#106: Clear and Boring

i am recording in two places now oh i did um my backup recorder it should be right don't forget the backup recorder i can't i can't tell if you're serious or not about the backup recorder are you serious about the backup recorder i would just wish you recorded in two software pieces of software instead of those i don't i don't think that's possible to do you can't do that and besides you want like you want things physically you want things physically separated right if it's one computer it's no good it's like you've got you know you need two things physically recording oh my god what are you doing for something that you consider to be so important which is the backup recorder why if you seemingly buried it like on the multiple boxes that's a good question uh well okay so the thing the thing is i'm recording from my new office mike my home office is blue now oh new is blue blue is new right and i'm mentally considering it okay to be my new office okay that's good yeah it's been great but i've also as part of the process of painting it everything came out of the office and went into the main room of our house which was made things quite cozy uh for the several days it took to paint i'm sure you were very aware of all the things that you've purchased i became very aware of all the things that i've purchased i got rid of a whole bunch of them because again i've had collapsed two offices down into one and i moved out of my old one i was like there's a bunch of redundant stuff that i got rid of and i've just just like re-put everything back into the new blue office and i haven't well i haven't quite figured out what the storage system is going to be but look basically there's been a ton of change here at what i'm thinking of is like the blue engine of spaceship u oh yeah it's pretty great i love it i'm like i'm so happy about it and it it really is the case like the way you arrange your physical environment matters so much and we can we can talk about this stuff like later but the the short answer to your question is i've spent the last two weeks completely redoing two desks like i got a i got another big desk for this office and like i've set up all of that stuff and to get my office back into a workable state i just kind of threw a bunch of the stuff that was in my main room into boxes and i was like you are my project for later boxes uh like i'll have to organize you and uh figure all that stuff out and like get a much better storage system for the various things that i have but what that means is it just occurred to me i was like oh i'm pretty sure that audio recorder is in the box that's behind me and then i took a look and i go oh no it's not in this box i mean there's only six boxes of things but they're very dense so we might be you know doing a trapeze show here without two nets underneath us just one net underneath us did you pick blue because of spaceship u it's no mike it's the other way around it's the it's blue in spaceship u because that's the color for years and years i've always color coded as right important work but now but like did you pick the blue for the office because of that is what i mean i don't even understand what you're asking blue is the color of serious work yeah but your office wasn't blue before no i know it wasn't blue before because i just hadn't painted it before but if you had painted it always would be blue is what i'm asking yeah of course of course it would be like it couldn't be any other it couldn't be any other color it's like it's like look mike if i if i had like a dedicated recreation room in the house it would be green because green is the color of like oh i'm relaxing now i'm i'm reading a book here yeah that's just the way the colors would be it couldn't you wouldn't make a relaxing room blue that's matte stupid it's a relaxing room has to be green like what are you even asking me [Music] silly me so anyway i don't have a backup recorder just a quick thing just a quick point of order uh something i'd like to bring to the the attention of the quartz oh damn wait wait the cortex no don't you dare i'd like to i would just look i just want like the court stenographer to take down that i got i got a lot of flack last time for oh gray made a schedule and then he moved the very first incidence of this as mike said we didn't even get to one yeah we didn't we didn't even get to one as like tears rolled down your cheeks into your beard and it's like yes yes okay well then guess what we didn't get to one again but it wasn't me this time it was you this time you moved cortex right so i so i just wanted that like officially on the record oh our our second scheduled time which would have been the first scheduled time i did not move it you moved it all right when was we scheduled for the 10th right oh i don't know all right well i think and i've moved it two days earlier yeah yes i did two days earlier no but you see the thing is so great it doesn't it doesn't it's not the same what do you mean it's not the same you can't turn it around on me and be like of course i could no but i can completely no because it doesn't because i'm doing that right now i never set the schedule you set the schedule so you broke the schedule you set the shoujo and i moved it that doesn't matter it's not my shoujo it's yours right don't give me don't give me this schedule you've wanted a schedule for years yeah i i gave you i gave you a schedule and this is what this is what the sentence means right like i gave it to you wrapped up wrapped up in a little bow and i said here mike all right here is the thing that you have asked and wanted for years and you were so happy and you you know and now you are only making this situation worse for yourself when you move next month now you're making it a big thing right like you are now making it a thing that i moved it so now when you move it it becomes even bigger we're basically gonna spend every episode for the next year having this back and forth conversation yeah well no but look look i mean mike i know i know what you're trying to say here but let's get real neither of us is really expecting that i'm going to be the one who really sticks to the schedule like you know we both know that's not really going to happen so no one's surprised when grade moves the schedule it's just it's pretty shocking that mike moved this game [Laughter] here we go okay you know you just this thing that i gave you it was just immediately treated very poorly i'm not a very good recipient of gifts yes and and for a little bit of behind the scenes we almost had to move it just as we were recording now because of some stuff that came up but it was like uh-oh so we almost we almost got like a double move something we've never done before is rearrange after we've begun uh but we ended up pulling the parachute on that one we didn't do it so anyway thank you the court for hearing that and thank you to the stenographer for getting that down on the record i just it was very important before we begin to have that done yeah all right this september you can join relay fm in support of st jews children's research hospital september is childhood cancer awareness month and so we turn our support to saint jude during that period of time childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children under the age of 15 and children undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening diseases need transfusions physical and cognitive therapy and so much more but the families of saint jude patients do not pay a dime for this world-class care which is an important thing especially in america right and saint jude cover the costs for those families because if you're in that situation and your child has been diagnosed with cancer what you don't want to have to be thinking about is how can i pay for this but as well as being this incredible hospital for children saint jude is also a world-class research institution saint jude combines the very best in personalized care with one of the most technologically advanced treatment clinics in the world it's called the red frog therapy center this is the very first proton therapy center dedicated solely to children with cancer it has the ability to kill and shrink tumors while keeping healthy tissues and organs safe and saint jude continues to research the use of proton therapy preventing the growth and spread of tumors while reducing the risk of treatment related side effects and what's so great about saint jude is because they are a research institution and because they are funded by donations they give their research away they don't sell it they don't keep it for the highest bidder they share their research with institutions all over the world you can donate today at st jude.org relay and you will be joining the fight to end childhood cancer once again that is saintjude.org relay please go there today and donate for this incredible cause if you wonder or are wondering why does relay firm support saint jude like saint jude is a hospital in memphis tennessee now this is incredibly personal to us and to me because my co-founder stephen his son josiah has been a patient at saint jude since he was a very young baby he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and the care and support that said you'd gave to him allowed him to live today without saint jude things could have gone very differently and i consider stephen's family like an extension of my own family and to have seen and i have visited st true multiple times and seen firsthand what an incredible place this is and the more we have worked with them over the years the more i am convinced of the fact that this is a place that deserves donations and we will continue to keep doing it we're trying to raise 314 000 so we're doing it again what we raised last year i have been absolutely blown away so far by the support of the relay fm community and we have raised just an incredible amount of money so far but we need your help to get us to that goal so please go to student.org relay yes thank you very much thank you very much to all the cortexans who help support saint jude so once again that's saintjude.org relay podcast-a-thon 2 baby it's happening it's happening real soon very very soon are you very very prepared for podcastathon 2 by the time people hear this i will be more prepared than i currently am that will be in the midst of preparing a lot more what a what a what a true answer that is in the future it will be closer to podcastathon 2 than it is now i will i will talk in a little later on in the episode i will talk about why i am about a week behind the preparations that i wanted to be at um but we're getting things set up so the podcast-a-thon is gonna be a six-hour livestream that we're doing on twitch at twitch.tv relay fm on september the 18th from 2 to 8 p.m eastern time so you should come and hang out we've got a lot of fun things planned a lot of weird challenges a lot of great guests from relay fm shows going to be coming on and we're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff but getting getting everything set up is is it's becoming quite a task i think i mentioned on our last episode that i have three areas in mega studio that i'm i'm making right so i spoke about my lounge area which is fully done now i've been doing some streams and stuff from there i have kind of a desk area which is partly set up and then i had a third area that i wasn't talking about but i will now talk about it is a gazebo full of balloons or at least it will be so uh okay so okay so this this goes back to last year um at the saint jude campus they have these filming facilities and they have two studios and we used a large studio and then there was a small studio which we maybe would have been able to use and i don't know how it came up but i was very excited about the possibility of every time somebody donated an amount of money we inflate a balloon and put it in this room so it would show donations during the podcast-a-thon right you would see the balloons filling this room right and i was