and we will be needed, remember. There we go. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Daily Whatever Show.
Good morning. I'm Dana Dubois. I'm Lawrence Winterman. Lawrence, I like what we've done with the place.
Yeah, we're trying, we're trying. We are. It has been quite the weekend for trying. I can't tell if it...
Oh, we are live on some set. We're live, thank God. It worked, you guys. We did it.
Oh my gosh, I'm so happy. And I am so... There we go. Okay, we're muted on there.
Welcome, everyone. I'm debating which monitor to put everybody on to keep track. But yay, thank you, Kat. Hi, Yolanda.
Hi, Melissa. Hi, so-so. Yes, we look a lot better when there's two of us. We loved having our three friends here on Saturday.
We were like teeny tiny little boxes. Yes, we fiddled with things all weekend, and it may have driven me partially insane, but we did it, and we're up and running. Oh, Melissa, we're proud of the fact that we're using Restream and it's actually working and, you know, properly live on Substack and YouTube at the same time. And yeah, for somebody who is, you know, somewhat technically that, I'm proud of myself that I got it working even after things didn't work.
You know, Lawrence, we, there was a, for all of you to know, late-ish night, late-night Lawrence's time, like, oh, shit, I'm locked out of my account. I need you to go post this stuff. I can't, tomorrow we're supposed to talk about my story. I can't publish it because I'm locked out.
We weren't sure Lawrence could even join today, but it all depended on if this new tool Restream was working properly. It was kind of a sick pit in the stomach, wasn't it, Lawrence? It was, yeah, I was honestly freaked out last night. I thought I was locked out of Lawrence Winnerman's science fiction and potentially, you know, after that story of the woman who, like, tried to make some small change to her account and ended up losing her entire subs that she found in all of her work, I was terrified that I had done that.
And, you know, thank God I didn't, and it worked out. But my goodness, it was a crazy weekend. And, you know, we're trying to do something, you know, fun and innovative here. And, you know, Dana, I was laughing because you know this, you're in tech.
There's this, like, phrase, there's this belief in tech that all the tech bros love to say, like, move fast and break things, man. Yeah, if you're going to fail, fail fast. Right, fail fast. You got to be scrappy and take chances.
And, like, last night at midnight, I was, you know, sitting here weeping at my desk and thinking, no, fail fast and break things sucks. Like, that's stupid. It's not good if breaking things means I lost all of my creative work. Right, or I'm locked out of Substack, or, you know, or nothing is going to work properly.
So, right. Should we first kind of take a minute to talk about what's new? Why we look different today? We're blue in the background, which is confusing me.
But does it look blue for everybody or just for me? Just for you. Oh, okay, then fine. Let me go look at it in this window.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's just in the Restream. Restream's dashboard has a blue background and don't pay any attention to that. Okay, good. Blue is not my signature color.
Yes, we are. Yeah. It's just, yeah, I was filling up the whole screen. So, Lawrence, why don't we start with what is Restream and maybe a little bit, why are we on Restream today?
So, yeah, we talked a little bit about this on Saturday. You know, so I think everyone knows that Dana and I have been doing our Summer Pledge Drive because we thought, we hoped, that there were kind of additional features with Substack that we would unlock when we got to those levels. And when the Siren launched a couple days ago, last weekend, I guess, or sometime last week, I realized that they, it's not that they had access to some feature of Substack, it's they were using a tool. There are these tools, Restreaming tools, and there are a bunch of them.
And there's Mux and there's OBS and Streambird, StreamYard, something like that. I always get it wrong. And Restream. And they're basically just tools that you can go out and buy.
And they allow you to do things like add documentation to your stream, have more than three people. And we tried that on Saturday. And one of the first lessons we learned was five people is too many for a stream. Yes, especially five chatterboxes.
Five chatterboxes. And when you try to do all the bells and whistles at the same time, it's overwhelming and it's not a fun experience for the people watching. But the cool thing that it does is it allows us to stream here on Substack, which is our forever home. We're not leaving Substack.
But we also, over the weekend, the last couple of days, I set up a YouTube channel and a Facebook page where we can stream live on Facebook and an Instagram channel and a TikTok channel. And we'll be able to stream in all of those things. So it's exciting for us. You know, we're hoping to kind of get, bring more people on board into the whatevers.
And Dana, maybe we want to talk about kind of what we're thinking in terms of show format and how our goal is that we want to be a morning show. Not a, like, every minute is politics show, but a fun place to hang. Yeah. We've been talking a lot about what is the Daily Whatever and what do we hope it to be.
And what we kept coming back to was those old school morning shows. We Gen Xers remember very well. I know they still exist, but there's so many other options now. They don't have the same power that they had when we were growing up when there were maybe five radio stations tops to choose from.
