Off-the-Cuff Smörgåsbord

Episode Transcript
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Ernest (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share
qualitative and quantitativeperspectives on products to help
you make better.
My name is Ernest Kim, and I'mjoined by my friend and co-host,
Joachim Groeger.
Hey, Joachim.
How's it going?

Joachim (00:18):
I am.
Well, I think we're both guiltyof having hit record in what, I
dunno, three, four months now.
I feel, I feel bad, but I alsofeel good that we're back.
So mixed mixture of feelings.
Yeah.

Ernest (00:35):
Yep, I think you're right.
Uh, well, this is episode 27,our second episode of 2025.
Uh, and, uh, given that we'rerecording this on June 15th, it
tells you just how.
Un prolific we've been this yearand our sincere apologies for
that.
But, uh, we are back and we'regonna do our best to exceed our

(00:57):
current rate of production, ofabout an episode per quarter.
on that, with just about threemonths having passed since our
last episode, we thought itmight be best to ease back into
the swing of things with an offthe cuff conversation.
Uh, and um, as Joachim and Iwere, uh, talking through sort
of the mix of topics we wereinterested in talking about

(01:17):
today, Joachim offered up thetitle of Off the Cuff
Smorgasbord, which seemed quitefitting.

Joachim (01:24):
It, it just rolls off the tongue, that's why.

Ernest (01:28):
So I think we're gonna run with that and, uh, just kind
of talk about a, a mix ofthings.
But first, I guess, how have youbeen?

Joachim (01:36):
Ooh.
It's been a busy time, I have tosay, and the world has been
getting crazier.
So I feel, I feel like we'vealways been able to have a, I
don't wanna call it apartitioning, like we've allowed
the influences of the outsideworld and reality of the state
of the world to, to bleed intothings that we talk about.

(01:56):
But we always focus very much onthings.
But I feel like it's gonna getharder to those things out,

Ernest (02:04):
All right.

Joachim (02:05):
So I feel like there are little things that are
happening in, in industry, inproducts, and they reflect a
bigger thing and an even biggerthing.
What about you, Ernest?
I mean, yeah.
What about you?
How is it or everything?

Ernest (02:18):
Oh, you know, uh, I guess I'd say I can't complain.
Um, I think absolutely I feelthe same.
It's, it's very, it's, um, tothe point now where it's
impossible to separate thingsthat are happening in the world
with the sorts of things thatwe, um, usually talk about.
And I think that's gonna comeacross as we, um, kind of

(02:38):
continue on with our topics.
This episode.
Uh, one thing I've done started,that's helped me I guess, a bit
with managing some of this, isthat I've, um, taken up running
again after a very long hiatusfrom the sport.
And that's, um, been veryhelpful for me.
Uh, and there's a, a few reasonswhy I stopped running for, gosh,

(03:04):
it's been almost 20 years.

Joachim (03:06):
Whoa.
Okay.
Like that's a real absence.
My

Ernest (03:09):
Yeah.
Uh, and then a few reasons whyI've come back to it, but, um,
uh, it's, it's been great andit's part of the reason why it's
been, um, challenging to, tofind time to record as well,
because it can be pretty timeconsuming.

Joachim (03:24):
Running is one of those things that I guess you only
really get the full benefit of.
That run's high when you starthitting those longer times,
right?
Like it has to, you have to getpast at least 30 minutes, 40
minutes, 15 minutes to reallyget where people get into the
runner's side.

Ernest (03:39):
Right?

Joachim (03:40):
runner's high once, and that's like 15 years ago or
something like that, and I nevergot it back again.
It was such a rare, it was theone time I was running, I ran an
hour and then I thought, oh myGod, I could go another 30
minutes.
And so I did and, and then neveragain.
Never again.
That was it one time.

Ernest (04:00):
Once was enough.

Joachim (04:01):
Yeah, I think that was it.
My body said, you've, you'veexperienced it now.
Now get on with your life.

Ernest (04:08):
Um, well in terms of our discussion, how about we start
with watches?
Uh, in our last episode, uh, inwhich we discussed AI nonsense
as we titled it, uh, amongst afew other topics, we promised
that we would devote a futureepisode to the annual Watches
and Wonders trade show that tookplace in Geneva in early May.

(04:31):
And so this seemed like, uh, asgood a time as any to deliver on
that promise.
Um, Joachim, did any of the newsoutta Geneva catch your
interest?

Joachim (04:39):
Yeah, I was, we, we discussed the last episode.
We said, oh, why don't we do a,a whole episode about watches
and wonders?
so I started thinking about.
The whole thing in general, likewatches luxury items.
and I tried to formulate a bigthesis about is, what does the

(04:59):
current state of watches andwonders tell us about the state
of the world., And I reallycouldn't, I couldn't figure
anything out, to be honest.
I kept coming back this bookcalled Cosmos by Don Dlo, um,
which is from the early twothousands.
Um, so the book is interestingbecause it's about this

(05:20):
incredibly wealthy, we thinkquantitative trader who's made
billions of dollars.
the, the setup of the story isthat he's riding in his limo to
get to a haircut.
That's what he wants to do, andhe has to cut through Manhattan
to do that.
Um, but along the way, you know,people from his world and his
company hop into the car andhave conversations with him, He

(05:42):
has a, I think it's hisphilosopher in residence that he
calls his chief of theory, whichI just, number one, the, to me,
that's the job I want.
I just want chief of theory, youknow, that's so good.
But, um, she's basically hisphilosopher in residence and
challenges him in all kinds ofthings and.
this section in it that juststicks in my head every time I

(06:05):
think about watches and wonder.
I'll read a little bit of it.
It's, it's quite a little bit ofan extended sequence, but
basically she hops into the carand she starts challenging the
main character, Eric, about hisconsumption habits.
Um, and so she starts off withall wealth has become wealth for
its own sake.
There is no other kind ofenormous wealth.
Money has lost its narrativequality the way painting did

(06:28):
once upon a time.
Money is talking to itself.
And property follows.
Of course, the concept ofproperty is changing day by day.
The enormous expenditures thatpeople make for land and houses
and boats and planes.
This has nothing to do withtraditional self assurances.
Okay?
Property is no longer aboutpower, personality, and command.
It's not about vulgar display ortasteful display because it no

(06:49):
longer has weight or shape.
The only thing that matters isthe price you pay.
So I, that just always stuckwith you.
She starts challenging him, themain character about like, you
bought these things, not becausethey're good or because they're
bad, but because of the pricetag.
And I feel like that is, as Iwas looking at stuff from
watches and wonders, I wasreally having trouble getting

(07:13):
excited about stuff, you know?
So we all know that watches arealready ridiculous anyway, but
it feels like the, thedistribution of the price points
has shifted up again and.
The section of the, uh, thewatch market that is more
mid-tier.

(07:34):
And now mid-tier is like over 10K, right?
There's nothing, there's nothingbelow 10 K anymore.
Everything starts at 10 K

Ernest (07:41):
Right.

Joachim (07:41):
and then the, the next tier is like 19 K.
got very hard for me to getexcited, I think.
Um, yes, there were sometechnical innovations.
Rolex released the land dweller.
Is that the name?
Is

Ernest (07:55):
Yes.

Joachim (07:55):
I forgot.
Yeah, so Rolex released the landdweller, which has a new
escapement in it.
Very fancy, very nice.
I mean, truly does it matter?
Like we don't wear these thingsfor the quality of the
timekeeping.
We wear them for some otherreason.
we also got new IWCs, engineers,which I was so excited to see.

(08:17):
I was so excited to see allblack watches and they had these
ceramic all black engineers thatwere on display.
It looked incredible.
starting price.
I mean, I don't get it.
Like what is going on?
So I, I come back to that piece,which is like, we're just, the
watch world is compressing itsprice distributions to be higher

(08:40):
and higher catering to an evermore elite clientele.
uh, you know what comes of it?
I don't know.
The one positive side that I seethough, and I've been trying to
like, about these things, aboutwealth distributions being very
skewed and very unequal.
Inequality per se is not aproblem.

(09:00):
But it's the extent and theextreme, this degree of
inequality that's so crazy now.
I had a conversation with, mywife, we were talking about, I
always love saying this becauseit's very controversial.
I say, well, you should tax thewealth away.
Compress the income distributionso that things get a little less
crazy.
then you take the money that hasbeen taxed and you just burn it.

(09:24):
Just set fire to it, you know,because it's too tempting for
governments to have that moneybecause they'll do dodgy things.
It's just, just too muchtemptation in the system.
And then my wife counted with,well, you know, buying watches
is kind of like that, isn't it?
And I thought, yeah, actually itreally is.
Like, it's such a stupidexpense.
And when you see the UR mealsthat cost, you know, a million

(09:47):
dollars, you go, that'sactually, yes.
Buy more of those, burn yourmoney on that because the
negative consequences for therest of the world are very, very
limited.
But they does, it does erodeyour wealth, you know, quite
quickly if you buy a few millionof those, you'll be done.
So, from that perspective, maybethe watch industry unwittingly
is providing us with a wealthtax of some kind and maybe

(10:10):
things will be better.
I don't know.
But kind of where I was coming.
So I, I know we would, normally,we talk about the specific
watches, but I was finding itvery difficult to get excited
and, maybe that is part of likethe reality of the world
creeping in to something that isso, um, you know, watches and
wonders appearing in the middleof 2025 when so many terrible

(10:33):
things are happening.
It's quite interest.
Interesting.
It was a interesting to see theinfluences go on about.
Watches as if nothing else wasreally going on in the world,
you know?
So, yeah.
What's your take on this?
Is yours more focused on thespecific launches that got you
motivated or were you seeing akind of dissonance with, with

(10:56):
what they were doing and wherethe world was at?

