Latest / Never Post / Mailbag #9: Don't Livestream at The Club

Transcript

Mailbag #9: Don't Livestream at The Club · Never Post

• 0:00
  Mike Rugnetta: Hey, folks. A little news right up front here
• 0:02
  before we get to the mail. We are in the midst of our member
• 0:06
  drive, and holy moly, y'all are crushing it. We still have a
• 0:11
  while to go to hit our goals, which we're gonna mention soon
• 0:14
  during our member drive stream week. Please imagine that
• 0:19
  emblazoned on a big LED screen, perhaps surrounded by igniting
• 0:24
  pyrotechnics as though you are at a monster truck rally.
• 0:27
  Maybe Jason can pitch me down here and put a MIDI guitar solo
• 0:30
  in.
• 0:31
  Mike Rugnetta: Member drive stream week. That's right,
• 0:35
  folks. Starting at 10AM eastern on Monday, August 18 and going
• 0:39
  until Friday evening, August twenty second, the Neverpost
• 0:42
  team will be streaming. Not the entire
• 0:45
  Mike Rugnetta: time because we have families and need to eat
• 0:47
  food and stuff, but for a lot of that time
• 0:48
  Mike Rugnetta: Streaming. Do you wanna know how we write music
• 0:52
  for the show? Do you wanna see inside Georgia's closet in a
• 0:55
  Mike Rugnetta: not at all creepy way, but with, like, permission?
• 0:57
  Mike Rugnetta: Do you wanna find out what the best quote in the
• 0:59
  world is? Do you want to see Jason play NBA Jam? He's so
• 1:05
  funny.
• 1:07
  Mike Rugnetta: Then join us for Member Drive Stream Week. Full
• 1:13
  schedule to follow. Admission is free, but you can get a bundle.
• 1:16
  Follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/theneverpost.
• 1:24
  Mike Rugnetta: Okay. I'm not gonna lie. When I sat down to
• 1:25
  make this topper for the mailbag, I did not expect it to
• 1:27
  go in the direction of fake monster truck rally, but here we
• 1:31
  are. Member drive stream week, the week of August 18.
• 1:34
  Twitch.tv/theneverpost.
• 1:37
  Go follow us now so you get notifications when we go live.
• 1:40
  See you there. Friends, hello, and welcome to the Never Post
• 1:50
  Mailbag episode four, Dog Days twenty twenty five, in which we
• 1:54
  respond to listener emails, comments, voicemail, and voice
• 1:58
  messages about our segments. We love hearing from you. Well,
• 2:04
  most of you.
• 2:06
  Hans Buetow: You know who you are.
• 2:08
  Mike Rugnetta: You know who you are.
• 2:09
  Mike Rugnetta: Is it Mom. Please
• 2:13
  Mike Rugnetta: just kidding, mom. Love you. You send an email
• 2:15
  whenever you want. Do get in touch. Tell us your thoughts on
• 2:18
  our segments.
• 2:19
  All the ways you can get a hold of us are in the show notes.
• 2:21
  Drop us a line and maybe Hans will respond with some of the
• 2:24
  things he ate most recently at the state fair. Anything
• 2:27
  anything sticking out to you as a teaser?
• 2:29
  Hans Buetow: Well, we haven't we haven't gone yet. I mean, it's
• 2:32
  we're gonna wait. It starts twentieth.
• 2:35
  Jason Oberholtzer: So
• 2:35
  Mike Rugnetta: Oh, really? Oh, I thought it already started.
• 2:37
  Hans Buetow: No. Twelve days Mike, come on. It's the twelve
• 2:40
  days before Labor Day.
• 2:41
  Mike Rugnetta: Every Like, we all know that. We We do so.
• 2:44
  Mike Rugnetta: Know. Wait. How far in advance of the state fair
• 2:47
  do they publish the menu?
• 2:49
  Mike Rugnetta: Quite a while. It's a it's a big old deal.
• 2:52
  That's hilar okay. I had no clue. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Alright. Yep. I'm your host Mike Rugnetta. Joining
• 2:56
  me today paired with who I assume their go to characters in
• 3:01
  Mario Kart world are are Never Post producer Georgia Hampton.
• 3:09
  I'm calling Dry Bones.
• 3:10
  I'm gonna say Dry Bones.
• 3:11
  Mike Rugnetta: Yes. Wow.
• 3:14
  Jason Oberholtzer: Got it in one?
• 3:15
  Georgia Hampton: Yes. Yes. I love tripods. Love
• 3:18
  Mike Rugnetta: and I love my little skeletal boy.
• 3:21
  Mike Rugnetta: I'm going entirely on vibe here, not like,
• 3:24
  Yeah. You know,
• 3:26
  Georgia Hampton: This is more just like who each of us are as
• 3:28
  people.
• 3:29
  Mike Rugnetta: What a
• 3:30
  Mike Rugnetta: well, okay. We'll see how Jason responds to this
• 3:31
  next one. Never post executive producer, Jason Oberholzer,
• 3:37
  Waluigi.
• 3:40
  Georgia Hampton: So I'm right.
• 3:41
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. It's either Bowser or one of the was.
• 3:46
  Mike Rugnetta: My brother-in-law is a big Bowser devotee, and I'm
• 3:50
  gonna say he's probably right. Bowser is actually probably the
• 3:53
  correct choice.
• 3:54
  Jason Oberholtzer: It is. But, you know, I'll take any of the
• 3:55
  bad boys. I like to be a bad boy when I'm on the track.
• 3:59
  Mike Rugnetta: And finally, never post senior producer Hans
• 4:01
  Buto, lack it too.
• 4:03
  Hans Buetow: I do love to drop a spiny shell. Love it. You're not
• 4:07
  wrong.
• 4:08
  Georgia Hampton: Wait, Mike. Who are you then?
• 4:09
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. My go to is Shy Guy.
• 4:11
  Georgia Hampton: Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:12
  Mike Rugnetta: I'm a
• 4:13
  Mike Rugnetta: little upset. Seems like you can no longer
• 4:15
  pick the color of your Shy Guy, which is sad to me. Sorry, bud.
• 4:19
  You know what's gonna help me take my mind off of this?
• 4:21
  Bagging some mail.
• 4:23
  Okay.
• 4:25
  Hans Buetow: Okay. Kick us off. We wanna set the mood. We wanna
• 4:28
  settle us into kind of the vibe of the day. And let's see let's
• 4:32
  see if we can do this with Michael Bukino, who sent us this
• 4:35
  poem saying that has been rattling around in their head on
• 4:39
  long bike rides around.
• 4:41
  Well, I'll let you guess where.
• 4:44
  Clip: The bugs in my beard I bring back from my bike ride are
• 4:46
  just souvenirs from failed attempt flybys, buzzing and
• 4:49
  bumping and flipping and flapping, jittering, jumping,
• 4:52
  slithering, slapping. One proboscis, two antennae, 6,000
• 4:56
  or so limbs, shiny shells, wondrous wings, and a slimy
• 4:59
  trail of mucin. Each camouflage colorful, cute, creepy crawly
• 5:03
  hitching a lift on the fuzzy face trolley can look like a lot
• 5:06
  at the end of my hall, but these little critters don't bug me at
• 5:08
  all.
• 5:11
  Mike Rugnetta: Bug beard. Bug beard.
• 5:12
  Mike Rugnetta: Bug beard. Bug beard. Michael. So good. Is that
• 5:16
  Jason Oberholtzer: fuzzy face trolley? What's that?
• 5:19
  Mike Rugnetta: Into it. Good mood set.
• 5:21
  Hans Buetow: That's I feel like we're ready to go.
• 5:23
  Mike Rugnetta: Okay. Let's bring it right down.
• 5:26
  Georgia Hampton: I don't get too excited.
• 5:30
  Mike Rugnetta: So we got a few comments about AI Mike, who
• 5:33
  everybody will remember took over for me while I was on
• 5:36
  vacation. One thing regarding AI Mike that we, I guess, did not
• 5:42
  make clear enough is that Jason wrote the words. Yes.
• 5:47
  Jason Oberholtzer: I am at fault. I did it.
• 5:49
  Mike Rugnetta: There were some folks who were concerned that
• 5:52
  maybe we had used an LLM. We didn't. Jason wrote it. It was a
• 5:56
  script. Mhmm.
• 5:57
  I also like I don't know how much LLM output you've seen, but
• 6:00
  I encounter a fair amount of it online now. And I don't think I
• 6:04
  think Jason's far funnier than a than a than a computer.
• 6:07
  Jason Oberholtzer: I love to clear a low bar. The
• 6:14
  Mike Rugnetta: voice of AI Mike was AI generated based on, I
• 6:18
  assume, me reading the news. Hans, is that true?
• 6:23
  Hans Buetow: You know what? It's actually a model made of you
• 6:26
  reading copy for the first pilot segment that we ever did that no
• 6:32
  one but us has ever heard.
• 6:34
  Jason Oberholtzer: Interesting. Oh, interesting.
• 6:35
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. I I mess with it a lot.
• 6:38
  Mike Rugnetta: Why did you why that as raw material?
• 6:41
  Hans Buetow: That's just the one that I made, and I feel like it
• 6:43
  doesn't quite sound like you in a way that I really, really
• 6:47
  love. Like, it kinda it sounds enough like you that it's
• 6:49
  recognizable, but I really like pushing it and making it sound
• 6:53
  weird. One of the things I enjoyed about this instance of
• 6:56
  using it use Eleven Labs to do it, and they are they have an
• 7:00
  they're an alpha for a brand new version of it, which allows you
• 7:03
  to add in tags for mood. And so I got really into using the
• 7:08
  wrong mood tag for your for what you were supposed to be
• 7:14
  experiencing in that moment and just seeing what it would do.
• 7:16
  And I turned the variability, like, all the way up and, like,
• 7:19
  the comic express or, like, I don't remember all the the the
• 7:23
  different things, but, like, I really ratchet it.
• 7:25
  And I really believe in that. Like, I really believe in having
• 7:27
  Mike AI Mike announce itself Yeah. As AI, and that it was
• 7:35
  done with permission. You gave us permission to make an AI
• 7:38
  model of you. And then just like messing with it because it's I
• 7:42
  think way more funny that way.
