Macaroon

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing a host, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts, but this week we've been betrayed. There is no Matt Birchler. I am just joined by Niléane. Niléane, how do you feel about this betrayal? I feel fine, actually. Oh, okay. It was bound to happen. It's the first time that it's just us two, right? No, I think it's just been us two before. I think we've done every combo of just two of the three hosts.

But yeah. No, it's just the two of us this week. But we have some exciting stuff to talk about nonetheless. You have something in the document here. What is this about? I saw this yesterday. You may click the link. It's a new thing that Belkin just announced. And it's called, what is it called? The Belkin Power Grip. Oh, okay. And what this is, is a camera grip for your iPhone.

It attaches via MaxSafe. And it's also a battery. Oh, it's also a battery as well. Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. And I thought this looks interesting. This does look interesting. it's 80 bucks so it's a little outside of the whole like I'll just throw money at it and try it for giggles but honestly this looks kind of cool if there was an external hard drive in this so like you could plug it in and shoot the ProRes Raw that would be really interesting to me it has a tripod mount screw hole

that is cool It also looks like you can put it in portrait mode and it stands up on its own if you do that Oh that's true And then because it's MagSafe you can just rotate the phone if you want to shoot landscape stuff but it stands up on its own That's kind of interesting It's got a screen You will like that I do like screens Oh and it has a USB-C cable built into it I'm guessing so you can charge the battery Yeah where it goes.

It looks like it's retractable. Oh, it's like... It's a pulling... You have to pull it kind of thing. You pull it and then it snaps back. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's... This is interesting and I kind of want to order this. Look, there's a non-zero chance that next time we record, I have one of these or it's on the way. I will leave this tab open and decide later. Is it on pre-orders? It's already out.

I think it says buy now. Okay, okay, yeah. I don't know. There is a non-zero chance I have this the next time we record. But I don't know. We'll see. I mean, you can't take it back. It's yours. You have it now. Yeah. This is interesting. I like this I think we didn't even mention that this is it has a shutter button it has a camera button so that you can

take photos and take videos and it has a grip so that you can hold your iPhone a little more stable so if you're shooting video, your video won't be all wobbly and stuff because I'm going to guess this thing since it's got a battery in it it's got some heft to it So you're going to be able to hold this a little more stable while doing panning shots and stuff like that. Seeing how it can hold itself up vertically, it seems like it's got some weight.

Yeah. And that's the big issue with shooting with an iPhone and doing video is there's not a lot of weight to it. So it's really easy to just wobble it in your hands. Yeah, yeah. With some weight, you can kind of balance it a little bit better and just hold it so you're doing a little bit more smoother video. You may have just made me spend money. I knew you would like this. We should have been, from the very start of the show, we should have started a spreadsheet with how much money we make the others spend.

Like, whenever we convince somebody to buy something, that would have been an interesting statistic. I would win like I I'm not easily convinced generally I think you would win I think you would win in convincing me and Matt to spend money yeah I think that would be you I don't know I think I'm also really good at spending Matt's money as well I've got him to buy a few keyboards that's true it's the time of the week where we have a podcast within a podcast

right I don't know I'm not allowed on this podcast Yes, that's true. Yes, confidence. Okay. We are back on the browser podcast. Hit it, Matt. Virtual Matt. Hit it. I can do lasers. That's fireworks, not lasers. But hey, it works.

All right. Welcome back to the browser podcast. This is a great show, weekly show within the show where we talk all about web browsers. I'm half of your hosts. Matt is out today. But we have a guest today. Chris, you are on the Browser Podcast. How does it feel? Thank you so much for having me on. It is probably the biggest honor of my life to be on the Browser Podcast. You know, I've been a longtime forced listener. You know, I've been forced to listen every single week, but I'm a first-time caller.

So I'm excited to be here and to chat with you about all things web browsers. Yeah, yeah. As you should be. Yeah. Perfect. Last week, you were tasked to check out a new browser that's called Aura Browser. It's a browser that was recommended to us in the feedback form. And so it looks like ARK. It's basically yet another ARK clone. But this one is for iPadOS and VisionOS.

Yes. And we should say right up front, so there'll be a link in the description, but it is not on the App Store. The link is to a GitHub page, but there is a test flight link in there. So you can click that test flight, and last time I checked, the test flight wasn't full. It's not a great browser. I set it as my default browser, and it didn't even last a full day, but I did use it periodically throughout the week. Okay. It's really not that great, good-looking.

Like, it really doesn't look good. It's got this purplish gradient as the background, and, like, no matter if you're using light mode or dark mode, it just sticks out. It doesn't look good, and I couldn't find a way to change that. I was like, it really should just be white if you're in light mode and some kind of dark gray if you're in dark mode. I feel like the developer behind this really wanted to do a gradient. But like you said, it's kind of an ARC clone, but for the iPad and Vision OS or Vision Pro.

And because of that, it's still a WebKit browser. It's not a Chrome browser. It doesn't have the Chromium back, so it's just a WebKit browser. but it does have sidebar tabs and oh i love sidebar tabs so much they are so great i absolutely sidebar tabs everywhere they're just so nice it was really nice to just see everything laid out like i don't know about you but when i'm using safari or any other browser and i have tabs open i lose what those tabs are because i have a bunch of tabs open and all of a sudden like i can't see

what they are. With sidebar tabs, you can see what all of your tabs are and where they are and just click on them. It's glorious. I'm not that kind of person. I don't get over... I rarely use too many tabs at once. I close my tabs as soon as I'm done with them. I rely on the browsing history a lot and I assume that I will be able to find things back when I search in the address bar.

So yeah, I close my tabs very often. Okay. Yeah, I'm not one of those people. Usually what happens is I go, oh man, I have a bunch of tabs open. So I sit there and just hit command W a bunch until I'm like, all my tabs are closed. Yeah. Because I have so many open, I don't know what's what. So I'm just like, yeah, screw it. And just command W and close everything. You know, there was this trend on Twitter back in the day where people would say close your tabs on Fridays every Friday.