Ernest (10:59):
I had a similar reaction and I actually think, um, the
show was affected in that, if Iremember right, the tariffs,
the.
Trump terrorists were announcedeither the day before or the day
that the show started.

Joachim (11:13):
Yeah.

Ernest (11:13):
So, um, it cast the pall on the, the show as a whole.
It was, you know, certainly a, ahuge topic of conversation there
from what I've heard.
And then obviously, uh, amongstthose, watching it from, um, the
outside as well.
But one quick thing, the, um,that kind of excerpt from
Cosmopolis that you mentionedand kind of your follow up, uh,

(11:38):
thought about just burning theex excess capital, it, it
brought to mind, uh, thisamazing.
Interview I read a while back,uh, it was of, uh, the interview
was of, uh, an academic andauthor named W David Marks, and
it was conducted by Derek Guy.
Marks is an American academicand author who's been based in

(12:01):
Tokyo for over a decade now.
His primary focus is theintersection of fashion and
culture and with a particularfocus on men's wear.
And Derek Guy is a CanadianAmerican writer who also focuses
on men's wear and is probablybetter known as his online norm
de plume, which is die workwear.
He's, uh, uses that same handleon, uh, x and, uh, threads and,

(12:24):
um, you know, all over.
And so, um, this interview waspublished in 2023 on a menswear
focused website called, put Thison.
And we'll, we'll share a link tothe interview as well, but I,
I'll just share one quickexcerpt, which is related to
what you were just talkingabout.
So, uh, uh, Derek Guy asks thisquestion, he says.
Work wear was historicallyassociated with low status

(12:47):
groups such as day laborers, notold money elites.
Why would people in theprofessional class try to adopt
the cultural aesthetic of daylaborers, which in your rubric
are labeled as having lowstatus?
And so Marx replies with thefollowing.
This is one of the reasons whywe have to be careful with how
we think about status.
200 years ago, high status justmeant wealth.

(13:09):
The 20th century is interestingbecause we started to
romanticize low status groupsthat didn't have much material
wealth, but seemed to beauthentic.
Quote unquote, elites used thestyles from and knowledge about
marginalized groups to elevatetheir own status position in
society.
This also happened with workwear, but it's important to

(13:30):
recognize that the aesthetic isalways based in the wardrobe of
an idealized laborer from aprevious economic era.
People are rarely copying theactual work clothes used today
in society.
Fashion, fetishizes, industriallabor at a time when service
jobs are ascendant andindustrial labor is in decline,
end of quote.

(13:50):
So I thought that was a reallyinteresting observation.
Um, and kind of offers a littlebit of a framework on how to
interpret some of these thingswe're seeing where, you know,
um, this, uh, kind ofreemergence of watches, um, as
being maybe, uh, an expressionof this fetishization of this

(14:12):
previous era, this sort ofidealized era.
Right.
which I think is just such aninteresting thing because this
whole work war thing is sointeresting to me as well.
Like, why are

Joachim (14:24):
yeah.

Ernest (14:25):
rich people adopting work wear?
Just seems so.
Yeah,

Joachim (14:29):
And we, and also like military garb, all these things
kind of persist in this funnyway.

Ernest (14:34):
right.
Uh, but you know, as heobserves, it's always of this
previous time, you know, they'renot celebrating the workers of
today,

Joachim (14:45):
that's right.

Ernest (14:45):
right?
It's always of this previouskind of rosier time, I guess.
Um, and, and it just, it, itmade me think about is that the
same role that watches areplaying,

Joachim (15:01):
Hmm.

Ernest (15:02):
in this time?
Um, and you know, it does tallywith the fact that the most
popular watches are toolwatches,

Joachim (15:10):
Yes.

Ernest (15:11):
right?
Quote unquote tool watches,which, you know,

Joachim (15:13):
Yeah,

Ernest (15:14):
how much can a$10,000 watch be a tool watch?
Um, so that's a bit, bit of atangent, but I, I, overall, I
came away with a very similarsort of feeling of, um.
You know, not, not being able tobe particularly excited about
anything that came out of theshow with one exception.

(15:35):
Um, and that was from Nomos, my,probably my favorite brand.
Um, and it's because it, theyreally do go against what you
talked about, this trend towardseverything just getting so
expensive, you know, you know,mid-market being now$10,000, but
they introduced a watch calledthe, uh, Club Sport Neomatik

(15:57):
Worldtimer.
And, um, you know, this isinsane to say that this is an, a
reasonably priced watch, but itretails for, uh,$4,720 us.
But that is, you know, in thisworld actually a pretty
reasonable offering for whatit's doing.
So, um, again, and also heretoo, a lot of people argue that

(16:19):
it's not truly a worldtimer and,you know, whatever.

Joachim (16:22):
What is it about World Timer watches?
There's something about Worldtimer watches where everyone has
an opinion about how this is notreally a world timer watch,

Ernest (16:30):
Yeah,

Joachim (16:30):
keep track of two time zones, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway,

Ernest (16:33):
yeah.

Joachim (16:34):
about this complication that gets people very motivated,
and I don't very, is a beautifulwatch though, but, sorry.
You should continue on this.

Ernest (16:41):
no, no.
But so, you know, it's great isthat it's, it's a watch that,
uh, enables you to track timeacross multiple time zones very
easily.
Uh, nomos has offered world timeand multi-time zone watches for
many years now.

Joachim (16:57):
Yeah.

Ernest (16:57):
But what's different about this one is that it does
come in a much more sporty formfactor.
Historically, their world timewatches have been a little bit
more dressy.
Their, uh, Zurich, uh, Weltzeithas been kind of the best known
of their world timers when it'sa very dressy sort of watch.
Beautiful, but very dressy.
So this one is much more sportsporty.
Uh, the, the new, uh, club sportis, as the name suggests, their

(17:21):
sport is model line.
And what's really interesting isthat one of the.
Uh, most common critiques ofnomos is that this measurement
that watch geeks called lug tolug, which is to say just the
distance between the top end ofthe lugs.
Uh, you know, if you're lookingat your watch, the very top of

(17:41):
the, you know, the arms of thewatch and then to the very
bottom of the arms of the watch,um, that total length
measurement, nomos watches tendto be quite long in that
measurement.
Uh, but in this case, they, um,significantly reduced that lu to
lug.
So the, the, diameter is 40millimeters, which is quite

(18:05):
small for this sort of, uh, acomplication, the world timer.
And then that lug to lugmeasurement is 48 millimeters,
which is very reasonable for thesize of the watch and actually
quite a bit shorter than all ofthe other incarnations of the.
Club sport in this size.
So they seem to have taken thatcritique to heart, uh, Nomos.

(18:26):
And it's also only 9.9millimeters thick, which is
very, very thin

Joachim (18:31):
Yeah.

Ernest (18:31):
for this complication.
So, um, I just, it, well, andthen beyond all the numbers,
it's also just really fun.
The way it's executed is veryfun and playful.
It's, uh, offered in two.
Colorways, I guess you mightcall it, um, that are part of
the kind of permanentcollection.
Uh, and they're both very nice.

(18:52):
But in addition to those two,um, standard colorways, nomos
offered six limited editioncolorways.
What's great is that they'renot, uh, upcharged, they're the
same price and there're thesejust really fun combinations of
colors.
There's this really vibrantyellow, an orange, a red, um, a

(19:13):
very nice subdued blue.
So, um, really having fun andoffering something that's really
fun and at, you know, again, inthis world, an accessible price
point.
So that's the one watch thatreally stood out to me as, um,
kind of standing apart from, youknow, a lot of the other things
that you mentioned, which wereall very much, uh, in this

(19:33):
higher price point.
I don't know if I mentionedthis, but, um, nomos has it, it
can be a little bit difficult tofind in person in the US in, in
Germany, the, the top sellingwatch brand.
But, um, in the US they're notquite as widely distributed.
Uh, but they recently opened up,um, a showroom in New York.

(19:55):
And, uh, when I was, it, itjust, I think they had opened it
up like just a week or twobefore I was in New York, late
last year.
And, um, you have to make anappointment, but, uh, it's, it's
very straightforward and I wasable to visit and it was just
such a great experience.
Like, to your point of knowingwho they are,

Joachim (20:13):
Yeah.

Ernest (20:15):
everything about the experience was true to the
brand.
It was very accessible.
The staff were so friendly.
They, you know, reallyencouraged me to try everything
on, you know,

Joachim (20:26):
Nice.

Ernest (20:26):
there was no sense of, um, you know, needing to buy
anything.
Uh, and this was just before theChristmas holidays and.
They, um, uh, sent me home withlike a bunch of really cool
little, little knickknacksgifts.
Uh, you know, there was acatalog and their catalogs are

(20:47):
really beautiful.

Joachim (20:48):
Yeah.

Ernest (20:48):
uh, there was this really fantastic little like,
um, what do you call it?
I forget.
It's like those old classic toyswhere you would look in into a,
uh, a device and you'd see animage, you know, you'd have to
put it up against the light,

Joachim (21:03):
Mm-hmm.

Ernest (21:03):
and then you could kind of hit a button and it would
switch between a bunch ofdifferent images.

Joachim (21:07):
Oh, I know what you mean.

Ernest (21:08):
Yeah, I forgot what that's called.
But, uh, it, it was in the formof an old fashioned tv and the
images were all images of, uh,the nomos, um, manufacture in,
uh, Glashutte.

Joachim (21:20):
Oh, very

Ernest (21:21):
yeah.
And, you know, little thingslike that.
It was just such a awesomeexperience.
Um, so yeah, I, I absolutelyagree that I feel like they're,
they're a brand who reallyunderstands who they are, but
also understands the moment.
Um, one last thing I'll mention.
I think a brand that reallymissed the moment, I think too
is Tag Heuer, they, uh,re-released their F1 collection

(21:45):
of watches.

