Learn, Make, Learn

Off-the-Cuff Smörgåsbord

• Ernest Kim, Joachim Groeger • Season 1 • Episode 27

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Ernest:

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. Well, I think we're both guilty of having hit record in what, I dunno, three, four months now. I feel, I feel bad, but I also feel good that we're back. So mixed mixture of feelings. Yeah.

Ernest:

Yep, I think you're right. Uh, well, this is episode 27, our second episode of 2025. Uh, and, uh, given that we're recording this on June 15th, it tells you just how. Un prolific we've been this year and our sincere apologies for that. But, uh, we are back and we're gonna do our best to exceed our current rate of production, of about an episode per quarter. on that, with just about three months having passed since our last episode, we thought it might be best to ease back into the swing of things with an off the cuff conversation. Uh, and um, as Joachim and I were, uh, talking through sort of the mix of topics we were interested in talking about today, Joachim offered up the title of Off the Cuff Smorgasbord, which seemed quite fitting.

Joachim:

It, it just rolls off the tongue, that's why.

Ernest:

So I think we're gonna run with that and, uh, just kind of talk about a, a mix of things. But first, I guess, how have you been?

Joachim:

Ooh. It's been a busy time, I have to say, and the world has been getting crazier. So I feel, I feel like we've always been able to have a, I don't wanna call it a partitioning, like we've allowed the influences of the outside world and reality of the state of the world to, to bleed into things that we talk about. But we always focus very much on things. But I feel like it's gonna get harder to those things out,

Ernest:

All right.

Joachim:

So I feel like there are little things that are happening in, in industry, in products, and they reflect a bigger thing and an even bigger thing. What about you, Ernest? I mean, yeah. What about you? How is it or everything?

Ernest:

Oh, you know, uh, I guess I'd say I can't complain. Um, I think absolutely I feel the same. It's, it's very, it's, um, to the point now where it's impossible to separate things that are happening in the world with the sorts of things that we, um, usually talk about. And I think that's gonna come across as we, um, kind of continue on with our topics. This episode. Uh, one thing I've done started, that's helped me I guess, a bit with managing some of this, is that I've, um, taken up running again after a very long hiatus from the sport. And that's, um, been very helpful for me. Uh, and there's a, a few reasons why I stopped running for, gosh, it's been almost 20 years.

Joachim:

Whoa. Okay. Like that's a real absence. My

Ernest:

Yeah. Uh, and then a few reasons why I've come back to it, but, um, uh, it's, it's been great and it's part of the reason why it's been, um, challenging to, to find time to record as well, because it can be pretty time consuming.

Joachim:

Running is one of those things that I guess you only really get the full benefit of. That run's high when you start hitting those longer times, right? Like it has to, you have to get past at least 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 15 minutes to really get where people get into the runner's side.

Ernest:

Right?

Joachim:

runner's high once, and that's like 15 years ago or something like that, and I never got it back again. It was such a rare, it was the one time I was running, I ran an hour and then I thought, oh my God, I could go another 30 minutes. And so I did and, and then never again. Never again. That was it one time.

Ernest:

Once was enough.

Joachim:

Yeah, I think that was it. My body said, you've, you've experienced it now. Now get on with your life.

Ernest:

Um, well in terms of our discussion, how about we start with watches? Uh, in our last episode, uh, in which we discussed AI nonsense as we titled it, uh, amongst a few other topics, we promised that we would devote a future episode to the annual Watches and Wonders trade show that took place in Geneva in early May. And so this seemed like, uh, as good a time as any to deliver on that promise. Um, Joachim, did any of the news outta Geneva catch your interest?

Joachim:

Yeah, I was, we, we discussed the last episode. We said, oh, why don't we do a, a whole episode about watches and wonders? so I started thinking about. The whole thing in general, like watches luxury items. and I tried to formulate a big thesis about is, what does the current state of watches and wonders tell us about the state of the world., And I really couldn't, I couldn't figure anything out, to be honest. I kept coming back this book called Cosmos by Don Dlo, um, which is from the early two thousands. Um, so the book is interesting because it's about this incredibly wealthy, we think quantitative trader who's made billions of dollars. the, the setup of the story is that he's riding in his limo to get to a haircut. That's what he wants to do, and he has to cut through Manhattan to do that. Um, but along the way, you know, people from his world and his company hop into the car and have conversations with him, He has a, I think it's his philosopher in residence that he calls his chief of theory, which I just, number one, the, to me, that's the job I want. I just want chief of theory, you know, that's so good. But, um, she's basically his philosopher in residence and challenges him in all kinds of things and. this section in it that just sticks in my head every time I think about watches and wonder. I'll read a little bit of it. It's, it's quite a little bit of an extended sequence, but basically she hops into the car and she starts challenging the main character, Eric, about his consumption habits. Um, and so she starts off with all wealth has become wealth for its own sake. There is no other kind of enormous wealth. Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself. And property follows. Of course, the concept of property is changing day by day. The enormous expenditures that people make for land and houses and boats and planes. This has nothing to do with traditional self assurances. Okay? Property is no longer about power, personality, and command. It's not about vulgar display or tasteful display because it no longer has weight or shape. The only thing that matters is the price you pay. So I, that just always stuck with you. She starts challenging him, the main character about like, you bought these things, not because they're good or because they're bad, but because of the price tag. And I feel like that is, as I was looking at stuff from watches and wonders, I was really having trouble getting excited about stuff, you know? So we all know that watches are already ridiculous anyway, but it feels like the, the distribution of the price points has shifted up again and. The section of the, uh, the watch market that is more mid-tier. And now mid-tier is like over 10 K, right? There's nothing, there's nothing below 10 K anymore. Everything starts at 10 K

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

and then the, the next tier is like 19 K. got very hard for me to get excited, I think. Um, yes, there were some technical innovations. Rolex released the land dweller. Is that the name? Is

Ernest:

Yes.

Joachim:

I forgot. Yeah, so Rolex released the land dweller, which has a new escapement in it. Very fancy, very nice. I mean, truly does it matter? Like we don't wear these things for the quality of the timekeeping. We wear them for some other reason. we also got new IWCs, engineers, which I was so excited to see. I was so excited to see all black watches and they had these ceramic all black engineers that were on display. It looked incredible. starting price. I mean, I don't get it. Like what is going on? So I, I come back to that piece, which is like, we're just, the watch world is compressing its price distributions to be higher and higher catering to an ever more elite clientele. uh, you know what comes of it? I don't know. The one positive side that I see though, and I've been trying to like, about these things, about wealth distributions being very skewed and very unequal. Inequality per se is not a problem. But it's the extent and the extreme, this degree of inequality that's so crazy now. I had a conversation with, my wife, we were talking about, I always love saying this because it's very controversial. I say, well, you should tax the wealth away. Compress the income distribution so that things get a little less crazy. then you take the money that has been taxed and you just burn it. Just set fire to it, you know, because it's too tempting for governments to have that money because they'll do dodgy things. It's just, just too much temptation in the system. And then my wife counted with, well, you know, buying watches is kind of like that, isn't it? And I thought, yeah, actually it really is. Like, it's such a stupid expense. And when you see the UR meals that cost, you know, a million dollars, you go, that's actually, yes. Buy more of those, burn your money on that because the negative consequences for the rest of the world are very, very limited. But they does, it does erode your wealth, you know, quite quickly if you buy a few million of those, you'll be done. So, from that perspective, maybe the watch industry unwittingly is providing us with a wealth tax of some kind and maybe things will be better. I don't know. But kind of where I was coming. So I, I know we would, normally, we talk about the specific watches, but I was finding it very difficult to get excited and, maybe that is part of like the reality of the world creeping in to something that is so, um, you know, watches and wonders appearing in the middle of 2025 when so many terrible things are happening. It's quite interest. Interesting. It was a interesting to see the influences go on about. Watches as if nothing else was really going on in the world, you know? So, yeah. What's your take on this? Is yours more focused on the specific launches that got you motivated or were you seeing a kind of dissonance with, with what they were doing and where the world was at?

