Can't get away from the cold and chores, like washing clothes and seasoning cast iron skillets, cause Airbnb's new design is so bad we can't find anywhere to go for a good price.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
Can't get away from the cold and chores, like washing clothes, cause Airbnb's new design is so bad we can't find anywhere to go for a good price.
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:09
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. I am your co host, Georgie and I’m here with Geoff. Wearing a puffer jacket, Geoff.
Geoff 0:19
Yeah, it’s like I’ve been saying that it’s basically winter and people are winter deniers.
Georgie 0:28
Oh yeah?
Geoff 0:30
“Nah, it’s not winter.”
Georgie 0:32
I think it’s because we don’t have a real one. It’s not very cold.
Geoff 0:36
What is winter? Definition of winter?
Georgie 0:40
I think a lot of people not in Australia think of winter as being like, really snowy, really cold and our temperatures just don’t go that low enough for people to be like, “Yeah, that’s a real winter”. So.
Geoff 0:56
Yeah.
Georgie 0:58
So like our winters sometimes are like, what, a maximum of 20 or something. If you go to the UK, they will say that 20 degrees is summer for them and very hot. And I remember my friend, when I met up with her in, in Liverpool in England, she was eating ice cream in like, and it was like I don’t know, it was very windy. And I’m pretty sure it was not even 20 degrees. Celsius people, by the way.
Geoff 1:29
Yeah.
Georgie 1:29
Which is what in Fahrenheit.
Geoff 1:31
Maybe our seasons should be based on you know, temperature. You could say technically, the month are incorrect for winter, but it is kind of relative...ly as cold as winter now. Oh, I guess not? And it’s been like 12, 9 degrees. I think that’s pretty much winter for Australia.
Georgie 2:02
Yeah, I actually agree. But winter is next week anyway. So I figured, you know, it’s...
Geoff 2:07
Oh, winter’s next week? Oh, this is so funny. So I just kept saying, “Oh, it’s probably winter” to my partner. And my partner’s like, it’s it’s not winter. And I was like it... Yeah, yeah, it feels like winter. So can’t it be winter, and they’re like, “It’s not winter?” I’m like, “okay, when’s winter?” And they’re like, “Are you trolling me? Do you do not know when winter is?” And I am dead serious. I had not, like, remembered the seasons. Because it’s pretty irrelevant to life for me. It’s cold, it’s cold. It’s hot, it’s hot. It’s not cold. Semi hot. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Georgie 2:55
Yeah.
Geoff 2:55
It’s just irrelevant to my life.
Georgie 2:58
I don’t think it’s that concrete either. Like so winter for us is at the beginning of June. By the way, people listening to this it probably is already winter here by the time you listen to this because we’re recording... so winter is the beginning of June until...
Geoff 3:15
Don’t cancel us because we’re talking about the wrong season.
Georgie 3:21
Yeah, we’re not in the northern hemisphere. Sorry, people. It’s just the way it is.
Geoff 3:25
Just the way it is.
Georgie 3:26
Also for, for people in the northern hemisphere. 20 degrees Celsius is 68 Fahrenheit. So there you go.
Geoff 3:33
Oh, look at that. You looked it up? Or do you know that off the top of your head weirdly.
Georgie 3:38
I did look it up. I was inclined to just pretend I knew it. But no.
Geoff 3:43
Yeah, but I mean, it’s like that tweet about the met—not the metric system. The whatever.
Georgie 3:50
Imperial.
Geoff 3:51
Imperial system that like that America uses. It’s like, all of it’s incorrect. Anyways, so that’s what I thought, you know, Fahrenheit is, but apparently Kelvins and Fahrenheit, it’s still as accurate as Celsius. I think. I don’t know. Don’t use it.
Georgie 4:14
I don’t know. I think it’s just I don’t know about accuracy. But I think it’s...
Geoff 4:20
Consistent.
Georgie 4:21
It is. It’s a different way of saying.
Geoff 4:26
Oh my god, I forgot to season my iron skillet again. I’ve been trying all morning to season my iron skillet.
Georgie 4:36
But how do you do that? How does one go about doing that?
Geoff 4:38
Right. So it’s like a two hour long process, and not two hours of doing shit. So step one is of course, clean the skillet. If you used it, you clean the skillet and you clean the skillet. Well, they recommend that you don’t use any dish soap or anything but I kind of had to because I had a ton of oil on it. But um, you pour some salt crystals to make it make, like, whatever, you’re rubbing it abrasive, and then you take like a sponge and you scrape stuff off anyways. Then you dry it to the bone. So it has to be in the oven for maybe 40 minutes to an hour just to dry it to the bone. If you don’t dry it to the bone, you get rust. It’s plain and simple. So you dry it to the bone for what for like an hour in the oven, you’re heating it up. And then you take it out of the oven. And you have to let the oven cool down I think, or either way it’s going to cool down. And then because it’s too hot, I have to like, I try to wait for like 20 minutes or something. So it cools down. But the next part is you put like a vegetable oil, and you give it a vegetable oil rub all over it. And then the next step is that you have to wipe all of that oil off so thoroughly as if it doesn’t feel like it’s oily anymore. So the idea here is the heat opens up the pores of the iron. And then you fill the iron with fat, the oil fat, and that creates a nonstick layer. And then basically, you to bake in the fat, you put it back in the oven for like another hour or two, or hour and a half. So the whole process can take like, two hours, because you’re just waiting for shit to happen.