very excited about the prospect of being in that room and like talking right like presenting from the balloon room i was very excited about this but it ended up being outside of our scope last year and what we did instead was we created a ball pit that we had so every time somebody donated money they got their name written on the ball and it got thrown in the ball pit and there were many times during the podcast of thumb where i was standing in the ball pit and recording from the bullpen so i always podcast on two wanted to do the balloon room right i was fixed on the balloon room and we were gonna do the balloon room but then we couldn't be in memphis so i was like you know what i'm gonna make my own balloon room so inside of mega studio okay we are going to be erecting a gazebo is there a different word for gazebo in america is that like the people know what that means i don't know if this is a british term or not you know well right well okay i think i know what you're talking about because i'm i'm hearkening back to my time at the craft fairs and i'm assuming that you're talking about one of these kind of setups where you have like a booth and uh yeah i i think i know what you're talking about but now you are suddenly making me doubt like do you do you mean a gazebo like you would find out on a lawn like the kind of thing that people get married in is that what you mean yeah but like a small one of those oh okay that's not at all what i had in my head when you were talking about okay so you mean how do the balloons stay in we have netting around it so i was able to find a gazebo okay that had netted walls okay so the balloons won't escape and you'll still be able to see in right the balloons won't escape and you won't escape you'll just be in no i'll just keep walking in and out okay i mean again like as of right now the gazebo is not up it will be okay i was like do you have a picture of this thing but you don't have a picture of this thing because you haven't built it well i can show you what it will look like okay oh yeah i would like a photo here because i'm just look mike human communication is very hard and suddenly i'm just filled with doubts that i have anything in my head like what you're actually doing okay i just sent you a link to what i have procured okay let's see what this gazebo looks like they call it a pop-up marquee oh okay well now that makes me think i'm thinking of the original thing that i was thinking of yeah maybe okay right this is okay yes all right i understand what i'm doing okay yes i understand what you're doing now the thing is this is much closer to what i was imagining like say you know a young boy would sell pretzels out of with his father like this is much closer to that than when you were like no no it's like a gazebo that people get married in and then i was thinking of like a wooden thing in a park and i was i just didn't know what was going on here yeah no that was the wrong one but like so but but now you say that like the wooden ones yeah but my people also get married in marquis right which is kind of close too but bigger ones anyway this is what am erecting in the studio inside of my studio okay and we'll be filling with balloons with the idea that as we raise money during the podcast-a-thon the balloon room will get more full i like it and i will be able to be inside the big full balloon room obviously to do this requires the pre-filling of many many hundreds of balloons right you're not going to fill them live on air some for sure okay but not all because otherwise the sound of balloons being inflated will be the entire six hours right so we're gonna fill up many hundreds of balloons in advance me and adina here in mega studio put them in nets put them behind the gazebo and slowly fill up the gazebo are you feeling them with helium like they're going to be no i thought about helium but there was a couple of things with helium one the ceilings of mega studio are very high right and i don't want to be dealing with that and two helium balloons will go to the top which won't have the visual effect of filling right right it will go the other way yeah it'll more be like helium balloons are crushing you from above right i wasn't planning to say anything but i was also just wondering what is the like those those gazebos as you call them they like they're not that heavy and i was just beginning to wonder like what's this what's the maximum thrust of all of these balloons and i was just going to keep real quiet if this is that would have been actually quite a fun thing to have occurred right but uh like how how many balloons until the gazebo leaves the ground would have been quite a fun moment but no we're going to be doing air in there so yeah that's like that's the big thing that i've been keeping under my hat i mean so here's the thing like when when i'm releasing this episode because of things i will get to later in this episode we have not had the ability to start the setup of this so like i'm putting it all on the line here gray has the gazebo been delivered like is it in oh i have it all i have everything i've got many hundreds of balloons i have an inflating machine i have the gazebo the nets and the whole nine yards okay great then you're set what could go wrong i know what could go wrong it feels like everything i have everything how could anything go wrong so i we've we've put up the metal part and taken it down again so we know it fits because it's immersive um uh because funnily enough gazebos difficult to buy during covert why they're out of stock everywhere because people are putting them up in their gardens [Music] they're making little rooms for themselves in their gardens right so it ended up being a thing that was trickier to procure than i had expected what are you going to do with it long term i don't know man i haven't ever thought that far out yet okay so when it is up what percent of the floor space of mega studio would you say it's taking up um good 25 so it's probably not something you'd want to leave up indefinitely oh it's coming down again for sure but when it's down it's it's very small actually i was i was just thinking like maybe this could be a fun like vr room for you you can have like oh the gazebo is now the vr cave but if it's 25 of mega studio you probably don't want to do that that is a fun idea but it's far too big for it to be a permanent fixture but yeah i will keep it because like you know you never know when you need a balloon room i guess but also when it's down it's not that large at all yes yes it's like a pretty small box that goes inside um well that will be delightful of the many many fun things that we have planned for podcast-a-thon 2 but is part of the very very large job for a two-person team to put together but if you're gonna do it go for it and that's what we're doing right we're just going for it and see what happens and we're gonna have fun along the way and it's gonna be this week is gonna be wild i would like the time tracking numbers for filling balloons like i'd love to see what percent of the year that ends up being uh later on that would be great i'll let you know it's going to be a combined number it's not just me thankfully filling these things yes you uh mike you are a very very busy boy this upcoming week and i do not i do not envy you i do not envy you at all this episode of cortex is brought to you by squarespace you can make your next move with squarespace because they will let you create the website to give your next idea the perfect home they have all of the tools that you will need to build the website that you want to show off your next project to show off your next idea or maybe even an event that you've got going on whether you want to create an online store a portfolio or a blog it doesn't matter because 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sign up for a plan just use the code cortex and you will get 10 of your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show that is squarespace.com cortex and the code cortex for 10 of your first purchase thanks to squarespace for their support of this show and all the relay fm squarespace make your next move make your next website so i've been doing a lot of twitch streaming in the lead up to the podcast-a-thon so like we've been doing some additional streams games and and some in-person kind of stuff too and i am reminded how much i enjoy streaming as an activity what do you like about it i like that there's so much additional stuff that you can do that you can't do with audio right like it's video it's the video thing right like you know i can play games i can show things um like i've been doing some show and tell my growing keyboard collection no the keyboard collection yeah we'll come back to that so it has so many so many keyboards it's yeah it's a collection uh now it's a thing i got a it's a big thing in my life um but at the moment but so like i'm i'm enjoying that and what i like about the about twitch streaming specifically is it doesn't have the overhead of post video right like there's no editing it has many of the things that i enjoy about video as a medium without me having to think about putting in the many hours of work of the editing and publishing that youtube does right is that is that just because of the expectations of the platform or is that a side effect of twitch ditches your streams after uh i don't know what it is what is like a month or something all the streams going i don't know i mean you can i mean i can host them on the youtube channel and i'm planning on doing that for some stuff but it's just the fact that like all there is from a production perspective is the is what's happened live and that and then that's the end that's the video right so like there's nothing more to do after that period of time really like there is no edit to do for me with what i'm doing because it's not like the vlogs or it's not like product review videos where like you do all the filming and then you start all the editing right twitch stream it's just like this is what i produced and you can choose to have been there when it was happening or you can choose to watch it after the fact and that's all it is and i think i kind of like that and i'm thinking about maybe now i have room and space and stuff like that here in the studio like trying to make more a more permanent setup for that is definitely something that i'm going to consider like i'd spoken about always spoken about having like video ambitions here because i will be able to set stuff up and have it be more permanent but i think now that i will probably be turning my attention more towards streaming then producing some basically more towards twitch than youtube it's just the casualness of it that's what you like i like yeah i like the casualness of the the actual video itself right like the the making of it like i like the interaction method of streaming like talking to people that are in the chat room like in the in the live chat and stuff like that i enjoy that um i find it to be quite chill actually like as a way of producing content it is much more relaxed for me than other types of stuff that i make like the expectations are different so i find that quite relaxing as a content production thing and i also just like that it's you sit down you do the thing you get up and you're done there's no more all that's there is what you did you what you put into it when you were live is all that exists and and i i kind of find that quite refreshing because that's not like the other content that i make yeah i don't know i feel like i've i've i've had this i keep asking because i've had this like on and off again like what is live streaming like i don't know i just i i never feel like i'm able to get into it like i've never found content creators that have been like oh i really enjoy watching a bunch of this live stuff yeah i have also been watching way more twitch streams okay so like that's part of it it's like um i've found a type of content that i like to watch which is people building keyboards no okay