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April 25, 2025 12 mins

In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the tech he actually likes, and how digital connections give him hope in the darkest times.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alzo Media. The world's got plenty of cowboys, but it's
short on dancers. This is the award winning Better Offline
and I'm your host ed Zetron. That's right. You're listening
to this week's monologue. And you may wonder why I'm

(00:23):
saying award winning, but that's because we won the goddamn
Webby for best Episode in the Business category. We're winners,
all of us, you, me, every listener. You all did this.
Thank you so much. And before I get started any further,
as lots of you have been asking about it, we're
finally selling Better Offline merchandise. We've got shirts, hoodies, onesies, glasses,
tumblers and mugs, and until May twenty second, we're selling

(00:43):
a limited edition ham. It's all really good stuff. The
links are in the episode notes by them. Now anyway,
the monologue. I've realized that over time I've skewed pretty
negatively about tech, and as I've said before, it's because
I'm a broken hearted romantic. Tech has made me who
I am, enabling me a man with a coordinational disability
SPRAXA RO if you're curious, severe ADHD and a good
amount of social anxiety in the past well, it allowed

(01:05):
me to thrive. Without the Internet and the associated platforms
I've used, I would have never had a good life.
And if that sounds dramatic, you should see my handwranging,
or hear how awkward I was as a child, or
see how I tie my shoelaces. Anyway, so today I
want to talk about some of the things I love,
why I love them, and why you might love them too,
because it's important for you to see that I'm pissed
off because I know that tech can be cool. It

(01:26):
can be so much better now. While some of you
might see this as shilling or fanboying, I think it's
important that anyone covering tech actually likes him, find something
exciting about it, and wants it to be better beyond
the bullshit horse trading or sports fandom style stuff. And
this episode will also run down my general daily carries.
I optimize for convenience and as little thought as possible

(01:46):
because I'm a huge baby and I need everything to
be easy. I do not have any financial relationships with
any of these companies that have, in some cases given
them a great deal of my own money, unless I
specify otherwise. Everything I've mentioned or linked is something I've
bought with my own money. Far enough answer of recording this.
So at my desk, I use this insufferable keyboard, a
split keyboard called the Moonlander as ZSA, and it lets

(02:07):
me type and feel like I'm plugged into the mainframe.
You've got your two hands separa. It's good for the
risk because you're not moving them around. And I've got
an Apple Magic track pad along with a giant forty
nine inch Samsung o lad. It's a G nine connected
to this thing called the scron No doc where I
just slide by MacBook Pro sixteen inch in. Your minage
may vary, but I really like it when I travel
between New York and Vegas to just be able to

(02:27):
slot the thing in and have the same setup. It works.
It works really well, And like I said, I'm a
huge baby, so if it didn't, I be complaining endlessly
now when I'm out and about. I really like what
companies like Anchor have been doing with gallium nitride GAN
for short, and they're charges in batteries. GAN lets you
put way more power in the much smaller profile, meaning
that you can now get charges that are dramatically smaller

(02:48):
that can first charge your iFund or your iPad or
even your MacBook Pro. The reason I like Anchor stuff
is because it works and it can take a beating,
and the batteries tend to come with a cable built in,
which I love because I hate having to have cables
in my pocket. If you were cost me on the street,
I probably have one of their fast charging USBC batteries
in my pocket, mostly because it can fast charge either
my iPhone or right my iPad. They also just released
this giant one hundred and sixty five what power bank

(03:10):
with two cables. I'm lusting for it. I wanted so badly,
but I cannot justify it. I al really have a
really similar battery pack that I bought years ago. I
have no justification for it now. What's cool about these
is that they can also be charged using their built
in cables. I hate carrying it's to shit around, so
this works very well for me. I also use an
Anchor Prime charger when I'm traveling. It's got the ports

(03:30):
to power on my stuff include my MacBook, along with
the Maggo wireless charging station, which is kind of a
little fold up thing, charge your AirPods Pro, your Apple Watch,
and your phone via mag Safe. It all just kind
of works, which is kind of the theme of everything,
and for those curious. I also really like the Airpod's Max.
They sound great. They're way too expensive, They're like five
hundred bucks, but they sound lovely and they fit these

(03:51):
giant goddamn ears. I've got. Some of you have said
I'm an Apple fanboy. I'm an Apple fan boy in
the past, and I'm really What I really am is
a suck of for stuff that all works together, and
I realize I am being monopolized. You do not need
to tell me. I know, and I've also really I
will say it again like Apple's app store is horrifying.
I believe that they are responsible for fueling truly evil industries. Anyway,

(04:13):
though it's not tech per se. I really need to
tell you about the Pac twenty five l travel Duffel.
I think it might me later. I don't know. It's
where I put on my crap when I'm traveling. If
it's under the sea in front of you on Southwest,
It's able to fit a lot of crap, has lots
of slots for your laptop, and generally feels comfortable over
your shoulder. I know It's weird to bring up a
bag and a tech thing, but this bag is amazing.

