Overtired

The gang waxes nostalgic about classic viral sites, discusses the best RSS readers, and gets back into the Mental Health Corner after a couple weeks off.

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Transcript

It’s Fine, I’m OK

[00:00:00]

[00:00:04] Brett: This episode is brought to you by HIM. Stay tuned for more info and welcome to Overtired. It’s great to have you back. I’m here with, Jeff Severance Gunsel and Christina Warren. welcome back. It’s been a couple weeks.

[00:00:18] Jeff: Thank you. Hi, everybody.

[00:00:20] Brett: So we’ve been starting with Grappitude and I gotta say, like, So, starting with Graptitude has meant that for the last two episodes we haven’t had the Mental Health Corner. And, and honestly, without the Mental Health Corner, I don’t want to do this show anymore.

[00:00:37] Jeff: Yeah, I think where we landed, I don’t know if this was a complete chat in our in our thread, but I think where we landed was to switch it back, but just to somehow

[00:00:45] Brett: To

[00:00:46] Jeff: police ourselves.

[00:00:47] Brett: yeah,

[00:00:48] Christina: exactly. We’re gonna, we’re gonna

[00:00:49] Brett: don’t, we don’t need 45 minutes for, for a mental health coroner. We, we can keep that, we can keep it down to five minutes per person, plus a little chat, and get us [00:01:00] down to like, no more than half the

[00:01:01] Jeff: we barely even get to Taylor Swift

[00:01:03] Brett: Right, I know, it’s,

[00:01:05] Jeff: But the whole world kind of overtook us, really.

[00:01:08] Christina: Honestly, they did and now it’s like not even funny to be like, oh, this is a Taylor Swift podcast because people are like, oh. Oh, really? Another one? And I’m like,

[00:01:15] Jeff: You think it’s good SEO?

[00:01:17] Christina: right. And, and, and it’s like, like trying to explain to people, it’s like, no, it’s actually not. That’s sort of the joke.

[00:01:22] Christina: Uh,

[00:01:22] Jeff: I tried to get us to change it to Kat Williams, but go ahead. Sorry, Christina.

[00:01:26] TikTok and Who TF Did I Marry

[00:01:26] Christina: no, I mean, look, honestly, Oh, okay. Have you guys seen, if we were going to switch it to something, if we were going to have a new hyperfixation, would it, it would be the, who the fuck should I marry TikTok lady?

[00:01:36] Brett: Haven’t

[00:01:36] Jeff: is that? I don’t know.

[00:01:39] Christina: I’m going to have to explain this to you. Um, we can do it after mental health corner. Yeah.

[00:01:42] Jeff: because of your understandable, exasperated, Oh my God. I have completely fucked my TikTok algorithm, which with like the people who do live feeds from oil rigs and the like, there’s some guys, there’s some guys who are just cutting up lumber. Uh, every night live, uh, as that, [00:02:00] and now baby monkeys.

[00:02:01] Jeff: That’s my TikTok. So,

[00:02:02] Brett: this, was this because of intentional decisions? How’d

[00:02:05] Jeff: oh, hell yeah. I’ve got, I love TikTok and I love how I can just be like, you know what, right now I’m really into oil rigs and, and lumber mills, and then sometimes I’m just into Cat Williams and, uh, and let’s see, like talking dogs, like, and you know what, I don’t mind TikTok knows me. Okay. Sorry. I’ll stop there.

[00:02:22] Jeff: But Christina, can you tell me now what this is? Cause I’m always looking

[00:02:26] Christina: Yeah, so, so this is, uh, I’ll be very brief on this, but, um, we’ll have a link in the show notes to a Rolling Stone thing, because this is the first thing I found SEO wise that looked somewhat decent. There are full, if you want to watch the whole thing, you can watch it on her TikTok, but people have also uploaded although She should have, so she can get some of the YouTube views, um, and that way you can play it on full time, uh, like, like, like 2x speed.

[00:02:49] Christina: Basically, this woman, she goes by Risa M. Tisa. Um, last week, she started, or maybe she started it, like, uh, a little bit before that. I, I heard about it on, like, Monday. And [00:03:00] then it’s, it’s blown up since then. Basically she’s put out a 50 plus, and yes, I’m, I’m, this is accurate, 50 plus part series on TikTok called Who TF Did I Marry?

[00:03:11] Christina: And basically talking about the, the, this pathological liar that she married. And it’s insane. It’s like the most insane story. So the story is like six hours long.

[00:03:20] Jeff: Wow.

[00:03:21] Christina: It’s nuts. And in the details, like all the things that are psychologically wrong with this man, um, and I looked in our, I peeped our notes, like talking about abusive partners, Brett, like this guy, holy fucking shit.

[00:03:34] Christina: We’re talking like making up relative deaths, making up relatives, fake phone calls to no one, fake bank accounts, pretending to buy a house when you don’t actually have the money for said house, completely faking what career he had, having multiple side checks. Being previously married in ways he didn’t say before.

[00:03:51] Christina: Like, literally, like this man that she married lied about everything. Everything. [00:04:00] And then lied about the lie.

[00:04:01] Jeff: George Santos?

[00:04:03] Brett: I, I had,

[00:04:05] Christina: someone

[00:04:05] Brett: I had, I had a, I had a pathological liar girlfriend and like, it wasn’t like, honestly, obviously it wasn’t as involved as getting married to someone, but in, in retrospect, I could not believe the stuff she lied about. Like, literally, her entire life was a fabrication. Stuff that, what, like, you wouldn’t, why, why would you even lie about it?

[00:04:28] Brett: She just made shit up for the sake of making shit up.

[00:04:31] Christina: Yeah, totally. Um, and, and, and this, this guy, I think it’s kind of a mix of those things. But anyway, the, the interesting thing is, like, she does take some responsibility because there’s some stuff and you’re like, all right, look, girl, like I get that like you, it was the pandemic and you were lonely and like you wanted to have a baby and, and all kinds of shit.

[00:04:46] Christina: Um, uh, but, uh, side note, he, she had a miscarriage, but then he told like the few family members he was talking to, because most of them cut him off, um, that, that she had the baby and that then when they were getting divorced, he was going to be fighting her for custody. [00:05:00] Even though, like, like, like, like, nuts, right?

[00:05:03] Christina: So this whole thing is fucking crazy. So, um, It’s basically, you guys know that Zola, remember the Zola Twitter thread, right?

[00:05:12] Jeff: No.

[00:05:14] Christina: Turn. It was a

[00:05:15] Brett: not

[00:05:16] Jeff: It’s called X.

[00:05:17] Christina: no. Well, it but, but this was back when it was very much Twitter and it was even turned into an a 24 film. So,

[00:05:26] Jeff: okay, got it, got it,

[00:05:27] Christina: um, basically is this, um, this stripper who like this, this, she met like this, this white girl at Hooters, who then like took her basically on like a, a trap trip, um, uh, with a bunch of, uh, Johns and like a bunch of shit went down.

[00:05:41] Christina: It’s like the most insane. It’s this famous viral tweet that turned into a movie. Anyway, this is like Zola, but without the sex work. Um, but it’s that sort of like viral thing where like everybody’s watching this fucking, um, the interesting thing here from like a social perspective is you have millions and millions of views [00:06:00] on this per installment.

[00:06:01] Christina: So she’s got 50 plus installments. Millions of people are watching this thing. Um, it, it’s, you know, obviously not on your TikToks, but it’s on mine and it’s on. Basically everybody I knows and, um, then people, of course, as they do, can’t not be fucking weirdos online. So even though she was very clear about the fact that she was like, I don’t want to like uncover the real people behind this.

[00:06:23] Christina: Of course, that’s the very first thing the internet’s going to do. And then be very proud of themselves when you have like women being like, Oh, we’re outing abusers. And this is Legion, who is, is, is what she’d call the guy. His name is Jerome. He’s now putting his TikTok because of course he is. Um, anyway, the, the, like.

[00:06:40] Christina: Also, she’s from Atlanta, and, and so, she goes into ridiculous amounts of detail about some of the things. Like, the first thing she said, she was like, oh yeah, you know, our first date was at the Cheesecake Factory at Perimeter Mall, and I’m like, I fucking worked at Perimeter Mall. I’ve been to that Cheesecake

[00:06:54] Jeff: Perimeter Mall, that’s quite a name.

[00:06:56] Christina: Perimeter, yeah, um, yeah, Perimeter, sorry, [00:07:00] I didn’t enunciate well enough.

[00:07:01] Christina: Um, but I’m like, I worked at that mall, I worked at the Abercrombie at that mall, I worked at the Best Buy across the street from that mall,

[00:07:08] Jeff: Oh man, how have we not talked about this?

[00:07:10] Brett: do they, when the, the rent a cops at the mall go out on patrol, do they say, I’m gonna secure the perimeter? Do

[00:07:19] Jeff: Oh my god.

[00:07:20] Brett: have

[00:07:21] Christina: so like, the rent a cops are very, very laid back.

[00:07:26] Jeff: Have I ever told y’all the story of

[00:07:28] Christina: They did back in the day.

[00:07:31] Been Caught Stealing

[00:07:31] Jeff: Have I ever told the story in this podcast of when I was arrested by, uh, thanks to a secret shopper, uh, for shoplifting?

[00:07:37] Christina: No.

[00:07:38] Brett: I feel like

[00:07:39] Jeff: I’ve finally,

[00:07:39] Christina: and where did you shoplift from? And where, and where did you shoplift

[00:07:42] Jeff: it was a grocery store, it was a grocery store in Minot, North Dakota. I, you know, we can put it on the topic list for later.

[00:07:48] Jeff: I finally told, now both of my boys know, so I feel like I can tell it on a podcast.

[00:07:52] Brett: Maybe you told this story to me over tacos last time I was in

[00:07:56] Jeff: I think that’s likely, I don’t think I would have told it on the podcast, but I’m ready. It [00:08:00] doesn’t have to be, well this could be a teaser for the next episode, it doesn’t have to be in this

[00:08:02] Christina: It doesn’t have to be this one. No, but I need to know about this. Uh, so I mean, I, I, I never, I’ve never shoplifted, um, the, that’s the one thing I’ve never done. I’ve never shoplifted. Um, I’ve stole, I’ve, you know, like stolen plenty of things from, from digital.

[00:08:16] Christina: You wouldn’t download a car. Oh. But I would. Um, but like, you know, I would def, I would definitely download a virtual car. Um. But I’ve never shoplifted. Not because I even am that opposed to it. I mean, I am, but like, I’m not. Like, I’m indifferent is what I should say. If it’s not my store, I’m going to be completely selfish.

[00:08:36] Christina: I kind of don’t care. But, um, Uh, you know, you shouldn’t steal from mom and pops or whatever, like, I’m not

[00:08:43] Jeff: oh yeah, no no, for sure.

[00:08:44] Christina: you know what I mean? I’m indifferent is what I’m trying to say. Um, but,

[00:08:48] Jeff: And I want to be clear, the last time I shoplifted was this story, and it was in, uh, 1998. It’s gonna be clear for the record, any perspective, you know, employers, it’s over.