Oh, I find that funny. Interesting. Yeah, I just do it when Safari gets out of hand and I have too many things open. Another feature of Aurora Browser is it has profile support. So you have tabs on the side in the column, but at the bottom, and I don't really like this design, at the bottom you can set up the different profiles and stuff and like you scroll horizontally through them but it's just in the sidebar so the things get cut off and you forget it because you don't see see them there um yeah it's cool that that's

there but yeah the the big thing that just had me running back to safari is extensions uh safari is the only browser on ios and ipad os that supports extensions and i use a bunch of them and they're really handy so i you know it's just another case of apple open up the browser side of ios and ipad os to allow actual other third-party browsers and not just rescanned stripped down versions of safari yeah yeah all right so out of 10 your rating It's got some good ideas.

It's held back by the system. I'm going to give it a six because it's got some decent ideas. I would have given it. Actually, you know what? I'm going to give it a five. I would have given it a six if it wasn't for the purple gradient thing. The purple gradient really bugged me. And it's in beta, maybe. That's completely fair. And I do think if you're an iPad user or a Vision Pro user, go check out the test flight. give it a shot. Like, it's not going to cost you anything. It's really interesting to play with a sidebar tab system.

I really like that. I'm curious if Safari would ever adopt that. I don't think so, but maybe. Yeah. Apparently, Chrome, like Google, is working on sidebar tabs. Oh, really? I saw that the other day. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. It's currently behind a flag. in Chrome in whatever canary, Google Chrome canary testing builds of Chrome and it doesn't look pretty right now

well that's why it's behind a flag yeah interesting, that would be curious if that ships because that would be if that ships on Chrome and people like it I could see Safari doing it then yeah alright, thank you for coming on the browser podcast this was a much more like very serious episode of the browser podcast and like our inaugural episode last week uh i can't wait to have you back chris thank you thank you so much for having me like i said long time forced listener first time caller so it's been great great to be here to chat with you next week or not

probably not i'm not probably allowed back on if matt's uh speaking of other podcasts uh this week on Cozy Zone, which is our members special podcast. It's a whole separate podcast. You can check it out. There'll be links in the description to go see it. But this week on Cozy Zone, Matt and I quizzed Neelion on her US geography skills. It was pretty funny. It was pretty funny all the way around.

It was a good time. I am waiting for my naturalization certificate or whatever. Citizenship, my US citizenship certificate. You sure you want that right now? You sure you want that one right now? I mean, why not? I can keep it in a spare pocket somewhere and pull it out when it's like a good opportunity to use it. You never know. Okay. Yeah. All right.

That was a good one. So go check that out. That was this week on Cozy Zone. Yes. You ready to get in the main show? Yes. Okay. I'm really excited for what I have for you this week. Okay. It just showed up this week. It showed up earlier this week, like Monday or Tuesday, and I've been having so much fun with it, and it is the brick. What is this? You may have seen this advertised. It's advertised all over places like Instagram and stuff like that, but for audio listeners, it is a gray square,

and it just says brick on it. literally doesn't you know it's not much here but what this is is it is a device that you can and there's an app on your phone and then so you you get the brick app you let's see how can i do this you can put it up next to it oh hang on brick device you put it up next to it and it scans it or like just like an nfc tag just like an nfc tag it works just like kind of like apple pay or any

of that stuff where like you just you scan it and then what this does is you can use this to block apps so now if i try and open up uh music here it shows that uh it is blocked right now so this is kind of like one of those productivity tools for people with like adhd and stuff like that that like if you find your phone to be really distracting you can use this device and this uses the built-in screen time APIs to block apps.

Now, what's cool about this, and there are, and I've talked about apps that do the same thing, but the issue with apps is you could just go into the app and turn it off. Like, I have my phone in my hand. If I'm blocking something and I really want to get around that, I could just go in and turn that off. Where brick comes in handy is on the backside of it, there's a magnet. So what I've done is I've went and put this on my refrigerator, which is the furthest thing from my studio in my house. Like my refrigerator, you can't get much further in my house from the point of my studio to the refrigerator.

You can't get much further than that. So this sits on my refrigerator now. So when I get ready in the morning and I'm like, okay, I got a lot of work to do. Like yesterday I had a big script I needed to write. So I grabbed my Dr. Pepper, I scanned, I held the phone up to this thing, opened the app, did the ready to brick, and walked away. and so that meant i couldn't access mastodon i couldn't access uh blue sky overcast music i have uh 26 different apps blocked in here now there is a limit of 50 apps that you can block

and that's a an ios limitation but what you can do is if you want to block a lot is there's a either a block list or an allow list so you could just be like oh allow these apps and it blocks everything else or you can do what i'm doing and i just i selected 26 apps that i find to be very distracting block those can't open those and and in order to unbrick your device unbrick your phone you literally have to go back up to it hit the unlock device button so here and then scan it again and that will unlock your device so now i could go in and open up overcast or whatever so okay

why why i don't understand so i have found lately my phone to be very distracting i have been just trying to i've been distracting myself a lot lately with just like playing around opening up games or social media apps or whatever i've just been distracting myself a ton and this has basically made it so that I can still use my phone for work stuff when I need to. So like if I'm filming a short or something like that, I could still use my phone. I'm not leaving it in another room or

something like that. But those distracting apps that are causing me to not get work done, to pull my focus away from work, those are now blocked on my device. So I don't need to delete them or anything like that and that barrier of me having to get up and walk to the kitchen to scan it to unlock the device that is the thing that that's working for me so i i used to use an app called focus os i've talked about focus friend and stuff like that but if i really want to get to apps and i'm using the software solution for that and i really want to get to apps i can just turn that off

in my phone. Like there's no barrier there. The barrier for this is I would have to get up, walk out of my studio, go to the other side of the house, scan the device to unlock it and then do it. And that barrier I have found for me to be just enough to where like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to distract myself. I need to stay focused on my work. So there's a scenario where If you go on vacation, you could leave it at home, and you'd have no way to unlock your apps until you come home?

Yeah. So you have to physically scan it to brick the device, and then you have to scan it again to unbrick it. So yes, technically... So you could scan it before leaving. You could do that. There is a setting in here that's called emergency unbrick, And like that gives you access to the stuff. I actually haven't used it. Let's see how that works. Because I actually haven't used it because I haven't needed it. I don't know if it's limited by time. Use an emergency unbrick.