• 7:44
  Mike Rugnetta: Jay Springit on Blue Sky asked, could you speak
• 7:47
  or reflect a little bit on how it felt to listen to and
• 7:50
  experience AI Mike like as me? And I think that factors into
• 7:55
  factors heavily into my experience of it, which is that
• 7:57
  it's I enjoy it, maybe not entirely, but significantly
• 8:01
  because of how strange it is. Mhmm. I wonder I was wondering
• 8:05
  as I was listening to it. I was like, could we ever actually use
• 8:09
  this as a tool when we like have to retract something?
• 8:13
  I would be curious to know what you think Hans, but my feeling
• 8:15
  is that it might not be as easy as one might think it should be.
• 8:20
  Mike Rugnetta: I think that's right. I think
• 8:21
  Hans Buetow: at the moment, no. Yeah. And I wanna be clear
• 8:23
  parenthetically that we actually had access to you. We chose to
• 8:26
  make
• 8:27
  Mike Rugnetta: Yes.
• 8:27
  Mike Rugnetta: That is true.
• 8:28
  Hans Buetow: Even though we had full access to you to
• 8:30
  Mike Rugnetta: be able to record this. We thought it was funny.
• 8:32
  Yes.
• 8:33
  Jason Oberholtzer: And it was out of deference to your
• 8:35
  vacation. You did the thing that, you know, you're not
• 8:37
  supposed to do.
• 8:38
  Mike Rugnetta: Took a real vacation.
• 8:39
  Jason Oberholtzer: You took a real vacation. Yeah. And you
• 8:42
  should
• 8:42
  Mike Rugnetta: be punished for that. Yes.
• 8:45
  Georgia Hampton: You were.
• 8:45
  Mike Rugnetta: And you were. Yeah.
• 8:46
  Jason Oberholtzer: No. The thing you did that you're not supposed
• 8:48
  to do is you brought a microphone on vacation just in
• 8:50
  case we needed any punch ins or anything there. And when we did,
• 8:54
  you were going to set up and we said, no. You go have your
• 8:57
  stupid vacation.
• 8:58
  Hans Buetow: Go enjoy your
• 8:59
  Jason Oberholtzer: family. Yeah. That we instead we're gonna do
• 9:03
  this because it would be fun for us and would force you to not
• 9:06
  stop vacationing.
• 9:09
  Hans Buetow: And I think that this would be hard to to
• 9:12
  earnestly make a mic because it just doesn't sound enough like
• 9:15
  you. No. I think we retrained it on a little bit better copy, it
• 9:20
  would work like we're more in gave it more intentional
• 9:23
  training material
• 9:24
  Mike Rugnetta: It could get closer.
• 9:25
  Hans Buetow: Than yeah. To make it closer to you, and then
• 9:28
  really like worked at it maybe, and definitely in like a year,
• 9:32
  because a year ago, the technology was wildly different.
• 9:35
  This is also why I like to use it is because I think it's
• 9:37
  really important to kind of understand what state the the
• 9:41
  technology is in, and it changes so quickly that I mean, I was
• 9:48
  making fun of the the emotion tags, but it's pretty incredible
• 9:53
  what it can do. It can sigh. It can laugh.
• 9:55
  It creates mics laugh weirdly. It can, like, cluck. It can do
• 10:00
  all sorts of things. I can make it sing. I made it sing.
• 10:03
  Mike Rugnetta: What mood is Yeah.
• 10:06
  Mike Rugnetta: Feeling barnyard.
• 10:07
  Hans Buetow: And that's just gonna get more that's just we're
• 10:09
  gonna have have more and more nuanced control where we're
• 10:11
  gonna be able to do more and more nuanced things with it. So
• 10:14
  I think eventually, yes. I don't think it's there yet.
• 10:16
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
• 10:16
  Jason Oberholtzer: To me, there's a distinction where this
• 10:20
  does not feel like generative AI. I would not call this
• 10:24
  generative AI. Yeah. To me generative AI is something that
• 10:27
  is performing the facsimile of creativity. Yeah.
• 10:30
  That is being marketed as AI. This to me is an audio tool
• 10:36
  wielded by humans, the same way that the iZotope suite of
• 10:39
  plugins includes a lot of audio tools that are AI marketed and
• 10:44
  motivated that are used by us to do things that we cannot do on
• 10:49
  our own.
• 10:49
  Mike Rugnetta: And that's you mean things like, you know,
• 10:51
  that's noise reduction.
• 10:52
  Mike Rugnetta: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
• 10:54
  Jason Oberholtzer: Like finding the profile of the
• 10:55
  reverberations of a room and then showing me that profile so
• 10:59
  that I can take it out.
• 11:00
  Mike Rugnetta: I mean, I do realize the intrusion of AI into
• 11:04
  everything is incredibly frustrating. You know, we hate
• 11:11
  it too. So I hope it's balm enough to know that we didn't
• 11:15
  use any big gross generative AI tools in this episode nor any
• 11:20
  other episode. So, you know, we understand. I totally
• 11:22
  understand.
• 11:23
  We only got a few emails about this, but, you know, I wanted to
• 11:25
  make sure that
• 11:26
  Jason Oberholtzer: we take them seriously. Let's dive back into
• 11:29
  more meta mailbag action. As predicted, mailbags beget
• 11:34
  mailbags topics. In response to the previous mailbag, there were
• 11:37
  two emails I wanted to pull out. One, a piece of gear
• 11:42
  recommendation.
• 11:45
  Hans Buetow: Wait. Dude, you just lifted your cat over your
• 11:47
  head when you said that. Was that is that is Robert being
• 11:50
  recommended to us?
• 11:51
  Georgia Hampton: He's Bluetooth enabled.
• 11:54
  Jason Oberholtzer: We got an email from Manuel who says,
• 11:58
  friends, I wanna share my dumbified, I'd rather use that
• 12:01
  term, not frictionless, way to consume audio media. I got one
• 12:05
  of those bone conducting earphones which are also
• 12:08
  waterproof, so I can use them while running or swimming. They
• 12:12
  have an internal memory, so I can go around and listen to
• 12:14
  stuff without having to constantly carry my phone with
• 12:16
  me, which has drastically reduced how much time I spend
• 12:19
  looking at it. But I think the best feature, in my opinion, is
• 12:22
  how little options this device has. Volume up, volume down,
• 12:26
  skip forward, skip backward, pause.
• 12:29
  No shuffle, no playlist or anything. As soon as the last
• 12:33
  file is played, the loop starts from the beginning. This forces
• 12:36
  me to regularly curate my content which I find very
• 12:39
  refreshing. It still feels weird not to have the weight of the
• 12:43
  phone in my pocket, or not having to worry about how far
• 12:45
  from the phone I'm going before the Bluetooth signal drops, but
• 12:48
  I'm getting used to moving freely.
• 12:50
  Hans Buetow: I've had to get
• 12:51
  Jason Oberholtzer: getting used to moving freely. The only
• 12:54
  downside listen, this is important. I get this. The only
• 12:57
  downside is that I can't skip ads. But oh no, wait.
• 13:02
  This is not an issue at all. Because for only $4 a month, I
• 13:07
  can get Never Post without ads. And I can guarantee you that
• 13:12
  listening to pet sounds while underwater is really something.
• 13:16
  Mike Rugnetta: Oh, Manuel. Oh, Manuel. VIP.
• 13:18
  Mike Rugnetta: That is
• 13:19
  Hans Buetow: incredible with the plug. Mhmm.
• 13:22
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's so rad. I've never heard of that.
• 13:23
  Hans Buetow: Have you have you ever experienced have you have
• 13:25
  you has anyone ever tried bone conduction headphones?
• 13:27
  Jason Oberholtzer: People have told me this happens. I've never
• 13:29
  done it.
• 13:30
  Georgia Hampton: I've never heard of this before. I'm so
• 13:32
  curious.
• 13:32
  Hans Buetow: So this is if you ever look at, like, if you
• 13:35
  watch, like, military movies and stuff, these are the headphones
• 13:38
  that they often have on. So what they do is it it attaches to
• 13:41
  your jaw or around your jaw, and it sends the vibrations of the
• 13:45
  audio through your skull, through the bones, which keeps
• 13:48
  your ear canal open so you can fully hear everything that's
• 13:51
  still happening with full fidelity. But what happens is
• 13:54
  your head becomes a resonating chamber, and you hear the
• 13:57
  whatever's happening kind of in the center of your
• 14:00
  Mike Rugnetta: head. What?
• 14:01
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. I used to wear one I used to wear one when
• 14:03
  I was a bike messenger so that I could keep my ears clear and I
• 14:06
  could hear traffic, but I could still hear the like, whatever
• 14:09
  was happening on the radio.
• 14:10
  Mike Rugnetta: I think of them as being popular for folks who
• 14:13
  work in offices. Right? And you can't, you know, you have to be
• 14:17
  present and like, listen listening to your environment,
• 14:20
  but also listen to Neverpost and the ad free feed only $4 a
• 14:25
  month.
• 14:27
  Jason Oberholtzer: This actually relates in some ways to the
• 14:30
  other email I wanted to pull out that responded to last mailbag
• 14:34
  from Oliver, who is responding to a comment Mike made while we
• 14:38
  were chatting that said, there is no knowing things without the
• 14:42
  body. The body is so really intimately involved in
• 14:47
  knowledge. This made Oliver think. He says, it made me think
• 14:52
  about how much of our communication online is
• 14:54
  flattened to the written word or to emojis, and the added
• 14:57
  importance of good written communication education and
• 15:00
  literacy. Years ago, I wrote my master's thesis on written
• 15:03
  education and literacy, ostentatious title incoming.
• 15:06
  Mike Rugnetta: Yes. Let's go.
• 15:07
  Jason Oberholtzer: Writing do. The way of writing, the
• 15:12
  instructional effectiveness of kinesthetic teaching methods as
• 15:15
  called from martial arts.
• 15:16
  Mike Rugnetta: That sounds sick as hell.
• 15:18
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. In it, I discussed how physical
• 15:20
  movements can inform our methods of communication, and you can
• 15:24
  take the teaching methods from a physical art like karate,
• 15:27
  capoeira, or tai chi, and transfer them to the analytical
• 15:30
  art of written communication, or learning critical pedagogy, or
• 15:35
  learning eco composition. The big thrust of my argument, which
• 15:38
  I still stand by decades later, is a punch and a sentence are
• 15:42
  fundamentally the same thing. As both are delivering an idea or
• 15:45
  feeling from the creator to the recipient. Both speaking and
• 15:49
  sparring are dialogues.