[00:08:58] Christina: statute of limitations actually does apply [00:09:00] here. No, I’m just saying, like, for me, it wasn’t, like, a moral reason why I never shoplifted. I just knew that I would get caught,

[00:09:06] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:09:07] Brett: Yeah, I, I was always getting in trouble for shit other people did. I didn’t need to tempt fate. Um, and, and I never, I never really got, like, a rush out of shoplifting. Like, I tried it and it, like, other people would, like, do it for the thrill of it. Um, do you guys remember a little craze called wahooing?

[00:09:26] Jeff: Oh, uh, remind me. I mean, I think, I think I’m familiar.

[00:09:30] Brett: you bring something sizable up to the checkout at the counter, and when they ring it up, you just yell Wahoo and you run out of the store, and to, to me that was a little more interesting than trying to like hide things in a trench coat, um, and half, half the time, half the time, half the time we would go back and, and just pay for it, cause it wasn’t about like, we couldn’t afford bread, so we were shoplifting to feed our families, we were just You know, [00:10:00] teenagers.

[00:10:01] Christina: you’re just being, yeah, no, I mean, I, I never did that and I never dined and dashed, although we did do a thing once when I was 16 where we wanted to see how many restaurants we could get kicked out of in 24 hours by like starting fake fights and like Denny’s and IHOP and, um, it is, it’s really hard to get kicked out of an IHOP.

[00:10:18] Christina: Um. Waffle House, too. Well, we didn’t even try at Waffle House. Waffle House, we, we would know better than trying there, because they’re not, like, just yelling at one another. Like, also,

[00:10:28] Jeff: there’s a fight?

[00:10:29] Christina: well,

[00:10:29] Brett: waitstaff would just knife

[00:10:31] Christina: they would, and the thing is, too, is that you respect the Waffle House, like, staff. Like, I respected them a lot, and you, you fucking should, for fucking real.

[00:10:39] Christina: And,

[00:10:40] Brett: basically frontline workers.

[00:10:42] Christina: I mean, honestly, um, one of my favorite Waffle House, uh, waitresses, she was also a stripper at like the strip club that was nearby, but she had a temper, really hot girl. And so they would like, she would lose her job as a stripper and then she’d come back to Waffle House. And then Waffle House like blacklisted her a few times, but this [00:11:00] was before their computer systems could really do that.

[00:11:01] Christina: So she just lied about who she was and she’d go to a different store, but she’d also been blacklisted by IHOP, I think. And, um, and her boyfriend was a drug dealer and had all kinds of really expensive, um, sound equipment and she and I used to talk about like high end stereo equipment all the time, which is a weird thing to do when you’re drunk at four o’clock in the morning.

[00:11:19] Christina: Um, but like, mean, if you’re two hot girls though, it kind of is. Um, but anyway,

[00:11:28] Jeff: gendered, but I’m just speaking from my lived experience.

[00:11:32] Christina: anyway, that’s a tangent, but yeah, but yeah, um, I, I never, I never did wahooing, but we did try, we would try to like get kicked out of restaurants. Um. Because that would, that was just

[00:11:43] Jeff: That sounds stressful as hell to me, like I, everything I did wrong I did quietly, when really the only thing I did like technically wrong was shoplifting and then immediately after I stopped that I started going illegally to Iraq. It was just like, I had to be breaking the law somehow.

[00:11:56] Christina: Well, I mean, I mean, which is impressive. You go from like, like, like [00:12:00] stealing something from a grocery store, which we got to talk about this on another episode. I need to like dig into the psychology here, to then sneaking into another country. Like, wow. Like, just the levels there. I’m like, I’m stealing some gum to I’m literally breaking, like, I’m literally crossing the border into a country that I’m not supposed to

[00:12:19] Jeff: With, with medical supplies that I’m smuggling in because it’s illegal for Americans to be there. This is, for anyone who’s wondering, this is pre war. This is during the sanctions. It wasn’t illegal for Americans to be there once there were

[00:12:30] Christina: What, right, once the war was there, then it’s like, oh no, come on over. Uh, uh, want a gun? w want

[00:12:34] Jeff: what’s illegal about Abu Ghraib?

[00:12:36] Jeff: No, it’s fine. Come on in.

[00:12:37] Christina: fine. Come on in. We’ll do it. But yeah, before that, the sanctions. Yeah,

[00:12:40] Jeff: Yes. Anyway, okay. We’ll, we’ll pin that. Um, it is, I will just say as a added teaser, um, this, this mostly happened on tour because when you’re on tour, you, you feel it’s like Deadwood. There’s no, no law at all. And uh, and my brother and I both had this. This tendency, we’ll call it. And my brother had a great story, [00:13:00] which I’ll share, but that I recently had drafted up by Dali.

[00:13:03] Jeff: Um, uh, and, and I’m trying to draft up other stories from being on tour, which I mentioned when Merlin was on, but that was one. And I’ll talk about that when we, that’ll be the show art when we go.

[00:13:12] Christina: awesome. All right.

[00:13:14] Brett: so I

[00:13:14] Jeff: my brother should be our guest. Cause he and I were the shoplifters together.

[00:13:18] Brett: I was telling you guys about some weird dreams I had and it would be amazing to get Dali to illustrate those

[00:13:26] Jeff: I’ve been doing it. I’ve been doing it with my weird dreams. I’ve been doing it with my weird dreams. I love it.

[00:13:31] Mental Health Corner (returns!)

[00:13:31] Brett: should we do a mental health corner?

[00:13:32] Christina: let’s do

[00:13:33] Brett: Okay, um, who wants to start?

[00:13:37] Jeff: I don’t mind starting unless Christina. Okay. First, I’m just gonna say I have a giant thing of water. Hear that? And, and this is part of taking care of

[00:13:46] Brett: bigger than his head.

[00:13:47] Jeff: working outside today. I’m building a little loft storage in my in my garage. And when I’m working outside, I might Kids call this Aquachungus.

[00:13:54] Jeff: It’s a half gallon, uh, water bottle, and I’m going to be drinking from it to stay hydrated in this [00:14:00] podcast, and every time you hear it, you know I’m taking care of my mental health, uh, because that’s really important. Here I go. Mmmmm.

[00:14:06] Christina: Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink.

[00:14:09] Jeff: drink, drink. Uh, yeah, okay, and this, also, Aquachungus has a, a hook on it for some reason?

[00:14:14] Jeff: I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do

[00:14:15] Christina: think that,

[00:14:16] Jeff: on my

[00:14:16] Christina: that I, maybe it’s supposed to be able to like, hang on to like a, I don’t know, like, like a boat or something. I don’t know, like a car. I don’t know.

[00:14:25] Brett: Yeah, for, for those listening, it’s not so much a hook as it is an anchor with like two prongs

[00:14:31] Jeff: Yeah, I think that this could be a whole new thing we do on this podcast, which is describe not interesting objects that nobody can see.

[00:14:36] Brett: Have you ever, have you, have you ever seen described porn? They’re, they make, they make these, these, like Pornhub has them for visually impaired people where like you can hear the soundtrack and like if you are.

[00:14:52] Brett: If you are visually abled, you can see it, but there’s this like soothing voice over the top of it that describes in [00:15:00] explicit detail exactly what is happening in every scene, I find it very humorous.

[00:15:05] Jeff: That’s interesting.

[00:15:06] Christina: A 10 inch thick cock

[00:15:08] Brett: Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:09] Christina: its way into a tight, yeah. I, I, I,

[00:15:12] Jeff: Yeah. That’s that’s interesting,

[00:15:15] Christina: no, is it, is it done like seriously, or is this, like, is this actually an accessibility

[00:15:18] Brett: No, it’s, yeah, it’s an accessibility thing

[00:15:20] Christina: I mean, well, the reason I was asking is because one of the things I have appreciated about Pornhub over the years is that, um, even though they’re very thirsty and very aggressive to try to make you write about every stupid little, um, like publicity stunt they do, or at least they did back in the day.

[00:15:36] Christina: I don’t know if that’s true anymore. Would be that they did have some pretty funny publicity stunts. So I could see that, that being as like a thing where they’re like, Oh yeah, we’re going to release this as a feature and do a, you know, press release about it, but then also maybe actually still have it as like a true accessibility thing too, which not going to lie, like.

[00:15:55] Christina: There’s a market for it, you

[00:15:57] Jeff: I mean, people read VC Andrews books.

[00:15:59] Christina: [00:16:00] Uh, no fucking Oh, Fanfic is incredibly popular, and not to mention, like, like, the most read, like, novels, like, the books that people sell that make the most money are the fucking smutty ass, like, weird, like, dragon, like, romance shit aimed at women. Yeah.

[00:16:17] Jeff: That’s like, okay, I will do my mental health check-in, but you made me think of this. Go ahead Brett. You have

[00:16:21] Brett: I just want to point out that this is why our mental health sections go for 45 minutes because, because half the podcast is like embedded in the mental

[00:16:30] Christina: Fair enough. Totally. I will say, at this point, we can very clearly siphon this off now. I was like, this is opening banter. And then we can go

[00:16:38] Jeff: that’s right. That’s right, that’s right. Uh, all I’ve really done is water so far. So I’m just gonna quick say this. You know, I’ve, I’ve been obsessed all year with The Godfather. I re-watched it. I, I watched the, um, the, the series, the limited series, the offer about bringing it to screen. Um, and I’m now reading a.

[00:16:54] Jeff: Book that’s just kind of a culmination of all other sort of books and reporting of the making of the Godfather. What [00:17:00] I never realized, I knew Mario Puzo’s book was like, at the time, was selling more copies than the Bible. I didn’t realize how completely inane and insane the sex scenes are in

[00:17:10] Christina: Oh, they are.

[00:17:11] Jeff: excerpts of them.

[00:17:12] Jeff: And I was just like, oh, I see why it was the biggest selling book. And it

[00:17:15] Christina: Oh, totally. No, no. There’s this whole thing about like, like, like, uh, the woman that, that, uh, that Sonny fucks at the wedding, um, is, uh, it like has like a really big pussy. Like, and, and, and that’s why, like, like it, it’s been, it’s been difficult for other men, like, to be able to like fill her well, and that’s why, like, she has to like, like, like fuck.

[00:17:32] Brett: is described porn. Okay.

[00:17:34] Jeff: it,

[00:17:35] Christina: I, I, I, I, so, um, I’m not trying to interrupt you, I’m gonna, I’ll talk about this after our Mental Health Corner thing, Jeff, but I do want to pick up on your Godfather

[00:17:43] Jeff: Okay.

[00:17:44] Christina: after this, because I want to know what book you’re reading, uh, because I have thoughts, but anyway, sorry, go on.

[00:17:48] Brett: I, I do think our show title is described porn.

[00:17:52] Christina: Yes, sponsored by HIMSS,

[00:17:55] Jeff: Did you?

[00:17:59] Brett: Oh [00:18:00] shit. Yeah.