Georgie 6:36
Oh wait, what is this in preparation for?
Geoff 6:39
So essentially, if you have a regular pan that coating is, there’s a nonstick coating on top of it.
Georgie 6:45
Yeah.
Geoff 6:46
For an iron skillet, it’s literally just iron. So it’s without the coating.
Georgie 6:51
Yeah.
Geoff 6:51
And what you’re doing is adding that nonstick layer on top. Also, you’re protecting the iron from getting rust. So you actually oil the whole thing from front to back and handle and stuff like that. Just to... and it will look like brand new if you do it correctly, every time. But because it takes like two hours after you finish like cooking and eating and you get to the pan and you’re just like, I’m just like, oh god, fuck doing that.
Georgie 7:24
Why don’t you outsource it?
Geoff 7:26
Why don’t I outsource it? Oh, I mean, like, do you want to pay someone five bucks to come over after every cook? Yeah, maybe they should have that like a shop. You just take your pan to them and they’ll season it for you.
Georgie 7:42
Similar to like lawn laundromats, right? So like here in Australia, they’re not really common for people to use.
Geoff 7:49
I used to do one.
Georgie 7:51
Or you did? Oh, okay.
Geoff 7:52
I used to use one, I’m sorry, not not actually be one.
Georgie 7:57
Is that because you didn’t have a washing machine? Moving houses or something?
Geoff 8:05
Back in the day, when I first moved to Sydney we had a shared washing machine and that was one of the big reasons we just went down the road and gave our laundry to an old couple and they would just do your laundry.
Georgie 8:19
Yeah. But do they also, I mean in Sydney, because I’ve never been to one in Sydney—there’s one actually not too far from me which is pretty new and you can sit there and and do it yourself. But did you go to one, I mean did you ever go to any that were like, you could sit there and do it yourself instead of paying the people who own the place?
Geoff 8:37
Oh no, I actively avoid having to do it. Like, like what am I what am I going, if I can go to a laundromat and pay the person to like do it for me then I do that rather than just go to a laundromat that’s coin machine and you just sit there and do it yourself.
Georgie 8:53
Have you ever done overseas like in another country?
Geoff 8:57
Oh... no.
Georgie 9:01
We did. One time. I can tell you the story. So yeah, like in I would say I think in America it can be quite common in some cities to not have a washing machine and so you go to the laundromat and I think yeah some people like, like you said, like just pay the person there to do it for them, others will just sit there and read a book while they operate and wait for the machine themselves. So. We were in New York and we stayed in an Airbnb and really long, really long story short, we flooded the toilet.
Geoff 9:37
Oh what, shit like really?
Georgie 9:41
Yeah in in like a, one of those. I mean, I think most apartments in in New York City like a pretty old, you know, in an old building. So anyway, we were like, oh shit, and then used as many towels as were available in the Airbnb to like mop up the mess. It wasn’t like it was, it wasn’t like it wasn’t like someone took a shit. It wasn’t like one of us took a shit and the water was bad. It was just the toilet flooded, right?
Geoff 10:12
You’re in a laundromat?
Georgie 10:13
Wait no, I’m saying no, no, we flooded in the Airbnb.
Geoff 10:16
Okay.
Georgie 10:17
This is where the story starts. The story starts where we flood the toilet. And there were many, thank you to our Airbnb host, there were many—we didn’t tell them that this happened by the way—but there were many towels available. So we used them to mop up the, the overflowing toilet water off the floor. But then obviously we couldn’t just leave it like that. We couldn’t hand wash the shit ourselves. So we were like, we’re gonna go to the laundromat.
Geoff 10:43
Why not just leave it? Sounds like a fine thing to do in an Airbnb. I know it’s not like the courteous thing to do but...
Georgie 10:51
Yeah, and I don’t want to be discourteous, is that the opposite?
Geoff 10:55
Discourteous... discourteous, rude?
Georgie 10:58
Just be a fucking cunt.
Geoff 10:59
I guess you could also get a bad rating, like they’re like, “these assholes took all our towels and wiped up their shit”.
