TAGQ (That's A Good Question)

Ben Johnston talks to his father Scott about improv comedy, forestry and landscaping, as well as computing, cooking, and music, and whatever else these characters are interested in.

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TAGQ (That's A Good Question)

Natural Intelligence is Greener

May 12, 2025 • Ben Johnston & Scott Johnston • Episode 33

0:00 | 39:45

Father and son share a meandering morning conversation over coffee, covering everything from technology limitations and AI energy consumption to cancel culture and Prince's legacy. Their caffeine-fueled discussion weaves through serious topics with humor and philosophical insight, challenging conventional wisdom about pain, learning, and human connection.

• The inherent problems with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stem from engineering disciplines bootstrapped during centralized control systems
• ChatGPT and other AI systems consume enormous amounts of energy compared to human cognition
• Finding reliable news sources becomes increasingly difficult as publications move behind paywalls
• Bill Burr's evolution demonstrates how people can grow beyond problematic comedy when they're willing to reflect and change
• Prince's fatal opioid addiction may have stemmed from chronic performance injuries that could have been addressed through physical therapy
• Our culture encourages pushing through pain until it becomes debilitating, rather than addressing early warning signs
• College experiences differ dramatically across generations, but learning remains about training your neurons to do difficult things until you take pride in the capability

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Morning Coffee Ramblings

Ben 0:12

Oh man, every time I come on here late I'm like wow, dad's really just staring at the computer right now just waiting for me for the last 27 minutes, just um I got up and such a bad sun, got some coffee and uh, it's coffee time.

Scott 0:34

yeah, yes, this is a whole new kind of podcast for for tagq, a morning podcast for TAGQ Morning podcast. Are you breaking up because you're away from the Wi-Fi? Yeah, you're stalling.

Ben 1:05

I'm sitting outside because there's a lot going on inside, but I guess the Wi-Fi doesn't work very well out here.

Scott 1:11

No, I think it was on my end.

Ben 1:14

Oh, that's classic. Haven't gotten a new router since the RuneScape days.

Scott 1:21

That's not true.

Ben 1:22

We just kept on losing it. That's not true. We just kept on losing it and our characters kept on dying, all because my dad didn't know how to install a router. Well, it was really, really trying times for us kids growing up, playing those massive multiplayer online role-playing games with pretty standard level Wi-Fi. Actually, all things considered, no one else really has it any better. The entire University of Washington loses its Wi-Fi probably just as often as we did growing up. I don't know. Everyone says they have bad Wi-Fi. Does anyone say that they have good Wi-Fi? Is that a thing?

Scott 2:02

No, but I know why it's bad, bad but you just can't do anything about it well, I tried to, but that company didn't work out.

Ben 2:13

Yeah, I know I know, you know, 12 year old, us, 12 year old kids gave you shit. But but you know, it's I I mean just angry, we didn't know where to put her anger. That was all. I know, my little avatar, my little character, marth. You know I have to get in my one-liner about why bluetooth and wi-fi are you? Don't, it'll come in. It'll come in, but first let me I'm just kidding. Okay, your one, one liner about bluetooth and wi-fi.

The Problem with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Scott 2:46

Well, anything designed by electrical engineers who, uh, you know the whole discipline was bootstrapped during this centralized control we use to defeat the fascists in world war ii. Yeah, the whole idea that there's one god king at the top, or pope or whatever, is just how systems are designed and um, and because of that, designers the whole industry. They just don't know how to deal with out of order events or events that are not pre-ordered. There's no guarantee whether this bluetooth connection will succeed before that one, or whether this wi-fi will connect so whenever there's, they all have to yeah instead of having a system for, like, making collisions be no problem, instead they have a system where collisions, like, bring everything.

Ben 3:44

Like in the nucleus of a cell, there's collisions happening all over the place. Yeah, really collisions, because they're Right, it doesn't make the cell. It's happening in a million different places in the lines of code at any given time.

Scott 4:01

Yeah, I don't know the mindset that wasn't able to deal with the reality of nature when it came to making computational systems yes, that's that's.

Ben 4:15

We have chat gpt inquiries that require a thousand times the amount of energy is a Google search.