And each of them had personalities in the morning who you knew. And you woke up and started your day with these folks, right? They were presenting the news sometimes. They were doing weird pranks sometimes.
I don't know, it was the 80s. They were being mean. They were just entertaining you and they were your familiars in a way. And of course, they were playing music, which we can't do because unless we have people coming on playing their own, you know, playing on guests and fill that gap.
So much like I'm always here with my morning cup of tea, who do I have today? I have Ruth Lader Ginsburg for business today. We want to be a place that is a politics, yes, but more politics, culture, community hub in the morning for an hour where you can check in and kind of be a part of our friendship, what we were already doing in the morning, which is calling each other and being like, hey girl, hey, what's up with you? And sometimes, hey, hey, I know you're not a girl.
It's expression like, dude. Yes, it is. And so we would like more flexibility to bring people on. Another Gen X entertainment metaphor is The Tonight Show.
And shows like that, all the late night shows that have persisted, that when they have multiple guests, they can time them so that everyone comes on for their 10, 15 minutes and also they can stick around and kind of move down the couch a seat, you know what I mean? And be a part of the conversation, but not hopefully I'll be over-talking one another. I think we still have some room for improvement there. I'm still laughing about Saturday, which was just kind of like, oh my God, we're all talking.
We were completely unrehearsed. We are so grateful that- I'm sure you can tell that we were completely unrehearsed. And I want to give a nod here to Lawrence. I also want to make sure we keep an eye on the chat here.
We're so happy to see everybody. I want to give a nod to Lawrence as someone who is so tech-curious. The Siren debuted on Thursday. And I know this because I saw JoJo from JERS make an announcement with this big splashy image about the Siren.
If you haven't checked this out, it's pretty cool. It's a liberal news network, like a media outlet. They have 10 contributors. I'm not entirely sure what their schedule is and when they'll each be on, but they're all branded under this umbrella of the Siren and they want to be able to make an impact in terms of influencing elections and the political zeitgeist for liberals, for Democrats.
Awesome mission. And what really stood out to us was how many of them have people on the screen? So here, Lawrence immediately was like, oh, it's a tool called Restream. I'm going to go research it.
And in a day, a day, Friday, figured it out pretty well. So round of applause, Lawrence, for being tech-curious and tech-savvy because I never would have been like, one day I need to explore this tool. We should look into it. I'm astonished at how much you did.
So going live Saturday was intentional that it was quick. We wanted to push and see what it could do. We did find things that broke. It broadcasts on Dana Dubois-Wrights, not on GenXE.
So our audience was pretty small because Dana Dubois-Wrights is a lot smaller. Maybe good that it was small, right? But it's another thing I have a microphone right here. Right, we're on our computers, which is, you know, partly we look different because we're, you know, I'm on my good webcam.
We're in 1080p. Like, I feel like the images look better than from the phone. And this might be a good transition, Lawrence, that Melissa St. Lawrence is impressed to learn a new CMS in a day.
Right, Lawrence said, secret fact, my entire career has been learning CMSs. And Karen said something very sweet. Karen said, we need more and more Lawrence talking. Okay, I will talk more.
I promise. Okay, I'll button. Actually, we want more Lawrence talking. We also want to hear from you.
I think a big part of today's show is kind of talking about what went wrong. People don't do it on Substack. We also want to hear from you all in the chat, both about how this is working, looking, sounding, but also, well, the future of who we are. We want to hear from all of you because we feel like we're growing up together.
And Lawrence, I'm going to let you talk because I'm talking a lot this morning. Thank you, Karen. Karen said we love you, Lawrence. Thank you.
We love you guys too. And we feel really lucky and privileged that we, you know, five months ago, by the way, the eighth was our five-month anniversary. So, you know, it's kind of hard to believe it's only been five months. And we created the show that, like Dana said, is, you know, really just kind of about our friendship and the fact that we, you know, talk every day and shoot the shit about whatever.
And, you know, we feel really lucky that we've got such a great audience. Like, we genuinely love everybody who's here and we look forward to spending time with you every day. And we want this to be fun for you too. And so, you know, I think the reason people come back is because they're having a good time and they've made friendships and formed relationships.
And, you know, we can talk at length about parasocial relationships and we probably will at some point. But what we really want to know is like, what would make this even better for you? You know, so we think having kind of access to this tool might make things better in terms of sound quality and visual quality and, you know, being able to stream simultaneously other places can help us grow the community even bigger and, you know, hopefully drag people over to some staff because this is our home. This is where we want people to subscribe and do the first choice in viewing us.
You know, but tell us what works and what doesn't work. You know, we reached out to a couple people over the weekend to kind of ask opinions and we got really clear, honest answers about like, what's fun and what isn't fun. And, you know, we know we've been skewing maybe too much politics. You know, partly that's, we're drowning in a sea of politics, the tidal wave of politics that Trump has brought about.
