Dax's CSS Journey vs Adam's Exercise Journey
Look at you with your big headphones. Do we wanna talk about CSS?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I was gonna bring it up.
Speaker 1:Dax likes to use raw CSS and I think he's dumb. Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Can I tell you my my little journey? Very classy journey that I went on.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Okay. So back in 02/2016, I wrote this library called legos dot css. It wasn't really a library.
Speaker 1:Wait, what?
Speaker 2:It was just a big file. And that was something I made public. It was just Oh. Just something I used across all my projects. Okay?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And it was just an ever, yeah, it was an ever growing list of every single utility class that I I used. Wasn't very like customizable or reusable. It was just like my own flavor of stuff. And from 2016 to around 2019, maybe to right at beginning of 2020, I built everything that way.
Speaker 2:So that kind of spanned, I think, across two different major projects with, you know, much of like sub projects inside of them. And I really liked it and it was great. And all the reasons why people use Tailwind today, like, definitely experience that. Like, having everything in line, super easy to tweak. You feel pretty productive.
Speaker 2:Then in 2020, I was like, part of my team that I managed was in charge of building a design system, not just for the company to consume internally, but also to publish externally because they had this whole system where third parties could build UI extensions inside their UI. So they were giving them giving them, you know, UI components to to build with that. So in that process, I was just exposed to, like, the whole wide range of ways you can do styling just because we evaluated, like, everything. And, like, you know, there were enough people on the team that particularly liked one thing versus another. So I I like heard all arguments and and kind of understood it.
Speaker 2:And I ended up settling I don't know what we ended up selling on there, but I personally ended up settling on the styled component approach. So like coupling styling to like your frameworks, way of describing components. And I found this to be a really good balance of it. It still felt pretty productive, but then your markup looked really clean and easy to to read, etcetera. And that's pretty much how I've been doing things for the past since then, since 2020.
Speaker 2:It I never found the exact right library to do this. The little library called solid components, I thought I just didn't like how it was just like random strings. Then this library called Stitches came out, which was I think had some really good ideas and I used that for a while. But that was like heavily runtime based. It didn't do any kind of CSS extraction.
Speaker 2:So it was just really not performant and eventually got abandoned because it just didn't fit with the future of where React was going. And I jumped to another library called Macron and then then I went to something called Panda. And I just got to the very classic point of being like, okay, it's been like effectively like eight years since I looked at raw CSS. I am getting really tired of the levels of abstraction above it for all the same reasons people always talk about like, know, additional build tooling, stuff being broken, more to set up, like stuff changing. And I just wanted to see, okay, what does raw CSS look like in 2024?
Speaker 2:And I just found it can do a lot of stuff that made it suck before, or like it was missing a lot of stuff that made it suck before, that now it's just there natively. And there's a whole new way of expressing stuff that like I think totally changes how, at least my perception of CSS was. And the second thing is I found like a really cool pattern from this library called Winny UI. It's a good, again, like a design system but implemented purely CSS that I found to be pretty compelling. So the combination of these two things has made me really, really like writing raw CSS.
Speaker 2:And especially with Liz working on Radiant, having that extra abstraction layer when she like understands HTML and CSS pretty well, it was just kinda slowing things down a little bit more than than needed. So yeah, I've been having a really good time with it and I'm like really pleasantly surprised how how far things have come.
Speaker 1:And you you're like putting your CSS in separate files that are like dot CSS files. Yeah. And you're naming, I guess, all of your DOM elements or all your HTML tags, you're naming them with classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is something I already dealt with because the style component approach forced you to name everything, which is an upfront pain but long term benefit because when you come back things are very very readable. Mhmm. But hang on, there's a few layers here, right? There is so there's like a design system for like the really common components, right?
Speaker 2:Like button, checkbox Mhmm. Stack, row. And those are built with like global CSS, like there's these data attributes that you on any element, if you do data dash component equals button, it'll look like a button. Whether that's an href or an actual button or like some other element.
Speaker 1:That's because you've written a bunch of raw CSS
Speaker 2:That targets that.
Speaker 1:To like build your design system that way. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Why not just sorry, the first question that comes to mind, why not just like button?
Speaker 2:As a class name?
Speaker 1:Or not no, not as a class name. Why not like write your design system in your CSS as just like targeting certain types of elements? Why have to do the data
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because it solves a problem of you pretty much always want a button to look like a button, but sometimes a button is a link.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sometimes you have an anchor tag Yeah. This looks like a button Yeah. Or I gotcha. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Imagine like all the React components, they have all this like really fancy complex ways to To solve this
Speaker 1:use a different kinda underlying Yeah. Document all types
Speaker 2:of good stuff. I don't even need to wrap these in a React, Solid, whatever component. I can just use div but then Yeah. So like, I do end up wrapping them. I probably will end up wrapping them but it's just not necessary.
Speaker 2:It's like a bonus. Can use it at the lowest Yeah. And then the other pattern here is what I found to be really cool is I learned a lot more about this has selector. Have you used this a bunch? No.
Speaker 1:Okay. So Wait, maybe
Speaker 2:Another class
Speaker 1:has, like, has checked and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But you can also check if the current element contains another one. So for example
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
Speaker 2:I'll have an element button data component, whatever hello. It's a button that says hello. And I wanna add an icon to it. So inside, I add another component, maybe an SVG with data dash slot equals icon because it's filling the slot of the icon and the button. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Then in the CSS, I can say if button has component has an icon component inside of it, add Change the pad. Change pad. Yeah. So a lot of that stuff you used to do through JavaScript before where you would be like, in your component you'd be like, okay, if there is an icon prop specified, add this additional class or like has icon or like add additional tail and classes, whatever it is. So now you can express like pretty complex logics just in in pure CSS.
Speaker 2:And that's like really saved a lot of it. Like, I basically don't I can basically add all those conditional logic inside just your CSS, which means if I take the style sheet and I drop it in an email, like it'll all still work. I can now build my emails the same thing, which is true of Tailwind too, you can copy paste the markup. But just implementing my design system at the CSS level and not at the component level has been pretty nice.
Speaker 1:So it's so hard to imagine. Like I'm trying to think what would it take for me to actually switch from Tailwind to this? And I it's the two things that everybody brings up that I get so hung up on. I guess the one is not that big a deal. Like, talk back and forth between two different files or buffers, whatever.
Speaker 1:It's not a big deal. But the naming things, you don't struggle to like when you have like three nested divs and it's all just because you have to do stupid like flex box stuff and you're trying to figure out how to lay it out, how do you name like the middle one? Like, what is that thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I think I think the problem here is not having a good set of utilities at the lowest level. By the way, I still have some utility classes in there, just kind of like how it did back in 2016. I had just like some random utility classes that I I find like flex grow. Like, oh, I find the element just to fill that way.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But I have row and stack components and that solves like a lot of the one off classes that I'd I'd have to make in like a specific screen. But you know, it doesn't solve all of it. Like I'm thinking about a screen right now, I have like like a root class and I have like a header class but then everything inside the header class is just a mix of stack row and buttons and there's like a breadcrumpe type layout. I don't mind the the naming, like I think stack and row like reduce, let's say 50% of what you'd have to name.
