Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to NeverPost's
jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell mailbag twenty twenty five
in which we respond to listener emails, comments, voicemails,
and voice messages about our segments. A surprising number of
missives this round delivered by the mailman. Though they mostly
appear to be poorly written letters with awful handwriting
requesting things like pop guns, Lego sets, and puppies addressed
to some guy who definitely does not work here. Beginning to
think there may have been a mix up at the post office. Anyways,
we're only a small Internet show.
We're gonna see what we can do about all of these puppy
requests. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me here today
in order of how likely I think it is that they may have gotten
their tongue frozen to a flagpole as a child decreasing.
Hans Buetow: Oh. Okay. So most likely first.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh. Based entirely upon geography, never
post senior producer Hans Buteau. Yeah.
Hans Buetow: My geography is cold. It was nine degrees
yesterday, max. It's been snowing a lot recently. I live
in the Twin Cities, and I grew up here. So, yeah, absolutely.
I have frozen here's I'm not
Mike Rugnetta: frozen my tongue too.
Hans Buetow: Is the flagpole? But you know how well,
especially when you're a kid, I was gonna say, you know how
accidentally you lick your zipper on your jacket once in a
while. I mean, you don't. But when you're a kid, you do. When
you're
Mike Rugnetta: a kid, you absolutely do your thing.
Hans Buetow: You you huddle yeah. Exactly. Yes.
Georgia Hampton: Huddle your Sure.
Hans Buetow: Sure. Middle is exactly what you're
Mike Rugnetta: talking about.
Hans Buetow: Yes. And then your tongue, like, glances against in
its 16 below, and all of
Mike Rugnetta: a sudden no longer a glance.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, you're stuck to your
zipper. That has happened Next to
Mike Rugnetta: in the roster, based again entirely upon
geography, friend of the show, Meagle Janardan.
Meghal Janardan: Yeah. I don't think my tongue has ever frozen
against anything, but I have been slashed by ice. Woah.
Slashed by ice. Sledding accident.
Oh. Classic.
Mike Rugnetta: Let the audience know that Meagle made a motion
indicating that she got the coolest, most badass injury in
the world.
An ice cut across the face.
Never post producer Georgia Hampton.
Georgia Hampton: Okay. So I think I literally have done
this. Like, I have a vivid memory of that specific feeling
of my tongue being sucked to something that's, like, very
strong, and having to figure out how to free myself and the panic
of, like,
Georgia Hampton: uh-oh, the consequences of my actions.
Mike Rugnetta: And finally, never post executive producer
Jason Oberholtzer.
Jason Oberholtzer: I would never do such a thing.
Georgia Hampton: And I know that.
Georgia Hampton: Two watts.
Jason Oberholtzer: Two My entire life, I've been in a climate
where that was available to me, and yet I have decided to make a
better choice every time it was on offer. Wow. Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: And that's why Jason's the EP of the show,
folks.
Hans Buetow: Mike, have you had such a thing happen?
Mike Rugnetta: Oh, god. Yes. Absolutely. Oh, wow. Oh.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I mean,
Mike Rugnetta: I would just wander around my grandmother's
house in Boston during this during the Boston winters and
just, you know, lick every piece of metal I could possibly find.
Jason Oberholtzer: That's what
Georgia Hampton: I'm talking about. Mike's
Hans Buetow: a very lingual four word. It's how Mike engages with
a lot of the world.
Mike Rugnetta: Heard about this one guy in Connecticut who
refused to, and I was like, well, I gotta maintain balance
in the universe.
Jason Oberholtzer: So Yeah. Have you ever considered making a
better choice?
Mike Rugnetta: You know? No.
Georgia Hampton: Good.
Mike Rugnetta: Anyways, let's make a podcast.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Speaking of making bad choices,
we've got a lot of mail. I'd like to start us out like we
normally do with some responses to the previous mailbag and the
subjects that came up there. And as a reminder, everybody, there
are many ways to get in touch with us if you wanna be a part
of these mailbags and look to the show notes for all of them.
So I have one email in particular responding to some of
the chatting you were doing last mailbag that I thought was
particularly relevant in the holiday season.
We're gonna do some spiritual stuff, gang.
Mike Rugnetta: You know, we have we have joked in the past that
this is a religious podcast. And then have joked that the more
that we make that joke internally, the closer it gets
to being weirdly kind of true. Mhmm.
Jason Oberholtzer: Well, I got an email for you, bud. We're
getting close. This comes from Alex Friedman. I've been
thinking about emailing the show for some time because I love it.
I'm a member, and because I'm a rabbi.
Oh. The last reason makes sense only because Never Post was
deeply influential to me and to the high holiday sermon I just
gave a week or so ago. Oh. I spoke about Addictive
Technologies, Neil Postman, and focusing on local things you can
actually influence over things that are just designed to get
you angry and impotently engaged or enraged. Oh.
I thought that might be too boring to be worth an email, but
then Mike mentioned in the latest mailbag episode that he
loves Rhode Island, and I'm in Providence.
Mike Rugnetta: I this is only proving me more right that
Providence that, yeah, Rhode Island rules. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: I know y'all are inclined to think
politically about solutions to crisis of the social Internet,
but I'm a rabbi, at least in part because I believe that
religious institutions have a crucial role to play. They are,
by definition and necessity, local. They are one of the last
places, though this is becoming less true in some places and
ways, where people of different politics and economic
backgrounds come together regularly in common purpose, and
they are a bastion of communal meaning making in a world that
wants to teach us we are meant only to consume alone and be
angry. Mhmm. He concludes, I'm happy to send the sermon along
if you want to read it.
I hope this note finds you well. It does and I do, so please send
it along.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I would love to read that. Please send
it along.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah, please. That sounds awesome.
Hans Buetow: Incredible. So what do we
Jason Oberholtzer: think about the role of a religious
institution as one of the last places where people of different
political and economic backgrounds come together in
common purpose? Wasn't that supposed to be the Internet?
