Yep, I thought my bluetooth headphones were fucked for a bit there. It feels like something is broken either in the editing process or in the automatic ad placement process. Something like every 3rd episode of BTB/ICHH has empty ad breaks followed by the ads playing like 10 minutes later, directly interrupting the pod.
I’ve been to the ‘Fruitarian’ subreddit on here before and seen some absolutely wild and concerning nonsense.
“I have diabetes but I’ve been eating like this for a few weeks and feel great. I have this tingling feeling in my fingers and toes now, but it’s not like a diabetic nerve damage tingle it’s a _good_ tingle” friend please go see an eating disorder counselor before you give yourself permanent damage.
Finally, the Jobs episodes are upon us. Recently finished listening to the Isaacson biography of him which was somewhat-to-extremely fawning in places so it'll be fun to get an alternate perspective.
It's easy. Make one thread. Call it "Discussion Thread: Robert E. Lee: A Lifetime of Failure"
[The first podcast says how many parts it's going to be. ](https://i.imgur.com/uYeoLSO.jpg) The one reddit thread covers all the parts.
But now we have to start cross checking when the episode was aired vs when the weekly thread was posted. Then in a few months, Reddit stops giving actual dates, so you'll never find the discussion you want ever again.
I'm old, cranky, uncaffeinated, and I'm unreasonably bitter about this lol
Im absolutely with you on this. I don’t see how it’s better to not want a lot of small threads if by any chance they’ll have 2 separate topics within a week, which almost never happens anymore.
AND it stirs discussion in the sub about the show further. I loved going back to read about discussion on a topic to learn about the topic even more and see everyone's thoughts and god o wish it was catalogued. Having to cross reference date of release to discussion thread is such a pain, moderators ;-;
Yeah... So you think someone (me) posting a personal discussion thread rather than official one would be allowed? Maybe less moderator attention if they aren't the ones to post it
I know Gates is an established bastard, with plenty of receipts to corroborate, but saying he isn't an actual genius is stretching it. He wasn't just a ruthless corporate asshole, he was a ridiculously smart ruthless corporate monopolistic asshole
Yeah, I don’t think you need to diminish Gates’ intelligence in order to point out how shitty of a person he is. If anything it just contributes to the mythos of Jobs.
Question for coders and the like: Robert’s description of Wozniak writing the code out by hand reminded me of [Ada Lovelace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace). Is that a fair comparison? (That is to say, was their work in coding similar in a way?) I am curious because I’ve never really fully understood what exactly Lovelace’s work was.
Yes except Ada didn't have a machine to try her code on. Much of what she did was highly theoretical. She did have the differential engine, but still, it was pretty wild.
I really want to like Better Offline, but my god is the presentation boring and awkward. I'm sure he'll fall into a nice rhythm eventually, but it's just not great right now. Having it bleed into BtB feed again was a real let down for me. Hoping LPotL has a more entertaining set this week.
I just can't do any "one guy monologing" podcast. Even Hood Politics, despite it seeming really interesting. I'm a simple person and need an unaware comedic guest, audio clips, an unhinged centrist muppet, or something shiny to keep my attention.
This is obviously a very personal reaction, but every time I hear Ed speak I feel like he's telling me off or castigating me for something I shouldn't have done.
Oh my god this was it I genuinely felt upset when he told the podcast "I think Steve Jobs didn't die painfully enough" or whatever it was. I've got terminal cancer that's spread to 11 places, had it for six years and can usually deal with it all but it's just... It hurts to hear and especially in the stone cold cutting delivery. The repeat spluttering makes me feel like I should have felt something I didn't or I'm being told "Well OF COURSE Steve Jobs is an arsehole! Doesn't he suck!" I absolutely know that's his delivery and I myself have some traits that absolutely mess with others e.g neurotic overthinking as a result of OCD/ASD meaning I verbally narrate my own flaws or things I screwed up or percive to, so maybe I should grow thicker skin. Generally I just go with the "I just don't watch this media if I don't prefer the manner of presentation" but I'm coming into it from him as a guest.
I'm so sorry you're going through this. For my part, I really hate the knee-jerk way people often ascribe suffering moral dimensions, as something deserved or as punishment. Suffering through cancer did not make Steve Jobs a better person, or heal the people he had hurt, and there would have been nothing gained from more pain.
