Finally addressing the complexities of Twitter's “blue checkmark”, but what if we all returned to the dark ages of the internet, before Twitter ever existed. Would it work? Does it even matter cause we're all addicted to ChatGPT?
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Finally addressing the complexities of Twitter's “blue checkmark”, but what if we all returned to the dark ages of the internet, before Twitter ever existed. Would it work? Does it even matter cause we're all addicted to ChatGPT?
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:08
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. I’m your co host, Georgie. And as usual, I’m here with Geoff.
Geoff 0:16
Hi. We’re back. From—
Georgie 0:19
Always.
Geoff 0:20
Always, one week.
Georgie 0:21
Every, every, every week.
Geoff 0:23
Every week. Oh, yeah. We’re just talking about what the hell I said in the last episode, right at the end. I think it was like, it was like, yeah, we, follow us on Twitter. Right, right. So I thought like, I was scrolling Twitter, and I found one of the people I used to follow lost their legacy verified checkmark.
Georgie 0:47
Oh. Okay.
Geoff 0:49
And I feel like like this has been going on forever. Right. The like, have you seen how many checkmarks there? There’s like three different kinds, right?
Georgie 0:58
I don’t I don’t even know. I didn’t even know you can discern between them. But I know that you could now pay—
Geoff 1:05
Yeah.
Georgie 1:05
For Twitter Blue and pay for like a checkmark for like subscription price.
Geoff 1:09
Yeah. So there is this check, the blue checkmark. There’s a gold checkmark.
Georgie 1:18
Oh, okay. I haven’t seen that one. I haven’t really been on Twitter.
Geoff 1:22
What who has a gold checkmark? I can’t remember. Anyways there’s a gold checkmark. And then I have no fucking clue which ones are which? There’s also a Twitter icon. If you go over to Elon’s illustrious profile, there’s a—
Georgie 1:42
Does that mean you work there?
Geoff 1:44
I don’t know. I guess. I guess that means you work there—oh Twitter has a gold checkmark.
Georgie 1:50
Oh, there we go. So what does that mean?
Geoff 1:51
So this one is a verified account. This account is verified, because it’s an official organisation on Twitter. So this is what the official organisations have—
Georgie 2:01
Like a business, you could be just like a business.
Geoff 2:03
Yeah, like YouTube is an official organisation. But we’re not going to get too into the weeds of it. But accessibility wise, this is horrendous. For anyone who doesn’t know, if you are representing something with an icon, you need to have a more, or rather than anything, really, when you’re representing something, you can’t have, you can’t rely solely on coluor to represent the difference between two different things. So in this case, there is a check mark that is blue, which is kind of more like a like a flower. And then there’s a check mark that’s gold, which is kind of more like a spiky sun. But I feel like this would probably fail because really the difference is just blue and yellow. Um, so negative points on their part.
Georgie 2:55
I did come across a girl on Instagram who’s colourblind and she shares a lot of her experiences as a colourblind person, and the one that really baffled me—so sometimes her videos are in black and white so we can kind of experience what she sees. And one one in—OK I got to two stories, one, oh two things to share. The first one is that the interesting thing is clothes when she tries on clothes that literally look white, but they like neon, or fluorescent, like green or pink. The other one which was completely baffling was red and white wine. She wanted to buy red wine for someone and she said generally she can look at the bottle, compare them to other bottles. And like without really paying too much attention to the label. And the red is obviously darker than the white, the white wine you can see it’s a bit it’s a bit clearer.
Geoff 3:49
Yeah.
Georgie 3:50
And she grabbed a bottle of what she thought was red wine. And she said look, this is this is a bottle of, this is I believe this is a bottle of red wine. If she read the label, then she could have like figured out that it was actually white but when you look at it as a as a person who can see colour, I was like whoa, the white wine bottle was the same as a red wine bottle, like dark in colour, and she the way she did the reveal was she got a wine glass, poured from this dark colored bottle because the video is in black and white, poured from it and it was so obvious that the the product in the glass was red.
Geoff 4:31
It’s oh, so if you looked at the two bottles you couldn’t actually tell if they were red or white wine because you can’t see the liquid inside it maybe? No?
Georgie 4:39
Well it’s more the colour, she went by the color of the bottles.
Geoff 4:41
Oh, yeah okay, she went from the colour of the bottles.
Georgie 4:43
Yeah, so she—
Geoff 4:43
Kind of what you do.
Georgie 4:44
...was like, yeah, so you look at it and you’re like, okay they’re, they’re both red. One of them is straight up red like because you could tell it was dark liquid that came out of the bottle. It’s the gloss the other one that was the bottle was about the same colour came out liquid was like clear as day.
Geoff 4:59
Oh, what?
Georgie 4:59
And so she’d accidentally bought the person white wine instead of red wine.
Geoff 5:03
Yeah, we have a we have a colourblind person on our team, it’s funny enough that we are the design system team. So we have to be mindful of this stuff all the time. So it’s really, it’s really handy. He’s also the staff engineer for accessibility. So it, it’s pretty cool. And pretty handy, because obviously, it’s really difficult to test for this type of stuff without any kind of real person suffering. I wouldn’t say suffering, let’s say, experiencing this different different perspective on life. Anyways, so back to back to the reason why I brought up the frickin checkbox. checkmark.