Ernest:

I had a similar reaction and I actually think, um, the show was affected in that, if I remember right, the tariffs, the. Trump terrorists were announced either the day before or the day that the show started.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

So, um, it cast the pall on the, the show as a whole. It was, you know, certainly a, a huge topic of conversation there from what I've heard. And then obviously, uh, amongst those, watching it from, um, the outside as well. But one quick thing, the, um, that kind of excerpt from Cosmopolis that you mentioned and kind of your follow up, uh, thought about just burning the ex excess capital, it, it brought to mind, uh, this amazing. Interview I read a while back, uh, it was of, uh, the interview was of, uh, an academic and author named W David Marks, and it was conducted by Derek Guy. Marks is an American academic and author who's been based in Tokyo for over a decade now. His primary focus is the intersection of fashion and culture and with a particular focus on men's wear. And Derek Guy is a Canadian American writer who also focuses on men's wear and is probably better known as his online norm de plume, which is die work wear. He's, uh, uses that same handle on, uh, x and, uh, threads and, um, you know, all over. And so, um, this interview was published in 2023 on a menswear focused website called, put This on. And we'll, we'll share a link to the interview as well, but I, I'll just share one quick excerpt, which is related to what you were just talking about. So, uh, uh, Derek Guy asks this question, he says. Work wear was historically associated with low status groups such as day laborers, not old money elites. Why would people in the professional class try to adopt the cultural aesthetic of day laborers, which in your rubric are labeled as having low status? And so Marx replies with the following. This is one of the reasons why we have to be careful with how we think about status. 200 years ago, high status just meant wealth. The 20th century is interesting because we started to romanticize low status groups that didn't have much material wealth, but seemed to be authentic. Quote unquote, elites used the styles from and knowledge about marginalized groups to elevate their own status position in society. This also happened with work wear, but it's important to recognize that the aesthetic is always based in the wardrobe of an idealized laborer from a previous economic era. People are rarely copying the actual work clothes used today in society. Fashion, fetishizes, industrial labor at a time when service jobs are ascendant and industrial labor is in decline, end of quote. So I thought that was a really interesting observation. Um, and kind of offers a little bit of a framework on how to interpret some of these things we're seeing where, you know, um, this, uh, kind of reemergence of watches, um, as being maybe, uh, an expression of this fetishization of this previous era, this sort of idealized era. Right. which I think is just such an interesting thing because this whole work war thing is so interesting to me as well. Like, why are

Joachim:

yeah.

Ernest:

rich people adopting work wear? Just seems so. Yeah,

Joachim:

And we, and also like military garb, all these things kind of persist in this funny way.

Ernest:

right. Uh, but you know, as he observes, it's always of this previous time, you know, they're not celebrating the workers of today,

Joachim:

that's right.

Ernest:

right? It's always of this previous kind of rosier time, I guess. Um, and, and it just, it, it made me think about is that the same role that watches are playing,

Joachim:

Hmm.

Ernest:

in this time? Um, and you know, it does tally with the fact that the most popular watches are tool watches,

Joachim:

Yes.

Ernest:

right? Quote unquote tool watches, which, you know,

Joachim:

Yeah,

Ernest:

how much can a$10,000 watch be a tool watch? Um, so that's a bit, bit of a tangent, but I, I, overall, I came away with a very similar sort of feeling of, um. You know, not, not being able to be particularly excited about anything that came out of the show with one exception. Um, and that was from Nomos, my, probably my favorite brand. Um, and it's because it, they really do go against what you talked about, this trend towards everything just getting so expensive, you know, you know, mid-market being now$10,000, but they introduced a watch called the, uh, Club Sport Neomatik Worldtimer. And, um, you know, this is insane to say that this is an, a reasonably priced watch, but it retails for, uh,$4,720 us. But that is, you know, in this world actually a pretty reasonable offering for what it's doing. So, um, again, and also here too, a lot of people argue that it's not truly a worldtimer and, you know, whatever.

Joachim:

What is it about World Timer watches? There's something about World timer watches where everyone has an opinion about how this is not really a world timer watch,

Ernest:

Yeah,

Joachim:

keep track of two time zones, blah, blah, blah. Anyway,

Ernest:

yeah.

Joachim:

about this complication that gets people very motivated, and I don't very, is a beautiful watch though, but, sorry. You should continue on this.

Ernest:

no, no. But so, you know, it's great is that it's, it's a watch that, uh, enables you to track time across multiple time zones very easily. Uh, nomos has offered world time and multi-time zone watches for many years now.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

But what's different about this one is that it does come in a much more sporty form factor. Historically, their world time watches have been a little bit more dressy. Their, uh, Zurich, uh, Weltzeit has been kind of the best known of their world timers when it's a very dressy sort of watch. Beautiful, but very dressy. So this one is much more sport sporty. Uh, the, the new, uh, club sport is, as the name suggests, their sport is model line. And what's really interesting is that one of the. Uh, most common critiques of nomos is that this measurement that watch geeks called lug to lug, which is to say just the distance between the top end of the lugs. Uh, you know, if you're looking at your watch, the very top of the, you know, the arms of the watch and then to the very bottom of the arms of the watch, um, that total length measurement, nomos watches tend to be quite long in that measurement. Uh, but in this case, they, um, significantly reduced that lu to lug. So the, the, diameter is 40 millimeters, which is quite small for this sort of, uh, a complication, the world timer. And then that lug to lug measurement is 48 millimeters, which is very reasonable for the size of the watch and actually quite a bit shorter than all of the other incarnations of the. Club sport in this size. So they seem to have taken that critique to heart, uh, Nomos. And it's also only 9.9 millimeters thick, which is very, very thin

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

for this complication. So, um, I just, it, well, and then beyond all the numbers, it's also just really fun. The way it's executed is very fun and playful. It's, uh, offered in two. Colorways, I guess you might call it, um, that are part of the kind of permanent collection. Uh, and they're both very nice. But in addition to those two, um, standard colorways, nomos offered six limited edition colorways. What's great is that they're not, uh, upcharged, they're the same price and there're these just really fun combinations of colors. There's this really vibrant yellow, an orange, a red, um, a very nice subdued blue. So, um, really having fun and offering something that's really fun and at, you know, again, in this world, an accessible price point. So that's the one watch that really stood out to me as, um, kind of standing apart from, you know, a lot of the other things that you mentioned, which were all very much, uh, in this higher price point. I don't know if I mentioned this, but, um, nomos has it, it can be a little bit difficult to find in person in the US in, in Germany, the, the top selling watch brand. But, um, in the US they're not quite as widely distributed. Uh, but they recently opened up, um, a showroom in New York. And, uh, when I was, it, it just, I think they had opened it up like just a week or two before I was in New York, late last year. And, um, you have to make an appointment, but, uh, it's, it's very straightforward and I was able to visit and it was just such a great experience. Like, to your point of knowing who they are,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

everything about the experience was true to the brand. It was very accessible. The staff were so friendly. They, you know, really encouraged me to try everything on, you know,

Joachim:

Nice.

Ernest:

there was no sense of, um, you know, needing to buy anything. Uh, and this was just before the Christmas holidays and. They, um, uh, sent me home with like a bunch of really cool little, little knickknacks gifts. Uh, you know, there was a catalog and their catalogs are really beautiful.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

uh, there was this really fantastic little like, um, what do you call it? I forget. It's like those old classic toys where you would look in into a, uh, a device and you'd see an image, you know, you'd have to put it up against the light,

Joachim:

Mm-hmm.

Ernest:

and then you could kind of hit a button and it would switch between a bunch of different images.

Joachim:

Oh, I know what you mean.

Ernest:

Yeah, I forgot what that's called. But, uh, it, it was in the form of an old fashioned tv and the images were all images of, uh, the nomos, um, manufacture in, uh, Glashutte.

