Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
Off-the-Cuff: AI Nonsense & More!
We return from hibernation to talk AI nonsense, critique the review industrial complex, promote a return to RSS, and share a raft of recommendations!
JOACHIM ON AI NONSENSE – 01:52
Previous Discussion of Humane AI (starts at 18:34)
Humane Set to Brick $700 ‘AI Pins’
I outsourced my memory to an AI pin and all I got was fanfiction
Ben Thompson: DeepSeek FAQ
Previous Discussion on LLMs & Constraints (starts at 02:33)
“Low-Resource” Text Classification
ERNEST ON THE REVIEW INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX – 09:41
Motor Trend: 2021 MINI Cooper SE
America’s Commute to Work Is Getting Longer (paywall)
CNET: 2022 Mini Cooper SE
James Hoffmann’s reviews
Sigma BF Review: Beautiful Foolishness
By contrast ... I took 1,000 photos with the Sigma BF
GxAce YouTube channel
Chris Harris on the Mercedes-AMG A45 S
How Ferrari Spins
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRODUCT CREATORS? – 26:07
Americans Are Obsessed With the Wrong Trucks
TELO MT1
Remembering Nike’s Sandy Bodecker
JOACHIM ON RSS & MORE – 31:37
Inoreader
Catherine Shannon: Your phone is why you don’t feel sexy
Tracy Durnell: In praise of the hundred page idea
In Praise of Shadows
Kenya Hara: White
Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny
Harry G. Frankfurt: On Bullshit
Perfect Days
Perfect Day (Komorebi Version)
SHOULD WE START A DISCORD? – 41:22
CLOSING – 42:02
****
Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Joachim Groeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:I am doing well. I'm happy because we are breaking the seal. 2025. This is it. We've done it. We're in 2025 and we're recording. This is thE first step for Lmic learn to be in the next year, which means we've been, we will can say, officially, we've been going for two years. We can round up, but I'm very happy that we're here and I'm happy that we're here with an off the cuff because I feel like that's the easiest way to break the seal. How are you?
Ernest:Good, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Also excited to, uh, kind of get back into our recording and, you know, as. JohE just mentioned, uh, we have had a bit of a winter hiatus. I guess maybe you could call it a winter holiday, uh, but this, this is episode 26 and today, um, like Jo JohE mentioned, we're bringing you another of our shorter format off the cuff episodes. Where we highlight and discuss a handful of products or ideas that have caught our attention. And I just wanted to note that we will absolutely continue to bring you longer format, in depth conversations and interviews hopefully in the near future. But, um, and off the cuff episode seemed like the best way to just kind of ease our way back into the saddle after our, uh, extended winter break. Um, also wanted to mention that as ever. We want to hear from you, so please share any thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions, suggestions, sorry. With us at Learn make learn@gmail.com or on thread at Learn make, learn show, all one word. Alright, with that intro out of the way, let's move on to our off the cuff conversation. Jo, you wanna get us started?
Joachim:Yeah, we, um, you know what? I'm gonna try and be really rapid. Super efficient and then we'll see which ones like pique your interest Ernest. And maybe we'll dig a little to you because I have a few here. So, I'm trying to figure out. As well in the things I'm gonna talk about, connections to things we've talked about in the past, in previous episodes, and because things have happened that have made me think, oh, we actually did cover this in a previous episode on passing. So it'd be nice to see the connection to where we are because it's been a while, again, three months, and then it's been more to those early episodes. So we talked about humane ai uh, in a previous episode. So they recently announced last month that they would be shutting down and all of their Humane AI pins will be bricked. So if you recall, humane AI pin is the little device that you could clipped to your clothes, and it would use LLMs and. Blah blah. And magic and fairy dust to make things happen. And it would be amazing. And the thing that didn't work, it had terrible battery life. I mean, these are ex apple people that should have known better and just bombed. And then they tried to sell the company and it's done. So they're gonna shut, shut down. And all of their pins that cost about$700 are just gonna cease to function. And these units are. Pretty much useless without the server infrastructure that sits in the cloud. And so that's kind of a really dumb end to something that was, you know, hyped up as this incredible, the future of everything. Um, and so connected to that, um, I stumbled on a. Review for a new wearable that reminds me a lot of the humane AI pin, and it's called the B. Um, it's very new. It looks like a Fitbit and it has its whole., twist on all of these LLM things and AI nonsense is that it records everything that you say and it's gonna create these summaries of what's happened during your day. So if you're in a meeting, it's gonna listen to every word that's happening and it's gonna summarize stuff. And it's pretty, I mean, number one, very creepy, very worrying from an information security perspective, privacy perspective. I mean, the people that you're interacting with are gonna be saying sensitive pieces of