#243 - LGHT

Speaker A: Light. Thank you for joining. Always a pleasure to connect. Um, the prompt for this conversation was a little back and forth we did on Farcaster. Um, I have been casting and tweeting and talking a lot about not using my phone. Um, have had like, pretty radically low phone screen time for the last probably three or four months now. Um, talking something like less than 20 minutes a day average most weeks for the last few months. And then, um, I think you've been interested in that. Um, and you've also been interested in experimenting at the other end of the extreme, so to speak. Which, you know, contrary to what it might seem with what I'm doing, just because I'm doing something sort of extreme that most people don't do, that doesn't mean I have certainty that it's like the right move. I just think it's sort of an interesting thing to try when the whole world is spending a ton of time on their phone. What happens if you sort of spend radically low time on your phone? It's not like I'm going off the map or I'm not trying to be unreachable or anything, which some people might want to do that and good for them, but like, I'm trying to remain highly productive and effective in my work and reachable by people that I love and responsive and all of that, but just not using my phone, like simply not using that device. I think it's a highly, like, consumptive device. Um, and I think the computer is much more productive, whether it's your laptop or. What I like to use most is like my laptop plugged into an ultra wide monitor. And if you just think about like screen space as a proxy for productivity of the device. You know, I don't know how many iPhones fit on my widescreen monitor, but it's probably on the order of like 40 or something. Um, and then, you know, the laptop is somewhere kind of in between there. Um, and so anyway, I use, you know, my, my monitor, my laptop, and when I'm on the move or going for a walk, I want to take a call or whatever. I use my Apple Watch connected with, um, AirPods or Ray Ban metas, which is kind of an underrated device as well. Um, and things like that. So it's been an interesting experiment, but I know you've been running the opposite, or at least thinking about the opposite for a little while as well, which is a two phone system. Um, so want to talk about, you know, the no phone, the two phone, the three phone, the one phone, any sort of phone combination or device combination experiments that we can think of that are worth trying and just sort of like, put some color on it, because it's not immediately obvious why one should try or why we're interested in trying anything, but sort of the default, which is probably to spend around, I don't know, four or five hours on your phone and just, you know, keep it in your pocket and not have a second phone and not try to do no phone or anything like that. So why, you know, talking about sort of like why we're interested in those things, I thought it'd be an interesting conversation people might enjoy.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I think it's. It's one of those kind of like, fringe Internet native kind of concepts that always tends to grab my mind the most. I think I have a similar instinct probably to you, which is. Which is probably why it's inspired by you. Um, you know, I didn't, I didn't read your process and obviously, correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't read your process as kind of, uh, how could we phrase it? Like, tech hate. I think there's like, a growing movement in, like, the generations that are coming of age where there's almost this resentment to how addictive these devices are and how easy it is for a platform to take three or four hours of your attention before you even realize it. And it's almost, uh, similar to the regrets of, like, substance abuse partying, like, 20 or 30 years ago, where you'd wake up at the hangover and be like, why did I do it again? And I didn't get that read from you, so it made it even more enticing. And then, you know, you've been doing it, like you said, for a few months. And so I was, I was watching your, you know, progress reports and status updates, which forecaster seems to be, like, the best for doing, like, fringe experiments and kind of logging it with people interested. And so I was one of those people. And, you know, the backstory for why your system specifically doesn't work for how my brain and life operates is I have a weird thing about, like, wearables. I'm not the biggest jewelry guy. I don't wear watches or necklaces. I had earrings in college, but then I took them out. You know, I was being more rebellious than interested in having something on me. And I was an early whoop user, uh, uh, for a long time. And I actually very much enjoy that wearable. But I noticed not nerve damage. I'm not saying that there was anything Actually wrong with me. But I've noticed that if I wore it for, let's say, you know, five or six months, then eventually I would have what felt like uh, a kind of nerve soreness or nerve pain running up my bicep. And so I would take it off and I'd put it on the other wrist and it would go away. But then within like five or six months it would happen on the other arm. And so that was just not feasible. And I got the data I needed, right. I kind of understood what the patterns were, that that works for my body. So I was like, I'm going to ditch this. So that's why I was watching your system and you were kind of talking about what you just explained with the Apple watch and the monitors and I was like, man, that seems really cool. I'm also in a point in my life where I am interested in not having my perception so tunnel visioned into this like cardboard cutout and then also having almost like a separate feeling life outside events that I would love to put an Apple watch on but I just can't. And so it made me start thinking more about, well, kind of what's going on in the experiment. It's not really about digital minimalism more so as it is about like optimizing what the tech was originally made for. And my workflow, uh, is more media rich and a lot of, you know, it's a funnel of, or cycle maybe is a better word of consumption, curation, creation, production, publishing, sharing. And that kind of bounces around like a zigzag along that cycle. And so you have the apps like Cosmos, Pinterest, arena, those things. You have YouTube, sometimes you want to clip something up on a screen, recording. You obviously have the social platforms, but then you have things like Capcut, things like Replit, um, things like Procreate, then Obsidian with the whole new push for, you know, the AI assisted dictation apps and more and more. I was finding that the creative or production side of my cycle has just accelerated quarter after quarter because of all these tech increases and how much AI assisted software is becoming mobile native. Especially like things like Replit. I mean the ability to just speak and generate code and then push it to my live site has been something that has really made me yearn for the, I guess we call them more editing, more admin level parts of the cycle like editing, sharing, copy paste, these kind of things. None of that materially changed even though all the creative stuff accelerated. So I had an idea based off yours where I went, well what if I took another phone? And this kind of goes into a tangent we could talk about later because we're both pseudonymous. More and more people are moving away from the social platforms like Twitter and Farcaster, especially in our industry. And so it's actually becoming harder for me to keep in contact with people I spent years developing relationships with. And so a little bit of a friction point is I don't want to give them my personal phone number. And so it was kind of the last thing that pushed the ball over of, well, here's a legitimate excuse. If we get a work phone now, um, we can give people a number, we can stay in contact with them and then simultaneously, oh, now I can fork your idea and see what would happen if I bifurcate some of the actions. But more so it's that admin level thing I'm talking about where airdrops, copy paste idea, uh, capture. Right. Sending yourself texts and dms. Um, this phone is more going to be replit and I'm just talking into it incessantly. This other one is going to be more. I'm on procreate when I'm pulling assets from Cosmos or Pinterest or Mid Journey or whatever. And so that I'll stop here. That is kind of all of the ideas that melded together of why I was so inspired to try out your system.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Um, you know, I appreciate it's cool that it's somewhat inspired by my system, but obviously it's, it's a unique system of its own. Um, and it makes sense how you arrived at two phones, um, and that even just people, you know, not wanting to give your main phone number was like sort of the Catalyst. It's funny sometimes how like, the inspiration for this was like, pretty independent from anything to do with that in terms of like trying to build a better system for yourself. But then like, the Catalyst is sort of this independent thing that comes out of left field that finally gets you to do it. Um, there's a few things from what you said that I'm interested to, uh, to drill into a little bit. First of all, um, the apps that you mentioned that are like, it was a really interesting and like sort of coherent flow that you mentioned or like a cycle or a loop that you're running through every day. Um, I don't know that I can rehash it back at you, but it was, you know, consumption and editing and production and all of these things. But you had like six or seven sort of steps that run in a Loop, and there's different apps for each. Um, and the apps that you mentioned in terms of consumption, uh, struck me as, like, somewhat unusual. And you produce this, uh, somewhat unusual and I think, like, awesome aesthetic with all of your content. So I'm curious, just what were those, like, you know, when I'm on my phone back when I'm just burning a bunch of time that I don't feel is really that useful, my consumption is largely Twitter and Farcaster and maybe just more broadly, like browsing the Internet. Um, but, like, I don't have other core apps. What are the things? Like, what's your consumption diet, so to speak?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I could talk about this for hours. Um, so they're kind of in buck.