But, you know, we want this to be a place of community first and not always about the dread of politics. Karen says, I love ice cream, but not all the time. Karen also said, the chat is awesome. Yeah, no, the chat is awesome.
The chat is like, we think one of the best parts of this entire thing. And, you know, and so we wanted to find ways to strengthen that and make it even better. I want to bring up a question from Usings in the chat. Yeah.
He is saying, does the chat show up on YouTube? If so, is it safe there? Do you want to talk a little bit about the beta and the chat and how that all works? Yeah.
So I know, you know, we heard pretty clearly that like people don't want all the bells and whistles, but I'm going to show you guys something right now. One of the things that got me excited about Restream that got us, you know, that got us excited about it in the first place was, I'm going to have to maximize my window here. So here, I'm about to show you something. We are getting comments from YouTube.
Joe is watching us over on YouTube and, you know, we can show chats on screen here, except, I'm going to turn this off now because this is in beta, in Substack, we're not getting Substack comments integrated. The goal, like what Restream is trying to do is we could be live on YouTube and Facebook and Substack at the same time and all comments and all chats would be put in that stream that we could show on the screen and then we could record the chat with the video and we could respond to comments from everybody wherever they're watching it. And so that will be really cool if and when they actually get the integration up and running and that works, but it just doesn't work right now, if that makes sense. It does.
It was a little tricky to find us on YouTube. I just did. The sound started playing so I closed it, but Melissa, you had asked for the URL. I had put one to our channel and then there's one to the actual live that's happening today.
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. The one thing that's confusing is the chat and this.
Before it was the phone versus the laptop and now it's two tabs that look identical, but one of them is, you know, eight or ten seconds behind. There's a few different pieces of chatter in the chat about politics and one of them is it's possible to talk about it without being doom and gloom and rage-baity. 100% true and I think there's ways to talk about it that can be... constructive, that can be funny, and we will continue to talk about things as they are happening, and they will influence the lighter weight things we're talking about, right?
When we're talking about parity, politics has an influence on how we do it, our relationships, or whatever it is. But it won't be the only focus here. There are loads of places that are doing it, and we do want to keep a sense of levity here. That said, I'm seeing Kat in the chat saying that Trump's about to come on TV and possibly proclaim martial law.
Yeah, so there is a press conference this morning. Trump is announcing a D.C. beautification thing, which is actually kind of the government power-grabbing control of Washington, D.C. away from the duly elected mayor and state council, and potentially rolling out military forces into the streets of D.C.
is not great, for sure. I don't know that we can characterize it as declaring martial law nationally, but definitely it's going to suck in D.C., and yeah, it's another thing that we need to protest, and another thing we shouldn't allow to stand, but yeah. I just dropped a link for our link tree in the chat, and all of the stuff, all the new socials and everything that we signed up for, go there. There's also a shop on the link tree that has our merch in it.
We do have a merch shop on GenXE. I just want to say something about merch real quick. We aren't rolling out merch because we're, you know, like, money hungry. I know maybe people could possibly perceive the fact that we've got merch as, I don't know, we're trying to, I heard this piece of feedback from somebody, and to me, merch has always said, this organization is pro, right?
Like, these people have their shit going on because they got merch. And the other thing that I'll say is merch, for me, is a thing that I'm learning, right? So a pack of lunch is my side hustle upon a side hustle, and I love doing it. I love designing t-shirts.
It allows me to flex my, you know, maybe underdeveloped graphic design muscles that I've always wanted to use, and it lets me kind of have a little business that I can run from the comfort of my office, and so you know, if anyone feels weird about the fact that we have merch, like, please just know it's a passion project of mine, and it feels like a way that we can reinforce GenX-y and kind of share our brand, and I'm glad that people got excited about the whatever t-shirts. You know, a bunch of people ordered them, which is amazing. So that's my plug for merch. It's, yeah, I guess maybe if you look at it, it was sort of the benefit of the doubt that we're not doing it to, like, cash in.
We're doing it because this is the thing that I'm teaching myself to do, and I love doing it, and it makes me very, very happy. Thank you, Lawrence. We like to talk a lot here about how GenX is both multi-hyphenate and late bloomers who are coming into their creative power. This is completely your creative power.
It's just kind of your wacky t-shirt shop, so I love it. And, yeah, you guys should check it out just to have a good laugh, and then if you want to get a t-shirt or mug or tote bag or what have you, there they are. It's another example of how you were like, oh, here's a tool. I'm going to jump in, figure out how to use it, and here we go.
