The Better Offline Mailbag

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Coolzone Media.

Hello, and welcome to Better Offline.

I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

Today I'm joined by the wonderful Sophie Lichterman, who will be overseeing our Q ⁇ A episode, our very first one.

Sophie, thank you so much for joining me.

Yeah, I'm kind of the Q ⁇ A MC over here at CoolZone Media, as in you need somebody to ask you the questions.

And we've had wonderful questions from all of you this week.

Thank you so much.

We're going to try and do these every couple months but i love hearing from you please post on the reddit please message me you have my email easy at betteroffline.com and that's ez at betteroffline.com for the canadians and the british who listen to this as well but sophie why don't we take it away yeah i'm just gonna jump through some of these questions and uh

yeah and like thank you guys so much for submitting them like we really genuinely appreciate it it's cool it's cool it's cool that you have a podcast where people like you enough where they want to ask you questions yeah it's sick All right, I'm going to start with a question from Garrett Smart.

Do you think AI is actually useful in any capacity, even as an assistant in the areas of art or programming?

If so, why?

So, when it comes to art, I think that there are new functions like slightly better clone tools as well that I've heard people use.

But really, this is just a bridge from Photoshop.

I will say, for the most part, art is

not a great one because usually it's just getting rid of the creative side.

Programming is a more complex one.

So there's an excellent video I'll link to in the episode notes from the Internet of Bugs that Carl Brown, I think his name is.

I really want him on the show.

Carl, if you're listening, please come on.

Where he kind of said that generative AI code is

different to what software engineering is.

Like software engineering is solving a murder.

or an investigation far more than generative AI is just creating code.

Because software engineering isn't just spooting out code and saying, here we go, we're done.

We now have software.

Software is a manifold series of different things you have to do.

And on top of that, things break when you plug them into other things.

And our internet and most software products are built in a patchwork of different things.

So software development, the best I've heard is that it can be used in very controlled situations for very specific things.

If you're really interested in learning what it can actually do, I recommend Max Wolf and Simon Wilson.

I'll link them in the notes as well.

But those two are non-hype AI guys.

I also really recommend the Internet of Bugs, which again, I'll link as well.

There are software developers who use this stuff.

I don't know about, and actually the Internet of Bug videos really good as well because it breaks the whole myth of, oh, Microsoft and Google saying 20 to 30% of their code is written by AI.

It's kind of bullshit, as you'd expect, because you can't just hand off code like this.

There's also vibe coding.

Vibe coding in and of itself has so many problems in that, yeah, when you create something that works in a way that you literally don't understand by definition, yeah, it's probably gonna fucking break.

I mean, it will break at some point, and you won't know how to fix it other than to poke the machine that built it and say, fix the problem I don't understand.

That's a good answer.

From Falcon underscore 1983.

I'd be interested to hear Ed's process for researching and planning his stuff.

How long does it take to go from an idea to a finished article and podcast?

I'm excited to hear the truth for this one.

Okay.

So, Sophie, Sophie's going to love this.

So the answer is several seconds or several days or several weeks.

So I'll give you an example.

I have an upcoming newsletter that's about 13,000 words long.

I'm going to break it into probably two or three episodes.

That thing started with me listening to JoJo Bizarre Adventure Music.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure music even.

Sitting outside, just it was a nice day.

I had a smoke.

I was like, oh, fuck.

And I started writing down like the most insane notes ever.

I then sent that to my editor and my mate Casey and we talked about it for like a day or two.

And then I get pissed off like a baby that needs to fart or burp.

I sit there being mad at the idea.

I message people like, what do you think about that?

You ever see this?

And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about, Ed.

I don't understand what you're talking about.

What do you mean?

And then I'll, then in explaining it to them, I'll actually come up with the idea.

And then I will sit down and I will write for several hours.

And I will write for several hours straight.

I will research as I'm writing.

There will be stuff that I pick up along along the way in my day that I'm reading and I'll go, there, this kind of makes me feel annoyed or feels like it slots in.

And then I will go through a full, I, so the 13,000 one took me about three days, probably three days, about three hours each, bits and pieces.

And I'm researching as I go.

That's a big part of my process, which sounds insane, but it's mostly because I'm trying to explain it to myself as I go, which works pretty well.

It makes the things a little long, but I mean, that's why you listen to the podcast.

Then there will be situations like with Giant Bomb.

