, you know, don't pretend it's real.

Shouldn't we have some truth in the world anymore? There's plenty of truth. There's plenty of wonder, but there's also plenty of bullshit and there's always been bullshit. There are people that still think the weekly world news is real, okay? They still think Bat Boy exists. That's true. I guess I'm just really sad about all this.

And, you know, having Jimmy Kimmel be the start of this whole thing that they'd staged. He had a contest with his writers to see who could make the most viral video and get the most hits and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's doing it, you know, he's cloaking himself in the cloak of irony saying, look how stupid you are, all the rest of the media, that we were able to do this to you.

Which, well, you're part of that media, Jimmy. Yeah, I didn't, that wasn't my takeaway from it. When I first saw the reveal and that it was Jimmy Kimmel, I laughed even harder, you know? I thought it was awesome that he pulled it off. Yeah. And basically, you know, punked everybody.

That's true. He did do that. But I don't know. I guess I just, there's something that just doesn't sit right with it for me. And I can't really articulate it, obviously. But I have a problem with this. It just doesn't seem right. And, oh, God, I don't know what to do about it.

It's, like, I just look at sites like Upworthy and all these viral videos going around. And half of them are staged and not real. And then we have to go in and find out what's real, what isn't. You know, there was that video of the guy seeing the wife for the first time right now because she's a total babe.

I mean, they were even on the Today Show. And something isn't even sitting right with me about that video. There's a really great article about how there's no anesthesia at all that would cause that reaction or that kind of memory loss. And my point is, ignore it.

Don't go to Upworthy.com if it troubles you so much. And, B, just, you know, chill, man. Get a sense of humor. Relax. This is not, it's not like if Jimmy Kimmel went out there and wrote that Putin op-ed in the New York Times. Now, that would be something different.

You know, this is stupid crap on the Internet. It's nothing to get riled up about. It is what it is. Seriously. All right. All right. I see your point. But it also just, it permeates our culture now. So you've got to drop out of culture if you want to avoid all this stuff. Well, you don't have to drop out of culture.

You just have to stop watching Entertainment Tonight and stupid shit, stupid shows, stupid shows that run this stuff. They're like all the media outlets that ran it. Well, those aren't media outlets that I would watch anyway. You know, I mean, that's the one good thing that I do appreciate about Jimmy Kimmel doing that and punking them.

Because, like, every major news station was showing this stuff. And it's not news. I would bet that Al Jazeera America did not show it. I promise you they didn't. I've been, I, unfortunately, I don't get it anymore. I have to get the iPad app again.

And I think you only get Al Jazeera, the straight-up Al Jazeera on the iPad app, which is great news. And Al Jazeera America was fantastic for the first couple weeks that I got to see it. Right. But now that I'm, I don't have it anymore, I kind of miss it because it's not, I can't stand.

I mean, CNN yesterday, everything was about this Putin letter. And I was just like, oh, this is ridiculous. I turned that off, too. If you don't like these stupid videos, just don't watch shit that shows the videos, you know? Okay, well, you just solved my problem, Jason. Thank you. Yeah, or just watch the videos, laugh, and know that it's just, it's a joke.

It's popcorn. It's throwaway. This is not war and peace, you know? No, that's true. That's true. I just, again, like I said, there's just something about honesty that I think is getting increasingly killed in our society. And it doesn't matter anymore. I don't know if this is in the realm of journalism where you can claim that honesty is warranted.

True. No, I agree. But, again, it's my Huffington Post argument, which is Huffington Post is not a fucking news site anymore. Which is why I don't read Huffington Post. Exactly. And I've stopped. I've cut down on my HuffPo. Except you linked the article from the Huffington Post, so I know you're lying.

Well, I said cut down, not cut out completely. Come on. I got to see what's going on in the world. I can't get outraged and be grumpy if I don't look at this every now and then. There's enough in the world to be grumpy about. It's called Congress. You know, be grumpy about that.

It's called the NSA. Be grumpy about that. Be grumpy about shit that matters. Don't be grumpy about some stunt woman who fooled you. Okay. Oh, didn't fool me for the record, damn it. Okay. You're a pushover, man. I know. Security.

Ha! So the biggest reveal about the new iPhones is that they're going to have a fingerprint scanner. I don't know if that's the biggest reveal. I was actually more excited about the camera. The camera sounds hot. Yeah, it actually does. That was really good. And the whole processor is a lot nicer and faster.

But the fingerprint scanner is definitely getting the most attention right now, particularly with all our NSA stuff going on. And I love that little photo that was going around where they show, like, you know, Reagan and all those guys from the 80s just yucking it up and laughing hysterically with the headline. And we told them that the fingerprints will just stay on the phone.

Ha! Ha! Ha! That was pretty funny. Yeah. And it is true. It's like, yeah, okay, you're now putting your fingerprint in. You're just putting your fingerprint in the database, which, if you've ever gotten a driver's license in the past 10 years, is already in the database. They got it anyways. Yep. So there's really nothing to worry about security-wise there, except for the fact that fingerprints aren't a secure, you know, biometric marker because they're easily copied.