Georgie 11:09
The thing with Airbnbs is I think some Airbnb hosts said they don’t mind about you leaving like, your your trash in the bin or whatever. Others will say no, you need to take it out. Like as if you were living there, you need to take it out to the trash can of the building or whatever. But anyway, you know, we try not to leave too much of a mess because we don’t want them to get a bad impression and just think we trashed the place. So I think it’s just, I think it’s just better that we we do the right thing and and clean up because it was like, I know we’re not gonna wash bedsheets and stuff. Obviously, that’s, you know, something for them. And they probably have a cleaner, but it was still like, we made a mess, like a bad mess. So we go to the laundromat. And we ended up just throwing all the towels in the machine and putting it on for—I don’t even—see the thing with these laundromats and just, just washing machines in general, I think sometimes you can’t tell how long the cycle will take.
Geoff 12:17
Oh, definitely not.
Georgie 12:19
Yeah, there’s no actual time that tells you this will take 20 minutes, this take 40 minutes, this will take an hour.
Geoff 12:25
Yeah.
Georgie 12:25
It has different settings. But they’re all so ambiguous. And even when you say “quick wash”, how long do you think a quick wash should be?
Geoff 12:34
Yeah, that’s why like, I mean, my lawn, my dish, not dishwasher, my washing machine, right now it says like explicitly, “quick 30”. So you know that it’s actually going to be 30 minutes. But everything else is sort of like, I have no fucking clue when it’s gonna end. We put towels in actually, actually, I’ll let you finish your story before telling you my towels, my towels. Because I’m sure I don’t want to spoil anything.
Georgie 13:02
Mine is not that exciting. But yeah, because there was no time we didn’t know, we didn’t know when it was going to finish. So we left it there. But it also feels strange when you’re in a foreign city and you’re leaving your laundry from the Airbnb you’re staying in, just in the laundromat and not really supervising it. So maybe there’s also a reason why people sit there and mind their, mind their laundry, but we did walk out, you know, we went bought something in a drink and walked around a little bit like not too far. And then we came back and it was still going, and so we just had to routinely check on it until it was done and then it had taken hours—I can’t even remember how long and I think they will I think we had to just put it in the in the dryer after that. Because—and that’s a whole other thing. But yeah, it’s not something I enjoy, I would say.
Geoff 13:58
Yeah, so we put towels in this just this morning at like 9.
Georgie 14:05
Yeah.
Geoff 14:05
For some reason our towels take like four hours. And my my best guess is that because when they when towels absorb water, they get pretty heavy. So like compared to other things that have, that aren’t as, I guess, heavy as towels. I think towels have like a lot of, probably a lot of cotton fibre, fibre like absorbed a lot of what, whatever. Anyway so because it’s super heavy when it’s wet, the, the washing machine takes a lot longer and probably rightly so. But it took four hours.
Georgie 14:44
Wait I’ve asked you this question before but you have a front loader or top loader?
Geoff 14:49
Front, front loader. I don’t give a shit, I don’t, I don’t know what the difference is.
Georgie 14:54
All right, my opinion—and I could very well be wrong, this is literally just my opinion.
Geoff 14:58
Oh yeah, I remember, because top loaders take less time or something.
Georgie 15:02
Yeah, and I’m not saying this just because I’m from some top loader cult or something.
Geoff 15:08
Closest thing to being in a cult is top loaders.
Georgie 15:13
It’s actually from experience, just every time I’ve used a front loader, which has been mostly on my travels, it’s just taken so long, I’ve been like, I’ll just wash a few things quickly. And I tried to put it on the quicker setting, but it takes forever. And I’m not, it’s not just a perceived thing that I’m watching it spinning, and I can see it in the window and going, “fucking hurry up”. It’s not that. It actually does take a lot longer. And I heard, I grew up with my parents having a top loader washing machine. I think they used to have a front loader, but then they stopped using it. But I, we’ve also had one for like, five years or whatever. And I don’t know, it just—I can’t believe your towels take four hours. Like I don’t think any of our washers have ever taken longer than like 40 minutes when, when it’s full. When the when the whole, when we fill up—
Geoff 16:06
Maybe top loaders don’t wash very well. How about that? How about because they only take 40 minutes, the towels aren’t, aren’t washed as well?
Georgie 16:16
Okay, well, let’s let’s go back, right. So washing machines are a piece of technology to wash your clothes. Before we had them, we often washed them by hand, and in some places, they still wash it by hand. Would it really take you four hours to wash your towels by hand, Geoff? So that’s where I think like, I know, the machine does it better than me. But like if I’m like, I’ve washed some of my like shirts and stuff or whatever, like socks and shit while I’m travelling—by hand. And to get a thorough wash I think doesn’t really take that long, I don’t know.
Geoff 16:56
Maybe I just need a new washing machine, maybe four hours is a defect.
Georgie 17:03
Get a top loader, and then see like, and you will know the difference.
Geoff 17:06
Get two washing machines and pit them against each other and like hey, this one is actually less efficient than that that one.
Georgie 17:13
But you have like the experience of using a front loader and then you can at least compare.