[00:18:02] Jeff: Oh my god. Okay. So, um, my, my mental health corner topic is like, this has been true of me for a while, but I’ve been, I’ve been experiencing it again. There’s a, there’s a tendency in my friends, most of them, um, Most of them are men, identify as men. A couple of them are women, identify as women. And it fucking makes me crazy.

[00:18:21] Jeff: And it’s someone to say it, and I’m gonna ask you a question. I can’t stand it when somebody tells me in the context of our friendship, something that’s going on with them that’s really hard, especially when there’s someone who maybe doesn’t even share that stuff that often. And now here they are, right?

[00:18:35] Jeff: They’re telling you about something that’s happened to them, something that’s happening inside them, whatever. It’s very, very, very hard. And you say the thing. That you say, which is like, I’m really sorry this is happening to you. Or you say, whatever it is you say, that’s like an empathy thing. Uh, and, and what they say back is.

[00:18:50] Jeff: I mean, it’s okay. Right? Which I find to be, I understand why it happens. I’m not even, I’m not judging it. Right? The older I [00:19:00] get and, uh, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with it because, and I realized it’s not because I care about them. It’s because as a friend, I’m, I’m walled out right there, right?

[00:19:13] Jeff: Like you’ve told me this stuff and now you go, it’s fine. Like, and I mean, I don’t mean like that happens sometimes. Sometimes it is fine. Right? Like, I’m not, I’m not saying every time that happens, this is triggers this thing in me, but I’ve found that like, it’s, it’s. It’s really hard to feel, uh, feel the connection that I felt when I was talking to them.

[00:19:32] Jeff: If when you acknowledge or reflect that thing back in a way that is totally normal inside your friendship, it’s not, you know, I’m not like, it’s, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing that part wrong. Um, and then it’s just, ah, it’s okay. It’s

[00:19:43] Brett: Is this a Midwest thing, do you think?

[00:19:46] Jeff: I mean, so I, no, I mean, I have a friend,

[00:19:48] Christina: a Protestant thing, I think.

[00:19:50] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

[00:19:52] Jeff: No, I mean, I’ve had it from people all over the world that are my friends. Um, and, uh, and so anyway, I was curious, I was curious for both of you. [00:20:00] Um, I know that for me, it is hard to hear someone say back to me after I’ve told them something hard. Like, that sounds really That sucks. Sounds really hard. Like I understand that that can be a weird thing to receive sometimes, but I think my typical response is like, yeah, shit.

[00:20:18] Jeff: Thank you.

[00:20:18] Brett: Yeah, exactly. That’s mine too, is like, yeah, it is.

[00:20:22] Jeff: and Christina, what about you?

[00:20:23] Christina: well, it varies, because I mean, I think that it’d be more healthy if I said thank you, or does. But I think a lot of times, my instinctual response is not to be like, is honestly like, it’s fine, it’s whatever. Um, and I

[00:20:40] Jeff: I think.

[00:20:41] Christina: Right, and to me, like, I think that it isn’t so much because I’m like, oh, I don’t want to let you in, um, because of the fact that I’m sharing it with you at all means that I’ve let you in.

[00:20:51] Christina: It just means that I’m, at least the way I intended, and maybe it doesn’t come across this way, um, so I agree, I think the way that you two respond is better, but I think the reason [00:21:00] I’m like, yeah, it’s whatever, it’s fine, it’s whatever, whatever, is because I’m kind of like, I’ve shared this with you, but I’m not necessarily in a place where I know that I can solve this or I can do anything about it.

[00:21:12] Christina: So, you know,

[00:21:14] Jeff: I’m super interested, I’m super interested in this because I, I, I’m thinking about, you’re causing me to think about things I hadn’t thought, so that doesn’t trigger me in the same way. Because I, here’s how I hear that, and I want to see if this is partly how you feel like you mean it when you say it. How I hear that is like, yeah, it’s fine, whatever.

[00:21:30] Jeff: Fuck. It’s like, you know, like, it’s just like, it’s to me, that’s a version of saying, yeah, it fucking sucks. Right. Um, it’s, it’s the thing. It’s not when someone does the, like, it’s okay. Literally those words seem to be the pathological thing. Whether your first language is, is English or not. It’s my experience.

[00:21:45] Jeff: And for me, it’s not that I want more, right? It’s not like, um, no, don’t cut me off. It’s kind of like, it’s just like a hard landing. It’s like, wait, what happened?

[00:21:55] Christina: yeah. No, I think you’re right. I mean, I think sometimes though, there’s a [00:22:00] weird thing too where I think, and, and you’re, you are, I think, probably right, and to pick up on this and, and right to have feelings about it, which is sometimes I think we can share things with people. And we can be perceptive, you know, and we can be like that vulnerable to do it, but we are then not vulnerable enough to continue to open up to it.

[00:22:18] Christina: So it’s like, I can share this to you. I can share this with you, but I don’t want to have a conversation about this. Right? Like I can say, and that happens sometimes where I’m like, I’m going to share this with you, but you know what? I do not want to talk any further about it. I don’t want to hear you even like, it’s great for you to say, Oh, I’m so sorry about that.

[00:22:32] Christina: But if you want to talk more in depth, because people always like, Oh, well, you know, I’m here for you if you want to talk. And a lot of times I’m like, I appreciate that. I really don’t. You know, or, or, or like, like, I, it’s been enough for me. Like I’ve, I’ve exalted my vulnerability for the day. I’ve been telling you this thing.

[00:22:47] Christina: I I’m not yet in a place where I can go beyond that.

[00:22:50] Brett: yeah, now that you say it like that, I realize what I often do is I will, like, you know me, I, I share everything with everybody. Um, and I’ll share something [00:23:00] really vulnerable and they will react the way Jeff does, like, that really sucks for you. I’m sorry. And I will say,

[00:23:07] Jeff: Sucks to be you.

[00:23:08] Brett: no, I, I will say. I will say, yeah, thank you.

[00:23:12] Brett: It does suck. And then immediately change the subject. Like I don’t generally, I don’t generally want to go into depth about everything that is, all the things I wear on my sleeve. Like I don’t mind the acknowledgement, but I’m not looking for an in depth conversation most of the time.

[00:23:28] Jeff: I so relate to that. And I, to Christina’s point, I will sometimes say this probably happens more in writing if I’m like texting with a friend, I will sometimes say like, Look, I don’t need a response to this. But I just need to share this, because let’s be honest, the worst way to respond when you have shared something with somebody is for that person to then go down any of the roads that are like solutioneering or like, you know, whatever, like, I don’t want that shit.

[00:23:50] Jeff: And I should And like, and I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to present what I’m saying as like, something I think is right or true, but I will say, I will say that in [00:24:00] fairness, I will choose not to share something more often than not, so I’m not, you know, like, if I, if I have kind of talked and someone says, shit, I’m sorry, that sucks, it’s like, I, I actually really needed to hear exactly that, and I don’t want any more than that, you

[00:24:16] Brett: My, uh, my partner, Elle, is a problem solver. Like, their, their instinct, as soon as they hear something’s wrong, they look for solutions. And that is so often not what I need.

[00:24:28] Christina: I, I, I, I can make that mistake sometimes too, and I think I’ve gotten better with it, but it depends on the person. And I know that can annoy people. My mom is like that. My mom is a problem solver, but she does know enough, and like, you know, she’s a problem solver. I’m a counselor, so she doesn’t do that, like, with people that she’s just listening to, to talk.

[00:24:47] Christina: I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I think she became a counselor is because she’s very good at that naturally. Um, but with, like, me and my sister and my dad, like, you know, because she wants to help so badly, she immediately goes into the, [00:25:00] okay, well, how can we fix this mode? And I, I would have to oftentimes, like, tell her as a kid, um, or, you know, teenager, or sometimes even as an adult, although she’s a lot better, uh, as an adult.

[00:25:10] Christina: As adults we’re much more communicative where I’m like, no, I actually just need you to like be my mom and just listen. Like, I don’t, I don’t want any, you know, advice. Um, because I know probably what I need to do or what my options are. Uh, I don’t want to go down that road right now because that’s what’s stressing me out.

[00:25:28] Christina: You know, like I think for a lot of people,

[00:25:31] Jeff: And it misses what I think is true about being human, which is that for the hardest things, what you need is to be able to describe them and say them out loud. And then you, uh, something in you starts to work on that a little bit. There’s something about having said it that isn’t always going to be the solution, but it’s like, I think when people go straight into solutions, which I’ve certainly been guilty of, I think it, it forgets the.

[00:25:52] Jeff: Importance of just saying something out loud and what that does for a person. I mean, hence therapy, right? Sometimes, sometimes you need, you do need your therapist to talk back, [00:26:00] but

[00:26:02] Brett: Yeah.

[00:26:03] Jeff: yeah, so anyway, I, I’ve just been thinking about that cause I’ve run into it a couple of times. And again, like I say, like some 49 now, um, a lot of the friendships I’m talking about where this happens are very old friendships, right? Where I know the arc of their lives. I know I know what it looks like when things are really bad or really hard.

[00:26:19] Jeff: I know when it’s not okay. And, and we’re close enough that it, it would be, some of us have talked about it to a really great effect where it’s fine to just, you don’t have to say anything back. If I, if I just register that I’m hearing you, but not, I don’t do it. I like the thing. I don’t do an overwrought or, you know, and if anything, I understate it by saying like, it fucking sucks.

[00:26:38] Jeff: I’m sorry. You know, like, uh, but, uh, I’ve found that in a lot of older relationships, that’s where it. Can be hard. But I mean, how I deal with that actually is just to be like, it’s not okay. You just spent 20 minutes talking to you about something. It’s totally not okay. We don’t talk about it anymore, but I’m just going to be the one that says it’s not okay.

[00:26:57] Jeff: And I get why you’re saying [00:27:00] let’s move on. Like that is how I handle it to be clear. Like I don’t, um, I don’t just, uh, seethe, but that’s my, that’s my bet.

[00:27:09] Brett: Alright.

[00:27:10] Jeff: Drink.

[00:27:11] Brett: Drink. Um, I’ll go next. I will effort to keep it short. Um, I have had insomnia for a couple months now. Um, I, for a long time, was sleeping every other night. Um, but then like, on the off nights, I would wake up around 12 or 1 and then just be awake, uh, for the rest of the night. So I was functioning on 3 to 4 hours of sleep max, um, every other night.

[00:27:41] Brett: And it was really dragging me down, so I talked to my psychiatrist. We’ve gone through a couple meds. The first ones actually made it worse. I can’t remember the name of what I just started last night, but it was the first night I slept in the last six days. And I’m not manic, just to [00:28:00] be clear. Like I’m not, none of the other symptoms are there other than sleeplessness.

[00:28:06] Brett: I just, for some reason. Have stopped sleeping. I think it might be circadian rhythms as the days get longer. I think my system might just be off. Um, so I’m using like a, a full spectrum light in the mornings to try to like shake this. But anyway, um, second point, I had my first actual IFS session on Tuesday.

[00:28:29] Brett: Um,

[00:28:29] Jeff: family systems.