Joachim (21:46):
that's right.
Yeah.

Ernest (21:47):
And, uh, for people who aren't necessarily watch nerds,
like, I don't remember whenthis, the original F1 collection
came to market, but it was like,you know, decades ago,

Joachim (21:57):
Yeah.

Ernest (21:58):
they were really cheap and cheerful watches, you know,
like kind of like the equivalentof a GShock back then.
There were analog.
But, uh, quartz based plasticcases, really fun, super
colorful watches, and, you know,very, very affordable.
Um, you know, even back thenwould've been very affordable.

(22:18):
I forget, you know, off the topof my head what the prices were,
but they were meant to be cheapand cheerful.

Joachim (22:23):
Yeah.

Ernest (22:23):
And, you know, there, you know, has been this sort of
cult following for them, uh,that's built over the years.
And so a lot of people were veryexcited that TAG was bringing
them back and so they introducedthem.
But I think when people saw theprice tag, which is I think, uh,
1900 US for Quartz poweredwatches, it just, all the air

(22:45):
went out of the room, you know,because it was just like, man,
you guys totally missed themoment here.

Joachim (22:51):
Exactly.

Ernest (22:52):
Well.
So let's go from watches tosomething that I think you're a
lot more excited about, Joachim,which was the surprise reveal of
a new American car maker calledSlate Auto, that happened just
about a month ago.
Um, can you talk about Slate andwhat has you so excited about
it?

Joachim (23:09):
Yeah, I mean, they just snuck out of nowhere.
They've been operating instealth mode for a while it
feels like.
But I guess if you had, maybe ifyou were attention to
automotive, uh, trends andindustry news, I mean, maybe you
would've realized to thesepeople, the people who've made
this company are known, they'vebeen in the industry before.
Some have been like head ofdesigns at Volvo, so there's

(23:30):
pedigree at this company.
It's Bezos backed, which made mekind of not so happy.
But anyway, the point is these,the product is something quite
interesting.
So.
If the federal incentives forelectric cars remain in place,
this will be an electric carthat will cost under$20,000, is,

(23:51):
you know, unbelievable nowadays.
Like everything is just goingcrazy price wise.
And so, they've managed to do alot of, make, made a lot of
clever choices here to get theprice point to be that level.
So it is just a pickup truck.
It's not super big.
Um, and it has a couple oftricks up its sleeve.

(24:14):
It's so you can change the shapeof this little pickup truck.
it can be turned into a smallSUV, or just a, like a, like a
Range Rover style, SUV with likea hatchback feel to it.
Or it can look like an oldfashioned jeep.
It's, it has this very retrofeel to it very clever.

(24:38):
but.
Then there are a couple of otherchoices that I thought were
really, really interesting.
So no electric windows, again,you're going to bring back the
little turn down the windowthing.
built in screens, entertainmentsystem.
All that they have is a dock anda built in speaker system, of
course.
But you put your device on thisdock and it.

(25:02):
That's your screen.
You wanna put an old iPad inthere?
That's your new screen.
It makes sense.
We use our phones foreverything.
I mean, what is Apple CarPlay?
What is Android car?
Uh, what is, sorry?

Ernest (25:13):
Yeah.
Android Auto.
Yeah.

Joachim (25:15):
Auto.
I mean, they're just screenmirroring essentially.
So why not just put the damnthing on the, on there and be
done with the job, which I thinkI might have asked for in a
previous episode.
So they stripped out that theystripped out the screens.
And then they started doingother things as well that I
thought was really interesting.
The car only comes in one colorand they've, um, built it out of

(25:38):
this material that is beentreated.
So it's as if it has beenpainted, but they don't paint
it.
It's just been fabricated fromscratch to be, uh, resistant to
all of the elements.
So as a result of that, theydon't have a paint shop in their
assembly line, which is a huge,huge expense and, uh, a huge
pollutant.
So they got rid of that.

(25:59):
Um, so if you want to change thecolor of your car, no problem.
They've optimized it to bereputable.
So you can go to a dealer whenthey have their dealer network
and they'll wrap the car for youin any color that you want, you
buy the wrapping kit and you doit yourself.
It's supposed to be relativelystraightforward for, uh, a
person to do it themselves.
And then similarly, you canchange the shape of the car

(26:21):
yourself with some tools.
It's just a lot of clever littlechoices that I think, are just
what we need right now in thismoment of over the top
everything.
So they have core things thatyou'd always want in a car, like
safety features, a, b, s, allthe stuff that you'd want NAC,

(26:42):
then all of the other thingsthat feel superfluous are just
taken out.
this thing is a hardy littletruck and it has, know, the
same, um, truck Bay area as someof the bigger trucks.
So Maverick, uh, ChevySilverado, all of those things

(27:03):
which are like twice the size,bigger monstrosities, they get
the same damn si size andeverything in a smaller truck.
Um, so I think there's just beena lot of, what I've always asked
for from cars is like, stripstuff out.
don't, you know, most peopledon't want this stuff, but of
course.
That's where the margin comesfrom.

(27:23):
Like you put in these things andthen you can charge a bigger
margin on a car.
Slate is such a counterpoint tothis.
It's they're doing exactly whatI want.
So that's what it is.
I'm just very happy that itfeels like I've been heard and
someone has said, you know, itis possible to strip down a car
and it is possible to actuallymake it economical, to produce,

(27:45):
environmentally friendly toproduce, because you're getting
rid of a lot of crap that youdon't need, like paint shops.
and you're making it modular sopeople feel a connection to
their car again, that they ownit, and then they can control it
and they can do things.
So very, it's very nice to seesomeone trying to do that.
It don't know how many peopleare gonna get excited about
this.

(28:05):
I do think from a broaderperspective, we do need to move
back into that world because weare wasting so many resources on
very, very foolish things.
And um, that excess is costingus something.
It's just not, we're notinternalizing it, but it will
come back.
We're wasting computer chips,we're wasting plastics and
batteries and all of this stuff,LCD screens for nonsense.

(28:26):
So nice to see that least thereis a model of an alternative
that could be built.
So that's, that's what got meexcited about this compared to
everything else that's, youknow, on the road.
So have you seen, did you followalong what the, when they
announced their stuff or wereyou just catching up recently?

Ernest (28:44):
No, no, I did catch it, uh, when it was announced, and
it does seem like, um, it caughteveryone by surprise.
Even the automotive press, itseemed like most people were,
were hadn't, you know, had noidea what was happening.
So it was pretty impressive thatthey were able to get to the
level of development thatthey've, um, attained, uh,
completely in secret, which ispretty remarkable.

Joachim (29:05):
yeah.

Ernest (29:05):
and I, I think.
I have high hopes for theirsuccess because of the price
point, because of

Joachim (29:11):
Yeah.

Ernest (29:11):
this time we're in.
I do think that, um, there's abig, uh, market and, you know,
growing market of people who,you know, are willing to forego
some of those, uh, bells andwhistles for, um, el more
affordable price point.
And those things likeeliminating the paint, but
making it, um, easy to wrap, Ithink is so clever because

(29:33):
that's just building on existingbehaviors.
Um, you know, one thing thatstruck me, I, uh, I've been kind
of a fan of Rivian and it's not,I don't think that well known,
but they, the, the currentversions of the R one T truck
and R one SSUV externally, theylook the same as the original

(29:55):
versions, but.
They've, uh, uh, I think it waslate last year, they introduced
it like a second gen update,

Joachim (30:01):
mm-hmm.

Ernest (30:02):
uh, where the, a lot of the guts have been updated even
though they, externally theylook the same.
But one of the things theyRivian mentioned was that as
part of this update, they wereable to reduce the amount of
cabling in the cars by 1.6miles.

Joachim (30:17):
Whoa.

Ernest (30:17):
So, you know, there's still quite a bit of cabling,
but you know, to imagine howmuch cabling there was total.
When they're able to cut it downby 1.6 miles and, uh, 44 pounds
just of, of cabling, ofelectrical cabling.
So, you know, really speaks the,to the amount of complexity and,
you know, not only is itwasteful, those are all things
that can go wrong,

Joachim (30:38):
Yes.

Ernest (30:39):
which is why so many.
Um, I think I, I heard recentlythat, uh, EVs generally have the
lowest, uh, customersatisfaction because

Joachim (30:47):
Hmm.

Ernest (30:47):
there's all these little bells and whistles that have a
tendency to, to break.
So I think that, um, there'sjust a lot of, uh, of wisdom in
this approach they're taking.
I, and I think there's someother interesting things, um, in
similar, along similar linesthat are coming out that I'm
really excited about.

(31:08):
we might have talked about this,but Kia a couple years ago
unveiled this new, um, highlymodular.
Um, EV platform for commercialvehicles like commercial vans
and trucks.
Uh, and so, you know, they couldtake the same exact platform
very easily, turn it into atruck or a van.
Um, but la late last year, theyalso showed an rv.

(31:33):
A consumer, uh, focused RV builton that same platform.
And I, I think it looksfantastic.
We'll include a link in the shownotes to it, but, um, it's said
to be, uh, because of itsmodular nature, very, um, uh,
pretty affordable.
I mean, I guess we'll see thefirst versions, the commercial,

(31:54):
uh, versions of the vehicles aresupposedly gonna come out this
year in Korea and Europe.

Joachim (31:59):
Oh

Ernest (31:59):
Um, so it's not just a concept now, it's, it's gonna be
real pretty soon.
So that one's prettyinteresting.
Um, the, uh, RV concept theyshowed is called the weak
weekender, but with no vowels,which is kinda lame, but.