right hanging out and building keyboards and i've been enjoying that content i find it very relaxing to watch um so like it's it's content that i am watching like semi-actively you know right yeah i mean i i can get that like the i mean the the most recent live thing i did watch was i i did watch steven put the wheels on his mac pro like oh yeah you see stuff like that so like he mentioned on that stream an idea that i am saying that i really want him to do so i'm now going to say on this show as a way to push him further so there was a show called this old house in america right i think it was like a home renovation show or something and he referenced like this old mac where like maybe every sunday he could take apart an old mac and show you the insides and i just thought like yeah man like i would love that right because i like i think i have come to enjoy this like calm comforting type of content that the in-person twitch streaming can be right and i think like a lot of the time on twitch it's called like just chatting or whatever but i i'd like there to be a thing that's going on as well as the interaction so like with the keyboard streamers that i watch they're doing something and also having conversations with the people that are there in the twitch chat right so i like the mixture of that which is like the calm conversation a lot of them as well have like beds of calming music through the streams which i also really like like the lo-fi hip-hop type stuff yes no no i i feel like you're uh your watch word for this one is calm right like yeah you've said it so much like mike wants something that's calm and i'm just i was just trying to think of like the the few things that i've seen that's live and i was and i'm trying to like bring some stuff up in my mind that's similar to this but a friend of mine i did get into it for a little bit but not permanently a friend of mine showed me these uh i don't know how to describe it like these crazy mario maker levels like yeah the world's most insanely difficult levels of mario that you have ever seen as for someone who was totally unfamiliar with mario maker it was very like what is this madness yeah it's a wild game i never really got into it but but i can see why people like it yeah but anyway so the thing about those streams is like yes the person who's playing the this incredibly hard level is casually chatting with the audience about whatever but i would not describe it as calm because in the background they're pulling off just these totally insane maneuvers and all i could think of is how can you possibly have a conversation with anyone while you're also doing these unbelievably god-tier-level moves in the background well that's because to them it's like it's flow right yes i'm sure it is i'm sure it is but i i don't think it wasn't like a calming viewing experience right right whereas watching steven put the wheels on his mac pro i don't know i i watched it but i also felt like oh this is like a like a weird art project that he's doing over here uh and it was a much more relaxing experience so that's kind of like where i am with this right where like i am in it's like you know i i feel like it's a common thing for me where if i find a type of content that i enjoy consuming i like to see if i can do it yeah right this is this is a trait of me that i have come to realize about myself maybe in the last year where like i've started to think like why do i do i try i try lots of things right and see what works and see what i like and what doesn't like and it's very frequent that like i will come across a style of content i will consider can i try that i like consuming it would i like making it and i try and sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't and i've kind of always been this way but i've kind of become self-aware about this of myself maybe in the last year or so so it's like similar where like i have enjoyed watching this type of content it is about a thing that i am becoming increasingly interested in and so maybe i will try doing some of it myself and i've been doing a couple of streams in this vein uh during september because as we've been hitting different fundraising amounts through the campaign we've been doing content and steven's wheel thing was was one of those where he basically changed the feet out of his mac pro to the really expensive wheels right and and like and i i really enjoyed watching steven do that in a similar vein where it was like it was really chill uh and i think i like that kind of i like i i have come to enjoy that kind of content and so i'm also thinking like are there things that i can do in that space maybe yeah well it's it's also it's also a very natural part of the creative process that it doesn't matter what it is like if it's if it's live streaming you know you watch a bunch of different content creators making live stream stuff and then you start to develop like preferences or or like genre sensitivities where you think oh i like it when people do this or i don't like it when people do that and and then like i think it can very naturally just lead you into thinking oh if i was going to do a version of this how how would i do it and and yeah i think that can just naturally happen for any kind of entertainment like yeah i mean i know when i made that decoy video i watched like a billion urban exploration videos around that time i'm just like what's this genre like you know what you know when i'm putting this together what do people do that i like and what do people do that i don't like let me try to make my version of this thing and i think i think that happens really naturally with any kind of creative project i mean the flip side of that is it's sort of cliche but it is true where you sometimes run into people where they're like oh you know i'm working on a on a novel or whatever you're like do you read a lot of fiction no no i don't read a lot of fiction but i'm writing this novel it's like oh no that project is doomed i think yeah i think it's pretty normal in the cr like for people that are creative right yeah you look at something and when you start to like it you can't help but think like can i do that too and how would i do that if i was gonna do that and like it ends up becoming a thing and i think certain people will not make it but i almost can't help myself but to always want to try yeah yeah and i i can see uh you know chill live with mike as a as a future project for sure like if it sounds very up your alley it fits for me basically i want to get to a point where i learn and i'm learning to like build my own keyboards right like from you buy the kits and you put them together and i kind of figure if i'm going to want to learn that anyway i may as well just do this stuff on live streams right like it just oh okay so you want to live stream the process hmm okay all right that makes sense yeah so something i'm thinking about and i'm kind of just putting i'm just noodling on it a little bit like you're gonna learn soldering is that one of the things you're going to do soldering is fun i've never done it it feels like one of those things where it's kind of missing from my geekdom to have done anything with electronics right your your geek resume right yes you want to put soldering on there yeah i want to get the the badge right yeah that's just thinking it's like the merit badge you can you can prove like able to poorly solder two things together great take they didn't fall apart immediately yes exactly yes i've never really done anything like that this feels like a low stakes thing to try you know um so yeah i just want to give it a go and basically it all comes back to that tweet that was sent into this show the ask cortex question that we had it was like in which started this whole journey it was from uh someone called noit and they sent this back in 2019 but we read it on a show much later basically saying if either of you have ever used mechanical keyboards have you ever been tempted further down the rabbit hole the fancier keyboards i can see mike's love of pens transporting to this right and they were right like and there's this kind of interest this kind of hobby i think it actually intersects with a lot of things that i like because it also is technology you know as well as being collecting and customization and stuff like that so some why not turn it into some kind of content but what i don't want to do is make a podcast like i don't i don't want to do that i have no interest in that yeah and it's something like mike learns to build a keyboard is poor podcast content that doesn't it's just not suited for it right no but i could and make a version of the pen addict but with keyboards not mic learning but like mike being interested in this hobby finding someone more knowledgeable than him to help teach him and the audience if they're interested and then over time my knowledge builds and then it becomes talking about what new products exist in the world right like there is definitely the penetic model would fit for keyboards easy but i don't want to do that just because i uh as i think i've said this before on on the show of like when i was talking about having hobbies and this is definitely a hobby it's like not turning it into work and the streaming stuff is hard to do right but exactly but the streaming stuff is like i don't really think of that as at the moment i'll say this i mean who knows but like i was like oh my god come on you know oh i don't really think of this as work yet it's far enough away at the moment from what i do right for a living and if it ended up becoming something that was work-like that would mean that it was successful otherwise it's just kind of maintained to be my hobby but what i i don't feel the same twitch streaming than i do recording shows like it does it's working different parts of my brain it's like i really loved recording videos i hated editing them because editing was too close to the editing that i do for audio you know so yeah pandemic busy my friend pandemic busy yeah you're gonna you're gonna add live streamer to your repertoire here and yeah and again like as soon as as soon as you start getting you know whatever it is like the twitch version of of youtube super chats like twitch donations like so then it's going to suddenly become much more much more work like uh but like you said that that just means that it's become a successful project uh but it's it's charming to hear you say that now at the beginning of it like oh this doesn't work i'm knowing my boundaries though right yeah well like i have set the boundary of i'm not starting a podcast about mechanical keyboards that boundaries i think i think that's the right decision and if i want to dabble in other things i will allow myself to do that because as well it's an expensive hobby so if i if i want to do it trying to make some money from it is a good like that's good for the spreadsheets right right you're going to try to recoup that i can try and bring some of that money back into the business a little bit but like it feels like something to play around with in an area which could be which intersects i think enough with some of my other hobbies so i kind of want to tinker with it without integrating it into my current creative work that's kind of the important part for me is i wanted to be adjacent not part of what i'm already doing if i do it yeah which you totally are gonna do well you know we'll see the podcast that on being over is going to free up quite a lot of time in my show just again which i'm excited about busy busy mike this episode is brought to you by our friends at freshbooks freshbooks can help you save time can help you save hassle with their super simple cloud accounting software they simplify tasks like invoicing expense tracking getting paid online to make sure that you can get your work done and they have done this for their over 10 million customers helping them deal with the hassles of getting rid of paperwork from their lives what i love about freshbooks is how simple and how easy it is to keep