[00:28:30] Brett: Internal family systems. It was, it was very interesting. Like, as we’ve talked about, I’m a little skeptical, um, of the entire process, but also have read enough that I think it would be very beneficial to me. Um, and immediately, like I discovered. Parts of me that I had no idea were there and made a lot of sense, um, and Ellis convinced that some of the weird dreams I had last night were a result [00:29:00] of beginning IFS therapy, um, and the last thing I’ll say actually relates to, uh, something Jeff was talking about, um, uh, A girl that I dated briefly in college and haven’t talked to in 20 years has recently gotten in touch with me, um, and, like, she got in touch with me before this shit went down, but the guy that she was hanging, okay, she said they’re not dating, but they hang out every day, and they, they make out, and, like, this is what I pieced together is, Much like when we were together in college, she doesn’t want a boyfriend, um, but she’ll, like, do all the things that a partner does, um, and, uh, then all of a sudden she texts me that he’s in treatment, uh, that they forced him into treatment, and I had no inkling of this Before, [00:30:00] um, but he tested positive for like every drug known to man, he broke out of treatment, he broke into her house, um, he is being scary as hell, um, she sends me videos that he sends her where he is like crazed and manic and, um, it is, it is terrifying and I don’t It’s I’m two hours away from her.

[00:30:25] Brett: I don’t know how to respond other than to say, I’m really sorry you’re going through this. Here are the shelters near you if you need, if you need a safe place to go. Um, and she doesn’t shut me down. Like she seems grateful that she has Someone to share all this with because, like, his entire family is being terrorized right now, and they can commiserate, but they can’t take a calm, external look at it.

[00:30:53] Brett: Um, and so that has been, uh, honestly, it has added some interest to my otherwise very stable [00:31:00] life. Um, but I I have a lot of, I’m really worried about how this ends and, and what happens next. So

[00:31:10] Jeff: Yeah. How did you end up back in touch?

[00:31:15] Brett: she texted, like we have been friends on Facebook for 20 years and we’ve never said a word to each other directly. Um, and then she texted me, I can’t remember. How she got my number, but yeah, she just kind of texted me out of the blue. How you doing? And then she kept promising we were going to FaceTime sometime and then always flaked on it.

[00:31:40] Brett: Um, which is okay. Um, but yeah, like she, she owns a restaurant and is Like, for all intents and purposes, seems to be doing well, but she got, she got in with, uh, a scary guy, [00:32:00] and honestly, the guy that we’re talking about is the guy who did all my tattoos. He used to be a roommate of mine, um, like they were

[00:32:07] Jeff: interesting. So this is a dual connection

[00:32:09] Brett: yeah, they were, they were, those two were not friends back then, but they have connected

[00:32:15] Christina: But they were like part, you are all part of the same circle, I

[00:32:17] Brett: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and, and I liked the guy. Uh, he was, He was passionate and, um, and very good looking, like, did some modeling, and, like, he was an interesting person to be around, but we were definitely junkies together, um, we, we definitely went through all of the stages of junkiedom together, uh, so I know, I know what he’s like high too.

[00:32:46] Brett: And that’s, that’s pretty scary. And I also, like, I really think he’s bipolar. Like, you can be whacked out on a bunch of drugs without acting the way he’s acting. And you can be manic and act that [00:33:00] way without any drugs.

[00:33:01] Jeff: right,

[00:33:02] Brett: the drugs with mania, and that, that describes what I’m seeing from him.

[00:33:09] Jeff: That’s hard.

[00:33:10] Brett: I think he’s, I think he’s fueling mania with drugs.

[00:33:14] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:33:15] Christina: Which, which is really, I mean, I mean that’s the worst. I mean, I, I, I dated someone who, um, when he went off of his medication and then started abusing cocaine, like it was a real problem. Um, and, and basically that ended our relationship, um, because he was bipolar before and, and dealt with it and, and whatnot.

[00:33:35] Christina: But then when it was the, okay, I am going to go. Purposely go off my medication and I’m going to start like using cocaine excessively and whatnot. I was like, okay, this is not a safe or a good, you know, environment for me to be in. I’m done. Um, especially when you’re like 22, like it’s just, you can’t do that.

[00:33:53] Christina: Um, and you’re right. Like that’s, That’s just like another level nightmare to have, you know, like the combination if, if [00:34:00] what you’re saying is right, right? Because it’s like either of those things on their own can be really bad, but together it’s a really dangerous combination for everybody involved.

[00:34:09] Brett: I agree. Um, I will, I will end mine there so we can try to contain our mental health, uh, uh, corner. Um, so Cristina, your turn.

[00:34:19] Christina: I’ve been ADHD as fuck. Um, I’ve been having a really hard time focusing and concentrating. I’ve mentioned that before and it’s, it’s still a problem. So I’m, I’m trying to kind of, I don’t know, see if I can like workshop some other solutions, try to do some other things. But this has like been worse than it’s.

[00:34:36] Christina: ever been in my life where, um, if I can kind of force myself into a mode where I’m actively working on something, it’s fine. But if I’m not actively like forcing myself, like I’m right now on the podcast, although while I’m recording with YouTube, I’m listening to you talk, but I’m also like looking up a bunch of other random stuff in the background and, and like multitasking.

[00:34:58] Christina: And, and I am engaged and I am listening [00:35:00] and, um, and whatnot, but it, but I’m. You know, my brain is, is doing a bunch of other things, so I don’t know what this means. I don’t really know what to do about it, but that’s kind of where I’m at right now. So,

[00:35:10] Brett: Yeah, I assume no medication changes. This is just a,

[00:35:14] Christina: this is just, yeah, I mean, I’m

[00:35:15] Brett: balance change.

[00:35:16] Christina: Yeah, this is just exactly, and, and it’s one of those things, so like, you know, I have been off of antidepressants now completely for a couple of months now, and I don’t know if that’s, Had any sort of impact or not? I mean, I have to say anecdotally, it does feel like it’s gotten worse, but at the same time, I don’t really, you know, like, the antidepressants weren’t working.

[00:35:35] Christina: So, yeah, I, I don’t know. I’m, I’m, I think that there are probably, I’m probably going to need to do some, some, uh, CBT, um, stuff to try to maybe get into a better mindset of some things I can do to maybe rewire myself to, Like not solve the ADHD because I don’t believe like that CBT can do that But some things that I can do to like force myself into better habits So [00:36:00] that I can then get into a better place because I think what tends to happen at least for me is that things can become rote and you can become like you can allow yourself to get away with you know, giving into the ADHD and And then get kind of like off schedule, off track, and I’m just trying to get myself to that place where I’m, you know, I’m honestly like trying to like screw myself and be like, get your shit together, like, do the hard

[00:36:22] Brett: trying to be a normal person.

[00:36:23] Christina: right, like, get your shit together, do these things.

[00:36:25] Christina: It’s not like everything’s going to be okay, magically, and it’s not like, you know, you’re going to immediately not struggle with this stuff, but you’re going to have, like, I’m just trying to get myself to that point where I can get the lethargy out and actually like, Forced myself into being like, no, actually, this is not okay and, and we need to do things to fix this because medicine alone is like, I think at this point, I don’t think it’s a medicine thing.

[00:36:46] Christina: It’s well, like the thing that medicine can solve. It’s like, my brain is broken. It’s a biochemical thing. But I also think that there are probably some like behavioral Things that I need to change. I don’t know. That’s

[00:36:57] Brett: what I’ve found too. I have found like [00:37:00] medication can get me to a certain point. Um, but once I started therapy just about a year ago, um. I began developing, like, actual, like, life skills that I didn’t have, uh, for, like, specific, not general life skills, but specifically for dealing with things like bipolar and ADHD, and while I will always say, take your meds, like, don’t, don’t be scared of medication for any of the reasons that people give you, but, uh, there is a behavioral component to all of it, and I don’t know anybody who’s I do.

[00:37:35] Brett: Okay. I know some people. I don’t know many neurodivergent people that are single diagnosis. Um, so when you start treating multiple disorders with medication, it becomes a tightrope walk. Like you’re talking about maybe stopping antidepressants, change your, change the way your ADHD presents itself. Um, and it’s, it’s such a tightrope walk when you have multiple diagnoses.

[00:37:59] Jeff: [00:38:00] rope walk where you’re always doing that tight rope walker thing where you’re like, one leg on and you’re going, yeah.

[00:38:07] Christina: No, you know, you make a good point. I don’t know how many people, I mean, I know that there are people who could have like, you know, single diagnosis and I’m not trying to limit that because obviously they’re all part of our neurodivergent family or whatnot. But yeah, I think most it’s, it’s weird because it’s like, it’s like for me, it’s like anxiety, depression, ADHD.

[00:38:23] Christina: Um, some people are, uh, you know, bipolar or some people, you know, like, uh, ASD or like other things. And, um, But, you know, OCD, I definitely had OCD as a kid, I don’t anymore, to the same degree, but like I was definitely, like, not like, to the point where, you know, it interfered with my day to day life, but I was definitely OCD, um, as a kid, but it’s I think you’re right, like, very rarely do any of these, um, diagnoses, like, fit one box.

[00:38:55] Christina: Most people are multiple and to your point, like that, then [00:39:00] that’s what, that’s what complicates treating stuff. I think especially with people who don’t have access to, um, good care or, or care that even gives a damn, because like, if you go to a GP, they’re going to give you one drug to try to solve this thing without any.

[00:39:16] Brett: it also makes it really hard to diagnose. Like a lot of, a lot of ASD people start off being diagnosed with depression and anxiety, uh, but those are actually symptoms of autism, um, in their case.

[00:39:31] Christina: in their case, I, I, I think they’re too, right.

[00:39:35] Brett: Yeah.

[00:39:36] Christina: think one of the things with autism, too, though, to be fair, is that over the last, like, 10 years, the definition, even as, like, from doctors, not even talking about the community, uh, which is a whole separate thing, but the definition from doctors has expanded quite differently than where it was even before a decade ago.

[00:39:54] Christina: So, you’re right, but I think that, like, it, you know, I think, I sometimes see people who are like, oh, why wasn’t I diagnosed [00:40:00] with this? 20 years ago. And I was like, because the diagnostic, you know, the diagnostic, you know, criteria was different then. Um, but yeah, uh, for, for, for sure. Like when I was a kid, like depression was the most active thing that I could pick up on from the commercials for the mental health treatment facility, which is how I diagnosed myself.

[00:40:25] Christina: But Anxiety has always been like the driving thing, really. And so, you know, but, but for me, the thing that I was able to like identify with as this, and I was like, Oh, I’m depressed. Right. So I very immediately diagnosed with depression. And then very, very soon after that was like, Oh, you also have anxiety disorders.

[00:40:45] Christina: Like, huh, shocker. Okay, cool. You know?

[00:40:49] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Oy. That tight, that tight rope walk. Fuckin sucks. [00:41:00] just say one, just, and maybe this isn’t closing, maybe not, is that like, Christina, what you were describing where it’s like, I’m off the depression meds, I, I heard you kind of essentially saying like, I don’t feel like fucking with medications right now, like this is, and, and like that, I, I only started taking Medications in 2000 and the thing that’s the, the, the phases that are the hardest for me is when, and it usually is in my case, I said, I’m not at all putting this to you.

