#haha! first result of that poll I did last week!
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(Bonus:)
Operation “Distract Chuuya from the mission that went terribly wrong” was a success!
(Lyrics from Wrecking Ball by Mother Mother)
#haha! first result of that poll I did last week!#was that last week? time isn’t real#anyway! shenanigans :D#bsd#my art#bsd chuuya#bsd dazai#bungou stray dogs#soukoku#skk
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snippet monday...
The result of the poll was TDC... so I dug into what I once began to write... and this snippet seemed somewaht tidy and done enough to share...
I've not decided where everyone is at in this fic idea. But I'm very interested to hear thoughts (if there are any haha - it might be too vague - lol)
thanks for tagging me for a Monday snippet @jamesunderwater consider this a very late reply ;-)
tagging @abihastastybeans @charmsandtealeaves @thelighthousestale @tiffanytoms @athenasparrow (only if you feel like it of course;-)
“Mr Black, please sit down,” Lily said and waved her hand to the unoccupied chairs opposite her desk. She took a deep breath, her office had seemed rather spacious to her, up until now. Filled with both Sirius Black and James Potter it was suddenly too small and far too crowded for her liking.
“Mr Potter,” she acknowledged him at last, all the while trying her best to keep a neutral look on her face, he only nodded at her, not even a dr. Evans today.
Why did he have to be here? This was exactly why she should stay the hell away from him. If he could only take the bloody hint.
Just stay professional, Lily, it’s not your fault the news is bad. You didn’t do that, you just have to tell them. Inform them. That’s what you do, that’s the job. It’s not personal.
Black spoke before she even got a chance to sit down,
“May I enquire why you are here, dr Evans?”
His question threw her off balance, the flush she was trying to keep off of her face crept back up again, heating her skin in a very uncomfortable way.
In an attempt to ignore the feeling of her face going scarlet, she cleared her throat and answered, “Mr Black, since I am the one who did this pre-purchase check—,” had he not been aware of that? Had he requested someone else? She was sure her name had been on the appointment. Had they never bothered to read the clinic’s communcations where she was introduced as their designated pre-purchase veterinarian for racing horses,? “—for the horse you are interested in buying, I’m here to discuss the results with you.”
‘’I did see your name on the appointment, however I’ve also been informed that you’re not certified to work in the UK, so I admit I expected a replacement. Was I wrong about that?”
“Come again?” Lily’s cheeks are positively burning now. The room has impossibly got even smaller in the past minute.
How did he know that? This was exactly what she was worried about would happen, why she’d almost refused her bosses, in case this would happen. And now it has.
Lily breathed out as slow and calmly as she could, not feeling very in control at all. Only last week she had pointed out to the Legal Department that until her license was transferred she would not officially be allowed to work without supervision by a licensed veterinarian. They had waved it off like something minor, yet the whole process supposedly only needed five working days, so why she was still not in the clear six weeks into her new job was unclear to Lily.
Why did it have to be Black and Potter who had somehow found this out?
“I’ve been told there’s a minor delay in the administration of my paperwork, Dr McGonagall supervises my work until that's cleared up,” she stated the legal answer her bosses had decided on for the time being. Like she expected, neither Black nor Potter looked impressed.
“Dr McGonagall wasn’t working yesterday. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that kind of lax supervision.”
“Well, perhaps you had been present yourself you would have been more comfortable with this. I'll have you know I'm not inexperienced, and I think if you had been there you could have at least seen so for yourself, instead of implying I don't know what I'm doing. This horse is not the first I’ve ever examined.” she said, pissed off at the situation.
Why couldn’t other people do their bloody jobs, so she could very well do hers instead of having these two smug know-it-alls openly question her abilities.
She was furious that somehow word had got out and now this arrogant man dared to sit in her own office and tell her she should not have checked his horse.
And the most infuriating part was that legally, he was one hundred percent right.
#TDC snippet#why did i have to dust this off. I wanted to write other things first#hmmm#jily#james potter#lily evans#Sirius Black#muggle au#vet!lily
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PART 2
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A heavy kick to his ribs was Luke Skywalker's rude awakening.
"Rise and Shine, sweetheart!" A cruel voice mocked.
"Come on, Qiler." Someone responded, exasperated.
Luke looked around the room grogily. The jedi was surrounded by five men, his hands bound above his head to an old rusty poll in a cold, dingy bunker. His head was still spinning from whatever they had given him to knock him out.
"Hey, kid!" A man to his left slapped him across the face to get his attention. "What are you doing in our territory?"
Luke bit his lip, thinking. If they knew why he was here, they might kill him. If they knew who he was, they might kill him. If he said nothing, they might kill him. Either way, this was not an ideal situation to be stuck in. His silence earned him a punch to the stomach from the larger man to his right. "My friend just asked you a question. I suggest you answer."
"Haha! Good one, Keye!" Another laughed.
"I..." Luke began before biting his tongue once more. He had to decide how best to deal with this situation. He could use the force right now, break the bonds, take these ruffians out and be done with it. After all, Din was unconscious somewhere out there in the cold; freezing, dying, alone....
But these men may be their only help around for miles. Plus, they could be the smugglers who had found the holocron, which means it could be close.
He had to be smart about this.
Luke leaned forward, his mouth open as if he was about to speak, before sighing and leaning back against the cold metal behind him. "Nah, you guys wouldn't know what I'm looking for."
"What do you mean?" The man in the middle -Qiler, he remembered the skinny one say earlier- asked.
"It's just that...well," Luke looked them up and down, wrinkling his nose. "it's above YOUR paygrade." He said, as snoody as he could, earning himself another slap across the face. Qiler grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him close enough that their noses nearly touched.
"We are the famous Smugglers of Kajimi." He said, glaring into the jedi's eyes.
Luke blinked. "...Who?"
"The..." Qiler stuttered. "We're..." His grip loosened as he broke eye contact to look at his comrades. They all looked as surprised as he was. "You've never heard of us?"
"Sorry." Luke shrugged. "Must be local fame or something."
"Where are you from?" The skinny one asked.
"Ever heard of the Galatic Republic?" The jedi felt tension rush through the room at his words. "I was sent on a mission to find some artifact for them."
"What kind of artifact?" The big meaty one asked.
"Like I said, you've probably never even heard of it." Luke said, sitting back again, nonchalantly. "I mean, it's common knowledge where I'm from, but maybe not all the way out here."
Qiler reached forward at lighting speed, grabbing his jaw and pulling him close once again.
"What. Is. It?" He demanded.
Luke stared the man down for a moment before yanking his face from the man's grasp. "A Jedi Holocron."
The men looked at each other. Luke shrugged, regaining his non-chalant demeanor. "Like I said, I'm sure you've never heard of it. Why would you?" He laughed.
"Oh yeah, smartass?" Qiler yelled, turning back toward the table behind him. He reached into a drawer and pulled out an odd cube.
There it was.
Din was right. The Smugglers of Kajimi did find it. But they hadn't sold it yet!
"What do you think of that?" He said, tossing it in the air like it was a ball and not one of the rarest artifacts in the galaxy.
"I think you better give that to me so I can return it to the Republic." Luke said, his whole demeanor had changed, his tone low and serious.
Qiler let out a hearty laugh, putting it down on the table with a loud thump that made the Jedi flinch. "Empire, Republic, none of them have ever done nothing for me."
Luke took a deep breath before shrugging and leaning back against the pole that held him there, trying to regain his charade. "Oh well. The Republic would have paid you big for that, as well as for me." He made his eyes go wide, feigning surprise. "...oops."
"What was that?" Qiler asked, rising from his seat.
Luke stayed silent.
"Maskter, run a search on him." He said and the group turned their backs on him. Maskter ran through the bounty database before finally pulling up Luke's bounty.
"A jedi?" Maskter read. The group looked between each other. The bounty on him was...It was insane.
Just as they were about to round on the jedi, Luke sprang into action. He snapped his binds and stood, extending his hand and shoving the group apart with the force. He pulled Din's scarf from his back pocket and rushed forward, grabbing and wrapping the holocron in the fabric before making a break for the door.
It flew open, intense cold rushing in and wrapping around his body like frozen fingers gripping at his limbs. A sudden memory flashed through his mind of --Cold, so cold, Ben? Ben was here. Degoba? Pain, pain, pain...Han?-- He shook his head, pulling himself from the awful memory and rushed into the snow, cradling the artifact. He didn't know where he was, and he didn't care. He knew he had to get out of the area first, find the waterfall, get Din and get the kriff home. His mind swam with the last image of Din he had; laying on the bank, reaching for him...
Engrossed in his own worry, he missed the sudden sharp warning in the Force as something tore through his abdomen.
Luke stopped in his tracks, the air sucked out of his lungs. With wide eyes, Luke slowly looked down, his hand touching his stomach. When he pulled it away, it was wet with blood.
A bullistic. And not blaster fire, a solid bullet had gone through his body.
So, his bounty was dead or alive, then?
Luke dropped to his knees, one shaking hand gripped over the wound and the other clinging desperately to the wrapped holocron.
Behind him he heard voices. The smugglers were gaining on him.
Luke screwed his eyes shut, trying, desperately trying to push past the pain spreading through his body. He stood slowly, ever so slowly, placing the holocron down next to him.
He stretched out his fingers, trying to stall their shaking with little results. The men got closer, their voice grew louder. He raised his arms high in the air before slamming them down. The earth beneath him shook and a huge flurry of snow flew up behind him, blinding the group pursuing him. They screamed in frustration as they stumbled and got lost in the sudden snow storm.
Luke bent down, letting out a cry as his wounded side protested the movement, then ran as fast as he could. He ran and ran and ran, not caring where he ended up, he just had to away. Away from the smugglers, the bunker, the violence, the pain. He ran until his body didn't allow him to run anymore. He found a large snowbank and rushed behind it, falling behind the freezing cover, hoping it was enough to shield him from his pursuers. Luke gasped in breath after breath, trembling hands gripped against his wound, dropping the holocron next to him so both hands could put pressure on the wound. His body wouldn't respond anymore, too cold, too hurt to move. Luke choked back a sob as another rush of pain went through him.
He really hated the cold.
"I'm sorry, Din." He mumbled, before slipping into unconciousness.
----------------------------------------------------
"Luke!" Din woke with a start, the jedi's name dripping from his lips. He sat up before instantly regretting it, his aching body bringing him swiftly back to the ground.
"Well, well, the sleeping beauty awakens." A gruff voice says from behind him. He turns to see a woman entering the doorway, a pile of logs in her arms. She looked to be in her late 60's with long blue hair and shining orange eyes hidden behind the markings of wisdom her age had earned her.
"Where am I?" Din asked.
"You are a guest in my home, even if as a reluctant one." She said, tending the fire.
Din's memory began to catch up with him and he remembered his last cognitive memory; Luke being drugged and dragged away by strangers as they left him for dead. "Where is my companion?"
"I didn't seen anyone else. Although there were a lot of markings on the ground from what looked like a scuffle." She told him.
"Who's out here?" Din asked.
The woman froze for a moment. "There's been some activity around the waterfall within the last week."
"Pirates?" Din questioned.
Her glowing eyes latched onto his helmet. "The Spice Runners of Kajimi."
Din's chest tightened. If the Spice Runners discovered who he was, Luke would be in a world of danger. His face was plastered all over the bounty boards, and from what he last saw a few of those were marked "dead or alive." He stood up, rushing toward the door.
"Hey, a thank you would be nice!" The woman yelled after him.
Din froze, hand hovering over the door handle, before turning back toward his host. "How did you know to check the lake?"
The woman's eyes became distant. "I just...felt like I needed to go there." She explained slowly, like she wasn't sure what had brought her there herself. "There was this...feeling. Like the heaviness of desperation was burnt into the air, a silent voice begging for help through the wind..."
Din sucked in a breath.
--Oh, Luke...-- Din thought.
"Thank you for saving me. I have to go." He said, turning back to the door.
"This companion of yours, must be pretty important." She said. Din didn't answer. The woman stared him down, studying him before reaching down into a bag and pulling out a metal cylinder. She tossed it to the Mandalorian. Din caught it, studying the tube. It was Luke's Lightsaber.
"Found that near the lake. This friend of yours. He's one of those jedi." She said. It wasn't a question.
Din stayed silent.
"I used to run with them. I know where their base is." She said.
"Why are you helping me?" Din asked.
The woman turned her head and bit her lip, contemplating what to say. "One of his kind helped me get away from those people when they turned on me. It's only right I return the favor."
"You knew a jedi?" Din asked, stepping toward her.
"A togruta woman. She carries two of those. She was looking for someone, ended up finding me instead..." She reminisced. "But that's a story for another time." She said, making her way toward a drawer against the wall. She reached in, pulling a holomap from it, then handed it to Din. He activated it, the place where Luke was being held glowing before his eyes. He wasn't far. He thanked her again, shaking her hand. She nodded at him. "Go find your jedi."
----------------------------------------------------
Luke's could feel hands on him, shaking him back into consciousness. One was gripping his shirt, the other tapping his face. Someone was trying to wake him up.
"Din?" Luke whispered out, hoping beyond hope.
"He's alive!" Someone yelled. Luke screwed his nose up at the sound.
That wasn't Din's voice.
He was pulled roughly to his knees, the movement jostling his aching body and pulling a cry from his trembling lips.
"You wanna treat us like we're stupid?" The voice said above him, hitting him hard across the jaw. "You wanna pretend you're better than us?" He said again, a knee entering his sternum, causing the jedi to cough, blood mixed with spit falling on the prestine white snow.
"Please..."Luke begged, his body screaming against the assault.
"Oh, now you want to beg? Too late!" The man mocked. "You make a mockery of us, you don't leave alive!" He yelled. Something cold and hard was pressed against Luke's forehead.
"Hey, we may get more credits if he's alive!" Someone yelled from behind Qiler.
"No! You saw that thing he did with the snow! He's too dangerous, I want him dead!" The man screamed, beyond crazed with anger. The barrell was removed from his head, the man grabbing him by the jaw, ripping Luke's head up to look at him as a knife was pressed to his throat. "The only question is if I wanna do it fast or slow." He growled.
Before Qiler could make his desicion, the earth erupted around them.
Single spikes from what seemed to be bombs set off around the perimeter. A row of them cut off Qiler from the rest, seperating the party. Qiler looked around at the disruption before turning his wide, crazed eyes back to the jedi. "What did you do!?" He screamed. Luke was too cold, in too much pain to respond, he tried to shake his head to convey this wasn't his doing this time. Qiler hoisted Luke up by the shirt and flipped him around so that his back was flush against Qiler's chest, knife to his throat as the smuggler backed away from the commotion. Scattered screams echoed incoherently through the blinding snow as whoever was hunting them made their way through the crew.
Using the diversion to his advantage, Luke shoved the man off him with the little amount of Force he could muster, his broken body crumpled to the ground.
Qiler recovered, letting out a frustrated scream as he barrelled after the jedi. He grabbed his ankles and flipped Luke onto his back, pinning his arms above his head and digging a knee into the wound on his side, mounting him. Luke screamed, his voice cracking in the process. The knife was pressed to his throat once again, this time, drawing blood. "Bye bye, jedi." He mocked.
But his threat remained unfinished, thanks to the blaster bullet the just went through his skull. The man fell off Luke with a thump, legs still tangled around his damaged torso.
Luke didn't move, he couldn't anymore. Any adrenaline he had left was sucked dry the second he landed on the ground. He lay there, staining the white snow red like the sands of Crait, shivering so violently it could be mistaken for convulsing. He heard footsteps approaching him. Luke pinched eyes shut, waiting for whoever hunted down the smugglers to do the same to him.
"Luke?"
The jedi's eyes shot open. That voice sounded familiar.
The man kneeled down next to the fallen jedi. Luke gasped, in spite of himself as a familiar helmet came into view. "You're alive?"
Din Djarin nodded. "I told you we were getting off this blasted rock, didn't I?"
Luke's wrecked body finally caught up to him. Every nerve seemed to be frozen over, except for his side which screamed at every movement. He caught a glance at his reflection in Din's visor. His blond hair was thick and frozen, little blond icicles dipped in red from the blood that had pooled around him. His lips were purple, chapped beyond compare. His neck leaked blood from where the knife had pushed in and Luke realized this was the first time he'd ever experienced a murder attempt that was actually a threat since... He couldn't hold back the sob that escaped his mouth.
"I'm so sorry, Luke, this never should of happened. I'm so, so sorry." Din said, voice shaken as he put pressure on the wound, pulling a cry from the younger man. Din shook his head. "Kark that blasted holocron, I'm taking you home."
The Holocron! Luke looked past Din, spotting the artifact still wrapped in the scarf. Luke reached toward it, trying to pull it with the Force. When the thing wouldn't budge, Luke let out a grunt of frustration, trying to sit up. Din pushed him back down. "Luke, enough, please, cyare, enough." He begged, taking Luke's shaking hand in his own.
"No, Din, please, please!" He managed to say, ripping his hand free from Din's, pointing a trembling finger at the wrapped box.
Din glanced back, spotting what had Luke's attention. "I can get another one, it's alright." He said about the scarf, continuing his field medicine.
"No, no! Please!" Luke insisted, wiggling against the pressure on his abdomen, shoving at Din's hands. Din let out a sigh as Luke stubbornly pointed at the scarf again.
"Okay. Okay, cyar'ika, alright. Put pressure on this." He instructed, guiding Luke's frozen hands to his side, pressing them into it. He stood, fingers lingering over the man's wrecked body for a moment, before turning to go. "I'll be right back." He promised.
Luke watched with greying vision as the mandolorian reached down and picked it up. With a sigh of relief, he looked back up at the sky, watching the snow fall lightly around him. He had stopped shivering, something that should have worried him more than it was. He didn't have the energy to care, he was too tired. His eyes slipped closed and he gave into oblivion.
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If there are any mistakes please let me know!
There will be a part 3!!!! Comment in the notes if you'd like to be tagged in it!
EDIT: Just went through and fixed a few buggy parts. Sorry, did not check this right the first time! Hopefully that's a bit better!
#dinluke#star wars#part 2#fanfiction#fanfic#luke skywalker#din djaren#din djarin#the mandolarian#mandolarian#poor luke#I did him so dirty#its okay next chapter will have fluff#hurt/comfort#whump#like for part 3
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The Descendants
The Descendants
Book 1:
Genesis
Chapter One:
November 4th, 2024. Edison New Jersey, Earth.
We had done it. The efforts of hundreds, if not thousands of people had come to fruition: a landslide victory for the brand new Equalist Party of America. Diya Anand scanned around the party office, taking in the momentous joy that had suddenly erupted amongst the volunteers and workers.
Just moments ago, the last state still counting their votes finally finished, putting the Equalists well ahead of both the Republicans and Democrats. It was assured, Dominick Moore would be the nation's second African American President, and her the first female Indian American Vice President.
As Diya walked amongst her colleagues, they began congratulating her on a job well done, wishing her the best of luck in the years ahead and most commonly, saying how happy they were to see a new face in the White House. Diya smiled, nodded and thanked all those who came up to her fervently shaking their hands and even shed a tear for one.
What she was really trying to do was transverse the crowd to get to the podium where Dominick was standing, since it is customary and necessary to address the people as their new leaders. As she reached the top, Diya smiled wide,
“Congratulations on your victory, Mr. President” , being sure to emphasize his new won title.
“Congratulations to you too, Madam Vice President” he said, returning the respect with a hint of playfulness which was hard to catch through his thick Nigerian accent. “Are you ready to change the nation for the better?
“I wouldn’t be standing here if I wasn’t Dom you know that” she replied. He began to say something else but just then news reporters pushed through the doors and poured in to stand in front of the podium. Like normal, they started barraging them with a multitude of questions, about how they felt, what would be their first actions and others that were lost in the torrent of sound.
After a few moments, Dominick finally got them to settle down as they needed to soon broadcast their victory speech. The camera’s soon flickered on, streaming their image to every news station in America and world-wide. Both Dominick and Diya were dressed in their cultures traditional attire: a well tailored Dashiki and Sari respectfully. The usual suit and tie and gown and pants had been thrown to the wayside at least for this instance. The American people needed to see the ethnic leaders they had voted for, and the new reality that was about to set in.
Dominick took the mic in hand, pushed his mask to the side and began, “I’d like to begin with stating how overjoyed I am. Not about winning the election but at the resolve of the American people. For the past eight years, we have had to fight countless battle after battle: wildfires in the west, massive storms and earthquakes in the Midwest, hurricanes and flooding in the east and two pandemics that changed the very core of our society. The past administrations had failed us, and we sought out new leaders, a new vision for the country. One that would let us tackle the challenges of climate change and other life changing issues…”
While Dominick kept speaking, Diya stood behind him smiling and nodding to the cameras whenever he said something that fell within the party’s platform. He was a great speaker, unlike her who most of the time did exactly this, stand behind him as he ran the show. But then it was her time to come up next to him and share her thoughts. As she did, as she spoke to millions of people across the world she couldn’t help but remember one thing in the back of her mind. She never even wanted the job in the first place.
As Diya was driven home by her security detail, she began to ponder how she had gotten to where she was now. She had been a judge, the closest she had ever wanted to come to politics. Many questioned her, how being in government meant you weren’t political but to her it was the best place to be apolitical.
You didn’t have to conscribe to any agreed upon base of actions, when a case reached her desk she went at it with the ethics she cultivated through her life and an understanding of the law she so fervently loved. But it all changed in 2020.
Everyone knew the presidential election was going to be a decisive one, but no one knew just how much. No one could tell who truly won, over a dozen states were flagged as “improper” because of their voting systems. The problems worsened as the incumbent president refused to leave office in a gambit to maintain power and the resulting riots tore through the nation. Every major city was hit, hundreds killed, thousands inquired and billions of dollars in property damage.
Through it all, Diya had stayed home wanting to weather out the crazy climate with her parents and siblings. She could still remember the fear in her families eyes, how they were utterly convinced this was the end of the life they knew. And as the riots raged, more tragedy struck.
Since so many young and capable people had been out protesting in such large numbers, another massive pandemic swept through the country. And then a super-hurricane hit Florida, an massive earthquake in the four corner states and… A lot of tragedies at once.
The next four years had proven to be one of extreme change and humanity for us. People started to band together like never before. Every place that was hit with something was helped by the very people in it. It was the citizens who helped themselves out of flooded homes and crushed buildings. It was parents and children who constantly made meals and clothes for the hundreds of homeless and sick. We didn’t ask our governments if we could, we just did.
And so Diya did just that, help all those she could. She quit as a judge and began organizing everything under the sun. Foodbanks, marches, fundraisers, if it was an event she was behind it. It was this type of cross-cultural, apolitical connectivity that the Equalist Party liked. They had formed under the noses of everyone, suddenly popping up around the nation with aid for all those ailed by the tragedies. No one really knows how they formed, but everyone knew how much they helped. In the end, the support they garnered was immense.