• 15:51
  For many students, thinking of grammar is tricky, but when you
• 15:54
  tell them that when a happens, do b, much like when punch comes
• 15:58
  to chest, do this block, the simplicity can click for some. I
• 16:03
  firmly believe that more people should learn the distinction
• 16:05
  between learning and knowing. My best example is a physical one.
• 16:09
  You can learn that a knife is sharp all you want by studying
• 16:12
  it, by looking at the blade profile, but the moment you
• 16:14
  accidentally nick yourself, you know it is sharp, and that will
• 16:18
  stick with you for all your days.
• 16:21
  Mike Rugnetta: A sentence and a punch are fundamentally the same
• 16:23
  thing, goes hard.
• 16:24
  Mike Rugnetta: It really does.
• 16:25
  Hans Buetow: In two ways.
• 16:29
  Mike Rugnetta: True.
• 16:29
  Mike Rugnetta: I think about this sort of thing all the time,
• 16:31
  because I I read a lot, and over the last couple years, I have
• 16:36
  really gone to great lengths to try to cut down on how much I
• 16:41
  read that's like important to me. Like, I I wanna know it
• 16:44
  just, know, for my own knowledge or for work on a screen. I try
• 16:49
  really really hard to not read things on a screen that I need
• 16:52
  to remember because I find that I just don't remember them as
• 16:56
  well. Mhmm. Mhmm.
• 16:57
  And I was actually thinking about this, like, this morning.
• 17:00
  I gotta go get a book from the library, and I was thinking
• 17:02
  about, like, my schedule of, when and how I'm gonna read it,
• 17:06
  and, you know, how I'm gonna fit it into my day. And I started
• 17:10
  thinking about I was like, am I should I choose somewhere unique
• 17:16
  to go and read this in the hopes that that lets me remember
• 17:21
  things about it easier. I wonder if my, like, embodied knowledge
• 17:26
  of this text will have, like, greater resolution if I'm
• 17:31
  somewhere that I am not normally. Is Hans is making all
• 17:36
  kinds of hand motions.
• 17:36
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. My this is a thing. This I find this amazing.
• 17:39
  I think about it all the time. My editor at the New York Times,
• 17:42
  who's incredible, she would not take notes when she would
• 17:45
  listen.
• 17:45
  So I would send her audio of something, and then she would go
• 17:48
  and she would walk. We all know about, like, how walking
• 17:50
  stimulates the brain and all of that, but she would geolocate
• 17:53
  her notes. So when she got back to her computer, she would
• 17:58
  remember her walk and be like, okay. Green Volkswagen. That was
• 18:02
  the part where Hans did this thing, and I wanted to change it
• 18:04
  to this thing.
• 18:05
  Broken mailbox. Okay. Like, that's how she did her notes was
• 18:08
  by locating them geographically in physical space, which I
• 18:12
  always, like, is so fascinating to me to, like, really embody,
• 18:16
  really locate information in space.
• 18:18
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. I think this is really interesting
• 18:20
  thinking of the way communication exists in
• 18:23
  different three d or four d forms. Because I have a version
• 18:27
  of this sometimes with music where I can remember things
• 18:30
  better because I was listening to a certain part of a song when
• 18:33
  I was writing something, or if I was taking notes on something.
• 18:37
  Like, it it, like, recalls that memory to me easier because of
• 18:43
  the auditory connection I've made.
• 18:47
  Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm. Yeah. I believe that.
• 18:49
  Georgia Hampton: And I'm also curious, Oliver, if in your
• 18:52
  writing in this piece, like, if at all and how maybe dance can
• 19:00
  be another example of this. Because to me, like, dance is an
• 19:04
  interesting physical version of this where it's less
• 19:08
  confrontational. You're not physically fighting each other,
• 19:10
  but you are still physically communicating to each other. It
• 19:14
  is also something you can do by yourself in the way that you can
• 19:17
  be talking to yourself. You can be dancing alone.
• 19:21
  And I don't know. I'm I'm interested in knowing more about
• 19:27
  the physical manifestation of communication beyond just
• 19:30
  physical fighting.
• 19:33
  Jason Oberholtzer: Well, this is not gonna be the last time we
• 19:35
  talk about dance. So dance heads, get ready. Because
• 19:39
  there's a bunch of emails that came into Georgia about dance
• 19:41
  we'll do later. The final thing this reminds me of, I haven't
• 19:45
  thought about this in a long time, Back when I had to
• 19:47
  remember more phone numbers because you just had to remember
• 19:49
  more phone numbers. I started linking the numbers to notes of
• 19:57
  the scale, so that I could sing somebody's phone number and
• 20:00
  that's how I remember them.
• 20:02
  Hans Buetow: What? You'd make a melody out of it?
• 20:03
  Jason Oberholtzer: You would make a melody out of it. Oh.
• 20:05
  Georgia Hampton: I love that.
• 20:06
  Jason Oberholtzer: Because you're only ever getting up to
• 20:07
  like a tenth. Right? Yeah. I would make a little melody and I
• 20:11
  could the melody or if it's like an easy to remember harmonic
• 20:14
  structure, I'd remember that and someone's number would be a
• 20:17
  harmonic structure.
• 20:18
  Hans Buetow: Cool. Next up is a comment from Matt Storm, who
• 20:24
  sent us a voice mail message about the story that I did about
• 20:28
  animating photos using AI. So taking still images, moving them
• 20:31
  into moving images.
• 20:34
  Matt Storm: And this reminds me of something I've been seeing a
• 20:36
  lot on TikTok lately, which is this AI tool that turns people
• 20:40
  into mermaids or makes your pets dance. I've seen them both, and
• 20:46
  I block every account I see using them because they just
• 20:49
  unsettle me. There's something about forcing an image, even if
• 20:54
  it's your own image, into a situation that's not real
• 20:57
  through AI that just makes my skin crawl. And I don't even
• 21:02
  know that I could tell you why. Right?
• 21:05
  And Hans talks about this in his piece. But I'm curious if you
• 21:08
  guys have seen this trend and what you think about it. You
• 21:11
  know, I just there's something about manipulating images. The
• 21:15
  one that really gets me that I've seen on TikTok is making
• 21:17
  two people kiss in an image. Like, that goes against
• 21:20
  everything that consent represents.
• 21:22
  Right? You are forcing two people who you cannot ask if
• 21:25
  they wanna kiss to kiss. It drives me bonkers. Sorry. I'm
• 21:28
  getting heated.
• 21:29
  Anyway, I'm curious how you think this connects to consent
• 21:33
  and basically your thoughts on that as well. Thanks. Keep up
• 21:37
  the awesome stuff.
• 21:39
  Hans Buetow: Matt, incredible. That is a huge part of the
• 21:43
  reason that people have been talking about making a new
• 21:45
  Humphrey Bogart movie or something or, like, animating
• 21:48
  our historical figures into things is, oh, well, the dead
• 21:51
  can't consent. But, like, I think we've seen it's not just
• 21:54
  the dead anymore who, can you consent or not consent? Do you
• 21:59
  have to this is the thing that that Tory brought up. Do you
• 22:01
  have to actively opt out of having anything done with your
• 22:05
  image?
• 22:05
  Do we have to make this a part of our wills? Georgia, have you
• 22:08
  seen these? You're our you're our TikTok maven. Have you seen
• 22:11
  these things that Matt is talking about?
• 22:14
  Georgia Hampton: So I haven't actually seen videos of, like,
• 22:17
  people turning themselves into mermaids or making people kiss
• 22:19
  as much, but it reminds me a lot of this music video that Kanye
• 22:24
  West did, like, years ago called Famous, in which he portrayed
• 22:28
  himself in bed with a bunch of other famous people, including
• 22:31
  Taylor Swift, and it engendered this huge response and a lot of
• 22:35
  controversy. And I believe Taylor Swift maybe taking legal
• 22:39
  action against him, or there at least being this very huge
• 22:42
  outcry against this kind of act. And it reminds me a lot of this
• 22:49
  because there is a question of consent here. And at the time, I
• 22:53
  think there was so much fixation on like, oh, well, you're super
• 22:55
  famous. Like, do you own the image of yourself?
• 22:59
  Do you have to like, do you have the right to tell someone that
• 23:03
  they can't represent you in a certain way? Yeah. If you're
• 23:06
  making someone kiss or do anything, frankly, there's this
• 23:11
  question of consent. And what makes me even more uncomfortable
• 23:16
  is this suggestion that maybe consent, like, isn't required
• 23:22
  for someone to do this, especially if they think it's
• 23:24
  funny. So up next, we got a very interesting message from Josh,
• 23:31
  in regard to a segment I did on tactility and the general lack
• 23:34
  of buttons on our devices and how interfacing with the
• 23:39
  smoothness of technology leaves us wanting.
• 23:44
  Josh: A couple years ago for Christmas, I got this fantastic
• 23:47
  gooseneck kettle electric kettle for boiling water that you can
• 23:52
  program to set the water to specific temperatures for your
• 23:57
  various snobby high end coffees and teas. This gooseneck kettle
• 24:01
  is perfect. It does exactly what I needed to do. Nothing more,
• 24:05
  nothing less. However, the buttons on the front of it,
• 24:07
  they're not touch screens, they're, touch capacitive
• 24:10
  buttons that don't actually go down.
• 24:13
  But they also look like buttons and feel like buttons and that
• 24:15
  there's crevices and they're different shape and color than
• 24:18
  the surrounding area of the the base of the kettle. So there's a
• 24:23
  very serious design flaw here that I didn't discover until I
• 24:26
  had the thing for a couple weeks, which is water makes
• 24:30
  touch capacitive buttons get touched. Yes. So, like, anytime
• 24:36
  water from the kettle or was coming into or out of or close
• 24:40
  to the kettle would drip down, it would touch the button and
• 24:44
  make it go off. And because it was wet and it had crevices like
• 24:48
  a real button, the water would just sit in there and I had to
• 24:51
  wait for it to dry itself out before I could actually make the
• 24:55
  thing work again, which often postponed getting my water to
• 24:58
  the perfect temperature for five or ten minutes and, being a very
• 25:02
  frustrating experience.