Are you sure? Yes. So that, yeah, that will just unbrick your device. But you only get five of those. So I just used one. Five ever? I don't know. It literally just says four remaining. And I just used one. So I don't know if that's it. And I have no idea. Maybe you got to buy a whole other brick. This thing wasn't super cheap. I forgot. Hang on. Let me look up how much it was before I say. Because it was. Yeah.

Okay. So this thing is not super cheap. It's $60. And $60 for an NFC tag with a magnet on the back is a lot. That's expensive. I guess you're also paying for the app. The app part is free. So I guess you're paying for that as well. But this has been working for me, and I really like it because of that. So, yes, it's not cheap. It's not, oh, they have a black one now. They didn't have this when I ordered it the other day. Oh, I feel ripped off.

Now I got to order another one. I think the emergency unlock, there are just five. Really? Oh, I just wasted one. That's how it reads on the website. We offer five emergency unbreaks in the app that will automatically unblock our apps. And that's it. End of the sentence. There's just five unlocks. So for your situation where you went on vacation and you forgot to unlock your phone, that's what you use it for?

Don't do that, I guess. I don't know. I haven't had that. When I was saying that, I meant intentionally you could do that. Oh, yeah. If you want to completely disconnect on your vacation or something. Yeah. And so what's really cool about this is if you go in the app, there's different modes that you can set up. So I just have one that's called focus, but like you could set up a vacation mode and be like, block my email app, block my calendar app, block my task manager. So you literally couldn't open those on vacation if you wanted, or you could set up like a nighttime one that blocked all of your work stuff

and just be like, okay, I am not working, you know, now I can't do it. And then, you know, when you get up in the morning to go work, you would scan it again and it would unbreak it and stuff like that. So that, yeah. So there are different like modes you can do. And I don't know. I don't think there's a limit to how many modes you could do. But yeah, the, but yeah, you can create different scenarios. So you could create that vacation one or you could create that evening one or family one or weekend one or something like that. So it is blocking those apps that you don't want.

Okay, okay. Yeah, that's interesting. It freaks me out, to be honest. But it's interesting. I can see that. I mean, I don't go places, so it's, you know, something happened. But also the apps I'm blocking aren't critical. They're like, you know, they're media apps, they're social media apps, they're games, stuff like that. So like if I didn't have access to those, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Yeah, yeah, I get it.

Okay, okay. But yeah, that's brick. I really like this. I was pleasantly surprised to find out there's a magnet on the back. So I was able to put this on the refrigerator. So it's literally just as far as ways. I was just going to put it in a drawer or something when I ordered it. But when I saw that it had a magnet on the back, I was like, oh, perfect. Right on the fridge. You just walk up, grab a Dr. Pepper, scan it. Boom. Felt bricked. Yeah. I mean, what else are you going to grab from your fridge? Food. What?

Food. Yogurt. How do you pronounce that? Food. Food. F-O-U-D-E. F-O-U-D-E. Okay. Food. Interesting. I haven't heard that one. Yeah, that's a French word. Oh, okay. Is that like that long bread you got? Yes. but yeah so that's brick i i like it i think it's interesting i i know it's not for everyone uh but i think we've heard from enough people that listen to the show that have

adhd and focus issues and stuff like that that something like this could be really interesting for you and like i said there is software options out there like focus friend and um focused os and there's a bunch of others too but i just find those to be really easy to be like yeah i'm gonna bypass this or yeah i'm gonna just skip this right now i don't i don't i don't you know i i really want to mess around on my phone or something like that and having the physical barrier of having to get up walk to the fridge and scan this to a lot to unbrick my phone is is

enough to basically keep me on task so what do you got for us this week ah chris chris chris so you know i'm looking to the side because i was just like refreshing the news to get the latest up-to-date information so because what i wanted to talk about is uh what kept me like how should i say not busy because not really but um distracted i guess yes you need a brick

you need a brick yeah so it does okay so does the brick work with emmanuel macron can i just like scan the guy with the brick and he goes away um yeah if he if he's an app maybe he's like a tron thing where like that then you know he's a program so you could block him i don't know i don't know anyway so we're comfort zone is tron re-fight for the users. Yeah. So anyway, so the way that I'm taking you all out of your comfort zones today is that I'm going to talk about politics.

That's just because it's what's on my mind. And I was thinking we could turn it into like an AMA. Ask me anything, Chris. Okay. Any details you want about the whole situation? I will first sum up the situation. and then you can ask anything you want. What about it? Stupid questions count. All right, so French politics. Yeah. French politics, right off the top of my head, the number one thing I need to know, what's the deal with Marie Antoinette?

Oh, she's gone. Oh, bummer. I missed her. Yeah. Okay, all right, all right. From what I understand, Emmanuel Macron, I'm not going to be able to pronounce his name right, macaroon emmanuel macaroon um he is the president yeah okay and then but then you have like somebody underneath him but they actually run the government and what right like am i on the right path here okay

what is their title uh prime minister premier ministre okay so you got a prime minister and a president that yeah that that seems like a okay that's a lot that's a lot there it's kind of unique Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So your prime minister that just got appointed to the job resigned, right? Yes. Okay. So I'm on the right track here. I just want to make sure I'm on the right track. Why did he resign? Oh, it's funny. You should ask.

So it all started in July, 2024. So long ago. So long ago. We actually had just started Comfort Zone at the time. And you may remember that it was our first summer together, right? And I was feeling off all summer long because what happened then is that Macron called snap elections. Basically, he decided just like that, out of the blue, let's dissolve parliament.

It's a power of the president. The president can do that. And parliament for you guys is like our Congress. elected officials from different regions, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Representatives from all over France. Okay. And overseas territories, etc. So, yeah. He decided I will dissolve parliament. It's one of my powers as president. It's a measure. Yeah. The president can dissolve parliament. It's a measure that's intended to like, when there are political deadlocks, It's meant as a way out of deadlocks.