Joachim:

Oh, very

Ernest:

yeah. And, you know, little things like that. It was just such a awesome experience. Um, so yeah, I, I absolutely agree that I feel like they're, they're a brand who really understands who they are, but also understands the moment. Um, one last thing I'll mention. I think a brand that really missed the moment, I think too is Tag Heuer, they, uh, re-released their F1 collection of watches.

Joachim:

that's right. Yeah.

Ernest:

And, uh, for people who aren't necessarily watch nerds, like, I don't remember when this, the original F1 collection came to market, but it was like, you know, decades ago,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

they were really cheap and cheerful watches, you know, like kind of like the equivalent of a GShock back then. There were analog. But, uh, quartz based plastic cases, really fun, super colorful watches, and, you know, very, very affordable. Um, you know, even back then would've been very affordable. I forget, you know, off the top of my head what the prices were, but they were meant to be cheap and cheerful.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

And, you know, there, you know, has been this sort of cult following for them, uh, that's built over the years. And so a lot of people were very excited that TAG was bringing them back and so they introduced them. But I think when people saw the price tag, which is I think, uh, 1900 US for Quartz powered watches, it just, all the air went out of the room, you know, because it was just like, man, you guys totally missed the moment here.

Joachim:

Exactly.

Ernest:

Well. So let's go from watches to something that I think you're a lot more excited about, Joachim, which was the surprise reveal of a new American car maker called Slate Auto, that happened just about a month ago. Um, can you talk about Slate and what has you so excited about it?

Joachim:

Yeah, I mean, they just snuck out of nowhere. They've been operating in stealth mode for a while it feels like. But I guess if you had, maybe if you were attention to automotive, uh, trends and industry news, I mean, maybe you would've realized to these people, the people who've made this company are known, they've been in the industry before. Some have been like head of designs at Volvo, so there's pedigree at this company. It's Bezos backed, which made me kind of not so happy. But anyway, the point is these, the product is something quite interesting. So. If the federal incentives for electric cars remain in place, this will be an electric car that will cost under$20,000, is, you know, unbelievable nowadays. Like everything is just going crazy price wise. And so, they've managed to do a lot of, make, made a lot of clever choices here to get the price point to be that level. So it is just a pickup truck. It's not super big. Um, and it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. It's so you can change the shape of this little pickup truck. it can be turned into a small SUV, or just a, like a, like a Range Rover style, SUV with like a hatchback feel to it. Or it can look like an old fashioned jeep. It's, it has this very retro feel to it very clever. but. Then there are a couple of other choices that I thought were really, really interesting. So no electric windows, again, you're going to bring back the little turn down the window thing. built in screens, entertainment system. All that they have is a dock and a built in speaker system, of course. But you put your device on this dock and it. That's your screen. You wanna put an old iPad in there? That's your new screen. It makes sense. We use our phones for everything. I mean, what is Apple CarPlay? What is Android car? Uh, what is, sorry?

Ernest:

Yeah. Android Auto. Yeah.

Joachim:

Auto. I mean, they're just screen mirroring essentially. So why not just put the damn thing on the, on there and be done with the job, which I think I might have asked for in a previous episode. So they stripped out that they stripped out the screens. And then they started doing other things as well that I thought was really interesting. The car only comes in one color and they've, um, built it out of this material that is been treated. So it's as if it has been painted, but they don't paint it. It's just been fabricated from scratch to be, uh, resistant to all of the elements. So as a result of that, they don't have a paint shop in their assembly line, which is a huge, huge expense and, uh, a huge pollutant. So they got rid of that. Um, so if you want to change the color of your car, no problem. They've optimized it to be reputable. So you can go to a dealer when they have their dealer network and they'll wrap the car for you in any color that you want, you buy the wrapping kit and you do it yourself. It's supposed to be relatively straightforward for, uh, a person to do it themselves. And then similarly, you can change the shape of the car yourself with some tools. It's just a lot of clever little choices that I think, are just what we need right now in this moment of over the top everything. So they have core things that you'd always want in a car, like safety features, a, b, s, all the stuff that you'd want NAC, then all of the other things that feel superfluous are just taken out. this thing is a hardy little truck and it has, know, the same, um, truck Bay area as some of the bigger trucks. So Maverick, uh, Chevy Silverado, all of those things which are like twice the size, bigger monstrosities, they get the same damn si size and everything in a smaller truck. Um, so I think there's just been a lot of, what I've always asked for from cars is like, strip stuff out. don't, you know, most people don't want this stuff, but of course. That's where the margin comes from. Like you put in these things and then you can charge a bigger margin on a car. Slate is such a counterpoint to this. It's they're doing exactly what I want. So that's what it is. I'm just very happy that it feels like I've been heard and someone has said, you know, it is possible to strip down a car and it is possible to actually make it economical, to produce, environmentally friendly to produce, because you're getting rid of a lot of crap that you don't need, like paint shops. and you're making it modular so people feel a connection to their car again, that they own it, and then they can control it and they can do things. So very, it's very nice to see someone trying to do that. It don't know how many people are gonna get excited about this. I do think from a broader perspective, we do need to move back into that world because we are wasting so many resources on very, very foolish things. And um, that excess is costing us something. It's just not, we're not internalizing it, but it will come back. We're wasting computer chips, we're wasting plastics and batteries and all of this stuff, LCD screens for nonsense. So nice to see that least there is a model of an alternative that could be built. So that's, that's what got me excited about this compared to everything else that's, you know, on the road. So have you seen, did you follow along what the, when they announced their stuff or were you just catching up recently?

Ernest:

No, no, I did catch it, uh, when it was announced, and it does seem like, um, it caught everyone by surprise. Even the automotive press, it seemed like most people were, were hadn't, you know, had no idea what was happening. So it was pretty impressive that they were able to get to the level of development that they've, um, attained, uh, completely in secret, which is pretty remarkable.

Joachim:

yeah.

Ernest:

and I, I think. I have high hopes for their success because of the price point, because of

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

this time we're in. I do think that, um, there's a big, uh, market and, you know, growing market of people who, you know, are willing to forego some of those, uh, bells and whistles for, um, el more affordable price point. And those things like eliminating the paint, but making it, um, easy to wrap, I think is so clever because that's just building on existing behaviors. Um, you know, one thing that struck me, I, uh, I've been kind of a fan of Rivian and it's not, I don't think that well known, but they, the, the current versions of the R one T truck and R one SSUV externally, they look the same as the original versions, but. They've, uh, uh, I think it was late last year, they introduced it like a second gen update,

Joachim:

mm-hmm.

Ernest:

uh, where the, a lot of the guts have been updated even though they, externally they look the same. But one of the things they Rivian mentioned was that as part of this update, they were able to reduce the amount of cabling in the cars by 1.6 miles.

Joachim:

Whoa.

Ernest:

So, you know, there's still quite a bit of cabling, but you know, to imagine how much cabling there was total. When they're able to cut it down by 1.6 miles and, uh, 44 pounds just of, of cabling, of electrical cabling. So, you know, really speaks the, to the amount of complexity and, you know, not only is it wasteful, those are all things that can go wrong,

Joachim:

Yes.

Ernest:

which is why so many. Um, I think I, I heard recently that, uh, EVs generally have the lowest, uh, customer satisfaction because

Joachim:

Hmm.

Ernest:

there's all these little bells and whistles that have a tendency to, to break. So I think that, um, there's just a lot of, uh, of wisdom in this approach they're taking. I, and I think there's some other interesting things, um, in similar, along similar lines that are coming out that I'm really excited about. we might have talked about this, but Kia a couple years ago unveiled this new, um, highly modular. Um, EV platform for commercial vehicles like commercial vans and trucks. Uh, and so, you know, they could take the same exact platform very easily, turn it into a truck or a van. Um, but la late last year, they also showed an rv. A consumer, uh, focused RV built on that same platform. And I, I think it looks fantastic. We'll include a link in the show notes to it, but, um, it's said to be, uh, because of its modular nature, very, um, uh, pretty affordable. I mean, I guess we'll see the first versions, the commercial, uh, versions of the vehicles are supposedly gonna come out this year in Korea and Europe.

