app01 Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:07:54 +0000 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Topic Lords https://topiclords.com Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:15:05 -0700 Every week, Jim invites different friends to guest on Topic Lords and be excited about whatever they've been fixated on this week. en-us © 2026 Jim Stormdancer episodic The only place on the internet you can hear topics discussed! Jim Stormdancer Every week, Jim invites different friends to guest on Topic Lords and be excited about whatever they've been fixated on this week. true Jim Stormdancer jim@goombas.org yes Support the show! 352. The Dim Sum Moose https://topiclords.com/the-dim-sum-moose 8d45c1ec-3020-4649-bced-da25dd3279e1 Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss trying to explain ghosts to a 3 year old, antler memories, summer homework, and Otzi Awake, by Max Lavergne 1:03:50 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer and other Drop 7 shows.
  • What real Topic Heads know.
  • California Extreme, the pinball and arcade machine expo.
  • Getting in on the ground floor to become the only place where topics are discussed.
  • Dropping soup cans into a jacuzzi to record the Frog Fractions splash noises.
  • Dropping the Frog Fractions lore.
  • Releasing art and watching people get it in the way you wanted them to get it.
  • Seeing the Human from Frog Fractions in real life and wondering "where do I know this human from?"
  • A pin-up calendar where you draw your own pin-up each month.
  • Conveying the concept of a ghost to a three year old.
  • Whether it's okay to tell the truth to a small child
  • Realizing that the three-year old only knows about fantasy skeletons and explaining that actually, skeletons are inside of us.
  • A two-minute soliloquy about where mama owls come from.
  • Doing your best not to adopt a child's adorable mispronunciation of restaurant.
  • Hearing Dust in the Wind in a car commercial and being like "That's my dad's guitar song! That's the song my dad plays on guitar!"
  • Accepting that you are responsible for shaping this child into a good, healthy adult human, but also, wouldn't it be funny if...
  • Training your child to ask for "hot guys on Instagram" when she wants to look at pictures of unicorns and waterslides.
  • Finding and ankylosaurus in the bedsheets.
  • The age at which children develop a sense of fear.
  • An entire song about not being afraid of ghosts and also how to bust them.
  • One of the major delights of being around a child.
  • Big bones sticking out of your head for a few months until they fall off.
  • A New Fork in the Antlers.
  • Whether it's advantageous to have more complicated antlers.
  • Growing antlers in the lab.
  • Owning a bunch of deer and collecting and labeling all their antlers.
  • Telling the bone cancer what to do.
  • Watching a moose shake its head and the antlers just pop right off.
  • A moose dropping antlers to distract a predator.
  • Trying to get on a plane with your new antler growth.
  • Eating enough calcium to do all the antler growing you need to do.
  • Scoring deer by counting the antler points.
  • Moose lifespan.
  • Seasonal Antler Disorder.
  • The Dim Sum moose with one dumpling on every point of its antlers.
  • Your 2nd grade teacher calling you up to assign you math homework to do on your honeymoon.
  • Homework: what is it for?
  • Homework as anti-union training.
  • Striving to care less about your job.
  • An after-school program that helps kids finish their homework by having an adult just do all the homework, like the parents would if they had the time.
  • The cat on Jim's head.
  • Finally hearing about a behavioral problem from your kid's teacher, that he likes reading too much.
  • Doing the social norms because you are in a group who is all doing the social norms.
  • Otzi the Preserved Carcass.
  • A pretty dang old guy.
  • An ice-age man with almost as many tattoos as a modern teenager.
  • Gen X Cuspers.
  • The earliest known human with Lyme disease.
  • Wanting to make a gutstring bow but there are no guts around.
  • What being any celebrity is like.
  • What percentage of humans are related to Otzi the Ice Man.
  • Being chased through the alps by people who want to kill you with arrows and the next thing you know scientists are rummaging through your stomach contents.
  • An ancient form of Grindr.
  • How old does a corpse need to be before you can buy and sell it?
  • How lost does a corpse need to be before you can find it?
  • Which natural laxatives the ice man used.
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer and other Drop 7 shows.
  • What real Topic Heads know.
  • California Extreme, the pinball and arcade machine expo.
  • Getting in on the ground floor to become the only place where topics are discussed.
  • Dropping soup cans into a jacuzzi to record the Frog Fractions splash noises.
  • Dropping the Frog Fractions lore.
  • Releasing art and watching people get it in the way you wanted them to get it.
  • Seeing the Human from Frog Fractions in real life and wondering "where do I know this human from?"
  • A pin-up calendar where you draw your own pin-up each month.
  • Conveying the concept of a ghost to a three year old.
  • Whether it's okay to tell the truth to a small child
  • Realizing that the three-year old only knows about fantasy skeletons and explaining that actually, skeletons are inside of us.
  • A two-minute soliloquy about where mama owls come from.
  • Doing your best not to adopt a child's adorable mispronunciation of restaurant.
  • Hearing Dust in the Wind in a car commercial and being like "That's my dad's guitar song! That's the song my dad plays on guitar!"
  • Accepting that you are responsible for shaping this child into a good, healthy adult human, but also, wouldn't it be funny if...
  • Training your child to ask for "hot guys on Instagram" when she wants to look at pictures of unicorns and waterslides.
  • Finding and ankylosaurus in the bedsheets.
  • The age at which children develop a sense of fear.
  • An entire song about not being afraid of ghosts and also how to bust them.
  • One of the major delights of being around a child.
  • Big bones sticking out of your head for a few months until they fall off.
  • A New Fork in the Antlers.
  • Whether it's advantageous to have more complicated antlers.
  • Growing antlers in the lab.
  • Owning a bunch of deer and collecting and labeling all their antlers.
  • Telling the bone cancer what to do.
  • Watching a moose shake its head and the antlers just pop right off.
  • A moose dropping antlers to distract a predator.
  • Trying to get on a plane with your new antler growth.
  • Eating enough calcium to do all the antler growing you need to do.
  • Scoring deer by counting the antler points.
  • Moose lifespan.
  • Seasonal Antler Disorder.
  • The Dim Sum moose with one dumpling on every point of its antlers.
  • Your 2nd grade teacher calling you up to assign you math homework to do on your honeymoon.
  • Homework: what is it for?
  • Homework as anti-union training.
  • Striving to care less about your job.
  • An after-school program that helps kids finish their homework by having an adult just do all the homework, like the parents would if they had the time.
  • The cat on Jim's head.
  • Finally hearing about a behavioral problem from your kid's teacher, that he likes reading too much.
  • Doing the social norms because you are in a group who is all doing the social norms.
  • Otzi the Preserved Carcass.
  • A pretty dang old guy.
  • An ice-age man with almost as many tattoos as a modern teenager.
  • Gen X Cuspers.
  • The earliest known human with Lyme disease.
  • Wanting to make a gutstring bow but there are no guts around.
  • What being any celebrity is like.
  • What percentage of humans are related to Otzi the Ice Man.
  • Being chased through the alps by people who want to kill you with arrows and the next thing you know scientists are rummaging through your stomach contents.
  • An ancient form of Grindr.
  • How old does a corpse need to be before you can buy and sell it?
  • How lost does a corpse need to be before you can find it?
  • Which natural laxatives the ice man used.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer and other Drop 7 shows.
  • What real Topic Heads know.
  • California Extreme, the pinball and arcade machine expo.
  • Getting in on the ground floor to become the only place where topics are discussed.
  • Dropping soup cans into a jacuzzi to record the Frog Fractions splash noises.
  • Dropping the Frog Fractions lore.
  • Releasing art and watching people get it in the way you wanted them to get it.
  • Seeing the Human from Frog Fractions in real life and wondering "where do I know this human from?"
  • A pin-up calendar where you draw your own pin-up each month.
  • Conveying the concept of a ghost to a three year old.
  • Whether it's okay to tell the truth to a small child
  • Realizing that the three-year old only knows about fantasy skeletons and explaining that actually, skeletons are inside of us.
  • A two-minute soliloquy about where mama owls come from.
  • Doing your best not to adopt a child's adorable mispronunciation of restaurant.
  • Hearing Dust in the Wind in a car commercial and being like "That's my dad's guitar song! That's the song my dad plays on guitar!"
  • Accepting that you are responsible for shaping this child into a good, healthy adult human, but also, wouldn't it be funny if...
  • Training your child to ask for "hot guys on Instagram" when she wants to look at pictures of unicorns and waterslides.
  • Finding and ankylosaurus in the bedsheets.
  • The age at which children develop a sense of fear.
  • An entire song about not being afraid of ghosts and also how to bust them.
  • One of the major delights of being around a child.
  • Big bones sticking out of your head for a few months until they fall off.
  • A New Fork in the Antlers.
  • Whether it's advantageous to have more complicated antlers.
  • Growing antlers in the lab.
  • Owning a bunch of deer and collecting and labeling all their antlers.
  • Telling the bone cancer what to do.
  • Watching a moose shake its head and the antlers just pop right off.
  • A moose dropping antlers to distract a predator.
  • Trying to get on a plane with your new antler growth.
  • Eating enough calcium to do all the antler growing you need to do.
  • Scoring deer by counting the antler points.
  • Moose lifespan.
  • Seasonal Antler Disorder.
  • The Dim Sum moose with one dumpling on every point of its antlers.
  • Your 2nd grade teacher calling you up to assign you math homework to do on your honeymoon.
  • Homework: what is it for?
  • Homework as anti-union training.
  • Striving to care less about your job.
  • An after-school program that helps kids finish their homework by having an adult just do all the homework, like the parents would if they had the time.
  • The cat on Jim's head.
  • Finally hearing about a behavioral problem from your kid's teacher, that he likes reading too much.
  • Doing the social norms because you are in a group who is all doing the social norms.
  • Otzi the Preserved Carcass.
  • A pretty dang old guy.
  • An ice-age man with almost as many tattoos as a modern teenager.
  • Gen X Cuspers.
  • The earliest known human with Lyme disease.
  • Wanting to make a gutstring bow but there are no guts around.
  • What being any celebrity is like.
  • What percentage of humans are related to Otzi the Ice Man.
  • Being chased through the alps by people who want to kill you with arrows and the next thing you know scientists are rummaging through your stomach contents.
  • An ancient form of Grindr.
  • How old does a corpse need to be before you can buy and sell it?
  • How lost does a corpse need to be before you can find it?
  • Which natural laxatives the ice man used.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+94-Ggnhh ]]> Jim Stormdancer 351. The Flushable Soda Can https://topiclords.com/the-flushable-soda-can eb2d665a-1432-4afb-9f00-dd5954962a46 Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chall and RT-55J. We discuss Remembering the Dynowarz, hosting your own Instagram private server, why don't CPUs do analog arithmetic? and Leaves, by Ursula LeGuin 58:45 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • DogTroid, the first Metroid ROM hack to star a dog.
  • Self-finishing games.
  • Sparkling water: it's like water but a lot more interesting.
  • Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi.
  • What sodas foam the most in response to a mento.
  • Foam persistence.
  • Foaminess reactions of a mento on various vintagesn of Diet Coke.
  • Jolt Cola: all the sugar, twice the caffeine, three times the foam.
  • A can of soda that's safe to open in a bathroom stall.
  • Artisanal Coca Cola cans on Etsy that finally allow you to open a can of soda in a bathroom stall without anyone realizing you're drinking a Coke on the toilet.
  • Flushable soda cans: as flushable as a flushable wipe.
  • Why do toilets have pee traps when the pee deserves to be free?
  • The second worst game in your NES collection.
  • Desert Chrome title screens.
  • Playing as a little spaceman until you enter the dinosaur mech.
  • Shooting some alien brain or maybe a heart.
  • 8bitnintendo.science
  • How to pick what video games to buy in the late 1980s.
  • How Metroid improved on the maze-with-keys genre.
  • Nanosaur.
  • A velociraptor with a techno-backpack.
  • A game that is exhilarating and scary and endless when you're a child turning out to be a twenty minute trifle when you're an adult.
  • Trespasser (1998)
  • Simulation dinosaur emotions but you can't find a good balance so you just permanently lock them all to angry.
  • Installing a violent action game about dinosaurs in the elementary school computer lab because dinosaurs are technically educational.
  • Revisiting games that perplexed you as a child.
  • Playing bad video games because no matter how bad they are they're still better than going outside and talking to people.
  • The one where Kirby eats a car.
  • The Roblox-like games you can find by logging into third party Minecraft servers.
  • Starting your own Pixelfed server.
  • Following the only person you know on Mastodon.
  • Bluesky's recommendation algorithms recommendeding you nothing but bots.
  • Inventing Internet forums from first principles.
  • When your brain makes up garbage and you need a void to shove it into.
  • Doing your part to make AI worse.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Signing up for a social media site and looking around and realizing you doing know anyone here.
  • Mining and reposting.
  • The ongoing maintenance requirements of running a Mastodon server.
  • Ways you can interact with your family that only work if you have an iOS developer in the family.
  • Off-box SQL database backup.
  • Hypothetical IRC servers that support chat logs.
  • Hardware random number generation.
  • The pot of boiling water every Intel CPU draws thermal noise from for random number generation.
  • The most commonly used analog computers in 2026.
  • The market forces that led to semi-modular synthesizers being available for $300.
  • Using your analog CPU to run a million instances of Lunar Lander at once.
  • A rustic summer retreat ranch in the hills of Napa Valley, California.
  • What makes us perceive the gradient of identities over the course of someone's life as a single identity.
  • The most ephemeral thing possible.
  • Musing for a few sentences and then thinking "hmm, I could put some line breaks in here and then publish it."
  • Musing about the nature of identity, with line breaks.
  • Topic Slingers.
  • Topics: throw them around a lil bit. They love it. A lot of people don't know that.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • DogTroid, the first Metroid ROM hack to star a dog.
  • Self-finishing games.
  • Sparkling water: it's like water but a lot more interesting.
  • Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi.
  • What sodas foam the most in response to a mento.
  • Foam persistence.
  • Foaminess reactions of a mento on various vintagesn of Diet Coke.
  • Jolt Cola: all the sugar, twice the caffeine, three times the foam.
  • A can of soda that's safe to open in a bathroom stall.
  • Artisanal Coca Cola cans on Etsy that finally allow you to open a can of soda in a bathroom stall without anyone realizing you're drinking a Coke on the toilet.
  • Flushable soda cans: as flushable as a flushable wipe.
  • Why do toilets have pee traps when the pee deserves to be free?
  • The second worst game in your NES collection.
  • Desert Chrome title screens.
  • Playing as a little spaceman until you enter the dinosaur mech.
  • Shooting some alien brain or maybe a heart.
  • 8bitnintendo.science
  • How to pick what video games to buy in the late 1980s.
  • How Metroid improved on the maze-with-keys genre.
  • Nanosaur.
  • A velociraptor with a techno-backpack.
  • A game that is exhilarating and scary and endless when you're a child turning out to be a twenty minute trifle when you're an adult.
  • Trespasser (1998)
  • Simulation dinosaur emotions but you can't find a good balance so you just permanently lock them all to angry.
  • Installing a violent action game about dinosaurs in the elementary school computer lab because dinosaurs are technically educational.
  • Revisiting games that perplexed you as a child.
  • Playing bad video games because no matter how bad they are they're still better than going outside and talking to people.
  • The one where Kirby eats a car.
  • The Roblox-like games you can find by logging into third party Minecraft servers.
  • Starting your own Pixelfed server.
  • Following the only person you know on Mastodon.
  • Bluesky's recommendation algorithms recommendeding you nothing but bots.
  • Inventing Internet forums from first principles.
  • When your brain makes up garbage and you need a void to shove it into.
  • Doing your part to make AI worse.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Signing up for a social media site and looking around and realizing you doing know anyone here.
  • Mining and reposting.
  • The ongoing maintenance requirements of running a Mastodon server.
  • Ways you can interact with your family that only work if you have an iOS developer in the family.
  • Off-box SQL database backup.
  • Hypothetical IRC servers that support chat logs.
  • Hardware random number generation.
  • The pot of boiling water every Intel CPU draws thermal noise from for random number generation.
  • The most commonly used analog computers in 2026.
  • The market forces that led to semi-modular synthesizers being available for $300.
  • Using your analog CPU to run a million instances of Lunar Lander at once.
  • A rustic summer retreat ranch in the hills of Napa Valley, California.
  • What makes us perceive the gradient of identities over the course of someone's life as a single identity.
  • The most ephemeral thing possible.
  • Musing for a few sentences and then thinking "hmm, I could put some line breaks in here and then publish it."
  • Musing about the nature of identity, with line breaks.
  • Topic Slingers.
  • Topics: throw them around a lil bit. They love it. A lot of people don't know that.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • DogTroid, the first Metroid ROM hack to star a dog.
  • Self-finishing games.
  • Sparkling water: it's like water but a lot more interesting.
  • Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi.
  • What sodas foam the most in response to a mento.
  • Foam persistence.
  • Foaminess reactions of a mento on various vintagesn of Diet Coke.
  • Jolt Cola: all the sugar, twice the caffeine, three times the foam.
  • A can of soda that's safe to open in a bathroom stall.
  • Artisanal Coca Cola cans on Etsy that finally allow you to open a can of soda in a bathroom stall without anyone realizing you're drinking a Coke on the toilet.
  • Flushable soda cans: as flushable as a flushable wipe.
  • Why do toilets have pee traps when the pee deserves to be free?
  • The second worst game in your NES collection.
  • Desert Chrome title screens.
  • Playing as a little spaceman until you enter the dinosaur mech.
  • Shooting some alien brain or maybe a heart.
  • 8bitnintendo.science
  • How to pick what video games to buy in the late 1980s.
  • How Metroid improved on the maze-with-keys genre.
  • Nanosaur.
  • A velociraptor with a techno-backpack.
  • A game that is exhilarating and scary and endless when you're a child turning out to be a twenty minute trifle when you're an adult.
  • Trespasser (1998)
  • Simulation dinosaur emotions but you can't find a good balance so you just permanently lock them all to angry.
  • Installing a violent action game about dinosaurs in the elementary school computer lab because dinosaurs are technically educational.
  • Revisiting games that perplexed you as a child.
  • Playing bad video games because no matter how bad they are they're still better than going outside and talking to people.
  • The one where Kirby eats a car.
  • The Roblox-like games you can find by logging into third party Minecraft servers.
  • Starting your own Pixelfed server.
  • Following the only person you know on Mastodon.
  • Bluesky's recommendation algorithms recommendeding you nothing but bots.
  • Inventing Internet forums from first principles.
  • When your brain makes up garbage and you need a void to shove it into.
  • Doing your part to make AI worse.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Signing up for a social media site and looking around and realizing you doing know anyone here.
  • Mining and reposting.
  • The ongoing maintenance requirements of running a Mastodon server.
  • Ways you can interact with your family that only work if you have an iOS developer in the family.
  • Off-box SQL database backup.
  • Hypothetical IRC servers that support chat logs.
  • Hardware random number generation.
  • The pot of boiling water every Intel CPU draws thermal noise from for random number generation.
  • The most commonly used analog computers in 2026.
  • The market forces that led to semi-modular synthesizers being available for $300.
  • Using your analog CPU to run a million instances of Lunar Lander at once.
  • A rustic summer retreat ranch in the hills of Napa Valley, California.
  • What makes us perceive the gradient of identities over the course of someone's life as a single identity.
  • The most ephemeral thing possible.
  • Musing for a few sentences and then thinking "hmm, I could put some line breaks in here and then publish it."
  • Musing about the nature of identity, with line breaks.
  • Topic Slingers.
  • Topics: throw them around a lil bit. They love it. A lot of people don't know that.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+tmXJ0U0t ]]> Jim Stormdancer 350. Tropic Olds https://topiclords.com/tropic-olds d13117e5-ce13-4de3-84d8-de0be72e1322 Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Tyriq. We discuss Doctor Lips, Tropic Olds, Cold Sri Top, Scold It Pro, Clod I Sport, Pic Rod Lost, Disc or Plot, Doc Rip Slot, Stolid Crop, Lo, Cod Strip!, Cod Trip Sol, Corps Do Lit, Cold Pis Tor, and Clipt Roods. 59:51 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Doctor Lips
  • Tropic Olds
  • Cold Sri Top
  • Scold It Pro
  • Clod I Sport
  • Pic Rod Lost
  • Disc or Plot
  • Doc Rip Slot
  • Stolid Crop
  • Lo, Cod Strip!
  • Cod Trip Sol
  • Corps Do Lit
  • Cold Pis Tor
  • Clipt Roods

Microtopics:

  • Trying to make a joke out of your own name: it's impossible.
  • Listening to this episode first.
  • The ice: it's not gross. (At first.)
  • Reverse osmosis water.
  • Shipping a game and selling more than one copy.
  • Selling enough copies of your game to be in the black with Steam.
  • Repaying debts until you end up in the black, because once you go black you never go back.
  • Getting old and having creaky bones so you like being warmer.
  • Standing in a parking lot in a melancholy mood and looking at the sky.
  • The most genetically and financially successful people you know.
  • Finishing off your successfulness in the Retirement State.
  • Star Tropic Olds.
  • Muppet Geriatrics.
  • Everyone is born the baby of themselves.
  • Geriatric MacGyver training a new younger MacGyver.
  • MacGyver vs. O'Gyver.
  • Going to Target and buying the sriracha t-shirt to establish your allegiance in the sriracha wars.
  • The Hangover and the sequel, Baby Hangover.
  • Too Young or Too Homeschooled?
  • Bruh bruh bruh, pass the sri.
  • Microsoft naming their word processor Word even though there are other kinds of words.
  • Y'all It or It Al as the plural for It.
  • Putting the Skip It around your ankle.
  • Pushing the buttons you understand on a Simon. (Just the volume buttons.)
  • Games you are guaranteed to lose, and soon.
  • Different short term memories for different senses.
  • Dual N-Back.
  • Doing a single bicep curl and deciding that you understand exercise and you're done now.
  • Clod vs. Klutz.
  • The clumsiest people in the world in fierce competition.
  • Things you wish you were allowed to laugh at.
  • Things you're allowed to laugh at as long as you make a donation.
  • Optimizing your laughter to minimize the amount of money you have to put in the laugh jar.
  • Last One Laughing, taking the laughter out of comedy one pained grimace at a time.
  • Clods of peanut butter.
  • Earthen Peanut Butter.
  • Shaping peanut butter with your earth manipulation spell.
  • A device you can use like a dowsing rod to find dick pics in a room full of hard drives.
  • The scene where The Dude shades the notepad.
  • Proof that robots can get embarrassed.
  • Waiting to watch a movie until after you know every plot twist.
  • Everyone's favorite game show: Disc or Plot?
  • Innova Leopard.
  • Some sort of DJ equipment, for spinning records.
  • Disc Golf vs. Disk Golf.
  • Floppy Discs and Compact Disks.
  • Devices Carrying Sound.
  • A guy on Reddit with 8 upvotes.
  • Seeing 8 inch floppy disks in the back of someone's car.
  • Dr. Ripslot.
  • The most stolid vegetable. (Ronald Reagan.)
  • Doozers making their Doozer Sticks out of radishes.
  • Secret Fraggle Lore.
  • Mutualism between Doozers and Fraggles.
  • The most emotive crop.
  • Crop with a c, not with a k.
  • Saying "Lo!" all the time.
  • Thinking "betimes" frequently but never saying it out loud.
  • Always forgetting to use "whilst."
  • Whomst'd've.
  • Pregnancy antihistamines.
  • Different kinds of fake dartboards.
  • Under the thumb of Big Velcro.
  • Throwing fish sticks at the sun and missing.
  • Corps Du Lit, WI
  • Book clubs that only do books that are two or three words long.
  • Librarian: Tidy up the Arcane Library.
  • Relaxing by reshelving books.
  • Complimenting housework any time you see it happen.
  • Picking up trash from the ground and finding a place to throw it away and wishing someone would congratulate you.
  • Hansel and Gretel and Chancellor Stormdancer.
  • Tongue Root Harmony.
  • Paying attention to where your tongue is at all times.
  • What takes your cold piss away?
  • Trunk Kevin Crap, Look at That Low Flying Plane.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Doctor Lips
  • Tropic Olds
  • Cold Sri Top
  • Scold It Pro
  • Clod I Sport
  • Pic Rod Lost
  • Disc or Plot
  • Doc Rip Slot
  • Stolid Crop
  • Lo, Cod Strip!
  • Cod Trip Sol
  • Corps Do Lit
  • Cold Pis Tor
  • Clipt Roods

Microtopics:

  • Trying to make a joke out of your own name: it's impossible.
  • Listening to this episode first.
  • The ice: it's not gross. (At first.)
  • Reverse osmosis water.
  • Shipping a game and selling more than one copy.
  • Selling enough copies of your game to be in the black with Steam.
  • Repaying debts until you end up in the black, because once you go black you never go back.
  • Getting old and having creaky bones so you like being warmer.
  • Standing in a parking lot in a melancholy mood and looking at the sky.
  • The most genetically and financially successful people you know.
  • Finishing off your successfulness in the Retirement State.
  • Star Tropic Olds.
  • Muppet Geriatrics.
  • Everyone is born the baby of themselves.
  • Geriatric MacGyver training a new younger MacGyver.
  • MacGyver vs. O'Gyver.
  • Going to Target and buying the sriracha t-shirt to establish your allegiance in the sriracha wars.
  • The Hangover and the sequel, Baby Hangover.
  • Too Young or Too Homeschooled?
  • Bruh bruh bruh, pass the sri.
  • Microsoft naming their word processor Word even though there are other kinds of words.
  • Y'all It or It Al as the plural for It.
  • Putting the Skip It around your ankle.
  • Pushing the buttons you understand on a Simon. (Just the volume buttons.)
  • Games you are guaranteed to lose, and soon.
  • Different short term memories for different senses.
  • Dual N-Back.
  • Doing a single bicep curl and deciding that you understand exercise and you're done now.
  • Clod vs. Klutz.
  • The clumsiest people in the world in fierce competition.
  • Things you wish you were allowed to laugh at.
  • Things you're allowed to laugh at as long as you make a donation.
  • Optimizing your laughter to minimize the amount of money you have to put in the laugh jar.
  • Last One Laughing, taking the laughter out of comedy one pained grimace at a time.
  • Clods of peanut butter.
  • Earthen Peanut Butter.
  • Shaping peanut butter with your earth manipulation spell.
  • A device you can use like a dowsing rod to find dick pics in a room full of hard drives.
  • The scene where The Dude shades the notepad.
  • Proof that robots can get embarrassed.
  • Waiting to watch a movie until after you know every plot twist.
  • Everyone's favorite game show: Disc or Plot?
  • Innova Leopard.
  • Some sort of DJ equipment, for spinning records.
  • Disc Golf vs. Disk Golf.
  • Floppy Discs and Compact Disks.
  • Devices Carrying Sound.
  • A guy on Reddit with 8 upvotes.
  • Seeing 8 inch floppy disks in the back of someone's car.
  • Dr. Ripslot.
  • The most stolid vegetable. (Ronald Reagan.)
  • Doozers making their Doozer Sticks out of radishes.
  • Secret Fraggle Lore.
  • Mutualism between Doozers and Fraggles.
  • The most emotive crop.
  • Crop with a c, not with a k.
  • Saying "Lo!" all the time.
  • Thinking "betimes" frequently but never saying it out loud.
  • Always forgetting to use "whilst."
  • Whomst'd've.
  • Pregnancy antihistamines.
  • Different kinds of fake dartboards.
  • Under the thumb of Big Velcro.
  • Throwing fish sticks at the sun and missing.
  • Corps Du Lit, WI
  • Book clubs that only do books that are two or three words long.
  • Librarian: Tidy up the Arcane Library.
  • Relaxing by reshelving books.
  • Complimenting housework any time you see it happen.
  • Picking up trash from the ground and finding a place to throw it away and wishing someone would congratulate you.
  • Hansel and Gretel and Chancellor Stormdancer.
  • Tongue Root Harmony.
  • Paying attention to where your tongue is at all times.
  • What takes your cold piss away?
  • Trunk Kevin Crap, Look at That Low Flying Plane.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Doctor Lips
  • Tropic Olds
  • Cold Sri Top
  • Scold It Pro
  • Clod I Sport
  • Pic Rod Lost
  • Disc or Plot
  • Doc Rip Slot
  • Stolid Crop
  • Lo, Cod Strip!
  • Cod Trip Sol
  • Corps Do Lit
  • Cold Pis Tor
  • Clipt Roods

Microtopics:

  • Trying to make a joke out of your own name: it's impossible.
  • Listening to this episode first.
  • The ice: it's not gross. (At first.)
  • Reverse osmosis water.
  • Shipping a game and selling more than one copy.
  • Selling enough copies of your game to be in the black with Steam.
  • Repaying debts until you end up in the black, because once you go black you never go back.
  • Getting old and having creaky bones so you like being warmer.
  • Standing in a parking lot in a melancholy mood and looking at the sky.
  • The most genetically and financially successful people you know.
  • Finishing off your successfulness in the Retirement State.
  • Star Tropic Olds.
  • Muppet Geriatrics.
  • Everyone is born the baby of themselves.
  • Geriatric MacGyver training a new younger MacGyver.
  • MacGyver vs. O'Gyver.
  • Going to Target and buying the sriracha t-shirt to establish your allegiance in the sriracha wars.
  • The Hangover and the sequel, Baby Hangover.
  • Too Young or Too Homeschooled?
  • Bruh bruh bruh, pass the sri.
  • Microsoft naming their word processor Word even though there are other kinds of words.
  • Y'all It or It Al as the plural for It.
  • Putting the Skip It around your ankle.
  • Pushing the buttons you understand on a Simon. (Just the volume buttons.)
  • Games you are guaranteed to lose, and soon.
  • Different short term memories for different senses.
  • Dual N-Back.
  • Doing a single bicep curl and deciding that you understand exercise and you're done now.
  • Clod vs. Klutz.
  • The clumsiest people in the world in fierce competition.
  • Things you wish you were allowed to laugh at.
  • Things you're allowed to laugh at as long as you make a donation.
  • Optimizing your laughter to minimize the amount of money you have to put in the laugh jar.
  • Last One Laughing, taking the laughter out of comedy one pained grimace at a time.
  • Clods of peanut butter.
  • Earthen Peanut Butter.
  • Shaping peanut butter with your earth manipulation spell.
  • A device you can use like a dowsing rod to find dick pics in a room full of hard drives.
  • The scene where The Dude shades the notepad.
  • Proof that robots can get embarrassed.
  • Waiting to watch a movie until after you know every plot twist.
  • Everyone's favorite game show: Disc or Plot?
  • Innova Leopard.
  • Some sort of DJ equipment, for spinning records.
  • Disc Golf vs. Disk Golf.
  • Floppy Discs and Compact Disks.
  • Devices Carrying Sound.
  • A guy on Reddit with 8 upvotes.
  • Seeing 8 inch floppy disks in the back of someone's car.
  • Dr. Ripslot.
  • The most stolid vegetable. (Ronald Reagan.)
  • Doozers making their Doozer Sticks out of radishes.
  • Secret Fraggle Lore.
  • Mutualism between Doozers and Fraggles.
  • The most emotive crop.
  • Crop with a c, not with a k.
  • Saying "Lo!" all the time.
  • Thinking "betimes" frequently but never saying it out loud.
  • Always forgetting to use "whilst."
  • Whomst'd've.
  • Pregnancy antihistamines.
  • Different kinds of fake dartboards.
  • Under the thumb of Big Velcro.
  • Throwing fish sticks at the sun and missing.
  • Corps Du Lit, WI
  • Book clubs that only do books that are two or three words long.
  • Librarian: Tidy up the Arcane Library.
  • Relaxing by reshelving books.
  • Complimenting housework any time you see it happen.
  • Picking up trash from the ground and finding a place to throw it away and wishing someone would congratulate you.
  • Hansel and Gretel and Chancellor Stormdancer.
  • Tongue Root Harmony.
  • Paying attention to where your tongue is at all times.
  • What takes your cold piss away?
  • Trunk Kevin Crap, Look at That Low Flying Plane.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Za2SpEW2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 349. Life Finds a Way (To Scratch Its Nose) https://topiclords.com/life-finds-a-way-to-scratch-its-nose f69e721c-4583-457a-8f6c-52c288fcb41b Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Cort and Martin. We discuss what Thomas the Tank Engine does when he gets an itchy nose, the end of Destiny, Glittermitten Grove's undisclosed AI content, Iroha, adding bears to your threat model, and what you'd like to be entangled with 1:10:30 true Lords:

Topics:

  • What does Thomas The Tank Engine do when he gets an itchy nose?
  • The end of Destiny
  • Glittermitten Grove's undisclosed AI content
  • Iroha
  • I need to add bears to my threat model
  • What thing would you like to be entangled with?

Microtopics:

  • Setting arbitrary deadlines to get things done and taking them seriously.
  • Lord Walker.
  • Writing 20 songs in 12 hours.
  • Schrodinger's Cat Burglar.
  • A video game that everyone in the world will love.
  • Jimbo and the Jet Set.
  • Soulful butt-licking.
  • Do Fish Itch?
  • What twisted idiot god would make a fish itch.
  • The cosmology of Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • Itchy planes flying very close to a mountain so they can scratch their faces.
  • Whether trains can die in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe.
  • Trains trying to live up to human standards of beauty.
  • Pixar Cars needing eye surgery.
  • Destiny's Final Update.
  • Patrolling the moon in search of wizards.
  • T-shirts with the insignias of obscure PVP factions.
  • The logo of a football team that doesn't exist.
  • Destiny shipping as MusicPlayerDemo.exe.
  • Six people at the peak of their skill doing weird crap.
  • Extremely obscure, elaborate secrets in MMOs.
  • The CEO wanting to write a bunch of game lore so the developers have to find a place for him to put it
  • Deliberately burning yourself out on an MMO and then deleting it forever.
  • Vaulting Justifications.
  • Clarity of Biome.
  • Great ideas for a company that has infinite resources.
  • RuneScape Modern and RuneScape Classic.
  • Quitting WoW with your fiancee because you have a wedding to plan.
  • The additional fee Blizzard charges for hosting your wedding inside of World of Warcraft.
  • Fantasy heroin vs. Sci-Fi heroin.
  • Stephepoa, Jasquosius, Dovanice and Jixandlia.
  • Little dudes persisting between missions, if they survive.
  • Naming all the fish after your Kickstarter backers.
  • Doing all the same things the target your satirizing does, except you're doing them ironically.
  • Lemmings as a squad-based tactical war game.
  • A joyous approach to an anti-war message that makes war seem like a ton of fun.
  • Violating the Geneva Convention by putting the Red Cross in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • The video game that has committed the most real life war crimes.
  • Poems you can't look at.
  • Arriving today at the deep mountains of evanescent existence.
  • Perfect pangrams.
  • How they decided on the order of the Japanese phonetic alphabet.
  • Who does Shakespeare think he is?
  • Localizing Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffallo into foreign languages.
  • Poorly localized advertising campaigns.
  • Who is the Pilot?
  • Reading Kingdom Hearts sequel titles as poetry.
  • A Language Built for Poetry.
  • Coyotes begrudgingly scampering away after you honk loud enough.
  • A small family of black bears walking down your street and effortlessly demolishing all your trash cans.
  • Dressing your dogs up like bear cubs so the mama bear takes care of them.
  • How are you going to keep your trash safe?
  • Trying to design a trash can lid that can be operated by a drunk human but not by a smart bear.
  • Putting up bear crossing signs on every street in hopes that you'll discourage traffic driving through your neighborhood.
  • What is this, an overpass for bears?!
  • A salmon tube but for bears.
  • Things in nature that want to kill you that you routinely interact with.
  • Animals that are great except they have way too many legs.
  • Entangled Burglars.
  • Sharing thoughts and sensory inputs over long distances.
  • Wrapping yourself in mummy wrappings so nobody can observe you directly.
  • The Timid Butthole.
  • Where does the cat end and the cat fur begin?
  • Sneaking into the archives and discovering a picture of your dad's butthole in the files and wondering "How did they get this? Why do they have this?"
  • The Three Names of an Elf.
  • Why Cort is one of the most researched developers on Mobygames.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • What does Thomas The Tank Engine do when he gets an itchy nose?
  • The end of Destiny
  • Glittermitten Grove's undisclosed AI content
  • Iroha
  • I need to add bears to my threat model
  • What thing would you like to be entangled with?

Microtopics:

  • Setting arbitrary deadlines to get things done and taking them seriously.
  • Lord Walker.
  • Writing 20 songs in 12 hours.
  • Schrodinger's Cat Burglar.
  • A video game that everyone in the world will love.
  • Jimbo and the Jet Set.
  • Soulful butt-licking.
  • Do Fish Itch?
  • What twisted idiot god would make a fish itch.
  • The cosmology of Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • Itchy planes flying very close to a mountain so they can scratch their faces.
  • Whether trains can die in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe.
  • Trains trying to live up to human standards of beauty.
  • Pixar Cars needing eye surgery.
  • Destiny's Final Update.
  • Patrolling the moon in search of wizards.
  • T-shirts with the insignias of obscure PVP factions.
  • The logo of a football team that doesn't exist.
  • Destiny shipping as MusicPlayerDemo.exe.
  • Six people at the peak of their skill doing weird crap.
  • Extremely obscure, elaborate secrets in MMOs.
  • The CEO wanting to write a bunch of game lore so the developers have to find a place for him to put it
  • Deliberately burning yourself out on an MMO and then deleting it forever.
  • Vaulting Justifications.
  • Clarity of Biome.
  • Great ideas for a company that has infinite resources.
  • RuneScape Modern and RuneScape Classic.
  • Quitting WoW with your fiancee because you have a wedding to plan.
  • The additional fee Blizzard charges for hosting your wedding inside of World of Warcraft.
  • Fantasy heroin vs. Sci-Fi heroin.
  • Stephepoa, Jasquosius, Dovanice and Jixandlia.
  • Little dudes persisting between missions, if they survive.
  • Naming all the fish after your Kickstarter backers.
  • Doing all the same things the target your satirizing does, except you're doing them ironically.
  • Lemmings as a squad-based tactical war game.
  • A joyous approach to an anti-war message that makes war seem like a ton of fun.
  • Violating the Geneva Convention by putting the Red Cross in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • The video game that has committed the most real life war crimes.
  • Poems you can't look at.
  • Arriving today at the deep mountains of evanescent existence.
  • Perfect pangrams.
  • How they decided on the order of the Japanese phonetic alphabet.
  • Who does Shakespeare think he is?
  • Localizing Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffallo into foreign languages.
  • Poorly localized advertising campaigns.
  • Who is the Pilot?
  • Reading Kingdom Hearts sequel titles as poetry.
  • A Language Built for Poetry.
  • Coyotes begrudgingly scampering away after you honk loud enough.
  • A small family of black bears walking down your street and effortlessly demolishing all your trash cans.
  • Dressing your dogs up like bear cubs so the mama bear takes care of them.
  • How are you going to keep your trash safe?
  • Trying to design a trash can lid that can be operated by a drunk human but not by a smart bear.
  • Putting up bear crossing signs on every street in hopes that you'll discourage traffic driving through your neighborhood.
  • What is this, an overpass for bears?!
  • A salmon tube but for bears.
  • Things in nature that want to kill you that you routinely interact with.
  • Animals that are great except they have way too many legs.
  • Entangled Burglars.
  • Sharing thoughts and sensory inputs over long distances.
  • Wrapping yourself in mummy wrappings so nobody can observe you directly.
  • The Timid Butthole.
  • Where does the cat end and the cat fur begin?
  • Sneaking into the archives and discovering a picture of your dad's butthole in the files and wondering "How did they get this? Why do they have this?"
  • The Three Names of an Elf.
  • Why Cort is one of the most researched developers on Mobygames.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • What does Thomas The Tank Engine do when he gets an itchy nose?
  • The end of Destiny
  • Glittermitten Grove's undisclosed AI content
  • Iroha
  • I need to add bears to my threat model
  • What thing would you like to be entangled with?

Microtopics:

  • Setting arbitrary deadlines to get things done and taking them seriously.
  • Lord Walker.
  • Writing 20 songs in 12 hours.
  • Schrodinger's Cat Burglar.
  • A video game that everyone in the world will love.
  • Jimbo and the Jet Set.
  • Soulful butt-licking.
  • Do Fish Itch?
  • What twisted idiot god would make a fish itch.
  • The cosmology of Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • Itchy planes flying very close to a mountain so they can scratch their faces.
  • Whether trains can die in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe.
  • Trains trying to live up to human standards of beauty.
  • Pixar Cars needing eye surgery.
  • Destiny's Final Update.
  • Patrolling the moon in search of wizards.
  • T-shirts with the insignias of obscure PVP factions.
  • The logo of a football team that doesn't exist.
  • Destiny shipping as MusicPlayerDemo.exe.
  • Six people at the peak of their skill doing weird crap.
  • Extremely obscure, elaborate secrets in MMOs.
  • The CEO wanting to write a bunch of game lore so the developers have to find a place for him to put it
  • Deliberately burning yourself out on an MMO and then deleting it forever.
  • Vaulting Justifications.
  • Clarity of Biome.
  • Great ideas for a company that has infinite resources.
  • RuneScape Modern and RuneScape Classic.
  • Quitting WoW with your fiancee because you have a wedding to plan.
  • The additional fee Blizzard charges for hosting your wedding inside of World of Warcraft.
  • Fantasy heroin vs. Sci-Fi heroin.
  • Stephepoa, Jasquosius, Dovanice and Jixandlia.
  • Little dudes persisting between missions, if they survive.
  • Naming all the fish after your Kickstarter backers.
  • Doing all the same things the target your satirizing does, except you're doing them ironically.
  • Lemmings as a squad-based tactical war game.
  • A joyous approach to an anti-war message that makes war seem like a ton of fun.
  • Violating the Geneva Convention by putting the Red Cross in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • The video game that has committed the most real life war crimes.
  • Poems you can't look at.
  • Arriving today at the deep mountains of evanescent existence.
  • Perfect pangrams.
  • How they decided on the order of the Japanese phonetic alphabet.
  • Who does Shakespeare think he is?
  • Localizing Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffallo into foreign languages.
  • Poorly localized advertising campaigns.
  • Who is the Pilot?
  • Reading Kingdom Hearts sequel titles as poetry.
  • A Language Built for Poetry.
  • Coyotes begrudgingly scampering away after you honk loud enough.
  • A small family of black bears walking down your street and effortlessly demolishing all your trash cans.
  • Dressing your dogs up like bear cubs so the mama bear takes care of them.
  • How are you going to keep your trash safe?
  • Trying to design a trash can lid that can be operated by a drunk human but not by a smart bear.
  • Putting up bear crossing signs on every street in hopes that you'll discourage traffic driving through your neighborhood.
  • What is this, an overpass for bears?!
  • A salmon tube but for bears.
  • Things in nature that want to kill you that you routinely interact with.
  • Animals that are great except they have way too many legs.
  • Entangled Burglars.
  • Sharing thoughts and sensory inputs over long distances.
  • Wrapping yourself in mummy wrappings so nobody can observe you directly.
  • The Timid Butthole.
  • Where does the cat end and the cat fur begin?
  • Sneaking into the archives and discovering a picture of your dad's butthole in the files and wondering "How did they get this? Why do they have this?"
  • The Three Names of an Elf.
  • Why Cort is one of the most researched developers on Mobygames.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6xAI6_LQ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 348. A Normal Spud Gun for Normal Children https://topiclords.com/a-normal-spud-gun-for-normal-children 1b673972-7609-41c5-84e1-0da871f06260 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kate and Andrew. We discuss movies that are supposed to be good and kind of annoyingly are actually good, making friends when you're old, Paris's pneumatic mail system, and Forgiven, by A. A. Milne 1:06:41 true Lords:

  • Kate
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The skill to make the noises that are in your head.
  • Writing quests for Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
  • Sanrio's NDA-enforcing snipers.
  • A crocodile that was invented in 1978.
  • Writing quests that force the artists to figure out how a crocodile would wear sunglasses.
  • Writing the dialog tree as the player is clicking on options, like Gromit placing tracks right as the train is about to roll over them.
  • Spending five years shipping the first part of a live service game and then shipping additional parts every few weeks.
  • Trying to rebuild a house while someone is living in it.
  • Lingo 2.
  • Dungeon Gals.
  • The kind of game you can't draw a map of.
  • Teetering on the razor's edge of "I'm a genius" and "I don't understand anything."
  • What does the developer tooling look like for games that have non-euclidean spaces?
  • Duplicated spaces with secret warp volumes.
  • The kind of movie that an Infinite Jest reader will recommend.
  • Terry Cavanagh's game about making tea.
  • Egg Game?
  • Astonishing movie running times.
  • Five minutes of two men intensely looking at each other.
  • An adventure movie about two best friends who hate each other.
  • James Joyce: maybe he's good?
  • A guy who lives in the middle of nowhere who thinks about politics a lot and never talks to anyone.
  • Gerry, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
  • The art is coming from inside the head.
  • Pro Shots vs. bootlegs.
  • Jukebox musicals.
  • Shawshank Redimension.
  • Shawshank Redemption 2: Shawshank Herdemption.
  • Communicating between cell blocks by flushing the toilet.
  • Loove a.k.a. Flushed a.k.a. Lavatory Lovastory.
  • Mixing your DNA with someone you've never seen.
  • Florida Writing.
  • Gravity Slingshotting around your hobbies to reach friendship.
  • Going to GDC and making a bunch of game dev friends.
  • Plateauing at two digits.
  • Getting hobbies that put you in a room with people of your desired gender.
  • Your co-worker at the call center who's married to the CEO of Twinings.
  • Playing puzzle games on the Internet in front of a chatful of puzzle experts.
  • The protagonist getting stuck on a puzzle and the narrator turning to the audience and saying "chat, help us out with this one."
  • Making friends vs. keeping friends.
  • The friendships that you both care enough about to have maintained.
  • I Love a Thoont.
  • Building a pneumo to relieve congestion on the telegraph system.
  • When the telegraph was invented vs. when pneumatics were invented.
  • Why banks had pneumatic drive thrus rather than the teller just handing you the stuff through the window like a fast food drive thrus.
  • Whimsical coffee preparation.
  • The cost of building a giant tube between the coasts of North America.
  • The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
  • Inventing a frictionless tube.
  • Preparing burritos to be magnetically fired.
  • Rifled sewers.
  • Plunging into the Lithosphere.
  • A diagram that shows how the burrito gets heated.
  • The Taste of Breaking the Sound Barrier.
  • Getting your poem voice on.
  • Whether A. A. Milne knew about hash tags.
  • Non-Fungible Beetles.
  • Oh great, the same beetle came back!
  • The kind of look that means "it's me, the same beetle!"
  • The XIX and XX centuries.
  • Writing Very Blackly.
  • Why Does Pooh Own a Shotgun?
  • All the talking Winnie the Pooh animals turning out to be aliens, like Starfox.
  • A pneumatic tube, except instead of burritos you're firing cork.
  • Writing your thesis on pop guns and continuing to do post doc research on pop guns.
  • Spud Guns vs. Potato Cannons.
  • A Normal Spud Gun for Normal Children.
  • Seeing that Wikipedia considers Spud Guns low importance and thinking of ways to make Spud Guns more important.
  • Too Many Posts.
]]> Lords:

  • Kate
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The skill to make the noises that are in your head.
  • Writing quests for Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
  • Sanrio's NDA-enforcing snipers.
  • A crocodile that was invented in 1978.
  • Writing quests that force the artists to figure out how a crocodile would wear sunglasses.
  • Writing the dialog tree as the player is clicking on options, like Gromit placing tracks right as the train is about to roll over them.
  • Spending five years shipping the first part of a live service game and then shipping additional parts every few weeks.
  • Trying to rebuild a house while someone is living in it.
  • Lingo 2.
  • Dungeon Gals.
  • The kind of game you can't draw a map of.
  • Teetering on the razor's edge of "I'm a genius" and "I don't understand anything."
  • What does the developer tooling look like for games that have non-euclidean spaces?
  • Duplicated spaces with secret warp volumes.
  • The kind of movie that an Infinite Jest reader will recommend.
  • Terry Cavanagh's game about making tea.
  • Egg Game?
  • Astonishing movie running times.
  • Five minutes of two men intensely looking at each other.
  • An adventure movie about two best friends who hate each other.
  • James Joyce: maybe he's good?
  • A guy who lives in the middle of nowhere who thinks about politics a lot and never talks to anyone.
  • Gerry, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
  • The art is coming from inside the head.
  • Pro Shots vs. bootlegs.
  • Jukebox musicals.
  • Shawshank Redimension.
  • Shawshank Redemption 2: Shawshank Herdemption.
  • Communicating between cell blocks by flushing the toilet.
  • Loove a.k.a. Flushed a.k.a. Lavatory Lovastory.
  • Mixing your DNA with someone you've never seen.
  • Florida Writing.
  • Gravity Slingshotting around your hobbies to reach friendship.
  • Going to GDC and making a bunch of game dev friends.
  • Plateauing at two digits.
  • Getting hobbies that put you in a room with people of your desired gender.
  • Your co-worker at the call center who's married to the CEO of Twinings.
  • Playing puzzle games on the Internet in front of a chatful of puzzle experts.
  • The protagonist getting stuck on a puzzle and the narrator turning to the audience and saying "chat, help us out with this one."
  • Making friends vs. keeping friends.
  • The friendships that you both care enough about to have maintained.
  • I Love a Thoont.
  • Building a pneumo to relieve congestion on the telegraph system.
  • When the telegraph was invented vs. when pneumatics were invented.
  • Why banks had pneumatic drive thrus rather than the teller just handing you the stuff through the window like a fast food drive thrus.
  • Whimsical coffee preparation.
  • The cost of building a giant tube between the coasts of North America.
  • The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
  • Inventing a frictionless tube.
  • Preparing burritos to be magnetically fired.
  • Rifled sewers.
  • Plunging into the Lithosphere.
  • A diagram that shows how the burrito gets heated.
  • The Taste of Breaking the Sound Barrier.
  • Getting your poem voice on.
  • Whether A. A. Milne knew about hash tags.
  • Non-Fungible Beetles.
  • Oh great, the same beetle came back!
  • The kind of look that means "it's me, the same beetle!"
  • The XIX and XX centuries.
  • Writing Very Blackly.
  • Why Does Pooh Own a Shotgun?
  • All the talking Winnie the Pooh animals turning out to be aliens, like Starfox.
  • A pneumatic tube, except instead of burritos you're firing cork.
  • Writing your thesis on pop guns and continuing to do post doc research on pop guns.
  • Spud Guns vs. Potato Cannons.
  • A Normal Spud Gun for Normal Children.
  • Seeing that Wikipedia considers Spud Guns low importance and thinking of ways to make Spud Guns more important.
  • Too Many Posts.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Kate
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The skill to make the noises that are in your head.
  • Writing quests for Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
  • Sanrio's NDA-enforcing snipers.
  • A crocodile that was invented in 1978.
  • Writing quests that force the artists to figure out how a crocodile would wear sunglasses.
  • Writing the dialog tree as the player is clicking on options, like Gromit placing tracks right as the train is about to roll over them.
  • Spending five years shipping the first part of a live service game and then shipping additional parts every few weeks.
  • Trying to rebuild a house while someone is living in it.
  • Lingo 2.
  • Dungeon Gals.
  • The kind of game you can't draw a map of.
  • Teetering on the razor's edge of "I'm a genius" and "I don't understand anything."
  • What does the developer tooling look like for games that have non-euclidean spaces?
  • Duplicated spaces with secret warp volumes.
  • The kind of movie that an Infinite Jest reader will recommend.
  • Terry Cavanagh's game about making tea.
  • Egg Game?
  • Astonishing movie running times.
  • Five minutes of two men intensely looking at each other.
  • An adventure movie about two best friends who hate each other.
  • James Joyce: maybe he's good?
  • A guy who lives in the middle of nowhere who thinks about politics a lot and never talks to anyone.
  • Gerry, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
  • The art is coming from inside the head.
  • Pro Shots vs. bootlegs.
  • Jukebox musicals.
  • Shawshank Redimension.
  • Shawshank Redemption 2: Shawshank Herdemption.
  • Communicating between cell blocks by flushing the toilet.
  • Loove a.k.a. Flushed a.k.a. Lavatory Lovastory.
  • Mixing your DNA with someone you've never seen.
  • Florida Writing.
  • Gravity Slingshotting around your hobbies to reach friendship.
  • Going to GDC and making a bunch of game dev friends.
  • Plateauing at two digits.
  • Getting hobbies that put you in a room with people of your desired gender.
  • Your co-worker at the call center who's married to the CEO of Twinings.
  • Playing puzzle games on the Internet in front of a chatful of puzzle experts.
  • The protagonist getting stuck on a puzzle and the narrator turning to the audience and saying "chat, help us out with this one."
  • Making friends vs. keeping friends.
  • The friendships that you both care enough about to have maintained.
  • I Love a Thoont.
  • Building a pneumo to relieve congestion on the telegraph system.
  • When the telegraph was invented vs. when pneumatics were invented.
  • Why banks had pneumatic drive thrus rather than the teller just handing you the stuff through the window like a fast food drive thrus.
  • Whimsical coffee preparation.
  • The cost of building a giant tube between the coasts of North America.
  • The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
  • Inventing a frictionless tube.
  • Preparing burritos to be magnetically fired.
  • Rifled sewers.
  • Plunging into the Lithosphere.
  • A diagram that shows how the burrito gets heated.
  • The Taste of Breaking the Sound Barrier.
  • Getting your poem voice on.
  • Whether A. A. Milne knew about hash tags.
  • Non-Fungible Beetles.
  • Oh great, the same beetle came back!
  • The kind of look that means "it's me, the same beetle!"
  • The XIX and XX centuries.
  • Writing Very Blackly.
  • Why Does Pooh Own a Shotgun?
  • All the talking Winnie the Pooh animals turning out to be aliens, like Starfox.
  • A pneumatic tube, except instead of burritos you're firing cork.
  • Writing your thesis on pop guns and continuing to do post doc research on pop guns.
  • Spud Guns vs. Potato Cannons.
  • A Normal Spud Gun for Normal Children.
  • Seeing that Wikipedia considers Spud Guns low importance and thinking of ways to make Spud Guns more important.
  • Too Many Posts.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+kXmQNjCO ]]> Jim Stormdancer 347. You Issue the Call; I'll Make the Modem Noises https://topiclords.com/you-issue-the-call-ill-make-the-modem-noises acf3f75e-5777-499e-b7cf-28df73695c21 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Krissy. We discuss the Battle of Food Dog and Valley Jump Park, the Wilson Wolfe Affair, this tabletop RPG with scripting support and The Naming of Cats, by T.S. Eliot 53:31 true Lords:

  • Erica
  • Krissy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The first and still only place you can discuss topics.
  • Writing down your plugs ahead of time.
  • The happy ending you deserve.
  • A small child crawling into your bed in the middle of the night and asking the questions that keep him up at night, such as "can you one-shot a Silver Boss Bokoblin with a regular arrow and a Lizal strong bow?"
  • Giving your child a classical education. (In Zelda and Mario games.)
  • Living in Virginia near a bunch of Confederate monuments.
  • Looking at the battle map to see where the soldiers come down from the Food Lion.
  • The monument to not building anything.
  • Sonically-enforced exclusion zones.
  • Whether there's sound in the eye of the hurricane.
  • What they call the Wal-Mart in Puerto Rico.
  • Podcasts on which it's okay to hate the French.
  • Quebecois LARPing as French.
  • History: it's all around us, and it keeps happening.
  • Wanting to spend $350 on the wolf in the sky but the wolf just won't take your money.
  • Simulacra Games.
  • Spinning a zoetrope.
  • Questioning the palness of these supposed pals.
  • Little mom and pop shops exhorting you to solve this unsolved cold case murder.
  • Side stories extending the lore.
  • Applying heat to make the secret message appear, then applying cold to make the message disappear so that the next person can apply heat to make the secret message appear.
  • Being so busy making your video game that you don't have the spare energy to solve an interesting puzzle.
  • Kitchen table ARGs.
  • Dang you, Mr. Stormdancer!
  • Always coming up with your schemes.
  • What happened to the Twinbeard corporation.
  • Paying $800 a year in something something taxes to keep your corporation going.
  • Incorporating in the state of Delaware.
  • Licensing the Frog Fractions brand for a dollar.
  • Retiring and making Pico-8 games for the rest of your life.
  • It's like PiCoSteveMo all year!
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who executes it in his head.
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who tells you there's a syntax error on line 397.
  • Writing out a program to present to the class.
  • You went over my helmet?!
  • Programming in Logo and watching the turtle move around the screen.
  • Rehabilitating the image of Lisp-like languages by changing the parentheses to square brackets which are much cooler.
  • Are you a friend of humans?
  • Crossing your legs into a storytelling position.
  • Picking your job based on what's funniest.
  • How smart do you have to be to be a fridge.
  • Pulling out your phone and opening your banking app to see how much cash is in your smart wallet.
  • Hacking smart butt plugs.
  • Whether hacking an insecure smart butt plug is funnier or less funny than making the smart butt plug in the first place.
  • Login functions that don't require a password.
  • Can you get a virus from a smart butt plug?
  • The consequences of your smart butt plug getting taken over by hackers.
  • Messaging all your Facebook friends explaining that your smart butt plug was hacked and if the butt plug sends a message saying "help I'm trapped in a butt plug," it's not really from you.
  • Working for the U.S. govt hacking pacemakers.
  • The chat is coming from inside the butt.
  • The three names of a cat.
  • Munkustrap, Quaxo, Coricopat, Bombalurina, and Jellylorum.
  • A cat in profound meditation.
  • Looking up TS Eliot in the phone book.
  • Child Jordan Mechner looking up the lyricist of the Wizard of Oz in the phone book and calling him up.
  • Doing a Doctor Who joke that nobody gets.
  • How many members of The Who are still alive.
  • Effanineffability.
  • Up to the Neck in Weber.
]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Krissy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The first and still only place you can discuss topics.
  • Writing down your plugs ahead of time.
  • The happy ending you deserve.
  • A small child crawling into your bed in the middle of the night and asking the questions that keep him up at night, such as "can you one-shot a Silver Boss Bokoblin with a regular arrow and a Lizal strong bow?"
  • Giving your child a classical education. (In Zelda and Mario games.)
  • Living in Virginia near a bunch of Confederate monuments.
  • Looking at the battle map to see where the soldiers come down from the Food Lion.
  • The monument to not building anything.
  • Sonically-enforced exclusion zones.
  • Whether there's sound in the eye of the hurricane.
  • What they call the Wal-Mart in Puerto Rico.
  • Podcasts on which it's okay to hate the French.
  • Quebecois LARPing as French.
  • History: it's all around us, and it keeps happening.
  • Wanting to spend $350 on the wolf in the sky but the wolf just won't take your money.
  • Simulacra Games.
  • Spinning a zoetrope.
  • Questioning the palness of these supposed pals.
  • Little mom and pop shops exhorting you to solve this unsolved cold case murder.
  • Side stories extending the lore.
  • Applying heat to make the secret message appear, then applying cold to make the message disappear so that the next person can apply heat to make the secret message appear.
  • Being so busy making your video game that you don't have the spare energy to solve an interesting puzzle.
  • Kitchen table ARGs.
  • Dang you, Mr. Stormdancer!
  • Always coming up with your schemes.
  • What happened to the Twinbeard corporation.
  • Paying $800 a year in something something taxes to keep your corporation going.
  • Incorporating in the state of Delaware.
  • Licensing the Frog Fractions brand for a dollar.
  • Retiring and making Pico-8 games for the rest of your life.
  • It's like PiCoSteveMo all year!
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who executes it in his head.
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who tells you there's a syntax error on line 397.
  • Writing out a program to present to the class.
  • You went over my helmet?!
  • Programming in Logo and watching the turtle move around the screen.
  • Rehabilitating the image of Lisp-like languages by changing the parentheses to square brackets which are much cooler.
  • Are you a friend of humans?
  • Crossing your legs into a storytelling position.
  • Picking your job based on what's funniest.
  • How smart do you have to be to be a fridge.
  • Pulling out your phone and opening your banking app to see how much cash is in your smart wallet.
  • Hacking smart butt plugs.
  • Whether hacking an insecure smart butt plug is funnier or less funny than making the smart butt plug in the first place.
  • Login functions that don't require a password.
  • Can you get a virus from a smart butt plug?
  • The consequences of your smart butt plug getting taken over by hackers.
  • Messaging all your Facebook friends explaining that your smart butt plug was hacked and if the butt plug sends a message saying "help I'm trapped in a butt plug," it's not really from you.
  • Working for the U.S. govt hacking pacemakers.
  • The chat is coming from inside the butt.
  • The three names of a cat.
  • Munkustrap, Quaxo, Coricopat, Bombalurina, and Jellylorum.
  • A cat in profound meditation.
  • Looking up TS Eliot in the phone book.
  • Child Jordan Mechner looking up the lyricist of the Wizard of Oz in the phone book and calling him up.
  • Doing a Doctor Who joke that nobody gets.
  • How many members of The Who are still alive.
  • Effanineffability.
  • Up to the Neck in Weber.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Krissy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The first and still only place you can discuss topics.
  • Writing down your plugs ahead of time.
  • The happy ending you deserve.
  • A small child crawling into your bed in the middle of the night and asking the questions that keep him up at night, such as "can you one-shot a Silver Boss Bokoblin with a regular arrow and a Lizal strong bow?"
  • Giving your child a classical education. (In Zelda and Mario games.)
  • Living in Virginia near a bunch of Confederate monuments.
  • Looking at the battle map to see where the soldiers come down from the Food Lion.
  • The monument to not building anything.
  • Sonically-enforced exclusion zones.
  • Whether there's sound in the eye of the hurricane.
  • What they call the Wal-Mart in Puerto Rico.
  • Podcasts on which it's okay to hate the French.
  • Quebecois LARPing as French.
  • History: it's all around us, and it keeps happening.
  • Wanting to spend $350 on the wolf in the sky but the wolf just won't take your money.
  • Simulacra Games.
  • Spinning a zoetrope.
  • Questioning the palness of these supposed pals.
  • Little mom and pop shops exhorting you to solve this unsolved cold case murder.
  • Side stories extending the lore.
  • Applying heat to make the secret message appear, then applying cold to make the message disappear so that the next person can apply heat to make the secret message appear.
  • Being so busy making your video game that you don't have the spare energy to solve an interesting puzzle.
  • Kitchen table ARGs.
  • Dang you, Mr. Stormdancer!
  • Always coming up with your schemes.
  • What happened to the Twinbeard corporation.
  • Paying $800 a year in something something taxes to keep your corporation going.
  • Incorporating in the state of Delaware.
  • Licensing the Frog Fractions brand for a dollar.
  • Retiring and making Pico-8 games for the rest of your life.
  • It's like PiCoSteveMo all year!
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who executes it in his head.
  • Reading your program aloud to the DM who tells you there's a syntax error on line 397.
  • Writing out a program to present to the class.
  • You went over my helmet?!
  • Programming in Logo and watching the turtle move around the screen.
  • Rehabilitating the image of Lisp-like languages by changing the parentheses to square brackets which are much cooler.
  • Are you a friend of humans?
  • Crossing your legs into a storytelling position.
  • Picking your job based on what's funniest.
  • How smart do you have to be to be a fridge.
  • Pulling out your phone and opening your banking app to see how much cash is in your smart wallet.
  • Hacking smart butt plugs.
  • Whether hacking an insecure smart butt plug is funnier or less funny than making the smart butt plug in the first place.
  • Login functions that don't require a password.
  • Can you get a virus from a smart butt plug?
  • The consequences of your smart butt plug getting taken over by hackers.
  • Messaging all your Facebook friends explaining that your smart butt plug was hacked and if the butt plug sends a message saying "help I'm trapped in a butt plug," it's not really from you.
  • Working for the U.S. govt hacking pacemakers.
  • The chat is coming from inside the butt.
  • The three names of a cat.
  • Munkustrap, Quaxo, Coricopat, Bombalurina, and Jellylorum.
  • A cat in profound meditation.
  • Looking up TS Eliot in the phone book.
  • Child Jordan Mechner looking up the lyricist of the Wizard of Oz in the phone book and calling him up.
  • Doing a Doctor Who joke that nobody gets.
  • How many members of The Who are still alive.
  • Effanineffability.
  • Up to the Neck in Weber.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+UCoPuYP0 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 346. Adam Doesn’t Want To Get Touchy-Feely With That https://topiclords.com/adam-doesnt-want-to-get-touchy-feely-with-that 384ceb70-9b4f-4c1b-acdb-72a2abb87974 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ron and Kevin. We discuss doing the easy tasks first vs. the hard tasks, Magic (not the gathering) in 2026, what makes text adventures interesting, The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, by Tracy K. Smith, trash vs. treasure, and weird hobbies 1:06:42 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Forgetting what you were going to say about prescription toothpaste.
  • Microsoft Encarta '94.
  • Back when computers were charming.
  • A roguelike where the screen is always scrolling.
  • Doing the hard tasks first so you no longer have to think about them.
  • Trying to cover air quotes audially.
  • Protaskination.
  • Solving a topic for the first time ever.
  • Advertisements for card tricks.
  • Art forms involving lying to people.
  • Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie.
  • Using the language of punctuation to make people lean forward.
  • Donnie Osmond being a jerk.
  • Self-working card tricks.
  • One of the greatest gifts ever given to you by the universe.
  • Winning $6000 in a single spin of roulette and then retiring from gambling.
  • Leaving decks of cards in bars that are 80% the same card.
  • A mail order service that emails you a video of a begloved man preparing your order to ship.
  • Why you own a nine of diamonds single card forcing deck.
  • Video reviews that never discuss or show what the product being reviewed actually does.
  • Dorky magicians in the Youtube era.
  • The text adventure community adopting the Twine community.
  • Zork's physics system and lighting model.
  • A medium in which a single auteur can make a complete work in a few months.
  • The Many Worlds interpretation of Twine adventures.
  • Implementing gamepad controls for a text adventure.
  • Complete inability to drop items in graphic adventures.
  • A Dropping Place.
  • Media in which only the author be clever vs. media in which the consumer can also be clever.
  • The "that doesn't seem to work" response.
  • How you interact with Starship Titanic.
  • Robots saying inscrutable stuff to you.
  • A firm turn-around wrong-way barrier.
  • Keeping the magic of the text parser in your head even as you figure out exactly how it works.
  • A text adventure with auto-complete.
  • Pulitzer-winning poetry about the entire universe.
  • White noise and black noise.
  • The dark we've only ever imagined, now audible, thrumming.
  • Learning how to hear poetry. (Like, at all.)
  • A way of thinking about how the universe was born.
  • Modern jazz as another way of exploring existence.
  • Reading Shakespeare and having to look up "moiety" again.
  • Reading a modern translation of Don Quixote and being annoyed that you can't find a modern translation of Shakespeare.
  • Retreating away from the camera in horror.
  • Unchecked ambition and desire for power.
  • Shakespeare except it's a bunch of lawyers.
  • Romeo and Juliet in the Globe Theater except everybody is shooting each other with guns.
  • Bill and Ted's Excellent Use of Febreeze.
  • JWST images of little weird pimples.
  • Astronomers looking at Interlopers and saying "get this trash out of here"
  • Leaving bugs in your game because they make the game more interesting.
  • There's no such things as trash: it's all treasure to somebody.
  • Throwing a disc up into the fizzlers.
  • Playing a video game and thinking of a way to really fuck your game up and being compelled to find out if the developers thought of it.
  • Always doing exactly what the game tells you not to do.
  • Going to the Sega booth at E3 and playing Sonic as slowly as possible.
  • Playing games in a way that makes the Sega representative come up and talk to you.
  • The production glitches subreddit.
  • Comb filtering.
  • Arguing about whether it's a mistake that you can hear Alanis Morissette inhale.
  • Parts of games that you need to polish and parts you can leave unpolished.
  • Jim's secret to shipping video games.
  • Polishing and honing and perfecting so much that you ruin the finished product.
  • Picking hobbies that don't scale.
  • Eating the top 1000 soups in the history of planet Earth.
  • The kind of person who gets fulfillment out of people appreciating work you've done for them.
  • Letting your wife know that you do have hobbies, actually.
  • The Dead Poet's Society scene about measuring the relative merits of poetry.
  • Jamming on the coffee table synthesizer, and thinking the whole time "I should make a finished song to upload to a web site"
  • Years of meticulous cutting and shaping.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Forgetting what you were going to say about prescription toothpaste.
  • Microsoft Encarta '94.
  • Back when computers were charming.
  • A roguelike where the screen is always scrolling.
  • Doing the hard tasks first so you no longer have to think about them.
  • Trying to cover air quotes audially.
  • Protaskination.
  • Solving a topic for the first time ever.
  • Advertisements for card tricks.
  • Art forms involving lying to people.
  • Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie.
  • Using the language of punctuation to make people lean forward.
  • Donnie Osmond being a jerk.
  • Self-working card tricks.
  • One of the greatest gifts ever given to you by the universe.
  • Winning $6000 in a single spin of roulette and then retiring from gambling.
  • Leaving decks of cards in bars that are 80% the same card.
  • A mail order service that emails you a video of a begloved man preparing your order to ship.
  • Why you own a nine of diamonds single card forcing deck.
  • Video reviews that never discuss or show what the product being reviewed actually does.
  • Dorky magicians in the Youtube era.
  • The text adventure community adopting the Twine community.
  • Zork's physics system and lighting model.
  • A medium in which a single auteur can make a complete work in a few months.
  • The Many Worlds interpretation of Twine adventures.
  • Implementing gamepad controls for a text adventure.
  • Complete inability to drop items in graphic adventures.
  • A Dropping Place.
  • Media in which only the author be clever vs. media in which the consumer can also be clever.
  • The "that doesn't seem to work" response.
  • How you interact with Starship Titanic.
  • Robots saying inscrutable stuff to you.
  • A firm turn-around wrong-way barrier.
  • Keeping the magic of the text parser in your head even as you figure out exactly how it works.
  • A text adventure with auto-complete.
  • Pulitzer-winning poetry about the entire universe.
  • White noise and black noise.
  • The dark we've only ever imagined, now audible, thrumming.
  • Learning how to hear poetry. (Like, at all.)
  • A way of thinking about how the universe was born.
  • Modern jazz as another way of exploring existence.
  • Reading Shakespeare and having to look up "moiety" again.
  • Reading a modern translation of Don Quixote and being annoyed that you can't find a modern translation of Shakespeare.
  • Retreating away from the camera in horror.
  • Unchecked ambition and desire for power.
  • Shakespeare except it's a bunch of lawyers.
  • Romeo and Juliet in the Globe Theater except everybody is shooting each other with guns.
  • Bill and Ted's Excellent Use of Febreeze.
  • JWST images of little weird pimples.
  • Astronomers looking at Interlopers and saying "get this trash out of here"
  • Leaving bugs in your game because they make the game more interesting.
  • There's no such things as trash: it's all treasure to somebody.
  • Throwing a disc up into the fizzlers.
  • Playing a video game and thinking of a way to really fuck your game up and being compelled to find out if the developers thought of it.
  • Always doing exactly what the game tells you not to do.
  • Going to the Sega booth at E3 and playing Sonic as slowly as possible.
  • Playing games in a way that makes the Sega representative come up and talk to you.
  • The production glitches subreddit.
  • Comb filtering.
  • Arguing about whether it's a mistake that you can hear Alanis Morissette inhale.
  • Parts of games that you need to polish and parts you can leave unpolished.
  • Jim's secret to shipping video games.
  • Polishing and honing and perfecting so much that you ruin the finished product.
  • Picking hobbies that don't scale.
  • Eating the top 1000 soups in the history of planet Earth.
  • The kind of person who gets fulfillment out of people appreciating work you've done for them.
  • Letting your wife know that you do have hobbies, actually.
  • The Dead Poet's Society scene about measuring the relative merits of poetry.
  • Jamming on the coffee table synthesizer, and thinking the whole time "I should make a finished song to upload to a web site"
  • Years of meticulous cutting and shaping.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Forgetting what you were going to say about prescription toothpaste.
  • Microsoft Encarta '94.
  • Back when computers were charming.
  • A roguelike where the screen is always scrolling.
  • Doing the hard tasks first so you no longer have to think about them.
  • Trying to cover air quotes audially.
  • Protaskination.
  • Solving a topic for the first time ever.
  • Advertisements for card tricks.
  • Art forms involving lying to people.
  • Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie.
  • Using the language of punctuation to make people lean forward.
  • Donnie Osmond being a jerk.
  • Self-working card tricks.
  • One of the greatest gifts ever given to you by the universe.
  • Winning $6000 in a single spin of roulette and then retiring from gambling.
  • Leaving decks of cards in bars that are 80% the same card.
  • A mail order service that emails you a video of a begloved man preparing your order to ship.
  • Why you own a nine of diamonds single card forcing deck.
  • Video reviews that never discuss or show what the product being reviewed actually does.
  • Dorky magicians in the Youtube era.
  • The text adventure community adopting the Twine community.
  • Zork's physics system and lighting model.
  • A medium in which a single auteur can make a complete work in a few months.
  • The Many Worlds interpretation of Twine adventures.
  • Implementing gamepad controls for a text adventure.
  • Complete inability to drop items in graphic adventures.
  • A Dropping Place.
  • Media in which only the author be clever vs. media in which the consumer can also be clever.
  • The "that doesn't seem to work" response.
  • How you interact with Starship Titanic.
  • Robots saying inscrutable stuff to you.
  • A firm turn-around wrong-way barrier.
  • Keeping the magic of the text parser in your head even as you figure out exactly how it works.
  • A text adventure with auto-complete.
  • Pulitzer-winning poetry about the entire universe.
  • White noise and black noise.
  • The dark we've only ever imagined, now audible, thrumming.
  • Learning how to hear poetry. (Like, at all.)
  • A way of thinking about how the universe was born.
  • Modern jazz as another way of exploring existence.
  • Reading Shakespeare and having to look up "moiety" again.
  • Reading a modern translation of Don Quixote and being annoyed that you can't find a modern translation of Shakespeare.
  • Retreating away from the camera in horror.
  • Unchecked ambition and desire for power.
  • Shakespeare except it's a bunch of lawyers.
  • Romeo and Juliet in the Globe Theater except everybody is shooting each other with guns.
  • Bill and Ted's Excellent Use of Febreeze.
  • JWST images of little weird pimples.
  • Astronomers looking at Interlopers and saying "get this trash out of here"
  • Leaving bugs in your game because they make the game more interesting.
  • There's no such things as trash: it's all treasure to somebody.
  • Throwing a disc up into the fizzlers.
  • Playing a video game and thinking of a way to really fuck your game up and being compelled to find out if the developers thought of it.
  • Always doing exactly what the game tells you not to do.
  • Going to the Sega booth at E3 and playing Sonic as slowly as possible.
  • Playing games in a way that makes the Sega representative come up and talk to you.
  • The production glitches subreddit.
  • Comb filtering.
  • Arguing about whether it's a mistake that you can hear Alanis Morissette inhale.
  • Parts of games that you need to polish and parts you can leave unpolished.
  • Jim's secret to shipping video games.
  • Polishing and honing and perfecting so much that you ruin the finished product.
  • Picking hobbies that don't scale.
  • Eating the top 1000 soups in the history of planet Earth.
  • The kind of person who gets fulfillment out of people appreciating work you've done for them.
  • Letting your wife know that you do have hobbies, actually.
  • The Dead Poet's Society scene about measuring the relative merits of poetry.
  • Jamming on the coffee table synthesizer, and thinking the whole time "I should make a finished song to upload to a web site"
  • Years of meticulous cutting and shaping.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+3v6n3m3R ]]> Jim Stormdancer 345. Is the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid Visible From Space? https://topiclords.com/is-the-bass-pro-shop-pyramid-visible-from-space dcd5c1df-6c0a-4490-9d6a-b969a52220c8 Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Aubrey and Avery. We discuss working on the same animated film for over 40 years, video game urban legends, Bay Area airport naming drama, and The Only animal by Franz Wright. 1:07:18 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Loving only the parts you don't hate.
  • Finishing the whole pack of Red Vines because you refuse to let them defeat you.
  • An album you haven't put on Spotify.
  • You know. Those podcasts.
  • The sort of thing we don't do around here.
  • Holding up cue cards so the guests know what to say.
  • Reading all 180,000 messages in the Frog Fractions 2 ARG solvers discord.
  • The tech company you're applying to sending you all the Enron emails, saying "review these before the interview"
  • Mysteries, Easter eggs, and rose-tinted glasses.
  • Hedgehog in the Fog.
  • Arduous animation processes.
  • Working on an animated feature by yourself for over 40 years.
  • Great Family Entertainment.
  • A story about a guy who has everything he needs who dies while trying to buy an overcoat.
  • A huge pack of Red Vines that you and your wife have been eating since 1981.
  • Burning yourself out very quickly if you don't put guardrails in place.
  • Perfectionists throwing away years of work because it's not good enough.
  • DJs who still spin vinyl and other artists who choose to do things the hard way.
  • Enveloping yourself in an emotion.
  • Refusing to break character for the entire time you're making the Youtube documentary.
  • Putting away art you're having a hard time with and coming back to it later.
  • Everything that happened between the Sigil Master and Austin Walker.
  • Losing track of whether art looks good.
  • The fine line between pacing yourself and torturing yourself.
  • The statue in the background of Frog Fractions that turns red when you're on Mars.
  • Encouraging people to have whimsy.
  • Space Knight Rom.
  • Snagglepuss the 1950s playwright.
  • Back when you could make up a video game rumor and not have it immediately debunked.
  • GTA San Andreas urban legends.
  • Windows Movie Maker transition screens.
  • Gravitating towards the unknowable.
  • Self-destructing music.
  • Scarcity and unknowability.
  • Buying an album from the record shop and perusing the indie record label catalog that comes with it.
  • Searching for the 16th colossus.
  • Forming a small community and feeling communal with them.
  • Playing games with a group of friends like a book club.
  • An MMO full of ARGy type stuff.
  • Automatically grouping people into a puzzle solving community.
  • Being paralyzed by the sheer amount of information that you don't know.
  • What's going on with the iGlyphs?
  • Finding evidence of the Jejune Institute on a telephone pole.
  • Painstakingly making the 7th Frog Fractions game, 45 years from now.
  • The history of Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name.
  • Game secrets that can't be ruined by one jerk with a decompiler.
  • Sleep No More.
  • Getting pulled into a secret compartment during an interactive play.
  • Multi-city zombie larps.
  • The Oakland Airport renaming themselves to the San Francisco Bay International Airport and then later the lawsuit becoming the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport.
  • Bay Area topology.
  • San Francisco and South San Francisco.
  • The Unincorporated Area of San Mateo County International Airport, or UAOSMCIA.
  • American cities named after European cities.
  • The Bass Pro Shop Pyramid in Memphis, TN.
  • Filling a 32-story disco pyramid with sports equipment.
  • Fry's Electronics.
  • Another episode of Topic Lords where we read from Wikipedia.
  • A huge empty building with paintings of Mayan gods holding torches that used to be an electronics store.
  • One more way in which people forget about San Diego.
  • The only animal that brushes its own teeth
  • A monkey wearing a spacesuit trying to smoke a cigarette through the face shield.
  • The only animal that smokes cigarettes. (Todd, who works down at the warehouse.)
  • Meeting your estranged dad when at the awards show when you're both up for the same Pulitzer.
  • Whether that fuckin' awesome monkey is a Bored Ape.
  • Whether Google Image Search is making up images yet.
  • That time Ryan North and his dog got stuck in an empty swimming pool and turned it into an interactive text adventure.
  • By the time you've smelt it, they have dealt it.
  • Topics are over!
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Loving only the parts you don't hate.
  • Finishing the whole pack of Red Vines because you refuse to let them defeat you.
  • An album you haven't put on Spotify.
  • You know. Those podcasts.
  • The sort of thing we don't do around here.
  • Holding up cue cards so the guests know what to say.
  • Reading all 180,000 messages in the Frog Fractions 2 ARG solvers discord.
  • The tech company you're applying to sending you all the Enron emails, saying "review these before the interview"
  • Mysteries, Easter eggs, and rose-tinted glasses.
  • Hedgehog in the Fog.
  • Arduous animation processes.
  • Working on an animated feature by yourself for over 40 years.
  • Great Family Entertainment.
  • A story about a guy who has everything he needs who dies while trying to buy an overcoat.
  • A huge pack of Red Vines that you and your wife have been eating since 1981.
  • Burning yourself out very quickly if you don't put guardrails in place.
  • Perfectionists throwing away years of work because it's not good enough.
  • DJs who still spin vinyl and other artists who choose to do things the hard way.
  • Enveloping yourself in an emotion.
  • Refusing to break character for the entire time you're making the Youtube documentary.
  • Putting away art you're having a hard time with and coming back to it later.
  • Everything that happened between the Sigil Master and Austin Walker.
  • Losing track of whether art looks good.
  • The fine line between pacing yourself and torturing yourself.
  • The statue in the background of Frog Fractions that turns red when you're on Mars.
  • Encouraging people to have whimsy.
  • Space Knight Rom.
  • Snagglepuss the 1950s playwright.
  • Back when you could make up a video game rumor and not have it immediately debunked.
  • GTA San Andreas urban legends.
  • Windows Movie Maker transition screens.
  • Gravitating towards the unknowable.
  • Self-destructing music.
  • Scarcity and unknowability.
  • Buying an album from the record shop and perusing the indie record label catalog that comes with it.
  • Searching for the 16th colossus.
  • Forming a small community and feeling communal with them.
  • Playing games with a group of friends like a book club.
  • An MMO full of ARGy type stuff.
  • Automatically grouping people into a puzzle solving community.
  • Being paralyzed by the sheer amount of information that you don't know.
  • What's going on with the iGlyphs?
  • Finding evidence of the Jejune Institute on a telephone pole.
  • Painstakingly making the 7th Frog Fractions game, 45 years from now.
  • The history of Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name.
  • Game secrets that can't be ruined by one jerk with a decompiler.
  • Sleep No More.
  • Getting pulled into a secret compartment during an interactive play.
  • Multi-city zombie larps.
  • The Oakland Airport renaming themselves to the San Francisco Bay International Airport and then later the lawsuit becoming the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport.
  • Bay Area topology.
  • San Francisco and South San Francisco.
  • The Unincorporated Area of San Mateo County International Airport, or UAOSMCIA.
  • American cities named after European cities.
  • The Bass Pro Shop Pyramid in Memphis, TN.
  • Filling a 32-story disco pyramid with sports equipment.
  • Fry's Electronics.
  • Another episode of Topic Lords where we read from Wikipedia.
  • A huge empty building with paintings of Mayan gods holding torches that used to be an electronics store.
  • One more way in which people forget about San Diego.
  • The only animal that brushes its own teeth
  • A monkey wearing a spacesuit trying to smoke a cigarette through the face shield.
  • The only animal that smokes cigarettes. (Todd, who works down at the warehouse.)
  • Meeting your estranged dad when at the awards show when you're both up for the same Pulitzer.
  • Whether that fuckin' awesome monkey is a Bored Ape.
  • Whether Google Image Search is making up images yet.
  • That time Ryan North and his dog got stuck in an empty swimming pool and turned it into an interactive text adventure.
  • By the time you've smelt it, they have dealt it.
  • Topics are over!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Loving only the parts you don't hate.
  • Finishing the whole pack of Red Vines because you refuse to let them defeat you.
  • An album you haven't put on Spotify.
  • You know. Those podcasts.
  • The sort of thing we don't do around here.
  • Holding up cue cards so the guests know what to say.
  • Reading all 180,000 messages in the Frog Fractions 2 ARG solvers discord.
  • The tech company you're applying to sending you all the Enron emails, saying "review these before the interview"
  • Mysteries, Easter eggs, and rose-tinted glasses.
  • Hedgehog in the Fog.
  • Arduous animation processes.
  • Working on an animated feature by yourself for over 40 years.
  • Great Family Entertainment.
  • A story about a guy who has everything he needs who dies while trying to buy an overcoat.
  • A huge pack of Red Vines that you and your wife have been eating since 1981.
  • Burning yourself out very quickly if you don't put guardrails in place.
  • Perfectionists throwing away years of work because it's not good enough.
  • DJs who still spin vinyl and other artists who choose to do things the hard way.
  • Enveloping yourself in an emotion.
  • Refusing to break character for the entire time you're making the Youtube documentary.
  • Putting away art you're having a hard time with and coming back to it later.
  • Everything that happened between the Sigil Master and Austin Walker.
  • Losing track of whether art looks good.
  • The fine line between pacing yourself and torturing yourself.
  • The statue in the background of Frog Fractions that turns red when you're on Mars.
  • Encouraging people to have whimsy.
  • Space Knight Rom.
  • Snagglepuss the 1950s playwright.
  • Back when you could make up a video game rumor and not have it immediately debunked.
  • GTA San Andreas urban legends.
  • Windows Movie Maker transition screens.
  • Gravitating towards the unknowable.
  • Self-destructing music.
  • Scarcity and unknowability.
  • Buying an album from the record shop and perusing the indie record label catalog that comes with it.
  • Searching for the 16th colossus.
  • Forming a small community and feeling communal with them.
  • Playing games with a group of friends like a book club.
  • An MMO full of ARGy type stuff.
  • Automatically grouping people into a puzzle solving community.
  • Being paralyzed by the sheer amount of information that you don't know.
  • What's going on with the iGlyphs?
  • Finding evidence of the Jejune Institute on a telephone pole.
  • Painstakingly making the 7th Frog Fractions game, 45 years from now.
  • The history of Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name.
  • Game secrets that can't be ruined by one jerk with a decompiler.
  • Sleep No More.
  • Getting pulled into a secret compartment during an interactive play.
  • Multi-city zombie larps.
  • The Oakland Airport renaming themselves to the San Francisco Bay International Airport and then later the lawsuit becoming the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport.
  • Bay Area topology.
  • San Francisco and South San Francisco.
  • The Unincorporated Area of San Mateo County International Airport, or UAOSMCIA.
  • American cities named after European cities.
  • The Bass Pro Shop Pyramid in Memphis, TN.
  • Filling a 32-story disco pyramid with sports equipment.
  • Fry's Electronics.
  • Another episode of Topic Lords where we read from Wikipedia.
  • A huge empty building with paintings of Mayan gods holding torches that used to be an electronics store.
  • One more way in which people forget about San Diego.
  • The only animal that brushes its own teeth
  • A monkey wearing a spacesuit trying to smoke a cigarette through the face shield.
  • The only animal that smokes cigarettes. (Todd, who works down at the warehouse.)
  • Meeting your estranged dad when at the awards show when you're both up for the same Pulitzer.
  • Whether that fuckin' awesome monkey is a Bored Ape.
  • Whether Google Image Search is making up images yet.
  • That time Ryan North and his dog got stuck in an empty swimming pool and turned it into an interactive text adventure.
  • By the time you've smelt it, they have dealt it.
  • Topics are over!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+fpgsymeo ]]> Jim Stormdancer 344. All Teeth Are Equally Smooth in the Eyes of the Lord https://topiclords.com/all-teeth-are-equally-smooth-in-the-eyes-of-the-lord f6cbd977-6e2a-475b-8673-65508ae6080d Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Lena and Cory. We discuss artists who make teeth, how it rules to be immortal, how committed to the bit is committed to the bit enough, A Shapeless Figure, by Evan Balster 57:30 true Lords:

  • Lena
  • Cory

Topics:

  • Re: Cory's teeth topic, there's so many artists making teeth
  • It would actually rule to be immortal, and all those stories about how it's not are just cope
  • How committed to the bit is committed to the bit enough?
  • A poem by Evan Balster, shared with us at GDC: A shapeless figure, locked away Inside a realm she godly sways; To weave in light and shadow, there, A living, breathing world from air. And nightly does she host a guest Who comes and goes at own behest, And time to time might take the throne To make the place a toy his own And on the morn to leave the mess Its keeper cleans, without protest. For lonely is the weaving-hand, The breaking-one's its only friend.

Microtopics:

  • Topic Lords-themed hangouts.
  • Indie City Games.
  • Two Truths and a Lie, a science fiction detective story.
  • A disgusting old man using an army of combat drones to find out what happened to his ex-boyfriend.
  • Two topics for the price of one.
  • Tooth dreams.
  • Considering what to do about your teeth as you go through various phases of having or not having teeth.
  • What people say if your femur is yellow.
  • People dying from mouth problems.
  • Going to the tooth artists and customizing your new teeth, just like Build-a-Bear.
  • Reaching into your mouth and pushing the button on your artificial tooth that plays your catchphrase.
  • The artist who illustrates your subject in stages as you dissect it.
  • Illustrating gross health things in a way that people can understand.
  • The cartoon amoeba that teaches you how to not get salmonella.
  • The kind of people who comment on Fecal Transplant Explainer videos.
  • Teeth: you chew with them.
  • Hitting up your dentist for extra teeth because the last ones were delicious.
  • The thing you have in your mouth the most that you're not allowed to eat. (Your teeth.)
  • Gradually eating your own teeth because you grind your own teeth at night.
  • Different sets of dentures for different vibes.
  • How to get glow in the dark teeth.
  • Discovering the hard way that your fake teeth don't fluoresce under UV light.
  • An entire generation of Americans going into the dentist together, like Hands Across America, to get all their teeth pulled so they can get dentures.
  • Losing all your teeth just in time for COVID.
  • Learning to not feel like you have to explain why you don't have any teeth.
  • Depressing people with possible existences that your mind can create.
  • What to do with the people who get too old to have good opinions.
  • Trying to maintain a continuous personality day to day.
  • Immortality vs. just living a really long time.
  • Burning it all down for the sake of your legacy.
  • Continuing to try to save people's lives and eventually inventing immortality.
  • Death: it's really cool actually.
  • Coming face to face with death and realizing it's not scary at all.
  • A Satanist and his wife selling everything to open a shop where they refuse to sell you human skulls and serial killer memorabilia.
  • Not needing a Memento Mori room because you already think about death all the time.
  • Transferring a marble from the future jar to the past jar to remind yourself not to waste this day.
  • Having a child and tossing it on the pile of existing children that everyone's already taking care of.
  • All there is to learn in the universe.
  • The Sword in the Stone.
  • Working all of physics out from first principles because it's fun and you have that kind of time.
  • Deciding to spend 100 years just hanging out with a tree and you don't even have podcasts.
  • Icehenge.
  • Associated Press title capitalization rules.
  • A decision that is awesome for everything except your wallet.
  • Artists who don't like what they make and don't enjoy the process, they just have to do it.
  • Not doing art for long enough to realize how unhappy you are because you're not doing art.
  • Making games because it's cool and fun to make games.
  • Making yourself happier by pretending to be happy.
  • What's bad about being too happy?
  • Oh thank God, a crisis!
  • A series of dreams in which the dream world is aware of you and hates you.
  • Lonely is the weaving hand, the breaking one its only friend.
  • Why you should be grateful when your son throws his trash on the floor.
  • The most mystical thing that we get to regularly experience.
  • Déjà rêvé.
  • One of the worst ways to determine whether you're dreaming.
  • Morpheus refusing to explain the Matrix in words even though he could describe it in 30 seconds.
  • Spoilers: the events of Inception did not actually occur.
]]> Lords:

  • Lena
  • Cory

Topics:

  • Re: Cory's teeth topic, there's so many artists making teeth
  • It would actually rule to be immortal, and all those stories about how it's not are just cope
  • How committed to the bit is committed to the bit enough?
  • A poem by Evan Balster, shared with us at GDC: A shapeless figure, locked away Inside a realm she godly sways; To weave in light and shadow, there, A living, breathing world from air. And nightly does she host a guest Who comes and goes at own behest, And time to time might take the throne To make the place a toy his own And on the morn to leave the mess Its keeper cleans, without protest. For lonely is the weaving-hand, The breaking-one's its only friend.

Microtopics:

  • Topic Lords-themed hangouts.
  • Indie City Games.
  • Two Truths and a Lie, a science fiction detective story.
  • A disgusting old man using an army of combat drones to find out what happened to his ex-boyfriend.
  • Two topics for the price of one.
  • Tooth dreams.
  • Considering what to do about your teeth as you go through various phases of having or not having teeth.
  • What people say if your femur is yellow.
  • People dying from mouth problems.
  • Going to the tooth artists and customizing your new teeth, just like Build-a-Bear.
  • Reaching into your mouth and pushing the button on your artificial tooth that plays your catchphrase.
  • The artist who illustrates your subject in stages as you dissect it.
  • Illustrating gross health things in a way that people can understand.
  • The cartoon amoeba that teaches you how to not get salmonella.
  • The kind of people who comment on Fecal Transplant Explainer videos.
  • Teeth: you chew with them.
  • Hitting up your dentist for extra teeth because the last ones were delicious.
  • The thing you have in your mouth the most that you're not allowed to eat. (Your teeth.)
  • Gradually eating your own teeth because you grind your own teeth at night.
  • Different sets of dentures for different vibes.
  • How to get glow in the dark teeth.
  • Discovering the hard way that your fake teeth don't fluoresce under UV light.
  • An entire generation of Americans going into the dentist together, like Hands Across America, to get all their teeth pulled so they can get dentures.
  • Losing all your teeth just in time for COVID.
  • Learning to not feel like you have to explain why you don't have any teeth.
  • Depressing people with possible existences that your mind can create.
  • What to do with the people who get too old to have good opinions.
  • Trying to maintain a continuous personality day to day.
  • Immortality vs. just living a really long time.
  • Burning it all down for the sake of your legacy.
  • Continuing to try to save people's lives and eventually inventing immortality.
  • Death: it's really cool actually.
  • Coming face to face with death and realizing it's not scary at all.
  • A Satanist and his wife selling everything to open a shop where they refuse to sell you human skulls and serial killer memorabilia.
  • Not needing a Memento Mori room because you already think about death all the time.
  • Transferring a marble from the future jar to the past jar to remind yourself not to waste this day.
  • Having a child and tossing it on the pile of existing children that everyone's already taking care of.
  • All there is to learn in the universe.
  • The Sword in the Stone.
  • Working all of physics out from first principles because it's fun and you have that kind of time.
  • Deciding to spend 100 years just hanging out with a tree and you don't even have podcasts.
  • Icehenge.
  • Associated Press title capitalization rules.
  • A decision that is awesome for everything except your wallet.
  • Artists who don't like what they make and don't enjoy the process, they just have to do it.
  • Not doing art for long enough to realize how unhappy you are because you're not doing art.
  • Making games because it's cool and fun to make games.
  • Making yourself happier by pretending to be happy.
  • What's bad about being too happy?
  • Oh thank God, a crisis!
  • A series of dreams in which the dream world is aware of you and hates you.
  • Lonely is the weaving hand, the breaking one its only friend.
  • Why you should be grateful when your son throws his trash on the floor.
  • The most mystical thing that we get to regularly experience.
  • Déjà rêvé.
  • One of the worst ways to determine whether you're dreaming.
  • Morpheus refusing to explain the Matrix in words even though he could describe it in 30 seconds.
  • Spoilers: the events of Inception did not actually occur.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Lena
  • Cory

Topics:

  • Re: Cory's teeth topic, there's so many artists making teeth
  • It would actually rule to be immortal, and all those stories about how it's not are just cope
  • How committed to the bit is committed to the bit enough?
  • A poem by Evan Balster, shared with us at GDC: A shapeless figure, locked away Inside a realm she godly sways; To weave in light and shadow, there, A living, breathing world from air. And nightly does she host a guest Who comes and goes at own behest, And time to time might take the throne To make the place a toy his own And on the morn to leave the mess Its keeper cleans, without protest. For lonely is the weaving-hand, The breaking-one's its only friend.

Microtopics:

  • Topic Lords-themed hangouts.
  • Indie City Games.
  • Two Truths and a Lie, a science fiction detective story.
  • A disgusting old man using an army of combat drones to find out what happened to his ex-boyfriend.
  • Two topics for the price of one.
  • Tooth dreams.
  • Considering what to do about your teeth as you go through various phases of having or not having teeth.
  • What people say if your femur is yellow.
  • People dying from mouth problems.
  • Going to the tooth artists and customizing your new teeth, just like Build-a-Bear.
  • Reaching into your mouth and pushing the button on your artificial tooth that plays your catchphrase.
  • The artist who illustrates your subject in stages as you dissect it.
  • Illustrating gross health things in a way that people can understand.
  • The cartoon amoeba that teaches you how to not get salmonella.
  • The kind of people who comment on Fecal Transplant Explainer videos.
  • Teeth: you chew with them.
  • Hitting up your dentist for extra teeth because the last ones were delicious.
  • The thing you have in your mouth the most that you're not allowed to eat. (Your teeth.)
  • Gradually eating your own teeth because you grind your own teeth at night.
  • Different sets of dentures for different vibes.
  • How to get glow in the dark teeth.
  • Discovering the hard way that your fake teeth don't fluoresce under UV light.
  • An entire generation of Americans going into the dentist together, like Hands Across America, to get all their teeth pulled so they can get dentures.
  • Losing all your teeth just in time for COVID.
  • Learning to not feel like you have to explain why you don't have any teeth.
  • Depressing people with possible existences that your mind can create.
  • What to do with the people who get too old to have good opinions.
  • Trying to maintain a continuous personality day to day.
  • Immortality vs. just living a really long time.
  • Burning it all down for the sake of your legacy.
  • Continuing to try to save people's lives and eventually inventing immortality.
  • Death: it's really cool actually.
  • Coming face to face with death and realizing it's not scary at all.
  • A Satanist and his wife selling everything to open a shop where they refuse to sell you human skulls and serial killer memorabilia.
  • Not needing a Memento Mori room because you already think about death all the time.
  • Transferring a marble from the future jar to the past jar to remind yourself not to waste this day.
  • Having a child and tossing it on the pile of existing children that everyone's already taking care of.
  • All there is to learn in the universe.
  • The Sword in the Stone.
  • Working all of physics out from first principles because it's fun and you have that kind of time.
  • Deciding to spend 100 years just hanging out with a tree and you don't even have podcasts.
  • Icehenge.
  • Associated Press title capitalization rules.
  • A decision that is awesome for everything except your wallet.
  • Artists who don't like what they make and don't enjoy the process, they just have to do it.
  • Not doing art for long enough to realize how unhappy you are because you're not doing art.
  • Making games because it's cool and fun to make games.
  • Making yourself happier by pretending to be happy.
  • What's bad about being too happy?
  • Oh thank God, a crisis!
  • A series of dreams in which the dream world is aware of you and hates you.
  • Lonely is the weaving hand, the breaking one its only friend.
  • Why you should be grateful when your son throws his trash on the floor.
  • The most mystical thing that we get to regularly experience.
  • Déjà rêvé.
  • One of the worst ways to determine whether you're dreaming.
  • Morpheus refusing to explain the Matrix in words even though he could describe it in 30 seconds.
  • Spoilers: the events of Inception did not actually occur.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+bB8_HGoC ]]> Jim Stormdancer 343. Put on Your Donut Ordering Face https://topiclords.com/put-on-your-donut-ordering-face de3110b8-a100-4d21-a08c-ebf23faf132b Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Chris. We discuss learning autism masking for parenting situations, making irrigation systems for plants, the D&D conspiracy theory I saw a few days ago and can't find now, and Don't Ever Kill the Buddha, by adzolotl 1:09:59 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

  • Having to relearn how to autism mask for parenting situations because the rules are different APPARENTLY
  • Only after five years learning to how make an irrigation system for a thousand plants, do I finally truly understand Han Solo's struggles with the Millenium Falcon.
  • The D&D conspiracy theory I saw a few days ago and can't find now
  • Don't Ever Kill the Buddha, by adzolotl

Microtopics:

  • Kitchen Bitchin'
  • Forgetting about plugs because there's a small child.
  • Out of Taskmaster again.
  • A tiny, very opinionated man.
  • Only understanding about seven concepts but having strong opinions about all of them.
  • Plugging PicoSteveMo again.
  • The Longing is Real Time.
  • Being in charge of all the Jaunt capsules for a few minutes before you fuck someone's life up.
  • What Stephen King would say if he heard about PicoSteveMo.
  • PicoSteveMo: it's a good time.
  • People at the bank thinking you're normal.
  • Ordering whatever donuts make sense.
  • Whether autistic people can order donuts.
  • Putting on your donut ordering face and instructing your toddler to do whatever makes sense.
  • Enjoying activating objects. Loving to access their functions.
  • A wonderful world where everything is interactive, especially dog tails.
  • What is a dog's tail for if not grabbing??
  • Better child-rearing outcomes associated with having heard more words.
  • Keeping a running commentary going while you put pants on your toddler.
  • Successfully interrupting your toddler before they disassemble anyone's grocery order.
  • Drug dealers in the parking lot who love when your toddler tries to catch a bird.
  • Yes! Yes, it's you! Feel shame!
  • Learning how to make small talk so you can get a job at Spencer's Gifts.
  • Whether you're autistic or if it's some other weird trauma instead.
  • Dad at Swim Class.
  • The kind of dads they have in Bakersfield.
  • Trying to find O.G. Dad in the Dad Soup.
  • Patriogenesis.
  • Fixing the water pressure on one end of the line which breaks all the janky connectors on the other end of the line.
  • The Big Chungus Alarm that you installed five years ago when you were working with the Big Chungus system.
  • Robots tearing themselves apart in ways you don't understand vs. in ways you do.
  • People who have worked on complicated systems.
  • Trying something new and suddenly you're dumb again.
  • The Millennium Falcon as a jalopy from American Graffiti.
  • Twenty extremely cool-dressed Asian kids in their twenties with souped up cars there's a racist term for that I legitimately don't remember, I'm not just trying to avoid saying it.
  • Somebody flipping their car in front of your house while the baby is trying to nap.
  • Self depreciation in the South Bay pan-Asian community.
  • Keeping nitrous oxide balloons in the back of your sports car and popping one into the Mr. Balloon when you need a speed boost.
  • Kids making too many U-turns in the 1950s and the No U-Turn signs are still making it hard to get their you're going to this day.
  • Things everyone knows about Walter White.
  • Black Walnut Trees extruding Juggalos, killing everyone in the vicinity.
  • A biome map that looks like when you take Minecraft and turn the biome setting to "really small"
  • The D&D conspiracy theory that you saw on Tumblr but can't find any more.
  • Being outed as someone who still thinks in terms of THACO.
  • Running a Shadowdark campaign and making delighted noises the entire time.
  • D&D characters leveling up too much and wanting to run a business.
  • What purpose dice serve in a TTRPG.
  • Rolling two natural ones in a row and cutting your own head off.
  • Orcs running ice-cream shops.
  • Having a hypomanic episode about not being allowed to be an elf with chainmail.
  • Having the Red Box and also the four subsequent boxes of different colors.
  • Picking up a gold piece and putting it back down over and over because finding a gold piece is worth 1 XP.
  • Reading a lot of things that rhyme.
  • Reading Dr. Seuss like Ulysses.
  • Playing pranks on people who reincarnate.
  • When one set of footprints disappeared it's when you married the Buddha and he carried you over the threshold.
  • Everyone trying to understand the "kill the Buddha" koan when it's just that the guy really hated the Buddha.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

  • Having to relearn how to autism mask for parenting situations because the rules are different APPARENTLY
  • Only after five years learning to how make an irrigation system for a thousand plants, do I finally truly understand Han Solo's struggles with the Millenium Falcon.
  • The D&D conspiracy theory I saw a few days ago and can't find now
  • Don't Ever Kill the Buddha, by adzolotl

Microtopics:

  • Kitchen Bitchin'
  • Forgetting about plugs because there's a small child.
  • Out of Taskmaster again.
  • A tiny, very opinionated man.
  • Only understanding about seven concepts but having strong opinions about all of them.
  • Plugging PicoSteveMo again.
  • The Longing is Real Time.
  • Being in charge of all the Jaunt capsules for a few minutes before you fuck someone's life up.
  • What Stephen King would say if he heard about PicoSteveMo.
  • PicoSteveMo: it's a good time.
  • People at the bank thinking you're normal.
  • Ordering whatever donuts make sense.
  • Whether autistic people can order donuts.
  • Putting on your donut ordering face and instructing your toddler to do whatever makes sense.
  • Enjoying activating objects. Loving to access their functions.
  • A wonderful world where everything is interactive, especially dog tails.
  • What is a dog's tail for if not grabbing??
  • Better child-rearing outcomes associated with having heard more words.
  • Keeping a running commentary going while you put pants on your toddler.
  • Successfully interrupting your toddler before they disassemble anyone's grocery order.
  • Drug dealers in the parking lot who love when your toddler tries to catch a bird.
  • Yes! Yes, it's you! Feel shame!
  • Learning how to make small talk so you can get a job at Spencer's Gifts.
  • Whether you're autistic or if it's some other weird trauma instead.
  • Dad at Swim Class.
  • The kind of dads they have in Bakersfield.
  • Trying to find O.G. Dad in the Dad Soup.
  • Patriogenesis.
  • Fixing the water pressure on one end of the line which breaks all the janky connectors on the other end of the line.
  • The Big Chungus Alarm that you installed five years ago when you were working with the Big Chungus system.
  • Robots tearing themselves apart in ways you don't understand vs. in ways you do.
  • People who have worked on complicated systems.
  • Trying something new and suddenly you're dumb again.
  • The Millennium Falcon as a jalopy from American Graffiti.
  • Twenty extremely cool-dressed Asian kids in their twenties with souped up cars there's a racist term for that I legitimately don't remember, I'm not just trying to avoid saying it.
  • Somebody flipping their car in front of your house while the baby is trying to nap.
  • Self depreciation in the South Bay pan-Asian community.
  • Keeping nitrous oxide balloons in the back of your sports car and popping one into the Mr. Balloon when you need a speed boost.
  • Kids making too many U-turns in the 1950s and the No U-Turn signs are still making it hard to get their you're going to this day.
  • Things everyone knows about Walter White.
  • Black Walnut Trees extruding Juggalos, killing everyone in the vicinity.
  • A biome map that looks like when you take Minecraft and turn the biome setting to "really small"
  • The D&D conspiracy theory that you saw on Tumblr but can't find any more.
  • Being outed as someone who still thinks in terms of THACO.
  • Running a Shadowdark campaign and making delighted noises the entire time.
  • D&D characters leveling up too much and wanting to run a business.
  • What purpose dice serve in a TTRPG.
  • Rolling two natural ones in a row and cutting your own head off.
  • Orcs running ice-cream shops.
  • Having a hypomanic episode about not being allowed to be an elf with chainmail.
  • Having the Red Box and also the four subsequent boxes of different colors.
  • Picking up a gold piece and putting it back down over and over because finding a gold piece is worth 1 XP.
  • Reading a lot of things that rhyme.
  • Reading Dr. Seuss like Ulysses.
  • Playing pranks on people who reincarnate.
  • When one set of footprints disappeared it's when you married the Buddha and he carried you over the threshold.
  • Everyone trying to understand the "kill the Buddha" koan when it's just that the guy really hated the Buddha.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

  • Having to relearn how to autism mask for parenting situations because the rules are different APPARENTLY
  • Only after five years learning to how make an irrigation system for a thousand plants, do I finally truly understand Han Solo's struggles with the Millenium Falcon.
  • The D&D conspiracy theory I saw a few days ago and can't find now
  • Don't Ever Kill the Buddha, by adzolotl

Microtopics:

  • Kitchen Bitchin'
  • Forgetting about plugs because there's a small child.
  • Out of Taskmaster again.
  • A tiny, very opinionated man.
  • Only understanding about seven concepts but having strong opinions about all of them.
  • Plugging PicoSteveMo again.
  • The Longing is Real Time.
  • Being in charge of all the Jaunt capsules for a few minutes before you fuck someone's life up.
  • What Stephen King would say if he heard about PicoSteveMo.
  • PicoSteveMo: it's a good time.
  • People at the bank thinking you're normal.
  • Ordering whatever donuts make sense.
  • Whether autistic people can order donuts.
  • Putting on your donut ordering face and instructing your toddler to do whatever makes sense.
  • Enjoying activating objects. Loving to access their functions.
  • A wonderful world where everything is interactive, especially dog tails.
  • What is a dog's tail for if not grabbing??
  • Better child-rearing outcomes associated with having heard more words.
  • Keeping a running commentary going while you put pants on your toddler.
  • Successfully interrupting your toddler before they disassemble anyone's grocery order.
  • Drug dealers in the parking lot who love when your toddler tries to catch a bird.
  • Yes! Yes, it's you! Feel shame!
  • Learning how to make small talk so you can get a job at Spencer's Gifts.
  • Whether you're autistic or if it's some other weird trauma instead.
  • Dad at Swim Class.
  • The kind of dads they have in Bakersfield.
  • Trying to find O.G. Dad in the Dad Soup.
  • Patriogenesis.
  • Fixing the water pressure on one end of the line which breaks all the janky connectors on the other end of the line.
  • The Big Chungus Alarm that you installed five years ago when you were working with the Big Chungus system.
  • Robots tearing themselves apart in ways you don't understand vs. in ways you do.
  • People who have worked on complicated systems.
  • Trying something new and suddenly you're dumb again.
  • The Millennium Falcon as a jalopy from American Graffiti.
  • Twenty extremely cool-dressed Asian kids in their twenties with souped up cars there's a racist term for that I legitimately don't remember, I'm not just trying to avoid saying it.
  • Somebody flipping their car in front of your house while the baby is trying to nap.
  • Self depreciation in the South Bay pan-Asian community.
  • Keeping nitrous oxide balloons in the back of your sports car and popping one into the Mr. Balloon when you need a speed boost.
  • Kids making too many U-turns in the 1950s and the No U-Turn signs are still making it hard to get their you're going to this day.
  • Things everyone knows about Walter White.
  • Black Walnut Trees extruding Juggalos, killing everyone in the vicinity.
  • A biome map that looks like when you take Minecraft and turn the biome setting to "really small"
  • The D&D conspiracy theory that you saw on Tumblr but can't find any more.
  • Being outed as someone who still thinks in terms of THACO.
  • Running a Shadowdark campaign and making delighted noises the entire time.
  • D&D characters leveling up too much and wanting to run a business.
  • What purpose dice serve in a TTRPG.
  • Rolling two natural ones in a row and cutting your own head off.
  • Orcs running ice-cream shops.
  • Having a hypomanic episode about not being allowed to be an elf with chainmail.
  • Having the Red Box and also the four subsequent boxes of different colors.
  • Picking up a gold piece and putting it back down over and over because finding a gold piece is worth 1 XP.
  • Reading a lot of things that rhyme.
  • Reading Dr. Seuss like Ulysses.
  • Playing pranks on people who reincarnate.
  • When one set of footprints disappeared it's when you married the Buddha and he carried you over the threshold.
  • Everyone trying to understand the "kill the Buddha" koan when it's just that the guy really hated the Buddha.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+2rv-EfmT ]]> Jim Stormdancer 342. Psycho Mantis Says To Drink Mercury https://topiclords.com/psycho-mantis-says-to-drink-mercury b51cc766-dc03-4d4e-8243-acbf955d89c0 Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Robb. We discuss Eurorack synthesizer modules that give you radiation poisoning, ectoparasites, stairs are the driving of walking, and The Beaufort Wind Scale. 1:08:41 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Year 14 of Cyberganked development.
  • Cryptozookeeper.
  • Struggling to play Yankee Doodle Dandy because the piano teacher doesn't want to hear your rendition of Axel F.
  • Being hit up for $25 by the state.
  • A text adventure with little pictures.
  • Composing your 3D scene using pictures you took at the Denver haunted house your friend runs.
  • Including an in-game explanation for why you chose to use the CGA colors.
  • Playing TXT World and wondering "why would anyone make a game that looks like that?"
  • How do you afford to take seven years to make a game?
  • Finagling money out of various governments during COVID.
  • Turning off the fish so that you can see the cat.
  • Spending thousands of dollars to go to GDC and pitch your game to publishers and finding no takers because your game isn't a roguelike or a deck builder.
  • Financial solvency isn't everything it's cracked up to be!
  • Existing as a person on earth and being as old as possible.
  • Life hacks for making your publisher go out of business.
  • A spreadsheet of 450 game publishers that existed in 2023 whereas now there's just Epic and Roblox.
  • Chainsaws and rocket launchers and other things you have in your front yard.
  • Chainsaws vs. Chainstaffs.
  • Measuring the IQ of every single Topic Lords listener.
  • Asking your artist to make it 10% grosser.
  • I know you have a good working relationship with your artist, but wouldn't you have had a better time alone in a dark room making bullshit with stable diffusion?
  • The Bloodlust Software art style.
  • Showing your four year old nephew how to throw a spear as Scorpion, then spending the rest of the afternoon shouting "get over here!" at each other.
  • Your Eurorack habit leading you to import uranium.
  • So-called "synthesizer music."
  • Shitpost Eurorack Modules.
  • Enriching uranium.
  • Talking to everyone about the uranium-based Eurorack module you want to buy in order to shift the Overton Window until buying the uranium-based Eurorack module seems totally normal.
  • Making the most incredible techno everyone's ever heard before dying of radiation poisoning, like Marie Curie.
  • What the Moog Modular would be like if Bob Moog only designed shitpost modules.
  • The three reasons to buy a hardware synthesizer.
  • Making art on the same device you use to doom scroll.
  • Sitting there with a jeweler's screwdriver trying to tune your synthesizer.
  • Coming on Topic Lords to declare that you're not a pervert.
  • Deckard's Dream.
  • Spending $5000 on a new synthesizer, making one song, and selling it for 75 cents on Bandcamp.
  • Making things go twang in the 70s.
  • The kind of parasites Slimer would have.
  • Fixing a toilet in space.
  • Tongue-eating isopods.
  • Eating a tongue and then becoming the tongue. You are what you eat!
  • Making Elevator Action and then getting in a multi-floor shootout in an office building.
  • Alpha Gal, the matriarch that makes you allergic to beef.
  • Teaming up with the Kool-Aid Man to fight the tick that makes you allergic to the color red.
  • A floor except every step you take is higher than the last and after you take a few steps you're way up in the air.
  • The accident-per-mile-traveled for stairs.
  • How your family reacts the second time you fall down the stairs.
  • What a caveman would think of stairs.
  • What simple machine a staircase is.
  • Hiding from the Dalek on the second floor because Daleks don't understand desires.
  • Umbrellas difficult to use.
  • A poem that came from the sea.
  • Might Order an Extra Mango Lassi.
  • Whether the scoville scale is logarithmic.
  • Arguing against preventing forest forest.
  • Bringing a machete to the farmer's market because what are the chances there are two machetes at the farmer's market?
  • Sea Heaps Up.
  • Fresh Gale vs. Whole Gale.
  • Never having been outside in the wind but trying to guess what happens in a moderate gale.
  • Taking a seven foot Chainstaff to MAGFest.
  • 3D printing a giant spear for your Hornet costume.
  • Sign-twirling your seven foot bone spear and terrifying all the MAGFest attendees.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Year 14 of Cyberganked development.
  • Cryptozookeeper.
  • Struggling to play Yankee Doodle Dandy because the piano teacher doesn't want to hear your rendition of Axel F.
  • Being hit up for $25 by the state.
  • A text adventure with little pictures.
  • Composing your 3D scene using pictures you took at the Denver haunted house your friend runs.
  • Including an in-game explanation for why you chose to use the CGA colors.
  • Playing TXT World and wondering "why would anyone make a game that looks like that?"
  • How do you afford to take seven years to make a game?
  • Finagling money out of various governments during COVID.
  • Turning off the fish so that you can see the cat.
  • Spending thousands of dollars to go to GDC and pitch your game to publishers and finding no takers because your game isn't a roguelike or a deck builder.
  • Financial solvency isn't everything it's cracked up to be!
  • Existing as a person on earth and being as old as possible.
  • Life hacks for making your publisher go out of business.
  • A spreadsheet of 450 game publishers that existed in 2023 whereas now there's just Epic and Roblox.
  • Chainsaws and rocket launchers and other things you have in your front yard.
  • Chainsaws vs. Chainstaffs.
  • Measuring the IQ of every single Topic Lords listener.
  • Asking your artist to make it 10% grosser.
  • I know you have a good working relationship with your artist, but wouldn't you have had a better time alone in a dark room making bullshit with stable diffusion?
  • The Bloodlust Software art style.
  • Showing your four year old nephew how to throw a spear as Scorpion, then spending the rest of the afternoon shouting "get over here!" at each other.
  • Your Eurorack habit leading you to import uranium.
  • So-called "synthesizer music."
  • Shitpost Eurorack Modules.
  • Enriching uranium.
  • Talking to everyone about the uranium-based Eurorack module you want to buy in order to shift the Overton Window until buying the uranium-based Eurorack module seems totally normal.
  • Making the most incredible techno everyone's ever heard before dying of radiation poisoning, like Marie Curie.
  • What the Moog Modular would be like if Bob Moog only designed shitpost modules.
  • The three reasons to buy a hardware synthesizer.
  • Making art on the same device you use to doom scroll.
  • Sitting there with a jeweler's screwdriver trying to tune your synthesizer.
  • Coming on Topic Lords to declare that you're not a pervert.
  • Deckard's Dream.
  • Spending $5000 on a new synthesizer, making one song, and selling it for 75 cents on Bandcamp.
  • Making things go twang in the 70s.
  • The kind of parasites Slimer would have.
  • Fixing a toilet in space.
  • Tongue-eating isopods.
  • Eating a tongue and then becoming the tongue. You are what you eat!
  • Making Elevator Action and then getting in a multi-floor shootout in an office building.
  • Alpha Gal, the matriarch that makes you allergic to beef.
  • Teaming up with the Kool-Aid Man to fight the tick that makes you allergic to the color red.
  • A floor except every step you take is higher than the last and after you take a few steps you're way up in the air.
  • The accident-per-mile-traveled for stairs.
  • How your family reacts the second time you fall down the stairs.
  • What a caveman would think of stairs.
  • What simple machine a staircase is.
  • Hiding from the Dalek on the second floor because Daleks don't understand desires.
  • Umbrellas difficult to use.
  • A poem that came from the sea.
  • Might Order an Extra Mango Lassi.
  • Whether the scoville scale is logarithmic.
  • Arguing against preventing forest forest.
  • Bringing a machete to the farmer's market because what are the chances there are two machetes at the farmer's market?
  • Sea Heaps Up.
  • Fresh Gale vs. Whole Gale.
  • Never having been outside in the wind but trying to guess what happens in a moderate gale.
  • Taking a seven foot Chainstaff to MAGFest.
  • 3D printing a giant spear for your Hornet costume.
  • Sign-twirling your seven foot bone spear and terrifying all the MAGFest attendees.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Year 14 of Cyberganked development.
  • Cryptozookeeper.
  • Struggling to play Yankee Doodle Dandy because the piano teacher doesn't want to hear your rendition of Axel F.
  • Being hit up for $25 by the state.
  • A text adventure with little pictures.
  • Composing your 3D scene using pictures you took at the Denver haunted house your friend runs.
  • Including an in-game explanation for why you chose to use the CGA colors.
  • Playing TXT World and wondering "why would anyone make a game that looks like that?"
  • How do you afford to take seven years to make a game?
  • Finagling money out of various governments during COVID.
  • Turning off the fish so that you can see the cat.
  • Spending thousands of dollars to go to GDC and pitch your game to publishers and finding no takers because your game isn't a roguelike or a deck builder.
  • Financial solvency isn't everything it's cracked up to be!
  • Existing as a person on earth and being as old as possible.
  • Life hacks for making your publisher go out of business.
  • A spreadsheet of 450 game publishers that existed in 2023 whereas now there's just Epic and Roblox.
  • Chainsaws and rocket launchers and other things you have in your front yard.
  • Chainsaws vs. Chainstaffs.
  • Measuring the IQ of every single Topic Lords listener.
  • Asking your artist to make it 10% grosser.
  • I know you have a good working relationship with your artist, but wouldn't you have had a better time alone in a dark room making bullshit with stable diffusion?
  • The Bloodlust Software art style.
  • Showing your four year old nephew how to throw a spear as Scorpion, then spending the rest of the afternoon shouting "get over here!" at each other.
  • Your Eurorack habit leading you to import uranium.
  • So-called "synthesizer music."
  • Shitpost Eurorack Modules.
  • Enriching uranium.
  • Talking to everyone about the uranium-based Eurorack module you want to buy in order to shift the Overton Window until buying the uranium-based Eurorack module seems totally normal.
  • Making the most incredible techno everyone's ever heard before dying of radiation poisoning, like Marie Curie.
  • What the Moog Modular would be like if Bob Moog only designed shitpost modules.
  • The three reasons to buy a hardware synthesizer.
  • Making art on the same device you use to doom scroll.
  • Sitting there with a jeweler's screwdriver trying to tune your synthesizer.
  • Coming on Topic Lords to declare that you're not a pervert.
  • Deckard's Dream.
  • Spending $5000 on a new synthesizer, making one song, and selling it for 75 cents on Bandcamp.
  • Making things go twang in the 70s.
  • The kind of parasites Slimer would have.
  • Fixing a toilet in space.
  • Tongue-eating isopods.
  • Eating a tongue and then becoming the tongue. You are what you eat!
  • Making Elevator Action and then getting in a multi-floor shootout in an office building.
  • Alpha Gal, the matriarch that makes you allergic to beef.
  • Teaming up with the Kool-Aid Man to fight the tick that makes you allergic to the color red.
  • A floor except every step you take is higher than the last and after you take a few steps you're way up in the air.
  • The accident-per-mile-traveled for stairs.
  • How your family reacts the second time you fall down the stairs.
  • What a caveman would think of stairs.
  • What simple machine a staircase is.
  • Hiding from the Dalek on the second floor because Daleks don't understand desires.
  • Umbrellas difficult to use.
  • A poem that came from the sea.
  • Might Order an Extra Mango Lassi.
  • Whether the scoville scale is logarithmic.
  • Arguing against preventing forest forest.
  • Bringing a machete to the farmer's market because what are the chances there are two machetes at the farmer's market?
  • Sea Heaps Up.
  • Fresh Gale vs. Whole Gale.
  • Never having been outside in the wind but trying to guess what happens in a moderate gale.
  • Taking a seven foot Chainstaff to MAGFest.
  • 3D printing a giant spear for your Hornet costume.
  • Sign-twirling your seven foot bone spear and terrifying all the MAGFest attendees.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+tJu6s83B ]]> Jim Stormdancer 341. The Real Jim Stormdancer (On My Birth Certificate) https://topiclords.com/the-real-jim-stormdancer-on-my-birth-certificate cce35b7c-7202-408a-9dad-fa21963fe099 Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Noel. We discuss Moss Moss design & process, being gaslit by an open-source 3D physics engine, ACME products, and Splinter by Carl Sandburg 1:03:33 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Blippo+
  • Wearing merch for a TV show in the Blippo+ cosmology.
  • The bureau where you keep your cotton.
  • Mossing the world and finding secrets.
  • Designing for mystery and discovery.
  • A platformer with no skill checks.
  • The standard puzzle game playbook.
  • Designing your game to offer one question per screen.
  • Pig Farm.
  • Discovering your way through a story.
  • What to show and what to hide
  • Collecting leaves that grow a vine up to something at the top.
  • Cats or rabbits or turnips or something.
  • An underrated comment on the Pico-8 BBS.
  • A secret at the end of the game that you try to be okay with most players not finding.
  • Play testing with your local game dev scene.
  • Various Pico-8 data compression strategies.
  • Code golfing until you can't stand it.
  • Ending every project in a nightmare slog.
  • PARENS-8.
  • How Pico-8 makes constraints feel real and not like some arbitrary bullshit you decided to do.
  • Forking Pico-8 and expanding the token limit to 8193.
  • 50 years of game designs to draw examples from.
  • Spikes.
  • Bounding your understanding of the space.
  • The satisfying feeling of playing a good XAMWWSKH.
  • Lions sculpted out of hedges that want to give you a big hug.
  • Creatures in the game world just going about your business in a way that can aid or hinder you.
  • Just lil dudes, just hanging out.
  • The feeling of being outside the bounds of a game world.
  • Lunacid.
  • Games that don't know you're playing them.
  • The pickup truck you can just barely spot in Pokemon Red.
  • Interpreting data as a compressed Pokemon.
  • Trying to make an N64 game because Pyrite 64 came out
  • Testing on your Summer Cart.
  • Choosing the physics engine that only supports cubes.
  • Lateral friction.
  • Reading about video game car physics on the Internet and getting so desperate that you start asking the LLMs.
  • Four wheels all applying different forces in different conditions.
  • What Google indexes now rather than text on the Internet.
  • A heavily abbreviated transcript.
  • Nearly 20,000 microtopics.
  • microtopics_ebooks.
  • An ebook written by many uncredited people.
  • Collecting 30,000 Bug Mars Work Visa signatures.
  • Informing your users that you are collecting their personal information but only in order to improve the contents of your wallet.
  • Zenith Electronics Is.
  • The game developers who broke off of Activision to form Accolade looking in the dictionary to find a name that's come earlier than Activision in alphabetical listings, and then the game developers who broke off from Accolade to form Acclaim doing the same thing.
  • Going to a movie theater in the 1930s because that's how you see the memes.
  • Hanna-Barbera inventing a new animation technique where they give everybody a collar so they can animate their head and body separately.
  • Disney replacing animators with photocopiers in the 1950s.
  • A medium's technical limitations eventually becoming an art style.
  • How often did they make the Looney Tunes? How many Looney Tunes are there?
  • Shorts that play before the main feature.
  • The DJ in the projection booth deciding what Looney Tune will drive the crowd wildest.
  • How many movies are made each year.
  • When the MPAA was established.
  • Which Looney Tunes did they play in front of the R-rated movies?
  • A splinter of singing.
  • If you say hello a thousand times, is the thousandth time actually a goodbye?
  • Eating the last grilled cheese sandwich of your life, and either being aware of it or not aware of it.
  • Crickets going extinct every winter and re-evolving in the spring.
  • Crickets becoming locusts in the winter and seeing how many divine plagues they can enact before springtime.
  • Entomology Blog: you're totally full of shit.
  • Walking towards a cricket and it stops chirping and you're like "how am I supposed to hunt you down and eat you now?"
  • The science weighs in: we won't be able to visit the aliens, but we will be able to send them a plague of locusts.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Blippo+
  • Wearing merch for a TV show in the Blippo+ cosmology.
  • The bureau where you keep your cotton.
  • Mossing the world and finding secrets.
  • Designing for mystery and discovery.
  • A platformer with no skill checks.
  • The standard puzzle game playbook.
  • Designing your game to offer one question per screen.
  • Pig Farm.
  • Discovering your way through a story.
  • What to show and what to hide
  • Collecting leaves that grow a vine up to something at the top.
  • Cats or rabbits or turnips or something.
  • An underrated comment on the Pico-8 BBS.
  • A secret at the end of the game that you try to be okay with most players not finding.
  • Play testing with your local game dev scene.
  • Various Pico-8 data compression strategies.
  • Code golfing until you can't stand it.
  • Ending every project in a nightmare slog.
  • PARENS-8.
  • How Pico-8 makes constraints feel real and not like some arbitrary bullshit you decided to do.
  • Forking Pico-8 and expanding the token limit to 8193.
  • 50 years of game designs to draw examples from.
  • Spikes.
  • Bounding your understanding of the space.
  • The satisfying feeling of playing a good XAMWWSKH.
  • Lions sculpted out of hedges that want to give you a big hug.
  • Creatures in the game world just going about your business in a way that can aid or hinder you.
  • Just lil dudes, just hanging out.
  • The feeling of being outside the bounds of a game world.
  • Lunacid.
  • Games that don't know you're playing them.
  • The pickup truck you can just barely spot in Pokemon Red.
  • Interpreting data as a compressed Pokemon.
  • Trying to make an N64 game because Pyrite 64 came out
  • Testing on your Summer Cart.
  • Choosing the physics engine that only supports cubes.
  • Lateral friction.
  • Reading about video game car physics on the Internet and getting so desperate that you start asking the LLMs.
  • Four wheels all applying different forces in different conditions.
  • What Google indexes now rather than text on the Internet.
  • A heavily abbreviated transcript.
  • Nearly 20,000 microtopics.
  • microtopics_ebooks.
  • An ebook written by many uncredited people.
  • Collecting 30,000 Bug Mars Work Visa signatures.
  • Informing your users that you are collecting their personal information but only in order to improve the contents of your wallet.
  • Zenith Electronics Is.
  • The game developers who broke off of Activision to form Accolade looking in the dictionary to find a name that's come earlier than Activision in alphabetical listings, and then the game developers who broke off from Accolade to form Acclaim doing the same thing.
  • Going to a movie theater in the 1930s because that's how you see the memes.
  • Hanna-Barbera inventing a new animation technique where they give everybody a collar so they can animate their head and body separately.
  • Disney replacing animators with photocopiers in the 1950s.
  • A medium's technical limitations eventually becoming an art style.
  • How often did they make the Looney Tunes? How many Looney Tunes are there?
  • Shorts that play before the main feature.
  • The DJ in the projection booth deciding what Looney Tune will drive the crowd wildest.
  • How many movies are made each year.
  • When the MPAA was established.
  • Which Looney Tunes did they play in front of the R-rated movies?
  • A splinter of singing.
  • If you say hello a thousand times, is the thousandth time actually a goodbye?
  • Eating the last grilled cheese sandwich of your life, and either being aware of it or not aware of it.
  • Crickets going extinct every winter and re-evolving in the spring.
  • Crickets becoming locusts in the winter and seeing how many divine plagues they can enact before springtime.
  • Entomology Blog: you're totally full of shit.
  • Walking towards a cricket and it stops chirping and you're like "how am I supposed to hunt you down and eat you now?"
  • The science weighs in: we won't be able to visit the aliens, but we will be able to send them a plague of locusts.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Blippo+
  • Wearing merch for a TV show in the Blippo+ cosmology.
  • The bureau where you keep your cotton.
  • Mossing the world and finding secrets.
  • Designing for mystery and discovery.
  • A platformer with no skill checks.
  • The standard puzzle game playbook.
  • Designing your game to offer one question per screen.
  • Pig Farm.
  • Discovering your way through a story.
  • What to show and what to hide
  • Collecting leaves that grow a vine up to something at the top.
  • Cats or rabbits or turnips or something.
  • An underrated comment on the Pico-8 BBS.
  • A secret at the end of the game that you try to be okay with most players not finding.
  • Play testing with your local game dev scene.
  • Various Pico-8 data compression strategies.
  • Code golfing until you can't stand it.
  • Ending every project in a nightmare slog.
  • PARENS-8.
  • How Pico-8 makes constraints feel real and not like some arbitrary bullshit you decided to do.
  • Forking Pico-8 and expanding the token limit to 8193.
  • 50 years of game designs to draw examples from.
  • Spikes.
  • Bounding your understanding of the space.
  • The satisfying feeling of playing a good XAMWWSKH.
  • Lions sculpted out of hedges that want to give you a big hug.
  • Creatures in the game world just going about your business in a way that can aid or hinder you.
  • Just lil dudes, just hanging out.
  • The feeling of being outside the bounds of a game world.
  • Lunacid.
  • Games that don't know you're playing them.
  • The pickup truck you can just barely spot in Pokemon Red.
  • Interpreting data as a compressed Pokemon.
  • Trying to make an N64 game because Pyrite 64 came out
  • Testing on your Summer Cart.
  • Choosing the physics engine that only supports cubes.
  • Lateral friction.
  • Reading about video game car physics on the Internet and getting so desperate that you start asking the LLMs.
  • Four wheels all applying different forces in different conditions.
  • What Google indexes now rather than text on the Internet.
  • A heavily abbreviated transcript.
  • Nearly 20,000 microtopics.
  • microtopics_ebooks.
  • An ebook written by many uncredited people.
  • Collecting 30,000 Bug Mars Work Visa signatures.
  • Informing your users that you are collecting their personal information but only in order to improve the contents of your wallet.
  • Zenith Electronics Is.
  • The game developers who broke off of Activision to form Accolade looking in the dictionary to find a name that's come earlier than Activision in alphabetical listings, and then the game developers who broke off from Accolade to form Acclaim doing the same thing.
  • Going to a movie theater in the 1930s because that's how you see the memes.
  • Hanna-Barbera inventing a new animation technique where they give everybody a collar so they can animate their head and body separately.
  • Disney replacing animators with photocopiers in the 1950s.
  • A medium's technical limitations eventually becoming an art style.
  • How often did they make the Looney Tunes? How many Looney Tunes are there?
  • Shorts that play before the main feature.
  • The DJ in the projection booth deciding what Looney Tune will drive the crowd wildest.
  • How many movies are made each year.
  • When the MPAA was established.
  • Which Looney Tunes did they play in front of the R-rated movies?
  • A splinter of singing.
  • If you say hello a thousand times, is the thousandth time actually a goodbye?
  • Eating the last grilled cheese sandwich of your life, and either being aware of it or not aware of it.
  • Crickets going extinct every winter and re-evolving in the spring.
  • Crickets becoming locusts in the winter and seeing how many divine plagues they can enact before springtime.
  • Entomology Blog: you're totally full of shit.
  • Walking towards a cricket and it stops chirping and you're like "how am I supposed to hunt you down and eat you now?"
  • The science weighs in: we won't be able to visit the aliens, but we will be able to send them a plague of locusts.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+xjA19TGK ]]> Jim Stormdancer 340. Too Young for Doom https://topiclords.com/too-young-for-doom 784f7a65-dd06-4c7b-82f6-d728e4c1472f Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Matt and Cort. We discuss Doom Modding, the Boston Marathon Stampede, secrets in games becoming grotesque, and Dammit I'm Mad by Demetri Martin. 1:04:54 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Doom Modding and You
  • The Boston Marathon Stampede
  • This 1989 Shigeru Miyamoto quote. "When pornography escalates, it eventually crosses into the grotesque. I think the world of 'hidden secrets' in games has almost reached that same grotesque level. It's reached a point where it isn't measured by common sense anymore. It's just people getting bored and looking for stronger and stronger stimulation. We've hit a wall. When you're at the point where you have no choice but to go 'grotesque,' you have to start thinking of new ways to use the medium."
  • Dammit I'm Mad by Demetri Martin

Microtopics:

  • Plugging in the middle of someone else's topic.
  • Successfully comparing apples and oranges.
  • Waking extremely early to meet with someone in the wrong time zone.
  • Doing anything for 30 years.
  • What monsters do.
  • Making Doom mods before they figured out how to change the walls.
  • The Hacker's Guide to Doom, by Hank Leukart.
  • Anthropology of Doom modding.
  • Roots: the Evolution of Doom Level Design.
  • Demon of the Well.
  • People heralding the end of Doom modding before you even get started.
  • Megawads.
  • Where's All the Data?
  • Non-commercial Doom Source License.
  • Jokes that take thirty years to get.
  • The Vanilla Limitations of Doom.
  • Recreating your high school in Doom, which was okay at the time but stopped being okay several years later.
  • Dividing eras at a pinching point.
  • People who are opposed to doors.
  • Relaxed-Limit Source Ports.
  • The Stand-Alone Project Era.
  • DeHackEd patching the binary.
  • Various sources of value you might get from modding Doom.
  • Mark Z. Danielewski commenting on MyHouse.wad.
  • Sonic Robo Blast 2.
  • Falling Away Floors.
  • Taking certain features and mushing them together into a new thing.
  • Back when Doom rules the LAN parties.
  • What you played on your Mac instead of Doom.
  • A hardware mod that added looking up and down to Doom via a cardboard window that you can slide around the monitor.
  • Making a Beeline for the Bungie Booth.
  • A crowd of shifty eyed gamers waiting to sprint across the show floor full of unsuspecting exhibitors setting up booths.
  • An okay one of those if you're into that sort of thing.
  • Drinkable Cheeseburgers.
  • Finishing the tutorial and quitting Marathon (2026) forever so that you can brag about your100% extraction rate.
  • Doing non-euclidean architecture in your Marathon maps.
  • Adding portals to the Doom engine.
  • The three stages of development that every medium goes through.
  • Paying the shareware fee to get your registered copy of WinBolo and/or LinBolo.
  • The point when you have no choice but to Go Grotesque.
  • Miyamoto quotes that modern-day Nintendo would never allow to escape containment.
  • A completely constructed, untrue memory of how you played The Legend of Zelda.
  • Miyamoto foretelling in 1989 that grotesque secrets in video games will lead directly to the cat hair mustache puzzle and kill adventure games.
  • Slaughter-mappy.
  • Hell Keep and the Fortress of Mystery.
  • The one place in the Doom episode they can force a constrained-ammo puzzle.
  • I rise; my bed on a sun.
  • Rats peed on hope.
  • Deified as a sign in ruby ash.
  • Making a computer watch every episode of Seinfeld.
  • Guided Markov.
  • Writing a poem from both ends at the same time.
  • Saying the moon is anything and squeezing a poem out of it.
  • Doom mods where you can pull down the console.
  • Porting ZZT to the Doom engine and vice versa.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Doom Modding and You
  • The Boston Marathon Stampede
  • This 1989 Shigeru Miyamoto quote. "When pornography escalates, it eventually crosses into the grotesque. I think the world of 'hidden secrets' in games has almost reached that same grotesque level. It's reached a point where it isn't measured by common sense anymore. It's just people getting bored and looking for stronger and stronger stimulation. We've hit a wall. When you're at the point where you have no choice but to go 'grotesque,' you have to start thinking of new ways to use the medium."
  • Dammit I'm Mad by Demetri Martin

Microtopics:

  • Plugging in the middle of someone else's topic.
  • Successfully comparing apples and oranges.
  • Waking extremely early to meet with someone in the wrong time zone.
  • Doing anything for 30 years.
  • What monsters do.
  • Making Doom mods before they figured out how to change the walls.
  • The Hacker's Guide to Doom, by Hank Leukart.
  • Anthropology of Doom modding.
  • Roots: the Evolution of Doom Level Design.
  • Demon of the Well.
  • People heralding the end of Doom modding before you even get started.
  • Megawads.
  • Where's All the Data?
  • Non-commercial Doom Source License.
  • Jokes that take thirty years to get.
  • The Vanilla Limitations of Doom.
  • Recreating your high school in Doom, which was okay at the time but stopped being okay several years later.
  • Dividing eras at a pinching point.
  • People who are opposed to doors.
  • Relaxed-Limit Source Ports.
  • The Stand-Alone Project Era.
  • DeHackEd patching the binary.
  • Various sources of value you might get from modding Doom.
  • Mark Z. Danielewski commenting on MyHouse.wad.
  • Sonic Robo Blast 2.
  • Falling Away Floors.
  • Taking certain features and mushing them together into a new thing.
  • Back when Doom rules the LAN parties.
  • What you played on your Mac instead of Doom.
  • A hardware mod that added looking up and down to Doom via a cardboard window that you can slide around the monitor.
  • Making a Beeline for the Bungie Booth.
  • A crowd of shifty eyed gamers waiting to sprint across the show floor full of unsuspecting exhibitors setting up booths.
  • An okay one of those if you're into that sort of thing.
  • Drinkable Cheeseburgers.
  • Finishing the tutorial and quitting Marathon (2026) forever so that you can brag about your100% extraction rate.
  • Doing non-euclidean architecture in your Marathon maps.
  • Adding portals to the Doom engine.
  • The three stages of development that every medium goes through.
  • Paying the shareware fee to get your registered copy of WinBolo and/or LinBolo.
  • The point when you have no choice but to Go Grotesque.
  • Miyamoto quotes that modern-day Nintendo would never allow to escape containment.
  • A completely constructed, untrue memory of how you played The Legend of Zelda.
  • Miyamoto foretelling in 1989 that grotesque secrets in video games will lead directly to the cat hair mustache puzzle and kill adventure games.
  • Slaughter-mappy.
  • Hell Keep and the Fortress of Mystery.
  • The one place in the Doom episode they can force a constrained-ammo puzzle.
  • I rise; my bed on a sun.
  • Rats peed on hope.
  • Deified as a sign in ruby ash.
  • Making a computer watch every episode of Seinfeld.
  • Guided Markov.
  • Writing a poem from both ends at the same time.
  • Saying the moon is anything and squeezing a poem out of it.
  • Doom mods where you can pull down the console.
  • Porting ZZT to the Doom engine and vice versa.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Doom Modding and You
  • The Boston Marathon Stampede
  • This 1989 Shigeru Miyamoto quote. "When pornography escalates, it eventually crosses into the grotesque. I think the world of 'hidden secrets' in games has almost reached that same grotesque level. It's reached a point where it isn't measured by common sense anymore. It's just people getting bored and looking for stronger and stronger stimulation. We've hit a wall. When you're at the point where you have no choice but to go 'grotesque,' you have to start thinking of new ways to use the medium."
  • Dammit I'm Mad by Demetri Martin

Microtopics:

  • Plugging in the middle of someone else's topic.
  • Successfully comparing apples and oranges.
  • Waking extremely early to meet with someone in the wrong time zone.
  • Doing anything for 30 years.
  • What monsters do.
  • Making Doom mods before they figured out how to change the walls.
  • The Hacker's Guide to Doom, by Hank Leukart.
  • Anthropology of Doom modding.
  • Roots: the Evolution of Doom Level Design.
  • Demon of the Well.
  • People heralding the end of Doom modding before you even get started.
  • Megawads.
  • Where's All the Data?
  • Non-commercial Doom Source License.
  • Jokes that take thirty years to get.
  • The Vanilla Limitations of Doom.
  • Recreating your high school in Doom, which was okay at the time but stopped being okay several years later.
  • Dividing eras at a pinching point.
  • People who are opposed to doors.
  • Relaxed-Limit Source Ports.
  • The Stand-Alone Project Era.
  • DeHackEd patching the binary.
  • Various sources of value you might get from modding Doom.
  • Mark Z. Danielewski commenting on MyHouse.wad.
  • Sonic Robo Blast 2.
  • Falling Away Floors.
  • Taking certain features and mushing them together into a new thing.
  • Back when Doom rules the LAN parties.
  • What you played on your Mac instead of Doom.
  • A hardware mod that added looking up and down to Doom via a cardboard window that you can slide around the monitor.
  • Making a Beeline for the Bungie Booth.
  • A crowd of shifty eyed gamers waiting to sprint across the show floor full of unsuspecting exhibitors setting up booths.
  • An okay one of those if you're into that sort of thing.
  • Drinkable Cheeseburgers.
  • Finishing the tutorial and quitting Marathon (2026) forever so that you can brag about your100% extraction rate.
  • Doing non-euclidean architecture in your Marathon maps.
  • Adding portals to the Doom engine.
  • The three stages of development that every medium goes through.
  • Paying the shareware fee to get your registered copy of WinBolo and/or LinBolo.
  • The point when you have no choice but to Go Grotesque.
  • Miyamoto quotes that modern-day Nintendo would never allow to escape containment.
  • A completely constructed, untrue memory of how you played The Legend of Zelda.
  • Miyamoto foretelling in 1989 that grotesque secrets in video games will lead directly to the cat hair mustache puzzle and kill adventure games.
  • Slaughter-mappy.
  • Hell Keep and the Fortress of Mystery.
  • The one place in the Doom episode they can force a constrained-ammo puzzle.
  • I rise; my bed on a sun.
  • Rats peed on hope.
  • Deified as a sign in ruby ash.
  • Making a computer watch every episode of Seinfeld.
  • Guided Markov.
  • Writing a poem from both ends at the same time.
  • Saying the moon is anything and squeezing a poem out of it.
  • Doom mods where you can pull down the console.
  • Porting ZZT to the Doom engine and vice versa.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RaPYgQSD ]]> Jim Stormdancer 339. Become Uncoffinable https://topiclords.com/become-uncoffinable 64b134dd-0068-492d-8510-0262128eceb7 Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Watson and Wren. We discuss faction design in historical strategy games, linguistics making it easier and harder to name things, belonging in SLUSD, The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service, and the magic systems of Brandon Sanderson 1:04:36 true Lords:

  • Watson
  • Wren

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Three-Body Problem (Not That One)
  • Jade City; Jade Legacy.
  • Making any non-creamy soup into a creamy soup.
  • Boiling an entire civilization down to a concept simple enough to program.
  • Getting to the end of the tech tree first and winning science.
  • Greece as the origin of many of our modern ideas about government.
  • Grand strategy games where you spend most of your time trying to not to be assassinated by your family.
  • Dwarf Fortress except it's obsessed with the royal family.
  • Hiring Charles Babbage to invent the analytical engine because otherwise all your game jams will have to be board game jams.
  • Playing a TTRPG and having to name something so first you have to create thousands of years of linguistic history.
  • The World Builder's Disease. (A.k.a. having a delightful hobby)
  • What you might have named somebody back in Zelda Times.
  • Developing a set of phonotactics so that you can name something plausibly.
  • What is SLUSD?
  • The webp of 3D model formats.
  • Trans people: they belong in Ohio.
  • Putting up a billboard and hoping people will look away from the road to see your content.
  • What investigative journalists might do if investigative journalism still existed.
  • Solving the SLUSD mystery.
  • Reconstructing the history of civilization from the Topic Lords vaults.
  • What did people with ADHD do before Topics?
  • Strange things done in the midnight sun.
  • Cremating Sam in the wreck of the Alice May.
  • The secret tales of the Arctic trails that would make your blood run cold.
  • A poet who mostly writes about burial rituals in the arctic circle.
  • Stompin' Tom.
  • Bits to Try if You Think You're About To Die.
  • Supernatural small-town Alaska death promises.
  • Why SETI@Home looked for three spikes.
  • At what point to Doom clones become first-person shooters, and at what point do you become a conspiracy theorist for pointing out all these games are the same.
  • Gandhi becoming so peaceful that he integer underflows.
  • Video games as a way to cope with the outcome of civilization.
  • Sanderson's four laws.
  • A fictional branch of physics.
  • Various metals that do various things.
  • Consuming metal filings that have magical effects based on this funky diagram.
  • Eating a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil.
  • Coinshots shooting people with coins.
  • Soothing and inflaming various emotions.
  • The element of thinking about stuff in various kinds of ways, and its atomic number.
  • Forcing a Mistborn to burn aluminum, as a prank.
  • Creating a magic system by working backwards from the premise that tinfoil hats are effective in this universe.
  • A fandom wiki. Made by fans. Not on fandom.com.
  • Gradually revealing the rules of your system as they become relevant.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Whether fantasy and horror fiction would be better if it was more like a video game.
  • Characters in a story who are trying real hard to level up.
  • Establishing the reality of the fiction while also taking that reality to a very strange place.
]]> Lords:

  • Watson
  • Wren

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Three-Body Problem (Not That One)
  • Jade City; Jade Legacy.
  • Making any non-creamy soup into a creamy soup.
  • Boiling an entire civilization down to a concept simple enough to program.
  • Getting to the end of the tech tree first and winning science.
  • Greece as the origin of many of our modern ideas about government.
  • Grand strategy games where you spend most of your time trying to not to be assassinated by your family.
  • Dwarf Fortress except it's obsessed with the royal family.
  • Hiring Charles Babbage to invent the analytical engine because otherwise all your game jams will have to be board game jams.
  • Playing a TTRPG and having to name something so first you have to create thousands of years of linguistic history.
  • The World Builder's Disease. (A.k.a. having a delightful hobby)
  • What you might have named somebody back in Zelda Times.
  • Developing a set of phonotactics so that you can name something plausibly.
  • What is SLUSD?
  • The webp of 3D model formats.
  • Trans people: they belong in Ohio.
  • Putting up a billboard and hoping people will look away from the road to see your content.
  • What investigative journalists might do if investigative journalism still existed.
  • Solving the SLUSD mystery.
  • Reconstructing the history of civilization from the Topic Lords vaults.
  • What did people with ADHD do before Topics?
  • Strange things done in the midnight sun.
  • Cremating Sam in the wreck of the Alice May.
  • The secret tales of the Arctic trails that would make your blood run cold.
  • A poet who mostly writes about burial rituals in the arctic circle.
  • Stompin' Tom.
  • Bits to Try if You Think You're About To Die.
  • Supernatural small-town Alaska death promises.
  • Why SETI@Home looked for three spikes.
  • At what point to Doom clones become first-person shooters, and at what point do you become a conspiracy theorist for pointing out all these games are the same.
  • Gandhi becoming so peaceful that he integer underflows.
  • Video games as a way to cope with the outcome of civilization.
  • Sanderson's four laws.
  • A fictional branch of physics.
  • Various metals that do various things.
  • Consuming metal filings that have magical effects based on this funky diagram.
  • Eating a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil.
  • Coinshots shooting people with coins.
  • Soothing and inflaming various emotions.
  • The element of thinking about stuff in various kinds of ways, and its atomic number.
  • Forcing a Mistborn to burn aluminum, as a prank.
  • Creating a magic system by working backwards from the premise that tinfoil hats are effective in this universe.
  • A fandom wiki. Made by fans. Not on fandom.com.
  • Gradually revealing the rules of your system as they become relevant.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Whether fantasy and horror fiction would be better if it was more like a video game.
  • Characters in a story who are trying real hard to level up.
  • Establishing the reality of the fiction while also taking that reality to a very strange place.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Watson
  • Wren

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Three-Body Problem (Not That One)
  • Jade City; Jade Legacy.
  • Making any non-creamy soup into a creamy soup.
  • Boiling an entire civilization down to a concept simple enough to program.
  • Getting to the end of the tech tree first and winning science.
  • Greece as the origin of many of our modern ideas about government.
  • Grand strategy games where you spend most of your time trying to not to be assassinated by your family.
  • Dwarf Fortress except it's obsessed with the royal family.
  • Hiring Charles Babbage to invent the analytical engine because otherwise all your game jams will have to be board game jams.
  • Playing a TTRPG and having to name something so first you have to create thousands of years of linguistic history.
  • The World Builder's Disease. (A.k.a. having a delightful hobby)
  • What you might have named somebody back in Zelda Times.
  • Developing a set of phonotactics so that you can name something plausibly.
  • What is SLUSD?
  • The webp of 3D model formats.
  • Trans people: they belong in Ohio.
  • Putting up a billboard and hoping people will look away from the road to see your content.
  • What investigative journalists might do if investigative journalism still existed.
  • Solving the SLUSD mystery.
  • Reconstructing the history of civilization from the Topic Lords vaults.
  • What did people with ADHD do before Topics?
  • Strange things done in the midnight sun.
  • Cremating Sam in the wreck of the Alice May.
  • The secret tales of the Arctic trails that would make your blood run cold.
  • A poet who mostly writes about burial rituals in the arctic circle.
  • Stompin' Tom.
  • Bits to Try if You Think You're About To Die.
  • Supernatural small-town Alaska death promises.
  • Why SETI@Home looked for three spikes.
  • At what point to Doom clones become first-person shooters, and at what point do you become a conspiracy theorist for pointing out all these games are the same.
  • Gandhi becoming so peaceful that he integer underflows.
  • Video games as a way to cope with the outcome of civilization.
  • Sanderson's four laws.
  • A fictional branch of physics.
  • Various metals that do various things.
  • Consuming metal filings that have magical effects based on this funky diagram.
  • Eating a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil.
  • Coinshots shooting people with coins.
  • Soothing and inflaming various emotions.
  • The element of thinking about stuff in various kinds of ways, and its atomic number.
  • Forcing a Mistborn to burn aluminum, as a prank.
  • Creating a magic system by working backwards from the premise that tinfoil hats are effective in this universe.
  • A fandom wiki. Made by fans. Not on fandom.com.
  • Gradually revealing the rules of your system as they become relevant.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Whether fantasy and horror fiction would be better if it was more like a video game.
  • Characters in a story who are trying real hard to level up.
  • Establishing the reality of the fiction while also taking that reality to a very strange place.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Sq6VuoMg ]]> Jim Stormdancer 338. Placebo Yourself Into Having a Phenomenal Time https://topiclords.com/placebo-yourself-into-having-a-phenomenal-time 2ffcacd2-8e20-4dff-bffc-f4a636f1780f Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss going to the front of the stage at a metal show, using religion to protect natural spaces, modding your EV to have custom engine noises, Litany Against Fear, and how to stop drinking coffee 1:09:03 true Lords:

Topics:

  • If you want to be at the front of the stage at a show, just go there, literally no one is stopping you - or - THE ONLY THING YOU LACK IS WILL
  • Elves and Using Religion to Protect Natural Spaces
  • It's illegal to mod your EV to have custom engine noises
  • Litany Against Fear
  • How to stop drinking coffee

Microtopics:

  • The Splintered Oar, by Weft.
  • An album about labor rights in Kentucky.
  • Reading aloud to your friends and family.
  • The siren song of sitting on the couch and watching TV.
  • Time as the crow flies.
  • Measuring time as the crow looks at the clock.
  • Wanting to be right in front of the stage and just going there.
  • Paying hundreds of dollars to stand in an extremely loud room.
  • Getting after it with an open heart.
  • Everyone standing at the same height as the musicians playing live music.
  • An active member of a live music community in a major US city.
  • Physically engaging with the music.
  • Letting go of your concern for the eyes upon you.
  • Standing in place for the entire four or five bands playing this show without ever leaving your spot to pee.
  • Working the merch booth.
  • Unloading a truckload of positive energy into the space in front of the stage.
  • Mosh pit comfort.
  • Bands graduating to the next level of popularity.
  • Fighting your way to the front of the stage so you can not look at the band.
  • Luxuriating in the freedom of a shared experience of joy.
  • Giving back to the artists you love by screaming at them while they play music.
  • Becoming part of a local scene.
  • People who believe in elves and people who pretend to believe in elves.
  • Looking forward to when your child might one day bring you boba.
  • Elf kayfabe.
  • Mall Santa breaking kayfabe.
  • Whether the mall Santa has to keep up the act even when he's alone in the shower.
  • Reindeer-powered Yaris.
  • Scandinavian elf lore.
  • Post 9/11 supporting of the troops.
  • Arguments to which there is no possible rebuttal, such as "you can't build a mini mall because the elves live here."
  • Picking a random Wikipedia article about Nordic folklore and finding out how many metal bands are named after it.
  • How few murders there are in the modern black metal scene.
  • A looping sample of Snoop Dogg saying "this Volt is in reverse."
  • Automotive engineers deliberately making the engine noise play a power chord.
  • Instead of banning whistle tips, legislators mandating that they play a 7th chord, and also that the driver must know enough music theory to explain why they chose that chord.
  • Being on the sideshow mailing list so you can attend every sideshow.
  • All the different motions you have to make to wash the entire surface of both hands.
  • A poem about not allowing fear to conquer you while you wash your hands.
  • A poem with a specific utility.
  • The lifelong pursuit of being okay with your own mortality.
  • Trying to learn to be happy with what you have.
  • How I fucked myself up.
  • How many waves coffee has.
  • Genetic sense of thirst.
  • Making up a magic number of ounces of water to drink.
  • Getting a water bottle and putting a cool sticker on it.
  • The lion's share of behavioral addiction.
  • Going downstairs into your morning environment.
  • The ritual pleasure of fidgeting with a cigarette.
  • Quitting smoking and having to find other rituals to fill the space smoking used to fill.
  • Your brain being like "remember cigarettes? That was cool" and you're like "that's a weird thing to bring up right now, brain."
  • Having a puff on a cigarette to find out if that's enough to get you addicted again.
  • What it would take to make smoking look uncool.
  • How much easier it is to quit smoking now that they have fidget spinners.
  • All the little adjustments you make to make your life more tolerable.
  • Embers of the Dawn by Bronze Hall.
  • Pumping your fist while you think about elves.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • If you want to be at the front of the stage at a show, just go there, literally no one is stopping you - or - THE ONLY THING YOU LACK IS WILL
  • Elves and Using Religion to Protect Natural Spaces
  • It's illegal to mod your EV to have custom engine noises
  • Litany Against Fear
  • How to stop drinking coffee

Microtopics:

  • The Splintered Oar, by Weft.
  • An album about labor rights in Kentucky.
  • Reading aloud to your friends and family.
  • The siren song of sitting on the couch and watching TV.
  • Time as the crow flies.
  • Measuring time as the crow looks at the clock.
  • Wanting to be right in front of the stage and just going there.
  • Paying hundreds of dollars to stand in an extremely loud room.
  • Getting after it with an open heart.
  • Everyone standing at the same height as the musicians playing live music.
  • An active member of a live music community in a major US city.
  • Physically engaging with the music.
  • Letting go of your concern for the eyes upon you.
  • Standing in place for the entire four or five bands playing this show without ever leaving your spot to pee.
  • Working the merch booth.
  • Unloading a truckload of positive energy into the space in front of the stage.
  • Mosh pit comfort.
  • Bands graduating to the next level of popularity.
  • Fighting your way to the front of the stage so you can not look at the band.
  • Luxuriating in the freedom of a shared experience of joy.
  • Giving back to the artists you love by screaming at them while they play music.
  • Becoming part of a local scene.
  • People who believe in elves and people who pretend to believe in elves.
  • Looking forward to when your child might one day bring you boba.
  • Elf kayfabe.
  • Mall Santa breaking kayfabe.
  • Whether the mall Santa has to keep up the act even when he's alone in the shower.
  • Reindeer-powered Yaris.
  • Scandinavian elf lore.
  • Post 9/11 supporting of the troops.
  • Arguments to which there is no possible rebuttal, such as "you can't build a mini mall because the elves live here."
  • Picking a random Wikipedia article about Nordic folklore and finding out how many metal bands are named after it.
  • How few murders there are in the modern black metal scene.
  • A looping sample of Snoop Dogg saying "this Volt is in reverse."
  • Automotive engineers deliberately making the engine noise play a power chord.
  • Instead of banning whistle tips, legislators mandating that they play a 7th chord, and also that the driver must know enough music theory to explain why they chose that chord.
  • Being on the sideshow mailing list so you can attend every sideshow.
  • All the different motions you have to make to wash the entire surface of both hands.
  • A poem about not allowing fear to conquer you while you wash your hands.
  • A poem with a specific utility.
  • The lifelong pursuit of being okay with your own mortality.
  • Trying to learn to be happy with what you have.
  • How I fucked myself up.
  • How many waves coffee has.
  • Genetic sense of thirst.
  • Making up a magic number of ounces of water to drink.
  • Getting a water bottle and putting a cool sticker on it.
  • The lion's share of behavioral addiction.
  • Going downstairs into your morning environment.
  • The ritual pleasure of fidgeting with a cigarette.
  • Quitting smoking and having to find other rituals to fill the space smoking used to fill.
  • Your brain being like "remember cigarettes? That was cool" and you're like "that's a weird thing to bring up right now, brain."
  • Having a puff on a cigarette to find out if that's enough to get you addicted again.
  • What it would take to make smoking look uncool.
  • How much easier it is to quit smoking now that they have fidget spinners.
  • All the little adjustments you make to make your life more tolerable.
  • Embers of the Dawn by Bronze Hall.
  • Pumping your fist while you think about elves.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • If you want to be at the front of the stage at a show, just go there, literally no one is stopping you - or - THE ONLY THING YOU LACK IS WILL
  • Elves and Using Religion to Protect Natural Spaces
  • It's illegal to mod your EV to have custom engine noises
  • Litany Against Fear
  • How to stop drinking coffee

Microtopics:

  • The Splintered Oar, by Weft.
  • An album about labor rights in Kentucky.
  • Reading aloud to your friends and family.
  • The siren song of sitting on the couch and watching TV.
  • Time as the crow flies.
  • Measuring time as the crow looks at the clock.
  • Wanting to be right in front of the stage and just going there.
  • Paying hundreds of dollars to stand in an extremely loud room.
  • Getting after it with an open heart.
  • Everyone standing at the same height as the musicians playing live music.
  • An active member of a live music community in a major US city.
  • Physically engaging with the music.
  • Letting go of your concern for the eyes upon you.
  • Standing in place for the entire four or five bands playing this show without ever leaving your spot to pee.
  • Working the merch booth.
  • Unloading a truckload of positive energy into the space in front of the stage.
  • Mosh pit comfort.
  • Bands graduating to the next level of popularity.
  • Fighting your way to the front of the stage so you can not look at the band.
  • Luxuriating in the freedom of a shared experience of joy.
  • Giving back to the artists you love by screaming at them while they play music.
  • Becoming part of a local scene.
  • People who believe in elves and people who pretend to believe in elves.
  • Looking forward to when your child might one day bring you boba.
  • Elf kayfabe.
  • Mall Santa breaking kayfabe.
  • Whether the mall Santa has to keep up the act even when he's alone in the shower.
  • Reindeer-powered Yaris.
  • Scandinavian elf lore.
  • Post 9/11 supporting of the troops.
  • Arguments to which there is no possible rebuttal, such as "you can't build a mini mall because the elves live here."
  • Picking a random Wikipedia article about Nordic folklore and finding out how many metal bands are named after it.
  • How few murders there are in the modern black metal scene.
  • A looping sample of Snoop Dogg saying "this Volt is in reverse."
  • Automotive engineers deliberately making the engine noise play a power chord.
  • Instead of banning whistle tips, legislators mandating that they play a 7th chord, and also that the driver must know enough music theory to explain why they chose that chord.
  • Being on the sideshow mailing list so you can attend every sideshow.
  • All the different motions you have to make to wash the entire surface of both hands.
  • A poem about not allowing fear to conquer you while you wash your hands.
  • A poem with a specific utility.
  • The lifelong pursuit of being okay with your own mortality.
  • Trying to learn to be happy with what you have.
  • How I fucked myself up.
  • How many waves coffee has.
  • Genetic sense of thirst.
  • Making up a magic number of ounces of water to drink.
  • Getting a water bottle and putting a cool sticker on it.
  • The lion's share of behavioral addiction.
  • Going downstairs into your morning environment.
  • The ritual pleasure of fidgeting with a cigarette.
  • Quitting smoking and having to find other rituals to fill the space smoking used to fill.
  • Your brain being like "remember cigarettes? That was cool" and you're like "that's a weird thing to bring up right now, brain."
  • Having a puff on a cigarette to find out if that's enough to get you addicted again.
  • What it would take to make smoking look uncool.
  • How much easier it is to quit smoking now that they have fidget spinners.
  • All the little adjustments you make to make your life more tolerable.
  • Embers of the Dawn by Bronze Hall.
  • Pumping your fist while you think about elves.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+g-F3j5ej ]]> Jim Stormdancer 337. Mars, Technically https://topiclords.com/mars-technically 52cb7171-b61f-4800-aeed-63b3e9503976 Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Fabian. We discuss your 3D printer accidentally becoming a hobby, GTA's driving AI, Alberic Whale and the Enigma Layer, and Between What I See and What I Say…, by Octavio Paz 1:21:57 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A coffee shop that exists here because of the port of Oakland.
  • Popping unroasted coffee beans into your mouth like peanuts.
  • The worst tasting and most caffeinated cup of coffee you've ever had.
  • Your local library.
  • Things that should not be businesses.
  • Three possible purposes of universities.
  • Finding a new hobby (derogatory)
  • 3D printing a selection of action figures for your wedding.
  • That one person you know who's really into 3D printers.
  • Why having a broken 3D printer counts as a hobby where having a broken refrigerator is just a situation.
  • Yanking out some gunk with pliers in hopes that that'll fix it.
  • Your 3D printer breaking halfway through your wedding figurine project so you have to make the other other half out of milled aluminum.
  • IBM Selectric Typewriters shipping with a repair guy who lives in your spare bedroom in case it breaks.
  • Amazon sending an Amazon warrior to repair your 3D printer but since you only paid for the cheap extended warranty she's allowed to attack anybody including you.
  • Whether Balatro is trying to deliberately find weaknesses in your build.
  • Higher fidelity graphics coming with expectations of higher fidelity traffic modeling.
  • Car AI in open world games being as dumb as the developers can get away with, except for in Cyberpunk 2077, where they're dumber than the developers can get away with.
  • Whacking at it until it's good enough to ship.
  • Traffic tuning in GTA Vice City.
  • Playing games with really smart, effective AI, like Chessmaster 2000 and X-Com, and realizing that actually having really smart AI is no fun.
  • Skating around with rollerblades on your elbows and knees.
  • Everything's a tuna can.
  • Three car accidents in six weeks.
  • Conscientiously objecting to military service so they insist you get a driver's license instead.
  • Driving through a haunted house to train the braking reflex in response to being startled.
  • Whatever happened to ol' Alby Whale?
  • The AI assistant named Zack turning out to just be a dude named Zack.
  • Adorable tiny food delivery robots who turn out to just be remote controlled by a guy hiding around the corner.
  • Waymo cars blocking major thoroughfares for hours at a time.
  • Multitasking between all the most stressful, confusing driving situations.
  • Self-driving cars (allegedly) turning self-driving off half a second before impact so the impact is blamed on the human operator.
  • Several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen cooled supercomputer.
  • Blaming your spelling errors on The Enigma Layer.
  • Having seen more proof of your AI assistant than you have of god.
  • It's scammers and hucksters all the way down.
  • Whether DLSS is taking away game developer jobs.
  • What happens when you go from a three word Markov model to a five word markov model.
  • A giant prank with no particular end-game in sight.
  • Acts of speech.
  • Poetry as synesthesia.
  • Trying to explain in words why that cat is acting weird when the cat doesn't think in words at all.
  • My Psychosis, my Bicycle and I, by Fritz B. Simon.
  • Trying to figure out how football works when you can't see the players, only the referee.
  • Feeling some type of way.
  • Trying to take musical ideas and apply them outside of the realm of music.
  • Creating words that dance around concepts.
  • Getting stuck forever in your cringe phase.
  • Opportunities to write the same program over and over again.
  • A melancholy linked list implementation.
  • Passive-aggressive C code.
  • Java Enterprise Abstract Singleton Proxy Factory Bean.
  • Remember printed manuals?
  • The international obfuscated C code contest.
  • What made the 3D accelerated demo scene interesting again.
  • How much code you can fit in 64k if you don't link to anything.
  • Secret Topics.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A coffee shop that exists here because of the port of Oakland.
  • Popping unroasted coffee beans into your mouth like peanuts.
  • The worst tasting and most caffeinated cup of coffee you've ever had.
  • Your local library.
  • Things that should not be businesses.
  • Three possible purposes of universities.
  • Finding a new hobby (derogatory)
  • 3D printing a selection of action figures for your wedding.
  • That one person you know who's really into 3D printers.
  • Why having a broken 3D printer counts as a hobby where having a broken refrigerator is just a situation.
  • Yanking out some gunk with pliers in hopes that that'll fix it.
  • Your 3D printer breaking halfway through your wedding figurine project so you have to make the other other half out of milled aluminum.
  • IBM Selectric Typewriters shipping with a repair guy who lives in your spare bedroom in case it breaks.
  • Amazon sending an Amazon warrior to repair your 3D printer but since you only paid for the cheap extended warranty she's allowed to attack anybody including you.
  • Whether Balatro is trying to deliberately find weaknesses in your build.
  • Higher fidelity graphics coming with expectations of higher fidelity traffic modeling.
  • Car AI in open world games being as dumb as the developers can get away with, except for in Cyberpunk 2077, where they're dumber than the developers can get away with.
  • Whacking at it until it's good enough to ship.
  • Traffic tuning in GTA Vice City.
  • Playing games with really smart, effective AI, like Chessmaster 2000 and X-Com, and realizing that actually having really smart AI is no fun.
  • Skating around with rollerblades on your elbows and knees.
  • Everything's a tuna can.
  • Three car accidents in six weeks.
  • Conscientiously objecting to military service so they insist you get a driver's license instead.
  • Driving through a haunted house to train the braking reflex in response to being startled.
  • Whatever happened to ol' Alby Whale?
  • The AI assistant named Zack turning out to just be a dude named Zack.
  • Adorable tiny food delivery robots who turn out to just be remote controlled by a guy hiding around the corner.
  • Waymo cars blocking major thoroughfares for hours at a time.
  • Multitasking between all the most stressful, confusing driving situations.
  • Self-driving cars (allegedly) turning self-driving off half a second before impact so the impact is blamed on the human operator.
  • Several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen cooled supercomputer.
  • Blaming your spelling errors on The Enigma Layer.
  • Having seen more proof of your AI assistant than you have of god.
  • It's scammers and hucksters all the way down.
  • Whether DLSS is taking away game developer jobs.
  • What happens when you go from a three word Markov model to a five word markov model.
  • A giant prank with no particular end-game in sight.
  • Acts of speech.
  • Poetry as synesthesia.
  • Trying to explain in words why that cat is acting weird when the cat doesn't think in words at all.
  • My Psychosis, my Bicycle and I, by Fritz B. Simon.
  • Trying to figure out how football works when you can't see the players, only the referee.
  • Feeling some type of way.
  • Trying to take musical ideas and apply them outside of the realm of music.
  • Creating words that dance around concepts.
  • Getting stuck forever in your cringe phase.
  • Opportunities to write the same program over and over again.
  • A melancholy linked list implementation.
  • Passive-aggressive C code.
  • Java Enterprise Abstract Singleton Proxy Factory Bean.
  • Remember printed manuals?
  • The international obfuscated C code contest.
  • What made the 3D accelerated demo scene interesting again.
  • How much code you can fit in 64k if you don't link to anything.
  • Secret Topics.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A coffee shop that exists here because of the port of Oakland.
  • Popping unroasted coffee beans into your mouth like peanuts.
  • The worst tasting and most caffeinated cup of coffee you've ever had.
  • Your local library.
  • Things that should not be businesses.
  • Three possible purposes of universities.
  • Finding a new hobby (derogatory)
  • 3D printing a selection of action figures for your wedding.
  • That one person you know who's really into 3D printers.
  • Why having a broken 3D printer counts as a hobby where having a broken refrigerator is just a situation.
  • Yanking out some gunk with pliers in hopes that that'll fix it.
  • Your 3D printer breaking halfway through your wedding figurine project so you have to make the other other half out of milled aluminum.
  • IBM Selectric Typewriters shipping with a repair guy who lives in your spare bedroom in case it breaks.
  • Amazon sending an Amazon warrior to repair your 3D printer but since you only paid for the cheap extended warranty she's allowed to attack anybody including you.
  • Whether Balatro is trying to deliberately find weaknesses in your build.
  • Higher fidelity graphics coming with expectations of higher fidelity traffic modeling.
  • Car AI in open world games being as dumb as the developers can get away with, except for in Cyberpunk 2077, where they're dumber than the developers can get away with.
  • Whacking at it until it's good enough to ship.
  • Traffic tuning in GTA Vice City.
  • Playing games with really smart, effective AI, like Chessmaster 2000 and X-Com, and realizing that actually having really smart AI is no fun.
  • Skating around with rollerblades on your elbows and knees.
  • Everything's a tuna can.
  • Three car accidents in six weeks.
  • Conscientiously objecting to military service so they insist you get a driver's license instead.
  • Driving through a haunted house to train the braking reflex in response to being startled.
  • Whatever happened to ol' Alby Whale?
  • The AI assistant named Zack turning out to just be a dude named Zack.
  • Adorable tiny food delivery robots who turn out to just be remote controlled by a guy hiding around the corner.
  • Waymo cars blocking major thoroughfares for hours at a time.
  • Multitasking between all the most stressful, confusing driving situations.
  • Self-driving cars (allegedly) turning self-driving off half a second before impact so the impact is blamed on the human operator.
  • Several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen cooled supercomputer.
  • Blaming your spelling errors on The Enigma Layer.
  • Having seen more proof of your AI assistant than you have of god.
  • It's scammers and hucksters all the way down.
  • Whether DLSS is taking away game developer jobs.
  • What happens when you go from a three word Markov model to a five word markov model.
  • A giant prank with no particular end-game in sight.
  • Acts of speech.
  • Poetry as synesthesia.
  • Trying to explain in words why that cat is acting weird when the cat doesn't think in words at all.
  • My Psychosis, my Bicycle and I, by Fritz B. Simon.
  • Trying to figure out how football works when you can't see the players, only the referee.
  • Feeling some type of way.
  • Trying to take musical ideas and apply them outside of the realm of music.
  • Creating words that dance around concepts.
  • Getting stuck forever in your cringe phase.
  • Opportunities to write the same program over and over again.
  • A melancholy linked list implementation.
  • Passive-aggressive C code.
  • Java Enterprise Abstract Singleton Proxy Factory Bean.
  • Remember printed manuals?
  • The international obfuscated C code contest.
  • What made the 3D accelerated demo scene interesting again.
  • How much code you can fit in 64k if you don't link to anything.
  • Secret Topics.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+HQWXGa_V ]]> Jim Stormdancer 336. The Four Colonoscopies https://topiclords.com/the-four-colonoscopies 0a86855a-0353-4f5b-9908-aa57ab938d8d Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jason and Ben. We discuss colonoscopy prep, how to do things you're bad at, the Trustworthy Shirts Tournament, and Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas 1:07:29 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Wordle Puzzmo and Dall-E shitposts channel.
  • Plugging your turbulence forecasting web site at both ends.
  • Kids picking a name for themselves at age 8 and then being stuck with it forever.
  • Going to court and the judge is named "velociraptor#1993" and that's just normal.
  • Trying to pick a baby name and suggesting the name of your great grandmother whom you never met, velociraptor1993.
  • People still being named Baker even though nobody bakes any more.
  • Ripped off vs. stolen.
  • Colonoscopy Strategies.
  • Poorly understood advice from well meaning friends.
  • Drinking squid ink the day before your colonoscopy.
  • A power-blasted clean empty warehouse of a colon.
  • Why are you still listening to these colonoscopy stories? Skip to the end of the episode where I ask you to give money to the patreon.
  • The tattoo on the inside of your colon of an arrow indicating "this polyp right here"
  • Staying up until 3 AM drinking an entire jerry can of mineral wax.
  • Referring to the COVID pandemic as "the pandy"
  • The colonoscopy robot's tattoo gun.
  • Knowing all the names of parts of the intestines because of the difficult boss fight inside an intestine at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
  • Hideo Kojima setting out to design a game to force people to write strategy guides about traversing the human rectum.
  • What Google searches Hideo Kojima was trying to inspire when he designed Snatcher.
  • Writing a strategy guide for drinking a five gallon can of lemon-flavored gym socks.
  • Slightly chewy boiled sweets.
  • Whether Jim should already have had a colonoscopy by now.
  • Getting your colon cancer screening kit in the mail and it swishes when you shake the box.
  • The tattoo scissor robot: it's out there waiting for you.
  • Getting an image of someone else's intestines tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Getting "how's my driving" or "if you can read this you're too close" or "we bought this before we realized Elon was a fascist" tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Striving to be more comfortable with being bad at skills.
  • All the ways you can fail at throwing pottery.
  • Learning to enjoy being bad at the piano.
  • The doodle that Bach drew on the cover of Well Tempered Clavier.
  • Flanderizing yourself because nobody else will.
  • Art forms where you accumulate physical evidence of your skill progression.
  • Recording three audio books and observing yourself getting better at recording audio books.
  • Audible's gig economy thing.
  • Never studying piano because you get too much done when you procrastinate studying piano.
  • Converted telephone microphones.
  • Trying to learn to play piano with a broken digital piano and really getting into electronics repair.
  • Playing live music and being completely at the mercy of time passing.
  • The Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.
  • The aspect of human existence that you're most missing out on.
  • Sitting there watching people play music and wishing you could also play music.
  • Learning to play the Final Countdown riff or the Axel F riff and being set for life.
  • Following a tutorial to create a convincing cover of Satisfaction by Benny Benassi.
  • Rip it Up, by Orange Juice.
  • Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.
  • The Lesser Trolley Problems.
  • Whether viewers of The Good Place are more likely to value moral philosophy.
  • M*A*S*H vs. Moomins.
  • Who would go around wearing a M*A*S*H shirt in 2026?
  • Deciding how much to trust a Moomins aficionado without knowing how old they are.
  • Identifying Moomins on sight.
  • Owl House vs. Owl City.
  • People who go around wearing Owl House shirts without thinking about all the passers by assuming that they mean the Fireflies band.
  • What the characters in Interstellar think of Dylan Thomas.
  • The last wave by soaking in the green bay.
  • Whether you should get mad before you die.
  • Breathing life and fire into those who yet live.
  • Showing people an argument for losing so that they get mad and win instead.
  • Charitable Reads Book Club, LLC.
  • Production values that are way too high for this bit.
  • Soupertasters 15, with guest star Michael Caine.
  • Corn poems vs. carrot poems.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Wordle Puzzmo and Dall-E shitposts channel.
  • Plugging your turbulence forecasting web site at both ends.
  • Kids picking a name for themselves at age 8 and then being stuck with it forever.
  • Going to court and the judge is named "velociraptor#1993" and that's just normal.
  • Trying to pick a baby name and suggesting the name of your great grandmother whom you never met, velociraptor1993.
  • People still being named Baker even though nobody bakes any more.
  • Ripped off vs. stolen.
  • Colonoscopy Strategies.
  • Poorly understood advice from well meaning friends.
  • Drinking squid ink the day before your colonoscopy.
  • A power-blasted clean empty warehouse of a colon.
  • Why are you still listening to these colonoscopy stories? Skip to the end of the episode where I ask you to give money to the patreon.
  • The tattoo on the inside of your colon of an arrow indicating "this polyp right here"
  • Staying up until 3 AM drinking an entire jerry can of mineral wax.
  • Referring to the COVID pandemic as "the pandy"
  • The colonoscopy robot's tattoo gun.
  • Knowing all the names of parts of the intestines because of the difficult boss fight inside an intestine at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
  • Hideo Kojima setting out to design a game to force people to write strategy guides about traversing the human rectum.
  • What Google searches Hideo Kojima was trying to inspire when he designed Snatcher.
  • Writing a strategy guide for drinking a five gallon can of lemon-flavored gym socks.
  • Slightly chewy boiled sweets.
  • Whether Jim should already have had a colonoscopy by now.
  • Getting your colon cancer screening kit in the mail and it swishes when you shake the box.
  • The tattoo scissor robot: it's out there waiting for you.
  • Getting an image of someone else's intestines tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Getting "how's my driving" or "if you can read this you're too close" or "we bought this before we realized Elon was a fascist" tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Striving to be more comfortable with being bad at skills.
  • All the ways you can fail at throwing pottery.
  • Learning to enjoy being bad at the piano.
  • The doodle that Bach drew on the cover of Well Tempered Clavier.
  • Flanderizing yourself because nobody else will.
  • Art forms where you accumulate physical evidence of your skill progression.
  • Recording three audio books and observing yourself getting better at recording audio books.
  • Audible's gig economy thing.
  • Never studying piano because you get too much done when you procrastinate studying piano.
  • Converted telephone microphones.
  • Trying to learn to play piano with a broken digital piano and really getting into electronics repair.
  • Playing live music and being completely at the mercy of time passing.
  • The Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.
  • The aspect of human existence that you're most missing out on.
  • Sitting there watching people play music and wishing you could also play music.
  • Learning to play the Final Countdown riff or the Axel F riff and being set for life.
  • Following a tutorial to create a convincing cover of Satisfaction by Benny Benassi.
  • Rip it Up, by Orange Juice.
  • Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.
  • The Lesser Trolley Problems.
  • Whether viewers of The Good Place are more likely to value moral philosophy.
  • M*A*S*H vs. Moomins.
  • Who would go around wearing a M*A*S*H shirt in 2026?
  • Deciding how much to trust a Moomins aficionado without knowing how old they are.
  • Identifying Moomins on sight.
  • Owl House vs. Owl City.
  • People who go around wearing Owl House shirts without thinking about all the passers by assuming that they mean the Fireflies band.
  • What the characters in Interstellar think of Dylan Thomas.
  • The last wave by soaking in the green bay.
  • Whether you should get mad before you die.
  • Breathing life and fire into those who yet live.
  • Showing people an argument for losing so that they get mad and win instead.
  • Charitable Reads Book Club, LLC.
  • Production values that are way too high for this bit.
  • Soupertasters 15, with guest star Michael Caine.
  • Corn poems vs. carrot poems.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Wordle Puzzmo and Dall-E shitposts channel.
  • Plugging your turbulence forecasting web site at both ends.
  • Kids picking a name for themselves at age 8 and then being stuck with it forever.
  • Going to court and the judge is named "velociraptor#1993" and that's just normal.
  • Trying to pick a baby name and suggesting the name of your great grandmother whom you never met, velociraptor1993.
  • People still being named Baker even though nobody bakes any more.
  • Ripped off vs. stolen.
  • Colonoscopy Strategies.
  • Poorly understood advice from well meaning friends.
  • Drinking squid ink the day before your colonoscopy.
  • A power-blasted clean empty warehouse of a colon.
  • Why are you still listening to these colonoscopy stories? Skip to the end of the episode where I ask you to give money to the patreon.
  • The tattoo on the inside of your colon of an arrow indicating "this polyp right here"
  • Staying up until 3 AM drinking an entire jerry can of mineral wax.
  • Referring to the COVID pandemic as "the pandy"
  • The colonoscopy robot's tattoo gun.
  • Knowing all the names of parts of the intestines because of the difficult boss fight inside an intestine at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
  • Hideo Kojima setting out to design a game to force people to write strategy guides about traversing the human rectum.
  • What Google searches Hideo Kojima was trying to inspire when he designed Snatcher.
  • Writing a strategy guide for drinking a five gallon can of lemon-flavored gym socks.
  • Slightly chewy boiled sweets.
  • Whether Jim should already have had a colonoscopy by now.
  • Getting your colon cancer screening kit in the mail and it swishes when you shake the box.
  • The tattoo scissor robot: it's out there waiting for you.
  • Getting an image of someone else's intestines tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Getting "how's my driving" or "if you can read this you're too close" or "we bought this before we realized Elon was a fascist" tattooed on the inside of your intestines.
  • Striving to be more comfortable with being bad at skills.
  • All the ways you can fail at throwing pottery.
  • Learning to enjoy being bad at the piano.
  • The doodle that Bach drew on the cover of Well Tempered Clavier.
  • Flanderizing yourself because nobody else will.
  • Art forms where you accumulate physical evidence of your skill progression.
  • Recording three audio books and observing yourself getting better at recording audio books.
  • Audible's gig economy thing.
  • Never studying piano because you get too much done when you procrastinate studying piano.
  • Converted telephone microphones.
  • Trying to learn to play piano with a broken digital piano and really getting into electronics repair.
  • Playing live music and being completely at the mercy of time passing.
  • The Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.
  • The aspect of human existence that you're most missing out on.
  • Sitting there watching people play music and wishing you could also play music.
  • Learning to play the Final Countdown riff or the Axel F riff and being set for life.
  • Following a tutorial to create a convincing cover of Satisfaction by Benny Benassi.
  • Rip it Up, by Orange Juice.
  • Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.
  • The Lesser Trolley Problems.
  • Whether viewers of The Good Place are more likely to value moral philosophy.
  • M*A*S*H vs. Moomins.
  • Who would go around wearing a M*A*S*H shirt in 2026?
  • Deciding how much to trust a Moomins aficionado without knowing how old they are.
  • Identifying Moomins on sight.
  • Owl House vs. Owl City.
  • People who go around wearing Owl House shirts without thinking about all the passers by assuming that they mean the Fireflies band.
  • What the characters in Interstellar think of Dylan Thomas.
  • The last wave by soaking in the green bay.
  • Whether you should get mad before you die.
  • Breathing life and fire into those who yet live.
  • Showing people an argument for losing so that they get mad and win instead.
  • Charitable Reads Book Club, LLC.
  • Production values that are way too high for this bit.
  • Soupertasters 15, with guest star Michael Caine.
  • Corn poems vs. carrot poems.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+OApy1uz2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 335. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll: Pick Any Two https://topiclords.com/sex-drugs-rock-and-roll-pick-any-two 933b0bb9-305c-46b6-8ba3-cdfda9d6d5c1 Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Aubrianne. We discuss reading every Hugo-award-winning novel, accidentally making Frog Fractions 2.5, the perfect video game genre, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman, Software Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia CD from 1992, and fixing your slow computer with time travel 1:11:28 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging moving.
  • Apps that don't do things or have functionality.
  • Wearing one of those blood pressure cuffs all day.
  • The treadmill hacking into your heart rate monitor.
  • Getting your heart rate up by being aggravated at terrible exercise apps.
  • Video games that only work with first party controllers because they patch the controller firmware.
  • The only team that was permitted to alter the microcode on the Nintendo 64's GPU.
  • Reading every Hugo award winning novel.
  • Sci-fi authors in the 50s being obsessed with advancements in psychiatry.
  • What if there was an empire that spanned a continent.
  • Drinking a potion every morning to address your ADHD.
  • Dissolving your gummy vitamin in liquid nitrogen and/or
  • Looking forward to the next time you get sick so you can take NyQuil again.
  • The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.
  • Why they let women write books now.
  • Advantages of AuDHD.
  • The Hugo award, invented by the protagonist of Hugo's House of Horrors.
  • Knock-off Sierra games.
  • Feed the Ducks.
  • The one with the Spider-Bat.
  • Stealth plugging a classic Pico-8 game.
  • Independently inventing Frog Fractions.
  • Not-Vector Art.
  • Making games that don't have a secret thing in them.
  • Making Pizza Panda without ever telling anyone what you're working on.
  • Picking up a mouse with hats.
  • Just make a dumb thing that's silly and you can make fun gifs of it.
  • Splore 'em if you got 'em.
  • XAMWWSKH, or "Exam Whiskey"
  • Curses, or ncurses.
  • Walking around this maze and running into this guy and suddenly you're playing a minigame.
  • Whether weird shit keeps happening in Pac-Man, or happens only once.
  • Why wait at all? Just wake up each day and be surprised.
  • Aren't we all just building mazes for ourselves?
  • Why sports games still exist.
  • Why do people play sports video games when they could play sports in real life?
  • Snapping your fingers in order to better internalize the poem.
  • What have you over-intellectualized in your life?
  • Your particular brainotype.
  • Learning about muscles, joints and physiology.
  • A bicycle reflector they put on the moon so they could shoot lasers at it.
  • Measuring diagrams during your lecture.
  • The astronomer who lost his nose.
  • Revealing that you've drawn a moustache on Orion's Belt.
  • Learning to read words by looking at a spectrogram.
  • Who knows what the Danes are up to?
  • Things that are not widely known but can be described.
  • Looking at really old computer stuff because that's fun.
  • Beautiful art that nobody made on purpose.
  • Getting actors together in a room to read a scene together before discovering that that's exactly the wrong way to do video game voice acting.
  • Aphantasia but for audiation.
  • Inability to audiate at different volumes or on the stereo spectrum.
  • Focusing really hard to fall asleep.
  • Kick-starting your hypnagogic hallucination dream state.
  • Rolling that sleep boulder up the hill every day.
  • Retheming your 2026 Linux computer to look like Windows 95.
  • Downloading 20 years of email history.
  • Playing Hunt the Wumpus on your dad's SIM-1.
  • What game developers say now that "AI" means something else.
  • What "drone" used to mean, and also what it meant before that.
  • OpenRCT2 and FreeCiv.
  • Making your customers less nauseous before they sit on a bench.
  • Not having any restaurants at your theme park so that nobody throws up on your roller coaster.
  • Being unable to A/B test your brain because you only have one brain.
  • Having a variety of weirdos on Jorts dot horse.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging moving.
  • Apps that don't do things or have functionality.
  • Wearing one of those blood pressure cuffs all day.
  • The treadmill hacking into your heart rate monitor.
  • Getting your heart rate up by being aggravated at terrible exercise apps.
  • Video games that only work with first party controllers because they patch the controller firmware.
  • The only team that was permitted to alter the microcode on the Nintendo 64's GPU.
  • Reading every Hugo award winning novel.
  • Sci-fi authors in the 50s being obsessed with advancements in psychiatry.
  • What if there was an empire that spanned a continent.
  • Drinking a potion every morning to address your ADHD.
  • Dissolving your gummy vitamin in liquid nitrogen and/or
  • Looking forward to the next time you get sick so you can take NyQuil again.
  • The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.
  • Why they let women write books now.
  • Advantages of AuDHD.
  • The Hugo award, invented by the protagonist of Hugo's House of Horrors.
  • Knock-off Sierra games.
  • Feed the Ducks.
  • The one with the Spider-Bat.
  • Stealth plugging a classic Pico-8 game.
  • Independently inventing Frog Fractions.
  • Not-Vector Art.
  • Making games that don't have a secret thing in them.
  • Making Pizza Panda without ever telling anyone what you're working on.
  • Picking up a mouse with hats.
  • Just make a dumb thing that's silly and you can make fun gifs of it.
  • Splore 'em if you got 'em.
  • XAMWWSKH, or "Exam Whiskey"
  • Curses, or ncurses.
  • Walking around this maze and running into this guy and suddenly you're playing a minigame.
  • Whether weird shit keeps happening in Pac-Man, or happens only once.
  • Why wait at all? Just wake up each day and be surprised.
  • Aren't we all just building mazes for ourselves?
  • Why sports games still exist.
  • Why do people play sports video games when they could play sports in real life?
  • Snapping your fingers in order to better internalize the poem.
  • What have you over-intellectualized in your life?
  • Your particular brainotype.
  • Learning about muscles, joints and physiology.
  • A bicycle reflector they put on the moon so they could shoot lasers at it.
  • Measuring diagrams during your lecture.
  • The astronomer who lost his nose.
  • Revealing that you've drawn a moustache on Orion's Belt.
  • Learning to read words by looking at a spectrogram.
  • Who knows what the Danes are up to?
  • Things that are not widely known but can be described.
  • Looking at really old computer stuff because that's fun.
  • Beautiful art that nobody made on purpose.
  • Getting actors together in a room to read a scene together before discovering that that's exactly the wrong way to do video game voice acting.
  • Aphantasia but for audiation.
  • Inability to audiate at different volumes or on the stereo spectrum.
  • Focusing really hard to fall asleep.
  • Kick-starting your hypnagogic hallucination dream state.
  • Rolling that sleep boulder up the hill every day.
  • Retheming your 2026 Linux computer to look like Windows 95.
  • Downloading 20 years of email history.
  • Playing Hunt the Wumpus on your dad's SIM-1.
  • What game developers say now that "AI" means something else.
  • What "drone" used to mean, and also what it meant before that.
  • OpenRCT2 and FreeCiv.
  • Making your customers less nauseous before they sit on a bench.
  • Not having any restaurants at your theme park so that nobody throws up on your roller coaster.
  • Being unable to A/B test your brain because you only have one brain.
  • Having a variety of weirdos on Jorts dot horse.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging moving.
  • Apps that don't do things or have functionality.
  • Wearing one of those blood pressure cuffs all day.
  • The treadmill hacking into your heart rate monitor.
  • Getting your heart rate up by being aggravated at terrible exercise apps.
  • Video games that only work with first party controllers because they patch the controller firmware.
  • The only team that was permitted to alter the microcode on the Nintendo 64's GPU.
  • Reading every Hugo award winning novel.
  • Sci-fi authors in the 50s being obsessed with advancements in psychiatry.
  • What if there was an empire that spanned a continent.
  • Drinking a potion every morning to address your ADHD.
  • Dissolving your gummy vitamin in liquid nitrogen and/or
  • Looking forward to the next time you get sick so you can take NyQuil again.
  • The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.
  • Why they let women write books now.
  • Advantages of AuDHD.
  • The Hugo award, invented by the protagonist of Hugo's House of Horrors.
  • Knock-off Sierra games.
  • Feed the Ducks.
  • The one with the Spider-Bat.
  • Stealth plugging a classic Pico-8 game.
  • Independently inventing Frog Fractions.
  • Not-Vector Art.
  • Making games that don't have a secret thing in them.
  • Making Pizza Panda without ever telling anyone what you're working on.
  • Picking up a mouse with hats.
  • Just make a dumb thing that's silly and you can make fun gifs of it.
  • Splore 'em if you got 'em.
  • XAMWWSKH, or "Exam Whiskey"
  • Curses, or ncurses.
  • Walking around this maze and running into this guy and suddenly you're playing a minigame.
  • Whether weird shit keeps happening in Pac-Man, or happens only once.
  • Why wait at all? Just wake up each day and be surprised.
  • Aren't we all just building mazes for ourselves?
  • Why sports games still exist.
  • Why do people play sports video games when they could play sports in real life?
  • Snapping your fingers in order to better internalize the poem.
  • What have you over-intellectualized in your life?
  • Your particular brainotype.
  • Learning about muscles, joints and physiology.
  • A bicycle reflector they put on the moon so they could shoot lasers at it.
  • Measuring diagrams during your lecture.
  • The astronomer who lost his nose.
  • Revealing that you've drawn a moustache on Orion's Belt.
  • Learning to read words by looking at a spectrogram.
  • Who knows what the Danes are up to?
  • Things that are not widely known but can be described.
  • Looking at really old computer stuff because that's fun.
  • Beautiful art that nobody made on purpose.
  • Getting actors together in a room to read a scene together before discovering that that's exactly the wrong way to do video game voice acting.
  • Aphantasia but for audiation.
  • Inability to audiate at different volumes or on the stereo spectrum.
  • Focusing really hard to fall asleep.
  • Kick-starting your hypnagogic hallucination dream state.
  • Rolling that sleep boulder up the hill every day.
  • Retheming your 2026 Linux computer to look like Windows 95.
  • Downloading 20 years of email history.
  • Playing Hunt the Wumpus on your dad's SIM-1.
  • What game developers say now that "AI" means something else.
  • What "drone" used to mean, and also what it meant before that.
  • OpenRCT2 and FreeCiv.
  • Making your customers less nauseous before they sit on a bench.
  • Not having any restaurants at your theme park so that nobody throws up on your roller coaster.
  • Being unable to A/B test your brain because you only have one brain.
  • Having a variety of weirdos on Jorts dot horse.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+PrJH4NJc ]]> Jim Stormdancer 334. A Pivotal Event in the Evolution of the Society of Quebec https://topiclords.com/a-pivotal-event-in-the-evolution-of-the-society-of-quebec e5e32f96-b54d-4835-8380-088192c99012 Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: SJ and Benjamin. We discuss TD Place Arena in Ottawa, learning to ice skate when you're 40, weird anime keyboards, and She Walks in Beauty, by Lord Byron 50:00 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Neutral Zone Hotel.
  • Heated Rivalry.
  • What a loon sounds like.
  • Going to Canada but never going outside.
  • A real dickhead in the history of hockey.
  • Needing a new hockey arena and a new football stadium and putting one on top of the other.
  • Backwards ice.
  • Canadian Tire Center.
  • The Ottawa '67s.
  • Realizing that your two arenas on top of one another will collapse instantly if you ever hold two events at once.
  • Asbestos sprinkles falling from the ceiling and delighting the crowd.
  • Ice skaters falling over because the ice is too cold.
  • What's up with fighting in hockey?
  • When ice hockey goaltenders got masks.
  • Regulating sports violence with additional violence.
  • Spontaneous vs. pre-arranged hockey fights.
  • The Gordie Howe Hat Trick.
  • A triple double, except instead of impacting the outcome of the game, it impacts your soul.
  • The Punch-up In Piestany and other bench-clearing brawls.
  • Hockey's Post-Headshot Era.
  • Learning new skills as an adult.
  • The Kraken Community Iceplex.
  • Complaining about swizzles for months.
  • Pumping your legs to propel yourself forward.
  • Swizzles vs. backwards swizzles.
  • The point at which ice skating classes branch out into hockey classes and figure skating classes.
  • Beer League teams.
  • Born knowing how to skate.
  • Jusse Saros erasure.
  • Hockey players getting concussed by swimming while drunk.
  • Circle to confirm and X to back out.
  • A keyboard with all the calculator buttons on it.
  • Interviewing the animator who designed the weird keyboard in Bubblegum Crisis.
  • An argument for Colemak over Dvorak.
  • The Z, X, C and V keys staying right where they are.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to keep your college roommates from screwing with you.
  • Why boredom is a good thing.
  • Desperately trying to fill today's 16 waking hours with something, anything.
  • Making content for the Internet.
  • Cloudless climes and starry skies.
  • Whether Lord Byron got his title by being on the show.
  • Trying to rhyme brow and glow.
  • Whether they had non-rhyming poetry 200 years ago.
  • Only remembering your anxiety dreams.
  • The recurring dream where you explore stone stairs leading down from a decrepit old fishing house, going deeper and deeper each time you have the dream until you finally get to the bottom of the stairs and find out what your whole life has been leading to.
  • Tiny hockey community discords.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Neutral Zone Hotel.
  • Heated Rivalry.
  • What a loon sounds like.
  • Going to Canada but never going outside.
  • A real dickhead in the history of hockey.
  • Needing a new hockey arena and a new football stadium and putting one on top of the other.
  • Backwards ice.
  • Canadian Tire Center.
  • The Ottawa '67s.
  • Realizing that your two arenas on top of one another will collapse instantly if you ever hold two events at once.
  • Asbestos sprinkles falling from the ceiling and delighting the crowd.
  • Ice skaters falling over because the ice is too cold.
  • What's up with fighting in hockey?
  • When ice hockey goaltenders got masks.
  • Regulating sports violence with additional violence.
  • Spontaneous vs. pre-arranged hockey fights.
  • The Gordie Howe Hat Trick.
  • A triple double, except instead of impacting the outcome of the game, it impacts your soul.
  • The Punch-up In Piestany and other bench-clearing brawls.
  • Hockey's Post-Headshot Era.
  • Learning new skills as an adult.
  • The Kraken Community Iceplex.
  • Complaining about swizzles for months.
  • Pumping your legs to propel yourself forward.
  • Swizzles vs. backwards swizzles.
  • The point at which ice skating classes branch out into hockey classes and figure skating classes.
  • Beer League teams.
  • Born knowing how to skate.
  • Jusse Saros erasure.
  • Hockey players getting concussed by swimming while drunk.
  • Circle to confirm and X to back out.
  • A keyboard with all the calculator buttons on it.
  • Interviewing the animator who designed the weird keyboard in Bubblegum Crisis.
  • An argument for Colemak over Dvorak.
  • The Z, X, C and V keys staying right where they are.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to keep your college roommates from screwing with you.
  • Why boredom is a good thing.
  • Desperately trying to fill today's 16 waking hours with something, anything.
  • Making content for the Internet.
  • Cloudless climes and starry skies.
  • Whether Lord Byron got his title by being on the show.
  • Trying to rhyme brow and glow.
  • Whether they had non-rhyming poetry 200 years ago.
  • Only remembering your anxiety dreams.
  • The recurring dream where you explore stone stairs leading down from a decrepit old fishing house, going deeper and deeper each time you have the dream until you finally get to the bottom of the stairs and find out what your whole life has been leading to.
  • Tiny hockey community discords.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Neutral Zone Hotel.
  • Heated Rivalry.
  • What a loon sounds like.
  • Going to Canada but never going outside.
  • A real dickhead in the history of hockey.
  • Needing a new hockey arena and a new football stadium and putting one on top of the other.
  • Backwards ice.
  • Canadian Tire Center.
  • The Ottawa '67s.
  • Realizing that your two arenas on top of one another will collapse instantly if you ever hold two events at once.
  • Asbestos sprinkles falling from the ceiling and delighting the crowd.
  • Ice skaters falling over because the ice is too cold.
  • What's up with fighting in hockey?
  • When ice hockey goaltenders got masks.
  • Regulating sports violence with additional violence.
  • Spontaneous vs. pre-arranged hockey fights.
  • The Gordie Howe Hat Trick.
  • A triple double, except instead of impacting the outcome of the game, it impacts your soul.
  • The Punch-up In Piestany and other bench-clearing brawls.
  • Hockey's Post-Headshot Era.
  • Learning new skills as an adult.
  • The Kraken Community Iceplex.
  • Complaining about swizzles for months.
  • Pumping your legs to propel yourself forward.
  • Swizzles vs. backwards swizzles.
  • The point at which ice skating classes branch out into hockey classes and figure skating classes.
  • Beer League teams.
  • Born knowing how to skate.
  • Jusse Saros erasure.
  • Hockey players getting concussed by swimming while drunk.
  • Circle to confirm and X to back out.
  • A keyboard with all the calculator buttons on it.
  • Interviewing the animator who designed the weird keyboard in Bubblegum Crisis.
  • An argument for Colemak over Dvorak.
  • The Z, X, C and V keys staying right where they are.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to keep your college roommates from screwing with you.
  • Why boredom is a good thing.
  • Desperately trying to fill today's 16 waking hours with something, anything.
  • Making content for the Internet.
  • Cloudless climes and starry skies.
  • Whether Lord Byron got his title by being on the show.
  • Trying to rhyme brow and glow.
  • Whether they had non-rhyming poetry 200 years ago.
  • Only remembering your anxiety dreams.
  • The recurring dream where you explore stone stairs leading down from a decrepit old fishing house, going deeper and deeper each time you have the dream until you finally get to the bottom of the stairs and find out what your whole life has been leading to.
  • Tiny hockey community discords.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+NI-m1koe ]]> Jim Stormdancer 333. Bring Your Daughter to Monastery Day https://topiclords.com/bring-your-daughter-to-monastery-day af74c55d-a81c-4642-b99f-ddf5c8a1b8c8 Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: AP and Alexander. We discuss the 5th Ramsey number, Mr. Satan (from Dragonball), the Odyssey 2's ROM sprites, Search Lizard Vagina And You Shall Find by Patricia Lockwood, and why do drugs have two names? What's up with that? 1:08:33 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Recording the fakest possible sounding laughter in case someone makes a joke that doesn't work.
  • Going on a nice short walk.
  • The PNW, where the frogs are a-croaking.
  • Going out to see the dog pee.
  • Lying down and pretending to sleep
  • Explaining to the doctor that you didn't sleep at all and he's like "that's not what your brain waves said!"
  • Dreaming that you've been awake for 48 hours.
  • Path of totality vs. regular shitty boring eclipse.
  • Consume Me.
  • Attempting to become hot in high school.
  • Whether unwishlisting and rewishlisting a game helps.
  • Very large prime numbers that are only two apart.
  • Prolific math speed freaks.
  • Whether the aliens know the fifth Ramsey Number and are just quizzing us.
  • Aliens visiting and sharing the ultimate secret to doing laundry.
  • Sentient arithmetic getting angry.
  • How do kangaroos clean their pouches?
  • Topics that don't cause listenership to drop precipitously.
  • Thinking about Mr. Satan in the bath.
  • Localizing Mr. Satan for the American audience.
  • A cartoon of two muscly guys screaming at each other, getting louder and higher pitched over the course of five minutes, to the point that you start worrying about the health of the voice actors.
  • An episode of TV that's just 22 pure minutes of building tension.
  • Goku's hair turning blond so that the manga artist doesn't have to laboriously color his hair black al on every panel.
  • Everyone in the story growing strong enough to blow up the planet on a whim.
  • Everyone on Earth showing up to cheer on Mr. Satan.
  • When wrestlers stopped maintaining kayfabe outside of the live show.
  • King Lear asking the audience if they can see the corpse breathing.
  • Giving annoying characters a moment of sincerity and/or heroism.
  • Enthusiastically chanting for Satan.
  • Witnessing the total horror of the universe and then being like "I didn't just see that"
  • Mr. Satan convincing the evil alien not to destroy the Earth by showing him a cool puppy.
  • How is Goku going to prevent spam bots from registering accounts?
  • A weird lens on this strange universe.
  • Sincerity punchlines.
  • Behold, an anime horse!
  • Top 37 Classiest Satans.
  • Death losing every game against Bill and Ted.
  • Coloring the up arrow green to represent a tree in your skiing game.
  • The division symbol you learned in grade school and never used again.
  • When you want to shoot a golf course, a plane or a tiny flat cake.
  • Collecting your favorite medieval manuscript scans.
  • The medieval scribe deciding on a whim to write the next passage in Greek.
  • The guy plucking penises off of the penis bush and putting them in a basket.
  • My brain, and the bad sunning lizard inside it.
  • Here is some pornography, if it will help you.
  • Great job, Canada.
  • Poems that foresee themselves being uploaded to the Internet.
  • One of the early "isn't it weird that this literary person is on Twitter writing shitposts?"
  • My Least Favorite Antibiotic.
  • Wrapping your antibiotic in a tortilla.
  • I love an antibiotic with a nickname.
  • Magic acts you can only do once. (Because they kill you.)
  • Settling Space. (And why we shouldn't do it.)
  • Establishing legal precedent for selling moon rocks.
  • Can God get a thorn stuck in his paw?
  • There's No P in Thomson. Let's try to keep it that way.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Recording the fakest possible sounding laughter in case someone makes a joke that doesn't work.
  • Going on a nice short walk.
  • The PNW, where the frogs are a-croaking.
  • Going out to see the dog pee.
  • Lying down and pretending to sleep
  • Explaining to the doctor that you didn't sleep at all and he's like "that's not what your brain waves said!"
  • Dreaming that you've been awake for 48 hours.
  • Path of totality vs. regular shitty boring eclipse.
  • Consume Me.
  • Attempting to become hot in high school.
  • Whether unwishlisting and rewishlisting a game helps.
  • Very large prime numbers that are only two apart.
  • Prolific math speed freaks.
  • Whether the aliens know the fifth Ramsey Number and are just quizzing us.
  • Aliens visiting and sharing the ultimate secret to doing laundry.
  • Sentient arithmetic getting angry.
  • How do kangaroos clean their pouches?
  • Topics that don't cause listenership to drop precipitously.
  • Thinking about Mr. Satan in the bath.
  • Localizing Mr. Satan for the American audience.
  • A cartoon of two muscly guys screaming at each other, getting louder and higher pitched over the course of five minutes, to the point that you start worrying about the health of the voice actors.
  • An episode of TV that's just 22 pure minutes of building tension.
  • Goku's hair turning blond so that the manga artist doesn't have to laboriously color his hair black al on every panel.
  • Everyone in the story growing strong enough to blow up the planet on a whim.
  • Everyone on Earth showing up to cheer on Mr. Satan.
  • When wrestlers stopped maintaining kayfabe outside of the live show.
  • King Lear asking the audience if they can see the corpse breathing.
  • Giving annoying characters a moment of sincerity and/or heroism.
  • Enthusiastically chanting for Satan.
  • Witnessing the total horror of the universe and then being like "I didn't just see that"
  • Mr. Satan convincing the evil alien not to destroy the Earth by showing him a cool puppy.
  • How is Goku going to prevent spam bots from registering accounts?
  • A weird lens on this strange universe.
  • Sincerity punchlines.
  • Behold, an anime horse!
  • Top 37 Classiest Satans.
  • Death losing every game against Bill and Ted.
  • Coloring the up arrow green to represent a tree in your skiing game.
  • The division symbol you learned in grade school and never used again.
  • When you want to shoot a golf course, a plane or a tiny flat cake.
  • Collecting your favorite medieval manuscript scans.
  • The medieval scribe deciding on a whim to write the next passage in Greek.
  • The guy plucking penises off of the penis bush and putting them in a basket.
  • My brain, and the bad sunning lizard inside it.
  • Here is some pornography, if it will help you.
  • Great job, Canada.
  • Poems that foresee themselves being uploaded to the Internet.
  • One of the early "isn't it weird that this literary person is on Twitter writing shitposts?"
  • My Least Favorite Antibiotic.
  • Wrapping your antibiotic in a tortilla.
  • I love an antibiotic with a nickname.
  • Magic acts you can only do once. (Because they kill you.)
  • Settling Space. (And why we shouldn't do it.)
  • Establishing legal precedent for selling moon rocks.
  • Can God get a thorn stuck in his paw?
  • There's No P in Thomson. Let's try to keep it that way.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Recording the fakest possible sounding laughter in case someone makes a joke that doesn't work.
  • Going on a nice short walk.
  • The PNW, where the frogs are a-croaking.
  • Going out to see the dog pee.
  • Lying down and pretending to sleep
  • Explaining to the doctor that you didn't sleep at all and he's like "that's not what your brain waves said!"
  • Dreaming that you've been awake for 48 hours.
  • Path of totality vs. regular shitty boring eclipse.
  • Consume Me.
  • Attempting to become hot in high school.
  • Whether unwishlisting and rewishlisting a game helps.
  • Very large prime numbers that are only two apart.
  • Prolific math speed freaks.
  • Whether the aliens know the fifth Ramsey Number and are just quizzing us.
  • Aliens visiting and sharing the ultimate secret to doing laundry.
  • Sentient arithmetic getting angry.
  • How do kangaroos clean their pouches?
  • Topics that don't cause listenership to drop precipitously.
  • Thinking about Mr. Satan in the bath.
  • Localizing Mr. Satan for the American audience.
  • A cartoon of two muscly guys screaming at each other, getting louder and higher pitched over the course of five minutes, to the point that you start worrying about the health of the voice actors.
  • An episode of TV that's just 22 pure minutes of building tension.
  • Goku's hair turning blond so that the manga artist doesn't have to laboriously color his hair black al on every panel.
  • Everyone in the story growing strong enough to blow up the planet on a whim.
  • Everyone on Earth showing up to cheer on Mr. Satan.
  • When wrestlers stopped maintaining kayfabe outside of the live show.
  • King Lear asking the audience if they can see the corpse breathing.
  • Giving annoying characters a moment of sincerity and/or heroism.
  • Enthusiastically chanting for Satan.
  • Witnessing the total horror of the universe and then being like "I didn't just see that"
  • Mr. Satan convincing the evil alien not to destroy the Earth by showing him a cool puppy.
  • How is Goku going to prevent spam bots from registering accounts?
  • A weird lens on this strange universe.
  • Sincerity punchlines.
  • Behold, an anime horse!
  • Top 37 Classiest Satans.
  • Death losing every game against Bill and Ted.
  • Coloring the up arrow green to represent a tree in your skiing game.
  • The division symbol you learned in grade school and never used again.
  • When you want to shoot a golf course, a plane or a tiny flat cake.
  • Collecting your favorite medieval manuscript scans.
  • The medieval scribe deciding on a whim to write the next passage in Greek.
  • The guy plucking penises off of the penis bush and putting them in a basket.
  • My brain, and the bad sunning lizard inside it.
  • Here is some pornography, if it will help you.
  • Great job, Canada.
  • Poems that foresee themselves being uploaded to the Internet.
  • One of the early "isn't it weird that this literary person is on Twitter writing shitposts?"
  • My Least Favorite Antibiotic.
  • Wrapping your antibiotic in a tortilla.
  • I love an antibiotic with a nickname.
  • Magic acts you can only do once. (Because they kill you.)
  • Settling Space. (And why we shouldn't do it.)
  • Establishing legal precedent for selling moon rocks.
  • Can God get a thorn stuck in his paw?
  • There's No P in Thomson. Let's try to keep it that way.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Qb3Mf8xE ]]> Jim Stormdancer 332. Boston: It's Not a Year https://topiclords.com/boston-its-not-a-year b1961920-e0d2-41b7-9e67-b02a311fbd5e Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jin and Brad. We discuss the shareware games business model, on how to define femininity, the Great Molasses Flood, Entrance by Rainer Maria Rilke, and combining magic and science in science fantasy. 1:02:43 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lizard for the NES.
  • Retrofuturism in ancient China.
  • Silkpunk Origins.
  • Ultima-inspired indie RPGs from 1994.
  • Passing around public domain games on floppy disks.
  • Registering shareware to get rid of the nag screen.
  • Adventure game hint books as a second channel of income.
  • Asking your mom to get a money order to register the shareware version of Impulse Tracker so you can get the Stereo Wav Writer.
  • Front loading all the good levels in the shareware episode and selling the crap in the registered episodes.
  • The Ur-Quan Masters.
  • Printing to PDF.
  • Uploading your music to mp3.com.
  • Cracking shareware using a known plaintext attack.
  • Drawing an image with so much entropy that the Save Robot dances for longer than usual and then plays a sad sound.
  • A three hour deep dive on the very popular vampire novel Twilight.
  • Going online and googling masculine and/or feminine traits.
  • The Four Pillars of Femininity.
  • Pants: they're for barbarians.
  • Whether Stephanie Meyer was trying to write a treatise on idealized gender roles or whether she was just writing what she thought was cool and fun.
  • Popular depictions of women who are masculine in behavior but feminine in appearance.
  • Why can't your girlfriend both look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and eat hamburgers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
  • Why women work so well as horror protagonists.
  • Do people cry less in Marvel movies?
  • Someone crying so hard in a movie that you start to worry about the actor's social life.
  • Tolkien adding a second female character to Lord of the Rings just so he can make the "I am no man" linguistic joke.
  • Boston: it's not a year.
  • Painting your giant molasses tank brown so it's harder to notice that it's leaking.
  • All the children in town walking up and licking the giant leaking molasses tank whenever they feel like a snack.
  • Waking up in a pile of dead bodies with your mouth full of molasses.
  • Big Enough to be Horrible.
  • Getting your architectural plans approved by a government body.
  • Gilding the lily when the lily is already extremely memetic.
  • Fame: look what it does to people.
  • Building a giant tank of anything in the middle of a city.
  • Where do you put your 50 million gallons of molasses?
  • What happens if you poke the Demon Core with a screwdriver?
  • Scientists getting too excited to keep being careful.
  • A black and slender tree.
  • A word kept in the mouth to grow.
  • Eveningfall.
  • Putting a tree in the sky while you're creating the world.
  • The game you're making giving you ideas about the game you're making.
  • Navigating the scientific method in a fantastical universe.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl.
  • Using a quarter of the words in your novel to explain the rules of the world like a board game manual.
  • Jedi using their powers to boil water for tea.
  • Enslaving Jedi to run your steam engine with their mind powers.
  • Jedi Inflation.
  • Two words that sound good together and now it's your name.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lizard for the NES.
  • Retrofuturism in ancient China.
  • Silkpunk Origins.
  • Ultima-inspired indie RPGs from 1994.
  • Passing around public domain games on floppy disks.
  • Registering shareware to get rid of the nag screen.
  • Adventure game hint books as a second channel of income.
  • Asking your mom to get a money order to register the shareware version of Impulse Tracker so you can get the Stereo Wav Writer.
  • Front loading all the good levels in the shareware episode and selling the crap in the registered episodes.
  • The Ur-Quan Masters.
  • Printing to PDF.
  • Uploading your music to mp3.com.
  • Cracking shareware using a known plaintext attack.
  • Drawing an image with so much entropy that the Save Robot dances for longer than usual and then plays a sad sound.
  • A three hour deep dive on the very popular vampire novel Twilight.
  • Going online and googling masculine and/or feminine traits.
  • The Four Pillars of Femininity.
  • Pants: they're for barbarians.
  • Whether Stephanie Meyer was trying to write a treatise on idealized gender roles or whether she was just writing what she thought was cool and fun.
  • Popular depictions of women who are masculine in behavior but feminine in appearance.
  • Why can't your girlfriend both look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and eat hamburgers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
  • Why women work so well as horror protagonists.
  • Do people cry less in Marvel movies?
  • Someone crying so hard in a movie that you start to worry about the actor's social life.
  • Tolkien adding a second female character to Lord of the Rings just so he can make the "I am no man" linguistic joke.
  • Boston: it's not a year.
  • Painting your giant molasses tank brown so it's harder to notice that it's leaking.
  • All the children in town walking up and licking the giant leaking molasses tank whenever they feel like a snack.
  • Waking up in a pile of dead bodies with your mouth full of molasses.
  • Big Enough to be Horrible.
  • Getting your architectural plans approved by a government body.
  • Gilding the lily when the lily is already extremely memetic.
  • Fame: look what it does to people.
  • Building a giant tank of anything in the middle of a city.
  • Where do you put your 50 million gallons of molasses?
  • What happens if you poke the Demon Core with a screwdriver?
  • Scientists getting too excited to keep being careful.
  • A black and slender tree.
  • A word kept in the mouth to grow.
  • Eveningfall.
  • Putting a tree in the sky while you're creating the world.
  • The game you're making giving you ideas about the game you're making.
  • Navigating the scientific method in a fantastical universe.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl.
  • Using a quarter of the words in your novel to explain the rules of the world like a board game manual.
  • Jedi using their powers to boil water for tea.
  • Enslaving Jedi to run your steam engine with their mind powers.
  • Jedi Inflation.
  • Two words that sound good together and now it's your name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lizard for the NES.
  • Retrofuturism in ancient China.
  • Silkpunk Origins.
  • Ultima-inspired indie RPGs from 1994.
  • Passing around public domain games on floppy disks.
  • Registering shareware to get rid of the nag screen.
  • Adventure game hint books as a second channel of income.
  • Asking your mom to get a money order to register the shareware version of Impulse Tracker so you can get the Stereo Wav Writer.
  • Front loading all the good levels in the shareware episode and selling the crap in the registered episodes.
  • The Ur-Quan Masters.
  • Printing to PDF.
  • Uploading your music to mp3.com.
  • Cracking shareware using a known plaintext attack.
  • Drawing an image with so much entropy that the Save Robot dances for longer than usual and then plays a sad sound.
  • A three hour deep dive on the very popular vampire novel Twilight.
  • Going online and googling masculine and/or feminine traits.
  • The Four Pillars of Femininity.
  • Pants: they're for barbarians.
  • Whether Stephanie Meyer was trying to write a treatise on idealized gender roles or whether she was just writing what she thought was cool and fun.
  • Popular depictions of women who are masculine in behavior but feminine in appearance.
  • Why can't your girlfriend both look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and eat hamburgers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
  • Why women work so well as horror protagonists.
  • Do people cry less in Marvel movies?
  • Someone crying so hard in a movie that you start to worry about the actor's social life.
  • Tolkien adding a second female character to Lord of the Rings just so he can make the "I am no man" linguistic joke.
  • Boston: it's not a year.
  • Painting your giant molasses tank brown so it's harder to notice that it's leaking.
  • All the children in town walking up and licking the giant leaking molasses tank whenever they feel like a snack.
  • Waking up in a pile of dead bodies with your mouth full of molasses.
  • Big Enough to be Horrible.
  • Getting your architectural plans approved by a government body.
  • Gilding the lily when the lily is already extremely memetic.
  • Fame: look what it does to people.
  • Building a giant tank of anything in the middle of a city.
  • Where do you put your 50 million gallons of molasses?
  • What happens if you poke the Demon Core with a screwdriver?
  • Scientists getting too excited to keep being careful.
  • A black and slender tree.
  • A word kept in the mouth to grow.
  • Eveningfall.
  • Putting a tree in the sky while you're creating the world.
  • The game you're making giving you ideas about the game you're making.
  • Navigating the scientific method in a fantastical universe.
  • Lit RPG.
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl.
  • Using a quarter of the words in your novel to explain the rules of the world like a board game manual.
  • Jedi using their powers to boil water for tea.
  • Enslaving Jedi to run your steam engine with their mind powers.
  • Jedi Inflation.
  • Two words that sound good together and now it's your name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+CDuhP8FB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 331. Earbuds Are a Type of Sandwich https://topiclords.com/earbuds-are-a-type-of-sandwich 4ca1fd03-7aa5-44ab-91f7-e22042c13402 Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kory and Andy. We discuss the Game Tank, auctions in games, how to watch TV at 2AM, Dragonfly Catcher by Chiyo-ni, and losing a snapshot of your life in MP3 format 1:12:08 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multi-time lords.
  • K-Bones dot fun.
  • CachyOS.
  • Scrubbing topics against the corrugated metal washboard of discussion.
  • Leaning into the microphone and saying "topics."
  • Helping Andy quit his day job tonight.
  • What MAGfest used to stand for.
  • Playing with SGI hardware in the Old-Ass Computer Room.
  • Game consoles that output square video.
  • Getting pixels into the framebuffer of the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Seeing a fun puzzle to solve but not solving it because you already have way too many projects.
  • Through-hole soldering.
  • Replacing volatile memory with F-RAM.
  • Preparing to have fun.
  • Reaching the point in your life where you don't want to bother with the war game, you just want to paint the miniatures.
  • What do you call it when you pair up with three people?
  • Throupling up for the next 45 minutes.
  • Who has time to both solder things and play video games?
  • Why Robotron 2084 was more difficult in emulation than in the arcade.
  • How to pronounce SNES.
  • Shmups slowing down when there are more objects on the screen, and game designers incorporating that into the game design.
  • The ZX Spectrum Next and the Mega 65.
  • A game console that only 150 people own and they get super excited whenever a new game comes out for it.
  • Game development like a caveman would do it.
  • Whether more than one person can take the under.
  • The rules of Monopoly as written vs. the folk rules.
  • eBay auctions as an extremely boring game.
  • First price vs. second price auctions.
  • Visiting the real money auction house in Diablo and finding out just how little your time and effort is worth.
  • The Gold Standard of the Hat Meta.
  • An evolutionary branch of PVP that's distinct from Yomi.
  • What to do when you want to play Avalon Hill's Dune.
  • Fence Lara Croft's Stolen Treasures.
  • Lara Croft's Stolen Antiquities Simulator.
  • Winning a bunch of Saltybucks on Saltybet.
  • Age-appropriate behavior.
  • Speedrun watching TV at 2 AM.
  • Live and Don't Learn.
  • Explaining jet lag to a two year old.
  • Watching MTV's Liquid Television block until 2:30 AM.
  • Finally sitting your son down to have the Aeon Flux talk.
  • Haiku that end "that's it, that's the haiku" even though that's too many syllables.
  • Hiking in the wilderness and encountering or not encountering a dragonfly.
  • People at risk of owning a Game Tank.
  • Broadly appealing messages sent out to farm likes.
  • The psychological cost of having 20,000 people following you.
  • Choosing your Mastodon instance based on what domain name William Gibson thought was funny.
  • The Mazzy Star song that's on the Batman Forever soundtrack.
  • iPod shuffles always insisting you're not pregnant no matter how much you pee on them.
  • Ephemeral preservation of a time in your life.
  • A biological weapon that removes your ability to perceive music as music.
  • You die young, or you live long enough to see Nine Inch Nails become dad rock.
  • Music Inspired by the Soundtrack.
  • Putting your MP3 collection on striped RAID arrays for the benefit of future archaeologists.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multi-time lords.
  • K-Bones dot fun.
  • CachyOS.
  • Scrubbing topics against the corrugated metal washboard of discussion.
  • Leaning into the microphone and saying "topics."
  • Helping Andy quit his day job tonight.
  • What MAGfest used to stand for.
  • Playing with SGI hardware in the Old-Ass Computer Room.
  • Game consoles that output square video.
  • Getting pixels into the framebuffer of the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Seeing a fun puzzle to solve but not solving it because you already have way too many projects.
  • Through-hole soldering.
  • Replacing volatile memory with F-RAM.
  • Preparing to have fun.
  • Reaching the point in your life where you don't want to bother with the war game, you just want to paint the miniatures.
  • What do you call it when you pair up with three people?
  • Throupling up for the next 45 minutes.
  • Who has time to both solder things and play video games?
  • Why Robotron 2084 was more difficult in emulation than in the arcade.
  • How to pronounce SNES.
  • Shmups slowing down when there are more objects on the screen, and game designers incorporating that into the game design.
  • The ZX Spectrum Next and the Mega 65.
  • A game console that only 150 people own and they get super excited whenever a new game comes out for it.
  • Game development like a caveman would do it.
  • Whether more than one person can take the under.
  • The rules of Monopoly as written vs. the folk rules.
  • eBay auctions as an extremely boring game.
  • First price vs. second price auctions.
  • Visiting the real money auction house in Diablo and finding out just how little your time and effort is worth.
  • The Gold Standard of the Hat Meta.
  • An evolutionary branch of PVP that's distinct from Yomi.
  • What to do when you want to play Avalon Hill's Dune.
  • Fence Lara Croft's Stolen Treasures.
  • Lara Croft's Stolen Antiquities Simulator.
  • Winning a bunch of Saltybucks on Saltybet.
  • Age-appropriate behavior.
  • Speedrun watching TV at 2 AM.
  • Live and Don't Learn.
  • Explaining jet lag to a two year old.
  • Watching MTV's Liquid Television block until 2:30 AM.
  • Finally sitting your son down to have the Aeon Flux talk.
  • Haiku that end "that's it, that's the haiku" even though that's too many syllables.
  • Hiking in the wilderness and encountering or not encountering a dragonfly.
  • People at risk of owning a Game Tank.
  • Broadly appealing messages sent out to farm likes.
  • The psychological cost of having 20,000 people following you.
  • Choosing your Mastodon instance based on what domain name William Gibson thought was funny.
  • The Mazzy Star song that's on the Batman Forever soundtrack.
  • iPod shuffles always insisting you're not pregnant no matter how much you pee on them.
  • Ephemeral preservation of a time in your life.
  • A biological weapon that removes your ability to perceive music as music.
  • You die young, or you live long enough to see Nine Inch Nails become dad rock.
  • Music Inspired by the Soundtrack.
  • Putting your MP3 collection on striped RAID arrays for the benefit of future archaeologists.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multi-time lords.
  • K-Bones dot fun.
  • CachyOS.
  • Scrubbing topics against the corrugated metal washboard of discussion.
  • Leaning into the microphone and saying "topics."
  • Helping Andy quit his day job tonight.
  • What MAGfest used to stand for.
  • Playing with SGI hardware in the Old-Ass Computer Room.
  • Game consoles that output square video.
  • Getting pixels into the framebuffer of the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Seeing a fun puzzle to solve but not solving it because you already have way too many projects.
  • Through-hole soldering.
  • Replacing volatile memory with F-RAM.
  • Preparing to have fun.
  • Reaching the point in your life where you don't want to bother with the war game, you just want to paint the miniatures.
  • What do you call it when you pair up with three people?
  • Throupling up for the next 45 minutes.
  • Who has time to both solder things and play video games?
  • Why Robotron 2084 was more difficult in emulation than in the arcade.
  • How to pronounce SNES.
  • Shmups slowing down when there are more objects on the screen, and game designers incorporating that into the game design.
  • The ZX Spectrum Next and the Mega 65.
  • A game console that only 150 people own and they get super excited whenever a new game comes out for it.
  • Game development like a caveman would do it.
  • Whether more than one person can take the under.
  • The rules of Monopoly as written vs. the folk rules.
  • eBay auctions as an extremely boring game.
  • First price vs. second price auctions.
  • Visiting the real money auction house in Diablo and finding out just how little your time and effort is worth.
  • The Gold Standard of the Hat Meta.
  • An evolutionary branch of PVP that's distinct from Yomi.
  • What to do when you want to play Avalon Hill's Dune.
  • Fence Lara Croft's Stolen Treasures.
  • Lara Croft's Stolen Antiquities Simulator.
  • Winning a bunch of Saltybucks on Saltybet.
  • Age-appropriate behavior.
  • Speedrun watching TV at 2 AM.
  • Live and Don't Learn.
  • Explaining jet lag to a two year old.
  • Watching MTV's Liquid Television block until 2:30 AM.
  • Finally sitting your son down to have the Aeon Flux talk.
  • Haiku that end "that's it, that's the haiku" even though that's too many syllables.
  • Hiking in the wilderness and encountering or not encountering a dragonfly.
  • People at risk of owning a Game Tank.
  • Broadly appealing messages sent out to farm likes.
  • The psychological cost of having 20,000 people following you.
  • Choosing your Mastodon instance based on what domain name William Gibson thought was funny.
  • The Mazzy Star song that's on the Batman Forever soundtrack.
  • iPod shuffles always insisting you're not pregnant no matter how much you pee on them.
  • Ephemeral preservation of a time in your life.
  • A biological weapon that removes your ability to perceive music as music.
  • You die young, or you live long enough to see Nine Inch Nails become dad rock.
  • Music Inspired by the Soundtrack.
  • Putting your MP3 collection on striped RAID arrays for the benefit of future archaeologists.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GJqc-NP0 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 330. Tip Extra To See the Nuns https://topiclords.com/tip-extra-to-see-the-nuns e2c3c71c-63ce-40cf-b0e3-ce8bd42be751 Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss festivals in Japan, marzipan made by nuns, podcast playlist problems, and Considering the Snail, by Thom Gunn. 1:00:58 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Traveling.
  • If you need a lot of stuff, or if that stuff needs you.
  • Real Topic Aficionados.
  • Last Life and other lives.
  • Watching a TV series you like and then going back and watching the same episodes again from a different character's perspective.
  • Napping all day and seeing street festivals at night.
  • Walking around with a tower of flaming candles on your head that keep getting tangled in power lines.
  • Why aren't the modern World's Fairs as exciting as the ones from 150 years ago?
  • Making a couple weeks vanish in lieu of a millennium and a half of leap days.
  • Naming your baby Person Who Packs For Themselves.
  • Naming your baby "Supplanter"
  • The littlest bean that's currently born.
  • Growing up enough to realize that everybody is named Luke now.
  • How Bob used to be the funny fake name but now it's Jeremy.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • The guy you call Baker because he's a baker.
  • The canonical order of ore value in video games.
  • Hacking your save file at home, just like in the good old days.
  • Selling marzipan in a dark room with a turntable and a bell.
  • Things you can eat in some parts of the world that you can't eat in others.
  • San Diego's Best Seattle Burrito.
  • The essence of fine Mexican foods.
  • Australians telling candy companies "stop trying to make Halloween happen"
  • That friend who has digestive issues eating salmon, but only in specific countries.
  • The politics of buying Girl Scout cookies.
  • The best place to sell a Girl Scout cookies on UCSD campus.
  • Boy Scouts trying to sell popcorn, with seemingly no awareness that popcorn is not remotely as good as Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Kobey's Swap Meet.
  • Getting an old timey surgical mannequin at a swap meet so you can practice your surgery.
  • Kids today trying to figure out how to operate a VCR like they're playing Myst.
  • What happens if you put a VHS tape in backwards?
  • Netflix's "continue watching" category, for movies you didn't like enough to finish.
  • We don't want to hear your bra podcasts!
  • The Stanford professor you're gardening for asking you what podcast you're listening to and now you have to explain your weird hobby to your employer.
  • How to listen to podcasts without your boss sneaking up on you.
  • The first time you've been to the dentist without headphones this millennium.
  • Introvert Dentists.
  • Tooth care advice that you forget immediately.
  • Extremely symmetrical knots in a power cable.
  • Climbing, sailing and caving knots.
  • What is a snail's fury? Why is this snail so mad?
  • A turtle that's decided it's go time.
  • Getting really excited about the turtle races at the Renaissance Fair.
  • Watching a carnival game where four people throw five spears each at targets attached to a wall of hay, and none of them manage to hit the wall.
  • Axe throwing bars, where you have a beer and throw axes.
  • Taking up axe throwing as a hobby because whenever someone gets killed with an axe, the police will be sad if they don't have any suspects.
  • Axe throwing failure modes.
  • Dominant javelin throwing strategies.
  • Throwing a javelin further by spinning around like a discus thrower.
  • Bullets: they go where they want.
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Traveling.
  • If you need a lot of stuff, or if that stuff needs you.
  • Real Topic Aficionados.
  • Last Life and other lives.
  • Watching a TV series you like and then going back and watching the same episodes again from a different character's perspective.
  • Napping all day and seeing street festivals at night.
  • Walking around with a tower of flaming candles on your head that keep getting tangled in power lines.
  • Why aren't the modern World's Fairs as exciting as the ones from 150 years ago?
  • Making a couple weeks vanish in lieu of a millennium and a half of leap days.
  • Naming your baby Person Who Packs For Themselves.
  • Naming your baby "Supplanter"
  • The littlest bean that's currently born.
  • Growing up enough to realize that everybody is named Luke now.
  • How Bob used to be the funny fake name but now it's Jeremy.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • The guy you call Baker because he's a baker.
  • The canonical order of ore value in video games.
  • Hacking your save file at home, just like in the good old days.
  • Selling marzipan in a dark room with a turntable and a bell.
  • Things you can eat in some parts of the world that you can't eat in others.
  • San Diego's Best Seattle Burrito.
  • The essence of fine Mexican foods.
  • Australians telling candy companies "stop trying to make Halloween happen"
  • That friend who has digestive issues eating salmon, but only in specific countries.
  • The politics of buying Girl Scout cookies.
  • The best place to sell a Girl Scout cookies on UCSD campus.
  • Boy Scouts trying to sell popcorn, with seemingly no awareness that popcorn is not remotely as good as Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Kobey's Swap Meet.
  • Getting an old timey surgical mannequin at a swap meet so you can practice your surgery.
  • Kids today trying to figure out how to operate a VCR like they're playing Myst.
  • What happens if you put a VHS tape in backwards?
  • Netflix's "continue watching" category, for movies you didn't like enough to finish.
  • We don't want to hear your bra podcasts!
  • The Stanford professor you're gardening for asking you what podcast you're listening to and now you have to explain your weird hobby to your employer.
  • How to listen to podcasts without your boss sneaking up on you.
  • The first time you've been to the dentist without headphones this millennium.
  • Introvert Dentists.
  • Tooth care advice that you forget immediately.
  • Extremely symmetrical knots in a power cable.
  • Climbing, sailing and caving knots.
  • What is a snail's fury? Why is this snail so mad?
  • A turtle that's decided it's go time.
  • Getting really excited about the turtle races at the Renaissance Fair.
  • Watching a carnival game where four people throw five spears each at targets attached to a wall of hay, and none of them manage to hit the wall.
  • Axe throwing bars, where you have a beer and throw axes.
  • Taking up axe throwing as a hobby because whenever someone gets killed with an axe, the police will be sad if they don't have any suspects.
  • Axe throwing failure modes.
  • Dominant javelin throwing strategies.
  • Throwing a javelin further by spinning around like a discus thrower.
  • Bullets: they go where they want.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Traveling.
  • If you need a lot of stuff, or if that stuff needs you.
  • Real Topic Aficionados.
  • Last Life and other lives.
  • Watching a TV series you like and then going back and watching the same episodes again from a different character's perspective.
  • Napping all day and seeing street festivals at night.
  • Walking around with a tower of flaming candles on your head that keep getting tangled in power lines.
  • Why aren't the modern World's Fairs as exciting as the ones from 150 years ago?
  • Making a couple weeks vanish in lieu of a millennium and a half of leap days.
  • Naming your baby Person Who Packs For Themselves.
  • Naming your baby "Supplanter"
  • The littlest bean that's currently born.
  • Growing up enough to realize that everybody is named Luke now.
  • How Bob used to be the funny fake name but now it's Jeremy.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • The guy you call Baker because he's a baker.
  • The canonical order of ore value in video games.
  • Hacking your save file at home, just like in the good old days.
  • Selling marzipan in a dark room with a turntable and a bell.
  • Things you can eat in some parts of the world that you can't eat in others.
  • San Diego's Best Seattle Burrito.
  • The essence of fine Mexican foods.
  • Australians telling candy companies "stop trying to make Halloween happen"
  • That friend who has digestive issues eating salmon, but only in specific countries.
  • The politics of buying Girl Scout cookies.
  • The best place to sell a Girl Scout cookies on UCSD campus.
  • Boy Scouts trying to sell popcorn, with seemingly no awareness that popcorn is not remotely as good as Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Kobey's Swap Meet.
  • Getting an old timey surgical mannequin at a swap meet so you can practice your surgery.
  • Kids today trying to figure out how to operate a VCR like they're playing Myst.
  • What happens if you put a VHS tape in backwards?
  • Netflix's "continue watching" category, for movies you didn't like enough to finish.
  • We don't want to hear your bra podcasts!
  • The Stanford professor you're gardening for asking you what podcast you're listening to and now you have to explain your weird hobby to your employer.
  • How to listen to podcasts without your boss sneaking up on you.
  • The first time you've been to the dentist without headphones this millennium.
  • Introvert Dentists.
  • Tooth care advice that you forget immediately.
  • Extremely symmetrical knots in a power cable.
  • Climbing, sailing and caving knots.
  • What is a snail's fury? Why is this snail so mad?
  • A turtle that's decided it's go time.
  • Getting really excited about the turtle races at the Renaissance Fair.
  • Watching a carnival game where four people throw five spears each at targets attached to a wall of hay, and none of them manage to hit the wall.
  • Axe throwing bars, where you have a beer and throw axes.
  • Taking up axe throwing as a hobby because whenever someone gets killed with an axe, the police will be sad if they don't have any suspects.
  • Axe throwing failure modes.
  • Dominant javelin throwing strategies.
  • Throwing a javelin further by spinning around like a discus thrower.
  • Bullets: they go where they want.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+wwKoATDt ]]> Jim Stormdancer 329. Who Made Tigers? https://topiclords.com/who-made-tigers 7fcee038-672c-405f-b234-2f35c7f3d0fe Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Watson. We discuss forgetting how to sleep over the holiday, conlanging teaching you how to judge good art, tate mode, and The Tyger by William Blake 1:08:23 true Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Watson

