30: The American Dream 2.0

Hey Brian, we're back. Episode 30. Number 30. I remember 30. 30 was good.

So I was chatting with my buds out here in Chicago and I was saying how, you know, we've kind of grown as we've been doing this show and getting better at it. And I looked at the numbers and I'm like, this is only episode number 30. And when you look at it with overs and unders, we're still under 40 hours of actual on-air mic time, right?

I'd imagine so, yeah. That's less than a five-day work week. True. After all this time, that's, I mean, so how can you expect somebody to be like an expert at their job by the end of the first week? But I just, I don't know why I thought of that. I thought it was kind of interesting.

I think you're like taunting the gods by calling us experts at this point. Oh, absolutely not. No, no, no. Especially after last week's. No, definitely. I'm not saying we're experts by a long shot. I'm just saying I'm happy with our progress so far from Monday to Friday, as it were. Yeah, me too. I mean, this has still been a lot of fun for me and it keeps me on my toes and I'm enjoying doing it. I like chatting away.

Yep. And I want to say that your Malcolm Gladwell stuff on the David and Goliath book, I was kind of snotty with my reply. My critique on the last book? Yes. Yeah. And I saw an article in New Republic this week that pretty much flipped the script.

Yeah. It was called The Pseudo Profundity of Malcolm Gladwell. And everything that was in the article hit home. And I was like, wow, I kind of feel like I've been duped by this guy. I wouldn't say duped. I mean, like I said, I really his first few first few books I really, really enjoyed and I didn't have the same kind of problem with as I did with this last one.

This last one felt like he was playing a little intellectual gamery and rookery with us. It just didn't sit as well with me as the other ones did. I still found it an interesting read. But yeah, I kind of agree with this article as well. So, yeah, it's like very formulaic and using just psychological tricks to make you make you think that something is more profound and scientific than it actually is.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't fault him necessarily for doing that. I mean, I like I like the fact that there are these guys out there writing these kind of intellectual tomes for the masses, as it were. No, no different than who's the guy that does all the the physics books and kind of dumbs them down for everyone.

Oh, not Neil deGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox, Brian Cox, as I was thinking of. And also, I think Brian Green is the other one. Although I. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, the first few chapters are dumbed down. And after you get to like halfway through the book, I don't understand the goddamn thing he's talking about anymore. So, yeah, I've never actually read either of their books.

I love the Brian Green ones. I can't recommend those enough. I the only problem is I don't know how current they are anymore, because they were both written, I think, like 10 years ago. And God knows, we're not still an M string theory or anything like that. So it's it's not. I'm sure he's writing a new one. I got to check on that. Actually. Note to self. Note to self. Put it in the show notes. If you find one.

I will. And let's let's just continue the Brian is right. Should we continue with the Brian is right? Because I didn't notice what you put in the show notes. And I've been screaming about this since I think the first episode that we did. And nobody believed me. And everybody's ignored me about this. Take it away, Jason.

Comcast announces data caps for for its Xfinity service. And it's they're rolling it out in Memphis and a couple couple other neighboring cities. But yet 300 gigabytes per month capped. Yes. And that means all the free Wi fies on at all the businesses that you go to are going to start to go away. That means that all the now that you've switched to all your streaming services for all your TV and for all your movies. That's going to start costing you a lot more money.

All those updates that get pushed out every two seconds for your iPhone and for every operating system known to man. Every time you download those that and update, that's going to start costing you all of the stuff that we think is free is now going to start costing us a fuckload of money. Yep. Because 300 gigabytes a month is it's a gig or it's 10 gigabytes a day.

Yeah. If you if you have a family of four, you know, you're going to you're going to run through that, especially if you're watching Netflix every night or, you know, doing the other stuff like bit torrenting or you can run through 10 gig in a day pretty easily.

Yeah. I mean, it's been no surprise to me why everybody, you know, why why big, big com telecom has been pushing us to start using all streaming services instead of owning say, I mean, everybody's music collection now is streaming. Nobody has it on their drive anymore. And hey, guess what? They just pulled the rug out from under us. Told you.

Yep. Yeah. Because I'm like RDO. I can I can download the songs to my phone so I don't have to stream them wirelessly. But you can't do that on the desktop version. No, you can't. So that is one thing that you can do on Spotify, though, which is a plus for them. But we'll see how long that feature lasts.

And iTunes match. You can you can keep your local songs, too. But here's the thing. I've deleted all my local songs because I just stream them when I need them. Yeah. And I've noticed with with I know you don't use the iTunes podcasting application, you use something different. But now the default and I haven't even found a way to switch it off is that it keeps all podcasts in the cloud instead of downloading them.

And I had set them all to download. And all of a sudden, when I did the last update, boom, everything that I used to have on my drive gone in the cloud. We'll have to look that up because I still have the podcast app because I tried really, really hard to go back and use that again. Right. And it's it's worthless. But it does download all my all my stuff.

And I'm also syncing between iTunes. So if I'm out and I don't have the latest episode, I can I can download it to my phone and then it'll sync back to my Mac. Right. But if it's on my Mac already, it'll sync back over to the phone. So it's only one copy. But as far as getting stuff live while I'm out in the field, I haven't noticed the streaming side at all.

OK, yeah, I got it. Who knows? My settings might be all messed up. I they update themselves so often now I can't even keep up anymore. Oh, this this auto app updates drive me nuts. I can't find half the apps anymore because they change the icon on me. Like I was trying to find my comics app on my iPad the other day and the logo is completely different now.

And it's, you know, in those froofy, fluffy iOS seven colors. And I'm like, you're a comic book app, man. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. So have you have you been following the David Byrne stuff where he's coming out against the streaming services?

Kind of kind of parroting what we've said already. But yeah, I mean, it's he's a smart guy. I love his music. I mean, not so much like the stuff he's been doing the past couple of years because it's a little too arty farty for me. But how can you not love the talking heads? I mean, David Byrne, great guy, really smart.

He's not wrong. I agree with everything that he says. It's kind of what I was saying, too. It's like all these the streaming services are basically telling artists, well, once we actually have everybody paying, you're going to get a lot of money. Well, maybe. And it's certainly not happening yet.

And right now, artists aren't making shit. And it still isn't going to help with with small, independent artists or people just starting up. And again, you know, it's it's a well thought out article. But what got me is nobody has a solution. Neither does he. You know, at the very end, it's I don't have an answer.

Well, thanks. That's helpful. Yeah. And because I'm in reading this, I went back and was kind of going through the the back of the napkin math from the article that we talked about two weeks ago with what's his nuts from the arrhythmics?

Where he said, oh, if we all just consolidate on one service, then we can start making money again. I don't think that I don't I don't think that math is right. I don't think that math is anywhere near right. Yeah, I don't either. I just I just I think the problem isn't really even the math or where the money is coming from or who's going to do what or join what I think the reality is that we we basically raised a generation starting with, gee, what year was it that Napster first hit?

We've raised an entire generation of people that don't think that music has any value and they're just not going to pay for music. And until YouTube goes away, none of these streaming services are going to matter anyways, because most people just go to YouTube to to hear music.

Unbelievably, yeah, that is so strange. Yeah. Well, not after the data caps are well, filled up, but the streaming services don't help with that either. So, yeah, I seriously doubt that's going to send anybody's street, you know, clamoring over to iTunes to start purchasing things to download.

If anything, it's going to make them go to BitTorrent to download entire artist catalogs in one go. Yep, exactly. And or or maybe we'll see a resurgence in the CD store. Not really. That is so funny. CDs. What the hell are those? Yeah.

So more follow up than as we're going along and because talking about the music industry puts me to sleep these days. Another article about sleep strengthening memory popped up on Salon. And I know we had talked about that recently. You know, it's just another thing basically saying if you get your eight hours, your memory is a lot better.

Oh, absolutely. And don't drink before you go to bed. Yeah. But the interesting part of this article, this is, yeah, the Salon article. Yeah. Is that the way that they mapped the brain activity was like in mice.

That's how they're doing all these sleep studies. And it was interesting that the – it was like your day was being played back in reverse. Yeah. Like the neurons were firing in reverse to cement the memories, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. And you had the – you popped in that Guardian article, which basically says that our brains are being cleaned out, spinal fluid pumping around and flushing out little bits and pieces and doodads and whatnot that we collect throughout the day, which I think is cool as shit.

Yeah, I mean this is – it needs a lot more study and this is one of the theories on why we need sleep is that it's garbage collection. And I'm sure that there's not just one reason we need sleep. We need sleep for a thousand different things that our bodies do at night.

But this is just an interesting take on it saying, yeah, because your neurons shrink by 60% while you sleep. Giving this spinal fluid or, you know, yeah, brain fluid – brain fluid – spinal fluid to have the mobility to flush out all of the crap that – you know, all the dead brain cells that you've, you know, killed by thinking during the day and give you a fresh start in the morning.

That's why you come up with a clear head as it were. Yeah, it's interesting. I – you know, I'm definitely going to keep following the studies on this stuff. Maybe I'll use the Circa app to follow specific stories. There you go. I've actually – I inadvertently dumped the app off my phone because I was going through a housekeeping.

I'm trying to get back to using as few apps as possible and using as much built-in stuff as possible. So I've gone – I'm using like the Reminders app that comes with the phone instead of trying to find another – get another damn app to track a list. Using the Notes app that comes with the phone that syncs with everything out of the gate that I don't have to pay for another app for.