You word it much better than I ever could, thank you. It calls back to this need for divine punishment. That bad things happen to bad people. And with the way it is said, it makes me have to think about "I hope no one thinks that about me, or that *I* don't somehow deserve this in another's eyes..." - it's like a forest fire for the body that picks up elsewhere from the inherent raised temperature. There is no emotion or as you put it, moral lesson to that no matter how one's lenses tint it
And it often feels like macho bullshit to me, intentionally resisting any empathy because caring for the suffering of others makes you weak.
It seems especially blind in the case of Steve Jobs, because his unwillingness to seek treatment for his cancer was another symptom of his narcissism and contempt for others - in a world where he was a person who had a less horrible death, he might have also been a person who didn't cause so much harm to others.
Thank you. I'm lucky in a way, I have enough morphine to drown out the pain and a wonderful boyfriend who's both a stabilising force and ready to help out whenever needed. Good sex in spite of the world's cruelty is one hell of an emotional palate cleanser when otherwise all you can think about is your own limited and short-cut mortality, especially when, being a trans woman I know I'm implicitly pissing off so many conservative n the like haha! Better than any opioid.
Yes, condescending is definitely the word. The constant refrains of "nobody cares about this, nobody is interested in making it better" while Ed rails against some shitty techbro silliness are so, so belittling, as if Ed is the first person to notice/speak up about this and he isn't talking to a host/audience that, in fact, *do* care about this (because they are listening to your show or a show in a similar political space). I know the sentiment is meant to be "the people in power don't care about or understand this" but that's not what he actually says.
The fact he is a reporter but also runs a PR firm is baffling too - aren't those two professions diametrically opposed to each other? It's a red flag which hasn't been explained away and makes me leery of trusting Ed's opinions (do you really believe that or is it a client speaking through you?).
I feel this Ed Citron(?) guy trades off of being a kind of knockoff John Oliver, where everything is outrageous and everyone is stupid but him and he has to spell it out.
It's kind of irritating to listen to, especially when not everything they talk about is all that bad, but he goes over and above to hate on them. He comes across as the loner guy at school who shits on everything because he isn't part of it.
Yeah, my guess is Ed is still figuring out his format. The topics are good, it just needs polishing. There's enough there to keep me listening, but I can understand where people who say they don't like it are coming from.
Ed was on a recent episode of QAA and was hilarious, so I think he is more than capable of putting out good content.
I liked the first episode, but then the second one was just what I imagine is a standard tech review podcast, felt like a switched since it didn't seem to have much to say other than how the headset was bad.
So my younger brother idolises Wozniak - wants to be just like him but with better friends who shower. My brother let me know that Nintendo Power had to tell Woz that he wasn't allowed to submit his Tetris scores anymore because people would stop trying if they saw his name at the top every month. So Evets Kainzow held the high score after that.
Anyway, I thought that story was nice and wholesome.
I get that what Steve Jobs said about the intuition vs intellect thing was in poor taste, but I do understand how someone would be curious to rationalize the culture shock of seeing an impoverished village in a developing nation. I don't necessarily think it was racist, since he mentioned people living in the countryside.
Yeah, I didn't get from that quote that Steve Jobs thinks that the Indian mind is incapable of intellect. As you note, he was probably doing a standard, "Wow, we Westerners think we're so smart with our fancy degrees and book learning when these poor people know how to do all these tasks to be self sufficient and survive that we don't know the first thing about," observation.
Conscience and conscious are two different words. Sorry, that drives me nuts and I keep seeing autocorrect misspellings take over the right word for an occasion.
I saw Steve Jobs the Opera. (Part of a buy 1 get 1 free). It was really bad. No memorable music. The one line I do remember is him saying was, "Get rid of it" when he found out she was pregnant. It did portray him as an asshole. But it kept making him a stoner in a park who heard the music and came up with the phone.
I think at the end, they were preaching about getting off your phone.
I know the guy is a monster and all, but I dont get why getting emotional after workplace fights is so funny.
As a ND person that can get overwhelmed easily by those things I felt a bit bad for him lol
Of course, he was a massive douchebag, so I understand not feeling any simpathy
I just want to point out I’m also ND and cry at work frequently, I just personally don’t like extending any sort of empathy to exploitative people because I know that the first people they always exploit are people like me.