Speaker 2:And yeah, there is a trade off there, so just just things to name. But I think you pay the price for not naming things either you have to pay a price upfront by having to name them or you pay it later when you go look at a bunch of nested HTML and you don't you can't really tell which level something is happening at. Yeah. I get it. But most people work on zero to one stuff.
Speaker 2:They don't think about, well, how am I gonna feel when I come back to this new year, you know?
Speaker 1:Right. What's the the runtime application? It's the same, I guess, like Tailwind versus raw CSS?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I mean, ultimately, Tailwind just compiles to raw CSS.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I think my approach is worse and that there's this like I think Tailwind has this nice property where there's this what's the word? Logarithmic curve to the amount of CSS produced. Because eventually, you know, it'll have generated all the different utility classes you'll ever use for any of your whole app. Whereas for me, like, I might have two different classes representing two different elements that effectively have the same style so the end result of the amount of CSS that produces higher. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I do wonder, like, it's funny because we all talk about this, but like, if you really think about what I'm saying, I'm saying that I am gonna send more duplicate markup. But you know what compresses really, really well? Duplicate markup. I do wonder in practice like with gzip effectively it's like a gzip is like a generic way to solve the d duping problem. Right?
Speaker 2:Like Tailwinds a very specific way to solve it for CSS.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But Gzip has a general algorithm to solve
Speaker 1:It's true.
Speaker 2:That. So it's not gonna be as good, but, know.
Speaker 1:I've never I mean, I would have never complained about the amount of data going over the wire with raw CSS versus Tailwind. That's not a thing I would think about. It's really just the you know, here's the thing. I think Tailwind is the best experience for going from zero to one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's true.
Speaker 1:Like, just standing something up. And I just like going from zero to one. So so it makes sense that I like Tailwind. If I can avoid it, I'll just never go back to a project. Like, if I can just go really hard on something and then never touch it again, that's kind of my ideal.
Speaker 1:So I just I guess I'm optimizing for my ideal my ideal case. Obviously, it doesn't work for like a startup I've had for ten years where I constantly have to go back to it. But for other projects, it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What I found interesting in this Hailwind Dodge is one section that I I think is like really interesting because it it's very different than how any other docs ever talk speak to you. But there's a question of like, what about reusing stuff? Like if I have a button with nine utility classes on it and I wanna use it more than one place, like how come Tailwind isn't solving this for me? And before they show you how they can solve it for you through like features in Tailwind, they're like, okay, first make sure that you can't just copy paste it and it's like gonna be too much of a pain.
Speaker 2:Second, check out your editor features. Like you might have a multi cursor feature, so if you have a bunch of buttons like or like near each other, you can do multi cursors, edit them all at once. Or, you know, maybe your framework has an idea of loops. Like if you're making a list of items, like, you're probably only to find the markup once and it's like running inside of a loop. So it's not actually an issue.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So they like really factor in the surrounding environment outside of Tailwind, whether it's your editor or your framework, when saying like you should rely on on those things. I think that's true of my approach as well, right? There's a downside of my situation where the markup is separate from the CSS. So if I need to change the markup, I need to go update it everywhere.
Speaker 2:Like if I this this icon data slot thing, if I decide to rename data slot icon to data slot something else, I have to go find every place that it's there and update it. Mhmm. But I can make the same argument, right? Like if you're using an editor where bulk operations are easy, this is not really a thing you want to like solve for in code. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I do find that line of thinking pretty interesting because I was like, I was going over all this with with Liz and we're reworking the radiant stuff to be more raw CSS. And after I explained all the CSS part, I then explained here are a bunch of editor things you can do to make this less of a pain in the ass. And that's all one thing. It's not like the code lives on its own and I expect any editor to be a great experience with it. We're both using the same editor so I can say, hey, like just if you're working on a file like mark the JavaScript file and mark the CSS file to these keys and then just you can flip back and forth between them as basically like it's in the same file.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But you know, you can't do that easily with any editor. So I can see why someone's like this experience really
Speaker 1:That made me think of two questions. One, when do I when do we all get radiant? I need to do some personal finance cleanup.
Speaker 2:Maybe at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1:Oh. Look at you. That's it's nice. It's not
Speaker 2:even at a state where like we're able to use it. It's just yeah. It's one of those things where there's some products where you wanna get it out as fast as possible because like, it's very undefined and you don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:As other products that are just like so iterative on top of like stuff that's been tried, you know, like for years and years and years. And with these, I think you can spend a lot more time upfront like getting certain things right because there's just less Yeah. Less variability. But I'm pretty happy with how it's coming out so far. Yeah, we're just focusing way more on like making giving you tools to keep your data clean and not at all on here's how you budget, which we might might do one day but for me the issue is always, like, I get a clean set of data?
Speaker 2:Like, can I automate everything so that stuff is remapped and like everything is clean and I do that once? There's just not good tools for that. And it's funny because we could just eventually just be an API only thing where you like manage all that stuff and then other budgeting tools like implement specific budgeting ways using that data or use export into an excel sheet and you do whatever you want. Spending a lot more time on the make sure we get all your data, make sure it's as accurate as possible, spend like way more time on that than anyone else has.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That I would like that. I think I have that problem. Yeah. Second thing I was gonna ask is what what's it like teaching your wife to code?
Speaker 1:This is a dream I've had. Casey's always resisted, but is it fun?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think I can't speak to it generally because there's like I think everything I have to say is very specific to my personality interacting with Liz's personality and how our relationship works. But I think Liz will admit this herself, she is not the easiest student. But I'm also this way, like, don't like I don't like, I've never like learned something from someone, so I can kind of relate to that.
Speaker 1:You've never learned wait, I wanna get that quote down. You've never learned something from someone?
Speaker 2:That's a weird way to say it. I'm saying I'm I'm not someone that's gonna, like, do a course or, like, you know, have a teacher. Like, just it just doesn't that type of learning doesn't are you tweeting this out right now?
Speaker 1:Yes. Sorry. I just had to I had to get that out there. Now continue defending your statement and what you actually said.
Speaker 2:I don't this the whole like mentor mentee relationship has just never been something that's So for I can relate to that. But her flavor of it is pretty funny because she just like, anytime I tell her something and it sounds a little weird or not like what she expected, she's just convinced that what I'm saying can't be right. And she like she like resists and fights a lot. Yeah. And to be fair, I'm like pretty extreme about certain things.
Speaker 2:I'm just like because my way of teaching is to like really go extreme in a way that might not even make sense so you understand like something about that approach. But yeah, so she's she's like, she doesn't trust me and half the time I'm like it's like, you know I'm like good at this, right? Like, know, I've like I've done this for so many years and like, a lot of people think I'm good at this stuff. Lots people. But you don't.
Speaker 2:For some
Speaker 1:reason I think you're good at it. How many times a day do you say to her, isn't it funny how I'm always right? Not every day. It's
Speaker 2:usually like, I build it up over a series of weeks and then I I use it every once in a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wait, you don't think I think you're good at What what was it you don't think I sorry.
Speaker 2:I I meant I was saying that to her. I was like
Speaker 1:I gotcha.
Speaker 2:I I can find you a 100 people that think I'm good at this but for some reason you don't You're like instinctive to not think I'm good
Speaker 1:at it. That's funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and to be fair, a lot of the way that I teach is kinda like Karate Kid stuff where you just do not understand why the hell you're doing the thing. And when you ask, I'm just like, shut up, you know. Shut up and do it.