Topics:

  • My sleep experience over the holiday
    • Esper says: "Cannabis can definitely help one get into a sleep state, but actually degrades the quality of sleep quite a bit. From personal experience my guess is this has to do with how it affects dreams, often precluding them from happening to begin with."
  • Conlanging taught me how to judge good art
  • Tate mode
  • The Tyger, by William Blake

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trubble
  • The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Leguin.
  • Changing history by dreaming about it and having a hypnotherapist that's trying to change your dreams.
  • Telling artists that you like them vs. telling them that you like your work.
  • Learning how to take compliments.
  • Three people who could have opinions.
  • Spoilers for early January.
  • Trying to sleep on an airplane and training yourself to be unable to sleep at all.
  • A highly suboptimal experience.
  • Untraining the fear of falling asleep on planes from your body.
  • How to wear a neck pillow, maybe.
  • Sleeping sitting up and your head nodding forward as you fall asleep.
  • Neck pillow instructions dot PDF.
  • How to transport a neck pillow.
  • Hyperfixation on sleep and the consequences of not getting it.
  • Mythbusters Mode.
  • If you can't sleep, how helpful is it to pretend to be asleep?
  • Being woken up by the sensation of all your senses shutting down as you fall asleep.
  • Skipping your consciousness off of the surface of sleep.
  • Getting super stoked when you're about to fall asleep and waking yourself up because you're so excited.
  • Problems solved with more coffee vs. problems solved with more coffee tables.
  • Lingthusiasm.
  • Cursing yourself to hate a beloved movie series by watching it on a plane.
  • Psychosomatic self-curses.
  • Linguistics and conlangs.
  • The guy everyone hires to con a lang for a movie.
  • Judging things based on whether you like it vs. judging things based on whether it achieved the creator's goals.
  • Learning a new framing and applying it to everything.
  • Being aware of your frame and communicating your frame to the listener.
  • Lojban.
  • Lojban as a wholly unnatural way to speak in the same way that ballet is a wholly unnatural way to move.
  • Decent and not unaesthetic.
  • Trying to draw a picture without knowing how to hold a pencil.
  • Birds with extra vocal tracts.
  • Birdlangs.
  • What if parrots evolved to be sentient, except in a fantasy world, because reasons.
  • Ascertaining the borders of your caring.
  • Brandon Sanderson doing Brandon Sanderson things.
  • The IPA of sounds a human can perform live on a modular synthesizer.
  • To create Hatsune Miku, you must first invent the universe.
  • Horizontal vs. vertical scanlines.
  • Designing a CRT that can scan either horizontally or vertically.
  • Delta gun tubes with a triad of phosphor dots.
  • Having a vertical monitor to display tall things.
  • Page-shaped-pages.
  • Games that ship as a rectangle on a web site.
  • Black frame insertion.
  • Do modern LCD displays have ghosting?
  • A very intimidating challenge.
  • A very fun nexus of art and programming.
  • Tate Mode vs. Tate Modern.
  • Tate your owl for science.
  • Whether this poem predates the Great Vowel Shift.
  • Mixing ands and ampersands.
  • Capital Ampersand.
  • Seeing an animal and realizing that this is it, this is the one that's meant to eat me.
  • A glowing golden perfect human that everyone instantly hates and wants to eat.
  • Whether you can invent a tiger in Dwarf Fortress.
]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Watson

Topics:

  • My sleep experience over the holiday
    • Esper says: "Cannabis can definitely help one get into a sleep state, but actually degrades the quality of sleep quite a bit. From personal experience my guess is this has to do with how it affects dreams, often precluding them from happening to begin with."
  • Conlanging taught me how to judge good art
  • Tate mode
  • The Tyger, by William Blake

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trubble
  • The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Leguin.
  • Changing history by dreaming about it and having a hypnotherapist that's trying to change your dreams.
  • Telling artists that you like them vs. telling them that you like your work.
  • Learning how to take compliments.
  • Three people who could have opinions.
  • Spoilers for early January.
  • Trying to sleep on an airplane and training yourself to be unable to sleep at all.
  • A highly suboptimal experience.
  • Untraining the fear of falling asleep on planes from your body.
  • How to wear a neck pillow, maybe.
  • Sleeping sitting up and your head nodding forward as you fall asleep.
  • Neck pillow instructions dot PDF.
  • How to transport a neck pillow.
  • Hyperfixation on sleep and the consequences of not getting it.
  • Mythbusters Mode.
  • If you can't sleep, how helpful is it to pretend to be asleep?
  • Being woken up by the sensation of all your senses shutting down as you fall asleep.
  • Skipping your consciousness off of the surface of sleep.
  • Getting super stoked when you're about to fall asleep and waking yourself up because you're so excited.
  • Problems solved with more coffee vs. problems solved with more coffee tables.
  • Lingthusiasm.
  • Cursing yourself to hate a beloved movie series by watching it on a plane.
  • Psychosomatic self-curses.
  • Linguistics and conlangs.
  • The guy everyone hires to con a lang for a movie.
  • Judging things based on whether you like it vs. judging things based on whether it achieved the creator's goals.
  • Learning a new framing and applying it to everything.
  • Being aware of your frame and communicating your frame to the listener.
  • Lojban.
  • Lojban as a wholly unnatural way to speak in the same way that ballet is a wholly unnatural way to move.
  • Decent and not unaesthetic.
  • Trying to draw a picture without knowing how to hold a pencil.
  • Birds with extra vocal tracts.
  • Birdlangs.
  • What if parrots evolved to be sentient, except in a fantasy world, because reasons.
  • Ascertaining the borders of your caring.
  • Brandon Sanderson doing Brandon Sanderson things.
  • The IPA of sounds a human can perform live on a modular synthesizer.
  • To create Hatsune Miku, you must first invent the universe.
  • Horizontal vs. vertical scanlines.
  • Designing a CRT that can scan either horizontally or vertically.
  • Delta gun tubes with a triad of phosphor dots.
  • Having a vertical monitor to display tall things.
  • Page-shaped-pages.
  • Games that ship as a rectangle on a web site.
  • Black frame insertion.
  • Do modern LCD displays have ghosting?
  • A very intimidating challenge.
  • A very fun nexus of art and programming.
  • Tate Mode vs. Tate Modern.
  • Tate your owl for science.
  • Whether this poem predates the Great Vowel Shift.
  • Mixing ands and ampersands.
  • Capital Ampersand.
  • Seeing an animal and realizing that this is it, this is the one that's meant to eat me.
  • A glowing golden perfect human that everyone instantly hates and wants to eat.
  • Whether you can invent a tiger in Dwarf Fortress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Watson

Topics:

  • My sleep experience over the holiday
    • Esper says: "Cannabis can definitely help one get into a sleep state, but actually degrades the quality of sleep quite a bit. From personal experience my guess is this has to do with how it affects dreams, often precluding them from happening to begin with."
  • Conlanging taught me how to judge good art
  • Tate mode
  • The Tyger, by William Blake

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trubble
  • The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Leguin.
  • Changing history by dreaming about it and having a hypnotherapist that's trying to change your dreams.
  • Telling artists that you like them vs. telling them that you like your work.
  • Learning how to take compliments.
  • Three people who could have opinions.
  • Spoilers for early January.
  • Trying to sleep on an airplane and training yourself to be unable to sleep at all.
  • A highly suboptimal experience.
  • Untraining the fear of falling asleep on planes from your body.
  • How to wear a neck pillow, maybe.
  • Sleeping sitting up and your head nodding forward as you fall asleep.
  • Neck pillow instructions dot PDF.
  • How to transport a neck pillow.
  • Hyperfixation on sleep and the consequences of not getting it.
  • Mythbusters Mode.
  • If you can't sleep, how helpful is it to pretend to be asleep?
  • Being woken up by the sensation of all your senses shutting down as you fall asleep.
  • Skipping your consciousness off of the surface of sleep.
  • Getting super stoked when you're about to fall asleep and waking yourself up because you're so excited.
  • Problems solved with more coffee vs. problems solved with more coffee tables.
  • Lingthusiasm.
  • Cursing yourself to hate a beloved movie series by watching it on a plane.
  • Psychosomatic self-curses.
  • Linguistics and conlangs.
  • The guy everyone hires to con a lang for a movie.
  • Judging things based on whether you like it vs. judging things based on whether it achieved the creator's goals.
  • Learning a new framing and applying it to everything.
  • Being aware of your frame and communicating your frame to the listener.
  • Lojban.
  • Lojban as a wholly unnatural way to speak in the same way that ballet is a wholly unnatural way to move.
  • Decent and not unaesthetic.
  • Trying to draw a picture without knowing how to hold a pencil.
  • Birds with extra vocal tracts.
  • Birdlangs.
  • What if parrots evolved to be sentient, except in a fantasy world, because reasons.
  • Ascertaining the borders of your caring.
  • Brandon Sanderson doing Brandon Sanderson things.
  • The IPA of sounds a human can perform live on a modular synthesizer.
  • To create Hatsune Miku, you must first invent the universe.
  • Horizontal vs. vertical scanlines.
  • Designing a CRT that can scan either horizontally or vertically.
  • Delta gun tubes with a triad of phosphor dots.
  • Having a vertical monitor to display tall things.
  • Page-shaped-pages.
  • Games that ship as a rectangle on a web site.
  • Black frame insertion.
  • Do modern LCD displays have ghosting?
  • A very intimidating challenge.
  • A very fun nexus of art and programming.
  • Tate Mode vs. Tate Modern.
  • Tate your owl for science.
  • Whether this poem predates the Great Vowel Shift.
  • Mixing ands and ampersands.
  • Capital Ampersand.
  • Seeing an animal and realizing that this is it, this is the one that's meant to eat me.
  • A glowing golden perfect human that everyone instantly hates and wants to eat.
  • Whether you can invent a tiger in Dwarf Fortress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+23gAyU8A ]]> Jim Stormdancer 328. Darth Icky https://topiclords.com/darth-icky 4ac13ea6-cf20-4d02-8baf-539e11c4628c Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jesse and Alex. We discuss 90s Gen X Internet High Weirdness, writing a podcast about video games as someone who doesn't really play video games, the mystery of BunnyROM, Junk by Richard Wilbur, this is what Saved Star Wars looks like, and cycling's hour record. 1:19:08 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A gold star Canadian.
  • Cousin show Insert Credit.
  • One of the world's foremost experts on DC Comics.
  • Filling in the gaps with bonus episodes.
  • The lost episode of topic lords that might one day be produced.
  • Spreadsheet Secrets.
  • Detritus and ruins of the culture that came before yours. (Gen-X.)
  • Whether Steve Jackson is still doing the GURPS thing.
  • Where did Gen-X come from, and why did it disappear?
  • Your personal relationship with They Might Be Giants.
  • The weirdos who first colonized the Internet in search of the community they weren't finding in their lives.
  • Nerds riding high on military funding and founding new religions with varying degrees of mockery.
  • British comedy crossing the ocean and losing its cultural context, so a generation of American nerds grow up with a more absurdist sense of humor than the previous generations.
  • Sitting at your computer running IRC in 1996, staring at the screen waiting for someone to say something.
  • Classical Education as a shared cultural context so rich people can understand each other's jokes.
  • Halfway into the 2020s, still thinking about the Roaring Twenties whenever anyone names the decade.
  • Everybody forgetting how to group history by decade after a twenty years of not easily being able to talk about "the 00s" and "the 10s."
  • Playing video games from the ages of 5 to 20 and then stopping forever.
  • Asking some of the most thoughtful people you know questions about video games.
  • The exhaustion of trying to keep video games in your life.
  • Artists and critics with opinions that are wildly out of step with their audience.
  • Video game companies that have great logos.
  • People who are so good at telling interesting stories about the bad video games that they're playing that they convince you to buy the game and then you're like "where's the interesting game they talked about"
  • Talking to the same oldbies every week.
  • An 18 year old kid obsessed with the Atari Jaguar wandering into the middle-aged video game club and everyone is like "sickos face yes emoji"
  • Trying to track down the manufacturer of Digital Princess Friend.
  • Mysterious ROM images that nobody knows the origin of because nobody asked.
  • A Tamagotchi where your little guy can be a fighter plane or Sponge Bob.
  • Mysteriously good Tamagotchi software floating around.
  • The reason M&Ms come in different colors.
  • An egg that your umbrella with an eye can hatch from.
  • Why you can't ship a container full of cheap junk to the United States any more.
  • Middle English style poetry.
  • Sheer shards of shattered tumblers.
  • Modern English alliterative verse.
  • It's cool what people do with words.
  • Paying so much attention to the alliteration that you miss the meaning of the poem.
  • All the Babu Frik Funko Pops that will still be around long after all the stars go out.
  • Hephaestus' Hammer, all gunked up in microplastics.
  • Quoting other poems in the middle of your poem.
  • Publishing a book of all the poems we've read on Topic Lords and then being sued for copyright infringement.
  • A poem that originated on Jim's fridge.
  • Diminishing Mandalorian Returns.
  • The goddamned Ewoks shit.
  • The Droids cartoon.
  • The future of Star Wars: jokes about Star Wars??
  • The Day the Clown Cried of Star Wars.
  • The angriest you've ever been watching a movie.
  • The third good Star Wars movie.
  • Stealing good ideas from cool fiction.
  • One guy who got lucky a couple times and a thousand yes men enabling him for the next 40 years.
  • Planet Moriband.
  • Finally finding a guy you can call Mace Windu.
  • Waiting for Jar-Jar.
  • Sometimes you just need drivel that you like.
  • Buying a tangerine and noticing that it's a Star Wars-branded tangerine.
  • Technology improving the way we interact with wind resistance.
  • 1890 guy on his velocipede getting mad at all the new Space Bikes.
  • Instituting new rules stating that your bicycle has to look like a bicycle.
  • Ivory Tower Cycle Men.
  • Vampire Tactics.
  • The most prestigious world record in professional cycling.
  • Keeping track of the world record best dress at a fashion show.
  • What about Funny Cars? What's so funny about them?
  • Trying to break the Merckx record using Merckx's original bicycle and outfit.
  • Everyone tying the same world record forever.
  • Riding 270 miles a day for a year.
  • Walking to work 23 miles a day, both ways, because you love suffering and hate bicycles.
  • Detective Comics Comics.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A gold star Canadian.
  • Cousin show Insert Credit.
  • One of the world's foremost experts on DC Comics.
  • Filling in the gaps with bonus episodes.
  • The lost episode of topic lords that might one day be produced.
  • Spreadsheet Secrets.
  • Detritus and ruins of the culture that came before yours. (Gen-X.)
  • Whether Steve Jackson is still doing the GURPS thing.
  • Where did Gen-X come from, and why did it disappear?
  • Your personal relationship with They Might Be Giants.
  • The weirdos who first colonized the Internet in search of the community they weren't finding in their lives.
  • Nerds riding high on military funding and founding new religions with varying degrees of mockery.
  • British comedy crossing the ocean and losing its cultural context, so a generation of American nerds grow up with a more absurdist sense of humor than the previous generations.
  • Sitting at your computer running IRC in 1996, staring at the screen waiting for someone to say something.
  • Classical Education as a shared cultural context so rich people can understand each other's jokes.
  • Halfway into the 2020s, still thinking about the Roaring Twenties whenever anyone names the decade.
  • Everybody forgetting how to group history by decade after a twenty years of not easily being able to talk about "the 00s" and "the 10s."
  • Playing video games from the ages of 5 to 20 and then stopping forever.
  • Asking some of the most thoughtful people you know questions about video games.
  • The exhaustion of trying to keep video games in your life.
  • Artists and critics with opinions that are wildly out of step with their audience.
  • Video game companies that have great logos.
  • People who are so good at telling interesting stories about the bad video games that they're playing that they convince you to buy the game and then you're like "where's the interesting game they talked about"
  • Talking to the same oldbies every week.
  • An 18 year old kid obsessed with the Atari Jaguar wandering into the middle-aged video game club and everyone is like "sickos face yes emoji"
  • Trying to track down the manufacturer of Digital Princess Friend.
  • Mysterious ROM images that nobody knows the origin of because nobody asked.
  • A Tamagotchi where your little guy can be a fighter plane or Sponge Bob.
  • Mysteriously good Tamagotchi software floating around.
  • The reason M&Ms come in different colors.
  • An egg that your umbrella with an eye can hatch from.
  • Why you can't ship a container full of cheap junk to the United States any more.
  • Middle English style poetry.
  • Sheer shards of shattered tumblers.
  • Modern English alliterative verse.
  • It's cool what people do with words.
  • Paying so much attention to the alliteration that you miss the meaning of the poem.
  • All the Babu Frik Funko Pops that will still be around long after all the stars go out.
  • Hephaestus' Hammer, all gunked up in microplastics.
  • Quoting other poems in the middle of your poem.
  • Publishing a book of all the poems we've read on Topic Lords and then being sued for copyright infringement.
  • A poem that originated on Jim's fridge.
  • Diminishing Mandalorian Returns.
  • The goddamned Ewoks shit.
  • The Droids cartoon.
  • The future of Star Wars: jokes about Star Wars??
  • The Day the Clown Cried of Star Wars.
  • The angriest you've ever been watching a movie.
  • The third good Star Wars movie.
  • Stealing good ideas from cool fiction.
  • One guy who got lucky a couple times and a thousand yes men enabling him for the next 40 years.
  • Planet Moriband.
  • Finally finding a guy you can call Mace Windu.
  • Waiting for Jar-Jar.
  • Sometimes you just need drivel that you like.
  • Buying a tangerine and noticing that it's a Star Wars-branded tangerine.
  • Technology improving the way we interact with wind resistance.
  • 1890 guy on his velocipede getting mad at all the new Space Bikes.
  • Instituting new rules stating that your bicycle has to look like a bicycle.
  • Ivory Tower Cycle Men.
  • Vampire Tactics.
  • The most prestigious world record in professional cycling.
  • Keeping track of the world record best dress at a fashion show.
  • What about Funny Cars? What's so funny about them?
  • Trying to break the Merckx record using Merckx's original bicycle and outfit.
  • Everyone tying the same world record forever.
  • Riding 270 miles a day for a year.
  • Walking to work 23 miles a day, both ways, because you love suffering and hate bicycles.
  • Detective Comics Comics.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A gold star Canadian.
  • Cousin show Insert Credit.
  • One of the world's foremost experts on DC Comics.
  • Filling in the gaps with bonus episodes.
  • The lost episode of topic lords that might one day be produced.
  • Spreadsheet Secrets.
  • Detritus and ruins of the culture that came before yours. (Gen-X.)
  • Whether Steve Jackson is still doing the GURPS thing.
  • Where did Gen-X come from, and why did it disappear?
  • Your personal relationship with They Might Be Giants.
  • The weirdos who first colonized the Internet in search of the community they weren't finding in their lives.
  • Nerds riding high on military funding and founding new religions with varying degrees of mockery.
  • British comedy crossing the ocean and losing its cultural context, so a generation of American nerds grow up with a more absurdist sense of humor than the previous generations.
  • Sitting at your computer running IRC in 1996, staring at the screen waiting for someone to say something.
  • Classical Education as a shared cultural context so rich people can understand each other's jokes.
  • Halfway into the 2020s, still thinking about the Roaring Twenties whenever anyone names the decade.
  • Everybody forgetting how to group history by decade after a twenty years of not easily being able to talk about "the 00s" and "the 10s."
  • Playing video games from the ages of 5 to 20 and then stopping forever.
  • Asking some of the most thoughtful people you know questions about video games.
  • The exhaustion of trying to keep video games in your life.
  • Artists and critics with opinions that are wildly out of step with their audience.
  • Video game companies that have great logos.
  • People who are so good at telling interesting stories about the bad video games that they're playing that they convince you to buy the game and then you're like "where's the interesting game they talked about"
  • Talking to the same oldbies every week.
  • An 18 year old kid obsessed with the Atari Jaguar wandering into the middle-aged video game club and everyone is like "sickos face yes emoji"
  • Trying to track down the manufacturer of Digital Princess Friend.
  • Mysterious ROM images that nobody knows the origin of because nobody asked.
  • A Tamagotchi where your little guy can be a fighter plane or Sponge Bob.
  • Mysteriously good Tamagotchi software floating around.
  • The reason M&Ms come in different colors.
  • An egg that your umbrella with an eye can hatch from.
  • Why you can't ship a container full of cheap junk to the United States any more.
  • Middle English style poetry.
  • Sheer shards of shattered tumblers.
  • Modern English alliterative verse.
  • It's cool what people do with words.
  • Paying so much attention to the alliteration that you miss the meaning of the poem.
  • All the Babu Frik Funko Pops that will still be around long after all the stars go out.
  • Hephaestus' Hammer, all gunked up in microplastics.
  • Quoting other poems in the middle of your poem.
  • Publishing a book of all the poems we've read on Topic Lords and then being sued for copyright infringement.
  • A poem that originated on Jim's fridge.
  • Diminishing Mandalorian Returns.
  • The goddamned Ewoks shit.
  • The Droids cartoon.
  • The future of Star Wars: jokes about Star Wars??
  • The Day the Clown Cried of Star Wars.
  • The angriest you've ever been watching a movie.
  • The third good Star Wars movie.
  • Stealing good ideas from cool fiction.
  • One guy who got lucky a couple times and a thousand yes men enabling him for the next 40 years.
  • Planet Moriband.
  • Finally finding a guy you can call Mace Windu.
  • Waiting for Jar-Jar.
  • Sometimes you just need drivel that you like.
  • Buying a tangerine and noticing that it's a Star Wars-branded tangerine.
  • Technology improving the way we interact with wind resistance.
  • 1890 guy on his velocipede getting mad at all the new Space Bikes.
  • Instituting new rules stating that your bicycle has to look like a bicycle.
  • Ivory Tower Cycle Men.
  • Vampire Tactics.
  • The most prestigious world record in professional cycling.
  • Keeping track of the world record best dress at a fashion show.
  • What about Funny Cars? What's so funny about them?
  • Trying to break the Merckx record using Merckx's original bicycle and outfit.
  • Everyone tying the same world record forever.
  • Riding 270 miles a day for a year.
  • Walking to work 23 miles a day, both ways, because you love suffering and hate bicycles.
  • Detective Comics Comics.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Se8G5_1G ]]> Jim Stormdancer 327. Damn, That's a Good Kidney! https://topiclords.com/damn-thats-a-good-kidney 25a4bbe6-7203-48ee-ab98-7de4e53a0b16 Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Josette and Daniel. We discuss the overlap between musicians and rhythm game players, figure skating and the upcoming Olympics, In This Short Life That Only Lasts an Hour by Emily Dickinson, The Reality of Hope, and whether time travel media is really that bad 1:06:29 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • 3D art spaces and the Virtual Burning Man experience.
  • What were we talking about at lunch?
  • The new kind of Christmas light that's reminiscent of the old kind of Christmas light.
  • A nice soft blue.
  • The LED lights that hurt the most.
  • Mounting recessed lights in the eaves and lighting them up with the worst gamer RGB patterns.
  • Beige keyboards with three green LEDs on them that you can animate because they're memory-mapped.
  • Paradiddle.
  • Learning to play drums in VR.
  • Paradiddle for Snapchat Glasses.
  • Video game audio latency vs. digital synthesizer latency.
  • The Bemani guitar game that inspired Guitar Hero.
  • Guitar Freaks vs. Guitar Hero as a case study in how the same idea can be executed very differently getting very different results
  • How singing is scored in Rock Band.
  • Finding new music via the Rock Band games.
  • Beat Saber Library Managers.
  • Solid beams of light.
  • Ice Dancing.
  • Whether you can train rhythm.
  • Brother-sister ice skating couples.
  • Which animals can learn rhythm.
  • Representing your ice rink.
  • What to do after you've spent your life training but what you were training for didn't work out?
  • Ice skater unions.
  • Going to the Olympics with your mom to watch the figure skating.
  • Alysa Liu.
  • Meeting America's Princess and she's not a nice lady.
  • Finding the right coach at age 7.
  • Sports therapists.
  • The disposition to perform your best under pressure.
  • Exercising and practicing at the expense of nearly everything else you could be doing with your time.
  • What to do with your life now that you're no longer spending all your time training for the Olympics.
  • Missing your friend's 11th birthday party because you're busy training for the Olympics.
  • Giving seven year olds a test to see if they do well under pressure and if not, telling their parents not to try to get this one into the Olympics.
  • Grit.
  • What boot camp is for.
  • Training to be the best person in the world at field stripping a rifle.
  • Still living this life, which is great.
  • Still being responsible for other people's taxes.
  • Looking forward to the new year because it's tax time.
  • How your life might've been different if your parents insisted you go to college.
  • We've got learning at home but we don't have socialization at home.
  • Studying how to study without knowing how to study.
  • Passing the classes you were interested in at that moment and not doing so well in the test.
  • Two friends in the furry community.
  • Telling your friend about your medical condition in VR Chat.
  • A documentary about kidney transplants in the furry community.
  • Damn, That's a Good Kidney!
  • Filming a documentary in VR Chat.
  • What normal people think about time travel fiction.
  • Yes, you have to use your hands, and yes it's like a baby's toy.
  • Reading a piece of fiction because you're hoping to have a good time.
  • Which time-travel movies have reached the heights of popular culture.
  • Having this 360-degree camera just sitting around and trying to figure out what movie to make with it.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • 3D art spaces and the Virtual Burning Man experience.
  • What were we talking about at lunch?
  • The new kind of Christmas light that's reminiscent of the old kind of Christmas light.
  • A nice soft blue.
  • The LED lights that hurt the most.
  • Mounting recessed lights in the eaves and lighting them up with the worst gamer RGB patterns.
  • Beige keyboards with three green LEDs on them that you can animate because they're memory-mapped.
  • Paradiddle.
  • Learning to play drums in VR.
  • Paradiddle for Snapchat Glasses.
  • Video game audio latency vs. digital synthesizer latency.
  • The Bemani guitar game that inspired Guitar Hero.
  • Guitar Freaks vs. Guitar Hero as a case study in how the same idea can be executed very differently getting very different results
  • How singing is scored in Rock Band.
  • Finding new music via the Rock Band games.
  • Beat Saber Library Managers.
  • Solid beams of light.
  • Ice Dancing.
  • Whether you can train rhythm.
  • Brother-sister ice skating couples.
  • Which animals can learn rhythm.
  • Representing your ice rink.
  • What to do after you've spent your life training but what you were training for didn't work out?
  • Ice skater unions.
  • Going to the Olympics with your mom to watch the figure skating.
  • Alysa Liu.
  • Meeting America's Princess and she's not a nice lady.
  • Finding the right coach at age 7.
  • Sports therapists.
  • The disposition to perform your best under pressure.
  • Exercising and practicing at the expense of nearly everything else you could be doing with your time.
  • What to do with your life now that you're no longer spending all your time training for the Olympics.
  • Missing your friend's 11th birthday party because you're busy training for the Olympics.
  • Giving seven year olds a test to see if they do well under pressure and if not, telling their parents not to try to get this one into the Olympics.
  • Grit.
  • What boot camp is for.
  • Training to be the best person in the world at field stripping a rifle.
  • Still living this life, which is great.
  • Still being responsible for other people's taxes.
  • Looking forward to the new year because it's tax time.
  • How your life might've been different if your parents insisted you go to college.
  • We've got learning at home but we don't have socialization at home.
  • Studying how to study without knowing how to study.
  • Passing the classes you were interested in at that moment and not doing so well in the test.
  • Two friends in the furry community.
  • Telling your friend about your medical condition in VR Chat.
  • A documentary about kidney transplants in the furry community.
  • Damn, That's a Good Kidney!
  • Filming a documentary in VR Chat.
  • What normal people think about time travel fiction.
  • Yes, you have to use your hands, and yes it's like a baby's toy.
  • Reading a piece of fiction because you're hoping to have a good time.
  • Which time-travel movies have reached the heights of popular culture.
  • Having this 360-degree camera just sitting around and trying to figure out what movie to make with it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • 3D art spaces and the Virtual Burning Man experience.
  • What were we talking about at lunch?
  • The new kind of Christmas light that's reminiscent of the old kind of Christmas light.
  • A nice soft blue.
  • The LED lights that hurt the most.
  • Mounting recessed lights in the eaves and lighting them up with the worst gamer RGB patterns.
  • Beige keyboards with three green LEDs on them that you can animate because they're memory-mapped.
  • Paradiddle.
  • Learning to play drums in VR.
  • Paradiddle for Snapchat Glasses.
  • Video game audio latency vs. digital synthesizer latency.
  • The Bemani guitar game that inspired Guitar Hero.
  • Guitar Freaks vs. Guitar Hero as a case study in how the same idea can be executed very differently getting very different results
  • How singing is scored in Rock Band.
  • Finding new music via the Rock Band games.
  • Beat Saber Library Managers.
  • Solid beams of light.
  • Ice Dancing.
  • Whether you can train rhythm.
  • Brother-sister ice skating couples.
  • Which animals can learn rhythm.
  • Representing your ice rink.
  • What to do after you've spent your life training but what you were training for didn't work out?
  • Ice skater unions.
  • Going to the Olympics with your mom to watch the figure skating.
  • Alysa Liu.
  • Meeting America's Princess and she's not a nice lady.
  • Finding the right coach at age 7.
  • Sports therapists.
  • The disposition to perform your best under pressure.
  • Exercising and practicing at the expense of nearly everything else you could be doing with your time.
  • What to do with your life now that you're no longer spending all your time training for the Olympics.
  • Missing your friend's 11th birthday party because you're busy training for the Olympics.
  • Giving seven year olds a test to see if they do well under pressure and if not, telling their parents not to try to get this one into the Olympics.
  • Grit.
  • What boot camp is for.
  • Training to be the best person in the world at field stripping a rifle.
  • Still living this life, which is great.
  • Still being responsible for other people's taxes.
  • Looking forward to the new year because it's tax time.
  • How your life might've been different if your parents insisted you go to college.
  • We've got learning at home but we don't have socialization at home.
  • Studying how to study without knowing how to study.
  • Passing the classes you were interested in at that moment and not doing so well in the test.
  • Two friends in the furry community.
  • Telling your friend about your medical condition in VR Chat.
  • A documentary about kidney transplants in the furry community.
  • Damn, That's a Good Kidney!
  • Filming a documentary in VR Chat.
  • What normal people think about time travel fiction.
  • Yes, you have to use your hands, and yes it's like a baby's toy.
  • Reading a piece of fiction because you're hoping to have a good time.
  • Which time-travel movies have reached the heights of popular culture.
  • Having this 360-degree camera just sitting around and trying to figure out what movie to make with it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6IDu-ZhG ]]> Jim Stormdancer 326. A Dead Quarterback Can Still Score https://topiclords.com/a-dead-quarterback-can-still-score d54cedc6-1533-41c8-9cbd-8a5c69b38768 Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Cort and Ben. We discuss the Geek Code, a fun fact about your neighborhood, Every 5x6 Nonogram, The Calf Path, by Sam Foss, and Phillip Rivers. 1:03:55 true Lords:

  • Cort
  • Ben

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Secret Playstation Things.
  • Transposing a matrix in SIMD.
  • Reclaiming your plug.
  • Trying and failing to use Libby.
  • Failing to check out library books from your toilet.
  • State-sanctioned piracy.
  • The restaurant where you had the dinner for your wedding.
  • The "my wife" voice.
  • Suddenly having nieces.
  • Hadad and Barney on Black Square Day.
  • The Talos Principal DLC.
  • The Geek Code Era.
  • VMS or OS/2 as a defining feature of your personality.
  • Dilbert, Perl, Doom, and X-Files: all equally culturally relevant to this day.
  • The Natural Bears Classification System for Gay Men.
  • The Human Code.
  • Your favorite grocery store's end-of-year recap.
  • The story of a Venezuelan woman between age 30 and 55, and her top 2000 interests.
  • Your favorite vowel in text messages you've sent this year.
  • What they call that AE vowel.
  • Speedrunning your entire email history in a weekend.
  • The Miracle Mile, where all the tar pits are.
  • Noted monster Sean "Diddy" Combs.
  • Two hip hop producers getting mad at each other.
  • Putting a plaque at your hotel explaining that Jim Morrison did not die at this hotel.
  • Being the plaque you want to see in the world.
  • Whether the Museum of Jurassic Technology has reopened after the fire.
  • A very earnest museum about a history that never was.
  • Wandering around dazed after every 5x5 nonogram is solved.
  • Doing your part to serve humanity by solving nonograms.
  • Do you remember where you were when Every 5x5 Nonogram Section 303 was finished?
  • Why a dippy bird can't keep you online.
  • Gesturing at the idea of collectively solving a problem.
  • Why we haven't heard from Peter Molyneux in a while.
  • What three digit numbers nonogram solvers think are interesting.
  • Sending 96 million solved nonograms into space as proof to alien life that humans are still capable of collective action.
  • Feeling bad about having installed an ad blocker and loading up a four hour block of ads from 80s TV.
  • Being prosecuted for use of ad blockers.
  • Look at that smirk. That's a man who knows he's preaching but getting away with it.
  • Getting a deck of flash cards to learn all of the pentameters.
  • Three iambs and a reverse iamb.
  • Your favorite good poems and your favorite shitpost poems.
  • Tony Gang Flame War.
  • Refusing to tackle the 40 year old quarterback after his wallet falls out on the field and the photos of his ten children unfold.
  • The median age of football players rising into retirement age as teenagers learn about the health risks and refuse to participate.
  • Using NBA 2K as a metaphor for the decline of civilization.
  • LA finally getting a football team again. (They have two now.)
  • Whether they're still playing Starcraft.
  • Broken 19 year olds who can't play Starcraft any more because their APMs are too low.
  • The experience of attending a live e-Sports event.
  • Whether they sell hot dogs and beer to the crowd at the live League of Legends event or if it's all GamerGrub and Feastables.
  • A Youtube shitpost made in Garry's Mod.
  • Channing Tatum playing the toilet in the Skibidi Toilet movie.
  • Al Gore: still alive?
  • Whether Wilford Brimley got plastic surgery to look that old.
]]> Lords:

  • Cort
  • Ben

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Secret Playstation Things.
  • Transposing a matrix in SIMD.
  • Reclaiming your plug.
  • Trying and failing to use Libby.
  • Failing to check out library books from your toilet.
  • State-sanctioned piracy.
  • The restaurant where you had the dinner for your wedding.
  • The "my wife" voice.
  • Suddenly having nieces.
  • Hadad and Barney on Black Square Day.
  • The Talos Principal DLC.
  • The Geek Code Era.
  • VMS or OS/2 as a defining feature of your personality.
  • Dilbert, Perl, Doom, and X-Files: all equally culturally relevant to this day.
  • The Natural Bears Classification System for Gay Men.
  • The Human Code.
  • Your favorite grocery store's end-of-year recap.
  • The story of a Venezuelan woman between age 30 and 55, and her top 2000 interests.
  • Your favorite vowel in text messages you've sent this year.
  • What they call that AE vowel.
  • Speedrunning your entire email history in a weekend.
  • The Miracle Mile, where all the tar pits are.
  • Noted monster Sean "Diddy" Combs.
  • Two hip hop producers getting mad at each other.
  • Putting a plaque at your hotel explaining that Jim Morrison did not die at this hotel.
  • Being the plaque you want to see in the world.
  • Whether the Museum of Jurassic Technology has reopened after the fire.
  • A very earnest museum about a history that never was.
  • Wandering around dazed after every 5x5 nonogram is solved.
  • Doing your part to serve humanity by solving nonograms.
  • Do you remember where you were when Every 5x5 Nonogram Section 303 was finished?
  • Why a dippy bird can't keep you online.
  • Gesturing at the idea of collectively solving a problem.
  • Why we haven't heard from Peter Molyneux in a while.
  • What three digit numbers nonogram solvers think are interesting.
  • Sending 96 million solved nonograms into space as proof to alien life that humans are still capable of collective action.
  • Feeling bad about having installed an ad blocker and loading up a four hour block of ads from 80s TV.
  • Being prosecuted for use of ad blockers.
  • Look at that smirk. That's a man who knows he's preaching but getting away with it.
  • Getting a deck of flash cards to learn all of the pentameters.
  • Three iambs and a reverse iamb.
  • Your favorite good poems and your favorite shitpost poems.
  • Tony Gang Flame War.
  • Refusing to tackle the 40 year old quarterback after his wallet falls out on the field and the photos of his ten children unfold.
  • The median age of football players rising into retirement age as teenagers learn about the health risks and refuse to participate.
  • Using NBA 2K as a metaphor for the decline of civilization.
  • LA finally getting a football team again. (They have two now.)
  • Whether they're still playing Starcraft.
  • Broken 19 year olds who can't play Starcraft any more because their APMs are too low.
  • The experience of attending a live e-Sports event.
  • Whether they sell hot dogs and beer to the crowd at the live League of Legends event or if it's all GamerGrub and Feastables.
  • A Youtube shitpost made in Garry's Mod.
  • Channing Tatum playing the toilet in the Skibidi Toilet movie.
  • Al Gore: still alive?
  • Whether Wilford Brimley got plastic surgery to look that old.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Cort
  • Ben

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Secret Playstation Things.
  • Transposing a matrix in SIMD.
  • Reclaiming your plug.
  • Trying and failing to use Libby.
  • Failing to check out library books from your toilet.
  • State-sanctioned piracy.
  • The restaurant where you had the dinner for your wedding.
  • The "my wife" voice.
  • Suddenly having nieces.
  • Hadad and Barney on Black Square Day.
  • The Talos Principal DLC.
  • The Geek Code Era.
  • VMS or OS/2 as a defining feature of your personality.
  • Dilbert, Perl, Doom, and X-Files: all equally culturally relevant to this day.
  • The Natural Bears Classification System for Gay Men.
  • The Human Code.
  • Your favorite grocery store's end-of-year recap.
  • The story of a Venezuelan woman between age 30 and 55, and her top 2000 interests.
  • Your favorite vowel in text messages you've sent this year.
  • What they call that AE vowel.
  • Speedrunning your entire email history in a weekend.
  • The Miracle Mile, where all the tar pits are.
  • Noted monster Sean "Diddy" Combs.
  • Two hip hop producers getting mad at each other.
  • Putting a plaque at your hotel explaining that Jim Morrison did not die at this hotel.
  • Being the plaque you want to see in the world.
  • Whether the Museum of Jurassic Technology has reopened after the fire.
  • A very earnest museum about a history that never was.
  • Wandering around dazed after every 5x5 nonogram is solved.
  • Doing your part to serve humanity by solving nonograms.
  • Do you remember where you were when Every 5x5 Nonogram Section 303 was finished?
  • Why a dippy bird can't keep you online.
  • Gesturing at the idea of collectively solving a problem.
  • Why we haven't heard from Peter Molyneux in a while.
  • What three digit numbers nonogram solvers think are interesting.
  • Sending 96 million solved nonograms into space as proof to alien life that humans are still capable of collective action.
  • Feeling bad about having installed an ad blocker and loading up a four hour block of ads from 80s TV.
  • Being prosecuted for use of ad blockers.
  • Look at that smirk. That's a man who knows he's preaching but getting away with it.
  • Getting a deck of flash cards to learn all of the pentameters.
  • Three iambs and a reverse iamb.
  • Your favorite good poems and your favorite shitpost poems.
  • Tony Gang Flame War.
  • Refusing to tackle the 40 year old quarterback after his wallet falls out on the field and the photos of his ten children unfold.
  • The median age of football players rising into retirement age as teenagers learn about the health risks and refuse to participate.
  • Using NBA 2K as a metaphor for the decline of civilization.
  • LA finally getting a football team again. (They have two now.)
  • Whether they're still playing Starcraft.
  • Broken 19 year olds who can't play Starcraft any more because their APMs are too low.
  • The experience of attending a live e-Sports event.
  • Whether they sell hot dogs and beer to the crowd at the live League of Legends event or if it's all GamerGrub and Feastables.
  • A Youtube shitpost made in Garry's Mod.
  • Channing Tatum playing the toilet in the Skibidi Toilet movie.
  • Al Gore: still alive?
  • Whether Wilford Brimley got plastic surgery to look that old.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+uKiP7eq0 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 325. Men, Explain Things to Me! https://topiclords.com/men-explain-things-to-me 6d1e581d-a3d9-443c-9616-b8aab6e8deb2 Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Micah. We discuss Puerto Rico branded holiday jams, chive drama on Reddit, how to cure tinnitus (maybe), the Ballad of Blasphemous Bill by Robert W. Service, and making movies sequels until they're good again 1:06:28 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being finished with horrible shit.
  • Being in the middle of things forever.
  • The Minutes of the Intermittent Meetings of the Society of Apocryphal Gentlefolk, by Dark Art
  • Coming down from the high of PiCoSteveMo.
  • Explaining PiCoSteveMo to someone like it's their first time at Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • Two things I'm willing to sacrifice to play PiCoSteveMo games.
  • Putting your PICO-8 game in a CRT filter.
  • Lawnmower Man, based on the title by Stephen King.
  • Developing a field system in Puerto Rico.
  • Winston's face appearing to the extent that Zoom thinks it's part of my chest.
  • A deafening hospital siren playing while you're trying to have a good time at the beach.
  • Pirate-themed massage.
  • Stealing the windsurfing gear and going for a ride.
  • Walking past the site of a pirate massage and fatal accident holding a solo cup.
  • Getting pushed off the road by seven full-sized Coca Cola trucks led by a Santa Sleigh and followed by a party truck with a giant octagonal speaker spreading holiday cheer.
  • Charging more for a well-traveled Coca Cola.
  • Holiday-Branded Traffic Jams.
  • Shipping your worst wine to India and it turns out that the sea voyage turns it into your best wine.
  • Spanish Milk.
  • Visiting Puerto Rico during linear time.
  • The Puerto Rican version of Sleep No More in which Bad Bunny might pull you into a dark corner for a one-on-one and it's not clear whether he works for the event or if he's just another attendee.
  • Day 57 of chopping chives on Reddit.
  • Drawing airplanes crashing into the chives that are too long.
  • Working with (and living with) the Chive Lord.
  • Comparing Day 1 chives with day 55 chives.
  • Finding Yoshi in a pile of chopped chives.
  • A job that exists. (But not one you get paid for.)
  • Asking the robot to add heart shapes to your food processor chives.
  • These are the Days of our Chives.
  • Each Sale I Drink a Glass of Water.
  • Self-hosting memes and Turing-complete memes.
  • Phase canceling your tinnitus.
  • Not wanting to look it up because then you'd know.
  • Curing tinnitus with extremely specific grenades.
  • A party where everyone is constantly singing their personal tinnitus tones.
  • Why don't we get bass tinnitus?
  • Can you cure bass tinnitus with snail caviar?
  • The native word for white people who are doing poorly in Alaska.
  • The ice worms wriggling their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow.
  • Pine trees cracking like little guns in the silence of the wood.
  • Prankster Bill dying with his arms and legs outstretched so that he won't fit in his coffin.
  • Poems that demand to be performed with a banjo.
  • Whether they have banjos in Alaska.
  • Having fun with the way words sound.
  • I'm not gonna make it – but I can be an X shape.
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee.
  • Burning your house down to get the insurance money to buy a telescope.
  • Making bad art until it becomes good.
  • Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
  • A giant worm monster drilling up out of the ground in order to slice chives.
  • Really dwelling on how much you don't have in common with other people.
  • Six topics (and Shrieker Island)
  • A dollmaker on the run after making farcical plays about Hitler.
  • The Saved by the Bell themed music video featuring the same actors as the Final Destination movie it's promoting.
  • Would you take 90 minutes off of your life to have not seen Final Destination 4?
  • The replacement for the 1 to 10 pain scale where you decide which Final Destination movie you'd be willing to watch to take the pain away.
  • Low pain awareness.
  • Chess boxing win/loss ratios.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being finished with horrible shit.
  • Being in the middle of things forever.
  • The Minutes of the Intermittent Meetings of the Society of Apocryphal Gentlefolk, by Dark Art
  • Coming down from the high of PiCoSteveMo.
  • Explaining PiCoSteveMo to someone like it's their first time at Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • Two things I'm willing to sacrifice to play PiCoSteveMo games.
  • Putting your PICO-8 game in a CRT filter.
  • Lawnmower Man, based on the title by Stephen King.
  • Developing a field system in Puerto Rico.
  • Winston's face appearing to the extent that Zoom thinks it's part of my chest.
  • A deafening hospital siren playing while you're trying to have a good time at the beach.
  • Pirate-themed massage.
  • Stealing the windsurfing gear and going for a ride.
  • Walking past the site of a pirate massage and fatal accident holding a solo cup.
  • Getting pushed off the road by seven full-sized Coca Cola trucks led by a Santa Sleigh and followed by a party truck with a giant octagonal speaker spreading holiday cheer.
  • Charging more for a well-traveled Coca Cola.
  • Holiday-Branded Traffic Jams.
  • Shipping your worst wine to India and it turns out that the sea voyage turns it into your best wine.
  • Spanish Milk.
  • Visiting Puerto Rico during linear time.
  • The Puerto Rican version of Sleep No More in which Bad Bunny might pull you into a dark corner for a one-on-one and it's not clear whether he works for the event or if he's just another attendee.
  • Day 57 of chopping chives on Reddit.
  • Drawing airplanes crashing into the chives that are too long.
  • Working with (and living with) the Chive Lord.
  • Comparing Day 1 chives with day 55 chives.
  • Finding Yoshi in a pile of chopped chives.
  • A job that exists. (But not one you get paid for.)
  • Asking the robot to add heart shapes to your food processor chives.
  • These are the Days of our Chives.
  • Each Sale I Drink a Glass of Water.
  • Self-hosting memes and Turing-complete memes.
  • Phase canceling your tinnitus.
  • Not wanting to look it up because then you'd know.
  • Curing tinnitus with extremely specific grenades.
  • A party where everyone is constantly singing their personal tinnitus tones.
  • Why don't we get bass tinnitus?
  • Can you cure bass tinnitus with snail caviar?
  • The native word for white people who are doing poorly in Alaska.
  • The ice worms wriggling their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow.
  • Pine trees cracking like little guns in the silence of the wood.
  • Prankster Bill dying with his arms and legs outstretched so that he won't fit in his coffin.
  • Poems that demand to be performed with a banjo.
  • Whether they have banjos in Alaska.
  • Having fun with the way words sound.
  • I'm not gonna make it – but I can be an X shape.
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee.
  • Burning your house down to get the insurance money to buy a telescope.
  • Making bad art until it becomes good.
  • Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
  • A giant worm monster drilling up out of the ground in order to slice chives.
  • Really dwelling on how much you don't have in common with other people.
  • Six topics (and Shrieker Island)
  • A dollmaker on the run after making farcical plays about Hitler.
  • The Saved by the Bell themed music video featuring the same actors as the Final Destination movie it's promoting.
  • Would you take 90 minutes off of your life to have not seen Final Destination 4?
  • The replacement for the 1 to 10 pain scale where you decide which Final Destination movie you'd be willing to watch to take the pain away.
  • Low pain awareness.
  • Chess boxing win/loss ratios.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being finished with horrible shit.
  • Being in the middle of things forever.
  • The Minutes of the Intermittent Meetings of the Society of Apocryphal Gentlefolk, by Dark Art
  • Coming down from the high of PiCoSteveMo.
  • Explaining PiCoSteveMo to someone like it's their first time at Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • Two things I'm willing to sacrifice to play PiCoSteveMo games.
  • Putting your PICO-8 game in a CRT filter.
  • Lawnmower Man, based on the title by Stephen King.
  • Developing a field system in Puerto Rico.
  • Winston's face appearing to the extent that Zoom thinks it's part of my chest.
  • A deafening hospital siren playing while you're trying to have a good time at the beach.
  • Pirate-themed massage.
  • Stealing the windsurfing gear and going for a ride.
  • Walking past the site of a pirate massage and fatal accident holding a solo cup.
  • Getting pushed off the road by seven full-sized Coca Cola trucks led by a Santa Sleigh and followed by a party truck with a giant octagonal speaker spreading holiday cheer.
  • Charging more for a well-traveled Coca Cola.
  • Holiday-Branded Traffic Jams.
  • Shipping your worst wine to India and it turns out that the sea voyage turns it into your best wine.
  • Spanish Milk.
  • Visiting Puerto Rico during linear time.
  • The Puerto Rican version of Sleep No More in which Bad Bunny might pull you into a dark corner for a one-on-one and it's not clear whether he works for the event or if he's just another attendee.
  • Day 57 of chopping chives on Reddit.
  • Drawing airplanes crashing into the chives that are too long.
  • Working with (and living with) the Chive Lord.
  • Comparing Day 1 chives with day 55 chives.
  • Finding Yoshi in a pile of chopped chives.
  • A job that exists. (But not one you get paid for.)
  • Asking the robot to add heart shapes to your food processor chives.
  • These are the Days of our Chives.
  • Each Sale I Drink a Glass of Water.
  • Self-hosting memes and Turing-complete memes.
  • Phase canceling your tinnitus.
  • Not wanting to look it up because then you'd know.
  • Curing tinnitus with extremely specific grenades.
  • A party where everyone is constantly singing their personal tinnitus tones.
  • Why don't we get bass tinnitus?
  • Can you cure bass tinnitus with snail caviar?
  • The native word for white people who are doing poorly in Alaska.
  • The ice worms wriggling their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow.
  • Pine trees cracking like little guns in the silence of the wood.
  • Prankster Bill dying with his arms and legs outstretched so that he won't fit in his coffin.
  • Poems that demand to be performed with a banjo.
  • Whether they have banjos in Alaska.
  • Having fun with the way words sound.
  • I'm not gonna make it – but I can be an X shape.
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee.
  • Burning your house down to get the insurance money to buy a telescope.
  • Making bad art until it becomes good.
  • Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
  • A giant worm monster drilling up out of the ground in order to slice chives.
  • Really dwelling on how much you don't have in common with other people.
  • Six topics (and Shrieker Island)
  • A dollmaker on the run after making farcical plays about Hitler.
  • The Saved by the Bell themed music video featuring the same actors as the Final Destination movie it's promoting.
  • Would you take 90 minutes off of your life to have not seen Final Destination 4?
  • The replacement for the 1 to 10 pain scale where you decide which Final Destination movie you'd be willing to watch to take the pain away.
  • Low pain awareness.
  • Chess boxing win/loss ratios.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+7Fzoly4G ]]> Jim Stormdancer 324. You Don't Love Staggering? https://topiclords.com/you-dont-love-staggering 44b15092-2fe8-4148-81b5-1efd986f75bb Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Kate. We discuss learning to drive at 40, the mottos of the livery companies of London, Independent They Stand!, Leda and the Swan, by William Butler Yeats, predecimalization currency in the UK, and DIY TTRPG mapping software, the ridiculous way 1:18:00 true Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming making maps of video games on the Internet.
  • The people who are willing to watch someone map out every corner of this sprawling and convoluted game.
  • Writing about video games and writing video games.
  • Dicey territory. (Which is only appropriate.)
  • King Stephen, which will have been great.
  • Fun jokes and oblique references.
  • Forty and a half years old.
  • Building your life around not being able to drive a car.
  • Pockets of civilization separated by vast stretches of asphalt.
  • The car unsteering itself unless you hold the steering wheel in place.
  • Someone yelling at you with their little beep beep horn.
  • Learning a skill and forgetting how you learn it.
  • Learning a skill before you find out that learning is hard.
  • The false sense of immortality that allows people to get into a car.
  • During your driving test, pushing the drift button but the driving instructor is like "I don't see any blue sparks"
  • Learning to drive when you're six years old.
  • Getting your Lego Land driving license.
  • Awarding the worst student in your driving class the "most spirited" driver's license.
  • Explaining what livery companies are by reading the Wikipedia page also.
  • The Worshipful Company of Communicators.
  • Everything's so good, bread especially.
  • A great motto for clockmakers.
  • Does anyone know any cool Latin mottos?
  • When are all these servants having time to go out and have mottos??
  • The Soggiest God you can Muster.
  • The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists finding a Latin word that is also a snack food for their motto.
  • Painting, staining, and compelling obedience.
  • Sticking with Hope Classic.
  • Shoemakers making jokes about supporting their customers.
  • Getting the salt/wit pun in there for people who know Latin.
  • Africa: always producing some novelty.
  • The 2000 IGF.
  • How to read a magazine together on a podcast.
  • John Carmack's Finger Server.
  • Doom Guy.
  • John Romero's specific type of memory.
  • How they invented mouse look.
  • Turning with the arrow keys and aiming a reticle around the screen with the mouse.
  • Dragging the mouse to the top of your cool dinosaur mouse pad.
  • Why doesn't Microsoft Excel keep the mouse cursor in the center of the screen?
  • The FPS phone interface where you swipe on the touchscreen until the button you want to press is in the center of the screen, then pull the trigger on the back of the phone and a shotgun sound plays.
  • Fold-away interface panels.
  • Thousand Hells, by the developer of King of Dragon Pass.
  • All the video games named "Rift" or "The Rift"
  • How can those terrified vague pink fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
  • Zeus disguised as a swan.
  • Whether Marylin Monroe will would've loved Hades.
  • Going to Wikipedia's list of mottos because you need some more mottos.
  • How many ha'ppenies to a thruppence?
  • The half crown, worth 2/6.
  • Several hundred quarterfarthings.
  • Decimal Day, 1971.
  • Extremely forgeable coins.
  • Dividing the day into two sets of twelve.
  • Decimalization. (Based on 10 fingers.)
  • Tuppence and Thruppence.
  • IBM calling it "hexadecimal" because they refuse to say "sexadecimal" out loud.
  • Theater of the Mind storytelling.
  • Importing an occlusion map.
  • Tinting what the players can see green and tinting what the DM can see red or blue.
  • Swapping the lenses in anaglyph glasses so one person can only see red and the other can only see blue.
  • Hanging a projector from the ceiling and projecting the D&D map on the table.
  • A projector of uncertain parentage.
  • Harebrained vs. cockamamie.
  • A fun puzzle you can run off and waste a bunch of time solving.
  • A stochastic cinema where you never know if it's going to be comedy or horror and everything seems totally real to you and is about your personal failings.
  • Focusing on wibbly dream state.
  • How to exhale with your nose plugged.
  • Losing your Apple Watch on Mt. Everest and going back up to look for it and it turns out you dropped it in the shower.
  • Topics going into the bucket that nobody ever sees.
  • Writing a secret on a piece of paper and burying it on a hill with a single tree on it on a moonlit night.
]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming making maps of video games on the Internet.
  • The people who are willing to watch someone map out every corner of this sprawling and convoluted game.
  • Writing about video games and writing video games.
  • Dicey territory. (Which is only appropriate.)
  • King Stephen, which will have been great.
  • Fun jokes and oblique references.
  • Forty and a half years old.
  • Building your life around not being able to drive a car.
  • Pockets of civilization separated by vast stretches of asphalt.
  • The car unsteering itself unless you hold the steering wheel in place.
  • Someone yelling at you with their little beep beep horn.
  • Learning a skill and forgetting how you learn it.
  • Learning a skill before you find out that learning is hard.
  • The false sense of immortality that allows people to get into a car.
  • During your driving test, pushing the drift button but the driving instructor is like "I don't see any blue sparks"
  • Learning to drive when you're six years old.
  • Getting your Lego Land driving license.
  • Awarding the worst student in your driving class the "most spirited" driver's license.
  • Explaining what livery companies are by reading the Wikipedia page also.
  • The Worshipful Company of Communicators.
  • Everything's so good, bread especially.
  • A great motto for clockmakers.
  • Does anyone know any cool Latin mottos?
  • When are all these servants having time to go out and have mottos??
  • The Soggiest God you can Muster.
  • The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists finding a Latin word that is also a snack food for their motto.
  • Painting, staining, and compelling obedience.
  • Sticking with Hope Classic.
  • Shoemakers making jokes about supporting their customers.
  • Getting the salt/wit pun in there for people who know Latin.
  • Africa: always producing some novelty.
  • The 2000 IGF.
  • How to read a magazine together on a podcast.
  • John Carmack's Finger Server.
  • Doom Guy.
  • John Romero's specific type of memory.
  • How they invented mouse look.
  • Turning with the arrow keys and aiming a reticle around the screen with the mouse.
  • Dragging the mouse to the top of your cool dinosaur mouse pad.
  • Why doesn't Microsoft Excel keep the mouse cursor in the center of the screen?
  • The FPS phone interface where you swipe on the touchscreen until the button you want to press is in the center of the screen, then pull the trigger on the back of the phone and a shotgun sound plays.
  • Fold-away interface panels.
  • Thousand Hells, by the developer of King of Dragon Pass.
  • All the video games named "Rift" or "The Rift"
  • How can those terrified vague pink fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
  • Zeus disguised as a swan.
  • Whether Marylin Monroe will would've loved Hades.
  • Going to Wikipedia's list of mottos because you need some more mottos.
  • How many ha'ppenies to a thruppence?
  • The half crown, worth 2/6.
  • Several hundred quarterfarthings.
  • Decimal Day, 1971.
  • Extremely forgeable coins.
  • Dividing the day into two sets of twelve.
  • Decimalization. (Based on 10 fingers.)
  • Tuppence and Thruppence.
  • IBM calling it "hexadecimal" because they refuse to say "sexadecimal" out loud.
  • Theater of the Mind storytelling.
  • Importing an occlusion map.
  • Tinting what the players can see green and tinting what the DM can see red or blue.
  • Swapping the lenses in anaglyph glasses so one person can only see red and the other can only see blue.
  • Hanging a projector from the ceiling and projecting the D&D map on the table.
  • A projector of uncertain parentage.
  • Harebrained vs. cockamamie.
  • A fun puzzle you can run off and waste a bunch of time solving.
  • A stochastic cinema where you never know if it's going to be comedy or horror and everything seems totally real to you and is about your personal failings.
  • Focusing on wibbly dream state.
  • How to exhale with your nose plugged.
  • Losing your Apple Watch on Mt. Everest and going back up to look for it and it turns out you dropped it in the shower.
  • Topics going into the bucket that nobody ever sees.
  • Writing a secret on a piece of paper and burying it on a hill with a single tree on it on a moonlit night.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming making maps of video games on the Internet.
  • The people who are willing to watch someone map out every corner of this sprawling and convoluted game.
  • Writing about video games and writing video games.
  • Dicey territory. (Which is only appropriate.)
  • King Stephen, which will have been great.
  • Fun jokes and oblique references.
  • Forty and a half years old.
  • Building your life around not being able to drive a car.
  • Pockets of civilization separated by vast stretches of asphalt.
  • The car unsteering itself unless you hold the steering wheel in place.
  • Someone yelling at you with their little beep beep horn.
  • Learning a skill and forgetting how you learn it.
  • Learning a skill before you find out that learning is hard.
  • The false sense of immortality that allows people to get into a car.
  • During your driving test, pushing the drift button but the driving instructor is like "I don't see any blue sparks"
  • Learning to drive when you're six years old.
  • Getting your Lego Land driving license.
  • Awarding the worst student in your driving class the "most spirited" driver's license.
  • Explaining what livery companies are by reading the Wikipedia page also.
  • The Worshipful Company of Communicators.
  • Everything's so good, bread especially.
  • A great motto for clockmakers.
  • Does anyone know any cool Latin mottos?
  • When are all these servants having time to go out and have mottos??
  • The Soggiest God you can Muster.
  • The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists finding a Latin word that is also a snack food for their motto.
  • Painting, staining, and compelling obedience.
  • Sticking with Hope Classic.
  • Shoemakers making jokes about supporting their customers.
  • Getting the salt/wit pun in there for people who know Latin.
  • Africa: always producing some novelty.
  • The 2000 IGF.
  • How to read a magazine together on a podcast.
  • John Carmack's Finger Server.
  • Doom Guy.
  • John Romero's specific type of memory.
  • How they invented mouse look.
  • Turning with the arrow keys and aiming a reticle around the screen with the mouse.
  • Dragging the mouse to the top of your cool dinosaur mouse pad.
  • Why doesn't Microsoft Excel keep the mouse cursor in the center of the screen?
  • The FPS phone interface where you swipe on the touchscreen until the button you want to press is in the center of the screen, then pull the trigger on the back of the phone and a shotgun sound plays.
  • Fold-away interface panels.
  • Thousand Hells, by the developer of King of Dragon Pass.
  • All the video games named "Rift" or "The Rift"
  • How can those terrified vague pink fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
  • Zeus disguised as a swan.
  • Whether Marylin Monroe will would've loved Hades.
  • Going to Wikipedia's list of mottos because you need some more mottos.
  • How many ha'ppenies to a thruppence?
  • The half crown, worth 2/6.
  • Several hundred quarterfarthings.
  • Decimal Day, 1971.
  • Extremely forgeable coins.
  • Dividing the day into two sets of twelve.
  • Decimalization. (Based on 10 fingers.)
  • Tuppence and Thruppence.
  • IBM calling it "hexadecimal" because they refuse to say "sexadecimal" out loud.
  • Theater of the Mind storytelling.
  • Importing an occlusion map.
  • Tinting what the players can see green and tinting what the DM can see red or blue.
  • Swapping the lenses in anaglyph glasses so one person can only see red and the other can only see blue.
  • Hanging a projector from the ceiling and projecting the D&D map on the table.
  • A projector of uncertain parentage.
  • Harebrained vs. cockamamie.
  • A fun puzzle you can run off and waste a bunch of time solving.
  • A stochastic cinema where you never know if it's going to be comedy or horror and everything seems totally real to you and is about your personal failings.
  • Focusing on wibbly dream state.
  • How to exhale with your nose plugged.
  • Losing your Apple Watch on Mt. Everest and going back up to look for it and it turns out you dropped it in the shower.
  • Topics going into the bucket that nobody ever sees.
  • Writing a secret on a piece of paper and burying it on a hill with a single tree on it on a moonlit night.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+erIBdaxA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 323. The Astigmaprism https://topiclords.com/the-astigmaprism 75801db5-6bc3-433e-be75-fbc39b0b7d17 Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ryan and CisHetKayfaber. We discuss vocal stims getting out of control now that you don't have pets, training to become a Tetris Grandmaster, switching to not-bifocals, and Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight 1:13:28 true Lords:

  • Ryan
  • CisHetKayfaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself or plugging something.
  • Going to Cape Town for Playtopia.
  • Enemies to enemies to lovers.
  • A game conference with a name that sounds way too much like Fruitopia.
  • What you would do for an Orbitz right now.
  • An apple juice with basil seeds ensconced in it, like an Orbitz.
  • I'm not mean, I'm just trying to manifest bullying.
  • Semisolid Kind of Life.
  • A dog following you into the kitchen and acting like a Ghostbusters trap except for all your bullshit rather than ectoplasm.
  • The movie about the prep school kids who poop on the floor at their magic school.
  • Making yourself laugh by doing a Gollum voice while you make a sandwich.
  • Hanging up a happy face on the fridge and writing "mirror" on top of it to convince yourself that you're okay.
  • An action figure that absorbs all the dark energy aimed at you.
  • Giving advice to someone that you really have no basis for.
  • The dog who loved your terrible celebrity impressions and the dog who gives you a look like "I expected more of you"
  • Your online source for news about what water parks Jim and his family went to.
  • The kind of Tetris that you become s grandmaster in.
  • Tetris but the pieces don't fall, they just instantly appear at the bottom of the well.
  • How the Tetris company wants you to play Tetris.
  • Delayed Auto-Shift.
  • Doing a hadouken move to place the zigzag piece in the correct column.
  • Stack faster, stack better.
  • A skill you can practice and get better at.
  • Training for three or four hours a day on a hacked PlayStation Vita to become a Tetris Grandmaster.
  • How the Tetris the Grandmaster community feels about leverless controls.
  • Going several years between occasions to say hello to your wife.
  • Going for a walk around the block so you have an excuse to say hello to your wife when you get back.
  • Seeing a person and immediately infodumping at them.
  • What they have now instead of bifocals.
  • Training your eyes to look through the part of the lens that does the thing.
  • Going to the optometrist and saying "just fuck me up"
  • Why they don't make bifocals for text at the distance of a computer monitor.
  • There's still time, and there's dignity.
  • Watching the VOD of your own death because you missed the livestream.
  • Getting used to your vision swimming in a new way when you get new glasses.
  • Getting an eye exam and saying "I'd rather not say" when they ask you what letters you see.
  • Freeballing your corneas.
  • A fellow glasses enjoyer.
  • A cursed gem that gives you astigmatism.
  • Doing the Magic Eye thing in order to learn to read.
  • Being born a trust fund kid, except it's your eyeballs.
  • The return of the quarter speed music video.
  • Even slower slow motion.
  • Why can't Eagle-Eye Cherry crawl?
  • Wondering why you haven't leaped yet.
  • Singing to the camera while being robbed.
  • Watching music videos at 1.5x speed as practice for watching them at .25x speed.
  • Suddenly the dog takes its mask off and it was Eagle-Eye Cherry the whole time!
  • Promising to eat your glasses frames on camera.
  • Forgetting how cool your whole premise is and just stopping doing it.
  • Literal music videos.
  • A houseplant can't save shit. A houseplant doesn't know what time it is.
  • People running around New York and looking sad at the camera.
  • Buck Cherry. (Named after Chuck Berry.)
]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • CisHetKayfaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself or plugging something.
  • Going to Cape Town for Playtopia.
  • Enemies to enemies to lovers.
  • A game conference with a name that sounds way too much like Fruitopia.
  • What you would do for an Orbitz right now.
  • An apple juice with basil seeds ensconced in it, like an Orbitz.
  • I'm not mean, I'm just trying to manifest bullying.
  • Semisolid Kind of Life.
  • A dog following you into the kitchen and acting like a Ghostbusters trap except for all your bullshit rather than ectoplasm.
  • The movie about the prep school kids who poop on the floor at their magic school.
  • Making yourself laugh by doing a Gollum voice while you make a sandwich.
  • Hanging up a happy face on the fridge and writing "mirror" on top of it to convince yourself that you're okay.
  • An action figure that absorbs all the dark energy aimed at you.
  • Giving advice to someone that you really have no basis for.
  • The dog who loved your terrible celebrity impressions and the dog who gives you a look like "I expected more of you"
  • Your online source for news about what water parks Jim and his family went to.
  • The kind of Tetris that you become s grandmaster in.
  • Tetris but the pieces don't fall, they just instantly appear at the bottom of the well.
  • How the Tetris company wants you to play Tetris.
  • Delayed Auto-Shift.
  • Doing a hadouken move to place the zigzag piece in the correct column.
  • Stack faster, stack better.
  • A skill you can practice and get better at.
  • Training for three or four hours a day on a hacked PlayStation Vita to become a Tetris Grandmaster.
  • How the Tetris the Grandmaster community feels about leverless controls.
  • Going several years between occasions to say hello to your wife.
  • Going for a walk around the block so you have an excuse to say hello to your wife when you get back.
  • Seeing a person and immediately infodumping at them.
  • What they have now instead of bifocals.
  • Training your eyes to look through the part of the lens that does the thing.
  • Going to the optometrist and saying "just fuck me up"
  • Why they don't make bifocals for text at the distance of a computer monitor.
  • There's still time, and there's dignity.
  • Watching the VOD of your own death because you missed the livestream.
  • Getting used to your vision swimming in a new way when you get new glasses.
  • Getting an eye exam and saying "I'd rather not say" when they ask you what letters you see.
  • Freeballing your corneas.
  • A fellow glasses enjoyer.
  • A cursed gem that gives you astigmatism.
  • Doing the Magic Eye thing in order to learn to read.
  • Being born a trust fund kid, except it's your eyeballs.
  • The return of the quarter speed music video.
  • Even slower slow motion.
  • Why can't Eagle-Eye Cherry crawl?
  • Wondering why you haven't leaped yet.
  • Singing to the camera while being robbed.
  • Watching music videos at 1.5x speed as practice for watching them at .25x speed.
  • Suddenly the dog takes its mask off and it was Eagle-Eye Cherry the whole time!
  • Promising to eat your glasses frames on camera.
  • Forgetting how cool your whole premise is and just stopping doing it.
  • Literal music videos.
  • A houseplant can't save shit. A houseplant doesn't know what time it is.
  • People running around New York and looking sad at the camera.
  • Buck Cherry. (Named after Chuck Berry.)

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • CisHetKayfaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself or plugging something.
  • Going to Cape Town for Playtopia.
  • Enemies to enemies to lovers.
  • A game conference with a name that sounds way too much like Fruitopia.
  • What you would do for an Orbitz right now.
  • An apple juice with basil seeds ensconced in it, like an Orbitz.
  • I'm not mean, I'm just trying to manifest bullying.
  • Semisolid Kind of Life.
  • A dog following you into the kitchen and acting like a Ghostbusters trap except for all your bullshit rather than ectoplasm.
  • The movie about the prep school kids who poop on the floor at their magic school.
  • Making yourself laugh by doing a Gollum voice while you make a sandwich.
  • Hanging up a happy face on the fridge and writing "mirror" on top of it to convince yourself that you're okay.
  • An action figure that absorbs all the dark energy aimed at you.
  • Giving advice to someone that you really have no basis for.
  • The dog who loved your terrible celebrity impressions and the dog who gives you a look like "I expected more of you"
  • Your online source for news about what water parks Jim and his family went to.
  • The kind of Tetris that you become s grandmaster in.
  • Tetris but the pieces don't fall, they just instantly appear at the bottom of the well.
  • How the Tetris company wants you to play Tetris.
  • Delayed Auto-Shift.
  • Doing a hadouken move to place the zigzag piece in the correct column.
  • Stack faster, stack better.
  • A skill you can practice and get better at.
  • Training for three or four hours a day on a hacked PlayStation Vita to become a Tetris Grandmaster.
  • How the Tetris the Grandmaster community feels about leverless controls.
  • Going several years between occasions to say hello to your wife.
  • Going for a walk around the block so you have an excuse to say hello to your wife when you get back.
  • Seeing a person and immediately infodumping at them.
  • What they have now instead of bifocals.
  • Training your eyes to look through the part of the lens that does the thing.
  • Going to the optometrist and saying "just fuck me up"
  • Why they don't make bifocals for text at the distance of a computer monitor.
  • There's still time, and there's dignity.
  • Watching the VOD of your own death because you missed the livestream.
  • Getting used to your vision swimming in a new way when you get new glasses.
  • Getting an eye exam and saying "I'd rather not say" when they ask you what letters you see.
  • Freeballing your corneas.
  • A fellow glasses enjoyer.
  • A cursed gem that gives you astigmatism.
  • Doing the Magic Eye thing in order to learn to read.
  • Being born a trust fund kid, except it's your eyeballs.
  • The return of the quarter speed music video.
  • Even slower slow motion.
  • Why can't Eagle-Eye Cherry crawl?
  • Wondering why you haven't leaped yet.
  • Singing to the camera while being robbed.
  • Watching music videos at 1.5x speed as practice for watching them at .25x speed.
  • Suddenly the dog takes its mask off and it was Eagle-Eye Cherry the whole time!
  • Promising to eat your glasses frames on camera.
  • Forgetting how cool your whole premise is and just stopping doing it.
  • Literal music videos.
  • A houseplant can't save shit. A houseplant doesn't know what time it is.
  • People running around New York and looking sad at the camera.
  • Buck Cherry. (Named after Chuck Berry.)

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+8xj2Nhvo ]]> Jim Stormdancer 322. Tony Hawk's Skateboarding Without Dying https://topiclords.com/tony-hawks-skateboarding-without-dying 9ea7a42d-14eb-4fb6-87ba-804e10514e0c Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Michael. We discuss reinventing pants, plortonomics (the economy in the game Slime Rancher), The Leaning American, and Maggie and Milly and Molly and May by E. E. Cummings 57:14 true Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Michael

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rabbits and writing.
  • Buying the lede (but thankfully the rabbits dug it up)
  • Lord Veterans
  • Ancillary Justice, or The Imperial Radch.
  • Rabbits who want nothing more than to chew louder than you talk.
  • Leaving space for the elephant in the room
  • Inventing a new kind of pants inspired by taiko drumming.
  • After years, finally trying out your new idea for how to sew pants, and realizing that the waist of the pants only reaches the crotch.
  • Pants that are only made of rectangles.
  • The slow process of realizing what pants are.
  • Rapidly becoming pants.
  • The universe doesn't end with a bang, but with a zip. (Of the pants.)
  • Inventing a new kind of pants and looking them up online and realizing that they already exist and the name is extremely offensive.
  • Pants that are just a square of cloth that you fold around your leg.
  • A new kind of pants where the crotch is higher than the waist.
  • Disassembling the kimono to hang it up to dry.
  • Looking up the etymology of "pants" and it comes from an ancient word that means "the thing you can't just fold around your legs, you have to find a pattern on ravelry and sew it"
  • Back when "pants" were just two leg tubes that you tied to your shirt.
  • Clothespins: they turn tubes into clothes.
  • How pants are different for fat people.
  • Clean room pants reverse engineering.
  • Asking a tailor who's never seen pants to make you pants based on a verbal description of a Taiko drummer you saw once.
  • Making plorts after eating.
  • Vacuuming up the plorts.
  • Extremely ineffective insider trading.
  • The kind of crime you only get caught at if people hate you.
  • Gathering data on when people didn't file a malpractice suit.
  • Doctor Parsley diagnosing you with sleep apnea based on the width of your neck.
  • Suing a little mouse for malpractice because his tiny thimbleful of chamomile tea didn't cure your hepatitis A.
  • Wholesome farming games where you go back to nature and practice aggressive capitalism.
  • Throwing your slimes into the sea. (Which is maybe made of slimes.)
  • The fantasy of running at high speed down a hill.
  • The fantasy of skateboarding without dying.
  • Incentivizing the player to discover new plorts.
  • The fantasy of being on friendly terms with your neighbors.
  • Comparing your favorite Animal Crossing villagers with your favorite Love Island cast members.
  • The two competing Britain's Favorite Gardener.
  • A reality show where you check in three times on people doing a project.
  • What the rest of the world does instead of leaving.
  • Learning how to stand – normally a thing only babies do.
  • Leaning on an inclined surface made for a butt.
  • Leaning less when you're visiting Japan.
  • Crab Doctor.
  • Reading a poem before it's too late.
  • Narcissists soaking French.
  • Tag yourself, I'm the horrible thing racing sideways while blowing bubbles.
  • As small as a world and as large as alone.
  • Wikipedia Dad.
  • Gauging how long an answer to give a child asking a philosophical question.
  • The Final Plug of Maxx Yamasaki.
]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Michael

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rabbits and writing.
  • Buying the lede (but thankfully the rabbits dug it up)
  • Lord Veterans
  • Ancillary Justice, or The Imperial Radch.
  • Rabbits who want nothing more than to chew louder than you talk.
  • Leaving space for the elephant in the room
  • Inventing a new kind of pants inspired by taiko drumming.
  • After years, finally trying out your new idea for how to sew pants, and realizing that the waist of the pants only reaches the crotch.
  • Pants that are only made of rectangles.
  • The slow process of realizing what pants are.
  • Rapidly becoming pants.
  • The universe doesn't end with a bang, but with a zip. (Of the pants.)
  • Inventing a new kind of pants and looking them up online and realizing that they already exist and the name is extremely offensive.
  • Pants that are just a square of cloth that you fold around your leg.
  • A new kind of pants where the crotch is higher than the waist.
  • Disassembling the kimono to hang it up to dry.
  • Looking up the etymology of "pants" and it comes from an ancient word that means "the thing you can't just fold around your legs, you have to find a pattern on ravelry and sew it"
  • Back when "pants" were just two leg tubes that you tied to your shirt.
  • Clothespins: they turn tubes into clothes.
  • How pants are different for fat people.
  • Clean room pants reverse engineering.
  • Asking a tailor who's never seen pants to make you pants based on a verbal description of a Taiko drummer you saw once.
  • Making plorts after eating.
  • Vacuuming up the plorts.
  • Extremely ineffective insider trading.
  • The kind of crime you only get caught at if people hate you.
  • Gathering data on when people didn't file a malpractice suit.
  • Doctor Parsley diagnosing you with sleep apnea based on the width of your neck.
  • Suing a little mouse for malpractice because his tiny thimbleful of chamomile tea didn't cure your hepatitis A.
  • Wholesome farming games where you go back to nature and practice aggressive capitalism.
  • Throwing your slimes into the sea. (Which is maybe made of slimes.)
  • The fantasy of running at high speed down a hill.
  • The fantasy of skateboarding without dying.
  • Incentivizing the player to discover new plorts.
  • The fantasy of being on friendly terms with your neighbors.
  • Comparing your favorite Animal Crossing villagers with your favorite Love Island cast members.
  • The two competing Britain's Favorite Gardener.
  • A reality show where you check in three times on people doing a project.
  • What the rest of the world does instead of leaving.
  • Learning how to stand – normally a thing only babies do.
  • Leaning on an inclined surface made for a butt.
  • Leaning less when you're visiting Japan.
  • Crab Doctor.
  • Reading a poem before it's too late.
  • Narcissists soaking French.
  • Tag yourself, I'm the horrible thing racing sideways while blowing bubbles.
  • As small as a world and as large as alone.
  • Wikipedia Dad.
  • Gauging how long an answer to give a child asking a philosophical question.
  • The Final Plug of Maxx Yamasaki.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Michael

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rabbits and writing.
  • Buying the lede (but thankfully the rabbits dug it up)
  • Lord Veterans
  • Ancillary Justice, or The Imperial Radch.
  • Rabbits who want nothing more than to chew louder than you talk.
  • Leaving space for the elephant in the room
  • Inventing a new kind of pants inspired by taiko drumming.
  • After years, finally trying out your new idea for how to sew pants, and realizing that the waist of the pants only reaches the crotch.
  • Pants that are only made of rectangles.
  • The slow process of realizing what pants are.
  • Rapidly becoming pants.
  • The universe doesn't end with a bang, but with a zip. (Of the pants.)
  • Inventing a new kind of pants and looking them up online and realizing that they already exist and the name is extremely offensive.
  • Pants that are just a square of cloth that you fold around your leg.
  • A new kind of pants where the crotch is higher than the waist.
  • Disassembling the kimono to hang it up to dry.
  • Looking up the etymology of "pants" and it comes from an ancient word that means "the thing you can't just fold around your legs, you have to find a pattern on ravelry and sew it"
  • Back when "pants" were just two leg tubes that you tied to your shirt.
  • Clothespins: they turn tubes into clothes.
  • How pants are different for fat people.
  • Clean room pants reverse engineering.
  • Asking a tailor who's never seen pants to make you pants based on a verbal description of a Taiko drummer you saw once.
  • Making plorts after eating.
  • Vacuuming up the plorts.
  • Extremely ineffective insider trading.
  • The kind of crime you only get caught at if people hate you.
  • Gathering data on when people didn't file a malpractice suit.
  • Doctor Parsley diagnosing you with sleep apnea based on the width of your neck.
  • Suing a little mouse for malpractice because his tiny thimbleful of chamomile tea didn't cure your hepatitis A.
  • Wholesome farming games where you go back to nature and practice aggressive capitalism.
  • Throwing your slimes into the sea. (Which is maybe made of slimes.)
  • The fantasy of running at high speed down a hill.
  • The fantasy of skateboarding without dying.
  • Incentivizing the player to discover new plorts.
  • The fantasy of being on friendly terms with your neighbors.
  • Comparing your favorite Animal Crossing villagers with your favorite Love Island cast members.
  • The two competing Britain's Favorite Gardener.
  • A reality show where you check in three times on people doing a project.
  • What the rest of the world does instead of leaving.
  • Learning how to stand – normally a thing only babies do.
  • Leaning on an inclined surface made for a butt.
  • Leaning less when you're visiting Japan.
  • Crab Doctor.
  • Reading a poem before it's too late.
  • Narcissists soaking French.
  • Tag yourself, I'm the horrible thing racing sideways while blowing bubbles.
  • As small as a world and as large as alone.
  • Wikipedia Dad.
  • Gauging how long an answer to give a child asking a philosophical question.
  • The Final Plug of Maxx Yamasaki.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+fIqlv2pc ]]> Jim Stormdancer 321. Mist Is Just Wet Dust https://topiclords.com/mist-is-just-wet-dust 4e3dc476-6caf-4b98-8895-4a19569c63ae Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Linker and Alexa We discuss variations in vampire stories, anthropomorphism in media, getting a free burger when you join my rewards, Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass, what letter would win in a Royal Rumble, and anti-lesbian vampire propaganda of the 1970s 1:07:45 true Lords:

  • Linker
  • Alexa

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being American and then being Canadian-American.
  • Elephantasy and Elephantasy Flipside.
  • Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty.
  • 3D-printed worms.
  • A plastic casing attached to your keychain that used to have a clicky button on it.
  • What we did to fidget after the industrialization of textiles.
  • How office workers goofed off before the Internet.
  • Bella's lead skull that prevents Edward from mind-controlling her.
  • Making up a power to be your favorite vampire power.
  • What happens when you inhale a vampire in mist form.
  • Using a picture of Cat's Cradle to illustrate the concept of telekinesis.
  • Putting the vampire coffin in steerage and the familiar has to sit in coach and then pull the coffin off of the luggage conveyor belt.
  • Would it be fun to turn into mist and be collected in a cup and then drunk?
  • Miss Frizzle, vampire expert.
  • Getting frustrated at a stealth video game and giving up being a pacifist as a metaphor for being an old vampire.
  • New Money vs. Old Money vampires.
  • Vampires going on Fetlife to find ethically sourced food.
  • One mysterious vampire at Goth night at the nightclub quietly asking to drink your blood, vs. twenty vampires going around begging and everyone's like jeez, this again?
  • Nobody expecting you to embezzle the blood.
  • Talking to a computer like it's a person you have absolutely no respect for, in a way you'd never talk to a real person because you assign a baseline respect for just being a real person, and people overhearing you are like "holy shit they're really mad" but you're not mad, you're just talking to a computer.
  • Apologizing to the table you just ran into.
  • It Takes Two.
  • Following the instructions of the book of love.
  • Creation of personality in moments of friction.
  • Interacting with video games in similar ways as you would a person, expect without the social anxiety.
  • Why would you ruin this perfectly good complex system with social anxiety?
  • We've got teamwork at home.
  • Sentient burgers enslaving other sentient burgers.
  • Being rewarded with a free burger but then turning into a burger and being given away as a reward.
  • Chicken stars! They're like chicken nuggets but they're shaped like stars!
  • Where were you when you were drafted into the Rewards Wars?
  • Naming your rewards program "My Rewards" so when the mascot refers to it it sounds like the rewards belong to the mascot.
  • Demanding to see the terms and conditions before you eat this hamburger.
  • A word that is elegy to what it signifies.
  • Moments when the body is as numinous as words.
  • Taking some LSD and learning about non-symbolic states.
  • Ignoring poetry in the same way that you ignore ads.
  • Vampire jokes!
  • Transylvanian Hounds.
  • Serif H being much more combat-ready than sans serif H.
  • The most bouba letters.
  • Capital O rolling around crushing the other letters of the alphabet like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • Distraction the ref so you can stab.
  • Which letter of the alphabet could do the best backflip.
  • Whether the ampersand counts as a letter.
  • Letters that are good at stabbing vs. letters with broad sturdy bases.
  • The nuclear family emerging in response to the financial boom following World War II.
  • Anti-lesbian propaganda films that are far too sexy to be effective.
  • Heteronormative fiances.
  • Carmella the lesbian vampire stealing your wife.
  • The vampire lesbians receiving their comeuppance and the heteronormative couple living happily every after.
  • Be gay do crimes. (Murder.)
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.
]]> Lords:

  • Linker
  • Alexa

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being American and then being Canadian-American.
  • Elephantasy and Elephantasy Flipside.
  • Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty.
  • 3D-printed worms.
  • A plastic casing attached to your keychain that used to have a clicky button on it.
  • What we did to fidget after the industrialization of textiles.
  • How office workers goofed off before the Internet.
  • Bella's lead skull that prevents Edward from mind-controlling her.
  • Making up a power to be your favorite vampire power.
  • What happens when you inhale a vampire in mist form.
  • Using a picture of Cat's Cradle to illustrate the concept of telekinesis.
  • Putting the vampire coffin in steerage and the familiar has to sit in coach and then pull the coffin off of the luggage conveyor belt.
  • Would it be fun to turn into mist and be collected in a cup and then drunk?
  • Miss Frizzle, vampire expert.
  • Getting frustrated at a stealth video game and giving up being a pacifist as a metaphor for being an old vampire.
  • New Money vs. Old Money vampires.
  • Vampires going on Fetlife to find ethically sourced food.
  • One mysterious vampire at Goth night at the nightclub quietly asking to drink your blood, vs. twenty vampires going around begging and everyone's like jeez, this again?
  • Nobody expecting you to embezzle the blood.
  • Talking to a computer like it's a person you have absolutely no respect for, in a way you'd never talk to a real person because you assign a baseline respect for just being a real person, and people overhearing you are like "holy shit they're really mad" but you're not mad, you're just talking to a computer.
  • Apologizing to the table you just ran into.
  • It Takes Two.
  • Following the instructions of the book of love.
  • Creation of personality in moments of friction.
  • Interacting with video games in similar ways as you would a person, expect without the social anxiety.
  • Why would you ruin this perfectly good complex system with social anxiety?
  • We've got teamwork at home.
  • Sentient burgers enslaving other sentient burgers.
  • Being rewarded with a free burger but then turning into a burger and being given away as a reward.
  • Chicken stars! They're like chicken nuggets but they're shaped like stars!
  • Where were you when you were drafted into the Rewards Wars?
  • Naming your rewards program "My Rewards" so when the mascot refers to it it sounds like the rewards belong to the mascot.
  • Demanding to see the terms and conditions before you eat this hamburger.
  • A word that is elegy to what it signifies.
  • Moments when the body is as numinous as words.
  • Taking some LSD and learning about non-symbolic states.
  • Ignoring poetry in the same way that you ignore ads.
  • Vampire jokes!
  • Transylvanian Hounds.
  • Serif H being much more combat-ready than sans serif H.
  • The most bouba letters.
  • Capital O rolling around crushing the other letters of the alphabet like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • Distraction the ref so you can stab.
  • Which letter of the alphabet could do the best backflip.
  • Whether the ampersand counts as a letter.
  • Letters that are good at stabbing vs. letters with broad sturdy bases.
  • The nuclear family emerging in response to the financial boom following World War II.
  • Anti-lesbian propaganda films that are far too sexy to be effective.
  • Heteronormative fiances.
  • Carmella the lesbian vampire stealing your wife.
  • The vampire lesbians receiving their comeuppance and the heteronormative couple living happily every after.
  • Be gay do crimes. (Murder.)
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Linker
  • Alexa

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being American and then being Canadian-American.
  • Elephantasy and Elephantasy Flipside.
  • Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty.
  • 3D-printed worms.
  • A plastic casing attached to your keychain that used to have a clicky button on it.
  • What we did to fidget after the industrialization of textiles.
  • How office workers goofed off before the Internet.
  • Bella's lead skull that prevents Edward from mind-controlling her.
  • Making up a power to be your favorite vampire power.
  • What happens when you inhale a vampire in mist form.
  • Using a picture of Cat's Cradle to illustrate the concept of telekinesis.
  • Putting the vampire coffin in steerage and the familiar has to sit in coach and then pull the coffin off of the luggage conveyor belt.
  • Would it be fun to turn into mist and be collected in a cup and then drunk?
  • Miss Frizzle, vampire expert.
  • Getting frustrated at a stealth video game and giving up being a pacifist as a metaphor for being an old vampire.
  • New Money vs. Old Money vampires.
  • Vampires going on Fetlife to find ethically sourced food.
  • One mysterious vampire at Goth night at the nightclub quietly asking to drink your blood, vs. twenty vampires going around begging and everyone's like jeez, this again?
  • Nobody expecting you to embezzle the blood.
  • Talking to a computer like it's a person you have absolutely no respect for, in a way you'd never talk to a real person because you assign a baseline respect for just being a real person, and people overhearing you are like "holy shit they're really mad" but you're not mad, you're just talking to a computer.
  • Apologizing to the table you just ran into.
  • It Takes Two.
  • Following the instructions of the book of love.
  • Creation of personality in moments of friction.
  • Interacting with video games in similar ways as you would a person, expect without the social anxiety.
  • Why would you ruin this perfectly good complex system with social anxiety?
  • We've got teamwork at home.
  • Sentient burgers enslaving other sentient burgers.
  • Being rewarded with a free burger but then turning into a burger and being given away as a reward.
  • Chicken stars! They're like chicken nuggets but they're shaped like stars!
  • Where were you when you were drafted into the Rewards Wars?
  • Naming your rewards program "My Rewards" so when the mascot refers to it it sounds like the rewards belong to the mascot.
  • Demanding to see the terms and conditions before you eat this hamburger.
  • A word that is elegy to what it signifies.
  • Moments when the body is as numinous as words.
  • Taking some LSD and learning about non-symbolic states.
  • Ignoring poetry in the same way that you ignore ads.
  • Vampire jokes!
  • Transylvanian Hounds.
  • Serif H being much more combat-ready than sans serif H.
  • The most bouba letters.
  • Capital O rolling around crushing the other letters of the alphabet like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • Distraction the ref so you can stab.
  • Which letter of the alphabet could do the best backflip.
  • Whether the ampersand counts as a letter.
  • Letters that are good at stabbing vs. letters with broad sturdy bases.
  • The nuclear family emerging in response to the financial boom following World War II.
  • Anti-lesbian propaganda films that are far too sexy to be effective.
  • Heteronormative fiances.
  • Carmella the lesbian vampire stealing your wife.
  • The vampire lesbians receiving their comeuppance and the heteronormative couple living happily every after.
  • Be gay do crimes. (Murder.)
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+D3APZNjI ]]> Jim Stormdancer 320. Wri Your WriMo, Gen Your GenMo https://topiclords.com/wri-your-wrimo-gen-your-genmo 6b51a81b-1388-4400-bc8b-0a74f94f6286 Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Hallie and Peter. We discuss where all your things are, how education doesn't melt, Bebop Bytes Back, and Augustus Gloop by Roald Dahl 1:15:43 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Directrix of Cybernetic Security.
  • Unity licensing from Unity as Unity.
  • Fantasy Book of the Month. (FBOM)
  • Part zombie, part ghost.
  • Accidentally GenMoing your WriMo.
  • A house with a bunch of your things in it, and they're everywhere.
  • Knowing someone who knows how to find things and knowing someone who knows where things are.
  • Knowing where to put something because it's where you first thought to look for it.
  • A person who itches when they see somebody not using a switch statement.
  • Having been gradually removing yourself from social media since back when Twitter was Twitter.
  • Back when you could get out of a chair without grunting.
  • Getting the whooping cough and coughing your disc out. (And you're in your twenties.)
  • Whether your dad named you after the murderous robot in 2001.
  • Seeing your students cheating poorly and teaching them how to do it well.
  • Scaffolding it pedagogically.
  • Big boat: hard turn.
  • How do we get education to exhibit swarm behavior?
  • A brand new exciting way to be bummed.
  • Education by Panopticon.
  • LLMs exposing how much of people's jobs and education are bullshit busywork.
  • When does the salt jump?
  • Putting together the 50s and then putting together the tens and then putting together the fours.
  • The simplest shallowest version of active listening that exists.
  • Doritos hacking the learning loop.
  • Continually finding new opiates of the masses.
  • Typing hex opcodes into the Beboputer.
  • An effective educational tool that has never been less appealing to the youth it's targeted at.
  • Steve Jobs coming out of his grave and slitting your throat if you install a programming tool on your iPhone.
  • Making the sun wink and realizing that this is the rest of your life.
  • Deescalating your LLM partner when it has an anxiety attack.
  • Your Socratic Oxford Don persona.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • There is a mistake, and it is being overcome.
  • Steps you can take to avoid Godzilla coming back and nature reclaiming the earth.
  • A poem written by a beloved children's author who absolutely loathes fat people.
  • Whether the terrible children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are all based on people that Roald Dahl knew.
  • SwitchBitch, Roald Dahl's famous Typescript library.
  • Making sure your weirdness is a kindness.
  • Roald Dahl: boy did he do the stuff.
  • Penning The Twits in an effort to "do something against beards."
  • Why Stephen King?
  • The Dollar Babies.
  • Whether Stephen King is still on MySpace.
  • Walking down the road and hearing Stephen King yelling at cloud.
  • The Dave Barry game jam.
  • Going into the sewer and solving puzzle platformer problems.
  • Group hug vs. forming a blob.
  • Tube Hippo is back!
  • The game engine sorting hat.
  • Coming out of character to talk about Inform 7.
  • The year that you fucked around with interactive fiction but never shipped anything.
  • Presuming that interactive fiction has continued to be great even after you stopped playing.
  • Choosing Twine over Inform 7 because of your absolutely enormous forelimbs.
  • LLMs as an extremely fancy Tarot deck.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Directrix of Cybernetic Security.
  • Unity licensing from Unity as Unity.
  • Fantasy Book of the Month. (FBOM)
  • Part zombie, part ghost.
  • Accidentally GenMoing your WriMo.
  • A house with a bunch of your things in it, and they're everywhere.
  • Knowing someone who knows how to find things and knowing someone who knows where things are.
  • Knowing where to put something because it's where you first thought to look for it.
  • A person who itches when they see somebody not using a switch statement.
  • Having been gradually removing yourself from social media since back when Twitter was Twitter.
  • Back when you could get out of a chair without grunting.
  • Getting the whooping cough and coughing your disc out. (And you're in your twenties.)
  • Whether your dad named you after the murderous robot in 2001.
  • Seeing your students cheating poorly and teaching them how to do it well.
  • Scaffolding it pedagogically.
  • Big boat: hard turn.
  • How do we get education to exhibit swarm behavior?
  • A brand new exciting way to be bummed.
  • Education by Panopticon.
  • LLMs exposing how much of people's jobs and education are bullshit busywork.
  • When does the salt jump?
  • Putting together the 50s and then putting together the tens and then putting together the fours.
  • The simplest shallowest version of active listening that exists.
  • Doritos hacking the learning loop.
  • Continually finding new opiates of the masses.
  • Typing hex opcodes into the Beboputer.
  • An effective educational tool that has never been less appealing to the youth it's targeted at.
  • Steve Jobs coming out of his grave and slitting your throat if you install a programming tool on your iPhone.
  • Making the sun wink and realizing that this is the rest of your life.
  • Deescalating your LLM partner when it has an anxiety attack.
  • Your Socratic Oxford Don persona.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • There is a mistake, and it is being overcome.
  • Steps you can take to avoid Godzilla coming back and nature reclaiming the earth.
  • A poem written by a beloved children's author who absolutely loathes fat people.
  • Whether the terrible children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are all based on people that Roald Dahl knew.
  • SwitchBitch, Roald Dahl's famous Typescript library.
  • Making sure your weirdness is a kindness.
  • Roald Dahl: boy did he do the stuff.
  • Penning The Twits in an effort to "do something against beards."
  • Why Stephen King?
  • The Dollar Babies.
  • Whether Stephen King is still on MySpace.
  • Walking down the road and hearing Stephen King yelling at cloud.
  • The Dave Barry game jam.
  • Going into the sewer and solving puzzle platformer problems.
  • Group hug vs. forming a blob.
  • Tube Hippo is back!
  • The game engine sorting hat.
  • Coming out of character to talk about Inform 7.
  • The year that you fucked around with interactive fiction but never shipped anything.
  • Presuming that interactive fiction has continued to be great even after you stopped playing.
  • Choosing Twine over Inform 7 because of your absolutely enormous forelimbs.
  • LLMs as an extremely fancy Tarot deck.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Directrix of Cybernetic Security.
  • Unity licensing from Unity as Unity.
  • Fantasy Book of the Month. (FBOM)
  • Part zombie, part ghost.
  • Accidentally GenMoing your WriMo.
  • A house with a bunch of your things in it, and they're everywhere.
  • Knowing someone who knows how to find things and knowing someone who knows where things are.
  • Knowing where to put something because it's where you first thought to look for it.
  • A person who itches when they see somebody not using a switch statement.
  • Having been gradually removing yourself from social media since back when Twitter was Twitter.
  • Back when you could get out of a chair without grunting.
  • Getting the whooping cough and coughing your disc out. (And you're in your twenties.)
  • Whether your dad named you after the murderous robot in 2001.
  • Seeing your students cheating poorly and teaching them how to do it well.
  • Scaffolding it pedagogically.
  • Big boat: hard turn.
  • How do we get education to exhibit swarm behavior?
  • A brand new exciting way to be bummed.
  • Education by Panopticon.
  • LLMs exposing how much of people's jobs and education are bullshit busywork.
  • When does the salt jump?
  • Putting together the 50s and then putting together the tens and then putting together the fours.
  • The simplest shallowest version of active listening that exists.
  • Doritos hacking the learning loop.
  • Continually finding new opiates of the masses.
  • Typing hex opcodes into the Beboputer.
  • An effective educational tool that has never been less appealing to the youth it's targeted at.
  • Steve Jobs coming out of his grave and slitting your throat if you install a programming tool on your iPhone.
  • Making the sun wink and realizing that this is the rest of your life.
  • Deescalating your LLM partner when it has an anxiety attack.
  • Your Socratic Oxford Don persona.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • There is a mistake, and it is being overcome.
  • Steps you can take to avoid Godzilla coming back and nature reclaiming the earth.
  • A poem written by a beloved children's author who absolutely loathes fat people.
  • Whether the terrible children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are all based on people that Roald Dahl knew.
  • SwitchBitch, Roald Dahl's famous Typescript library.
  • Making sure your weirdness is a kindness.
  • Roald Dahl: boy did he do the stuff.
  • Penning The Twits in an effort to "do something against beards."
  • Why Stephen King?
  • The Dollar Babies.
  • Whether Stephen King is still on MySpace.
  • Walking down the road and hearing Stephen King yelling at cloud.
  • The Dave Barry game jam.
  • Going into the sewer and solving puzzle platformer problems.
  • Group hug vs. forming a blob.
  • Tube Hippo is back!
  • The game engine sorting hat.
  • Coming out of character to talk about Inform 7.
  • The year that you fucked around with interactive fiction but never shipped anything.
  • Presuming that interactive fiction has continued to be great even after you stopped playing.
  • Choosing Twine over Inform 7 because of your absolutely enormous forelimbs.
  • LLMs as an extremely fancy Tarot deck.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Rm9PBME7 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 319. Rolling Dice Like Mozart https://topiclords.com/rolling-dice-like-mozart dde14b3d-f862-491c-991a-6358ebbfd632 Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer 1:06:00 true Lords:

  • Esper
  • Cort

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Figuring out new ways to make video games more expensive.
  • Puzzled Pint.
  • Oh man, this one's a real quart!
  • Puzzled Pint getting you through to the next MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Blippo Plus.
  • If you're going to watch TV, why not watch TV from another dimension?
  • Capturing broadcast artifacts and CRT fuzz on a 1-bit display.
  • An amateur DSPist. (Such as myself.)
  • Whether Lucas Pope took time away from his busy life as a pirate actuary to make a video about temporally-stable dithering.
  • Dr. Richard Garfield, who loves lasagna and hates Mondays.
  • Final Fantasy espers vs. Magic the Gathering espers.
  • All the different licenses Wizards of the Coast is using to fuck up Magic the Gathering.
  • How to play Magic the Gathering without getting your ass kicked by a SpongeBob deck.
  • Splitbeard, my nemesis.
  • The Kickstarter backer tier that nobody pledged to get.
  • Jim's beard braids, still floating around in a Ziploc bag somewhere.
  • Electroswing Jackson.
  • Trying to continue to evolve as an artist after you named yourself Chrono Trigger Remix DJ.
  • A sci-fi weird constructed zone.
  • The guy on the team who comes up with names like "banalia"
  • Fake scam Oxford English Dictionaries.
  • A Finn named Viznut.
  • The C program on Viznut's business card.
  • Recognizing the twelfth root of two in an obfuscated C program.
  • Bytebeat.
  • Generating audio in ShaderToy.
  • A closed form function of T that produces the Terminator theme.
  • Learning how to put GLSL into the GPU.
  • Needing the preceding 200 samples to produce the current sample so you just start at T-200 and start crunching numbers.
  • The oldest film on Netflix. (From 1987.)
  • Trying to finish X-Files before it leaves your streaming service.
  • Esper's power over the Futurama production schedule.
  • Why would you attack and dethrone God when you could summon God to help you fight a slime?
  • Trying to summon your god in a tough JRPG battle and she's like "not right now I'm editing a podcast."
  • Trying to describe a vocal sample without saying what the voice is saying.
  • The bitrate itself shaping new phonemes.
  • Wahoo vs. wahey vs. waheh.
  • The great darkness where sleep goes and farther death goes.
  • The gods choking on all the dreams you forget.
  • The dump trucks of tasteless gruel keep coming.
  • How to prevent the data miners determining exactly how far the mystery goes.
  • You Can't Data Mine Fallen London.
  • The character who doesn't exist in the game, only the game data files, because he erased himself.
  • Media where you can predict how much longer the story goes and media where you can't.
  • The forty second episode of Topic Lords.
  • The episode of Game Changer that had the fake "end of video" screen before the episode continues.
  • Hitting tab to switch to the next field.
  • Hitting tab to highlight the secret clickable button.
  • Bittorrenting all eight hours of Bandersnatch and watching every scene in random order.
  • How many names does a Seaman know?
  • Escaping the internet.
  • Binge watching the PiCoSteveMo development thread.
]]> Lords:

  • Esper
  • Cort

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Figuring out new ways to make video games more expensive.
  • Puzzled Pint.
  • Oh man, this one's a real quart!
  • Puzzled Pint getting you through to the next MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Blippo Plus.
  • If you're going to watch TV, why not watch TV from another dimension?
  • Capturing broadcast artifacts and CRT fuzz on a 1-bit display.
  • An amateur DSPist. (Such as myself.)
  • Whether Lucas Pope took time away from his busy life as a pirate actuary to make a video about temporally-stable dithering.
  • Dr. Richard Garfield, who loves lasagna and hates Mondays.
  • Final Fantasy espers vs. Magic the Gathering espers.
  • All the different licenses Wizards of the Coast is using to fuck up Magic the Gathering.
  • How to play Magic the Gathering without getting your ass kicked by a SpongeBob deck.
  • Splitbeard, my nemesis.
  • The Kickstarter backer tier that nobody pledged to get.
  • Jim's beard braids, still floating around in a Ziploc bag somewhere.
  • Electroswing Jackson.
  • Trying to continue to evolve as an artist after you named yourself Chrono Trigger Remix DJ.
  • A sci-fi weird constructed zone.
  • The guy on the team who comes up with names like "banalia"
  • Fake scam Oxford English Dictionaries.
  • A Finn named Viznut.
  • The C program on Viznut's business card.
  • Recognizing the twelfth root of two in an obfuscated C program.
  • Bytebeat.
  • Generating audio in ShaderToy.
  • A closed form function of T that produces the Terminator theme.
  • Learning how to put GLSL into the GPU.
  • Needing the preceding 200 samples to produce the current sample so you just start at T-200 and start crunching numbers.
  • The oldest film on Netflix. (From 1987.)
  • Trying to finish X-Files before it leaves your streaming service.
  • Esper's power over the Futurama production schedule.
  • Why would you attack and dethrone God when you could summon God to help you fight a slime?
  • Trying to summon your god in a tough JRPG battle and she's like "not right now I'm editing a podcast."
  • Trying to describe a vocal sample without saying what the voice is saying.
  • The bitrate itself shaping new phonemes.
  • Wahoo vs. wahey vs. waheh.
  • The great darkness where sleep goes and farther death goes.
  • The gods choking on all the dreams you forget.
  • The dump trucks of tasteless gruel keep coming.
  • How to prevent the data miners determining exactly how far the mystery goes.
  • You Can't Data Mine Fallen London.
  • The character who doesn't exist in the game, only the game data files, because he erased himself.
  • Media where you can predict how much longer the story goes and media where you can't.
  • The forty second episode of Topic Lords.
  • The episode of Game Changer that had the fake "end of video" screen before the episode continues.
  • Hitting tab to switch to the next field.
  • Hitting tab to highlight the secret clickable button.
  • Bittorrenting all eight hours of Bandersnatch and watching every scene in random order.
  • How many names does a Seaman know?
  • Escaping the internet.
  • Binge watching the PiCoSteveMo development thread.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Esper
  • Cort

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Figuring out new ways to make video games more expensive.
  • Puzzled Pint.
  • Oh man, this one's a real quart!
  • Puzzled Pint getting you through to the next MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Blippo Plus.
  • If you're going to watch TV, why not watch TV from another dimension?
  • Capturing broadcast artifacts and CRT fuzz on a 1-bit display.
  • An amateur DSPist. (Such as myself.)
  • Whether Lucas Pope took time away from his busy life as a pirate actuary to make a video about temporally-stable dithering.
  • Dr. Richard Garfield, who loves lasagna and hates Mondays.
  • Final Fantasy espers vs. Magic the Gathering espers.
  • All the different licenses Wizards of the Coast is using to fuck up Magic the Gathering.
  • How to play Magic the Gathering without getting your ass kicked by a SpongeBob deck.
  • Splitbeard, my nemesis.
  • The Kickstarter backer tier that nobody pledged to get.
  • Jim's beard braids, still floating around in a Ziploc bag somewhere.
  • Electroswing Jackson.
  • Trying to continue to evolve as an artist after you named yourself Chrono Trigger Remix DJ.
  • A sci-fi weird constructed zone.
  • The guy on the team who comes up with names like "banalia"
  • Fake scam Oxford English Dictionaries.
  • A Finn named Viznut.
  • The C program on Viznut's business card.
  • Recognizing the twelfth root of two in an obfuscated C program.
  • Bytebeat.
  • Generating audio in ShaderToy.
  • A closed form function of T that produces the Terminator theme.
  • Learning how to put GLSL into the GPU.
  • Needing the preceding 200 samples to produce the current sample so you just start at T-200 and start crunching numbers.
  • The oldest film on Netflix. (From 1987.)
  • Trying to finish X-Files before it leaves your streaming service.
  • Esper's power over the Futurama production schedule.
  • Why would you attack and dethrone God when you could summon God to help you fight a slime?
  • Trying to summon your god in a tough JRPG battle and she's like "not right now I'm editing a podcast."
  • Trying to describe a vocal sample without saying what the voice is saying.
  • The bitrate itself shaping new phonemes.
  • Wahoo vs. wahey vs. waheh.
  • The great darkness where sleep goes and farther death goes.
  • The gods choking on all the dreams you forget.
  • The dump trucks of tasteless gruel keep coming.
  • How to prevent the data miners determining exactly how far the mystery goes.
  • You Can't Data Mine Fallen London.
  • The character who doesn't exist in the game, only the game data files, because he erased himself.
  • Media where you can predict how much longer the story goes and media where you can't.
  • The forty second episode of Topic Lords.
  • The episode of Game Changer that had the fake "end of video" screen before the episode continues.
  • Hitting tab to switch to the next field.
  • Hitting tab to highlight the secret clickable button.
  • Bittorrenting all eight hours of Bandersnatch and watching every scene in random order.
  • How many names does a Seaman know?
  • Escaping the internet.
  • Binge watching the PiCoSteveMo development thread.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6hJRJb0L ]]> Jim Stormdancer 318. Fast Thick Pants https://topiclords.com/fast-thick-pants bfc3d0cd-5b4d-4421-9ab9-f714987d61ff Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kory and Mitch. We discuss the Nintendo 64DD, wristwatch repair videos, how to switch to Linux, Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the ICZN's recommended method of determining the Latin grammatical gender of a word that isn't Latin 1:06:10 true Lords:

  • Mitch
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being a fledgling your whole life.
  • Mitch from the Super Mario Wiki.
  • The episode of Topic Lords where we specifically didn't discuss what's happening in Washington DC.
  • A show with nobody on it discussing nothing.
  • Putting money in the jukebox to have three minutes of peace and quiet.
  • A noise cancellation podcast that guesses what noise you'll probably be surrounded by when you listen.
  • The least notable of Nintendo's major failures.
  • What if we added a floppy disk reader to compete with the Playstation?
  • In retrospect, it sounds like a bad idea, but at the time, it also sounded like a bad idea.
  • Paying $100 for a plastic replica of a Virtual Boy to play Virtual Boy games on your Switch.
  • The rich tapestry of homebrew games for the Virtual Boy.
  • Why isn't the Nintendo 64DD in Super Smash Bros. Brawl?
  • Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 64DD.
  • People writing very politely worded letters to Nintendo and getting Mother 3 released.
  • Playing with the 3D sculpture mini game on the title screen of Donkey Kong Bananza and thinking "I bet I could do something cool with this if I was an artist"
  • Mario Artist Polygon Studio.
  • Wario Ware as a spinoff of the Mario Paint series.
  • Family BASIC for the Famicom Disk System.
  • The Tonkachi Editor.
  • Mario 64 2 for the Game Boy Advance.
  • Vegging out by binging wristwatch repair videos.
  • Jewels on the movement that you ambiently know of.
  • Using a ruby or sapphire as a bearing for a mechanical device.
  • Synthetic corundum.
  • Why the little work is going back and forth.
  • Solving a very particular problem at a very micro scale.
  • Transistor radios advertising how many transistors are in there.
  • The World's First 128-Bit Web Site!
  • What 1990s video game enthusiasts knew about numbers of bits.
  • 1.21 Gigaflops!
  • The sad state of Nintendo 64 emulation.
  • Nintendo Classics – Nintendo Switch Online.
  • Migrating all the executables you use to the inside of virtual machines running Windows XP.
  • Winboat.
  • Linux distributions with as much or as little configuration as you want
  • How they made Linux good.
  • The year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Attaching an IR transceiver to the GPIO pins.
  • Setting the oven via PHP script.
  • Getting an ancient Thinkpad to install Linux on.
  • The red nub in the middle of the keyboard.
  • Whether there's any possible way this $50 Thinkpad doesn't run Pico-8.
  • A stately pleasure dome decreed.
  • Women wailing for their demon lovers.
  • Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a native speaker of early modern English, or he's Just Like That?
  • A poem that starts with a real Rubik's Cube of a sentence.
  • How Adam Saltzman does it.
  • Procrastinating game development by installing Linux on everything.
  • The Zoologist with naming dibs.
  • Finally getting to name a beetle and choosing to name it a word borrowed from Serbo-Croatian just to piss people off.
  • The ICZN's stance on Serbo-Croatian.
]]> Lords:

  • Mitch
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being a fledgling your whole life.
  • Mitch from the Super Mario Wiki.
  • The episode of Topic Lords where we specifically didn't discuss what's happening in Washington DC.
  • A show with nobody on it discussing nothing.
  • Putting money in the jukebox to have three minutes of peace and quiet.
  • A noise cancellation podcast that guesses what noise you'll probably be surrounded by when you listen.
  • The least notable of Nintendo's major failures.
  • What if we added a floppy disk reader to compete with the Playstation?
  • In retrospect, it sounds like a bad idea, but at the time, it also sounded like a bad idea.
  • Paying $100 for a plastic replica of a Virtual Boy to play Virtual Boy games on your Switch.
  • The rich tapestry of homebrew games for the Virtual Boy.
  • Why isn't the Nintendo 64DD in Super Smash Bros. Brawl?
  • Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 64DD.
  • People writing very politely worded letters to Nintendo and getting Mother 3 released.
  • Playing with the 3D sculpture mini game on the title screen of Donkey Kong Bananza and thinking "I bet I could do something cool with this if I was an artist"
  • Mario Artist Polygon Studio.
  • Wario Ware as a spinoff of the Mario Paint series.
  • Family BASIC for the Famicom Disk System.
  • The Tonkachi Editor.
  • Mario 64 2 for the Game Boy Advance.
  • Vegging out by binging wristwatch repair videos.
  • Jewels on the movement that you ambiently know of.
  • Using a ruby or sapphire as a bearing for a mechanical device.
  • Synthetic corundum.
  • Why the little work is going back and forth.
  • Solving a very particular problem at a very micro scale.
  • Transistor radios advertising how many transistors are in there.
  • The World's First 128-Bit Web Site!
  • What 1990s video game enthusiasts knew about numbers of bits.
  • 1.21 Gigaflops!
  • The sad state of Nintendo 64 emulation.
  • Nintendo Classics – Nintendo Switch Online.
  • Migrating all the executables you use to the inside of virtual machines running Windows XP.
  • Winboat.
  • Linux distributions with as much or as little configuration as you want
  • How they made Linux good.
  • The year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Attaching an IR transceiver to the GPIO pins.
  • Setting the oven via PHP script.
  • Getting an ancient Thinkpad to install Linux on.
  • The red nub in the middle of the keyboard.
  • Whether there's any possible way this $50 Thinkpad doesn't run Pico-8.
  • A stately pleasure dome decreed.
  • Women wailing for their demon lovers.
  • Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a native speaker of early modern English, or he's Just Like That?
  • A poem that starts with a real Rubik's Cube of a sentence.
  • How Adam Saltzman does it.
  • Procrastinating game development by installing Linux on everything.
  • The Zoologist with naming dibs.
  • Finally getting to name a beetle and choosing to name it a word borrowed from Serbo-Croatian just to piss people off.
  • The ICZN's stance on Serbo-Croatian.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Mitch
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being a fledgling your whole life.
  • Mitch from the Super Mario Wiki.
  • The episode of Topic Lords where we specifically didn't discuss what's happening in Washington DC.
  • A show with nobody on it discussing nothing.
  • Putting money in the jukebox to have three minutes of peace and quiet.
  • A noise cancellation podcast that guesses what noise you'll probably be surrounded by when you listen.
  • The least notable of Nintendo's major failures.
  • What if we added a floppy disk reader to compete with the Playstation?
  • In retrospect, it sounds like a bad idea, but at the time, it also sounded like a bad idea.
  • Paying $100 for a plastic replica of a Virtual Boy to play Virtual Boy games on your Switch.
  • The rich tapestry of homebrew games for the Virtual Boy.
  • Why isn't the Nintendo 64DD in Super Smash Bros. Brawl?
  • Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 64DD.
  • People writing very politely worded letters to Nintendo and getting Mother 3 released.
  • Playing with the 3D sculpture mini game on the title screen of Donkey Kong Bananza and thinking "I bet I could do something cool with this if I was an artist"
  • Mario Artist Polygon Studio.
  • Wario Ware as a spinoff of the Mario Paint series.
  • Family BASIC for the Famicom Disk System.
  • The Tonkachi Editor.
  • Mario 64 2 for the Game Boy Advance.
  • Vegging out by binging wristwatch repair videos.
  • Jewels on the movement that you ambiently know of.
  • Using a ruby or sapphire as a bearing for a mechanical device.
  • Synthetic corundum.
  • Why the little work is going back and forth.
  • Solving a very particular problem at a very micro scale.
  • Transistor radios advertising how many transistors are in there.
  • The World's First 128-Bit Web Site!
  • What 1990s video game enthusiasts knew about numbers of bits.
  • 1.21 Gigaflops!
  • The sad state of Nintendo 64 emulation.
  • Nintendo Classics – Nintendo Switch Online.
  • Migrating all the executables you use to the inside of virtual machines running Windows XP.
  • Winboat.
  • Linux distributions with as much or as little configuration as you want
  • How they made Linux good.
  • The year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Attaching an IR transceiver to the GPIO pins.
  • Setting the oven via PHP script.
  • Getting an ancient Thinkpad to install Linux on.
  • The red nub in the middle of the keyboard.
  • Whether there's any possible way this $50 Thinkpad doesn't run Pico-8.
  • A stately pleasure dome decreed.
  • Women wailing for their demon lovers.
  • Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a native speaker of early modern English, or he's Just Like That?
  • A poem that starts with a real Rubik's Cube of a sentence.
  • How Adam Saltzman does it.
  • Procrastinating game development by installing Linux on everything.
  • The Zoologist with naming dibs.
  • Finally getting to name a beetle and choosing to name it a word borrowed from Serbo-Croatian just to piss people off.
  • The ICZN's stance on Serbo-Croatian.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+8sR2HGzB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 317. This Bass Line Stinks (Non-Derogatory) https://topiclords.com/this-bass-line-stinks-non-derogatory be7a0222-a000-4a86-8680-cc7249d64983 Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lord: Danny, Josh, Vitor. We discuss games you love that nobody else knows exist, how to stop losing your sunglasses, homebrewing, when did Bush stop hiding the facts?, and Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath. 1:09:18 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics

  • Video game music man.
  • Playing a guitar part that someone else wrote by clicking with a mouse.
  • A very fun interesting exercise that you appreciate.
  • Bass dives.
  • Playing bass with extra fingers.
  • Walking into the luthier's workshop asking to pay them to put a whammy bar on a bass and they're like "fuck you, that's disgusting."
  • Harold Drumsman.
  • Tympanum Factotum.
  • Super Stardust vs. Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • The twin stick shooter you made all your bandmates play.
  • The most 1989 thing you've ever seen.
  • A lopsided castle shape drawn out of block characters.
  • Seeing a Lamborghini game and wondering "who would ever play that??"
  • Modding modern-resolution models and textures into an N64 game.
  • A game that looks like dogshit but with modern emulation it's extremely high resolution dogshit.
  • Impressing your dad at how good you are at the one video game he lets you play.
  • Hemiroids.
  • Art style becoming a monoculture more easily in small communities.
  • Dirty Dancing except Baby never dances again.
  • Phalanx. (The banjo game.)
  • The banjo player going inside the ship for the European box art.
  • Engineering Jones and the Time Thieves of DSPea.
  • Games that quiz you on what sorts of consulting services your company needs.
  • Finding a pair of crudely drawn breasts in a collection of Windows 3.1 icons on Uncle Dave's PC and thinking "Uncle Dave is into some weird shit."
  • Prescription sunglasses vs. Just For Fun sunglasses.
  • Doing something that makes you look funny and preparing a five minute angry rant to spit at anyone who looks at you funny.
  • Lacquering your eyes with a substance that darkens in the sunlight.
  • Lacquering your skin instead of wearing clothes.
  • Buying more and more expensive sunglasses until you stop losing them.
  • Pushing 32.
  • Being the mead guy and everyone sends you mead making videos.
  • Fermenting honey in the hot dog water.
  • Making a slurry of hot dogs and ethanol in the blender.
  • Letting honey sit in the closet until it becomes mead.
  • Putting mead in the beehive to give back to the community.
  • Giving all the hallucinogens to all the manufacturing insects to see if they make exciting new kinds of silk and honey.
  • Kirkland Signature Mead.
  • Going into an underground tavern in Sweden and eating boar and lingonberries.
  • Distilling and getting all the wrong -thanols.
  • Putting a couple shots of moonshine in a cup of Booster Juice.
  • Could potato pizza sprout more potato.
  • Have you ever heard a plant scream during a job interview?
  • There is no ethical consumption under life.
  • Connecting plants up to synthesizers.
  • The sound of two black holes colliding. (Bloop!)
  • Data Audializaion.
  • How Windows XP users discovered that bush hid the facts.
  • When did Bush get Microsoft to disable the "Bush hid the facts" Easter egg.
  • The mongoose is a common sight on the Earth.
  • The mongoose's shadow casts a faint glow upon the ancient tree.
  • Reading aloud and trying to understand what you're reading at the same time.
  • Cool as fuck yours truly uwu.
  • The four poems that made you say "oh shit."
  • Art that communicates ideas vs. art that communicates feelings.
  • Bonus stage.
  • Rock Band Karaoke.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics

  • Video game music man.
  • Playing a guitar part that someone else wrote by clicking with a mouse.
  • A very fun interesting exercise that you appreciate.
  • Bass dives.
  • Playing bass with extra fingers.
  • Walking into the luthier's workshop asking to pay them to put a whammy bar on a bass and they're like "fuck you, that's disgusting."
  • Harold Drumsman.
  • Tympanum Factotum.
  • Super Stardust vs. Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • The twin stick shooter you made all your bandmates play.
  • The most 1989 thing you've ever seen.
  • A lopsided castle shape drawn out of block characters.
  • Seeing a Lamborghini game and wondering "who would ever play that??"
  • Modding modern-resolution models and textures into an N64 game.
  • A game that looks like dogshit but with modern emulation it's extremely high resolution dogshit.
  • Impressing your dad at how good you are at the one video game he lets you play.
  • Hemiroids.
  • Art style becoming a monoculture more easily in small communities.
  • Dirty Dancing except Baby never dances again.
  • Phalanx. (The banjo game.)
  • The banjo player going inside the ship for the European box art.
  • Engineering Jones and the Time Thieves of DSPea.
  • Games that quiz you on what sorts of consulting services your company needs.
  • Finding a pair of crudely drawn breasts in a collection of Windows 3.1 icons on Uncle Dave's PC and thinking "Uncle Dave is into some weird shit."
  • Prescription sunglasses vs. Just For Fun sunglasses.
  • Doing something that makes you look funny and preparing a five minute angry rant to spit at anyone who looks at you funny.
  • Lacquering your eyes with a substance that darkens in the sunlight.
  • Lacquering your skin instead of wearing clothes.
  • Buying more and more expensive sunglasses until you stop losing them.
  • Pushing 32.
  • Being the mead guy and everyone sends you mead making videos.
  • Fermenting honey in the hot dog water.
  • Making a slurry of hot dogs and ethanol in the blender.
  • Letting honey sit in the closet until it becomes mead.
  • Putting mead in the beehive to give back to the community.
  • Giving all the hallucinogens to all the manufacturing insects to see if they make exciting new kinds of silk and honey.
  • Kirkland Signature Mead.
  • Going into an underground tavern in Sweden and eating boar and lingonberries.
  • Distilling and getting all the wrong -thanols.
  • Putting a couple shots of moonshine in a cup of Booster Juice.
  • Could potato pizza sprout more potato.
  • Have you ever heard a plant scream during a job interview?
  • There is no ethical consumption under life.
  • Connecting plants up to synthesizers.
  • The sound of two black holes colliding. (Bloop!)
  • Data Audializaion.
  • How Windows XP users discovered that bush hid the facts.
  • When did Bush get Microsoft to disable the "Bush hid the facts" Easter egg.
  • The mongoose is a common sight on the Earth.
  • The mongoose's shadow casts a faint glow upon the ancient tree.
  • Reading aloud and trying to understand what you're reading at the same time.
  • Cool as fuck yours truly uwu.
  • The four poems that made you say "oh shit."
  • Art that communicates ideas vs. art that communicates feelings.
  • Bonus stage.
  • Rock Band Karaoke.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics

  • Video game music man.
  • Playing a guitar part that someone else wrote by clicking with a mouse.
  • A very fun interesting exercise that you appreciate.
  • Bass dives.
  • Playing bass with extra fingers.
  • Walking into the luthier's workshop asking to pay them to put a whammy bar on a bass and they're like "fuck you, that's disgusting."
  • Harold Drumsman.
  • Tympanum Factotum.
  • Super Stardust vs. Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • The twin stick shooter you made all your bandmates play.
  • The most 1989 thing you've ever seen.
  • A lopsided castle shape drawn out of block characters.
  • Seeing a Lamborghini game and wondering "who would ever play that??"
  • Modding modern-resolution models and textures into an N64 game.
  • A game that looks like dogshit but with modern emulation it's extremely high resolution dogshit.
  • Impressing your dad at how good you are at the one video game he lets you play.
  • Hemiroids.
  • Art style becoming a monoculture more easily in small communities.
  • Dirty Dancing except Baby never dances again.
  • Phalanx. (The banjo game.)
  • The banjo player going inside the ship for the European box art.
  • Engineering Jones and the Time Thieves of DSPea.
  • Games that quiz you on what sorts of consulting services your company needs.
  • Finding a pair of crudely drawn breasts in a collection of Windows 3.1 icons on Uncle Dave's PC and thinking "Uncle Dave is into some weird shit."
  • Prescription sunglasses vs. Just For Fun sunglasses.
  • Doing something that makes you look funny and preparing a five minute angry rant to spit at anyone who looks at you funny.
  • Lacquering your eyes with a substance that darkens in the sunlight.
  • Lacquering your skin instead of wearing clothes.
  • Buying more and more expensive sunglasses until you stop losing them.
  • Pushing 32.
  • Being the mead guy and everyone sends you mead making videos.
  • Fermenting honey in the hot dog water.
  • Making a slurry of hot dogs and ethanol in the blender.
  • Letting honey sit in the closet until it becomes mead.
  • Putting mead in the beehive to give back to the community.
  • Giving all the hallucinogens to all the manufacturing insects to see if they make exciting new kinds of silk and honey.
  • Kirkland Signature Mead.
  • Going into an underground tavern in Sweden and eating boar and lingonberries.
  • Distilling and getting all the wrong -thanols.
  • Putting a couple shots of moonshine in a cup of Booster Juice.
  • Could potato pizza sprout more potato.
  • Have you ever heard a plant scream during a job interview?
  • There is no ethical consumption under life.
  • Connecting plants up to synthesizers.
  • The sound of two black holes colliding. (Bloop!)
  • Data Audializaion.
  • How Windows XP users discovered that bush hid the facts.
  • When did Bush get Microsoft to disable the "Bush hid the facts" Easter egg.
  • The mongoose is a common sight on the Earth.
  • The mongoose's shadow casts a faint glow upon the ancient tree.
  • Reading aloud and trying to understand what you're reading at the same time.
  • Cool as fuck yours truly uwu.
  • The four poems that made you say "oh shit."
  • Art that communicates ideas vs. art that communicates feelings.
  • Bonus stage.
  • Rock Band Karaoke.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Xn6LycQa ]]> Jim Stormdancer 316. Mr. T and the Rats of NIMH https://topiclords.com/mr-t-and-the-rats-of-nimh a28729bc-4943-4e01-bad9-8bdf0c963e28 Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Felicia. We discuss the Mr. T cartoon, couples roasting each other for doing the dishes wrong, the poem that wasn't on Yuji Naka's Wall, Sprouts by Loryn Brantz, and being convinced that you'd do better than the contestants you're watching on TV. 1:15:01 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Felicia

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Fisher Price DJ Mixer.
  • Farting directly into the DJ Mixer.
  • Furries working in cyber security.
  • Furries working at Arby's.
  • Impossible Roast Beef.
  • Beef Pringles.
  • Potato molecules.
  • Miscellaneous Meat Molecules.
  • 3D-printing various cuts of meat.
  • Whether Neil Hamburger has helped or hurt Taco Bell sales.
  • A fictional guy, like Chuck Tingle.
  • Seasonal Depression Suite.
  • Future topics. (Not for today.)
  • Cool PBS parents not letting you watch the Mr. T cartoon.
  • The KGB, the Computer and Me.
  • Writing three original songs per episode of your low-budget Saturday morning cartoon.
  • Mr. T stomping around yelling at Nicodemus.
  • A bulldog with a mohawk named Dozer.
  • Solving crimes by wearing a denim vest and punching through a steel wall.
  • How gymnasts refuse to walk around like regular people, they have to handspring everywhere.
  • Live action Mr. T explaining the moral of the story.
  • Whether The Jetsons qualifies as STEM programming.
  • Spending fifteen minutes watching a silent music video on your audio-only podcast.
  • Google Meat.
  • I hate that everything is on Google Meat now. My face is covered in blood!
  • Mr. T swinging an alligator around by the tail and throwing it, shouting "so long, gay Bowser!"
  • Taskmaster.
  • What happens if you put three lentils together?
  • If you eat almost all the leftover takeout, everyone knows you ate almost all the leftover takeout, but if you eat all of it and throw away the box, nobody knows for sure because maybe the box got lost behind the mayonnaise.
  • Being an object of a hyperspecific roast.
  • The Alice in Wonderland Theater Public Shaming Experience.
  • A burlesque show with a sexy caterpillar where they ask everyone in the audience to write a confession, such as "I find this caterpillar sexy."
  • The Drag Red Queen pulling the audience's written confessions out of her back pocket and everyone is like "oh no"
  • Eating almost the entire tub of Rocky Road but leaving one rock and one road at the bottom, explaining when you are confronted that "it doesn't say Rocky Road*s*"
  • Going outside and finding a piece of toast on the ground and that's the most exciting thing that's happened in two years.
  • Cruise ships ceasing operation during COVID, which rules, but then resuming operations later, which sucks.
  • Explaining that we'll be hosting the event on Google Meat and then slapping you with the salami.
  • A motivational poem that says "Miyamoto is a fart in the wind."
  • Looking at your motivational poem and getting angry every morning.
  • A cross-stitch reading "Miyamoto is a fart" inside of a 1-Up mushroom cloud.
  • Who wouldn't want to cross-stitch a butt? People who suck, that's who.
  • Podcast headers vs. podcast covers.
  • Oh jesus it's the skin fortress.
  • Walking around just trying to live your life but everybody knows exactly what to say to get you to fight.
  • Rock Paper Scissors Fart Scorpion Miyamoto.
  • Classic first time Lord mistake: jogging to school with toast in your mouth but crashing into your attractive senpai and both of you end up in an alien world and one of you is a chain mail dragon.
  • How can you read poetry when a katamari could roll you up at any moment and send you up into space so you can scream forever into the void.
  • Your katamari Prince costume with the fresnel lens that makes you look really small.
  • Whether it's safe to let babies eat chocolate.
  • Which poop is the best to transplant.
  • Only the most pristine dumps.
  • Keeping your blood inside and your skin closed.
  • Babies using your arm hair as a fidget toy.
  • Arm hairs rolling around each other.
  • Stabbing yourself because you're the only one worth stabbing.
  • Solipsistic Stabbing.
  • Who's my little tuber? Who's all starchy? You are. Yes you are!
  • While you were watching Great British Bake Off, I was studying the dough.
  • You're letting too much lactic acid build up in your muscles, you humble gas station clerk.
  • Watching an Olympic sport you've never seen before and critiquing the competitor's technique.
  • Spin, spin, triangle to grind.
  • A contestant putting rose in their cake and you're like "I've watched 20 seasons of this, that's how you go home, you put rose in stuff"
  • Studying game theory before competing on Survivor and everyone votes you off as soon as they find out you studied game theory.
  • Crime Scene Kitchen.
  • Silently switching from content warnings to tags.
  • The professional pink gaming chair with bunny ears.
  • Moral Maggie cutting in at the end of the episode to tell you how to live your life.
  • The Topic Lords discord: we like to have fun.
  • Gratuitous use of the Finger Fortress.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Felicia

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Fisher Price DJ Mixer.
  • Farting directly into the DJ Mixer.
  • Furries working in cyber security.
  • Furries working at Arby's.
  • Impossible Roast Beef.
  • Beef Pringles.
  • Potato molecules.
  • Miscellaneous Meat Molecules.
  • 3D-printing various cuts of meat.
  • Whether Neil Hamburger has helped or hurt Taco Bell sales.
  • A fictional guy, like Chuck Tingle.
  • Seasonal Depression Suite.
  • Future topics. (Not for today.)
  • Cool PBS parents not letting you watch the Mr. T cartoon.
  • The KGB, the Computer and Me.
  • Writing three original songs per episode of your low-budget Saturday morning cartoon.
  • Mr. T stomping around yelling at Nicodemus.
  • A bulldog with a mohawk named Dozer.
  • Solving crimes by wearing a denim vest and punching through a steel wall.
  • How gymnasts refuse to walk around like regular people, they have to handspring everywhere.
  • Live action Mr. T explaining the moral of the story.
  • Whether The Jetsons qualifies as STEM programming.
  • Spending fifteen minutes watching a silent music video on your audio-only podcast.
  • Google Meat.
  • I hate that everything is on Google Meat now. My face is covered in blood!
  • Mr. T swinging an alligator around by the tail and throwing it, shouting "so long, gay Bowser!"
  • Taskmaster.
  • What happens if you put three lentils together?
  • If you eat almost all the leftover takeout, everyone knows you ate almost all the leftover takeout, but if you eat all of it and throw away the box, nobody knows for sure because maybe the box got lost behind the mayonnaise.
  • Being an object of a hyperspecific roast.
  • The Alice in Wonderland Theater Public Shaming Experience.
  • A burlesque show with a sexy caterpillar where they ask everyone in the audience to write a confession, such as "I find this caterpillar sexy."
  • The Drag Red Queen pulling the audience's written confessions out of her back pocket and everyone is like "oh no"
  • Eating almost the entire tub of Rocky Road but leaving one rock and one road at the bottom, explaining when you are confronted that "it doesn't say Rocky Road*s*"
  • Going outside and finding a piece of toast on the ground and that's the most exciting thing that's happened in two years.
  • Cruise ships ceasing operation during COVID, which rules, but then resuming operations later, which sucks.
  • Explaining that we'll be hosting the event on Google Meat and then slapping you with the salami.
  • A motivational poem that says "Miyamoto is a fart in the wind."
  • Looking at your motivational poem and getting angry every morning.
  • A cross-stitch reading "Miyamoto is a fart" inside of a 1-Up mushroom cloud.
  • Who wouldn't want to cross-stitch a butt? People who suck, that's who.
  • Podcast headers vs. podcast covers.
  • Oh jesus it's the skin fortress.
  • Walking around just trying to live your life but everybody knows exactly what to say to get you to fight.
  • Rock Paper Scissors Fart Scorpion Miyamoto.
  • Classic first time Lord mistake: jogging to school with toast in your mouth but crashing into your attractive senpai and both of you end up in an alien world and one of you is a chain mail dragon.
  • How can you read poetry when a katamari could roll you up at any moment and send you up into space so you can scream forever into the void.
  • Your katamari Prince costume with the fresnel lens that makes you look really small.
  • Whether it's safe to let babies eat chocolate.
  • Which poop is the best to transplant.
  • Only the most pristine dumps.
  • Keeping your blood inside and your skin closed.
  • Babies using your arm hair as a fidget toy.
  • Arm hairs rolling around each other.
  • Stabbing yourself because you're the only one worth stabbing.
  • Solipsistic Stabbing.
  • Who's my little tuber? Who's all starchy? You are. Yes you are!
  • While you were watching Great British Bake Off, I was studying the dough.
  • You're letting too much lactic acid build up in your muscles, you humble gas station clerk.
  • Watching an Olympic sport you've never seen before and critiquing the competitor's technique.
  • Spin, spin, triangle to grind.
  • A contestant putting rose in their cake and you're like "I've watched 20 seasons of this, that's how you go home, you put rose in stuff"
  • Studying game theory before competing on Survivor and everyone votes you off as soon as they find out you studied game theory.
  • Crime Scene Kitchen.
  • Silently switching from content warnings to tags.
  • The professional pink gaming chair with bunny ears.
  • Moral Maggie cutting in at the end of the episode to tell you how to live your life.
  • The Topic Lords discord: we like to have fun.
  • Gratuitous use of the Finger Fortress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Felicia

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Fisher Price DJ Mixer.
  • Farting directly into the DJ Mixer.
  • Furries working in cyber security.
  • Furries working at Arby's.
  • Impossible Roast Beef.
  • Beef Pringles.
  • Potato molecules.
  • Miscellaneous Meat Molecules.
  • 3D-printing various cuts of meat.
  • Whether Neil Hamburger has helped or hurt Taco Bell sales.
  • A fictional guy, like Chuck Tingle.
  • Seasonal Depression Suite.
  • Future topics. (Not for today.)
  • Cool PBS parents not letting you watch the Mr. T cartoon.
  • The KGB, the Computer and Me.
  • Writing three original songs per episode of your low-budget Saturday morning cartoon.
  • Mr. T stomping around yelling at Nicodemus.
  • A bulldog with a mohawk named Dozer.
  • Solving crimes by wearing a denim vest and punching through a steel wall.
  • How gymnasts refuse to walk around like regular people, they have to handspring everywhere.
  • Live action Mr. T explaining the moral of the story.
  • Whether The Jetsons qualifies as STEM programming.
  • Spending fifteen minutes watching a silent music video on your audio-only podcast.
  • Google Meat.
  • I hate that everything is on Google Meat now. My face is covered in blood!
  • Mr. T swinging an alligator around by the tail and throwing it, shouting "so long, gay Bowser!"
  • Taskmaster.
  • What happens if you put three lentils together?
  • If you eat almost all the leftover takeout, everyone knows you ate almost all the leftover takeout, but if you eat all of it and throw away the box, nobody knows for sure because maybe the box got lost behind the mayonnaise.
  • Being an object of a hyperspecific roast.
  • The Alice in Wonderland Theater Public Shaming Experience.
  • A burlesque show with a sexy caterpillar where they ask everyone in the audience to write a confession, such as "I find this caterpillar sexy."
  • The Drag Red Queen pulling the audience's written confessions out of her back pocket and everyone is like "oh no"
  • Eating almost the entire tub of Rocky Road but leaving one rock and one road at the bottom, explaining when you are confronted that "it doesn't say Rocky Road*s*"
  • Going outside and finding a piece of toast on the ground and that's the most exciting thing that's happened in two years.
  • Cruise ships ceasing operation during COVID, which rules, but then resuming operations later, which sucks.
  • Explaining that we'll be hosting the event on Google Meat and then slapping you with the salami.
  • A motivational poem that says "Miyamoto is a fart in the wind."
  • Looking at your motivational poem and getting angry every morning.
  • A cross-stitch reading "Miyamoto is a fart" inside of a 1-Up mushroom cloud.
  • Who wouldn't want to cross-stitch a butt? People who suck, that's who.
  • Podcast headers vs. podcast covers.
  • Oh jesus it's the skin fortress.
  • Walking around just trying to live your life but everybody knows exactly what to say to get you to fight.
  • Rock Paper Scissors Fart Scorpion Miyamoto.
  • Classic first time Lord mistake: jogging to school with toast in your mouth but crashing into your attractive senpai and both of you end up in an alien world and one of you is a chain mail dragon.
  • How can you read poetry when a katamari could roll you up at any moment and send you up into space so you can scream forever into the void.
  • Your katamari Prince costume with the fresnel lens that makes you look really small.
  • Whether it's safe to let babies eat chocolate.
  • Which poop is the best to transplant.
  • Only the most pristine dumps.
  • Keeping your blood inside and your skin closed.
  • Babies using your arm hair as a fidget toy.
  • Arm hairs rolling around each other.
  • Stabbing yourself because you're the only one worth stabbing.
  • Solipsistic Stabbing.
  • Who's my little tuber? Who's all starchy? You are. Yes you are!
  • While you were watching Great British Bake Off, I was studying the dough.
  • You're letting too much lactic acid build up in your muscles, you humble gas station clerk.
  • Watching an Olympic sport you've never seen before and critiquing the competitor's technique.
  • Spin, spin, triangle to grind.
  • A contestant putting rose in their cake and you're like "I've watched 20 seasons of this, that's how you go home, you put rose in stuff"
  • Studying game theory before competing on Survivor and everyone votes you off as soon as they find out you studied game theory.
  • Crime Scene Kitchen.
  • Silently switching from content warnings to tags.
  • The professional pink gaming chair with bunny ears.
  • Moral Maggie cutting in at the end of the episode to tell you how to live your life.
  • The Topic Lords discord: we like to have fun.
  • Gratuitous use of the Finger Fortress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+OcGC-vC4 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 315. I Can't Believe It's Butter https://topiclords.com/i-cant-believe-its-butter 4093f8b9-084c-4226-9770-d338c841abb1 Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Kevin. We discuss dealing with criticism, how long until multiverse/crossover media is exciting again, cringe that's so cringey it's no longer upsetting, Bell's Theorem by Kevin Hainline, and the golden age of new official localizations of old games. 1:20:00 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Asking for help / Dealing with the slightest criticism/suggestions/etc
  • Roger Rabbit and Marvel vs. Capcom were big deals. How long until multiverse & crossover shit is exciting again?
  • Update on media that makes me feel things vs. media that doesn't
  • "Bell's Theorem"", a poem that I wrote, and then, at a poetry reading someone suggested the next poem and it demonstrated how good poets are pretty amazing and I am not a good poet
  • We're in a golden age of new official localizations and rereleases of old games (and why am I not playing them?!)

Microtopics:

  • Some guy on the internet.
  • Transparent aluminum ukuleles.
  • Hurting your fingers because your ukulele action is too high.
  • Do you still call them cowboy chords when you play them on a ukulele?
  • An astronomer making a series of Youtube videos about Jurassic Park.
  • The history of Mr. DNA.
  • How much kids in the early 90s loved Jamaicans.
  • Solving a 30 year old Internet mystery.
  • Suing Michael Crichton to make him put you in the Jurassic Park acknowledgements section.
  • The Ancient DNA Study Group.
  • Ian Malcolm just saying a bunch of lines from James Gleick's "Chaos."
  • Going into slow motion to show all the Victorian era pickpocketing.
  • Asking an august astronomer to critique your work and squirming as he critiques your work.
  • Therapy-style processing via Topic Lords.
  • People who like being asked for help because it gives them an opportunity to help.
  • The German word for being a person.
  • Being so overly polite that people feel obligated to reassure you that you don't need to be so polite, which is a big pain.
  • After someone helps you, asking for clarification on whether they wanted to help or if they felt obligated.
  • How to save Jim a lot of time and effort.
  • Two people coming from the same gross Internet soup. (Not 4chan)
  • The friends you made on the Pokey the Penguin mailing list.
  • Swearing to kids these days that the internet was good once.
  • Finding the exact right gif for your animated profile picture.
  • Pretend socialization: it's still socialization.
  • Knowing a guy by his Internet handle for decades and suddenly having to call him his birth name.
  • When crossovers started being a thing.
  • The Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, saying the stage for the world depicted in Bio Freaks for the N64.
  • Daffy and Donald playing rival pianos.
  • Detective Munch's cameo in Fortnite.
  • Konami Wai Wai World.
  • Vib Ribbon n Astro Bot.
  • Why am I on this show when I could be playing Vib Ribbon?
  • Burning episodes of Topic Lords to CD-R so you can play them in Vib Ribbon.
  • Extremely pixelated vector art.
  • The save the cat moment on Topic Lords.
  • Mind-blowing crossover media events where the mind-blowing part is how much they paid all the lawyers to negotiate the deal.
  • Why the indie game scene hadn't produced a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with public domain characters like Robin Hood, Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse and Abraham Lincoln.
  • Reagan-Gorbachev.
  • Which president was kidnapped by ninjas.
  • Choosing to let the ninjas keep Ronald Reagan.
  • Ape Out: Get Back In There!
  • Pushing the left stick to lean and pushing the triggers to lift either foot.
  • Trying to play a video game in which you dislike the protagonist.
  • A guy whose defining trait is that he tries to get out of every conversation as quickly as possible.
  • Playing with the mismatch between what the player wants and what the player character wants.
  • Upsetting the apple cart of how video games work.
  • A minimap that takes up the top fifth of the screen but is nonfunctional until you unlock it halfway through the game.
  • Which Jurassic Park video game is most interesting and which is most fun.
  • Looking down at your cleavage to see your health meter.
  • Saying the secret word and screaming real loud.
  • A poem based on a physics thing.
  • Forgetting your ex girlfriend's face, along with all the state capitals.
  • Time pointing an arrow at your back, and you walk.
  • The New Physicality of Long-Distance Love.
  • Sending a poet up on the spaceship to drain buckets from downtown.
  • A poem written sometime between 1936 and 1992.
  • Off-Topic Lords, a place for people who shout answers at podcasts in grocery stores.
  • A collection of Double Dragon and Kunio-kun games.
  • Kid Dracula.
  • Mother 3's copyright nightmare.
  • Mario Paint on the Switch 2.
  • Who was the Terry that Chris Houlihan replaced in Nintendo World Cup?
  • Satellaview games ported to the Switch.
  • Batman Loves Him a Parallelogram.
  • Joining the discord for the best PicoSteveMo experience.
  • KevinHainlineOnYoutube.com
  • Naming a distant galaxy after yourself and other astronomers mocking you mercilessly.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Asking for help / Dealing with the slightest criticism/suggestions/etc
  • Roger Rabbit and Marvel vs. Capcom were big deals. How long until multiverse & crossover shit is exciting again?
  • Update on media that makes me feel things vs. media that doesn't
  • "Bell's Theorem"", a poem that I wrote, and then, at a poetry reading someone suggested the next poem and it demonstrated how good poets are pretty amazing and I am not a good poet
  • We're in a golden age of new official localizations and rereleases of old games (and why am I not playing them?!)

Microtopics:

  • Some guy on the internet.
  • Transparent aluminum ukuleles.
  • Hurting your fingers because your ukulele action is too high.
  • Do you still call them cowboy chords when you play them on a ukulele?
  • An astronomer making a series of Youtube videos about Jurassic Park.
  • The history of Mr. DNA.
  • How much kids in the early 90s loved Jamaicans.
  • Solving a 30 year old Internet mystery.
  • Suing Michael Crichton to make him put you in the Jurassic Park acknowledgements section.
  • The Ancient DNA Study Group.
  • Ian Malcolm just saying a bunch of lines from James Gleick's "Chaos."
  • Going into slow motion to show all the Victorian era pickpocketing.
  • Asking an august astronomer to critique your work and squirming as he critiques your work.
  • Therapy-style processing via Topic Lords.
  • People who like being asked for help because it gives them an opportunity to help.
  • The German word for being a person.
  • Being so overly polite that people feel obligated to reassure you that you don't need to be so polite, which is a big pain.
  • After someone helps you, asking for clarification on whether they wanted to help or if they felt obligated.
  • How to save Jim a lot of time and effort.
  • Two people coming from the same gross Internet soup. (Not 4chan)
  • The friends you made on the Pokey the Penguin mailing list.
  • Swearing to kids these days that the internet was good once.
  • Finding the exact right gif for your animated profile picture.
  • Pretend socialization: it's still socialization.
  • Knowing a guy by his Internet handle for decades and suddenly having to call him his birth name.
  • When crossovers started being a thing.
  • The Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, saying the stage for the world depicted in Bio Freaks for the N64.
  • Daffy and Donald playing rival pianos.
  • Detective Munch's cameo in Fortnite.
  • Konami Wai Wai World.
  • Vib Ribbon n Astro Bot.
  • Why am I on this show when I could be playing Vib Ribbon?
  • Burning episodes of Topic Lords to CD-R so you can play them in Vib Ribbon.
  • Extremely pixelated vector art.
  • The save the cat moment on Topic Lords.
  • Mind-blowing crossover media events where the mind-blowing part is how much they paid all the lawyers to negotiate the deal.
  • Why the indie game scene hadn't produced a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with public domain characters like Robin Hood, Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse and Abraham Lincoln.
  • Reagan-Gorbachev.
  • Which president was kidnapped by ninjas.
  • Choosing to let the ninjas keep Ronald Reagan.
  • Ape Out: Get Back In There!
  • Pushing the left stick to lean and pushing the triggers to lift either foot.
  • Trying to play a video game in which you dislike the protagonist.
  • A guy whose defining trait is that he tries to get out of every conversation as quickly as possible.
  • Playing with the mismatch between what the player wants and what the player character wants.
  • Upsetting the apple cart of how video games work.
  • A minimap that takes up the top fifth of the screen but is nonfunctional until you unlock it halfway through the game.
  • Which Jurassic Park video game is most interesting and which is most fun.
  • Looking down at your cleavage to see your health meter.
  • Saying the secret word and screaming real loud.
  • A poem based on a physics thing.
  • Forgetting your ex girlfriend's face, along with all the state capitals.
  • Time pointing an arrow at your back, and you walk.
  • The New Physicality of Long-Distance Love.
  • Sending a poet up on the spaceship to drain buckets from downtown.
  • A poem written sometime between 1936 and 1992.
  • Off-Topic Lords, a place for people who shout answers at podcasts in grocery stores.
  • A collection of Double Dragon and Kunio-kun games.
  • Kid Dracula.
  • Mother 3's copyright nightmare.
  • Mario Paint on the Switch 2.
  • Who was the Terry that Chris Houlihan replaced in Nintendo World Cup?
  • Satellaview games ported to the Switch.
  • Batman Loves Him a Parallelogram.
  • Joining the discord for the best PicoSteveMo experience.
  • KevinHainlineOnYoutube.com
  • Naming a distant galaxy after yourself and other astronomers mocking you mercilessly.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Asking for help / Dealing with the slightest criticism/suggestions/etc
  • Roger Rabbit and Marvel vs. Capcom were big deals. How long until multiverse & crossover shit is exciting again?
  • Update on media that makes me feel things vs. media that doesn't
  • "Bell's Theorem"", a poem that I wrote, and then, at a poetry reading someone suggested the next poem and it demonstrated how good poets are pretty amazing and I am not a good poet
  • We're in a golden age of new official localizations and rereleases of old games (and why am I not playing them?!)

