Monologue: The Tech I Actually Like

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. YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. You can also order a limited-edition Better Offline hat until 5/22/25! https://cottonbureau.com/p/CAGDW8/hat/better-offline-hat#/28510205/hat-unisex-dad-hat-black-100percent-cotton-adjustable Sasmsung 49” Odyssey OLED G9 https://amzn.to/3Gg5Qvb Ascrono Macbook Dock https://amzn.to/3YHfSeO Anker Nano Power Bank (10k mAh, USB-C Cable) https://amzn.to/44zjC5R Anker 165W USBC battery with retractable cable: https://amzn.to/445Dwpa Anker 250W GaN Prime Charger: https://amzn.to/42QOEVH Anker MagGo 3-in-1 Charger: https://amzn.to/3YK26bt Macbook Pro 16”: https://amzn.to/42HtiJc Apple Watch Series 10: https://amzn.to/43XQ3uF Apple Airpods Max: https://amzn.to/4cLb12n Airpods Pro 2: https://amzn.to/3Er5SQd Moonlander ZSA: https://www.zsa.io/moonlander Apple Magic Trackpad: https://amzn.to/3GhYPtw Pakt 25L Duffel: https://paktbags.com/products/25l-travel-duffel Tonal: tonal.com --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Call Zone Media.

• 0:40Ed Zitron?

  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 Zitron.

• 0:52Ed Zitron?

  Better Offline.

• 0:55Ed Zitron?

  That's right, you're listening to this week's monologue. And you may wonder why I'm saying award-winning, but that's because we won the goddamn Webby for Best Episode in the Business category. We are 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 22nd, we're selling a limited edition hat. It's all really good stuff. The links are in the episode notes. Buy 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, dyspraxia if you're curious, severe ADHD, and a good amount of social anxiety in the past, well,

• 1:41Ed Zitron?

  allowed 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 handwriting, 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 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 it, finds 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 optimise for convenience and as little thought as possible because I'm a huge baby and I need everything to be easy.

• 2:25Ed Zitron?

  I do not have any financial relationships with any of these companies. I have in some cases given them a great deal of my own money. Unless I specify otherwise, everything I've mentioned or linked to something I've bought with my own money far in advance of recording this. So, at my desk, I use this insufferable keyboard, a split keyboard called the Moonlander ZSA, and it lets me type and feel like I'm plugged into the mainframe. You've got your two hands separate. It's good for the wrist because you're not moving them around. And I've got an Apple Magic Trackpad along with a giant 49-inch Samsung OLED. It's a G9 connected to this thing called a Scrono dock where I just slide my MacBook Pro 16-inch in. Your mileage may vary, but I really like it when I travel between New York and Vegas to just be able to slot the thing in and have the same setup. It works. It works really well.

• 3:08Ed Zitron?

  And like I've said, I'm a huge baby, so if it didn't, I'd 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 their chargers and batteries. GaN lets you put way more power in the much smaller profile, meaning that you can now get chargers that are dramatically smaller that can fast charge your iPhone or your iPad or even your MacBook Pro. The reason I like Anchor's 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 across me on the street, I probably have one of their fast-charging USB-C batteries in my pocket, mostly because it can fast charge either my iPhone or my iPad. They also just released this giant 165-watt powerbank with two cables. I'm lusting for it. I want it so badly, but I cannot justify it.

• 3:51Ed Zitron?

  I already 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 extra shit around, so this works very well for me. I also use an Anchor Prime charger when I'm travelling. It's got the ports to power all my stuff, including my MacBook, along with a MagGo wireless charging station, which is kind of a little fold-up thing, charges your AirPods Pro, your Apple Watch and your phone via MagSafe. It'll just kind of works, which is kind of the theme of everything. And for those curious, I also really like the AirPods Max. They sound great. They're way too expensive. They're like 500 bucks, but they sound lovely and they fit these giant goddamn ears I've got. Some of you have said, "I'm an Apple fanboy. I'm an Apple fanboy in the past and I'm real..."

• 4:34Ed Zitron?

  What I really am is a sucker for stuff that all works together and I realise I am being monopolised. You do not need to tell me, I know. And I've also really, I will say it again, Apple's App Store is horrifying. I believe that they are responsible for fuelling truly evil industries. Anyway, though it's not tech per se, I really need to tell you about the Pac 25 L travel duffel. I think it might mean liter, I don't know. It's where I put all my crap when I'm travelling. It fits underneath the seat 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. I was, I've gone through like five different other bags to find this one. And I can throw my Prime charger in, my MacBook, my iPad, my clothes, medicines, all sorts of crap and it all fits in.

• 5:18Ed Zitron?

  And it opens at 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 without worrying about anything dying, probably two days, honestly. And I've got this little bag of cables and extra batteries 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 can be moved around to fit different exercises. It's hard to explain, but I advise you to go to the website. So if you want to do bench press, you put the arms down, you've got on the bench, and you push up with the cables.