I figured it out really quickly. So, I think that's really cool. Yeah, I really like it, and I was thinking as you were talking, Lawrence, regarding talking about politics on the show, whenever anything happens politically for decades, the first person I called is Lawrence, and when September 11 happened and my phone rang, it was Lawrence waking me up to say we're under attack, you need to wake up, because it was very early here in Seattle. So, maybe that's the way we frame it, is like, Lawrence is your friend who knows what's going on and has really interesting feedback and context to provide for the news.
Like what you just said, I would call you and be like, are we about to be in martial law? And you would say, it's not great, but it's not national martial law yet. Fair summary? It's just a little martial law.
Just for D.C., what could hurt? No, I mean, it's bad, right? It's bad news. And also, it's not national martial law yet, and I don't know, maybe seeing this happen in D.C.
can get everybody activated to the point where we can actually push back and do things like the general strike that we keep trying to pull off. Yeah, and I would agree, like, this morning show is about our friendship, first and foremost, and, you know, for 47 years, and, like, I was the political kid in fucking middle school and high school, you know? When it was like, why do you care about that stuff, nerd? Nobody cares about politics.
But here we are. Here we are, here we are. I will say one thing about the new tool, and I don't know if this is just me or everybody, but I can't see how many people are in the live chat. Usually, in the upper right corner, near the chat, I can see.
If you're following along in Substack, in the Substack chat, we can see how many people are here. I cannot. Again, so here's the thing. So Restream is kind of like a pretty well-developed tool.
I was going to say fully-baked. It's not fully-baked. They're still improving it. But Substack is only in beta with any streaming service, right?
So, and I'm not 100% convinced that Substack actually wants all of the Restreamers. Like I said, there are, like, five or six tools, major tools. They're trying to compete in this space. I'm not convinced that Substack is actually excited about them.
Like, it is in beta in Substack, and so we can do it, but it's not fully integrated. Like, if you set up Restream on YouTube or on TikTok, they're all in, right? Like, it's fully integrated. Like, you can see all of the people in, you know, in the YouTube chat, and like, it's just fully-baked in, and Substack is not fully-baked in yet.
So we still have to watch the Substack chat to see the actual chat comments and to see how many people are in the live chat. We've got 39 folks right now. Thank you for being here on Monday morning. And I was going to do one more merch plug, which is, this is my new shirt.
So this is a flag. You know, you all know that I'm a vexillologist, a vexillologist, which means I love flags. God loves flags, and this is the flag I designed for Seattle. There was a competition to make a new flag for Seattle a couple years ago, and I decided to make it.
And so this is my Seattle Free Republic of Cascadia. In my book, this is the flag that flies over Seattle, which is the capital of Cascadia for the first part of the book. Uh-oh, Seattle is in the capital eventually? Spoilers!
Yeah, if you've been paying attention to the book, the Cascadia City is the multi-multi-billion-dollar project. They're moving the capital from Seattle to Cascadia City so that Seattle doesn't have too much power. Where's Cascadia City? Sorry, I don't know the map by heart, but where?
Yeah, so if you're familiar with eastern Washington, Cascadia City is just at a bend in the Columbia River around the Tri-Cities. Ew. So there's actually a vineyard there, or there's a, what do they call it, a wenological region called Horseheaven Hills. Oh, really good wine comes out of Horseheaven Hills.
Yes, well, it's getting cloud under for a capital city. Oh. Okay. I had to make a compromise.
Anyway, yeah. Okay, I love it. Is this a good time to transition to talking about your latest chapter, which is thankfully live today? Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like it is. I do want to encourage everyone in the chat to continue to weigh in with suggestions and things you like, things you don't like. I think we may even keep asking for this during the week. I saw that Kat posted, boy, that the chat is flying by here.
I love that. You said something about how you like this on our phones, that it had like a more homegrown quality to it. That's good feedback and good to know. I feel like the camera on my phone from overuse is so scratched that I look really fuzzy.
But thank you. Noble, I see you wrote love that. You know that, Dana? I'm not sure what that is.
Horseheaven Hills, I think. I have a small background of having worked in the wine industry, very briefly. So some things about Northwest wines, I know. And Robin said you made a flag for a fictional place in your book.
I was a big fan. Yes, Robin. Not only did I make a flag for a fictional place in my book, I made flags for all the fictional places in my books. I also made maps for all of the places in my book.
You just exceeded the nerdiness. Right. Yeah. Actually, can I carry it for one minute?
Hang on. I'm going to grab something and prove to you how even nerdy beyond I am. Hold on. Carrying it without Lawrence.
How about we, watch, we can do ASMR on the microphone. We really need to get Lawrence to do the ASMR on the microphone. Oh my God, it's beautiful. Lawrence, you framed it.
This is the framed map of North America in 2041. Oh my God. After the Second Civil War. You can see both my ring lights and my digital clock.
Yeah, so this is how nerdy I am, Robin. I made a map of the fictional universe, the book that I'm writing, and then I printed it and framed it. That is... Featured maps.