on top of the things that i need every time i log in there's a notification center right there it's like my personal assistant when it comes to finances i'll be told everything that's changed in my business since i last logged in and want these to be dealt with and this is available to you too you should sign up for freshbooks right now because you will also be able to automate late payment email reminders meaning that you'll be spending less time chasing people sending those emails saying hey did you get that invoice did you get that invoice freshbooks will tell you that they've received it we'll tell you when it's open and they can also automate those late payment email reminders so you don't have to be chasing people down this is one of the things that i really love about freshbooks it makes me feel like i'm in control and also keeps me from having to spend so much time dealing with the paperwork dealing with invoices that i don't really want to have to focus on if you're listening to this show and you still haven't used freshbooks now's the time to try it they are giving an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listings of this show with no credit card needed all you have to do is go to freshbooks.com cortex and enter cortex in the hell did you hear about us section that's freshbooks.com cortex for a 30-day free trial of freshbooks our thanks to freshbooks for their support of this show and relay fm so the reactions to our last episode were incredibly fun they fell into two camps people who were shocked like me that it never come up that me and you understood note taking so fundamentally differently and people that were surprised that they took notes the same way that you did or thought about notes the same way that you did and didn't know that the rest of the world thought differently to them yeah yeah yeah there's there's a lot of feedback i don't know i just i i felt like i was in literal pain listening back to that episode for my past of the edit where i was like oh no past gray is doing such a terrible job explaining anything here and it's just like this is just this is what he sounds like when he's in the middle of a project it seemed like there was definitely an episode that caused a lot of discussion and generated a lot of interesting feedback but for me i was mostly like ugh why do i explain things so poorly when i'm in the middle of them but um are you going to take another crack at it no i'm not going to take another crack at it because i'm still because i'm still in the middle of it right i'm still like don't rush me mike i don't know i i don't know where you are in it right this is me asking you yeah i'm i'm still very in the middle of this i don't know i i i think i partly sounded like just a complete weirdo on the last episode and a lot a lot of the feedback seemed to line up with that like how does how does he do anything if he's not doing what i think of his notes like that wasn't that was an overwhelming tidal wave of feedback of like how are you able to accomplish your job at all if you don't take notes well that feedback also came directly from me to you i still don't feel like i fully understand how you manage anything really yeah and there's still and there's still totally a part of me which is like i don't know about these notes i don't know about this [Laughter] yeah i feel like this is going to be a longer threat for a while yeah i mean maybe maybe again i i'm i'm still very much on the side of just that brains are really different and i think the feedback itself just totally demonstrated this that there is a way that some portion of the population does think about notes in the way that i do which is like what is this what you know what is this for and you think you could see it pop up where it was the same thing where they're like oh the other people are really doing something i just always assumed it was nonsense too right and this this is what i mean just like brains are different and you can find these little divisions but they're just not you just don't know where they're going to be or it's not obvious where they're where they're going to pop up but yeah i am still i am still very in the middle of this i'm still sort of working out what what the new system will be so i don't i don't have a lot of specific follow-up like you may have hoped on this on this topic but um i wasn't expecting much being honest yeah uh i just wondered how if you'd gotten any further and if you had how far yeah so i i guess i guess i would say while while i don't i don't have a clear direction forward at this point i have very clearly decided oh the past goodbye i'm just gonna dump some kerosene on all of my evernotes walk away and throw a match over my shoulder year zero we're beginning again and let's figure out from here what the new glorious future will be and i've picked intentionally two video topics for the next two projects that are are almost like toy projects that are easy to play around with this topic of oh how would notes work and that that's what i'm working on while i'm trying to figure out like what is the new system going forward also especially after the you know personally crushing decoy incident like it's useful anyway to pick lighter topics for the next two videos instead of uh some of my original plans which were like very complicated videos it's like you know what this is not the time to do that so i picked a couple of toy topics of like okay these are easy to do i know i won't run into any major problems here and the first one stylistically i'm even doing it so it's very clear that like this is not a 100 serious video so it's like if there's a if there's a minor factual error like it's fine because this is clearly not supposed to be like an encyclopedia entry on this topic and so that's sort of what i've done topic-wise for what i'm working on and i also think the the freedom and the lightness of topics gives me a lot of room to play around with what the system is or how how do the notes work and because they're smaller topics i can like just crunch up a bunch of stuff i've worked on and try to format it in a different way and see how that works so i'm just i'm very experimental i'm very experimental with notes for the time being and i'm just sort of seeing seeing what's going on and trying to figure out what the what the future will be but i i guess that's also a little bit of saying for the youtube audience maybe it's now a time to be a bit patient on when the next video will be like i'm do i'm doing a total like once in a decade oh reboot of the way i work interesting it's a choice that you make right you can you can choose that like i'm going to make this change before the next video or you can be like well i'm gonna keep working the old way and develop the new way but i can understand from your perspective that well the the reason this is happening is not because you had a new idea or found a new system that you thought might be fun to play around in if you've highlighted that you need to to look at this as a potential way to help you in the future then you'd be kind of foolish to not do this beforehand you know i took it very seriously what i said at the end of the cg grey was wrong video of like oh like i've done this autopsy and like at the end of that video i say oh you know if we need to change things we're gonna change things i didn't specify because i i just didn't have any idea like what that specifically would mean but that has very directly translated into like okay i need to rethink the way i do primary sources and my notes on primary sources right i also just realized i said it in a slightly strange way there but when i mean like the next video i think what i a clear way to say it is like excluding these couple of toy projects where i'm just experimenting like the next heavyweight video you have some uh light grey videos maybe yeah something something along those lines stuff that isn't maybe it's easier to say like stuff that in nature is not something that requires heavy research like tequila did exactly right so okay would you call it gray explains in that sense yeah yeah yeah okay yeah the videos the the toy projects are still like they're going to get that official logo on the side which makes them like the official real gray explains videos right but the topics have just been selected for very limited scope that's clever yeah well it's it's also like it's been a good time to like step back and take a not a break exactly but just do a rethink you're re-evaluating something yeah yeah that gray was wrong project was was extremely taxing on a very short period of time and i just knew like okay this this costs a lot of like work points that are going to take a long amount of time to recharge and so like doing the note stuff is a good thing to be tinkering with like while i'm building back up to that and then what i was thinking about is like okay well if i'm burning the past the future is now totally totally gone and all of my vague plans for like oh this is the rough outline of the next six videos i was like forget that whoosh in the garbage too like today is a new day like from right now given what you know like what topics would you select if nothing else matter and it's like okay there's two obvious ones that i can play with like and then i'll do a reevaluation of what the what the rest of the topics are going to be so so that's a little bit of of where i am with uh with the redoing of the notes well i look forward to coming back to it further i really look forward actually to finding out which app you end up landing on that that's the thing that i'm really interested in that's all people want to know people want to know about apps of course they do want to know let me rephrase it people in general probably don't care cortex they really care yeah no chord texans really care about the apps and also i get it right like we all know like oh gear is the most exciting the apps are the most interesting right because they are the physical and digital instantiations of ideas i do totally get why people care you know oh what pen did you write that novel with right people want to know i do have some initial thoughts okay so there's this phenomenon where once you notice something you notice it everywhere it's the beta meinhof phenomenon yes thank you i was like i couldn't remember the name for it it's one of the only things like this i remember because i i i love bringing it up and i've had to look it up so many times that it's stuck in my brain okay how do you say it it's beta meinhof bader meinhof okay how would you explain it to the audience then if you've looked it up so many times so the beta meinhof phenomenon is you become aware of something and then you see it everywhere in real life a good example is for people is like you buy a car or someone you know buys a car and then you see that model of car everywhere right right so i'm having i don't know if it is this phenomenon i have a suspicion that it's kind of not but at the same time i also feel like oh the whole world of notes is going through a revolution right now you you you have hit it on a very like weird time right like this might be part of the reason why you've realized that this is the thing that that you're not doing like everybody else because you have started to look at notes at a time when everyone is doing wikis right like yeah yeah there is a big up ending in the way that note applications are looked at um and it is this thing of like the notion nation um the roman rovers no it was the roman i think the one i heard i liked best was the roman legion which feels really obvious i really like that but there's a reason we because i also heard people say roman empire we didn't come on that because we were going for alliteration of all of them that's why we never got to any of the roman ones but i i like roman legion i like roman legion is good so i'm good notion nation is just funny and we can we don't have to alliterate everything because roman legion is excellent okay so i feel slightly less crazy with you