And so far it's working great. Yeah, I use a lot of the basic stuff too and I actually haven't used Circa in a long time. Like every now and then I'll just pop it up and I take a quick look and that's that. So I have a feeling that's going by the wayside on my apps. Yeah, speaking of apps that are going by the wayside, I'm done with Oyster.

Oh, I got my email today offering me a free month for the iPad version. First off, they should have started with the iPad version rather than the iPhone version. And secondly, obviously, it's not going so well since they're offering free months now. Yeah. I mean, hey, take the free month. Get a free book. Read it. See if you like it better.

But I'm so used to using the Amazon Kindle app for reading a book, being able to highlight passages, being able to take notes and then having that synced to my desktop so I can have like a historical – just my notes. It's just like highlighting a book that I bought.

Since you're renting these books, there's no note-taking. I mean it's hard enough just to get it to define something. You can copy sections of the book and take it out of the book. But that's – I would like my persistent – I'm just used to my persistent notes in Kindle.

So I'm getting rid of it. I'm dumping it. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and take them up on their free month offer as long as I actually search their site first and find a way to completely remove all your data from it if you're done. As long as I can do that, I'll try out the free month and I'll let you know what I think. But I have a feeling – I'm so used to the Kindle app and I think the Kindle app is an amazing – they've done an amazing job with it.

So I seriously doubt I'm going to be happy with Oyster. Yeah, and just remember and if you're listening right now and you're thinking about trying Oyster, on every book, the privacy settings are book by book and by default, they are on to share what you're reading. So you have to go in book by book and turn it off.

Yeah, good to know. Lame. Very lame. Yeah, so you did a video. Oh, yeah, my fire video. I posted this on the website and I was amazed at the response to it. I went back the other day and there were – there's hopefully more now.

But there were 1,650 views on that thing that took me 30 seconds to do and put up and I forgot about. That's the craziness of YouTube I guess. You can just put something there and come back and wow, lots of people have seen it. I turned off comments because YouTube comments are the taint of the internet.

I don't know if anybody liked it or not but people have seen it. Yeah, it's interesting. It's quite popular. So I liked it because I didn't see anybody else doing the slow-mo test with fire and I fortunately had a 10-foot fire to play with the day I got my 5S. Rather convenient. Indeed.

Yeah. Now, we talk about getting old and how terrible it is a lot of times. The grumpy old geeks, yes. My friend Tara Brown wrote a really interesting article and she wrote it on Medium which, you know, that's her fault I guess. And it's an interesting take because she's turning 40 this year and it was a slightly poignant little piece.

I just recommend going and checking it out. You know, give it a read. I don't have any great insights about it but I just wanted to give her a little shout out because it's a really good little article about turning 40 and what it's like and, you know, you just did it. I did just do it. And, yeah, I liked the piece a lot.

It was interesting and, you know, welcome to the club, Tara. Yeah, indeed. And thanks for the good article. It was definitely a good read. Now that, you know, I've gotten over the 40 hump and the fear of it, I'm actually quite happy. I have no worries about 40.

I'm not freaked out by it. It's all a good thing. You know, yeah. I'm cool. I'm cool with it. I have, you know, come to terms. Yep. I think I'm coming to terms with turning 40 now that I'm 42. It took me two years. There's another great article by a guy named Paul Cantor.

This is another Medium article. Again, I don't know why these people are posting this great stuff on something they don't own but, you know, more power to them. It's called The New Retirement Age is 30, The Changing Face of Work. And when I read the title, I thought, oh, Jesus, I'm going to hate this.

This is going to be another one of those, you know, fluffy founder stories. Everybody's getting rich and retiring because, you know, in San Francisco, they forget that people need ditch diggers and bank tellers. And that little bubble doesn't take into account the rest of the whole damn world.

Exactly. It was completely the opposite. So it's more about how stupid people are by buying into the startup lifestyle, working themselves to the bone for their quote unquote passions and coming out of it with nothing to show for it except getting old way too fast.

Yeah, I thought it was a really good read. For me, it's interesting because you were really a part of the startup scene and I always kind of avoided it. I just stayed on the wayside, did my little company that did steady business. I never, the only time I leapt in was I did attempt to do an MP3 streaming service before there was iTunes or even Beatport and it was electronic music, but we were way too ahead of our time and didn't get the funding.

So, you know, it's just I never did that, but I can see how it's such a burnout and I'm happy I never did it because I think I would have gone crazy. You know, in retrospect, I'm very happy I did it. I wish I would have quit sooner because it does take its toll on you.

Right. But I'm glad that I got up there and I got to be part of it, be part of one of the waves and, you know, get to see what the inside of it was like. I got to go to Sand Hill Road and pitch my company. I, you know, did the whole nine yards and so I had that experience, which was a, which was a great experience. But it was, you know, I was chasing the golden ring when I didn't even, it's not what I actually wanted.

I got into this business to just because I was having fun making stuff. I thought the internet was cool and I loved making stuff and then all this money started to come in and I forgot the reason why I originally got into the business was because it was fun. And then it was just like, oh, what do I have to do to make a million dollars?

What do I got to do to make that big company? And, you know, when I got my first job and I got to California and we were doing the site for Epson, that was our first site. And they're like, yeah, they're paying us $130,000 to build the Epson website. And I'm like, people pay that much money to build a website?

That's cool. You know? I totally remember that feeling too. I was like, really? Wow. They're stupid. Yeah, they're dumb. Of course, then you realize you're not getting that money. It's going to the big company that was able to get that kind of money and you're still getting your $40,000 a year. It was $35,000.

$35,000, okay. So, but, you know, this is a good article on just how, because they're saying the retirement age is, the new retirement age is 30. It's because by that time you're 60 inside. Yeah, you're completely burnt out. You can't do it anymore. Yeah.

And on the side of the startup scene, everybody's jumping on this bandwagon about railing about the Twitter story. So, the Business Insider has a longer article than the, what was it though? It wasn't the Washington Post, was it?

Yeah, Washington Post. Well, everybody's got articles about this, right? Yeah, the one that we talked about before with the excerpts from the books. This is, it's a similar story. It's got more information. But at this point, I'm tired of it. You know, this is, this story is, it's lather, rinse, repeat.

When you look around, look around the bay and all these, all these startups, there's way more drama going on behind the scenes than you could ever imagine. And every, almost every company that has made it has this kind of, you know, Machiavellian horror story going on behind it.

Yeah, yeah. So, we just have to wait like another year and then we're going to get the Twitter movie with the soundtrack by Trent Reznor. You know, really attractive people playing characters, you know, it's, it is what it is. It's, there's no way these companies make it to where they make it without people getting stomped and horrible, horrible, horrible people doing horrible things.

Yeah, it's called business. Yeah, it's called business. It's, you know, it's just as bad as the music industry. It's just as bad as any other industry. Whoop-de-doo. Yep. Although, I mean, if David Fincher did this one, I could go, go for another, another Facebook-esque social network movie.

I like that movie. I enjoyed the movie too, except for Justin Timberlake, but he also played a person I actually can't stand in real life either, so good enough. I like Justin Timberlake. I think he's funny. Well, dick in the box, whatever. Oh, come on. Don't, don't, don't be a hater.

That guy's got talent. Okay. Yep. Maybe I'm just too old. I'm over 30. I should retire. Yeah, because you're, we started younger, so we're, if you, if we're going doubling, we're over 80, so we should be getting our social security now that the government's back over. Oh, thank God.

Yeah. So, your boy, Ray Bradbury. I do. I'm a big fan. I always liked his writing. He liked to make lists like you do. Well, not quite like I do. These are, yeah. These are not traditional lists. I, I like this. This is a, you know, I've read, I've never read the book, Zen and the Art of Writing, that, that he has.

I have read Stephen King's book about writing, which I also thought was really interesting, and he also delves into a different format of kind of just tapping into the unconscious, which is what Ray Bradbury is talking about here. Yeah, so what we're talking about is an article on brainpickings.org, which is a pretty cool site. I'm digging it.

It's by a site done by a woman named Maria Popova. But the article is Ray Bradbury on how list making can boost your creativity, which it's, that's kind of a, it's a false statement almost because his quote unquote lists were just brainstorming.

It was, it was almost a stream of consciousness writing. And then he would take that list and then expound on it and, and kind of come up with a story out of it. So it was more kind of a, you know, like I said, stream of consciousness brainstorming type of thing. But it's an interesting article on lists and you like lists and Ray Bradbury.

So I thought I'd shove it in the notes so you could take a look. I do. And I like what he does. I mean, I think that's really interesting. Take a look at the article and read through some of his lists and the kind of associations that you start to make and then how he creates a sentence or a concept comes out of that.

Really, really cool. I mean, it reminded me, as I was looking through it, it reminded me a lot of the Oblique Strategies, which I believe I've talked about once or twice on the podcast that Brian Eno did with Peter Schmidt, which is, these are kind of infamous throughout the music world. Ray Brad, or Brian Eno, sorry, who's also infamous throughout the music world.

Super huge producer these days, was back in Roxy Music, et cetera. He came up with these cards as he became a producer and he started working with bands to basically, you know, kind of kickstart creativity in the studio. I've owned them forever. They're fantastic and really interesting. A lot of them obviously pertain only to music, but I'll just pick out a couple in front of me right now.