Microtopics:

  • Some guy on the internet.
  • Transparent aluminum ukuleles.
  • Hurting your fingers because your ukulele action is too high.
  • Do you still call them cowboy chords when you play them on a ukulele?
  • An astronomer making a series of Youtube videos about Jurassic Park.
  • The history of Mr. DNA.
  • How much kids in the early 90s loved Jamaicans.
  • Solving a 30 year old Internet mystery.
  • Suing Michael Crichton to make him put you in the Jurassic Park acknowledgements section.
  • The Ancient DNA Study Group.
  • Ian Malcolm just saying a bunch of lines from James Gleick's "Chaos."
  • Going into slow motion to show all the Victorian era pickpocketing.
  • Asking an august astronomer to critique your work and squirming as he critiques your work.
  • Therapy-style processing via Topic Lords.
  • People who like being asked for help because it gives them an opportunity to help.
  • The German word for being a person.
  • Being so overly polite that people feel obligated to reassure you that you don't need to be so polite, which is a big pain.
  • After someone helps you, asking for clarification on whether they wanted to help or if they felt obligated.
  • How to save Jim a lot of time and effort.
  • Two people coming from the same gross Internet soup. (Not 4chan)
  • The friends you made on the Pokey the Penguin mailing list.
  • Swearing to kids these days that the internet was good once.
  • Finding the exact right gif for your animated profile picture.
  • Pretend socialization: it's still socialization.
  • Knowing a guy by his Internet handle for decades and suddenly having to call him his birth name.
  • When crossovers started being a thing.
  • The Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, saying the stage for the world depicted in Bio Freaks for the N64.
  • Daffy and Donald playing rival pianos.
  • Detective Munch's cameo in Fortnite.
  • Konami Wai Wai World.
  • Vib Ribbon n Astro Bot.
  • Why am I on this show when I could be playing Vib Ribbon?
  • Burning episodes of Topic Lords to CD-R so you can play them in Vib Ribbon.
  • Extremely pixelated vector art.
  • The save the cat moment on Topic Lords.
  • Mind-blowing crossover media events where the mind-blowing part is how much they paid all the lawyers to negotiate the deal.
  • Why the indie game scene hadn't produced a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with public domain characters like Robin Hood, Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse and Abraham Lincoln.
  • Reagan-Gorbachev.
  • Which president was kidnapped by ninjas.
  • Choosing to let the ninjas keep Ronald Reagan.
  • Ape Out: Get Back In There!
  • Pushing the left stick to lean and pushing the triggers to lift either foot.
  • Trying to play a video game in which you dislike the protagonist.
  • A guy whose defining trait is that he tries to get out of every conversation as quickly as possible.
  • Playing with the mismatch between what the player wants and what the player character wants.
  • Upsetting the apple cart of how video games work.
  • A minimap that takes up the top fifth of the screen but is nonfunctional until you unlock it halfway through the game.
  • Which Jurassic Park video game is most interesting and which is most fun.
  • Looking down at your cleavage to see your health meter.
  • Saying the secret word and screaming real loud.
  • A poem based on a physics thing.
  • Forgetting your ex girlfriend's face, along with all the state capitals.
  • Time pointing an arrow at your back, and you walk.
  • The New Physicality of Long-Distance Love.
  • Sending a poet up on the spaceship to drain buckets from downtown.
  • A poem written sometime between 1936 and 1992.
  • Off-Topic Lords, a place for people who shout answers at podcasts in grocery stores.
  • A collection of Double Dragon and Kunio-kun games.
  • Kid Dracula.
  • Mother 3's copyright nightmare.
  • Mario Paint on the Switch 2.
  • Who was the Terry that Chris Houlihan replaced in Nintendo World Cup?
  • Satellaview games ported to the Switch.
  • Batman Loves Him a Parallelogram.
  • Joining the discord for the best PicoSteveMo experience.
  • KevinHainlineOnYoutube.com
  • Naming a distant galaxy after yourself and other astronomers mocking you mercilessly.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ROjK0flu ]]> Jim Stormdancer 314. Gotta Catch Half of 'Em! https://topiclords.com/gotta-catch-half-of-em 6293dad9-6f0a-4612-bdb2-afa99f485ce2 Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Joël. We discuss the Luck Factor, Dual Pilgrim Certificate, the return of PicoSteveMo, and every poem, by every human. 1:04:45 true Lords:

  • Elena
  • Joël

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Packing cubes.
  • The Rolling Method.
  • Modular backpacks.
  • Camera people: a different type of people.
  • Nested zippered envelopes labeled one through five.
  • Why does your purse say "three" on it??
  • Tool user opinions.
  • Getting ready for fiction to incorporate our new conception of what AI is.
  • Running experiments on people who self-identify as lucky or unlucky.
  • Gladstone Gander.
  • Paying your put-upon nephew a dime to accompany you on a trip to Zazu-Zazu.
  • Stan Connery's terrible taste in roles.
  • Natalie Portman's Tom Scott number.
  • Systems that are gamable but not trivially gamable.
  • Rick Rubin numbers vs. Sabbath Numbers.
  • The Kumano Kodo Trail's trail adjudicators ringing a bell and giving you a certificate to certify that you've walked their trail.
  • A terrible time of year to hike the Camino de Santiago.
  • Taking a wrong turn while hiking the Camino de Santiago and ending up on France.
  • All the school children running over to high five the pilgrims.
  • Feral Eucalyptus plantation.
  • Peeking into all the ancient mills.
  • Shrine tossing tricks.
  • Passing bones from chopstick to chopstick.
  • The three major sources of ritual pollution.
  • Getting sick of climbing the hill all the time so you write a poem explaining that the gods don't want the shrine to be at the top of the hill any more.
  • Harassment prevention for non-supervisors.
  • Printing and framing the certificate you got after taking the class on filling out your timecard.
  • The uncle so otherwise never contacts you sending you a happy birthday message on LinkedIn every year.
  • Endorsing your friend on LinkedIn for being a git.
  • Balloons in the sewer.
  • Sokoban mechanics that could apply Stephen King's It.
  • A tricycle kart racer set in the Overlook hotel.
  • NanoSteveMo.
  • The scruffy guy the hotel manager doesn't want around.
  • Singlehandedly supplying the fanbase for this Mo.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 cartridges on you desktop.
  • The Spore creature creator exporting your creature as a PNG.
  • A topic for another Topic Lords.
  • Concatenating a zip file to the end of a different file.
  • Here's this artifact. Please try it out.
  • Saving PNGs to Starlings.
  • Storing your Pico-8 game in a bird.
  • Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme.
  • Pirating software on Usenet.
  • Catching 50 out of 100 birds to extract the Pico-8 game from them.
  • Realizing that it's a plums in a refrigerator thing and moving on.
  • Helping a stranger grieve using your well-honed crossword skills.
  • Approaching classical literature as a collection of in-jokes and wanting to be in on the joke.
  • A book with a serrated edge.
  • How to read a book vs. how to read a poem.
]]> Lords:

  • Elena
  • Joël

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Packing cubes.
  • The Rolling Method.
  • Modular backpacks.
  • Camera people: a different type of people.
  • Nested zippered envelopes labeled one through five.
  • Why does your purse say "three" on it??
  • Tool user opinions.
  • Getting ready for fiction to incorporate our new conception of what AI is.
  • Running experiments on people who self-identify as lucky or unlucky.
  • Gladstone Gander.
  • Paying your put-upon nephew a dime to accompany you on a trip to Zazu-Zazu.
  • Stan Connery's terrible taste in roles.
  • Natalie Portman's Tom Scott number.
  • Systems that are gamable but not trivially gamable.
  • Rick Rubin numbers vs. Sabbath Numbers.
  • The Kumano Kodo Trail's trail adjudicators ringing a bell and giving you a certificate to certify that you've walked their trail.
  • A terrible time of year to hike the Camino de Santiago.
  • Taking a wrong turn while hiking the Camino de Santiago and ending up on France.
  • All the school children running over to high five the pilgrims.
  • Feral Eucalyptus plantation.
  • Peeking into all the ancient mills.
  • Shrine tossing tricks.
  • Passing bones from chopstick to chopstick.
  • The three major sources of ritual pollution.
  • Getting sick of climbing the hill all the time so you write a poem explaining that the gods don't want the shrine to be at the top of the hill any more.
  • Harassment prevention for non-supervisors.
  • Printing and framing the certificate you got after taking the class on filling out your timecard.
  • The uncle so otherwise never contacts you sending you a happy birthday message on LinkedIn every year.
  • Endorsing your friend on LinkedIn for being a git.
  • Balloons in the sewer.
  • Sokoban mechanics that could apply Stephen King's It.
  • A tricycle kart racer set in the Overlook hotel.
  • NanoSteveMo.
  • The scruffy guy the hotel manager doesn't want around.
  • Singlehandedly supplying the fanbase for this Mo.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 cartridges on you desktop.
  • The Spore creature creator exporting your creature as a PNG.
  • A topic for another Topic Lords.
  • Concatenating a zip file to the end of a different file.
  • Here's this artifact. Please try it out.
  • Saving PNGs to Starlings.
  • Storing your Pico-8 game in a bird.
  • Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme.
  • Pirating software on Usenet.
  • Catching 50 out of 100 birds to extract the Pico-8 game from them.
  • Realizing that it's a plums in a refrigerator thing and moving on.
  • Helping a stranger grieve using your well-honed crossword skills.
  • Approaching classical literature as a collection of in-jokes and wanting to be in on the joke.
  • A book with a serrated edge.
  • How to read a book vs. how to read a poem.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Elena
  • Joël

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Packing cubes.
  • The Rolling Method.
  • Modular backpacks.
  • Camera people: a different type of people.
  • Nested zippered envelopes labeled one through five.
  • Why does your purse say "three" on it??
  • Tool user opinions.
  • Getting ready for fiction to incorporate our new conception of what AI is.
  • Running experiments on people who self-identify as lucky or unlucky.
  • Gladstone Gander.
  • Paying your put-upon nephew a dime to accompany you on a trip to Zazu-Zazu.
  • Stan Connery's terrible taste in roles.
  • Natalie Portman's Tom Scott number.
  • Systems that are gamable but not trivially gamable.
  • Rick Rubin numbers vs. Sabbath Numbers.
  • The Kumano Kodo Trail's trail adjudicators ringing a bell and giving you a certificate to certify that you've walked their trail.
  • A terrible time of year to hike the Camino de Santiago.
  • Taking a wrong turn while hiking the Camino de Santiago and ending up on France.
  • All the school children running over to high five the pilgrims.
  • Feral Eucalyptus plantation.
  • Peeking into all the ancient mills.
  • Shrine tossing tricks.
  • Passing bones from chopstick to chopstick.
  • The three major sources of ritual pollution.
  • Getting sick of climbing the hill all the time so you write a poem explaining that the gods don't want the shrine to be at the top of the hill any more.
  • Harassment prevention for non-supervisors.
  • Printing and framing the certificate you got after taking the class on filling out your timecard.
  • The uncle so otherwise never contacts you sending you a happy birthday message on LinkedIn every year.
  • Endorsing your friend on LinkedIn for being a git.
  • Balloons in the sewer.
  • Sokoban mechanics that could apply Stephen King's It.
  • A tricycle kart racer set in the Overlook hotel.
  • NanoSteveMo.
  • The scruffy guy the hotel manager doesn't want around.
  • Singlehandedly supplying the fanbase for this Mo.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 cartridges on you desktop.
  • The Spore creature creator exporting your creature as a PNG.
  • A topic for another Topic Lords.
  • Concatenating a zip file to the end of a different file.
  • Here's this artifact. Please try it out.
  • Saving PNGs to Starlings.
  • Storing your Pico-8 game in a bird.
  • Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme.
  • Pirating software on Usenet.
  • Catching 50 out of 100 birds to extract the Pico-8 game from them.
  • Realizing that it's a plums in a refrigerator thing and moving on.
  • Helping a stranger grieve using your well-honed crossword skills.
  • Approaching classical literature as a collection of in-jokes and wanting to be in on the joke.
  • A book with a serrated edge.
  • How to read a book vs. how to read a poem.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GZoXYjjs ]]> Jim Stormdancer 313. Don't You Wish You Didn't Know That? https://topiclords.com/dont-you-wish-you-didnt-know-that a8901fd1-e39f-47af-b16c-d7e5359f9131 Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Daniel and Chris. We discuss Psychic Students In Pursuit Of Guidance, Zhaozhou's "Wash Your Bowl" Koan, Figwit, Sudo-Ku, and the importance of choosing a form vs. your choices within the form. 1:06:29 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself twice.
  • Spider mites and spider mite exterminators.
  • Exterminating your spider mite infestation with a washcloth.
  • Diatomaceous earth mines in your hometown.
  • The paperwork necessary when your diatomaceous earth mine accidentally breaks through into the neighboring nitroglycerin mine.
  • How to develop psychic powers of various kinds.
  • Learning to meditate in service of manifesting your psiballs.
  • Learning how to spin a watch around on the Psipog Archive.
  • A 90 year old dude who has been meditating all his life but still doesn't have psychic powers: maybe he's just bad at it?
  • The secret geometry that lets you talk to space beings.
  • Who wants to talk to space beings?
  • How to make progress on what mysteries we have left.
  • Reinventing all of physics from first principles.
  • How does nobody know about creating energy balls with your mind??
  • Choosing not to do the thought experiments that have no good possible outcome.
  • Sitting at a desk made of laminated particleboard.
  • Pseudo-complex meals.
  • When civilization collapses, how am I gonna make a Big Mac??
  • Taking the time to get to know every person you meet and understand every safety you interact with.
  • Wanting to know a secret that nobody else knows.
  • How not to pronounce "koan."
  • What do you do after you finish your gruel?
  • Becoming enlightened during Ikea furniture assembly.
  • Ancient Chinese yo momma jokes.
  • The enlightened experience of inhabiting a mind vs. the bowl needs to be washed again.
  • Questions that science cannot answer.
  • Probing your blood.
  • Measuring your blood chemistry while you wash the dishes to determine whether you're a good person.
  • How to measure how many people you've helped.
  • Short-circuiting your friend's money metaphor before it starts.
  • An incredibly wise computer refusing to tell you the answer because it's too nuanced.
  • Concrete actionable advice that you can trust every time.
  • Figwit pre- and post lines.
  • How things went viral before social media.
  • The Figwit obsession: it's weird.
  • Tracking down Figwit's Topps card to look up his RBI.
  • Why is it the "one" ring when all the Nazguls also have rings??
  • Lord of the Rings fans and how much they love it when podcasters are confused about Lord of the Rings lore.
  • Effective fandom activism at its most innocent and pure.
  • Where were you when you found out Sonic was going to be in Smash?
  • A button that was effective so they pushed it a lot.
  • A Small Brown that Peter Jackson put inside the Real Brown.
  • Topic Lords Movie Secrets Special.
  • Sudo-Ku.
  • A fun gimmick that results in a worse poem.
  • Americans: do they do Haiku wrong??
  • Syllables vs. sound units.
  • One pthong and more than one pthong.
  • Spending too much time reading about the form.
  • Drawing a line on a grid.
  • A valid approach to making interesting stuff.
  • The Pacific Pinball Museum.
  • Pinball as kinetic electromechanical art.
  • Electromechanical puppet shows at Musee Mechanique.
  • If Pixar existed in 1800, what would they do?
  • What if you're playing DDR but it's a joke?
  • High concept jam games.
  • Alien vs. Predator but you're roommates with the Alien.
  • Advantages and disadvantages of starting from an existing design.
  • Advantages of having a slightly different goal from everyone else in your field.
  • Chess with time travel.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself twice.
  • Spider mites and spider mite exterminators.
  • Exterminating your spider mite infestation with a washcloth.
  • Diatomaceous earth mines in your hometown.
  • The paperwork necessary when your diatomaceous earth mine accidentally breaks through into the neighboring nitroglycerin mine.
  • How to develop psychic powers of various kinds.
  • Learning to meditate in service of manifesting your psiballs.
  • Learning how to spin a watch around on the Psipog Archive.
  • A 90 year old dude who has been meditating all his life but still doesn't have psychic powers: maybe he's just bad at it?
  • The secret geometry that lets you talk to space beings.
  • Who wants to talk to space beings?
  • How to make progress on what mysteries we have left.
  • Reinventing all of physics from first principles.
  • How does nobody know about creating energy balls with your mind??
  • Choosing not to do the thought experiments that have no good possible outcome.
  • Sitting at a desk made of laminated particleboard.
  • Pseudo-complex meals.
  • When civilization collapses, how am I gonna make a Big Mac??
  • Taking the time to get to know every person you meet and understand every safety you interact with.
  • Wanting to know a secret that nobody else knows.
  • How not to pronounce "koan."
  • What do you do after you finish your gruel?
  • Becoming enlightened during Ikea furniture assembly.
  • Ancient Chinese yo momma jokes.
  • The enlightened experience of inhabiting a mind vs. the bowl needs to be washed again.
  • Questions that science cannot answer.
  • Probing your blood.
  • Measuring your blood chemistry while you wash the dishes to determine whether you're a good person.
  • How to measure how many people you've helped.
  • Short-circuiting your friend's money metaphor before it starts.
  • An incredibly wise computer refusing to tell you the answer because it's too nuanced.
  • Concrete actionable advice that you can trust every time.
  • Figwit pre- and post lines.
  • How things went viral before social media.
  • The Figwit obsession: it's weird.
  • Tracking down Figwit's Topps card to look up his RBI.
  • Why is it the "one" ring when all the Nazguls also have rings??
  • Lord of the Rings fans and how much they love it when podcasters are confused about Lord of the Rings lore.
  • Effective fandom activism at its most innocent and pure.
  • Where were you when you found out Sonic was going to be in Smash?
  • A button that was effective so they pushed it a lot.
  • A Small Brown that Peter Jackson put inside the Real Brown.
  • Topic Lords Movie Secrets Special.
  • Sudo-Ku.
  • A fun gimmick that results in a worse poem.
  • Americans: do they do Haiku wrong??
  • Syllables vs. sound units.
  • One pthong and more than one pthong.
  • Spending too much time reading about the form.
  • Drawing a line on a grid.
  • A valid approach to making interesting stuff.
  • The Pacific Pinball Museum.
  • Pinball as kinetic electromechanical art.
  • Electromechanical puppet shows at Musee Mechanique.
  • If Pixar existed in 1800, what would they do?
  • What if you're playing DDR but it's a joke?
  • High concept jam games.
  • Alien vs. Predator but you're roommates with the Alien.
  • Advantages and disadvantages of starting from an existing design.
  • Advantages of having a slightly different goal from everyone else in your field.
  • Chess with time travel.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Introducing yourself twice.
  • Spider mites and spider mite exterminators.
  • Exterminating your spider mite infestation with a washcloth.
  • Diatomaceous earth mines in your hometown.
  • The paperwork necessary when your diatomaceous earth mine accidentally breaks through into the neighboring nitroglycerin mine.
  • How to develop psychic powers of various kinds.
  • Learning to meditate in service of manifesting your psiballs.
  • Learning how to spin a watch around on the Psipog Archive.
  • A 90 year old dude who has been meditating all his life but still doesn't have psychic powers: maybe he's just bad at it?
  • The secret geometry that lets you talk to space beings.
  • Who wants to talk to space beings?
  • How to make progress on what mysteries we have left.
  • Reinventing all of physics from first principles.
  • How does nobody know about creating energy balls with your mind??
  • Choosing not to do the thought experiments that have no good possible outcome.
  • Sitting at a desk made of laminated particleboard.
  • Pseudo-complex meals.
  • When civilization collapses, how am I gonna make a Big Mac??
  • Taking the time to get to know every person you meet and understand every safety you interact with.
  • Wanting to know a secret that nobody else knows.
  • How not to pronounce "koan."
  • What do you do after you finish your gruel?
  • Becoming enlightened during Ikea furniture assembly.
  • Ancient Chinese yo momma jokes.
  • The enlightened experience of inhabiting a mind vs. the bowl needs to be washed again.
  • Questions that science cannot answer.
  • Probing your blood.
  • Measuring your blood chemistry while you wash the dishes to determine whether you're a good person.
  • How to measure how many people you've helped.
  • Short-circuiting your friend's money metaphor before it starts.
  • An incredibly wise computer refusing to tell you the answer because it's too nuanced.
  • Concrete actionable advice that you can trust every time.
  • Figwit pre- and post lines.
  • How things went viral before social media.
  • The Figwit obsession: it's weird.
  • Tracking down Figwit's Topps card to look up his RBI.
  • Why is it the "one" ring when all the Nazguls also have rings??
  • Lord of the Rings fans and how much they love it when podcasters are confused about Lord of the Rings lore.
  • Effective fandom activism at its most innocent and pure.
  • Where were you when you found out Sonic was going to be in Smash?
  • A button that was effective so they pushed it a lot.
  • A Small Brown that Peter Jackson put inside the Real Brown.
  • Topic Lords Movie Secrets Special.
  • Sudo-Ku.
  • A fun gimmick that results in a worse poem.
  • Americans: do they do Haiku wrong??
  • Syllables vs. sound units.
  • One pthong and more than one pthong.
  • Spending too much time reading about the form.
  • Drawing a line on a grid.
  • A valid approach to making interesting stuff.
  • The Pacific Pinball Museum.
  • Pinball as kinetic electromechanical art.
  • Electromechanical puppet shows at Musee Mechanique.
  • If Pixar existed in 1800, what would they do?
  • What if you're playing DDR but it's a joke?
  • High concept jam games.
  • Alien vs. Predator but you're roommates with the Alien.
  • Advantages and disadvantages of starting from an existing design.
  • Advantages of having a slightly different goal from everyone else in your field.
  • Chess with time travel.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ArOBADfn ]]> Jim Stormdancer 312. Rubber Baby Knopfler Romplers https://topiclords.com/rubber-baby-knopfler-romplers 96139945-4d54-4741-83f3-18c8d1107469 Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Danny and Walker. We discuss "You Probably Think This Song is About You," a tour of r/crappymusic archetypes, sample-based film scores in the 80s, Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep, by Clare Harner, and being a video game noob in your 40s 1:21:23 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Is it a Topic or is it Just Banter?
  • Cleaning Lords, Lunch Lords and Cat Lords.
  • Have you heard the good word about the Gaylady?
  • Night Brunch.
  • Wearing your own band's t-shirt.
  • A thing that could happen for a while and then was no longer able to happen.
  • Hi Cindy!
  • Motivating yourself to work harder via self loathing.
  • Feeling the need to act all angsty so that people take you seriously as an artist.
  • A Touch of Grandiosity.
  • How many tracks get uploaded to SoundCloud every day?
  • Continuing to discover music from the 1970s.
  • It's called "Topic Lords," not "Correct Lords."
  • Once it becomes impossible to make new music, and we go back and start listening to all the SoundCloud uploads with 0 listens.
  • All the kids at Rock & Roll Camp getting excited about Lofey.
  • Pretending a topic is about one thing when it's actually about something else.
  • Canadian Actor Dave Coulier.
  • Tuesday at 3:01pm.
  • Learning a new chord on your Electric Tenor Guitar.
  • Bringing Pokemon Puzzle League characters into your love song.
  • Having a whole week to dial in that wub wub patch.
  • What art is for and what art should be for.
  • Fun is our only reward.
  • The objective best pitch wheel range.
  • The Funky Worm preset.
  • Synthesizers that can save and load patches but only when plugged into your phone.
  • Coming up with a Rube Goldberg machine to upload patches from a web server to your CZ-5000.
  • thisdx7cartridgedoesnotexist.com
  • In a convex optimization problem, there is no gradient to descend.
  • Fiddling with the synthesizer sliders until you reach a corner of the parameter space that doesn't make any noise and giving up.
  • Camp Counselor Grant hastily drawing all the synthesizer waves on the board.
  • Ask any Geometer, the triangle has three sides. Love triangles are actually just two love segments.
  • The All Topic Fakeouts episode.
  • The gulf between how an artist thinks they're presenting themselves and how they're being received.
  • A Beautiful Rainbow of the Human Experience.
  • Elderly rappers with excellent flow but terrible drip.
  • Piling onto propaganda music.
  • Someone doing their own thing with confidence and authenticity.
  • Graffiti with immaculate copyediting.
  • With improved access to art tools, taste is one of the only things left to get wrong.
  • Only the best crappy music.
  • Promoting your music in r/crappymusic.
  • Tori the Clown Rap Gal.
  • The audacity of extreme autotune.
  • All Youtube thumbnails converging on the same cognitive attention hacks.
  • Singing the comments on your last video.
  • Situations where echo chamber amplification is fun and good for the world.
  • Obscure Music That Slaps.
  • Serbian Kolos.
  • The Ketron Event Chrom.
  • The Nightmare Klaxon that Represents Dread.
  • All the Fairlight CMI presets used in the Terminator 2 soundtrack.
  • Growing up playing samples at every possible speed in Impulse Tracker.
  • Slowly sucking dog food out of a can to simulate the sound of a mimetic polyalloy passing through steel bars.
  • It's been a long day and you're ready to go home but you need to slam 1000 more inverted glasses into bowls of yogurt, let's hurry it up guys.
  • That one sample library squeaking metal door sound that everyone uses.
  • Calling out comb filtering whenever you hear someone exhale deeply while sitting down at a desk.
  • The sound guy instructing all the actors when to breathe to minimize comb filtering.
  • Rubber Baby Knopfler Romplers.
  • All the things you are after you die.
  • The purpose of suffering. (So we can write cool poems about it.)
  • Making art about how trauma used to exist.
  • Why wireheading will not solve our problems. (Because everything uses bluetooth now.)
  • Who needs trauma when we have CRISPR?
  • Shepherding noobs.
  • Play Any Video Game Day.
  • Complicated goose controls.
  • Trying to play Portal as your first 3D game.
  • Learning video games vs. learning board games.
  • Trying to get into video game series that don't change.
  • Looking at the screen and/or ants until it coalesces into an image.
  • Video games filled with really gross blood squirt sounds.
  • Jumping on and off of buildings.
  • Playing Breath of the Wild and just collecting mushrooms and herbs.
  • Grass simulation in Breath of the Wild vs. in Horizon Zero Dawn.
  • Putting yourself in the head-space of the protagonist in order to do protagonist stuff.
  • Spelling brunch the secret way.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Is it a Topic or is it Just Banter?
  • Cleaning Lords, Lunch Lords and Cat Lords.
  • Have you heard the good word about the Gaylady?
  • Night Brunch.
  • Wearing your own band's t-shirt.
  • A thing that could happen for a while and then was no longer able to happen.
  • Hi Cindy!
  • Motivating yourself to work harder via self loathing.
  • Feeling the need to act all angsty so that people take you seriously as an artist.
  • A Touch of Grandiosity.
  • How many tracks get uploaded to SoundCloud every day?
  • Continuing to discover music from the 1970s.
  • It's called "Topic Lords," not "Correct Lords."
  • Once it becomes impossible to make new music, and we go back and start listening to all the SoundCloud uploads with 0 listens.
  • All the kids at Rock & Roll Camp getting excited about Lofey.
  • Pretending a topic is about one thing when it's actually about something else.
  • Canadian Actor Dave Coulier.
  • Tuesday at 3:01pm.
  • Learning a new chord on your Electric Tenor Guitar.
  • Bringing Pokemon Puzzle League characters into your love song.
  • Having a whole week to dial in that wub wub patch.
  • What art is for and what art should be for.
  • Fun is our only reward.
  • The objective best pitch wheel range.
  • The Funky Worm preset.
  • Synthesizers that can save and load patches but only when plugged into your phone.
  • Coming up with a Rube Goldberg machine to upload patches from a web server to your CZ-5000.
  • thisdx7cartridgedoesnotexist.com
  • In a convex optimization problem, there is no gradient to descend.
  • Fiddling with the synthesizer sliders until you reach a corner of the parameter space that doesn't make any noise and giving up.
  • Camp Counselor Grant hastily drawing all the synthesizer waves on the board.
  • Ask any Geometer, the triangle has three sides. Love triangles are actually just two love segments.
  • The All Topic Fakeouts episode.
  • The gulf between how an artist thinks they're presenting themselves and how they're being received.
  • A Beautiful Rainbow of the Human Experience.
  • Elderly rappers with excellent flow but terrible drip.
  • Piling onto propaganda music.
  • Someone doing their own thing with confidence and authenticity.
  • Graffiti with immaculate copyediting.
  • With improved access to art tools, taste is one of the only things left to get wrong.
  • Only the best crappy music.
  • Promoting your music in r/crappymusic.
  • Tori the Clown Rap Gal.
  • The audacity of extreme autotune.
  • All Youtube thumbnails converging on the same cognitive attention hacks.
  • Singing the comments on your last video.
  • Situations where echo chamber amplification is fun and good for the world.
  • Obscure Music That Slaps.
  • Serbian Kolos.
  • The Ketron Event Chrom.
  • The Nightmare Klaxon that Represents Dread.
  • All the Fairlight CMI presets used in the Terminator 2 soundtrack.
  • Growing up playing samples at every possible speed in Impulse Tracker.
  • Slowly sucking dog food out of a can to simulate the sound of a mimetic polyalloy passing through steel bars.
  • It's been a long day and you're ready to go home but you need to slam 1000 more inverted glasses into bowls of yogurt, let's hurry it up guys.
  • That one sample library squeaking metal door sound that everyone uses.
  • Calling out comb filtering whenever you hear someone exhale deeply while sitting down at a desk.
  • The sound guy instructing all the actors when to breathe to minimize comb filtering.
  • Rubber Baby Knopfler Romplers.
  • All the things you are after you die.
  • The purpose of suffering. (So we can write cool poems about it.)
  • Making art about how trauma used to exist.
  • Why wireheading will not solve our problems. (Because everything uses bluetooth now.)
  • Who needs trauma when we have CRISPR?
  • Shepherding noobs.
  • Play Any Video Game Day.
  • Complicated goose controls.
  • Trying to play Portal as your first 3D game.
  • Learning video games vs. learning board games.
  • Trying to get into video game series that don't change.
  • Looking at the screen and/or ants until it coalesces into an image.
  • Video games filled with really gross blood squirt sounds.
  • Jumping on and off of buildings.
  • Playing Breath of the Wild and just collecting mushrooms and herbs.
  • Grass simulation in Breath of the Wild vs. in Horizon Zero Dawn.
  • Putting yourself in the head-space of the protagonist in order to do protagonist stuff.
  • Spelling brunch the secret way.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Is it a Topic or is it Just Banter?
  • Cleaning Lords, Lunch Lords and Cat Lords.
  • Have you heard the good word about the Gaylady?
  • Night Brunch.
  • Wearing your own band's t-shirt.
  • A thing that could happen for a while and then was no longer able to happen.
  • Hi Cindy!
  • Motivating yourself to work harder via self loathing.
  • Feeling the need to act all angsty so that people take you seriously as an artist.
  • A Touch of Grandiosity.
  • How many tracks get uploaded to SoundCloud every day?
  • Continuing to discover music from the 1970s.
  • It's called "Topic Lords," not "Correct Lords."
  • Once it becomes impossible to make new music, and we go back and start listening to all the SoundCloud uploads with 0 listens.
  • All the kids at Rock & Roll Camp getting excited about Lofey.
  • Pretending a topic is about one thing when it's actually about something else.
  • Canadian Actor Dave Coulier.
  • Tuesday at 3:01pm.
  • Learning a new chord on your Electric Tenor Guitar.
  • Bringing Pokemon Puzzle League characters into your love song.
  • Having a whole week to dial in that wub wub patch.
  • What art is for and what art should be for.
  • Fun is our only reward.
  • The objective best pitch wheel range.
  • The Funky Worm preset.
  • Synthesizers that can save and load patches but only when plugged into your phone.
  • Coming up with a Rube Goldberg machine to upload patches from a web server to your CZ-5000.
  • thisdx7cartridgedoesnotexist.com
  • In a convex optimization problem, there is no gradient to descend.
  • Fiddling with the synthesizer sliders until you reach a corner of the parameter space that doesn't make any noise and giving up.
  • Camp Counselor Grant hastily drawing all the synthesizer waves on the board.
  • Ask any Geometer, the triangle has three sides. Love triangles are actually just two love segments.
  • The All Topic Fakeouts episode.
  • The gulf between how an artist thinks they're presenting themselves and how they're being received.
  • A Beautiful Rainbow of the Human Experience.
  • Elderly rappers with excellent flow but terrible drip.
  • Piling onto propaganda music.
  • Someone doing their own thing with confidence and authenticity.
  • Graffiti with immaculate copyediting.
  • With improved access to art tools, taste is one of the only things left to get wrong.
  • Only the best crappy music.
  • Promoting your music in r/crappymusic.
  • Tori the Clown Rap Gal.
  • The audacity of extreme autotune.
  • All Youtube thumbnails converging on the same cognitive attention hacks.
  • Singing the comments on your last video.
  • Situations where echo chamber amplification is fun and good for the world.
  • Obscure Music That Slaps.
  • Serbian Kolos.
  • The Ketron Event Chrom.
  • The Nightmare Klaxon that Represents Dread.
  • All the Fairlight CMI presets used in the Terminator 2 soundtrack.
  • Growing up playing samples at every possible speed in Impulse Tracker.
  • Slowly sucking dog food out of a can to simulate the sound of a mimetic polyalloy passing through steel bars.
  • It's been a long day and you're ready to go home but you need to slam 1000 more inverted glasses into bowls of yogurt, let's hurry it up guys.
  • That one sample library squeaking metal door sound that everyone uses.
  • Calling out comb filtering whenever you hear someone exhale deeply while sitting down at a desk.
  • The sound guy instructing all the actors when to breathe to minimize comb filtering.
  • Rubber Baby Knopfler Romplers.
  • All the things you are after you die.
  • The purpose of suffering. (So we can write cool poems about it.)
  • Making art about how trauma used to exist.
  • Why wireheading will not solve our problems. (Because everything uses bluetooth now.)
  • Who needs trauma when we have CRISPR?
  • Shepherding noobs.
  • Play Any Video Game Day.
  • Complicated goose controls.
  • Trying to play Portal as your first 3D game.
  • Learning video games vs. learning board games.
  • Trying to get into video game series that don't change.
  • Looking at the screen and/or ants until it coalesces into an image.
  • Video games filled with really gross blood squirt sounds.
  • Jumping on and off of buildings.
  • Playing Breath of the Wild and just collecting mushrooms and herbs.
  • Grass simulation in Breath of the Wild vs. in Horizon Zero Dawn.
  • Putting yourself in the head-space of the protagonist in order to do protagonist stuff.
  • Spelling brunch the secret way.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+S5Z9FR2i ]]> Jim Stormdancer 311. Godzilla's Daily Routine https://topiclords.com/godzillas-daily-routine d20415cd-0b75-48a8-9a43-79cd872fe056 Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Fif. We discuss accidentally exploring a bunch of related subjects, the excellent progression system of Blues' Clues ABCs (1995), salty Licorice as the sixth taste, the Cubivore between-level limerick, and having 55,555 names. 1:04:37 true Lords:

  • John
  • Fif

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Modern problems requiring modern solutions.
  • Leaving media behind.
  • Subscribing to PBS Passport via your local PBS affiliate.
  • Running out of media and just watching Peaceful Skeleton Realm Attacked By Helicopter over and over again.
  • Whether the Arctic Circle requires any age verification.
  • What even are Truck Nuts?
  • Why do trucks have such tiny nuts??
  • Watching a movie every day because you're unemployed.
  • I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.
  • Independent used bookstores in the San Diego Area.
  • Used bookstores desperately trying to get rid of math textbooks.
  • The original Topic Lords.
  • Having a lot of knowledge that you can call on in a useful way.
  • Being old and having learned a lot of stuff.
  • Your mom describing your brain as "a bric-a-brac of useless facts."
  • Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
  • Someone who you forget as soon they go out of sight.
  • An SCP from the perspective of the SCP.
  • A really cool interactive fiction scene in France.
  • Rules lawyering your way out of yet another curse.
  • The 17th century demon cursing you to live forever and also that "whenever you send an email people won't be able to read what you wrote, they'll just say 'not more dick pill spam.'"
  • Word-based minigames.
  • The blank was in the sky. Blue had fun with her blank.
  • Making a game for three year olds warning them about insecure pedants on the Internet.
  • What year of our Lord was Bully released?
  • We don't talk about the 2010s.
  • The Milton Bradley Microvision.
  • The game is about cubes eating and fucking.
  • Trying to describe any flavor
  • Blue the Dog.
  • Scandinavian Delicacy Ammonium Chloride.
  • A quest to track down Circus Peanuts.
  • An edible earplug that tastes like fake bananas.
  • Red Vines and Black Red Vines.
  • Being the only grocery store in town that sells licorice and reeling in the only licorice eater in town.
  • That Rotting Shark Dish.
  • The white people equivalent of huitlacoche.
  • The Secret Cowbell.
  • The hip hop community realizing that you can increase the delay on the kick drum and rattle your entire car for several seconds.
  • Tigers can't see the sideshow, only cows can see the sideshow.
  • Piggy Fif.
  • A classic poem about cubes fucking.
  • Checking GameFAQs for a list of poems in Cubivore.
  • Piggy Playername's extremely distinctive manner of speaking.
  • Atlus Beast and Editing Beast.
  • The Cubivore trophy in Super Smash Bros.
  • A genetic progression that you need to do by transmogrifying into a progression of various beasts.
  • Entering a tunnel shaped like a heart and sitting in a flesh colored void until you attract 20 females into your harem.
  • Want to mate? Yes/no.
  • The Cubivore manual with the cutaway diagram of cube physiology.
  • Bully/Cubivore crossover fic.
  • Little Samson.
  • Get good at enjoying video games without being validated by a tiny purple cube, scrub.
  • The file you keep of all the names you'll answer to.
  • Pith, fip, pince, fifth, and fint.
  • People: they have a lot of names.
  • Being diagnosably bad at code switching.
  • Writing a random number of fs as a symbol representing your employee.
  • Choosing to be the banana taped to the wall.
  • Gaming naming.
  • Printing up a deck of constraints for when you're asking people to choose a name for you.
  • Paraeducation.
  • Jobs at The MADE.
  • The Worst Nintendo Store.
  • Teaching game design to young children every Saturday morning.
  • The forefront of the next generation of digital creators.
]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Fif

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Modern problems requiring modern solutions.
  • Leaving media behind.
  • Subscribing to PBS Passport via your local PBS affiliate.
  • Running out of media and just watching Peaceful Skeleton Realm Attacked By Helicopter over and over again.
  • Whether the Arctic Circle requires any age verification.
  • What even are Truck Nuts?
  • Why do trucks have such tiny nuts??
  • Watching a movie every day because you're unemployed.
  • I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.
  • Independent used bookstores in the San Diego Area.
  • Used bookstores desperately trying to get rid of math textbooks.
  • The original Topic Lords.
  • Having a lot of knowledge that you can call on in a useful way.
  • Being old and having learned a lot of stuff.
  • Your mom describing your brain as "a bric-a-brac of useless facts."
  • Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
  • Someone who you forget as soon they go out of sight.
  • An SCP from the perspective of the SCP.
  • A really cool interactive fiction scene in France.
  • Rules lawyering your way out of yet another curse.
  • The 17th century demon cursing you to live forever and also that "whenever you send an email people won't be able to read what you wrote, they'll just say 'not more dick pill spam.'"
  • Word-based minigames.
  • The blank was in the sky. Blue had fun with her blank.
  • Making a game for three year olds warning them about insecure pedants on the Internet.
  • What year of our Lord was Bully released?
  • We don't talk about the 2010s.
  • The Milton Bradley Microvision.
  • The game is about cubes eating and fucking.
  • Trying to describe any flavor
  • Blue the Dog.
  • Scandinavian Delicacy Ammonium Chloride.
  • A quest to track down Circus Peanuts.
  • An edible earplug that tastes like fake bananas.
  • Red Vines and Black Red Vines.
  • Being the only grocery store in town that sells licorice and reeling in the only licorice eater in town.
  • That Rotting Shark Dish.
  • The white people equivalent of huitlacoche.
  • The Secret Cowbell.
  • The hip hop community realizing that you can increase the delay on the kick drum and rattle your entire car for several seconds.
  • Tigers can't see the sideshow, only cows can see the sideshow.
  • Piggy Fif.
  • A classic poem about cubes fucking.
  • Checking GameFAQs for a list of poems in Cubivore.
  • Piggy Playername's extremely distinctive manner of speaking.
  • Atlus Beast and Editing Beast.
  • The Cubivore trophy in Super Smash Bros.
  • A genetic progression that you need to do by transmogrifying into a progression of various beasts.
  • Entering a tunnel shaped like a heart and sitting in a flesh colored void until you attract 20 females into your harem.
  • Want to mate? Yes/no.
  • The Cubivore manual with the cutaway diagram of cube physiology.
  • Bully/Cubivore crossover fic.
  • Little Samson.
  • Get good at enjoying video games without being validated by a tiny purple cube, scrub.
  • The file you keep of all the names you'll answer to.
  • Pith, fip, pince, fifth, and fint.
  • People: they have a lot of names.
  • Being diagnosably bad at code switching.
  • Writing a random number of fs as a symbol representing your employee.
  • Choosing to be the banana taped to the wall.
  • Gaming naming.
  • Printing up a deck of constraints for when you're asking people to choose a name for you.
  • Paraeducation.
  • Jobs at The MADE.
  • The Worst Nintendo Store.
  • Teaching game design to young children every Saturday morning.
  • The forefront of the next generation of digital creators.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Fif

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Modern problems requiring modern solutions.
  • Leaving media behind.
  • Subscribing to PBS Passport via your local PBS affiliate.
  • Running out of media and just watching Peaceful Skeleton Realm Attacked By Helicopter over and over again.
  • Whether the Arctic Circle requires any age verification.
  • What even are Truck Nuts?
  • Why do trucks have such tiny nuts??
  • Watching a movie every day because you're unemployed.
  • I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.
  • Independent used bookstores in the San Diego Area.
  • Used bookstores desperately trying to get rid of math textbooks.
  • The original Topic Lords.
  • Having a lot of knowledge that you can call on in a useful way.
  • Being old and having learned a lot of stuff.
  • Your mom describing your brain as "a bric-a-brac of useless facts."
  • Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
  • Someone who you forget as soon they go out of sight.
  • An SCP from the perspective of the SCP.
  • A really cool interactive fiction scene in France.
  • Rules lawyering your way out of yet another curse.
  • The 17th century demon cursing you to live forever and also that "whenever you send an email people won't be able to read what you wrote, they'll just say 'not more dick pill spam.'"
  • Word-based minigames.
  • The blank was in the sky. Blue had fun with her blank.
  • Making a game for three year olds warning them about insecure pedants on the Internet.
  • What year of our Lord was Bully released?
  • We don't talk about the 2010s.
  • The Milton Bradley Microvision.
  • The game is about cubes eating and fucking.
  • Trying to describe any flavor
  • Blue the Dog.
  • Scandinavian Delicacy Ammonium Chloride.
  • A quest to track down Circus Peanuts.
  • An edible earplug that tastes like fake bananas.
  • Red Vines and Black Red Vines.
  • Being the only grocery store in town that sells licorice and reeling in the only licorice eater in town.
  • That Rotting Shark Dish.
  • The white people equivalent of huitlacoche.
  • The Secret Cowbell.
  • The hip hop community realizing that you can increase the delay on the kick drum and rattle your entire car for several seconds.
  • Tigers can't see the sideshow, only cows can see the sideshow.
  • Piggy Fif.
  • A classic poem about cubes fucking.
  • Checking GameFAQs for a list of poems in Cubivore.
  • Piggy Playername's extremely distinctive manner of speaking.
  • Atlus Beast and Editing Beast.
  • The Cubivore trophy in Super Smash Bros.
  • A genetic progression that you need to do by transmogrifying into a progression of various beasts.
  • Entering a tunnel shaped like a heart and sitting in a flesh colored void until you attract 20 females into your harem.
  • Want to mate? Yes/no.
  • The Cubivore manual with the cutaway diagram of cube physiology.
  • Bully/Cubivore crossover fic.
  • Little Samson.
  • Get good at enjoying video games without being validated by a tiny purple cube, scrub.
  • The file you keep of all the names you'll answer to.
  • Pith, fip, pince, fifth, and fint.
  • People: they have a lot of names.
  • Being diagnosably bad at code switching.
  • Writing a random number of fs as a symbol representing your employee.
  • Choosing to be the banana taped to the wall.
  • Gaming naming.
  • Printing up a deck of constraints for when you're asking people to choose a name for you.
  • Paraeducation.
  • Jobs at The MADE.
  • The Worst Nintendo Store.
  • Teaching game design to young children every Saturday morning.
  • The forefront of the next generation of digital creators.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+03cPpUfo ]]> Jim Stormdancer 310. Dance Like the Universe Is an Empty Wasteland https://topiclords.com/dance-like-the-universe-is-an-empty-wasteland 9b282781-a275-426a-a768-cf7a202b8292 Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Kev. We discuss floaty movement in games, giving people clutter they can't throw away, debunking Dunning Kruger, With or Without Witnesses, the instinct to not swing a heavy object at somebody, and Japanese curry. 1:03:15 true Lords

  • Alexander
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Humble Screw.
  • What it might take to be good at hammering nails.
  • Fingerbashing.
  • An inclined plane that goes around in a circle.
  • Metric Rules Football.
  • Whether a state machine is the same kind of thing as a wedge.
  • Clockwork Maiden.
  • Speedrunning, cleaning and dating.
  • Floaty movement.
  • The JPEG artifact of physics simulation.
  • How to Unit Test a video game.
  • Using MIDI knobs to tune your game's physics.
  • Game Oriented Assembly Lisp.
  • Hot Reloading Workflow.
  • Why Naughty Dog stopped using Lisp.
  • Just going about your life when suddenly you have to use Perl for something.
  • Peak Node.JS/SAAS years.
  • Walk/run/sprint transition speed.
  • Getting an special drink for your guys.
  • Medieval style calligraphy.
  • Gifting someone with a burden for the rest of their lives.
  • Pouring rocks into your dad's pocket because that's where you keep your rocks.
  • The kitten going to sleep behind your laptop because it's warm back there.
  • Here's how someone in the 14th century would've written these words.
  • How to say "fuck around and find out" in medieval Latin.
  • Writing a meme in 14th century Blackletter Hand.
  • Sans-serif calligraphy.
  • The ancient Greeks trying to invent ASCII art but they couldn't close the deal.
  • Letters placed inside other letters.
  • Autocorrelation.
  • Figures 8 and 9.
  • Coming out of discussion the topic with a better understanding of the topic.
  • Using a bird feather to write.
  • Knowledge that we used to have and now have again.
  • Learning to Topic Lords while doing home improvement stuff.
  • Scrapping your fragile human body to merge with the machines.
  • Rainbows in Space.
  • Suns going around in circles regardless of whether anyone's looking.
  • A semi-conscious little robot dude.
  • Calling the Qualia Function.
  • A real messed-up looking machine cat.
  • Communicating the story solely via flavor text on mana dorks.
  • A squadron of little kids waving wooden swords at each other.
  • How do you turn sword fighting into something you can do in a video game?
  • East Bay Rat Motorcycle Club Flight Nights.
  • Situations where they ask if you want a mouth guard.
  • Asking the ref at the boxing match what the etiquette is for tapping out.
  • The crowd roaring when they realize you're a southpaw.
  • Punching a guy you just met three seconds ago.
  • Did you end up cutting that girl's head off?
  • Renaissance MMA.
  • That Awkward Sparring Feeling.
  • A simulacrum of kicking each other in the face.
  • Getting a part-time job at your favorite curry shop so you can learn the recipe.
  • What part of curry is the curry?
  • The curry you eat so you don't die.
  • Emperor Riding a Dragon to the Forbidden Palace.
  • The advantage of a burger as a fast food staple.
  • How to make curry convenient.
  • Rendang.
  • Dry curry.
  • Joining a discord and asking "what are all these users for??"
  • Which user is which lord on which episode?
]]> Lords

  • Alexander
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Humble Screw.
  • What it might take to be good at hammering nails.
  • Fingerbashing.
  • An inclined plane that goes around in a circle.
  • Metric Rules Football.
  • Whether a state machine is the same kind of thing as a wedge.
  • Clockwork Maiden.
  • Speedrunning, cleaning and dating.
  • Floaty movement.
  • The JPEG artifact of physics simulation.
  • How to Unit Test a video game.
  • Using MIDI knobs to tune your game's physics.
  • Game Oriented Assembly Lisp.
  • Hot Reloading Workflow.
  • Why Naughty Dog stopped using Lisp.
  • Just going about your life when suddenly you have to use Perl for something.
  • Peak Node.JS/SAAS years.
  • Walk/run/sprint transition speed.
  • Getting an special drink for your guys.
  • Medieval style calligraphy.
  • Gifting someone with a burden for the rest of their lives.
  • Pouring rocks into your dad's pocket because that's where you keep your rocks.
  • The kitten going to sleep behind your laptop because it's warm back there.
  • Here's how someone in the 14th century would've written these words.
  • How to say "fuck around and find out" in medieval Latin.
  • Writing a meme in 14th century Blackletter Hand.
  • Sans-serif calligraphy.
  • The ancient Greeks trying to invent ASCII art but they couldn't close the deal.
  • Letters placed inside other letters.
  • Autocorrelation.
  • Figures 8 and 9.
  • Coming out of discussion the topic with a better understanding of the topic.
  • Using a bird feather to write.
  • Knowledge that we used to have and now have again.
  • Learning to Topic Lords while doing home improvement stuff.
  • Scrapping your fragile human body to merge with the machines.
  • Rainbows in Space.
  • Suns going around in circles regardless of whether anyone's looking.
  • A semi-conscious little robot dude.
  • Calling the Qualia Function.
  • A real messed-up looking machine cat.
  • Communicating the story solely via flavor text on mana dorks.
  • A squadron of little kids waving wooden swords at each other.
  • How do you turn sword fighting into something you can do in a video game?
  • East Bay Rat Motorcycle Club Flight Nights.
  • Situations where they ask if you want a mouth guard.
  • Asking the ref at the boxing match what the etiquette is for tapping out.
  • The crowd roaring when they realize you're a southpaw.
  • Punching a guy you just met three seconds ago.
  • Did you end up cutting that girl's head off?
  • Renaissance MMA.
  • That Awkward Sparring Feeling.
  • A simulacrum of kicking each other in the face.
  • Getting a part-time job at your favorite curry shop so you can learn the recipe.
  • What part of curry is the curry?
  • The curry you eat so you don't die.
  • Emperor Riding a Dragon to the Forbidden Palace.
  • The advantage of a burger as a fast food staple.
  • How to make curry convenient.
  • Rendang.
  • Dry curry.
  • Joining a discord and asking "what are all these users for??"
  • Which user is which lord on which episode?

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

  • Alexander
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Humble Screw.
  • What it might take to be good at hammering nails.
  • Fingerbashing.
  • An inclined plane that goes around in a circle.
  • Metric Rules Football.
  • Whether a state machine is the same kind of thing as a wedge.
  • Clockwork Maiden.
  • Speedrunning, cleaning and dating.
  • Floaty movement.
  • The JPEG artifact of physics simulation.
  • How to Unit Test a video game.
  • Using MIDI knobs to tune your game's physics.
  • Game Oriented Assembly Lisp.
  • Hot Reloading Workflow.
  • Why Naughty Dog stopped using Lisp.
  • Just going about your life when suddenly you have to use Perl for something.
  • Peak Node.JS/SAAS years.
  • Walk/run/sprint transition speed.
  • Getting an special drink for your guys.
  • Medieval style calligraphy.
  • Gifting someone with a burden for the rest of their lives.
  • Pouring rocks into your dad's pocket because that's where you keep your rocks.
  • The kitten going to sleep behind your laptop because it's warm back there.
  • Here's how someone in the 14th century would've written these words.
  • How to say "fuck around and find out" in medieval Latin.
  • Writing a meme in 14th century Blackletter Hand.
  • Sans-serif calligraphy.
  • The ancient Greeks trying to invent ASCII art but they couldn't close the deal.
  • Letters placed inside other letters.
  • Autocorrelation.
  • Figures 8 and 9.
  • Coming out of discussion the topic with a better understanding of the topic.
  • Using a bird feather to write.
  • Knowledge that we used to have and now have again.
  • Learning to Topic Lords while doing home improvement stuff.
  • Scrapping your fragile human body to merge with the machines.
  • Rainbows in Space.
  • Suns going around in circles regardless of whether anyone's looking.
  • A semi-conscious little robot dude.
  • Calling the Qualia Function.
  • A real messed-up looking machine cat.
  • Communicating the story solely via flavor text on mana dorks.
  • A squadron of little kids waving wooden swords at each other.
  • How do you turn sword fighting into something you can do in a video game?
  • East Bay Rat Motorcycle Club Flight Nights.
  • Situations where they ask if you want a mouth guard.
  • Asking the ref at the boxing match what the etiquette is for tapping out.
  • The crowd roaring when they realize you're a southpaw.
  • Punching a guy you just met three seconds ago.
  • Did you end up cutting that girl's head off?
  • Renaissance MMA.
  • That Awkward Sparring Feeling.
  • A simulacrum of kicking each other in the face.
  • Getting a part-time job at your favorite curry shop so you can learn the recipe.
  • What part of curry is the curry?
  • The curry you eat so you don't die.
  • Emperor Riding a Dragon to the Forbidden Palace.
  • The advantage of a burger as a fast food staple.
  • How to make curry convenient.
  • Rendang.
  • Dry curry.
  • Joining a discord and asking "what are all these users for??"
  • Which user is which lord on which episode?

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RK5RER5C ]]> Jim Stormdancer 309. Shaking Ass to Music for Airports https://topiclords.com/shaking-ass-to-music-for-airports 118fdf7b-e3ae-4839-bc45-28e059417620 Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Megan and Austin. We discussed going for very long walks, "elevated" horror, Every 5x5 Nonogram Section 303, NPC Dialog Test by Nintendo Europe, breakfast dogma, and not wanting to make shitpost music because people might like it more than your regular music. 1:12:22 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Going for a super long walk is amazing
  • "Elevated" horror is a sham
  • I was there when Every 5x5 Nonogram section 303 finished
  • NPC Dialog Test by Nintendo Europe #NintendoEurope
  • My breakfast dogma
  • Not bringing my shitpost music/mashup ideas to life because I'm afraid they'll be more popular than my actual music

Microtopics:

  • Music for films and video games.
  • The Paper Labyrinths theme.
  • Feeding your cats and yourself.
  • Exercising, drinking water, you know, all of the worst things.
  • Explaining to the doctor that you're depressed and he asks if you've been eating well and exercising and you say "no, because I've been depressed."
  • Turning 35 and becoming interested in birds.
  • Shazam for birds.
  • Birdpilled and Avianmaxxing.
  • Taking the L in Chicago and eating Dick's in Seattle.
  • Cream cheese on a hot dog.
  • The late Chicago on a Bun.
  • Regional food that you get outside of the region.
  • St. Louis style barbecue.
  • Ordering Jack in the Box at 1am and regretting it immediately because you are in your 30s.
  • Eating a spicy chicken sandwich in the prime gremlin hours.
  • Feeling bad because you ate bad.
  • Forty years later, thinking "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all that White Castle"
  • The kind of person who would call himself a genius.
  • Sometimes it's fun to be goofy and have fun.
  • Horror movies vs. anxiety movies.
  • Media imbibers.
  • The film critic opinions of your Trekkie mom.
  • The high audience score, low critic score, and vice versa.
  • Applauding a huge pile of garbage.
  • Whether anyone ever self-applied the "IDM" genre.
  • The Oscar Genre.
  • Very good movies nominated for Oscars.
  • Braindance.
  • Cringe (Derogatory)
  • The only good form of multiplayer.
  • One of the hominids that watched a different great ape figure out fire.
  • What happens when they run out of nonograms?
  • Morons welcome!
  • Twitch plays Every 5x5 Nonogram.
  • Twitch plays Dark Souls never getting out of that pool of water in the tutorial area.
  • Every star going out at the same time.
  • In the short run, everyone will be fine.
  • Getting bored of your death anxiety.
  • Life is meaningless and nothing matters and that rules actually.
  • Extremely sensible anxieties.
  • Setting an alarm to periodically tell your friend that you're not annoying and I don't hate you.
  • Whether everyone should be afraid of heights.
  • A database of all the kinds of movements a rollercoaster can make so you can search for the types you like.
  • Do you ever get thirsty? Studies say people with ADHD need to drink water.
  • Taking a drug test at your job and worrying that the test people will notice that you're dehydrated.
  • The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in all caps.
  • Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD.
  • There really are castles in the eyes of people see them.
  • Role-playing the skeleton of Ben Shapiro in a D&D campaign.
  • What's the difference between being an asshole and role playing an asshole?
  • The 'shopkeepers are not copyeditors" apostrophe.
  • Eating your breakfast burrito over the counter.
  • Things that people say are good for your mental health.
  • Anxiety medication that gives you terrible nightmares.
  • Your anxiety meds making you feel okay about the zombie apocalypse.
  • Revenge bedtime procrastination.
  • The kidnapping advice episode. (FBI don't listen to this one.)
  • Kids are funny. (Just trust us.)
  • Playing in a band with your best friend for fifteen years.
  • Kids: they're sticky everywhere.
  • Never making any shitposts because someone might like them better than your regular art.
  • Receiving a series of increasingly aggressive answering machine messages from the piece of public art across the street from your apartment.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Going for a super long walk is amazing
  • "Elevated" horror is a sham
  • I was there when Every 5x5 Nonogram section 303 finished
  • NPC Dialog Test by Nintendo Europe #NintendoEurope
  • My breakfast dogma
  • Not bringing my shitpost music/mashup ideas to life because I'm afraid they'll be more popular than my actual music

Microtopics:

  • Music for films and video games.
  • The Paper Labyrinths theme.
  • Feeding your cats and yourself.
  • Exercising, drinking water, you know, all of the worst things.
  • Explaining to the doctor that you're depressed and he asks if you've been eating well and exercising and you say "no, because I've been depressed."
  • Turning 35 and becoming interested in birds.
  • Shazam for birds.
  • Birdpilled and Avianmaxxing.
  • Taking the L in Chicago and eating Dick's in Seattle.
  • Cream cheese on a hot dog.
  • The late Chicago on a Bun.
  • Regional food that you get outside of the region.
  • St. Louis style barbecue.
  • Ordering Jack in the Box at 1am and regretting it immediately because you are in your 30s.
  • Eating a spicy chicken sandwich in the prime gremlin hours.
  • Feeling bad because you ate bad.
  • Forty years later, thinking "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all that White Castle"
  • The kind of person who would call himself a genius.
  • Sometimes it's fun to be goofy and have fun.
  • Horror movies vs. anxiety movies.
  • Media imbibers.
  • The film critic opinions of your Trekkie mom.
  • The high audience score, low critic score, and vice versa.
  • Applauding a huge pile of garbage.
  • Whether anyone ever self-applied the "IDM" genre.
  • The Oscar Genre.
  • Very good movies nominated for Oscars.
  • Braindance.
  • Cringe (Derogatory)
  • The only good form of multiplayer.
  • One of the hominids that watched a different great ape figure out fire.
  • What happens when they run out of nonograms?
  • Morons welcome!
  • Twitch plays Every 5x5 Nonogram.
  • Twitch plays Dark Souls never getting out of that pool of water in the tutorial area.
  • Every star going out at the same time.
  • In the short run, everyone will be fine.
  • Getting bored of your death anxiety.
  • Life is meaningless and nothing matters and that rules actually.
  • Extremely sensible anxieties.
  • Setting an alarm to periodically tell your friend that you're not annoying and I don't hate you.
  • Whether everyone should be afraid of heights.
  • A database of all the kinds of movements a rollercoaster can make so you can search for the types you like.
  • Do you ever get thirsty? Studies say people with ADHD need to drink water.
  • Taking a drug test at your job and worrying that the test people will notice that you're dehydrated.
  • The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in all caps.
  • Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD.
  • There really are castles in the eyes of people see them.
  • Role-playing the skeleton of Ben Shapiro in a D&D campaign.
  • What's the difference between being an asshole and role playing an asshole?
  • The 'shopkeepers are not copyeditors" apostrophe.
  • Eating your breakfast burrito over the counter.
  • Things that people say are good for your mental health.
  • Anxiety medication that gives you terrible nightmares.
  • Your anxiety meds making you feel okay about the zombie apocalypse.
  • Revenge bedtime procrastination.
  • The kidnapping advice episode. (FBI don't listen to this one.)
  • Kids are funny. (Just trust us.)
  • Playing in a band with your best friend for fifteen years.
  • Kids: they're sticky everywhere.
  • Never making any shitposts because someone might like them better than your regular art.
  • Receiving a series of increasingly aggressive answering machine messages from the piece of public art across the street from your apartment.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Going for a super long walk is amazing
  • "Elevated" horror is a sham
  • I was there when Every 5x5 Nonogram section 303 finished
  • NPC Dialog Test by Nintendo Europe #NintendoEurope
  • My breakfast dogma
  • Not bringing my shitpost music/mashup ideas to life because I'm afraid they'll be more popular than my actual music

Microtopics:

  • Music for films and video games.
  • The Paper Labyrinths theme.
  • Feeding your cats and yourself.
  • Exercising, drinking water, you know, all of the worst things.
  • Explaining to the doctor that you're depressed and he asks if you've been eating well and exercising and you say "no, because I've been depressed."
  • Turning 35 and becoming interested in birds.
  • Shazam for birds.
  • Birdpilled and Avianmaxxing.
  • Taking the L in Chicago and eating Dick's in Seattle.
  • Cream cheese on a hot dog.
  • The late Chicago on a Bun.
  • Regional food that you get outside of the region.
  • St. Louis style barbecue.
  • Ordering Jack in the Box at 1am and regretting it immediately because you are in your 30s.
  • Eating a spicy chicken sandwich in the prime gremlin hours.
  • Feeling bad because you ate bad.
  • Forty years later, thinking "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all that White Castle"
  • The kind of person who would call himself a genius.
  • Sometimes it's fun to be goofy and have fun.
  • Horror movies vs. anxiety movies.
  • Media imbibers.
  • The film critic opinions of your Trekkie mom.
  • The high audience score, low critic score, and vice versa.
  • Applauding a huge pile of garbage.
  • Whether anyone ever self-applied the "IDM" genre.
  • The Oscar Genre.
  • Very good movies nominated for Oscars.
  • Braindance.
  • Cringe (Derogatory)
  • The only good form of multiplayer.
  • One of the hominids that watched a different great ape figure out fire.
  • What happens when they run out of nonograms?
  • Morons welcome!
  • Twitch plays Every 5x5 Nonogram.
  • Twitch plays Dark Souls never getting out of that pool of water in the tutorial area.
  • Every star going out at the same time.
  • In the short run, everyone will be fine.
  • Getting bored of your death anxiety.
  • Life is meaningless and nothing matters and that rules actually.
  • Extremely sensible anxieties.
  • Setting an alarm to periodically tell your friend that you're not annoying and I don't hate you.
  • Whether everyone should be afraid of heights.
  • A database of all the kinds of movements a rollercoaster can make so you can search for the types you like.
  • Do you ever get thirsty? Studies say people with ADHD need to drink water.
  • Taking a drug test at your job and worrying that the test people will notice that you're dehydrated.
  • The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in all caps.
  • Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD.
  • There really are castles in the eyes of people see them.
  • Role-playing the skeleton of Ben Shapiro in a D&D campaign.
  • What's the difference between being an asshole and role playing an asshole?
  • The 'shopkeepers are not copyeditors" apostrophe.
  • Eating your breakfast burrito over the counter.
  • Things that people say are good for your mental health.
  • Anxiety medication that gives you terrible nightmares.
  • Your anxiety meds making you feel okay about the zombie apocalypse.
  • Revenge bedtime procrastination.
  • The kidnapping advice episode. (FBI don't listen to this one.)
  • Kids are funny. (Just trust us.)
  • Playing in a band with your best friend for fifteen years.
  • Kids: they're sticky everywhere.
  • Never making any shitposts because someone might like them better than your regular art.
  • Receiving a series of increasingly aggressive answering machine messages from the piece of public art across the street from your apartment.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+VrryzQa8 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 308. A Xylophone for Jandek https://topiclords.com/a-xylophone-for-jandek 8ab8a077-9592-4344-a13f-72d7aac5bca3 Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John, Avery, Jay. We discuss being known for one thing and trying to do a different thing, finding instruments on the street, and accidentally arguing with sauna guy. 1:08:34 true Lords:

  • John
  • Avery
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Many-Time Topic Lord John Mystery.
  • Talking the plunge into the Topic Lords discord.
  • An unspoken constant presence like Seymour Glass in the Glass Family novels.
  • The Once and Future Musician.
  • Putting a formant filter on your organ so you can play the organ on Zoom.
  • Why pouring hot water sounds different from pouring cold water.
  • The sound of boiling hot urine.
  • The top rated coffee shop in San Francisco on Yelp for seven months in a row.
  • Remaining your coffee shop after Mark Zuckerberg in hopes that he'll show up in person.
  • Trying to open up a coffee shop in late 90s San Francisco and only realizing too late that it's 2016.
  • ADA compliant seating.
  • Four-person episodes of Topic Lords.
  • A 6'5" guy trying to barter a half-used spray paint can for a cup of coffee.
  • The Menacing Barterer.
  • Aggressive Wimpy gladly paying you tomorrow for a hamburger today or else.
  • Aggressive Wimpy throwing a shoe at your espresso machine.
  • Your car accidentally becoming an art car.
  • Letting people spray paint your car until it's nothing but spray paint.
  • Calling 911 and explaining that the guy menacing you needs marijuana.
  • Being detained by Mark Zuckerberg's private security force.
  • Living near Mark Zuckerberg's house so you can do whatever your fixation with Mark Zuckerberg is.
  • Aggressive Barter Guy trying to barter a Porsche for a cup of coffee.
  • The $6 Porsche.
  • Tholen or Tholen.
  • A prog album constructed from Klik n Play samples.
  • When someone who does I've things decides to do something else.
  • The Mountain Goats novelizations.
  • Leonard Cohen's terrible poetry.
  • Thinking a song is deeply meaningful until you read the lyrics.
  • New Active Object.
  • Lunch Music.
  • Doing a thing for a long time and getting good at it.
  • Who has time to read a novel?
  • Having Game Boys Advance but still reading books sometimes.
  • Telling your teacher that you need to go to your job at NASA and they're like "oh you must be doing something important over there"
  • Working in the waterslide industry.
  • The Joy of Being the Secrets Guy.
  • Reading too much into it is the next Frog Fractions game.
  • Admitting to your wife that you found a digital piano on the curb.
  • The digital piano in the background of the Frog Fractions 2 pitch video.
  • Walking by a theremin at a party and it chirps at you like a proximity car alarm.
  • The Moog Etherwave.
  • Staring at your broken Omnichord.
  • A toddler whose first word is "mandolin."
  • Living Out Yonder.
  • The Roland Space Echo.
  • A cassette tape except there isn't any cassette, the tape is just kind of wriggling around in there.
  • Buying synthesizers from thrift shops that don't know how to tell whether synthesizers are broken.
  • The Two Organs Behind Me.
  • Ukelins.
  • Zither-esques.
  • Dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Looping your song and picking the notes that kind of sound like they belong.
  • A Xylophone For Jandek.
  • Feeling like you're taking to extremely accomplished people and you're just a weird little guy.
  • Who Is Sauna Guy??
  • Stuck debating sauna guy while the venerated author with similar interests to yours is holding court in the next room.
  • Physics Philosophy guy talking about physics and philosophy.
  • An hour into the conversation, telling Sauna Guy that you don't even like being warm and he just stares at you.
  • The new way to joke about forum URLs.
  • Back when the Internet was full of exciting possibilities.
  • What topics turn you into Sauna Guy.
  • David Byrne sitting alone at the David Byrne art exhibit in Palo Alto.
  • We're All Sauna Guy Now.
  • Voting each other off the podcast.
  • Lightning round sudden death topics.
  • When the sunscreen finally makes it onto your cornea.
  • Not having a home page again but meaning to someday.
]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Avery
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Many-Time Topic Lord John Mystery.
  • Talking the plunge into the Topic Lords discord.
  • An unspoken constant presence like Seymour Glass in the Glass Family novels.
  • The Once and Future Musician.
  • Putting a formant filter on your organ so you can play the organ on Zoom.
  • Why pouring hot water sounds different from pouring cold water.
  • The sound of boiling hot urine.
  • The top rated coffee shop in San Francisco on Yelp for seven months in a row.
  • Remaining your coffee shop after Mark Zuckerberg in hopes that he'll show up in person.
  • Trying to open up a coffee shop in late 90s San Francisco and only realizing too late that it's 2016.
  • ADA compliant seating.
  • Four-person episodes of Topic Lords.
  • A 6'5" guy trying to barter a half-used spray paint can for a cup of coffee.
  • The Menacing Barterer.
  • Aggressive Wimpy gladly paying you tomorrow for a hamburger today or else.
  • Aggressive Wimpy throwing a shoe at your espresso machine.
  • Your car accidentally becoming an art car.
  • Letting people spray paint your car until it's nothing but spray paint.
  • Calling 911 and explaining that the guy menacing you needs marijuana.
  • Being detained by Mark Zuckerberg's private security force.
  • Living near Mark Zuckerberg's house so you can do whatever your fixation with Mark Zuckerberg is.
  • Aggressive Barter Guy trying to barter a Porsche for a cup of coffee.
  • The $6 Porsche.
  • Tholen or Tholen.
  • A prog album constructed from Klik n Play samples.
  • When someone who does I've things decides to do something else.
  • The Mountain Goats novelizations.
  • Leonard Cohen's terrible poetry.
  • Thinking a song is deeply meaningful until you read the lyrics.
  • New Active Object.
  • Lunch Music.
  • Doing a thing for a long time and getting good at it.
  • Who has time to read a novel?
  • Having Game Boys Advance but still reading books sometimes.
  • Telling your teacher that you need to go to your job at NASA and they're like "oh you must be doing something important over there"
  • Working in the waterslide industry.
  • The Joy of Being the Secrets Guy.
  • Reading too much into it is the next Frog Fractions game.
  • Admitting to your wife that you found a digital piano on the curb.
  • The digital piano in the background of the Frog Fractions 2 pitch video.
  • Walking by a theremin at a party and it chirps at you like a proximity car alarm.
  • The Moog Etherwave.
  • Staring at your broken Omnichord.
  • A toddler whose first word is "mandolin."
  • Living Out Yonder.
  • The Roland Space Echo.
  • A cassette tape except there isn't any cassette, the tape is just kind of wriggling around in there.
  • Buying synthesizers from thrift shops that don't know how to tell whether synthesizers are broken.
  • The Two Organs Behind Me.
  • Ukelins.
  • Zither-esques.
  • Dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Looping your song and picking the notes that kind of sound like they belong.
  • A Xylophone For Jandek.
  • Feeling like you're taking to extremely accomplished people and you're just a weird little guy.
  • Who Is Sauna Guy??
  • Stuck debating sauna guy while the venerated author with similar interests to yours is holding court in the next room.
  • Physics Philosophy guy talking about physics and philosophy.
  • An hour into the conversation, telling Sauna Guy that you don't even like being warm and he just stares at you.
  • The new way to joke about forum URLs.
  • Back when the Internet was full of exciting possibilities.
  • What topics turn you into Sauna Guy.
  • David Byrne sitting alone at the David Byrne art exhibit in Palo Alto.
  • We're All Sauna Guy Now.
  • Voting each other off the podcast.
  • Lightning round sudden death topics.
  • When the sunscreen finally makes it onto your cornea.
  • Not having a home page again but meaning to someday.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Avery
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Many-Time Topic Lord John Mystery.
  • Talking the plunge into the Topic Lords discord.
  • An unspoken constant presence like Seymour Glass in the Glass Family novels.
  • The Once and Future Musician.
  • Putting a formant filter on your organ so you can play the organ on Zoom.
  • Why pouring hot water sounds different from pouring cold water.
  • The sound of boiling hot urine.
  • The top rated coffee shop in San Francisco on Yelp for seven months in a row.
  • Remaining your coffee shop after Mark Zuckerberg in hopes that he'll show up in person.
  • Trying to open up a coffee shop in late 90s San Francisco and only realizing too late that it's 2016.
  • ADA compliant seating.
  • Four-person episodes of Topic Lords.
  • A 6'5" guy trying to barter a half-used spray paint can for a cup of coffee.
  • The Menacing Barterer.
  • Aggressive Wimpy gladly paying you tomorrow for a hamburger today or else.
  • Aggressive Wimpy throwing a shoe at your espresso machine.
  • Your car accidentally becoming an art car.
  • Letting people spray paint your car until it's nothing but spray paint.
  • Calling 911 and explaining that the guy menacing you needs marijuana.
  • Being detained by Mark Zuckerberg's private security force.
  • Living near Mark Zuckerberg's house so you can do whatever your fixation with Mark Zuckerberg is.
  • Aggressive Barter Guy trying to barter a Porsche for a cup of coffee.
  • The $6 Porsche.
  • Tholen or Tholen.
  • A prog album constructed from Klik n Play samples.
  • When someone who does I've things decides to do something else.
  • The Mountain Goats novelizations.
  • Leonard Cohen's terrible poetry.
  • Thinking a song is deeply meaningful until you read the lyrics.
  • New Active Object.
  • Lunch Music.
  • Doing a thing for a long time and getting good at it.
  • Who has time to read a novel?
  • Having Game Boys Advance but still reading books sometimes.
  • Telling your teacher that you need to go to your job at NASA and they're like "oh you must be doing something important over there"
  • Working in the waterslide industry.
  • The Joy of Being the Secrets Guy.
  • Reading too much into it is the next Frog Fractions game.
  • Admitting to your wife that you found a digital piano on the curb.
  • The digital piano in the background of the Frog Fractions 2 pitch video.
  • Walking by a theremin at a party and it chirps at you like a proximity car alarm.
  • The Moog Etherwave.
  • Staring at your broken Omnichord.
  • A toddler whose first word is "mandolin."
  • Living Out Yonder.
  • The Roland Space Echo.
  • A cassette tape except there isn't any cassette, the tape is just kind of wriggling around in there.
  • Buying synthesizers from thrift shops that don't know how to tell whether synthesizers are broken.
  • The Two Organs Behind Me.
  • Ukelins.
  • Zither-esques.
  • Dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Looping your song and picking the notes that kind of sound like they belong.
  • A Xylophone For Jandek.
  • Feeling like you're taking to extremely accomplished people and you're just a weird little guy.
  • Who Is Sauna Guy??
  • Stuck debating sauna guy while the venerated author with similar interests to yours is holding court in the next room.
  • Physics Philosophy guy talking about physics and philosophy.
  • An hour into the conversation, telling Sauna Guy that you don't even like being warm and he just stares at you.
  • The new way to joke about forum URLs.
  • Back when the Internet was full of exciting possibilities.
  • What topics turn you into Sauna Guy.
  • David Byrne sitting alone at the David Byrne art exhibit in Palo Alto.
  • We're All Sauna Guy Now.
  • Voting each other off the podcast.
  • Lightning round sudden death topics.
  • When the sunscreen finally makes it onto your cornea.
  • Not having a home page again but meaning to someday.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ERPe8q-H ]]> Jim Stormdancer 308B. Oops, All Microtopics! https://topiclords.com/oops-all-microtopics 0f60c5af-00fd-4aee-9709-7a906880c83c Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer This is the pre-show banter and topic negotiation from episode 308, recorded and edited basically by accident?? Enjoy?? 28:17 true This is the pre-show planning and banter for episode 308, recorded and edited basically by accident?? Enjoy??

Microtopics:

  • The old saw that if the teacher is 15 minutes late, you are excused.
  • All the hosts forgetting about the podcast so that episode just doesn't get recorded.
  • The seam in the fish video.
  • Procedurally vs. manually textured terrain.
  • How to texture a limestone chunk.
  • Whether Donkey Kong Bananza is deliberately evoking the sickly sheen of Donkey Kong Country's raytraced art.
  • Procedurally decorating terrain in Techtonica.
  • A lens flare shaped like bananas.
  • Mario Kart opinions.
  • Doing a stunt for the next 30 seconds.
  • The Baja 1000 but with Mario Kart.
  • How Mario Kart tries to make highways interesting.
  • A souped-up Volkswagen Beetle driving 1000 miles through the desert
  • Mario Kart except it's Desert Bus.
  • A Hunter S. Thompson stand-in sent to report on Mario Kart races and ranting about the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Keeping your powder dry in case your anecdote gets promoted to Topic.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket for a long time and probably will remain there for a long time.
  • Doing a brass fall with your mouth.
  • Finally learning to play "Imagine" on piano.
  • Zoom's musician mode.
  • Going on a date with twins to the same restaurant but neither one knows about the other, so you have to keep going into the bathroom and parting your hair the other way.
  • The episode of Three's Company where there's a misunderstanding.
  • Don Knotts making a weird face.
  • Your prospective roommates explaining that you have to pretend to be gay so the landlord doesn't think you're all having sex with each other.
  • More behind than ahead.
  • Keeping cats in the Storage Atrium.
  • Buying an organ from a salvage yard.
  • Bartering with the organ maker's apprentice.
  • The Estey Organ Company.
  • Playing a bad prog rock solo on the analog synthesizer next to your couch.
  • An organ with all of its organs showing.
  • An accordion with zero subtlety.
  • The difference between an electric piano and a digital piano.
  • The Yamaha Clavinova with Advanced Wave Modeling.
  • Don't play these notes unless you want to hear them forever.
  • Topic Negotiation.
  • Driving every single topic into the ground.
]]> This is the pre-show planning and banter for episode 308, recorded and edited basically by accident?? Enjoy??

Microtopics:

  • The old saw that if the teacher is 15 minutes late, you are excused.
  • All the hosts forgetting about the podcast so that episode just doesn't get recorded.
  • The seam in the fish video.
  • Procedurally vs. manually textured terrain.
  • How to texture a limestone chunk.
  • Whether Donkey Kong Bananza is deliberately evoking the sickly sheen of Donkey Kong Country's raytraced art.
  • Procedurally decorating terrain in Techtonica.
  • A lens flare shaped like bananas.
  • Mario Kart opinions.
  • Doing a stunt for the next 30 seconds.
  • The Baja 1000 but with Mario Kart.
  • How Mario Kart tries to make highways interesting.
  • A souped-up Volkswagen Beetle driving 1000 miles through the desert
  • Mario Kart except it's Desert Bus.
  • A Hunter S. Thompson stand-in sent to report on Mario Kart races and ranting about the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Keeping your powder dry in case your anecdote gets promoted to Topic.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket for a long time and probably will remain there for a long time.
  • Doing a brass fall with your mouth.
  • Finally learning to play "Imagine" on piano.
  • Zoom's musician mode.
  • Going on a date with twins to the same restaurant but neither one knows about the other, so you have to keep going into the bathroom and parting your hair the other way.
  • The episode of Three's Company where there's a misunderstanding.
  • Don Knotts making a weird face.
  • Your prospective roommates explaining that you have to pretend to be gay so the landlord doesn't think you're all having sex with each other.
  • More behind than ahead.
  • Keeping cats in the Storage Atrium.
  • Buying an organ from a salvage yard.
  • Bartering with the organ maker's apprentice.
  • The Estey Organ Company.
  • Playing a bad prog rock solo on the analog synthesizer next to your couch.
  • An organ with all of its organs showing.
  • An accordion with zero subtlety.
  • The difference between an electric piano and a digital piano.
  • The Yamaha Clavinova with Advanced Wave Modeling.
  • Don't play these notes unless you want to hear them forever.
  • Topic Negotiation.
  • Driving every single topic into the ground.

Support Topic Lords

]]> This is the pre-show planning and banter for episode 308, recorded and edited basically by accident?? Enjoy??

Microtopics:

  • The old saw that if the teacher is 15 minutes late, you are excused.
  • All the hosts forgetting about the podcast so that episode just doesn't get recorded.
  • The seam in the fish video.
  • Procedurally vs. manually textured terrain.
  • How to texture a limestone chunk.
  • Whether Donkey Kong Bananza is deliberately evoking the sickly sheen of Donkey Kong Country's raytraced art.
  • Procedurally decorating terrain in Techtonica.
  • A lens flare shaped like bananas.
  • Mario Kart opinions.
  • Doing a stunt for the next 30 seconds.
  • The Baja 1000 but with Mario Kart.
  • How Mario Kart tries to make highways interesting.
  • A souped-up Volkswagen Beetle driving 1000 miles through the desert
  • Mario Kart except it's Desert Bus.
  • A Hunter S. Thompson stand-in sent to report on Mario Kart races and ranting about the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Keeping your powder dry in case your anecdote gets promoted to Topic.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket for a long time and probably will remain there for a long time.
  • Doing a brass fall with your mouth.
  • Finally learning to play "Imagine" on piano.
  • Zoom's musician mode.
  • Going on a date with twins to the same restaurant but neither one knows about the other, so you have to keep going into the bathroom and parting your hair the other way.
  • The episode of Three's Company where there's a misunderstanding.
  • Don Knotts making a weird face.
  • Your prospective roommates explaining that you have to pretend to be gay so the landlord doesn't think you're all having sex with each other.
  • More behind than ahead.
  • Keeping cats in the Storage Atrium.
  • Buying an organ from a salvage yard.
  • Bartering with the organ maker's apprentice.
  • The Estey Organ Company.
  • Playing a bad prog rock solo on the analog synthesizer next to your couch.
  • An organ with all of its organs showing.
  • An accordion with zero subtlety.
  • The difference between an electric piano and a digital piano.
  • The Yamaha Clavinova with Advanced Wave Modeling.
  • Don't play these notes unless you want to hear them forever.
  • Topic Negotiation.
  • Driving every single topic into the ground.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ymChaHDu ]]> Jim Stormdancer 307. The Bad Boy of Crossword Construction https://topiclords.com/the-bad-boy-of-crossword-construction f41766e2-6521-47db-baef-918c6eed7eb6 Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and Avery. We discuss The Mishima Incident, city-wide game of hide and seek, how to stick it to bad bluetooth actors, and The Carrotman's Lament. 1:04:56 true Lords:

  • Ben
  • Avery

Topics:

  • The Mishima Incident, in which one of the most famous authors in Japan created his own private militia of young men, attempted to overthrow the government and, upon failing, committed ritual suicide.
  • City-wide game of hide and seek
  • How to stick it to bad Bluetooth actors
  • The Carrotman's Lament, by E.L. Hubert
    • https://x.com/sweetstench/status/1724958011754504568
    • Esper says: "Avery’s anecdote about the carrot poem being something he’d do in high school reminded me of something I did in high school, where I took the song 'The Cha Cha Slide' and removed every instance of 'slide to the right' and added a bunch of 'slide to the left' so that people eventually collapsed into the wall. I got to do it at a little party with friends, and it paid off nicely."

Microtopics:

  • Where to play some crosswords.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Putting the black squares where the letters don't go.
  • Putting structural jokes in your crossword puzzles.
  • The cleverer the gimmick, the less fun the crossword puzzle.
  • Talking into your phone's transcription software during a five hour drive and having five hours of gibberish at the end of it.
  • Fifth caller wins a t-shirt!
  • Impossible Owls.
  • Squishy details.
  • Taking on an apprenticeship with a nobel prize winner.
  • The Japanese Self-Defense Force.
  • Dressing in bee keeper outfits and hitting each other with sticks.
  • Buying swords for your right wing ultra nationalist militia with the proceeds of your prize-winning literature.
  • Exhorting the troops to reinstate the emperor of Japan but nobody can hear you because there's a helicopter flying overhead.
  • A poster of a kitten next to a poster of a samurai, with diametrically opposed mantras about how you ought to handle failure.
  • Topics that leave you speechless.
  • Founder Brain.
  • Debunking a thing from philosophy.
  • The Philosophy of Reversing a Linked List.
  • The alternate universe where Banksy is a totalitarian dictator.
  • Vladimir Putin tagging up the streets of Bristol in the 90s.
  • Top hat, eyeball and coattails.
  • The Residents of Theseus.
  • Rednex.
  • David Bowie starring as Tesla in The Prestige and self-driving off the set.
  • The percentage of Teslas on the street
  • Nice Stylized T as a Screw Shirt.
  • Brainstorming places to hide in Copenhagen.
  • The problem of how to define the bounds of the hide and seek legal play field.
  • Playing hide and seek and knocking on a stranger's door and asking if you can hide in their house.
  • Knocking on the door of the company that moved into the building your company was in six years ago, asking to use the conference room because you're six years late for a meeting.
  • Journey to the End of the Night.
  • Playing music and speaking in riddles.
  • At what point it becomes morally correct to join the zombies.
  • Why is it okay to name a thing after another thing? Why is it okay to name a band after someone else's song?
  • Whether Skibidi Toilet has been cool, is currently cool, will become cool temporarily, or will become cool and stay forever.
  • A meme based on a Youtube thing.
  • Dadaist comedy Internet videos made in Garry's Mod.
  • Changing the head so it's not owned by Valve.
  • Generations starting the alphabet over, like hurricane names.
  • Turn of the millennium coffee shop war stories.
  • Drinking coffee at 2 AM on January 1st, 2000, looking out the window and waiting for the satellites to come crashing down.
  • Tech folks successfully convincing people that the Y2K bug is a problem, but not what the problem actually was.
  • What the Y2K bug was and how we solved it.
  • The Corolla Must Have Control.
  • The phone is too eager and the car is too greedy.
  • The phone and the bluetooth speaker agreeing to connect, and isn't there somebody you forgot to ask??
  • We invented this new thing but we don't know what it's for. Let's try to solve every problem with it and see if anything sticks.
  • Everybody migrating to TempleOS to get away from LLMs.
  • A lightweight operating system designed to be the Third Temple from the Hebrew bible.
  • Writing to your colleague to retract the continuum hypothesizing.
  • God's Chosen Programmer.
  • Off-Topic Lords.
  • A poem on the back of a bag of carrots.
  • A poem having been added to a bag of carrots by a scoundrel.
  • How many carrots you need to eat before you can be called a carrot man.
  • Explaining hidden tracks by first explaining that music used to come in this form called "albums."
  • If you have topics to talk about, we have a show for that, you don't put it on a hidden track on a CD in the 1990s.
  • Living to regret your self-own.
]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Avery

Topics:

  • The Mishima Incident, in which one of the most famous authors in Japan created his own private militia of young men, attempted to overthrow the government and, upon failing, committed ritual suicide.
  • City-wide game of hide and seek
  • How to stick it to bad Bluetooth actors
  • The Carrotman's Lament, by E.L. Hubert
    • https://x.com/sweetstench/status/1724958011754504568
    • Esper says: "Avery’s anecdote about the carrot poem being something he’d do in high school reminded me of something I did in high school, where I took the song 'The Cha Cha Slide' and removed every instance of 'slide to the right' and added a bunch of 'slide to the left' so that people eventually collapsed into the wall. I got to do it at a little party with friends, and it paid off nicely."

Microtopics:

  • Where to play some crosswords.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Putting the black squares where the letters don't go.
  • Putting structural jokes in your crossword puzzles.
  • The cleverer the gimmick, the less fun the crossword puzzle.
  • Talking into your phone's transcription software during a five hour drive and having five hours of gibberish at the end of it.
  • Fifth caller wins a t-shirt!
  • Impossible Owls.
  • Squishy details.
  • Taking on an apprenticeship with a nobel prize winner.
  • The Japanese Self-Defense Force.
  • Dressing in bee keeper outfits and hitting each other with sticks.
  • Buying swords for your right wing ultra nationalist militia with the proceeds of your prize-winning literature.
  • Exhorting the troops to reinstate the emperor of Japan but nobody can hear you because there's a helicopter flying overhead.
  • A poster of a kitten next to a poster of a samurai, with diametrically opposed mantras about how you ought to handle failure.
  • Topics that leave you speechless.
  • Founder Brain.
  • Debunking a thing from philosophy.
  • The Philosophy of Reversing a Linked List.
  • The alternate universe where Banksy is a totalitarian dictator.
  • Vladimir Putin tagging up the streets of Bristol in the 90s.
  • Top hat, eyeball and coattails.
  • The Residents of Theseus.
  • Rednex.
  • David Bowie starring as Tesla in The Prestige and self-driving off the set.
  • The percentage of Teslas on the street
  • Nice Stylized T as a Screw Shirt.
  • Brainstorming places to hide in Copenhagen.
  • The problem of how to define the bounds of the hide and seek legal play field.
  • Playing hide and seek and knocking on a stranger's door and asking if you can hide in their house.
  • Knocking on the door of the company that moved into the building your company was in six years ago, asking to use the conference room because you're six years late for a meeting.
  • Journey to the End of the Night.
  • Playing music and speaking in riddles.
  • At what point it becomes morally correct to join the zombies.
  • Why is it okay to name a thing after another thing? Why is it okay to name a band after someone else's song?
  • Whether Skibidi Toilet has been cool, is currently cool, will become cool temporarily, or will become cool and stay forever.
  • A meme based on a Youtube thing.
  • Dadaist comedy Internet videos made in Garry's Mod.
  • Changing the head so it's not owned by Valve.
  • Generations starting the alphabet over, like hurricane names.
  • Turn of the millennium coffee shop war stories.
  • Drinking coffee at 2 AM on January 1st, 2000, looking out the window and waiting for the satellites to come crashing down.
  • Tech folks successfully convincing people that the Y2K bug is a problem, but not what the problem actually was.
  • What the Y2K bug was and how we solved it.
  • The Corolla Must Have Control.
  • The phone is too eager and the car is too greedy.
  • The phone and the bluetooth speaker agreeing to connect, and isn't there somebody you forgot to ask??
  • We invented this new thing but we don't know what it's for. Let's try to solve every problem with it and see if anything sticks.
  • Everybody migrating to TempleOS to get away from LLMs.
  • A lightweight operating system designed to be the Third Temple from the Hebrew bible.
  • Writing to your colleague to retract the continuum hypothesizing.
  • God's Chosen Programmer.
  • Off-Topic Lords.
  • A poem on the back of a bag of carrots.
  • A poem having been added to a bag of carrots by a scoundrel.
  • How many carrots you need to eat before you can be called a carrot man.
  • Explaining hidden tracks by first explaining that music used to come in this form called "albums."
  • If you have topics to talk about, we have a show for that, you don't put it on a hidden track on a CD in the 1990s.
  • Living to regret your self-own.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Avery

Topics:

  • The Mishima Incident, in which one of the most famous authors in Japan created his own private militia of young men, attempted to overthrow the government and, upon failing, committed ritual suicide.
  • City-wide game of hide and seek
  • How to stick it to bad Bluetooth actors
  • The Carrotman's Lament, by E.L. Hubert
    • https://x.com/sweetstench/status/1724958011754504568
    • Esper says: "Avery’s anecdote about the carrot poem being something he’d do in high school reminded me of something I did in high school, where I took the song 'The Cha Cha Slide' and removed every instance of 'slide to the right' and added a bunch of 'slide to the left' so that people eventually collapsed into the wall. I got to do it at a little party with friends, and it paid off nicely."

Microtopics:

  • Where to play some crosswords.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Putting the black squares where the letters don't go.
  • Putting structural jokes in your crossword puzzles.
  • The cleverer the gimmick, the less fun the crossword puzzle.
  • Talking into your phone's transcription software during a five hour drive and having five hours of gibberish at the end of it.
  • Fifth caller wins a t-shirt!
  • Impossible Owls.
  • Squishy details.
  • Taking on an apprenticeship with a nobel prize winner.
  • The Japanese Self-Defense Force.
  • Dressing in bee keeper outfits and hitting each other with sticks.
  • Buying swords for your right wing ultra nationalist militia with the proceeds of your prize-winning literature.
  • Exhorting the troops to reinstate the emperor of Japan but nobody can hear you because there's a helicopter flying overhead.
  • A poster of a kitten next to a poster of a samurai, with diametrically opposed mantras about how you ought to handle failure.
  • Topics that leave you speechless.
  • Founder Brain.
  • Debunking a thing from philosophy.
  • The Philosophy of Reversing a Linked List.
  • The alternate universe where Banksy is a totalitarian dictator.
  • Vladimir Putin tagging up the streets of Bristol in the 90s.
  • Top hat, eyeball and coattails.
  • The Residents of Theseus.
  • Rednex.
  • David Bowie starring as Tesla in The Prestige and self-driving off the set.
  • The percentage of Teslas on the street
  • Nice Stylized T as a Screw Shirt.
  • Brainstorming places to hide in Copenhagen.
  • The problem of how to define the bounds of the hide and seek legal play field.
  • Playing hide and seek and knocking on a stranger's door and asking if you can hide in their house.
  • Knocking on the door of the company that moved into the building your company was in six years ago, asking to use the conference room because you're six years late for a meeting.
  • Journey to the End of the Night.
  • Playing music and speaking in riddles.
  • At what point it becomes morally correct to join the zombies.
  • Why is it okay to name a thing after another thing? Why is it okay to name a band after someone else's song?
  • Whether Skibidi Toilet has been cool, is currently cool, will become cool temporarily, or will become cool and stay forever.
  • A meme based on a Youtube thing.
  • Dadaist comedy Internet videos made in Garry's Mod.
  • Changing the head so it's not owned by Valve.
  • Generations starting the alphabet over, like hurricane names.
  • Turn of the millennium coffee shop war stories.
  • Drinking coffee at 2 AM on January 1st, 2000, looking out the window and waiting for the satellites to come crashing down.
  • Tech folks successfully convincing people that the Y2K bug is a problem, but not what the problem actually was.
  • What the Y2K bug was and how we solved it.
  • The Corolla Must Have Control.
  • The phone is too eager and the car is too greedy.
  • The phone and the bluetooth speaker agreeing to connect, and isn't there somebody you forgot to ask??
  • We invented this new thing but we don't know what it's for. Let's try to solve every problem with it and see if anything sticks.
  • Everybody migrating to TempleOS to get away from LLMs.
  • A lightweight operating system designed to be the Third Temple from the Hebrew bible.
  • Writing to your colleague to retract the continuum hypothesizing.
  • God's Chosen Programmer.
  • Off-Topic Lords.
  • A poem on the back of a bag of carrots.
  • A poem having been added to a bag of carrots by a scoundrel.
  • How many carrots you need to eat before you can be called a carrot man.
  • Explaining hidden tracks by first explaining that music used to come in this form called "albums."
  • If you have topics to talk about, we have a show for that, you don't put it on a hidden track on a CD in the 1990s.
  • Living to regret your self-own.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+riG-fCWe ]]> Jim Stormdancer 306. You Wouldn't Believe the Brutes They Make https://topiclords.com/you-wouldnt-believe-the-brutes-they-make 8ae4534c-f845-4674-8b01-3a1c8ef603bd Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Xalavier and Cort. We discuss the coolest instrument to give a child, what happened to sound lasers?, appearing canes, and The Story of Mel 1:06:06 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether your middle name is really Danger.
  • Half an extra plug.
  • The inexplicable aliveness of Strange Scaffold.
  • Co-op Casual Horror Cooking.
  • Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival.
  • Making a game so that you can voice act the main character.
  • How many careers you're allowed to have before the world begins to rip them away from you.
  • Hiring the designer of Frog Fractions when Frog Fractions is already designed.
  • A boxing game featuring the inside of your mouth.
  • Knockout Kings 2003 or Fight Night Round 3.
  • Your dad explaining all the ways grownups are better than children while soundly trouncing you at Fight Night Round 3.
  • Tattooing a message on your infant son's head so that he reads it when he begins to bald.
  • Playing music with humans.
  • What's special about playing an analog monosynth.
  • Getting an analog synthesizer and finally sounding like the 70s.
  • Your larynx thinking "I'm singing meat!" while you push air through it, making it vibrate.
  • All the ways your larynx is confused about the nature of music.
  • Sitting in a circle and playing music together.
  • The Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Festival.
  • Playing folk songs within ten minutes of owning a mandolin.
  • How Irish sessions compare to Bluegrass sessions.
  • Being too far back in the crowd to have sex with Neil Young.
  • A big long guitar with only four strings.
  • Bass Sherpa Hunter Bond.
  • Practicing bass with your bass unplugged because plugging in your bass feels like an imposition.
  • Short-scale basses.
  • Finding the bass that makes it feel like you're holding Mjolnir.
  • The Minibrute, Microbrute, Matrixbrute and Polybrute.
  • The problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Travel amps and amp alternatives.
  • The non-problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Oh yeah, that's the acoustic bass player!
  • The only instrument in a rock band that can go up to. x6 multiplier.
  • Coming back to Rock Band after learning the actual instrument.
  • The Rock Band Pro Controller.
  • What about Second Topic?
  • Asking a parent if it's okay to give their child an accordion and backpedaling when they start white-knuckling their chair.
  • Kung fu instructionals.
  • The smallest member of the mandola family.
  • Instruments that require elongation.
  • Chapman sticks.
  • The kind of musical instrument you can stab someone with.
  • Vibrating your bones.
  • That time science stopped itself from inventing something awful.
  • Non lethal directed acoustic energy weapons.
  • Sound cannons as an anti-piracy measure.
  • SASERs.
  • Using headphones as a microphone and vice versa.
  • Plugging a bass into a guitar amp.
  • Traveling to another country and trying out the basses that they have there.
  • Whacking the high tension wires to make laser noises.
  • What they have on BART now instead of high tension wire noises.
  • Raising Cain's.
  • Trying to reload your appearing cane.
  • The type of thing the TSA would miss but should watch out for.
  • Terrorists taking over the plane by doing such an impressive magic show that the passengers are like "that was amazing, we'd better do what he wants"
  • It poked me straight in the middle of my eye.
  • A sound laser for mischief and giggles.
  • Fighting those who would be your comrades in shenanigans.
  • Easy to operation!
  • If you love something, let it go. If you hold onto it, it will stab you in the hand.
  • A frog boiling effect but for extremely long poems.
  • Computers made out of drums and vacuum tubes.
  • Royal McBee Computer Corp.
  • Executing another complete revolution to find the next instruction.
  • If the thesis of Summoning Salt was that "this is what all gamers should be doing all the time."
  • When you get old enough that most of the people you don't like are now dead.
  • When you decide to hate somebody, taking comfort in the fact that one day they will die, or maybe you'll die, and either way you won't have to deal with them any more.
  • Taking comfort that Mel is out there writing in direct hexadecimal for all us sinners.
  • Jobs you wish you'd had in the past but that you wouldn't take today.
  • The honor in choosing not to be famous.
  • Our first pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Version control plugins that scan commits for variable names that scan to the Ninja Turtles theme.
  • Winston on the Microbrute.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether your middle name is really Danger.
  • Half an extra plug.
  • The inexplicable aliveness of Strange Scaffold.
  • Co-op Casual Horror Cooking.
  • Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival.
  • Making a game so that you can voice act the main character.
  • How many careers you're allowed to have before the world begins to rip them away from you.
  • Hiring the designer of Frog Fractions when Frog Fractions is already designed.
  • A boxing game featuring the inside of your mouth.
  • Knockout Kings 2003 or Fight Night Round 3.
  • Your dad explaining all the ways grownups are better than children while soundly trouncing you at Fight Night Round 3.
  • Tattooing a message on your infant son's head so that he reads it when he begins to bald.
  • Playing music with humans.
  • What's special about playing an analog monosynth.
  • Getting an analog synthesizer and finally sounding like the 70s.
  • Your larynx thinking "I'm singing meat!" while you push air through it, making it vibrate.
  • All the ways your larynx is confused about the nature of music.
  • Sitting in a circle and playing music together.
  • The Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Festival.
  • Playing folk songs within ten minutes of owning a mandolin.
  • How Irish sessions compare to Bluegrass sessions.
  • Being too far back in the crowd to have sex with Neil Young.
  • A big long guitar with only four strings.
  • Bass Sherpa Hunter Bond.
  • Practicing bass with your bass unplugged because plugging in your bass feels like an imposition.
  • Short-scale basses.
  • Finding the bass that makes it feel like you're holding Mjolnir.
  • The Minibrute, Microbrute, Matrixbrute and Polybrute.
  • The problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Travel amps and amp alternatives.
  • The non-problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Oh yeah, that's the acoustic bass player!
  • The only instrument in a rock band that can go up to. x6 multiplier.
  • Coming back to Rock Band after learning the actual instrument.
  • The Rock Band Pro Controller.
  • What about Second Topic?
  • Asking a parent if it's okay to give their child an accordion and backpedaling when they start white-knuckling their chair.
  • Kung fu instructionals.
  • The smallest member of the mandola family.
  • Instruments that require elongation.
  • Chapman sticks.
  • The kind of musical instrument you can stab someone with.
  • Vibrating your bones.
  • That time science stopped itself from inventing something awful.
  • Non lethal directed acoustic energy weapons.
  • Sound cannons as an anti-piracy measure.
  • SASERs.
  • Using headphones as a microphone and vice versa.
  • Plugging a bass into a guitar amp.
  • Traveling to another country and trying out the basses that they have there.
  • Whacking the high tension wires to make laser noises.
  • What they have on BART now instead of high tension wire noises.
  • Raising Cain's.
  • Trying to reload your appearing cane.
  • The type of thing the TSA would miss but should watch out for.
  • Terrorists taking over the plane by doing such an impressive magic show that the passengers are like "that was amazing, we'd better do what he wants"
  • It poked me straight in the middle of my eye.
  • A sound laser for mischief and giggles.
  • Fighting those who would be your comrades in shenanigans.
  • Easy to operation!
  • If you love something, let it go. If you hold onto it, it will stab you in the hand.
  • A frog boiling effect but for extremely long poems.
  • Computers made out of drums and vacuum tubes.
  • Royal McBee Computer Corp.
  • Executing another complete revolution to find the next instruction.
  • If the thesis of Summoning Salt was that "this is what all gamers should be doing all the time."
  • When you get old enough that most of the people you don't like are now dead.
  • When you decide to hate somebody, taking comfort in the fact that one day they will die, or maybe you'll die, and either way you won't have to deal with them any more.
  • Taking comfort that Mel is out there writing in direct hexadecimal for all us sinners.
  • Jobs you wish you'd had in the past but that you wouldn't take today.
  • The honor in choosing not to be famous.
  • Our first pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Version control plugins that scan commits for variable names that scan to the Ninja Turtles theme.
  • Winston on the Microbrute.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether your middle name is really Danger.
  • Half an extra plug.
  • The inexplicable aliveness of Strange Scaffold.
  • Co-op Casual Horror Cooking.
  • Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival.
  • Making a game so that you can voice act the main character.
  • How many careers you're allowed to have before the world begins to rip them away from you.
  • Hiring the designer of Frog Fractions when Frog Fractions is already designed.
  • A boxing game featuring the inside of your mouth.
  • Knockout Kings 2003 or Fight Night Round 3.
  • Your dad explaining all the ways grownups are better than children while soundly trouncing you at Fight Night Round 3.
  • Tattooing a message on your infant son's head so that he reads it when he begins to bald.
  • Playing music with humans.
  • What's special about playing an analog monosynth.
  • Getting an analog synthesizer and finally sounding like the 70s.
  • Your larynx thinking "I'm singing meat!" while you push air through it, making it vibrate.
  • All the ways your larynx is confused about the nature of music.
  • Sitting in a circle and playing music together.
  • The Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Festival.
  • Playing folk songs within ten minutes of owning a mandolin.
  • How Irish sessions compare to Bluegrass sessions.
  • Being too far back in the crowd to have sex with Neil Young.
  • A big long guitar with only four strings.
  • Bass Sherpa Hunter Bond.
  • Practicing bass with your bass unplugged because plugging in your bass feels like an imposition.
  • Short-scale basses.
  • Finding the bass that makes it feel like you're holding Mjolnir.
  • The Minibrute, Microbrute, Matrixbrute and Polybrute.
  • The problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Travel amps and amp alternatives.
  • The non-problematic acoustic P-bass.
  • Oh yeah, that's the acoustic bass player!
  • The only instrument in a rock band that can go up to. x6 multiplier.
  • Coming back to Rock Band after learning the actual instrument.
  • The Rock Band Pro Controller.
  • What about Second Topic?
  • Asking a parent if it's okay to give their child an accordion and backpedaling when they start white-knuckling their chair.
  • Kung fu instructionals.
  • The smallest member of the mandola family.
  • Instruments that require elongation.
  • Chapman sticks.
  • The kind of musical instrument you can stab someone with.
  • Vibrating your bones.
  • That time science stopped itself from inventing something awful.
  • Non lethal directed acoustic energy weapons.
  • Sound cannons as an anti-piracy measure.
  • SASERs.
  • Using headphones as a microphone and vice versa.
  • Plugging a bass into a guitar amp.
  • Traveling to another country and trying out the basses that they have there.
  • Whacking the high tension wires to make laser noises.
  • What they have on BART now instead of high tension wire noises.
  • Raising Cain's.
  • Trying to reload your appearing cane.
  • The type of thing the TSA would miss but should watch out for.
  • Terrorists taking over the plane by doing such an impressive magic show that the passengers are like "that was amazing, we'd better do what he wants"
  • It poked me straight in the middle of my eye.
  • A sound laser for mischief and giggles.
  • Fighting those who would be your comrades in shenanigans.
  • Easy to operation!
  • If you love something, let it go. If you hold onto it, it will stab you in the hand.
  • A frog boiling effect but for extremely long poems.
  • Computers made out of drums and vacuum tubes.
  • Royal McBee Computer Corp.
  • Executing another complete revolution to find the next instruction.
  • If the thesis of Summoning Salt was that "this is what all gamers should be doing all the time."
  • When you get old enough that most of the people you don't like are now dead.
  • When you decide to hate somebody, taking comfort in the fact that one day they will die, or maybe you'll die, and either way you won't have to deal with them any more.
  • Taking comfort that Mel is out there writing in direct hexadecimal for all us sinners.
  • Jobs you wish you'd had in the past but that you wouldn't take today.
  • The honor in choosing not to be famous.
  • Our first pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Version control plugins that scan commits for variable names that scan to the Ninja Turtles theme.
  • Winston on the Microbrute.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+gtZMDrCT ]]> Jim Stormdancer 305. Phlegmletting https://topiclords.com/phlegmletting ca88f96f-526e-4687-a21e-741578108617 Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Abby and Sid. We discuss reading the diabetes manual, saying vegetables instead of cussin', Winston punching his tooth out, If I Ran the Circus (excerpt) by Dr. Seuss, and reminding yourself of all the PS2 games you hated. 1:16:09 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Reading about type 1 diabetes
  • Saying vegetables instead of cussin'
  • Winston punched his tooth out
  • If I Ran the Circus (excerpt)
  • With the power of portable PS2 emulation, I can find out how many types of games I don't like anymore

Microtopics:

  • My Favorite Loser.
  • Mistakes we always keep in the show because it's more fun that way.
  • How to plagiarize video using Da Vinci Resolve.
  • A tool that automatically turns any Youtube video into a series of screenshots with captions.
  • Your mom threatening to sell your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog when it's explicitly labeled "not for resale"
  • Explaining to your mom that they're not video games, they're computer games, and she explains that video is from the Latin for "to see"
  • Mom paying proper deference to your clever sass before grounding you.
  • They're called RPGs, Mother!
  • Reading just enough about diabetes to be unhelpful.
  • Reading the diabetes owners manual.
  • Your $200/month Glucagon habit.
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes, which explains that ideally you'd do such and such for your diabetic child but you probably don't have health insurance so, uh, good luck!
  • WiFi 7 upgrading you to gay.
  • Recreational glucose monitors.
  • The new glucose tablets coming in metric and confusing everybody.
  • That time Solid Snake went hypoglycemic while being tortured and bit down on his fake tooth to release the glucose capsule.
  • We put sugar gel in you, Solid Snake! It's going to make you slightly loopy!
  • An accountant who likes jogging.
  • Nobody knows why women have a higher incidence of eating disorders. If only we could ask them
  • They made a cure to diabetes 30 years ago, but you have to become the President of the United States to get it.
  • If Diabetes is so good, why haven't they made a Diabetes 2?
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes explaining that people with diabetes can talk over you in a funny voice and you're not allowed to do anything about it.
  • Fiddling with a bloodletting device in an antique store and accidentally letting nearly all of your blood.
  • Phlegmletters.
  • What part of the body hurts least to prick with a needle. (The balls.) (Of your feet.)
  • Code switching halfway through explaining how you like to cuss.
  • How to swear at someone using vegetables.
  • What a load of parsnips!
  • Brussels Sprouts patch notes.
  • Brussels Sprouts: Belgium's Great Shame.
  • Winnipeg Manitoba sprouts.
  • Walking up to a stranger on the street and saying "Hey! It's a load of parsnips!" when they don't even know how you feel about parsnips.
  • Veggie Tales: Christ Died for our Parsnips.
  • Finding hilarious jokes in the text but your Bible studies group doesn't think they're very funny at all.
  • Refusing to apologize about a joke because someone somewhere is going to get the joke.
  • Why they still play old cartoons when they have Dragon Ball Z now.
  • Trying to find the 90s show about a kid trapped in a sitcom neighborhood that a talking dog told Abby about.
  • A video game where instead of having to shoot people, you talk to people.
  • Mr. Friendly.
  • Running errands for the demons.
  • Demon acceptance.
  • Can you believe Satan? What will they come up with next?
  • Lucifer Twocifer: Bringer of the Deuce.
  • Embarking on a multi-year project to have the coolest most clever minced oaths because you refuse to have basic minced oaths.
  • Whether it's racist to call a safecracker a Yegg.
  • The funniest joke you heard when you were eight.
  • The hobo with excellent glycemic index who lives in your shed.
  • Trying cat insulin and promising to report back if you die.
  • Hyperdontia.
  • Accidentally swallowing a tooth and growing a tooth tree in your tummy.
  • Explaining to your kid who just swallowed a tooth that it's going to bite him on the butt on the way out.
  • Inventing an increasingly elaborate series of fairies that cover everything that can happen to your child's teeth
  • What kind of degree you need to become a tooth fairy.
  • Going to the dentist to do a bunch of drugs and get punched in the face.
  • The tooth fairy talking about switching careers.
  • Paying for PDFs to print and put under your child's pillow when they lose a tooth.
  • Trying to pay a mortgage on a tooth fairy's salary nowadays.
  • What you're going to make Mr. Sneelock do.
  • A hoodwink who can't wink good.
  • If only we could talk to the LAPD.
  • Looking up the IPA pronunciation of Truffula Trees.
  • Anticipating the day you'll finally get to say "what it is"
  • Reading The Lorax in a bad David Lynch impression.
  • Over Forty Years of Trusted Quality at Nature's Bounty.
  • Seeing yourself on video and realizing you've been on the autism spectrum the whole time.
  • Knowing your friend only has one joke and telling a whole shaggy dog story to set up the one joke, as a gift.
  • The zoomers that they have nowadays.
  • Hello, this is my Asian man voice.
  • Going around the circle and everybody doing their best Asian man voice, finishing with the guy you want cancelled the most.
  • Spending $150 trying to connect your PlayStation 2 to a modern television.
  • Exhorting people to read the jokes in your pinned tweets.
  • Importing PS3 games – or not importing them, which is cheaper.
  • All the things you could've done instead of shooting Shinzo Abe.
  • Playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and trying to change the control scene to be more like Sekiro, even though you hated Sekiro.
  • Freaking out because you didn't have everything figured out by the time you're 24.
  • Playing Bumpy Trot with your weeb girlfriend.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Reading about type 1 diabetes
  • Saying vegetables instead of cussin'
  • Winston punched his tooth out
  • If I Ran the Circus (excerpt)
  • With the power of portable PS2 emulation, I can find out how many types of games I don't like anymore

Microtopics:

  • My Favorite Loser.
  • Mistakes we always keep in the show because it's more fun that way.
  • How to plagiarize video using Da Vinci Resolve.
  • A tool that automatically turns any Youtube video into a series of screenshots with captions.
  • Your mom threatening to sell your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog when it's explicitly labeled "not for resale"
  • Explaining to your mom that they're not video games, they're computer games, and she explains that video is from the Latin for "to see"
  • Mom paying proper deference to your clever sass before grounding you.
  • They're called RPGs, Mother!
  • Reading just enough about diabetes to be unhelpful.
  • Reading the diabetes owners manual.
  • Your $200/month Glucagon habit.
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes, which explains that ideally you'd do such and such for your diabetic child but you probably don't have health insurance so, uh, good luck!
  • WiFi 7 upgrading you to gay.
  • Recreational glucose monitors.
  • The new glucose tablets coming in metric and confusing everybody.
  • That time Solid Snake went hypoglycemic while being tortured and bit down on his fake tooth to release the glucose capsule.
  • We put sugar gel in you, Solid Snake! It's going to make you slightly loopy!
  • An accountant who likes jogging.
  • Nobody knows why women have a higher incidence of eating disorders. If only we could ask them
  • They made a cure to diabetes 30 years ago, but you have to become the President of the United States to get it.
  • If Diabetes is so good, why haven't they made a Diabetes 2?
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes explaining that people with diabetes can talk over you in a funny voice and you're not allowed to do anything about it.
  • Fiddling with a bloodletting device in an antique store and accidentally letting nearly all of your blood.
  • Phlegmletters.
  • What part of the body hurts least to prick with a needle. (The balls.) (Of your feet.)
  • Code switching halfway through explaining how you like to cuss.
  • How to swear at someone using vegetables.
  • What a load of parsnips!
  • Brussels Sprouts patch notes.
  • Brussels Sprouts: Belgium's Great Shame.
  • Winnipeg Manitoba sprouts.
  • Walking up to a stranger on the street and saying "Hey! It's a load of parsnips!" when they don't even know how you feel about parsnips.
  • Veggie Tales: Christ Died for our Parsnips.
  • Finding hilarious jokes in the text but your Bible studies group doesn't think they're very funny at all.
  • Refusing to apologize about a joke because someone somewhere is going to get the joke.
  • Why they still play old cartoons when they have Dragon Ball Z now.
  • Trying to find the 90s show about a kid trapped in a sitcom neighborhood that a talking dog told Abby about.
  • A video game where instead of having to shoot people, you talk to people.
  • Mr. Friendly.
  • Running errands for the demons.
  • Demon acceptance.
  • Can you believe Satan? What will they come up with next?
  • Lucifer Twocifer: Bringer of the Deuce.
  • Embarking on a multi-year project to have the coolest most clever minced oaths because you refuse to have basic minced oaths.
  • Whether it's racist to call a safecracker a Yegg.
  • The funniest joke you heard when you were eight.
  • The hobo with excellent glycemic index who lives in your shed.
  • Trying cat insulin and promising to report back if you die.
  • Hyperdontia.
  • Accidentally swallowing a tooth and growing a tooth tree in your tummy.
  • Explaining to your kid who just swallowed a tooth that it's going to bite him on the butt on the way out.
  • Inventing an increasingly elaborate series of fairies that cover everything that can happen to your child's teeth
  • What kind of degree you need to become a tooth fairy.
  • Going to the dentist to do a bunch of drugs and get punched in the face.
  • The tooth fairy talking about switching careers.
  • Paying for PDFs to print and put under your child's pillow when they lose a tooth.
  • Trying to pay a mortgage on a tooth fairy's salary nowadays.
  • What you're going to make Mr. Sneelock do.
  • A hoodwink who can't wink good.
  • If only we could talk to the LAPD.
  • Looking up the IPA pronunciation of Truffula Trees.
  • Anticipating the day you'll finally get to say "what it is"
  • Reading The Lorax in a bad David Lynch impression.
  • Over Forty Years of Trusted Quality at Nature's Bounty.
  • Seeing yourself on video and realizing you've been on the autism spectrum the whole time.
  • Knowing your friend only has one joke and telling a whole shaggy dog story to set up the one joke, as a gift.
  • The zoomers that they have nowadays.
  • Hello, this is my Asian man voice.
  • Going around the circle and everybody doing their best Asian man voice, finishing with the guy you want cancelled the most.
  • Spending $150 trying to connect your PlayStation 2 to a modern television.
  • Exhorting people to read the jokes in your pinned tweets.
  • Importing PS3 games – or not importing them, which is cheaper.
  • All the things you could've done instead of shooting Shinzo Abe.
  • Playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and trying to change the control scene to be more like Sekiro, even though you hated Sekiro.
  • Freaking out because you didn't have everything figured out by the time you're 24.
  • Playing Bumpy Trot with your weeb girlfriend.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Reading about type 1 diabetes
  • Saying vegetables instead of cussin'
  • Winston punched his tooth out
  • If I Ran the Circus (excerpt)
  • With the power of portable PS2 emulation, I can find out how many types of games I don't like anymore

Microtopics:

  • My Favorite Loser.
  • Mistakes we always keep in the show because it's more fun that way.
  • How to plagiarize video using Da Vinci Resolve.
  • A tool that automatically turns any Youtube video into a series of screenshots with captions.
  • Your mom threatening to sell your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog when it's explicitly labeled "not for resale"
  • Explaining to your mom that they're not video games, they're computer games, and she explains that video is from the Latin for "to see"
  • Mom paying proper deference to your clever sass before grounding you.
  • They're called RPGs, Mother!
  • Reading just enough about diabetes to be unhelpful.
  • Reading the diabetes owners manual.
  • Your $200/month Glucagon habit.
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes, which explains that ideally you'd do such and such for your diabetic child but you probably don't have health insurance so, uh, good luck!
  • WiFi 7 upgrading you to gay.
  • Recreational glucose monitors.
  • The new glucose tablets coming in metric and confusing everybody.
  • That time Solid Snake went hypoglycemic while being tortured and bit down on his fake tooth to release the glucose capsule.
  • We put sugar gel in you, Solid Snake! It's going to make you slightly loopy!
  • An accountant who likes jogging.
  • Nobody knows why women have a higher incidence of eating disorders. If only we could ask them
  • They made a cure to diabetes 30 years ago, but you have to become the President of the United States to get it.
  • If Diabetes is so good, why haven't they made a Diabetes 2?
  • The Quick Start Guide to Diabetes explaining that people with diabetes can talk over you in a funny voice and you're not allowed to do anything about it.
  • Fiddling with a bloodletting device in an antique store and accidentally letting nearly all of your blood.
  • Phlegmletters.
  • What part of the body hurts least to prick with a needle. (The balls.) (Of your feet.)
  • Code switching halfway through explaining how you like to cuss.
  • How to swear at someone using vegetables.
  • What a load of parsnips!
  • Brussels Sprouts patch notes.
  • Brussels Sprouts: Belgium's Great Shame.
  • Winnipeg Manitoba sprouts.
  • Walking up to a stranger on the street and saying "Hey! It's a load of parsnips!" when they don't even know how you feel about parsnips.
  • Veggie Tales: Christ Died for our Parsnips.
  • Finding hilarious jokes in the text but your Bible studies group doesn't think they're very funny at all.
  • Refusing to apologize about a joke because someone somewhere is going to get the joke.
  • Why they still play old cartoons when they have Dragon Ball Z now.
  • Trying to find the 90s show about a kid trapped in a sitcom neighborhood that a talking dog told Abby about.
  • A video game where instead of having to shoot people, you talk to people.
  • Mr. Friendly.
  • Running errands for the demons.
  • Demon acceptance.
  • Can you believe Satan? What will they come up with next?
  • Lucifer Twocifer: Bringer of the Deuce.
  • Embarking on a multi-year project to have the coolest most clever minced oaths because you refuse to have basic minced oaths.
  • Whether it's racist to call a safecracker a Yegg.
  • The funniest joke you heard when you were eight.
  • The hobo with excellent glycemic index who lives in your shed.
  • Trying cat insulin and promising to report back if you die.
  • Hyperdontia.
  • Accidentally swallowing a tooth and growing a tooth tree in your tummy.
  • Explaining to your kid who just swallowed a tooth that it's going to bite him on the butt on the way out.
  • Inventing an increasingly elaborate series of fairies that cover everything that can happen to your child's teeth
  • What kind of degree you need to become a tooth fairy.
  • Going to the dentist to do a bunch of drugs and get punched in the face.
  • The tooth fairy talking about switching careers.
  • Paying for PDFs to print and put under your child's pillow when they lose a tooth.
  • Trying to pay a mortgage on a tooth fairy's salary nowadays.
  • What you're going to make Mr. Sneelock do.
  • A hoodwink who can't wink good.
  • If only we could talk to the LAPD.
  • Looking up the IPA pronunciation of Truffula Trees.
  • Anticipating the day you'll finally get to say "what it is"
  • Reading The Lorax in a bad David Lynch impression.
  • Over Forty Years of Trusted Quality at Nature's Bounty.
  • Seeing yourself on video and realizing you've been on the autism spectrum the whole time.
  • Knowing your friend only has one joke and telling a whole shaggy dog story to set up the one joke, as a gift.
  • The zoomers that they have nowadays.
  • Hello, this is my Asian man voice.
  • Going around the circle and everybody doing their best Asian man voice, finishing with the guy you want cancelled the most.
  • Spending $150 trying to connect your PlayStation 2 to a modern television.
  • Exhorting people to read the jokes in your pinned tweets.
  • Importing PS3 games – or not importing them, which is cheaper.
  • All the things you could've done instead of shooting Shinzo Abe.
  • Playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and trying to change the control scene to be more like Sekiro, even though you hated Sekiro.
  • Freaking out because you didn't have everything figured out by the time you're 24.
  • Playing Bumpy Trot with your weeb girlfriend.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+wPPnl2vm ]]> Jim Stormdancer 304. Turn on the MacLachlan https://topiclords.com/turn-on-the-maclachlan 85caf6d7-9999-4d2a-b63f-a13f1ab03e43 Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Brandon. We discuss high school pep band bangers, why some actors can't carry a b-movie but others can, what do these white rings on the Microbrute mean?, Medley by Louis Phillips, and things you can eat in your garden that you might not expect 1:07:26 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bringing the fact that you are now a Lord to everyone's attention.
  • Hitting 1700 nautical miles today.
  • Demonschool. (Wishlist it.)
  • Whether it helps to un-wishlist and re-wishlist a game on Steam.
  • The Hot Dog Plant.
  • Tiny stinky blobs that attach to each other.
  • What kind of marsh grasses rich people in the 80s would have in their house.
  • Calling an aesthetic "southwestern" even though it's to the east of you.
  • A pep rally band playing a Lil Nas X tune.
  • The band soundtracking your No Kings rally playing a medley of Blister in the Sun, When the Saints Go Marching In, and I Want You Back.
  • Transcribing music from Double Dragon 2 and slipping under the door of your high school band director.
  • Disasterpeace's score for Under the Silver Lake.
  • How many people it takes to compose a pop song.
  • What it means to be a producer.
  • Kyle MacLaughlan desperately trying to hold on to Elizabeth Berkeley.
  • Christopher Lambert being legally blind and accidentally stabbing everyone while filming Highlander.
  • A weird guy who goes "hheeehh"
  • Mean Guns.
  • Putting a b-movie guy in a b-movie and everyone is like "nice!"
  • The Recent Vampire Movie With Nicolas Cage.
  • The kind of movie you can follow without looking at the screen.
  • Someone who has at least one idea and a vision for how to achieve it.
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme pushing you aside so he can take over the editing suite.
  • Making a movie while making another movie.
  • The dwindling number of people getting weird chances.
  • What day they bury people in Ghana.
  • Art that's only good if a friend explains what's good about it first.
  • The comic relief witch doctor who is funny because he keeps screwing up.
  • Trying to type on a 25 key keyboard.
  • The three knobs that you have to be able to see best in a low light environment.
  • The ultrasaw: not as good as a supersaw.
  • Paying extra to get the one in red because of the kind of person you are.
  • Why buy an analog synthesizer in 2025?
  • The tactile wall of knobs.
  • The giant modular synthesizer at Mills college.
  • The tiniest patch cables.
  • Adamantium Rage's FM doom metal soundtrack.
  • Did you mean: I love Mickey Mouse?
  • Emailing Arturia Support.
  • The Pants That Said Maximum.
  • A poem with rotational symmetry around the center axis.
  • A poem where the whole point is the acrostic complaining about something.
  • Eating the leaves and stems of a squash blossom.
  • Allowing lettuce to bolt.
  • AeroLettuce.
  • Making pesto out of herbs other than basil.
  • The fragrance and the earth tones you get from a bay leaf.
  • Top garden plants you might not have thought of eating.
  • A hobby that is cool and fun to do.
  • Discovered two giant cucumbers you hadn't even noticed before.
  • Volunteer squash and wacky gourds.
  • Sharing the fruits of your garden with your neighbors.
  • When it's lemon season and everybody's trying to give everyone else lemons.
  • Some plants are in pots; some are in the ground.
  • Growing a plant that can give you something back.
  • mstdn.party
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bringing the fact that you are now a Lord to everyone's attention.
  • Hitting 1700 nautical miles today.
  • Demonschool. (Wishlist it.)
  • Whether it helps to un-wishlist and re-wishlist a game on Steam.
  • The Hot Dog Plant.
  • Tiny stinky blobs that attach to each other.
  • What kind of marsh grasses rich people in the 80s would have in their house.
  • Calling an aesthetic "southwestern" even though it's to the east of you.
  • A pep rally band playing a Lil Nas X tune.
  • The band soundtracking your No Kings rally playing a medley of Blister in the Sun, When the Saints Go Marching In, and I Want You Back.
  • Transcribing music from Double Dragon 2 and slipping under the door of your high school band director.
  • Disasterpeace's score for Under the Silver Lake.
  • How many people it takes to compose a pop song.
  • What it means to be a producer.
  • Kyle MacLaughlan desperately trying to hold on to Elizabeth Berkeley.
  • Christopher Lambert being legally blind and accidentally stabbing everyone while filming Highlander.
  • A weird guy who goes "hheeehh"
  • Mean Guns.
  • Putting a b-movie guy in a b-movie and everyone is like "nice!"
  • The Recent Vampire Movie With Nicolas Cage.
  • The kind of movie you can follow without looking at the screen.
  • Someone who has at least one idea and a vision for how to achieve it.
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme pushing you aside so he can take over the editing suite.
  • Making a movie while making another movie.
  • The dwindling number of people getting weird chances.
  • What day they bury people in Ghana.
  • Art that's only good if a friend explains what's good about it first.
  • The comic relief witch doctor who is funny because he keeps screwing up.
  • Trying to type on a 25 key keyboard.
  • The three knobs that you have to be able to see best in a low light environment.
  • The ultrasaw: not as good as a supersaw.
  • Paying extra to get the one in red because of the kind of person you are.
  • Why buy an analog synthesizer in 2025?
  • The tactile wall of knobs.
  • The giant modular synthesizer at Mills college.
  • The tiniest patch cables.
  • Adamantium Rage's FM doom metal soundtrack.
  • Did you mean: I love Mickey Mouse?
  • Emailing Arturia Support.
  • The Pants That Said Maximum.
  • A poem with rotational symmetry around the center axis.
  • A poem where the whole point is the acrostic complaining about something.
  • Eating the leaves and stems of a squash blossom.
  • Allowing lettuce to bolt.
  • AeroLettuce.
  • Making pesto out of herbs other than basil.
  • The fragrance and the earth tones you get from a bay leaf.
  • Top garden plants you might not have thought of eating.
  • A hobby that is cool and fun to do.
  • Discovered two giant cucumbers you hadn't even noticed before.
  • Volunteer squash and wacky gourds.
  • Sharing the fruits of your garden with your neighbors.
  • When it's lemon season and everybody's trying to give everyone else lemons.
  • Some plants are in pots; some are in the ground.
  • Growing a plant that can give you something back.
  • mstdn.party

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bringing the fact that you are now a Lord to everyone's attention.
  • Hitting 1700 nautical miles today.
  • Demonschool. (Wishlist it.)
  • Whether it helps to un-wishlist and re-wishlist a game on Steam.
  • The Hot Dog Plant.
  • Tiny stinky blobs that attach to each other.
  • What kind of marsh grasses rich people in the 80s would have in their house.
  • Calling an aesthetic "southwestern" even though it's to the east of you.
  • A pep rally band playing a Lil Nas X tune.
  • The band soundtracking your No Kings rally playing a medley of Blister in the Sun, When the Saints Go Marching In, and I Want You Back.
  • Transcribing music from Double Dragon 2 and slipping under the door of your high school band director.
  • Disasterpeace's score for Under the Silver Lake.
  • How many people it takes to compose a pop song.
  • What it means to be a producer.
  • Kyle MacLaughlan desperately trying to hold on to Elizabeth Berkeley.
  • Christopher Lambert being legally blind and accidentally stabbing everyone while filming Highlander.
  • A weird guy who goes "hheeehh"
  • Mean Guns.
  • Putting a b-movie guy in a b-movie and everyone is like "nice!"
  • The Recent Vampire Movie With Nicolas Cage.
  • The kind of movie you can follow without looking at the screen.
  • Someone who has at least one idea and a vision for how to achieve it.
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme pushing you aside so he can take over the editing suite.
  • Making a movie while making another movie.
  • The dwindling number of people getting weird chances.
  • What day they bury people in Ghana.
  • Art that's only good if a friend explains what's good about it first.
  • The comic relief witch doctor who is funny because he keeps screwing up.
  • Trying to type on a 25 key keyboard.
  • The three knobs that you have to be able to see best in a low light environment.
  • The ultrasaw: not as good as a supersaw.
  • Paying extra to get the one in red because of the kind of person you are.
  • Why buy an analog synthesizer in 2025?
  • The tactile wall of knobs.
  • The giant modular synthesizer at Mills college.
  • The tiniest patch cables.
  • Adamantium Rage's FM doom metal soundtrack.
  • Did you mean: I love Mickey Mouse?
  • Emailing Arturia Support.
  • The Pants That Said Maximum.
  • A poem with rotational symmetry around the center axis.
  • A poem where the whole point is the acrostic complaining about something.
  • Eating the leaves and stems of a squash blossom.
  • Allowing lettuce to bolt.
  • AeroLettuce.
  • Making pesto out of herbs other than basil.
  • The fragrance and the earth tones you get from a bay leaf.
  • Top garden plants you might not have thought of eating.
  • A hobby that is cool and fun to do.
  • Discovered two giant cucumbers you hadn't even noticed before.
  • Volunteer squash and wacky gourds.
  • Sharing the fruits of your garden with your neighbors.
  • When it's lemon season and everybody's trying to give everyone else lemons.
  • Some plants are in pots; some are in the ground.
  • Growing a plant that can give you something back.
  • mstdn.party

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GH2Mi1kv ]]> Jim Stormdancer 303. A System of People Doing Stuff and Being Weirdos https://topiclords.com/a-system-of-people-doing-stuff-and-being-weirdos c514abe3-ee04-4a08-9f5f-3a4fd47bde31 Mon, 11 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JP and Styger. We discuss the nature of Mario vs. Super Mario, Hot Defensive Bee Ball, solving all 25 million 5x5 nonograms, Poem Seen in a Motel Fan by Alberto Blanco, werecreature logistics, and The Ball is Back. 1:06:04 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The World of Video Games
  • Your favorite granola coming back in stock.
  • Working to make the world a slightly better place every day.
  • Weird frustrating tethering.
  • Levels that are about hauling ass.
  • Being on the same train as someone for a few stops.
  • The small version of yourself that you become when you lose your mushroom.
  • Whether Small Mario has access to all of Super Mario's memories.
  • What was the authorial intent of Alice growing bigger and smaller.
  • Whether Small or Big Mario is the original default.
  • Mario accumulating power and becoming an enormous hulking beast.
  • Designing a level to support multiple player scales.
  • Game series that have been both 2D and 3D platformers.
  • Small Mario eating a mushroom and teleporting into a pocket dimension, swapping in Big Mario.
  • Japanese hornets in an evolutionary arms race with Japanese honey bees.
  • Bees forming a tight clump around a hive invader to make them uncomfortably warm.
  • A baseball sized mass of bees smothering a huge horrible wasp.
  • Touring beehives and giving seminars about the hot defensive bee ball.
  • A multi-disciplinary bullshit operation.
  • Enjoying your job.
  • The degree to which they waggle.
  • Bees having a dance-off to determine where to live.
  • Extending the bee dance language to teach them orbital dynamics so they can find pollen sources in space.
  • Candy that smells like a bee alarm pheromone.
  • The NPC in Curse of Monkey Island who explains that merengue is made of eggs.
  • What they call being "slashdotted" nowadays.
  • Doing 15 puzzles and taking satisfaction in being 15 puzzles closer to not being able to play this game any more.
  • Web sites: they shouldn't scale.
  • Putting every 5x5 nonogram in the Library of Congress.
  • Humanity dedicating all of its resources to solve every 6x6 nonogram.
  • The 100 people in the world whose brains are tricked by this kind of fake work.
  • The most interesting three-digit numbers.
  • What happens when we run out of nonograms??
  • The kayfabe of the community doing every 5x5 nonogram over and over again
  • A convex mirror, a fisheye, a golden dome.
  • Taking comfort in the continued existence of observers.
  • Having all the resources to grow as a person but none of the incentives.
  • Your little chunk of humanity's future.
  • Things can get better but also they can get worse.
  • The City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, 60th Anniversary Edition.
  • The official City Lights typeface.
  • A dignified serif.
  • A poem is when you do something interesting with typefaces.
  • How to distribute your poem that does something interesting with fonts.
  • Lycanthropy booths and other werewolf accommodations.
  • It's not a disability but they still accommodate you.
  • Seasonal Mania.
  • Humans brains being affected by the sun and moon in ways we don't fully understand.
  • Hospital intake numbers that correlate with the lunar cycle.
  • What's the deal with the ball being back?
  • A flying silver ball that sucks your brains out with a fork.
  • Doing what you do just because.
  • The ball: it has to be back.
  • Watching an 80s horror movie and thinking "surely someone has made a Doom level of this"
  • Inventing perfectly mirrored silver spheres entirely independently from ray tracers.
  • Reporting back when you are further along on your Phantasm journey.
  • Not being on the Internet because you're hanging out with the bees instead.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The World of Video Games
  • Your favorite granola coming back in stock.
  • Working to make the world a slightly better place every day.
  • Weird frustrating tethering.
  • Levels that are about hauling ass.
  • Being on the same train as someone for a few stops.
  • The small version of yourself that you become when you lose your mushroom.
  • Whether Small Mario has access to all of Super Mario's memories.
  • What was the authorial intent of Alice growing bigger and smaller.
  • Whether Small or Big Mario is the original default.
  • Mario accumulating power and becoming an enormous hulking beast.
  • Designing a level to support multiple player scales.
  • Game series that have been both 2D and 3D platformers.
  • Small Mario eating a mushroom and teleporting into a pocket dimension, swapping in Big Mario.
  • Japanese hornets in an evolutionary arms race with Japanese honey bees.
  • Bees forming a tight clump around a hive invader to make them uncomfortably warm.
  • A baseball sized mass of bees smothering a huge horrible wasp.
  • Touring beehives and giving seminars about the hot defensive bee ball.
  • A multi-disciplinary bullshit operation.
  • Enjoying your job.
  • The degree to which they waggle.
  • Bees having a dance-off to determine where to live.
  • Extending the bee dance language to teach them orbital dynamics so they can find pollen sources in space.
  • Candy that smells like a bee alarm pheromone.
  • The NPC in Curse of Monkey Island who explains that merengue is made of eggs.
  • What they call being "slashdotted" nowadays.
  • Doing 15 puzzles and taking satisfaction in being 15 puzzles closer to not being able to play this game any more.
  • Web sites: they shouldn't scale.
  • Putting every 5x5 nonogram in the Library of Congress.
  • Humanity dedicating all of its resources to solve every 6x6 nonogram.
  • The 100 people in the world whose brains are tricked by this kind of fake work.
  • The most interesting three-digit numbers.
  • What happens when we run out of nonograms??
  • The kayfabe of the community doing every 5x5 nonogram over and over again
  • A convex mirror, a fisheye, a golden dome.
  • Taking comfort in the continued existence of observers.
  • Having all the resources to grow as a person but none of the incentives.
  • Your little chunk of humanity's future.
  • Things can get better but also they can get worse.
  • The City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, 60th Anniversary Edition.
  • The official City Lights typeface.
  • A dignified serif.
  • A poem is when you do something interesting with typefaces.
  • How to distribute your poem that does something interesting with fonts.
  • Lycanthropy booths and other werewolf accommodations.
  • It's not a disability but they still accommodate you.
  • Seasonal Mania.
  • Humans brains being affected by the sun and moon in ways we don't fully understand.
  • Hospital intake numbers that correlate with the lunar cycle.
  • What's the deal with the ball being back?
  • A flying silver ball that sucks your brains out with a fork.
  • Doing what you do just because.
  • The ball: it has to be back.
  • Watching an 80s horror movie and thinking "surely someone has made a Doom level of this"
  • Inventing perfectly mirrored silver spheres entirely independently from ray tracers.
  • Reporting back when you are further along on your Phantasm journey.
  • Not being on the Internet because you're hanging out with the bees instead.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The World of Video Games
  • Your favorite granola coming back in stock.
  • Working to make the world a slightly better place every day.
  • Weird frustrating tethering.
  • Levels that are about hauling ass.
  • Being on the same train as someone for a few stops.
  • The small version of yourself that you become when you lose your mushroom.
  • Whether Small Mario has access to all of Super Mario's memories.
  • What was the authorial intent of Alice growing bigger and smaller.
  • Whether Small or Big Mario is the original default.
  • Mario accumulating power and becoming an enormous hulking beast.
  • Designing a level to support multiple player scales.
  • Game series that have been both 2D and 3D platformers.
  • Small Mario eating a mushroom and teleporting into a pocket dimension, swapping in Big Mario.
  • Japanese hornets in an evolutionary arms race with Japanese honey bees.
  • Bees forming a tight clump around a hive invader to make them uncomfortably warm.
  • A baseball sized mass of bees smothering a huge horrible wasp.
  • Touring beehives and giving seminars about the hot defensive bee ball.
  • A multi-disciplinary bullshit operation.
  • Enjoying your job.
  • The degree to which they waggle.
  • Bees having a dance-off to determine where to live.
  • Extending the bee dance language to teach them orbital dynamics so they can find pollen sources in space.
  • Candy that smells like a bee alarm pheromone.
  • The NPC in Curse of Monkey Island who explains that merengue is made of eggs.
  • What they call being "slashdotted" nowadays.
  • Doing 15 puzzles and taking satisfaction in being 15 puzzles closer to not being able to play this game any more.
  • Web sites: they shouldn't scale.
  • Putting every 5x5 nonogram in the Library of Congress.
  • Humanity dedicating all of its resources to solve every 6x6 nonogram.
  • The 100 people in the world whose brains are tricked by this kind of fake work.
  • The most interesting three-digit numbers.
  • What happens when we run out of nonograms??
  • The kayfabe of the community doing every 5x5 nonogram over and over again
  • A convex mirror, a fisheye, a golden dome.
  • Taking comfort in the continued existence of observers.
  • Having all the resources to grow as a person but none of the incentives.
  • Your little chunk of humanity's future.
  • Things can get better but also they can get worse.
  • The City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, 60th Anniversary Edition.
  • The official City Lights typeface.
  • A dignified serif.
  • A poem is when you do something interesting with typefaces.
  • How to distribute your poem that does something interesting with fonts.
  • Lycanthropy booths and other werewolf accommodations.
  • It's not a disability but they still accommodate you.
  • Seasonal Mania.
  • Humans brains being affected by the sun and moon in ways we don't fully understand.
  • Hospital intake numbers that correlate with the lunar cycle.
  • What's the deal with the ball being back?
  • A flying silver ball that sucks your brains out with a fork.
  • Doing what you do just because.
  • The ball: it has to be back.
  • Watching an 80s horror movie and thinking "surely someone has made a Doom level of this"
  • Inventing perfectly mirrored silver spheres entirely independently from ray tracers.
  • Reporting back when you are further along on your Phantasm journey.
  • Not being on the Internet because you're hanging out with the bees instead.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+T1rUulpB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 302. Frog Fractions 2 OST 2: Still Croakin' https://topiclords.com/frog-fractions-2-ost-2-still-croakin 4f74eb0b-f13b-4937-9de0-ad00ae589314 Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kory and Ryan. We discuss incorrect facts they teach you in school, remaking your game yet again, accidentally finding a cat on vacation, and Being Boring by Wendy Cope. 1:22:06 true Lords:

  • Kory
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Watching an epicurean professional licking the Switch and Switch 2 cartridges back to back.
  • Switch 2 cartridges that don't contain a game but still taste disgusting.
  • A digital key that tastes awful.
  • 1 in 100,000 Switch 2 cartridges tasting absolutely delicious.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Relorded.
  • How many people have licked the Switch game you just bought used.
  • A construction worker spitting a big loog of chew and there's a Switch cartridge floating in it.
  • Not everybody is Jim Stormdancer.
  • And independent game design aficionado.
  • The New York Mayoral primary.
  • Hackmud.
  • Games that get two soundtracks while some games don't even get one.
  • Disasterpeace's Soupertasters theme song.
  • How to prove that your blood is not blue until it hits the air.
  • Why do bats e-chocolate??
  • What color lobsters are until you cook them.
  • In space, noone can not see your blue blood.
  • Eating a 9-volt battery that tastes like chocolate.
  • Strawberry flavored chocolate that you puff on.
  • Hey, look who capitalism finally enslaved.
  • A can of A&W Root Beer that folds in on itself like a neutron star and you don't get to drink any because it's just empty space.
  • Believing the thing you were told before you turned 18.
  • Bodyboarding on a plank of wood in an open field.
  • An empire of the skies and caves.
  • Whether the tritone was ever illegal.
  • Education as a Russian doll of nested simplifications.
  • Wait, this isn't plum pudding!
  • Blood color facts.
  • Tuning your piano down to A=420.
  • Making one mistake and proceeding from the premise that everything you know is wrong.
  • A t-shirt reading "My favorite guests don't have their fontanelles closed yet."
  • How to structure your game world.
  • A grid of lights that are flickering on and off.
  • The tilty wooden labyrinth with holes in it.
  • Always on the lookout for the next engine to rewrite your game in.
  • One of those newfangled scripting languages that targets the NES.
  • Renting a magic want and running from kiosk to kiosk doing quests.
  • Finding the Pinecone of Peril.
  • Capacitative touch interfaces aren't magical for you??
  • Asymptotically approaching cat saturation.
  • Framily.
  • Hot and cold running cat slides.
  • Weird reverb where things don't echo right because everything's wet.
  • A Rainforest Cafe the size of several football fields.
  • Rainforest Cafe Chic.
  • A liquid balance tied to your QR code.
  • Jailbreaking the soda fountain DRM, yelling "kill the banks" and spraying everyone with Mr. Pibb.
  • Striving to be as boring as possible.
  • Being boring. (In a good way.)
  • Being asked how you're doing and scrambling to come up with something interesting to say.
  • Trying to explain the Video Game History Foundation to your boss.
  • The Video Game Thing Guy.
  • Maintaining a garden and posting your harvests on your private Instagram.
  • Stopping someone on the street and asking them what are the last six vegetables you grew.
  • How to perform boredom after people realize that yawning means you're tired.
  • Starting to make omelets a new way.
  • Asking how someone is doing and bracing yourself for the answer.
  • Getting emotional and intellectual sustenance from cleaning the bathroom.
  • The me that comes up when you google my name.
]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Watching an epicurean professional licking the Switch and Switch 2 cartridges back to back.
  • Switch 2 cartridges that don't contain a game but still taste disgusting.
  • A digital key that tastes awful.
  • 1 in 100,000 Switch 2 cartridges tasting absolutely delicious.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Relorded.
  • How many people have licked the Switch game you just bought used.
  • A construction worker spitting a big loog of chew and there's a Switch cartridge floating in it.
  • Not everybody is Jim Stormdancer.
  • And independent game design aficionado.
  • The New York Mayoral primary.
  • Hackmud.
  • Games that get two soundtracks while some games don't even get one.
  • Disasterpeace's Soupertasters theme song.
  • How to prove that your blood is not blue until it hits the air.
  • Why do bats e-chocolate??
  • What color lobsters are until you cook them.
  • In space, noone can not see your blue blood.
  • Eating a 9-volt battery that tastes like chocolate.
  • Strawberry flavored chocolate that you puff on.
  • Hey, look who capitalism finally enslaved.
  • A can of A&W Root Beer that folds in on itself like a neutron star and you don't get to drink any because it's just empty space.
  • Believing the thing you were told before you turned 18.
  • Bodyboarding on a plank of wood in an open field.
  • An empire of the skies and caves.
  • Whether the tritone was ever illegal.
  • Education as a Russian doll of nested simplifications.
  • Wait, this isn't plum pudding!
  • Blood color facts.
  • Tuning your piano down to A=420.
  • Making one mistake and proceeding from the premise that everything you know is wrong.
  • A t-shirt reading "My favorite guests don't have their fontanelles closed yet."
  • How to structure your game world.
  • A grid of lights that are flickering on and off.
  • The tilty wooden labyrinth with holes in it.
  • Always on the lookout for the next engine to rewrite your game in.
  • One of those newfangled scripting languages that targets the NES.
  • Renting a magic want and running from kiosk to kiosk doing quests.
  • Finding the Pinecone of Peril.
  • Capacitative touch interfaces aren't magical for you??
  • Asymptotically approaching cat saturation.
  • Framily.
  • Hot and cold running cat slides.
  • Weird reverb where things don't echo right because everything's wet.
  • A Rainforest Cafe the size of several football fields.
  • Rainforest Cafe Chic.
  • A liquid balance tied to your QR code.
  • Jailbreaking the soda fountain DRM, yelling "kill the banks" and spraying everyone with Mr. Pibb.
  • Striving to be as boring as possible.
  • Being boring. (In a good way.)
  • Being asked how you're doing and scrambling to come up with something interesting to say.
  • Trying to explain the Video Game History Foundation to your boss.
  • The Video Game Thing Guy.
  • Maintaining a garden and posting your harvests on your private Instagram.
  • Stopping someone on the street and asking them what are the last six vegetables you grew.
  • How to perform boredom after people realize that yawning means you're tired.
  • Starting to make omelets a new way.
  • Asking how someone is doing and bracing yourself for the answer.
  • Getting emotional and intellectual sustenance from cleaning the bathroom.
  • The me that comes up when you google my name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Watching an epicurean professional licking the Switch and Switch 2 cartridges back to back.
  • Switch 2 cartridges that don't contain a game but still taste disgusting.
  • A digital key that tastes awful.
  • 1 in 100,000 Switch 2 cartridges tasting absolutely delicious.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Relorded.
  • How many people have licked the Switch game you just bought used.
  • A construction worker spitting a big loog of chew and there's a Switch cartridge floating in it.
  • Not everybody is Jim Stormdancer.
  • And independent game design aficionado.
  • The New York Mayoral primary.
  • Hackmud.
  • Games that get two soundtracks while some games don't even get one.
  • Disasterpeace's Soupertasters theme song.
  • How to prove that your blood is not blue until it hits the air.
  • Why do bats e-chocolate??
  • What color lobsters are until you cook them.
  • In space, noone can not see your blue blood.
  • Eating a 9-volt battery that tastes like chocolate.
  • Strawberry flavored chocolate that you puff on.
  • Hey, look who capitalism finally enslaved.
  • A can of A&W Root Beer that folds in on itself like a neutron star and you don't get to drink any because it's just empty space.
  • Believing the thing you were told before you turned 18.
  • Bodyboarding on a plank of wood in an open field.
  • An empire of the skies and caves.
  • Whether the tritone was ever illegal.
  • Education as a Russian doll of nested simplifications.
  • Wait, this isn't plum pudding!
  • Blood color facts.
  • Tuning your piano down to A=420.
  • Making one mistake and proceeding from the premise that everything you know is wrong.
  • A t-shirt reading "My favorite guests don't have their fontanelles closed yet."
  • How to structure your game world.
  • A grid of lights that are flickering on and off.
  • The tilty wooden labyrinth with holes in it.
  • Always on the lookout for the next engine to rewrite your game in.
  • One of those newfangled scripting languages that targets the NES.
  • Renting a magic want and running from kiosk to kiosk doing quests.
  • Finding the Pinecone of Peril.
  • Capacitative touch interfaces aren't magical for you??
  • Asymptotically approaching cat saturation.
  • Framily.
  • Hot and cold running cat slides.
  • Weird reverb where things don't echo right because everything's wet.
  • A Rainforest Cafe the size of several football fields.
  • Rainforest Cafe Chic.
  • A liquid balance tied to your QR code.
  • Jailbreaking the soda fountain DRM, yelling "kill the banks" and spraying everyone with Mr. Pibb.
  • Striving to be as boring as possible.
  • Being boring. (In a good way.)
  • Being asked how you're doing and scrambling to come up with something interesting to say.
  • Trying to explain the Video Game History Foundation to your boss.
  • The Video Game Thing Guy.
  • Maintaining a garden and posting your harvests on your private Instagram.
  • Stopping someone on the street and asking them what are the last six vegetables you grew.
  • How to perform boredom after people realize that yawning means you're tired.
  • Starting to make omelets a new way.
  • Asking how someone is doing and bracing yourself for the answer.
  • Getting emotional and intellectual sustenance from cleaning the bathroom.
  • The me that comes up when you google my name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+UlEowa_q ]]> Jim Stormdancer 301. For Those Who Are Glucose Curious https://topiclords.com/for-those-who-are-glucose-curious 978a627b-b702-4bdb-8c63-f232f48c49b5 Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Wacy and Chris. We discuss the mysterious BART smell between 12th st. Oakland and West Oakland, glucose monitors, Minecraft, and The Earth Wants You. 56:46 true Lords:

  • Wacy
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing so many Chrises that you refuse to call yourself Chris.
  • Not knowing what just happened for the past how, but now there's an hour-long M4A file with your voice in it.
  • A whole range of thought experiments that might bear interesting fruit.
  • A scrap of papyrus containing a transcript of the first episode of Topic Lords.
  • Trash-adjacent smells.
  • Whether power substations smell like anything.
  • A smell worth seeking out for its own experience.
  • A smell for smell connoisseurs.
  • A tiny BART Easter egg for your nose.
  • A huge amount of substance that is replenishing the smell particles.
  • Checking your apps for indescribable smells.
  • Closing some Tupperware in a stinky room to preserve the smell forever.
  • A rat kingdom living under the BART tracks.
  • Where to talk about unsolved mysteries now that Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack went off the air.
  • Reintroducing mystery to the world like replenishing a lake with trout.
  • What is the goo under the BART 12th Street Tunnel?
  • Mystery caches.
  • An extremely achievable local mystery.
  • Your body surfacing issues you were previously unaware of.
  • The full spectrum of diabetes.
  • Disposable glucose monitors.
  • What type of food are you eating that spikes your blood sugar, and by how much?
  • Glucose Curious.
  • Sports enthusiasts needing to checking their pulse as they watch the big game.
  • Going for a walk right after eating.
  • Continuing walking until your blood sugar is back within tolerances.
  • Having a bad habit for a few months vs. having a bad habit for your whole life.
  • Learning to spot blood glucose meters in the wild.
  • Measuring your blood glucose for a month to learn how your body reacts to various foods.
  • Getting funneled into videos of a douchebag with spiked hair breaking shit with a hammer.
  • Figuring out how to survive the first night in Minecraft with a six year old.
  • A game that lets you do lots of different things but doesn't suggest any of them so you have to figure out what you can do and why you would want to do it.
  • Java edition mods vs. Bedrock edition mods.
  • Mods: they have they mod problem.
  • Why they added copper to Minecraft.
  • Purposeful exploration.
  • Laying down a bunch of the stone that makes The Warden spawn so you can meet your new Warden pal.
  • Exploring The End and getting your wings.
  • Dragon Quest Builders.
  • The Terraria tutorial.
  • A weird person to be.
  • Vampire Survivors: not the first Vampire Survivors-like.
  • Getting to the poem before it's too late.
  • Looking through your photos of graffiti
  • A cat mermaid playing a violin as if it's a guitar.
  • The Earth Wants You To Be Die.
  • Emitting a series of tones that insert an image in the listener's mind.
  • If you can't handle me at my fish, you don't deserve me at my cat.
  • Missing some sleep and some teeth.
  • Trying to refute an idea without exposing your audience to the original idea.
  • Videos continuing to appear on your travel vlog long after you've finished traveling.
]]> Lords:

  • Wacy
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing so many Chrises that you refuse to call yourself Chris.
  • Not knowing what just happened for the past how, but now there's an hour-long M4A file with your voice in it.
  • A whole range of thought experiments that might bear interesting fruit.
  • A scrap of papyrus containing a transcript of the first episode of Topic Lords.
  • Trash-adjacent smells.
  • Whether power substations smell like anything.
  • A smell worth seeking out for its own experience.
  • A smell for smell connoisseurs.
  • A tiny BART Easter egg for your nose.
  • A huge amount of substance that is replenishing the smell particles.
  • Checking your apps for indescribable smells.
  • Closing some Tupperware in a stinky room to preserve the smell forever.
  • A rat kingdom living under the BART tracks.
  • Where to talk about unsolved mysteries now that Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack went off the air.
  • Reintroducing mystery to the world like replenishing a lake with trout.
  • What is the goo under the BART 12th Street Tunnel?
  • Mystery caches.
  • An extremely achievable local mystery.
  • Your body surfacing issues you were previously unaware of.
  • The full spectrum of diabetes.
  • Disposable glucose monitors.
  • What type of food are you eating that spikes your blood sugar, and by how much?
  • Glucose Curious.
  • Sports enthusiasts needing to checking their pulse as they watch the big game.
  • Going for a walk right after eating.
  • Continuing walking until your blood sugar is back within tolerances.
  • Having a bad habit for a few months vs. having a bad habit for your whole life.
  • Learning to spot blood glucose meters in the wild.
  • Measuring your blood glucose for a month to learn how your body reacts to various foods.
  • Getting funneled into videos of a douchebag with spiked hair breaking shit with a hammer.
  • Figuring out how to survive the first night in Minecraft with a six year old.
  • A game that lets you do lots of different things but doesn't suggest any of them so you have to figure out what you can do and why you would want to do it.
  • Java edition mods vs. Bedrock edition mods.
  • Mods: they have they mod problem.
  • Why they added copper to Minecraft.
  • Purposeful exploration.
  • Laying down a bunch of the stone that makes The Warden spawn so you can meet your new Warden pal.
  • Exploring The End and getting your wings.
  • Dragon Quest Builders.
  • The Terraria tutorial.
  • A weird person to be.
  • Vampire Survivors: not the first Vampire Survivors-like.
  • Getting to the poem before it's too late.
  • Looking through your photos of graffiti
  • A cat mermaid playing a violin as if it's a guitar.
  • The Earth Wants You To Be Die.
  • Emitting a series of tones that insert an image in the listener's mind.
  • If you can't handle me at my fish, you don't deserve me at my cat.
  • Missing some sleep and some teeth.
  • Trying to refute an idea without exposing your audience to the original idea.
  • Videos continuing to appear on your travel vlog long after you've finished traveling.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Wacy
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing so many Chrises that you refuse to call yourself Chris.
  • Not knowing what just happened for the past how, but now there's an hour-long M4A file with your voice in it.
  • A whole range of thought experiments that might bear interesting fruit.
  • A scrap of papyrus containing a transcript of the first episode of Topic Lords.
  • Trash-adjacent smells.
  • Whether power substations smell like anything.
  • A smell worth seeking out for its own experience.
  • A smell for smell connoisseurs.
  • A tiny BART Easter egg for your nose.
  • A huge amount of substance that is replenishing the smell particles.
  • Checking your apps for indescribable smells.
  • Closing some Tupperware in a stinky room to preserve the smell forever.
  • A rat kingdom living under the BART tracks.
  • Where to talk about unsolved mysteries now that Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack went off the air.
  • Reintroducing mystery to the world like replenishing a lake with trout.
  • What is the goo under the BART 12th Street Tunnel?
  • Mystery caches.
  • An extremely achievable local mystery.
  • Your body surfacing issues you were previously unaware of.
  • The full spectrum of diabetes.
  • Disposable glucose monitors.
  • What type of food are you eating that spikes your blood sugar, and by how much?
  • Glucose Curious.
  • Sports enthusiasts needing to checking their pulse as they watch the big game.
  • Going for a walk right after eating.
  • Continuing walking until your blood sugar is back within tolerances.
  • Having a bad habit for a few months vs. having a bad habit for your whole life.
  • Learning to spot blood glucose meters in the wild.
  • Measuring your blood glucose for a month to learn how your body reacts to various foods.
  • Getting funneled into videos of a douchebag with spiked hair breaking shit with a hammer.
  • Figuring out how to survive the first night in Minecraft with a six year old.
  • A game that lets you do lots of different things but doesn't suggest any of them so you have to figure out what you can do and why you would want to do it.
  • Java edition mods vs. Bedrock edition mods.
  • Mods: they have they mod problem.
  • Why they added copper to Minecraft.
  • Purposeful exploration.
  • Laying down a bunch of the stone that makes The Warden spawn so you can meet your new Warden pal.
  • Exploring The End and getting your wings.
  • Dragon Quest Builders.
  • The Terraria tutorial.
  • A weird person to be.
  • Vampire Survivors: not the first Vampire Survivors-like.
  • Getting to the poem before it's too late.
  • Looking through your photos of graffiti
  • A cat mermaid playing a violin as if it's a guitar.
  • The Earth Wants You To Be Die.
  • Emitting a series of tones that insert an image in the listener's mind.
  • If you can't handle me at my fish, you don't deserve me at my cat.
  • Missing some sleep and some teeth.
  • Trying to refute an idea without exposing your audience to the original idea.
  • Videos continuing to appear on your travel vlog long after you've finished traveling.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+NlOCBApR ]]> Jim Stormdancer 300. Dave's Kid Doesn't Know How To Spit https://topiclords.com/daves-kid-doesnt-know-how-to-spit 691b157e-7410-4b18-b05b-181635d9b6d7 Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Tyriq. We discuss internal monologue soundboards, whether it sucks that Ash wants to be the very best, the different ways people play games, friendship as a skill, and which element is best for bending? 1:07:26 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Internal Monologue Soundboards
  • Ash wants to be the very best, but at what cost? When is competition a bad thing?
  • The different ways people play games
  • Friendship is a skill
  • Water… Earth… Fire… Air… which bending is best bending?

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trouble.
  • Figuring out how to do a multiplayer roguelike.
  • Power leveling all your skills at once and hoping it's enough.
  • Looking at the comments, because there might be something good in there.
  • The Dawn of Our Topic Lords Century.
  • Why all ducks sound like that.
  • Hearing a sound an incorporating it into your internal monologue.
  • Saying "good morning" whenever you pick up the phone no matter what time of day it is.
  • Alone in the Dark Hedge Maze Mafioso Barks.
  • Talkin' Barks.
  • A vault full of clones of a guy named Gary and the only thing they can say is "Gary"
  • You're a cluster of cells wafting through the universe and latching onto phrases you hear on the internet.
  • Kids who think they invented being dumb on the Internet.
  • The Bill Nye theme song sound board.
  • Wanting to be the very best, like noone ever was, and defining "best" as "kindest."
  • Wanting to be the very best, and then being it, and then no longer being it and losing your entire sense of identity.
  • What if you're on a spaceship? Lots of weird things happen on a spaceship.
  • Striving to be the most benevolent god, like noone ever was.
  • The sound of angering the giant goose.
  • Trying to get your significant other to play Outer Wilds because you can't fly the spaceship.
  • Solving puzzles with the internet.
  • Super Metroid + Link to the Past and other multi-game randomizers.
  • Lies on video game forums.
  • The Search for the Last Great Secret.
  • A Clop or a Girp.
  • Collecting meat for a Roguelike Celebration talk.
  • Holding a meeting about all the ways your project could potentially fail.
  • Good mortem!
  • Going back in time and all humans clump together like a giant Katamari.
  • Friendship as a skill vs. friendship as a natural outcome of your life circumstances.
  • Friendship decay, a a problem that neurotypicals have.
  • Keeping up with real life friends vs. with Internet friends.
  • Online games as a third place.
  • Complaining about all the ways in which your are socially incompetent.
  • Inviting people over for a listening party.
  • Not knowing what number you're thinking of but knowing that it's either odd or even.
  • Filling away tidbits of information.
  • The Y2K problem where when pro people start being over 127 years old, everyone remembers them as being -128.
  • Things that are impossible to think about because you have no frame of reference.
  • Making yourself a little coffee treat and scrolling reddit so you can stop thinking about death.
  • Water is imba!
  • Whether magma falls under bending Earth or bending Fire.
  • Highly fluid particulate sand.
  • Which bending is most delicious, according to avatarfandom.com
  • The cosmology of Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City"
  • Whether circuit bending is still fun now that everything is software-controlled.
  • Circuit bending your electric together.
  • The Goodbye Noise.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • Hamster Disco.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Internal Monologue Soundboards
  • Ash wants to be the very best, but at what cost? When is competition a bad thing?
  • The different ways people play games
  • Friendship is a skill
  • Water… Earth… Fire… Air… which bending is best bending?

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trouble.
  • Figuring out how to do a multiplayer roguelike.
  • Power leveling all your skills at once and hoping it's enough.
  • Looking at the comments, because there might be something good in there.
  • The Dawn of Our Topic Lords Century.
  • Why all ducks sound like that.
  • Hearing a sound an incorporating it into your internal monologue.
  • Saying "good morning" whenever you pick up the phone no matter what time of day it is.
  • Alone in the Dark Hedge Maze Mafioso Barks.
  • Talkin' Barks.
  • A vault full of clones of a guy named Gary and the only thing they can say is "Gary"
  • You're a cluster of cells wafting through the universe and latching onto phrases you hear on the internet.
  • Kids who think they invented being dumb on the Internet.
  • The Bill Nye theme song sound board.
  • Wanting to be the very best, like noone ever was, and defining "best" as "kindest."
  • Wanting to be the very best, and then being it, and then no longer being it and losing your entire sense of identity.
  • What if you're on a spaceship? Lots of weird things happen on a spaceship.
  • Striving to be the most benevolent god, like noone ever was.
  • The sound of angering the giant goose.
  • Trying to get your significant other to play Outer Wilds because you can't fly the spaceship.
  • Solving puzzles with the internet.
  • Super Metroid + Link to the Past and other multi-game randomizers.
  • Lies on video game forums.
  • The Search for the Last Great Secret.
  • A Clop or a Girp.
  • Collecting meat for a Roguelike Celebration talk.
  • Holding a meeting about all the ways your project could potentially fail.
  • Good mortem!
  • Going back in time and all humans clump together like a giant Katamari.
  • Friendship as a skill vs. friendship as a natural outcome of your life circumstances.
  • Friendship decay, a a problem that neurotypicals have.
  • Keeping up with real life friends vs. with Internet friends.
  • Online games as a third place.
  • Complaining about all the ways in which your are socially incompetent.
  • Inviting people over for a listening party.
  • Not knowing what number you're thinking of but knowing that it's either odd or even.
  • Filling away tidbits of information.
  • The Y2K problem where when pro people start being over 127 years old, everyone remembers them as being -128.
  • Things that are impossible to think about because you have no frame of reference.
  • Making yourself a little coffee treat and scrolling reddit so you can stop thinking about death.
  • Water is imba!
  • Whether magma falls under bending Earth or bending Fire.
  • Highly fluid particulate sand.
  • Which bending is most delicious, according to avatarfandom.com
  • The cosmology of Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City"
  • Whether circuit bending is still fun now that everything is software-controlled.
  • Circuit bending your electric together.
  • The Goodbye Noise.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • Hamster Disco.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Internal Monologue Soundboards
  • Ash wants to be the very best, but at what cost? When is competition a bad thing?
  • The different ways people play games
  • Friendship is a skill
  • Water… Earth… Fire… Air… which bending is best bending?

Microtopics:

  • Scrubbin' Trouble.
  • Figuring out how to do a multiplayer roguelike.
  • Power leveling all your skills at once and hoping it's enough.
  • Looking at the comments, because there might be something good in there.
  • The Dawn of Our Topic Lords Century.
  • Why all ducks sound like that.
  • Hearing a sound an incorporating it into your internal monologue.
  • Saying "good morning" whenever you pick up the phone no matter what time of day it is.
  • Alone in the Dark Hedge Maze Mafioso Barks.
  • Talkin' Barks.
  • A vault full of clones of a guy named Gary and the only thing they can say is "Gary"
  • You're a cluster of cells wafting through the universe and latching onto phrases you hear on the internet.
  • Kids who think they invented being dumb on the Internet.
  • The Bill Nye theme song sound board.
  • Wanting to be the very best, like noone ever was, and defining "best" as "kindest."
  • Wanting to be the very best, and then being it, and then no longer being it and losing your entire sense of identity.
  • What if you're on a spaceship? Lots of weird things happen on a spaceship.
  • Striving to be the most benevolent god, like noone ever was.
  • The sound of angering the giant goose.
  • Trying to get your significant other to play Outer Wilds because you can't fly the spaceship.
  • Solving puzzles with the internet.
  • Super Metroid + Link to the Past and other multi-game randomizers.
  • Lies on video game forums.
  • The Search for the Last Great Secret.
  • A Clop or a Girp.
  • Collecting meat for a Roguelike Celebration talk.
  • Holding a meeting about all the ways your project could potentially fail.
  • Good mortem!
  • Going back in time and all humans clump together like a giant Katamari.
  • Friendship as a skill vs. friendship as a natural outcome of your life circumstances.
  • Friendship decay, a a problem that neurotypicals have.
  • Keeping up with real life friends vs. with Internet friends.
  • Online games as a third place.
  • Complaining about all the ways in which your are socially incompetent.
  • Inviting people over for a listening party.
  • Not knowing what number you're thinking of but knowing that it's either odd or even.
  • Filling away tidbits of information.
  • The Y2K problem where when pro people start being over 127 years old, everyone remembers them as being -128.
  • Things that are impossible to think about because you have no frame of reference.
  • Making yourself a little coffee treat and scrolling reddit so you can stop thinking about death.
  • Water is imba!
  • Whether magma falls under bending Earth or bending Fire.
  • Highly fluid particulate sand.
  • Which bending is most delicious, according to avatarfandom.com
  • The cosmology of Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City"
  • Whether circuit bending is still fun now that everything is software-controlled.
  • Circuit bending your electric together.
  • The Goodbye Noise.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • Hamster Disco.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+p1C03MBt ]]> Jim Stormdancer 299. Skin Fortress With Armed Idiot https://topiclords.com/skin-fortress-with-armed-idiot 9108f664-14df-477b-9345-80e3a47f698b Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Robb. We discuss multiple people responding with the same mystifying emoji, role-playing with a four year old about stealing Toxic Waste candy and lying to the cops about it, choosing to not rent a Playstation, Hints by Atari Games, and getting an Osia 2 bone-anchored hearing aid. 1:03:53 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Robb

Topics:

  • The phenomenon where multiple people respond with the same mystifying emoji
  • Lately I've engaged in pretend play with my 4 year old nephew by pretending we stole a crate of "Toxic Waste" candy and lying to the cops about it. As actual parents, is this healthy for the child?
  • It turns out you don't want to rent a Playstation
  • Hints
  • I would be happy to talk about what having an operation to get an Osia 2 bone anchored hearing aid is like.

Microtopics:

  • The Stanley Parable New Edition.
  • Cyberganked.
  • Wishing for games using the Steam wishlist system and the Steam Monkey's Paw curls.
  • CRPG blobbers.
  • 25 years of Hugo.
  • Recognizing a Windows program from 1996.
  • Back when malware pretended to be a little guy.
  • The origins of Skinfort.
  • Hapsburg Jaw.
  • Angry Cry Laughing.
  • Meta-channels and meta-meta-channels.
  • Medicinal Dock Spiders.
  • This Spider Pays Taxes.
  • The weakest Great Lake of all.
  • The good Mexican restaurant in Fond du Lac.
  • Fish pouches.
  • Whether you have to refrigerate Big League Chew.
  • Putting tuna on dry toast.
  • Four year olds who want to impress people with how sour s candy they can eat.
  • The amount of toxic waste you are allowed to feed a child.
  • Having a milkshake and being in bed by 8:30.
  • Doing improv with your four year old nephew about invoking the fifth amendment.
  • The Cocomelon video about never talking to the police.
  • I'm not sad; I'm just on a triangle.
  • French mice asking to buy your armpit cheese.
  • A kid who just plain needs to be lied to.
  • Renting a child so you can make cheese in their armpits.
  • Did Jim finally rent the Playstation?
  • Going to the place to rent a Playstation and they immediately ask for your Social Security Number.
  • It's hot inside the Playstation, and the bugs are cold.
  • Just doing the poem about Data's cat Spot every episode.
  • The warlock dominatrix Harley Quinn voice that you make everybody listen to.
  • Oh I'm sorry, I thought the ceiling was your ass.
  • Telling your friends about the guy who said he thought the ceiling was your ass and asking them what it means and they just respond with the grapes emoji.
  • Games that have both Booty and The Wizard.
  • The scrawny wizard from Zwackery.
  • Whether chewing your food is a spell.
  • Listening to Topic Lords for all the mouth sounds.
  • Constantly rehydrating this child so that he can make the whole house wet.
  • Starving zombie apocalypse survivors taking the child seats out of a car so they can turn them upside down and shake all the gummy bears out.
  • A poem with a pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Bone-anchored hearing aids.
  • Bringing a topic list to a first date.
  • Waiting until your last day of insurance and bursting into the OR like the Kool-Aid Man.
  • Your surgeon quitting the industry immediately after seeing the inside of your head.
  • Performatively pressing your hearing aid's nonfunctional volume button.
  • Your wife violating HIPAA to tell you a hilarious work story.
  • Accidentally installing Bonzi Buddy on your hearing aid.
  • Marrying an audiologist to get the best possible hearing aid.
  • Going to zoom.ca to rev up your savings.
  • Performance Acura North Mississauga.
  • Adapting Eliza into a game where you're trying to trick Smaug into giving up his hoard.
  • Making a joke about a banana slug actually bring a plantain slug.
  • It is the 90s and there is time for Rifftrax.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Robb

Topics:

  • The phenomenon where multiple people respond with the same mystifying emoji
  • Lately I've engaged in pretend play with my 4 year old nephew by pretending we stole a crate of "Toxic Waste" candy and lying to the cops about it. As actual parents, is this healthy for the child?
  • It turns out you don't want to rent a Playstation
  • Hints
  • I would be happy to talk about what having an operation to get an Osia 2 bone anchored hearing aid is like.

Microtopics:

  • The Stanley Parable New Edition.
  • Cyberganked.
  • Wishing for games using the Steam wishlist system and the Steam Monkey's Paw curls.
  • CRPG blobbers.
  • 25 years of Hugo.
  • Recognizing a Windows program from 1996.
  • Back when malware pretended to be a little guy.
  • The origins of Skinfort.
  • Hapsburg Jaw.
  • Angry Cry Laughing.
  • Meta-channels and meta-meta-channels.
  • Medicinal Dock Spiders.
  • This Spider Pays Taxes.
  • The weakest Great Lake of all.
  • The good Mexican restaurant in Fond du Lac.
  • Fish pouches.
  • Whether you have to refrigerate Big League Chew.
  • Putting tuna on dry toast.
  • Four year olds who want to impress people with how sour s candy they can eat.
  • The amount of toxic waste you are allowed to feed a child.
  • Having a milkshake and being in bed by 8:30.
  • Doing improv with your four year old nephew about invoking the fifth amendment.
  • The Cocomelon video about never talking to the police.
  • I'm not sad; I'm just on a triangle.
  • French mice asking to buy your armpit cheese.
  • A kid who just plain needs to be lied to.
  • Renting a child so you can make cheese in their armpits.
  • Did Jim finally rent the Playstation?
  • Going to the place to rent a Playstation and they immediately ask for your Social Security Number.
  • It's hot inside the Playstation, and the bugs are cold.
  • Just doing the poem about Data's cat Spot every episode.
  • The warlock dominatrix Harley Quinn voice that you make everybody listen to.
  • Oh I'm sorry, I thought the ceiling was your ass.
  • Telling your friends about the guy who said he thought the ceiling was your ass and asking them what it means and they just respond with the grapes emoji.
  • Games that have both Booty and The Wizard.
  • The scrawny wizard from Zwackery.
  • Whether chewing your food is a spell.
  • Listening to Topic Lords for all the mouth sounds.
  • Constantly rehydrating this child so that he can make the whole house wet.
  • Starving zombie apocalypse survivors taking the child seats out of a car so they can turn them upside down and shake all the gummy bears out.
  • A poem with a pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Bone-anchored hearing aids.
  • Bringing a topic list to a first date.
  • Waiting until your last day of insurance and bursting into the OR like the Kool-Aid Man.
  • Your surgeon quitting the industry immediately after seeing the inside of your head.
  • Performatively pressing your hearing aid's nonfunctional volume button.
  • Your wife violating HIPAA to tell you a hilarious work story.
  • Accidentally installing Bonzi Buddy on your hearing aid.
  • Marrying an audiologist to get the best possible hearing aid.
  • Going to zoom.ca to rev up your savings.
  • Performance Acura North Mississauga.
  • Adapting Eliza into a game where you're trying to trick Smaug into giving up his hoard.
  • Making a joke about a banana slug actually bring a plantain slug.
  • It is the 90s and there is time for Rifftrax.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Robb

Topics:

  • The phenomenon where multiple people respond with the same mystifying emoji
  • Lately I've engaged in pretend play with my 4 year old nephew by pretending we stole a crate of "Toxic Waste" candy and lying to the cops about it. As actual parents, is this healthy for the child?
  • It turns out you don't want to rent a Playstation
  • Hints
  • I would be happy to talk about what having an operation to get an Osia 2 bone anchored hearing aid is like.

Microtopics:

  • The Stanley Parable New Edition.
  • Cyberganked.
  • Wishing for games using the Steam wishlist system and the Steam Monkey's Paw curls.
  • CRPG blobbers.
  • 25 years of Hugo.
  • Recognizing a Windows program from 1996.
  • Back when malware pretended to be a little guy.
  • The origins of Skinfort.
  • Hapsburg Jaw.
  • Angry Cry Laughing.
  • Meta-channels and meta-meta-channels.
  • Medicinal Dock Spiders.
  • This Spider Pays Taxes.
  • The weakest Great Lake of all.
  • The good Mexican restaurant in Fond du Lac.
  • Fish pouches.
  • Whether you have to refrigerate Big League Chew.
  • Putting tuna on dry toast.
  • Four year olds who want to impress people with how sour s candy they can eat.
  • The amount of toxic waste you are allowed to feed a child.
  • Having a milkshake and being in bed by 8:30.
  • Doing improv with your four year old nephew about invoking the fifth amendment.
  • The Cocomelon video about never talking to the police.
  • I'm not sad; I'm just on a triangle.
  • French mice asking to buy your armpit cheese.
  • A kid who just plain needs to be lied to.
  • Renting a child so you can make cheese in their armpits.
  • Did Jim finally rent the Playstation?
  • Going to the place to rent a Playstation and they immediately ask for your Social Security Number.
  • It's hot inside the Playstation, and the bugs are cold.
  • Just doing the poem about Data's cat Spot every episode.
  • The warlock dominatrix Harley Quinn voice that you make everybody listen to.
  • Oh I'm sorry, I thought the ceiling was your ass.
  • Telling your friends about the guy who said he thought the ceiling was your ass and asking them what it means and they just respond with the grapes emoji.
  • Games that have both Booty and The Wizard.
  • The scrawny wizard from Zwackery.
  • Whether chewing your food is a spell.
  • Listening to Topic Lords for all the mouth sounds.
  • Constantly rehydrating this child so that he can make the whole house wet.
  • Starving zombie apocalypse survivors taking the child seats out of a car so they can turn them upside down and shake all the gummy bears out.
  • A poem with a pangram rhyme scheme.
  • Bone-anchored hearing aids.
  • Bringing a topic list to a first date.
  • Waiting until your last day of insurance and bursting into the OR like the Kool-Aid Man.
  • Your surgeon quitting the industry immediately after seeing the inside of your head.
  • Performatively pressing your hearing aid's nonfunctional volume button.
  • Your wife violating HIPAA to tell you a hilarious work story.
  • Accidentally installing Bonzi Buddy on your hearing aid.
  • Marrying an audiologist to get the best possible hearing aid.
  • Going to zoom.ca to rev up your savings.
  • Performance Acura North Mississauga.
  • Adapting Eliza into a game where you're trying to trick Smaug into giving up his hoard.
  • Making a joke about a banana slug actually bring a plantain slug.
  • It is the 90s and there is time for Rifftrax.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Lt9QgrZU ]]> Jim Stormdancer 298. Rawdogging Life https://topiclords.com/rawdogging-life b2be8849-4b59-4e0b-9311-6ce8da5cca33 Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss Music League, shaping the head like a Japanese watermelon, Kugelmugel, Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley, and using drugs in 2025 1:23:03 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wyrm Burden.
  • Metal bands running out of cool word combinations.
  • Checking Metal Archives.
  • Canadian atmospheric sludge metal.
  • Sorcerot.
  • Crowdfunding a vinyl pressing because your label refuses to pay for it.
  • Music that is not on Spotify.
  • How many Music Leagues you're part of right now.
  • A competition to see who has the best taste in music.
  • A song about a horse.
  • Adversarial Music League.
  • Posting on the internet with the goal of getting the same number of upvotes and downvotes.
  • Benign Hypotonia and the Floppy Baby.
  • Wearing a helmet 23 hours a day to adjust the shape of your skull.
  • Heads that smell like feet.
  • A very head-shaped head.
  • Babies that look like the Gary Oldman character in The Fifth Element.
  • A cone-shaped otter.
  • Zorg and Zord.
  • What kind of gear is this baby on?
  • Eat clen, tren hard.
  • Collecting as many physical therapists as possible.
  • A sweet little guy who's having a great time.
  • Putting on your resume your first word and the age you first walked.
  • Parent influencers with bad takes.
  • A baby that expands to the size of its container, so they'll stay baby sized forever unless you move into a bigger house.
  • Listen, have you ever evaluated anything? It's not easy.
  • Vibes-Based Medicine.
  • Declaring your metal sphere a micronation.
  • Closing the borders of your 8 meter micronation during COVID.
  • Building a house that looks like a ball.
  • Declaring your new house a micronation after the city refuses to grant you a building permit.
  • Antifascism Square.
  • Declaring your baby paddock a micronation.
  • A very good basically-a-poem.
  • Disabilities that are worse than going to Holland.
  • Trying to figure out how to live with the life you have.
  • Making peace with the fact that you didn't achieve all your dreams.
  • Divisive takes about sleep training.
  • Outcomes associated with prolonged cortisol exposure.
  • Category One Squawking.
  • Spending six years figuring out how to get your kid to fall asleep.
  • The term they invented to remind parents that just because things are good now, that doesn't mean they stay good forever, which is true for everything, but for children sleeping they have a specific term for it.
  • Getting real sad and going home.
  • Trying to take any drug except for fentanyl.
  • Fentanyl test strips from reliable suppliers.
  • If Coolio isn't safe, who is?
  • Narcan vending machines.
  • Walking down the street like you have Narcan in your pocket.
  • The terrifying gray line that dominates the entire graph.
  • A credible threat to a lot of recreational drug users.
  • Finally inventing the nightmare drug that DARE wanted you to be terrified of.
  • Nostalgia for street heroin.
  • The role that dopamine plays in human behavior.
  • A dogshit drug even from a drug enjoyer's perspective.
  • The only internet you even like any more.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wyrm Burden.
  • Metal bands running out of cool word combinations.
  • Checking Metal Archives.
  • Canadian atmospheric sludge metal.
  • Sorcerot.
  • Crowdfunding a vinyl pressing because your label refuses to pay for it.
  • Music that is not on Spotify.
  • How many Music Leagues you're part of right now.
  • A competition to see who has the best taste in music.
  • A song about a horse.
  • Adversarial Music League.
  • Posting on the internet with the goal of getting the same number of upvotes and downvotes.
  • Benign Hypotonia and the Floppy Baby.
  • Wearing a helmet 23 hours a day to adjust the shape of your skull.
  • Heads that smell like feet.
  • A very head-shaped head.
  • Babies that look like the Gary Oldman character in The Fifth Element.
  • A cone-shaped otter.
  • Zorg and Zord.
  • What kind of gear is this baby on?
  • Eat clen, tren hard.
  • Collecting as many physical therapists as possible.
  • A sweet little guy who's having a great time.
  • Putting on your resume your first word and the age you first walked.
  • Parent influencers with bad takes.
  • A baby that expands to the size of its container, so they'll stay baby sized forever unless you move into a bigger house.
  • Listen, have you ever evaluated anything? It's not easy.
  • Vibes-Based Medicine.
  • Declaring your metal sphere a micronation.
  • Closing the borders of your 8 meter micronation during COVID.
  • Building a house that looks like a ball.
  • Declaring your new house a micronation after the city refuses to grant you a building permit.
  • Antifascism Square.
  • Declaring your baby paddock a micronation.
  • A very good basically-a-poem.
  • Disabilities that are worse than going to Holland.
  • Trying to figure out how to live with the life you have.
  • Making peace with the fact that you didn't achieve all your dreams.
  • Divisive takes about sleep training.
  • Outcomes associated with prolonged cortisol exposure.
  • Category One Squawking.
  • Spending six years figuring out how to get your kid to fall asleep.
  • The term they invented to remind parents that just because things are good now, that doesn't mean they stay good forever, which is true for everything, but for children sleeping they have a specific term for it.
  • Getting real sad and going home.
  • Trying to take any drug except for fentanyl.
  • Fentanyl test strips from reliable suppliers.
  • If Coolio isn't safe, who is?
  • Narcan vending machines.
  • Walking down the street like you have Narcan in your pocket.
  • The terrifying gray line that dominates the entire graph.
  • A credible threat to a lot of recreational drug users.
  • Finally inventing the nightmare drug that DARE wanted you to be terrified of.
  • Nostalgia for street heroin.
  • The role that dopamine plays in human behavior.
  • A dogshit drug even from a drug enjoyer's perspective.
  • The only internet you even like any more.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wyrm Burden.
  • Metal bands running out of cool word combinations.
  • Checking Metal Archives.
  • Canadian atmospheric sludge metal.
  • Sorcerot.
  • Crowdfunding a vinyl pressing because your label refuses to pay for it.
  • Music that is not on Spotify.
  • How many Music Leagues you're part of right now.
  • A competition to see who has the best taste in music.
  • A song about a horse.
  • Adversarial Music League.
  • Posting on the internet with the goal of getting the same number of upvotes and downvotes.
  • Benign Hypotonia and the Floppy Baby.
  • Wearing a helmet 23 hours a day to adjust the shape of your skull.
  • Heads that smell like feet.
  • A very head-shaped head.
  • Babies that look like the Gary Oldman character in The Fifth Element.
  • A cone-shaped otter.
  • Zorg and Zord.
  • What kind of gear is this baby on?
  • Eat clen, tren hard.
  • Collecting as many physical therapists as possible.
  • A sweet little guy who's having a great time.
  • Putting on your resume your first word and the age you first walked.
  • Parent influencers with bad takes.
  • A baby that expands to the size of its container, so they'll stay baby sized forever unless you move into a bigger house.
  • Listen, have you ever evaluated anything? It's not easy.
  • Vibes-Based Medicine.
  • Declaring your metal sphere a micronation.
  • Closing the borders of your 8 meter micronation during COVID.
  • Building a house that looks like a ball.
  • Declaring your new house a micronation after the city refuses to grant you a building permit.
  • Antifascism Square.
  • Declaring your baby paddock a micronation.
  • A very good basically-a-poem.
  • Disabilities that are worse than going to Holland.
  • Trying to figure out how to live with the life you have.
  • Making peace with the fact that you didn't achieve all your dreams.
  • Divisive takes about sleep training.
  • Outcomes associated with prolonged cortisol exposure.
  • Category One Squawking.
  • Spending six years figuring out how to get your kid to fall asleep.
  • The term they invented to remind parents that just because things are good now, that doesn't mean they stay good forever, which is true for everything, but for children sleeping they have a specific term for it.
  • Getting real sad and going home.
  • Trying to take any drug except for fentanyl.
  • Fentanyl test strips from reliable suppliers.
  • If Coolio isn't safe, who is?
  • Narcan vending machines.
  • Walking down the street like you have Narcan in your pocket.
  • The terrifying gray line that dominates the entire graph.
  • A credible threat to a lot of recreational drug users.
  • Finally inventing the nightmare drug that DARE wanted you to be terrified of.
  • Nostalgia for street heroin.
  • The role that dopamine plays in human behavior.
  • A dogshit drug even from a drug enjoyer's perspective.
  • The only internet you even like any more.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+cF03Mvvc ]]> Jim Stormdancer 297. Grimace Exploded, Covering 70,000 People https://topiclords.com/grimace-exploded-covering-70000-people 68f71355-3d6b-4442-acee-c5ff97131ca9 Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Judy. We discuss the Pantone college experience, why everyone with superpowers is a crime fighter or a criminal, metal utensils, Grand Avenue by Ron Koertge, and spicy toothpaste 1:00:03 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Just Judy.
  • Telling your friends you love them.
  • Taking a break from the Internet and staring at the ceiling.
  • Realizing you need to take a break and then trying to figure out what you need to take a break from.
  • Doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes.
  • People who enjoy meditation explaining that you just need to meditate harder.
  • Taking a depressing game and remaking it, reframing it as relaxing.
  • Tetromino Chill.
  • Asking "do I have the flu?" in French.
  • Clicking on a wav file of Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny and thinking "computer music is cool"
  • Your college's particular shade of purple.
  • The proliferation of this exact shade of purple now that Pantone has made it possible to exactly reproduce a color.
  • The reason why can't we tell who's buff and sexy any more.
  • Going to college to get sick of a particular color.
  • Whether any place is as intensely branded as a college campus.
  • What the founding fathers would think of this college campus' branding.
  • James Madison inventing the signature duplicator.
  • James Madison insisting that his entire family sleep sitting up.
  • Colors that you can't use until you really mean it.
  • Colors that are not allowed in the bathroom.
  • Pantone inventing a way to pee any known color.
  • Boom Box Guy.
  • The professor with the glasses with two different color lenses who is constantly complaining about JMU Purple.
  • Having jaws strong enough to eat bones and eating way more bones than you used to.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket since the inception of the bucket.
  • Unlimited energy. (Not limited energy.)
  • Why isn't Superman using his x-ray vision to watch TV better than anyone?
  • Lois Lane wearing superman's shirt.
  • Using your x-ray vision to make sure ant colonies aren't siphoning money out of bank vaults.
  • Advising strangers on the street that they have an untreated medical condition and they're like "go away creep"
  • The spoon doing a catapult move because the handle is too heavy, and flinging chili everywhere.
  • Plastic utensils for adults.
  • Hitting the age when doctors start saying things like "let's see if we can get a couple more good years out of you"
  • Whether the fork ever touches your tongue.
  • Ceramic spoons.
  • Melamine, the plastic material manufactured on Alf's home planet.
  • Handsome Korean wooden spoons.
  • Just slurping down a whole bowl of guacamole.
  • Everyday Carry Forks.
  • Metal utensils: so good, you carry them around.
  • Trying to eat a leaf of lettuce with an extremely heavy fork.
  • Eating a meal with a pickaxe and a pronged shovel.
  • Turning the corner by Señor Fish.
  • Different ways to kil for somebody.
  • A punch-line that was not set up in the descriptive part of the poem.
  • A poem that is a subset of another poem.
  • Where is the wacky misunderstanding that I was promised?
  • A bumper sticker reading "you just got passed by a bad driver (AI)"
  • Slapping the "artificial intelligence" label on everything you write so people blame AI.
  • Cinnamon toothpaste and ginger toothpaste.
  • Conventionally spicy toothpaste.
  • Toothpaste that doesn't taste like anything. (You know, for cats!)
  • Spicy tuna toothpaste and black pepper toothpaste.
  • Rinsing your mouth with lemon cleanser so your mouth can feel lemon fresh.
  • Pure Piperin.
  • Tubes: they're for squeezing.
  • Phosphoric acid toothpaste.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Just Judy.
  • Telling your friends you love them.
  • Taking a break from the Internet and staring at the ceiling.
  • Realizing you need to take a break and then trying to figure out what you need to take a break from.
  • Doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes.
  • People who enjoy meditation explaining that you just need to meditate harder.
  • Taking a depressing game and remaking it, reframing it as relaxing.
  • Tetromino Chill.
  • Asking "do I have the flu?" in French.
  • Clicking on a wav file of Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny and thinking "computer music is cool"
  • Your college's particular shade of purple.
  • The proliferation of this exact shade of purple now that Pantone has made it possible to exactly reproduce a color.
  • The reason why can't we tell who's buff and sexy any more.
  • Going to college to get sick of a particular color.
  • Whether any place is as intensely branded as a college campus.
  • What the founding fathers would think of this college campus' branding.
  • James Madison inventing the signature duplicator.
  • James Madison insisting that his entire family sleep sitting up.
  • Colors that you can't use until you really mean it.
  • Colors that are not allowed in the bathroom.
  • Pantone inventing a way to pee any known color.
  • Boom Box Guy.
  • The professor with the glasses with two different color lenses who is constantly complaining about JMU Purple.
  • Having jaws strong enough to eat bones and eating way more bones than you used to.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket since the inception of the bucket.
  • Unlimited energy. (Not limited energy.)
  • Why isn't Superman using his x-ray vision to watch TV better than anyone?
  • Lois Lane wearing superman's shirt.
  • Using your x-ray vision to make sure ant colonies aren't siphoning money out of bank vaults.
  • Advising strangers on the street that they have an untreated medical condition and they're like "go away creep"
  • The spoon doing a catapult move because the handle is too heavy, and flinging chili everywhere.
  • Plastic utensils for adults.
  • Hitting the age when doctors start saying things like "let's see if we can get a couple more good years out of you"
  • Whether the fork ever touches your tongue.
  • Ceramic spoons.
  • Melamine, the plastic material manufactured on Alf's home planet.
  • Handsome Korean wooden spoons.
  • Just slurping down a whole bowl of guacamole.
  • Everyday Carry Forks.
  • Metal utensils: so good, you carry them around.
  • Trying to eat a leaf of lettuce with an extremely heavy fork.
  • Eating a meal with a pickaxe and a pronged shovel.
  • Turning the corner by Señor Fish.
  • Different ways to kil for somebody.
  • A punch-line that was not set up in the descriptive part of the poem.
  • A poem that is a subset of another poem.
  • Where is the wacky misunderstanding that I was promised?
  • A bumper sticker reading "you just got passed by a bad driver (AI)"
  • Slapping the "artificial intelligence" label on everything you write so people blame AI.
  • Cinnamon toothpaste and ginger toothpaste.
  • Conventionally spicy toothpaste.
  • Toothpaste that doesn't taste like anything. (You know, for cats!)
  • Spicy tuna toothpaste and black pepper toothpaste.
  • Rinsing your mouth with lemon cleanser so your mouth can feel lemon fresh.
  • Pure Piperin.
  • Tubes: they're for squeezing.
  • Phosphoric acid toothpaste.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Just Judy.
  • Telling your friends you love them.
  • Taking a break from the Internet and staring at the ceiling.
  • Realizing you need to take a break and then trying to figure out what you need to take a break from.
  • Doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes.
  • People who enjoy meditation explaining that you just need to meditate harder.
  • Taking a depressing game and remaking it, reframing it as relaxing.
  • Tetromino Chill.
  • Asking "do I have the flu?" in French.
  • Clicking on a wav file of Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny and thinking "computer music is cool"
  • Your college's particular shade of purple.
  • The proliferation of this exact shade of purple now that Pantone has made it possible to exactly reproduce a color.
  • The reason why can't we tell who's buff and sexy any more.
  • Going to college to get sick of a particular color.
  • Whether any place is as intensely branded as a college campus.
  • What the founding fathers would think of this college campus' branding.
  • James Madison inventing the signature duplicator.
  • James Madison insisting that his entire family sleep sitting up.
  • Colors that you can't use until you really mean it.
  • Colors that are not allowed in the bathroom.
  • Pantone inventing a way to pee any known color.
  • Boom Box Guy.
  • The professor with the glasses with two different color lenses who is constantly complaining about JMU Purple.
  • Having jaws strong enough to eat bones and eating way more bones than you used to.
  • Topics that have been in the bucket since the inception of the bucket.
  • Unlimited energy. (Not limited energy.)
  • Why isn't Superman using his x-ray vision to watch TV better than anyone?
  • Lois Lane wearing superman's shirt.
  • Using your x-ray vision to make sure ant colonies aren't siphoning money out of bank vaults.
  • Advising strangers on the street that they have an untreated medical condition and they're like "go away creep"
  • The spoon doing a catapult move because the handle is too heavy, and flinging chili everywhere.
  • Plastic utensils for adults.
  • Hitting the age when doctors start saying things like "let's see if we can get a couple more good years out of you"
  • Whether the fork ever touches your tongue.
  • Ceramic spoons.
  • Melamine, the plastic material manufactured on Alf's home planet.
  • Handsome Korean wooden spoons.
  • Just slurping down a whole bowl of guacamole.
  • Everyday Carry Forks.
  • Metal utensils: so good, you carry them around.
  • Trying to eat a leaf of lettuce with an extremely heavy fork.
  • Eating a meal with a pickaxe and a pronged shovel.
  • Turning the corner by Señor Fish.
  • Different ways to kil for somebody.
  • A punch-line that was not set up in the descriptive part of the poem.
  • A poem that is a subset of another poem.
  • Where is the wacky misunderstanding that I was promised?
  • A bumper sticker reading "you just got passed by a bad driver (AI)"
  • Slapping the "artificial intelligence" label on everything you write so people blame AI.
  • Cinnamon toothpaste and ginger toothpaste.
  • Conventionally spicy toothpaste.
  • Toothpaste that doesn't taste like anything. (You know, for cats!)
  • Spicy tuna toothpaste and black pepper toothpaste.
  • Rinsing your mouth with lemon cleanser so your mouth can feel lemon fresh.
  • Pure Piperin.
  • Tubes: they're for squeezing.
  • Phosphoric acid toothpaste.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+gYnh1tBl ]]> Jim Stormdancer 296. Do You Know About the Sun? https://topiclords.com/do-you-know-about-the-sun cbbe72d8-3c4c-4dfd-aae8-2718bfe383d2 Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Esper. We discuss Chess the Musical, live television as the most exciting thing humans have invented, Blaseball's multi million dollar VC funding, Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith, RSS for text, and officiating weddings for your friends. 1:20:24 true The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering Mario around the screen:

Lords:

  • John
  • Esper

Topics:

  • Chess, the Musical: a show that is universally acclaimed but no longer performed because it consistently loses money
  • I believe live television to be the most exciting thing humans have invented
  • Blaseball had $3 million in VC funding
  • Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith
  • Why not RSS for text?
  • Officiating weddings for your friends

Microtopics:

  • The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering the Mario head.
  • Who gets to say "roll theme song!"
  • A community where the chances of someone acting in bad faith is negligible.
  • DC Action News.
  • All human communication is technicallt advertising.
  • The generous Haste demo.
  • A skipping stones on water kind of game.
  • Sonic/Klonoa/late 90s/early 00s aesthetics.
  • A karaoke favorite that is not very reasonably sensitive.
  • All the Tims who did not work on Chess the Musical.
  • The guy from Rent whose name you can't remember.
  • Breakdancing while arbitrating a chess match.
  • Internet radio stations.
  • A Windows 95 theme of Chess the Musical.
  • Installing Windows 95 themes on your Picotron desktop.
  • Sex, Death and Live Television!
  • Live TV mishaps that ruin entirely the wrong career.
  • HQ.
  • At five o'clock, there's gonna be a guy.
  • The sense of spectacle you get from a live broadcast with a big audience.
  • The time one of the leads forgot his entire monologue.
  • The thrill of being part of a live performance as it's going wrong.
  • Listening to Shoutcast channels on Winamp.
  • Winamp's Shoutcast station registry.
  • The childhood dream of owning a TV station and getting to make all the little station IDs.
  • Netflix's abandoned "just fuck me up" button.
  • Six episodes of Deep Space 9 on a single VHS tape.
  • Drop 7 vs. Dropout TV.
  • Getting entirely the wrong information from your survey about what people like about your product.
  • Trying to sign up for Blaseball and failing.
  • Funny names such as Dominic Marijuana.
  • Jumping in and forcing some actions to happen.
  • Needing your game to break so that you can write the way it breaks into the narrative of the story.
  • Blaseball-likes.
  • Terrorball. (Short for Territory Ball.)
  • A list of all locations.
  • The Scarborough Fairies.
  • Resurrecting Jaylen Hotdogfingers.
  • An online text mode football manager with a live chat.
  • Fish Center.
  • Determining which fish is best.
  • Bringing a little bit of the live frisson to a fake live broadcast.
  • Whether it's okay to read a poem more than once.
  • Softly I go now, pad pad.
  • Cats you had together.
  • The cat that Hatricia Hop-Meow is based on.
  • Blogs: do they exist?
  • Making a point of finding an open source way to do your shit.
  • A 24 hour cycle of live podcasts.
  • TiVo for podcasts.
  • Edging the feeling of whether you're watching live TV or not in a slip slidey timestream.
  • Asking chat a question and then waiting 15 to 20 seconds for the response to come back.
  • Bringing back RSS readers.
  • The New Old Reader.
  • Opening with the mawwige joke.
  • Wanting people to want things.
  • Going back to your old life except now your friends are married.
  • Protecting The Lord from unauthorized clergymen.
  • Paying $20 to the Universal Life Church so you can perform weddings in most states.
  • Keeping the card in your wallet in case anyone tries to claim that you're not really an ordained minister.
]]> The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering Mario around the screen:

Lords:

  • John
  • Esper

Topics:

  • Chess, the Musical: a show that is universally acclaimed but no longer performed because it consistently loses money
  • I believe live television to be the most exciting thing humans have invented
  • Blaseball had $3 million in VC funding
  • Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith
  • Why not RSS for text?
  • Officiating weddings for your friends

Microtopics:

  • The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering the Mario head.
  • Who gets to say "roll theme song!"
  • A community where the chances of someone acting in bad faith is negligible.
  • DC Action News.
  • All human communication is technicallt advertising.
  • The generous Haste demo.
  • A skipping stones on water kind of game.
  • Sonic/Klonoa/late 90s/early 00s aesthetics.
  • A karaoke favorite that is not very reasonably sensitive.
  • All the Tims who did not work on Chess the Musical.
  • The guy from Rent whose name you can't remember.
  • Breakdancing while arbitrating a chess match.
  • Internet radio stations.
  • A Windows 95 theme of Chess the Musical.
  • Installing Windows 95 themes on your Picotron desktop.
  • Sex, Death and Live Television!
  • Live TV mishaps that ruin entirely the wrong career.
  • HQ.
  • At five o'clock, there's gonna be a guy.
  • The sense of spectacle you get from a live broadcast with a big audience.
  • The time one of the leads forgot his entire monologue.
  • The thrill of being part of a live performance as it's going wrong.
  • Listening to Shoutcast channels on Winamp.
  • Winamp's Shoutcast station registry.
  • The childhood dream of owning a TV station and getting to make all the little station IDs.
  • Netflix's abandoned "just fuck me up" button.
  • Six episodes of Deep Space 9 on a single VHS tape.
  • Drop 7 vs. Dropout TV.
  • Getting entirely the wrong information from your survey about what people like about your product.
  • Trying to sign up for Blaseball and failing.
  • Funny names such as Dominic Marijuana.
  • Jumping in and forcing some actions to happen.
  • Needing your game to break so that you can write the way it breaks into the narrative of the story.
  • Blaseball-likes.
  • Terrorball. (Short for Territory Ball.)
  • A list of all locations.
  • The Scarborough Fairies.
  • Resurrecting Jaylen Hotdogfingers.
  • An online text mode football manager with a live chat.
  • Fish Center.
  • Determining which fish is best.
  • Bringing a little bit of the live frisson to a fake live broadcast.
  • Whether it's okay to read a poem more than once.
  • Softly I go now, pad pad.
  • Cats you had together.
  • The cat that Hatricia Hop-Meow is based on.
  • Blogs: do they exist?
  • Making a point of finding an open source way to do your shit.
  • A 24 hour cycle of live podcasts.
  • TiVo for podcasts.
  • Edging the feeling of whether you're watching live TV or not in a slip slidey timestream.
  • Asking chat a question and then waiting 15 to 20 seconds for the response to come back.
  • Bringing back RSS readers.
  • The New Old Reader.
  • Opening with the mawwige joke.
  • Wanting people to want things.
  • Going back to your old life except now your friends are married.
  • Protecting The Lord from unauthorized clergymen.
  • Paying $20 to the Universal Life Church so you can perform weddings in most states.
  • Keeping the card in your wallet in case anyone tries to claim that you're not really an ordained minister.

Support Topic Lords

]]> The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering Mario around the screen:

Lords:

  • John
  • Esper

Topics:

  • Chess, the Musical: a show that is universally acclaimed but no longer performed because it consistently loses money
  • I believe live television to be the most exciting thing humans have invented
  • Blaseball had $3 million in VC funding
  • Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith
  • Why not RSS for text?
  • Officiating weddings for your friends

Microtopics:

  • The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering the Mario head.
  • Who gets to say "roll theme song!"
  • A community where the chances of someone acting in bad faith is negligible.
  • DC Action News.
  • All human communication is technicallt advertising.
  • The generous Haste demo.
  • A skipping stones on water kind of game.
  • Sonic/Klonoa/late 90s/early 00s aesthetics.
  • A karaoke favorite that is not very reasonably sensitive.
  • All the Tims who did not work on Chess the Musical.
  • The guy from Rent whose name you can't remember.
  • Breakdancing while arbitrating a chess match.
  • Internet radio stations.
  • A Windows 95 theme of Chess the Musical.
  • Installing Windows 95 themes on your Picotron desktop.
  • Sex, Death and Live Television!
  • Live TV mishaps that ruin entirely the wrong career.
  • HQ.
  • At five o'clock, there's gonna be a guy.
  • The sense of spectacle you get from a live broadcast with a big audience.
  • The time one of the leads forgot his entire monologue.
  • The thrill of being part of a live performance as it's going wrong.
  • Listening to Shoutcast channels on Winamp.
  • Winamp's Shoutcast station registry.
  • The childhood dream of owning a TV station and getting to make all the little station IDs.
  • Netflix's abandoned "just fuck me up" button.
  • Six episodes of Deep Space 9 on a single VHS tape.
  • Drop 7 vs. Dropout TV.
  • Getting entirely the wrong information from your survey about what people like about your product.
  • Trying to sign up for Blaseball and failing.
  • Funny names such as Dominic Marijuana.
  • Jumping in and forcing some actions to happen.
  • Needing your game to break so that you can write the way it breaks into the narrative of the story.
  • Blaseball-likes.
  • Terrorball. (Short for Territory Ball.)
  • A list of all locations.
  • The Scarborough Fairies.
  • Resurrecting Jaylen Hotdogfingers.
  • An online text mode football manager with a live chat.
  • Fish Center.
  • Determining which fish is best.
  • Bringing a little bit of the live frisson to a fake live broadcast.
  • Whether it's okay to read a poem more than once.
  • Softly I go now, pad pad.
  • Cats you had together.
  • The cat that Hatricia Hop-Meow is based on.
  • Blogs: do they exist?
  • Making a point of finding an open source way to do your shit.
  • A 24 hour cycle of live podcasts.
  • TiVo for podcasts.
  • Edging the feeling of whether you're watching live TV or not in a slip slidey timestream.
  • Asking chat a question and then waiting 15 to 20 seconds for the response to come back.
  • Bringing back RSS readers.
  • The New Old Reader.
  • Opening with the mawwige joke.
  • Wanting people to want things.
  • Going back to your old life except now your friends are married.
  • Protecting The Lord from unauthorized clergymen.
  • Paying $20 to the Universal Life Church so you can perform weddings in most states.
  • Keeping the card in your wallet in case anyone tries to claim that you're not really an ordained minister.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+vCxFFRH4 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 295. Fantasy Malware https://topiclords.com/fantasy-malware 3f54f77d-5f7b-4fcc-88d4-54c1f045eff3 Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Andrew. We discuss finally making a 3D game after using only PICO-8 for 10 years, PICO-8 screen carts, Picotron viruses, and Quest by kittenmaster. 1:04:47 true Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Professional software developers trying to figure out a terrible UI.
  • The Real Andrew – it says so on my computer screen.
  • Make 10 Deluxe.
  • Double Mustache's Lizard Multiplication, now available in a cardboard box in Staples.
  • Lizard Multiplication Tables.
  • Total Toads.
  • Pizza Panda vs. Pizza Possum.
  • Children's Allegra, on Nick, Jr.
  • Eugene, Oregon, the grass seed capital of the world.
  • Scientists discovering an exciting new antihistamine in the medicine aisle.
  • Working on whatever feature strikes your fancy for a year and ending up with an undirected project that's nowhere near shipping.
  • Using the lessons you've learned making small games to make a bigger game.
  • Making an N64 game for modern PCs.
  • Two people with the same name, the same headphones, and the same back story.
  • 3D cameras: a huge pain in the ass.
  • What makes San Francisco Rush different from Mario Kart.
  • Getting Keys in Rush 2.
  • How to collect keys in the middle of the air.
  • Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom and other car platformers.
  • Extending the lifetime of an arcade game by adding weird secrets.
  • Arcade games with a save system.
  • Feeding Smash Tokens into the gacha system.
  • Super Mario Bros.: The Movie: The Game.
  • Looking at Picotron and thinking "I don't have time to draw that many pixels."
  • The Tweet Jam Andrews.
  • Is this really that interesting, Andrew?
  • Foreshadowing the poem.
  • How much game can you fit on one screen?
  • Code golfing and limiting yourself to typeable characters.
  • Reading a David Ahl book and realizing you want to tell the sand how to think.
  • Playing music on the PC speaker and printing funny phrases on the screen.
  • Writing a series of text mode animations in C in 1992 and then losing them all.
  • STDIO jam.
  • Dig World and Dig World Realms.
  • Typing in 6 pages of ROT13 text.
  • Writing an adventure game with a novel-length source code listing and demanding that players type it in.
  • Accidentally reading ROT13 spoilers.
  • The people who memorize the eye exam chart.
  • Rotting ROT13 a different amount.
  • Running ROT13 multiple times for extra security.
  • Competing ROT13 implementations that rotate in different directions.
  • Games in which the game state includes what line of code is currently executing.
  • How beginners expect game programming to work.
  • Deliberately contracting the Picotron virus where the characters fall to the bottom of your screen.
  • A monster that runs around on your desktop and eats your icons.
  • Turning off networking features for individual programs.
  • Writing a keylogger to read people's email and it turns out people's email is incredibly boring.
  • Writing a keylogger by hooking the keyboard interrupt and not bothering to log the state of the shift key.
  • Capturing the handshake and brute forcing it.
  • The first S is for Secure.
  • Screen carts vs. tweet carts.
  • Colon colon home colon colon.
  • Question mark? Puzzlescript man. (Or weird asterisk.)
  • The new default Pico-8 code editor background color.
  • Forgetting to screen shot the pixels so you open the image in Photoshop and add the pixels back.
  • Alfonzo's Bowling Challengs.
  • Unlocking HD streaming at level 2.
]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Professional software developers trying to figure out a terrible UI.
  • The Real Andrew – it says so on my computer screen.
  • Make 10 Deluxe.
  • Double Mustache's Lizard Multiplication, now available in a cardboard box in Staples.
  • Lizard Multiplication Tables.
  • Total Toads.
  • Pizza Panda vs. Pizza Possum.
  • Children's Allegra, on Nick, Jr.
  • Eugene, Oregon, the grass seed capital of the world.
  • Scientists discovering an exciting new antihistamine in the medicine aisle.
  • Working on whatever feature strikes your fancy for a year and ending up with an undirected project that's nowhere near shipping.
  • Using the lessons you've learned making small games to make a bigger game.
  • Making an N64 game for modern PCs.
  • Two people with the same name, the same headphones, and the same back story.
  • 3D cameras: a huge pain in the ass.
  • What makes San Francisco Rush different from Mario Kart.
  • Getting Keys in Rush 2.
  • How to collect keys in the middle of the air.
  • Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom and other car platformers.
  • Extending the lifetime of an arcade game by adding weird secrets.
  • Arcade games with a save system.
  • Feeding Smash Tokens into the gacha system.
  • Super Mario Bros.: The Movie: The Game.
  • Looking at Picotron and thinking "I don't have time to draw that many pixels."
  • The Tweet Jam Andrews.
  • Is this really that interesting, Andrew?
  • Foreshadowing the poem.
  • How much game can you fit on one screen?
  • Code golfing and limiting yourself to typeable characters.
  • Reading a David Ahl book and realizing you want to tell the sand how to think.
  • Playing music on the PC speaker and printing funny phrases on the screen.
  • Writing a series of text mode animations in C in 1992 and then losing them all.
  • STDIO jam.
  • Dig World and Dig World Realms.
  • Typing in 6 pages of ROT13 text.
  • Writing an adventure game with a novel-length source code listing and demanding that players type it in.
  • Accidentally reading ROT13 spoilers.
  • The people who memorize the eye exam chart.
  • Rotting ROT13 a different amount.
  • Running ROT13 multiple times for extra security.
  • Competing ROT13 implementations that rotate in different directions.
  • Games in which the game state includes what line of code is currently executing.
  • How beginners expect game programming to work.
  • Deliberately contracting the Picotron virus where the characters fall to the bottom of your screen.
  • A monster that runs around on your desktop and eats your icons.
  • Turning off networking features for individual programs.
  • Writing a keylogger to read people's email and it turns out people's email is incredibly boring.
  • Writing a keylogger by hooking the keyboard interrupt and not bothering to log the state of the shift key.
  • Capturing the handshake and brute forcing it.
  • The first S is for Secure.
  • Screen carts vs. tweet carts.
  • Colon colon home colon colon.
  • Question mark? Puzzlescript man. (Or weird asterisk.)
  • The new default Pico-8 code editor background color.
  • Forgetting to screen shot the pixels so you open the image in Photoshop and add the pixels back.
  • Alfonzo's Bowling Challengs.
  • Unlocking HD streaming at level 2.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Professional software developers trying to figure out a terrible UI.
  • The Real Andrew – it says so on my computer screen.
  • Make 10 Deluxe.
  • Double Mustache's Lizard Multiplication, now available in a cardboard box in Staples.
  • Lizard Multiplication Tables.
  • Total Toads.
  • Pizza Panda vs. Pizza Possum.
  • Children's Allegra, on Nick, Jr.
  • Eugene, Oregon, the grass seed capital of the world.
  • Scientists discovering an exciting new antihistamine in the medicine aisle.
  • Working on whatever feature strikes your fancy for a year and ending up with an undirected project that's nowhere near shipping.
  • Using the lessons you've learned making small games to make a bigger game.
  • Making an N64 game for modern PCs.
  • Two people with the same name, the same headphones, and the same back story.
  • 3D cameras: a huge pain in the ass.
  • What makes San Francisco Rush different from Mario Kart.
  • Getting Keys in Rush 2.
  • How to collect keys in the middle of the air.
  • Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom and other car platformers.
  • Extending the lifetime of an arcade game by adding weird secrets.
  • Arcade games with a save system.
  • Feeding Smash Tokens into the gacha system.
  • Super Mario Bros.: The Movie: The Game.
  • Looking at Picotron and thinking "I don't have time to draw that many pixels."
  • The Tweet Jam Andrews.
  • Is this really that interesting, Andrew?
  • Foreshadowing the poem.
  • How much game can you fit on one screen?
  • Code golfing and limiting yourself to typeable characters.
  • Reading a David Ahl book and realizing you want to tell the sand how to think.
  • Playing music on the PC speaker and printing funny phrases on the screen.
  • Writing a series of text mode animations in C in 1992 and then losing them all.
  • STDIO jam.
  • Dig World and Dig World Realms.
  • Typing in 6 pages of ROT13 text.
  • Writing an adventure game with a novel-length source code listing and demanding that players type it in.
  • Accidentally reading ROT13 spoilers.
  • The people who memorize the eye exam chart.
  • Rotting ROT13 a different amount.
  • Running ROT13 multiple times for extra security.
  • Competing ROT13 implementations that rotate in different directions.
  • Games in which the game state includes what line of code is currently executing.
  • How beginners expect game programming to work.
  • Deliberately contracting the Picotron virus where the characters fall to the bottom of your screen.
  • A monster that runs around on your desktop and eats your icons.
  • Turning off networking features for individual programs.
  • Writing a keylogger to read people's email and it turns out people's email is incredibly boring.
  • Writing a keylogger by hooking the keyboard interrupt and not bothering to log the state of the shift key.
  • Capturing the handshake and brute forcing it.
  • The first S is for Secure.
  • Screen carts vs. tweet carts.
  • Colon colon home colon colon.
  • Question mark? Puzzlescript man. (Or weird asterisk.)
  • The new default Pico-8 code editor background color.
  • Forgetting to screen shot the pixels so you open the image in Photoshop and add the pixels back.
  • Alfonzo's Bowling Challengs.
  • Unlocking HD streaming at level 2.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Ms7Ely9M ]]> Jim Stormdancer 294. Click on This Ad To Save This Child https://topiclords.com/click-on-this-ad-to-save-this-child 2603757e-3d5b-42d6-bd3a-19303d69339a Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss the rapid proliferation of identical mobile games, randomly generated time traveler loadout, turning your body into 3D printer filament after you die, and Girls Only Want One Thing, by Isabel Correra 1:00:15 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Alien Clay.
  • Gravity Falls.
  • Tryharding at Duolingo.
  • Removing the popsicle sticks in the right order or the king dies in lava.
  • Writing a solitaire game generator and uploading 30,000 solitaires to the app store.
  • Ads that are not even pretending to not be falsely advertising to you.
  • Mobile game advertisers all pretending that their games are the same non-existent game genre.
  • Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!
  • People saying "that ad for a game where you pull out popsicle sticks until a king doesn't die looks pretty good but when I click on it it's a completely different game."
  • Lying to consumers in the 80s vs. lying to consumers today.
  • Ads that are just two horrifying images to get your adrenalin spiking.
  • Screaming Tamagotchi.
  • The Paw Patrol diagetically being funded by real life Paw Patrol merch sales.
  • Maximizing emotional whiplash when it doesn't matter which two emotions they are.
  • Having a week to prepare for a one way trip to Northern Italy in 1326.
  • Going on a trip and bringing along your undeveloped Broca's area.
  • Bootlegging reproducing GMO crop seeds in Renaissance Italy.
  • Wizard/Prophecy Person.
  • 21st Century Traveling Merchants.
  • Bringing your jar of penicillin mold to the 14th century.
  • Being stranded in Renaissance Italy and becoming travelling minstrels.
  • Larger bearded guy that wears suspenders (under a graphic tee)
  • When were you born? The 14th century. Fuck you.
  • Bringing a snack to the spooky extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan who lives in the woods.
  • Big ol' dogs.
  • Non-electronic megaphones.
  • A little top you can spin that's made of grandpa.
  • A magic genie that can grant any wish as it's for a small striated plastic trinket.
  • Getting turned into Redstone after you die.
  • A poorly-made fidget spinner that used to be your husband.
  • Shipping ashes and asking that ashes be put into things.
  • The sloughed off skin cells coating everything you send in the mail.
  • A shitty fidget spinner that just happens to have some human remains in it.
  • Where human composting is allowed.
  • Places it's no longer legal to bury a body.
  • The problem with imbuing symbols with value.
  • An alternative wedding ring that you switch to as necessary.
  • A plant that is a metaphor for death.
  • Grandpa living forever by being repeatedly melted down and 3D printed into a new toy when you get sick of the old once.
  • Bringing 3D printing back to 14th century Italy to revolutionize reliquaries.
  • Giving the world both Frog Fractions and Topics.
  • How many people you pass on the street each day are wearing suspenders under their shirt.
  • Hip Clips Style Under Ups.
  • A poem that's in the bucket twice.
  • Love is a seed and lust is a bird ravenous for seeds.
  • Burying the word sorry and seeing what grows.
  • Poetry that's just a paragraph of text.
  • What you're going to be if you eat the fruit of the sorry fruit.
  • Trying to imit inimitable things.
  • There's a lot of different women and they all want different things. (Except they all want to travel back in time.)
  • My Mother's Savage Daughter.
  • Girls only want one thing: to not be found on the Internet.
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Alien Clay.
  • Gravity Falls.
  • Tryharding at Duolingo.
  • Removing the popsicle sticks in the right order or the king dies in lava.
  • Writing a solitaire game generator and uploading 30,000 solitaires to the app store.
  • Ads that are not even pretending to not be falsely advertising to you.
  • Mobile game advertisers all pretending that their games are the same non-existent game genre.
  • Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!
  • People saying "that ad for a game where you pull out popsicle sticks until a king doesn't die looks pretty good but when I click on it it's a completely different game."
  • Lying to consumers in the 80s vs. lying to consumers today.
  • Ads that are just two horrifying images to get your adrenalin spiking.
  • Screaming Tamagotchi.
  • The Paw Patrol diagetically being funded by real life Paw Patrol merch sales.
  • Maximizing emotional whiplash when it doesn't matter which two emotions they are.
  • Having a week to prepare for a one way trip to Northern Italy in 1326.
  • Going on a trip and bringing along your undeveloped Broca's area.
  • Bootlegging reproducing GMO crop seeds in Renaissance Italy.
  • Wizard/Prophecy Person.
  • 21st Century Traveling Merchants.
  • Bringing your jar of penicillin mold to the 14th century.
  • Being stranded in Renaissance Italy and becoming travelling minstrels.
  • Larger bearded guy that wears suspenders (under a graphic tee)
  • When were you born? The 14th century. Fuck you.
  • Bringing a snack to the spooky extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan who lives in the woods.
  • Big ol' dogs.
  • Non-electronic megaphones.
  • A little top you can spin that's made of grandpa.
  • A magic genie that can grant any wish as it's for a small striated plastic trinket.
  • Getting turned into Redstone after you die.
  • A poorly-made fidget spinner that used to be your husband.
  • Shipping ashes and asking that ashes be put into things.
  • The sloughed off skin cells coating everything you send in the mail.
  • A shitty fidget spinner that just happens to have some human remains in it.
  • Where human composting is allowed.
  • Places it's no longer legal to bury a body.
  • The problem with imbuing symbols with value.
  • An alternative wedding ring that you switch to as necessary.
  • A plant that is a metaphor for death.
  • Grandpa living forever by being repeatedly melted down and 3D printed into a new toy when you get sick of the old once.
  • Bringing 3D printing back to 14th century Italy to revolutionize reliquaries.
  • Giving the world both Frog Fractions and Topics.
  • How many people you pass on the street each day are wearing suspenders under their shirt.
  • Hip Clips Style Under Ups.
  • A poem that's in the bucket twice.
  • Love is a seed and lust is a bird ravenous for seeds.
  • Burying the word sorry and seeing what grows.
  • Poetry that's just a paragraph of text.
  • What you're going to be if you eat the fruit of the sorry fruit.
  • Trying to imit inimitable things.
  • There's a lot of different women and they all want different things. (Except they all want to travel back in time.)
  • My Mother's Savage Daughter.
  • Girls only want one thing: to not be found on the Internet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Alien Clay.
  • Gravity Falls.
  • Tryharding at Duolingo.
  • Removing the popsicle sticks in the right order or the king dies in lava.
  • Writing a solitaire game generator and uploading 30,000 solitaires to the app store.
  • Ads that are not even pretending to not be falsely advertising to you.
  • Mobile game advertisers all pretending that their games are the same non-existent game genre.
  • Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!
  • People saying "that ad for a game where you pull out popsicle sticks until a king doesn't die looks pretty good but when I click on it it's a completely different game."
  • Lying to consumers in the 80s vs. lying to consumers today.
  • Ads that are just two horrifying images to get your adrenalin spiking.
  • Screaming Tamagotchi.
  • The Paw Patrol diagetically being funded by real life Paw Patrol merch sales.
  • Maximizing emotional whiplash when it doesn't matter which two emotions they are.
  • Having a week to prepare for a one way trip to Northern Italy in 1326.
  • Going on a trip and bringing along your undeveloped Broca's area.
  • Bootlegging reproducing GMO crop seeds in Renaissance Italy.
  • Wizard/Prophecy Person.
  • 21st Century Traveling Merchants.
  • Bringing your jar of penicillin mold to the 14th century.
  • Being stranded in Renaissance Italy and becoming travelling minstrels.
  • Larger bearded guy that wears suspenders (under a graphic tee)
  • When were you born? The 14th century. Fuck you.
  • Bringing a snack to the spooky extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan who lives in the woods.
  • Big ol' dogs.
  • Non-electronic megaphones.
  • A little top you can spin that's made of grandpa.
  • A magic genie that can grant any wish as it's for a small striated plastic trinket.
  • Getting turned into Redstone after you die.
  • A poorly-made fidget spinner that used to be your husband.
  • Shipping ashes and asking that ashes be put into things.
  • The sloughed off skin cells coating everything you send in the mail.
  • A shitty fidget spinner that just happens to have some human remains in it.
  • Where human composting is allowed.
  • Places it's no longer legal to bury a body.
  • The problem with imbuing symbols with value.
  • An alternative wedding ring that you switch to as necessary.
  • A plant that is a metaphor for death.
  • Grandpa living forever by being repeatedly melted down and 3D printed into a new toy when you get sick of the old once.
  • Bringing 3D printing back to 14th century Italy to revolutionize reliquaries.
  • Giving the world both Frog Fractions and Topics.
  • How many people you pass on the street each day are wearing suspenders under their shirt.
  • Hip Clips Style Under Ups.
  • A poem that's in the bucket twice.
  • Love is a seed and lust is a bird ravenous for seeds.
  • Burying the word sorry and seeing what grows.
  • Poetry that's just a paragraph of text.
  • What you're going to be if you eat the fruit of the sorry fruit.
  • Trying to imit inimitable things.
  • There's a lot of different women and they all want different things. (Except they all want to travel back in time.)
  • My Mother's Savage Daughter.
  • Girls only want one thing: to not be found on the Internet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+CX5cl49M ]]> Jim Stormdancer 293. Pasting the Sickos Face Back and Forth Forever https://topiclords.com/pasting-the-sickos-face-back-and-forth-forever d957c321-9bc4-4991-8474-5fc77f22a2ce Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kory and Andy. We discuss whim-based coding, making friends on the internet, the oscilloscope demo, Peripheriques Like Halos by Robert Montgomery, enhancing a party with a bespoke bar menu, and creating a threatening windows batch file and leaving it on the desktop to frighten an application into not crashing 1:09:32 true Lords:

  • Kory
  • Andy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones.
  • When was the last time you invested in yourself?
  • Getting FM to sound like anything except a bell.
  • The American Psycho meme of FM syntheses.
  • A griminess level somewhere between Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3.
  • The Yamaha DX7 presets.
  • An aggressively nonlinear approach to productivity.
  • Doing board game AI until it becomes boring and then moving on to something else
  • A lifelong ADHD enjoyer.
  • Trying to explain "burndown rate" without knowing the term burndown rate or what burndown rate is.
  • Getting ideas out of your brain so it can think about something else for a while.
  • Games that you aren't allowed to play for fun.
  • The M stands for Money.
  • Whim-based topics.
  • Segue-free zones.
  • Essness and Snez.
  • Maintaining friendships via custom chat stickers.
  • Stickers you use in your daily life.
  • Discord For Andy.
  • Anonymous inscrutable pixel faces.
  • A sticker of Princess Rosaline shrugging with the text "Skill Issue?"
  • The rich ecology of daily Garfield recap podcasts.
  • Conflating RJ-45 and RJ-11.
  • Which One's The Astromech??
  • Two superpowers at one.
  • How to win the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Classic Raster Bars.
  • Reading a 40k stream of consciousness essay scrolling by the bottom of the screen in a pixelated font
  • Scrubbing right to Cronologia.
  • Doing surgery on the topic bucket right now.
  • That Oscilloscope Demo.
  • Converting your laptop into tent mode.
  • Zamboni Mayhem.
  • Running a video signal through a reverb pedal.
  • Stereo oscilloscopes.
  • Pringle of Scotland: once you pop, you can't stop.
  • A picture of a wall with a bunch of balloon letters spelling out a phrase.
  • Non-elected councils called ABAG and ICLEI.
  • A weird thing that's been kind of near you your whole life.
  • The final Neon Genesis Evangelization 3.0+1.0 movie.
  • A gripe session with themed cocktails.
  • Continuing to think of puns and refusing to pass any of them up.
  • Taking a Negroni and calling it LCL.
  • A 55 gallon drum of Tom Collins with a valve on it.
  • Walking by the booze aisle and everything looks delicious. (Even though it's not.)
  • Everyone's favorite topic.
  • Waving a .bat around to make your computer behave.
  • Sorry about your synapses!
  • An angry phone call from your mom circa 1995.
  • Telling the sand how to think and making the little guy run around.
  • Writing a bad song and immediately sending it to all your friends.
  • Pivoting to pay-per-reload.
  • Discovering what the requirements are as you discover the game you are making.
  • Crashing Pico-8 so hard that it reverts to Japanese.
]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • Andy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones.
  • When was the last time you invested in yourself?
  • Getting FM to sound like anything except a bell.
  • The American Psycho meme of FM syntheses.
  • A griminess level somewhere between Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3.
  • The Yamaha DX7 presets.
  • An aggressively nonlinear approach to productivity.
  • Doing board game AI until it becomes boring and then moving on to something else
  • A lifelong ADHD enjoyer.
  • Trying to explain "burndown rate" without knowing the term burndown rate or what burndown rate is.
  • Getting ideas out of your brain so it can think about something else for a while.
  • Games that you aren't allowed to play for fun.
  • The M stands for Money.
  • Whim-based topics.
  • Segue-free zones.
  • Essness and Snez.
  • Maintaining friendships via custom chat stickers.
  • Stickers you use in your daily life.
  • Discord For Andy.
  • Anonymous inscrutable pixel faces.
  • A sticker of Princess Rosaline shrugging with the text "Skill Issue?"
  • The rich ecology of daily Garfield recap podcasts.
  • Conflating RJ-45 and RJ-11.
  • Which One's The Astromech??
  • Two superpowers at one.
  • How to win the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Classic Raster Bars.
  • Reading a 40k stream of consciousness essay scrolling by the bottom of the screen in a pixelated font
  • Scrubbing right to Cronologia.
  • Doing surgery on the topic bucket right now.
  • That Oscilloscope Demo.
  • Converting your laptop into tent mode.
  • Zamboni Mayhem.
  • Running a video signal through a reverb pedal.
  • Stereo oscilloscopes.
  • Pringle of Scotland: once you pop, you can't stop.
  • A picture of a wall with a bunch of balloon letters spelling out a phrase.
  • Non-elected councils called ABAG and ICLEI.
  • A weird thing that's been kind of near you your whole life.
  • The final Neon Genesis Evangelization 3.0+1.0 movie.
  • A gripe session with themed cocktails.
  • Continuing to think of puns and refusing to pass any of them up.
  • Taking a Negroni and calling it LCL.
  • A 55 gallon drum of Tom Collins with a valve on it.
  • Walking by the booze aisle and everything looks delicious. (Even though it's not.)
  • Everyone's favorite topic.
  • Waving a .bat around to make your computer behave.
  • Sorry about your synapses!
  • An angry phone call from your mom circa 1995.
  • Telling the sand how to think and making the little guy run around.
  • Writing a bad song and immediately sending it to all your friends.
  • Pivoting to pay-per-reload.
  • Discovering what the requirements are as you discover the game you are making.
  • Crashing Pico-8 so hard that it reverts to Japanese.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • Andy

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones.
  • When was the last time you invested in yourself?
  • Getting FM to sound like anything except a bell.
  • The American Psycho meme of FM syntheses.
  • A griminess level somewhere between Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3.
  • The Yamaha DX7 presets.
  • An aggressively nonlinear approach to productivity.
  • Doing board game AI until it becomes boring and then moving on to something else
  • A lifelong ADHD enjoyer.
  • Trying to explain "burndown rate" without knowing the term burndown rate or what burndown rate is.
  • Getting ideas out of your brain so it can think about something else for a while.
  • Games that you aren't allowed to play for fun.
  • The M stands for Money.
  • Whim-based topics.
  • Segue-free zones.
  • Essness and Snez.
  • Maintaining friendships via custom chat stickers.
  • Stickers you use in your daily life.
  • Discord For Andy.
  • Anonymous inscrutable pixel faces.
  • A sticker of Princess Rosaline shrugging with the text "Skill Issue?"
  • The rich ecology of daily Garfield recap podcasts.
  • Conflating RJ-45 and RJ-11.
  • Which One's The Astromech??
  • Two superpowers at one.
  • How to win the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Classic Raster Bars.
  • Reading a 40k stream of consciousness essay scrolling by the bottom of the screen in a pixelated font
  • Scrubbing right to Cronologia.
  • Doing surgery on the topic bucket right now.
  • That Oscilloscope Demo.
  • Converting your laptop into tent mode.
  • Zamboni Mayhem.
  • Running a video signal through a reverb pedal.
  • Stereo oscilloscopes.
  • Pringle of Scotland: once you pop, you can't stop.
  • A picture of a wall with a bunch of balloon letters spelling out a phrase.
  • Non-elected councils called ABAG and ICLEI.
  • A weird thing that's been kind of near you your whole life.
  • The final Neon Genesis Evangelization 3.0+1.0 movie.
  • A gripe session with themed cocktails.
  • Continuing to think of puns and refusing to pass any of them up.
  • Taking a Negroni and calling it LCL.
  • A 55 gallon drum of Tom Collins with a valve on it.
  • Walking by the booze aisle and everything looks delicious. (Even though it's not.)
  • Everyone's favorite topic.
  • Waving a .bat around to make your computer behave.
  • Sorry about your synapses!
  • An angry phone call from your mom circa 1995.
  • Telling the sand how to think and making the little guy run around.
  • Writing a bad song and immediately sending it to all your friends.
  • Pivoting to pay-per-reload.
  • Discovering what the requirements are as you discover the game you are making.
  • Crashing Pico-8 so hard that it reverts to Japanese.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+9jwaoHLk ]]> Jim Stormdancer 292. A Dewey Decimal System, but for Libraries https://topiclords.com/a-dewey-decimal-system-but-for-libraries 13123412-8a9a-4e2e-9592-49850a895f4d Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Chall. We discuss having an address after not having an address, slopsquatting, book curses, This Boke ys Myne by Eleanor Worcester, the David Lynch random number generator, and game designers going into public policy. 1:04:47 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Having an address after not having an address
  • Slopsquatting
  • Book curses
  • This boke ys myne, Eleanor Worcester
  • The David Lynch random number generator
    • Esper says: My personal favorite use of numbers stations is the brief “station ID” type messages on Secret Agent Radio, a radio station that plays funky groovy Bond soundtrack-type music. Every now and then between songs, you’ll get a brief clip of creepy French-accented actual number station recordings, which really sells the vibe: https://somafm.com/player24/station/secretagent
  • Do game designers ever go into public policy or vice-versa?