• 25:04
  Mike Rugnetta: Oh my god.
• 25:06
  Jason Oberholtzer: I'm so proud of Josh for not just screaming
• 25:08
  that entire time.
• 25:10
  Georgia Hampton: I mean, again, it's it's this hubris of
• 25:13
  technological quote unquote advancement. The blind trudging
• 25:18
  forward of certain kinds of technological fads, which I
• 25:25
  think honestly is what this is, is it just is endlessly telling
• 25:30
  on itself. Like, it's ridiculous. That doesn't make
• 25:34
  any sense. Like, yeah, it it should be something wherein,
• 25:37
  product testing that comes up immediately.
• 25:40
  Hans Buetow: I think it's so interesting that they don't
• 25:41
  actually save anything. Like, the whole point of being touch
• 25:44
  sensitive is you wouldn't have
• 25:45
  Mike Rugnetta: to have the you wouldn't have
• 25:46
  Hans Buetow: to make it look feel like a button, but they
• 25:47
  wanted it to look and feel like a button, but also have that
• 25:50
  like, why not just make them buttons then? Why Yeah. Why make
• 25:55
  Mike Rugnetta: it a
• 25:55
  Hans Buetow: different thing?
• 25:56
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. But you can't market a kettle with a
• 25:58
  button in the description on the Amazon page. It's kettle with
• 26:03
  touch sensitivity that goes right in Yeah. The title
• 26:07
  description, which is how we buy things now.
• 26:08
  Hans Buetow: Yeah.
• 26:09
  Mike Rugnetta: It's a psyop. It's a psyop.
• 26:11
  Mike Rugnetta: It's a psyop. Psyop.
• 26:13
  Mike Rugnetta: It's unraveling society. One cup of coffee at a
• 26:17
  time. Speaking of psyops, I did a segment a little while ago
• 26:22
  about how everything is increasingly feeling like a
• 26:26
  gamble or like gambling, and that feeling is really prevalent
• 26:31
  online. And we got a voice mail from Tom about this.
• 26:37
  Hans Buetow: As an artist, you know, I feel like over the last
• 26:40
  decade, we're being bombarded with all these different, you
• 26:43
  know oh, if you wanna make a living online, you need to be
• 26:46
  posting at these times. You need to be posting this often. Use
• 26:50
  hashtags. Don't use hashtags. Go.
• 26:51
  Twitter's blocking hashtags. Go. X hashtags. In the blue sky,
• 26:54
  they work. It's it's this this constant deluge of information.
• 26:59
  At a certain point, it starts to feel like, does anyone actually
• 27:02
  know what these what you know, if these tips work? Like No.
• 27:08
  Because the platform changes how the rules work from one day to
• 27:12
  the next without even letting us know. It just feels like we're
• 27:16
  we're sort of thrown to see, I guess, dealing with all this.
• 27:22
  And at a certain point, for your own mental health, I feel like
• 27:25
  you need to just say fuck it and just post what you want to post
• 27:29
  when you wanna post it.
• 27:30
  You know, if if you if you worry about all of the different
• 27:34
  possible factors, then you're gonna be so petrified. You wanna
• 27:38
  be able to to create anything. It's sad out here, but but not
• 27:42
  caring about those things had done wonders for my mental
• 27:45
  health. And my followers have gone up. So yay.
• 27:50
  Mike Rugnetta: Yay. I think yay. Yes. Yay. Yay.
• 27:53
  Yay, Tom.
• 27:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I agree. I think trying to imagine the
• 27:56
  world that the algorithm wants, wherever algorithm it is that
• 28:00
  you're, you know, trying to imagine is just such a trap. I
• 28:03
  think if you're like a really particular kind of person, it
• 28:06
  can be like a fulfilling challenge. Like if I think, you
• 28:09
  know, there are some people who I've met in my life online who
• 28:13
  are really good at just figuring out, like, having an intuitive
• 28:18
  sense of like what to put up when and where and with what
• 28:22
  metadata around it.
• 28:23
  Mike Rugnetta: But
• 28:23
  Mike Rugnetta: like, that's what they do. You know what I mean?
• 28:26
  Like, they really really invest a lot of time into building that
• 28:32
  skill and staying up on, like you say, all of the algorithm
• 28:36
  changes. And I think that's not for everyone. I think it's not
• 28:40
  for the vast majority of people.
• 28:43
  I think the other secret to this is that it's like, you I don't
• 28:47
  necessarily think that making and posting things that the
• 28:52
  algorithm likes, wherever that is, is going to be the thing
• 28:57
  that makes a particular poster or account popular. It is
• 29:04
  something that can assist in reach on a platform and thus
• 29:11
  help you become more popular, but it's not like the make or
• 29:14
  break thing. And in that way, it really is just so much more
• 29:19
  fulfilling and less crazy making to just focus on the thing
• 29:22
  itself. And then, you know, let all that other stuff just sort
• 29:25
  of like, if you can't think about it, sure, why not? But
• 29:28
  like, don't force yourself to do it.
• 29:30
  You're just gonna you're just gonna go nuts. We also got a
• 29:35
  voicemail from user friendly sounds.
• 29:37
  User Friendly: Before I start, I would just like to sort of make
• 29:40
  it clear that I generally agree with what Mike is saying in the
• 29:44
  piece and overall think social media is bad. With that out of
• 29:47
  the way, being somewhat of a semi pro content creator, I
• 29:52
  suppose, and more from an artistic standpoint, I just
• 29:55
  wanted to mention a couple of things. In regards to the few
• 30:00
  times that it seems like there's a suggestion that maybe posting
• 30:05
  is just a slot machine like as scrolling. I think I kind of
• 30:11
  agree with the idea in some ways, but to other creators out
• 30:16
  there, I just sort of wanted to to at least defend it a little
• 30:20
  bit. And the main point is that it is fairly low effort to
• 30:27
  scroll.
• 30:28
  It's really high effort in a lot of cases, obviously not all
• 30:33
  cases. In a lot of cases, it's high effort to post. And
• 30:38
  regardless of how many views or clicks or likes or whatever the
• 30:43
  thing is that you get, you still made the thing and that's
• 30:46
  valuable. And if you continue to make the thing, it's gonna
• 30:52
  improve over time just by default. But I think, this sort
• 30:58
  of idea of a writer or a painter or a musician practice your
• 31:03
  craft every day, write something every day, make a beat every
• 31:07
  day, whatever the thing is, that is a really good technique.
• 31:11
  But I think it can actually be improved if you make a thing
• 31:15
  every day and then show it to people. Because you're gonna
• 31:19
  create a little bit differently when you know that you're gonna
• 31:22
  be putting in front of somebody, whether that's 50 people or a
• 31:26
  million people, it doesn't matter. It's for a lot of us,
• 31:30
  it's gonna we're gonna think a little bit differently about how
• 31:33
  we're making what we're making if we're planning on sharing it.
• 31:37
  Mike Rugnetta: So first things first. If you don't know, User
• 31:41
  Friendly's work, he's on Instagram, I think mostly, and
• 31:46
  his work rules. User Friendly Sounds is great. He's like a
• 31:50
  great glitchy sound designer, like music maker, makes great
• 31:54
  visuals. So one, highly recommend User Friendly's work.
• 31:58
  Second, like I agree broadly with all of these things. I
• 32:01
  think we were generally in agreement. I know that it
• 32:06
  doesn't seem this way, but I don't want the point of that
• 32:10
  segment at least to fully come across as like social media is
• 32:13
  bad. I think the thing that I'm trying to figure out how to say
• 32:16
  is that it's like, social media is bad when you surrender too
• 32:20
  much of your agency to it. It's really really easy to forget
• 32:24
  that like, we have agency in these relationships that we have
• 32:27
  with technology, and like that's the thing that's bad.
• 32:29
  And it's bad that the software is designed on purpose to like
• 32:33
  siphon that to siphon that agency away from you or to give
• 32:36
  you excuses to give it up and to reward you with these paltry
• 32:41
  things to do so. I can understand the idea that, like,
• 32:45
  posting is high effort and scrolling is low effort, But I
• 32:49
  think the moment we're in now, we have a lot of people who talk
• 32:52
  about just like getting trapped in social media. You know, this
• 32:56
  started as like, oh, I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, right,
• 32:58
  like a decade or two ago. And you like lost a bunch of hours
• 33:02
  reading interesting things. Now, it's like, well, I'm, you know,
• 33:05
  really just deleted two hours scrolling through TikTok, which
• 33:12
  is itself, I think, a kind of high effort activity.
• 33:16
  It it's a it's a lot of energy being spent, But, yeah, it
• 33:22
  doesn't have the outcome of like, well, then at least you
• 33:24
  made something. I think sometimes we like dilute
• 33:27
  ourselves a little bit and thinking like, well, now I know
• 33:28
  more about what's happening on the Internet or like, I've
• 33:31
  experienced the sort of media or information environment for a
• 33:34
  little bit, and that's good for me for reasons. But, yeah, for
• 33:37
  the most part, you don't come out with anything, but you do, I
• 33:40
  think, expend a lot of effort.
• 33:43
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. I mean, we've talked
• 33:45
  about this before specifically with TikTok. And I know I've
• 33:48
  said the thing that I experience all the time with TikTok where
• 33:51
  I'll just be sort of sucked into it and then kind of zap myself
• 33:55
  out and be like, what am I looking for right now?
• 33:57
  Yeah. Because I've realized that over however long that I've been
• 34:01
  on TikTok, I feel this, like, growing frenzy, within me of,
• 34:07
  like, where is it? Where is it? Like and, like, I'm not looking
• 34:12
  for anything, but there is yeah. This sort of boiling a frog
• 34:16
  situation where maybe at first, scrolling through TikTok
• 34:19
  especially seems low effort, kind of relaxing, just like I
• 34:23
  wanna kind of go down the lazy river of my mind.
• 34:26
  And then it it changes. It never stays like that.
• 34:28
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. The yeah. The feeling I get is like, I'll
• 34:30
  be like, where am I going? Where do I Yeah. Think I'm headed?
• 34:34
  And Yes. Have I have I arrived there?