Don't be frightened to display your talents. All right. So you got a singer who's kind of freaking out a little bit. Maybe he's uncomfortable in front of the mic. That's a good one. When is it for? You know, these are just like random things that you pick up when you're working on something to make you rethink it.

What to increase? What to reduce? That would work for anything. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. These, that reminds me, I think his guy's name was Brian Van Eck. He did, he wrote the whack on the side of the head books, the creativity books. And he had a, he had a thing called the creative whack pack. And you, you'd flip up a card and it would just kind of spur your creativity.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's great to, it's just things that anything that forces you out of what, out of your mindset at the time is bound to help you with creativity. Anything that makes you kind of question and rethink things in a different way. That's all this stuff is supposed to do. And that, and that's what Bradbury's lists were, which is, I just think it's really interesting to read through some of it, the actual ones that he did, because I've always liked his books.

So, or as we discussed two episodes ago, have a couple of beers. Yeah. Have a couple of beers and look through the lists and get some flashcards. Exactly. And, and, and get eight hours of sleep. And boom, then you can be as creative as Lady Gaga. Exactly. But you got to get up and do the damn work.

Sitting around reading about creativity and listening to podcasts about creativity. Don't need squat unless you put pen to paper. Exactly. You still got to do it. Do it. In the news. So I got some bad news this week. Oh, right. Remember how I was complaining about Media Temple?

Yes. And how, how terrible my service has been with them lately? Yes. Well, GoDaddy bought them. Ooh. GoDaddy is, is quite possibly the worst company for just everything. The CEO is an elephant killer. You know, that was the, that was, it was not the CEO anymore.

He's the founder and chairman of the board. So he's still there. And there's, they're saying, oh, we've got a new CEO. Everything's peachy keen. And I mean, they're the worst company, period. They're just one of the worst. A lot of my clients always seem to get their domains through them.

And the entire website is a mess. Getting anything done through them is a mess. Ugh. I've never liked them. And I hate their commercials. Commercials are terrible. Their service is terrible. Their website's terrible. Everything about them is terrible. Their hosting has been atrocious.

So I get, I think this is why they bought Media Temple was to try and bolster their, you know, that side of their business. Yeah. Unfortunately, I mean, granted, I was leaving Media Temple anyway, so this isn't going to push me over the edge. Right. But it made me kind of up my timeline quite a bit.

And I still can't find anybody that's comparable. So we're working on that. I tried Rackspace cloud sites because I thought that would be good enough for what I need. I mean, unlimited sites, huge amounts of bandwidth, lots of compute cycles. But their base price is $150 a month, which is like, you know, that's a little crazy.

That's, that's, yeah, that's, that's a bit pricey. I'd have to jump, I'd have to get like 10 more clients just to cover the costs on that every month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the one thing about GoDaddy and why a lot of people use them is they're cheap as hell. Yeah. They're extremely cheap. Yeah. In, in service and in price.

You get what you pay for. Exactly. Yeah. Well, sorry, man. And let me know if you find someone because I'm still with the company that I will not name, but, you know, and they're still trying to do me right, but not really doing a great job. Yeah. It seems to be going around. So I saw an interesting thing because you always talk about Star Trek economics and how we're like edging our way there.

Well, we're only edging our way there in one sense, on one side of the equation where we're getting to the point where nobody is getting paid for anything, but we still have to pay for shit. Yeah. We don't get paid, but we have to pay. Exactly. So Switzerland is doing something bizarre.

Okay. They, they, uh, it's, it's another salon article I've turned into you. Apparently, I don't know how I'm getting all these damn salon articles. It's a pretty good site. Turns out it actually is. Um, it says rather than savage cuts, Switzerland considers Star Trek economics and they plan to give every adult in the country a $2,800 check every month, regardless of who they are.

Could be a homeless guy, could be a CEO. Everybody gets $2,800 a month. But isn't the tax rate so high there that you're basically just turning that $2,800 back over? Probably. Okay. I mean, I, that part, I, I mean, I, I read this earlier in the week. I should have, I should have gone back through it, but I just thought it was interesting.

And I, I was hoping that, uh, you could expound a little bit and explain your Star Trek economics. Well, the Star Trek economics is, is, is simple. It's nobody has to really work because they have replicators and things like that. So all your, all your basics are kind of taken care of. That was the, the concept behind Star Trek.

And people actually go out and do things for, for, you know, self-improvement and the betterment of mankind. Well, not even just mankind, because there's all the other races. Um, but yeah, I mean, that was, that was kind of the theory. I mean, they never get too far into it because obviously you still need garbage men and who's going to do that to kind of better themselves, but whatever, I guess you got robots or stuff like that.

Yeah. Robots, man. Yeah. But the concept of Star Trek really was that there, there was no money. Money didn't exist. You did not get paid for things. You didn't pay for other things, which, you know, always made for weird scenes when they were at the pub or whatever. Um, and it didn't explain gambling and Latinum later on when, cause you know, obviously money became important for certain races or it certainly was around, but the general theory being that there is no money and everybody's kind of taken care of and you just, uh, do what you're going to do for the betterment of yourself and mankind.

Okay, fine. So this isn't quite Star Trek because they're, they're actually just kind of giving people money, um, as opposed to there not being any money. Uh, but I like it. I mean, it's, I mean, but I'm a fucking dyed in the wool, crazy liberal, practically socialist. I don't really have a problem with this.

I don't understand where the money is coming from. Um, does, does Switzerland have some sort of like massive infrastructure that, that is government owned, that is bringing in a shit ton of income to the country. So they're able to kind of like share the riches. I'm not really sure what the economics are on this.

That could be all the fees on the Swiss bank accounts. Could be. I mean, this is instead of the Star Trek economy, maybe this is kind of more the third Reich economy. They're making all that money off all that gold that's in there. Oh God. They still have lots of chocolate, lots of chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

Um, I love the Swiss. Uh, this is really interesting. I'm definitely going to follow this story and, and, and see what happens. I mean, uh, you know, the old, obviously we've been talking a lot, uh, just kind of in popular culture as, you know, as well as myself with friends recently about, about, um, you know, our, our economy here and democracy and, and all that sort of stuff.

And, you know, the old joke being, uh, democracy sucks, but it's the best system we got. Maybe not. I don't know. I like to see these tweaks. I mean, I like what Canada does with, in terms of universal healthcare and all that sort of stuff, a higher tax rate. Sure. But it's not like the tax rate here in the U S is low anymore.

Yeah, but it's not, it's not like, you know, I think, uh, what is it? Denmark is the happiest country on earth for starters, completely socialist country. Yeah. Uh, I think it's a 60% tax rate. Yeah. And they're happy as clams.

So the thing that, you know, Americans, when you say 60% tax rate automatically fucking freak out and they go, you're already taking so much out of my paycheck. Well, how much are you paying out of your paycheck for your healthcare, which you wouldn't have to pay anymore with that tax rate? Oh yeah, definitely.

And, and all the other service, everybody gets to go to college for free. Exactly. How much are you saving for your college, your kid's college education? How much money did you put away for that? How much are you still paying on your student loans? It's a trade-off and you have to analyze the pros and cons and the money coming in and out. I, it's, it's ridiculous to just think, oh my God, I'm going to lose, you know, another 30% of my income.

Well, you're also going to stop paying for a shitload of stuff that you're paying right now. Yeah. And there was a, there's, this is a, this drags me down a couple of different quick roads here. One, one, uh, Anthony Bourdain's new show on CNN. Yes. Amazing show.

Check it out. Especially the one on Denmark. And they, they do something different on this episode where they just go to one restaurant. They go to Nobu, which has been, I think three years in a row, uh, voted the best restaurant in the world. Yeah. So check out that episode.

You can probably, if you're a Comcast or direct TV, a subscriber, you can get them on demand or go steal them off the internet. I don't care. Check out the show. It's really good. One of the things that the guy who owns Nobu was talking about, which I thought was very interesting was they have a cultural mindset of don't be exceptional, right?

Don't stand out. Everybody's, everybody is on an equal playing field. You know, nobody's better than anybody else, which is so un-American. It's beyond un-American. Yeah. It's, it's almost unbelievable. And he got, you know, a ton of flack when he opened his restaurant because it's like, it's the greatest restaurant in the world.

That's really not staying under the radar and being unexceptional, you know? No, not at all. And it just makes me think that, you know, I mean, and they're happy. So, and everybody in the U S is miserable because there's, everybody's trying to be, you know, everybody's scraping for the top of the pyramid, but there's only room for a few people and everybody else falls off and is still climbing to get up.

It's like, where does that stop? Yeah. Well, I mean, the, the original concept of the American dream back in, you know, the, the beginning part of the century was, was all well and good. And, and you could kind of, people did come here and they climbed the ladder and they made better lives for themselves. Uh, but it was a different time. Uh, that doesn't exist anymore.

And we live in this world now in America where we're, we're thrown these false idols, these, you know, your Jay Z's and, and your Kanye's and these people that just, and even your, your Zuckerbergs. Yeah, exactly. Your Zuckerbergs, which is, these are one in a million billion chances and they've made it.

And you're never going to be that Jason, you and I, unfortunately are never going to be Zuckerberg. We're probably better at what he does, but we're never going to be that. And it doesn't matter. It's a fucking ruse. There is no American dream. It's the American joke.