Basically, the president can say, okay, we're deadlocked. Let's just call new elections and see if that changes things. However, Macron, he decided to dissolve parliament out of the blue. Like, there was no real reason to do it. He just decided to do it right after the European elections. But that's more context that you may not need. So he dissolved parliament, and that ended up with, we ended up with a deadlocked parliament. We did not have a deadlocked parliament.

And after he dissolved parliament, we had a deadlocked parliament. Okay. So. Okay. So that was counterintuitive. That was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there are basically three blocks in the National Assembly. Just like you, like Congress, you have two houses, right? Yeah. We have the House of Representatives and we have the Senate. And the Senate, right. We have the same thing. We have the Senate and the National Assembly. Here, all that matters is the National Assembly.

Okay. And the National Assembly, so we re-elected them all last summer, and we ended up with a deadlocked National Assembly with three main blocks. It's divided in three, basically. We have the left, which are the biggest of the threes. I think it's the biggest of the three blocks. In the middle, we have the right wing supporters of Macron and whatnot, and the conservative, the center block.

And on the right side of the assembly, we have the far right, Marine Le Pen and their buddies. Okay. Yeah. And where does Marie Antoinette come into all this? Yeah, she's dead. Oh, okay. All right. What about Hugh Jackman singing in Les Miserables? Where is he in all this? I don't know, actually. Okay. I kind of like the greatest showman, but. Really? Over Les Miserables?

I've never seen Les Miserables. Cozy Zone episode. Hang on. Hang on. I'm putting it in the document right now. What's the idea? we are going to watch Les Miserables oh really where is the cozy zone it looks like a bad movie no it's awesome it's Danielle's favorite movie I'm going to be so triggered yes you are I don't even know where our cozy zone idea document is

what was that even called let me add it okay so yeah Three blocks, deadlock. However, the block that came in front, came in first place, was the left. Okay. The coalition of the left came in first. They don't have a majority, but they are the biggest block. Okay? Okay. So they can't govern alone.

Oh, okay. Because they don't have a majority. Because they don't have a majority. They're just the biggest group in the assembly. Okay. So logical sense would mean that Macron, who has the power to appoint a prime minister, it's the president that appoints a prime minister. Okay. And what's the power difference between the president and the prime minister? Is the prime minister making... Is it kind of like our president?

What's the difference? What does the prime minister do? It's kind of difficult to explain in comparison to the U.S. because I think like in the U.S., it's basically you have both in one person. The president is like the chief of state. So Macron represents France abroad in international institutions and all of that.

Whereas the prime minister and his government, they actually do things like in the country. So they're like the local stuff and the president is the figurehead to the rest of the world. Yeah, kind of, yeah. And that's theoretically. However, our constitution, the current constitution, makes it hard to be like that because since the president in our constitution has a lot of power, his prime minister is never really

super important. So Macron has had many prime ministers until last year, but we never really cared about his prime ministers because it's macron who decides everything and he just has his prime minister prime ministers do the things right so it's it's kind of like it's it's kind of like the vice president's role where they don't really do much like the biggest thing the vice president of the

united states does is if the senate votes because the senate is made up of a hundred senators every state gets two senators if there is a tie the vice president comes in and votes as the tie burger that's kind of like the biggest role of the vice president other than like if something happens to the president they take over but that's kind of like that that's kind of what i'm picking up here yeah yeah it's not really like that okay it's really just like never mind because the prime minister is really just the exit in the executive branch and the legislative

legislative branch is very separate. But anyway, so yeah, it's figure that it's just a split of power between the two that you have as a single person in the president of the US, basically. So yeah, anyway. So because the left was in first, the biggest bloc, it would have seemed logical that Macron would appoint a prime minister of the left.

But that's not his party. But that's not his party. It happened in the past. Like in the early 2000s, Jacques Chirac was a right-wing president, but the socialists, they won in the National Assembly. So the president was forced to appoint a prime minister, a socialist prime minister, which was Lionel Jospin at the time. And that's called the cohabitation.

Basically, they have to live together is the meaning of the word. They're like roommates. They have a two-bedroom apartment, one bathroom. They got to live together. You know, it's like a sitcom. You won't believe what happens next week. They got a wacky neighbor that just pops in. Exactly. Yeah. The president has to tolerate a prime minister of the other party, the other camp. But that was clear at the time because when that happened, the socialists, they had a majority.

So the president had no choice. he either appointed a prime minister from the socialists, the left, or he appointed his own and his own would get overthrown by the National Assembly. So he's just like the constitution makes it so he has to. He has to name a prime minister from the majority in the National Assembly. But right now, as you know, it's difficult because there's no majority. So there's no majority in the National Assembly.

So what is Macron supposed to do? phone a friend? Yeah, so the logical thing would have been to appoint a prime minister from the left because they're the biggest group. But what he did is he named the prime minister from the right even though they were far from having the biggest group. In fact, he named Michel Barnier his first prime minister last year in September, September 2024. He named

Michel Barnier, a right-wing prime minister. And his political group was like the smallest group, I believe, in National Assembly. Like, or close to the smallest, second to smallest. Anyway, so he made his own thing. And with the idea being that his supporters, his right-wing and conservative supporters would just ally with those, with them and just have a right-wing government.

That did not work out. His first Prime Minister last year, he was overthrown by the National Assembly by a motion of no confidence. So it's literally the Star Wars thing. It's literally when Padme goes, I have a motion of no confidence against the Chancellor Valorum. Now, when somebody is overthrown in France politically, from what I have read historically, there's usually a guillotine involved.

Is that still the case? Okay, so sometimes I wish, but no. No. Okay, all right. Well, your politics has gotten boring then. I know, I know. I mean, let's talk about King Louis. I would argue they are not boring right now. I swear they are not boring. So, yeah, the first guy last year got overthrown in three months. It was the shortest government we ever had.

Like, yeah, since we have had this constitution, it was the shortest one ever. So he named another one. And instead of like trying something else, he just appointed another one of the same camp. Well, you know, if you do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, that's definitely not the definition of insanity. Definitely not. And guess what? What happened? What happened, Niléane? So he lasted a bit longer.

