Things kick off with a cameo and Merlin's abortive attempt to make a connection.

Next, John reeds Merlin the riot act on his unintentional use of red receipts. Merlin pleads _nolo contendere_ but, as you can imagine, this does not dissuade John from explaining how he broke some cockamamie social contract. The complexities and risks of asynchronous communication are explored.

Merlin makes a case for broader use of *procedure words*. He also wants to learn how to do those cool hand signals.

In Follow-Up, John shares some encouraging news about his childhood teppanyaki destination. Enthusiasts of life's ephemera are celebrated, and John professes his own enthusiasm for a free grill-cleaning show.

Teppanyaki videos are further discussed, because they are *awesome*, and it was cool to hear how many of you agree. *Competence Porn* is enumerated, before the conversation somehow turns back (yes, _again_) to teppanyaki videos.

As something like a main topic, Merlin offers a sheepish series of recent anecdotes regarding technology and hasty decision-making. He seems not to remember this being his idea (_he_ did that), which he is surprisingly not all that sheepish about. But, let's be honest. Technology can be terrible and very confusing.

With that said, the new Macintoshes are very good. And, finally, Merlin narrowly dodges a bullet with another completely avoidable bonus consumer technology mishap.

(_Recorded on Tuesday, December 29, 2020_)

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