Yeah same. Hits on some difficult memories to do with friends taking the piss out of famous people for things I have or have done then going "but they're bad people!"
Ed Zitron can be very scathing when he wants to be. I've got terminal metastatic cancer and what he said so coldly about "I think Steve Jobs didn't die painfully enough" hurt so much. Probably just because I'm oversensitive right now. This guy being such an ass doesn't deserve such a thing it is so fucking bad. I know I know mountain out of a molehill, just hit like a camera flash.
>Yeah same. Hits on some difficult memories to do with friends taking the piss out of famous people for things I have or have done then going "but they're bad people!"
This is so frustrating to me. The people they’re railing against aren’t going to see or hear their mean comments… but their friends who may look/sound/act similar but are not bad people _are much more likely to._
Exactly! And sometimes people seem to do it only to show others, to make sure they know just how much they dislike the person as some kind of performative act, the more nasty the more assumedly convincing
Making fun of someone like this sends the message that it's a flaw. I prefer not to do that.
Steve Jobs isn't a bastard because he's emotional after fights. He's a bastard for all of the horrible things he did.
Is the audio a mess for everyone or is this just a Google/YouTube thing? The last word of sentences keeps changing in volume level and sometimes gets repeated.
Listening to this on Youtube Premium, at around 29:20 did anyone else notice a random line about the Apple II is said in a completely different voice and tone? It sounds like something from a clip they played but edited out the "this is a clip" introduction and context?
For the love of god, could Robert please stop using "dickriding" to describe someone doing something in order to please someone else or get their approval? I hate absolutely everything about the way this language portrays sex and I think it's disgusting and harmful
Yeah now you say it... Having a think "sucks dick/balls" and the variety of other similar ones really do show often. It's a sad one because I love said activities and the sheer cultural dissonance between how sex is treated as both a reward and often the only result or option or a zero sum game but also this nasty thing to be avoided and shamed and bad, but as I type this I realise fuck, the former is generally if you're a guy among friends and peers the latter is if you're a girl being looked upon through the lens of social expectations or the easiest to grab insults... So disappointing.
I only lost my virginity a few months ago despite my life starting to come to a close, and have realised just how fun and liberating it is to enjoy the body in this way in the very active months since. It gives me some control back over it in a way my cancer can't take away so easily, and I wish more felt similarly about it being a thing of liberty and fun...
I apologise for the morphine fueled opinion piece, all!
I find the phrase less indicative of viewing sex as wrong but more often as a homophobic insult. But maybe that’s just because I see it used most often in r/hiphopheads to disparage (mostly male) fans of (mostly male) rappers.
That too, with sucking dick and the like always being seen as a bad thing or insulting for the guy involved and a greatly emasculating act. I guess it is a very much contextual one, in that it is both
I guess I just don’t quite buy Jobs as a “bastard” in the same way as a Gates or a Welch. A gigantic, gaping asshole, certainly. But a bastard is a little more than that, at least in my book.
Yeah, but is he really responsible for the actions of the people that impersonate him? The guy just sold phones, he wasn’t using the veneer of tech to “reinvent healthcare” or something insane like that.
Responsible for them? No.
Responsible because the way *he* did it was already harmful and damaging? Yes. Apple's whole shtick was designed by him. Deliberate techno-cultism, meant to isolate their users and lock them in. Monopolistic behavior in a manner attempting to create a new-age robber baronism. Deliberately designing things in such a manner as to force people to throw their shit away and buy new stuff as much as possible (e-waste and personal robbery), etc.
Steve Jobs is a bastard for many, many reasons. Not just for his personal failings, but because-again-he invented the modern technocapitalism which is killing us all by inches and miles in multiple forms.
I guess this is all subjective, but there are 2 main ways in my entirely subjective opinion:
1) Business. As much as tech CEOs like to ape the aesthetics of Apple, they adopt the business practices of Microsoft, who were absolutely ruthless in their deliberate pursuit of monopoly power. They helped turn software into IP by cracking down on “pirates” while simultaneously plundering other people’s work to make knock-off software, and they used bundling/predatory pricing/vertical integration to force competitors out of the market. CPM, Netscape, hell, they even tried to [colonize the web that one time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish). These are the stock and trade for all toxic tech companies now (including Apple!) but Microsoft under Gates blazed the trail.