By 2022, the amount of support from the polls put them around 20% of the population. The following year, over 50% of the population. The online rallies broke the communication industry, almost every new politician that switches parties immediately gained thousands of followers. Which is where Diya's’ interactions with the Equalists started.
Having to coordinate resources and capabilities from her volunteer organization with the Equalists own outreach efforts, Diya virtually became a superstar overnight. Not that she wanted to in any way shape or form, helping from the shadows was her go to plan for the future. Work hard, help everyone, retire old, die older; that had been the plan.
Diya stepped out of the car waving a farewell to her driver only to be escorted into her home by the home security detail in front of her house. She smiled to the bodyguard as he held the door open and she walked in as the automated lights flickered on. She was about to put down her bag and wind down when her cell phone began to vibrate within.
“Hello?” she answered inquisitively, as she hadn’t known the number.
“Hey Diya, it’s me Leo,” the caller said.
An unexpected but gratuitous call. Diya immediately smiled and perked up a bit at the sound of his voice. Diya had met Leonidas, or Leo, over four years ago during one of the outreaches she had organized. They had immediately taken a liking to each other, having an unexplainable connection from day one. They had stayed in contact over the years, but with so much going on in his and her life, calls became less and less frequent.
“Oh it's great to hear from you, using someone else's sat phone this time? Diya asked, making the conclusion on her own.
“You got it. I hope this is okay, I just wanted to congratulate you on your amazing victory!” Leo exclaimed.
“Haha yea, amaaazing.” Diya groaned, emphasizing the sarcasm. “But you know what’s new with me and I have been talking about it for hours. How’s things on your end, last we spoke you just finished training”
“Yes Ma’am” Leo replied, realizing now that Diya was technically his superior. “I shipped out about about a week ago with the fleet. We’re somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, waiting to meet up with the Indian and Chinese before we make landfall. I called because I’m part of the second wave.”
“I see… well you know I’m not much for words, but I can make the exception for tonight” she mused.
“Haha thanks Diya, there are definitely a few things I want to get off my chest.” Leo continued. Leo and Diya talked things over for the rest of that night, never truly talking about anything important but that didn’t matter. Anything that could distract them from the different realities they now faced, was a blessing they couldn’t interrupt.
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): With former President Barack Obama’s return to the campaign trail in the last week or so, here’s our overarching question for today: Who does Obama motivate more in 2018, Democrats or Republicans?
I’m thinking first we talk a bit about what we know about Obama’s sway among Democrats. Then we dive into his standing among Republicans. Then we see how they compare. Sound good?
nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): But I have numbers, Micah. Numbers that will obviate the need for this chat in the first place.
micah: $100 says that’s not true.
In any case, to start with what may be a dumb question: Democratic voters love Obama, right?
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Well, his role seems to be that of elder statesman and moral force. Most Democrats seem to be ignoring for now that they really hated (or were at least less than thrilled with) some of his policies … drone strikes and some immigration policies, for example.
But the Obama-is-above-reproach sentiment is en vogue for Democrats right now because there’s lots of stuff to reproach President Trump for. Obama’s very feel-good.
perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): According to the Pew Research Center, 51 percent of Democrats say Obama is the best president of their lifetime. That’s way above Bill Clinton at 19 percent.
So, yes.
nrakich: Or, to take a different measure, look at this June 2017 poll by Gallup (the latest I could find crosstabs for): 95 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of Obama.
micah: So how do we reconcile those numbers with the tension Clare mentioned? Like … the party does seem to have clearly become more liberal since Obama’s days.
clare.malone: I think most voters probably think of him as a lot more liberal than his policies actually were.
Obama was a pragmatist in many ways, but he also had an uncanny ability to communicate and be an empath for the moment.
nrakich: Yeah, issues are overrated as a determinant of how people feel about politicians — or even how they vote.
And the party may have moved left, but presidents almost always get more popular after they leave office, and I think that’s the stronger signal here.
Obama himself is up to a 63-36 retrospective job approval rating.
clare.malone: Issues are always overrated!
People vote with their gut.
perry: Look at this poll from YouGov. The Obama vision is way more popular among Democrats than the Bernie Sanders one.
micah: Wow.
Those YouGov numbers are really interesting — they sorta suggest that personality is the stronger force even than the “antiestablishment” pull of the moment.
nrakich: Isn’t being antiestablishment all about personality?
clare.malone: Well, no.
But it’s certainly important to have the rhetoric to back things up. Obama, of course, isn’t antiestablishment anymore. And Sanders is in some ways moving into the policy mainstream.
nrakich: Right, but the antiestablishment movement is built strongly on personality.
As we’ve said many times, style and approach (the establishment vs. insurgent divide) is different from ideology (the progressive vs. moderate divide).
micah: Is no one else surprised that Sanders gets less than a third there?
That’s worse than he did in the 2016 Democratic primary.
perry: I was surprised by the Sanders number. I would have guessed something like 40 percent of Democrats would have preferred the Sanders-style candidates to Obama ones.
Sanders is extremely popular among Democrats.
micah: IDK, maybe that poll result is more about Obama’s near-deity status in the party more than any problems with Sanders.
perry: Yeah, Obama is a deity among Democrats. I think that’s right. And Bill Clinton has the #MeToo problem now and Hillary Clinton lost, so he’s not in as strong of a position as Obama in terms of ex-Democratic presidents able to help the party in the future. I also think the median Democratic voter is not particularly supportive of ideas like “abolish ICE” and has more establishment/centrist views, like Obama.
clare.malone: There is anger out there, though. People have a lot to be angry about in the post-financial-crash world. And Sanders is good at evoking it. Obama made history, and it’s hard to not like that if you’re a Democratic voter — and also, to Perry’s point, he doesn’t have personal problems that will tarnish him. And he’s young and will be a force in the party for years. I think that’s probably comforting on some level to people.
perry: Democrats favor abolishing ICE by only 43 percent to 34 percent. Obama is personally way more popular with Democrats than abolishing ICE is.
micah: OK, so you run into a liberal friend at a coffee shop and they say, “Hey, I saw Obama was campaigning for Democrats in California — do you think he’ll help the party in 2018?”
What do you say?
perry: I would start by saying that most Democrats are pretty motivated already.
nrakich: I don’t know, Perry. I feel like Obama could help at the edges — say, with African-American voters, whose lower turnout was a problem for Democrats in 2016.
micah: Obama campaigned with Clinton, Nathaniel!
perry: Nathaniel, how much did Obama’s appearances in Alabama help Doug Jones with black turnout? (Note: Obama did not go to Alabama in person, and Doug Jones did very well with black voters in that race.)
Micah and I are making the same point. We will be more polite next time. We love you.
nrakich: Haha.
clare.malone: Shameless plug re: black voters and Jones.
nrakich: I am open to the argument that campaigns just don’t matter all that much. But then, again, that would mean there’s no more need for this chat!
#lolnothingmatters
micah: I think it matters, but the effect is just more marginal?
perry: Obama is really popular among millennials (of all parties, although millennials lean to the left). So he could help turnout among that group.
clare.malone: Because millennials like to watch inspiring viral videos on Facebook and Obama is great fodder for that. He’s perfect for a generation of people or an era of politics that’s Upworthy-ish, right? He pulls on emotion.
micah: And he could definitely help the specific candidates he campaigns for with
too?
perry: Yes. And media attention.
Like I’m sure those House candidates in California were happy to have him Obama come to campaign for them.
So I don’t think Nathaniel is wrong — I think Obama can be a help.
micah: But on the margins.
perry: Very marginal.
clare.malone: Here’s a question: Will whoever turns out to be the Democrats’ 2020 front-runner need the Obama benediction?
perry: What do you mean by benediction, Clare?
And do you mean in the primary or the general?
clare.malone: Primary.
micah: I don’t think he’ll endorse in the primary, though.
clare.malone: Yeah, or will he stay out of the primary and not tilt the scales and adjust after?
perry: If it’s down to Michael Avenatti vs. Joe Biden, Obama endorses Biden.
I mean, Obama all-but-endorsed Clinton in 2016, and I would assume that helped Clinton with black voters, a group she overwhelmingly won in the primary.
micah: Oh, yeah.
clare.malone: See.
micah: But what if it came down to Sanders vs. Elizabeth Warren?
perry: First, he’ll have to pretend not to dislike them both. (Obama had sharp tensions with Sanders and Warren when he was president.)
micah: Or Sanders vs. Biden?
nrakich: If it’s Sanders vs. Biden, he’ll do what he did in 2016.
perry: I doubt that.
clare.malone: I’m not sure he won’t endorse … he probably won’t. But he was reportedly very interested in the shadow primary of the Democratic National Committee leadership election … getting Tom Perez elected, etc.
He cares about the party direction.
nrakich: Yeah, Clare, I generally think ex-presidents are a little too cautious/tradition-bound about sticking their necks out. Why shouldn’t Obama be a little more muscular about the future direction of the party? His legacy is on the line.
micah: I think Sanders is more mainstream now than he was in 2016, so I don’t think Obama could do the same thing again.
perry: If it’s Sanders vs. Biden, Sanders might win. And I don’t think Obama wants to be on the losing side.
nrakich: But he’ll still have plausible deniability because he didn’t formally endorse.
perry: “I love Joe Biden. He was a great vice president. But I’m going to let the voters sort it out.”
I assume he would say something like that.
micah: OK, let’s take a hard turn here …
REPUBLICANS!
micah: I saw a lot of
takes after the Obama speeches that were like “#actually, Obama could hurt Democrats because Republicans hate him and Obama’s involvement in 2018 will rally the GOP base.”
Anyone buying that?
nrakich: Not really, Micah.
perry: Were any of those takes from people who aren’t “Republican strategists.”
micah: haha
nrakich: Look, it’s not rocket science. Obama has a 63 percent approval rating. That has to include a big chunk of independents and at least a non-trivial number of Republicans.
According to the 2017 poll I referenced earlier, Obama was seen favorably by 22 percent of Republicans. That’s not awful.
micah: That’s better than I expected, actually.
nrakich: And, according to a Gallup poll from February, 38 percent of Democrats now approve of George W. Bush! Some of that is the Trump effect, but in general, partisans cool their jets once their mortal enemy stops being their mortal enemy.
perry: So the data suggests that unlike 2006, 2010 and 2014, both the opposition party and the president’s party are pretty motivated. I think GOP enthusiasm is already high, as conservatives view this election as defending Trump. And that was before Obama got more involved.
nrakich: The bottom line is that Republicans don’t love Obama, but they don’t hate him the way Democrats
LOVE
him.
perry: I do think Obama has to be somewhat careful about where he campaigns. My guess is that his approval rating is higher with California Republicans than Georgia Republicans, for example. I don’t have data to prove that, but it’s my intuition.
nrakich: For sure.
I’m basically saying, Obama should look at his personal approval rating in each state or district. If it’s above water, campaign there. If not, don’t.
perry: Amy McGrath, the Democratic candidate in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, should not have Obama campaign for her.
nrakich: Right.
micah: Wait a sec, Nathaniel — you think Democratic
for Obama > Republican
?
nrakich: Absolutely.
We talk a lot about Trump’s “strongly” approve and “strongly” disapprove numbers.
Basically, a lot more people strongly disapprove of Trump than strongly approve.
For Obama, at least when he was leaving office, it was the reverse.
perry: Interesting.
nrakich: The final Washington Post/ABC News poll of Obama’s administration found that 42 percent of Americans strongly approved of him and 27 percent strongly disapproved. (His overall approval spread was 60-38.)
The same pattern shows up in other polls, like Rasmussen and YouGov.
micah: Wow. OK, so that suggests that more Democrats strongly approve of Obama than Republicans strongly disapprove of him?
nrakich: Yes. In the WaPo/ABC News poll, 77 percent of Democrats strongly approved of Obama on his way out the door; 60 percent of Republicans strongly disapproved.
micah: Aha!
nrakich: And among independents, 35 percent strongly approved of his job performance and 26 percent strongly disapproved. (Overall, independents approved 61-37.)
micah: And those numbers, if anything have probably gotten better for Obama in the time since.
OK, so …
Dem
> GOP
nrakich: And don’t discount the independent
.
micah: Those
takes are stupid. Or, at the least, the evidence suggests (if anything) the opposite.
nrakich: With swing voters, especially 2018’s swing voters, Obama is probably pretty popular.
perry: And he presumably has some appeal with Obama-Trump voters too.
nrakich: Exactly.
And I have no data to back this up, but I bet Romney-Clinton voters are pretty favorably disposed toward him too. They may not have voted for him, but they’re the kind of genteel suburbanite who probably misses his even keel.
clare.malone: OK, so let’s move out of numbers for a second and say that in practical terms this means what? That Obama must choose over the next months (and years) where he campaigns based on what?
The basic approval numbers of Democrats?
The tentative approval numbers of Obama-Trump voters?
Does he leave states like Alabama to more local pols who can turn out, say, the black vote, without turning it into a national thing when he visits?
I think he’s got an interesting thicket to pick through.
perry: Sen. Cory Booker, not Obama, went to Alabama. And that was probably best for Jones.
My guess is Kamala Harris/Booker/Sanders go to Georgia, and that is best for Stacey Abrams.
micah: I guess all these numbers make me think it’s less of a thicket than I originally thought.
But still a thicket, of course.
nrakich: Right. I think someone (you, Perry?) put it well in an earlier chat: Send the mid-level pols who will get coverage/chatter in the circles you want, like the campus newspaper or the local black community, while not breaking through into the mainstream coverage that reaches everyone. A visit by Obama would get state- or district-wide coverage, which would probably hurt Democrats in a state like Alabama or Georgia that are still majority-Republican.
micah: Would you send Obama to Obama-Trump counties?
perry: No.
nrakich: If I had the resources, I would poll them to see how his image there is holding up.
clare.malone: Well, he’s going to Cleveland to stump for Richard Cordray, who’s running for governor.
perry: So the answer is yes.
I was going to say Obama may not go to Iowa or Wisconsin. But Ohio …
clare.malone: A mostly black part of the city. But, yes, Ohio.
He’s not in, say, Youngstown.
perry: Yeah, Iowa is very white and I think sort of old.
nrakich: Take Iowa. I think he probably wouldn’t hurt Democrats there. He did, after all, win there six years ago. But to our earlier point, I think he helps Democrats more actively in more base places — areas with lots of millennials, nonwhite voters, etc.
micah: OK, final thoughts?
nrakich: I think, in general, we shouldn’t overthink this: Obama is quite popular and therefore would be an asset on net. But it definitely depends on geography.
perry: Obama will be an interesting case. He is popular. He is young. He will be able to campaign for Democrats for years and years. His presidency was not considered unsuccessful (like Jimmy Carter’s was). His wife is not planning to run (like Bill Clinton’s was when he left office). In fact, Michelle Obama is really popular too. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem like Democrats did very well in 2010, 2014 or 2016, when he was the chief surrogate. It seems like his political magic is in some ways personal to him.
micah: Will Obama have a bigger role in 2018 or 2020?
clare.malone: 2020, baby!
2018 is just the initial proving ground.
nrakich: ^^This.
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So many replies!
You guys are overwhelming me!! <3
First a general reply to everyone reading about the colony because I feel like I should explain my choice for Hunter considering all your comments. In the end there were two very simple reasons I chose Hunter instead of Davey:
1. Violet rolled no wishes regarding Davey but she did roll a wish to go on a date with Hunter.
2. The morning I wanted to make a decision Story Progression prompted me a message that Davey was now in a relationship with Yasmine Aozora. I could’ve broken them up of course without including that into the story, but since I already had such a bad time choosing and because of the date wish, I decided to let the game lead me!
One more thing: the poll did not influence the choice since the chapters published today were written earlier this week before the poll was online. I’ll let you guys know right now that I have 15(!) chapters on queue all the way to december 30. So for example if you comment something right now, don’t expect to see it influence the story the day after or something like that. In all honesty you guys have very diverse opinions so I just go my own way and write what I think will make you guys go FJSDGFSJKFGSDJK in both good and bad ways lol. I hope that those who are suffering right now will forgive me <3.
Now, to the individual replies! --->
@goatkibble replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 6 - Violet’s Journal So about the answer to the...”
Stupid woman.
I added this reply last but further down the road of this batch of replies I kind of agree with you on this lol.
@ktarsims replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 5 - Violet’s Journal Oh journal, where do I start?...”
Katie sounds like a good match for Davey, possibly.
I think they would be a good match indeed. Though Davey seems to have found Yasmine instead as I just explained above...
@stepawayfromthecarrot replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 6 - Violet’s Journal So about the answer to the...”
Noooooo ��
I’m sorry! Blame the game! Don’t blame me! :P e.e *hides*
@ktarsims replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 6 - Violet’s Journal So about the answer to the...”
Ouch. Although, I can't disagree with her. Lopsided relationships are not good. And this relationship would definitely have been lopsided. It'll probably be better for Davey if he ends up in a relationship where he won't be absolutely dependent on the other person.
I completely agree with this statement.
@dandylion240 replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 6 - Violet’s Journal So about the answer to the...”
I thought the vote didn't have anything to do with the results. Doesn't matter thought I voted for Hunter. Just because he seemed the most interesting. I am sad that Davey got his heart broke though.
Yep, that’s right. The vote didn’t influence the outcome as I explained above. I feel very sad for Davey too. He really is the kind of guy you’d almost date just because you want him to not be sad lol.
@rosiesimming replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 6 - Violet’s Journal So about the answer to the...”
*throws hands in the air* You are dead to me, Violet. >.> HOW DARE YOU HURT THAT SWEET MAN. A pox on everyone that voted for Hunter. A pox I say!! XD
You can direct this anger towards the game haha not towards the voters they had nothing to do with this e.e.
@rosiesimming replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 5 - Violet’s Journal Oh journal, where do I start?...”
Violet and Dimitri = bestest friends till the end! XD
I think they could have a really nice friendship, though I’m going to give you something to wonder about: do you think Dimitri is the right person to ask love advice from? e.e
@goatkibble replied to your post “I just wanted to say all your comments on my colony have given me...”
*tantrum brewing*
I’m scared! Forgive me plz. *blames the game and runs*
@kyranyx replied to your post “I just wanted to say all your comments on my colony have given me...”
Kkk you reminds me how I used to act as a dungeon master
Having your readers get all worked up over the events in your story is the best feeling for a writer, don’t you agree? :P
@stepawayfromthecarrot replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 3 - Hunter’s Journal Today was a holiday for all of...”
Dislike! I can see him getting mean and bitter if she goes with someone else though
Mean and bitter Hunter... we’ll have to see if he has a side like that!
@rosiesimming replied to your post “I just wanted to say all your comments on my colony have given me...”
;)
I hope you keep reading even though I made you suffer D:
@stepawayfromthecarrot replied to your post “Man I just went through a total nightmare! I’m going home for...”
That sucks! Hope everything is okay!
I hope so too. My dad will check it out after the christmas days are over.
@goatkibble replied to your post “Man I just went through a total nightmare! I’m going home for...”
It might not be as bad as you think...
yeah, my dad said the tower can take a hit, but you should’ve seen it fall from my bike onto the hard stone street... people turned around to see what happened. And of course my stepdad put some fear in me saying that IF something broke, it’d probably be the harddrive -_-.
@goatkibble replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 3 - Hunter’s Journal Today was a holiday for all of...”
And he seems to think substituting 'passion' for true romance and respect is the way to a woman's heart. I know Violet needs to explore her options but this isn't a good choice.
Violet still has some growing up to do. She’s young, naive and childish and not the kind of girl that has gained such wisdom in love yet unfortunately. I used to be like her and I used to fall for guys like Hunter too. I got my own Davey now though! But who knows maybe Hunter is nicer than you imagine him to be.
@rosiesimming replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 3 - Hunter’s Journal Today was a holiday for all of...”
What are you doing!? No, I refuse. If Violet picks him, she is dead to me. XD
Well... oops D:
@goatkibble replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 3 - Hunter’s Journal Today was a holiday for all of...”
"Oh yeah, I wouldn't mind this bird since the others aren't up to my standard." So romantic *eyeroll*. And I was right. He IS as boring as he is pasty.
You’ll get to see a lot more of him in the following chapters and I’m really curious to see your thoughts on him! heheheh....
@goatkibble replied to your photoset
“The Year 2239, Day 2 - Davey’s Journal Oh my… I know I don’t have any...”
You COULD invite her to hang out with you on your free day you know.... but let's face it, you are going to get your heart broken in favour of Captain Boring :(
I guess you were right about that one...
@ktarsims replied to your post “Some more replies”
It's possible that people like Hunter better because he's a blonde white dude. However, he's also the only other dude who seems to be possibly rather decent, a bit less calculating, and to be a bit more genuine than some of the others. Additionally, he has kind of a 'bad boy' vibe 'but not too bad' going on that tends to appeal to a lot of people. Even his name lends to that sort of thing.
Very true indeed! Hunter is like a more confident Davey though this also makes him a bit more superficial. With Davey, you’re instantly in a very deep and serious relationship. Hunter is a bit less overwhelming and for some (including Violet) this can be a good thing.
@ktarsims replied to your post “Replies!”
Wait, was there an actual poll? LMAO I thought there was just the post and we posted our picks. xD *goes to look for actual poll*
Lol :D did you get tricked into replying that way? :P
@ktarsims replied to your post “Man I just went through a total nightmare! I’m going home for...”
Oye oye. *sends hugs* I hope everything turns out alright!
Thanks <3 <3.
@rosiesimming replied to your photoset “The Year 2239, Day 2 - Davey’s Journal Oh my… I know I don’t have any...”
YAS :D
Aww look, at this reply you were still happy! *laughs evilish and then runs away scared*
@dandylion240 replied to your post “Man I just went through a total nightmare! I’m going home for...”
I have my fingers crossed that it's fixable or at least you can retrieve your files.
Me too! D: We’ll see after Christmas.
@stepawayfromthecarrot replied to your photoset “Poll time! Who would you like to see as Violet’s spouse in the colony?...”
John screams fuckboy, dimitri also a fuckboy (plus don't get on scarlet's bad side haha), jerry would make a great best (platonic) friend but not exactly chemistry there. Hunter is okayyy but I'm not super feeling it yet. Although we haven't seen much of him yet so who knows! Davey does feel like the obvious choice (although I'm sure you'll always make it interesting no matter what!) but i chose him, i think he's the only one at this stage who genuinely cares about her
@stepawayfromthecarrot replied to your photoset “Poll time! Who would you like to see as Violet’s spouse in the colony?...”
