Satellite Haiku

MiLo shares stories about his canvasing work in AZ, Vivek’s ad as a MAGA loyalty test, “live by the sword” misuse, grammar pet peeves, prescriptivism vs descriptivism, fun yiddish words, virtues of the English language, D&D character alignment, evil genius behavior, Trump’s corruption, politics and virtue double-standards, psychedelics, epigenetics, ghosts, tolerating uncertainty, spiritual (but not religious) communities, and secular parallels to church.

We talk about first world (tech) problems, choosing convenience over what’s right, the tragedy of the commons, the atheism debate, the purpose of religion, Hegseth’s planned/cancelled public execution, the real root of our political differences, harmful versus harmless false beliefs, FAFO, cognitive biases, what it means to live in a society, consolidates power, the midterm elections, where common ground exists (and doesn’t), the scientific method, the cycle of dark ages, just asking questions, institutions, technocracy in politics and its limits, witch trials in Scotland and elsewhere, something the founding fathers got wrong, MiLo’s new songs.<...

We talk about working in large organizations, meeting to agree to decide, Zeno’s paradox, internal thoughts, the experience of listening to podcasts these days, f*cking with the algorithm, the Jean Claude Vandamme Volvo commercial, humans vs AI, Soylent, infinite personalized music, Elon Musk’s Grokipedia, Time Magazine’s Trump interview, cults, and the death of Liquid Death.

Mentioned in this episode

Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” (film and Netflix series)

B******t Jobs (book) by David Graeber

The Volvo ad from “Crazy People” (1990 Dudley Moore film)

The Jean Claude Van...

Do money and power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to chase money and power? Both surely. We start with this question and return to it at various points. In-between we talk about the human propensity to latch onto gurus and saviors, the power of rizz, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, Tony Robbins, Tim Tebow / Life Surge, two questions to always ask a self-proclaimed guru or spiritual leader, scammers and their victims, FOMO and greater-fool theory, the “please run for president” reflex, the pain of uncertainty, rejecting false binaries, false equivalences, double-standard traps, the God of the Old Testament, a theo...

We talk about how an AI might “evolve,” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, recursive self-improvement, scaling up to super-intelligence from LLMs, the nuclear disarmament analogy, lifespan disparities, Waymo rollouts, anthropomorphizing chatbots, chatbots emulating human niceties, Siri getting spicy in Spanish, Google Maps of late, AI in Gmail, the new COVID strain (“cicada”), evolution of the human immune system, the leap past neanderthals, the Hugging Face hack, AI regulation schemes, the AI financial bubble, AI as a useful technology (today) vs magical super-intelligence (future), nationalizing AGI, neurosymbolic AI vs deep learning, what happened to IBM Watson, Uber, enshitification and willingness to buy, jo...

We talk about the 6-7 meme, generational divides, our old friend Peter, prank comedy, entrapment as a law enforcement tactic, the Lake Ontario name change and CEO boot-lickers, late-stage Trumpism, dishonest discourse (about Hasan Piker, zionism/antisemitism, socialism, etc), John Ratcliffe’s Trip to Moscow, the human costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and pet peeves.

Mentioned in this episode

Sacha Baron Cohen as “Erran Morad” and the “Kinder Guardians” program

Mentalist Derren Brown’s special,“The Push”

We remember where we were on 9/11, and MiLo shares a song he wrote in the immediate aftermath, an anthem for hope and lasting peace. Then we talk about how our individual political views have changed (or not over the years).

We talk about the paradox of ‘brown MAGA,’ the Natalie Harp saga, quitting Bill Maher and Sam Harris, the ‘socialism’ debate, correcting the online discourse, straw men and slippery slope arguments, marriage vs domestic partnership, Trump vs reality, concentration camps in America, rationalizing Trump, revisiting Kamala, and the meaningless courage of outsider candidates.