Speaker A: Can I just. Ah, you know, one. One more thing to add to that is, would you agree with, like, sort of my assumption that, uh. Or my, um, you know, my guess that your sort of unique consumption or unusual consumption is a large piece of what ultimately is like, sort of the root of the unique output?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. I think that's totally a fair assumption. Um, a little bit of additional context on that is I'm sure you're familiar with that meme that went around maybe like five or six years ago with Elon before he kind of really hit into the cultural stratosphere where he was saying how we're already cyborgs, but there's just a ton of latency and all these things. I. That was a very inspiring idea a few years ago, and I do think there are remnants of that that have worked its way into what you were observing, and that has led me to ideate quite a bit on how lightweight can I make a digital system that. Because it's inherently digital and it's gonna technologically compound, like, can I make essentially a HUD display? That's not really here, but it's kind of an ephemeral thing that I understand how it works. I know these buttons over here are gonna attach to this thing, and this function over here connects to the outputs of those, et cetera, et cetera. And so the. To get back to the original question, they're kind of in buckets for me. So I think the easiest way for me to articulate this currently is that I did a real large intake on the past five years when I took some time off last year of, um, you know, what are the things that I seem to have naturally been producing, what are the things that were very much a struggle, et cetera. And that led me to really simplifying it. To words and visuals. And visuals is not just images. It could be gifs, it could be videos, whatever. Um, and it, and it has a tangent kind of overlap with audio, but it's mostly words and visuals, I realized. And so that led to seeking applications that would like, give me asymmetries in words or visuals. And so in the words camp, it's Obsidian, um, because it's just so easy with how it exports to Markdown. And I can throw it into AI chats if I want, um, or just send it as a text message very easily or paste it into a blog that I have to read. Markdown. So it's Obsidian, then it's your standard chatbots, right? ChatGPT, Gemini. Those are my two main drivers. Quad is more of like a tertiary one that I still use sometimes. And then on the visual sides of things it is Cosmos. This is like, this is the new kind of unicorn of my curiosity in terms of a media rich app. And they're very interesting to me because they've gotten the old foundation, uh, co founder who was the head of design, his name is Matt and he now works for Cosmos. So that's interesting as well. But that application is essentially like a souped up Pinterest, but it's AI, uh, native with its tagging, it has color matching, it has a little bit of a marketplace brewing. It seems like they're starting to introduce followers and kind of a social graft in this kind of curating taste, network aesthetic. But even before they got to that, it just seemed like high signal designers and I guess visual nuts, for lack of a better phrase for them, were more selective with the kind of media that they were uploading. And so there was a more photorealistic, more fine art, more luxury, more editorialized kind of media footprint that drew me to it. And because the way I tend to take those images is reinterpretation through image models or whatever. I like the photorealistic kind of athletic aesthetic. And so Cosmos is the big one. Pinterest is its little brother. Um, it is more kind of memes, Internet native, posters, icons, maybe like a section of an image is very interesting, like an item as opposed to the entire subject. Then YouTube, I, I'm a big fan of screen record, like very small, 8 to 10 seconds, uh, YouTube clips, um, from like a podcast or a video I'm watching. And then Cap cut, um, very much like the mobile interface on capcut. It's very straightforward. It has a ton of AI features I don't really use. Things are very simple. It's like here's a screen recording or here's an image, here's an overlay of a text word mark with no background. And then that's pretty much it. The AI's all kind of connect everything. Maybe I'll take images from those platforms I just mentioned, feed them into there, or maybe I'll take words that I wrote or captured by voice and condense them into LLMs and then that's all mobile. Uh, if I'm on desktop, Figma is also included in this, but on mobile specifically it's those, It's Cosmos, Pinterest, YouTube Cap, that's all the visuals and then it's Obsidian, uh, Gemini Chachi, PG if it's words.

Speaker A: Very interesting. Um, I just signed up for Cosmos as we're talking because, uh, I had seen this like roughly, uh, you know, not roughly, occasionally, um, in my feed. And um, I didn't realize like, I mean you describing it as like sort of your unicorn input is like sort of signal enough for me. Um, and I had been previously drawn to it by, I think it was like, you can search for images by like hex code, right? Like you can search or at least by like general color, right?

Speaker B: Yep, exactly.

Speaker A: And what's their, um, you know, is there, is it easy? Like do they have a stated ambition or is it more of a, um, you know, sort of like an art project? Like, are they trying to build something like an Instagram or a Pinterest or something that's different in a specific way?

Speaker B: It seems like they are now, I think in the earlier stages of using it, they didn't necessarily know what they were. And so it was very much Pinteresty. It was just upload, you know, add to a folder, whatever. It seems like now they're trying to push into some kind of like curator type network. Um, because the other part of it that I really like is you make your folder and then it has an infinite canvas, you can scroll on it, but they allow you to export everything that you curated into your folder. So that to me, obviously this is all, uh, speculation from my side, but that to me tells me that they're kind of trying to be like a liminal kind of app where people with high sigma or high esthetic preferences come and curate and share and follow each other and get inspired. But also they know that those people are probably working creatives or designers and it would be very helpful if they are able to export the things that they curate so that they can use them. Similar to how I was talking and I'VE not found other platforms that make it that simple. And so I think they're, they're trying to push for like some combination of Arena, Pinterest while simultaneously almost being like a GitHub or taste.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Um, I'm just scrolling at it a little bit and uh, you know, I felt like Zora had the sort of esthetic vibe for a while, um, and then became more of a, um, financial and speculative platform. Naturally people came and posted content and sort of through the growth, the equality was, you know, diluted pretty materially. Um, and I wonder how something like Cosmos is able to, um, sort of defend the quality in a sense. Um, I know as I was just signing up I was confused for a little bit. It's like a little suboptimal onboarding, I would say. And then I tried to get the username. Um, what was it? I think it was Jake with the V instead of an A, because Jake was taken. And um, it said this is a premium username. So I'm like, great. And then the only button to click is like upgrade to premium, which is paid. And I didn't want to do that. And I couldn't figure out how. I didn't connect that. The premium username required me to then have a premium account. And so I was trying to figure out how to get out of that. And ultimately I figured out like, if I made a non premium username. So I went with, what did I do with the real Jake? Um, that is not premium. And then it let me sign up and so maybe the, the premium username I guess could, could filter some people out. But if they want a premium username, they need to pay and so they don't do it. But anyone can have any nonsense username, so I wouldn't really think that would do it. Maybe people are posting, but it just doesn't get elevated. They have like a really good way of filtering what you actually see. But, um, it's very cool, very cool imagery. Um, so that makes sense. And it's an interesting way to break it down is just like words and visuals. You've got your word system, you've got your visual system on the word side. Um, you know, I've heard a lot of good things about Obsidian. What, like, I'm very interested in this. Uh, you know, speak to code to basically production flow that you have. Um, I'm not sure if that was on the, like what tools are involved in that. It's, I think replit, at least for part of it. Um, but what separate. What makes Obsidian, um, you know, better or easier from like just Apple Notes or something?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's an interesting question.