Microtopics:

  • Math.
  • An incredible youtube channel you don't know how to search for.
  • Lamplight but with a four.
  • Making art that only a tetrachromat could appreciate and then finding a tetrachromat to appreciate it.
  • The secret color: yellow.
  • Crashlands 2.
  • Watching X-Files until you've already seen all the Darin Morgan episodes.
  • Having twenty shirts to choose from and the same place to sit every day.
  • How long it takes to tire off the non-stop stream of novelty.
  • Working for yourself vs. working for someone else.
  • How to stop feeling like life is rushing past you.
  • Running a Kickstarter to get chores done around the house.
  • How to get your ADHD brain to do work in purpose.
  • Trying to get past the gauntlet of open browser tabs to the one where you get work done.
  • Running 100 times.
  • Productivity!
  • Buying a productivity calendar and then glaring at the calendar and saying "you can't trick me, calendar"
  • Nefarious NPM packages really popping off in the past few years.
  • Cool pens dot com.
  • Kazaam vs. Shazaam.
  • What people knew before they could search things on the Internet.
  • Dog bone facts.
  • The apocryphal things that LLMs like to say.
  • Lost books that we know about because they were mentioned in less old books.
  • The Actual Monster Mash.
  • Jeff Minter's Polybius.
  • Nobody ever releasing a fake Frog Fractions 2 even though Jim could never disavow it.
  • Hash tag relatable stories about medieval scribes.
  • Laws about book mishandling.
  • Dukes collecting books like treasures.
  • Putting a curse in your book to make sure nobody steals it.
  • The Falling Disease.
  • Irascibly Incoherent Book Curses.
  • May your NPM packages be infected with the falling disease.
  • A curse that can only curse people who can read.
  • Young people getting their grubby fingers dirty in the yard and leaving fingerprints in your books.
  • Someone left their bookmark in my book and the bookmark rotted again.
  • Cursing podcast bootleggers with the affliction where they always put their headphones on backwards.
  • The cheat code to unlock Nukey.
  • May your X button get stuck.
  • The wildest spelling that could possibly make sense.
  • A book that once belonged to a library.
  • Borrowing a book about space from your first grade teacher and forgetting to return it and learning about the ADHD shame procrastination spiral.
  • Blessed be he who steals this book.
  • Walking into a library and instantly being completely overwhelmed.
  • Giving your child the talk about where Little Free Libraries come from.
  • David Lynch giving you the weather in his all caps voice.
  • Why David Lynch never draws a 7.
  • The Reproducibility Crisis.
  • The Law of the Iterated Logarithm.
  • All the ways we make mistakes.
  • Coded drug drop messages on Britney Spears' Insagram.
  • The 485.152nd Amendment.
  • A great source of puns that must've existed for thousands of years.
  • How to predict whether your idea will work and then how to test whether it worked.
  • The Double Crossover Diamond Interchange.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Having an address after not having an address
  • Slopsquatting
  • Book curses
  • This boke ys myne, Eleanor Worcester
  • The David Lynch random number generator
    • Esper says: My personal favorite use of numbers stations is the brief “station ID” type messages on Secret Agent Radio, a radio station that plays funky groovy Bond soundtrack-type music. Every now and then between songs, you’ll get a brief clip of creepy French-accented actual number station recordings, which really sells the vibe: https://somafm.com/player24/station/secretagent
  • Do game designers ever go into public policy or vice-versa?

Microtopics:

  • Math.
  • An incredible youtube channel you don't know how to search for.
  • Lamplight but with a four.
  • Making art that only a tetrachromat could appreciate and then finding a tetrachromat to appreciate it.
  • The secret color: yellow.
  • Crashlands 2.
  • Watching X-Files until you've already seen all the Darin Morgan episodes.
  • Having twenty shirts to choose from and the same place to sit every day.
  • How long it takes to tire off the non-stop stream of novelty.
  • Working for yourself vs. working for someone else.
  • How to stop feeling like life is rushing past you.
  • Running a Kickstarter to get chores done around the house.
  • How to get your ADHD brain to do work in purpose.
  • Trying to get past the gauntlet of open browser tabs to the one where you get work done.
  • Running 100 times.
  • Productivity!
  • Buying a productivity calendar and then glaring at the calendar and saying "you can't trick me, calendar"
  • Nefarious NPM packages really popping off in the past few years.
  • Cool pens dot com.
  • Kazaam vs. Shazaam.
  • What people knew before they could search things on the Internet.
  • Dog bone facts.
  • The apocryphal things that LLMs like to say.
  • Lost books that we know about because they were mentioned in less old books.
  • The Actual Monster Mash.
  • Jeff Minter's Polybius.
  • Nobody ever releasing a fake Frog Fractions 2 even though Jim could never disavow it.
  • Hash tag relatable stories about medieval scribes.
  • Laws about book mishandling.
  • Dukes collecting books like treasures.
  • Putting a curse in your book to make sure nobody steals it.
  • The Falling Disease.
  • Irascibly Incoherent Book Curses.
  • May your NPM packages be infected with the falling disease.
  • A curse that can only curse people who can read.
  • Young people getting their grubby fingers dirty in the yard and leaving fingerprints in your books.
  • Someone left their bookmark in my book and the bookmark rotted again.
  • Cursing podcast bootleggers with the affliction where they always put their headphones on backwards.
  • The cheat code to unlock Nukey.
  • May your X button get stuck.
  • The wildest spelling that could possibly make sense.
  • A book that once belonged to a library.
  • Borrowing a book about space from your first grade teacher and forgetting to return it and learning about the ADHD shame procrastination spiral.
  • Blessed be he who steals this book.
  • Walking into a library and instantly being completely overwhelmed.
  • Giving your child the talk about where Little Free Libraries come from.
  • David Lynch giving you the weather in his all caps voice.
  • Why David Lynch never draws a 7.
  • The Reproducibility Crisis.
  • The Law of the Iterated Logarithm.
  • All the ways we make mistakes.
  • Coded drug drop messages on Britney Spears' Insagram.
  • The 485.152nd Amendment.
  • A great source of puns that must've existed for thousands of years.
  • How to predict whether your idea will work and then how to test whether it worked.
  • The Double Crossover Diamond Interchange.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Having an address after not having an address
  • Slopsquatting
  • Book curses
  • This boke ys myne, Eleanor Worcester
  • The David Lynch random number generator
    • Esper says: My personal favorite use of numbers stations is the brief “station ID” type messages on Secret Agent Radio, a radio station that plays funky groovy Bond soundtrack-type music. Every now and then between songs, you’ll get a brief clip of creepy French-accented actual number station recordings, which really sells the vibe: https://somafm.com/player24/station/secretagent
  • Do game designers ever go into public policy or vice-versa?

Microtopics:

  • Math.
  • An incredible youtube channel you don't know how to search for.
  • Lamplight but with a four.
  • Making art that only a tetrachromat could appreciate and then finding a tetrachromat to appreciate it.
  • The secret color: yellow.
  • Crashlands 2.
  • Watching X-Files until you've already seen all the Darin Morgan episodes.
  • Having twenty shirts to choose from and the same place to sit every day.
  • How long it takes to tire off the non-stop stream of novelty.
  • Working for yourself vs. working for someone else.
  • How to stop feeling like life is rushing past you.
  • Running a Kickstarter to get chores done around the house.
  • How to get your ADHD brain to do work in purpose.
  • Trying to get past the gauntlet of open browser tabs to the one where you get work done.
  • Running 100 times.
  • Productivity!
  • Buying a productivity calendar and then glaring at the calendar and saying "you can't trick me, calendar"
  • Nefarious NPM packages really popping off in the past few years.
  • Cool pens dot com.
  • Kazaam vs. Shazaam.
  • What people knew before they could search things on the Internet.
  • Dog bone facts.
  • The apocryphal things that LLMs like to say.
  • Lost books that we know about because they were mentioned in less old books.
  • The Actual Monster Mash.
  • Jeff Minter's Polybius.
  • Nobody ever releasing a fake Frog Fractions 2 even though Jim could never disavow it.
  • Hash tag relatable stories about medieval scribes.
  • Laws about book mishandling.
  • Dukes collecting books like treasures.
  • Putting a curse in your book to make sure nobody steals it.
  • The Falling Disease.
  • Irascibly Incoherent Book Curses.
  • May your NPM packages be infected with the falling disease.
  • A curse that can only curse people who can read.
  • Young people getting their grubby fingers dirty in the yard and leaving fingerprints in your books.
  • Someone left their bookmark in my book and the bookmark rotted again.
  • Cursing podcast bootleggers with the affliction where they always put their headphones on backwards.
  • The cheat code to unlock Nukey.
  • May your X button get stuck.
  • The wildest spelling that could possibly make sense.
  • A book that once belonged to a library.
  • Borrowing a book about space from your first grade teacher and forgetting to return it and learning about the ADHD shame procrastination spiral.
  • Blessed be he who steals this book.
  • Walking into a library and instantly being completely overwhelmed.
  • Giving your child the talk about where Little Free Libraries come from.
  • David Lynch giving you the weather in his all caps voice.
  • Why David Lynch never draws a 7.
  • The Reproducibility Crisis.
  • The Law of the Iterated Logarithm.
  • All the ways we make mistakes.
  • Coded drug drop messages on Britney Spears' Insagram.
  • The 485.152nd Amendment.
  • A great source of puns that must've existed for thousands of years.
  • How to predict whether your idea will work and then how to test whether it worked.
  • The Double Crossover Diamond Interchange.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+j3kcVion ]]> Jim Stormdancer 291. Nair and Nnail: Keratin Erasers https://topiclords.com/nair-and-nnail-keratin-erasers 1868fe09-0898-4b02-a803-c71919ed56e5 Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexei, Evan. We discuss silt clouds and underwater visibility as a game mechanic, the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid and the utility calculations of weird buildings, what happens when your Firefox root certificate expires?, and The Ailing Mirror-Smith. 1:08:47 true Lords:

  • Alexei
  • Evan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Roguelike Celebration.
  • Virtual conferences.
  • How to be in a conversation with one person in a room and not the whole room.
  • Drinking a polymorph potion to put a different animal emoji next to your user name.
  • Roguelikes and Roguelikers.
  • Topic munching and topic grazing.
  • How to design non-violent roguelikes.
  • Spending your paw prints on the "become water" skill so when a human tries to pick you up, you just flow out of their hands.
  • Imitone.
  • Abruptly tooting a horn.
  • Reading an email and then pointing at it and yelling "sold!"
  • DSP for game developers.
  • Video essays about maritime disasters.
  • Penetration diving.
  • Huge warning signs in front of every underwater cave.
  • Silt Warnings.
  • Guideline Entanglement.
  • Moving in more directional axes than you normally do.
  • Fast things that live underwater.
  • Panicking and forgetting that the game is turn based.
  • Playing Nethack with a screen reader.
  • Multi stage dives to deliver oxygen further and further into a cave system.
  • Retrieving the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
  • Inventing special hells to put yourself through because the existing hells aren't good enough.
  • Gabe Newell's lack of fear response.
  • Remembering the time you blacked out and thinking "the brain is really cool."
  • Borrowing some time from your cat attack to give to the car crash.
  • Scout the Floof.
  • Running out of adrenalin and being extremely calm.
  • Entering and exiting Tennessee in a state of intense unreality.
  • Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt.
  • The acoustic properties of a gigantic metal pyramid.
  • Getting married inside the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.
  • Hotel rooms attached up the back of the giant fish.
  • Why the Egyptians built pyramids rather than other cooler shapes.
  • A procedurally generated lady in Canada.
  • Importing the Burning Man from Burning Man.
  • Stopping at Saskatchewan for gas.
  • Home of the World's Biggest Dad.
  • Building Ram Pumps in Dwarf Fortress.
  • Great Pyramid Ram Pump.
  • Mummy Tea.
  • A terrible waste of tax dollars that brings joy to children all around the world.
  • Firefox telling you "oh shit, you need to update now, dog."
  • Configuring Windows Firewall to not allow Windows Updates.
  • Protecting your users from malware by opening the floodgates of Internet ads.
  • Encino Man.
  • Handing Firefox a Baby Ruth and it's like "this tastes like plastic."
  • Picking tiny hills to die on as a way to remain mentally stable.
  • Escalating lack of politeness from a UK security firm.
  • Nitric Acid Piano: sounds great but hurts like heck to play.
  • 3D printing new fingernails right onto your bare cuticles every morning.
  • Working on a long project in which you see more potency than clarity of purpose.
  • Valorizing craft for the sake of craft, disconnected from the use of it.
  • In the worst case scenario, how could your tool be used?
  • Avoiding doing evil by making morally neutral art.
  • Sitting on multiple generations of Cold War techno-optimism.
  • Keita Takahashi's manifesto about being a video game romantic.
  • Designing things that people can do and enjoy in the world we want to live in.
  • Striving to bring people some small amount of a positive emotion.
  • Making curry for your colleagues and going totally overboard on it.
  • I'm going to go do evil with this curry.
  • Learning the flavors of new herbs and spices.
  • Fenugreek leaf.
  • The worst time in history to get enthusiastic about cooking quiche.
  • Trying to figure out how to post.
]]> Lords:

  • Alexei
  • Evan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Roguelike Celebration.
  • Virtual conferences.
  • How to be in a conversation with one person in a room and not the whole room.
  • Drinking a polymorph potion to put a different animal emoji next to your user name.
  • Roguelikes and Roguelikers.
  • Topic munching and topic grazing.
  • How to design non-violent roguelikes.
  • Spending your paw prints on the "become water" skill so when a human tries to pick you up, you just flow out of their hands.
  • Imitone.
  • Abruptly tooting a horn.
  • Reading an email and then pointing at it and yelling "sold!"
  • DSP for game developers.
  • Video essays about maritime disasters.
  • Penetration diving.
  • Huge warning signs in front of every underwater cave.
  • Silt Warnings.
  • Guideline Entanglement.
  • Moving in more directional axes than you normally do.
  • Fast things that live underwater.
  • Panicking and forgetting that the game is turn based.
  • Playing Nethack with a screen reader.
  • Multi stage dives to deliver oxygen further and further into a cave system.
  • Retrieving the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
  • Inventing special hells to put yourself through because the existing hells aren't good enough.
  • Gabe Newell's lack of fear response.
  • Remembering the time you blacked out and thinking "the brain is really cool."
  • Borrowing some time from your cat attack to give to the car crash.
  • Scout the Floof.
  • Running out of adrenalin and being extremely calm.
  • Entering and exiting Tennessee in a state of intense unreality.
  • Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt.
  • The acoustic properties of a gigantic metal pyramid.
  • Getting married inside the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.
  • Hotel rooms attached up the back of the giant fish.
  • Why the Egyptians built pyramids rather than other cooler shapes.
  • A procedurally generated lady in Canada.
  • Importing the Burning Man from Burning Man.
  • Stopping at Saskatchewan for gas.
  • Home of the World's Biggest Dad.
  • Building Ram Pumps in Dwarf Fortress.
  • Great Pyramid Ram Pump.
  • Mummy Tea.
  • A terrible waste of tax dollars that brings joy to children all around the world.
  • Firefox telling you "oh shit, you need to update now, dog."
  • Configuring Windows Firewall to not allow Windows Updates.
  • Protecting your users from malware by opening the floodgates of Internet ads.
  • Encino Man.
  • Handing Firefox a Baby Ruth and it's like "this tastes like plastic."
  • Picking tiny hills to die on as a way to remain mentally stable.
  • Escalating lack of politeness from a UK security firm.
  • Nitric Acid Piano: sounds great but hurts like heck to play.
  • 3D printing new fingernails right onto your bare cuticles every morning.
  • Working on a long project in which you see more potency than clarity of purpose.
  • Valorizing craft for the sake of craft, disconnected from the use of it.
  • In the worst case scenario, how could your tool be used?
  • Avoiding doing evil by making morally neutral art.
  • Sitting on multiple generations of Cold War techno-optimism.
  • Keita Takahashi's manifesto about being a video game romantic.
  • Designing things that people can do and enjoy in the world we want to live in.
  • Striving to bring people some small amount of a positive emotion.
  • Making curry for your colleagues and going totally overboard on it.
  • I'm going to go do evil with this curry.
  • Learning the flavors of new herbs and spices.
  • Fenugreek leaf.
  • The worst time in history to get enthusiastic about cooking quiche.
  • Trying to figure out how to post.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alexei
  • Evan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Roguelike Celebration.
  • Virtual conferences.
  • How to be in a conversation with one person in a room and not the whole room.
  • Drinking a polymorph potion to put a different animal emoji next to your user name.
  • Roguelikes and Roguelikers.
  • Topic munching and topic grazing.
  • How to design non-violent roguelikes.
  • Spending your paw prints on the "become water" skill so when a human tries to pick you up, you just flow out of their hands.
  • Imitone.
  • Abruptly tooting a horn.
  • Reading an email and then pointing at it and yelling "sold!"
  • DSP for game developers.
  • Video essays about maritime disasters.
  • Penetration diving.
  • Huge warning signs in front of every underwater cave.
  • Silt Warnings.
  • Guideline Entanglement.
  • Moving in more directional axes than you normally do.
  • Fast things that live underwater.
  • Panicking and forgetting that the game is turn based.
  • Playing Nethack with a screen reader.
  • Multi stage dives to deliver oxygen further and further into a cave system.
  • Retrieving the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
  • Inventing special hells to put yourself through because the existing hells aren't good enough.
  • Gabe Newell's lack of fear response.
  • Remembering the time you blacked out and thinking "the brain is really cool."
  • Borrowing some time from your cat attack to give to the car crash.
  • Scout the Floof.
  • Running out of adrenalin and being extremely calm.
  • Entering and exiting Tennessee in a state of intense unreality.
  • Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt.
  • The acoustic properties of a gigantic metal pyramid.
  • Getting married inside the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.
  • Hotel rooms attached up the back of the giant fish.
  • Why the Egyptians built pyramids rather than other cooler shapes.
  • A procedurally generated lady in Canada.
  • Importing the Burning Man from Burning Man.
  • Stopping at Saskatchewan for gas.
  • Home of the World's Biggest Dad.
  • Building Ram Pumps in Dwarf Fortress.
  • Great Pyramid Ram Pump.
  • Mummy Tea.
  • A terrible waste of tax dollars that brings joy to children all around the world.
  • Firefox telling you "oh shit, you need to update now, dog."
  • Configuring Windows Firewall to not allow Windows Updates.
  • Protecting your users from malware by opening the floodgates of Internet ads.
  • Encino Man.
  • Handing Firefox a Baby Ruth and it's like "this tastes like plastic."
  • Picking tiny hills to die on as a way to remain mentally stable.
  • Escalating lack of politeness from a UK security firm.
  • Nitric Acid Piano: sounds great but hurts like heck to play.
  • 3D printing new fingernails right onto your bare cuticles every morning.
  • Working on a long project in which you see more potency than clarity of purpose.
  • Valorizing craft for the sake of craft, disconnected from the use of it.
  • In the worst case scenario, how could your tool be used?
  • Avoiding doing evil by making morally neutral art.
  • Sitting on multiple generations of Cold War techno-optimism.
  • Keita Takahashi's manifesto about being a video game romantic.
  • Designing things that people can do and enjoy in the world we want to live in.
  • Striving to bring people some small amount of a positive emotion.
  • Making curry for your colleagues and going totally overboard on it.
  • I'm going to go do evil with this curry.
  • Learning the flavors of new herbs and spices.
  • Fenugreek leaf.
  • The worst time in history to get enthusiastic about cooking quiche.
  • Trying to figure out how to post.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+-q0ni12D ]]> Jim Stormdancer 290. Forever Games are Just Rude https://topiclords.com/forever-games-are-just-rude 96db5fb0-7a99-4e3d-9d6d-4f185e42c303 Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Lena and Droqen. We discuss killing gameplay, the thrill of firefighting on live service games, and how to stop, and It was D and K who Showed me the Way. 1:02:12 true Lords:

  • Lena
  • Droqen

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Great content.
  • Multiplayer games that are focused on human connection.
  • Farmers' markets.
  • Kinopio. (The mind-mapping software.)
  • Just barfing stuff onto the page.
  • Looking at a piece of software that someone has polished for fifteen years and being astounded.
  • Weird ego boosts.
  • Meeting hundreds of people whose names you recognize from the Internet and they're all like "I love the thing you made."
  • Pursuing the thing that other people say is good about your work and forgetting what you liked about it yourself.
  • A nebulous idea whose lot in life is to be dominated by more concrete ideas.
  • Making your next game with the intention of killing your most popular game.
  • Unlocking creative expression into a vessel.
  • Tolerating a combat system to get to the good parts of a game.
  • Playing a game because you enjoy pushing the buttons.
  • A museum exhibit of a hundred different platformer control schemes.
  • Using your ability to hang out with people to tell them a story.
  • A list of all the ideas you've ever had.
  • The safety of watching the numbers go up.
  • An interaction that exists to be self-perpetuating.
  • Advertising as a way to tell people that a thing exists vs. all the noxious cruft that we've grown on top of that idea.
  • Game addiction as a thing that is desirable.
  • Games that grip you as tightly as possible vs. games that gracefully end and allow you to stop playing.
  • Game developers accidentally discovering that they can Skinner Box people and then deciding "let's build our entire industry around that forever"
  • The mantra you use to remind yourself to not put gameplay in your games.
  • Trying to detect the humanity in a work of art.
  • Trying to express your experiences in a medium and knowing you at least have an audience of one. (Yourself.)
  • Disagreeing about color names.
  • It's Thanksgiving and people are at-ing you on Twitter that your online service isn't working.
  • Moving fast enough that you don't have time to sit with your thoughts and second-guess yourself.
  • The true meaning of a Lord.
  • How to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty.
  • Solving a problem before you get the chance to wonder whether solving the problem aligns with your values.
  • Running an online world that gets hacked and rolling back only 98% of the hack, leaving enough to remind people that this is a world with a living history.
  • Ruminating about your past actions as a way to learn how to behave in the future.
  • Acting without reflection because you can't reflect and act at the same time.
  • It doesn't matter what you do as long as you feel really bad about it afterwards.
  • How to stop.
  • Don't make live service games.
  • Sitting with the knowledge that you are going to make mistakes.
  • Staring at blue-green walls.
  • The most juicy fire-fighting that's available.
  • The horrible steak that is life.
  • Trying to construct your life so that you are doing something thrilling and important for one to four hours per day and then relaxing.
  • The introverted fire fighter who has his own personal cardboard box to cover his head with as he's hanging out at the station.
  • What's-his-letter?
  • If Heaven's so good, why haven't they made a Heaven 2?
  • Making a one-user forum for yourself.
  • Poetry 2: it's when you do something interesting with forum posts.
  • Doing something for brain reasons and then people who you inspire do the same things to so they can pretend to have the same brain reasons.
  • Adding everyone who ever influenced you to the credits of your game.
  • Intentionally excluding the U.
  • Suck it, English orthography!
]]> Lords:

  • Lena
  • Droqen

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Great content.
  • Multiplayer games that are focused on human connection.
  • Farmers' markets.
  • Kinopio. (The mind-mapping software.)
  • Just barfing stuff onto the page.
  • Looking at a piece of software that someone has polished for fifteen years and being astounded.
  • Weird ego boosts.
  • Meeting hundreds of people whose names you recognize from the Internet and they're all like "I love the thing you made."
  • Pursuing the thing that other people say is good about your work and forgetting what you liked about it yourself.
  • A nebulous idea whose lot in life is to be dominated by more concrete ideas.
  • Making your next game with the intention of killing your most popular game.
  • Unlocking creative expression into a vessel.
  • Tolerating a combat system to get to the good parts of a game.
  • Playing a game because you enjoy pushing the buttons.
  • A museum exhibit of a hundred different platformer control schemes.
  • Using your ability to hang out with people to tell them a story.
  • A list of all the ideas you've ever had.
  • The safety of watching the numbers go up.
  • An interaction that exists to be self-perpetuating.
  • Advertising as a way to tell people that a thing exists vs. all the noxious cruft that we've grown on top of that idea.
  • Game addiction as a thing that is desirable.
  • Games that grip you as tightly as possible vs. games that gracefully end and allow you to stop playing.
  • Game developers accidentally discovering that they can Skinner Box people and then deciding "let's build our entire industry around that forever"
  • The mantra you use to remind yourself to not put gameplay in your games.
  • Trying to detect the humanity in a work of art.
  • Trying to express your experiences in a medium and knowing you at least have an audience of one. (Yourself.)
  • Disagreeing about color names.
  • It's Thanksgiving and people are at-ing you on Twitter that your online service isn't working.
  • Moving fast enough that you don't have time to sit with your thoughts and second-guess yourself.
  • The true meaning of a Lord.
  • How to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty.
  • Solving a problem before you get the chance to wonder whether solving the problem aligns with your values.
  • Running an online world that gets hacked and rolling back only 98% of the hack, leaving enough to remind people that this is a world with a living history.
  • Ruminating about your past actions as a way to learn how to behave in the future.
  • Acting without reflection because you can't reflect and act at the same time.
  • It doesn't matter what you do as long as you feel really bad about it afterwards.
  • How to stop.
  • Don't make live service games.
  • Sitting with the knowledge that you are going to make mistakes.
  • Staring at blue-green walls.
  • The most juicy fire-fighting that's available.
  • The horrible steak that is life.
  • Trying to construct your life so that you are doing something thrilling and important for one to four hours per day and then relaxing.
  • The introverted fire fighter who has his own personal cardboard box to cover his head with as he's hanging out at the station.
  • What's-his-letter?
  • If Heaven's so good, why haven't they made a Heaven 2?
  • Making a one-user forum for yourself.
  • Poetry 2: it's when you do something interesting with forum posts.
  • Doing something for brain reasons and then people who you inspire do the same things to so they can pretend to have the same brain reasons.
  • Adding everyone who ever influenced you to the credits of your game.
  • Intentionally excluding the U.
  • Suck it, English orthography!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Lena
  • Droqen

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Great content.
  • Multiplayer games that are focused on human connection.
  • Farmers' markets.
  • Kinopio. (The mind-mapping software.)
  • Just barfing stuff onto the page.
  • Looking at a piece of software that someone has polished for fifteen years and being astounded.
  • Weird ego boosts.
  • Meeting hundreds of people whose names you recognize from the Internet and they're all like "I love the thing you made."
  • Pursuing the thing that other people say is good about your work and forgetting what you liked about it yourself.
  • A nebulous idea whose lot in life is to be dominated by more concrete ideas.
  • Making your next game with the intention of killing your most popular game.
  • Unlocking creative expression into a vessel.
  • Tolerating a combat system to get to the good parts of a game.
  • Playing a game because you enjoy pushing the buttons.
  • A museum exhibit of a hundred different platformer control schemes.
  • Using your ability to hang out with people to tell them a story.
  • A list of all the ideas you've ever had.
  • The safety of watching the numbers go up.
  • An interaction that exists to be self-perpetuating.
  • Advertising as a way to tell people that a thing exists vs. all the noxious cruft that we've grown on top of that idea.
  • Game addiction as a thing that is desirable.
  • Games that grip you as tightly as possible vs. games that gracefully end and allow you to stop playing.
  • Game developers accidentally discovering that they can Skinner Box people and then deciding "let's build our entire industry around that forever"
  • The mantra you use to remind yourself to not put gameplay in your games.
  • Trying to detect the humanity in a work of art.
  • Trying to express your experiences in a medium and knowing you at least have an audience of one. (Yourself.)
  • Disagreeing about color names.
  • It's Thanksgiving and people are at-ing you on Twitter that your online service isn't working.
  • Moving fast enough that you don't have time to sit with your thoughts and second-guess yourself.
  • The true meaning of a Lord.
  • How to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty.
  • Solving a problem before you get the chance to wonder whether solving the problem aligns with your values.
  • Running an online world that gets hacked and rolling back only 98% of the hack, leaving enough to remind people that this is a world with a living history.
  • Ruminating about your past actions as a way to learn how to behave in the future.
  • Acting without reflection because you can't reflect and act at the same time.
  • It doesn't matter what you do as long as you feel really bad about it afterwards.
  • How to stop.
  • Don't make live service games.
  • Sitting with the knowledge that you are going to make mistakes.
  • Staring at blue-green walls.
  • The most juicy fire-fighting that's available.
  • The horrible steak that is life.
  • Trying to construct your life so that you are doing something thrilling and important for one to four hours per day and then relaxing.
  • The introverted fire fighter who has his own personal cardboard box to cover his head with as he's hanging out at the station.
  • What's-his-letter?
  • If Heaven's so good, why haven't they made a Heaven 2?
  • Making a one-user forum for yourself.
  • Poetry 2: it's when you do something interesting with forum posts.
  • Doing something for brain reasons and then people who you inspire do the same things to so they can pretend to have the same brain reasons.
  • Adding everyone who ever influenced you to the credits of your game.
  • Intentionally excluding the U.
  • Suck it, English orthography!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+iVkvn_5_ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 289. It's Pronounced VRML https://topiclords.com/its-pronounced-vrml 80306066-1119-4df7-b926-7cf575479f81 Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayFaber, Andrew. We discuss people saying things in front of janitors, revisiting a creative work after 20 years, naming conventions in the demo scene vs. the ZZT scene, How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett, and Floops, a 3D cartoon character from the mid-90s internet. 1:06:59 true Lords:

Topics:

  • People say the craziest stuff in front of janitors.
  • Revisiting development of a creative work after 20 years
  • Naming conventions in the demo scene vs. the ZZT scene
  • How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett
  • Floops, a 3D cartoon character generated in VRML in the mid-90's internet

Microtopics:

  • Putting all your stress from the last three months into a single EP.
  • Brains pooping right into your ears.
  • Refusing to talk about Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
  • Are you allowed to talk to janitors??
  • Being assumed to be part of a group (openly racist people) that you are not actually part of.
  • The risks of letting other people clean up after you.
  • How do you know when it's time to eat candy when you don't have the candy gland?
  • Giving yourself heat stroke because you don't realize it's too hot.
  • Making a plan for how to not get heat stroke!
  • Not having a thirst meter but your snacking meter is pegged 24/7.
  • The inability to sleep and eat at the same time.
  • How to tell if you're on SSRIs.
  • Cyclothymia.
  • "You have to do this now or I'm going to stare at you."
  • A VR exercise app where if your heart rate drops too low all the NPCs start staring at you.
  • The cost of not taking care of yourself.
  • Clinging to your flow state for dear life.
  • Feeling like you've done a thing vs. actually doing the thing.
  • Sedarising and unsedarising your essay.
  • The many eras of cancelling David Sedaris.
  • Independent tabletop game developers in the Osaka area.
  • Writing to explore your own thought space.
  • Writing the program and then running the program.
  • Taking a twenty year break between essay drafts so you can revisit your ideas fresh.
  • Cyberpunk-coded online handles.
  • Attaching a political ideology to the ZZT scene.
  • Role-playing bring a small business owner as you make art in your bedroom and share it with the online community.
  • Social capital in the cracking community.
  • The era in your life when you didn't even know it was possible to pay for computer games.
  • Who'd win in a fight, Slayer, or Mega Slayer ZZ9 Final?
  • The revealed philosophies of different online communities.
  • Shareware and early web nostalgia.
  • A wild time to be on the Internet.
  • Enjoying lo-fi versions of a thing.
  • A movie with bad special effects that look great in the pirated cammed version.
  • Straightening your room before you save the world.
  • Not doing anything to make what you want impossible.
  • Using attractive stamps, like the one with the tornado on it.
  • Carrying the only poem you like around with you on index cards.
  • Living in a culture where respect for the elderly is out of control.
  • The age at which you get to elbow your way to the front of every line.
  • Getting paid to tell people how to do things better.
  • Things you had to learn outside of school.
  • A guy who looks like he's eaten every lemon in the world.
  • Ron Padgett celebrity lookalikes.
  • An alarm clock that wakes you up by shouting "I'm looking forward to the Internet of things!" in your own voice.
  • Who's been to cocktail parties and when, and did you discuss VRML?
  • Hand animating 3D cartoons by typing VRML.
  • Vtubers in the 90s.
  • Making things and putting them on the Internet and everyone just assumes you just prompted an AI to make it.
  • Demystifying the magic pixie dust.
  • The burly wizard with a hammer and anvil who knows how to make the metal not brittle.
  • NAND to Tetris and Cryptopals. (Not the blockchain kind.)
  • Learning to never roll your own crypto.
  • Magic. (Derogatory.)
  • Punished for understanding the assignment.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • People say the craziest stuff in front of janitors.
  • Revisiting development of a creative work after 20 years
  • Naming conventions in the demo scene vs. the ZZT scene
  • How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett
  • Floops, a 3D cartoon character generated in VRML in the mid-90's internet

Microtopics:

  • Putting all your stress from the last three months into a single EP.
  • Brains pooping right into your ears.
  • Refusing to talk about Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
  • Are you allowed to talk to janitors??
  • Being assumed to be part of a group (openly racist people) that you are not actually part of.
  • The risks of letting other people clean up after you.
  • How do you know when it's time to eat candy when you don't have the candy gland?
  • Giving yourself heat stroke because you don't realize it's too hot.
  • Making a plan for how to not get heat stroke!
  • Not having a thirst meter but your snacking meter is pegged 24/7.
  • The inability to sleep and eat at the same time.
  • How to tell if you're on SSRIs.
  • Cyclothymia.
  • "You have to do this now or I'm going to stare at you."
  • A VR exercise app where if your heart rate drops too low all the NPCs start staring at you.
  • The cost of not taking care of yourself.
  • Clinging to your flow state for dear life.
  • Feeling like you've done a thing vs. actually doing the thing.
  • Sedarising and unsedarising your essay.
  • The many eras of cancelling David Sedaris.
  • Independent tabletop game developers in the Osaka area.
  • Writing to explore your own thought space.
  • Writing the program and then running the program.
  • Taking a twenty year break between essay drafts so you can revisit your ideas fresh.
  • Cyberpunk-coded online handles.
  • Attaching a political ideology to the ZZT scene.
  • Role-playing bring a small business owner as you make art in your bedroom and share it with the online community.
  • Social capital in the cracking community.
  • The era in your life when you didn't even know it was possible to pay for computer games.
  • Who'd win in a fight, Slayer, or Mega Slayer ZZ9 Final?
  • The revealed philosophies of different online communities.
  • Shareware and early web nostalgia.
  • A wild time to be on the Internet.
  • Enjoying lo-fi versions of a thing.
  • A movie with bad special effects that look great in the pirated cammed version.
  • Straightening your room before you save the world.
  • Not doing anything to make what you want impossible.
  • Using attractive stamps, like the one with the tornado on it.
  • Carrying the only poem you like around with you on index cards.
  • Living in a culture where respect for the elderly is out of control.
  • The age at which you get to elbow your way to the front of every line.
  • Getting paid to tell people how to do things better.
  • Things you had to learn outside of school.
  • A guy who looks like he's eaten every lemon in the world.
  • Ron Padgett celebrity lookalikes.
  • An alarm clock that wakes you up by shouting "I'm looking forward to the Internet of things!" in your own voice.
  • Who's been to cocktail parties and when, and did you discuss VRML?
  • Hand animating 3D cartoons by typing VRML.
  • Vtubers in the 90s.
  • Making things and putting them on the Internet and everyone just assumes you just prompted an AI to make it.
  • Demystifying the magic pixie dust.
  • The burly wizard with a hammer and anvil who knows how to make the metal not brittle.
  • NAND to Tetris and Cryptopals. (Not the blockchain kind.)
  • Learning to never roll your own crypto.
  • Magic. (Derogatory.)
  • Punished for understanding the assignment.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • People say the craziest stuff in front of janitors.
  • Revisiting development of a creative work after 20 years
  • Naming conventions in the demo scene vs. the ZZT scene
  • How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett
  • Floops, a 3D cartoon character generated in VRML in the mid-90's internet

Microtopics:

  • Putting all your stress from the last three months into a single EP.
  • Brains pooping right into your ears.
  • Refusing to talk about Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
  • Are you allowed to talk to janitors??
  • Being assumed to be part of a group (openly racist people) that you are not actually part of.
  • The risks of letting other people clean up after you.
  • How do you know when it's time to eat candy when you don't have the candy gland?
  • Giving yourself heat stroke because you don't realize it's too hot.
  • Making a plan for how to not get heat stroke!
  • Not having a thirst meter but your snacking meter is pegged 24/7.
  • The inability to sleep and eat at the same time.
  • How to tell if you're on SSRIs.
  • Cyclothymia.
  • "You have to do this now or I'm going to stare at you."
  • A VR exercise app where if your heart rate drops too low all the NPCs start staring at you.
  • The cost of not taking care of yourself.
  • Clinging to your flow state for dear life.
  • Feeling like you've done a thing vs. actually doing the thing.
  • Sedarising and unsedarising your essay.
  • The many eras of cancelling David Sedaris.
  • Independent tabletop game developers in the Osaka area.
  • Writing to explore your own thought space.
  • Writing the program and then running the program.
  • Taking a twenty year break between essay drafts so you can revisit your ideas fresh.
  • Cyberpunk-coded online handles.
  • Attaching a political ideology to the ZZT scene.
  • Role-playing bring a small business owner as you make art in your bedroom and share it with the online community.
  • Social capital in the cracking community.
  • The era in your life when you didn't even know it was possible to pay for computer games.
  • Who'd win in a fight, Slayer, or Mega Slayer ZZ9 Final?
  • The revealed philosophies of different online communities.
  • Shareware and early web nostalgia.
  • A wild time to be on the Internet.
  • Enjoying lo-fi versions of a thing.
  • A movie with bad special effects that look great in the pirated cammed version.
  • Straightening your room before you save the world.
  • Not doing anything to make what you want impossible.
  • Using attractive stamps, like the one with the tornado on it.
  • Carrying the only poem you like around with you on index cards.
  • Living in a culture where respect for the elderly is out of control.
  • The age at which you get to elbow your way to the front of every line.
  • Getting paid to tell people how to do things better.
  • Things you had to learn outside of school.
  • A guy who looks like he's eaten every lemon in the world.
  • Ron Padgett celebrity lookalikes.
  • An alarm clock that wakes you up by shouting "I'm looking forward to the Internet of things!" in your own voice.
  • Who's been to cocktail parties and when, and did you discuss VRML?
  • Hand animating 3D cartoons by typing VRML.
  • Vtubers in the 90s.
  • Making things and putting them on the Internet and everyone just assumes you just prompted an AI to make it.
  • Demystifying the magic pixie dust.
  • The burly wizard with a hammer and anvil who knows how to make the metal not brittle.
  • NAND to Tetris and Cryptopals. (Not the blockchain kind.)
  • Learning to never roll your own crypto.
  • Magic. (Derogatory.)
  • Punished for understanding the assignment.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Nh-v_Eem ]]> Jim Stormdancer 288. Nobody Has Poop on Their Balls on The Astral Plane https://topiclords.com/nobody-has-poop-on-their-balls-on-the-astral-plane 3dc368bc-6cdb-4f2f-a926-7f52d18c9fe1 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Rebecca. We discuss getting emotionally ambushed by a children's toy piano, all the non-art things you have to do to get external validation about your art, explaining where owls come from, The Witches are Coming (excerpt) by Lindy West, and Ask Me About Looms in Video Games. 1:14:04 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Weft: for weavers!
  • The Weft Zone.
  • A two and a half foot piano with five notes on it.
  • Are you the width of your arm?
  • Pushing a button to increase your team's number.
  • A white paper about how to not get a divorce when you go to burning man together.
  • Teaching kids all the animal names, even the ones they'll never encounter, like how we used to teach kids all the state capitals even for the states they'll never visit.
  • A bird with polka dot wings that could fly over the sea, and John Legend sings about it.
  • Expecting your child to eventually go through every age.
  • Now that your kid is 40, he can clean the poop from his own balls.
  • The umbilical cord being connected to weird meat inside your body.
  • Kidney bean figures connected by glowing blue lines in the astral plane.
  • Being paid to stay at home and solve puzzles on you computer. (And go to Zoom meetings.)
  • All the non-art things you need to do to get your art out there.
  • The Loom on Loom Island.
  • Exhibiting at Maker Fair and explaining how a loom works 50,000 times.
  • Happy last year's birthday! I made you something and it took me this long to finish it.
  • Getting a fanbase who has a parasocial relationship with you and having to pretend not to be a crotchety asshole.
  • What it takes to run a personal Mastodon instance.
  • Getting a call from the school and they're like "your instance isn't federating with the other instances, we need you to come pick it up."
  • Explaining to a six year old about sexual reproduction, DNA, mutations, and speciation so you can explain where owls come from.
  • Explaining to your baby that talking is when an organ vibrates in your throat that makes the air vibrate, but he doesn't know what air is, he thinks there's an ether.
  • What music you can play with the pentatonic scale.
  • Poko the cockatiel sitting Totoro.
  • The intern at the mobile factory who spent an afternoon downloading a hundred bootleg MIDIs so that the mobile plays.
  • Tooting the bad cone inside the house.
  • The person who would be playing the trumpet in your relationship.
  • Seeing someone knitting incorrectly in a TV show.
  • Patching better jokes into the hat DLC.
  • Using a sequence of transpilers to get your code from point A to point B.
  • People who make game engines wanting your to touch the engine as much as possible.
  • Wanting to declare a global variable and the developers say you can't do that but they point you to the bespoke language feature that does the same thing as global variables but in a much more complicated way.
  • Playing the Frog Fractions text adventure with a gamepad.
  • Funny looking pirates who are secretly advertisements.
  • Kidney beans, swans, and other delicious things.
  • Learning a song from a dye pot that turns things green.
  • A piano guitar that you just press on.
  • Showing your husband the Wikipedia page that proves that you hobby exists and he's like "anybody can edit Wikipedia."
  • Making a sculpture of the Eiffel tower without looking at any references and it ends up just being a letter A with the word "Paris" written nearby.
  • A coked-up knitting machine.
  • Spring has sprung so sprang your sprang.
  • Heddles and treadles and gamps.
  • Some of your best Comfy Fingering, please.
  • Basic Sour.
  • Smelling things in your mouth.
  • Getting tired of sucking your baby's snot through a tube and getting an electric aspirator.
  • Starting up Morrowind and being immediately presented with a guy who has a bad case of Bethesda Face.
  • The thirteen games that have looms in them.
  • The looms in Assassin's Creed being kind of historically accurate because Ubisoft's whole thing is being kind of historically accurate.
  • Subscribing to a service that periodically sends you different swatches of cloth so you can disassemble them and figure out how they're woven.
  • Festive Gazelles.
  • Happy Vampire Christmas!
  • Forum drama on Ravelry that ends up with the web designer no longer being allowed to talk directly to customers.
  • Creative mode for Minecraft except for a bunch of old ladies.
  • If you lose your bird bone just wait for another bird to hit your window.
  • Magazines as extremely slow podcasts.
  • Updating your gender and getting rid of your loser middle name while you're at it.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Weft: for weavers!
  • The Weft Zone.
  • A two and a half foot piano with five notes on it.
  • Are you the width of your arm?
  • Pushing a button to increase your team's number.
  • A white paper about how to not get a divorce when you go to burning man together.
  • Teaching kids all the animal names, even the ones they'll never encounter, like how we used to teach kids all the state capitals even for the states they'll never visit.
  • A bird with polka dot wings that could fly over the sea, and John Legend sings about it.
  • Expecting your child to eventually go through every age.
  • Now that your kid is 40, he can clean the poop from his own balls.
  • The umbilical cord being connected to weird meat inside your body.
  • Kidney bean figures connected by glowing blue lines in the astral plane.
  • Being paid to stay at home and solve puzzles on you computer. (And go to Zoom meetings.)
  • All the non-art things you need to do to get your art out there.
  • The Loom on Loom Island.
  • Exhibiting at Maker Fair and explaining how a loom works 50,000 times.
  • Happy last year's birthday! I made you something and it took me this long to finish it.
  • Getting a fanbase who has a parasocial relationship with you and having to pretend not to be a crotchety asshole.
  • What it takes to run a personal Mastodon instance.
  • Getting a call from the school and they're like "your instance isn't federating with the other instances, we need you to come pick it up."
  • Explaining to a six year old about sexual reproduction, DNA, mutations, and speciation so you can explain where owls come from.
  • Explaining to your baby that talking is when an organ vibrates in your throat that makes the air vibrate, but he doesn't know what air is, he thinks there's an ether.
  • What music you can play with the pentatonic scale.
  • Poko the cockatiel sitting Totoro.
  • The intern at the mobile factory who spent an afternoon downloading a hundred bootleg MIDIs so that the mobile plays.
  • Tooting the bad cone inside the house.
  • The person who would be playing the trumpet in your relationship.
  • Seeing someone knitting incorrectly in a TV show.
  • Patching better jokes into the hat DLC.
  • Using a sequence of transpilers to get your code from point A to point B.
  • People who make game engines wanting your to touch the engine as much as possible.
  • Wanting to declare a global variable and the developers say you can't do that but they point you to the bespoke language feature that does the same thing as global variables but in a much more complicated way.
  • Playing the Frog Fractions text adventure with a gamepad.
  • Funny looking pirates who are secretly advertisements.
  • Kidney beans, swans, and other delicious things.
  • Learning a song from a dye pot that turns things green.
  • A piano guitar that you just press on.
  • Showing your husband the Wikipedia page that proves that you hobby exists and he's like "anybody can edit Wikipedia."
  • Making a sculpture of the Eiffel tower without looking at any references and it ends up just being a letter A with the word "Paris" written nearby.
  • A coked-up knitting machine.
  • Spring has sprung so sprang your sprang.
  • Heddles and treadles and gamps.
  • Some of your best Comfy Fingering, please.
  • Basic Sour.
  • Smelling things in your mouth.
  • Getting tired of sucking your baby's snot through a tube and getting an electric aspirator.
  • Starting up Morrowind and being immediately presented with a guy who has a bad case of Bethesda Face.
  • The thirteen games that have looms in them.
  • The looms in Assassin's Creed being kind of historically accurate because Ubisoft's whole thing is being kind of historically accurate.
  • Subscribing to a service that periodically sends you different swatches of cloth so you can disassemble them and figure out how they're woven.
  • Festive Gazelles.
  • Happy Vampire Christmas!
  • Forum drama on Ravelry that ends up with the web designer no longer being allowed to talk directly to customers.
  • Creative mode for Minecraft except for a bunch of old ladies.
  • If you lose your bird bone just wait for another bird to hit your window.
  • Magazines as extremely slow podcasts.
  • Updating your gender and getting rid of your loser middle name while you're at it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Weft: for weavers!
  • The Weft Zone.
  • A two and a half foot piano with five notes on it.
  • Are you the width of your arm?
  • Pushing a button to increase your team's number.
  • A white paper about how to not get a divorce when you go to burning man together.
  • Teaching kids all the animal names, even the ones they'll never encounter, like how we used to teach kids all the state capitals even for the states they'll never visit.
  • A bird with polka dot wings that could fly over the sea, and John Legend sings about it.
  • Expecting your child to eventually go through every age.
  • Now that your kid is 40, he can clean the poop from his own balls.
  • The umbilical cord being connected to weird meat inside your body.
  • Kidney bean figures connected by glowing blue lines in the astral plane.
  • Being paid to stay at home and solve puzzles on you computer. (And go to Zoom meetings.)
  • All the non-art things you need to do to get your art out there.
  • The Loom on Loom Island.
  • Exhibiting at Maker Fair and explaining how a loom works 50,000 times.
  • Happy last year's birthday! I made you something and it took me this long to finish it.
  • Getting a fanbase who has a parasocial relationship with you and having to pretend not to be a crotchety asshole.
  • What it takes to run a personal Mastodon instance.
  • Getting a call from the school and they're like "your instance isn't federating with the other instances, we need you to come pick it up."
  • Explaining to a six year old about sexual reproduction, DNA, mutations, and speciation so you can explain where owls come from.
  • Explaining to your baby that talking is when an organ vibrates in your throat that makes the air vibrate, but he doesn't know what air is, he thinks there's an ether.
  • What music you can play with the pentatonic scale.
  • Poko the cockatiel sitting Totoro.
  • The intern at the mobile factory who spent an afternoon downloading a hundred bootleg MIDIs so that the mobile plays.
  • Tooting the bad cone inside the house.
  • The person who would be playing the trumpet in your relationship.
  • Seeing someone knitting incorrectly in a TV show.
  • Patching better jokes into the hat DLC.
  • Using a sequence of transpilers to get your code from point A to point B.
  • People who make game engines wanting your to touch the engine as much as possible.
  • Wanting to declare a global variable and the developers say you can't do that but they point you to the bespoke language feature that does the same thing as global variables but in a much more complicated way.
  • Playing the Frog Fractions text adventure with a gamepad.
  • Funny looking pirates who are secretly advertisements.
  • Kidney beans, swans, and other delicious things.
  • Learning a song from a dye pot that turns things green.
  • A piano guitar that you just press on.
  • Showing your husband the Wikipedia page that proves that you hobby exists and he's like "anybody can edit Wikipedia."
  • Making a sculpture of the Eiffel tower without looking at any references and it ends up just being a letter A with the word "Paris" written nearby.
  • A coked-up knitting machine.
  • Spring has sprung so sprang your sprang.
  • Heddles and treadles and gamps.
  • Some of your best Comfy Fingering, please.
  • Basic Sour.
  • Smelling things in your mouth.
  • Getting tired of sucking your baby's snot through a tube and getting an electric aspirator.
  • Starting up Morrowind and being immediately presented with a guy who has a bad case of Bethesda Face.
  • The thirteen games that have looms in them.
  • The looms in Assassin's Creed being kind of historically accurate because Ubisoft's whole thing is being kind of historically accurate.
  • Subscribing to a service that periodically sends you different swatches of cloth so you can disassemble them and figure out how they're woven.
  • Festive Gazelles.
  • Happy Vampire Christmas!
  • Forum drama on Ravelry that ends up with the web designer no longer being allowed to talk directly to customers.
  • Creative mode for Minecraft except for a bunch of old ladies.
  • If you lose your bird bone just wait for another bird to hit your window.
  • Magazines as extremely slow podcasts.
  • Updating your gender and getting rid of your loser middle name while you're at it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+bvsrf2xb ]]> Jim Stormdancer 287. Drive It Like You Hate It https://topiclords.com/drive-it-like-you-hate-it f8b9b522-5f29-450a-80f7-3baa72155c66 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and Andrew. We discuss Super Nintendo World's theming, the ABCs of Style - A Guide to Plain English, renting game consoles, Matsuo Bashô: Frog Haiku, and pixel art impressionism. 1:03:32 true Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The games you should've bought when the Steam Spring Sale was still going.
  • Citizen Sleeper 2.
  • Being excited about a new project until you landlord tells you to move out.
  • Real-life POW blocks.
  • Timing your punch so that the shell pops out.
  • The park employees doing their best to ameliorate the bad game design of the theme park.
  • Rushing to hit the snooze button so the piranha plant doesn't wake up.
  • A plant that's not quite as big as Audrey II.
  • Buying the wrist band so that you can punch blocks to get coins and find all the KONG letters.
  • Using your shadow to interact with a video game.
  • Running from the park entrance to your favorite ride right when the park opens and there's already a two hour line.
  • A picture that you took with your camera and somehow they made reality look cel shaded.
  • Super Mushroom Croutons.
  • Clipping the AR goggles into the Mario hat.
  • No matter where you look, stuff is happening all the time.
  • Whether kids in Japan handle failure better than kids in California.
  • A phone booth, except it exists.
  • A book about pedantry.
  • When to use difference vs. discrepancy.
  • Reading text aloud but internalizing it not at all.
  • The model of the mind where you are a passive observer sitting in the backseat thinking about pancakes while the driver is doing all the thinking and acting.
  • Whether the person who struggles to read gets more out of the text than the person who reads effortlessly, because they're spending more time on it
  • Two full pages about "like."
  • Faces similar to faces you've never seen before.
  • Drive it like you hate it vs. drive it as if you hate it.
  • Utilizing a big word.
  • Phrasing something in an awkward way for entertainment purposes.
  • One of the more expensive things you can rent.
  • Being able to afford all the games that you want. (Not that many game consoles.)
  • Naughty Dog remaking The Last of Us for the third time.
  • Sending an assassin to the Second to Last Blockbuster.
  • Not knowing how a certain business works because you refuse to give them your social security number.
  • Digitally renting a PS5. (It has fingers.)
  • Putting stickers on your toilet claiming that it's an Xbox.
  • Building a Mario Kart course into your house.
  • Sharing your cool social security number.
  • Pronouncing Japanese like someone who is covered in tattoos of Pokemon.
  • Frog-jump-in Water-sound.
  • Pond. Frog. Plop.
  • Localizing a Japanese poem into sculpture.
  • What is art? What is anything?
  • Looking at a pixel art face and thinking "whoa, what's going on with that guy?"
  • Pixel art being able to represent detail at a certain scale, but only if it aligns with the directionality of the grid.
  • Trying to represent a cartoon world realistically.
  • Walking into a dungeon and being surrounded by statues that look like sentries.
  • Recognizing a blob of pixels as representing the idea of a decoration and never thinking about it again.
  • Fan art of Dr. Robotnik's niece.
  • High color, high detail, low resolution.
  • Weird rendering techniques that are texture mapping adjacent.
  • Line Cook.
  • A blue lid that feels sort of mayo.
  • Only realizing late in life that three lines makes a ladder.
  • The main places that you don't post.
]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The games you should've bought when the Steam Spring Sale was still going.
  • Citizen Sleeper 2.
  • Being excited about a new project until you landlord tells you to move out.
  • Real-life POW blocks.
  • Timing your punch so that the shell pops out.
  • The park employees doing their best to ameliorate the bad game design of the theme park.
  • Rushing to hit the snooze button so the piranha plant doesn't wake up.
  • A plant that's not quite as big as Audrey II.
  • Buying the wrist band so that you can punch blocks to get coins and find all the KONG letters.
  • Using your shadow to interact with a video game.
  • Running from the park entrance to your favorite ride right when the park opens and there's already a two hour line.
  • A picture that you took with your camera and somehow they made reality look cel shaded.
  • Super Mushroom Croutons.
  • Clipping the AR goggles into the Mario hat.
  • No matter where you look, stuff is happening all the time.
  • Whether kids in Japan handle failure better than kids in California.
  • A phone booth, except it exists.
  • A book about pedantry.
  • When to use difference vs. discrepancy.
  • Reading text aloud but internalizing it not at all.
  • The model of the mind where you are a passive observer sitting in the backseat thinking about pancakes while the driver is doing all the thinking and acting.
  • Whether the person who struggles to read gets more out of the text than the person who reads effortlessly, because they're spending more time on it
  • Two full pages about "like."
  • Faces similar to faces you've never seen before.
  • Drive it like you hate it vs. drive it as if you hate it.
  • Utilizing a big word.
  • Phrasing something in an awkward way for entertainment purposes.
  • One of the more expensive things you can rent.
  • Being able to afford all the games that you want. (Not that many game consoles.)
  • Naughty Dog remaking The Last of Us for the third time.
  • Sending an assassin to the Second to Last Blockbuster.
  • Not knowing how a certain business works because you refuse to give them your social security number.
  • Digitally renting a PS5. (It has fingers.)
  • Putting stickers on your toilet claiming that it's an Xbox.
  • Building a Mario Kart course into your house.
  • Sharing your cool social security number.
  • Pronouncing Japanese like someone who is covered in tattoos of Pokemon.
  • Frog-jump-in Water-sound.
  • Pond. Frog. Plop.
  • Localizing a Japanese poem into sculpture.
  • What is art? What is anything?
  • Looking at a pixel art face and thinking "whoa, what's going on with that guy?"
  • Pixel art being able to represent detail at a certain scale, but only if it aligns with the directionality of the grid.
  • Trying to represent a cartoon world realistically.
  • Walking into a dungeon and being surrounded by statues that look like sentries.
  • Recognizing a blob of pixels as representing the idea of a decoration and never thinking about it again.
  • Fan art of Dr. Robotnik's niece.
  • High color, high detail, low resolution.
  • Weird rendering techniques that are texture mapping adjacent.
  • Line Cook.
  • A blue lid that feels sort of mayo.
  • Only realizing late in life that three lines makes a ladder.
  • The main places that you don't post.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The games you should've bought when the Steam Spring Sale was still going.
  • Citizen Sleeper 2.
  • Being excited about a new project until you landlord tells you to move out.
  • Real-life POW blocks.
  • Timing your punch so that the shell pops out.
  • The park employees doing their best to ameliorate the bad game design of the theme park.
  • Rushing to hit the snooze button so the piranha plant doesn't wake up.
  • A plant that's not quite as big as Audrey II.
  • Buying the wrist band so that you can punch blocks to get coins and find all the KONG letters.
  • Using your shadow to interact with a video game.
  • Running from the park entrance to your favorite ride right when the park opens and there's already a two hour line.
  • A picture that you took with your camera and somehow they made reality look cel shaded.
  • Super Mushroom Croutons.
  • Clipping the AR goggles into the Mario hat.
  • No matter where you look, stuff is happening all the time.
  • Whether kids in Japan handle failure better than kids in California.
  • A phone booth, except it exists.
  • A book about pedantry.
  • When to use difference vs. discrepancy.
  • Reading text aloud but internalizing it not at all.
  • The model of the mind where you are a passive observer sitting in the backseat thinking about pancakes while the driver is doing all the thinking and acting.
  • Whether the person who struggles to read gets more out of the text than the person who reads effortlessly, because they're spending more time on it
  • Two full pages about "like."
  • Faces similar to faces you've never seen before.
  • Drive it like you hate it vs. drive it as if you hate it.
  • Utilizing a big word.
  • Phrasing something in an awkward way for entertainment purposes.
  • One of the more expensive things you can rent.
  • Being able to afford all the games that you want. (Not that many game consoles.)
  • Naughty Dog remaking The Last of Us for the third time.
  • Sending an assassin to the Second to Last Blockbuster.
  • Not knowing how a certain business works because you refuse to give them your social security number.
  • Digitally renting a PS5. (It has fingers.)
  • Putting stickers on your toilet claiming that it's an Xbox.
  • Building a Mario Kart course into your house.
  • Sharing your cool social security number.
  • Pronouncing Japanese like someone who is covered in tattoos of Pokemon.
  • Frog-jump-in Water-sound.
  • Pond. Frog. Plop.
  • Localizing a Japanese poem into sculpture.
  • What is art? What is anything?
  • Looking at a pixel art face and thinking "whoa, what's going on with that guy?"
  • Pixel art being able to represent detail at a certain scale, but only if it aligns with the directionality of the grid.
  • Trying to represent a cartoon world realistically.
  • Walking into a dungeon and being surrounded by statues that look like sentries.
  • Recognizing a blob of pixels as representing the idea of a decoration and never thinking about it again.
  • Fan art of Dr. Robotnik's niece.
  • High color, high detail, low resolution.
  • Weird rendering techniques that are texture mapping adjacent.
  • Line Cook.
  • A blue lid that feels sort of mayo.
  • Only realizing late in life that three lines makes a ladder.
  • The main places that you don't post.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+oFra8Cuh ]]> Jim Stormdancer 286. A Kangaroo the Size of Two Kangaroos https://topiclords.com/a-kangaroo-the-size-of-two-kangaroos 9b78005c-f222-41db-ae62-a6517bf83e67 Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Tyriq. We discuss not knowing whether having twins is harder than having one kid, the pros and cons of living on a supercontinent, the X-Files episode when Scully scanned an alien artifact in a grocery store's bar code reader, When I Am Among The Trees by Mary Oliver, and Dippin' Dots except each dot is a tiny burger 1:02:31 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Pouring a glass of water and leaving it for your future self to discover later.
  • What Jim used his mailing list for before Mail Chimp shut in down.
  • Discussion things. (Not topics.)
  • Trying to do a bit and the person you're doing s bit to does a bit back and now you're doing two bits.
  • Raising a couple of outliers.
  • Children who have learned how to run but have not yet learned not to run into the street.
  • You're already making dinner for one twin, why not feed the other one too?
  • Raising a child with your tired adult body.
  • Is it bad for twins to always be together?
  • A/B testing your twins.
  • Getting Minecraft pajamas for the kid who keep talking about Minecraft.
  • It's like Legos but there are monsters.
  • Running Doom in Minecraft redstone at four hours per frame.
  • The continents being spread out like s badly peeled orange.
  • Flying around in the Aluminium Falcon.
  • Pangaea vs. Panthalassa.
  • A small bird that digs into your bag and eats your food and it's not afraid of you because it has no predators.
  • Wooly Rhinoceroses, Land Sharks, and
  • A little guy in a world that's too big for him.
  • Playing Counterstrike and always picking the map where you are a mouse in a gigantic kitchen and all your friends hate it
  • The katamari getting bigger but the prince stays the same size.
  • Finishing your book about mice knights before you realize you're writing a children's series.
  • The breadth of fiction about sapient rodents.
  • Inner-Continental Gigantism.
  • Finding a reason to offscreen your lead actress.
  • Why Scully uses a different text editor to write her reports in every episode.
  • What does Scully do with the dog she adopted?
  • What happened to alien abductions?
  • A very powerful spice and making an entire meal out of just the spice.
  • The Lone Gunmen. (Cancelled after half a season.)
  • Watching unaired Lone Gunmen pilot for Casey's Star Trek podcast
  • Short subject lords.
  • Equally the beach, the oaks and the pines.
  • To go easy, to be filled with light.
  • How much five dollar words cost now, adjusted for inflation.
  • Becoming a nature person over time.
  • Whether dollars existed in the 1580s.
  • Measuring the value of a word by multiplying chips by mult.
  • Hoping to one day look back on your experiences playing Balatro.
  • A thousand burgers each the size of a grain of quinoa.
  • Whether it's possible to make hamburger buns smaller.
  • They're just tiny burgers, so why don't you call them that?
  • Maximizing your burger's surface area because you taste the surface, not the middle.
  • You can't taste the middle of a burger!
  • A plate full of Dippin' Dots burgers.
  • Eating rice, but each grain takes like a burger.
  • A bed of the finest chopped onions.
  • Making a rectangle of steamed hamburger and chopping them up in a grid.
  • Extruding tiny finished hamburgers out of the pasta machine.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • The Garages' final final album.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Pouring a glass of water and leaving it for your future self to discover later.
  • What Jim used his mailing list for before Mail Chimp shut in down.
  • Discussion things. (Not topics.)
  • Trying to do a bit and the person you're doing s bit to does a bit back and now you're doing two bits.
  • Raising a couple of outliers.
  • Children who have learned how to run but have not yet learned not to run into the street.
  • You're already making dinner for one twin, why not feed the other one too?
  • Raising a child with your tired adult body.
  • Is it bad for twins to always be together?
  • A/B testing your twins.
  • Getting Minecraft pajamas for the kid who keep talking about Minecraft.
  • It's like Legos but there are monsters.
  • Running Doom in Minecraft redstone at four hours per frame.
  • The continents being spread out like s badly peeled orange.
  • Flying around in the Aluminium Falcon.
  • Pangaea vs. Panthalassa.
  • A small bird that digs into your bag and eats your food and it's not afraid of you because it has no predators.
  • Wooly Rhinoceroses, Land Sharks, and
  • A little guy in a world that's too big for him.
  • Playing Counterstrike and always picking the map where you are a mouse in a gigantic kitchen and all your friends hate it
  • The katamari getting bigger but the prince stays the same size.
  • Finishing your book about mice knights before you realize you're writing a children's series.
  • The breadth of fiction about sapient rodents.
  • Inner-Continental Gigantism.
  • Finding a reason to offscreen your lead actress.
  • Why Scully uses a different text editor to write her reports in every episode.
  • What does Scully do with the dog she adopted?
  • What happened to alien abductions?
  • A very powerful spice and making an entire meal out of just the spice.
  • The Lone Gunmen. (Cancelled after half a season.)
  • Watching unaired Lone Gunmen pilot for Casey's Star Trek podcast
  • Short subject lords.
  • Equally the beach, the oaks and the pines.
  • To go easy, to be filled with light.
  • How much five dollar words cost now, adjusted for inflation.
  • Becoming a nature person over time.
  • Whether dollars existed in the 1580s.
  • Measuring the value of a word by multiplying chips by mult.
  • Hoping to one day look back on your experiences playing Balatro.
  • A thousand burgers each the size of a grain of quinoa.
  • Whether it's possible to make hamburger buns smaller.
  • They're just tiny burgers, so why don't you call them that?
  • Maximizing your burger's surface area because you taste the surface, not the middle.
  • You can't taste the middle of a burger!
  • A plate full of Dippin' Dots burgers.
  • Eating rice, but each grain takes like a burger.
  • A bed of the finest chopped onions.
  • Making a rectangle of steamed hamburger and chopping them up in a grid.
  • Extruding tiny finished hamburgers out of the pasta machine.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • The Garages' final final album.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Pouring a glass of water and leaving it for your future self to discover later.
  • What Jim used his mailing list for before Mail Chimp shut in down.
  • Discussion things. (Not topics.)
  • Trying to do a bit and the person you're doing s bit to does a bit back and now you're doing two bits.
  • Raising a couple of outliers.
  • Children who have learned how to run but have not yet learned not to run into the street.
  • You're already making dinner for one twin, why not feed the other one too?
  • Raising a child with your tired adult body.
  • Is it bad for twins to always be together?
  • A/B testing your twins.
  • Getting Minecraft pajamas for the kid who keep talking about Minecraft.
  • It's like Legos but there are monsters.
  • Running Doom in Minecraft redstone at four hours per frame.
  • The continents being spread out like s badly peeled orange.
  • Flying around in the Aluminium Falcon.
  • Pangaea vs. Panthalassa.
  • A small bird that digs into your bag and eats your food and it's not afraid of you because it has no predators.
  • Wooly Rhinoceroses, Land Sharks, and
  • A little guy in a world that's too big for him.
  • Playing Counterstrike and always picking the map where you are a mouse in a gigantic kitchen and all your friends hate it
  • The katamari getting bigger but the prince stays the same size.
  • Finishing your book about mice knights before you realize you're writing a children's series.
  • The breadth of fiction about sapient rodents.
  • Inner-Continental Gigantism.
  • Finding a reason to offscreen your lead actress.
  • Why Scully uses a different text editor to write her reports in every episode.
  • What does Scully do with the dog she adopted?
  • What happened to alien abductions?
  • A very powerful spice and making an entire meal out of just the spice.
  • The Lone Gunmen. (Cancelled after half a season.)
  • Watching unaired Lone Gunmen pilot for Casey's Star Trek podcast
  • Short subject lords.
  • Equally the beach, the oaks and the pines.
  • To go easy, to be filled with light.
  • How much five dollar words cost now, adjusted for inflation.
  • Becoming a nature person over time.
  • Whether dollars existed in the 1580s.
  • Measuring the value of a word by multiplying chips by mult.
  • Hoping to one day look back on your experiences playing Balatro.
  • A thousand burgers each the size of a grain of quinoa.
  • Whether it's possible to make hamburger buns smaller.
  • They're just tiny burgers, so why don't you call them that?
  • Maximizing your burger's surface area because you taste the surface, not the middle.
  • You can't taste the middle of a burger!
  • A plate full of Dippin' Dots burgers.
  • Eating rice, but each grain takes like a burger.
  • A bed of the finest chopped onions.
  • Making a rectangle of steamed hamburger and chopping them up in a grid.
  • Extruding tiny finished hamburgers out of the pasta machine.
  • Odd Object dot Zone.
  • The Garages' final final album.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+1Yy-Z34l ]]> Jim Stormdancer 285. Poop Songs for Roy https://topiclords.com/poop-songs-for-roy 46fcd343-8a1d-414e-bcf8-b0a341295cec Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Jenni. We discuss the chaos you missed, having a baby as a set of hobbies you are expected to engage in full-time, whether people live longer in Greece and Japan or whether they just have more pension fraud, Too Many Women Become Desperate, and whether your kid will find out about Cocomelon even if you never tell them 1:07:21 true Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

  • The chaos you missed
  • Having a baby is like being assigned a set of hobbies you don't necessarily care about but are expected to engage in full-time
  • Do people actually live longer in Greece and Japan or do they just have more pension fraud?
  • Too Many Women Become Desperate, by Infinite Sexy Marriage
  • Is it possible to never show your kid Cocomelon and they never demand to be shown Cocomelon or are they gonna find out about it through osmosis

Microtopics:

  • Beneficial nematodes: are they really that good?
  • How to pronounce "iykyk."
  • Singing "beneficial nematodes" to the tune of Hall of the Mountain King.
  • Going extreme on the melismas.
  • The Saying Hi Chamber.
  • Shazam chastising you for singing.
  • 100 MIDIs that some Chinese intern threw together in a couple of hours and now every baby is going to grow up with these tunes in their heads.
  • Inventing a new way to live that's worse in every respect.
  • Having dinner with a friend while grandma puts the kid to bed.
  • A baby getting upset because he isn't staring at geometric shapes right now.
  • Making sure the baby makes all the right neural connections and not the wrong ones.
  • A video of a guy walking down every street in Vice City.
  • Twenty minutes of people icing cakes. Not the really fancy cakes, just regular-ass cakes.
  • Clutching at your face as the cake icer puts red next to brown.
  • Caking Bad.
  • A coup amongst the Smithsonian National Zoo's naked mole rats.
  • Stabbing your mom with your teeth so that you can breed.
  • A horrible skin creature with prehensile chopsticks.
  • Eusocial mammals.
  • Growing extra vertebrae every time you give birth.
  • A Topic Lords field trip to the naked mole rat colony to meet the new queen.
  • Intervertebral red shift.
  • EBF, EFF and EP.
  • Wake windows and contact naps.
  • Holding them like a football and making a sandwich and putting the sandwich in the football, and now you're breastfeeding!
  • Whether it's ethical to leave your baby at the Burger King or if you need to go fast casual.
  • The poop potato who has opinions.
  • You gotta draw the line somewhere, and it's sweeping the floor.
  • All the things you're not supposed to put in the crib with the baby.
  • Replacing your baby with a gerbil because you're not allowed to kiss your baby on the forehead in case you have a cold sore.
  • How to tell if a gerbil has been replaced with a similar gerbil.
  • Paying $7/month for the NYT crossword but not getting access to the articles so you click on the crossword constructors' notes but you're already at your three free article limit.
  • Anthrocyanins.
  • Cynical Jim says yes, Regular Jim says maybe.
  • The most domesticated mammal: man.
  • Small Japanese women having the longest lifespans because they hide in your crawlspace and death cannot find them.
  • Old ladies? In my duct work?
  • Hoping there are no old ladies living in your duct work because you haven't cleaned in s while and there are probably mold spores in there
  • Poop Songs for Roy.
  • Thinking of the shrieking old lady as a sonic shower for you duct work.
  • The future-episodes channel, where we discuss episodes that may one day exist.
  • Remember that time when you retweeted a thing and it turned into a picture of a fish.
  • The ransom note on top of peach tarts aesthetic.
  • Welcome to lesbianism. Here is your greeting card with peaches.
  • Whether reverse image search is bad now or if it was always bad.
  • The Poem is Entertaining.
  • Speculative fiction about soviets invading.
  • The kind of poem you'd read in feminist bookstores in the early 00s.
  • Children's YouTube channels full about new wave songs about trucks.
  • Showing your child only OG Sesame Street episodes so they can't relate to adults or children their own age and are technically Xennials.
  • Xennial Warrior Princess.
  • Everything's more true when you're wearing pants.
  • The 25th place you can post pictures of your baby.
  • The legend of Shrimptaur.
  • Hide in the discord and never post.
  • Finally writing the tweet that's going to make John Hodgman unfollow you
]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

  • The chaos you missed
  • Having a baby is like being assigned a set of hobbies you don't necessarily care about but are expected to engage in full-time
  • Do people actually live longer in Greece and Japan or do they just have more pension fraud?
  • Too Many Women Become Desperate, by Infinite Sexy Marriage
  • Is it possible to never show your kid Cocomelon and they never demand to be shown Cocomelon or are they gonna find out about it through osmosis

Microtopics:

  • Beneficial nematodes: are they really that good?
  • How to pronounce "iykyk."
  • Singing "beneficial nematodes" to the tune of Hall of the Mountain King.
  • Going extreme on the melismas.
  • The Saying Hi Chamber.
  • Shazam chastising you for singing.
  • 100 MIDIs that some Chinese intern threw together in a couple of hours and now every baby is going to grow up with these tunes in their heads.
  • Inventing a new way to live that's worse in every respect.
  • Having dinner with a friend while grandma puts the kid to bed.
  • A baby getting upset because he isn't staring at geometric shapes right now.
  • Making sure the baby makes all the right neural connections and not the wrong ones.
  • A video of a guy walking down every street in Vice City.
  • Twenty minutes of people icing cakes. Not the really fancy cakes, just regular-ass cakes.
  • Clutching at your face as the cake icer puts red next to brown.
  • Caking Bad.
  • A coup amongst the Smithsonian National Zoo's naked mole rats.
  • Stabbing your mom with your teeth so that you can breed.
  • A horrible skin creature with prehensile chopsticks.
  • Eusocial mammals.
  • Growing extra vertebrae every time you give birth.
  • A Topic Lords field trip to the naked mole rat colony to meet the new queen.
  • Intervertebral red shift.
  • EBF, EFF and EP.
  • Wake windows and contact naps.
  • Holding them like a football and making a sandwich and putting the sandwich in the football, and now you're breastfeeding!
  • Whether it's ethical to leave your baby at the Burger King or if you need to go fast casual.
  • The poop potato who has opinions.
  • You gotta draw the line somewhere, and it's sweeping the floor.
  • All the things you're not supposed to put in the crib with the baby.
  • Replacing your baby with a gerbil because you're not allowed to kiss your baby on the forehead in case you have a cold sore.
  • How to tell if a gerbil has been replaced with a similar gerbil.
  • Paying $7/month for the NYT crossword but not getting access to the articles so you click on the crossword constructors' notes but you're already at your three free article limit.
  • Anthrocyanins.
  • Cynical Jim says yes, Regular Jim says maybe.
  • The most domesticated mammal: man.
  • Small Japanese women having the longest lifespans because they hide in your crawlspace and death cannot find them.
  • Old ladies? In my duct work?
  • Hoping there are no old ladies living in your duct work because you haven't cleaned in s while and there are probably mold spores in there
  • Poop Songs for Roy.
  • Thinking of the shrieking old lady as a sonic shower for you duct work.
  • The future-episodes channel, where we discuss episodes that may one day exist.
  • Remember that time when you retweeted a thing and it turned into a picture of a fish.
  • The ransom note on top of peach tarts aesthetic.
  • Welcome to lesbianism. Here is your greeting card with peaches.
  • Whether reverse image search is bad now or if it was always bad.
  • The Poem is Entertaining.
  • Speculative fiction about soviets invading.
  • The kind of poem you'd read in feminist bookstores in the early 00s.
  • Children's YouTube channels full about new wave songs about trucks.
  • Showing your child only OG Sesame Street episodes so they can't relate to adults or children their own age and are technically Xennials.
  • Xennial Warrior Princess.
  • Everything's more true when you're wearing pants.
  • The 25th place you can post pictures of your baby.
  • The legend of Shrimptaur.
  • Hide in the discord and never post.
  • Finally writing the tweet that's going to make John Hodgman unfollow you

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

  • The chaos you missed
  • Having a baby is like being assigned a set of hobbies you don't necessarily care about but are expected to engage in full-time
  • Do people actually live longer in Greece and Japan or do they just have more pension fraud?
  • Too Many Women Become Desperate, by Infinite Sexy Marriage
  • Is it possible to never show your kid Cocomelon and they never demand to be shown Cocomelon or are they gonna find out about it through osmosis

Microtopics:

  • Beneficial nematodes: are they really that good?
  • How to pronounce "iykyk."
  • Singing "beneficial nematodes" to the tune of Hall of the Mountain King.
  • Going extreme on the melismas.
  • The Saying Hi Chamber.
  • Shazam chastising you for singing.
  • 100 MIDIs that some Chinese intern threw together in a couple of hours and now every baby is going to grow up with these tunes in their heads.
  • Inventing a new way to live that's worse in every respect.
  • Having dinner with a friend while grandma puts the kid to bed.
  • A baby getting upset because he isn't staring at geometric shapes right now.
  • Making sure the baby makes all the right neural connections and not the wrong ones.
  • A video of a guy walking down every street in Vice City.
  • Twenty minutes of people icing cakes. Not the really fancy cakes, just regular-ass cakes.
  • Clutching at your face as the cake icer puts red next to brown.
  • Caking Bad.
  • A coup amongst the Smithsonian National Zoo's naked mole rats.
  • Stabbing your mom with your teeth so that you can breed.
  • A horrible skin creature with prehensile chopsticks.
  • Eusocial mammals.
  • Growing extra vertebrae every time you give birth.
  • A Topic Lords field trip to the naked mole rat colony to meet the new queen.
  • Intervertebral red shift.
  • EBF, EFF and EP.
  • Wake windows and contact naps.
  • Holding them like a football and making a sandwich and putting the sandwich in the football, and now you're breastfeeding!
  • Whether it's ethical to leave your baby at the Burger King or if you need to go fast casual.
  • The poop potato who has opinions.
  • You gotta draw the line somewhere, and it's sweeping the floor.
  • All the things you're not supposed to put in the crib with the baby.
  • Replacing your baby with a gerbil because you're not allowed to kiss your baby on the forehead in case you have a cold sore.
  • How to tell if a gerbil has been replaced with a similar gerbil.
  • Paying $7/month for the NYT crossword but not getting access to the articles so you click on the crossword constructors' notes but you're already at your three free article limit.
  • Anthrocyanins.
  • Cynical Jim says yes, Regular Jim says maybe.
  • The most domesticated mammal: man.
  • Small Japanese women having the longest lifespans because they hide in your crawlspace and death cannot find them.
  • Old ladies? In my duct work?
  • Hoping there are no old ladies living in your duct work because you haven't cleaned in s while and there are probably mold spores in there
  • Poop Songs for Roy.
  • Thinking of the shrieking old lady as a sonic shower for you duct work.
  • The future-episodes channel, where we discuss episodes that may one day exist.
  • Remember that time when you retweeted a thing and it turned into a picture of a fish.
  • The ransom note on top of peach tarts aesthetic.
  • Welcome to lesbianism. Here is your greeting card with peaches.
  • Whether reverse image search is bad now or if it was always bad.
  • The Poem is Entertaining.
  • Speculative fiction about soviets invading.
  • The kind of poem you'd read in feminist bookstores in the early 00s.
  • Children's YouTube channels full about new wave songs about trucks.
  • Showing your child only OG Sesame Street episodes so they can't relate to adults or children their own age and are technically Xennials.
  • Xennial Warrior Princess.
  • Everything's more true when you're wearing pants.
  • The 25th place you can post pictures of your baby.
  • The legend of Shrimptaur.
  • Hide in the discord and never post.
  • Finally writing the tweet that's going to make John Hodgman unfollow you

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+5OQTkyLE ]]> Jim Stormdancer 284. Spotting a Wild Misogyny https://topiclords.com/spotting-a-wild-misogyny b92e7f9b-b899-45ec-959d-08c0f0c59f4a Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mitch and Nathan. We discuss Ursula LeGuin, Ryu Numbers and Tom Scott Numbers, how to get out of a chair, Have you seen the new show? by Orcboxer, and OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist 1:17:54 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mitch from jan Misali.
  • The episode where we have beef.
  • The milk frother attachment to the chain staff.
  • The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother.
  • Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time.
  • The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
  • The Clock Before Armageddon.
  • Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords.
  • Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author.
  • What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price?
  • Dreams of gutting the collectors market.
  • Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price.
  • A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it.
  • Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game.
  • Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit.
  • What counts as a Bacon Connection.
  • A character who has been in a lot of crossover games.
  • The de facto authority on Ryu numbers.
  • Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions.
  • Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World.
  • The British buy who wears a red shirt.
  • The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers.
  • Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game.
  • White men who have had a long Youtube career.
  • Whether Ryu has a surname.
  • Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number.
  • Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music.
  • The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play.
  • Why do people love squats?
  • Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed.
  • Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise.
  • Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly.
  • Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair.
  • The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag.
  • Watching the X-Files with your wife.
  • Aged Like Me.
  • Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking.
  • A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat.
  • Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes.
  • How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down.
  • A.C. Slatering.
  • Why isn't Jim an industrial designer?
  • Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume.
  • Poob has it for you.
  • Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you.
  • The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!"
  • Tumblr eras.
  • The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything.
  • The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
  • The Tumblr Funnymen.
  • The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr.
  • Someone who looks like they've been deactivated.
  • The miracle of Tumblr still being online.
  • The Poster's Curse.
  • Bucket, where are you?
  • A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for.
  • Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create.
  • Beatboxing puppy!
  • A contextless segue into a musical number.
  • An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie.
  • A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it.
  • Legally distinct Marios rapping.
  • Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law.
  • The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about.
  • It's cool when people make art.
  • Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other.
  • A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers.
  • Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be.
  • Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mitch from jan Misali.
  • The episode where we have beef.
  • The milk frother attachment to the chain staff.
  • The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother.
  • Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time.
  • The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
  • The Clock Before Armageddon.
  • Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords.
  • Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author.
  • What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price?
  • Dreams of gutting the collectors market.
  • Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price.
  • A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it.
  • Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game.
  • Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit.
  • What counts as a Bacon Connection.
  • A character who has been in a lot of crossover games.
  • The de facto authority on Ryu numbers.
  • Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions.
  • Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World.
  • The British buy who wears a red shirt.
  • The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers.
  • Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game.
  • White men who have had a long Youtube career.
  • Whether Ryu has a surname.
  • Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number.
  • Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music.
  • The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play.
  • Why do people love squats?
  • Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed.
  • Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise.
  • Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly.
  • Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair.
  • The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag.
  • Watching the X-Files with your wife.
  • Aged Like Me.
  • Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking.
  • A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat.
  • Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes.
  • How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down.
  • A.C. Slatering.
  • Why isn't Jim an industrial designer?
  • Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume.
  • Poob has it for you.
  • Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you.
  • The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!"
  • Tumblr eras.
  • The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything.
  • The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
  • The Tumblr Funnymen.
  • The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr.
  • Someone who looks like they've been deactivated.
  • The miracle of Tumblr still being online.
  • The Poster's Curse.
  • Bucket, where are you?
  • A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for.
  • Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create.
  • Beatboxing puppy!
  • A contextless segue into a musical number.
  • An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie.
  • A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it.
  • Legally distinct Marios rapping.
  • Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law.
  • The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about.
  • It's cool when people make art.
  • Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other.
  • A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers.
  • Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be.
  • Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mitch from jan Misali.
  • The episode where we have beef.
  • The milk frother attachment to the chain staff.
  • The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother.
  • Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time.
  • The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
  • The Clock Before Armageddon.
  • Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords.
  • Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author.
  • What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price?
  • Dreams of gutting the collectors market.
  • Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price.
  • A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it.
  • Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game.
  • Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit.
  • What counts as a Bacon Connection.
  • A character who has been in a lot of crossover games.
  • The de facto authority on Ryu numbers.
  • Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions.
  • Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World.
  • The British buy who wears a red shirt.
  • The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers.
  • Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game.
  • White men who have had a long Youtube career.
  • Whether Ryu has a surname.
  • Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number.
  • Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music.
  • The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play.
  • Why do people love squats?
  • Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed.
  • Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise.
  • Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly.
  • Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair.
  • The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag.
  • Watching the X-Files with your wife.
  • Aged Like Me.
  • Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking.
  • A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat.
  • Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes.
  • How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down.
  • A.C. Slatering.
  • Why isn't Jim an industrial designer?
  • Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume.
  • Poob has it for you.
  • Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you.
  • The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!"
  • Tumblr eras.
  • The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything.
  • The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
  • The Tumblr Funnymen.
  • The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr.
  • Someone who looks like they've been deactivated.
  • The miracle of Tumblr still being online.
  • The Poster's Curse.
  • Bucket, where are you?
  • A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for.
  • Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create.
  • Beatboxing puppy!
  • A contextless segue into a musical number.
  • An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie.
  • A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it.
  • Legally distinct Marios rapping.
  • Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law.
  • The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about.
  • It's cool when people make art.
  • Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other.
  • A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers.
  • Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be.
  • Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+hPwiXrDC ]]> Jim Stormdancer 283. Dracula's Big Happy Polycule https://topiclords.com/draculas-big-happy-polycule ec2a5ac6-1666-48f3-b6d1-ee6137333f26 Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Dan and Daniel. We discuss whether Dracula could escape Groundhog Day, how to know if you're in a golden era, Indiana Jones is supposed to look good?? and Where the Heart Is by F.S. Yousaf 1:04:35 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Deciding to get a teleprompter on episode 283.
  • The Molly James Band.
  • Mid-century lounge music.
  • Describing yourself as a cross between Pink Floyd and Doja Cat.
  • Shooting a music video the day after the election.
  • The sun and the battery life racing each other to ruin your forest concert first.
  • What does Dracula get up to? Does he have hobbies?
  • A lawyer hired to buy Dracula a new house
  • Scrubbing all the proper nouns out of your fan fiction.
  • Dracula as smoldering sex bomb vs. Dracula as a weird old man.
  • Figuring out how to not cancel Dracula.
  • A D&D campaign where you need to recruit a therapist into the party as part of your goal is to convince Dracula to become a better person.
  • Dracula being verbally abused by all his wives.
  • Batman playing Flappy Bird while he waits behind the curtain to ambush the villain.
  • Extremely high powered Nerf rifles.
  • Joining a community and ascertaining what they need.
  • Living through a golden age and not realizing until later.
  • Feeling grateful for the good things you once had.
  • Being reluctant to push your awesome community because you're afraid it's going to grow too large.
  • Figuring out how to 3D print blasters.
  • Mentoring under Captain Slug.
  • Realizing that your hobby is suddenly your primary source of income.
  • How to be part of a burgeoning music scene.
  • The cool kid at GDC.
  • Ways Jim could've made Glittermitten Grove more accessible without losing the interesting game design.
  • Getting email from a parent saying that their kid wants to become a mechanical engineer because of you Nerf blaster design.
  • A video game that is the third best Indiana Jones film.
  • Who is this technology helping, and how to we stop listening to their opinions?
  • Playstation Four and a Half.
  • A game with a lot of whirling debris.
  • Finding new ways to make more expensive every day.
  • How you'd put a loot box in a Pico-8 game.
  • The mental health community arguing about when it's okay to sleep with your therapist.
  • A/B tasting topics to see which ones get more downloads.
  • Staying up late enough to get hungry.
  • What kind of salad you'd put Doritos in.
  • What kind of salad you'd put a Clif bar in.
  • Clif bars: fall off of us!
  • Disappointing dolmas.
  • Your everyday carry web browser.
  • The difference between Chrome and Chromium.
  • Why doesn't everyone just compile their own Firefox?
  • Bawling at the typewriter about not having the thing you're writing a poem about.
  • Deciding your book of love poetry to your therapist.
  • Saving your fan mail to be read at your funeral.
  • Archaeologists tooting Interesting exchanges written in cuneiform.
  • Future archaeologists training AI to peruse the entire corpus of tweets to find the choicest memes.
  • The time to look for an out.
  • Serenading the audience with the address they can mail cash to.
  • Where all the best Lords hang out.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Deciding to get a teleprompter on episode 283.
  • The Molly James Band.
  • Mid-century lounge music.
  • Describing yourself as a cross between Pink Floyd and Doja Cat.
  • Shooting a music video the day after the election.
  • The sun and the battery life racing each other to ruin your forest concert first.
  • What does Dracula get up to? Does he have hobbies?
  • A lawyer hired to buy Dracula a new house
  • Scrubbing all the proper nouns out of your fan fiction.
  • Dracula as smoldering sex bomb vs. Dracula as a weird old man.
  • Figuring out how to not cancel Dracula.
  • A D&D campaign where you need to recruit a therapist into the party as part of your goal is to convince Dracula to become a better person.
  • Dracula being verbally abused by all his wives.
  • Batman playing Flappy Bird while he waits behind the curtain to ambush the villain.
  • Extremely high powered Nerf rifles.
  • Joining a community and ascertaining what they need.
  • Living through a golden age and not realizing until later.
  • Feeling grateful for the good things you once had.
  • Being reluctant to push your awesome community because you're afraid it's going to grow too large.
  • Figuring out how to 3D print blasters.
  • Mentoring under Captain Slug.
  • Realizing that your hobby is suddenly your primary source of income.
  • How to be part of a burgeoning music scene.
  • The cool kid at GDC.
  • Ways Jim could've made Glittermitten Grove more accessible without losing the interesting game design.
  • Getting email from a parent saying that their kid wants to become a mechanical engineer because of you Nerf blaster design.
  • A video game that is the third best Indiana Jones film.
  • Who is this technology helping, and how to we stop listening to their opinions?
  • Playstation Four and a Half.
  • A game with a lot of whirling debris.
  • Finding new ways to make more expensive every day.
  • How you'd put a loot box in a Pico-8 game.
  • The mental health community arguing about when it's okay to sleep with your therapist.
  • A/B tasting topics to see which ones get more downloads.
  • Staying up late enough to get hungry.
  • What kind of salad you'd put Doritos in.
  • What kind of salad you'd put a Clif bar in.
  • Clif bars: fall off of us!
  • Disappointing dolmas.
  • Your everyday carry web browser.
  • The difference between Chrome and Chromium.
  • Why doesn't everyone just compile their own Firefox?
  • Bawling at the typewriter about not having the thing you're writing a poem about.
  • Deciding your book of love poetry to your therapist.
  • Saving your fan mail to be read at your funeral.
  • Archaeologists tooting Interesting exchanges written in cuneiform.
  • Future archaeologists training AI to peruse the entire corpus of tweets to find the choicest memes.
  • The time to look for an out.
  • Serenading the audience with the address they can mail cash to.
  • Where all the best Lords hang out.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Deciding to get a teleprompter on episode 283.
  • The Molly James Band.
  • Mid-century lounge music.
  • Describing yourself as a cross between Pink Floyd and Doja Cat.
  • Shooting a music video the day after the election.
  • The sun and the battery life racing each other to ruin your forest concert first.
  • What does Dracula get up to? Does he have hobbies?
  • A lawyer hired to buy Dracula a new house
  • Scrubbing all the proper nouns out of your fan fiction.
  • Dracula as smoldering sex bomb vs. Dracula as a weird old man.
  • Figuring out how to not cancel Dracula.
  • A D&D campaign where you need to recruit a therapist into the party as part of your goal is to convince Dracula to become a better person.
  • Dracula being verbally abused by all his wives.
  • Batman playing Flappy Bird while he waits behind the curtain to ambush the villain.
  • Extremely high powered Nerf rifles.
  • Joining a community and ascertaining what they need.
  • Living through a golden age and not realizing until later.
  • Feeling grateful for the good things you once had.
  • Being reluctant to push your awesome community because you're afraid it's going to grow too large.
  • Figuring out how to 3D print blasters.
  • Mentoring under Captain Slug.
  • Realizing that your hobby is suddenly your primary source of income.
  • How to be part of a burgeoning music scene.
  • The cool kid at GDC.
  • Ways Jim could've made Glittermitten Grove more accessible without losing the interesting game design.
  • Getting email from a parent saying that their kid wants to become a mechanical engineer because of you Nerf blaster design.
  • A video game that is the third best Indiana Jones film.
  • Who is this technology helping, and how to we stop listening to their opinions?
  • Playstation Four and a Half.
  • A game with a lot of whirling debris.
  • Finding new ways to make more expensive every day.
  • How you'd put a loot box in a Pico-8 game.
  • The mental health community arguing about when it's okay to sleep with your therapist.
  • A/B tasting topics to see which ones get more downloads.
  • Staying up late enough to get hungry.
  • What kind of salad you'd put Doritos in.
  • What kind of salad you'd put a Clif bar in.
  • Clif bars: fall off of us!
  • Disappointing dolmas.
  • Your everyday carry web browser.
  • The difference between Chrome and Chromium.
  • Why doesn't everyone just compile their own Firefox?
  • Bawling at the typewriter about not having the thing you're writing a poem about.
  • Deciding your book of love poetry to your therapist.
  • Saving your fan mail to be read at your funeral.
  • Archaeologists tooting Interesting exchanges written in cuneiform.
  • Future archaeologists training AI to peruse the entire corpus of tweets to find the choicest memes.
  • The time to look for an out.
  • Serenading the audience with the address they can mail cash to.
  • Where all the best Lords hang out.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+TjvaG9Vs ]]> Jim Stormdancer 282. Check Out My Feetbook! https://topiclords.com/check-out-my-feetbook c0d14253-140e-41bb-b27f-b2c7370e315c Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jeff and Danny. We discuss what's happening on Bluesky, using Google Earth and YouTube to rid myself of Nostalgia of Places you've lived, and Dad Talk: what do we do about porn? 1:11:01 true Lords:

Topics:

  • What's happening on Bluesky.
  • Using Google Earth and YouTube to rid myself of Nostalgia of Places I've lived
  • Dad talk: what do we do about porn?

Microtopics:

  • The Good Morning America series finale.
  • Covering video games online.
  • Getting married and feeling safe from people who run dating sites.
  • Nintendo Disasters.
  • Reviewing every individual version of FIFA 2011.
  • The Sega Master System catalog.
  • Choosing not to do something because someone else has done it before.
  • A Weird Slop of People.
  • The CD-32 version of Alfred Chicken.
  • The Noclip documentary about PiCoSteveMo.
  • Blood and Fear and Nolf and Shogo and Condemned.
  • A hardware Pico-8 solution.
  • Explaining how to and how not to reply.
  • Enjoying social media because you need a place to type your garbage.
  • An Eternal September Situation.
  • Repeating Daily Show jokes from five years ago.
  • An oral history of Bluesky users.
  • Jimmy Fallon posting a picture of himself holding a Nintendo Switch.
  • The Ford vs. Chevy argument over and over again until we're all dead.
  • Laying your employees off based on their Klout scores.
  • What aspects of social media you can leave behind once you get a goat farm.
  • Having goats and not even posting pictures of them.
  • Goats as a gateway drug to other ungulates.
  • Did I get drunk and order 20 snakes again?
  • Boxcars: Where the Hobos Go.
  • Jumping in a train car full of refined materials.
  • Reminiscing about the time you lived in London and remembering everything that sucks about living in London.
  • A warped melting representation of your childhood memories.
  • An emotional VR moment.
  • Floating in space and hearing a cacophony of national anthems screaming up at you.
  • That time they added your uncle's farm to Google Street View.
  • Looking back on previous eras of your life and remembering why you don't want that kind of life any more.
  • The guy you know who mined bitcoins on his CPU and then spent it on black market Provigil.
  • Why do something that's going to make money when you can do ridiculous bullshit instead?
  • Three year olds who know how to use a remote control.
  • Areas of human interaction that you are just not prepared for.
  • Just putting your Zip disk in the file server and grabbing whatever's there.
  • What kind of porn the owner of the video rental place is personally obsessed with.
  • Why do you never see porn scored with tracker music?
  • Deep appreciation of porn that is made for somebody else
  • Beavis and Butthead trading cards.
  • Scintillating pizza delivery.
  • Explaining to your child that porn is fictional, not a documentary, and leaving it at that.
  • Your daughter asking you questions about Sonic the Hedgehog that you're not prepared to answer.
  • Encountering boys who play Minecraft.
  • Deploying new words to the wrong people.
  • Laying in bed and cursing at ghosts to calm yourself down.
  • An entire generation who goes to the gym and doesn't just watch CKY2K and break things.
  • Doing all the drugs so that you can explain what drugs are like to your children.
  • Learning how to fall as a child so you can fall safely as an adult.
  • Smoking Ice and waking up in San Francisco.
  • Pulling over, opening the hood, and punching the engine block over and over.
  • A poem that somebody else will read.
  • Whether the money has changed the Dwarf Fortress developers.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • What's happening on Bluesky.
  • Using Google Earth and YouTube to rid myself of Nostalgia of Places I've lived
  • Dad talk: what do we do about porn?

Microtopics:

  • The Good Morning America series finale.
  • Covering video games online.
  • Getting married and feeling safe from people who run dating sites.
  • Nintendo Disasters.
  • Reviewing every individual version of FIFA 2011.
  • The Sega Master System catalog.
  • Choosing not to do something because someone else has done it before.
  • A Weird Slop of People.
  • The CD-32 version of Alfred Chicken.
  • The Noclip documentary about PiCoSteveMo.
  • Blood and Fear and Nolf and Shogo and Condemned.
  • A hardware Pico-8 solution.
  • Explaining how to and how not to reply.
  • Enjoying social media because you need a place to type your garbage.
  • An Eternal September Situation.
  • Repeating Daily Show jokes from five years ago.
  • An oral history of Bluesky users.
  • Jimmy Fallon posting a picture of himself holding a Nintendo Switch.
  • The Ford vs. Chevy argument over and over again until we're all dead.
  • Laying your employees off based on their Klout scores.
  • What aspects of social media you can leave behind once you get a goat farm.
  • Having goats and not even posting pictures of them.
  • Goats as a gateway drug to other ungulates.
  • Did I get drunk and order 20 snakes again?
  • Boxcars: Where the Hobos Go.
  • Jumping in a train car full of refined materials.
  • Reminiscing about the time you lived in London and remembering everything that sucks about living in London.
  • A warped melting representation of your childhood memories.
  • An emotional VR moment.
  • Floating in space and hearing a cacophony of national anthems screaming up at you.
  • That time they added your uncle's farm to Google Street View.
  • Looking back on previous eras of your life and remembering why you don't want that kind of life any more.
  • The guy you know who mined bitcoins on his CPU and then spent it on black market Provigil.
  • Why do something that's going to make money when you can do ridiculous bullshit instead?
  • Three year olds who know how to use a remote control.
  • Areas of human interaction that you are just not prepared for.
  • Just putting your Zip disk in the file server and grabbing whatever's there.
  • What kind of porn the owner of the video rental place is personally obsessed with.
  • Why do you never see porn scored with tracker music?
  • Deep appreciation of porn that is made for somebody else
  • Beavis and Butthead trading cards.
  • Scintillating pizza delivery.
  • Explaining to your child that porn is fictional, not a documentary, and leaving it at that.
  • Your daughter asking you questions about Sonic the Hedgehog that you're not prepared to answer.
  • Encountering boys who play Minecraft.
  • Deploying new words to the wrong people.
  • Laying in bed and cursing at ghosts to calm yourself down.
  • An entire generation who goes to the gym and doesn't just watch CKY2K and break things.
  • Doing all the drugs so that you can explain what drugs are like to your children.
  • Learning how to fall as a child so you can fall safely as an adult.
  • Smoking Ice and waking up in San Francisco.
  • Pulling over, opening the hood, and punching the engine block over and over.
  • A poem that somebody else will read.
  • Whether the money has changed the Dwarf Fortress developers.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • What's happening on Bluesky.
  • Using Google Earth and YouTube to rid myself of Nostalgia of Places I've lived
  • Dad talk: what do we do about porn?

Microtopics:

  • The Good Morning America series finale.
  • Covering video games online.
  • Getting married and feeling safe from people who run dating sites.
  • Nintendo Disasters.
  • Reviewing every individual version of FIFA 2011.
  • The Sega Master System catalog.
  • Choosing not to do something because someone else has done it before.
  • A Weird Slop of People.
  • The CD-32 version of Alfred Chicken.
  • The Noclip documentary about PiCoSteveMo.
  • Blood and Fear and Nolf and Shogo and Condemned.
  • A hardware Pico-8 solution.
  • Explaining how to and how not to reply.
  • Enjoying social media because you need a place to type your garbage.
  • An Eternal September Situation.
  • Repeating Daily Show jokes from five years ago.
  • An oral history of Bluesky users.
  • Jimmy Fallon posting a picture of himself holding a Nintendo Switch.
  • The Ford vs. Chevy argument over and over again until we're all dead.
  • Laying your employees off based on their Klout scores.
  • What aspects of social media you can leave behind once you get a goat farm.
  • Having goats and not even posting pictures of them.
  • Goats as a gateway drug to other ungulates.
  • Did I get drunk and order 20 snakes again?
  • Boxcars: Where the Hobos Go.
  • Jumping in a train car full of refined materials.
  • Reminiscing about the time you lived in London and remembering everything that sucks about living in London.
  • A warped melting representation of your childhood memories.
  • An emotional VR moment.
  • Floating in space and hearing a cacophony of national anthems screaming up at you.
  • That time they added your uncle's farm to Google Street View.
  • Looking back on previous eras of your life and remembering why you don't want that kind of life any more.
  • The guy you know who mined bitcoins on his CPU and then spent it on black market Provigil.
  • Why do something that's going to make money when you can do ridiculous bullshit instead?
  • Three year olds who know how to use a remote control.
  • Areas of human interaction that you are just not prepared for.
  • Just putting your Zip disk in the file server and grabbing whatever's there.
  • What kind of porn the owner of the video rental place is personally obsessed with.
  • Why do you never see porn scored with tracker music?
  • Deep appreciation of porn that is made for somebody else
  • Beavis and Butthead trading cards.
  • Scintillating pizza delivery.
  • Explaining to your child that porn is fictional, not a documentary, and leaving it at that.
  • Your daughter asking you questions about Sonic the Hedgehog that you're not prepared to answer.
  • Encountering boys who play Minecraft.
  • Deploying new words to the wrong people.
  • Laying in bed and cursing at ghosts to calm yourself down.
  • An entire generation who goes to the gym and doesn't just watch CKY2K and break things.
  • Doing all the drugs so that you can explain what drugs are like to your children.
  • Learning how to fall as a child so you can fall safely as an adult.
  • Smoking Ice and waking up in San Francisco.
  • Pulling over, opening the hood, and punching the engine block over and over.
  • A poem that somebody else will read.
  • Whether the money has changed the Dwarf Fortress developers.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+3511dEqs ]]> Jim Stormdancer 281. Mr. Nukem Was My Father https://topiclords.com/mr-nukem-was-my-father 138a8a14-143d-4158-a378-5260fb41af4d Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Stevie and Bri. We discuss 3D modeling and lack of visual imagination, cut-throat compounds (a linguistic specialty), Pocket Warwick and other lost software, For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper, by Joseph Fasano, and Colma's city motto. 1:06:54 true Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Bri

Topics:

  • 3D modeling and my lack of visual imagination
  • Cutthroat compounds (my linguistic specialty) – current pursuit is "verb-em" last names – I'm researching the origins of the fictional law offices of Dewey Cheatum and Howe
  • Pocket Warwick and other lost software
  • For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper, by Joseph Fasano
  • Colma's city motto "It's Great to Be Alive in Colma" is great marketing

Microtopics:

  • Silly inventor and brainstormer.
  • Writing code that generates audio.
  • Giving talks at the Odd Salon.
  • Coffeehouse revolutionary thinkers.
  • Classic Hughes Behavior.
  • Looking at Blender again every seven to ten years.
  • Imagining a place in any level of detail. (Other than the name.)
  • The memory of what a tiger looks like, and whether it rotated on a Lazy Susan.
  • Whether seeing things in a dream feels similar to visualization.
  • Needing a license to operate as an engineer, but anyone can call themselves an Imagineer.
  • Weenies and MacGuffins.
  • Drawing something in 2D and tracing it in Blender.
  • Different ways to approach level design.
  • Thinking of something and putting it in your game.
  • Getting your game design playable as soon as possible so you can find out if it's any good.
  • A verb and its direct object.
  • Misers and drunks and cowards and gluttons.
  • Kick 'em Jenny.
  • Bop It!
  • Plastic keys where the point of the key is that it immediately breaks and you have to buy a new one.
  • Lawyer jokes from 19th century Australia.
  • Whether Nukem is his last name or just a nickname.
  • Syntactic freezes.
  • Rude slang words that end up on listicles.
  • How "cacafuego" became "spitfire."
  • Etymonline shrugging and giving up.
  • Not knowing about the alternate pronunciation of parentheses and processes until you get an office job.
  • Choosing a comma as one of your hills.
  • A unit of sound and meaning that you use to modify another unit of sound and meaning.
  • How to pronounce Warwick Davis.
  • A Jib Jab.
  • A Tamagotchi Situation.
  • Boatswains and forecastles.
  • Adding redundancy for clarity and also removing it for efficiency.
  • If you still have a Jaz disk, what do you even do with it?
  • Going to MagFest to see a chip metal band called Master Boot Record and he's throwing floppy disks with Deluxe Paint on them into the crowd.
  • Sharing a birthday with a Kentucky Derby winner but not being sure if he's a person or a horse.
  • The Friendliest Friend!
  • Stu Sutcliffe, the sixth Beatle.
  • International Snooker 2012 and Seven Wonders: Ancient Alien Makeover.
  • Fantasy consoles that only run Final Fantasy games.
  • If it's your first time at Nice Club, you have to Nice.
  • Seeing a generation grow up using automation to do a task that you had to do by hand and feeling one way or another about it.
  • How to tell whether somebody can reason about a topic and express their thoughts clearly.
  • Underpants Gnome Plans.
  • Polishing your thought processes until you find one that you agree with.
  • Defending Your Thesis, directed by Al Brooks.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear advice about going to college.
  • Colma Secrets.
  • Noone ever stops in Colma (on purpose)
  • Everyone who came to San Francisco and died.
  • Go By Train.
  • Calling the Colma Historical Society to see if they have a living volunteer there that day.
  • Calling a song "Going to Colma" and hoping that the phrase catches on as a euphemism for Kicking the Bucket.
  • The Joy of Actual Citizens and People Involved in Government.
  • Encyclopedia Briannica.
]]> Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Bri

Topics:

  • 3D modeling and my lack of visual imagination
  • Cutthroat compounds (my linguistic specialty) – current pursuit is "verb-em" last names – I'm researching the origins of the fictional law offices of Dewey Cheatum and Howe
  • Pocket Warwick and other lost software
  • For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper, by Joseph Fasano
  • Colma's city motto "It's Great to Be Alive in Colma" is great marketing

Microtopics:

  • Silly inventor and brainstormer.
  • Writing code that generates audio.
  • Giving talks at the Odd Salon.
  • Coffeehouse revolutionary thinkers.
  • Classic Hughes Behavior.
  • Looking at Blender again every seven to ten years.
  • Imagining a place in any level of detail. (Other than the name.)
  • The memory of what a tiger looks like, and whether it rotated on a Lazy Susan.
  • Whether seeing things in a dream feels similar to visualization.
  • Needing a license to operate as an engineer, but anyone can call themselves an Imagineer.
  • Weenies and MacGuffins.
  • Drawing something in 2D and tracing it in Blender.
  • Different ways to approach level design.
  • Thinking of something and putting it in your game.
  • Getting your game design playable as soon as possible so you can find out if it's any good.
  • A verb and its direct object.
  • Misers and drunks and cowards and gluttons.
  • Kick 'em Jenny.
  • Bop It!
  • Plastic keys where the point of the key is that it immediately breaks and you have to buy a new one.
  • Lawyer jokes from 19th century Australia.
  • Whether Nukem is his last name or just a nickname.
  • Syntactic freezes.
  • Rude slang words that end up on listicles.
  • How "cacafuego" became "spitfire."
  • Etymonline shrugging and giving up.
  • Not knowing about the alternate pronunciation of parentheses and processes until you get an office job.
  • Choosing a comma as one of your hills.
  • A unit of sound and meaning that you use to modify another unit of sound and meaning.
  • How to pronounce Warwick Davis.
  • A Jib Jab.
  • A Tamagotchi Situation.
  • Boatswains and forecastles.
  • Adding redundancy for clarity and also removing it for efficiency.
  • If you still have a Jaz disk, what do you even do with it?
  • Going to MagFest to see a chip metal band called Master Boot Record and he's throwing floppy disks with Deluxe Paint on them into the crowd.
  • Sharing a birthday with a Kentucky Derby winner but not being sure if he's a person or a horse.
  • The Friendliest Friend!
  • Stu Sutcliffe, the sixth Beatle.
  • International Snooker 2012 and Seven Wonders: Ancient Alien Makeover.
  • Fantasy consoles that only run Final Fantasy games.
  • If it's your first time at Nice Club, you have to Nice.
  • Seeing a generation grow up using automation to do a task that you had to do by hand and feeling one way or another about it.
  • How to tell whether somebody can reason about a topic and express their thoughts clearly.
  • Underpants Gnome Plans.
  • Polishing your thought processes until you find one that you agree with.
  • Defending Your Thesis, directed by Al Brooks.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear advice about going to college.
  • Colma Secrets.
  • Noone ever stops in Colma (on purpose)
  • Everyone who came to San Francisco and died.
  • Go By Train.
  • Calling the Colma Historical Society to see if they have a living volunteer there that day.
  • Calling a song "Going to Colma" and hoping that the phrase catches on as a euphemism for Kicking the Bucket.
  • The Joy of Actual Citizens and People Involved in Government.
  • Encyclopedia Briannica.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Bri

Topics:

  • 3D modeling and my lack of visual imagination
  • Cutthroat compounds (my linguistic specialty) – current pursuit is "verb-em" last names – I'm researching the origins of the fictional law offices of Dewey Cheatum and Howe
  • Pocket Warwick and other lost software
  • For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper, by Joseph Fasano
  • Colma's city motto "It's Great to Be Alive in Colma" is great marketing

Microtopics:

  • Silly inventor and brainstormer.
  • Writing code that generates audio.
  • Giving talks at the Odd Salon.
  • Coffeehouse revolutionary thinkers.
  • Classic Hughes Behavior.
  • Looking at Blender again every seven to ten years.
  • Imagining a place in any level of detail. (Other than the name.)
  • The memory of what a tiger looks like, and whether it rotated on a Lazy Susan.
  • Whether seeing things in a dream feels similar to visualization.
  • Needing a license to operate as an engineer, but anyone can call themselves an Imagineer.
  • Weenies and MacGuffins.
  • Drawing something in 2D and tracing it in Blender.
  • Different ways to approach level design.
  • Thinking of something and putting it in your game.
  • Getting your game design playable as soon as possible so you can find out if it's any good.
  • A verb and its direct object.
  • Misers and drunks and cowards and gluttons.
  • Kick 'em Jenny.
  • Bop It!
  • Plastic keys where the point of the key is that it immediately breaks and you have to buy a new one.
  • Lawyer jokes from 19th century Australia.
  • Whether Nukem is his last name or just a nickname.
  • Syntactic freezes.
  • Rude slang words that end up on listicles.
  • How "cacafuego" became "spitfire."
  • Etymonline shrugging and giving up.
  • Not knowing about the alternate pronunciation of parentheses and processes until you get an office job.
  • Choosing a comma as one of your hills.
  • A unit of sound and meaning that you use to modify another unit of sound and meaning.
  • How to pronounce Warwick Davis.
  • A Jib Jab.
  • A Tamagotchi Situation.
  • Boatswains and forecastles.
  • Adding redundancy for clarity and also removing it for efficiency.
  • If you still have a Jaz disk, what do you even do with it?
  • Going to MagFest to see a chip metal band called Master Boot Record and he's throwing floppy disks with Deluxe Paint on them into the crowd.
  • Sharing a birthday with a Kentucky Derby winner but not being sure if he's a person or a horse.
  • The Friendliest Friend!
  • Stu Sutcliffe, the sixth Beatle.
  • International Snooker 2012 and Seven Wonders: Ancient Alien Makeover.
  • Fantasy consoles that only run Final Fantasy games.
  • If it's your first time at Nice Club, you have to Nice.
  • Seeing a generation grow up using automation to do a task that you had to do by hand and feeling one way or another about it.
  • How to tell whether somebody can reason about a topic and express their thoughts clearly.
  • Underpants Gnome Plans.
  • Polishing your thought processes until you find one that you agree with.
  • Defending Your Thesis, directed by Al Brooks.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear advice about going to college.
  • Colma Secrets.
  • Noone ever stops in Colma (on purpose)
  • Everyone who came to San Francisco and died.
  • Go By Train.
  • Calling the Colma Historical Society to see if they have a living volunteer there that day.
  • Calling a song "Going to Colma" and hoping that the phrase catches on as a euphemism for Kicking the Bucket.
  • The Joy of Actual Citizens and People Involved in Government.
  • Encyclopedia Briannica.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6ZuMZjea ]]> Jim Stormdancer 280. How to Start an Ice Cream Shop (Probably) https://topiclords.com/how-to-start-an-ice-cream-shop-probably f1490691-1726-4913-950d-30cd1c8c48ce Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andi and Casey. We discuss life hacks as communion with the divine, firing your computer, and childhood amnesia. 1:21:58 true Lords:

  • Andi
  • Casey

Topics:

  • Lifehacks as communion with the divine
  • I decided to fire my computer
  • Winston is starting to forget things

Microtopics:

  • A Star Trek watchalong podcast that doesn't exist yet.
  • Positing that what you said is no longer an NDA violation by the time this episode comes out.
  • Plugging a fake game that you worked on.
  • Astrobot.
  • Horror movie clinky noises that you can't hear over the PS4 fan noises.
  • Caffeine-infused mints with Tux the Penguin branding on Think Geek dot com.
  • The pre-eminent source for Life Hacks.
  • Using a hotel shower cap to bake bread.
  • Anime girls that are happy to see you.
  • That one time Film Crit Hulk broke character.
  • The joy of moving efficiently through the world.
  • More efficient ways to set the microwave timer.
  • Hotel rooms that you can bake bread in.
  • Whether bread should contain hair.
  • Tricking yourself into not being bored while doing something you have to do.
  • Reading 50 life hacks and applying none of them because.
  • Viral Life Hack that's killed 33 people.
  • A life hack that already had a body count in the double digits before someone made a TikTok about it.
  • Getting really fed up with computers.
  • Cryptographic signing processes that you can't participate in.
  • The HDCP certification board taking steps to ensure nobody can take a screen shot of their Crunchy Roll anime.
  • The analog hole.
  • Open source web browsers that can't see DRM content.
  • Microsoft-authenticated Linux installations.
  • Designing a circuit that solves a math problem.
  • Stamping a circuit onto your circuit clay.
  • An independent circuit re-implementation of video game hardware.
  • Should you use FPGA to do a thing?
  • Ridiculous multi-level memory caching systems.
  • Bootstrapping an FPGA design tool that runs on an FPGA device.
  • Every single circuit doing something on every single cycle.
  • Voltages going high and/or low.
  • Making a bunch of CPUs and testing them afterwards to see how many GHz they have.
  • Why the PS3 Cell processor had 7 SPUs
  • The industrial uses of the Cell processor.
  • A GLSL compiler that outputs FPGA circuits.
  • Mr. MiSTer.
  • Open-hardware laptops.
  • Inventing an open-source GPU.
  • Multics or Minix.
  • Writing a Breakout clone in Rust targeting the weird CPU your friend just invented.
  • Making a terrible first effort that is the right kind of good enough.
  • A laptop that has a FPGA where the CPU/GPU usually goes.
  • 1970s-era TV games.
  • The Epoch Cassette Vision.
  • A game console with interchangeable cartridges where the CPU is on the cartridge.
  • The Glasgow Interface Explorer.
  • Describing your FPGA circuit in Python.
  • Manufacturing homebrew Cassette Vision Homebrew cartridges for the audience of zero Cassette Vision owners.
  • Making art just for you, in the most overly elaborate and overly complicated way possible.
  • The programmer equivalent of going to swim with the dolphins.
  • Diagonal pixels.
  • Childhood amnesia.
  • Remembering your memories.
  • Using 10% of your brain. (And also the other 90%.)
  • Knowing things about stuff.
  • When one brother dies, the other brother gets their memories.
  • Memories that are formed before vs. after you learn to talk.
  • Being persecuted for being friends with a girl.
  • Rules of heteronormativity being enforced by three year olds.
  • Getting off of Wordpress.
]]> Lords:

  • Andi
  • Casey

Topics:

  • Lifehacks as communion with the divine
  • I decided to fire my computer
  • Winston is starting to forget things

Microtopics:

  • A Star Trek watchalong podcast that doesn't exist yet.
  • Positing that what you said is no longer an NDA violation by the time this episode comes out.
  • Plugging a fake game that you worked on.
  • Astrobot.
  • Horror movie clinky noises that you can't hear over the PS4 fan noises.
  • Caffeine-infused mints with Tux the Penguin branding on Think Geek dot com.
  • The pre-eminent source for Life Hacks.
  • Using a hotel shower cap to bake bread.
  • Anime girls that are happy to see you.
  • That one time Film Crit Hulk broke character.
  • The joy of moving efficiently through the world.
  • More efficient ways to set the microwave timer.
  • Hotel rooms that you can bake bread in.
  • Whether bread should contain hair.
  • Tricking yourself into not being bored while doing something you have to do.
  • Reading 50 life hacks and applying none of them because.
  • Viral Life Hack that's killed 33 people.
  • A life hack that already had a body count in the double digits before someone made a TikTok about it.
  • Getting really fed up with computers.
  • Cryptographic signing processes that you can't participate in.
  • The HDCP certification board taking steps to ensure nobody can take a screen shot of their Crunchy Roll anime.
  • The analog hole.
  • Open source web browsers that can't see DRM content.
  • Microsoft-authenticated Linux installations.
  • Designing a circuit that solves a math problem.
  • Stamping a circuit onto your circuit clay.
  • An independent circuit re-implementation of video game hardware.
  • Should you use FPGA to do a thing?
  • Ridiculous multi-level memory caching systems.
  • Bootstrapping an FPGA design tool that runs on an FPGA device.
  • Every single circuit doing something on every single cycle.
  • Voltages going high and/or low.
  • Making a bunch of CPUs and testing them afterwards to see how many GHz they have.
  • Why the PS3 Cell processor had 7 SPUs
  • The industrial uses of the Cell processor.
  • A GLSL compiler that outputs FPGA circuits.
  • Mr. MiSTer.
  • Open-hardware laptops.
  • Inventing an open-source GPU.
  • Multics or Minix.
  • Writing a Breakout clone in Rust targeting the weird CPU your friend just invented.
  • Making a terrible first effort that is the right kind of good enough.
  • A laptop that has a FPGA where the CPU/GPU usually goes.
  • 1970s-era TV games.
  • The Epoch Cassette Vision.
  • A game console with interchangeable cartridges where the CPU is on the cartridge.
  • The Glasgow Interface Explorer.
  • Describing your FPGA circuit in Python.
  • Manufacturing homebrew Cassette Vision Homebrew cartridges for the audience of zero Cassette Vision owners.
  • Making art just for you, in the most overly elaborate and overly complicated way possible.
  • The programmer equivalent of going to swim with the dolphins.
  • Diagonal pixels.
  • Childhood amnesia.
  • Remembering your memories.
  • Using 10% of your brain. (And also the other 90%.)
  • Knowing things about stuff.
  • When one brother dies, the other brother gets their memories.
  • Memories that are formed before vs. after you learn to talk.
  • Being persecuted for being friends with a girl.
  • Rules of heteronormativity being enforced by three year olds.
  • Getting off of Wordpress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Andi
  • Casey

Topics:

  • Lifehacks as communion with the divine
  • I decided to fire my computer
  • Winston is starting to forget things

Microtopics:

  • A Star Trek watchalong podcast that doesn't exist yet.
  • Positing that what you said is no longer an NDA violation by the time this episode comes out.
  • Plugging a fake game that you worked on.
  • Astrobot.
  • Horror movie clinky noises that you can't hear over the PS4 fan noises.
  • Caffeine-infused mints with Tux the Penguin branding on Think Geek dot com.
  • The pre-eminent source for Life Hacks.
  • Using a hotel shower cap to bake bread.
  • Anime girls that are happy to see you.
  • That one time Film Crit Hulk broke character.
  • The joy of moving efficiently through the world.
  • More efficient ways to set the microwave timer.
  • Hotel rooms that you can bake bread in.
  • Whether bread should contain hair.
  • Tricking yourself into not being bored while doing something you have to do.
  • Reading 50 life hacks and applying none of them because.
  • Viral Life Hack that's killed 33 people.
  • A life hack that already had a body count in the double digits before someone made a TikTok about it.
  • Getting really fed up with computers.
  • Cryptographic signing processes that you can't participate in.
  • The HDCP certification board taking steps to ensure nobody can take a screen shot of their Crunchy Roll anime.
  • The analog hole.
  • Open source web browsers that can't see DRM content.
  • Microsoft-authenticated Linux installations.
  • Designing a circuit that solves a math problem.
  • Stamping a circuit onto your circuit clay.
  • An independent circuit re-implementation of video game hardware.
  • Should you use FPGA to do a thing?
  • Ridiculous multi-level memory caching systems.
  • Bootstrapping an FPGA design tool that runs on an FPGA device.
  • Every single circuit doing something on every single cycle.
  • Voltages going high and/or low.
  • Making a bunch of CPUs and testing them afterwards to see how many GHz they have.
  • Why the PS3 Cell processor had 7 SPUs
  • The industrial uses of the Cell processor.
  • A GLSL compiler that outputs FPGA circuits.
  • Mr. MiSTer.
  • Open-hardware laptops.
  • Inventing an open-source GPU.
  • Multics or Minix.
  • Writing a Breakout clone in Rust targeting the weird CPU your friend just invented.
  • Making a terrible first effort that is the right kind of good enough.
  • A laptop that has a FPGA where the CPU/GPU usually goes.
  • 1970s-era TV games.
  • The Epoch Cassette Vision.
  • A game console with interchangeable cartridges where the CPU is on the cartridge.
  • The Glasgow Interface Explorer.
  • Describing your FPGA circuit in Python.
  • Manufacturing homebrew Cassette Vision Homebrew cartridges for the audience of zero Cassette Vision owners.
  • Making art just for you, in the most overly elaborate and overly complicated way possible.
  • The programmer equivalent of going to swim with the dolphins.
  • Diagonal pixels.
  • Childhood amnesia.
  • Remembering your memories.
  • Using 10% of your brain. (And also the other 90%.)
  • Knowing things about stuff.
  • When one brother dies, the other brother gets their memories.
  • Memories that are formed before vs. after you learn to talk.
  • Being persecuted for being friends with a girl.
  • Rules of heteronormativity being enforced by three year olds.
  • Getting off of Wordpress.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+BeT_SjYC ]]> Jim Stormdancer 279. Concrete Peanut Butter Condensate https://topiclords.com/concrete-peanut-butter-condensate a54a2052-edaf-40de-8713-acfd8a60f76e Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kory and James. We discuss ditching your eReader, Journey to the Planets, Send Me to Heaven, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun, whether criminals are like peanut butter, and enjoying photography by making it as labor intensive as possible. 1:05:40 true Lords:

  • Kory
  • James

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A circulating cadre of hobbies.
  • Corpseflower blooms.
  • A forum to complain about the state of e-Readers.
  • eReaders launching as a perfect product and then slowly morphing into shitty phones.
  • Autosleep anxiety.
  • Increased difficulty of finding reference art now that stable diffusion exists.
  • Turning off all your screens in order to accomplish something.
  • Accordioning ebooks.
  • Breaking out into meat space with tiny Greek busts.
  • Freedom to do it the wrong way.
  • Reading the last page of a book so you don't have the temptation of reading the last page of the book.
  • Physical bit rot books.
  • Buying more than one book.
  • Collecting treasure in order to get home.
  • A flying around in space mini game.
  • Dying from comets.
  • Designing a game that you would never play.
  • Art that is better in some contexts than others.
  • King's Quest.
  • Tuning your adventure game difficulty based on how distracting the real world is.
  • Difficulty ramping in adventure games.
  • The text adventure prototype of Outer Wilds.
  • Untitled Goose Game's melding of the adventure game and the stealth sandbox.
  • Brock the Investigator's melding of the adventure game and the belt scroller.
  • An adventure game where the solution to the puzzle is to run up and kick something.
  • Games that would've been a useful referent for Gunhouse if it had existed.
  • The I'm Rich era of phone app development.
  • Let's Play videos of Send Me to Heaven.
  • App Store review bits that are not very well received.
  • If hairs be wires then black wires growing on her head.
  • Quoting a Shakespeare sonnet in your diss track.
  • Whether "reeks" has the same connotation in Early Modern English.
  • It's true but you shouldn't say it vs. I just think they're neat.
  • Whether the Smooth Criminal is the kind where you need to stir the oil in
  • Smooth criminals vs. chunky criminals.
  • In what ways criminals are like peanut butter?
  • What would a chunky rap sheet look like?
  • A pristine unopened criminal.
  • Getting merged in some sort of valve situation.
  • Scientists studying the stripey toothpaste to discover how it stays striped.
  • That movie where every character is the same person.
  • Regressing to the analog wherever possible.
  • Developing film without a dark room, using a dark bag.
  • Obsessing over a single photograph until the color balance is perfect.
  • Photography tropes that read as fancy.
  • The instinct to replicate the superficial qualities of an analog process in its digital equivalent.
  • Authentically taking a terrible picture with a terrible camera.
  • Getting sick of what fancy used to mean and figuring out what fancy means going forward.
  • Hypernice photography.
  • Art that has way too much detail.
]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • James

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A circulating cadre of hobbies.
  • Corpseflower blooms.
  • A forum to complain about the state of e-Readers.
  • eReaders launching as a perfect product and then slowly morphing into shitty phones.
  • Autosleep anxiety.
  • Increased difficulty of finding reference art now that stable diffusion exists.
  • Turning off all your screens in order to accomplish something.
  • Accordioning ebooks.
  • Breaking out into meat space with tiny Greek busts.
  • Freedom to do it the wrong way.
  • Reading the last page of a book so you don't have the temptation of reading the last page of the book.
  • Physical bit rot books.
  • Buying more than one book.
  • Collecting treasure in order to get home.
  • A flying around in space mini game.
  • Dying from comets.
  • Designing a game that you would never play.
  • Art that is better in some contexts than others.
  • King's Quest.
  • Tuning your adventure game difficulty based on how distracting the real world is.
  • Difficulty ramping in adventure games.
  • The text adventure prototype of Outer Wilds.
  • Untitled Goose Game's melding of the adventure game and the stealth sandbox.
  • Brock the Investigator's melding of the adventure game and the belt scroller.
  • An adventure game where the solution to the puzzle is to run up and kick something.
  • Games that would've been a useful referent for Gunhouse if it had existed.
  • The I'm Rich era of phone app development.
  • Let's Play videos of Send Me to Heaven.
  • App Store review bits that are not very well received.
  • If hairs be wires then black wires growing on her head.
  • Quoting a Shakespeare sonnet in your diss track.
  • Whether "reeks" has the same connotation in Early Modern English.
  • It's true but you shouldn't say it vs. I just think they're neat.
  • Whether the Smooth Criminal is the kind where you need to stir the oil in
  • Smooth criminals vs. chunky criminals.
  • In what ways criminals are like peanut butter?
  • What would a chunky rap sheet look like?
  • A pristine unopened criminal.
  • Getting merged in some sort of valve situation.
  • Scientists studying the stripey toothpaste to discover how it stays striped.
  • That movie where every character is the same person.
  • Regressing to the analog wherever possible.
  • Developing film without a dark room, using a dark bag.
  • Obsessing over a single photograph until the color balance is perfect.
  • Photography tropes that read as fancy.
  • The instinct to replicate the superficial qualities of an analog process in its digital equivalent.
  • Authentically taking a terrible picture with a terrible camera.
  • Getting sick of what fancy used to mean and figuring out what fancy means going forward.
  • Hypernice photography.
  • Art that has way too much detail.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Kory
  • James

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A circulating cadre of hobbies.
  • Corpseflower blooms.
  • A forum to complain about the state of e-Readers.
  • eReaders launching as a perfect product and then slowly morphing into shitty phones.
  • Autosleep anxiety.
  • Increased difficulty of finding reference art now that stable diffusion exists.
  • Turning off all your screens in order to accomplish something.
  • Accordioning ebooks.
  • Breaking out into meat space with tiny Greek busts.
  • Freedom to do it the wrong way.
  • Reading the last page of a book so you don't have the temptation of reading the last page of the book.
  • Physical bit rot books.
  • Buying more than one book.
  • Collecting treasure in order to get home.
  • A flying around in space mini game.
  • Dying from comets.
  • Designing a game that you would never play.
  • Art that is better in some contexts than others.
  • King's Quest.
  • Tuning your adventure game difficulty based on how distracting the real world is.
  • Difficulty ramping in adventure games.
  • The text adventure prototype of Outer Wilds.
  • Untitled Goose Game's melding of the adventure game and the stealth sandbox.
  • Brock the Investigator's melding of the adventure game and the belt scroller.
  • An adventure game where the solution to the puzzle is to run up and kick something.
  • Games that would've been a useful referent for Gunhouse if it had existed.
  • The I'm Rich era of phone app development.
  • Let's Play videos of Send Me to Heaven.
  • App Store review bits that are not very well received.
  • If hairs be wires then black wires growing on her head.
  • Quoting a Shakespeare sonnet in your diss track.
  • Whether "reeks" has the same connotation in Early Modern English.
  • It's true but you shouldn't say it vs. I just think they're neat.
  • Whether the Smooth Criminal is the kind where you need to stir the oil in
  • Smooth criminals vs. chunky criminals.
  • In what ways criminals are like peanut butter?
  • What would a chunky rap sheet look like?
  • A pristine unopened criminal.
  • Getting merged in some sort of valve situation.
  • Scientists studying the stripey toothpaste to discover how it stays striped.
  • That movie where every character is the same person.
  • Regressing to the analog wherever possible.
  • Developing film without a dark room, using a dark bag.
  • Obsessing over a single photograph until the color balance is perfect.
  • Photography tropes that read as fancy.
  • The instinct to replicate the superficial qualities of an analog process in its digital equivalent.
  • Authentically taking a terrible picture with a terrible camera.
  • Getting sick of what fancy used to mean and figuring out what fancy means going forward.
  • Hypernice photography.
  • Art that has way too much detail.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GWyax6FB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 278. Successfully Talking https://topiclords.com/successfully-talking 4f0a7504-8d1a-4acb-8a17-3d5fc507e7d4 Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Avery and Linker. We discuss Twin Peaks, Myxozoa, how storytelling is failing us, Bones and Shadows by John Philip Johnson, and novelizing films that originated as novels. 56:28 true Lords:

  • Avery
  • Linker

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A spike of interest corresponding with every episode you're on.
  • How many hate listeners Topic Lords has.
  • Chiaroscuro.
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.
  • Watching Blue Velvet while high.
  • Finishing season two of Twin Peaks out of a sense of duty.
  • A protagonist who you want to be happy.
  • That time David Lynch bought five Woody Woodpecker dolls and named them Chucko, Buster, Pete, Bob and Dan, then had to cut them out of his life after their personalities changed.
  • Focusing the energy you have on the things you love: filmmaking, painting and smoking.
  • The David Lynch Foundation for the Human Mind.
  • David Lynch changing the subject back to transcendental meditation.
  • The permeable boundary between dreams and reality.
  • David Lynch putting sawmills in every movie because he just likes sawmills.
  • The disappearance of all-night diners.
  • What it takes to get Denny's In small-town New Brunswick.
  • Whether it's possible to mod the bad parts of Deadly Premonition.
  • Putting evolutionary pressure on jellyfish to get smaller until they evolve back into a single-called organism.
  • Mammals returning to the sea.
  • The mutation that allows Henrietta Lacks to live forever.
  • The cancerous organism that's been hitchhiking in dogs for over a thousand years.
  • What kind of tumors are blowing around in the Tasmanian Devil whirlwind.
  • Real and metaphorical spandrels.
  • Where the Panda's sharp thumb came from.
  • The kiwi egg-to-body-mass ratio.
  • Big Bird, the evolutionary pinnacle of all birds.
  • Introverted Darwinism.
  • Keeping your toilet paper on the bed.
  • It's an indie game, you have to put a dead wife in there somewhere.
  • Obama's presidency as the end of history.
  • That time everyone was terrified of superpredators.
  • Human beings organizing facts info stories.
  • One of the many human traits that cause problems.
  • Interpreting observed facts differently when you are depressed.
  • Virtue Ethics.
  • Deducing ethics via pure reason.
  • Whether it's true or false that Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe.
  • Flash games where you drone strike terrorists.
  • Exploring a system by interacting with it.
  • A poem about a guy being beaten up for money.
  • Successfully talking.
  • Becoming the bones in the last case.
  • Pre-nostalgia.
  • Answering a question by just saying shit.
  • A video game adaption of a poem.
  • An atheist take on Tarot readings.
  • The opinions of someone who once read a lot of philosophy.
  • Sensing the passage of time in a film clip of a stationary object.
  • Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the Star Wars radio plays.
  • The Weird Al song that's just the whole plot of The Phantom Menace.
  • The Blade Runner and V for Vendetta novelizations.
  • Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the novelization.
  • Kenneth Branagh rolling around in slime with a naked reanimated corpse because because Mary Shelley would've wanted it that way.
  • A social media platform that was designed to be mindful of mental health, going out of business almost immediately.
]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Linker

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A spike of interest corresponding with every episode you're on.
  • How many hate listeners Topic Lords has.
  • Chiaroscuro.
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.
  • Watching Blue Velvet while high.
  • Finishing season two of Twin Peaks out of a sense of duty.
  • A protagonist who you want to be happy.
  • That time David Lynch bought five Woody Woodpecker dolls and named them Chucko, Buster, Pete, Bob and Dan, then had to cut them out of his life after their personalities changed.
  • Focusing the energy you have on the things you love: filmmaking, painting and smoking.
  • The David Lynch Foundation for the Human Mind.
  • David Lynch changing the subject back to transcendental meditation.
  • The permeable boundary between dreams and reality.
  • David Lynch putting sawmills in every movie because he just likes sawmills.
  • The disappearance of all-night diners.
  • What it takes to get Denny's In small-town New Brunswick.
  • Whether it's possible to mod the bad parts of Deadly Premonition.
  • Putting evolutionary pressure on jellyfish to get smaller until they evolve back into a single-called organism.
  • Mammals returning to the sea.
  • The mutation that allows Henrietta Lacks to live forever.
  • The cancerous organism that's been hitchhiking in dogs for over a thousand years.
  • What kind of tumors are blowing around in the Tasmanian Devil whirlwind.
  • Real and metaphorical spandrels.
  • Where the Panda's sharp thumb came from.
  • The kiwi egg-to-body-mass ratio.
  • Big Bird, the evolutionary pinnacle of all birds.
  • Introverted Darwinism.
  • Keeping your toilet paper on the bed.
  • It's an indie game, you have to put a dead wife in there somewhere.
  • Obama's presidency as the end of history.
  • That time everyone was terrified of superpredators.
  • Human beings organizing facts info stories.
  • One of the many human traits that cause problems.
  • Interpreting observed facts differently when you are depressed.
  • Virtue Ethics.
  • Deducing ethics via pure reason.
  • Whether it's true or false that Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe.
  • Flash games where you drone strike terrorists.
  • Exploring a system by interacting with it.
  • A poem about a guy being beaten up for money.
  • Successfully talking.
  • Becoming the bones in the last case.
  • Pre-nostalgia.
  • Answering a question by just saying shit.
  • A video game adaption of a poem.
  • An atheist take on Tarot readings.
  • The opinions of someone who once read a lot of philosophy.
  • Sensing the passage of time in a film clip of a stationary object.
  • Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the Star Wars radio plays.
  • The Weird Al song that's just the whole plot of The Phantom Menace.
  • The Blade Runner and V for Vendetta novelizations.
  • Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the novelization.
  • Kenneth Branagh rolling around in slime with a naked reanimated corpse because because Mary Shelley would've wanted it that way.
  • A social media platform that was designed to be mindful of mental health, going out of business almost immediately.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Linker

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A spike of interest corresponding with every episode you're on.
  • How many hate listeners Topic Lords has.
  • Chiaroscuro.
  • Buying Linker's games so he doesn't die.
  • Watching Blue Velvet while high.
  • Finishing season two of Twin Peaks out of a sense of duty.
  • A protagonist who you want to be happy.
  • That time David Lynch bought five Woody Woodpecker dolls and named them Chucko, Buster, Pete, Bob and Dan, then had to cut them out of his life after their personalities changed.
  • Focusing the energy you have on the things you love: filmmaking, painting and smoking.
  • The David Lynch Foundation for the Human Mind.
  • David Lynch changing the subject back to transcendental meditation.
  • The permeable boundary between dreams and reality.
  • David Lynch putting sawmills in every movie because he just likes sawmills.
  • The disappearance of all-night diners.
  • What it takes to get Denny's In small-town New Brunswick.
  • Whether it's possible to mod the bad parts of Deadly Premonition.
  • Putting evolutionary pressure on jellyfish to get smaller until they evolve back into a single-called organism.
  • Mammals returning to the sea.
  • The mutation that allows Henrietta Lacks to live forever.
  • The cancerous organism that's been hitchhiking in dogs for over a thousand years.
  • What kind of tumors are blowing around in the Tasmanian Devil whirlwind.
  • Real and metaphorical spandrels.
  • Where the Panda's sharp thumb came from.
  • The kiwi egg-to-body-mass ratio.
  • Big Bird, the evolutionary pinnacle of all birds.
  • Introverted Darwinism.
  • Keeping your toilet paper on the bed.
  • It's an indie game, you have to put a dead wife in there somewhere.
  • Obama's presidency as the end of history.
  • That time everyone was terrified of superpredators.
  • Human beings organizing facts info stories.
  • One of the many human traits that cause problems.
  • Interpreting observed facts differently when you are depressed.
  • Virtue Ethics.
  • Deducing ethics via pure reason.
  • Whether it's true or false that Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe.
  • Flash games where you drone strike terrorists.
  • Exploring a system by interacting with it.
  • A poem about a guy being beaten up for money.
  • Successfully talking.
  • Becoming the bones in the last case.
  • Pre-nostalgia.
  • Answering a question by just saying shit.
  • A video game adaption of a poem.
  • An atheist take on Tarot readings.
  • The opinions of someone who once read a lot of philosophy.
  • Sensing the passage of time in a film clip of a stationary object.
  • Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the Star Wars radio plays.
  • The Weird Al song that's just the whole plot of The Phantom Menace.
  • The Blade Runner and V for Vendetta novelizations.
  • Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the novelization.
  • Kenneth Branagh rolling around in slime with a naked reanimated corpse because because Mary Shelley would've wanted it that way.
  • A social media platform that was designed to be mindful of mental health, going out of business almost immediately.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+EP578-pO ]]> Jim Stormdancer 277. Tunic 2, for Lords Only https://topiclords.com/tunic-2-for-lords-only 9a093686-66dc-4846-9890-fffbb52e0574 Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Kate. We discuss designing a boring game, whether you should let your friend convince you to play WoW, how to melt chocolate, Kate's Wallace and Gromit song, VFX is like cooking; game design is like baking, and "Looksmaxxing" 1:14:57 true Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Adam Atomic's Pico-8 renaissance.
  • Vampire vs. Pope Army
  • Still Kate.
  • Grass and flowers and touching them.
  • The bifurcation of Bluesky into Twitter 2 and Mastodon into Not Twitter.
  • The different kinds of people who tell you you're doing it wrong on different social media services.
  • Looking at Bluesky and realizing it's just like Twitter, and having a reaction to that realization.
  • Comparing your mood before using an internet service to your mood afterwards.
  • You're the cow, baby!
  • A story about living in a village of fewer than twenty people where nothing happens for thirty years.
  • Countervailing forces preventing your game design from becoming a worry stone.
  • Going outside and being bored until being bored stops feeling like an assault on all your senses.
  • Talking to your mates in the pub about your new socks.
  • Your mayonnaise manufacturing district.
  • YAGNI.
  • That time your ex-husband stole your knife and without a knife you can't cut food! Or ropes!
  • Needing medical help and asking the guy in your village who owns half an encyclopedia.
  • A miserable experience that is worth doing.
  • The big advantage of playing World of Warcraft in Hardcore mode.
  • WoW Classic and WoW Classic Classic.
  • A game about killing 40 rats.
  • The game for children that do annoying dances.
  • Who knows about causality?
  • The two year period when game designers played nothing but World of Warcraft.
  • Getting addicted to an MMO and never contributing anything to society ever again.
  • Entering into an activity with a miserly determination to not have fun.
  • What it takes to do a dungeon.
  • The spaces between the exciting parts.
  • Melting chocolate on top of parchment paper.
  • Melting chocolate with a hair dryer.
  • A Fraught Bark Experience.
  • Mouthfuls of raw flour.
  • Cake Batter Bark.
  • Rescuing seized chocolate.
  • Counterintuitive chocolate behavior.
  • Baking: It's Stupid.
  • Adding a tart cheese to cream of mushrooms soup.
  • Reading the poem as if you're not singing it in your head.
  • Asking the vicar to share a stir-fry.
  • Adding swear words to the Wallace and Gromit theme.
  • Leggy Desert Boy, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
  • The verse in Eleanor Rigby where they talk about cooking and eating dinner.
  • Words that rhyme with "pint."
  • Rhyming "pint" with "2019."
  • Inventing an OC named "blorange" to solve your rhyming problems.
  • Taking flavors and synthesizing new flavors.
  • Hammering on the "fun" button for forty or fifty years.
  • Having the one hit and not needing another hit.
  • Exploring a multidimensional design space and tapping on all the walls to see which ones are destructible.
  • Starting to make a game and finding out whether it's an easy game to make.
  • Langoliers.
  • Night Snacker.
  • Releasing games exclusively in the Topic Lords discord.
  • The art of turning your mortal vessel into a weapon.
  • Softmaxxing vs. Hardmaxxing.
  • Doing tongue exercises to sharpen your jaw.
  • The Wikipedia page with the most scare quotes on it.
  • Limb-lengthening surgery.
  • Dabbing: it's just extremely short-term looksmaxxing.
  • When two subcultures have two different words for the same idea.
  • Whether the Xes in "Looksmaxxing" are the kisses and the Os the hugs, or vice versa.
  • Whether the Xes in are the kisses and the Os are the hugs or whether the Xes are the dead eyes on the cartoon face.
  • Archiving the VODs.
]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Adam Atomic's Pico-8 renaissance.
  • Vampire vs. Pope Army
  • Still Kate.
  • Grass and flowers and touching them.
  • The bifurcation of Bluesky into Twitter 2 and Mastodon into Not Twitter.
  • The different kinds of people who tell you you're doing it wrong on different social media services.
  • Looking at Bluesky and realizing it's just like Twitter, and having a reaction to that realization.
  • Comparing your mood before using an internet service to your mood afterwards.
  • You're the cow, baby!
  • A story about living in a village of fewer than twenty people where nothing happens for thirty years.
  • Countervailing forces preventing your game design from becoming a worry stone.
  • Going outside and being bored until being bored stops feeling like an assault on all your senses.
  • Talking to your mates in the pub about your new socks.
  • Your mayonnaise manufacturing district.
  • YAGNI.
  • That time your ex-husband stole your knife and without a knife you can't cut food! Or ropes!
  • Needing medical help and asking the guy in your village who owns half an encyclopedia.
  • A miserable experience that is worth doing.
  • The big advantage of playing World of Warcraft in Hardcore mode.
  • WoW Classic and WoW Classic Classic.
  • A game about killing 40 rats.
  • The game for children that do annoying dances.
  • Who knows about causality?
  • The two year period when game designers played nothing but World of Warcraft.
  • Getting addicted to an MMO and never contributing anything to society ever again.
  • Entering into an activity with a miserly determination to not have fun.
  • What it takes to do a dungeon.
  • The spaces between the exciting parts.
  • Melting chocolate on top of parchment paper.
  • Melting chocolate with a hair dryer.
  • A Fraught Bark Experience.
  • Mouthfuls of raw flour.
  • Cake Batter Bark.
  • Rescuing seized chocolate.
  • Counterintuitive chocolate behavior.
  • Baking: It's Stupid.
  • Adding a tart cheese to cream of mushrooms soup.
  • Reading the poem as if you're not singing it in your head.
  • Asking the vicar to share a stir-fry.
  • Adding swear words to the Wallace and Gromit theme.
  • Leggy Desert Boy, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
  • The verse in Eleanor Rigby where they talk about cooking and eating dinner.
  • Words that rhyme with "pint."
  • Rhyming "pint" with "2019."
  • Inventing an OC named "blorange" to solve your rhyming problems.
  • Taking flavors and synthesizing new flavors.
  • Hammering on the "fun" button for forty or fifty years.
  • Having the one hit and not needing another hit.
  • Exploring a multidimensional design space and tapping on all the walls to see which ones are destructible.
  • Starting to make a game and finding out whether it's an easy game to make.
  • Langoliers.
  • Night Snacker.
  • Releasing games exclusively in the Topic Lords discord.
  • The art of turning your mortal vessel into a weapon.
  • Softmaxxing vs. Hardmaxxing.
  • Doing tongue exercises to sharpen your jaw.
  • The Wikipedia page with the most scare quotes on it.
  • Limb-lengthening surgery.
  • Dabbing: it's just extremely short-term looksmaxxing.
  • When two subcultures have two different words for the same idea.
  • Whether the Xes in "Looksmaxxing" are the kisses and the Os the hugs, or vice versa.
  • Whether the Xes in are the kisses and the Os are the hugs or whether the Xes are the dead eyes on the cartoon face.
  • Archiving the VODs.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Kate

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Adam Atomic's Pico-8 renaissance.
  • Vampire vs. Pope Army
  • Still Kate.
  • Grass and flowers and touching them.
  • The bifurcation of Bluesky into Twitter 2 and Mastodon into Not Twitter.
  • The different kinds of people who tell you you're doing it wrong on different social media services.
  • Looking at Bluesky and realizing it's just like Twitter, and having a reaction to that realization.
  • Comparing your mood before using an internet service to your mood afterwards.
  • You're the cow, baby!
  • A story about living in a village of fewer than twenty people where nothing happens for thirty years.
  • Countervailing forces preventing your game design from becoming a worry stone.
  • Going outside and being bored until being bored stops feeling like an assault on all your senses.
  • Talking to your mates in the pub about your new socks.
  • Your mayonnaise manufacturing district.
  • YAGNI.
  • That time your ex-husband stole your knife and without a knife you can't cut food! Or ropes!
  • Needing medical help and asking the guy in your village who owns half an encyclopedia.
  • A miserable experience that is worth doing.
  • The big advantage of playing World of Warcraft in Hardcore mode.
  • WoW Classic and WoW Classic Classic.
  • A game about killing 40 rats.
  • The game for children that do annoying dances.
  • Who knows about causality?
  • The two year period when game designers played nothing but World of Warcraft.
  • Getting addicted to an MMO and never contributing anything to society ever again.
  • Entering into an activity with a miserly determination to not have fun.
  • What it takes to do a dungeon.
  • The spaces between the exciting parts.
  • Melting chocolate on top of parchment paper.
  • Melting chocolate with a hair dryer.
  • A Fraught Bark Experience.
  • Mouthfuls of raw flour.
  • Cake Batter Bark.
  • Rescuing seized chocolate.
  • Counterintuitive chocolate behavior.
  • Baking: It's Stupid.
  • Adding a tart cheese to cream of mushrooms soup.
  • Reading the poem as if you're not singing it in your head.
  • Asking the vicar to share a stir-fry.
  • Adding swear words to the Wallace and Gromit theme.
  • Leggy Desert Boy, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
  • The verse in Eleanor Rigby where they talk about cooking and eating dinner.
  • Words that rhyme with "pint."
  • Rhyming "pint" with "2019."
  • Inventing an OC named "blorange" to solve your rhyming problems.
  • Taking flavors and synthesizing new flavors.
  • Hammering on the "fun" button for forty or fifty years.
  • Having the one hit and not needing another hit.
  • Exploring a multidimensional design space and tapping on all the walls to see which ones are destructible.
  • Starting to make a game and finding out whether it's an easy game to make.
  • Langoliers.
  • Night Snacker.
  • Releasing games exclusively in the Topic Lords discord.
  • The art of turning your mortal vessel into a weapon.
  • Softmaxxing vs. Hardmaxxing.
  • Doing tongue exercises to sharpen your jaw.
  • The Wikipedia page with the most scare quotes on it.
  • Limb-lengthening surgery.
  • Dabbing: it's just extremely short-term looksmaxxing.
  • When two subcultures have two different words for the same idea.
  • Whether the Xes in "Looksmaxxing" are the kisses and the Os the hugs, or vice versa.
  • Whether the Xes in are the kisses and the Os are the hugs or whether the Xes are the dead eyes on the cartoon face.
  • Archiving the VODs.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+VZ4LCURO ]]> Jim Stormdancer 276. The Yukon Territories Foodie Scene https://topiclords.com/the-yukon-territories-foodie-scene 600378fe-cdc0-4371-a802-18c10316d0c1 Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Remy and Abhi. We discuss why food tastes better outside of Canada, whether biased history is better, making a new game console when we haven't even finished the ones we already have, Puranaanooru, and IP you'd like to adapt. 1:08:21 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Why does food taste better outside of Canada?
  • Xander asks: "Biased history is better"
  • Is it fair to make a new game console when we haven't finished the ones we already have?
  • Puranaanooru
  • What's one IP you would like to adapt or work with?

Microtopics:

  • An image that allows you to attribute the text above it to the character in the image.
  • Knower. (The one who knows things.)
  • Losing your faith in God until you see the clip of Mario Kart showing 24 starting positions.
  • Visual novels with contextualized minigames.
  • Enjoying food more abroad.
  • Orbiting the United States.
  • Which state makes the best dosas.
  • The best Asian food ten minutes south of Vancouver.
  • Waves of immigration establishing generations of restaurants.
  • When there are finally enough immigrants in a city that one of them might open a restaurant to serve food to other immigrants.
  • Vancouver's restaurant licensing situation.
  • Vancouver's medallion system for food trucks.
  • No Good Pizza In My Back Yard!
  • NAID 96.
  • Jim's personal experience with Canadian food.
  • Whether it's what it sounds like.
  • Capturing the history of written language in your game.
  • The constant flux of our understanding of history.
  • Xander-biased history.
  • A very happy self-described sad boy.
  • Squeezing every last great game out of the Atari 2600 before creating a new game console.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 games on your desktop.
  • The golden era of video game development effort-to-return ratio.
  • New ways to make games look more expensive.
  • Outrageously high margins that you are not expected to fill.
  • Games that would still be fun if the graphics were worse.
  • Giving your PS5 to your dad so you can buy a PS5 Pro.
  • Brain hacking yourself.
  • PS5 Pro Max.
  • Realizing you don't need to upgrade your game console or in fact any consumer electronics ever again.
  • The Fairchild Channel F Pro, featuring S-Video.
  • The Dave the Diver revolution.
  • Failing enough that you decide to change.
  • Fortnite Money.
  • You can't read ancient Tamil?!
  • A small white lizard stuck to the wagon axle hub's spoke.
  • The purpose of art. (For people to examine it in 2000 years and find things out about you.)
  • Finding out what dead people thought.
  • Finding the time to be cruel.
  • Shocking Adventure Time moments.
  • Trusting what people write about themselves.
  • Finally understanding Xander Bias.
  • A love letter to Indian cinema.
  • Things Metroid Prime does to make you feel like you're inside a space suit.
  • Waiting for the Metroid IP to expire so you can make your Metroid fan game in your extreme old age.
  • Continuity nerds.
  • Reboot.
  • Vancouver-coded fictional cities.
  • Telus Storyhive.
  • An IP address you're dying to do.
  • Shouldn't Zelda and Sokoban be the same genre?
  • Atari 50 vs. UFO 50.
  • A murder mystery that you solve by playing video games.
  • Why the CBC is like that.
  • Brown Money.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Why does food taste better outside of Canada?
  • Xander asks: "Biased history is better"
  • Is it fair to make a new game console when we haven't finished the ones we already have?
  • Puranaanooru
  • What's one IP you would like to adapt or work with?

Microtopics:

  • An image that allows you to attribute the text above it to the character in the image.
  • Knower. (The one who knows things.)
  • Losing your faith in God until you see the clip of Mario Kart showing 24 starting positions.
  • Visual novels with contextualized minigames.
  • Enjoying food more abroad.
  • Orbiting the United States.
  • Which state makes the best dosas.
  • The best Asian food ten minutes south of Vancouver.
  • Waves of immigration establishing generations of restaurants.
  • When there are finally enough immigrants in a city that one of them might open a restaurant to serve food to other immigrants.
  • Vancouver's restaurant licensing situation.
  • Vancouver's medallion system for food trucks.
  • No Good Pizza In My Back Yard!
  • NAID 96.
  • Jim's personal experience with Canadian food.
  • Whether it's what it sounds like.
  • Capturing the history of written language in your game.
  • The constant flux of our understanding of history.
  • Xander-biased history.
  • A very happy self-described sad boy.
  • Squeezing every last great game out of the Atari 2600 before creating a new game console.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 games on your desktop.
  • The golden era of video game development effort-to-return ratio.
  • New ways to make games look more expensive.
  • Outrageously high margins that you are not expected to fill.
  • Games that would still be fun if the graphics were worse.
  • Giving your PS5 to your dad so you can buy a PS5 Pro.
  • Brain hacking yourself.
  • PS5 Pro Max.
  • Realizing you don't need to upgrade your game console or in fact any consumer electronics ever again.
  • The Fairchild Channel F Pro, featuring S-Video.
  • The Dave the Diver revolution.
  • Failing enough that you decide to change.
  • Fortnite Money.
  • You can't read ancient Tamil?!
  • A small white lizard stuck to the wagon axle hub's spoke.
  • The purpose of art. (For people to examine it in 2000 years and find things out about you.)
  • Finding out what dead people thought.
  • Finding the time to be cruel.
  • Shocking Adventure Time moments.
  • Trusting what people write about themselves.
  • Finally understanding Xander Bias.
  • A love letter to Indian cinema.
  • Things Metroid Prime does to make you feel like you're inside a space suit.
  • Waiting for the Metroid IP to expire so you can make your Metroid fan game in your extreme old age.
  • Continuity nerds.
  • Reboot.
  • Vancouver-coded fictional cities.
  • Telus Storyhive.
  • An IP address you're dying to do.
  • Shouldn't Zelda and Sokoban be the same genre?
  • Atari 50 vs. UFO 50.
  • A murder mystery that you solve by playing video games.
  • Why the CBC is like that.
  • Brown Money.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Why does food taste better outside of Canada?
  • Xander asks: "Biased history is better"
  • Is it fair to make a new game console when we haven't finished the ones we already have?
  • Puranaanooru
  • What's one IP you would like to adapt or work with?

Microtopics:

  • An image that allows you to attribute the text above it to the character in the image.
  • Knower. (The one who knows things.)
  • Losing your faith in God until you see the clip of Mario Kart showing 24 starting positions.
  • Visual novels with contextualized minigames.
  • Enjoying food more abroad.
  • Orbiting the United States.
  • Which state makes the best dosas.
  • The best Asian food ten minutes south of Vancouver.
  • Waves of immigration establishing generations of restaurants.
  • When there are finally enough immigrants in a city that one of them might open a restaurant to serve food to other immigrants.
  • Vancouver's restaurant licensing situation.
  • Vancouver's medallion system for food trucks.
  • No Good Pizza In My Back Yard!
  • NAID 96.
  • Jim's personal experience with Canadian food.
  • Whether it's what it sounds like.
  • Capturing the history of written language in your game.
  • The constant flux of our understanding of history.
  • Xander-biased history.
  • A very happy self-described sad boy.
  • Squeezing every last great game out of the Atari 2600 before creating a new game console.
  • Hoarding Pico-8 games on your desktop.
  • The golden era of video game development effort-to-return ratio.
  • New ways to make games look more expensive.
  • Outrageously high margins that you are not expected to fill.
  • Games that would still be fun if the graphics were worse.
  • Giving your PS5 to your dad so you can buy a PS5 Pro.
  • Brain hacking yourself.
  • PS5 Pro Max.
  • Realizing you don't need to upgrade your game console or in fact any consumer electronics ever again.
  • The Fairchild Channel F Pro, featuring S-Video.
  • The Dave the Diver revolution.
  • Failing enough that you decide to change.
  • Fortnite Money.
  • You can't read ancient Tamil?!
  • A small white lizard stuck to the wagon axle hub's spoke.
  • The purpose of art. (For people to examine it in 2000 years and find things out about you.)
  • Finding out what dead people thought.
  • Finding the time to be cruel.
  • Shocking Adventure Time moments.
  • Trusting what people write about themselves.
  • Finally understanding Xander Bias.
  • A love letter to Indian cinema.
  • Things Metroid Prime does to make you feel like you're inside a space suit.
  • Waiting for the Metroid IP to expire so you can make your Metroid fan game in your extreme old age.
  • Continuity nerds.
  • Reboot.
  • Vancouver-coded fictional cities.
  • Telus Storyhive.
  • An IP address you're dying to do.
  • Shouldn't Zelda and Sokoban be the same genre?
  • Atari 50 vs. UFO 50.
  • A murder mystery that you solve by playing video games.
  • Why the CBC is like that.
  • Brown Money.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+UlxykUQ8 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 275. Angora Semiconductors https://topiclords.com/angora-semiconductors a7b66878-06fc-4a2d-a1f1-c6c80c8cfdc7 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Chall. We discuss the Steam Deck, the puzzle of the Wikipedia "did you know" section, the neuroplasticity theory of why we dream, and She Needed a Hobby, by Maxx 1:05:31 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Comic Fury.
  • The most mediocre comic.
  • Mildreth of the Night.
  • Collage vs. ransom note.
  • A squirrel that finds a way to contact aliens.
  • Using Redbubble to host your webcomic.
  • Direct-to-cassette podcast episodes.
  • A co-op game that makes you raise your voice.
  • Overcooked but it's a train.
  • The part of the train that keeps you moist and warm.
  • How to run Pico-8 on the Steam Deck.
  • Not wanting to get a Steam Deck because you might drop it on your face.
  • How many liters a parrot is.
  • One of those massage beds where your face goes in a little hole and your hands dangle to reach the controls of the Steam Deck that's lying on the ground.
  • Waterproofing the Vive.
  • Games Done Pwick.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog looking like he ought to be a progress bar but he definitely isn't.
  • Emulators: you can do that!
  • Extremely intricate marble runs.
  • Retiring so you have enough time to configure the warping on your enormous loom.
  • The pleasant monotony of weaving vs. the meticulous craft of warping.
  • Tuning 1000 pianos at once.
  • Using a drop spindle to turn wool into thread.
  • Spinning wool straight from the rabbit.
  • Breeding for maximum stats on every axis.
  • Facts that are not particularly fun.
  • Seeing what the Wikipedia home page looks like on January 2nd, 2525.
  • Why is a mountain landscape?
  • Make-your-own-fun fun facts.
  • Who is this man? Why did he steal a horse?
  • Clicking on the nomination wizard.
  • Five Clicks to Jesus and other Wikipedia routing games.
  • Getting really into patterns and categories.
  • Shoehorning your favorite pop culture thing into everywhere you can fit it.
  • Mock Guffin.
  • Breaking down a story into a list of tropes.
  • Screen savers for the visual cortex.
  • Finding stories in the noise.
  • Different levels of the thing where you see patterns on the back of your eyelids.
  • How much can you see behind your eyes?
  • Running experiments on your own physiology.
  • New places on your body you haven't pressed yet.
  • Strobe lights for your ears.
  • Covering the speaker on your phone because you're too place to turn down the volume.
  • How text looks in your dreams.
  • Latching onto the idea of a story.
  • Tasting a lot of math problems before you go to sleep.
  • A gross crinkled dog texture.
  • Accidentally crocheting so much that you remake the universe.
  • The names of such unthinkable numbers.
  • A crochet pattern for an infinite Mobius strip.
  • Cool yarns from the local crafting store.
  • The ability to stick with a hobby.
  • Crocheting a functional internal combustion engine.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Comic Fury.
  • The most mediocre comic.
  • Mildreth of the Night.
  • Collage vs. ransom note.
  • A squirrel that finds a way to contact aliens.
  • Using Redbubble to host your webcomic.
  • Direct-to-cassette podcast episodes.
  • A co-op game that makes you raise your voice.
  • Overcooked but it's a train.
  • The part of the train that keeps you moist and warm.
  • How to run Pico-8 on the Steam Deck.
  • Not wanting to get a Steam Deck because you might drop it on your face.
  • How many liters a parrot is.
  • One of those massage beds where your face goes in a little hole and your hands dangle to reach the controls of the Steam Deck that's lying on the ground.
  • Waterproofing the Vive.
  • Games Done Pwick.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog looking like he ought to be a progress bar but he definitely isn't.
  • Emulators: you can do that!
  • Extremely intricate marble runs.
  • Retiring so you have enough time to configure the warping on your enormous loom.
  • The pleasant monotony of weaving vs. the meticulous craft of warping.
  • Tuning 1000 pianos at once.
  • Using a drop spindle to turn wool into thread.
  • Spinning wool straight from the rabbit.
  • Breeding for maximum stats on every axis.
  • Facts that are not particularly fun.
  • Seeing what the Wikipedia home page looks like on January 2nd, 2525.
  • Why is a mountain landscape?
  • Make-your-own-fun fun facts.
  • Who is this man? Why did he steal a horse?
  • Clicking on the nomination wizard.
  • Five Clicks to Jesus and other Wikipedia routing games.
  • Getting really into patterns and categories.
  • Shoehorning your favorite pop culture thing into everywhere you can fit it.
  • Mock Guffin.
  • Breaking down a story into a list of tropes.
  • Screen savers for the visual cortex.
  • Finding stories in the noise.
  • Different levels of the thing where you see patterns on the back of your eyelids.
  • How much can you see behind your eyes?
  • Running experiments on your own physiology.
  • New places on your body you haven't pressed yet.
  • Strobe lights for your ears.
  • Covering the speaker on your phone because you're too place to turn down the volume.
  • How text looks in your dreams.
  • Latching onto the idea of a story.
  • Tasting a lot of math problems before you go to sleep.
  • A gross crinkled dog texture.
  • Accidentally crocheting so much that you remake the universe.
  • The names of such unthinkable numbers.
  • A crochet pattern for an infinite Mobius strip.
  • Cool yarns from the local crafting store.
  • The ability to stick with a hobby.
  • Crocheting a functional internal combustion engine.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Comic Fury.
  • The most mediocre comic.
  • Mildreth of the Night.
  • Collage vs. ransom note.
  • A squirrel that finds a way to contact aliens.
  • Using Redbubble to host your webcomic.
  • Direct-to-cassette podcast episodes.
  • A co-op game that makes you raise your voice.
  • Overcooked but it's a train.
  • The part of the train that keeps you moist and warm.
  • How to run Pico-8 on the Steam Deck.
  • Not wanting to get a Steam Deck because you might drop it on your face.
  • How many liters a parrot is.
  • One of those massage beds where your face goes in a little hole and your hands dangle to reach the controls of the Steam Deck that's lying on the ground.
  • Waterproofing the Vive.
  • Games Done Pwick.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog looking like he ought to be a progress bar but he definitely isn't.
  • Emulators: you can do that!
  • Extremely intricate marble runs.
  • Retiring so you have enough time to configure the warping on your enormous loom.
  • The pleasant monotony of weaving vs. the meticulous craft of warping.
  • Tuning 1000 pianos at once.
  • Using a drop spindle to turn wool into thread.
  • Spinning wool straight from the rabbit.
  • Breeding for maximum stats on every axis.
  • Facts that are not particularly fun.
  • Seeing what the Wikipedia home page looks like on January 2nd, 2525.
  • Why is a mountain landscape?
  • Make-your-own-fun fun facts.
  • Who is this man? Why did he steal a horse?
  • Clicking on the nomination wizard.
  • Five Clicks to Jesus and other Wikipedia routing games.
  • Getting really into patterns and categories.
  • Shoehorning your favorite pop culture thing into everywhere you can fit it.
  • Mock Guffin.
  • Breaking down a story into a list of tropes.
  • Screen savers for the visual cortex.
  • Finding stories in the noise.
  • Different levels of the thing where you see patterns on the back of your eyelids.
  • How much can you see behind your eyes?
  • Running experiments on your own physiology.
  • New places on your body you haven't pressed yet.
  • Strobe lights for your ears.
  • Covering the speaker on your phone because you're too place to turn down the volume.
  • How text looks in your dreams.
  • Latching onto the idea of a story.
  • Tasting a lot of math problems before you go to sleep.
  • A gross crinkled dog texture.
  • Accidentally crocheting so much that you remake the universe.
  • The names of such unthinkable numbers.
  • A crochet pattern for an infinite Mobius strip.
  • Cool yarns from the local crafting store.
  • The ability to stick with a hobby.
  • Crocheting a functional internal combustion engine.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+vloxGo8T ]]> Jim Stormdancer 274. Samuel Beckett's Animal Crossing Letters https://topiclords.com/samuel-becketts-animal-crossing-letters dccf902d-0ca1-4cca-888a-36962ee0bd09 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Elena. We discuss potlock advent calendars, NES games that science says are bad, how animals read, this untitled breakup poem by ailbey 1:06:00 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Crispy Shrimp Balls.
  • What makes it Dim Sum?
  • Whether there's always a cart that you roll around.
  • Tapas Lords, a new ASMR podcast.
  • The Blade of Cutie Pants: a Very Cutie Christmas.
  • Christmas Dangerous Dave.
  • Here's a song. I'm going to scroll past that.
  • Stock footage of Godzilla attacks.
  • An album about making games in Kilk n Play.
  • Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream.
  • Jim's songs in the Hypnospace OST.
  • Knowing a lot of people just by hanging out and being entertaining.
  • Recognizing sounds by looking at them.
  • Tea and Jam Advent Calendars.
  • Tippy Tops.
  • 3D-printed animals with wiggly arms.
  • Taking the economics of Halloween and applying it to Christmas.
  • Stocking Stuffers Every Day.
  • 365-day Advent Calendars.
  • Santa with a Fanta.
  • Showing Home Alone to a kid who already loves setting up traps.
  • An Advent Calendar filled with traps.
  • Never playing board games but opening up the boxes and playing with the pieces.
  • Fake Winstons.
  • Getting 2.5 trinkets from each person.
  • Half-Lego, Half-Chocolate.
  • Why your favorite NES games are terrible.
  • Shipping a game that's no good but damned if it doesn't exist.
  • A Failure of Science.
  • Rare game or Rare game?
  • The Treasure Master walk cycle.
  • The worst NES games with the best soundtracks.
  • British developers succeeding on the Commodore 64 but failing on the NES because people are willing to pay 6 quid for the latest Rob Hubbard track, but not $50.
  • Your neighbor who had Big Nose Freaks Out.
  • Punching the clues.
  • Buying the 3D version of Urban Champion on purpose.
  • Trying to go back to Super Monkey Ball.
  • Nostalgically revisiting your best Super Monkey Ball replays.
  • Accidentally transposing two digits and now you have a Super Monkey Ball world record.
  • Making local copies of videos you want to continue to exist.
  • Recognizing when something works for someone else but not you.
  • Writing letters to your animal neighbors.
  • The seven criteria to judge a letter.
  • How to safely write a letter about VVVVVV to your Animal Crossing neighbor.
  • Roleplaying James Joyce in Animal Crossing.
  • Teaching Animal Crossing a slur and then returning the cartridge to Gamestop.
  • Deciding that it's okay if local news stations freak out.
  • Taking joy in extremely mundane activities.
  • How you spend your moments and how you feel about them.
  • Watching TV so that in several decades you can go to a bar and find out who's the same age as you.
  • Practicing love by trying to love yourself.
  • The breakup song from the Wedding Singer.
  • Corollaries of aphantasia.
  • Blind people watching TV.
  • Learning to draw by studying human anatomy and proportions in detail and imagining the body kinesthetics.
  • Looney Tunes artists making faces in the mirror.
  • Knowing how bones go.
  • The Bone Book.
  • That's Topics!
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Crispy Shrimp Balls.
  • What makes it Dim Sum?
  • Whether there's always a cart that you roll around.
  • Tapas Lords, a new ASMR podcast.
  • The Blade of Cutie Pants: a Very Cutie Christmas.
  • Christmas Dangerous Dave.
  • Here's a song. I'm going to scroll past that.
  • Stock footage of Godzilla attacks.
  • An album about making games in Kilk n Play.
  • Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream.
  • Jim's songs in the Hypnospace OST.
  • Knowing a lot of people just by hanging out and being entertaining.
  • Recognizing sounds by looking at them.
  • Tea and Jam Advent Calendars.
  • Tippy Tops.
  • 3D-printed animals with wiggly arms.
  • Taking the economics of Halloween and applying it to Christmas.
  • Stocking Stuffers Every Day.
  • 365-day Advent Calendars.
  • Santa with a Fanta.
  • Showing Home Alone to a kid who already loves setting up traps.
  • An Advent Calendar filled with traps.
  • Never playing board games but opening up the boxes and playing with the pieces.
  • Fake Winstons.
  • Getting 2.5 trinkets from each person.
  • Half-Lego, Half-Chocolate.
  • Why your favorite NES games are terrible.
  • Shipping a game that's no good but damned if it doesn't exist.
  • A Failure of Science.
  • Rare game or Rare game?
  • The Treasure Master walk cycle.
  • The worst NES games with the best soundtracks.
  • British developers succeeding on the Commodore 64 but failing on the NES because people are willing to pay 6 quid for the latest Rob Hubbard track, but not $50.
  • Your neighbor who had Big Nose Freaks Out.
  • Punching the clues.
  • Buying the 3D version of Urban Champion on purpose.
  • Trying to go back to Super Monkey Ball.
  • Nostalgically revisiting your best Super Monkey Ball replays.
  • Accidentally transposing two digits and now you have a Super Monkey Ball world record.
  • Making local copies of videos you want to continue to exist.
  • Recognizing when something works for someone else but not you.
  • Writing letters to your animal neighbors.
  • The seven criteria to judge a letter.
  • How to safely write a letter about VVVVVV to your Animal Crossing neighbor.
  • Roleplaying James Joyce in Animal Crossing.
  • Teaching Animal Crossing a slur and then returning the cartridge to Gamestop.
  • Deciding that it's okay if local news stations freak out.
  • Taking joy in extremely mundane activities.
  • How you spend your moments and how you feel about them.
  • Watching TV so that in several decades you can go to a bar and find out who's the same age as you.
  • Practicing love by trying to love yourself.
  • The breakup song from the Wedding Singer.
  • Corollaries of aphantasia.
  • Blind people watching TV.
  • Learning to draw by studying human anatomy and proportions in detail and imagining the body kinesthetics.
  • Looney Tunes artists making faces in the mirror.
  • Knowing how bones go.
  • The Bone Book.
  • That's Topics!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Crispy Shrimp Balls.
  • What makes it Dim Sum?
  • Whether there's always a cart that you roll around.
  • Tapas Lords, a new ASMR podcast.
  • The Blade of Cutie Pants: a Very Cutie Christmas.
  • Christmas Dangerous Dave.
  • Here's a song. I'm going to scroll past that.
  • Stock footage of Godzilla attacks.
  • An album about making games in Kilk n Play.
  • Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream.
  • Jim's songs in the Hypnospace OST.
  • Knowing a lot of people just by hanging out and being entertaining.
  • Recognizing sounds by looking at them.
  • Tea and Jam Advent Calendars.
  • Tippy Tops.
  • 3D-printed animals with wiggly arms.
  • Taking the economics of Halloween and applying it to Christmas.
  • Stocking Stuffers Every Day.
  • 365-day Advent Calendars.
  • Santa with a Fanta.
  • Showing Home Alone to a kid who already loves setting up traps.
  • An Advent Calendar filled with traps.
  • Never playing board games but opening up the boxes and playing with the pieces.
  • Fake Winstons.
  • Getting 2.5 trinkets from each person.
  • Half-Lego, Half-Chocolate.
  • Why your favorite NES games are terrible.
  • Shipping a game that's no good but damned if it doesn't exist.
  • A Failure of Science.
  • Rare game or Rare game?
  • The Treasure Master walk cycle.
  • The worst NES games with the best soundtracks.
  • British developers succeeding on the Commodore 64 but failing on the NES because people are willing to pay 6 quid for the latest Rob Hubbard track, but not $50.
  • Your neighbor who had Big Nose Freaks Out.
  • Punching the clues.
  • Buying the 3D version of Urban Champion on purpose.
  • Trying to go back to Super Monkey Ball.
  • Nostalgically revisiting your best Super Monkey Ball replays.
  • Accidentally transposing two digits and now you have a Super Monkey Ball world record.
  • Making local copies of videos you want to continue to exist.
  • Recognizing when something works for someone else but not you.
  • Writing letters to your animal neighbors.
  • The seven criteria to judge a letter.
  • How to safely write a letter about VVVVVV to your Animal Crossing neighbor.
  • Roleplaying James Joyce in Animal Crossing.
  • Teaching Animal Crossing a slur and then returning the cartridge to Gamestop.
  • Deciding that it's okay if local news stations freak out.
  • Taking joy in extremely mundane activities.
  • How you spend your moments and how you feel about them.
  • Watching TV so that in several decades you can go to a bar and find out who's the same age as you.
  • Practicing love by trying to love yourself.
  • The breakup song from the Wedding Singer.
  • Corollaries of aphantasia.
  • Blind people watching TV.
  • Learning to draw by studying human anatomy and proportions in detail and imagining the body kinesthetics.
  • Looney Tunes artists making faces in the mirror.
  • Knowing how bones go.
  • The Bone Book.
  • That's Topics!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+bkAh7yzF ]]> Jim Stormdancer 273. Why Isn't Dracula Good at Anything? https://topiclords.com/why-isnt-dracula-good-at-anything 591d8ea2-099b-4bb1-a29f-20208d171baf Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Esper and RT-55J. We discuss poorly-constructed memes, making ZZT games in 2024, porting Mario 64 to the Commodore 64. "I like to think that in another universe," by ailbey, what counts as a plausible Dracula, and introducing licensed characters into a game that has previously been itself. 1:02:47 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Muppet Christmas Carol.
  • Gradations of Michael Caine oldness.
  • The Museum of ZZT.
  • Wizened ZZT Wizards.
  • Taking a common idea and altering it in an interesting way.
  • Why do plays still exist?
  • Making up an audience to applaud you.
  • Rehearsing a conversation in a low-oxygen environment.
  • A guy walking around touching things in the world and flavor text appears.
  • The ZZT aspect ratio problem.
  • Sneaking into the office at night and playing ZZT in silent mode so you don't bother the janitor.
  • 8-way movement in ZZT.
  • Reasons to stick with a certain set of constraints.
  • WeaveZZT.
  • Making a deck builder RPG in ZZT.
  • The safety and romance of a good set of constraints.
  • The King in Yellow Borders.
  • Oktrollberfest.
  • A found object horror game built in a fake ZZT engine.
  • Wario doing a ground pound and breaking the Youtube interface around the video.
  • Reading like 200 pages of Problem Sleuth and never getting around to Homestuck.
  • A program you can install to make your computer look like it's still running Windows Vista, and another you can install to make it feel like Obama is still president.
  • Porting ZZT to the Commodore 64.
  • An economy of people enjoying themselves.
  • Porting Mario 64 to ZZT and ending up on the front page of Planet Quake.
  • Tux Racer.
  • Scoping your game just big enough for people to see screen shots and get excited, but small enough that it's still finishable.
  • Mario 64's British Platformer Energy.
  • Whether Argonaut or Rare was a bigger influence on the design of Mario 64.
  • 3D Construction Kit for the Commodore 64.
  • Trying to build a scene in PovRay.
  • What iPad kids were like in the mid-90s.
  • Whether or not Eve ate the best possible apple.
  • Plausible and implausible vampires.
  • Ahistorical vampire analysis.
  • Why there's chicken on the Streets of Rage
  • What the Antediluveans got up to.
  • The 14 million year war for Cybertron.
  • What did you eat for 14 million years?
  • Subsisting on pure unfiltered Sparklemotion.
  • Two robots punching each other in the face for millennia.
  • Nike sponsorships in Magic the Gathering.
  • A roadmap of Magic the Gathering Crossovers.
  • The Guitar Hero game where you could make Kurt Cobain perform Run DMC.
  • Rated E for Explicit.
  • A PubG with fort building mechanics.
  • Winning your first game of Fortnite and retiring forever.
  • The Super Smash Instinct.
  • Monetizing a child's insatiable gambling instincts.
  • Playing a video game and worrying about the developer's immortal soul.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Muppet Christmas Carol.
  • Gradations of Michael Caine oldness.
  • The Museum of ZZT.
  • Wizened ZZT Wizards.
  • Taking a common idea and altering it in an interesting way.
  • Why do plays still exist?
  • Making up an audience to applaud you.
  • Rehearsing a conversation in a low-oxygen environment.
  • A guy walking around touching things in the world and flavor text appears.
  • The ZZT aspect ratio problem.
  • Sneaking into the office at night and playing ZZT in silent mode so you don't bother the janitor.
  • 8-way movement in ZZT.
  • Reasons to stick with a certain set of constraints.
  • WeaveZZT.
  • Making a deck builder RPG in ZZT.
  • The safety and romance of a good set of constraints.
  • The King in Yellow Borders.
  • Oktrollberfest.
  • A found object horror game built in a fake ZZT engine.
  • Wario doing a ground pound and breaking the Youtube interface around the video.
  • Reading like 200 pages of Problem Sleuth and never getting around to Homestuck.
  • A program you can install to make your computer look like it's still running Windows Vista, and another you can install to make it feel like Obama is still president.
  • Porting ZZT to the Commodore 64.
  • An economy of people enjoying themselves.
  • Porting Mario 64 to ZZT and ending up on the front page of Planet Quake.
  • Tux Racer.
  • Scoping your game just big enough for people to see screen shots and get excited, but small enough that it's still finishable.
  • Mario 64's British Platformer Energy.
  • Whether Argonaut or Rare was a bigger influence on the design of Mario 64.
  • 3D Construction Kit for the Commodore 64.
  • Trying to build a scene in PovRay.
  • What iPad kids were like in the mid-90s.
  • Whether or not Eve ate the best possible apple.
  • Plausible and implausible vampires.
  • Ahistorical vampire analysis.
  • Why there's chicken on the Streets of Rage
  • What the Antediluveans got up to.
  • The 14 million year war for Cybertron.
  • What did you eat for 14 million years?
  • Subsisting on pure unfiltered Sparklemotion.
  • Two robots punching each other in the face for millennia.
  • Nike sponsorships in Magic the Gathering.
  • A roadmap of Magic the Gathering Crossovers.
  • The Guitar Hero game where you could make Kurt Cobain perform Run DMC.
  • Rated E for Explicit.
  • A PubG with fort building mechanics.
  • Winning your first game of Fortnite and retiring forever.
  • The Super Smash Instinct.
  • Monetizing a child's insatiable gambling instincts.
  • Playing a video game and worrying about the developer's immortal soul.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Muppet Christmas Carol.
  • Gradations of Michael Caine oldness.
  • The Museum of ZZT.
  • Wizened ZZT Wizards.
  • Taking a common idea and altering it in an interesting way.
  • Why do plays still exist?
  • Making up an audience to applaud you.
  • Rehearsing a conversation in a low-oxygen environment.
  • A guy walking around touching things in the world and flavor text appears.
  • The ZZT aspect ratio problem.
  • Sneaking into the office at night and playing ZZT in silent mode so you don't bother the janitor.
  • 8-way movement in ZZT.
  • Reasons to stick with a certain set of constraints.
  • WeaveZZT.
  • Making a deck builder RPG in ZZT.
  • The safety and romance of a good set of constraints.
  • The King in Yellow Borders.
  • Oktrollberfest.
  • A found object horror game built in a fake ZZT engine.
  • Wario doing a ground pound and breaking the Youtube interface around the video.
  • Reading like 200 pages of Problem Sleuth and never getting around to Homestuck.
  • A program you can install to make your computer look like it's still running Windows Vista, and another you can install to make it feel like Obama is still president.
  • Porting ZZT to the Commodore 64.
  • An economy of people enjoying themselves.
  • Porting Mario 64 to ZZT and ending up on the front page of Planet Quake.
  • Tux Racer.
  • Scoping your game just big enough for people to see screen shots and get excited, but small enough that it's still finishable.
  • Mario 64's British Platformer Energy.
  • Whether Argonaut or Rare was a bigger influence on the design of Mario 64.
  • 3D Construction Kit for the Commodore 64.
  • Trying to build a scene in PovRay.
  • What iPad kids were like in the mid-90s.
  • Whether or not Eve ate the best possible apple.
  • Plausible and implausible vampires.
  • Ahistorical vampire analysis.
  • Why there's chicken on the Streets of Rage
  • What the Antediluveans got up to.
  • The 14 million year war for Cybertron.
  • What did you eat for 14 million years?
  • Subsisting on pure unfiltered Sparklemotion.
  • Two robots punching each other in the face for millennia.
  • Nike sponsorships in Magic the Gathering.
  • A roadmap of Magic the Gathering Crossovers.
  • The Guitar Hero game where you could make Kurt Cobain perform Run DMC.
  • Rated E for Explicit.
  • A PubG with fort building mechanics.
  • Winning your first game of Fortnite and retiring forever.
  • The Super Smash Instinct.
  • Monetizing a child's insatiable gambling instincts.
  • Playing a video game and worrying about the developer's immortal soul.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+yvg38Q89 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 272. Beakknifed in Busch Gardens https://topiclords.com/beakknifed-in-busch-gardens 13336607-d526-42d1-8e56-7a7845bcd308 Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ryan and Cort. We discuss meat-flavored potato chips, the Pico-8 tracker, using "Add or Remove Programs" to add a program, Tommy C, and Advent Calendars. 1:06:56 true Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Cort

Topics:

  • Is it possible to make a "meat flavored" potato chip that's not disgusting.
  • Meandering Pico-8 tracker jabbering
  • Do you think anyone has ever used the "Add or Remove Programs" interface to add a program?
  • Tommy C
  • Advent calendars are just tiny bulk-rate loot crates

Microtopics:

  • Ryan Ike Audio on Instagram.
  • How to make music and have balance in your life.
  • If there's nothing to fail at, what are you bad at?
  • Stand Elsewhere, an Oregon Trail-like.
  • Converting 50s pop songs to chunky four channel chip tunes.
  • The Pico-8 Splore database.
  • Asking a friend to make music for your PiCoSteveMo game, and having to explain what a PiCoSteveMo is, then Pico-8, trackers, music, sound, air, matter, and existence itself.
  • Potatoed Chips.
  • Romanian Beef Bolognese Flavored Potato Chips.
  • Abuela's All-Day Braised Carnitas potato chips.
  • Hate-buying a terrible flavor potato chips over and over so you can make everybody you know taste them.
  • Raw Hamburger flavored potato chips that moo when you eat them.
  • The Doritos Brain-hack.
  • Looking at the box of Frosted Mini-Wheats with a shrimp on the box and thinking "that's a little shrimpy"
  • Cool American Doritos.
  • Eat the cool. They knew the risks.
  • A bowl of M&Ms with a single Skittle in it.
  • Fresh Meat Potato Chips.
  • Walking into the Frito-Lay factory, dangling your jaw open and waiting for come what may.
  • All Night Nippon Shredded Abuela's Braised Carnitas.
  • The Taki's One-Chip Challenge.
  • Inviting all your friends over to try the new Strawberry Mochi Dill Pickle potato chips.
  • Explaining to your daughter's friends' parents that we're going to give your children tablets I got on the Internet and then we're going to eat lots of food and it's going to taste really weird. The FDA doesn't allow you to put this in food but I need you to dissolve this on your tongue.
  • Par-boiling your soft palate in lemon juice because it tastes so amazing.
  • Reprogramming your tongue to remix your palate.
  • What to do if you love both music and spreadsheets.
  • Art tools that make your tummy feel icky.
  • Mr. Lee by the Bobbettes.
  • What trackers are good at.
  • An extremely Bojangles tracker configuration.
  • Trying to do Math Rock in the Pico-8 tracker.
  • Triggering patterns 0 through 7 as instruments.
  • Whether the Add or Remove Programs interface can add a program.
  • Windows Sandbox.
  • Jacking your whole life up but your Windows desktop is pristine.
  • Getting a burner desktop for write-ins.
  • Inventing a guy named Dampiel and getting mad at him even years later.
  • Classic Dampy.
  • Renaming your game to doom.exe and suddenly Nvidia cards run it way better.
  • Putting a comment in your shader saying "Dear Nvidia, please make this shader look rad."
  • The Valve guy refusing to tell you how the math is wrong.
  • A selection of gags, hand movements and facial expressions.
  • Dying onstage while the audience applauds.
  • Feigning death so often as part of your comedy act so when you really die during your routine it'll be hilarious.
  • Death: just a bad deal all around.
  • Not my birth mom, but my robo-mom.
  • Having a death so weird that even as an extremely minor celebrity you end up on TMZ.
  • Doing extensive R&D so that you can somehow be murdered by a flamingo.
  • A bloodied flamingo wearing Ryan Ike's glasses.
  • Walking through the zoo looking for opportunities for environmental storytelling.
  • Accidentally doing an immaculate 360 Christ Air and then dying on impact.
  • Thinking of one funny scenario a month.
  • A treat that's busting the seams of the Advent Calendar door.
  • A sack of little handmade animal ornaments.
  • The Joy of Mastery.
  • Empty Advent Calendars.
  • Going shopping for used candy after Halloween.
  • Terrible Novelty Potato Chip of the Day.
  • One big Advent calendar the size of a barn door with 365 doors in it.
  • The Mayan Advent Calendar.
  • Automats.
  • Wheel of Fortune except you're assembling a wheel and not a phrase.
  • Spin the wheel, make a deal!
  • The first podcast of the rest of your life.
]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Cort

Topics:

  • Is it possible to make a "meat flavored" potato chip that's not disgusting.
  • Meandering Pico-8 tracker jabbering
  • Do you think anyone has ever used the "Add or Remove Programs" interface to add a program?
  • Tommy C
  • Advent calendars are just tiny bulk-rate loot crates

Microtopics:

  • Ryan Ike Audio on Instagram.
  • How to make music and have balance in your life.
  • If there's nothing to fail at, what are you bad at?
  • Stand Elsewhere, an Oregon Trail-like.
  • Converting 50s pop songs to chunky four channel chip tunes.
  • The Pico-8 Splore database.
  • Asking a friend to make music for your PiCoSteveMo game, and having to explain what a PiCoSteveMo is, then Pico-8, trackers, music, sound, air, matter, and existence itself.
  • Potatoed Chips.
  • Romanian Beef Bolognese Flavored Potato Chips.
  • Abuela's All-Day Braised Carnitas potato chips.
  • Hate-buying a terrible flavor potato chips over and over so you can make everybody you know taste them.
  • Raw Hamburger flavored potato chips that moo when you eat them.
  • The Doritos Brain-hack.
  • Looking at the box of Frosted Mini-Wheats with a shrimp on the box and thinking "that's a little shrimpy"
  • Cool American Doritos.
  • Eat the cool. They knew the risks.
  • A bowl of M&Ms with a single Skittle in it.
  • Fresh Meat Potato Chips.
  • Walking into the Frito-Lay factory, dangling your jaw open and waiting for come what may.
  • All Night Nippon Shredded Abuela's Braised Carnitas.
  • The Taki's One-Chip Challenge.
  • Inviting all your friends over to try the new Strawberry Mochi Dill Pickle potato chips.
  • Explaining to your daughter's friends' parents that we're going to give your children tablets I got on the Internet and then we're going to eat lots of food and it's going to taste really weird. The FDA doesn't allow you to put this in food but I need you to dissolve this on your tongue.
  • Par-boiling your soft palate in lemon juice because it tastes so amazing.
  • Reprogramming your tongue to remix your palate.
  • What to do if you love both music and spreadsheets.
  • Art tools that make your tummy feel icky.
  • Mr. Lee by the Bobbettes.
  • What trackers are good at.
  • An extremely Bojangles tracker configuration.
  • Trying to do Math Rock in the Pico-8 tracker.
  • Triggering patterns 0 through 7 as instruments.
  • Whether the Add or Remove Programs interface can add a program.
  • Windows Sandbox.
  • Jacking your whole life up but your Windows desktop is pristine.
  • Getting a burner desktop for write-ins.
  • Inventing a guy named Dampiel and getting mad at him even years later.
  • Classic Dampy.
  • Renaming your game to doom.exe and suddenly Nvidia cards run it way better.
  • Putting a comment in your shader saying "Dear Nvidia, please make this shader look rad."
  • The Valve guy refusing to tell you how the math is wrong.
  • A selection of gags, hand movements and facial expressions.
  • Dying onstage while the audience applauds.
  • Feigning death so often as part of your comedy act so when you really die during your routine it'll be hilarious.
  • Death: just a bad deal all around.
  • Not my birth mom, but my robo-mom.
  • Having a death so weird that even as an extremely minor celebrity you end up on TMZ.
  • Doing extensive R&D so that you can somehow be murdered by a flamingo.
  • A bloodied flamingo wearing Ryan Ike's glasses.
  • Walking through the zoo looking for opportunities for environmental storytelling.
  • Accidentally doing an immaculate 360 Christ Air and then dying on impact.
  • Thinking of one funny scenario a month.
  • A treat that's busting the seams of the Advent Calendar door.
  • A sack of little handmade animal ornaments.
  • The Joy of Mastery.
  • Empty Advent Calendars.
  • Going shopping for used candy after Halloween.
  • Terrible Novelty Potato Chip of the Day.
  • One big Advent calendar the size of a barn door with 365 doors in it.
  • The Mayan Advent Calendar.
  • Automats.
  • Wheel of Fortune except you're assembling a wheel and not a phrase.
  • Spin the wheel, make a deal!
  • The first podcast of the rest of your life.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Cort

Topics:

  • Is it possible to make a "meat flavored" potato chip that's not disgusting.
  • Meandering Pico-8 tracker jabbering
  • Do you think anyone has ever used the "Add or Remove Programs" interface to add a program?
  • Tommy C
  • Advent calendars are just tiny bulk-rate loot crates

Microtopics:

  • Ryan Ike Audio on Instagram.
  • How to make music and have balance in your life.
  • If there's nothing to fail at, what are you bad at?
  • Stand Elsewhere, an Oregon Trail-like.
  • Converting 50s pop songs to chunky four channel chip tunes.
  • The Pico-8 Splore database.
  • Asking a friend to make music for your PiCoSteveMo game, and having to explain what a PiCoSteveMo is, then Pico-8, trackers, music, sound, air, matter, and existence itself.
  • Potatoed Chips.
  • Romanian Beef Bolognese Flavored Potato Chips.
  • Abuela's All-Day Braised Carnitas potato chips.
  • Hate-buying a terrible flavor potato chips over and over so you can make everybody you know taste them.
  • Raw Hamburger flavored potato chips that moo when you eat them.
  • The Doritos Brain-hack.
  • Looking at the box of Frosted Mini-Wheats with a shrimp on the box and thinking "that's a little shrimpy"
  • Cool American Doritos.
  • Eat the cool. They knew the risks.
  • A bowl of M&Ms with a single Skittle in it.
  • Fresh Meat Potato Chips.
  • Walking into the Frito-Lay factory, dangling your jaw open and waiting for come what may.
  • All Night Nippon Shredded Abuela's Braised Carnitas.
  • The Taki's One-Chip Challenge.
  • Inviting all your friends over to try the new Strawberry Mochi Dill Pickle potato chips.
  • Explaining to your daughter's friends' parents that we're going to give your children tablets I got on the Internet and then we're going to eat lots of food and it's going to taste really weird. The FDA doesn't allow you to put this in food but I need you to dissolve this on your tongue.
  • Par-boiling your soft palate in lemon juice because it tastes so amazing.
  • Reprogramming your tongue to remix your palate.
  • What to do if you love both music and spreadsheets.
  • Art tools that make your tummy feel icky.
  • Mr. Lee by the Bobbettes.
  • What trackers are good at.
  • An extremely Bojangles tracker configuration.
  • Trying to do Math Rock in the Pico-8 tracker.
  • Triggering patterns 0 through 7 as instruments.
  • Whether the Add or Remove Programs interface can add a program.
  • Windows Sandbox.
  • Jacking your whole life up but your Windows desktop is pristine.
  • Getting a burner desktop for write-ins.
  • Inventing a guy named Dampiel and getting mad at him even years later.
  • Classic Dampy.
  • Renaming your game to doom.exe and suddenly Nvidia cards run it way better.
  • Putting a comment in your shader saying "Dear Nvidia, please make this shader look rad."
  • The Valve guy refusing to tell you how the math is wrong.
  • A selection of gags, hand movements and facial expressions.
  • Dying onstage while the audience applauds.
  • Feigning death so often as part of your comedy act so when you really die during your routine it'll be hilarious.
  • Death: just a bad deal all around.
  • Not my birth mom, but my robo-mom.
  • Having a death so weird that even as an extremely minor celebrity you end up on TMZ.
  • Doing extensive R&D so that you can somehow be murdered by a flamingo.
  • A bloodied flamingo wearing Ryan Ike's glasses.
  • Walking through the zoo looking for opportunities for environmental storytelling.
  • Accidentally doing an immaculate 360 Christ Air and then dying on impact.
  • Thinking of one funny scenario a month.
  • A treat that's busting the seams of the Advent Calendar door.
  • A sack of little handmade animal ornaments.
  • The Joy of Mastery.
  • Empty Advent Calendars.
  • Going shopping for used candy after Halloween.
  • Terrible Novelty Potato Chip of the Day.
  • One big Advent calendar the size of a barn door with 365 doors in it.
  • The Mayan Advent Calendar.
  • Automats.
  • Wheel of Fortune except you're assembling a wheel and not a phrase.
  • Spin the wheel, make a deal!
  • The first podcast of the rest of your life.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+h3i1z8R5 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 271. Ego Death Mario https://topiclords.com/ego-death-mario 5ab296ba-0d99-481e-b5f2-943237427c31 Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq, Stevie, Avery. We discuss Dr. Mario's specialty, boutique sardines, Street Sharks (and the lies about them), and the aftermath of PiCoSteveMo. 1:11:59 true Lords

  • Tyriq
  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

  • What is Dr. Mario's specialty?
  • Boutique sardines
  • Street Sharks (and the lies about them)
  • PiCoSteveMo is over! (as of this recording)

Microtopics:

  • Throwing out an idea like a plate of spaghetti, or a grenade.
  • Odd Object.
  • Piggy-back dual plugs.
  • Now! That's What I Call Avery Burke, Vol. VII.
  • Jason Shiga.
  • Older kids who are into roughhousing and watching shark movies.
  • Audio Issues Because of Dog.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear cardboard boxes rubbing against each other.
  • Two hours of an attractive woman scraping her thumbnail on a microphone.
  • Dr. Mario telling someone that they only have-a four months to live-a.
  • The weird forehead mirror that old-timey doctors wear.
  • The opinions of someone who's eaten cat food.
  • Grandma barging in while you're eating dog food.
  • Flintstones Cannibalism Vitamins.
  • Barney's PTSD after the Neanderthal Wars.
  • Wacky Races, the original MCU.
  • Dr. Mario's pill pusherside hustle causing the opioid crisis.
  • Ego Death Mario microdosing the germs in the pill bottle who transcend to the great pill bottle in the sky.
  • Coming up with the conceit that your band is enemies with sea mammals and making all future audiences hate you.
  • Three adorable sardines rowing a boat shaped like a dragon.
  • An octopus tentacle that looks like a serial port or a 2x6 spot light.
  • The animal that you're eating depicted in cartoon form as cheering you on.
  • An anthropomorphic ginger root eating a ginger candy.
  • Single-serving black characters.
  • Eating a fish and finding an entire spine.
  • The weirdest bone to find.
  • Free floating animals gathering into a colony and turning into a face.
  • The most popular fish sauce in ancient Rome.
  • Sealing a whale hand in a trash can with duct tape for two years until it starts leaking and your roommate has to help you dispose of it wearing a hazmat suit.
  • Tucking a whale bone under your trench coat and sneaking out of the museum.
  • Famous whale disposal techniqus.
  • Fishwife, fish life!
  • Not knowing about the preexisting work that your favorite cartoon is in conversation with because you're a kid and don't know anything.
  • Slammu, Ripster and Streex.
  • Michelangelo, Leonardo, DiCaprio, and Don Angelo.
  • Vin Diesel being very excited about the Street Sharks.
  • IP Homeopathy.
  • Sexy Mummy Costume.
  • Using mumnies as train fuel because they are so plentiful.
  • You can't get Mummy Brown any more because of Woke.
  • Who has and hasn't heard of Tommy Tallarico.
  • A toy that lets you shoot at the TV screen during the interactive parts of Captain Power.
  • Fresh off the PiCoSteveMo boat.
  • Graph going up emoji.
  • Lots of different skill levels going on in there.
  • Aardvarks and anteaters.
  • A three hour celebration of weird things that games can be.
  • Look Who's The Shining Two!
  • Why the Sokoban puzzle in Ocarina of Time sucks.
  • Puzzles vs. situations.
  • Tony and the Tony Mechanic.
  • The Thought Leader of the Thinky Games Community.
]]> Lords

  • Tyriq
  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

  • What is Dr. Mario's specialty?
  • Boutique sardines
  • Street Sharks (and the lies about them)
  • PiCoSteveMo is over! (as of this recording)

Microtopics:

  • Throwing out an idea like a plate of spaghetti, or a grenade.
  • Odd Object.
  • Piggy-back dual plugs.
  • Now! That's What I Call Avery Burke, Vol. VII.
  • Jason Shiga.
  • Older kids who are into roughhousing and watching shark movies.
  • Audio Issues Because of Dog.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear cardboard boxes rubbing against each other.
  • Two hours of an attractive woman scraping her thumbnail on a microphone.
  • Dr. Mario telling someone that they only have-a four months to live-a.
  • The weird forehead mirror that old-timey doctors wear.
  • The opinions of someone who's eaten cat food.
  • Grandma barging in while you're eating dog food.
  • Flintstones Cannibalism Vitamins.
  • Barney's PTSD after the Neanderthal Wars.
  • Wacky Races, the original MCU.
  • Dr. Mario's pill pusherside hustle causing the opioid crisis.
  • Ego Death Mario microdosing the germs in the pill bottle who transcend to the great pill bottle in the sky.
  • Coming up with the conceit that your band is enemies with sea mammals and making all future audiences hate you.
  • Three adorable sardines rowing a boat shaped like a dragon.
  • An octopus tentacle that looks like a serial port or a 2x6 spot light.
  • The animal that you're eating depicted in cartoon form as cheering you on.
  • An anthropomorphic ginger root eating a ginger candy.
  • Single-serving black characters.
  • Eating a fish and finding an entire spine.
  • The weirdest bone to find.
  • Free floating animals gathering into a colony and turning into a face.
  • The most popular fish sauce in ancient Rome.
  • Sealing a whale hand in a trash can with duct tape for two years until it starts leaking and your roommate has to help you dispose of it wearing a hazmat suit.
  • Tucking a whale bone under your trench coat and sneaking out of the museum.
  • Famous whale disposal techniqus.
  • Fishwife, fish life!
  • Not knowing about the preexisting work that your favorite cartoon is in conversation with because you're a kid and don't know anything.
  • Slammu, Ripster and Streex.
  • Michelangelo, Leonardo, DiCaprio, and Don Angelo.
  • Vin Diesel being very excited about the Street Sharks.
  • IP Homeopathy.
  • Sexy Mummy Costume.
  • Using mumnies as train fuel because they are so plentiful.
  • You can't get Mummy Brown any more because of Woke.
  • Who has and hasn't heard of Tommy Tallarico.
  • A toy that lets you shoot at the TV screen during the interactive parts of Captain Power.
  • Fresh off the PiCoSteveMo boat.
  • Graph going up emoji.
  • Lots of different skill levels going on in there.
  • Aardvarks and anteaters.
  • A three hour celebration of weird things that games can be.
  • Look Who's The Shining Two!
  • Why the Sokoban puzzle in Ocarina of Time sucks.
  • Puzzles vs. situations.
  • Tony and the Tony Mechanic.
  • The Thought Leader of the Thinky Games Community.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

  • Tyriq
  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

  • What is Dr. Mario's specialty?
  • Boutique sardines
  • Street Sharks (and the lies about them)
  • PiCoSteveMo is over! (as of this recording)

Microtopics:

  • Throwing out an idea like a plate of spaghetti, or a grenade.
  • Odd Object.
  • Piggy-back dual plugs.
  • Now! That's What I Call Avery Burke, Vol. VII.
  • Jason Shiga.
  • Older kids who are into roughhousing and watching shark movies.
  • Audio Issues Because of Dog.
  • The only place on the Internet you can hear cardboard boxes rubbing against each other.
  • Two hours of an attractive woman scraping her thumbnail on a microphone.
  • Dr. Mario telling someone that they only have-a four months to live-a.
  • The weird forehead mirror that old-timey doctors wear.
  • The opinions of someone who's eaten cat food.
  • Grandma barging in while you're eating dog food.
  • Flintstones Cannibalism Vitamins.
  • Barney's PTSD after the Neanderthal Wars.
  • Wacky Races, the original MCU.
  • Dr. Mario's pill pusherside hustle causing the opioid crisis.
  • Ego Death Mario microdosing the germs in the pill bottle who transcend to the great pill bottle in the sky.
  • Coming up with the conceit that your band is enemies with sea mammals and making all future audiences hate you.
  • Three adorable sardines rowing a boat shaped like a dragon.
  • An octopus tentacle that looks like a serial port or a 2x6 spot light.
  • The animal that you're eating depicted in cartoon form as cheering you on.
  • An anthropomorphic ginger root eating a ginger candy.
  • Single-serving black characters.
  • Eating a fish and finding an entire spine.
  • The weirdest bone to find.
  • Free floating animals gathering into a colony and turning into a face.
  • The most popular fish sauce in ancient Rome.
  • Sealing a whale hand in a trash can with duct tape for two years until it starts leaking and your roommate has to help you dispose of it wearing a hazmat suit.
  • Tucking a whale bone under your trench coat and sneaking out of the museum.
  • Famous whale disposal techniqus.
  • Fishwife, fish life!
  • Not knowing about the preexisting work that your favorite cartoon is in conversation with because you're a kid and don't know anything.
  • Slammu, Ripster and Streex.
  • Michelangelo, Leonardo, DiCaprio, and Don Angelo.
  • Vin Diesel being very excited about the Street Sharks.
  • IP Homeopathy.
  • Sexy Mummy Costume.
  • Using mumnies as train fuel because they are so plentiful.
  • You can't get Mummy Brown any more because of Woke.
  • Who has and hasn't heard of Tommy Tallarico.
  • A toy that lets you shoot at the TV screen during the interactive parts of Captain Power.
  • Fresh off the PiCoSteveMo boat.
  • Graph going up emoji.
  • Lots of different skill levels going on in there.
  • Aardvarks and anteaters.
  • A three hour celebration of weird things that games can be.
  • Look Who's The Shining Two!
  • Why the Sokoban puzzle in Ocarina of Time sucks.
  • Puzzles vs. situations.
  • Tony and the Tony Mechanic.
  • The Thought Leader of the Thinky Games Community.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+nQCTg08J ]]> Jim Stormdancer 270. B-Roll of the Big Bang https://topiclords.com/b-roll-of-the-big-bang c7dea7bf-4656-4c01-8cb8-fc7a69a67943 Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Hallie. We discuss making AI drunk, how Star Wars being bought Disney is basically the same thing as the Roman Empire converting to Christianity, Electromagnetism, Super Bon Bon according to Google search, using flow theory and Kubler Ross grief to drive learning systems, and animals you want to pet, but cannot. 1:08:27 true Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Hallie

Topics:

  • Making AI drunk
  • How Star Wars being bought Disney is basically the same thing as the Roman Empire converting to Christianity
  • Electromagnetism
  • Super Bon Bon (according to Google search)
  • Using flow theory and Kubler Ross grief to drive learning systems
  • Animals you want to pet, but cannot.