Speaker 1:That's funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But it's been good. I'm glad she's into it and I think she's there's like areas of it that clicked with her more and she's a lot more motivated to do it. Like, the the shift back to CSS has her really motivated because she understands that stuff well and just removing levels of abstraction is a is always helpful when someone is newer.
Speaker 1:Can I make an observation that's unrelated to all this? Yeah. It's just an overwhelming feeling and I can't go any longer without saying it. I think exercise is really important. I feel very depressed and it's probably because for like a week I haven't moved.
Speaker 2:It's crazy how true that is.
Speaker 1:It's really true. Yeah. I hate that it's true, but it's very true.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like when I when I'm on when I go through periods like that, I don't like the day I start to snap out of it, I just can't believe how good I feel and how long Mhmm. I went without that. That said, I'm currently in that kind of slump, but I But this is the first time I don't feel that way.
Speaker 1:Oh, well, you're not far enough into the slump maybe?
Speaker 2:No. Is actually Okay. So here here's two things of it. I don't really feel as bad as I normally do, both mentally and physically. And when I say physically, I mean like, when I like look at myself, I'm like I I usually degrade in certain ways and I've gone through this enough times where I I've like seen that.
Speaker 2:But I feel like I just haven't and Right. I don't want to like completely correlate this because like who knows. But if you this whole like diet I'm doing, I feel like it's like somehow related to that. That's only thing that's changed.
Speaker 1:Steaks and beef tallow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like my I I there's like like I said, I've I've gone through phases where I worked out a lot and I stopped for a month and I see exactly like, okay, my traps like decreased by this much. I can just like easily easily see that. And just
Speaker 1:Did you say your traps?
Speaker 2:Yeah. For some reason, whenever I work out like my traps get like really big really quick. And then when I stop, they like That's awesome. They I mean, I don't know if it's awesome, like, it's it's it's like, I actually don't like that part being so muscular, but for whatever reason, maybe the workout I do is just very, like, shoulder focused. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's why as soon as I stop, I can just see that shrinking and it's like way the way I measure like how out of shape I am. Yeah. But it's been a very long time and they haven't degraded that much. I think I'm just consuming like way more protein than I
Speaker 1:That'll do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I normally do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've just it's I think it's been like three months that it's such a slow fade for me. Yeah. Like I stopped going to open mat. That was my main jujitsu practice.
Speaker 1:And then, it's like travel and stuff has just
Speaker 2:Travel made it where is up.
Speaker 1:It's yeah. Between travel and then just random life events, it's like I was I was going from two or three personal trainer sessions a week to like two or one and then it was just one and then we like missed a couple weeks. And then I got one in and then I missed another week. So was like once in a whole month I had gone. And then Casey's been gone this week, which has been the just like the exclamation point on the whole thing because I literally haven't been able to go for walks.
Speaker 1:Like, I've got the boys. Mhmm. So I'm just like, I I get no physical activity. And it's just resulted in this culmination of like, what happened? It's it's like it all snuck up on me and then just realized how inactive I've been for like two or three months.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I was hanging on by a thread and then I just cut the thread this week. Yeah. And and it's all caught up in this like mental feeling of like the coffee is just not doing it for me. I'm not getting up every morning and like ready to tackle the world. And I think it was mostly just the exercise.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I hate it. I hate that that's true.
Speaker 2:My question is though, I've gone through the same exact thing where like I'm on it and then like a few different things happen back to back and it just totally knocks me off of the thing I was on.
Speaker 1:All your habits.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But then what
Speaker 2:I just started doing was reducing the amount of friction it takes from to like just go do something. Because I I it's like, okay, I used to go to Yeah. The Equinox near me, which was a five minute drive. So let's get in a car, drive, go do it. And then come back.
Speaker 2:Then I was like, okay, that's even that burden, like the moment my life isn't like chill, like I start to like fall off of that. So let me just go to the gym and end in my street. So then now the birds just get walking out of my house and walking down to it. Then even that became like, you know, a little too brittle. Then I was like, let me just work out my backyard.
Speaker 2:And that like kind of helped. None of this actually solves a real problem, but it just feels like like the margin for error is higher because I can always always do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Does that work for you or no?
Speaker 1:So here's what I would say. I've definitely had this thought that, you know, it's getting too hard to like sync up with my personal trainer. Mhmm. It's fifteen minute drive there, which isn't that much, but it's like I mean, in the Ozarks, that's not very much. I know in a city that's like forever.
Speaker 1:But it's not that big of a deal to drive fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. It's more that his schedule is very restrictive, so I have to go at like this time of the day. That's so hard.
Speaker 2:Yes. Okay. So that that was the issue that was the exact issue with the gym on my street because they're a CrossFit gym and I just wanted to use them for open gym and they only had like like three slots in a day for like an hour and a half. Yeah. And then if I missed it, it was
Speaker 1:just It's very hard to have those kind of like restrictions on a day. Yeah. So I think, okay, I'll just start working out at home. Because we have we have pretty good setup here at the house. Casey works out at home.
Speaker 1:That's like super low friction. The problem is if I start trying to do like especially strength training stuff on my own without a personal trainer, I'm so I'm so unmotivated. I like Mhmm. It's easier I think Casey has a good time because she does like HIIT workouts and stuff and I think YouTube is rich with
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Those types of workouts. There's plenty of them and you can just get on some plan and do a HIIT workout every day or whatever. Strength training, maybe it does exist on YouTube. I've never gone down that track. If I just don't have a plan and I go into the gym, it's two problems.
Speaker 1:One, I don't have a plan. So I just kind of aimlessly do a bunch of stuff And it just I don't push myself that hard. And then two is the not pushing myself. It's the not having just like if I did have a workout, not having the discipline or motivation to like really
Speaker 2:Push all the way.
Speaker 1:Wear myself out. Yeah. Yeah. Like one session with my personal trainer, he just kills me. And there's stuff I would just never do to myself.
Speaker 1:And like I hate every second of it, but I know if I show up at the gym for that hour, he's gonna push me really hard. I just can't do that to myself for some reason. Yeah. I really have to have that like accountability. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that that's like the fundamental truth. Like, Liz has been working as a personal trainer for the past couple months. And yeah, it's like like she she's she's been on a pretty good run for the past two years in terms of like working out. In the past couple months just like, it just works.
Speaker 2:Like, when you work with a personal trainer, like, it just works and you just just do that.
Speaker 1:It just works.