Next level, Lawrence. Truly next level. We all love that you're this nerdy about your passion projects. Anyhow, we're going to get in and we're going to read.
And also, yeah, tell us. Well, I'm debating, Lawrence. Do we jump in and have you start with your story? Or do we ask more specific questions about, like, what would you like to see staying the same or changing here, you know?
What do you think? Mark Raker? I mean, I'm excited to read a bit of the story and kind of talk about it. This is...
The segment that I was going to read today is kind of a pivotal moment in one of the big arcs of the story. Robin says, put Canada back. Robin, Canada takes over. Well, okay.
BC becomes part of Tascadia and Saskatchewan and Manitoba and... Oh my God. Why am I blanking on the other one? Alberta.
Alberta. Jesus, thank you. They all become part... They get taken over.
Anyway, but there's a country on the map called the United States and Provinces of North America. And it's basically Canada, Ottawa sort of takes over the northern seaboard after the United States collapses. And so-so, I don't know if you noticed, the map was backwards in the camera, but Quebec is its own independent country. The Republic of Quebec.
And yeah, so there you go. Oh my gosh. Hold on. I'm saying...
By the Sinback is going to do an exercise class. I'm working out. Good for you. That's awesome.
While you read, Lawrence, hold on. Am I able to change the showtime? Do you want to change it? Do you know what I'm talking about?
We're going to show a restream feature. Oh, wait. What are we showing? I don't know.
I think it'll make you big and be little. Oh, right, right. If I click this first one here, I think it'll do that. Should I try?
I'm nervous. Okay, here we go. No, no. I think this one.
Yes. Okay. Is that what you want? Don't you guys think?
You don't need to see me while Lawrence is reading. And I should add, this just went live like 10 minutes before we did. So I don't know this story. This is new.
Okay. Yes. I'll read the segment and we can talk about it. And I hope people don't mind the fact that sometimes Dana and I read our work.
We're writers first, right? And it feels really exciting to be able to share my work in this way. And I try not to read the entire chapter and just a segment of it because, you know, it would be too much. But it is, please, thank you.
Well, thank you for indulging us because I know we both like doing this. Joe is making t-shirt requests. I can do that, Joe. I will make a t-shirt for you and I'll let you know when it's up on the store.
Excuse me. All right. So we're going to do this. I'm going to read.
Yeah? Yes. And I'm going to be in the tiny corner nodding along and smiling while you read. Aw.
Just like a good woman should do. Kidding. Kidding. Oh, my God.
I'm kidding. Just like a good best friend should do. Supporting your creative work. It's not the patriarchy.
It's just being a good friend. Right. We're not the patriarchy. We swear.
All right. Go for it, Lawrence. All right. So this is chapter five of the book.
The book is Light Shines Through. Book one of the Shattered World Series. Chapter five is Jackie. November 2041, Seattle, Tahoma, Free Republic of Cascadia.
There's old school Bollywood music playing in the background from an apparently inexhaustible playlist that Lakshmi has queued up on the music server in the lab. Jackie has lost a momentary wonder at what she has heard in the last hour. Has it only been an hour, she wonders? It doesn't seem possible.
New music and the mind-blowing information Lakshmi and Doug are sharing with her have made time stretch and warp like the summertime taffy her mother used to make in what seemed like a different life. So I just need to go over this again from the top, Jackie says during a lull in the music. This, she says, motioning to the whiteboard and the laptop that has been the focus of the world recently. This came to you in a dream?
She tries to keep the incredulity and doubt out of her voice, but she suspects that she doesn't succeed. Lakshmi trades a look with Doug and nods at Jackie. Look, I know it sounds absolutely stock-raving mad, but it's not completely unheard of. Jackie interjects.
As in, oh, look, I dreamt of an Ouroboros and now I've discovered the shape of benzene? Lakshmi laughs, a sound of genuine mirth. Yes, and points to you for knowing that story. Exactly that.
But seriously, think about it. I've been working for years on exotic and quantum materials for Helios too. She shrugs, an elaborate motion that seems to include her whole body. And I don't know.
My subconscious put some things together and showed it to me in a dream, where you saw an equation named after you in a book from the future. I mean, sure, but it's the most literal metaphor you can possibly think of, isn't it? Like, dream Lakshmi was saying, hey, waking Lakshmi, here's the next thing for you to work on. And then you came in here and wrote the math down and tried it, and it worked.
Lakshmi nods and then hesitates and waggles both of her hands in equivocation. Well, sort of. I wrote down what I could remember, and over about a month, I worked out a lot of the rest. And not here.
We didn't have this lab yet. And it changed as I was working on it, I think. And it's an infinite-distance quantum-entangled communicator of some kind. Jackie has followed most of the information, but the math has become progressively more esoteric, and she wasn't sure she had fully digested the impact of what they were telling her.