information to you, but it turns out. The Verge Review has revealed that it is terrible at doing this. So, um, he, the reviewer wears this device and, um, he recounts that he was in a few Zoom meetings, chatted with a coworker at the office, met up with a friend for dinner and committed home, and then he looked at the transcript and the B. App told him that number one quote, you are having a conversation with someone about a patient of yours who lives in Louisiana. patient appears to be causing harm to another person. No doctor's offices, nothing. This is a Verge tech writer. Okay? And the second summary was. Victoria and her friend were driving reminiscing about childhood memories. They talked about a place called PT and Malcolm Buttons, which seemed to be familiar locations or references from their past. There was a rocky sound at some point, perhaps indicating a bumpy road or an issue with the car. This was all completely, I mean, there. Elements that are true. Like he was driving and he took the train, so there was a bump, but my goodness, like how bad is this? So it's incredible to see that we in, you know, last month Humane AI shuts down shamefully and bricks, all of its divides shamefully. And here we've got the next round. Everyone's ready. Be wearables, we're gonna listen to everything. You can transcribe it in cloud and LLM magic and blah, blah, blah. So have we learned any lessons? I don't know. Maybe that's. the first thing is can we please just learn the lessons of the past? Um, and so yeah, that was a quick thing on that. And then just another bit that we talked about still related to LLMs. And I'll pass off to you Ernest, and you can throw in some stuff into the mix. But, this is the year of efficiency and large language models. So this is now the big thing everyone's talking about, because DeepSeek, the Tiny Chinese outfit, basically spent a little bit of time tweaking these LLMs and got them to run on less powerful hardware, less memory, more efficient, and all of those things. Um, and it's unsurprising. It's unsurprising because I. I dunno, it feels like the early days of the American automobile industry competing against the Japanese where they just had bigger and bigger cars and bigger and bigger engines. And then the Japanese come along and say like, actually you just need this small engine and this car, and people will love it post oil crisis. So that, uh, deep seek revelation was pretty to me unsurprising because we had mentioned in the previous episode about using very, very, um, simple techniques to get. Powerful performance. And one of those things was using compression for text classification and also image classification. So when I heard the deep seek news, I was thinking, look, people know this. We just need to go back to the roots of being a little bit more frugal and mindful about how we build things and think about those efficiencies. They just did the work, they did the basic stuff that everyone should be doing instead of burning billions and billions of dollars as OpenAI has been doing, um, and continues to do and suggests that we need nuclear power plants. This small team of like five people just said, actually, if you just code well. don't need all this stuff. So those two things together are like a little tidbit that I've been, uh, like I wanted to share. And we'll have links to all these stories again and links to the previous episodes where we talked about that stuff. But yeah. Have you been following all of this? LLM? Uh, well, I don't, I don't wanna call it hype. It's also like it doesn't feel right, just noise.
Ernest:Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I certainly am not an expert in the area, but I. When the story came out about Deep Cica, it definitely reminded me of your comment from that, uh, our prior episode where you talked about the fact that, um, there are so much, there are far more efficient ways to achieve these things that are being done with, um, just, it seems like the least efficient tools, uh, means possible, uh, by most American companies. So, um, it was, uh, exciting to see that, uh, I, I mean, I think. It's a great wake up call. I, I think a lot of people were, um, shocked by it. Uh, and so hopefully we'll see things, um, change for the better. Just because, you know, when you realize you don't have to actually spend all this money, not just on the equipment, but on the electricity as well, um, and get as good results, I think that's gonna open a lot of people's eyes.
Joachim:Yeah. For sure.
Ernest:And then the humane thing as well. I mean, it, it is another point that you've made, um, across a few episodes, just this, I forget the term you used, but, um, it wasn't fragility, but just this dependence on. Extended infrastructure beyond the physical product that, um, does make your product so fragile. Um, you know, we see it with Humane, but we also saw it with, um, the other one. Uh, which one
Joachim:Rabbit R
Ernest:Yeah. Rabbit. Yeah, same idea, but where we really, the hardware is just the front end to. Stuff that's happening in the cloud. And once uh, the company starts to get, um, fallen hard times, then all that can go away. And you, that hardware you feel like you paid for, it just becomes a brick. So, um, kind of seeing chickens come home to roost, I guess, you know,
Joachim:Yeah, maybe that's my secret theme actually, is like, look at the stuff that we were talking about. We were right.