Speaker 2:As long as you show up. Yeah. But when I first got into working out because I used to play a lot of sports, I hated working out. Then once I became like an adult and I wasn't playing as much sports, was like, alright, I have to like try to go
Speaker 1:to gyms. Arbitrarily move my body in certain ways. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I got into it, and we've talked about this before through that McGuff workout thing I talked about where like it's all like it's like as much pain as possible. And I watched a bunch of videos with some like bodybuilders that like just because they because they that's What you're describing is if you were trying to be a, like, a bodybuilder, minus the story part, like, the actual working out part, it's just about, like, pushing to like your maximum pain on your own every single day, right? So almost like entirely like a mental exercise and I really understood it like, okay, this is actually not my body physically failing, it's like I'm working out my mind to be like Yeah. I could quit at this rep but I could my body can technically do one more, it's more that my mind is quitting versus my body. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So I think entering it that way, like I in like the first, like, six months of me working out was kind of in that mindset, so that that kind of helped. But the reality is is like even with that, if I had a personal trainer, I would just do better. That's just that's just a fact.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. I'm I'm on the fence. I really enjoy my personal trainer. We have a good rapport now. But his times just don't work very well for my schedule and that's always gonna be a problem.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I feel like if I could find somebody that could I could do it like early in the morning or something, that'd be less friction. I don't know. Just gotta start getting into it again. I gotta get back into jujitsu. That was a nice hobby.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Gave me like a reason to wanna work out, to get more fit, to be better.
Speaker 2:The other pattern I've noticed in myself is so I really like trunk training. I love just doing everything at the squat rack, like just doing every possible exercise with the barbell. Mhmm. And I'll usually when I get back on it, I usually start by doing that because I enjoy it and I like really like doing that every day. There's not like any resistance to me going to do that.
Speaker 2:And I'll do that for a while and I'll get to like a pretty good place and I'll be like, man, like, strength training is good but like obviously for my health I need to do at least some amount of cardio, right? Mhmm. But then I'll be like, okay, before I do my strength training, let me just do ten minutes on the StairMaster or something and just like like, win myself. And I'll do that for a bit, but I don't like doing that. So eventually, I stopped doing everything because I'm just like, if I work out, then I have to do the StairMaster and I don't want to do that today, you know?
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like
Speaker 1:The one thing that kind of ruins the workout.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've noticed that I've gone through this path a bunch of times where I'm like, maybe I should just like, obviously something is better than nothing. But I'm like, resulting on landing on nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I have a hard time with this. Yeah. Same problem.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, maybe I should just find join some kind of sport and I can just count that as as my cardio, which is probably what BJJ was for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That is the best part about sports is like you wear yourself out and it's fun and you don't think about it. Yeah. I like so much of working out or just like running or walking even, it's just like the whole time I'm just thinking about how I I hate this. Like this is pointless and I hate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Whereas like a sport, you're into it, you don't think about it. Yeah. Jiu Jitsu is that for me. I think it still lacks something like the team sport aspect Yeah. Of
Speaker 2:It's different.
Speaker 1:Early like yeah. Early in adulthood, I was doing like the basketball leagues, like rec leagues, city league. Yeah. That was really fun.
Speaker 2:I did that too.
Speaker 1:Because it felt like yeah. It felt like high school sports again. And it felt like you have that like when the game starts, it's like intense. It's a different kind of feeling than just like a pickup game. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I I I need something. I need something like that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The user mind I think I told you about this before, but I did the same thing. I did like a rec basketball league with my friends in in New York for a bunch of years. The first year, for some reason, the league put us in with a bunch of other teams that just were not at the same skill level, is how I can put it. We went to our first game and I don't think we scored a single point.
Speaker 2:I think we might have scored like it was that bad. They and they just wouldn't stop. Like, they they were up by, like, 50 points and they were just full court press and then, like, dunking.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I'm like, aren't
Speaker 2:you tired of this? Like, we Full court. Yeah. Full court press in Rec League,
Speaker 1:New York City. Oh, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was ridiculous.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, that was bad. Then then then they adjusted us and put us in some of the more good in there.
Speaker 1:They put you in the Yeah. In the appropriate league.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1:it's funny. I'd love to have some video of that. Oh, we do have a famous Dax photo from your basketball days, your rec basketball days. Right?
Speaker 2:One where I'm screaming. That's not rec basketball. That's just us.
Speaker 1:Oh, that wasn't
Speaker 2:rec. That's
Speaker 1:just playing around.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. Pickup in New York. But I think I just so I I did go to one ultimate Pick Up Ultimate game, like, a year ago when I first started, like, a year and half ago when I first went to Miami. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I remember the next day, my whole body was like, okay, this is insane. Like, I can't believe all these places that hurt. But that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. It's like, okay, this means this type of thing.
Speaker 2:I totally enjoyed doing it. I played for two hours and probably workout. I just need to like get back into that and then I never have to be like, am I doing enough cardio? Because I have that and I can just do this on training which I which I enjoy. The other thing is, I guess, I don't know how much I want to count this, but I do technically like, wind myself, like, get out of breath every single day because in as you know, in the morning I blow bubbles, but in the evening Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To go get the second set of playtime. And all I do is take this ball, this, like, big green soccer ball type thing, and try to keep it away from him. Like either, like we play basketball or I'm like dribbling and I try to keep it away from him or like Yeah. A soccer mode where I do it all with my feet. And I've never played soccer before and I've just gotten so good at or not so good, but just like, I picked up on all these like dribbling tricks just from trying to keep it away from him.
Speaker 2:And it is tiring. Is so tiring because he's so fast and he can like change directions in like a second. So it is just like really tiring and I can usually only do it for like ten minutes or so before I'm like completely Yeah. Wiped out. So my activity, I guess, doesn't go to zero, but I don't know how much I can count that.
Speaker 1:Soccer is amazing. Like, even just dribbling, just moving around with the ball is tiring. But like the field is so big in
Speaker 2:college. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:We we played like a pickup soccer game in college once. And like none of us played soccer, but it was like we went to the college soccer field and just like played a random game. It is so huge and like the amount of running you do playing soccer. Like, I remember playing as a kid, but I never realized and as a kid, it's not
Speaker 2:I never even played as a kid. I just basically somehow I just missed soccer. Like, I just it just did not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's another thing I ever did. I guess here at least in the Midwest, every kid plays soccer and then like nobody played like, the high schools don't really have soccer. Yeah. There's not enough, I don't know, interest.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's changing. But, yeah, just like didn't really have any idea how large how large a soccer field was until college and then we all just died one night trying to play soccer.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you look at And we
Speaker 1:were in pretty good shape.
Speaker 2:If you look at a lot of like the best soccer players, it does feel like a big part of their skill set is conserving energy for the right moments.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Like, they're not sprinting all the time. Like, if if
Speaker 2:you watch, it's a mess. He's just walking all the time. He just everywhere. Okay. And all of a sudden, he's just
Speaker 1:like use they choose their moments. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the whole like faking injuries thing, think that's like a big part of just getting a break.
Speaker 1:Really? That's just like part of the soccer culture? Fake injuries? Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 1:So We should say football, I guess, for our international audience. Well,
Speaker 2:I was I was gonna say I was gonna talk about actual football.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. American football.
Speaker 2:Jay is really into the NFL just as a
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, he is. As a Yes. Same.
Speaker 2:As a I was gonna say user, but he's as a fan.
Speaker 1:As a fan.
Speaker 2:But also he's
Speaker 1:super interested
Speaker 2:in in the business of it. And he was telling me a lot about
Speaker 1:Of the NFL.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, like, he takes a lot of inspiration from the way they think. And he was like, they view their sport more than everyone else as a product that they're trying to, like, scale as big as possible, which means they're, like, constantly tweaking the rules and trying to figure out how to deliver the most entertaining product possible, which is different from how other sports, like not every sport is innately like this. Like, I think he was mentioning that baseball people feel more like there's a tradition to this and like we need to like stick to the tradition and honor it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whereas NFL has like blown up like crazy in the past, I guess, I don't know, five, ten years because they just view it as totally different thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's so interesting. I'm also an NFL fan and obviously, like I keep good tabs on all the leagues just with my line of work. Yeah. Baseball has like made some attempt at least in the last couple years.