Joachim (32:12):
incredible.
Wow.
Talk about like being a littlebit late to the party,

Ernest (32:15):
Yeah, exactly.
But I think the car itself waspretty cool.
Not just, uh, aesthetically, butthey, they had some really
interesting ideas aroundfunctionality, uh, and
modularity within the caritself, uh, to make it much more
useful.
Um, and then, uh, we may havetalked about this, uh, in a
previous episode as well, butToyota, a few years back also
unveiled this modular commercialvehicle platform, um, based on

(32:39):
the Hilux, which is kind of thislegendary pickup truck that's
not available in the US but isavailable, um, in a lot of
markets outside the us.
Uh, there was, there's for topgear fans, there's that, uh.
You know, amazing episode wherethey tried to break a Hilux and
they couldn't do it.
But, um, so it's cool to seethat, uh, this seems to be in

(33:02):
the water.
This idea of trying to deliversomething that is a little bit
more affordable, that is alittle bit more, more modular
to, um, work for some a, a widerspectrum of needs, uh, and is a
little bit more bare bones.
'cause all these concepts are alittle bit more bare bones as
well.
So, um, hopefully this is a signof more things to come.
And, uh, do you did, um, uh,they mentioned a release dates

(33:28):
late auto

Joachim (33:29):
I think they said, uh, last quarter of next year

Ernest (33:33):
Wow.

Joachim (33:34):
that was the goal.
Um, so see if, uh, if all of theoptimizations to make this as
straightforward to put togetherhold true.
I hope so.

Ernest (33:45):
Yeah.
Oh, that'd still be reallyexciting.
Um, I don't know if you want totalk at all about, uh, apple's,
uh, developer, uh, event thathappened last week.
I,

Joachim (33:55):
Yeah, yeah, let's go there.
Let's get, let's get Apple intothe room.
I do feel like this was a goodexample of just typical business
opposed to product innovation.
Um, uh, one, one of the bigthings, um, the thing, one of
the things that caught my eyewas liquid glass, which is the
new visual language forinterfaces.

(34:16):
So I stumbled on a substack poston, uh, hacker News, which is
why Combinators, like read it,clone for specifically
technology news.
And this one was placed quitehigh, I just read through it and
I'm not even sure who thisperson is.
The substack was only puttogether like 16 days ago.
But, um, here a couple oftidbits that they put together

(34:38):
about liquid glass.
so they said Apple doesn't justchange design for aesthetic
reasons.
Each major visual overhaul hasproceeded a fundamental shift in
how we interact with technology.
Skew morphic design made sensewhen touchscreens were new.
design emerged when users hadinternalized touch interactions
and no longer needed heavyvisual scaffolding.

(34:59):
Um, and then they continue.
So I.
They talk about liquid glasses,technological complexity.
So the real time blurs, dynamictransparency effects and
contextual lighting requiresserious GPU horsepower and
optimized rendering pipelines.
It's the kind of feature thatruns silky smooth on an iPhone
with apple silicon, but mightstart on competing hardware.

(35:22):
creates what economists call acomplimentary good effect.
The new design language makesapple's hardware more valuable
by showcasing capabilities thatother competitors can't easily
match.
similar to how retina displayscreated a virtuous cycle.
High resolution screens made iOSlook better, which drove demand
for Apple devices, whichjustified the cost of those
expensive displays on and on andon and on.
So this person's very much like,Ooh, isn't this amazing?

(35:45):
I was, this is another moment oflike, where I look at this and
go like, this is just excess.
this.
This is why.
Why do I need to have GPUhorsepower to render an
interface?
Then now moving to this newlevel of design with reflections
and refractions and lightsinteracting with these surfaces
as if they're real.

(36:05):
We all understand that this isin preparation for augmented
reality, et cetera.
Great.
But this is using computationalpower for something that.
It's fundamentally not reallyadding very much to the actual
experience in my view.
So we have GPUs everywhere.
The phones are so expensive now.
You need to have a justificationfor that thing to exist and to
run.

(36:25):
And, and this idea that thissomehow highlights Apple's
hardware, like surely the wholepoint of having it in there is
that it should be self-evident.
Why it's better to have that,why do you have to now ex, you
know, use more of it in a visualway?
It just sounds foolish and, andvery excessive, you know?
You just have to burn throughGPUs to prove something.
I don't get it.
it reminded me also actually ofearly discussions about GUIs

(36:49):
graph user interfaces back inthe day.
And, um, there's a reallyinteresting little bit from
Spectrum from which is IEE, theInstitute of Electrical
Engineering or something that,that's like a academic
organization for electricalengineers, computer scientists
that's been around forever.
And they have a little blogabout graphical user interfaces
and they were discussing, um,something as simple as windows

(37:12):
overlapping each other, which wenow take for granted.
So I can drag a window across,and then it's kind of covering
the other window.
back in the day, that wasn'tobviously true.
When they would do it, theywould just kind of tile them
back.
So it would look like a stack ofwindows, and then you would kind
of see the, the headings of thewindows, and you could just
like, get into that window, say,okay, that's the window I

(37:32):
wanted.
But when you started likeoverlapping them and and
obscuring, uh, components fromthe previous window, you would
then have to have full awarenessof where this new window on top
of it sits.
What the, what's behind thebehind it, what's being
displayed on there, and how itgets obscured.
It's a ton of computationalpower.
And really the question is, isthat really useful?

(37:55):
Like, is that I, I don't, when Ithought about it for a second, I
was like, actually I just needto know what is in the window.
I don't need to know that.
Like half the text is cut offand the cut, you know, we've
taken that for granted and wethen again believe that was,
that is necessary.
That is the normal state.
And I don't, I don't know ifthat's necessarily true,
especially when you think abouthow Apple does the iOS thing,

(38:19):
the double click to home buttonor whatever motion you

Ernest (38:22):
Hmm.

Joachim (38:22):
you see all the windows tiled, right?
There's no need for the stacking'cause they know it's a waste of
time, but,

Ernest (38:27):
Hm.

Joachim (38:27):
but now liquid is glass is the new thing we have to do.
So feel like it's another one ofthose excess things.
And Apple, you know, they makemistakes.
I think the idea that we have toalways rationalize their choices
is these super clever things.
It's also getting tired, youknow?
Come on,

Ernest (38:43):
Right.

Joachim (38:43):
keyboards.
Butterfly keyboards.
The worst, worst keyboards ever.
So.
What about you and what were youthinking?

Ernest (38:52):
Uh, there were two things that came to mind and one
of them, uh, intersects withwhat you just talked about.
So this first one, it was reallymore about, um, uh, it's a
little bit of inside baseball,but for the last, I think 10
years now, uh, as part of theoverall Worldwide Developers

(39:13):
conference, series of events,Apple's executives have
participated in, in an interviewwith, uh, a Apple journalist
called John Gruber.
He's a long time, I guessblogger, uh, focused on Apple.
Um, and you know, back in theday, Steve Jobs was an avid
reader of his blog.
Um, and so for the last 10years, uh, Gruber was able to

(39:37):
get Apple Executives to, um, youknow, sit for an interview with
him.
And, uh, this was an event thatwas, um, open to, to, um, uh,
attendees as well.
And it was for a lot of, uh,developers who attended the
conference.
It was a kind of a highlight ofthe week, but, uh, a few, maybe
two months ago or so, Gruberwrote the scathing post

(40:00):
criticizing Apple Intelligence.
Uh, and the fact that theyshowed off these features at
last year's W-D-C-W-W-D-C,

Joachim (40:11):
mm-hmm.

Ernest (40:11):
that it turned out weren't anywhere near ready to
be brought to market.
And so Apple had to come out andexplicitly say, actually, these
features aren't ready.
The crazy thing though is thatthey had created advertising
promoting these specificfeatures, and they aired these
ads, you know, for months.
And yet they knew internallythat these features were not

(40:34):
gonna be ready anytime soon.
And, uh, uh, couple months agothey came out and said,
actually, these features aren'tgonna be ready.
Um.
Uh, for like a year.
Uh, the, the language they usedat the time was ambiguous.
And then finally in ww DC thisyear, they said, oh, it's not
gonna, they aren't gonna comeout till next year,

Joachim (40:52):
Wow.

Ernest (40:52):
spring.
And so Gruber, um, he actuallystarted the post criticizing
himself saying, I shouldn't havetaken them at face value.
You know, I, I, which is kind ofto this point of your post that
you're making that Oh, yeah.
Liquid gloss.
It's like obviously a setup tosome genius thing down the road.
Like, you know, he kind of said,I, I did the same thing.

(41:14):
Apple had just such a good trackrecord of delivering on the
things they promised that hejust, uh, took it at face value
that oh yeah, these features aregonna launch and, and do what
they said they were gonna do.
But, you know, clearly theyweren't anywhere near ready to
go and he really excoriated themfor that.
And kind of talked about thefact that it was a sign to him
of, of some, you know, a rot atthe core of Apple, essentially.

Joachim (41:39):
Wow.

Ernest (41:40):
And I, I, I think it was a very fair piece because for
Apple to have done that, to haveshared these very specific
features,

Joachim (41:48):
Yeah,

Ernest (41:49):
you know, and make these very specific promises and then,
and, you know, and have now belike a year and a half late or
two years late to deliver them.
That's,

Joachim (41:59):
crazy.

Ernest (41:59):
yeah, that's

Joachim (42:00):
Everything app.
That was the Jobsian thing,right?
Everything Apple announces willbe available.

Ernest (42:06):
right.

Joachim (42:07):
now, it was always, that was kind of like, and this
will be available, you know, nowjust put your orders in.
I, I mean, that, that was theirwhole thing, so I think they
abused that trust

Ernest (42:15):
Right.

Joachim (42:16):
keep that thing going.