Mike Rugnetta: Interesting. Mean, I wonder the degree to
which this is true on the larger scale. Like, I don't actually
know, but it is extremely heartening to read that it is at
least true in some places.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Yeah. I do think there's very few in in
world places. Sorry.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, no. It's not it's,
Mike Rugnetta: you know, in universe locations.
Georgia Hampton: In universe. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: Canonical. Is this church canon? They say,
Chad. This reminded me there's an another conversation I've
been following online right now about movie theaters, kind of in
a a sort of similar way of this space in our real lived world
where we are gathering together for a shared goal, in the case
of movie theaters. And I imagine in the case of religious
institutions, the idea being that you are not allowed to be
on your phone, that there are very few places left where that
is explicitly understood.
And in the things I've seen, movie theaters obviously fall
under that category, though many people do not follow that. Mhmm.
And I imagine the same is true for religious institutions.
Mike Rugnetta: I think it's yeah. There's, like, relatively
few places that you go where there is some percentage of the
group of people that is there has a strong idea about how
everybody is supposed to behave while they're there and enforces
that.
Georgia Hampton: Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: It's one of the reasons I love metal and punk
rock shows. Because when someone gets out of line, there's a big
group of people there who will very gently, but very firmly say
Meghal Janardan: Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: We don't behave that way here. It's not what
this is for.
Meghal Janardan: Yes. Do you think a classroom will fall into
that?
Mike Rugnetta: That's a good question. I and I wonder if the
answer is different pre and post device ban, which is really sort
of sweeping the nation at this very moment.
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm. It's almost like we have a natural
inclination to desire some structure and authority around
us at times.
Georgia Hampton: I mean It
Jason Oberholtzer: can be nice. It can
Georgia Hampton: be nice.
Georgia Hampton: That's not very girl boss slay.
Georgia Hampton: We gotta take our medicine sometimes. Yeah.
Meghal Janardan: But interesting about that comment is that it
implies that having a device around you is anti structure in
some way, where I would argue that having a phone on you is
following a different set of rules. Like Yes. The people who
want you to hold your phone all the time and want to be online,
and that's a different environment with its own rules.
It just clashes with a movie theater, a church Yes. A
synagogue, what have you.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Yeah. It is in some ways in, like,
conflict that you're walking around with a social compact in
your pocket that's very different from the spaces you
move between
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. That have
Jason Oberholtzer: different social compacts.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Like it's not just that it's different,
it's that it's like directly in opposition to those spaces.
Jason Oberholtzer: Well, because they're both kind of asking the
same thing, which is that they want you to be here. Yeah. They
just happen to be co located and at odds.
Meghal Janardan: Mhmm. We got some responses to the segment I
worked on on New Luddism. One of them from a friend of the show,
Talia. Talia wrote in, what a great episode. Love your work,
Meagle.
Thank you. It just so happened that Jathan Sadowski was holding
a Luddite tribunal at the local public library last night. So,
of course, I had to mosey down and have a gander. Although the
analysis and antics were fun, the library had risk assess
smashing things and found it, well, risky. Instead, they
commissioned, quote, Enoch shredder, unquote, to shred
paper icons of the technology we deem smash able.
Jason Oberholtzer: Amazing. That is suspicious.
Georgia Hampton: I'll put it on.
Meghal Janardan: Fun little tautological knots aside, I
guess the event didn't delve into the questions I feel most
strongly about, and these were the ones I think this episode
tackled. Like, generally, one of the most important questions to
me is, can you even smash a virtual machine? There
definitely feels like there is an important moment going on in
which capital is trying to make its instruments less contingent
on labor. Maybe more clearly stated, are they making the
machines networked and virtual with protective intention? Can
tools of this nature ever be democratized?
I would question, is it really virtual? I I I think that that
maybe is something that a lot of companies are having us think is
that, you know, like, the cloud is in the cloud when a lot of
technology is not there there's a physical aspect to all the
technology that we engage with. We just kind of are being more
and more removed from it. Yes. I also think that, you know, if
we're not gonna go mosey our way down to a data center, maybe
another way to look at smashing virtual technology is through
boycotting.
Hans Buetow: It reminds me, Meaghel, of of what they were
talking about, of what especially Mohammed was talking
about in the interview about all the different types of sabotage
that exist.
Meghal Janardan: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mohammed and Emily were talking
about that it's not always about smashing a physical piece of
technology. You know, there's other ways to resist and kind of
break down the technology even through using it.
Mike Rugnetta: You have to smash the Epson printer in your heart
first.
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god.
Meghal Janardan: Next up, we got an email from Julia Fisher in
response to the episode I worked on about my attention span. This
episode made me think about my own relationship with my phone
usage and particularly short form video. In about twenty
twenty two, I was halfway across the road when I realized that I
had been using TikTok without enjoying it for months. I took
that moment to delete the app and have never gone back. I
could feel how the app had its hooks in my brain, and I knew
that I had to remove myself from the cycle there and then.
I am still annoyed that a medium, which I think has so
much potential for really interesting and unique
expressions, been used as a tool to squeeze the hours out of my
day like a juicer. I'm ashamed to say that in the past year, I
started going at Instagram reels instead.
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god. I saw. The freaks.
Mike Rugnetta: Home of the freaks.
Meghal Janardan: I feel similar. I could give various arguments
as to why I've gone back, but ultimately, it's the same brain
hooks from a different app. One thing I've noticed with
Instagram though is that one of my core themes my algorithm
keeps returning me to is productivity. I believe it
started from a few videos about how to do good academia, which
makes sense since I've recently returned to university for a
master's. And, of course, Meta could consult their
constellation of data about me to find out the second I
submitted my application.
From those academia videos, I have then been shown a number of
videos similar to the episode, which are about how to rebuild
your attention. Mhmm. I am fascinated by the process of an
app showing me videos, which acknowledge that the experience
is not pleasant and then showing techniques of how to stop using
it. It's hardly new for systems to present their own critiques,
but seeing people talk in practical terms about how to
stop does feel different. It all makes me wonder about how the
future of digital systems will be built on co opted critique.
Could Instagram just be setting up a smokescreen by showing me
these videos, showing me the way out to trick me into thinking I
can leave whenever I want? Oh. Woah. You should definitely
subscribe to the Neverpost RSS feed and continue to listen to
this podcast.