Speaker 1:They've got like the pitch count
Speaker 2:thing or the timer. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're just so far behind like nobody wants to watch baseball and that's their the inherent problem with baseball. It's like everyone's standing around and it's not very fun to watch.
Speaker 2:So boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's so boring. But the NFL has like all kinds of problems to solve because one, they're yeah. They're always trying to make it a better product and they're trying to like spread it and take over the TV counter because they've just got this huge lead in The US on all the other leagues. So they're you'd like I think the Chiefs play on every game every day of the week, but Tuesday this year.
Speaker 1:Like, they've now got Christmas Day games. They had a Black Friday game this year. They're just like very aggressively trying to take over the TV calendar for the months that the NFL season's active. But they also have to deal with like the fact that NFL athletes are insane. And every year, they just keep pushing the boundaries of like size and speed and strength.
Speaker 1:And they it's like they will kill each other if they don't put certain rules in place to just make the game more safe. So they that's the other thing they have to deal with is like Mhmm. You've got this sport where there's collisions, it's very violent, you've got athletes who are just getting more and more menacing. And then a a public that's more and more aware of like the brain injury side of the NFL. So they they've had to do all these things to make the game safer, which could work against some of their goals with making it more entertaining.
Speaker 1:It's it's an interesting league to follow over the last decade. Like, they've made all these changes that that you've got the old timers who feel like it's not even football anymore or you can't even hit the quarterback. But then at the same time, like, it's a better product than ever and it's more entertaining. There's more points or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can talk about the NFL a lot. It's it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, he was saying he was telling me that, like, it's be it's been such like this iterative optimized for, you know, the things you talked about process that no one even knows the rules anymore. But like it doesn't it doesn't really matter at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. No. They they have like weird defensive things like you can't specific kinds of tackling and people don't even know what like Mhmm. What is a hip drop tackle, but like you can't do it and randomly it'll come up in some game because somebody got hurt.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It it is interesting. The the what's interesting to me is that this year so like, they've done all these things to try and make it more exciting and more points and, like, generally favor the offensive side of the ball. The it's like the defensive minded people in the league caught up. And this year, there was like this the first half of the season was just like terrible offense and, like, defenses were just limiting scoring at kind of unprecedented levels.
Speaker 1:And and I think that's gotten a little better the second half of the season. But it is interesting, like, they can do all these things with the rules to try and make it more exciting and then like defensive coordinators can just figure out how to make it not exciting again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think everything in life works that way. There's like rules that work then eventually they get optimized out and come up with a different it happens in Mhmm. Or it happens in politics, it happens like happens everywhere. But I mean, that's what's cool.
Speaker 2:It's like constantly evolving and not at all static. Like in f one, like, was just an era where Mercedes just won every single race. Every single race.
Speaker 1:I've gotta get into f one. I've heard people talk about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And And it was like so boring. And Yeah. For
Speaker 1:And like one driver, right, was really dominant?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Lewis Lewis Hamilton, okay. So and so I like, oh, he's so great. Like, he like he literally wins every single like, when I got into it, was around when he started to win a lot. And so, like, this huge period of time, it was just like, I ignored first place and was more looking to see what was gonna happen in second or third.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was
Speaker 2:like, oh, Lewis Hamilton's so great, Mercedes is so great. And it is like a team sport at the end of the day, like, there's lot of coordination going on. Then, there was one race where there was a team that typically came like in the bottom, like, maybe a lot. They were always friends like last one or two. I forgot what the reason was.
Speaker 2:I think it's because this driver of that car is like super young and he was technically like sponsored by Mercedes in some other way. They let him go in an f one car. Sorry, in a Mercedes car. That he that he like he like drove for that team. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Instantly was just in first place, the whole like, I'd never seen him do anything at all. And then he was just, like, immediately, like, the best driver on the track. And some crazy freak thing happened where, he got a tire puncture and he ended up, like, losing. But he was literally about to win. This random ass person just put in this car that he hasn't even practiced in that much is now, like, phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's more it's more the car.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just and then on the engineering side, they're just, like, totally killing it. And then f one added a rule about they added just like caps on the what's it called? The there's like a name for this in sports show when they cap how much a team can spend. Is what it's called?
Speaker 1:Oh, like a salary cap kind of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like a luxury tax or whatever.
Speaker 1:Or luxury tax? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I forgot what exactly they did and, you know, it it made stuff a lot more competitive. But, yeah, it was just funny to see, like, for years that everyone was like and obviously, Lewis Hamilton is still a great driver, but everyone it just felt like he was the one winning and then just someone else uses his car and they're like, almost as good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. I know I've heard some of the f one stuff like that the winning it's like as you win, as a team wins, they get an advantage in terms of their budget or something. So they kind of get ahead on the R and D side because they're allowed to spend more or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've heard
Speaker 2:Well, it it's it's complicated because the Mercedes team is attached to Mercedes, like, multi billion dollar corporation. And then, like, that's where they draw funding from. But there are teams on the track that are just like some random billionaire's team. I'm sure they get access to a of capital too, but obviously not the same level as like, this is the marketing arm of Mercedes, like, doing these f one races.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2:So I think that created a lot of imbalance. Yeah. It's, the thing with f one is they also have a similar problem where it can be quite boring and it's really hard to make it better just because there's like, you just can't control it. It's just a race at the end of the day, like how much can you change about it?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The moments where it's not boring are some of like the best things in sports Moments ever, in right? Yeah. But they're far and few between in most races you like go into excited to see that, but then it turns out the three fastest people just stay in positions one, three for the whole two hours. Mhmm. So nothing really really happens.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So a lot of the reason F1 blew up was not because of people watching the races, it was because of the Netflix series, Drive to Survive. Yeah. Because
Speaker 1:I've heard of this.
Speaker 2:The reality show aspect of it is super super interesting. There's like so much drama behind the scenes. Just a lot of like complexity with like the teams being drivers or drivers being pissed at the teams and, like, a lot of this stuff that Yeah. That go on, like, you would just never see if you just watch stuff on the track. And it also involves, like, traveling the world.
Speaker 2:It's, like, a very, like, rich sport. Right? It's, like, there's, like Mhmm. One of the racers is, like, a billionaire's son and it's just weird to think that there's like a billionaire like zooming around this track. And like Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like dad bought the team and then like, it's just Yeah. There's like all this like appealing stuff that's very entertaining, but way wider appeal with that stuff than just literally watching the race.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Documentaries are so good because you do you get this peek into worlds that you don't even know exists. Yeah. I enjoy sports documentaries a lot too.
Speaker 1:I I find it fascinating like the behind the scenes of the what just the giant industry that is, sports. Yeah. I watched some of the like, there's some NFL stuff that's interesting. Receiver and quarterback series. Oh, speaking of media, I started list well, I did listen to the first three Body Problem books.
Speaker 1:I finished it last night.
