Checking in on the Mainland

Dean: Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson, I hope you are living in your. In your Cloudlandia splendor.

Dean: Yes, I really am. I really am. I just got back in the house. I went, I just went for a little drive to see that the mainland was still intact.

Dan: You checked out your domain?

Dean: Checked out. My domain did a little loop around the kingdom. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting. Because we were at the cottage for a week. We just got back on Friday night. And it's a strange feeling now being so much in the Cloudlandia world in terms of the company to see the real division between the Cloudlandia and the mainland.

Dean: Yes, absolutely. Now what I mean up in, up at cottage country there you're kind of spread out and less change.

Dan: But yeah, we, yeah, we just have Shannon Waller and her husband Bruce. Bruce Green. They are about a seven minute walk from our cottage.

Dean: Oh, that's awesome.

Dan: Yeah, we always have a night over with them and then a night over. This time it was with. At a restaurant that had opened.

Dean: Oh my goodness.

Dan: The restaurant was open. It's by regions in Ontario gradually opened up Friday, opened up in Toronto. Restaurants were open as of Friday. Okay. And, and so, but an interesting, interesting thing. I've never seen this before. It must have been the city that okayed the city of Toronto because in front of almost every restaurant that wants to do it, they've taken a parking lane and turned it into an outdoor restaurant. So they have, they have tables and chairs right in what is parking lanes usually Parking.

Dean: Yes. Yeah.

Dan: And I don't know if that's happened where you are.

Dean: It has because most people there's at first was only allowed outdoor dining. So you could.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: So it is happening here,

Dan: but it's. They're like forest animals watching humans coming back. We're now resembling nature kind of, you know, coming back and taking over areas of the mainland.

Dean: Yeah. Oh.

Dan: Oh, I'm here.

Dean: Okay, good. I heard some, sounded like some dialing, but I think

Dan: it might have been the Communist Party of China listening in. Yeah. Try to, try to steal intellectual. Intellectual.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Well, since they're from the source, because we're kind of at the source because as far as I know we're the first two individuals on the planet that welcomed other people to Cloudlandia.

Dean: That's exactly right. That is exactly right. It's gonna catch on.

Dan: Yeah. So yeah, we're back. And one thing that's changed. At 7:30 every night before, you know, from around March until well, well the end of July at 7:30 every night there Was horns blowing and pots being hit. But we noticed when we came back that that was over. Now that part of the ritual.

Dean: Oh, wow.

Dan: Being lost and I.

Dean: Everybody acknowledging all the frontline workers. Is that what that was about?

Dan: Yeah, I think that was it. And that went for, you know, went for a good four months. And I, I found, I found it interesting. It was. And apparently it was a worldwide thing. It was right. Just local and. And you know, it'll go into the, you know, into the history books as the memories of people who were. The Great Lockdown known as the Great Pause. The Great Lockdown.

Dean: Yeah. This is amazing for us to be really like we are at the. Yeah. At the cusp. Right at the very beginning of the full migration into Clevelandia. And that's going to be an amazing time.

Dan: In the late 1970s, I had a slide presentation that I put on that was called the Great Crossover. I'm going to see if I can dig up the slides. It was the Great Crossover from basically a print controlled world to a digital world, like the language. And I described this one that we were going into and I used a particular event as the moment when. And apparently there was an earlier one, but this one, I just pegged it in the calendar. I think it was in 1974 and 1974, 1975, it was the thriller and Manila prize fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier which took place in Manila. And as far as I know, this was one of the great events that was seen by satellite television for the whole world. And I said, you know, this is. I'm going to just mark this at the beginning of the Great Crossover. And I said probably take about 50 years, it'll take till the 2000s. So I said this and I said it's is the move from a hierarchical bureaucratic world to a networked world. And that the corporations would. That were the top corporations in the 1970s. Government and corporate bureaucracies. They would find this difficult. They would find this transition very difficult. And that more and more there would be an upswing of network based enterprises.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And these would be started by entrepreneurs. And in 1974, this was before Microsoft, this was before Apple. Just, just what they were, you know, a bunch of, you know, small group

Dean: of people who were in their garages.