Ernest:oh. If you want to trade off, then I guess I could. Jump in. There were a co couple of things I thought I'd highlight, but under the theme of, I don't know what the right way to explain this would be, but just my, uh, I've, I feel like we, we are in this time now where. Product reviews have become really, really important because we're inundated by products. So, you know, not a surprise, people are turning to reviews to help them make better buying decisions. But I think what that's led to is this sort of a review industrial complex, just this, um, army of people, particularly on social media, who are make now making a living, reviewing products across all different categories and. The concern I have, the thing that I'm seeing that I'm really disappointed by is that because now for so many of these people, this is a career they've resorted to just sort of review by spec sheet. I, recently was looking at some reviews for cars. And also saw a review for camera that I'll talk about more in just a minute. But the overriding sentiment I heard across both of those was depressingly similar, and it really boiled down to this product should have the same exact features as every other product in its segment or category. You know,, here are these kind of. Okay. Generic specifications that I as a reviewer have come to expect from every product in this category. And if this new product doesn't deliver on, doesn't check off on all those boxes, then that just makes it very easy for me to say this is not a good product. because when, as a reviewer, your primary objective is just to turn out as much content as possible so that you can maximize your ad inventory and ad revenue. I think this is just naturally the outcome, this review by spec sheet approach because you just don't have the time to actually use and experience the products, and I think that. The thing that's disappointed me is that alright, that's the case in this sort of new media, but this has been something that's been happening in, you know, maybe so-called old media as well as they've been subjected to these similar sorts of pressures of just sort of, um, tracking clicks. And one example that's close to home for me is, um. I own a, I can't remember what year it is. It's I think maybe a 2023 Mini Cooper se, which is the electric version of the two door Mini Fully Battery Electric. And I, it kind of struck me looking back at some of the reviews for that car, how I think Miss leading they can be for people who might have been in the car market. The SC is actually no longer available mini's in this weird period right now where they don't currently offer a. Electric version of their two-door car only of their bigger countrymen. And there's lots of different reasons for that that have to do with, um, tariffs and all kinds of other stuff we could talk about in a different episode. But so. At the time though, uh, the se the two door was the only, uh, electric model that they offered and MotorTrend in their review review, um, echoed the sentiment that I saw across pretty much every review that was, um, out at the time that the car was available. So, I'll, I'll just read. Uh, a snippet from MotorTrend review of the 2021 Mini Cooper se. And the interesting thing is they just copy and pasted the same exact paragraph into the review of the 2022 Cooper Se and I, I believe the 2023 as well. So. Quoting here, quote, perhaps the Cooper's most significant drawback is its limited range. The electric mini can travel just 110 miles on a charge, making it the lowest range. Ev currently on sale its closest competitors to 40 kilowatt per hour. Nissan Leaf and Hyundai Ionic achieve 149 and 170 miles respectively. And I, to me that's just like a classic example of review by spec sheet because it's like, oh Yeah. look at these specs. This doesn't deliver on the specs. But the reality is this is a, this data, um, from, uh, wall Street Journal article from 2023 where they noted that the average distance to work as of the end of 2023 was um, 27 miles. And that's the average. I think most urban people are living in city centers, which is kind of mini's core audience. Their commutes are probably much shorter than that. But let's say you have the average commute, so roughly 50 miles total, both ways. You know, you've still got plenty of range to work with after that 50 mile commute. So it is just, uh, such a, uh, I think thoughtless comment to make, and it's just a function of, oh, we don't have time to actually drive this thing and test it in the real world. So we're just gonna cite this number off a spec sheet because, you know, it just makes us look smart. Now I, I'll contrast that with, of all publication cnet, which is now like a content farm, but they, um, uh, to their credit back in 2023, oh no, this is actually, it was either 2022 or 2023. They published, um, a long term review of the Mini Cooper SE So it, the piece was titled 2022 Mini Cooper SE Long-Term Wrap Up. And, uh, the subhead was after a year of city living, our electric Mini's short range isn't what we'll remember most. Um, and, uh, I don't know. I'll, I'll read some of the, um, just the beginning of that review. So they say quoting them. Now, people love to hate the electric Mini Cooper SE for its short driving