AI Energy Consumption Tangent

Scott 4:24

I since we have a ban on talking about. I think this is allowed, though, because we're talking about the nature. Yeah, I think it's amazing that chat GPT is such a energy hog and that kind of shows that they really haven't modeled the human brain yet.

Ben 4:46

Yeah, really feels like I'm talking to a therapist, though, let me tell you. So I got parts of it right.

Scott 4:53

What.

Ben 4:56

Well, you know, when you put in your messy emotions, you know, and they spit back something that any trained therapist would tell you.

Scott 5:08

When you're talking to chat GPT, I thought you were saying I was being like a therapist and it's like no.

Ben 5:15

I'm not quite as energy efficient in terms of the energy expenditure. Calorie wise has to burn a lot more calories in the form of fossil fuels as the therapist does in the form of cliff bars and Jimmy Dean sausages. A room of 20 experts.

Scott 5:35

I don't know why a room of 20 experts in like various disciplines could probably answer a query with far lower energy consumption than chat GBT. At least that's what the media is trying to convince you, like every time you say thank you. Okay, we should stop talking about AI again.

Ben 5:58

No, you should finish that thought.

Scott 6:00

Every time you say thank you, they say they're like you know whatever boiling water we're losing there. Every time you say thank you, they say they're like you know whatever boiling water we're losing their.

Ben 6:08

Every time you say thank you to the robot.

Scott 6:10

Yeah, it's like oh wait, what does? This mean.

Ben 6:17

So confusing? Why are you, why do you? Why do all of you feel the urge to thank me?

Scott 6:23

But I think we'll look back on. I guess if they're that inefficient in the future, we'll look back like on those smoke belching you know factory smokestacks in the 19th century how we look back on that and go how inefficient that was or like bloodletting or something like chat gpt will be. Yeah, can you believe they?

Scott 6:47

figured out how to introduce, uh, local low energy connections in the, in the, in the silicon. Doing this and they go. Yes, I can believe that because I know exactly how the company that was trying to compete with NVIDIA got, you know, shut down, even though NVIDIA is an energy hog solution for what they do.

Ben 7:13

Yeah.

Scott 7:13

You're only going to hear that on this podcast though we're only here.

Ben 7:18

You were here first, everybody. Wow, we're boiling the ocean because our robots are trying to quantify our gratitude.

Scott 7:29

I also take it with a grain of salt. I think a lot of the articles are clickbait that are derived from someone doing crazy reasoning, from you know some paper they read partially, so I don't know from some paper they read partially.

Ben 7:50

So I don't know. That's why I spend so little time on the internet these days, because it's so hard for me to, unless I have a very specific thing I'm researching. I can't be aimless on the internet because, for that exact reason, it's just so full of light.

Scott 8:08

I'm getting nervous about how to find reliable information sources. Yeah, I know, I know Me too, especially like CNN is now charging for their articles. So it's like, okay, oh, really, that one's gone. So who am I going to pay? I guess I'll play the, you know Minneapolis star Tribune and maybe the San Francisco Chronicle I don't know New York times. Do I want to pay Washington post? I'm not sure, right.

Ben 8:43

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know npr npr.

Scott 8:48

Give money to npr.

Ben 8:49

Yeah I uh, I really couldn't tell you. Can I tell you the secret though?

Scott 8:59

okay, do I have to keep it? Yeah, okay, all right.

Ben 9:03

Uh, before I logged on, I was like, oh, this will be. I really have to pee. This will be really interesting. I probably have, like you know, safely, like half an hour before, like this starts getting really uncomfortable for me, but like I can do a 40 minute podcast like this, this will make things fun, this will make things interesting. And now that we're, you know, 10 minutes in, I'm like I'm. I think it was a good choice to be or not to be to not pee.

Bill Burr and Cancel Culture

Ben 9:35

Oh okay, that was my decision. All right, I can add a little more kind of risk to the situation here and see what happens.

Scott 9:44

Well, that kind of leads me to my next point, which is you know, this podcast that's a good question dot buzzsproutcom, and so we hosted at buzzsprout, or we pay them to host it. And there I have a list of podcasts that are the ones I like to follow, which I should add your list of podcasts.