Dan: Yeah, garages and you know, commercial sort of industrial space. And they were starting their move towards this. And I said that I felt that we were. This was going to be the big thrust of entrepreneurism in the world simply because that the tools that were being created Electronic tools at that time. And the word microchip was just being used at that time. There weren't personal computers yet, but you, but they were coming down in size and you know, there were companies that were very big. Remember DAC with the dac, dac. And they made these, you know, they were, they weren't room sized computers. They were down to maybe the island in your kitchen size. Yeah,

Dean: I remember when, like I remember our. So when I was in high school, I entered high school in 1990, 80 and we, they had just gotten a computer lab where now we were, I was learning basic programming and we had floppy disks and these whole, I mean it was, the whole thing was learning basic programming. And you look at it now, I mean, wow. Like, to be at that stage is really something. I think it's, you know, there's an interesting.

Dan: Yeah, my whole notion of being a coach started in 1974. That's when I went out coaching and it seemed that there was a role for me. You know, I said, you know, what I'm good at is asking other people questions and doing drawings of their answers and then I could give them a game plan. And that was the, the real beginning of strategic coach, which, you know, eventually became the strategy circle. After about eight years of doing that, I came up with. Yeah, I said, you know, it's going to be process, you coach processes. And of course, both you and I have taken that route.

Dean: Yes. You know, it's, it's interesting as I Look, you're talking about that in roughly the same time, a little earlier than 1980. Sounds like.

Dan: Well, I'm a little earlier on the planet than you were. I was scout, I was sent out to, I was doing some bushwhacking for you. A little bit of bushwhacking for you.

Dean: Well, I understand like the, it's really, it's an interesting thing that I think it was one of Malcolm Gladwell's books was talking about how certain things happen at certain stages. Right. Like where there's just this, all these circumstances that go around. Like when you look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Bill Joy, the three kind of most impactful people in computing, we're all, all the same age. Like they were all born in the 50s and you know, in 1950-54 or whatever.

Dan: And

Dean: largely because the people who were born before that would have already been through college and fully invested in the mainframe world, they weren't even, they didn't have that access to the things. And so when you spot these things early on like you spotting the microchip as the thing that was going to shape the future and the networked future as a part of that is a really. It's an interesting dynamic. I think I may have shared with you that I've been. I have all my journals from 1996 till now, and for the last little while, I've been every day just taking a random journal and looking back to just check in with what was going on at that time. And I was struck by one. In August of 98, the question at the top of my page of the journal was, what are you going to do about the Internet? And it was really. And it was like I was exploring this thing, like, I feel like it's getting traction now. And I listed, you know, stop your divorce and living in Winter Haven as the two things that had the most potential, because I was already getting traction with. With stop your divorce. And, you know, those things went on, you know, made millions of dollars from those, just those two things. By having that awareness in 1998, that I think this is going to be a big thing, bigger than what it actually was in 1998. And I really believe that we're on the cusp of that right now. If I were to recreate the. That page in my journal, I think that the question is that we're exploring is, what are we going to do? Cloudlandia. I mean, that's really. Yeah.

Dan: Well, it's really interesting. You know, the. There's a economist who lived. He's a Austrian economist by the name of Schumpeter. And Schumpeter was sort of 1930s, 40s, 50s. And he came up with a concept that technology, as introduced by entrepreneurs was a force of creative destruction. Okay. That whole notion that entrepreneurism is essentially a force of. Of obsoleting old forms, operating forms in society, and creating things that are faster, easier and cheaper and produce bigger results. And he said, that's really what the force of entrepreneur is. And I thought I put that together. I had read Schumpeter before this, and I had come across that concept of creative destruction. And so I said, there's two columns, and you can take a look and you can start putting in news events of what happens when you get a entrepreneurial force. And entrepreneurs, by the way, really don't emerge as a force in society until you have a technological multiplier. Okay. And, and, and, and that creates a great crossover. There's a crossover that creates. So I identified that crossover, that there have been four of them in human history. One of them was way back when when some humanoid type human and there were lots of different kinds. You know, they've identified at least 12 different human like species. The one that we're most familiar with because it's the most recent was the, that's not actually humans and didn't survive were the Neanderthals. Okay, you know, who looked like us. And you know, from everything they can tell, they, they were human like. But they weren't up to our communication ability. Basically humans had greater communication. And I, I said, well, it's the ability to communicate faster, easier, cheaper and bigger. That's really the key to a crossover. And if it takes the form of a technology. And I got really interested in technology, just not as machine. But it's a process that technologies are actually processes that if you do A, B, C and D, you get a predictable result at the end of it. So that I was seeing the microchip as a very, very advanced form of technology and it would change how we communicate with each other. So I went back and I said, well, Corly Gutenberg was the one that had built the modern world.