Georgie 5:42
Yeah.
Geoff 5:44
So for those who actually don’t know, I guess, Elon has been messing around with this checkbox, this checkmark for a while now. He first removed the... he kind of put, oh everyone who has a checkmark is technically someone who is public publicly known. And they verify this through, I believe news articles, you have to have greater than three, I guess, news articles about you, like you have to have, like before Elon, anyways, basically have to verify that you are a person of public renown, like.
Georgie 6:24
Yeah.
Geoff 6:25
So... but then he probably changed. He’s changed the rules on that. And he was like, well, we want to be able to verify who’s a person on our platform. And I’m not going to get into the weeds as to exactly why. But you know what, there’s lots of bots on Twitter, and this is Elon’s, quote unquote, solution is to introduce Twitter Blue, you have to pay for that. And then being able to pay for it is your verification of humanity. And you get the checkmark. But this obviously creates a lot of other problems. Because now like, I could be, I could be I didn’t know, I could create a Taylor Swift account. And I can also pay for Twitter Blue, and then hey, presto, I’m a verified Taylor Swift. Except then Elon’s, oh, yeah, but you know what, if you have the same name as somebody else, then we’ll have to do some double checks and all that kind of crap. Anyways, it’s a bit of a shit show. This person I used to follow has lost the checkmark. And they’re like, I’m no longer verified. Not that I care I don’t, but this is as good as any time to bid farewell. So long and thank you for all the hashtags. This is the creator of hashtags as we know, today.
Georgie 7:45
Mhmm.
Geoff 7:45
Chris Messina. If you see a hashtag anywhere on any platform, this guy came up with it to begin with—
Georgie 7:52
And he’s just fucking quit.
Geoff 7:53
He’s fucking quit. So then I was like, hey, could we like not just like, I wonder, he I think he’s going to Mastodon, obviously.
Georgie 8:05
(laughs) I didn’t tell you I signed up for a Mastodon account.
Geoff 8:10
I mean, I think I have a Mastodon account from way back when they first like came about because I have an account for everything.
Georgie 8:18
Yeah, you just like, do the thing that Nick did. “Reserve my username”.
Geoff 8:21
I just, I just sign up for shit. Mastodon?
Georgie 8:24
That was me, early adopter hoe. Like—
Geoff 8:27
Yeah. It was, it was totally an SEO play back in the day.
Georgie 8:32
Oh, yeah, that’s exactly right.
Geoff 8:33
You just sign up for everything. And then you win in SEO. For those who don’t know that SEO, Search Engine Optimization is basically the idea that when someone Googles your name, you appear in at least the first page because apparently statistics say that, like not very many people, very low percentage of people actually go to the second page on Google. If that’s you, then congratulations, you’re part of a statistic. Do I have an account? Can I just like, insert my account? Anyways, so I was like, hey, what would happen if I just, you know, decided to make my own feed. Back in the day, we had things called RSS feeds, right? So—
Georgie 9:22
Wait, what do you mean! We still have one, I have one from my blog. (laughs)
Geoff 9:26
Well, that’s the thing, right? I was like, what if I just posted to an RSS feed of my own? And then like—
Georgie 9:32
And?
Geoff 9:33
Then yeah, that’s my problem. Then it’s like, okay—
Georgie 9:36
What wait, so you made an RSS—
Geoff 9:38
People can’t follow them, people can’t follow the RSS feed because no one knows how to follow RSS feeds anymore.
Georgie 9:46
There’s a subset of people who still like very much care about that as a thing. Like—
Geoff 9:48
Yeah.
Georgie 9:48
Having a feed reader reading, like—okay, by the way, kids—who don’t know what this is—it’s sort of a way to subscribe to content without just clicking goddamn buttons and stuff, like you have a dedicated sort of platform. one app that you read your news and social stuff on. And there’s a link to, I guess a feed, like a bunch of data, that could be someone’s blog, could be some social media, that kind of thing.
Geoff 10:11
You could probably say it’s kind of just like Twitter, if you had your own—I mean, everyone has their own Twitter. So instead of subscribing to instead of following a person’s profile, you would essentially subscribe to the RSS feed, and hey, presto, you’ve got your own Twitter in this app, it could be—
Georgie 10:31
It’s probably, yes. It’s probably a more technical way of saying how to follow people on social media. Like it’s like—
Geoff 10:38
Yeah.
Georgie 10:38
How, did we just uncover that following people was always a thing.
Geoff 10:44
Yeah.
Georgie 10:44
Before social media, it was just RSS.
Geoff 10:47
It’s just RSS subscribes. It’s honestly the probably the technology like—it’s probably not the technology—but is essentially the underlying concept of all social media is you’re essentially curating an RSS feed for yourself of all the people that you’d like to hear from. Were RSS feeds more difficult to set up probably, like, I think that’s it—
Georgie 11:09
I don’t know.
Geoff 11:10
Like, yeah, think about it this this way. You want to publish text to a following. And if you had no Twitter, no Facebook, or whatever, is a shitshow.
Georgie 11:24
Blog!
Geoff 11:25
It’s a shitshow.
Georgie 11:25
It’s what I do, just do a blog.
Geoff 11:27
Yeah, so—
Georgie 11:27
And then if you set it up with something that already makes RSS for you, you don’t have to do it yourself.
Geoff 11:32
Yes.