Jackie looks back and forth between the two and has a moment where she's sure she's missing some kind of telepathic communication. Something gets decided, and Lakshmi suddenly stands up and starts pacing. Okay, don't freak out. Let me show you something on the laptop.
As she says this, Doug is pulling up some kind of simulation program on the old machine. Yes, I originally thought this was a way to create q-matter objects with certain quantum properties that would maintain entanglement when the material was split into two halves. And then information could be passed between the two, regardless of distance. Done.
has press buttons and a simulated object gets created on the screen splits in two and the two halves float opposite sides of the screen the halves blip in unison as if morse code or binary pulses are sent between them it's pretty standard stuff at least in terms of quantum properties imagine very long distance phones because i originally thought you'd be able to cram a fairly dense data stream through them jackie nods at this because it's true what she knows about quantum entanglement covers this basic element the idea of information being passed regardless of distance but then as i was playing with the mass i realized if you created a torus of the material and split it precisely while running a high energy current through it what you'd get would be an aperture of any width through which any normal matter object could pass through the opening while traversing zero internal distance regardless of the physical distance of the ring halves themselves doug has pressed more buttons and on the screen indeed a glowing blue torus has been created then halved with each half set to opposite sides of the screen this time a three-dimensional a green three-dimensional cube approaches the half on the right side of the screen and passes through instantly popping out the left half without crossing the middle of the screen watch me and doug are watching her eagle-eyed and she's trying not to gape at the screen so you've invented what portals stargates she leans forward dramatically have you invented stargates watch me claps delighted yes yes i mean no not stargates not really not exactly but portals yes or quantum doors or i don't know i don't know what we call them there are some huge limits lakshmi is glowing caught in the thrill of revealing her discovery the music in the background has shifted to a plaintive love song and it is dissonant to the mood of the room a sorrowful longing at odds with the astonishment inside of jackie jackie shakes her head as if waking from a reverie and purses her lips to blow out the lung-filled air she didn't realize she'd been holding in an accidental off-tune whistle lakshmi this is amazing truly incredible but i have to ask why do you need me i mean i can follow the math up to a point but i'm a software engineer and a modeler and maybe on the down low a decent white hat but this she motions towards the screen and shrugs halfway through as if she's making a half-ass half-assed attempt to throw a ball she looks at doug you were right it's big big big doug shoots a finger at jackie pointing see i told you lakshmi grins at her so you're not going to run away screaming jackie laughs and again doug seems startled at the sound while it just makes lakshmi smile even wider i'm not running away screaming but my mind is blown a little and again i'm not sure how i can help lakshmi nods she holds it by hand and starts taking items off her list one i need top level security here the plans only exist on this one inch laptop that i take everywhere with me and i erase the math from the board every night when i leave i need an ultra safe place to work i need somewhere to store this where i'm sure no one can hack it not even a fence two the devices are going to need robust control mechanisms for one thing they need a steady supply of constant power she pauses as if debating adding more detail jackie interjects but i'm not an electrical engineer but i am interrupts doug i can do the fancy wiring bad jokes and fancy wiring are my contribution to team awesome but we need strong proprietary software to control the devices jackie nods at this and it makes sense like to switch the portal from paris texas to paris france kind of thing lakshmi sighs a little and shakes her head no actually sorry we didn't cover that part yet i said there were some limitations and they're fairly hard and fast ones at that once the portal pair gets created they are permanently locked to each other and only each other and only if there's a constant flow of power to both devices what happens if one or both loses power jackie asks racing herself for the worst lakshmi and doug trade a glance nothing says lakshmi nothing well that's just it if one or both completely lose power completely they lose entanglement it just stops and it can't be turned back on look imagine the pair has three states there's on which means they're both at full power and the aperture is open between them full power varies by the way on the size of the portal and not the distance big portals take more etc and then there's a low power state which means that the aperture isn't open between them but they're still connected in a quantum entangled state and then there's off completely unpowered one or both which is disaster because it means you've lost entanglement and no matter how much power you dump into them afterwards you can't get it back you then just have very expensive loops of manufactured diamond diamond lakshmi nods and hold your hand back up with two fingers out and raises a third and that gets me back to my list 3d printing techniques have gotten pretty advanced but the means to print what we need exists only in one place and it isn't here number three is that i need help from someone someone very specific there's a guy i met once and i've been in touch with over the years who i think can help his name is caleb sims and he's my peer at caltech i need him to review the maths with me and if it works he has access to the only set of equipment i know of that can make test runs of this stuff and you need me jackie starts i need you because i need to talk to caleb secretly in a completely unhackable and untraceable way jackie laughs again but in a gentler way she runs her gloves through her hair vaguely conscious that this is her tell look i'm i'm in all right i signed your agreements and this is