Ben 10:18

You have a list of podcasts that you don't like to follow.

Scott 10:20

That I like to follow, that I do follow, which do follow, which is basically cohen o'brien who you follow. Yes, judge john hodgman.

Scott 10:31

Um, but I have a new one that I'm following, which is um bill burr, and he does. He's currently on broadway with like um, a whole bunch of people, like odin kirk and uh, I know they're doing this play glenn gary, glenn ross, which was a, a play by david memet meme. I don't know how you say his name, but he just puts out a podcast where he's the only one talking and it's like oh well, I could you know? If Bill? If no, what's your name? Ben?

Ben 11:19

If Ben is busy, I could just sit here and talk, but does he have guests on or anything? Because I know like that's he just talks. Some people do that. Uh, yeah, I I know of a couple of other podcasts that do that.

Scott 11:37

It's usually white dudes that have a lot of opinions yeah, and his opinions are surprising because I thought he was in like this, you know, anti-woke, um sort of contingency, but he's, he's, he's not. He's like just yeah, solidly irrational, dude in in the Solidly Wow that's. Those are big words, but he admits.

Ben 12:08

I don't read anything Solidly irrational.

Scott 12:10

But I don't read anything, but I can tell this guy is full of shit, can't you? It's like, and he does it in a humorous way, so it's like okay.

Ben 12:24

How long has he been doing this podcast?

Scott 12:28

I don't know, but he goes through his journey about how he got so much humor out of his misogyny.

Ben 12:38

And you really run that one dry, and then he's like, well, that wasn't right, and he changed himself yeah, I guess I I got really turned off to his comedy because there were just so many times where he was making jokes that were just like, yeah, dude, do your fucking research. You're just like you can't. The best humor is based in truth. And you just like are misunderstanding. Uh, like you're just misunderstanding obesity. You're misunderstanding homosexuality. You're misunderstanding women. You're like, yeah, and so I just have.

Scott 13:15

I've always kind of been stuck with that opinion of bill burr because of that right, and it was a fair opinion and and and he says that in his podcast, which is like, well, I'm glad I'm started listening to you now, because now you're like people change, yeah, yeah right and um see, that's like, that's, that's what, that's what cancel culture is sort of meant to be.

Ben 13:39

You know, that's what the me too movement is hoping for is to get people to be like oh, you mean, I've been wrong about this actually, wow, huh.

Billionaire Tech Bros Act Out On Hurt Feelings

Scott 13:54

Yeah, I mean and but and itactions are, you know, kind of having the opposite effect that they want totally. Yeah, um like did you hear this week about the the secret signal group chat that all the tech bro billionaires were in on no um signal where, where it got driven to group think by mark andreason?

Ben 14:34

uh, give me a 10 second bio of mark andreason he's the guy who became a billionaire off of um.

Scott 14:41

he took a public domain web browser and then he worked with this Clark guy and made Netscape and they got rich and this happened way back in the day. And he's the other computer science luminary I should have walked out on. I mean, I walked out on Bill Gates, but I should have walked out on him like in before you were born, because I went to this Linux user group meeting and he was like just saying you know, every user interface in the world that you're going to use from now on will be written inside my browser, which is kind of comparable to Bill Gates saying like every pot in China, every chicken, whatever, every pot in China will have a Microsoft Chicken pot chicken.

Ben 15:32

every cooking pot in China is going to have little Bill Gates inside.

Scott 15:37

Basically, they're just monopolists.

Ben 15:38

You're going to stir your own vaccines.

Scott 15:41

They're monopolists trying to like just declare their approach as the only approach. Therefore, everyone should use it. Thank God that didn't happen. Where do you?

Ben 15:51

read about how did you find out about this? About Bill Gates? How?

Scott 15:59

I went to a talk he gave at a high school in Bloomington, Minnesota. Maybe he? Changed like Bill Burr um, I think once a monopolist, you're always a monopolist sympathizer. High school dad come on. He was not in, he was in a high school. But the point is, and I'm what is the point?