Well, there's another article, unfortunately, another salon article. Uh, this one's called living in America will drive you insane, literally. And it, this is what got me on this, this kick to begin with about, you know, how the American dream is just a, it's a farce.

And something that, uh, Mike said on our last episode where he was talking about, he could go get a, you know, a great job at another game studio, but his free time is more important to him than working super hard on a game, you know, and, and really like climbing the corporate ladder and doing that kind of thing.

It's like, that kind of struck me. It's like, yeah, his, this is somebody who's free time. He's, he's, he's prioritizing his life over his job, which is, you know, that's taboo. You don't say that anymore. Everybody's got to follow their passion and work and work and work. And, you know, I'm, I'm in awe of what he's done here.

He's got, you know, he's got, he's surrounded by everything he loves. He's got video games in the basement. He's got records everywhere and he, he still works and has a nice life and just didn't follow that, that crazy prescription of, you know, kill yourself. Well, I mean, that really reminds me of a study that had come out recently and I'll have to find it and get it in the show notes and I'm just going to kind of paraphrase it right now because I don't, I didn't have it prepared and it just kind of hit me right now.

But there was a really well documented study that had come out and it was doing the rounds for a little bit that basically proved that money does not make you happy. There is a bell curve of happiness in terms of your financial success and it kind of goes from like, if you're dirt poor, you're unhappy and then your happiness rises as you make a certain amount of money and it basically tops out at about, you know, I think $70,000 a year.

$70,000. That's the number. Yeah. And as soon as you start making more than that, your happiness starts to actually decrease, which is counterintuitive to the American way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, it is. But if you, if you have reached that peak and gone on the other side, what happens then is you get into a higher tax bracket because it puts you in that middle ground that I think both of us lived in and you probably still live there.

I've fallen way out of it. But when you, when you make between, I think it's like $75,000 and $175,000, that bracket in there, that is the worst place to be. Yeah, that's where I'm sitting and it, it sucks. I mean, both my wife and I feel like we're always working and we're always paying and we don't have the money and we don't have the time because we're struggling to try to keep up with everything and we feel like we have to break through and the breakthrough

doesn't happen until you have so much money you don't even have to work at all anymore. So, yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's kind of where, what I'm looking at now is because I, I climbed that slippery ass slope for so long and all it did was get me farther down the hill than it got me up the hill. So, you know, it's, it, I, I'm, I'm at a place now where I'm, I'm happily taking a look and saying, wait a minute, let's, let's think this through, you know?

I mean, for you, you, you've recently gotten married, so you'll soon to get, you'll soon get those tax breaks that come with getting married, but you're not a property owner, you have to own property to get like any kind of serious tax breaks in this country. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, we, we've sat down and actually we're really starting to kind of reevaluate what it is we want to do with our lives.

I mean, I know, um, you know, Sylvana in particular has already decided that she no longer has any interest in climbing corporate ladder any further than she is right now because she, she, she looks at the money versus the amount of hours extra that she'll have to put in and it's not worth it to her. Exactly.

Yeah. That's smart. That's very smart. And I wish a lot, a lot more people would do this and just take a, you know, a seriously critical look why they're doing those, why they're killing themselves working so hard. I was, I'm probably, I'm, you know, I'm thinking back to like, say 25, 20, when I was 25, 26, when I kind of started my company and I was probably making 70 to $80,000 a year as, as, as we started up and we weren't working crazy hours and we

were doing a lot of fun stuff and we were doing things that we really enjoyed. My lifestyle was way better. Now I'm making more money. I have less time. I'm unhappy a lot more than I ever used to be. And I'm starting to really think about that too, about scaling back and like finding that sweet spot.

Yeah. I think, and for you, I think living where you live is probably the, the biggest contributor to not being able to get ahead because it's just so damn expensive there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was actually going to say that that particular curve of $70,000, if you're living in LA or New York, you got to add a one in front of that.

Like 170 is probably where the sweet spot is. Yeah. Just because you need so damn much money to be here. And I'm starting to wonder about that too. I mean, I love LA. I love sitting here in Venice. I love everything about it, but it, it kills you. And just like this article says, I mean, living here in America where I'm living is driving me insane very slowly.

Yeah. And there's something to be said for just, you know, moving, moving to the flyover States and live in a nice, comfortable life because you can do the same damn thing you do there here. I'm thinking more Canada. Even better, even better. No, I mean, you can't, Canadians are way happier than Americans.

There was that, you know, study of the most, you know, the happiest countries and, and we're way down on that damn list. So, I mean, there's just so many bad things. I love America. I've lived here all my life. I'm proud to be an American, but we are, we are, our priorities are fucked right now. And we're not being realistic about the situation that we're in.

We keep clinging to this concept that, that, you know, hard work and, and, you know, move forward and charge ahead and work, work, work, work. No, no, that doesn't work. It doesn't get you anywhere. It gets you back to where you were and, and worse off than when you started. Yeah, often, because you've, now you've got the stress and the craziness and you're probably, your health has suffered and blah, blah, blah, and there's no healthcare.

Oh, dude, let me tell you something new. What's not new. This has been happening to me for about a year and a half now. And I finally think I figured out what it is. I wake up in the middle of the night, my arms from my elbow to the tips of my fingers are numb and oftentimes like thoroughly in pain and my hands are in claws.

And I finally thought, I thought maybe, oh, well, shit, I'm just dying. I'm withering from the inside, but it's, it's an RSI from typing so damn much. Right, right. You know, I finally found enough people that can, that can kind of corroborate that. So, I mean, I can't even sleep right because of all the typing I've done.

So I'm starting to really scale back and doing this podcast thing is kind of fun because I don't have to type while I'm doing it. No, I like just talking too. I mean, I haven't had the health issues in terms of the physical stuff so much, but I mean, I've definitely, you know, I've had the insomnia.

I've had the waking up, stressing out about, you know, clients, clients, stupid demands that make no sense in that in any other industry in the world, everybody would just tell them to go fuck themselves. And then, you know, I finally just came to the point where I was like, you know what? Screw it.

I'm going to treat this like it's a regular job and too bad. End of story. And just kind of approach it from a different way. Yeah, good for you. Good for you. We'll see how, you know, how many of them fire me. Well, hey, maybe it's best. Do you ever have those, those crazy nightmares when you wake up like panicked about a job that you had just been dreaming about for like four hours that never existed and a client that never existed, but you were late?

Yeah. I had that, I had that for an entire summer and I'd just wake up freaking out. I'm like, oh God, I gotta, I gotta push. I gotta push this code out. And then like, you know, when the fog lifts, it's like, oh, idiot, go back to bed. Well, let's, okay.

That's enough depressing stuff. Let's talk about, let's talk about the happiest place on earth. Disney. We're going to a Disney segment. Let me go put on my, my Mickey Mouse ears. Got your ears? You ready? Ready to go. So, uh, the Disney Imagineering, I don't know if it's the Imagineering guys or the, just the straight R and D guys.

These guys have been coming up with some really cool stuff. Yeah. And, um, recently they've come up with a way that touchscreens can have like, um, uh, actual physical feedback. So you can feel what's going on, uh, that what you're seeing on the screen when you touch it has feedback.

Okay. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Um, and this comes on the heels of another one that they did a couple, I think a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago, um, where they were using airflow for tactile feedback. So if you're like, play it, you can, if you have your, um, uh, what's that thing with the Xbox, the, the hell's it called?

The motion capture. You're talking to the non-game. The Kinect. The Kinect. Oh, okay. So if you're, if you're playing with a Kinect, they've got, uh, basically little air guns that are around you that will blow air at you to simulate feedback of what's going on in the game. Right. So like, if you like punch something or whatever, you know, it's, it's a cool concept and I'm sure they built it for their theme parks, which is what originally, imagine standing in line and you're watching the video getting on the Star Wars thing and the wind starts blowing through your hair or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's more, it's more on a personal level, like actual feedback from things that are happening in a game. Right. Which is pretty cool. Yeah, that is pretty cool. I mean, yeah. I mean, everything's going to end up going this way anyway. So it's, it's, yeah, I read the article. It looks really cool.

I mean, I've, I would love to have something like this. Be sweet. No, definitely. And hopefully this, this, uh, touch feedback thing will really come into, uh, hopefully they'll get a patent on it. It'll make it work. And then I'll be able to, when I'm playing, uh, my games on my iPad, I'll be able to feel them and don't, don't even get into the porn aspect.

We'll just leave that one where it's at. Well, I won't get into the porn aspect, but I, it's funny that you had two Disney stories about tech because I had two Disney stories that came up this week that caught my eye, um, that don't have anything to do with tech. Uh, I don't know if you saw, uh, this is actually from slate.

Um, an animator over at Disney got in a little trouble for, for saying something that was, I found quite funny. I'm just going to read the headline because it's good enough. Women are hard to animate because they have emotions, says Disney. Oh God.

I love it. But when you think about it, I mean, you know, most, uh, most of the Disney male characters, the Prince Charmings and whatever, they were stoic and they had the iron jaw and, you know, nothing moved on their faces. Yeah. And you know, they had to actually animate women's faces to show all the emotions and everything.

It very funny. Um, you know, I had a good laugh at that one. Uh, the other thing that, let's file that one under a captain obvious, but, uh, you know, of course this being the internet now there's like 10,000 op-eds about that and people are getting all pissed off because nobody can actually just read an article without writing a fucking open letter anymore.