So the the Giant Bomb episode came out last week.

So that one came together in a few minutes.

I was like, I messaged Dan Reichert over there and said, Hey, look, I would love to do an episode with you guys.

And it just came together quickly.

Same with like Karen Howe.

And so it really is a tapestry of different things.

There will be times when I ping friends and just say, Hey, look, what do you think about this idea?

And I will shoot the shit with them for a few hours and something will come out.

That's why I end up.

I mentioned Casey Kagara a lot.

He's one of my closest friends, and we ideate a lot because we both have brainworms.

So yeah, I don't know if anyone else in the world writes like this.

It makes me sound insane, but I really enjoy it and I feel better at the end.

Like it feels like I really built something.

It's cool.

I like doing it.

The monologues are insane in that those usually take me about

10 minutes of pacing around thinking and then about 20 minutes of writing then I record straight because I like the monologues the monologues I think I have more fun with than anything else because they're so low.

They're low velocity, low pressure.

I love doing them.

And I always say, I'll just do five minutes.

It comes out as 10.

Oh, really should do a monologue this week.

I love your monologues.

Oh, they're the best.

I love that you were like, yeah, I'll try it.

And then you were like, I had so much fun doing this.

It's because it's low pressure.

You can tell, but you can tell.

That's why they're so, that's why they're so good.

Because if you were doing them out of like, oh, obligation to rant as opposed to like i actually like doing and then it's just not as interesting in my opinion yeah you can tell you can tell as like a as like a like a a a podcast a producer of many podcasts you can tell when somebody's phoning it in

yeah i don't think i have it in me to phone it in i get no you don't i get i mean the man who killed google search you know from last monologue

Sorry, two monologues back even when we're recording this.

Yeah.

Was literally that came from me being pissed off about like I was trying to phone in a sheen newsletter.

It was like super not she in newsletter

podcast and it was super early and better offline so I had no process I was just like worry just constantly worried every week yeah not anymore though now I now I feast on content

yeah you you caught the podcast illness oh yeah the full the evidence madness

let's let's do another one um from Logan my question is

How do you see the copyright lawsuits playing out and its effect on generative AI in the tech industry?

Do you have faith that creators will win and copyrighted content will need to be pulled from these models, severely hindering their performance?

I think that it's going to be

weird and confusing right up until it isn't.

So I don't think you're going to have like a unilateral win in any of these cases.

It's never that clean.

It's never that easy.

But I think what is most likely to happen is there's going to be a win and then there will be a massive settlement, but that settlement will be used in the future to break these machines.

If they lose these things and there is ever like a precedent set that says, and I'm not a lawyer, I realize, but, and they say, okay, this is the thing where

this proves that feeding into the models

is a violation of copyright, let's just say.

They can't untrain these things.

They cannot do it.

You cannot untrain a model.

Once a model is trained, it's done.

There are stages to them they could probably revert back to, from what I understand, but you can't just be like, okay, remove all pictures of Scooby-Doo, remove all pictures of Garfield.

It's, they, and another important detail is the model developers don't really understand how these things work themselves.

They're still working it out.

It's why that, it's why there's so many questions they have when it's like they get where they're like, oh yeah, yeah, it'd just be very complex to remove.

The answer is they don't know how.

Open AI, like a year ago, said they were going to make a media central thing We could opt out of stuff.

Just never happened.

No one checked.

On the less fun level, it will probably be a big settlement.

On the funny level, will be the judge says, yeah, you have to amend your models.

There is no amending these models.

They will have to spend tens, hundreds of millions of dollars to retrain anything that is used there.

There will be some that refuse to.

I would not be surprised if Elon Musk.

If even ordered just goes, oh, yeah,

that's not epic or base.

They want not going to do it.

And

no one's gonna outsue him.

Open AI is far more scared of that.

Anthropic, extremely weak to that.

And on top of that, any of these lawsuits prevailing will fuck OpenAI's non-profit situation, which is already pretty fucked.

Like, there are so many weak points in these companies that people don't realize.

And there's always hope.

Never give up hope that these arsholes can get crushed.

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All right.

From Mella.

I think it's Mella, M-E-L-A.

I'm sorry if it's not Mella.

Question.

I'm a teacher.

Any thoughts on AI being implemented in the classroom, specifically in public schools?

We talk about it pretty often because it's constantly getting marketed as a tool, but it is mostly in the context of students learning on it to write research, but not about how it is being marketed to schools.