More importantly, i can see her and davey totally getting together in a "normal sim world" instead of feeling forced to shack up with someone for procreation. They can be their genuine selves and so they can like each other for their real selves. Also can we TALK about davey's bod?!?!? Yeeees violet get it gurl
Haha Davey is very handsome indeed, but Hunter has quite a body as well, did you check it out? ;)
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Announcement regarding Patreon Tier adjustments for October, 2017
So I made an announcement last night on Patreon regarding some changes I hope to make starting NOT THIS MONTH, but next month. I’ve copied the message below to those considering becoming patrons. LONG, so beneath a cut but IMPORTANT so please read if it’s relevant to you.
Hi all!
So I've mentioned this before, but I'm new to patreon, as many of you likely are too, and a lot of this is figuring things out as I go. I'm learning the platform and learning how to manage my works on it, and I feel I know a lot more about Patreon now than I did when I first started 1.5 months ago.
One of the things that has changed a bit is me learning that I'm not really producing the kinds of content I thought I would be.
Namely, I never really expected myself to enjoy drawing NSFW so much (COUGH) or that I'd be drawing full NSFW comics, sometimes fully lined to the quality of stuff I'd post on Tumblr. I expected to stick to mostly rough sketch illustrations only. But in general, I've discovered having some sort of short story/character interaction makes it a lot more fun for me, which I should have expected, knowing me >.>; . And hopefully these are more fun for you too haha! ^ ^;
Unfortunately, these comics take up a HUGE amount of time, usually 2-3 days (anywhere from 15-30 hours each _:(´ཀ`」∠):_), which means I have no time to do much of anything else. Combined with the 1-2 other Patreon posts and my public posts, my schedule is completely full, if barely manageable (with a guaranteed burn out at the end of each week HAHA!!).
I've also been stressing quite a bit because I haven't had time to work on Inferno at all, which I feel some of you may be here for. Inferno is, in the end, my BIG serious story that I'm heavily invested in, but because the chapters take so dang long to produce and are honestly so exhausting, it's easier for me to work on Future!Verse where I can produce lots of less stressful, shorter posts with immediate feedback. Immediate gratification is so sweet OTL
But all this sorta sucks because it means that I feel I don't have enough content to thank my higher tier patrons. I originally meant to do more tutorial posts and world building posts, but I haven't had the time to make them. Sure there are request/poll posts, but I personally don't feel that's quite enough to thank patrons nor enough to exactly motivate people to pledge when almost all my content is $1 ^ ^;;
I've also done a lot more exploring of other people's patreons to see how tiering works and I've noticed that I seem...to be posting a lot more, a lot more regularly than many other patreons, even taking out all the Also Public posts (which I never post unless I also have a Patreon Only post to upload at the same time). And all available at the lowest tier too, which other patreons usually do not do.
While I'd like to keep most of my work viewable to as many patrons as possible, and I really love the community I have here where so many of you leave such incredibly kind and motivating comments (thank you!! ;A;) I've learned that I also need to balance this with a desire to thank higher paying patrons, as well as the need to actually support myself through here if I want this to really be my main form of income.
While I truly am so incredibly grateful to all $1 patrons and your pledge DOES mean a lot and has added up, I also get that because my content in general targets a very niche audience (minor YOI ships, complex AUs, OCs), I don't and shouldn't count on the number of patrons alone. I uh, also figure that most people'll only pay what they have to in order to see what they want, which is totally fair and reasonable, and I hope you feel my art/time/effort is worth the price ^ ^;
As such, I think I will make the starting changes, which will come into effect October:
- All NSFW comics (things like currently, Minami's birthday, Yurio x Yuuri + watching Vic, and Phi x Yuu x Vic) will be moved to $5/Silver medal tier +. Again, this is a type of content I was never expecting to produce, hence why it is currently not marked for any of the tiers and simply placed in $1 by default. Upcoming NSFW comics include All husbands x Yuuri, Chris x Yuuri x Vic sandwich, and Yurio x Yuuri x Otabek sandwich.
- All of my single standalone NSFW illustrations (currently, Vic x Yuu x Yurio, Phi x Yuuri) will remain on $1 tier.
- All of my WIPs/sketches/abandoned works/New Kids stuff will remain on $1 Tier, so there'll still be 1-2 of these every week. This is what I had initially promised on the tier description to begin with.
- I will still post ONE NSFW piece every week, most likely alternating between $5 comics and $1 illustrations. If I end up doing comics almost every week, I'll take one frame from there and put it in the $1 tier ^ ^;
- I am setting a goal for myself to post at least ONE page of Inferno from my upcoming chapter every week onto the $20 Tier. While I usually prefer to wait to post pages until the whole chapter's done so you can enjoy the entire story experience as I mean for people to read it, I'm hoping this more short-term goal will regular deadlines will motivate me to actually work on it at all, and that the more limited audience will still let me save the suspense for the rest of my readers. ^ ^;
The upcoming Inferno chapter is in two parts, the first currently set at 7-8 pages, the second around the same. I will not be posting publicly until they're both complete, as I don't want there to be a large gap between posting the two.
The individual pages will all be posted at public resolution + watermarked, so if you have the patience you'll see it all regardless of your tier ^ ^; But I AM also hoping this will mean a more constant stream of content for $20 tier.
Again, none of these changes will be put into effect this month, so you'll still be able to see comics at the $1 Tier until October 1st! ^ ^ If you're $1, please enjoy them all this month, and if you like them and want to see similar/want to support me more in general, please consider upgrading to $5 next month!
If you decide to drop being a patron/downgrade your Tier as a result of these changes I ask that you please stay until you are charged for this month on October 1st. If you leave before then, I will not receive any payment, but you will already have accessed all of my currently available patron-only content. It's a really shitty system Patreon has here, but I'll do my part and work very hard to provide you a full month's worth of content including everything you signed up for as no changes will be made this month, and in return I'm sincerely hoping you'll do your part too and not be an asshole (a rather heartbreaking number of people didn't last month >.<;). So please wait until you've paid your promised pledge if you decide to leave.
If you wish to upgrade, you may do so at any time ^ ^;
So to recap, Starting October:
- $1 Tier - at least 2 posts per week. Sketches/WIPs, new kid posts, NSFW illustrations likely every other week
- $5+ Tiers - NSFW comics at least every other week, request + poll, tutorials (I WILL do at least one each month orz)
- $20+ Tiers - Weekly Inferno page, additional request post, at least one HQ download, some more concept stuff (I will also do at least one of these each month orz)
I hope these changes sound fair, I'm open to suggestions as well! Thank you all for reading and supporting my work! m(_ _)m
-Kazu
If you’re concerned about these changes, please also read this response further explaining them.
#YukiPri rambles#Patreon#IMPORTANT seriously please read if you're considering becoming a patron#full transparency I'm telling y'all in advance#so no one's surprised#I really do consider this fair#I hope you do too
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Weekly Update #176 - A Look Back At 2017 & A Look Ahead At 2018
Tomorrow's the last day of 2017. With that in mind I have decided that, rather than postpone it until the 1st or even wait until next Saturday, I will use today's blog post to take a look back at 2017 and give you an idea as to what you can expect from us in 2018.
So, without further ado, let's see what we have managed to accomplish throughout this past year!
Unfortunately, this year, we don't have anything as big as the release of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair to look back on. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I'm rather proud of.
At the beginning of the year, I was mostly working on SHINRAI's sequel, Withering Without Hope, updating the sprites for recurring characters like Raiko, Nobara and Henjin, for example. I generally worked on a lot of basic things in order to lay the foundation for our next game. Like the story and setting, planning the layout of the new location and starting to work on its design. If you have read one of our more recent blog posts, you might already know that the events of WWH will take place at the Ginmaku Movie Theater. I'm planning to finish the first background of the game as soon as possible so that you can have an actual first look at it.
Over the past 1 1/2 months, I've gotten back into WWH again and I'm planning to continue working on it over the next few months as well... as opposed to pushing it aside almost completely like I did around April.
Why did I do that, you might wonder... Well, that's because I wanted to focus solely on GENBA no Kizuna, the other project we are currently working on and which we officially revealed in June along with its main cast.
Up until that point, I had referred to it as our "dinosaur project" and by now, you should know why that is (at least if you've kept up with our blog posts over the last six months).
GENBA takes place at the Kaseki Residence, home of a world-renowned paleontologist. As such, it features a dinosaur-themed interior, but this "dinosaur theme" is also seeping into character designs and other things, similar to how "Halloween" was the theme for BBD.
GENBA is going to be shorter, a bit more fast-paced and more gameplay-oriented than SHINRAI, featuring a lot more interactivity. With the police actively involved in the investigation, the story being told mostly through dialogue, as well as the ability to experience it through the eyes of multiple characters, it will certainly feel rather different from our previous VN.
Nevertheless, it is still a murder mystery and it does actually connect to SHINRAI in very important ways. A topic I've talked about not too long ago.
With our focus mainly lying on GENBA for most of the year, we naturally made quite some progress with it. By creating a whole bunch of assets ranging from backgrounds to sprites and even menus, the game's foundation is laid now as well, to the point that we're getting really close to the release of a first demo!
That's really what most of our energy went into this year. We did pull off a few other things too, though.
For instance, after all this time, we now have our own website, which we launched back in June along with the GENBA announcement. It still requires more work and I really want to finally expand the sections for GENBA and WWH as well as add some other things to it, but that will be one of my goals for early 2018.
Outside of that (after an eternal back and forth), we have also decided to launch a Patreon page, which we did back in September. Through this, we hope to get enough funds together to eventually hire more people for our tiny team. At the moment, however, it's main purpose is to help us with covering the costs of GENBA's soundtrack.
Now, you might wonder, what exactly you'll get in return for supporting us on Patreon. Well, here's a quick list of everything you currently get access to:
- 3 character design sketches for the suspects appearing in GENBA
- design sketches for Kenji and Misaki, 2 of the new characters in WWH
- 3 full-length BGM tracks for GENBA
- a look at the full script of GENBA's prologue
- the first part of WWH's prologue
- a post featuring unused BBD art + talk about visual clues
- higher resolution & alternate versions of seasonal artworks + a whole bunch of WIP-looks
Things patrons can look forward to in the coming weeks: the final suspect character for GENBA, WWH's first BGM track, the second part of its script and more character designs. You'll also be able to decide through a poll who will be featured in February's Valentine's artwork. And, last but not least, early access to our GENBA demo!
Patreon is really about getting to see things way ahead of everyone else and being able to influence the stuff we do by offering suggestions. Patrons will be able to help us prepare the demo for its public release, for example.
Another thing I want to use Patreon for, however, is to post more WIP-stuff and other things I've always been way too shy and embarrassed about to share publicly. One big other thing patrons can look forward to, for example, is a post about our very first VN project which never got released. I will talk a bit more about how we got started and share with you some very old assets to give you an actual look at our early work from way back in 2011.
So yeah, if you're curious about those kinds of things, please consider checking out our Patreon page. Your support would be greatly appreciated!
I'd actually like to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone who has supported us thus far, whether it'd be through Patreon or any other means.
Throughout this year, we had some incredible things happen. From something as simple as getting new reviews on Steam to even receiving fan mail, both digitally as well as physically. It still feels strange and very surreal to think that some people actually enjoyed SHINRAI that much. People have even asked about possible merchandise, which is kind of shocking to me. But I guess that will be something to look into in 2018.
One of the greatest compliments I have received this year, however, is that SHINRAI actually inspired others to go forth and make their own stories. That's quite touching to hear and... I dunno... like I said, it's surreal. Sometimes it's really difficult to believe that this isn't just a dream. Because these are the kinds of things I have dreamed about for the longest time. For a big chunk of my life, actually.
Really, I'm deeply grateful for all the support we have gotten. People going out of their way to leave us a good review or even send us a message simply to show their appreciation... things like that truly make me happy and I couldn't ask for more. And they certainly serve to fuel our passion. I hope that all of you will continue to stick with us until our next projects come out, no matter how long it will take!
Which I guess brings me to the final point: what's in store for 2018?
Well, like I said before, our main focus will lie on finishing that GENBA demo. It was already supposed to be released in late November, which didn't quite work out. And although not much is missing anymore, we didn't make too much progress on it in December. Which is mostly due to the fact that December is always a really busy month. Aside of a lot of RL stuff, we had to take care of the seasonal artworks and... I admittedly decided to rather devote myself to WWH, simply because I was in the right mood for it. And while I plan to continue work on WWH, I will definitely get back to that demo now, too.
When will GENBA be finished in its entirety? That's a good question. To be honest, I was hoping to release it in 2018, but it's always difficult to assess whether or not that will work out. I can't foresee what kind of hurdles we might stumble into or how long exactly certain tasks might take. That said, I still want to make it my goal to finish GENBA in 2018.
Please keep in mind though that whenever I set goals such as this (even the demo release for late November), it's more of a way to motivate myself rather than me making an actual promise. Might sound like a lame excuse, but... I know that, even if I don't manage to make the deadline, I will still do my best to actually meet it, resulting in more progress than I would achieve otherwise.
If I tell myself that releasing GENBA in 2018 is impossible, so I'll just say 2019... I will make a lot less progress on it, because I'll have that "there's still time"-feeling in the back of my mind. That's why I think it's always important to set personal goals and work towards them as hard as you can. Whether or not you actually manage to reach those goals doesn't really matter as much as the amount of progress you have made once their deadline hits.
Of course, those goals should still be somewhat realistic, so that you can actually feel as though they're perfectly possible to reach. There is no point in purposely setting completely unrealistic goals. That might actually be more detrimental to your work ethic than anything else. But finishing GENBA in 2018 seems doable to me, so I do want to work towards that. Just don't be mad at me please if it doesn't work out after all, haha.
Anyway, this is starting to get a tad too long, so I should finally wrap this up. I will talk more specifically about our January goals in next week's blog post. Until then, please take care and have a happy new year!
And once again, from both Natsu and myself: thank you so much for your interest in the things we do!
#shinrai#genba#genba no kizuna#visual novel#visualnovel#interactive fiction#vn#evn#visual novel development#vndev#game development#gamedev#indie#indiedev#Ren'Py#renpy#murder mystery#mystery#detective#detective game#patreon#retrospect
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DigiFes
It’s a long day folks. We were up at 5 to get to the venue by 7. You aren’t meant to line up until 8 and goods weren’t meant to go on sale until 10.
Heaps of people were there earlier in a somewhat orderly fashion. But management decided to fuck us all around and said we needed to line up from the opposite end of where we were. This may not seem like a big deal, but remember items are limited and resellers are a thing. This was a chance for people who arrived later to get to the front.
There was a literal stampede. People were screaming and being shoved. I was separated from my group numerous times, and only got back with them due to shoving others and the kindness of other fans who clearly realised I was with the other foreigners.
To get to the other side, management made us go in a complete circle. It was unnecessary and quite frankly, a little dangerous. It didn’t stop people who were there earlier from being close to the line, or help those who arrived on time be rewarded. It was just bad planning.
Of course, then it started raining. Umbrellas went up and if I hadn’t of been wearing glasses I would have been poked in the eye more than once. To say it was unpleasant would be an understatement.
The line slowly shuffled along. Every now and again people behind us would start pushing like mad, despite the fact that the line wasn’t moving. It was 35+ degrees Celsius, no air con, everyone was a bit hot and bothered. These jerks were not helping or doing anything to get the line moving faster.
If you follow my snapchat and/or twitter, you may have seen me mention the kindness of fans. This specifically refers to one lady in line who let me stay under her umbrella with her and who talked to me when I was separated from my friends. It also refers to another girl who kindly returned one of my badges to me.
You read that right. The lines and shoving were so bad, numerous people were having items ripped off their ita bags.
I don’t care where you’re from, that’s disgusting. It’s unnecessary, rude and disheartening. We’re all meant to be fans of the same thing and we all know some of these items are expensive or rare. The fans who were helping others get their things back were the MVPs of the day. Everyone who pushed and shoved can eat dog food for the rest of their life.
Goods started being sold early, at 9. Most likely due to the feral crowd. We were only a little over 100 people into the line, but by the time we got there, all of the keychains had sold out, as had some other items. On the other hand, by the time the first session finished, most items were sold out yet the amount of tshirts left was overflowing. Whoever did the math in the product department really needs to be fired. So many goods were gone, and the badges being so limited was honestly appalling. They want our money and Tri is a pretty blatant cash cow to the point it’s disgusting, yet they limited the badges (among others), one of the few things people are happy to buy quite a lot of, to such a small amount. Very bad planning. Lots of people were disappointed and trading was mediocre as a result.
We left the building just after 12. We’d spent around five hours lining up, buying goods and trading. We went to a supermarket and got some food, and since we had our trading stuff still out, a little girl came over to talk to us. I was with people who got Meiko badges (so many people did) and they didn’t want her, so they gave the badges to the little girl and her brother. A new set of Digi fans in the making???
I ended up trading the Koushirou acrylic stand to THE Koushirou fan. She lost her shit. In exchange I got ‘frontier no debu’ (the frontier fatty). She couldn’t remember Junpei’s name ;;; I also traded something else (Omegamon?) for LadyDevimon which is an A++++++ trade, tho the other girl was very confused as to why I wanted LDevimon. I SO regret not ordering that figure it’s sooooooo beautiful!!!! They had the prototypes for the sibling figures as well, and I can’t wait until the Yamakeru one is mine, they’re so cute!!!
For seats, I was in the fifth row, pretty much in the centre. Before you went in they had the life size AguGabu duo. One kid was like ‘um, no thanks!’ when his mum made him have a photo with them and I ended up sitting next to him. The girl on my other side was there for the first time too and pretty much cried the entire time haha
So first up was a talk and the reveal of the twitter poll. Nobody believed Jyou has a girlfriend – everyone thought that scene was the funniest moment. This happened a few times during the conversation. Every time it came up, his VA would just stand up, shrug and go I DO TOO HAVE A GIRLFRIEND.
Meiko got a lot of support – Junko (iirc) said she supported Meiko because ‘she moved to Tokyo from the country’. As someone who lives in rural Japan, I can totally relate! Literally nobody supported Yamato lmao
I apologise that it’s short, but it was funny and interesting, but I can’t remember a lot of specifics sorry ;;; Fans and staff were shocked Leomon died. Like, have y’all ever been involved in this franchise????
Mini live – Miyazaki then AiM. Most people are only familiar with adventure stuff tho, which is kinda sad. It is also the main focus of fes so it’s understandable.
Next was advertising. Basically the figures, Agumon being in Appmon etc. Unfortunately, they showed a lot of this pre-show while we were waiting, so it was pretty dumb and pointless unless you came in just before the show started :/
The trailer, obviously online now, made people excited. I’m hoping Hikari goes dark either because of Taichi, or she tries to fight Takeru and Taichi gets in the way and gets hurt hehe~ Nobody really spoke about it tho.
Next was the drama segment. Essentially, there’s a singing contest and the winner gets an all you can eat buffet with them and friends. Obviously, with nine kids and mons, that's a great prize! Yamato wasn’t there due to his VA being ill, which came up a few times.
They all sung their chara songs, which was a little dull tbh. If it had been last year, it would have been great promo for the cds, but this year it feels too late and they didn’t want to put effort into a full drama.
Jyou ran off because the pressure made him have a bad stomach. Gomamon tried to bring him back and failed. Gabumon tried to bring Yamato in but failed but Gabu sung. Most of the cast didn’t sing. Hikari and Gomamon sung. Takeru did as well, Patamon blew him out of the water since it’s Seiyuu was jumping around and being cute.
Mimi sung I wish iirc and then started with Super Girl. AiM came out and they duet’d. It was pretty rad and you can hear how close new Mimi is to AiM’s Mimi. Palmon was like ‘wow two Mimi’s!!’ and Koushirou was ??? a little confused by past and present versions.
Agumon’s seiyuu ROCKED Agumon Sunba and then Agumon Ondo (fit will since it’s matsuri and obon season). I would drink with her any day of the week. The seiyuu and lifesize Agu Gabu all joined in to dance, and it was cute how some of them had no clue what they were doing.
Meikuumon also sung. Weird to see the VA do the voice change so quickly. And she’s so tall??
Anyway, Agumon won and Mimi was low key pissed. “I lost to Agumon? That’s kinda…”
Then, the new song. Aikotoba. Holy shit it’s pretty. It’s very soothing, their voices work so well together. Please buy a copy of the CD!!!! I haven’t heard a single person say they didn’t like it. Wonderful song and lyrics.
Of course, everyone sang Butterfly. They had Wada-san’s performance from the time when they announced tri, which was special. Everyone gets kinda emotional. It’s definitely a moment where everyone feels like family.
In the group photo, I can’t be seen but I can see my light stick lol Most people had red or blue, so I chose green to represent Mimi (no point in representing Yama if he isn’t there lol). So it was easy to figure out where I was haha
By the time we left it was 4ish, and by the time we got home it was 9. A very, very long day, but a mostly eventful and amazing one <3
#Digimon#DigiFes#Everyone is convinced next year will be the last#The other shows just don't have the fanbase of Adventure and there's only so many goods they can advertise#Also it wasn't sold out soooooo
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Transcript of The Talk Show Episode 172
Title: Holiday Party
Host: John Gruber
Special guest: Merlin Mann
Release date: 9 November 2016
Description: Merlin Mann returns to the show to discuss the election, by which I mean we mostly talk around the election. I hope we never do another show again with such heavy hearts, but whatever you think about this election, I think you’ll like this show.
Merlin Mann: Had a heck of a day. I’ve had a very interesting 30 hours.
John Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: Yesterday morning, we woke up early. I knew I had jury duty at the Superior Court.
Gruber: Wow!
Mann: Yeah, yeah.
Gruber: On voting day?
Mann: I only found out finally yesterday that I’m registered under two addresses and basically that’s why I get called constantly. And I’m jury crack. I always get called, I always get picked, and no matter what I say, they’re like, “Haha, that’s great, we could really use you.” So in this case, Superior Court — oh my god, what it’s going to be — long story short, we get up early, the three of us go to the polling station, my daughter drops in the ballot for Hillary Clinton. I go to jury duty, I narrowly, narrowly avoid a multi-month attempted murder jury duty.
Gruber: Oh... [laughs]
Mann: John Gruber, I’m literally rocking in my seat and making this noise, [in a distressed voice] “mhhn-mhhnnn”. I won’t drag this out, but basically I pleaded hardship. Even though they said they’re probably not going to let us off for that, I astoundingly got deferred. I walk up 6th street. Are you familiar with 6th street?
Gruber: I am. You know what, I am oddly familiar with 6th street in San Francisco.
Mann: You don’t unsee 6th street, you don’t forget 6th street.