Um, anyways, uh, the second thing that came out and I by came out, I mean, quite literally came out Mulan, one of the Disney heroines who obviously had to have a lot of, uh, facial animation going on. I can't remember the name of it. Oh no, it was called Mulan. Duh, stupid. Uh, that was the name of the movie.

Um, apparently they're continuing the stories on Disney ABC channels or whatnot. She's bisexual. She came out in the last episode. Oh my sexy. Well, cause Mulan was an animated character, but from the video I saw in the artist, I mean, once upon a time is the show and the show is an actual live action show and it's one of ABC's biggest shows.

It's kind of silly, but I mean, if you're into that kind of fairytale crap, go for it. Yeah. Well, apparently she's just all over the place. Uh, she revealed her, her love for sleeping beauty, princess Aurora, but she also has developed feelings for Prince Philip. So look forward to the threesome on the next episode.

Oh dear. Disney. Yeah. Disney's changing with the times, man. They got to compete with the porn. The mouse is blushing. It is. I mean, you know, I used to hang out at Disneyland when I was a kid and none of this crap was going on. You'd probably still be there if it was. I never would have left.

It is the happiest place on earth. I'm in porno land. Kickstile in the balls. Another week, another celebrity with a Kickstarter. This time it's dear old Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliffe has a new Kickstarter project, Snowy River.

They're only requesting 400,000, 400,000 million dollars. Yeah, it's 1,000 million. And they're going to deliver a scriptless movie entirely improvised with questionable acting talent and virtually no plot. Uh, the concept art movie takes place in Brooklyn because Brooklyn is like crazy hot right now.

And, uh, one of the, there's lots of hardcore sex, actual authentic sex. Uh, one would assume Mulan would be involved. There is singing. And for one of the, the, uh, prize or the donation of $50 or more, Alan Rickman will come watch TV with you for an entire evening. I thought that was classic.

I'm totally in on that. I would pay for that. Anyways, it's not a real Kickstarter. Uh, they made a fake one making fun of the whole process and all the celebrities that do it. Well done. Very funny. I like that Harry Potter kid. I, it is a very funny little video that they made in, in Daniel Radcliffe, rolling off the, the actresses that he wants to have sex with in the movie was pretty good too.

Cause the last one, he snuck in Helen Mirren, which I love because that's awesome. Helen Mirren is still sexy as hell. Tell me about it. Yeah, no, it was, it was good stuff. And I couldn't, you know, this is tailor made for, for us in our little segment because we've been shitting on this for a long time and it just cracked, cracked me up.

Yeah. And, and, and to flip it on its head, I've got a couple of Kickstarters this week that I actually am looking forward to. So the first one, the first one, unfortunately it's over. I meant to try and sneak it in on last week's episode, but we were just having too much fun with Mike. Um, this is Werewolf by Corey Fields. Yeah.

And what it is, he's just an artist who loves to play the game Werewolf, which if you've never played Werewolf, get, look it up online, find the rules, get at least seven friends, preferably more and play it. I've never even heard of it, but I'm going to tell you, I am beyond impressed. He, he, his, he only had a goal of $2,000.

He made 14 times that much. Yeah. That is impressive. And I kept, I actually kept pimping it because when he, his, uh, uh, stretch goals were all different cards that would be put into this deck of cards that you get. And they were really cool, like really cool additions to the game.

So this was one of the ones I, I put in my 15 bucks. So I'm getting a set and, uh, I'm really looking forward to it because the cards are beautiful. Yeah. They, they look stunning. I mean, I, again, like I've never played this game, but, uh, the cards are, I love his artwork. It's, it's great. It's really beautiful.

Yeah. The one time I played it, I, I almost made it to the end and, uh, we were, we were in a, uh, vineyard up in Napa and it was like a bunch of tech luminaries who've all played this game before because apparently that's what you do because it's about lying and cheating and manipulation. And Kevin Rose knocked me out a little bastard.

Uh, but it's, it's, it's a really, I, I, I didn't quite understand the rules and it is very much about lying, lying and lying and lying. So, because it's everybody's heads down and you get little pieces of paper, but this, this guy made the cards that you hand out.

So it makes it a little, a little more fancier. So check out the rules. I'll try and find a good link to the rules and put it in the show notes. And sadly you can't get the cards now, but hopefully he'll create a store when he's done. And if he does, I'll definitely link to them because they're beautiful. Uh, one would imagine he would, it would be dumb not to.

So yeah. And, uh, I'm going to have to check this out. So, and speaking of beautiful things, uh, you, you often said that the only games you ever bought were missed and riven and then never played them. That's true. Well, the guys who made it, Cyan, they are kickstarting a new game called abduction with an O.

Right. It looks gorgeous. Um, I, where are they at on their funding at this point? Uh, they want 1.1 million and they have 324,000. And it's only been up for like two days, two or three days to go still. Yeah. They're, they're going to make this no problem. Uh, they've got some, some, uh, initial gameplay looking stuff.

They've got a beautiful trailer. Definitely check out the trailer, but they've got a good bit from the guys at Cyan talking about why they're doing the Kickstarter because their games are, their games are non-standard. I mean, their, their games are non-standard. They're different types of games and trying to get a publisher on board with the types of games they do.

I, I have a hard time believing it personally because these guys made missed and riven, which are two of the greatest games ever made. That's what I was thinking. They, they've got to have tons of money. So, you know, if this is the only way that's games going to get made, fine. I'm cool with it because I can't believe they haven't exhausted all the options.

You know, they're not doing this because they, you know, want to, I I'm guessing, but you know, it could, could be the, uh, the Atlas shrugged model, do it for marketing. It could be, but there are, you know, if you're doing it for marketing, you don't ask for quite that much money.

Yeah. And you do it when you're, when the game's almost done, but these guys are definitely in production on the game because some of the stretch goals, not, not stretch goals, the higher priced packages are like sit in on brainstorming sessions, come to Cyan and hang out with them and, you know, be in the process, which is cool.

I think if I was rich and I was a super fan, I would totally do that, but I'm not. So I won't, I'll pick up the game when it comes out for sure. But, um, and the last thing I got is, uh, my friend Heather Vessant, which is her, her nom de plume on the internet.

She's doing a, uh, a six part TV series. She's trying to Kickstarter this called the future of money. And I highly recommend checking the link in the show notes and going to go and watch her video. It's very well done. She's got a very good take on how money works and how it will work in the future.

I mean, she's a futurist and it's not going to be Bitcoin. No, it's going to be a whole bunch of different things. It looks like, but it's, it's, I, I wish her the best of luck and I hope she, hope she hits her goal because I think this is the kind of thing that Kickstarter is made for, you know, indie producers trying to put out cool new content and she's got a distributor.

She just needs to get the show. So it looks like she's, she's pretty close. She's at 18,000 with the $35,000 goal, 13 days to go. So, uh, check it out. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, we'll, we'll link all of these in the show notes and definitely go check them out. That's all I got this week.

No, I didn't find anything funny at all. I actually found things that I liked this week. I don't know what's happening. We might have to change the whole name of the segment soon. Jeez. Well, you know, I, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some more celebrities come up with stupid shit. Yeah. We need to find, find the wackiest iPhone cases.

I'm sure there will be some soon. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers. I finally found an app sort of a little bit. I'm not, I'm not even sure how this ended up crossing my conscience. My consciousness anymore. I mean, maybe somebody might've recommended it or I heard it on a podcast or I don't know.

Uh, but I, I figured what the hell I'll give it a shot. I need to try some apps. It's called Elefante and you can check it out at elefante.com. But I'd suggest you just don't even bother. Um, this is supposed to be one of those social walking around apps that helps you find interesting, uh, interesting stores and venues.

Uh, it's the first online showroom for retail stores and venues where retail businesses can list their products, services, and menus for shoppers. It's the ultimate shopping app, helping them search and find where to buy the things they need, which I kind of thought that, uh, you know, people were doing that with four square.

Like if you checked in at a place, you'd get a special. Anyways, this is supposed to be, you launch the app when you're around anywhere and it'll tell you local businesses that have specials or interesting things going on. Um, I live in Los Angeles. I live on the West side of Los Angeles. There are shopping.

This is a shopping Mecca. Uh, I launched the app nearby places, zero increased radius to 50 miles. The nearest thing that is in here for me is in either Sherman Oaks or Hermosa beach, which take me at least an hour to drive in kind of regular LA traffic, nothing.

So this is a prime case of like, if you're going to offer an app, like this, and if you're going to advertise an app like this, have some stuff in it for God's sake, don't launch without services. So, you know, and, and a pet peeve, they spell a love L U V instead of love L O V E annoying.

Um, and then I tried to, they also have an interesting places button as opposed to nearby places, uh, which I, I don't really know what they're doing with that. Probably charging retailers more to be in there. When I click on it, it says we can't find anything interesting. I agree.

I completely agree. I find nothing interesting about this app. Now, one of my other pet peeves before I was getting, I was getting ready to basically delete it immediately, but then I realized, wait, hold on a second. I had to sign up. They have my personal information. So I went, hold on before I delete this.

I'm going to go to their site and see if I can figure out a way to say, I'm removing your app. I want you to remove all my private information. No, nothing. There's of course no way to do that. So I wrote them an email because they have a little contact form. And I said, you know, I'm really sorry. I didn't find your app to be of any use to me.