Dan: The mass printing had really, you know, when you get mass printing with movable type in the 15th century, you see this enormous force of creative destruction, the Protestant Reformation and all the wars in Europe during that period of time. Then I went back and I said, well, if it's communication, then obviously one of the first humanoid species learned how to talk. We created language.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And they've proven from analysis because they have five or six, you know, really almost intact Neanderthal bodies that were in perfect. And they found them and they found that their jawbones would not have permitted the kind of speech that we can do, that humans have a different kind of jaw and we can do all sorts of speech tricks with it. So obviously this group that could really, really talk were. And you know, that was a big deal. So I said speech is number one then writing, the ability to write. Which means that you can communicate over distances. Yes, you can also, you can also communicate over generations. So you got two, two capabilities. So if you write something down and from what we can tell the Middle east, you know, they, three or four thousand years ago they could write things down that went for a long time. And then you have a long time in our, in our terms, but not

Dean: so long scrolls and the like they had.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And on stone and iris and you know, skins. They did it on skins and everything. And then Gutenberg. So you got, got speech, you've got writing, you've got printing and then digital. Digital. And digital combines a lot of different things because we can digitally record sound, we can digitally put things into print, we can digitally put visuals out there. And so that's where we are right

Dean: now, I think that. And that's where we've come. If you look at that. That's been. I've been trying to capture that thought. I hadn't gone all the way back to Gutenberg. I started with the digitization and went forward that what we've basically seen over the last 20 years has been this cascading of sort of asymptotic curves that start with print, like PDFs were. Print was fully digitized first. And then shortly behind it, we got the MP3, which digitized sound, and then we got the MP4, which digitized video. And then came YouTube. And, you know, then we got. As technology advanced, we're able to stream these things over the Internet. And now the final sort of. The. The final sort of curve of that is that we're able to project ourselves in real time to everybody, everywhere, all at once. And that until we figure out how to physically transport our bodies somewhere. This is the last of the dominoes, I think, in that for. I think it will be a long, long time now before we get to the next iteration of that. You know, I don't know. Is that.

Dan: Well, yeah, I think first of all, you know, and you and I have talked about this on previous podcasts, that I paid attention to the predictions about virtual reality.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, where you have this sensation of actually.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Put in another place.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And maybe, maybe. And I think that it may be the. The space age that will kind of require that, you know, like, you know, you know, you want to be transplant, transported to another planet. But my sense is you'd have to have a real critical to do that.

Dean: I think that the.

Dan: There would have. There would have to be an advantage, either an urgency about it that you'd be able to trans or. Right. It would be. You know, there would be such a critical mass.

Dean: I've seen right before I went to. Right before we all went into. To lockdown. There's a studio in Winter Haven here that. A video studio, production studio. So famous old thing in the 40s and 50s, they made a lot of movies and. And stuff here. It's got pedigree and history and this. Somebody bought it from Orlando because it's got land and, you know, they can actually make a real production studio there. And they have a. What's called an AR wall, which is a huge 8K, you know, digital screen that is, you know, 20ft by 12ft, kind of big. And you can. I just had a glimpse that. That I think is going to be more likely than. And they use it as a backdrop for filming things that, you know, where you can feel like you're there kind of thing. Because it's life size and it's better than green screen. It's actually all these LCD or led, you know, projection on it. And so like Lady Gaga just had a big video that filmed using this type of wall. There's only a few of them in the country right now, and this place has one. And I just start to see like I had a crystal clear vision that we're going to at some point have rooms in our home that are. That have a big wall of this that that's going to be much more likely, I think, than people strapping on headgear that we're going to go into an immersive room with this, which is less cumbersome, you know, bigger. Bigger and bigger screens. But that's all just the delivery or a, you know, visualizer for what we're already at right now. We're already. And we're seeing it right now. That. I was watching some of the talk shows and it really struck me the other day I was watching Kelly Clarkson has a TV show and. And she was, you know, she has a little home studio made up and she was doing an interview with someone who's, you know, at their home now. And you start to see all these shows are people, you're the hosts from their home, interviewing the celebrities from their homes. And you realize very quickly that anybody could do this. Anybody could do what's happening right now. It's been completely democratized. And there's no.