Microtopics:

  • A Game Called Anomaly.
  • A tarot-based GM-less storytelling game about a sinister organization investigating a supernatural The KGB (not that one)
  • Deliberately lo-fi neural nets.
  • Real to less-real name sliders.
  • What Jamden Ovenson is up to these days.
  • Cranking the tipsy slider all way up.
  • anomaly.
  • Things humans can do with new tools.
  • Setting desired and undesired objectives for your learning designers.
  • Learning to speak as many languages as possible so that Godzilla does not rise from the briny deep.
  • Refusing to let the AI drive the bus.
  • A very big json dump.
  • The Mac Mini in your closet that runs your witch's familiars.
  • Things that are obvious to you but not to anyone else.
  • Cool apocryphal acts, bro.
  • Getting into Christ before it was cool.
  • Decanonizing anything that doesn't serve your power interests.
  • Bible/Star Wars crossover fan fiction.
  • Once you eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, forever will it dominate your destiny.
  • Metals that can be turned into a magnet.
  • Where to even start with spin?
  • Whether protons are physical objects.
  • The language of perceiving the world.
  • Reading a poem about quantum physics.
  • Finally understanding the mathematics of love so you can ditch the love poetry and find the best lovers in the math department.
  • Which types of quark are super effective against other types of quark.
  • Why they call it electromagnetism.
  • But what about the Bullet Galaxies?
  • Weakly-interactive massive particles, or WIMPs.
  • Another particle that we thought up.
  • Microphones not picking up your tinnitus.
  • Extremely slow and old neutrinos.
  • Cosmic Microwave Background Average Frame of Reference.
  • The Soul Coughing cadence.
  • A poem, but it's performed in a certain rhythm. Some white guy should invent that and take credit for it.
  • Song Meanings Blog Dot Com.
  • Helping drive exploration of new ideas.
  • Making a name generator so bad that nobody uses it more than once.
  • Patterns and responses that characterize human behavior.
  • Grief as a mechanism to address overfitting in the human learning model.
  • The Parable of the Spandrel.
  • Possibilities that are more probable than Godzilla having eaten your house.
  • Depression as a way to just sit there.
  • Automatons with anxiety.
  • Entering random Game Genie codes into your neural net.
  • Wanting to pet a service dog because he's the best boy.
  • Service dogs having their own service dogs, recursively all the way down.
  • A chicken named Regular Expressions, or Reggie for short.
  • Digging in anything that looks diggable.
  • Being desperately confused by objects that you can see through but not walk through.
  • Ways to not get tricked by yourself or others.
]]> Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Hallie

Topics:

  • Making AI drunk
  • How Star Wars being bought Disney is basically the same thing as the Roman Empire converting to Christianity
  • Electromagnetism
  • Super Bon Bon (according to Google search)
  • Using flow theory and Kubler Ross grief to drive learning systems
  • Animals you want to pet, but cannot.

Microtopics:

  • A Game Called Anomaly.
  • A tarot-based GM-less storytelling game about a sinister organization investigating a supernatural The KGB (not that one)
  • Deliberately lo-fi neural nets.
  • Real to less-real name sliders.
  • What Jamden Ovenson is up to these days.
  • Cranking the tipsy slider all way up.
  • anomaly.
  • Things humans can do with new tools.
  • Setting desired and undesired objectives for your learning designers.
  • Learning to speak as many languages as possible so that Godzilla does not rise from the briny deep.
  • Refusing to let the AI drive the bus.
  • A very big json dump.
  • The Mac Mini in your closet that runs your witch's familiars.
  • Things that are obvious to you but not to anyone else.
  • Cool apocryphal acts, bro.
  • Getting into Christ before it was cool.
  • Decanonizing anything that doesn't serve your power interests.
  • Bible/Star Wars crossover fan fiction.
  • Once you eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, forever will it dominate your destiny.
  • Metals that can be turned into a magnet.
  • Where to even start with spin?
  • Whether protons are physical objects.
  • The language of perceiving the world.
  • Reading a poem about quantum physics.
  • Finally understanding the mathematics of love so you can ditch the love poetry and find the best lovers in the math department.
  • Which types of quark are super effective against other types of quark.
  • Why they call it electromagnetism.
  • But what about the Bullet Galaxies?
  • Weakly-interactive massive particles, or WIMPs.
  • Another particle that we thought up.
  • Microphones not picking up your tinnitus.
  • Extremely slow and old neutrinos.
  • Cosmic Microwave Background Average Frame of Reference.
  • The Soul Coughing cadence.
  • A poem, but it's performed in a certain rhythm. Some white guy should invent that and take credit for it.
  • Song Meanings Blog Dot Com.
  • Helping drive exploration of new ideas.
  • Making a name generator so bad that nobody uses it more than once.
  • Patterns and responses that characterize human behavior.
  • Grief as a mechanism to address overfitting in the human learning model.
  • The Parable of the Spandrel.
  • Possibilities that are more probable than Godzilla having eaten your house.
  • Depression as a way to just sit there.
  • Automatons with anxiety.
  • Entering random Game Genie codes into your neural net.
  • Wanting to pet a service dog because he's the best boy.
  • Service dogs having their own service dogs, recursively all the way down.
  • A chicken named Regular Expressions, or Reggie for short.
  • Digging in anything that looks diggable.
  • Being desperately confused by objects that you can see through but not walk through.
  • Ways to not get tricked by yourself or others.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Hallie

Topics:

  • Making AI drunk
  • How Star Wars being bought Disney is basically the same thing as the Roman Empire converting to Christianity
  • Electromagnetism
  • Super Bon Bon (according to Google search)
  • Using flow theory and Kubler Ross grief to drive learning systems
  • Animals you want to pet, but cannot.

Microtopics:

  • A Game Called Anomaly.
  • A tarot-based GM-less storytelling game about a sinister organization investigating a supernatural The KGB (not that one)
  • Deliberately lo-fi neural nets.
  • Real to less-real name sliders.
  • What Jamden Ovenson is up to these days.
  • Cranking the tipsy slider all way up.
  • anomaly.
  • Things humans can do with new tools.
  • Setting desired and undesired objectives for your learning designers.
  • Learning to speak as many languages as possible so that Godzilla does not rise from the briny deep.
  • Refusing to let the AI drive the bus.
  • A very big json dump.
  • The Mac Mini in your closet that runs your witch's familiars.
  • Things that are obvious to you but not to anyone else.
  • Cool apocryphal acts, bro.
  • Getting into Christ before it was cool.
  • Decanonizing anything that doesn't serve your power interests.
  • Bible/Star Wars crossover fan fiction.
  • Once you eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, forever will it dominate your destiny.
  • Metals that can be turned into a magnet.
  • Where to even start with spin?
  • Whether protons are physical objects.
  • The language of perceiving the world.
  • Reading a poem about quantum physics.
  • Finally understanding the mathematics of love so you can ditch the love poetry and find the best lovers in the math department.
  • Which types of quark are super effective against other types of quark.
  • Why they call it electromagnetism.
  • But what about the Bullet Galaxies?
  • Weakly-interactive massive particles, or WIMPs.
  • Another particle that we thought up.
  • Microphones not picking up your tinnitus.
  • Extremely slow and old neutrinos.
  • Cosmic Microwave Background Average Frame of Reference.
  • The Soul Coughing cadence.
  • A poem, but it's performed in a certain rhythm. Some white guy should invent that and take credit for it.
  • Song Meanings Blog Dot Com.
  • Helping drive exploration of new ideas.
  • Making a name generator so bad that nobody uses it more than once.
  • Patterns and responses that characterize human behavior.
  • Grief as a mechanism to address overfitting in the human learning model.
  • The Parable of the Spandrel.
  • Possibilities that are more probable than Godzilla having eaten your house.
  • Depression as a way to just sit there.
  • Automatons with anxiety.
  • Entering random Game Genie codes into your neural net.
  • Wanting to pet a service dog because he's the best boy.
  • Service dogs having their own service dogs, recursively all the way down.
  • A chicken named Regular Expressions, or Reggie for short.
  • Digging in anything that looks diggable.
  • Being desperately confused by objects that you can see through but not walk through.
  • Ways to not get tricked by yourself or others.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+b1kL_0BU ]]> Jim Stormdancer 269. Wet-Ass Planetoid https://topiclords.com/wet-ass-planetoid 5ccb4ff1-2d93-4e3f-808b-8e8a9531d56d Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Alex. We discuss trying to superficially familiarize yourself with every country, the log burner fan, drilling this chair for ancient water, Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, by Kenneth Koch, Boichik Bagels, and the boxfish skeleton. 1:00:09 true Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Saya Gray.
  • Least-favorite UFO 50 games.
  • Treating the city you live in as if you're a tourist.
  • Going to obscure corners of parking lots.
  • A way to have an adventure in real life.
  • The tiny squishy seal that's no longer in your back pocket.
  • Web sites that are nothing but quizzes.
  • Trying to name every country.
  • This Sporcle quiz's opinion about which disputed territories count as countries.
  • Feeling more worldly after you memorize the names of every country.
  • Learning katakana and then being annoyed when signs do katakana wrong.
  • The curse of perfect-pitch.
  • Corrupted Pitch.
  • Tuning your whole band to the same out of tune guitar.
  • Hearing sounds in your head but only the sounds you're also hearing with your ears.
  • State.gov hosting PDF reports of the US government's opinion of every country.
  • Dear diary, today I did a cool fishing trade with Norway.
  • The Four Guineas.
  • The Place Across the Woods.
  • A giant CPU heat sink in gunmetal black sitting on top of your wood burning stove.
  • Devices powered by ambient temperature differentials.
  • The spinning thing on the roof that looks like a macaroon.
  • Putting googly eyes on your turbine roof vents.
  • Whether Stirling Engines are useful for anything other than a demonstration of the principles of the Stirling Engine.
  • Fluids moving through spaces of different sizes.
  • Injection molded hollow chunky boys.
  • Extremely mundane time capsules.
  • A Chair for Scientists.
  • A giant plastic-encased garbage ravioli.
  • Entire ecosystems that have existed without light for thousands of years.
  • Your FEMA-approved disaster preparedness chair.
  • Sorting all the water molecules on earth from newest to oldest.
  • Artists' depictions of the Hadean Earth.
  • The biggest wettest comet in the universe.
  • Don Quixote, the sopping wet comet.
  • Free sharps, only used once!
  • Writing a piece for prepared guitar after your kid fills the guitar with crayons.
  • Unprepared Pianos.
  • Juicy cold March wind.
  • A fair-use parody.
  • AI analysis of poetry that completely misses the point.
  • Editing Wikipedia to say that Lil Jon went to Harvard.
  • List of Rivers in Togo.
  • What a Specific Guy!
  • Registering an account to vandalize Wikipedia every few months for years.
  • Supermarket bagels.
  • Boiling round bread in water with crustaceans from the Bronx.
  • Making your own water to make coffee with.
  • Where to get food-grade lye.
  • Pastrami lox.
  • Seahorse skeletons.
  • Every Platonic Solid Has a Fish.
  • Where babies breathe from.
  • Fish without ribcages.
  • Caltrops arranged into a fish.
  • Using a pufferfish skeleton as a fidget toy.
  • The pufferfish at the center of our solar system.
  • The kind of decoration you see in a lobster joint.
  • Tropes of the open ocean.
  • The guy preventing you from being able to find search results for the Atari game Toobin'.
  • The loudest drinks in the world.
  • The Toobin' zone in LEGO Dimensions.
  • Chucking whole unopened cans of beer from your inner tube.
]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Saya Gray.
  • Least-favorite UFO 50 games.
  • Treating the city you live in as if you're a tourist.
  • Going to obscure corners of parking lots.
  • A way to have an adventure in real life.
  • The tiny squishy seal that's no longer in your back pocket.
  • Web sites that are nothing but quizzes.
  • Trying to name every country.
  • This Sporcle quiz's opinion about which disputed territories count as countries.
  • Feeling more worldly after you memorize the names of every country.
  • Learning katakana and then being annoyed when signs do katakana wrong.
  • The curse of perfect-pitch.
  • Corrupted Pitch.
  • Tuning your whole band to the same out of tune guitar.
  • Hearing sounds in your head but only the sounds you're also hearing with your ears.
  • State.gov hosting PDF reports of the US government's opinion of every country.
  • Dear diary, today I did a cool fishing trade with Norway.
  • The Four Guineas.
  • The Place Across the Woods.
  • A giant CPU heat sink in gunmetal black sitting on top of your wood burning stove.
  • Devices powered by ambient temperature differentials.
  • The spinning thing on the roof that looks like a macaroon.
  • Putting googly eyes on your turbine roof vents.
  • Whether Stirling Engines are useful for anything other than a demonstration of the principles of the Stirling Engine.
  • Fluids moving through spaces of different sizes.
  • Injection molded hollow chunky boys.
  • Extremely mundane time capsules.
  • A Chair for Scientists.
  • A giant plastic-encased garbage ravioli.
  • Entire ecosystems that have existed without light for thousands of years.
  • Your FEMA-approved disaster preparedness chair.
  • Sorting all the water molecules on earth from newest to oldest.
  • Artists' depictions of the Hadean Earth.
  • The biggest wettest comet in the universe.
  • Don Quixote, the sopping wet comet.
  • Free sharps, only used once!
  • Writing a piece for prepared guitar after your kid fills the guitar with crayons.
  • Unprepared Pianos.
  • Juicy cold March wind.
  • A fair-use parody.
  • AI analysis of poetry that completely misses the point.
  • Editing Wikipedia to say that Lil Jon went to Harvard.
  • List of Rivers in Togo.
  • What a Specific Guy!
  • Registering an account to vandalize Wikipedia every few months for years.
  • Supermarket bagels.
  • Boiling round bread in water with crustaceans from the Bronx.
  • Making your own water to make coffee with.
  • Where to get food-grade lye.
  • Pastrami lox.
  • Seahorse skeletons.
  • Every Platonic Solid Has a Fish.
  • Where babies breathe from.
  • Fish without ribcages.
  • Caltrops arranged into a fish.
  • Using a pufferfish skeleton as a fidget toy.
  • The pufferfish at the center of our solar system.
  • The kind of decoration you see in a lobster joint.
  • Tropes of the open ocean.
  • The guy preventing you from being able to find search results for the Atari game Toobin'.
  • The loudest drinks in the world.
  • The Toobin' zone in LEGO Dimensions.
  • Chucking whole unopened cans of beer from your inner tube.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Saya Gray.
  • Least-favorite UFO 50 games.
  • Treating the city you live in as if you're a tourist.
  • Going to obscure corners of parking lots.
  • A way to have an adventure in real life.
  • The tiny squishy seal that's no longer in your back pocket.
  • Web sites that are nothing but quizzes.
  • Trying to name every country.
  • This Sporcle quiz's opinion about which disputed territories count as countries.
  • Feeling more worldly after you memorize the names of every country.
  • Learning katakana and then being annoyed when signs do katakana wrong.
  • The curse of perfect-pitch.
  • Corrupted Pitch.
  • Tuning your whole band to the same out of tune guitar.
  • Hearing sounds in your head but only the sounds you're also hearing with your ears.
  • State.gov hosting PDF reports of the US government's opinion of every country.
  • Dear diary, today I did a cool fishing trade with Norway.
  • The Four Guineas.
  • The Place Across the Woods.
  • A giant CPU heat sink in gunmetal black sitting on top of your wood burning stove.
  • Devices powered by ambient temperature differentials.
  • The spinning thing on the roof that looks like a macaroon.
  • Putting googly eyes on your turbine roof vents.
  • Whether Stirling Engines are useful for anything other than a demonstration of the principles of the Stirling Engine.
  • Fluids moving through spaces of different sizes.
  • Injection molded hollow chunky boys.
  • Extremely mundane time capsules.
  • A Chair for Scientists.
  • A giant plastic-encased garbage ravioli.
  • Entire ecosystems that have existed without light for thousands of years.
  • Your FEMA-approved disaster preparedness chair.
  • Sorting all the water molecules on earth from newest to oldest.
  • Artists' depictions of the Hadean Earth.
  • The biggest wettest comet in the universe.
  • Don Quixote, the sopping wet comet.
  • Free sharps, only used once!
  • Writing a piece for prepared guitar after your kid fills the guitar with crayons.
  • Unprepared Pianos.
  • Juicy cold March wind.
  • A fair-use parody.
  • AI analysis of poetry that completely misses the point.
  • Editing Wikipedia to say that Lil Jon went to Harvard.
  • List of Rivers in Togo.
  • What a Specific Guy!
  • Registering an account to vandalize Wikipedia every few months for years.
  • Supermarket bagels.
  • Boiling round bread in water with crustaceans from the Bronx.
  • Making your own water to make coffee with.
  • Where to get food-grade lye.
  • Pastrami lox.
  • Seahorse skeletons.
  • Every Platonic Solid Has a Fish.
  • Where babies breathe from.
  • Fish without ribcages.
  • Caltrops arranged into a fish.
  • Using a pufferfish skeleton as a fidget toy.
  • The pufferfish at the center of our solar system.
  • The kind of decoration you see in a lobster joint.
  • Tropes of the open ocean.
  • The guy preventing you from being able to find search results for the Atari game Toobin'.
  • The loudest drinks in the world.
  • The Toobin' zone in LEGO Dimensions.
  • Chucking whole unopened cans of beer from your inner tube.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+FCYa5gaw ]]> Jim Stormdancer 268. Puzzles for Puzzle Enjoyers https://topiclords.com/puzzles-for-puzzle-enjoyers 978f79ad-f33f-4833-87ef-97ab89de65f0 Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: James and Kev. We discuss copyparty, egg punk vs. chain punk, going geocaching three times, Septic Tanks, certain kinds of trash you don't see any more, and mosquito bites. 59:29 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multiple recurring lords.
  • Going back to an earlier episode to listen to the plugs.
  • Agreeing to a copy party without knowing what it is.
  • Multi-part RARs.
  • Putting together educational material for your hypothetical younger self.
  • Manually extracting files over a physical USB connection.
  • Org-mode.
  • A collection of ogg vorbis music.
  • Your personal learning mind-map for learning how to draw.
  • The bottom end of expertise.
  • Two contrasting branches of the punk community.
  • Nerdy; dancey; influenced by Devo.
  • Musical genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • How old you have to be to know about My Bloody Valentine.
  • Finally getting your act together and installing the right app and logging into the right web site.
  • Finding excuses to be more engaged with nature.
  • Having conversations, like you do with friends in a park.
  • Finding an Altoids tin where you would expect to find a bunch of spider webs.
  • Walking through half-nature in near-complete darkness.
  • Climbing down a rocky embankment in near-complete darkness with your phone in one hand.
  • Caches getting muggled.
  • Null Island.
  • Realizing that you're about to go on the bad kind of adventure.
  • A passing wizard complimenting you on your ironic orc-detecting sword.
  • A stuffed BB-8 that you use for photo opportunities.
  • Leaving one line of your toilet poem blank in case you think of a good rhyme for "too."
  • The kind of poem you put in your bathroom.
  • A pithy way to say what to put in the toilet.
  • Telling the restaurant's poet laureate that he really nailed that septic tank poem.
  • Using a black marker to redact the line about cigarette butts from your poem.
  • A book that reads like browsing Reddit.
  • Taking your mind off of your butt for five minutes.
  • Whether Law and Order was ever an accurate depiction of police procedure.
  • How they convicted or didn't convict the latest perp.
  • Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
  • TV Guides lying on the street.
  • The genre of children's craft made from newspaper.
  • Archaeologists finding a thousand year old USB drive and finding a bunch of PDFs and videos about how to learn to draw.
  • FAT16 vs. FAT32.
  • Multi-volume ARJ files.
  • Putting together dual-purpose CDs for punk banks.
  • CD-ROMs shaped like a business card.
  • Inserting mini-CDs into a slot loading CD drive.
  • What it takes to make an indie Gamecube game.
  • Side-factoids about Luigi's Mansion.
  • Luigi's Mansion counting the volume of dust you've vacuumed through the whole playthrough.
  • The new Duck Tales game modeling the physics of every treasure you can collect so you can swim in them.
  • Mosquito activity in the midwest.
  • Hanging out around mosquito predators.
  • Mosquitos waking up for the gloaming and then going back to bed.
  • Finding the one high-altitude spot in the Panhandle to avoid the mosquitos.
  • Feeling bad about killng mosquitos after playing Hollow Knight.
  • Your favorite mind control force.
  • Golfers hitting that ball to make the number go down when they could just play less and it'd stay at 0 forever.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multiple recurring lords.
  • Going back to an earlier episode to listen to the plugs.
  • Agreeing to a copy party without knowing what it is.
  • Multi-part RARs.
  • Putting together educational material for your hypothetical younger self.
  • Manually extracting files over a physical USB connection.
  • Org-mode.
  • A collection of ogg vorbis music.
  • Your personal learning mind-map for learning how to draw.
  • The bottom end of expertise.
  • Two contrasting branches of the punk community.
  • Nerdy; dancey; influenced by Devo.
  • Musical genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • How old you have to be to know about My Bloody Valentine.
  • Finally getting your act together and installing the right app and logging into the right web site.
  • Finding excuses to be more engaged with nature.
  • Having conversations, like you do with friends in a park.
  • Finding an Altoids tin where you would expect to find a bunch of spider webs.
  • Walking through half-nature in near-complete darkness.
  • Climbing down a rocky embankment in near-complete darkness with your phone in one hand.
  • Caches getting muggled.
  • Null Island.
  • Realizing that you're about to go on the bad kind of adventure.
  • A passing wizard complimenting you on your ironic orc-detecting sword.
  • A stuffed BB-8 that you use for photo opportunities.
  • Leaving one line of your toilet poem blank in case you think of a good rhyme for "too."
  • The kind of poem you put in your bathroom.
  • A pithy way to say what to put in the toilet.
  • Telling the restaurant's poet laureate that he really nailed that septic tank poem.
  • Using a black marker to redact the line about cigarette butts from your poem.
  • A book that reads like browsing Reddit.
  • Taking your mind off of your butt for five minutes.
  • Whether Law and Order was ever an accurate depiction of police procedure.
  • How they convicted or didn't convict the latest perp.
  • Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
  • TV Guides lying on the street.
  • The genre of children's craft made from newspaper.
  • Archaeologists finding a thousand year old USB drive and finding a bunch of PDFs and videos about how to learn to draw.
  • FAT16 vs. FAT32.
  • Multi-volume ARJ files.
  • Putting together dual-purpose CDs for punk banks.
  • CD-ROMs shaped like a business card.
  • Inserting mini-CDs into a slot loading CD drive.
  • What it takes to make an indie Gamecube game.
  • Side-factoids about Luigi's Mansion.
  • Luigi's Mansion counting the volume of dust you've vacuumed through the whole playthrough.
  • The new Duck Tales game modeling the physics of every treasure you can collect so you can swim in them.
  • Mosquito activity in the midwest.
  • Hanging out around mosquito predators.
  • Mosquitos waking up for the gloaming and then going back to bed.
  • Finding the one high-altitude spot in the Panhandle to avoid the mosquitos.
  • Feeling bad about killng mosquitos after playing Hollow Knight.
  • Your favorite mind control force.
  • Golfers hitting that ball to make the number go down when they could just play less and it'd stay at 0 forever.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Multiple recurring lords.
  • Going back to an earlier episode to listen to the plugs.
  • Agreeing to a copy party without knowing what it is.
  • Multi-part RARs.
  • Putting together educational material for your hypothetical younger self.
  • Manually extracting files over a physical USB connection.
  • Org-mode.
  • A collection of ogg vorbis music.
  • Your personal learning mind-map for learning how to draw.
  • The bottom end of expertise.
  • Two contrasting branches of the punk community.
  • Nerdy; dancey; influenced by Devo.
  • Musical genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • genres refusing to converge no matter how close they get.
  • How old you have to be to know about My Bloody Valentine.
  • Finally getting your act together and installing the right app and logging into the right web site.
  • Finding excuses to be more engaged with nature.
  • Having conversations, like you do with friends in a park.
  • Finding an Altoids tin where you would expect to find a bunch of spider webs.
  • Walking through half-nature in near-complete darkness.
  • Climbing down a rocky embankment in near-complete darkness with your phone in one hand.
  • Caches getting muggled.
  • Null Island.
  • Realizing that you're about to go on the bad kind of adventure.
  • A passing wizard complimenting you on your ironic orc-detecting sword.
  • A stuffed BB-8 that you use for photo opportunities.
  • Leaving one line of your toilet poem blank in case you think of a good rhyme for "too."
  • The kind of poem you put in your bathroom.
  • A pithy way to say what to put in the toilet.
  • Telling the restaurant's poet laureate that he really nailed that septic tank poem.
  • Using a black marker to redact the line about cigarette butts from your poem.
  • A book that reads like browsing Reddit.
  • Taking your mind off of your butt for five minutes.
  • Whether Law and Order was ever an accurate depiction of police procedure.
  • How they convicted or didn't convict the latest perp.
  • Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
  • TV Guides lying on the street.
  • The genre of children's craft made from newspaper.
  • Archaeologists finding a thousand year old USB drive and finding a bunch of PDFs and videos about how to learn to draw.
  • FAT16 vs. FAT32.
  • Multi-volume ARJ files.
  • Putting together dual-purpose CDs for punk banks.
  • CD-ROMs shaped like a business card.
  • Inserting mini-CDs into a slot loading CD drive.
  • What it takes to make an indie Gamecube game.
  • Side-factoids about Luigi's Mansion.
  • Luigi's Mansion counting the volume of dust you've vacuumed through the whole playthrough.
  • The new Duck Tales game modeling the physics of every treasure you can collect so you can swim in them.
  • Mosquito activity in the midwest.
  • Hanging out around mosquito predators.
  • Mosquitos waking up for the gloaming and then going back to bed.
  • Finding the one high-altitude spot in the Panhandle to avoid the mosquitos.
  • Feeling bad about killng mosquitos after playing Hollow Knight.
  • Your favorite mind control force.
  • Golfers hitting that ball to make the number go down when they could just play less and it'd stay at 0 forever.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+mfrsqHvi ]]> Jim Stormdancer 267. Unburying the Duck https://topiclords.com/unburying-the-duck 4a86a57b-e574-4fcc-b9ca-b8a4c20cd52f Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Erica. We discuss Golden Owl Pre-Post-Mortem, one year of having twins, notepad's support for alternative line endings, and Goodnight Moon (plus Goodnight Dune) 1:13:18 true Lords:

  • John
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The waiting list to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • What goes on the lords-only channel.
  • The first rule of being a lord.
  • It's the end of the show somewhere in the world.
  • Frog Fractions Royalty.
  • Topic Lords Con East.
  • Choosing pairs of lords.
  • What lords have been on the show least recently.
  • Mystery with a B.
  • Responsibility to the lords.
  • ARG goings-on.
  • Maze of Games.
  • Rubber hose ARG solving
  • Digging up the golden owl and replacing it with a duck.
  • The minimum number of golden owls you are allowed to cast in France.
  • The History of the Owl Stuff.
  • Commemorating your love of the Golden Owl by purchasing this commemorative Golden Owl.
  • The Mystery of the Golden Owl that nobody wanted solved.
  • It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
  • Going and burying a duck
  • Unburying the Duck and putting the Owl back.
  • Looking through the Heart of France.
  • Another cursed treasure hunt in the can.
  • Ancient alternatives to zip files.
  • Re-scoping your puzzle hunt on the fly.
  • Telling twins apart using phrenology.
  • Twin identification strategies.
  • Let me see your flecks!
  • Checking your placental mammals for belly buttons.
  • Platypodes.
  • Jock twin/nerd twin.
  • Having children as a way to practice solving problems together.
  • Who forgot to take a nap today? (Everyone on the show.)
  • Flailing limbs kicking your bedmate all night.
  • Rocking your kid to sleep and then depositing them in the crib like Indy swapping out the golden idol.
  • How to teach babies to sleep.
  • Wearing children until the children no longer tolerate it.
  • A good selection of kid-friendly music.
  • A guy with a soothing British voice saying interesting things for ten minutes.
  • How much coffee to give a six year old right before bed.
  • Waiting for your kid to realize that when it's 1am he doesn't have to ask you if he can watch TV.
  • Just show me the byte order marker!
  • Adding tabs to Notepad.
  • Everyone agreeing to go back to WordStar.
  • What software developers do once a program is finished and perfect.
  • Loading CSV files into R.
  • Accidentally updating Excel.
  • The kind of person who is passionate about the latest cutting edge version of all software, who works in tech and is in charge of all update systems.
  • Adobe Premiere updates that ruin your team's entire workflow.
  • Why JWZ is no longer rich.
  • Seeing all the trailing spaces at the end of the line.
  • Jobs that require you to be able to distinguish between a tab character and the equivalent number of spaces.
  • How Unity handles upgrades and versioning.
  • The 75th anniversary of Goodnight Moon.
  • Why the New York Times's list of most borrowed children's library books of all time doesn't contain Goodnight Moon.
  • When Goodnight Moon says "Goodnight Nobody" and you immediately assume that the old lady died.
  • The calming effect of going over an inventory of really nice soothing things.
  • The Margaret Wise Brown ouevre.
  • Goodnight Dune.
  • Good night, shai-hulud bursting out of the dune.
  • Good night, Bene Gesserit witch whispering "they tried and died."
  • Too much of every character giving their internal monologue in italics.
  • Virginia Facebook's extremely cheap antiques.
  • Floating in the No-Room.
]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The waiting list to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • What goes on the lords-only channel.
  • The first rule of being a lord.
  • It's the end of the show somewhere in the world.
  • Frog Fractions Royalty.
  • Topic Lords Con East.
  • Choosing pairs of lords.
  • What lords have been on the show least recently.
  • Mystery with a B.
  • Responsibility to the lords.
  • ARG goings-on.
  • Maze of Games.
  • Rubber hose ARG solving
  • Digging up the golden owl and replacing it with a duck.
  • The minimum number of golden owls you are allowed to cast in France.
  • The History of the Owl Stuff.
  • Commemorating your love of the Golden Owl by purchasing this commemorative Golden Owl.
  • The Mystery of the Golden Owl that nobody wanted solved.
  • It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
  • Going and burying a duck
  • Unburying the Duck and putting the Owl back.
  • Looking through the Heart of France.
  • Another cursed treasure hunt in the can.
  • Ancient alternatives to zip files.
  • Re-scoping your puzzle hunt on the fly.
  • Telling twins apart using phrenology.
  • Twin identification strategies.
  • Let me see your flecks!
  • Checking your placental mammals for belly buttons.
  • Platypodes.
  • Jock twin/nerd twin.
  • Having children as a way to practice solving problems together.
  • Who forgot to take a nap today? (Everyone on the show.)
  • Flailing limbs kicking your bedmate all night.
  • Rocking your kid to sleep and then depositing them in the crib like Indy swapping out the golden idol.
  • How to teach babies to sleep.
  • Wearing children until the children no longer tolerate it.
  • A good selection of kid-friendly music.
  • A guy with a soothing British voice saying interesting things for ten minutes.
  • How much coffee to give a six year old right before bed.
  • Waiting for your kid to realize that when it's 1am he doesn't have to ask you if he can watch TV.
  • Just show me the byte order marker!
  • Adding tabs to Notepad.
  • Everyone agreeing to go back to WordStar.
  • What software developers do once a program is finished and perfect.
  • Loading CSV files into R.
  • Accidentally updating Excel.
  • The kind of person who is passionate about the latest cutting edge version of all software, who works in tech and is in charge of all update systems.
  • Adobe Premiere updates that ruin your team's entire workflow.
  • Why JWZ is no longer rich.
  • Seeing all the trailing spaces at the end of the line.
  • Jobs that require you to be able to distinguish between a tab character and the equivalent number of spaces.
  • How Unity handles upgrades and versioning.
  • The 75th anniversary of Goodnight Moon.
  • Why the New York Times's list of most borrowed children's library books of all time doesn't contain Goodnight Moon.
  • When Goodnight Moon says "Goodnight Nobody" and you immediately assume that the old lady died.
  • The calming effect of going over an inventory of really nice soothing things.
  • The Margaret Wise Brown ouevre.
  • Goodnight Dune.
  • Good night, shai-hulud bursting out of the dune.
  • Good night, Bene Gesserit witch whispering "they tried and died."
  • Too much of every character giving their internal monologue in italics.
  • Virginia Facebook's extremely cheap antiques.
  • Floating in the No-Room.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The waiting list to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • What goes on the lords-only channel.
  • The first rule of being a lord.
  • It's the end of the show somewhere in the world.
  • Frog Fractions Royalty.
  • Topic Lords Con East.
  • Choosing pairs of lords.
  • What lords have been on the show least recently.
  • Mystery with a B.
  • Responsibility to the lords.
  • ARG goings-on.
  • Maze of Games.
  • Rubber hose ARG solving
  • Digging up the golden owl and replacing it with a duck.
  • The minimum number of golden owls you are allowed to cast in France.
  • The History of the Owl Stuff.
  • Commemorating your love of the Golden Owl by purchasing this commemorative Golden Owl.
  • The Mystery of the Golden Owl that nobody wanted solved.
  • It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
  • Going and burying a duck
  • Unburying the Duck and putting the Owl back.
  • Looking through the Heart of France.
  • Another cursed treasure hunt in the can.
  • Ancient alternatives to zip files.
  • Re-scoping your puzzle hunt on the fly.
  • Telling twins apart using phrenology.
  • Twin identification strategies.
  • Let me see your flecks!
  • Checking your placental mammals for belly buttons.
  • Platypodes.
  • Jock twin/nerd twin.
  • Having children as a way to practice solving problems together.
  • Who forgot to take a nap today? (Everyone on the show.)
  • Flailing limbs kicking your bedmate all night.
  • Rocking your kid to sleep and then depositing them in the crib like Indy swapping out the golden idol.
  • How to teach babies to sleep.
  • Wearing children until the children no longer tolerate it.
  • A good selection of kid-friendly music.
  • A guy with a soothing British voice saying interesting things for ten minutes.
  • How much coffee to give a six year old right before bed.
  • Waiting for your kid to realize that when it's 1am he doesn't have to ask you if he can watch TV.
  • Just show me the byte order marker!
  • Adding tabs to Notepad.
  • Everyone agreeing to go back to WordStar.
  • What software developers do once a program is finished and perfect.
  • Loading CSV files into R.
  • Accidentally updating Excel.
  • The kind of person who is passionate about the latest cutting edge version of all software, who works in tech and is in charge of all update systems.
  • Adobe Premiere updates that ruin your team's entire workflow.
  • Why JWZ is no longer rich.
  • Seeing all the trailing spaces at the end of the line.
  • Jobs that require you to be able to distinguish between a tab character and the equivalent number of spaces.
  • How Unity handles upgrades and versioning.
  • The 75th anniversary of Goodnight Moon.
  • Why the New York Times's list of most borrowed children's library books of all time doesn't contain Goodnight Moon.
  • When Goodnight Moon says "Goodnight Nobody" and you immediately assume that the old lady died.
  • The calming effect of going over an inventory of really nice soothing things.
  • The Margaret Wise Brown ouevre.
  • Goodnight Dune.
  • Good night, shai-hulud bursting out of the dune.
  • Good night, Bene Gesserit witch whispering "they tried and died."
  • Too much of every character giving their internal monologue in italics.
  • Virginia Facebook's extremely cheap antiques.
  • Floating in the No-Room.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+cXTw0qWf ]]> Jim Stormdancer 266. Voronoi Cookies https://topiclords.com/voronoi-cookies 822381c4-b108-4b1e-a707-3c0e7b1ebf15 Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and Andrew. We discuss baking with precise measurement vs. by feel, making crosswords, how many weeks there are in a year, The Rules by Leila Chatti, building fidgeting into a Zoom lecture, and Things of Science. 1:07:10 true Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Baking: precise science of measurement or do it all by feel? (People have very different philosophies of muffins)
  • I've gotten into making crosswords this year and recently had the idea to start putting them on postcards and leaving them in public places for people to find. Am I becoming the Riddler? Is this fine?
  • I just found out that there aren't exactly 52 weeks in a year
  • The Rules, Leila Chatti
  • Building fidgeting into a Zoom lecture
  • Things of Science. (Subscription science toy service that I got when I was a kid)

Microtopics:

  • Posting pictures of pottery to social media.
  • The Hopefully Year of Layoffs.
  • Teaching game development as a hobby.
  • The interactive comic books of Jason Shiga.
  • Lies and truth and sea monsters.
  • Waiting for half an hour to find out if you fucked it up.
  • Baking intuitively.
  • Skimming a recipe and thinking "hmm yes, I've made food before"
  • Voronoi cookies.
  • Keeping separate baking notebooks for each season.
  • Having units that are divisible by two.
  • Putting it in a Gas 4 Oven.
  • How to pronounce "tare."
  • Sneaking into Grandma's kitchen and weighing all the ingredients.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Where to post the crosswords you've constructed.
  • A Lord's Puzzle.
  • Giving people a little bit of joy and avoiding hearing any feedback about it.
  • Living in the puzzle capital of the world.
  • Constructing a crossword puzzle for every party you attend.
  • The MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Making art for a really small group of people.
  • Crosswordese.
  • Designing themed vs. themeless crossword puzzles.
  • How many weeks are in a leap year.
  • Yet another ratio that doesn't work out.
  • Calendrical systems you could use.
  • Things that you know that are wrong.
  • What's your favorite thing you don't know that you don't know?
  • Finding a drawer full of narwhal tusks in a bone shop and thinking "hm, sixty unicorns died here"
  • NASA's antigravity room.
  • Why doesn't the Mars habitat work out?
  • Multiple digressions on horse urine.
  • Refining horse urine into progesterone on Mars.
  • Suddenly realizing that you've been dead all along.
  • Cicadas doing whatever they do in the trees.
  • Acknowledging the expectations of what a poem is.
  • Why you always turn out to have been dead at the end.
  • Who is out there still making games about guns?
  • Adding line breaks to make your essay look like a poem.
  • Innominateness.
  • Garden path level design.
  • Reading aloud etudes.
  • Mavis Beacon Teaches Elocution.
  • Replacing your Zoom background with a video of yourself.
  • Brain massaging video of cutting sand.
  • The calming effect of amphetamines.
  • Fidgeting incessantly during Zoom calls.
  • Fidgeting for people so they don't have to.
  • Bubbling noises and space harps.
  • Remote testing protocols.
  • Plagiarism detector snake oil.
  • Doing homework to get used to the idea of doing homework.
  • Mass-production of adults.
  • Paperwork as a method of crowd control.
  • Homework as a barrier to family time vs. homework that facilitates family time.
  • Mailing people little bits of science.
  • Aerogel vs. Superslurper.
  • Growing mold in your oobleck.
  • Sending 1940s children asbestos in the mail.
  • Using every sense to explore the world.
  • A dog sniffing your hand and walking away.
  • Throwing away all the business cards that just have your Twitter handle on them.
]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Baking: precise science of measurement or do it all by feel? (People have very different philosophies of muffins)
  • I've gotten into making crosswords this year and recently had the idea to start putting them on postcards and leaving them in public places for people to find. Am I becoming the Riddler? Is this fine?
  • I just found out that there aren't exactly 52 weeks in a year
  • The Rules, Leila Chatti
  • Building fidgeting into a Zoom lecture
  • Things of Science. (Subscription science toy service that I got when I was a kid)

Microtopics:

  • Posting pictures of pottery to social media.
  • The Hopefully Year of Layoffs.
  • Teaching game development as a hobby.
  • The interactive comic books of Jason Shiga.
  • Lies and truth and sea monsters.
  • Waiting for half an hour to find out if you fucked it up.
  • Baking intuitively.
  • Skimming a recipe and thinking "hmm yes, I've made food before"
  • Voronoi cookies.
  • Keeping separate baking notebooks for each season.
  • Having units that are divisible by two.
  • Putting it in a Gas 4 Oven.
  • How to pronounce "tare."
  • Sneaking into Grandma's kitchen and weighing all the ingredients.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Where to post the crosswords you've constructed.
  • A Lord's Puzzle.
  • Giving people a little bit of joy and avoiding hearing any feedback about it.
  • Living in the puzzle capital of the world.
  • Constructing a crossword puzzle for every party you attend.
  • The MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Making art for a really small group of people.
  • Crosswordese.
  • Designing themed vs. themeless crossword puzzles.
  • How many weeks are in a leap year.
  • Yet another ratio that doesn't work out.
  • Calendrical systems you could use.
  • Things that you know that are wrong.
  • What's your favorite thing you don't know that you don't know?
  • Finding a drawer full of narwhal tusks in a bone shop and thinking "hm, sixty unicorns died here"
  • NASA's antigravity room.
  • Why doesn't the Mars habitat work out?
  • Multiple digressions on horse urine.
  • Refining horse urine into progesterone on Mars.
  • Suddenly realizing that you've been dead all along.
  • Cicadas doing whatever they do in the trees.
  • Acknowledging the expectations of what a poem is.
  • Why you always turn out to have been dead at the end.
  • Who is out there still making games about guns?
  • Adding line breaks to make your essay look like a poem.
  • Innominateness.
  • Garden path level design.
  • Reading aloud etudes.
  • Mavis Beacon Teaches Elocution.
  • Replacing your Zoom background with a video of yourself.
  • Brain massaging video of cutting sand.
  • The calming effect of amphetamines.
  • Fidgeting incessantly during Zoom calls.
  • Fidgeting for people so they don't have to.
  • Bubbling noises and space harps.
  • Remote testing protocols.
  • Plagiarism detector snake oil.
  • Doing homework to get used to the idea of doing homework.
  • Mass-production of adults.
  • Paperwork as a method of crowd control.
  • Homework as a barrier to family time vs. homework that facilitates family time.
  • Mailing people little bits of science.
  • Aerogel vs. Superslurper.
  • Growing mold in your oobleck.
  • Sending 1940s children asbestos in the mail.
  • Using every sense to explore the world.
  • A dog sniffing your hand and walking away.
  • Throwing away all the business cards that just have your Twitter handle on them.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Baking: precise science of measurement or do it all by feel? (People have very different philosophies of muffins)
  • I've gotten into making crosswords this year and recently had the idea to start putting them on postcards and leaving them in public places for people to find. Am I becoming the Riddler? Is this fine?
  • I just found out that there aren't exactly 52 weeks in a year
  • The Rules, Leila Chatti
  • Building fidgeting into a Zoom lecture
  • Things of Science. (Subscription science toy service that I got when I was a kid)

Microtopics:

  • Posting pictures of pottery to social media.
  • The Hopefully Year of Layoffs.
  • Teaching game development as a hobby.
  • The interactive comic books of Jason Shiga.
  • Lies and truth and sea monsters.
  • Waiting for half an hour to find out if you fucked it up.
  • Baking intuitively.
  • Skimming a recipe and thinking "hmm yes, I've made food before"
  • Voronoi cookies.
  • Keeping separate baking notebooks for each season.
  • Having units that are divisible by two.
  • Putting it in a Gas 4 Oven.
  • How to pronounce "tare."
  • Sneaking into Grandma's kitchen and weighing all the ingredients.
  • Cruciverbalism.
  • Where to post the crosswords you've constructed.
  • A Lord's Puzzle.
  • Giving people a little bit of joy and avoiding hearing any feedback about it.
  • Living in the puzzle capital of the world.
  • Constructing a crossword puzzle for every party you attend.
  • The MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Making art for a really small group of people.
  • Crosswordese.
  • Designing themed vs. themeless crossword puzzles.
  • How many weeks are in a leap year.
  • Yet another ratio that doesn't work out.
  • Calendrical systems you could use.
  • Things that you know that are wrong.
  • What's your favorite thing you don't know that you don't know?
  • Finding a drawer full of narwhal tusks in a bone shop and thinking "hm, sixty unicorns died here"
  • NASA's antigravity room.
  • Why doesn't the Mars habitat work out?
  • Multiple digressions on horse urine.
  • Refining horse urine into progesterone on Mars.
  • Suddenly realizing that you've been dead all along.
  • Cicadas doing whatever they do in the trees.
  • Acknowledging the expectations of what a poem is.
  • Why you always turn out to have been dead at the end.
  • Who is out there still making games about guns?
  • Adding line breaks to make your essay look like a poem.
  • Innominateness.
  • Garden path level design.
  • Reading aloud etudes.
  • Mavis Beacon Teaches Elocution.
  • Replacing your Zoom background with a video of yourself.
  • Brain massaging video of cutting sand.
  • The calming effect of amphetamines.
  • Fidgeting incessantly during Zoom calls.
  • Fidgeting for people so they don't have to.
  • Bubbling noises and space harps.
  • Remote testing protocols.
  • Plagiarism detector snake oil.
  • Doing homework to get used to the idea of doing homework.
  • Mass-production of adults.
  • Paperwork as a method of crowd control.
  • Homework as a barrier to family time vs. homework that facilitates family time.
  • Mailing people little bits of science.
  • Aerogel vs. Superslurper.
  • Growing mold in your oobleck.
  • Sending 1940s children asbestos in the mail.
  • Using every sense to explore the world.
  • A dog sniffing your hand and walking away.
  • Throwing away all the business cards that just have your Twitter handle on them.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+S1Py-ve4 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 265. We're Here to Make This Slide Floppy https://topiclords.com/were-here-to-make-this-slide-floppy 7a000f82-d16b-4ab6-b851-150d6ded340d Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tim and Chris. We discuss noodles, the impoverishment of the question, choosing an integrator, Lucky Jim (old song), and collaborative music as a game design problem. 1:10:50 true Lords:

  • Tim
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Celtic Music and Corgis.
  • Tim, a figure shrouded in mystery.
  • Topic Monologues.
  • Gluten-free noodle straws.
  • Bucatini: imagine a Red Vine but made of pasta.
  • Replacing food service workers with clockwork automata made of noodles that have been hardened into gears and springs.
  • Giant fusilli as playground equipment.
  • Noodleness and pastitude.
  • Whether gnocchi is a pasta. What about cauliflower gnocchi?
  • Unleavened Carrot Cake.
  • Indomie: the number one selling noodle on Earth.
  • Good spices: they can work in a broth.
  • Soupertaster: Jim eats soup alone while talking to a volleyball with a bloody handprint on it.
  • Learning math by starting with incredibly abstract unmotivated ideas.
  • Some Bottomless Pits are Deeper than Others.
  • Approaching a question by interpreting it as a question that if answerable.
  • The significant of the perception of free will.
  • How a closed system can produce multiple different outcomes.
  • What happens when we decide we don't have free will.
  • A completely deterministic system that has a sensation of free will.
  • Taking as much time as it takes to read a book.
  • Shooting the Moon (in real life)
  • Taking all the bad cards and winning.
  • Becoming disciplined about time
  • What a modern feature phone can do.
  • Dividing your day into blocks and spending them.
  • The period in your life when you lived in Burlingame.
  • Getting an incredibe amount of work done during your hour and a half commute.
  • Topic Lords or Plug Lords?
  • Something you'll be glad you did tomorrow.
  • Integration Basics.
  • Explicit Euler vs. Semi-Implicit Euler.
  • The pros and cons of RK4.
  • The physics system behind Drawn to Life.
  • What it takes to be an old song.
  • Hadestown and The Instigator.
  • The Hadestown Tiny Desk Concert.
  • How to play music with other people in a way that accounts for skill gaps.
  • Going to the Starry Plough to play the penny whistle.
  • Musicians sitting in a circle and talking until someone starts playing something and everyone else joins in.
  • Joining in on a song you've never heard before.
  • Playing Mary Had a Little Lamb at 40 BPM.
  • Making a slow song more interesting by adding ornamentation.
  • Star of the County Down.
  • Different ideas that come out when you play music at half speed.
  • Lark Camp.
  • The person who hands out the cheat sheet with all the popular tunes and their chord progressions.
  • Sorting tunes by frequnecy.
  • The bad things about Irish sessions, from a game design perspective.
  • Learning a song by reading the notation vs. learning it by playing it for 30 years.
  • Star Above the Garter.
]]> Lords:

  • Tim
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Celtic Music and Corgis.
  • Tim, a figure shrouded in mystery.
  • Topic Monologues.
  • Gluten-free noodle straws.
  • Bucatini: imagine a Red Vine but made of pasta.
  • Replacing food service workers with clockwork automata made of noodles that have been hardened into gears and springs.
  • Giant fusilli as playground equipment.
  • Noodleness and pastitude.
  • Whether gnocchi is a pasta. What about cauliflower gnocchi?
  • Unleavened Carrot Cake.
  • Indomie: the number one selling noodle on Earth.
  • Good spices: they can work in a broth.
  • Soupertaster: Jim eats soup alone while talking to a volleyball with a bloody handprint on it.
  • Learning math by starting with incredibly abstract unmotivated ideas.
  • Some Bottomless Pits are Deeper than Others.
  • Approaching a question by interpreting it as a question that if answerable.
  • The significant of the perception of free will.
  • How a closed system can produce multiple different outcomes.
  • What happens when we decide we don't have free will.
  • A completely deterministic system that has a sensation of free will.
  • Taking as much time as it takes to read a book.
  • Shooting the Moon (in real life)
  • Taking all the bad cards and winning.
  • Becoming disciplined about time
  • What a modern feature phone can do.
  • Dividing your day into blocks and spending them.
  • The period in your life when you lived in Burlingame.
  • Getting an incredibe amount of work done during your hour and a half commute.
  • Topic Lords or Plug Lords?
  • Something you'll be glad you did tomorrow.
  • Integration Basics.
  • Explicit Euler vs. Semi-Implicit Euler.
  • The pros and cons of RK4.
  • The physics system behind Drawn to Life.
  • What it takes to be an old song.
  • Hadestown and The Instigator.
  • The Hadestown Tiny Desk Concert.
  • How to play music with other people in a way that accounts for skill gaps.
  • Going to the Starry Plough to play the penny whistle.
  • Musicians sitting in a circle and talking until someone starts playing something and everyone else joins in.
  • Joining in on a song you've never heard before.
  • Playing Mary Had a Little Lamb at 40 BPM.
  • Making a slow song more interesting by adding ornamentation.
  • Star of the County Down.
  • Different ideas that come out when you play music at half speed.
  • Lark Camp.
  • The person who hands out the cheat sheet with all the popular tunes and their chord progressions.
  • Sorting tunes by frequnecy.
  • The bad things about Irish sessions, from a game design perspective.
  • Learning a song by reading the notation vs. learning it by playing it for 30 years.
  • Star Above the Garter.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Tim
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Celtic Music and Corgis.
  • Tim, a figure shrouded in mystery.
  • Topic Monologues.
  • Gluten-free noodle straws.
  • Bucatini: imagine a Red Vine but made of pasta.
  • Replacing food service workers with clockwork automata made of noodles that have been hardened into gears and springs.
  • Giant fusilli as playground equipment.
  • Noodleness and pastitude.
  • Whether gnocchi is a pasta. What about cauliflower gnocchi?
  • Unleavened Carrot Cake.
  • Indomie: the number one selling noodle on Earth.
  • Good spices: they can work in a broth.
  • Soupertaster: Jim eats soup alone while talking to a volleyball with a bloody handprint on it.
  • Learning math by starting with incredibly abstract unmotivated ideas.
  • Some Bottomless Pits are Deeper than Others.
  • Approaching a question by interpreting it as a question that if answerable.
  • The significant of the perception of free will.
  • How a closed system can produce multiple different outcomes.
  • What happens when we decide we don't have free will.
  • A completely deterministic system that has a sensation of free will.
  • Taking as much time as it takes to read a book.
  • Shooting the Moon (in real life)
  • Taking all the bad cards and winning.
  • Becoming disciplined about time
  • What a modern feature phone can do.
  • Dividing your day into blocks and spending them.
  • The period in your life when you lived in Burlingame.
  • Getting an incredibe amount of work done during your hour and a half commute.
  • Topic Lords or Plug Lords?
  • Something you'll be glad you did tomorrow.
  • Integration Basics.
  • Explicit Euler vs. Semi-Implicit Euler.
  • The pros and cons of RK4.
  • The physics system behind Drawn to Life.
  • What it takes to be an old song.
  • Hadestown and The Instigator.
  • The Hadestown Tiny Desk Concert.
  • How to play music with other people in a way that accounts for skill gaps.
  • Going to the Starry Plough to play the penny whistle.
  • Musicians sitting in a circle and talking until someone starts playing something and everyone else joins in.
  • Joining in on a song you've never heard before.
  • Playing Mary Had a Little Lamb at 40 BPM.
  • Making a slow song more interesting by adding ornamentation.
  • Star of the County Down.
  • Different ideas that come out when you play music at half speed.
  • Lark Camp.
  • The person who hands out the cheat sheet with all the popular tunes and their chord progressions.
  • Sorting tunes by frequnecy.
  • The bad things about Irish sessions, from a game design perspective.
  • Learning a song by reading the notation vs. learning it by playing it for 30 years.
  • Star Above the Garter.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+0OpEqIAI ]]> Jim Stormdancer 264. Pickpocketed So Hard You Die https://topiclords.com/pickpocketed-so-hard-you-die 754ad184-e393-464a-a182-af9dbf5997ef Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Aubrianne. We discuss coming to terms with being bad at video games, charging money for art, messy game design, To Be of Use by Marge Piercy, Films Noir, and Complementary Hobby Power Couples. 1:07:31 true Lords:

Topics:

  • I will never get good at video games and that's okay
  • Does charging (or even allowing donations) for something change its perception as a piece of art?
  • Messy game design
  • To Be of Use, Marge Piercy
  • Films Noir
  • Complementary Hobby Power Couples

Microtopics:

  • Just shakin' it a little bit.
  • The royal it.
  • Putting Homestar Runner on shuffle while you do homework.
  • Making Pico-8 games under an Internet name.
  • Your child petting a dog but when you try to pet the dog as well the dog is like "no, not you!"
  • A beard or long braid as a fidget tool.
  • Spectrum Cheater Reveals.
  • Games where you have to plan ahead.
  • A very easy social slot to fit into.
  • How many extra organs does Master Chief have?
  • Watching your mom fail the same jump in Animal Well for twenty minutes.
  • Picking a garbage can in Fallout 3 where you keep all your stuff which works great until they patch garbage collection into the game.
  • A game that requires two skills and the two skills exist in two different people.
  • What happened to cheat codes?
  • Paying the pickpocket trainer to train you and then pickpocketing your money back.
  • Pickpocketing someone's vital organs.
  • Homestar Runner as the ultimate counter example.
  • What quilts are worth if you charged a fair wage for your time.
  • Spending half an hour convincing your nephew that this scarf really is worth $300.
  • The only two millennials who haven't professionalized their hobbies.
  • Constructing your game design like a mathematical proof.
  • The promise of the text parser.
  • All the weird bespoke deaths you could find in a Sierra game.
  • Games intended for people who have more free time than you.
  • How to make it completely viable to make small games.
  • A clever hack to market your video game (spend a bunch of money)
  • The promise of the 50 in one pirate kart.
  • Trying to get the house gifts in every game in UFO 50.
  • Collecting the umbrella and the pin an least a dozen times.
  • A Guided Tour of Barbuta.
  • The black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls.
  • Doing what has to be done, again and again.
  • A form of idleness that produces an incredibly amount of textiles.
  • Peruvian people spinning while they wait for the bus.
  • Why nobody gives a shit about rope and string.
  • Appreciating the lasagna that's right in front of you.
  • Making a loaf of bread for your family that mostly eats peanut butter sandwiches.
  • Making a little frowny face at "amphoras."
  • Meeting a girl and wooing her with good semicolon usage.
  • Dressing up as Elaine and Guybrush for Halloween.
  • Whoppers Jr. and Games Boys Advance.
  • Classic Film Noir such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • That time Rita Hayworth made you realize you were gay.
  • Getting no movies from America for years and then getting a ton of movies from America all at once.
  • Pulpy low-budget melodramas.
  • The Hays Code.
  • The five minute monologue where Quint describes the graphic sex scene between Jaws and the Hoth Ice Wampa
  • Neo Noir. (Meaning from the 70a.)
  • Modern art. (Meaning from the early 20th century.)
  • Neo Noir films such as the Bourne Identity and Batman Begins
  • Bugs Bunny inventing the smoky noir saxophone.
  • A taxonomy of complementary hobby pairs.
  • Getting 20 musicians in a room and it's a total disaster.
  • Sheep growing so much extraneous wool that they fall on their backs and explode.
  • Youtube recommending a video on how to flip a sheep over.
  • Sheep Tips: How to Flip a Sheep.
  • A video of a guy getting out of a car and hopping a fence and running over to help a sheep who is stuck on its back like "what do I even do now?"
  • Fellow Jorts Horsians.
  • Deep lore of server outages.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • I will never get good at video games and that's okay
  • Does charging (or even allowing donations) for something change its perception as a piece of art?
  • Messy game design
  • To Be of Use, Marge Piercy
  • Films Noir
  • Complementary Hobby Power Couples

Microtopics:

  • Just shakin' it a little bit.
  • The royal it.
  • Putting Homestar Runner on shuffle while you do homework.
  • Making Pico-8 games under an Internet name.
  • Your child petting a dog but when you try to pet the dog as well the dog is like "no, not you!"
  • A beard or long braid as a fidget tool.
  • Spectrum Cheater Reveals.
  • Games where you have to plan ahead.
  • A very easy social slot to fit into.
  • How many extra organs does Master Chief have?
  • Watching your mom fail the same jump in Animal Well for twenty minutes.
  • Picking a garbage can in Fallout 3 where you keep all your stuff which works great until they patch garbage collection into the game.
  • A game that requires two skills and the two skills exist in two different people.
  • What happened to cheat codes?
  • Paying the pickpocket trainer to train you and then pickpocketing your money back.
  • Pickpocketing someone's vital organs.
  • Homestar Runner as the ultimate counter example.
  • What quilts are worth if you charged a fair wage for your time.
  • Spending half an hour convincing your nephew that this scarf really is worth $300.
  • The only two millennials who haven't professionalized their hobbies.
  • Constructing your game design like a mathematical proof.
  • The promise of the text parser.
  • All the weird bespoke deaths you could find in a Sierra game.
  • Games intended for people who have more free time than you.
  • How to make it completely viable to make small games.
  • A clever hack to market your video game (spend a bunch of money)
  • The promise of the 50 in one pirate kart.
  • Trying to get the house gifts in every game in UFO 50.
  • Collecting the umbrella and the pin an least a dozen times.
  • A Guided Tour of Barbuta.
  • The black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls.
  • Doing what has to be done, again and again.
  • A form of idleness that produces an incredibly amount of textiles.
  • Peruvian people spinning while they wait for the bus.
  • Why nobody gives a shit about rope and string.
  • Appreciating the lasagna that's right in front of you.
  • Making a loaf of bread for your family that mostly eats peanut butter sandwiches.
  • Making a little frowny face at "amphoras."
  • Meeting a girl and wooing her with good semicolon usage.
  • Dressing up as Elaine and Guybrush for Halloween.
  • Whoppers Jr. and Games Boys Advance.
  • Classic Film Noir such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • That time Rita Hayworth made you realize you were gay.
  • Getting no movies from America for years and then getting a ton of movies from America all at once.
  • Pulpy low-budget melodramas.
  • The Hays Code.
  • The five minute monologue where Quint describes the graphic sex scene between Jaws and the Hoth Ice Wampa
  • Neo Noir. (Meaning from the 70a.)
  • Modern art. (Meaning from the early 20th century.)
  • Neo Noir films such as the Bourne Identity and Batman Begins
  • Bugs Bunny inventing the smoky noir saxophone.
  • A taxonomy of complementary hobby pairs.
  • Getting 20 musicians in a room and it's a total disaster.
  • Sheep growing so much extraneous wool that they fall on their backs and explode.
  • Youtube recommending a video on how to flip a sheep over.
  • Sheep Tips: How to Flip a Sheep.
  • A video of a guy getting out of a car and hopping a fence and running over to help a sheep who is stuck on its back like "what do I even do now?"
  • Fellow Jorts Horsians.
  • Deep lore of server outages.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • I will never get good at video games and that's okay
  • Does charging (or even allowing donations) for something change its perception as a piece of art?
  • Messy game design
  • To Be of Use, Marge Piercy
  • Films Noir
  • Complementary Hobby Power Couples

Microtopics:

  • Just shakin' it a little bit.
  • The royal it.
  • Putting Homestar Runner on shuffle while you do homework.
  • Making Pico-8 games under an Internet name.
  • Your child petting a dog but when you try to pet the dog as well the dog is like "no, not you!"
  • A beard or long braid as a fidget tool.
  • Spectrum Cheater Reveals.
  • Games where you have to plan ahead.
  • A very easy social slot to fit into.
  • How many extra organs does Master Chief have?
  • Watching your mom fail the same jump in Animal Well for twenty minutes.
  • Picking a garbage can in Fallout 3 where you keep all your stuff which works great until they patch garbage collection into the game.
  • A game that requires two skills and the two skills exist in two different people.
  • What happened to cheat codes?
  • Paying the pickpocket trainer to train you and then pickpocketing your money back.
  • Pickpocketing someone's vital organs.
  • Homestar Runner as the ultimate counter example.
  • What quilts are worth if you charged a fair wage for your time.
  • Spending half an hour convincing your nephew that this scarf really is worth $300.
  • The only two millennials who haven't professionalized their hobbies.
  • Constructing your game design like a mathematical proof.
  • The promise of the text parser.
  • All the weird bespoke deaths you could find in a Sierra game.
  • Games intended for people who have more free time than you.
  • How to make it completely viable to make small games.
  • A clever hack to market your video game (spend a bunch of money)
  • The promise of the 50 in one pirate kart.
  • Trying to get the house gifts in every game in UFO 50.
  • Collecting the umbrella and the pin an least a dozen times.
  • A Guided Tour of Barbuta.
  • The black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls.
  • Doing what has to be done, again and again.
  • A form of idleness that produces an incredibly amount of textiles.
  • Peruvian people spinning while they wait for the bus.
  • Why nobody gives a shit about rope and string.
  • Appreciating the lasagna that's right in front of you.
  • Making a loaf of bread for your family that mostly eats peanut butter sandwiches.
  • Making a little frowny face at "amphoras."
  • Meeting a girl and wooing her with good semicolon usage.
  • Dressing up as Elaine and Guybrush for Halloween.
  • Whoppers Jr. and Games Boys Advance.
  • Classic Film Noir such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • That time Rita Hayworth made you realize you were gay.
  • Getting no movies from America for years and then getting a ton of movies from America all at once.
  • Pulpy low-budget melodramas.
  • The Hays Code.
  • The five minute monologue where Quint describes the graphic sex scene between Jaws and the Hoth Ice Wampa
  • Neo Noir. (Meaning from the 70a.)
  • Modern art. (Meaning from the early 20th century.)
  • Neo Noir films such as the Bourne Identity and Batman Begins
  • Bugs Bunny inventing the smoky noir saxophone.
  • A taxonomy of complementary hobby pairs.
  • Getting 20 musicians in a room and it's a total disaster.
  • Sheep growing so much extraneous wool that they fall on their backs and explode.
  • Youtube recommending a video on how to flip a sheep over.
  • Sheep Tips: How to Flip a Sheep.
  • A video of a guy getting out of a car and hopping a fence and running over to help a sheep who is stuck on its back like "what do I even do now?"
  • Fellow Jorts Horsians.
  • Deep lore of server outages.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RDDC_1k5 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 263. Drafted Into the Applebee's Wars https://topiclords.com/drafted-into-the-applebees-wars 5a82915f-1733-4717-9f51-d08835a7d394 Mon, 04 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Xalavier and Brianne. We discuss movies about contract killers doing contract negotiation, whether fictional characters are better role models than real people, the new Zelda game talks too much and I'm okay with that, Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish, enacting a customer service draft, and doing terrible things to the Criterion Closet. 1:09:40 true Lords:

  • Xalavier
  • Brianne

Topics:

  • Why do movies about contract killers skip over the good part of negotiating in excruciating detail the contract and clauses present?
  • Are fictional characters greater role models than real people?
  • The new Zelda game talks too much and I'm okay with that
  • Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish
  • Should every person be forcibly drafted into a customer service job, like the military.
  • The horrible things I would do in the Criterion Closet, if given an opportunity.

Microtopics:

  • I Am Your Beast.
  • Making 50 games in 7 years.
  • A co-op Kaiju horror cooking game
  • The Name of the Rose meets Godzilla meets Lethal Company.
  • Power couples in games.
  • Moviegoers who want to know about contract law.
  • Search and replacing "murder" with "unalive" so that a contact killer can safely sue the client for breach of contact.
  • Pedantic legal contact killer law every week.
  • Lowering the bar so that we can all raise it later.
  • Doctor Odyssey.
  • Disheveled Detective.
  • The Autistic Coded Detective.
  • A ahow about autistic people written by neurotypical people.
  • Making a weekly podcast and scoffing at the TV shows that can only manage 24 episodes a year.
  • Asking google for the "podcast with the fewest episodes" and google just assuming you meant the podcast with the shortest running time.
  • Sending children to the sharps dump. (Because the kid asked for it and the parent signed a waiver.)
  • Desperately knocking on Google's door and beginning them to tell you where the furthest Denny's is.
  • The Waluigi-owned Denny's in the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • Role Models happening accidentally.
  • Donald Duck becoming a sex pest after edgier writers take over.
  • A form of self to aspire to.
  • 300 Rorschach Guys in a discord server.
  • An epic story that FromSoft will continue to plunder of its biggest plot elements for the next 30 years.
  • A character that you relate to and then you realize that's bad.
  • What do you do after you get what you want?
  • Leading a horde of ninja at the dictates of an Eldritch god.
  • Getting what you've been looking for and realizing that you're no longer the person who wanted that thing.
  • Role-playing a princess who has to talk to a litany of insufferable people.
  • Swinging your sword through grass to reveal rupees.
  • Zelda's Got an Onus.
  • Who you're thinking about as you pay your water bills.
  • Those who are nursed by clouds.
  • Shakespeare beeves.
  • GettingTikTok Mad.
  • The Death of Arthur.
  • Impacting media literacy for generations because you want to make a sassy pun.
  • Slipping into Belgian because you don't have enough mana to speak French.
  • The red phone in every publicly traded franchise restaurant that connects the customer directly to a random shareholder.
  • Working a Black Friday at a retail job and being awarded a purple heart.
  • Working a Best Buy Geek Squad tour of service to earn your citizenship.
  • The Criterion Closet.
  • The level of stardom you need to attain in order to remove movies from the Criterion Collection.
  • Supermarket Sweep.
  • Asking someone who took one year of high school French what you call someone who owns a closet.
  • I would not be normal and they would not be safe.
  • Landed noblemen who are super into Amontillado.
  • Where to lock the insufferable friend who went to film school.
  • How many Miami Vice episodes ended up in the Criterion Collection.
  • The movie that you remember the least.
  • Forgiving the insufferable film school attendees in your life because you can't think of a good punishment for them.
]]> Lords:

  • Xalavier
  • Brianne

Topics:

  • Why do movies about contract killers skip over the good part of negotiating in excruciating detail the contract and clauses present?
  • Are fictional characters greater role models than real people?
  • The new Zelda game talks too much and I'm okay with that
  • Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish
  • Should every person be forcibly drafted into a customer service job, like the military.
  • The horrible things I would do in the Criterion Closet, if given an opportunity.

Microtopics:

  • I Am Your Beast.
  • Making 50 games in 7 years.
  • A co-op Kaiju horror cooking game
  • The Name of the Rose meets Godzilla meets Lethal Company.
  • Power couples in games.
  • Moviegoers who want to know about contract law.
  • Search and replacing "murder" with "unalive" so that a contact killer can safely sue the client for breach of contact.
  • Pedantic legal contact killer law every week.
  • Lowering the bar so that we can all raise it later.
  • Doctor Odyssey.
  • Disheveled Detective.
  • The Autistic Coded Detective.
  • A ahow about autistic people written by neurotypical people.
  • Making a weekly podcast and scoffing at the TV shows that can only manage 24 episodes a year.
  • Asking google for the "podcast with the fewest episodes" and google just assuming you meant the podcast with the shortest running time.
  • Sending children to the sharps dump. (Because the kid asked for it and the parent signed a waiver.)
  • Desperately knocking on Google's door and beginning them to tell you where the furthest Denny's is.
  • The Waluigi-owned Denny's in the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • Role Models happening accidentally.
  • Donald Duck becoming a sex pest after edgier writers take over.
  • A form of self to aspire to.
  • 300 Rorschach Guys in a discord server.
  • An epic story that FromSoft will continue to plunder of its biggest plot elements for the next 30 years.
  • A character that you relate to and then you realize that's bad.
  • What do you do after you get what you want?
  • Leading a horde of ninja at the dictates of an Eldritch god.
  • Getting what you've been looking for and realizing that you're no longer the person who wanted that thing.
  • Role-playing a princess who has to talk to a litany of insufferable people.
  • Swinging your sword through grass to reveal rupees.
  • Zelda's Got an Onus.
  • Who you're thinking about as you pay your water bills.
  • Those who are nursed by clouds.
  • Shakespeare beeves.
  • GettingTikTok Mad.
  • The Death of Arthur.
  • Impacting media literacy for generations because you want to make a sassy pun.
  • Slipping into Belgian because you don't have enough mana to speak French.
  • The red phone in every publicly traded franchise restaurant that connects the customer directly to a random shareholder.
  • Working a Black Friday at a retail job and being awarded a purple heart.
  • Working a Best Buy Geek Squad tour of service to earn your citizenship.
  • The Criterion Closet.
  • The level of stardom you need to attain in order to remove movies from the Criterion Collection.
  • Supermarket Sweep.
  • Asking someone who took one year of high school French what you call someone who owns a closet.
  • I would not be normal and they would not be safe.
  • Landed noblemen who are super into Amontillado.
  • Where to lock the insufferable friend who went to film school.
  • How many Miami Vice episodes ended up in the Criterion Collection.
  • The movie that you remember the least.
  • Forgiving the insufferable film school attendees in your life because you can't think of a good punishment for them.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Xalavier
  • Brianne

Topics:

  • Why do movies about contract killers skip over the good part of negotiating in excruciating detail the contract and clauses present?
  • Are fictional characters greater role models than real people?
  • The new Zelda game talks too much and I'm okay with that
  • Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish
  • Should every person be forcibly drafted into a customer service job, like the military.
  • The horrible things I would do in the Criterion Closet, if given an opportunity.

Microtopics:

  • I Am Your Beast.
  • Making 50 games in 7 years.
  • A co-op Kaiju horror cooking game
  • The Name of the Rose meets Godzilla meets Lethal Company.
  • Power couples in games.
  • Moviegoers who want to know about contract law.
  • Search and replacing "murder" with "unalive" so that a contact killer can safely sue the client for breach of contact.
  • Pedantic legal contact killer law every week.
  • Lowering the bar so that we can all raise it later.
  • Doctor Odyssey.
  • Disheveled Detective.
  • The Autistic Coded Detective.
  • A ahow about autistic people written by neurotypical people.
  • Making a weekly podcast and scoffing at the TV shows that can only manage 24 episodes a year.
  • Asking google for the "podcast with the fewest episodes" and google just assuming you meant the podcast with the shortest running time.
  • Sending children to the sharps dump. (Because the kid asked for it and the parent signed a waiver.)
  • Desperately knocking on Google's door and beginning them to tell you where the furthest Denny's is.
  • The Waluigi-owned Denny's in the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • Role Models happening accidentally.
  • Donald Duck becoming a sex pest after edgier writers take over.
  • A form of self to aspire to.
  • 300 Rorschach Guys in a discord server.
  • An epic story that FromSoft will continue to plunder of its biggest plot elements for the next 30 years.
  • A character that you relate to and then you realize that's bad.
  • What do you do after you get what you want?
  • Leading a horde of ninja at the dictates of an Eldritch god.
  • Getting what you've been looking for and realizing that you're no longer the person who wanted that thing.
  • Role-playing a princess who has to talk to a litany of insufferable people.
  • Swinging your sword through grass to reveal rupees.
  • Zelda's Got an Onus.
  • Who you're thinking about as you pay your water bills.
  • Those who are nursed by clouds.
  • Shakespeare beeves.
  • GettingTikTok Mad.
  • The Death of Arthur.
  • Impacting media literacy for generations because you want to make a sassy pun.
  • Slipping into Belgian because you don't have enough mana to speak French.
  • The red phone in every publicly traded franchise restaurant that connects the customer directly to a random shareholder.
  • Working a Black Friday at a retail job and being awarded a purple heart.
  • Working a Best Buy Geek Squad tour of service to earn your citizenship.
  • The Criterion Closet.
  • The level of stardom you need to attain in order to remove movies from the Criterion Collection.
  • Supermarket Sweep.
  • Asking someone who took one year of high school French what you call someone who owns a closet.
  • I would not be normal and they would not be safe.
  • Landed noblemen who are super into Amontillado.
  • Where to lock the insufferable friend who went to film school.
  • How many Miami Vice episodes ended up in the Criterion Collection.
  • The movie that you remember the least.
  • Forgiving the insufferable film school attendees in your life because you can't think of a good punishment for them.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+XkeLDWID ]]> Jim Stormdancer 262. Real Meal, Fictional Man https://topiclords.com/real-meal-fictional-man 774b92f7-0d10-4ac7-b22d-e64e3455b0fa Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayFaber and Maxx. We discuss food-focused Japanese TV, how pescetarians exist if fish don't, the return of PicoSteveMo, wikipoem.org, and the shifting nature of what is appropriate for children. 1:10:55 true Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Maxx

Topics:

  • Food-focused Japanese TV
  • If "fish don't exist," then how do pescetarians?
  • PicoSteveMo is back!
  • https://wikipoem.org/
  • Verisimilitude in play (My daughter plays GTA and Roblox) (The shifting nature of what is appropriate for children)

Microtopics:

  • Emotionally connecting with a dying web site and meeting up with other users in Seattle.
  • What the Cohost diaspora is doing to do.
  • Drive-by bad opinions.
  • Where people live in Australia, on average.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • Using external image hosts to continue blogging on Cohost after it is in read-only mode.
  • URL shortening services reusing old links.
  • Meeting up with people you have a loose association with and having a good time together.
  • The Bowling League Mafia taking up every lane every day with tournaments so nobody else can bowl.
  • A TV drama where a traveling salesman keeps being hungry at different train stations.
  • Seeing a meal that looks delicious but you're full and can't eat a whole nother meal.
  • Whether food becomes fictional as soon as you eat it.
  • Watching satellite TV on your flip phone.
  • OneSeg.
  • Your email address being owned by your phone carrier.
  • A phone that closes and has great battery life.
  • The golden age of food-focused broadcast TV.
  • A celebrity who's interested in food goes and eats at a restaurant.
  • This Burger Weighs 30 Pounds!
  • Midnight Diner.
  • The Karate Kid but with ramen.
  • Watching a Youtube of the video gamers.
  • Ordinary People, Extraordinary Food.
  • Whether pescetarians exist.
  • The researchers in the shark lab you used to work at calling dolphins fish.
  • Fish eyes: nature's boba.
  • A block of gouda floating in the ocean.
  • Fish that stop being fish when you think about it too hard.
  • Disagreeing with beavers about what tree to cut down, but you're conflict avoidant so the beaver always wins.
  • Haven't we all argued with beavers?
  • Crows stealing the naan out of your naan and curry.
  • Jungle Crows who sound like an adult man doing an impression of crows.
  • Crows who are really good at Japanese T9.
  • The nets you put over your garbage that can't possibly keep the crows out.
  • Picking Steves from a continuity standpoint.
  • Finding any excuse to make a Stephen King Sokoban.
  • Deliberately awkward control schemes.
  • A thousand prototyping girls in space.
  • A poem without any line breaks in it.
  • The zine era of web design, when people would just type HTML and it would become a web page.
  • Phrases that make sense locally but not globally.
  • A comedian who is in lots of things.
  • The kind of poem you'd get if you put a poem on a wiki.
  • The kind of thing that would probably be read on this show.
  • The kind of web site that you'd run into when you're doing an ARG.
  • Installing Roblox on the PS5 to teach your daughter to read English better.
  • Playing a game with purple vomiting everywhere.
  • The ways a 7 year old interacts with a Grand Theft Auto.
  • Teaching yourself how to drive in Grand Theft Auto and obeying all the traffic laws.
  • Not shielding your kid from media but talking to them about it instead.
  • Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens.
]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Maxx

Topics:

  • Food-focused Japanese TV
  • If "fish don't exist," then how do pescetarians?
  • PicoSteveMo is back!
  • https://wikipoem.org/
  • Verisimilitude in play (My daughter plays GTA and Roblox) (The shifting nature of what is appropriate for children)

Microtopics:

  • Emotionally connecting with a dying web site and meeting up with other users in Seattle.
  • What the Cohost diaspora is doing to do.
  • Drive-by bad opinions.
  • Where people live in Australia, on average.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • Using external image hosts to continue blogging on Cohost after it is in read-only mode.
  • URL shortening services reusing old links.
  • Meeting up with people you have a loose association with and having a good time together.
  • The Bowling League Mafia taking up every lane every day with tournaments so nobody else can bowl.
  • A TV drama where a traveling salesman keeps being hungry at different train stations.
  • Seeing a meal that looks delicious but you're full and can't eat a whole nother meal.
  • Whether food becomes fictional as soon as you eat it.
  • Watching satellite TV on your flip phone.
  • OneSeg.
  • Your email address being owned by your phone carrier.
  • A phone that closes and has great battery life.
  • The golden age of food-focused broadcast TV.
  • A celebrity who's interested in food goes and eats at a restaurant.
  • This Burger Weighs 30 Pounds!
  • Midnight Diner.
  • The Karate Kid but with ramen.
  • Watching a Youtube of the video gamers.
  • Ordinary People, Extraordinary Food.
  • Whether pescetarians exist.
  • The researchers in the shark lab you used to work at calling dolphins fish.
  • Fish eyes: nature's boba.
  • A block of gouda floating in the ocean.
  • Fish that stop being fish when you think about it too hard.
  • Disagreeing with beavers about what tree to cut down, but you're conflict avoidant so the beaver always wins.
  • Haven't we all argued with beavers?
  • Crows stealing the naan out of your naan and curry.
  • Jungle Crows who sound like an adult man doing an impression of crows.
  • Crows who are really good at Japanese T9.
  • The nets you put over your garbage that can't possibly keep the crows out.
  • Picking Steves from a continuity standpoint.
  • Finding any excuse to make a Stephen King Sokoban.
  • Deliberately awkward control schemes.
  • A thousand prototyping girls in space.
  • A poem without any line breaks in it.
  • The zine era of web design, when people would just type HTML and it would become a web page.
  • Phrases that make sense locally but not globally.
  • A comedian who is in lots of things.
  • The kind of poem you'd get if you put a poem on a wiki.
  • The kind of thing that would probably be read on this show.
  • The kind of web site that you'd run into when you're doing an ARG.
  • Installing Roblox on the PS5 to teach your daughter to read English better.
  • Playing a game with purple vomiting everywhere.
  • The ways a 7 year old interacts with a Grand Theft Auto.
  • Teaching yourself how to drive in Grand Theft Auto and obeying all the traffic laws.
  • Not shielding your kid from media but talking to them about it instead.
  • Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Maxx

Topics:

  • Food-focused Japanese TV
  • If "fish don't exist," then how do pescetarians?
  • PicoSteveMo is back!
  • https://wikipoem.org/
  • Verisimilitude in play (My daughter plays GTA and Roblox) (The shifting nature of what is appropriate for children)

Microtopics:

  • Emotionally connecting with a dying web site and meeting up with other users in Seattle.
  • What the Cohost diaspora is doing to do.
  • Drive-by bad opinions.
  • Where people live in Australia, on average.
  • CSS Crimes.
  • Using external image hosts to continue blogging on Cohost after it is in read-only mode.
  • URL shortening services reusing old links.
  • Meeting up with people you have a loose association with and having a good time together.
  • The Bowling League Mafia taking up every lane every day with tournaments so nobody else can bowl.
  • A TV drama where a traveling salesman keeps being hungry at different train stations.
  • Seeing a meal that looks delicious but you're full and can't eat a whole nother meal.
  • Whether food becomes fictional as soon as you eat it.
  • Watching satellite TV on your flip phone.
  • OneSeg.
  • Your email address being owned by your phone carrier.
  • A phone that closes and has great battery life.
  • The golden age of food-focused broadcast TV.
  • A celebrity who's interested in food goes and eats at a restaurant.
  • This Burger Weighs 30 Pounds!
  • Midnight Diner.
  • The Karate Kid but with ramen.
  • Watching a Youtube of the video gamers.
  • Ordinary People, Extraordinary Food.
  • Whether pescetarians exist.
  • The researchers in the shark lab you used to work at calling dolphins fish.
  • Fish eyes: nature's boba.
  • A block of gouda floating in the ocean.
  • Fish that stop being fish when you think about it too hard.
  • Disagreeing with beavers about what tree to cut down, but you're conflict avoidant so the beaver always wins.
  • Haven't we all argued with beavers?
  • Crows stealing the naan out of your naan and curry.
  • Jungle Crows who sound like an adult man doing an impression of crows.
  • Crows who are really good at Japanese T9.
  • The nets you put over your garbage that can't possibly keep the crows out.
  • Picking Steves from a continuity standpoint.
  • Finding any excuse to make a Stephen King Sokoban.
  • Deliberately awkward control schemes.
  • A thousand prototyping girls in space.
  • A poem without any line breaks in it.
  • The zine era of web design, when people would just type HTML and it would become a web page.
  • Phrases that make sense locally but not globally.
  • A comedian who is in lots of things.
  • The kind of poem you'd get if you put a poem on a wiki.
  • The kind of thing that would probably be read on this show.
  • The kind of web site that you'd run into when you're doing an ARG.
  • Installing Roblox on the PS5 to teach your daughter to read English better.
  • Playing a game with purple vomiting everywhere.
  • The ways a 7 year old interacts with a Grand Theft Auto.
  • Teaching yourself how to drive in Grand Theft Auto and obeying all the traffic laws.
  • Not shielding your kid from media but talking to them about it instead.
  • Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+HXNqcZYU ]]> Jim Stormdancer 261. Chat Hurt Chatself in Chat's Confusion https://topiclords.com/chat-hurt-chatself-in-chats-confusion 429765dc-4c27-4000-9bfc-e861cef70663 Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Mitch. We discuss the wikipedia article about Football, classic Macintosh computers, the entomologists in Silence of the Lambs, With Apologies to Dr. Seuss by Supper Mario Broth, Archipelago, and deconstructing chat as a first person pronoun. 1:03:25 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Off-the-cuff something.
  • Putting on the best talent show Cohost has ever seen.
  • Www.www.www
  • How to deal with multiple things that are called the same thing.
  • A list of things called Georgia.
  • A very opinionated move that you would not expect from a source as neutral as Wikipedia.
  • Sometimes your can carry the ball; sometimes you can't carry the ball.
  • What an IP address has to say about women in sports.
  • Sports: there's a place where you play it.
  • Watching Mexican TV and seeing an ad for "¡futbol americano!"
  • Repairing an old Mac that you found in an e-waste place.
  • Whether programming has changed since 1985.
  • Running an Electron app on a Mac Classic.
  • Switcher allowing you to run four 128k programs at a time on a 512k Mac.
  • How the 1991 Borland C++ debugger compares to the 2024 Visual Studio debugger.
  • Blah Blob, a Celeste-inspired platformer implemented as a Hypercard stack.
  • Sitting at the blender all day blending everything within arm's reach.
  • Steve Jobs' relationship with fans.
  • Wrapping your Xbox 360 in a towel to reflow the cracked solder.
  • Adding an extra lane to a highway to make the traffic worse.
  • Two awkwardly charming guys who help with an FBI investigation.
  • CSIvania.
  • The public domain jingle that precedes the poem.
  • Supper Mario Broth.
  • Wario's Shit Bone.
  • A Rare Gooper Bloober Goop Gooble Event.
  • Rhyming portend with event.
  • A textuovisual post.
  • Dr. Soup.
  • Whether the folks writing the Prima guide to Mario Sunshine get to personally ask Miyamoto what the weird goop enemies are called.
  • Bowser's Fury: the final Mario game.
  • F Boy: the F stands for fireball.
  • Trying to use a social media service when you don't know anyone on it.
  • In My Tumbl Opinion.
  • Weird Mario Enemies.
  • F Boy (Again)
  • Wanting a cool nickname like F Boy.
  • Explaining randomizers to someone who has never heard of video games.
  • Multi-game multiplayer randomizers.
  • A non-randomized randomizer.
  • Getting rupee donations left and right when all you need is a sword.
  • Unofficial archipelago support.
  • The hypothetical dad behind the fourth wall.
  • The hypothetical eighth month of the year.
  • Subtumbling.
  • How to tell the difference between a noun and a pronoun.
  • Old-fashioned home grown misinformation.
  • Getting from fourth wall to fourth person.
  • Fourth person perspective as an alternative term for first person plural.
  • Whether "dad" is a pronoun.
  • Chat hurt chatself in chat's confusion.
  • Rebageling images from 2014.
  • Agreeing with yourself from 10 years ago about which images are interesting.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Off-the-cuff something.
  • Putting on the best talent show Cohost has ever seen.
  • Www.www.www
  • How to deal with multiple things that are called the same thing.
  • A list of things called Georgia.
  • A very opinionated move that you would not expect from a source as neutral as Wikipedia.
  • Sometimes your can carry the ball; sometimes you can't carry the ball.
  • What an IP address has to say about women in sports.
  • Sports: there's a place where you play it.
  • Watching Mexican TV and seeing an ad for "¡futbol americano!"
  • Repairing an old Mac that you found in an e-waste place.
  • Whether programming has changed since 1985.
  • Running an Electron app on a Mac Classic.
  • Switcher allowing you to run four 128k programs at a time on a 512k Mac.
  • How the 1991 Borland C++ debugger compares to the 2024 Visual Studio debugger.
  • Blah Blob, a Celeste-inspired platformer implemented as a Hypercard stack.
  • Sitting at the blender all day blending everything within arm's reach.
  • Steve Jobs' relationship with fans.
  • Wrapping your Xbox 360 in a towel to reflow the cracked solder.
  • Adding an extra lane to a highway to make the traffic worse.
  • Two awkwardly charming guys who help with an FBI investigation.
  • CSIvania.
  • The public domain jingle that precedes the poem.
  • Supper Mario Broth.
  • Wario's Shit Bone.
  • A Rare Gooper Bloober Goop Gooble Event.
  • Rhyming portend with event.
  • A textuovisual post.
  • Dr. Soup.
  • Whether the folks writing the Prima guide to Mario Sunshine get to personally ask Miyamoto what the weird goop enemies are called.
  • Bowser's Fury: the final Mario game.
  • F Boy: the F stands for fireball.
  • Trying to use a social media service when you don't know anyone on it.
  • In My Tumbl Opinion.
  • Weird Mario Enemies.
  • F Boy (Again)
  • Wanting a cool nickname like F Boy.
  • Explaining randomizers to someone who has never heard of video games.
  • Multi-game multiplayer randomizers.
  • A non-randomized randomizer.
  • Getting rupee donations left and right when all you need is a sword.
  • Unofficial archipelago support.
  • The hypothetical dad behind the fourth wall.
  • The hypothetical eighth month of the year.
  • Subtumbling.
  • How to tell the difference between a noun and a pronoun.
  • Old-fashioned home grown misinformation.
  • Getting from fourth wall to fourth person.
  • Fourth person perspective as an alternative term for first person plural.
  • Whether "dad" is a pronoun.
  • Chat hurt chatself in chat's confusion.
  • Rebageling images from 2014.
  • Agreeing with yourself from 10 years ago about which images are interesting.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Off-the-cuff something.
  • Putting on the best talent show Cohost has ever seen.
  • Www.www.www
  • How to deal with multiple things that are called the same thing.
  • A list of things called Georgia.
  • A very opinionated move that you would not expect from a source as neutral as Wikipedia.
  • Sometimes your can carry the ball; sometimes you can't carry the ball.
  • What an IP address has to say about women in sports.
  • Sports: there's a place where you play it.
  • Watching Mexican TV and seeing an ad for "¡futbol americano!"
  • Repairing an old Mac that you found in an e-waste place.
  • Whether programming has changed since 1985.
  • Running an Electron app on a Mac Classic.
  • Switcher allowing you to run four 128k programs at a time on a 512k Mac.
  • How the 1991 Borland C++ debugger compares to the 2024 Visual Studio debugger.
  • Blah Blob, a Celeste-inspired platformer implemented as a Hypercard stack.
  • Sitting at the blender all day blending everything within arm's reach.
  • Steve Jobs' relationship with fans.
  • Wrapping your Xbox 360 in a towel to reflow the cracked solder.
  • Adding an extra lane to a highway to make the traffic worse.
  • Two awkwardly charming guys who help with an FBI investigation.
  • CSIvania.
  • The public domain jingle that precedes the poem.
  • Supper Mario Broth.
  • Wario's Shit Bone.
  • A Rare Gooper Bloober Goop Gooble Event.
  • Rhyming portend with event.
  • A textuovisual post.
  • Dr. Soup.
  • Whether the folks writing the Prima guide to Mario Sunshine get to personally ask Miyamoto what the weird goop enemies are called.
  • Bowser's Fury: the final Mario game.
  • F Boy: the F stands for fireball.
  • Trying to use a social media service when you don't know anyone on it.
  • In My Tumbl Opinion.
  • Weird Mario Enemies.
  • F Boy (Again)
  • Wanting a cool nickname like F Boy.
  • Explaining randomizers to someone who has never heard of video games.
  • Multi-game multiplayer randomizers.
  • A non-randomized randomizer.
  • Getting rupee donations left and right when all you need is a sword.
  • Unofficial archipelago support.
  • The hypothetical dad behind the fourth wall.
  • The hypothetical eighth month of the year.
  • Subtumbling.
  • How to tell the difference between a noun and a pronoun.
  • Old-fashioned home grown misinformation.
  • Getting from fourth wall to fourth person.
  • Fourth person perspective as an alternative term for first person plural.
  • Whether "dad" is a pronoun.
  • Chat hurt chatself in chat's confusion.
  • Rebageling images from 2014.
  • Agreeing with yourself from 10 years ago about which images are interesting.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+BwedVLyH ]]> Jim Stormdancer 260. This Sentient Life Could've Been an Email https://topiclords.com/this-sentient-life-couldve-been-an-email caeb9d4f-e0fd-4bfb-b9d1-95e63c2b8510 Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Chris. We discuss whether corporate mascots are age-locked to a generation, balls being able to taste soy sauce, BB-8 changed my tire, and The Woodchuck by Sam Pink. 1:15:33 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Too much dick content for one show.
  • What kind of fetus dong shot engagement you're looking for.
  • When they smear the goo on your belly.
  • Throwing a gender reveal party and the uncle nobody wants around is like "I don't believe you" and you get to whip out the photo of the kid's dick.
  • Shipping a person in Q4.
  • Automating the Omelas kid.
  • The Disney suffering animatronic child asking passers by to walk away from Omelas.
  • Gen Z no longer needing to read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas because they live in modern society.
  • Gardening in one of the hardest places in the world to garden.
  • What's the grass for?
  • An office park spending millions of gallons of water to maintain a lawn nobody ever walks on or looks at.
  • What if the Omelas kid is a dick? What if they're treating him really well and he just has impossibly high standards and hates everything.
  • An electrical problem that's very pronounced when Jenni turns on the blender.
  • The Golden Age of Corporate Mascots.
  • Undead Corporate Mascots.
  • Trying to find a picture of the Toucan Sam redesign and ending up on Deviant Art.
  • Howard and Nester.
  • Whether American kids will tolerate anime.
  • President of the Nintendo No Fun Club.
  • Spending $200 on the Nintendo hint line trying to solve the last screen in Solstice.
  • An adventure game that's also a platformer where if your toe touches a candle flame it's an instant game over.
  • Inventing terrible camera angles in a 2D game.
  • It's 3D, but on your Speccy!
  • Trusting a YouTube documentary more the longer the video is.
  • Are Domo Kun and Hello Kitty free agents?
  • Cap'n Crunch guest starring in the Star Wars Holiday Special.
  • A Roma who was once helpful.
  • Eating a sandwich and getting the sandwich tattooed on your bicep because.
  • A baby name that Boomer moms love.
  • Remington Steel On At 7PM After Matlock Jones.
  • Getting into a thing with people on Metafilter.
  • POV: when your girlfriend gets you Swedish meatballs at Ikea.
  • Whether Frosthaven is important to the testicles tasting umami story.
  • Vanilloid receptors.
  • Why you can shock your tongue with a 9 volt battery but you can't shock your forearm even if it's wet.
  • The chef with the tiny spoon in your testicles making sure to get the exact right MSG level in your semen.
  • Peppers hacking mammal biology.
  • Seeds who enjoy being digested by birds.
  • The cardioprotective benefit of spicy food.
  • The Ones Who Bring it Back to Omelas.
  • Broccoli evolving into crabs.
  • This is canon: BB-8 drives a 2016 Corolla.
  • Pretending that you are talking to a Youtube audience while you make s sandwich.
  • Just a li'l guy who rolls around on a ball.
  • R2D2: a mean mean man.
  • The floor falling out of the Pinto while you're driving it.
  • A rubber pad with friction stripes on it.
  • Turning it until it feels like you broke it, but you didn't and you have to keep going.
  • After the cake comes out of the oven the recipe stops having steps.
  • How to get help from Linux users.
  • The entire wheel snapping off the axle as you're parking at Camerica Bank.
  • Different car, same maintenance strategy.
  • Driving a car until it can no longer be ontologically be classified as a car.
  • Churchill's Irregulars.
  • Waiting for Peter Jackson to mansplain to you the sound a car makes when the wheel snaps off.
  • Delving too deeply into the Cars cinematic universe.
  • A Mastodon setting that hides all of Jim's BB-8 toots.
  • How to find people to follow on Nectarine.
  • The dying MUD you joined in 1997.
  • Radioactive names such as Hitler and Sheldon.
  • Joining a social media service and it tells you there are no posts.
  • Sam Pink strikes again.
  • The emotional arc of putting a tiny hat on a woodchuck.
  • A woodchuck you would definitely do a murder to.
  • Ampersand at the beginning of the line.
  • The Furniture That Rolled Away From Omelas.
  • Why the computer is mad in I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
  • Looking for sentient life in the universe when you have dolphins at home.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Too much dick content for one show.
  • What kind of fetus dong shot engagement you're looking for.
  • When they smear the goo on your belly.
  • Throwing a gender reveal party and the uncle nobody wants around is like "I don't believe you" and you get to whip out the photo of the kid's dick.
  • Shipping a person in Q4.
  • Automating the Omelas kid.
  • The Disney suffering animatronic child asking passers by to walk away from Omelas.
  • Gen Z no longer needing to read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas because they live in modern society.
  • Gardening in one of the hardest places in the world to garden.
  • What's the grass for?
  • An office park spending millions of gallons of water to maintain a lawn nobody ever walks on or looks at.
  • What if the Omelas kid is a dick? What if they're treating him really well and he just has impossibly high standards and hates everything.
  • An electrical problem that's very pronounced when Jenni turns on the blender.
  • The Golden Age of Corporate Mascots.
  • Undead Corporate Mascots.
  • Trying to find a picture of the Toucan Sam redesign and ending up on Deviant Art.
  • Howard and Nester.
  • Whether American kids will tolerate anime.
  • President of the Nintendo No Fun Club.
  • Spending $200 on the Nintendo hint line trying to solve the last screen in Solstice.
  • An adventure game that's also a platformer where if your toe touches a candle flame it's an instant game over.
  • Inventing terrible camera angles in a 2D game.
  • It's 3D, but on your Speccy!
  • Trusting a YouTube documentary more the longer the video is.
  • Are Domo Kun and Hello Kitty free agents?
  • Cap'n Crunch guest starring in the Star Wars Holiday Special.
  • A Roma who was once helpful.
  • Eating a sandwich and getting the sandwich tattooed on your bicep because.
  • A baby name that Boomer moms love.
  • Remington Steel On At 7PM After Matlock Jones.
  • Getting into a thing with people on Metafilter.
  • POV: when your girlfriend gets you Swedish meatballs at Ikea.
  • Whether Frosthaven is important to the testicles tasting umami story.
  • Vanilloid receptors.
  • Why you can shock your tongue with a 9 volt battery but you can't shock your forearm even if it's wet.
  • The chef with the tiny spoon in your testicles making sure to get the exact right MSG level in your semen.
  • Peppers hacking mammal biology.
  • Seeds who enjoy being digested by birds.
  • The cardioprotective benefit of spicy food.
  • The Ones Who Bring it Back to Omelas.
  • Broccoli evolving into crabs.
  • This is canon: BB-8 drives a 2016 Corolla.
  • Pretending that you are talking to a Youtube audience while you make s sandwich.
  • Just a li'l guy who rolls around on a ball.
  • R2D2: a mean mean man.
  • The floor falling out of the Pinto while you're driving it.
  • A rubber pad with friction stripes on it.
  • Turning it until it feels like you broke it, but you didn't and you have to keep going.
  • After the cake comes out of the oven the recipe stops having steps.
  • How to get help from Linux users.
  • The entire wheel snapping off the axle as you're parking at Camerica Bank.
  • Different car, same maintenance strategy.
  • Driving a car until it can no longer be ontologically be classified as a car.
  • Churchill's Irregulars.
  • Waiting for Peter Jackson to mansplain to you the sound a car makes when the wheel snaps off.
  • Delving too deeply into the Cars cinematic universe.
  • A Mastodon setting that hides all of Jim's BB-8 toots.
  • How to find people to follow on Nectarine.
  • The dying MUD you joined in 1997.
  • Radioactive names such as Hitler and Sheldon.
  • Joining a social media service and it tells you there are no posts.
  • Sam Pink strikes again.
  • The emotional arc of putting a tiny hat on a woodchuck.
  • A woodchuck you would definitely do a murder to.
  • Ampersand at the beginning of the line.
  • The Furniture That Rolled Away From Omelas.
  • Why the computer is mad in I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
  • Looking for sentient life in the universe when you have dolphins at home.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Too much dick content for one show.
  • What kind of fetus dong shot engagement you're looking for.
  • When they smear the goo on your belly.
  • Throwing a gender reveal party and the uncle nobody wants around is like "I don't believe you" and you get to whip out the photo of the kid's dick.
  • Shipping a person in Q4.
  • Automating the Omelas kid.
  • The Disney suffering animatronic child asking passers by to walk away from Omelas.
  • Gen Z no longer needing to read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas because they live in modern society.
  • Gardening in one of the hardest places in the world to garden.
  • What's the grass for?
  • An office park spending millions of gallons of water to maintain a lawn nobody ever walks on or looks at.
  • What if the Omelas kid is a dick? What if they're treating him really well and he just has impossibly high standards and hates everything.
  • An electrical problem that's very pronounced when Jenni turns on the blender.
  • The Golden Age of Corporate Mascots.
  • Undead Corporate Mascots.
  • Trying to find a picture of the Toucan Sam redesign and ending up on Deviant Art.
  • Howard and Nester.
  • Whether American kids will tolerate anime.
  • President of the Nintendo No Fun Club.
  • Spending $200 on the Nintendo hint line trying to solve the last screen in Solstice.
  • An adventure game that's also a platformer where if your toe touches a candle flame it's an instant game over.
  • Inventing terrible camera angles in a 2D game.
  • It's 3D, but on your Speccy!
  • Trusting a YouTube documentary more the longer the video is.
  • Are Domo Kun and Hello Kitty free agents?
  • Cap'n Crunch guest starring in the Star Wars Holiday Special.
  • A Roma who was once helpful.
  • Eating a sandwich and getting the sandwich tattooed on your bicep because.
  • A baby name that Boomer moms love.
  • Remington Steel On At 7PM After Matlock Jones.
  • Getting into a thing with people on Metafilter.
  • POV: when your girlfriend gets you Swedish meatballs at Ikea.
  • Whether Frosthaven is important to the testicles tasting umami story.
  • Vanilloid receptors.
  • Why you can shock your tongue with a 9 volt battery but you can't shock your forearm even if it's wet.
  • The chef with the tiny spoon in your testicles making sure to get the exact right MSG level in your semen.
  • Peppers hacking mammal biology.
  • Seeds who enjoy being digested by birds.
  • The cardioprotective benefit of spicy food.
  • The Ones Who Bring it Back to Omelas.
  • Broccoli evolving into crabs.
  • This is canon: BB-8 drives a 2016 Corolla.
  • Pretending that you are talking to a Youtube audience while you make s sandwich.
  • Just a li'l guy who rolls around on a ball.
  • R2D2: a mean mean man.
  • The floor falling out of the Pinto while you're driving it.
  • A rubber pad with friction stripes on it.
  • Turning it until it feels like you broke it, but you didn't and you have to keep going.
  • After the cake comes out of the oven the recipe stops having steps.
  • How to get help from Linux users.
  • The entire wheel snapping off the axle as you're parking at Camerica Bank.
  • Different car, same maintenance strategy.
  • Driving a car until it can no longer be ontologically be classified as a car.
  • Churchill's Irregulars.
  • Waiting for Peter Jackson to mansplain to you the sound a car makes when the wheel snaps off.
  • Delving too deeply into the Cars cinematic universe.
  • A Mastodon setting that hides all of Jim's BB-8 toots.
  • How to find people to follow on Nectarine.
  • The dying MUD you joined in 1997.
  • Radioactive names such as Hitler and Sheldon.
  • Joining a social media service and it tells you there are no posts.
  • Sam Pink strikes again.
  • The emotional arc of putting a tiny hat on a woodchuck.
  • A woodchuck you would definitely do a murder to.
  • Ampersand at the beginning of the line.
  • The Furniture That Rolled Away From Omelas.
  • Why the computer is mad in I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
  • Looking for sentient life in the universe when you have dolphins at home.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+2DQ5S50n ]]> Jim Stormdancer 259. All Bag, No Pipes https://topiclords.com/all-bag-no-pipes 9c0dd629-3157-4531-9439-04ddffc15b39 Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Tyriq. We discuss being witty and social as a power fantasy, popular music: sometimes popular because it's good, where do we go after Cohost, and Ballad of the Veliger by Walter Garstang. 1:08:54 true Lords:

  • Elena
    • Esper says: "I will join both guests in also recommending Dropout, especially Game Changer. They are on to something really special with the shows they're making, very little makes me laugh as hard as the stuff on there."
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Japanese cold medicine.
  • Promising the guy at the drug store you haven't taken this drug on the last week.
  • Lulu Attack X.
  • What the College Humor folks went on to do after graduating.
  • 50 games for a fictional console.
  • UFO 500.
  • Super Mario Bros but it scrolls wrong.
  • Google docs autocorrecting your Steam keys.
  • Some weird shit that you're going to maybe discover.
  • Why he's named Gordy.
  • Being sharp and on it all the time in a conversational manner.
  • The safety of a fantasy that is unrealistic to fulfill in real life.
  • Picking a joke and connecting it to the prompt.
  • Making a speech check and the DM thinks of a clever thing for you to say.
  • Coming across as socially competent in a conversation and feeling great for the rest of the day.
  • Looking at an extremely charismatic, competent character in a film and thinking "that's me! That's me in there!"
  • People talking to you about Chappell Roan.
  • Japanese translated cover of Good Luck Babe.
  • Hearing a lot about an artist and thinking "this artist has a lot of attention and they don't need mine"
  • The combination of a man, a woman, and bunch of instruments.
  • Where people who like pop music hear new music.
  • Pop music: not as popular as it used to be.
  • The pros and cons of people enjoying a wider variety of pop culture.
  • Fingerprints in the Clay.
  • Having to make synthesizer music in prison because they won't let you have guitars.
  • Not paying attention to the political context of the unintelligible screaming in your favorite album.
  • Ancestors of the guitar that sound a little bit different from the guitar.
  • People being unable to tell what amateurish synthesizer work sounds like.
  • Instruments producing incidental noises that come alongside the sounds you intend to make, just by their nature as a physical object.
  • Pink Pony Club, a song about dancing at a club.
  • Authenticity vs. perceived authenticity.
  • Trying to stay on top of fashion trends.
  • Making noises because you feel compelled to.
  • Finding one way or another to pay off the Capitalism demons.
  • Having the genetic disposition to practice a lot.
  • Seeking out things that are easy for you personally to become good at.
  • Drawing because you are holding a pencil all the time and need to fidget, and stopping drawing forever when you are no longer in that life situation.
  • Singing to yourself on the bus.
  • An instrument that's just the screechy tube part of the bagpipes.
  • A monotonic screech machine.
  • Joining your church choir and knowing you're better than everybody else there.
  • Doing a really good job and being relieved that nobody noticed.
  • What does 12 year old Jim know? Certainly not where he's been for the past six months.
  • Making a space for humans on the internet.
  • Tumblr wins by doing absolutely nothing.
  • The kind of person who is like "follow me onto this social media site I've just heard of right now"
  • Artist Alley.
  • The moral difference between "liking" and "reposting."
  • The "reposting something without liking it" vs. "liking it without reposting it" truth table.
  • A British citizen from the 19th century with a name that looks German.
  • How the gastropod got its twist.
  • Horny Foot Without.
  • A poem that is just literally what it says on the tin.
  • A little baby sea guy.
  • A sonnet about the anatomy of the eyeball.
  • What marine biology nerds got up to in 1928.
  • Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses.
  • Red Seas Under Red Skies.
  • Lamarckian evolution.
  • Snails are great. (Except for the cone snail.)
  • I'm on a sea slug diet.
  • The class of pet that you never touch or interact with in any way.
  • How to interact with fish.
  • Whether koi care that you're petting them.
  • Interacting with fish by having them clean your teeth.
  • Enticing your pet octopus to do the dishes by covering them with fish paste.
]]> Lords:

  • Elena
    • Esper says: "I will join both guests in also recommending Dropout, especially Game Changer. They are on to something really special with the shows they're making, very little makes me laugh as hard as the stuff on there."
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Japanese cold medicine.
  • Promising the guy at the drug store you haven't taken this drug on the last week.
  • Lulu Attack X.
  • What the College Humor folks went on to do after graduating.
  • 50 games for a fictional console.
  • UFO 500.
  • Super Mario Bros but it scrolls wrong.
  • Google docs autocorrecting your Steam keys.
  • Some weird shit that you're going to maybe discover.
  • Why he's named Gordy.
  • Being sharp and on it all the time in a conversational manner.
  • The safety of a fantasy that is unrealistic to fulfill in real life.
  • Picking a joke and connecting it to the prompt.
  • Making a speech check and the DM thinks of a clever thing for you to say.
  • Coming across as socially competent in a conversation and feeling great for the rest of the day.
  • Looking at an extremely charismatic, competent character in a film and thinking "that's me! That's me in there!"
  • People talking to you about Chappell Roan.
  • Japanese translated cover of Good Luck Babe.
  • Hearing a lot about an artist and thinking "this artist has a lot of attention and they don't need mine"
  • The combination of a man, a woman, and bunch of instruments.
  • Where people who like pop music hear new music.
  • Pop music: not as popular as it used to be.
  • The pros and cons of people enjoying a wider variety of pop culture.
  • Fingerprints in the Clay.
  • Having to make synthesizer music in prison because they won't let you have guitars.
  • Not paying attention to the political context of the unintelligible screaming in your favorite album.
  • Ancestors of the guitar that sound a little bit different from the guitar.
  • People being unable to tell what amateurish synthesizer work sounds like.
  • Instruments producing incidental noises that come alongside the sounds you intend to make, just by their nature as a physical object.
  • Pink Pony Club, a song about dancing at a club.
  • Authenticity vs. perceived authenticity.
  • Trying to stay on top of fashion trends.
  • Making noises because you feel compelled to.
  • Finding one way or another to pay off the Capitalism demons.
  • Having the genetic disposition to practice a lot.
  • Seeking out things that are easy for you personally to become good at.
  • Drawing because you are holding a pencil all the time and need to fidget, and stopping drawing forever when you are no longer in that life situation.
  • Singing to yourself on the bus.
  • An instrument that's just the screechy tube part of the bagpipes.
  • A monotonic screech machine.
  • Joining your church choir and knowing you're better than everybody else there.
  • Doing a really good job and being relieved that nobody noticed.
  • What does 12 year old Jim know? Certainly not where he's been for the past six months.
  • Making a space for humans on the internet.
  • Tumblr wins by doing absolutely nothing.
  • The kind of person who is like "follow me onto this social media site I've just heard of right now"
  • Artist Alley.
  • The moral difference between "liking" and "reposting."
  • The "reposting something without liking it" vs. "liking it without reposting it" truth table.
  • A British citizen from the 19th century with a name that looks German.
  • How the gastropod got its twist.
  • Horny Foot Without.
  • A poem that is just literally what it says on the tin.
  • A little baby sea guy.
  • A sonnet about the anatomy of the eyeball.
  • What marine biology nerds got up to in 1928.
  • Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses.
  • Red Seas Under Red Skies.
  • Lamarckian evolution.
  • Snails are great. (Except for the cone snail.)
  • I'm on a sea slug diet.
  • The class of pet that you never touch or interact with in any way.
  • How to interact with fish.
  • Whether koi care that you're petting them.
  • Interacting with fish by having them clean your teeth.
  • Enticing your pet octopus to do the dishes by covering them with fish paste.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Elena
    • Esper says: "I will join both guests in also recommending Dropout, especially Game Changer. They are on to something really special with the shows they're making, very little makes me laugh as hard as the stuff on there."
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Japanese cold medicine.
  • Promising the guy at the drug store you haven't taken this drug on the last week.
  • Lulu Attack X.
  • What the College Humor folks went on to do after graduating.
  • 50 games for a fictional console.
  • UFO 500.
  • Super Mario Bros but it scrolls wrong.
  • Google docs autocorrecting your Steam keys.
  • Some weird shit that you're going to maybe discover.
  • Why he's named Gordy.
  • Being sharp and on it all the time in a conversational manner.
  • The safety of a fantasy that is unrealistic to fulfill in real life.
  • Picking a joke and connecting it to the prompt.
  • Making a speech check and the DM thinks of a clever thing for you to say.
  • Coming across as socially competent in a conversation and feeling great for the rest of the day.
  • Looking at an extremely charismatic, competent character in a film and thinking "that's me! That's me in there!"
  • People talking to you about Chappell Roan.
  • Japanese translated cover of Good Luck Babe.
  • Hearing a lot about an artist and thinking "this artist has a lot of attention and they don't need mine"
  • The combination of a man, a woman, and bunch of instruments.
  • Where people who like pop music hear new music.
  • Pop music: not as popular as it used to be.
  • The pros and cons of people enjoying a wider variety of pop culture.
  • Fingerprints in the Clay.
  • Having to make synthesizer music in prison because they won't let you have guitars.
  • Not paying attention to the political context of the unintelligible screaming in your favorite album.
  • Ancestors of the guitar that sound a little bit different from the guitar.
  • People being unable to tell what amateurish synthesizer work sounds like.
  • Instruments producing incidental noises that come alongside the sounds you intend to make, just by their nature as a physical object.
  • Pink Pony Club, a song about dancing at a club.
  • Authenticity vs. perceived authenticity.
  • Trying to stay on top of fashion trends.
  • Making noises because you feel compelled to.
  • Finding one way or another to pay off the Capitalism demons.
  • Having the genetic disposition to practice a lot.
  • Seeking out things that are easy for you personally to become good at.
  • Drawing because you are holding a pencil all the time and need to fidget, and stopping drawing forever when you are no longer in that life situation.
  • Singing to yourself on the bus.
  • An instrument that's just the screechy tube part of the bagpipes.
  • A monotonic screech machine.
  • Joining your church choir and knowing you're better than everybody else there.
  • Doing a really good job and being relieved that nobody noticed.
  • What does 12 year old Jim know? Certainly not where he's been for the past six months.
  • Making a space for humans on the internet.
  • Tumblr wins by doing absolutely nothing.
  • The kind of person who is like "follow me onto this social media site I've just heard of right now"
  • Artist Alley.
  • The moral difference between "liking" and "reposting."
  • The "reposting something without liking it" vs. "liking it without reposting it" truth table.
  • A British citizen from the 19th century with a name that looks German.
  • How the gastropod got its twist.
  • Horny Foot Without.
  • A poem that is just literally what it says on the tin.
  • A little baby sea guy.
  • A sonnet about the anatomy of the eyeball.
  • What marine biology nerds got up to in 1928.
  • Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses.
  • Red Seas Under Red Skies.
  • Lamarckian evolution.
  • Snails are great. (Except for the cone snail.)
  • I'm on a sea slug diet.
  • The class of pet that you never touch or interact with in any way.
  • How to interact with fish.
  • Whether koi care that you're petting them.
  • Interacting with fish by having them clean your teeth.
  • Enticing your pet octopus to do the dishes by covering them with fish paste.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+pai4S6jM ]]> Jim Stormdancer 258. Only The Head of the Deer Sparks Joy https://topiclords.com/only-the-head-of-the-deer-sparks-joy 19e20ee9-d80b-4718-9ed0-4bb3962fe50e Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Cort and Mark. We discuss things you've found in the trash, traveling with children, Adventures with BB-8, Burma Shave Sign by Andrew Plotkin, the useless superpowers game, and whether Mega Man suffers ennui 1:04:45 true Lords:

  • Cort
  • Mark

Topics:

  • The best and worst thing you’ve ever found in the trash.
  • Traveling with children & associated challenges/solutions
  • Adventures with BB-8
  • Survey of Forms - Burma-Shave Sign, by Andrew Plotkin
  • The useless superpowers game
  • Does Mega Man ever suffer ennui?

Microtopics:

  • Dependable sources of guava.
  • Staring at the raccoons as they go by at night.
  • Room temperature ice cream full of bullets.
  • Vietnamese guava vs. central american guava.
  • Gnawing through a leathery rock to impress your in-laws.
  • Cudgel Hero Faction.
  • A life-sized deer sticking out of your neighbor's trash can.
  • What to do with three quarters of a deer.
  • Swimming around in a treasure factory and finding spices.
  • Explaining to your mom where this salt and pepper came from.
  • Dodging a delicious treat bullet.
  • Bringing home a NeXT machine from the dumpsters behind Carnegie Mellon.
  • Throwing away 30 year old legal books and a time traveling lawyer compares you to Hitler.
  • Won't somebody think of the LA hipsters?
  • Figuring out how to be okay not having exactly what you want all the time.
  • Getting heatstroke in Japan.
  • Mr. Puddles Pineapple having the time of his life.
  • Getting a photo of your stuffed penguin at a Hamlet castle holding a skull.
  • Is it really fake if you're telling the truth in a fake way?
  • Housekeeping having a good time with your stuffed animals.
  • The perfect companion to explore the Star Wars Galaxy by your side.
  • Arranging yourself external motivators.
  • A skill separate from cooking that is still relevant to the dining experience.
  • Butterfly Pee Tea.
  • Interwoven bread dough.
  • These are Zelda meatballs!
  • Trying out the recipe for Dubious Food in the Zelda cookbook.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog chili that takes five hours to make.
  • Rouge the Bat's favorite dish.
  • Very round droid. Rounder than most.
  • The make-your-own-lightsaber course class project room experience.
  • Going to Disneyland and asking someone in costume for directions to the speakeasy.
  • A game that exists to make children sad.
  • Everyone working together to blow the shit out of Bowser, Jr.
  • Losing the boss battle with Bowser Jr. at Super Nintendo World and the attendant hands you the dongle so your kids can listen to Princess Peach crying in despair the entire drive home.
  • Explaining to the Super Nintendo World staff that you shouldn't need all the keys to get to the final boss because that's not how Mario games are typically structured.
  • The guy trying to backwards long jump the stairs to the final boss in Super Nintendo World.
  • A series of billboards that turn out to be a poem.
  • Which came first, the Pizza Hut or the building shaped like a hut that you make pizza in?
  • A racially insensitive fireworks store.
  • Dropping a CRT monitor off of a tall building vs. dropping an LCD display.
  • Raccoons witnessing crimes.
  • Shaking exactly two aspirin out of the bottle every single time.
  • An extremely opaque Pepper's Ghost.
  • Mega Man defeating Ennui Man and acquiring his powers.
  • Mega Man can't defeat Dr. Wily because of Asimov's Three Laws.
  • Dr. Light deleting Mega Man's special abilities between games because he needs the hard drive space for porn.
  • Mega Man choosing to forget Crash Man's memories because he's tired of remembering that awkward first date.
  • Dr. Wily hacking everyone's iPhone to have the latest U2 album.
  • Searching for lords and finding a random raccoon.
]]> Lords:

  • Cort
  • Mark

Topics:

  • The best and worst thing you’ve ever found in the trash.
  • Traveling with children & associated challenges/solutions
  • Adventures with BB-8
  • Survey of Forms - Burma-Shave Sign, by Andrew Plotkin
  • The useless superpowers game
  • Does Mega Man ever suffer ennui?

Microtopics:

  • Dependable sources of guava.
  • Staring at the raccoons as they go by at night.
  • Room temperature ice cream full of bullets.
  • Vietnamese guava vs. central american guava.
  • Gnawing through a leathery rock to impress your in-laws.
  • Cudgel Hero Faction.
  • A life-sized deer sticking out of your neighbor's trash can.
  • What to do with three quarters of a deer.
  • Swimming around in a treasure factory and finding spices.
  • Explaining to your mom where this salt and pepper came from.
  • Dodging a delicious treat bullet.
  • Bringing home a NeXT machine from the dumpsters behind Carnegie Mellon.
  • Throwing away 30 year old legal books and a time traveling lawyer compares you to Hitler.
  • Won't somebody think of the LA hipsters?
  • Figuring out how to be okay not having exactly what you want all the time.
  • Getting heatstroke in Japan.
  • Mr. Puddles Pineapple having the time of his life.
  • Getting a photo of your stuffed penguin at a Hamlet castle holding a skull.
  • Is it really fake if you're telling the truth in a fake way?
  • Housekeeping having a good time with your stuffed animals.
  • The perfect companion to explore the Star Wars Galaxy by your side.
  • Arranging yourself external motivators.
  • A skill separate from cooking that is still relevant to the dining experience.
  • Butterfly Pee Tea.
  • Interwoven bread dough.
  • These are Zelda meatballs!
  • Trying out the recipe for Dubious Food in the Zelda cookbook.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog chili that takes five hours to make.
  • Rouge the Bat's favorite dish.
  • Very round droid. Rounder than most.
  • The make-your-own-lightsaber course class project room experience.
  • Going to Disneyland and asking someone in costume for directions to the speakeasy.
  • A game that exists to make children sad.
  • Everyone working together to blow the shit out of Bowser, Jr.
  • Losing the boss battle with Bowser Jr. at Super Nintendo World and the attendant hands you the dongle so your kids can listen to Princess Peach crying in despair the entire drive home.
  • Explaining to the Super Nintendo World staff that you shouldn't need all the keys to get to the final boss because that's not how Mario games are typically structured.
  • The guy trying to backwards long jump the stairs to the final boss in Super Nintendo World.
  • A series of billboards that turn out to be a poem.
  • Which came first, the Pizza Hut or the building shaped like a hut that you make pizza in?
  • A racially insensitive fireworks store.
  • Dropping a CRT monitor off of a tall building vs. dropping an LCD display.
  • Raccoons witnessing crimes.
  • Shaking exactly two aspirin out of the bottle every single time.
  • An extremely opaque Pepper's Ghost.
  • Mega Man defeating Ennui Man and acquiring his powers.
  • Mega Man can't defeat Dr. Wily because of Asimov's Three Laws.
  • Dr. Light deleting Mega Man's special abilities between games because he needs the hard drive space for porn.
  • Mega Man choosing to forget Crash Man's memories because he's tired of remembering that awkward first date.
  • Dr. Wily hacking everyone's iPhone to have the latest U2 album.
  • Searching for lords and finding a random raccoon.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Cort
  • Mark

Topics:

  • The best and worst thing you’ve ever found in the trash.
  • Traveling with children & associated challenges/solutions
  • Adventures with BB-8
  • Survey of Forms - Burma-Shave Sign, by Andrew Plotkin
  • The useless superpowers game
  • Does Mega Man ever suffer ennui?

Microtopics:

  • Dependable sources of guava.
  • Staring at the raccoons as they go by at night.
  • Room temperature ice cream full of bullets.
  • Vietnamese guava vs. central american guava.
  • Gnawing through a leathery rock to impress your in-laws.
  • Cudgel Hero Faction.
  • A life-sized deer sticking out of your neighbor's trash can.
  • What to do with three quarters of a deer.
  • Swimming around in a treasure factory and finding spices.
  • Explaining to your mom where this salt and pepper came from.
  • Dodging a delicious treat bullet.
  • Bringing home a NeXT machine from the dumpsters behind Carnegie Mellon.
  • Throwing away 30 year old legal books and a time traveling lawyer compares you to Hitler.
  • Won't somebody think of the LA hipsters?
  • Figuring out how to be okay not having exactly what you want all the time.
  • Getting heatstroke in Japan.
  • Mr. Puddles Pineapple having the time of his life.
  • Getting a photo of your stuffed penguin at a Hamlet castle holding a skull.
  • Is it really fake if you're telling the truth in a fake way?
  • Housekeeping having a good time with your stuffed animals.
  • The perfect companion to explore the Star Wars Galaxy by your side.
  • Arranging yourself external motivators.
  • A skill separate from cooking that is still relevant to the dining experience.
  • Butterfly Pee Tea.
  • Interwoven bread dough.
  • These are Zelda meatballs!
  • Trying out the recipe for Dubious Food in the Zelda cookbook.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog chili that takes five hours to make.
  • Rouge the Bat's favorite dish.
  • Very round droid. Rounder than most.
  • The make-your-own-lightsaber course class project room experience.
  • Going to Disneyland and asking someone in costume for directions to the speakeasy.
  • A game that exists to make children sad.
  • Everyone working together to blow the shit out of Bowser, Jr.
  • Losing the boss battle with Bowser Jr. at Super Nintendo World and the attendant hands you the dongle so your kids can listen to Princess Peach crying in despair the entire drive home.
  • Explaining to the Super Nintendo World staff that you shouldn't need all the keys to get to the final boss because that's not how Mario games are typically structured.
  • The guy trying to backwards long jump the stairs to the final boss in Super Nintendo World.
  • A series of billboards that turn out to be a poem.
  • Which came first, the Pizza Hut or the building shaped like a hut that you make pizza in?
  • A racially insensitive fireworks store.
  • Dropping a CRT monitor off of a tall building vs. dropping an LCD display.
  • Raccoons witnessing crimes.
  • Shaking exactly two aspirin out of the bottle every single time.
  • An extremely opaque Pepper's Ghost.
  • Mega Man defeating Ennui Man and acquiring his powers.
  • Mega Man can't defeat Dr. Wily because of Asimov's Three Laws.
  • Dr. Light deleting Mega Man's special abilities between games because he needs the hard drive space for porn.
  • Mega Man choosing to forget Crash Man's memories because he's tired of remembering that awkward first date.
  • Dr. Wily hacking everyone's iPhone to have the latest U2 album.
  • Searching for lords and finding a random raccoon.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+_dceqXC9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 257. Stinky Judo https://topiclords.com/stinky-judo 9977c3ee-390c-4c4f-916c-cbcdaf825c59 Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Tom. We discuss France stealing breakdancing during the 2024 Olympics, growing to an age where media is good, how are you saying goodbye to trigraphs, Rain by Raymond Carver, how to pronounce things you normally just type, and rolling in NES tetris. 1:14:40 true Lords:

Topics:

  • During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028?
  • Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore.
  • How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs?
  • Rain by Raymond Carver
  • Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags
  • 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later.

Microtopics:

  • Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook.
  • How all games ought to be made.
  • Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender.
  • Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk.
  • Space Opera by Catherynne Valente.
  • Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day.
  • A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot.
  • Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics.
  • Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser.
  • Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics.
  • Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics.
  • The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle.
  • Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is.
  • This right here is a horse.
  • Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances.
  • Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different.
  • Running fast at the Olympics.
  • Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers.
  • Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors.
  • Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other.
  • Liking television alongside people who share your generational values.
  • Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old.
  • Making an effort to appreciate new art more.
  • The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen.
  • What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night.
  • Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode.
  • All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC.
  • Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard.
  • Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible.
  • A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of.
  • Compiling C++ to a web site.
  • Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string.
  • What website people are into.
  • Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load.
  • Loading the loading screen.
  • Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt.
  • Waking up and it's raining.
  • Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool!
  • What cities were destroyed in December 2012?
  • Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system.
  • Complete List of Destroyed Cities.
  • How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old.
  • How to communicate about what you want someone to type.
  • What they call curly braces in other countries.
  • Smooth brackets.
  • How Mandarin speakers write C code.
  • Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it.
  • Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names.
  • Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code.
  • Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now.
  • How to play Tetris faster.
  • Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster.
  • Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster.
  • A new way to interact with this piece of plastic.
  • Turning the back of the controller into a giant button.
  • What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop.
  • Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish.
  • Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships.
  • Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028?
  • Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore.
  • How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs?
  • Rain by Raymond Carver
  • Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags
  • 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later.

Microtopics:

  • Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook.
  • How all games ought to be made.
  • Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender.
  • Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk.
  • Space Opera by Catherynne Valente.
  • Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day.
  • A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot.
  • Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics.
  • Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser.
  • Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics.
  • Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics.
  • The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle.
  • Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is.
  • This right here is a horse.
  • Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances.
  • Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different.
  • Running fast at the Olympics.
  • Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers.
  • Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors.
  • Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other.
  • Liking television alongside people who share your generational values.
  • Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old.
  • Making an effort to appreciate new art more.
  • The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen.
  • What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night.
  • Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode.
  • All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC.
  • Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard.
  • Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible.
  • A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of.
  • Compiling C++ to a web site.
  • Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string.
  • What website people are into.
  • Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load.
  • Loading the loading screen.
  • Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt.
  • Waking up and it's raining.
  • Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool!
  • What cities were destroyed in December 2012?
  • Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system.
  • Complete List of Destroyed Cities.
  • How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old.
  • How to communicate about what you want someone to type.
  • What they call curly braces in other countries.
  • Smooth brackets.
  • How Mandarin speakers write C code.
  • Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it.
  • Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names.
  • Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code.
  • Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now.
  • How to play Tetris faster.
  • Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster.
  • Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster.
  • A new way to interact with this piece of plastic.
  • Turning the back of the controller into a giant button.
  • What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop.
  • Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish.
  • Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships.
  • Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028?
  • Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore.
  • How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs?
  • Rain by Raymond Carver
  • Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags
  • 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later.

Microtopics:

  • Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook.
  • How all games ought to be made.
  • Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender.
  • Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk.
  • Space Opera by Catherynne Valente.
  • Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day.
  • A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot.
  • Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics.
  • Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser.
  • Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics.
  • Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics.
  • The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle.
  • Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is.
  • This right here is a horse.
  • Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances.
  • Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different.
  • Running fast at the Olympics.
  • Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers.
  • Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors.
  • Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other.
  • Liking television alongside people who share your generational values.
  • Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old.
  • Making an effort to appreciate new art more.
  • The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen.
  • What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night.
  • Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode.
  • All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC.
  • Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard.
  • Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible.
  • A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of.
  • Compiling C++ to a web site.
  • Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string.
  • What website people are into.
  • Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load.
  • Loading the loading screen.
  • Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt.
  • Waking up and it's raining.
  • Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool!
  • What cities were destroyed in December 2012?
  • Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system.
  • Complete List of Destroyed Cities.
  • How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old.
  • How to communicate about what you want someone to type.
  • What they call curly braces in other countries.
  • Smooth brackets.
  • How Mandarin speakers write C code.
  • Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it.
  • Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names.
  • Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code.
  • Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now.
  • How to play Tetris faster.
  • Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster.
  • Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster.
  • A new way to interact with this piece of plastic.
  • Turning the back of the controller into a giant button.
  • What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop.
  • Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish.
  • Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships.
  • Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+T3H34WKq ]]> Jim Stormdancer 256. Donkey Kong Is a Tankie https://topiclords.com/donkey-kong-is-a-tankie 280c66c8-fb73-4899-a051-4a554f82d53f Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss naming a human, getting more liberal as you get older, I'm scared to start recording Mario Odyssey, and The Orc 1:16:18 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Writhen Hilt.
  • Writing a few sentences to achieve your goal.
  • Being extremely entertained by your drunken journal entries from a year ago.
  • Remembering the 140 years your son has been around.
  • Learningl from the dead.
  • How the archaeologists of the future are going to cope with social media, let alone the reams of LLM generated nonsense.
  • Detecting forged paintings via the radioactive isotopes that are only found in pigments manufactured after the detonation of the atomic bomb.
  • Low-background steel.
  • Scavenging steel from shipwrecks because you just can't make steel that good any more.
  • Pizza Pranks.
  • Packaging a USB stick as though it's a cassette tape.
  • Packaging your Dungeon Synth album on cassette in a Sega Genesis cartridge box.
  • Propsr Topics.
  • Calling your niece Billy Zane.
  • Naming your child Scooter. (Monotonously.)
  • Being unable to decide whether you're going to name your child Scooter or Squooter.
  • Some Wizard of Earrhsea ahit.
  • Holding power over your friends (magically, not legally)
  • Your name for a person carrying with it your relationship with that person.
  • Why they shipped a game called "Epic Mickey.*
  • Compaeing this year's top 50 baby names to the top 50 a century ago.
  • Mikse meeting Mikes.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • One day there will be no more Bobs, and a door will close.
  • Continuing to refer to your nephew as a "little kid" even though he's 45 now.
  • Thinking you're getting more liberal but eventually realizing you're getting more apocalyptic.
  • Garbage-ass subreddits full of dis- and misinformation.
  • Battle Jackets vs. Jackets for Battle.
  • Pregnancy subreddits.
  • Checking out of gamer culture entirely.
  • Black metal communities dealing with white supremacists.
  • Can't we just have a place who love swords and wizards?
  • How to not run a Nazi bar.
  • Whether people get more liberal or more conservative as they age.
  • Stone cold hippies.
  • Explaining trans rights to your parents who are doing their best to understand.
  • Asking the AI-generated slush pile how to update your political beliefs.
  • Keeping younger people around who care about you enough to help you fix your shitty opinions.
  • Hungry for Jim topics.
  • Japanese cultural touchstones referenced in video games that just seem like nonsense to Americans.
  • Slavic folklore in the Witcher games.
  • Importing video games from more and more obscure countries because Japan is played out now.
  • Recognizing Greek heavy metal just from the riffs.
  • Vacuuming a couch and twenty one-dollar bills fly out of it.
  • Shagrat, you shag rats!
  • Rheumy weeping orbs that glare with hate.
  • Truly a poem of unknown provenance.
  • Shagrat doesn't deserve this!
  • We had some great topics today, y'all.
  • Mythcarver.
  • A discord for people who are due in the same month as you.
  • The Libras who won't let the dads in.
  • Circle time with other pregnant couples.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Writhen Hilt.
  • Writing a few sentences to achieve your goal.
  • Being extremely entertained by your drunken journal entries from a year ago.
  • Remembering the 140 years your son has been around.
  • Learningl from the dead.
  • How the archaeologists of the future are going to cope with social media, let alone the reams of LLM generated nonsense.
  • Detecting forged paintings via the radioactive isotopes that are only found in pigments manufactured after the detonation of the atomic bomb.
  • Low-background steel.
  • Scavenging steel from shipwrecks because you just can't make steel that good any more.
  • Pizza Pranks.
  • Packaging a USB stick as though it's a cassette tape.
  • Packaging your Dungeon Synth album on cassette in a Sega Genesis cartridge box.
  • Propsr Topics.
  • Calling your niece Billy Zane.
  • Naming your child Scooter. (Monotonously.)
  • Being unable to decide whether you're going to name your child Scooter or Squooter.
  • Some Wizard of Earrhsea ahit.
  • Holding power over your friends (magically, not legally)
  • Your name for a person carrying with it your relationship with that person.
  • Why they shipped a game called "Epic Mickey.*
  • Compaeing this year's top 50 baby names to the top 50 a century ago.
  • Mikse meeting Mikes.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • One day there will be no more Bobs, and a door will close.
  • Continuing to refer to your nephew as a "little kid" even though he's 45 now.
  • Thinking you're getting more liberal but eventually realizing you're getting more apocalyptic.
  • Garbage-ass subreddits full of dis- and misinformation.
  • Battle Jackets vs. Jackets for Battle.
  • Pregnancy subreddits.
  • Checking out of gamer culture entirely.
  • Black metal communities dealing with white supremacists.
  • Can't we just have a place who love swords and wizards?
  • How to not run a Nazi bar.
  • Whether people get more liberal or more conservative as they age.
  • Stone cold hippies.
  • Explaining trans rights to your parents who are doing their best to understand.
  • Asking the AI-generated slush pile how to update your political beliefs.
  • Keeping younger people around who care about you enough to help you fix your shitty opinions.
  • Hungry for Jim topics.
  • Japanese cultural touchstones referenced in video games that just seem like nonsense to Americans.
  • Slavic folklore in the Witcher games.
  • Importing video games from more and more obscure countries because Japan is played out now.
  • Recognizing Greek heavy metal just from the riffs.
  • Vacuuming a couch and twenty one-dollar bills fly out of it.
  • Shagrat, you shag rats!
  • Rheumy weeping orbs that glare with hate.
  • Truly a poem of unknown provenance.
  • Shagrat doesn't deserve this!
  • We had some great topics today, y'all.
  • Mythcarver.
  • A discord for people who are due in the same month as you.
  • The Libras who won't let the dads in.
  • Circle time with other pregnant couples.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Writhen Hilt.
  • Writing a few sentences to achieve your goal.
  • Being extremely entertained by your drunken journal entries from a year ago.
  • Remembering the 140 years your son has been around.
  • Learningl from the dead.
  • How the archaeologists of the future are going to cope with social media, let alone the reams of LLM generated nonsense.
  • Detecting forged paintings via the radioactive isotopes that are only found in pigments manufactured after the detonation of the atomic bomb.
  • Low-background steel.
  • Scavenging steel from shipwrecks because you just can't make steel that good any more.
  • Pizza Pranks.
  • Packaging a USB stick as though it's a cassette tape.
  • Packaging your Dungeon Synth album on cassette in a Sega Genesis cartridge box.
  • Propsr Topics.
  • Calling your niece Billy Zane.
  • Naming your child Scooter. (Monotonously.)
  • Being unable to decide whether you're going to name your child Scooter or Squooter.
  • Some Wizard of Earrhsea ahit.
  • Holding power over your friends (magically, not legally)
  • Your name for a person carrying with it your relationship with that person.
  • Why they shipped a game called "Epic Mickey.*
  • Compaeing this year's top 50 baby names to the top 50 a century ago.
  • Mikse meeting Mikes.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • One day there will be no more Bobs, and a door will close.
  • Continuing to refer to your nephew as a "little kid" even though he's 45 now.
  • Thinking you're getting more liberal but eventually realizing you're getting more apocalyptic.
  • Garbage-ass subreddits full of dis- and misinformation.
  • Battle Jackets vs. Jackets for Battle.
  • Pregnancy subreddits.
  • Checking out of gamer culture entirely.
  • Black metal communities dealing with white supremacists.
  • Can't we just have a place who love swords and wizards?
  • How to not run a Nazi bar.
  • Whether people get more liberal or more conservative as they age.
  • Stone cold hippies.
  • Explaining trans rights to your parents who are doing their best to understand.
  • Asking the AI-generated slush pile how to update your political beliefs.
  • Keeping younger people around who care about you enough to help you fix your shitty opinions.
  • Hungry for Jim topics.
  • Japanese cultural touchstones referenced in video games that just seem like nonsense to Americans.
  • Slavic folklore in the Witcher games.
  • Importing video games from more and more obscure countries because Japan is played out now.
  • Recognizing Greek heavy metal just from the riffs.
  • Vacuuming a couch and twenty one-dollar bills fly out of it.
  • Shagrat, you shag rats!
  • Rheumy weeping orbs that glare with hate.
  • Truly a poem of unknown provenance.
  • Shagrat doesn't deserve this!
  • We had some great topics today, y'all.
  • Mythcarver.
  • A discord for people who are due in the same month as you.
  • The Libras who won't let the dads in.
  • Circle time with other pregnant couples.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+VYZgItG1 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 255. We're Truly on the Bleeding Edge of Something https://topiclords.com/were-truly-on-the-bleeding-edge-of-something 63557269-fef7-4987-8f70-8af5a3a13b72 Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Adam and Linker. We discuss ways you've changed in 20 years, examples of X animal software running on Y animal hardware, whether erasure poetry counts as poetry, and your favorite RPG (whatever that means) 59:02 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Ways you've changed in the last 20 years that have surprised you
  • Examples of x animal software running on y animal hardware (ie. fox being cat software on dog hardware)
  • This argument about whether erasure poetry is poetry
  • Favourite RPG (videogame or tabletop; open to interpretation)

Microtopics:

  • Launching a game in the deep past.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • After Journey's End vol. 2.
  • The Monthly Tape Club.
  • Games that are big enough or marketable enough.
  • Getting excited about this month's PC Gamer demo disk.
  • Zine-like game distribution.
  • Making a small game to express a thought.
  • Making a living making weird shit.
  • The methods of marketing a small game.
  • Practices that have existed for thousands of years.
  • The boom and bust cycle and why you might or might not get in on the next boom.
  • Making a shit-ton of money and continuing to pay your employees rather than laying them off.
  • Whether Gen Z is savvy to the MBA brain worms.
  • Whether Jim has a college degree.
  • New England Sarcastic.
  • Learning about having kids and wondering what it'd be like to have a purpose in life.
  • Being legally responsible for the survival of the worst roommate imaginable.
  • Other People's Dogs.
  • How is your life different from when you were 6 years old?
  • Becoming a permanent resident of Canada.
  • A local theater company producing your play.
  • Frog Fractions: it came from space.
  • A thing that expresses the maelstrom going on in my head (or soul)
  • The six 70s funk songs with a long enough stretch of isolated drums that they became the drums for every song ever.
  • How to make art as an expression of human needs.
  • Video games: they shouldn't exist.
  • Expressing a thought with the skills you enjoy flexing.
  • The virtues of having playtesters.
  • Bug software running on mammal hardware.
  • Tiny cats in the bodies of big cats.
  • Service dogs for cheetahs.
  • Remaining calm around humans because your dog buddy loves humans.
  • Erasure Poetry.
  • Oh Someone Oh God And Then Me.
  • Formalized rules for determining who gets credit for what when a bunch of people make a piece of art.
  • Legal precedents for copyright and reproduction rights.
  • Magnetic fridge poetry.
  • Inventing an art form that's even more constrained than pixel art somehow.
  • Unity of effect.
  • Looking at a blurry 16x16 tile and not being quite sure what it's supposed to be.
  • RPGs: what even are they?
  • What you can get away with within the aesthetics of a black and white Game Boy game.
  • Whether Breath of the Wild counts as an immersive sim and whether immersive sims count as RPGs
  • Getting into the topic weeds.
  • Chained Echoes.
  • Observing the sand running through the hourglass.
  • Social anxiety preventing you from enjoying tabletop RPGs.
  • Playing tabletop RPGs with a bunch of weird theater people.
  • Meeting your friend at a bar to catch up on the latest events in his tabletop RPG sessions.
  • How to use your name on social media.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Ways you've changed in the last 20 years that have surprised you
  • Examples of x animal software running on y animal hardware (ie. fox being cat software on dog hardware)
  • This argument about whether erasure poetry is poetry
  • Favourite RPG (videogame or tabletop; open to interpretation)

Microtopics:

  • Launching a game in the deep past.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • After Journey's End vol. 2.
  • The Monthly Tape Club.
  • Games that are big enough or marketable enough.
  • Getting excited about this month's PC Gamer demo disk.
  • Zine-like game distribution.
  • Making a small game to express a thought.
  • Making a living making weird shit.
  • The methods of marketing a small game.
  • Practices that have existed for thousands of years.
  • The boom and bust cycle and why you might or might not get in on the next boom.
  • Making a shit-ton of money and continuing to pay your employees rather than laying them off.
  • Whether Gen Z is savvy to the MBA brain worms.
  • Whether Jim has a college degree.
  • New England Sarcastic.
  • Learning about having kids and wondering what it'd be like to have a purpose in life.
  • Being legally responsible for the survival of the worst roommate imaginable.
  • Other People's Dogs.
  • How is your life different from when you were 6 years old?
  • Becoming a permanent resident of Canada.
  • A local theater company producing your play.
  • Frog Fractions: it came from space.
  • A thing that expresses the maelstrom going on in my head (or soul)
  • The six 70s funk songs with a long enough stretch of isolated drums that they became the drums for every song ever.
  • How to make art as an expression of human needs.
  • Video games: they shouldn't exist.
  • Expressing a thought with the skills you enjoy flexing.
  • The virtues of having playtesters.
  • Bug software running on mammal hardware.
  • Tiny cats in the bodies of big cats.
  • Service dogs for cheetahs.
  • Remaining calm around humans because your dog buddy loves humans.
  • Erasure Poetry.
  • Oh Someone Oh God And Then Me.
  • Formalized rules for determining who gets credit for what when a bunch of people make a piece of art.
  • Legal precedents for copyright and reproduction rights.
  • Magnetic fridge poetry.
  • Inventing an art form that's even more constrained than pixel art somehow.
  • Unity of effect.
  • Looking at a blurry 16x16 tile and not being quite sure what it's supposed to be.
  • RPGs: what even are they?
  • What you can get away with within the aesthetics of a black and white Game Boy game.
  • Whether Breath of the Wild counts as an immersive sim and whether immersive sims count as RPGs
  • Getting into the topic weeds.
  • Chained Echoes.
  • Observing the sand running through the hourglass.
  • Social anxiety preventing you from enjoying tabletop RPGs.
  • Playing tabletop RPGs with a bunch of weird theater people.
  • Meeting your friend at a bar to catch up on the latest events in his tabletop RPG sessions.
  • How to use your name on social media.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Ways you've changed in the last 20 years that have surprised you
  • Examples of x animal software running on y animal hardware (ie. fox being cat software on dog hardware)
  • This argument about whether erasure poetry is poetry
  • Favourite RPG (videogame or tabletop; open to interpretation)

Microtopics:

  • Launching a game in the deep past.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • After Journey's End vol. 2.
  • The Monthly Tape Club.
  • Games that are big enough or marketable enough.
  • Getting excited about this month's PC Gamer demo disk.
  • Zine-like game distribution.
  • Making a small game to express a thought.
  • Making a living making weird shit.
  • The methods of marketing a small game.
  • Practices that have existed for thousands of years.
  • The boom and bust cycle and why you might or might not get in on the next boom.
  • Making a shit-ton of money and continuing to pay your employees rather than laying them off.
  • Whether Gen Z is savvy to the MBA brain worms.
  • Whether Jim has a college degree.
  • New England Sarcastic.
  • Learning about having kids and wondering what it'd be like to have a purpose in life.
  • Being legally responsible for the survival of the worst roommate imaginable.
  • Other People's Dogs.
  • How is your life different from when you were 6 years old?
  • Becoming a permanent resident of Canada.
  • A local theater company producing your play.
  • Frog Fractions: it came from space.
  • A thing that expresses the maelstrom going on in my head (or soul)
  • The six 70s funk songs with a long enough stretch of isolated drums that they became the drums for every song ever.
  • How to make art as an expression of human needs.
  • Video games: they shouldn't exist.
  • Expressing a thought with the skills you enjoy flexing.
  • The virtues of having playtesters.
  • Bug software running on mammal hardware.
  • Tiny cats in the bodies of big cats.
  • Service dogs for cheetahs.
  • Remaining calm around humans because your dog buddy loves humans.
  • Erasure Poetry.
  • Oh Someone Oh God And Then Me.
  • Formalized rules for determining who gets credit for what when a bunch of people make a piece of art.
  • Legal precedents for copyright and reproduction rights.
  • Magnetic fridge poetry.
  • Inventing an art form that's even more constrained than pixel art somehow.
  • Unity of effect.
  • Looking at a blurry 16x16 tile and not being quite sure what it's supposed to be.
  • RPGs: what even are they?
  • What you can get away with within the aesthetics of a black and white Game Boy game.
  • Whether Breath of the Wild counts as an immersive sim and whether immersive sims count as RPGs
  • Getting into the topic weeds.
  • Chained Echoes.
  • Observing the sand running through the hourglass.
  • Social anxiety preventing you from enjoying tabletop RPGs.
  • Playing tabletop RPGs with a bunch of weird theater people.
  • Meeting your friend at a bar to catch up on the latest events in his tabletop RPG sessions.
  • How to use your name on social media.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+qY8bf4nX ]]> Jim Stormdancer 254. Help Me Get Over the Pervert Hump https://topiclords.com/help-me-get-over-the-pervert-hump 67558368-aad3-4950-8239-10217e10fb09 Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ryan and Alicia. We discuss asking people what they're into without sounding like a pervert, Arctic Expeditions and man's hubris, Asterix Park, and I Won't Call You Pretty, by L.E. Bowman 1:05:31 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to work as a freelance creative without burning yourself out.
  • The me who comes up if you google me.
  • The black egg who knows all.
  • A huge egg with a second smaller egg in it.
  • The chickens who got no credit for inventing the Matrioshka doll.
  • Pluto: still a planet, because a dwarf planet is a kind of planet.
  • Team Moon.
  • Ancient Occult Magicks that you can check out from the library.
  • Giving up on the fairy smut everyone is recommending because it isn't smutty enough.
  • The air I just breathed.
  • One of my Top 5 Zeldas.
  • How many goes you get at being alive.
  • Luring Moongrum into the rolling boulder trap.
  • Bracing to hear about some online stuff.
  • Conference season in the game industry.
  • Meeting someone at a conference and asking them a question that Black Philip would ask.
  • How to Unfuck your Sales.
  • Content you Enjoyed.
  • Who are the coolest hangs in game dev?
  • Working with people you know and trust.
  • The Pervert's Mound.
  • Imagine if I was cool.
  • Wearing a sandwich board with the word "MONOGAMY" on it so the woman you're talking to knows you're not hitting on her.
  • Refusing to answer random innocuous questions so that it's not a tacit admission of guilt when you refuse to discuss an accusation.
  • Birthday bookshop tours.
  • Climbing as an act of disrespect to the mountain.
  • The HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
  • Peak British Colonialism.
  • Ignoring the locals' advice about what parts of animals to eat.
  • Sledging around your silverware.
  • Getting lead poisoning from the canned food you brought with you to find the Northwest Passage.
  • A cool pantsless mummy.
  • Paradoxical Undressing.
  • Having a hard time climbing Mount Everest because the path is choked with corpses of white people who blew it.
  • Oops, All Antarctic Ship Crashes.
  • Getting excited about bookshelves again.
  • Stepping forward into whatever the next grift is going to be.
  • Asterix the Gaul.
  • Localizing a book that is full of puns to dozens of different languages.
  • Not getting jokes in the English version of the Simpsons because the Swedish version of the Simpsons uses a completely different set of pop culture references.
  • What would an Asterix theme park look like?
  • Riding in a big inner tube down the lazy river.
  • Elder Millenials learning about Skibidi Toilet.
  • Asterix Park is the world's 12th largest economy.
  • My brain beans are really getting steamed, here.
  • Building an empire on that mustache.
  • Watching POV rollercoaster videos with your five year old.
  • Refusing to get in the sea.
  • Going up to strangers and asking what percentage of the sea is fish piss.
  • Weekend at Bernie's-ing your friend's corpse to Asterix Park.
  • What style of underwear Zeus is wearing today.
  • Who makes Zeus's underwear?
  • Eating the boar sandwich at Asterix Park.
  • Tasting the terror sweat on the wild boar you just hunted down.
  • The little bald kid from the comics page has a theme park??
  • Pirates of the Carabiner.
  • Sailing through a diorama.
  • The theme park ride with the sudden drop into a pool of mercury.
  • The Haunted Garfield Theme Park.
  • DeFuncoland.
  • Jon trying to get with the veterinarian lady he's into and Garfield ruining it.
  • Let's-plays as a service.
  • You won't believe what happens when these Muppets swarm Treasure Island.
  • A movie recap that is 80% of the length of the movie.
  • Flirting tricks.
  • The violence of being struck by Cupid's arrow.
  • Complimenting someone on something they have no control over.
  • Good luck getting any continuity out of me!
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to work as a freelance creative without burning yourself out.
  • The me who comes up if you google me.
  • The black egg who knows all.
  • A huge egg with a second smaller egg in it.
  • The chickens who got no credit for inventing the Matrioshka doll.
  • Pluto: still a planet, because a dwarf planet is a kind of planet.
  • Team Moon.
  • Ancient Occult Magicks that you can check out from the library.
  • Giving up on the fairy smut everyone is recommending because it isn't smutty enough.
  • The air I just breathed.
  • One of my Top 5 Zeldas.
  • How many goes you get at being alive.
  • Luring Moongrum into the rolling boulder trap.
  • Bracing to hear about some online stuff.
  • Conference season in the game industry.
  • Meeting someone at a conference and asking them a question that Black Philip would ask.
  • How to Unfuck your Sales.
  • Content you Enjoyed.
  • Who are the coolest hangs in game dev?
  • Working with people you know and trust.
  • The Pervert's Mound.
  • Imagine if I was cool.
  • Wearing a sandwich board with the word "MONOGAMY" on it so the woman you're talking to knows you're not hitting on her.
  • Refusing to answer random innocuous questions so that it's not a tacit admission of guilt when you refuse to discuss an accusation.
  • Birthday bookshop tours.
  • Climbing as an act of disrespect to the mountain.
  • The HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
  • Peak British Colonialism.
  • Ignoring the locals' advice about what parts of animals to eat.
  • Sledging around your silverware.
  • Getting lead poisoning from the canned food you brought with you to find the Northwest Passage.
  • A cool pantsless mummy.
  • Paradoxical Undressing.
  • Having a hard time climbing Mount Everest because the path is choked with corpses of white people who blew it.
  • Oops, All Antarctic Ship Crashes.
  • Getting excited about bookshelves again.
  • Stepping forward into whatever the next grift is going to be.
  • Asterix the Gaul.
  • Localizing a book that is full of puns to dozens of different languages.
  • Not getting jokes in the English version of the Simpsons because the Swedish version of the Simpsons uses a completely different set of pop culture references.
  • What would an Asterix theme park look like?
  • Riding in a big inner tube down the lazy river.
  • Elder Millenials learning about Skibidi Toilet.
  • Asterix Park is the world's 12th largest economy.
  • My brain beans are really getting steamed, here.
  • Building an empire on that mustache.
  • Watching POV rollercoaster videos with your five year old.
  • Refusing to get in the sea.
  • Going up to strangers and asking what percentage of the sea is fish piss.
  • Weekend at Bernie's-ing your friend's corpse to Asterix Park.
  • What style of underwear Zeus is wearing today.
  • Who makes Zeus's underwear?
  • Eating the boar sandwich at Asterix Park.
  • Tasting the terror sweat on the wild boar you just hunted down.
  • The little bald kid from the comics page has a theme park??
  • Pirates of the Carabiner.
  • Sailing through a diorama.
  • The theme park ride with the sudden drop into a pool of mercury.
  • The Haunted Garfield Theme Park.
  • DeFuncoland.
  • Jon trying to get with the veterinarian lady he's into and Garfield ruining it.
  • Let's-plays as a service.
  • You won't believe what happens when these Muppets swarm Treasure Island.
  • A movie recap that is 80% of the length of the movie.
  • Flirting tricks.
  • The violence of being struck by Cupid's arrow.
  • Complimenting someone on something they have no control over.
  • Good luck getting any continuity out of me!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to work as a freelance creative without burning yourself out.
  • The me who comes up if you google me.
  • The black egg who knows all.
  • A huge egg with a second smaller egg in it.
  • The chickens who got no credit for inventing the Matrioshka doll.
  • Pluto: still a planet, because a dwarf planet is a kind of planet.
  • Team Moon.
  • Ancient Occult Magicks that you can check out from the library.
  • Giving up on the fairy smut everyone is recommending because it isn't smutty enough.
  • The air I just breathed.
  • One of my Top 5 Zeldas.
  • How many goes you get at being alive.
  • Luring Moongrum into the rolling boulder trap.
  • Bracing to hear about some online stuff.
  • Conference season in the game industry.
  • Meeting someone at a conference and asking them a question that Black Philip would ask.
  • How to Unfuck your Sales.
  • Content you Enjoyed.
  • Who are the coolest hangs in game dev?
  • Working with people you know and trust.
  • The Pervert's Mound.
  • Imagine if I was cool.
  • Wearing a sandwich board with the word "MONOGAMY" on it so the woman you're talking to knows you're not hitting on her.
  • Refusing to answer random innocuous questions so that it's not a tacit admission of guilt when you refuse to discuss an accusation.
  • Birthday bookshop tours.
  • Climbing as an act of disrespect to the mountain.
  • The HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
  • Peak British Colonialism.
  • Ignoring the locals' advice about what parts of animals to eat.
  • Sledging around your silverware.
  • Getting lead poisoning from the canned food you brought with you to find the Northwest Passage.
  • A cool pantsless mummy.
  • Paradoxical Undressing.
  • Having a hard time climbing Mount Everest because the path is choked with corpses of white people who blew it.
  • Oops, All Antarctic Ship Crashes.
  • Getting excited about bookshelves again.
  • Stepping forward into whatever the next grift is going to be.
  • Asterix the Gaul.
  • Localizing a book that is full of puns to dozens of different languages.
  • Not getting jokes in the English version of the Simpsons because the Swedish version of the Simpsons uses a completely different set of pop culture references.
  • What would an Asterix theme park look like?
  • Riding in a big inner tube down the lazy river.
  • Elder Millenials learning about Skibidi Toilet.
  • Asterix Park is the world's 12th largest economy.
  • My brain beans are really getting steamed, here.
  • Building an empire on that mustache.
  • Watching POV rollercoaster videos with your five year old.
  • Refusing to get in the sea.
  • Going up to strangers and asking what percentage of the sea is fish piss.
  • Weekend at Bernie's-ing your friend's corpse to Asterix Park.
  • What style of underwear Zeus is wearing today.
  • Who makes Zeus's underwear?
  • Eating the boar sandwich at Asterix Park.
  • Tasting the terror sweat on the wild boar you just hunted down.
  • The little bald kid from the comics page has a theme park??
  • Pirates of the Carabiner.
  • Sailing through a diorama.
  • The theme park ride with the sudden drop into a pool of mercury.
  • The Haunted Garfield Theme Park.
  • DeFuncoland.
  • Jon trying to get with the veterinarian lady he's into and Garfield ruining it.
  • Let's-plays as a service.
  • You won't believe what happens when these Muppets swarm Treasure Island.
  • A movie recap that is 80% of the length of the movie.
  • Flirting tricks.
  • The violence of being struck by Cupid's arrow.
  • Complimenting someone on something they have no control over.
  • Good luck getting any continuity out of me!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+H5fC9qBS ]]> Jim Stormdancer 253. A Unified Theory of Hot Dog Preference https://topiclords.com/a-unified-theory-of-hot-dog-preference b951d075-3e40-4426-a4a5-a67486914acd Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Wacy and Chris. We discuss difficulties with long-term traveling, Norway, why they don't have novelty whipped cream, and The Dirt Man Song. 1:03:44 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Specialty pour over filter coffee.
  • A very deep rabbit hole of discovery of flavors.
  • Drink the Machine: a Clean Metallic Flavor.
  • Wacy and Chris.
  • Chris or sounds like Chris.
  • Living near your friends and family and being able to see them any time you want.
  • Spot-it.
  • Explaining what "on air" means to someone who has never listened to the radio.
  • Why are flickering lights creepy?
  • Getting Winston ready for swim class.
  • The pressure to hyper-optimize.
  • Being in the place where you are all the time.
  • The world: it's really big and really full of stuff.
  • How to exist in a city where you don't speak the language.
  • Things you don't feel like maximizing.
  • Grocery store bagged salads.
  • Countries that are known for salads.
  • Eating nothing but pickled fish and salty licorice during your trip even though you hate both.
  • Being delighted by mediocre sushi.
  • How many times Topic Lords has been downloaded in Osaka.
  • Modern New-Age Scandinavian Food.
  • Gas station hot dogs in Norway.
  • Ordering a big slab of My Girlfriend is Not Hungry.
  • Ways Norway is familiar to Americans.
  • Walking around kicking the glaciers.
  • Bikepackers.
  • Giant highway ferries with six lanes of traffic.
  • Brown Cheese Waffles.
  • Daylight all night long.
  • Normal people going outside and walking their dogs at 1am.
  • The song that plays with the baby raccoon spinning in a circle.
  • A country that is extremely serious about tunnels.
  • Opening up your windows to let the cave air in.
  • Visiting the Arctic circle in the winter.
  • Good ideas, like Pesto Whipped Cream.
  • Orange Cream Whipped Cream.
  • The toothpaste tubes with the colored wedges.
  • Birthday Cake Coffee Creamer.
  • Guava-flavored beer foam.
  • Coffee creamer except for beer.
  • Chefs seeking out the worst food so they can understand exactly why it's bad.
  • The Friendly's Cone Head.
  • The Bad-Interesting Food Spectrum.
  • Sleep regression, or more generally how you don't always keep forward progress.
  • Why kids become picky eaters.
  • Replicating the texture of uncooked hot dog in a novelty whipped cream.
  • What whippets are for.
  • Original flavorless N2O tanks.
  • Using the word for amyl nitrite that signifies that you are a VCR owner and not a drug user.
  • How to not become dirt in the dirt lair.
  • The dirt man's tithe.
  • Lying to your kid about cosmology.
  • Pretending to believe the little lies as practice for believing big lies.
  • Reminding your mom to make a leprechaun trap.
  • Making fake boot prints to convince your kids that god is real.
  • Reindeer food. (It's just hay.)
  • All the years you didn't keep dirt under your pillow.
  • The dirt man's dirt man taking you even deeper down.
  • Lots of great places where the dirt man can be found.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Specialty pour over filter coffee.
  • A very deep rabbit hole of discovery of flavors.
  • Drink the Machine: a Clean Metallic Flavor.
  • Wacy and Chris.
  • Chris or sounds like Chris.
  • Living near your friends and family and being able to see them any time you want.
  • Spot-it.
  • Explaining what "on air" means to someone who has never listened to the radio.
  • Why are flickering lights creepy?
  • Getting Winston ready for swim class.
  • The pressure to hyper-optimize.
  • Being in the place where you are all the time.
  • The world: it's really big and really full of stuff.
  • How to exist in a city where you don't speak the language.
  • Things you don't feel like maximizing.
  • Grocery store bagged salads.
  • Countries that are known for salads.
  • Eating nothing but pickled fish and salty licorice during your trip even though you hate both.
  • Being delighted by mediocre sushi.
  • How many times Topic Lords has been downloaded in Osaka.
  • Modern New-Age Scandinavian Food.
  • Gas station hot dogs in Norway.
  • Ordering a big slab of My Girlfriend is Not Hungry.
  • Ways Norway is familiar to Americans.
  • Walking around kicking the glaciers.
  • Bikepackers.
  • Giant highway ferries with six lanes of traffic.
  • Brown Cheese Waffles.
  • Daylight all night long.
  • Normal people going outside and walking their dogs at 1am.
  • The song that plays with the baby raccoon spinning in a circle.
  • A country that is extremely serious about tunnels.
  • Opening up your windows to let the cave air in.
  • Visiting the Arctic circle in the winter.
  • Good ideas, like Pesto Whipped Cream.
  • Orange Cream Whipped Cream.
  • The toothpaste tubes with the colored wedges.
  • Birthday Cake Coffee Creamer.
  • Guava-flavored beer foam.
  • Coffee creamer except for beer.
  • Chefs seeking out the worst food so they can understand exactly why it's bad.
  • The Friendly's Cone Head.
  • The Bad-Interesting Food Spectrum.
  • Sleep regression, or more generally how you don't always keep forward progress.
  • Why kids become picky eaters.
  • Replicating the texture of uncooked hot dog in a novelty whipped cream.
  • What whippets are for.
  • Original flavorless N2O tanks.
  • Using the word for amyl nitrite that signifies that you are a VCR owner and not a drug user.
  • How to not become dirt in the dirt lair.
  • The dirt man's tithe.
  • Lying to your kid about cosmology.
  • Pretending to believe the little lies as practice for believing big lies.
  • Reminding your mom to make a leprechaun trap.
  • Making fake boot prints to convince your kids that god is real.
  • Reindeer food. (It's just hay.)
  • All the years you didn't keep dirt under your pillow.
  • The dirt man's dirt man taking you even deeper down.
  • Lots of great places where the dirt man can be found.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Specialty pour over filter coffee.
  • A very deep rabbit hole of discovery of flavors.
  • Drink the Machine: a Clean Metallic Flavor.
  • Wacy and Chris.
  • Chris or sounds like Chris.
  • Living near your friends and family and being able to see them any time you want.
  • Spot-it.
  • Explaining what "on air" means to someone who has never listened to the radio.
  • Why are flickering lights creepy?
  • Getting Winston ready for swim class.
  • The pressure to hyper-optimize.
  • Being in the place where you are all the time.
  • The world: it's really big and really full of stuff.
  • How to exist in a city where you don't speak the language.
  • Things you don't feel like maximizing.
  • Grocery store bagged salads.
  • Countries that are known for salads.
  • Eating nothing but pickled fish and salty licorice during your trip even though you hate both.
  • Being delighted by mediocre sushi.
  • How many times Topic Lords has been downloaded in Osaka.
  • Modern New-Age Scandinavian Food.
  • Gas station hot dogs in Norway.
  • Ordering a big slab of My Girlfriend is Not Hungry.
  • Ways Norway is familiar to Americans.
  • Walking around kicking the glaciers.
  • Bikepackers.
  • Giant highway ferries with six lanes of traffic.
  • Brown Cheese Waffles.
  • Daylight all night long.
  • Normal people going outside and walking their dogs at 1am.
  • The song that plays with the baby raccoon spinning in a circle.
  • A country that is extremely serious about tunnels.
  • Opening up your windows to let the cave air in.
  • Visiting the Arctic circle in the winter.
  • Good ideas, like Pesto Whipped Cream.
  • Orange Cream Whipped Cream.
  • The toothpaste tubes with the colored wedges.
  • Birthday Cake Coffee Creamer.
  • Guava-flavored beer foam.
  • Coffee creamer except for beer.
  • Chefs seeking out the worst food so they can understand exactly why it's bad.
  • The Friendly's Cone Head.
  • The Bad-Interesting Food Spectrum.
  • Sleep regression, or more generally how you don't always keep forward progress.
  • Why kids become picky eaters.
  • Replicating the texture of uncooked hot dog in a novelty whipped cream.
  • What whippets are for.
  • Original flavorless N2O tanks.
  • Using the word for amyl nitrite that signifies that you are a VCR owner and not a drug user.
  • How to not become dirt in the dirt lair.
  • The dirt man's tithe.
  • Lying to your kid about cosmology.
  • Pretending to believe the little lies as practice for believing big lies.
  • Reminding your mom to make a leprechaun trap.
  • Making fake boot prints to convince your kids that god is real.
  • Reindeer food. (It's just hay.)
  • All the years you didn't keep dirt under your pillow.
  • The dirt man's dirt man taking you even deeper down.
  • Lots of great places where the dirt man can be found.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+AmIp_HWe ]]> Jim Stormdancer 252. A Properly Functioning Bag Nose https://topiclords.com/a-properly-functioning-bag-nose d46ad0bc-759e-48f5-9a8f-112aa5c91e07 Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JohnB, Kory. We discuss vinyl records, teaching yourself C++, forgetting things as a way of getting things done, I Sat Belonely by John Lennon, and the vestigial organs of video games. 1:04:40 true Lords:

  • JohnB
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones' Wire Tripper, on display at Wonderville.
  • Easter eggs for fans of Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.
  • Watching Shin Godzilla immediately after Evangelion.
  • Dan Ryckert's nonsense over at Giant Bomb.
  • Listening to a Mario Party game on the radio.
  • Supplementing all your collecting hobbies with a creative hobby.
  • Grabbing the record player before the garbage collector does.
  • An auto-sustaining supply of sound bars entering and leaving the trash.
  • The Digital Jim Gift Shop.
  • The Frog Fractions OST Vinyl in Bug Mars Orange.
  • Auditioning for college radio by DJing a show to tape that won't be aired, just rated by a panel of experts.
  • The vinyl soundtrack to a Net Yaroze game.
  • Albums that have an odd number of sides.
  • Holographic tie fighters that spin around when you shine a light on them.
  • The Funkopopization of Vinyl.
  • Hobbies that are better if you have friends.
  • Using wood glue to clean an LP, then using an inverse record player to play music off the glue's negative grooves.
  • The glue's glue.
  • Station to Station, by David Bowie.
  • The experience of listening to an album all the way through.
  • Content-producing reasons.
  • An excuse to listen to an album with friends under the auspices of being productive.
  • Seeing the music by looking how wide the groove is.
  • Smooth jazz appreciation.
  • The Madden NFL of the record shop.
  • How to justify going to GDC when you're not a game developer.
  • How to ship a Love2D game.
  • Drag your file onto a Love Executable.
  • Putting together your first Arkanoid-like in Game Boy Assembly.
  • To create Red Dead Redemption, first add two binary digits.
  • Super FML.
  • Objectless games.
  • The data flow required to change screens in a Zelda-like game.
  • What happened to various aspects of the Adobe Flash ecosystem.
  • Why console games had such sluggish menus.
  • A bug where if you do it right you don't have to press A.
  • How to do a bureaucracy thing.
  • Keeping an important task in mind so you can accomplish all your less important tasks.
  • Trying to forget all but one thing you need to do because if you remember two things you'll just sit there being anxious.
  • Forgetting information that you do have vs. faking information that you don't have.
  • Foveated vision.
  • Yesterday's List.
  • How many Frog Fractions had to die because the most dangerous task was attempted first?
  • A little tiny little pig.
  • Balonely.
  • A Spaniard in the Works.
  • Reading your own book in your fictionalized biopic.
  • Whimsical Elisions.
  • Fun whimsical vs. dark whimsical.
  • Coming back from India and writing a hundred one minute songs that don't mean anything.
  • Music that you've listened to so much that it's like listening to breathing air.
  • Don't Pass Me By and Octopus' Garden.
  • Game mechanics that still exist because nobody's thought about them in a while.
  • Moon phases in Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Demon Fusion.
  • What Super Mario Wonder does with a combo since it doesn't have points.
  • A potentially dangerous vestigial organ in video games.
  • How to make pinball beginner friendly.
]]> Lords:

  • JohnB
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones' Wire Tripper, on display at Wonderville.
  • Easter eggs for fans of Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.
  • Watching Shin Godzilla immediately after Evangelion.
  • Dan Ryckert's nonsense over at Giant Bomb.
  • Listening to a Mario Party game on the radio.
  • Supplementing all your collecting hobbies with a creative hobby.
  • Grabbing the record player before the garbage collector does.
  • An auto-sustaining supply of sound bars entering and leaving the trash.
  • The Digital Jim Gift Shop.
  • The Frog Fractions OST Vinyl in Bug Mars Orange.
  • Auditioning for college radio by DJing a show to tape that won't be aired, just rated by a panel of experts.
  • The vinyl soundtrack to a Net Yaroze game.
  • Albums that have an odd number of sides.
  • Holographic tie fighters that spin around when you shine a light on them.
  • The Funkopopization of Vinyl.
  • Hobbies that are better if you have friends.
  • Using wood glue to clean an LP, then using an inverse record player to play music off the glue's negative grooves.
  • The glue's glue.
  • Station to Station, by David Bowie.
  • The experience of listening to an album all the way through.
  • Content-producing reasons.
  • An excuse to listen to an album with friends under the auspices of being productive.
  • Seeing the music by looking how wide the groove is.
  • Smooth jazz appreciation.
  • The Madden NFL of the record shop.
  • How to justify going to GDC when you're not a game developer.
  • How to ship a Love2D game.
  • Drag your file onto a Love Executable.
  • Putting together your first Arkanoid-like in Game Boy Assembly.
  • To create Red Dead Redemption, first add two binary digits.
  • Super FML.
  • Objectless games.
  • The data flow required to change screens in a Zelda-like game.
  • What happened to various aspects of the Adobe Flash ecosystem.
  • Why console games had such sluggish menus.
  • A bug where if you do it right you don't have to press A.
  • How to do a bureaucracy thing.
  • Keeping an important task in mind so you can accomplish all your less important tasks.
  • Trying to forget all but one thing you need to do because if you remember two things you'll just sit there being anxious.
  • Forgetting information that you do have vs. faking information that you don't have.
  • Foveated vision.
  • Yesterday's List.
  • How many Frog Fractions had to die because the most dangerous task was attempted first?
  • A little tiny little pig.
  • Balonely.
  • A Spaniard in the Works.
  • Reading your own book in your fictionalized biopic.
  • Whimsical Elisions.
  • Fun whimsical vs. dark whimsical.
  • Coming back from India and writing a hundred one minute songs that don't mean anything.
  • Music that you've listened to so much that it's like listening to breathing air.
  • Don't Pass Me By and Octopus' Garden.
  • Game mechanics that still exist because nobody's thought about them in a while.
  • Moon phases in Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Demon Fusion.
  • What Super Mario Wonder does with a combo since it doesn't have points.
  • A potentially dangerous vestigial organ in video games.
  • How to make pinball beginner friendly.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • JohnB
  • Kory

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Kbones' Wire Tripper, on display at Wonderville.
  • Easter eggs for fans of Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.
  • Watching Shin Godzilla immediately after Evangelion.
  • Dan Ryckert's nonsense over at Giant Bomb.
  • Listening to a Mario Party game on the radio.
  • Supplementing all your collecting hobbies with a creative hobby.
  • Grabbing the record player before the garbage collector does.
  • An auto-sustaining supply of sound bars entering and leaving the trash.
  • The Digital Jim Gift Shop.
  • The Frog Fractions OST Vinyl in Bug Mars Orange.
  • Auditioning for college radio by DJing a show to tape that won't be aired, just rated by a panel of experts.
  • The vinyl soundtrack to a Net Yaroze game.
  • Albums that have an odd number of sides.
  • Holographic tie fighters that spin around when you shine a light on them.
  • The Funkopopization of Vinyl.
  • Hobbies that are better if you have friends.
  • Using wood glue to clean an LP, then using an inverse record player to play music off the glue's negative grooves.
  • The glue's glue.
  • Station to Station, by David Bowie.
  • The experience of listening to an album all the way through.
  • Content-producing reasons.
  • An excuse to listen to an album with friends under the auspices of being productive.
  • Seeing the music by looking how wide the groove is.
  • Smooth jazz appreciation.
  • The Madden NFL of the record shop.
  • How to justify going to GDC when you're not a game developer.
  • How to ship a Love2D game.
  • Drag your file onto a Love Executable.
  • Putting together your first Arkanoid-like in Game Boy Assembly.
  • To create Red Dead Redemption, first add two binary digits.
  • Super FML.
  • Objectless games.
  • The data flow required to change screens in a Zelda-like game.
  • What happened to various aspects of the Adobe Flash ecosystem.
  • Why console games had such sluggish menus.
  • A bug where if you do it right you don't have to press A.
  • How to do a bureaucracy thing.
  • Keeping an important task in mind so you can accomplish all your less important tasks.
  • Trying to forget all but one thing you need to do because if you remember two things you'll just sit there being anxious.
  • Forgetting information that you do have vs. faking information that you don't have.
  • Foveated vision.
  • Yesterday's List.
  • How many Frog Fractions had to die because the most dangerous task was attempted first?
  • A little tiny little pig.
  • Balonely.
  • A Spaniard in the Works.
  • Reading your own book in your fictionalized biopic.
  • Whimsical Elisions.
  • Fun whimsical vs. dark whimsical.
  • Coming back from India and writing a hundred one minute songs that don't mean anything.
  • Music that you've listened to so much that it's like listening to breathing air.
  • Don't Pass Me By and Octopus' Garden.
  • Game mechanics that still exist because nobody's thought about them in a while.
  • Moon phases in Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Demon Fusion.
  • What Super Mario Wonder does with a combo since it doesn't have points.
  • A potentially dangerous vestigial organ in video games.
  • How to make pinball beginner friendly.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+awpcFUZx ]]> Jim Stormdancer 251. Organs Experiencing Red Shift https://topiclords.com/organs-experiencing-red-shift ee254511-69d4-4b69-be1a-81f9008fb45c Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Casey. We discuss coeloms, solving problems by experiencing a bigger problem, mammals learning to eat cephalopods, A Narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson, and personal project retrospectives. 1:11:19 true Lords:

  • Erica
  • Casey

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • That thing you just heard.
  • Assigning your new hire an office.
  • Plugging over a million leaking gas and oil wells in West Texas.
  • The Topic Lords Promise.
  • A bag that your organs sit in.
  • Undifferentiated tissues.
  • How dissecting an earthworm is different from dissecting a gummy worm.
  • Inflating your coelom in order to take out your spleen.
  • Organisms with high diseectability.
  • The anti-coelom lobby.
  • Undifferentiated tubes of goo that get depression.
  • The gummy worm future we're all looking forward to.
  • Fluid things going on in the organism.
  • A car that has a huge dent in it and it doesn't matter because the car still gets around no problem.
  • Good car ideas.
  • A bad thing happening but it's not your fault.
  • Buying your house in a point and clock adventure online.
  • Rediscovering all the things you have stored at your parent's house.
  • Multi-episode Topic Lords story arcs.
  • Which colored stripes are on Wikipedia's Non-Notable Flag.
  • The Topic Lords explainer episode where everyone finds out what this show is about.
  • Serial Podcast Monogamy.
  • Podcast guilt.
  • Discussing all the same topics as the last episode with no self-awareness.
  • Non-Stop Coelom Celebration.
  • My own very special walking bag of guts.
  • Evolving cheek muscles to suck meat out of a spiral shell.
  • Losing your baby lips.
  • What it's like to eat a planarian.
  • Cephalopods that have evolved to eat mammals.
  • The giant squid that have never been seen alive.
  • The colossal squid vs. the giant squid.
  • Finding a mobius strip solution so borh your flag and your neighbor'a flag can be biggest.
  • Our flag that represents limpness will be your downfall.
  • Non-stop sensationalized documentaries about North Korea.
  • Opening the border to North Korea so we can finally interview the people about the colossal squid.
  • Emily Dickinson slipping into Yoda Speak.
  • Being too busy reading to understand what you're reading.
  • Whether the Emily Dickinson poem about the snake is actually about a snake or about a dick or both.
  • It's coming at your feet! It likes a boggy acre!
  • A polysexual attitude towards nature.
  • Emily Dickinson making thousands of attempts to fix the Gilligan's Island theme.
  • Herman Melville describing Moby Dick as "the Ebon Whale" because he didn't have Wikipedia.
  • Moby Dick annotated by biologists who explain why all the whale facts are wrong.
  • Game Developers doing a "post-mortem" of projects that are ongoing.
  • Befunge.
  • Clojure and other Lisps.
  • Watching your own programming livestreams to learn how to learn better.
  • A huge block of text off to the side that tells you how to play the game.
  • Fine-grained tactical mistakes.
  • Why people keep telling game developers to learn to ship a game.
  • The most significant barrier between you and putting a work of art out in the world.
  • Inventing metrics for success for game engines that never ship.
  • Rewriting your game engine to have cooler tech but be way harder to make levels for.
  • Modern Jim-Style Content.
  • Artists trash talking their own work while they're showing it to you.
  • A sign on your forehead reading "ask me about my severely negative feedback."
  • The George W. Bush childhood home.
  • A community built on everyone's shared desire to leave.
  • The ethic of owning a shotgun.
  • The last of the Midland Odessa complaining.
  • Big Bend and Carlsbad Caverns.
  • An airport full of ads for oil wells and oil well accessories.
  • The Chris Kyle American Sniper Memorial.
  • A plaque on a sculpture explaining whether the flag represents a penis.
  • Everything's a dick if you squint hard enough.
  • An assassin of federal judges.
]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Casey

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • That thing you just heard.
  • Assigning your new hire an office.
  • Plugging over a million leaking gas and oil wells in West Texas.
  • The Topic Lords Promise.
  • A bag that your organs sit in.
  • Undifferentiated tissues.
  • How dissecting an earthworm is different from dissecting a gummy worm.
  • Inflating your coelom in order to take out your spleen.
  • Organisms with high diseectability.
  • The anti-coelom lobby.
  • Undifferentiated tubes of goo that get depression.
  • The gummy worm future we're all looking forward to.
  • Fluid things going on in the organism.
  • A car that has a huge dent in it and it doesn't matter because the car still gets around no problem.
  • Good car ideas.
  • A bad thing happening but it's not your fault.
  • Buying your house in a point and clock adventure online.
  • Rediscovering all the things you have stored at your parent's house.
  • Multi-episode Topic Lords story arcs.
  • Which colored stripes are on Wikipedia's Non-Notable Flag.
  • The Topic Lords explainer episode where everyone finds out what this show is about.
  • Serial Podcast Monogamy.
  • Podcast guilt.
  • Discussing all the same topics as the last episode with no self-awareness.
  • Non-Stop Coelom Celebration.
  • My own very special walking bag of guts.
  • Evolving cheek muscles to suck meat out of a spiral shell.
  • Losing your baby lips.
  • What it's like to eat a planarian.
  • Cephalopods that have evolved to eat mammals.
  • The giant squid that have never been seen alive.
  • The colossal squid vs. the giant squid.
  • Finding a mobius strip solution so borh your flag and your neighbor'a flag can be biggest.
  • Our flag that represents limpness will be your downfall.
  • Non-stop sensationalized documentaries about North Korea.
  • Opening the border to North Korea so we can finally interview the people about the colossal squid.
  • Emily Dickinson slipping into Yoda Speak.
  • Being too busy reading to understand what you're reading.
  • Whether the Emily Dickinson poem about the snake is actually about a snake or about a dick or both.
  • It's coming at your feet! It likes a boggy acre!
  • A polysexual attitude towards nature.
  • Emily Dickinson making thousands of attempts to fix the Gilligan's Island theme.
  • Herman Melville describing Moby Dick as "the Ebon Whale" because he didn't have Wikipedia.
  • Moby Dick annotated by biologists who explain why all the whale facts are wrong.
  • Game Developers doing a "post-mortem" of projects that are ongoing.
  • Befunge.
  • Clojure and other Lisps.
  • Watching your own programming livestreams to learn how to learn better.
  • A huge block of text off to the side that tells you how to play the game.
  • Fine-grained tactical mistakes.
  • Why people keep telling game developers to learn to ship a game.
  • The most significant barrier between you and putting a work of art out in the world.
  • Inventing metrics for success for game engines that never ship.
  • Rewriting your game engine to have cooler tech but be way harder to make levels for.
  • Modern Jim-Style Content.
  • Artists trash talking their own work while they're showing it to you.
  • A sign on your forehead reading "ask me about my severely negative feedback."
  • The George W. Bush childhood home.
  • A community built on everyone's shared desire to leave.
  • The ethic of owning a shotgun.
  • The last of the Midland Odessa complaining.
  • Big Bend and Carlsbad Caverns.
  • An airport full of ads for oil wells and oil well accessories.
  • The Chris Kyle American Sniper Memorial.
  • A plaque on a sculpture explaining whether the flag represents a penis.
  • Everything's a dick if you squint hard enough.
  • An assassin of federal judges.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Casey

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • That thing you just heard.
  • Assigning your new hire an office.
  • Plugging over a million leaking gas and oil wells in West Texas.
  • The Topic Lords Promise.
  • A bag that your organs sit in.
  • Undifferentiated tissues.
  • How dissecting an earthworm is different from dissecting a gummy worm.
  • Inflating your coelom in order to take out your spleen.
  • Organisms with high diseectability.
  • The anti-coelom lobby.
  • Undifferentiated tubes of goo that get depression.
  • The gummy worm future we're all looking forward to.
  • Fluid things going on in the organism.
  • A car that has a huge dent in it and it doesn't matter because the car still gets around no problem.
  • Good car ideas.
  • A bad thing happening but it's not your fault.
  • Buying your house in a point and clock adventure online.
  • Rediscovering all the things you have stored at your parent's house.
  • Multi-episode Topic Lords story arcs.
  • Which colored stripes are on Wikipedia's Non-Notable Flag.
  • The Topic Lords explainer episode where everyone finds out what this show is about.
  • Serial Podcast Monogamy.
  • Podcast guilt.
  • Discussing all the same topics as the last episode with no self-awareness.
  • Non-Stop Coelom Celebration.
  • My own very special walking bag of guts.
  • Evolving cheek muscles to suck meat out of a spiral shell.
  • Losing your baby lips.
  • What it's like to eat a planarian.
  • Cephalopods that have evolved to eat mammals.
  • The giant squid that have never been seen alive.
  • The colossal squid vs. the giant squid.
  • Finding a mobius strip solution so borh your flag and your neighbor'a flag can be biggest.
  • Our flag that represents limpness will be your downfall.
  • Non-stop sensationalized documentaries about North Korea.
  • Opening the border to North Korea so we can finally interview the people about the colossal squid.
  • Emily Dickinson slipping into Yoda Speak.
  • Being too busy reading to understand what you're reading.
  • Whether the Emily Dickinson poem about the snake is actually about a snake or about a dick or both.
  • It's coming at your feet! It likes a boggy acre!
  • A polysexual attitude towards nature.
  • Emily Dickinson making thousands of attempts to fix the Gilligan's Island theme.
  • Herman Melville describing Moby Dick as "the Ebon Whale" because he didn't have Wikipedia.
  • Moby Dick annotated by biologists who explain why all the whale facts are wrong.
  • Game Developers doing a "post-mortem" of projects that are ongoing.
  • Befunge.
  • Clojure and other Lisps.
  • Watching your own programming livestreams to learn how to learn better.
  • A huge block of text off to the side that tells you how to play the game.
  • Fine-grained tactical mistakes.
  • Why people keep telling game developers to learn to ship a game.
  • The most significant barrier between you and putting a work of art out in the world.
  • Inventing metrics for success for game engines that never ship.
  • Rewriting your game engine to have cooler tech but be way harder to make levels for.
  • Modern Jim-Style Content.
  • Artists trash talking their own work while they're showing it to you.
  • A sign on your forehead reading "ask me about my severely negative feedback."
  • The George W. Bush childhood home.
  • A community built on everyone's shared desire to leave.
  • The ethic of owning a shotgun.
  • The last of the Midland Odessa complaining.
  • Big Bend and Carlsbad Caverns.
  • An airport full of ads for oil wells and oil well accessories.
  • The Chris Kyle American Sniper Memorial.
  • A plaque on a sculpture explaining whether the flag represents a penis.
  • Everything's a dick if you squint hard enough.
  • An assassin of federal judges.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+VGT3u4a4 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 250. Almost Pickles: It's Just Cucumbers! https://topiclords.com/almost-pickles-its-just-cucumbers 26f277ca-fd79-4b39-962f-063e1eefea14 Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Tyriq. We discuss mayochup and kranch, Barry Topping, Magic Shell, Hot Sauce by Just James, video games where you put toppings on things, and the temptation of bad ice cream toppings. 57:50 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The game where you go into your uncle's nipple and find a tiny heart.
  • Isles of Sea and Sky.
  • A block pushy game.
  • Toppings that are just recombinations of existing toppings.
  • Switching sriracha brands for labor relations reasons.
  • Combining all the soda flavors because you're an iconoclast and suffering because the flavor is worse but it's worth it.
  • Getting a squeeze bottle so you can drizzle sauces like on TV.
  • Getting pre-ruined peanut butters so you don't need to worry about ruining it any further.
  • Buying peanut butter because you no longer live with someone who is allergic to nuts.
  • Intrusive and non-intrusive seeds.
  • Condiment combinations sticking in your head for decades.
  • Ketchup and something that's kind of like a thing you might know but might not.
  • Almost Pickles: It's Just Cucumbers.
  • Harmless Coconut Water.
  • Cranch: ranch dressing that that comes out of the can in a wobbly cylinder like cranberry sauce.
  • Barry Hilary Valentine Topping.
  • Paradise Killer.
  • Walking into court sipping your Starbucks latte.
  • Hopping around a beach and looking at a vaporwave pyramid.
  • Collecting skate tapes, just like Mario does.
  • Bails hurt scores, Mario!
  • Street Uni X.
  • The Tony Hawk soundtrack except slightly more a Lilith Fair.
  • Enjoying a bad N64 camera enough for the two of us.
  • The thing you squirt onto your ice cream.
  • Making your own counterfeit Kranch at home in a bottle with Kranch written on it in crayon.
  • The Cheese Remains Saucy.
  • Getting a boba tea for $17 outside of LA.
  • Taking the very worst bite out of your mother in law's ice cream cone.
  • Working out your jaw muscles until you can eat the entire ice cream cone in one bite.
  • Eating 16 pints of ice cream in six minutes.
  • Screaming at ice cream until it teleports into your belly.
  • Admonishing your readers that hot sauce would not make a good wife.
  • Stealing the pelt of a selkie but she always wants to go back to the ocean.
  • Selkie for a wife vs. ice cream for a wife.
  • ASMRtistry.
  • Spices of life.
  • Using a food metaphor to describe the metaphorical nature to food.
  • Three pop songs that compare women to food.
  • A topic that is floating around in the the collective unconscious.
  • Sriracha sorbet.
  • A flight of tea-flavored ice creams.
  • Sentient hot sauce putting itself on things you don't usually put hot sauce on.
  • Salamander County Public Television.
  • A Wario Ware that's a little bit QWOP.
  • The Pancake/Burger/Bacon trilogy.
  • An interactive thing where you put food into space.
  • The American Portion Gun.
  • Put things on things.
  • Video games with hamburger building elements.
  • A fast food simulator where you solve all the horror game problems that you're in.
  • Whether board games count as video games since you can see them.
  • Vidus Gamus.
  • Livin' la Video Game Loca.
  • Learning how to recover from mistakes.
  • Putting an entire Snickers bar in your cup of Sriracha and the clerk just shakes his head.
  • Asking the froyo guy to arrange the gummy worms "artfully. Like how I would if I could reach in there nyself. In fact why do I need to order, just give me the froyo that I want!"
  • All the Mistake Blizzards you can eat.
  • Nerds Butterfinger Mistake Blizzard.
  • Putting barbecue sauce on vanilla ice cream because you're out or chocolate sauce.
  • What's your favorite cheese to put on Pop-Tarts?
  • The Ambies for Excellence in Audio.
  • How to make more of the red liquid they found in the black sarcophagus.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The game where you go into your uncle's nipple and find a tiny heart.
  • Isles of Sea and Sky.
  • A block pushy game.
  • Toppings that are just recombinations of existing toppings.
  • Switching sriracha brands for labor relations reasons.
  • Combining all the soda flavors because you're an iconoclast and suffering because the flavor is worse but it's worth it.
  • Getting a squeeze bottle so you can drizzle sauces like on TV.
  • Getting pre-ruined peanut butters so you don't need to worry about ruining it any further.
  • Buying peanut butter because you no longer live with someone who is allergic to nuts.
  • Intrusive and non-intrusive seeds.
  • Condiment combinations sticking in your head for decades.
  • Ketchup and something that's kind of like a thing you might know but might not.
  • Almost Pickles: It's Just Cucumbers.
  • Harmless Coconut Water.
  • Cranch: ranch dressing that that comes out of the can in a wobbly cylinder like cranberry sauce.
  • Barry Hilary Valentine Topping.
  • Paradise Killer.
  • Walking into court sipping your Starbucks latte.
  • Hopping around a beach and looking at a vaporwave pyramid.
  • Collecting skate tapes, just like Mario does.
  • Bails hurt scores, Mario!
  • Street Uni X.
  • The Tony Hawk soundtrack except slightly more a Lilith Fair.
  • Enjoying a bad N64 camera enough for the two of us.
  • The thing you squirt onto your ice cream.
  • Making your own counterfeit Kranch at home in a bottle with Kranch written on it in crayon.
  • The Cheese Remains Saucy.
  • Getting a boba tea for $17 outside of LA.
  • Taking the very worst bite out of your mother in law's ice cream cone.
  • Working out your jaw muscles until you can eat the entire ice cream cone in one bite.
  • Eating 16 pints of ice cream in six minutes.
  • Screaming at ice cream until it teleports into your belly.
  • Admonishing your readers that hot sauce would not make a good wife.
  • Stealing the pelt of a selkie but she always wants to go back to the ocean.
  • Selkie for a wife vs. ice cream for a wife.
  • ASMRtistry.
  • Spices of life.
  • Using a food metaphor to describe the metaphorical nature to food.
  • Three pop songs that compare women to food.
  • A topic that is floating around in the the collective unconscious.
  • Sriracha sorbet.
  • A flight of tea-flavored ice creams.
  • Sentient hot sauce putting itself on things you don't usually put hot sauce on.
  • Salamander County Public Television.
  • A Wario Ware that's a little bit QWOP.
  • The Pancake/Burger/Bacon trilogy.
  • An interactive thing where you put food into space.
  • The American Portion Gun.
  • Put things on things.
  • Video games with hamburger building elements.
  • A fast food simulator where you solve all the horror game problems that you're in.
  • Whether board games count as video games since you can see them.
  • Vidus Gamus.
  • Livin' la Video Game Loca.
  • Learning how to recover from mistakes.
  • Putting an entire Snickers bar in your cup of Sriracha and the clerk just shakes his head.
  • Asking the froyo guy to arrange the gummy worms "artfully. Like how I would if I could reach in there nyself. In fact why do I need to order, just give me the froyo that I want!"
  • All the Mistake Blizzards you can eat.
  • Nerds Butterfinger Mistake Blizzard.
  • Putting barbecue sauce on vanilla ice cream because you're out or chocolate sauce.
  • What's your favorite cheese to put on Pop-Tarts?
  • The Ambies for Excellence in Audio.
  • How to make more of the red liquid they found in the black sarcophagus.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The game where you go into your uncle's nipple and find a tiny heart.
  • Isles of Sea and Sky.
  • A block pushy game.
  • Toppings that are just recombinations of existing toppings.
  • Switching sriracha brands for labor relations reasons.
  • Combining all the soda flavors because you're an iconoclast and suffering because the flavor is worse but it's worth it.
  • Getting a squeeze bottle so you can drizzle sauces like on TV.
  • Getting pre-ruined peanut butters so you don't need to worry about ruining it any further.
  • Buying peanut butter because you no longer live with someone who is allergic to nuts.
  • Intrusive and non-intrusive seeds.
  • Condiment combinations sticking in your head for decades.
  • Ketchup and something that's kind of like a thing you might know but might not.
  • Almost Pickles: It's Just Cucumbers.
  • Harmless Coconut Water.
  • Cranch: ranch dressing that that comes out of the can in a wobbly cylinder like cranberry sauce.
  • Barry Hilary Valentine Topping.
  • Paradise Killer.
  • Walking into court sipping your Starbucks latte.
  • Hopping around a beach and looking at a vaporwave pyramid.
  • Collecting skate tapes, just like Mario does.
  • Bails hurt scores, Mario!
  • Street Uni X.
  • The Tony Hawk soundtrack except slightly more a Lilith Fair.
  • Enjoying a bad N64 camera enough for the two of us.
  • The thing you squirt onto your ice cream.
  • Making your own counterfeit Kranch at home in a bottle with Kranch written on it in crayon.
  • The Cheese Remains Saucy.
  • Getting a boba tea for $17 outside of LA.
  • Taking the very worst bite out of your mother in law's ice cream cone.
  • Working out your jaw muscles until you can eat the entire ice cream cone in one bite.
  • Eating 16 pints of ice cream in six minutes.
  • Screaming at ice cream until it teleports into your belly.
  • Admonishing your readers that hot sauce would not make a good wife.
  • Stealing the pelt of a selkie but she always wants to go back to the ocean.
  • Selkie for a wife vs. ice cream for a wife.
  • ASMRtistry.
  • Spices of life.
  • Using a food metaphor to describe the metaphorical nature to food.
  • Three pop songs that compare women to food.
  • A topic that is floating around in the the collective unconscious.
  • Sriracha sorbet.
  • A flight of tea-flavored ice creams.
  • Sentient hot sauce putting itself on things you don't usually put hot sauce on.
  • Salamander County Public Television.
  • A Wario Ware that's a little bit QWOP.
  • The Pancake/Burger/Bacon trilogy.
  • An interactive thing where you put food into space.
  • The American Portion Gun.
  • Put things on things.
  • Video games with hamburger building elements.
  • A fast food simulator where you solve all the horror game problems that you're in.
  • Whether board games count as video games since you can see them.
  • Vidus Gamus.
  • Livin' la Video Game Loca.
  • Learning how to recover from mistakes.
  • Putting an entire Snickers bar in your cup of Sriracha and the clerk just shakes his head.
  • Asking the froyo guy to arrange the gummy worms "artfully. Like how I would if I could reach in there nyself. In fact why do I need to order, just give me the froyo that I want!"
  • All the Mistake Blizzards you can eat.
  • Nerds Butterfinger Mistake Blizzard.
  • Putting barbecue sauce on vanilla ice cream because you're out or chocolate sauce.
  • What's your favorite cheese to put on Pop-Tarts?
  • The Ambies for Excellence in Audio.
  • How to make more of the red liquid they found in the black sarcophagus.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+e4ZWKTA1 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 249. Singles Night at Whole Foods https://topiclords.com/singles-night-at-whole-foods 4ee3285f-3ff6-4a13-822f-ed3a81454c13 Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ian and Shannon. We discuss remakes of Yojimbo, how to balance character likability with dark comedy, fixing bad movie dialog mixing, and The Chinese Checker Players by Richard Brautigan. 1:02:26 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Songs that signify that this scene or moment is sophisticated.
  • How to pronounce Debussy.
  • Southern gothic dark comedy body horror.
  • A weirdo from Twitter who can't email your employer because he doesn't know who you work for.
  • The Glass Key's remake family tree.
  • A drifter samurai coming to a town.
  • A dude who shows up in town and decides to play all the criminal factions against each other.
  • The scene where the protagonist sets the bed on fire and jumps out the window.
  • Escaping from rum runners by convincing them that you've already escaped.
  • Propping your gun on a cross and using Jesus to pull the trigger.
  • A sorceress who spends the whole movie topless because it's one of those movies.
  • Omega Doom starring Rutger Hauer.
  • A robot who gets stabbed in a bar because the stabber needs to download his memories.
  • Using a mook as a human shield.
  • The supporting actor getting a better offer and quitting in between takes.
  • Where you put the interesting part in your movie.
  • A hobo who runs two crime syndicates.
  • The story of two rival vice principals.
  • Jim's theory for why cringe comedy shouldn't exist.
  • Where cringe comedy has gone since Seinfeld.
  • How to make an unlikable protagonist that people don't admire.
  • Characters who aren't good at anything.
  • The schlub.
  • A montage of dad destroying model airplanes with a sledge hammer.
  • Liking some things about someone while not liking other things.
  • A monster who is very fun to hang out with.
  • The character in the show who ends up in Florida.
  • Marathoning Breaking Bad and Better Call Sail and ending up 40 years old no matter how old you were when you started
  • Why you might not throw away a sound bar.
  • Entering the Konami code to enable compression.
  • What the Clear Voice feature actually does.
  • Getting really agitated and putting the subtitles on.
  • Thinking of something interesting to say and then forgetting it.
  • Which one's the son and which one's the dad?
  • Ripley vs. Ripley's Believe it or Not.
  • Lobbying for more mean old lesbians in theatrical productions.
  • Playing Chinese Checkers with a woman who outlived her husband by 70 years.
  • Where you were when you realized that it's possible to outlive your spouse by 70 years.
  • Bowling Alone.
  • A place to meet people that isn't the play you go to drink or the place where you go to pray.
  • All your friends who went sober in the last year.
  • Liquor stores that only sells non-alcoholic products.
  • Mocktail bars.
  • Name tags that have different foods on them.
  • Inappropriate attention in nerd spaces.
  • Figuring out where you can go with all your sober friends.
  • Who listens past the first five minutes of a podcast?
  • AI-driven smell-o-vision.
  • Searching automated transcripts to find things that people didn't say.
  • The subtitler writing "knockos" whenever people in The Wire say "narcos" in a Baltimore accent.
  • Streaming services cutting corners wherever possible in a desperate attempt to become profitable.
  • Snitching on bootlegers of racist Disney movies.
  • How to get banned from TikTok.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Songs that signify that this scene or moment is sophisticated.
  • How to pronounce Debussy.
  • Southern gothic dark comedy body horror.
  • A weirdo from Twitter who can't email your employer because he doesn't know who you work for.
  • The Glass Key's remake family tree.
  • A drifter samurai coming to a town.
  • A dude who shows up in town and decides to play all the criminal factions against each other.
  • The scene where the protagonist sets the bed on fire and jumps out the window.
  • Escaping from rum runners by convincing them that you've already escaped.
  • Propping your gun on a cross and using Jesus to pull the trigger.
  • A sorceress who spends the whole movie topless because it's one of those movies.
  • Omega Doom starring Rutger Hauer.
  • A robot who gets stabbed in a bar because the stabber needs to download his memories.
  • Using a mook as a human shield.
  • The supporting actor getting a better offer and quitting in between takes.
  • Where you put the interesting part in your movie.
  • A hobo who runs two crime syndicates.
  • The story of two rival vice principals.
  • Jim's theory for why cringe comedy shouldn't exist.
  • Where cringe comedy has gone since Seinfeld.
  • How to make an unlikable protagonist that people don't admire.
  • Characters who aren't good at anything.
  • The schlub.
  • A montage of dad destroying model airplanes with a sledge hammer.
  • Liking some things about someone while not liking other things.
  • A monster who is very fun to hang out with.
  • The character in the show who ends up in Florida.
  • Marathoning Breaking Bad and Better Call Sail and ending up 40 years old no matter how old you were when you started
  • Why you might not throw away a sound bar.
  • Entering the Konami code to enable compression.
  • What the Clear Voice feature actually does.
  • Getting really agitated and putting the subtitles on.
  • Thinking of something interesting to say and then forgetting it.
  • Which one's the son and which one's the dad?
  • Ripley vs. Ripley's Believe it or Not.
  • Lobbying for more mean old lesbians in theatrical productions.
  • Playing Chinese Checkers with a woman who outlived her husband by 70 years.
  • Where you were when you realized that it's possible to outlive your spouse by 70 years.
  • Bowling Alone.
  • A place to meet people that isn't the play you go to drink or the place where you go to pray.
  • All your friends who went sober in the last year.
  • Liquor stores that only sells non-alcoholic products.
  • Mocktail bars.
  • Name tags that have different foods on them.
  • Inappropriate attention in nerd spaces.
  • Figuring out where you can go with all your sober friends.
  • Who listens past the first five minutes of a podcast?
  • AI-driven smell-o-vision.
  • Searching automated transcripts to find things that people didn't say.
  • The subtitler writing "knockos" whenever people in The Wire say "narcos" in a Baltimore accent.
  • Streaming services cutting corners wherever possible in a desperate attempt to become profitable.
  • Snitching on bootlegers of racist Disney movies.
  • How to get banned from TikTok.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Songs that signify that this scene or moment is sophisticated.
  • How to pronounce Debussy.
  • Southern gothic dark comedy body horror.
  • A weirdo from Twitter who can't email your employer because he doesn't know who you work for.
  • The Glass Key's remake family tree.
  • A drifter samurai coming to a town.
  • A dude who shows up in town and decides to play all the criminal factions against each other.
  • The scene where the protagonist sets the bed on fire and jumps out the window.
  • Escaping from rum runners by convincing them that you've already escaped.
  • Propping your gun on a cross and using Jesus to pull the trigger.
  • A sorceress who spends the whole movie topless because it's one of those movies.
  • Omega Doom starring Rutger Hauer.
  • A robot who gets stabbed in a bar because the stabber needs to download his memories.
  • Using a mook as a human shield.
  • The supporting actor getting a better offer and quitting in between takes.
  • Where you put the interesting part in your movie.
  • A hobo who runs two crime syndicates.
  • The story of two rival vice principals.
  • Jim's theory for why cringe comedy shouldn't exist.
  • Where cringe comedy has gone since Seinfeld.
  • How to make an unlikable protagonist that people don't admire.
  • Characters who aren't good at anything.
  • The schlub.
  • A montage of dad destroying model airplanes with a sledge hammer.
  • Liking some things about someone while not liking other things.
  • A monster who is very fun to hang out with.
  • The character in the show who ends up in Florida.
  • Marathoning Breaking Bad and Better Call Sail and ending up 40 years old no matter how old you were when you started
  • Why you might not throw away a sound bar.
  • Entering the Konami code to enable compression.
  • What the Clear Voice feature actually does.
  • Getting really agitated and putting the subtitles on.
  • Thinking of something interesting to say and then forgetting it.
  • Which one's the son and which one's the dad?
  • Ripley vs. Ripley's Believe it or Not.
  • Lobbying for more mean old lesbians in theatrical productions.
  • Playing Chinese Checkers with a woman who outlived her husband by 70 years.
  • Where you were when you realized that it's possible to outlive your spouse by 70 years.
  • Bowling Alone.
  • A place to meet people that isn't the play you go to drink or the place where you go to pray.
  • All your friends who went sober in the last year.
  • Liquor stores that only sells non-alcoholic products.
  • Mocktail bars.
  • Name tags that have different foods on them.
  • Inappropriate attention in nerd spaces.
  • Figuring out where you can go with all your sober friends.
  • Who listens past the first five minutes of a podcast?
  • AI-driven smell-o-vision.
  • Searching automated transcripts to find things that people didn't say.
  • The subtitler writing "knockos" whenever people in The Wire say "narcos" in a Baltimore accent.
  • Streaming services cutting corners wherever possible in a desperate attempt to become profitable.
  • Snitching on bootlegers of racist Disney movies.
  • How to get banned from TikTok.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+XxiM76C1 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 248. The Ephemeral Nature of Digital Fish Food https://topiclords.com/the-ephemeral-nature-of-digital-fish-food 7e25b221-0602-40af-813c-97c27bb8ec71 Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Nathalie. We discuss fish-based screensavers, fire safety, the Aquarium and the Glass Harmonica, I Am Running Into A New Year by Lucille Clifton, and going to Japan. 1:03:27 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Shikiori Ink.
  • The Computer Museum in Berlin.
  • Back when you saw fish-based screen savers everywhere.
  • The Roku app fish screen saver.
  • A rock in the aquarium that says "Roku"
  • 11 hours of fish content.
  • Fish nerds sitting in a small box at the bottom of the ocean getting hype over seeing a small worm.
  • An animated gif of fish nerds getting hype.
  • A live jellyfish web cam that is just in principle.
  • A web cam of the thing that goes donk and everyone cheers when it goes donk.
  • The fish screen saver where you need to keep buying floppy disks with fish food on it or the fish die.
  • Don't copy that fish food!
  • The startup selling digital rabbit food going out of business so all the digital rabbits go into hibernation.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • Being unable to open your front door because the smart lock ran out of batteries.
  • Everybody congratulating you on the infuriating guy you made up to get mad at.
  • Fire safety anecdotes.
  • Glass top electric stoves that look just like induction stoves, as a prank.
  • How fire extinguishers taste.
  • Looking at fire extinguisher dust and thinking "let's get the blood brain barrier involved."
  • Leaving the stove on.
  • Broiling a sandwich and the whole sandwich catches fire.
  • A five year old doing science experiments with a lit candle.
  • The UX design of grease fires.
  • The William Shatner song about the dangers of deep frying a turkey.
  • Relating to the teens coming into fashion for like a week and then the next week the teens are like "You're still trying to relate? That's cheugy AF."
  • Self-moistening fingertips.
  • Soaking your fingertips in water for eight minutes to get them pruny.
  • The Canon of harmonica virtuoso music.
  • Ethereal floating tones that fade in and out of existence.
  • The Flat Bells.
  • The Mellotron as a slightly more physical sampler.
  • Clara Rockmore playing "The Swan" on Theremin.
  • Bit-doers playing "The Swan" on Otamatone.
  • Letting go of what you said to yourself about yourself when you were 16, 26, even 36.
  • The assumption that you need to be forgiven for something.
  • The sun coming up on this episode of Topic Lords.
  • Working up the courage to climb the mountain you see every day from your back yard.
  • Really tall hills you can walk up.
  • What it's like to not hear cars constantly.
  • Designing a building to sound good – even if it isn't a concert hall.
  • Car-free cities.
  • Biking in a bike-centric environment.
  • Throwing your body into traffic and hoping drivers care about the legal liability of running someone over.
  • The intersection where you always see the skid marks from kids doing donuts.
  • Doing watercolors but with ink.
  • Buying a bunch of art supplies and never using them because you're afraid to waste them.
  • How do you get your paintbrush to do what you want?
  • How watercolors behave depending on how wet the painting is and how wet the paintbrush is.
  • Scraping your knife on the painting and it just looks like a shed.
  • Is it a bunch of cats or is it the word "gay"?
  • Images that look like stereograms but aren't.
  • The blank canvas stereogram.
  • Crowds staring at the enormous stereograms hanging up in the Mall of America.
  • Stereogram artists accounting for pupillary distance.
  • Making a stereogram in MS Paint.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Shikiori Ink.
  • The Computer Museum in Berlin.
  • Back when you saw fish-based screen savers everywhere.
  • The Roku app fish screen saver.
  • A rock in the aquarium that says "Roku"
  • 11 hours of fish content.
  • Fish nerds sitting in a small box at the bottom of the ocean getting hype over seeing a small worm.
  • An animated gif of fish nerds getting hype.
  • A live jellyfish web cam that is just in principle.
  • A web cam of the thing that goes donk and everyone cheers when it goes donk.
  • The fish screen saver where you need to keep buying floppy disks with fish food on it or the fish die.
  • Don't copy that fish food!
  • The startup selling digital rabbit food going out of business so all the digital rabbits go into hibernation.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • Being unable to open your front door because the smart lock ran out of batteries.
  • Everybody congratulating you on the infuriating guy you made up to get mad at.
  • Fire safety anecdotes.
  • Glass top electric stoves that look just like induction stoves, as a prank.
  • How fire extinguishers taste.
  • Looking at fire extinguisher dust and thinking "let's get the blood brain barrier involved."
  • Leaving the stove on.
  • Broiling a sandwich and the whole sandwich catches fire.
  • A five year old doing science experiments with a lit candle.
  • The UX design of grease fires.
  • The William Shatner song about the dangers of deep frying a turkey.
  • Relating to the teens coming into fashion for like a week and then the next week the teens are like "You're still trying to relate? That's cheugy AF."
  • Self-moistening fingertips.
  • Soaking your fingertips in water for eight minutes to get them pruny.
  • The Canon of harmonica virtuoso music.
  • Ethereal floating tones that fade in and out of existence.
  • The Flat Bells.
  • The Mellotron as a slightly more physical sampler.
  • Clara Rockmore playing "The Swan" on Theremin.
  • Bit-doers playing "The Swan" on Otamatone.
  • Letting go of what you said to yourself about yourself when you were 16, 26, even 36.
  • The assumption that you need to be forgiven for something.
  • The sun coming up on this episode of Topic Lords.
  • Working up the courage to climb the mountain you see every day from your back yard.
  • Really tall hills you can walk up.
  • What it's like to not hear cars constantly.
  • Designing a building to sound good – even if it isn't a concert hall.
  • Car-free cities.
  • Biking in a bike-centric environment.
  • Throwing your body into traffic and hoping drivers care about the legal liability of running someone over.
  • The intersection where you always see the skid marks from kids doing donuts.
  • Doing watercolors but with ink.
  • Buying a bunch of art supplies and never using them because you're afraid to waste them.
  • How do you get your paintbrush to do what you want?
  • How watercolors behave depending on how wet the painting is and how wet the paintbrush is.
  • Scraping your knife on the painting and it just looks like a shed.
  • Is it a bunch of cats or is it the word "gay"?
  • Images that look like stereograms but aren't.
  • The blank canvas stereogram.
  • Crowds staring at the enormous stereograms hanging up in the Mall of America.
  • Stereogram artists accounting for pupillary distance.
  • Making a stereogram in MS Paint.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Shikiori Ink.
  • The Computer Museum in Berlin.
  • Back when you saw fish-based screen savers everywhere.
  • The Roku app fish screen saver.
  • A rock in the aquarium that says "Roku"
  • 11 hours of fish content.
  • Fish nerds sitting in a small box at the bottom of the ocean getting hype over seeing a small worm.
  • An animated gif of fish nerds getting hype.
  • A live jellyfish web cam that is just in principle.
  • A web cam of the thing that goes donk and everyone cheers when it goes donk.
  • The fish screen saver where you need to keep buying floppy disks with fish food on it or the fish die.
  • Don't copy that fish food!
  • The startup selling digital rabbit food going out of business so all the digital rabbits go into hibernation.
  • The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
  • Being unable to open your front door because the smart lock ran out of batteries.
  • Everybody congratulating you on the infuriating guy you made up to get mad at.
  • Fire safety anecdotes.
  • Glass top electric stoves that look just like induction stoves, as a prank.
  • How fire extinguishers taste.
  • Looking at fire extinguisher dust and thinking "let's get the blood brain barrier involved."
  • Leaving the stove on.
  • Broiling a sandwich and the whole sandwich catches fire.
  • A five year old doing science experiments with a lit candle.
  • The UX design of grease fires.
  • The William Shatner song about the dangers of deep frying a turkey.
  • Relating to the teens coming into fashion for like a week and then the next week the teens are like "You're still trying to relate? That's cheugy AF."
  • Self-moistening fingertips.
  • Soaking your fingertips in water for eight minutes to get them pruny.
  • The Canon of harmonica virtuoso music.
  • Ethereal floating tones that fade in and out of existence.
  • The Flat Bells.
  • The Mellotron as a slightly more physical sampler.
  • Clara Rockmore playing "The Swan" on Theremin.
  • Bit-doers playing "The Swan" on Otamatone.
  • Letting go of what you said to yourself about yourself when you were 16, 26, even 36.
  • The assumption that you need to be forgiven for something.
  • The sun coming up on this episode of Topic Lords.
  • Working up the courage to climb the mountain you see every day from your back yard.
  • Really tall hills you can walk up.
  • What it's like to not hear cars constantly.
  • Designing a building to sound good – even if it isn't a concert hall.
  • Car-free cities.
  • Biking in a bike-centric environment.
  • Throwing your body into traffic and hoping drivers care about the legal liability of running someone over.
  • The intersection where you always see the skid marks from kids doing donuts.
  • Doing watercolors but with ink.
  • Buying a bunch of art supplies and never using them because you're afraid to waste them.
  • How do you get your paintbrush to do what you want?
  • How watercolors behave depending on how wet the painting is and how wet the paintbrush is.
  • Scraping your knife on the painting and it just looks like a shed.
  • Is it a bunch of cats or is it the word "gay"?
  • Images that look like stereograms but aren't.
  • The blank canvas stereogram.
  • Crowds staring at the enormous stereograms hanging up in the Mall of America.
  • Stereogram artists accounting for pupillary distance.
  • Making a stereogram in MS Paint.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+p-a-jcEM ]]> Jim Stormdancer 247. Fish That Scrutinize; Fish That Rubberneck https://topiclords.com/fish-that-scrutinize-fish-that-rubberneck daf7c004-0687-4886-a5d5-a15a27781267 Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss spending less on food and it tasting better, the jizz of a bird, the Cosmic Call, Line Fishing by Daniel Kahaulelio, how to order coffee in Malaysia, and physically rolling dice. 1:15:40 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Paleo animators.
  • Malaysia as a vacation destination.
  • Restaurants that are just in s guy's house.
  • The best whole fried catfish you've ever had.
  • Eating mixed whole livers.
  • Striving to get a B rating from the food safety inspectors because the A rating is too bougie.
  • Starch and grease.
  • The shape of the price to deliciousness correlation graph.
  • If you're here to buy cake, ring the doorbell.
  • You can talk to the cops or you can have cake. You can't have both.
  • Whether Americans can drink the water in Malaysia.
  • Being so desperate for fresh vegetables that you wash them with tap water.
  • Butterfly Pee Flour.
  • Jizz (birding)
  • The practice of just getting the vibe of a bird.
  • I don't know, it had the jizz of a bird.
  • Zooniverse.
  • Going through the still images on a nature webcam and trying to identify local animals.
  • Trying to tell the difference between a wood rat and a deer mouse.
  • Reclassifying all the animals in the world based not on their actual genetics or but based on what people think they are by looking at them.
  • Small, Brown and On the Ground.
  • Submitting a picture of a pair of brown wood owls to a bird study app and two hours later an angry ecologist is knocking on your tent to ask if you meant a spotted wood owl.
  • An extremely high-stress app.
  • Asking an albatross which of the twelve species is albatross it is.
  • Walking around in the woods until you spot a kiwi.
  • Major gaffes in interstellar communication that future aliens will be very confused about.
  • Massively synesthetic dog brains.
  • Receiving a sequence of bits and deciding to arrange them in a grid.
  • The other book with the spiders.
  • Humans interacting with a spider-based society.
  • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
  • Expecting monkeys to become the dominant intelligent species on a terraformed planet seeded with Earth animals.
  • Adventuring into a dungeon built by the ancients and admiring the signage.
  • Opening an oil drum full of concrete and tubes and being like "where's the treasure that's supposed to be in here!"
  • Writing a song about how being near glowing cats is very dangerous.
  • Public serving meme songs.
  • Engineering earworms for the public good.
  • The Museum of Hawaiian Culture in Oahu.
  • Fish that watch. Fish that look.
  • Get those fish hungry.
  • It's just a lookin' fish.
  • Sleeping the lobes of your brain in shifts.
  • The lobes of your brain playing pranks on each other.
  • How can fish get some shuteye if they don't have eyelids??
  • How can fish rubberneck if they don't even have necks??
  • The Star Trek replicator except instead of materializing your food it prints a piece of paper with the words that you need to say to the tired-looking guy who then goes to cook your meal.
  • Ais krim.
  • What languages are hardest to spell in.
  • Are there four silent letters at the end, and if so which ones?
  • Cofftea.
  • Rolling all them bones.
  • Owning more sets of dice than you have played actual D&D sessions.
  • A big pile of dice rattling around in your phone.
  • Rolling the dice off of the table every single time.
  • A switch that goes ka-chonk.
  • Actively seeking out hobbies where you touch things.
  • Ways that continuous deployment sucks.
  • Text classifiers flagging your sexuality as photographic.
  • Image classifiers flagging your medical photos as pornographic.
  • Which photos encapsulate what you're trying to remember and discuss.
  • How to get your life off of a corporation's hard drive.
  • Unsearchable Tumblrs.
  • Get out there and jizz a bird!
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Paleo animators.
  • Malaysia as a vacation destination.
  • Restaurants that are just in s guy's house.
  • The best whole fried catfish you've ever had.
  • Eating mixed whole livers.
  • Striving to get a B rating from the food safety inspectors because the A rating is too bougie.
  • Starch and grease.
  • The shape of the price to deliciousness correlation graph.
  • If you're here to buy cake, ring the doorbell.
  • You can talk to the cops or you can have cake. You can't have both.
  • Whether Americans can drink the water in Malaysia.
  • Being so desperate for fresh vegetables that you wash them with tap water.
  • Butterfly Pee Flour.
  • Jizz (birding)
  • The practice of just getting the vibe of a bird.
  • I don't know, it had the jizz of a bird.
  • Zooniverse.
  • Going through the still images on a nature webcam and trying to identify local animals.
  • Trying to tell the difference between a wood rat and a deer mouse.
  • Reclassifying all the animals in the world based not on their actual genetics or but based on what people think they are by looking at them.
  • Small, Brown and On the Ground.
  • Submitting a picture of a pair of brown wood owls to a bird study app and two hours later an angry ecologist is knocking on your tent to ask if you meant a spotted wood owl.
  • An extremely high-stress app.
  • Asking an albatross which of the twelve species is albatross it is.
  • Walking around in the woods until you spot a kiwi.
  • Major gaffes in interstellar communication that future aliens will be very confused about.
  • Massively synesthetic dog brains.
  • Receiving a sequence of bits and deciding to arrange them in a grid.
  • The other book with the spiders.
  • Humans interacting with a spider-based society.
  • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
  • Expecting monkeys to become the dominant intelligent species on a terraformed planet seeded with Earth animals.
  • Adventuring into a dungeon built by the ancients and admiring the signage.
  • Opening an oil drum full of concrete and tubes and being like "where's the treasure that's supposed to be in here!"
  • Writing a song about how being near glowing cats is very dangerous.
  • Public serving meme songs.
  • Engineering earworms for the public good.
  • The Museum of Hawaiian Culture in Oahu.
  • Fish that watch. Fish that look.
  • Get those fish hungry.
  • It's just a lookin' fish.
  • Sleeping the lobes of your brain in shifts.
  • The lobes of your brain playing pranks on each other.
  • How can fish get some shuteye if they don't have eyelids??
  • How can fish rubberneck if they don't even have necks??
  • The Star Trek replicator except instead of materializing your food it prints a piece of paper with the words that you need to say to the tired-looking guy who then goes to cook your meal.
  • Ais krim.
  • What languages are hardest to spell in.
  • Are there four silent letters at the end, and if so which ones?
  • Cofftea.
  • Rolling all them bones.
  • Owning more sets of dice than you have played actual D&D sessions.
  • A big pile of dice rattling around in your phone.
  • Rolling the dice off of the table every single time.
  • A switch that goes ka-chonk.
  • Actively seeking out hobbies where you touch things.
  • Ways that continuous deployment sucks.
  • Text classifiers flagging your sexuality as photographic.
  • Image classifiers flagging your medical photos as pornographic.
  • Which photos encapsulate what you're trying to remember and discuss.
  • How to get your life off of a corporation's hard drive.
  • Unsearchable Tumblrs.
  • Get out there and jizz a bird!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Paleo animators.
  • Malaysia as a vacation destination.
  • Restaurants that are just in s guy's house.
  • The best whole fried catfish you've ever had.
  • Eating mixed whole livers.
  • Striving to get a B rating from the food safety inspectors because the A rating is too bougie.
  • Starch and grease.
  • The shape of the price to deliciousness correlation graph.
  • If you're here to buy cake, ring the doorbell.
  • You can talk to the cops or you can have cake. You can't have both.
  • Whether Americans can drink the water in Malaysia.
  • Being so desperate for fresh vegetables that you wash them with tap water.
  • Butterfly Pee Flour.
  • Jizz (birding)
  • The practice of just getting the vibe of a bird.
  • I don't know, it had the jizz of a bird.
  • Zooniverse.
  • Going through the still images on a nature webcam and trying to identify local animals.
  • Trying to tell the difference between a wood rat and a deer mouse.
  • Reclassifying all the animals in the world based not on their actual genetics or but based on what people think they are by looking at them.
  • Small, Brown and On the Ground.
  • Submitting a picture of a pair of brown wood owls to a bird study app and two hours later an angry ecologist is knocking on your tent to ask if you meant a spotted wood owl.
  • An extremely high-stress app.
  • Asking an albatross which of the twelve species is albatross it is.
  • Walking around in the woods until you spot a kiwi.
  • Major gaffes in interstellar communication that future aliens will be very confused about.
  • Massively synesthetic dog brains.
  • Receiving a sequence of bits and deciding to arrange them in a grid.
  • The other book with the spiders.
  • Humans interacting with a spider-based society.
  • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
  • Expecting monkeys to become the dominant intelligent species on a terraformed planet seeded with Earth animals.
  • Adventuring into a dungeon built by the ancients and admiring the signage.
  • Opening an oil drum full of concrete and tubes and being like "where's the treasure that's supposed to be in here!"
  • Writing a song about how being near glowing cats is very dangerous.
  • Public serving meme songs.
  • Engineering earworms for the public good.
  • The Museum of Hawaiian Culture in Oahu.
  • Fish that watch. Fish that look.
  • Get those fish hungry.
  • It's just a lookin' fish.
  • Sleeping the lobes of your brain in shifts.
  • The lobes of your brain playing pranks on each other.
  • How can fish get some shuteye if they don't have eyelids??
  • How can fish rubberneck if they don't even have necks??
  • The Star Trek replicator except instead of materializing your food it prints a piece of paper with the words that you need to say to the tired-looking guy who then goes to cook your meal.
  • Ais krim.
  • What languages are hardest to spell in.
  • Are there four silent letters at the end, and if so which ones?
  • Cofftea.
  • Rolling all them bones.
  • Owning more sets of dice than you have played actual D&D sessions.
  • A big pile of dice rattling around in your phone.
  • Rolling the dice off of the table every single time.
  • A switch that goes ka-chonk.
  • Actively seeking out hobbies where you touch things.
  • Ways that continuous deployment sucks.
  • Text classifiers flagging your sexuality as photographic.
  • Image classifiers flagging your medical photos as pornographic.
  • Which photos encapsulate what you're trying to remember and discuss.
  • How to get your life off of a corporation's hard drive.
  • Unsearchable Tumblrs.
  • Get out there and jizz a bird!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+aWA29T2D ]]> Jim Stormdancer 246. Send an Envelope of Guacamole for Analysis https://topiclords.com/send-an-envelope-of-guacamole-for-analysis 0a099963-182e-4e23-a9e7-c0aff556f4c2 Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jay and Alex. We discuss Mexican food outside of San Diego, releasing your first commercial video game, the being an uncle of camping, Skyscrapers by Matt Haig, and attempting to preserve 40 years' worth of personal data. 1:03:58 true Lords:

  • Jay
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A puzzle adventure game starring a ferret.
  • DROD-likes.
  • Sending an envelope full of guacamole to a food lab so they can tell you a list of ingredients.
  • Reaching in the window so you can finally drive a million dollar Porsche.
  • Letting the Ewok sit in the driver's seat but not actually letting it drive the car.
  • Whether Ewoks get old enough to drive.
  • Throw Rock.
  • Making a game by first making your own level editor, image editor, audio synthesizer and music composition tools.
  • Finding playtesters by letting them come to you.
  • An eyeball that charges a laser when you step in front of it.
  • Deliberately optimizing your game to take up as little disk space as possible.
  • A project that starts moving much faster when you figure out what kind of project it should be.
  • Writing a 3D modeler so that you can get your 2D game on Steam.
  • Working with a professional artist.
  • Rendering fur.
  • Games with turns that represent less than a second of in-game time.
  • The mind-feel of a turn length.
  • A game that was so good that the developers went back decades later to make it playable.
  • The Mud and the Slime.
  • How to play DROD without any roach timers.
  • Which DROD is the best one to start with.
  • Sokoban with swordplay.
  • The level in King Dugan's Dungeon that's nothing but roach queens.
  • Optimizing your sword movements well enough that you can move forward while fighting.
  • Puzzles that are just hard enough to engage your mind while you do something else.
  • Visiting someone who is camping and then going home to sleep in your own bed.
  • Building a fire and making s'mores in the bathroom.
  • Camping expenses.
  • Giving gifts to adults who can already buy whatever they want.
  • Deliberately choosing a vacation that is especially exhausting.
  • Spending two days each visiting seven different family friends.
  • Your grandparents taking you camping and they sleep in the RV while you have to sleep in the tent.
  • Buying an onion bloomer for $600 and insisting that your family eat a blooming onion every night to justify the purchase.
  • Skyscrapers made out of words
  • Training yourself to visualize words in the wrong orientation.
  • Puzzling out what the title of the poem would've been if the typesetter hadn't messed it up
  • Cross-sectional art.
  • Poems that are intended to be viewed rather than read aloud.
  • Anti-poem poems.
  • Every project you've ever worked on (on a computer)
  • Good usable archives.
  • The unique digital footprint of your life.
  • Getting the bits from a SCSI hard drive in an old Mac that doesn't boot up.
  • Apple Desktop Bus Connection.
  • The miraculous ubiquity and longevity of USB-A.
  • Figuring out how to hook up a digital video player that requires a Firewire connection.
  • The MacOS resource fork.
  • What the .sit and .hqx extensions meant.
  • Gamma Zee.
  • Using social media to actually do things.
]]> Lords:

  • Jay
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A puzzle adventure game starring a ferret.
  • DROD-likes.
  • Sending an envelope full of guacamole to a food lab so they can tell you a list of ingredients.
  • Reaching in the window so you can finally drive a million dollar Porsche.
  • Letting the Ewok sit in the driver's seat but not actually letting it drive the car.
  • Whether Ewoks get old enough to drive.
  • Throw Rock.
  • Making a game by first making your own level editor, image editor, audio synthesizer and music composition tools.
  • Finding playtesters by letting them come to you.
  • An eyeball that charges a laser when you step in front of it.
  • Deliberately optimizing your game to take up as little disk space as possible.
  • A project that starts moving much faster when you figure out what kind of project it should be.
  • Writing a 3D modeler so that you can get your 2D game on Steam.
  • Working with a professional artist.
  • Rendering fur.
  • Games with turns that represent less than a second of in-game time.
  • The mind-feel of a turn length.
  • A game that was so good that the developers went back decades later to make it playable.
  • The Mud and the Slime.
  • How to play DROD without any roach timers.
  • Which DROD is the best one to start with.
  • Sokoban with swordplay.
  • The level in King Dugan's Dungeon that's nothing but roach queens.
  • Optimizing your sword movements well enough that you can move forward while fighting.
  • Puzzles that are just hard enough to engage your mind while you do something else.
  • Visiting someone who is camping and then going home to sleep in your own bed.
  • Building a fire and making s'mores in the bathroom.
  • Camping expenses.
  • Giving gifts to adults who can already buy whatever they want.
  • Deliberately choosing a vacation that is especially exhausting.
  • Spending two days each visiting seven different family friends.
  • Your grandparents taking you camping and they sleep in the RV while you have to sleep in the tent.
  • Buying an onion bloomer for $600 and insisting that your family eat a blooming onion every night to justify the purchase.
  • Skyscrapers made out of words
  • Training yourself to visualize words in the wrong orientation.
  • Puzzling out what the title of the poem would've been if the typesetter hadn't messed it up
  • Cross-sectional art.
  • Poems that are intended to be viewed rather than read aloud.
  • Anti-poem poems.
  • Every project you've ever worked on (on a computer)
  • Good usable archives.
  • The unique digital footprint of your life.
  • Getting the bits from a SCSI hard drive in an old Mac that doesn't boot up.
  • Apple Desktop Bus Connection.
  • The miraculous ubiquity and longevity of USB-A.
  • Figuring out how to hook up a digital video player that requires a Firewire connection.
  • The MacOS resource fork.
  • What the .sit and .hqx extensions meant.
  • Gamma Zee.
  • Using social media to actually do things.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jay
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A puzzle adventure game starring a ferret.
  • DROD-likes.
  • Sending an envelope full of guacamole to a food lab so they can tell you a list of ingredients.
  • Reaching in the window so you can finally drive a million dollar Porsche.
  • Letting the Ewok sit in the driver's seat but not actually letting it drive the car.
  • Whether Ewoks get old enough to drive.
  • Throw Rock.
  • Making a game by first making your own level editor, image editor, audio synthesizer and music composition tools.
  • Finding playtesters by letting them come to you.
  • An eyeball that charges a laser when you step in front of it.
  • Deliberately optimizing your game to take up as little disk space as possible.
  • A project that starts moving much faster when you figure out what kind of project it should be.
  • Writing a 3D modeler so that you can get your 2D game on Steam.
  • Working with a professional artist.
  • Rendering fur.
  • Games with turns that represent less than a second of in-game time.
  • The mind-feel of a turn length.
  • A game that was so good that the developers went back decades later to make it playable.
  • The Mud and the Slime.
  • How to play DROD without any roach timers.
  • Which DROD is the best one to start with.
  • Sokoban with swordplay.
  • The level in King Dugan's Dungeon that's nothing but roach queens.
  • Optimizing your sword movements well enough that you can move forward while fighting.
  • Puzzles that are just hard enough to engage your mind while you do something else.
  • Visiting someone who is camping and then going home to sleep in your own bed.
  • Building a fire and making s'mores in the bathroom.
  • Camping expenses.
  • Giving gifts to adults who can already buy whatever they want.
  • Deliberately choosing a vacation that is especially exhausting.
  • Spending two days each visiting seven different family friends.
  • Your grandparents taking you camping and they sleep in the RV while you have to sleep in the tent.
  • Buying an onion bloomer for $600 and insisting that your family eat a blooming onion every night to justify the purchase.
  • Skyscrapers made out of words
  • Training yourself to visualize words in the wrong orientation.
  • Puzzling out what the title of the poem would've been if the typesetter hadn't messed it up
  • Cross-sectional art.
  • Poems that are intended to be viewed rather than read aloud.
  • Anti-poem poems.
  • Every project you've ever worked on (on a computer)
  • Good usable archives.
  • The unique digital footprint of your life.
  • Getting the bits from a SCSI hard drive in an old Mac that doesn't boot up.
  • Apple Desktop Bus Connection.
  • The miraculous ubiquity and longevity of USB-A.
  • Figuring out how to hook up a digital video player that requires a Firewire connection.
  • The MacOS resource fork.
  • What the .sit and .hqx extensions meant.
  • Gamma Zee.
  • Using social media to actually do things.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+tqhgglYz ]]> Jim Stormdancer 245. It Was You, Old Man Molyneux! https://topiclords.com/it-was-you-old-man-molyneux 91f0837e-8356-45a5-9cdb-14700e861ea0 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and Nicholas. We discuss sending treats from Australia to Canada, the terrible UX of live sports, Games Buddha Would Not Play, I Continue to Dream by Langston Hughes, and being overly patriotic and repping the national identity but only when around foreigners 1:13:21 true Lords:

  • Ben
  • Nicholas

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Projects that you can't talk about yet
  • Telling a joke for international joke day.
  • A very busy day for Australians.
  • Sending 3 kilos of lollies to your co-worker in Canada.
  • It's the way it shatters that matters.
  • Cherry Ripes.
  • The thinking man's candy.
  • Chicken Crimpy.
  • A biscuit inspired by Golden Gaytime.
  • "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own."
  • Renaming chocolate jelly babies to be less racist.
  • A real enthusiasm for desiccated coconut.
  • Butter chicken parmigiana.
  • P burger candy.
  • Whether kangaroos are hunted or farmed.
  • Whether kangaroos are the same size as the kangaroo fruit.
  • The waiter in Japan staring at you until you eat the single slice of kiwi.
  • The official ranking of fruit prestige in Japan, with melon only being bested by keys and Galaga ships.
  • How many footballs they have in Australia. (At least three, maybe six.)
  • A sport where nobody can tell when somebody has scored so the whole audience is constantly on edge.
  • The theme song for the guy coming up to bat.
  • Booing when your team scores, because they didn't score more.
  • Whether Eurovision is better when you're not in Europe.
  • Correlating sports with Eurovision.
  • A little song and dance that's definitely not political.
  • XFL camera operators running around on the field.
  • Improving sports broadcasts with drone cameras.
  • A comprehensive list of games that are causes for negligence.
  • Games on boards with 8 or 10 rows (or the same games played in the sky).
  • Avoiding the line to be avoided.
  • Making a mark on a wall and deciding if it looks like an elephant.
  • There's no throwing, Buddha! This is not a cause for negligence.
  • How the Buddha feels about the Mersenne Twister.
  • An abacus except it's a roller coaster track.
  • Tracing letters in the air or on a friend's back.
  • Even more games Buddha would not play.
  • The minigame from the beginning of Mario 64 where you stretch out his eyes.
  • What Shall it Be?
  • In this game you are the video game and you are the one being played.
  • A video game adaptation of the less half fun of Pictionary.
  • Kinect Charades.
  • Using the Kinect voice to say "it's goat!"
  • It turns out Molyneux was wearing the business all along.
  • Turning your dream into art. Like a video game! Or something more artistic.
  • Dubbing your podcast onto cassette tape and calling it an Audio Zine.
  • The Creative Labs Creative Zen.
  • Setting up your sound card and hearing digitized speech in Leisure Suit Larry.
  • Fond memories of listening to digital audio on your Creative Labs Sound Blaster.
  • Dr. Sbaitso and Dr. Sbaitso imitators.
  • What you do when your dad isn't around to help you boot up Red Alert.
  • An FMV adventure game set in Germany.
  • The Red Alert installation experience.
  • Tim Curry giving his all in the Red Alert FMV cutscenes.
  • An oral history of Tim Curry's escape into the one place uncorrupted by capitalism.
  • Enjoying the Aboriginal Sauce at Outback Steakhouse.
  • Australians explaining that America also started as a prison colony
  • Hamilton didn't talk about this!
  • The Simpsons writing room discovering the Coriolis effect and realizing that they need to tell the world so it's lucky that anything they write will be broadcast on national television and on streaming services for decades to come.
  • Everyone in your age bracket having the first ten seasons of the Simpsons memorized.
  • Finding Frinkiac, analogous to discovering a new Blender plug-in.
  • Lying on the couch and taking a photo of the TV.
  • Having a mobile game and sending the APK to anyone who asks nicely.
]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Nicholas

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Projects that you can't talk about yet
  • Telling a joke for international joke day.
  • A very busy day for Australians.
  • Sending 3 kilos of lollies to your co-worker in Canada.
  • It's the way it shatters that matters.
  • Cherry Ripes.
  • The thinking man's candy.
  • Chicken Crimpy.
  • A biscuit inspired by Golden Gaytime.
  • "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own."
  • Renaming chocolate jelly babies to be less racist.
  • A real enthusiasm for desiccated coconut.
  • Butter chicken parmigiana.
  • P burger candy.
  • Whether kangaroos are hunted or farmed.
  • Whether kangaroos are the same size as the kangaroo fruit.
  • The waiter in Japan staring at you until you eat the single slice of kiwi.
  • The official ranking of fruit prestige in Japan, with melon only being bested by keys and Galaga ships.
  • How many footballs they have in Australia. (At least three, maybe six.)
  • A sport where nobody can tell when somebody has scored so the whole audience is constantly on edge.
  • The theme song for the guy coming up to bat.
  • Booing when your team scores, because they didn't score more.
  • Whether Eurovision is better when you're not in Europe.
  • Correlating sports with Eurovision.
  • A little song and dance that's definitely not political.
  • XFL camera operators running around on the field.
  • Improving sports broadcasts with drone cameras.
  • A comprehensive list of games that are causes for negligence.
  • Games on boards with 8 or 10 rows (or the same games played in the sky).
  • Avoiding the line to be avoided.
  • Making a mark on a wall and deciding if it looks like an elephant.
  • There's no throwing, Buddha! This is not a cause for negligence.
  • How the Buddha feels about the Mersenne Twister.
  • An abacus except it's a roller coaster track.
  • Tracing letters in the air or on a friend's back.
  • Even more games Buddha would not play.
  • The minigame from the beginning of Mario 64 where you stretch out his eyes.
  • What Shall it Be?
  • In this game you are the video game and you are the one being played.
  • A video game adaptation of the less half fun of Pictionary.
  • Kinect Charades.
  • Using the Kinect voice to say "it's goat!"
  • It turns out Molyneux was wearing the business all along.
  • Turning your dream into art. Like a video game! Or something more artistic.
  • Dubbing your podcast onto cassette tape and calling it an Audio Zine.
  • The Creative Labs Creative Zen.
  • Setting up your sound card and hearing digitized speech in Leisure Suit Larry.
  • Fond memories of listening to digital audio on your Creative Labs Sound Blaster.
  • Dr. Sbaitso and Dr. Sbaitso imitators.
  • What you do when your dad isn't around to help you boot up Red Alert.
  • An FMV adventure game set in Germany.
  • The Red Alert installation experience.
  • Tim Curry giving his all in the Red Alert FMV cutscenes.
  • An oral history of Tim Curry's escape into the one place uncorrupted by capitalism.
  • Enjoying the Aboriginal Sauce at Outback Steakhouse.
  • Australians explaining that America also started as a prison colony
  • Hamilton didn't talk about this!
  • The Simpsons writing room discovering the Coriolis effect and realizing that they need to tell the world so it's lucky that anything they write will be broadcast on national television and on streaming services for decades to come.
  • Everyone in your age bracket having the first ten seasons of the Simpsons memorized.
  • Finding Frinkiac, analogous to discovering a new Blender plug-in.
  • Lying on the couch and taking a photo of the TV.
  • Having a mobile game and sending the APK to anyone who asks nicely.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • Nicholas

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Projects that you can't talk about yet
  • Telling a joke for international joke day.
  • A very busy day for Australians.
  • Sending 3 kilos of lollies to your co-worker in Canada.
  • It's the way it shatters that matters.
  • Cherry Ripes.
  • The thinking man's candy.
  • Chicken Crimpy.
  • A biscuit inspired by Golden Gaytime.
  • "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own."
  • Renaming chocolate jelly babies to be less racist.
  • A real enthusiasm for desiccated coconut.
  • Butter chicken parmigiana.
  • P burger candy.
  • Whether kangaroos are hunted or farmed.
  • Whether kangaroos are the same size as the kangaroo fruit.
  • The waiter in Japan staring at you until you eat the single slice of kiwi.
  • The official ranking of fruit prestige in Japan, with melon only being bested by keys and Galaga ships.
  • How many footballs they have in Australia. (At least three, maybe six.)
  • A sport where nobody can tell when somebody has scored so the whole audience is constantly on edge.
  • The theme song for the guy coming up to bat.
  • Booing when your team scores, because they didn't score more.
  • Whether Eurovision is better when you're not in Europe.
  • Correlating sports with Eurovision.
  • A little song and dance that's definitely not political.
  • XFL camera operators running around on the field.
  • Improving sports broadcasts with drone cameras.
  • A comprehensive list of games that are causes for negligence.
  • Games on boards with 8 or 10 rows (or the same games played in the sky).
  • Avoiding the line to be avoided.
  • Making a mark on a wall and deciding if it looks like an elephant.
  • There's no throwing, Buddha! This is not a cause for negligence.
  • How the Buddha feels about the Mersenne Twister.
  • An abacus except it's a roller coaster track.
  • Tracing letters in the air or on a friend's back.
  • Even more games Buddha would not play.
  • The minigame from the beginning of Mario 64 where you stretch out his eyes.
  • What Shall it Be?
  • In this game you are the video game and you are the one being played.
  • A video game adaptation of the less half fun of Pictionary.
  • Kinect Charades.
  • Using the Kinect voice to say "it's goat!"
  • It turns out Molyneux was wearing the business all along.
  • Turning your dream into art. Like a video game! Or something more artistic.
  • Dubbing your podcast onto cassette tape and calling it an Audio Zine.
  • The Creative Labs Creative Zen.
  • Setting up your sound card and hearing digitized speech in Leisure Suit Larry.
  • Fond memories of listening to digital audio on your Creative Labs Sound Blaster.
  • Dr. Sbaitso and Dr. Sbaitso imitators.
  • What you do when your dad isn't around to help you boot up Red Alert.
  • An FMV adventure game set in Germany.
  • The Red Alert installation experience.
  • Tim Curry giving his all in the Red Alert FMV cutscenes.
  • An oral history of Tim Curry's escape into the one place uncorrupted by capitalism.
  • Enjoying the Aboriginal Sauce at Outback Steakhouse.
  • Australians explaining that America also started as a prison colony
  • Hamilton didn't talk about this!
  • The Simpsons writing room discovering the Coriolis effect and realizing that they need to tell the world so it's lucky that anything they write will be broadcast on national television and on streaming services for decades to come.
  • Everyone in your age bracket having the first ten seasons of the Simpsons memorized.
  • Finding Frinkiac, analogous to discovering a new Blender plug-in.
  • Lying on the couch and taking a photo of the TV.
  • Having a mobile game and sending the APK to anyone who asks nicely.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+EAetbvKT ]]> Jim Stormdancer 244. Get Gimbal Locked, Dean! https://topiclords.com/get-gimbal-locked-dean 6089995c-fd87-44ba-ab44-2dfe4fe2b285 Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Daniel and Andrew. We discuss hyperthymesia, Animal Well, "Twinbeard" is the name of the Helldivers 2 community manager, spam about house flipping, and whether game developers should "soak themselves" in games. 1:08:11 true Lords:

  • Daniel
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Hyperthymesia
  • Animal Well
  • Bad news for my google alerts: "Twinbeard" is the name of the Helldivers 2 community manager
  • Dean asks "I know there are many seniors who are looking to start a business during retirement. For those who haven't settled on an idea yet, I'd love to suggest house flipping as a good way to earn income. May I write about this topic in a free article for your website -- specifically, how seniors can get into the house flipping business and become successful at it? I'll be sure to cover all the basics, including how to find the perfect property, how to finance the expenses, how to manage payroll for employees and contractors, etc. I'll also feature a link back to your website."
  • Should game developers "soak themselves" in games. Referring to this clip of Orson Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg-qaeIcuyI

Microtopics:

  • Doom Guy: Life in First Person
  • A well full of animals.
  • A game that you keep hearing is great from people that you trust.
  • Remembering every detail of your life even though that's a terrible idea.
  • A cop asking you what you were doing on the night of November 3rd, 2021.
  • Fnords.
  • Eidetic memory vs. photographic memory vs. hyperthymesic memory.
  • Checking your memory of a time against your written records of that time.
  • Remembering that you're going to have a conversation about your day tonight so you had better do something interesting.
  • Data mining electronic records to figure out how you met somebody.
  • Playing a Sam Barlow game with your bank records.
  • Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics.
  • Spending a lot of time frowning.
  • Dark Forest.
  • A game providing you with a spoiler-free mechanism of conveying where you are in the game.
  • Shooting people vs. swording people.
  • The tools and verbs of just being a little guy.
  • Seeing a dog doing something you didn't expect to see a dog do.
  • Being unable to turn a crank because there's a blue ghost.
  • Choosing not to be a video game.
  • Setting up Google alerts for your game's working title.
  • Famous racehorse Secret Legend.
  • Liking some parts but not liking other parts.
  • How to construct a Google alert for t the video game Tunic.
  • Computer vision algorithms to increase yield and profitablity of insect farms.
  • How seniors can get into the house flipping business.
  • Collaborating with a spammer to write a poem about house flipping.
  • Exhorting a spammer to join the discord and post their dreams in the announcements channel.
  • A think tank dedicated to increasing house flipping around the world, measured by total rotation.
  • House flipping vs. house spinning.
  • A skateboard with the word "quaternion" written on it in a sick font.
  • Trying to flip a house but it gets gimbal locked and you lose everything.
  • Soaking in films. Just marinating in them.
  • Having virgin eyes in order to make great things.
  • Inventing video games from first principles.
  • The value of outsider art.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto inventing jumping.
  • Trying to remember the last time you jumped in real life.
  • Whether a historian has discovered the cave that inspired the Legend of Zelda.
  • What Stories Untold says about the Orson Welles quote about having virgin eyes.
  • Trying to prove yourself to a piece of software.
  • Trying to tell a story about a spaceship that doesn't involve combat.
  • 50 Years of Text Games.
  • Having read a book back when it was a blog.
  • Whether we have time for another topic.
  • Mixing a Red Bull with a Caffeine Free Coca Cola.
  • Sunlight patterns that remind you of wandering in the forest as a child
  • The disco ball as an extrapolation of dappled sunlight in the forest.
  • Out of focus motes of light.
  • Figuring out how to make a desert beautiful.
  • Living that home assistant life.
  • Going to a thrift store to buy a lamp to fix the terrible lighting in your hotel room.
  • A motor that's constantly jiggling a pot of water.
]]> Lords:

  • Daniel
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Hyperthymesia
  • Animal Well
  • Bad news for my google alerts: "Twinbeard" is the name of the Helldivers 2 community manager
  • Dean asks "I know there are many seniors who are looking to start a business during retirement. For those who haven't settled on an idea yet, I'd love to suggest house flipping as a good way to earn income. May I write about this topic in a free article for your website -- specifically, how seniors can get into the house flipping business and become successful at it? I'll be sure to cover all the basics, including how to find the perfect property, how to finance the expenses, how to manage payroll for employees and contractors, etc. I'll also feature a link back to your website."
  • Should game developers "soak themselves" in games. Referring to this clip of Orson Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg-qaeIcuyI

Microtopics:

  • Doom Guy: Life in First Person
  • A well full of animals.
  • A game that you keep hearing is great from people that you trust.
  • Remembering every detail of your life even though that's a terrible idea.
  • A cop asking you what you were doing on the night of November 3rd, 2021.
  • Fnords.
  • Eidetic memory vs. photographic memory vs. hyperthymesic memory.
  • Checking your memory of a time against your written records of that time.
  • Remembering that you're going to have a conversation about your day tonight so you had better do something interesting.
  • Data mining electronic records to figure out how you met somebody.
  • Playing a Sam Barlow game with your bank records.
  • Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics.
  • Spending a lot of time frowning.
  • Dark Forest.
  • A game providing you with a spoiler-free mechanism of conveying where you are in the game.
  • Shooting people vs. swording people.
  • The tools and verbs of just being a little guy.
  • Seeing a dog doing something you didn't expect to see a dog do.
  • Being unable to turn a crank because there's a blue ghost.
  • Choosing not to be a video game.
  • Setting up Google alerts for your game's working title.
  • Famous racehorse Secret Legend.
  • Liking some parts but not liking other parts.
  • How to construct a Google alert for t the video game Tunic.
  • Computer vision algorithms to increase yield and profitablity of insect farms.
  • How seniors can get into the house flipping business.
  • Collaborating with a spammer to write a poem about house flipping.
  • Exhorting a spammer to join the discord and post their dreams in the announcements channel.
  • A think tank dedicated to increasing house flipping around the world, measured by total rotation.
  • House flipping vs. house spinning.
  • A skateboard with the word "quaternion" written on it in a sick font.
  • Trying to flip a house but it gets gimbal locked and you lose everything.
  • Soaking in films. Just marinating in them.
  • Having virgin eyes in order to make great things.
  • Inventing video games from first principles.
  • The value of outsider art.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto inventing jumping.
  • Trying to remember the last time you jumped in real life.
  • Whether a historian has discovered the cave that inspired the Legend of Zelda.
  • What Stories Untold says about the Orson Welles quote about having virgin eyes.
  • Trying to prove yourself to a piece of software.
  • Trying to tell a story about a spaceship that doesn't involve combat.
  • 50 Years of Text Games.
  • Having read a book back when it was a blog.
  • Whether we have time for another topic.
  • Mixing a Red Bull with a Caffeine Free Coca Cola.
  • Sunlight patterns that remind you of wandering in the forest as a child
  • The disco ball as an extrapolation of dappled sunlight in the forest.
  • Out of focus motes of light.
  • Figuring out how to make a desert beautiful.
  • Living that home assistant life.
  • Going to a thrift store to buy a lamp to fix the terrible lighting in your hotel room.
  • A motor that's constantly jiggling a pot of water.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Daniel
  • Andrew

Topics:

  • Hyperthymesia
  • Animal Well
  • Bad news for my google alerts: "Twinbeard" is the name of the Helldivers 2 community manager
  • Dean asks "I know there are many seniors who are looking to start a business during retirement. For those who haven't settled on an idea yet, I'd love to suggest house flipping as a good way to earn income. May I write about this topic in a free article for your website -- specifically, how seniors can get into the house flipping business and become successful at it? I'll be sure to cover all the basics, including how to find the perfect property, how to finance the expenses, how to manage payroll for employees and contractors, etc. I'll also feature a link back to your website."
  • Should game developers "soak themselves" in games. Referring to this clip of Orson Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg-qaeIcuyI

Microtopics:

  • Doom Guy: Life in First Person
  • A well full of animals.
  • A game that you keep hearing is great from people that you trust.
  • Remembering every detail of your life even though that's a terrible idea.
  • A cop asking you what you were doing on the night of November 3rd, 2021.
  • Fnords.
  • Eidetic memory vs. photographic memory vs. hyperthymesic memory.
  • Checking your memory of a time against your written records of that time.
  • Remembering that you're going to have a conversation about your day tonight so you had better do something interesting.
  • Data mining electronic records to figure out how you met somebody.
  • Playing a Sam Barlow game with your bank records.
  • Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics.
  • Spending a lot of time frowning.
  • Dark Forest.
  • A game providing you with a spoiler-free mechanism of conveying where you are in the game.
  • Shooting people vs. swording people.
  • The tools and verbs of just being a little guy.
  • Seeing a dog doing something you didn't expect to see a dog do.
  • Being unable to turn a crank because there's a blue ghost.
  • Choosing not to be a video game.
  • Setting up Google alerts for your game's working title.
  • Famous racehorse Secret Legend.
  • Liking some parts but not liking other parts.
  • How to construct a Google alert for t the video game Tunic.
  • Computer vision algorithms to increase yield and profitablity of insect farms.
  • How seniors can get into the house flipping business.
  • Collaborating with a spammer to write a poem about house flipping.
  • Exhorting a spammer to join the discord and post their dreams in the announcements channel.
  • A think tank dedicated to increasing house flipping around the world, measured by total rotation.
  • House flipping vs. house spinning.
  • A skateboard with the word "quaternion" written on it in a sick font.
  • Trying to flip a house but it gets gimbal locked and you lose everything.
  • Soaking in films. Just marinating in them.
  • Having virgin eyes in order to make great things.
  • Inventing video games from first principles.
  • The value of outsider art.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto inventing jumping.
  • Trying to remember the last time you jumped in real life.
  • Whether a historian has discovered the cave that inspired the Legend of Zelda.
  • What Stories Untold says about the Orson Welles quote about having virgin eyes.
  • Trying to prove yourself to a piece of software.
  • Trying to tell a story about a spaceship that doesn't involve combat.
  • 50 Years of Text Games.
  • Having read a book back when it was a blog.
  • Whether we have time for another topic.
  • Mixing a Red Bull with a Caffeine Free Coca Cola.
  • Sunlight patterns that remind you of wandering in the forest as a child
  • The disco ball as an extrapolation of dappled sunlight in the forest.
  • Out of focus motes of light.
  • Figuring out how to make a desert beautiful.
  • Living that home assistant life.
  • Going to a thrift store to buy a lamp to fix the terrible lighting in your hotel room.
  • A motor that's constantly jiggling a pot of water.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+KRZBDmOd ]]> Jim Stormdancer 243. Welcome to the Elder Zone https://topiclords.com/welcome-to-the-elder-zone f62fa628-976f-4955-8ed6-0c124c842fea Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Tyriq. We discuss the Church of the SubGenius, making FreeCell vs. playing FreeCell, how do we get to a place where our primary tool for productivity is not also our primary avenue of distraction? and "<3 Team Schiff", by Team Schiff 1:03:01 true Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Tyriq

Lords:

Microtopics:

  • World Building Notes
  • An accent you cannot discern the origin of.
  • Fun worlds that I've thought of.
  • A world where hair is the source of all life.
  • A port of Freecell to the Playdate that might never be released.
  • J.R. Bob Dobbs, a salesman from the 1950s.
  • Whether Discord (the IRC client) is named after Discordianism.
  • Tyriq Reads Wikipedia.
  • Principia Discordia.
  • An extremely profitable troll.
  • Good and bad reasons to troll.
  • Making your weird fun art without worrying about people taking you way too seriously fifty years from now.
  • Whether submarines are named after the Church of the Subgenus.
  • Rewriting your entire game in C.
  • Playing Freecell Validly.
  • A latecomer to Freecell.
  • The one known impossible Freecell seed.
  • The Freecell Helleed vs. the Minesweeper Dream Board.
  • The looking at the cube phase and the turning the cube phase.
  • Typeshift speed run hacks.
  • Knowing a 38-letter word.
  • Undo trees.
  • The New York Times games package being sold separately from the newspaper.
  • The diction of the New York Times crossword puzzle.
  • Doing Greek letter flash cards to up your crossword game.
  • Words that come up a lot when you're mashing letters together.
  • A job where you don't use a computer? In this economy?
  • Sequencer-based techno.
  • Constraints that fit the UI extremely well.
  • An interface that makes a lot of sense for the Game Boy.
  • Printing out the entirety of Wikipedia so you can go offline for a while.
  • The compressed size of Wikipedia.
  • Here's a thing and the only thing it does is have information on it.
  • Hanging out in the library with people vs. with books.
  • The three best things in life.
  • Opening the tiny drawer and flipping through the tiny cards with your tiny hands and using your tiny eyes to read the tiny text.
  • Downloading information about a spider that links to another spider.
  • Using robots.txt to ward off all kinds of creatures, not just robots.
  • 999: Extraterrestrial Worlds.
  • Abandoning the Dewey Decimal System after you discover that numbers go higher than 999.
  • Stopping to end.
  • This Cat Does Not Exist.
  • The perfect source of images that have never been used before.
  • An art project that invents politicians and texts people imploring them to donate to the campaign and that's how the art project gets funding.
  • What Socrates would have said about the Banksy that shredded itself.
  • Your legal name with a bunch of letters removed.
  • Picking an online handle that's very hard to pronounce to make sure people don't call you that in real life.
  • Giving everybody you meet a different name for yourself.
  • Having more friends than you've ever had.
  • Having hobbies that put you in a room with people.
  • Libraries as raucous hangouts.
  • Inviting tweens to play video games in the back rooms (but not in a shady way)
  • A citizen saying "hey, library, can I use a room?"
  • Your local library, featuring the Middle-Aged Zone.
  • Lego Security Theater.
  • An unordered list of links.
]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Tyriq

Lords:

Microtopics:

  • World Building Notes
  • An accent you cannot discern the origin of.
  • Fun worlds that I've thought of.
  • A world where hair is the source of all life.
  • A port of Freecell to the Playdate that might never be released.
  • J.R. Bob Dobbs, a salesman from the 1950s.
  • Whether Discord (the IRC client) is named after Discordianism.
  • Tyriq Reads Wikipedia.
  • Principia Discordia.
  • An extremely profitable troll.
  • Good and bad reasons to troll.
  • Making your weird fun art without worrying about people taking you way too seriously fifty years from now.
  • Whether submarines are named after the Church of the Subgenus.
  • Rewriting your entire game in C.
  • Playing Freecell Validly.
  • A latecomer to Freecell.
  • The one known impossible Freecell seed.
  • The Freecell Helleed vs. the Minesweeper Dream Board.
  • The looking at the cube phase and the turning the cube phase.
  • Typeshift speed run hacks.
  • Knowing a 38-letter word.
  • Undo trees.
  • The New York Times games package being sold separately from the newspaper.
  • The diction of the New York Times crossword puzzle.
  • Doing Greek letter flash cards to up your crossword game.
  • Words that come up a lot when you're mashing letters together.
  • A job where you don't use a computer? In this economy?
  • Sequencer-based techno.
  • Constraints that fit the UI extremely well.
  • An interface that makes a lot of sense for the Game Boy.
  • Printing out the entirety of Wikipedia so you can go offline for a while.
  • The compressed size of Wikipedia.
  • Here's a thing and the only thing it does is have information on it.
  • Hanging out in the library with people vs. with books.
  • The three best things in life.
  • Opening the tiny drawer and flipping through the tiny cards with your tiny hands and using your tiny eyes to read the tiny text.
  • Downloading information about a spider that links to another spider.
  • Using robots.txt to ward off all kinds of creatures, not just robots.
  • 999: Extraterrestrial Worlds.
  • Abandoning the Dewey Decimal System after you discover that numbers go higher than 999.
  • Stopping to end.
  • This Cat Does Not Exist.
  • The perfect source of images that have never been used before.
  • An art project that invents politicians and texts people imploring them to donate to the campaign and that's how the art project gets funding.
  • What Socrates would have said about the Banksy that shredded itself.
  • Your legal name with a bunch of letters removed.
  • Picking an online handle that's very hard to pronounce to make sure people don't call you that in real life.
  • Giving everybody you meet a different name for yourself.
  • Having more friends than you've ever had.
  • Having hobbies that put you in a room with people.
  • Libraries as raucous hangouts.
  • Inviting tweens to play video games in the back rooms (but not in a shady way)
  • A citizen saying "hey, library, can I use a room?"
  • Your local library, featuring the Middle-Aged Zone.
  • Lego Security Theater.
  • An unordered list of links.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Andrew
  • Tyriq

Lords:

Microtopics:

  • World Building Notes
  • An accent you cannot discern the origin of.
  • Fun worlds that I've thought of.
  • A world where hair is the source of all life.
  • A port of Freecell to the Playdate that might never be released.
  • J.R. Bob Dobbs, a salesman from the 1950s.
  • Whether Discord (the IRC client) is named after Discordianism.
  • Tyriq Reads Wikipedia.
  • Principia Discordia.
  • An extremely profitable troll.
  • Good and bad reasons to troll.
  • Making your weird fun art without worrying about people taking you way too seriously fifty years from now.
  • Whether submarines are named after the Church of the Subgenus.
  • Rewriting your entire game in C.
  • Playing Freecell Validly.
  • A latecomer to Freecell.
  • The one known impossible Freecell seed.
  • The Freecell Helleed vs. the Minesweeper Dream Board.
  • The looking at the cube phase and the turning the cube phase.
  • Typeshift speed run hacks.
  • Knowing a 38-letter word.
  • Undo trees.
  • The New York Times games package being sold separately from the newspaper.
  • The diction of the New York Times crossword puzzle.
  • Doing Greek letter flash cards to up your crossword game.
  • Words that come up a lot when you're mashing letters together.
  • A job where you don't use a computer? In this economy?
  • Sequencer-based techno.
  • Constraints that fit the UI extremely well.
  • An interface that makes a lot of sense for the Game Boy.
  • Printing out the entirety of Wikipedia so you can go offline for a while.
  • The compressed size of Wikipedia.
  • Here's a thing and the only thing it does is have information on it.
  • Hanging out in the library with people vs. with books.
  • The three best things in life.
  • Opening the tiny drawer and flipping through the tiny cards with your tiny hands and using your tiny eyes to read the tiny text.
  • Downloading information about a spider that links to another spider.
  • Using robots.txt to ward off all kinds of creatures, not just robots.
  • 999: Extraterrestrial Worlds.
  • Abandoning the Dewey Decimal System after you discover that numbers go higher than 999.
  • Stopping to end.
  • This Cat Does Not Exist.
  • The perfect source of images that have never been used before.
  • An art project that invents politicians and texts people imploring them to donate to the campaign and that's how the art project gets funding.
  • What Socrates would have said about the Banksy that shredded itself.
  • Your legal name with a bunch of letters removed.
  • Picking an online handle that's very hard to pronounce to make sure people don't call you that in real life.
  • Giving everybody you meet a different name for yourself.
  • Having more friends than you've ever had.
  • Having hobbies that put you in a room with people.
  • Libraries as raucous hangouts.
  • Inviting tweens to play video games in the back rooms (but not in a shady way)
  • A citizen saying "hey, library, can I use a room?"
  • Your local library, featuring the Middle-Aged Zone.
  • Lego Security Theater.
  • An unordered list of links.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RpIkCL7I ]]> Jim Stormdancer 242. Malware for Labyrinths https://topiclords.com/malware-for-labyrinths 1e69d7f9-e4ae-4afc-a779-cf73d4b4a854 Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and JP. We discuss different kinds of "changing your mind" in creative work, what texture clouds are, Infinity Island, Sleep by Jorge Luis Borges, and Chippendale Mupps and the slowest nerves. 1:06:14 true Lords:

  • Maxx
  • JP

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing the names of zero outdoor cats in your neighborhood.
  • Canny outdoor cats who are adapted to city life and don't need your plugs.
  • Obi like the belt or like the Star Wars guy?
  • Loosey goosey versions
  • Changing your mind while making a creative work.
  • Moving a door or a window in an existing wall.
  • Bigger creative decisions being composed of many smaller creative decisions.
  • Retaining maximum flexibility at every point in the process.
  • A workflow that reflects the spectrum of flexibility.
  • Flexibility Lost is Sturdiness Gained.
  • Tweaking the value of pi to suit your needs.
  • A system where a bunch of things depend on a bunch of other things.
  • Axes of flexibility that you don't end up using.
  • More specific categories of types of changing your mind.
  • Going down a deep dark hole and finding the glittering prize but not being sure whether it's worth anything.
  • A loop that spirals, oscillating, into the middle.
  • Putting a branch into a meditation labyrinth and changing its theological meaning.
  • Rewriting your novel in second person, present tense, just to see how it feels.
  • The Citation Needed guy doubting that mazes can be built with snow.
  • The ongoing Corn vs. Maize Wikipedia war.
  • The marine layer rolling in.
  • Looking at clouds and totally seeing the ice cream.
  • Buying aerogel samples on eBay.
  • What stuffed animals are stuffed with.
  • Going to the sky island and it's sort of rubbery.
  • Walkable clouds in the Mario series.
  • Cloudjacking.
  • Yanking Lakitu out onto the pavement and going on a joyride until the LoJack system kicks in.
  • Super Mario Bros. redubbed with Quake and Half-Life sounds.
  • Super Mario Bros. Next Gen AAA
  • What clouds taste like.
  • Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
  • The soda with the glass ball.
  • Ordering something red hoping for cherry, watermelon or strawberry flavor, but it's cinnamon flavored.
  • Eating Red Hots for the first time and realizing you've been Halloween poisoned.
  • Your first bitey cinnamon food.
  • A little poison, as a treat.
  • Filling your mouth with tree bark.
  • Games with saved progress feeling like you're participating in a responsible activity than games where you start over every time.
  • Deliberate mechanical whimsy.
  • Making a complicated game and failing to teach the player how to play it.
  • For a Change, by Dan Schmidt.
  • An infinite variety of forms of confusion.
  • Playing Frog Fractions all the way through and being like "what twist??"
  • Why Jorge Luis Borges gets annoyed when people wake him up.
  • Semi-routinely yelling in your sleep.
  • Being asleep is the inside time.
  • Citing Borges as a vibe.
  • A mid-pod plug.
  • The works of Ted Chiang.
  • Internalizing the idea that you need sleep to function.
  • Stepping stones of self-reflection.
  • Waking up feeling the vague sensations of having dreamt.
  • Sleeping with your eyes open.
  • Integration of your environment into your dreams.
  • Biting your tail before you go to sleep and not feeling it until you wake up.
  • Putting keys in your toast.
  • Repurposing the Chippendale Mupp's nervous system to make a vintage delay pedal.
  • Esports competitors putting the left mouse button between their teeth to improve reaction time, because it's closer to the brain.
  • Brains evolving to process whatever whenever and assembling the timeline later.
  • Kuratas Heavy Industries.
  • Smiling to fire the heavy machine guns.
  • Gripens.
  • Subway ads exhorting Maximum Lethality!
  • The airport nearest to all of the oil fields in the Permean Basin.
  • Billboards for enterprise services.
  • Wasting eyeballs.
  • A couple of active web presences.
]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • JP

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing the names of zero outdoor cats in your neighborhood.
  • Canny outdoor cats who are adapted to city life and don't need your plugs.
  • Obi like the belt or like the Star Wars guy?
  • Loosey goosey versions
  • Changing your mind while making a creative work.
  • Moving a door or a window in an existing wall.
  • Bigger creative decisions being composed of many smaller creative decisions.
  • Retaining maximum flexibility at every point in the process.
  • A workflow that reflects the spectrum of flexibility.
  • Flexibility Lost is Sturdiness Gained.
  • Tweaking the value of pi to suit your needs.
  • A system where a bunch of things depend on a bunch of other things.
  • Axes of flexibility that you don't end up using.
  • More specific categories of types of changing your mind.
  • Going down a deep dark hole and finding the glittering prize but not being sure whether it's worth anything.
  • A loop that spirals, oscillating, into the middle.
  • Putting a branch into a meditation labyrinth and changing its theological meaning.
  • Rewriting your novel in second person, present tense, just to see how it feels.
  • The Citation Needed guy doubting that mazes can be built with snow.
  • The ongoing Corn vs. Maize Wikipedia war.
  • The marine layer rolling in.
  • Looking at clouds and totally seeing the ice cream.
  • Buying aerogel samples on eBay.
  • What stuffed animals are stuffed with.
  • Going to the sky island and it's sort of rubbery.
  • Walkable clouds in the Mario series.
  • Cloudjacking.
  • Yanking Lakitu out onto the pavement and going on a joyride until the LoJack system kicks in.
  • Super Mario Bros. redubbed with Quake and Half-Life sounds.
  • Super Mario Bros. Next Gen AAA
  • What clouds taste like.
  • Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
  • The soda with the glass ball.
  • Ordering something red hoping for cherry, watermelon or strawberry flavor, but it's cinnamon flavored.
  • Eating Red Hots for the first time and realizing you've been Halloween poisoned.
  • Your first bitey cinnamon food.
  • A little poison, as a treat.
  • Filling your mouth with tree bark.
  • Games with saved progress feeling like you're participating in a responsible activity than games where you start over every time.
  • Deliberate mechanical whimsy.
  • Making a complicated game and failing to teach the player how to play it.
  • For a Change, by Dan Schmidt.
  • An infinite variety of forms of confusion.
  • Playing Frog Fractions all the way through and being like "what twist??"
  • Why Jorge Luis Borges gets annoyed when people wake him up.
  • Semi-routinely yelling in your sleep.
  • Being asleep is the inside time.
  • Citing Borges as a vibe.
  • A mid-pod plug.
  • The works of Ted Chiang.
  • Internalizing the idea that you need sleep to function.
  • Stepping stones of self-reflection.
  • Waking up feeling the vague sensations of having dreamt.
  • Sleeping with your eyes open.
  • Integration of your environment into your dreams.
  • Biting your tail before you go to sleep and not feeling it until you wake up.
  • Putting keys in your toast.
  • Repurposing the Chippendale Mupp's nervous system to make a vintage delay pedal.
  • Esports competitors putting the left mouse button between their teeth to improve reaction time, because it's closer to the brain.
  • Brains evolving to process whatever whenever and assembling the timeline later.
  • Kuratas Heavy Industries.
  • Smiling to fire the heavy machine guns.
  • Gripens.
  • Subway ads exhorting Maximum Lethality!
  • The airport nearest to all of the oil fields in the Permean Basin.
  • Billboards for enterprise services.
  • Wasting eyeballs.
  • A couple of active web presences.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • JP

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Knowing the names of zero outdoor cats in your neighborhood.
  • Canny outdoor cats who are adapted to city life and don't need your plugs.
  • Obi like the belt or like the Star Wars guy?
  • Loosey goosey versions
  • Changing your mind while making a creative work.
  • Moving a door or a window in an existing wall.
  • Bigger creative decisions being composed of many smaller creative decisions.
  • Retaining maximum flexibility at every point in the process.
  • A workflow that reflects the spectrum of flexibility.
  • Flexibility Lost is Sturdiness Gained.
  • Tweaking the value of pi to suit your needs.
  • A system where a bunch of things depend on a bunch of other things.
  • Axes of flexibility that you don't end up using.
  • More specific categories of types of changing your mind.
  • Going down a deep dark hole and finding the glittering prize but not being sure whether it's worth anything.
  • A loop that spirals, oscillating, into the middle.
  • Putting a branch into a meditation labyrinth and changing its theological meaning.
  • Rewriting your novel in second person, present tense, just to see how it feels.
  • The Citation Needed guy doubting that mazes can be built with snow.
  • The ongoing Corn vs. Maize Wikipedia war.
  • The marine layer rolling in.
  • Looking at clouds and totally seeing the ice cream.
  • Buying aerogel samples on eBay.
  • What stuffed animals are stuffed with.
  • Going to the sky island and it's sort of rubbery.
  • Walkable clouds in the Mario series.
  • Cloudjacking.
  • Yanking Lakitu out onto the pavement and going on a joyride until the LoJack system kicks in.
  • Super Mario Bros. redubbed with Quake and Half-Life sounds.
  • Super Mario Bros. Next Gen AAA
  • What clouds taste like.
  • Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
  • The soda with the glass ball.
  • Ordering something red hoping for cherry, watermelon or strawberry flavor, but it's cinnamon flavored.
  • Eating Red Hots for the first time and realizing you've been Halloween poisoned.
  • Your first bitey cinnamon food.
  • A little poison, as a treat.
  • Filling your mouth with tree bark.
  • Games with saved progress feeling like you're participating in a responsible activity than games where you start over every time.
  • Deliberate mechanical whimsy.
  • Making a complicated game and failing to teach the player how to play it.
  • For a Change, by Dan Schmidt.
  • An infinite variety of forms of confusion.
  • Playing Frog Fractions all the way through and being like "what twist??"
  • Why Jorge Luis Borges gets annoyed when people wake him up.
  • Semi-routinely yelling in your sleep.
  • Being asleep is the inside time.
  • Citing Borges as a vibe.
  • A mid-pod plug.
  • The works of Ted Chiang.
  • Internalizing the idea that you need sleep to function.
  • Stepping stones of self-reflection.
  • Waking up feeling the vague sensations of having dreamt.
  • Sleeping with your eyes open.
  • Integration of your environment into your dreams.
  • Biting your tail before you go to sleep and not feeling it until you wake up.
  • Putting keys in your toast.
  • Repurposing the Chippendale Mupp's nervous system to make a vintage delay pedal.
  • Esports competitors putting the left mouse button between their teeth to improve reaction time, because it's closer to the brain.
  • Brains evolving to process whatever whenever and assembling the timeline later.
  • Kuratas Heavy Industries.
  • Smiling to fire the heavy machine guns.
  • Gripens.
  • Subway ads exhorting Maximum Lethality!
  • The airport nearest to all of the oil fields in the Permean Basin.
  • Billboards for enterprise services.
  • Wasting eyeballs.
  • A couple of active web presences.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+p0fodlA2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 241. Brad Garrett Must Eat! https://topiclords.com/brad-garrett-must-eat 2cc2c8a9-12d7-49ff-a017-9b3f5ee0b121 Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Abby and Pat. We discuss the pear scene, capsule machines vs. claw games, designing UIs for TV, and This be the Verse, by Philip Larkin. 59:11 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • My Brother the Car.
  • A card game that is not totally random.
  • Deciding to focus on something else in 2020.
  • Rock Paper Scissors vs. Rock Scissors Paper.
  • Which of the twins to take a kidney from
  • Committing to a bit that breaks the rhythm of what people expect you to say.
  • Making a game where people get crushed by debt but making it fun.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond.
  • Sitcoms that have plenty of opportunity to disappoint you.
  • A show that lives and dies in the performance.
  • Nine years to stop trying.
  • The most profitable sitcom of all time.
  • Adapting Raymond.
  • Ray Romano explaining the concept of having parents to a puzzled audience.
  • The kind of argument where both people make sense and are both trying to be nice.
  • Trying to be nice but failing.
  • 'Til Death.
  • The demeanor of a revenant.
  • Whether Brad Garrett listens to this show.
  • Hitting 100 episodes and going into syndication.
  • Musicians needing a body that can strike.
  • Writing an increasingly ludicrous sitcom for an audience of nobody.
  • A son who is always on the wacky tobacky.
  • A sitcom husband who notices that his wife has been recast and realizes he's on a sitcom.
  • Continuing to give Brad Garrett chances to star in sitcoms because he's so tall.
  • A sitcom that made you feel seen.
  • The workplace sitcom vs. the domestic sitcom.
  • Aimlessness in a post-Seinfeld era.
  • Abed Ghaith's striptease.
  • Is that Abed Ghaith's penis in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
  • Claw game skill issues.
  • A billionaire trying to figure out how best to do good in the world and who decides to operate several generous claw machines.
  • Decorating a desk space with a pocket full of miniature delights.
  • Mona Lisa Breakdancing.
  • The rice cooker that King Piccolo was trapped in.
  • Rubik's Cube but all the faces are Mahjong tiles.
  • The coolest and most popular racial atrocity.
  • Ramen Man vs. Kikko Man.
  • A bowl of ramen in the shape of a tube.
  • Homer Simpson: visual ripoff of Kinnikuman.
  • Seeing an aquarium fish that looks just slightly too human.
  • Reading a book about bugs and itching like mad.
  • Worrying that you are ruining eyes for yourself.
  • Famous JAV title "Reincarnated as a Spider"
  • Conveying the idea of receiving a DM on social media to a television audience.
  • My face in a tube dot com.
  • Saying "youshmoob" really fast and hoping nobody notices.
  • Wanting to put a Russian Roulette scene in your TV show but being unable to negotiate the rights to Russian Roulette from ELORG so you need to hire Alexey Pajitnov to design a replacement game.
  • A joke that is very funny when you explain it but impossible to convey in any known medium.
  • The flag that says "bang!"
  • The Joker not being confident enough in his jokes so he has to use laughing gas.
  • Silent Comedy Joker has to work a bit harder.
  • Naming a difficulty level after a pop culture allusion to babies.
  • The ending of a Clockwork Orange in the UK depicting the protagonist as deciding to renounce violence and become a better person, but in the US they omitted that chapter because it's unrealistic.
  • The UK edition of A Clockwork Orange depicting the protagonist renouncing violence and becoming a better person so he joins the police force, whereas in the US edition the protagonist decides to remain brutal and violent so he joins the police force.
  • Where's the bridge, Larkin?
  • This be the verse you grave for me.
  • Poets being jerks to all different kinds of people.
  • Kefka creating a tower of garbage in Final Fantasy while everyone tries to convince him it's worthwhile to have a family.
  • Which kids inspired Lord of the Flies.
  • Suggesting that your mom read Chainsaw Man Part 1 so that you can talk to her about grief.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • My Brother the Car.
  • A card game that is not totally random.
  • Deciding to focus on something else in 2020.
  • Rock Paper Scissors vs. Rock Scissors Paper.
  • Which of the twins to take a kidney from
  • Committing to a bit that breaks the rhythm of what people expect you to say.
  • Making a game where people get crushed by debt but making it fun.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond.
  • Sitcoms that have plenty of opportunity to disappoint you.
  • A show that lives and dies in the performance.
  • Nine years to stop trying.
  • The most profitable sitcom of all time.
  • Adapting Raymond.
  • Ray Romano explaining the concept of having parents to a puzzled audience.
  • The kind of argument where both people make sense and are both trying to be nice.
  • Trying to be nice but failing.
  • 'Til Death.
  • The demeanor of a revenant.
  • Whether Brad Garrett listens to this show.
  • Hitting 100 episodes and going into syndication.
  • Musicians needing a body that can strike.
  • Writing an increasingly ludicrous sitcom for an audience of nobody.
  • A son who is always on the wacky tobacky.
  • A sitcom husband who notices that his wife has been recast and realizes he's on a sitcom.
  • Continuing to give Brad Garrett chances to star in sitcoms because he's so tall.
  • A sitcom that made you feel seen.
  • The workplace sitcom vs. the domestic sitcom.
  • Aimlessness in a post-Seinfeld era.
  • Abed Ghaith's striptease.
  • Is that Abed Ghaith's penis in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
  • Claw game skill issues.
  • A billionaire trying to figure out how best to do good in the world and who decides to operate several generous claw machines.
  • Decorating a desk space with a pocket full of miniature delights.
  • Mona Lisa Breakdancing.
  • The rice cooker that King Piccolo was trapped in.
  • Rubik's Cube but all the faces are Mahjong tiles.
  • The coolest and most popular racial atrocity.
  • Ramen Man vs. Kikko Man.
  • A bowl of ramen in the shape of a tube.
  • Homer Simpson: visual ripoff of Kinnikuman.
  • Seeing an aquarium fish that looks just slightly too human.
  • Reading a book about bugs and itching like mad.
  • Worrying that you are ruining eyes for yourself.
  • Famous JAV title "Reincarnated as a Spider"
  • Conveying the idea of receiving a DM on social media to a television audience.
  • My face in a tube dot com.
  • Saying "youshmoob" really fast and hoping nobody notices.
  • Wanting to put a Russian Roulette scene in your TV show but being unable to negotiate the rights to Russian Roulette from ELORG so you need to hire Alexey Pajitnov to design a replacement game.
  • A joke that is very funny when you explain it but impossible to convey in any known medium.
  • The flag that says "bang!"
  • The Joker not being confident enough in his jokes so he has to use laughing gas.
  • Silent Comedy Joker has to work a bit harder.
  • Naming a difficulty level after a pop culture allusion to babies.
  • The ending of a Clockwork Orange in the UK depicting the protagonist as deciding to renounce violence and become a better person, but in the US they omitted that chapter because it's unrealistic.
  • The UK edition of A Clockwork Orange depicting the protagonist renouncing violence and becoming a better person so he joins the police force, whereas in the US edition the protagonist decides to remain brutal and violent so he joins the police force.
  • Where's the bridge, Larkin?
  • This be the verse you grave for me.
  • Poets being jerks to all different kinds of people.
  • Kefka creating a tower of garbage in Final Fantasy while everyone tries to convince him it's worthwhile to have a family.
  • Which kids inspired Lord of the Flies.
  • Suggesting that your mom read Chainsaw Man Part 1 so that you can talk to her about grief.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • My Brother the Car.
  • A card game that is not totally random.
  • Deciding to focus on something else in 2020.
  • Rock Paper Scissors vs. Rock Scissors Paper.
  • Which of the twins to take a kidney from
  • Committing to a bit that breaks the rhythm of what people expect you to say.
  • Making a game where people get crushed by debt but making it fun.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond.
  • Sitcoms that have plenty of opportunity to disappoint you.
  • A show that lives and dies in the performance.
  • Nine years to stop trying.
  • The most profitable sitcom of all time.
  • Adapting Raymond.
  • Ray Romano explaining the concept of having parents to a puzzled audience.
  • The kind of argument where both people make sense and are both trying to be nice.
  • Trying to be nice but failing.
  • 'Til Death.
  • The demeanor of a revenant.
  • Whether Brad Garrett listens to this show.
  • Hitting 100 episodes and going into syndication.
  • Musicians needing a body that can strike.
  • Writing an increasingly ludicrous sitcom for an audience of nobody.
  • A son who is always on the wacky tobacky.
  • A sitcom husband who notices that his wife has been recast and realizes he's on a sitcom.
  • Continuing to give Brad Garrett chances to star in sitcoms because he's so tall.
  • A sitcom that made you feel seen.
  • The workplace sitcom vs. the domestic sitcom.
  • Aimlessness in a post-Seinfeld era.
  • Abed Ghaith's striptease.
  • Is that Abed Ghaith's penis in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
  • Claw game skill issues.
  • A billionaire trying to figure out how best to do good in the world and who decides to operate several generous claw machines.
  • Decorating a desk space with a pocket full of miniature delights.
  • Mona Lisa Breakdancing.
  • The rice cooker that King Piccolo was trapped in.
  • Rubik's Cube but all the faces are Mahjong tiles.
  • The coolest and most popular racial atrocity.
  • Ramen Man vs. Kikko Man.
  • A bowl of ramen in the shape of a tube.
  • Homer Simpson: visual ripoff of Kinnikuman.
  • Seeing an aquarium fish that looks just slightly too human.
  • Reading a book about bugs and itching like mad.
  • Worrying that you are ruining eyes for yourself.
  • Famous JAV title "Reincarnated as a Spider"
  • Conveying the idea of receiving a DM on social media to a television audience.
  • My face in a tube dot com.
  • Saying "youshmoob" really fast and hoping nobody notices.
  • Wanting to put a Russian Roulette scene in your TV show but being unable to negotiate the rights to Russian Roulette from ELORG so you need to hire Alexey Pajitnov to design a replacement game.
  • A joke that is very funny when you explain it but impossible to convey in any known medium.
  • The flag that says "bang!"
  • The Joker not being confident enough in his jokes so he has to use laughing gas.
  • Silent Comedy Joker has to work a bit harder.
  • Naming a difficulty level after a pop culture allusion to babies.
  • The ending of a Clockwork Orange in the UK depicting the protagonist as deciding to renounce violence and become a better person, but in the US they omitted that chapter because it's unrealistic.
  • The UK edition of A Clockwork Orange depicting the protagonist renouncing violence and becoming a better person so he joins the police force, whereas in the US edition the protagonist decides to remain brutal and violent so he joins the police force.
  • Where's the bridge, Larkin?
  • This be the verse you grave for me.
  • Poets being jerks to all different kinds of people.
  • Kefka creating a tower of garbage in Final Fantasy while everyone tries to convince him it's worthwhile to have a family.
  • Which kids inspired Lord of the Flies.
  • Suggesting that your mom read Chainsaw Man Part 1 so that you can talk to her about grief.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+3kus545g ]]> Jim Stormdancer 240. Who Was Emily Dickinson Owning? https://topiclords.com/who-was-emily-dickinson-owning 2b07c29c-88b1-4b58-aabe-2cdab8d0b2c2 Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JP and Shepard. We discuss Microsoft adding a good feature to Office, favorite DOS game soundtracks, the Balatro Discourse, and Faith is a Fine Invention by Emily Dickinson 1:00:50 true Lords:

  • JP
  • Shepard

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Artist Alley.
  • Scrolling down a web page and seeing a bunch of cool stuff.
  • Seeing a list and wondering "how did this list happen"?
  • Steam Farming Fest.
  • Trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.
  • Eating eggs and rice when you have tummy troubles.
  • The file you all edit to make the deposit slip.
  • Taking data from multiple columns and putting them all in a single list.
  • Becoming the spreadsheet wizard.
  • Installation wizards.
  • Why nobody calls a software feature a "wizard" any more
  • A window into the dialectic of wizards.
  • The LLM hype tornado.
  • Renting video software from Blockbuster.
  • Back when any media was a "tape"
  • Enumerating the kinds of MS-DOS audio hardware.
  • Emitting a blast of data.
  • Enjoying a video game in 4, 16 or 256 colors.
  • How Doom sounded on the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing multiplayer Doom on a four computer LAN where two of the computers don't have sound cards.
  • The Doom source port family tree.
  • Whether Linux supported the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing each MIDI note with the off-the-track square wave.
  • Holding on to a joke for several minutes.
  • Doing sound effects via the Roland MT-32.
  • FM synth guitars sounding more evil than real guitars.
  • Synthesizers that are fancier than other synthesizers and are therefore better.
  • The ambient music on the Doom soundtrack.
  • The Lost Vikings soundtrack.
  • Games with tracker soundtracks.
  • The tracker music era.
  • A roguelike deck builder kind of a thing.
  • A huge hit within your social horizon.
  • Beginners hoping to project intelligence and competence.
  • The kind of mixing of data and code that Lua makes easy to do.
  • How to deploy a Love2D game to consoles.
  • A cool game idea that's just a bunch of cards doing stuff.
  • Sean Barrett's STB libraries.
  • The ability to change your mind without having to throw away a bunch of work.
  • Ambient complexity vs. intrinsic complexity.
  • Hot takes escaping containment.
  • The Celeste character controller.
  • Software security practices that do not apply to a single player indie game.
  • Looking at code and seeing all the things that it used to be.
  • Looking at code solving a problem in a domain you are unfamiliar with.
  • An Emily Dickinson poem that reads like a response to an argument she had at dinner.
  • Situations where you can directly observe what's happening.
  • All the filters preventing you from bursting out into song.
  • Esprit de escalier.
  • Who was Emily Dickinson owning?
  • A contempt for faith and a sense that microscopes are good.
  • Knowing that nobody reads your blog, but taking satisfaction in the knowledge that someone hypothetically could.
  • Excavating spiritual truth from apocryphal ramblings.
  • The app that holds all the texts you don't send for ransom.
  • Digging through people's trash but with fewer steps.
]]> Lords:

  • JP
  • Shepard

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Artist Alley.
  • Scrolling down a web page and seeing a bunch of cool stuff.
  • Seeing a list and wondering "how did this list happen"?
  • Steam Farming Fest.
  • Trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.
  • Eating eggs and rice when you have tummy troubles.
  • The file you all edit to make the deposit slip.
  • Taking data from multiple columns and putting them all in a single list.
  • Becoming the spreadsheet wizard.
  • Installation wizards.
  • Why nobody calls a software feature a "wizard" any more
  • A window into the dialectic of wizards.
  • The LLM hype tornado.
  • Renting video software from Blockbuster.
  • Back when any media was a "tape"
  • Enumerating the kinds of MS-DOS audio hardware.
  • Emitting a blast of data.
  • Enjoying a video game in 4, 16 or 256 colors.
  • How Doom sounded on the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing multiplayer Doom on a four computer LAN where two of the computers don't have sound cards.
  • The Doom source port family tree.
  • Whether Linux supported the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing each MIDI note with the off-the-track square wave.
  • Holding on to a joke for several minutes.
  • Doing sound effects via the Roland MT-32.
  • FM synth guitars sounding more evil than real guitars.
  • Synthesizers that are fancier than other synthesizers and are therefore better.
  • The ambient music on the Doom soundtrack.
  • The Lost Vikings soundtrack.
  • Games with tracker soundtracks.
  • The tracker music era.
  • A roguelike deck builder kind of a thing.
  • A huge hit within your social horizon.
  • Beginners hoping to project intelligence and competence.
  • The kind of mixing of data and code that Lua makes easy to do.
  • How to deploy a Love2D game to consoles.
  • A cool game idea that's just a bunch of cards doing stuff.
  • Sean Barrett's STB libraries.
  • The ability to change your mind without having to throw away a bunch of work.
  • Ambient complexity vs. intrinsic complexity.
  • Hot takes escaping containment.
  • The Celeste character controller.
  • Software security practices that do not apply to a single player indie game.
  • Looking at code and seeing all the things that it used to be.
  • Looking at code solving a problem in a domain you are unfamiliar with.
  • An Emily Dickinson poem that reads like a response to an argument she had at dinner.
  • Situations where you can directly observe what's happening.
  • All the filters preventing you from bursting out into song.
  • Esprit de escalier.
  • Who was Emily Dickinson owning?
  • A contempt for faith and a sense that microscopes are good.
  • Knowing that nobody reads your blog, but taking satisfaction in the knowledge that someone hypothetically could.
  • Excavating spiritual truth from apocryphal ramblings.
  • The app that holds all the texts you don't send for ransom.
  • Digging through people's trash but with fewer steps.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • JP
  • Shepard

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Artist Alley.
  • Scrolling down a web page and seeing a bunch of cool stuff.
  • Seeing a list and wondering "how did this list happen"?
  • Steam Farming Fest.
  • Trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.
  • Eating eggs and rice when you have tummy troubles.
  • The file you all edit to make the deposit slip.
  • Taking data from multiple columns and putting them all in a single list.
  • Becoming the spreadsheet wizard.
  • Installation wizards.
  • Why nobody calls a software feature a "wizard" any more
  • A window into the dialectic of wizards.
  • The LLM hype tornado.
  • Renting video software from Blockbuster.
  • Back when any media was a "tape"
  • Enumerating the kinds of MS-DOS audio hardware.
  • Emitting a blast of data.
  • Enjoying a video game in 4, 16 or 256 colors.
  • How Doom sounded on the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing multiplayer Doom on a four computer LAN where two of the computers don't have sound cards.
  • The Doom source port family tree.
  • Whether Linux supported the internal PC speaker.
  • Playing each MIDI note with the off-the-track square wave.
  • Holding on to a joke for several minutes.
  • Doing sound effects via the Roland MT-32.
  • FM synth guitars sounding more evil than real guitars.
  • Synthesizers that are fancier than other synthesizers and are therefore better.
  • The ambient music on the Doom soundtrack.
  • The Lost Vikings soundtrack.
  • Games with tracker soundtracks.
  • The tracker music era.
  • A roguelike deck builder kind of a thing.
  • A huge hit within your social horizon.
  • Beginners hoping to project intelligence and competence.
  • The kind of mixing of data and code that Lua makes easy to do.
  • How to deploy a Love2D game to consoles.
  • A cool game idea that's just a bunch of cards doing stuff.
  • Sean Barrett's STB libraries.
  • The ability to change your mind without having to throw away a bunch of work.
  • Ambient complexity vs. intrinsic complexity.
  • Hot takes escaping containment.
  • The Celeste character controller.
  • Software security practices that do not apply to a single player indie game.
  • Looking at code and seeing all the things that it used to be.
  • Looking at code solving a problem in a domain you are unfamiliar with.
  • An Emily Dickinson poem that reads like a response to an argument she had at dinner.
  • Situations where you can directly observe what's happening.
  • All the filters preventing you from bursting out into song.
  • Esprit de escalier.
  • Who was Emily Dickinson owning?
  • A contempt for faith and a sense that microscopes are good.
  • Knowing that nobody reads your blog, but taking satisfaction in the knowledge that someone hypothetically could.
  • Excavating spiritual truth from apocryphal ramblings.
  • The app that holds all the texts you don't send for ransom.
  • Digging through people's trash but with fewer steps.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+_sQzrPdp ]]> Jim Stormdancer 239. Public Universal Snoopy https://topiclords.com/public-universal-snoopy 07eb98a7-ed02-4d64-b8a0-f2117e0ccaab Mon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Abi and Eva. We discuss the year of Snoopy girls, whether living fossils are better than the rest of us, Helious, Certain Women, emulators on iOS, and Public Universal Friend. 50:13 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Working through mental struggles in the form of Zelda dungeons.
  • Donating to Red Cross for Snoopy Merch.
  • Snoopy's place in the cultural zeitgeist.
  • Transcending Peanuts.
  • Who doesn't want a fun bird friend?
  • Crocheting and knitting making a major comeback.
  • Every year is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Influencers wearing a Snoopy merch.
  • NASA sending Snoopy to the Moon.
  • Giving your merch to NASA for free but charging the shit out of movie makers trying to make documentaries or authentic space movies.
  • Animals that are already so good they didn't need to keep evolving.
  • Leaving bacteria off your list because you couldn't even see them.
  • A little blobby thing.
  • Scientists trying to write for the general public.
  • Naming an organism after the concept of having three eyes when it only has two eyes.
  • Having two good eyes but evolving a third shitty eye just to annoy people.
  • Running executables of completely unknown provenance.
  • A game that was plausibly created by aliens if you haven't played very many interesting games.
  • Making up an incredible back story for your game to explain why you have no idea why colors work.
  • Good Wild Combo vs. Unused Insurance Bonus.
  • Looking up the artist of a work you loved in the 90s and they're still out there tooting.
  • Wizened game developers posting on social media about their farm animals.
  • Designing interfaces for the phone.
  • Finding out that a person made a work you loved and preferring to have imagined it came from space.
  • Striving to be a cozy follow.
  • Retweeting a thing that does not make people angry.
  • Putting the poise in poison.
  • Inherently terrifying bodies of water.
  • A big fish that's touching you now.
  • A level of repetition that is bordering on too much.
  • Songs of Love, Death and Pleasure.
  • Deliberately blurring the line between poems and songs.
  • The Emulators-on-iOS era.
  • Kirby Canvas Curse.
  • Playing Super Mario Land on a TI-84 calculator.
  • What old Nintendo games work well on an iPhone.
  • The EU repeatedly forcing Apple to get its shit together.
  • One- and two-thumbed smartphones.
  • The Society of Universal Friends.
  • The thought process that led to the creation of Human Snoopy.
  • The Cat Snoopy phenomenon.
  • Snoopy as a Psychonauts character.
  • Snoopy enjoying a pile of human femurs.
  • The Notorious PUF.
  • Someone who was interesting enough to enter the historical record.
  • An attempt to seize the Friend and carry them off in an oxcart.
  • The distinction between abstinence and celibacy, and whether it exists now or in the 19th century.
  • The Mouth of the Lord.
  • Naming yourself after a branch of the government.
  • DMing people on Discord.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Working through mental struggles in the form of Zelda dungeons.
  • Donating to Red Cross for Snoopy Merch.
  • Snoopy's place in the cultural zeitgeist.
  • Transcending Peanuts.
  • Who doesn't want a fun bird friend?
  • Crocheting and knitting making a major comeback.
  • Every year is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Influencers wearing a Snoopy merch.
  • NASA sending Snoopy to the Moon.
  • Giving your merch to NASA for free but charging the shit out of movie makers trying to make documentaries or authentic space movies.
  • Animals that are already so good they didn't need to keep evolving.
  • Leaving bacteria off your list because you couldn't even see them.
  • A little blobby thing.
  • Scientists trying to write for the general public.
  • Naming an organism after the concept of having three eyes when it only has two eyes.
  • Having two good eyes but evolving a third shitty eye just to annoy people.
  • Running executables of completely unknown provenance.
  • A game that was plausibly created by aliens if you haven't played very many interesting games.
  • Making up an incredible back story for your game to explain why you have no idea why colors work.
  • Good Wild Combo vs. Unused Insurance Bonus.
  • Looking up the artist of a work you loved in the 90s and they're still out there tooting.
  • Wizened game developers posting on social media about their farm animals.
  • Designing interfaces for the phone.
  • Finding out that a person made a work you loved and preferring to have imagined it came from space.
  • Striving to be a cozy follow.
  • Retweeting a thing that does not make people angry.
  • Putting the poise in poison.
  • Inherently terrifying bodies of water.
  • A big fish that's touching you now.
  • A level of repetition that is bordering on too much.
  • Songs of Love, Death and Pleasure.
  • Deliberately blurring the line between poems and songs.
  • The Emulators-on-iOS era.
  • Kirby Canvas Curse.
  • Playing Super Mario Land on a TI-84 calculator.
  • What old Nintendo games work well on an iPhone.
  • The EU repeatedly forcing Apple to get its shit together.
  • One- and two-thumbed smartphones.
  • The Society of Universal Friends.
  • The thought process that led to the creation of Human Snoopy.
  • The Cat Snoopy phenomenon.
  • Snoopy as a Psychonauts character.
  • Snoopy enjoying a pile of human femurs.
  • The Notorious PUF.
  • Someone who was interesting enough to enter the historical record.
  • An attempt to seize the Friend and carry them off in an oxcart.
  • The distinction between abstinence and celibacy, and whether it exists now or in the 19th century.
  • The Mouth of the Lord.
  • Naming yourself after a branch of the government.
  • DMing people on Discord.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Working through mental struggles in the form of Zelda dungeons.
  • Donating to Red Cross for Snoopy Merch.
  • Snoopy's place in the cultural zeitgeist.
  • Transcending Peanuts.
  • Who doesn't want a fun bird friend?
  • Crocheting and knitting making a major comeback.
  • Every year is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
  • Influencers wearing a Snoopy merch.
  • NASA sending Snoopy to the Moon.
  • Giving your merch to NASA for free but charging the shit out of movie makers trying to make documentaries or authentic space movies.
  • Animals that are already so good they didn't need to keep evolving.
  • Leaving bacteria off your list because you couldn't even see them.
  • A little blobby thing.
  • Scientists trying to write for the general public.
  • Naming an organism after the concept of having three eyes when it only has two eyes.
  • Having two good eyes but evolving a third shitty eye just to annoy people.
  • Running executables of completely unknown provenance.
  • A game that was plausibly created by aliens if you haven't played very many interesting games.
  • Making up an incredible back story for your game to explain why you have no idea why colors work.
  • Good Wild Combo vs. Unused Insurance Bonus.
  • Looking up the artist of a work you loved in the 90s and they're still out there tooting.
  • Wizened game developers posting on social media about their farm animals.
  • Designing interfaces for the phone.
  • Finding out that a person made a work you loved and preferring to have imagined it came from space.
  • Striving to be a cozy follow.
  • Retweeting a thing that does not make people angry.
  • Putting the poise in poison.
  • Inherently terrifying bodies of water.
  • A big fish that's touching you now.
  • A level of repetition that is bordering on too much.
  • Songs of Love, Death and Pleasure.
  • Deliberately blurring the line between poems and songs.
  • The Emulators-on-iOS era.
  • Kirby Canvas Curse.
  • Playing Super Mario Land on a TI-84 calculator.
  • What old Nintendo games work well on an iPhone.
  • The EU repeatedly forcing Apple to get its shit together.
  • One- and two-thumbed smartphones.
  • The Society of Universal Friends.
  • The thought process that led to the creation of Human Snoopy.
  • The Cat Snoopy phenomenon.
  • Snoopy as a Psychonauts character.
  • Snoopy enjoying a pile of human femurs.
  • The Notorious PUF.
  • Someone who was interesting enough to enter the historical record.
  • An attempt to seize the Friend and carry them off in an oxcart.
  • The distinction between abstinence and celibacy, and whether it exists now or in the 19th century.
  • The Mouth of the Lord.
  • Naming yourself after a branch of the government.
  • DMing people on Discord.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+kyRIa4kQ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 238. Talk to Me Like a Doctor Who Gives a Shit https://topiclords.com/talk-to-me-like-a-doctor-who-gives-a-shit 6544909f-94ec-48b7-9d97-e91a653a3f6d Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayfaber and Jenni. We discuss weird game foley, finding out about pop culture when it shows up in ASMR videos, seeing the eclipse, He peels off my clothes like a starving man would peel an orange, by Sharon Cherski, and generational punctuation differences. 1:10:02 true Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging the enormous void in your soul by playing Balatro.
  • A card game with really good balance and numbering.
  • Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the Rusty Lake series.
  • Giving everybody grace except for yourself.
  • Corpse looting foley.
  • Looking through a sound library for the sound of a spider dying.
  • Buying a chair from an estate sale because you love the sound it makes.
  • The Looney Tunes cartoon where some foley artist invented everyone's conception of what a pneumatic tube sounds like.
  • Running around outside and deciding to drop a soup can into the pool.
  • A school project where you rerecord all the audio for five minutes of television.
  • Showing your project to someone and you did such a good job that they don't even notice your project.
  • All the clothes that you're wearing making all the clothes noises.
  • Watching a porn clip overdubbed with Minecraft noises at just the right time in your life.
  • Does two tails mean two assholes?
  • Putting an acronym on the Tails experience.
  • If you've got a cloaca, it's gotta go in the acronym.
  • Only getting horny when an earth, somewhere in the multiverse, is being hit by a comet.
  • Two-Tails has two assholes, and I'm one of them.
  • Forming the Megazord.
  • Lance from all the various things that have Lances in them.
  • Who is Lance in love with Voltron?
  • Google giving you sports results to make incognito mode more plausible.
  • Ironic ASMR.
  • Doin' it for the tingles.
  • When Dora the Explorer asks you what your favorite part of the show was and she says "I liked that too" except it's a video of a doctor asking you about your health.
  • The doctor explaining that this is just what your life is like now.
  • Hot dogging it on the blood pressure cuff.
  • Changing your blood pressure just to fuck with your doctor.
  • Deliberately choosing a femme-presenting chubby doctor.
  • Needing to lose about 40 pounds so you get a leg amputated.
  • Checking a box on your insurance form saying "do not give me lifestyle advice."
  • Carrying around your patient in a folder.
  • Doing the Barium test every time.
  • I'm in a Barium rotisserie, I need you to work with me.
  • Checking the quality of your stomach lining.
  • Trying to banter with the person giving you the mammogram and deeply offending them.
  • Getting small mouth shame at the dentist.
  • Rude Doctor ASMR.
  • ASMR videos where the dentist tells you your mouth is big enough.
  • Assuming Hugh Laurie is not on Cameo for the purposes of the bit.
  • Sourcing an entire podcast through Cameo.
  • The most stony-faced magical realism twin assassins.
  • Topics episode topics.
  • How to personalize a stair.
  • Hiring Mike Ehrmantraut to tell you how you're gonna do your taxes.
  • Mike Ehrmantraut administering the mammogram.
  • Visiting friends who live near the totality.
  • A stump that is freshly cut so it's exuding sap non-stop and is covered with bees and flies 24/7.
  • Whalefall but on land.
  • Chekov's oozing stump coming back in the third act.
  • Going to the astronomical society web site to be sure that the eclipse glasses you get are not the counterfeit eclipse glasses.
  • Looking at where the sun used to be.
  • Looking at something that could only be a visual effect except it's right there in the sky.
  • A thousand year old elf working through her emotions about how her human friends keep dying.
  • The day you had to be inside during recess.
  • Standing up and throwing your potato salad and mint julep on the ground.
  • Writing an angry email to Peter Molyneux for designing eclipses badly.
  • The cold cement basement of love.
  • Media from 1992.
  • Borrowing the DVD boxed set of My So-Called Life from your manager at the pizza place.
  • Writing poems for your benefactors.
  • Poetry written from the point of view of a fake person.
  • Poetry that could plausibly have been written by a teenager.
  • Do you believe the German mathematician in the 19th century, or do you believe Google?
  • A soda can that plays the Amen Break when you open it.
  • Texts from your mom asking how is your "boyfriend," is there anything I can do to "help"?
  • What it means when someone puts two spaces after a period.
  • Growing up meaningfully on the internet.
  • Composing some shit very quickly and making sure it is very needs-suiting.
  • Taking all day to come up with 350 words because you did not grow up on IRC or forums.
  • All the kids discordin' like for real for real fam.
  • A much wider variety of emoji than anything you can do with colons and parentheses.
  • Sending the semicolon-based winky face to your wife because you cannot be bothered to pull open the emoticon window and find the right icon.
  • Asking your dad "what do you think LMAO means"
  • Aunts saying "LOL" in funeral announcements.
  • Entire generations who have terrible reading comprehension because they didn't grow up texting their friends as their primary mode of communication.
  • Missing entire regions of UI because they are vaguely shaped like ads.
  • Using a bigger computer to make your bigger purchases.
  • Millenial CAPTCHAs.
  • Straight for pay.
]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging the enormous void in your soul by playing Balatro.
  • A card game with really good balance and numbering.
  • Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the Rusty Lake series.
  • Giving everybody grace except for yourself.
  • Corpse looting foley.
  • Looking through a sound library for the sound of a spider dying.
  • Buying a chair from an estate sale because you love the sound it makes.
  • The Looney Tunes cartoon where some foley artist invented everyone's conception of what a pneumatic tube sounds like.
  • Running around outside and deciding to drop a soup can into the pool.
  • A school project where you rerecord all the audio for five minutes of television.
  • Showing your project to someone and you did such a good job that they don't even notice your project.
  • All the clothes that you're wearing making all the clothes noises.
  • Watching a porn clip overdubbed with Minecraft noises at just the right time in your life.
  • Does two tails mean two assholes?
  • Putting an acronym on the Tails experience.
  • If you've got a cloaca, it's gotta go in the acronym.
  • Only getting horny when an earth, somewhere in the multiverse, is being hit by a comet.
  • Two-Tails has two assholes, and I'm one of them.
  • Forming the Megazord.
  • Lance from all the various things that have Lances in them.
  • Who is Lance in love with Voltron?
  • Google giving you sports results to make incognito mode more plausible.
  • Ironic ASMR.
  • Doin' it for the tingles.
  • When Dora the Explorer asks you what your favorite part of the show was and she says "I liked that too" except it's a video of a doctor asking you about your health.
  • The doctor explaining that this is just what your life is like now.
  • Hot dogging it on the blood pressure cuff.
  • Changing your blood pressure just to fuck with your doctor.
  • Deliberately choosing a femme-presenting chubby doctor.
  • Needing to lose about 40 pounds so you get a leg amputated.
  • Checking a box on your insurance form saying "do not give me lifestyle advice."
  • Carrying around your patient in a folder.
  • Doing the Barium test every time.
  • I'm in a Barium rotisserie, I need you to work with me.
  • Checking the quality of your stomach lining.
  • Trying to banter with the person giving you the mammogram and deeply offending them.
  • Getting small mouth shame at the dentist.
  • Rude Doctor ASMR.
  • ASMR videos where the dentist tells you your mouth is big enough.
  • Assuming Hugh Laurie is not on Cameo for the purposes of the bit.
  • Sourcing an entire podcast through Cameo.
  • The most stony-faced magical realism twin assassins.
  • Topics episode topics.
  • How to personalize a stair.
  • Hiring Mike Ehrmantraut to tell you how you're gonna do your taxes.
  • Mike Ehrmantraut administering the mammogram.
  • Visiting friends who live near the totality.
  • A stump that is freshly cut so it's exuding sap non-stop and is covered with bees and flies 24/7.
  • Whalefall but on land.
  • Chekov's oozing stump coming back in the third act.
  • Going to the astronomical society web site to be sure that the eclipse glasses you get are not the counterfeit eclipse glasses.
  • Looking at where the sun used to be.
  • Looking at something that could only be a visual effect except it's right there in the sky.
  • A thousand year old elf working through her emotions about how her human friends keep dying.
  • The day you had to be inside during recess.
  • Standing up and throwing your potato salad and mint julep on the ground.
  • Writing an angry email to Peter Molyneux for designing eclipses badly.
  • The cold cement basement of love.
  • Media from 1992.
  • Borrowing the DVD boxed set of My So-Called Life from your manager at the pizza place.
  • Writing poems for your benefactors.
  • Poetry written from the point of view of a fake person.
  • Poetry that could plausibly have been written by a teenager.
  • Do you believe the German mathematician in the 19th century, or do you believe Google?
  • A soda can that plays the Amen Break when you open it.
  • Texts from your mom asking how is your "boyfriend," is there anything I can do to "help"?
  • What it means when someone puts two spaces after a period.
  • Growing up meaningfully on the internet.
  • Composing some shit very quickly and making sure it is very needs-suiting.
  • Taking all day to come up with 350 words because you did not grow up on IRC or forums.
  • All the kids discordin' like for real for real fam.
  • A much wider variety of emoji than anything you can do with colons and parentheses.
  • Sending the semicolon-based winky face to your wife because you cannot be bothered to pull open the emoticon window and find the right icon.
  • Asking your dad "what do you think LMAO means"
  • Aunts saying "LOL" in funeral announcements.
  • Entire generations who have terrible reading comprehension because they didn't grow up texting their friends as their primary mode of communication.
  • Missing entire regions of UI because they are vaguely shaped like ads.
  • Using a bigger computer to make your bigger purchases.
  • Millenial CAPTCHAs.
  • Straight for pay.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Plugging the enormous void in your soul by playing Balatro.
  • A card game with really good balance and numbering.
  • Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the Rusty Lake series.
  • Giving everybody grace except for yourself.
  • Corpse looting foley.
  • Looking through a sound library for the sound of a spider dying.
  • Buying a chair from an estate sale because you love the sound it makes.
  • The Looney Tunes cartoon where some foley artist invented everyone's conception of what a pneumatic tube sounds like.
  • Running around outside and deciding to drop a soup can into the pool.
  • A school project where you rerecord all the audio for five minutes of television.
  • Showing your project to someone and you did such a good job that they don't even notice your project.
  • All the clothes that you're wearing making all the clothes noises.
  • Watching a porn clip overdubbed with Minecraft noises at just the right time in your life.
  • Does two tails mean two assholes?
  • Putting an acronym on the Tails experience.
  • If you've got a cloaca, it's gotta go in the acronym.
  • Only getting horny when an earth, somewhere in the multiverse, is being hit by a comet.
  • Two-Tails has two assholes, and I'm one of them.
  • Forming the Megazord.
  • Lance from all the various things that have Lances in them.
  • Who is Lance in love with Voltron?
  • Google giving you sports results to make incognito mode more plausible.
  • Ironic ASMR.
  • Doin' it for the tingles.
  • When Dora the Explorer asks you what your favorite part of the show was and she says "I liked that too" except it's a video of a doctor asking you about your health.
  • The doctor explaining that this is just what your life is like now.
  • Hot dogging it on the blood pressure cuff.
  • Changing your blood pressure just to fuck with your doctor.
  • Deliberately choosing a femme-presenting chubby doctor.
  • Needing to lose about 40 pounds so you get a leg amputated.
  • Checking a box on your insurance form saying "do not give me lifestyle advice."
  • Carrying around your patient in a folder.
  • Doing the Barium test every time.
  • I'm in a Barium rotisserie, I need you to work with me.
  • Checking the quality of your stomach lining.
  • Trying to banter with the person giving you the mammogram and deeply offending them.
  • Getting small mouth shame at the dentist.
  • Rude Doctor ASMR.
  • ASMR videos where the dentist tells you your mouth is big enough.
  • Assuming Hugh Laurie is not on Cameo for the purposes of the bit.
  • Sourcing an entire podcast through Cameo.
  • The most stony-faced magical realism twin assassins.
  • Topics episode topics.
  • How to personalize a stair.
  • Hiring Mike Ehrmantraut to tell you how you're gonna do your taxes.
  • Mike Ehrmantraut administering the mammogram.
  • Visiting friends who live near the totality.
  • A stump that is freshly cut so it's exuding sap non-stop and is covered with bees and flies 24/7.
  • Whalefall but on land.
  • Chekov's oozing stump coming back in the third act.
  • Going to the astronomical society web site to be sure that the eclipse glasses you get are not the counterfeit eclipse glasses.
  • Looking at where the sun used to be.
  • Looking at something that could only be a visual effect except it's right there in the sky.
  • A thousand year old elf working through her emotions about how her human friends keep dying.
  • The day you had to be inside during recess.
  • Standing up and throwing your potato salad and mint julep on the ground.
  • Writing an angry email to Peter Molyneux for designing eclipses badly.
  • The cold cement basement of love.
  • Media from 1992.
  • Borrowing the DVD boxed set of My So-Called Life from your manager at the pizza place.
  • Writing poems for your benefactors.
  • Poetry written from the point of view of a fake person.
  • Poetry that could plausibly have been written by a teenager.
  • Do you believe the German mathematician in the 19th century, or do you believe Google?
  • A soda can that plays the Amen Break when you open it.
  • Texts from your mom asking how is your "boyfriend," is there anything I can do to "help"?
  • What it means when someone puts two spaces after a period.
  • Growing up meaningfully on the internet.
  • Composing some shit very quickly and making sure it is very needs-suiting.
  • Taking all day to come up with 350 words because you did not grow up on IRC or forums.
  • All the kids discordin' like for real for real fam.
  • A much wider variety of emoji than anything you can do with colons and parentheses.
  • Sending the semicolon-based winky face to your wife because you cannot be bothered to pull open the emoticon window and find the right icon.
  • Asking your dad "what do you think LMAO means"
  • Aunts saying "LOL" in funeral announcements.
  • Entire generations who have terrible reading comprehension because they didn't grow up texting their friends as their primary mode of communication.
  • Missing entire regions of UI because they are vaguely shaped like ads.
  • Using a bigger computer to make your bigger purchases.
  • Millenial CAPTCHAs.
  • Straight for pay.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+9ijmxnNp ]]> Jim Stormdancer 237. Through the Pooping Glass https://topiclords.com/through-the-pooping-glass 0098e138-43d0-4cc6-9121-421567b842f7 Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Avery and Chris. We discuss cross-country skiing, putting art where advertising usually goes, running Pico-8 on a Raspberry Pi, The Day I Fell Down the Toilet, and snow being a million different things. 1:13:54 true Lords:

  • Avery
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking for a job as a programmer but finding one as a bard.
  • A Transformers the Movie style power ballad.
  • Stopping having a job on purpose.
  • All the fun things you can do on mountains.
  • Carrying around a VR helmet so you can take photos of a mountain.
  • Snowy mountains on one side and lava fields on the other.
  • Towns named after regular guys.
  • Yelling at your barista that you live in Frisco.
  • The tier list of San Francisco's rarest nicknames.
  • The wrong kind of skiing.
  • A kind of hiking that is faster and also you can slide down the hill.
  • Cross-country snowboarding.
  • Repeatedly popping out of your ski boots and landing in the snow barefoot.
  • The most winter you've experienced in your entire life.
  • Taking snow home from the mountains and putting it in a cup in your freezer.
  • Breaking your toe while stage jumping.
  • Best ways to not save a hypothermic toe.
  • Devoting a portion of your massive intellect to making your friend's life interesting.
  • Back before the Internet was threatening.
  • The Avery ARG (or AARG).
  • Writing a short story about your friend in the form of a dating personals ad and posting hundreds of copies all over town.
  • Miranda July.
  • An app that crowdsources uncomfortable personal interactions.
  • A KFC billboard that has been defaced to unrecognizability but the life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders right next to it remains untouched.
  • Partnering with Safeway to distribute your zine on the back of Safeway receipts.
  • Mixing up your ammo with your pharmaceuticals so your mugger no longer feels iron deficient.
  • Whether it's morally okay to appreciate a well-made advertisement.
  • The advertisement where the guy is now on a horse.
  • Spray tan parties happening in your area.
  • Going to the buying place with your earth money.
  • Your favorite deodorant being discontinued and buying the very last crate and rationing them even though you go to the gym every day.
  • Handling Smellium with your bare hands.
  • Smelling what happened to the scientists who discovered Smellium.
  • Asking for a fun tool for Christmas even though you know you'll never have time to use it because maybe the idea of fun is enough.
  • The screen saver only paying attention to mouse and keyboard input so when you're playing games you need to jiggle the mouse every few minutes or the screen saver kicks in
  • Looking at headlines first thing in the morning to make yourself angry enough to get out of bed.
  • Seeing a headline saying "10,000 people join Mastodon" and thinking it's talking about the metal band.
  • A touring photographer whose job is is to photograph EDM acts staring at their laptops.
  • Software developers figure out a more effective way to make money than making their users happy.
  • Nonconsensual updates.
  • Writing demos, like in the 90s, back when computers were fun.
  • The optimism of feeling like computers were going to make people's lives better.
  • Finding cool programs to download onto your computer.
  • Getting a job writing Picotron BBSes in Lua.
  • Waiting until Chat GPT learns how to use Picotron.
  • Clippy but it's self-aware and hates itself.
  • Asking Clippy for stories about Bill Gates.
  • Desktop Pets.
  • Bonzi Buddy pointedly reminding you that he has your credit card number.
  • Writing a poem to get your dad to stop asking you if you're off the toilet.
  • The scene from Trainspotting where the protagonist dives into the toilet.
  • In twenty years when Winston is hosting Topic Lords and making Frog Fractions sequels.
  • downpour.games
  • Look at this, look what I did!
  • Seeing snowflakes for the second time in your life.
  • Snow: it's beautiful, unless it's in Avery's freezer.
  • A frozen lake that you can just run around on and dogs love it.
  • Snowboarding with a kite.
  • Cross country snowboarding while holding a Swiffer.
  • Contagious ice.
  • 28 different shapes for the waters to be in.
  • A metastable high pressure form of ice.
  • The sci-fi lore of obscure ice.
  • Virtually all the ice in the biosphere.
  • Pauly Shore's lifetime achievement Oscar.
  • Why climb a mountain when you could administer a Mastodon server?
]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking for a job as a programmer but finding one as a bard.
  • A Transformers the Movie style power ballad.
  • Stopping having a job on purpose.
  • All the fun things you can do on mountains.
  • Carrying around a VR helmet so you can take photos of a mountain.
  • Snowy mountains on one side and lava fields on the other.
  • Towns named after regular guys.
  • Yelling at your barista that you live in Frisco.
  • The tier list of San Francisco's rarest nicknames.
  • The wrong kind of skiing.
  • A kind of hiking that is faster and also you can slide down the hill.
  • Cross-country snowboarding.
  • Repeatedly popping out of your ski boots and landing in the snow barefoot.
  • The most winter you've experienced in your entire life.
  • Taking snow home from the mountains and putting it in a cup in your freezer.
  • Breaking your toe while stage jumping.
  • Best ways to not save a hypothermic toe.
  • Devoting a portion of your massive intellect to making your friend's life interesting.
  • Back before the Internet was threatening.
  • The Avery ARG (or AARG).
  • Writing a short story about your friend in the form of a dating personals ad and posting hundreds of copies all over town.
  • Miranda July.
  • An app that crowdsources uncomfortable personal interactions.
  • A KFC billboard that has been defaced to unrecognizability but the life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders right next to it remains untouched.
  • Partnering with Safeway to distribute your zine on the back of Safeway receipts.
  • Mixing up your ammo with your pharmaceuticals so your mugger no longer feels iron deficient.
  • Whether it's morally okay to appreciate a well-made advertisement.
  • The advertisement where the guy is now on a horse.
  • Spray tan parties happening in your area.
  • Going to the buying place with your earth money.
  • Your favorite deodorant being discontinued and buying the very last crate and rationing them even though you go to the gym every day.
  • Handling Smellium with your bare hands.
  • Smelling what happened to the scientists who discovered Smellium.
  • Asking for a fun tool for Christmas even though you know you'll never have time to use it because maybe the idea of fun is enough.
  • The screen saver only paying attention to mouse and keyboard input so when you're playing games you need to jiggle the mouse every few minutes or the screen saver kicks in
  • Looking at headlines first thing in the morning to make yourself angry enough to get out of bed.
  • Seeing a headline saying "10,000 people join Mastodon" and thinking it's talking about the metal band.
  • A touring photographer whose job is is to photograph EDM acts staring at their laptops.
  • Software developers figure out a more effective way to make money than making their users happy.
  • Nonconsensual updates.
  • Writing demos, like in the 90s, back when computers were fun.
  • The optimism of feeling like computers were going to make people's lives better.
  • Finding cool programs to download onto your computer.
  • Getting a job writing Picotron BBSes in Lua.
  • Waiting until Chat GPT learns how to use Picotron.
  • Clippy but it's self-aware and hates itself.
  • Asking Clippy for stories about Bill Gates.
  • Desktop Pets.
  • Bonzi Buddy pointedly reminding you that he has your credit card number.
  • Writing a poem to get your dad to stop asking you if you're off the toilet.
  • The scene from Trainspotting where the protagonist dives into the toilet.
  • In twenty years when Winston is hosting Topic Lords and making Frog Fractions sequels.
  • downpour.games
  • Look at this, look what I did!
  • Seeing snowflakes for the second time in your life.
  • Snow: it's beautiful, unless it's in Avery's freezer.
  • A frozen lake that you can just run around on and dogs love it.
  • Snowboarding with a kite.
  • Cross country snowboarding while holding a Swiffer.
  • Contagious ice.
  • 28 different shapes for the waters to be in.
  • A metastable high pressure form of ice.
  • The sci-fi lore of obscure ice.
  • Virtually all the ice in the biosphere.
  • Pauly Shore's lifetime achievement Oscar.
  • Why climb a mountain when you could administer a Mastodon server?

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking for a job as a programmer but finding one as a bard.
  • A Transformers the Movie style power ballad.
  • Stopping having a job on purpose.
  • All the fun things you can do on mountains.
  • Carrying around a VR helmet so you can take photos of a mountain.
  • Snowy mountains on one side and lava fields on the other.
  • Towns named after regular guys.
  • Yelling at your barista that you live in Frisco.
  • The tier list of San Francisco's rarest nicknames.
  • The wrong kind of skiing.
  • A kind of hiking that is faster and also you can slide down the hill.
  • Cross-country snowboarding.
  • Repeatedly popping out of your ski boots and landing in the snow barefoot.
  • The most winter you've experienced in your entire life.
  • Taking snow home from the mountains and putting it in a cup in your freezer.
  • Breaking your toe while stage jumping.
  • Best ways to not save a hypothermic toe.
  • Devoting a portion of your massive intellect to making your friend's life interesting.
  • Back before the Internet was threatening.
  • The Avery ARG (or AARG).
  • Writing a short story about your friend in the form of a dating personals ad and posting hundreds of copies all over town.
  • Miranda July.
  • An app that crowdsources uncomfortable personal interactions.
  • A KFC billboard that has been defaced to unrecognizability but the life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders right next to it remains untouched.
  • Partnering with Safeway to distribute your zine on the back of Safeway receipts.
  • Mixing up your ammo with your pharmaceuticals so your mugger no longer feels iron deficient.
  • Whether it's morally okay to appreciate a well-made advertisement.
  • The advertisement where the guy is now on a horse.
  • Spray tan parties happening in your area.
  • Going to the buying place with your earth money.
  • Your favorite deodorant being discontinued and buying the very last crate and rationing them even though you go to the gym every day.
  • Handling Smellium with your bare hands.
  • Smelling what happened to the scientists who discovered Smellium.
  • Asking for a fun tool for Christmas even though you know you'll never have time to use it because maybe the idea of fun is enough.
  • The screen saver only paying attention to mouse and keyboard input so when you're playing games you need to jiggle the mouse every few minutes or the screen saver kicks in
  • Looking at headlines first thing in the morning to make yourself angry enough to get out of bed.
  • Seeing a headline saying "10,000 people join Mastodon" and thinking it's talking about the metal band.
  • A touring photographer whose job is is to photograph EDM acts staring at their laptops.
  • Software developers figure out a more effective way to make money than making their users happy.
  • Nonconsensual updates.
  • Writing demos, like in the 90s, back when computers were fun.
  • The optimism of feeling like computers were going to make people's lives better.
  • Finding cool programs to download onto your computer.
  • Getting a job writing Picotron BBSes in Lua.
  • Waiting until Chat GPT learns how to use Picotron.
  • Clippy but it's self-aware and hates itself.
  • Asking Clippy for stories about Bill Gates.
  • Desktop Pets.
  • Bonzi Buddy pointedly reminding you that he has your credit card number.
  • Writing a poem to get your dad to stop asking you if you're off the toilet.
  • The scene from Trainspotting where the protagonist dives into the toilet.
  • In twenty years when Winston is hosting Topic Lords and making Frog Fractions sequels.
  • downpour.games
  • Look at this, look what I did!
  • Seeing snowflakes for the second time in your life.
  • Snow: it's beautiful, unless it's in Avery's freezer.
  • A frozen lake that you can just run around on and dogs love it.
  • Snowboarding with a kite.
  • Cross country snowboarding while holding a Swiffer.
  • Contagious ice.
  • 28 different shapes for the waters to be in.
  • A metastable high pressure form of ice.
  • The sci-fi lore of obscure ice.
  • Virtually all the ice in the biosphere.
  • Pauly Shore's lifetime achievement Oscar.
  • Why climb a mountain when you could administer a Mastodon server?

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6hKvesN1 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 236. Your Child Is About the Size of a Game Boy Advance https://topiclords.com/your-child-is-about-the-size-of-a-game-boy-advance 7f9cff6b-cd57-4af9-ab25-66c5b288fad8 Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss Egypt sweater, whether we want Indy to save Elsa, Kazim, Portrait of my Brother as Indiana Jones, the hardest brownface to swallow, whether pits of snakes are good circus attractions, and closing yourself in a giant box on a motorcycle. 1:01:54 true Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A nerd of the second-highest caliber.
  • Working in tech on the internet.
  • Quality guests on a quality show.
  • Savage Oaf vs. Savage Oath.
  • Getting on Metal Archives and figuring out those bands are.
  • Swearing an Oaf.
  • Reading "Lord of the Rings" because you are pregnant.
  • Recommending pregnancy to someone who wants a child.
  • Wonder Weeks.
  • Your child is about the size of a mid-sized sedan.
  • A delightful looking creature about the size of a Micro Machine.
  • A sister who is a chimp and other wild shit from the 1970s.
  • A screwball comedy about lions living with Tippi Hedren and mauling the director of Speed.
  • A movie about an archaeologist who is beloved by all his students and one of them is wearing this sweater.
  • 1940s Egyptian Fair Isle Jumper.
  • Getting unprofessionally close to the professor you have a crush on so he can notice your cool Egypt sweater.
  • Why Dial of Destiny didn't do that well.
  • An entirely tolerable movie according to Mark circa whenever that movie came out.
  • Deploying the tense night-time action music.
  • Going to Fiverr and paying someone the fair value of their labor.
  • Elsa's a Nazi and then we're mad at Elsa.
  • Emotionally elevated moments between Indy and Elsa.
  • Proposing to your girlfriend on the Golden Gate Bridge in a last-ditch attempt to save your relationship.
  • The payoff of Henry Jones Sr.'s character arc.
  • Elsa choosing the wrong grail on purpose.
  • The 50 grails on the other side of the room that Elsa didn't even look at.
  • Coffee cup movie magic.
  • The expeditious nature of film storytelling.
  • The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword.
  • Kazim falling off the dock.
  • Kazim showing up to beat the shit out of a kid who is spending too much time reading about the grail on Wikipedia.
  • The two-part episode of MacGyver where MacGyver looks for the Holy Grail.
  • Stealing artifacts because they belong in museums, not with the people who originated them.
  • Going on a series of heists to steal artifacts back from museums and returning them to their people.
  • Sometimes chased, sometimes chasing.
  • Amorak from Kalamazoo.
  • Love on her eyelids.
  • A certified Wocust.
  • Compensation for my brother-in-law's car.
  • The depiction of Sallah in Raiders vs. in Last Crusade.
  • Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.
  • A movie you can give up.
  • John Rhys-Davies playing a dwarf even though he's not even from Middle Earth.
  • Middle Earth being flat for elves but round for humans.
  • A huge vat filled with undifferentiated snakes that is a circus attraction somehow.
  • The guy who lays down in the bed of snakes.
  • A 1920s-era circus putting on a performance of the play that Snakes on a Plane was based on.
  • Giving a garter snake to every kid who comes to the circus and if their parents don't like it they can just set the snake loose in the back yard because it's the midwest.
  • Not thinking to ask a question until 30 years after you've seen the movie.
  • Liking art that is flawed.
  • Dying from a recreational drug situation.
  • Safely ensconced in the box.
  • Being chased by Nazis and taking a moment to pry open a wooden crate just in case there is a motorcycle in it.
  • Batman scrolling reddit while hiding behind the curtain for the guy he's going to surprise coming back into the office.
  • Of course that's what they do, and of course it worked, because you just saw it happen and it worked.
  • The pitfalls of googling your own medical symptoms.
]]> Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A nerd of the second-highest caliber.
  • Working in tech on the internet.
  • Quality guests on a quality show.
  • Savage Oaf vs. Savage Oath.
  • Getting on Metal Archives and figuring out those bands are.
  • Swearing an Oaf.
  • Reading "Lord of the Rings" because you are pregnant.
  • Recommending pregnancy to someone who wants a child.
  • Wonder Weeks.
  • Your child is about the size of a mid-sized sedan.
  • A delightful looking creature about the size of a Micro Machine.
  • A sister who is a chimp and other wild shit from the 1970s.
  • A screwball comedy about lions living with Tippi Hedren and mauling the director of Speed.
  • A movie about an archaeologist who is beloved by all his students and one of them is wearing this sweater.
  • 1940s Egyptian Fair Isle Jumper.
  • Getting unprofessionally close to the professor you have a crush on so he can notice your cool Egypt sweater.
  • Why Dial of Destiny didn't do that well.
  • An entirely tolerable movie according to Mark circa whenever that movie came out.
  • Deploying the tense night-time action music.
  • Going to Fiverr and paying someone the fair value of their labor.
  • Elsa's a Nazi and then we're mad at Elsa.
  • Emotionally elevated moments between Indy and Elsa.
  • Proposing to your girlfriend on the Golden Gate Bridge in a last-ditch attempt to save your relationship.
  • The payoff of Henry Jones Sr.'s character arc.
  • Elsa choosing the wrong grail on purpose.
  • The 50 grails on the other side of the room that Elsa didn't even look at.
  • Coffee cup movie magic.
  • The expeditious nature of film storytelling.
  • The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword.
  • Kazim falling off the dock.
  • Kazim showing up to beat the shit out of a kid who is spending too much time reading about the grail on Wikipedia.
  • The two-part episode of MacGyver where MacGyver looks for the Holy Grail.
  • Stealing artifacts because they belong in museums, not with the people who originated them.
  • Going on a series of heists to steal artifacts back from museums and returning them to their people.
  • Sometimes chased, sometimes chasing.
  • Amorak from Kalamazoo.
  • Love on her eyelids.
  • A certified Wocust.
  • Compensation for my brother-in-law's car.
  • The depiction of Sallah in Raiders vs. in Last Crusade.
  • Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.
  • A movie you can give up.
  • John Rhys-Davies playing a dwarf even though he's not even from Middle Earth.
  • Middle Earth being flat for elves but round for humans.
  • A huge vat filled with undifferentiated snakes that is a circus attraction somehow.
  • The guy who lays down in the bed of snakes.
  • A 1920s-era circus putting on a performance of the play that Snakes on a Plane was based on.
  • Giving a garter snake to every kid who comes to the circus and if their parents don't like it they can just set the snake loose in the back yard because it's the midwest.
  • Not thinking to ask a question until 30 years after you've seen the movie.
  • Liking art that is flawed.
  • Dying from a recreational drug situation.
  • Safely ensconced in the box.
  • Being chased by Nazis and taking a moment to pry open a wooden crate just in case there is a motorcycle in it.
  • Batman scrolling reddit while hiding behind the curtain for the guy he's going to surprise coming back into the office.
  • Of course that's what they do, and of course it worked, because you just saw it happen and it worked.
  • The pitfalls of googling your own medical symptoms.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A nerd of the second-highest caliber.
  • Working in tech on the internet.
  • Quality guests on a quality show.
  • Savage Oaf vs. Savage Oath.
  • Getting on Metal Archives and figuring out those bands are.
  • Swearing an Oaf.
  • Reading "Lord of the Rings" because you are pregnant.
  • Recommending pregnancy to someone who wants a child.
  • Wonder Weeks.
  • Your child is about the size of a mid-sized sedan.
  • A delightful looking creature about the size of a Micro Machine.
  • A sister who is a chimp and other wild shit from the 1970s.
  • A screwball comedy about lions living with Tippi Hedren and mauling the director of Speed.
  • A movie about an archaeologist who is beloved by all his students and one of them is wearing this sweater.
  • 1940s Egyptian Fair Isle Jumper.
  • Getting unprofessionally close to the professor you have a crush on so he can notice your cool Egypt sweater.
  • Why Dial of Destiny didn't do that well.
  • An entirely tolerable movie according to Mark circa whenever that movie came out.
  • Deploying the tense night-time action music.
  • Going to Fiverr and paying someone the fair value of their labor.
  • Elsa's a Nazi and then we're mad at Elsa.
  • Emotionally elevated moments between Indy and Elsa.
  • Proposing to your girlfriend on the Golden Gate Bridge in a last-ditch attempt to save your relationship.
  • The payoff of Henry Jones Sr.'s character arc.
  • Elsa choosing the wrong grail on purpose.
  • The 50 grails on the other side of the room that Elsa didn't even look at.
  • Coffee cup movie magic.
  • The expeditious nature of film storytelling.
  • The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword.
  • Kazim falling off the dock.
  • Kazim showing up to beat the shit out of a kid who is spending too much time reading about the grail on Wikipedia.
  • The two-part episode of MacGyver where MacGyver looks for the Holy Grail.
  • Stealing artifacts because they belong in museums, not with the people who originated them.
  • Going on a series of heists to steal artifacts back from museums and returning them to their people.
  • Sometimes chased, sometimes chasing.
  • Amorak from Kalamazoo.
  • Love on her eyelids.
  • A certified Wocust.
  • Compensation for my brother-in-law's car.
  • The depiction of Sallah in Raiders vs. in Last Crusade.
  • Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.
  • A movie you can give up.
  • John Rhys-Davies playing a dwarf even though he's not even from Middle Earth.
  • Middle Earth being flat for elves but round for humans.
  • A huge vat filled with undifferentiated snakes that is a circus attraction somehow.
  • The guy who lays down in the bed of snakes.
  • A 1920s-era circus putting on a performance of the play that Snakes on a Plane was based on.
  • Giving a garter snake to every kid who comes to the circus and if their parents don't like it they can just set the snake loose in the back yard because it's the midwest.
  • Not thinking to ask a question until 30 years after you've seen the movie.
  • Liking art that is flawed.
  • Dying from a recreational drug situation.
  • Safely ensconced in the box.
  • Being chased by Nazis and taking a moment to pry open a wooden crate just in case there is a motorcycle in it.
  • Batman scrolling reddit while hiding behind the curtain for the guy he's going to surprise coming back into the office.
  • Of course that's what they do, and of course it worked, because you just saw it happen and it worked.
  • The pitfalls of googling your own medical symptoms.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+JA326buA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 235. Ennui Golf https://topiclords.com/ennui-golf 89a0c322-695d-40b5-af47-d0e552837352 Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Xalavier. We discuss centaur internal organs, adapting unlikely horror franchises, whether boomerangs work, Serious KAAAND, game mascots as sexual avatars of their creators, and The Ted Dabney Experience. 1:03:35 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Xalavier

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rusty Lake.
  • An intriguing, terrifying morsel.
  • Whether it's okay to lie on this show.
  • Life Eater.
  • The horror fantasy kidnapping sim space.
  • Shippers shipping games.
  • How do we ship this game without destroying people?
  • All of the horse except for the head and neck.
  • Cosmetic centaur organs.
  • Introducing yourself to the inside of a centaur and it's extremely squishy in there.
  • A single multifunctional cube that births a centaur and that's the original Xbox startup video.
  • Speaking a language that doesn't exist and every time you finish a sentence you hear church bells.
  • Would a defective centaur wear a hat like this or like this?
  • Centaurs always standing at their standing desks.
  • A centaur wearing a horse mask.
  • Playing Wii Golf with someone who remains sitting the entire time.
  • Getting off the Power Pad to long jump.
  • Sitting golf.
  • My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
  • The monster mash vs. monster bash.
  • Adapting the Ghostbusters theme song to other media.
  • Playing as the car and running people over.
  • Jail for cars.
  • Jelly beans that taste bad on purpose.
  • 80s films for children that are meant to turn them into weird bisexuals when they grow up.
  • Jeff Minter's Dune.
  • Barbarella the video game.
  • More things you can do with your Rock Band instruments.
  • Sticking even more games inside of Fortnite.
  • The lemur with the really big eyes.
  • Microorganisms that live in water and have the end of a comedy roast bone for a head.
  • Venomousness of hybrid mammals.
  • Grabbing your stress ball after learning that the duck billed platypus uses electroreception to track their prey, Xalavier Nelson, Jr.
  • Platypus patch notes.
  • Adding expansions to Classic World of Warcraft.
  • Gauging the temperature of the room when it comes to boomerangs.
  • Throwing a washing machine in a circle.
  • How you feel when the boomerang doesn't come back.
  • Objects that you see on TV.
  • Boomerangs that instant of being carved to return when you throw them, are carved to say "help, I'm trapped in a boomerang factory" in an Australian accent when the wind whistles through it.
  • A boomerang with a heart on it that you throw to find true love.
  • Boomerangs vs. Gen-Xerangs.
  • Getting lazy by the time you sharpen the 7th blade on your boomerang.
  • Disrupting marshmallows by making them kinda good.
  • Hiring a game studio to make a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy and then immediately suing them for fraud because making a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy is impossible.
  • Getting Australian concussions all weekend.
  • Naming your facial hair "are you ready for the next topics"
  • Hi guys call anyone knows how to buy guns and armor India?
  • Crossposting between r/TopicLords to r/IndianTeenagers.
  • Weeding out the cowards with Gregorian Chant.
  • Looking at Glover and immediately understanding his salient sexual verbs.
  • The distinction between mascot and main character.
  • Your Sonics, your Gexes and your Crashes Bandicoot.
  • Switching places with your therapist.
  • Non-saucy mascots.
  • Having to pick between being horny and being a sociopath because you can't be both.
  • Glover vs. Hamburger Helper vs. Thing.
  • Opening yourself to a deeper Freudian zeitgeist.
  • The mascot platformer you keep seeing roms of but have never downloaded.
  • Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space.
  • Blinx dressing up as the lead singer of Power Man 5000.
  • Exactly the sort of podcast segment you want to commit to sight unseen.
  • Being willing to give up 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand to make a friend happy.
  • How much do you want that Golden Microphone?
  • The crucible of the soul you go through to record a podcast.
  • People in the future deciding what you would have made a podcast about if you were still alive and making that podcast.
  • The Xalavier Nelson, Jr. Experience.
  • The dream list of developers you ask to help finish your game in your will.
  • Locking Albert Einsten and Genghis Khan in a haunted house and they vote each other off the show back and forth forever.
  • A deeply safe field for job hunting.
  • The Ted Dabney Experience of finding out that Ted Dabney died twelve years ago.
  • Mrs. Columbo.
  • A movie named "This Movie Has Marky Mark In It."
  • A game called Beyonce Battle Royale that doesn't have Beyonce in it and it's not a battle royale. (It's a clicker.)
  • Beyonce: Oops All Mudkips.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Xalavier

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rusty Lake.
  • An intriguing, terrifying morsel.
  • Whether it's okay to lie on this show.
  • Life Eater.
  • The horror fantasy kidnapping sim space.
  • Shippers shipping games.
  • How do we ship this game without destroying people?
  • All of the horse except for the head and neck.
  • Cosmetic centaur organs.
  • Introducing yourself to the inside of a centaur and it's extremely squishy in there.
  • A single multifunctional cube that births a centaur and that's the original Xbox startup video.
  • Speaking a language that doesn't exist and every time you finish a sentence you hear church bells.
  • Would a defective centaur wear a hat like this or like this?
  • Centaurs always standing at their standing desks.
  • A centaur wearing a horse mask.
  • Playing Wii Golf with someone who remains sitting the entire time.
  • Getting off the Power Pad to long jump.
  • Sitting golf.
  • My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
  • The monster mash vs. monster bash.
  • Adapting the Ghostbusters theme song to other media.
  • Playing as the car and running people over.
  • Jail for cars.
  • Jelly beans that taste bad on purpose.
  • 80s films for children that are meant to turn them into weird bisexuals when they grow up.
  • Jeff Minter's Dune.
  • Barbarella the video game.
  • More things you can do with your Rock Band instruments.
  • Sticking even more games inside of Fortnite.
  • The lemur with the really big eyes.
  • Microorganisms that live in water and have the end of a comedy roast bone for a head.
  • Venomousness of hybrid mammals.
  • Grabbing your stress ball after learning that the duck billed platypus uses electroreception to track their prey, Xalavier Nelson, Jr.
  • Platypus patch notes.
  • Adding expansions to Classic World of Warcraft.
  • Gauging the temperature of the room when it comes to boomerangs.
  • Throwing a washing machine in a circle.
  • How you feel when the boomerang doesn't come back.
  • Objects that you see on TV.
  • Boomerangs that instant of being carved to return when you throw them, are carved to say "help, I'm trapped in a boomerang factory" in an Australian accent when the wind whistles through it.
  • A boomerang with a heart on it that you throw to find true love.
  • Boomerangs vs. Gen-Xerangs.
  • Getting lazy by the time you sharpen the 7th blade on your boomerang.
  • Disrupting marshmallows by making them kinda good.
  • Hiring a game studio to make a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy and then immediately suing them for fraud because making a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy is impossible.
  • Getting Australian concussions all weekend.
  • Naming your facial hair "are you ready for the next topics"
  • Hi guys call anyone knows how to buy guns and armor India?
  • Crossposting between r/TopicLords to r/IndianTeenagers.
  • Weeding out the cowards with Gregorian Chant.
  • Looking at Glover and immediately understanding his salient sexual verbs.
  • The distinction between mascot and main character.
  • Your Sonics, your Gexes and your Crashes Bandicoot.
  • Switching places with your therapist.
  • Non-saucy mascots.
  • Having to pick between being horny and being a sociopath because you can't be both.
  • Glover vs. Hamburger Helper vs. Thing.
  • Opening yourself to a deeper Freudian zeitgeist.
  • The mascot platformer you keep seeing roms of but have never downloaded.
  • Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space.
  • Blinx dressing up as the lead singer of Power Man 5000.
  • Exactly the sort of podcast segment you want to commit to sight unseen.
  • Being willing to give up 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand to make a friend happy.
  • How much do you want that Golden Microphone?
  • The crucible of the soul you go through to record a podcast.
  • People in the future deciding what you would have made a podcast about if you were still alive and making that podcast.
  • The Xalavier Nelson, Jr. Experience.
  • The dream list of developers you ask to help finish your game in your will.
  • Locking Albert Einsten and Genghis Khan in a haunted house and they vote each other off the show back and forth forever.
  • A deeply safe field for job hunting.
  • The Ted Dabney Experience of finding out that Ted Dabney died twelve years ago.
  • Mrs. Columbo.
  • A movie named "This Movie Has Marky Mark In It."
  • A game called Beyonce Battle Royale that doesn't have Beyonce in it and it's not a battle royale. (It's a clicker.)
  • Beyonce: Oops All Mudkips.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Xalavier

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Rusty Lake.
  • An intriguing, terrifying morsel.
  • Whether it's okay to lie on this show.
  • Life Eater.
  • The horror fantasy kidnapping sim space.
  • Shippers shipping games.
  • How do we ship this game without destroying people?
  • All of the horse except for the head and neck.
  • Cosmetic centaur organs.
  • Introducing yourself to the inside of a centaur and it's extremely squishy in there.
  • A single multifunctional cube that births a centaur and that's the original Xbox startup video.
  • Speaking a language that doesn't exist and every time you finish a sentence you hear church bells.
  • Would a defective centaur wear a hat like this or like this?
  • Centaurs always standing at their standing desks.
  • A centaur wearing a horse mask.
  • Playing Wii Golf with someone who remains sitting the entire time.
  • Getting off the Power Pad to long jump.
  • Sitting golf.
  • My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
  • The monster mash vs. monster bash.
  • Adapting the Ghostbusters theme song to other media.
  • Playing as the car and running people over.
  • Jail for cars.
  • Jelly beans that taste bad on purpose.
  • 80s films for children that are meant to turn them into weird bisexuals when they grow up.
  • Jeff Minter's Dune.
  • Barbarella the video game.
  • More things you can do with your Rock Band instruments.
  • Sticking even more games inside of Fortnite.
  • The lemur with the really big eyes.
  • Microorganisms that live in water and have the end of a comedy roast bone for a head.
  • Venomousness of hybrid mammals.
  • Grabbing your stress ball after learning that the duck billed platypus uses electroreception to track their prey, Xalavier Nelson, Jr.
  • Platypus patch notes.
  • Adding expansions to Classic World of Warcraft.
  • Gauging the temperature of the room when it comes to boomerangs.
  • Throwing a washing machine in a circle.
  • How you feel when the boomerang doesn't come back.
  • Objects that you see on TV.
  • Boomerangs that instant of being carved to return when you throw them, are carved to say "help, I'm trapped in a boomerang factory" in an Australian accent when the wind whistles through it.
  • A boomerang with a heart on it that you throw to find true love.
  • Boomerangs vs. Gen-Xerangs.
  • Getting lazy by the time you sharpen the 7th blade on your boomerang.
  • Disrupting marshmallows by making them kinda good.
  • Hiring a game studio to make a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy and then immediately suing them for fraud because making a satisfying sequel to Katamari Damacy is impossible.
  • Getting Australian concussions all weekend.
  • Naming your facial hair "are you ready for the next topics"
  • Hi guys call anyone knows how to buy guns and armor India?
  • Crossposting between r/TopicLords to r/IndianTeenagers.
  • Weeding out the cowards with Gregorian Chant.
  • Looking at Glover and immediately understanding his salient sexual verbs.
  • The distinction between mascot and main character.
  • Your Sonics, your Gexes and your Crashes Bandicoot.
  • Switching places with your therapist.
  • Non-saucy mascots.
  • Having to pick between being horny and being a sociopath because you can't be both.
  • Glover vs. Hamburger Helper vs. Thing.
  • Opening yourself to a deeper Freudian zeitgeist.
  • The mascot platformer you keep seeing roms of but have never downloaded.
  • Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space.
  • Blinx dressing up as the lead singer of Power Man 5000.
  • Exactly the sort of podcast segment you want to commit to sight unseen.
  • Being willing to give up 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand to make a friend happy.
  • How much do you want that Golden Microphone?
  • The crucible of the soul you go through to record a podcast.
  • People in the future deciding what you would have made a podcast about if you were still alive and making that podcast.
  • The Xalavier Nelson, Jr. Experience.
  • The dream list of developers you ask to help finish your game in your will.
  • Locking Albert Einsten and Genghis Khan in a haunted house and they vote each other off the show back and forth forever.
  • A deeply safe field for job hunting.
  • The Ted Dabney Experience of finding out that Ted Dabney died twelve years ago.
  • Mrs. Columbo.
  • A movie named "This Movie Has Marky Mark In It."
  • A game called Beyonce Battle Royale that doesn't have Beyonce in it and it's not a battle royale. (It's a clicker.)
  • Beyonce: Oops All Mudkips.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+QTebtX-R ]]> Jim Stormdancer 234. Plunge Correctly for High Score https://topiclords.com/plunge-correctly-for-high-score 39ac5f31-4f4d-449b-98d4-f2e6bd793494 Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JohnB and Kevin. We discuss Don Quixote, the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown series, whether phones need to ring, Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, and whether pinball is supposed to be fun. 1:10:03 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Dog ownership.
  • A living creature that just wanders around the house.
  • Picking up warm soft weird thing.
  • Cracking open a cold one.
  • Computers flush with science data.
  • The deepest images humans have ever taken.
  • Finding distances to individual galaxies.
  • Listicles you can peruse.
  • Picking a galaxy and naming it after yourself.
  • Bug Mars 2.
  • The Glass Universe.
  • Hiring women and calling them computers.
  • A guy with a lot of free time and a gold nose.
  • Some public domain books being more readable than others.
  • Pun localization.
  • North American otaku tilting at windmills with their katanas.
  • How people pronounce quixotic and how they ought to pronounce quixotic.
  • Whether we respect English majors on this show.
  • Naming a character something weird and hoping nobody argues about the pronunciation hundreds of years from now.
  • Butthead as Don Quixote and Beavis as Sancho Panza.
  • The Great Cornholio tilting at windmills.
  • The era of translations that don't realize Don Quixote is a parody.
  • Part II of Don Quixote responding to Don Quixote fan fiction.
  • Don Coyote.
  • Sending Mario Maker back to Miguel Cervantes to see what he would make.
  • The kinds of books your parents would have on their shelf, back when that was the only thing available to read.
  • The 80s resurgence of New Age thought.
  • Mystic Places.
  • The Shin Megami Tensei section in the library.
  • Where to find the books that teach you magic in the public library.
  • The canonical map of reported UFO sightings worldwide.
  • Books for the kind of person who thinks Aleister Crowley is cool.
  • The Spaceships of Ezekiel.
  • The JWST iceberg.
  • The Distant Astronomical Objects iceberg.
  • A tin can and a string with a battery attached.
  • Hello, fellow phone owner.
  • A phone call asking you to log into a web site and read a message.
  • Funny ways to answer the phone.
  • E.B. Games, where you can get F-Zero for Zero.
  • The size of fortune cookies in the 1920s.
  • Nice things to do and be.
  • Desiderata vs. Deteriorata.
  • Advice giving poems.
  • Skin cancer is mid.
  • Casey Kasem quitting Transformers after they wrote an episode featuring Abdul, king of Carbombya.
  • Avoiding loud and aggressive persons.
  • Pinball getting harder and more complex over the course of a century.
  • Baffleball.
  • Pinball features to make things easier for beginners.
  • The quickest way to lose money on an arcade game.
  • Tilt-sensing plum bobs.
  • A weird kinetic sculpture that exists just for your entertainment.
  • The Black Hole for Personal Reasons.
  • A boring and easy pinball cabinet that you can play for an hour when you want to get sick of pinball.
  • Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball.
  • Multidisc!
  • Pinball tables by George Gomez.
  • Pinball: not actually fun, but they did their best.
  • Free play skee-ball.
  • Pacific Pinball Museum and Musee Mecanique.
  • Twitter forgiveness.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Dog ownership.
  • A living creature that just wanders around the house.
  • Picking up warm soft weird thing.
  • Cracking open a cold one.
  • Computers flush with science data.
  • The deepest images humans have ever taken.
  • Finding distances to individual galaxies.
  • Listicles you can peruse.
  • Picking a galaxy and naming it after yourself.
  • Bug Mars 2.
  • The Glass Universe.
  • Hiring women and calling them computers.
  • A guy with a lot of free time and a gold nose.
  • Some public domain books being more readable than others.
  • Pun localization.
  • North American otaku tilting at windmills with their katanas.
  • How people pronounce quixotic and how they ought to pronounce quixotic.
  • Whether we respect English majors on this show.
  • Naming a character something weird and hoping nobody argues about the pronunciation hundreds of years from now.
  • Butthead as Don Quixote and Beavis as Sancho Panza.
  • The Great Cornholio tilting at windmills.
  • The era of translations that don't realize Don Quixote is a parody.
  • Part II of Don Quixote responding to Don Quixote fan fiction.
  • Don Coyote.
  • Sending Mario Maker back to Miguel Cervantes to see what he would make.
  • The kinds of books your parents would have on their shelf, back when that was the only thing available to read.
  • The 80s resurgence of New Age thought.
  • Mystic Places.
  • The Shin Megami Tensei section in the library.
  • Where to find the books that teach you magic in the public library.
  • The canonical map of reported UFO sightings worldwide.
  • Books for the kind of person who thinks Aleister Crowley is cool.
  • The Spaceships of Ezekiel.
  • The JWST iceberg.
  • The Distant Astronomical Objects iceberg.
  • A tin can and a string with a battery attached.
  • Hello, fellow phone owner.
  • A phone call asking you to log into a web site and read a message.
  • Funny ways to answer the phone.
  • E.B. Games, where you can get F-Zero for Zero.
  • The size of fortune cookies in the 1920s.
  • Nice things to do and be.
  • Desiderata vs. Deteriorata.
  • Advice giving poems.
  • Skin cancer is mid.
  • Casey Kasem quitting Transformers after they wrote an episode featuring Abdul, king of Carbombya.
  • Avoiding loud and aggressive persons.
  • Pinball getting harder and more complex over the course of a century.
  • Baffleball.
  • Pinball features to make things easier for beginners.
  • The quickest way to lose money on an arcade game.
  • Tilt-sensing plum bobs.
  • A weird kinetic sculpture that exists just for your entertainment.
  • The Black Hole for Personal Reasons.
  • A boring and easy pinball cabinet that you can play for an hour when you want to get sick of pinball.
  • Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball.
  • Multidisc!
  • Pinball tables by George Gomez.
  • Pinball: not actually fun, but they did their best.
  • Free play skee-ball.
  • Pacific Pinball Museum and Musee Mecanique.
  • Twitter forgiveness.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Dog ownership.
  • A living creature that just wanders around the house.
  • Picking up warm soft weird thing.
  • Cracking open a cold one.
  • Computers flush with science data.
  • The deepest images humans have ever taken.
  • Finding distances to individual galaxies.
  • Listicles you can peruse.
  • Picking a galaxy and naming it after yourself.
  • Bug Mars 2.
  • The Glass Universe.
  • Hiring women and calling them computers.
  • A guy with a lot of free time and a gold nose.
  • Some public domain books being more readable than others.
  • Pun localization.
  • North American otaku tilting at windmills with their katanas.
  • How people pronounce quixotic and how they ought to pronounce quixotic.
  • Whether we respect English majors on this show.
  • Naming a character something weird and hoping nobody argues about the pronunciation hundreds of years from now.
  • Butthead as Don Quixote and Beavis as Sancho Panza.
  • The Great Cornholio tilting at windmills.
  • The era of translations that don't realize Don Quixote is a parody.
  • Part II of Don Quixote responding to Don Quixote fan fiction.
  • Don Coyote.
  • Sending Mario Maker back to Miguel Cervantes to see what he would make.
  • The kinds of books your parents would have on their shelf, back when that was the only thing available to read.
  • The 80s resurgence of New Age thought.
  • Mystic Places.
  • The Shin Megami Tensei section in the library.
  • Where to find the books that teach you magic in the public library.
  • The canonical map of reported UFO sightings worldwide.
  • Books for the kind of person who thinks Aleister Crowley is cool.
  • The Spaceships of Ezekiel.
  • The JWST iceberg.
  • The Distant Astronomical Objects iceberg.
  • A tin can and a string with a battery attached.
  • Hello, fellow phone owner.
  • A phone call asking you to log into a web site and read a message.
  • Funny ways to answer the phone.
  • E.B. Games, where you can get F-Zero for Zero.
  • The size of fortune cookies in the 1920s.
  • Nice things to do and be.
  • Desiderata vs. Deteriorata.
  • Advice giving poems.
  • Skin cancer is mid.
  • Casey Kasem quitting Transformers after they wrote an episode featuring Abdul, king of Carbombya.
  • Avoiding loud and aggressive persons.
  • Pinball getting harder and more complex over the course of a century.
  • Baffleball.
  • Pinball features to make things easier for beginners.
  • The quickest way to lose money on an arcade game.
  • Tilt-sensing plum bobs.
  • A weird kinetic sculpture that exists just for your entertainment.
  • The Black Hole for Personal Reasons.
  • A boring and easy pinball cabinet that you can play for an hour when you want to get sick of pinball.
  • Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball.
  • Multidisc!
  • Pinball tables by George Gomez.
  • Pinball: not actually fun, but they did their best.
  • Free play skee-ball.
  • Pacific Pinball Museum and Musee Mecanique.
  • Twitter forgiveness.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+KYPgRlsw ]]> Jim Stormdancer 233. A Huge Pile of Gold You Just Use To Shoot Porn On https://topiclords.com/a-huge-pile-of-gold-you-just-use-to-shoot-porn-on 8e98eeee-453a-4cd3-af63-367c254209bf Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jonah and AC. We discuss listening to music backwards, decentralized manufacturing, other terms like "foodies" to describe those who are super into universal bodily functions, The Bathroom Line, by Jesse Thurston and playtesting Legos. 1:12:35 true Lords:

  • Jonah
  • AC

Topics:

  • When was the last time you listened to a song backwards?
  • Decentralized manufacturing
  • Are there other terms like "foodies," to describe those who are super into universal bodily functions?
  • The Bathroom Line, by Jesse Thurston
  • Playtesting legos

Microtopics:

  • Pet Rock Dot Site
  • Whether rhythm is a kind of sound.
  • A rhythm synthesizer that produces control voltages.
  • All the things you could hypothetically like about New York City.
  • Crowded speculative real estate.
  • Canada's role as a fire hazard.
  • The power company in charge of all the wildfires.
  • What happened to Smokey the Bear.
  • Stopping for lobsters crossing the highway.
  • Whether Smokey the Bear died in his sleep.
  • Putting the oven on self clean and it cleans your whole house.
  • Bringing back Satanic Panic to make backmasking cool again.
  • Constructing a cliff that echoes backwards.
  • Musique Concrete.
  • The kind of people who would make an album in Csound.
  • Admitting that your music is hilarious.
  • Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Knowing that you should be adding a constraint to your assertion but not knowing what it should be.
  • If Conlon Nancarrow had only entered cryosleep.
  • Loading up a song in Sound Forge.
  • Squid Salmple.
  • Bluetooth: it works every time!
  • Virtual modular synthesizers with cool cable physics.
  • The etymology of backmasking.
  • If Wiktionary is so good, why isn't there a Wiktionary 2?
  • Franchising your rhythm box.
  • Doing each other's administrative work.
  • Doing a labor swap to get fresh eyes on your project.
  • Ubering to the trail head.
  • Imagine: paying rent for an office.
  • Poopsocking it on this family show.
  • The Armory.
  • Going back in time and having $14 million.
  • Selling your forehead as advertising space.
  • Joseph Circuit City Smith.
  • This man needs your help to remove his porn logo forehead tattoos.
  • Aspirational snake eye contacts.
  • Your contacts contact.
  • Antique sword knife bookmark charm sword knife pendants knife charms for bookmarks.
  • Going to the breathing club and breathing really hard.
  • The Hearty-Starty.
  • Trying to joke about a thing that turns out to just be a real thing.
  • A Facebook group for people who love shitting.
  • Blinkos and all the nuances of the ways they love to blink.
  • A whole world just for smelling.
  • How your heart doesn't stop every time you sneeze.
  • Green text vs. other colors of text.
  • The r/bluetext subreddit that's all about links to other web sites.
  • Nutty Gum and Fruit Spleggings.
  • Finding the one while in line to poop.
  • Going to college for like a year and one of the best things about it was the bathroom graffiti.
  • A chalkboard in the physics department's bathroom stall.
  • Help I'm trapped in the bathroom grout.
  • Peeing while trying to think of a poem.
  • Peeing your pants in the bathroom.
  • Don't Backmask Me, Bro.
  • Finding someone in a bar who wants to playtest your experimental game for three hours.
  • The movie Yesterday except for inventing Legos.
  • Following instructions as a way to fidget.
  • Trying to solve a difficult programming puzzle when someone comes up and starts biting you in the ass.
  • All the ways someone can be onboarded onto an experience.
  • Free HTML5 Games Tagged Idle.
  • Top Three Clickers.
  • Roguathia.
  • Waiting until you have more SP to select upgrades.
]]> Lords:

  • Jonah
  • AC

Topics:

  • When was the last time you listened to a song backwards?
  • Decentralized manufacturing
  • Are there other terms like "foodies," to describe those who are super into universal bodily functions?
  • The Bathroom Line, by Jesse Thurston
  • Playtesting legos

Microtopics:

  • Pet Rock Dot Site
  • Whether rhythm is a kind of sound.
  • A rhythm synthesizer that produces control voltages.
  • All the things you could hypothetically like about New York City.
  • Crowded speculative real estate.
  • Canada's role as a fire hazard.
  • The power company in charge of all the wildfires.
  • What happened to Smokey the Bear.
  • Stopping for lobsters crossing the highway.
  • Whether Smokey the Bear died in his sleep.
  • Putting the oven on self clean and it cleans your whole house.
  • Bringing back Satanic Panic to make backmasking cool again.
  • Constructing a cliff that echoes backwards.
  • Musique Concrete.
  • The kind of people who would make an album in Csound.
  • Admitting that your music is hilarious.
  • Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Knowing that you should be adding a constraint to your assertion but not knowing what it should be.
  • If Conlon Nancarrow had only entered cryosleep.
  • Loading up a song in Sound Forge.
  • Squid Salmple.
  • Bluetooth: it works every time!
  • Virtual modular synthesizers with cool cable physics.
  • The etymology of backmasking.
  • If Wiktionary is so good, why isn't there a Wiktionary 2?
  • Franchising your rhythm box.
  • Doing each other's administrative work.
  • Doing a labor swap to get fresh eyes on your project.
  • Ubering to the trail head.
  • Imagine: paying rent for an office.
  • Poopsocking it on this family show.
  • The Armory.
  • Going back in time and having $14 million.
  • Selling your forehead as advertising space.
  • Joseph Circuit City Smith.
  • This man needs your help to remove his porn logo forehead tattoos.
  • Aspirational snake eye contacts.
  • Your contacts contact.
  • Antique sword knife bookmark charm sword knife pendants knife charms for bookmarks.
  • Going to the breathing club and breathing really hard.
  • The Hearty-Starty.
  • Trying to joke about a thing that turns out to just be a real thing.
  • A Facebook group for people who love shitting.
  • Blinkos and all the nuances of the ways they love to blink.
  • A whole world just for smelling.
  • How your heart doesn't stop every time you sneeze.
  • Green text vs. other colors of text.
  • The r/bluetext subreddit that's all about links to other web sites.
  • Nutty Gum and Fruit Spleggings.
  • Finding the one while in line to poop.
  • Going to college for like a year and one of the best things about it was the bathroom graffiti.
  • A chalkboard in the physics department's bathroom stall.
  • Help I'm trapped in the bathroom grout.
  • Peeing while trying to think of a poem.
  • Peeing your pants in the bathroom.
  • Don't Backmask Me, Bro.
  • Finding someone in a bar who wants to playtest your experimental game for three hours.
  • The movie Yesterday except for inventing Legos.
  • Following instructions as a way to fidget.
  • Trying to solve a difficult programming puzzle when someone comes up and starts biting you in the ass.
  • All the ways someone can be onboarded onto an experience.
  • Free HTML5 Games Tagged Idle.
  • Top Three Clickers.
  • Roguathia.
  • Waiting until you have more SP to select upgrades.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jonah
  • AC

Topics:

  • When was the last time you listened to a song backwards?
  • Decentralized manufacturing
  • Are there other terms like "foodies," to describe those who are super into universal bodily functions?
  • The Bathroom Line, by Jesse Thurston
  • Playtesting legos

Microtopics:

  • Pet Rock Dot Site
  • Whether rhythm is a kind of sound.
  • A rhythm synthesizer that produces control voltages.
  • All the things you could hypothetically like about New York City.
  • Crowded speculative real estate.
  • Canada's role as a fire hazard.
  • The power company in charge of all the wildfires.
  • What happened to Smokey the Bear.
  • Stopping for lobsters crossing the highway.
  • Whether Smokey the Bear died in his sleep.
  • Putting the oven on self clean and it cleans your whole house.
  • Bringing back Satanic Panic to make backmasking cool again.
  • Constructing a cliff that echoes backwards.
  • Musique Concrete.
  • The kind of people who would make an album in Csound.
  • Admitting that your music is hilarious.
  • Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Knowing that you should be adding a constraint to your assertion but not knowing what it should be.
  • If Conlon Nancarrow had only entered cryosleep.
  • Loading up a song in Sound Forge.
  • Squid Salmple.
  • Bluetooth: it works every time!
  • Virtual modular synthesizers with cool cable physics.
  • The etymology of backmasking.
  • If Wiktionary is so good, why isn't there a Wiktionary 2?
  • Franchising your rhythm box.
  • Doing each other's administrative work.
  • Doing a labor swap to get fresh eyes on your project.
  • Ubering to the trail head.
  • Imagine: paying rent for an office.
  • Poopsocking it on this family show.
  • The Armory.
  • Going back in time and having $14 million.
  • Selling your forehead as advertising space.
  • Joseph Circuit City Smith.
  • This man needs your help to remove his porn logo forehead tattoos.
  • Aspirational snake eye contacts.
  • Your contacts contact.
  • Antique sword knife bookmark charm sword knife pendants knife charms for bookmarks.
  • Going to the breathing club and breathing really hard.
  • The Hearty-Starty.
  • Trying to joke about a thing that turns out to just be a real thing.
  • A Facebook group for people who love shitting.
  • Blinkos and all the nuances of the ways they love to blink.
  • A whole world just for smelling.
  • How your heart doesn't stop every time you sneeze.
  • Green text vs. other colors of text.
  • The r/bluetext subreddit that's all about links to other web sites.
  • Nutty Gum and Fruit Spleggings.
  • Finding the one while in line to poop.
  • Going to college for like a year and one of the best things about it was the bathroom graffiti.
  • A chalkboard in the physics department's bathroom stall.
  • Help I'm trapped in the bathroom grout.
  • Peeing while trying to think of a poem.
  • Peeing your pants in the bathroom.
  • Don't Backmask Me, Bro.
  • Finding someone in a bar who wants to playtest your experimental game for three hours.
  • The movie Yesterday except for inventing Legos.
  • Following instructions as a way to fidget.
  • Trying to solve a difficult programming puzzle when someone comes up and starts biting you in the ass.
  • All the ways someone can be onboarded onto an experience.
  • Free HTML5 Games Tagged Idle.
  • Top Three Clickers.
  • Roguathia.
  • Waiting until you have more SP to select upgrades.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+5S5MFrlZ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 232. Where's the Poem, Zaborowske? https://topiclords.com/wheres-the-poem-zaborowske b9901864-742a-46ed-91b5-b797acf1c8cc Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Dev. We discuss taking improv classes, practicing three keyboard layouts at the same time, the perils of store brand salt, I Once Snorted an Eight Ball with Santa, and whether everyone's creative ideas are derivative 1:12:22 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Taking Improv classes has been life changing.
  • Practicing 3 keyboard layouts at the same time
  • I bought store brand salt. You wouldn't think this would be a big deal but it turns out to be
  • I Once Snorted an Eight Ball with Santa, by Richie Zaborowske
  • Are all creative ideas very derivative, or is it just my ideas

Microtopics:

  • Pickleball.
  • Weird shapes the birdie flies in.
  • The sport that has level design.
  • Mindful breathing.
  • You are now breathing mindfully.
  • Looking forward to being at square one.
  • Getting the real data once you stop paying attention.
  • Thespians in High School.
  • Spinning a wheel to figure out what emotion to feel.
  • Whether the yes and rule only works for comedy.
  • Pancakes. Are. Starchy.
  • Being late to your job that's on fire because you were stuck behind the fire truck.
  • Celebrating your own failures.
  • How to play Lemmings in 2024.
  • Self-esteem.
  • Immediately vibing with a new sport.
  • Autotuning except it's completely manual.
  • A bunch of joysticks that you twiddle with your fingers to do letters.
  • Colemak vs. Colemak DH.
  • Keyboards that are laid out in columns.
  • Splitting up the typing test into QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak.
  • Palm Pilot Graffiti.
  • The Lord's Prayer in Gregg.
  • Shorthand. (Originally called Briefhand.)
  • Good ciphers for room escape puzzles.
  • Are QR codes based on the mazes in Zelda 2?
  • Flaky sea salt vs. coarse sea salt.
  • Adding a biting experience to make your food more heterogeneous.
  • Edible chemistry.
  • The last time you pinched salt.
  • Audially-rewarding salt grinders.
  • Science Youtuber Hank Green.
  • Warning pregnant women to not eat too much salty licorice.
  • Supertaster-outing Tic Tacs that regular people love but supertasters immediately vomit.
  • We've got a level six kaiju supertaster on our hands!
  • The guy who gets paid too much to taste ice cream.
  • The kind of person who doesn't salt their food but instead repeatedly licks a salt lick throughout the meal.
  • Heads swirling around like snow globes.
  • A poem that doesn't do anything with line breaks but does do something interesting with sentence lengths.
  • A poem that you might read on a bathroom stall.
  • Wearing the little hat and pulling on the cord that makes the horn toot.
  • The ecology that grows around the dumpster.
  • The crane swinging porta potties around.
  • An extremely expensive way to have fun
  • Heading towards the era of having kids.
  • Asking for payment for software that is not being maintained.
  • Minesweeper but X.
  • An idea that is worth doing but not obviously worth doing.
  • How to make Missile Command fun in a new and interesting way.
  • A boxing essay with questionable authenticity.
  • Strategies for enjoying Frog Fractions.
  • Rangers and the new way they handle animals.
  • Yes-anding whatever ideas come to you.
  • Ancient primals that were interlocked in battle.
  • Someone thinking of an idea.
  • Constantly listening for cues.
  • What do inanimate objects do?
  • Buying a giant bag of googly eyes and putting them on everything.
  • Not posting on Twitter.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Taking Improv classes has been life changing.
  • Practicing 3 keyboard layouts at the same time
  • I bought store brand salt. You wouldn't think this would be a big deal but it turns out to be
  • I Once Snorted an Eight Ball with Santa, by Richie Zaborowske
  • Are all creative ideas very derivative, or is it just my ideas

Microtopics:

  • Pickleball.
  • Weird shapes the birdie flies in.
  • The sport that has level design.
  • Mindful breathing.
  • You are now breathing mindfully.
  • Looking forward to being at square one.
  • Getting the real data once you stop paying attention.
  • Thespians in High School.
  • Spinning a wheel to figure out what emotion to feel.
  • Whether the yes and rule only works for comedy.
  • Pancakes. Are. Starchy.
  • Being late to your job that's on fire because you were stuck behind the fire truck.
  • Celebrating your own failures.
  • How to play Lemmings in 2024.
  • Self-esteem.
  • Immediately vibing with a new sport.
  • Autotuning except it's completely manual.
  • A bunch of joysticks that you twiddle with your fingers to do letters.
  • Colemak vs. Colemak DH.
  • Keyboards that are laid out in columns.
  • Splitting up the typing test into QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak.
  • Palm Pilot Graffiti.
  • The Lord's Prayer in Gregg.
  • Shorthand. (Originally called Briefhand.)
  • Good ciphers for room escape puzzles.
  • Are QR codes based on the mazes in Zelda 2?
  • Flaky sea salt vs. coarse sea salt.
  • Adding a biting experience to make your food more heterogeneous.
  • Edible chemistry.
  • The last time you pinched salt.
  • Audially-rewarding salt grinders.
  • Science Youtuber Hank Green.
  • Warning pregnant women to not eat too much salty licorice.
  • Supertaster-outing Tic Tacs that regular people love but supertasters immediately vomit.
  • We've got a level six kaiju supertaster on our hands!
  • The guy who gets paid too much to taste ice cream.
  • The kind of person who doesn't salt their food but instead repeatedly licks a salt lick throughout the meal.
  • Heads swirling around like snow globes.
  • A poem that doesn't do anything with line breaks but does do something interesting with sentence lengths.
  • A poem that you might read on a bathroom stall.
  • Wearing the little hat and pulling on the cord that makes the horn toot.
  • The ecology that grows around the dumpster.
  • The crane swinging porta potties around.
  • An extremely expensive way to have fun
  • Heading towards the era of having kids.
  • Asking for payment for software that is not being maintained.
  • Minesweeper but X.
  • An idea that is worth doing but not obviously worth doing.
  • How to make Missile Command fun in a new and interesting way.
  • A boxing essay with questionable authenticity.
  • Strategies for enjoying Frog Fractions.
  • Rangers and the new way they handle animals.
  • Yes-anding whatever ideas come to you.
  • Ancient primals that were interlocked in battle.
  • Someone thinking of an idea.
  • Constantly listening for cues.
  • What do inanimate objects do?
  • Buying a giant bag of googly eyes and putting them on everything.
  • Not posting on Twitter.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Taking Improv classes has been life changing.
  • Practicing 3 keyboard layouts at the same time
  • I bought store brand salt. You wouldn't think this would be a big deal but it turns out to be
  • I Once Snorted an Eight Ball with Santa, by Richie Zaborowske
  • Are all creative ideas very derivative, or is it just my ideas

Microtopics:

  • Pickleball.
  • Weird shapes the birdie flies in.
  • The sport that has level design.
  • Mindful breathing.
  • You are now breathing mindfully.
  • Looking forward to being at square one.
  • Getting the real data once you stop paying attention.
  • Thespians in High School.
  • Spinning a wheel to figure out what emotion to feel.
  • Whether the yes and rule only works for comedy.
  • Pancakes. Are. Starchy.
  • Being late to your job that's on fire because you were stuck behind the fire truck.
  • Celebrating your own failures.
  • How to play Lemmings in 2024.
  • Self-esteem.
  • Immediately vibing with a new sport.
  • Autotuning except it's completely manual.
  • A bunch of joysticks that you twiddle with your fingers to do letters.
  • Colemak vs. Colemak DH.
  • Keyboards that are laid out in columns.
  • Splitting up the typing test into QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak.
  • Palm Pilot Graffiti.
  • The Lord's Prayer in Gregg.
  • Shorthand. (Originally called Briefhand.)
  • Good ciphers for room escape puzzles.
  • Are QR codes based on the mazes in Zelda 2?
  • Flaky sea salt vs. coarse sea salt.
  • Adding a biting experience to make your food more heterogeneous.
  • Edible chemistry.
  • The last time you pinched salt.
  • Audially-rewarding salt grinders.
  • Science Youtuber Hank Green.
  • Warning pregnant women to not eat too much salty licorice.
  • Supertaster-outing Tic Tacs that regular people love but supertasters immediately vomit.
  • We've got a level six kaiju supertaster on our hands!
  • The guy who gets paid too much to taste ice cream.
  • The kind of person who doesn't salt their food but instead repeatedly licks a salt lick throughout the meal.
  • Heads swirling around like snow globes.
  • A poem that doesn't do anything with line breaks but does do something interesting with sentence lengths.
  • A poem that you might read on a bathroom stall.
  • Wearing the little hat and pulling on the cord that makes the horn toot.
  • The ecology that grows around the dumpster.
  • The crane swinging porta potties around.
  • An extremely expensive way to have fun
  • Heading towards the era of having kids.
  • Asking for payment for software that is not being maintained.
  • Minesweeper but X.
  • An idea that is worth doing but not obviously worth doing.
  • How to make Missile Command fun in a new and interesting way.
  • A boxing essay with questionable authenticity.
  • Strategies for enjoying Frog Fractions.
  • Rangers and the new way they handle animals.
  • Yes-anding whatever ideas come to you.
  • Ancient primals that were interlocked in battle.
  • Someone thinking of an idea.
  • Constantly listening for cues.
  • What do inanimate objects do?
  • Buying a giant bag of googly eyes and putting them on everything.
  • Not posting on Twitter.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+yczrmf1u ]]> Jim Stormdancer 231. Game: the Game and Music Experience https://topiclords.com/game-the-game-and-music-experience e195dcd0-a83a-4aec-8c91-43d906199bd0 Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jeff and Tyriq. We discuss writing jokes on the spot for impatient children, your favorite genre that you have no interest in making, High Sidin', Poetry, and every mammal's fish. 1:11:49 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Line of sight for the fog of war.
  • Plugging unplugging.
  • How to keep looking at TikTok when your phone is destroyed.
  • Telling your kid that Youtube broke.
  • Youtube videos that teach your child how to give a thumbs up.
  • Having more kids because it pays for itself.
  • Why did the princess have no dresses?
  • Explaining to a four year old about the $20 Sack Pyramid.
  • Weaning yourself off of saying /s by saying "wocka wocka" instead.
  • Teaching your kids better standards for comedy.
  • Snow White did this and then Belle was there and Ariel was there with her human legs.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but for making pie.
  • Looking up knock knock jokes online.
  • Your kid finding your secret hoard of popsicle sticks and realizing you didn't just make all those jokes up from your head.
  • Things you want to have made but don't want to make
  • Trying to surprise yourself with your own level design.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Whether game developers know when they're making a bad game.
  • Playtesting the shit out of a game because you enjoy playtesting so much.
  • Questionable hip hop.
  • Thrashy hyperpop.
  • Full-time access to a green screen and what it does to your head.
  • Comedy FMV games.
  • Making a career out of making bad art except it's funny and having to live with yourself.
  • Approachable game projects.
  • Pivoting from making an action RPG to making a Vampire Survivors clone in the space of a weekend.
  • Making a bunch of efforts and they're all terrible.
  • Whispering into a distortion pedal.
  • Putting your vocals through a bunch of effects pedals because your lyrics are terrible.
  • Enjoying an art creation process until you get too self conscious and ruin it.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Making art and never showing it to anybody.
  • A twin stick shooter that's just for me.
  • Game Heads.
  • Onlookers getting hyphy.
  • "Side Show" by 415.
  • Back when Oakland was in the 415 area code.
  • Turning tight ones.
  • Turning brodies in an intersection while commuters look at your 15-inch subwoofers.
  • Rogue car events.
  • Game: the Games and Music Experience.
  • A lowrider with the entirely wrong number of switches.
  • Whether Boots Riley and Too Short still live in Oakland.
  • Aspirational trailer music choices.
  • Car Stealth: drive around a corner and hide.
  • Missing Rock Band but not missing it enough to install Fortnite.
  • Initiating taunts in Fortnite by strumming the guitar controller.
  • The immovable critic twinkling his skin.
  • Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.
  • Poetry with a diss track vibe to it.
  • Good going, dumbass, you got into poetry.
  • Whether poetry should rhyme.
  • Discriminating against business documents.
  • Putting a poem on genius.com and adding a "wocka wocka" annotation after every joke.
  • Spending an hour searching for animal names followed by "fish"
  • Which fish have the thickest bones?
  • Buffalo Fish Wings.
  • A fish that is way too big and shaped like the letter D.
  • Is Beyonce a Nicki Minaj friends??
  • Grandma's big bowl of worsties.
  • Energy drinks that make you want to disassemble a clock radio.
  • Drinking C4.
  • The guy you know who always has at least three Red Bulls on him at all times.
  • Bringing home a one-of-a-kind Monet even though you know your roommate is a Monet fiend and will eat it immediately.
  • The Master P of devouring Kit Kats.
  • The Queen of Bites and Sips.
  • Your duty to eat snacks before they go bad.
  • Eating one marshmallow right now.
  • The shitposty garbage that made Twitter fun.
  • Here's some pants pooping jokes, wocka wocka.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Line of sight for the fog of war.
  • Plugging unplugging.
  • How to keep looking at TikTok when your phone is destroyed.
  • Telling your kid that Youtube broke.
  • Youtube videos that teach your child how to give a thumbs up.
  • Having more kids because it pays for itself.
  • Why did the princess have no dresses?
  • Explaining to a four year old about the $20 Sack Pyramid.
  • Weaning yourself off of saying /s by saying "wocka wocka" instead.
  • Teaching your kids better standards for comedy.
  • Snow White did this and then Belle was there and Ariel was there with her human legs.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but for making pie.
  • Looking up knock knock jokes online.
  • Your kid finding your secret hoard of popsicle sticks and realizing you didn't just make all those jokes up from your head.
  • Things you want to have made but don't want to make
  • Trying to surprise yourself with your own level design.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Whether game developers know when they're making a bad game.
  • Playtesting the shit out of a game because you enjoy playtesting so much.
  • Questionable hip hop.
  • Thrashy hyperpop.
  • Full-time access to a green screen and what it does to your head.
  • Comedy FMV games.
  • Making a career out of making bad art except it's funny and having to live with yourself.
  • Approachable game projects.
  • Pivoting from making an action RPG to making a Vampire Survivors clone in the space of a weekend.
  • Making a bunch of efforts and they're all terrible.
  • Whispering into a distortion pedal.
  • Putting your vocals through a bunch of effects pedals because your lyrics are terrible.
  • Enjoying an art creation process until you get too self conscious and ruin it.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Making art and never showing it to anybody.
  • A twin stick shooter that's just for me.
  • Game Heads.
  • Onlookers getting hyphy.
  • "Side Show" by 415.
  • Back when Oakland was in the 415 area code.
  • Turning tight ones.
  • Turning brodies in an intersection while commuters look at your 15-inch subwoofers.
  • Rogue car events.
  • Game: the Games and Music Experience.
  • A lowrider with the entirely wrong number of switches.
  • Whether Boots Riley and Too Short still live in Oakland.
  • Aspirational trailer music choices.
  • Car Stealth: drive around a corner and hide.
  • Missing Rock Band but not missing it enough to install Fortnite.
  • Initiating taunts in Fortnite by strumming the guitar controller.
  • The immovable critic twinkling his skin.
  • Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.
  • Poetry with a diss track vibe to it.
  • Good going, dumbass, you got into poetry.
  • Whether poetry should rhyme.
  • Discriminating against business documents.
  • Putting a poem on genius.com and adding a "wocka wocka" annotation after every joke.
  • Spending an hour searching for animal names followed by "fish"
  • Which fish have the thickest bones?
  • Buffalo Fish Wings.
  • A fish that is way too big and shaped like the letter D.
  • Is Beyonce a Nicki Minaj friends??
  • Grandma's big bowl of worsties.
  • Energy drinks that make you want to disassemble a clock radio.
  • Drinking C4.
  • The guy you know who always has at least three Red Bulls on him at all times.
  • Bringing home a one-of-a-kind Monet even though you know your roommate is a Monet fiend and will eat it immediately.
  • The Master P of devouring Kit Kats.
  • The Queen of Bites and Sips.
  • Your duty to eat snacks before they go bad.
  • Eating one marshmallow right now.
  • The shitposty garbage that made Twitter fun.
  • Here's some pants pooping jokes, wocka wocka.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Line of sight for the fog of war.
  • Plugging unplugging.
  • How to keep looking at TikTok when your phone is destroyed.
  • Telling your kid that Youtube broke.
  • Youtube videos that teach your child how to give a thumbs up.
  • Having more kids because it pays for itself.
  • Why did the princess have no dresses?
  • Explaining to a four year old about the $20 Sack Pyramid.
  • Weaning yourself off of saying /s by saying "wocka wocka" instead.
  • Teaching your kids better standards for comedy.
  • Snow White did this and then Belle was there and Ariel was there with her human legs.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but for making pie.
  • Looking up knock knock jokes online.
  • Your kid finding your secret hoard of popsicle sticks and realizing you didn't just make all those jokes up from your head.
  • Things you want to have made but don't want to make
  • Trying to surprise yourself with your own level design.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Whether game developers know when they're making a bad game.
  • Playtesting the shit out of a game because you enjoy playtesting so much.
  • Questionable hip hop.
  • Thrashy hyperpop.
  • Full-time access to a green screen and what it does to your head.
  • Comedy FMV games.
  • Making a career out of making bad art except it's funny and having to live with yourself.
  • Approachable game projects.
  • Pivoting from making an action RPG to making a Vampire Survivors clone in the space of a weekend.
  • Making a bunch of efforts and they're all terrible.
  • Whispering into a distortion pedal.
  • Putting your vocals through a bunch of effects pedals because your lyrics are terrible.
  • Enjoying an art creation process until you get too self conscious and ruin it.
  • Wallowing in the stuckness.
  • Making art and never showing it to anybody.
  • A twin stick shooter that's just for me.
  • Game Heads.
  • Onlookers getting hyphy.
  • "Side Show" by 415.
  • Back when Oakland was in the 415 area code.
  • Turning tight ones.
  • Turning brodies in an intersection while commuters look at your 15-inch subwoofers.
  • Rogue car events.
  • Game: the Games and Music Experience.
  • A lowrider with the entirely wrong number of switches.
  • Whether Boots Riley and Too Short still live in Oakland.
  • Aspirational trailer music choices.
  • Car Stealth: drive around a corner and hide.
  • Missing Rock Band but not missing it enough to install Fortnite.
  • Initiating taunts in Fortnite by strumming the guitar controller.
  • The immovable critic twinkling his skin.
  • Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.
  • Poetry with a diss track vibe to it.
  • Good going, dumbass, you got into poetry.
  • Whether poetry should rhyme.
  • Discriminating against business documents.
  • Putting a poem on genius.com and adding a "wocka wocka" annotation after every joke.
  • Spending an hour searching for animal names followed by "fish"
  • Which fish have the thickest bones?
  • Buffalo Fish Wings.
  • A fish that is way too big and shaped like the letter D.
  • Is Beyonce a Nicki Minaj friends??
  • Grandma's big bowl of worsties.
  • Energy drinks that make you want to disassemble a clock radio.
  • Drinking C4.
  • The guy you know who always has at least three Red Bulls on him at all times.
  • Bringing home a one-of-a-kind Monet even though you know your roommate is a Monet fiend and will eat it immediately.
  • The Master P of devouring Kit Kats.
  • The Queen of Bites and Sips.
  • Your duty to eat snacks before they go bad.
  • Eating one marshmallow right now.
  • The shitposty garbage that made Twitter fun.
  • Here's some pants pooping jokes, wocka wocka.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+o9jgj_dI ]]> Jim Stormdancer 230. What's God Even Made of Anymore? https://topiclords.com/whats-god-even-made-of-anymore 09cb08e1-bc25-47e4-9576-3e8fd9e6ec2c Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mike and Jake. We discuss what's next after cameras, disappearing mystery, preschool security practices, At the Feast in the Great Hall, by Ursula Leguin, and whether it's boring to talk about dreams. 1:13:38 true Lords:

  • Mike
  • Jake

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The great state of Maine.
  • A project you've been working on for a long time.
  • Inventing a game developer community in Michigan.
  • Meaningful distinguishers on normal camera use.
  • A lukewarm decisionmaking process.
  • Computational photography.
  • Samsung's fake moon.
  • A camera that just guesses what you want to see so you don't even need to take the photo.
  • A massive endless feed of the same photo with different people in it.
  • Why people use cameras.
  • Whether photos exist.
  • Late stages of the product category.
  • People who need Photoshop to do their job.
  • Photo mode in real life.
  • A photo you can take later.
  • Adding a filter to make the guy in the background less likable.
  • Meals for the Ages
  • How to get from here to perfect ubiquitous service surveillance.
  • Theatrically pretending to be hit by a stationary car.
  • Going to the Gallagher movie and getting sprayed with watermelon.
  • There's just the one Bigfoot, it's the same Bigfoot every time.
  • Tomato sauces that are still delicious even if you learned the recipe from the Internet and not from a grandma.
  • Mysterious things backing into the shadows so they can remain mysterious.
  • Protecting mystery wherever you find it.
  • The Museum of Jurassic Technology.
  • Stepping inside someone else's very strange brain.
  • Dawn Wall.
  • An intensely detailed exploration of the surface of a cliff.
  • I wonder what it's like on the fucking moon?
  • Who painted the iconic cover of the Wrinkle in Time paperback.
  • The shoot-em-up cabinet you saw in the canteen at the US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia before the first Liberian civil war and have never been able to find since.
  • A reaction to the lack of organic mystery in our lives.
  • The Case of the Missing Hit and Searching for Sugarman.
  • Wash over me, True Story.
  • Which phone checked the kid out of preschool.
  • Being on the list of services the insurance companies consider to have checked various boxes.
  • We got pins. We can do that.
  • The three bad four-digit pins.
  • Streamlining the process of rapidly accounting for all the children.
  • Developing a system that would deterministically move the needle in a useful way.
  • Blundering in the brightness.
  • Telling two events from the same perspective.
  • Ugly crying at your desk in a public workspace.
  • Spending way more time not alive than alive.
  • Something that we can experience on either side of our lives.
  • A Fire Take from Jake.
  • Waiter stress dreams.
  • A skill that you can hone.
  • One of the more fun channels in the discord.
  • Holding an increasingly large bag of stuff.
  • Waking up laughing until you realize your dream was not funny.
  • The consciousness wall between you and visualization.
  • Training yourself to let your mental imagery be visible.
  • Seeing clumps of color and interpreting them.
  • Doing an editing pass on your dreams before relating it to your friends.
  • Jay-Z's favorite bleu cheese Milkshakes.
  • Screwball horror.
  • A splash of furry content.
]]> Lords:

  • Mike
  • Jake

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The great state of Maine.
  • A project you've been working on for a long time.
  • Inventing a game developer community in Michigan.
  • Meaningful distinguishers on normal camera use.
  • A lukewarm decisionmaking process.
  • Computational photography.
  • Samsung's fake moon.
  • A camera that just guesses what you want to see so you don't even need to take the photo.
  • A massive endless feed of the same photo with different people in it.
  • Why people use cameras.
  • Whether photos exist.
  • Late stages of the product category.
  • People who need Photoshop to do their job.
  • Photo mode in real life.
  • A photo you can take later.
  • Adding a filter to make the guy in the background less likable.
  • Meals for the Ages
  • How to get from here to perfect ubiquitous service surveillance.
  • Theatrically pretending to be hit by a stationary car.
  • Going to the Gallagher movie and getting sprayed with watermelon.
  • There's just the one Bigfoot, it's the same Bigfoot every time.
  • Tomato sauces that are still delicious even if you learned the recipe from the Internet and not from a grandma.
  • Mysterious things backing into the shadows so they can remain mysterious.
  • Protecting mystery wherever you find it.
  • The Museum of Jurassic Technology.
  • Stepping inside someone else's very strange brain.
  • Dawn Wall.
  • An intensely detailed exploration of the surface of a cliff.
  • I wonder what it's like on the fucking moon?
  • Who painted the iconic cover of the Wrinkle in Time paperback.
  • The shoot-em-up cabinet you saw in the canteen at the US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia before the first Liberian civil war and have never been able to find since.
  • A reaction to the lack of organic mystery in our lives.
  • The Case of the Missing Hit and Searching for Sugarman.
  • Wash over me, True Story.
  • Which phone checked the kid out of preschool.
  • Being on the list of services the insurance companies consider to have checked various boxes.
  • We got pins. We can do that.
  • The three bad four-digit pins.
  • Streamlining the process of rapidly accounting for all the children.
  • Developing a system that would deterministically move the needle in a useful way.
  • Blundering in the brightness.
  • Telling two events from the same perspective.
  • Ugly crying at your desk in a public workspace.
  • Spending way more time not alive than alive.
  • Something that we can experience on either side of our lives.
  • A Fire Take from Jake.
  • Waiter stress dreams.
  • A skill that you can hone.
  • One of the more fun channels in the discord.
  • Holding an increasingly large bag of stuff.
  • Waking up laughing until you realize your dream was not funny.
  • The consciousness wall between you and visualization.
  • Training yourself to let your mental imagery be visible.
  • Seeing clumps of color and interpreting them.
  • Doing an editing pass on your dreams before relating it to your friends.
  • Jay-Z's favorite bleu cheese Milkshakes.
  • Screwball horror.
  • A splash of furry content.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Mike
  • Jake

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The great state of Maine.
  • A project you've been working on for a long time.
  • Inventing a game developer community in Michigan.
  • Meaningful distinguishers on normal camera use.
  • A lukewarm decisionmaking process.
  • Computational photography.
  • Samsung's fake moon.
  • A camera that just guesses what you want to see so you don't even need to take the photo.
  • A massive endless feed of the same photo with different people in it.
  • Why people use cameras.
  • Whether photos exist.
  • Late stages of the product category.
  • People who need Photoshop to do their job.
  • Photo mode in real life.
  • A photo you can take later.
  • Adding a filter to make the guy in the background less likable.
  • Meals for the Ages
  • How to get from here to perfect ubiquitous service surveillance.
  • Theatrically pretending to be hit by a stationary car.
  • Going to the Gallagher movie and getting sprayed with watermelon.
  • There's just the one Bigfoot, it's the same Bigfoot every time.
  • Tomato sauces that are still delicious even if you learned the recipe from the Internet and not from a grandma.
  • Mysterious things backing into the shadows so they can remain mysterious.
  • Protecting mystery wherever you find it.
  • The Museum of Jurassic Technology.
  • Stepping inside someone else's very strange brain.
  • Dawn Wall.
  • An intensely detailed exploration of the surface of a cliff.
  • I wonder what it's like on the fucking moon?
  • Who painted the iconic cover of the Wrinkle in Time paperback.
  • The shoot-em-up cabinet you saw in the canteen at the US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia before the first Liberian civil war and have never been able to find since.
  • A reaction to the lack of organic mystery in our lives.
  • The Case of the Missing Hit and Searching for Sugarman.
  • Wash over me, True Story.
  • Which phone checked the kid out of preschool.
  • Being on the list of services the insurance companies consider to have checked various boxes.
  • We got pins. We can do that.
  • The three bad four-digit pins.
  • Streamlining the process of rapidly accounting for all the children.
  • Developing a system that would deterministically move the needle in a useful way.
  • Blundering in the brightness.
  • Telling two events from the same perspective.
  • Ugly crying at your desk in a public workspace.
  • Spending way more time not alive than alive.
  • Something that we can experience on either side of our lives.
  • A Fire Take from Jake.
  • Waiter stress dreams.
  • A skill that you can hone.
  • One of the more fun channels in the discord.
  • Holding an increasingly large bag of stuff.
  • Waking up laughing until you realize your dream was not funny.
  • The consciousness wall between you and visualization.
  • Training yourself to let your mental imagery be visible.
  • Seeing clumps of color and interpreting them.
  • Doing an editing pass on your dreams before relating it to your friends.
  • Jay-Z's favorite bleu cheese Milkshakes.
  • Screwball horror.
  • A splash of furry content.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+SFdaUtrU ]]> Jim Stormdancer 229. This Show Now Available on Cockroach DNA https://topiclords.com/this-show-now-available-on-cockroach-dna f95abfd9-6c0a-42d3-8622-e18754efa425 Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Megan and Lexi. We dicsuss Erik Satie's performance indications, instant food from other cultures, seasonal decorations, Delhi Metro, becoming immortal by being predictable, and living in different climates. 54:40 true Lords:

  • Megan
  • Lexi

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Music implementation for The Lamplighters League.
  • Watching a streamer play games and asking them for a turn at the controls.
  • How to pronounce "Erik Satie."
  • How to pronounce "Gymnopedies."
  • Finding 100 umbrellas in your dead friend's apartment.
  • A list of Satie's performance indications.
  • Grandly forgetting the present.
  • With your bones dry and distant.
  • Playing music with your forehead.
  • Doing something to a piano.
  • Your boss sending a memo asking you to work with a shy piety.
  • Pizzicato vs. Bartok pizzicato.
  • Adding the hamburger so it's not just Helper.
  • What instant foods are missing from your food vocabulary.
  • Adding heavy cream to ramen broth.
  • Getting an apron so you can have a little costume when you cook.
  • Realizing that when you wear the apron you don't get food on your shirt.
  • A big bib for Big Jim.
  • Normalizing scoop bibs.
  • Kraft Dinner.
  • Halal certified instant stir fry noodles.
  • Ramen in a cup or ramen where you provide your own container.
  • Insurance Mac.
  • Canned cheeseburgers.
  • A boring house with nothing on it.
  • Movable feasts.
  • Keeping those 12-foot skeletons in your yard and decorating it seasonally.
  • The beetles that clean bones for you.
  • Recreational Explosives Day.
  • A Zachtronics programming puzzle for every holiday.
  • A movable feast where you don't eat.
  • Decorating your house to celebrate Toyotathon.
  • Falling for strangers and their blue hair.
  • A poem that is long if you read it but short if you recite it.
  • Taking public transit as an act of defiance.
  • A gift that is impossible to give yourself on purpose.
  • Inventing a shower proof phone so nobody ever has shower thoughts again.
  • Putting your phone in a Ziploc bag and watching movies underwater.
  • Sitting down at your computer and getting stuck.
  • Hacking your executive function by adding friction in the right places.
  • Whether Wellbutrin gives everyone tinnitus or just you.
  • Death hacks for staying mentally connected to your dead relatives.
  • A service that puts your podcast on vinyl.
  • Using CRISPR to infect the cockroach population with 229 episodes of Topic Lords.
  • Moving to a land where your snot doesn't freeze.
  • Not trusting your own weather opinions.
  • Surprising yourself by enjoying seasons.
  • Driving in icy conditions.
  • Standing under the heated lamps like a lizard.
  • Waiting for the bus in the dark.
  • Learning to drive after you move to a city with public transit.
  • Not driving with kids.
  • Getting rid of all the bots.
  • Sgt. Pepper Bot.
]]> Lords:

  • Megan
  • Lexi

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Music implementation for The Lamplighters League.
  • Watching a streamer play games and asking them for a turn at the controls.
  • How to pronounce "Erik Satie."
  • How to pronounce "Gymnopedies."
  • Finding 100 umbrellas in your dead friend's apartment.
  • A list of Satie's performance indications.
  • Grandly forgetting the present.
  • With your bones dry and distant.
  • Playing music with your forehead.
  • Doing something to a piano.
  • Your boss sending a memo asking you to work with a shy piety.
  • Pizzicato vs. Bartok pizzicato.
  • Adding the hamburger so it's not just Helper.
  • What instant foods are missing from your food vocabulary.
  • Adding heavy cream to ramen broth.
  • Getting an apron so you can have a little costume when you cook.
  • Realizing that when you wear the apron you don't get food on your shirt.
  • A big bib for Big Jim.
  • Normalizing scoop bibs.
  • Kraft Dinner.
  • Halal certified instant stir fry noodles.
  • Ramen in a cup or ramen where you provide your own container.
  • Insurance Mac.
  • Canned cheeseburgers.
  • A boring house with nothing on it.
  • Movable feasts.
  • Keeping those 12-foot skeletons in your yard and decorating it seasonally.
  • The beetles that clean bones for you.
  • Recreational Explosives Day.
  • A Zachtronics programming puzzle for every holiday.
  • A movable feast where you don't eat.
  • Decorating your house to celebrate Toyotathon.
  • Falling for strangers and their blue hair.
  • A poem that is long if you read it but short if you recite it.
  • Taking public transit as an act of defiance.
  • A gift that is impossible to give yourself on purpose.
  • Inventing a shower proof phone so nobody ever has shower thoughts again.
  • Putting your phone in a Ziploc bag and watching movies underwater.
  • Sitting down at your computer and getting stuck.
  • Hacking your executive function by adding friction in the right places.
  • Whether Wellbutrin gives everyone tinnitus or just you.
  • Death hacks for staying mentally connected to your dead relatives.
  • A service that puts your podcast on vinyl.
  • Using CRISPR to infect the cockroach population with 229 episodes of Topic Lords.
  • Moving to a land where your snot doesn't freeze.
  • Not trusting your own weather opinions.
  • Surprising yourself by enjoying seasons.
  • Driving in icy conditions.
  • Standing under the heated lamps like a lizard.
  • Waiting for the bus in the dark.
  • Learning to drive after you move to a city with public transit.
  • Not driving with kids.
  • Getting rid of all the bots.
  • Sgt. Pepper Bot.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Megan
  • Lexi

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Music implementation for The Lamplighters League.
  • Watching a streamer play games and asking them for a turn at the controls.
  • How to pronounce "Erik Satie."
  • How to pronounce "Gymnopedies."
  • Finding 100 umbrellas in your dead friend's apartment.
  • A list of Satie's performance indications.
  • Grandly forgetting the present.
  • With your bones dry and distant.
  • Playing music with your forehead.
  • Doing something to a piano.
  • Your boss sending a memo asking you to work with a shy piety.
  • Pizzicato vs. Bartok pizzicato.
  • Adding the hamburger so it's not just Helper.
  • What instant foods are missing from your food vocabulary.
  • Adding heavy cream to ramen broth.
  • Getting an apron so you can have a little costume when you cook.
  • Realizing that when you wear the apron you don't get food on your shirt.
  • A big bib for Big Jim.
  • Normalizing scoop bibs.
  • Kraft Dinner.
  • Halal certified instant stir fry noodles.
  • Ramen in a cup or ramen where you provide your own container.
  • Insurance Mac.
  • Canned cheeseburgers.
  • A boring house with nothing on it.
  • Movable feasts.
  • Keeping those 12-foot skeletons in your yard and decorating it seasonally.
  • The beetles that clean bones for you.
  • Recreational Explosives Day.
  • A Zachtronics programming puzzle for every holiday.
  • A movable feast where you don't eat.
  • Decorating your house to celebrate Toyotathon.
  • Falling for strangers and their blue hair.
  • A poem that is long if you read it but short if you recite it.
  • Taking public transit as an act of defiance.
  • A gift that is impossible to give yourself on purpose.
  • Inventing a shower proof phone so nobody ever has shower thoughts again.
  • Putting your phone in a Ziploc bag and watching movies underwater.
  • Sitting down at your computer and getting stuck.
  • Hacking your executive function by adding friction in the right places.
  • Whether Wellbutrin gives everyone tinnitus or just you.
  • Death hacks for staying mentally connected to your dead relatives.
  • A service that puts your podcast on vinyl.
  • Using CRISPR to infect the cockroach population with 229 episodes of Topic Lords.
  • Moving to a land where your snot doesn't freeze.
  • Not trusting your own weather opinions.
  • Surprising yourself by enjoying seasons.
  • Driving in icy conditions.
  • Standing under the heated lamps like a lizard.
  • Waiting for the bus in the dark.
  • Learning to drive after you move to a city with public transit.
  • Not driving with kids.
  • Getting rid of all the bots.
  • Sgt. Pepper Bot.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+o1Q_w8yN ]]> Jim Stormdancer 228. Detecting Myself as Spam https://topiclords.com/detecting-myself-as-spam d8cdd8a4-e918-4281-89fd-dfe65a7f00e8 Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Fif and Mitch. We discuss the Ace Attorney series' naming conventions, the kissing mechanic in Bully, Podcast Prep Sheet, the Tay Bridge Disaster, the user interface in Bully, and comments asking "why did the algorithm recommend this to me" 1:10:47 true Lords:

  • Fif
  • Mitch

Topics:

  • The Ace Attorney series' English localization's naming conventions
  • The kissing mechanic in Bully represents both what is genius and terrible about the game
  • Podcast Prep Sheet Trending Guests and Topics
  • The Tay Bridge Disaster
  • No but seriously what the hell is up with the user interface in Bully. I assume it's just a Rockstar thing? I'm only into Bully so it is a mystery
  • Comments that say "why did the algorithm recommend this to me"

Microtopics:

  • Two handfuls of times.
  • Something very fivey about hands.
  • Dependability and a detail-oriented nature.
  • Putting your resume in the show notes.
  • Naming your kid a list of two things.
  • A story taking place in a Los Angeles that is a satire of near future Japan.
  • Naming games after verbs.
  • Mario Push Button.
  • The Haiku-detecting tumblr bot.
  • Imagining an opinion and searching for someone who has it so you can yell at them.
  • All the time we have for Topic Lords.
  • Kissing a kissable person. (They have kissability.)
  • A dress-up fashion thing.
  • Wearing a reindeer patterned jumper to reduce your kissability.
  • Applying triple-A polish to a boarding school setting.
  • Dorms in a castle.
  • Hey, nice face.
  • Demographics based on what classes you have to take to kiss members of the demographic.
  • Dressing in real life like you do in a Grand Theft Auto game.
  • The one character in the entire GTA series that cares about the clothes you wear.
  • Secrets Behind the Suite: Unveiling the Hidden World behind Luxury Hotels.
  • Eco-friendly or Eco-fail?
  • Law and Disorder: how TV crime shows get it wrong.
  • Sending an email to yourself and it gets detected as spam.
  • The friend who has a lot of opinions about Homestuck.
  • Making your hearts for to quail.
  • Poems including civil engineering advice.
  • Good vs. bad nonsense poems.
  • A fun poem to read.
  • Paying money to engage with content.
  • Deliberately slipping on a banana peel.
  • What it says about hitting in the Banana Rules.
  • School administrators publishing statistics on how many banana peels you've slipped on.
  • Skyrim spoiling the presence of robots on the stats screen.
  • Watching what players do and rewarding every action they take.
  • A good video game is a game that has three good stats screens and no bad stats screens.
  • Having a question in your head and not knowing who to ask so you ask the person in front of you.
  • Youtube koans.
  • Showing content to someone who will be not that jazzed about it.
  • Youtube recommending a let's-play from a year ago with 10 views.
  • A PMV of the character you are obsessed with.
  • The only person who takes a the Youtube Creator Surveys.
  • Constantly deleting the shorts.
  • Posting a tweet to youtube.com.
  • Posting a link to your own videos on Youtube.
  • Community captions and what happened to them.
  • Doing annotations dirty.
  • Nekoneko.
  • Comments popping up and scrolling across the screen constantly.
  • Listening to a cassette tape you dug up in the desert.
]]> Lords:

  • Fif
  • Mitch

Topics:

  • The Ace Attorney series' English localization's naming conventions
  • The kissing mechanic in Bully represents both what is genius and terrible about the game
  • Podcast Prep Sheet Trending Guests and Topics
  • The Tay Bridge Disaster
  • No but seriously what the hell is up with the user interface in Bully. I assume it's just a Rockstar thing? I'm only into Bully so it is a mystery
  • Comments that say "why did the algorithm recommend this to me"

Microtopics:

  • Two handfuls of times.
  • Something very fivey about hands.
  • Dependability and a detail-oriented nature.
  • Putting your resume in the show notes.
  • Naming your kid a list of two things.
  • A story taking place in a Los Angeles that is a satire of near future Japan.
  • Naming games after verbs.
  • Mario Push Button.
  • The Haiku-detecting tumblr bot.
  • Imagining an opinion and searching for someone who has it so you can yell at them.
  • All the time we have for Topic Lords.
  • Kissing a kissable person. (They have kissability.)
  • A dress-up fashion thing.
  • Wearing a reindeer patterned jumper to reduce your kissability.
  • Applying triple-A polish to a boarding school setting.
  • Dorms in a castle.
  • Hey, nice face.
  • Demographics based on what classes you have to take to kiss members of the demographic.
  • Dressing in real life like you do in a Grand Theft Auto game.
  • The one character in the entire GTA series that cares about the clothes you wear.
  • Secrets Behind the Suite: Unveiling the Hidden World behind Luxury Hotels.
  • Eco-friendly or Eco-fail?
  • Law and Disorder: how TV crime shows get it wrong.
  • Sending an email to yourself and it gets detected as spam.
  • The friend who has a lot of opinions about Homestuck.
  • Making your hearts for to quail.
  • Poems including civil engineering advice.
  • Good vs. bad nonsense poems.
  • A fun poem to read.
  • Paying money to engage with content.
  • Deliberately slipping on a banana peel.
  • What it says about hitting in the Banana Rules.
  • School administrators publishing statistics on how many banana peels you've slipped on.
  • Skyrim spoiling the presence of robots on the stats screen.
  • Watching what players do and rewarding every action they take.
  • A good video game is a game that has three good stats screens and no bad stats screens.
  • Having a question in your head and not knowing who to ask so you ask the person in front of you.
  • Youtube koans.
  • Showing content to someone who will be not that jazzed about it.
  • Youtube recommending a let's-play from a year ago with 10 views.
  • A PMV of the character you are obsessed with.
  • The only person who takes a the Youtube Creator Surveys.
  • Constantly deleting the shorts.
  • Posting a tweet to youtube.com.
  • Posting a link to your own videos on Youtube.
  • Community captions and what happened to them.
  • Doing annotations dirty.
  • Nekoneko.
  • Comments popping up and scrolling across the screen constantly.
  • Listening to a cassette tape you dug up in the desert.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Fif
  • Mitch

Topics:

  • The Ace Attorney series' English localization's naming conventions
  • The kissing mechanic in Bully represents both what is genius and terrible about the game
  • Podcast Prep Sheet Trending Guests and Topics
  • The Tay Bridge Disaster
  • No but seriously what the hell is up with the user interface in Bully. I assume it's just a Rockstar thing? I'm only into Bully so it is a mystery
  • Comments that say "why did the algorithm recommend this to me"

Microtopics:

  • Two handfuls of times.
  • Something very fivey about hands.
  • Dependability and a detail-oriented nature.
  • Putting your resume in the show notes.
  • Naming your kid a list of two things.
  • A story taking place in a Los Angeles that is a satire of near future Japan.
  • Naming games after verbs.
  • Mario Push Button.
  • The Haiku-detecting tumblr bot.
  • Imagining an opinion and searching for someone who has it so you can yell at them.
  • All the time we have for Topic Lords.
  • Kissing a kissable person. (They have kissability.)
  • A dress-up fashion thing.
  • Wearing a reindeer patterned jumper to reduce your kissability.
  • Applying triple-A polish to a boarding school setting.
  • Dorms in a castle.
  • Hey, nice face.
  • Demographics based on what classes you have to take to kiss members of the demographic.
  • Dressing in real life like you do in a Grand Theft Auto game.
  • The one character in the entire GTA series that cares about the clothes you wear.
  • Secrets Behind the Suite: Unveiling the Hidden World behind Luxury Hotels.
  • Eco-friendly or Eco-fail?
  • Law and Disorder: how TV crime shows get it wrong.
  • Sending an email to yourself and it gets detected as spam.
  • The friend who has a lot of opinions about Homestuck.
  • Making your hearts for to quail.
  • Poems including civil engineering advice.
  • Good vs. bad nonsense poems.
  • A fun poem to read.
  • Paying money to engage with content.
  • Deliberately slipping on a banana peel.
  • What it says about hitting in the Banana Rules.
  • School administrators publishing statistics on how many banana peels you've slipped on.
  • Skyrim spoiling the presence of robots on the stats screen.
  • Watching what players do and rewarding every action they take.
  • A good video game is a game that has three good stats screens and no bad stats screens.
  • Having a question in your head and not knowing who to ask so you ask the person in front of you.
  • Youtube koans.
  • Showing content to someone who will be not that jazzed about it.
  • Youtube recommending a let's-play from a year ago with 10 views.
  • A PMV of the character you are obsessed with.
  • The only person who takes a the Youtube Creator Surveys.
  • Constantly deleting the shorts.
  • Posting a tweet to youtube.com.
  • Posting a link to your own videos on Youtube.
  • Community captions and what happened to them.
  • Doing annotations dirty.
  • Nekoneko.
  • Comments popping up and scrolling across the screen constantly.
  • Listening to a cassette tape you dug up in the desert.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+p5wQqTxv ]]> Jim Stormdancer 227. Maximal Overlap With the Dork https://topiclords.com/maximal-overlap-with-the-dork 46cc7ef6-74d0-4098-b402-5bdf5ca5a3d1 Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Kory. We discuss Mystery Hunt 2024, developing your first video game, wearing glasses to prevent COVID, English Ending Song by Ryoji Yoshitomi, and how to make satisfying non-violent gameplay 1:13:21 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Letting go of concepts of yourself that you believe.
  • Losing a concept of yourself as a person and just becoming free-floating thoughts.
  • 47 year old house painters.
  • Growing up to be a pluripotent human being.
  • Finding cool and positive Internet spaces to hang out in.
  • Excavating old Bubsy memorabilia.
  • Checking the maps on your telephone.
  • Defining yourself as someone who doesn't eat free cheese samples.
  • Scientists researching how to be cool and cringe at the same time.
  • 2023 Game of the Year Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Protocols and processes that presume that if you are good at solving puzzles then you must also be good at designing puzzles.
  • The humble beginnings of the MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Puzzle Inflation.
  • Instant stooging.
  • People who are obligated to prevent their children from dying.
  • Server migration problems.
  • Accidentally writing the same puzzle as someone else.
  • Premium content for listeners who want to subscribe.
  • Putting sprites on the screen and accepting controller input.
  • Game design by proxy.
  • Your local Barcade with a Pico-8 cabinet.
  • Buttoning up a game to make it a shippable product.
  • Whether the knife is detecting a dork.
  • Butter golems.
  • Bugs that make games more fun.
  • Building a high end gaming PC and only running Pico-8 on it
  • I can't believe they buttered Jorts!
  • Meeting the guy who runs the Indie Arcade at Magfest.
  • Waiting 40 years for opportunities to fall in your lap.
  • Think Buick.
  • A cat that is not on the show.
  • Of all the exposed mucus membranes on your face, the eyes are two of them.
  • Projectile transmission.
  • Did this COVID infection rate study control for popularity?
  • Hitting 40 and embracing the cringe.
  • Wearing chemistry goggles in public.
  • Myopic basketball players.
  • Things you can put on your face to look like a superhero in disguise.
  • The Wario Land 4 soundtrack.
  • Making ogg vorbis rips of the Wario Land 4 soundtrack to put on Napster.
  • A gem of a poem to be hidden in a Wario game.
  • Playing back vocals with single-syllable samples.
  • Our collective dream diary.
  • Your dreams melting into your pillow with all the dust mites.
  • Everything is impermanent, especially video games.
  • A shocking removal of an important human from your life.
  • Making your peace with the time you have forgotten.
  • The natural high you get from blowing things up.
  • Throwing apples at a Snorlax until it wakes up.
  • Cooking games.
  • Matching happy looking fruits of different sizes.
  • Watching carefully as two peaches slide together.
  • Designing video games for 5-year olds on T.
  • Dropping things that merge in a two dimensional space with gravity.
  • The boy has two dads.
  • What can I do that is nonviolent and crunchy and interesting and solvable?
  • Looking for inspiration outside of video games.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Letting go of concepts of yourself that you believe.
  • Losing a concept of yourself as a person and just becoming free-floating thoughts.
  • 47 year old house painters.
  • Growing up to be a pluripotent human being.
  • Finding cool and positive Internet spaces to hang out in.
  • Excavating old Bubsy memorabilia.
  • Checking the maps on your telephone.
  • Defining yourself as someone who doesn't eat free cheese samples.
  • Scientists researching how to be cool and cringe at the same time.
  • 2023 Game of the Year Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Protocols and processes that presume that if you are good at solving puzzles then you must also be good at designing puzzles.
  • The humble beginnings of the MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Puzzle Inflation.
  • Instant stooging.
  • People who are obligated to prevent their children from dying.
  • Server migration problems.
  • Accidentally writing the same puzzle as someone else.
  • Premium content for listeners who want to subscribe.
  • Putting sprites on the screen and accepting controller input.
  • Game design by proxy.
  • Your local Barcade with a Pico-8 cabinet.
  • Buttoning up a game to make it a shippable product.
  • Whether the knife is detecting a dork.
  • Butter golems.
  • Bugs that make games more fun.
  • Building a high end gaming PC and only running Pico-8 on it
  • I can't believe they buttered Jorts!
  • Meeting the guy who runs the Indie Arcade at Magfest.
  • Waiting 40 years for opportunities to fall in your lap.
  • Think Buick.
  • A cat that is not on the show.
  • Of all the exposed mucus membranes on your face, the eyes are two of them.
  • Projectile transmission.
  • Did this COVID infection rate study control for popularity?
  • Hitting 40 and embracing the cringe.
  • Wearing chemistry goggles in public.
  • Myopic basketball players.
  • Things you can put on your face to look like a superhero in disguise.
  • The Wario Land 4 soundtrack.
  • Making ogg vorbis rips of the Wario Land 4 soundtrack to put on Napster.
  • A gem of a poem to be hidden in a Wario game.
  • Playing back vocals with single-syllable samples.
  • Our collective dream diary.
  • Your dreams melting into your pillow with all the dust mites.
  • Everything is impermanent, especially video games.
  • A shocking removal of an important human from your life.
  • Making your peace with the time you have forgotten.
  • The natural high you get from blowing things up.
  • Throwing apples at a Snorlax until it wakes up.
  • Cooking games.
  • Matching happy looking fruits of different sizes.
  • Watching carefully as two peaches slide together.
  • Designing video games for 5-year olds on T.
  • Dropping things that merge in a two dimensional space with gravity.
  • The boy has two dads.
  • What can I do that is nonviolent and crunchy and interesting and solvable?
  • Looking for inspiration outside of video games.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Letting go of concepts of yourself that you believe.
  • Losing a concept of yourself as a person and just becoming free-floating thoughts.
  • 47 year old house painters.
  • Growing up to be a pluripotent human being.
  • Finding cool and positive Internet spaces to hang out in.
  • Excavating old Bubsy memorabilia.
  • Checking the maps on your telephone.
  • Defining yourself as someone who doesn't eat free cheese samples.
  • Scientists researching how to be cool and cringe at the same time.
  • 2023 Game of the Year Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Protocols and processes that presume that if you are good at solving puzzles then you must also be good at designing puzzles.
  • The humble beginnings of the MIT Mystery Hunt.
  • Puzzle Inflation.
  • Instant stooging.
  • People who are obligated to prevent their children from dying.
  • Server migration problems.
  • Accidentally writing the same puzzle as someone else.
  • Premium content for listeners who want to subscribe.
  • Putting sprites on the screen and accepting controller input.
  • Game design by proxy.
  • Your local Barcade with a Pico-8 cabinet.
  • Buttoning up a game to make it a shippable product.
  • Whether the knife is detecting a dork.
  • Butter golems.
  • Bugs that make games more fun.
  • Building a high end gaming PC and only running Pico-8 on it
  • I can't believe they buttered Jorts!
  • Meeting the guy who runs the Indie Arcade at Magfest.
  • Waiting 40 years for opportunities to fall in your lap.
  • Think Buick.
  • A cat that is not on the show.
  • Of all the exposed mucus membranes on your face, the eyes are two of them.
  • Projectile transmission.
  • Did this COVID infection rate study control for popularity?
  • Hitting 40 and embracing the cringe.
  • Wearing chemistry goggles in public.
  • Myopic basketball players.
  • Things you can put on your face to look like a superhero in disguise.
  • The Wario Land 4 soundtrack.
  • Making ogg vorbis rips of the Wario Land 4 soundtrack to put on Napster.
  • A gem of a poem to be hidden in a Wario game.
  • Playing back vocals with single-syllable samples.
  • Our collective dream diary.
  • Your dreams melting into your pillow with all the dust mites.
  • Everything is impermanent, especially video games.
  • A shocking removal of an important human from your life.
  • Making your peace with the time you have forgotten.
  • The natural high you get from blowing things up.
  • Throwing apples at a Snorlax until it wakes up.
  • Cooking games.
  • Matching happy looking fruits of different sizes.
  • Watching carefully as two peaches slide together.
  • Designing video games for 5-year olds on T.
  • Dropping things that merge in a two dimensional space with gravity.
  • The boy has two dads.
  • What can I do that is nonviolent and crunchy and interesting and solvable?
  • Looking for inspiration outside of video games.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+I600Nrlt ]]> Jim Stormdancer 226. Ilk-Action Lawsuit https://topiclords.com/ilk-action-lawsuit 5b8c1569-66c1-4426-87b1-4faf363b5312 Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ryan and Alexander. We discuss getting so agitated that you cook dinner, acquired tastes that are worth acquiring, texturally enhanced alternative beverage, and Bagme Bloma. 1:08:29 true Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Alexander

Topics:

  • Getting so agitated that you cook dinner
  • What's an acquired taste that's worth acquiring? What's one that's not worth the effort? What's the point of even "acquiring" a taste for anything when there are probably infinite options you don't have to teach yourself to enjoy?
  • Texturally enhanced alternative beverage
  • Bagme Bloma

Microtopics:

  • How the science gets done.
  • Measuring the height of a flagpole by measuring its shadow.
  • Using calculus to find the surface area of a potato.
  • Measuring and re-measuring until you get the result you want.
  • Confronting your professor about their involvement in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Country and Western music fused with synth heavy prog rock.
  • Using the gun to parallel park.
  • That time Ryan died while recording Topic Lords.
  • Getting so agitated that you do some differential equations.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who whenever he thinks about death he has to make a sandwich.
  • The first step towards rejecting a task: assessing the task.
  • Today is a good day to fill your Prius with snakes.
  • The Raccoon Prius story.
  • Hilarious mothers.
  • The inside of a Prius: nothing but corners.
  • Officer, it's not what you think. No, not that either.
  • Putting the AC on so the python in the back seat gets sluggish.
  • Getting a fork and spoon and twirling up snakes like spaghetti.
  • A taste worth busting your ass for.
  • An oral history of tricking alcohol post your tongue.
  • An entire generation that has never had to work to enjoy things because there are so many things that are easy to enjoy.
  • Twelve year olds from Alabama calling you a cuck.
  • New ideas that you haven't been thinking of even without looking at your phone.
  • Hiking: it's just hard walking.
  • Getting so agitated that you developed a taste for hiking.
  • The guy in the Fred Meyer buying Reese's cups while wearing a tuxedo.
  • The Men's Wearhome.
  • The Men's Wearhouse employee who is not allowed to tell you that they don't have anything for fat people so he brings out less and less flattering outfits until you take the hint.
  • Orbitz. (The soft drink from 1996.)
  • A proto-boba.
  • Drinking a random test tube from a bioengineering lab.
  • What if everyone had a number floating above their heads that represented the number of times they had to drink Orbitz before they developed a taste for Orbitz and now that Orbitz is out of production everyone's number stays the same forever
  • Big Dick's Energy.
  • Flavor-blasted slushies.
  • The sense-horror of drinking an Orbitz.
  • Shelf-stable tapioca pearls.
  • A free-to-play game for your tongue.
  • Texturally subdued beverages.
  • Decaf Red Bull.
  • The hypothetical beverage enthusiast who wants a decaf Red Bull.
  • How to make Orbitz in your toilet.
  • How many Orbitz you have to drink to reach Nirvana.
  • eBay sellers insisting that you don't drink the thirty year old novelty beverage they're selling you.
  • Thinking a poem is a Middle Earth thing but it's actually a regular Earth thing.
  • Poetry that is alliterative rather than rhyming.
  • Making art by fucking around with a new medium.
  • Music in a foreign language.
  • What Simlish sounds like in different languages.
  • A quest to discover why they started dotting the letter Y.
  • Expecting scrolls in 3 to 5 days.
]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Alexander

Topics:

  • Getting so agitated that you cook dinner
  • What's an acquired taste that's worth acquiring? What's one that's not worth the effort? What's the point of even "acquiring" a taste for anything when there are probably infinite options you don't have to teach yourself to enjoy?
  • Texturally enhanced alternative beverage
  • Bagme Bloma

Microtopics:

  • How the science gets done.
  • Measuring the height of a flagpole by measuring its shadow.
  • Using calculus to find the surface area of a potato.
  • Measuring and re-measuring until you get the result you want.
  • Confronting your professor about their involvement in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Country and Western music fused with synth heavy prog rock.
  • Using the gun to parallel park.
  • That time Ryan died while recording Topic Lords.
  • Getting so agitated that you do some differential equations.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who whenever he thinks about death he has to make a sandwich.
  • The first step towards rejecting a task: assessing the task.
  • Today is a good day to fill your Prius with snakes.
  • The Raccoon Prius story.
  • Hilarious mothers.
  • The inside of a Prius: nothing but corners.
  • Officer, it's not what you think. No, not that either.
  • Putting the AC on so the python in the back seat gets sluggish.
  • Getting a fork and spoon and twirling up snakes like spaghetti.
  • A taste worth busting your ass for.
  • An oral history of tricking alcohol post your tongue.
  • An entire generation that has never had to work to enjoy things because there are so many things that are easy to enjoy.
  • Twelve year olds from Alabama calling you a cuck.
  • New ideas that you haven't been thinking of even without looking at your phone.
  • Hiking: it's just hard walking.
  • Getting so agitated that you developed a taste for hiking.
  • The guy in the Fred Meyer buying Reese's cups while wearing a tuxedo.
  • The Men's Wearhome.
  • The Men's Wearhouse employee who is not allowed to tell you that they don't have anything for fat people so he brings out less and less flattering outfits until you take the hint.
  • Orbitz. (The soft drink from 1996.)
  • A proto-boba.
  • Drinking a random test tube from a bioengineering lab.
  • What if everyone had a number floating above their heads that represented the number of times they had to drink Orbitz before they developed a taste for Orbitz and now that Orbitz is out of production everyone's number stays the same forever
  • Big Dick's Energy.
  • Flavor-blasted slushies.
  • The sense-horror of drinking an Orbitz.
  • Shelf-stable tapioca pearls.
  • A free-to-play game for your tongue.
  • Texturally subdued beverages.
  • Decaf Red Bull.
  • The hypothetical beverage enthusiast who wants a decaf Red Bull.
  • How to make Orbitz in your toilet.
  • How many Orbitz you have to drink to reach Nirvana.
  • eBay sellers insisting that you don't drink the thirty year old novelty beverage they're selling you.
  • Thinking a poem is a Middle Earth thing but it's actually a regular Earth thing.
  • Poetry that is alliterative rather than rhyming.
  • Making art by fucking around with a new medium.
  • Music in a foreign language.
  • What Simlish sounds like in different languages.
  • A quest to discover why they started dotting the letter Y.
  • Expecting scrolls in 3 to 5 days.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Alexander

Topics:

  • Getting so agitated that you cook dinner
  • What's an acquired taste that's worth acquiring? What's one that's not worth the effort? What's the point of even "acquiring" a taste for anything when there are probably infinite options you don't have to teach yourself to enjoy?
  • Texturally enhanced alternative beverage
  • Bagme Bloma

Microtopics:

  • How the science gets done.
  • Measuring the height of a flagpole by measuring its shadow.
  • Using calculus to find the surface area of a potato.
  • Measuring and re-measuring until you get the result you want.
  • Confronting your professor about their involvement in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Country and Western music fused with synth heavy prog rock.
  • Using the gun to parallel park.
  • That time Ryan died while recording Topic Lords.
  • Getting so agitated that you do some differential equations.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who whenever he thinks about death he has to make a sandwich.
  • The first step towards rejecting a task: assessing the task.
  • Today is a good day to fill your Prius with snakes.
  • The Raccoon Prius story.
  • Hilarious mothers.
  • The inside of a Prius: nothing but corners.
  • Officer, it's not what you think. No, not that either.
  • Putting the AC on so the python in the back seat gets sluggish.
  • Getting a fork and spoon and twirling up snakes like spaghetti.
  • A taste worth busting your ass for.
  • An oral history of tricking alcohol post your tongue.
  • An entire generation that has never had to work to enjoy things because there are so many things that are easy to enjoy.
  • Twelve year olds from Alabama calling you a cuck.
  • New ideas that you haven't been thinking of even without looking at your phone.
  • Hiking: it's just hard walking.
  • Getting so agitated that you developed a taste for hiking.
  • The guy in the Fred Meyer buying Reese's cups while wearing a tuxedo.
  • The Men's Wearhome.
  • The Men's Wearhouse employee who is not allowed to tell you that they don't have anything for fat people so he brings out less and less flattering outfits until you take the hint.
  • Orbitz. (The soft drink from 1996.)
  • A proto-boba.
  • Drinking a random test tube from a bioengineering lab.
  • What if everyone had a number floating above their heads that represented the number of times they had to drink Orbitz before they developed a taste for Orbitz and now that Orbitz is out of production everyone's number stays the same forever
  • Big Dick's Energy.
  • Flavor-blasted slushies.
  • The sense-horror of drinking an Orbitz.
  • Shelf-stable tapioca pearls.
  • A free-to-play game for your tongue.
  • Texturally subdued beverages.
  • Decaf Red Bull.
  • The hypothetical beverage enthusiast who wants a decaf Red Bull.
  • How to make Orbitz in your toilet.
  • How many Orbitz you have to drink to reach Nirvana.
  • eBay sellers insisting that you don't drink the thirty year old novelty beverage they're selling you.
  • Thinking a poem is a Middle Earth thing but it's actually a regular Earth thing.
  • Poetry that is alliterative rather than rhyming.
  • Making art by fucking around with a new medium.
  • Music in a foreign language.
  • What Simlish sounds like in different languages.
  • A quest to discover why they started dotting the letter Y.
  • Expecting scrolls in 3 to 5 days.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+-yV5Tccf ]]> Jim Stormdancer 225. Showers: It's Wet in There https://topiclords.com/showers-its-wet-in-there 7642077f-83d1-4974-901c-7d65abeeb1f1 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayfaber and BaseCase. We discuss raising third culture kids, how to do creative projects that take longer than a weekend, Venmo having your money and having to sign up for Venmo, Farmyard Song, and Universal Yums sweet vs. savory snacks. 1:19:36 true Lords:

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • BaseCase

Topics:

  • Raising third cultural kids as a second cultural individual
  • Figuring out how to do creative projects that take longer than a weekend when you aren't getting paid for them.
  • Someone sent me money on Venmo and now I need to sign up for Venmo if I want to have the money
  • Farmyard Song
  • We've been subscribed to Universal Yums for over a year now, and the sweet snacks range from "unremarkable" to "unbelievably great" to "not my cup of tea but interesting", whereas the savory snacks are mostly bad. What's going on there?