I would like my information removed from your systems. No, I didn't hear anything for basically two weeks. Then I finally got an email from what I can only assume is, is a, you know, a holding corporation based out of Shanghai saying, we'd like to know why you don't want to use our app. And that was it.

So I have a feeling that they were just forever going to have my email address and that'll be something that they sell off when they end up killing this thing. Or, or it'll get when their service goes into hibernation mode and they forget to update their server software. And then some hacker comes in five years later and hacks it and then pulls your email and password stuff out.

Yeah, that's that, you know, um, I, I, I went and looked at the, the website for this app and I was, I was just like boggled why you signed up in the first place because it's obviously a chicks only app. It's like pictures of young girls shopping and their use of capitalization is abhorrent.

Oh, I know. They, they definitely designed it more for, for girls. But the interesting thing is like the only businesses in here that even come up are not for chicks. It's like a, there's an auto place, uh, there's a technology place. There's a beach coast Institute of higher learning, which I'm sure is awesome.

Um, you know, there's, there's a, I'm an optometrist and a publisher. That's all I got. See, this is one of those things where, you know, it kind of drives me crazy when sites roll out location specific launches, but that's usually like with physical types of things like task rabbit, task rabbit started in San Francisco, then it like Uber, same thing.

And then they go into different cities, even with something like this, that is location information and where you have to have businesses start in one place, grow it there, see if it works. Don't go global. Cause you're going to, I mean, you're not going to have businesses from all around the world advertising, especially when they put in menus.

Yeah. That's just, it's, this is a sucker's game to get companies that already have websites or online presences to put their crap in yet another place. And if they don't have traffic, there's no reason for people to go there. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, this is one of those really dumb ideas that is never going to gain traction.

Somebody came up with this thinking, wouldn't it be great if, quote, with air quotes. Yeah. And no, actually not. No, it wouldn't be great. This is actually extremely useless. Yeah. And I, I mean, I've seen a bunch of these come and go and this one will go to, and when you, when you say the name Elefante, I just think of Harry Belafonte.

Hey, oh. Nice. Yeah. That was my app. Um, I haven't had anything else interesting and I'm kind of so turned off by that one, but I'll, I'll keep trying. Yeah, this one, the one I got is, uh, it's a website that really kind of, it's, it's called Sync Metrics and it's for aggregating all your, your bio data, all your quantified self stuff.

So you can take all of the, you know, your Fitbit data, your Nike plus, all the crap and put it into one dashboard, which is exactly the company that my friend Devin and I built like three years ago that never went anywhere, which we could have done the exact same thing. And I'm thinking, damn, I even had a domain for it because the old site was called Metrically.

And I got biometrically because I wanted to do the same thing. And, but these guys at least give them credit. They went and did it. Uh, I haven't checked. I looked at some of the graphs. The graphs look pretty cool. Um, I didn't see any kind of business model on it. I haven't signed up yet because I only have Fitbit.

I have Fitbit and my ARIA. So I get everything on my Fitbit dashboard anyway. So it doesn't really, you know, have anything for me. The one, the one app that I, uh, tried before that I was actually wanted to bring up to you is called Strava. Strava run, which is another, like, it's kind of like your moves app, but it looks, it looks nicer.

It looks much nicer. Oh, really? Because moves is actually, that's this one classes. It's pretty. So is this one. Definitely, definitely check it out. Uh, I know, I know a couple of people that are using it and really like it. Okay. So, uh, give it a shot. Yeah. It's free to sign up. There are some, you know, uh, premium upsells in the app, but you can just use it.

Right. Uh, uses the M7 chip and the whole nine yards, different activity details, uh, route maps. You know, you can have different challenges. It's, it's, it's got, it's got a whole bunch of cool stuff in it. I highly recommend checking it out. I'm going to, it's just too damn cold where I'm at right now to even go out walking.

But, um, as soon as I get, get back on the horse, I will be giving this a full run through and see how it matches up with my Fitbit data. Cool. Excellent. So I, that's the only one I got this week. Cause like I said before, I'm trying to actually clean out more stuff than, than add to it.

So we'll get there. We'll get there. I'll find something swanky next week. I, unfortunately I've, I've fallen back into it. Remember the, uh, dots app, the game. Oh yes. For some, the Jared Leto album cover. Yeah, exactly. For some reason I reinstalled it on my phone.

Oops. Oopsies. I finished infinity blade three and I was like, Oh, what am I going to do now? Well, I hit some of the classics. So infinity blade three, my, my roundup on that. Excellent for the money. Seven bucks took me two weeks to play through. And in, in classic infinity blade style, you start over at the beginning and you can do it all again.

But that was the point where I deleted the app from all my devices. Cause I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole another time. That's all I got for apps this week. Little library. Woo. Okay. So I, I actually, uh, I finished Dr. Sleep and cause I think when we talked about it, the, the previous week, I was, I was most of the way through.

Um, loved it. Great book. Uh, can't recommend enough. If you'd like Stephen King, go for it, read it. Um, I then started to go back to, uh, some really, well, I tried to do more of that, uh, Gladwell book. And, uh, I think I've kind of stalled out on that for all the reasons we talked about earlier.

I'll probably trudge through it eventually, but, uh, it just turned me off. So I needed, I needed something else exciting and some stupid fiction, good nighttime reading. And I picked up world war Z and oral history of the zombie war. I'm not really into zombies. Uh, I don't care. I don't watch the walking dead.

My zombie addiction starts and ends with Shaun of the dead. Um, but that's a, that's a good starting and ending point. If you have to have a zombie movie to go to, that is the one. Yeah, that is the one. But, uh, I have to say I'm loving this book. Um, I haven't seen the movie. I can't see in any way, shape or form how the movie even approximates or has anything to do with this book.

Uh, but the book is amazing. I'm loving this. Yes. The book is by Max Brooks, who is Mel Brooks's son, by the way. Yeah. Um, and the, you are in fact, correct. The movie, the only thing they share is the title and the fact that there are dead people that walk. Okay.

That is the only similarity. They, that, this is, that was in the news when they were making the movie and the previews came out and everybody's like, well, what the hell is that? They have nothing to do with each other. They killed the, they just bought the title. Okay, good. All right. So I'm not even going to bother with the movie then.

Um, cause I'm not really that into zombies anyways. Um, I love this book. I, I, Mel Brooks's son, which is kind of crazy. Um, I just think the writing is amazing given he has to come from so many different angles to talk about the stuff that he talks about. He has had to research so much stuff because every single like little bit is a completely different take from a completely different culture from a completely different experience and it all kind of ties together.

I, I'm almost done with it. I can't wait to see how, well, I guess we know how it ends, but, uh, looking forward to it. It's, it's, it's been a great read so far. And I, I have to say, I highly recommend the, uh, audible version of the book because it's a full cast recording. Cool.

There's every segment is with different people, great voice actors. It really brings it to life. So even if you've read the book, it's almost worth going back and listening to it again, just because it's so cool. It is, it is on the top 10 all time best audio book recordings out there. Wow.

I might have to do that then. Cause yeah, I'm, I'm really loving it. It's, it's a great read. If, if, uh, if you're out there, if you haven't read it yet, uh, it's awesome. Cool. I'm, I'm glad you're giving it a shot. I read it a couple of years ago and that's when I was, I was really excited for the movie. And yeah, I mean, the movie was, uh, I didn't hate it.

I really didn't hate it. I like Brad Pitt a lot. I think he's a great actor and I think the, some of the effects were pretty cool. The story was the, the weakest part, but from an action zombie fun movie, I thought it was, I thought it was totally enjoyable. B minus.

I gave it B minus. And on the David and Goliath side, just don't even bother going back. It ends on a low note. It doesn't really have any punch at the end. So just, just put it away and save your time for another good book. Yeah. It feels weird. I hate abandoning books, especially one by, you know, an author I've actually really enjoyed all of his previous work by, but, uh, yeah, it started to become a real slog for me.

Yeah, I did. I went through that with Seth Godin. I really liked some of his early books. And then I, when I started to read his, his newer stuff, I'd get halfway through and just put it down and never pick it up again. And learning to be able to put a book down and walk away, I think it's, it's an important life skill.

It really is. It really is. Cause yeah, I used to be, I used to sit there and go, Oh God, I got to finish this. I got to finish this before I can start another book. And you know what? You're much happier if you just say, screw it and move on with your life and not, not waste the time. Exactly. I agree. A hundred percent. So my book is a little strange.

Okay. I bought Buddhism for dummies. Okay. I like feeling like you need to get a little spirituality in your life. No. Well, I, I want to get back into meditation and do it properly. Not, you know, my, my own version, which I started doing when I was like 15, which, which turns out is very similar to what's in the books.

Um, but I wanted a history of Buddhism. I wanted to know kind of what it was about and just have like cultural reference points for everything. Get the philosophy, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Just to have a primer, you know, and the dummies books are really good at just distilling everything down and getting you to where you need to be quickly.

Right. I've, I've always liked them. You know, if, if people poo poo, people who read dummies books, I think that's ridiculous. People are trying to learn. It's a good primer and it lets you know really quickly if it's something you want to pursue. Right. So I'm, I'm, I, that's, that's my, my stance on the dummies books.