Geoff 17:18
Yeah, to be fair, I think a top loader might work better here because then I can actually grab the stuff and then put it into the dryer that’s hanging above it a lot easier. You know, if you’re taking stuff out the front, and then you’re lifting it up, and then you’re putting it into the top. It’s like, you might drop shit. We’ve dropped shit all the time. So you, if you pick up from the top loader and you dropped some shit. Then it doesn’t matter.
Georgie 17:46
I can’t believe you’re thinking about this. This doesn’t even matter.
Geoff 17:49
Logistics, logistics, it’s all about efficiency.
Georgie 17:53
Don’t they have washing machines and dryers in one?
Geoff 17:58
Yeah, arguably, I think there’s some reading out there that basically says like, why why do you get both? It doesn’t, it’s neither a good washer nor good dryer.
Georgie 18:12
Yeah.
Geoff 18:13
I think that’s the sentiment. But my brother has a washer dryer now. And he’s like, it’s fine, but I seriously don’t know what my brother considers fine. Like...
Georgie 18:21
Yeah.
Geoff 18:22
He’s done. He’s done dishes before, he’s just like “alright, I’m finished”, he walks away. It’s literally like there’s stuff still still dirty or there’s still stuff on the counter, and I’m like, I don’t know how you understood this is finished, like, you still have to do here. Or he’ll vacuum stuff like this like, it’s like 30% still here, like did you, you just miss it? So my my brother’s perception of “it’s all good” is kind of, it’s kind of in question. Maybe I’ll get him to do some of my laundry someday. I’ll put some laundry in his machine and I’ll be like alright, let’s let’s give this a go. And see how it goes. I don’t know if it’s a top or front, probably a front. It’s kind of strange to just call them top and fronts. Anyways, Airbnb got a redesign. Did you have a chance to look at it?
Georgie 19:25
No, I didn’t know they had it.
Geoff 19:25
You’re going on holiday right?
Georgie 19:25
Yeah, but booked our stuff already so, I haven’t seen shit.
Geoff 19:29
So you didn’t, you didn’t know this happened?
Georgie 19:32
Nope, I’m gonna look. Is it good? I don’t know.
Geoff 19:35
Whoa. Oh shit I forgot that I’m on a Windows machine. I can’t fucking zoom. Anyways shouldn’t this be, shouldn’t this be the same control? Oh yeah, cuz I just don’t know the shortcut. Anyways. Yeah, have a look at the, have a look at it. It’s basically surfaced the categories as like literal filters at the top now, instead of your very generic side filters.
Georgie 20:05
Wow, mine’s not loading.
Geoff 20:09
Is it not loading on the stream either?
Georgie 20:11
I need it. I need a new MacBook so bad.
Geoff 20:14
OH man. This is this is the time you’re gonna buy a MacBook on the podcast. Just go to the—
Georgie 20:22
Oh nah nah, I’m waiting—
Geoff 20:22
M1, M1 MacBook Air. Just hit that button. Click...
Georgie 20:28
No, I’ve already got an M1 for work. So...
Geoff 20:33
What? You can’t get any other one. There’s only...
Georgie 20:38
What do you mean, sorry?
Geoff 20:38
You can’t get an Intel one.
Georgie 20:41
Well, what I mean is I’ve already got one for work. So I don’t want to get another one yet. And I think they might announce some new ones.
Geoff 20:51
Oh my god, you’re waiting for them to announce M2.
Georgie 20:56
Yeah, maybe. I don’t really care—I’ve put up, ah, it’s not really about the price. It’s just like I’ve put up with this piece of shit. This is a 2015 by the way. I’ve just put up with it for so long.
Geoff 21:06
Yeah, so the glory, it’s a glory day, um, like the glory days of Apple MacBook Pros. 2015.
Georgie 21:15
Yeah, so I’m kind of attached. Wow, like, seriously, it’s—I, you know what I’m seeing on my screen?
Geoff 21:23
Yeah.
Georgie 21:24
I’m seeing the, what do you call them, the loading state.
Geoff 21:28
Shit. Seriously.
Georgie 21:29
All of the icons. Yeah. All the icons all of the... Okay, it’s loading my avatar. Hooray.
Geoff 21:37
Internet.
Georgie 21:37
It’s so fucking slow. I don’t know if it’s the internet or just how bad this is.
Geoff 21:43
Maybe if, let’s, let’s do a performance test of Airbnb.
Georgie 21:48
Yeah, cuz this is my first time loading the new site.
Geoff 21:51
Oh, shit.
Georgie 21:52
Okay, now now they’ve all loaded. Okay.
Geoff 21:54
I wonder what the performance is like on Airbnb. Anyways,
Georgie 21:58
You know what’s funny? Anyway, you were talking about the design?
Geoff 22:01
Yeah, we’re talking about design, we’re...
Georgie 22:02
Yeah. So. So this design like now I’m looking at it, like very nice. But this is it’s like it’s selling me... products.
