Ask The Hosts – Episode 34

0:00What's the point of being a professional podcast guy if you don't just get drunk and sleep all the time? Yes, it's true. Ask the host Episode 34. I'm Joe. I'm Andy. And I'm Shane. Hello, Chaps. The idea of the show is very simple. You send in any questions to show at askthehost.com and we answer them. The catch is there can be about anything except Linux and I've been sourced. Before we get going, just a quick thank you to everyone who supports us with Paypal and Patreon. We really do appreciate that. And remember that patrons get these episodes two weeks before everyone else. The first question then. Alex asks, what's your favorite smell? I've got a weird one actually. When I was a kid, my mom used to work shifts in a factory. So every other week I barely saw. But some nights occasionally she'd get home early or I was allowed to stay up late and she'd come in and give me this big hug and she had this really distinct smell from the factory. It was kind of like a chemical kind of metal smell from making factory made carmers. And so it wasn't like a nice smell and like the normal sense.

1:01But it meant she came home and I was getting a hug and it was just really, it's attached to really nice memories. But now like maybe once a year I'll walk past somewhere and catch that exact smell and it just takes me instantly back to being a kid hugging my mom. So really odd one. But yeah, my favorite smell is basically like industrial solvents and parental love basically. That is very beautiful and that's definitely the type of answer that I was hoping to come up with and didn't really. But I do feel like probably like the right answer is probably like home or something like it. Like there are actually smells that you don't even notice going on around you that are the the things that like it really affects you emotionally. The only thing I could think of was when I'm grinding coffee. So I make coffee for my wife every morning, grinding the beans and it just smells great. And sometimes when you open the packet of beans, it smells really disgusting. It smells like sick, which is extremely disappointing because sometimes just opening a new pack of

2:01beans is pretty good. But I think grinding the beans is the best smell. Are you getting what sort of coffee you're getting that smells like sick? I don't think we have to think coffee providers. I don't know if it's like because they put nitrogen in with it or something. I don't know. I mean, nitrogen obviously doesn't smell so it won't be that. No, I'd echo that as well. Actually, I have a morning routine of my two kids where I'm trying to desperately get them out the door, hand them off to my wife who take them to school. And then the first thing I do when the chaos is out of the house is I will grind some coffee for myself. And that like that action of grinding and the smell of coffee grinding is like I just puts me in a zen place like after the last hour and a half of chaos. I've got a few different ones. I did talk about this on a similar show to this once upon a time. And I guess it's similar to your shane in that it's a chemical smell. And that is nitracellular is lacquer, which is what Gibson's smell of like a brand new Gibson or a newish Gibson, a Gibson that's been kept in its case guitar smells of this like weird like vanilla

3:01chemical smell. And it is if you just smell that smell you think it was sort of broadly unpleasant. But I associate it with really nice guitars that I'd always wanted since I was a kid. And when I could finally afford to buy Gibson's, you know, I'd open the case and it would just hit me this smell. So kind of similar to you for it's more about the emotional reasons behind it. And there's a smell that I like that is kind of unpleasant, but I do like that smell and I will never ever smell it again, I don't suppose. And that is the smell of walking past a pub before smoking was banned in part. Like you walk past a pub now and it's kind of half that smell of like, you know, spilt beer all over the carpet and stuff. But it used to be that with the kind of stale smoke mixed into it. And you just if you go into a pub, you don't smell it, but walking past a pub, you smell it. And it's almost like this siren call, you know, like come in to come smoke and drink. Yeah, exactly smoke and drink and all that. And I will never smell it

4:04in the UK again. I don't suppose unless I don't know if reform getting an unbanned smoking. But yeah, I don't suppose I'll ever smell that one again, but I like lemon. Like I don't like a lot of strong smells, but if it's going to be a strong smell, then lemon scented stuff tends to be the least offensive. It's kind of a strong smell, but I like it. And so I get like lemon soap, for example, it smells like toilet cleaner to me. Strong lemon smells just are like this, I'm in a bathroom or urinal place of some sort. Well, I have been known on many occasions to eat just a lemon like it was an orange. So maybe I'm just weird. Yeah, I did want to eat a whole lemon meringue pie. And I was unable to face eating lemon meringue pie for many years, although I've got past that now. So that's good. I was thinking about cigarette smoke because just very occasionally, I get a smell or a taste that takes me straight back to the first time I ever smoke to cigarette or the first time I ever drank beer, where it really tastes horrible and your palate is like

5:06unfamiliar with it. So you don't like it yet, but it's really strong memory for me. So sometimes I'm walking past someone smoking or something like that and it hits me in that way because I don't smoke now. I guess that makes it makes it more likely. It takes me straight back to those early experiences. That's funny because I used to smoke and don't. I know I hate smoking and I can't stand when I smell smoke 90 times out of 100. But that 10% times when I'm just the right amount of drunk and it's just the right distance away. If someone was like smoking standing right next to me, it'd just be horrible. But like if it's, you know, walking past a pub where people are smoking outside and maybe I'm the opposite side of the road and I get just a whiff of it and it triggers that chemical memory of wanting to smoke, I think, maybe. And that is like broadly pleasant, just briefly. Yeah, I get the exact same thing. It's after a meal and if someone say it across the table lights up and I smell that, I'm like, this is the perfect moment to have a cigarette.