Speaker A: I don't. And sorry but uh, not like, you know, generally speaking in terms of like feature set but like, because I know there's like, you know, I've tried some of these sort of sophisticated note taking apps and um, they're capable of a lot but I just don't really end up finding much of it useful. And for whatever reason it's like, you know, the mid curve meme of like Apple Notes actually just kind of is pretty good. Um, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm more specific, like more specifically curious like not what Obsidian offers but the m, the like 80, 20 most useful like pieces for you.

Speaker B: Yeah, we have a lot of overlap, I believe in kind of how we view the function of apps for our particular goals. And I'm similar. Like I remember trying roam research like years back and it was just way too much. And then I had notion for a while especially when like that super uh, startup came up where you could take your notion pages and turn them into websites. So that was interesting for a while. And then I just similarly just Apple Note for a while. The thing for me that I like about Obsidian is pretty much like maybe two things, maybe three tops. You know, it's the folder system with how simple it is and it's all there on my sidebar. Um, and then it's just exporting into like plain text. Markdown. I love doing a brain dump into an Obsidian page where I'm just talking for like four or five minutes.

Speaker A: So it captures voice to like, it transcribes.

Speaker B: Uh, the connecting piece for that is you have to use one of like um, super whisper or whisper flow and you have a shortcut on your phone that your action button triggers, uh, a live recording and it lasts for like maybe five minutes at a time before you need to trigger another one again. And so I just Action button speak for five minutes, hit action button again. It transcribes all of it and immediately makes it on your clipboard. And then you just paste into Obsidian. And so I just do that like way too much each time. And then I uh.

Speaker A: Or you can walk while you do it. Right?

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. That those were. That's like the mesh point. It's like then I just export to markdown and then I just paste it into my chatbot that I want it and then I just, you know, give it its instructions of like, you know, condense this or find these particular through lines, whatever. And then what I love, the third function is then whatever I get out from the chatbot, I have it, give it again to me in plain text markdown so that I can copy it. And when I copy and paste back into Obsidian. And the thing I love is that when I do it that way, it immediately creates like that, you know, drop down little arrow on the side where it's all in, almost like an in page folder. And so I can have on one page, you know, 7 to 10 of these headers that is just a line item. But then clicking the little arrow on the side drops down the entire thing that I pasted. And that's pretty much it. That's the only reason I really love Obsidian.

Speaker A: Can you run that by me one more time? So it's basically, I understand everything up to the point where you've spoken, uh, by audio while you're walking most of the time. Uh, and this app that you're triggering with the action button, it's capturing the audio. You copy that, or it copies automatically the clipboard. You paste that into Obsidian, you paste that to chat, uh, and, you know, ask some sort of questions about it. You're pasting then what exactly back into. So let's say you do an audio recording. It's in Obsidian. Now you're. You paste it into chat, the full thing. And then what are you asking or talking about? And then what are you pasting back?

Speaker B: Yeah, here. So here's like a material example with, uh, the Walk Club recently. So I had, So I was, you know, I'm doing a bunch of walking. I'm trying to think of like a very lightweight app, um, kind of playing with the idea of mini apps. But what if they were just regular iOS apps in the App Store, but they were mini apps in a way. And so I would be walking and rambling about that, you know, five or ten minutes. I would have two or three worth of pastes that would go in. I would copy all that, pasted it in ChatGPT and then in ChatGPT. A lot of times the way I work with AI writing is I don't really have AI write things for me. Instead I ramble and then I go to ChatGPT and I say, so I just said a bunch of stuff. The core ideas are. Because usually, you know, you think clear after you've gone through one pass. So the core ideas are this, please pull out everything related to this, you know, add in some tines if you feel like it, remove the things that are, uh, erroneous and then that comes in clipboard able, you know, copy. And I take that and I put that back into Obsidian underneath my original.

Speaker A: But okay, so, so let's, let's stop there for now. Cause I, I followed to that point. Um, is this. Do you. Are you specifying whether with chat or in your head, do you have a um, uh, like a form factor for that output? Like is that intended to be a blog post or like a note to self or like an outline? Um, what format is that thing that you're copying back into Obsidian? You've got the rough. You've got the full transcription in Obsidian and now you've got this sort of polished and targeted like get rid of the fluff and M. Tie together the core points. Like what, what is that actually? Is it paragraph like form or what does that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's like an. It's almost like um, like a scientific papers abstracts. So it's a little. It's probably going to be

Speaker A: three or

Speaker B: four line paragraphs, no more than two or three of them and then bulleted list and then a final maybe two or three sentences that condense everything. And then I. The recent thing I've been doing for the past few months is then the final thing will be like a one line item and it gets no more than five or seven words and it has to try to condense everything into those five or seven words. And that's pretty much the structure. So it's like, it's more so almost like if I had an administrative assistant, it would be what I'd be asking them to turn into a brief to give to me the next day so that I can move on further into the idea.

Speaker A: Got it. Um, that makes. That makes sense and it's an interesting structure. Um, it's kind of none of the above for like what I say. Like not really a blog post, although some of them probably could be published as a blog post. It's somewhat. Maybe a self directive of here's like next steps, um, with some color around why. And then ultimately like the, the most condensed version which is included in the. The larger version is like a tweet, like a short tweet of like a, you know, one sentence on the whole thing. Which is, which is a nice hook to remember the full thing by. Um, because otherwise it's just a bunch of, you know, if it's a bunch of longer things like you can remember it as like, oh, this was the note about that and this was the note about that. But having a Five to seven word hook might be like, most helpful, um, because it's more useful to remember that hook than it is. This is the note about the subject sort of thing. Um, so anyway, one of the parts that it seemed like you were saying you might love the most, um, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically when you feed that, when you paste that back into Obsidian, um, it's. If there's like sort of multiple, you know, five sort of core themes or pieces of, of the ultimate, like polished up note. Um, it's. Is it having those sections collapsible or is it something. Is it a different level? Okay, so that's what it is. So you end up with like sort of uh, a roughly speaking, like in like a word doc, like one or two page thing that has some paragraphs and bullets and like a concluding sentence or something like that. It's not. Might not be the same every time, but like something like that in like the form of like roughly a memo. And the sections are collapsible such that the whole thing could be like five collapsible sections with a sentence at the end or something.