Geoff 22:15
Yes.
Georgie 22:17
It’s...
Geoff 22:17
Yes.
Georgie 22:18
Yeah. You know what I mean? If feels like they’re selling something really nice and fancy and like, “here, buy this”—not the experience that they’re all about?
Geoff 22:28
Yeah, it’s almost like they took a page out of magazines.
Georgie 22:32
Haha, yeah.
Geoff 22:32
And they’re like, you know what, that’s a great idea. We should we should just suggest the most expensive things, designer things right up front. Like literally the first house design. And they’re all like $1,000 a night? Well, probably not. That’s that’s three, four nights, five nights, and a thousand...
Georgie 22:54
Oh my goodness. There’s one here in Thailand that was on my screen $106,532 for like five days.
Geoff 23:07
I’ve seen it. Yeah, five days in designed by Freddo. Like why would you want to go to a house designed by a chocolate frog, is—
Georgie 23:17
Spelled differently by the way.
Geoff 23:19
Fredo.
Georgie 23:21
Fredo.
Geoff 23:22
And then this was like “designed by urban feature Chico Warihadi... Wirahadi?
Georgie 23:28
Wow. There’s a lot of Indonesian ones. Is this like profiling me?
Geoff 23:31
It’s well, it’s profiling everybody at this stage because there are so many...
Georgie 23:36
Yeah.
Geoff 23:37
But yeah, like, what, why? Why did they think this is a good idea?
Georgie 23:44
Like who is the, the what, the customer here? Like, who are they trying to attract?
Geoff 23:51
It’s, it’s clearly people who can afford to spend 100k on five days. But the, I think it’s kind of interesting in a way that these could be filters. I don’t, I don’t argue that these could be filters, but not like the first thing. Not the first filters, you know.
Georgie 24:12
Are they just trying to grab our attention but...
Geoff 24:16
But also, I’d be like, I’m priced out of this. Seeya.
Georgie 24:19
Okay, like even, all right, the Arctic. What makes you think that right now, that is like, what I’m, that’s what I’m looking for. Like, okay. I don’t know. It’s just...
Geoff 24:35
The Arctic.
Georgie 24:36
I just don’t understand why they’d be targeting very specific re—so the Arctic is like a specific region, right? Why are they going “Hey, check this out”. Like...
Geoff 24:45
Yeah, that’s really interesting, because—let’s have a look. Alright, so we have Design, which is designer places; National Parks, which are places in national parks, but that’s not comparable to design. Right? Design is a type of house that you’re looking for. Very “designer”. National park, are we going to national park, the type of house? Like it’s just like, let’s just rent out a national park? And the Arctic is really interesting because it’s—
Georgie 25:15
Hey, there’s one, there’s one that says Luxe, let’s see how expensive that shit is.
Geoff 25:19
Oh yeah, yeah, I was I was getting to the Luxe... ho my god. So $251,000 Dominican Republic, 10 guests, only 10 guests? This thing is massive five bedrooms, five beds, seven baths, but only 10 guests? No way.
Georgie 25:36
Wait, have they had this Luxe thing before? I feel like...
Geoff 25:41
They’ve had super... They’ve had super—
Georgie 25:45
Comfort, they’ve had comfort, right?
Geoff 25:48
And I haven’t heard of anything Luxe though. By the way, the performance score is 29, people. 29 out of 100 for a multi, I don’t know, 100 million dollar business. They have a performance score of 29. Not saying that’s bad. That’s pretty bad.
Georgie 26:10
This is bad.
Geoff 26:13
It’s it’s like that tweet I saw the other day, where it said, someone posted a screenshot of, come back later. “JavaScript had problem loading, come back later”. And I was like, does JavaScript come back later? Like when you come back, does JavaScript—
Georgie 26:31
Nah.
Geoff 26:31
Yeah.
Georgie 26:32
It is what it is.
Geoff 26:34
But but just just for context, people, JavaScript is actually something your browser has and it runs runs the code on the website. So what they really meant to say was we had trouble loading our website, not so much that Java, JavaScript’s left the building everybody, all right, come come come back later and maybe it’ll come off its break. Anyways, so look at this, amazing pool so I think this should be the default filters where you’re looking at it experiences, right? You’re like, I want to go stay somewhere that...
Georgie 27:15
Castles, that makes sense to me.
Geoff 27:16
Castles, cabins.
Georgie 27:19
Tiny homes as well.
Geoff 27:20
I like tiny homes one.
Georgie 27:22
Caves, caves is another one.
Geoff 27:26
And camping. I guess it’s an experience more, more, countryside.
Georgie 27:33
Woah.
Geoff 27:33
These are types of—
Georgie 27:33
How many?
Geoff 27:34
Yeah.
Georgie 27:35
How many filters are there? I’m just pressing the arrow. It doesn’t end.