Gruber: Right. [laughs]
Mann: I walk up 6th street, and it’s like a Godspeed You! Black Emperor song. It’s just a lot of people with sores and amputations, I saw a sobbing man pooping on the street, there’s a lot of screaming and dogs and it’s basically, it’s like the end of the world. And that was my morning up till about 11:30. So then I just went home and started rocking at home. I couldn’t even play Threes, I was just rocking, going “mhhn”. Because I’m already — I’m sorry, I’m monopolizing your show — I don’t want to make a big deal about it because I think it’s unseemly —
Gruber: It was a bad start, it was a bad start to a bad day.
Mann: And I hoped that those would all be good, good portents. But that was my morning and then, yeah — how are you feeling, are you having a good day?
Gruber: [laughs] No! Here’s the thing, I think you and I owe it to the world? We owe it to America, we’re going to do this show, and we’re going to do this show for everybody.
Mann: Okay. You don’t have to be an Apple fan.
Gruber: Are you with me so far?
Mann: Oh, I’m so with you. You’re going to get notes. [laughs]
Gruber: We’re going to get notes because we’re going to miss some people. We’re trying to scoop up everybody... we’re trying to... we’re... we... [sighs] I don’t know, we’ve got the scoop... we’re coming in for everybody...
Mann: [laughs] Are you having a holiday party there?
Gruber: Yeah! Oh...
Mann: [laughs, claps]
Gruber: I’m having a holiday party. Merlin, we’re coming in with the scoop, we’re coming in for everybody, we’re going to try to pick everybody up.
Mann: Yeah, okay.
Gruber: And we’re going to miss some people. There’s no doubt about it. There’s no way —
Mann: John Gruber, you can’t get every person, that’s the first lesson you learn.
Gruber: No way, and we’re going to miss some people. In my opinion, this is the most special episode of this podcast I’ve ever recorded. I’ve recorded many Star Wars... [laughs]
Mann: Isn’t that still your record holder?
Gruber: Oh, of course, Star Wars episodes are about eight hours long. And I mean, we’ve had Harrison Ford on, we’ve had Mark Hamill on —
Mann: He was a lot nicer than I expected.
Gruber: — Carrie Fisher, I mean, some very special guests for those episodes. Nothing is going to compare to this episode of the show and I would tell you —
Mann: No pressure! [laughs]
Gruber: No, no pressure. Well, there was only one person —
Mann: We’re trying to scoop up everybody, but we’re going to miss some people.
Gruber: Well, I would tell you this, I’m going to be honest, open kimono, I’m opening the kimono here.
Mann: [laughs]
Gruber: [sighs] I’m not happy with the election results. I honestly fear for the state of Western democracy. I absolutely, positively had too much to drink last night. And when I woke up this morning, I thought, there’s only one person I can ask to be on my show today and it’s Merlin Mann.
Mann: Hello!
Gruber: And I will say this, I reached out to you —
Mann: For this very special emergency episode.
Gruber: Right. Because I’ll tell you what, I am, in general, I try to go once a week and once a week would’ve put me like a couple of days before the election, and a couple of days ago I was too pre-election obsessed, and I thought, nobody wants to hear pre-election obsessed John Gruber talk about the keyboard on the new MacBook Pro, right? I mean, who the fuck cares about the goddamn key travel on the MacBook Pro two or three days before the end of Western civilization? So I thought, I can’t do it. I probably should’ve. I should’ve just done like a regular show, just called Moltz up again, you know what I mean? Couldn’t do it.
Mann: You also, you as a person, you enjoy a winning franchise with a story.
Gruber: Ohh, I do, I do.
Mann: And one thing I’ve learned from you and I share with a lot of people was that distinction you made one time, I think, on this program, talking about how there’s numbers people in baseball and there’s story people, with regard to fans.
Gruber: Yes, right.
Mann: I still think about that a lot, and it did have an effect on how I think about sports as a thing. I’m not trying to take the piss, I mean, you like the Yankees, you like, what, Cowboys, right?
Gruber: Yep.
Mann: You like these teams with a storied past who are going to win. So it makes sense for you to wait until the inevitable win to be able to talk about it in a way that’s — I don’t know, more celebratory? Why be jittery on air. Because it all seemed like it was going in the right direction. Mostly. Mostly, I mean, I don’t even know where to begin.
Gruber: I’ll just tell you this. I was thinking last night, and early on, I started tweeting less because I started thinking like, you know what I like to do, I think people who, certainly people who listen to the show, but people who follow me on Twitter, certainly know, I like to tweet during sporting events I care about. And it is a similar feeling in my stomach when there’s a sporting event I care about and an election I care about. But then there’s a difference, and the difference is that sports don’t mean anything, and that’s kind of the fun part about sports, and I know that there’s —
Mann: Everything that’s wonderful about sports is what the fan brings to it. You can choose to bring all different kinds of history and expectations and import, but you get to pick what you’re going to be very emotional about, and on some rational level, you get to decide why those stakes are important to you.
Gruber: Right, like, if six months ago, you — something happened, and you had a terrible head injury, and you went into a coma, but you’re a terrific baseball fan, and you don’t wake up until like the middle of next year. You wake up, and you’re like, “Who won the World Series?” And somebody tells you, “Well, it was the Cubs.” The state of the world outside the word C-U-B-S, “Cubs”, is actually not any different than if they said, “Oh my god, it was the Cleveland Indians.”
Mann: I feel like I only hear this — but a lot of people say that was probably one of the — definitely one of the better World Series games, some people would put it in their top 50 games.
Gruber: Yeah! No, there are people who would put it in their top 5 games. I mean, it was an amazing game. But the truth of the matter is that outside of the baseball park, it doesn’t really matter and that is — so I do, I woke up yesterday and I thought, you know what, this feels like when the Yankees are in the World Series. I’ve got that feeling, I care, I can’t sleep, I’m jittery. Except, I know that this time it cares. In one regard it makes me say, this is why sports are great, and in the other regard it makes me say, this is why a lot of smart people don’t give two craps about sports because sports are actually nonsense. And I kind of feel like this election brings that into focus.
Mann: Yeah. I mean, I don’t like getting involved in a lot of political — I don’t like talking about politics in public. I have my feelings about all kind of stuff in life, and who knows, maybe it’s time for me to talk more about it, but I feel like, generally speaking, the cost-benefit analysis on — having a strong public opinion that’s unambiguous, and you argue about it a lot, and you encourage people to pick or continue fights with you, that’s just not my personality, it’s not how I want to live, it’s not who I want to be, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have those strong opinions. So my cards on the table. And I’m that guy, I’m that guy that used to say, get rid of all your news tabs, stop following stuff — time and attention. But I have started listening to probably half a dozen podcasts about politics this election year, some of which come out every day, or twice or three times a week. I’ve been utterly steeped in that. But at almost every step of the way, even when things were not looking great for the Democratic candidate, there was still part of me that said, I think I understand enough about the bones of this country to know how this will end up. And on top of that, I see enough stuff from different sources of data that tells me it’ll turn out okay. Is this going to be the best election ever? No. But I swear to Christ, even up until yesterday, that confidence in the American bones is — I think I might’ve gotten it wrong? And so when we were texting this morning, that’s kind of where I am. I’m not to angry yet, I’m not to fingerpointing, I’m not even to abject terror yet, I’m still stuck at sitting there in my living room with my family last night. My daughter was literally under a blanket, she put earplugs in and went under a blanket to read Wimpy Kid because she couldn’t take it anymore.
Gruber: I love the Wimpy Kid books.
Mann: Oh, there are better than you think. But watching that little drip, drip, drip and then seeing a state flip to red, and at first, when we walked up, I picked her up at school like I do, I said, “Hey, look, he’s got three on the board already, don’t worry, people knew he was going to get those, those are not giant electoral states.” She knows about this from school. But anyway, I don’t mean to prod along, but I’m here today because I’m not even to where I know I’m going to end up, I’m still — I’m just stunned by how wrong I was and how poorly I saw, and I think I’m going to be processing that for at least a few days. Words like “shock” and “surprise”, it sounds silly. I just listen to Keepin’ it 1600, which is a show I like a lot. And they’re just like, “We got every single bit of this wrong, and we feel bad that we told you not to wet the bed.” Now I’m just sitting here — I’m babbling, but I’m sitting here and I’m stunned with how much I got wrong, I’ll eventually try to figure out what I got wrong, but at this point it’s just an unconscionably large amount of assumptions that I had a fairly decent level of confidence in that I’m going to have to just rethink a whole bunch of things that make me very uncomfortable.
Gruber: Not for “let’s make sure everyone feels included” sake, but for “hey, everybody is sick of the divisive stuff”, is why I would love and I think you agree that this episode of the show should not be like, hey, Hillary should’ve won, Donald Trump is an asshole. I don’t want to divide people because everybody’s had enough of that and the time for that is over.
Mann: Not least because Democrats are the second most surprised party today.
Gruber: I agree, you’re right, I do think so too.
Mann: I don’t think most people in their hearts really believed this would go this way.
Gruber: I agree and I honestly think if we want to just for a moment get a little political —
Mann: [laughs]
Gruber: But seriously, Donald Trump’s win is not a Republican win, it’s a Trump win. What he is and what he represents and what drove his victory has almost nothing to do with the Republican Party. But I would like for this episode of the show to be for everybody, and I will just tell you that my son who is not, I wouldn’t think is political, because he’s 12 years old, he’s way too young to be political — before we sent him to bed last night, we’re watching the results, they were not, they were obviously heading towards where we are, and he said that his stomach felt bad. And I mean, it killed me because what am I going to say to him? [sighs]
Mann: I think kids pick up a lot from the people around them, particularly their parents, doesn’t mean they’re going to listen or put on their shoes, but they can read a lot of the emotional temperature and barometric pressure in the room. And we’ve talked a lot about this election at home, a lot, a lot, a lot, but I think the difference here is, it’s not that my team didn’t win, it’s that maybe I just don’t understand baseball anymore? And that’s a very different kind of thing to process, and I think, apart from the fact that we were both crying a little bit, which is never fun to do in front of your kid, it’s — I think there was definitely the sense that this was something very much different, it’s not like she sat and watched a bunch of presidential elections, but it felt like the stakes were higher than we had any idea. And then, god, what did Amy say today about, I mean, could you share what happened at his school?
Gruber: Yeah, well, the one thing was that we got a letter from the principal of the school, the head of the school, whatever they call the guy — we got an actual email that said like, “The rhetoric of the guy who won the presidential election is still no longer accepted at our school”, which is like —
Mann: That’s like when — did you get the creepy clown letter in October?
Gruber: Yes, we got the —
Mann: We got the creepy clown letter, and I remember thinking, oh my god, I know how busy our principal is, and I can’t believe that she had to take any amount of time from her day to acknowledge that there was such a thing as creepy clowns and then to feel the need or maybe the mandate, maybe it came down from the unified school district. But she had to say, there’s a couple of other things I’m not going to do today because I need to email everybody about creepy clowns. And you’re like, wow, that’s — just FYI, for my purposes, you don’t need to keep on the creepy clown bit, I trust you on the strength to just take care of that. But that’s something that your kid’s principal felt they needed to do.
Gruber: On that note... [laughs]
Mann: “You guys know Fracture!” [laughs]
Gruber: Let me take a break —
Mann: [laughs hysterically]
Gruber: — and tell you about our first friend.
Mann: If you’re going to have a holiday party, I feel like I should have one too. That’s just what we need, just need me to show up at my kid’s school in two hours just a liiittle bit drunk. [in a drunk voice] “Everything’s going to be fine, honey.”
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: “Daddy’s just sleepy.”
Gruber: Today’s host of The Talk Show is Harry Caray. [laughs]
Mann: [laughs] “Hey, hey.”
Gruber: “Hey, hey.” [laughs] Seriously, we’re laughing because we’re crying, but I want to tell you about our g— [breaks into laughter]
Mann: You want me to take this one?
Gruber: — our good friends at Automatic.
Mann: Oh, love Automatic!
Gruber: It’s a small adapter, it turns your car into a smart connected car. They’ve just launched, I mean, seriously, within like the last month or so, the Automatic Pro, it’s a new version of the device they already sold that in addition to all the cool stuff it already does, it includes unlimited 3G online internet connection. Exactly, you think, well, that sounds too good to be true, well, look, your Kindle, Kindles have been doing this for years. I don’t know how they worked out the deal with the 3G providers, but the Automatic people did it. It’s a dingus, you plug it into your car, there’s a port on every car made since like 1997–1998, somewhere around there, there’s a port and that’s where when it says, like, you get a thing on your dashboard that says “A1 service due” or whatever, you don’t know what A1 service is. You take it into the car dealer, they plug a thing into this port and then it knows exactly what you need. Well, it turns out that’s just an oil change or whatever. Automatic lets you plug their dingus, they have a dingus, that’s what you buy. You plug it in and you get all that information, all the service information that your car can provide to a mechanic or a service provider, but instead you get it, you can — if it’s nonsense, if it’s just like, oh, you know, one of the lights is out or something like that, you can just turn it off, whatever you want to do. Otherwise though, it gives you so much information, it gives you information on your efficiency, on how you’re driving your car, it gives you information on fuel efficiency, all that stuff.
Mann: John, John, John, it does it all, it’s an app plus it’s a dingus, you did mention it’s a dingus, it’s a fantastic dingus.
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: Here’s the thing, those fat cats in Detroit or Tokyo or wherever, no offense, I don’t want to be ping-pong, they never intended you to use that port for this, they say that’s for them, that’s for them, that’s their port, don’t use that. They [Automatic] are democratizing that port in a way that’s very important in our country right now. You get that dingus, you get that app, you plug it in, and you know what, you don’t have to think about it, you’re going to hear this — “beep” — that means it’s working. You can have it yell at you when you break, you can have it tell you, hey, quit driving so fast, you dork. Like John, for example, John lost his license now about five years ago —
Gruber: That’s true.
Mann: You were driving, I think you were driving 190 in a 30 mph zone.
Gruber: That, well, that was what they said I was doing.
Mann: Was it that fast? It was pretty fast.
Gruber: I don’t think that that’s true but that’s what they flagged me for. 105 in a 30 zone.
Mann: 105 in a 30, the speedometer only goes up so high. But you get this thing, it’ll automatically tag business trips for your expense purposes, it’ll do all of that and it will make you a better and more mindful driver, you don’t have to think about it, it just works. It also works with things like IFTTT, you can hook it up to all kinds of different things, you can have it turn your freaking lights on when you pull home. This thing is dynamite. Are you laughing at my tweet?
Gruber: I’m laughing because you’re the only person — I don’t know if anybody who listens to this podcast [drunkenly struggles with the word] regulllarrrly —
Mann: [laughs quietly]
Gruber: — has noticed, there’s a couple of regulars who come back. And you’re the only one who ever breaks in and helps with the sponsor read.
Mann: Yeah. [sarcastically] Thanks, John Moltz.
Gruber: Well, Moltz will never do it. Moltz will sit there and text me while I’m doing it, and he’ll give me notes on how the sponsor read could be better, but he won’t break in and say anything.
Mann: Sickening. Sickening.
Gruber: Moltz won’t say a goddamn word. He’s the worst.
Mann: I use this [Automatic], I love it, I bought this dingus with my own goddamn money, and we use it, and I look at it, and it is a terrific device.
Gruber: All right. Where do you go to find out more? Go to automatic.com/thetalkshow. There you go, there’s the [phenoms?] you need. My thanks to them. Great sponsor. I love them. I’ve got it plugged into my car, I’ve got the app, and honestly, it has gotten me to take the lead foot off the gas pedal. A little bit.
Mann: Oh, that’s, that’s so important. So did you ever get your — you probably shouldn’t say that.
Gruber: No, I don’t have a license, I haven’t had a license in six or seven years.
Mann: But the Automatic becomes a kind of ad hoc license. It’s license to be safe. They can just run with that. Did you get my text?
Gruber: Yes.
Mann: Can I tweet it?
Gruber: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely.
Mann: Okay.
Gruber: My hope would be that people — I mean, there’s not that many people who listen to this show, my hope would be that people are not going to report this to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Mann: No, no.
Gruber: We’ll keep it on the QT that I continue to drive without a valid PA driver’s license.
Mann: Yeah. You know, I don’t think that has to be a big deal. If you’re just moving the car or let’s say what if you had to go somewhere important. Should you need a license for that?
Gruber: No. I don’t think so.
Mann: What if it’s a fairly short trip, or better still, what if it’s a very long trip where you’re going to be on a highway. Everybody knows highways are safer.
Gruber: Oh, very safe. I mean, you could fall asleep on the highway, right? I mean, people who have the Teslas, they hit a button, and you could just go to sleep.
Mann: Yeah, yeah. Oh boy.
Gruber: I got a catalog the other day, just yesterday I think it was. I got a catalog, I don’t even know what I bought that put me on the list, but it came addressed to me. I got a catalog for a Radio Flyer. Now, you know Radio Flyer, right?
Mann: Oh, I got the same thing. With the Tesla?
Gruber: With the Tesla, yeah.
Mann: What are we on? How did we get this?
Gruber: You know what, maybe it’s this show, I don’t know.
Mann: They send it to — you know what it is, clicky keyboards, fussy coffee, fizzy water, has podcast. They call that an array.
Gruber: I got a Radio Flyer catalog —
Mann: We’ve gotten two of them!
Gruber: — with a delightful young boy riding in a Tesla, like a fake Tesla Radio Flyer wagon. [laughs]
Mann: Kids love Teslas.
Gruber: And I thought about taking a picture of it and making a joke, and I couldn’t make a joke, I couldn’t figure out the joke because what are you going to joke about? Zero emissions?
Mann: Self-driving, yeah.
Gruber: Zero emissions, it’s not actually a joke, that’s actually kind of cool. I couldn’t figure out the joke.
Mann: We get a lot of catalogs, John. We get a lot of political things, we had, I think it was, let me check here, 175 ballot initiatives yesterday.
Gruber: Oh my god, oh.
Mann: John, the Board of Elections had to provide guidance on how to fold your ballot to put in the envelope so that you didn’t end up spending like $11 on postage. They had guidance on that, I think they had, like, a QuickTime movie you could watch. Crazy days.
Gruber: [laughs] We had two — we don’t call them ballot initiatives here in Pennsylvania, I forget what we call them, it’s not like California. But we had two things to vote on that was sort of — the sort of thing that I don’t think you should be deciding by direct democracy, I think that this is exactly why we have a legislator. So one of them was, should we raise — in Pennsylvania, like many states, a surprising number of states if you just Google it, if you’re a state judge, when you reach the age of 70, it’s a mandatory retirement, you’re out.
Mann: That’s probably a pretty old law. From the time when being 70 was kind of a big deal.
Gruber: It seems like it, and on the ballot was an initiative, I don’t know what you call it, but whatever they call it here in PA, to raise the age to 75.
Mann: That’s so weirdly just slightly less arbitrary.
Gruber: Right, it’s not to get rid of it, exactly.
Mann: “Ah, come on, let’s make it 76.” Oh, okay, that’ll fix it. Done.
Gruber: [laughs] That’s exactly what I thought when I saw it. Do you want to get rid of this age thing, yes or no. I can kind of see that, but 70 to 75, it’s like, what? Where do these numbers come from? But we got a thing because we’re registered, we happen to be registered Democrats, I don’t think people are surprised to hear me say that.
Mann: [ironically] Huh, interesting.
Gruber: But we got something from our local Democratic word with a suggested ballot, like, here’s how we think you should vote, here’s everything that’s up, here’s who you should vote for. And it says like, President, you should vote for Hillary Clinton. Senator, Katie McGinty, that’s our senator who was running against this dipshit Pat Toomey, and so on as it goes down the ballot. But then it gets down to these ballot initiatives, and we only had two. And on the one that said “should we raise the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 75”, it said, vote no, in other words, don’t raise the retirement age. It said, “Vote no —
Mann: Oh, that confusing language.
Gruber: — it’s already hard enough to get rid of bad judges.” That’s what it said.
Mann: What?
Gruber: I swear to god, Merlin. I’m not making it up. [laughs]
Mann: Doesn’t somebody have to approve these things? Do you just get to paste it up and it just goes in, whatever you have to say?
Gruber: Well, the next best thing was that the next question was “should the city of Philadelphia raise $185,000,000 in debt to finance infrastructure improvements”. And the answer on how should you vote, it was blank. It was blank!
Mann: What? Did they forget to fill it in?
Gruber: [laughs] They forgot to fill it in!
Mann: “Forget about it. Highways are for dicks!” Oh gosh, we had a lot. “Should people be allowed to sleep in tents on the sidewalk?”
Gruber: [laughs] No! I would vote no, I would vote no.
Mann: It’s very controversial, they don’t have anywhere else to sleep. You go down Division street, and it’s like a one long KOA under a highway. You got the, oh, the grocery tax, dun-dun-dun. [in a movie trailer voice] “In a world...”
Gruber: Here’s what I think they should do —
Mann: Okay. Just to be clear, we’re trying to scoop everybody in here, we’re going to miss a few people, but I think it’s really important that we try to really find some answers.
Gruber: I’m giving you an honest answer, here’s what I honestly think. I think they should drive buses, special buses around the city, and you find anybody sleeping on a sidewalk in a tent, you just scoop them up in a bus.
Mann: Where do they go after that? Do they stay on the bus? Are they allowed to get off?
Gruber: [laughs] They can get off wherever they want.
Mann: This may be closer to what we see in the next four years than you think.
Gruber: Whenever they wake up, they can get off if they want.
Mann: It’s going to be tremendous.
Gruber: They can get off wherever they want but... [laughs]
Mann: Okay, so the bus comes along, you scoop up the tent people and —
Gruber: And I’ll tell you what, this is an opinion that I would not have had if I hadn’t spent a lot of time in downtown San Francisco over the last ten years. But I’ll just tell you that there are people sleeping on the sidewalks in San Francisco who make the city an unpleasant place to be.
Mann: There are people living, it’s important, these are not people who take a nap, these are people who do not have anywhere else to go.
Gruber: We’re trying to have fun, I’m not trying to make light of a desperate situation, but —
Mann: People already ride on the public transit, you can ride on the public transit, you’ve got a fairly comfortable place to be.
Gruber: What I’m suggesting though would be a bus that has a toilet. [laughs]
Mann: Oh, nice, okay. You’ve got like a stadium restroom on wheels. John, would they have shower facilities at all? Maybe a small library? Could you get a LaCroix?
Gruber: I would like all of those things. I would vote for all of that.
Mann: You get a Google bus, you get a nice Google bus.
Gruber: I would vote for all of those things, I would vote for the shower facility, I would vote for the small library, and honestly, I would vote for the tax increase that would pay for it. Honestly, I do feel like that would make for a better city.
Mann: Well, if you never find a house, you should come out here. Too soon?