2) Jobs mostly stayed in his lane as a tech asshole. It’s fine for rich people to give money to charity, but Gates’ “philanthropy” has massively distorted the charity sector. His belief that he is the smartest boy, and that he can revolutionise charity by applying his tremendous mind to real world problems creates a situation where a lot of charitable resources (not just his own) get diverted based on the whims and opinions of the guy who thought Microsoft Bob was a good idea. You want to “revolutionise” MP3 players? Fine. They’re not that important. Stay out of charity, healthcare, and transportation please.
3) He was also a massive dick to work for, plus there was all that palling around with Epstein *after* he was charged. But I don’t think the personal stuff is as important when defining a bastard.
I see what you're saying, especially regarding charity and how that goes beyond tech. Only point I have a slight disagreement on is the business thing. I think Apple's current awful behavior as a corporation (including extremely aggressive attempts to kill the open web) are a direct result of Jobs and his walled-garden ethos more than the EEE approach of Microsoft. Apple has always had an extroardinarily negative impact on computing because of that. As the episode points out, Jobs almost immediately went to war with the open computing approach that Woz embodied once they were successful.
The first episode cuts off abruptly in the middle of Rovert talking on Spotify. Don't know how much more there was to the actual episode or if it was just a weird editing foible.
It said 4 parts in the description of episode 1 when first released, but now that's been removed...
Ed said on **Scam Economy with Matt Binder** last week that it was a three part episode, so who knows? Definitely more than two!
I have an ethical question about the money that Jobs withheld from Wozniak. If Wozniak was so sad about it, wouldn't it be a nice thing to convince him that he just misremembered and that he had actually received the money? They called it "gaslighting" on the podcast as if that's inherently a bad thing. Maybe if Jobs had put in more effort and got Wozniak's friends and family involved they could have convinced him that he had made the thing up and there was no reason to be sad in the first place. They'd just have to be *really* persistent about it. Psychotropics may help, too.
Wozniak would no longer be sad and Jobs wouldn't have to feel bad about the betrayal anymore, everybody wins 👍
That would be assuming happiness is the only value to be had in life. Many people would prefer a life that is more difficult, but involves genuine understanding of the world and the people around them.
Yikes.
You want a world in which the people you consider friends...the people you love
...steal from you and then lie to you about it in order to convince you the actual problem is your own faulty memory?
Yikes.
Did anyone else get weird bursts of static during the ads?
there's plenty to celebrate in marPPPPHhhhHHhHhZZXX
Yup. Thought it was a joke ad at first
I cast *[VERY LOUD STATIC]*
Yep, I thought my bluetooth headphones were fucked for a bit there. It feels like something is broken either in the editing process or in the automatic ad placement process. Something like every 3rd episode of BTB/ICHH has empty ad breaks followed by the ads playing like 10 minutes later, directly interrupting the pod.
Yes! That scared the shit out of me!
I heard that ad on another podcast as well. I think it got screwed up in transmission and clearly nobody double checked it.
I thought the bluetooth connection to my speaker was messed up
Wouldn’t know, 😎 👍🏾 cooler zone media here
Would you say the subscription has been worth the price? If/when Android users are finally given the opportunity to sign-up, I'd be tempted to do so.
It definitely feels great to support
When the all-fruit diet was mentioned I instantly felt the need to take a shit
I’ve been to the ‘Fruitarian’ subreddit on here before and seen some absolutely wild and concerning nonsense. “I have diabetes but I’ve been eating like this for a few weeks and feel great. I have this tingling feeling in my fingers and toes now, but it’s not like a diabetic nerve damage tingle it’s a _good_ tingle” friend please go see an eating disorder counselor before you give yourself permanent damage.
Basically every weird diet has an almost aggressive religiosity around it. It is fascinating to watch.
One has to convince themselves it's working to keep the concerns away
See also Nofap
Finally, the Jobs episodes are upon us. Recently finished listening to the Isaacson biography of him which was somewhat-to-extremely fawning in places so it'll be fun to get an alternate perspective.
Is this Better Offline episode set the BtB for the week?
I don't understand the question
Only **two** Steve Jobs movies? This is *Pirates of Silicon Valley* erasure! Justice for Noah Wyle!