Joachim:

Oh

Ernest:

Um, so it's not just a concept now, it's, it's gonna be real pretty soon. So that one's pretty interesting. Um, the, uh, RV concept they showed is called the weak weekender, but with no vowels, which is kinda lame, but.

Joachim:

incredible. Wow. Talk about like being a little bit late to the party,

Ernest:

Yeah, exactly. But I think the car itself was pretty cool. Not just, uh, aesthetically, but they, they had some really interesting ideas around functionality, uh, and modularity within the car itself, uh, to make it much more useful. Um, and then, uh, we may have talked about this, uh, in a previous episode as well, but Toyota, a few years back also unveiled this modular commercial vehicle platform, um, based on the Hilux, which is kind of this legendary pickup truck that's not available in the US but is available, um, in a lot of markets outside the us. Uh, there was, there's for top gear fans, there's that, uh. You know, amazing episode where they tried to break a Hilux and they couldn't do it. But, um, so it's cool to see that, uh, this seems to be in the water. This idea of trying to deliver something that is a little bit more affordable, that is a little bit more, more modular to, um, work for some a, a wider spectrum of needs, uh, and is a little bit more bare bones.'cause all these concepts are a little bit more bare bones as well. So, um, hopefully this is a sign of more things to come. And, uh, do you did, um, uh, they mentioned a release dates late auto

Joachim:

I think they said, uh, last quarter of next year

Ernest:

Wow.

Joachim:

that was the goal. Um, so see if, uh, if all of the optimizations to make this as straightforward to put together hold true. I hope so.

Ernest:

Yeah. Oh, that'd still be really exciting. Um, I don't know if you want to talk at all about, uh, apple's, uh, developer, uh, event that happened last week. I,

Joachim:

Yeah, yeah, let's go there. Let's get, let's get Apple into the room. I do feel like this was a good example of just typical business opposed to product innovation. Um, uh, one, one of the big things, um, the thing, one of the things that caught my eye was liquid glass, which is the new visual language for interfaces. So I stumbled on a substack post on, uh, hacker News, which is why Combinators, like read it, clone for specifically technology news. And this one was placed quite high, I just read through it and I'm not even sure who this person is. The substack was only put together like 16 days ago. But, um, here a couple of tidbits that they put together about liquid glass. so they said Apple doesn't just change design for aesthetic reasons. Each major visual overhaul has proceeded a fundamental shift in how we interact with technology. Skew morphic design made sense when touchscreens were new. design emerged when users had internalized touch interactions and no longer needed heavy visual scaffolding. Um, and then they continue. So I. They talk about liquid glasses, technological complexity. So the real time blurs, dynamic transparency effects and contextual lighting requires serious GPU horsepower and optimized rendering pipelines. It's the kind of feature that runs silky smooth on an iPhone with apple silicon, but might start on competing hardware. creates what economists call a complimentary good effect. The new design language makes apple's hardware more valuable by showcasing capabilities that other competitors can't easily match. similar to how retina displays created a virtuous cycle. High resolution screens made iOS look better, which drove demand for Apple devices, which justified the cost of those expensive displays on and on and on and on. So this person's very much like, Ooh, isn't this amazing? I was, this is another moment of like, where I look at this and go like, this is just excess. this. This is why. Why do I need to have GPU horsepower to render an interface? Then now moving to this new level of design with reflections and refractions and lights interacting with these surfaces as if they're real. We all understand that this is in preparation for augmented reality, et cetera. Great. But this is using computational power for something that. It's fundamentally not really adding very much to the actual experience in my view. So we have GPUs everywhere. The phones are so expensive now. You need to have a justification for that thing to exist and to run. And, and this idea that this somehow highlights Apple's hardware, like surely the whole point of having it in there is that it should be self-evident. Why it's better to have that, why do you have to now ex, you know, use more of it in a visual way? It just sounds foolish and, and very excessive, you know? You just have to burn through GPUs to prove something. I don't get it. it reminded me also actually of early discussions about GUIs graph user interfaces back in the day. And, um, there's a really interesting little bit from Spectrum from which is IEE, the Institute of Electrical Engineering or something that, that's like a academic organization for electrical engineers, computer scientists that's been around forever. And they have a little blog about graphical user interfaces and they were discussing, um, something as simple as windows overlapping each other, which we now take for granted. So I can drag a window across, and then it's kind of covering the other window. back in the day, that wasn't obviously true. When they would do it, they would just kind of tile them back. So it would look like a stack of windows, and then you would kind of see the, the headings of the windows, and you could just like, get into that window, say, okay, that's the window I wanted. But when you started like overlapping them and and obscuring, uh, components from the previous window, you would then have to have full awareness of where this new window on top of it sits. What the, what's behind the behind it, what's being displayed on there, and how it gets obscured. It's a ton of computational power. And really the question is, is that really useful? Like, is that I, I don't, when I thought about it for a second, I was like, actually I just need to know what is in the window. I don't need to know that. Like half the text is cut off and the cut, you know, we've taken that for granted and we then again believe that was, that is necessary. That is the normal state. And I don't, I don't know if that's necessarily true, especially when you think about how Apple does the iOS thing, the double click to home button or whatever motion you

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

you see all the windows tiled, right? There's no need for the stacking'cause they know it's a waste of time, but,

Ernest:

Hm.

Joachim:

but now liquid is glass is the new thing we have to do. So feel like it's another one of those excess things. And Apple, you know, they make mistakes. I think the idea that we have to always rationalize their choices is these super clever things. It's also getting tired, you know? Come on,

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

keyboards. Butterfly keyboards. The worst, worst keyboards ever. So. What about you and what were you thinking?

Ernest:

Uh, there were two things that came to mind and one of them, uh, intersects with what you just talked about. So this first one, it was really more about, um, uh, it's a little bit of inside baseball, but for the last, I think 10 years now, uh, as part of the overall Worldwide Developers conference, series of events, Apple's executives have participated in, in an interview with, uh, a Apple journalist called John Gruber. He's a long time, I guess blogger, uh, focused on Apple. Um, and you know, back in the day, Steve Jobs was an avid reader of his blog. Um, and so for the last 10 years, uh, Gruber was able to get Apple Executives to, um, you know, sit for an interview with him. And, uh, this was an event that was, um, open to, to, um, uh, attendees as well. And it was for a lot of, uh, developers who attended the conference. It was a kind of a highlight of the week, but, uh, a few, maybe two months ago or so, Gruber wrote the scathing post criticizing Apple Intelligence. Uh, and the fact that they showed off these features at last year's W-D-C-W-W-D-C,

Joachim:

mm-hmm.

Ernest:

that it turned out weren't anywhere near ready to be brought to market. And so Apple had to come out and explicitly say, actually, these features aren't ready. The crazy thing though is that they had created advertising promoting these specific features, and they aired these ads, you know, for months. And yet they knew internally that these features were not gonna be ready anytime soon. And, uh, uh, couple months ago they came out and said, actually, these features aren't gonna be ready. Um. Uh, for like a year. Uh, the, the language they used at the time was ambiguous. And then finally in ww DC this year, they said, oh, it's not gonna, they aren't gonna come out till next year,

Joachim:

Wow.

Ernest:

spring. And so Gruber, um, he actually started the post criticizing himself saying, I shouldn't have taken them at face value. You know, I, I, which is kind of to this point of your post that you're making that Oh, yeah. Liquid gloss. It's like obviously a setup to some genius thing down the road. Like, you know, he kind of said, I, I did the same thing. Apple had just such a good track record of delivering on the things they promised that he just, uh, took it at face value that oh yeah, these features are gonna launch and, and do what they said they were gonna do. But, you know, clearly they weren't anywhere near ready to go and he really excoriated them for that. And kind of talked about the fact that it was a sign to him of, of some, you know, a rot at the core of Apple, essentially.

Joachim:

Wow.

Ernest:

And I, I, I think it was a very fair piece because for Apple to have done that, to have shared these very specific features,

Joachim:

Yeah,

Ernest:

you know, and make these very specific promises and then, and, you know, and have now be like a year and a half late or two years late to deliver them. That's,

Joachim:

crazy.