range, and I would replace people With reviewers because it was really reviewers who love to hate the electricity for short driving range. But uh, continuing on with their piece. But focus on that 114 mile EPA estimate and you'll miss the car's strongest selling points. No one is buying a mini gas or electric for long distance cruising. Put the Cooper SE into service as a daily driver in a congested city and its goodness will quickly win you over. So they actually went to the effort of. Driving the car in the, um, context in which it was intended, and they came to love it. And they, you know, I love that point they made, which is that the short range isn't what we'll remember most. And that's absolutely been my experience as owner as well. It's my favorite car by a long shot of, of the cars I've owned. Um, and knowing what it was intended for, which is as a city car, it's so amazingly. Perfect for that role, and it's just such a joy to drive. So I, you know, I think we just see so much of this these days, this sort of review by spec sheet, which leads to, I think, many people to just discount a lot of products that they might love. Just because this sort of review industrial comp complex, um, is not incentivized to actually spend time on their reviews. I'd say that the counter example to that is James Hoffman, who we've talked about in the past, who has this incredible. Uh, coffee focused YouTube channel. Um, he's also a, an award-winning barista and also has a company that, uh, roasts and sells coffee. But he does incredible reviews on his site where he actually takes the time to really dig out on the spec, you know, geek out on the specifications, but then to really use the product in the way it's intended. Um, and I love how in a lot of his reviews. He'll also talk about the joy or the lack thereof of using a given product, not just the specifications. Um, but he's very much the exception, uh, rather than the rule, which is just this sort of really lowest common denominator, bottom of the barrel, sort of, uh, review by spec sheet. And to me, the. Thing that disappoints me is that that leads to lowest common denominator products because, you know, as a product maker, you're incentivized to then just make products that do adhere to that you know, checklist. Um, and you end up with a sea of products that are all effectively identical and then all you have left to compete on is price. Um, so. I would, this is I guess my, uh, soapboxing to really, um, push people to go beyond those surface level reviews. Um, I know it's difficult because it takes time and we're all busy, but, I think probably the best resource remains I. Forums and you know, now more so discord channels, these sort of hidden corners of the internet where people, who are really interested in certain topic areas are willing to spend a lot more time discussing the pros and cons of products in a way that, you know, these sort of, um. Social media reviewers are not. one other example I'll give here is, I don't know if you've seen this Yohi, you may have, but uh, this new camera from Sigma called the
Joachim:is it the one that's, that's made out of like a solid block of aluminum or something? They machined it out of the, it's in incred, if that's the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah,
Ernest:that's the one. And um, I saw a review of that camera. On a YouTube channel called PET aix, which is actually a, I think, a great channel. It's folks from the old DP review site,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:which is a great, uh, site for, uh, digital or camera reviews in general, but they reviewed the Sigma bf and essentially if you watch that review and we'll provide a link to it, you can boil it down to, to, I wish this camera was like all the other cameras I use. It's like basically the reviewer kind of highlighting all the things that the camera doesn't have that his. Pro his, you know, typical cameras do. And I just found it very disappointing for that because he was reviewing, you know, he wasn't reviewing what it was, but he was reviewing what he was used to using. Um, and I just think it's such a miss because there's so many things that that camera does that are so unique that, uh, I think would bring a lot of joy to a lot of people. So I think it's absolutely. There is value to highlighting the fact that maybe it doesn't have some features that you might find on typical cameras, but here are the other things that it does that those other cameras don't do. And so here's why you might enjoy it, even though it doesn't have those sort of typical checklist features. So, uh, that, that's another one that just kind of really struck me as an example of. The sort of product that is done a disservice by this kind of review culture that we're in right now. I don't know if
Joachim:feel you. I feel you, Ernest. Legacy media became exactly that. Spec sheet type of thing. And with internal combustion engines, it was zero to 60 was the number one stat. Right. And then German manufacturers especially, were just so honed in on extracting everything outta the engine to get that zero to 60 down to three seconds to, I mean, absolutely insane numbers that make no sense. And there's never any need for that.
Ernest:Right.