Georgia Hampton: I'm trying to
Meghal Janardan: can learn how to stop
Georgia Hampton: listening to podcasts. But just listen to
this podcast.
Jason Oberholtzer: Could Instagram be showing you the way
out to trick you into thinking you can leave whenever you want?
We know the answer, and we'll tell you soon later on. Never
post.
Mike Rugnetta: After these messages. After
Georgia Hampton: these messages. If you're a member,
Georgia Hampton: you'll get access to that conversation
early.
Mike Rugnetta: Should we should we just start printing out
transcripts and mailing them to people? Is that the better
option? Finish an episode. Do the transcripts.
Meghal Janardan: Not to be confused with a newspaper. Oh.
Georgia Hampton: Uh-oh. Mike accidentally invented
newspapers. Newspapers.
Mike Rugnetta: Interesting. Interesting. You know, this
podcast industry thing is doesn't really seem to be
working out for the world. Let's just go and check. How is the
news publishing industry doing?
Georgia Hampton: Oh, Mike. I already checked.
Georgia Hampton: It's awesome. It's so good.
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god. I do have to I have to yell about the
TikTok to Instagram reel pipeline.
Mike Rugnetta: Where where what's the state
Jason Oberholtzer: of it now? Because it used to be, like,
TikTok had everything first and it was cool, then Instagram was
boomer y and had it late. But now, like okay. Still that?
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Oh,
Meghal Janardan: still that.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, I'm just gonna
Jason Oberholtzer: know TikTok seems like it's all commercials,
and Instagram seems like it's all sickos.
Mike Rugnetta: Instagram reels, at least in my experience in
comparison to using TikTok, is full of fucking weirdos. Oh,
okay. Strange. Like, the amount of just truly bizarre stuff that
I see, it's is just mountains more of it on Instagram than I
ever saw on TikTok.
Georgia Hampton: I do wonder how long it will take for the the
ads, the endless advertising to get to Reels because I do still
feel like TikTok I I generally avoid Reels because I'm like,
listen, if I'm going to be drinking straight from the hose
of this kind of content, I'm gonna do it once.
Mike Rugnetta: Like it to be like it to be water and not
chlorine or
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Exactly.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. And, like, I have a lot of a a few
friends in my life who genuinely have been like, yeah. I'm so
glad that I never got on TikTok. And I'm like, diva, Let's check
our Instagram DMs. How many times are you looking at
Mike Rugnetta: TikTok is on you. Yeah. This email does it just
makes me think about I mean, and and Julia even acknowledges
this, the old idea that it's like, any capitalism is able to
subsume any criticism of it and is able to host it and profit
from it. Yeah. So it's like, you know, Penguin House makes tons
of money from printing Karl Marx's books.
Yeah. It's just how it works. And it's like, you know, the job
of the technology is to figure out what you want and give it to
you. And what a lot of people want right now is to figure out
how to spend less time online. So yeah, it is deeply ironic,
but also very very true and makes all kinds of sense that
Instagram will be like, well, here's endless content about
spending less time online.
Meghal Janardan: Yeah. There is also this new what's in my bag
video that I've seen where it's people packing, like, you know,
putting stuff in their purse for activities that are offline, and
they're making content about putting a book in their purse.
Mike Rugnetta: Folks, we're gonna win. We're gonna we're
everything's gonna be okay. It's just gonna take a little while.
Jason Oberholtzer: Did they start that day by yawning and
tossing off their
Georgia Hampton: sheets 10 feet away from their phone? Yes. God.
Well, I
Hans Buetow: think one thing that's interesting about this is
where Julia figured it out. I love the detail that no one has
commented on. I was halfway across a road. Realized I
Georgia Hampton: had been using TikTok
Hans Buetow: TikTok without enjoying it for months. I took
that moment to delete the app and have never gone back.
Georgia Hampton: I hope it.
Mike Rugnetta: Stepping on to the far curb and thinking
immediately, oh, damn, dog.
Hans Buetow: We all remember that moment. If you if you
remember the moment that you had such a realization, tell us what
it is. Tell us where you were standing and which road you were
crossing, when you decide when it hit you.
Mike Rugnetta: Don't tell us
Hans Buetow: Oh god.
Mike Rugnetta: Out of the road first.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Yeah. Please. Traffic.
Hans Buetow: But send that to us. Thank you, Julia, for this.
Georgia Hampton: Ben Smith sent in something about my segment
about recipes as vibe posting.
Ben Smith: Hi, Neverpost. This is less of a question or comment
and more of just an excited, what a wonderful confluence of
people thinking about this topic slash excitedly just sort of
waving my arms in the air about this the entire time I was
listening. But Ruby Tando from Bake Off, but also who is just a
fantastic food writer in her own right, literally had a book
coming out this week called All Consuming. The cover is very
good, but the first section of it, because I have devoured it
like so much of her writing, is all about the process of writing
recipes now. And why are all of the descriptions of them like
cheesy green beans and things like that.
And just sort of like the nature of very Marshall McLuhan y, the
medium is the message, and what does it mean that the medium has
now changed? And I just wanted to excitedly share so that it is
also on your radar. Thank you for a fantastic show.
Georgia Hampton: Ben, I just looked this up, and I'm ordering
it right now.
Hans Buetow: I love this. Love this.
Georgia Hampton: The it also it would behoove me to mention
specifically Caleb Herron's interpretation of this, which is
the, like, just a a green crunch. Like, a a healthy green
crunch. Like, it's Is there a
Mike Rugnetta: name for that? For that, like God.
Georgia Hampton: Maybe I need to do another segment that's
specifically food about this.
Mike Rugnetta: In? It's enraging.
Georgia Hampton: It's so it's so wild. Like, I just think we need
a little green, a little crunch, a little
Jason Oberholtzer: Like, it's every time you
Georgia Hampton: do this.
Georgia Hampton: But it is, like, there's something so it's
like, picking up, like, a mosquito bite where, like, even
saying it, I'm like, there's something evil that I'm, like,
taking pleasure But, yes, thank you so much, Ben. This is
awesome. I am so going to read this. This looks amazing. Also,
cover is awesome.