He lasted eight months. And yeah, he was a reformed just as well. That was François Bayrou. So now, surely, surely Macron will do something else. He will just try at least like appoint a prime minister from the left, because the left has the biggest group in the National Assembly. So maybe that will last longer. Yeah, no, no, he didn't do that. He named, he appointed yet another Macronist, like another of his own party, Sébastien Lecornu.

And that was one month ago. And you can sense that the timeline is accelerating. maybe? That was one month ago. He named yet another prime minister, Le Corne. So we lasted one month without a government because Le Corne, he took his time basically to form his government, to form his cabinet, to choose all the ministers. But last Sunday, so that was, as we were recording, It will have been a week and a half.

But as we're recording, it's last Saturday. He revealed all the names of his cabinets, like all the ministers. And he was like, hey, guys, there you go. I have spent a month trying to form a government. And here, there it is. I have a government. And turns out the government was extremely similar to the previous one, which was overthrown just one month ago. Like two months ago, actually.

So he resigned the next morning. Isn't that... You can't invent that scenario. This is wild. They're literally just doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And it's getting worse. It's a lot faster now. It would take months, a year ago would take months before you'd notice that it doesn't work.

But now it's just a matter of hours. And this is where maybe the tech comes in a little bit in this story. It's been extremely funny to observe social media since this Monday when he resigned. So he resigned after 14 hours of forming his government. Oh, that's got to be some kind of record. I remember a few minutes ago, I told you, Barnier last year was the shortest government we ever had.

His government lasted one month. So he was prime minister for three months, but his government lasted one month. Okay. Because it took about two months to form his government. Okay. Here, we had a new record. This prime minister was here for one month and his cabinet lasted 14 hours. And the memes are crazy. like some people, French people on social media are counting in Le Corne governments.

Like they're doing recipes, you know, cooking recipes. And instead of like leave it in the fridge for 24 hours, they will say leave it in the fridge for two Le Corne governments. Things like it. That is fantastic. It's so funny. That is awesome. And one very funny thing is Instagram. so on Instagram the government the French government they have an official account of course like official institutional account of the government and their Instagram stories so on Sunday there was can you see it coming

yeah that made the rounds on Sunday they published in their Instagram stories here's the new you can see all of the names of our new ministers. Click here to see all the names. Then you click next in the Instagram story. And then it says, Resignation of the government. With no transition whatsoever.

In the same Instagram story. Oh my goodness. Oh, I'm dying. That is hilarious. Extremely funny. and it doesn't end there because there was a third slide in the story where you click next and then the next story is how are you feeling today? Let's talk about your mental health because it was just some kind of mental health campaign unrelated. It was some scheduled thing that was scheduled probably like a week ago Yes Oh my god that's fantastic I love everything about that

oh my gosh my eyes are watering I'm laughing so hard I can yeah I will add the link in the show notes that's amazing yeah my eyes are red because they're watering because I was laughing so hard oh my gosh that was awesome so you're caught up Okay. But are you? Because now, what is next?

What is next? I mean, my question is, so timelines are obviously speeding up. This guy didn't even last a full day. He lasted 14 hours. So the next one, you know, lasts a couple hours. At what point are you in the succession? Because eventually, you know, France is just going to run out of people. Yeah, I know. Like, it's not that big. Like, it's big. but it's not that big. So eventually France is going to run out of people. Where are you in the succession line? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. Maybe it's happening soon. I will just prepare myself to become prime minister. Surely it will last 10 minutes or something like that. So, yeah. But in that 10 minutes, you can just make a bunch of radical changes, just have documents ready to go and just sign them quickly. I should get prepared. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, you can learn a lot from the U.S. government right now. Yeah.

So at what point, I mean, he's done it three times, right? Macarune has done it three times. He's done the same thing three times. Doesn't work. So he's probably going to do it a fourth time. Or is there another path? Okay, so we've had a crazy week because when Le Cornu resigned on Monday, no one was expecting it. And it felt like the regime was about to fall apart.

And there were only two paths that were being foreseen by everyone. Either Macron resigns or he dissolves the National Assembly again. Those were the two realistic options on Monday. But what was the option under secret door number three? We don't know yet.

Okay, dang. I was hoping there was going to be some wild twist. Yeah, we don't know yet, but it's evolved. Okay. On Monday, yes, we had these two options that seemed like, it really seemed like one of those two would happen. But so there have been negotiations all week, etc. And as we're recording right now, it seems like Macron is about to do the same thing a fourth time.

Ha ha! Yeah! I shouldn't laugh because... And I swear I'm not kidding. I shouldn't laugh, but it is hilarious. It is. I agree. It is hilarious. We are on Friday as we're recording, so people know. Because surely things will have changed by the time people listen to this. And today, Macron invited all of the parties, main parties, at his palace, at the Elyse Palace.

And I'm reading right now live, like that was 15 minutes ago. Most of them are coming out of the meeting and are saying, yeah, he's just going to appoint one of his own again. There's nothing we can do. Oh, my gosh. Okay. There's definitely a failure. And, okay. I guess I shouldn't be the one to speak, but also I didn't write the thing. There seems to be a failure in your constitution. There's a lot of failures in our constitution. Yeah. There seems to be some loopholes that Macaroon figured out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, basically our constitution does not give, does not put too many obstacles in front of the president's office. Like, he has tools to unlock situations, But there is nothing in place to force him to use any of them. So if Macron insists on blocking everything, things will stay blocked.

And there's nothing people can do. All the National Assembly can do is overthrow his governments again and again and again and again, which is bound to happen. If it is confirmed, we'll probably know tonight that he will appoint a fourth prime minister from his own party. And this one will surely work. Absolutely. Surely this one will work.

Surely it will work. Yeah? Yeah. So I'm done, Chris. I just like, this was fun because it was fun to actually rant a little bit by narrating the events. And I'm curious, like, what even happens tomorrow or next week or a month from now. Who knows? Who knows? Like, on Monday, I was convinced that we would have to go vote in November, that we would have a new assembly by Christmas.