Mentioned in this episode

Nick Hanaur on Diary of a CEO and The.Ink

Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the trans athlete issue

Mark Kelly vs Tommy Tuberville

We talk about the urge to create art and confronting the voice that asks, “what’s the point?” Before and after that, we riff on mental health, therapy, trauma, male vs female friendships, the manosphere, Sean Ryan, peer groups and mental health, solitude, calibrating your inside voice, gratitude vs avoidance, quitting Sam Harris and Bill Maher, church camp, feeling called to the priesthood, quitting religion, priests who are secret atheists, people leaving MAGA, and ideological blind spots. Finally, we share some harmless pet peeves.

We talk about penalty kicks and tiebreakers, the offsides rule, high-tech swimsuits, augmented sports, ABS, swim race time precision, Jude Bellingham vs Harry Kane, England vs Norway, biohacking, body optimization, fitness trackers, the stigmatization of pleasure, Tim Ferris, the five-minute mile, the purpose of meditation, Iron Man competitions, Dean Karnazes, ad hoc competitions with strangers, skiing until the mountain closes, the Orwell future vs the Huxley future, and a movie trope that needs to die.

We talk about forgetfulness, routine, middle age as a metaphor for Europe, San Francisco weather vs east coast weather, security vs convenience, the Jefferson-Adams death coincidence, birth/death synchronicities in general, Max Muncy x2 as proof of the simulation, dystopias, caterpillar epigenetics, past lives, the difference between personality and self, summer tomatoes, CA’s top predator, jet lag

Mentioned in this episode

Rutger Bregman / Reith lectures

The Truman Show (1998 film)

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

This American Life: “Testosterone”

Bob Odenkirk answers “who are you jeal...

We talk about solitude, the tech job hunt scene, MiLo’s conversion to “sports guy” for the World Cup, the offsides rule, bad landlords, MiLo’s work for the Pima County (AZ) Democratic Party, the ascendance of the DSA, asking whether Israel has a “right to exist,” the false binary of capitalism vs socialism, corporate monopolies, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, anti-Zionism on the right vs left, the difference between England and Great Britain and the U.K., England fans doing side quests, one advantage of the parliamentary system, Republicans finding their spines when it no longer matters.

Mention...

Shawn remembers the early days of the web, and we talk about our first office jobs, majoring in the humanities, MiLo’s brush with Theranos, buying Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk, yoga retreats, World Cup visitors experiencing Americana, the White House as reality tv fodder, Trump as a tragic figure, the enduring power of the MAGA mob, the reflecting pool episode.

Mentioned in this episode

Our Cartoon President (tv show)

We talk about doing voices to entertain our kids, Waldorf schooling and its prohibitions, audio book performances, art books, conceptual art, SpaceX and other IPOs, Elon’s race-baiting and other shenanigans, satellite launches, the World Cup, fans singing at sporting events, white American culture, sports as a melting pot, the Knicks game 4 comeback, Brazil’s humiliating 7-1 loss to Germany in 2014, magical thinking, family heirlooms, American immigrants and assimilation, America as a melting pot versus salad, Hegseth’s Hitler speech at Normandy, UFC and Idiocracy at the White House, protests in the US versus Europe.

Mentioned in this e...

We talk about the podcasting ad ecosystem, the “long tail”, Ani DiFranco, the economics of music streaming, news hygiene, Trump and the depths of dumb, vestiges of the Internet’s golden age, public healthcare vs private insurance.

We talk about Shawn’s patented microwave shortcut, first world problems™️, dumb uses of AI, the AI commencement speech “boo” trend, AI hallucinations, the AI “bubble” feeling (whether or not it’s actually a bubble), comparing this AI wave to the 2000 dotcom wave, the Trump firehose of s**t, finding solace and hope in things (Biosphere 2, radically zooming out, the overview effect, surrendering to the airplane), reframing the abortion debate, the gun control debate, political polarization and finding common ground, when your reality changes overnight, being intentional.

Mentioned in this episode

Powers of Ten (short film by the Eame...