• 34:37
  Georgia Hampton: Is there a destination at all, in fact?
• 34:41
  Mhmm.
• 34:42
  Jason Oberholtzer: I also think that his point about repetition
• 34:46
  of showing creativity to people, or in this case, a defensive
• 34:50
  posting, which I'll allow. Showing it to people in the form
• 34:55
  of a post is well taken. That is true. You do create differently
• 34:59
  when a perceived audience stops being imagined and starts
• 35:02
  becoming real.
• 35:03
  Mike Rugnetta: 100%.
• 35:03
  Jason Oberholtzer: And I think it's probably beneficial whether
• 35:06
  or not your endgame involves showing things to people as
• 35:10
  posts for remuneration. I think it's probably valuable even if
• 35:14
  it's just to make better paintings or whatnot. So I think
• 35:18
  it's about taking point. There's one more email in here about the
• 35:22
  gambling segment from Gustav. He says he's been thinking about
• 35:27
  the old expression, the house always wins.
• 35:29
  Gustav says, the reason why casinos design their spaces and
• 35:33
  games to keep people playing is because they, over the long run,
• 35:36
  get more out of you than you get out of them. I think it holds
• 35:38
  true for online platforms though as astute media savvy folks, e g
• 35:42
  listeners have never post, $4 a month if you don't remember. We
• 35:46
  might believe we're gaming that system in some way. Like because
• 35:50
  we maybe use ad blockers or VPNs and curate our feeds well, we
• 35:53
  can get more out of the platform than it can extract from us. On
• 35:57
  an individual level, it might be true.
• 35:59
  Even casinos will have customers who get in when a small amount
• 36:02
  get out in time. But on a societal level, the level of
• 36:06
  these massive platforms, those cases are probably
• 36:08
  insignificant. The question then is, what does winning look like
• 36:14
  for the owners of these platforms? If Google decided to
• 36:18
  weigh their algorithms to favor anti regulation messaging, or
• 36:20
  Meta decided to subtly back right wing reactionaries, would
• 36:24
  we have any way of stemming the tide of public opinion? Would we
• 36:28
  even know what was going on, and could we prove them culpable?
• 36:32
  I think what's happening with Elon's takeover Twitter might
• 36:35
  just be a more visible and incompetent version of a process
• 36:38
  that is shaping world politics already in less obvious ways.
• 36:44
  Gustav, I think the question of what does winning look like for
• 36:46
  a particular platform is a very good question. The extent to
• 36:51
  which we can guess about what is already happening, I will leave
• 36:55
  to any individual mind. But I think it's very instructive to
• 36:58
  think about, whereas a casino has a very obvious definition of
• 37:02
  what winning is, extracting money from people who walk in
• 37:05
  their doors. Platforms, I think have a more complicated version
• 37:08
  of what winning ends up looking like.
• 37:10
  Ultimately, course, separating us from our money, but there are
• 37:15
  a lot of other games they are playing, especially as their
• 37:19
  vestigial tendencies from their ZERB funded beginnings still
• 37:22
  play themselves out.
• 37:23
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I mean, to it's I think the comparison to
• 37:26
  the house holds and I think yeah, Jason, your point about
• 37:29
  like, really they separate people from their time and their
• 37:31
  money, separate them from their their time to get their money
• 37:34
  Mhmm. Is true. But like the big difference is that a casino,
• 37:38
  it's not like gray goo. You know, like it doesn't the casino
• 37:42
  doesn't grow.
• 37:43
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Casinos rule.
• 37:45
  Mike Rugnetta: That's the difference.
• 37:47
  Georgia Hampton: You can smoke cigarettes in there.
• 37:48
  Mike Rugnetta: In defensive casinos. Yeah.
• 37:51
  Jason Oberholtzer: I never smoked a cigarette in my phone.
• 37:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Just, you know, imagine if, like, Caesar's
• 37:57
  Palace just grew one inch every minute and just swallowed
• 38:02
  swallowed the entirety of The United States and then the
• 38:04
  world.
• 38:05
  Georgia Hampton: I mean, that's kind of what it is. Right? Like,
• 38:07
  thinking about this when, Jason, you were reading it, it feels
• 38:09
  very much like, yeah, that the notion of winning when it comes
• 38:12
  to online platforms is exists in my mind as the way that universe
• 38:17
  is endlessly expanding. There is kind of no end point. It's
• 38:21
  always growing in the same way our individual experience on
• 38:24
  platforms is this feeling of kind of chasing something or
• 38:28
  following something.
• 38:30
  There's no satisfying, I've reached the end of the stack of
• 38:35
  stuff, like, that's never going to happen. I think the same is
• 38:38
  true for platforms,
• 38:39
  Mike Rugnetta: but in
• 38:40
  Georgia Hampton: a more evil way.
• 38:43
  Jason Oberholtzer: Well, you know one thing that does have a
• 38:46
  clear ending? The first half of this podcast episode.
• 38:51
  Mike Rugnetta: We're gonna go to a break
• 38:52
  Jason Oberholtzer: and come back with more emails and voice
• 38:56
  messages. Welcome back, gamblers. We have an email from
• 39:18
  Crow in response to the leaving social media roundtable. Crow
• 39:23
  says, whenever I feel the urge to check Instagram and Twitter,
• 39:26
  I have to do it through my phone's browser app, because
• 39:30
  Crow has deleted the applications themselves. The
• 39:33
  browser app, which is a terrible experience just because of how
• 39:36
  bizarre it feels.
• 39:38
  And I think it really works for me because I'm just so much more
• 39:40
  aware of how awful social social media is when the act of
• 39:44
  browsing is also awful. Twitter is already a terrible website,
• 39:48
  but intentionally making my own user experience worse is
• 39:52
  actually kind of liberating. I know y'all have talked about the
• 39:55
  tactic of using your phone screen time function to limit
• 39:58
  social media use, but that's still a product of design. I
• 40:01
  think maybe we should be using anti design tactics. Yeah.
• 40:06
  Georgia Hampton: This is like using hostile architecture on
• 40:08
  yourself. Yeah. Exactly.
• 40:09
  Mike Rugnetta: I used to do this and it works really well.
• 40:12
  Jason Oberholtzer: Okay.
• 40:12
  Mike Rugnetta: I use Firefox Focus, which is the mobile
• 40:16
  browser that only has one tab. You can't open more than one tab
• 40:20
  in it. And when you quit What? It's and it's a permanent
• 40:24
  private mode. So it doesn't save any cookies.
• 40:26
  It doesn't keep you logged into things. It deletes your history.
• 40:30
  When you quit the app, it loses the page, and when you reopen
• 40:35
  it, it's just blank. There's nothing there.
• 40:37
  Hans Buetow: It roots out the page code, deletes the page
• 40:40
  itself. It comes to
• 40:41
  Mike Rugnetta: your house and smacks
• 40:42
  Mike Rugnetta: you around a little.
• 40:44
  Hans Buetow: It goes back in time.
• 40:45
  Georgia Hampton: Cheese your car.
• 40:46
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. It
• 40:48
  Mike Rugnetta: rules. I it is like, you know, I worry about
• 40:53
  the day that it is no longer maintained because it is the
• 40:57
  fact that it has no features is its best feature, and it does
• 41:02
  really help me, like, deal with, you know, this kind of thing,
• 41:05
  like staying off of stuff.
• 41:07
  Hans Buetow: So like you open something up into this delicate
• 41:10
  ecosystem that you know will fail. Like, does that change how
• 41:14
  you interact with it? You can't be like, oh, I'll come back to
• 41:15
  this later, or oh, saving this, and like letting it like, do you
• 41:19
  have to resolve everything as you're doing it? What does it
• 41:21
  change for you?
• 41:21
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I don't well, like, means that I'm not,
• 41:24
  let's say, like, logged into Bandcamp constantly. Right? So I
• 41:29
  can't if I wanna buy a record, right, I have to log in to
• 41:33
  Bandcamp and add it to cart and then what what you know, I can't
• 41:36
  just go to the tab where I have Bandcamp open already logged in.
• 41:40
  Yeah.
• 41:41
  So like that's just a recent example of like, you know,
• 41:44
  putting putting roadblocks in my way so that I don't like spend
• 41:47
  too much money, so that I don't spend too much time online.
• 41:51
  Georgia Hampton: I feel like what we're kinda talking about
• 41:53
  here is just removing convenience.
• 41:57
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I think so.
• 41:58
  Georgia Hampton: It turns things into this featureless, smooth,
• 42:04
  frictionless experience. And I I really like this idea of of
• 42:09
  adding friction.
• 42:10
  Mike Rugnetta: You gotta get yourself a browser that stands
• 42:11
  in your doorway and goes, uh-uh.
• 42:14
  Georgia Hampton: No. No. No.
• 42:15
  Jason Oberholtzer: Gotta get you a bone conducting earphone. It
• 42:18
  has its own memory.
• 42:21
  Hans Buetow: This conversation actually ties into the next
• 42:25
  comment that we got, which is from our friend, best friend, we
• 42:28
  love you, Tom Lum.
• 42:30
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. We love you.
• 42:32
  Mike Rugnetta: Love Tom. Tom.
• 42:33
  Hans Buetow: Tom. Tom. Tom. Tom sent us something saying, quote,
• 42:35
  I wanted to share these two TikToks that I leave the app on
• 42:39
  whenever I need to focus to stop myself from mindlessly opening
• 42:43
  the app and scrolling. And Georgia, you are the resident.
• 42:47
  Mike Rugnetta: TikTok I'm already there, baby.
• 42:49
  Hans Buetow: Can you
• 42:49
  Hans Buetow: tell us tell us what I haven't even opened these
• 42:51
  yet. Tell us what's going on.
• 42:52
  Georgia Hampton: Okay. The first link. It's person on a couch.
• 42:57
  The text above them says, that moment when you're done rotting
• 43:00
  and ready to be a human. It's exactly what I've described.
• 43:03
  Basically, what they're doing is sitting there and then they
• 43:07
  kinda go like, and throw their phone like onto the floor or
• 43:12
  just stand up and are like, alright. Alright. Alright.
• 43:15
  Alright. That's enough.
• 43:16
  And yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like. And then the
• 43:21
  second one interesting. Okay.
• 43:24
  Mike Rugnetta: This is good. I like this.