Ben 16:28

they don't let me in high schools anymore because I'm not a high schooler. You can go into high schools.

Scott 16:35

They used the auditorium for this talk he was giving. He basically Bill Gates. His presentation was how he invented computers. I'm exaggerating, but he was just trying to.

Ben 16:48

That was a long time ago, though you don't think that he's like maybe I'm stupid. That was dumb long time ago, though you don't think that he's like maybe I'm stupid.

Scott 16:56

That was dumb.

Ben 16:58

Well, he's basically saying that, not because I want it, but because I think I'm so amazing.

Scott 17:03

His approach is the best and will dominate all the future, and that's what he wants you to believe. And that's the same thing.

Ben 17:09

He does have that kick on him and he kind of applies that You're right With the same thing he does. He does have that kick on him and he kind of applies that you're right with the whole the chicken pot pot, chicken, chicken, china. He does the same thing with farmland in the united states. Right, he is the one that should have jurisdiction over all of this, because he's the only one that has the means and the intelligence to take care of everybody.

Scott 17:34

So these group of tech bros were doing that whole conversation and they they got into groupthink, they decided it would be best if trump got re-elected and they took all their power and went out and secretly seeded it into all these propaganda outlets, all their relationships with comedians, like yeah on or they went into the culture, went into the cultural sphere of well they they control the outlets. You know and, and, but nobody knew they were doing this in this secret, secret group chat until I can't imagine.

Ben 18:14

It's just like, it's the equivalent of just like a group of like 13 frat bros that decide one day it's like dude, I'm sick of people rejecting me and telling me I'm toxic, like let's make this a new group chat. The 13 toxic men that need a need an outlet because we're angry. Well, their feelings were, that's all it is, but they're people with billions and billions of dollars in their fingers and politics and their feelings were really hurt during the pandemic god, during the pandemic God.

Scott 18:52

So they've become crusaders for their hurt feelings from the pandemic and their feelings were really hurt by the Me Too movement and their feelings are really hurt by trans people and they wanted to take action with all their money and power and they did. And now they're going like so the one in this article. They had one thing of this, one guy who's like probably an Indian tech bro and said, like you know, I'd put pronouns back on my profile if we could have the stock market back the way it was a year ago. Yeah, you couldn't see that one coming. I guess being rich and powerful does not give you wisdom oh, how about that?

Scott 19:42

this is what we get over coffee. I'm usually amped up like this in the morning.

Prince, Paisley Park and Physical Pain

Ben 19:50

Yeah, in my, in my new world, I told Peter that yesterday this episode brought to you by the Prince Museum in Minneapolis. I got a few really great photos of my family at the Prince Museum in Minneapolis recently. Okay. And the name With its very own cafe called Star Fishing Coffee. I don't know why, but the name of that song makes me really hungry, star.

Scott 20:23

Fishing. I know why.

Ben 20:25

I'm imagining one of those Mexican pastries like a concha.

Scott 20:30

I was thinking it was jamba juice.

Ben 20:33

Oh, definitely not. No, that stuff makes me sick these days, it's so.

Scott 20:38

Mexican what?

Ben 20:41

The Mexican pastries. Yeah, they look like little shells.

Scott 20:47

So you're referring to Paisley Park.

Ben 20:53

Yeah, I don't really know what I'm referring to, but I knew we needed a sponsor.

Scott 20:57

In Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Ben 21:01

It looked like Peter and Grandma had a good time.

Scott 21:04

Where this high school musician who graduated the same time as I did, but in Minneapolis not in the same time as I did, but you know, in Minneapolis, not in the St Paul suburb yeah, believed in himself, and he wasn't white. Well, he also, his father was a. His father, like, played the piano. He just didn't want to play the piano. He actually played the piano as a jazz musician and he took his son to burlesque shows where he was the, the uh, you know, the the accompanist. So it's like, okay, prince had a little different upbringing than I did. So it's like, okay, prince had a little different upbringing than I did.

Ben 21:58

All I had was the acapella choir across the river. Yeah, well, we all make our way to our dreams somehow. I shouldn't say we all do, but we hope we do. And you are now. You're playing in rock and roll bands. Yeah, in San.

