320: I Have A Question Part 2 (Muppet Babies of Fortune)

ot320

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Brett: Hi, this is Brett Terpstra. You know me. Um, this is episode two of our very special series. What was it? A very special episode. Isn’t that like Hallmark channel? Um, um, I am here again with Jeff Severances Council and Christina Warren. And we are going to, we’re we’re gonna offer, we’re gonna ask some, um, Hopefully open-ended questions that will lead to some really fun discussions.

[00:00:34] On Mastodon

[00:00:34] Brett: The last episode went great. I think, uh, this was, this was Jeff’s brainchild. I’m, I’m very impressed with how it’s going so far. Um, before we roll into the new interview questions, I did have one topic, um, especially for Christina, but I’m curious about Jeff’s input on this as well. Um, Mastodon, uh, I. I didn’t run away from Twitter when [00:01:00] Elon just completely royally fucked it.

Um, I have, I have 13,000 followers there. I have a good community. I feel, um, I feel heard there and, and that’s hard for me to leave behind. But the fact is it has become truly a, a wasteland. Um, and all of the sudden, like I set up a Macedon instance. Maybe a year ago. Um, and all of a sudden I started getting enough followers that I started following back.

That my timeline got interesting to the, to the point where I check Macedon before Twitter. Now Twitter has become kind of a, a secondary, I’ll just see what’s there, where that used to be, what Macedon was. I’d check it like maybe every three or four days and respond to queries there. But I hit like this critical mass.

I, I’m up to almost 2000 followers and I follow about. [00:02:00] Maybe 350 people. And that was like a magic number. All of a sudden, Macedon got really interesting for me. Um, I, I was getting more interaction from a post there than I have on Twitter for a long time, and I was finding more interesting articles and more links and more funny jokes.

And like Macedon suddenly became a thing for me. Uh, like this just happened in the last couple weeks. Um, ivory came out and, and th there’s honestly a great ecosystem of apps, Mona Ice cubes, like, uh, toot, uh, there’re just, there are so many good Mastodon apps. It feels like the early days of Twitter, uh, when Twitter was a little more.

Before the invention of the hashtag, you guys remember that, like that era when Twitter was still figuring out what it was. And I feel like that’s where we’re at with Macedon. So I’m curious, [00:03:00] uh, how, what your guys’ current perspective on Macedon is, uh, how your, your follower accounts are going. Um, is it, is it replacing Twitter for you?

[00:03:13] Christina: Yeah. So for me it’s getting there. I’m, I’m still in this weird place and I’m actually, so, and this is what’s frustrating because Twitter may or may not be shutting down the, or changing the terms of the developer api, which will make this difficult. But I’m still in this weird place where like, I kind of have to use both because I have a master, really large audience on Macedon, uh, relatively speaking, like I’ve got almost 13,000 followers now.

So I have more than 10% of my Twitter followers are now on Macedon. And I find that the engagement is a lot better. I think a, because frankly it’s, it’s a smaller audience, so more people, even though I have like. Fewer followers because like the pool of Macedon users is smaller. Like more people see your stuff and more people wanna be engaged with it.

Um, which honestly was [00:04:00] similar to Twitter in it’s early days too, when it was smaller. Uh, I think a lot of times you had sometimes, you know, people who were lucky enough to have like bigger accounts had like, A bigger impact, so to speak. And then as the services get bigger, you need bigger and bigger, like account numbers for that, um, to, to continue to work.

Um, the people who are on Macedon, it, it reminds me a lot of like Apple, Twitter circa like 2007 to like

[00:04:25] Brett: Yeah.

[00:04:26] Christina: Like the Mac people are all there, you know, like our, like my, my, my kind of tech nerds. Um, but not everybody is there. Like pop culture is not there. Memes are not there. Um, and so, uh, there are even some people who do cool stuff that like, like I, you know, um, who I, I maybe wouldn’t give a shout out about something who aren’t there.

So I still feel like I have to use both. And so ideally, and, and, and I’m trying to treat them as different things. Like I, I don’t wanna set up like an automated. Crosspost the same content to each service thing, cuz that’s doesn’t feel right. But it [00:05:00] also is annoying to have to rewrite the same post for two different audiences.