(04:33):
I've gone through like five different other bags to find
this one. And I can throw my Prime charger in it,
my MacBook, my iPad, maclothes, medicines, all sorts of crap
and it all fits in and it opens that the
top so you can look inside of it without having
to pull it fully out. I love it. I love it.
I've got Instagram targeted with it, which annoys me. I
don't like that the Internet manipulated me. But thanks to
all this gear, I can basically walk around all day

(04:54):
without worrying about anything dying probably two days, honestly. And
I've got this little bag of cables and extra bags
that I can hand out to friends who haven't been
planning ahead like I have. Skill issue moving on, though,
those of you who follow me on Blue Sky will
know that I've been on a big fitness push, and
a big part of that has been Tonal. Tonal is
this giant wall mounted exercise machine with a big screen
in the middle, along with big adjustable arms that could

(05:16):
be moved around to fit different exercises. It's hard to explain,
but advice you'd go to the website. So if you
want to do bench press, you put the arms down,
you go on the bench, and you push up with
the cables. It works really well, and it uses magnetic
resistance to create up to one hundred and twenty five
pounds away either side, and uses on screen prompts either
through classes or your own custom workouts, which is what
I use to tell you both what to do, critique

(05:38):
your form using the built in camera, give your feedback,
and actually count your reps, which I love because again
huge baby, don't like ranking stuff down, don't really like
having to do anything. If they could do the workout
for me, i'd let them. But nevertheless, it works really
well and like I must say, though, it is egregiously expensive.
It's over four thousand dollars before tax and requires a

(05:59):
great dealers space around it. But it's possibly my favorite
piece of tech ever made. It just works. I dropped
from two hundred and forty pounds to one hundred and
sixty five pounds since the show began, gaining real muscle
definition and physical strength. Since getting Tonal in twenty twenty one,
I realize that's much longer. I've done hundreds of workouts. Look,
I'm a simpleton, and thus having something count my reps
and tom Mey exactly what to do is extremely effective.

(06:20):
And Tunnel also has cool shit like eccentric mode, where
they add more weight on the eccentric movement of the exercise.
So if you're thinking of the bench prest, it starts
by your chest and you push up and then went
and you've done the push up that's in the pushy part.
As the weight is coming down, it adds weight to
that eccentric weight. There are studies that suggest it it
works more it feels good, though I also say the

(06:41):
form correction works and the workouts have varied in equivalent
to working out with reallyian. It's got bar bells, it's
got dumb bell exercises, and I've got real muscle as
a result, which is the best endorsement I could actually give.
I love it, I've happily paid for it, and Tunnel
is worth it if you're going to use it like
any gym membership, except done, like any gym membership, you
have a bloody thing nail to your wall if you
don't use them. Don't get this. If you're not going

(07:02):
to use it, seriously, it's so expensive, but if you are,
if you are truly going to it is the best
money I've ever spent. Really, I'm sure that there are
more important things, but nevertheless it's I cannot. I just
upgraded to Tonal two, which has like smoother action and stuff,
but I beat the ever living shit out of my
old one. I used the crap out of it. It's

(07:23):
something I kind of dreamed of as a kid, Like
I really wanted something like this, something that direct me
and allow me to do these exercides and tell me
what to do without having to go to the gym,
because the gym feels like a very judgmental place. And
on a higher level, I have up until recently, really
not liked my body or how I look, and connected
fitness stuff has really helped me fix that. For those

(07:45):
curious or those who aren't want to get pissed off
at me. I woke out about three to five times
a week, either lifting on Tonal or doing my cardio days,
which include Peloton's yoga classes and another one of my
favorite tech products, fight Camp, which puts you got putas
trackers in the wraps and yeah, they've got great classes.
Shout out to coach PJ. I love fight camp, I
really do. And I love boxing as well. If you've