Joachim:What was interesting about then the transition to the YouTube personalities and those people is that it felt like they were authentic. They were not part of. The reviewing industrial complex as you put it. They're their own people. And, and that's why their reviews were trustworthy. They were enthusiasts and that was it. And then they became brands and then they had to worry about, you know, making money and advertising revenue and everything. Then they become legacy media. So it's, it's not that the. The platform or the medium is the problem, is the fact that the force towards commercialization and then the typical force of how you monetize this stuff is through advertising. That's what ruins all of these things. Um, so yeah, I agree. It's very hard to find good reviews that go beyond just rattling off the, the stats. And I think it's easy, right? It's very easy to churn out those reviews and make videos quickly, especially for these big budget guys now who can just, you know, they just get their army of minions to just. Takes shots and do stuff. And, but I find that also in the watch review community, it has become, I like the personalities and I don't wanna single anyone out, but it is, it is quite tedious after a while where you just, uh, the, it's this many males across and it's like, how does it feel? Like, what does it, what's cool about it? What does it make you want to, you know, what is the vibe of this thing? And so to that. My counterpoint to actually, I, you know, I don't, I'm not a photographing enthusiast. I don't have any fancy cameras, but I do follow this YouTube channel called GX Ace, and this person does camera reviews and they are like mini Blade Runner vignettes. That is the only way I can describe them. He. He will pick a pick camera that is maybe not being produced anymore. Um, and he just takes fantastic pictures of them with, with them. And he's created this narrative that he is speaking from the future, maybe 20 years in the future, and. He describes our present moment through that lens of being from the future. he's got this little narrative arc to it that's very, inspiring, entertaining, and the pictures he takes are really wonderful. You get a great sense of. Why this camera is so good, because it's, the picture is what matters, not the specs. It's like, what does it do? You know? So we'll link to that person's, they're very entertaining and, um, immersive. So that is a great counterpoint to the, to the spec sheet thing. Like I, I don't think he even mentions megapixels on the sensor or something. They're very inspirational. I think that is. That is where the medium should be. It is this, you let me experience what this thing lets you do and then that will inspire me potentially. Yeah. And that's why I like James Hoffman as well. He's also very unromantic about things. I think you need that as well. There's very grounded, no coffee, pun intended, but there it is. Grounded approach to his coffee reviewing machine, uh, when he reviews coffee machines. I trusted his review. So I think it's about, yeah, it's hard to trust anyone now in these review cycles. And so of course they, they don't want to ruin their brand. They don't wanna upset anyone. So the spec sheet is. The lowest common denominator. That is the statement that is unemotional and not subject to debate. Right. But if someone said, I took a picture and it just doesn't have the right feeling to it, they'll be like, oh my God, what are you doing? This is terrible. You know? Um, actually on that note, that reminds me, I remember, um. Chris Harris is a car reviewer. He also ran a YouTube channel and I can't remember which car manufacturer it was. It could have been oh, Lamborghini or someone like that, like a pretty big or Mercedes, one of those. I'll try and remember and we can maybe link to it, but he describes the fact that he has been throughout his career, very honest about. Car reviews and he had a moment where he was describing the typical car review circuit now, and he is just one of the reviews there. And then there are all these influences there. And I think he was driving a Mercedes, a MG. And it has all these modes in it that allow the computer to help you drive it so you can drift the car without much skill. And so they, all these influences drive it. They love it because they're. They're not professional drivers, they're just personalities. And he commented on the fact that that's the majority of car reviews of that, and Mercedes loves having them on track. And then he hops in the car and he switches everything off. And then he drives the car around the track and he gives an honest review. He says, this car is pretty boring. It's, you know, it's not very good. So it's, it's out there, you know, and that we understand that something has gone awry with the. What the power of YouTube was, which was authenticity. It wasn't a typical broadcast medium. It was a very flat democratized broadcast medium. Um, and now it's just tv. Like everything else it feels like. So, but you have to find those pockets and they exist. And so I, yeah, we will help people find these little pockets and I'm sure that will spur the YouTube algorithm to pick other things that you can stumble on that are interesting. And that's the way we fight back. It's resistance.