so fucking huge i can't walk away now but you know what you're asking right lakshmi nods the ncr is our ally but if we get caught communicating scientific secrets from a research lab across national borders for something so revolutionary she trails off for a moment if they catch us we will likely be charged with treason jackie can see the color rising in doug's face face and lakshmi's warm brown eyes have taken on a hard gene they look at each other and then they both look up at her nodding we know we talked about it we know what we're doing and we have to do this i can't just walk away from this god or the universe or shiva or nesha or my namesake or whoever gave this thing to me in a dream if it's real and we can make it work i can't hand it over it's mine i have to do it the steel and watch me's voice matches the hard determination in her eyes doug is nodding and i go where she goes he says simply jackie looks back and forth between them oh fuck she thinks i wanted something big and this could not be any bigger the music in the background shifts to something wild and upbeat and celebratory a howl of joy turned into a song it seems fitting she grins at her two new friends and colleagues and she knows there's a wildness in her smile that matches the height of the song okay okay then let's do this let's break some rules and change the world and scene okay beautiful lawrence i am going to go put us back actually i'm just going to play with all the modes how about a two-third one-third split yes very nice since i'm interviewing you or should we just go back to 50 50 50 is fine by me okay there we go this is so fun i'll stop playing now um wow so the story is getting more harrowing lawrence we've got treason on the table i mean yeah oh what happened where did you go i uh my foot kicked my camera cord under the desk and uh and i was dropping away sorry i feel like we should take photos of our setups like not what's behind us but what we're looking at because i have a ring light propped on a coffee mug and uh yeah it would be funny yeah i basically got like a studio set up here but it's still kind of somewhat janky because um oh look you're doing it i'm fine okay fine i'll do it too hold on let me sit back because i'm wired um oh thank you melissa i love so much that you read your characters and their varying accents uh thank you i i feel weird doing that but also like that's literally what they sound like in my head so right um okay i've gotten the photo and uh i have no questions prepared because i'm hearing this story like it's my first time hearing it through um why don't you tell us um tell me what i should ask you uh no no not that but let's let's have a conversation about this how is this moving the plot forward um yeah well this is a pretty significant plot moment because um the i think i've said this previously the like the conceit of the book is um you know there are two kind of primary things that are infringing in the book one is that the world the world has been shattered by the second civil war and the you know the crash the smash uh the flash all those things that we've kind of talked about in previous chapters you know and the world has been in sort of this depression for you know almost 20 years basically um some places doing better than others and and the tension is the invention of this new technology right like i think you know rare every once in a while in human history an invention comes along it really truly does change everything and this is one of those things that has the potential to really truly change everything and the you know further in the book we kind of explore the um uh kind of the ramifications right because you know if you can create these quantum linked portals that are connected regardless of distance you know then you could sneak one into an enemy country right you sneak one into an enemy country and then suddenly you've got an invasion force coming within you know the enemy country where they never expected it right or you put one on a rocket and shoot it to the moon and suddenly you can step through from someplace on earth into the moon and then you know of course you would need to be in an airlock because blah blah there's nowhere on the moon uh you know so like the idea that idea really excites me of what would it be like if we actually invented this and had the opportunity to to use it to roll it out and to you know suddenly um discover all the crazy things we could do with it uh like there's a there's a silly plot point that i really really want to get to but it's not even until like the next book or the book after that which is um you know the kingdom of deseret the mormon nation that gets formed out of utah ends up signing into this alliance eventually and uh and they get access to this technology the thing that they want to do is they want to refill ancient lake bonneville they want to take the great salt lake and fill it back to its ancient borders of basically being this massive inland sea and so they do that they you know stick one end like in the antarctic waters to capture you know fresh glacier melt and fill it you know refill up ancient lake bonneville which would change their climate right which would allow them to be much more agrarian uh and kind of counter counteract the effects of climate change right and would make deseret no longer the best name for them really well deseret doesn't mean desert um but it sounds like desert it does sound like desert yes oh my gosh the bathrobe guy in the comments they started a new diner on the moon the food is great but there's no atmosphere right we'll be here all day folks um it is i i am noting that as you were reading this and everyone half the folks in the chat are like laurence's voice is so beautiful this is really interesting science and the other half are like trump is on tv he's talking about crazy um you've got fiction at the same time as non-fiction oh yeah i hate to report this but aaron just posted trump places dc police under federal control and deploys national guard right why is this happening right now laurence do you have a sense for like literally why monday morning at almost 8 a.m pacific time i mean i think everything in the last month all comes back to one thing which is the trump epstein files um that this is yet another distraction technique he he wants an excuse to declare martial law nationally and currently he doesn't have a reason