Speaker B: Precisely, precisely. And. And it almost allows for like, oh, uh, like a concurrent brief to just keep continuing. And I just love on the aesthetic level that it's all collapsible because I don't, I really don't like super long documents. But additionally, I love that it is just. I'm gonna have like 10 of these collapsible things and I'm gonna be able to just click through each of them and watch how this, the idea progresses. And because they each have that hook at the bottom, I'm going to see if any real material pivots have happened to the idea as it's gone. And I have found that that has allowed. When I return to ideas, after I take some time to give you a breather, I have found that this is making the ideas much more durable than they were before.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great, um, sounds like sort of a great system continuously improving, uh, both through your own intentional improvements and the improvements of the tech alone. Like becoming more capable in some ways. Um, and yeah, uh, I've done a lot of the, uh, you know, record audio to transcribe. Like before those tools were quite as good as they are now. There was a app called Otter that I used quite a bit. Um, and so I need to sort of. I haven't been doing that much. I'd like to. I can check out the ones you mentioned or, you know, there's a bunch of tools that do this. Now. I, uh, just didn't know if it was Obsidian directly, but as long as it's not Obsidian directly, there's a bunch of tools I think, that could be used for that. And it's a really great. I think it's a great, like, sort of activity that, um, not a lot of people do. Like, I don't have specific examples in mind, but I think as a general, like a general thing, um, you know, successful, like, wealthy, um, people in, like, older times would have their. I don't want to, like, overgeneralize because, again, I can't even name one person. I want to say, like, Ben Franklin or something, but I don't know that that's necessarily true. But someone like that, um, I've heard, I feel like, multiple examples of people who would, like, sort of lie in bed or something and have their assistant just kind of sit there and they would, um, you know, speak and have the assistant, you know, write down what they're saying. And like, that's the. You know, you used to need an assistant to do that, and it's like, kind of a crappy job.

Speaker B: Um.

Speaker A: Well, I don't know how bad it is to, like, listen to Ben Franklin ramble and write it down or whatever, but, um. But like, in general, like, you used to need a person that. And I think it's so cool now that, like, you just, you know, the device or, you know, the app can. Can do that alone. And it's just a different form of input. Like, you can imagine the percentage of, um. I don't know, it's just sort of this weird in between. Like, obviously people talk and have conversations and calls. Uh, and people do emails and write. You know, they do writing. And it's more or less like writing, but verbally. And it's just sort of like an underdone practice I think that I find super useful for a number of reasons. But, you know, a couple of them are. One, like, writing can be difficult. Opening up a blank document can be overwhelming. You might edit a lot as you're going, and it sort of breaks the flow. Um, and then the second thing that I think we both appreciate is, like, there's something to walking, and you can't write while you walk, really. Um, but you can talk while you walk. And there's something about walking that seems to. There's like, the scientific view of, like, you know, it's. It's increasing your. Your blood flow and, like, heartbeat and circulation, and maybe there's like, more Blood pump in your brain or something. I think there's also just like occupying your body with something might maybe like sort of freeze the mind to uh, you know, I don't know, focus better or something like that. But like for me, I think, you know, I'm, I feel better listening, speaking, thinking all of the above basically while walking. So it's a nice opportunity to do that. Um, I generally just really like the sound of these systems that you've built for yourself. I've endeavored to do the same in some ways for myself and with new tools like there continues to be more opportunities to do these things. I want to move to actually like the ideas that you're thinking about and the things that you're working on and away from these systems. Like my key sort of takeaways are I won't know until I do it, but I'm like pretty motivated to try Obsidian. Um, um, which I've actually never done. I did roam, I've done notion. Um, um, there's maybe another or two. But I actually, as much as I've heard about Obsidian, I haven't personally tried it.

Speaker B: Um, um.

Speaker A: And then Cosmos, I still have open on my screen and I don't know exactly. Like maybe that's the last question I'll ask on sort of the systems. Um, how you like, are you just scrolling the feed on Cosmos? Like is there a specific way with which you interact and then anything else you have comment wise on on systems, um, before moving to sort of like the ideas themselves?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. I'm very particular with Cosmos. So one of its features is similar to Pinterest. You're going to get an algorithmic feed the more you use it. And like most algorithms, I will say it does kind of that thing of like, you know, you bought a laundry machine and now you get ads for laundry machines. So it does do a little bit of that. Um, um. But as such that doesn't really get in the way of the use for me. I'm very much like a project folder kind of guy. So I'll, I'll send you my profile after we get off so you can follow it. And so I have maybe 12 to 15 different folders. A couple examples would be like, uh, motion photography, photos, surreal photography, horses. Uh, I have a whole folder on horses. I have a whole folder on eyes, I have a whole folder on lips. And so I almost see them as like little windows into one particular aesthetic vertex. And then I make a folder and I just fill that folder until I've exhausted my interest in filling it. And then often, like, uh, I was mentioning earlier, they have an export feature. So this will be more on computer and not mobile. I'll export the entire library. Sometimes It'll be like 200 photos, sometimes it'll only be like 20. And then I'll take that and then I'll put it in Figma and then kind of figure out which in here are the dime is in the rough. And then those are kind of the things that they can go to my Photos app and then from mobile while I'm walking, those are things I can be generating with image models and creating procreate stuff. So that's. And it's pretty much that I don't really stray from that system. With Cosmos, it's pretty much I'm not really viewing other people's profiles that much. I mean, maybe if it's a buddy who creates an account and follows me, I'll keep tabs on theirs. Because you do get notified when they add things to folders or when they make them, but by and large it's just like concept folder saturated. Export it.

Speaker A: And, um, what was that last thing? After you export, you go to Figma. You've got like the diamonds in the rough. What are you then doing after that?

Speaker B: Then I take those and I export those diamonds and put them in my like iOS photos app. So then I can access them on my phones. And then a lot of times what I like to do is I take things that are inspiring to me visually. And then, uh, this happens a lot while walking. This is kind of one of those benefits I wasn't expecting. I'm finding that I'm liking the inspiration I get out in the real world to mix in with the things I'm getting inspired with digitally. So a recent example here materially is that I was walking the other day and I was up by Johns Hopkins in the National Gallery, and there's, uh, a Canadian embassy that's very large. It's like, it stands out. And you know, in D.C. there's so many of these, um, retractable barriers to not allow people to drive through, right. That have this big stop word mark on it with red lines. So I have a folder in Cosmos that is like kind of a brutalism. You know, roads, concrete, cement, these kind of things. And there was a surreal photo of like a guy, he's laying on a concrete floor, he has like a cinder block on his head instead of his head. And it was just one of those things that just by that divergent association while I was walking I take a photo of this stop barrier and I change it to a start barrier. And the only reason that really happened was because earlier, before that walk, the diamonds and the rough I was picking out and the photos I had were all kind of brutalist, concrete type things. And then I just mix them together with my image model. So that's kind of more what I mean. Those diamonds, sometimes they're one to one translation, where I literally just put that image into ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever and say, change these features into this. Or it's more. So just kind of like a loose inspiration and then things are captured while I'm out and about and the ideas of both get mixed together in the image model.