Ernest (42:18):
And so I think Gruber very rightfully, um, articulated
that and highlighted that.
But, uh, in the aftermath ofthat, Apple's executive declined
to participate in a, you know,that kind of annual event of,
uh, sitting with Gruber,

Joachim (42:32):
Yeah.

Ernest (42:32):
I think was very, uh, disappointingly thin skinned, I
guess I'd say.
Um.
And to me it, it, it reminded meof Worldwide Developers
Conference from 1997, which wasthe year that, uh, Steve Jobs
returned to Apple at the time,still as a consultant to the
CEO, but he participated in a qand a session with developers.

(42:58):
Um, and fortunately, a recordingof this session still exists.
We'll provide a link to it inthe show notes.

Joachim (43:05):
this is, this one's legendary.

Ernest (43:07):
it's incredible.
Uh, and so I highly recommendthat people watch it.
It's, it's remarkable for abunch of different reasons.
There's, there's some greatquestions, uh, from the audience
of developers.
Uh, but in particular there'sthis, uh, exchange.
With someone who, um, starts offhis quote unquote question by

(43:28):
saying, you don't know whatyou're talking about to Steve
Jobs.

Joachim (43:31):
Mm-hmm.

Ernest (43:31):
And then he asks a question about this thing called
Open Doc, which was a technologythat Jobs killed when he came
back to Apple.
And then, uh, this person endshis question with, uh, and what
personally have you been doingfor the past seven years?
Basically saying, you know,you're, you, you're not, you
don't really amount to anything.
And I think it was a remarkableone that that sort of exchange

(43:55):
was possible.
And Steve Jobs's response to it,I think was remarkable as well.
'cause he didn't say, you know,get out

Joachim (44:04):
Yeah.

Ernest (44:04):
security.
Take this guy outta here.
He answered his question.
Um, and in that exchange wassomething that I think is really
powerful that again connectsback to the point you made about
liquid glass.
So he.
I think it was in, in the, hisanswer to that question or that
comment was he said, you'vegotta start with the customer,

(44:25):
customer experience and workbackwards to the technology.
You can't start with thetechnology and try to figure out
where you're going to try tosell it.
And I've made this mistakeprobably more than anyone else
in this room.
And I've got the scar tissue toprove it.
Uh, and I know that it's thecase.
And as we've tried to come upwith a strategy and a vision for
Apple, it started with whatincredible benefits can we give

(44:47):
to the customer?
Where can we take the customer?
Not starting with, let's sitdown with the engineers and
figure out what awesometechnology we have and how are
we gonna market that?
unquote, so where I think thatconnects to your point about
liquid glasses, I think youcould.
Replace in that sentence.
Engineers with designers, youknow, I feel like Liquid Glass

(45:07):
was, let's sit down with thedesigners and out what awesome
design we can come up with andhow we're gonna market that.
Versus starting with that, youknow, customer experience and
working back to the technologyit, struck me for a couple
reasons there.
One, how thin skinned Apple'sbecome, uh, and the where
they've just seemed to have losttheir way of.

(45:28):
I think there, I think theVision Pro is a great example of
starting with the technologyversus starting with the
customer experience and thenliquid glasses starting with the
design instead of the customerexperience.
So, um, that was one thing.
You know, one other thing I'llmention is that there was a
really remarkably prescientquestion from one of the
developers asking about agentsoftware,

Joachim (45:50):
Oh.

Ernest (45:50):
you know, is now very relevant as everyone's talking
about agent ticket, ai, blah,blah, blah.
And I think Steve Jobs answer isalso really, really interesting.
So again, we'll provide a linkto this video.
It's an amazing watch.
It's over an hour long.
It's uh, uh, an amazing session.
So the second thing that I wasreally surprised by and as a fan

(46:10):
of Apple worries me is, uh,someone mentioned this, but he
said, this is Apple playingsmall ball.
And I'd say it's Apple playingsmall ball in the midst of a
seismic shift in the industry,right?
I mean, there is this seismic,whatever you think of ai.

Joachim (46:26):
Hmm.

Ernest (46:27):
It's a huge change.

Joachim (46:28):
Yeah.

Ernest (46:28):
It's gonna impact the industry in big ways and lasting
ways.
And you know, in the middle ofthat Apple's talking about your
icon colors and, you know, therefraction of fake glass, uh, in
an interface.
Um, and, and I think that'sreally worrisome.
You know, o obviously they'redoing it because they have to,
right?
That's, they, they didn't haveanything more substantive that

(46:51):
they could actually

Joachim (46:52):
yeah.

Ernest (46:52):
talk about.
But this here again, reminded meof something from the past,
which was Bill Gates' legendaryinternet tidal Wave memo.
Uh, I don't know if you'refamiliar with this, but this
was, um.
From 1995, uh, just for context,I'll share a quote from Fast
Company.
So they're saying, explaininghere in the spring of 1995,
thanks to the rapidcommercialization of the

(47:14):
worldwide web, the world was onthe cusp of the internet era, a
shift with profound implicationsfrom Microsoft.
The company that dominated PCsoftware, its co-founder and CEO
Bill Gates, responded with afive alarm internal memo, quote
unquote the internal title, uh,the internet tidal wave that
gave the highest level ofimportance to responding to this

(47:35):
challenge in the most sweeping,ambitious manner possible.
And just three months after thismemo, uh, the MSN or Microsoft
Network was launched, which was,uh, you know, it turned out to
be ill faded, but it was atleast the, the beginnings of a
response.
Um, but I, I don't, I don't, soone, I, this came to mind

(47:57):
because it feels like we're in asimilar sort of period of, of
huge change.
But what's striking to me isthat, you know, whereas Bill
Gates back then recognized thechange, uh, we'll provide a link
to the memo.
'cause it's remarkable.
He was, he saw it all, he got,he really understood what was
happening in the challenge.

(48:18):
And so it was so impressive tome to see that, uh, someone at
that level who, you know, Ithink some, sometimes CEOs can
be kind of outta touch, but he,he got it.
Um, so compare that to Tim Cookat the Sears, WWDC, where the
only media that Tim Cook didaround the event was to promote

(48:40):
this upcoming F1 movie, whichis, is striking.
Like, so if you look at all ofthe interviews, it's all, um,
anything that has to do withactual features and products.
We're, we're all CraigFederighi.
Um, and their, uh, head ofproduct marketing, I forget his
name, the legendary guy with anApple's been around, but it's

(49:00):
not as well known.
So it's just the two of themthat did all those kind of
product focus interviews,whereas the only interviews
that, uh, Tim Cook did wereabout this F1 movie, which, uh,
you know, whatever the moviemight be.
Interesting, but.
Man, talk about, uh,

Joachim (49:16):
Yeah.

Ernest (49:17):
you know, in the middle of this seismic shift in the
industry, you've got your, theCEO of the company talking about
a movie that's coming up andhanging out with, uh, Louis
Hamilton, the F1 driver, insteadof talking about this incredible
shift that's happening, youknow, and maybe, hey, wouldn't
it be great if Tim Cook talkedabout why they missed, you know,
this promise they made lastyear, um, and what they're gonna

(49:38):
do to kind of improve on this,this huge, uh, gaff.
So that's, that was the secondthing that struck me was, man,
it just seemed like a reallyweird, uh, misplaced priorities.
And also, are they evenunderstanding the magnitude of
what's happening, um, as theykind of are like, you know,

(49:59):
basically the interface, theproduct equivalent of
rearranging the deck chairs onthe Titanic.

Joachim (50:07):
I think that what's, you know what's really
interesting?
We've been crapping on Apple.
It's very easy now, but, um, um,a couple of days ago, we're
recording on June 15th.
So last week, Apple's AIresearch group released a paper
where they kind of went throughsome of the agentic AI and the
latest reasoning, sorry, notagentic, higher level reasoning,

(50:30):
uh, chatbots um, damning damningresults there.
Um.
These LLMs failing on basicpuzzles that children can
eventually do and also stumblingon exactly the same spots as
humans would do.
is so funny because I think mostof the defenses were, well,
humans can't do it, so why wouldyou expect an LM to do?

(50:50):
It's like, that's a frickingpoint of the LLM, you idiot.
That's the whole point.
It's supposed to be better thanus.
Um, so I, all of that to saythat as with everything out of
touch, CEO does not know whatthe product is, does not
understand where they are, doesnot have a vision for where they
want to go.
Like even if he just said like,we're not doing this AI crap, or

(51:11):
We're not gonna

Ernest (51:12):
Right,

Joachim (51:12):
we're gonna do

Ernest (51:13):
right.

Joachim (51:13):
just take a freaking position and talk about the
technology that your job, wethink in the traditional sense,
and you have the people that areable to pause the complexity of
the, the current moment andevaluate it, it seems like
reasonably dispassionately.
But again, I think it wouldrequire the CEO to engage with

(51:37):
the technology, engage with someof these details, be in a
learning position as opposed toa position of just like what
feels right.
And that's why I feel like,yeah, talking about the F1 movie
is way, way easier.
Right?
It's just hell we got.
It does look good though, and,and IWC is a big feature on this
sponsorship.
Their name is plastered in allof the cars as

Ernest (51:59):
Right, right.

Joachim (52:00):
um, and there's a whole lot of watch stuff going on.
We'll, we'll talk about that inanother time, maybe.
But yeah, it's, um, prettyinteresting that is the thing
that he chose to, to, to talkabout, you know, uh, as opposed
to the stuff that there arepeople in the company thinking
about these things deeply.

Ernest (52:15):
Oh,

Joachim (52:16):
so

Ernest (52:16):
one last thing, you know, to your point about, hey,
he, he could as a CEO say, Hey,we're not gonna do this.
Right?
And that's one of the thingsthat I, I thought was so awesome
about that 1997 WDC video withjobs.
'cause he talks about whythey're not, why they killed
Open Dock.
And,

Joachim (52:33):
Yeah.