Microtopics:

  • Not being permitted to plug anything.
  • A unique situation in which you are gendered a lot less.
  • Australian Treat Arnott's Mint Slice.
  • Crossover of snacks from Australia to Japan.
  • Gentleman's agreements among cookie manufacturers.
  • Patenting your cookie recipe.
  • Touring school administrators.
  • Being friends with a lot of Coca Cola people.
  • Really enjoying multiculturalism.
  • Producing a good person.
  • Taking credit for the time your daughter didn't play Mario for six months.
  • Focusing on the aspects of the situation that you find meaningful.
  • What does and doesn't count as a childhood development milestone.
  • Being good at the work people are expecting you to do.
  • Doing worksheets outside.
  • What children report back from their experience at school.
  • Attempting to pirate the Montessori curriculum.
  • A really fun month.
  • Projects you can accomplish in a weekend.
  • Why you don't have more to show for all your free time.
  • Refusing to call someone stupid or lazy and having to figure out why they're actually failing.
  • Coping strategies to get things done.
  • Advice that is not helpful for neurodivergent people.
  • Breaking a task into subtasks and putting them on a schedule.
  • The first time you encountered the concept of a to-do list.
  • Brain tech.
  • Hammock time. (Or shower time.)
  • Showers: It's Wet In There.
  • Exultation of showers.
  • Watching someone start a hobby and immediately excel at it.
  • Finding a good community to learn how to do a thing.
  • Joining a discord with experts in many things.
  • Learning how to program and realizing that this makes you good at everything because programming is the hardest thing humans do.
  • Sending money to a phone number vs. sending money to an email address.
  • Canadians wishing each other money.
  • Nice things to do when you don't want to defraud people.
  • Opening a whole raft of phishing opportunities.
  • Visa getting a cut of every transaction that happens ever.
  • Whether every person in the world could live in Canada.
  • The Cocaine Mayor.
  • A traditional that is credited to Aaron Copeland.
  • Cats saying "fiddle-eye-fee."
  • Not being a raging misogynist but engaging in raging misogyny anyway.
  • The era when the onomatopoeia for a dog barking was "bow wow."
  • Onomatopoeia that is literal like "bang" vs. onomatopoeia that is more of a stretch like "shimmy shack shimmy shack."
  • Riffing on Aaron Copeland's sexuality.
  • Trying to shit enough to keep up with your toilet paper subscription.
  • A product built for people who have kids but do not have kids.
  • The mechanism by which the "Launch Frog Fractions 2" button launched Frog Fractions 2.
  • The great Loot Box crash of 2019.
  • Snacks that come with an instruction manual.
  • Ketchup flavored potato chips.
  • What you reach for when you're feeling snacky.
  • A potato chip palate that is just far too sophisticated.
  • Smoked ham potato chips.
  • Harry Potter jelly beans ruining snacks forever.
  • Only liking eating things that taste good.
  • This is bad, but is it bad in a new, interesting way?
  • The worst kind of bad.
  • Observing a terrible sprawling work and thinking "wow, you really did a thing here."
  • The recontextualization of earlier elements based on later knowledge.
  • Discord Lords.
  • Listening to ads because you have gloves on.
  • How to join the Topic Lords discord.
  • A recently minted lord who edits the show.
  • Lords Eat Free.
]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • BaseCase

Topics:

  • Raising third cultural kids as a second cultural individual
  • Figuring out how to do creative projects that take longer than a weekend when you aren't getting paid for them.
  • Someone sent me money on Venmo and now I need to sign up for Venmo if I want to have the money
  • Farmyard Song
  • We've been subscribed to Universal Yums for over a year now, and the sweet snacks range from "unremarkable" to "unbelievably great" to "not my cup of tea but interesting", whereas the savory snacks are mostly bad. What's going on there?

Microtopics:

  • Not being permitted to plug anything.
  • A unique situation in which you are gendered a lot less.
  • Australian Treat Arnott's Mint Slice.
  • Crossover of snacks from Australia to Japan.
  • Gentleman's agreements among cookie manufacturers.
  • Patenting your cookie recipe.
  • Touring school administrators.
  • Being friends with a lot of Coca Cola people.
  • Really enjoying multiculturalism.
  • Producing a good person.
  • Taking credit for the time your daughter didn't play Mario for six months.
  • Focusing on the aspects of the situation that you find meaningful.
  • What does and doesn't count as a childhood development milestone.
  • Being good at the work people are expecting you to do.
  • Doing worksheets outside.
  • What children report back from their experience at school.
  • Attempting to pirate the Montessori curriculum.
  • A really fun month.
  • Projects you can accomplish in a weekend.
  • Why you don't have more to show for all your free time.
  • Refusing to call someone stupid or lazy and having to figure out why they're actually failing.
  • Coping strategies to get things done.
  • Advice that is not helpful for neurodivergent people.
  • Breaking a task into subtasks and putting them on a schedule.
  • The first time you encountered the concept of a to-do list.
  • Brain tech.
  • Hammock time. (Or shower time.)
  • Showers: It's Wet In There.
  • Exultation of showers.
  • Watching someone start a hobby and immediately excel at it.
  • Finding a good community to learn how to do a thing.
  • Joining a discord with experts in many things.
  • Learning how to program and realizing that this makes you good at everything because programming is the hardest thing humans do.
  • Sending money to a phone number vs. sending money to an email address.
  • Canadians wishing each other money.
  • Nice things to do when you don't want to defraud people.
  • Opening a whole raft of phishing opportunities.
  • Visa getting a cut of every transaction that happens ever.
  • Whether every person in the world could live in Canada.
  • The Cocaine Mayor.
  • A traditional that is credited to Aaron Copeland.
  • Cats saying "fiddle-eye-fee."
  • Not being a raging misogynist but engaging in raging misogyny anyway.
  • The era when the onomatopoeia for a dog barking was "bow wow."
  • Onomatopoeia that is literal like "bang" vs. onomatopoeia that is more of a stretch like "shimmy shack shimmy shack."
  • Riffing on Aaron Copeland's sexuality.
  • Trying to shit enough to keep up with your toilet paper subscription.
  • A product built for people who have kids but do not have kids.
  • The mechanism by which the "Launch Frog Fractions 2" button launched Frog Fractions 2.
  • The great Loot Box crash of 2019.
  • Snacks that come with an instruction manual.
  • Ketchup flavored potato chips.
  • What you reach for when you're feeling snacky.
  • A potato chip palate that is just far too sophisticated.
  • Smoked ham potato chips.
  • Harry Potter jelly beans ruining snacks forever.
  • Only liking eating things that taste good.
  • This is bad, but is it bad in a new, interesting way?
  • The worst kind of bad.
  • Observing a terrible sprawling work and thinking "wow, you really did a thing here."
  • The recontextualization of earlier elements based on later knowledge.
  • Discord Lords.
  • Listening to ads because you have gloves on.
  • How to join the Topic Lords discord.
  • A recently minted lord who edits the show.
  • Lords Eat Free.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • BaseCase

Topics:

  • Raising third cultural kids as a second cultural individual
  • Figuring out how to do creative projects that take longer than a weekend when you aren't getting paid for them.
  • Someone sent me money on Venmo and now I need to sign up for Venmo if I want to have the money
  • Farmyard Song
  • We've been subscribed to Universal Yums for over a year now, and the sweet snacks range from "unremarkable" to "unbelievably great" to "not my cup of tea but interesting", whereas the savory snacks are mostly bad. What's going on there?

Microtopics:

  • Not being permitted to plug anything.
  • A unique situation in which you are gendered a lot less.
  • Australian Treat Arnott's Mint Slice.
  • Crossover of snacks from Australia to Japan.
  • Gentleman's agreements among cookie manufacturers.
  • Patenting your cookie recipe.
  • Touring school administrators.
  • Being friends with a lot of Coca Cola people.
  • Really enjoying multiculturalism.
  • Producing a good person.
  • Taking credit for the time your daughter didn't play Mario for six months.
  • Focusing on the aspects of the situation that you find meaningful.
  • What does and doesn't count as a childhood development milestone.
  • Being good at the work people are expecting you to do.
  • Doing worksheets outside.
  • What children report back from their experience at school.
  • Attempting to pirate the Montessori curriculum.
  • A really fun month.
  • Projects you can accomplish in a weekend.
  • Why you don't have more to show for all your free time.
  • Refusing to call someone stupid or lazy and having to figure out why they're actually failing.
  • Coping strategies to get things done.
  • Advice that is not helpful for neurodivergent people.
  • Breaking a task into subtasks and putting them on a schedule.
  • The first time you encountered the concept of a to-do list.
  • Brain tech.
  • Hammock time. (Or shower time.)
  • Showers: It's Wet In There.
  • Exultation of showers.
  • Watching someone start a hobby and immediately excel at it.
  • Finding a good community to learn how to do a thing.
  • Joining a discord with experts in many things.
  • Learning how to program and realizing that this makes you good at everything because programming is the hardest thing humans do.
  • Sending money to a phone number vs. sending money to an email address.
  • Canadians wishing each other money.
  • Nice things to do when you don't want to defraud people.
  • Opening a whole raft of phishing opportunities.
  • Visa getting a cut of every transaction that happens ever.
  • Whether every person in the world could live in Canada.
  • The Cocaine Mayor.
  • A traditional that is credited to Aaron Copeland.
  • Cats saying "fiddle-eye-fee."
  • Not being a raging misogynist but engaging in raging misogyny anyway.
  • The era when the onomatopoeia for a dog barking was "bow wow."
  • Onomatopoeia that is literal like "bang" vs. onomatopoeia that is more of a stretch like "shimmy shack shimmy shack."
  • Riffing on Aaron Copeland's sexuality.
  • Trying to shit enough to keep up with your toilet paper subscription.
  • A product built for people who have kids but do not have kids.
  • The mechanism by which the "Launch Frog Fractions 2" button launched Frog Fractions 2.
  • The great Loot Box crash of 2019.
  • Snacks that come with an instruction manual.
  • Ketchup flavored potato chips.
  • What you reach for when you're feeling snacky.
  • A potato chip palate that is just far too sophisticated.
  • Smoked ham potato chips.
  • Harry Potter jelly beans ruining snacks forever.
  • Only liking eating things that taste good.
  • This is bad, but is it bad in a new, interesting way?
  • The worst kind of bad.
  • Observing a terrible sprawling work and thinking "wow, you really did a thing here."
  • The recontextualization of earlier elements based on later knowledge.
  • Discord Lords.
  • Listening to ads because you have gloves on.
  • How to join the Topic Lords discord.
  • A recently minted lord who edits the show.
  • Lords Eat Free.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+k5IuV8Jq ]]> Jim Stormdancer 224. Following a Garden Hose Around in the Dark https://topiclords.com/following-a-garden-hose-around-in-the-dark 0f6c713d-f900-4a73-aa83-4a9c67054140 Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jason and Nathan. We discuss painting your nails, jukebox griefing, the team that developed Donkey Kong, Hypothetical Explanations for the Paradox, how color happens on monitors, and Bach's looping doodle. 1:10:21 true Lords:

Topics:

  • When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!"
  • Jukebox griefing
  • Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon.
  • Hypothetical explanations for the paradox
  • Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors.
  • Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier

Microtopics:

  • Interactive Fiction Land.
  • Panoptikum Budapest.
  • Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc.
  • Frantic Frank.
  • Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails.
  • Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing.
  • What's going on with my thumbs?
  • Your non-thumb fingernails.
  • Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them.
  • Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.)
  • Forehead loaves.
  • Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are.
  • Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud.
  • Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row.
  • Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met.
  • Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play.
  • Binary data played back at audio rates.
  • The math describing Mario's jump arc.
  • Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted."
  • Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name.
  • Mario: a weird little dude.
  • Drill Dozer.
  • How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game.
  • Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name.
  • Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument.
  • Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.)
  • They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged.
  • Arguing about a sexy robot.
  • Ironically Sexy Robots
  • The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury.
  • People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang.
  • Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits.
  • Blank verse vs. free verse.
  • Burning Monkey Solitaire.
  • What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos.
  • How blue is blue?
  • Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore.
  • The Opaque See-Through TV.
  • Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES."
  • Ribbed monitors.
  • The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS.
  • All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce.
  • The Moogseum.
  • Bach's looping doodle.
  • The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community.
  • A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about.
  • Hungry music theorists who need human connection.
  • Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event.
  • The Fetaverse.
  • Making an arcade cabinet.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!"
  • Jukebox griefing
  • Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon.
  • Hypothetical explanations for the paradox
  • Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors.
  • Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier

Microtopics:

  • Interactive Fiction Land.
  • Panoptikum Budapest.
  • Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc.
  • Frantic Frank.
  • Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails.
  • Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing.
  • What's going on with my thumbs?
  • Your non-thumb fingernails.
  • Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them.
  • Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.)
  • Forehead loaves.
  • Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are.
  • Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud.
  • Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row.
  • Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met.
  • Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play.
  • Binary data played back at audio rates.
  • The math describing Mario's jump arc.
  • Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted."
  • Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name.
  • Mario: a weird little dude.
  • Drill Dozer.
  • How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game.
  • Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name.
  • Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument.
  • Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.)
  • They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged.
  • Arguing about a sexy robot.
  • Ironically Sexy Robots
  • The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury.
  • People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang.
  • Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits.
  • Blank verse vs. free verse.
  • Burning Monkey Solitaire.
  • What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos.
  • How blue is blue?
  • Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore.
  • The Opaque See-Through TV.
  • Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES."
  • Ribbed monitors.
  • The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS.
  • All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce.
  • The Moogseum.
  • Bach's looping doodle.
  • The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community.
  • A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about.
  • Hungry music theorists who need human connection.
  • Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event.
  • The Fetaverse.
  • Making an arcade cabinet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!"
  • Jukebox griefing
  • Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon.
  • Hypothetical explanations for the paradox
  • Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors.
  • Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier

Microtopics:

  • Interactive Fiction Land.
  • Panoptikum Budapest.
  • Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc.
  • Frantic Frank.
  • Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails.
  • Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing.
  • What's going on with my thumbs?
  • Your non-thumb fingernails.
  • Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them.
  • Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.)
  • Forehead loaves.
  • Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are.
  • Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud.
  • Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row.
  • Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met.
  • Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play.
  • Binary data played back at audio rates.
  • The math describing Mario's jump arc.
  • Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted."
  • Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name.
  • Mario: a weird little dude.
  • Drill Dozer.
  • How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game.
  • Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name.
  • Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument.
  • Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.)
  • They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged.
  • Arguing about a sexy robot.
  • Ironically Sexy Robots
  • The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury.
  • People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang.
  • Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits.
  • Blank verse vs. free verse.
  • Burning Monkey Solitaire.
  • What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos.
  • How blue is blue?
  • Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore.
  • The Opaque See-Through TV.
  • Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES."
  • Ribbed monitors.
  • The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS.
  • All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce.
  • The Moogseum.
  • Bach's looping doodle.
  • The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community.
  • A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about.
  • Hungry music theorists who need human connection.
  • Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event.
  • The Fetaverse.
  • Making an arcade cabinet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+lyLZJCJ8 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 223. Three Hats to Scoop up a Mouse https://topiclords.com/three-hats-to-scoop-up-a-mouse 044b270f-4eae-44c6-b285-1813bed6c296 Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Aubrianne. We discuss knitting patterns as open source clothing, making your video game feel original, using insert after all, The Garden by Shel Silverstein, and aphantasia but for audiation. 1:12:38 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Knitting patterns are open source clothing
  • This one weird trick will make your videogame feel original
    • Esper says: "JRPGs are just menu games. Everything that's happening is an option in a menu doing some math, there's almost never timing involved. Why do they have to be 'battles?' I've always wanted to make a JRPG set in 1990 where instead of getting in battles, you're just a band from Detroit on tour. There's probably enough going on that you could make interesting JRPG 'battles' and story and characters out of that. 'Audience response' as an HP meter that goes up instead of down, I guess."
  • I noticed myself using insert. It turns out I use insert.
  • https://genius.com/Shel-silverstein-the-garden-annotated
    • Esper says: "The best summation of Black Mirror I ever heard was: 'Can I have an apple?' 'No, there are only Cyber Apples.' 'Can I have a Cyber Apple?' 'No.'"
  • Aphantasia but for audiation. Is that a thing?

Microtopics:

  • Wool socks.
  • The thing Jim heard about wool.
  • Making a rope out of human hair.
  • Whether there are multiple Columbos or just one.
  • Which one of you is the programmer and which one is the rubber duck?
  • A human 3D printer.
  • Keeping your hands busy.
  • Stim vs. fidget.
  • How to end a conversation that is not during a D&D session.
  • Discovering that your entire personality is a coping mechanism.
  • YarnTube.
  • The fine line between dressing like a grandma and dressing like a really slutty grandma.
  • It's a tube. Figure it out.
  • Doing it badly until you figure out how to do it better.
  • Making a game that is fun even if it doesn't have health bars.
  • Instead of doing the easy and obvious things, do something really hard instead.
  • Why video games have conflict.
  • Disaccord between you and everyone else in the video game.
  • Definitely arguably.
  • Kids learning from people who are not their parents.
  • Smashing a bunch of things together until fun emerges.
  • It's not a game where you jump over pits and it's not a game where you hit people with swords so what even is it??
  • Dating anime ladies by clicking through text.
  • A caveat among recommenders.
  • Video game dialog that makes you feel conflicted about shooting Nazis.
  • Remembering people's tweets.
  • The Rule of Thirds of video game dialog.
  • Executing a bad idea very well.
  • No One Weird Trick for learning to play cello.
  • The insert key as part of your typing repertoire.
  • Whether pause/break still works.
  • A keyboard without the LinkedIn key.
  • Getting your grandma online.
  • Pushing the pizza key on the keyboard and the CD-ROM drive opens and there it is.
  • Rifled plumbing that allows sewage to flow in a clockwise spiral while clean water flows in a counterclockwise spiral and they never touch.
  • A surprise poem where none of your fruit is food.
  • How to make a poem fit on Pinterest.
  • No combat in my poems.
  • Doing your best to make a good thing but never thinking your own work is good even after you experience great success.
  • A grocery list with a Black Mirror twist ending.
  • Having money in Venmo but you need to sign up for Venmo to get it.
  • Listening to a thing if you want to know what it sounds like.
  • Anauralia: the silent mind.
  • It takes your whole brain to be you, it doesn't have time to be other people too.
  • Not watching Black Mirror so that you can believe everyone when they tell you lies about Black Mirror.
  • It was Emma Thompson all along.
  • The difficulty of remembering Maggie Gyllenhaal.
  • Getting ripped while sitting motionless at your desk.
  • That fat jiggling machine from the 50s.
  • A weighted hula hoop to massage your guts.
  • Jorts Horse.
  • A bunch of millennials shitposting.
  • Trying to distribute your games locally by stapling a floppy disk to a telephone pole
  • Microtransaction pump games.
  • Sneaking into an arcade with a new arcade game in your back pocket and furtively shoving your new game between two existing arcade games.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Knitting patterns are open source clothing
  • This one weird trick will make your videogame feel original
    • Esper says: "JRPGs are just menu games. Everything that's happening is an option in a menu doing some math, there's almost never timing involved. Why do they have to be 'battles?' I've always wanted to make a JRPG set in 1990 where instead of getting in battles, you're just a band from Detroit on tour. There's probably enough going on that you could make interesting JRPG 'battles' and story and characters out of that. 'Audience response' as an HP meter that goes up instead of down, I guess."
  • I noticed myself using insert. It turns out I use insert.
  • https://genius.com/Shel-silverstein-the-garden-annotated
    • Esper says: "The best summation of Black Mirror I ever heard was: 'Can I have an apple?' 'No, there are only Cyber Apples.' 'Can I have a Cyber Apple?' 'No.'"
  • Aphantasia but for audiation. Is that a thing?

Microtopics:

  • Wool socks.
  • The thing Jim heard about wool.
  • Making a rope out of human hair.
  • Whether there are multiple Columbos or just one.
  • Which one of you is the programmer and which one is the rubber duck?
  • A human 3D printer.
  • Keeping your hands busy.
  • Stim vs. fidget.
  • How to end a conversation that is not during a D&D session.
  • Discovering that your entire personality is a coping mechanism.
  • YarnTube.
  • The fine line between dressing like a grandma and dressing like a really slutty grandma.
  • It's a tube. Figure it out.
  • Doing it badly until you figure out how to do it better.
  • Making a game that is fun even if it doesn't have health bars.
  • Instead of doing the easy and obvious things, do something really hard instead.
  • Why video games have conflict.
  • Disaccord between you and everyone else in the video game.
  • Definitely arguably.
  • Kids learning from people who are not their parents.
  • Smashing a bunch of things together until fun emerges.
  • It's not a game where you jump over pits and it's not a game where you hit people with swords so what even is it??
  • Dating anime ladies by clicking through text.
  • A caveat among recommenders.
  • Video game dialog that makes you feel conflicted about shooting Nazis.
  • Remembering people's tweets.
  • The Rule of Thirds of video game dialog.
  • Executing a bad idea very well.
  • No One Weird Trick for learning to play cello.
  • The insert key as part of your typing repertoire.
  • Whether pause/break still works.
  • A keyboard without the LinkedIn key.
  • Getting your grandma online.
  • Pushing the pizza key on the keyboard and the CD-ROM drive opens and there it is.
  • Rifled plumbing that allows sewage to flow in a clockwise spiral while clean water flows in a counterclockwise spiral and they never touch.
  • A surprise poem where none of your fruit is food.
  • How to make a poem fit on Pinterest.
  • No combat in my poems.
  • Doing your best to make a good thing but never thinking your own work is good even after you experience great success.
  • A grocery list with a Black Mirror twist ending.
  • Having money in Venmo but you need to sign up for Venmo to get it.
  • Listening to a thing if you want to know what it sounds like.
  • Anauralia: the silent mind.
  • It takes your whole brain to be you, it doesn't have time to be other people too.
  • Not watching Black Mirror so that you can believe everyone when they tell you lies about Black Mirror.
  • It was Emma Thompson all along.
  • The difficulty of remembering Maggie Gyllenhaal.
  • Getting ripped while sitting motionless at your desk.
  • That fat jiggling machine from the 50s.
  • A weighted hula hoop to massage your guts.
  • Jorts Horse.
  • A bunch of millennials shitposting.
  • Trying to distribute your games locally by stapling a floppy disk to a telephone pole
  • Microtransaction pump games.
  • Sneaking into an arcade with a new arcade game in your back pocket and furtively shoving your new game between two existing arcade games.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Knitting patterns are open source clothing
  • This one weird trick will make your videogame feel original
    • Esper says: "JRPGs are just menu games. Everything that's happening is an option in a menu doing some math, there's almost never timing involved. Why do they have to be 'battles?' I've always wanted to make a JRPG set in 1990 where instead of getting in battles, you're just a band from Detroit on tour. There's probably enough going on that you could make interesting JRPG 'battles' and story and characters out of that. 'Audience response' as an HP meter that goes up instead of down, I guess."
  • I noticed myself using insert. It turns out I use insert.
  • https://genius.com/Shel-silverstein-the-garden-annotated
    • Esper says: "The best summation of Black Mirror I ever heard was: 'Can I have an apple?' 'No, there are only Cyber Apples.' 'Can I have a Cyber Apple?' 'No.'"
  • Aphantasia but for audiation. Is that a thing?

Microtopics:

  • Wool socks.
  • The thing Jim heard about wool.
  • Making a rope out of human hair.
  • Whether there are multiple Columbos or just one.
  • Which one of you is the programmer and which one is the rubber duck?
  • A human 3D printer.
  • Keeping your hands busy.
  • Stim vs. fidget.
  • How to end a conversation that is not during a D&D session.
  • Discovering that your entire personality is a coping mechanism.
  • YarnTube.
  • The fine line between dressing like a grandma and dressing like a really slutty grandma.
  • It's a tube. Figure it out.
  • Doing it badly until you figure out how to do it better.
  • Making a game that is fun even if it doesn't have health bars.
  • Instead of doing the easy and obvious things, do something really hard instead.
  • Why video games have conflict.
  • Disaccord between you and everyone else in the video game.
  • Definitely arguably.
  • Kids learning from people who are not their parents.
  • Smashing a bunch of things together until fun emerges.
  • It's not a game where you jump over pits and it's not a game where you hit people with swords so what even is it??
  • Dating anime ladies by clicking through text.
  • A caveat among recommenders.
  • Video game dialog that makes you feel conflicted about shooting Nazis.
  • Remembering people's tweets.
  • The Rule of Thirds of video game dialog.
  • Executing a bad idea very well.
  • No One Weird Trick for learning to play cello.
  • The insert key as part of your typing repertoire.
  • Whether pause/break still works.
  • A keyboard without the LinkedIn key.
  • Getting your grandma online.
  • Pushing the pizza key on the keyboard and the CD-ROM drive opens and there it is.
  • Rifled plumbing that allows sewage to flow in a clockwise spiral while clean water flows in a counterclockwise spiral and they never touch.
  • A surprise poem where none of your fruit is food.
  • How to make a poem fit on Pinterest.
  • No combat in my poems.
  • Doing your best to make a good thing but never thinking your own work is good even after you experience great success.
  • A grocery list with a Black Mirror twist ending.
  • Having money in Venmo but you need to sign up for Venmo to get it.
  • Listening to a thing if you want to know what it sounds like.
  • Anauralia: the silent mind.
  • It takes your whole brain to be you, it doesn't have time to be other people too.
  • Not watching Black Mirror so that you can believe everyone when they tell you lies about Black Mirror.
  • It was Emma Thompson all along.
  • The difficulty of remembering Maggie Gyllenhaal.
  • Getting ripped while sitting motionless at your desk.
  • That fat jiggling machine from the 50s.
  • A weighted hula hoop to massage your guts.
  • Jorts Horse.
  • A bunch of millennials shitposting.
  • Trying to distribute your games locally by stapling a floppy disk to a telephone pole
  • Microtransaction pump games.
  • Sneaking into an arcade with a new arcade game in your back pocket and furtively shoving your new game between two existing arcade games.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+gOmJapTf ]]> Jim Stormdancer 222. Barkley in Retrograde https://topiclords.com/barkley-in-retrograde 0c93519c-5ae2-4568-bd7a-566d7b9501d3 Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Esper. Topics: Geocaching, the Miyoo Mini, my lost career as a Super Mario Bros. 35 Coach, There's Not a Person Alive by David Donihue, the semiparasocial relationship between a podcast editor and the people on the podcast, and struggling to relearn high school Spanish 1:13:23 true Lords:

  • Chris
  • Esper

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The editor of a podcast.
  • The #1 podcast for topic fans.
  • Chopping at some audio until it becomes a podcast.
  • Editing a recording into a podcast that's nothing but ums, mouth smacking noises and uncomfortable silence.
  • Zoom dynamically sensing when you're saying something dumb or boring and muting you.
  • Saying yes with the Sonic ring noise and no with the Sonic taking damage noise.
  • A cozy pleasant show full of fun facts.
  • Prepping for a paradigm.
  • How to put audio on film.
  • Going on a web forum and receiving a quest to find a magnetic box stuck underneath a metal staircase.
  • Geocaching on the Moon.
  • Geocaching vs. Geohashing.
  • A French pun for your board game night that nobody can remember because it's in French.
  • c:geo.
  • Finding a geocache by climbing a tree and pulling a paperclip attached to a fake piece of bark.
  • What to do if you're the one who picks up a travel bug.
  • Fake bolts where the center unscrews and it's hollow inside.
  • Developing a sense for when a geocache is nearby and always being wrong.
  • Miyoo Mini Plus.
  • Custom firmware that fixes your terrible handheld game system.
  • The Dream of the Playdate.
  • The Anbernic R something something letters numbers.
  • C-ctrl.
  • Going back to the Tekken 3 well.
  • A video game bar in Japan that only has Americans in it.
  • A very reasonable number of video games to flip through.
  • Emulators with daily runs.
  • Multi Bowl.
  • A game that legally can not exist.
  • Johann Sebastian Joust and its meta.
  • Getting one point in Rampage.
  • Advice that can literally no longer be helpful for anybody.
  • How to be an effective Goomba.
  • Looking at Jim's win/loss ratio and being inspired.
  • As Garfield said, "nothing good can stay."
  • A stainless soul lying inspired.
  • Bad experiences shared by every human.
  • A very smooth-brained day
  • Rampant poetry plagiarism on TikTok.
  • A food ASMR video where someone is repeatedly stabbing chicken with a fork.
  • Videos of hamsters running in wheels while listening to Dragula by Rob Zombie.
  • Whether the fish enjoys playing Pokemon.
  • A sweet 16 bracket of Best Kinds of Shark.
  • Rerecording the Topic Lords jingle with a swarm of bees.
  • The qualifications required for the person who designs electric car backing up noises.
  • Which apps to use to help you remember Spanish.
  • Speedrunning High School Spanish.
  • Learning Japanese from anime.
  • A 24/7 Livestream of digital cats lying around the house.
  • Hallucinating new languages around the house.
  • 52 Pickup with Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffee, about the most important comic book series of this century.
]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Esper

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The editor of a podcast.
  • The #1 podcast for topic fans.
  • Chopping at some audio until it becomes a podcast.
  • Editing a recording into a podcast that's nothing but ums, mouth smacking noises and uncomfortable silence.
  • Zoom dynamically sensing when you're saying something dumb or boring and muting you.
  • Saying yes with the Sonic ring noise and no with the Sonic taking damage noise.
  • A cozy pleasant show full of fun facts.
  • Prepping for a paradigm.
  • How to put audio on film.
  • Going on a web forum and receiving a quest to find a magnetic box stuck underneath a metal staircase.
  • Geocaching on the Moon.
  • Geocaching vs. Geohashing.
  • A French pun for your board game night that nobody can remember because it's in French.
  • c:geo.
  • Finding a geocache by climbing a tree and pulling a paperclip attached to a fake piece of bark.
  • What to do if you're the one who picks up a travel bug.
  • Fake bolts where the center unscrews and it's hollow inside.
  • Developing a sense for when a geocache is nearby and always being wrong.
  • Miyoo Mini Plus.
  • Custom firmware that fixes your terrible handheld game system.
  • The Dream of the Playdate.
  • The Anbernic R something something letters numbers.
  • C-ctrl.
  • Going back to the Tekken 3 well.
  • A video game bar in Japan that only has Americans in it.
  • A very reasonable number of video games to flip through.
  • Emulators with daily runs.
  • Multi Bowl.
  • A game that legally can not exist.
  • Johann Sebastian Joust and its meta.
  • Getting one point in Rampage.
  • Advice that can literally no longer be helpful for anybody.
  • How to be an effective Goomba.
  • Looking at Jim's win/loss ratio and being inspired.
  • As Garfield said, "nothing good can stay."
  • A stainless soul lying inspired.
  • Bad experiences shared by every human.
  • A very smooth-brained day
  • Rampant poetry plagiarism on TikTok.
  • A food ASMR video where someone is repeatedly stabbing chicken with a fork.
  • Videos of hamsters running in wheels while listening to Dragula by Rob Zombie.
  • Whether the fish enjoys playing Pokemon.
  • A sweet 16 bracket of Best Kinds of Shark.
  • Rerecording the Topic Lords jingle with a swarm of bees.
  • The qualifications required for the person who designs electric car backing up noises.
  • Which apps to use to help you remember Spanish.
  • Speedrunning High School Spanish.
  • Learning Japanese from anime.
  • A 24/7 Livestream of digital cats lying around the house.
  • Hallucinating new languages around the house.
  • 52 Pickup with Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffee, about the most important comic book series of this century.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Esper

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The editor of a podcast.
  • The #1 podcast for topic fans.
  • Chopping at some audio until it becomes a podcast.
  • Editing a recording into a podcast that's nothing but ums, mouth smacking noises and uncomfortable silence.
  • Zoom dynamically sensing when you're saying something dumb or boring and muting you.
  • Saying yes with the Sonic ring noise and no with the Sonic taking damage noise.
  • A cozy pleasant show full of fun facts.
  • Prepping for a paradigm.
  • How to put audio on film.
  • Going on a web forum and receiving a quest to find a magnetic box stuck underneath a metal staircase.
  • Geocaching on the Moon.
  • Geocaching vs. Geohashing.
  • A French pun for your board game night that nobody can remember because it's in French.
  • c:geo.
  • Finding a geocache by climbing a tree and pulling a paperclip attached to a fake piece of bark.
  • What to do if you're the one who picks up a travel bug.
  • Fake bolts where the center unscrews and it's hollow inside.
  • Developing a sense for when a geocache is nearby and always being wrong.
  • Miyoo Mini Plus.
  • Custom firmware that fixes your terrible handheld game system.
  • The Dream of the Playdate.
  • The Anbernic R something something letters numbers.
  • C-ctrl.
  • Going back to the Tekken 3 well.
  • A video game bar in Japan that only has Americans in it.
  • A very reasonable number of video games to flip through.
  • Emulators with daily runs.
  • Multi Bowl.
  • A game that legally can not exist.
  • Johann Sebastian Joust and its meta.
  • Getting one point in Rampage.
  • Advice that can literally no longer be helpful for anybody.
  • How to be an effective Goomba.
  • Looking at Jim's win/loss ratio and being inspired.
  • As Garfield said, "nothing good can stay."
  • A stainless soul lying inspired.
  • Bad experiences shared by every human.
  • A very smooth-brained day
  • Rampant poetry plagiarism on TikTok.
  • A food ASMR video where someone is repeatedly stabbing chicken with a fork.
  • Videos of hamsters running in wheels while listening to Dragula by Rob Zombie.
  • Whether the fish enjoys playing Pokemon.
  • A sweet 16 bracket of Best Kinds of Shark.
  • Rerecording the Topic Lords jingle with a swarm of bees.
  • The qualifications required for the person who designs electric car backing up noises.
  • Which apps to use to help you remember Spanish.
  • Speedrunning High School Spanish.
  • Learning Japanese from anime.
  • A 24/7 Livestream of digital cats lying around the house.
  • Hallucinating new languages around the house.
  • 52 Pickup with Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffee, about the most important comic book series of this century.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GcI1QUM7 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 221. Fisher-Price My First Right Click Menu https://topiclords.com/fisher-price-my-first-right-click-menu b1322b7b-35e1-45a1-ac6a-bb110d20956d Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Alex. We discuss living without software updates, Cyberpunk 2077, arguing with people collecting signatures, and PIECE A SHIT by Sam Pink. 1:12:39 true Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lords of Topics.
  • Asking your mom if this Thanksgiving turkey is Frog Fractions 3.
  • Haiku Hero.
  • How to talk to the press.
  • An email from the guy who sent me the quirky thing from before.
  • The Last Biceps.
  • Filling your house with electronics that continuously ask you to do things.
  • How to interact with the Internet on an old un-updated computer.
  • Snap craft something or other.
  • Turning off Windows updates for over a year and nothing bad happens because security best practices are bullshit.
  • Visiting twinbeard.com to find out about the beads in Jim's ears.
  • Searching Google for the little balls in your ears.
  • Your phone popping up a window saying "you're a year and a half out of date, would you like to update?" and hitting the back button as fast as you can.
  • Windows updates adding AI functionality to MS Paint.
  • Making uneducated guesses about how someone else's code works.
  • Searching for a program on your computer and Windows gives you Bing results for that program's name.
  • A sneaky hacker man doing non lethal takedowns.
  • Making a complicated video game and then patching it into a completely different complicated video game after the guides have all been written.
  • Trying to explain to someone why the story of Half-Life is cool and realizing halfway through your explanation that it's not that cool actually.
  • Cool things that build immersion.
  • A guy saying "have a seat" and a contextual actionicon appearing over a chair.
  • Voluminous closets full of costumes for virtual dress-up.
  • Delivering exposition in cars.
  • All the weird things people will put on their body in the cyber future.
  • A fictional city halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
  • Recovering a stolen painting by showing a satellite.
  • A city with lots of neat stuff to do.
  • Querulous Friend's Advocate.
  • The Everyone Gets a Pony Initiative of 2023.
  • Filibustering people collecting signatures in front of the grocery store.
  • How much do you believe in the political causes you're promoting?
  • Watching your friend play games in a little window on your second monitor.
  • Mr. Feeny recording car AI voices.
  • Getting into World of Warcraft because you are stressed about starting a new job.
  • Level 1 Superman killing rats to collect 10 rat pelts.
  • Fun ways to fight crowds of mooks.
  • The things you see on your limbs when you see your limbs.
  • Replacing all the mirrors with cyber mirrors.
  • The doctor pulling out your cyber eyes and putting them in a drawer and all you can see is the inside of the drawer.
  • Lost games dev techniques such as palette swaps.
  • A screenshot of a book.
  • A poem painting a picture of a time and place.
  • Maybe Sam Pink.
  • Writing a bunch of messages to someone and making their phone vibrate every five seconds for a full minute.
  • Notification throttling.
  • Fanciful technological panaceas.
  • Ultra poetry where each line has animation and timing.
  • Making a word wiggle in a sine wave to indicate that it's a spooky ghost noise.
  • Poem Lords.
  • Seven poems on the itinerary. (But we'll only have time for three of them.)
]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lords of Topics.
  • Asking your mom if this Thanksgiving turkey is Frog Fractions 3.
  • Haiku Hero.
  • How to talk to the press.
  • An email from the guy who sent me the quirky thing from before.
  • The Last Biceps.
  • Filling your house with electronics that continuously ask you to do things.
  • How to interact with the Internet on an old un-updated computer.
  • Snap craft something or other.
  • Turning off Windows updates for over a year and nothing bad happens because security best practices are bullshit.
  • Visiting twinbeard.com to find out about the beads in Jim's ears.
  • Searching Google for the little balls in your ears.
  • Your phone popping up a window saying "you're a year and a half out of date, would you like to update?" and hitting the back button as fast as you can.
  • Windows updates adding AI functionality to MS Paint.
  • Making uneducated guesses about how someone else's code works.
  • Searching for a program on your computer and Windows gives you Bing results for that program's name.
  • A sneaky hacker man doing non lethal takedowns.
  • Making a complicated video game and then patching it into a completely different complicated video game after the guides have all been written.
  • Trying to explain to someone why the story of Half-Life is cool and realizing halfway through your explanation that it's not that cool actually.
  • Cool things that build immersion.
  • A guy saying "have a seat" and a contextual actionicon appearing over a chair.
  • Voluminous closets full of costumes for virtual dress-up.
  • Delivering exposition in cars.
  • All the weird things people will put on their body in the cyber future.
  • A fictional city halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
  • Recovering a stolen painting by showing a satellite.
  • A city with lots of neat stuff to do.
  • Querulous Friend's Advocate.
  • The Everyone Gets a Pony Initiative of 2023.
  • Filibustering people collecting signatures in front of the grocery store.
  • How much do you believe in the political causes you're promoting?
  • Watching your friend play games in a little window on your second monitor.
  • Mr. Feeny recording car AI voices.
  • Getting into World of Warcraft because you are stressed about starting a new job.
  • Level 1 Superman killing rats to collect 10 rat pelts.
  • Fun ways to fight crowds of mooks.
  • The things you see on your limbs when you see your limbs.
  • Replacing all the mirrors with cyber mirrors.
  • The doctor pulling out your cyber eyes and putting them in a drawer and all you can see is the inside of the drawer.
  • Lost games dev techniques such as palette swaps.
  • A screenshot of a book.
  • A poem painting a picture of a time and place.
  • Maybe Sam Pink.
  • Writing a bunch of messages to someone and making their phone vibrate every five seconds for a full minute.
  • Notification throttling.
  • Fanciful technological panaceas.
  • Ultra poetry where each line has animation and timing.
  • Making a word wiggle in a sine wave to indicate that it's a spooky ghost noise.
  • Poem Lords.
  • Seven poems on the itinerary. (But we'll only have time for three of them.)

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alex

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lords of Topics.
  • Asking your mom if this Thanksgiving turkey is Frog Fractions 3.
  • Haiku Hero.
  • How to talk to the press.
  • An email from the guy who sent me the quirky thing from before.
  • The Last Biceps.
  • Filling your house with electronics that continuously ask you to do things.
  • How to interact with the Internet on an old un-updated computer.
  • Snap craft something or other.
  • Turning off Windows updates for over a year and nothing bad happens because security best practices are bullshit.
  • Visiting twinbeard.com to find out about the beads in Jim's ears.
  • Searching Google for the little balls in your ears.
  • Your phone popping up a window saying "you're a year and a half out of date, would you like to update?" and hitting the back button as fast as you can.
  • Windows updates adding AI functionality to MS Paint.
  • Making uneducated guesses about how someone else's code works.
  • Searching for a program on your computer and Windows gives you Bing results for that program's name.
  • A sneaky hacker man doing non lethal takedowns.
  • Making a complicated video game and then patching it into a completely different complicated video game after the guides have all been written.
  • Trying to explain to someone why the story of Half-Life is cool and realizing halfway through your explanation that it's not that cool actually.
  • Cool things that build immersion.
  • A guy saying "have a seat" and a contextual actionicon appearing over a chair.
  • Voluminous closets full of costumes for virtual dress-up.
  • Delivering exposition in cars.
  • All the weird things people will put on their body in the cyber future.
  • A fictional city halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
  • Recovering a stolen painting by showing a satellite.
  • A city with lots of neat stuff to do.
  • Querulous Friend's Advocate.
  • The Everyone Gets a Pony Initiative of 2023.
  • Filibustering people collecting signatures in front of the grocery store.
  • How much do you believe in the political causes you're promoting?
  • Watching your friend play games in a little window on your second monitor.
  • Mr. Feeny recording car AI voices.
  • Getting into World of Warcraft because you are stressed about starting a new job.
  • Level 1 Superman killing rats to collect 10 rat pelts.
  • Fun ways to fight crowds of mooks.
  • The things you see on your limbs when you see your limbs.
  • Replacing all the mirrors with cyber mirrors.
  • The doctor pulling out your cyber eyes and putting them in a drawer and all you can see is the inside of the drawer.
  • Lost games dev techniques such as palette swaps.
  • A screenshot of a book.
  • A poem painting a picture of a time and place.
  • Maybe Sam Pink.
  • Writing a bunch of messages to someone and making their phone vibrate every five seconds for a full minute.
  • Notification throttling.
  • Fanciful technological panaceas.
  • Ultra poetry where each line has animation and timing.
  • Making a word wiggle in a sine wave to indicate that it's a spooky ghost noise.
  • Poem Lords.
  • Seven poems on the itinerary. (But we'll only have time for three of them.)

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+vIhF9qux ]]> Jim Stormdancer 220. An Oral History of Men Riding Cats https://topiclords.com/an-oral-history-of-men-riding-cats d8100dc3-f66e-4c27-b313-0d4979a2b12c Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Abby and Michael. We discuss when podcast ads don't play, Lobsang Rampa, recoloring your teeth, "I've Been Writing You A Poem," by Abby Denton, and rideable cats. 1:08:00 true Lords:

Topics:

  • That moment when the podcast ads don't play
  • Lobsang Rampa
  • I had a dream where I needed to recolor my teeth. Why don't video game character creators support this?
  • "I've Been Writing You A Poem," by Abby Denton
  • Cats you can ride, pre-He Man

Microtopics:

  • Cyber Cafe.
  • Tiny Barbarian DX.
  • An exciting new way to give me money.
  • The gamut of barbarian sizes.
  • Learning the power of chat from Alan Partridge.
  • A podcast deciding that you're not worth advertising to.
  • Launching into the jokes and the fiending.
  • 99% Inaudible.
  • Elvira's lawful good rival.
  • Sugarhill Oiljack.
  • Roundtree's fruit pastilles.
  • A more colorful playful treat time.
  • The comic book guy sizing you up and stapling appropriate ads into the comic you're buying.
  • Finding out a lot of very interesting information about Texas Railroad Commissioner and forgetting it all immediately.
  • Page after page of ads and then a back cover.
  • A hardcore Bush-era ad explaining that Klonoa's gonna kill your mom.
  • Two Dollar Groos.
  • Writing a fan letter to the guy who letters Groo the Wanderer.
  • Groo ASMR on GrooTube.
  • A man in the 50s. (And the 60s.)
  • A plumber from London who found success writing books about Tibetan mysticism.
  • What English sounds like to an Italian speaker.
  • Prisencolinescionalciusol.
  • Lobsang Rampa getting an extra bump from people misspelling Danganronpa.
  • Painting your teeth mother of pearl.
  • The Xbox 360s mii knockoffs.
  • Breath of the Wild's NPC faces.
  • Mr. Potato Head Plug and Play Mouth.
  • Mainly a tooth-oriented game.
  • Dentists wearing a back sack over their head.
  • How dentures happen.
  • Insulin price caps.
  • Explaining to the nice lady who works at the grocery store that the company she works for is monstrous.
  • Trashy people in all walks of life.
  • Why shouldn't I be able to give Bayonetta missing teeth?
  • Post-hoc nightmares where they only upset you after you wake up.
  • The bladder comes to me, I don't go to the bladder.
  • Changing the scansion on the fly.
  • Writing a poem for a relative who won't appreciate it.
  • Whether children only like 3D animation now.
  • Whether it's cheaper to do 3D or 2D animation.
  • Wanting to play with the person you see even though they can't step out of the phone.
  • People who love being perceived.
  • This poem's threen.
  • Vamping about an ambiguous number because of diabetes.
  • Feeling shaky even though you are not shaking.
  • Fat cats in Washington and what they're sitting on.
  • Two people in the universe with perfectly incompatible needs.
  • The only member of your family who didn't go into the hard sciences.
  • The giant cats in Tom and Jerry going their weird shifting their muscles walk.
  • A mockery of a crown.
  • There he is; the poopy man.
  • Thinking of a man riding on a cat.
  • The Lure of the Basilisk.
  • The Gandalara Cycle.
  • Teleport vs. New Body.
  • A big cat-riding opportunity.
  • Riding around on a cat made of pure vinyl.
  • How did Cringer get like that, Prince Adam?
  • Little jokes you do with your partner.
  • Wingor, Trunkor and Unkor.
  • She-Ra taking it back from the boys.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • That moment when the podcast ads don't play
  • Lobsang Rampa
  • I had a dream where I needed to recolor my teeth. Why don't video game character creators support this?
  • "I've Been Writing You A Poem," by Abby Denton
  • Cats you can ride, pre-He Man

Microtopics:

  • Cyber Cafe.
  • Tiny Barbarian DX.
  • An exciting new way to give me money.
  • The gamut of barbarian sizes.
  • Learning the power of chat from Alan Partridge.
  • A podcast deciding that you're not worth advertising to.
  • Launching into the jokes and the fiending.
  • 99% Inaudible.
  • Elvira's lawful good rival.
  • Sugarhill Oiljack.
  • Roundtree's fruit pastilles.
  • A more colorful playful treat time.
  • The comic book guy sizing you up and stapling appropriate ads into the comic you're buying.
  • Finding out a lot of very interesting information about Texas Railroad Commissioner and forgetting it all immediately.
  • Page after page of ads and then a back cover.
  • A hardcore Bush-era ad explaining that Klonoa's gonna kill your mom.
  • Two Dollar Groos.
  • Writing a fan letter to the guy who letters Groo the Wanderer.
  • Groo ASMR on GrooTube.
  • A man in the 50s. (And the 60s.)
  • A plumber from London who found success writing books about Tibetan mysticism.
  • What English sounds like to an Italian speaker.
  • Prisencolinescionalciusol.
  • Lobsang Rampa getting an extra bump from people misspelling Danganronpa.
  • Painting your teeth mother of pearl.
  • The Xbox 360s mii knockoffs.
  • Breath of the Wild's NPC faces.
  • Mr. Potato Head Plug and Play Mouth.
  • Mainly a tooth-oriented game.
  • Dentists wearing a back sack over their head.
  • How dentures happen.
  • Insulin price caps.
  • Explaining to the nice lady who works at the grocery store that the company she works for is monstrous.
  • Trashy people in all walks of life.
  • Why shouldn't I be able to give Bayonetta missing teeth?
  • Post-hoc nightmares where they only upset you after you wake up.
  • The bladder comes to me, I don't go to the bladder.
  • Changing the scansion on the fly.
  • Writing a poem for a relative who won't appreciate it.
  • Whether children only like 3D animation now.
  • Whether it's cheaper to do 3D or 2D animation.
  • Wanting to play with the person you see even though they can't step out of the phone.
  • People who love being perceived.
  • This poem's threen.
  • Vamping about an ambiguous number because of diabetes.
  • Feeling shaky even though you are not shaking.
  • Fat cats in Washington and what they're sitting on.
  • Two people in the universe with perfectly incompatible needs.
  • The only member of your family who didn't go into the hard sciences.
  • The giant cats in Tom and Jerry going their weird shifting their muscles walk.
  • A mockery of a crown.
  • There he is; the poopy man.
  • Thinking of a man riding on a cat.
  • The Lure of the Basilisk.
  • The Gandalara Cycle.
  • Teleport vs. New Body.
  • A big cat-riding opportunity.
  • Riding around on a cat made of pure vinyl.
  • How did Cringer get like that, Prince Adam?
  • Little jokes you do with your partner.
  • Wingor, Trunkor and Unkor.
  • She-Ra taking it back from the boys.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • That moment when the podcast ads don't play
  • Lobsang Rampa
  • I had a dream where I needed to recolor my teeth. Why don't video game character creators support this?
  • "I've Been Writing You A Poem," by Abby Denton
  • Cats you can ride, pre-He Man

Microtopics:

  • Cyber Cafe.
  • Tiny Barbarian DX.
  • An exciting new way to give me money.
  • The gamut of barbarian sizes.
  • Learning the power of chat from Alan Partridge.
  • A podcast deciding that you're not worth advertising to.
  • Launching into the jokes and the fiending.
  • 99% Inaudible.
  • Elvira's lawful good rival.
  • Sugarhill Oiljack.
  • Roundtree's fruit pastilles.
  • A more colorful playful treat time.
  • The comic book guy sizing you up and stapling appropriate ads into the comic you're buying.
  • Finding out a lot of very interesting information about Texas Railroad Commissioner and forgetting it all immediately.
  • Page after page of ads and then a back cover.
  • A hardcore Bush-era ad explaining that Klonoa's gonna kill your mom.
  • Two Dollar Groos.
  • Writing a fan letter to the guy who letters Groo the Wanderer.
  • Groo ASMR on GrooTube.
  • A man in the 50s. (And the 60s.)
  • A plumber from London who found success writing books about Tibetan mysticism.
  • What English sounds like to an Italian speaker.
  • Prisencolinescionalciusol.
  • Lobsang Rampa getting an extra bump from people misspelling Danganronpa.
  • Painting your teeth mother of pearl.
  • The Xbox 360s mii knockoffs.
  • Breath of the Wild's NPC faces.
  • Mr. Potato Head Plug and Play Mouth.
  • Mainly a tooth-oriented game.
  • Dentists wearing a back sack over their head.
  • How dentures happen.
  • Insulin price caps.
  • Explaining to the nice lady who works at the grocery store that the company she works for is monstrous.
  • Trashy people in all walks of life.
  • Why shouldn't I be able to give Bayonetta missing teeth?
  • Post-hoc nightmares where they only upset you after you wake up.
  • The bladder comes to me, I don't go to the bladder.
  • Changing the scansion on the fly.
  • Writing a poem for a relative who won't appreciate it.
  • Whether children only like 3D animation now.
  • Whether it's cheaper to do 3D or 2D animation.
  • Wanting to play with the person you see even though they can't step out of the phone.
  • People who love being perceived.
  • This poem's threen.
  • Vamping about an ambiguous number because of diabetes.
  • Feeling shaky even though you are not shaking.
  • Fat cats in Washington and what they're sitting on.
  • Two people in the universe with perfectly incompatible needs.
  • The only member of your family who didn't go into the hard sciences.
  • The giant cats in Tom and Jerry going their weird shifting their muscles walk.
  • A mockery of a crown.
  • There he is; the poopy man.
  • Thinking of a man riding on a cat.
  • The Lure of the Basilisk.
  • The Gandalara Cycle.
  • Teleport vs. New Body.
  • A big cat-riding opportunity.
  • Riding around on a cat made of pure vinyl.
  • How did Cringer get like that, Prince Adam?
  • Little jokes you do with your partner.
  • Wingor, Trunkor and Unkor.
  • She-Ra taking it back from the boys.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+HamEDsbB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 219. Jeff Bezos's Butthole Guy https://topiclords.com/jeff-bezos-butthole-guy 8ad01b98-baa5-4480-99dc-fb7d898bb58b Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jay and Jenni. We discuss learning a skill on a message board, the Baldur's Gate 3 butthole chart, whether giving people ideas helps them, why configuring the thing is more enjoyable than using the thing, and knowing a place vs. having a guy. 1:15:38 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Three people with social anxiety.
  • Your left ear not working at the post office.
  • 80 people in a post office screaming at each other.
  • Keeping your broken item and just buying another because you don't want to go to the post office.
  • Naming your band after a way to transmit audio.
  • I'm good that they're exist.
  • Getting your New Year's Resolution off of the Mastodon Tooter.
  • Finding a kid at Applebee's to sit next to.
  • Forming a seal on your face when there's hair.
  • A hip burger or hot dog joint hanging a sign saying "Take it to Squirts-Town" over their condiment counter.
  • An app to track how much emotional load you've dumped on each friend recently.
  • Preparing to hold space for your feelings.
  • Going outside and banging on pots and pans at midnight.
  • Getting really into Casey Kasem's Rockin' New Year.
  • Getting twelve grapes and trying to eat a grape on every bong of the clock.
  • How far apart are the bongs?
  • Whack it for a huge dong!
  • The second message board you signed up for. (After The Sims.)
  • Entirely abandoning the idea of drawing with your hands.
  • The Three Tile Rule.
  • New Year, New Wife!
  • Being approached in a Trader Joe's by a guy who runs a message board for men with long hair.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Searching for a technical issue on the internet and finding a post on a message board asking your question and the answer is to "google it."
  • Message boards about tying knots.
  • A ghost giving you a hug.
  • Shadebobs and searching on Youtube for shadebobs.
  • Shadebob Squarepixels.
  • Turn-based speed runs.
  • Oxygenarian runs.
  • Starting with meat. Ending with meat.
  • Whether it's okay to do a Butthole Chart for people who are still alive.
  • The Shade of the Butthole.
  • Special people with hairy buttholes.
  • When God asks you to bring him 50 buttholes, what body parts he'll accept as the butthole.
  • Butthole purism.
  • Personality traits that correspond with butthole traits in popular culture.
  • What to do if you don't like the shade or the smell of your butthole.
  • Going on T because you want a hairier butthole.
  • Whether billionaires are real people.
  • The Butthole of Dorian Gray.
  • Hiring a person to take care of your butthole situation.
  • Making eye contact with the guy who cleans Jeff Bezos's butthole but you can't stop and help, you have to catch your train.
  • PiCoSteveMo outcomes.
  • Self-driving taxis paving the entire planet.
  • Suggesting ideas as a way to make sure nobody will implement those ideas.
  • Receiving a new CD for Christmas in the post-Napster era.
  • What we can still use as stocking stuffers now that CDs and DVDs don't make sense any more.
  • Your life partner going through a Brandon Sanderson phase and giving you a huge Brandon Sanderson book to read.
  • What you call the plug that goes into a plug.
  • Getting paid to learn to solder.
  • Deliberately introducing mpeg artifacts into a video stream.
  • How to troubleshoot a motherboard now that they don't beep any more.
  • How many Intels they're up to now.
  • A memory of fun that you can't go back to.
  • Awful Fantasy.
  • Putting a foul-mouthed rom hack on your SNES Classic and then forgetting that happened when you give it away to your friends' kids.
  • Imagining how great a product is going to be while you're buying the product.
  • Asking for a toy for Christmas even though you know you'll never make time for it.
  • Going to a friend's house and seeing a bajillion guitar pedals that you can't afford.
  • Giving your guitar pedals away to someone who'll actually use them rather than just reselling them.
  • Hanging out with the kind of person who's playing Rock Band in 2023.
  • The only generation that learned how to use computers.
  • Worrying that the five year old computer geniuses are going to hack your foot so you can't walk.
  • Living in New Holstein Wisconsin and needing psychic healing.
  • Living in the city and having a place you go to for hot dogs vs. living in the country and having a guy you call for hot dogs and he comes to your house with a suitcase full of hot dogs and a USB-C grill.
  • Moving to the country so you can hang out of the hot dog guy.
  • A place that's not even really a place because you can't catch Pokemon there.
  • Two Guys and a Place.
  • Bringing independent gas stations their coffee.
  • Yacht Man Cologne.
  • Stuff You're Not Allowed To Eat dot com.
  • Arguing with GPT-4 until it agrees that your Garfield dating sim idea is ethical.
  • Putting on your face shoes.
  • This Is Cake Bread!
  • Tholen vs. Tholen.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Three people with social anxiety.
  • Your left ear not working at the post office.
  • 80 people in a post office screaming at each other.
  • Keeping your broken item and just buying another because you don't want to go to the post office.
  • Naming your band after a way to transmit audio.
  • I'm good that they're exist.
  • Getting your New Year's Resolution off of the Mastodon Tooter.
  • Finding a kid at Applebee's to sit next to.
  • Forming a seal on your face when there's hair.
  • A hip burger or hot dog joint hanging a sign saying "Take it to Squirts-Town" over their condiment counter.
  • An app to track how much emotional load you've dumped on each friend recently.
  • Preparing to hold space for your feelings.
  • Going outside and banging on pots and pans at midnight.
  • Getting really into Casey Kasem's Rockin' New Year.
  • Getting twelve grapes and trying to eat a grape on every bong of the clock.
  • How far apart are the bongs?
  • Whack it for a huge dong!
  • The second message board you signed up for. (After The Sims.)
  • Entirely abandoning the idea of drawing with your hands.
  • The Three Tile Rule.
  • New Year, New Wife!
  • Being approached in a Trader Joe's by a guy who runs a message board for men with long hair.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Searching for a technical issue on the internet and finding a post on a message board asking your question and the answer is to "google it."
  • Message boards about tying knots.
  • A ghost giving you a hug.
  • Shadebobs and searching on Youtube for shadebobs.
  • Shadebob Squarepixels.
  • Turn-based speed runs.
  • Oxygenarian runs.
  • Starting with meat. Ending with meat.
  • Whether it's okay to do a Butthole Chart for people who are still alive.
  • The Shade of the Butthole.
  • Special people with hairy buttholes.
  • When God asks you to bring him 50 buttholes, what body parts he'll accept as the butthole.
  • Butthole purism.
  • Personality traits that correspond with butthole traits in popular culture.
  • What to do if you don't like the shade or the smell of your butthole.
  • Going on T because you want a hairier butthole.
  • Whether billionaires are real people.
  • The Butthole of Dorian Gray.
  • Hiring a person to take care of your butthole situation.
  • Making eye contact with the guy who cleans Jeff Bezos's butthole but you can't stop and help, you have to catch your train.
  • PiCoSteveMo outcomes.
  • Self-driving taxis paving the entire planet.
  • Suggesting ideas as a way to make sure nobody will implement those ideas.
  • Receiving a new CD for Christmas in the post-Napster era.
  • What we can still use as stocking stuffers now that CDs and DVDs don't make sense any more.
  • Your life partner going through a Brandon Sanderson phase and giving you a huge Brandon Sanderson book to read.
  • What you call the plug that goes into a plug.
  • Getting paid to learn to solder.
  • Deliberately introducing mpeg artifacts into a video stream.
  • How to troubleshoot a motherboard now that they don't beep any more.
  • How many Intels they're up to now.
  • A memory of fun that you can't go back to.
  • Awful Fantasy.
  • Putting a foul-mouthed rom hack on your SNES Classic and then forgetting that happened when you give it away to your friends' kids.
  • Imagining how great a product is going to be while you're buying the product.
  • Asking for a toy for Christmas even though you know you'll never make time for it.
  • Going to a friend's house and seeing a bajillion guitar pedals that you can't afford.
  • Giving your guitar pedals away to someone who'll actually use them rather than just reselling them.
  • Hanging out with the kind of person who's playing Rock Band in 2023.
  • The only generation that learned how to use computers.
  • Worrying that the five year old computer geniuses are going to hack your foot so you can't walk.
  • Living in New Holstein Wisconsin and needing psychic healing.
  • Living in the city and having a place you go to for hot dogs vs. living in the country and having a guy you call for hot dogs and he comes to your house with a suitcase full of hot dogs and a USB-C grill.
  • Moving to the country so you can hang out of the hot dog guy.
  • A place that's not even really a place because you can't catch Pokemon there.
  • Two Guys and a Place.
  • Bringing independent gas stations their coffee.
  • Yacht Man Cologne.
  • Stuff You're Not Allowed To Eat dot com.
  • Arguing with GPT-4 until it agrees that your Garfield dating sim idea is ethical.
  • Putting on your face shoes.
  • This Is Cake Bread!
  • Tholen vs. Tholen.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Three people with social anxiety.
  • Your left ear not working at the post office.
  • 80 people in a post office screaming at each other.
  • Keeping your broken item and just buying another because you don't want to go to the post office.
  • Naming your band after a way to transmit audio.
  • I'm good that they're exist.
  • Getting your New Year's Resolution off of the Mastodon Tooter.
  • Finding a kid at Applebee's to sit next to.
  • Forming a seal on your face when there's hair.
  • A hip burger or hot dog joint hanging a sign saying "Take it to Squirts-Town" over their condiment counter.
  • An app to track how much emotional load you've dumped on each friend recently.
  • Preparing to hold space for your feelings.
  • Going outside and banging on pots and pans at midnight.
  • Getting really into Casey Kasem's Rockin' New Year.
  • Getting twelve grapes and trying to eat a grape on every bong of the clock.
  • How far apart are the bongs?
  • Whack it for a huge dong!
  • The second message board you signed up for. (After The Sims.)
  • Entirely abandoning the idea of drawing with your hands.
  • The Three Tile Rule.
  • New Year, New Wife!
  • Being approached in a Trader Joe's by a guy who runs a message board for men with long hair.
  • How to find people to follow on Cohost.
  • Searching for a technical issue on the internet and finding a post on a message board asking your question and the answer is to "google it."
  • Message boards about tying knots.
  • A ghost giving you a hug.
  • Shadebobs and searching on Youtube for shadebobs.
  • Shadebob Squarepixels.
  • Turn-based speed runs.
  • Oxygenarian runs.
  • Starting with meat. Ending with meat.
  • Whether it's okay to do a Butthole Chart for people who are still alive.
  • The Shade of the Butthole.
  • Special people with hairy buttholes.
  • When God asks you to bring him 50 buttholes, what body parts he'll accept as the butthole.
  • Butthole purism.
  • Personality traits that correspond with butthole traits in popular culture.
  • What to do if you don't like the shade or the smell of your butthole.
  • Going on T because you want a hairier butthole.
  • Whether billionaires are real people.
  • The Butthole of Dorian Gray.
  • Hiring a person to take care of your butthole situation.
  • Making eye contact with the guy who cleans Jeff Bezos's butthole but you can't stop and help, you have to catch your train.
  • PiCoSteveMo outcomes.
  • Self-driving taxis paving the entire planet.
  • Suggesting ideas as a way to make sure nobody will implement those ideas.
  • Receiving a new CD for Christmas in the post-Napster era.
  • What we can still use as stocking stuffers now that CDs and DVDs don't make sense any more.
  • Your life partner going through a Brandon Sanderson phase and giving you a huge Brandon Sanderson book to read.
  • What you call the plug that goes into a plug.
  • Getting paid to learn to solder.
  • Deliberately introducing mpeg artifacts into a video stream.
  • How to troubleshoot a motherboard now that they don't beep any more.
  • How many Intels they're up to now.
  • A memory of fun that you can't go back to.
  • Awful Fantasy.
  • Putting a foul-mouthed rom hack on your SNES Classic and then forgetting that happened when you give it away to your friends' kids.
  • Imagining how great a product is going to be while you're buying the product.
  • Asking for a toy for Christmas even though you know you'll never make time for it.
  • Going to a friend's house and seeing a bajillion guitar pedals that you can't afford.
  • Giving your guitar pedals away to someone who'll actually use them rather than just reselling them.
  • Hanging out with the kind of person who's playing Rock Band in 2023.
  • The only generation that learned how to use computers.
  • Worrying that the five year old computer geniuses are going to hack your foot so you can't walk.
  • Living in New Holstein Wisconsin and needing psychic healing.
  • Living in the city and having a place you go to for hot dogs vs. living in the country and having a guy you call for hot dogs and he comes to your house with a suitcase full of hot dogs and a USB-C grill.
  • Moving to the country so you can hang out of the hot dog guy.
  • A place that's not even really a place because you can't catch Pokemon there.
  • Two Guys and a Place.
  • Bringing independent gas stations their coffee.
  • Yacht Man Cologne.
  • Stuff You're Not Allowed To Eat dot com.
  • Arguing with GPT-4 until it agrees that your Garfield dating sim idea is ethical.
  • Putting on your face shoes.
  • This Is Cake Bread!
  • Tholen vs. Tholen.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+noob8Tek ]]> Jim Stormdancer 218. Darmok and Jalad Go to White Castle https://topiclords.com/darmok-and-jalad-go-to-white-castle 6066d4c3-69e3-4d42-b4a2-d0d2031d9a69 Mon, 25 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Stevie and Avery. We discuss medieval musical instruments, the baseball cult who all looked like old-timey barbers, arguing about how needing to pee works, Avery's Non-Mammalian Milk Corner, and Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds 1:03:49 true Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Why the show works like that.
  • Asking people if they understand what's going on.
  • Spy software.
  • Exactly the kind of game you don't want to explain.
  • Someone who has a sense of humor and thinks something is funny.
  • A hat you can put on your frog.
  • Why frogs are so damn popular.
  • The game with the magnifying glass.
  • Whether the recorder is a real instrument or a crappy toy for babies.
  • Just how thicc this bass recorder is
  • The supercomputer that's also a couch.
  • Talking to your mom on the phone for 45 minutes because she can't stop listing medieval instruments.
  • Recorders that are double recorders.
  • Michael Fassbender teaching his clone how to play the flute.
  • Eating a pair of garden shears.
  • An umbrella handle that was given growth hormones that sounds kind of like a stylophone.
  • An instrument that is curved so that you can play it on horseback without bonking the horse.
  • The sackbut.
  • A selfie stick but for a trombone.
  • Sausage bassoons.
  • Unholy Rackett.
  • How long how many strings look it up?
  • Insufflation tubes and dudelsacks..
  • Versatile, like the Pogues.
  • Bears riding unicycles but not very well.
  • Overblowing.
  • Jim the Overblower.
  • Bringing up bugles to someone who works hospice.
  • How many songs you can play on a bugle.
  • Not wanting to play Beatles Rock Band because you with at BevMo.
  • A photo of an early 20th century cult/baseball team that looks like a modern-day metal band.
  • Not being able to make it to the majors so you settle for House of Dave.
  • Someone who's never played Blaseball trying to explain Blaseball.
  • Amusement parks started by cults.
  • A pretty good way to end a baseball league.
  • Additional amusement.
  • Preserving tiny railways built by a baseball cult.
  • A busy man who has no time to pee.
  • Peristalsis.
  • Persons currently experiencing hubris.
  • What happens to your knowledge when you're not actively thinking about it.
  • When you can truly say you know the capital of the United States.
  • Waking up needing to pee and trying to fall back to sleep so that you forget you need to pee.
  • Having a dream about urinals overflowing.
  • Cutting nature at its joints.
  • Preparing for Topicking.
  • Whether the Jejune Institute made money.
  • When Sacky Meets Butty.
  • Signing a contract in someone else's blood.
  • Yet another non-mammalian milk.
  • Jacked, yoked, ripped and swole spiders.
  • Imagery that's only unsettling because you don't regularly drink spider milk.
  • Vestigial web butts.
  • Sympathy for the young.
  • Putting on a spider silk dress and never being able to take it off.
  • A communal spider butthole web.
  • Blinded by the milk, wrapped up in a douche.
  • The first boutique New York restaurant to serve spider milk pancakes.
  • Cutting out all the parts where people say something dumb.
  • Drum Pants. (It turns your pants into a drum set.)
  • We have seen the a Queen of Cheese.
  • The worst rhyme scheme.
  • A poem that screams 5th grade.
  • Why does this web site have line numbers?
  • Are you a bad enough dude to save the president's cheese?
  • A poetic technique that can be really cool (but not in this poem)
  • Confusing this mammoth cheese with another mammoth cheese.
  • The most mammalian of all mammals.
  • My Mother Milked a Million Mostly Male Mammoths.
  • A huge ice cream tub carried by four ponies.
  • 35 tons of milk
  • Extremely fake beards.
  • A thing people once said to sell chicken.
]]> Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Why the show works like that.
  • Asking people if they understand what's going on.
  • Spy software.
  • Exactly the kind of game you don't want to explain.
  • Someone who has a sense of humor and thinks something is funny.
  • A hat you can put on your frog.
  • Why frogs are so damn popular.
  • The game with the magnifying glass.
  • Whether the recorder is a real instrument or a crappy toy for babies.
  • Just how thicc this bass recorder is
  • The supercomputer that's also a couch.
  • Talking to your mom on the phone for 45 minutes because she can't stop listing medieval instruments.
  • Recorders that are double recorders.
  • Michael Fassbender teaching his clone how to play the flute.
  • Eating a pair of garden shears.
  • An umbrella handle that was given growth hormones that sounds kind of like a stylophone.
  • An instrument that is curved so that you can play it on horseback without bonking the horse.
  • The sackbut.
  • A selfie stick but for a trombone.
  • Sausage bassoons.
  • Unholy Rackett.
  • How long how many strings look it up?
  • Insufflation tubes and dudelsacks..
  • Versatile, like the Pogues.
  • Bears riding unicycles but not very well.
  • Overblowing.
  • Jim the Overblower.
  • Bringing up bugles to someone who works hospice.
  • How many songs you can play on a bugle.
  • Not wanting to play Beatles Rock Band because you with at BevMo.
  • A photo of an early 20th century cult/baseball team that looks like a modern-day metal band.
  • Not being able to make it to the majors so you settle for House of Dave.
  • Someone who's never played Blaseball trying to explain Blaseball.
  • Amusement parks started by cults.
  • A pretty good way to end a baseball league.
  • Additional amusement.
  • Preserving tiny railways built by a baseball cult.
  • A busy man who has no time to pee.
  • Peristalsis.
  • Persons currently experiencing hubris.
  • What happens to your knowledge when you're not actively thinking about it.
  • When you can truly say you know the capital of the United States.
  • Waking up needing to pee and trying to fall back to sleep so that you forget you need to pee.
  • Having a dream about urinals overflowing.
  • Cutting nature at its joints.
  • Preparing for Topicking.
  • Whether the Jejune Institute made money.
  • When Sacky Meets Butty.
  • Signing a contract in someone else's blood.
  • Yet another non-mammalian milk.
  • Jacked, yoked, ripped and swole spiders.
  • Imagery that's only unsettling because you don't regularly drink spider milk.
  • Vestigial web butts.
  • Sympathy for the young.
  • Putting on a spider silk dress and never being able to take it off.
  • A communal spider butthole web.
  • Blinded by the milk, wrapped up in a douche.
  • The first boutique New York restaurant to serve spider milk pancakes.
  • Cutting out all the parts where people say something dumb.
  • Drum Pants. (It turns your pants into a drum set.)
  • We have seen the a Queen of Cheese.
  • The worst rhyme scheme.
  • A poem that screams 5th grade.
  • Why does this web site have line numbers?
  • Are you a bad enough dude to save the president's cheese?
  • A poetic technique that can be really cool (but not in this poem)
  • Confusing this mammoth cheese with another mammoth cheese.
  • The most mammalian of all mammals.
  • My Mother Milked a Million Mostly Male Mammoths.
  • A huge ice cream tub carried by four ponies.
  • 35 tons of milk
  • Extremely fake beards.
  • A thing people once said to sell chicken.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Stevie
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Why the show works like that.
  • Asking people if they understand what's going on.
  • Spy software.
  • Exactly the kind of game you don't want to explain.
  • Someone who has a sense of humor and thinks something is funny.
  • A hat you can put on your frog.
  • Why frogs are so damn popular.
  • The game with the magnifying glass.
  • Whether the recorder is a real instrument or a crappy toy for babies.
  • Just how thicc this bass recorder is
  • The supercomputer that's also a couch.
  • Talking to your mom on the phone for 45 minutes because she can't stop listing medieval instruments.
  • Recorders that are double recorders.
  • Michael Fassbender teaching his clone how to play the flute.
  • Eating a pair of garden shears.
  • An umbrella handle that was given growth hormones that sounds kind of like a stylophone.
  • An instrument that is curved so that you can play it on horseback without bonking the horse.
  • The sackbut.
  • A selfie stick but for a trombone.
  • Sausage bassoons.
  • Unholy Rackett.
  • How long how many strings look it up?
  • Insufflation tubes and dudelsacks..
  • Versatile, like the Pogues.
  • Bears riding unicycles but not very well.
  • Overblowing.
  • Jim the Overblower.
  • Bringing up bugles to someone who works hospice.
  • How many songs you can play on a bugle.
  • Not wanting to play Beatles Rock Band because you with at BevMo.
  • A photo of an early 20th century cult/baseball team that looks like a modern-day metal band.
  • Not being able to make it to the majors so you settle for House of Dave.
  • Someone who's never played Blaseball trying to explain Blaseball.
  • Amusement parks started by cults.
  • A pretty good way to end a baseball league.
  • Additional amusement.
  • Preserving tiny railways built by a baseball cult.
  • A busy man who has no time to pee.
  • Peristalsis.
  • Persons currently experiencing hubris.
  • What happens to your knowledge when you're not actively thinking about it.
  • When you can truly say you know the capital of the United States.
  • Waking up needing to pee and trying to fall back to sleep so that you forget you need to pee.
  • Having a dream about urinals overflowing.
  • Cutting nature at its joints.
  • Preparing for Topicking.
  • Whether the Jejune Institute made money.
  • When Sacky Meets Butty.
  • Signing a contract in someone else's blood.
  • Yet another non-mammalian milk.
  • Jacked, yoked, ripped and swole spiders.
  • Imagery that's only unsettling because you don't regularly drink spider milk.
  • Vestigial web butts.
  • Sympathy for the young.
  • Putting on a spider silk dress and never being able to take it off.
  • A communal spider butthole web.
  • Blinded by the milk, wrapped up in a douche.
  • The first boutique New York restaurant to serve spider milk pancakes.
  • Cutting out all the parts where people say something dumb.
  • Drum Pants. (It turns your pants into a drum set.)
  • We have seen the a Queen of Cheese.
  • The worst rhyme scheme.
  • A poem that screams 5th grade.
  • Why does this web site have line numbers?
  • Are you a bad enough dude to save the president's cheese?
  • A poetic technique that can be really cool (but not in this poem)
  • Confusing this mammoth cheese with another mammoth cheese.
  • The most mammalian of all mammals.
  • My Mother Milked a Million Mostly Male Mammoths.
  • A huge ice cream tub carried by four ponies.
  • 35 tons of milk
  • Extremely fake beards.
  • A thing people once said to sell chicken.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+rpY9NMy_ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 217. Rotate Your Plate Breakage https://topiclords.com/rotate-your-plate-breakage ebe5bfca-44f2-4c81-81d1-325e26746fed Mon, 18 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Nick. We discuss Puzzmo, tableware rotation strategy, Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, and "It Was A Coffin That Sang," by Olena Davis 1:07:00 true Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Nick

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Instead of giving someone a business card, stamping your information on them so they have to call you before they take a shower.
  • Where's George?
  • George isn't here. George was never here.
  • Canadians looking forward to when they can walk around with King Charles' face in their pocket.
  • Giving the barista a coupla chucks for a cup of coffee.
  • Money with RadarSat on it.
  • inaturalist dot org.
  • Taking a photo of a weird plant with a weird seed pod.
  • The fantasy of collecting information.
  • The game where you try to name every street in San Francisco.
  • Running all the streets in your city over the course of a decade.
  • Games Genie.
  • Lexicographic Ordering and Time Travel.
  • A sanctioned topic. (It's on the list.)
  • Wario Ware presenting you with a full sized crossword and giving you six seconds to solve it.
  • A fun little histogram.
  • Finally implementing the letter T.
  • Doing the crossword on paper and making your daughter enter your answers into the app.
  • Will Shortz coming out of his orb to carry out a hit on a competing puzzle.
  • Fugue Orbs.
  • Comparing the interface design of Connections and Red Herring.
  • Things Relating to Wonder Woman.
  • Extremely well SEO'd pestilences.
  • Arranging your dinner plates in a stack vs. in a queue.
  • Using all your plates evenly so they all break at the same time.
  • Rotating the Stock.
  • The dangers of Low-Sodium Perpetual Stew.
  • Default plates from the food service factory.
  • Airplane boarding algorithms and how to convince everyone in the terminal to follow yours.
  • Plates that are made for using.
  • A whole Jefferson, in your Republic dollars.
  • The urge to queue.
  • Lanesplitting your backpack.
  • History: it's a lot older than we think
  • Ancient cash registers.
  • Pranksters organizing the topic bucket.
  • How many museums deep are we?
  • The human wife.
  • Efficient.. Successful. Human.
  • Top five lists of your life.
  • How small a flavoring agent has to be to be considered a spice.
  • A twelve foot tall statue of either Zeus or Poseidon.
  • Myth- and Nationhood- Making.
  • A museum where you can feel wood cut with various tools.
  • Hearing about a cool metalworking museum but fixating on how the bathroom works.
  • Cool Bathroom Ghost.
  • The toilet commenting on your performance.
  • Piping bookshop noises into your bathroom.
  • Robert Stack's Solved Mysteries.
  • Being sad and trying to have a good sadness.
  • Michael Brough talking about his design process.
  • Fun exercise vs. shitty boring exercise.
  • What to do about the world ending.
  • Driving in circles around the McDonald's drive-thru ordering more and more coffee until they catch on.
  • Telling a joke on Twitter and an archaeologist getting it 1000 years from now.
  • The world's oldest joke.
  • A fart joke from 1900 BCE.
  • Reconstructive historical linguistics.
  • The linguistics of swearing and taboo.
  • Eater of bees.
  • Top five stanzas.
]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Nick

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Instead of giving someone a business card, stamping your information on them so they have to call you before they take a shower.
  • Where's George?
  • George isn't here. George was never here.
  • Canadians looking forward to when they can walk around with King Charles' face in their pocket.
  • Giving the barista a coupla chucks for a cup of coffee.
  • Money with RadarSat on it.
  • inaturalist dot org.
  • Taking a photo of a weird plant with a weird seed pod.
  • The fantasy of collecting information.
  • The game where you try to name every street in San Francisco.
  • Running all the streets in your city over the course of a decade.
  • Games Genie.
  • Lexicographic Ordering and Time Travel.
  • A sanctioned topic. (It's on the list.)
  • Wario Ware presenting you with a full sized crossword and giving you six seconds to solve it.
  • A fun little histogram.
  • Finally implementing the letter T.
  • Doing the crossword on paper and making your daughter enter your answers into the app.
  • Will Shortz coming out of his orb to carry out a hit on a competing puzzle.
  • Fugue Orbs.
  • Comparing the interface design of Connections and Red Herring.
  • Things Relating to Wonder Woman.
  • Extremely well SEO'd pestilences.
  • Arranging your dinner plates in a stack vs. in a queue.
  • Using all your plates evenly so they all break at the same time.
  • Rotating the Stock.
  • The dangers of Low-Sodium Perpetual Stew.
  • Default plates from the food service factory.
  • Airplane boarding algorithms and how to convince everyone in the terminal to follow yours.
  • Plates that are made for using.
  • A whole Jefferson, in your Republic dollars.
  • The urge to queue.
  • Lanesplitting your backpack.
  • History: it's a lot older than we think
  • Ancient cash registers.
  • Pranksters organizing the topic bucket.
  • How many museums deep are we?
  • The human wife.
  • Efficient.. Successful. Human.
  • Top five lists of your life.
  • How small a flavoring agent has to be to be considered a spice.
  • A twelve foot tall statue of either Zeus or Poseidon.
  • Myth- and Nationhood- Making.
  • A museum where you can feel wood cut with various tools.
  • Hearing about a cool metalworking museum but fixating on how the bathroom works.
  • Cool Bathroom Ghost.
  • The toilet commenting on your performance.
  • Piping bookshop noises into your bathroom.
  • Robert Stack's Solved Mysteries.
  • Being sad and trying to have a good sadness.
  • Michael Brough talking about his design process.
  • Fun exercise vs. shitty boring exercise.
  • What to do about the world ending.
  • Driving in circles around the McDonald's drive-thru ordering more and more coffee until they catch on.
  • Telling a joke on Twitter and an archaeologist getting it 1000 years from now.
  • The world's oldest joke.
  • A fart joke from 1900 BCE.
  • Reconstructive historical linguistics.
  • The linguistics of swearing and taboo.
  • Eater of bees.
  • Top five stanzas.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Nick

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Instead of giving someone a business card, stamping your information on them so they have to call you before they take a shower.
  • Where's George?
  • George isn't here. George was never here.
  • Canadians looking forward to when they can walk around with King Charles' face in their pocket.
  • Giving the barista a coupla chucks for a cup of coffee.
  • Money with RadarSat on it.
  • inaturalist dot org.
  • Taking a photo of a weird plant with a weird seed pod.
  • The fantasy of collecting information.
  • The game where you try to name every street in San Francisco.
  • Running all the streets in your city over the course of a decade.
  • Games Genie.
  • Lexicographic Ordering and Time Travel.
  • A sanctioned topic. (It's on the list.)
  • Wario Ware presenting you with a full sized crossword and giving you six seconds to solve it.
  • A fun little histogram.
  • Finally implementing the letter T.
  • Doing the crossword on paper and making your daughter enter your answers into the app.
  • Will Shortz coming out of his orb to carry out a hit on a competing puzzle.
  • Fugue Orbs.
  • Comparing the interface design of Connections and Red Herring.
  • Things Relating to Wonder Woman.
  • Extremely well SEO'd pestilences.
  • Arranging your dinner plates in a stack vs. in a queue.
  • Using all your plates evenly so they all break at the same time.
  • Rotating the Stock.
  • The dangers of Low-Sodium Perpetual Stew.
  • Default plates from the food service factory.
  • Airplane boarding algorithms and how to convince everyone in the terminal to follow yours.
  • Plates that are made for using.
  • A whole Jefferson, in your Republic dollars.
  • The urge to queue.
  • Lanesplitting your backpack.
  • History: it's a lot older than we think
  • Ancient cash registers.
  • Pranksters organizing the topic bucket.
  • How many museums deep are we?
  • The human wife.
  • Efficient.. Successful. Human.
  • Top five lists of your life.
  • How small a flavoring agent has to be to be considered a spice.
  • A twelve foot tall statue of either Zeus or Poseidon.
  • Myth- and Nationhood- Making.
  • A museum where you can feel wood cut with various tools.
  • Hearing about a cool metalworking museum but fixating on how the bathroom works.
  • Cool Bathroom Ghost.
  • The toilet commenting on your performance.
  • Piping bookshop noises into your bathroom.
  • Robert Stack's Solved Mysteries.
  • Being sad and trying to have a good sadness.
  • Michael Brough talking about his design process.
  • Fun exercise vs. shitty boring exercise.
  • What to do about the world ending.
  • Driving in circles around the McDonald's drive-thru ordering more and more coffee until they catch on.
  • Telling a joke on Twitter and an archaeologist getting it 1000 years from now.
  • The world's oldest joke.
  • A fart joke from 1900 BCE.
  • Reconstructive historical linguistics.
  • The linguistics of swearing and taboo.
  • Eater of bees.
  • Top five stanzas.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+KLbFPGky ]]> Jim Stormdancer 216. I Forget What We Do but We're About To Do It https://topiclords.com/i-forget-what-we-do-but-were-about-to-do-it cc9da316-6e3f-457f-b9ce-4e1ca7f160b8 Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Jay. We discuss moving and having stuff, teaching a 3-year-old to use a mouse and keyboard, interface traps, Yelp! Review for God, and starting a Youtube channel for kids. 1:13:42 true Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.
  • Washing the ice cream off of the cookie dough ice cream and baking cookies.
  • Snacking dough.
  • Living on your own and owning silverware for the first time.
  • Losing a fork that they don't make any more and having mismatched forks forever.
  • A hodgepodge of styles.
  • Different spaces each with their own internal consistency.
  • Going to your ex-roommate's Halloween party as a guest for the first time.
  • Parties that you can leave.
  • Finding out you were right about what you thought you'd like.
  • Moving house in an hour.
  • Your kid banging on the keyboard to write nonsense messages in discord but he forgets to hit enter to send so you have to do it for him.
  • Teaching kids to read by giving them a Kindle tablet.
  • Typing "stop" fifty times in notepad.
  • Dell Rugged.
  • What Mavis Beacon is up to nowadays.
  • Computers as the exciting future vs. computers as the boring shitty present.
  • Getting a laptop without a touch screen so your kid can learn to use the mouse.
  • Different ways to not understand folders.
  • Whether the problem is that Gen Z doesn't know what a folder is or whether it's that they sometimes still need to know what a folder is.
  • Apps that appear to be native apps but they're secretly running in a web browser.
  • Coming into possession of a child.
  • An overworld where you can walk in 8 directions and bump into NPCs.
  • Boots Quest.
  • Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Roguelike Turn-Based Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Mini Yoto.
  • Using the insert key on purpose.
  • The Jay's Wife of Scroll Lock.
  • The two Smush tracks on the Hypnospace Outlaw soundtrack.
  • Why there are separate shift and caps lock keys but no separate toggle insert and hold to insert keys.
  • Sticky Keys.
  • Caps lock keys that physically toggle.
  • Toon Boom Harmony and other way too expensive subscription software.
  • Can't draw can't see pencil in toon boom reddit
  • Lock the taskbar, lock the taskbar.
  • The pros and cons of different start menu orientations.
  • Getting kissed in the vegetable aisle, so to speak.
  • Talking about dungeons and dragons and getting something slightly wrong about dungeons or dragons.
  • The laws of physics preventing you from kidding boys.
  • On the one hand growing up as a trans poet in Arizona. On the other, drinking a whole lot of strawberry kiwi kombucha.
  • Four out of five stars for inventing an extremely dry mouth.
  • A dry, scratchy, sandpaper cat tongue.
  • A song about a ghost eating toast.
  • Watching your kid watch things.
  • Where to put video content on the internet.
  • Ideas that are occluded by ideas that are better search-engine optimized.
  • Whether librarians are scarier in Germany.
  • Combining three people with social anxiety to make one really big person with social anxiety.
  • Fixing kids software for 100 people because it's too hard to fix it for the whole world.
  • X for Extreme.
]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.
  • Washing the ice cream off of the cookie dough ice cream and baking cookies.
  • Snacking dough.
  • Living on your own and owning silverware for the first time.
  • Losing a fork that they don't make any more and having mismatched forks forever.
  • A hodgepodge of styles.
  • Different spaces each with their own internal consistency.
  • Going to your ex-roommate's Halloween party as a guest for the first time.
  • Parties that you can leave.
  • Finding out you were right about what you thought you'd like.
  • Moving house in an hour.
  • Your kid banging on the keyboard to write nonsense messages in discord but he forgets to hit enter to send so you have to do it for him.
  • Teaching kids to read by giving them a Kindle tablet.
  • Typing "stop" fifty times in notepad.
  • Dell Rugged.
  • What Mavis Beacon is up to nowadays.
  • Computers as the exciting future vs. computers as the boring shitty present.
  • Getting a laptop without a touch screen so your kid can learn to use the mouse.
  • Different ways to not understand folders.
  • Whether the problem is that Gen Z doesn't know what a folder is or whether it's that they sometimes still need to know what a folder is.
  • Apps that appear to be native apps but they're secretly running in a web browser.
  • Coming into possession of a child.
  • An overworld where you can walk in 8 directions and bump into NPCs.
  • Boots Quest.
  • Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Roguelike Turn-Based Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Mini Yoto.
  • Using the insert key on purpose.
  • The Jay's Wife of Scroll Lock.
  • The two Smush tracks on the Hypnospace Outlaw soundtrack.
  • Why there are separate shift and caps lock keys but no separate toggle insert and hold to insert keys.
  • Sticky Keys.
  • Caps lock keys that physically toggle.
  • Toon Boom Harmony and other way too expensive subscription software.
  • Can't draw can't see pencil in toon boom reddit
  • Lock the taskbar, lock the taskbar.
  • The pros and cons of different start menu orientations.
  • Getting kissed in the vegetable aisle, so to speak.
  • Talking about dungeons and dragons and getting something slightly wrong about dungeons or dragons.
  • The laws of physics preventing you from kidding boys.
  • On the one hand growing up as a trans poet in Arizona. On the other, drinking a whole lot of strawberry kiwi kombucha.
  • Four out of five stars for inventing an extremely dry mouth.
  • A dry, scratchy, sandpaper cat tongue.
  • A song about a ghost eating toast.
  • Watching your kid watch things.
  • Where to put video content on the internet.
  • Ideas that are occluded by ideas that are better search-engine optimized.
  • Whether librarians are scarier in Germany.
  • Combining three people with social anxiety to make one really big person with social anxiety.
  • Fixing kids software for 100 people because it's too hard to fix it for the whole world.
  • X for Extreme.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Jay

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.
  • Washing the ice cream off of the cookie dough ice cream and baking cookies.
  • Snacking dough.
  • Living on your own and owning silverware for the first time.
  • Losing a fork that they don't make any more and having mismatched forks forever.
  • A hodgepodge of styles.
  • Different spaces each with their own internal consistency.
  • Going to your ex-roommate's Halloween party as a guest for the first time.
  • Parties that you can leave.
  • Finding out you were right about what you thought you'd like.
  • Moving house in an hour.
  • Your kid banging on the keyboard to write nonsense messages in discord but he forgets to hit enter to send so you have to do it for him.
  • Teaching kids to read by giving them a Kindle tablet.
  • Typing "stop" fifty times in notepad.
  • Dell Rugged.
  • What Mavis Beacon is up to nowadays.
  • Computers as the exciting future vs. computers as the boring shitty present.
  • Getting a laptop without a touch screen so your kid can learn to use the mouse.
  • Different ways to not understand folders.
  • Whether the problem is that Gen Z doesn't know what a folder is or whether it's that they sometimes still need to know what a folder is.
  • Apps that appear to be native apps but they're secretly running in a web browser.
  • Coming into possession of a child.
  • An overworld where you can walk in 8 directions and bump into NPCs.
  • Boots Quest.
  • Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Roguelike Turn-Based Auto Shooting Survival.
  • Mini Yoto.
  • Using the insert key on purpose.
  • The Jay's Wife of Scroll Lock.
  • The two Smush tracks on the Hypnospace Outlaw soundtrack.
  • Why there are separate shift and caps lock keys but no separate toggle insert and hold to insert keys.
  • Sticky Keys.
  • Caps lock keys that physically toggle.
  • Toon Boom Harmony and other way too expensive subscription software.
  • Can't draw can't see pencil in toon boom reddit
  • Lock the taskbar, lock the taskbar.
  • The pros and cons of different start menu orientations.
  • Getting kissed in the vegetable aisle, so to speak.
  • Talking about dungeons and dragons and getting something slightly wrong about dungeons or dragons.
  • The laws of physics preventing you from kidding boys.
  • On the one hand growing up as a trans poet in Arizona. On the other, drinking a whole lot of strawberry kiwi kombucha.
  • Four out of five stars for inventing an extremely dry mouth.
  • A dry, scratchy, sandpaper cat tongue.
  • A song about a ghost eating toast.
  • Watching your kid watch things.
  • Where to put video content on the internet.
  • Ideas that are occluded by ideas that are better search-engine optimized.
  • Whether librarians are scarier in Germany.
  • Combining three people with social anxiety to make one really big person with social anxiety.
  • Fixing kids software for 100 people because it's too hard to fix it for the whole world.
  • X for Extreme.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+zMoaMNm_ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 215. Taffy Arbitrage Tips https://topiclords.com/taffy-arbitrage-tips 16bb6dec-9931-4c64-b5f8-90e33d28e164 Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and JohnB. We discuss Game & Watch Gallery, Novemberween, square mattresses, Eight Line Poem by David Bowie, and sitting on a bench in Spider-Man 2. 1:03:18 true Lords:

  • Ben
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fellow Traveler.
  • Citizen Sleeper: at least one person's game of the year.
  • State fair taffy.
  • Where to find seasonal taffy bargains.
  • Terrifying taffy flavors.
  • Single game LCD handhelds.
  • Gunplay Yokoi.
  • Withered technology.
  • The RC car that can only turn left because right was cut for scope.
  • Games where things are bouncing across the screen.
  • Tiger Electronics Double Dragon.
  • The earliest, most boring Game and Watch game.
  • A fun clock that's fun to watch.
  • Putting your face as the juggler in Ball for the Game Boy Camera.
  • What they did before d-pads.
  • A Print the Legend situation.
  • Mario Bros II for the Commodore 64.
  • Porting Game and Watch games to card stock.
  • Releasing a floppy disk reader for the Game Boy Advance in 2023.
  • Mario's Bombs Away, in Panorama Vision.
  • Moving slower the more gold you're carrying.
  • Toad walking across a bunch of seagulls.
  • Trying to get 16 player Faceball up and running.
  • The Burger King vs. Hungry Jack's era.
  • The Lost Lost Levels.
  • The most polite pumpkin head person you've ever met.
  • Inventing a new Halloween that happens the first weekend after Halloween so you can get candy at a discount.
  • Implicating the viewers in your terrible horror movie marathon.
  • Terrifying cakes with spooky words on them like "mortgage"
  • Tammy and the T-Rex.
  • A spooky guy in a helmet who races people in his car (and kills them)
  • Putting pieces of Stonehenge into circuitry to make children's faces turn into bugs.
  • A movie about a cat that vomits up another cat.
  • A very spooky four dollar pumpkin man.
  • Neglecting upkeep on your house for thirty years to celebrate Halloween.
  • Novemberween every Sunday.
  • How to celebrate Labor Day.
  • Rotating a square mattress 90 degrees.
  • Going into the mattress store and unrolling the amount of mattress you want from the spool and getting it cut to order.
  • Alternate reality How It's Made videos.
  • The Manchester Department.
  • Super Passive Aggressive Xenomorph Roommate Irritation Simulator.
  • Rolling the dice to determine which side of the cube mattress you're sleeping on tonight.
  • Rotating the tires on your racecar bed.
  • Asking the cat for poem opinions.
  • Sometimes the sun is just the sun. (Not this time though – it's David Bowie.)
  • Plugs within plugs.
  • All the different games named "Spider-Man 2"
  • Using your Spider Radar to track down the next objective.
  • A video game where you go on a holiday to Greece and stab a bunch of people.
  • The distressing absence of Mario Odyssey 2.
  • Finally, a Super Mario game you can finish without hating yourself.
  • A grown-up with adult things to do, like cooking bacon and receiving mail.
  • The Trophy Seller in Nier Automata.
  • Kosmology Hungry Jack.
]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fellow Traveler.
  • Citizen Sleeper: at least one person's game of the year.
  • State fair taffy.
  • Where to find seasonal taffy bargains.
  • Terrifying taffy flavors.
  • Single game LCD handhelds.
  • Gunplay Yokoi.
  • Withered technology.
  • The RC car that can only turn left because right was cut for scope.
  • Games where things are bouncing across the screen.
  • Tiger Electronics Double Dragon.
  • The earliest, most boring Game and Watch game.
  • A fun clock that's fun to watch.
  • Putting your face as the juggler in Ball for the Game Boy Camera.
  • What they did before d-pads.
  • A Print the Legend situation.
  • Mario Bros II for the Commodore 64.
  • Porting Game and Watch games to card stock.
  • Releasing a floppy disk reader for the Game Boy Advance in 2023.
  • Mario's Bombs Away, in Panorama Vision.
  • Moving slower the more gold you're carrying.
  • Toad walking across a bunch of seagulls.
  • Trying to get 16 player Faceball up and running.
  • The Burger King vs. Hungry Jack's era.
  • The Lost Lost Levels.
  • The most polite pumpkin head person you've ever met.
  • Inventing a new Halloween that happens the first weekend after Halloween so you can get candy at a discount.
  • Implicating the viewers in your terrible horror movie marathon.
  • Terrifying cakes with spooky words on them like "mortgage"
  • Tammy and the T-Rex.
  • A spooky guy in a helmet who races people in his car (and kills them)
  • Putting pieces of Stonehenge into circuitry to make children's faces turn into bugs.
  • A movie about a cat that vomits up another cat.
  • A very spooky four dollar pumpkin man.
  • Neglecting upkeep on your house for thirty years to celebrate Halloween.
  • Novemberween every Sunday.
  • How to celebrate Labor Day.
  • Rotating a square mattress 90 degrees.
  • Going into the mattress store and unrolling the amount of mattress you want from the spool and getting it cut to order.
  • Alternate reality How It's Made videos.
  • The Manchester Department.
  • Super Passive Aggressive Xenomorph Roommate Irritation Simulator.
  • Rolling the dice to determine which side of the cube mattress you're sleeping on tonight.
  • Rotating the tires on your racecar bed.
  • Asking the cat for poem opinions.
  • Sometimes the sun is just the sun. (Not this time though – it's David Bowie.)
  • Plugs within plugs.
  • All the different games named "Spider-Man 2"
  • Using your Spider Radar to track down the next objective.
  • A video game where you go on a holiday to Greece and stab a bunch of people.
  • The distressing absence of Mario Odyssey 2.
  • Finally, a Super Mario game you can finish without hating yourself.
  • A grown-up with adult things to do, like cooking bacon and receiving mail.
  • The Trophy Seller in Nier Automata.
  • Kosmology Hungry Jack.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ben
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fellow Traveler.
  • Citizen Sleeper: at least one person's game of the year.
  • State fair taffy.
  • Where to find seasonal taffy bargains.
  • Terrifying taffy flavors.
  • Single game LCD handhelds.
  • Gunplay Yokoi.
  • Withered technology.
  • The RC car that can only turn left because right was cut for scope.
  • Games where things are bouncing across the screen.
  • Tiger Electronics Double Dragon.
  • The earliest, most boring Game and Watch game.
  • A fun clock that's fun to watch.
  • Putting your face as the juggler in Ball for the Game Boy Camera.
  • What they did before d-pads.
  • A Print the Legend situation.
  • Mario Bros II for the Commodore 64.
  • Porting Game and Watch games to card stock.
  • Releasing a floppy disk reader for the Game Boy Advance in 2023.
  • Mario's Bombs Away, in Panorama Vision.
  • Moving slower the more gold you're carrying.
  • Toad walking across a bunch of seagulls.
  • Trying to get 16 player Faceball up and running.
  • The Burger King vs. Hungry Jack's era.
  • The Lost Lost Levels.
  • The most polite pumpkin head person you've ever met.
  • Inventing a new Halloween that happens the first weekend after Halloween so you can get candy at a discount.
  • Implicating the viewers in your terrible horror movie marathon.
  • Terrifying cakes with spooky words on them like "mortgage"
  • Tammy and the T-Rex.
  • A spooky guy in a helmet who races people in his car (and kills them)
  • Putting pieces of Stonehenge into circuitry to make children's faces turn into bugs.
  • A movie about a cat that vomits up another cat.
  • A very spooky four dollar pumpkin man.
  • Neglecting upkeep on your house for thirty years to celebrate Halloween.
  • Novemberween every Sunday.
  • How to celebrate Labor Day.
  • Rotating a square mattress 90 degrees.
  • Going into the mattress store and unrolling the amount of mattress you want from the spool and getting it cut to order.
  • Alternate reality How It's Made videos.
  • The Manchester Department.
  • Super Passive Aggressive Xenomorph Roommate Irritation Simulator.
  • Rolling the dice to determine which side of the cube mattress you're sleeping on tonight.
  • Rotating the tires on your racecar bed.
  • Asking the cat for poem opinions.
  • Sometimes the sun is just the sun. (Not this time though – it's David Bowie.)
  • Plugs within plugs.
  • All the different games named "Spider-Man 2"
  • Using your Spider Radar to track down the next objective.
  • A video game where you go on a holiday to Greece and stab a bunch of people.
  • The distressing absence of Mario Odyssey 2.
  • Finally, a Super Mario game you can finish without hating yourself.
  • A grown-up with adult things to do, like cooking bacon and receiving mail.
  • The Trophy Seller in Nier Automata.
  • Kosmology Hungry Jack.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+nKFle5d9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 214. Oh Shit! That Guy's Got Horse Legs! https://topiclords.com/oh-shit-that-guys-got-horse-legs 5c14804c-b73d-4727-8358-cc2be876c4f1 Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Daniel and Alexander. We discuss octopus dreams, perception of memory, hike on 58, World of Warcraft over the years, mathematicians not capitalizing your name, polywater, and involuntary trochaic trimeter recognition. 1:05:19 true Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Preventative care.
  • COVID lucky streaks.
  • Being able to go to the ER.
  • How to spell Cocoon.
  • Moth guys carrying orbs on their backs.
  • Boss battles that you wouldn't expect.
  • Wilford Brimley's agelessness.
  • Octopus nightmares.
  • The octopus equivalent of rapid eye movement.
  • Meeting sapient crows and asking them whether Y or Z should be up.
  • Which memories stick better.
  • Perception of time when you have a routine vs. when you don't.
  • Arranging your life to maximize perceived lifespan.
  • Different ways to have an adventure.
  • Shooby doooby doggie.
  • A sports rule that sounds like a 17776 plot point
  • Why the Bob Emergency is an emergency.
  • The best quarterbacks getting stuck in an endless hike and football ending forever.
  • The one person who hasn't played Frog Fractions but just listens to Topic Lords because they like topics so much.
  • Summer's lease.
  • Reading a poem aloud without knowing what "ow'st" means or how to pronounce it.
  • Words that used to rhyme but don't anymore.
  • Meter recognize meter.
  • Writing all your sonnets during COVID lockdown.
  • A poem about a dude that Shakespeare is not in love with.
  • Woe is me, etc.
  • Piss Jugman vs Piss Jugm'n.
  • Making phonetic reforms that don't take.
  • Smoothing off any rough edges or peculiarities.
  • Permadeath taking inspiration from real life.
  • A fun thing that you wouldn't have expected to see.
  • Enjoying spending time in the world.
  • Hold the W key and cruise through it.
  • The difference between wanting something vs. liking it.
  • Abelian.
  • The opposite of how you would think honor works.
  • Great honors: brands hate them!
  • Whether to capitalize "lynchian," "kafkaesque" or "quixotic"
  • Eternal abstract universal objects.
  • Teaching truck drivers where to put their piss jugs.
  • The highest honor Piss Jugman can receive.
  • The surname Piss.
  • What is the average Piss lifespan?
  • A real life Bobby Tables moment.
  • The Polywater Gap.
  • Water that scientists have sweated in.
  • Buying a can of Soviet Scientist Sweat in a Japanese vending machine.
  • Polyester intoxication.
  • Liquids with a lower freezing temperature than water.
  • The Polywater Doodle.
  • A metabolism described by Richard Feynman.
  • Brain Pollution.
  • The particular better of the first line of Aqualung by Jethro Tull.
  • Singing "parallelipiped" to the tune of Aqualung.
  • Hearing random phrases in your life.
  • Spelling "yogurt" backwards.
  • Trying to understand the New York Times' effect on man.
  • A killer rap album based on alliteration rather than rhyming.
  • Poetry that rhymes on the second to last syllable rather than the last.
  • The baffling cosmology of Butter Dorks.
]]> Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Preventative care.
  • COVID lucky streaks.
  • Being able to go to the ER.
  • How to spell Cocoon.
  • Moth guys carrying orbs on their backs.
  • Boss battles that you wouldn't expect.
  • Wilford Brimley's agelessness.
  • Octopus nightmares.
  • The octopus equivalent of rapid eye movement.
  • Meeting sapient crows and asking them whether Y or Z should be up.
  • Which memories stick better.
  • Perception of time when you have a routine vs. when you don't.
  • Arranging your life to maximize perceived lifespan.
  • Different ways to have an adventure.
  • Shooby doooby doggie.
  • A sports rule that sounds like a 17776 plot point
  • Why the Bob Emergency is an emergency.
  • The best quarterbacks getting stuck in an endless hike and football ending forever.
  • The one person who hasn't played Frog Fractions but just listens to Topic Lords because they like topics so much.
  • Summer's lease.
  • Reading a poem aloud without knowing what "ow'st" means or how to pronounce it.
  • Words that used to rhyme but don't anymore.
  • Meter recognize meter.
  • Writing all your sonnets during COVID lockdown.
  • A poem about a dude that Shakespeare is not in love with.
  • Woe is me, etc.
  • Piss Jugman vs Piss Jugm'n.
  • Making phonetic reforms that don't take.
  • Smoothing off any rough edges or peculiarities.
  • Permadeath taking inspiration from real life.
  • A fun thing that you wouldn't have expected to see.
  • Enjoying spending time in the world.
  • Hold the W key and cruise through it.
  • The difference between wanting something vs. liking it.
  • Abelian.
  • The opposite of how you would think honor works.
  • Great honors: brands hate them!
  • Whether to capitalize "lynchian," "kafkaesque" or "quixotic"
  • Eternal abstract universal objects.
  • Teaching truck drivers where to put their piss jugs.
  • The highest honor Piss Jugman can receive.
  • The surname Piss.
  • What is the average Piss lifespan?
  • A real life Bobby Tables moment.
  • The Polywater Gap.
  • Water that scientists have sweated in.
  • Buying a can of Soviet Scientist Sweat in a Japanese vending machine.
  • Polyester intoxication.
  • Liquids with a lower freezing temperature than water.
  • The Polywater Doodle.
  • A metabolism described by Richard Feynman.
  • Brain Pollution.
  • The particular better of the first line of Aqualung by Jethro Tull.
  • Singing "parallelipiped" to the tune of Aqualung.
  • Hearing random phrases in your life.
  • Spelling "yogurt" backwards.
  • Trying to understand the New York Times' effect on man.
  • A killer rap album based on alliteration rather than rhyming.
  • Poetry that rhymes on the second to last syllable rather than the last.
  • The baffling cosmology of Butter Dorks.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Preventative care.
  • COVID lucky streaks.
  • Being able to go to the ER.
  • How to spell Cocoon.
  • Moth guys carrying orbs on their backs.
  • Boss battles that you wouldn't expect.
  • Wilford Brimley's agelessness.
  • Octopus nightmares.
  • The octopus equivalent of rapid eye movement.
  • Meeting sapient crows and asking them whether Y or Z should be up.
  • Which memories stick better.
  • Perception of time when you have a routine vs. when you don't.
  • Arranging your life to maximize perceived lifespan.
  • Different ways to have an adventure.
  • Shooby doooby doggie.
  • A sports rule that sounds like a 17776 plot point
  • Why the Bob Emergency is an emergency.
  • The best quarterbacks getting stuck in an endless hike and football ending forever.
  • The one person who hasn't played Frog Fractions but just listens to Topic Lords because they like topics so much.
  • Summer's lease.
  • Reading a poem aloud without knowing what "ow'st" means or how to pronounce it.
  • Words that used to rhyme but don't anymore.
  • Meter recognize meter.
  • Writing all your sonnets during COVID lockdown.
  • A poem about a dude that Shakespeare is not in love with.
  • Woe is me, etc.
  • Piss Jugman vs Piss Jugm'n.
  • Making phonetic reforms that don't take.
  • Smoothing off any rough edges or peculiarities.
  • Permadeath taking inspiration from real life.
  • A fun thing that you wouldn't have expected to see.
  • Enjoying spending time in the world.
  • Hold the W key and cruise through it.
  • The difference between wanting something vs. liking it.
  • Abelian.
  • The opposite of how you would think honor works.
  • Great honors: brands hate them!
  • Whether to capitalize "lynchian," "kafkaesque" or "quixotic"
  • Eternal abstract universal objects.
  • Teaching truck drivers where to put their piss jugs.
  • The highest honor Piss Jugman can receive.
  • The surname Piss.
  • What is the average Piss lifespan?
  • A real life Bobby Tables moment.
  • The Polywater Gap.
  • Water that scientists have sweated in.
  • Buying a can of Soviet Scientist Sweat in a Japanese vending machine.
  • Polyester intoxication.
  • Liquids with a lower freezing temperature than water.
  • The Polywater Doodle.
  • A metabolism described by Richard Feynman.
  • Brain Pollution.
  • The particular better of the first line of Aqualung by Jethro Tull.
  • Singing "parallelipiped" to the tune of Aqualung.
  • Hearing random phrases in your life.
  • Spelling "yogurt" backwards.
  • Trying to understand the New York Times' effect on man.
  • A killer rap album based on alliteration rather than rhyming.
  • Poetry that rhymes on the second to last syllable rather than the last.
  • The baffling cosmology of Butter Dorks.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+kGtEp-Wi ]]> Jim Stormdancer 213. Urine-Based Interactions With the Scientific Community https://topiclords.com/urine-based-interactions-with-the-scientific-community 567066d6-50d1-46d8-bdbe-782d22f3fb7d Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Ryan. We discuss dog bone facts, going to Cuba, Candidatos Desulforudis audaxviator, Avoid the Noid by Florence P. Wordsmith, canceling Texas, and shielding an avid gamer from the Final Fantasy 7 spoiler. 1:23:36 true Lords:

  • Erica
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The COVID booster as a form of recreational drug use.
  • Puking, but not for the listeners at home.
  • The only way you can know if you're doing well.
  • WavHog.
  • Trying a lot of things that aren't working out.
  • A chat log that's organized poorly.
  • An ever-growing cacophony.
  • The million dollar web page.
  • Buying ad space on a web page that's entirely ads.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Little Buddy mode vs. Little Nemesis mode.
  • Making a noise whenever you wonder about something.
  • The sound of the aurora borealis.
  • The Northern Lights explaining to you how many bones are in a dog's body.
  • Peeing on your equipment to keep the foxes away.
  • Maintaining curiosity about things.
  • Burying a question and seeing if it comes back to you.
  • Recording a podcast even though you don't know anything.
  • An information strategy that is much more enchanting than looking things up.
  • Leaving through your journals.
  • Tannish white hair.
  • Burying a dog bone so that it grows into a dog bone tree.
  • Farms with no distinct edges.
  • Cholera vegetables.
  • Inventing your own COVID-19 vaccine.
  • Putting a whole country in a snow globe.
  • Tube ham.
  • Drinking a soda branded "your ass."
  • Knight Anoles.
  • Gerrymandering Florida to fix Cuba.
  • Lord Kensingtonitis.
  • A bacterium named after a Jules Verne quote.
  • The only known organism to exist in an ecosystem containing only itself.
  • A biome that's just a bunch of clones of you making a go of it together.
  • Slurping up radiation from the good good surrounding bedrock.
  • All the little guys out there being interesting.
  • The credentials you need to call yourself a scientist.
  • Which bacteria are most bothered by their Wikipedia pages.
  • Everyone's MRCA.
  • Meteorites throwing amino assets into space.
  • Extremely grabby carbon.
  • Moldy bathtubs all over the universe.
  • Little Buddy mode but for bacteria.
  • The works of Florence P. Wordsmith.
  • The origin myth of the Noid.
  • Whether the Noid is wearing a suit or if that's just his skin.
  • Yo! Noid and Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void.
  • A layer of water that's waving up and down.
  • Empathizing with how the Noid sees the world.
  • Writing a poem about the Noid and, instead of hiding it in shame, putting it on the internet for all to see.
  • Getting a game over before you finish the first level but at least you killed a lot of seagulls with a yoyo.
  • The sun making a big X over Texas.
  • Drilling for oil in the Permian Basin.
  • The last total eclipse of the sun of our lifetimes.
  • Checkmate, scientists!
  • Solar noon.
  • Grab your glasses and get lookin'!
  • Meeting Topic Lords all summer.
  • Going sightseeing to find out where all your gasoline comes from.
  • Going to see the solar eclipse or just closing your eyes to get the same effect.
  • A big pile of polygonal Doritos killing another pile of polygonal Doritos.
  • Making sequels to the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
  • The porn web site named after a Final Fantasy 7 plot point.
  • aerisdies.com vs. aerithdies.com.
  • Retransliterations.
  • Husbands who are dead (asleep).
  • The option that makes you look like less of a douchebag.
  • Watching a Final Fantasy documentary before you watch it with your girlfriend to make sure it won't spoil a major character's death for her, and it shows the death onscreen but you missed it during the vetting process, but it's okay because she couldn't visually parse the Playstation-era graphics anyway.
  • Sending your sister to media literacy classes so that she can understand when Aeris dies.
  • A pile of snack chips fighting each other.
  • Showing Star Wars to kids who have never seen it but know every plot point in advance.
  • A priceless Ming vase that has never been perceived by human eyes and everyone thinks it's an idiot and Erica wants to save it by calling it up on the phone and smashing it.
  • A big red button you can push whenever you want.
  • The only time you've ever been accused of underthinking something.
  • Putting your first name and last name together to make a person.
]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The COVID booster as a form of recreational drug use.
  • Puking, but not for the listeners at home.
  • The only way you can know if you're doing well.
  • WavHog.
  • Trying a lot of things that aren't working out.
  • A chat log that's organized poorly.
  • An ever-growing cacophony.
  • The million dollar web page.
  • Buying ad space on a web page that's entirely ads.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Little Buddy mode vs. Little Nemesis mode.
  • Making a noise whenever you wonder about something.
  • The sound of the aurora borealis.
  • The Northern Lights explaining to you how many bones are in a dog's body.
  • Peeing on your equipment to keep the foxes away.
  • Maintaining curiosity about things.
  • Burying a question and seeing if it comes back to you.
  • Recording a podcast even though you don't know anything.
  • An information strategy that is much more enchanting than looking things up.
  • Leaving through your journals.
  • Tannish white hair.
  • Burying a dog bone so that it grows into a dog bone tree.
  • Farms with no distinct edges.
  • Cholera vegetables.
  • Inventing your own COVID-19 vaccine.
  • Putting a whole country in a snow globe.
  • Tube ham.
  • Drinking a soda branded "your ass."
  • Knight Anoles.
  • Gerrymandering Florida to fix Cuba.
  • Lord Kensingtonitis.
  • A bacterium named after a Jules Verne quote.
  • The only known organism to exist in an ecosystem containing only itself.
  • A biome that's just a bunch of clones of you making a go of it together.
  • Slurping up radiation from the good good surrounding bedrock.
  • All the little guys out there being interesting.
  • The credentials you need to call yourself a scientist.
  • Which bacteria are most bothered by their Wikipedia pages.
  • Everyone's MRCA.
  • Meteorites throwing amino assets into space.
  • Extremely grabby carbon.
  • Moldy bathtubs all over the universe.
  • Little Buddy mode but for bacteria.
  • The works of Florence P. Wordsmith.
  • The origin myth of the Noid.
  • Whether the Noid is wearing a suit or if that's just his skin.
  • Yo! Noid and Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void.
  • A layer of water that's waving up and down.
  • Empathizing with how the Noid sees the world.
  • Writing a poem about the Noid and, instead of hiding it in shame, putting it on the internet for all to see.
  • Getting a game over before you finish the first level but at least you killed a lot of seagulls with a yoyo.
  • The sun making a big X over Texas.
  • Drilling for oil in the Permian Basin.
  • The last total eclipse of the sun of our lifetimes.
  • Checkmate, scientists!
  • Solar noon.
  • Grab your glasses and get lookin'!
  • Meeting Topic Lords all summer.
  • Going sightseeing to find out where all your gasoline comes from.
  • Going to see the solar eclipse or just closing your eyes to get the same effect.
  • A big pile of polygonal Doritos killing another pile of polygonal Doritos.
  • Making sequels to the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
  • The porn web site named after a Final Fantasy 7 plot point.
  • aerisdies.com vs. aerithdies.com.
  • Retransliterations.
  • Husbands who are dead (asleep).
  • The option that makes you look like less of a douchebag.
  • Watching a Final Fantasy documentary before you watch it with your girlfriend to make sure it won't spoil a major character's death for her, and it shows the death onscreen but you missed it during the vetting process, but it's okay because she couldn't visually parse the Playstation-era graphics anyway.
  • Sending your sister to media literacy classes so that she can understand when Aeris dies.
  • A pile of snack chips fighting each other.
  • Showing Star Wars to kids who have never seen it but know every plot point in advance.
  • A priceless Ming vase that has never been perceived by human eyes and everyone thinks it's an idiot and Erica wants to save it by calling it up on the phone and smashing it.
  • A big red button you can push whenever you want.
  • The only time you've ever been accused of underthinking something.
  • Putting your first name and last name together to make a person.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Erica
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The COVID booster as a form of recreational drug use.
  • Puking, but not for the listeners at home.
  • The only way you can know if you're doing well.
  • WavHog.
  • Trying a lot of things that aren't working out.
  • A chat log that's organized poorly.
  • An ever-growing cacophony.
  • The million dollar web page.
  • Buying ad space on a web page that's entirely ads.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Little Buddy mode vs. Little Nemesis mode.
  • Making a noise whenever you wonder about something.
  • The sound of the aurora borealis.
  • The Northern Lights explaining to you how many bones are in a dog's body.
  • Peeing on your equipment to keep the foxes away.
  • Maintaining curiosity about things.
  • Burying a question and seeing if it comes back to you.
  • Recording a podcast even though you don't know anything.
  • An information strategy that is much more enchanting than looking things up.
  • Leaving through your journals.
  • Tannish white hair.
  • Burying a dog bone so that it grows into a dog bone tree.
  • Farms with no distinct edges.
  • Cholera vegetables.
  • Inventing your own COVID-19 vaccine.
  • Putting a whole country in a snow globe.
  • Tube ham.
  • Drinking a soda branded "your ass."
  • Knight Anoles.
  • Gerrymandering Florida to fix Cuba.
  • Lord Kensingtonitis.
  • A bacterium named after a Jules Verne quote.
  • The only known organism to exist in an ecosystem containing only itself.
  • A biome that's just a bunch of clones of you making a go of it together.
  • Slurping up radiation from the good good surrounding bedrock.
  • All the little guys out there being interesting.
  • The credentials you need to call yourself a scientist.
  • Which bacteria are most bothered by their Wikipedia pages.
  • Everyone's MRCA.
  • Meteorites throwing amino assets into space.
  • Extremely grabby carbon.
  • Moldy bathtubs all over the universe.
  • Little Buddy mode but for bacteria.
  • The works of Florence P. Wordsmith.
  • The origin myth of the Noid.
  • Whether the Noid is wearing a suit or if that's just his skin.
  • Yo! Noid and Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void.
  • A layer of water that's waving up and down.
  • Empathizing with how the Noid sees the world.
  • Writing a poem about the Noid and, instead of hiding it in shame, putting it on the internet for all to see.
  • Getting a game over before you finish the first level but at least you killed a lot of seagulls with a yoyo.
  • The sun making a big X over Texas.
  • Drilling for oil in the Permian Basin.
  • The last total eclipse of the sun of our lifetimes.
  • Checkmate, scientists!
  • Solar noon.
  • Grab your glasses and get lookin'!
  • Meeting Topic Lords all summer.
  • Going sightseeing to find out where all your gasoline comes from.
  • Going to see the solar eclipse or just closing your eyes to get the same effect.
  • A big pile of polygonal Doritos killing another pile of polygonal Doritos.
  • Making sequels to the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
  • The porn web site named after a Final Fantasy 7 plot point.
  • aerisdies.com vs. aerithdies.com.
  • Retransliterations.
  • Husbands who are dead (asleep).
  • The option that makes you look like less of a douchebag.
  • Watching a Final Fantasy documentary before you watch it with your girlfriend to make sure it won't spoil a major character's death for her, and it shows the death onscreen but you missed it during the vetting process, but it's okay because she couldn't visually parse the Playstation-era graphics anyway.
  • Sending your sister to media literacy classes so that she can understand when Aeris dies.
  • A pile of snack chips fighting each other.
  • Showing Star Wars to kids who have never seen it but know every plot point in advance.
  • A priceless Ming vase that has never been perceived by human eyes and everyone thinks it's an idiot and Erica wants to save it by calling it up on the phone and smashing it.
  • A big red button you can push whenever you want.
  • The only time you've ever been accused of underthinking something.
  • Putting your first name and last name together to make a person.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+_H7bHKS0 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 212. Back in My Day, Kids Actually Crossied the Road https://topiclords.com/back-in-my-day-kids-actually-crossied-the-road 852f0f94-acae-468d-a370-9aedef1e5a3e Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mitch and Andrew. We discuss how many Super Mario games there are now, owning the domain emailfordogs.com, whether the DMV is hiring kids to jump in front of your car, Love in the Age of Google, the Burrito Run, and storytelling in the WarioWare series. 1:10:50 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Your names.
  • Jokes that have or have not been done.
  • The real Jim Stormdancer. (On my birth certificate.)
  • A game which has no sequels.
  • Pizza Panda dot Pizza.
  • Cultivating an audience who loves clicking links.
  • A polling feature that is great for polling people.
  • Why not use one thing? Just have one place where you post everything.
  • How to make your audience stop clicking links.
  • 358 games that might or might not be Super Mario games.
  • A game called Super Mario Bros. Something.
  • All the different years there hasn't been a new Super Mario game since.
  • A controversy, but not one people care about.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who gets in arguments about whether New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a mainline Super Mario game.
  • Super Mario Bros. and Friends: When I Grow Up.
  • Super Mario and his friends discussing what career paths they might take.
  • Looking at all these MS-DOS colors.
  • Brian A. Rice, Inc.: it's just a guy!
  • Mario games for MS-DOS.
  • A Mario fan theory that has been disproven extremely recently.
  • Princess Peach and Princess Daisy having a conversation about something other than a man.
  • The description of Daisy in Smash Ultimate trying to come up with convincing reasons why Peach and Daisy are different people.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Mii.
  • Super Mariologists studying Super Mariology.
  • Super Mario Bros. Special.
  • A smeary snapshot of your mind.
  • A Mario game that was extremely expensive to make.
  • Working on a game until it's ready.
  • If you like Mario games, then it's one of them. If you don't then it's not.
  • Super Mario Bros. Tudor.
  • Super Mario Bros. Oneder.
  • Getting email for dogs at emailfordogs.com.
  • A hobby you used to be able to have.
  • Enough people making up fake emails for their dogs that some them send email to your fake dog email domain name.
  • Rip the old spacejam.com.
  • Space Jam: a New Legacy.
  • Reusing apacejam.com to capture all the people clicking on novelty domain names that redirect to spacejam.com.
  • A very small scale conspiracy, between one driver's test examiner and one child.
  • Being too flustered to deliberately fail your test.
  • A checkbox on the DMV test labeled "did not assassinate my arch rival, whom I now owe five dollars."
  • Back in my day kids actually Crossied the Road.
  • A smoke made with the fume of sighs.
  • A poem that scans as a poem.
  • A million monkeys using a million trackers.
  • One extremely busy monkey using a million trackers.
  • A new form of physical exercise.
  • Terraforming the hill to make your exercise routine more effective.
  • Copylefted exercise routines.
  • There are very few perfect things in life but this is the perfect exercise routine.
  • Dogs who are like dogs.
  • Dog theory.
  • What's more habitual than eating lunch?
  • Mathematical proof that all horses are the same color. (Except for the horse of a different color.)
  • Booger joke fart joke silly game.
  • A history of storytelling in the Wario Ware series.
  • Wario's hiring process.
  • A thing that happens after Wario puts a toilet on his head.
  • Why the latest Wario Ware game has microgames in it.
  • The Wario Ware employee who joined the company because he was such a big fan of previous games in the series.
  • Nintendo games that implicitly support unionization and fan-fiction.
  • The man who was too many Marios.
  • Hearing Wario speak in full sentences.
  • A thing that is nothing to write home about but writing home about it anyways.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Your names.
  • Jokes that have or have not been done.
  • The real Jim Stormdancer. (On my birth certificate.)
  • A game which has no sequels.
  • Pizza Panda dot Pizza.
  • Cultivating an audience who loves clicking links.
  • A polling feature that is great for polling people.
  • Why not use one thing? Just have one place where you post everything.
  • How to make your audience stop clicking links.
  • 358 games that might or might not be Super Mario games.
  • A game called Super Mario Bros. Something.
  • All the different years there hasn't been a new Super Mario game since.
  • A controversy, but not one people care about.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who gets in arguments about whether New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a mainline Super Mario game.
  • Super Mario Bros. and Friends: When I Grow Up.
  • Super Mario and his friends discussing what career paths they might take.
  • Looking at all these MS-DOS colors.
  • Brian A. Rice, Inc.: it's just a guy!
  • Mario games for MS-DOS.
  • A Mario fan theory that has been disproven extremely recently.
  • Princess Peach and Princess Daisy having a conversation about something other than a man.
  • The description of Daisy in Smash Ultimate trying to come up with convincing reasons why Peach and Daisy are different people.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Mii.
  • Super Mariologists studying Super Mariology.
  • Super Mario Bros. Special.
  • A smeary snapshot of your mind.
  • A Mario game that was extremely expensive to make.
  • Working on a game until it's ready.
  • If you like Mario games, then it's one of them. If you don't then it's not.
  • Super Mario Bros. Tudor.
  • Super Mario Bros. Oneder.
  • Getting email for dogs at emailfordogs.com.
  • A hobby you used to be able to have.
  • Enough people making up fake emails for their dogs that some them send email to your fake dog email domain name.
  • Rip the old spacejam.com.
  • Space Jam: a New Legacy.
  • Reusing apacejam.com to capture all the people clicking on novelty domain names that redirect to spacejam.com.
  • A very small scale conspiracy, between one driver's test examiner and one child.
  • Being too flustered to deliberately fail your test.
  • A checkbox on the DMV test labeled "did not assassinate my arch rival, whom I now owe five dollars."
  • Back in my day kids actually Crossied the Road.
  • A smoke made with the fume of sighs.
  • A poem that scans as a poem.
  • A million monkeys using a million trackers.
  • One extremely busy monkey using a million trackers.
  • A new form of physical exercise.
  • Terraforming the hill to make your exercise routine more effective.
  • Copylefted exercise routines.
  • There are very few perfect things in life but this is the perfect exercise routine.
  • Dogs who are like dogs.
  • Dog theory.
  • What's more habitual than eating lunch?
  • Mathematical proof that all horses are the same color. (Except for the horse of a different color.)
  • Booger joke fart joke silly game.
  • A history of storytelling in the Wario Ware series.
  • Wario's hiring process.
  • A thing that happens after Wario puts a toilet on his head.
  • Why the latest Wario Ware game has microgames in it.
  • The Wario Ware employee who joined the company because he was such a big fan of previous games in the series.
  • Nintendo games that implicitly support unionization and fan-fiction.
  • The man who was too many Marios.
  • Hearing Wario speak in full sentences.
  • A thing that is nothing to write home about but writing home about it anyways.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Your names.
  • Jokes that have or have not been done.
  • The real Jim Stormdancer. (On my birth certificate.)
  • A game which has no sequels.
  • Pizza Panda dot Pizza.
  • Cultivating an audience who loves clicking links.
  • A polling feature that is great for polling people.
  • Why not use one thing? Just have one place where you post everything.
  • How to make your audience stop clicking links.
  • 358 games that might or might not be Super Mario games.
  • A game called Super Mario Bros. Something.
  • All the different years there hasn't been a new Super Mario game since.
  • A controversy, but not one people care about.
  • New guy just dropped: guy who gets in arguments about whether New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a mainline Super Mario game.
  • Super Mario Bros. and Friends: When I Grow Up.
  • Super Mario and his friends discussing what career paths they might take.
  • Looking at all these MS-DOS colors.
  • Brian A. Rice, Inc.: it's just a guy!
  • Mario games for MS-DOS.
  • A Mario fan theory that has been disproven extremely recently.
  • Princess Peach and Princess Daisy having a conversation about something other than a man.
  • The description of Daisy in Smash Ultimate trying to come up with convincing reasons why Peach and Daisy are different people.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Mii.
  • Super Mariologists studying Super Mariology.
  • Super Mario Bros. Special.
  • A smeary snapshot of your mind.
  • A Mario game that was extremely expensive to make.
  • Working on a game until it's ready.
  • If you like Mario games, then it's one of them. If you don't then it's not.
  • Super Mario Bros. Tudor.
  • Super Mario Bros. Oneder.
  • Getting email for dogs at emailfordogs.com.
  • A hobby you used to be able to have.
  • Enough people making up fake emails for their dogs that some them send email to your fake dog email domain name.
  • Rip the old spacejam.com.
  • Space Jam: a New Legacy.
  • Reusing apacejam.com to capture all the people clicking on novelty domain names that redirect to spacejam.com.
  • A very small scale conspiracy, between one driver's test examiner and one child.
  • Being too flustered to deliberately fail your test.
  • A checkbox on the DMV test labeled "did not assassinate my arch rival, whom I now owe five dollars."
  • Back in my day kids actually Crossied the Road.
  • A smoke made with the fume of sighs.
  • A poem that scans as a poem.
  • A million monkeys using a million trackers.
  • One extremely busy monkey using a million trackers.
  • A new form of physical exercise.
  • Terraforming the hill to make your exercise routine more effective.
  • Copylefted exercise routines.
  • There are very few perfect things in life but this is the perfect exercise routine.
  • Dogs who are like dogs.
  • Dog theory.
  • What's more habitual than eating lunch?
  • Mathematical proof that all horses are the same color. (Except for the horse of a different color.)
  • Booger joke fart joke silly game.
  • A history of storytelling in the Wario Ware series.
  • Wario's hiring process.
  • A thing that happens after Wario puts a toilet on his head.
  • Why the latest Wario Ware game has microgames in it.
  • The Wario Ware employee who joined the company because he was such a big fan of previous games in the series.
  • Nintendo games that implicitly support unionization and fan-fiction.
  • The man who was too many Marios.
  • Hearing Wario speak in full sentences.
  • A thing that is nothing to write home about but writing home about it anyways.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+YNM-ky3g ]]> Jim Stormdancer 211. Window-Peering Jim Checking Out Your Cats https://topiclords.com/window-peering-jim-checking-out-your-cats 228d0f9c-d36a-444b-90aa-7cbe5b49736b Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Cort and Elena. We discuss your baby being due tomorrow, Dogme 95 for web development, visits from neighborhood cats, Potato by Jane Kenyon, the difficulty of designing cooperative board games, and building a conlang generator. 1:04:19 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Be Real App.
  • Posting your mortifying skin condition for all the internet to see.
  • Being born.
  • The Dance Dance Revolution song "20,November," by Earth Wind and Fire.
  • PiCoSteveMo.
  • Tossing around hastily drawn concept art with your team.
  • Being born, again.
  • Having a kid for someone else.
  • Eating cigarettes off of the sidewalk.
  • A grab bag of thousands of possible pregnancy symptoms.
  • Literacy as a symptom of pregnancy.
  • A visceral reminder that you are part of a long chain of humans.
  • Which came first, humans or birth?
  • The comfort of the humans who are still around having individual experiences even after you die.
  • Tips n Tricks for dealing with fear of death.
  • Inviting dead people onto the show.
  • Asking for more pro-death art so you can feel better about death.
  • Pro-life, in the literal sense.
  • Flowers and mushrooms growing up through the bones.
  • Returning to the universe to nurture it.
  • Dumb Ways to Die.
  • Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives.
  • Thought experiments about something weird that could happen.
  • The Egg by Andy Weir.
  • Covering birth and death in the same topic.
  • Looking at photos of yourself from five years ago and thinking "oh shit!"
  • I am choosing to no longer have conscious experience, mom. You wouldn't understand, mom.
  • Swedish with a mouthful of potatoes.
  • Dogme 95.
  • Enpoopification.
  • A protocol for exchanging information on a computer.
  • Rewinding to a kinder, simpler web.
  • Avoiding all this gestures at the world
  • New rule: no web servers more powerful than a Raspberry Pi.
  • The cool thing that was on the web in the mid-90s.
  • Making art and putting it on the internet and getting a fan base.
  • The teenage gamer comic series making a comic about prostate exams.
  • Sharding the internet.
  • El Goonish Shive.
  • Anime hammers that you do when someone is being a pervert.
  • Coming to personal revelations regarding your neurodivergence or gender situation.
  • How to be a successful artist.
  • Not knowing if your favorite webcomic had ads because you use an adblocker.
  • Working at your parents animation studio as an inbetweener.
  • Merging your cats into one cat.
  • Neighborhood coyotes.
  • Cats beyond the reach of fear.
  • Window-peering Jim: he's just checking out your remodel.
  • Putting a GoPro on your neighbor's cat and livestreaming the inside of their house.
  • Cats with amazing life stories that they'll never tell you.
  • The consort of coffee grounds.
  • Making shepherd's pie for an entire hamlet.
  • A possibly accidental double line break.
  • A line break corresponding to a conceptual boundary.
  • The Story of Mel: a Real Programmer.
  • Adding left angle brackets to the start of every line until word wrap makes it a poem.
  • Blackout poetry.
  • Pumping gas as an element of Cottagecore.
  • A hamlet is just a city in New Jersey.
  • The fireworks on your forehead game.
  • A game where everyone stops talking.
  • The Yelling Game.
  • A dedicated period of yelling.
  • Space-themed trick taking games.
  • The Spaceteam card game.
  • Coming up with a set of place names that sound like they're from the same culture.
  • Assigning syllable groups to a morpheme.
  • Asking Claude.
  • Interpolating the obvious things.
  • The Sonority Hierarchy.
  • A gradient from less vowel-like to more vowel-like.
  • Cursed Conlangs.
  • Generating syllables and mushing them together.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Be Real App.
  • Posting your mortifying skin condition for all the internet to see.
  • Being born.
  • The Dance Dance Revolution song "20,November," by Earth Wind and Fire.
  • PiCoSteveMo.
  • Tossing around hastily drawn concept art with your team.
  • Being born, again.
  • Having a kid for someone else.
  • Eating cigarettes off of the sidewalk.
  • A grab bag of thousands of possible pregnancy symptoms.
  • Literacy as a symptom of pregnancy.
  • A visceral reminder that you are part of a long chain of humans.
  • Which came first, humans or birth?
  • The comfort of the humans who are still around having individual experiences even after you die.
  • Tips n Tricks for dealing with fear of death.
  • Inviting dead people onto the show.
  • Asking for more pro-death art so you can feel better about death.
  • Pro-life, in the literal sense.
  • Flowers and mushrooms growing up through the bones.
  • Returning to the universe to nurture it.
  • Dumb Ways to Die.
  • Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives.
  • Thought experiments about something weird that could happen.
  • The Egg by Andy Weir.
  • Covering birth and death in the same topic.
  • Looking at photos of yourself from five years ago and thinking "oh shit!"
  • I am choosing to no longer have conscious experience, mom. You wouldn't understand, mom.
  • Swedish with a mouthful of potatoes.
  • Dogme 95.
  • Enpoopification.
  • A protocol for exchanging information on a computer.
  • Rewinding to a kinder, simpler web.
  • Avoiding all this gestures at the world
  • New rule: no web servers more powerful than a Raspberry Pi.
  • The cool thing that was on the web in the mid-90s.
  • Making art and putting it on the internet and getting a fan base.
  • The teenage gamer comic series making a comic about prostate exams.
  • Sharding the internet.
  • El Goonish Shive.
  • Anime hammers that you do when someone is being a pervert.
  • Coming to personal revelations regarding your neurodivergence or gender situation.
  • How to be a successful artist.
  • Not knowing if your favorite webcomic had ads because you use an adblocker.
  • Working at your parents animation studio as an inbetweener.
  • Merging your cats into one cat.
  • Neighborhood coyotes.
  • Cats beyond the reach of fear.
  • Window-peering Jim: he's just checking out your remodel.
  • Putting a GoPro on your neighbor's cat and livestreaming the inside of their house.
  • Cats with amazing life stories that they'll never tell you.
  • The consort of coffee grounds.
  • Making shepherd's pie for an entire hamlet.
  • A possibly accidental double line break.
  • A line break corresponding to a conceptual boundary.
  • The Story of Mel: a Real Programmer.
  • Adding left angle brackets to the start of every line until word wrap makes it a poem.
  • Blackout poetry.
  • Pumping gas as an element of Cottagecore.
  • A hamlet is just a city in New Jersey.
  • The fireworks on your forehead game.
  • A game where everyone stops talking.
  • The Yelling Game.
  • A dedicated period of yelling.
  • Space-themed trick taking games.
  • The Spaceteam card game.
  • Coming up with a set of place names that sound like they're from the same culture.
  • Assigning syllable groups to a morpheme.
  • Asking Claude.
  • Interpolating the obvious things.
  • The Sonority Hierarchy.
  • A gradient from less vowel-like to more vowel-like.
  • Cursed Conlangs.
  • Generating syllables and mushing them together.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Be Real App.
  • Posting your mortifying skin condition for all the internet to see.
  • Being born.
  • The Dance Dance Revolution song "20,November," by Earth Wind and Fire.
  • PiCoSteveMo.
  • Tossing around hastily drawn concept art with your team.
  • Being born, again.
  • Having a kid for someone else.
  • Eating cigarettes off of the sidewalk.
  • A grab bag of thousands of possible pregnancy symptoms.
  • Literacy as a symptom of pregnancy.
  • A visceral reminder that you are part of a long chain of humans.
  • Which came first, humans or birth?
  • The comfort of the humans who are still around having individual experiences even after you die.
  • Tips n Tricks for dealing with fear of death.
  • Inviting dead people onto the show.
  • Asking for more pro-death art so you can feel better about death.
  • Pro-life, in the literal sense.
  • Flowers and mushrooms growing up through the bones.
  • Returning to the universe to nurture it.
  • Dumb Ways to Die.
  • Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives.
  • Thought experiments about something weird that could happen.
  • The Egg by Andy Weir.
  • Covering birth and death in the same topic.
  • Looking at photos of yourself from five years ago and thinking "oh shit!"
  • I am choosing to no longer have conscious experience, mom. You wouldn't understand, mom.
  • Swedish with a mouthful of potatoes.
  • Dogme 95.
  • Enpoopification.
  • A protocol for exchanging information on a computer.
  • Rewinding to a kinder, simpler web.
  • Avoiding all this gestures at the world
  • New rule: no web servers more powerful than a Raspberry Pi.
  • The cool thing that was on the web in the mid-90s.
  • Making art and putting it on the internet and getting a fan base.
  • The teenage gamer comic series making a comic about prostate exams.
  • Sharding the internet.
  • El Goonish Shive.
  • Anime hammers that you do when someone is being a pervert.
  • Coming to personal revelations regarding your neurodivergence or gender situation.
  • How to be a successful artist.
  • Not knowing if your favorite webcomic had ads because you use an adblocker.
  • Working at your parents animation studio as an inbetweener.
  • Merging your cats into one cat.
  • Neighborhood coyotes.
  • Cats beyond the reach of fear.
  • Window-peering Jim: he's just checking out your remodel.
  • Putting a GoPro on your neighbor's cat and livestreaming the inside of their house.
  • Cats with amazing life stories that they'll never tell you.
  • The consort of coffee grounds.
  • Making shepherd's pie for an entire hamlet.
  • A possibly accidental double line break.
  • A line break corresponding to a conceptual boundary.
  • The Story of Mel: a Real Programmer.
  • Adding left angle brackets to the start of every line until word wrap makes it a poem.
  • Blackout poetry.
  • Pumping gas as an element of Cottagecore.
  • A hamlet is just a city in New Jersey.
  • The fireworks on your forehead game.
  • A game where everyone stops talking.
  • The Yelling Game.
  • A dedicated period of yelling.
  • Space-themed trick taking games.
  • The Spaceteam card game.
  • Coming up with a set of place names that sound like they're from the same culture.
  • Assigning syllable groups to a morpheme.
  • Asking Claude.
  • Interpolating the obvious things.
  • The Sonority Hierarchy.
  • A gradient from less vowel-like to more vowel-like.
  • Cursed Conlangs.
  • Generating syllables and mushing them together.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+aE3IRoKo ]]> Jim Stormdancer 210. Good Ideas for Sam Barlow https://topiclords.com/good-ideas-for-sam-barlow 96ec3e9c-d108-40f5-ba7a-b5c84a39aa5b Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Andrew and Kate. We discuss british food, learning new things, lightswitch abstraction limits, Un Petit D'un Petit, The Old Timey Computer Show, trying to get your friends to play a game that sucks to learn, and watching just the end of movies. 1:13:43 true Lords:

Topics:

  • British food is good, actually
  • Really enjoying programming in MonoGame (and stop motion animation)
  • Lightswitch abstraction limit
  • Un petit d'un petit
  • The Old Timey Computer Show
  • Trying to get your friends to play a game that sucks to learn
  • Winston has discovered that the ending of a story is usually the most exciting part, so he doesn't want to watch whole movies any more, just the last twenty minutes of each

Microtopics:

  • Moonstone Island.
  • A tiny fox in a big world.
  • Cherry blues.
  • Something within your culture that is awful and bad.
  • Whatever can grow in the wet and dark. (Potatoes.)
  • Cool Whip based salads.
  • Yorkshire pudding. (The fluffy one.)
  • The non-spicy gravies.
  • J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's roast potato recipe.
  • Lamb going with mint and pork going with applesauce.
  • How to eat Vegemite or Marmite.
  • A man at the end of the table whose entire job is to carve meat for you.
  • A place to take your picky grandma to eat.
  • Bodega cats and bodega kids.
  • Doing stop motion animation as a goof.
  • The fun part of Dunning Krueger.
  • Doing a magic trick without knowing how the trick works and amazing yourself.
  • Leaning into the good times.
  • Accidentally getting good at an employable skill.
  • Flailing at the wall until the light switches are in the right position.
  • Off: just a different kind of on.
  • Doing your first pull request.
  • The fountain pen of the version control ecology.
  • Getting a bunch of little plant men to turn the lights on and off for me.
  • Poetry written in nonsensical French that is homophonic with English nursery rhymes.
  • An entire book for a very specific kind of nerd to have a sensible chuckle.
  • Allowing yourself one E, as a mistake.
  • A joke written back when people knew what am omnibus was.
  • Vintages footage from 1980s computer shows.
  • Dousing CD-Rs.
  • The Free Cake and Donuts Half-Hour.
  • Getting as many 35+ computer dorks as you can under a box before you pull the string.
  • Making two children fight each other on the British equivalent of Crash Bandicoot.
  • A policeman on a unicycle.
  • The imagined experience of programming the ZX Spectrum.
  • The other Cambridge.
  • Mac PCs.
  • The Oliver Twins.
  • Turning on all the shaders to make your programmer art look good.
  • Finding three extra Dizzy games in the attic.
  • Trying to tell your friends about a family tradition and while you're telling them you realize how messed up it is.
  • A pile of 500 cards that should really be a computer game instead.
  • A rule where every time you play a card you have to sigh a little bit.
  • A game where you torture your friends.
  • A food with the letter E in it.
  • Trying to have fun despite your friend who is making you play the game.
  • Have you guys heard about conclusions?
  • A bunch of stuff happening and then there's a riddle.
  • The Go Left Problem.
  • When games have secrets.
  • Pushing at the edges of a game and the game pops up a dialog saying "I noticed you pushing at my edges."
  • A password named "Susan."
  • A DVD where every interface to start the movie starts it at chapter 2 and chapter 1 is a secret.
  • Reading just the last word of a book.
  • Watching the first episode and the last episode of a sitcom and trying to guess which actors missing from the last episode died and which went to prison.
  • How to find your Mastodon name.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • British food is good, actually
  • Really enjoying programming in MonoGame (and stop motion animation)
  • Lightswitch abstraction limit
  • Un petit d'un petit
  • The Old Timey Computer Show
  • Trying to get your friends to play a game that sucks to learn
  • Winston has discovered that the ending of a story is usually the most exciting part, so he doesn't want to watch whole movies any more, just the last twenty minutes of each

Microtopics:

  • Moonstone Island.
  • A tiny fox in a big world.
  • Cherry blues.
  • Something within your culture that is awful and bad.
  • Whatever can grow in the wet and dark. (Potatoes.)
  • Cool Whip based salads.
  • Yorkshire pudding. (The fluffy one.)
  • The non-spicy gravies.
  • J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's roast potato recipe.
  • Lamb going with mint and pork going with applesauce.
  • How to eat Vegemite or Marmite.
  • A man at the end of the table whose entire job is to carve meat for you.
  • A place to take your picky grandma to eat.
  • Bodega cats and bodega kids.
  • Doing stop motion animation as a goof.
  • The fun part of Dunning Krueger.
  • Doing a magic trick without knowing how the trick works and amazing yourself.
  • Leaning into the good times.
  • Accidentally getting good at an employable skill.
  • Flailing at the wall until the light switches are in the right position.
  • Off: just a different kind of on.
  • Doing your first pull request.
  • The fountain pen of the version control ecology.
  • Getting a bunch of little plant men to turn the lights on and off for me.
  • Poetry written in nonsensical French that is homophonic with English nursery rhymes.
  • An entire book for a very specific kind of nerd to have a sensible chuckle.
  • Allowing yourself one E, as a mistake.
  • A joke written back when people knew what am omnibus was.
  • Vintages footage from 1980s computer shows.
  • Dousing CD-Rs.
  • The Free Cake and Donuts Half-Hour.
  • Getting as many 35+ computer dorks as you can under a box before you pull the string.
  • Making two children fight each other on the British equivalent of Crash Bandicoot.
  • A policeman on a unicycle.
  • The imagined experience of programming the ZX Spectrum.
  • The other Cambridge.
  • Mac PCs.
  • The Oliver Twins.
  • Turning on all the shaders to make your programmer art look good.
  • Finding three extra Dizzy games in the attic.
  • Trying to tell your friends about a family tradition and while you're telling them you realize how messed up it is.
  • A pile of 500 cards that should really be a computer game instead.
  • A rule where every time you play a card you have to sigh a little bit.
  • A game where you torture your friends.
  • A food with the letter E in it.
  • Trying to have fun despite your friend who is making you play the game.
  • Have you guys heard about conclusions?
  • A bunch of stuff happening and then there's a riddle.
  • The Go Left Problem.
  • When games have secrets.
  • Pushing at the edges of a game and the game pops up a dialog saying "I noticed you pushing at my edges."
  • A password named "Susan."
  • A DVD where every interface to start the movie starts it at chapter 2 and chapter 1 is a secret.
  • Reading just the last word of a book.
  • Watching the first episode and the last episode of a sitcom and trying to guess which actors missing from the last episode died and which went to prison.
  • How to find your Mastodon name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • British food is good, actually
  • Really enjoying programming in MonoGame (and stop motion animation)
  • Lightswitch abstraction limit
  • Un petit d'un petit
  • The Old Timey Computer Show
  • Trying to get your friends to play a game that sucks to learn
  • Winston has discovered that the ending of a story is usually the most exciting part, so he doesn't want to watch whole movies any more, just the last twenty minutes of each

Microtopics:

  • Moonstone Island.
  • A tiny fox in a big world.
  • Cherry blues.
  • Something within your culture that is awful and bad.
  • Whatever can grow in the wet and dark. (Potatoes.)
  • Cool Whip based salads.
  • Yorkshire pudding. (The fluffy one.)
  • The non-spicy gravies.
  • J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's roast potato recipe.
  • Lamb going with mint and pork going with applesauce.
  • How to eat Vegemite or Marmite.
  • A man at the end of the table whose entire job is to carve meat for you.
  • A place to take your picky grandma to eat.
  • Bodega cats and bodega kids.
  • Doing stop motion animation as a goof.
  • The fun part of Dunning Krueger.
  • Doing a magic trick without knowing how the trick works and amazing yourself.
  • Leaning into the good times.
  • Accidentally getting good at an employable skill.
  • Flailing at the wall until the light switches are in the right position.
  • Off: just a different kind of on.
  • Doing your first pull request.
  • The fountain pen of the version control ecology.
  • Getting a bunch of little plant men to turn the lights on and off for me.
  • Poetry written in nonsensical French that is homophonic with English nursery rhymes.
  • An entire book for a very specific kind of nerd to have a sensible chuckle.
  • Allowing yourself one E, as a mistake.
  • A joke written back when people knew what am omnibus was.
  • Vintages footage from 1980s computer shows.
  • Dousing CD-Rs.
  • The Free Cake and Donuts Half-Hour.
  • Getting as many 35+ computer dorks as you can under a box before you pull the string.
  • Making two children fight each other on the British equivalent of Crash Bandicoot.
  • A policeman on a unicycle.
  • The imagined experience of programming the ZX Spectrum.
  • The other Cambridge.
  • Mac PCs.
  • The Oliver Twins.
  • Turning on all the shaders to make your programmer art look good.
  • Finding three extra Dizzy games in the attic.
  • Trying to tell your friends about a family tradition and while you're telling them you realize how messed up it is.
  • A pile of 500 cards that should really be a computer game instead.
  • A rule where every time you play a card you have to sigh a little bit.
  • A game where you torture your friends.
  • A food with the letter E in it.
  • Trying to have fun despite your friend who is making you play the game.
  • Have you guys heard about conclusions?
  • A bunch of stuff happening and then there's a riddle.
  • The Go Left Problem.
  • When games have secrets.
  • Pushing at the edges of a game and the game pops up a dialog saying "I noticed you pushing at my edges."
  • A password named "Susan."
  • A DVD where every interface to start the movie starts it at chapter 2 and chapter 1 is a secret.
  • Reading just the last word of a book.
  • Watching the first episode and the last episode of a sitcom and trying to guess which actors missing from the last episode died and which went to prison.
  • How to find your Mastodon name.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+7WrI6eH9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 209. Do Caterpillars Anticipate? https://topiclords.com/do-caterpillars-anticipate 9d1b3985-c0e2-4b51-ab4b-4d82a9f29815 Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Will, Chris. We discuss canoes, blowing soap bubbles with your hands and other party tricks, nissan.com, Nothing Is Too Small Not To Be Wondered About, by Mary Oliver, zombies pretending to not be zombies, and magic. 1:20:45 true Lords:

  • Will
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Soda Drinker Pro for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
  • Finding someone to port your game to NES via LinkedIn.
  • The Vivian Clark Experience.
  • Making certain contortions slightly easier.
  • Rock climbing. (Not a topic.)
  • The Phantom Lapboard.
  • The Only Viable Product. (OVP.)
  • What if you could mouse and keyboard on the couch?
  • Growing up in a canoe family.
  • Paddling vs. rowing.
  • Carbon fiber paddles for canoe racing.
  • Waterwalker by Bill Mason.
  • Your favorite memories of a kayak.
  • Waking up in your kayak to see a snapping turtle staring at you.
  • Floating up and wiggling all over the place.
  • Kayaking to lunch from your office.
  • Living in a ski cabin and your office is at the bottom of the mountain.
  • Living at a Lagrange point and your office is at the bottom of the zipline.
  • Boston Unity Knights.
  • Doing a game jam every month for four years.
  • Knowing enough people in your field that you no longer need to network.
  • Five really worthy zero-hour games.
  • Making a therapeutic horror game.
  • Going to a terrifying party in an abandoned train tunnel and finding a burned-out police car.
  • Questionable poisonous air filled with unknown tunnel organisms.
  • Doing mouth stuff in VR.
  • Making the soda line up with your mouth.
  • The Ferris Bueller water drop noise.
  • The thing where you play a blade of grass like a reed instrument.
  • Cheek-flapping noises.
  • Magic tricks vs. Party Tricks.
  • Inhaler magic.
  • Twenty levels of spinning pens.
  • A different horrible knife game.
  • A game about chopping off fingers named "Chop the Finger."
  • Shooting arrows in the air while your friend run away.
  • The keyboard shortcut for finding someone to port your game to NES.
  • A web site where you endorse people as thought leaders.
  • Entering the LinkedIn cheat code on Xbox 360.
  • Porting your video game to a robotic arm.
  • Making it move when you think about it.
  • Uzi Nissan v. Nissan Motors.
  • It can happen to you or someone you know!
  • Picturing conceptual rabbit holes in your head.
  • Sylvester Stallone's Mom's web site.
  • Sylvester Stallone's mom doing palm readings of your ass.
  • All our favorite apps, such as buffalo wings and boneless spare ribs.
  • Thinking about a cricket's interiority.
  • Putting some nature in your poem.
  • Using cricket noises to tell what temperature it is.
  • Having the same number of wings you've always had.
  • Do any bugs make a plan.
  • Leaving "I gave up" pheromones
  • Leaving a map of a physical space in the space.
  • Sizable ants.
  • Fewer scorpions than you'd expect.
  • Putting a bug into your awareness.
  • Pseudoscorpions hanging out on old stuff.
  • Little guys in random places very occasionally.
  • Zombies going to Whole Foods.
  • Going quiescent until a dude walks by with a tasty-looking scalp.
  • Painting a brain on your helmet to fool the zombies.
  • A short-hair wig taped to your grandfather's basketball.
  • Dropping your scalp like a lizard tail and the zombie shakes your scalp back and forth in its teeth.
  • An analyst commissioned by a think tank to write a book explicating how to deal with the zombie apocalypse.
  • Sound Reading Trainer.
  • Having a bunch of magic props that you never show anyone how to use.
  • The casino OJ got arrested at.
  • Tommy Wonder.
  • Reviewing a product on YouTube without ever showing it or saying what it does.
  • How stage hypnosis works.
]]> Lords:

  • Will
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Soda Drinker Pro for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
  • Finding someone to port your game to NES via LinkedIn.
  • The Vivian Clark Experience.
  • Making certain contortions slightly easier.
  • Rock climbing. (Not a topic.)
  • The Phantom Lapboard.
  • The Only Viable Product. (OVP.)
  • What if you could mouse and keyboard on the couch?
  • Growing up in a canoe family.
  • Paddling vs. rowing.
  • Carbon fiber paddles for canoe racing.
  • Waterwalker by Bill Mason.
  • Your favorite memories of a kayak.
  • Waking up in your kayak to see a snapping turtle staring at you.
  • Floating up and wiggling all over the place.
  • Kayaking to lunch from your office.
  • Living in a ski cabin and your office is at the bottom of the mountain.
  • Living at a Lagrange point and your office is at the bottom of the zipline.
  • Boston Unity Knights.
  • Doing a game jam every month for four years.
  • Knowing enough people in your field that you no longer need to network.
  • Five really worthy zero-hour games.
  • Making a therapeutic horror game.
  • Going to a terrifying party in an abandoned train tunnel and finding a burned-out police car.
  • Questionable poisonous air filled with unknown tunnel organisms.
  • Doing mouth stuff in VR.
  • Making the soda line up with your mouth.
  • The Ferris Bueller water drop noise.
  • The thing where you play a blade of grass like a reed instrument.
  • Cheek-flapping noises.
  • Magic tricks vs. Party Tricks.
  • Inhaler magic.
  • Twenty levels of spinning pens.
  • A different horrible knife game.
  • A game about chopping off fingers named "Chop the Finger."
  • Shooting arrows in the air while your friend run away.
  • The keyboard shortcut for finding someone to port your game to NES.
  • A web site where you endorse people as thought leaders.
  • Entering the LinkedIn cheat code on Xbox 360.
  • Porting your video game to a robotic arm.
  • Making it move when you think about it.
  • Uzi Nissan v. Nissan Motors.
  • It can happen to you or someone you know!
  • Picturing conceptual rabbit holes in your head.
  • Sylvester Stallone's Mom's web site.
  • Sylvester Stallone's mom doing palm readings of your ass.
  • All our favorite apps, such as buffalo wings and boneless spare ribs.
  • Thinking about a cricket's interiority.
  • Putting some nature in your poem.
  • Using cricket noises to tell what temperature it is.
  • Having the same number of wings you've always had.
  • Do any bugs make a plan.
  • Leaving "I gave up" pheromones
  • Leaving a map of a physical space in the space.
  • Sizable ants.
  • Fewer scorpions than you'd expect.
  • Putting a bug into your awareness.
  • Pseudoscorpions hanging out on old stuff.
  • Little guys in random places very occasionally.
  • Zombies going to Whole Foods.
  • Going quiescent until a dude walks by with a tasty-looking scalp.
  • Painting a brain on your helmet to fool the zombies.
  • A short-hair wig taped to your grandfather's basketball.
  • Dropping your scalp like a lizard tail and the zombie shakes your scalp back and forth in its teeth.
  • An analyst commissioned by a think tank to write a book explicating how to deal with the zombie apocalypse.
  • Sound Reading Trainer.
  • Having a bunch of magic props that you never show anyone how to use.
  • The casino OJ got arrested at.
  • Tommy Wonder.
  • Reviewing a product on YouTube without ever showing it or saying what it does.
  • How stage hypnosis works.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Will
  • Chris

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Soda Drinker Pro for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
  • Finding someone to port your game to NES via LinkedIn.
  • The Vivian Clark Experience.
  • Making certain contortions slightly easier.
  • Rock climbing. (Not a topic.)
  • The Phantom Lapboard.
  • The Only Viable Product. (OVP.)
  • What if you could mouse and keyboard on the couch?
  • Growing up in a canoe family.
  • Paddling vs. rowing.
  • Carbon fiber paddles for canoe racing.
  • Waterwalker by Bill Mason.
  • Your favorite memories of a kayak.
  • Waking up in your kayak to see a snapping turtle staring at you.
  • Floating up and wiggling all over the place.
  • Kayaking to lunch from your office.
  • Living in a ski cabin and your office is at the bottom of the mountain.
  • Living at a Lagrange point and your office is at the bottom of the zipline.
  • Boston Unity Knights.
  • Doing a game jam every month for four years.
  • Knowing enough people in your field that you no longer need to network.
  • Five really worthy zero-hour games.
  • Making a therapeutic horror game.
  • Going to a terrifying party in an abandoned train tunnel and finding a burned-out police car.
  • Questionable poisonous air filled with unknown tunnel organisms.
  • Doing mouth stuff in VR.
  • Making the soda line up with your mouth.
  • The Ferris Bueller water drop noise.
  • The thing where you play a blade of grass like a reed instrument.
  • Cheek-flapping noises.
  • Magic tricks vs. Party Tricks.
  • Inhaler magic.
  • Twenty levels of spinning pens.
  • A different horrible knife game.
  • A game about chopping off fingers named "Chop the Finger."
  • Shooting arrows in the air while your friend run away.
  • The keyboard shortcut for finding someone to port your game to NES.
  • A web site where you endorse people as thought leaders.
  • Entering the LinkedIn cheat code on Xbox 360.
  • Porting your video game to a robotic arm.
  • Making it move when you think about it.
  • Uzi Nissan v. Nissan Motors.
  • It can happen to you or someone you know!
  • Picturing conceptual rabbit holes in your head.
  • Sylvester Stallone's Mom's web site.
  • Sylvester Stallone's mom doing palm readings of your ass.
  • All our favorite apps, such as buffalo wings and boneless spare ribs.
  • Thinking about a cricket's interiority.
  • Putting some nature in your poem.
  • Using cricket noises to tell what temperature it is.
  • Having the same number of wings you've always had.
  • Do any bugs make a plan.
  • Leaving "I gave up" pheromones
  • Leaving a map of a physical space in the space.
  • Sizable ants.
  • Fewer scorpions than you'd expect.
  • Putting a bug into your awareness.
  • Pseudoscorpions hanging out on old stuff.
  • Little guys in random places very occasionally.
  • Zombies going to Whole Foods.
  • Going quiescent until a dude walks by with a tasty-looking scalp.
  • Painting a brain on your helmet to fool the zombies.
  • A short-hair wig taped to your grandfather's basketball.
  • Dropping your scalp like a lizard tail and the zombie shakes your scalp back and forth in its teeth.
  • An analyst commissioned by a think tank to write a book explicating how to deal with the zombie apocalypse.
  • Sound Reading Trainer.
  • Having a bunch of magic props that you never show anyone how to use.
  • The casino OJ got arrested at.
  • Tommy Wonder.
  • Reviewing a product on YouTube without ever showing it or saying what it does.
  • How stage hypnosis works.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+qPvrBm7u ]]> Jim Stormdancer 208. E.T. Shot First https://topiclords.com/et-shot-first b31677bf-7e49-4f89-aa25-ebbc3bdf158e Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Hallie and Tyriq. We discuss not really caring for potatoes, wearing shorts, why ants are on my desk, the go-getters of pre-dawn gym, non-feathered dinosaurs in the public imagination, and McPop. 1:01:28 true Lords:

  • Hallie
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • People really like potatoes and I don't get it
  • I wear shorts now.
  • Why are these ants on my desk?
  • The go-getters of predawn gym
  • Non feathered dinosaurs in the public imagination
    • Esper says: Magic: the Gathering does have feathered dinosaurs as part of its mesoamerican-inspired setting, which look cool as hell. Not all of them are completely covered or anything, but Gishath is a good example of how to make a dinosaur look really intimidating and powerful while still having feathers. https://scryfall.com/card/xln/222/gishath-suns-avatar
  • McPop

Microtopics:

  • Not counting the Zelda game you made.
  • Mashing up the hummus beans.
  • Tahini texture.
  • Garbanzo merengue.
  • Cutting-edge vegan technology.
  • Making video games until you learn better.
  • The freezer popsicle that's just a tube of flavored water.
  • Potato struggle sessions.
  • Curly fries versus seasoned curly fries.
  • A waste of a hearty food that should last longer.
  • Century potatoes.
  • Burying a potato in the ground and setting a peat bog on fire.
  • Taro chips.
  • The bag in the grocery store that says "veggie sticks" and there's a picture of fresh vegetables on the bag but inside it's just potato slurry fried into stick form.
  • Anti-shorts positions.
  • A tattoo in a conspicuous place.
  • Showing up to a game jam in a Voldo harness.
  • A tattoo that makes it look like you've been scratching a rash.
  • Getting a cool tattoo and starting going to the gym because you want to be worthy of the tattoo.
  • A slovenly dude in a fedora getting a sick tattoo of a slovenly dude in a fedora.
  • Yakuza style tattoos except it's all video game shit.
  • Leaving an olive under your desk.
  • What the ants are into lately.
  • House Ants.
  • Storehouses of finger dust.
  • Letting the ants have the olive.
  • Mice with an exoskeleton.
  • Sitting on a toilet made of ants and instantly becoming one with the ants.
  • A bottle of Ginger Ants.
  • Extremely tangy abyss.
  • What is in my mouth? What is in my bed?
  • Rolling a ball of goo over your keyboard.
  • Finding some good goo and keeping it to yourself.
  • The validity of shipping yourself with things.
  • Merging your cats.
  • Motivated brothers.
  • Waking up at 5:30 to go to the gym.
  • Go-gettitude.
  • Chronotypes.
  • Expressing all the aspirational aspects of yourself.
  • The only person flexing in the mirrors.
  • Why is this young teen here so early?
  • Pretty ripped. (For a child.)
  • Giving up on waking up before dawn and becoming the kind of go-getter who gets later things.
  • Reconstructing dinosaurs based on what people think they should look like.
  • Semi-mythical creatures. (That actually existed.)
  • Microraptors that are slightly melty.
  • 65, with Adam Driver.
  • An interesting concept, executed poorly.
  • The Pepsisaur.
  • Adam Driver running away from horny dudes crawling around in mocap suits and the test audiences hate it so they CGI in some horny humanoid dinosaurs.
  • Having kids and patching ET so the government agents don't have guns and then after your kids grow up, patching ET so they have extra guns.
  • Twelve gauge flashlights.
  • Lemmings but with babies.
  • One of each type of eye.
  • Eyes that are so human looking that it kind of fucks you up.
  • A reverse The Fly situation.
  • McPopHouse.
  • The Junta of Tralfaz.
  • Picking up a new key and trying it on every locked door you've ever seen.
  • Pressing insert to empty your sexual tension meter.
  • Back before Microsoft Word owned the .doc extension.
  • A hoary pld PD Turbo 3.0 include file circa 1985.
  • Sentences from shareware documentation that have been in your head for 30 years.
  • BBS Doors.
  • Legend of the Red Dragon.
  • Reprising your role as Olmec.
]]> Lords:

  • Hallie
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • People really like potatoes and I don't get it
  • I wear shorts now.
  • Why are these ants on my desk?
  • The go-getters of predawn gym
  • Non feathered dinosaurs in the public imagination
    • Esper says: Magic: the Gathering does have feathered dinosaurs as part of its mesoamerican-inspired setting, which look cool as hell. Not all of them are completely covered or anything, but Gishath is a good example of how to make a dinosaur look really intimidating and powerful while still having feathers. https://scryfall.com/card/xln/222/gishath-suns-avatar
  • McPop

Microtopics:

  • Not counting the Zelda game you made.
  • Mashing up the hummus beans.
  • Tahini texture.
  • Garbanzo merengue.
  • Cutting-edge vegan technology.
  • Making video games until you learn better.
  • The freezer popsicle that's just a tube of flavored water.
  • Potato struggle sessions.
  • Curly fries versus seasoned curly fries.
  • A waste of a hearty food that should last longer.
  • Century potatoes.
  • Burying a potato in the ground and setting a peat bog on fire.
  • Taro chips.
  • The bag in the grocery store that says "veggie sticks" and there's a picture of fresh vegetables on the bag but inside it's just potato slurry fried into stick form.
  • Anti-shorts positions.
  • A tattoo in a conspicuous place.
  • Showing up to a game jam in a Voldo harness.
  • A tattoo that makes it look like you've been scratching a rash.
  • Getting a cool tattoo and starting going to the gym because you want to be worthy of the tattoo.
  • A slovenly dude in a fedora getting a sick tattoo of a slovenly dude in a fedora.
  • Yakuza style tattoos except it's all video game shit.
  • Leaving an olive under your desk.
  • What the ants are into lately.
  • House Ants.
  • Storehouses of finger dust.
  • Letting the ants have the olive.
  • Mice with an exoskeleton.
  • Sitting on a toilet made of ants and instantly becoming one with the ants.
  • A bottle of Ginger Ants.
  • Extremely tangy abyss.
  • What is in my mouth? What is in my bed?
  • Rolling a ball of goo over your keyboard.
  • Finding some good goo and keeping it to yourself.
  • The validity of shipping yourself with things.
  • Merging your cats.
  • Motivated brothers.
  • Waking up at 5:30 to go to the gym.
  • Go-gettitude.
  • Chronotypes.
  • Expressing all the aspirational aspects of yourself.
  • The only person flexing in the mirrors.
  • Why is this young teen here so early?
  • Pretty ripped. (For a child.)
  • Giving up on waking up before dawn and becoming the kind of go-getter who gets later things.
  • Reconstructing dinosaurs based on what people think they should look like.
  • Semi-mythical creatures. (That actually existed.)
  • Microraptors that are slightly melty.
  • 65, with Adam Driver.
  • An interesting concept, executed poorly.
  • The Pepsisaur.
  • Adam Driver running away from horny dudes crawling around in mocap suits and the test audiences hate it so they CGI in some horny humanoid dinosaurs.
  • Having kids and patching ET so the government agents don't have guns and then after your kids grow up, patching ET so they have extra guns.
  • Twelve gauge flashlights.
  • Lemmings but with babies.
  • One of each type of eye.
  • Eyes that are so human looking that it kind of fucks you up.
  • A reverse The Fly situation.
  • McPopHouse.
  • The Junta of Tralfaz.
  • Picking up a new key and trying it on every locked door you've ever seen.
  • Pressing insert to empty your sexual tension meter.
  • Back before Microsoft Word owned the .doc extension.
  • A hoary pld PD Turbo 3.0 include file circa 1985.
  • Sentences from shareware documentation that have been in your head for 30 years.
  • BBS Doors.
  • Legend of the Red Dragon.
  • Reprising your role as Olmec.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Hallie
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • People really like potatoes and I don't get it
  • I wear shorts now.
  • Why are these ants on my desk?
  • The go-getters of predawn gym
  • Non feathered dinosaurs in the public imagination
    • Esper says: Magic: the Gathering does have feathered dinosaurs as part of its mesoamerican-inspired setting, which look cool as hell. Not all of them are completely covered or anything, but Gishath is a good example of how to make a dinosaur look really intimidating and powerful while still having feathers. https://scryfall.com/card/xln/222/gishath-suns-avatar
  • McPop

Microtopics:

  • Not counting the Zelda game you made.
  • Mashing up the hummus beans.
  • Tahini texture.
  • Garbanzo merengue.
  • Cutting-edge vegan technology.
  • Making video games until you learn better.
  • The freezer popsicle that's just a tube of flavored water.
  • Potato struggle sessions.
  • Curly fries versus seasoned curly fries.
  • A waste of a hearty food that should last longer.
  • Century potatoes.
  • Burying a potato in the ground and setting a peat bog on fire.
  • Taro chips.
  • The bag in the grocery store that says "veggie sticks" and there's a picture of fresh vegetables on the bag but inside it's just potato slurry fried into stick form.
  • Anti-shorts positions.
  • A tattoo in a conspicuous place.
  • Showing up to a game jam in a Voldo harness.
  • A tattoo that makes it look like you've been scratching a rash.
  • Getting a cool tattoo and starting going to the gym because you want to be worthy of the tattoo.
  • A slovenly dude in a fedora getting a sick tattoo of a slovenly dude in a fedora.
  • Yakuza style tattoos except it's all video game shit.
  • Leaving an olive under your desk.
  • What the ants are into lately.
  • House Ants.
  • Storehouses of finger dust.
  • Letting the ants have the olive.
  • Mice with an exoskeleton.
  • Sitting on a toilet made of ants and instantly becoming one with the ants.
  • A bottle of Ginger Ants.
  • Extremely tangy abyss.
  • What is in my mouth? What is in my bed?
  • Rolling a ball of goo over your keyboard.
  • Finding some good goo and keeping it to yourself.
  • The validity of shipping yourself with things.
  • Merging your cats.
  • Motivated brothers.
  • Waking up at 5:30 to go to the gym.
  • Go-gettitude.
  • Chronotypes.
  • Expressing all the aspirational aspects of yourself.
  • The only person flexing in the mirrors.
  • Why is this young teen here so early?
  • Pretty ripped. (For a child.)
  • Giving up on waking up before dawn and becoming the kind of go-getter who gets later things.
  • Reconstructing dinosaurs based on what people think they should look like.
  • Semi-mythical creatures. (That actually existed.)
  • Microraptors that are slightly melty.
  • 65, with Adam Driver.
  • An interesting concept, executed poorly.
  • The Pepsisaur.
  • Adam Driver running away from horny dudes crawling around in mocap suits and the test audiences hate it so they CGI in some horny humanoid dinosaurs.
  • Having kids and patching ET so the government agents don't have guns and then after your kids grow up, patching ET so they have extra guns.
  • Twelve gauge flashlights.
  • Lemmings but with babies.
  • One of each type of eye.
  • Eyes that are so human looking that it kind of fucks you up.
  • A reverse The Fly situation.
  • McPopHouse.
  • The Junta of Tralfaz.
  • Picking up a new key and trying it on every locked door you've ever seen.
  • Pressing insert to empty your sexual tension meter.
  • Back before Microsoft Word owned the .doc extension.
  • A hoary pld PD Turbo 3.0 include file circa 1985.
  • Sentences from shareware documentation that have been in your head for 30 years.
  • BBS Doors.
  • Legend of the Red Dragon.
  • Reprising your role as Olmec.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+3to8OWYm ]]> Jim Stormdancer 207. Muppet Bird Generation Ship https://topiclords.com/muppet-bird-generation-ship 06ba70c9-4ca6-4a59-b0e6-7851cf7994f4 Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Lesley and Nathan. We discuss whether wilderness survival is a sport, variation in NextDoor posts, pastry arbitrage, The Light That Shines When Things End, wild takahe returning to New Zealand, and Boston Robotics. 1:11:39 true Lords:

  • Lesley
  • Nathan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Hyper Light Breaker.
  • Bumpy Grumpy.
  • Recording a podcast from inside a toilet.
  • Fishtank bubbling noises.
  • Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen.
  • Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century.
  • Starving contests.
  • Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists.
  • The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff.
  • The "it's a living" joke.
  • Pez Guy.
  • Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet.
  • A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles.
  • Weary cereal mascots.
  • Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges.
  • Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel."
  • Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you."
  • Encouraging microcultures.
  • Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos.
  • Using technology to steer people away from being terrible.
  • Writing a story about a guy with a sword.
  • Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building.
  • Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion.
  • Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?"
  • How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up.
  • The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store.
  • The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select."
  • The Quasi-Authentic Experience.
  • A pumpkin velcroed to a vine.
  • A large hill. (Not a mountain.)
  • Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties.
  • Ruining an otherwise amazing moment.
  • A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation.
  • Whether the light has a bell too.
  • A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it.
  • Taking the eggs to an incubation center.
  • Muppet Bird flavor.
  • Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside.
  • Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop.
  • The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up.
  • Robots that sound like bees.
  • Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees.
  • Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots.
  • Moxie the child companion robot.
  • A dog named Spot and his SDK.
  • Too loud, too scary, too many bees.
  • People who can pollinate.
  • If it's empty, fill it with bees.
  • Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely.
  • Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell.
]]> Lords:

  • Lesley
  • Nathan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Hyper Light Breaker.
  • Bumpy Grumpy.
  • Recording a podcast from inside a toilet.
  • Fishtank bubbling noises.
  • Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen.
  • Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century.
  • Starving contests.
  • Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists.
  • The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff.
  • The "it's a living" joke.
  • Pez Guy.
  • Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet.
  • A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles.
  • Weary cereal mascots.
  • Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges.
  • Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel."
  • Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you."
  • Encouraging microcultures.
  • Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos.
  • Using technology to steer people away from being terrible.
  • Writing a story about a guy with a sword.
  • Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building.
  • Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion.
  • Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?"
  • How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up.
  • The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store.
  • The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select."
  • The Quasi-Authentic Experience.
  • A pumpkin velcroed to a vine.
  • A large hill. (Not a mountain.)
  • Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties.
  • Ruining an otherwise amazing moment.
  • A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation.
  • Whether the light has a bell too.
  • A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it.
  • Taking the eggs to an incubation center.
  • Muppet Bird flavor.
  • Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside.
  • Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop.
  • The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up.
  • Robots that sound like bees.
  • Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees.
  • Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots.
  • Moxie the child companion robot.
  • A dog named Spot and his SDK.
  • Too loud, too scary, too many bees.
  • People who can pollinate.
  • If it's empty, fill it with bees.
  • Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely.
  • Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Lesley
  • Nathan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Hyper Light Breaker.
  • Bumpy Grumpy.
  • Recording a podcast from inside a toilet.
  • Fishtank bubbling noises.
  • Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen.
  • Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century.
  • Starving contests.
  • Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists.
  • The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff.
  • The "it's a living" joke.
  • Pez Guy.
  • Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet.
  • A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles.
  • Weary cereal mascots.
  • Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges.
  • Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel."
  • Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you."
  • Encouraging microcultures.
  • Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos.
  • Using technology to steer people away from being terrible.
  • Writing a story about a guy with a sword.
  • Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building.
  • Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion.
  • Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?"
  • How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up.
  • The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store.
  • The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select."
  • The Quasi-Authentic Experience.
  • A pumpkin velcroed to a vine.
  • A large hill. (Not a mountain.)
  • Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties.
  • Ruining an otherwise amazing moment.
  • A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation.
  • Whether the light has a bell too.
  • A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it.
  • Taking the eggs to an incubation center.
  • Muppet Bird flavor.
  • Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside.
  • Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop.
  • The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up.
  • Robots that sound like bees.
  • Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees.
  • Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots.
  • Moxie the child companion robot.
  • A dog named Spot and his SDK.
  • Too loud, too scary, too many bees.
  • People who can pollinate.
  • If it's empty, fill it with bees.
  • Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely.
  • Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+UgiFNhj9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 206. Waiting Around for Laundry To Be Invented https://topiclords.com/waiting-around-for-laundry-to-be-invented f7c88162-9481-41d2-b6e9-1ddd2d777d39 Mon, 02 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JP and Styger. We discuss Super Mario Bros. Wonder, souls departing, using a spacer with inhalers, revisiting the Cosmic Crisp, how to learn to play piano, and teaching our children to pirate. 1:21:40 true Lords:

  • JP
  • Styger

Topics:

  • Wouldn't mind hearing Jim's thoughts on the recent Super Mario Bros Wonder video
  • Souls departing / cartoon ghosts
  • You're supposed to use a "spacer" with inhalers now
  • Probably not a full topic but I finally ate that apple I was hyped for in my fist Topic Lords appearance
  • Questions for a more experienced musician about learning to play piano + songwriting
  • How do we teach our children to pirate?

Microtopics:

  • The flu shot.
  • Your TV patching itself.
  • Going wading in a bog until laundry is invented.
  • Dying of smoke inhalation until someone invents the chimney.
  • A topic for Jim.
  • Soliciting Mario opinions.
  • Murdering an 80s kid with Mario footage.
  • Squat anime Link.
  • Mario with a grappling hook.
  • Mario with asynchronous co-op partners.
  • The new Mario game bringing the real freak shit.
  • Developer quality of life.
  • The unfortunate mythology of the industry.
  • Getting to the moon more sustainably.
  • Mike Mika's Donkey Kong gender swap mod.
  • Big globs of ragu flying out of rotoscoped pixel men.
  • The evolutionary dynamic range of AAA games.
  • The boringness of violence.
  • Realistic present day modern warfare.
  • Making garbage that makes the world worse forever.
  • Wanting to see your medium grow.
  • A puzzle platformer using a first person shooter interface.
  • Reaching a little bit for a different thing.
  • Dealing a little bit of damage to a wall.
  • A door turning a corpse into a squished blood paste sprite.
  • Pikmin 3 as the most honest war game.
  • No Dead Pikmin Speed Run.
  • Getting more stuff back to your onion.
  • Revisiting game mechanics from throughout the series.
  • Outgrowing your childhood diseases.
  • A big plastic cylinder the size of a breath.
  • Audio iconography saying "look at this dickhead"
  • A bong for your inhaler.
  • All the surfaces between the air and your bronchial tubes.
  • A major change in inhaler technology.
  • Putting a bunch of programmer time into making conference calls sound good.
  • Respironix Optichamber Diamond.
  • Algorithms to cancel out the Mentos Jingle.
  • Finally trying the new apple varietal on your birthday.
  • Haphazard produce sections.
  • Heapsorting apples.
  • This apple is going to make you its bitch.
  • Bad mealy apples in the 80s.
  • Banana lore.
  • As Seen In Snopes: Verified Not Bullshit Fruit.
  • Getting the gist of a song and being able to do your own thing with it.
  • Making noises that sound like nice music.
  • Learning to play guitar while waiting for your maps to compile.
  • Edly's Music Theory for Practical People.
  • Learning to which suspicious-looking websites to trust.
  • The Golden Age of Scams.
  • oldversion.com
  • Spiffy new Windows NT computers.
  • Streaming services that you refuse to give money to.
  • Doers of Game Piracy.
  • Public opinion turning on piracy and copyright.
  • Information literacy.
  • The surviving websites where you don't mind being found.
]]> Lords:

  • JP
  • Styger

Topics:

  • Wouldn't mind hearing Jim's thoughts on the recent Super Mario Bros Wonder video
  • Souls departing / cartoon ghosts
  • You're supposed to use a "spacer" with inhalers now
  • Probably not a full topic but I finally ate that apple I was hyped for in my fist Topic Lords appearance
  • Questions for a more experienced musician about learning to play piano + songwriting
  • How do we teach our children to pirate?

Microtopics:

  • The flu shot.
  • Your TV patching itself.
  • Going wading in a bog until laundry is invented.
  • Dying of smoke inhalation until someone invents the chimney.
  • A topic for Jim.
  • Soliciting Mario opinions.
  • Murdering an 80s kid with Mario footage.
  • Squat anime Link.
  • Mario with a grappling hook.
  • Mario with asynchronous co-op partners.
  • The new Mario game bringing the real freak shit.
  • Developer quality of life.
  • The unfortunate mythology of the industry.
  • Getting to the moon more sustainably.
  • Mike Mika's Donkey Kong gender swap mod.
  • Big globs of ragu flying out of rotoscoped pixel men.
  • The evolutionary dynamic range of AAA games.
  • The boringness of violence.
  • Realistic present day modern warfare.
  • Making garbage that makes the world worse forever.
  • Wanting to see your medium grow.
  • A puzzle platformer using a first person shooter interface.
  • Reaching a little bit for a different thing.
  • Dealing a little bit of damage to a wall.
  • A door turning a corpse into a squished blood paste sprite.
  • Pikmin 3 as the most honest war game.
  • No Dead Pikmin Speed Run.
  • Getting more stuff back to your onion.
  • Revisiting game mechanics from throughout the series.
  • Outgrowing your childhood diseases.
  • A big plastic cylinder the size of a breath.
  • Audio iconography saying "look at this dickhead"
  • A bong for your inhaler.
  • All the surfaces between the air and your bronchial tubes.
  • A major change in inhaler technology.
  • Putting a bunch of programmer time into making conference calls sound good.
  • Respironix Optichamber Diamond.
  • Algorithms to cancel out the Mentos Jingle.
  • Finally trying the new apple varietal on your birthday.
  • Haphazard produce sections.
  • Heapsorting apples.
  • This apple is going to make you its bitch.
  • Bad mealy apples in the 80s.
  • Banana lore.
  • As Seen In Snopes: Verified Not Bullshit Fruit.
  • Getting the gist of a song and being able to do your own thing with it.
  • Making noises that sound like nice music.
  • Learning to play guitar while waiting for your maps to compile.
  • Edly's Music Theory for Practical People.
  • Learning to which suspicious-looking websites to trust.
  • The Golden Age of Scams.
  • oldversion.com
  • Spiffy new Windows NT computers.
  • Streaming services that you refuse to give money to.
  • Doers of Game Piracy.
  • Public opinion turning on piracy and copyright.
  • Information literacy.
  • The surviving websites where you don't mind being found.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • JP
  • Styger

Topics:

  • Wouldn't mind hearing Jim's thoughts on the recent Super Mario Bros Wonder video
  • Souls departing / cartoon ghosts
  • You're supposed to use a "spacer" with inhalers now
  • Probably not a full topic but I finally ate that apple I was hyped for in my fist Topic Lords appearance
  • Questions for a more experienced musician about learning to play piano + songwriting
  • How do we teach our children to pirate?