• 43:29
  Georgia Hampton: Single image of a big old block of what looks
• 43:32
  like cheddar cheese with text over it that reads, if you're
• 43:35
  looking at this block of cheese, you have scrolled to the bottom
• 43:38
  of your FYP, and it's time for you to get off TikTok and go to
• 43:42
  sleep. Your eyes are getting heavy, and you need to go to
• 43:45
  sleep and get some rest for whatever you're doing tomorrow.
• 43:48
  You have been on TikTok way too long. I hope you sleep well and
• 43:51
  have sweet dreams. Good night.
• 43:54
  Jason Oberholtzer: Perfect. Perfect. There's typos, which
• 43:56
  make it even better.
• 43:57
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. They're sure. It's even better.
• 43:58
  Hans Buetow: Yep. Thanks, Tom. In our next set of questions, we
• 44:03
  got some questions slash stories from some folks asking about how
• 44:09
  many cameras are there. From the segment, how many cameras are
• 44:13
  there, where I ask the question, how many
• 44:16
  Jason Oberholtzer: How many
• 44:17
  Hans Buetow: cameras are there?
• 44:18
  Jason Oberholtzer: Keep it going. One more time.
• 44:19
  Mike Rugnetta: Just how many cameras are there?
• 44:24
  Hans Buetow: The first one was anonymous, and they said, I
• 44:27
  worked at a small location with a very small number of
• 44:30
  employees, about three to five, and an overbearing micromanaging
• 44:35
  boss who was there almost every day. About a year into working
• 44:40
  there, he installed cameras in the store, ones that he could
• 44:43
  view the feed from his phone. Shrugging it off as security, we
• 44:48
  went about our workdays just like normal. He would come into
• 44:51
  the store less, and when he was away, we would talk shit as
• 44:54
  coworkers often do. Somehow the tension and horrible vibes in
• 44:58
  the store became increasingly worse than usual whenever the
• 45:01
  boss was in.
• 45:04
  One day, I was complaining about him when one of my coworkers
• 45:06
  pulled me aside and showed me a sheet of paper that said, quote,
• 45:10
  I think he's listening to us. The immediate shock I felt,
• 45:16
  exclamation point. I felt embarrassed too because, of
• 45:19
  course, I had said things that I wouldn't say to his face. I then
• 45:24
  looked at the laws in my state regarding surveilling employees
• 45:27
  and found out that, yeah, it was in fact okay to listen in on
• 45:32
  employees.
• 45:33
  Hans Buetow: Oui.
• 45:34
  Hans Buetow: The idea of him watching and listening to us on
• 45:37
  his phone, found upsetting. It was a real invasion of privacy
• 45:40
  in my opinion. What I wear, whether or not I can use my
• 45:43
  phone at all, and the time I have to be at work and confined
• 45:45
  to a specific building are already controlled by my
• 45:49
  employer. My speech being controlled as well felt like an
• 45:53
  insult to injury. I think a time before security systems like
• 45:57
  that was a time where you could be more human, slack off a
• 46:00
  little, joke around with coworkers.
• 46:03
  I don't want to be forced to be a robot just because I know
• 46:06
  someone is watching. I think this is harrowing. Like, that's
• 46:13
  just really, really hard to realize how much you're being
• 46:16
  surveilled, And there's a lot in this. There is, however, one
• 46:20
  thing in here that I wanna point out that I think is important
• 46:25
  for people to think about that people probably know, but I
• 46:29
  think people know but don't know, which is what is a
• 46:32
  reasonable expectation of privacy? I think we get really
• 46:35
  it's it's a thread that I think goes through some of the things
• 46:37
  we've already talked about in this episode.
• 46:39
  But when anonymous tells us that it was they looked up state laws
• 46:44
  regarding surveilling employees that, yeah, it is okay, in fact,
• 46:47
  okay to listen in on employees. That's true. If you're in a
• 46:50
  public space or if you're in a privately owned space with rules
• 46:54
  to that says it is possible, if there's a sign at the door, it
• 46:57
  depends on where you are. These things are completely legal and
• 47:00
  allowed to happen. What is your expectation of privacy is quite
• 47:07
  low, actually.
• 47:09
  And places that we haven't really figured out is what if
• 47:11
  you bring a device in or is giving away a bunch of data an a
• 47:15
  breach in privacy in other ways. I can for example, Minnesota,
• 47:21
  where I live, is a one party consent state. Not all are,
• 47:27
  which means if I do an interview, I can legally record
• 47:30
  it as long as I know I'm recording it. One party in the
• 47:34
  conversation has to know it's being recorded, and that party
• 47:36
  can be me doing the recording. Please note I would never do
• 47:41
  this.
• 47:41
  This is not a tactic that I use, but it is legally allowed. And
• 47:45
  that's just one example of many of how the right to privacy is
• 47:49
  pretty sticky, and actually when you confront where we are
• 47:53
  allowed to be surveilled is is pretty gross and doesn't feel
• 47:57
  good.
• 47:57
  Mike Rugnetta: It should be a law that you can talk shit about
• 47:59
  your boss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just put it right in the
• 48:03
  constitution.
• 48:05
  We're we're working. That thing's a work in progress right
• 48:08
  now anyways. Let's just put it in there.
• 48:09
  Georgia Hampton: For real.
• 48:10
  Mike Rugnetta: I feel
• 48:10
  Hans Buetow: like it's I feel like it's open.
• 48:12
  Hans Buetow: We could
• 48:12
  Hans Buetow: somebody opened the door.
• 48:13
  Mike Rugnetta: Maybe it's a requirement, actually. Article
• 48:15
  one. You are legally required to talk shit about your boss.
• 48:18
  Jason Oberholtzer: Article one. Your boss is a herb.
• 48:23
  Mike Rugnetta: Fuck that guy.
• 48:24
  Hans Buetow: Anonymous also pointed us to a website,
• 48:27
  instacam.org, which is insecam, instacam.org, on which anyone
• 48:34
  can access any video feed of any unsecured surveillance camera
• 48:37
  that has a connection to the Internet, which I have not
• 48:40
  looked at and cannot verify, but woah. Click Let's all go check
• 48:43
  that out. Yep. Yeah.
• 48:45
  Jason Oberholtzer: Everyone click until you can see Georgia.
• 48:51
  Hans Buetow: We also got a comment from Stevie, who said in
• 48:56
  response to a comment that Carl made in the in the two mailbags
• 49:00
  ago about counting 11 cameras in a famous vegetarian restaurant
• 49:05
  and musing about what do they need all of that surveillance
• 49:09
  for.
• 49:11
  Stevie: So I used to work in fine dining, and we used to have
• 49:15
  cameras essentially over every table in the dining room so
• 49:22
  that, we could see the rate at which people were eating. We
• 49:27
  served, like, tasting menus. We served, like, prefix menus. So
• 49:31
  we wanted to know as soon as people were done, so we could
• 49:35
  clear their tables and drop the new dishes.
• 49:39
  Hans Buetow: There you go, folks. Reasonable expectation of
• 49:41
  privacy. Woah.
• 49:42
  Mike Rugnetta: God. Woah. Fuck
• 49:45
  Mike Rugnetta: that. Yeah. Oh my god.
• 49:49
  Jason Oberholtzer: This sucks, dude. Yeah.
• 49:52
  Mike Rugnetta: Talk about a seafood dinner. Hey.
• 49:55
  Hans Buetow: Oh my god.
• 49:56
  Mike Rugnetta: It's good now. I like it now.
• 50:01
  Hans Buetow: The last one we got on this was from Dean, who sent
• 50:04
  us a, something about phone cameras.
• 50:08
  Dean: The phone camera has obviously become ubiquitous, and
• 50:13
  I think a angle that I can't remember if it was in the
• 50:16
  original story or not, is this fear that comes with the phone
• 50:21
  camera of, at least for me, ending up viral without
• 50:27
  noticing. The idea that has, like, escalated since, like,
• 50:31
  twenty ten's prank videos of anybody could be filming you for
• 50:35
  their funny TikTok or making fun of you or something. And yikes.
• 50:42
  Georgia Hampton: Well, dude. Oh,
• 50:44
  Hans Buetow: You great minds. Georgia, why don't you take
• 50:46
  this?
• 50:47
  Georgia Hampton: You got a big storm coming.
• 50:50
  Mike Rugnetta: I think just as a quick aside, I think about every
• 50:53
  time I'm walking around the city carrying something weird. Yes.
• 50:57
  Where I'm like, am I gonna be am I gonna be a what is New York?
• 50:59
  Is this the time that someone from their window is taking a is
• 51:02
  taking a video of me? Yep.
• 51:03
  Georgia Hampton: This is the perfect transition to the
• 51:07
  submissions that we got about my segment, about why nobody dances
• 51:11
  at the club anymore. And the answer, obviously, is because of
• 51:16
  this exact thing of people either being on their phones and
• 51:19
  just scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or whatever, texting.
• 51:23
  But also that people are on the dance floor recording things,
• 51:28
  recording each other, recording the DJ, recording someone
• 51:30
  dancing, perhaps, a little too extravagantly for their taste.
• 51:34
  And before we get into it, I will tell you guys, I literally
• 51:38
  lived this this weekend.
• 51:40
  Jason Oberholtzer: Okay.
• 51:41
  Georgia Hampton: I went out dancing with my friend. It was
• 51:43
  early in the night. The dance floor was, you know, pockmarked
• 51:46
  with people. It wasn't super busy yet and there was this
• 51:49
  couple that had come together and we're standing on the
• 51:53
  outskirt of the dance floor, just recording the dance floor.
• 51:58
  People dancing.
• 51:59
  And my friend and I both noticed it and we're like, this makes me
• 52:03
  super uncomfortable. What are you doing? Why are you doing
• 52:05
  this?
• 52:06
  Hans Buetow: You said this to them?
• 52:07
  Georgia Hampton: No. No. No. No. No.
• 52:08
  Hans Buetow: Oh, you just said this to the to the air.
• 52:10
  Georgia Hampton: No. I'm not trying to get got. But it was
• 52:14
  no. Was my friend and I were basically just commenting on
• 52:16
  that to each other of how instantly uncomfortable it is to
• 52:22
  actually witness this. And it was kind of the first time I'd
• 52:24
  really seen it myself.