Scott 22:11

Francisco, that's right, that's right. Bands yeah In San Francisco, that's right, that's right, yeah, yeah.

Ben 22:17

So I know it's easy for me to get on myself about that too, because it's like oh, I didn't. I didn't grow up going going to the church. I didn't grow up playing drums for the church band. Like oh right. I'm so musically challenged. Yeah, I don't know. I just find so many excuses to be like I could be so good at that.

Scott 22:41

but life is just. Those excuses are so powerful. Wow, I was telling that story because we were doing an ad for Paisley park, paisley place, what is it?

Ben 22:57

I don't know I called it the prince museum. I have no idea what it is.

Scott 23:01

Well, it's his, it's his house and studio like personal recording studio. Yeah, I've never been there, but we got a lot of pictures of I can't believe we had never been there before your grandma, grandma, standing around in the dark.

Ben 23:15

It was when, like, oh, it's just Peter and mom and grandma. It's like, oh, that'll be easy for them to find something to do, whereas you add one other person to the mix and it becomes infinitely more complicated. Yeah.

Scott 23:28

Yeah, yeah, peter said he was most impressed by his, like you know, the small setup, the small studio, the small room, yeah, I bet, um, where I I think there was a smaller stage, you know, not the one for ushering a crowd, but just for a group of friends, and he had all this great recording equipment and yep yeah, but he got injured by jumping off of stayed, jumping off of his amps with high heels.

Ben 24:07

Was that an acute injury or was that like a chronic stress over time? Just, you jump off of the stamp state, you jump off of an amp with high heels enough times and you start to kind of, you know, wear out your ankles.

Scott 24:24

Can we define for our listeners the difference between acute and chronic, because I always forget.

Ben 24:30

Acute, meaning. Prince jumps off of a stage like he's done a hundred times before. He's wearing stilettos, yeah, and he hits the ground and just a millimeter off and the ankle rolls and one time eight thousand, yeah, of force goes well.

Scott 24:54

No, I think chronic is what it breaks is. I mean, chronic is like something that's slow and ongoing, is like gonna kill you tomorrow, right?

Ben 25:04

exactly so I think it was a chronic jumps off the stage like he has a hundred times, but this one time something different happens no, I think it was chronic.

Scott 25:13

It just built up, which led to taking pain killers, which led to opiates which led to death.

Ben 25:22

So prince could still be alive if he had some dr shoals insoles um or physical therapy let me tell you if I was dancing on stage every day with my dancing shoes on. I mean, you saw those shoes at that wedding a couple weeks ago. Those, those are so fun yeah but, like I, that stuff probably tears down my cartilage like crazy. Yeah, just, they're just blocks of wood. Yeah, it's like like just pounding on the floor. Yeah, probably, you know, style of dancing matters too, but I, I also.

Scott 26:00

I don't know why we're going into. Well, it's what comes up. It's like and in the culture we grew up in, I think people are just conditioned to like if you have a physical injury in your fifties, you're just going to die because you're old now and there's nothing you can do to get better.

Ben 26:21

Louis CK has some good content about that. Yeah, you go to the doctor and like he's like my back hurts. And the doctor just says like here, take this, yeah. And you're like is, is it gonna get better? And he's like you won't feel it much anymore, but just take this. You know right, do I do anything? He's like no, I'll probably be about the same, you know, it'll just keep going. Yeah, that's. But it's so true, I mean people, I mean there's a lot there I.

Scott 27:00

I thought that was completely true until I went through the experience and found it wasn't. You know right, you know running injury I got. I thought, okay, that's just it. I'm in the class of people who it's never run again because they got injured yeah it's.

Ben 27:18

I mean really, the injuries and the pain is kind of your body in my opinion. I mean it's not always true, but just kind of like yelling at you a little bit like hey, hey, dumbass, dumbass, dumbass, pay attention and it gets louder and louder and louder until the point where it's just like punching you in the face. Well, I've been telling you this whole time, you just weren't paying attention to me.