We talk about Shawn’s tenacious cold, the hantavirus outbreak, pandemic insanity, MiLo’s paintings, his upcoming show, and Bob Ross. Then we talk about for an hour about our current state of religious (non)belief and how we got here.

Mentioned in this episode

Emmanuel Swedenborg, and especially his writings in Divine Love and Wisdom, Divine Providence, and Apocalypse Revealed.

Rupert Sheldrake, and his hypothesis of “morphic resonance”

We talk about generalists vs specialists, the communications degree, film school then and now, the process vs the product (redux), Disney layoffs, creativity as a temperament, retirement, doomscrolling (hantavirus, ebola, SARS, COVID, and related conspiracy thinking), the Artemis mission (and flat-earthers), Q-Anon, wrong number spam, scamming the scammers, tolerating uncertainty, first world problems.

Mentioned in this episode

Kicking and Screaming (1995 film)

DEEP VZN project to identify potential pandemic viruses

Q: Into the Storm (2021 documentary series)

Noel Rhodes / doctordub comedy

We talk about our podcast as a family artifact, home tech challenges, class reunions, digitizing MiLo’s old film projects, our celebrity doppelgängers, Charlize Theron, synchronicity, George Gurdjieff’s attention exercises, Lebron James and other athletic savants, the magical thinking of children, learning languages, John Vervaeke’s “four ways of knowing,” IQ and the definition of intelligence, Asterix and Obelix, learning disparities in grade school, the Science of Reading, IEPs, California Proposition 13 (property tax reduction)

We talk about mountains, trains, snow, the Donner Party, medical “diseases of opulence,” 80s teen movies, categories of 80s parents, finding jobs during a downturn, AI and the future of jobs, the market for craftsmanship and artisanal goods, hipsters, the process and the product, the Luddites, local vs. global capitalism, AI writing, AI sycophancy, AI psychosis, AI artists, brain hemisphere differences, Internal Family Systems, neurosymbolic AI as an precursor/alternative to LLMs, first world problems.

Mentioned in this episode

Portlandia: Wilson Artisanal Lightbulbs

@Husk testing AI on TikTok and Sam Altman’s response

A...

MiLo shares an update on his grandbabies and uses that to riff on the constant versus the variant (nature versus nurture). We linger on parenthood for a bit, and then we talk about approaches to human learning, analogous approaches to training AI, Waldorf education, screen use and attention span, ADHD, the purpose of school and different college majors, STEM versus the humanities, the idea of the “collective” (i.e. society) and its obstacles, globalization, “fraternity” versus selfishness, whether selfishness is endemic (constant) or learned (variant), proxy debates in politics, Steven Pinker’s view of human progress, the need for certainty...

We talk about audiophiles, stereos of our youth, early portable music devices, white gentrification, artistic idiosyncrasies, writing, the pap smear test, videoconferencing apps, libertarians, Andreessen, Musk, Zuckerberg and the end of the Metaverse, the stupidity of supposedly smart people, the daily barrage of crime and scandal, fears about the midterms and 2028 elections.

Mentioned in this episode

Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou, Greek physician and pathologist who developed the “Pap Smear” screening method in the 1920s to detect cancerous cells in the cervix

Ex Machina (2014 film)

We talk about the challenge of focusing on normal life, Trump’s fundamental laziness and capriciousness, art after tragedies like 9/11, the diminishing returns of escapism, dystopia-induced anxiety vs depression, eschatological beliefs, children as an investment with delayed returns, society vs selfishness, the hierarchy of self-identification, what capitalism can and can’t solve, America as non-dualist, alternative energy opportunities and challenges.

Mentioned in this episode

Spun (2002 film starring Jason Schwartzman, Brittany Murphy)

Ill Fares the Land - book by historian Tony Judt

Sold a Story - podcast series about reading instruction in Amer...