Ernest (52:33):
uh, I won't go into it, but basically Opend doc is
exactly the sort of technologythat technologists love.
I remember I was a big, uh,apple fan at the time and, and I
thought, thought Opend doc wasso cool.
But there was, there was, therewas no consumer facing side to
it.
It was just the technology thatwas cool.

Joachim (52:53):
Yeah.

Ernest (52:54):
he Jobs had the wisdom to understand that even though.
As you'll see if you watch thatvideo, a lot of developers loved
it because it was just this kindof cool idea.
But he said, you know, no,there's not, there's no there,
there when it comes to theconsumer benefit.
So, you know, as a companythat's like 90 days away from
being insolvent, we need tofocus on the things that are

(53:15):
gonna matter to our customersand potential customers.
And so, you know, that's, Ithink that's what I, this is
gonna sound like Steve Jobsworship, but that was what was
so impressive about him is thathe wasn't a programmer, but he
had the ability to understandenough and then the willingness
to make these very bigdecisions, um, and say no, you

(53:38):
know, I think that's probablythe most important thing someone
at that level can do, is to sayno to the right things.
And,

Joachim (53:44):
enough evidence now that it feels like.
We are, we are living in an erawhere CEOs don't wanna say yes
or no.

Ernest (53:51):
Hmm.

Joachim (53:51):
wanna be on both sides, and they wanna play both things.
And they want to have plausibledeniability about they should
have said no earlier about, ohno, we were looking at the
metrics.
It reminds me again, sorry,apple.
The, the electric car thing.

Ernest (54:03):
Hmm.

Joachim (54:04):
I think you've mentioned that there's a lot of
discussion about every roundwith Tim Cook was

Ernest (54:07):
Right.

Joachim (54:08):
if we just got some more metrics, or if we got some

Ernest (54:10):
Hmm.

Joachim (54:10):
measurements and just say, no, dude.
Like take a stand.
But no, it's easier to keep itrolling and then you can, and
then eventually it dies whenit's so obvious it needs to die.
Yeah.
What a, what a waste.

Ernest (54:22):
Right, right.
All right.
But enough about Apple.
I think you've mentioned therewas something else you wanted to
talk about too.

Joachim (54:29):
I stumbled on this Discord blog, discord, of
course, the developer of a huge,hugely popular chat platform
equivalent to Slack.
I mean, essentially the samething, but very much geared
towards gamers.
Um, you have the same notion of,um, you know.
Company spaces.
Well instead you have a Discordserver, which a person controls

(54:50):
and there's moderators.
So it's very much, like miniReddits, mini chat rooms, things
like that with a little bitmore, um, structure around how
people interact with each other.
There are moderators, of course,that are there to keep things
clean and Discord providesmoderators with extra tooling so
they can do those things.
So that's the thing thatdifferentiates it from Slack.
So Discord is a hugely popularplatform and, as everyone does

(55:12):
in these technology companies,they write blogs about all the
cool engineering that happens.
And the title of this blog wasHow Discord indexes Trillions of
Messages.
Why do you need to indextrillions of messages?
Well, because every time I'msearching for a message in my
Discord server, it has to gointo the database and it's got a
pull information about themessage I care about.

(55:32):
Um.
And so this is actually a sequelto a 2017 blog post, which is
called How Discord IndexesBillions of Messages.
So, uh, and so, know, I mean,here's like a representative
paragraph, maybe.
They said, we designed our suchinfrastructure to be performant,
cost-effective, scalable, andeasy use.

(55:52):
We chose to use elastic searchwith discord messages, chartered
over indices, the logicalnamespace for elastic search
messages on two elastic searchclosets.
Messages were charted either bydiscord server or direct
message.
This allowed us to store allGil's messages together for
Facebook, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
I mean, who cares?
I really was very stressed out.
I was thinking, is this reallynecessary?
Because if I wanted to make analternative app wasn't discord.

(56:17):
And didn't do, do I really needto do this work?
It's something that I, Istruggle with in all of the
technology companies because Ialways see the degree of
complexity that emerges.
I think I've alluded to this inthe past, the over reliance on
the cloud, the idea thateverything should sit in the
cloud and the cloud does all thework.

(56:37):
So it's kind of weird, like, whydo I have to index all of these
messages as a central entity?
Well, I am the Oracle Discordcloud is the Oracle for all
discord servers.
what the engineers are doing isthey have to make this
infrastructure scale beperformant, resilient, they have

(56:59):
to do this for everyone.
Um, and so I was just thinkingto myself, it has to be some
sort of alternative.
And so I was, again, I.
I talking to my wife as I wasranting about this, I said, look
at this nonsense.
and I said, you know, I don'tunderstand what happened to the
old internet peer to peer backin the day when I wanted to

(57:22):
connect with you, I wouldconnect with you directly.
You know, I would just send youa message or I would, um, send a
file just to you.
being of course the most famousexample of a peer-to-peer
protocol.
But then later on, uh, later on,Limewire was part of that bit
torrent, which still exists.
Another highly optimized, um,protocol for peer-to-peer

(57:44):
sharing.
I mean, these services, that'show we used to do stuff before
cloud, before centralizedservers.
And I was thinking, why aren'twe doing that?
That is, we have powerfulcomputers.
have powerful internet.
Why do I need a central Oracleto handle everything?
At the end of the day, if I'monly a member on five discord

(58:06):
servers or one Discord server, Ishould only care about the
messages in my Discord server.
What happens now is when I hitthe cloud, there's an efficient
routing mechanism for myrequest, but it still has to
pull from everything that's inout there that within that sub,
um, sub, um, domain that they'veparceled off for me.
But it's still througheverything almost, you know?

(58:30):
So, but if I just have like fivefriends in my Discord group and
we've just been online for onemonth, that should just sit on
my laptop.
You know, I, why is that not athing?
And so that got me thinkinglike, what is the problem with
peer-to-peer messaging?
Why can't I have a slack that ispeer-to-peer where I just
message you when I message you?
And then you start thinkingthrough the problem.
You go like, oh, okay, I get it.
Like, um, if I'm online andyou're offline, well, all I can

(58:54):
do is I can send my message.
And then if you're not there,you're not there to receive it.
There's no central oracle thatwill receive the message and
then pass it on to you.
the only way you'll get thatmessage is if I come online and
you're online, and then themessage gets sent to you.
Okay?
That's the weakness in thesystem.
What if someone else is online?
That's part of our server.
So I want to send, you know,node A, a message, but node B is

(59:16):
online.
Well, when I send the message,shouldn't I just send the parcel
and the archive of new messagesto node B and then when node A
comes back online, B can passthat to them.
So we could just have thearchive be moved around all the
time.
And the only way we could havetotal failure of the system is
no one is online.

Ernest (59:33):
Hmm.

Joachim (59:34):
if someone just leaves their laptop on, they would be
online all the time or whatever.
Like there's a way to do thisand okay, it's a small cost.
There's a risk that we mightmiss a message.
But in that sense, it's not bad.
Like we could have the fullarchive and such and, and like
this is, this seemsstraightforward.
This is very kind of oldfashioned technology.
There's no cloud, it'sdecentralized.

(59:54):
Surely this must exist.
And I just Googled it and thereis, there's a service called
Quiet and they run a peer topeer.
Um, slack messaging service, andthey basically pass the archive
of messages, the database ofmessages to each user,

Ernest (01:00:08):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:00:08):
they do it in an efficient way so that they only
turn, move packets across orbytes that across that are
different.
So when someone logs on, getthey ping or everyone and say,
Hey, I've got this archive.
What's the newest database?
And then it kind of merges ittogether using a combination of
technologies.
And they use like a, a databaseservice that was developed for
blockchain

Ernest (01:00:28):
Ah.

Joachim (01:00:28):
blockchains have to be distributed and it's a mashup of
blockchain databases and Git.
So if you're a software person,Git is built into Linux and
built into Unix as a way tomanage, uh, code changes.
And basically it's a veryefficient system that only takes
on, passes, changes through thesystem.
So if nothing has changed,nothing moves, and it can check

(01:00:49):
files one by one, bite by biteto figure out what needs to be
changed.
So they did that.
it works.
And again, they say highlightthe same problems if one, if
everyone's off, nothing getsmoved.
If one person's online, theywill be able to pass messages
around.
Problem solved to a certainextent.
I don't have to index a trillionmessages.
And so then that got me downthis whole rabbit hole of local

(01:01:09):
first software engineering.
Turns out there's a smallmovement of people that are
trying to work on this.
I come back to this because thisis another version of when we do
everything in a cloud, it feelsso easy.
And the engineers who work on,it's like, oh, this is very
easy.
We just need more compute, morecompute, more compute, and more
databases and a little bit morelogical.
And that's it.
But that complexity, it's high,it's high complexity.

(01:01:32):
For something as dumb as amessaging service, like, why
don't we just pass, likeliterally, I just ping you and
you ping me.
End of story.
And then, uh, have like someclever way of moving the
archives around and that logicof things are stored on my
computer.
That also means that thatarchive is searchable, even if
your internet is down.

Ernest (01:01:52):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:01:52):
Right.
That means that you have a wayto access the data, and the data
is yours.
always, if, if Discord shutsdown your entire message history
is gone, you will, you will bedone.
Slack is gone.
You know, that's it.
And that's what, you know, wehave many slack outages that's
it.
Nothing, not a damn thing works.
So it really got me thinkingabout that and it's like, yeah,

(01:02:13):
it's a little bit more complex.
It's like brings back softwareengineering as a way to write
self-contained pieces ofsoftware that you install on
your computer and you use thehard drive space on your
computer that you have.
yes, it sounds old fashioned,but I actually think it's way,
way more resilient.
So that was something that wason my mind as I was, and, and
you know, hearing about all ofthese technologies, how much

(01:02:35):
stuff gets offloaded into thecloud, the LLMs are all in the
cloud.
I

Ernest (01:02:39):
Right.