mentioning this because i i have though been feeling like oh i'm paying attention to notes and so suddenly the whole world is paying attention to notes it's like that's not how the world works but apparently it is and it is not so thank you for coming away from me thank you for confirming that mike just just as i suspected like liverpool's around me good to know and as quantum mechanics tells me like my pure attention creates the world as it is perfect that's exactly what i thought so anyway okay i have been looking into the notes there is this idea that's been going around in this discussion of notes that my attention has created which i think encapsulates a clear idea and it's this distinction between evernote rome and notion and like what kind of person each of these apps are for and the idea is evernote is for librarians rome is for gardeners and notion is for architects and i've seen this like all over the place this concept from people are trying to think about these different note systems and i do think there's something really there's something really good about it which is why it's an idea that's spreading i think the gardener one is the one that's the most confusing to me the other two librarian and architect i can kind of get around that but i don't know why notion is for gardeners it's rome is roma is for gardeners notion is for architects okay um still hasn't helped no no yes well i don't know well so the but the gardeners want it we'll get to that in a second but as soon as i heard that i was like oh this makes total sense and yes librarians makes perfect sense notion is something that's been incorporated into like my workflow purely through my assistant and it also is like oh this of course is this good tool for architecting uh like a more permanent structure around something like a company right and procedures and checklists and how do you do all of this you know it's it's why it's why notion allows you to throw a database in the middle of your text file like it's sort of leans in this direction of you want to build a beautiful cathedral that is complete about this topic like that's the way that tool works so the rome is for gardener's one like the reason this is confusing to you mike is because i think the idea that this is trying to express is the same kind of idea in the zettelkasten system that i was describing last time you're not making the outline ahead of time you don't know specifically what it is that you're building and unlike a library you're not trying to file things within a hierarchical dewey decimal system you are having things grow and you're sort of tending to them as they grow and and the idea here is also like it's not a you know it's not not like an english garden where everything is like like sharply cut lines it's more like oh this is like a wild managed garden and you are the person who's overseeing it and that's like the idea in the zeddle casting system and that's also why it makes sense the way rome does things it's like oh okay it's it is leaning you in this other direction of it's really easy to create notes it's really easy to link notes to each other the the focus is is like much less on the specific content of any particular note like notion does and it's more about the relationships between them and i just think like this is seems to me like a pretty good division in how do people work these three ideas and even the gardner one being a little bit confusing to me seems like no but that makes sense because if you are this sort of person it just makes sense to you right away and i think very clearly like oh i got attracted to zettelkaston in the first place because the ideas that i originally came across related to it like this makes much more sense to me than any of the other two messages so all of that is to say that rome is obviously the tool that i should use but i don't like it and i don't like it for reasons that are incredibly hard to pin down like i was trying to think about it before the show like i need to be able to put into words like why i don't like rome and i can come up with nothing specific that doesn't sound ridiculous so i'll just say like this is the way life is sometimes sometimes you find yourself a little repelled from something and you just don't know why and it's okay to go with your gut sometimes let me throw in some of the reasons that i don't like it at the moment and it might change one there's no apps right yeah i'm not interested in that and then because it's just for the web like and it's just on the web it feels like it has absolutely zero personality because nothing it's like here's just some white pages and you just go for it it doesn't it doesn't feel like it has a personality of any kind maybe that's not important probably not important uh and i reckon i would maybe feel better about it if there was an app but like it just i don't want to use a web page like to to put my notes into i just don't want to do that yeah it's like one of the reasons i'm turned off of notion is right like it just feels like it's the web even though it's an app you know so like to be honest i'm not sure that i would ever really be that interested in trying something like rome because even when they build an app i expect it would just be a web view inside of an application especially when it comes to stuff like notes there's like a security that i feel from it in that it being like a what feels like a native application it just makes me feel more comfortable to trust my notes to that that's why i like the notes app i like bear i don't really use bear for notes i use it for like markdown longer writing but if i was gonna not use the apple notes app bear is the app i would use yeah i mean a bear is doing more and more stuff like this by the way you might want to look at it grey for like connecting notes together and they just introduced they've been doing this for a while where you can link from note to note but now they've done it where you can link to sections of other notes yeah i i did see that and again it's just like because my attention is turned to this topic now right i was like oh bear is doing this thing too right but now i feel like i am in this too because like i think i would have previously just ignored that headline but now i'm like oh notes right like even though i'm not doing what you're doing but now my brain is tuned to every piece of notes news yeah and and of course we have now done this to the listeners where i think many of them will have never even like come across a piece of notes news in forever and like now ev every every s every scrap of notes news is going to like be blared into their attention because of this especially anything noteworthy [Music] i'm glad you're pleased with yourself very thought scrap was like close enough without being a pun but no you gotta go one further it wasn't cheesy enough gray come on i want to i will turn my attention back to rome because i know they're building an app and that's when i will give it much more of its due i just know that there's no point in me trying to use it now because it's just not the tool for me if it's on the web only yeah because like i like to write notes anytime i don't want to wait for an internet connection that is like a very important thing for me like if this does not work offline i can't trust it as my notes app because i would want to retrieve and add that information without waiting without delay without fail so i need to know that all of that content is available to me whenever i need it and and a web page is is not that right like if i have something i want to write a note about i need to write it right now and it needs to go where it needs to go that's why i trust apple knows right like it does that for me the syncing is fantastic the notes are always where i need them you know like you a notes apple notes database builds incredibly fast like if i have a new machine it's syncing my hundreds and hundreds of notes takes a couple of minutes you know like that's what i want i don't want to be going out to the web every time yeah yeah it doesn't feel reliable enough for me that way yeah and like those are good those are good reasons it's just a funny thing it's like rome is in in this the three big contenders for these kind of knowledge management systems evernote rome and notion are the big players and evernote is the dinosaur on the block and roman notion are the new kids on the block but they're very different in the way that they act and of the three it's very clear that like rome is the tool that i should use but i don't like it and i cannot specify why but the flip side of that coin is that there is a tool that i shouldn't like but i totally love and that is obsidian which is the one i mentioned last time like i had been just investigating a little bit but like boy oh boy do i love obsidian and it's it is the reverse like i've got i've got a long list of things that i could tell you about why i shouldn't like obsidian but they don't matter because i just love it while i was editing the episode before i was looking at the website again and i was listening to your description and i tell you great i still do not understand what this application does right i was looking at the images that they paused the website i was listening to you explaining to me for the second time well i'm going yeah yeah and i agree i don't understand it i don't know why there's graphs i don't know where the notes actually are like i do not get it i am pleased this one is interesting to you but like oh it's not it's not interesting like i love it right but like let me tell you i've got all these reasons why i shouldn't it's like oh it's an electron app i hate electron apps but you know what whatever like the programmers are doing an amazing job of making it feel like it's just a different tool and not a gross electron app looking at you slack all right so like i don't oh i don't like that at all it's a tiny development team it's like two people it's a brand new project so like the the variance and uncertainty is incredibly high they don't even have any monetization in in place right now they've got a plan for like how they will monetize the app but like they don't have it right now all they have is an option to sign up and just give them some money to support the development which i 100 did in exchange for nothing i'm like please keep building this app i love it oh it's mac only no ios apps no ipad apps probably never will be i just assume never like it's on there really they have a little trello board for what's under development and like on the farthest end they're like very long term you know mobile apps but even there they're all there like long-term projection is is just a lightweight one you know something for capture and for access but they're not even like they're not even dreaming that they're going to recreate the whole thing on ios what an incredible downside i don't care i love it i've been playing around with it and it's just very obvious that of all of the digital tools this is the one that just suits my brain the best and yeah it's you know you can do the kind of zeddle casting sort of thing i think probably one of the clearest things i can say that is a function of why do i like it is it's very easy to open up a bunch of little windows so i'm really trying to recreate this idea of all the notes are sort of index card sized and if you think that these are like these aren't endless scrolling text documents these are index card size pieces of information well you can fit a lot of index cards on an imac screen and obsidian makes it really easy to do that like every time you command click on a link in one of your notes it'll just open up in a new window and like fit it somewhere on the screen so it's a great way to be able to look at like a bunch of stuff at once it really is very linuxy but in the good way not in the way that linux can be terrible so uh yeah i would say i really like obsidian and for my own total self-interest anyone who's trying to roam and has felt like oh they don't quite like it give