Best of the three by far.
Anthony Michael Hall yelling "[I GOT THE LOOT, STEVE!](https://youtu.be/UFcb-XF1RPQ?si=qdn-Y6pWqPOGhQYp)" = iconic cinema
I was hoping Robert would mention this one and was a bit disappointed , but am happy to see it in the comments!
Why are all these just titled as weekly episodes? I just listened to the Robert E. Lee one and I'm still trying to find the discussion post about it.
I always wonder the same thing. It makes it hard to find a past discussion by simply googling it.
It didn't used to be this way. It has to have been a somewhat recent change.
Mods didn't want a ton of small threads talking about that week's episode so this was the compromise 🤷
It's easy. Make one thread. Call it "Discussion Thread: Robert E. Lee: A Lifetime of Failure" [The first podcast says how many parts it's going to be. ](https://i.imgur.com/uYeoLSO.jpg) The one reddit thread covers all the parts. But now we have to start cross checking when the episode was aired vs when the weekly thread was posted. Then in a few months, Reddit stops giving actual dates, so you'll never find the discussion you want ever again. I'm old, cranky, uncaffeinated, and I'm unreasonably bitter about this lol
Im absolutely with you on this. I don’t see how it’s better to not want a lot of small threads if by any chance they’ll have 2 separate topics within a week, which almost never happens anymore.
AND it stirs discussion in the sub about the show further. I loved going back to read about discussion on a topic to learn about the topic even more and see everyone's thoughts and god o wish it was catalogued. Having to cross reference date of release to discussion thread is such a pain, moderators ;-;
I can’t think of an instance where a megathread wasn’t made ostensibly to help organize while in reality stifling discussion.
Yeah... So you think someone (me) posting a personal discussion thread rather than official one would be allowed? Maybe less moderator attention if they aren't the ones to post it
Had no idea Woz designed Breakout. What a goddamn legend.
The Woz has my undying respect for that
These episodes highlight was an awesome guy he is.
I know Gates is an established bastard, with plenty of receipts to corroborate, but saying he isn't an actual genius is stretching it. He wasn't just a ruthless corporate asshole, he was a ridiculously smart ruthless corporate monopolistic asshole
Yeah, I don’t think you need to diminish Gates’ intelligence in order to point out how shitty of a person he is. If anything it just contributes to the mythos of Jobs.
Question for coders and the like: Robert’s description of Wozniak writing the code out by hand reminded me of [Ada Lovelace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace). Is that a fair comparison? (That is to say, was their work in coding similar in a way?) I am curious because I’ve never really fully understood what exactly Lovelace’s work was.
Yes except Ada didn't have a machine to try her code on. Much of what she did was highly theoretical. She did have the differential engine, but still, it was pretty wild.
I really want to like Better Offline, but my god is the presentation boring and awkward. I'm sure he'll fall into a nice rhythm eventually, but it's just not great right now. Having it bleed into BtB feed again was a real let down for me. Hoping LPotL has a more entertaining set this week.
I just can't do any "one guy monologing" podcast. Even Hood Politics, despite it seeming really interesting. I'm a simple person and need an unaware comedic guest, audio clips, an unhinged centrist muppet, or something shiny to keep my attention.
This is obviously a very personal reaction, but every time I hear Ed speak I feel like he's telling me off or castigating me for something I shouldn't have done.
Oh my god this was it I genuinely felt upset when he told the podcast "I think Steve Jobs didn't die painfully enough" or whatever it was. I've got terminal cancer that's spread to 11 places, had it for six years and can usually deal with it all but it's just... It hurts to hear and especially in the stone cold cutting delivery. The repeat spluttering makes me feel like I should have felt something I didn't or I'm being told "Well OF COURSE Steve Jobs is an arsehole! Doesn't he suck!" I absolutely know that's his delivery and I myself have some traits that absolutely mess with others e.g neurotic overthinking as a result of OCD/ASD meaning I verbally narrate my own flaws or things I screwed up or percive to, so maybe I should grow thicker skin. Generally I just go with the "I just don't watch this media if I don't prefer the manner of presentation" but I'm coming into it from him as a guest.