Yeah, so I don't know this subject in depth, but I'll say this.

I've heard of people using it for lesson plans.

Teachers, and if you're not a teacher and you hear this, teachers have to like buy all their own shit and they need to do all their own work.

They get basically no support.

So I wouldn't be surprised if

OpenAI or one of these companies tries to push in and be like, oh, it's a teacher's assistant.

And it's a rare case where like maybe it kind of helps, but I think after a certain point, if you're making a lesson plan with Chat GPT, you're no longer fucking teaching.

I think you're just, you are just representing someone else's information and hoping it works.

I worry about administrations in poorly funded education departments just being like, okay, yeah, let's just shove this in here.

I think the worries that people have

over

the whole like, oh, kids are just going to be handed a GPT and told to go nuts.

I don't think that will happen just because, well, Google's already trying to do that with Gemini.

They're already trying to give Gemini to kids.

I don't think that that's going to last as long as people think because at some point, a child is going to hurt themselves because of one of these things or hurt someone else.

And as much as we love our

unrestrained capitalism in this country and the world at large, there comes a point where that kind of stuff fucks you in Europe.

Like Europe will unhinge their jaw and swallow open AI whole.

And the same with Google if they do anything with kids and AI in a way they don't like.

Over here, you're going to see some tests, but the fundamental thing is it can't do the teaching part.

It can do the, hi, I want, like finish my homework for me, but the actual lesson instruction, no.

And nor is there a situation where they're just going to sit kids down in front of it because I don't know how would that even, I mean, sure, in some dystopian future, we just hand them a laptop and chat GPT and say, go nuts, but on a practical level, I just don't see that happening.

And if, I guess you could say, then there are the doomers out there who say, well, the Department of Education could force Grok onto everything.

If you think in that way, if you constantly pull yourself in the doomerous direction, yeah, anything can literally happen ever.

Anytime, anything terrible can happen.

I think you are going to see a lot of departments push teachers to learn this stuff to the point in your question.

I think when it becomes student-facing, that's when things are going to get a little bit weird and a little bit crazier because another thing to think about.

How well do you think conservatives will react to their child being plonked in front of ChatGPT or Grok or what have you, and Grok or Chat GPT tells them that, like, black people should have the same rights as white people.

They're going to hate that, they're going to be furious at that idea, they're going to say that they're being given a woke education, and there is only so much amendment you can do to a system prompt before you entirely break it, as proven by the fact that Grok talked about white genocide or the Boas

ad nauseum the other day.

Shout out to Kylie Robinson, who went on a Chris Hayes to talk about that.

But yeah, I, it's a mix, it's really

a question question of how far this hype cycle goes and for how long because if it lasts another two or three years somewhere it's going to happen but i don't see that happening at all

yeah i know it's really kind of gnarly for teachers when they can when they can so easily tell that students are just using ai to turn in homework i i mean somebody's going to create something that is like a plagiarism tracker but it's like an ai tracker at some point you'd have to imagine and those already exist and they're already dinging students.

For

and I think that there is a wider problem with the whole ChatGPT essay writing thing, which is we don't teach children to write.

Correct.

I remember when I was at Penn State, I had a group project.

If any of you are listening, I'm very sorry your writing sucked.

I had a group project with like seniors and juniors, and I was a sophomore at the time.

And it was like an 18-page.

18-page double-spaced essay.

And everyone's writing was different, but the same kind of bad.

And it kind of mirrored the shitty writing of ChatGPT.

It's the kind of

intro body conclusion slop.

We taught people to write like this, and we graded them based on this writing.

We don't, because we think, oh, not everyone can write.

Actually, they can.

I fully believe they can if given media to consume and encouragement and have good writers teach them.

Because we do not prioritize communication as, in fact, I think it is a word of thing.

It's we don't prioritize teaching people communication at all.

People are using ChatGPT to mediate conflict because we we don't have any kind of institutionalized mental health.

I don't mean like institutions.

I mean like making people do mental health stuff.

We don't have any kind of classes to teach people conflict resolution.

And we also don't teach people how to fucking communicate.

We romanticize, especially in college, this kind of overstuffed architect in the matrix style, indubitably bullshit, which is about making yourself sound smart rather than actually communicating an intelligent point.

This is a natural weak point for things like ChatGPT, which is entirely about sounding smart without being smart.