obsidian a try cause i would like them to get a bigger user base and then to be able to have a monetization plan so that it continues to exist but yeah so that that is where i have fallen on the digital tool side obsidian the app that i shouldn't love but i really do oh they also have an 80s theme which is totally rad okay this episode of cortex is brought to you by expressvpn have you ever watched the office if you have you probably know that the us series is based on a uk series also called the office but what if i told you that there are nine other countries around the world with their own versions of the office that you've probably never seen i bet you didn't even know about them because they're not available in your country but you can access content available all around the world with no geo restrictions when you use expressvpn expressvpn lets you control where you want sites to think that you're located you can choose from nearly 100 different countries giving you access to content that isn't usually available in your region if you like watching shows and movies expressvpn it's a must-have for less than seven dollars a month expressvpn lets you access thousands of new 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go there now to learn more and thanks to expressvpn for their support of this show and relay fm you mentioned paint in your office blue what else is going on in your quarantine well i mean i would say this has without a doubt been the most boring and uneventful time of my life yep but i've also just loved it like i've just loved every minute of it boring doesn't have to be bad it depends on how you caught what you're saying right it's boring in the sense that like you haven't gone anywhere yeah it's it's boring in the sense that i painted my office blue is legitimately one of the biggest pieces of news i can present to you in my life right like what what has happened like my office is blue and this like if we're making a list of here's the top three most interesting things that have happened to gray in the past many months like that easily makes the top three list that's that's what i mean by boring right i like it i like boring and i i was just looking at my calendar the other day and i realized i passed my what what i'm thinking of as my six-month quarantine a quarantineiversary because i was looking at my calendar and it occurred to me i was like oh what was the last social event that i did in person and i realized yeah that was that was more than six months ago now was the last time i socialized with a human being in person and so yeah i was like oh it was quite a while ago it's been great so yeah very low key corn time but it's nice i mean do you feel the same way do you feel like your life has no events different events different events what do you mean by different events well i mean i still have things going on right podcast-a-thon is happening you know right we're getting into new phone season um these are things that always happen anyway i have had that period of time up until now because things that typically happen for me between march and september call for lots of events that are only really occurring in person but this time of year kind of september to december there's a lot of stuff happening for me which always happen the way that i'm doing them so it feels like i'm getting a little bit of normalcy there right like new iphones multiple product releases of different like all that kind of stuff i always did that at home right so like right those feel like normal and also like our quarantine is different in that i have my studio right so i'm leaving the house i'm going to a place every day i'm here basically every work day now by the way oh that's great yeah it's really good uh i have a commute again which is interesting i actually like it because it's a bit more activity i can get work done on the commute right like i'm like i'm finding all of the things that can be good about a commute there are bad things about commutes sure like i have a travel car again right like which is a weird thing it's been six years since i had a travel card um i kind of hate that i have to use the physical oyster card that like tfo have not found a way to make a digital oyster card in my phone which they could totally do if they wanted to why don't you just use the contactless credit card thing because it's more expensive i thought i thought it retroactively gave you the discount after you traveled the time yes kind of but also if you're gonna make it a business expense it's way easier to pay for it in a chunk than for me to be saving like you could tear them and generate receipts right but i can get a receipt of a travel card yes okay i got it that makes that makes sense that it's right now i'm like with this freaking oyster card in my wallet like a chump taking it out every day beeping it also feels like a real relic i'm trying to think how long it's been since i've had a physical oyster card like oh i was a child who had just arrived in the city for me it has been six years six years since i had an oyster card so i'm back on that again uh but that's kind of what it is i have a pretty good like 11 to 7 routine it's pretty standard for me like i don't typically get into the office before 10 which just fits with my routine and also means that i'm definitely not around any of the busy times of travel and for my route super chill every day there's barely anyone on the trains i can stay within good distance like if that feels i've not been concerned about that i did get a bag okay for your travel back and forth what bag did you get i got a bag called the bellroy tote pack which you listening call texans might remember as i brought this bag up once before back when mega studio was new and you really talked me out of getting a new batch yes but frankly there isn't a situation right now where i can leave things here right the things that i need to be at home and here because i can't leave things here safely okay that okay that's right because immediate lockdown can occur at any point and i have been proven in that fact because i had to self-isolate last week so last weekend i didn't feel too well okay right like i was just feeling under the weather so no reason to be paranoid could just be a cold it could just be a cult but like you get any symptom now and you're like well i better check so i got a cover test how how was the covet test i've heard they're terrible so i found it okay because people told me how bad it was okay so this is different in different countries around the world but in the uk it's not very difficult to get tested it's trickier right now but like the mechanics of it aren't too bad we just went online i filled in a form they mailed me a test the tests are delivered by amazon which is like this weird dystopian but convenient thing that is that is really weird that that does very much feel like the the movie where it's the corporate future you know everything is brought to you by amazon even even your government kovid test she's very by and large right because in wall-e the president of bayern lodge is the president right absolutely right you know it's very close to that but honestly it was convenient right like it was it came on a sunday right and then so we took the test i mean so if you don't know the thing about the cover testing is here in the uk if you have a car you can drive to a drive-through and someone will administer the test to you oh yeah but if you don't have a car the best way to do it is they send you the test but that means you do the test to yourself and the instructions are like okay you have to take the swab you have to rub it on the tonsils on your tonsils do not touch your tongue do not touch your cheek and it's like is that even possible yeah i could i don't think i could do that i did it i did do it both meaning i did it and we didn't touch our tongues it's it takes a lot of practice like looking in the mirror and opening your mouth and being like how do i need to open my mouth in such a way that i can see a clear path to my tonsils without touching my tongue and like adina was doing it by saying ah that worked for her and i could just do it by just being like very like just paying attention right it's like a game of operation it's what you're playing and also yeah staying calm too right like you got to be calm because it makes you want to gag right but if you do that your tongue moves you stay really calm now my brother had done one a few weeks ago and he had like really hyped up to me as like this is terrible so going into it i thought it was going to be really terrible and really it just ended up being kind of uncomfortable but that's right because the other thing is you then take that same swab and stick it up your nose which is so weird and you and as the instructions say you keep pushing until you feel resistance it just goes up in and you turn it round take it out stick it up the other one it's like uh it is it's a very like brutal and like a like brutalist type thing to do to yourself like to administer this test to yourself in your own bathroom it's very strange but i'm happy that we have access to testing right yeah yeah i mean of course of course you want to access yes granted but it's still super freaking weird mm-hmm but you know unfortunately it took us a little longer like in the in previous weeks it's been pretty quick but we had unfortunately hit we took our test in a week where there was a bank holiday so there was one less day of processing and then also a week where for some reason there was just people lots more people testing themselves and it seemed like the test incentives were overrun so we sent our tests off on tuesday which is so weird because you put it in the post box right i know that they're in tubes and in bags but like you see the boxes and you're like oh no right like i can imagine as a postal worker right it's like yeah just like very strange right like anyway so they then it goes off and you get a text and an email and they're like you're negative but we didn't get that until saturday evening so i was home from saturday to saturday and let me tell you i do not want to go into lockdown again because i have gotten used to having an office now okay so having tasted the freedom of mega office yeah the lock down with the lockdown was much more brutal much worse yeah because i couldn't exactly fail properly right because it just happened you know like so there was stuff in the studio that i would have liked to have at home and didn't one thing that we did do was really i think this was uh spurred on by what was happening in the gray household we really tidied out mega office so by the end of our isolation it did feel nicer to be working in there because i wasn't surrounded by mountains of boxes right right as i described so it did feel better and now like i feel like okay i actually do need to put some effort into mega office for the time being in case we have to go back right but i am so happy to be back in the studio again but this is also like why am i a week behind on physical podcast-a-thon prep because we lost a week at the studio right of course of course that makes sense so we could we would have been a little bit further ahead with some of the setup so i'm having to do a bit of catch-up on that but yeah so that's my quarantine i'm loving the studio dreading lockdown and you tested negative you you failed oh yeah yeah of course i mean of course this is negative i'm back out in the world again although basically like by the time i got my test back i was only two days away from being allowed to go outside again anyway because the current isolation time is 10 days right so i mean i guess i guess in theory in this circumstance you would have actually wanted to test positive and just stay home for two more days and then like you know if it's possible to benefit from antibodies i would make the benefit right right but like the frustrating thing was i felt basically normal after three days but then couldn't go anywhere right because you don't know and