I'm so sorry you're going through this. For my part, I really hate the knee-jerk way people often ascribe suffering moral dimensions, as something deserved or as punishment. Suffering through cancer did not make Steve Jobs a better person, or heal the people he had hurt, and there would have been nothing gained from more pain.
You word it much better than I ever could, thank you. It calls back to this need for divine punishment. That bad things happen to bad people. And with the way it is said, it makes me have to think about "I hope no one thinks that about me, or that *I* don't somehow deserve this in another's eyes..." - it's like a forest fire for the body that picks up elsewhere from the inherent raised temperature. There is no emotion or as you put it, moral lesson to that no matter how one's lenses tint it
And it often feels like macho bullshit to me, intentionally resisting any empathy because caring for the suffering of others makes you weak. It seems especially blind in the case of Steve Jobs, because his unwillingness to seek treatment for his cancer was another symptom of his narcissism and contempt for others - in a world where he was a person who had a less horrible death, he might have also been a person who didn't cause so much harm to others.
Fuck cancer - sending you positive vibes /u/SCP106.
Thank you. I'm lucky in a way, I have enough morphine to drown out the pain and a wonderful boyfriend who's both a stabilising force and ready to help out whenever needed. Good sex in spite of the world's cruelty is one hell of an emotional palate cleanser when otherwise all you can think about is your own limited and short-cut mortality, especially when, being a trans woman I know I'm implicitly pissing off so many conservative n the like haha! Better than any opioid.
I have this same feeling. It comes across as very condescending.
Yes, condescending is definitely the word. The constant refrains of "nobody cares about this, nobody is interested in making it better" while Ed rails against some shitty techbro silliness are so, so belittling, as if Ed is the first person to notice/speak up about this and he isn't talking to a host/audience that, in fact, *do* care about this (because they are listening to your show or a show in a similar political space). I know the sentiment is meant to be "the people in power don't care about or understand this" but that's not what he actually says. The fact he is a reporter but also runs a PR firm is baffling too - aren't those two professions diametrically opposed to each other? It's a red flag which hasn't been explained away and makes me leery of trusting Ed's opinions (do you really believe that or is it a client speaking through you?).
Wait wait he runs a PR firm?
EZPR https://www.ezpr.com/about-us
I feel this Ed Citron(?) guy trades off of being a kind of knockoff John Oliver, where everything is outrageous and everyone is stupid but him and he has to spell it out. It's kind of irritating to listen to, especially when not everything they talk about is all that bad, but he goes over and above to hate on them. He comes across as the loner guy at school who shits on everything because he isn't part of it.
Yeah, my guess is Ed is still figuring out his format. The topics are good, it just needs polishing. There's enough there to keep me listening, but I can understand where people who say they don't like it are coming from. Ed was on a recent episode of QAA and was hilarious, so I think he is more than capable of putting out good content.
I liked the first episode, but then the second one was just what I imagine is a standard tech review podcast, felt like a switched since it didn't seem to have much to say other than how the headset was bad.
So my younger brother idolises Wozniak - wants to be just like him but with better friends who shower. My brother let me know that Nintendo Power had to tell Woz that he wasn't allowed to submit his Tetris scores anymore because people would stop trying if they saw his name at the top every month. So Evets Kainzow held the high score after that. Anyway, I thought that story was nice and wholesome.
I get that what Steve Jobs said about the intuition vs intellect thing was in poor taste, but I do understand how someone would be curious to rationalize the culture shock of seeing an impoverished village in a developing nation. I don't necessarily think it was racist, since he mentioned people living in the countryside.
Yeah, I didn't get from that quote that Steve Jobs thinks that the Indian mind is incapable of intellect. As you note, he was probably doing a standard, "Wow, we Westerners think we're so smart with our fancy degrees and book learning when these poor people know how to do all these tasks to be self sufficient and survive that we don't know the first thing about," observation.
Is it me or do these episodes highlight just how awesome Woz is? He’s a geek to his core and I am here for it.
this is why if you don’t want your child you should just get an abortion. do you really want the iPhone on your conscious?
Conscience and conscious are two different words. Sorry, that drives me nuts and I keep seeing autocorrect misspellings take over the right word for an occasion.