Geoff 27:37
Oh my god. It doesn’t end. You’re right. Wait, Casa Casa particularas? What?
Georgie 27:45
Yeah, there’s some styles of house, there’s like...
Geoff 27:48
House boat.
Georgie 27:49
Yeah.
Geoff 27:50
Here we go, ski in and out.
Georgie 27:51
Grand pianos?
Geoff 27:53
Wait, grand pianos? Oh, my god. This is strange. This is a feature of a house.
Georgie 28:01
Okay, so here’s my question. Why were these the choices for all of these categories, I guess you could say, why, were they like, yeah, people like the desert?
Geoff 28:12
Did they come back with like, did they come back with all the search, like the custom search filters, like requests, and they came up with, “You know what? People really want trullis, you know?”
Georgie 28:25
Yeah, I don’t know. Is that a type of...
Geoff 28:27
I guess it’s a type of house. I mean, there’s trullis, there’s yurts. So this is this is very strange. Ski in and out. Yeah, this mix, I wouldn’t mind the filters, if they were all con—like consistent with each other. You can compare boats to domes to tree houses. But you can’t compare deserts to towers to containers. Like... Wait, why is there containers? Oh it’s like a tiny home but only made of a container.
Georgie 29:01
Oh my god. Is that like a demountable?
Geoff 29:05
Yeah, that’s a demountable. For those who don’t live in places with demountables, demountables are literally just like—
Georgie 29:12
Hot boxes.
Geoff 29:13
Rooms, rooms or houses that are lifted from the ground by by a structure of some sort. We had them back in primary school. We have like a whole set of demountables.
Georgie 29:24
Yes so did I.
Geoff 29:26
And that’s just because they’re probably underfunded and they couldn’t like... public school, couldn’t build a building, build a demountable.
Georgie 29:34
Funnily enough, I had them at my private school.
Geoff 29:39
Private school, a private school had a demountable?
Georgie 29:42
Yeah, and I had a classroom in in a demountable for like, I think two years.
Geoff 29:50
That’s yeah, maybe not.. Maybe it’s a style. Maybe it’s a style not a, not a cost saving.
Georgie 29:58
Yeah.
Geoff 29:58
What I, what I want here, is electric charger? Electric... no, no electric chargers? People love electric chargers.
Georgie 30:06
So I actually, see that “Learn More” link in the top right? I actually clicked on that and, and I’m reading this bit where it says “Airbnb categories”. So it says “designed to help guests discover one of a kind homes”. So that’s what these icons are for—oh, icons, these, these categories are for.
Geoff 30:24
But, but that’s not what I’m looking for when I go to Airbnb, I don’t care if I’m finding a one of a kind home or a million of a kind home.
Georgie 30:34
Yeah, you, okay, when you go—when, okay, when I go to Airbnb, usually I have a certain like place I’m going to.
Geoff 30:41
Yeah.
Georgie 30:42
And then I, so, I type in the dates I’m going, you know, roughly, and now they have this “flexible” filter where you can go—
Geoff 30:48
I like the—
Georgie 30:49
“My dates are flexible”.
Geoff 30:49
I like their new time filters.
Georgie 30:51
Yeah. And then I pick a place where I have already planned to stay. And then I search and then from that search, I start to filter and then I start looking at stuff. And I go, “oh, there’s a really nice”—if I wanted to—“container home here. There’s a nice, I don’t know like, what is the other thing. Yeah, there’s like a grand piano here.”
Geoff 31:14
Mansion. I was just looking, I was just looking for a mansion to stay in.
Georgie 31:18
But I don’t come to the Airbnb site to just browse and lust after like... this stuff, you know what I mean?
Geoff 31:27
Yeah. It’s, it’s like semi inspiring, and also demoralising.
Georgie 31:36
You know what it is? It’s Pinterest.
Geoff 31:39
Oh, fuck Pinterest. Like, Pinterest is such a confusing platform right now. It’s honest to god, I don’t get what it is. You google search. Sometimes I search, you know, products and things. And Pinterest will come up as an option because someone had pinned a thing I want to buy from a different website. But when you click it, it goes nowhere. You’re stopped at Pinterest. And you’re like, “Alright, so how do I get to the link that they pinned?” No, go, buddy. That’s it. You just get to Pinterest and you’re just clicking around. You’re like, “Fuck, I can’t get to the thing I wanted in the first place”. So it’s an SEO god. But it’s an SEO god for Pinterest but not what you’re trying to get through. It’s not linking.