Mike Rugnetta: Eric Moore wrote in about my Brain Rot segment.
Eric writes, I was listening to the Mailbag episode, and I was
struck by what my mother used to call the cosmic two by four when
I heard your discussion about Jay McGee's letter on
WikiLeaping. I'm a professional independent trivia host, and
what they were talking about is very nearly my initial
brainstorming process when it comes time for me to write a new
show every week, which got me thinking, am I just a paid brain
rot shepherd? Uh-oh. I think trivia and brain rot have a sort
of rhombus slash quadrilateral relationship.
In that trivia, begrudgingly to my field, is a type of
fulfilling brain rot in the modern sense, but especially
when compared to AI slop brain rot, which at most generous is
probably a highly irregular trapezoid in this metaphor.
While I think brain rot is a well understood and accurate
description of the umbrella term for activities that are
capitalistically useless, but passively to semi passively
enjoyable, I think where some of that distinction of fulfillment
and where it loops into being a healthy thing pejoratively
called brain rot comes in is in a, as Jay remarked, was this
brain rot designed by human minds? B, are you engaging with
it because you want to and not that it was served to you
algorithmically slash systematically? And c, is this
something that can be shared and communally experienced? Trivia
is at least as old as the classics etymologically, but
probably even older because even standing on the stage, there is
nothing quite so enjoyably human as being surrounded by other
humans fighting about answers to questions no one ever made you
learn the answers to, and that you don't need to remember and
utilize afterwards.
Viva la brain rot that actually helps you enjoy living and being
wonderfully useless if only for a moment. PS, AI is extremely
bad at writing competent trivia questions, so my brain rot job
is safe for the time being. I mean, I think like I don't know.
I'm so maybe increasingly resistant to calling anything
that doesn't leave you with a kind of device related hangover
afterwards, any form of brain rot. That like, for me, rot now
has, like, a very particular feeling associated to it.
And it is when I put my phone down and I, like, re check into
the world, and I'm like, oh, woah.
Georgia Hampton: Hold on.
Hans Buetow: Like, you just woke up from a really long nap and
you'll
Georgia Hampton: go Oh, yeah. You feel sick and angry. Yeah.
Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Stupid. Like a you're, like, kinda
sweaty and angry. You went
Georgia Hampton: to bed.
Hans Buetow: It was bright, and now it's dark, and you missed
dinner, and what
Mike Rugnetta: the hell? Stop. I had stuff I needed to do. Yeah.
And so I'm like, if you're I'm open to the idea that, like, you
can do things in space with people, and then afterwards be
like, oh.
And like, have a kind of social hangover. But like,
fundamentally, is that brain rot or is that just, you know,
social anxiety? Like, I think if you're with people, there's
gotta be something just fundamentally additive and pro
social about it, if certain characteristics of the scenario
are given. That is just so different from sitting on your
phone and like, doing nothing or doing something that sort of is
justified through the idea of doing nothing.
Georgia Hampton: I'm really enchanted by this description of
trivia as information that you never learned intentionally.
Because there's something I think, comparatively true about
that with memes, and I can say, and they were roommates, and you
know what comes next, and you know where that's from.
Georgia Hampton: And they were roommates.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. There's something about that that's
kinda sweet that is sort of communal, but it kind of I feel
like in a way, it feels the most that way in the real world with
other people.
Mike Rugnetta: And I think there's still a big distinction
between, like I'm gonna talk in generalities here, and like what
I'm about to say doesn't apply to say, like, people who are
gonna go on Jeopardy! Or like Don Caldwell from Know Your
Meme. Watch yourself, counselor. The idea of trivia is that you,
just through the way that you live your life and the sort of,
like, you know, who you are, you are in possession of information
that is at that particular moment and perhaps no other
moment immediately useful to answer a question. Whereas I see
a lot of people using their devices, being online, scrolling
TikTok, scrolling Instagram, etcetera etcetera, like, using
the excuse of being like, well, I gotta know what's going on out
there.
Like, I gotta sort of, like, actively dig through this pile
of stuff and like kinda hurt myself a little bit in the
process Mhmm. So that I know what's going on. I think unless
you are a professional trivia person, the people who play
trivia most regularly, and I have a lot of friends who do,
they're not like studying. But they are studious people.
Jason Oberholtzer: My takeaway from all the responses we've
gotten to your brain rot segment is, I think to notice that
people have a very difficult time defining what productive
uses of their time are as soon as they are asked to so without
a capitalistic framework.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Everyone answers that a little
differently, or like makes a little bit of a different
deflection on the answer, as if they cannot just wholeheartedly
say, I enjoy doing this with my time, and so I do.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. And and even though it makes me no money
or whatever, like, don't feel guilty about that.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah.
Hans Buetow: So with that, let's take a little break so I can go
check my texts, my TikTok, my Instagram, all the things.
Because I don't know what happened in the last twenty
minutes, but
Mike Rugnetta: Gotta go make sure. Maybe it could have been
Hans Buetow: some guy. Gotta yeah. So sorry. We'll be right
back.
Jason Oberholtzer: Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed
that break wherein you looked at a different screen and waited
for us to come back. Next up, we have a response to a segment I
did over the summer with Hannah Paivo about charts in the early
nineteen hundreds, and the ways in which charting came from the
cartographers of the world, historians, and the academics
into the greedy little hands of business. And what that meant
about the dissemination of data and its magical powers of
prognostication. I have not heard this response at all, but
Hans assures me I will enjoy it.
So Hans, show me what I'm in store for.
Hans Buetow: We got a message, an audio message from Talia, who
we heard from a little bit earlier in the in the episode.
They sent us this pretty incredible thing with the tag.
They're all good segments, Brent, but I have listened to
the charts one like four times.
Talia: Hey, Inverpost. This is Talia. I'm coming to you today
from a far noisier place than I normally do. It's Friday
afternoon in the hot lab, which is where I work, which means
it's time for the end of week monitoring sweep. And I have
been thinking a lot about the formalism thing that Jason
discussed and how much I have grown to have after working in
HOT Labs for the last six or seven years, a sense of
formalism based on the sensor, which is a radioactive sensor,
which you potentially can hear in the background.