6:08But that's the only, like yourself, Joe, almost all the time. It's gross, but just sometimes when the nicotine addiction moon comes out, like, oh, it's going to be amazing right now. Exactly. I have strong memories of opening a packet of Curtis Choice Tobacco. The smell of that's pretty good. Yeah, it's choice. I remember that. It's very fragrant. That one. Yeah, it's smooth and like, why are we doing a pro smoking podcast? Yeah, don't smoke. It's really bad for you. Yes. I also have, for a while, smoked cigars to get off cigarettes and I was driving through the States and I'd go into them cigar shops and they'd have like a smoking room in the back and it's smell of a smoking cigar smoking room as well as really nice and like stale smoke for like fine cigars is pretty good too. Foracle asks dark mode or light. It depends. It depends for me. I use dark mode or light mode to delineate or separate out different tasks and basically I basically use dark mode for stuff.

7:14I what I wish I was doing. I'm glad I'm doing, which is basically writing code and light mode for like editing documents, answering email, looking at the internet, stuff like that. So basically I have a black terminal with them in for my code and then I'm in my happy place and everything else is white basically. Green text? Not green text but like fairly bright whiteish, not completely the brightest white but not as pale as some people like to have like like low contrast. So I think I just nod off or just not be able to see it. Yeah, I think I've always been dark mode before it was cool and after everything enabled dark mode I was like you know what this this is gotten too hip. I'm I'm going to try light mode and it sucked. I hate light mode everything. I will install plug-ins to turn everything into dark mode. It's just like it's just more light going into your eyes and for some reason it really bothers me. So I am dark mode all the way. I saw headlines about a study so I'm not going to you know say that it's definitely true.

8:16But it was something along the lines of dark mode ends up using more battery only foreign and laptop because you turn the brightness up to compensate for it. So I'm not convinced that dark mode is right for me let's say when I'm reading it has to be just white background black text. Terminal I have black background and green text because it has to look like the matrix otherwise it's not right. But dark mode is incredibly hard to do well. I think when it is done well it can be good but if it's done not quite well enough then it's just horrible and just hurts my eyes. Yeah my son has everything in dark mode and when I when he tries to get me to help him over his shoulder I often find I can't focus I can't quite read it properly just all feels wrong and that's probably just not being used to it but yeah I agree I think often dark mode doesn't look very attractive to me. I would caveat that with suppose my love of dark mode is I my kindled in light mode for reading so you're right it does it's it's harder to read in dark mode and I also

9:20have an e-ink phone and that's in light mode as well because being e-ink is also is weird and have a dark mode e-ink would be very weird. That would be weird e-ink is the best invention ever though so like yeah obviously it should be just like paper for reading yeah what your main foreign is e-ink. Yeah wow. Yeah it's mood either compact it's a small little phone that they run like a lockdown version of Android but yeah it's a I think it's a Polish company it's quite good for one isn't it it does enough to like get you through the day but you don't enjoy it using it which is kind of exactly what I want and it's e-ink so it's not blinding my eyes because I look at laptops all day. How do what's YouTube shorts? Yeah I just have to have to live a life without that all the time in my pocket. That's terrible that sounds pretty good. Yeah it's good I can I can use or I use it from apps and all the messages etc so it's kind of fine. I'd rather just use a laptop for 99% of the things I use a phone for. Absolutely. How do you unfold it and watch football in bed? I read a book. The phone stays downstairs well away from bed. Yeah well I like to unfold my phone

10:28and watch videos in bed because I'm clearly a bad person. All right a deep one Hobbs asks is there any inherent meaning to life in an irrational world devoid of purpose? It's kind of answered a question in the question there. Yeah no is the obvious answer. Yeah no. Sorry Hobbs. And therefore you have to make your own meaning. Yeah just do what you want and be nice to other people and that's the meaning of life. In this vast universe where there happened to be a chemical reaction which turned out to be a catalyst for itself which then evolved into very basic life slightly that's basic life proper multicellular all the rest of it and until you get ours like it just happened and the universe could then start contemplating itself and that to me is like enough that's enough meaning like the universe became conscious in one tiny little place