Georgie 32:27
So when you see a pin, usually, okay, no, hang on. Let’s go back. So I haven’t used Pinterest in a while. So my knowledge, my knowledge may be outdated. But when I used it, I used it to—doesn’t matter, but this is for context—but I used it to pin like, style and fashion inspiration. But when you pin something from somewhere—okay, so for people who don’t know what Pinterest is—you get to make a board, like a online mood board or you know, inspiration board and you find something you like on the internet, or picture a link or whatever, and you add it to the board, and Pinterest automatically grabs the, grabs the data from from this thing you’re interested in. It gets the picture, gets all the text or whatever. And when you, before you choose to pin it, there’s actually an option to like link to the website that it’s from. And you can actually deselect that. You can actually deselect that so that people like Geoff, go and look for a picture of some random watch, like he just had on his screen right now. And you want to read more about the watch. But the person who pinned the watch picture didn’t give a shit and was like, “I don’t want to link to that pic where I got that from”. So it’s just a pile of trash.
Geoff 33:40
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s no, it’s, it’s not useful for anybody.
Georgie 33:46
Why are they? Why are they indexed?
Geoff 33:50
Yeah. It’s—
Georgie 33:52
Why do search engines...
Geoff 33:54
And now we’re seeing Tik Toks on here. So Pinterest is just now. I don’t know, Twitter. Instagram—by the way, still have Instagram deleted. It is seven, seven days since I last used Instagram app. But actually on the Instagram thing, I watched a video from a photographer who, well, does photography. And it’s like an OG user and he did have a good perspective where he went through the different aspect ratios that in that Instagram was defaulting. So before we had a 1 by 1, which was a square, then they turned into a 4 by 3, which was generally a portrait size photo you get from your regular cameras. And then now they’re going to 9 by 16 which is basically the height and width of your phone. So when you take a photo and you post it there, the default they’re going to show you is your, size of your phone. Photographers hate it. Because—
Georgie 35:09
Yeah, that’s not how you—
Geoff 35:11
The photos that come out of a camera are not 9 by 16, they are on a mobile phone. But his point was that the point of Instagram doing it is kind of valid, where if people are all scrolling on their phone, and if you have a look at all of the photos sizes, side by side, the evolution from square all the way to 9 by 16, you, it’s actually good. Like, if you want to take a photo and you want to put on Instagram, you want the photo to take up more of your screen so that you can see more detail of the photo.
Georgie 35:47
Yes, for the user then technically, like, it’s like it will benefit even though you don’t take photos that way. It benefits you if you’re able to post photos like that so that your followers can can see more of your pictures.
Geoff 36:04
Yeah, it’s 100% a consumer benefit feature. Not so much a like a photographer’s benefit feature.
Georgie 36:16
Still sucks ass.
Geoff 36:17
Yeah, still sucks ass. But arguably, is the experience gonna be better for consumers? Yeah, probably, because they get to see bigger photos.
Georgie 36:29
Oh, actually, since you deleted Instagram, you won’t know that this happened. But I opened the app this morning. And it asked me for my birthday. And I was like, “Don’t do this”. And it wouldn’t let me proceed unless—
Geoff 36:40
Oh, no, not optional?
Georgie 36:42
Yeah. So I went, I went to the link that said “learn more, read more about this”. And it said, because Instagram is only—in some countries, it’s only allowed for people who are over 13, for some over 16. And if you put in a in a date, and that is that means you’re under those ages in a certain country or whatever, they will actually just remove your account.
Geoff 37:10
Woah.
Georgie 37:10
You’re not allowed to use it. I was like, what are you gonna do with my birthday? So I went and read it’s like blah, blah, privacy. We’re not going to use your data, I’m like fine, fine. But yeah, they will, they will move your account. And then they said, If you see anyone under 13 using Instagram, like you gotta report it.
Geoff 37:28
Geez. That’s extreme.
Georgie 37:32
Well. If that’s what the rules of a country are, then I’m like, okay, that makes sense. A technology company is, what are you... helping a country, what, enforce its rules, I suppose. Now the thing I’m curious about, which I don’t know, and I highly doubt because Instagram has had a bad rap with regards to like cyberbullying and violent content and things like that, and suppressing artists’ and other people’s voices... Is I wonder if that is going to help or if that means that they’re going to do more around, like, preventing cyberbullying and things like that.
Geoff 38:14
Right.
Georgie 38:15
It’s hard to say, and it’s like, I don’t even want to dive deep into that cos a whole fucking issue.
Geoff 38:20
Well, the whole purpose is for videos anyways. whole idea behind that redesign, scroll-jacking, full, full height thing is for videos. And they’re like yeah, the fu—we’re thinking about the future of Instagram, future of Instagram is is more and more aligned to video and I’m like, have you have you checked your name recently? Have you ever seen a moving in Instagram? Have—no? Yeah? No? Should probably rename, because you know, printed photos don’t... don’t move. I don’t know if anyone on our podcast hasn’t, isn’t aware of the origins of the word Instagram, but it’s from Polaroids. I think they’re called Instax which is why it’s called, and like the actual—
Georgie 39:16
Something like that yeah.
Geoff 39:17
Product is called Instax.
Georgie 39:19
Yeah, the film I think or the brand.