Scott 27:47

But culture is telling the person push through the pain, yeah, right, until the pain becomes debilitating. Then stop forever. Right, right, yeah, totally. So we could have helped. If Prince is my friend, I could have helped him.

Ben 28:04

You really yeah. So he was taking painkillers because he didn't go to physical therapy.

Scott 28:10

He was taking painkillers because he needed physical therapy? Yeah, I think so, but this is where we go. Let's focus on the music Great, great music, because we're sponsoring the thing you know. I care about him, okay at.

Ben 28:28

We're sponsoring the thing you know. Care about him, care about, okay, we're sponsoring the thing. Well, we wouldn't be allowed to walk in his house and like, look around if he was still alive.

Scott 28:37

So you know yeah, so go to minnesota and visit paisley park, which we've never done, but we should do someday, yeah, we should. Or just go to the US Bank Stadium, because it's all purple and looks like it's dedicated to Prince anyways, okay so very good. Yeah, very messy, very messy, but very good, yeah, I feel like very messy, very good, yeah, yeah I like.

Ben 29:14

I like messy, I do, I do like I like messy. Really well by me. Yeah, yes and no. I like experiment, it depends. Wow, I was totally right. We're about half an hour into the podcast and my kidneys are like shit.

Scott 29:38

Well, I can talk about something and I'll just tell a secret while you're. You can make it. We're on the timer already, okay, and you.

Ben 29:51

You know how it is, though. Like someone you gotta pee like nobody's business and then someone's 10 minutes, just it's like let me, let me go turn on a water faucet yeah, go turn on the backyard faucet. You you can hear it under under your chair and your old key pipes. I could pee into my coffee mug.

Scott 30:16

So recently I discovered that you always prepare a question to ask which I did not know.

Ben 30:22

So funny drinking coffee to distract myself from the sensation of having to pee.

Question Reprise

Scott 30:29

And with the last podcast I put out, your question was what did my about my mother's breakfast eating habits? Yes, yes, and you were getting around to talking about, like she had bagels with peanut butter, indeed, and then, instead of like responding to your question, I just went on about oh, peanut butter, yeah, we use that to trap the rats yeah, peanut butter and I stepped on your question to you by peanut butter.

Ben 31:02

So thoughts or new question thoughts about the bagels I mean I was waiting for you to Thoughts about the bagels. I mean I was waiting for you to talk more about the bagels.

Scott 31:13

Do we want to use a recycled question Is that.

Ben 31:17

I do get very nostalgic about peanut butter on bagels and toast. For that reason, although it's not usually my first choice in the morning, I like something that's a little more well-rounded. Um well question. I've always, you know, I go through these waves of like getting good sleep and not good sleep in college. And I had a lot of fun this last week, like I did a lot of great stuff and and then, in having all that fun, there was this really big assignment that I put off, and so I decided I'm actually going to turn this in late. That's okay. So I'm going to take the 10% mark and I'm like, oh my God, it's only 10%. I can just take a 10% mark and get like a full night of sleep. That's amazing, it's sweet, I'm going to do it.

Ben 32:11

But come yesterday it's like okay, now I have to do the regular thing. You know, I still need to finish this assignment. Got to go to school, got to, you know, got to do all my things, got to do my plans. Oh my God, I need to go grocery shopping. Well, I definitely need to get it worked out. So by the time, I'm like sitting back down doing the assignment seven or eight o'clock at night and it's like Jesus Christ, ben, like what is, wow. It just got me thinking like, oh, what is other? What have other people's approaches to a secondary education been Like? What was, what was? What was your schedule like when you were in college?

Scott 32:58

I would classes, usually in the morning and in the afternoon I would do what homework was required like, which really was just getting ready for tests or a little bit of programming. But you know it was nowhere near what you imagine programming is now because I had to go somewhere to use some device to like enter a program and then sit and wait until the computer, which was locked far away. You know I never would have seen a computer when I got a computer science degree unless I had other ways of seeing them. I never would have seen one through my education. They were locked away, wow.

Scott 33:55

There was just one of them first of all, it was in a building like off campus.

