Episode 185: David Foster Wallace Morning
Back to Work
5by5
4.7 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2014
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
TOPIC: The Durable Impossibility of Email.
This week, Dan and Merlin return to an evergreen topic: the impossibility of email.
Chaotic, paradoxical, debilitating, frustrating, buoyant, and occasionally capable of causing short-term madness, email is still the medium that we'll never get right.
But, quixotically, it never stops us from trying.
Links for this episode:
- Engineers4Engineers 2014 Developer Conference
- [VIDEO] Two-Wheelin’ Per this week’s Back to Work. ... | kung fu grippe
In which Merlin's kid scoots like a big kid. - Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews
- Jackal Podcasts
A weekly interview show with fans of podcasting - DaisyDisk - Analyze disk usage and free up disk space on Mac
- Iron Maiden - Flight Of Icarus - YouTube
- Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail - Gmail Help
Learn them. Love them. - Mailbox
We redesigned the inbox to make email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash and scan entire conversations in a chat-like view. It's a whole new inbox. - Dispatch: TextExpander-enabled Email App for iPhone
Dispatch makes it easy to act on mails even when you're on the move. Based on Merlin Mann's idea of managing your inbox, it helps you tame your inbox by letting you delete, defer, delegate, generate actions and even respond to your mails with ease. - ParisLemon — Yes, Another Email Rant
I know all of this sounds crazy. But given my hatred of email, I often find myself thinking about the psychology behind it. And thinking about if there’s something here to give me the upper hand. - Fresh Start: The Email DMZ | 43 Folders
Like a lot of the best fresh starts, this one's a total psych-out - Guardians of the Galaxy - Rotten Tomatoes
- Infinite Jest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-satiric future version of North America, centering on a junior tennis academy and a nearby substance-abuse recovery center. - A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the title essay, originally published in Harper's as "Shipping Out", Wallace describes the excesses of his one-week trip in the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship MV Zenith, which he rechristens the Nadir. - Le Show - Harry Shearer
- Sodium laureth sulfate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sodium laureth sulfate, or sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES), is an anionic detergent and surfactant found in many personal care products (soaps, shampoos, toothpaste etc.). SLES is an inexpensive and very effective foaming agent - Amazon.com: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1: Cosmic Avengers (Marvel Now) (9780785166078): Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli: Books
- Guardians of the galaxy 1 : cosmic avengers . (Book, 2014) [WorldCat.org]
- Dropbox - How do I save space on my computer?
Selective Sync is a feature of the Dropbox desktop application that allows you to select only the folders you want to be synced to your computer. Selective Sync gives you the control to ensure you have only the files you need on any computer. It's especially handy if you want to save space on netbooks and other computers with small hard drives. - Satisficing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Contrast | Launch Center Pro
- Autopen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This episode was sponsored by our friends at lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/backtowork and get a free 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses), and Varonis DatAnywhere (Try turning your own network shares into a private cloud free for 30 days with an unlimited amount of users and if you visit varonis.com/backtowork you get 5 users free forever).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lie on your way like an ego |
| 0:06.4 | Hello, oh hi, Merlin. Good morning. How are you? How's everything going? |
| 0:13.6 | Very well. How are you good house? How's school? |
| 0:16.5 | School is |
| 0:18.7 | Good good school is good. We're just starting our third week of school. You're starting your second week of school second week of school |
| 0:27.2 | Yeah, and he lost the tooth yesterday |
| 0:30.0 | All front tooth. Oh, she just lost her front tooth a couple weeks ago. It's so funny. They look so weird. She looks a hideous freak |
| 0:38.0 | They look they look a little too homeless for my tastes |
| 0:41.4 | When you get those little gum nubs hanging down. Yeah, what is the gum nub gum nubs |
| 0:48.0 | Hi, you enjoy jelly babies. It's so weird. Try gum nubs. Hi |
| 0:54.0 | Lost the tooth can't chew. Not a problem. Hi |
| 0:57.9 | Yeah, I was surprised with the gum nub and |
| 1:01.7 | And my wife's like, oh, yeah, that's normal. That's fine |
| 1:04.7 | How what which number tooth is this for cash for losing? |
| 1:11.6 | Three maybe three that same for us. We lost the two bottom front ones and the one |
| 1:17.8 | When one she's got a little snaggle now makes the other one look really big and weird |
| 1:21.8 | Cleetus the slack job. Yokel. Well, what was the weirder part for me was that before he I don't know why |
| 1:29.6 | But I don't know if it's a courage thing |
| 1:32.5 | but he was not ready to |
| 1:35.6 | Really work it so it would come out so he was very gentle with it |
| 1:40.2 | And I said, listen, you know if you want this and come out all you got to do is just kind of twist it around a little bit |
| 1:44.8 | like not so it bleeds, but just keep twisting it, you know like move it and |
... |
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