Jason Oberholtzer: I was wondering what that was.
Georgia Hampton: Yep. The
Talia: afternoon monitoring sweep is to check whether or not
the laboratory is clean and safe and if everything that should be
active or hot, as we like to call it, is in its rightful
place. So rest assured, I'm a professional and
Georgia Hampton: I know what I'm doing.
Talia: Don't worry if
Georgia Hampton: it happens to sound noisy Okay.
Talia: With chirps over here. But I thought that this would be
a nice submission for the charts that Jason requested as this is
a sensor that moves through the chart of space in the laboratory
in the jerk. And I think the way in which these trips have come
to mean something to me, but potentially don't mean anything
to you, is is interesting as a discussion on, like, that that
kind of idea of, like, how the form becomes or starts to mean
something the more you interact with it. Anyway, I'm gonna stop
talking and just do the sweep. Okay.
Hans Buetow: So this message goes on for another
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh, Talia, get out of there. No.
Hans Buetow: Another five minutes and it goes a lot of
places. Talia's really doing the work over that. Let me play you
just a couple of moments that happen within the next four
minutes of Talia's life.
Mike Rugnetta: Can I just read one one thing, Hans, before you
start it? Yeah. Okay. A hot lab is a secure shielded room in
hospitals or research facilities for safely handling, preparing,
and storing radioactive materials used in nuclear
medicine and therapy.
Jason Oberholtzer: Talia, just Okay.
Georgia Hampton: Our first radioactive audio clip.
Hans Buetow: So apparently, they can just use their phone in
there because this is these are these are two examples of what
we get later.
Jason Oberholtzer: Is that good?
Georgia Hampton: I don't think so. They are a professional.
Jason Oberholtzer: Are a professional.
Georgia Hampton: Hearing that sound, does that feel good?
Jason Oberholtzer: No. It does not. Something about the form of
it.
Mike Rugnetta: I don't think I like charts.
Georgia Hampton: I'm scared. I'm scared. So by the end of
Hans Buetow: it, Talia gets into a little bit calmer area.
Georgia Hampton: This is even scarier to be seen. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: I embraced. Is that good?
Georgia Hampton: Who is that? Don't know. Okay.
Hans Buetow: Again, Talia is a professional.
Georgia Hampton: A secret third thing.
Talia: Okay. Well, that's all the serious stuff done. As
always, loving the show.
Mike Rugnetta: Bizarrely stressful.
Georgia Hampton: Why is it?
Mike Rugnetta: What is the part of my, like, animal brain that's
like, that's bad. That's just bad.
Georgia Hampton: That's bad.
Georgia Hampton: Get out of there.
Jason Oberholtzer: I cannot overemphasize how much everyone
was fidgeting and moving around frame that entire time. Nobody
was comfortable.
Hans Buetow: Oh, that's also only segments of it. I'm it
literally go it's four minutes long of them just
Jason Oberholtzer: going through the room. That is truly
Incredible. Wild.
Georgia Hampton: Speaking of unsettling and alarming sounds,
Adam, sent in a note about my segment with Luis Lopez on Burnt
Toast Audio, which if you do not recall, was this audio trend
where people intentionally peak their audio and just blow out
the sound.
Adam: On the opposite end of mic clipping, I've noticed this
thing where people will move their face away from a mic to
yell, and it just has a very particular vibe to it that
creates this mixture of both yelling and whispering as
they're no longer speaking directly into the mic, but
they're still talking at a loud volume. I feel like I see it a
lot when people are making comments that are either open
secrets or very private hush-hush secrets. I couldn't
find any good analysis about this online, so I wanted to see
what you all could dig up. Thanks. This is truly one of my
favorite podcasts, and I look forward to every new episode.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh, thanks, Adam.
Georgia Hampton: Thanks, Adam. Okay. This I'm obsessed with
this because I know exactly what you're talking about.
Jason Oberholtzer: Can you do it?
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. So it'd be kind of like, I'm talking to
you over here.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: And then I move away
Georgia Hampton: Okay.
Georgia Hampton: And in interact with the space I'm in more
pointedly.
Mike Rugnetta: And while you're back there, you talk about how,
like, someone is cheating on their significant other? Like,
is that
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Is that,
Mike Rugnetta: like, the gossip you enter the gossip zone?
You're like,
Georgia Hampton: so this celebrity has done something
normal and innocuous.
Hans Buetow: The smash cut, probably.
Georgia Hampton: Not that we would ever forget the terrible
and horrible crimes they've committed.
Hans Buetow: Smash cut back.
Georgia Hampton: So anyway, like, it's yeah. It's
Mike Rugnetta: this Sure. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: It's this, like, analog
Mike Rugnetta: It's like the Greek chorus almost.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's this analog way of
cutting. It's an emphasis on what you're saying in the
opposite, which is interesting.
Mike Rugnetta: It's it's sort of posits, like, you know, like the
whisper is like a very particular kind of emphasis that
it's close and a change in vocal timbre. Like, you know, you
can't really, the only way that you can hear this is like, you
really have to get in there. But like, this sort of does the
opposite where it's like, it forces you to yell, but it still
sort of like enters this whole other space.
Georgia Hampton: Well and I think there's the an implication
there that it's like, I'm yelling and no one can hear me.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh, interesting.
Georgia Hampton: Like, no.
Georgia Hampton: I didn't think about that.
Georgia Hampton: Like, I'm saying this thing, like, don't
you under like, it's sort of you, like, slapping your hands
against the glass being like trying to warn
Mike Rugnetta: you. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. I've tried to warn you. Don't like,
don't you see I'm yelling and no one can hear me.
Hans Buetow: One of the things that I teach students when we
work on audio only things and I talk about writing for audio is
that grammar, as it is generally taught, is a written person's
game Yeah. And not a reading or talking person's game. We do not
talk with proper grammar, and we never will. If you wanna sound
natural, ignore grammar. Of course, don't because you need
to make it legible when you read it and things, but this feels
like another entry into a grammar
Mike Rugnetta: of audio.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, a 100%.