Geoff 39:23
Yeah, ah, man. But anyways, from there. So moving on. So what was I—oh, yeah, the yes um, so my laundry took four hours. And it’s like the second time that it’s done it because I think I put it into the started it something like nine o’clock thinking that in two hours, I’ll be done. And I literally started, I stayed up till 1am. Just waiting for it to stop. So, yeah, PSA, if you have a front loader and you’re just starting out with your own front loader, it may or may not take four hours for your towels to dry. I mean—
Georgie 40:12
Actually, that’s that’s a question we should ask like, what are your opinions? Like, do you think top loaders run a shorter cycle than, compared to front loaders?
Geoff 40:22
Yeah I wonder if there’s like statistical or like... top top loaders...
Georgie 40:28
I think I actually look this up once and I’m not sure actually found anything satisfying or groundbreaking.
Geoff 40:33
“Top loaders are generally faster than front loaders, partly because front loaders use less water. If you prefer a front loader, look for one with fast wash cycle, but this may not be suitable for very full or heavy soiled loads, no matter how much of a hurry you are in to get the washing on the line.”
Georgie 40:53
So that explains four hours for your towels. Your heavy ass towels.
Geoff 40:58
I’m saving water. I’m being environmentally friendly. Cos I care.
Georgie 41:04
Wait, yeah. Are you saving water? Or is it just that the machine uses less water at a time. That it ends up using the same amount.
Geoff 41:16
Haha I’m using the same amount over a longer period of time? I’m wasting time to, to what, time to water ratio. But something that has saved me time recently is that a charger opened up like literally down the road from me. Ish.
Georgie 41:35
A what?
Geoff 41:36
We have a park that’s adjacent like a block away, I guess. And they put a charger on that.
Georgie 41:46
Oh.
Geoff 41:46
So now I can five minutes to the charger. So the other night I just parked it at like it’s free parking after six. So went for a walk. And so I got in the car, drove the car to the charger, and then went for a walk and then left it there because the charge would take like an hour or something like that. So left it and came back after dinner. And then like, picked up the car. Oh my god. So good. Having a charger.
Georgie 42:10
That’s convenient.
Geoff 42:11
Yeah. It didn’t work at first though. They opened it up, and I put, I put the plug in, I was like, it charged for like one second and it stopped charging. Like oh my god, fuck. So I left I came back the next day I tried it again, and came back the next day, and I was like, okay. I came back, I think Sunday in the, in the morning or something like that. So I was like okay. So I’m gonna call support. So sat there, calling support. And I was like, what’s going on? And they looked it up. And there’s a, “oh, it’s a hardware fault. So we’re going to bring the charger down”. And we’re going to go to the Carriageworks today, and the char—and I was like, right Friday night, going to test it because I tested it on Wednesday or something and it still hadn’t fixed. So it was on Friday night. And it successfully charged, started charging. Oh, god. Yes. I can go to Carriageworks. Which a week... not a weekend market. It’s just Saturday market, if anybody was curious. But we didn’t end up going, but I still got my charge, so that’s okay. Which was pretty good. I think it cost me like $13 for basically three quarter charge.
Georgie 43:38
Is that cheap? Because I don’t know what the price is.
Geoff 43:41
Yeah, I mean, if you take a look at the car—for fuel car, I did this math quickly.
Georgie 43:48
Wait, did you do it in your head? Kumon?
Geoff 43:50
Yeah, yeah, Kumon’d it. Two, two dollars a litre. And I was trying to figure out, you know, what’s the average, what kilometre mileage did I get from the charge? And if that’s comparable, yadda yadda yadda. But I was like, wait a second. $2 a litre is like six liters for $13. And no car runs on six litres.
Georgie 44:19
Yeah.
Geoff 44:19
Like you don’t. You don’t you don’t like fill six litres. So I got basically 400, 250, maybe 250 kilometres out of just $13. If anyone else wants to do that math. You’re welcome.
Georgie 44:36
Nice.
Geoff 44:37
Yeah, that was pretty big win. Oh, speaking of big wins. We’re at the end of the podcast.
Georgie 44:49
Woo.
Geoff 44:49
So yeah. If you enjoy this podcast, we release a new episode every Monday. So tune in next time? You can follow us on @toastroastpod, Twitter, Instagram, Simplecast...
Georgie 45:07
And you can find us on... wait, you just said Twitter, it’s, si—yeah. You can find us on Pinterest—nah, we’re not on Pinterest.
Geoff 45:19
Like our pa—yeah, Patreon, Ko-fi... you can shout us a coffee...
Georgie 45:26
Yeah, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, pretty much wherever you find your podcasts, and the big... I don’t know. The big Airbnb taking long to load.
Geoff 45:37
Yeah.
Georgie 45:38
Thing.
Geoff 45:39
And... see you next week.
Georgie 45:41
Will see you next week.
Geoff 45:42
Bye!