11:30at least and that's cool but doesn't mean anything and so fuck it like just do what you want and be nice to each other. I think there is a meaning to life like I'm I feel incredibly uncertain about all this stuff but I think that like all people are like beautiful and amazing and love is like this incredible thing and sometimes I think that there's like a loving presence in the universe that is real. What you're thinking about there is chemical reactions in your brain. Thanks Joe. It was a lovely moment and sentiment Andy. And so I've gone through various phases believing and not believing that and come to a point where it just turns out that I do think that I do think there's something magical if you want to call it that. Well if that makes you happy cool yeah let that be your meaning doesn't make it true but that's fine you know knock yourself out be happy. Yeah these days is much closer to making me happy than it used to when I was younger

12:35put it that way. Yeah well it doesn't make me happy to think about the universe and think that there is literally no point to any of it it's all just an accident of evolution and stuff and that's fine I kind of catch myself thinking about it and then I remember oh I've got a record in a couple of minutes or I've got to get that edited or you know I've got to get with my real life I've got to pay that bill and then I just don't think about it too much. I think the temptation is to think about it at night especially when it's nice weather and you can be outside at night and look up at the stars and contemplate the universe and everything but I don't think it really ultimately does you any good to start thinking about this kind of really deep stuff because well I mean unless you believe in irrational bullshit sorry Andy but you know if you start really trying to rationalize it nothing good comes of that I don't think ultimately. I tell you something that I I found out a little while ago right so I used to have kind of straightforward

13:36beliefs in God and stuff and a lot of there's a lot of misery from my childhood linked to that which I which really really hurts me still as an adult but something that happened to me a while ago was that I started like genuinely contemplate the idea that there was absolutely nothing at all and I started thinking about well what would I do in my life if that were the case and in particular like in terms of doing right and doing wrong how would it change what how I thought about what was right and what was wrong if there was just nothing and it really helped it really helped me separate out the bad bits of my religious background that were only there because someone told me from the good bits that were about you know trying to do the right thing and trying to judge for yourself what's right and what's wrong and so like staring down the barrel of there's absolutely nothing I don't know if it made me a better person or I think it really helped I feel like it made me a better person because I was brought up not massively religious but I was brought up to basically believe that there was a God and then when I started to read books and

14:41stuff about it and and come to the conclusion that there was no God and that there was no meaning it was very freeing in a way and I've talked to religious people who ask the question of like well if you don't believe in God how come you don't do X, Y and Z terrible thing and it's like well because I don't want to do that like if the only thing stopping you doing that is religion then you're an asshole and I believe in karma but not in some weird supernatural sense I believe in it and they're like if you do good things for people then they'll do a good thing for another person and then eventually it'll come back to you sort of thing. As you might guess from my accent I was raised very Catholic and in a very religious household and I probably went through maybe a very similar progression as yourself Andy but I think I came out of it with a very different outcome and it's kind of funny when when I stopped believing in religion there was definitely a hole in my life that I was trying to fill with something else and I think I kind of got to where Joe is where I'm kind of just okay with that absence of belief in anything bigger to the point where I kind

15:45of have either of you watched the first season of True Detective. No yes. So there is a character in that called Rust Cole I think his name is. All right, all right, all right. Yeah it played by Max McHenry excellent excellent show excellent character recommended to everyone. This character is very negative on humanity in general as we were just an awful mistake and at the moment I'm actually reading the book that this character is based on. It's by a guy named Thomas Lagatti he's a horror writer but he's written something called the conspiracy against the human race and what the premise is is that all philosophy effectively is all coming from a position of human consciousness was a good thing and he's now trying to find these philosophers out there who are like you know what maybe it wasn't a good thing maybe this is a horrible accident all of humanity and all of consciousness was this hard inducing horrible event that happened which is kind of an interesting premise but that's where what's our reading right now is it is my color like my view is a little but I don't go that far but I would say like I kind of agree with

16:50Joe which is like I don't think that there is any meaning from a bigger cosmic perspective like in the same way the tides don't have a meaning being human is just a happy accident we can call it and like for me the the meaning that I still kind of hold to each day is much more like local and like relational and present so it's kind of like I don't think the universe has any purpose but I think our experience does so mean isn't something we discover out there or is is based on something external it's something we make by being like present long enough to notice we're here so I like that Joe those moments where you're like outside and a lovely day just being present like that is as close to meaning as I think I can get as well that feeling you get I guess the whole experience of being human is so bittersweet it's so tragic and beautiful and most of the time I just feel incredibly grateful that I get to experience all of them

17:51well I hate to quote Freddie Mercury but sometimes we should not have been born I'm gonna let's look at my head for next week thank you you