Georgie 11:32
Like WordPress.
Geoff 11:33
But it’s still lack of discoverability. Because you can’t just say, you can just go to your RSS app and say, give me like, an RSS feed that I might be interested in.
Georgie 11:42
Mm. Ah. Okay, it’s like yeah, okay. Like you can go, I want to read this or whatever. Like—
Geoff 11:47
Yeah.
Georgie 11:48
Plug in the thing and you can’t actually find stuff. It’s difficult to find stuff.
Geoff 11:54
Yeah, having said that, it might be a way more intentional way of living. Like why do you need this random, all these random... Like who to follow, and peep, people who retweet? That’s probably another thing that social media does that RSS feeds don’t. Is that like, why would I, why would I—
Georgie 12:12
You can reshare, repost.
Geoff 12:12
Yes, like I wouldn’t just reshare like a post of yours on my RSS feed, my RSS feed was my stuff.
Georgie 12:19
Did you ever use Tumblr?
Geoff 12:21
Oh yes.
Georgie 12:21
That was the OG reblog.
Geoff 12:24
I’ve tried. I’ve tried to build. Anyways we won’t get into that topic...
Georgie 12:27
You what?
Geoff 12:28
I tried to build Tumblr. Anyways. So yeah. So could we go back to the old days? Would anyone enjoy that? I don’t know.
Georgie 12:35
Okay, so a thing I just remembered from the old days was I think it was called like a link ring or something.
Geoff 12:44
A link—oh, yes. I—yeah.
Georgie 12:46
So you would sign up to like a group and then you’d stick this JavaScript code on the side. And it would display like a little bit of UI that would, for any person in the ring—
Geoff 12:57
Hyperlink ring.
Georgie 12:59
It would have like arrows right and left.
Geoff 13:02
Yeah.
Georgie 13:02
And you can jump to the next person’s blog or website, who was in that little community by pressing that, locate the next one. It was sort of a way that people I guess, discovered peep, like-minded peeps and stuff.
Geoff 13:16
Yeah, it’s quite, it’s super manual. That’s probably the problem, right?
Georgie 13:21
I’m sad that it’s gone. Start it up again.
Geoff 13:25
Yeah. Well, now that we have like things like—oh, no, I’m gonna say the keyword—ChatGPT.
Georgie 13:31
No. No, ugh!
Geoff 13:34
We could get—
Georgie 13:34
This podcast is tainted!
Geoff 13:36
We could get a ChatGPT RSS app, you know, and that could probably help in the idea that you’re, you’re reading the, can be fed into training a large language model that could actually find other things on the internet that are similar to what you read. And then, like, auto add some RSS like feed.
Georgie 14:03
I have problems with this, because it just made me think of how it would read certain articles or certain tones of writing, which sucks. It’s such nuance, right? Have you heard of Mark Manson? No, he wrote the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck?
Geoff 14:20
Oh, I know this, I know the book.
Georgie 14:23
Do you? Have you read it? Or even some of it?
Geoff 14:25
I’ve not, I’ve not read it because I really don’t give a fuck.
Georgie 14:28
Okay. Well that’s, that’s fantastic.
Geoff 14:30
(laughs)
Georgie 14:30
And in fact, I haven’t read it because this guy, no, no diss, but I read Mark Manson’s blog for many years before he released this book. So I was familiar with his writing, his writing style. And I did have a peek at the book in a in a bookstore. And it was almost the same as what I’ve read in, in his blog posts and he has a tone that’s very, I guess, direct, there’s a bit of swearing in there. That’s that’s like, you know, motivating you—
Geoff 14:59
Like our podcast, our podcast is very motivating and very direct and very harsh.
Georgie 15:04
No it’s not like that, we’re fun. But yeah, he just has a tone that sounds I wouldn’t say angry, but it’s just that kind of forceful language that some people need to like, you know, “get your shit together!”, that kind of—
Geoff 15:17
Oh yeah, like a military vibe.
Georgie 15:20
Yeah, I guess. And I shudder to think if you put that into ChatGPT and it came up with things that it thought was similar.
Geoff 15:32
Yeah.
Georgie 15:32
But we’re actually so far from motivational like, speeches.
Geoff 15:38
Yeah.
Georgie 15:39
That is actually almost rude. It’s hateful. It could—who knows?
Geoff 15:43
You could definitely get some hate speech... like.
Georgie 15:46
So yeah, I really, really doubt the nuances that—
Geoff 15:51
That’s very true.
Georgie 15:51
...that Chat GPT can like pick up on when it comes to like, tone and like style of writing, voice and that kind of thing. It’s not, it’s a far way from doing that.
Geoff 16:00
Yeah, I guess we can get into this topic now that we’ve brought it up, but Chat GPT, like, a lot of people are afraid of losing their jobs Chat GPT.
Georgie 16:12
Nah, fuck this. I’ve seen a lot of people in different fields talk about how, like, that is a concern and then debunking it.
Geoff 16:20
Yeah.
Georgie 16:21
Or like explaining, it makes them point out what it is about their job that simply like hat is like so human that you know, AI cannot replace.
Geoff 16:30
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting, right. Like, it’s such an oversimplified way of saying something like, just because people see that you type something in and something marginally believable comes out based on whatever, that like, all of a sudden, it’s the idea. Maybe it’s just sensational media, as we know, everything is controlled by media.