So, I mean, I'm actually shocked that teachers can't tell when ChatGPT is writing, because I've been able to 100% notice when I get that slob.

It's a really certain kind of echoing nothing behind it.

There's no, there is no, I'm not even being kind of condescending.

I mean, there is a way it writes.

There is a way that Claude writes as well.

It always goes like, that's a really good point.

Yeah, there's usually some kind of like, indeed, that is great.

Yeah.

Like, there's some like really strange or like, and unusually awkward punctuation as well that you can just tell.

And it doesn't feel right.

And, but again, if we have teachers that don't know how to write, who don't know what good writing is, they just,

and again, that is a, well, not again, I didn't say this yet, but there is also likely not the institutional support for teachers either.

So it's just we create these weak systems that get exploited.

And none of this is a business model for ChatGPT either.

Like they got 16.5 million, I think, from

Cal State University, Cal State University System.

It's like that's still losing the money.

And already people are trying to get rid of it.

It's just,

it's also sickening.

It's a mess.

Let's go to a fun question from Nora.

Do you have a piece of tech you wish had been successful but wasn't?

Or that you wish was widely influential but didn't turn out that way?

I would love to know your answer to this question.

So, my one is the PlayStation Vita.

So, the PlayStation Vita was this little gaming console that Sony did.

It was PlayStation 3 era, I think it was.

It was so cool.

It was like a step up from the PlayStation Portable.

The graphics were good.

It had this weird touch screen on the back that you could use.

It really wasn't a great idea, but it was like they were trying stuff.

It was also just a great form factor, great weight, great games, really great games.

Same with the PSP.

And I get why it didn't take off.

And I think we are getting there.

There's the GPD Win 4, which is like a little gaming PC handheld.

It kind of feels like it, but it's too chunky.

I think in the next few years, you might actually see growth in this.

Because good lord, is the...

I love the mobile gaming PCs.

For the show, actually, I'm playing with an Asus ROG Ally X, which is really cool.

We are probably five to ten years away from what I'm dreaming of, which is a super thin one that's kind of like a Nintendo Switch, but a powerful gaming PC.

But

I wish the PS Vita had done better because we would have seen this quicker.

We would have seen a push for smaller silicon, for batteries, like there would have been just more money going into it.

But again, maybe it didn't get there because the tech wasn't ready.

I still loved it.

I still really loved it.

And

I really love that form factor as well.

And the big thing I guess I'm saying is it's not just...

Do these things exist?

It's our play.

Like, Sony is very good at ergonomic stuff.

I love their controllers.

Like, that was what really made it as well.

It was just,

I missed, I missed that.

And I'm sure there's some, if you are a listener who played with the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita homebrew scene, love you.

Please email me.

I would love to talk about it.

I miss it.

It's cool as shit.

Raymond Wong, who used to write at Inverse, did a lot about it as well.

It's just, I guess the part of tech I'm missing is,

well, that never really took off, is these powerful portable handhelds.

And we're so close.

We're so close.

I can feel it.

I can feel it.

I can feel the cosmos.

It's going to be wonderful when it gets here.

There was a article that I read a couple of days ago from Vice that was probably, you know, not an original piece from Vice.

No offense to Vice.

That was like, your pets could one day be able to talk to you with AI.

And

I just

like

that to me was one.

You've been talking about, and there's a question that talks about the AI bubble burst, which is what this is leading into.

You've talked about that.

That is such an indicator to me that I'm like, come on.

Come on.

Yeah.

Come on, guys.

Part of the joy of pets is that they can't communicate with us and we have to show them extra love and affection.

I know.

That we have to understand their needs without fully understanding them, that we have to be empathetic and caring about them.

The idea that, also, I don't want to hear what Babu thinks of me.

I think he loves me, but now he loves me.

I think Howell is the one,

my cat who kind of like stays in my office mostly.

He is the one who I think he's probably got some mean things to say he loves me but he also hits me in the face sometimes so yeah I mean like I think Anderson would would not trade me for a piece of string cheese but my my newest rescue dog Truman I mean I'd love for for us to know when she'd be like that I'm scared of that but also

I don't want to hear that she would trade me for a piece of string cheese which I'm pretty sure she would at this point and I understand it what if my dog's racist yeah I mean come on what if your dog has like really bad taste in television?

Yeah.

Oh, God.

What if your dog is just annoying?

What if your dog just like hums?