Joachim (01:02:40):
and on and on.
The list grows on.
So small tidbit that got meupset, but then relieved that
people are thinking about thisas well.

Ernest (01:02:47):
That's awesome.
Would, uh, quiet, uh, qualify asa recommendation for the week on
your.

Joachim (01:02:53):
so, I think it's a recommendation to read the
technology.
I, I don't, I was then startedgetting very excited about doing
a version of this, and I'm like,I'm not gonna invest in learning
all this stuff.
But I think reading theirdocumentation, their motivation,
the, the use, it's, it's a, it'sa solution to a problem, you
know?
And it's a way of actuallyhaving all of the convenience of
these, one of these programswithout the reliance on, on a

(01:03:16):
cloud service.
So that means that as long asyou all have the software and it
runs, you will have yourmessaging service.
I mean, that's, that's reallythe, the thing that comes out of
all of this,

Ernest (01:03:31):
actually, so if you, if you wanna segue into
recommendations, do you have anyothers for this week?

Joachim (01:03:35):
So I've been alluding to this recommendation
throughout the whole thing, andit's a very, very long essay by
Ed Zirin.
It's about 13,000 words.
If you can't handle it, he'sbroken it down into a three
episode podcast where hebasically reads in the bridged
version of it, which is veryfun.
The title of this piece iscalled The Era of the Business

(01:03:57):
Idiot.
So it's, it's, um, he's beenbuilding up to this point for
many, many years.
His newsletter has covered, um,many topics.
AI has been his big one thisyear.
Before that, he was talking alot about the growth at all
cost, uh, mindset, rot economywas the phrase that he was
using.
Very similar to ification thatCorey, Dr.

(01:04:19):
Row coined.
But rot economy is somethingthat he wants to say is very far
reaching.
It's not just about platformsdegrading the quality of
something, it's actually justplatforms and companies existing
that don't actually care aboutwhat they do.
They just are these financialentities that grow and generate
stock market returns.
And so this piece, um, lays outmore of that thinking um, I feel

(01:04:44):
like he's touched on somethingvery, very real that has
affected every aspect of modernlife.
And I do think, um.
It's important.
I know we don't get political,but many people should know that
our current president was a CEOof a company and a business
leader.
And people think that was a goodthing, that a business leader is
someone that you should have tolead a country because it should

(01:05:04):
be run like a business.
Well, he runs it exactly like aCEO would all the terrible
things, like doesn't care howthings work, doesn't care how
rules work, what are the, doesthis thing move over here?
It's just that number looks likethat.
I want the number to look likethis.
So make that number like that,you know, that type of thinking

(01:05:26):
is CEO thinking I, I strongly onaverage.
Like, I think everyone's kind ofsubject to this.
So, it comes back to the TimCook discussion, right?
There's this, this idea of wantto really, I don't want to get
in the weeds with what thecustomer wants or cares about.
And, you know, none of thismatters.
So this piece is just very, verylong.

(01:05:46):
Um.
But there's a lot of greattidbits here about managers,
CEOs, and he even really refersto this notion that we live in a
symbolic economy, that so muchof business leadership has
become more about the aestheticof engaging in a conversation as
opposed to actually making aproduct.
Um, and so what does the CEO do?

(01:06:07):
He does.
He's not gonna talk about users.
He's gonna tell you how you areall gonna lose your jobs because
his technology is so amazing.
You have to get ready.
So this is Dario Amide, like hejust, talk that kind of crap.
Sorry.
Um, so I would say.
It's quite interesting because Ifeel like we've seen many
examples of CEOs who've reachedthe tops of corporate power

(01:06:29):
structures, and they just don'treally know what it is that they
do and what it is that they'resupposed to do for customers.
And I, I just don't think theycare about customers anymore.
Not to do more Steve Jobsworship.
He's a, he's a terrible man inmany ways.
He was a terrible man, this dumbthing that they did where they
charged the devices a little bitbefore they put them in the

(01:06:50):
boxes, it's a total waste ofmoney, right?
Your bean counter andaccountants will tell you, why
are you doing this?
This is electricity.
You do this millions of timeswe're wasting money.
And he's like, no, of course.
Like when the customer gets theitem, they're excited.
This is the moment to blow themaway.
Hook them.
That damn thing powers on.

(01:07:12):
And it's because I am solvingthe customer problem.
I'm not solving something else.
I care about the customer.
And I feel like when you look atApple now, it's like it's gone
the other way.
It doesn't care about the cost,cares about the shareholder, the
number of share, uh, buybacks isincredible.
They're off the charts.
Interestingly enough, Steve Jobsfound the same problem when he

(01:07:34):
arrived at Apple, which was theywere doing huge numbers of stock
buybacks put an immediate stopto it

Ernest (01:07:39):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:07:40):
that's how you discipline the company in many
ways.
You stop it from being thisfinancialized entity

Ernest (01:07:46):
Right.

Joachim (01:07:46):
make it a product company again.
But now it's kind of returned tobe this financialized entity,
hence services, movies,aesthetic things are very
exciting.

Ernest (01:07:55):
All right.

Joachim (01:07:55):
long.
I think you should, everyoneshould read this.
You might feel it's terrible andreally mean to managers, and
you, anyone who's a manager willfeel, oh, well, I'm a very good
man.
I'm sure you are.
But it's good to hear this thingbecause there are many people
that are terrible at it andthere are many leaders that are
terrible.
And so this was a very nice.
Distillation of all thosethings.
So Ed Zirin, the age of thebusiness idiot, or the era of

(01:08:18):
the business idiot I should say.
Um, yeah I think it touches on alot of stuff and like I said, I
don't, I think it's inescapable.
We all swim in this water aroundleadership that doesn't,
generally not naming names oranyone that we are working with,
of course, but I'm just sayingin general, when you look
around, especially like Appleand things like that, where is
the customer in that discussion?

(01:08:40):
You know, very little.
Very little.
no voice of the customer, henceTim Cook will talk about F1
movies.
That's something else.
Hanging out with Louis Hamiltonagain, you know?
Yeah,

Ernest (01:08:53):
Oh, that sounds great.
And, and as with all thesethings we're, we'll provide a
link in the show notes to thepiece, but also the podcast,

Joachim (01:09:01):
yeah.

Ernest (01:09:01):
yeah.
Great.
Uh, well, I have, um,recommendations I have, I'm
gonna cheat.
I have two that are perhaps morelighthearted on the surface, but
I think are, are prettysubstantive as well.
But, um, the first one, andthey're both media, uh, it's
kind of funny speaking of, uh,Tim Cook, talking about F1, but,

(01:09:22):
uh, the first one is, and orseason two, have you watched it
at all?
Yohi.

Joachim (01:09:27):
We started and or season one.
And it's funny you saylighthearted, we've, we've
started going back into itbecause people have been saying
that it is very, very relevant,um, and quite meaningful at this
moment.
So yeah, we're still at thebeginning, but season two you're
saying is worth it.

Ernest (01:09:47):
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, I think, um, I mean a lotof, I'm certainly not alone in
this.
A lot of people have been sayingit's the best Star Wars since
the original, uh, star Wars.
I think to put it in thatcontext is limiting.
'cause I just think it's just anincredible piece of art that is
incredibly relevant and timely,but is also just remarkable in,

(01:10:13):
in, in pretty much every aspect.
I think the writing is justphenomenal.
The acting is across the board.
Incredible.
Um, and then all the crafts, youknow, the costuming, the
production design, it's justeveryone was on their A game
and.
Uh, it, the end result issomething really, really

(01:10:35):
special.
The sort of thing that peopletalk about, you know, for years
and years to come.
So I would highly, highlyrecommend it.
What's I think pretty impressiveis, you know, like a lot of,
like you mentioned, every, a lotof people say how timely it
feels, but it was filmed in2022, going on 2023, so it was

(01:10:59):
written well before that.

Joachim (01:11:00):
Hmm.

Ernest (01:11:01):
Uh, and, uh, the showrunner, Tony Gilroy has
talked about that, the fact thatit's really about these things
that consistently come back, youknow?
Um, so he didn't know Trump wasgonna win the election, but
it's, it's sadly these, um.
Uh, behaviors, uh, that cyclethrough time

Joachim (01:11:23):
Yeah.

Ernest (01:11:24):
are surprisingly predictable in the way they come
to life.
I think maybe what we'resurprised by is that they're
happening here in the us but theplaybook is the same.
Um, and if you're a student ofthat, then you know, you can,
you can tap into that and, andhe's absolutely done that.
And, uh, man, it's, I think, uh,amazing.

(01:11:48):
So yeah.
And or season two absolutelywould, uh, highly recommend.
And, uh, one other related notehere is, you know, we talked
about the review industrialcomplex in our last episode and
how terrible it is, and asimilar sort of thing exists
around media and this kind ofreview industrial complex of
media, uh, on YouTube, which isgenerally terrible.

(01:12:10):
But I came across one podcastand it's also available on
YouTube that I think isactually.
Worth listening to and watching,which is the Yukon Pop, which
is, uh, hosted by two, uh,political science professors out
of the University ofConnecticut.
Thus the name Yukon.
Uh, it's Steven Dyson andJeffrey RDAs dos, and they

(01:12:34):
actually talk about.
The show.
Uh, so they talk about popculture in general, but so they,
they, they did a, uh, recaps ofevery batch of episodes of, and
or this season.
And they provide culturalcontext and political context
around these episodes so thatmaybe, you know, if you're not
as much of a student of history,you can kind of understand, uh,

(01:12:59):
where these things are comingfrom.
And they're not, you know,things that are being made up
that they're actually rooted inthings that have happened in the
past.
Uh, and so that's the one kindof piece of, um, commentary
about, and or that I felt wasactually, that actually added to
the experience that wasworthwhile versus all these
other, uh, useless, uh, recappodcasts and YouTube channels.