So there’s this service called MOA Party, uh, uh, is moa.party. And, but you can host your own instance, um, as well. That basically lets you cross-post between networks like Macdonna Twitter and it, and it can be conditional. So you could have like a hashtag and only post that have that hashtag would be cross posted.

That to me is ideal and that’s really what I want, but I don’t know how long that’ll be like, um, useful given that the, the Twitter API is kind of in

[00:05:34] Brett: Yeah, I was using, I was using like open web services for quite a while, for a year, uh, to cross post anything. I posted to Twitter, just got posted to Macedon and anything I retweeted on Twitter showed up as a boost on Macedon and that, that worked for a while. Twitter broke that. Um, that no longer functions, and I’m fine with it because Macon has just become the place I go first,[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Christina: Yeah. I’m,

[00:06:00] Brett: about stuff.

[00:06:01] Christina: I, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to kind of do that too. And to, to the point though, where Yeah, but because of my job and because of other things, like I can’t completely, I mean, I guess I could completely migrate, but it just, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel fair to the people who are still on Twitter in some ways too.

Who, who, who I know still wanna maybe converse with me.

[00:06:19] Brett: Yeah. I’m not, I’m not deleting my Twitter

[00:06:21] Christina: Totally, totally. And so, but, but, um, I’m trying to kind of figure out like the, the way that I can cross post again, like I said, conditionally, right? Like there’s an instance where, but, but it is interesting what, for me, the changing moment was getting rid of the Twitter clients.

Like all the Elon stuff. I didn’t. I mean, I hated it, but it was getting rid of the Twitter clients. And for me, I think it was because then I started seeing a significant, uh, mass of people who weren’t there. And it was also, I think that that decision also coincided with some of the other decisions that have been made at Twitter where things are breaking, but we don’t know how broken it is because so many people are gone.

And so the website’s [00:07:00] still functioning, but it’s not really functioning. And so people don’t see your tweets because that stuff has been changed or the, the logic behind that is broken and, and no one

[00:07:10] Brett: Somehow, no matter how much blocking and unfollowing I do, I still see tweets from Elon every day,

[00:07:17] Christina: Yeah, yeah. Uh, and, and there were reports that he like had, like made, forced kind of, uh, you know, engineers to rejigger the algorithm so that everybody would see his content first, which is.

[00:07:30] Jeffrey: Uh, the great fictional company, Huli,

[00:07:32] Christina: Yeah, exactly. 100%. 100. I mean,

[00:07:35] Brett: Oh, Gavin.

[00:07:36] Christina: all of this is like literally out of like Silicon Valley. Um, but it’s real, but, but, but beyond like that stuff, like, stuff is just broken and the site is breaking and whatnot.

And so it’s becoming this frustrating thing where it’s like, I don’t get the engagement. I don’t see people that I used to really, like, some of them have moved to Masson, some of them haven’t. And so I’m like, well, if I get more engagement, you know, on this [00:08:00] platform, I’m, I’m gonna spend more time here. But like I said, the thing that sucks about it is like all my memes, all my pop culture, all that stuff is just not there.

And I don’t know if it’s going to be there. Like, I think that, yeah.

[00:08:13] Brett: Does Instagram fill that gap for you at all? Because to me, Instagram is broken these days too.

[00:08:18] Christina: Yeah. It,

[00:08:19] Brett: every third post on Instagram is an ad I get. They, they infiltrate my timeline with people I don’t follow because someone I do follow liked a post and they decided, all right, I’m gonna show that to you.

[00:08:32] Christina: I’m getting notifications now that so-and-so posted something and I’m getting a notification because two people that I follow also follow. And I’m like, what are you doing? Like, I, I, I don’t know,

[00:08:43] Brett: Not, not in the way that Twitter is broken, but it is, it is. It’s gonna kill itself. It is going to kill itself.

[00:08:51] Christina: The thing that had kept Instagram, I think, so successful for so long is that Kevin Systrom and, uh, Mike, I can’t think of his last name.