Georgie 16:30
Yeah.
Geoff 16:31
But yeah, like, if any, like, like you said, most people in their fields, look at this tool, and have debunked the fact that it’s not going to replace them yet. What is the vibe, I guess, of mass, of the masses is that they actually fear for their job. Like, what? McDonald’s? Like, no one in McDonald’s is going to be replaced by Chat GPT. But I guess a little bit more software people would would think that their jobs—oh, wait. So my point is actually, I see this a lot on Reddit, that software, like people who are starting out in software engineering—
Georgie 17:38
Yeah.
Geoff 17:39
Feel like, feel like their job is not going to be there when they get there. Because of Chat GPT.
Georgie 17:45
No, I understand that concern.
Geoff 17:47
Yeah.
Georgie 17:48
I can understand that.
Geoff 17:49
Yeah, I think it’s very much the people who aren’t specialists, or like, experts in the field yet, being concerned that because Chat GPT does such a good job, at being a junior at most things, then they wouldn’t have a job. And for the record, it really doesn’t mean that juniors aren’t going to have a job. It probably just means for the most part, you might be a large language model prompt writer for a bit.
Georgie 18:26
Yeah, it might like be like, embedded into your potential career.
Geoff 18:31
Yeah.
Georgie 18:32
Because it’s so prevalent.
Geoff 18:33
Yeah. Like, at the, in reality, people who are hiring software engineers don’t know how to do the job, and therefore, cannot safely use Chat GPT to do the job. As far as we know, now.
Georgie 18:51
Yeah, like, and if you’re able to as like a business identify that, you know, you might make mistakes when hiring and you hired a fucking douchebag or whatever, then, if you know, that, then you know, probably well enough to that you can’t, you can’t use AI to do that.
Geoff 19:06
You’re basically hiring a moron when it comes to—nah, just joking.
Georgie 19:11
We actually did a thing at work, where like, Chris was, like, really interested to see if it could pass out like front end UI test.
Geoff 19:19
Oh. That’s really interesting.
Georgie 19:19
So he plugged in all the things and basically, just long story short, it was able to answer all the questions correctly, but we also had some, you know, more personal personal related, like behavioural questions.
Geoff 19:31
Yeah.
Georgie 19:31
And one of them was, “who’s the best developer, you know, and why?”
Geoff 19:35
Haha, yeah.
Georgie 19:37
And so we as people, like, we know, what’s a red flag, and we know what’s not or whatever, but we asked it that and then Chat GPT is like, well, I I’m a I’m a language learning model, I can’t have like opinions and things like that. And so he rephrased the question, and he said, “Who are some well known front end developers you would work with?” Who have done like some stuff in the field. And it spat out, it spat out Sarah Soueidan, and I remember the other two yeah, like, actual, like, people. And it was like, damn.
Geoff 20:10
But I think that’s like, that’s really interesting, because the question had to be rephrased to just listing people, whereas what we need when we hire someone is critical thinking. And your behavioural question is exactly that. You ask them to give you someone that you can critically, like, assign positive attributes to that you you would that you would admire, theoretically. And that just doesn’t do it. Because it’s a robot.
Georgie 20:41
It’s also the years of experience, then, like in a career that would that would get you to, like, understand your, the skills you need for the job and things like that. And for you to like, communicate that, you can usually tell if in an interview with someone, whether they actually have the experience you’re looking for, but—
Geoff 21:00
Yeah.
Georgie 21:00
They’re still like a beginner.
Geoff 21:01
Yeah. Um, one last thing on this, I guess, I don’t want to go on about Chat GPT too long.
Georgie 21:09
(laughs) Hit the quota.
Geoff 21:09
But yeah, the best take, I’ve seen is essentially that Chat GPT will probably be more of a multiplier on your existing workforce. So if you have five people, Chat GPT or whatever, could double their double their productivity? So it’d be like, if you had 10 people. Now, does it mean you hire less? Probably? Because you have, the, you have, like quite a good amount of output from the amount of workers you have currently. But does it completely remove the need to hire people? Or not? Eh. Oh, yeah, I was saying, I was saying like, as a as a person that is not a software engineer, could you use AI to build stuff? Without knowing how to do it? The answer is actually kind of yes. I’ve seen I’ve seen people actually generate stuff using fig, like Figma prompts, you can actually prompt Figma prompt than AI to mock things in Figma.
Georgie 22:16
Yeah.
Geoff 22:16
And then you can and then like, from there, actually, Figma does a very shitty job, but it can produce a website for you and you can deploy it. So hey, you can have a possibly a good product landing page with just AI but I mean, if you want a Facebook, I don’t think AI is going to help you build a Facebook.
Georgie 22:39
I feel like maybe I need to think about what what I can use it for. I’m still very like anti Chat GPT.
Geoff 22:45
Of course you are. You hate automation.
Georgie 22:47
I, fuck, yeah, exactly. So it doesn’t like it doesn’t freak me out. But I look at what it can do. And there’s a very, like, there’s a bit of like, reluctant impressed, like, sense of like being impressed for me, but I don’t know, I haven’t... I haven’t thought about it. But maybe there’s something that, I don’t know. Can it do my dishes for me? No.
Geoff 23:11
No. The, I mean, it took you a while to get on the React, like, tools, right.