• 52:25
  I knew this was a thing, but it was it's incredibly unsettling.
• 52:29
  Jason Oberholtzer: God, that sucks.
• 52:30
  Georgia Hampton: Anyway, I wanna start us with a voicemail we got
• 52:35
  from Travis at about a potential form of dance that might be a
• 52:41
  nice balm for this.
• 52:44
  Dean: My spouse, Ruby, and I go to contra dancing, which is like
• 52:47
  a country style dance. It's like line dancing and square dancing
• 52:51
  kinda combined. It's very nerdy and queer, but there's a lot of
• 52:54
  diversity in age. It's one of the things I like about it. And
• 52:58
  it's something where, like, it's partnered dancing, but you're
• 53:01
  actually encouraged not to dance with the person you came with.
• 53:04
  You absolutely can. But you're encouraged to do new partners
• 53:07
  every song. But one of the things that we've really liked
• 53:11
  about this is that it's, like, two and a half hours that we
• 53:14
  just don't think about our phones. We put it in a bag and
• 53:16
  just forget it. And even when people take breaks in between
• 53:21
  dance like, you know, if they're skipping a dance, they don't
• 53:24
  look at their phones.
• 53:25
  Like, people just, like, engage with each other. It is, like, so
• 53:27
  fantastic the way that that works.
• 53:29
  Jason Oberholtzer: Love it. Line dancing is the solution for
• 53:32
  everything. Every problem we've outlined in this mailbag so far.
• 53:36
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. I can't think of one that won't be solved that
• 53:38
  way. Yeah. Good call.
• 53:40
  Georgia Hampton: We also got a message from Kay who writes, as
• 53:44
  a DJ, phones are a double edged sword. I want people to feel
• 53:48
  connected to the music I'm playing, but I also do need
• 53:51
  videos of people capturing the tracks I'm blending together.
• 53:54
  It's important so that I can, a, hear how it sounded on the sound
• 53:57
  system if I'm not recording the set with other means, and b, use
• 54:01
  it to advertise myself for gigs. Performative, for sure. However,
• 54:06
  here's my experience as someone in the Chicago scene.
• 54:08
  Oh my god. Hi, first of all. Hello. They continue saying,
• 54:14
  dance floors of people from diverse backgrounds with house
• 54:16
  and techno playing have little issue with the lack of dancing.
• 54:20
  While the lack of dancing generally is due to phones to
• 54:23
  some degree, in my view, any lack of dancing or communal
• 54:26
  engagement with the DJ is a straight people problem.
• 54:29
  Or wait, is it a straight people problem?
• 54:33
  Jason Oberholtzer: Got them.
• 54:36
  Georgia Hampton: There's a feeling of collective joy with
• 54:39
  the DJ as the leader, but it's a much more relational experience
• 54:43
  than simply being analogous to an audience viewing a band on
• 54:47
  stage. The DJ is selecting tracks and responding to the
• 54:50
  dancers, But it's a relational bond that I and many other DJs
• 54:54
  view as sacred. The biggest difference I've noticed is that
• 54:57
  as electronic music becomes more mainstream, beyond dubstep, you
• 55:01
  find at EDM festivals, some bastardization of house, techno,
• 55:04
  and rave music, I've heard DJs call it corporate techno, has
• 55:08
  emerged that you can find young, white, straight, West Loop types
• 55:12
  playing. It is a straight people problem. Those are the
• 55:20
  environments where people don't dance out of fear of being
• 55:22
  watched or captured on video.
• 55:25
  Or they really want to be seen on video, as Tim articulated,
• 55:29
  for influencing purposes. I think there's something here
• 55:33
  about performance and wanting to signal to people online that you
• 55:41
  have done something interesting. There's this currency that
• 55:46
  starts getting generated when you see online a way of
• 55:52
  performing as cool. And it's being the person in an
• 55:56
  interesting outfit next to the DJ booth who is live streaming
• 55:59
  their set. And that is so much more about the performance of
• 56:04
  being at this event, of looking interesting at this event, of
• 56:08
  acting in a way that suggests that you're the kind of person
• 56:11
  who would know about this, but blah blah blah.
• 56:14
  Like, it's it's this play acting. It's not actually
• 56:19
  participating.
• 56:21
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Which seems to actually be a
• 56:25
  particular loss because there are things that as I'm learning
• 56:29
  from like the beautiful responses some folks are sending
• 56:31
  us, as well as what you articulate in your piece. Like,
• 56:34
  there are some things about these clubs that are, to some
• 56:37
  people, sacred. I don't think that's like, you know, an overly
• 56:39
  ambitious word they're throwing around. But also like, these
• 56:42
  spaces like have jobs to do outside of just being the
• 56:46
  backdrop for people's social lives.
• 56:49
  Georgia Hampton: Definitely.
• 56:49
  Jason Oberholtzer: One one email that we got that stuck out to
• 56:51
  me, that sort of helped me understand this about these
• 56:53
  dance faces was from Philip, who grew up in a small town in
• 56:57
  Germany. And it was actually a very nice accounting of what it
• 57:02
  was like going to clubs when you were growing up in a small town
• 57:05
  in Germany, and the ways we would do photo dumps, usually on
• 57:08
  the Facebook at the end of every night out with our shitty little
• 57:11
  digital cameras, which is certainly something that I
• 57:14
  remember. He says, because of that, the first time I went to a
• 57:17
  club with a no photo policy, it felt strangely serious. No
• 57:21
  foolery, no innocent fun. This is a place for grown ups, I
• 57:25
  thought.
• 57:25
  You're allowed to be whoever you wanna be, but there are rules.
• 57:28
  Rules I had to abide by, rules everyone else seemed to already
• 57:31
  know and silently agree to follow. I was 25 years old and
• 57:34
  still doubted whether I was even old enough to be here. I was
• 57:38
  nervous and afraid of doing something wrong, but once I was
• 57:40
  on the dance floor, I had one of the best nights of my life. He
• 57:44
  then goes on to describe how in contemporary German culture, the
• 57:50
  club scene has started shifting a little bit to his read of it.
• 57:55
  He says that beyond substance only, the no photo policy helps
• 57:59
  reinforce club culture as a safe space for marginalized
• 58:02
  communities, especially the LGBTQIA plus community. I've
• 58:05
  noticed that the standard German club experience tends to be
• 58:08
  catered primarily to a gay male able-bodied audience. Because of
• 58:12
  that, more and more events are working to include all people,
• 58:14
  establishing broader guidelines to improve well-being and safety
• 58:17
  for everyone. It's common for clubs to have accessible
• 58:20
  entrances, gender neutral, and flinta toilets, awareness teams
• 58:24
  patrolling the premises, dedicated rest areas, free water
• 58:27
  stations, and medical staff on-site. Does it all work?
• 58:31
  Possibly not. It only takes one bad actor and things can go to
• 58:34
  shit, but it helps to know there's someone you can turn to
• 58:37
  for help. All of this exists to create a space where people can
• 58:40
  be who they are and do what they love with no shame or guilt
• 58:43
  attached. That's only possible when no cameras are allowed. No
• 58:47
  pictures are taken and there's no social media aftermath to be
• 58:51
  dealt with.
• 58:52
  Disregarding these rules, especially by taking and posting
• 58:55
  photos online feels almost sacrilegious. There it is again,
• 58:58
  the sacred. So for me, the no photo policy has become not just
• 59:02
  a rule, but a seal of approval for a proper night out.
• 59:07
  Georgia Hampton: I'm so glad someone wrote in from Germany,
• 59:09
  specifically. Yes. Because
• 59:12
  Jason Oberholtzer: The subject matter experts.
• 59:14
  Georgia Hampton: In general, it's just it's an incredibly
• 59:17
  powerful and efficient practice in terms of self expression in
• 59:21
  general, especially for marginalized communities. To be
• 59:25
  able to be like, yeah, you can come here and dress how you
• 59:28
  want. You can engage in certain kinds of sexual activities if
• 59:32
  you want to. You can come here and do drugs with your friends.
• 59:35
  Like, you can act out things you'd like to act out and behave
• 59:39
  how you wanna behave, dress how you want, and there's no
• 59:43
  documentation of it.
• 59:45
  That agreement is crucial for this kind of self expression.
• 59:49
  Mike Rugnetta: There's some interesting thing here about,
• 59:50
  like, how in a location where all of those things happen, you
• 59:54
  know, the engagement in so many different vices, the thing that
• 59:59
  is truly profane ends up just being a document. Yeah. Like,
• 1:00:05
  wonder if that's like, you know, there's there's maybe an
• 1:00:07
  interesting line of thought there about the sacred being
• 1:00:11
  sort of necessarily ephemeral. And that as soon as it becomes
• 1:00:16
  fixed in a way, it's you've you've ruined it or dirtied it.
• 1:00:20
  Jason Oberholtzer: Alright, kids. There is one last thing to
• 1:00:25
  do. You know it. You love it. You were waiting for it even
• 1:00:29
  though you can't remember the rules.
• 1:00:31
  It is one word graffiti.
• 1:00:34
  Mike Rugnetta: Wow. Chase and
• 1:00:35
  Mike Rugnetta: Come on.
• 1:00:36
  Jason Oberholtzer: I gotta be fair. Were you appropriately
• 1:00:39
  chastised after the last mailbag because you all did a much
• 1:00:42
  better job sticking relatively close to the prompt of one word
• 1:00:46
  graffiti that is funny. Starting with Taylor from Oklahoma City
• 1:00:50
  who sent in two.
• 1:00:52
  Georgia Hampton: Okay. First one, we got your standard
• 1:00:55
  residential sign that has a picture of a bicycle, and then
• 1:00:58
  underneath it, it says, may use full lane. So bicycles may use
• 1:01:02
  full lane. But someone has taken it upon themselves to cross off
• 1:01:08
  the picture of the bicycle and just write the word punks under
• 1:01:12
  it. So it says punks may use full lane.
• 1:01:16
  Mike Rugnetta: Do we think this is celebratory of punks or
• 1:01:19
  trying to dunk on cyclists?
• 1:01:21
  Jason Oberholtzer: Oh. I never even considered it. And you know
• 1:01:24
  what? I support it either way.
• 1:01:27
  Mike Rugnetta: Why does he have to
• 1:01:28
  Hans Buetow: do only one?