Ernest:

yeah, that's

Joachim:

Everything app. That was the Jobsian thing, right? Everything Apple announces will be available.

Ernest:

right.

Joachim:

now, it was always, that was kind of like, and this will be available, you know, now just put your orders in. I, I mean, that, that was their whole thing, so I think they abused that trust

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

keep that thing going.

Ernest:

And so I think Gruber very rightfully, um, articulated that and highlighted that. But, uh, in the aftermath of that, Apple's executive declined to participate in a, you know, that kind of annual event of, uh, sitting with Gruber,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

I think was very, uh, disappointingly thin skinned, I guess I'd say. Um. And to me it, it, it reminded me of Worldwide Developers Conference from 1997, which was the year that, uh, Steve Jobs returned to Apple at the time, still as a consultant to the CEO, but he participated in a q and a session with developers. Um, and fortunately, a recording of this session still exists. We'll provide a link to it in the show notes.

Joachim:

this is, this one's legendary.

Ernest:

it's incredible. Uh, and so I highly recommend that people watch it. It's, it's remarkable for a bunch of different reasons. There's, there's some great questions, uh, from the audience of developers. Uh, but in particular there's this, uh, exchange. With someone who, um, starts off his quote unquote question by saying, you don't know what you're talking about to Steve Jobs.

Joachim:

Mm-hmm.

Ernest:

And then he asks a question about this thing called Open Doc, which was a technology that Jobs killed when he came back to Apple. And then, uh, this person ends his question with, uh, and what personally have you been doing for the past seven years? Basically saying, you know, you're, you, you're not, you don't really amount to anything. And I think it was a remarkable one that that sort of exchange was possible. And Steve Jobs's response to it, I think was remarkable as well.'cause he didn't say, you know, get out

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

security. Take this guy outta here. He answered his question. Um, and in that exchange was something that I think is really powerful that again connects back to the point you made about liquid glass. So he. I think it was in, in the, his answer to that question or that comment was he said, you've gotta start with the customer, customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. And I've made this mistake probably more than anyone else in this room. And I've got the scar tissue to prove it. Uh, and I know that it's the case. And as we've tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with what incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer? Not starting with, let's sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and how are we gonna market that? unquote, so where I think that connects to your point about liquid glasses, I think you could. Replace in that sentence. Engineers with designers, you know, I feel like Liquid Glass was, let's sit down with the designers and out what awesome design we can come up with and how we're gonna market that. Versus starting with that, you know, customer experience and working back to the technology it, struck me for a couple reasons there. One, how thin skinned Apple's become, uh, and the where they've just seemed to have lost their way of. I think there, I think the Vision Pro is a great example of starting with the technology versus starting with the customer experience and then liquid glasses starting with the design instead of the customer experience. So, um, that was one thing. You know, one other thing I'll mention is that there was a really remarkably prescient question from one of the developers asking about agent software,

Joachim:

Oh.

Ernest:

you know, is now very relevant as everyone's talking about agent ticket, ai, blah, blah, blah. And I think Steve Jobs answer is also really, really interesting. So again, we'll provide a link to this video. It's an amazing watch. It's over an hour long. It's uh, uh, an amazing session. So the second thing that I was really surprised by and as a fan of Apple worries me is, uh, someone mentioned this, but he said, this is Apple playing small ball. And I'd say it's Apple playing small ball in the midst of a seismic shift in the industry, right? I mean, there is this seismic, whatever you think of ai.

Joachim:

Hmm.

Ernest:

It's a huge change.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

It's gonna impact the industry in big ways and lasting ways. And you know, in the middle of that Apple's talking about your icon colors and, you know, the refraction of fake glass, uh, in an interface. Um, and, and I think that's really worrisome. You know, o obviously they're doing it because they have to, right? That's, they, they didn't have anything more substantive that they could actually

Joachim:

yeah.

Ernest:

talk about. But this here again, reminded me of something from the past, which was Bill Gates' legendary internet tidal Wave memo. Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but this was, um. From 1995, uh, just for context, I'll share a quote from Fast Company. So they're saying, explaining here in the spring of 1995, thanks to the rapid commercialization of the worldwide web, the world was on the cusp of the internet era, a shift with profound implications from Microsoft. The company that dominated PC software, its co-founder and CEO Bill Gates, responded with a five alarm internal memo, quote unquote the internal title, uh, the internet tidal wave that gave the highest level of importance to responding to this challenge in the most sweeping, ambitious manner possible. And just three months after this memo, uh, the MSN or Microsoft Network was launched, which was, uh, you know, it turned out to be ill faded, but it was at least the, the beginnings of a response. Um, but I, I don't, I don't, so one, I, this came to mind because it feels like we're in a similar sort of period of, of huge change. But what's striking to me is that, you know, whereas Bill Gates back then recognized the change, uh, we'll provide a link to the memo.'cause it's remarkable. He was, he saw it all, he got, he really understood what was happening in the challenge. And so it was so impressive to me to see that, uh, someone at that level who, you know, I think some, sometimes CEOs can be kind of outta touch, but he, he got it. Um, so compare that to Tim Cook at the Sears, WWDC, where the only media that Tim Cook did around the event was to promote this upcoming F1 movie, which is, is striking. Like, so if you look at all of the interviews, it's all, um, anything that has to do with actual features and products. We're, we're all Craig Federighi. Um, and their, uh, head of product marketing, I forget his name, the legendary guy with an Apple's been around, but it's not as well known. So it's just the two of them that did all those kind of product focus interviews, whereas the only interviews that, uh, Tim Cook did were about this F1 movie, which, uh, you know, whatever the movie might be. Interesting, but. Man, talk about, uh,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

you know, in the middle of this seismic shift in the industry, you've got your, the CEO of the company talking about a movie that's coming up and hanging out with, uh, Louis Hamilton, the F1 driver, instead of talking about this incredible shift that's happening, you know, and maybe, hey, wouldn't it be great if Tim Cook talked about why they missed, you know, this promise they made last year, um, and what they're gonna do to kind of improve on this, this huge, uh, gaff. So that's, that was the second thing that struck me was, man, it just seemed like a really weird, uh, misplaced priorities. And also, are they even understanding the magnitude of what's happening, um, as they kind of are like, you know, basically the interface, the product equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Joachim:

I think that what's, you know what's really interesting? We've been crapping on Apple. It's very easy now, but, um, um, a couple of days ago, we're recording on June 15th. So last week, Apple's AI research group released a paper where they kind of went through some of the agentic AI and the latest reasoning, sorry, not agentic, higher level reasoning, uh, chatbots um, damning damning results there. Um. These LLMs failing on basic puzzles that children can eventually do and also stumbling on exactly the same spots as humans would do. is so funny because I think most of the defenses were, well, humans can't do it, so why would you expect an LM to do? It's like, that's a fricking point of the LLM, you idiot. That's the whole point. It's supposed to be better than us. Um, so I, all of that to say that as with everything out of touch, CEO does not know what the product is, does not understand where they are, does not have a vision for where they want to go. Like even if he just said like, we're not doing this AI crap, or We're not gonna

Ernest:

Right,

Joachim:

we're gonna do

Ernest:

right.

Joachim:

just take a freaking position and talk about the technology that your job, we think in the traditional sense, and you have the people that are able to pause the complexity of the, the current moment and evaluate it, it seems like reasonably dispassionately. But again, I think it would require the CEO to engage with the technology, engage with some of these details, be in a learning position as opposed to a position of just like what feels right. And that's why I feel like, yeah, talking about the F1 movie is way, way easier. Right? It's just hell we got. It does look good though, and, and IWC is a big feature on this sponsorship. Their name is plastered in all of the cars as

Ernest:

Right, right.

Joachim:

um, and there's a whole lot of watch stuff going on. We'll, we'll talk about that in another time, maybe. But yeah, it's, um, pretty interesting that is the thing that he chose to, to, to talk about, you know, uh, as opposed to the stuff that there are people in the company thinking about these things deeply.