Um, uh, last name starts [00:09:00] with the K, the two like founders were still there. And when they left, I think that they left in like 2018, um, because of some clashes was z uh, that to me, I was like, okay, there it goes. Because they had, they had maintained like creative control and like product vision. and you know, he started putting just the, the, you know, ad guys and the people who are juicing engagement in charge, and then the service dies, like, you know,

[00:09:31] Brett: because it’s not sustainable. And with apple’s latest, like do not follow, uh, technologies. And with Google removing like cookie tracking, um, in upcoming removal of cookie tracking, like the ad, the ad based. Uh, system that these major services were built on is going to fail them. And they do. They’ve never put time into figuring out [00:10:00] an alternative way to make money.

And Elon’s struggling with that right now. Uh, but also z like, there’s just, it’s, it’s in an, in an era where we’re starting to worry a little more about privacy, where we’ve stopped just voluntarily giving up privacy. Um, ads aren’t, ads aren’t gonna work the way they have for the last 10 years or so.

[00:10:25] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. People will have to change things. I, it’s interesting to look that at a, you know, talk’s Rise too, which is, uh, So in TikTok is a completely different system in that like, and this I think is why Instagram has been struggling because Instagram was brought up in like the old web era where your social graphic was very important that it be people, you know, and that was what linked you together.

And like that was, you know, uh, Facebook and that was Instagram. And, and to a certain extent that was Twitter. Twitter’s always kind of been kind of in the middle of these two worlds, which [00:11:00] to me is actually strength. But, you know, uh, it’s not strength if you don’t capitalize on that, whereas, TikTok is all about your interest graph.

It’s not about your, your personal, uh, graph. Right? Like, I don’t really follow a lot of people that I know in real life. I follow some of them, but a lot of them I don’t. And I, I kind of don’t even like that. Like I see people auto following me on TikTok cause I, I don’t post anything on there, but I’m kinda like, oh man, I’m, that’s not really, you know, the audience.

I’m kind of going for like, if you want to, cool, but like, that’s not really, you know, my, my, my bag. And so it’s, it’s a, it’s different expectations and different types of, you know, interactions with things. The reason it sucks that what Instagram is doing is that it’s like you go into it with the expectation that I’m going to see people that I chose to follow my friends or people I’m interested in.

And instead they’re showing you content that they think you’re gonna like, and hey, maybe you do like it, but like, that’s not what I signed up for.

[00:11:52] Brett: but yeah, and it’s like the majority, like if you wanted, if you wanted to slip in, you know, something you thought I would [00:12:00] be interested in every 10 20 posts fine. But you get past the first five posts in your Instagram feed and it’s, it’s not stuff you signed up to

[00:12:10] Christina: no, no where,

[00:12:12] Brett: just reaching for your interest at that point.

[00:12:14] Christina: exactly. Whereas TikTok was very clear about, we are going to show you stuff that we think you will like based on your activity and you might not even have to follow people. We’re just going to continue to feed you this stuff. But like I know that, I know that going into TikTok that that’s what it’s going to do.

YouTube is sort of similar in that way, right? Like I might follow certain personalities, but I don’t need to have like a personal relationship with people that I follow on YouTube. And a lot of times stuff that’s recommended to me is not people that I follow. And that’s great

[00:12:42] Brett: Yeah, like

[00:12:43] Christina: I come into it.

[00:12:44] Brett: YouTube’s algorithm, YouTube’s algorithm is working for me. I watch a video from someone that I specifically subscribe to. I watch their video. At the end of it, after I’ve gotten the content, I came there for. It gently suggests. Oh, if [00:13:00] you dug that, here’s some other related content. Um, and sure, you know, like the whole radicalization procedure that it puts people through is, is terrifying.

But for me, I, I, I find new content. I subscribe to three new YouTubers last week just because of suggested content after our video. I watched that’s, that’s an okay way to do it. But that worked on YouTube because you are consuming more than just one image and then moving on, you’re actually engaged with something for five to 20 minutes or longer if you’re into like crazy Collin shows like the atheist experience.