(08:08):
ever wanted a cardio exercise that just feels perfect, really
boxing is there. You're probably throwing a puntrong. I certainly
was like smiling as I read this, Ben, But this
was this was a large part of how I changed
my view of fitness from this kind of punishment, kind
of a penance for the sin of sloth, for feeling

(08:28):
bad about how I looked in the mirror, for feeling lethargic,
but just feeling fat. And I'm sure there are listeners
who totally get this as well. And I use this
kind of stuff to find it as a joyous alternative
to typing all day, something that makes me feel happy
and strong, like I'm building something that's just for me.
I'm building an image. And I know that sends for
a dramatic who gives a shit, it's a monologue. Come on,

(08:51):
we can have some fun. But having data the work
I've done, my heart rate, the volume of what I've
I've been lifting, my output on the heavy bag, it
all lets me see gris sure, but it gives me
a body of work and the connected fitness aspect let
me do it alone, which helped my social anxiety and
going to the gym. Now I'm extremely socire and I'm
very confident in who I am, and I think a

(09:12):
lot of that came from this came from the fitness side.
If you ever want to talk about this, my email
is easy at Better offline dot com. It's Echo Zeta
at better Offline dot com. Always happy to talk fitness,
always happy to give advice. I'm not a personal trainer,
but I've found so much joy through this, and it
is through the tech side. Yet beyond the connective fitness

(09:33):
aspect was this thing that I truly love the most
about technology is the connections I've made with real human
beings that have made my physical life so much better.
A few years ago, I started chatting to a guy
called Ben Rudolph on Twitter and we, along with a
few friends Tatiana Kleb, ended up starting a group DM
for Fitness, which truly changed my life, in part because Ben,
out of the kindness of his heart, patiently explained everything

(09:54):
from how to build a sustainable lifting routine to showing
me a video of how to throw a punch and
a kick. I'm proud to called Ben my friend, and
had the Internet and not existed, I'd never have got
to share my fitness journey with him, and probably never
got out of the hole I was in. I was
injured after really overtraining because I got very depressed, and
Ben helped me out. Ben is not in fitness himself.
He is a mountain of a man, a formidable muscled fella,

(10:18):
but he works in tech. It just so happened that
we had a mutual interest. This is the reason I
log onto the Internet and like, this is really what
I love the most about technology. As dark and ominous
and brutal as the world feels right now, as noxious
and poisonous as social media can feel and seem, there's

(10:38):
such joy to be had connecting with others about just
about anything. I love using Reddit, and if you're on
the Better Offline Reddit, I truly love you for posting there.
And the way all of you responded to the webby
thing actually made me cry in the best way. Thank you.
And I love Blue Skuy too, because for every sickly
little pedant correcting me, there are hundreds of wonderful souls,
many of whom choose to email me when I make
this show. At the core of my critiques and complain

(11:00):
points is the sense that I know what technology has
done and will do for me, in a frustration that
there are those who would interfere with that process as
much as possible for profit or growth. I guess, and
I realize it's bland and obvious to say the Internet
is good for connecting people, but it really is, and
had it not done so for me, I don't know
if I'd have made it out of my teens. And
you can choose what you want to make that meme.

(11:23):
I find such joy and love in my friends. I'm
so incredibly grateful for them. At times I well up
with the love in my heart for their kindness and
their generosity that they continually show me. And almost every
single friendship I've made has started online. I can connect
with them wherever they are in the world. I can
send them what I'm doing, or hear what they're doing
and what I'm feeling, and vice versa, and for that

(11:44):
I'm eternally grateful. Nothing about this gratitude stops me from
critiquing these companies, and indeed, the love that I've fostered
through digital connections drives my fury at those who would
interfere with or exploit it. True cynicism doesn't come from
a place of emptiness. It comes from a determin to
defend that which makes us feel whole. Thank you for listening,

(12:04):
and again, by the way, thank you for voting for
me in the webbys. It fucking rocks me one. Actually,
you know what, before I go, I was gonna log
off there. I just want to thank everyone who works
on Better Offline. I forget whether we put the thing
at the bank that says all of these things again,
but thank you to Mattasowski, Robert Evans, Sophie Lichtman, Ava Warrender,
Daniel Goodman, Ian Johnson and everyone who works on this show.

(12:26):
You've been extra normally supportive. It's a pleasure to do this.
And yeah, thank you to the listeners as well. It's
my cheesy way of thanking you all for the Webby anyway,
the episode's really done now. Cheers,
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Host

Ed Zitron

Ed Zitron

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