i'm a fool right like i've got i've been waiting on a test result like if it turns out you know like you don't want to be that person you shouldn't be that person if i've got a test pending i've got to wait for the answer of the test before i go back outside again right otherwise yeah would you yeah you don't you don't want to be the the start of a new little cluster yeah what will be known as the hurley cluster right yeah there's a new costume cluster this guy was commuting to work every day even when he had a test pending what an idiot so yeah that's quarantine boring life is the best life mike i mean it is a life you can get used to that i i feel like i'm used to it yeah maybe a better word is placid like what a blasted enjoyable stretch of time i've had is it was on my mind just because i could i can start to i sort of mentioned this in the video but like i'm just feeling the beginnings of like the cracks of social pressure coming back into my life and you know again it's it's this it's this difficulty of making decisions about what are and what are not acceptable risks but i'm feeling more aware of like this interregnum is coming to an end at some point and that's why it like it struck me as curious like i wonder how long it has been since i've seen someone in person not my wife and like oh that's just six months and yeah i just i don't know like i don't know when that first real break is going to happen but it just it can feel a lot of the world like spinning back up and invitations and social pressures kind of coming back in and but but i mean yes they are occurring more but i do feel like it's easier to say no than before you can just say like no where are so late yes and i think most people do the okay right like in the same way that like i have seen some friends and you know we're taking all of the recommended precautions but like it's pretty we're you know it's like people's like we're not like touching in any way right right nothing right like no hugs no nothing and it's like i'm keeping that my family still like i've seen some family but like we there is no physical contact right it's just like and and i've my personal result on that is everyone's like okay like yeah yeah yeah don't get me wrong i'm not getting messages that are like get in the car loser we're going shopping right like share this ice cream with me gray yeah exactly there's there's none of that kind of stuff it but it's it's just i'm aware of like an exponential increase in the number of like oh come to this thing or like go over here and it's like no please no i don't want to no no one has has had even the slightest hint of a negative response right but it's it's still like again it's just it's the difficulty of making these decisions and these like these risk calculations and and trying to think about when are sensible points to reevaluate and i think one of the other things that's just on my mind is i've been aware that in the beginning my wife and i kept having like a really clear reevaluation schedule you know so it was like okay maybe there's a global pandemic coming we're going to go into lockdown for two weeks and then we'll see what the deal is you know and then was like oh god this looks really bad you know we'll check back in in a month oh it's worse than worst case scenario yeah like at one point i remember we had we will reevaluate on independence day like american freedom day will be the day that we leave our quarantine you know and then that that reevaluation day came and it was like nope this is not happening yet i remember in march thinking maybe i can go to the atlanta pen show in april right also like in april thinking maybe i can be in memphis for the podcast on yeah these were all things where it's like surely it will be taken care of by then yeah exactly but then at some point after independence day and i don't know exactly when we never really set a reevaluation point uh yeah you know it's just like i guess this is the thing now and i i think it is good to have dates to set as reevaluation points like i do i do think that was the only time in this whole period where my wife and i were like drifting a little bit it's because we just hadn't settled like when do we reevaluate it but now my wife's been looking at like expert advice and you know she's looking at oh okay end of 2021 is like maybe this is the reevaluation point who knows you know but it's just like just to have something in your mind i am maintaining right as i should be like being very aware being very valid digital and all that kind of stuff right which is my preface to saying that i am finding myself thinking much more like looking around seeing what's happening in the world seeing the way that retailers opening and and dining you know just looking and and and thinking to myself you know what like this is it right like this is how we're going to be for some time and there is a set of balances that as a society if we're functioning properly we can try and do and as individuals we can do and i'm basically like i'm not getting upset anymore i'm not freaking out anymore i'm kind of just like all right like i'm in it we're in it and we'll just keep going until we're not yeah no yeah don't give me that there's i'm not saying you're not saying it but it's like it's a similar thing we're like i don't i don't feel like i need like like you both do like i don't feel like i i need this sense of like well maybe in a couple of months it will be taken care of or i'm kind of just like all right like i'm in it now and and i'm just gonna try and find life within these parameters and just get used to it because if i don't do that i don't know what how else i'm gonna feel like this is just where i am oh yeah yeah and and it makes sense you know and it's also again it's just trying to figure out where to set the dial with these things the only thing that i have found genuinely frustrating is just like the not the inability to travel and that and that's part of what the big like reevaluation point is as well is like okay when is the next time that if something came up that's interesting for a project i would feel comfortable getting on an airplane to you know go investigate that project right that's you know that's a question and then you know and then the other question on the so that's like one big one and that does feel like the 2021 reevaluation um yeah you know but then on a much on a much smaller scale there's there's just the question of like i've never gone this long without some kind of gracation or without being on my own and you know it's just it's a funny thing it's like oh losing all the socializing no problem but not having a a period of time where i'm just actually completely isolated yeah like boy it's been been a long time since that and you know my my wife was looking at me the other day she's usually the one who initiates this where she's like you look like you could need a gracation and it's like oh okay how do we evaluate that as a risk i have no idea like i just haven't even really thought it through but those are the sorts of things i'm just trying to think like what are the trade-offs here you know what's what is being too cautious what is possibly being not cautious enough like it's it's still extremely hard to judge and it is in part of this feeling that like i think the vast majority of the world is basically where you are mike of like yeah this is okay this is the way things are you know for some indefinite period of time and people are like getting on with their lives i think that's the way most of the world is so yeah it's just it's just thinking about things in in those contexts but that's partly why i just i feel like there's some some kind of cracks coming and i just i don't know what the first thing to crack will be like maybe my wife will find some totally isolated place to dump me for two weeks you know for like a gracation and that will represent the first kind of quarantine break like i just don't know i just don't know what's what the situation's gonna be we have a couple of staycations coming up we have a family event and then uh we're doing something for edm's birthday so what are you what are you doing in terms of the physicalness of it what does that mean like is the family getting together are you going to some place and staying overnight we're going to a place for a few days like we're all going to place for a few days if it goes well and it all works out and everyone has fun like i can imagine me and adina doing more of that stuff throughout the rest of the year you know finding a hotel just just to change the scenery yeah yeah and even with that i have been more in the outside world lately like the you know the physical outside you have okay i i do have a question i have a question uh feedback question for the audience okay so some masks right everybody's wearing them i think my face is too big for a mask like yeah okay i cannot find a mask that seems to fit it's like the distance between the top of my nose and the bottom of my chin is too large all right i was having this problem okay uh i'm gonna send you a link you're not gonna like it i'm gonna send you a link i feel like i'm not gonna like it mike adidas make masks okay i mean i have an adidas logo on them i don't know how you feel about that that's what i think that you might not like these are my favorites these are my favorites they're made they're not it's difficult to explain what they're made from but they're kind of like they feel like a little spongy in a way okay get a pack of these they have the medium and large like they have small medium medium large right two sizes get the medium large it's 15 pounds for the three pack these are my favorites they fit me the best i was having this problem too of like that i cannot find i could not find many options that would cover my nose to all the way under my chin these do that i really like them yeah or like i i would find something that would cover until i would open my mouth at all and then it would just it would come and not work uh i mean okay if you can do i've been able to do a bit of talking but if i talk for a bit it will slip off but i think that that you'll never find an option no i'm going to find an option and this is part of the reason why i'm asking the audience it's like hey listen there's got to be someone else out there whose face is too big but who also wants like an n95 mask to protect them from all the things all right this must exist i can't help you with because these adidas ones are just clock coverings right yes no i can i can see that i'll i'll take them i'll take them over nothing right like if something just fits i mean it has it has a pocket for a filter so you know you can go wild get those and see but okay you are asking for this feedback how will you how are you aiming to collect it where do you want people people going to go into the reddit that's the way to do it there's no one home on twitter just send stuff to the reddit okay that's that's the best way to find stuff well that's why i wanted to make it very clear because there's two things that i don't want to happen which is i don't want to feel tweets all get emails right yeah yeah don't send stuff to mike that'd be terrible it doesn't happen to me very often but like if you ask something specific like this i know i'm gonna get caught up in it yeah that's that's my request okay i will i mean i will happily benefit from this crowdsourcing because yeah i'm always on the lookout for new masks the adidas ones are the ones that i have liked the most but they are far from perfect yeah i i hate the logo it's ugly i mean look what i what i really want is a cortex brand mask that's the thing that i actually want yeah but it doesn't exist it doesn't exist look at this is not through a lack of trying on my part right but it's this is the thing like to get right it seems to be pretty tricky so yes but that's but that's what i would like to bring into the world is the cortex brand mask but it doesn't exist so in the meantime help me out cortexes feedback in the reddit