Yeah.

What if your dog's sitting there, like, kind of going,

hmm.

Just like makes like weird mouths.

Like, there's just otherwise, like, my pets are beautiful and wonderful.

I love them so much.

And they make my life so good.

They really are angels.

Yeah, exactly.

Can you imagine?

I know.

I don't need to.

Well, I mean, Babu talks to me anyway.

I can understand almost everything that my dogs communicate to me.

And that's great.

And that's where it needs to stay.

I think Babu can understand me for sure.

Yeah.

Because I have tons of videos of me saying, Babu, what do you want?

And he meows at me.

I'm saying, really?

He goes, meow.

And it's like, okay, yeah.

We're talking.

That's what I'm telling myself.

Like, Anderson can, she's right behind me, staring at you.

The legend.

The legend.

Yeah.

Look at her.

Yeah, she's perfect.

But like, I think she is more self-aware about what's going on in the world than most humans.

Yeah.

That doesn't surprise me.

Yeah.

Anyways, from Justin,

this was leading into the AI bubble burst thing.

As the AI bubble bursts, what will become of the many mediocre customers who have become overly reliant on it for just about everything?

That's a great question.

I think the first thing they're going to find out is they're not reliant on it at all.

That is the first thing they're going to discover is that they were never reliant on this stuff.

I also think that in the event that they were reliant on it, they'll choose one of the many open source models.

And because large language models are not going to disappear.

It's not like OpenAI dies tomorrow.

Large language models will not.

The hype cycle dies, they will not die.

There are on-device models.

Nvidia is putting out like a $3,000,

I think it's the DGX

box they're doing that can run large language models of a certain parameter.

It's like it's very doable.

And there are going to be people who just go, I never really needed this.

Yeah, there are going to be those who say, oh, well, I use ChatGPT for this, that, and the other.

Chatgpt.com will forward to copilot.

Like, you're going to have access to one of these fucking things.

You're just going to find out what happens when people are not told to use this stuff, when people naturally use it.

And I think you can kind of see what will happen there based on the user numbers for these companies outside of OpenAI.

They can barely muster up the combined active users of like a free-to-play game that sells your information to the Chinese.

Like,

I think that so much of this demand is artificial too.

And I think that it's curiosity.

People are like, oh, I hear about this constantly.

I should try it out.

And then, yeah, people are ultimately a bit lazy.

I know I can be.

And they're like, oh, I'm in an argument with my mate.

What do I do about it?

How do I deal with the argument with my friend?

Chat GPT.

And there will be that.

People use it for that.

But I also think that, again, that's not a business model.

And people will not care for that.

So I I think the future will be large language models with heavy usage limits

and premium ones that no one pays for, really, that are just way more expensive.

And I really do think OpenAI eventually cops it.

I think they get absorbed into Microsoft because we don't really have antitrust right now.

So, I think they'll just get paying for premium AI.

Sadly, so they're paying OpenAI gets like billions of dollars through this, but it's like people, organizations buying it.

And you have people, think about it like this: If every single news outlet everywhere forever, for two, sorry, not forever, for two years straight or more has said chat GPT, AI, generative AI, chat GPT.

Yeah,

billions of, billions of dollars of revenue.

Sure.

People will shove money into something if they are told to.

And on top of that, you have tons of business idiots who are just like, yeah, I need to put AI in my business.

And I have the podcast that's coming up.

I actually believe our economy is run by a lot of people who don't do any work.

So this shit seems like magic.

Of course they'll buy it for their entire organization.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Yeah, sure.

I'll put chat GPT and everything.

That's how that works.

Here we go.

And I think that when it goes away, well, Chat GPT does, I think that we'll probably see just the kind of very boring large language model industry.

And it just, it just won't, it won't be as prevalent.

You won't hear about it as much.

And it'll actually be better for the tech, I think, all told.

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And we're back

from

I'm gonna try to get this right: P8N T B A L L N X J.

I think I did that.

I think they're trying to say paintball and

XJ.

All right.

The question is, Ed,

what are your favorite activities that have nothing to do with tech?

Okay.

So I have a local basketball court I've been going to on my own and I've been playing basketball on my own, which sounds very sad, but.

No, it doesn't.

I do a shit ton of fitness.

So last year, lost a ton of weight.

I'm down like $1.65 now.

Muscle, it's great.

So I work out a lot.

The reason I don't bring up lifting is because that's tech.