Mike Rugnetta: I agree with that.
Georgia Hampton: Because there's also kind of a like, it's a
parenthetical almost.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Like this what you're saying so much more.
It is a parenthetical, but it's like a nuanced parenthetical.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Well, because it's not it's not just
necessarily, like, I'm yelling and no one can hear me. It's
almost like I'm yelling. I'm far enough away from the mic where
there's almost this implication that, like, I don't know you can
hear me. Like, whereas I'm right here right now, and I know that
you can hear me.
I'm right by my mic. I am intentionally recording my
voice. Whereas if I move four feet back, there's this sort of
implicit feeling of, like, maybe I'm saying this and I don't know
that you can hear me.
Mike Rugnetta: I wonder how much of it is derived from the
practical concerns of, Yeah. These are things that you want
to shout because they frustrate you, but that would make the
audio sound bad, so you just move away a little bit.
Hans Buetow: But with burnt toast, you'd be looking for
that.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah.
Hans Buetow: Like, staying close to your mic and blowing it out
according to Georgia's thesis is actually a thing you could do,
and it would mean something.
Meghal Janardan: Yeah. There is something this phenomenon of,
like, either intentionally, like, okay, come closer, come
closer, and then whispering into your mic or, like, going back
reminds me of, like, millennials use of jump cuts Yes. Yeah. And
the videos that they make.
Hans Buetow: Sure.
Meghal Janardan: Mhmm. It feels very millennial to
Georgia Hampton: me. Uh-oh. That well, that's interesting to me
because I feel like the millennial jump cut is much more
effort Because in that case, you are actually cutting the video,
like, are going in after the fact and cutting it. Whereas
this is such a, like to me, this feels very very close to the
medium that you see it in, at least that I see it in, which is
more like short form video TikTok, that kind of stuff,
vertical video, where the idea is that you can just make a
video right now. I don't have time to do all this stuff.
So I'm just going to get this message across as quickly as I
can.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Adam,
Georgia Hampton: this is so interesting. I could write an
entire other, segment about this, and maybe I will.
Georgia Hampton: No. Wait. Hold on.
Georgia Hampton: Hold on.
Georgia Hampton: And maybe I will. A
Mike Rugnetta: little while ago, I did a segment about how
artificial intelligence is helping contribute to the
aesthetic of new American fascism. And Dan wrote us an
email, and Dan says, since listening to your episode about
AI and new American fascism, I can't stop thinking about how
the Fasc Bros' latest obsession of AI contrasts with and
contradicts their previous obsession with cryptocurrency.
Specifically, how the supposed advantage of crypto, its ability
to substitute fiat government banking with cryptographic proof
of work runs completely counter to the inherent premise of AI.
What is at its core evidence of a lack of work. So much of the
hype of crypto seems nominally predicated on the belief that
the proof of work equals scarcity, and therefore
legitimacy as a currency.
But AI throws out that notion that proof of work matters at
all, insisting that only the end result is of any importance to
the audience. The fact that adherence to one of these
technologies are typically adherence to the other belies
crypto's stated necessity. If the ultimate goal of AI is to
get work without any effort, then perhaps predicating an
entire economic system on computational work isn't the
democratic decentralized anti establishment tool we were told
it would be. Perhaps even it's just another tool for
speculating, scams, and buying sketchy drugs on the dark web.
Okay.
Listen. As someone with friends who buy a lot of sketchy drugs
on the dark web, like, that part, let's, you know, let's let
people buy their sketchy drugs. Everything else, hell yeah, Dan.
Georgia Hampton: Well, in truth, you should be buying sketchy
drugs from your own
Mike Rugnetta: community. Lately.
Georgia Hampton: Sores. You. You go You should be going
Mike Rugnetta: to Providence. Yeah. I mean, I think that this
is a set of people who generally is interested in one thing and
it's political expediency. And so they will do whatever is
politically expedient in any given scenario, and they're
doing the politically expedient thing in both of these
scenarios. The fact that those two things don't necessarily
line up to form a coherent I don't even wanna call it
ideology.
A coherent line of reasoning is like, Dan, you have given this a
thousand times more thought than any of the people who are
interested in both of these technologies.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Yeah. Think the center of the Venn
diagram between the two is what is an easy answer for how can I
receive things from the world when I have absolutely nothing
of value to give the world?
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. I guess in that way, it's very
coherent.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: So we got a very interesting comment in, of
all places, our subreddit, which if you did not know this
existed, you should go to r/neverpost and join the
community there. Make your voice heard. Tell us your thoughts. We
are constantly reading it. Sometimes we might even comment
in there.
Hans Buetow: We're in there.
Georgia Hampton: We're in there, and I was in there when I found
this comment. So, frequent, chat participant in our, live
streams, which if you'd also like to, see our beautiful faces
there, it is twitch.tv/theneverpost. User
nondeterminist system wrote a really interesting comment on
our subreddit about my episode that came out in October about
digital witchcraft, Etsy witches, and the industry of
witchcraft on the Internet. And they write, I had a few quick
thoughts after listening to this episode. First, one thing that I
may ruminate on and come back with a more fleshed out thought
later.
Mahegan Saint Pierre talked about acting as an intermediary
between the living and the spirits. It occurred to me that,
for most people, the Internet is a vast ethereal world with
unpredictable agents whose will often requires interpretation
and intercession. Maybe we need new kinds of spiritual
intermediaries for our new realities. Or maybe we're
already trying to think of the Internet as a spiritual place,
and maybe some of our angst about the current state of the
Internet can be thought of as spiritual. Second, and
relatedly, I'd love to hear more from practitioners of other
religions and faith traditions about how their beliefs and
practices have been impacted by the Internet.
Well, Alex Friedman, rabbi who wrote in to us, I'd be very
interested if you have thoughts about this. Yeah. Yeah. I do
think this is an interesting idea of looking at our
relationship to the Internet as spiritual. I think it's that's
certainly its own thing.