[00:41:26] Jeff: In my case, it often is like, I’m really bad at doing the behavioral stuff. Um, but like putting that aside, cause that’s just hard. Um, Uh, I find that when, when something is act, when some aspect of me that I, I think I’m adequately medicating or, or, or, you know, dealing with the therapy, whatever acts up, it’s kind of a hopeless feeling for a minute, uh, because I don’t want to go down the medication road, but like, I’ve learned a lot about how the medication can help me, but I also learned if I go down that road, then maybe it gets a little worse at first or whatever.

[00:41:56] Jeff: That’s just a terrible feeling.

[00:41:58] Christina: No, it is. I mean, especially coming off of like the [00:42:00] last six months that I had, um, with, like, I’m, I’m not in a place where I can, right? Like, if I do, um, if I, if I were to go, like, if I were to reestablish like a medication regimen again, and it’s possible that I might have to do that, I know that I will have to, like, take a leave of absence from work, right?

[00:42:18] Christina: Yeah. It will have to be one of those scenarios. Like, I, I will, I will not be able to go into, like, if I were to try ketamine therapy, even, like, you know, stuff like, which I would like to do at some point, like, I will, it will have to be under the circumstances where I’m not trying to do what I did before.

[00:42:34] Christina: And so, unfortunately, what that means. for me is that I’m going to have to wait until it reaches kind of a critical point or a more, not, not, not critical, critical, but a more critical point, because I don’t feel like I have the luxury or the ability to be like, Oh yeah, let’s just experiment with meds right now.

[00:42:53] Christina: Right? Like, I know that when, and there will come a time for me to have to do that, that I will have to [00:43:00] have, um, supports set up and, and, and systems set up in my life so that I can focus just on that. Um, and that’s just, that’s not an option right now.

[00:43:11] Jeff: Yeah, this is where I go. It fucking sucks. I’m sorry.

[00:43:16] Christina: Yeah. And, and, and,

[00:43:17] Jeff: you go, Yeah, it’s fine. Whatever.

[00:43:19] Christina: and I’m like, no, yeah, it does because honestly, that’s just all I say is, yeah, it does. But I will just say on the upside, on the upside, like nothing’s critical. I’m just really ADHD right now, but I’m not like, I don’t want to actively harm myself. And I, I don’t like, it’s not like, you

[00:43:35] Brett: better than being horribly depressed.

[00:43:37] Christina: I was going to say like, it’s better than six months ago when I was like, I don’t really want to be alive, you know, so it’s better than that.

[00:43:43] Jeff: better. Maybe for our show notes, getting back to something you said earlier, refresh notes, we just we just publish our search history during the recording of the episode. I feel like it would both hit the show notes and how much we’re just like, thinking about 80

[00:43:57] Christina: totally. I was going to be, which ironically, that was [00:44:00] sort of like the original kind of genesis of the show where Brett and I was like, we’d go down like these, you know, wiki k holes of things where we talk about one thing and then go to the next and then go to the next and go to the next. I mean, that’s kind of the, it’s

[00:44:12] Brett: almost as if we’re both ADHD.

[00:44:14] Christina: Oh,

[00:44:15] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of saying that sucks and then immediately changing the subject.

[00:44:19] Christina: do it.

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[00:45:52] Brett: Subscription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. Oh my God. I nailed that. That was one take, no edits.[00:46:00]

[00:46:00] Christina: Hell fucking yeah. Let’s go. Let’s go,

[00:46:02] Jeff: You shouldn’t even, you shouldn’t even edit that part out. That’s a good

[00:46:05] Brett: I, I’m not gonna, I should podcast sober more often.

[00:46:09] Christina: Honestly, though, that was so fun. I like that.

[00:46:15] Slutty SEO

[00:46:15] Brett: so can I, okay, I, I, I just want to, I came up, sorry, I’m fucking with my microphone. Um, I came up with a new term. Tell me if it’s original. Um, I was looking for a Shopify plugin for a friend for a consult. And I found it. I found one that honestly seemed to be exactly what we needed. But when I went into the reviews, like there were these pages that were like top 10 plugins for this thing.

[00:46:44] Brett: And then you look and it’s hosted by the people who made the plugin I was looking at, and it’s kind of, it’s, it’s black hat SEO, but I want to call it slutty SEO. Like it just. Like, that term came to me when I was trying [00:47:00] to describe to them why I had hesitations about this. I was like, they have really, it’s just kind of slutty SEO.

[00:47:07] Brett: Um, I think I’m gonna make that a thing.

[00:47:11] Christina: I probably would have, and it’s so interesting, like, and I like, I like your, um, characterization of it as slutty, but like, I probably would have like, oh yeah, that’s just kind of like scummy, whatever, you know, SEO tactics, but, but, but

[00:47:23] Brett: that’s fair. That’s probably less offensive to women who get called sluts all the

[00:47:27] Christina: well, see, but this is

[00:47:28] Brett: But I would never call a woman a slut.

[00:47:30] Christina: but see, but I

[00:47:31] Brett: I would call SEO

[00:47:32] Christina: Right, but that’s what I’m saying. I was going to say, but I kind of like the, the, like, I kind of like the slut shaming aspect of it. You know what I mean? Because on the A, I think that it, like, at this point, for a lot of people, slut has kind of been reclaimed, which is excellent.

[00:47:49] Christina: Um, and honestly, when I call people sluts at this point, I’m not, I, I’m not even being like, oh, you’re, you’re, you’re easy, you’re a whore or whatever. I’m like, you’re a whore in a completely non sexual way. Like, I don’t care what you do with your body. Like, if [00:48:00] I call you a whore, it’s because either I’m telling you how much I love you or like, it’s something else, right?

[00:48:06] Christina: But like,

[00:48:07] Brett: there’s a major book on polyamory called The Ethical Slut, and I feel like it’s been mainstreamed at this

[00:48:13] Christina: Oh, it’s incredibly mainstream. It’s like, if I, if I have like one more people, like, look, you do you. It’s always just the ugliest people who want to tell you about their polycule. And I’m like, I don’t want to imagine any of you fucking, you know, like I’m happy for all of you, but I don’t want to.

[00:48:28] Christina: Yeah.

[00:48:29] Brett: have heard, I’ve heard gay men use the term slut about other gay men quite a bit, like it doesn’t seem to have the, um, kind of, like you, if you say, if a man says it about a woman,

[00:48:42] Christina: Oh yeah,

[00:48:43] Brett: then, then that’s very derisive. But, but a man saying it about another man, or like two girls saying it to each other in a more, like, playful way, I don’t feel like it has the

[00:48:55] Christina: It doesn’t.

[00:48:56] Brett: stigma around it.

[00:48:57] Brett: Anyway,

[00:48:58] Christina: to be clear, like, some women calling other [00:49:00] women like sluts and whores, like, can be very like, or, you know, but, but again, I was going to say, like, at least for me, and I, and I don’t usually use the word slut unless I’m with people who I know will understand my meaning of it, because again, the, the connotations are still what they are.

[00:49:14] Christina: But again, this is why I like you calling it slutty SEO, is that my, my, my personal definition is now completely removed from like the, the, the sexual shaming aspect of it. Right? Like, like, like if I call a woman, like again, if I call somebody a slut, it is either because I’m like, what’s up slut, like lovingly, or it is just to be like, Oh, you fucking suck.

[00:49:35] Christina: Um, but I don’t really care what your sexual proclivities are. Right? Like, I’m not making the judgment that way. I’m not calling you a whore, but like, like I said, like, I’m repeating what I said now, but, um, but at the same time, like, if, if another woman were to call me that, like, in some cases, you do know that they mean it like in a, oh, I’m sexually shaming you way, which I You know, okay, but the, the, I understand like the hesitancy there, but yeah, [00:50:00] you got scummy SEO, slutty SEO though.

[00:50:01] Christina: I like that. I like that.

[00:50:04] Brett: Alright, I have, we are, we are at 50 minutes, and I know we talked about trying to do an hour long episode. I want to talk about Dimspire. me, but if we want to jump straight into Graptitude, I’m game.

[00:50:17] Jeff: No, do it.

[00:50:18] Christina: Yeah. Let’s talk about it.

[00:50:19] Dimspirations

[00:50:19] Brett: so, I have for a couple of years been publishing hashtag dimspirations, which were inspired by inspirational posters, but not, um, think despair.

[00:50:32] Brett: com kind of stuff. And I’m not the only person out there doing this, but I’ve had a lot of fun putting my darkest thoughts into meme format. Um, I recently released, after a sleepless night, um, I released dimspire. me And, uh, or Dimspire me as, as you would say it in a sentence. Um, uh, and, and it has. Most of the [00:51:00] DIMSpirations I’ve done over the last couple of years, and I’ve started updating regularly, and today I fixed the RSS feed, so now you can subscribe via RSS or email, um, and I, and it’s the, the OpenGraph tags are set up such that you can share a URL from any DIMSpiration, and it’ll put the preview image in like your tweet or your Mastodon posts or your Facebook posts, um, so I’m hoping to, like.

[00:51:28] Brett: Get some legs out of this because eventually, eventually I would like to merchandise it. I don’t plan to ever paywall the online version, but I think if I took my best, my best 12 and made a calendar, I think I could do okay

[00:51:44] Jeff: Uh, be a good calendar.

[00:51:47] Christina: I

[00:51:47] Brett: It

[00:51:47] Jeff: like, uh, I like, uh, you have my undivided attention, but even if it, if you divided it, it’s still zero. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math. It’s math.

[00:51:57] Brett: Um, yeah, no, I had a lot of fun. [00:52:00] I, the whole thing is automated, uh, tremendously. Like I have, uh, an affinity photo template with a bunch of guides in it. And I make sure the background covers the whole thing. And then all the texts is within a. Certain square, and then I save that in RetroBatch, automatically outputs the square version for Instagram and the website, plus wallpaper versions and an iPhone wallpaper version.

[00:52:25] Brett: It zips it all up, creates a manifest for it, puts it on the website. I could run a single rake task and it’ll add all of the new posts and the manifest, and then I can just add a pithy description to

[00:52:39] Christina: written this up?

[00:52:41] Brett: No, I haven’t. I like, I posted, I posted on the blog about the launch, um, but not about the automations.

[00:52:49] Christina: write a thing about the automations because especially like whatever, like you’re, like you’re you’re, if you’re using GitHub Actions or any of those setups or whatnot, because I think that’s really

[00:52:56] Brett: it’s all local. It’s all, it’s all local and very Mac [00:53:00] centric, but

[00:53:00] Christina: Which is fine, but I

[00:53:01] Brett: still be interesting.

[00:53:02] Christina: think it could be interesting to people because I could see how that could be, like, you could turn that into a CICD thing. Um, but, um, even putting that aside, I would love to just read about how you’ve automated this.

[00:53:14] Brett: All right.