Ben 34:01

Meanwhile, I'm using the computer right now that's owned by University of Washington. It's raining outside. It's on my porch. Humidity is probably 85%.

Scott 34:11

It's probably getting rained on a little bit and I'm just yeah, fucking and that computer has more power than the one my whole computer science cohort used for our education.

Ben 34:23

Education, right, yeah, yeah it was, it was the cdc 6000, but um okay, whole nother story yeah yeah, yeah, that was a good, that was a good model that's good. Yeah, I don't know, I didn't work that hard sounds like you did your homework and went pro was oh, but but what else? You didn't do any. What would you do when you weren't working? Because you just said you went to class and then you did some homework and then then someone say let's go to a bar, yeah, okay, yeah but this was undergrad yeah, I know it's completely different, but I mean, my undergrad looked really different.

Ben 35:05

You know it would then, it does now and it looked a lot different than what you're describing. I mean from class.

Scott 35:11

The equivalent of grad school was my job as a student programmer at Honeywell. You know, that's where I learned all these industry things that I would have had no idea about without that student job.

Ben 35:29

Or you learn about industry things in grad school.

Scott 35:32

Well, there was a mini computer On program. There was a computer I could touch and reboot and mount different disks on it and we had video.

Ben 35:42

No, it totally. I mean, yeah, you were learning on the job, you were working in the actual industry, you were learning actual relevant information and skills about the trade, whereas I'm still in school and I'm just doing courses and it's like I'm in forestry but like you're not even. Why, why aren't I out there like working with loggers, learning how to use a chainsaw? That it's like what this is. Just so that I have this, this, this, these letters after my name when I like go around and talk to people, I guess yeah, that that'll like.

Scott 36:15

That's what an internship or uh or a job is for. But then what's this for?

Ben 36:24

oh, this people, I'm like I I'm interested in this, I care about this.

Scott 36:30

Well, I think it's don't answer that.

Scott 36:31

I'll just ask chat gbt can I, can I offer something? I think it's like practicing writing. It's like why are you practicing writing? It's like, well, just so. The next time you practice writing it's a little easier. So the next time you practice writing it's a little easier. So the next time you practice writing it's a little easier. Yeah, you're like training your neurons to do an activity that maybe is not their first choice and then at some point it'll subtly go from you hating it to you being proud of your capability to do it.

Ben 37:09

Yeah, yeah.

Scott 37:10

I mean yeah, yeah, and that describes things pretty well if you can temper both of those. You're hating it now and you're priding it later, you'll, you'll, you'll, that'll be okay, right? Yeah, some people go from you, know they hate it so much and then when they get a little competence, they love it too much and then they're stuck there. You know like I hated spreadsheets, but now all I do is spreadsheets all the time, you know how did I get here?

Ben 37:45

yeah?

Scott 37:47

but don't forget yourself while you're learning skills. I feel it. So much philosophy over coffee, that's true, that does happen.

Ben 38:00

When you really enjoy something proud of what you've done, then you get lost in it a little bit. That's kind of the case with everything I've been lost in coffee over breakfast. I just that's what. That's when I feel most fulfilled and it's like what am I.

Scott 38:23

The best he's done is three weeks sober and that's a deep cut. If anyone's been listening to the podcast.

Ben 38:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm proud of you listener, if you know what that's from. Yeah, yeah, you must be a longtime listener to all of the Johnston musings, if you know what that one's from. Three weeks sober, yeah, be sober.

Scott 38:45

It's not in the song.

Ben 38:48

That idea of being the breakfast being my. That probably made no sense to anybody. You know what that's okay, yeah, it's a mystery. It's being addicted to caffeine. I'm really good at drinking coffee and eating breakfast. People are like, wow, you eat such a healthy breakfast. That's great. I'm like, yeah, it's my drug.

Scott 39:09

Yeah, it's also my remaining drug, caffeine. I might have to quit it too. I'm worse yeah, well, jeez, god jeez god, what am I going to rely on? Exercise and meditation.

Ben 39:29

I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. More hobbies, more hobbies and human connection. Just get better at those.

Scott 39:36

Human connection exercise meditation. What are you recommending?

Ben 39:41

And that's the.