But we totally lost Jeff in all of this. I’m sorry, Jeff

[00:13:44] Christina: Jeff

[00:13:45] Jeffrey: you didn’t lose me. I’m listening. I, uh, I was on a

[00:13:49] Brett: here to listen. My favorite 12 step response.

[00:13:53] Jeffrey: I, I have the privilege of being able to kind of sit back and see how this mastered on [00:14:00] Twitter thing sorts, cuz I don’t have any reason to be, I don’t have any, I don’t have any, no, I’m not, I’m sorry. I’m, I don’t have any professional reason to be on Mastadon or on Twitter at the moment.

And so I, I’ve been just kind of letting it fly, letting it go, see what happens. But I, I find it a little, we’ve talked about this before, Christina, you and I talked about this, I think when Brett was out. Like, it is, it is the case that I, I know there’s so much of what I have gone to Twitter for and what I’ve built and uh, you know, in terms of who I followed and lists and everything else.

Like, they just can’t be recreated. Like, and, and I am, I’m, I’m not ready to fully grieve that loss. And so I’ve kind of. I’ve stayed in, but I’ve, I’ve noticed, you know, every, every week it’s, it’s a truer thing that, uh, what I created is not really what I created anymore. Um, and so, you know, as a kid who had to move like 30 times or something, I pisses me off to have to like, take all my posters down and put ’em on up somewhere else.

But I do have to, I do have to [00:15:00] go over to Macedon and, and put my posters up.

[00:15:02] Brett: I create an Overtired MA sit down account? And if so, what instance should I put it on? Is there a podcast, like what place where Podcast Gather? Is there an instance for, I bet there

[00:15:18] Christina: I bet there is. I bet there is. Yeah, cuz, cuz there are, because unfortunately it does sort of matter. I would think Hacky Durham might be the one that we would use, uh, because that’s kinda like the tech-centric one. Um, uh, but actually let’s, let’s also put this out to our listeners.

[00:15:37] Brett: yeah.

[00:15:38] Christina: What, what, what instance do you think we should be on?

Should we be on Macedon? For Overtired? I feel like it, it, it would find our audience cuz like both of us have managed to build, you know, um, good proportions of our, of our Twitter audiences on Macedon really quickly with, with very little work.

[00:15:55] Brett: I wanna switch, I wanna switch instances like I signed up . [00:16:00] I’m on no, noj dot ez dns.com. Uh, or ca.

[00:16:08] Jeffrey: Is that? Is that, that sounds like some dark web drug buying

[00:16:11] Christina: it does. It

[00:16:12] Brett: it is. What it is is Libertarian shit. It’s, it’s, Easy. DNS is run by a libertarian who puts out a libertarian newsletter. And there there’s this fine line between like skeptical of the government, which I am, um, and, and libertarian and like I, I am the newsletter he puts out, talks about privacy invasions, especially in, uh, Canada and the us and, and it’s stuff that is actually of interest to me.

Uh, but the , the approach he takes to it is disconcerting for me. Um, that said, like, I signed up because it, he was like, Hey, I made a ma instance and at the time Macedon was a new thing. And I’m like, all right, I’ll sign up. [00:17:00] And I did. And now I have this embarrassing, uh, Macedon handle TT scoff at noj jack dot. Easy DNS ca. Um, and I, I wanna switch. I feel like there’s, there’s like , there’s an, there’s, uh, there are indie app spaces. Um, there are, uh, spaces that I would feel more comfortable having associated with my handle that, um, I, I know it’s possible to like switch instances and have all of your followers follow you there?

[00:17:37] Christina: and I’ve done it.

[00:17:38] Brett: haven’t looked into it yet.

[00:17:40] Christina: yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I can walk you through that. The only thing is, is that like you wanna figure out what essence you wanna go to and then, um, with your number of followers, I think that you’d be okay. It takes some time cuz they have to re propagate. You won’t bring your posts with you.

That’s, that’s the only thing. All of your posts will remain kind of in a read only state in, in the [00:18:00] old thing. Um, and.

[00:18:01] Brett: At this point, I think I’m okay with that.

[00:18:03] Christina: Totally. I’m just saying that, that that is kind of a, a concern, uh, that a lot of people have. And I’ve actually been looking at maybe getting my own, like hosted, uh, master on instance that like I control at, at like Master Host.