I don't want to equate the industry and existence of
witchcraft on the Internet with a broader spirituality about the
Internet. But I do think there is there is truth in this
feeling that the Internet does, by virtue of it existing through
devices, but not in a particular place. It's sort of a this vast
endless more conceptual space that there is a a desire to
ground it, to understand it, to interpret it in a way that I
think does feel similar to spiritual practice. There's a
desire to, like, interpret, understand, have people who
interpret it for us who feel more, like, authorities.
Mike Rugnetta: And that's why I have to look at my phone for
fourteen hours every day to make sure that I know enough to guide
people through
Georgia Hampton: the Exactly. Exactly. I was gonna say I do
feel I I worry that us on this call I mean, I certainly fall
into that, where I'm like, I gotta I gotta learn so that I
can I can explain? Mhmm.
Meghal Janardan: I would also say that what this made me think
of is how sometimes people have a crisis of faith, where going
to church every week, doing this thing doesn't feel the same
anymore. It's not they're not getting what they used to get
out of it. And that makes me think of how I feel about the
Internet. I used to go to the Internet. When I would go
online, I would feel a certain way.
I would frequent certain websites, engage in certain
content, whatever. And I'm always almost having a crisis of
faith when it comes to the Internet. I don't feel the same
anymore when I gauge in certain times of types of content, and
I'm in certain spaces. And that makes me think of how maybe,
yeah, the Internet is kind of a place that is very similar to,
like, a spiritual practice.
Mike Rugnetta: And which is also, like, getting actively
worse. Like, you know Yes. I don't as I don't participate in
religion too much, so I don't know how often that that
happens. It certainly has famously happened in a couple
places in The United States over the last thirty or so years.
But, like, I think that's also part of it is that it's like, it
is actually demonstrably getting less pleasant and harder to use.
Mhmm.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Speaking of getting less pleasant and harder
to use, unless you're a member, it's time to hear some ads.
We'll be right back.
Mike Rugnetta: Folks, I got good news for us. Finally. Finally,
good news after all those ads. We got a Molly's Corner.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: I have no clue what this is. For anybody who is
a new listener, Molly, my wife, occasionally calls in and asks
questions or make statements that are completely unrelated to
the show.
Hans Buetow: Yes. Today, we hear from Molly Underground.
Molly: Hi. It's me. I was just getting the m train up town from
Delancey Essex Street. And one thing they've done, everything
is install a screen that tells you on the m Platform when the f
is coming because it's not in New York. These are trains that
basically go on the same route that are on different levels of
the subway platform.
For the years, there's been one stairway between the two
platforms where people would either stand at the top or stand
at the bottom, look out for when the train was coming, and then
communicate to strangers to say, come up here or go down there,
and and people would essentially shave one or two minutes off
their commute. Very important. But they since they've installed
the screen, now you can stand on the m platform and see when the
app coming. I assume the same as Shu downstairs. And it's just a
bit sad to me, really, because I love that I love the forcing
function of having to communicate with a stranger to
figure something out in the city.
And it made me wonder if any of you have examples of where,
like, technology has arguably made your life better. It
actually makes you a little bit sad because maybe it's the right
some kind of human connection or something that was pleasurable
to do that took longer than the way you do it now. Anyway, I was
just thinking about that. So gladly. Know
Mike Rugnetta: exactly what Molly's talking about. Is this
clear to everybody what's going on here?
Hans Buetow: Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I think so. Two two
different levels of people talking to each other about
which train is coming first.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. And then they put it they put a screen
in. You don't to do that anymore.
Meghal Janardan: Yeah. Molly trusting the screen is what I'm
Georgia Hampton: not sure
Meghal Janardan: about. Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: I find those screens generally are right
unless they say, hey. I'm a screen. I'm broken.
Georgia Hampton: Nope. Which is Hey. Often. Often. So maybe No.
Georgia Hampton: Okay. But okay. To her question, does this make
you think of another example?
Mike Rugnetta: Absolutely. Something came right to mind
when they installed checkout kiosks at the library. Oh. I
love talking to our librarians. They're great.
Hans Buetow: Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Like, I loved going to the desk and, like,
having a little chat, talking about books, and, like, getting
recommended other books. And, like, I sometimes I did have to
wait in line.
Hans Buetow: Mike, that's a good one because I feel the same way.
I think I'm on record on this show saying I don't use self
checkout in lines. Oh,
Mike Rugnetta: yeah. Interesting.
Hans Buetow: And and a similar reason where, like and it's a
similar reason to, like, what Alex was saying way at the
beginning of this episode, which is, like, there's certain social
contracts and the fact that people still wear their pajamas
to the store and then can check out without interacting with a
single person. It leads to this idea that these spaces are your
living room, and they are not
Mike Rugnetta: Bypass by bypassing all of the moments
wherein they may be slightly judged.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. Why is wearing pajamas
to the store catching strays right
Meghal Janardan: now? Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Hans is actually a Russian grandma that thinks
that you should have a full face of makeup and red lipstick every
time
Georgia Hampton: you leave silence. All
Georgia Hampton: of us. Right?
Georgia Hampton: All of us. Yes. All of us doing
Mike Rugnetta: that. Yep.
Georgia Hampton: No. I this then makes me think of it's funny
when when I was listening to Molly's Molly's Corner. I wasn't
originally thinking of this, but the other day, was walking down
the street and I saw a little restaurant in my neighborhood
that basically deals entirely in online orders. Nobody ever goes
in there and sits there. It's just picking up or getting
DoorDash or whatever.
I have certainly been someone who does this, but it does make
me sad to see entire restaurants that are just completely empty,
have all the trappings of a regular restaurant, have seats,
have chairs of everything, and nobody's ever there because
they're never going to be there because this has been determined
to be a takeout restaurant.
Mike Rugnetta: There's an incredible thread on the I
believe the Bed Stuy, the neighborhood that I live in
subreddit, where someone is like, hey, where are the good
Indian food restaurants where people actually sit down in the
restaurant Yes. And eat in the restaurant? I want I wanna go. I
have a first date coming up or something like that, and I wanna
go, and I don't want the two of us. We wanna get Indian food,
but, like, we don't want the two of us to be the only people in
the restaurant.