Speaker 2:How'd you like it?
Speaker 1:I didn't even know I was about to finish it. I didn't even know it was almost over. That's the interesting thing. Sometimes you listen to an Audible book, you get really into it and then just suddenly it's like they're doing the credits. You're like, what?
Speaker 1:What? That's the
Speaker 2:end? Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's so good actually. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. I'm I'm on the second book now.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many books there are, but I'm gonna try the the series, what? Are Are you gonna make it
Speaker 2:No, I'm laughing because your your tweet about the names, about like not being able to tell listen to audiobook. Okay.
Speaker 1:I still don't know who half the people are.
Speaker 2:Because the names are Chinese and you don't recognize them. It's a Yes. And they sound very similar. So it's funny you say that because you were like, you commented on how it's difficult because you're like listening to it through audiobook. I read
Speaker 1:it Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I had a situation where I thought there was I didn't realize two characters were the same character just from different time periods. I I thought they were totally different people. I didn't realize till the end of the book like, oh, yeah, that was the same name as the beginning, you know.
Speaker 1:I really need to look at like a diagram that's like a tree, like a family tree of characters from this book because like I know a couple of them distinctly from the others, but the number of characters could be twice as many as I realize. It's You know, Dashi.
Speaker 2:That's the only one that matters. It's only one I remember.
Speaker 1:Dashi. Is that the tough cop? Yeah. I said that he was the only character that said Like, the tough cop is like literally the one guy in the whole book. Because like he has a different voice in the Audible book.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:And it's like this very like grungy like
Speaker 2:I mean, even reading it, like voice. There's not really a main character in that book, but that's like the most main character of the characters.
Speaker 1:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess in my memory
Speaker 1:I would think Yao I would guess he I would guess Yao Ming or whatever. Not Yao Ming. That's a that's a basketball player. I'm so sorry. It's close to that.
Speaker 1:Her name is like Yao. I I would have thought she was the main character, like the
Speaker 2:The one from the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1:That feels like this is spoilers, but like the one who sends the thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. Not at the beginning. The one who sends the thing, this is in the middle of the book, bounces it off the sun. Oh.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna say what she sent.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I know.
Speaker 1:I would I would call her the main character.
Speaker 2:I I count that as the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? Interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I felt like that was squarely in the middle. The beginning's all a blur to me, to be honest. It was like a story about her dad, Yao's dad, I don't even remember his name, and what she witnessed. Again, I don't wanna give spoilers. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a great book. You should read the book, watch the series, whatever.
Speaker 2:The reason I said there's not really a main character is because the book and you can probably see you can probably already tell, the story is set up to span like hundreds of years, it's just gonna transition to different people. The second book is by far the best one. It is Oh, really? Really good.
Speaker 1:I've never heard anybody talk about.
Speaker 2:I remember like literally to the last page, like, the best moment is understanding like, basically the the excellent the thing you're trying to understand the whole book is literally explained on the last page of the book. So, like, up to the point of you getting to the end, you're just like really into it and the explanation is so satisfying.
Speaker 1:Oh, now I'm super pumped.
Speaker 2:And then the third book, what's funny about the third book is, so he said he sets up the story, right, the thing you've read Halfway so into the third book, that story concludes effectively. That it's still half a book left. And he just goes nuts. It's just like the craziest impossible to understand physics shit like you've ever seen after just becomes so like beyond the realm of anything understandable. It's still really good and interesting, but yeah, it's just like really wild.
Speaker 1:Is there just three books? Yeah. That There's three
Speaker 2:books. Okay. So
Speaker 1:I'm realizing like it's this is the dumbest observation ever And I feel like it's hard to even say this out loud without sounding super dumb. But like, it's finally clicking to me that like science fiction is like science. And it's super interesting. Like, they make up science, but then there's probably also some real science.
Speaker 2:No. No. So so this book, Three Body Problem, is in a specific subgenre of science fiction. And there's like a whole spectrum of it. So there's a subgenre of science fiction called hard sci fi.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And hard sci fi is a lot more of what you're describing, where it's like actual science that is all literally, probably most of it's very like correct and they're extrapolating stories and and ideas And out of this I would say is on like, if you're trying to get into hard sci fi, this is like the easiest entry point into that. I personally think anything past this level of hard sci fi is like pretty niche, but I think that this book is unique in that he did something in that category but it was so like widely accessible and enjoyable. So he's very good at this and then Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:The other sci fi author that's like probably the best of our generation is the guy that wrote
Speaker 1:Michael Crichton? What?
Speaker 2:Oh, no. Okay. The guy that made Jurassic Park? No. No.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:He made other stuff. Come on. Don't don't don't, like, belittle his career.
Speaker 2:I mean, I love Jurassic Park. I love dinosaurs, so I'm not belittling.
Speaker 1:There's a there's a bunch of them. We'll get rid of later. Keep going.
Speaker 2:There's bunch of them. Man, what's Blanket Azan, the guy that wrote the short story that became the movie Arrival?
Speaker 1:I'm I'm familiar with the movie. Didn't know there was a short story.
Speaker 2:George Yang.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Who's also Asian, but he's American.
Speaker 1:Gathered that.
Speaker 2:His writing is, like, insane. Like, he like, as a writer, there's this one short story me and Liz listened to when we were driving from New York to Miami. It's called I it's called exhalation.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And the and she describes it in this way, think it's totally accurate. She's like, there wasn't a single extra word in the whole story. It's like so so so beautifully written. Like, just as forget like a the science part, just as like a story, as an expression of ideas, then that makes you feel something. And on top of that, it is one of the most fantastic explanations of the idea of entropy that has ever been like thought of.
Speaker 1:Oh. So Okay. This
Speaker 2:person can like deeply understand science scientific concepts and also turn it into like, some of the best works of arts ever made. And just like, so mind blowingly, like, mind blowing talented. You have to be so talented to be able to do those two things. And Mhmm. And the same thing with three body problem, right?
Speaker 2:Like, one moment he's like creating like plot devices out of like physics that involve like planets. The next moment he's, like, doing computer engineering. He's, you know, the whole thing where they, like, do that calculation.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like, he understands how computers work and understands, like, that, you know, a computer can be made from anything and understands that idea and turns that into, like, a plot device. So it's really wild. These people are just like not human to me. They're brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Okay. So I like hard sci fi because I think the Project Hail Mary book, which I've talked about before on the podcast It's
Speaker 2:it's kind of more in that direction too.
Speaker 1:It's in that direction, yeah. Because it feels like you're learning stuff. Even the hard thing for me is listening to these authors like Andy Weir. He also did The Martian.
Speaker 2:Martian. Yeah. Martian also hard because they're fi. Listen
Speaker 1:to that one. I guess I'm getting into hard sci fi hard sci fi. The the hard thing for me is not knowing what's true and what is made up. Because I assume some of the stuff they're talking about, they can't really know. Like it's beyond the levels of science that we as humans have uncovered.
Speaker 2:I think everything in the book is plausible. Like, it's it's that like Plausible. There's nothing about it that's just like, oh, that's wrong. It might be like really hard to pull off or really unlikely but our current understanding of the math and physics like allow for that.