[00:53:14] Jeff: I just want to say one that makes me laugh is you have one that says know your body and then it’s like the map of a body and the the head it says bad decisions the shoulders inaction the chest unavoidable reality and everything from there down just is water that’s a good bit that’s a really good bit

[00:53:32] Brett: Yeah, I’ve had a few good ones over the years. And then I got political, like every, when I get really tired, they come out like, like anti gun violence and anti Anti genocide, and,

[00:53:45] Jeff: an asshole.

[00:53:46] Brett: I know, well, and then I, then I get flack, they’re like, I wish you’d keep your politics out of this, and I’m like, is it really political to be, like, anti kids dying, or anti genocide?

[00:53:57] Brett: Like, are these really, like, politically [00:54:00] divisive issues? I don’t know.

[00:54:01] The Topic We Should Have Avoided, Probably

[00:54:01] Jeff: Apparently anti semitic to be anti genocide. Let’s stop there!

[00:54:04] Brett: Yep. Yep, we don’t want to get political.

[00:54:07] Christina: No, well, actually it’s funny because somebody did have a topic here, which was should tech personalities express political views?

[00:54:13] Jeff: was,

[00:54:13] Brett: Which is related to

[00:54:15] Christina: Yeah, I mean, I think it just sort of, because there’s some issues, like I’m going to be completely honest with you. I will not talk publicly about the topic that you were just alluding to.

[00:54:26] Christina: Like, I’m not getting, I’m not going to say a fucking thing about that on any of my channels.

[00:54:31] Brett: I will on Facebook. I’m, I’m more quiet about it where I have a bigger following like Twitter or even Mastodon. I’m not as in your face about my beliefs on the topic, um, but I won’t shy away from it. And honestly, if I had, if I had as many followers as you do, Christina, I would probably be a lot more shy about sharing my political beliefs.[00:55:00]

[00:55:00] Jeff: Christine is like, I just want to keep my DMs.

[00:55:02] Brett: But

[00:55:03] Christina: mean, at this point, I do just want to keep my DMs, but it’s also, it’s beyond that. But no, I get what you’re saying. For me, though, it’s just like, there’s like,

[00:55:10] Brett: like, so on, on Brett Terpstra, On brettterpstra. com, I won’t, I won’t get political. Um, on my personal Twitter account, I’m going to say whatever the hell I want. If I were like on my account for Oracle, uh, no politics, like that’s not even an option, but I don’t think that, I think if you follow a tech personality or any public personality, if you follow their personal account.

[00:55:38] Brett: You should expect to get to know them as a person.

[00:55:42] Christina: I fully agree. And, and I’m completely okay with people making whatever decision they want to make about how, what they want to share or don’t want to share, especially on their personal accounts. And, and I’ve I don’t shy away from sharing some of my personal thoughts clearly, right? Like, I’ve kind of like, that’s been like part of my success, I think, is being authentic and whatnot.

[00:55:59] Christina: That said, [00:56:00] there are some things that I’m just like, I know that nothing good is going to come from me personally speaking out about something, especially because I can’t do anything to solve anything. Like, I can’t actually make any difference, right? So my personal reason for not speaking out has Nothing to do with like thinking, Oh, you know, people shouldn’t do it or whatnot.

[00:56:18] Christina: Cause no, I mean, I, people should do whatever they are comfortable with. I’m just like, there’s some political topics that I feel like, and I’ll just like, just be completely honest about it. There are some instances where it’s easier because the stakes are lower because everybody’s kind of on the same page.

[00:56:32] Christina: And then there are some where honestly, the situation is so complicated and so complex and nuance is

[00:56:39] Jeff: One or the other, it’s usually not both.

[00:56:42] Christina: And, and, and people,

[00:56:43] Jeff: But I won’t get into that argument.

[00:56:45] Christina: right, right. But, but, but it’s like, you know, but like, it’s, it’s like such a complicated, complex thing. And then because there’s no ability to have any sort of nuanced discussion, I’m just like, you know what?

[00:56:55] Christina: I’m not, I’m not going to participate. Like I’m not opposed to anybody else. And I might interact with some [00:57:00] people’s, you know, uh, statements or whatever that, that I feel like I can kind of, you know, get behind, but like my own stuff. Don’t, don’t need to have those conversations, like, publicly, personally, but I respect everybody else who wants to do that.

[00:57:14] Brett: I, I get, like, I do research. I do my own research. No, but I’ll like, I’ll, I’ll do, like,

[00:57:21] Jeff: Educate yourself.

[00:57:23] Brett: legitimate research if a topic Like, if I can’t understand where people are coming from on a topic, I will research and I will try to understand, like, where, where a contradicting argument or a viewpoint is coming from.

[00:57:37] Brett: And sometimes I find that argument so un contradictory. persuasive, dissuasive, that I can’t keep my mouth shut. It just comes spilling out. And I, especially when I’m tired, like I do not check myself well when I’m tired.

[00:57:54] Christina: I’m, I’m the same way. I’m the same way, but it’s weird. It’s like the, the one thing. Cause I’ve had some people who [00:58:00] have like, kind of like yelled at me, like, why aren’t you saying anything about, you know, what’s happening in Gaza? And I’m like, cause I’m not going to, like, cause I’m not going to, like, that’s just for my own mental health.

[00:58:10] Christina: Frankly, I will be, I will completely own that. I’m being selfish here. And I’m like, I’m actually, this is a case where I’m prioritizing. I’m My own like mental health to not get involved doesn’t mean that I’m not paying attention doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions Um, but this is not a thing that I actually for me right now Need to comment on in any way shape or form and frankly, you don’t need to hear my opinion Like you don’t need to care about it.

[00:58:30] Christina: You don’t need to hear it. It doesn’t matter to anyone um having said that like I completely, uh, you know support anybody else’s Right to to speak out and and go for it. I’m just saying like

[00:58:41] Jeff: fucking brutal context and, and, and it’s just brutal. I don’t, it’s not, I’m not getting us deep into that, into the issue of Israel Palestine, but I will say that like it’s, it’s been easier for me in life because I’ve, I’ve had personal experiences there and connections there and that’s just known.

[00:58:57] Jeff: Um, you know, I’ve watched mass graves [00:59:00] get filled with Palestinian bodies. Um, and, and, but putting that aside, like, um, I think that it is fucking impossible for me to receive the kind of feedback or to have the kind of conversation that is so just fucked. And the reason it’s hard is I think that the arguments people have, this isn’t about which side, uh, I mean, I guess it probably always is in some way, and that’s the problem.

[00:59:29] Jeff: But the, the arguments people have, I think, in the way they have them get them further and further away from the actual suffering and pain and horrors and, and murderous violence that is impacting people

[00:59:42] Brett: I have so much to say, but I’m going to

[00:59:44] Christina: No, same. I mean, same. And the only thing I’ll say is I agree with you is there’s just it’s I think that so much because it is literally on the whole issue is, is such a, um, you know, like theological and ideological just Fundamental [01:00:00] disagreement that will not be solved that by, because people do wind up having to go into sometimes two camps, like we do lose sight of the fact of like the, the, the, the death and, and the, and the, you know, the, just the horrors of humanity that are happening.

[01:00:15] Christina: And like, to me, like, that’s the real like focus, but you can’t have just that conversation because you cannot, unfortunately, it is impossible to disentangle it from the other aspect.

[01:00:27] Brett: if you say the word genocide right now in a completely out of context, you just say the word genocide, you start a political conversation. Um, people get very irate. It, I mean, the US has funded genocides throughout its history. Like, this is not, it’s not a, it’s not a crazy conspiracy statement to say that the U.

[01:00:51] Brett: S. funds genocide. And you don’t have to be talking about a specific genocide to say maybe genocide is bad, maybe we shouldn’t do

[01:00:59] Christina: No, I [01:01:00] agree. And no, absolutely, the U. S. has funded, you know, genocide. I mean, like, our previous support link, Jeff, the reason that we had sanctions in Iraq to begin with is, ironically, because we helped aid the genocide by Saddam Hussein against, you know, his own

[01:01:14] Jeff: Kurds and,

[01:01:15] Christina: Kurds, exactly. Yes. Um, and not, not to mention like, like, like our, our support, you know, of certain, you know, South American regimes and, and, and, and people like Pol Pot.

[01:01:24] Christina: Like, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of, of history where the U. S. has 100 percent done that. And you’re completely correct. This particular situation though, because it is such like a long standing thing and you’re not, but, but I would say, I would actually say

[01:01:36] Jeff: Only 1948. Damn, I can’t help, we’re getting, we gotta be careful.

[01:01:39] Brett: Yeah, we, we should,

[01:01:41] Jeff: Not that long.

[01:01:42] Brett: we

[01:01:42] Christina: No, but no, but, but, but I was just going to say like, no, no, but, but I’m just saying like to, to, just to close on this, like.

[01:01:47] Christina: Genocide is a political topic. Like, it’s not, like, it’s not, it’s, it’s fundamentally about politics. I mean, that’s really what it is. So

[01:01:55] Brett: but, but as non politicians, is there anyone who’s pro genocide?[01:02:00]

[01:02:00] Jeff: I think, yes.

[01:02:02] Brett: Okay, that scares me. The fact, the fact that, the fact that that

[01:02:06] Jeff: I mean, look, this, I’ll just say this isn’t even about the Israel Palestine, I would say that like, if you think about Rwanda, you think about what happened in the former Yugoslavia, like, yes, it’s politicians that, that gin it up, it’s the people who do it. Um, and that’s super. Hard to think

[01:02:21] Christina: if you think about there, there are,

[01:02:22] Jeff: Germany fucks me up because my people are all German and like,

[01:02:26] Christina: I was going to say people did it, right? Because and there are many instances of that where there are people who go and it is the governments who gen it up. You’re exactly right. But it’s the people who do it. And it’s the people who do believe that there are some people who don’t have the right to exist and are completely content with that.

[01:02:40] Brett: then there’s all the people who said, I didn’t realize how bad it was. Like you talked to people that were regular democratic German citizens at the, in 1940, that they didn’t realize how bad what was going on was, and they didn’t feel the need to take a stance. Not that like it would have made a [01:03:00] difference at the time.

[01:03:01] Brett: Um,

[01:03:02] Jeff: gonna attempt to button this up by laughing at something I just said, which is Nazi Germany really fucks me up. I just like, it’s like, oh, really? Oh, wow. That guy’s really,

[01:03:13] Brett: Yeah, we got, we got, we got way off track here, I’m

[01:03:16] Christina: No,

[01:03:16] Jeff: I appreciate it. I, I, this, this is great. Um, all right. Graftitude or what? Graftitude or bust?

[01:03:23] Christina: Love it.

[01:03:26] grAPPtitude

[01:03:26] Jeff: Um, okay. Who’s going first?

[01:03:28] Brett: You are.

[01:03:29] Jeff: Oh, okay, great. Um, so I, I opened MarsEdit for the first time and probably since the second Bush administration, um, and I opened it because I realized, oh, you know what, well, I just wanted to see it. It’s on set app. We all love Setapp. And

[01:03:47] Brett: Martha is so good.