Gruber: Too soon. There’s an awful lot of people, and again, I’m not trying to rub it in anybody’s face, I’m not trying to say who — I voted for Hillary Clinton, I think a lot of people who listen to this probably voted for Hillary Clinton. I’m not trying to say she should’ve won, I’m not trying to rub it in anybody’s face if you voted for the other guy. But there’s an awful lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who I would really like for them to spend a day at, like, 3rd and Market in San Francisco. Just stand on the corner for 12 hours.
Mann: Yeah, yeah. That gets at a lot of the problem. We don’t have to go into this, but did you look at that Washington Post demographic breakdown?
Gruber: Yes, I did.
Mann: Boy, this is going to be an interesting few years. Basically, pretty cool — I don’t know if I could find the link now, I’ll send it to you here.
Gruber: I got it, I got it. I’ll put it in the show notes.
Mann: Essentially, I think these are exit polls so take it with a grain of salt, but basically they go in and do a full demographic breakdown, starting with the basic numbers but then going through gender, race, education, party, age. And I think it’s a pretty good infographic that really tells a hell of a story that I think many of us need to really digest. I love the fact that — so basically, they’ve got a line of like — so you say, for example, they could say “sex”, I say “gender” because I’m woke — what percentage voted blue and then I think that’s reflected — so basically, area of the circle is based on the size of the demographic group and percentage of vote obtained, so you actually get three different very interesting data points. You get the who did what, you get the how that went, and then you get the what percentage of the total amount do they represent. And therein is quite a story.
Gruber: It’s a fascinating thing to scroll through because it works on a couple of dimensions where the circles are the size of the group —
Mann: So like the total number per capita, like how many people are involved, right.
Gruber: Right, it’s like you see how far apart the two groups are, but the size of these circles lets you know, like, sex: men vs. women. Well, the groups are obviously humongous because almost everybody is either a man or a woman. And the race one, where it’s, you know, how did white people vote, how did black people vote. It shows you how many of the people who actually voted are white or black or Hispanic etc., etc. So you hear these numbers, you hear, here’s the numbers, this is from their page you’re saying, and we’ll put it in the show notes, but the black vote went 88 percent to the Democrats, 8 percent to Donald Trump, 2 percent to Gary Dingus or whatever his name is.
Mann: Yeah, but the size of that circle —
Gruber: Right, lets you know.
Mann: — ain’t that big.
Gruber: Right, you say, 88 to 8, holy hell, that’s a blowout and then you see the size of the circle and —
Mann: A pie is always round.
Gruber: Right, exactly. It’s a really interesting infographic in my opinion. It explains the election in a way that feels true to me. Obviously not in the way that is true, like, “Oh, this is the truth I want to hear”, because the election did not turn out the way that I wanted but —
Mann: Sometimes when I get real worked up, I take pictures of my TV, and so I just sent you an image from last night with a great state of Pennsylvania in which you live, and at the point this was taken — I don’t know if you’ve got that in your messages.
Gruber: I got it.
Mann: Look at that breakdown. So they’re breaking down voting for the two parties, presidential candidates by city, suburbs, and rural. City: 73/24 Clinton. Suburb: 48 percent dead even. Rural: 72 percent Trump.
Gruber: Yep. I remember all the way back to 1992, and it was, how old was I then? Jesus Christ, I was only, I think that was the first election I could vote in.
Mann: Oh wow.
Gruber: I was, like, a freshman in college. But I remember hearing James Carville on TV, at the time James Carville was like the horse whisperer in Bill Clinton’s ear, he’s the guy telling him what to do. And James Carville described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburg on the other, and Alabama in the middle. And as a lifelong Pennsylvanian, I was like, oh yeah, that’s exactly right. And as a college kid who had just moved from that sort of Alabama middle to one of the cities on one of the sides of the state, I was like, yeah, that’s exactly right, that is totally right.
Mann: Scott Simpson always used to say the same thing, he comes from a very rural community, he said he felt absolutely no allegiance to any of those two cities, coming from the middle.
Gruber: Yeah, I believe Scott is from Lancaster or near Lancaster.
Mann: I should remember. All I remember is that he was in a Christian rock band.
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: Company of Praise. They abbreviated C-O-P.
Gruber: If not Lancaster, it’s close enough. And everybody I know from Pennsylvania, it’s actually one of those things where it’s like, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, you hear that and you’re like, “Oh yeah, yeah, that sounds right.” Even if you’re pro-Trump, if you’re somebody from Pennsylvania who voted for Trump, you’re like, “Yeah, that sounds right, it’s dirty liberals on Pittsburg and Philadelphia and good people in the middle.” And it’s absolutely, it’s striking, the picture you just sent me is amazing.
Mann: There was that time last night where it was — trying to do the translation on time — but it was past my daughter’s bedtime, but it was at the point of, like, “ohh”. You know what I should not have been looking at? It’s that stupid New York Times little speedometer thing. That was the death of me.
Gruber: It was for me too, it absolutely was.
Mann: It was Clinton — I’ll say some names, I guess. But it was Clinton 82 for a really long time. Then it was like “beep, beep, boop” [?] down a little bit and you get to 50/50 — whaaat? And by the time I was getting up, at one point then it said greater than 95 for the Republican candidate. And that was around the time when — so I was going back and forth between CNN and CBS because CBS has John Dickerson who is flatly the best, he was so good on that show.
Gruber: I wish, in hindsight, honest to god, it wouldn’t change the result, which obviously is the only thing that really matters, but in hindsight, I wish that I had CBS on. I watched MSNBC and that was the worst decision I could’ve made, honestly.
Mann: Because they were — was there happy talk about how it would be okay or?
Gruber: No, it was more like... I don’t know, it was something about the attitude they were taking to the results that really got me. What I really want was just a total pro who didn’t have — I bet, I didn’t watch CBS but I bet John Dickerson was exactly what —
Mann: He was great, it was a pretty good crew, but when I would flip back and forth, and sometimes CBS would go to local coverage, and I was like, please, don’t tell me about legal marijuana, I need to see what’s happening with this national race.
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: So I would hop over to CNN and it seems like — by the way, you guys can have your marijuana now, congratulations. You can have your 420s.
Gruber: The people of New Jersey, it was like, we’re having the most important, in my opinion, the most important presidential election in our lifetimes, and then half of the time was spent on did the people in New Jersey get medical marijuana.
Mann: Well, okay, so one nice thing is I think they’re finally getting their hands around on how to deal with those giant touch screens, it’s still kind of funny to watch them struggle with them.
Gruber: [laughs] Oh my god, on the MSNBC it was horrible!
Mann: Did they keep hitting the wrong thing? “Oh, whoa, oh.”
Gruber: And the guy kept complaining about it on air! He was like, “God damn this machine!” [laughs]
Mann: I don’t think they get time to practice nearly as much as — like, if you go see your local Perd Hapley doing the weather report, that is a person who has been dealing with the green screen and understands how to gesture their arms. In this case, they’re flying all over the place. But there was the point in the evening when they got to where it was like, “Okay, well, this is how it’s looking”, and this was right before it went to Florida, like pretty conclusively. But he’s going in, he kept zooming way in on Broward and saying, “Well, we know, this could still be Broward”, and zooming in further and then saying, “Then you compare that to 2012”, and then he kept going to these two counties in Michigan and kept saying, “Detroit, the story could still be Detroit, there could be like 150,000 people in Detroit that show up in a minute”, and we’re all going, “Yeah, yeah, that could be it. Detroit seems cool.”
Gruber: That was a little bit of the MSNBC experience too.
Mann: I’m sure we’re eventually going to get to our friends from South by South West but —
Gruber: [laughs] There was a little bit of this sort of — we’re watching it, and we came into it optimistic, we really did. And I don’t think we were unrealistic, everybody sort of expected a Hillary Clinton win. We went into it —
Mann: They at least expected something within a normal range, but it was like you went into your kitchen to make cupcakes, and it kept producing monitor lizards. I don’t even understand what’s happening in here! And I think they’re struggling with — because they can’t just say, “What the fuck is going on here?! What the fuck!” You can’t say that on the TV. So they’ve got to go like, “Well, Detroit, there could be a heck of a lot of, uhhh, underperforming with, you know, get out the vote, uh, news alert.”
Gruber: That is so true. I honestly think that that — again, I’m laughing because I am a white male with a job, so I can afford to laugh, but I’m crying on the inside because I really do think — I’m not making light of this election.
Mann: No, I don’t think that’s coming across —
Gruber: I hope so. I just want to double-emphasize it as many times as I can. But I really do think watching it live last night, there was this sort of like, we can’t say “what the fuck”, so therefore, because we can’t say “what the fuck”, we’re going to say stuff that doesn’t make any sense —
Mann: We have to utilize these other words that are in the parlance for our business that don’t get even near how what the fuck-y this is.
Gruber: Right, and so they were saying things like, “Hey, Hillary Clinton is down by 300,000 votes in Florida, but she might make up 80,000 votes in Broward County so...” And you’re like, wait, you just said she’s down by 300,000, and she maybe, if everything goes right in Broward County, might make up 80,000. You realize that’s not even close to making up the difference?
Mann: No, it’s this magical thinking. Everybody goes, “Well, you know, Wisconsin still isn’t all the way in.” They didn’t even bother to go to Wisconsin because that’s so in the bag, it’s not even going to be a problem.
Gruber: And I would turn to Amy and I would say, “Am I mishearing this? This doesn’t make any sense.” And by the time I turned to her, I would look and then all of a sudden they’re talking about Wisconsin.
Mann: [laughs]
Gruber: It’s like, wait, wait, put that manic guy with the glasses back on and have him explain to me how making up 80,000 votes in this — and MSNBC, they were going through these contortions about what they can call and when they can call it, and I was saying to Amy, I was like, wait a minute, if you’re saying, she is down by 300,000 and the most she could make up is 80,000, what in the world is the difference where you can say “we can call this”? Just call it! Just fucking call the goddamn thing! And here we are, 24 hours later, we’ve got these results, we see the results, and she didn’t win Florida. Why couldn’t they call it when she was definitively, best case scenario, down by 220,000 votes? I don’t understand that.
Mann: There’s this other phenomenon in, like, when you’re a little kid — I have to tell you, we might’ve talked about this before, talking about TV, but I always haaated election nights as a kid. It was so boring, all the shows got preempted, and then your parents would sit there and watch this incredibly boring thing, and you’d hear about this, like, who your new alderman is. Yay, where’s Happy Days, fucking bring it. I knew this was excruciating for my daughter, but I was like, “You know, we’ve told you this is a pretty big deal and we’re —” I won’t get too personal, but we had a lot of personal stake, all three of us, had a lot of personal stake in this. Yes, even my nine-year-old daughter, maybe especially my nine-year-old daughter, had a lot of stake in this, so that made it really difficult. You learn as you get a little bit older, like when you first see the map when you’re a little kid, you go what, like, oh, Texas. Well, Texas is a big state and it’s a big deal because there are a lot of electoral votes. But you know, all these little states you see running down the side because they’re too small to identify, some of those end up being really important. In other words, the amount of red or blue on the map, you learn to look at the numbers rather than the pretty colors because that’s the story, do you know what I’m saying? A smart person understands that you can for example, as recently as 2016, you can win the most votes and still not win the election because that’s not how the electoral college works. And my kid understood that, my wife and I understand that. So you start seeing more and more of the red pop up and then they go to somewhere like Michigan, and all of a sudden I felt like I was seven years old again. I was like, there’s so much red on there. And they keep zooming in on these two or three little blue areas, but it was very profound to me to then have to undo that idea because the colors were not lining up, the shapes were not lining up, and the numbers were not lining up. And that’s why I want to locate this a little bit in last night because over the period of about 90 minutes the world started to feel a little bit different, at least a little bit different, and then it started to feel different faster and faster, and my breath was taken away at several points.
Gruber: We’re three hours time-shifted from you, but we were watching the same thing at the same time, and that is exactly how I felt, exactly, exactly. I couldn’t put it any better. And again, like you were saying, with these county by county results in Michigan, I was just like, what the?.. How can this be, how can Hillary Clinton possibly win, looking at this?
Mann: Right. But also some 2015 part of your brain is spinning because the 2015 part of your brain goes, even if there’s three people in that county, how did three people in that county choose to vote for the Republican candidate? In my 2015 mind, which is still a big part of my brain, and again, now I have a different mind today, but that was part of the cognitive dissonance for me, was even, like, looking at straight numbers and having my iPad Pro sideways with multiple tabs open plus the side screen like an idiot, like a monster, I’m looking at all of this data and then drilling down, and New York Times actually had pretty good coverage on this, where you could go in and drill down into specific areas and see for yourself what was going on, and you could just look at the numbers. And the other thing we told our kid, and I think this is a good thing, is like, understand this is a multi-variant thing. There’s a certain number of electoral votes in that state, that state is comprised of counties, each of those counties are reporting in different ways and at different times, and shame on CNN for the amount of, like, 1 percent reporting special news alerts that they had, it was so gross. But you can go in and there’s this thing that happened though, and I guess this happens to everybody when their side is not winning is that you start seeing that number go up, and you see 60 percent reporting, you see 70 percent reporting, you start wondering how many more votes really could be there in a box somewhere in Portland that will pull this out. And then like you’re describing, you’re describing, I think, you’re very aptly describing that feeling of “oh my god, just say it”. Because I see it. I don’t believe it, I see it, why aren’t you just saying it because, oh my god, another one just turned red, why isn’t someone not saying what’s really happening here. And I really in my heart believed that at least some — I know they were trying to be journalistically canny and trying to be fair and trying to not freak out, but I bet you we’re going to hear a lot about a lot of things, and I bet one of the things we’re going to hear is how many people just can’t believe what happened on numerous levels. The failures or shortcomings of everything from our own perception to how we learn about what people think to how we choose to believe anybody else could see the world. I feel like I’ve just come out of a cult or something and I don’t know what I even think anymore. I mean, I know what I think, I know how I feel, I’m here to talk to you about how I feel, but I don’t know what to trust about my brain anymore.
Gruber: It was very frustrating, I thought, last night because what I want is somebody who knows as much shit about the goddamn new MacBook Pros as I do. I want somebody who knows that much about the elections to tell me what the hell is going on. And I felt like I wasn’t getting it. I felt like I was getting people who were as loosely informed as I was going like, “I don’t know, this seems kind of crazy, this is unexpected.” And I’m looking at the numbers on screen and I’m thinking, why won’t somebody just tell me, Florida is already lost. It was at the point, it was at least two hours after the point where me as a non-expert was looking at Florida’s numbers and thinking, this is gone, before they said, okay, Florida is in the Trump column. And I’m like, why did that take two hours? That’s crazy.
Mann: I can actually see this in my Safari, the two things that it says, “Do you want to visit this site?” on your iPad, the two of those have been 538 and The Upshot. The Upshot has done a really good job of graphically displaying whatever information they had. And you know, don’t yell at them, they’re just reporting the polls. But one of my favorite things to look at, because it’s very interesting, is the How Other Forecasts Compare area, which I’m sure you’ve seen. So this has not been updated since yesterday, but as of yesterday, New York Times, 85 percent Democrat. 538, the very conservative 538, really, in context, they were very conservative compared to the others, they got a lot of heat, 71 percent. Huffington Post: 98 percent Democratic. PW, I’m not sure what that is: 89 percent. PEC: greater than 99 percent Dem.
Gruber: Oh, that’s the Princeton Election something.
Mann: PW is PredictWise. So the 538 was the most pessimistic with the 71 percent.
Gruber: The Princeton Election Committee, or whatever the hell they’re called, I love the guy and I’m not doubting the statistical math behind the projection but that was how I slept the last few nights. [laughs]
Mann: Oh my god. Also they use WordPress. Anything else you want to tell me about today, anything you like?
Gruber: Should we talk about these buttons on the keyboards? [laughs]
Mann: Sure, sure, I just, at this happy point I thought you might want to wedge another sponsor to visit. I’ll help with the sponsor.
Gruber: I’m going to tell you, this is a new sponsor, first-time sponsor of the show. And I love it. I don’t know if you know this or not, I spend about 180 days a year at Disney World. I love Disney, and for the first time ever, Disney is sponsoring the show.
Mann: Oh, that’s so nice, that must’ve taken a long time to work out.
Gruber: Have you heard this though? This might be new to you, you might not have even heard about this, Merlin. It’s called Circle. Circle with Disney.
Mann: You’re not kidding me?
Gruber: I’m not kidding you, I am not kidding you, this is an actual sponsor.
Mann: Oh my gosh.
Gruber: It really is Disney. It’s a device called Circle. And it’s a little dingus. [laughs]
Mann: Look at that, it is a little dingus, it looks like the power adapter that comes with your iPhone.
Gruber: Exactly. You plug this into your house, it pairs with any Wi-Fi router —
Mann: [gasps] Oh my god.
Gruber: — that you might want. And what you can do is set up a thing so that if you have kids, you can manage their internet access.
Mann: Oh my god, this is so boss.
Gruber: It’s $99, one-time cost. But if you use the code “thetalkshow”, don’t forget the “the”, “thetalkshow”, you’ll save $10, it’s only $89. And you can get this — one-time cost, you can get Circle Go, which is like a service, you can get it for $10 a month, $9.95, for up to 10 devices. But it’s only for iOS. It’s super easy to set up. There’s nothing worse than setting up a complicated networking device. I mean, I’ve done it —
Mann: John, that’s table stakes nowadays. If you want to penetrate the market, as you like to say —
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: — you’re going to have to come out with a device that has as little fiddle-y — save the fiddle-y stuff for your coffee, let Circle manage your content for you, you know what I’m saying?
Gruber: Exactly. If you’re going to spend a lot of time on something, it might as well be making your coffee. Circle with Disney lets parents filter content, customize what’s available, customize the time that kids can be on the internet. It’s amazing. Kids staying up late on their tablet — Circle with Disney lets you set a bedtime for each kid on each device. What about 4G? Because you think, hey, I’ll shut off the Wi-Fi, my kid will just hop on LTE. They know that your kids already have, probably, especially if they’re teenage years, they already have a smartphone and they already have that, so that’s why they make Circle Go. Disney Circle Go takes all the settings on your kids’ devices and lets you configure them with you Circle with Disney.
Mann: What?
Gruber: I swear to god, I don’t even know how that works.
Mann: Is it an MDM, how does it work? You know what it is, John, it’s Disney magic, they can use that.
Gruber: Disney magic. So here you go, if you got kids and you want to manage their access to the internet on your Wi-Fi, remember the code, “thetalkshow”. Go to meetcircle.com. M-E-E-T, not “meat” like we’re going to eat steak or whatever. It’s like you’re meeting somebody, you’re greeting somebody. meetcircle.com. And you get free shipping and $10 off with that code, “thetalkshow”. It’s a great device, super easy. They sent me one, I did, I set it up, it is super easy to set up. I mean, my kid actually is, just between me and you, is maybe sort of not the sharpest tack in the room because he — I don’t think he actually tries to go to anything that we wouldn’t approve of?
Mann: Hmm. Doesn’t it disappoint you a little bit?
Gruber: A little bit because I know —
Mann: Don’t you want him to be a little bit more ambitious?
Gruber: Yeah, a little bit. I would think that he would but — so we set it up and it was super easy to set it up. They sent me the thing and I set it up and it’s like, do we really need this? I don’t know because it seems to me like our kid just comes to us and he’s like, “Hey, is it okay if I search Google for blah blah blah?”
Mann: Wow, but you know what, belts and suspenders. Have a good kid and get yourself a Circle.
Gruber: Exactly, that’s what I thought, exactly.
Mann: Good deal.
Gruber: Couldn’t be easier to set up. It’s a beautiful little device. So go to meetcircle.com and remember the code “thetalkshow”, you will save $10 and get free shipping. There you go.
Mann: Just for what it’s worth, for now, it appears that meatcircle.com with an A is available. [laughs]
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: You know what? I’m just going to go there. As a man from San Francisco, I’m here to tell you, if there was a website called Meat Circle with an A, about circles of meat, I got a pretty good feeling that Meet Circle with two E’s would not let you see it.
Gruber: I could’ve sworn that was the name of the restaurant where we went the last time I was out there.
Mann: Mmm. Meat Circle.
Gruber: We’re making a joke but it actually is not a bad name for a — not bad at all.
Mann: Think about those tourist-y sushi places you go where it arrives on the boat and they just count your plates, what if there was a rotating, let’s call it a carousel, a carne carousel, you’ve got a spinning meat Lazy Susan. And you could just try all different things, it would be kind of like going to a Brazilian steakhouse but with a technology. I think people would love that, Meat Circle. I think they’d gobble that up.
Gruber: At the Brazilian steakhouse, the ones I’ve been to — we’ve got two here in Philly, we’ve got Fogo de Chão and we’ve got — I forget what the other one’s called. The other one’s better.
Mann: [laughs] Ringing endorsement from John Gruber!
Gruber: Ringing endorsement.
Mann: Yeah, we’ve got one here, it’s costly but it’s a lot of fun — if you go at lunch, you don’t get as many varieties of meat.
Gruber: No, no, at the lunch you get screwed.
Mann: Lunch, they got chicken hearts.
Gruber: They desperately want you to come in at lunch.
Mann: [with an accent] “Would you like more chicken heart? Corazón de pollo?” Yes, I know that’s Spanish. We’re like, we’re good, we’re good. How about some more of that tri-tip? “Yeah, maybe you try the chicken heart. It’s on a sword. I think you’ll find it quite toothsome.” And the tiny little sausages?
Gruber: I love the little sausages.
Mann: My favorite I think is the straight-up, salty sirloin.
Gruber: All right, the other one here in Philadelphia is called Chima. That’s the good one. Fogo de Chão is a little... I don’t know, a little... you save like five bucks, there’s always like an all you can eat type deal.
Mann: Oh, you don’t want to be buying meat on price. Nuh-uh.
Gruber: Chima is the good one. But for anybody who hasn’t been to one of these places, both of them, at least here, and I’ve been to Fogo de Chão — you know, it’s going to be funny because it might come up again later in the show — in Austin, Texas, I’ve been to Fogo de Chão.
Mann: [laughs] You meet a lot of interesting people in Austin. “You okay, man?”
Gruber: But it’s the same deal though where you go into this place, and there’s these cowboys walking around who grill the steak, and they give everybody a little thing, red light/green light.
Mann: “Obrigado.” Yeah, more steak/less steak, red and green. Red steak/green steak.
Gruber: If you put it green side up, if the guy is coming around with whatever cut of steak he’s made, he’ll say, hey do you want some? And you say, yes or no.
Mann: They usually ask you, but if you have it on green, they’re not legally obligated to ask.
Gruber: Right, they might just give it to you.
Mann: That’s the law of Rio, it’s called, from the Magna Carta. They can come right up and put whatever meat suits them on your plate, and you have to eat it, and they don’t have to ask you, you don’t have to say your thank you, they’re just going to literally keep bringing meat until you can get your swollen, greasy fingers to change it to “obrigado”.