Speaker A: Is there any, um. Like, are you ever taking the photo? Like, taking a photo that's a part of the input yourself?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker A: Like, I'm. I. I see the start image that you're referencing and is that like the actual building that you were talking about or. That is the real photo. Okay, so you actually took that photo and then modified the start element.

Speaker B: Yep, exactly.

Speaker A: Interesting. Uh, it's a great photo. It looks like a cool building.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, I love that building. Oh, that's interesting. Um, I didn't think that that would have been a building, uh, that you actually, like, sort of stumbled upon, um, just by, like, how interesting looking it is. Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Easy has some weird architecture.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool. What about the, you know, people? I'm doing this thing that, uh, you know, whenever I listen to Rogan, uh, I haven't listened to him in a little while, but I always think it's. There's a couple things to me about Joe Rogan podcast that are kind of, uh, interesting. Uh, well, there's a bunch. But, um, you know, one is, is that he's built the, uh. I don't know if it's still. But I still consider it, like, the most popular podcast in the world, most successful podcast in the world. And, you know, his conversations are not at all. There's no editing. Um, and that, to me was always the permission slip to not edit at all, because I don't enjoy editing. And, uh, you know, in terms of audio at least. And, uh, my excuse was always like, well, you know, and then you listen to, like, no, not. No shade against him, but, like, Harry Stebbings, like, has this popular VC podcast. And, uh, and it's, like, highly edited, like, to the point where he's jumping from one word to the next, sort of like too fast because the pause has been removed or like the, um, has been removed. And it just sort of sounds to me personally, like a little too choppy or something, um, like, unnatural. And so anyway, the Rogan editing thing was always my, uh, excuse. Like, if he got the most popular podcast in the world without editing, like, there's no proof that editing actually improves things. And so, uh, uh, if it costs time and energy and I don't like doing it, and it's not even obviously a positive thing to do, I'm not gonna spend time on it. The other thing I think is kind of funny is, uh, a lot of times, you know, he'll ask Jamie to, like, bring something up on the screen. This is where it'll actually relate back to what we're talking about. Um, or won't motivate me to. To go on this little tangent. He'll be like, you know, Jamie pulled this up, and like, I was listening to one that he did with Bill Burr and, uh, the comedian, and they're looking at cars for, like, half an hour. Like, Jamie's, like, going through these cars. They're looking at cars, talking about cars. And I'm listening to the. You know, I don't really do the video podcast very much. I'm listening to the audio, and I'm like, this sucks. Like, you know, they're referencing, like, these cars, talking about car. I can't see the cars. Like, it's for the number one podcast in the world. It seems kind of crazy that they spend half an hour and it's like, not that irregular that they do this. Maybe not half an hour, but they spend a good amount of time talking about something with a visual reference that if you're listening audio only, which, like, millions of or tens of millions of people are, you know, you. You don't really get it.

Speaker B: Um.

Speaker A: Um. So anyway, I'm. I'm doing that now in looking at your feed and, uh, looking at some photos and talking about them when, for better or worse, not tens of millions of listeners, but, you know, tens or hundreds are going to. Not really know what I'm talking about, but they can go to your feed on. On Forecaster. Or maybe X. Uh, like, lght. Eth. On, uh. What is it? On X. It's. It's not by light, right? Without the eyes.

Speaker B: Yeah, not by light.

Speaker A: Yeah, not by light. Without the eye. On Farcat, on Twitter, like that. Ethan. Forecaster. Anyway, I'm looking at this photo now separately from the John. Or it wasn't John Hopkins. It was, uh, the Canadian Embassy building. This is A separate photo of, like, a street with, um. I don't know if that's. If that's, like, paddle ball courts or something. Like some sort of lines on the street and then, uh, like a chair sort of in the middle. Is that also a photo?

Speaker B: That's a real photo, Yep.

Speaker A: Oh, cool. Um, you've got some nice walking area, uh, on the. Envious of some. This walking area.

Speaker B: D.C. is so green. And, you know, I. I grew up in the DMV. Um, I wasn't in D.C. particularly, but I would come in, and it's one of those things that now that we're older and, you know, you have perspective and you don't absolutely hate where you came from. You know, I come back and it's like, DC Is a. DC Is probably the most European American city. Like, the Metro is very European. It all has the same brutalist design. Um, it goes everywhere. You know, there's four corners, essentially, and there's so much green space. Like, the National Mall itself is obviously very green. But the photo you're talking about with the chair, that's just a random, like, neighborhood in Capitol Hill underneath a bridge. Like, you see that stuff everywhere. And, uh, so it makes kind of tie it all in. It's like. It made me want to be out of my office more, you know, And I was like, well, I don't want to have my productivity drop. What if I could actually, like, kill two birds with one stone?

Speaker A: Yeah. It seems to me that there's, uh, less and less, um, you know, uh, less and less excuse to, uh, not be able to work on the move, um, even. Obviously, you know, there's plenty of professions that don't require you to be at a computer, at a desk at all. But for guys like us who are largely doing Internet things, um, you know, your portal is either the phone or the computer. And obviously the phone is mobile. But, you know, you don't have a ton of people, like, working while walking necessarily. Obviously, you are, to some degree. And I've tried to. I mean, the easy. There's different components of work that are easier to, um, you know, uh, untether from the desk than others. So the easiest one, I think, is. Is phone calls. Um, you know, you can. Obviously, sometimes you need a screen share or whatever, but if you're just willing to sacrifice the video component, you can go for a walk and have a call. Um, the video component wasn't even at all a usual thing until Covid. Like, you know, my working out of college, I had conference calls for work all the time with, you know, up to 6, 7, however many people, no audio, no video, you just take turns. It kind of, there's a natural way to figure out like whose time to talk it is. And most, a lot of people are just listening anyway. Same as a Zoom call. And instead of those sort of uh, passive participants having to make eye contact with their computer camera to pretend that they're listening, you can actually just like do work or you know, listen without making eye contact with your, with your computer, uh, and all of these things. So anyway, I'm not a, uh, if it's not obvious, I'm not a big. We're using, we're, we're recording on Zoom right now. I think it's a good app, but I'm not a big video, uh, conferencing guy. And I think kind of silly that that became the default. Um, I understand why, because you were trying to replace in person meetings and it seems seemingly gets you closer to that, but it's just too much.