Um, I agree. I don't have a problem with them. Yeah. And so far I'm like two thirds of the way through and it's, it's a really good history. It gets a little boring in the middle because there's only so much I can take on, you know, truncated history of religions.

Um, even though the best parts about Buddhism, what I see are not religious, it's more mindset and way of life. Right. That's what, that's what I like about it. So, um, so far so good. Um, if that's, if you're thinking about getting into meditation or just want to, a history of something interesting that, you know, is it's in our culture.

There are Buddhists everywhere. Not as many, not as many as there used to be, but it's, it's having a resurgence, I think. And it's just something I was interested in. I'm not religious. I, you know, the, the afterlife portion, the rebirth and all that stuff, not for me, but just from a, a philosophical mindset of the cause of suffering, I think it's really fascinating.

Like, you know, suffering is in the mind and you create it and giving you tools to uncreate it is I think pretty cool. Yeah, I agree. I'm going to try and finish that, that book that I got on Oyster before my subscription expires.

The, this book will make you smarter. Um, I'm halfway through it and man, it's good, but it's dense because it's, it's probably like 150 short essays. But if you, if you, if you're going to do your Oyster, uh, one month dealio, get it and flip through it.

It's, they're really good stories. I feel smarter just opening it up. So WordPress is something that I have to deal with pretty often because he does that works on the web. Unfortunately, it is a powerful tool for people to publish easily.

Um, but it is, there's, and just for quick clarification, I'm talking about the self-install WordPress when I, when I referenced WordPress, not WordPress.com, which is the hosted side of WordPress where you can barely do anything. You can't install your own plugins. They have a set of plugins you can pay for to install, but the self-hosted WordPress where you install it on a server and you add plugins and play with themes and make your website, right?

Every, every, every mommy blogger in the world can set up WordPress and customize it. That's correct. Well, since it is so popular, it is also one of the largest targets for hackers on the internet because it is open source. Anybody can look at it and anybody can reverse engineer it.

And anybody that uses a plugin is using third-party code that is also generally unvetted. And it's, it's just a mess. It's a mess. So there's an article that came out from, uh, WP white hat security, where it says out of the, uh, Alexa top 1 million, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Now they did, they did a survey using common hacker tools that are basically built to automate it, automate the process of breaking into a WordPress site in owning the server, right? They did this like right after the three, six, one, the, the upgrade from 3.6 to 3.6.1 came out.

So when those upgrades happen, there are, there are security implications on those upgrades because they say we patched these security holes. So then, oh, the hackers know there are these security holes in 3.6. So they go back and find the holes, create tools to go exploit them.

So every time you get an upgrade, your, your software is safer, but it also means people that don't upgrade are more vulnerable. So this is one of the things that I am, I'm a preacher about. I will always be preachy about it. The instant there is an upgrade available for WordPress, upgrade it.

Don't sit around and go, ah, maybe I'll do it next weekend and leave it sit for three months and then wonder why your server's running so slow. Wondering why you're getting emails from your sysadmin saying, hey, why are you sending out 200 million emails a day? Oh, here's a bill for your bandwidth, by the way.

And, and, oh, why did, why is my site down? Oh, because somebody just went and deleted all your databases because they didn't like what you wrote, you know? It's, it's, you have to be diligent about updating. If you're going to use WordPress, that's the cost of entry. Otherwise you're going to get screwed.

That is the most frustrating thing to try to explain to people who, because the automatic thing with a client is they want WordPress because it's cheap and because it's easy and they don't take it. They think they can do it all by themselves without understanding anything. And you can't, you have to keep this stuff updated, which means you need to know what you're somewhat doing.

Yes. WordPress is not free. I'm just going to tell you right now, there's time involved in maintaining a WordPress site that is, you know, that's not in the manual. You have to know to update this shit all the time. Any plugins that come out. I've moved over to a new site.

I think it's called WP manage where it, it lets me manage all of my WordPress sites from one central control panel, which is amazing. And it's, it's free for up to four sites, I think. But you get emails every day that tells you which plugins are out of date. If there's an update, you can do backups.

You can clean everything up. You have to, if you're going to run more than one WordPress site and you're not going to be diligent about it, at least get something like this that will help you with the process. Because once you, if you're putting software on the internet that you don't know what it does at its root, then you need to be responsible for at least keeping it up to date or at the very least, don't bitch about it when you get hacked.

Okay. Agreed. And rant and rant. Sorry. It just pisses me off. It's just, you know, take responsibility for the crap that you put on the internet. So upgrade your stuff. Yep. Keep it up date. You have to WordPress. And also back it up because even if you keep it updated, that's no guarantee that they're not going to find a hole in the new one that's out that's more secure than the last one, but it's still not secure.

And every, every plugin that you put in is also a possible vulnerability. So backup daily because at some point you're going to get owned. Period. Period. All right. So, uh, what you got, you know, just more stuff coming about, coming out about what the NSA is collecting from all of us.

Uh, apparently they're also hoarding all of our online contact lists. According to leaked documents, the NSA daily collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 contact lists. So this is like your, your instant message, email addresses, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, there you go.

More stuff always being collected. Any information that you have out there, they can have access to. My main question is, I'm, I'm wondering if they can actually tell me who some of these people are on my IM list because they've been in there for like 10 years and I don't even know who they are anymore. Maybe they can help me out with like going, who is this dude? Yeah.

I, I, I used to, I scrubbed mine regularly. Actually, I don't even use IM anymore. I gave it up. But yeah, I thought it was genius how they were doing this, taking basically scraping when you load a, uh, web mail interface, it has to send your, your contact list over the wire.

And most of the time people aren't accessing it through HTTPS. So it's not encrypted. So it's, it's out in the clear. Yeah. So they're just grabbing. Yeah. And, and reconstructing it and then doing analysis on everybody's contact list. Which I, that's genius. I thought that was really clever how they did that.

Granted, I think it sucks that they do it, but I thought that, I thought that what they were doing there was actually quite clever. I give them props for that. Um, and yeah, what are you going to do? Yeah, it is what it is. So. Yeah, I, yeah, God, I don't even, I don't even know how to react anymore.

I'm kind of throwing up my hands in the air and said, oh, well. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, we're kind of at a screw it moment. Um, and even my mom was like, you're turning into one of those guys. You really need to like chill. Yeah. Yeah. I heard that you bought a bunch of tinfoil and we're starting to line the, uh, line the windows and make a hat.

So I was like, oh, Jason. No, no. Um, so. Now Google, Google has jumped on the Facebook bandwagon with using our personal likes and photos to pimp stuff to other, other members.

Well, yeah, you knew this was coming. It was going to happen. Uh, we're put, we're going to put a link in the show notes about how to keep your name and face out of the, that side of it. Right. Um, it's just an easy, quick how to, if it, if it doesn't bother you, then fine. Go about your day.

If it bothers you, then there's, there are ways that you can pull out of it. It's actually quite a little, quite a bit easier than Facebook. Uh, cause I don't think Facebook gives you the choice. Google is at least giving you the choice to opt out. It's opt out after the, you know, it's opt in by default. They already, they turn it on for you.

Yeah. It's on, so you have to turn it off. Shocking. Yeah. Yeah. Go figure. Um, yeah, but, uh, check it out. I'm going to leave it on. I really couldn't care less. I don't, I don't use Google plus one for anything. So I don't plus one, there's nothing that they, they can get on me because I just don't use it.

But if you do use it, then, uh, you might want to take a look at it. Yeah. Are you, are you, for me, I never actually use it. So this doesn't even really affect me at all. So I'm not even going to bother. Yeah. I, I don't plus the only thing I like on Facebook or other people's articles just to make them feel better.

I don't, uh, I don't like or plus or thumb or whatever the hell you want to call it. Any companies anymore because I don't want ads from them. So yeah, I just opted out of that. Not just through sheer habit than anything else. That's my, that's my, uh, civil disobedience.

I just don't click the thumb anymore.

So I've got a couple of things, uh, that were really funny this week. One, one is the periodic table of swearing. Yes. Which is just a simple, it's a, it's a redo of a periodic table with, uh, you click on, you click on a word and it will say the word.

It's, and it's got phrases, but it's laid out in, in a periodic table style where it's like, you know, the, the lighter elements are, you know, like, uh, piss off. And then it's like, fuck your motherfucker for her, you know, as it gets to the heavy elements. Uh, for you Americans that haven't traveled, this is obviously done by an Englishman.

So it's, it's, it's heavy on particularly English swear words. Yes, it's very, it's very British. They use one in particular that, uh, most, most people in America finds extremely offensive. So if you're easily offended, well, fuck it. You're not listening to this podcast. So nevermind. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's just funny. Go check it out. Uh, the next thing I got, which speaking of swearing in, in the, uh, the British Isles is these guys in Scotland who get trapped on a road with a, with a, I'm sorry, Jason, they're, they're not guys in Scotland.

They're council tit grislers in Scotland. Council tit grislers. That's one of the heavy metals. Okay. And if you think we swear a lot, go watch this video because they're driving at night and a rabbit gets in front of them and oh, no, wait, no, it's a hair.

Oh wait, no, it's just a cunt. That's all. It's this rabbit that just won't leave them alone. It just keeps running and running and running. And just the, the commentary for, I think it's like four and a half or three and a half, four minutes is I was, you have to speak Scottish.