Gruber: [laughs] That is true, that is the law of the Brazilian steakhouse.
Mann: [laughs] You know what the other law is, don’t fill up on salad, that’s the second law. Second law of the Brazilian steakhouse, because that’s how they get you, they want you to fill up on potato salad and shit, don’t do that because they’re going to bring you a bunch of chicken hearts in a minute.
Gruber: And they always have, everyone, doesn’t matter what the name of the steakhouse is, if it’s a Brazilian steakhouse, it’s always a salad bar where you can go up and go hog wild on the salad.
Mann: Ours has a hot bar too, ours is called Espetus, and boy, is it ever good. Is that what yours is called, Buca di Beppo, Beppo di Buca, what’s yours called?
Gruber: [laughs] Well, we got two, we got Fogo de Chão, and we got Chima.
Mann: Espetus, they got a really nice salad bar of some unconventional salads, some non-traditional salads, and they got a hot bar, so if you want black beans and white rice, not a problem. You can go up there and get yourself some fake-y paella. It’s by the bathroom. Wash your hands, come out, get a plate. But that’s rule number two, rule number two of steakhouse club is that you don’t fill up — and bread, they’re going to give the cheesy bread, fuck that! Rule number three of the Brazilian steakhouse, do not fill up on the fucking — I’m talking to you, daughter! Big glass of milk. That’s for meat! Don’t fill up on that.
Gruber: And the cheesy bread is good.
Mann: It’s good, but that’s how they get you.
Gruber: [laughs] It’s so true.
Mann: It’s really disappointing.
Gruber: There’s a reason why at a regular steakhouse, where I mean “regular” meaning you don’t get an unlimited red light/green light meat, that they don’t also have a “just eat as much as you want at the salad bar” salad bar.
Mann: Exactly.
Gruber: It is true, you said “that’s how they get you” and that is, I think, for me and you, “that’s how they get you” is sort of a catchphrase of our parents’ generation. They would explain the way those systems work.
Mann: That’s the single greatest piece of conventional wisdom for everybody older than me. [in a low voice] “You’re going to 7-Eleven? Oh, you’re going to get one of those Big Gulps? Oh, how much is that, it’s a dollar? You know what that costs? A nickel. That’s how they get you.” Is that right? “You’re buying a Japanese car? That’s how they get you.”
Gruber: I remember somebody telling me that we you went to 7-Eleven, that you had to be careful of how much ice you put in the cup because —
Mann: “Don’t put ice in. That’s how they get you.”
Gruber: Right, that no matter what size cup you got, they’d fill it up with ice and you’d get the same amount of soda even if you got the 64-ounce — which is bullshit! Like, a 64-ounce soda is an enormous amount of soda, but there were people who told me in my youth that that’s how they get you.
Mann: It’s like the secret menu for cheapskates. It’s the things that you can get away with. [in a low voice] “Hey, listen, so you know when you go to this place, you can ask for extra rolls to take home and they have to give it to you.” We used to run a restaurant when I was a kid, and it would be the same people who were very unhappy, every weekend would come in, and they came here to be unhappy together. Same people who complained about the same things every time, there was a one couple who always came in, always got the same really crappy deuce right by the bar, and then they would complain about the noise in the bar, and then they would steal literally everything off the table. Every week, they would take all the silverware, the salt and pepper shakers, they would take the Sweet’N Low, they would take the sugar, they would take the flower arrangement, and then we’d have them back the next week. And that was just the thing we did. Florida.
Gruber: [laughs] We had like a —
Mann: I’m having a hard day, John, I gotta be honest with you, I’m having a hard day.
Gruber: You know what, I don’t know who else would do this with me, Merlin. Honestly.
Mann: Well, we were not going to scoop up every single person, but I think it’s good that we’re here, it’s good we’re here to talk about this.
Gruber: Right, so, Amy and I, you know this, maybe people who listen to this show don’t know this. My wife, Amy and I, and people maybe know her on Twitter, she’s @amyjane, but we literally were in the same kindergarten class together. We were in school together from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade, then we were separated for the college years, somehow made it work. And here we are, now we’re married and we’re on Twitter, we’re married on Twitter.
Mann: [laughs]
Gruber: But we’ve often said though, it is an amazing thing that we spent our teenage years together because we can tell stories about our teenage years and instead of like, oh my god, just blacking out, rolling your eyes because your significant other, your partner is talking about being 14 years old, you’re like, oh my god, I remember that, and you’re like, I was there and yes, that is true. So where we grew up, everybody was a member — it was a public pool, it was public but you had to pay, your family had to pay like a hundred bucks a year to get in or something like that, so it wasn’t like you could just show up. But everybody was a member, you’d get a special badge, every year they’d put up a new color badge and you’d sew it on your swimsuit, so when you showed up at the pool, they could see that you were a paid member. And as a teenager, every day, every single day in the summer what I would do is I would wake up, I would go play basketball because I was an avid basketball player, I’d play basketball from like 11 am till 1 in the afternoon, and when it got just too goddamn hot to keep playing basketball, we would head over to the pool and that’s where we would go. And at the pool there was a snack bar. And the snack bar sold, like, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Swedish Fish. I think your entire selection of food offerings were Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Swedish Fish, which were a penny a piece, and they would count them out, and it would take forever.
Mann: [with an accent] “One, two, three. Three Swedish Fish. Now back to the pool with you, and wait a half hour before you go back in.”
Gruber: And they had a soda fountain. Long story short, at some point in my teenage years, somebody convinced me that they were screwing me over by filling my cup up with ice.
Mann: Because that’s how they get you.
Gruber: Yeah, that’s how they get you! So I would go over and get my — I would say like, “Give me a Dr Pepper, no ice.”
Mann: They’ll never see that coming.
Gruber: Two points, I have two points to make on this. Number one, warm Dr Pepper tastes like shit, it is horrible, it really is.
Mann: [smacks lips] The pruney-ness really comes out. You don’t realize how pruney Dr Pepper is until you have it at room temperature. It tastes like some kind of a 19th century elixir.
Gruber: And number two, this is the point — you’re going to love this, Merlin, you’re going to love it. About two or three weeks after I started ordering my sodas no ice and my friends were doing the same, it wasn’t just me, it was a bunch of us, they changed their policy —
Mann: [gasps]
Gruber: — and if you ordered your soda no ice, they only filled it to one inch below the cup.
Mann: Wow. Because of portion control.
Gruber: Right. And we would say like, “Give me a large Dr Pepper, no ice.” And they’d only fill it an inch below the rim and then you’d be like, “Wait, that’s not filled”, and they would be like, “Well, that’s where the ice would go.” [laughs]
Mann: It’s like one of those bars, bars with robot dispensers. You know what I mean, like, there are some bars now where when you get a drink, it’s like a — the robot does it, it tells it, this is exactly an ounce or half an ounce or whatever. Oh, that’s sickening, my god, and they got you again, that’s how they got you a second time.
Gruber: The thing is, in hindsight, one reaffirms the other, where on the one hand, it tasted terrible because it wasn’t cold, but on the other hand, the fact that they started screwing you on how much soda, reaffirms the initial reason why you did it, which was this is how they get you, because if it wasn’t how they got you, why would they be screwing you on how much soda they put in the cup.
Mann: Absolutely. The system always wins.
Gruber: System always wins, and this is honestly how we wound up with President Trump.
Mann: You blame the system?
Gruber: If you connect the dots, I would say that 1987 at the Antietam pool, a no ice Dr Pepper only being filled one inch below the rim dot dot dot here you go, 2016, President Trump. Do you agree?
Mann: It makes perfect sense.
Gruber: I think it’s a clear line.
Mann: When you put it that way, I see it. I’m thinking of any kind of documentary, not a documentary, but a docudrama, like you do something like And the Band Played On. And the Band Played On is about the AIDS epidemic, but it begins with Matthew Modine dealing with the Ebola and that sets us up for all the flashbacks. Paul McCartney walks by, sees a bass in the window, “Oh, one day I’ll be playing that at the Cavern Club”, you know, “As you know, Bob, this is what I ended up doing.”
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: And so in this case, a young John Gruber, hot from basketball, 11:01 every day, he wants to take a dip, buy three cents worth of Swedish Fish, and have himself a refreshing cup of Dr Pepper. And now today everybody’s at school crying. You put it that way and I see it now.
Gruber: I think it’s a direct line. Jesus Christ, Merlin.
Mann: How did everybody get so — so I was telling you I was listening to all these podcasts, usually I’m getting six podcasts a day in the run-up to this, and boy, it was like radio silence this morning. There was one NPR Politics episode I think they recorded last night, there was a pretty short — what was the other one, 1600 finally came out, but so far today no Culture Gabfest, maybe John’s busy. No Trumpcast, still haven’t heard Election Profit Makers, it’s been a real quiet —
Gruber: Crickets chirping.
Mann: I don’t know how many of those things you listen to but I’m sitting there, flippity flippity flippity, like, come on, Overcast, let me “experience my emotions”, as my hippie girlfriend used to say. I want to experience my emotions, I want to walk through this.
Gruber: Again, I’m being more jovial than usual and quite frankly —
Mann: Well, it’s the holiday season.
Gruber: Right, quite frankly, without taking another sip of any beverage, I might be drunk for the next 72 hours based on how much I drank last night. So, you know.
Mann: You gave yourself a contact high.
Gruber: It’s table stakes. Let’s just face it.
Mann: It’s a complicated time, for sure.
Gruber: But I think it might be enjoyable. But here is what I thought. I’m going to be deadly serious here, and again, apolitical, it doesn’t matter what side you’re on, but there was a moment yesterday, let’s say 24 hours ago and as we record, no results were in, so it wasn’t even like, oh, it looks bad for her, it looks good for him or whatever. 24 hours ago, I thought, you know what, I should’ve done a show by now, I should’ve had a new episode. I don’t have a regular schedule, I don’t record on a regular schedule, and the reason I didn’t record a show is I thought, I can’t, I’m so distracted by this election, I don’t want to do a show because that’s all I can think about. And I realized, in hindsight, I should’ve done a show, not for myself, but because, hey, I’ll bet, tens of thousands of people who listen to my show would love to just distract themselves with me talking about the goddamn key travel on a new MacBook Pro. Like, two hours of me talking about what it’s like to type on the new MacBook Pro. In my mind, it was like, well, what a waste of fucking time, but in hindsight, I thought, that actually would’ve been great for the people who love the stuff that I do. And I should’ve done it. And then I woke up today and I thought, well, now I’ve got to get Merlin.
Mann: Yeah, I mean, basically, it’s been a really weird morning and my only thought was, like I said in the text to you, my only plan for this entire day was to try to stay sane and clean the shit out of the car.
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: My whole plan for the day was — my wife biked to work today and I was like, “So, uh, how about I clean the car today?” And she’s like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” So I go out there, I got the vinegar —
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: — I got the baking soda, I got the mini vac, I got the big vac, I’m taking it all out, I’m taking the whole thing apart, and I’m scrubbing it like a crazy person because I need to control a small area today.
Gruber: I did that yesterday, Merlin, I swear to god, I mean, seriously, go DM her right now, you can DM Amy, yesterday —
Mann: Is she at the holiday party too?
Gruber: No, she’s actually — she probably will be soon, but she’s not at the holiday party yet.
Mann: You know, the reason you didn’t get an invitation is because you asked for an invite. If you ask for an invite, you don’t get an invitation.
Gruber: You know my feelings on invites.
Mann: That’s rule number five of the Brazilian steakhouse.
Gruber: You never get invite. [laughs]
Mann: There is no invite, it’s not a word. Stop saying that.
Gruber: Yesterday, I swear to god, you can — I swear to god, DM her and find out —
Mann: You cleaned the car?
Gruber: No, what I did is I vacuumed in our dining room. [laughs]
Mann: [makes a vacuum cleaner noise]
Gruber: Our kid, he loves corn chips, he eats a lot of tacos, he just likes corn chips, and there was just a ton of ground-up corn chips underneath our dining room table and I thought, what better — why not now, let’s get the —
Mann: Somebody’s got to get these corn chips off.
Gruber: Somebody’s got to get them. And my wife came down. And, I mean — shocker — 99 times out of 100 when somebody vacuums up the corn chips, it’s my wife, not me. And my wife was like, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Mann: Oh, I cleaned the shit out of our dishes last night. I cleaned dishes I didn’t need to clean. I cleaned the cast-iron pan twice and then this is a life hack, you can use kosher salt and you can rub it around in there without harming it, you don’t want to put soap in there. So I did that a couple times, with the kosher salt. And they still kept turning red. Stopped at one point to watch Parks and Recreation because my daughter was on the verge. So we watched a very good, relevant episode of Parks and Rec where she narrowly wins the election, because it’s an educational program for a 9-year-old. We’ve got to talk a little bit about what we got wrong, don’t you think? I mean, is that too much, is that too deep? We could talk about the keyboard, you know, I’m not using my Das because I’m on the podcast but I could type on my Das if that would help.
Gruber: No, I think we should, I think we should talk about what we got wrong.
Mann: It’s got some amazing key travel, listen to this, let’s see. [types on a clicky keyboard]
Gruber: Oh, that sounds good.
Mann: You want to talk about key travel? [continues typing] “Sixth rule of Brazilian steakhouse.” I don’t know what kind of Cherry that is, that could be Cherry Blue, Cherry Brown, I’d have to have Jason [Snell] listen to this. You know, Jason types very fast.
Gruber: For two or three seconds there I completely forgot about this election. [laughs]
Mann: Oh, isn’t that nice. We can talk about it. It seems so relevant. “Yes, that’s all very interesting, but will I be dissatisfied with the butterfly switches on my computer?” AAAAA!
Gruber: I have photographed myself — kids call them a selfie — with Jason Snell —
Mann: I yesterday watched the video of you using an Escape key. “Is it over here, no? Uh, over here?”
Gruber: I had to delete that tweet.
Mann: Oh, because it’s a loaner?
Gruber: Turns out the embargo is not up yet. [laughs]
Mann: Oh man, the embargo still counts, even today? Doesn’t that seem ludicrous that anybody is doing anything today? Doesn’t it seem crazy that anybody is at work while worrying —
Gruber: Yes, it does. That’s exactly what I thought yesterday. Long story short, I tweeted a video of me using an Escape key on a MacBook Pro, and the embargo is not up on those MacBook Pros, but on the ones that have the physical keys, it is up and I just — it was yesterday and I was so — I mean, this is what I was thinking, why not obsess over the Escape key? [laughs]
Mann: Absolutely.
Gruber: I would love to spend the next four years thinking about Escape keys. It just seems like, wake me up four years from now when the next election is over and I’ll spend the entire, between now and then, just dealing with Escape keys.
Mann: Our friend Marco even said, “Hey, you know, I would get into sports if I could get that back.” I’ve gotten two emails today, one email was a 2FA to get into my Apple on the web when you sent me the notes for this, and the other one was somebody who just sent me an email today. And I was like, what the fuck? You sent me an email today? Who sends a fucking email the day after the election? I mean, it’s the way we used to feel about Christmas. It’d be like having a vacuum salesman at your house on Christmas morning. Why are you, what are you doing? Don’t you live in a civil society? You don’t send somebody an email on the day like today. What are you thinking? How did that even cross your mind to do that? I’m sending texts to my friends and saying, “Are you okay?” That’s what I’ve been doing all morning, is texting my friends to say, “Are you okay?”
Gruber: The sun never even came out here.
Mann: Oh dear.
Gruber: We’ve had about 36 hours of complete darkness. I’m not even making that up, it’s actually been a very dreary day.
Mann: You did go red.
Gruber: Yeah, and amazing thing — and I thought, well, this is a good sign — is yesterday, election day, it was beautiful! It was 62 and sunny.
Mann: Oh, what a good sign! What a great sign.
Gruber: Not a cloud in the skies. [laughs]
Mann: Everything’s coming up Milhouse.
Gruber: Yeah.
Mann: [laughs] But to return to that, because I just need to vent a little more, is, like, even at last night, and even when it got bad, and even with the needle moved past the 50 percent, that 2015 part of my brain said, “Calm the fuck down, there’s no way —” I mean, how late was it before you started to flip and then how long did it take for you to really say “oh shit”.
Gruber: That’s a very good question.
Mann: Because there were a plenty of chances and you expected that it would go back and forth, this is how it works, electoral —
Gruber: I started to feel really bad in my stomach when it took so long to call Virginia because —
Mann: So you’re okay with Florida because you realize, big state, lots of places, two time zones, there’s a lot going on in Florida.
Gruber: And I am enough of a political nerd where I kind of — I do feel like this election flipped a lot of the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom is still basically true. And Virginia being so long was like a really bad sign. So Hillary Clinton ended up winning Virginia but the fact that it took so long to call it was really where it — so I would say, at least on the East Coast time, it was around, I don’t know, around 10 o’clock, so probably 7 o’clock your time where I just thought, the fact that they’re not willing to Virginia is a really bad sign.
Mann: I think I started to really get the fear a little before that. Last night — you know how you do the benefits where if you go and buy at this restaurant, the school gets money? We try to do this. So girls went out to get some poke at the poke place, poke bowl. And they were gone for a while, and they came back in, and I was like, “This is not good.” It was a situation where — you know, I follow this enough to know, okay, here’s the battleground states, I don’t need an infographic to understand the importance of that. Being somebody who’s followed this more closely than I would ever admit in public until today, I knew that there’s a handful of places that are going to make a difference. And I explained this with my kid, yeah, California’s got a lot of electoral votes, but what is it they say about companies, that’s baked into the price, or built into the price. We go into this knowing that there’s a really good chance, there’s a way beyond good chance that California is going to go this way. There’s a very good chance that, say, Utah is going to go this way etc., etc., etc. So you really focus on — it’s like we’re not going to worry about the ponds, we’re going to worry about the road that’s right in front of us here. These are the big things. And I kept going, okay, haha, here we go, I’m not going to have a drink, this is going to be fine. And I just kept thinking, okay, it’s time for a few of these to go from white to blue. And I kept thinking, feels like it’s really time for these to go from white to blue. To, like, well, this seems quite irregular. Why are more of these not flipping to blue? And that’s where I got to the headspace you’re in where you’re like, what is taking so long? We thought that was going to be one of the firewall states. What happened with that? And I bet that along with a lot of other people watching this, that’s probably around the time we had the WTF maybe aloud moment of going like, what if this is something — I don’t want to say fundamentally different because it isn’t like it started as an election and turned into a tennis game. It was an election that ended as an election. But at the same time there’s so many things that we thought to some level of certainty we understood about this — I’m sorry to keep coming back to this, but this is just where my emotions and my mind are today is I’m still stunned. I’m still stunned with how much I did not understand about what was happening. And then you go and you look at the polls. And you go and you look at the reporting on all of this. And I think it’s probably about five times worse for a journalist today. Like, listening to the NPR podcast this morning and they were just like, “Uh, yeah, this is real different than anything we had imagined could happen.” Do we rule out — just to get this out of the way because there’s certainly some part of your brain that goes, huh, it’s weird. If I were going to make a program that affected the elections, if I were going to do some kind of an exploit, I would make it look close for a while and then win by a little bit. Like, you’re a gambler. Right?
Gruber: I am.
Mann: Are we ruling that out? Do we feel like — that’s probably not — I just want to get it out of the way so we can move on.
Gruber: Yeah, I don’t think so.
Mann: Do you think there was meddling? I kind of do.
Gruber: No, I don’t, I don’t think so. I think it’s a totally legit election.
Mann: And that’s the problem.
Gruber: There was a period I would say between 8 and 10 Eastern time last night, we had MSNBC on before 8, but 8 was when real results —
Mann: That’s when polls start closing and you start being able to say something.
Gruber: Right. So from 8 to 10 I was kind of rolling my eyes and I kind of felt like MSNBC was sandbagging it to make it look close. There was that —
Mann: “Sandbagging” is a great word for it. They’re milking it, this is their last chance. They need to make this seem like a horse race up to the end. And everyone kept saying how close it was. That was the watchword of the night. This is so much closer than anybody thought.
Gruber: And there was an interchange between Rachel Maddow and — what’s the guy’s name, the guy who got fired from the big seat at NBC.
Mann: Tom Brokaw?
Gruber: No. He got demoted, not fired, but demoted.
Mann: Oh, oh, Brian Williams.
Gruber: Brian Williams, that’s it. There was an exchange between Brian Williams and Rachel Maddow where they kind of went meta and they were like, we are not fucking with you, honest to god, this is as up in the air as we’re making it seem. And it was right around that 10 o’clock at night moment where I thought, like, the fact that they are not willing to call Virginia yet, this is — something is going on. That’s where I thought, hey, this isn’t just the TV, they’re not just playing this for ratings.
Mann: Right, right. Yeah, I felt something similar. CBS did a really good job. I didn’t love every single one of the folks on, I think they could’ve done with fewer than six people and just let Dickerson talk more. But it was a very good group. I felt a similar thing at a lot of what I was looking at. And that’s when we were talking earlier about screaming WTF — I don’t know why I’m suddenly so precious about language. But there did get to be this feeling that you’re describing of almost like, we need to break the fourth wall for a minute here. Like, we all understand that there’s a performance aspect to this. A polling site is going to get less traffic if it’s a solid 85/14 for a year. If it’s a pretty solid 85/14 for a year, that’s not going to get as much traffic as something where those numbers are changing. So we get cynical about that, we understand clickbait and all that kind of stuff. But now I agree with you, I think there was a certain point or maybe I was just inferring this with my own increasingly frazzled mentality, but it really felt like they were struggling with it too. And so we’re avoiding getting to this but, you know, the polls. You go listen to anybody, and I told you in a text today, I’ve been listening to the FiveThirtyEight podcast and between Nate and Harry they always try to say, like, tamp down this irrational exuberance about what this means. Nate got burned pretty bad on Trump because at one point he said, he’s now famous for saying that he thought Trump — I can’t believe I’m saying his name — had a less than 20 percent chance of becoming the GOP candidate. And that really came back to bite him and I think he clamped down super hard with the model. And listen to that show all along, how they developed the model, updates to the model, what’s happening with the model. But I think they have all along been trying to tamp that down. But I had this really sick feeling where I want to hear this but I don’t want to hear this, I want to hear what they have to say because they were the most conservative and it was still so — I haven’t seen a side by side yet, I have not seen a side by side on how it turned out vs. what each polling site modeled. But that’s going to be a hell of a story. What parts of that broke down and how did I break down? I mean I’d like to think of myself as an empathetic person, I’m fond of quoting that old Renoir movie and saying “everybody has their reasons”. I think I’m a fairly empathetic person about this but I did not know realize how deep something was in this election. How deep some set of feelings and I think there’s a variety of feelings, I think just calling it racist or misogynistic is a little shortsighted, there’s something maybe even deeper than that going on there, and I called that way wrong.