• 6:02Ed Zitron?

  It works really well and it uses magnetic resistance to create up to 125 pounds of weight 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 your form using the built-in camera, give you feedback and actually count your reps, which I love because again, huge baby, don't like writing 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 $4,000 before tax and requires a great deal of space around it, but it's possibly my favorite piece of tech ever made. It just works. I dropped from £240 to £165 since the show began, gaining real muscle

• 6:45Ed Zitron?

  definition and physical strength. And since getting Tonal in 2021, I realise that's much longer, I've done hundreds of workouts. Look, I'm a simpleton and thus having something count my reps and tell me exactly what to do is extremely effective. And Tonal 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 press, it starts by your chest and you push up and then when, 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'll also say the form correction works and the workouts are varied in equivalent to working out with real iron. It's got barbells, it's got dumbbell 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

• 7:29Ed Zitron?

  paid for it. And Tonal is worth it if you're gonna use it, like any gym membership, except unlike any gym membership, you have a bloody thing nailed to your wall if you don't use it. Don't get this if you're not gonna 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 2, 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 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 exercises 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

• 8:12Ed Zitron?

  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 curious or those who aren't but want to get pissed off at me, I work out about three to five times a week, either lifting on Tonal or doing my cardio days, which include Peloton's yoga classes, another one of my favorite tech products, FightCamp, which puts, you've got putts trackers in the wraps. And yeah, they've got great classes, shout out to Coach PJ. I love FightCamp, I really do. And I love boxing as well. If you've ever wanted a cardio exercise that just feels perfect, really boxing is it. You're probably throwing a punch wrong, I certainly was. Like, smiling as I read this bit. But this was-

• 8:55Ed Zitron?

  This was a large part of how I changed my view of fitness from this kind of punishment, a kind of a penance for the sin of sloth, for feeling 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 sounds very dramatic. Who gives a shit? It's a, it's a monologue. Come on, 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 progress. Sure, but it gives me a body of work and the connected fitness aspect,

• 9:39Ed Zitron?

  let me do it alone, which helped my social anxiety and going to the gym. Now I'm extremely social and I'm very confident in who I am. And I think a lot of that came from this, came from the fitness side. If you ever want to talk about this, my email is [email protected], that's [email protected]. 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 connected fitness aspect was this thing that I truly love the most about technology. It's 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,

• 10:20Ed Zitron?

  and we, along with a few friends, Tatyana, Caleb, 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 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 call Ben my friend and had the internet 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, but he works in tech. It just so happened that we had a mutual interest. This is, this is the reason I log on to the internet.

• 11:03Ed Zitron?

  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 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 Sky 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 complaints is the sense that I know what technology has done and will do for me, and a frustration that there are those who would interfere with that process as much as possible for profit, or growth, I guess.

• 11:46Ed Zitron?

  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. 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, what I'm feeling, and vice versa. And for that, 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

• 12:30Ed Zitron?

  with or exploit it. True cynicism doesn't come from a place of emptiness. It comes from a determination to defend that which makes us feel whole. Thank you for listening. And again, by the way, thank you for voting for me in the Webby's. It fucking rocks me one.

• 12:46Ed Zitron?

  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 back that says all of these things again, but thank you to Matt Asowski, Robert Evans, Sophie Lichtman, Ava Warander, Daniel Goodman, Ian Johnson, and everyone who works on this show. You've been extraordinarily 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.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Wait, I came in for two things. How is this $47? All right, we're gonna need a plan here.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  Just start simple with Bank of America Advantage Safe Balance Banking. No overdraft ATM fees, no monthly maintenance fee if you're under 25.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Oh, that's actually really simple.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Safe Balance Banking, one less thing to figure out. Learn more at BofA.com/simplbanking. Terms and conditions apply. Bank of America and a member FDIC.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 14:35Speaker 06

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 15:18Speaker 06

  This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis. Games on a break? Instead of doom scrolling, try Rips on Underdog. Rip.

• 15:26Speaker 07

  Real player cards worth real money right there in the app. It's instant cash in the palm of your hand. Buy a digital pack, rip it open on your phone and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, Pokemon, yes, Pokemon, and more. The best part, packs start at just $5. And if you pull something you don't want to let go of just yet, have it shipped straight to your door. Want the cash? Sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. No listing, no negotiating, no stranger asking if you'll trade it for a used jet ski, even though jet skis are super sick. Best part, there are some serious grails in the mix, with maximum card values reaching up to $125,000 depending on your pack tier. You can also check the live odds and see what you could pull before you rip,

• 16:11Speaker 07

  and what other cards are being pulled by fans. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Get five free rips packs when you deposit $5. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus. Terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.