• 1:01:28
  Jason Oberholtzer: He's gonna drill once. Alright.
• 1:01:31
  Georgia Hampton: And we're down to the second submission.
• 1:01:33
  Personally, my favorite of the two, in which we see a little
• 1:01:39
  pyramid guy with some shoes and two little stick arms, both
• 1:01:45
  reaching upwards, one closed eyelid and a bit of a a jagged
• 1:01:50
  smile. And right next to it, it just says, forget about it.
• 1:01:56
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. As one word, they slammed those letters
• 1:01:59
  together to make one word out of it, which makes this admissible.
• 1:02:04
  Mike Rugnetta: Yes.
• 1:02:05
  Jason Oberholtzer: I love it.
• 1:02:05
  Mike Rugnetta: You know, I never would have expected when I woke
• 1:02:07
  up this morning, I would see a happy pyramid doing the two
• 1:02:10
  step. But here we are.
• 1:02:11
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. Next, we got one in from Lily. Mike, what
• 1:02:14
  do we got going on here?
• 1:02:16
  Mike Rugnetta: So this is it looks like we're looking in the
• 1:02:19
  window of maybe a ceramics shop and underneath that window on a
• 1:02:25
  piece of stone has been scribbled a picture, a side view
• 1:02:30
  of a rat inside the body of the rat. It says, rat with the
• 1:02:37
  Anarchist There
• 1:02:38
  Mike Rugnetta: you go. Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  Jason Oberholtzer: And I've got a suspicion that this might be
• 1:02:42
  one of those Anarchist listeners that we have. Because they also
• 1:02:45
  included this little snippet of text under the image. Mike?
• 1:02:50
  Mike Rugnetta: Kind gut, kind stat, kind patriarch cat,
• 1:02:54
  patriarch chat.
• 1:02:55
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's better than I could do.
• 1:02:57
  Mike Rugnetta: Kind, kind, kinda, kinda means none. No.
• 1:03:00
  Right? No god, no state. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  It can mean no, not not any, none, nobody, no one. So no god,
• 1:03:07
  no state, no patriarchy. Alright. It's a good rat. It's a
• 1:03:11
  very
• 1:03:12
  Mike Rugnetta: It's a
• 1:03:12
  Jason Oberholtzer: great rat.
• 1:03:12
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. It's a really, you know, approachable
• 1:03:15
  rat.
• 1:03:16
  Jason Oberholtzer: Next up, friend of the show, Talia, who
• 1:03:20
  always follows the rules, sends in w e r m s worms.
• 1:03:26
  Mike Rugnetta: Worms. Worms. Worms.
• 1:03:29
  Georgia Hampton: Worms.
• 1:03:29
  Stevie: Worms.
• 1:03:30
  Jason Oberholtzer: Hans, what's next?
• 1:03:32
  Hans Buetow: Next, we have on a salmon dirty salmon colored
• 1:03:36
  wall. This does not qualify, Jason. I'm so sorry.
• 1:03:39
  Matt Storm: Hang on.
• 1:03:39
  Mike Rugnetta: You gotta say it the way it's written too.
• 1:03:41
  Hans Buetow: Yes, please. It is no. La Polizia. No. La Polizia.
• 1:03:53
  No. No. No.
• 1:03:56
  Jason Oberholtzer: And then, like, sort of half a raised
• 1:04:00
  penis.
• 1:04:00
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta
• 1:04:03
  Mike Rugnetta: get one in every show, you know.
• 1:04:06
  Jason Oberholtzer: Delightful. Technically, words. Technically.
• 1:04:09
  This is balanced out by Tedder who sent the purest of all
• 1:04:16
  submissions.
• 1:04:17
  Mike Rugnetta: This is pretty good.
• 1:04:18
  Jason Oberholtzer: One letter. This is good. Yes. Apparently,
• 1:04:22
  there's a lot of streets. I believe these to be around
• 1:04:24
  Portland.
• 1:04:25
  Hans Buetow: Laurelhurst is what I'm reading.
• 1:04:27
  Jason Oberholtzer: Northeast Flanders Street. Northeast, N E
• 1:04:31
  Space Flanders Street. Into which space you can drop a
• 1:04:34
  single letter d. Ned Flanders Street. One letter graffiti.
• 1:04:41
  Tedder's the
• 1:04:42
  Dean: winner right now.
• 1:04:42
  Mike Rugnetta: It's good. It's funny.
• 1:04:44
  Jason Oberholtzer: The final two we have here, I think our first
• 1:04:47
  for us, two people decided to send in their graffiti in the
• 1:04:49
  form of a video. The first one I don't think really needs it, but
• 1:04:53
  there's something kind of nice about the ambiance of the slow
• 1:04:56
  crawl of this across the screen and the scoring of what I assume
• 1:05:00
  they were listening to in the car. Georgia, what's going on
• 1:05:04
  here?
• 1:05:05
  Georgia Hampton: First of all, I am attacked by the sound of Fade
• 1:05:09
  Into by Mazi Star. And then, yes, we're we're seeing sort
• 1:05:15
  Mike Rugnetta: of a
• 1:05:15
  Georgia Hampton: skyline, a billboard upon which someone has
• 1:05:22
  written what does that say?
• 1:05:24
  Mike Rugnetta: I think it says Oprah.
• 1:05:26
  Mike Rugnetta: I think it
• 1:05:27
  Georgia Hampton: says Oprah. Oh my god. Of course, it says
• 1:05:29
  Oprah. Oh my god. Says Oprah.
• 1:05:31
  Sorry. Sorry, guys. Fonts aren't
• 1:05:34
  Mike Rugnetta: my It's
• 1:05:35
  Mike Rugnetta: a it's a whole billboard.
• 1:05:37
  Mike Rugnetta: Oprah's huge. It's huge.
• 1:05:40
  Georgia Hampton: Would have been done with, like, like, a rolling
• 1:05:43
  like a paint roller.
• 1:05:44
  Mike Rugnetta: It's
• 1:05:44
  Georgia Hampton: like, this is enormous. Takes up the entire
• 1:05:48
  rectangle of the billboard. Oprah. I find
• 1:05:52
  Jason Oberholtzer: it deeply satisfying. I just keep looping
• 1:05:55
  this. I find this very nice.
• 1:05:56
  Mike Rugnetta: I don't know. Some of
• 1:05:57
  Georgia Hampton: us aren't ready to receive as it turns out.
• 1:06:02
  Jason Oberholtzer: And then the final one here is three words,
• 1:06:06
  which made me not want to include it because that makes me
• 1:06:08
  mad. But what made me happy is
• 1:06:11
  Mike Rugnetta: It's the same two words twice in a row.
• 1:06:14
  Jason Oberholtzer: You know, no matter how you slice it, I hate
• 1:06:15
  it. But you went to the effort and this can only really be seen
• 1:06:19
  by taking a video of it. Jordan sent in this video. Mike, what's
• 1:06:25
  going on?
• 1:06:26
  Mike Rugnetta: We're in a car and the car is on the highway
• 1:06:29
  and we see a sign that says Nikolai Street and a building in
• 1:06:33
  the background, in front of a hill that says Montgomery Park.
• 1:06:37
  We're approaching, we are in the left hand lane with the Jersey
• 1:06:40
  barriers right next to us. We approach a bunch of green
• 1:06:44
  bollards that are on top of the Jersey barrier and on the first
• 1:06:48
  four are spelled out one letter per bollard f u c k bollard
• 1:06:57
  bollard y o u. Three more bollards, another fuck. Two more
• 1:07:03
  bollards, another u.
• 1:07:06
  Looking almost like they were painted while in motion. Yeah.
• 1:07:11
  Georgia Hampton: Is like scary serial killer font also.
• 1:07:15
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. It's like white paint. It's all drippy.
• 1:07:18
  It's a very Yeah.
• 1:07:19
  Georgia Hampton: It's all lowercase.
• 1:07:20
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. So, yeah, driving by six miles an hour or
• 1:07:23
  whatever it is. Fuck you. Fuck you.
• 1:07:25
  Jason Oberholtzer: Fuck you. Very dangerous. Four words. Hate
• 1:07:27
  everything about it. But gotta give it up to you for putting in
• 1:07:29
  the effort.
• 1:07:30
  So thank you, Jordan.
• 1:07:31
  Georgia Hampton: Now, who's the Polizia?
• 1:07:33
  Mike Rugnetta: No.
• 1:07:38
  Jason Oberholtzer: Alright. Before we sign off, there is one
• 1:07:41
  more very important thing we have possibly learned. You know,
• 1:07:45
  we all know the thing that we all say at the end of every
• 1:07:48
  episode. Right? Do their claws find my flesh?
• 1:07:51
  May they drown in my blood?
• 1:07:52
  Georgia Hampton: Oh, yes. Of course.
• 1:07:53
  Jason Oberholtzer: Well, Daniel t says the only place that they
• 1:07:57
  can find this online is at techteesusa.com.
• 1:08:01
  Mike Rugnetta: This website is horrible.
• 1:08:03
  Georgia Hampton: Very American. Sounds legit.
• 1:08:07
  Jason Oberholtzer: Most American of websites were in the
• 1:08:09
  description for a t shirt that says exactly that. It says, the
• 1:08:14
  should their claws find my flesh, may they drown in my
• 1:08:17
  blood shirt is a powerful and evocative statement of defiance.
• 1:08:21
  This bold declaration adorns a shirt that serves as a wearable
• 1:08:24
  symbol of courage and resistance. The words attributed
• 1:08:27
  to legendary warrior, queen Budoka, reflect a fierce
• 1:08:31
  determination to fight back against those who would seek to
• 1:08:34
  harm or oppress. We have a potential candidate here for who
• 1:08:38
  has said this phrase which we were not able to find.
• 1:08:41
  I have looked no further than this website considering it the
• 1:08:43
  universal source source of truth.
• 1:08:46
  Hans Buetow: If you can find better, let us know.
• 1:08:49
  Jason Oberholtzer: Please do. And until that time comes, all
• 1:08:52
  together now kids.
• 1:08:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Should claws find my flesh. May they
• 1:08:58
  Georgia Hampton: drown in
• 1:09:01
  Mike Rugnetta: my blood. Bye, everybody. Bye.