And it's all been turned upside down since. So maybe nothing will move at all. So who knows? And of course, you guys are having a shutdown, right? Yes, our government is completely shut down right now. Despite the fact that one party controls the House, the Senate, and the executive branch, the three things that are required to pass a budget, which the reason why the government is shut down is because they can't pass a budget.

despite the fact that one party controls all three of those things, which is what is needed in order to pass the budget, that political party is blaming the other political party and saying it's their fault, even though they control the House, the Senate, and the executive branch. Oh, and basically the judicial branch as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's a feat. It's chaos, and not the fun kind of chaos that our show normally is. Yeah. It's actually very similar because like this is also the thing right now in France, like the budget.

Oh, okay. We have no budget yet for next year. And like Le Cornu, he resigned because he said, I can't pass a budget with the state of things. And Bayrou, he was overthrown because the National Assembly was like, your budget sucks. We don't want this right-wing austerity thing. And I believe there's constitutionally no risk of shutdown in France.

It doesn't work at all like the U.S., but it's the same kind of issue. Yeah. The U.S. shutdown is really bad because a lot of people that have government jobs can't work. Right now, it's essential personnel only in government positions. and those people that aren't working don't get paid right now. Yeah, that's awful. So it's not good at all. It's really a terrible, terrible situation.

And it happens lately. It's happened almost every single year because it's used as a political tool and you're messing with people's livelihoods and not great. Yeah. Yeah. So fun. That was actually really fun to walk through the state of French politics with you because there is some similarities and then there's just some wild stuff happening there. But that was pretty fun. Should we get to our challenge?

Let's do it. Okay. So the challenge, well, it was kind of a group decided challenge because we workshopped it on the last one. It really wasn't any one in particular. But Matt, we found out before we recorded last week that Matt wasn't going to join us this week. So I wanted to do something that would work with just me and Neilion. And me and Neilion have very different music tastes. So we ended up coming up with a challenge that was just recommend some music that the other person would like. Do you want to round robin this? That's the way it does.

Okay. All right. I could go first. So the first song I recommended to you is one of my all-time favorite songs. It's just like a fun pump-up song. I listen to it all the time right before I sit down and record a video. And it's Jump by Van Halen. And I'm curious, have you ever heard it? So, I had no idea what that was looking at the name of the track. Okay. However, when I started listening to it, I recognized it immediately. Oh. It's a very popular song.

It's Van Halen, who's one of the biggest hair metal bands of the 80s. It's their biggest song. It's in movies and stuff like that. It's in a lot of places. But I'm curious, what did you think of it? I thought it's really nice. It feels like it's a party. And I associate it with like victory. Like it seems like the kind of soundtrack that would play when you've won something or when a main character in a movie has won something at the end after the climax.

Feels like that. um, David Lee Roth, the front man, well, sometimes the front man for Van Halen. That's a whole thing. We won't get into it. Yeah, I could, what you just did for French politics, I could literally do for the history of Van Halen. Oh, damn. Yeah. Um, yeah, we won't, we won't do that. Who gets overthrown in that story? Uh, David Lee Roth gets overthrown, then Sammy Hagar, then David Lee Roth comes back, then there's a third guy that I can never remember his name, then David Lee Roth again. Um, it's a whole thing.

Yeah, literally it's, it's French politics, But Jump, when David Lee Roth comes out and he performs the song, he usually has, like, this big flag he's waving around. Like, it is, like, a party. It's, like, a pump-up song kind of thing. Like, Van Halen, it was, they kind of got famous in L.A. And they were, like, the party band. Like, they would play, like, backyard deals and gigs and stuff like that. Like, that's how they got big. So, yeah, I kind of picked this one because I knew you kind of like, like, exciting pump-up music kind of thing. And I thought that was kind of along those lines.

Yeah, yeah. Good shout. Good shout. I liked it. I immediately got a sense of the kind of music that you like, where the music that you listen to, I will try to maybe explain as we go along your other picks. But the first thing I can say is it's often very sparkly sound and very pattern-y, like some recognizable pattern that repeats.

And I think that's your kind of sound. I would probably agree with that. Yeah, I tried to pick music that wasn't like super popular that you may not have heard. Or maybe you have heard a couple of times in the past. But definitely the picks that I did have that kind of repetitive nature of music. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. All right. My first pick that I sent to you was...

So, do you know that band, by the way? The Killers. The Killers, yes. Do you know them? Yes, yeah. Mr. Brightside, all that stuff. Of course, yes. Yeah. And the funny thing about The Killers is I'm not a super big fan of their classic albums. Oh, okay. I'm a huge fan of one of their, I mean, it's their most recent album, I believe. The one that's called Imploding the Mirage.

This is their album that came out in, let me check, 2020, during the pandemic. And Imploding the Mirage, I believe, is one of my all-time favorite albums. I've listened to this album on repeat so many times. And I've sent you the track that's called When the Dreams Run Dry. And so, what do you think? I like this. It reminded me, have you ever heard the song I Ran by a Flock of Seagulls? Yeah, I think so.

I think I know what that is. Okay. Google really quick on air because I want your reaction. Google a flock of seagulls and look at the guy look at the band members. A flock of seagulls. A flock of seagulls. Okay. A flock of seagulls. You will probably recognize this hair from something.

no i don't know okay the the hair of that makes an m m shaped hair yeah so he's got like the spiky sides but the bit coming down the front yeah uh so that does do you recognize that from any place no yes so that's not probably not what you're thinking of no it's probably exactly what i'm thinking of uh it's what the hair uh chandler had in Friends. Oh, no, I was not thinking of that, but you're right, yes.

Yeah, so that's the flock of seagulls hair. So that's kind of like their big thing. The dude had spiky sides, but then it was flat and coming down in the middle, it was flat, and then it was coming off. And that's in reference to that? Yeah, so that in Friends is in reference to a flock of seagulls. Oh, good. Yeah. Okay, okay. Anyways, sorry, I derailed your thing, but I actually really like this song. I thought this was interesting. I bookmarked this album. I never listened to this album. I've only listened to The Killer's older stuff.