Oh, And every single comment is like, oh, this place is really
good. And then people being like, you didn't he doesn't
yeah. But it's always empty.
Georgia Hampton: But it's a takeout restaurant.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Only just a group of guys on bikes waiting
outside constantly.
Meghal Janardan: Do you think then it's this is kind of part
of the bigger conversation that about convenience, and this is
actually the pain of convenience?
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. The destruction of
the sensual world at the the altar of convenience.
Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm.
Hans Buetow: Jason? Yes? You look like you were gonna say
something. I wanna give you a chance before we move on.
Jason Oberholtzer: I was gonna try to, and I haven't figured
out how to use the altar pivot to land a religious button to
move us on. Okay. Ended at the altar of convenience.
Mike Rugnetta: Sir Suri is mouse in French, and mice inhabit
churches. Church mouse.
Georgia Hampton: Mice are very religious.
Mike Rugnetta: This is a well known fact. Mice love Jesus.
Jason Oberholtzer: All of this is.
Mike Rugnetta: Mice love Jesus. Jesus. They're constantly
telling me. Yeah.
Meghal Janardan: And we actually I think like most Ganesha
statues, there is a mouse.
Jason Oberholtzer: I feel like I missed an entire connective step
in this. Why am I here?
Mike Rugnetta: I feel like we should just leave this in and
then just talking about start talking about one word graffiti.
Georgia Hampton: Blessed are the meat.
Georgia Hampton: Okay. A mouse.
Georgia Hampton: What's the great or not the great mouse
detective. This one
Jason Oberholtzer: Why are we talking about mice?
Georgia Hampton: What's this? The Jewish
Mike Rugnetta: No one tell
Georgia Hampton: Jason. One. That's about mice.
Jason Oberholtzer: Fievel Goes West is a Jewish movie? Yes. But
he's a cowboy.
Georgia Hampton: Careful. Why are we talking about the cowboy?
That's okay.
Jason Oberholtzer: How about this? Andy's a cowboy.
Georgia Hampton: There you go.
Mike Rugnetta: We got a bunch of one word graffiti mostly from
the subreddit.
Jason Oberholtzer: Good god. Alright. Yeah, gang. Hey.
Remember when I told you all to stop doing this last time?
Well, you didn't fucking listen, did you? I'm gonna rattle off
some one word graffiti for you, which to be fair, you all were
very good rule followers this time. Maybe it's because you
listened to an episode of Normal Gossip where Mike Rickenetta
talked about being a rule follower, but you're doing good
this time. Alright. Reddit user, vim dynamo, sent in Souris, s o
u r I s.
And in that thread are a bunch of people talking about this
word that is baffling to me. I'm not gonna spoil it. You gotta go
to the subreddit and figure out what the fuck Cerus is all
about.
Mike Rugnetta: It's good. There's a whole discussion. It's
great.
Jason Oberholtzer: Next up, Vogie sends in p s y c psych.
Psych. On the side of, like, a transformer unit. That's kind of
fun.
Hans Buetow: With just pigeons and pigeons?
Georgia Hampton: I don't think that's not
Hans Buetow: a pigeons.
Georgia Hampton: That's are those assumptions? It's
something far more worried.
Georgia Hampton: Those are bushcats. It's
Mike Rugnetta: I this image is spooky.
Georgia Hampton: There's a darkness here. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: If Saff only sends in dong.
Hans Buetow: Dong.
Mike Rugnetta: Dong dong near soup.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah. There's a bunch of I didn't see
that ever.
Mike Rugnetta: That just makes it for me. Yeah. Dong near soup.
Hans Buetow: Campbell's cream of something.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Oh, this next one rips so hard.
Jason Oberholtzer: Todd from Montreal sends sends in and a
little Mario guy with a b on his hat.
Mike Rugnetta: I'm gonna say that this barely it is one word,
but, like, maximum effort.
Jason Oberholtzer: It is a full wall mural
Mike Rugnetta: of graffiti. With, like, three d letters.
Carolyn
Jason Oberholtzer: Thompson from Portland, Oregon sends in queso.
It appears twice. Queso queso, and it's stenciled on the
street. So in a few ways, you are pushing credulity, but I'll
let it in.
Meghal Janardan: And it's yellow. Like queso.
Hans Buetow: Like queso.
Jason Oberholtzer: We do like that.
Mike Rugnetta: I like that it's also in this very pleasing
triangle.
Jason Oberholtzer: Like a chip almost. Yeah. Like a tortilla
chip. You know what? Cameron, this is good now.
I'm gonna forgive this being both a stencil and the same word
twice.
Georgia Hampton: Wait. What's wrong with the stencil? Yeah.
Why is that a problem?
Mike Rugnetta: Jason's the, in charge of He's the decider.
Yeah.
Hans Buetow: Yep. There's lots of mostly,
Mike Rugnetta: we must cater to his whims.
Georgia Hampton: That's so true.
Jason Oberholtzer: I just feel like spray painting through a
stencil is not quite the spirit of one word graffiti.
Georgia Hampton: Fair enough. Fair enough.
Jason Oberholtzer: And finally, quirky spirit five nine eight
zero in the subreddit sends in a sign that appears to say shit
bottle on it, and one imagines someone spray painted something
to change it from what it once said.
Mike Rugnetta: There's a whole story. This is less than one
word graffiti. It is people adding a single horizontal line
to the signs for a town named Shillbottle.
Georgia Hampton: Uh-huh. Knew it. Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: Jason, in fact, two months ago, you responded to
this saying, the purest entry.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. We'll see if
Mike Rugnetta: past Jason agrees with the whims of present Jason.
Jason Oberholtzer: Well, I myself feel like something of a
shit bottle right now. So I think that's as good a reason as
any to say, thank you all for your one word graffiti. You did
much better this time around. I'm proud of you all and my
holiday gift is for the next mailbag, you can send me two and
only two word graffiti. Oh.
Wow. Thank you all your little shit bottles out there. See you
next time.
Mike Rugnetta: Thanks for listening everybody. Done.