My tonal is a tech thing.

Basketball is not.

It's me, my music, and hooping.

And I'll tell you, I am one of the worst shooters of all time.

I am so bad at it, but I really like rebounding and I really like the cardio thing because I needed a cardio level to go because my boxing was kind of stalling.

So, I really enjoy just like running around for half an hour, like catching a ball in the air and shooting it.

And then I want to play basketball with you.

You will demolish me more than that.

I have the cardio.

I have the cardio, but I am like, how tall are you?

I'm five foot three on a good day.

Okay, yeah, I might be all right then.

I'm five nine.

I was captain of my varsity basketball team.

Oh, then you'll demolish me then.

Okay, you will send me to hell.

You'll be able to actually get the ball in the hoop, which is my one problem.

But I really like that, and I really like barbecue.

So I have two pellet smokers, which I realize to some listeners who do, like, the wood chunks is kind of considered haram, but fuck you, you purist bastard.

But I love making ribs.

I love making tri-tip.

I hate making brisket.

It was a few years ago I really fucked up.

I love tri-tip's the best.

My tri-tip's incredible as well.

I really enjoy that.

I do use some tech things.

I have a combustion thermometer, but really it is just a giant steel thing full of smoke that I watch.

And it's great.

And it honestly has been

really good for me and it allows me to cook for people, which I love doing.

And yeah,

and when I'm waiting for stuff to cook, I will stand watching TV outside, bouncing the basketball around, catching it in the air.

I just, I have some weird habits, as you can probably guess, but I really enjoy

being bad at basketball.

I honestly have not enjoyed being able to get away from.

Do you like to watch basketball?

I'm getting there.

I'm still learning the people.

I know that like James Harden is constantly at strip clubs or being traded.

I hate him.

My brother played against him in high school.

He's been an asshole since he was a child.

Yeah, and he seems to like enjoy tricking people into doing fouls.

But I just, I'd like him more if he was ruder, like if he was more of a heel, if he was like, nah, the fans a bit.

Yeah, I mean,

prop Ian and I can teach you.

I would love to learn basketball.

You're a Laker fan, by the way.

You are.

I like that.

I'm assigning it.

It's good.

You've been assigned.

Baseball as well.

I really enjoy baseball.

I got into baseball a few years ago.

I really enjoy going to baseball.

Don't really enjoy watching it on TV.

Like, I can, but I need to have a reason I'm there.

Like, it needs to be like an LDS or something.

I'm like a Dodgers Padres Mets fan.

It's a whole mess.

That's fucking.

I'm more of a game.

I'm like the Rob Lowe wearing the NFL hat guy.

I'm just like, I'm here for the game.

But I really do.

I really enjoy baseball.

And with that in mind, I also enjoy, but haven't been for a while, going to a batting cage.

I really enjoy batting cages.

It's just, especially when you're on the computer all the time, you're looking at screens all the time, and you just go and you hit a ball that's like thrown at you at 70 miles an hour.

It's very difficult, but again, really enjoy it.

How do you feel about like mini golf and like the driving range?

I do, I like mini golf.

Never done the driving range, though.

I like mini golf a lot.

Mini golf is great.

You know, I don't, I don't like that, like, uh, what's it called?

The like Yassified like driving range where they're oh, top golf, yeah, I really don't enjoy top golf.

Oh, it's just unfortunately.

It was so golf.

I've never really known where you'd go.

I guess it just felt like a driving range to me.

And it's like, I like mini golf.

I think mini golf is fun and silly.

I like a really old school mini golf course that you know has been there forever.

And like, yeah, it's kind of shit.

It's shit in the tech, and there's like no tech.

It's just like really bad, like wooden, wooden art.

And it's just hilarious.

You're not sure if it's meant to go in the certain place, but you keep playing anywhere.

Do you like bowling?

No.

So I have a coordinational disability called dyspraxia, which is really weird.

I realize basketball has honestly been an exploration of how prevalent that is in my life, though, because I could not dribble the ball when I started.

Like I physically could not.

I would get maybe three or four bounces before I drop it.

Now I can run at full speed up and down the court, dribbling, changing hands.

I can turn around.

I can grab the ball in the air.

So it's been this weird exploration.

So bowling might be one of those things where maybe if I try it more.

I don't know.

The sticking your fingers into dirty holes thing is

we've all been there, but

it's one of those things where

six months ago I'd have said no, but the basketball side, again, on screens all day.