Um,

[00:18:16] Brett: Oh, we should start an Overtired

[00:18:17] Christina: was thinking that, I was thinking that, I was like, we could do that for like $5 a month or something. Um, but uh, and we’ve been thinking about doing one for Rocket, but um,

[00:18:28] Brett: I would join the Rocket instance.

[00:18:30] Christina: yeah, totally. Totally. Um, and we could have it Overtired at, at like whatever our, um, uh,

[00:18:37] Brett: I’m surprised re relay doesn’t have their own incense.

[00:18:40] Christina: does, I think.

But they don’t have it. Like, it’s not like a thing where like, at least to my knowledge anyway, they’re, I mean, maybe for some people they’re like, Hey, join our instance and, and moved all your stuff over. But

[00:18:50] Brett: But it’s mostly for shows at this point. Yeah.

[00:18:54] Jeffrey: I don’t know, Brett, wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you miss TT scoff at, uh, take it sl. That’s what [00:19:00] she said. Biz

[00:19:02] Brett: It’s gotta be ca it’s gotta be, it’s gotta be a Chinese, a Chinese tld. Um, um, alright. We are, we we’re 20 minutes in already and we haven’t gotten to interview questions. So what I’m gonna do is take a quick sponsor block, uh, and then we’ll spend the rest of the time on our interview questions. So same sponsor from last week.

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[00:21:40] Jeffrey: We the nerd. We The

[00:21:42] If you could go anywhere…

[00:21:42] Brett: Yes. All right, Jeff, do you want to kick us off with a question again?

[00:21:46] Jeffrey: Alright, here is the question. It’s not so much a tech question, although I guess maybe it could be if you choose to snap and end up in like a server room. But if you could snap your fingers and be anywhere in the world [00:22:00] but invisible. why invisible?

So obviously why the place, but why invisible?

[00:22:05] Christina: Okay. All right. I think that I would go to China and I would go to China, or I would go to Ukraine. Um, and I would be invisible in both of those places because I, well Ukraine, because I, I would want to be safe and would not want to necessarily have to like engage in all like the horror that’s happening there.

But I would also like to see what’s happening on the ground. And China, I would love to go to China, but my fear about going to China has been for a long time, and not so much fear, but just like hesitation. It’s been like, I’m gonna have to bring a burner phone, I’m gonna have to bring a burner laptop. I’m gonna have to like, deal with a lot of like the, the state sponsored stuff.

and I, I don’t know how much I would wanna engage necessarily with the state. And so I would love to see China, [00:23:00] but I would like to see it in a context where like, I’m not having to engage with the government, which seems like that would be difficult to do otherwise. Um, and in the Ukraine, simply it is just that I’m a freaking baby and, and don’t wanna go to like a war zone.

Um,

[00:23:14] Jeffrey: that that’s not being a baby that’s wanting to live

[00:23:19] Christina: but I, but I would like to see like what’s happening on the ground and I would like to like, you know,

[00:23:23] Jeffrey: Yeah,

[00:23:24] Christina: uh, ha have, have perspective of that.

[00:23:27] Jeffrey: totally. Totally. That’s awesome. Did you ever see the, um, the YouTube videos? This guy, I think he’s in Shinzen, and he, he’s like, how I made my own iPhone. And he basically goes through all the tech markets to find the various

[00:23:42] Christina: Yeah.

[00:23:43] Jeffrey: of iPhone tech and puts it all together. Uh, just about at the end. Oh God.

That’s what I thought of when you said you’d wanna, you’d wanna be chat. I,

[00:23:52] Christina: No, I totally, the tech markets, yeah. I would love to see the tech markets. I would love to see like the, some of the factories. I would love to see some of the, I mean, it’s such a vast country, right? [00:24:00] Like, like,

[00:24:00] Jeffrey: Yeah. Incredible.

[00:24:01] Christina: I would love to see like the, the Great Wall as, as, uh, you know, trite as that is.