Speaker B: Um, small, small tangent on that idea. I was actually talking to a buddy about this and there are some people I'm sure you come across that are very staunch about the video. And I think now it's speculative, but there's a part of me that feels like it's a little bit of a power thing and a control thing and like a, uh, I'm going to, you know, I'm working, I'm going to make sure you're working. Like there's some of that going on, I feel like. But my buddy reminded me, it's so true. Conference meetings used to be a thing where like you had your conference rooms because you would have to just email everybody that, hey, we need to talk about X, y, Z at 1pm so everybody get in the elevator and go to the 13th floor and we're going to meet in this room and talk about it. And when email came along and video conferencing, that all kind of went by the wayside. I mean most people, I'm sure if you were to say, like, we need you to drive into the office as a remote worker and meet us in this competition to talk, they would go, why? I have a similar why to video. Like if, if it's about, like you said, visuals and we need to be screen sharing, sure, I, I do understand that, but even then I'm not necessarily sold on that. I need to see your face and you need to see mine. I mean we talk as people our entire lives. I kind of have a good rhythm of when to talk, when not to talk. And then even when there's a couple moments that we were both talking, it's very simple to be like oh no, you go, you go. So I'm, I'm not sold on video either.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even the talking over yourself, it happens on video. I'm a big. Or uh, talking over each other happens on video. I'm a big audio only as underrated as compared to video guy. Um, I have a blog post about this somewhere where I laid out like some, some more of the reasons. But yeah, um, I just, it's, it's uh, yeah, just kind of silly to me. But um, I'm looking, I'm sorry, I'm getting distracted. I'm been on your feed and uh, I'm not really like thinking like I'm listening, I'm not thinking about anything else but I'm just looking at some of the visuals and uh, I got down to the golf clubs which looks so cool. Uh, the super normal. Yeah, golf clubs just look like the cleanest things ever. Um, and uh, again I guess I'm doing the Rogan thing but uh, yeah, those are sweet. I, I got new clubs uh, like a year or two ago that I have not used very much. Like I, I, I like golfing. I just haven't. Uh, if, if I, it's a weird thing where um, if I'm really busy on, on something work wise I don't really have time and if I'm not, I feel guilty golfing because trying to find the next thing to like be busy on, uh, and feels like golfing feels like too luxurious or not luxurious like leisure. Like um. Yeah, but I would like to get playing more. The other thing was that you know I mentioned I was in Florida previously. Um, and uh, in theory you can play year round in Florida, but it's so hot for a large chunk of the year that even though you can play in theory, it's just not really pleasant. Like I love golf, but golf on a beautiful. I'm like sort of a fair weathered golfer. Like I'm not gonna go out there and like just get absolutely roasted for four hours.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so anyway, um, so maybe you know, this is a good uh, segue into. I want to, I'm going to mention a few projects that I've seen uh, you posting about and you know, pick whichever one or multiple if you'd like but at least you know, one that is sort of you're most interested in talking about now. And um, because I know we're, we're just at an hour now and going to be running over as a result of this. Yeah, um, you know, we can sort of, we can leave some discussion, uh, material for another day. But um, the three brands, or um, you know, however you refer to them, but that I'll propose as options are one, super, uh, normal. The I just mentioned, I see these golf clubs that are sort of branded super normal. Uh, two, uh, the Walk Club and three, New Money Club.

Speaker B: Okay. They're a little bit all tied together, but I think for kind of the intent you say it, I think I'll go for a hybrid approach between New Money Club and the Walk Club.

Speaker A: And, and also I, I should say I don't care about the specific, uh, if, if the more organic way to speak about them is all together like, and even adding something else or whatever, like, go for it. I, I don't know. You know, I'm not trying to prescribe a way, uh, of talking about them that is less good than whatever you might otherwise want to do.

Speaker B: Cool, no worries. Uh, so New Money Club and Walk Club kind of occupy similar space. And this is actually perfect that I'm talking to you because you actually have a ton of the context of what I'm about to talk about. Um, they are permutations of a lot of the theories I was playing with. Entire network. Right. And I, um, guess very briefly for someone who's listening to this, that has no frame of reference for that. It's one of the only what I consider successful attempts at a, uh, decentralized autonomous organization. And it's largely inspired from Downsdale. And it took a couple big swings on some different technical theories. And I would say for what was available at the time, it was wildly successful. I know some people whose lives were changed by what they told me. I know some people who use it as a launchpad to get very high level jobs and very successful works. Now there are people who like, are very creative now who were very scared to be creative publicly. And I'm watching them kind of build their own paths and design and creativity and such and so on and so forth. And it was just a fun scene. Very much like in hindsight is a thing that reminds me of like impressionist France, how you get art scenes or like 1960s New York conceptual art scene. It to me is like a very art scene kind of thing that had a weird confluence of money and technology at the same time. And so, you know, materially it did not get to where I wanted it to get. There were some technical limitations. There were Some operator limitations on my end, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of factors, but uh, the theory's in that I still believe, I still believe in the idea of open source intellectual property. I still believe in a financial layer at the global level that anyone can opt into for payments, for verification and for coordination. And I still believe that the platform economy has peaked and that there will probably be new platforms that will take its place or at least compete with it to make it course correct. But simultaneously I believe that there's going to be a whole side of the Internet that is not a platform economy and it will be what is kind of the real creator economy thesis you see play out. And a very quick kind of tangent to give it some subtext is the pipeline we're watching of youtubers making indie horror movies and get actual some capital injection into them, to me is a very clear example of like the real creator economy is coming. There's a whole bunch of conversations and things that have to happen to get everyday people to understand what is available to them. But I don't necessarily think that's my job. I think it'll take time. So New Money Club and the Law club are not recreations of hire, nor are they like my. That's not my intention. But there are on some of the theories of terms like headless brands and open source ip, et cetera. And so hire, I believe works really well, um, in part to a lot of things. But to get it off the ground starting, I do believe from a creative standpoint that it was very important that that was a belief that I fully embodied in my own life. And so it was not an authentic show. Right. I do believe in the idea of going higher and aiming higher. And I felt like people probably felt that, even if intuitively. And so the people who also operated by that belief kind of congregated together. And so that is more the thing I'm forking for New Money Club and the Wall Club. And it was kind of this, you know, I was rewatch, I rewatched succession, watch industry, all these things. And I'd had some personal stuff where I was caretaking elderly people for a few years. So these, um, concepts were loosely around and it was kind of tongue in cheek was this idea like, you know, nobody wants to be old. And I was kind of just riffing and I was saying, well, nobody wants to be old money either. And then I was thinking about meme coins, crypto, AI, all these things and like legacy crypto, Twitter. And I kind of just was flooded with ideas of like, well, there should be a club for people with new money, people who want to wear shorts and flip flops, people who want to wear hoodies, people who want to be tattooed, who maybe want to smoke cigarettes or smoke weed or want to do mushrooms or drink or maybe want to abstain from all of it and kind of more aesthetic. And that kind of just rolled out naturally of some aesthetics for that. And then the walk club is a little less elaborative in the ideas here, I would say, but it's still kind of pushing on some things. There was an offshoot from Higher called Higher Athletics that was essentially all about, you know, triathlons and running. And I saw there are actually people still using it for challenges and there are some mini apps. And the Wall club for me especially being back in D.C. was kind of a. Well, there are all these run clubs, right? And there's all this press about how run clubs are becoming like dating networks and now they're oversaturated and people think they've peaked. Well, I like walking and I like walking for a lot of things we've discussed. And then I can actually have a conversation and like do things with another individual while I'm walking, while when I'm running I cannot be doing those things. And so, you know, when I, you know, I like to travel a lot and when I was traveling a ton, I just took photos on my, my iPhone because I liked it. And over time, obviously through working through hire and other creative stuff, I realized this is kind of the lowest lift idea, uh, that feels like a home run in terms of just my own personal satisfaction. Because it's as simple as walking, taking photos if you want to, and putting the logo on it, similar to what we did with Hire and allowing anybody to do that without persecution or it's as simple as walking. And then maybe you have ideas that you take down and you can attribute that to walking. So they're, they're very kind of low friction, open source IP ideas that I could see growing into networks that, ah, remove some of the mistakes that were made in Higher, um, and then to kind of put the bow on it. Supernormal is just kind of the shop. I realized I should not be doing all this just kind of ephemerally. I should probably put it all under one, uh, shop so that it can, you know, gain leverage and compound over time. And so Supernormal is kind of just like a propaganda factory in a way. It's like what I already do with words and visuals and then if there are any cool projects that come about, like New Money Club or Walk Club, just shove them under the supernormal brand. They don't have to be super, like, dogmatically tied, but just have an, uh, origin point that people who are interested in them and maybe want to see if there's more can go and find more stuff.