Gruber: Yeah, and it is clearly — subtract white men and the election is a blowout for Hillary Clinton.
Mann: In the model, but a lot of white women came out.
Gruber: It’s true.
Mann: That’s the crazy part.
Gruber: And it’s weird, like, what is the difference, why was the white — whether you’re a man or a woman — angle so definitive here and not when the black guy was running the last two elections, you know what I mean?
Mann: Look at the margins, look at the margins in the — god, listen to me, I fucking hate myself. [in a mocking voice] “Let’s all look at the margins in the battleground states.” But look at the margins, the ’08, the ’12, and Hillary margins. And Wilkes-Barre — I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce it. But that’s one Obama ran away with. He won by like 20 points.
Gruber: Pennsylvania has gone blue since ’92, I think? It’s crazy, it’s really, really weird. And the turnout was phenomenal in Philadelphia. I don’t know what you were watching, you said that you were watching —
Mann: CBS and CNN.
Gruber: Right, but on MSNBC they kept cutting to Philadelphia and they were showing crazy long lines.
Mann: North Carolina, you see a line where somebody takes their iPhone — ugh, in portrait mode — and walks along and you just see several hundred black people waiting to vote and you’re like, well, clearly, part of this — when they say, like, the whole percentage reporting — well, what if we don’t know how many people have actually voted? And then they kept going, oh, maybe this is really going to pull it out, maybe North Carolina is going to be the one.
Gruber: I think for whatever reason they’re going to show — I think the results will show that the turnout in the middle of all these states where the rural areas, that the turnout was just phenomenal and hasn’t been even in the Obama election years. For whatever reason, Trump turned these people out. I don’t get it, but it’s there.
Mann: I need to dash in a bit. Did you want to tell me about one more thing that you’re excited about this week? I’m very happy to help if I can. That’s the eighth rule, the eighth rule was there are no sixth and seventh rules of Brazilian steakhouse. The ninth rule is you help a buddy with a read. Obrigado, obrigado.
Gruber: It’s a new sponsor, brand new company. Well, maybe you’ve heard of them, you’re juiced in.
Mann: Yeah, I am juiced in.
Gruber: Have you ever heard of the company called Squarespace?
Mann: Squarespace, is that with an S?
Gruber: With an S, Squarespace is —
Mann: Are you talking about the single best place to go to have a website, a portfolio, or an online store?
Gruber: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is.
Mann: You know what, yes, I do, I’ve heard of Squarespace, yeah.
Gruber: Well, you’re more juiced in than I am, I’ve never heard of this company.
Mann: I’m a little more juiced in, yeah.
Gruber: I’ve never heard of this company but you can start building your own website today.
Mann: Does it require a credit card?
Gruber: It does not but if you use this code, “talkshow”, now, they don’t have the “the”, it’s just “talkshow”, but you’ll get 10 percent off whatever level you end up signing up at, but you can sign up for free with no credit card.
Mann: Are you telling me you could start literally, literally building your website today with Squarespace by going to squarespace.com, is that what you’re telling me?
Gruber: If you have any notion in your head for, hey, that should be a website, I could make a website that is blank. And it could be, like you said, a portfolio of your work. It could be a store where you sell the... crap that you make. [laughs] Could be a blog, could be a podcast. Could be anything. If you just start by going to squarespace.com, you are almost certainly will have an easier time doing it than if you do it in any other way.
Mann: Is there any benefit at all of signing up for a year?
Gruber: I think you get a free domain?
Mann: You get a free domain name if you sign up for a year.
Gruber: Free domain. Are you looking at my screen? [laughs]
Mann: Yes. Why do you have your home screen like that?
Gruber: If you sign up for a year —
Mann: [in an internet critic voice] “Your Dock’s in the wrong place.”
Gruber: — you can get a free domain name. So literally, they cover everything from registering the domain name to the layout of your site, the fonts, the style. Is it a portfolio site where you’re showing the illustrations you make, is it a store where you’re selling T-shirts, is it a blog — all that stuff, you can set up visually, they have —
Mann: I don’t know, man, what if I’m a developer and I want to get my hands on the actual code, is there any way, do they have any provision for that, probably not, because it’s Squarespace, right? They wouldn’t have a platform for that?
Gruber: You would think that they wouldn’t, you would think it’s all just — you’ve got to click, click, click, but the truth is, Merlin, this is amazing, if you want to get in there and you want to write your own JavaScript code and put it in there, you can do it.
Mann: Right on the website, you can do that?
Gruber: Right on the website. You can just get in there and insert your own code.
Mann: But the thing is, with all these sites, if I run into any kind of trouble, I’m on my own, is that correct? Let’s say I run into some kind of trouble, maybe I get confused, maybe I follow the wrong tutorial from John Siracusa’s CPAN, and I do my backpack slashes the wrong way, is there anybody that can help me? What if you got a, what do they call it, a greedy enumerator, what if there’s something that’s accidentally eating your JavaScript, is there anybody that you can call?
Gruber: I would like to say that you are correct because you’re on this show and I don’t want to embarrass you, I would like to say yes, you’ve got to fix it yourself. The truth is though, they actually have 24 hour a day, real-time support.
Mann: Oh my god.
Gruber: You just call them up —
Mann: You can text them.
Gruber: Yeah. But they’ve got people, they’ve positioned them around the world, literally, if you think that I’m making this up —
Mann: What if I want to talk to somebody in Portland, is that anything they can help me with?
Gruber: Yeah, they’re in Portland, they’re in Ireland. They’ve positioned these people strategically around the world, so that when you need tech support, if you need tech support, you can get somebody on the horn —
Mann: It’s like the Doctor Strange portals! They’re protecting the globe with these three equidistant points and they put an entire web of support over the Earth and that keeps us away from Dormammu.
Gruber: Exactly.
Mann: That’s amazing. What’s the name of the service again?
Gruber: It’s called Squarespace. I think they’re going places, I think you’re going to hear about them. Keep it in mind, if you have a notion for a website, go to squarespace.com. Remember the code “talkshow”, no “the”, and you’ll get 10 percent off. But honestly, you don’t even need 10 percent off, even if you forget the code, just go there and sign up. It’s a great service.
Mann: And there could be somebody in your life today who needs this site and they don’t know it, but you do. That’s the thing. You do not want to be in the webmaster business, you don’t want to be making it for your pre-school, for your church group. You don’t want to be doing that. Get out of that business where you’ve got to know the SSH login to be able — no! You don’t need to do that anymore. Tell your friends and your family about this site because it’s perfect for somebody in your life.
Gruber: I’m tongue-and-cheek on this whole thing where you are jumping in on this, but that’s actually probably the single best advice about Squarespace is that keep it in mind for people who don’t listen to shows like The Talk Show because exactly, like if your kid’s preschool or the church group or whatever needs a website, guaranteed that is a better idea than you jumping in and saying, oh yeah, I’ll jump in and SSH in and start an index.html website — forget it, just go to Squarespace and cut yourself out of it. Totally true.
Mann: “Cut yourself out of it.” They’ve just got to run with that.
Gruber: Right. It’s totally true though.
Mann: [sighs]
Gruber: What are we going to do? I think we’re going to be okay.
Mann: Yeah, I think we will too. I share your interest and obsession with the whole idea of story. I’m doing a new show with a couple of friends of mine, we were talking last week about that Steve Jobs lost interview that you can see on Netflix. And I was realizing — forgive me if you’re one of the five people who listen to that show, but I’m very interested in the idea of how Apple and Steve Jobs and Pixar are so interested in the idea of story. Story about the company, story as a thing that we create. I was trying to make the case that Apple also, if you accept the notion that story is an abstraction layer, their computers and their devices are stories too. They’re taking out all of the inessential things and telling a great story with the minimal number of components needed to tell this story correctly. So I’ve been thinking a lot about story, and now today I’m thinking more about story because I feel like with our president-elect right now, you described something earlier, well, is this a victory for him? Or is it a victory for the party? Is it a defeat of the opposing party? It’s hard to know right now but the one thing I do feel that I need to learn more about before I try to do anything intelligent or rational, is to understand what stories he told, whether they’re true, whether they’re good, whether they’re accurate, whether they’re kind, whether they’re decent, whether they’re respectful. Whatever stories he’s telling meant a lot to people, and I think different parts of that story meant things to different people, and a lot of the folks in those red states found a way to overlook one to five terrible things about him because there was something about that story that worked for them. And the failure of imagination for me, as I sit here today, is that I don’t think I got that story well enough and I think like everybody else I missed it. I don’t know what’s going to change as a result of that, but I don’t know how I can proceed to do anything intelligently until I understand what I got wrong. I don’t want to point a finger, I don’t want to yell at Jill Stein, I want to first understand how I got it wrong and I think I didn’t get the story right.
Gruber: So I am of the opinion that in the 2000 election, that you can yell at Ralph Nader, that Ralph Nader really fucked that one up and you don’t even want to get my wife — you’ve probably heard her do it because that one is —
Mann: She has a few hot button issues.
Gruber: She has hot button issues and Ralph Nader in 2000 is one of them — is that Ralph Nader really fucked that one up. And I don’t feel like this is that at all. I’m with you, I don’t have any animosity towards the third-party candidates, towards Jill Stein or Joe [Schenectady?], whatever the guy’s name is [Gary Johnson].
Mann: Yeah, the pot guy, Joe [Schenectady?].
Gruber: The guy who doesn’t know where Aleppo is.
Mann: Aleppo is that Brazilian restaurant in Philadelphia.
Gruber: You know what? I think that’s the third —
Mann: That’s the twelfth rule of —
Gruber: Aleppo! If you yell “Aleppo”, you’ll always get a fresh cut of the house sirloin.
Mann: Don’t fill up on Aleppo.
Gruber: This isn’t that at all. It’s very different. And I tweeted it — my id comes out on Twitter. I tweet a lot looser than I blog. Even on this show, I’m looser on Twitter than I am anywhere else. And I tweeted before — I think it was two days ago where the Trump team had suggested that they’re going to appoint Rudy Giuliani as attorney general and —
Mann: You could not put those announcements — and Gingrich — you could not put that in Mad magazine and have it be plausible.
Gruber: And Newt Gingrich as secretary of state. And at this point, maybe that’s going to come to pass, and like you said, sounds like something out of Mad magazine, but honest to god, at least there’s a certain honesty to it. I think it’s preposterous, I don’t agree with it, I think it’s terrible, but at least they’re saying, this is how bad it’s going to be. I say “bad”, but this is how — you know.
Mann: Different.
Gruber: How different it’s going to be.
Mann: I think we can fairly say, things are going to be a little different for a while.
Gruber: [laughs] Yes, I think that’s exactly —
Mann: Did you see that video of Obama highfiving a little kid dressed like Superman?
Gruber: Yeah.
Mann: And then he fell down, Superman highfived him and he fell back. Like the force of that 5-year-old kid knocked him over. I don’t think you’re going to get so much of that anymore.
Gruber: Yeah, not so much.
Mann: I’m going to really, really miss that guy. Sorry, I cut you off there.
Gruber: No, I don’t know where I was going.
Mann: You’re going to edit this and put it out, this is going to help a lot of people.
Gruber: That’s exactly what I want.
Mann: I think you are probably one of the premier Brazilian steak podcasts that’s available today. I don’t know all of them, the thing is we can’t scoop up everybody, that’s the thing. We’re going to leave some people out of the Brazilian meat circle.
Gruber: Have you ever had the fried banana at a Brazilian steakhouse?
Mann: Shit, dawg! Hell yeah.
Gruber: [laughs] And here’s what I thought the first time I went, I was like, well, I’m not eating a fried banana, that sounds disgusting.
Mann: That’s how they get you. That’s how they get you.
Gruber: And that’s how they get it.
Mann: It’s pretty damn good.
Gruber: It’s really good, and next thing you know, you’re asking your guy, the guy thinks you’re asking for more of the top sirloin or the bottom sirloin, they’ve got like 13 different cuts of steak, and the guy thinks you’re going to ask for that, and you’re like, no, bring us another fried banana.
Mann: They should serve it on the sword though. That would make it more fun.
Gruber: They should.
Mann: Banana sword.
Gruber: I think the problem is it’s going to fall right off the sword, it’s going to cut right through it.
Mann: I agree. Do you get the little tongs on the table when you go? I love the little tongs.
Gruber: Oh, always. You’ve got to get the tongs.
Mann: Well, you get to participate a little bit. I don’t think they have to do that, but I like the fact that they cut most of it off, then they give you this look, they go, huh? And you grab your little tongs and you help with the rest of the way.
Gruber: They cut it about 80 percent of the way and then you take your tongs, and then they cut the rest of the way and you take your little slab of meat.
Mann: Mm. Now I want more Brazilian steak.
Gruber: I think that’s what America needs. America needs a Brazilian steak.
Mann: That’s a really good way — stronger together. I think it’s something we could all use. Do you feel like you’re going to be okay? I mean, after the holiday party is over. I know it’s probably too early to feel anything too coherently, but anything you’re thinking about going forward?
Gruber: All I keep thinking is — I am obsessed. I’ve taken this very hard. I am politically very fascinated — I’ve said this before, but when I first started thinking, I should start writing a blog, I had this name “Daring Fireball” in my pocket, and I thought, should I write about Apple and tech stuff or should I write about politics. And it was like a 50/50 call for me in 2002.
Mann: Wow. Wow.
Gruber: It really was, I really am that invested in this stuff.
Mann: Or maybe sports, did you ever consider sports?
Gruber: Sports is always up there.
Mann: I’m not being facetious, did it cross your mind?
Gruber: I’m totally serious, it did but not as much because I didn’t feel like it was as underserved. I felt like politics and tech were underserved by smart commentary.
Mann: Well, we both got lucky — obviously you’re way more successful than I was at this — but we had good timing on figuring out pie slice of a pie slice. Who would ever think somebody would want something about Mac productivity, like, most people don’t want a Mac site. Most people don’t want a productivity site. Who would want a Mac productivity site? That’s bananas. And in your case, there were not that many people out there doing what you were doing. But sports, a little more.
Gruber: Totally true. But I would tell you, previous elections, again, I’m glad that Barack Obama won the last two, I was despondent in 2000 and 2004 when George W. Bush won, but this one, I don’t just feel like my side lost, I feel a guilt. I feel like... You and I are almost identically aged, straight white men with wives and a kid, and our kids are both what, roughly 10 years old, my kid’s a little older, yours is a little younger — we’re almost the same guy. We really are. And we make our living on the internet, and we’ve got it good. Right? I mean, there’s no denying it. You and I have it really good. And I really do feel that at a basic level I almost, it’s not even my right to feel bad about this one because it’s my people who blew it.
Mann: That’s true but there’s another part of this, part of what eats at me is that I have seen — and I agree with you, who needs two white guys talking about anything, except I’m a white guy who’s really pulling it for a lot of stuff to change. Like, regardless of whatever apple sauce my dick is in, there’s some stuff that means a lot to me. And as I have had small and sometimes private little bits of evolution in how I think about the world, I got a little myopic in thinking that other people saw the same thing and that they could be thrilled and buoyed to see people who never had a chance to be normal American citizens before, get to do things in the last five years nobody could’ve expected. I mean, who saw the gay marriage thing coming along the way it did? Well, some people did, and then it happened. And how can you look at that and see anything but joy that two people just got to be the person they wanted to be. America is where you get to be the person that you want to be. And that’s the hard part. But even, or especially as a white guy, because no, I don’t have the same — I’m certainly, I’m extremely privileged in so many ways, I get to go where I want to go and all that kind of stuff, but my little miniature journey into understanding these little parts of America better and getting to see those people have these exalted moments of victory after years of being told that they aren’t an actual human being, to see so much of that progress in the last five years and now see that in jeopardy hurts my heart in a way that’s difficult for me to communicate.
Gruber: I feel exactly the same way. I can’t say it better, this is why I’m glad you’re on the show with me today, and I really hope that whatever side of the election people who are listening to this are on, that they can hear us and sympathize. I mean that. And in a way, for example, I think my wife — I don’t think she listens to the show —
Mann: No, she doesn’t. Uh-uh.
Gruber: I think she’d be furious if she heard me saying that I’m — “whichever side of the election you’re on” because she thinks people who voted the other way are shitbags. And she’s not wrong. [laughs]
Mann: No, she’s not wrong. Here’s something I got schooled hard on by friend of the show John Siracusa, and we were talking about things having to do with the way that women get treated by everybody. And I found myself saying this thing that I don’t say anymore. This was like less than a year ago, but I found myself saying, “Don’t these people, these Gamergate guys, don’t they realize that they’re talking to somebody’s sister or they’re talking to somebody’s daughter?” And John, I think, very intelligently said, “Hey, is that really, is that the hill that you want to die on? Are you sure you want to put the importance of their humanity and rights in terms of how they relate to you?” And I thought about it, for months and months and months, and then I saw it happening a lot after the pussy grabbing and I thought about it a lot, and now I think you have to want these things for people because they’re people, not because they’re people that you’ve decided are particularly empathetic based on your own feelings and needs. And that’s where I think — I do feel comfortable as a white guy saying that this is a shitshow because I’ve gotten to see those victories, I see it in my kid’s class, the girl in my kid’s class wears a hidjab, you see it, it is real. This is not an abstract thing about a wall, this is about actual human beings who worked extremely hard to make what they can here and to see that potentially taken away in such a massive way, if that doesn’t move you, you’re not wired right.
Gruber: I saw a thing just yesterday, somebody posted on Twitter — I mean, there’s a thousand of them, maybe there’s a thousand different pictures of the same thing, but somebody posted yesterday a picture of a white guy, maybe somewhere around 27 years old. White guy at a Trump rally the day before the election and he was wearing a shirt that said “Hillary is a bitch #Trump”. So, black letters, “Hillary is a bitch” and then the hashtag, it was in red, “#Trump”. The observation was, can you even imagine how much worse is the misogyny that allows somebody to go out in public with the shirt like that, because what would be the equivalent shirt against Obama? Nobody would go out wearing a shirt with the N-word on it, right? Or — I say nobody, but — maybe in a country of 300 million there’s one guy who would do it, but. This wasn’t that abnormal.
Mann: But you wouldn’t have 46 percent of the population thinking it’s okay.
Gruber: Right, exactly, there is something very different.
Mann: There’s no cultural prohibition against that that’s pushing back to make him go “maybe this isn’t such a good idea”.
Gruber: And it makes me feel personally — even before the — and again, this was like 48 hours ago, this was before the results, but that one tweet and the guy wearing that shirt that said that, it just emphasizes how I feel this whole time, I feel like I need to step backwards and let other people tell me what is going on rather than observe myself. Do you know what I mean?
Mann: I do, you have to shut the fuck up at the times when somebody is telling you something you need to hear and then increasingly I’m coming around to the idea of how important it is to speak up when somebody’s doing the opposite.
Gruber: Exactly. The only time I feel the need to speak up is to you observe — like for example, to say it is to me literally, I’m not exaggerating, unacceptable to wear a shirt that says “Hillary is a bitch”. It’s completely unacceptable. To me it’s as unacceptable as saying “Obama is the N-word”. It’s equivalent. Yet we are not there as a society. So I’m willing to stand up and say that, but in terms of how we got these election result — I just feel like, I don’t know.
Mann: I don’t know either.
Gruber: I’ll tell you what, the other thing too, and I think we’re in the same boat here with, like I said, with two kids who at this point, like when we first had our kids, it felt like they were so far apart in age, right?
Mann: Oh, I know, I know. We were just playing with that — last night Ellie was pulling out some of her stuffies because she was feeling pretty ragged, and she found that little bird Jonas gave her in New Zealand. They were like babies, a little baby and a big baby.
Gruber: But at this point it feels like they are both “about 10 years old”. And that’s a loose approximation. I have to say, honest to god, and we haven’t indoctrinated Jonas with politics, we don’t make him talk about it, we don’t make him think about it. He just absorbs what he picks up. I have to say, he is devastated. He is absolutely devastated. And the kids, again, maybe it’s because we’re in the city and it’s an urban environment, but the kids today are so open-minded.
Mann: Oh, it’s unbelievably different. My daughter does not need to be schooled that it’s okay for gay people to be together. I mean, it’s everywhere, it’s the teachers at her school, that’s where we live, this is life, these are our friends. And it’d be like saying to her, you shouldn’t punch people in the face just because they’re wearing a blue shirt. She’d be like, yeah, yeah, of course not, why did you need to tell me that? “Just so you know, it’s okay if gay people are together.”
Gruber: I’ve said this before and I think you listen to my shows so maybe you’ve heard it but — I think it’s the most amazing thing. Jonas’s school has a club and it’s called GLOW, G-L-O-W, and it stands for “Gay, Lesbian, or Whatever”. And to me, it is the greatest — it’s so much better than LGBT and then they keep — you know, there’s Q and —
Mann: QIA.
Gruber: QI... “Gay, Lesbian, or Whatever” is to me —
Mann: Oh, that’s the actual name?
Gruber: It’s literally the name!
Mann: [laughs]
Gruber: It’s officially the name. I’m not making it up, it is so great.
Mann: And it’s actually weirdly efficient.
Gruber: But he doesn’t think it’s funny or clever at all. But it actually is what everybody of his generation seems to think is like, oh, yeah, whatever you’re into, you’re into, cool. It’s all right.
Mann: Why would that matter to me. It’s like me worrying about you having a green car.
Gruber: But this election result is such a repudiation of that “or whatever” part, right? And the kids get it, there’s no denying it, it’s not just like the video of the Latino girl saying to Hillary Clinton, “I’m worried that my parents are going to be deported”, and Hillary says, “Come here, I’m going to do whatever I can.” It’s all kids. It doesn’t matter what their background is. All kids see it, and I don’t know what to do. It’s the most loss I’ve ever felt as a parent.
Mann: Yeah, I agree with you. It’s so early. I think at a time when you’re not sure what’s going on and you’re feeling at sea, I think the advice to not panic is a good one. It’s hard not to, but I think on some level you’ve kind of got to just feel your way through and know we’ve gotten through a lot of stuff. And we’ll go through a lot of stuff in the future. I don’t have anything inspirational to say here, except that you’ve got to keep your cool, keep doing the right thing and try not to be unkind. Like right now, there’s a lot of people going after each other, and feels like there’s the beginnings of the vibe of fingerpointing and there’s a big vibe — and you know, if that’s your thing, hakuna matata, but if I had one thing to ask, let’s go easy on that for a while. And let’s go easy on tearing each other apart or tearing other people apart and let’s maybe just a have at least a couple-three days where we don’t tell people that they’re feeling wrong incorrectly or they’re feeling bad wrongly. Let people have a time to grieve for whatever it is they’re grieving for, even if you don’t think they deserve it.