Ernest:

Oh,

Joachim:

so

Ernest:

one last thing, you know, to your point about, hey, he, he could as a CEO say, Hey, we're not gonna do this. Right? And that's one of the things that I, I thought was so awesome about that 1997 WDC video with jobs.'cause he talks about why they're not, why they killed Open Dock. And,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

uh, I won't go into it, but basically Opend doc is exactly the sort of technology that technologists love. I remember I was a big, uh, apple fan at the time and, and I thought, thought Opend doc was so cool. But there was, there was, there was no consumer facing side to it. It was just the technology that was cool.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

he Jobs had the wisdom to understand that even though. As you'll see if you watch that video, a lot of developers loved it because it was just this kind of cool idea. But he said, you know, no, there's not, there's no there, there when it comes to the consumer benefit. So, you know, as a company that's like 90 days away from being insolvent, we need to focus on the things that are gonna matter to our customers and potential customers. And so, you know, that's, I think that's what I, this is gonna sound like Steve Jobs worship, but that was what was so impressive about him is that he wasn't a programmer, but he had the ability to understand enough and then the willingness to make these very big decisions, um, and say no, you know, I think that's probably the most important thing someone at that level can do, is to say no to the right things. And,

Joachim:

enough evidence now that it feels like. We are, we are living in an era where CEOs don't wanna say yes or no.

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

wanna be on both sides, and they wanna play both things. And they want to have plausible deniability about they should have said no earlier about, oh no, we were looking at the metrics. It reminds me again, sorry, apple. The, the electric car thing.

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

I think you've mentioned that there's a lot of discussion about every round with Tim Cook was

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

if we just got some more metrics, or if we got some

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

measurements and just say, no, dude. Like take a stand. But no, it's easier to keep it rolling and then you can, and then eventually it dies when it's so obvious it needs to die. Yeah. What a, what a waste.

Ernest:

Right, right. All right. But enough about Apple. I think you've mentioned there was something else you wanted to talk about too.

Joachim:

I stumbled on this Discord blog, discord, of course, the developer of a huge, hugely popular chat platform equivalent to Slack. I mean, essentially the same thing, but very much geared towards gamers. Um, you have the same notion of, um, you know. Company spaces. Well instead you have a Discord server, which a person controls and there's moderators. So it's very much, like mini Reddits, mini chat rooms, things like that with a little bit more, um, structure around how people interact with each other. There are moderators, of course, that are there to keep things clean and Discord provides moderators with extra tooling so they can do those things. So that's the thing that differentiates it from Slack. So Discord is a hugely popular platform and, as everyone does in these technology companies, they write blogs about all the cool engineering that happens. And the title of this blog was How Discord indexes Trillions of Messages. Why do you need to index trillions of messages? Well, because every time I'm searching for a message in my Discord server, it has to go into the database and it's got a pull information about the message I care about. Um. And so this is actually a sequel to a 2017 blog post, which is called How Discord Indexes Billions of Messages. So, uh, and so, know, I mean, here's like a representative paragraph, maybe. They said, we designed our such infrastructure to be performant, cost-effective, scalable, and easy use. We chose to use elastic search with discord messages, chartered over indices, the logical namespace for elastic search messages on two elastic search closets. Messages were charted either by discord server or direct message. This allowed us to store all Gil's messages together for Facebook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, who cares? I really was very stressed out. I was thinking, is this really necessary? Because if I wanted to make an alternative app wasn't discord. And didn't do, do I really need to do this work? It's something that I, I struggle with in all of the technology companies because I always see the degree of complexity that emerges. I think I've alluded to this in the past, the over reliance on the cloud, the idea that everything should sit in the cloud and the cloud does all the work. So it's kind of weird, like, why do I have to index all of these messages as a central entity? Well, I am the Oracle Discord cloud is the Oracle for all discord servers. what the engineers are doing is they have to make this infrastructure scale be performant, resilient, they have to do this for everyone. Um, and so I was just thinking to myself, it has to be some sort of alternative. And so I was, again, I. I talking to my wife as I was ranting about this, I said, look at this nonsense. and I said, you know, I don't understand what happened to the old internet peer to peer back in the day when I wanted to connect with you, I would connect with you directly. You know, I would just send you a message or I would, um, send a file just to you. being of course the most famous example of a peer-to-peer protocol. But then later on, uh, later on, Limewire was part of that bit torrent, which still exists. Another highly optimized, um, protocol for peer-to-peer sharing. I mean, these services, that's how we used to do stuff before cloud, before centralized servers. And I was thinking, why aren't we doing that? That is, we have powerful computers. have powerful internet. Why do I need a central Oracle to handle everything? At the end of the day, if I'm only a member on five discord servers or one Discord server, I should only care about the messages in my Discord server. What happens now is when I hit the cloud, there's an efficient routing mechanism for my request, but it still has to pull from everything that's in out there that within that sub, um, sub, um, domain that they've parceled off for me. But it's still through everything almost, you know? So, but if I just have like five friends in my Discord group and we've just been online for one month, that should just sit on my laptop. You know, I, why is that not a thing? And so that got me thinking like, what is the problem with peer-to-peer messaging? Why can't I have a slack that is peer-to-peer where I just message you when I message you? And then you start thinking through the problem. You go like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, um, if I'm online and you're offline, well, all I can do is I can send my message. And then if you're not there, you're not there to receive it. There's no central oracle that will receive the message and then pass it on to you. the only way you'll get that message is if I come online and you're online, and then the message gets sent to you. Okay? That's the weakness in the system. What if someone else is online? That's part of our server. So I want to send, you know, node A, a message, but node B is online. Well, when I send the message, shouldn't I just send the parcel and the archive of new messages to node B and then when node A comes back online, B can pass that to them. So we could just have the archive be moved around all the time. And the only way we could have total failure of the system is no one is online.

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

if someone just leaves their laptop on, they would be online all the time or whatever. Like there's a way to do this and okay, it's a small cost. There's a risk that we might miss a message. But in that sense, it's not bad. Like we could have the full archive and such and, and like this is, this seems straightforward. This is very kind of old fashioned technology. There's no cloud, it's decentralized. Surely this must exist. And I just Googled it and there is, there's a service called Quiet and they run a peer to peer. Um, slack messaging service, and they basically pass the archive of messages, the database of messages to each user,

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

they do it in an efficient way so that they only turn, move packets across or bytes that across that are different. So when someone logs on, get they ping or everyone and say, Hey, I've got this archive. What's the newest database? And then it kind of merges it together using a combination of technologies. And they use like a, a database service that was developed for blockchain

Ernest:

Ah.

Joachim:

blockchains have to be distributed and it's a mashup of blockchain databases and Git. So if you're a software person, Git is built into Linux and built into Unix as a way to manage, uh, code changes. And basically it's a very efficient system that only takes on, passes, changes through the system. So if nothing has changed, nothing moves, and it can check files one by one, bite by bite to figure out what needs to be changed. So they did that. it works. And again, they say highlight the same problems if one, if everyone's off, nothing gets moved. If one person's online, they will be able to pass messages around. Problem solved to a certain extent. I don't have to index a trillion messages. And so then that got me down this whole rabbit hole of local first software engineering. Turns out there's a small movement of people that are trying to work on this. I come back to this because this is another version of when we do everything in a cloud, it feels so easy. And the engineers who work on, it's like, oh, this is very easy. We just need more compute, more compute, more compute, and more databases and a little bit more logical. And that's it. But that complexity, it's high, it's high complexity. For something as dumb as a messaging service, like, why don't we just pass, like literally, I just ping you and you ping me. End of story. And then, uh, have like some clever way of moving the archives around and that logic of things are stored on my computer. That also means that that archive is searchable, even if your internet is down.