Joachim (01:13:23):
Yeah, I, I know exactly what you mean, that it reminds
me.
I know I've done lots oftalking, but, uh,

Ernest (01:13:28):
No.

Joachim (01:13:29):
um.
We were, mentioned this, cyclethrough these things and things
repeat, or it's alwaysvariations on the theme.
Maybe that's the way, likeclassical music and music and or
like cover versions of oldsongs.
There's a kind of variation andan underlying theme in history.
Um, and I found it always veryhelpful for myself always have

(01:13:55):
that long view to remember thatthere is a lineage to these
things.
Um, and things happen because ofwhat's come before in the past.
And also things change for thebetter because of things that
have happened in the past.
Uh, but on that note, there's abook that I just started reading
and I'm quite fond of it.
It's um, by Rebecca Sonet whowrote, uh, a pretty famous

(01:14:17):
collection of essays called MenExplain Things to Me.
I think it captured the momentof, I think it was very Me Too

Ernest (01:14:22):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:14:23):
Feminist and so on.
And, I was.
To be honest, I was verydismissive of Rebecca.
So, but my very good, one of myvery good friends is a big fan I
would, you know, I was like, Iwill keep an open mind, but I
never picked up a book.
And then, um, the other week mywife picked up this book and
said, just read the firstparagraph of this essay.

(01:14:45):
Um, and it's from the bookscollection.
It's called No Straight RoadTakes You There and it is very,
very good.
It's about this moment in timeand understanding the lineage
and how long it takes for thingsto change and how important it
is to express what should be asopposed to accepting things the

(01:15:07):
way they are.
stop thinking things areinevitable believe that things
are inevitable, that they can bechanged and avoided.
And they start with very smallthings and they start with
futile attempts at just doingsomething, you know?
And I feel like.
There's some bits of that inthe, in the Star Wars universe.

(01:15:28):
And I feel like Ando also hasthat feeling, you know, of what
is the point.
It's such an insurmountablething.
And it reminds me all the wayback to the beginning of this
podcast, that Ur Lagu quotationthat you shared where she was
taking her book prize where shesaid, know, the power of the
absolute, divine power of kingswas taken as truth that need not

(01:15:50):
apply to capitalism, forexample, but in truth, nothing,
you know, but it takes time.
Um, and so I found this book wasvery, very helpful to, you know,
just not even as a manual, butjust a daily meditation on how
important it's that justrepresent an alternative to
something and things need not beinevitable and need not be at,
you know, the end of thingsfeels like a part of the

(01:16:12):
resistance.
You know, it's just one of thosethings that you add to it.
So, uh, yeah, no Straight Roadtakes you there by

Ernest (01:16:17):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:16:18):
Sa that, um, it's, it's a pretty, it's pretty great.

Ernest (01:16:21):
Oh, that's fantastic.
Uh, one last 10 chili relatedthing I'll, I'll note here.
I think this is a great exampleof, um, good, great art, is it,
it elicits all these connectionsand makes you want to talk about
other things, but there's thisama fantastic interview of Tony
Gilroy, the showrunner for andAndroid.
And or, uh, in the New YorkTimes.
And, uh, the interviewer, it's,I, my feel of it is like the

(01:16:45):
interviewer is trying to pin himdown and trying to get him to
say that it's a liberal show.
Uh, and Gilroy gives thisphenomenal answer as to why he
believes all creative works,lean, progressive by th nature.
So I'll provide a link to thatinterview and, uh, yeah, it's a
fantastic, uh, he's, man, he'sgreat.

(01:17:06):
I think, uh, he's an amazingwriter.
But, uh, so my lastrecommendation for this week is
also a piece of media, uh, andI'm very late to this, but.
Are you familiar with NathanFielder?
He's a comedian.

Joachim (01:17:20):
Yes.

Ernest (01:17:20):
Yeah.
So I'm very late to him.
I've never seen anything elsehe'd done.
But, uh, my wife and I, wewatched the second season of the
rehearsal,

Joachim (01:17:30):
Yes,

Ernest (01:17:30):
is on, uh, HBO Max, formerly known as Max, formerly
known as HBO.
Um, but, uh, oh my goodness, uh,we, we, I think we ended up
watching the whole season in onenight.
'cause it just was so mindblowing it, I'd never seen
anything like it, it was, I,it's like inexplicable.

(01:17:52):
You can't explain it'cause it'sjust so, uh, uh, enigmatic so
weird.
But, but it, it, I feel likeit's just really deeply human.

Joachim (01:18:05):
Hmm.

Ernest (01:18:06):
and it's remark, much like, and or it's remarkable
that Disney funded and or,

Joachim (01:18:14):
Yeah.

Ernest (01:18:14):
know, uh.
Uh, and HBO Discovery, whateverfunded the rehearsal.
It's just incredible to me thatthis exists and I just am so
happy that it exists.
And, uh, and so after watchingseason two, we went back and
watched season one.
And, um, I, I actually wouldrecommend if you've never seen

(01:18:36):
the rehearsal to start withseason two.

Joachim (01:18:38):
Yeah.

Ernest (01:18:38):
'cause I think it's, it's a more accessible entry
point, but then we reallyenjoyed season one as well.
It's actually, I think, more,even more thought provoking, um,
uh, and challenging, uh, andhappened to be set in Oregon.
But, uh, man, what a amazingpiece of, I don't even what,

(01:19:02):
know what to call it.
Uh, performance art.

Joachim (01:19:05):
Yeah, it's very strange.
Other stuff is also reallyweird, um, that he did on Comedy
Central, which is, uh, Nathan,for you,

Ernest (01:19:13):
Uh.

Joachim (01:19:14):
this is, this stuff is way more out loud, silly, but he
had this premise in mind'causehe, he was thinking about post
Credit Crisis America 2008 andhe was asking himself like, how
did we get to that point?
How did people allow themselvesto be played and, and join the

(01:19:35):
game?
And when something obviouslysounded stupid, they still went
along with it with, if you justgave it the right framing and
the right thing.
And so Nathan for you is reallyjust him saying, what can I get
people to do?
Which is, it sounds very cruel,

Ernest (01:19:50):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:19:51):
but the things that he suggests are so ridiculous that
anyone should say this is aterrible, he go, his, the first
episode I think is where he goesto a frozen yogurt company and
says, Hey, you know what willreally shock people into coming
to the store?
Let's make a shit flavoredfrozen yogurt and.
They go, he chemicallysynthesizes the taste of

(01:20:13):
excrement, human excrement.
And,

Ernest (01:20:16):
Oh my gosh.

Joachim (01:20:17):
and, and the guy is not saying, this is a terrible idea.
We shouldn't do this.
They go all the way.
start serving this, they, theyinterview the guests.
says this taste like shit.
And, you know, and then the guy,the guy, the managers, I, I
should have told him to stop.
And he is like, yes.

(01:20:37):
As soon as he uttered the words.
Why did you let him go downthis?
There are so many episodes thatare so ridiculous, but it, it
was clear that he always had adeeper, that show was very laugh
out loud, ridiculous.
But at its core was thisquestion of what could you, why
is it that human beings arewilling to go down this path and

Ernest (01:20:59):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:21:00):
in this way?
Just because there's a camera onthem and a guy who says, I'm an
expert and

Ernest (01:21:04):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:21:04):
is the nature of the show.
It was really interesting inthat.
And so I think the rehearsal isa, a much more mature and, and
deeper version

Ernest (01:21:14):
Hmm.

Joachim (01:21:14):
You know, of course Comedy Central versus something
that's on HBO Max.
Now you can get away withdifferent things, but yeah, I
think he's quite a compelling,strange character.

Ernest (01:21:23):
Yeah,

Joachim (01:21:24):
very strange and his, yeah, his, uh, delivery of.
Sentences, his voice, the tamboof his voice, they're just all
so specific to him.
It's very strange.
And he has that laptop standthat is so weird.
That's hanging around his neck.
it's strange.
Yeah, it's right.
It's like performance

Ernest (01:21:44):
yeah,

Joachim (01:21:44):
reality tv.
It's confusing as hell, but

Ernest (01:21:47):
yeah.

Joachim (01:21:48):
yeah, that's why it's challenging.
I have to, I can only do it insmall doses.
Yeah, it's very weird.

Ernest (01:21:54):
All right.
So, um, that's ourrecommendation.
That's something very unique foryou all.
Uh, and I think that does it forus, for this.

Joachim (01:22:02):
Yes,

Ernest (01:22:03):
Off the cuff episode.
Uh, a apologies again for ourextended hiatus and for our
paltry output thus far thisyear.
Uh, with the kind of vagaries oflife.
I don't think we're gonna beable to get back to a weekly
publication schedule, but, uh,we're gonna do our best to do
better than an episode ofquarter, at the very least.

(01:22:24):
Uh, and in the meantime, we wantto hear from you.
Do you have any thoughts onanything we discussed or
recommended this week?
If so, what's your perspective?
Um, or maybe there's a productor service you'd love to hear us
focus on through the lens ofproduct, uh, and product
marketing.
Whether it's a request, aquestion, or an observation.
Please do share your thoughtswith us at Learn make

(01:22:44):
learn@gmail.com or on threads atLearn Make Learn Show, all one
word.
Thanks for listening, and wehope you'll join us for the next
Learn.
Make, learn.

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