Georgie 23:20
I semi had no choice. Like the entire whole JavaScript journey was just like an absolute like debacle for me but—
Geoff 23:29
Yeah.
Georgie 23:30
Yeah.
Geoff 23:31
Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between, you are looking at one of the last pure, pure HTML templater of all time.
Georgie 23:40
I also, what’s the other thing that we were talking—I also use Sublime Text, don’t judge—like, no hate. I’ve been using it since 2010.
Geoff 23:50
Yeah, you’re a dinosaur in software engineering land.
Georgie 23:55
Yeah. I’m just so old hat. You know, I’m a, I’m like a boomer.
Geoff 23:59
Yeah.
Georgie 23:59
I’m like a boomer with certain technologies. I’m like yeah, not touching that new thing, nope.
Geoff 24:04
I mean, the Japanese do this best where they wait like two decades to adopt any technology because it has to like 100% work or it’s no go for them.
Georgie 24:16
Is that why it’s taking so long for them to release these massively speedy maglev.
Geoff 24:21
Oh!
Georgie 24:22
The—
Geoff 24:22
Yeah, the maglev—
Georgie 24:23
The 500 kilometre an hour.
Geoff 24:25
Oh my god, that would be amazing.
Georgie 24:26
Let us have it. Tom Scott did a video on it.
Geoff 24:29
Yeah. I think I’ve watched the same thing but the the idea that what’s it go get goes 500 kilometres an hour?
Georgie 24:37
Yeah. Oh four nine, like yeah, real close to 500.
Geoff 24:40
Japan maglev, I think we need to probably like... train speed... because like 603 kilometres per hour or 375 miles per hour. The, has there’s a description somewhere. Where is it? You can travel from I don’t know, where’s a popular place? Maglev.
Georgie 25:06
Just one side of Aus—you can go to Perth, Geoff.
Geoff 25:11
How far away is it actually, from here to? I mean, let’s do something like that’s a very common—
Georgie 25:17
Blue Mountain?
Geoff 25:18
People go from Las Vegas, San Francisco to Las Vegas or something right?
Georgie 25:23
Yeah. Okay.
Geoff 25:24
Some somewhere a little bit more famous because, from here to Perth is like nothing.
Georgie 25:29
Quote unquote, universal.
Geoff 25:30
Universally understood. Las Vegas, so let’s see. So age a the distance between San Francisco and Las Vegas by car is 569 miles or—
Georgie 25:45
That‘s like nine hours did it say?
Geoff 25:47
By train is technically not a distance that they calculate on Google. So—
Georgie 25:55
That’s 16 hours by public...
Geoff 25:57
Yeah, 16. Eight hours, 569 miles. So in one hour—
Georgie 26:01
Fuck, you could be there.
Geoff 26:03
In two hours. You could be there in two hours essentially. That is in... sane. So 375 times two. Yeah, you’ll be there. For us Sydneysiders to Perth, I guess Sydney to Airport... to Perth WA. It is approximately 3921 kilometres. That’s not going the fastest way I think. But hey, 41 hours. So what’s that is—
Georgie 26:37
That’s 2436 miles.
Geoff 26:39
Yeah. And then so if you just went ahead and did the quick math, 4000 divided by 600 kilometres an hour, you’d be there in six hours. This is like the flight.
Georgie 26:52
Wait, that’s the same as a flight.
Geoff 26:54
But better. I strongly believe trains are better than flights. And if you can equivalent if you can equivocate a flight to a train that’s insane. Like something that took you six hours by flight versus six hours by train. That’s pretty good.
Georgie 27:11
Actually, on this topic. There’s that sort of like, recreational train journey that goes across Australia. So I feel like, I remember it, for some reason. It really appealed to me when I was like in my mid 20s I don’t know why. I think I just liked the idea of being on the road versus in a plane.
Geoff 27:33
Yeah.
Georgie 27:33
Because also like, plane you gotta go through airport security—
Geoff 27:36
You can also disappear on the plane.
Georgie 27:39
Oh, fuck, don’t go there. They haven’t solved that one yet. But the thing that Nick said to me, he said it seems like a very old people retiree kind of thing to do. And—
Geoff 27:50
(laughs) Pretty much.
Georgie 27:51
He said if you went on it, there would be elderly folks on the trains and enjoying their tea and stuff, and as you go across, what is it called, the Great Outback whatever.
Geoff 28:01
Oh, yeah. Is it called The Great Northern train or something?
Georgie 28:06
Some... Yeah, this I have forgotten.
Geoff 28:08
Great Northern Trains.
Georgie 28:10
There’s one that goes up north and there’s one that goes from Sydney to Perth, but you stop in like Adelaide or whatever. You have a little stop. So it’s kind of slow. You’re not doing it for the destination. You’re doing this for the journey. I still think it’s kind of cool. But I know in places like Europe, the the high speed train or the just the train travel is just nice, nicer, like the non like in the metro thing but just like wider, and I prefer that kind of travel myself.
Geoff 28:39
Yeah. Yeah, it’s very much a like an experience being on the train. Was thinking about the Japan one, there’s there’s a, Jap, one Japan for cross country esque like sleeper trains, they call them.
Georgie 28:55
Yeah.