[01:03:48] Jeff: great thing about Setapp is it allows me to just, there’s a lot of apps that have just been gloriously in production and improving for decades that are at Setapp so I can open them and be like, look at you, um, you’re all [01:04:00] grown up.

[01:04:00] Jeff: And, uh, the, the fun I had with MarsEdit was a couple of things. I actually really enjoy creating Mastodon posts in MarsEdit, which you can do. Um, I Don’t like making Mastodon posts in Mastodon, um, even though I used Ivory, which is, which is great, uh, you know, Tweetbots, Xbots, uh, RIP, R I P. Um, but I, the reason I’m actually bringing up MarsEdit, which I would just say is delightful, is it helped me to archive my many, many Tumblr blocks.

[01:04:30] Jeff: Uh, every once in a while, I’m like, I should go out and just make a list of all the, the. Fucking ghosts I have out there. And so I was able to archive, I mean, I have Tumblr blogs where there’s like three posts, right? It’s like, Oh, this is a great idea.

[01:04:41] Christina: How do you do this with, um, with MarsEdit? You just log in with, um, your

[01:04:44] Jeff: can just, yeah, you can log in with Tumblr and it just sucks in all the posts, um, which is really great.

[01:04:50] Jeff: And, and including the misspellings.

[01:04:53] Brett: WordPress sites as

[01:04:54] Jeff: And the WordPress sites. Yep, for sure. For sure. And, and somehow you can still at least import your blog [01:05:00] spot sites, which I, I haven’t. It’s a little more, it’s a little trickier. They don’t, the blog spot, API or the blogger API went away in terms of being able to post from Marta, but it seems like you can still import from there.

[01:05:10] Jeff: And I need to do that. ’cause I have a lot of those too. I used to like just spray blogs indiscriminately into the crowd. It’s just like, but that was probably early bipolar and, and also ADHD

[01:05:21] Christina: I, I, I, I

[01:05:22] Jeff: I have an idea. It now must be real.

[01:05:24] Brett: undiagnosed here,

[01:05:26] Christina: I was gonna say, I think that it’s like, it’s, it’s both Tumblr, uh, or not Tumblr, it’s, it’s both ADHD and like, like tech, um, early adopter thing, right? Cause I think that I know so many tech people who, as. Many of them aren’t even ADHD, who are just like, Oh, I have an idea. I want to start a blog. Because we always have this itch.

[01:05:42] Christina: Like, it’s the easiest thing to do is to spin up another website or another blog. And, uh, and

[01:05:48] Jeff: really funny name.

[01:05:50] Brett: Well, look, it’s insane to think about the days before you could do that. Like, what did people like us, when we had an [01:06:00] idea, what’d we do? Like, we told, maybe we made a zine, but mostly we just told our friends. And suddenly, like, people our age suddenly had this, we could, we can spin up a Tumblr. We can spin up a blogger site.

[01:06:13] Christina: We can have a, we can have a live

[01:06:14] Brett: this with

[01:06:14] Christina: we can have a GeoCities. Yeah. We have

[01:06:16] Jeff: it was such a glorious time. And this is the second episode, I think in a row that we talked about Tumblr. Um, it was such a glorious time and I’m so glad I had those Tumblrs cause they’re like little journals. And even the ones that were, um, just three posts now, what’s nice about having the Mars edit is there there’s everything, right?

[01:06:32] Jeff: It’s all there. And, and that’s really nice. And so even if it had three posts, it’s now alongside 10 other Tumblrs that had, you know, six to 40 posts each, um, my proudest. Blog title, and this one’s dead, was Skinny Notebook Full of Code, which was when I first started coding as a journalist. And I was like, I have a skinny notebook full of code, and I thought that was a great name.

[01:06:52] Brett: Oh, that didn’t, what, on the show notes, wasn’t your pick originally, uh, Jupiter Notebooks? [01:07:00] Jupiter Labs. So, okay, we’re going to talk about that in the future, I hope, because I feel like that is exactly the kind of coding you did in journalism.

[01:07:08] Jeff: moved, yeah, I moved this down, uh, in place of it because I had it as a topic because I wanted to talk about it on my Tumblr, so I snuck it in in gratitude.

[01:07:15] Brett: I would like to, two points I’ll add to the MarsEdit discussion. I recently gave away MarsEdit, uh, a few copies on brettterpstra. com. There will be a link in the show notes for the upcoming giveaways. And this week is Black Ink from Daniel Jalkut, who also made, uh, MarsEdit and Black Ink is a great,

[01:07:36] Jeff: FastScripts?

[01:07:38] Brett: uh, yeah.

[01:07:39] Brett: Um, it’s, I think I already did the fast script. Yeah. Uh, Black Ink is a great crossword puzzle. Like if you want to If you want to

[01:07:46] Jeff: Oh, I need to try it.

[01:07:47] Brett: I can finish a crossword puzzle five times faster using black ink than I can even using like an online version where you have to

[01:07:55] Jeff: Why? Why is it

[01:07:56] Brett: I just keyboard shortcuts, man, like you can [01:08:00] just, you can just flip through the whole thing and you see a clue and you get a couple of cross

[01:08:03] Jeff: Thanks for not saying key chords.

[01:08:05] Brett: switch, switch, switch your orientation, type out the word you

[01:08:09] Christina: Totally. And it’s a great app.

[01:08:10] Jeff: try

[01:08:11] Christina: It’s also, it’s like, I love the, I, I pay for the, like, um, well, it’s like, I guess it’s part of a New York Times subscription or whatever, but you know, you get the games and whatnot and, and that stuff.

[01:08:19] Jeff: it till Wednesday.

[01:08:20] Christina: yeah. And so, like, I like their app a lot. Like I think that their iOS app

[01:08:25] Jeff: It’s

[01:08:25] Brett: mini, I’ll do the mini on the iOS app, but if I’m going to do the actual crossword, Black Ink is the

[01:08:30] Christina: No, I was going to say, but I really enjoy being able to like have it on my Mac. Like it’s, it’s a really great app. Uh, but yeah. Um, yeah. So shout out to Jacob cause he’s, he’s the best, um, Um, my, my favorite Tumblr incidentally is, uh, cause I had a whole bunch of them too. Um, it’s fuckyeahcorrections.

[01:08:50] Christina: tumblr. com.

[01:08:51] Jeff: The fuck yeah, whole fuck yeah idea

[01:08:53] Christina: So good.

[01:08:54] Jeff: was so great. Fuck yeah corrections. Okay. Is this still up?

[01:08:56] Christina: Yeah, it is. And so the, the, the impetus was that, uh, [01:09:00] do you remember Alex from Target? He was like this, this kid who was like cute, who somebody like did a meme on. This was ten years ago now. New York Times wrote about it. And because it’s the New York Times, on Twitter had had a meme showing Kel from, from, from Good Burger.

[01:09:14] Christina: And this is the correction, November 10th, 2014. An article on Thursday about the latest internet sensation of, quote, Alex from Target, end quote, a picture of a teenager bagging merchandise at the retailer that went viral online, described incorrectly a subsequent internet posting of, quote, Kel from Good Burger, end quote.

[01:09:32] Christina: It was a frame from the 1997 film Good Burger, starring actor Kel Mitchell. It was not a photograph of a teenager in a juff.

[01:09:41] Jeff: Wow. Wow. Wow.

[01:09:45] Brett: I like, so Christina is always asking us if we’ve heard of, you know, fads, viral topics, memes, and Jeff and I are always like, no, but you bring up Alex from Target and we’re like, oh yeah.

[01:09:57] Christina: were like, yeah, because that was like Halcyon Days, like [01:10:00] it was so good, but.

[01:10:01] Jeff: Well, it’s like how the only sports team I can talk about is the 1987 Twins. Like it’s, it’s a thing. Related to my AARP conversation, which I’ll save for next week. Sorry, Christina.

[01:10:12] Christina: was gonna say, there’s another funny one too. An article last Sunday about Bradley Cooper, who is

[01:10:16] Jeff: I love this

[01:10:17] Christina: revival of The Elephant Man, reverting correctly to the London address where Joseph Carey Merrick, the real Elephant Man, exhibited himself. The address is now a sorry store. It is not, our sincerest apologies, a sorry store.

[01:10:33] Jeff: That reminds me of something I’ll say briefly, which is I was recently talking to a friend who works at a news organization for which you would be disappointed to learn what I’m about to tell you, which is that they’re in the process of unionizing and one of the things they hope to get out of being in union is fact checkers.

[01:10:47] Jeff: And let me tell you,

[01:10:49] Christina: Yeah.

[01:10:50] Jeff: if you knew what this organization was, which one day you will, it would be very disappointing.

[01:10:56] Christina: This was one of my favorites, because I didn’t have a lot of posts on this Tumblr. It was just, it was one that I [01:11:00] started in 2014 and then forgot about promptly. Um, the AP deleted a tweet that incorrectly referred to Lauren Conrad as Lauren Hill. A corrected tweet will be published shortly. Because they’re like, oh, Lauren from the Hills is Lau I mean, it’s just, it’s so good.

[01:11:16] Jeff: Oh my God. I love it. I

[01:11:19] Brett: All right, Christina, what you got?

[01:11:21] Christina: Alright, so this is one that I’ve talked about before, but a new version just came out, so I’m going to give it a shout out again. So this is FF Works, which is, um, a great ff neg, uh, front end, um, for Mac os. It’s at ff works.info and it is, or actually that’s not correct. That is correct. Yes. It’s FFworks.

[01:11:41] Christina: net. My bad. My apologies. Um, but FFworks 4 just came out. Um, and I don’t remember what the upgrade price was, although it was, it was fairly low. I think that it’s, it’s still like 22 pounds, I think, for the full version. Um, and

[01:11:54] Jeff: how many meters away from, from your wallet? Are you?

[01:11:57] Christina: I mean, I don’t know. Well, because, because he, he [01:12:00] sells it or he sells it in euros or he sells it in pounds and so, so you’ve gotta buy it like that way, so it, yeah.

[01:12:05] Christina: Yeah. It’s 22 euros. So, so, uh, ’cause I think he’s German, so what, whatever. Um, the, uh,

[01:12:10] Jeff: solver. Hello, Graftitude.

[01:12:12] Christina: so, uh, exactly, so, oh, okay. So it’s 14, uh, it’s 14 euros to upgrade, and then it’s 22 for, for the new thing. Um, and this is just a, a great app.

[01:12:21] Brett: which is 23. 82 US dollars

[01:12:24] Christina: hey, great. Okay. Well, that’s fantastic because that means that the, the dollar is either

[01:12:30] Brett: exchange rate is great.

[01:12:31] Christina: I was going to say the exchange rate is actually good now. Uh, cause before that’d be like, Oh, okay. So that’s 30 bucks

[01:12:36] Brett: like, it was like 1. 5, not too long

[01:12:38] Christina: It was exactly. So I’m like, okay, good. So what’s great about this is that if, um, it’s, uh, like, you know, we’ve talked about FFmpeg before. Um, it is one of those tools that I use all the time for so many different things.

