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Back to Work

Episode 310: Nominally Mine

Back to Work

5by5

Business, Society & Culture, Barriers, Dan Benjamin, Careers, Communication, Merlin Mann, Creativity, Work, Productivity, Constraints, Technology

4.72.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2017

⏱️ 80 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

TOPIC: My place is here—I fight with you!

This week, Dan and Merlin cover a meetup announcement, Merlin's Les Mis obsession, Dan's new Hackintosh Method, and the Benjamin Family's slippery bar problem. Merlin advocates for "The Tiny Life Improvement Project." Pens and pencils are recommended, desks are discussed, and LBJ speaks out about his bespoke slack needs.

The boys talk about the FTC's actions over Vizio's super-creepy user tracking, and wonder what questions to ask about the future of privacy on our smart devices.

Things wrap with a quick discussion of culture-specific cargo culting and why we still cut the ends off the roast.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, hello, Merlin. How are you? I'm great, Dan. How's your afternoon? Pretty good. Pretty good. So far, pretty. I'm having a good day. I'm setting them up and knock them down.

0:12.4

One by one. I set them up. I knock them down. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Why not? I get up again. Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup, Dup. Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, wait. Got a chance. I got a clicky keyboard. Hang on.

0:22.6

Oh, remember when I would type on the clicky keyboard. Yes, of course. You got a new one. No, no, no. I just switched to the

0:31.4

Logitech when I do an audio program. I think my fingers are getting heavier, though, because people complain that you're

0:39.1

typing too loudly on. Well, everyone has a different editing style. So if they're not running any kind of

0:45.3

noise gate or limiter or anything, then people will hear it. But I've never heard them complain about it on

0:50.7

this show. Oh, I didn't mean to imply that. I don't edit. When I edit, I, no matter what I do,

1:02.0

somebody doesn't like how it sounds. You're an avatar. Is that woman from the robots, the West,

1:09.0

where I was that still up? I thought it changed the Wolverine. Huh? I'm still seeing the woman. Yeah, I

1:14.0

try to keep them relevant. One of her eyes is a little weird. Yeah. Hmm. Oh, I've changed it to

1:22.2

Wolverine on my end. But yeah, you might still be getting the robot lady. That's a Clementine. That's

1:25.5

Clementine number one. No spoilers. Yeah. Yeah. I changed them. I try to change them for each recording. It's a new

1:32.9

thing I'm doing. Each time I record with somebody, I change my avatar. Something is relevant to the topic.

1:39.9

Okay. All right. So you were talking about robots. Well, but see, no, this is if you wanted to call

1:46.4

in for the show about the elderly, you should have found in when we're doing our pet episode. Okay.

1:51.6

No, I changed it to Wolverine because I want to announce done done done done. Ungainly. X man, meet up. Number

2:00.0

15 has been scheduled. I saw you to watch your web page. I'm clicking. Thank you. Ungainly,

2:07.3

X man meet up. Number 15. It's going to be Thursday February 23rd from 730 to 9 p.m. at two cats

2:16.9

comics. That's 320 West portal Avenue in San Francisco. My favorite comic store. My favorite people.

2:22.9

And so you can come and, you know, don't be creepy, but you know, you come and you hang out. We

2:27.9

don't just talk about comics. We also talk about Doctor Who. It covers the gamut. I'm going to be

2:32.4

talking about a lot about laym is because I'm having kind of a laym is thing right now. Of course.

...

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