We talk about daylight savings, the war with Iran, ancient civilizations in North America, Lucy (aka “the missing link”), Charles Darwin’s bone collection, the brontosaurus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Hancock, chagas disease, science, freedom vs. security, Orwell, the S.A.V.E. Act, the Dunning-Kruger effect, the need for certainty and cognitive closure, James Talarico, consequentialism, secular morality, WWJD, loving your enemy, altruism, tragedies of the commons, Jeselnik’s rule of offensive jokes, the cultural equation for canceling someone (Elvis vs Jerry Lee Lewis; Michael Jackson vs R. Kelly).

We talk about MiLo’s new grandson, parenting, germaphobia, catastrophizing, panic attacks, our love language, learning the hard way, idiosyncrasies of houses, intuitive design and its opposite, the AI future as Terminator versus R2D2, the emerging techno-status gap, Luddites, AI use cases, Shawn’s journey down an Epstein Files rabbit hole, syndicates of capital, the Iran war, taxing the rich, and Obama in retrospect.

Shawn gets a little salty about Trump’s SOTU address (which he avoided), while MiLo compares Trump to Liberace. After indulging that digression for a bit, we talk about the closeted 1980s. We come back to the state of US politics, then we talk about cults, theocracy, the ability to recognize truth, tolerating uncertainty, the Tucson rodeo, deconstruction (from the church), embracing mystery, the Golden Rule, the nature of faith and belief, Pascal’s wager, the impotence of prayers, charity and its motivations, indigenous justice systems.

Mentioned in this episode

Covered with Night, A Story of M...

Happy birthday to MiLo! Shawn is recovering from a cold, so we talk about that and about losing your voice, then about (the royal formerly known as) Prince Andrew, political accountability (former President of S. Korea Yoon Suk Yeol, former Philippine President Duterte and his successor), whether the Epstein “dominoes” are really starting to fall, Anarcho-Capitalism, breakfast sandwiches, the “cold start” sourdough technique, home renovations, designs that have single point of failure, getting an electrical shock, robot plumbers, doomsday prepping, Outward Bound, consciousness theory, the multiverse, the “Quantum Suicide Thought Experiment,” teleportation.

Mentioned in this episode

Cy Cantere...

MiLo (“Abu”) welcomes a new grandson, and we talk about pregnancy and birth. Then we talk about discrimination and personal blind spots, “cooperative interruption,” daydreaming, optimizing yourself to perform better, lifehacks, material wealth and happiness, striving versus self-acceptance, envy, commute time as a predictor of school success, the power of intention, classical yoga versus kashmir shaivism on transcending versus ‘being’ the pile of dung, and gratitude as a practice. At the end we wonder about the optimal form of government and what that means for whom.

Mentioned in this episode

Brené Brown and Tim Ferris on the tensio...

We have thoughts about sleep. Then we talk about movies and entertainment—Quentin Tarantino’s films, Elmore Leonard adaptations, The Matrix, F1 (movie), Justin Timberlake, K-Pop Demon Hunters, the preteen years, Brian Eno’s definition of charisma, The Talking Heads, being different to be cool, Star Wars, Mon Rovîa, Mazes & Monsters (1982 Tom Hanks film), the Renaissance of female acting roles in the streaming era, THX 1138, The Life of Chuck. We discuss the the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie and Elizabeth Smart, the general question of stranger danger, and free-range parenting in the 1980s vs today.

We talk about what’s happening in Minneapolis and debate whether the Trump administration is pursuing a strategy or just sort of chaotically pushing against civil norms and legal boundaries. Shawn sees a method in the madness and points to the existence of Project 2025 as evidence of coordination and a commitment to establish something durable. Milo plays devil’s advocate, dubious that this collection of MAGA clowns could coordinate breakfast, let alone a political strategy.

We talk about helping elderly parents with tech support, situations when AI unhelpfully offers help, the unnatural mix of high and low quality in AI output, machines vs the human experience of creating art, the engineer/STEM perspective on art and creativity, the real revenge of the nerds, dad jokes, living in the lie; living in the truth.