Speaker A: Do you think it's, um, important to have that? Uh, I mean, like, evidently, I would say you do. Um, as opposed to basically you personally being that, like, does that make a. What's the. I, um, guess. Do you have a, uh, sort of, um. Not that you need it, but like a justification for.

Speaker B: Oh, no, I. Yeah, I do. I have one for this. This is one of the bigger lessons for the personal side of higher mistakes. So. And it's a bit funny because it's a little contradictory to what I was talking to you about with the creator economy, but. Right. The bare bones kind of creator economy thesis is that the founder of a company is essentially the company is a shell of the founder's personality. Right. There's like the. All that David Semra quotes about how, you know, companies are really kind of signatures of a human mind and all these things. Steve Jobs, with Apple's often the most cited kind of version of that. And I kind of was following that philosophy because I didn't really have enough experience to have my own opinion on what ways I wanted to do it. And with Ayer, what I realized was I'm not interested really in the accolades of self. Um, I mean, I'm pseudonymous. Right. I don't really use my real name, so that's kind of proof of, like, where my preferences lie natively. But even more so, it just felt like there was unnecessary execution risk or perceived execution risk, rather for it being going to my name as a brand. Right. Because all of a sudden I would be in conversations with people and they would have the idea, they would have how they were going to grow the idea. They would have a set of people that were already interested in the idea and all they really needed was maybe some push, some publicity, maybe a little bit of money. And that was kind of what I was doing at the time with Hagger. But I would notice once that transaction happened, there was almost this intuition that it was a handoff happening, that it was like, oh, cool, so you do like it. Cool. Well, here it all is now. You are synonymous with hire. So you're going to do it. Right. And that burnt me out massively. That's part of why I took so Much time off because I realized, oh, I can't be the anchor for an idea that I want to be way larger than me. Part of the reason I liked hire so much was I like that idea of divergent aesthetics, divergent narratives, divergent personality types. I mean, we would have never gotten aether from Martin so early. Now you see that as a commonplace thing. Agents. But that was so early. That never happens if you don't allow people who have a completely different skill set and preference type from you to be just as top level influential. But I was noticing trying to scale that a lot of that context was getting lost because people weren't along for the ride. And so it became kind of, uh, oh, you're the president, you're the CEO of this thing, and that limits kind of the core idea. So that's why I go, okay, maybe it should be a shop instead. And it's just one extra layer of the onion ball so that you can at least tell people, now, this is the thing that's happening at this shop. Yes, the shop is a wrapper for me, but it's the shop, it's not me. And that allows me. If it grows long enough, maybe we do hire one or two people and then it really isn't just me, it is a shop.

Speaker A: I see. And so you can actually, there's a few things there, but one of them, you know, the last one you mentioned is you might prefer to like, you want to basically be able to hire people at the personal level, um, without having it be with having some entity, though, uh, rather than having to plug people in on each individual brand, it's helpful to have leverage on the full thing, but also have that, that level of separation to where the. Each brand is not sort of synonymous with you, uh, just by sort of giving it an extra layer, um, removed. So where is the, uh. I think I've been there before, but what's. Is there a URL for supernormal?

Speaker B: Yeah, supernormal tech. All actually spelled correctly. I know I mess with letters a lot, but it's all just spelled correctly. Supernormal Tech Propaganda factory.

Speaker A: Got it. Um, and then. Right. Um, and you can. Can you get to the walk club from here?

Speaker B: Uh, not yet. That is actually going to go up this weekend, though, because I've just reworked the logo and so now it's ready to go. But yeah, so that'll be like, for example, that'll be. There'll be little, you know, breadcrumbs here and there of like, where did this come from? And then There'll be a site, it's folded on the site right now and there will be, you know, a repository of projects.

Speaker A: Nice. Um, and yeah, I, obviously I've, I've loved Walk Club. I feel like you've been iterating on Walk Club or sort of uh, in and out of, of Walk Club for some time in terms of like the concept. Um, yeah, and obviously I, I really enjoy that one. Um, but New Money Club, having seen that one from you more recently, I think is also interesting. And I like the early images that you've got going on there. And it's just a great, I mean both of them, like, you know, they just seem, they're big, like similar to how higher is big. Um, in terms of. There's a lot of people with, you know, who are trying to be ambitious and positive and have a certain, um, you know, aesthetic taste and, and things like that. Um, the Walk Club, for all of your points on like the popularity of running Club, it's like kind of a no brainer. Like it's a much more social, uh, like social friendly activity and a lot of people enjoy it. There's just not sort of like yet a walking culture as there is a running culture. So it seems like a pretty big thing. Um, and then, yeah, you know, on New Money Club, um, it's a pretty elegant name for a class of people that is basically inevitable to grow. Because by definition, I mean the only the way they won't grow is when new money turns into old money over many decades.

Speaker B: But um, that's true, very true.