Dean: I think that what that leads to now is it creates room for a true meritocracy. Right. Where the cream will really, truly rise to the top. There are zero gatekeepers along the way here. You don't have to, you know, like in. In even 20 years ago, there were six people deciding what everybody watched on television, you know.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's very, very interesting. And I, you know, I mean, I think that you're, you know, marvelous presentation of Old Town Road and.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Together. Yeah. Really shows the proof of the democratizing.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Talent. The democratizing, you know, of, you know, and it's just one entrepreneur putting it together with another entrepreneur putting it together with another entrepreneur and simply using the technology that's available. To individuals, unidentified individuals who suddenly put, you know, their skills, their talents, their technology together and they can, you know, they can go right to the top. Yeah. I think that, that, you know, Old Town Road may be one of the early markers of. Yes, you do that.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I mean, there's probably many, many people doing different things. It's just that they didn't go to number one on Billboard.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And Billboard, you know, Billboard is the, is the carry forward from an old print empire, right?

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Everybody waited for Bill. Everybody waited for their copy of Billboard to come out.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So they could see where their, their song was and that.

Dean: So it's now this double edged thing where it's very easy to. Because certainly the hive is bigger now and you can tap into that mainstream and be thrust into the global mainstream of acceptance. Right. Things go viral much quicker. But there's also on the other end, that cancel culture has come along with that, that if you make one, one misstep, that the whole world is ganged against you now and you're canceled, as they say. Right. Where you could be thrust into oblivion too.

Dan: Yeah. The interesting thing about the cancel thing, you know, and let's use the markers that are being used to cancel people out. It's sexism, it's racism.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And that's, you know, ideological. You know, you're, you're expressing. But my sense is that that only matters to you if you go to mainland parties, Right?

Dean: Yeah, I think that's true.

Dan: So you and I are long ago bypass that world. I mean, we don't go to mainland parties. In other words, our social status isn't really depending upon whose parties that we show up at.

Dean: Unless they're at the garden, in the

Dan: beach, or we're involved in some job hunt, you know, we're trying to promote it, or a job hunt. But you and I, you know, if you just look at how we've operated for the last quarter century, you know, I have never done any kind of socializing for business purposes in the last 50 years. I mean, there's no party I have to show up that has any importance or there's no being a part of some mainland organization that has any importance to me.

Dean: Listen, all the parties I've been to have been in your garden. That's really it. Right? I mean, that's the truth.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Or at our house.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: In Park Ridge.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And so what I found is that we departed from mainland culture a long time ago. And I think that that's the only penalty that these people Ever. You know, I was saying, well, if you get canceled, what's the penalty? Well, you won't be invited to parties or you. When the next job offering comes out, you won't be offered that. But I said, well, I'm not depending on anyone for my entertainment, and I'm not depending on anyone for my promotion.

Dean: Right, yeah, that is true.

Dan: So that's an aspect that we have to include in our welcome to Cloudlandia. Because I say, you know, I mean, in. In private. I mean, I mean, if you went to my other podcast, American Checklist, I would get canceled for everything that I said on American Checklist.

Dean: Right, right, right. But the people who are listening are the ones who are.

Dan: Who would. Checking the list.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: They're checking. They want to check the list. So it's. It's an interesting thing, is that if you don't want to, you know, it's the Groucho Marx, I would, you know, I would never blonde to any. I would never blog to any club that would have me as a member, you know.

Dean: Right. Well, you better watch out, because you may start getting death threats from your association.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And I'm even purer than you are. I'm making a. In the sense that I don't use social media at all. I'm not. I'm not part of social media, and I don't really want to be famous and. Or well known. In a

Dean: broad.

Dan: Yeah, in a broad sense. No. I'm a narrow caster. And you are, too.

Dean: Yes. Entrepreneurs. That's our people.

Dan: Target.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Target casters.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah, that's something.