Um, uh, but, but I would love to see, yeah, I would love to see the cities. Like I haven’t spent a lot of time in Asia, unfortunately. Um, I’d, I’d had some trips planned and then, uh, COVID happened. Um, but I would, I, like, I, I don’t wanna be invisible when I go to Tokyo, like I wanna like be fully immersed in all of that.

Um, but I, in China, I, I, I have a feeling I’ll go there certain day and, and not invisible. And I’ll be very happy to do that. But again, like I’d be thinking about my opsec and I’d be thinking about. The state. So it would be cool to be there, you know, again, kind of as an observer, um, and not having to necessarily be like a participant.

I, I think that, I think that for me is, is any place I would go be like a place I would wanna go to observe, but not to participate in

[00:24:52] Jeffrey: yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense, Brett.

[00:24:55] Brett: I couldn’t think of an answer to this. Well, I had to think hard [00:25:00] to come up with an answer that wasn’t creepy and overtly sexual. Um,

[00:25:05] Jeffrey: You know what’s funny? It didn’t even occur to me. What a creepy question that could be.

[00:25:08] Christina: No, it didn’t. Me either. And until we said this, and I’m like, oh, actually, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:25:13] Brett: So, so here’s my answer. Here’s what, here’s what I came up with. Um, I would like to, Are we in al Like, do we take up space in this invisible,

[00:25:26] Jeffrey: I, I leave that up

[00:25:28] Brett: with like, I wanna go to a Michelin star kitchen. Um, and I wanna, I wanna watch the chef and the sous chefs. I wanna watch them work.

Um, I’d love, I love cooking YouTube. Um, I love watching real chefs do their thing. I love food so much. Um, and it’s just fascinating to me to see that what goes into the preparation of Michelin star meals. And if I could be [00:26:00] in those kitchens which don’t have a lot of space and like you can’t be in the way.

So I would literally have to be a fly on the wall, an invisible fly on the

[00:26:08] Christina: Or you’d have to be a rat at Chewy. You’d have to be a rat.

[00:26:11] Jeffrey: Yeah.

[00:26:13] Brett: I would hope that there aren’t a lot of rats in Michelin circuit kitchens, but, but yes. Um, I, I would just, I would love to just spy

[00:26:24] Christina: That would be

[00:26:24] Brett: on someone not making a YouTube video, just doing their thing just in the moment, not explaining what they’re doing. Just fucking cooking.

[00:26:33] Christina: just wanna actually observe. I love, oh, I love this answer so much. This is like, this is genuinely like, such a better answer than mine. That’s so cool.

[00:26:40] Brett: I, I, I liked your answer.

[00:26:43] Jeffrey: that’s awesome.

[00:26:44] Brett: Did you guys, oh, we talked about the bear, right? You guys saw the bear. I know, I know. We’re not talking

[00:26:49] Jeffrey: I do not want to, I do not wanna be in the bear, uh, invisible or otherwise, but love that show.

[00:26:56] Brett: but that kitchen environment, like to me, there’s something [00:27:00] attractive about like just being in a kitchen that knows what they’re doing and like, yeah,

[00:27:06] Christina: You read, you read, you read the book Kitchen Confidential, right? I’m sure you.

[00:27:09] Brett: I didn’t.

[00:27:10] Jeffrey: I did not either.

[00:27:11] Christina: You have to, and the audio book is really good, especially now that he is gone. Um, that is Anthony Bourdain’s, you know, book. It was turned into a TV show. But no, you would love it. You would love it, Brett, because it, it’s all the culture and, and everything that goes into that.

And it’s, it’s, it’s a great book. Um, the audio book is really, really good too, because he, you know, is, is the narrator and he’s obviously, you know, he was a fantastic, um, uh, speaker and and storyteller. Um, you saying this. So my favorite ride at Disney World was the rat

[00:27:42] Jeffrey: was my next question, the TUI ride.

[00:27:45] Christina: rat ride? Uh, uh, like Remy’s, uh, quest or something.

I don’t remember what it’s called now, but basically you’re in these little, um, the way that they have it working is that it’s one of the, the three. Um, rides, um, [00:28:00] or I think it’s 3d. Um, I think you have 3D glasses. It, it’s kind of a combination of different elements. So, uh, basically it’s like a dark ride coaster sort of thing, but each of the, um, cars is shaved like a mouse.