Geoff 28:55
So we might take one when we’re in Japan to do like an overnight on a train. Even though there is a there is a Shinkansen or bullet train available. Haven’t really checked that out. Yeah. When is this coming? The maglev train, man?
Georgie 29:13
I think it’s years away still.
Geoff 29:14
Yeah. I, oh, yeah. Back to like the the Japanese thing of like waiting decades.
Georgie 29:20
Yeah.
Geoff 29:22
If you have a look, I think if you have a look at some footage, not even like maybe less than 10 years ago, you can see on their, like news networks, that they use very old-school looking microphones. And they use very old-school looking like technology. And I think this is this is what what trips me out the most about Japan. It’s like the oldest technology and the newest technology simultaneously in one country.
Georgie 29:49
Yeah, yeah, because, because they do havae like traditional, like they’re still very, they got, have traditional things.
Geoff 29:55
Yeah.
Georgie 29:56
In Japan still.
Geoff 29:57
Oldest tech in Japan... history of science. But, but yeah, the it’s it’s really interesting. I think they stuffed up on this maglev train. I can’t remember where I read it. But essentially, like, China’s also making one. And it’s basically a race to the to the one who can, like export this the fastest.
Georgie 30:22
But then wait, what’s wrong with having two suppliers though? Like, if they both do it like, is one of them better?
Geoff 30:28
You’d be the country known for it essentially. Right
Georgie 30:31
Oh fuck, yeah.
Geoff 30:32
It’s about clout.
Georgie 30:33
One of those... man, talking about fame. Bloody hell.
Geoff 30:38
because you get the contract. I think like, these contracts aren’t short, like contracts, they’re like decades, like you put a train and—
Georgie 30:46
Fifty years.
Geoff 30:47
Fifty years, replace all the trains. And, honestly, did you hear about the Sydney train? The new the new train. I can’t remember when this was but it was recent. Essentially—
Georgie 31:01
This sounds familiar. Maybe Nick told me because he’s really into like—
Geoff 31:05
Trains.
Georgie 31:05
Transport stuff. Yeah.
Geoff 31:06
Yeah. They commissioned trains from Germany. And when they arrived in Australia, they couldn’t fit it through our tunnels—
Georgie 31:15
Oh they didn’t fit. Yeah, I think I remember this.
Geoff 31:19
Yeah. Such a, such a riot. I’m like, you guys just didn’t give them the right measurements. And you just bought it off the shelf and thought it would work?
Georgie 31:30
Speaking of this, I was on my way to like, I think I was going to Eastwood. I think I was on the M2 or something like that. And we were about to exit but we were wondering why there was so much traffic. And I think there’s a tunnel before the exit, like a very short tunnel.
Geoff 31:46
Yeah.
Georgie 31:46
And like there was just everyone was merging into one lane. And there was like a traffic, or some kind of vehicle assigned to help whatever was going on, which we didn’t see yet. As we were approaching this, like lane merge. And we get closer and then we see all this debris on the—
Geoff 32:07
Ooh shit.
Georgie 32:08
Just at the entrance of the tunnel like ooh, this, was someone in an accident? Because it was, looked like glass and stuff. No, there was one car, but it was in front of a truck whose height exceeded the height of the tunnel, and had taken out like several metres of the lighting inside that tunnel. It was, the traffic was like backed up to, I don’t know how how long, but someone I remember someone left a comment on like the YouTube video that was on the news, the news YouTube channel later that evening and said, “Man, some numpty just like didn’t even know his bloody height restriction”. Just fucked it up.
Geoff 32:49
Yeah. I was on the way back from Melbourne. And the Uber driver was like, “Do you want to take the new tunnel or not?” And I’m like, hell if know. You take whatever direction you want to take.
Georgie 33:02
Is this the M8?
Geoff 33:03
I can’t remember. The... so I was like, but then like after I said that I’m like, ha, I think I would like to see the new tunnel. Turns out he did take the new tunnel and I was like, okay, seems like a regular tunnel to me. And then I was trying to look really hard at the roof. Like I was like, is that just dirt? Like? Surely it can’t just be like a bunch of piping. Like they just dug the hole and they just laid a bunch of piping on top of the dirt.
Georgie 33:33
So it looked raw, you mean?
Geoff 33:34
It was too dark for me to figure out so I just spent the entire time trying to figure out like, did they, did they just like put tarp up there and then like... it’s just such a botched job? Because I feel like the tunnel didn’t seem finished. The road was smooth. They had the they had the like the—well it wasn’t finished because there’s another exit that doesn’t that doesn’t exist yet. But there’s like the silt... the cement blocks or whatever on the side. And they have these panels, like these big white panels on either side of the, of the road. And they, they’re just, that’s it. And I was like, where’s my was my shiny over arching like, space age. It’s not there.
Georgie 34:19
Nope. No future is, no futurism for you.
Geoff 34:22
No. There’s also that tunnel that’s supposed to go underneath the harbour?
Georgie 34:29
WestConnex? Oh, yeah, that one the one that goes connects to, Gl—not Glebe, Rozelle or something.
Geoff 34:35
Anyways, yeah, yeah, they’re supposed to bridge not even bridge going under the water to put like—
Georgie 34:41
Yeah.
Geoff 34:42
Segments down there. And my gosh—
Georgie 34:45
Is it the, was it, is it the An—not the Anzac bridge, the...