Dan: Yeah. It's very, very interesting because it. It plays in all parts of the world. You know, I think that there's things like culture and society and politics and economics that they move from communication forum to communication forum. So I think that politics is a constant to human life, you know, and it was true when they only had speech. It was true when they had speech and writing. When they had speech writing and printing. And I'm sure it's the same as they have speech, writing, printing, and digital. Politics is a constant, you know.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And other things, you know, who's famous and who's popular and everything else. I'm sure those all existed going back to, you know, to the year zero, year one of humanity. But they take. They change different forms, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: I mean, it's just.

Dan: And I think, you know, the guy who I think is really the pioneer in this is Trump. I think Trump is showing how politics is done in the digital world. And I think that he really got on very quick and I think it's his experience with reality TV that got him onto this and he understood. So, for example, he let out that, you know, the election may have to be delayed this year and he says because of the mail in voting. Mail in voting? Well, it was front headline everywhere for the last five days. Five days. And they, and you know, even the Republicans were saying, we can't do that. It's a federal law when you can't move the president, can't move the election and everything like that. But you know what all the media were talking about for the last five days?

Dean: Mail in voting.

Dan: Trump.

Dean: Yes, of course.

Dan: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. They weren't talking about the guy in the basement.

Dean: That's true. Yeah. He definitely does keep them engaged about him with, you know, and it's.

Dan: No, he just understands that you just suck the oxygen.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And I think that's a, that's a Cloudlandia understanding of how the world works. Name recognition.

Dean: Yes. And you know, the interesting thing now is. Yeah. I wonder, you know, I think there's going to be wide open stuff for the first candidate to embrace. Zoom. Or virtual, you know, virtual town halls or virtual gatherings, you know.

Dan: Well, Trump did a rally with 300,000 four weeks ago and he raised $2 million in three hours.

Dean: Oh, really? Okay. In, in, in Cloudlandia.

Dan: In. Yeah, it was virtual.

Dean: I did.

Dan: It wasn't that Mount Rush. It wasn't that Mount Rushmore.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah. And I think he's learned. Do the rallies. Do the rallies in Cloudlandia. And you get 3 or 400,000 and they each had to pay like $15, $20 or whatever, right?

Dean: Oh, that's right.

Dan: And he instant. Instantly raised 20. 20 million is the greatest fundraiser in history.

Dean: That's perfect. Do you remember when Ross Perot was running for president and he bought Main Time Prime Time television to broadcast his messages? I thought, there's a great draft. Yes. It was so great.

Dan: You know what? You know what? That great sucking sound is that all of our jobs going to Mexico. That was all of our jobs.

Dean: He was the best. It was so great. Nobody had ever done that.

Dan: Bill Clinton should kiss him because he's the reason. Bill Clinton.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Right.

Dean: I think you're right. Absolutely.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And it's Right, it's really funny. Yeah. But he was, you know, and he got 20 in the 92 election. He got 21% of the vote. You know. Yeah. You know, actually he's a predecessor of Donald Trump, because it was a populist. And you know, it's, it's a very, very interesting. It does change politics, you know. I mean. Yeah, yeah, you can, you can see the, the difference. But I was talking about the creative destruction. I, I happen to mention that term. Joseph, Joseph Schumpeter. And, and one of the things is the importance of big inner cities is disappearing.

Dean: Mm. Well, for sure it is. Yeah. Because it's not gonna.

Dan: And maybe that's why they're burning them down. Mm. I'm not saying they're burning them down because they understand the theme that we're talking about, but the importance of them has gotten so low that burning them down, you know, would have been treated differently 30 years ago or 50 years ago than it is right now.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: And so, you know, you can see. Well, nobody wants to defend them.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And maybe they were talking about, you know, all the lockdowns that, you know, like a huge number in the hundreds of thousands of people who would ordinarily come into New York City aren't going to come back. You know, they're just not going to come back because they've learned how to work from home. They don't have to make the commute into New York. And I think that's true for a lot of, A lot of places. They don't have to make the commute down. And we were, we're just been judging the response that we got from our first quarters. Workshops, Workshops, Workshops. And people said, we're very, we're very positively surprised at how well this works. That's.

Dean: I think they're really.

Dan: If I could put a sentence that sums up what the experience has been is that we're very positively surprised by how a zoom workshop really works.

Dean: Yeah. I've heard again and again people said I may never get on a plane again. I mean, it's the truth, right? That, that's, it's that good.