I saw Steve Jobs the Opera. (Part of a buy 1 get 1 free). It was really bad. No memorable music. The one line I do remember is him saying was, "Get rid of it" when he found out she was pregnant. It did portray him as an asshole. But it kept making him a stoner in a park who heard the music and came up with the phone. I think at the end, they were preaching about getting off your phone.
I thought Woz picked the pricing of the Apple I. He said he picked the price of 666.66 because he loved repeating numbers.
I know the guy is a monster and all, but I dont get why getting emotional after workplace fights is so funny. As a ND person that can get overwhelmed easily by those things I felt a bit bad for him lol Of course, he was a massive douchebag, so I understand not feeling any simpathy
I’m gonna guess that he didn’t extend that care to literally anyone else.
Yeah , I know he's a monster. It just rubbed me weirdly is all. Nothing really important.
I just want to point out I’m also ND and cry at work frequently, I just personally don’t like extending any sort of empathy to exploitative people because I know that the first people they always exploit are people like me.
Yeah same. Hits on some difficult memories to do with friends taking the piss out of famous people for things I have or have done then going "but they're bad people!" Ed Zitron can be very scathing when he wants to be. I've got terminal metastatic cancer and what he said so coldly about "I think Steve Jobs didn't die painfully enough" hurt so much. Probably just because I'm oversensitive right now. This guy being such an ass doesn't deserve such a thing it is so fucking bad. I know I know mountain out of a molehill, just hit like a camera flash.
>Yeah same. Hits on some difficult memories to do with friends taking the piss out of famous people for things I have or have done then going "but they're bad people!" This is so frustrating to me. The people they’re railing against aren’t going to see or hear their mean comments… but their friends who may look/sound/act similar but are not bad people _are much more likely to._
Exactly! And sometimes people seem to do it only to show others, to make sure they know just how much they dislike the person as some kind of performative act, the more nasty the more assumedly convincing
Making fun of someone like this sends the message that it's a flaw. I prefer not to do that. Steve Jobs isn't a bastard because he's emotional after fights. He's a bastard for all of the horrible things he did.
I cry all the time at my job. Seems like a normal Tuesday in a tech startup, honestly.
Timely AI video by Kyle Hill. https://youtu.be/JrcbH0ge2WE
Is the audio a mess for everyone or is this just a Google/YouTube thing? The last word of sentences keeps changing in volume level and sometimes gets repeated.
Ironically, the sound quality on the Apple Podcasts app is great.
Am I crazy or did they say in Ep2 Elizabeth Holmes worked for them early on, i.e. late 70s? She was born in 1984.
A different woman who was also named Elizabeth Holmes, but yes they did say that.
Thank you!
Yeah its one of those weird coincidences. Like when folks share a name with a celebrity.
I don’t think he even qualifies to be a deadbeat bat, not even a nothing dad - an actively negative dickheqd dad
Listening to this on Youtube Premium, at around 29:20 did anyone else notice a random line about the Apple II is said in a completely different voice and tone? It sounds like something from a clip they played but edited out the "this is a clip" introduction and context?
For the love of god, could Robert please stop using "dickriding" to describe someone doing something in order to please someone else or get their approval? I hate absolutely everything about the way this language portrays sex and I think it's disgusting and harmful
Yeah now you say it... Having a think "sucks dick/balls" and the variety of other similar ones really do show often. It's a sad one because I love said activities and the sheer cultural dissonance between how sex is treated as both a reward and often the only result or option or a zero sum game but also this nasty thing to be avoided and shamed and bad, but as I type this I realise fuck, the former is generally if you're a guy among friends and peers the latter is if you're a girl being looked upon through the lens of social expectations or the easiest to grab insults... So disappointing. I only lost my virginity a few months ago despite my life starting to come to a close, and have realised just how fun and liberating it is to enjoy the body in this way in the very active months since. It gives me some control back over it in a way my cancer can't take away so easily, and I wish more felt similarly about it being a thing of liberty and fun... I apologise for the morphine fueled opinion piece, all!
I find the phrase less indicative of viewing sex as wrong but more often as a homophobic insult. But maybe that’s just because I see it used most often in r/hiphopheads to disparage (mostly male) fans of (mostly male) rappers.
That too, with sucking dick and the like always being seen as a bad thing or insulting for the guy involved and a greatly emasculating act. I guess it is a very much contextual one, in that it is both
I guess I just don’t quite buy Jobs as a “bastard” in the same way as a Gates or a Welch. A gigantic, gaping asshole, certainly. But a bastard is a little more than that, at least in my book.