So like my achievements are all typing.

But like being able to grab a ball out of the air, being able to actually rebound successfully, it's thrilling.

I really enjoy it.

And it's like something where I can't look at a screen.

I have to look at where I'm going to miss next.

I'm telling, I'm going to text Ian and prop right now.

We're going to give you a full basketball education.

I would love that.

I would genuinely love that.

Casey Kagarwoff ran to the show, got me into baseball in the same way.

That's how I get into sport.

I also do watch the NFL, but I think saying I like the Raiders is a stretch.

It's like attending a years-long class action suit.

That was the weirdest thing that's ever coming out of your mouth.

The Raider.

I know locationally, sure, but like to actually like the Raiders, you have to be a specific type of person, which you are not.

Well, the funny thing is, is so Ari Fassan from 60 Minute Drill football podcast I do laughed at me once because he asked on the pod, he said, Why'd you get into the Raiders?

And I was like, Oh, I lived in Oakland at the time, and the season ticket's really cheap.

And he just goes, You got into a football team because of market conditions,

and that is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life because it's true.

However, the team might be good this year, maybe.

Yeah.

But

I haven't had hope before, so who cares?

Yeah.

Oh, and also the show JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

That's another thing I really like.

You don't want to get me talking about that too much.

Is that what the question about JoJo is?

Yeah, you can skip that.

I was like, I don't know what that is, so I'm not going to answer.

You don't need to.

I would have to explain a bunch of stuff.

I'm not.

I was like, that went over my head.

I'll ask one more serious one and then we'll do the cats.

Sounds good.

All right.

Which one do I want to ask that's serious.

Oh, this comes from Eric.

How the fuck is anyone supposed to make anything cool and make a living out of music anymore?

I quit touring to be with my kid, but all the avenues I was going to explore and crumble under my feet.

I think that's a good question.

I think that's like music, but it's also just like, how the fuck are you supposed to create anything anymore?

I think the thing that

the problem is that it was never really a good way of making money before.

And the internet had this explosion of where it was good to it was good to make money for a bit, but there were only so many people who could.

I mean, iHeartRadio and CoolZone came to me and I did the podcast because they could pay.

Like, I wouldn't have done, like, the idea of starting a podcast and, like, building an audience and selling ads sounds nightmarish to me.

I can't imagine being a musician right now.

It seems the way that musicians I know are making money are skipping streaming services, doing a shit ton of touring, doing merch, like kind of old school measures.

I know these aren't really good answers.

I have, I can only sing, I can't play any musical instruments.

I wish I could.

I've never toured with anyone or have experience with that.

But my general thing with creators right now is, and the only really good advice I've ever had is find whatever is easiest and do that.

The reason I do my newsletter is, though they're very long, I enjoy doing it.

And it isn't, it's work, I guess, but it comes very naturally.

I don't do anything that doesn't.

I find ways to streamline things that I don't like doing, like I think anyone does.

And I obviously like run like a PR firm and another thing.

So like, I need to make sure my time is used well.

But the big thing is, is I don't know how anyone does anything independently anymore.

The newsletter, I think I could have monetized, but

the best advice I got there was from Drew, Drew Fairweather.

So I'm married to the Sea, the shares was just keep creating stuff, which I know is deeply unsatisfying.

But the mistake that people get pulled into is they're like, okay, so I've got Patreon.

I've got got this.

What platforms am I on?

I'm on the platform, I'm on this platform, am I posting to social?

Am I posting to LinkedIn?

Am I on Instagram?

Do I have Instagram clips?

Do I have this?

All of that time could be spent making something.

And indeed, this is advice that I got from Sophie and Robert failure.

Just fucking record.

Just go for it.

You will never be perfect.

You will never be able to do a flawless episode or flawless product.

What will come through is that you care about doing it and you're actually fucking doing it.

Because so many people get obsessed with the social media of it all, with the pushing, like with the I must hit content every week in this way, in this perfect way with all these clips.

And I must resemble another content creator.

When it really comes down to it, it's just push it out, try stuff.

Another great bit of advice I got was from wonderful Matt Weinberger.

I used to be a business insider, great editor, great writer.

And he said, look to hit singles rather than home runs.

You want to just keep putting stuff out regularly enough that you get feedback, that you get the natural feeling of what bangs before you even finish it.