Mentioned in this episode

Ted Chiang: Why A.I. Isn’t Going To Make Art

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs (book by Ian Leslie)

Miracle & Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon (Malcolm Gl...

We talk about works we created long ago, old tech, operant conditioning oneself, checklists, the memory palace, MiLo’s dad’s collections of stamps and old baseball cards, Warren Buffet’s stock market advice, the scammer mindset as a strange superpower, Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff, trying to learn options trading, trying to time the market, sneakerheads, Yeezeys, Minneapolis and its precedents (like Kent State), social movements, the Trump administration response to the killing of Renee Good, the NRx movement (Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance), and the billionaire bubble.

We talk about being creatures of habit, aging parents, purpose and meaning in the context of work and AI, and what it feels like to live in this age of rapid and accelerating change.

We talk about family gatherings and family estrangement, the horseshoe effect in political ideology, the nazi problem on the right, incels, women in politics, misogyny, super-wealthy welfare queens, the rise of leftist economic populism, right-wing populism, wearing shoes in the house, Filipino family parties, gravy, family estrangement (redux), confirmation bias, scientific consensus as a heuristic, making quality arguments, and how these days it feels like corporations resent that they have to go through us to get to our money.

We talk about conflicting nutrition advice, confirmation bias, Jedi mind tricks as a parenting technique, our visceral aversion to blaming and shaming, consequentialism in parenting, older/younger sibling dynamics, being triggered by criticism and corrections, back seat driving, thinking out loud versus in your head, chemistry in relationships, psychopathology versus polygraph tests, the persistence of history, and MAGA Jesus.

Mentioned in this episode

Brené Brown’s work regarding vulnerability and shame, and in particular a story she tells in her Netflix special, The Call to Courage, about a time she and her husband both experienced sha...

We talk about creating, procrastinating, collaborating, seeing our own past work with fresh eyes, discipline and the lack thereof, arts & craft fairs, art criticism, having your beliefs challenged, alternative energy, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and leaving work unfinished because you are finished with it.

Mentioned in this episode

Don’t Look Up (2021 Netflix film)

Landman (Paramount+ series)

Elizabeth Kolbert reviews Ed Conway’s book, Material World: The Six Raw Materials that Shape Modern Civilization

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang

We talk about atmospheric rivers, The Doobie Brothers, suburban myths and life before the internet, Rush Limbaugh, the American Revolution, Simón Bolivar, the Haudenosaunee confederacy, the decline of language, and MiLo’s voiceover career that could have been.

Mentioned in this episode

L.A. Story (1991 film written by and starring Steve Martin)

Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

The American Revolution (new Ken Burns documentary series)

We meander for an hour and talk about internet memes, mullets, old time hockey, creative careers, various songs and artists, New York City, roommates, and natural comedic talent.

Mentioned in this episode

Song Exploder episode episode 70 (Weezer) and episode 233 (Rick Astley)

We share some nuggets of wisdom we have gathered during our fiftysomething years on this bluegreen rock, and we try to fashion it into advice….

* Use “I” statements

* Don’t take things personally; own your own experience

* “Expand your threshold before your recoil” (respond instead of reacting, and be aware of the “unseen possibility”)

* Don’t shun the shadow side of yourself; integrate it

* Recognize emotions as a somatic experience, versus stories we attach to them

* Be here now; fully see and accept the present moment

Then we talk for...

We talk about last week’s election results (mini blue wave), what natural political talent looks like (Mamdani, AOC), factions in the Democratic party, theories about what voters actually want, what MTG is doing, MiLo’s “high dopamine dynamic range,” Shawn’s opinion on term limits, gerrymandering, our top potential election reforms, people’s reasons for not voting, Trump’s unlikely coalition, the Puerto Rico statehood debate, expanding SCOTUS, the mid-decade redistricting gambit, how everything is now seen through a partisan lens, how Putin punches above his weight, the universal healthcare debate, and snappy comebacks (including Churchill to Nancy Astor).

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