Gruber: That’s exactly how I feel. And I don’t want to point any fingers, I really don’t. I just want to say, keep pushing in the right direction. It’s so hard because as mechanical devices, human beings are meant to see everything day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, but the truth is, in the long term what matters is on the years and decades perspective. And just keep pushing in the right direction and it’ll work out, even though this is clearly a setback. But I really do think that it’s not right, counterproductive to start pointing fingers.
Mann: Well, let’s check back in after a while. I’ve got to go pick up my kid and start my holiday party. I have a holiday party, did you get the invitation?
Gruber: [laughs] I’m going to be joining you.
Mann: [rings a bell, laughs]
Gruber: Merlin Mann, where else can people listen to you? You are, in my opinion, probably the single greatest podcaster on the internet.
Mann: Oh, you’re always, you’re always saying that.
Gruber: But I actually mean that.
Mann: Oh, thank you.
Gruber: You have, like, a bizarre gift for being really good on a podcast.
Mann: “Bizarre gift,” declares John Gruber. I don’t know, I don’t fucking know at this point. I don’t have a very good branding. Just go to @hotdogsladies if you want to see me on Twitter. I’m feeling kind of quiet right now. [laughs]
Gruber: Go to @hotdogsladies on Twitter.
Mann: You know what they should do, they should listen to the show I do with John Siracusa. I do a show with John Siracusa called Reconcilable Differences.
Gruber: Never heard of the guy.
Mann: Never heard of it, it’s at relay.fm/rd.
Gruber: Yeah, but who is this guy John Siracusa?
Mann: I don’t know, I think he might be an Italian.
Gruber: [laughs]
Mann: I don’t know if he’s here legally. We’re going to build a biiig, beautiful wall with Napoli, and we’re going to make the Italians pay for it. “Eh, that’s a spicy meatball!”
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My Future Goals
After the Twitter poll tied last week, I decided to do one of the options last week which was a new personal character reveal and save the other tied option for this week which is a few of my future goals. I decided to split the goals into my top 3 goals for this year and then my top 3 lifetime goals. These obviously aren't all of my goals, and I probably have way too many, but there's no point in thinking small! Some of them include dreams like being able to create work for top games studios such as Blizzard Ent, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog, but I also have goals such as visiting certain countries and getting a puppy. So I thought I'd use this post to write about ambitions related to what I'm working on now.
My top goals for 2017.
1. Launch my first Skillshare class.
I currently have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do for this, but I do know that I love sharing what I know with others and while I might not be as experienced as the next person, I am have been doing this professionally for 3 years now, so I do know that I have more experience than someone who is just starting out.
I'm thinking that I'll probably either direct the class towards character design or my digital process, if you have any other suggestions of course then feel free to let me know! I think the next focus for this goal is analysing my own work, figuring out what I'm good at and then working out what I want to put into a class before I take it to the next stages.
2. Get my portfolio games studio ready.
Anyone who knows me will know how much I love games, however, it's taken me a good few years to realise that creating character designs and concept art for games is the direction that I would like to take my work. It took me a quite a while before I realised that I wanted to focus more on characters and monsters, and both of these realisations have both been something I should've picked up on earlier. But that's just one of those things, sometimes you focus so much on creating what you think you should be creating, rather than gravitating to what you've always enjoyed working on, usually the thing you love but think that no one else will be interested in!
If you're a regular reader of my blog or follow me on social media, you might have seen some of the personal work I've been creating over the last few months. I knew that I wanted to create various character designs and environments for this project, but I have now decided to direct this more towards developing the art for it as if I'm designing it for a game. This will result in me having a project on my website that can show what I can do for a games studio and allow me to challenge myself at the same time.
I do already work for games studios on a freelance basis and would love to continue to do so, but in all honesty, I think that I've only just taken my first few steps in this area and the work that I've created recently, which makes me so excited to do more. I'm also looking into applying for in house positions to get that face to face advice and experience.
3. Bullet Journal for the rest of 2017.
I am constantly trying to improve my organisation, productivity and ideas, I find new ways to do this, and although they seem to work for a while, I usually get bored of using that technique and need to find something new, which I think goes for a lot of things in life, we need change. I saw the term bullet journal (if you aren't sure what is is just google bullet journal as it has an official website) getting thrown around a lot in 2016 and just thought it was another trendy thing to do, after looking it up I still didn't get it and just forgot about it. However at the start of 2017, I needed to explore a new way to keep organised so I watched the bullet journal video and gave it a try. It was working OK, but I was going through a really, really rough time at the start of the year, and I just completely forgot about it.
Recently though, I have gotten back on track with trying to organise all of my tasks and projects and the way I did it before just wasn't working. So I found my old bullet journal and carried it on. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and it's been really effective for me personally, allowing me to see what is working and what isn't, what sort of tasks I am capable of getting done in a day and what tasks aren't as important as I thought. This is something I would like to keep in motion for the rest of the year and see how it works out for me.
My top 3 life goals.
1. Build my own house.
Most people will probably read that and be like 'Pffft, no way will that happen' but I am a firm backer of believing in yourself and working hard to achieve what you want. It's not going to happen now, but one day, I will build my own custom house with an indoor pool, home cinema, games room and a bright and inspiring studio. I'm not looking to build a mansion, but I want to live in a home that fits my needs and that will do so for a long time.
At the moment I've not really set anything into action, I have looked into a few things and some big things are happening in my life soon which will hopefully allow me to plan this goal in more depth and figure out the exact steps to achieve it.
2. Have a full time freelance creative career that provides me with an income to support my lifestyle.
This might sound really obnoxious from the way that it's written, I feel like it comes across that I'm making out like I want to be some top dog that earns a ton of money to support my lavish spending. However, all I want is to build a great reputation, doing what I love, earning a good income from that and being able to live happily. I want to have enough money to not have to worry about paying bills or buying food, I want to have plenty of money spare to invest into areas/projects that I believe will make a difference and to be able to pay for treats such as a couple of holidays a year, a nice car and maybe a hot tub in my custom back garden haha!
You only live once, and I don't want to live this life scraping by, and I certainly don't want to be selfish with what I do earn. Two things I value extremely highly in my life is happiness and investing in others whether that's teaching, the investment of money or even just giving someone an hour of your time.
3. Be creatively fulfilled.
You could say that this is too closely related to the previous goal to be a goal of it's own but I don't agree with that. You can make all sorts of money, work for the biggest clients and have a huge social following, but literally none of that will leave you creatively fulfilled if you're not passionate about what you are actually working on. I've mentioned it before but I spent my first year out of University working on quite a few client projects and making decent money, but eventually I came to the realisation that I'd gotten miserable because I was working to make money, not because I loved what I was doing. So I took a good few months out to purely work on personal projects, I've never felt better for it and it led me on a journey to self discovery of what I do love to work on.
If I can work on projects/ideas, whether they're my own or clients, that leave me feeling creatively fulfilled, AND earn a good living from them at the same time, then I know I'm well on my way to living a happy life.
Time is the most valuable commodity we have in life and I certainly don't want to grow old full of regrets!
I hope you guys liked this post, it's a little different and a little scary in all honesty to put my goals out there, but great at the same time because now I feel responsible to you guys to reach them! I don't post as much on social media any more about my goals/ideas etc. because when people reply to that sort of thing and praise you, it gives the false effect that you've already gotten the results of achieving that goal so you don't feel like you need to go for it anymore. So I'm choosing to keep to myself a bit more and focus on my work, but I'm really hoping that sharing these goals with you guys will really encourage me to work hard towards them, and hopefully you guys too!
Thanks for reading!
#illustration#Illustration#illustrator#freelance#freelancing#freelanceillustrator#freelancer#writing#blogging#blog#inspiration#advice#character#character design#characterdesign#charactersheet#monsterdesign#monster#creaturedesign#creature#photoshop#gamedesign#conceptart
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Burnouts, breakdowns and that pesky work/life balance
Last year I bit off more than I could chew with travel. I said yes to too much. In fact, I said yes to almost everything, because isn’t that what we are told we are supposed to be like?
If I had a few days break in my calendar, I’d take on more work. If I had a few weeks, I’d book a trip somewhere. In 2017 I took almost 100 flights around the world. Sometimes I would literally go to a different country, do a job, fly back to New Zealand, come home for a day, and then fly off again somewhere else. It doesn’t take a genius to say that’s not exactly a sustainable lifestyle, and here I am eight years into this blogging thing acting like it’s year one.
We live in a world that idolizes being busy, that you can always being doing more, and I fucking can’t stand it. I’m over it. I want time for myself again.
Is that so selfish?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful for this world I’ve built for myself as a professional travel blogger, but I finally realized a few months ago that I couldn’t keep up with my own life.
My situation had become unbalanced. Travel didn’t excite me anymore. Stress was my constant companion. The pressure to be successful, to be creative all the time, and stay ahead of the game had been eating me alive.
Without even being aware of it, I quickly was slipping into deep unhappiness, along with some very unhealthy routines. By the end of September, I was just really unpleasant to be around. The littlest things would set me off, I’d get really nervous about normal things like flights or meetings, and I’d freak out over stuff that didn’t matter. Change upset me.
I was becoming bitter and negative. And just plain grumpy. Instead of responding to with excitement to things, I would only see the downsides. I used to always hate people who would react negatively to things or focusing on what could go wrong, and I had gone and become one of them!
A routine trip in October sent me spiraling rapidly towards a total breakdown, something I didn’t realize at the time. And then I stopped sleeping. Like I went 3 and half weeks with no sleep. Yes, it’s possible and yes, it’s literally the worst thing ever.
I’ll preface this by saying I’ve always been a really shitty sleeper. I am not quite sure how I got that way, but I imagine my crazy lifestyle of sleeping in different beds all the time, constantly changing timezones, with crazy work hours and an insane caffeine addiction thrown in for good measure over several years might have had something to do with it. I could fall asleep straight away but would wake up after a few hours and never get back to sleep.
On my travels it was getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. Until that point, I literally couldn’t remember the last time I slept a whole night straight without waking up. Unless I was heavily drugged.
About mid-way through last year I started to see different doctors about my sleep issues, usually resulting in being subscribed some kind of strong sleeping pill that I would invariably quickly become addicted to and would knock me out so hard that I would be sluggish for days afterwards, not even being able to drive.
I tried everything, from lavender baths, lavender sprays, melatonin, herbal shit, tons of exercise, yoga, massage, vitamins, less coffee, among many others.
Then I started working on a sleep routine, going to bed at the same time every night, stopping looking at screens hours before bed, finally making up my bed every day (seriously, who has time for that?), changing my diet, cutting out bad stuff like sugar and eating better, having several hours of dedicated “winding down” time before bed. If I woke up, I’d get up, read for a while in the other room, and then try to start the “going to bed” process over again.
Did it work? Nope.
Then I went from sleeping badly to not sleeping at all.
I don’t need to tell you guys that getting no sleep over long periods of time is just terrible. And even when I was so tired I couldn’t see straight, I STILL couldn’t sleep. It was the worst.
It didn’t take long for me to go slip towards the unhinged and have a bit of a breakdown. And no, not like a Britney-style-shave-my-head-in-public kind of breakdown, mine was far less exciting and boring in comparison. I was deep in a some burnouts.
The lack of sleep caused me so much stress that I couldn’t even brush my hair because my scalp and skin hurt so much from tension, and I would get multiple migraines a week that only remedial physio and massage could alleviate. My body physically was in pain constantly from the stress of everything. Somedays I wouldn’t be able to move my head and I’d lose feeling in my feet or hands and my stomach constantly hurt.
Day in and out, I almost stopped being able to function, slipping into a zombie-like state for most of the day. I would have panic attacks and feel like I was going to faint; I’d cry uncontrollably at night after hours of trying to get to sleep unsuccessfully shifting between being hot and cold. I’d even start to drift to sleep and jerk awake frozen in a panic convinced someone was in my house to kill me. I wouldn’t be able to nap during the day but couldn’t get my eyes to focus on anything or even read. I snapped at everyone and was a huge bitch. I’d pick fights with my best friends for no reason.
Who was this person I had become?
After weeks and weeks of trying to convince myself that tonight would be the night I’d get some sleep and then failing, I finally found a different doctor who I connected with and who was interested in actually finding the cause of my insomnia. She was great, quickly diagnosing me with severe anxiety, among other goodies. My sleep was also being impacted my a shoulder injury from earlier last year along with some delightful nose problems I’ve been ignoring since college, a perfect cocktail for insomnia and sleep apnea.
But until she uttered the word “anxiety” it hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be an issue with me.
I was a really problematic kid and was forced into a lot of therapy that I hated as a preteen, and since I’ve grown up, I’ve really worked hard and prided myself on just generally keeping my shit together and being in charge. I’ve had ups and downs over the years like everyone. To spiral like this was really new for me and after failing to pull myself together, I realized I did, in fact, need some help.
I polled in on Instagram Stories to see who else had sleep problems, and thousands of you guys replied with the results being an even fifty – fifty. Obviously it goes without saying that I hate all of you who sleep all night long anywhere without any issue. WHAT’S IT LIKE?! But also it was some weird kind of solace to know that I am not alone in this, that a lot of us are in the same boat.
Not to mention a surprising number of you replied telling me to smoke weed. I feel like we are closer, and I know you all better than ever haha.
Forgoing heavy duty sleeping pills for anxiety meds, I’ve been working hard to get my sleep issues back under control. Whether my anxiety caused my insomnia or vice-versa, or a bit of both, who knows.
I’m not a psychiatrist or anything but I do know myself better than anyone else, and I think if anything last year taught me that I had very easily let myself be overwhelmed with stress and become unbalanced with my work and blogging. Obviously, not a good place to be, and not a place I wanted to be in ever again.
I didn’t quit my job to blog and travel full time to hate it or be unhappy. I suppose in some ways subconsciously I was feeling like I need to say yes to all the trips and events, worried that one day things might be different or feeling a need to feel grateful for this life all the time. Like I had to take advantage while I could or something. But the reality was that I was doing too much.
I was burnt out on my own dreams.
I couldn’t sustain the life I had been living, it was too intense with too much stress for one person to manage. I was overwhelmed. I needed to find time for myself again, time away from computers, work, photography and even traveling, in a way.
I needed to find some balance in my life again.
The scales had become to far tipped in one direction, only focusing on work and success, while personal happiness, and the little things we do for ourselves, even my friends and family, had taken a back-burner in importance. Not cool, Liz.
I never put a hold on or checked my stress, rather just telling myself, yup, you can do this, taking on more and more and more, never stopping, never breathing. By the time I stopped sleeping, I felt like I was drowning. While I could pull myself together publicly when I needed to, it was getting harder and harder.
In some ways I often wonder if my very profound insomnia was my body screaming at me to pay attention and get my shit together. Along with seeing sleep specialists (who, to be honest, I’m still really cynical about) and being on anxiety meds, I’ve also have been focusing my energy on establishing routine and balance back into my life.
I used to never have proper work/life boundaries; I basically never stopped working, ever.
Now I wake up, put on a podcast, and spend half an hour or so making coffee, waking up, sitting outside, ect before beginning my day. I stop working at normal hours, like 5 or 6 in the afternoon, making time to meet up with friends, go for long runs or hikes, swim in the lake, and have a few hours decompressing before bed. No more working til 2am.
I bought Netflix for the first time, and I’ll start watching TV or episodes, something I literally never did before. It sounds stupid to write this all down but for me, I needed to establish a normal routine again. I get facials and manicures just for the hell of it, and reminder to look after myself and a little pampering makes you feel good.
I’ve also been making some big changes on the blog that you might not have noticed yet. I’m still figuring it all out but I’ve finally accepted that I can’t keep doing everything myself, and to be honest, I don’t want to. I’m exhausted in more ways than one.
I’ve been working on building a team of my badass women friends to help me run the blog moving forward and to take some of the weight off my back, in all sorts of ways, for helping with partnerships to boring admin tasks, to taking on expert guest writers in areas that I really want more content on. I’m even going to cut back on how much travel I do moving forward, focusing on only a few major trips that excite me, in the hopes of freeing up more time for me to work on more creative ventures, charities here, and on projects on here that I really want to do that I just haven’t had time for. Oh, and finish my first book!
Oh, and I also want FREE TIME TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! There, I admit it – I’m shouting it for the world to hear. I want time all to myself to just be lazy and not be busy with stuff. To think about things again and also think about sweet fuck all.
It’s like Liz 2.0.
It’s been a hard lesson to learn but I’ve realized rather painfully that I’ve got to look after myself first and foremost, and being constantly busy isn’t good for you, no matter what people say.
It’s been a few months now since everything crashed for me, and I really struggled with publicly admitting my anxiety on here for the first time, feeling like its a real weakness or afraid of being judged. I know that other people are probably in the same boat, especially women, and I know there are a lot of people out there dealing with far worse shit than my anxieties, another reason I’ve held back from sharing this.
But I can’t be the only one that feels there’s a real stigma still around mental health these days, and admitting something like crippling anxiety feels like somehow I wasn’t strong anymore or even worse, that I was a failure. But really, what’s so wrong with NOT being able to do it all?
Perhaps one of the most important things I’ve changed is working on just being a little bit nicer to myself. Instead of focusing on what I could be doing better, focusing on staying positive and being proud of what I’ve already done. I think we could all do with a little more kindness, don’t you?
The road uphill hasn’t been easy, and I’ve slipped off the bandwagon more than once, like having a week of no sleep a few weeks in to the occasional midnight Dominos pizza and wine binge (I mean seriously, there are only so many green smoothies a girl can fucking take). And while my sleep schedule isn’t perfect, it’s definitely a very big step up from where it was a few months ago.
But it’s only really in the past few weeks I’ve noticed that my personality is getting back to normal, where something that used to stress me out doesn’t even bother me anymore, and I that I’m back to being much more relaxed and laid back, and that I’m happier. I’ve just come home from a month traveling again and didn’t fly off the rails. Not to mention I’ve had more than one random acquaintance even say to me that I’m shiny and glowing once again, whatever the hell that means. Disclosure – I’m NOT pregnant.
So what’s the point with all my rambling here? I dunno actually. I suppose to just share with all that life is messy and complicated, and don’t be afraid to not be busy and ask for help when you really need it. I’d like to think there’s strength in admitting your problems in an effort to become stronger down the road.
And I’m really looking forward to being really inspired again!
What do you think? Share below!
The post Burnouts, breakdowns and that pesky work/life balance appeared first on Young Adventuress.
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“Sick”ond Week Here
The second week of school has passed and something I hoped I wouldn’t have to go through happened...I got SICK! (Boohoo).
The moment it turned October was the moment the weather dropped 10 degrees colder. I had made it my mission to try and adjust to how cold it already was when we got here (because to according to UK folk, it was still “Summer weather”). But now, it’s about low 50s and my body couldn’t handle the change, so in short I now have the cold. I truthfully hate it because 1) my nose is runny ALL the time, even in class during lecture. 2) I ran out of NyQuil that I brought from home and had to buy medicine from the pharmacy here, but the brands are all so different and I don’t feel it’s working quite well, and 3) being under the weather just makes me want to sleep all day in my room. Wah.
BUT, other than that, I have to say that I am slowly starting to adjust to the way Uni works around here. For starters, I have to meticulously plan out when I should read what I need to before a class so that I can have some background knowledge of the topic before lecture. It’s truthfully hard to have to force myself to sit down and read for hours, but don’t worry I give myself breaks in between. I have a poster up on my wall where I’ve written down all the due dates of assignments that need to be turned in throughout this term, just so that I can make myself aware of what needs to be done first. It’s a lot of organization and time management, but doing this makes me feel a little bit more control with all the information I have to catch up on. (Wish me luck).
So what else have I done this week? Well, my Norwegian friend Eskil’s family was coming up for the weekend! Excited for him, I asked him to teach me how to say “Hi, nice to meet you” in Norwegian so that I could greet his parents when they came.
He wrote it down for me: “Hei, jeg er en liten pølse.”
(hai, yah-ar-en-lee-ten-poll-suh)
He also taught Erin how to say “Nice to meet you too!”
(Hai, yah-ar-en-lee-ten-loo-pen)
We had practiced it and got it down before they arrived. His parents were staying at a guest accommodation on campus. Me, Erin, and Eskil were going to Asda for a grocery run and his mom was going to come with us. When we finally met his mom, me and Erin greeted her with our newly practiced Norwegian.
She looked at us both oddly, laughing in confusion.
It turns out Eskil DIDN’T teach us how to say “Hi, nice to meet you (too)”. Instead, his mom had said, Eskil taught us how to say “Hi, I’m a hot dog/Hi, I’m the bun.” LOL.
“You shouldn’t trust him, he’s always been a troublemaker.” said Eskil’s mom. Me and Erin couldn’t stop laughing.
What I also did this week was make SPAM MUSUBIS for my flatmates! Of course I had to modify it a bit because the rice here was different and I didn’t necessarily have nori or the correct seaweed to wrap the spam and rice in (I used the snack seaweed packs, so they ended up looking like Spam and rice sandwiches). But nevertheless, I had made spam musubis for my non-hawaiian cultured friends. At first they were a little skeptical because Spam wasn’t really a popular thing to eat, but they ended up actually really liking it! Some thought Spam was made of fish LOL. But I’m glad I got to share a bit of something back home to my diverse range of flatmates. Keep in mind, I had London flatmates, a Norwegian friend, a Poland friend, and an Algerian friend. Now they were all touched by some Hawaiian cultured goodness.
Speaking of food, here’s what I’ve been doing to keep myself alive since I don’t really know how to cook for myself haha! I bought a bunch of meal prep containers before arriving to London and decided I would meal prep the next 3 months being here. I’ll admit there were times I’ve gotten a little lazy having to cook for a week’s worth of food so I’ve resulted in microwavable meals, but for the times I do get to cook for myself I feel really proud! This weeks prep? Baked salmon and spinach.
What other things can I update you all about? Well me and the UH fam are going to Shakespeare’s Globe tomorrow to watch a live play. I mean, it’s got to be such a London thing to do here, watch a play in a live theater like how they did back in the old days. The funny thing though is that the play is 3 hours long, and we bought tickets to the show where we’ll be standing to watch the play. LOL. The prices were either pay a whole lot for a seat, or pay 5 quid to stand up close to the stage. I’m hoping my legs will be fine for the duration of it.
Another fun fact? I joined Judo! Haha, I had my first beginner practice last Wednesday night and we got to learn simple take downs. It reminded me of how I used to wrestle in high school, so I figured it’d be a fun thing to be a part of while I’m here.
Well, I best be going to bed. Hope I overcome this sickness so I can enjoy myself again!
Cheerio,
Sheena
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