Speaker A: But for now like new money is emerging by definition. Um, and it's a very simple like sort of clear name. And it's also kind of. I actually, when I first saw it, I'm now remembering that I was thinking of it less as like the opposite of you know, quote unquote, old money in terms of like people and more in terms of like old money being dollars in gold and like new money being, you know, bitcoin and meme coin. So there's sort of like a double. Double.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's part of it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: There's um. God, if I can nerd out for a sec. There is something that I find incredibly optimistic from the higher experience, which is. And we're seeing it a little bit. We've seen it with the Timothee Chalamet thing where he was accepting that award and he kind of broke the fourth wall and kind of spoke about his ambition. And then we saw it even recently with Wemby when they Won the conference finals of kind of like, see, it's cool that he's so emotional and cares so much about this.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: Hmm. It's like the nihilism, apathy, nothing matters thing. It's cool for a period of time. I'm not going to say it's not. It has nothing because people wouldn't be doing it if it had nothing. So it's cool for a period of time. It's rebellious. It had little. Little motion. But what Higher taught me is that if you can make something challenging, like trying to better yourself or to make sure you have a daily walk, or to try to build your finances as a new person entering the economy, these are all very tough things to do. And they're very often isolated. Right. Um, and so people are very precious about sharing it. They're very insecure about it. And that's where a lot of that whole nonchalant gimmick comes from. You know, I've been through that cycle myself, so I'm not even judging, just speaking from experience. What Higher taught me was like, if you can make things fun, and more importantly, if you can make things a little sexy, all of a sudden there's a lot less friction for people to join them. So the idea of a walk club being a little, kind of sexy, the idea of being new money being a little sexy, I really do find that that is. That works way more than I would have thought. And that has me more optimistic that we are going to see daos or network states or collectives that have real motion and money and do things. Because all that's really missing at the moment is just a little bit of sex appeal. And we have a ton of designers and creators and thinkers who know how to do sex appeal. So they do. It's just going to take time for them to find their way here or about here and then just let them make sexy stuff and it'll. It'll make people come. So I'm not, as. It's made me very bullish on the Internet.

Speaker A: Yeah. What you're talking about as, like, adding a little bit of sexy to it. Uh, I. I think I think about, like, with a slightly different word of, like, cool. But they're basically the same.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, they're basically the same. And, uh, you know, one thing, you know, you pointed out with the chalamet and the Wemby and. And juxtapositioning that against, like, apathy and that seeming, you know, cool. M. It's this, like, a point that I come back to. I found This. I just found this old, uh. Old. It's actually not. A couple months ago I casted. Everything is better when people care and more people care when caring is cool. Um, and so, like, basically, you can.

Speaker B: I forget.

Speaker A: It was, uh. Joni. I've was talking about something. I forget, like, I'm not gonna be able to pull the context on this completely. I think he was talking to Patrick Collison and, um. And he was talking about how you can really sense, uh, maybe it was like something like you can't totally sense the care in a prod product, but you can sense the carelessness or something like that. I don't know. Something like that. Where roughly speaking, you can really, um. As a. As a user of a product, uh, you can. You can really feel like how much the people working on it cared. And that's maybe why something like, you know, Apple's computers appealed to people because they so obviously cared tremendously about, like, you know, Steve Jobs old thing about, like, you got to do the back of the cabinet the right way and all of that. Um, and so they. And like, so products are basically just better and service, you know, services. I actually think, um. I forget if. If that was what inspired the specific cast, but I remember, like, I went to. This might have been different, but it was. It's relevant. At the same point I was. I went to like a. I don't know if it's Chipotle or like a Chipotle, like shop. And, uh, you know, went through the motions getting the food order as one does. And this person was just like, hooking it up. Like, they just like, you know, they were super focused. Like, I got like a breedable. And they were like. Were hitting everything, like, making it nice, you know, uh, they just. They clearly cared, like, about putting this bowl together. And it's totally understandable. Especially, like, the more objectively sort of menial the task, the less I expect a person to care. Um, and so when they do, it's just like, wow. Like, I really respect that in any occupation or any. Like, it doesn't need to be a job, just like any task. Like, caring is just like, it goes such a long way because you might be more or less talented or skilled or smart or whatever, but, like, caring is within your control. And, um, if you dial that up, like, the result will be better, like, guaranteed. It's like a fully controllable quality control, basically. Um, yeah, but where a lot of quality control sort of like out of your hands. So anyway, I think, you know, like you said the default, um, whether it's, like, about coolness or whatever, the default is just, like, it's not really that in, you know, I think, like, just generally speaking, like, caring is not that cool. I even remember when I was like, a kid, I. I, like, have a pretty not so good memory. Um, and, like, especially from growing up, like, I just, like, you tell me a story. Like, I. I know the story, but, like, I don't really remember, like, being there that much. Right. Um, one thing I remember, like, very clearly is, like, in middle school or something. Like, I just. I remember, like, really identifying with, like, not caring, being cool. Like, you know, oh, I don't care about school or this or that or whatever. And then as I got older, reflecting upon that, really, um, like, post high school, post, having taken, like, a gap year in college, which really sort of transformed my perspective in a lot of ways. Looking back at that and being like, man, that was really dumb. Like, you forgot, like, caring is like, you know, it's not cool to everyone, but, like, I don't care. Like, I mean, uh, that's kind of ironic, but, like, yeah, you know, don't care about that. Like, you should. The thing is, like, it's. It's easy to not care, especially when you're going through the motions, doing a bunch of things that you want to do. In order to care, you kind of have to find things that you care about to spend your time with. And, yeah, that's worth doing, like, I believe very strongly. And so, um, anyway, just a little riff on your riff, but to take something naturally agree that might be, uh, somewhat pedestrian, you, uh, know, no pun intended, on the walking club and make it sexy or cool. I'm, uh, all for that. So, um, cool. Well, this has been a awesome, uh, conversation. Let's wrap it here and save, uh, some content for another day. But, uh, it's a pleasure getting back on board. Uh, on my podcast with you, like I mentioned before we started rolling, it's been a little while, uh, and I remember, you know, speaking of caring, like, I. I. Podcasting is just a night. You know, it's. You can call it whatever you want. It's really just having conversations and recording them for other people to be able to listen if you want. Uh, and it's such. And the fact that, you know, we could have had this conversation one on one, and I would have enjoyed it all the same. But the fact that now, you know, I know at least some other people are going to tune in, it's just like, why not? Like, why restrict this conversation from others being able to listen? Um, and to do. So they don't have to do it now while we're live. They can do it anytime they want. Um, years into the future, we can come and listen back if we want to catch a reference or something, and we can, you know, we. And they can all listen to it while we're walking as well, which is a nice, uh, a nice touch. So, anyway, thanks for. For doing this and.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that was awesome. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah. And any. Any, you know, final, uh, words. You've got more than free to, uh, to take the floor. But other than that, I'll close, uh, it out and, uh, we'll get on with it.

Speaker B: And then the only thing I have is if there's anyone listening that is more an emerging talent than fleshed out. It's cool to care. On Jake's words, cool to care. And on my words, it's sexy to care. I find you very sexy if you care. So go. Care.

Speaker A: Caring is cool and sexy. Good place to end.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, all right, man. Well, thanks again and, uh, have a good one.

Speaker B: Same to you.