right like he the la thing ended up you know being being a joke right because they got things under control without the national guard without the marine and uh you know like he is he is desperately trying to distract he wants to stir shit up so that he has an excuse to distract got it but yeah now what what are we is he doing this so that people do take to the streets and then there's more of a cause yeah right like the ideal outcome for trump in this is that the population of dc which we all know is um very uh minority you know there's a large black and latino population in dc and what trump wants more than anything else is pictures of people of color riding in the streets of washington dc hopefully you know hopefully in his mind you know he's oh please please let them smash i can't do a good job you know i like when you you know let them smash windows oh that would be so beautiful if they smashed windows at starbucks and yeah i don't know that starbucks is bad and liberal city right liberal city smash the windows and set fire to cars and then i can you know then he can like take over he can declare national martial law and um yeah we said uh we wouldn't be emphasizing politics but i think when it's happening real time yeah during the show this is the problem right is that um in the era of trump politics literally happens in real time um yeah remember when obama was president and uh there were like entire weeks at a time where you didn't hear about the president's work i remember when biden was president and we could go to brunch and be like everything's you know nothing's perfect but like nothing's on fire and they're not trying to catch our attention it's not a everything isn't this like delirious nonsensical mess like why would you declare effectively martial law in dc today there's nothing happening right it's absolutely it makes no sense right so the the tweet that he posted on trump social um or whatever it's called true social i refuse to call it a truth yeah it's just we need a name for it we'll have to come up with something yeah you know he's like oh dc has uh you know filled with trash and it's you know that run down and blah blah blah and uh it needs more gilding right honestly like he everyone has seen the the ridiculous amount of building he's applied to the white house which is the gold house vomitously like overdone it is not fucking versailles for god's sake i'm a maximalist what he's doing is disgusting i can be a maximalist too and what what he's doing there is insanely bad um it's trash and you know and i mean he uh yeah he part of his complaint is he wants dc to make the make dc beautiful again or whatever golden toilets and the dunking donuts or something i am i'm going to refuse to panic about this right we're almost has a really good point of she says i'm supposed to take my son my trans son to dc for a concert in a month are there going to be federal guards on the streets asking for our ids and what happens when my son's he doesn't match his appearance i literally don't know how concerned i should be yeah concerned yeah pretty concerned i think like what if they ask for your ids i mean we let me know that white americans right like i i fully acknowledge that i have lived my life embodied in white privilege and male privilege and straight-looking privilege and all you know non-jewish looking privilege all the privileges and yeah like i i would be scared that somebody wearing you know carrying a gun whether they're wearing a uniform or not um but somebody like dressed shop by the lake and carrying a gun could ask you for your ID. And we literally don't know what would happen in this country right now if you said no. Which, you know, would be your right, at least as far as I understand them, unless there's an actual emergency or warrant for your arrest. You know, like, I don't, we're at the point where regular people don't know what is appropriate and not appropriate.
If a police officer with a badge asked me for my ID, I wouldn't be thrilled about it, but I would show them my ID, right? If TSA in the airport asked me for my ID, I show them because I know why they're asking. But if a random person with a gun on the street asked for my ID, I'm pretty sure and concerned that my response would be, fuck you, absolutely not. You show me your ID first.
Right? Show me yours first. I like that. I'm a big fan of concerts, Melissa, and I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know if it's being alarmist to say don't go or if it's being very practical because this is unprecedented. Again, all the unprecedented. It is also the top of the hour, and I am about to go on live with Nick Perra to talk about parenting in an era of restaurants. And Sosa will be there, too.
Yeah, this is going to be a... That's great. And I think, if I'm not running a surprise, I think Nick has Restream up and running as well, so... I messaged Nick if you're still on, but I was like, I'm not sure where I'm joining, if it's Restream or live.
But I will be over there in a moment. Before we drop, I wanted to first say thanks to everybody for your feedback. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your reading, Lawrence.
Thanks a lot. Of course. Join us tomorrow. I will be talking about a story I just published today called Falling in Love Through My Thumbs Part 1, and it is about the idea of can we fall in love with people who we only know through the internet?
And I would imagine that lots and lots of people have stories like this. I've got stories. I know. We're going to talk about both of our stories.
We want to hear your stories. This is a part one, so we'll have to stay tuned for part two to hear how that story continues on. But I'm really looking forward to that one tomorrow, and it's been lovely to be here today, except for the whole Marshall on DC part. But if we have to experience it, I'm happy to have done it with all of you.
Thanks, everybody. Thanks for being with us as we grow. And like I said, thank you for being here and for all of your support and love. And let us know.
If you've got feedback, if you didn't want to put it in the chat, you want to DM us correctly, let us know. We'd love to hear it sincerely and truly. And we won't be offended by any feedback that you provide. We're asking with pure intent here.
So thanks for being here. Have a great time on your next show with Nick and Soso. Thank you. Let me meet you.
Bye. Bye.