Ernest:Well, you know, on that point I was starting to think, okay, knowing that it'll take a while for that change to happen, if ever, you know, understanding that this is now the, the state of affairs, what could you as a product person in the business of making products do about that? And what I started to, get to was the idea that it almost means that you have to. Make your product so extreme that it just forces reviewers to break out of that spec sheet review by spec sheet paradigm. And you know, I think the, um, Sigma BF is a good example of that, is just so different from traditional digital cameras that it really does force you as a reviewer to approach it differently because. Otherwise, you'll just end up like that pix review, which is really boring and just saying, oh, it doesn't do all these things that my other cameras do. You know? So it forces you to, to approach it in a different way. Another example that I, I saw recently that I'm really excited about is this little mini truck. I don't know if you've seen this, this, it's from a startup company called Telo, TELO, and it's called the MT one, and the line that everyone's repeating, which I'm sure they've. Uh, given them is it's as short as a two door mini Cooper, but has five seats and a bed that's essentially as big as a standard pickup. Uh, the, it's a remarkable feat of packaging. Um, it's, it's not commercially available yet, but they just, uh, in the last few weeks started, um, giving people an opportunity to drive it. Reviewers. And, you know, there again, it's something that. You know,'cause the discourse around pickups is really also just so stupid. If you've ever looked at reviews for pickup trucks, it's so this classic review by spec sheet, oh, it doesn't tow 7,000 pounds, so it's not a real pickup, you know, it's like, God, gimme a freaking break. And so this forces reviewers outside of that just, uh, milk toasts spec sheet review paradigm, because it's just so different. So. That feels like, you know, maybe that's, at least, I'm sure there's other ways to do it too, but that's one way to break out of this, um, construct because otherwise, like I said, the other way is just lower pricing, which is just a road to nowhere, right. So, um, I think this, and it's obviously scary as well to do something that's really different and breaks out of the norm and to a, um, a significant way. But it feels like it's almost essential now to do that so that your product doesn't get lost in the shuffle.
Joachim:It reminds me, I think we referenced this a few episodes ago, but Sandy Bo's work on Nike Espb is kind of the great playbook of how to, I mean, it's, he has the, the. The machinery of Nike behind him and the marketing machinery of Nike, but kind of bypasses all of that to create a brand that feels more authentic and is able to connect directly with the community. So I feel like another approach is really to start focusing more on, I have this very focused idea and I will first find the people that are interested in being part of that and maybe bring them along for that journey. So it's interesting'cause you mentioned that company Telo, the first thing on the top of that page is actually join our Discord server. So I'm gonna speculate, but this is how I would play is like, I know this product is not gonna appeal to everyone. This is not a mass market thing. It's an electric pickup truck that looks quite funky. It looks really cute. I do like it and its footprint is tiny. Um, and yeah, so everyone's gonna hop on the Discord server and they're gonna connect with each other and go be like, oh, you like small trucks that are electric? Cool. I like these things as well. And, and then you have this. Thing that is a groundswell built around a product. Um, and I think that's kind of interesting. It's a very, well, it's an old school approach and a new school approach because you can use the technology to build these connections across people, across continents and actually figure out a lot about what they actually care about. And, um, you could even draw them into the, the process of how this product's gonna emerge. So yeah, truck discourses is some of the, I mean, that's the thing that's interesting about, um, actually Ford as a prime example, like they, they did actually go the other way, right? They, the F-150 is there and then beyond there's more, but then they also have the, they have the Maverick, which is that tiny, tiny pickup truck, which is really cute and is enough. It's like the way the F-150 was in the eighties or
Ernest:Mm-hmm.
Joachim:Um, and then that's pretty interesting that they were, they went all the way down and it's, it has none of the typical truck features, but it's got a bed and it's got five, five seats and everything that you'd want to have from it, and it's looks pretty practical. That was an interesting counter, you know, a response to the whole, bigger, bigger,
Ernest:Right, and it's been.
Joachim:went the other way. Yeah. And it's been pretty successful.
Ernest:Yeah, that Maverick has been enormously successful. It's, it's just so funny how. Uh, companies and industries get stuck in these ruts of just believing their own bs, you know,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:and, and, uh, just not listening to what their customers are looking for. Uh, but, but that was all I had, that, that kind of theme of this kind of review industrial complex and what's that's leading, what that's leading to, and how maybe as people making products, we can break outta that. But, um, I think you, it sounded like you had some other things you wanted to highlight as well.