But I saved this album, and I'm going to listen to it later. Yeah. I really like this song. And I'm hoping that maybe you can sense that what I like in music is when there are chapters inside the songs. And I mean that in the vaguest way possible. when there are very distinct parts in one song. So this one song, and it's the case for many songs on this album, they start slow and then build up, and there's a big explosion of sound at some point,

and then it comes down again in the second part of the song. And then maybe it goes back up again. So, you know, like in terms of energy in the song. Yeah. There's one line in the lyric of the song that I want to mention. It says, one time the singer cries and shouts, we all going to die. And I relate to that. There you go. I mean, eventually. Hopefully not anytime soon, though.

Yeah. No, I really enjoyed this. I thought it was a good song. like I said I bookmarked the album and I'm gonna listen to it later I almost sent you I'll spoiler for what I don't have I almost sent you some Pink Floyd stuff but I thought you might have heard that I like like wish you were here and stuff like that and that is like that perfect uh like chapter-y kind of like the sound changes and builds and then goes and like like it like takes a long time to get started it's that i should have included that one but i didn't yeah but you could have i don't know much from big floyd like okay i think you would actually really knowing

knowing what you just explained to me i think you would like a lot of pink floyd stuff yeah i think so too yeah i'll send you some after the show okay so my second song that i actually sent you was This Secret Ninja by AFI. Now, AFI is an interesting band. Their older stuff is very punky. Their newer stuff is very poppy. This is from their second album. So this was when they were still a punk rock band. Like, an ongoing joke with AFI is, like, people my age go, you know that meme of, like, it's the grandma,

and she has her granddaughter next to her, and the grandma's like, I remember when such and such. And so there's always a meme going around of, like, I remember when AFI was a punk band and the granddaughter's like, okay, let's get you to bed, grandma. So I remember when AFI was a punk band and this album, their second album is my favorite album they've done and this is my favorite song on that album. So that's more like, you would say that's more like a punk album. Yeah, that's a punk album, yeah.

Okay, okay. So I will say I'm not a big fan of this one. Okay. I think it feels a lot like the first one. But, like, again, I think this is exacerbated the thing that I was talking about. Like, it's very patterny in the sound. Yeah, it is. And I think I get bored quickly, too quickly, of that type of sound.

Like, I check out. It too quickly becomes background noise. not to demean the song or anything, but it's kind of like that because I can't focus on the song anymore. No, I get that. No, I totally get that. Yeah. No, okay. That's fair. Yeah. All right. What was your second one here? So my second one. I can't even pronounce this one. Yeah, I felt like I should include some French thing in there.

Also because I listen to a lot of French music. So it seemed fair to include one. This is probably my favorite French band, Feux Chatterton. Okay. Yeah. What does that mean? Does that translate to something? So it means fire with the exclamation mark. Okay. I don't know how to... Chatterton is like the tape. Is there a word?

That's a medium. Shatterton is like it's black thick tape oh like gaffer's tape or electrical tape or something yeah for some reason we call that Shatterton I mean not we like young people don't call it that anymore I don't think but it's a word for it huh okay and this song is from their latest album which came out like three weeks ago Oh, nice.

Very new, yeah. But Fischer-Tornton, I love this band. I listen to the entire discography of theirs. I have nothing to throw to the band. I absolutely love this band. They have amazing lyrics. You can tell that their lead is the singer, and they write all the lyrics, and they are an amazing writer. They're clearly a poet as well. anyway so this is the from the latest album and it's called allons voir and that means uh let's go see okay yeah let's go see i i like this song i obviously had no idea what they were saying

but it had like a funky bass line and a really good guitar solo and i was like yeah i i you know i was just i was jamming along with it no idea what they were saying but i enjoyed it i i thought it was really good yeah yeah as far as i know they could have been like chris dolly's an idiot something like that. Like that could have been the whole song. And I'm like, yeah, right on. Yeah, no, it's a wholesome song, I think. Like, it's more like, let's come together, let's go see.

Uh, what is it? I'm trying to sing it in my mind just to remember. Sing it in your mind and translate at the same time. My brain is not following. Anyway, yeah. It's a wholesome song. It feels like a good vibe summer song. Okay. Yeah. I enjoyed it. Like I said, I don't know what they said, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was a fun song.

All right. So my last song, and I have a little bit of a story to go along with this one, is I Hate Myself for Loving You by Joan Jett. Joan Jett is a rock goddess. She is amazing. and I'm not a jealous person. I don't really get jealous of other people. It's not really my thing. But my brother, who is a sound engineer, who has put on a lot of live concerts, once did a show for Joan Jett. He was like filling in for somebody and she came up to him and kissed him after the show and I've never been so jealous of somebody in my life.

Oh, wow. Massive crush on Joan Jett. But anyways, I love this song. She has a bunch of other songs that you might know. Do you know the song, I Love Rock and Roll? Or I Don't Give a Damn But My Reputation. I Love Rock and Roll. Yeah. I Love Rock. And then she does the one that's like, I Don't Give a Damn But My Reputation. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So she does those. But this is my favorite song from her. So I'm kind of curious what you thought about this one. So this is my favorite one, I believe, from the three that you sent me.

Okay. Really like the energy in this voice. Very punchy. I don't know what to say. I really like it. Nice. No, that's fantastic. I'm glad you liked it. This was actually the one I was the least sure about. So I'm glad you liked this one. Yeah, I like also when there's a sense of chorus. I don't know if there's a chorus. Like, I wrote this down, but, like, it felt like maybe there's a reverb.

It's what's helping. Like, there's a sense of space in the sound of this music. Whereas the previous two, first two, like I said, they feel very sparkly. And I think the sparkly feeling comes from the fact that it feels very closed in. And, yeah, my descriptions of music are, like, very abstract. Hey, you know more than I do. I have no musical talent whatsoever. Me neither. I'm not a musician. Yeah, my brother got all the musical talent.

I got the good ones. But yeah. It's just that I know very precisely what I like. No, that's good. That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm just kind of somebody that like I listen to something and I either like it or I don't. Yeah, but yeah, this was a really nice one. My last one was a quite different pick. This is a... So do you know about Leprus? Have you heard about them?

No, I've never heard of this band before. That was the first time you listened to Leprus. Yes. Okay, so Leprus is a Norwegian... Oh my God, I don't want to say anything wrong. Oh, you're going to get banned from a country like Matt? Are they from Norwegian, please? Yes, they are from Norwegia. You mean Norway? Norway, yes. Norwegian, yeah. So they are Norwegian metal band. Okay. However, like, I don't listen to a ton of metal.