So you might want to have a pint or two before you get into it because that lubes the, the language skills. It does help. Yes. Uh, my God, I have not laughed so hard in so long. These guys are, I mean, it's just swearing and swearing and swearing, but it's just watching this little rabbit with his floppy ears.

Just go. I mean, it's, it, I think it's been around. So most people have seen it. Here's the other thing. Most people I look, it's got 3 million views. There's a couple of billion people on the planet. I have to, I got to remember to recalibrate. So you probably haven't seen it in the grand scheme of things. So go check out this video.

It's, it's really damn funny. And, and spoiler alert, the rabbit does not die at the end. I have confirmation. I have legitimate confirmation that the rabbit did not die at the end. So don't worry about it. Rabbit's fine. And speaking of not dying or death.

Right. Or cake. I found, I found this site called Ikea or death, which is, is it Ikea furniture or a death metal band? That's all it is. It's a quiz. Now that is, you know, it sounds deceptively easy, but it's, it's not because most death metal bands are Norwegian.

I kicked my ass. I only got, I got 13 out of 20 and I was impressed with myself. I got eight and I've heard of most of those bands. Go, so go check out Ikea or death and see how you do compared to, if your furniture knowledge trumps your black death metal knowledge.

Post your scores on our, uh, grumpy old geeks Facebook page. We want to see if, especially if you got a perfect score, cause I want to know somebody that's out there that does it. I know. Even, even my friends from up there got like a 17. That's the most I've ever seen as a 17. Nobody's beat a 17. Farfig Nugin.

So as you know, I, I listened to, uh, a lot of the podcasts on the Adam Carolla network. Um, Larry Miller, who's an old school comedian actor extraordinaire, uh, has his own podcast on there as does Alison Rosen, who is the current news girl on, uh, on Adam Carolla's main podcast.

Um, Alison had Larry on and it was just, uh, I wasn't expecting much. I was just listening to it because I, I listened to the podcast regularly when I'm just sitting around working. Um, but I've always liked Larry Miller, uh, his podcast by himself can be a little bit dry. I like it when he's with people and him paired with Alison Rosen was a really surprisingly good combination.

Um, he just kind of talks a little bit about his life, talks life lessons. Um, it was surprisingly touching because I, and maybe, you know, maybe you don't know, but Larry Miller had like a really, really bad, like concussion coma. Didn't look like he was going to pull through and, uh, but now he's pretty much completely fine.

Um, so he's kind of coming at it. Uh, he's got this huge long life in showbiz anyway, so he's full of great stories, but now he's got this kind of added gravitas to, uh, to his humor. And, uh, it was a really, really good listen. I highly recommend it. Yeah. The story about how he was in the hospital and having to fight the insurance companies and it was, it was pretty good.

I gotta say, I really enjoyed that episode. So definitely check it out. Yeah. It's a, it's just, he's a really great guy and, and, um, it was a great, great emotional, really nice, uh, little listen. And, uh, I've also included in our show notes, uh, if you ever make it all the way through our show, you'll hear that we're driving to Florida soundbite at the end.

We've got the full, uh, YouTube comedy clip from Mr. Miller there that, that came from. Very cool. Very cool. And you're the one that turned me onto that, that bit. And it was, it was so damn funny. I'd be like, yeah, we got to put this in the show. So my, my podcast that I would like to talk about is called latest in paleo.

Remember a couple of weeks ago I said I was, I was going paleo full paleo. Yes. And of course they have a podcast, a very, very good podcast. I must say. Um, and it's, it's not so much even about what to eat. It's just, it's more about philosophy and lifestyle and I don't know, I don't know how to describe it.

It's not what I thought it was going to be. They, they talk more about, he comes from a point that humanity is not, or humans are not broken. That's the starting point. And that all the dumb stuff we do to ourselves with all the processed crap that we eat and drink.

And like, that's, what's causing a lot of our societal problems and malaise and all this, all these different things. And I, I don't know why I just got into it and I've listened to probably 25 episodes of it, just getting caught up on it. And it's fantastic.

I highly recommend it. Even if, even if you're not trying to go paleo, just trying to get a little more healthy in just like to hear people talk about really interesting things about, you know, what, you know, big farming and, and just corporate food does to the society.

Right. It's, it's a really interesting read. And they're, they're not taking this from the tinfoil hat side, like, oh, they're trying to kill us and all this. It's just, it's a very interesting point of view. And the, uh, the host is very smart and the guests he gets are very smart. And he does a thing at the end where he finds clips of other shows or other people talking about things that are relevant and puts it in.

I, all in all, it's a solid show. It's, it's about an hour every week. Um, he took some time off, but there were, there are a ton of back issues you can go listen to, but he's back on the air now once a week. Highly recommended, highly recommended. I'll have to check it out, even though it sounds like it'll probably piss me off.

I doubt it. I, I, if, if you listen to it and it pisses you off, I would be very interested to know why. This is going to be a strange one because we are two, two guys who generally can't stand American sports. Uh, yeah. I mean, I basically never watch sports.

Uh, once every four years, I will hunker down for, for like the month long world cup and basically watch every single game. But other than that, I, I don't pay attention to sports. I couldn't tell you what's going on except for when the Dodgers are in the post season and I have been watching every single game.

Um, they're playing at five 30 today, which is why I'm kind of hurry rushing through this podcast. So I get everything else done and I can get out of my office and go watch the damn game as soon as possible. Um, they're, you know, they're up against the wall right now. They've got to win today or else they're out and then they have to win again tomorrow or they're out.

So by the time you hear this podcast, the Dodgers go Doyers will hopefully be in the world series, but probably not. Probably not. They're kind of getting their ass handed to them. And I see, here's the thing. I am in a baseball household right now, so I have to watch every single game. So I was up last night watching the, uh, the Detroit Boston game.

And I tell me out because the, the one thing that makes me happier than the Dodgers winning is the Red Sox losing. I see. I'm rooting for the Sox because I just like the beards. I think it's a bunch of, it looks like grizzly Adams every time they come up to bat. It is pretty insane. And tell me those catchers last night were getting to hell.

I, I, I mean that part I found it entertaining. This could be these poor catchers were getting hit with everything in the face and the knees and the nuts, everything. Yeah. I mean, there was that one play at home plate where that guy just decimated the catcher. I mean, just fucking ran into him at full speed, knocked him down.

The guy held onto the ball. Pretty amazing. Good stuff. I mean, I really, I've really enjoyed watching all the games in the post season. I would never, ever, ever possibly. I could never get into baseball and watch all year long because they have like 10,000 games. It's ridiculous. But, uh, you know, Dodgers post season, I'm all in. I'm going to watch it all unless the Dodgers don't make it, at which point I'll won't give a shit about the world series.

So yeah, I'm sure as soon as I'm out of here and baseball's not around, I won't watch it anymore, but it was, I tell you what, these have been fun games to watch. Nail biters. Yeah. They've been a lot of fun. It's been some really, really good games. So, so in, in non sports news, we've been, we've been talking about how the next evolution of the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast was going to be the daily show that I was working on ideas for.

Um, kind of scrap that for now because I still cannot find a single way to make more tech news every day that compelling. I like what we do because this is, this is fun and we just talk about everything. So, but just doing generic tech news, it's done to death.

Right. So we have a, we have a new show coming out on the Grumpy Old Geeks network and it is a, we have a network now. Well, we have shows, so it's a network. Uh, this show will be a classic movie, a classic movie show where we find old movies that were considered classics in their day.

We watch them, we review them and we find out, does it have legs? That's the name of the show. It is a, it's a round table between myself, our previous guest, Mike Vinicor and our audience member, uh, Mr. Calby Mundy, who's a professional photographer, used to shoot for Rolling Stone.

He's a, he's a, he's a good guy. We're all movie fanatics. So we, we recorded our first episode this week. We did, uh, the classic, the warriors and you'll, you'll have to tune in to find out if it has legs, but we're, uh, we're going to put a few shows in there. So hopefully it'll be out by Halloween and, uh, this next week we're going to do three, three shows back to back.

We watched the movie, we critique the movie and we put down our judgment. So it's, it's a pretty fun show, at least recording. It's fun. We'll see if, uh, see if anybody likes it, but if you have, yeah, I can't wait to hear it. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.

And it, the, the rules are, it must be at least 20 years old. Okay. One person in the room has to be new to it. So we have to have a fresh perspective on every movie. So we might even have to bring in other guests who have not seen the movie to get a, to get a read on it because we, we have seen a lot of movies together.

So, um, I think, uh, yeah, for Halloween, we're going to be doing attack of the killer tomatoes. Oh, I love that movie. I've never, I've never seen it. Okay. Uh, I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah. Repo man is on the list because, uh, Mr. Mundy hasn't seen it. So it's, it's, it's funny finding out all these classic movies that other people haven't seen.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I'll be throwing in some Kurosawa because, uh, I'm a huge Kurosawa fan and I don't think these guys have seen any Kurosawa. So I think it's going to be a fun show. Uh, time will tell, but that is the, the, the geek podcast news, uh, coming down in the shout outs.

That's all I got. Cool. All right, man. Well, I'm looking forward to that. And I'm also looking forward to, uh, next week's episode with us. Absolutely. Keep up with the grumpy old geeks on the web at grumpy old geeks.com on Facebook and facebook.com slash grumpy old geeks or email them at podcast and grumpy old geeks.com.

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