Geoff 34:49
Yeah it is that one. There’s only two bridges, right.
Georgie 34:51
Yeah. So it’s the one that goes like Drummoyne, kind of, I think it’s Rozelle, but that entire above the ground, that entire intersection is like, has been fucked for ages because of like, the construction has been there, I feel like for ages.
Geoff 35:03
It has. I watched a whole YouTube video about how they had to actually change their plan midway because of all the heat from all the other all the people that were living around the the construction, and they were like, oh, if you do it this way, then like, it’s going to disturb loads of people, and then they were like, I can’t remember what the original plan was, I think where they’re gonna go over? And then they like, er nevermind, let’s go under anyways, it was a very expensive change of plans.
Georgie 35:30
They’re also connecting it to the harbour so that you can do like the nice walk kind of thing.
Geoff 35:34
Oh.
Georgie 35:34
And then they’re going to open some more stuff like I think in Rozelle just more en... not entertainment, like shops and like just—
Geoff 35:42
To get people to use the tunnel?
Georgie 35:45
I don’t know.
Geoff 35:45
To drive over? But either way, there’s lots of people complaining about congestion and they’re the same, they’re probably the same people who are complaining about the plan to solve the congestion and then just not agreeing with the plan to solve the congestion. And then like not coming to the table with a better plan or whatever, anyway.
Georgie 36:03
I still maintain you have not seen congestion until you’ve been on Parramatta Road.
Geoff 36:07
Yeah. That’s true.
Georgie 36:08
Absolute hellhole.
Geoff 36:09
Like we have, that we’re going to a concert not too far away from, I don’t know when this episode is going to come out. But essentially the concert is like at the Olympic, Sydney Olympic Park. So—
Georgie 36:23
Ha ha have fun with that.
Geoff 36:24
Yeah, have to—god.
Georgie 36:24
Get—yeah. Go to the station and then you got to change trains because there’s only one train.
Geoff 36:31
Well that’s the bullshit part. I’m on the way.
Georgie 36:33
Yeah I hate that.
Geoff 36:34
I’m like, I’m like on the way but we don’t have a direct train there. It’s such bullshit.
Georgie 36:41
Yeah.
Geoff 36:41
And we could drive but then you look at the parking costs and and I have to go on Parramatta Road and I have to be on there, fucking traffic.
Georgie 36:51
It, how bad is the parking costs? Because I think I’ve parked—
Geoff 36:54
I don’t know. It’s something unimportant.
Georgie 36:58
They don’t have some evening rate?
Geoff 36:59
It’s unimportant to our listeners, but the Olympic Park. Sydney Olympic Park parking. It’s, it’s not like horrendous, but I don’t know how many people have, oh here, pre booked the parking—$6 after 6pm. Oh, that’s great. Hey—
Georgie 37:16
That’s alright.
Geoff 37:16
I can do that. That—
Georgie 37:17
Cos like, the Moore—
Geoff 37:18
It’s cheaper than taking the train even.
Georgie 37:21
Yeah, the Moore Park Entertainment Quarter, I think does like $7 after, a certain—
Geoff 37:26
Oh.
Georgie 37:26
Like 6pm as well. That yeah, so it’s an option. It’s just how busy is is it gonna be depending on who you’re seeing and that kind of thing. Like, wait are you going Qudos? The Qudos Bank Arena, or?
Geoff 37:39
Yeah, I think that’s it, right.
Georgie 37:40
Fuck, man.
Geoff 37:41
The one in Sydney Olympic Park. Yeah.
Georgie 37:43
Yeah, that’s the one.
Geoff 37:44
Yeah, we’re gonna go see Twice, the Kpop band that I mentioned in some episode behind us.
Georgie 37:50
Yeah, that’s funny, because The 1975 was playing there again.
Geoff 37:54
Oh really.
Georgie 37:55
Like, tomorrow. This episode’s gonna come out the wrong time.
Geoff 37:58
Yeah.
Georgie 37:59
But they, they announced a second show. And it was at Qudos.
Geoff 38:01
That’s actually really—
Georgie 38:02
I’m very tempted to go.
Geoff 38:03
Oh, see them again. Whoa, big fan. There’s, there’s actually a really funny thing, it’s like they, it seemed very last minute because they released tickets for one day. And then they—
Georgie 38:14
Yep?
Geoff 38:15
And then everyone rushed for it, Ticketek got smashed, obviously. There were times where you get in the queue and you get at the end of the queue. And then you you select a seat, but you can’t actually go to the checkout, that like, that was frickin annoying. The button just wasn’t there.
Georgie 38:31
Ticktek is shit, they’re like, yeah.
Geoff 38:33
Yeah and obviously being a developer, you, I checked.
Georgie 38:36
Ha, you tried to inspect—
Geoff 38:37
To see if I could just unhide the button.
Georgie 38:40
(laughs)
Geoff 38:40
It’s written in Angular. Bullshit.
Georgie 38:42
Oh my god, why am I not surprised?
Geoff 38:45
Yeah.
Georgie 38:46
I wonder what was before that though.
Geoff 38:47
Well, the thing is, it’s probably unstable because it’s written in Angular. The, but then like, after the first day, they were like, oh, due to popular demand. We opened up the second day.