That's the biggest problem. You can get a fingerprint off of anything. They've shown it on Mythbusters. You can get – they foiled fingerprint scanners very easily. Plus, there's always, you know, from the movies, they cut off your finger. They do cut off your finger. I'll get back to that in a second. But the other problem with the fingerprint scanner is, A, if your fingerprint is compromised, you can't change it.

Yes. It can never be changed. That's very true. So pass locks can be changed anytime. Fingerprints cannot. So what are you going to do there if your roommate, you know, gets a latex copy of your fingerprint and can sneak into your phone and get all your Snapchats? Whatever.

Yeah. It's a really, I think, false sense of security to tie in. I think it's a waste of money and a waste of time to put a fingerprint scanner in it, honestly. I know that they're pissed off – not pissed off. They're increasingly worried that people don't use pass locks. I would rather they just require a pass lock.

Even if people just start putting in 0000, it's better than what they're doing now. I don't think we should have to require anything. It's, you know, at the end of the day, this is our personal rights. If I don't want to protect my phone, I don't protect my phone. But, you know, boo-hoo to me when everything gets ripped off.

True. True. I mean, I wish I could force family members to password protect their phone. But in the general public, yeah. It's one of those things where it's a piece of hardware. It's yours. You own it, theoretically.

The fingerprint scanner is sexy, and it's easy, and I can see – I would totally use it. If I got the new phone, instead of doing a passcode, I would just do that. It's quicker. It's faster. And it's kind of sexy. It does feel very, like, sci-fi. It's cool. Well, I'll tell you how it is because before we record next week, I'll be standing in line that morning at the Apple store to go buy one.

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's – the other interesting thing, I mean, I'm going to go a little off topic, is I think that the cheaper plastic phones was a great move on their part. They're not cheaper. I thought they were. No. Well, no. That's – they're slightly cheaper than the higher end, but they're still not cheap.

They're the same price as, I believe, the fives. Oh, wow. I didn't – I thought that they were considerably cheaper. Oh, well. No. No. That was a lot of the news. And when he said, it's like, everybody's expecting a cheaper phone from us, and we're not going to do that. I mean, they're slightly cheaper, but they're older hardware. They're five hardware inside of, you know, a plastic case.

Ah, gotcha. Which I'm hoping is going to have at least better reception. I'm not going to get one, but with plastic, instead of metal and glass, you probably have a better signal. Probably, yeah. I do want to circle back on your cutting off the finger thing. That was going around, and I honestly think it is so ridiculous.

Oh, yeah. Of course it is. I mean, granted, in the old days, people were chopping off people's wrists to get their $10,000 watches because it was faster than having them take off the watch. A couple, two guys come up behind you, one holds your arm down, the other one chops your hand off, they grab your watch, and they run. Now, the real dicks would take the hand with them, so you couldn't get it reattached.

You know, and that says something, that in this day and age, you're getting your hand chopped off, and you're probably more pissed off that they kept the hand than the watch. Because the fact that you can, A, now reattach a hand. Which is amazing. And have a supercomputer that has biometric, you know, unlocking.

The whole thing is just mind-boggling. But when I was thinking about it the other night with the whole thing, because I used to work in an art gallery, and we would hear stories about this all the time because we had rich people who, you know, were our patrons. And they would tell the stories of people that were their friends that literally, like, Joe got his arm chopped off last week downtown Chicago.

It's like, whoa, it really happens. Right, yeah. Well, I mean, now you chop off a finger, what are you going to get access to? My photos? Big deal. This is insane to me. I mean, I know a lot of people carry a lot of really sensitive stuff on their phones, but you're probably stupid for doing that in the first place.

Why are you carrying it around with you? Yeah, and most people are going to have, if they're that careful about their locking, they're going to be able to, they're going to have the, if you fail to log in 10 times, it just wipes the phone, which is what these guys want anyway. They want to wipe the phone. And most of them, as soon as they steal it, they power it off immediately and then just take it and, you know, use their higher-end software to wipe it and clone it or remod it and send it off to Asia where they can sell it unlocked.

Right. I don't think I have to worry about my finger getting chopped off if somebody steals my phone. No, I'm not particularly worried about that either. So, let that one go. But I'll let you know how it is. I'm getting it. Cool. Yeah, we'll talk about it next week. I think I'm going to be ordering one as well, but I'm not entirely sure yet.

I'm going to go stand in line. It's been two years since I went and stood in line at an Apple store. That is something I will probably never do. It's fun. It's fun. No. People think you're just nerdy, but it's fun. Okay. Nerd. It's a joke out!

For my closing shout-out, I want to give a shout-out to a musician that I've always been kind of very intrigued by, Al Jorgensen from Ministry, who we talked about regarding pig face and not being in it. That got me into really listening, going back and listening to a lot of the old Ministry albums, which I really enjoy.