And so the idea is that you are a mouse who’s, um, helping, um, assist Remy as he’s helping get service for the restaurant. And so everything is like massively like scaled. So like you’ve got like, you know, and you’ve got these experiences where like you have, um, somebody sees you, uh, and, and you almost get swept under something and then a water from the, uh, mop comes and hits you in the face and real water comes out and, and, and, you know, you see like these, these, these different kind of, uh, thing, it’s just super, super fun.

Like, I, I, I went on it several times and I had a great time. Uh, so, uh, that made me think of that because that was like,

[00:28:53] Brett: I feel like there’s a,

[00:28:54] Christina: the wall in, in a high end restaurant?

[00:28:56] Brett: there’s a litmus, there’s a litmus test much akin [00:29:00] to knowing that Frankenstein wasn’t the monster. Um, and knowing that rat Tui wasn’t the rat

[00:29:06] Christina: Yes.

[00:29:07] Jeffrey: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:29:11] Brett: All right. Can I, can, before we switch to Jeff’s answer, which I want to hear, um, have you guys ever read a deadly education?

[00:29:22] Jeffrey: no.

[00:29:22] Christina: No.

[00:29:23] Brett: It’s, you, you, you said audiobook, and this, I just wanna mention this completely, completely as an aside. Uh, but it’s Harry Potter, except. There are no teachers in the school. The school wants to kill you.

Only a quarter of the graduating class survives. But it’s, it’s magic and it’s lethal. And I started this book and just immediately gotten grossed in it. Like it is what I look forward. I’m, I’m doing the audiobook. It’s part of a trilogy, but a deadly education is the first one. And [00:30:00] it just drops you immediately into this world where magic wants to kill you.

[00:30:05] Christina: Okay. I love

[00:30:06] Brett: e every decision you make is a survival decision. It’s fascinating.

[00:30:11] Christina: Okay. I’m gonna, I’m, I’m gonna put this in my queue of, of things to like, to listen to next. I have an

[00:30:15] Brett: Yeah. I highly recommend it. Very good. All right, Jeff, so what is your answer to this question?

[00:30:23] Jeffrey: Um, it’s funny, I wrote the question and then instantly had an answer as I was writing it. Um,

[00:30:29] Brett: And it didn’t have anything to do with girls’ locker rooms.

[00:30:32] Jeffrey: No it did not. Sorry. It’s, this isn’t gonna be, what’s the movie? Oh, what’s the porkies? Thank you very much. Well played Um, okay. So I, from 1998 to 2001, I was traveling back and forth to Iraq, uh, doing like humanitarian work. And then, um, I stopped for a while and then the war happened and I went [00:31:00] back and I went back like, know, does everybody remember the big statue being pulled

[00:31:04] Brett: Mm-hmm. . Sure.

[00:31:06] Jeffrey: I went back, I went back like right after that, right after that, like a day or two after that. Um, so the occupation was pretty new and, and everything was still very confusing. And, um, and, and also it was the, um, first time I had ever experienced a city that I knew, well, this is the only time I ever experienced , a city that I knew well, um, being totally

[00:31:29] Brett: Leveled.

[00:31:31] Jeffrey: not leveled because in Baghdad, like it was a lot of like what they call smart bomb hits, you know?

But, but there were, there were, there was just enough of that kind of stuff that the whole city felt different, even though, you know, other parts were still working, whatever. Anyway, I really love that city, um, and, and really loved the time I was blessed to spend in it. Um, but once the war ended, and especially once the Civil War started, [00:32:00] um, Which, you know, was like 2006 or so when that started, lasted a couple years.

It, it just wasn’t possible to go back. Like I, I had had friends, um, Iraqi and American Kidnapped. I had had, uh, someone who was traveling with my organization was kidnapped and then beheaded. Um, and, and it just wasn’t possible to go and not get someone hurt basically. Um, and, and the place that I would like to go now, because it’s now been since, uh, 2003, since I was there at all.