Speaker 1:So let me give you yeah. Let me give you an example. And I'm sorry. If this is spoilers, just go ahead and stop listening if you don't want I don't think it's spoilers, but I'm gonna give you an actual example where my brain is like, I don't know what to think about this. The proton stuff.
Speaker 1:The like
Speaker 2:They're so fun.
Speaker 1:Different dimensions. Yeah. The sofan. The different dimensions
Speaker 2:Bolding like into the tiny thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That stuff. Is all that like based in real science? Yeah. Because that blew my mind.
Speaker 1:What? Like, there are 11 dimensions? No.
Speaker 2:No. Sorry. It's not that we know for sure there are 11 dimensions, but we have Okay. Certain models of physics that require there to be, you know, x number dimensions. I think the 11 dimensions thing comes from string theory, but I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 1:So, like, do you know how many you're gonna say something confidently either way, so I love this conversation because I can just I can just ask you questions and you'll give me something. Like, do you know what level we're on? Like, how many dimensions do we actually know about?
Speaker 2:Okay. So I I mean Is that something? We are we are living in okay. It's a little hard to explain. We are three-dimensional creatures living in a four dimensional space.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Because of time?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because we can traverse It's
Speaker 1:the fourth dimension.
Speaker 2:We can traverse physical three dimensions and Mhmm. We can't traverse the fourth dimension if you are a
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:Fourth dimensional being in a fifth dimensional space, you can
Speaker 1:You could traverse time. Exactly. Woah.
Speaker 2:By the way, this is kind of a spoiler for the book. Like, he he get he goes really far it's not really a spoiler, but I'm saying he goes really far into this dimensionality It's actually really brilliant. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So maybe that gets more into it in the second book because I don't think we we just kind of like briefly touched on it in the first book. Okay. I'm very excited for the second book now. I'll be honest, the start a little slow for me.
Speaker 1:There's so many moments in these books. Well, I guess not so much like I listened to Project Hail Mary, I don't feel like there were moments in that book. Maybe he's just smarter, this author, and I'm dumber with the stuff he's saying. There's just like stretches where I just get so lost. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I just feel like I kinda like tune out because I I'm just not able to follow. There's the beginning of this second book, there's this whole like ant thing and to be honest, I didn't understand a single Ant bit of
Speaker 2:thing is so so good though.
Speaker 1:Ugh. Gonna have to go
Speaker 2:back and listen to it again and
Speaker 1:actually figure it out. And
Speaker 2:maybe Liz is also one that pointed this out. That whole ant thing has nothing to do with anything. It's just him showing off.
Speaker 1:I know. It just felt like this Yeah. It just felt like this whole thing, this whole puzzle, it was like a little side quest and I have to go back and listen to it again to like know what the numbers are and like figure it all out.
Speaker 2:No, it's not It it has nothing to do with the plot, it's just he just had this Right. Thought, this interesting observation and he found a good way to express it. But it has nothing to do with the rest of the book, I think.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, I got the sense that it's like, this is optional. This is the thing I don't need to actually understand. Like, it's interesting that like the ant is like near this conversation and like that's what a cool perspective. But like, I know I didn't get it and like the numbers of things the ant was following on the ground, like I just know I missed it and I can't decide if I wanna go back and listen to the whole thing over again.
Speaker 2:No, you don't
Speaker 1:have to. There's moments like that in in these books where I just feel like I didn't need to understand that to know the plot of the book. Yeah. It was just like a cool side quest, but like not knowing when I should try to understand versus just like ignore it.
Speaker 2:I think with all creative works, there's some stuff that's for the audience and there's some stuff that's the author.
Speaker 1:And Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes the author will indulge and as they should. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, the sec I don't know if you got did you get the whole, like, wall facer program? No.
Speaker 2:No? Okay. What? No.
Speaker 1:I'm very
Speaker 2:early on
Speaker 1:the second book. Just started
Speaker 2:Basically, second book, there's this program they start and it's, like, so interesting the way they, like, approach it. With a lot of these Honestly Oh,
Speaker 1:go ahead.
Speaker 2:As I said, with a lot of these books, I always find that some books, like the plot is so good that you just want to know what happens, so you're just like trying to blow through it as fast as possible. And I did feel that way a lot with the with this series. So I probably ended up skimming over a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1:So what's interesting to me is so I listen to these books at like one and something, one point seven or whatever, one point eight speed. There's like different seasons because I started this book probably like two months ago and I only listened to a little bit. And then I like missed a couple weeks and then I listened to a little bit. It's like the it's hard for me to tell you how far into the book certain parts of it are of the different listening patterns. Like over the last week, I've listened a ton.
Speaker 1:Right. I listened to most of it in the last week. But like, if you go back to the beginning of the book, it was two months ago and it was in little spurts. So what my observation here may be completely off. Like, I I I just have a hard time with knowing, you know, the chronology of the book.
Speaker 1:But it felt like I listened to half the book and was like, this is stupid. I Maybe it was the not understanding which characters were which. It just felt so slow. Yeah. And then there was some point like three fourths of the way into the book where it was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever listened to in my life and I'm so hooked.
Speaker 1:Like, I have to hear every next word and I'm like super into it. But it felt honestly like that was like one chapter of the entire book that was like the payoff and it made it so worth it, but like the rest of it was super boring to me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Have the same issue with so I was getting so I've I read a lot of so of all the books I've read, most of them have been fiction. Of the fiction books I've read, most of them have been sci fi. But I've read like all the great sci fi books that always come up. But I was like, hey, let me like try to get into some fantasy stuff.
Speaker 2:And I did read one fantasy book that was really good. Like, I, like, couldn't put it down. The whole thing was
Speaker 1:Fantasy being, like, Lord of the Rings?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, like, you know, like more I mean, like, Harry Potter is technically fantasy. It's like Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's, modern equivalents to that.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And I was really into it. So then I asked on Twitter like, hey, can you guys recommend me some other stuff? And a lot of people in our circle love this author Brandon Sanderson. He comes up a lot.
Speaker 2:Like, lot of people have read him. Mhmm. And so I tried one of his books and it was really difficult because similarly, like the middle of the book it gets crazy slow, but the payoff at the ending is so incredible that it just made all of it totally worth And I was like, yes, this guy's great, I love it. Let me get into the second book. Even harder.
Speaker 2:Like, I didn't make it past the middle. Like, just like so much of, like, just nothing happening and I know that's gonna get really good at the end. And so his name is Brendan Sanderson and I think people have identified this about his books and they call it like a sander lance or something. You get like an avalanche of stuff in like 10 pages at the end. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think it takes like I would never have stuck it out through this first three body problem book if I hadn't heard glowing reviews. It's like you just need that social proof where somebody is like, this series is amazing. And that was like the the thing that kept me going. It's like, I'm gonna get through this book because I heard people say they like it. But it felt like literally hours of foreplay.
Speaker 1:Just like Uh-huh. Listening to this giant book and feeling like there's so many characters and it's so much just like vagueness and not really wanting to reveal the thing that they're eventually gonna reveal. And when they reveal it, it's all gonna be worth it. But it just felt like so much effort Yeah. To get through that first half.
Speaker 1:But then, yeah, you just feel like, oh, I'm so glad I I stuck it out. This is getting so bad.