Channel: Cortex Podcast

Views: 13,311

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: CGP Grey, Myke Hurley, Podcast, Work, YouTube

Id: ZOqL6Sqo9fs

Length: 90min 47sec (5447 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/varunpramanik]

You go, Grey Coco, with the Mean Girls reference at 1:20:08!

[u/yorkton]

Its a tent.

[u/Pseudonium]

Hey Grey, glad to know you’re loving Obsidian! I’ve been using it for about three months, and have found it great for note-taking on undergraduate-level maths.

You’ve mentioned Anki in passing before - do you think you might investigate incorporating it into your workflow? I’m not sure how you use it currently, but it might be useful to have some information about a project fresh in your mind from reviewing in Anki, especially for projects completed over a long period of time.

I did recently finish developing a script that’ll let you embed Anki flashcards within text or markdown files. It has customisable syntax - e.g. there’s a header-paragraph format, where the front of the card is the header line and the back is the following paragraph. Markdown formatting and images are also supported!

[u/Kuba-P-14]

I miss hello internet

[u/seannguyen428]

Grey talking about how a project is doom when the creator is not familiar with the medium

Me flashback to when Myke decided to make his own Roleplay game system because he had never learnt/ran one before

[u/10BillionDreams]

Hearing Grey use the term "superchat" made the image of VTuber Grey pop into my head. He already does streams without showing his face, after all, and he already has a recognizable (if extremely basic) avatar, so it's really just the next logical step.

[u/elaborinth8993]

As long as people on here are suggesting masks, any cortexans have recommendations on masks that tie around your head? (Not the ones that secure behind your ears)

I just got a new job where I am now an "essential employee" in a deli and I have to wear a mask 8 hours a day. And I feel like the tying ones would be more comfortable over that period of time, then the ones that hook into your ears.

[u/dannyswrld]

I was very sad that the specifications do not list the weight of the gazebo. I was getting ready to do some math on how many balloons you would need for liftoff.

[u/lamp-town-guy]

I haven't heard the podcast yet. But if you use obsidian and you want to sync it with multiple machines use syncthing. It's peer to peer software that helps you sync your stuff without any central server. If you're paranoid about your data it's a great choice to use it. Syncthing can be configured in a way that it doesn't use any 3rd party servers.