Dan: It tells you two things, that it was not a pleasant experience getting on a plane.

Dean: No, that's the truth. I was in my. You know, I think this sort of. If we look at everything that's culminated right now, if we said in 2020, like everything we said about that, you know, audio has audio and text and video and streaming, like broadcast video and two way broadcast video has reached its, like, maturity now at 2020. Full, full capabilities. If we stack it all up in

Dan: 2020, anyone who wants to have it can have it.

Dean: Yes. And I thought about, I'm looking backwards now and I'm thinking, when was the last time that any innovation like that, where if you think, okay, we got radio, I mean, print, the printing press, newspapers and magazines and stuff were at the turn of the century, you know, in the 1800s anyway. They were certainly coming on radio later than moving pictures. But I would say that by 1950, with broadcast television, everything kind of like stacked up there. You could have, you know, printing at scale, radio at scale, television broadcasting. All of that set up at 1950. And am I missing any other innovation rather than just the broader distribution of those things until the Internet?

Dan: Yeah. Well, I think the. The outermost car and the interstate highway system that you could drive. You could drive anywhere.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: That happened at the same time. So national television and the interstate highway system came in at the same time.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then all the, you know, enterprises, motels, restaurants, everything that went along with the interstate highway system. Yeah.

Dean: But it really had a good long. A good long run then of just innovation within those platforms.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Right. Like television got broader and broader and cable and all the. The stuff. Until probably. Until when the VCR came out and you could actually record and you didn't have to be there at the right. You know, you can watch things asynchronously. That really changed. That really changed things.

Dan: Yeah. I think from a consumer standpoint, it was probably the 50s, was a culmination.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then you jump to probably the turn of the century. Yes. 2000, when you said, I gotta get interested in the Internet here.

Dean: Yeah. Is. I think if I was saying in. In 1948, it would have been the. What are you gonna do about television and radio and that. Right. It's the same kind of thing. So I'm wondering now if this is. We're entering a phase of. With no. Sort of like, we. Of course, you can't anticipate what the new thing is going to be, but we are certainly at the point of the top of the curve for the main things. Right. We were talking about the. So now I really think that this is where the creativity of these things is now going to. The innovation is going to be in the use of these things.

Dan: The. The content of these things at a consumer level.

Dean: Yes. Huh. Because everybody has access to find that audience, you know.

Dan: Yeah. And it's kind of interesting is that the Cloudlandia actually reinforces.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: The importance of a crucial thing from mainland.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And that's home. You like being home.

Dean: I do like being home.

Dan: I like being home. I like being home. Yeah. It was so funny because last week, while we were up in cottage country we went out with Bruce. Bruce Green and Shannon Waller to a favorite. It's the only good restaurant to go to in our area, and it's called Rhubarb. And they were open, you know, and, you know, tables for their part, but not, not. Not noticeably. And, you know, the waitresses had face masks done and. Yes, everything else. And it was the first time that I had been to a restaurant since very early. Might have been the first week of March. First week of March. So the first one. And I felt like a dog who's never been let inside was let inside. And I said, I just won't draw any attention to myself. I won't draw attention.

Dean: Right, right, right, right, right.

Dan: I like it here, I hope.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I hope they don't throw me out. But it was like. Like five months. It was.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, virtually five months I hadn't been to a restaurant, and I felt, is it okay? Is it okay? Oh, man, is it legal?

Dean: I think about that.

Dan: I'm.

Dean: I'm missing our table 10.

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: I mean, that's. Yeah.

Dan: I'm going to have to check. We were going to go up for three days to the Cottage next weekend, but we've decided not to. I'm going to check if Jacques is open because all Toronto restaurants could open up. My. I walked past the Jacques and they were still closed, so I think they're probably holding off to.

Dean: Well, they're normally closed for July anyway.

Dan: July. And first week, they've been going until August, so we'll see if they come back for Labor Day. But, yeah, I just walked around to see what was open and what wasn't open. Nespresso was open and Starbucks was open and a few other things were open, and Sassafras was open. All the patios that, you know, that, you know from Nervosa. Nervosa was open. Yeah. And the Hazleton's been open now for the patio for about two weeks. Two, three.

Dean: They've done a big renovation in there, I'm sure. Yeah.