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

Right. That means that you have a way to access the data, and the data is yours. always, if, if Discord shuts down your entire message history is gone, you will, you will be done. Slack is gone. You know, that's it. And that's what, you know, we have many slack outages that's it. Nothing, not a damn thing works. So it really got me thinking about that and it's like, yeah, it's a little bit more complex. It's like brings back software engineering as a way to write self-contained pieces of software that you install on your computer and you use the hard drive space on your computer that you have. yes, it sounds old fashioned, but I actually think it's way, way more resilient. So that was something that was on my mind as I was, and, and you know, hearing about all of these technologies, how much stuff gets offloaded into the cloud, the LLMs are all in the cloud. I

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

and on and on. The list grows on. So small tidbit that got me upset, but then relieved that people are thinking about this as well.

Ernest:

That's awesome. Would, uh, quiet, uh, qualify as a recommendation for the week on your.

Joachim:

so, I think it's a recommendation to read the technology. I, I don't, I was then started getting very excited about doing a version of this, and I'm like, I'm not gonna invest in learning all this stuff. But I think reading their documentation, their motivation, the, the use, it's, it's a, it's a solution to a problem, you know? And it's a way of actually having all of the convenience of these, one of these programs without the reliance on, on a cloud service. So that means that as long as you all have the software and it runs, you will have your messaging service. I mean, that's, that's really the, the thing that comes out of all of this,

Ernest:

actually, so if you, if you wanna segue into recommendations, do you have any others for this week?

Joachim:

So I've been alluding to this recommendation throughout the whole thing, and it's a very, very long essay by Ed Zirin. It's about 13,000 words. If you can't handle it, he's broken it down into a three episode podcast where he basically reads in the bridged version of it, which is very fun. The title of this piece is called The Era of the Business Idiot. So it's, it's, um, he's been building up to this point for many, many years. His newsletter has covered, um, many topics. AI has been his big one this year. Before that, he was talking a lot about the growth at all cost, uh, mindset, rot economy was the phrase that he was using. Very similar to ification that Corey, Dr. Row coined. But rot economy is something that he wants to say is very far reaching. It's not just about platforms degrading the quality of something, it's actually just platforms and companies existing that don't actually care about what they do. They just are these financial entities that grow and generate stock market returns. And so this piece, um, lays out more of that thinking um, I feel like he's touched on something very, very real that has affected every aspect of modern life. And I do think, um. It's important. I know we don't get political, but many people should know that our current president was a CEO of a company and a business leader. And people think that was a good thing, that a business leader is someone that you should have to lead a country because it should be run like a business. Well, he runs it exactly like a CEO would all the terrible things, like doesn't care how things work, doesn't care how rules work, what are the, does this thing move over here? It's just that number looks like that. I want the number to look like this. So make that number like that, you know, that type of thinking is CEO thinking I, I strongly on average. Like, I think everyone's kind of subject to this. So, it comes back to the Tim Cook discussion, right? There's this, this idea of want to really, I don't want to get in the weeds with what the customer wants or cares about. And, you know, none of this matters. So this piece is just very, very long. Um. But there's a lot of great tidbits here about managers, CEOs, and he even really refers to this notion that we live in a symbolic economy, that so much of business leadership has become more about the aesthetic of engaging in a conversation as opposed to actually making a product. Um, and so what does the CEO do? He does. He's not gonna talk about users. He's gonna tell you how you are all gonna lose your jobs because his technology is so amazing. You have to get ready. So this is Dario Amide, like he just, talk that kind of crap. Sorry. Um, so I would say. It's quite interesting because I feel like we've seen many examples of CEOs who've reached the tops of corporate power structures, and they just don't really know what it is that they do and what it is that they're supposed to do for customers. And I, I just don't think they care about customers anymore. Not to do more Steve Jobs worship. He's a, he's a terrible man in many ways. He was a terrible man, this dumb thing that they did where they charged the devices a little bit before they put them in the boxes, it's a total waste of money, right? Your bean counter and accountants will tell you, why are you doing this? This is electricity. You do this millions of times we're wasting money. And he's like, no, of course. Like when the customer gets the item, they're excited. This is the moment to blow them away. Hook them. That damn thing powers on. And it's because I am solving the customer problem. I'm not solving something else. I care about the customer. And I feel like when you look at Apple now, it's like it's gone the other way. It doesn't care about the cost, cares about the shareholder, the number of share, uh, buybacks is incredible. They're off the charts. Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs found the same problem when he arrived at Apple, which was they were doing huge numbers of stock buybacks put an immediate stop to it

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

that's how you discipline the company in many ways. You stop it from being this financialized entity

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

make it a product company again. But now it's kind of returned to be this financialized entity, hence services, movies, aesthetic things are very exciting.

Ernest:

All right.

Joachim:

long. I think you should, everyone should read this. You might feel it's terrible and really mean to managers, and you, anyone who's a manager will feel, oh, well, I'm a very good man. I'm sure you are. But it's good to hear this thing because there are many people that are terrible at it and there are many leaders that are terrible. And so this was a very nice. Distillation of all those things. So Ed Zirin, the age of the business idiot, or the era of the business idiot I should say. Um, yeah I think it touches on a lot of stuff and like I said, I don't, I think it's inescapable. We all swim in this water around leadership that doesn't, generally not naming names or anyone that we are working with, of course, but I'm just saying in general, when you look around, especially like Apple and things like that, where is the customer in that discussion? You know, very little. Very little. no voice of the customer, hence Tim Cook will talk about F1 movies. That's something else. Hanging out with Louis Hamilton again, you know? Yeah,

Ernest:

Oh, that sounds great. And, and as with all these things we're, we'll provide a link in the show notes to the piece, but also the podcast,

Joachim:

yeah.

Ernest:

yeah. Great. Uh, well, I have, um, recommendations I have, I'm gonna cheat. I have two that are perhaps more lighthearted on the surface, but I think are, are pretty substantive as well. But, um, the first one, and they're both media, uh, it's kind of funny speaking of, uh, Tim Cook, talking about F1, but, uh, the first one is, and or season two, have you watched it at all? Yohi.

Joachim:

We started and or season one. And it's funny you say lighthearted, we've, we've started going back into it because people have been saying that it is very, very relevant, um, and quite meaningful at this moment. So yeah, we're still at the beginning, but season two you're saying is worth it.

Ernest:

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I think, um, I mean a lot of, I'm certainly not alone in this. A lot of people have been saying it's the best Star Wars since the original, uh, star Wars. I think to put it in that context is limiting.'cause I just think it's just an incredible piece of art that is incredibly relevant and timely, but is also just remarkable in, in, in pretty much every aspect. I think the writing is just phenomenal. The acting is across the board. Incredible. Um, and then all the crafts, you know, the costuming, the production design, it's just everyone was on their A game and. Uh, it, the end result is something really, really special. The sort of thing that people talk about, you know, for years and years to come. So I would highly, highly recommend it. What's I think pretty impressive is, you know, like a lot of, like you mentioned, every, a lot of people say how timely it feels, but it was filmed in 2022, going on 2023, so it was written well before that.

Joachim:

Hmm.

Ernest:

Uh, and, uh, the showrunner, Tony Gilroy has talked about that, the fact that it's really about these things that consistently come back, you know? Um, so he didn't know Trump was gonna win the election, but it's, it's sadly these, um. Uh, behaviors, uh, that cycle through time

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

are surprisingly predictable in the way they come to life. I think maybe what we're surprised by is that they're happening here in the us but the playbook is the same. Um, and if you're a student of that, then you know, you can, you can tap into that and, and he's absolutely done that. And, uh, man, it's, I think, uh, amazing. So yeah. And or season two absolutely would, uh, highly recommend. And, uh, one other related note here is, you know, we talked about the review industrial complex in our last episode and how terrible it is, and a similar sort of thing exists around media and this kind of review industrial complex of media, uh, on YouTube, which is generally terrible. But I came across one podcast and it's also available on YouTube that I think is actually. Worth listening to and watching, which is the Yukon Pop, which is, uh, hosted by two, uh, political science professors out of the University of Connecticut. Thus the name Yukon. Uh, it's Steven Dyson and Jeffrey RDAs dos, and they actually talk about. The show. Uh, so they talk about pop culture in general, but so they, they, they did a, uh, recaps of every batch of episodes of, and or this season. And they provide cultural context and political context around these episodes so that maybe, you know, if you're not as much of a student of history, you can kind of understand, uh, where these things are coming from. And they're not, you know, things that are being made up that they're actually rooted in things that have happened in the past. Uh, and so that's the one kind of piece of, um, commentary about, and or that I felt was actually, that actually added to the experience that was worthwhile versus all these other, uh, useless, uh, recap podcasts and YouTube channels.