[01:12:51] Christina: Um, and, and it’s great if you need. Many times you do need to, like, re encode media into different formats and whatnot. Um, but the problem with FFMPEC is that even with [01:13:00] ChatGPT, like, writing scripts, even with ChatGPT, remembering what to fucking do with it is a nightmare. It’s like the most useful application of all time.

[01:13:09] Christina: And it’s actually well designed. I’m not even gonna lie and be like, Oh, it’s not like a well designed syntax or whatever. It’s just got so many fucking options that who can keep track of them? It’s like image magic, right? Like, these are these amazing utilities.

[01:13:22] Brett: And a lot, and a lot of the options, you don’t

[01:13:24] Christina: Know about, right?

[01:13:26] Brett: not so well versed in video formats that you would understand what the option will actually do to the end video. So a GUI is so nice for

[01:13:35] Christina: It is. And what’s, what I like about this GUI is that it is, in my opinion, like the perfect kind of mix because there are, there, there are two ways I think you could go about doing this. You could, that could be successful. Uh, there’s, there’s a third way, which would be the Linux way, which we’ll talk about.

[01:13:50] Christina: I, I could, you know, talk about at length, which would, Be the bad way. But the two ways you could do this successfully to like make like a gooey of an FF impact thing would be to [01:14:00] either A, have a very simple drag and drop process where you then have like, like per Yeah. Where you just have like a very like easy kind of slider and it’s just telling you what to do, but you really can’t go that advance and you can’t, you know, go beyond kind of what, what a lot of things you could do in QuickTime back in the day.

[01:14:15] Christina: Right. Or you can do what FF works does, which is give you all those options. Um. It hides them to a certain extent. So you have to kind of go looking if you want to do more with it. And you do need to kind of, it’s not going to be the most intuitive thing to be able to figure out, Oh, I can do all these things, but it definitely does service all your options.

[01:14:34] Christina: But what I appreciated about it is that unlike If this were a Linux desktop app, this would literally just be every single option available in FFmpeg as like a checkbox or a slider, but with no understanding of what any of that means, and like, not well organized, like it would just be a disaster. Um, this is

[01:14:55] Jeff: going to talk about Linux and Israel Palestine in the same episode?

[01:14:58] Brett: ha ha ha

[01:14:59] Christina: what, [01:15:00] look, wow,

[01:15:00] Brett: ha ha

[01:15:01] Christina: sssssssshaaaaaaaa

[01:15:03] Brett: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

[01:15:07] Christina: I feel suitably owned, um, that’s, that’s fucking perfect. But, that’s so good, but yeah, no, but

[01:15:15] Jeff: different.

[01:15:16] Christina: Are they? Are they? Um, but it’s so different. Yeah.

[01:15:21] Brett: Don’t they both date back to, back to like

[01:15:23] Christina: So,

[01:15:24] Jeff: both, yeah, Oh, Oh, but they have similar characteristics in the rhetorical space.

[01:15:34] Christina: but I was just gonna say, but I really enjoy, I appreciate this, like, application so much because I do like that it treats you like an adult and that you can, you can make it really easy. Like, you can set up a droplet, just make it really easy to auto convert stuff. But if you do need to, the reason that someone would want to use this app over Permute is because you do need to use this more.

[01:15:53] Christina: Advanced parts of FFmpeg, but you don’t want to fuck with it. So, honestly, for 23, [01:16:00] highly recommended. Um, and, uh, it gets very frequent updates and, uh, works with like, you know, 4K and 5K footage and stuff. So it’s, it’s really good.

[01:16:10] Brett: Very nice.

[01:16:11] Jeff: How many rubles is it going to set me back?

[01:16:14] Brett: checkduckduckgo, I bet it would do that conversion for you.

[01:16:17] Jeff: I just downloaded it. I had, I had actually forgotten about this and I, and I think it’s great.

[01:16:22] Brett: What is, what is 22 euros and rupees? That’s what I want to know. Um, so my pick is I, so I spent my morning, um, creating the RSS feed for Dimspired. me, um, which ended up being a very manual process, which I then ported to Feedpress and made like, you can do an email subscription and everything. As I was testing it, I opened up my trustee RSS app, which lately has been reader, R-E-E-D-E-R.

[01:16:53] Brett: Um, there are, there are a ton like Net Newswire and Read Kitt, and there are so many [01:17:00] good RSS apps for Mac, but I, I keep coming back to reader. I love the single, uh, single key keyboard shortcuts. I love some of the niceties of the interface. I love bionic reading, which will like. It re highlights, it bolds certain letters in each word.

[01:17:21] Brett: So, do you know, have you ever seen the font, um, uh, Open Dyslexic? Um, it’s kind of like that, and it creates like kind of a magnet for your eyes so you can scan a line and pick it up. Maybe, maybe 50 percent faster than you would reading just plain text. Um, it really helps with speed reading. It’s kind of cool.

[01:17:45] Brett: Um, uh, Reader also has like iCloud sync. If you don’t feel like using, it works with Feedbin and all of the other various services that replaced Feedburner, you know, back from the day. Um, Which, [01:18:00] which I’m grateful for, but, uh, Reader has iCloud subscript subscription sync, uh, so you can get, uh, your syncs, your, your feed synced across your devices without having to use a third party service.

[01:18:14] Brett: Personally, I use Feedbin. I love it. I think it’s great, but, uh, but you have options. So, um, that’s my, that’s my, that’s my Graptitude.

[01:18:26] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:18:27] Christina: And, and, and you still use Feedbreast, uh, to manage, uh, your RSS feeds. Um, like is there, and that’s like 10 a month or something, isn’t it?

[01:18:36] Brett: Uh, yeah, but that’s for unlimited feeds. So I have feeds for multiple sites and, and I, I do pay like you could, there’s a free version that you don’t get like email subscription and you can’t do podcasts and stuff like that. Um, but if you want to, if you want basically unlimited feeds and, uh, the ability to embed.

[01:18:59] Brett: [01:19:00] Audio and have email subscriptions and all of that. Yeah. It’s like 10 bucks a month, but I have, I have enough. I have enough feeds to justify that.

[01:19:09] Christina: No, I mean, I think that makes sense. I was just, uh, uh, I, um, yeah. Cause like, cause at this point, like FeedBurner is, I think just only just, I think it’s basically gone. I mean, I think that like it, it, it exists only in so far, like they’ve gotten rid of almost every single feature. So, which is a shame because like that was free for so long.

[01:19:29] Christina: Um, and,

[01:19:31] Brett: so it’s Google reader

[01:19:32] Christina: Oh, I know, I know.

[01:19:34] Brett: we are now.

[01:19:34] Christina: But like, but like, it’s, but FeedBurner seems dumb because it’s just like, okay, it’s just like a front end thing, like for, you know, it’s generating like RSS files, like you’re hosting them yourself, you know what I mean? Like,

[01:19:45] Brett: I, I love feed press partly because much like pinboard, it’s kind of a low maintenance.

[01:19:52] Christina: yeah, it is. Yeah,

[01:19:54] Brett: I can’t remember the guy’s name. It’s an Italian name, but, um, Maxime? Or was [01:20:00] that? Anyway, like, like he’s making 10 bucks a month off of all these people who are just forwarding, forwarding the RSS feeds they’re already creating.

[01:20:10] Christina: what I’m saying. Yeah,

[01:20:11] Brett: something that offers analytics to basically a PHP script. And, and that’s like, I I’m happy to pay it, but also I, I could stand to have like, uh, a passive income like that, that required probably very little actual like customer service or anything.

[01:20:30] Christina: Oh, I’m sure there’s almost none and and honestly like I’m not mad at him at all Like I’m happy for him for it I think my whole like issue with it is I’m like, why should I pay 10 a month for this? I know that like that if you have enough sites like it is actually going to be like like

[01:20:45] Brett: stats. It’s

[01:20:46] Christina: Well, no,

[01:20:47] Brett: if you want,

[01:20:48] Christina: and I get that

[01:20:49] Brett: want statistics, you need it.

[01:20:51] Christina: No, and I get that.

[01:20:52] Christina: I’m just saying, like, when you know how little it is, there’s like the part of my mind, which is broken, which goes to, well, why don’t I just spend that 10 a

[01:20:58] Brett: Right? There you

[01:20:59] Christina: on, on, on, [01:21:00] on a VPS server where I’m hosting this myself and doing all this myself? Why am I paying someone else for it? And then of course I realized, well, you don’t want to fucking maintain that, Christina.

[01:21:09] Brett: Right. Exactly.

[01:21:10] Christina: get that. And, and, and that’s why he can have this passive income. But I’m saying the part of my brain that’s broken is that I’m like, and sorry

[01:21:18] Brett: If I, if I put eight hours of coding into this, I could do it for basically free.

[01:21:24] Christina: That, that’s

[01:21:25] Brett: I have, I have that same part of my brain. You’re not alone.

[01:21:28] Christina: So, so I’m, but, but, but I’m happy for him that like, it’s still, um, uh, there. And, um, uh, also happy, I haven’t used Reader in a while. I didn’t, I, I honestly, I didn’t know Reader was still being updated.

[01:21:39] Jeff: I didn’t either.

[01:21:41] Christina: that’s great.

[01:21:41] Brett: is. Yeah, they came out with a new, I think it was this year, maybe last year, they came out with a whole, like, major version bump. Um, honestly, NetNewsWire kind of stole the show. Um, and, and it’s a great app. Uh, it doesn’t, There are some things [01:22:00] about Reader that I miss when I use NetNewsWire, uh, but NetNewsWire is free, and it’s a solid app, and it’s really good to see it come back after, like, how long did it go unmaintained?

[01:22:11] Brett: Like 10 years?

[01:22:12] Jeff: a long time. But then yeah,

[01:22:15] Brett: Is that Brent Simmons now?

[01:22:17] Christina: it’s Brent Simmons. Well, he was it originally, and then he, um, sold it to NetGator, um, who did it. And then

[01:22:24] Jeff: then got it back.

[01:22:25] Christina: then he got it back. Yeah, he was able to get it back and then he decided to make it open source, which I think is really remarkable and amazing. Um, and, and at this point, I think that’s what I use, or I just use like, honestly, Feedbin’s website has been good enough for me.

[01:22:38] Christina: Um,

[01:22:38] Brett: ReadKit, ReadKit was really

[01:22:40] Christina: I really did like

[01:22:41] Brett: for me. Um, like I, it started hanging and crashing and like, that was a few operating systems ago and maybe it’s fine now. Um, cause it had a lot of cool features, um, that made it worth the price for me at the time. But anyhow, Hey, we [01:23:00] did it in an hour and 22 minutes.

[01:23:01] Jeff: Not bad.

[01:23:03] Brett: Like no edits. I’m not going to edit. I’m not going to edit anything. We said what we said. We’re going to, we’re going to leave it all in.

[01:23:11] Jeff: Alright, then I guess I hope you get more sleep tonight.

[01:23:17] Christina: for real.

[01:23:18] Brett: Get some sleep.

[01:23:19] Christina: Yeah. Get some sleep, everyone. For real.