Dan: Well, if they didn't, they're foolish. They were given time to do that. Yep, yep. Yeah. So it's. It's very. It's very, very fascinating. And it points to the fact that preparation that you and I have done over the past several decades has made this a positive thing for us.

Dean: Yes. I mean, it's. So. Yeah, I agree. I look at where the. What I've been thinking about is the, you know, the amount of. The amount of content that is created and digitized or archived or available compared to the new constant appetite for new stuff as well. The one constraint that we have is our ability to consume it. You know, that's really the. That's the one thing. And I'm always aware of that. Of what's the. Trying to rectify that. Where does that go? You know?

Dan: Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing being a simplifier. Both.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Is that the vast majority of it is of no. No importance to me. I mean, I'm only looking for certain things I'm not looking for. You know, it's not like everything.

Dean: And you're not even looking, though. That's the thing about. Because we've talked about curation and for you, it's not about what you're looking for, it's about what you find that you weren't looking for. That's where the. That's the thing.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And you know, so my. My sense is that my life is not any more complicated in Cloudlandia than it was.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Actually, it's less so because it's. The decision making in Cloudlandia is a lot easier. Not interested. Not interested in everything else in the mainland that still requires the laws of gravity.

Dean: Yes. Now you make daily treks into Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yeah, about two or three hours.

Dean: About two or three hours. And do you have any sort of way that you go about that? Is there a method to finding what you're not looking for that you put yourself in?

Dan: Yeah, well, I have one main curator that I use and that's a site out of Chicago called Real Clear. Okay. And Real Clear has grown over the years. It used to be Real Clear Politics, and they've added other dimensions like health and science, technology and history and publishing.

Dean: So that's your portal into Cloud.

Dan: Yeah. And they're an aggregator and all they do every day they have a staff that goes through all the magazines, all the newspapers. Yeah. Probably TV stations in the world. And they just will create a link that this is of interest and then they'll headline for you. And so they actually. It's not present on their site. It's just a link they have. And every day it changes. And all the competition probably in the publishing world now and then the broadcast world, is to get on Real Clear. So for example, the New York Times, which dominated the newspaper world, that and a few other, you know, publications, they have to strive mightily to get one of their headlines from their whole edition for the day. If they can get one headline on Real Clear, that's probably a win for them.

Dean: I Gotcha.

Dan: But, but they don't pay. They don't pay Real Clear anything for that. Real Clear has its own advertising. You know, it's got ads on it. Yes, they do that. But to be on Real Clear means that you probably just got a couple hundred thousand more readers for that, for that day. And, and so that's where I go first. And I just see anything interesting and I'll scan. I'm very interested in energy. So they have a dimension called energy. Because I think energy is really the key.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The key to cos landing is electricity, you know, and so it's very, very important. And that, that means that solar and wind are kaputs because we're going to use every bit of energy we have every day in the world. And we're looking for the fastest, easiest, most productive energy. And that happens to fall in the category of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels produce the most intense energy. You get more bang out of the buck with fossil fuels. So all the notion of alternative fuels, unless nuclear comes back in a big way or that they find some new energy source that's completely different. But it won't be wind and it won't be wind and solar. So that's interesting to me. And they're despairing. You can see people who thought that that was an alternative was, you know, that's gone. They've been hijacked, they've been blindsided by, by his.

Dean: Yeah, Michael Moore said a good documentary about that, actually.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a lot of money. I mean, that's. That, that was an industry to get money from government. An industry to get money from foundations and money.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And industry. It wasn't about energy, it was about money. And they got a lot of money from, from, from people. And so that's. That's really interesting. So I look at. And then I'll notice that there are certain other publications that will show up on a frequent basis and then I'll have them on my. What's the section that Apple has the favorites at the top? I have about 12, 12 of them that I go to.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah. Bookmarks. If anybody studied me, studied what I go to frequently, they would cancel me. Huh?

Dean: Cancel the.

Dan: Cancel the. Cancel culture would. Yes, they would cancel me. But since, since it plays no part of my future, I. I don't really care.

Dean: Right. And how do you know you found something that you weren't looking for? Like when you. Do you go. Do you then go down? Does that open up a whole like, research thing that you Start looking into.