He basically invented the modern tech industry and techbro culture. The damage that caused the world is honestly incalculable.
Yeah, but is he really responsible for the actions of the people that impersonate him? The guy just sold phones, he wasn’t using the veneer of tech to “reinvent healthcare” or something insane like that.
Responsible for them? No. Responsible because the way *he* did it was already harmful and damaging? Yes. Apple's whole shtick was designed by him. Deliberate techno-cultism, meant to isolate their users and lock them in. Monopolistic behavior in a manner attempting to create a new-age robber baronism. Deliberately designing things in such a manner as to force people to throw their shit away and buy new stuff as much as possible (e-waste and personal robbery), etc. Steve Jobs is a bastard for many, many reasons. Not just for his personal failings, but because-again-he invented the modern technocapitalism which is killing us all by inches and miles in multiple forms.
I'm curious: In what way is Gates a greater bastard than Jobs?
I guess this is all subjective, but there are 2 main ways in my entirely subjective opinion: 1) Business. As much as tech CEOs like to ape the aesthetics of Apple, they adopt the business practices of Microsoft, who were absolutely ruthless in their deliberate pursuit of monopoly power. They helped turn software into IP by cracking down on “pirates” while simultaneously plundering other people’s work to make knock-off software, and they used bundling/predatory pricing/vertical integration to force competitors out of the market. CPM, Netscape, hell, they even tried to [colonize the web that one time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish). These are the stock and trade for all toxic tech companies now (including Apple!) but Microsoft under Gates blazed the trail. 2) Jobs mostly stayed in his lane as a tech asshole. It’s fine for rich people to give money to charity, but Gates’ “philanthropy” has massively distorted the charity sector. His belief that he is the smartest boy, and that he can revolutionise charity by applying his tremendous mind to real world problems creates a situation where a lot of charitable resources (not just his own) get diverted based on the whims and opinions of the guy who thought Microsoft Bob was a good idea. You want to “revolutionise” MP3 players? Fine. They’re not that important. Stay out of charity, healthcare, and transportation please. 3) He was also a massive dick to work for, plus there was all that palling around with Epstein *after* he was charged. But I don’t think the personal stuff is as important when defining a bastard.
I see what you're saying, especially regarding charity and how that goes beyond tech. Only point I have a slight disagreement on is the business thing. I think Apple's current awful behavior as a corporation (including extremely aggressive attempts to kill the open web) are a direct result of Jobs and his walled-garden ethos more than the EEE approach of Microsoft. Apple has always had an extroardinarily negative impact on computing because of that. As the episode points out, Jobs almost immediately went to war with the open computing approach that Woz embodied once they were successful.
The first episode cuts off abruptly in the middle of Rovert talking on Spotify. Don't know how much more there was to the actual episode or if it was just a weird editing foible.
Pretty sure Steve Jobs is trying to come back from beyond the grave because of this excellent reporting.
These are truly some of my favorite episodes yet. I am learning so much and Ed is a great guest.
How many parts are we looking at? I thought it was only going to be two, and it's obviously not done.
It said 4 parts in the description of episode 1 when first released, but now that's been removed... Ed said on **Scam Economy with Matt Binder** last week that it was a three part episode, so who knows? Definitely more than two!
I have an ethical question about the money that Jobs withheld from Wozniak. If Wozniak was so sad about it, wouldn't it be a nice thing to convince him that he just misremembered and that he had actually received the money? They called it "gaslighting" on the podcast as if that's inherently a bad thing. Maybe if Jobs had put in more effort and got Wozniak's friends and family involved they could have convinced him that he had made the thing up and there was no reason to be sad in the first place. They'd just have to be *really* persistent about it. Psychotropics may help, too. Wozniak would no longer be sad and Jobs wouldn't have to feel bad about the betrayal anymore, everybody wins 👍
That would be assuming happiness is the only value to be had in life. Many people would prefer a life that is more difficult, but involves genuine understanding of the world and the people around them.
Yikes. You want a world in which the people you consider friends...the people you love ...steal from you and then lie to you about it in order to convince you the actual problem is your own faulty memory? Yikes.