Georgie 39:00
Okay, so I learned a thing recently about that like tier releasing shit or whatever. Like obviously they have like, like, we get Amex presale because Nick has an American Express card. So sometimes some events like, will have like a presale. And then—
Geoff 39:15
Oh wait, sorry, the first time I opened it was a presale.
Georgie 39:19
OK. And then it was, presale gone?
Geoff 39:22
Presale went and then they announced, and then like the next day, they announced that there was going to be a second day. Anyways. Yeah.
Georgie 39:30
I think they do. They definitely do this on purpose, or they plan it, especially with like popular shows, because I also learned that like with some credit cards, I think like the AMEX with some very expensive ones, it’s a specific Amex card. I think it’s like the Platinum Charge Card or something.
Geoff 39:45
Yeah.
Georgie 39:46
You get like access to like some concierge thing for like events and things—
Geoff 39:50
Yes.
Georgie 39:50
You can just call them up and be like, yo, can I have tickets for Twice—
Geoff 39:53
No way! Is that what it’s used for?
Georgie 39:56
And they will just give it to you. And so like Nick was like, interested in this card and I’m like, bro, I don’t want to drop I think it’s like $3,000 a year, something ridic, 1000? Several thousand dollars a year on using a credit card to get these benefits, but I’m like you go to weigh up if you’re actually gonna use these benefits. There are a lot of travel benefits on it. And I’m like, yeah, but am I going to use those travel benefits but one of them he reckoned I would like was the one where you can call up and if if a show is sold out they’ll always have like reserved some—
Geoff 40:26
Oh my god.
Georgie 40:27
Certain amount of tickets for, for these people who have obviously the privilege and the money to have some kind of VIP or some card like—
Geoff 40:35
See this is this is the interesting thing. I’m looking at this concierge service for NAB and it’s like, can do more than book your flights. I’m like, why am I calling someone else to book my flights when I can book them myself.
Georgie 40:46
I want to do that myself.
Geoff 40:47
Yeah, I can like click a few buttons. It’s “travel, lifestyle, available 24 hours a day. Find, book and deliver tickets for live music, sports and shows”. So... Thanks because I’m gonna I’m gonna start booking through the concierge service. That’s that’s pretty good.
Georgie 41:03
Definitely share your experience.
Geoff 41:06
Yeah.
Georgie 41:07
Because I’ve never, yeah. I’ve—yeah.
Geoff 41:09
Book reservations at health clubs, golf clubs and hotels. Restaurants...
Georgie 41:14
You? Golf? Nah.
Geoff 41:16
Well, my dad’s a big golfer, and I have played golf in my time. I enjoy putting. I feel like there’s a fine art to putting and not the freaking like, what do you call—
Georgie 41:31
Not your mini putt putt.
Geoff 41:32
Not your mini putt.
Georgie 41:33
There’s, it’s like an in between, right, between that and like—
Geoff 41:36
Yeah.
Georgie 41:37
Actual golf, going across the—
Geoff 41:40
Yeah.
Georgie 41:40
The fields and shit. Yeah.
Geoff 41:42
I think mini golf is a time where you’re not actually supposed to be good at golf. It’s kind of like karaoke.
Georgie 41:48
It’s for kids, man. Kinda like karaoke! But everybody goes to karaoke.
Geoff 41:52
Yeah, people go to karaoke, but you’re not supposed to be good at singing when you go to karaoke.
Georgie 41:58
Someone called me out for taking it too seriously. Because like I think there was a video of me like singing the Titanic, My Heart Will Go On and I was just like, really like getting into it.
Geoff 42:08
Getting into it. I actually saw a YouTube video of someone at... who was it, Adele’s concert or something like that. Anyways, they were taking it super seriously. They sang very loud, projected their voice, like on pitch and they were basically trying to out sing Adele. At her own concert.
Georgie 42:32
Oh my god.
Geoff 42:32
Yeah, where is this YouTube video. Person tries to out... “sue God”? Came up with “sue God”!
Georgie 42:43
As a suggestion.
Geoff 42:46
Outsing... outsing performer.
Georgie 42:49
I feel like this gives off have a pretentious vibe.
Geoff 42:53
Oh, yeah. 100%. [inaudible] Okay. In any case. Yeah, someone did that from the audience. And it was like being recorded and people were like to shut up. We came to see the fricking person sing, not you. So yeah. On that note, haha, get it.
Georgie 43:18
(laughs)
Geoff 43:18
You can catch us on @toastroastpod on Twitter, still, no checkmark.
Georgie 43:24
(laughs) No. Yeah. No tick.
Geoff 43:25
No checks.
Georgie 43:27
We’re gonna pay for that?
Geoff 43:28
No.
Georgie 43:30
(laughs)
Geoff 43:30
No matter what Elon does to the algorithm to help boost people with checkmarks we are not, we’re not gonna get checkmarked.
Georgie 43:37
Because we don’t want to be famous. Right?
Geoff 43:38
No, it’s really not cool to have a checkmark these days.
Georgie 43:41
Yeah, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you find your podcasts and the big projecting voice. Just say that because you just mentioned that person.
Geoff 43:53
Yeah. Or could do like the big train.
Georgie 43:59
The big train.
Geoff 44:00
Big train. I like trains. And—
Georgie 44:04
New episodes—
Geoff 44:05
New episodes every Monday.
Georgie 44:07
So see you next week.
Geoff 44:09
Bye.