It's pretty rare, actually. But Leprous, like, absolutely love Leprous. This is from an album called Athelion. And this is very atmospheric. A lot of beautiful vocals in that album. And long, chill moments that contrast with the musical drops that they get inside their songs and explosions.

So this is a really nice album, I think. Like, very nice, like, lots of melodies in this album. What did you think? So this is the track that I sent you, All the Moments. And I picked this one because it starts with a big showdown of both bass and cymbals and all of that. And then it stops quite suddenly.

I still all of this at the beginning of the track. And it's very chill with some... I forgot the English word. Drums. There you go. Okay. Very low drums. When it starts to build up again. With some beautiful vocals from the lead singer. And then it's a beautiful song. What did you think? So out of the three, I would say this one was the one I liked the least.

It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't my... I don't know. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it, and I need to give it another go. But I just... It didn't hit... The other two hit, and I was like, yeah, I'm headbanging along with them. But this one just didn't... I don't know. It just didn't quite hit the same way for me. But maybe I just need to give it another go in a different context. Yeah, I get that. I especially get that because lepros is not something that I can listen to anytime.

I completely agree with you. I enjoy it most when I'm in a specific mood. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So maybe this afternoon or something, I'll give it another go and report back. But yeah, for some reason, it just didn't quite hit with me like the other two did. And I was just like, it's fine. It's just wasn't something I would come back to, but I will go back to it and give it a shot. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I think this was a fun challenge because this actually pushed me outside my comfort zone.

Yeah, me too. None of this stuff is stuff I would have listened to on my own. So I legit like this. Yeah, same. And then, well, there's Apple Music links in our document. So hopefully, Matt, if you're listening, links in the show notes. They're in the document, so you can copy and paste. All right. So, challenge for next week. I think we decided I'm just going to issue, because I didn't really issue a challenge last week. So, I'm going to issue the challenge this week. Because I had one I wanted all three of us to do. And since Matt wasn't going to be here this week, we punted it.

So, this week's challenge is going to be here. But next week, he's here. Next week, he will be here. Next week, it'll be all three of us. So, I want us to make something creative with our iPhones. So it has to be from start to finish completely made on your iPhone. Just something creative. And it's very open-ended like a lot of my challenges are. Okay. All right. Yeah. I shall download all the meme-making apps.

Technically, that works. That works. But yeah, no, I just thought I was like, A new iPhone season might be interesting to do something like actually productive with the phones instead of just talking about GPU cores. Yes, yes. All right. Well, that just brings us to the end of the show. Thank you all so much for listening. But I have an end of the show question for you, Neelion. Yes. That I specifically wrote. But we do want your questions. We have a feedback form. Link in the description. You can play along with the challenge. Send us end of the show questions. Whatever you want. But I have a question specifically for you.

I want to know what is your favorite Friends episode? I know you're a huge fan of Friends. Danielle is also a huge fan of Friends, so we watch it all the time. So I kind of want to know what your favorite episode is. That's a difficult question. I can tell you mine right off the top. Go ahead. It's the one where nobody is ready. It's the one where Ross is getting ready. Oh, my God, yes. Excellent. Ross has a award show or something, award thing, and no one's getting ready. And it's actually the one where Matt LeBlanc dislocated his shoulder.

So they actually had to come back and film the second half of it like weeks later and stuff like that. This episode feels like a long shot. It is absolutely not a long shot. But because it's just the same scene going on and on and on. So that's called a bottle episode where like the whole episode takes place in Monica's apartment. And specifically just the main area. They don't even go into the bedrooms. Characters exit the set, but you don't follow them. The whole thing is just in the kitchen, dining room, living room area.

And yeah, so it's a bottle episode. And usually bottle episodes aren't great, but that one, man, it's one of my favorites. So one that came to mind for me was the one where they, I don't know what the name, but the one where they turn 30? Oh, yeah. I think it's literally the one where everyone turns 30. Where everyone turns 30, yes. I vividly remember that one as something very funny to me.

And something to which I will relate to shortly. But yeah, I really like this one. There's also another one where I'm trying to remember, but I think it's the one where they're at the beach house. and Ross and Rachel are getting back together. Oh, yeah. But she makes him read a 14-page... 18. 18 pages long letter.

And he does it because Ross is the stupidest guy on earth. Yep. Like, let's just call out Ross for good. Let's just do it. We don't say it enough. He's the worst guy. And it's extremely funny to me how that episode exposes that greatly. That he's a... Sorry. No, Ross is terrible. Danielle and I talk about this all the time. Ross, the character, is horrible.

But David Schwimmer, the actor playing Ross, is fantastic at it. He's perfect. But Ross is horrible. Ross, the character, is horrible. And just like, there was a line in an episode we were watching the other night. family friendly podcast can't give the context of it but if you've seen the show you'll know what i'm talking about where he's literally talking character makes a comment about something he hasn't done in a long time and he goes it's winter there's not very many people out on the streets right now and it's like oh my god he's a serial killer yes yeah there's so many videos on youtube where it's scenes from friends with ross and they cut out the laugh tracks the the laughs from the audience

and they add suspense like thriller music it's so bad really seems like ross is a is a uh what's the word sociopath sociopath yes exactly yeah he uh oh gosh um one of my favorites is uh Oh, gosh. I'm totally blanking on it now. Oh, the way Mona. Poor Mona. Oh, man. Mona. She put up with way too much.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. But anyways, that is our friend's talk. That's our podcast within a podcast. Oh, no, we don't need another one. I'll commission my composer right now. Oh, no. That would actually be really funny if like every single one of our segments had that. It's too much. It's too much. It will escalate. Too much. All right. Well, let's wrap up there. Do you have anything you want to promote this week?

Oh, not much. You know, Chris. I'm turning 30 next year. It's not that bad. Look, I'm more nervous about turning 40 than I was about turning 30. I can understand that. I just turned 35. Like, what was it? A week, week and a half ago, two weeks ago, something like that. That was okay. Whatever. It was fine. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye-bye.