Joachim:I had a few things. So I know a lot of people are disconnecting from the day to day of the, of the news cycle, which I think is fine. The way I've been trying to process this is I, I'm trying to focus more on a, first of all, productive and not keeping my eyes and ears closed to ways where there's a moment where I could probably contribute in one direction in to make things to ameliorate things and be less, be less worse. So be aware of those things, but then also having the long view. Uh, so that means. Actually trying to work on figuring out longer run solutions for the problems that we face in general, societal problems, not the ones of the political establishment, but just things that are on my mind, um, and trying to avoid these gotcha headlines. I'm gonna call it the New York Times Industrial Complex. Is this the, the way they've kind of been passing the news in the first time we had a Trump administration, it was always this kind of like, let's count how many lies, or, you know, oh, he, that's not quite correct because it turns out blah, blah, or Elon Musk is wrong, that there are over a hundred thousand people who are a hundred years old or whatever. There was this whole, dissection of why he must be wrong about the ages of people, because they don't understand that in COBOL, the way dates are done is different from things and you gotta, oh yeah. So it turns out like, you know, Unix starts in 1970 at zero, but COBOL starts in 1870, so blah, blah, blah. Who cares? If you want the summary, it's like people are gonna get harmed by these things, and it doesn't matter like what the stats are and if the numbers are not right, who cares? Like protect people. You don't need the rest of it. This doesn't help me solve these bigger problems. Long introduction to base, the idea of how do I start curating a world that I can actually focus on more long view things. And so I found that, um, the thing that's really helped me is having an RSS reader and, um. Being very directed in who I follow and people that are discussing longer view things or websites that focus on longer things. So RSS is a really old fashioned technology. We use it for the podcast as well. It's just a feed that updates that you can read from any type of app, and it will populate it with the latest things that a website is publishing. So it could be any website every. Major website has these, so you don't have to rely on social media. This is the main thing that social media always mixes. The ads and the clickbait this and the new headlines. It's just really hard to get stuff so. So the one that I'm using is the, I think it's pronounced eno rita INO reader.com. And I have just been using that as my primary point of getting information. And I've stumbled on so many interesting things as a result of that. Uh, every blogger that there are so many great bloggers out there again. I add them on the feed and I can just be updated in all of the things that they do. Um, if you're fans of tki tki.org, who does links all the time, he's a great source for other RSS feeds. So he has a feed, you can use that. I would recommend doing that because it helps you focus on the things that you want to keep track of. Yes. I also have like one newspaper that I follow and then, and that's it. I don't, I don't have anything else. And that newspaper is the Financial Times of London, and it's so dry and so focused and boring. It's perfect. It's, it's just very good. Um, but because of that I've stumbled on all these other things, so I'm just gonna do like a dump. One of them is, a writer on Substack called Catherine Shannon, and she is really, I, I don't know what to call her. She doesn't write about big things, but they feel like big things, and I, I think it's something about. captures the essence of vibes, the importance of vibes and emotion and feeling and, and things like that. She wrote a lot of fun posts that I think are great entry points. Uh, one of them is your phone is why you don't feel sexy, and she kind of revisits how phones used to be kind of a sexy thing and now they're just this awful distraction and you just look like a douche bag when you're on it, and they're not this cool accessory that you kind of would show and only flip out once in a while. She also wrote this great piece about,, what you should do in your twenties or how to cult cultivate your intuition, like little life lessons, which I really appreciate. She's, she's a bit younger than us, but I think she's got pretty interesting perspective. So that's one I would put out there as something very different from the news cycle, but it's still focused on a deeper level of introspection and understanding how you can cultivate and nurture. Your soul. It sounds very grand, sorry, but it's one of those things I think we need to do that. Um, and then the other thing that has also been separately from feeds, but I actually pulled from someone else's feed. Um, she wrote this essay, her name is. Ah, it's her, her blog is called The Mind Garden. Uh, we'll send the link, but she wrote the thing about a hundred to 200 page books being kind of the sweet spot for big ideas and a lot of books patted out because we have this idea that 300 pages for a nonfiction book is, is essential. She listed a couple of a hundred page books that she really liked. And one two of them were, um, in Praise of Shadows, uh, which is a novelist writing about Japanese aesthetics, Zaki. He writes about. The, the magical way Japanese architects and artists play with shadows. It's very straightforward, it's wonderful. Um, and then another book, which is kind of you would think is the opposite, Kenya Hara, who is the art director of Muji. That's. Brand, the famous brand. Um, but he wrote this book called White, and it's about a hundred pages and it's really fantastic. It's deeply philosophical, enjoyable, easy to read, but then can challenge you in lots of interesting ways. So I, I think I'm now on this. Focus of trying to find highly condensed and focused books. There's a book called On Tyranny, which people really, really like. And that's about a hundred, 200 pages super focused, you know, um, Harry Frankfort wrote the book on bullshit. It's nothing, it's super short. Like these are to the point, not wasting my time. And I feel like that is a certain urgency now to like, we just need to feed our brains very, very focused messages. And then, uh, we will be able to. Help wherever we can, however we can, whatever it is that we wanna do. I just, there's a certain, yeah, I'm feeling a certain urgency here. Like, I, like, I still read novels, but I've been favoring short novels as well, that I like that I'll, I'll add them to our list so everyone can see what these short novels are. They pack a punch, you know, they kind of get to the point. So all of that to say, uh, I've been on a trip to try and curate and focus. My time on things that I think are highly effective for wellbeing, feeling, not feeling so alone, uh, connecting with the, the world and the community. And ultimately, yeah, I think the missing pieces, like how do you build more community, um, which I think is happening in our daily lives in general here. But yeah, it would be nice to use all of those things that we have here as well. Like we should, Hey. Maybe we should have a discord. Ernest, maybe this is the moment. I don't know. But I was just saying there's, there's something like you, we always say, we'd like to hear from you. We should, yeah. I think it's very true. We love, we love the idea that this is part of people's listening behavior, so it's It is something, yeah.