That way, it will have more mass appeal because you'll learn more from people's reaction and from creating stuff than you ever will from doing a perfect social campaign, from following the right people, from having enough retweets in this.

The beginning sucks.

When I started, I already had somewhat of a following, ironically from PR.

I can only recommend just creating more.

I realize this is kind of an unsatisfying answer, but there are no good ones here.

Discovery sucks on everything now.

Even for popularity.

When Ed started his podcast, he was like, I'm terrible.

And I'm like, keep doing it.

You're happy.

Now I enjoy it.

Yeah, you're sick of it.

Now they have to tell me to do less.

It's true.

Last question from Carolina.

They say, I have an underlining curiosity to hear what your cats' favorite toys are and if they like Churu.

Is that how you pronounce that?

Churu is this beast that you hand cats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's this goop.

I have yet to give my cats the goop.

Yeah.

So, Babu, Pokey, Howell doesn't really like, I am his toy.

He comes and sits on me.

He bites my hand occasionally.

He purrs.

He lies down.

He's a big, big softie.

Same with Tingus Pingus.

Tingus Pingus doesn't really play.

Pokey and Babu's favorite toy is each other.

They chase each other two bengals.

They just bolt around the house.

They don't do it much.

I have one of those cat wheels.

Babu will go and run on it for 15 seconds he will walk over meow

run on it get ahead of steam and then stop and then sit down on it they like the classic dangly toys they like to jump babu we have like a river in the wall where we put something very high

with like one of the dangly ones and babu would just do these insane like six foot tall jumps he loves oh he loves it He loves it.

And yes, of course, boxes.

Anytime I get a box,

they want to get in that.

They want to play in the box.

The twist tie things.

I get cheap toys for them because they seem just as happy.

Another thing is, this isn't really a toy, but I got one of these doughnut beds for the cats.

And they didn't use it for a year.

And then one day I found, in the space of 24 hours, all three of them trying the doughnut hole in the middle.

Now Pingus mostly uses it.

I have never tried giving them Churu.

I am now going to get some Churu and try just because.

Have you tried one of those

glove brushes?

My best friend's cats.

I go to their house and I just sit there with the brush and they're just so good.

I get one of them.

And I use it a few times and it never seems to...

There is always more hair.

So I think I need to get a deeper gloom.

Well, it's not even for the brush.

It's not even for the grooming.

Oh, they love it.

They love it.

Yeah.

I pull that thing out sometimes when Pingas, I don't know, he looks particularly cute.

Yeah.

And I just go and pick it.

I go and like pick him up and sit down and start grooming him like Blofeld, but with a giant kind of like blue spiky glove.

Looks very sinister.

But he, he really, he really, Pingis is the sweetie.

He's the sweetest of them.

All of them are, I'm blessed with my beautiful cats and my friends as well.

But like my cats really, I genuinely believe that cats echo something about their owners.

So if you have someone with like super dysfunctional cats, there's a reason.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel that way about my dogs.

They are me and I am them.

Well, they're wonderful dogs.

I've yet to meet them, though.

One day I will.

You will.

You have to make it to Iraq.

Yeah.

You will.

But yeah, I'm going to get Churu after this.

I actually have some because they gave it to me to.

I thought you were going to say you were eating some.

No, somebody gave somebody when I when I they was like trying to it was it's like uh in like a

like uh for like pill pill hiding for pets somebody gave it to me as like a thing but turns out Truman will

eat a pill out of my hand.

Just a la carte.

She doesn't need the Tru-Ru.

Perfect dog.

She's an angel.

She's a good girl.

Well,

you did the mailbag.

You did the keyboard.

You did the mailbag.

We will do another one of these in maybe a month or two.

I love doing this.

I love hearing from all of you.

And genuinely thank you to all the listeners who reach out regularly.

Because if I say so much as something negative about myself, you are all very reassuring and you refuse to accept it.

I love you all genuinely.

I'm blessed to have you.

So thank you for listening.

And yeah, until next time, Sophie, thank you for being on with me.

Of course.

Of course.

I can't wait to teach you more about basketball.

Prop and Ian are

the group chat has decided you're in the club.

You made it.

Hell yeah.

I look forward to it.

Thank you for listening, everyone.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.

You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matasowski.com.

M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com.

You can email me at easy at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter.

I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit.

Thank you so much for listening.

Better Offline is a production of CoolZone Media.

For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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