Gweek 106: You Are Now Less Dumb




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Guests:

David McRaney creator of the the blog You Are Not So Smart, where he writes about the psychology of self-delusion. He also hosts the podcast of the same name and is the author of the book based on the blog, You Are Not So Smart, and the sequel, You Are Now Less Dumb, which was released July 30.

Dean Putney, Boing Boing's coding and development wizard.

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Show notes:

David's books about the psychology of self-delusion: You Are Not So Smart, and You Are Now Less Dumb.

The Last of Us. The new game from Naughty Dog. David: "It raises several bars in the world of character-driven, strongly narrative, realistic video games. It’s also maybe the best zombie-genre exploration in the last few years. Made by the company that gave us the Uncharted series."

My dad and the Oculus Rift. David: "My dad is 65, and is still a hardcore gamer. He used to take me around the backwoods of Mississippi and visit all the pirates who traded games for the C-64 when I was a little kid, and he’s never since stopped being deeply involved in PC gaming culture. I try to buy him a new game every few months if he hasn’t beaten me to it, and I’m really, really, really, hoping I can get him an Oculus while he still can enjoy it. It’s the realization of his greatest geek desires."

Bittorrent Sync. Dean: "Decentralized Dropbox via Bittorrent. Share your files to lots of people much faster by sharing directly to all of them and letting them share to others. Much more flexible than Dropbox, any folder can become a shared folder, install it on a server and sync to S3."

The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews, and Annotations. Mark: "Like Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes is a cartoonist whose interviews are are interesting as his comics are."

The Love and Rockets Companion. Mark: "One of the greatest comic series ever. 30 years and counting!"

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret. Mark: "I’m so glad Fantagraphics is making the work of Carl Barks’ available in low -cost, high-quality hardbound editions."

Bulkr. Mark: "An app that lets you download anyone’s Flickr photos in bulk."