Ernest:I really, I'm, I, I'm so glad you made that recommendation of the RSS reader'cause I've been meaning to readopt RSS'cause I've kind of had dropped off some years back. Um, but I think you're totally right that, that, to get out of this. Uh, world of Got News and stupid headlines, uh, would just be so much better for, um, my health
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:also my, um, knowledge base. So, uh, I'm definitely going to check that out. Oh, one quick follow up to on your recommendation of In Praise of Shadows, for one, I, I'll definitely read it, but also if you enjoyed that, I think you might also enjoy, um, I think I mentioned it in a previous episode, this movie. Perfect days,
Joachim:Oh yes,
Ernest:did have you seen it Oh,
Joachim:your recommendation. We watched it. It's fantastic.
Ernest:Oh, all good. I'm glad you liked it. And you know, core to it is this idea of rebi, which is this idea of sunlight filtering through the trees and creating dancing shadows and just forcing you to be in the moment. Um, but I do, I think that's such a, uh, a beautiful idea. So, uh, I'm definitely excited to read that. But those are awesome.
Joachim:Well, I recommend the perfect days Again, let's, everyone needs to watch it. Ev I keep bumping into people and, and Tina and I, my wife and I, we recommend it and everyone's say, oh, I haven't heard of this one. I'm like, are you insane? This is, this is the thing that you need. You need to see a person who's just content and is absorbing every aspect of daily life. And there is yet, there is still. Deep sadness in their life. It is so, it is so wonderful. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And he's got cassette tapes. I love that. This is so, it's so cool. Yeah.
Ernest:And there is also, um, it's a beau, a fantastic soundtrack, but, um, if you look up the soundtrack on the various streaming surfaces, I think the only, so, um, thing that comes up is the one track, which is the instrumental piano version of Perfect Day. Uh, and it's really beautiful. So that's another, if you wanna kind of get a sense for the film, just listen to that and, um, it really does convey the feeling you get from the film as a whole as well. Uh, well, those are fantastic. Um, and I think that that does it for this episode. Uh, as I mentioned earlier, we do want to hear from you. Um, do you. Have experiences with anything we've recommended this week? If so, what's your perspective? Or maybe there's a product or service you'd love to hear us focus on through the lens of product and product marketing. Uh, whether it's a request, a question, or an observation, please do share your thoughts with us at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on threads@LearnMakeLearnShow, all one word and let us know if you would like us to start a discord server.
Joachim:yes, yes.
Ernest:If, if enough people are interested, um, we'll do it. Uh, now as for our next episode, we haven't talked about this prior to this, but, um, I'll, I'll run this by you on air yo with, uh, watches and Wonders coming up. What about doing another kind of, uh, whether it's a pre or post, watches and Wonders episode?
Joachim:I'm up for that. That that'll be fun. That's a good, that's a good warm up topic episode. Yeah, I'm happy. Let's, let's revisit that. Hopefully we'll get, maybe, who knows? It'll get political. You never know.
Ernest:Well, you know, the funny thing, our, our mutual friend Dan, uh, who we've both worked with, he approached me and said that he is not at all interested in watches, but he said he really enjoyed listening to our last year's watch Some Wonder's follow up episode. So, um, it seems like there's an audience for it, so.
Joachim:we got, we got one,
Ernest:Yeah, we've got one.
Joachim:one non non watch person. I think that's a big deal. So this one's for you, Dan.
Ernest:All right. So that, I think we're on then for, uh, a Watch and Wonders episode and for anyone who doesn't know Watches and Wonders is the big annual watch, um, trade show I guess that happens in Switzerland and it's going to kick off at the very end of this month and run through the beginning of April. alright, well thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us for the next Learn Make, learn.