Um, and of course coming up on the 20th anniversary of the war this month is, um, there was this big hotel called, called the the Palestine Hotel. And. You could go to the restaurant on the top floor, which was like a 360 restaurant. It wasn’t one of those that moved. They had one of those in Baghdad, but this wasn’t that.

But it was like, there were all of these like, um, really high backed booths that you could sit in and kind of see some part of the city. And it was like a perfect place cuz you’re like [00:33:00] right on the Tigers River and um, you could really see how the city’s laid out and how it’s functioning and um, all of that stuff.

And I used to love it cuz like you could go up there and there’d be like young lovers eating cake in the like, private booths, you know? Um, and uh, and people would meet there for various reasons. It was a lovely place to hang out. Um, and I would love to just be plopped. There first in that restaurant to just have sort of a look around the city and see what’s changed because I, it’s not so much that it was all bombed out anymore, it’s that it’s been in a rebuilding process for quite some time.

And, um, and I, and I know exactly how I would be able to see that, um, like which park areas and which whatever else, and just sounds lovely to be able to be there and, and wandering around and not, uh, not getting, Hurts , because that is the sad reality to this day. I mean, I have friends who go, everyone always goes to Northern Iraq, but in [00:34:00] Baghdad, I, I think it’s still not terribly safe for anybody who is your friend if you’re there,

[00:34:05] Brett: Sure

[00:34:06] Jeffrey: So I wanna be dropped in a restaurant too. Um,

[00:34:10] Brett: for entirely different reasons.

[00:34:12] Christina: different.

[00:34:12] Jeffrey: reasons,

[00:34:13] Brett: All

[00:34:14] Jeffrey: oh, and the sunsets. You could watch the sunsets there. It was really awesome. That’s an awesome city, man. I hope, I hope to God one day you, you could just travel there normally and be a tourist. It’s just an awesome city

[00:34:25] Brett: Nice.

[00:34:26] Christina: what do you think would have to happen for that to actually be a reality? Like I, I would hope that too, but I just don’t know geopolitically if that’s ever going to really be a possibility.

[00:34:33] Jeffrey: I have no idea anymore. I used to think I could imagine a pathway to that moment, but the way in which, the way in which the region and, and geopolitical forces generally like shifted or imploded because of that war and the way in which that some of that implosion didn’t happen for five years or 10 years or 15 years.

And the way in which that’s still happening, you know, I can’t imagine. I mean, I [00:35:00] just think I get so frustrated as someone who was working pretty much full-time as an anti-war like organizer and going on TV and radio. Cause I’ve been traveling there. It’s like, like talk about it like that. Um, you know, it’s not even satisfying to say we were right cuz actually we were wrong.

It was bad. We had no fucking idea. How bad it was going to be. Um, you know, we weren’t saying, we weren’t saying, Hey, there’s gonna be a civil war and there’ll be bodies in the street every day that nobody wants to pick up because it’s dangerous to even go out and pick up a body in the street. Right. Like, we weren’t thinking of that.

We weren’t thinking of Syria, we weren’t thinking of the Arab Spring and, and, and where that fits into everything.

[00:35:37] Christina: weren’t thinking 20 years.

[00:35:38] Jeffrey: yeah. And so, I don’t know. I, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to think about it,

[00:35:43] Brett: You know who you should talk to though is Jared Kushner,

[00:35:47] Jeffrey: yeah, that guy seems to be on top of some shit. Yeah,

[00:35:53] Brett: All right,

[00:35:53] Jeffrey: love to kick him in the shin and flick his ear

[00:35:58] Brett: Um, all, so [00:36:00] my question for you guys would be, since, since we were talking about Michelin Star kitchens,

[00:36:08] Christina: Yes.

[00:36:09] Brett: all right, so envision your last meal. You don’t have to be on death row, but you have the opportunity. You know, you know, this is your last meal for whatever reason. What do you want to eat and where do you want to eat?

[00:36:25] Jeffrey: I’m so, I’m so confused about this question because like I get way too in the weeds right away. Like, I’m like, I’m like, well, if it’s my last meal, I don’t wanna just be jerked around some part of the world and I’m back home and