Dan: No, no, I mean, I just, I'll. I'll. I'll copy the link, you know.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Favorite article or something like that, and then I have them and I look at it. But it's. I'm sure there's a central logic operating somewhere in my thinking that this is important for my, you know, and my big one is really the free zone. And when I'm 100 years old, anything that relates to the free zone when I'm 100, you know, the 15 trillion dollar free zone, anything that sort of resonates with that, I. Yeah, copy, you know, so I'm just sorting through, sorting through. I'm like a grizzly at a. At an endless salmon run, you know.

Dean: All right.

Dan: I'm not interested in every salmon.

Dean: Right.

Dan: That looks like a good one. I'll pop it up on the shore.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Later.

Dean: Yeah, I gotcha. That's. Well, I do something similar. I mean, I go. You have got the sites that I go and look at, but I'm constantly on a loop. Like I'll look at a Drudge Report and Harvard Business Review and.

Dan: And

Dean: I've just added Toronto Life into my thing to see what's going on.

Dan: Yeah, because you're not. Because I miss it.

Dean: I miss it. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Well, there hasn't been much going on for the last.

Dean: Right, Exactly.

Dan: There was a. There was a big political scandal that over the last month. I don't know if you saw that.

Dean: I heard something about the. We.

Dan: Yeah, those guys are toast. I'll tell you. They. They canceled. Yeah, it's really bad because it. It involves the Prime Minister and his family. Oh, boy. It looks like there was a connection and, you know, it doesn't do you any good. I have to tell you, if you're a private citizen, that never does you any good. Be connects with politicians. Right? Yeah. Because you'll be caught in the crossfire. And two Kilburger brothers just got. And now it looks like it's very, very complicated. You know, Nick Nanton just did a.

Dean: I just saw that. That's why I know about them. Yeah, that's why I wonder what.

Dan: So I sent him a note with about four articles and I said, I expect that this is an occasional occupational hazard for you to, you know, that you'll cover somebody who turns out you might not want to cover. And Nick wrote right back and he said, yeah, I'm very aware of it. And we have. Nice thing he says about editing. You can edit, you can edit in and you can edit out.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And everything like that, you know, but they, they had a good scheme going, but I think that they're like six or seven major corporations just instantly canceled their sponsorship and everything like that.

Dean: Oh, man. Wow.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So you, you know, it's two edged sword.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Political connections. It's a two edged sword. And, and the media has a lot of time on their hands right now. So they all.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the whole thing is the swarming of it. Everybody knows very quickly where to go, but. But we also forget very quickly too.

Dan: But that was the big deal that happened in the last three months. That's four months in Canada. Canada is a country without news for the most part.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's. Yeah. But your proximity to news is very close. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: That's funny. So, yeah, I mean, we all have a logic, you know, our eyes only see in our ears, only hear what our brain is looking for.

Dean: Well, yeah, I know when I've seen it. I know when I've seen it because I remember the first time, this was several years ago and I may have mentioned it to you about the ghost restaurants, kitchens, that, that was where that first came on my thing where it was really this underground thing that people were discovering. Hey, wait a minute, there's no restaurant here. And it was really this kind of like low key underground kind of thing. And now look where that has almost exclusively the way now, you know.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's certainly its own dimension that can, you know, compete with a. You know, and probably half the restaurants in Toronto will. If they reappear. They'll reappear under new ownership or something when they come back because. Yeah, they've gotten wiped out.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And. And most of them weren't worth going to anyway, so.

Dean: Right, right, right, right, right. I get it.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's interesting, but it is a great shift. I mean, there's no question about it that this five months, it's almost to the day. Five months that we've been through is a great historic shift. And, you know, everything will be affected, good or bad, by what happens.

Dean: Yeah. I'm going to focus on the good and be an accelerator.

Dan: Yep.

Dean: Simplify to accelerate.

Dan: Well, we're here. Here we are again. That was an hour well spent.

Dean: It really was. I will be here next time.

Dan: I will too. So I wasn't going to be. But now I am going to be perfect.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Next. Next Sunday I'll be here. And I'll be here for the following Sunday too.

Dean: Me too. Perfect.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Okay, Dan, I'll talk to you more than ever.

Dan: We know where we can find each other.

Dean: That's exactly right. There he is.

Dan: Okay.

Dean: Bye.

Dan: Bye.