Joachim:

Yeah, I, I know exactly what you mean, that it reminds me. I know I've done lots of talking, but, uh,

Ernest:

No.

Joachim:

um. We were, mentioned this, cycle through these things and things repeat, or it's always variations on the theme. Maybe that's the way, like classical music and music and or like cover versions of old songs. There's a kind of variation and an underlying theme in history. Um, and I found it always very helpful for myself always have that long view to remember that there is a lineage to these things. Um, and things happen because of what's come before in the past. And also things change for the better because of things that have happened in the past. Uh, but on that note, there's a book that I just started reading and I'm quite fond of it. It's um, by Rebecca Sonet who wrote, uh, a pretty famous collection of essays called Men Explain Things to Me. I think it captured the moment of, I think it was very Me Too

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

Feminist and so on. And, I was. To be honest, I was very dismissive of Rebecca. So, but my very good, one of my very good friends is a big fan I would, you know, I was like, I will keep an open mind, but I never picked up a book. And then, um, the other week my wife picked up this book and said, just read the first paragraph of this essay. Um, and it's from the books collection. It's called No Straight Road Takes You There and it is very, very good. It's about this moment in time and understanding the lineage and how long it takes for things to change and how important it is to express what should be as opposed to accepting things the way they are. stop thinking things are inevitable believe that things are inevitable, that they can be changed and avoided. And they start with very small things and they start with futile attempts at just doing something, you know? And I feel like. There's some bits of that in the, in the Star Wars universe. And I feel like Ando also has that feeling, you know, of what is the point. It's such an insurmountable thing. And it reminds me all the way back to the beginning of this podcast, that Ur Lagu quotation that you shared where she was taking her book prize where she said, know, the power of the absolute, divine power of kings was taken as truth that need not apply to capitalism, for example, but in truth, nothing, you know, but it takes time. Um, and so I found this book was very, very helpful to, you know, just not even as a manual, but just a daily meditation on how important it's that just represent an alternative to something and things need not be inevitable and need not be at, you know, the end of things feels like a part of the resistance. You know, it's just one of those things that you add to it. So, uh, yeah, no Straight Road takes you there by

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

Sa that, um, it's, it's a pretty, it's pretty great.

Ernest:

Oh, that's fantastic. Uh, one last 10 chili related thing I'll, I'll note here. I think this is a great example of, um, good, great art, is it, it elicits all these connections and makes you want to talk about other things, but there's this ama fantastic interview of Tony Gilroy, the showrunner for and Android. And or, uh, in the New York Times. And, uh, the interviewer, it's, I, my feel of it is like the interviewer is trying to pin him down and trying to get him to say that it's a liberal show. Uh, and Gilroy gives this phenomenal answer as to why he believes all creative works, lean, progressive by th nature. So I'll provide a link to that interview and, uh, yeah, it's a fantastic, uh, he's, man, he's great. I think, uh, he's an amazing writer. But, uh, so my last recommendation for this week is also a piece of media, uh, and I'm very late to this, but. Are you familiar with Nathan Fielder? He's a comedian.

Joachim:

Yes.

Ernest:

Yeah. So I'm very late to him. I've never seen anything else he'd done. But, uh, my wife and I, we watched the second season of the rehearsal,

Joachim:

Yes,

Ernest:

is on, uh, HBO Max, formerly known as Max, formerly known as HBO. Um, but, uh, oh my goodness, uh, we, we, I think we ended up watching the whole season in one night.'cause it just was so mind blowing it, I'd never seen anything like it, it was, I, it's like inexplicable. You can't explain it'cause it's just so, uh, uh, enigmatic so weird. But, but it, it, I feel like it's just really deeply human.

Joachim:

Hmm.

Ernest:

and it's remark, much like, and or it's remarkable that Disney funded and or,

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

know, uh. Uh, and HBO Discovery, whatever funded the rehearsal. It's just incredible to me that this exists and I just am so happy that it exists. And, uh, and so after watching season two, we went back and watched season one. And, um, I, I actually would recommend if you've never seen the rehearsal to start with season two.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

'cause I think it's, it's a more accessible entry point, but then we really enjoyed season one as well. It's actually, I think, more, even more thought provoking, um, uh, and challenging, uh, and happened to be set in Oregon. But, uh, man, what a amazing piece of, I don't even what, know what to call it. Uh, performance art.

Joachim:

Yeah, it's very strange. Other stuff is also really weird, um, that he did on Comedy Central, which is, uh, Nathan, for you,

Ernest:

Uh.

Joachim:

this is, this stuff is way more out loud, silly, but he had this premise in mind'cause he, he was thinking about post Credit Crisis America 2008 and he was asking himself like, how did we get to that point? How did people allow themselves to be played and, and join the game? And when something obviously sounded stupid, they still went along with it with, if you just gave it the right framing and the right thing. And so Nathan for you is really just him saying, what can I get people to do? Which is, it sounds very cruel,

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

but the things that he suggests are so ridiculous that anyone should say this is a terrible, he go, his, the first episode I think is where he goes to a frozen yogurt company and says, Hey, you know what will really shock people into coming to the store? Let's make a shit flavored frozen yogurt and. They go, he chemically synthesizes the taste of excrement, human excrement. And,

Ernest:

Oh my gosh.

Joachim:

and, and the guy is not saying, this is a terrible idea. We shouldn't do this. They go all the way. start serving this, they, they interview the guests. says this taste like shit. And, you know, and then the guy, the guy, the managers, I, I should have told him to stop. And he is like, yes. As soon as he uttered the words. Why did you let him go down this? There are so many episodes that are so ridiculous, but it, it was clear that he always had a deeper, that show was very laugh out loud, ridiculous. But at its core was this question of what could you, why is it that human beings are willing to go down this path and

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

in this way? Just because there's a camera on them and a guy who says, I'm an expert and

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

is the nature of the show. It was really interesting in that. And so I think the rehearsal is a, a much more mature and, and deeper version

Ernest:

Hmm.

Joachim:

You know, of course Comedy Central versus something that's on HBO Max. Now you can get away with different things, but yeah, I think he's quite a compelling, strange character.

Ernest:

Yeah,

Joachim:

very strange and his, yeah, his, uh, delivery of. Sentences, his voice, the tambo of his voice, they're just all so specific to him. It's very strange. And he has that laptop stand that is so weird. That's hanging around his neck. it's strange. Yeah, it's right. It's like performance

Ernest:

yeah,

Joachim:

reality tv. It's confusing as hell, but

Ernest:

yeah.

Joachim:

yeah, that's why it's challenging. I have to, I can only do it in small doses. Yeah, it's very weird.

Ernest:

All right. So, um, that's our recommendation. That's something very unique for you all. Uh, and I think that does it for us, for this.

Joachim:

Yes,

Ernest:

Off the cuff episode. Uh, a apologies again for our extended hiatus and for our paltry output thus far this year. Uh, with the kind of vagaries of life. I don't think we're gonna be able to get back to a weekly publication schedule, but, uh, we're gonna do our best to do better than an episode of quarter, at the very least. Uh, and in the meantime, we want to hear from you. Do you have any thoughts on anything we discussed or recommended this week? If so, what's your perspective? Um, or maybe there's a product or service you'd love to hear us focus on through the lens of product, uh, and product marketing. Whether it's a request, a question, or an observation. Please do share your thoughts with us at Learn make learn@gmail.com or on threads at Learn Make Learn Show, all one word. Thanks for listening, and we hope you'll join us for the next Learn. Make, learn.

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Ernest Kim

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Joachim Groeger

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