And then I was like, well, this guy is so interesting. He's written a book. I got to get this book and read about it. Ministry, the Lost Gospels, according to Al Jorgensen. I'm about halfway through it right now. This guy is fucking crazy, in a good way. Just a crazy life, drugs, alcohol, sex, practically dying on tour.

I mean, talking about every night after a show is drinking so much that he'd be puking blood the next day, somehow still surviving it all, having a sense of humor, really intelligent, hates the music. The music industry, set up his own life, doing it himself on his own little compound. This is really interesting.

It's not just interesting to me because I grew up listening to this music and I was totally into the scene. Just interesting in general. Just really weird. It's a hell of a fun read. I'm going to have to check that out for sure then. Yeah, it's a lot of debauchery mixed with a lot of intelligence.

And it's a good combination in people. I'm quite impressed. I really talk about wanting to have a beer with a dude. I want to have a beer with this guy. I'll leave after he has the 19th beer, but I'll have a couple with him. Is he still drinking? He's still going? Yeah, he still drinks. He still does drugs.

He's tapered it off enough that he's not killing himself anymore. But he admits, this is like, I like it. This is what I do. Wow. Yeah. Hey, own your brand, I guess. I'm surprised you can marry intelligence and that much debauchery and mind-destroying chemistry.

It's pretty amazing. My respect for this guy has just gone through the roof, even though I could never even attempt to live the lifestyle that he is. It's pretty intense and pretty amazing. And it's been a great read. He wrote the damn book. It's a good read. Great stories. Does he have a ghostwriter?

Is it co-authored? No, it's him. Oh, impressive. Yeah. What was it called again? It is called Ministry, the Lost Gospels, according to Al Jorgensen, available on Amazon and for your Kindle. Okay, that was my next question.

Yeah, I'm reading it on the Kindle. It's a fun read every night right before I go to bed. Then I start thinking ministry songs and like, hmm, yeah. Okay, I have to check Audible to see if they have a version that he reads because that would be even better. Actually, that would be fantastic, particularly with his voice.

So, I was doing a little Facebook surfing the other day and Scott Beal, who we had on from Laughing Squid, he posted a picture that he took of Evan Williams on stage in 2006 when he just mentioned Twitter or something.

Because it was in relation to the IPO just being announced yesterday that they filed for IPO. And it got me thinking. I'm like, oh, man, I want to go back and find some of the old pictures and throw a few of them up. What I found was I'm a huge fan of Merlin Mann and his show Back to Work on the 5x5 network.

Yeah. And Merlin used to run a site called 43 Folders, which is what got him famous in the first place with Inbox Zero and all the productivity stuff. And he created the Hipster PDA. And this was back when the Hipster PDA had just come out. And we were at a party in 2005 for this thing called Webstock, which was like a zine type of conference in San Francisco.

And we were just blind, messed up, drunk and hanging out. And he wrote a series of cards for me on his Hipster PDA that I took pictures of with my sidekick, my T-Mobile sidekick. And I found them. And I'm like, I couldn't remember that party.

So I went back and went to Laughing Squid and did a search for Webstock. And then I found his Scott Beals Flickr set. I'm getting there. I'm getting to the point. And I found a picture of the moment that Merlin was signing those cards to me. Nice. Talk about how crazy the Internet is.

I was just floored. I could not believe it. I got a couple pictures of one. He's handing me the cards. One I'm looking at. I'm just like, oh, my God. Then I totally remembered the party. It was a crazy one. And I'll put the cards up in the show notes because it was very funny because it was right when I was going through a tough time at Technorati because we kept going down a lot.

And we were working our ass off. And he writes what? He's like, hi, I'm Jason. And we're doing what we can, you cock. Another one is like, scale is for suckers. But the last one, I'm like, okay, explain to me what 43 folders is.

And it just says, 43 folders. One, write shit down. Two, do it. To Jason, sign Merlin. Nice. I have no idea where those things went. But I had the wherewithal to at least take pictures of them, probably before I threw them away. But I just love that I can go back and find things that happened back then and tie it all back together.

But that was the fun part, why Scott was on the show and why we talked about the old days because it's, you know, there was just so much synergy back then and cross-pollination and inbreeding, as it were. It was a different world. It wasn't that long ago.

I know. It wasn't that long ago. You got anything else this week? No, that's pretty much it for this week. Let's, we'll be back again next week talking about shit. I'll have my shiny iPhone 5S, which would be nice. I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about that. So, and I should be having a, we should have iOS 7 by then.

Right. So. I've got it. The Golden Master's solid. I love it. I'm waiting. I'll wait for the official. Yeah. And hopefully I'll have a little more energy next week. I am. I've been laid up with back injuries from all of my crazy Pittsburghian moving.

And I've not worked this hard probably in 20 years. And it's just, I'm half dead now. So hopefully I'll be back. I'll be back. Take a little break. My back is healing. Relax. Go get yourself a foam roller. Swear by those things. I'm going to go get in the pool and have a margarita.

How's that? Oh God, that sounds even better. All right. I'm going to go hop the flight. See you in a few. Later. Bye. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. On Facebook at Facebook.com slash GrumpyOldGeeks.

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