Speaker 2:But maybe, like, you know, you need that delay to, like, And have a half be obviously, all of our attention spans are are pretty bad these days, so I didn't I, feel that way with Three Body like, really didn't feel like Like, I definitely felt like I really wanted to know the thing. Like, the second book, there's like a thing he does and the whole book you're just like waiting for the outcome of the thing or having him explain why he did it. And the payoff is great, but I I found like the the process to that to be to be okay. But like I said, I can relate to that with with other books.
Speaker 1:Man, not me. I may just be a simpler simpler human from the Ozarks.
Speaker 2:Have you read other sci fi?
Speaker 1:I think I mean, I think I I have given you my whole history with sci fi. So Andy Weir, so The Martian and
Speaker 2:I still have to read Project Hail Mary. That's like the one major thing that I haven't read. Yeah. Everyone says it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Because the movie. Yeah. You know who's in that movie? Movie
Speaker 2:with Ryan Gosling. I
Speaker 1:just watched Blade Runner by the way.
Speaker 2:Which one?
Speaker 1:Both of them. I
Speaker 2:What'd you think?
Speaker 1:So I read, I I googled it extensively like, do I need to watch the first one? Because I have such limited movie watching time and I needed to know like, do I need to spend two hours watching this 1982 movie? Oh my god, it's so old.
Speaker 2:I don't think I personally don't think you need to.
Speaker 1:So, I I hard disagree because I went through the pain. Maybe it's just like I'm trying to justify the time the time I spent. I've spent two mornings watching that first stupid Harrison Ford movie. It was so dumb. Not so dumb.
Speaker 1:It was just like, it's made in the eighties and it was like
Speaker 2:That's yeah. I know. It's hard to understand it properly
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When it's watching it now. So Forty years ago. It's insane.
Speaker 1:It's insane. It's really insane. So I watched that because I read that it it did supplement the second movie. I feel like without that knowledge, that would have taken a lot out of the plot. But maybe
Speaker 2:No. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:In the second movie, maybe it's hard for me to watch the second movie with fresh eyes and imagine like if I don't know all the things I know. Did it explain it all enough without having watched the first one?
Speaker 2:No. In a way, it's even better if you haven't watched the first one because you get to experience like well, Okay. One, the the the actual twist in the second one is so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. That was that was really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I love the part where
Speaker 1:I enjoyed the second movie a lot.
Speaker 2:Did you did you like the part where the main character thought he was so special? Yeah. And then it turned out he wasn't special?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You kinda just I mean, that's spoilers a little bit but
Speaker 2:It's it's Okay. If you haven't seen it by now
Speaker 1:Yeah. I guess that's a more recent like, people would
Speaker 2:have I watched you could learn a lot from
Speaker 1:Oh, you're saying I think I'm special. I'm just kidding. That was so good. That was a good one. You're not wrong.
Speaker 2:But then also, like, you you don't need to know anything about Harrison Ford for that movie.
Speaker 1:Which you do. I mean, who he who he fell in love with, I'm sorry, that's like a huge part of the second movie's plot.
Speaker 2:But that's just another twist for you.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:So here's the thing, I I watched the second one. I didn't watch it at first. I'd seen the first one but like not properly and I barely remembered anything from it. So I basically watched the second one without watching the first one. And I thought it was a really good movie and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's probably hard for me to like separate what I knew already and what they explained in the second movie. But I felt like my time was well spent. I'm glad I watched the first one first because I knew like I know Harrison Ford's character and where he came from and who he fell in love with and all that story. I felt like that was nice context. But I guess they probably did a good job of making sure you don't have to see it because they can't assume people saw a movie forty years ago.
Speaker 2:Know what I you know what always pops into my head from that movie? Just that whole like baseline thing where he's like interlinked interlinked.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, that's so bizarre. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What is Something about that just like stuck to my brain and I always think
Speaker 1:about it. What does it feel like to hold your child interlinked? That's some robot shit right there for sure. It was a good movie. It was.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed it. Yeah. I'm getting into sci fi, turns out. I I just like never considered what genres are what and like what I actually like. I always thought I just like dramas.
Speaker 1:That was like the broad it's like, I don't like comedy, I like drama. And that was like the two categories of movies for me. And now I'm realizing there's a lot more depth to it than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I I would actually argue that sci fi is the greatest genre. I don't think it's objective because I
Speaker 1:think the
Speaker 2:best works in it, and maybe it's true of every genre, but like
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:said earlier, like being able to just contain all the other parts of great work Yeah. And also do This hard this scientific Yeah. Thing where you extrapolate and like derive a story from like weird things that could happen. Like, that is just so so so impressive. So I I would definitely recommend reading Ted Chiang if you wanna get more into
Speaker 1:It feels like it would take and I would recommend reading Michael Crichton because that's the name I knew. I feel like he's made a lot of stuff. I actually read one of his books that I don't know if it ever became a movie. It was like Swarm or it was the idea of swarms. What was that?
Speaker 1:Michael?
Speaker 2:What's the one where they travel through time?
Speaker 1:I feel like that you just named like a million movies.
Speaker 2:No. There there's one.
Speaker 1:There's just One. Swarm? Was it the book called Swarm? Oh, Prey. So I read Prey.
Speaker 1:I don't think it became a movie. Did it become a movie? Interesting book. Yeah. He's he's very much a sci fi.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, comes up with stuff that sounds but his stuff is maybe less hard sci fi, like the Jurassic Park thing. It's like it sounds like it could happen. It's like this
Speaker 2:The thing with his stuff is I don't it's not in this category of describing. It doesn't contain, like, a crazy level of deep deepness to it. Right? There's like
Speaker 1:Sorry. Talking to my son. Keep going.
Speaker 2:That's okay. It's like a good enjoy these books are good and enjoyable, but they're very straightforward.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's not like a big mind bender.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's not like incorporating like philosophy. Philosophy. It doesn't like make you think about No. Your mindset.
Speaker 2:Right. Into like what matters in life and and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:More mass market appeal. But not for us intellectuals. We like the deeper stuff. I totally got all the stuff in Three Body Problem. I totally understand it all.
Speaker 1:It's so good. Alright. I gotta get off here. My my five year old, he's ready to play.
Speaker 2:Listen to if you once you run out of audiobook, listen to Ted Chiang's stories. I'll send you a few because you can listen to them in like a couple hours each one.
Speaker 1:Are the characters all named Yao and Yang and Yin and Yu and
Speaker 2:No. He's American. Okay. He's an American.
Speaker 1:That that sounds so racist, but it's just like, I'm from the Ozarks and those names do not distinguish themselves enough. It's just like how they would say we all look the same and they probably think all our names sound the same. Is this racist? Yeah. Just cut it out if it's racist.
Speaker 2:Please say. It's just a reality.
Speaker 1:Okay. It's just a reality. Right? I feel like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's just reality. It's hard for names apart because I don't live in that culture and I don't hear those sounds all the time.
Speaker 2:So I also wonder how much the translation because like, because Frank read the book in Chinese.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice.
Speaker 2:You know, it's Chinese. And I bet it was like a quite a different experience. Very different. There's stuff you can't express the same
Speaker 1:Oh, sure.
Speaker 2:When you translate it. So Alright. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Alright. Goodbye.
Speaker 2:See you.