Microtopics:

  • The flu shot.
  • Your TV patching itself.
  • Going wading in a bog until laundry is invented.
  • Dying of smoke inhalation until someone invents the chimney.
  • A topic for Jim.
  • Soliciting Mario opinions.
  • Murdering an 80s kid with Mario footage.
  • Squat anime Link.
  • Mario with a grappling hook.
  • Mario with asynchronous co-op partners.
  • The new Mario game bringing the real freak shit.
  • Developer quality of life.
  • The unfortunate mythology of the industry.
  • Getting to the moon more sustainably.
  • Mike Mika's Donkey Kong gender swap mod.
  • Big globs of ragu flying out of rotoscoped pixel men.
  • The evolutionary dynamic range of AAA games.
  • The boringness of violence.
  • Realistic present day modern warfare.
  • Making garbage that makes the world worse forever.
  • Wanting to see your medium grow.
  • A puzzle platformer using a first person shooter interface.
  • Reaching a little bit for a different thing.
  • Dealing a little bit of damage to a wall.
  • A door turning a corpse into a squished blood paste sprite.
  • Pikmin 3 as the most honest war game.
  • No Dead Pikmin Speed Run.
  • Getting more stuff back to your onion.
  • Revisiting game mechanics from throughout the series.
  • Outgrowing your childhood diseases.
  • A big plastic cylinder the size of a breath.
  • Audio iconography saying "look at this dickhead"
  • A bong for your inhaler.
  • All the surfaces between the air and your bronchial tubes.
  • A major change in inhaler technology.
  • Putting a bunch of programmer time into making conference calls sound good.
  • Respironix Optichamber Diamond.
  • Algorithms to cancel out the Mentos Jingle.
  • Finally trying the new apple varietal on your birthday.
  • Haphazard produce sections.
  • Heapsorting apples.
  • This apple is going to make you its bitch.
  • Bad mealy apples in the 80s.
  • Banana lore.
  • As Seen In Snopes: Verified Not Bullshit Fruit.
  • Getting the gist of a song and being able to do your own thing with it.
  • Making noises that sound like nice music.
  • Learning to play guitar while waiting for your maps to compile.
  • Edly's Music Theory for Practical People.
  • Learning to which suspicious-looking websites to trust.
  • The Golden Age of Scams.
  • oldversion.com
  • Spiffy new Windows NT computers.
  • Streaming services that you refuse to give money to.
  • Doers of Game Piracy.
  • Public opinion turning on piracy and copyright.
  • Information literacy.
  • The surviving websites where you don't mind being found.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+mol4XWZd ]]> Jim Stormdancer 205. It's Cool to Get a Letter https://topiclords.com/its-cool-to-get-a-letter dd0a4c66-cb95-47fc-b194-ad2b5135b11b Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and John. We discuss spending four days fasting in the woods, having twins, the Zelda 1 second quest, and "Now the World has Gone to Bed" by Marvin. 1:08:23 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Joyful communities.
  • Whether discord logs can be subpoenaed.
  • Encoding all your mail in ROT13 to keep them safe from the snoops at the NSA.
  • Finishing with your DSP design work so your employer sends you into the basement to make cardboard boxes.
  • Someone in the early 2000s with a high pitched voice.
  • Remembering your grandma's phone number from when you were six but not remembering any phone numbers since then.
  • Thinky Puzzle Games.
  • An Alan Hazelden thing.
  • Tom Brown's Tracker School.
  • Going into the woods and sitting in one spot for four days.
  • A good, productive, safe time.
  • Keeping control of your emotions.
  • How to know when to stop.
  • Doing a ritual at sunrise.
  • Having animal encounters.
  • Trees dripping water on you.
  • Doing the most boring thing for four days straight so you can never be bored again.
  • A really cool thing to do in your twenties.
  • Sonic showers screaming at you until you're clean.
  • Lacking the experience to understand what's coming for you.
  • Going through some shit and loving it.
  • What if it all works out?
  • The experience of knowing twins.
  • Taking advantage of the Groupon for college tuition.
  • Hanging your fears on milestones.
  • Taking your parental leave consecutively.
  • Daycare as a microcosm of communal living.
  • Showing people what you're working on.
  • Making a living putting your kids on social media until your kids get old enough to express that they don't like it.
  • Wearing a shirt saying "I do not consent to be photographed."
  • A conversation with a five year old about scrub jays.
  • Sharing media with an allowlist.
  • Setting permissions on who can see your photos.
  • Sharing photos with your family by handing out USB drives.
  • A visual novel that is extremely interested in your personal financial information.
  • A pen connected to a matrix of hundreds of other pens so you can sign your name hundreds of times at once.
  • The Zelda one-second quest.
  • Naming yourself Zelda as a shortcut for understanding this topic.
  • Naming your character Zelda without understanding the consequences.
  • Red bubbles that take your sword away.
  • An obvious door that you can walk through.
  • Iwata Asks.
  • Accidentally using only half the space available.
  • Zelda randomizers.
  • SMZ3.
  • How to make Super Mario World a metroidvania.
  • Marvin putting in work.
  • Capturing a particular level of snark.
  • Reading books in high school that you won't understand until you're 30.
  • The California Raisins as the sequel to the Grapes of Wrath.
  • The kind of person who works really hard in high school.
  • Xanthan gum.
  • Trochaic something or other.
  • I had a theory about music and then I made all these friends!
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Joyful communities.
  • Whether discord logs can be subpoenaed.
  • Encoding all your mail in ROT13 to keep them safe from the snoops at the NSA.
  • Finishing with your DSP design work so your employer sends you into the basement to make cardboard boxes.
  • Someone in the early 2000s with a high pitched voice.
  • Remembering your grandma's phone number from when you were six but not remembering any phone numbers since then.
  • Thinky Puzzle Games.
  • An Alan Hazelden thing.
  • Tom Brown's Tracker School.
  • Going into the woods and sitting in one spot for four days.
  • A good, productive, safe time.
  • Keeping control of your emotions.
  • How to know when to stop.
  • Doing a ritual at sunrise.
  • Having animal encounters.
  • Trees dripping water on you.
  • Doing the most boring thing for four days straight so you can never be bored again.
  • A really cool thing to do in your twenties.
  • Sonic showers screaming at you until you're clean.
  • Lacking the experience to understand what's coming for you.
  • Going through some shit and loving it.
  • What if it all works out?
  • The experience of knowing twins.
  • Taking advantage of the Groupon for college tuition.
  • Hanging your fears on milestones.
  • Taking your parental leave consecutively.
  • Daycare as a microcosm of communal living.
  • Showing people what you're working on.
  • Making a living putting your kids on social media until your kids get old enough to express that they don't like it.
  • Wearing a shirt saying "I do not consent to be photographed."
  • A conversation with a five year old about scrub jays.
  • Sharing media with an allowlist.
  • Setting permissions on who can see your photos.
  • Sharing photos with your family by handing out USB drives.
  • A visual novel that is extremely interested in your personal financial information.
  • A pen connected to a matrix of hundreds of other pens so you can sign your name hundreds of times at once.
  • The Zelda one-second quest.
  • Naming yourself Zelda as a shortcut for understanding this topic.
  • Naming your character Zelda without understanding the consequences.
  • Red bubbles that take your sword away.
  • An obvious door that you can walk through.
  • Iwata Asks.
  • Accidentally using only half the space available.
  • Zelda randomizers.
  • SMZ3.
  • How to make Super Mario World a metroidvania.
  • Marvin putting in work.
  • Capturing a particular level of snark.
  • Reading books in high school that you won't understand until you're 30.
  • The California Raisins as the sequel to the Grapes of Wrath.
  • The kind of person who works really hard in high school.
  • Xanthan gum.
  • Trochaic something or other.
  • I had a theory about music and then I made all these friends!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Joyful communities.
  • Whether discord logs can be subpoenaed.
  • Encoding all your mail in ROT13 to keep them safe from the snoops at the NSA.
  • Finishing with your DSP design work so your employer sends you into the basement to make cardboard boxes.
  • Someone in the early 2000s with a high pitched voice.
  • Remembering your grandma's phone number from when you were six but not remembering any phone numbers since then.
  • Thinky Puzzle Games.
  • An Alan Hazelden thing.
  • Tom Brown's Tracker School.
  • Going into the woods and sitting in one spot for four days.
  • A good, productive, safe time.
  • Keeping control of your emotions.
  • How to know when to stop.
  • Doing a ritual at sunrise.
  • Having animal encounters.
  • Trees dripping water on you.
  • Doing the most boring thing for four days straight so you can never be bored again.
  • A really cool thing to do in your twenties.
  • Sonic showers screaming at you until you're clean.
  • Lacking the experience to understand what's coming for you.
  • Going through some shit and loving it.
  • What if it all works out?
  • The experience of knowing twins.
  • Taking advantage of the Groupon for college tuition.
  • Hanging your fears on milestones.
  • Taking your parental leave consecutively.
  • Daycare as a microcosm of communal living.
  • Showing people what you're working on.
  • Making a living putting your kids on social media until your kids get old enough to express that they don't like it.
  • Wearing a shirt saying "I do not consent to be photographed."
  • A conversation with a five year old about scrub jays.
  • Sharing media with an allowlist.
  • Setting permissions on who can see your photos.
  • Sharing photos with your family by handing out USB drives.
  • A visual novel that is extremely interested in your personal financial information.
  • A pen connected to a matrix of hundreds of other pens so you can sign your name hundreds of times at once.
  • The Zelda one-second quest.
  • Naming yourself Zelda as a shortcut for understanding this topic.
  • Naming your character Zelda without understanding the consequences.
  • Red bubbles that take your sword away.
  • An obvious door that you can walk through.
  • Iwata Asks.
  • Accidentally using only half the space available.
  • Zelda randomizers.
  • SMZ3.
  • How to make Super Mario World a metroidvania.
  • Marvin putting in work.
  • Capturing a particular level of snark.
  • Reading books in high school that you won't understand until you're 30.
  • The California Raisins as the sequel to the Grapes of Wrath.
  • The kind of person who works really hard in high school.
  • Xanthan gum.
  • Trochaic something or other.
  • I had a theory about music and then I made all these friends!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RuinU2HP ]]> Jim Stormdancer 204. Defrag My Colon https://topiclords.com/defrag-my-colon 2fc4d385-6f34-4f4b-8eed-bd840725da99 Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JohnB and CisHetKayFaber. We discuss the human body's similarity to shitty software, the origin of hiccups, books about video games that aren't strategy guides, untitled by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, and TV shows that have inspired original mathematics. 1:10:38 true Lords:

  • JohnB
  • CisHetKayFaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether it's okay to catch up.
  • Air conditioning on hot days.
  • A steel mill catching fire and the whole east bay smells like the back of a cathode ray tube.
  • Shaking yellow sand out of your laundry.
  • Importing brushfire smoke from Canada.
  • Using bad metaphors to explain RAM.
  • Stochastic immunology.
  • Alphabetizing all your gut bacteria.
  • Whitman's Anal Sampling Mechanism.
  • The Bonzi Buddy of the human body.
  • Your inkjet printer waking up at 5am to cycle some ink.
  • The optimal humidity to reflow your ink cartridges.
  • Norton Commander.
  • Selecting files with the arrow keys and viewing them with F3.
  • How Thunking ruined Jim's Norton Commander clone.
  • Your fish nervous system trying to be a fish again.
  • Reciting the anti-hiccup poem to cure your hiccups.
  • Fish reminding each other to not take ten small sips of water or they'll stop breathing.
  • Scaly swimmers.
  • Working in a shark lab.
  • Whether a fish sandwich is a fish or a sandwich.
  • Offering people a "tuna roll" and when they say yes guessing whether they think you mean the sushi or tuna salad on a bready roll.
  • Meditating on the concept of hiccups.
  • Congratulations, you won the game!
  • How to Beat the Atari Home Video Games.
  • Where a library would shelve those books of type-in BASIC programs.
  • Dave (2018) and Dave Demo (2018)
  • Which Boss Fight Books are good.
  • Starting your kid on Mario Maker.
  • Game Engine Black Book: Doom and Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D.
  • Mario Galaxy's camera-oriented level design.
  • Your body telling you when it's time to drink water.
  • Using Final Fantasy 4 as a bridge to talk about localization.
  • Developing a light gun game to install in all the bowling alleys now that the bowling fad has faded.
  • The Countdown to Irrelevance.
  • Books that used to be blogs.
  • Inventing criteria for how you beat Galaga.
  • Learning what micturations are twenty years after reading that Vogon poem and wondering which seeming nonsense words you'll learn in the next twenty years.
  • The BBC TV Hitchhiker's Guide series.
  • The second-worst poetry in the galaxy.
  • Red Dwarf airing on Dave.
  • A better way to think about it. (If you are a math person.)
  • Drive-by Mathematics.
  • Nesting your watch orders.
  • Watching every episode in every possible order to get the maximum possible amount of context for every scene.
  • Marylin vos Savant.
  • The Monty Hall Problem.
  • A game design that presumes the player does not want a goat.
  • Whether you want to switch to the other goat.
  • Opening 98 doors, revealing goats behind each one.
  • Pushing limits and talking about calculus.
  • Learning Japanese because you want to read the smutty manga.
  • X: The Everything App.
]]> Lords:

  • JohnB
  • CisHetKayFaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether it's okay to catch up.
  • Air conditioning on hot days.
  • A steel mill catching fire and the whole east bay smells like the back of a cathode ray tube.
  • Shaking yellow sand out of your laundry.
  • Importing brushfire smoke from Canada.
  • Using bad metaphors to explain RAM.
  • Stochastic immunology.
  • Alphabetizing all your gut bacteria.
  • Whitman's Anal Sampling Mechanism.
  • The Bonzi Buddy of the human body.
  • Your inkjet printer waking up at 5am to cycle some ink.
  • The optimal humidity to reflow your ink cartridges.
  • Norton Commander.
  • Selecting files with the arrow keys and viewing them with F3.
  • How Thunking ruined Jim's Norton Commander clone.
  • Your fish nervous system trying to be a fish again.
  • Reciting the anti-hiccup poem to cure your hiccups.
  • Fish reminding each other to not take ten small sips of water or they'll stop breathing.
  • Scaly swimmers.
  • Working in a shark lab.
  • Whether a fish sandwich is a fish or a sandwich.
  • Offering people a "tuna roll" and when they say yes guessing whether they think you mean the sushi or tuna salad on a bready roll.
  • Meditating on the concept of hiccups.
  • Congratulations, you won the game!
  • How to Beat the Atari Home Video Games.
  • Where a library would shelve those books of type-in BASIC programs.
  • Dave (2018) and Dave Demo (2018)
  • Which Boss Fight Books are good.
  • Starting your kid on Mario Maker.
  • Game Engine Black Book: Doom and Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D.
  • Mario Galaxy's camera-oriented level design.
  • Your body telling you when it's time to drink water.
  • Using Final Fantasy 4 as a bridge to talk about localization.
  • Developing a light gun game to install in all the bowling alleys now that the bowling fad has faded.
  • The Countdown to Irrelevance.
  • Books that used to be blogs.
  • Inventing criteria for how you beat Galaga.
  • Learning what micturations are twenty years after reading that Vogon poem and wondering which seeming nonsense words you'll learn in the next twenty years.
  • The BBC TV Hitchhiker's Guide series.
  • The second-worst poetry in the galaxy.
  • Red Dwarf airing on Dave.
  • A better way to think about it. (If you are a math person.)
  • Drive-by Mathematics.
  • Nesting your watch orders.
  • Watching every episode in every possible order to get the maximum possible amount of context for every scene.
  • Marylin vos Savant.
  • The Monty Hall Problem.
  • A game design that presumes the player does not want a goat.
  • Whether you want to switch to the other goat.
  • Opening 98 doors, revealing goats behind each one.
  • Pushing limits and talking about calculus.
  • Learning Japanese because you want to read the smutty manga.
  • X: The Everything App.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • JohnB
  • CisHetKayFaber

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Whether it's okay to catch up.
  • Air conditioning on hot days.
  • A steel mill catching fire and the whole east bay smells like the back of a cathode ray tube.
  • Shaking yellow sand out of your laundry.
  • Importing brushfire smoke from Canada.
  • Using bad metaphors to explain RAM.
  • Stochastic immunology.
  • Alphabetizing all your gut bacteria.
  • Whitman's Anal Sampling Mechanism.
  • The Bonzi Buddy of the human body.
  • Your inkjet printer waking up at 5am to cycle some ink.
  • The optimal humidity to reflow your ink cartridges.
  • Norton Commander.
  • Selecting files with the arrow keys and viewing them with F3.
  • How Thunking ruined Jim's Norton Commander clone.
  • Your fish nervous system trying to be a fish again.
  • Reciting the anti-hiccup poem to cure your hiccups.
  • Fish reminding each other to not take ten small sips of water or they'll stop breathing.
  • Scaly swimmers.
  • Working in a shark lab.
  • Whether a fish sandwich is a fish or a sandwich.
  • Offering people a "tuna roll" and when they say yes guessing whether they think you mean the sushi or tuna salad on a bready roll.
  • Meditating on the concept of hiccups.
  • Congratulations, you won the game!
  • How to Beat the Atari Home Video Games.
  • Where a library would shelve those books of type-in BASIC programs.
  • Dave (2018) and Dave Demo (2018)
  • Which Boss Fight Books are good.
  • Starting your kid on Mario Maker.
  • Game Engine Black Book: Doom and Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D.
  • Mario Galaxy's camera-oriented level design.
  • Your body telling you when it's time to drink water.
  • Using Final Fantasy 4 as a bridge to talk about localization.
  • Developing a light gun game to install in all the bowling alleys now that the bowling fad has faded.
  • The Countdown to Irrelevance.
  • Books that used to be blogs.
  • Inventing criteria for how you beat Galaga.
  • Learning what micturations are twenty years after reading that Vogon poem and wondering which seeming nonsense words you'll learn in the next twenty years.
  • The BBC TV Hitchhiker's Guide series.
  • The second-worst poetry in the galaxy.
  • Red Dwarf airing on Dave.
  • A better way to think about it. (If you are a math person.)
  • Drive-by Mathematics.
  • Nesting your watch orders.
  • Watching every episode in every possible order to get the maximum possible amount of context for every scene.
  • Marylin vos Savant.
  • The Monty Hall Problem.
  • A game design that presumes the player does not want a goat.
  • Whether you want to switch to the other goat.
  • Opening 98 doors, revealing goats behind each one.
  • Pushing limits and talking about calculus.
  • Learning Japanese because you want to read the smutty manga.
  • X: The Everything App.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+-iozeOlg ]]> Jim Stormdancer 203. Only Girls Get Duck Combs for Christmas https://topiclords.com/only-girls-get-duck-combs-for-christmas 135fc497-e847-40f6-9834-3bd991d0a3b4 Mon, 11 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayFaber and Phone. We discuss Metal Gear Solid, children being unable to enjoy things, this extremely specific list of danger signs, Bank Account by Louis Cole, and technical beliefs which may be regarded as superstition but are true to your experience. 1:08:17 true Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Phone

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The part where Jim talks.
  • Splitting your mutuals.
  • The kind of person who goes to Bluesky vs. who goes to Mastodon.
  • A relationship with an editor. (Like Emacs.) (Or Vim)
  • Wanting to see what Shaq posts.
  • The human zoo of bad takes.
  • Who sent Shaq a Bluesky invite??
  • O' That's Raspberry
  • Metal Gear Apologies.
  • Sending Konami money to fund the port of Metal Gear Solid 4.
  • Optimizing for extremely specific hardware and getting entrenched.
  • Shaders languishing on PS3.
  • PT's final resting place.
  • Konami diversifying into video games in the 80s when it's lucrative and dediversifying when it stops being as lucrative in the 2010s
  • A lot of weird business practices involving Slurpees and banking
  • All the places the Vita port of Metal Gear Solid 2 went on to.
  • The Worlds of Power novelization of Metal Gear.
  • A Narpas Sword scenario.
  • Cutscene inflation.
  • What happened to cutscene lengths after voice acting became cheap.
  • Encoding movies on a disc for free.
  • Time to Crate vs. Time to When Your Input Matters.
  • Ramen waterslides.
  • Annoying things that little kids do that adults also do.
  • Playing video games and parenting at the same time.
  • Whether it's still abuse if it's happening in the Netherlands.
  • Expectations people place on their children for Christmas vs. for Halloween.
  • Distorted beer.
  • Getting a bunch of stuff you don't want for Christmas.
  • A sweater with Mario or a cool dinosaur on it.
  • Swapping the Barbie and GI Joe voice boxes and whether that's a plot point of the Barbie movie.
  • Chewbacca dancing on top of the twin towers as they collapse.
  • Taking wire cutters to the electrical substation and getting some free copper.
  • I don't feel 130 kilovolts; I'm a perfect sphere.
  • Creating a situation where people are safe even if they're not paying attention.
  • Flying around in a tornado googling "what do you do when you're flying around in a tornado"
  • Is it .webm or .webnn?
  • All the three letter acronyms that ought to be on the internet rug you can't get.
  • The giant System 7 floppy disk blanket.
  • A blanket with the Mac startup sound on it.
  • Missing out on some drum solos.
  • A poem based on a true story.
  • Being afraid to look at your tax returns.
  • Getting single taxed and double social security benefits.
  • Replacing your old snowball with a new snowball.
  • Your thing as a person trained in audio engineering.
  • Getting a very insensitive microphone so that it only picks up the sounds you want it to.
  • Jim's advice for recording your voice.
  • A Shure SM-57B with the Cloudlifter.
  • Technical knowledge for smart people.
  • Solid state drives failing without warning.
  • A high pitched whine imparting a natural warmth to your voice.
  • Recording your voice with a $15 boom arm.
  • Using shittier tools as you get more experienced.
  • A cover of a Weezer song that's rendered unlistenable hematite l because of the string squeak.
  • The inability to process and retain information about LinkedIn's purpose.
]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Phone

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The part where Jim talks.
  • Splitting your mutuals.
  • The kind of person who goes to Bluesky vs. who goes to Mastodon.
  • A relationship with an editor. (Like Emacs.) (Or Vim)
  • Wanting to see what Shaq posts.
  • The human zoo of bad takes.
  • Who sent Shaq a Bluesky invite??
  • O' That's Raspberry
  • Metal Gear Apologies.
  • Sending Konami money to fund the port of Metal Gear Solid 4.
  • Optimizing for extremely specific hardware and getting entrenched.
  • Shaders languishing on PS3.
  • PT's final resting place.
  • Konami diversifying into video games in the 80s when it's lucrative and dediversifying when it stops being as lucrative in the 2010s
  • A lot of weird business practices involving Slurpees and banking
  • All the places the Vita port of Metal Gear Solid 2 went on to.
  • The Worlds of Power novelization of Metal Gear.
  • A Narpas Sword scenario.
  • Cutscene inflation.
  • What happened to cutscene lengths after voice acting became cheap.
  • Encoding movies on a disc for free.
  • Time to Crate vs. Time to When Your Input Matters.
  • Ramen waterslides.
  • Annoying things that little kids do that adults also do.
  • Playing video games and parenting at the same time.
  • Whether it's still abuse if it's happening in the Netherlands.
  • Expectations people place on their children for Christmas vs. for Halloween.
  • Distorted beer.
  • Getting a bunch of stuff you don't want for Christmas.
  • A sweater with Mario or a cool dinosaur on it.
  • Swapping the Barbie and GI Joe voice boxes and whether that's a plot point of the Barbie movie.
  • Chewbacca dancing on top of the twin towers as they collapse.
  • Taking wire cutters to the electrical substation and getting some free copper.
  • I don't feel 130 kilovolts; I'm a perfect sphere.
  • Creating a situation where people are safe even if they're not paying attention.
  • Flying around in a tornado googling "what do you do when you're flying around in a tornado"
  • Is it .webm or .webnn?
  • All the three letter acronyms that ought to be on the internet rug you can't get.
  • The giant System 7 floppy disk blanket.
  • A blanket with the Mac startup sound on it.
  • Missing out on some drum solos.
  • A poem based on a true story.
  • Being afraid to look at your tax returns.
  • Getting single taxed and double social security benefits.
  • Replacing your old snowball with a new snowball.
  • Your thing as a person trained in audio engineering.
  • Getting a very insensitive microphone so that it only picks up the sounds you want it to.
  • Jim's advice for recording your voice.
  • A Shure SM-57B with the Cloudlifter.
  • Technical knowledge for smart people.
  • Solid state drives failing without warning.
  • A high pitched whine imparting a natural warmth to your voice.
  • Recording your voice with a $15 boom arm.
  • Using shittier tools as you get more experienced.
  • A cover of a Weezer song that's rendered unlistenable hematite l because of the string squeak.
  • The inability to process and retain information about LinkedIn's purpose.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Phone

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The part where Jim talks.
  • Splitting your mutuals.
  • The kind of person who goes to Bluesky vs. who goes to Mastodon.
  • A relationship with an editor. (Like Emacs.) (Or Vim)
  • Wanting to see what Shaq posts.
  • The human zoo of bad takes.
  • Who sent Shaq a Bluesky invite??
  • O' That's Raspberry
  • Metal Gear Apologies.
  • Sending Konami money to fund the port of Metal Gear Solid 4.
  • Optimizing for extremely specific hardware and getting entrenched.
  • Shaders languishing on PS3.
  • PT's final resting place.
  • Konami diversifying into video games in the 80s when it's lucrative and dediversifying when it stops being as lucrative in the 2010s
  • A lot of weird business practices involving Slurpees and banking
  • All the places the Vita port of Metal Gear Solid 2 went on to.
  • The Worlds of Power novelization of Metal Gear.
  • A Narpas Sword scenario.
  • Cutscene inflation.
  • What happened to cutscene lengths after voice acting became cheap.
  • Encoding movies on a disc for free.
  • Time to Crate vs. Time to When Your Input Matters.
  • Ramen waterslides.
  • Annoying things that little kids do that adults also do.
  • Playing video games and parenting at the same time.
  • Whether it's still abuse if it's happening in the Netherlands.
  • Expectations people place on their children for Christmas vs. for Halloween.
  • Distorted beer.
  • Getting a bunch of stuff you don't want for Christmas.
  • A sweater with Mario or a cool dinosaur on it.
  • Swapping the Barbie and GI Joe voice boxes and whether that's a plot point of the Barbie movie.
  • Chewbacca dancing on top of the twin towers as they collapse.
  • Taking wire cutters to the electrical substation and getting some free copper.
  • I don't feel 130 kilovolts; I'm a perfect sphere.
  • Creating a situation where people are safe even if they're not paying attention.
  • Flying around in a tornado googling "what do you do when you're flying around in a tornado"
  • Is it .webm or .webnn?
  • All the three letter acronyms that ought to be on the internet rug you can't get.
  • The giant System 7 floppy disk blanket.
  • A blanket with the Mac startup sound on it.
  • Missing out on some drum solos.
  • A poem based on a true story.
  • Being afraid to look at your tax returns.
  • Getting single taxed and double social security benefits.
  • Replacing your old snowball with a new snowball.
  • Your thing as a person trained in audio engineering.
  • Getting a very insensitive microphone so that it only picks up the sounds you want it to.
  • Jim's advice for recording your voice.
  • A Shure SM-57B with the Cloudlifter.
  • Technical knowledge for smart people.
  • Solid state drives failing without warning.
  • A high pitched whine imparting a natural warmth to your voice.
  • Recording your voice with a $15 boom arm.
  • Using shittier tools as you get more experienced.
  • A cover of a Weezer song that's rendered unlistenable hematite l because of the string squeak.
  • The inability to process and retain information about LinkedIn's purpose.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Kd1yqHiW ]]> Jim Stormdancer 202. Tim Was My Jim https://topiclords.com/tim-was-my-jim 8488587e-5abf-4cf7-9ca0-5f50d9398698 Mon, 04 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss why the city gets to decide what is a weed, learning to program as a cheat code for work, poop epidemiology, Insomnolence by Charles Rafferty, and buying food items labeled in a foreign language. 1:15:48 true Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics

  • Lawn Angst: Why does the city get to decide what is a weed vs an acceptable plant?
  • Learning to code is like a cheat code for life, or at least work
  • Poop epidemiology
  • Insomnolence by Charles Rafferty
  • Ville asks: "buying mysterious items that aren't labeled in a language you speak from the Asian supermarket because the picture on the front looks good, then choosing whether to roll the dice by putting them in your dinner or keep them in the back of the cupboard until you move house and throw them away"

Microtopics:

  • Chamber Mage.
  • Touring on the strength of your one song.
  • Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman.
  • The city issuing a ticket because you have a weed on your lawn.
  • Declaring certain plants weeds when they're all good plants, Bront.
  • All the different signs you could put on your lawn to tell off your neighbors.
  • How tall a CB tower you're allowed to build without a permit.
  • The youngest homeowners on the block.
  • A natural space that isn't so manufactured.
  • A society that loves some plants and hates others.
  • How to grow flowers on the moon.
  • Making 660 folders based on an excel spreadsheet.
  • The stick-to-it-iveness required to fight a bunch of bugs.
  • What LLMs are good at and bad at.
  • A Dragonborn Paladin with aphasia.
  • Generating humans with too many fingers.
  • Where to post your Wordle results and Dall-E shitposts.
  • A cryptic lineage of COVID in Columbus, Ohio.
  • Gross but amazing.
  • Some seriously bad-ass science.
  • Expecting more diligence after you start paying your volunteers.
  • The Paxlovid Rebound.
  • Gin Gin Ginger Chews
  • Genetically altering your tongue to taste the most possible bitter flavor all the time.
  • Placing a ginger chew on your tongue and allowing it to dissolve over the course of an hour.
  • Paxlovid Mouth.
  • How to sleep with a cough.
  • Numbing your coughing agents.
  • Stashing the lozenge on your gums.
  • Waking with a hard candy stuck to your teeth.
  • Scarring your vocal folds by coughing as much as you can.
  • Poets: good at writing in a poetic way.
  • Poetry that's just prose if you think about it.
  • Turning a poet in to the authorities for writing prose.
  • At night, in the woods.
  • Standing here a thousand years ago and feeling the exact same thing.
  • Not being able to upgrade our armor any more because bokoblins are extinct.
  • Finding and giving up on a new ingredient every week.
  • RIP Bean Paste.
  • H-Mart.
  • Gooey Duck.
  • Buying a bunch of dumplings without any idea what's in them and having a tasting party.
  • A tiny freezer with only durian in it.
  • A smoothie that tastes like drinking a gas leak.
  • Jackfruit as a crab or pulled meat alternative vs. jackfruit as a tasty treat.
  • Getting foodstuffs stuck behind your soft palate.
  • Asafoetida risks.
  • Golden Mountain Sauce.
  • Brown Umami Boosters.
  • Fish sauce tastings.
  • Three Crabs vs. Flying Lion.
  • How to say "Serving Suggestion" in all the different Asian languages.
  • Loving all your listeners, even the problematic ones.
  • Throne of Iron.
  • Heavy metal music about D&D.
  • Finding yourself on the internet.
]]> Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics

  • Lawn Angst: Why does the city get to decide what is a weed vs an acceptable plant?
  • Learning to code is like a cheat code for life, or at least work
  • Poop epidemiology
  • Insomnolence by Charles Rafferty
  • Ville asks: "buying mysterious items that aren't labeled in a language you speak from the Asian supermarket because the picture on the front looks good, then choosing whether to roll the dice by putting them in your dinner or keep them in the back of the cupboard until you move house and throw them away"

Microtopics:

  • Chamber Mage.
  • Touring on the strength of your one song.
  • Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman.
  • The city issuing a ticket because you have a weed on your lawn.
  • Declaring certain plants weeds when they're all good plants, Bront.
  • All the different signs you could put on your lawn to tell off your neighbors.
  • How tall a CB tower you're allowed to build without a permit.
  • The youngest homeowners on the block.
  • A natural space that isn't so manufactured.
  • A society that loves some plants and hates others.
  • How to grow flowers on the moon.
  • Making 660 folders based on an excel spreadsheet.
  • The stick-to-it-iveness required to fight a bunch of bugs.
  • What LLMs are good at and bad at.
  • A Dragonborn Paladin with aphasia.
  • Generating humans with too many fingers.
  • Where to post your Wordle results and Dall-E shitposts.
  • A cryptic lineage of COVID in Columbus, Ohio.
  • Gross but amazing.
  • Some seriously bad-ass science.
  • Expecting more diligence after you start paying your volunteers.
  • The Paxlovid Rebound.
  • Gin Gin Ginger Chews
  • Genetically altering your tongue to taste the most possible bitter flavor all the time.
  • Placing a ginger chew on your tongue and allowing it to dissolve over the course of an hour.
  • Paxlovid Mouth.
  • How to sleep with a cough.
  • Numbing your coughing agents.
  • Stashing the lozenge on your gums.
  • Waking with a hard candy stuck to your teeth.
  • Scarring your vocal folds by coughing as much as you can.
  • Poets: good at writing in a poetic way.
  • Poetry that's just prose if you think about it.
  • Turning a poet in to the authorities for writing prose.
  • At night, in the woods.
  • Standing here a thousand years ago and feeling the exact same thing.
  • Not being able to upgrade our armor any more because bokoblins are extinct.
  • Finding and giving up on a new ingredient every week.
  • RIP Bean Paste.
  • H-Mart.
  • Gooey Duck.
  • Buying a bunch of dumplings without any idea what's in them and having a tasting party.
  • A tiny freezer with only durian in it.
  • A smoothie that tastes like drinking a gas leak.
  • Jackfruit as a crab or pulled meat alternative vs. jackfruit as a tasty treat.
  • Getting foodstuffs stuck behind your soft palate.
  • Asafoetida risks.
  • Golden Mountain Sauce.
  • Brown Umami Boosters.
  • Fish sauce tastings.
  • Three Crabs vs. Flying Lion.
  • How to say "Serving Suggestion" in all the different Asian languages.
  • Loving all your listeners, even the problematic ones.
  • Throne of Iron.
  • Heavy metal music about D&D.
  • Finding yourself on the internet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics

  • Lawn Angst: Why does the city get to decide what is a weed vs an acceptable plant?
  • Learning to code is like a cheat code for life, or at least work
  • Poop epidemiology
  • Insomnolence by Charles Rafferty
  • Ville asks: "buying mysterious items that aren't labeled in a language you speak from the Asian supermarket because the picture on the front looks good, then choosing whether to roll the dice by putting them in your dinner or keep them in the back of the cupboard until you move house and throw them away"

Microtopics:

  • Chamber Mage.
  • Touring on the strength of your one song.
  • Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman.
  • The city issuing a ticket because you have a weed on your lawn.
  • Declaring certain plants weeds when they're all good plants, Bront.
  • All the different signs you could put on your lawn to tell off your neighbors.
  • How tall a CB tower you're allowed to build without a permit.
  • The youngest homeowners on the block.
  • A natural space that isn't so manufactured.
  • A society that loves some plants and hates others.
  • How to grow flowers on the moon.
  • Making 660 folders based on an excel spreadsheet.
  • The stick-to-it-iveness required to fight a bunch of bugs.
  • What LLMs are good at and bad at.
  • A Dragonborn Paladin with aphasia.
  • Generating humans with too many fingers.
  • Where to post your Wordle results and Dall-E shitposts.
  • A cryptic lineage of COVID in Columbus, Ohio.
  • Gross but amazing.
  • Some seriously bad-ass science.
  • Expecting more diligence after you start paying your volunteers.
  • The Paxlovid Rebound.
  • Gin Gin Ginger Chews
  • Genetically altering your tongue to taste the most possible bitter flavor all the time.
  • Placing a ginger chew on your tongue and allowing it to dissolve over the course of an hour.
  • Paxlovid Mouth.
  • How to sleep with a cough.
  • Numbing your coughing agents.
  • Stashing the lozenge on your gums.
  • Waking with a hard candy stuck to your teeth.
  • Scarring your vocal folds by coughing as much as you can.
  • Poets: good at writing in a poetic way.
  • Poetry that's just prose if you think about it.
  • Turning a poet in to the authorities for writing prose.
  • At night, in the woods.
  • Standing here a thousand years ago and feeling the exact same thing.
  • Not being able to upgrade our armor any more because bokoblins are extinct.
  • Finding and giving up on a new ingredient every week.
  • RIP Bean Paste.
  • H-Mart.
  • Gooey Duck.
  • Buying a bunch of dumplings without any idea what's in them and having a tasting party.
  • A tiny freezer with only durian in it.
  • A smoothie that tastes like drinking a gas leak.
  • Jackfruit as a crab or pulled meat alternative vs. jackfruit as a tasty treat.
  • Getting foodstuffs stuck behind your soft palate.
  • Asafoetida risks.
  • Golden Mountain Sauce.
  • Brown Umami Boosters.
  • Fish sauce tastings.
  • Three Crabs vs. Flying Lion.
  • How to say "Serving Suggestion" in all the different Asian languages.
  • Loving all your listeners, even the problematic ones.
  • Throne of Iron.
  • Heavy metal music about D&D.
  • Finding yourself on the internet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ScaJWJ-g ]]> Jim Stormdancer 201. Don't Be Distressed, It's Just Australia https://topiclords.com/dont-be-distressed-its-just-australia 8c599edf-3f4f-4841-bead-45980fdb33d6 Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss tree law, Tax Heaven 3000, the trick where you hold two fingers in front of your face and hallucinate a disembodied third finger, Outbreaks by Kitchen McKeown, and the best food byproducts. 1:05:16 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Exhausting topics before the show even starts.
  • Should we give bee educators guns?
  • Lords with lord awards.
  • Megalords lording over huge swaths of topics.
  • Getting your partner a very smooth engagement ring so it hurts less when they punch you in the face.
  • Trimming a tree in the middle of summer.
  • Tree law consequences.
  • The Hitman games, you know, with the bald guy
  • Whether Hit People are hired to kill likable or dislikable people.
  • Games with missions designed to make you feel bad about what you're doing but also to give you no choice but to do it.
  • Injured while sl searching for bodies in Lake Mead? Demand compensation!
  • A cute anime girl who really wants to help you prepare your taxes.
  • MSCHF.
  • Calling the Key 4 All hotline for real time data on the car's location and speed.
  • Playing Geoguessr to determine where the car is.
  • Reverse engineering the smell of WD-40.
  • Using the car for purposes of a car.
  • The legal standing of Public Universal Car.
  • Don't rotate the donut, you gave to rotate the pie
  • Legal MSCHF.
  • Taking the SATs for money.
  • Writing a list of demands in a child's scrawl and sending it to your senator.
  • Seeing the Vienna sausage with knuckles.
  • Getting a book of Magic Eyes in the 90s and staring at it until you see the dolphin and having a splitting headache for the next day and a half.
  • A jump scare in Magic Eye form.
  • Why we all need glasses.
  • Listening to your dad listening to a podcast.
  • Disappearing your own nose.
  • The purpose of feeling boredom.
  • The impossibility of being bored when libraries exist.
  • Paleolithic man enjoying memes.
  • Why campfire smoke always blows into your eyes.
  • Building a prehistoric highway system and using one of those printers that prints on the road so paleolithic man can enjoy dank memes.
  • What kids get in their stockings today now that iTunes gift cards are obsolete.
  • Why keep any DVDs?
  • A common metaphor for a problem that can be overcome by relaxing.
  • The most racist shrimp.
  • It's not a firearm, it's just an explosive knife.
  • Begging your mom to buy you the Krazy Krabs.
  • Putting on a brine shrimp show for your family members.
  • A spring loaded rigid whip.
  • Kitchen Somebody.
  • Searching for comfort and the eels come.
  • The neon 24 hour fried chicken sign gleaming behind the pines.
  • Finding god in a cluster of eels beneath your palms.
  • Have you given god a pizza?
  • A different eel pizza meme.
  • All the Breaking Bad fans coming to your neighborhood and throwing pizza on top of the Pizza Eels for a photo opportunity and the eels are getting extremely fat.
  • Feeding the sharks by stuffing a dive suit full of chum.
  • A cooking process that creates a byproduct that you can use to cook something else.
  • Calling bean juice "aqua fava" and styling.
  • Browning the whey to create a delicious paste loaf.
  • The two-in-one, in which they put two taquitos into a burrito.
  • Glorpamole.
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Exhausting topics before the show even starts.
  • Should we give bee educators guns?
  • Lords with lord awards.
  • Megalords lording over huge swaths of topics.
  • Getting your partner a very smooth engagement ring so it hurts less when they punch you in the face.
  • Trimming a tree in the middle of summer.
  • Tree law consequences.
  • The Hitman games, you know, with the bald guy
  • Whether Hit People are hired to kill likable or dislikable people.
  • Games with missions designed to make you feel bad about what you're doing but also to give you no choice but to do it.
  • Injured while sl searching for bodies in Lake Mead? Demand compensation!
  • A cute anime girl who really wants to help you prepare your taxes.
  • MSCHF.
  • Calling the Key 4 All hotline for real time data on the car's location and speed.
  • Playing Geoguessr to determine where the car is.
  • Reverse engineering the smell of WD-40.
  • Using the car for purposes of a car.
  • The legal standing of Public Universal Car.
  • Don't rotate the donut, you gave to rotate the pie
  • Legal MSCHF.
  • Taking the SATs for money.
  • Writing a list of demands in a child's scrawl and sending it to your senator.
  • Seeing the Vienna sausage with knuckles.
  • Getting a book of Magic Eyes in the 90s and staring at it until you see the dolphin and having a splitting headache for the next day and a half.
  • A jump scare in Magic Eye form.
  • Why we all need glasses.
  • Listening to your dad listening to a podcast.
  • Disappearing your own nose.
  • The purpose of feeling boredom.
  • The impossibility of being bored when libraries exist.
  • Paleolithic man enjoying memes.
  • Why campfire smoke always blows into your eyes.
  • Building a prehistoric highway system and using one of those printers that prints on the road so paleolithic man can enjoy dank memes.
  • What kids get in their stockings today now that iTunes gift cards are obsolete.
  • Why keep any DVDs?
  • A common metaphor for a problem that can be overcome by relaxing.
  • The most racist shrimp.
  • It's not a firearm, it's just an explosive knife.
  • Begging your mom to buy you the Krazy Krabs.
  • Putting on a brine shrimp show for your family members.
  • A spring loaded rigid whip.
  • Kitchen Somebody.
  • Searching for comfort and the eels come.
  • The neon 24 hour fried chicken sign gleaming behind the pines.
  • Finding god in a cluster of eels beneath your palms.
  • Have you given god a pizza?
  • A different eel pizza meme.
  • All the Breaking Bad fans coming to your neighborhood and throwing pizza on top of the Pizza Eels for a photo opportunity and the eels are getting extremely fat.
  • Feeding the sharks by stuffing a dive suit full of chum.
  • A cooking process that creates a byproduct that you can use to cook something else.
  • Calling bean juice "aqua fava" and styling.
  • Browning the whey to create a delicious paste loaf.
  • The two-in-one, in which they put two taquitos into a burrito.
  • Glorpamole.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Exhausting topics before the show even starts.
  • Should we give bee educators guns?
  • Lords with lord awards.
  • Megalords lording over huge swaths of topics.
  • Getting your partner a very smooth engagement ring so it hurts less when they punch you in the face.
  • Trimming a tree in the middle of summer.
  • Tree law consequences.
  • The Hitman games, you know, with the bald guy
  • Whether Hit People are hired to kill likable or dislikable people.
  • Games with missions designed to make you feel bad about what you're doing but also to give you no choice but to do it.
  • Injured while sl searching for bodies in Lake Mead? Demand compensation!
  • A cute anime girl who really wants to help you prepare your taxes.
  • MSCHF.
  • Calling the Key 4 All hotline for real time data on the car's location and speed.
  • Playing Geoguessr to determine where the car is.
  • Reverse engineering the smell of WD-40.
  • Using the car for purposes of a car.
  • The legal standing of Public Universal Car.
  • Don't rotate the donut, you gave to rotate the pie
  • Legal MSCHF.
  • Taking the SATs for money.
  • Writing a list of demands in a child's scrawl and sending it to your senator.
  • Seeing the Vienna sausage with knuckles.
  • Getting a book of Magic Eyes in the 90s and staring at it until you see the dolphin and having a splitting headache for the next day and a half.
  • A jump scare in Magic Eye form.
  • Why we all need glasses.
  • Listening to your dad listening to a podcast.
  • Disappearing your own nose.
  • The purpose of feeling boredom.
  • The impossibility of being bored when libraries exist.
  • Paleolithic man enjoying memes.
  • Why campfire smoke always blows into your eyes.
  • Building a prehistoric highway system and using one of those printers that prints on the road so paleolithic man can enjoy dank memes.
  • What kids get in their stockings today now that iTunes gift cards are obsolete.
  • Why keep any DVDs?
  • A common metaphor for a problem that can be overcome by relaxing.
  • The most racist shrimp.
  • It's not a firearm, it's just an explosive knife.
  • Begging your mom to buy you the Krazy Krabs.
  • Putting on a brine shrimp show for your family members.
  • A spring loaded rigid whip.
  • Kitchen Somebody.
  • Searching for comfort and the eels come.
  • The neon 24 hour fried chicken sign gleaming behind the pines.
  • Finding god in a cluster of eels beneath your palms.
  • Have you given god a pizza?
  • A different eel pizza meme.
  • All the Breaking Bad fans coming to your neighborhood and throwing pizza on top of the Pizza Eels for a photo opportunity and the eels are getting extremely fat.
  • Feeding the sharks by stuffing a dive suit full of chum.
  • A cooking process that creates a byproduct that you can use to cook something else.
  • Calling bean juice "aqua fava" and styling.
  • Browning the whey to create a delicious paste loaf.
  • The two-in-one, in which they put two taquitos into a burrito.
  • Glorpamole.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+PqXb1I9e ]]> Jim Stormdancer 200. My Banana Has Bones https://topiclords.com/my-banana-has-bones ea60729f-39cf-4493-be8a-57dad15558fd Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Tyriq. We discuss King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Nervous Subject, Subject Zero, On the Subject of Poetry By W. S. Merwin, royal subjects, and Subject 13. 1:07:01 true Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The only place on the internet you can hear subjects discussed.
  • Subject Lords.
  • Finding video games in places that don't exist.
  • Renaming the spreadsheet to the Subject Bucket.
  • A hand me down Rocky and Bullwinkle bedsheet set.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle indoctrination.
  • How many seasons the Flintstones ran for.
  • The Classic Wikipedia Was.
  • Wacky Racers.
  • Whether Winston has ever tried Circus Peanuts.
  • Enjoying one Circus Peanut every three years.
  • How to buy just one Circus Peanut.
  • Sawing a nickel in half before money became pre-scored.
  • Whether jokes were funny in the past.
  • Two troublemaking nephews named Duke and Earl.
  • Mr. Mad's plan to trap the king.
  • One actor playing more than one character all in one take.
  • Somebody the Explainer.
  • A Nancy strip where the joke revolves around knowing that people used to take their shoes off in movie theaters.
  • Show Swap day at the movie theater.
  • Waiting in the closet for the grim reaper to show up and then jumping out and being really seductive.
  • Closet-pilled.
  • Multiple people dying in the same yoga class and the grim reaper just sticks around instead of leaving and coming back.
  • Yogaing while old. (YWO.)
  • First name nervous, last name subject.
  • Born pregnant by aliens.
  • Nervous Subject vs. Nervous Object.
  • Pressing X to wisecrack.
  • Getting quests from Lord British and killing some monsters.
  • The Vic Viper and the Road British.
  • A pop culture character who hits the center of the Venn diagram.
  • Writing Mass Effect fanfiction for Glittermitten Grove
  • 10,000 Boolean variables that can be triggered by your narrative choices.
  • Narratively justifying how getting a donut leads to your death.
  • Generating alive/dead states for everybody.
  • The tortured but boring space marine guy with a tragic soldier past that isn't very interesting.
  • The girl who is just a cloud of gas under her hazard suit.
  • The man who slouches listening to the wheel revolving in the stream, yet there is no wheel there to revolve.
  • The reason the wheel turns – though there is no wheel.
  • Sitting at the end of March.
  • Deckard Bane.
  • Hortatoriness.
  • How do we feel about monarchies?
  • Tropical fruit tree drama.
  • The Miami Fruit Organization.
  • Ordering a moonbeam in a jar from Instacart.
  • Where in the fruit the seed wants to be.
  • The banana that evolved for the seed to pop out and hit you in the face as soon as you start peeling it and that's how they invented firearms.
  • Figuring out how to hold an avocado like a gun.
  • Fruit with Velcro-style hook and loop.
  • Fruit you should avoid if you have a mucous membrane.
  • Subscribing to durians for $199 per week.
  • Turning the pineapple upside down.
  • The pineapple as a symbol of hospitality.
  • A video game with many of the components a video game would have.
  • The taking robots from the System Shock series.
  • A pre-rendered background Final Fantasy 7 type deal.
  • Cinematic platformers starring spheres.
  • Conflating two games made by Francophones.
  • Namable group chats.
  • Getting a Bluesky invite just so you can park your domain.
]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The only place on the internet you can hear subjects discussed.
  • Subject Lords.
  • Finding video games in places that don't exist.
  • Renaming the spreadsheet to the Subject Bucket.
  • A hand me down Rocky and Bullwinkle bedsheet set.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle indoctrination.
  • How many seasons the Flintstones ran for.
  • The Classic Wikipedia Was.
  • Wacky Racers.
  • Whether Winston has ever tried Circus Peanuts.
  • Enjoying one Circus Peanut every three years.
  • How to buy just one Circus Peanut.
  • Sawing a nickel in half before money became pre-scored.
  • Whether jokes were funny in the past.
  • Two troublemaking nephews named Duke and Earl.
  • Mr. Mad's plan to trap the king.
  • One actor playing more than one character all in one take.
  • Somebody the Explainer.
  • A Nancy strip where the joke revolves around knowing that people used to take their shoes off in movie theaters.
  • Show Swap day at the movie theater.
  • Waiting in the closet for the grim reaper to show up and then jumping out and being really seductive.
  • Closet-pilled.
  • Multiple people dying in the same yoga class and the grim reaper just sticks around instead of leaving and coming back.
  • Yogaing while old. (YWO.)
  • First name nervous, last name subject.
  • Born pregnant by aliens.
  • Nervous Subject vs. Nervous Object.
  • Pressing X to wisecrack.
  • Getting quests from Lord British and killing some monsters.
  • The Vic Viper and the Road British.
  • A pop culture character who hits the center of the Venn diagram.
  • Writing Mass Effect fanfiction for Glittermitten Grove
  • 10,000 Boolean variables that can be triggered by your narrative choices.
  • Narratively justifying how getting a donut leads to your death.
  • Generating alive/dead states for everybody.
  • The tortured but boring space marine guy with a tragic soldier past that isn't very interesting.
  • The girl who is just a cloud of gas under her hazard suit.
  • The man who slouches listening to the wheel revolving in the stream, yet there is no wheel there to revolve.
  • The reason the wheel turns – though there is no wheel.
  • Sitting at the end of March.
  • Deckard Bane.
  • Hortatoriness.
  • How do we feel about monarchies?
  • Tropical fruit tree drama.
  • The Miami Fruit Organization.
  • Ordering a moonbeam in a jar from Instacart.
  • Where in the fruit the seed wants to be.
  • The banana that evolved for the seed to pop out and hit you in the face as soon as you start peeling it and that's how they invented firearms.
  • Figuring out how to hold an avocado like a gun.
  • Fruit with Velcro-style hook and loop.
  • Fruit you should avoid if you have a mucous membrane.
  • Subscribing to durians for $199 per week.
  • Turning the pineapple upside down.
  • The pineapple as a symbol of hospitality.
  • A video game with many of the components a video game would have.
  • The taking robots from the System Shock series.
  • A pre-rendered background Final Fantasy 7 type deal.
  • Cinematic platformers starring spheres.
  • Conflating two games made by Francophones.
  • Namable group chats.
  • Getting a Bluesky invite just so you can park your domain.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Jenni
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The only place on the internet you can hear subjects discussed.
  • Subject Lords.
  • Finding video games in places that don't exist.
  • Renaming the spreadsheet to the Subject Bucket.
  • A hand me down Rocky and Bullwinkle bedsheet set.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle indoctrination.
  • How many seasons the Flintstones ran for.
  • The Classic Wikipedia Was.
  • Wacky Racers.
  • Whether Winston has ever tried Circus Peanuts.
  • Enjoying one Circus Peanut every three years.
  • How to buy just one Circus Peanut.
  • Sawing a nickel in half before money became pre-scored.
  • Whether jokes were funny in the past.
  • Two troublemaking nephews named Duke and Earl.
  • Mr. Mad's plan to trap the king.
  • One actor playing more than one character all in one take.
  • Somebody the Explainer.
  • A Nancy strip where the joke revolves around knowing that people used to take their shoes off in movie theaters.
  • Show Swap day at the movie theater.
  • Waiting in the closet for the grim reaper to show up and then jumping out and being really seductive.
  • Closet-pilled.
  • Multiple people dying in the same yoga class and the grim reaper just sticks around instead of leaving and coming back.
  • Yogaing while old. (YWO.)
  • First name nervous, last name subject.
  • Born pregnant by aliens.
  • Nervous Subject vs. Nervous Object.
  • Pressing X to wisecrack.
  • Getting quests from Lord British and killing some monsters.
  • The Vic Viper and the Road British.
  • A pop culture character who hits the center of the Venn diagram.
  • Writing Mass Effect fanfiction for Glittermitten Grove
  • 10,000 Boolean variables that can be triggered by your narrative choices.
  • Narratively justifying how getting a donut leads to your death.
  • Generating alive/dead states for everybody.
  • The tortured but boring space marine guy with a tragic soldier past that isn't very interesting.
  • The girl who is just a cloud of gas under her hazard suit.
  • The man who slouches listening to the wheel revolving in the stream, yet there is no wheel there to revolve.
  • The reason the wheel turns – though there is no wheel.
  • Sitting at the end of March.
  • Deckard Bane.
  • Hortatoriness.
  • How do we feel about monarchies?
  • Tropical fruit tree drama.
  • The Miami Fruit Organization.
  • Ordering a moonbeam in a jar from Instacart.
  • Where in the fruit the seed wants to be.
  • The banana that evolved for the seed to pop out and hit you in the face as soon as you start peeling it and that's how they invented firearms.
  • Figuring out how to hold an avocado like a gun.
  • Fruit with Velcro-style hook and loop.
  • Fruit you should avoid if you have a mucous membrane.
  • Subscribing to durians for $199 per week.
  • Turning the pineapple upside down.
  • The pineapple as a symbol of hospitality.
  • A video game with many of the components a video game would have.
  • The taking robots from the System Shock series.
  • A pre-rendered background Final Fantasy 7 type deal.
  • Cinematic platformers starring spheres.
  • Conflating two games made by Francophones.
  • Namable group chats.
  • Getting a Bluesky invite just so you can park your domain.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6xr-T0aP ]]> Jim Stormdancer 199. The Hum of the Universe Sounded Like a Bug Zapper https://topiclords.com/the-hum-of-the-universe-sounded-like-a-bug-zapper 1167b0e7-dbaf-4852-9638-c567d9e5f2f9 Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: April and Ryan. We discuss puzzle games you don't understand, rotating food by 90 degrees before eating it, The Shaggs, Instructions for Traveling West, and songs where we ignore how weird they are because they're famous already. 1:17:06 true Lords:

  • April
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unions
  • Plug guilt.
  • Mentoring young composers.
  • Saying smart stuff about things you know about.
  • Taking the W.
  • A high pitched ding whenever someone succeeds at something.
  • A Good Snowman is Hard to Build.
  • Into the Breach.
  • Pushing the Vek to a different square.
  • Making something in your environment more satisfying.
  • A squid with your kid.
  • Colors that have frequencies vs. compound colors.
  • Indigo: a fake color.
  • The banger heavy duty colors.
  • A range of frequencies that is culturally mediated.
  • Paint mixing vs. light mixing.
  • Exploding ancient dinosaur juice constantly.
  • The electricity magic vs. the valve magic.
  • What does it mean to explode?
  • How to tell the difference between things you know because it's common knowledge vs. things you know because it's what you obsessed about when you were 15.
  • Having a responsibility to the taxpayers to not be wasteful.
  • The science of what sounds good.
  • The most confusing music you've ever heard.
  • Food rotation.
  • Imagining you have a banana coming at you. (It's not scary.)
  • Biting it the way we bite it.
  • Burrowing through your hamburger top to bottom.
  • Living with the mayonnaise for 30 seconds.
  • What happens when you turn a taco 90 degrees.
  • Ike's Paradox.
  • Eating a rib straight up and down.
  • Pizza sandwiches.
  • Explaining to your dentist that your bottom jaw is a ruinous cavern because you eat ribs top to bottom.
  • Adding a thickening agent to soup so you can turn the bowl sideways and just shove your face in there.
  • Buying the Ultra Rare Cheeto Shaped Like Batman Crying just to flip it.
  • A li'l cute ghostie with ears.
  • Affection for bands that are bad.
  • A rock album recorded by three kids who have no interest in or aptitude for writing and performing music.
  • Art that lives at the very tips of the horseshoe ends.
  • High fashion and weird looks that aren't meant to be for everyday.
  • Music that sounds bad in a way that you don't recognize.
  • Music that is boring and propulsive at the same time.
  • Music that is not for listening to.
  • Threatening your wife with a conversation about Beatles chord progressions.
  • Making art that is boring in unexpected, interesting ways.
  • Inventing a new boring version of interesting that still isn't interesting but is boring in interesting ways, which should make it interesting but doesn't.
  • Finding a desert and falling in.
  • Watching a purple meadow quiver and drinking whiskey beside a 100 year old cactus.
  • Whether Joy is a trick.
  • Blowing up your life and other people's lives as well.
  • The other entendre.
  • Yet another example of this fucking show.
  • Cooking for the rest of your life without ever washing dishes.
  • Joy that can't not be real.
  • Poetry that's just really well-constructed prose.
  • A poem that doesn't have any line breaks because then it wouldn't fit on Instagram.
  • A true poet who accounts for swiping.
  • An expression of a huge evocative idea built out of tiny ideas.
  • How to be happy even when you are not actively chasing your dreams.
  • A song that is famous in some way.
  • That fuckin' Pina Colada song.
  • Marrying the same person three or four times.
  • Bouncing along and going on a fun road trip while the world is ending.
  • Mystifying number one hits.
  • Robot Mr. Feeny in your car and you go around solving mysteries together.
  • Getting your wife a Groucho Marx nose for christmas.
  • Robust dependable noses.
  • Think On Thine Sins, Gumshoes.
  • Giving the Latin Grammar Police the L.
]]> Lords:

  • April
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unions
  • Plug guilt.
  • Mentoring young composers.
  • Saying smart stuff about things you know about.
  • Taking the W.
  • A high pitched ding whenever someone succeeds at something.
  • A Good Snowman is Hard to Build.
  • Into the Breach.
  • Pushing the Vek to a different square.
  • Making something in your environment more satisfying.
  • A squid with your kid.
  • Colors that have frequencies vs. compound colors.
  • Indigo: a fake color.
  • The banger heavy duty colors.
  • A range of frequencies that is culturally mediated.
  • Paint mixing vs. light mixing.
  • Exploding ancient dinosaur juice constantly.
  • The electricity magic vs. the valve magic.
  • What does it mean to explode?
  • How to tell the difference between things you know because it's common knowledge vs. things you know because it's what you obsessed about when you were 15.
  • Having a responsibility to the taxpayers to not be wasteful.
  • The science of what sounds good.
  • The most confusing music you've ever heard.
  • Food rotation.
  • Imagining you have a banana coming at you. (It's not scary.)
  • Biting it the way we bite it.
  • Burrowing through your hamburger top to bottom.
  • Living with the mayonnaise for 30 seconds.
  • What happens when you turn a taco 90 degrees.
  • Ike's Paradox.
  • Eating a rib straight up and down.
  • Pizza sandwiches.
  • Explaining to your dentist that your bottom jaw is a ruinous cavern because you eat ribs top to bottom.
  • Adding a thickening agent to soup so you can turn the bowl sideways and just shove your face in there.
  • Buying the Ultra Rare Cheeto Shaped Like Batman Crying just to flip it.
  • A li'l cute ghostie with ears.
  • Affection for bands that are bad.
  • A rock album recorded by three kids who have no interest in or aptitude for writing and performing music.
  • Art that lives at the very tips of the horseshoe ends.
  • High fashion and weird looks that aren't meant to be for everyday.
  • Music that sounds bad in a way that you don't recognize.
  • Music that is boring and propulsive at the same time.
  • Music that is not for listening to.
  • Threatening your wife with a conversation about Beatles chord progressions.
  • Making art that is boring in unexpected, interesting ways.
  • Inventing a new boring version of interesting that still isn't interesting but is boring in interesting ways, which should make it interesting but doesn't.
  • Finding a desert and falling in.
  • Watching a purple meadow quiver and drinking whiskey beside a 100 year old cactus.
  • Whether Joy is a trick.
  • Blowing up your life and other people's lives as well.
  • The other entendre.
  • Yet another example of this fucking show.
  • Cooking for the rest of your life without ever washing dishes.
  • Joy that can't not be real.
  • Poetry that's just really well-constructed prose.
  • A poem that doesn't have any line breaks because then it wouldn't fit on Instagram.
  • A true poet who accounts for swiping.
  • An expression of a huge evocative idea built out of tiny ideas.
  • How to be happy even when you are not actively chasing your dreams.
  • A song that is famous in some way.
  • That fuckin' Pina Colada song.
  • Marrying the same person three or four times.
  • Bouncing along and going on a fun road trip while the world is ending.
  • Mystifying number one hits.
  • Robot Mr. Feeny in your car and you go around solving mysteries together.
  • Getting your wife a Groucho Marx nose for christmas.
  • Robust dependable noses.
  • Think On Thine Sins, Gumshoes.
  • Giving the Latin Grammar Police the L.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • April
  • Ryan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unions
  • Plug guilt.
  • Mentoring young composers.
  • Saying smart stuff about things you know about.
  • Taking the W.
  • A high pitched ding whenever someone succeeds at something.
  • A Good Snowman is Hard to Build.
  • Into the Breach.
  • Pushing the Vek to a different square.
  • Making something in your environment more satisfying.
  • A squid with your kid.
  • Colors that have frequencies vs. compound colors.
  • Indigo: a fake color.
  • The banger heavy duty colors.
  • A range of frequencies that is culturally mediated.
  • Paint mixing vs. light mixing.
  • Exploding ancient dinosaur juice constantly.
  • The electricity magic vs. the valve magic.
  • What does it mean to explode?
  • How to tell the difference between things you know because it's common knowledge vs. things you know because it's what you obsessed about when you were 15.
  • Having a responsibility to the taxpayers to not be wasteful.
  • The science of what sounds good.
  • The most confusing music you've ever heard.
  • Food rotation.
  • Imagining you have a banana coming at you. (It's not scary.)
  • Biting it the way we bite it.
  • Burrowing through your hamburger top to bottom.
  • Living with the mayonnaise for 30 seconds.
  • What happens when you turn a taco 90 degrees.
  • Ike's Paradox.
  • Eating a rib straight up and down.
  • Pizza sandwiches.
  • Explaining to your dentist that your bottom jaw is a ruinous cavern because you eat ribs top to bottom.
  • Adding a thickening agent to soup so you can turn the bowl sideways and just shove your face in there.
  • Buying the Ultra Rare Cheeto Shaped Like Batman Crying just to flip it.
  • A li'l cute ghostie with ears.
  • Affection for bands that are bad.
  • A rock album recorded by three kids who have no interest in or aptitude for writing and performing music.
  • Art that lives at the very tips of the horseshoe ends.
  • High fashion and weird looks that aren't meant to be for everyday.
  • Music that sounds bad in a way that you don't recognize.
  • Music that is boring and propulsive at the same time.
  • Music that is not for listening to.
  • Threatening your wife with a conversation about Beatles chord progressions.
  • Making art that is boring in unexpected, interesting ways.
  • Inventing a new boring version of interesting that still isn't interesting but is boring in interesting ways, which should make it interesting but doesn't.
  • Finding a desert and falling in.
  • Watching a purple meadow quiver and drinking whiskey beside a 100 year old cactus.
  • Whether Joy is a trick.
  • Blowing up your life and other people's lives as well.
  • The other entendre.
  • Yet another example of this fucking show.
  • Cooking for the rest of your life without ever washing dishes.
  • Joy that can't not be real.
  • Poetry that's just really well-constructed prose.
  • A poem that doesn't have any line breaks because then it wouldn't fit on Instagram.
  • A true poet who accounts for swiping.
  • An expression of a huge evocative idea built out of tiny ideas.
  • How to be happy even when you are not actively chasing your dreams.
  • A song that is famous in some way.
  • That fuckin' Pina Colada song.
  • Marrying the same person three or four times.
  • Bouncing along and going on a fun road trip while the world is ending.
  • Mystifying number one hits.
  • Robot Mr. Feeny in your car and you go around solving mysteries together.
  • Getting your wife a Groucho Marx nose for christmas.
  • Robust dependable noses.
  • Think On Thine Sins, Gumshoes.
  • Giving the Latin Grammar Police the L.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+deToyZJy ]]> Jim Stormdancer 198. I’m Not Leaving Until Someone Sequences This Cup of Spit https://topiclords.com/im-not-leaving-until-someone-sequences-this-cup-of-spit 38aa587a-b8a2-4b75-8b1b-68606572fc03 Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Avery. We discuss change ringing, the differences between American and Japanese robotics teams, the internet rug, Look What We Found in the Park in the Dark, and grandma giving you a world's best grandma mug. 1:04:26 true Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Topics. Disgust.
  • A video game experience that you will find relatable if you've ever moved.
  • Making prototype furniture out of huge Tetris blocks and then forcing your friends to carry them around every time you move onto a new house.
  • The kind of friend who believes the world should be a certain way and then acts like it is.
  • Just frogs. Toads too. Mostly turtles.
  • Frog-themed 8th birthday parties.
  • Running a frog rescue out of your van.
  • Frog Fractions 2: Revenge of the Fallen.
  • Writing Bonfire of the Vanities but never reading it.
  • Sport meets art: spart.
  • Method ringing with two cycle sine waves.
  • Installing a huge church organ in your home because they were giving it away for free but when you play a note the whole building catches on fire.
  • Free Pianos On Line!
  • Babysitting someone's upright piano while they go on the lam.
  • The mattress story but with a piano.
  • Where the warehouse came from.
  • When the landlord comes by and you have to put a microphone over your bed to convince him that this is a recording studio, not a bedroom.
  • Getting a pipe organ so you can play it while holding your brain in a jar and cackling.
  • Sliding down the whale rib.
  • Donating your brain to art so that they can slide it down the whale rib and try to hit a target.
  • Experiencing change ringing in a regal square.
  • Memorial ringing
  • Bell ringing machines.
  • Robots competing in team sports.
  • Microsumo.
  • Sumo printers smashing into each other.
  • Making a fighting toaster for the fighting toaster league.
  • Battle Bots vs. Robot Jox.
  • Department stores with an entire floor for stationery.
  • Buying Gundam models and never putting them together and just having a bunch of robot heads lying around.
  • Major innovations in robot mouse maze navigation.
  • A mouse with an inverted helicopter to keep it on the ground.
  • A 3D maze with a robot mouse that can walk on walls and ceilings.
  • Fun rugs fun time shapes to impress your teens with a trendy sense of style when you bring it into their room.
  • A rug covered with keywords from the 90s internet.
  • $87 for not that big of a rug.
  • Bonding with your child over ISP servers.
  • A visitor trying to bond with you about your ironic decor and you have to explain that sorry, no, it's supposed to be ironic.
  • The illuminated manuscript version of an the ironic internet rug.
  • A fantastic place to buy nuts and other bulk items.
  • A limit of 1 kilogram of tapioca pearls per customer.
  • Bringing the tapioca balls to life in the rice cooker.
  • Inventing a new way to dispose of tapioca pearls every single day.
  • Tiktok schticks that are connected to a minimum wage jobs so even if your tiktok starts making a bunch of money you still can't quit your shitty job.
  • Having anxiety dreams about the coffee shop you worked at years ago.
  • Non-mammalian milk enthusiasm.
  • Being someone's non-mammalian milk guy.
  • A bipedal walrus with jaundiced eyes in a jar the size of a walrus and it knows you're here.
  • Leaving a turtle in the park and it's a 50/50 tossup whether it immediately dies or has a litter of a thousand baby turtles that devour the entire ecosystem.
  • Companies that are named after the business that used to be in the building.
  • A 1950s sign with a bowling pin on it that says "Safeway."
  • Walking into the DNA lounge and demanding that they sequence some DNA.
  • Military challenge coins.
  • Meeting the world's best grandma and she hands you a "world's greatest grandma" mug to prove it.
  • Seek god coin??
]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Topics. Disgust.
  • A video game experience that you will find relatable if you've ever moved.
  • Making prototype furniture out of huge Tetris blocks and then forcing your friends to carry them around every time you move onto a new house.
  • The kind of friend who believes the world should be a certain way and then acts like it is.
  • Just frogs. Toads too. Mostly turtles.
  • Frog-themed 8th birthday parties.
  • Running a frog rescue out of your van.
  • Frog Fractions 2: Revenge of the Fallen.
  • Writing Bonfire of the Vanities but never reading it.
  • Sport meets art: spart.
  • Method ringing with two cycle sine waves.
  • Installing a huge church organ in your home because they were giving it away for free but when you play a note the whole building catches on fire.
  • Free Pianos On Line!
  • Babysitting someone's upright piano while they go on the lam.
  • The mattress story but with a piano.
  • Where the warehouse came from.
  • When the landlord comes by and you have to put a microphone over your bed to convince him that this is a recording studio, not a bedroom.
  • Getting a pipe organ so you can play it while holding your brain in a jar and cackling.
  • Sliding down the whale rib.
  • Donating your brain to art so that they can slide it down the whale rib and try to hit a target.
  • Experiencing change ringing in a regal square.
  • Memorial ringing
  • Bell ringing machines.
  • Robots competing in team sports.
  • Microsumo.
  • Sumo printers smashing into each other.
  • Making a fighting toaster for the fighting toaster league.
  • Battle Bots vs. Robot Jox.
  • Department stores with an entire floor for stationery.
  • Buying Gundam models and never putting them together and just having a bunch of robot heads lying around.
  • Major innovations in robot mouse maze navigation.
  • A mouse with an inverted helicopter to keep it on the ground.
  • A 3D maze with a robot mouse that can walk on walls and ceilings.
  • Fun rugs fun time shapes to impress your teens with a trendy sense of style when you bring it into their room.
  • A rug covered with keywords from the 90s internet.
  • $87 for not that big of a rug.
  • Bonding with your child over ISP servers.
  • A visitor trying to bond with you about your ironic decor and you have to explain that sorry, no, it's supposed to be ironic.
  • The illuminated manuscript version of an the ironic internet rug.
  • A fantastic place to buy nuts and other bulk items.
  • A limit of 1 kilogram of tapioca pearls per customer.
  • Bringing the tapioca balls to life in the rice cooker.
  • Inventing a new way to dispose of tapioca pearls every single day.
  • Tiktok schticks that are connected to a minimum wage jobs so even if your tiktok starts making a bunch of money you still can't quit your shitty job.
  • Having anxiety dreams about the coffee shop you worked at years ago.
  • Non-mammalian milk enthusiasm.
  • Being someone's non-mammalian milk guy.
  • A bipedal walrus with jaundiced eyes in a jar the size of a walrus and it knows you're here.
  • Leaving a turtle in the park and it's a 50/50 tossup whether it immediately dies or has a litter of a thousand baby turtles that devour the entire ecosystem.
  • Companies that are named after the business that used to be in the building.
  • A 1950s sign with a bowling pin on it that says "Safeway."
  • Walking into the DNA lounge and demanding that they sequence some DNA.
  • Military challenge coins.
  • Meeting the world's best grandma and she hands you a "world's greatest grandma" mug to prove it.
  • Seek god coin??

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Topics. Disgust.
  • A video game experience that you will find relatable if you've ever moved.
  • Making prototype furniture out of huge Tetris blocks and then forcing your friends to carry them around every time you move onto a new house.
  • The kind of friend who believes the world should be a certain way and then acts like it is.
  • Just frogs. Toads too. Mostly turtles.
  • Frog-themed 8th birthday parties.
  • Running a frog rescue out of your van.
  • Frog Fractions 2: Revenge of the Fallen.
  • Writing Bonfire of the Vanities but never reading it.
  • Sport meets art: spart.
  • Method ringing with two cycle sine waves.
  • Installing a huge church organ in your home because they were giving it away for free but when you play a note the whole building catches on fire.
  • Free Pianos On Line!
  • Babysitting someone's upright piano while they go on the lam.
  • The mattress story but with a piano.
  • Where the warehouse came from.
  • When the landlord comes by and you have to put a microphone over your bed to convince him that this is a recording studio, not a bedroom.
  • Getting a pipe organ so you can play it while holding your brain in a jar and cackling.
  • Sliding down the whale rib.
  • Donating your brain to art so that they can slide it down the whale rib and try to hit a target.
  • Experiencing change ringing in a regal square.
  • Memorial ringing
  • Bell ringing machines.
  • Robots competing in team sports.
  • Microsumo.
  • Sumo printers smashing into each other.
  • Making a fighting toaster for the fighting toaster league.
  • Battle Bots vs. Robot Jox.
  • Department stores with an entire floor for stationery.
  • Buying Gundam models and never putting them together and just having a bunch of robot heads lying around.
  • Major innovations in robot mouse maze navigation.
  • A mouse with an inverted helicopter to keep it on the ground.
  • A 3D maze with a robot mouse that can walk on walls and ceilings.
  • Fun rugs fun time shapes to impress your teens with a trendy sense of style when you bring it into their room.
  • A rug covered with keywords from the 90s internet.
  • $87 for not that big of a rug.
  • Bonding with your child over ISP servers.
  • A visitor trying to bond with you about your ironic decor and you have to explain that sorry, no, it's supposed to be ironic.
  • The illuminated manuscript version of an the ironic internet rug.
  • A fantastic place to buy nuts and other bulk items.
  • A limit of 1 kilogram of tapioca pearls per customer.
  • Bringing the tapioca balls to life in the rice cooker.
  • Inventing a new way to dispose of tapioca pearls every single day.
  • Tiktok schticks that are connected to a minimum wage jobs so even if your tiktok starts making a bunch of money you still can't quit your shitty job.
  • Having anxiety dreams about the coffee shop you worked at years ago.
  • Non-mammalian milk enthusiasm.
  • Being someone's non-mammalian milk guy.
  • A bipedal walrus with jaundiced eyes in a jar the size of a walrus and it knows you're here.
  • Leaving a turtle in the park and it's a 50/50 tossup whether it immediately dies or has a litter of a thousand baby turtles that devour the entire ecosystem.
  • Companies that are named after the business that used to be in the building.
  • A 1950s sign with a bowling pin on it that says "Safeway."
  • Walking into the DNA lounge and demanding that they sequence some DNA.
  • Military challenge coins.
  • Meeting the world's best grandma and she hands you a "world's greatest grandma" mug to prove it.
  • Seek god coin??

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+jPDiFaju ]]> Jim Stormdancer 197. It's No Moist Shit, But I'll Eat It https://topiclords.com/its-no-moist-shit-but-ill-eat-it e388a089-4fbf-4c12-a209-6755e5b510b6 Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mikel and Diana. We discuss banishment as a legal punishment, why it's so hard for apes to admit they're wrong, Minesweeper speed running, Sometime During Eternity, marsupial reproduction, Venture Bros., and the origin of dungeons. 58:24 true Lords:

Topics:

  • Banishment is still legal as a punishment in Georgia (the state)
  • From an evolutionary standpoint, why is it so hard to admit you're wrong?
  • Minesweeper speed running
  • Sometime During Eternity, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Marsupials: Have they got it figured out?
  • Venture Bros. rewatch - things gleaned from a binge rewatch 20 years after it debuted, ahead of the finale
    • Esper says: "Also I second the Venture Bros. recommendation, and double-triple the content warning. The first season is rough not only in terms of political correctness, but some of the episode setups are just 'let's watch the characters be racist for a while and assume that's funny.' They work their way out of it mostly after the first season, and those episodes aren't even great, but are completely necessary for laying groundwork going forward. And it's really worth it to get through them! Everything after season 1 is excellent, and everything from seasons 3 to 7 is truly some of the best television writing of all time."
  • The origin of dungeons

Microtopics:

  • Vidjagame Apocalypse.
  • 30 20 10.
  • The day when new games used to come out.
  • Why podcasts come out at certain times.
  • Banishing someone from 158 counties.
  • Taking drugs to regulate your brain chemistry.
  • Figuring out some way you were right every time you're wrong.
  • Signaling and countersignaling.
  • Being so high status that you don't even need to pretend to be right.
  • Coming back two days later to prove that Steven Spielberg directed Star Wars.
  • Minesweeper board generation.
  • The Dreamboard.
  • 16 vs 32-bit PRNGs.
  • Speed running a game regardless of whether it's fun to speed run.
  • Watching speed run attempts live.
  • Using up one of your Life Stalks.
  • The shame of confusing Minesweeper and Minecraft.
  • The origins of Minesweeper.
  • Minesweeper the Game the Movie.
  • Harrison Ford on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Rihanna on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Manning an aircraft carrier with four guys, two of whom are over 90.
  • Back when they were still making movie video games.
  • An Advance Wars clone made as a tie-in to the movie Battleship.
  • Some scroll-type parchments that some henchmen left lying around the Dead Sea.
  • Jesus sitting in on your jazz combo.
  • Sitting there looking dead.
  • Going all in on Beatnik Jargon.
  • Asking centenarian beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti what he thinks about Minesweeper.
  • Flies holding their noses to eat durians.
  • If humans had elephant-length gestation periods and the kids came out walking and talking.
  • Giving birth to peanut-sized babies and expecting the babies to climb into your pouch on their own.
  • Having half a dozen kids because you need help emailing PDFs.
  • Adorable tiny possums that look like weasels all over South America.
  • Marsupials transplanting babies between pouches.
  • Some K-Type shit.
  • Munching on opiates your entire life.
  • What if Jonny Quest grew up to become a fail son?
  • The slowest rollout of a TV show in the history of television.
  • Gee willikers, I can't wait to solve this mystery!
  • Making a sequel that reflects the fact that you've grown since you made the original.
  • Adventure cartoon archetypes.
  • David Bowie showing up and yelling at you.
  • The deadly sting of the monarch butterfly.
  • One of the things that you put up against your throat and it vibrates.
  • A little straw that you put in your mouth to make it sound like you're talking through a didgeridoo.
  • What a regular person thinks of when they hear "dungeon" vs. what a nerd thinks of.
  • What was this place before it was a monster-infested dungeon?
  • A labyrinth full of guys.
  • Fill it with a few wonders and you got yourself a dungeon.
  • The Tomb of the Qin Emperor.
  • Why they only made some of the pharaoh's tomb a trap, rather than the whole thing.
  • Letters we used to have.
  • The German letter that looks like a big B.
  • Mewterhead.
  • La Fiesta de Quince Anos.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Banishment is still legal as a punishment in Georgia (the state)
  • From an evolutionary standpoint, why is it so hard to admit you're wrong?
  • Minesweeper speed running
  • Sometime During Eternity, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Marsupials: Have they got it figured out?
  • Venture Bros. rewatch - things gleaned from a binge rewatch 20 years after it debuted, ahead of the finale
    • Esper says: "Also I second the Venture Bros. recommendation, and double-triple the content warning. The first season is rough not only in terms of political correctness, but some of the episode setups are just 'let's watch the characters be racist for a while and assume that's funny.' They work their way out of it mostly after the first season, and those episodes aren't even great, but are completely necessary for laying groundwork going forward. And it's really worth it to get through them! Everything after season 1 is excellent, and everything from seasons 3 to 7 is truly some of the best television writing of all time."
  • The origin of dungeons

Microtopics:

  • Vidjagame Apocalypse.
  • 30 20 10.
  • The day when new games used to come out.
  • Why podcasts come out at certain times.
  • Banishing someone from 158 counties.
  • Taking drugs to regulate your brain chemistry.
  • Figuring out some way you were right every time you're wrong.
  • Signaling and countersignaling.
  • Being so high status that you don't even need to pretend to be right.
  • Coming back two days later to prove that Steven Spielberg directed Star Wars.
  • Minesweeper board generation.
  • The Dreamboard.
  • 16 vs 32-bit PRNGs.
  • Speed running a game regardless of whether it's fun to speed run.
  • Watching speed run attempts live.
  • Using up one of your Life Stalks.
  • The shame of confusing Minesweeper and Minecraft.
  • The origins of Minesweeper.
  • Minesweeper the Game the Movie.
  • Harrison Ford on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Rihanna on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Manning an aircraft carrier with four guys, two of whom are over 90.
  • Back when they were still making movie video games.
  • An Advance Wars clone made as a tie-in to the movie Battleship.
  • Some scroll-type parchments that some henchmen left lying around the Dead Sea.
  • Jesus sitting in on your jazz combo.
  • Sitting there looking dead.
  • Going all in on Beatnik Jargon.
  • Asking centenarian beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti what he thinks about Minesweeper.
  • Flies holding their noses to eat durians.
  • If humans had elephant-length gestation periods and the kids came out walking and talking.
  • Giving birth to peanut-sized babies and expecting the babies to climb into your pouch on their own.
  • Having half a dozen kids because you need help emailing PDFs.
  • Adorable tiny possums that look like weasels all over South America.
  • Marsupials transplanting babies between pouches.
  • Some K-Type shit.
  • Munching on opiates your entire life.
  • What if Jonny Quest grew up to become a fail son?
  • The slowest rollout of a TV show in the history of television.
  • Gee willikers, I can't wait to solve this mystery!
  • Making a sequel that reflects the fact that you've grown since you made the original.
  • Adventure cartoon archetypes.
  • David Bowie showing up and yelling at you.
  • The deadly sting of the monarch butterfly.
  • One of the things that you put up against your throat and it vibrates.
  • A little straw that you put in your mouth to make it sound like you're talking through a didgeridoo.
  • What a regular person thinks of when they hear "dungeon" vs. what a nerd thinks of.
  • What was this place before it was a monster-infested dungeon?
  • A labyrinth full of guys.
  • Fill it with a few wonders and you got yourself a dungeon.
  • The Tomb of the Qin Emperor.
  • Why they only made some of the pharaoh's tomb a trap, rather than the whole thing.
  • Letters we used to have.
  • The German letter that looks like a big B.
  • Mewterhead.
  • La Fiesta de Quince Anos.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • Banishment is still legal as a punishment in Georgia (the state)
  • From an evolutionary standpoint, why is it so hard to admit you're wrong?
  • Minesweeper speed running
  • Sometime During Eternity, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Marsupials: Have they got it figured out?
  • Venture Bros. rewatch - things gleaned from a binge rewatch 20 years after it debuted, ahead of the finale
    • Esper says: "Also I second the Venture Bros. recommendation, and double-triple the content warning. The first season is rough not only in terms of political correctness, but some of the episode setups are just 'let's watch the characters be racist for a while and assume that's funny.' They work their way out of it mostly after the first season, and those episodes aren't even great, but are completely necessary for laying groundwork going forward. And it's really worth it to get through them! Everything after season 1 is excellent, and everything from seasons 3 to 7 is truly some of the best television writing of all time."
  • The origin of dungeons

Microtopics:

  • Vidjagame Apocalypse.
  • 30 20 10.
  • The day when new games used to come out.
  • Why podcasts come out at certain times.
  • Banishing someone from 158 counties.
  • Taking drugs to regulate your brain chemistry.
  • Figuring out some way you were right every time you're wrong.
  • Signaling and countersignaling.
  • Being so high status that you don't even need to pretend to be right.
  • Coming back two days later to prove that Steven Spielberg directed Star Wars.
  • Minesweeper board generation.
  • The Dreamboard.
  • 16 vs 32-bit PRNGs.
  • Speed running a game regardless of whether it's fun to speed run.
  • Watching speed run attempts live.
  • Using up one of your Life Stalks.
  • The shame of confusing Minesweeper and Minecraft.
  • The origins of Minesweeper.
  • Minesweeper the Game the Movie.
  • Harrison Ford on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Rihanna on a boat fighting aliens.
  • Manning an aircraft carrier with four guys, two of whom are over 90.
  • Back when they were still making movie video games.
  • An Advance Wars clone made as a tie-in to the movie Battleship.
  • Some scroll-type parchments that some henchmen left lying around the Dead Sea.
  • Jesus sitting in on your jazz combo.
  • Sitting there looking dead.
  • Going all in on Beatnik Jargon.
  • Asking centenarian beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti what he thinks about Minesweeper.
  • Flies holding their noses to eat durians.
  • If humans had elephant-length gestation periods and the kids came out walking and talking.
  • Giving birth to peanut-sized babies and expecting the babies to climb into your pouch on their own.
  • Having half a dozen kids because you need help emailing PDFs.
  • Adorable tiny possums that look like weasels all over South America.
  • Marsupials transplanting babies between pouches.
  • Some K-Type shit.
  • Munching on opiates your entire life.
  • What if Jonny Quest grew up to become a fail son?
  • The slowest rollout of a TV show in the history of television.
  • Gee willikers, I can't wait to solve this mystery!
  • Making a sequel that reflects the fact that you've grown since you made the original.
  • Adventure cartoon archetypes.
  • David Bowie showing up and yelling at you.
  • The deadly sting of the monarch butterfly.
  • One of the things that you put up against your throat and it vibrates.
  • A little straw that you put in your mouth to make it sound like you're talking through a didgeridoo.
  • What a regular person thinks of when they hear "dungeon" vs. what a nerd thinks of.
  • What was this place before it was a monster-infested dungeon?
  • A labyrinth full of guys.
  • Fill it with a few wonders and you got yourself a dungeon.
  • The Tomb of the Qin Emperor.
  • Why they only made some of the pharaoh's tomb a trap, rather than the whole thing.
  • Letters we used to have.
  • The German letter that looks like a big B.
  • Mewterhead.
  • La Fiesta de Quince Anos.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+OOTG_zBH ]]> Jim Stormdancer 196. Active Time Battle Internet Relay Chat https://topiclords.com/active-time-battle-internet-relay-chat 657a5ed9-37d8-4469-87a7-06787c24a752 Mon, 24 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and John. We discuss juxtaposition, farewell to Cheap Bots Done Quick, the Temple of Apshai manual, "Seen and Not Seen" by Talking Heads, and the new Zelda game several weeks in. 1:11:01 true Lords:

  • John
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • John and John as well.
  • A John of Many Names.
  • The Frog Fractions Soundtrack of the Decade Edition Vinyl.
  • Being sued for copying a song's vibes.
  • Aldi Barcodes.
  • Noise-cancelling the sound of eating crackers.
  • Just scan it. It's food.
  • A word full of high-scoring Scrabble tiles.
  • Juxtaposing a police station.
  • A history of "juxtapose" waiting in the wings like a Batman origin story.
  • Pre-35 words.
  • Biff going back in time to 17th century Prague to be thrown out a window but surviving because he landed in a pile of manure.
  • An upbeat song about tolerating people that you hate.
  • The invention of defenestration.
  • Farewell to Cheap Bots Done Quick.
  • Sharing a fun tweet.
  • Being technical enough to look at nested braces and know what that means.
  • Bots in Space.
  • Capcom vs. Everyone.
  • Temple of Apshai.
  • A text adventure except they couldn't fit any of the text on the floppy.
  • Action RPGs that demand you manage your stats and inventory on paper.
  • Solo D&D adventure books.
  • Dragon's on a Chip.
  • Video games that come with books that you need to read to play the game.
  • A thick boy, full of lore.
  • The philosophy of city planning.
  • What is an Earth for?
  • Tunic.
  • What StarTropics did with the letter.
  • Sentinel Worlds One: Future Magic.
  • [See paragraph 3.]
  • 1980s computer game copy protection.
  • Bringing the Shenzhen I/O manual to work to study it on the job.
  • Why the main campaign in Shenzhen I/O is so much better than the bonus campaign.
  • Keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in your mind for years.
  • Musical mumbling.
  • Songs that are just a Shower Thoughts post.
  • The long-term discipline of adjusting your facial features over time.
  • Thinking about wider, thinner lips during the instrumental breakdown.
  • Trying to save SACD albums.
  • The Depths.
  • Sharing your location precisely.
  • There are four places: go to them.
  • The Ghost King Rauru.
  • The Calamity Ganon Calamity.
  • A dragon with really weird exaggerated eyelashes that you can run around on.
  • Giving up on horses.
  • Unique items of dubious usefulness.
  • Okay boomer, it's called a Purah Pad now.
  • Finding a tiny rock to jump off of to go into bullet time.
  • The two-fan hoverbike.
  • Skating around atop frozen gourmet meat.
]]> Lords:

  • John
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • John and John as well.
  • A John of Many Names.
  • The Frog Fractions Soundtrack of the Decade Edition Vinyl.
  • Being sued for copying a song's vibes.
  • Aldi Barcodes.
  • Noise-cancelling the sound of eating crackers.
  • Just scan it. It's food.
  • A word full of high-scoring Scrabble tiles.
  • Juxtaposing a police station.
  • A history of "juxtapose" waiting in the wings like a Batman origin story.
  • Pre-35 words.
  • Biff going back in time to 17th century Prague to be thrown out a window but surviving because he landed in a pile of manure.
  • An upbeat song about tolerating people that you hate.
  • The invention of defenestration.
  • Farewell to Cheap Bots Done Quick.
  • Sharing a fun tweet.
  • Being technical enough to look at nested braces and know what that means.
  • Bots in Space.
  • Capcom vs. Everyone.
  • Temple of Apshai.
  • A text adventure except they couldn't fit any of the text on the floppy.
  • Action RPGs that demand you manage your stats and inventory on paper.
  • Solo D&D adventure books.
  • Dragon's on a Chip.
  • Video games that come with books that you need to read to play the game.
  • A thick boy, full of lore.
  • The philosophy of city planning.
  • What is an Earth for?
  • Tunic.
  • What StarTropics did with the letter.
  • Sentinel Worlds One: Future Magic.
  • [See paragraph 3.]
  • 1980s computer game copy protection.
  • Bringing the Shenzhen I/O manual to work to study it on the job.
  • Why the main campaign in Shenzhen I/O is so much better than the bonus campaign.
  • Keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in your mind for years.
  • Musical mumbling.
  • Songs that are just a Shower Thoughts post.
  • The long-term discipline of adjusting your facial features over time.
  • Thinking about wider, thinner lips during the instrumental breakdown.
  • Trying to save SACD albums.
  • The Depths.
  • Sharing your location precisely.
  • There are four places: go to them.
  • The Ghost King Rauru.
  • The Calamity Ganon Calamity.
  • A dragon with really weird exaggerated eyelashes that you can run around on.
  • Giving up on horses.
  • Unique items of dubious usefulness.
  • Okay boomer, it's called a Purah Pad now.
  • Finding a tiny rock to jump off of to go into bullet time.
  • The two-fan hoverbike.
  • Skating around atop frozen gourmet meat.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • John
  • JohnB

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • John and John as well.
  • A John of Many Names.
  • The Frog Fractions Soundtrack of the Decade Edition Vinyl.
  • Being sued for copying a song's vibes.
  • Aldi Barcodes.
  • Noise-cancelling the sound of eating crackers.
  • Just scan it. It's food.
  • A word full of high-scoring Scrabble tiles.
  • Juxtaposing a police station.
  • A history of "juxtapose" waiting in the wings like a Batman origin story.
  • Pre-35 words.
  • Biff going back in time to 17th century Prague to be thrown out a window but surviving because he landed in a pile of manure.
  • An upbeat song about tolerating people that you hate.
  • The invention of defenestration.
  • Farewell to Cheap Bots Done Quick.
  • Sharing a fun tweet.
  • Being technical enough to look at nested braces and know what that means.
  • Bots in Space.
  • Capcom vs. Everyone.
  • Temple of Apshai.
  • A text adventure except they couldn't fit any of the text on the floppy.
  • Action RPGs that demand you manage your stats and inventory on paper.
  • Solo D&D adventure books.
  • Dragon's on a Chip.
  • Video games that come with books that you need to read to play the game.
  • A thick boy, full of lore.
  • The philosophy of city planning.
  • What is an Earth for?
  • Tunic.
  • What StarTropics did with the letter.
  • Sentinel Worlds One: Future Magic.
  • [See paragraph 3.]
  • 1980s computer game copy protection.
  • Bringing the Shenzhen I/O manual to work to study it on the job.
  • Why the main campaign in Shenzhen I/O is so much better than the bonus campaign.
  • Keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in your mind for years.
  • Musical mumbling.
  • Songs that are just a Shower Thoughts post.
  • The long-term discipline of adjusting your facial features over time.
  • Thinking about wider, thinner lips during the instrumental breakdown.
  • Trying to save SACD albums.
  • The Depths.
  • Sharing your location precisely.
  • There are four places: go to them.
  • The Ghost King Rauru.
  • The Calamity Ganon Calamity.
  • A dragon with really weird exaggerated eyelashes that you can run around on.
  • Giving up on horses.
  • Unique items of dubious usefulness.
  • Okay boomer, it's called a Purah Pad now.
  • Finding a tiny rock to jump off of to go into bullet time.
  • The two-fan hoverbike.
  • Skating around atop frozen gourmet meat.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+cpe58wiN ]]> Jim Stormdancer 195. Persian Castle Day at The Climbing Gym https://topiclords.com/persian-castle-day-at-the-climbing-gym 0e545454-be2c-44ac-be3d-4c790176a8db Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexicographic and Kev. We discuss whether sports are good, haunted articles of clothing, burrito R&D, Casey at the Bat, becoming a VTuber after losing a bet, and TV show mixtapes 52:05 true Lords:

  • Alexicographic
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming daily.
  • The Tears of the Kingdom thread in the Topic Lords discord.
  • A rigid self-conception as someone who does not like sports.
  • Roller derby.
  • Whether skateboarding is a sport.
  • Going fast and shoving past people.
  • An athletic endeavor.
  • How much hockey fights feed back into the actual game.
  • Baseball nerds.
  • Chart Party.
  • Storytelling using data.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • Seven Bobs left, and they're all aged.
  • Who was the top Bob?
  • East Bay Bike Party.
  • Floyd Rose Bridge Valves.
  • Figuring out how to make video games without involving Bay Area salaries.
  • Persian Castle Day at the climbing gym.
  • Taking the leather jacket that your drug dealer OD'd in.
  • Signing the bathroom guest book every time you poop at your grandma's house.
  • Schwarzenegger DNA on eBay.
  • The Clothes People Have Died In line at Value Village.
  • This Shirt Will Kill You.
  • A detailed cosmology of how hauntings work.
  • Ghosts of people who are still alive, following you around and asking for their hat back.
  • Taco Shop Guacamole.
  • A completely different foodstuff from what you were accustomed to.
  • Wet Burritos.
  • Airport Head.
  • A 3 oz container of guacamole that the TSA will allow on the plane.
  • Burrito night at the Stormdancer household.
  • Lulus and Cakes.
  • Spheroids.
  • Baseball Hagiography.
  • A Quora reply from three years ago.
  • Searching for cake and Google asking you to prove that you're not a robot.
  • Bethlehem slang from 1888.
  • Vtuber tooling.
  • Picking a punishment for yourself that you already want to do.
  • Animated fish backgrounds.
  • A more compatible CUDA API.
  • Mixtapes of TV episodes and video game levels.
  • Someone's top ten list of Star Trek episodes.
  • What the kids call Cliff's Notes.
  • The skill of understanding someone else's taste.
  • These are the songs that I love, perhaps you will also love them and if so we could fall in love.
  • Exchanging Spotify playlists because that's what we have now instead of mixtapes.
  • Trying to get into Homestuck via Problem Sleuth.
  • An 11 year old with the patience to wait a year to read Harry Potter book 2.
  • Phish Food.
  • Recording Topic Lords before lunch and getting a well-deserved burrito afterwards.
]]> Lords:

  • Alexicographic
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming daily.
  • The Tears of the Kingdom thread in the Topic Lords discord.
  • A rigid self-conception as someone who does not like sports.
  • Roller derby.
  • Whether skateboarding is a sport.
  • Going fast and shoving past people.
  • An athletic endeavor.
  • How much hockey fights feed back into the actual game.
  • Baseball nerds.
  • Chart Party.
  • Storytelling using data.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • Seven Bobs left, and they're all aged.
  • Who was the top Bob?
  • East Bay Bike Party.
  • Floyd Rose Bridge Valves.
  • Figuring out how to make video games without involving Bay Area salaries.
  • Persian Castle Day at the climbing gym.
  • Taking the leather jacket that your drug dealer OD'd in.
  • Signing the bathroom guest book every time you poop at your grandma's house.
  • Schwarzenegger DNA on eBay.
  • The Clothes People Have Died In line at Value Village.
  • This Shirt Will Kill You.
  • A detailed cosmology of how hauntings work.
  • Ghosts of people who are still alive, following you around and asking for their hat back.
  • Taco Shop Guacamole.
  • A completely different foodstuff from what you were accustomed to.
  • Wet Burritos.
  • Airport Head.
  • A 3 oz container of guacamole that the TSA will allow on the plane.
  • Burrito night at the Stormdancer household.
  • Lulus and Cakes.
  • Spheroids.
  • Baseball Hagiography.
  • A Quora reply from three years ago.
  • Searching for cake and Google asking you to prove that you're not a robot.
  • Bethlehem slang from 1888.
  • Vtuber tooling.
  • Picking a punishment for yourself that you already want to do.
  • Animated fish backgrounds.
  • A more compatible CUDA API.
  • Mixtapes of TV episodes and video game levels.
  • Someone's top ten list of Star Trek episodes.
  • What the kids call Cliff's Notes.
  • The skill of understanding someone else's taste.
  • These are the songs that I love, perhaps you will also love them and if so we could fall in love.
  • Exchanging Spotify playlists because that's what we have now instead of mixtapes.
  • Trying to get into Homestuck via Problem Sleuth.
  • An 11 year old with the patience to wait a year to read Harry Potter book 2.
  • Phish Food.
  • Recording Topic Lords before lunch and getting a well-deserved burrito afterwards.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alexicographic
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Streaming daily.
  • The Tears of the Kingdom thread in the Topic Lords discord.
  • A rigid self-conception as someone who does not like sports.
  • Roller derby.
  • Whether skateboarding is a sport.
  • Going fast and shoving past people.
  • An athletic endeavor.
  • How much hockey fights feed back into the actual game.
  • Baseball nerds.
  • Chart Party.
  • Storytelling using data.
  • The Bob Emergency.
  • Seven Bobs left, and they're all aged.
  • Who was the top Bob?
  • East Bay Bike Party.
  • Floyd Rose Bridge Valves.
  • Figuring out how to make video games without involving Bay Area salaries.
  • Persian Castle Day at the climbing gym.
  • Taking the leather jacket that your drug dealer OD'd in.
  • Signing the bathroom guest book every time you poop at your grandma's house.
  • Schwarzenegger DNA on eBay.
  • The Clothes People Have Died In line at Value Village.
  • This Shirt Will Kill You.
  • A detailed cosmology of how hauntings work.
  • Ghosts of people who are still alive, following you around and asking for their hat back.
  • Taco Shop Guacamole.
  • A completely different foodstuff from what you were accustomed to.
  • Wet Burritos.
  • Airport Head.
  • A 3 oz container of guacamole that the TSA will allow on the plane.
  • Burrito night at the Stormdancer household.
  • Lulus and Cakes.
  • Spheroids.
  • Baseball Hagiography.
  • A Quora reply from three years ago.
  • Searching for cake and Google asking you to prove that you're not a robot.
  • Bethlehem slang from 1888.
  • Vtuber tooling.
  • Picking a punishment for yourself that you already want to do.
  • Animated fish backgrounds.
  • A more compatible CUDA API.
  • Mixtapes of TV episodes and video game levels.
  • Someone's top ten list of Star Trek episodes.
  • What the kids call Cliff's Notes.
  • The skill of understanding someone else's taste.
  • These are the songs that I love, perhaps you will also love them and if so we could fall in love.
  • Exchanging Spotify playlists because that's what we have now instead of mixtapes.
  • Trying to get into Homestuck via Problem Sleuth.
  • An 11 year old with the patience to wait a year to read Harry Potter book 2.
  • Phish Food.
  • Recording Topic Lords before lunch and getting a well-deserved burrito afterwards.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6BFOMIVc ]]> Jim Stormdancer 194. How Good It Was, To Have a Toe https://topiclords.com/how-good-it-was-to-have-a-toe 96a5fc09-5f39-4497-808b-5732a965e01c Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Danny and Danny. We discuss redundancy of song lyrics, renaming perfect fourths and fifths, Mark Salud's "Forever in Summer," Upon Julia's Clothes, Oh yes, celebrity deaths getting out of control, and ZZT achievements. 1:19:15 true Lords:

  • Danny
  • Danny

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Which Danny should go first.
  • The Noclip Archive.
  • Night Brunch.
  • Plugging before demonstrating your plugworthiness.
  • Whatever happened to MySpace.
  • The gnarliest weirdest thing you can get away with.
  • Stop making weird things!
  • Feeling passionately about individual words without considering their actual message.
  • Writing lyrics by stringing together abstract vowel sounds and then filling in the rest of the word later.
  • The native language of rock and roll.
  • Prisencolinensinainciusol.
  • Irish rap.
  • All the ways music is redundant.
  • A very inefficient way to communicate factual information.
  • The Mentos jingle.
  • Spoonman: a famous guy who played the spoons.
  • Music's ability to convey ideas that shouldn't be conveyed.
  • Teaching kids to love it.
  • What's perfect about a perfect fifth.
  • Music theory homework that calls it a "perfect unison."
  • Lydian to Locrian.
  • An extremely popular nostalgic songwriting device.
  • Trying to bring up topics out in the wild.
  • Even majorer then major.
  • What it means to be far from A.
  • A thing that happened on Public Access TV in San Diego.
  • Keyjazzing.
  • Weirdos making weirdo outsider art.
  • The tradition of using an Amiga 500 as a musical instrument.
  • Watching a musical performance by looking at the back of the performer's head.
  • Something to watch.
  • Economy of movement.
  • Playing drums so as to take up the most possible space.
  • The kind of singing that the Rock Band scoring system encourages.
  • Pre-singing the note so you're getting points as soon as the note starts.
  • Smutty poetry.
  • Whether singer songwriters have parentheses.
  • The Diamond Fleece.
  • Whether liquefaction is a Bay Area word.
  • Brave Vibrations.
  • What people thought was sexy in the 1600s.
  • Talking about a topic because people can hear you.
  • The 80s-90s thing of saying "as if"
  • America's Whitest City.
  • A phrase that Zoomers use to mean that they don't believe what they just said.
  • Investigating the Cool S for ten years.
  • Finding the Cool S in ancient Sumeria.
  • People in Latvia who don't know who Marilyn Manson is but they know he had a rib surgically removed.
  • The first celebrity.
  • Increasing numbers of celebrities.
  • Industrialized celebrity.
  • Adopting a future grief machine.
  • Practicing grief.
  • Several generations of digital fish.
  • Trugoy the Dove.
  • Disembodied consciousnesses living on a Dyson Sphere simulating Tina Turner's music.
  • Downsides of everyone living forever.
  • This is a mistake. (Here I go.)
  • Pre-dead.
  • Questions that will not be answered on this show because they are not topics.
  • Fish swimming in the background of someone's Zoom call.
  • What a time to not want to be alive!
  • Doing squats so you can get out of a chair.
  • Maximizing broken limbs while minimizing brain trauma.
  • Renaming Potomac Computer Systems to Epic Megagames.
  • ZZT: an Epic Game Store exclusive.
  • Caverns of Kroz.
  • An Amiga platformer sponsored by Chupa-Chups.
  • Retro Achievements.
  • Modding emulators to add achievements to old games.
  • Adding achievements to the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Achievements as a ludological device.
  • Assigning a point value to all the things your lizard brain needs an extra incentive for.
  • Citizen Game.
  • A game design trope that can be deployed with taste or not.
]]> Lords:

  • Danny
  • Danny

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Which Danny should go first.
  • The Noclip Archive.
  • Night Brunch.
  • Plugging before demonstrating your plugworthiness.
  • Whatever happened to MySpace.
  • The gnarliest weirdest thing you can get away with.
  • Stop making weird things!
  • Feeling passionately about individual words without considering their actual message.
  • Writing lyrics by stringing together abstract vowel sounds and then filling in the rest of the word later.
  • The native language of rock and roll.
  • Prisencolinensinainciusol.
  • Irish rap.
  • All the ways music is redundant.
  • A very inefficient way to communicate factual information.
  • The Mentos jingle.
  • Spoonman: a famous guy who played the spoons.
  • Music's ability to convey ideas that shouldn't be conveyed.
  • Teaching kids to love it.
  • What's perfect about a perfect fifth.
  • Music theory homework that calls it a "perfect unison."
  • Lydian to Locrian.
  • An extremely popular nostalgic songwriting device.
  • Trying to bring up topics out in the wild.
  • Even majorer then major.
  • What it means to be far from A.
  • A thing that happened on Public Access TV in San Diego.
  • Keyjazzing.
  • Weirdos making weirdo outsider art.
  • The tradition of using an Amiga 500 as a musical instrument.
  • Watching a musical performance by looking at the back of the performer's head.
  • Something to watch.
  • Economy of movement.
  • Playing drums so as to take up the most possible space.
  • The kind of singing that the Rock Band scoring system encourages.
  • Pre-singing the note so you're getting points as soon as the note starts.
  • Smutty poetry.
  • Whether singer songwriters have parentheses.
  • The Diamond Fleece.
  • Whether liquefaction is a Bay Area word.
  • Brave Vibrations.
  • What people thought was sexy in the 1600s.
  • Talking about a topic because people can hear you.
  • The 80s-90s thing of saying "as if"
  • America's Whitest City.
  • A phrase that Zoomers use to mean that they don't believe what they just said.
  • Investigating the Cool S for ten years.
  • Finding the Cool S in ancient Sumeria.
  • People in Latvia who don't know who Marilyn Manson is but they know he had a rib surgically removed.
  • The first celebrity.
  • Increasing numbers of celebrities.
  • Industrialized celebrity.
  • Adopting a future grief machine.
  • Practicing grief.
  • Several generations of digital fish.
  • Trugoy the Dove.
  • Disembodied consciousnesses living on a Dyson Sphere simulating Tina Turner's music.
  • Downsides of everyone living forever.
  • This is a mistake. (Here I go.)
  • Pre-dead.
  • Questions that will not be answered on this show because they are not topics.
  • Fish swimming in the background of someone's Zoom call.
  • What a time to not want to be alive!
  • Doing squats so you can get out of a chair.
  • Maximizing broken limbs while minimizing brain trauma.
  • Renaming Potomac Computer Systems to Epic Megagames.
  • ZZT: an Epic Game Store exclusive.
  • Caverns of Kroz.
  • An Amiga platformer sponsored by Chupa-Chups.
  • Retro Achievements.
  • Modding emulators to add achievements to old games.
  • Adding achievements to the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Achievements as a ludological device.
  • Assigning a point value to all the things your lizard brain needs an extra incentive for.
  • Citizen Game.
  • A game design trope that can be deployed with taste or not.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Danny
  • Danny

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Which Danny should go first.
  • The Noclip Archive.
  • Night Brunch.
  • Plugging before demonstrating your plugworthiness.
  • Whatever happened to MySpace.
  • The gnarliest weirdest thing you can get away with.
  • Stop making weird things!
  • Feeling passionately about individual words without considering their actual message.
  • Writing lyrics by stringing together abstract vowel sounds and then filling in the rest of the word later.
  • The native language of rock and roll.
  • Prisencolinensinainciusol.
  • Irish rap.
  • All the ways music is redundant.
  • A very inefficient way to communicate factual information.
  • The Mentos jingle.
  • Spoonman: a famous guy who played the spoons.
  • Music's ability to convey ideas that shouldn't be conveyed.
  • Teaching kids to love it.
  • What's perfect about a perfect fifth.
  • Music theory homework that calls it a "perfect unison."
  • Lydian to Locrian.
  • An extremely popular nostalgic songwriting device.
  • Trying to bring up topics out in the wild.
  • Even majorer then major.
  • What it means to be far from A.
  • A thing that happened on Public Access TV in San Diego.
  • Keyjazzing.
  • Weirdos making weirdo outsider art.
  • The tradition of using an Amiga 500 as a musical instrument.
  • Watching a musical performance by looking at the back of the performer's head.
  • Something to watch.
  • Economy of movement.
  • Playing drums so as to take up the most possible space.
  • The kind of singing that the Rock Band scoring system encourages.
  • Pre-singing the note so you're getting points as soon as the note starts.
  • Smutty poetry.
  • Whether singer songwriters have parentheses.
  • The Diamond Fleece.
  • Whether liquefaction is a Bay Area word.
  • Brave Vibrations.
  • What people thought was sexy in the 1600s.
  • Talking about a topic because people can hear you.
  • The 80s-90s thing of saying "as if"
  • America's Whitest City.
  • A phrase that Zoomers use to mean that they don't believe what they just said.
  • Investigating the Cool S for ten years.
  • Finding the Cool S in ancient Sumeria.
  • People in Latvia who don't know who Marilyn Manson is but they know he had a rib surgically removed.
  • The first celebrity.
  • Increasing numbers of celebrities.
  • Industrialized celebrity.
  • Adopting a future grief machine.
  • Practicing grief.
  • Several generations of digital fish.
  • Trugoy the Dove.
  • Disembodied consciousnesses living on a Dyson Sphere simulating Tina Turner's music.
  • Downsides of everyone living forever.
  • This is a mistake. (Here I go.)
  • Pre-dead.
  • Questions that will not be answered on this show because they are not topics.
  • Fish swimming in the background of someone's Zoom call.
  • What a time to not want to be alive!
  • Doing squats so you can get out of a chair.
  • Maximizing broken limbs while minimizing brain trauma.
  • Renaming Potomac Computer Systems to Epic Megagames.
  • ZZT: an Epic Game Store exclusive.
  • Caverns of Kroz.
  • An Amiga platformer sponsored by Chupa-Chups.
  • Retro Achievements.
  • Modding emulators to add achievements to old games.
  • Adding achievements to the Fairchild Channel F.
  • Achievements as a ludological device.
  • Assigning a point value to all the things your lizard brain needs an extra incentive for.
  • Citizen Game.
  • A game design trope that can be deployed with taste or not.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+o93rfupN ]]> Jim Stormdancer 193. Pull Down Your Murphy Toilet https://topiclords.com/pull-down-your-murphy-toilet dd553b6e-3808-46b4-ac07-2a1000b02fdc Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Quil. We discuss Human Pudding, and why popular media can't depict bad art, only bad taste, getting a van, corporate art, and Lamentation Upon Surveying the Destruction of a Battlefield by Everett Patterson. 58:13 true Lords:

  • Elena
  • Quil

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A very good New York Times crossword.
  • Feats of crossword construction that just make the experience of solving it worse.
  • Cottage cheese and jam.
  • Fruit on the bottom cottage cheese cups.
  • Whether cottage cheese comes pre-curdled.
  • An opportunity to make money by making the richest people in the world happier.
  • A jams and jellies bandolier.
  • Going to the arcade wearing a token dispenser but also your "I don't work here" shirt.
  • A band that only exists so that John Stamos can be annoyed by it.
  • Whether the average person would misspell a word on a grocery list.
  • Flashy rock and roll in which the lyricss are goofy and the goofy lyrics heightens the perceived quality of the music and the music heightens the perceived goofiness of the lyrics.
  • Various anime in which the kids are forming a band.
  • The Fictitious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  • The East coast DIY music scene.
  • Eyeball Skeleton.
  • Smoosh nee Smush.
  • My Pal God Records.
  • The Most Wanted Song and The Most Unwanted Song.
  • Ramadan jingles.
  • Putting all the things people hate the most in the same song.
  • Single Ladies.
  • The Rescue Rangers dimension where the Rescue Rangers theme song is still modulating upwards to this day.
  • Releasing an album on vinyl that ends in a locked groove with a shepard tone.
  • Sprinter Vans.
  • Diesel vans racking up a million miles.
  • Van life.
  • Vans with indoor plumbing.
  • How people react when someone is sleeping in a vehicle in their neighborhood.
  • How to recognize a van that somebody lives in.
  • Living in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
  • Campy camping.
  • Living the hash tag no car life.
  • Bimodal distribution of van dwellers.
  • The Minimum Viable Van.
  • Living six people to a bedroom and not liking it.
  • A landlady who cooks for everybody in the 1800s.
  • Outlawing boarding houses because there are too many single men being rowdy.
  • The Florida Project.
  • Moving into the hotel across the street for a day so that you don't live in one place long enough to become a tenant.
  • Guessing how squatting laws work.
  • Staples presenting a trailer for their new logo at E3.
  • The history of Industrial Musicals.
  • Hiring video artists and composers to create massive lavish displays of brand awareness.
  • The documentary that Kevin Smith made about Prince just for Prince to watch and never release.
  • Making a funny video for mystery people to watch for mystery purposes.
  • The KFC VR training app.
  • Living close to Hamburger University.
  • Rerecording Prince's "1999" for every year up to 2999.
  • The circus ad that Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite was based on.
  • O Deathy Death.
  • Most Foul Vowel.
  • The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest.
  • The headspace you get into as an artist when you try to make bad art.
  • A good example of a bad poem.
  • Birdemic's environmental message.
  • A clown photobombing your movie soundtrack.
]]> Lords:

  • Elena
  • Quil

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A very good New York Times crossword.
  • Feats of crossword construction that just make the experience of solving it worse.
  • Cottage cheese and jam.
  • Fruit on the bottom cottage cheese cups.
  • Whether cottage cheese comes pre-curdled.
  • An opportunity to make money by making the richest people in the world happier.
  • A jams and jellies bandolier.
  • Going to the arcade wearing a token dispenser but also your "I don't work here" shirt.
  • A band that only exists so that John Stamos can be annoyed by it.
  • Whether the average person would misspell a word on a grocery list.
  • Flashy rock and roll in which the lyricss are goofy and the goofy lyrics heightens the perceived quality of the music and the music heightens the perceived goofiness of the lyrics.
  • Various anime in which the kids are forming a band.
  • The Fictitious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  • The East coast DIY music scene.
  • Eyeball Skeleton.
  • Smoosh nee Smush.
  • My Pal God Records.
  • The Most Wanted Song and The Most Unwanted Song.
  • Ramadan jingles.
  • Putting all the things people hate the most in the same song.
  • Single Ladies.
  • The Rescue Rangers dimension where the Rescue Rangers theme song is still modulating upwards to this day.
  • Releasing an album on vinyl that ends in a locked groove with a shepard tone.
  • Sprinter Vans.
  • Diesel vans racking up a million miles.
  • Van life.
  • Vans with indoor plumbing.
  • How people react when someone is sleeping in a vehicle in their neighborhood.
  • How to recognize a van that somebody lives in.
  • Living in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
  • Campy camping.
  • Living the hash tag no car life.
  • Bimodal distribution of van dwellers.
  • The Minimum Viable Van.
  • Living six people to a bedroom and not liking it.
  • A landlady who cooks for everybody in the 1800s.
  • Outlawing boarding houses because there are too many single men being rowdy.
  • The Florida Project.
  • Moving into the hotel across the street for a day so that you don't live in one place long enough to become a tenant.
  • Guessing how squatting laws work.
  • Staples presenting a trailer for their new logo at E3.
  • The history of Industrial Musicals.
  • Hiring video artists and composers to create massive lavish displays of brand awareness.
  • The documentary that Kevin Smith made about Prince just for Prince to watch and never release.
  • Making a funny video for mystery people to watch for mystery purposes.
  • The KFC VR training app.
  • Living close to Hamburger University.
  • Rerecording Prince's "1999" for every year up to 2999.
  • The circus ad that Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite was based on.
  • O Deathy Death.
  • Most Foul Vowel.
  • The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest.
  • The headspace you get into as an artist when you try to make bad art.
  • A good example of a bad poem.
  • Birdemic's environmental message.
  • A clown photobombing your movie soundtrack.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Elena
  • Quil

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A very good New York Times crossword.
  • Feats of crossword construction that just make the experience of solving it worse.
  • Cottage cheese and jam.
  • Fruit on the bottom cottage cheese cups.
  • Whether cottage cheese comes pre-curdled.
  • An opportunity to make money by making the richest people in the world happier.
  • A jams and jellies bandolier.
  • Going to the arcade wearing a token dispenser but also your "I don't work here" shirt.
  • A band that only exists so that John Stamos can be annoyed by it.
  • Whether the average person would misspell a word on a grocery list.
  • Flashy rock and roll in which the lyricss are goofy and the goofy lyrics heightens the perceived quality of the music and the music heightens the perceived goofiness of the lyrics.
  • Various anime in which the kids are forming a band.
  • The Fictitious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  • The East coast DIY music scene.
  • Eyeball Skeleton.
  • Smoosh nee Smush.
  • My Pal God Records.
  • The Most Wanted Song and The Most Unwanted Song.
  • Ramadan jingles.
  • Putting all the things people hate the most in the same song.
  • Single Ladies.
  • The Rescue Rangers dimension where the Rescue Rangers theme song is still modulating upwards to this day.
  • Releasing an album on vinyl that ends in a locked groove with a shepard tone.
  • Sprinter Vans.
  • Diesel vans racking up a million miles.
  • Van life.
  • Vans with indoor plumbing.
  • How people react when someone is sleeping in a vehicle in their neighborhood.
  • How to recognize a van that somebody lives in.
  • Living in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
  • Campy camping.
  • Living the hash tag no car life.
  • Bimodal distribution of van dwellers.
  • The Minimum Viable Van.
  • Living six people to a bedroom and not liking it.
  • A landlady who cooks for everybody in the 1800s.
  • Outlawing boarding houses because there are too many single men being rowdy.
  • The Florida Project.
  • Moving into the hotel across the street for a day so that you don't live in one place long enough to become a tenant.
  • Guessing how squatting laws work.
  • Staples presenting a trailer for their new logo at E3.
  • The history of Industrial Musicals.
  • Hiring video artists and composers to create massive lavish displays of brand awareness.
  • The documentary that Kevin Smith made about Prince just for Prince to watch and never release.
  • Making a funny video for mystery people to watch for mystery purposes.
  • The KFC VR training app.
  • Living close to Hamburger University.
  • Rerecording Prince's "1999" for every year up to 2999.
  • The circus ad that Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite was based on.
  • O Deathy Death.
  • Most Foul Vowel.
  • The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest.
  • The headspace you get into as an artist when you try to make bad art.
  • A good example of a bad poem.
  • Birdemic's environmental message.
  • A clown photobombing your movie soundtrack.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+E9-RkM-i ]]> Jim Stormdancer 192. The Prime Number Shitting Bear https://topiclords.com/the-prime-number-shitting-bear 4fac278b-58fb-4e30-9e08-587de91c3f48 Mon, 26 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayfaber and Charlie. We discuss umbrellas, siphons, and other physical things that seem like hacky bullshit but actually work, articulating the shape of your internal cause-and-effect network and applying it as a learning superpower, archipelago.gg, and why a skill is less valued the more we love it 1:06:52 true Lords

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • Charlie

Topics:

  • Umbrellas, siphons, and other physical things that seem like hacky bullshit but actually work
  • Articulating the shape of your internal cause-and-effect network and applying it as a learning superpower (futurevision)
  • I'm not sure what archipelago.gg is but if I read this paragraph aloud maybe we can figure it out together
  • A copypasta from this page:
  • Why is a skill less valued the more we love it? Shouldn't it be the opposite? Is this arguable?

Microtopics:

  • Supporting someone's video game dream in Denmark.
  • Escaping from idle games.
  • Video games drawing the screen as often as they can.
  • The pauses getting longer and longer whenever the bear needs to shit a new prime number.
  • The prime number shitting bear getting constipated.
  • How to calculate prime numbers faster.
  • Math stuff.
  • A choo choo train of thought.
  • Meditation apps that play ads while you're in the middle of meditating.
  • The thing where you put your mouth on the tube and then have to spit out the gas or you get neurological damage.
  • Creating a low pressure system by sucking on a tube.
  • Whether umbrellas make sense.
  • Umbrella side-drip.
  • How bicycles stay upright.
  • Does a bicycle on a treadmill stay upright?
  • Pattern recognition.
  • Seeing a situation you recognize and understanding what's going to happen.
  • Predicting where someone's sentence is going to end up.
  • Putting your water glass in a zone where it's going to get knocked over.
  • The shape of your mind's cause and effect network.
  • Seeing scenes from the future, like in Law and Order.
  • Predicting the future so that you can be a more efficient organism.
  • Mashing air molecules at you.
  • Speaking a language that your coworkers don't.
  • Applying FutureVision to your creative process.
  • Nonlinear creative processes.
  • One unique large musical story where nothing repeats.
  • A physical task you are doing inside your head.
  • The pet that is closest to having a kid.
  • Importing a portal gun into Tears of the Kingdom.
  • Finding the hookshot in Metroid and your friend then bring able to use it in Link to the Past.
  • How to know what your friends want.
  • All the bad ways an idea could be implemented
  • Surprise boomerangs.
  • Archipelago's Release System.
  • The era of couch co-op games.
  • A multiplayer season where everybody picks a different game.
  • Doing the oration.
  • Who the colored lights in your keyboard are for.
  • Polygonal dudes with long hair head banging in the background.
  • Weirdly modern music.
  • Fifteen years of everything else.
  • Rhythm games vs. music games.
  • Living in a society.
  • Devaluing the skills you love.
  • Listening to a song and really appreciating its use of rests.
  • How note lengths and rests work in tracker music.
  • Stopping a note without starting a new one.
  • Running experiments to determine exactly when a note should stop.
  • The micro decisions of things that people don't think about or care about.
  • A bird named Mabel.
  • A bird figuring out how to enjoy music.
  • A tepid delicate series of notes.
  • Attractivision.
]]> Lords

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • Charlie

Topics:

  • Umbrellas, siphons, and other physical things that seem like hacky bullshit but actually work
  • Articulating the shape of your internal cause-and-effect network and applying it as a learning superpower (futurevision)
  • I'm not sure what archipelago.gg is but if I read this paragraph aloud maybe we can figure it out together
  • A copypasta from this page:
  • Why is a skill less valued the more we love it? Shouldn't it be the opposite? Is this arguable?

Microtopics:

  • Supporting someone's video game dream in Denmark.
  • Escaping from idle games.
  • Video games drawing the screen as often as they can.
  • The pauses getting longer and longer whenever the bear needs to shit a new prime number.
  • The prime number shitting bear getting constipated.
  • How to calculate prime numbers faster.
  • Math stuff.
  • A choo choo train of thought.
  • Meditation apps that play ads while you're in the middle of meditating.
  • The thing where you put your mouth on the tube and then have to spit out the gas or you get neurological damage.
  • Creating a low pressure system by sucking on a tube.
  • Whether umbrellas make sense.
  • Umbrella side-drip.
  • How bicycles stay upright.
  • Does a bicycle on a treadmill stay upright?
  • Pattern recognition.
  • Seeing a situation you recognize and understanding what's going to happen.
  • Predicting where someone's sentence is going to end up.
  • Putting your water glass in a zone where it's going to get knocked over.
  • The shape of your mind's cause and effect network.
  • Seeing scenes from the future, like in Law and Order.
  • Predicting the future so that you can be a more efficient organism.
  • Mashing air molecules at you.
  • Speaking a language that your coworkers don't.
  • Applying FutureVision to your creative process.
  • Nonlinear creative processes.
  • One unique large musical story where nothing repeats.
  • A physical task you are doing inside your head.
  • The pet that is closest to having a kid.
  • Importing a portal gun into Tears of the Kingdom.
  • Finding the hookshot in Metroid and your friend then bring able to use it in Link to the Past.
  • How to know what your friends want.
  • All the bad ways an idea could be implemented
  • Surprise boomerangs.
  • Archipelago's Release System.
  • The era of couch co-op games.
  • A multiplayer season where everybody picks a different game.
  • Doing the oration.
  • Who the colored lights in your keyboard are for.
  • Polygonal dudes with long hair head banging in the background.
  • Weirdly modern music.
  • Fifteen years of everything else.
  • Rhythm games vs. music games.
  • Living in a society.
  • Devaluing the skills you love.
  • Listening to a song and really appreciating its use of rests.
  • How note lengths and rests work in tracker music.
  • Stopping a note without starting a new one.
  • Running experiments to determine exactly when a note should stop.
  • The micro decisions of things that people don't think about or care about.
  • A bird named Mabel.
  • A bird figuring out how to enjoy music.
  • A tepid delicate series of notes.
  • Attractivision.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

  • CisHetKayfaber
  • Charlie

Topics:

  • Umbrellas, siphons, and other physical things that seem like hacky bullshit but actually work
  • Articulating the shape of your internal cause-and-effect network and applying it as a learning superpower (futurevision)
  • I'm not sure what archipelago.gg is but if I read this paragraph aloud maybe we can figure it out together
  • A copypasta from this page:
  • Why is a skill less valued the more we love it? Shouldn't it be the opposite? Is this arguable?

Microtopics:

  • Supporting someone's video game dream in Denmark.
  • Escaping from idle games.
  • Video games drawing the screen as often as they can.
  • The pauses getting longer and longer whenever the bear needs to shit a new prime number.
  • The prime number shitting bear getting constipated.
  • How to calculate prime numbers faster.
  • Math stuff.
  • A choo choo train of thought.
  • Meditation apps that play ads while you're in the middle of meditating.
  • The thing where you put your mouth on the tube and then have to spit out the gas or you get neurological damage.
  • Creating a low pressure system by sucking on a tube.
  • Whether umbrellas make sense.
  • Umbrella side-drip.
  • How bicycles stay upright.
  • Does a bicycle on a treadmill stay upright?
  • Pattern recognition.
  • Seeing a situation you recognize and understanding what's going to happen.
  • Predicting where someone's sentence is going to end up.
  • Putting your water glass in a zone where it's going to get knocked over.
  • The shape of your mind's cause and effect network.
  • Seeing scenes from the future, like in Law and Order.
  • Predicting the future so that you can be a more efficient organism.
  • Mashing air molecules at you.
  • Speaking a language that your coworkers don't.
  • Applying FutureVision to your creative process.
  • Nonlinear creative processes.
  • One unique large musical story where nothing repeats.
  • A physical task you are doing inside your head.
  • The pet that is closest to having a kid.
  • Importing a portal gun into Tears of the Kingdom.
  • Finding the hookshot in Metroid and your friend then bring able to use it in Link to the Past.
  • How to know what your friends want.
  • All the bad ways an idea could be implemented
  • Surprise boomerangs.
  • Archipelago's Release System.
  • The era of couch co-op games.
  • A multiplayer season where everybody picks a different game.
  • Doing the oration.
  • Who the colored lights in your keyboard are for.
  • Polygonal dudes with long hair head banging in the background.
  • Weirdly modern music.
  • Fifteen years of everything else.
  • Rhythm games vs. music games.
  • Living in a society.
  • Devaluing the skills you love.
  • Listening to a song and really appreciating its use of rests.
  • How note lengths and rests work in tracker music.
  • Stopping a note without starting a new one.
  • Running experiments to determine exactly when a note should stop.
  • The micro decisions of things that people don't think about or care about.
  • A bird named Mabel.
  • A bird figuring out how to enjoy music.
  • A tepid delicate series of notes.
  • Attractivision.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ogGMULYp ]]> Jim Stormdancer 191. Carbonated Cream of Mushroom Latte https://topiclords.com/carbonated-cream-of-mushroom-latte fea884c2-5843-4d6b-9bf7-3326e3e2a782 Mon, 19 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Wacy. We discuss crafting little guys, negotiating how to play Zelda together, cream of mushroom latte, ChatGPT's poem about Zelda, and climbing real rocks. 1:03:16 true Lords:

  • Chris
  • Wacy

Topics:

  • Crafting little guys
  • Negotiating how to play Zelda together
  • Cream of mushroom latte
  • ChatGPT wrote a poem about zelda
  • Climbing real rocks

Microtopics:

  • The Marble Hornets/Slender Man oeuvre.
  • Copying and pasting a video.
  • Sharing a movie you liked with a friend over IM by copying and pasting the title.
  • The turnip in Breath of the Wild.
  • Attempting and failing to enjoy wood carving.
  • Stabbing the Korok until it is less fuzzy.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes it look like you're made of felt.
  • Losing your needle-felted Lorax and getting upset.
  • Kirby eating Halo.
  • Hobbies that double as fidget toys.
  • Carving a stick into a squirrel.
  • Finding polymer clay out in the woods.
  • Naturally-occurring fission reactors.
  • Nature with really good graphic design.
  • Sharing a Zelda save with your life partner and learning a lot about each other.
  • Finding every turnip.
  • Learning spoilers at an interesting space.
  • The huge thing.
  • Target's 30-day return policy.
  • What Switch games support local wireless multiplayer.
  • Playing halfway through a video game before you figure out the most of the systems.
  • Stirring until the lumps go away.
  • Kombucha milk.
  • An incredibly cheap gas.
  • The Sus Engineering DIY carbonation guide.
  • Cream of Cow Latte.
  • Target getting out the UV light to detect traces of cream of mushroom soup on the espresso machine you're trying to return.
  • Frothy oily coffees.
  • Inventing a culinary taxonomy in which mushrooms and cheese are both fruit.
  • Sweet cheese and savory fruit.
  • Sweet cheesus!
  • Making a yes or no answer incredibly long.
  • Rewriting each paragraph until it ends with a word on a line by itself.
  • Rapping about Zelda in 1980s.
  • Finding plot holes in this poem about the Legend of Zelda.
  • Using video games to ignore that you're on a plane for six hours.
  • Horror poems.
  • "A Crow Looked at Me" by Mt. Eerie.
  • Knowing why someone wrote an album but not why people listen to it.
  • Bad Two-Sentence Horror.
  • Whether Poe's The Raven counts as horror.
  • Businesses named after the thing that the building they're in used to be used for.
  • Berkeley Bowl's produce section.
  • Climbing a boulder that is not labeled with its difficulty level.
  • Difficulty inflation at the climbing gym.
  • How rocks are shaped.
  • A lump that you pinch with your whole hand.
  • Reading about a weird thing in Harry Potter and not knowing if it's weird because it's a magical kingdom or if that's how England does things.
  • What camping is like in England.
  • Taking a four year old to a parkour gym.
  • Being a kid and looking forward to finally growing tall enough to skate on the power lines.
  • A table full of rock obstacle courses.
  • The standards body that certifies what playground equipment is safe to install.
  • Old Enough.
  • Achieving the Milk Task.
  • Not teaching children cursive.
  • Having a name because your mom liked it.
]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Wacy

Topics:

  • Crafting little guys
  • Negotiating how to play Zelda together
  • Cream of mushroom latte
  • ChatGPT wrote a poem about zelda
  • Climbing real rocks

Microtopics:

  • The Marble Hornets/Slender Man oeuvre.
  • Copying and pasting a video.
  • Sharing a movie you liked with a friend over IM by copying and pasting the title.
  • The turnip in Breath of the Wild.
  • Attempting and failing to enjoy wood carving.
  • Stabbing the Korok until it is less fuzzy.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes it look like you're made of felt.
  • Losing your needle-felted Lorax and getting upset.
  • Kirby eating Halo.
  • Hobbies that double as fidget toys.
  • Carving a stick into a squirrel.
  • Finding polymer clay out in the woods.
  • Naturally-occurring fission reactors.
  • Nature with really good graphic design.
  • Sharing a Zelda save with your life partner and learning a lot about each other.
  • Finding every turnip.
  • Learning spoilers at an interesting space.
  • The huge thing.
  • Target's 30-day return policy.
  • What Switch games support local wireless multiplayer.
  • Playing halfway through a video game before you figure out the most of the systems.
  • Stirring until the lumps go away.
  • Kombucha milk.
  • An incredibly cheap gas.
  • The Sus Engineering DIY carbonation guide.
  • Cream of Cow Latte.
  • Target getting out the UV light to detect traces of cream of mushroom soup on the espresso machine you're trying to return.
  • Frothy oily coffees.
  • Inventing a culinary taxonomy in which mushrooms and cheese are both fruit.
  • Sweet cheese and savory fruit.
  • Sweet cheesus!
  • Making a yes or no answer incredibly long.
  • Rewriting each paragraph until it ends with a word on a line by itself.
  • Rapping about Zelda in 1980s.
  • Finding plot holes in this poem about the Legend of Zelda.
  • Using video games to ignore that you're on a plane for six hours.
  • Horror poems.
  • "A Crow Looked at Me" by Mt. Eerie.
  • Knowing why someone wrote an album but not why people listen to it.
  • Bad Two-Sentence Horror.
  • Whether Poe's The Raven counts as horror.
  • Businesses named after the thing that the building they're in used to be used for.
  • Berkeley Bowl's produce section.
  • Climbing a boulder that is not labeled with its difficulty level.
  • Difficulty inflation at the climbing gym.
  • How rocks are shaped.
  • A lump that you pinch with your whole hand.
  • Reading about a weird thing in Harry Potter and not knowing if it's weird because it's a magical kingdom or if that's how England does things.
  • What camping is like in England.
  • Taking a four year old to a parkour gym.
  • Being a kid and looking forward to finally growing tall enough to skate on the power lines.
  • A table full of rock obstacle courses.
  • The standards body that certifies what playground equipment is safe to install.
  • Old Enough.
  • Achieving the Milk Task.
  • Not teaching children cursive.
  • Having a name because your mom liked it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Chris
  • Wacy

Topics:

  • Crafting little guys
  • Negotiating how to play Zelda together
  • Cream of mushroom latte
  • ChatGPT wrote a poem about zelda
  • Climbing real rocks

Microtopics:

  • The Marble Hornets/Slender Man oeuvre.
  • Copying and pasting a video.
  • Sharing a movie you liked with a friend over IM by copying and pasting the title.
  • The turnip in Breath of the Wild.
  • Attempting and failing to enjoy wood carving.
  • Stabbing the Korok until it is less fuzzy.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes it look like you're made of felt.
  • Losing your needle-felted Lorax and getting upset.
  • Kirby eating Halo.
  • Hobbies that double as fidget toys.
  • Carving a stick into a squirrel.
  • Finding polymer clay out in the woods.
  • Naturally-occurring fission reactors.
  • Nature with really good graphic design.
  • Sharing a Zelda save with your life partner and learning a lot about each other.
  • Finding every turnip.
  • Learning spoilers at an interesting space.
  • The huge thing.
  • Target's 30-day return policy.
  • What Switch games support local wireless multiplayer.
  • Playing halfway through a video game before you figure out the most of the systems.
  • Stirring until the lumps go away.
  • Kombucha milk.
  • An incredibly cheap gas.
  • The Sus Engineering DIY carbonation guide.
  • Cream of Cow Latte.
  • Target getting out the UV light to detect traces of cream of mushroom soup on the espresso machine you're trying to return.
  • Frothy oily coffees.
  • Inventing a culinary taxonomy in which mushrooms and cheese are both fruit.
  • Sweet cheese and savory fruit.
  • Sweet cheesus!
  • Making a yes or no answer incredibly long.
  • Rewriting each paragraph until it ends with a word on a line by itself.
  • Rapping about Zelda in 1980s.
  • Finding plot holes in this poem about the Legend of Zelda.
  • Using video games to ignore that you're on a plane for six hours.
  • Horror poems.
  • "A Crow Looked at Me" by Mt. Eerie.
  • Knowing why someone wrote an album but not why people listen to it.
  • Bad Two-Sentence Horror.
  • Whether Poe's The Raven counts as horror.
  • Businesses named after the thing that the building they're in used to be used for.
  • Berkeley Bowl's produce section.
  • Climbing a boulder that is not labeled with its difficulty level.
  • Difficulty inflation at the climbing gym.
  • How rocks are shaped.
  • A lump that you pinch with your whole hand.
  • Reading about a weird thing in Harry Potter and not knowing if it's weird because it's a magical kingdom or if that's how England does things.
  • What camping is like in England.
  • Taking a four year old to a parkour gym.
  • Being a kid and looking forward to finally growing tall enough to skate on the power lines.
  • A table full of rock obstacle courses.
  • The standards body that certifies what playground equipment is safe to install.
  • Old Enough.
  • Achieving the Milk Task.
  • Not teaching children cursive.
  • Having a name because your mom liked it.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+3gYmiyuG ]]> Jim Stormdancer 190. The Linguistic Eggplant-Dick Collapse https://topiclords.com/the-linguistic-eggplant-dick-collapse 59a0292a-1147-441a-970e-651b93846514 Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Hallie. We discuss clues for secrets nearby, kids on TV hating leftovers, smartphone sales declining 11% in 2022 while sales of flip phones double, The Road Not Taken, what will emoji look like in 100 years?, and a conspiracy regarding the shape of hand-held supermarket baskets. 56:11 true Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Hallie

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lumps.
  • Lumpy Space Princess.
  • The best Space Princesses.
  • A completely different two Ls.
  • A good first vertically scrolling shooter.
  • Electric vehicle backing up noises.
  • Collecting Tesla license plates whenever you hear the Tesla collectible item noise.
  • The most sound-designed thing you interact with on a regular basis.
  • What kind of noises electric motorcycles make.
  • The laser you can point at any window to turn it into a speaker.
  • Bubb Rubb's reaction to whistle tips.
  • An urban legend about a haunted car driving down the freeway.
  • Advertisers beaming holograms directly into your AR goggles.
  • The city where instead of taxes they have ads and you're not allowed into the city without wearing the AR goggles at all times, even in the shower.
  • Wandering into the woods to escape the ubiquitous advertising but the birds have learned to repeat the ads.
  • Birds who sing the song that turns your skull into a speaker.
  • A scrub jay watching you with binoculars from across the street, reading your lips while you talk about the brown note, so it can teach the rest of the birds the song that makes the humans shit their pants.
  • Describing memes on podcasts.
  • The fungus that killed all the leftovers so the leftovers we eat today are a completely different varietal of leftovers.
  • Why leftovers-flavored jelly beans don't taste like real leftovers.
  • Spending more money so people don't perceive you as poor.
  • Food that you don't have to cook again.
  • Eating pizza straight out of the freezer.
  • Taking an ice cold slice of pizza into a hot shower.
  • Toaster pizza.
  • Cat body temperature pizza.
  • Rosemary garlic pop tarts.
  • Whether a day old poptart you forgot in the toaster counts as leftovers.
  • Leftunders.
  • Increasing crime by 100% but it's all good crime.
  • Flip phones Georg and whether he should be counted.
  • If anyone in the world decides not to eat something, that thing is canonically leftovers.
  • Wanting to be in a forest.
  • Dudes talking about themselves and the roads they've traveled.
  • The Most Misread Poem in America.
  • Pop quiz: individualism or fake individualism?
  • Doing a Twitter poll every time you are making a life decision and then taking the road less traveled by.
  • Dialects of emoji.
  • What Unicode looks like in the future where we communicate by swapping brain lobes with each other momentarily.
  • Doing the emoji hand clap for every word thing in your Great American Novel.
  • A screen reader reading out ascii art of a forest and after six minutes the blind user is like "nice forest!"
  • What the audio book for House of Leaves sounds like.
  • Lexicalogical collapse.
  • Veiny eggplant.
  • Which end of the eggplant emoji the droplets go on.
  • Genetically modifying eggplants so they look like dicks while unbeknownst to you another scientist is genetically modifying dicks so they look like eggplants and everyone remains confused.
  • Going to the bulk bin and scooping rice directly into your shopping basket.
  • If rice is like water and Bruce Lee is like water then Bruce Lee is like rice.
  • Trying to Tetris into a curve.
  • When a service works perfectly fine and they change things for no reason.
  • Searching Podcast Addict for a podcast and it comes back with a one episode podcast called "Please Update Podcast Addict"
  • Uber and Lyft becoming uncompetitive because they're trying to be profitable.
  • Ads that aren't even beamed directly into your skull so that good are they?
  • Advertising by teleporting a brain hemisphere of someone who loves your product with your target audience so you can share their knowledge.
]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Hallie

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lumps.
  • Lumpy Space Princess.
  • The best Space Princesses.
  • A completely different two Ls.
  • A good first vertically scrolling shooter.
  • Electric vehicle backing up noises.
  • Collecting Tesla license plates whenever you hear the Tesla collectible item noise.
  • The most sound-designed thing you interact with on a regular basis.
  • What kind of noises electric motorcycles make.
  • The laser you can point at any window to turn it into a speaker.
  • Bubb Rubb's reaction to whistle tips.
  • An urban legend about a haunted car driving down the freeway.
  • Advertisers beaming holograms directly into your AR goggles.
  • The city where instead of taxes they have ads and you're not allowed into the city without wearing the AR goggles at all times, even in the shower.
  • Wandering into the woods to escape the ubiquitous advertising but the birds have learned to repeat the ads.
  • Birds who sing the song that turns your skull into a speaker.
  • A scrub jay watching you with binoculars from across the street, reading your lips while you talk about the brown note, so it can teach the rest of the birds the song that makes the humans shit their pants.
  • Describing memes on podcasts.
  • The fungus that killed all the leftovers so the leftovers we eat today are a completely different varietal of leftovers.
  • Why leftovers-flavored jelly beans don't taste like real leftovers.
  • Spending more money so people don't perceive you as poor.
  • Food that you don't have to cook again.
  • Eating pizza straight out of the freezer.
  • Taking an ice cold slice of pizza into a hot shower.
  • Toaster pizza.
  • Cat body temperature pizza.
  • Rosemary garlic pop tarts.
  • Whether a day old poptart you forgot in the toaster counts as leftovers.
  • Leftunders.
  • Increasing crime by 100% but it's all good crime.
  • Flip phones Georg and whether he should be counted.
  • If anyone in the world decides not to eat something, that thing is canonically leftovers.
  • Wanting to be in a forest.
  • Dudes talking about themselves and the roads they've traveled.
  • The Most Misread Poem in America.
  • Pop quiz: individualism or fake individualism?
  • Doing a Twitter poll every time you are making a life decision and then taking the road less traveled by.
  • Dialects of emoji.
  • What Unicode looks like in the future where we communicate by swapping brain lobes with each other momentarily.
  • Doing the emoji hand clap for every word thing in your Great American Novel.
  • A screen reader reading out ascii art of a forest and after six minutes the blind user is like "nice forest!"
  • What the audio book for House of Leaves sounds like.
  • Lexicalogical collapse.
  • Veiny eggplant.
  • Which end of the eggplant emoji the droplets go on.
  • Genetically modifying eggplants so they look like dicks while unbeknownst to you another scientist is genetically modifying dicks so they look like eggplants and everyone remains confused.
  • Going to the bulk bin and scooping rice directly into your shopping basket.
  • If rice is like water and Bruce Lee is like water then Bruce Lee is like rice.
  • Trying to Tetris into a curve.
  • When a service works perfectly fine and they change things for no reason.
  • Searching Podcast Addict for a podcast and it comes back with a one episode podcast called "Please Update Podcast Addict"
  • Uber and Lyft becoming uncompetitive because they're trying to be profitable.
  • Ads that aren't even beamed directly into your skull so that good are they?
  • Advertising by teleporting a brain hemisphere of someone who loves your product with your target audience so you can share their knowledge.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Tyriq
  • Hallie

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lumps.
  • Lumpy Space Princess.
  • The best Space Princesses.
  • A completely different two Ls.
  • A good first vertically scrolling shooter.
  • Electric vehicle backing up noises.
  • Collecting Tesla license plates whenever you hear the Tesla collectible item noise.
  • The most sound-designed thing you interact with on a regular basis.
  • What kind of noises electric motorcycles make.
  • The laser you can point at any window to turn it into a speaker.
  • Bubb Rubb's reaction to whistle tips.
  • An urban legend about a haunted car driving down the freeway.
  • Advertisers beaming holograms directly into your AR goggles.
  • The city where instead of taxes they have ads and you're not allowed into the city without wearing the AR goggles at all times, even in the shower.
  • Wandering into the woods to escape the ubiquitous advertising but the birds have learned to repeat the ads.
  • Birds who sing the song that turns your skull into a speaker.
  • A scrub jay watching you with binoculars from across the street, reading your lips while you talk about the brown note, so it can teach the rest of the birds the song that makes the humans shit their pants.
  • Describing memes on podcasts.
  • The fungus that killed all the leftovers so the leftovers we eat today are a completely different varietal of leftovers.
  • Why leftovers-flavored jelly beans don't taste like real leftovers.
  • Spending more money so people don't perceive you as poor.
  • Food that you don't have to cook again.
  • Eating pizza straight out of the freezer.
  • Taking an ice cold slice of pizza into a hot shower.
  • Toaster pizza.
  • Cat body temperature pizza.
  • Rosemary garlic pop tarts.
  • Whether a day old poptart you forgot in the toaster counts as leftovers.
  • Leftunders.
  • Increasing crime by 100% but it's all good crime.
  • Flip phones Georg and whether he should be counted.
  • If anyone in the world decides not to eat something, that thing is canonically leftovers.
  • Wanting to be in a forest.
  • Dudes talking about themselves and the roads they've traveled.
  • The Most Misread Poem in America.
  • Pop quiz: individualism or fake individualism?
  • Doing a Twitter poll every time you are making a life decision and then taking the road less traveled by.
  • Dialects of emoji.
  • What Unicode looks like in the future where we communicate by swapping brain lobes with each other momentarily.
  • Doing the emoji hand clap for every word thing in your Great American Novel.
  • A screen reader reading out ascii art of a forest and after six minutes the blind user is like "nice forest!"
  • What the audio book for House of Leaves sounds like.
  • Lexicalogical collapse.
  • Veiny eggplant.
  • Which end of the eggplant emoji the droplets go on.
  • Genetically modifying eggplants so they look like dicks while unbeknownst to you another scientist is genetically modifying dicks so they look like eggplants and everyone remains confused.
  • Going to the bulk bin and scooping rice directly into your shopping basket.
  • If rice is like water and Bruce Lee is like water then Bruce Lee is like rice.
  • Trying to Tetris into a curve.
  • When a service works perfectly fine and they change things for no reason.
  • Searching Podcast Addict for a podcast and it comes back with a one episode podcast called "Please Update Podcast Addict"
  • Uber and Lyft becoming uncompetitive because they're trying to be profitable.
  • Ads that aren't even beamed directly into your skull so that good are they?
  • Advertising by teleporting a brain hemisphere of someone who loves your product with your target audience so you can share their knowledge.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+53pY5yUV ]]> Jim Stormdancer 189. If You Don't Know Who Your Wario Is, You're the Wario https://topiclords.com/if-you-dont-know-who-your-wario-is-youre-the-wario 1723faec-3e10-4c71-bc19-f8f63e7f2d02 Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Yaros. We discuss Somewhat Dim Mirror, Forth, getting email from Online Casino Guide about the most popular Mario characters, The Kraken by Alfred Tennyson, NES dev scene, heating a black hole to cool it down, and Winston being into Power Rangers 55:44 true Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Yaros

Topics:

  • Somewhat Dim Mirror
  • Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth
  • I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on?
  • The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson
  • NES dev scene and new games still being released
  • You have to heat a black hole to cool it down
  • Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations
    • Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are."

Microtopics:

  • Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now.
  • A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't.
  • A black mirror but a little less black.
  • How really shiny black things work.
  • Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable.
  • Reverse polish notation.
  • Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter.
  • Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?"
  • How Forth is like Eurovision.
  • Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment.
  • Your Dymaxion map of the globe.
  • The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators.
  • Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send.
  • A gaming and entertainment experience.
  • Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter.
  • How recently Nethack has been patched.
  • Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum.
  • The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract.
  • A kid named Wario.
  • The Abysmal Sea.
  • Unnumbered and enormous polypi.
  • Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool.
  • Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal.
  • Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it.
  • Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken.
  • Dendy.
  • Buying NES games made this year.
  • Sokoban with a Twist.
  • MOON 8.
  • Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square.
  • Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper.
  • Two people who are really bad at archery.
  • Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you.
  • A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies.
  • Forklift simulators in VR.
  • NES Maker and GB Studio.
  • LLVM's NES back-end.
  • Making a NES game in C and never using local variables.
  • Finding the free time to do all your hobbies.
  • The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I?
  • A tear in geometry that just leaks shit.
  • Care and feeding of your pet black hole.
  • Pascal's Breakfast.
  • Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles.
  • The International Cult Registry.
  • Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse.
  • Violence against putty monsters.
  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff.
  • A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original.
  • Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show.
  • Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie.
  • Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now.
]]> Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Yaros

Topics:

  • Somewhat Dim Mirror
  • Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth
  • I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on?
  • The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson
  • NES dev scene and new games still being released
  • You have to heat a black hole to cool it down
  • Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations
    • Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are."

Microtopics:

  • Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now.
  • A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't.
  • A black mirror but a little less black.
  • How really shiny black things work.
  • Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable.
  • Reverse polish notation.
  • Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter.
  • Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?"
  • How Forth is like Eurovision.
  • Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment.
  • Your Dymaxion map of the globe.
  • The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators.
  • Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send.
  • A gaming and entertainment experience.
  • Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter.
  • How recently Nethack has been patched.
  • Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum.
  • The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract.
  • A kid named Wario.
  • The Abysmal Sea.
  • Unnumbered and enormous polypi.
  • Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool.
  • Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal.
  • Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it.
  • Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken.
  • Dendy.
  • Buying NES games made this year.
  • Sokoban with a Twist.
  • MOON 8.
  • Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square.
  • Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper.
  • Two people who are really bad at archery.
  • Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you.
  • A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies.
  • Forklift simulators in VR.
  • NES Maker and GB Studio.
  • LLVM's NES back-end.
  • Making a NES game in C and never using local variables.
  • Finding the free time to do all your hobbies.
  • The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I?
  • A tear in geometry that just leaks shit.
  • Care and feeding of your pet black hole.
  • Pascal's Breakfast.
  • Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles.
  • The International Cult Registry.
  • Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse.
  • Violence against putty monsters.
  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff.
  • A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original.
  • Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show.
  • Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie.
  • Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Yaros

Topics:

  • Somewhat Dim Mirror
  • Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth
  • I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on?
  • The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson
  • NES dev scene and new games still being released
  • You have to heat a black hole to cool it down
  • Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations
    • Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are."

Microtopics:

  • Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now.
  • A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't.
  • A black mirror but a little less black.
  • How really shiny black things work.
  • Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable.
  • Reverse polish notation.
  • Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter.
  • Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?"
  • How Forth is like Eurovision.
  • Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment.
  • Your Dymaxion map of the globe.
  • The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators.
  • Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send.
  • A gaming and entertainment experience.
  • Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter.
  • How recently Nethack has been patched.
  • Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum.
  • The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract.
  • A kid named Wario.
  • The Abysmal Sea.
  • Unnumbered and enormous polypi.
  • Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool.
  • Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal.
  • Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it.
  • Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken.
  • Dendy.
  • Buying NES games made this year.
  • Sokoban with a Twist.
  • MOON 8.
  • Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square.
  • Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper.
  • Two people who are really bad at archery.
  • Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you.
  • A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies.
  • Forklift simulators in VR.
  • NES Maker and GB Studio.
  • LLVM's NES back-end.
  • Making a NES game in C and never using local variables.
  • Finding the free time to do all your hobbies.
  • The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I?
  • A tear in geometry that just leaks shit.
  • Care and feeding of your pet black hole.
  • Pascal's Breakfast.
  • Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles.
  • The International Cult Registry.
  • Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse.
  • Violence against putty monsters.
  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff.
  • A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original.
  • Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show.
  • Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie.
  • Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Hz5Kas-x ]]> Jim Stormdancer 188. An Extremely Gendered Sniper Rifle https://topiclords.com/an-extremely-gendered-sniper-rifle 59fa30ff-abc0-465d-80be-89b3eee8a659 Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Erica. We discuss zines and jam games, birding in the pandemic, itinerant filmmakers, and "Meditation on Capitalism." 57:47 true Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Bugzooka
  • Booms and busts of little insect invasions.
  • A little vacuum chamber that you squish closed.
  • Sucking a fly through a tube.
  • Cry havoc and let slip the bugs of war.
  • Egads, Bugzooks!
  • The Bug-A-Salt Passion Assassin 3.0.
  • A middle aged dad of the type that would buy a salt gun
  • A bugzooka in active use.
  • A balding man who looks like Jeffery Epstein crawling on the floor in his underwear to promote the Bug-A-Salt.
  • Professor Fly Presents: Fly Facts.
  • Judging the anatomical correctness of Professor Fly.
  • Hammacher-Schlemmer ads for bug-catching devices.
  • Whether women make better snipers.
  • Aiming at the fly on the wall with your laser sight.
  • Mr. Pinch.
  • A fly in a lab coat who lives in Seattle.
  • A photocopied leaflet about your band or political cause.
  • The best, most well-produced musicians in the world.
  • Ways to frame game jams.
  • A good brain hack for if you feel the urge to be a product.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • Electric Zine Maker.
  • Whether the pandemic is over.
  • One of the birdiest places in the United States.
  • Talk Irby to Me.
  • Becoming texting buddies with a famous bird systematist from Cornell.
  • A Big Year.
  • Yelling bird coordinates at someone you just met.
  • Winston's favorite bird and why he likes it so much.
  • Knowing something about ravens. (Not what they eat.)
  • The Northwestern Crow.
  • A crow catching live shrimp and stashing them in the moss.
  • Collecting black walnut husks to dye wool.
  • Feeding crows who bring you lipstick from the 1940s.
  • What to do with a 10 pound bag of unsalted peanuts.
  • A movie where every kid in town foils an attempted kidnapping and then holds a talent show.
  • Ark Music Factory.
  • Hiring a record label guy to write and record a song with your daughter so she can star in a terrible music video and become a survivor of internet celebrity.
  • Social media survivors.
  • Stardom: it's not good for you.
  • Whether kids today still want to be movie stars.
  • Bitmojis and other things that put you in a little cartoon.
  • A customized birthday greeting from a Weird Al.
  • Paying Rudy Giuliani a pittance to wish your mom a happy birthday.
  • One of the Breaking Bad hitman twins undercutting the other by $300 on Cameo.
  • Preserving your Too Short custom rap tape on Youtube.
  • A poem written in BASIC that is spoilers for Mad Men.
  • The light in your Ikea bookshelf recognizing the light in you.
  • Doing line number archaeology when reading a BASIC program.
  • Seeing text from the other side of the page through the page.
  • Do It.
  • Instructional Art.
  • Finding 25 identical objects and naming them all Jimmy.
  • Flying Maxx to the Permian Basin to teach your students how to repair microscopes.
]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Bugzooka
  • Booms and busts of little insect invasions.
  • A little vacuum chamber that you squish closed.
  • Sucking a fly through a tube.
  • Cry havoc and let slip the bugs of war.
  • Egads, Bugzooks!
  • The Bug-A-Salt Passion Assassin 3.0.
  • A middle aged dad of the type that would buy a salt gun
  • A bugzooka in active use.
  • A balding man who looks like Jeffery Epstein crawling on the floor in his underwear to promote the Bug-A-Salt.
  • Professor Fly Presents: Fly Facts.
  • Judging the anatomical correctness of Professor Fly.
  • Hammacher-Schlemmer ads for bug-catching devices.
  • Whether women make better snipers.
  • Aiming at the fly on the wall with your laser sight.
  • Mr. Pinch.
  • A fly in a lab coat who lives in Seattle.
  • A photocopied leaflet about your band or political cause.
  • The best, most well-produced musicians in the world.
  • Ways to frame game jams.
  • A good brain hack for if you feel the urge to be a product.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • Electric Zine Maker.
  • Whether the pandemic is over.
  • One of the birdiest places in the United States.
  • Talk Irby to Me.
  • Becoming texting buddies with a famous bird systematist from Cornell.
  • A Big Year.
  • Yelling bird coordinates at someone you just met.
  • Winston's favorite bird and why he likes it so much.
  • Knowing something about ravens. (Not what they eat.)
  • The Northwestern Crow.
  • A crow catching live shrimp and stashing them in the moss.
  • Collecting black walnut husks to dye wool.
  • Feeding crows who bring you lipstick from the 1940s.
  • What to do with a 10 pound bag of unsalted peanuts.
  • A movie where every kid in town foils an attempted kidnapping and then holds a talent show.
  • Ark Music Factory.
  • Hiring a record label guy to write and record a song with your daughter so she can star in a terrible music video and become a survivor of internet celebrity.
  • Social media survivors.
  • Stardom: it's not good for you.
  • Whether kids today still want to be movie stars.
  • Bitmojis and other things that put you in a little cartoon.
  • A customized birthday greeting from a Weird Al.
  • Paying Rudy Giuliani a pittance to wish your mom a happy birthday.
  • One of the Breaking Bad hitman twins undercutting the other by $300 on Cameo.
  • Preserving your Too Short custom rap tape on Youtube.
  • A poem written in BASIC that is spoilers for Mad Men.
  • The light in your Ikea bookshelf recognizing the light in you.
  • Doing line number archaeology when reading a BASIC program.
  • Seeing text from the other side of the page through the page.
  • Do It.
  • Instructional Art.
  • Finding 25 identical objects and naming them all Jimmy.
  • Flying Maxx to the Permian Basin to teach your students how to repair microscopes.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Erica

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Bugzooka
  • Booms and busts of little insect invasions.
  • A little vacuum chamber that you squish closed.
  • Sucking a fly through a tube.
  • Cry havoc and let slip the bugs of war.
  • Egads, Bugzooks!
  • The Bug-A-Salt Passion Assassin 3.0.
  • A middle aged dad of the type that would buy a salt gun
  • A bugzooka in active use.
  • A balding man who looks like Jeffery Epstein crawling on the floor in his underwear to promote the Bug-A-Salt.
  • Professor Fly Presents: Fly Facts.
  • Judging the anatomical correctness of Professor Fly.
  • Hammacher-Schlemmer ads for bug-catching devices.
  • Whether women make better snipers.
  • Aiming at the fly on the wall with your laser sight.
  • Mr. Pinch.
  • A fly in a lab coat who lives in Seattle.
  • A photocopied leaflet about your band or political cause.
  • The best, most well-produced musicians in the world.
  • Ways to frame game jams.
  • A good brain hack for if you feel the urge to be a product.
  • Indiepocalypse.
  • Electric Zine Maker.
  • Whether the pandemic is over.
  • One of the birdiest places in the United States.
  • Talk Irby to Me.
  • Becoming texting buddies with a famous bird systematist from Cornell.
  • A Big Year.
  • Yelling bird coordinates at someone you just met.
  • Winston's favorite bird and why he likes it so much.
  • Knowing something about ravens. (Not what they eat.)
  • The Northwestern Crow.
  • A crow catching live shrimp and stashing them in the moss.
  • Collecting black walnut husks to dye wool.
  • Feeding crows who bring you lipstick from the 1940s.
  • What to do with a 10 pound bag of unsalted peanuts.
  • A movie where every kid in town foils an attempted kidnapping and then holds a talent show.
  • Ark Music Factory.
  • Hiring a record label guy to write and record a song with your daughter so she can star in a terrible music video and become a survivor of internet celebrity.
  • Social media survivors.
  • Stardom: it's not good for you.
  • Whether kids today still want to be movie stars.
  • Bitmojis and other things that put you in a little cartoon.
  • A customized birthday greeting from a Weird Al.
  • Paying Rudy Giuliani a pittance to wish your mom a happy birthday.
  • One of the Breaking Bad hitman twins undercutting the other by $300 on Cameo.
  • Preserving your Too Short custom rap tape on Youtube.
  • A poem written in BASIC that is spoilers for Mad Men.
  • The light in your Ikea bookshelf recognizing the light in you.
  • Doing line number archaeology when reading a BASIC program.
  • Seeing text from the other side of the page through the page.
  • Do It.
  • Instructional Art.
  • Finding 25 identical objects and naming them all Jimmy.
  • Flying Maxx to the Permian Basin to teach your students how to repair microscopes.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+m2g-uj5B ]]> Jim Stormdancer 187. The Second-Best Whale Playground in Emeryville https://topiclords.com/the-second-best-whale-playground-in-emeryville 5f84c33d-04eb-435e-876b-0b91d5b59ac0 Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Cort and Stephan. We discuss asymmetrical USB-C cables, playground improvement over the last decade, bedtime guitar, Where the Wild Things Are, classic game hardware as a kind of virtual console, and constructing a computing environment as a nested series of cages for a child to escape 1:08:13 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Extra plugs.
  • Mr. Saitou
  • How to sideload software onto the Playdate.
  • Trying to make Sifteo happen.
  • Where to find all the fancy MacIntosh dithering algorithms.
  • Ableton for the Sega Megadrive.
  • Who Zarf is.
  • EU legislation saying that phones must charge via USB-C, which is unsustainable, when the text of the law ought to have been "Apple, knock that shit off."
  • Getting rid of your bucket of cables.
  • Never throwing away wood because you might need one that shape some day
  • Never throwing away oddly shaped pieces of wood because you might become a carpenter some day.
  • Playgrounds getting bad and then good again.
  • Getting breakfast at the Emeryville Public Market.
  • Whether swings or seesaws still exist.
  • Giant wooden castles with bridges going between them.
  • How to make the spinny playground things safe.
  • A regionally variable playground.
  • What countries have and don't have playgrounds.
  • The San Lorenzo Community Park.
  • A big stone bear you can climb on.
  • Whether any of those playground speaking tubes have ever worked.
  • Wanting the world to have magic in it so you lie to your kid about science.
  • The Dennis the Menace playground in Monterey.
  • Periodically removing the poison oak.
  • Growing up and being on the other side of the memory.
  • The Dead Dad playground turning into a fenced-off deathtrap.
  • Procedural memory for nice melodies.
  • Mountain dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Walking around with a bandolier of mountain dulcimers, one for every key.
  • What happens when you're living in the Appalachians and you want to make a violin but you can't.
  • What to do with your ability to play an instrument when you have no free time.
  • Maintaining a consistent strumming pattern while singing.
  • Strumming and finding finger positions intuitively.
  • Here's all the notes. Play the right ones at the right times.
  • The Virtual Console of musical instruments.
  • Jim's favorite note in the mixolydian mode.
  • Where the Wild Things Are for Xbox 360.
  • A poem with hardly any punctuation.
  • Going on a journey of many weeks in just a few pages.
  • Max in a wolf suit fighting bees with a stick.
  • Maurice Sendak Kart Racer.
  • Dinosaur Time.
  • Clapping for names you know.
  • A building with dinosaur bones in it.
  • Rumpusing things.
  • Games where you whack shadow spiders with a stick.
  • GB Studio.
  • Putting a wifi adapter in an NES cartridge.
  • The Mario modding tool set.
  • An IDE for making NES games.
  • Pi-Boy D.
  • Doing homebrew development on a system that is still in active use.
  • Castlevania: Passacaglia of Disrepair.
  • GBA of Theseus.
  • Making a Lynx game that supports 8-player multiplayer, when there aren't 8 people who own the system.
  • Porting a game about matching colors to a monochrome display.
  • Giving your kids a computer running Linux to teach them sysadmin skills, but they just play games on their phone instead.
  • Branded Scratch Wrappers.
  • Composing new music for the extended What the Golf? cinematic universe.
  • How to unlock your school laptop to play the Chrome Dinosaur Game.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Extra plugs.
  • Mr. Saitou
  • How to sideload software onto the Playdate.
  • Trying to make Sifteo happen.
  • Where to find all the fancy MacIntosh dithering algorithms.
  • Ableton for the Sega Megadrive.
  • Who Zarf is.
  • EU legislation saying that phones must charge via USB-C, which is unsustainable, when the text of the law ought to have been "Apple, knock that shit off."
  • Getting rid of your bucket of cables.
  • Never throwing away wood because you might need one that shape some day
  • Never throwing away oddly shaped pieces of wood because you might become a carpenter some day.
  • Playgrounds getting bad and then good again.
  • Getting breakfast at the Emeryville Public Market.
  • Whether swings or seesaws still exist.
  • Giant wooden castles with bridges going between them.
  • How to make the spinny playground things safe.
  • A regionally variable playground.
  • What countries have and don't have playgrounds.
  • The San Lorenzo Community Park.
  • A big stone bear you can climb on.
  • Whether any of those playground speaking tubes have ever worked.
  • Wanting the world to have magic in it so you lie to your kid about science.
  • The Dennis the Menace playground in Monterey.
  • Periodically removing the poison oak.
  • Growing up and being on the other side of the memory.
  • The Dead Dad playground turning into a fenced-off deathtrap.
  • Procedural memory for nice melodies.
  • Mountain dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Walking around with a bandolier of mountain dulcimers, one for every key.
  • What happens when you're living in the Appalachians and you want to make a violin but you can't.
  • What to do with your ability to play an instrument when you have no free time.
  • Maintaining a consistent strumming pattern while singing.
  • Strumming and finding finger positions intuitively.
  • Here's all the notes. Play the right ones at the right times.
  • The Virtual Console of musical instruments.
  • Jim's favorite note in the mixolydian mode.
  • Where the Wild Things Are for Xbox 360.
  • A poem with hardly any punctuation.
  • Going on a journey of many weeks in just a few pages.
  • Max in a wolf suit fighting bees with a stick.
  • Maurice Sendak Kart Racer.
  • Dinosaur Time.
  • Clapping for names you know.
  • A building with dinosaur bones in it.
  • Rumpusing things.
  • Games where you whack shadow spiders with a stick.
  • GB Studio.
  • Putting a wifi adapter in an NES cartridge.
  • The Mario modding tool set.
  • An IDE for making NES games.
  • Pi-Boy D.
  • Doing homebrew development on a system that is still in active use.
  • Castlevania: Passacaglia of Disrepair.
  • GBA of Theseus.
  • Making a Lynx game that supports 8-player multiplayer, when there aren't 8 people who own the system.
  • Porting a game about matching colors to a monochrome display.
  • Giving your kids a computer running Linux to teach them sysadmin skills, but they just play games on their phone instead.
  • Branded Scratch Wrappers.
  • Composing new music for the extended What the Golf? cinematic universe.
  • How to unlock your school laptop to play the Chrome Dinosaur Game.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Extra plugs.
  • Mr. Saitou
  • How to sideload software onto the Playdate.
  • Trying to make Sifteo happen.
  • Where to find all the fancy MacIntosh dithering algorithms.
  • Ableton for the Sega Megadrive.
  • Who Zarf is.
  • EU legislation saying that phones must charge via USB-C, which is unsustainable, when the text of the law ought to have been "Apple, knock that shit off."
  • Getting rid of your bucket of cables.
  • Never throwing away wood because you might need one that shape some day
  • Never throwing away oddly shaped pieces of wood because you might become a carpenter some day.
  • Playgrounds getting bad and then good again.
  • Getting breakfast at the Emeryville Public Market.
  • Whether swings or seesaws still exist.
  • Giant wooden castles with bridges going between them.
  • How to make the spinny playground things safe.
  • A regionally variable playground.
  • What countries have and don't have playgrounds.
  • The San Lorenzo Community Park.
  • A big stone bear you can climb on.
  • Whether any of those playground speaking tubes have ever worked.
  • Wanting the world to have magic in it so you lie to your kid about science.
  • The Dennis the Menace playground in Monterey.
  • Periodically removing the poison oak.
  • Growing up and being on the other side of the memory.
  • The Dead Dad playground turning into a fenced-off deathtrap.
  • Procedural memory for nice melodies.
  • Mountain dulcimers vs. hammered dulcimers.
  • Walking around with a bandolier of mountain dulcimers, one for every key.
  • What happens when you're living in the Appalachians and you want to make a violin but you can't.
  • What to do with your ability to play an instrument when you have no free time.
  • Maintaining a consistent strumming pattern while singing.
  • Strumming and finding finger positions intuitively.
  • Here's all the notes. Play the right ones at the right times.
  • The Virtual Console of musical instruments.
  • Jim's favorite note in the mixolydian mode.
  • Where the Wild Things Are for Xbox 360.
  • A poem with hardly any punctuation.
  • Going on a journey of many weeks in just a few pages.
  • Max in a wolf suit fighting bees with a stick.
  • Maurice Sendak Kart Racer.
  • Dinosaur Time.
  • Clapping for names you know.
  • A building with dinosaur bones in it.
  • Rumpusing things.
  • Games where you whack shadow spiders with a stick.
  • GB Studio.
  • Putting a wifi adapter in an NES cartridge.
  • The Mario modding tool set.
  • An IDE for making NES games.
  • Pi-Boy D.
  • Doing homebrew development on a system that is still in active use.
  • Castlevania: Passacaglia of Disrepair.
  • GBA of Theseus.
  • Making a Lynx game that supports 8-player multiplayer, when there aren't 8 people who own the system.
  • Porting a game about matching colors to a monochrome display.
  • Giving your kids a computer running Linux to teach them sysadmin skills, but they just play games on their phone instead.
  • Branded Scratch Wrappers.
  • Composing new music for the extended What the Golf? cinematic universe.
  • How to unlock your school laptop to play the Chrome Dinosaur Game.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GPnl3BWi ]]> Jim Stormdancer 186. ADHD Shame Graveyard of Browser Tabs https://topiclords.com/adhd-shame-graveyard-of-browser-tabs e076e051-4483-48be-adf5-584397fb1c33 Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tim and Ben. We discuss Thursday Night, finding your favorite music, never shipping a game and just playtesting forever, Fine Feather, having lots of browser tabs open, and secrets in Super Mario World 59:54 true Lords:

Topics:

  • My Thursday Night
  • The daunting thought of: there is so much music that exists now - it's more than likely that your favorite song in the world is out there and you'll never find it in your lifetime.
  • I've been working on a small game in my spare time and I never want to ship it. I just want to have friends playtest forever.
  • Fine Feather
  • The terrifying field of Hostile Nuclear Architecture
  • Do you have 103 tabs open in Chrome?
  • In Super Mario World, some secrets reward you by skipping levels and some reward you by adding new levels. Make up your mind! If the level add guy and the level subtract guy had just talked to each other they could've just left the levels as they were and saved everybody a lot of work.

Topics:

  • Having something to unplug.
  • Continuing to take care of your children.
  • Going to see the Mountain Goats for your birthday.
  • Sleep meds that don't interact well with grapefruit.
  • Caring for a newborn for a month and then suddenly having a nice meal.
  • A cocktail of factors.
  • Finding an amazing new artist you become obsessed with for the next few months.
  • Listening to music while you work.
  • A poster containing the source code for Pitfall.
  • How to keep finding new music in your thirties.
  • Phonograph.
  • Auto-brewery syndrome but for methamphetamines.
  • A good song that everybody likes.
  • Fear of stories.
  • Refusing to see a movie because you're afraid of what it'll make you feel.
  • Going camping in the woods in order to watch a movie.
  • Reliving your past experience in memory.
  • The soap operas that your ex's mom would watch.
  • Buying sheet music and playing it yourself in anticipation of when the orchestra comes to your town to play you the real thing.
  • Sheet music as a pre-release hype document.
  • Reading the manual of your new video game on the car ride home.
  • Crestfallenness.
  • Listening to a record with somebody.
  • Rogue topics that keep threatening to come up.
  • Playtesting as a way to get to know your friends better.
  • Approaching the things that are valuable to you through the lens of an illusion that you know is an illusion.
  • Lockdown hobbies.
  • How to enjoy hobbies.
  • Starting a Youtube series called "Ben sucks at baking" so you get a bunch of followers who will be disappointed if you get good at baking.
  • Dehydrating beer to get yeast out of it.
  • Making beer out of the yeast that's just hanging out in the air around you.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Nine year olds who are incredible at climbing because they refuse to eat fish.
  • A sparrow showing you its whole ass.
  • Whether sparrows are detested.
  • How to dispose of nuclear waste.
  • Attempts to make you hind brain think "I need to leave here immediately."
  • The meme of the skeleton playing the trumpet.
  • A field of Aztec death whistles activated by the wind blowing.
  • Trying to save the lives of people who live far in the future.
  • Speaking across time.
  • Whether this place is a place of honor.
  • An ADHD Shame Graveyard of Browser Tabs.
  • Going over all your browser tabs to see which ones remain relevant to you.
  • Details of how one bathes oneself that we never discuss in public.
  • A web browser that'll tell you "no, I think you've had enough tabs"
  • A brick that gives you a key.
  • How Elden Ring is structured.
  • A game that is a foray into a new design space that demonstrates how not to solve these design problems.
  • A scavenger hunt to find the next Topic Lords guest.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • My Thursday Night
  • The daunting thought of: there is so much music that exists now - it's more than likely that your favorite song in the world is out there and you'll never find it in your lifetime.
  • I've been working on a small game in my spare time and I never want to ship it. I just want to have friends playtest forever.
  • Fine Feather
  • The terrifying field of Hostile Nuclear Architecture
  • Do you have 103 tabs open in Chrome?
  • In Super Mario World, some secrets reward you by skipping levels and some reward you by adding new levels. Make up your mind! If the level add guy and the level subtract guy had just talked to each other they could've just left the levels as they were and saved everybody a lot of work.

Topics:

  • Having something to unplug.
  • Continuing to take care of your children.
  • Going to see the Mountain Goats for your birthday.
  • Sleep meds that don't interact well with grapefruit.
  • Caring for a newborn for a month and then suddenly having a nice meal.
  • A cocktail of factors.
  • Finding an amazing new artist you become obsessed with for the next few months.
  • Listening to music while you work.
  • A poster containing the source code for Pitfall.
  • How to keep finding new music in your thirties.
  • Phonograph.
  • Auto-brewery syndrome but for methamphetamines.
  • A good song that everybody likes.
  • Fear of stories.
  • Refusing to see a movie because you're afraid of what it'll make you feel.
  • Going camping in the woods in order to watch a movie.
  • Reliving your past experience in memory.
  • The soap operas that your ex's mom would watch.
  • Buying sheet music and playing it yourself in anticipation of when the orchestra comes to your town to play you the real thing.
  • Sheet music as a pre-release hype document.
  • Reading the manual of your new video game on the car ride home.
  • Crestfallenness.
  • Listening to a record with somebody.
  • Rogue topics that keep threatening to come up.
  • Playtesting as a way to get to know your friends better.
  • Approaching the things that are valuable to you through the lens of an illusion that you know is an illusion.
  • Lockdown hobbies.
  • How to enjoy hobbies.
  • Starting a Youtube series called "Ben sucks at baking" so you get a bunch of followers who will be disappointed if you get good at baking.
  • Dehydrating beer to get yeast out of it.
  • Making beer out of the yeast that's just hanging out in the air around you.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Nine year olds who are incredible at climbing because they refuse to eat fish.
  • A sparrow showing you its whole ass.
  • Whether sparrows are detested.
  • How to dispose of nuclear waste.
  • Attempts to make you hind brain think "I need to leave here immediately."
  • The meme of the skeleton playing the trumpet.
  • A field of Aztec death whistles activated by the wind blowing.
  • Trying to save the lives of people who live far in the future.
  • Speaking across time.
  • Whether this place is a place of honor.
  • An ADHD Shame Graveyard of Browser Tabs.
  • Going over all your browser tabs to see which ones remain relevant to you.
  • Details of how one bathes oneself that we never discuss in public.
  • A web browser that'll tell you "no, I think you've had enough tabs"
  • A brick that gives you a key.
  • How Elden Ring is structured.
  • A game that is a foray into a new design space that demonstrates how not to solve these design problems.
  • A scavenger hunt to find the next Topic Lords guest.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • My Thursday Night
  • The daunting thought of: there is so much music that exists now - it's more than likely that your favorite song in the world is out there and you'll never find it in your lifetime.
  • I've been working on a small game in my spare time and I never want to ship it. I just want to have friends playtest forever.
  • Fine Feather
  • The terrifying field of Hostile Nuclear Architecture
  • Do you have 103 tabs open in Chrome?
  • In Super Mario World, some secrets reward you by skipping levels and some reward you by adding new levels. Make up your mind! If the level add guy and the level subtract guy had just talked to each other they could've just left the levels as they were and saved everybody a lot of work.

Topics:

  • Having something to unplug.
  • Continuing to take care of your children.
  • Going to see the Mountain Goats for your birthday.
  • Sleep meds that don't interact well with grapefruit.
  • Caring for a newborn for a month and then suddenly having a nice meal.
  • A cocktail of factors.
  • Finding an amazing new artist you become obsessed with for the next few months.
  • Listening to music while you work.
  • A poster containing the source code for Pitfall.
  • How to keep finding new music in your thirties.
  • Phonograph.
  • Auto-brewery syndrome but for methamphetamines.
  • A good song that everybody likes.
  • Fear of stories.
  • Refusing to see a movie because you're afraid of what it'll make you feel.
  • Going camping in the woods in order to watch a movie.
  • Reliving your past experience in memory.
  • The soap operas that your ex's mom would watch.
  • Buying sheet music and playing it yourself in anticipation of when the orchestra comes to your town to play you the real thing.
  • Sheet music as a pre-release hype document.
  • Reading the manual of your new video game on the car ride home.
  • Crestfallenness.
  • Listening to a record with somebody.
  • Rogue topics that keep threatening to come up.
  • Playtesting as a way to get to know your friends better.
  • Approaching the things that are valuable to you through the lens of an illusion that you know is an illusion.
  • Lockdown hobbies.
  • How to enjoy hobbies.
  • Starting a Youtube series called "Ben sucks at baking" so you get a bunch of followers who will be disappointed if you get good at baking.
  • Dehydrating beer to get yeast out of it.
  • Making beer out of the yeast that's just hanging out in the air around you.
  • Gordy and the Monster Moon.
  • Nine year olds who are incredible at climbing because they refuse to eat fish.
  • A sparrow showing you its whole ass.
  • Whether sparrows are detested.
  • How to dispose of nuclear waste.
  • Attempts to make you hind brain think "I need to leave here immediately."
  • The meme of the skeleton playing the trumpet.
  • A field of Aztec death whistles activated by the wind blowing.
  • Trying to save the lives of people who live far in the future.
  • Speaking across time.
  • Whether this place is a place of honor.
  • An ADHD Shame Graveyard of Browser Tabs.
  • Going over all your browser tabs to see which ones remain relevant to you.
  • Details of how one bathes oneself that we never discuss in public.
  • A web browser that'll tell you "no, I think you've had enough tabs"
  • A brick that gives you a key.
  • How Elden Ring is structured.
  • A game that is a foray into a new design space that demonstrates how not to solve these design problems.
  • A scavenger hunt to find the next Topic Lords guest.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+zOoLdZHq ]]> Jim Stormdancer 185. 2000-Year-Old Head, Again?? https://topiclords.com/2000-year-old-head-again eb6fd239-7960-41c0-b77c-c37d6936c595 Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Danny and Kim. We discuss Animorphs, Danny's tech support needs, Youtube channels that summarize movies like Cliff's Notes, CatGPT, M3gan/technology horror movies, and not getting points in Super Mario World 1:00:33 true Lords:

  • Danny
  • Kim

Topics:

Microtopics

  • A video game man.
  • The Animorphs train.
  • Children committing war crimes and having to live with the consequences.
  • How many books are in the Animorphs series.
  • The Visser Chronicles.
  • Yeerks living in the Yeerk pool.
  • Finding the person whose car you stole and explaining "here's your car back, I did a bunch of war crimes in it"
  • Hearing someone explain Animorphs repeatedly and never forming a single opinion.
  • The horror of noses moving around.
  • Refusing to read graphic novels because you can't read and look at pictures at the same time.
  • Animorphs: Shattered Reality.
  • Why boys don't read Animorphs.
  • Marco turning into an Andalyte.
  • Eating via your hooves.
  • F for Furry.
  • The canonical source for all sexualities.
  • Non-Consensual Dippin' Dots.
  • Haunted Headphones.
  • How to compliment your partner's flams.
  • Taking a movie and turning it into a TikTok.
  • The dude from Dark with the face.
  • Twisted social experiment: whoever survives til the end gets to live.
  • 2000 Year Old Head Again??
  • Blind Man Who Robbers Are Trying To Avoid For A Movie.
  • This Garfield Comic is Too Highbrow.
  • A Simple Rhyming Man.
  • I Had a Lover's Quarrel with the World.
  • A chat bot that only replies with cat memes.
  • An extremely asymmetric cat.
  • Hiding inside the couch.
  • A cat wearing a neckerchief.
  • AI dolls in horror movies.
  • A movie that is advertised relentlessly on whatever wavelength you're on.
  • Content warning: hilarious child death. The whole movie theater will laugh.
  • Haunted TikTok.
  • Topic Lords M3gan Edition.
  • Robot vs. Firmware Updates.
  • Robot vs. EULA.
  • Horror stories about firmware updates.
  • A toilet that screams at you if you're not licensed to shit in it.
  • Bathrooms that self clean whether you're still in there or not.
  • How many points coins are worth in all the different Mario games.
  • Incentivizing children to stomp on goombas.
  • Frog Fractions as an expression of score-related trauma.
  • An email where it's hard to tell who is fucking with whom.
  • The kind of people who like a game and leave a negative review on Steam that is clearly a joke but actually click the thumbs down button.
  • Curling: the most horny sport.
  • The game where people crouch really low and try to get a stone into a button.
  • Playing Frog Fractions for 420 hours.
  • The modern experience of being verified on Twitter.
  • The time Frog Fractions was crashing when you played it in France.
]]> Lords:

  • Danny
  • Kim

Topics:

Microtopics

  • A video game man.
  • The Animorphs train.
  • Children committing war crimes and having to live with the consequences.
  • How many books are in the Animorphs series.
  • The Visser Chronicles.
  • Yeerks living in the Yeerk pool.
  • Finding the person whose car you stole and explaining "here's your car back, I did a bunch of war crimes in it"
  • Hearing someone explain Animorphs repeatedly and never forming a single opinion.
  • The horror of noses moving around.
  • Refusing to read graphic novels because you can't read and look at pictures at the same time.
  • Animorphs: Shattered Reality.
  • Why boys don't read Animorphs.
  • Marco turning into an Andalyte.
  • Eating via your hooves.
  • F for Furry.
  • The canonical source for all sexualities.
  • Non-Consensual Dippin' Dots.
  • Haunted Headphones.
  • How to compliment your partner's flams.
  • Taking a movie and turning it into a TikTok.
  • The dude from Dark with the face.
  • Twisted social experiment: whoever survives til the end gets to live.
  • 2000 Year Old Head Again??
  • Blind Man Who Robbers Are Trying To Avoid For A Movie.
  • This Garfield Comic is Too Highbrow.
  • A Simple Rhyming Man.
  • I Had a Lover's Quarrel with the World.
  • A chat bot that only replies with cat memes.
  • An extremely asymmetric cat.
  • Hiding inside the couch.
  • A cat wearing a neckerchief.
  • AI dolls in horror movies.
  • A movie that is advertised relentlessly on whatever wavelength you're on.
  • Content warning: hilarious child death. The whole movie theater will laugh.
  • Haunted TikTok.
  • Topic Lords M3gan Edition.
  • Robot vs. Firmware Updates.
  • Robot vs. EULA.
  • Horror stories about firmware updates.
  • A toilet that screams at you if you're not licensed to shit in it.
  • Bathrooms that self clean whether you're still in there or not.
  • How many points coins are worth in all the different Mario games.
  • Incentivizing children to stomp on goombas.
  • Frog Fractions as an expression of score-related trauma.
  • An email where it's hard to tell who is fucking with whom.
  • The kind of people who like a game and leave a negative review on Steam that is clearly a joke but actually click the thumbs down button.
  • Curling: the most horny sport.
  • The game where people crouch really low and try to get a stone into a button.
  • Playing Frog Fractions for 420 hours.
  • The modern experience of being verified on Twitter.
  • The time Frog Fractions was crashing when you played it in France.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Danny
  • Kim

Topics:

Microtopics

  • A video game man.
  • The Animorphs train.
  • Children committing war crimes and having to live with the consequences.
  • How many books are in the Animorphs series.
  • The Visser Chronicles.
  • Yeerks living in the Yeerk pool.
  • Finding the person whose car you stole and explaining "here's your car back, I did a bunch of war crimes in it"
  • Hearing someone explain Animorphs repeatedly and never forming a single opinion.
  • The horror of noses moving around.
  • Refusing to read graphic novels because you can't read and look at pictures at the same time.
  • Animorphs: Shattered Reality.
  • Why boys don't read Animorphs.
  • Marco turning into an Andalyte.
  • Eating via your hooves.
  • F for Furry.
  • The canonical source for all sexualities.
  • Non-Consensual Dippin' Dots.
  • Haunted Headphones.
  • How to compliment your partner's flams.
  • Taking a movie and turning it into a TikTok.
  • The dude from Dark with the face.
  • Twisted social experiment: whoever survives til the end gets to live.
  • 2000 Year Old Head Again??
  • Blind Man Who Robbers Are Trying To Avoid For A Movie.
  • This Garfield Comic is Too Highbrow.
  • A Simple Rhyming Man.
  • I Had a Lover's Quarrel with the World.
  • A chat bot that only replies with cat memes.
  • An extremely asymmetric cat.
  • Hiding inside the couch.
  • A cat wearing a neckerchief.
  • AI dolls in horror movies.
  • A movie that is advertised relentlessly on whatever wavelength you're on.
  • Content warning: hilarious child death. The whole movie theater will laugh.
  • Haunted TikTok.
  • Topic Lords M3gan Edition.
  • Robot vs. Firmware Updates.
  • Robot vs. EULA.
  • Horror stories about firmware updates.
  • A toilet that screams at you if you're not licensed to shit in it.
  • Bathrooms that self clean whether you're still in there or not.
  • How many points coins are worth in all the different Mario games.
  • Incentivizing children to stomp on goombas.
  • Frog Fractions as an expression of score-related trauma.
  • An email where it's hard to tell who is fucking with whom.
  • The kind of people who like a game and leave a negative review on Steam that is clearly a joke but actually click the thumbs down button.
  • Curling: the most horny sport.
  • The game where people crouch really low and try to get a stone into a button.
  • Playing Frog Fractions for 420 hours.
  • The modern experience of being verified on Twitter.
  • The time Frog Fractions was crashing when you played it in France.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+YcNkhlWR ]]> Jim Stormdancer 184. Times New Orange https://topiclords.com/times-new-orange d960d39d-0ad6-4e40-b8d6-429e84024a66 Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexicographic and Andrew. We discuss what 3 foods are pairwise good but bad all together, talking loudly during movie trailers as an act of anticapitalist subversion, the truth about Moon Mode, The Orange by Wendy Cope, learning Italian from a cartoon dog, being able to identify McElroy fans by how they complement my woodworking, and List of Video Games Considered Artistic 1:03:08 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • kittenm4ster's PICO-8 games.
  • Vibing with the Alfonzo's Bowling Challenge ethos.
  • A game that is implemented in under 8000 tokens.
  • The ideal game pitch.
  • Chocolate and cheese and something.
  • Choccoli.
  • Chocolate and gravy.
  • A lukewarm Americano.
  • A bunch of foodies who really know their foodstuffs.
  • A fish being strangled by Red Vines.
  • A GPU that has food inside of it.
  • The Turing test for whether computers can taste foods.
  • Asking Chat GPT what three foods you can combine to create a bomb in your kitchen.
  • Whether Gallium has calories.
  • Three people on a podcast who all think "trailers" should come after the movie
  • Finding out about a movie by seeing a trailer in a movie theater even though trailers are constantly spilling out of every screen you own.
  • Getting the wiggles out.
  • How to make the lives of people who enjoy looking at ads a little bit worse.
  • Yelling "fire" before the movie starts so fewer people pay attention to the pre-movie ads.
  • Wanting to become the reason all movies have "no leopards in the theater" PSAs now.
  • A toddler watching Youtube, yelling "no!" and throwing the phone on the ground when an ad plays.
  • Pushing the lever to receive your stochastic reward.
  • Youtube deciding you've seen enough ads lately and taking pity on you.
  • Trying to explain to a four year old how to play a light gun game but the game is over before you finish explaining.
  • The Space Alien Busting Song.
  • Drawing new mountains on the moon to test your camera's moon mode.
  • Here's the moon again.
  • A filter to replace pictures of your wife with the moon.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes you feel like you used to be attractive.
  • A filter that takes your bad photos of the moon and makes them even worse.
  • The worst bunny in the moon.
  • A good poem that rhymes.
  • Turtle metaconsistency.
  • Enormous and hilarious oranges.
  • Good art here, you guys.
  • Reading poetry in the original Helvetica.
  • BorgiaPro on various font downloading sites.
  • A cartoon that is entertaining even if you are not learning Italian.
  • Finding Armando's old hat in the attic.
  • Asking the clouds to move so that your hat can protect you from the sun.
  • Working within a constraint that produces delightful nonsense.
  • Photocopying yourself to create a black and white clone.
  • What drugs they'll give to kids in what countries.
  • Growing up but continuing to take the same drugs.
  • A little girl who is also a dog.
  • Subtitles that don't match what's being said aloud.
  • Watching Italian TV using a VPN.
  • The Andrew Lloyd Weber musical with the roller skates.
  • Roller bladers dancing in weird futuristic costumes.
  • Having positive fun experiences with language.
  • Learning a new language while skydiving.
  • Hiring an experienced skydiver who can give you foreign language lessons while you're both falling from a plane.
  • Getting bored while skydiving and looking at your phone but there's no WiFi up there.
  • How McElroy fans compliment someone's woodworking.
  • How to Fake an Interest in Woodworking.
  • Arguing about whether games are art.
  • All the games that anyone's ever called art.
  • Finding information about a deleted page on Wikipedia.
  • Philosophical debate on the creative qualia of electronic structured play. (Roger Ebert has a subheading.)
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes philosophical zombies.
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes voodoo zombies.
  • What Casinos are trying to do to attract kids who like video games.
  • Whether Lechuck is a voodoo zombie or a Romero zombie.
  • Hohokum.
  • Finding a bunch of snakes that each have different names.
  • What happens when you collect all the things. (Art.)
  • List of Paintings Considered Artistic.
  • Gimmick food that is more about the experience of eating a weird thing than the food itself.
  • A restaurant that doesn't have plates and just pours the food into your cupped hands.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • kittenm4ster's PICO-8 games.
  • Vibing with the Alfonzo's Bowling Challenge ethos.
  • A game that is implemented in under 8000 tokens.
  • The ideal game pitch.
  • Chocolate and cheese and something.
  • Choccoli.
  • Chocolate and gravy.
  • A lukewarm Americano.
  • A bunch of foodies who really know their foodstuffs.
  • A fish being strangled by Red Vines.
  • A GPU that has food inside of it.
  • The Turing test for whether computers can taste foods.
  • Asking Chat GPT what three foods you can combine to create a bomb in your kitchen.
  • Whether Gallium has calories.
  • Three people on a podcast who all think "trailers" should come after the movie
  • Finding out about a movie by seeing a trailer in a movie theater even though trailers are constantly spilling out of every screen you own.
  • Getting the wiggles out.
  • How to make the lives of people who enjoy looking at ads a little bit worse.
  • Yelling "fire" before the movie starts so fewer people pay attention to the pre-movie ads.
  • Wanting to become the reason all movies have "no leopards in the theater" PSAs now.
  • A toddler watching Youtube, yelling "no!" and throwing the phone on the ground when an ad plays.
  • Pushing the lever to receive your stochastic reward.
  • Youtube deciding you've seen enough ads lately and taking pity on you.
  • Trying to explain to a four year old how to play a light gun game but the game is over before you finish explaining.
  • The Space Alien Busting Song.
  • Drawing new mountains on the moon to test your camera's moon mode.
  • Here's the moon again.
  • A filter to replace pictures of your wife with the moon.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes you feel like you used to be attractive.
  • A filter that takes your bad photos of the moon and makes them even worse.
  • The worst bunny in the moon.
  • A good poem that rhymes.
  • Turtle metaconsistency.
  • Enormous and hilarious oranges.
  • Good art here, you guys.
  • Reading poetry in the original Helvetica.
  • BorgiaPro on various font downloading sites.
  • A cartoon that is entertaining even if you are not learning Italian.
  • Finding Armando's old hat in the attic.
  • Asking the clouds to move so that your hat can protect you from the sun.
  • Working within a constraint that produces delightful nonsense.
  • Photocopying yourself to create a black and white clone.
  • What drugs they'll give to kids in what countries.
  • Growing up but continuing to take the same drugs.
  • A little girl who is also a dog.
  • Subtitles that don't match what's being said aloud.
  • Watching Italian TV using a VPN.
  • The Andrew Lloyd Weber musical with the roller skates.
  • Roller bladers dancing in weird futuristic costumes.
  • Having positive fun experiences with language.
  • Learning a new language while skydiving.
  • Hiring an experienced skydiver who can give you foreign language lessons while you're both falling from a plane.
  • Getting bored while skydiving and looking at your phone but there's no WiFi up there.
  • How McElroy fans compliment someone's woodworking.
  • How to Fake an Interest in Woodworking.
  • Arguing about whether games are art.
  • All the games that anyone's ever called art.
  • Finding information about a deleted page on Wikipedia.
  • Philosophical debate on the creative qualia of electronic structured play. (Roger Ebert has a subheading.)
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes philosophical zombies.
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes voodoo zombies.
  • What Casinos are trying to do to attract kids who like video games.
  • Whether Lechuck is a voodoo zombie or a Romero zombie.
  • Hohokum.
  • Finding a bunch of snakes that each have different names.
  • What happens when you collect all the things. (Art.)
  • List of Paintings Considered Artistic.
  • Gimmick food that is more about the experience of eating a weird thing than the food itself.
  • A restaurant that doesn't have plates and just pours the food into your cupped hands.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • kittenm4ster's PICO-8 games.
  • Vibing with the Alfonzo's Bowling Challenge ethos.
  • A game that is implemented in under 8000 tokens.
  • The ideal game pitch.
  • Chocolate and cheese and something.
  • Choccoli.
  • Chocolate and gravy.
  • A lukewarm Americano.
  • A bunch of foodies who really know their foodstuffs.
  • A fish being strangled by Red Vines.
  • A GPU that has food inside of it.
  • The Turing test for whether computers can taste foods.
  • Asking Chat GPT what three foods you can combine to create a bomb in your kitchen.
  • Whether Gallium has calories.
  • Three people on a podcast who all think "trailers" should come after the movie
  • Finding out about a movie by seeing a trailer in a movie theater even though trailers are constantly spilling out of every screen you own.
  • Getting the wiggles out.
  • How to make the lives of people who enjoy looking at ads a little bit worse.
  • Yelling "fire" before the movie starts so fewer people pay attention to the pre-movie ads.
  • Wanting to become the reason all movies have "no leopards in the theater" PSAs now.
  • A toddler watching Youtube, yelling "no!" and throwing the phone on the ground when an ad plays.
  • Pushing the lever to receive your stochastic reward.
  • Youtube deciding you've seen enough ads lately and taking pity on you.
  • Trying to explain to a four year old how to play a light gun game but the game is over before you finish explaining.
  • The Space Alien Busting Song.
  • Drawing new mountains on the moon to test your camera's moon mode.
  • Here's the moon again.
  • A filter to replace pictures of your wife with the moon.
  • A Snapchat filter that makes you feel like you used to be attractive.
  • A filter that takes your bad photos of the moon and makes them even worse.
  • The worst bunny in the moon.
  • A good poem that rhymes.
  • Turtle metaconsistency.
  • Enormous and hilarious oranges.
  • Good art here, you guys.
  • Reading poetry in the original Helvetica.
  • BorgiaPro on various font downloading sites.
  • A cartoon that is entertaining even if you are not learning Italian.
  • Finding Armando's old hat in the attic.
  • Asking the clouds to move so that your hat can protect you from the sun.
  • Working within a constraint that produces delightful nonsense.
  • Photocopying yourself to create a black and white clone.
  • What drugs they'll give to kids in what countries.
  • Growing up but continuing to take the same drugs.
  • A little girl who is also a dog.
  • Subtitles that don't match what's being said aloud.
  • Watching Italian TV using a VPN.
  • The Andrew Lloyd Weber musical with the roller skates.
  • Roller bladers dancing in weird futuristic costumes.
  • Having positive fun experiences with language.
  • Learning a new language while skydiving.
  • Hiring an experienced skydiver who can give you foreign language lessons while you're both falling from a plane.
  • Getting bored while skydiving and looking at your phone but there's no WiFi up there.
  • How McElroy fans compliment someone's woodworking.
  • How to Fake an Interest in Woodworking.
  • Arguing about whether games are art.
  • All the games that anyone's ever called art.
  • Finding information about a deleted page on Wikipedia.
  • Philosophical debate on the creative qualia of electronic structured play. (Roger Ebert has a subheading.)
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes philosophical zombies.
  • Whether the List of Zombie Video Games on Wikipedia includes voodoo zombies.
  • What Casinos are trying to do to attract kids who like video games.
  • Whether Lechuck is a voodoo zombie or a Romero zombie.
  • Hohokum.
  • Finding a bunch of snakes that each have different names.
  • What happens when you collect all the things. (Art.)
  • List of Paintings Considered Artistic.
  • Gimmick food that is more about the experience of eating a weird thing than the food itself.
  • A restaurant that doesn't have plates and just pours the food into your cupped hands.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+u46iD3pz ]]> Jim Stormdancer 183. The Radioactive Scone Problem https://topiclords.com/the-radioactive-scone-problem e8e4a1cc-31b1-468c-b52c-d9e052aea795 Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Quil. We discuss playing a Zelda game before it's spoiled on the internet, RCA's implementation of color TV, the guy next to Jim on BART, 1961 by Robert Lowell, and every civilization independently inventing dumplings. 1:01:17 true Lords:

  • John
  • Quil

Topics:

  • Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to play a Legend of Zelda game before every aspect of it is documented on the internet
  • RCA's implementation of color television is one of the most impressive engineering feats of the 20th century
  • The guy next to me on BART talked to me the entire ride home from GDC. He made me play the phone game he was addicted to and compared my performance to the coworker he was also making play the game. He got a call from his wife and introduced me to her. He told me he was in prison for 30 years for murder. His step son is a pitbull breeder and he complained about how few free pitbulls he was getting. He smelled weed on the train and put on a loud voice to announce "I'm a cop, put your vape pen away." My stop was also his stop, so the monologue didn't let up when I got off the train. I finally escaped when he was distracted by girl scout cookies.
  • http://blueridgejournal.com/poems/rl-fall.htm
  • Are dumplings universal? It seems like every civilization has at some point invented their version of 'carbs around a protein' food

Microtopics:

  • The best part of the show.
  • The Great Lakes Pigeon Rescue.
  • How best to keep a pigeon.
  • Hiding in the discord
  • Solving problems in interesting ways.
  • A very interesting idea that just barely pays off.
  • Playing a new game all weekend for the first time in your life.
  • A game that is too spiky to be solved by one person.
  • A matchmaking service that puts you on a forum with fifty people who are each starting a Dark Souls game for the first time.
  • Accidentally playing geez Fez with your sister.
  • A riddle about risk management.
  • Not being able to throw away radioactive waste because you don't want to waste food.
  • Deciding which cookie to put in your mouth
  • Finding the password to someone's laptop in a video game by googling their information in real life.
  • Digital vs. Analog circuitry.
  • Piggybacking the color signal on top of the black and white signal.
  • Quadrature amplitude modulation.
  • Racing the Beam.
  • Being banished from the kingdom for partly understanding how television works.
  • Inventing two televisions so you can run one backwards.
  • Extroverts who when meeting an introvert, think to themselves "it's my job to bridge the gap"
  • Escaping when someone is distracted by Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Encountering the ARG that you made for yourself and then forgot about.
  • Not getting as many free pitbulls as you thought.
  • Getting off the train early to get away from the person who won't stop talking to you and he's like "oh ok I'll get off here too."
  • Your wife who hates when you impersonate a cop.
  • The episode of Train Hot Dog which was just Jim reading a stack trace for twenty minutes.
  • Trying to figure out what web site you can browse on your phone to get the person sitting next to you to stand up.
  • Jim's preferred San Francisco residents.
  • The orange bland ambassadorial face of the moon.
  • Wild spiders crying together.
  • What to do when the air raid sirens go off.
  • Moving to a new place where they don't have monthly nuclear accident drills.
  • John Vanderslice.
  • The Human Missile Crisis.
  • Showing fear for humanity before it's cool.
  • Poetry that is not meant to be read aloud.
  • Stripping the formatting out of e e cummings's poetry.
  • A poem that skips around on the page like Chutes and Ladders.
  • Topic Troves.
  • Carbs around a protein food.
  • A rooster named Pierogi.
  • Whether dumplings have to be slimy.
  • Putting the pudding in a protein.
  • A particleboard meat.
  • A McRib that's been injected with custard.
  • Sweet and savory things placed inside a carb.
  • What civilizations have never invented the dumpling.
  • How to get from agriculture to the Hot Pocket.
  • The singular of funfetti.
  • How to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • Topic Lords the Phone Game.
  • Cheap Bots Toot Sweet.
]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Quil

Topics:

  • Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to play a Legend of Zelda game before every aspect of it is documented on the internet
  • RCA's implementation of color television is one of the most impressive engineering feats of the 20th century
  • The guy next to me on BART talked to me the entire ride home from GDC. He made me play the phone game he was addicted to and compared my performance to the coworker he was also making play the game. He got a call from his wife and introduced me to her. He told me he was in prison for 30 years for murder. His step son is a pitbull breeder and he complained about how few free pitbulls he was getting. He smelled weed on the train and put on a loud voice to announce "I'm a cop, put your vape pen away." My stop was also his stop, so the monologue didn't let up when I got off the train. I finally escaped when he was distracted by girl scout cookies.
  • http://blueridgejournal.com/poems/rl-fall.htm
  • Are dumplings universal? It seems like every civilization has at some point invented their version of 'carbs around a protein' food

Microtopics:

  • The best part of the show.
  • The Great Lakes Pigeon Rescue.
  • How best to keep a pigeon.
  • Hiding in the discord
  • Solving problems in interesting ways.
  • A very interesting idea that just barely pays off.
  • Playing a new game all weekend for the first time in your life.
  • A game that is too spiky to be solved by one person.
  • A matchmaking service that puts you on a forum with fifty people who are each starting a Dark Souls game for the first time.
  • Accidentally playing geez Fez with your sister.
  • A riddle about risk management.
  • Not being able to throw away radioactive waste because you don't want to waste food.
  • Deciding which cookie to put in your mouth
  • Finding the password to someone's laptop in a video game by googling their information in real life.
  • Digital vs. Analog circuitry.
  • Piggybacking the color signal on top of the black and white signal.
  • Quadrature amplitude modulation.
  • Racing the Beam.
  • Being banished from the kingdom for partly understanding how television works.
  • Inventing two televisions so you can run one backwards.
  • Extroverts who when meeting an introvert, think to themselves "it's my job to bridge the gap"
  • Escaping when someone is distracted by Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Encountering the ARG that you made for yourself and then forgot about.
  • Not getting as many free pitbulls as you thought.
  • Getting off the train early to get away from the person who won't stop talking to you and he's like "oh ok I'll get off here too."
  • Your wife who hates when you impersonate a cop.
  • The episode of Train Hot Dog which was just Jim reading a stack trace for twenty minutes.
  • Trying to figure out what web site you can browse on your phone to get the person sitting next to you to stand up.
  • Jim's preferred San Francisco residents.
  • The orange bland ambassadorial face of the moon.
  • Wild spiders crying together.
  • What to do when the air raid sirens go off.
  • Moving to a new place where they don't have monthly nuclear accident drills.
  • John Vanderslice.
  • The Human Missile Crisis.
  • Showing fear for humanity before it's cool.
  • Poetry that is not meant to be read aloud.
  • Stripping the formatting out of e e cummings's poetry.
  • A poem that skips around on the page like Chutes and Ladders.
  • Topic Troves.
  • Carbs around a protein food.
  • A rooster named Pierogi.
  • Whether dumplings have to be slimy.
  • Putting the pudding in a protein.
  • A particleboard meat.
  • A McRib that's been injected with custard.
  • Sweet and savory things placed inside a carb.
  • What civilizations have never invented the dumpling.
  • How to get from agriculture to the Hot Pocket.
  • The singular of funfetti.
  • How to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • Topic Lords the Phone Game.
  • Cheap Bots Toot Sweet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • John
  • Quil

Topics:

  • Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to play a Legend of Zelda game before every aspect of it is documented on the internet
  • RCA's implementation of color television is one of the most impressive engineering feats of the 20th century
  • The guy next to me on BART talked to me the entire ride home from GDC. He made me play the phone game he was addicted to and compared my performance to the coworker he was also making play the game. He got a call from his wife and introduced me to her. He told me he was in prison for 30 years for murder. His step son is a pitbull breeder and he complained about how few free pitbulls he was getting. He smelled weed on the train and put on a loud voice to announce "I'm a cop, put your vape pen away." My stop was also his stop, so the monologue didn't let up when I got off the train. I finally escaped when he was distracted by girl scout cookies.
  • http://blueridgejournal.com/poems/rl-fall.htm
  • Are dumplings universal? It seems like every civilization has at some point invented their version of 'carbs around a protein' food

Microtopics:

  • The best part of the show.
  • The Great Lakes Pigeon Rescue.
  • How best to keep a pigeon.
  • Hiding in the discord
  • Solving problems in interesting ways.
  • A very interesting idea that just barely pays off.
  • Playing a new game all weekend for the first time in your life.
  • A game that is too spiky to be solved by one person.
  • A matchmaking service that puts you on a forum with fifty people who are each starting a Dark Souls game for the first time.
  • Accidentally playing geez Fez with your sister.
  • A riddle about risk management.
  • Not being able to throw away radioactive waste because you don't want to waste food.
  • Deciding which cookie to put in your mouth
  • Finding the password to someone's laptop in a video game by googling their information in real life.
  • Digital vs. Analog circuitry.
  • Piggybacking the color signal on top of the black and white signal.
  • Quadrature amplitude modulation.
  • Racing the Beam.
  • Being banished from the kingdom for partly understanding how television works.
  • Inventing two televisions so you can run one backwards.
  • Extroverts who when meeting an introvert, think to themselves "it's my job to bridge the gap"
  • Escaping when someone is distracted by Girl Scout Cookies.
  • Encountering the ARG that you made for yourself and then forgot about.
  • Not getting as many free pitbulls as you thought.
  • Getting off the train early to get away from the person who won't stop talking to you and he's like "oh ok I'll get off here too."
  • Your wife who hates when you impersonate a cop.
  • The episode of Train Hot Dog which was just Jim reading a stack trace for twenty minutes.
  • Trying to figure out what web site you can browse on your phone to get the person sitting next to you to stand up.
  • Jim's preferred San Francisco residents.
  • The orange bland ambassadorial face of the moon.
  • Wild spiders crying together.
  • What to do when the air raid sirens go off.
  • Moving to a new place where they don't have monthly nuclear accident drills.
  • John Vanderslice.
  • The Human Missile Crisis.
  • Showing fear for humanity before it's cool.
  • Poetry that is not meant to be read aloud.
  • Stripping the formatting out of e e cummings's poetry.
  • A poem that skips around on the page like Chutes and Ladders.
  • Topic Troves.
  • Carbs around a protein food.
  • A rooster named Pierogi.
  • Whether dumplings have to be slimy.
  • Putting the pudding in a protein.
  • A particleboard meat.
  • A McRib that's been injected with custard.
  • Sweet and savory things placed inside a carb.
  • What civilizations have never invented the dumpling.
  • How to get from agriculture to the Hot Pocket.
  • The singular of funfetti.
  • How to get into the Topic Lords discord.
  • Topic Lords the Phone Game.
  • Cheap Bots Toot Sweet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Gim-Tly2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 182. Baby Baby Mario https://topiclords.com/baby-baby-mario f326396f-7fb5-4a61-b39e-69a0b0ef6e82 Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Chris. We discuss sleepovers and latchkey kids, the movie adaptation of Jurassic Park 2, the VR episode of Nowhere Man, the space battle over Nuremberg in 1561, &c. 1:02:53 true Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being two different species.
  • Riff and Jenni play Rusty Lake.
  • Absorbing most of your twin in the womb and all that's left is his heart behind your nipple.
  • Nippleheart.
  • Cool Time Dice Hour.
  • Cragne Manor.
  • Heck of a project, terrible game, not recommended at all.
  • Cragne Manor's TV Tropes page.
  • A Metafilter thread about sleepovers.
  • Your mom asking for a report on all the swear words in the book you're reading.
  • Elsa Screams at Dentist.
  • Watching Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube to learn how to scream better.
  • Going to the bookstore by yourself when your are 13 years old.
  • Calling the anime repair guy when your anime goes out.
  • New guy just dropped: guy with trench coat full of VHS tapes who won't hand you the VHS tapes, he makes you reach in and take them.
  • Socializing your kids poorly so nobody will invite them to sleepovers.
  • Learning how sex works and then calling a conference on the playground to explain it to everyone.
  • Calvin's dad explaining that women only pee once a month.
  • Picking up the broken glass that your meth dealer neighbor keeps throwing in your cactus garden.
  • The tiny-handed thin-necked final girl.
  • Abraham Lincoln's wrestling career.
  • The one where they defeat the veloraptors with gymnastics.
  • The one where they defeat the velociraptors by showing them Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube.
  • Taking a bad book and adapting it into an even worse movie.
  • Doing drugs until the dinosaurs look like they have feathers.
  • Microscopic dust particles on the slicey bits.
  • Why blowing into the cartridge did or didn't work
  • Hunter-gatherers blowing on a blinking raspberry bush and cursing the defective lockout chip.
  • Being unable to hunt bison because of bison DRM.
  • A completely made-up kind of VR.
  • Downloading your estranged wife from the internet so you can reunite in VR.
  • A Rough Whimper of Insanity.
  • Max Headroom: a guy with a weird forehead who shows up in media sometimes, like a California Raisin.
  • Explaining Mac Tonight to a 22 year old.
  • The worst car you could have possibly imagined.
  • Delightful clean all-ages nonsense.
  • Demonstrating your allegiance to 90s-era edgelordism.
  • Cresting the event horizon of random bullshit.
  • The VR apparatus hanging off of your wasted body.
  • Adding more vanilla than the recipe calls for.
  • Putting a hapenny on the spice vendor's tongue and reaching into his trench coat to pull out a bag of cumin.
  • Poking bytes into memory to mod Cyberpunk 2077.
  • Whether Pico-8 is more or less racist than Dickens Fair.
  • The space battle that took place over Nuremberg in 1561.
  • UFOs vs. UAPs.
  • Tie-Fighters and Star Destroyers over Nuremberg.
  • The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: if you got an anomaly, yo, they'll resolve it.
  • Asking the Pentagon for money for a cab fare to go investigate unexplained aerial phenomena.
  • A mass hysteria of the collective unconscious.
  • Marrying your cousin and going into space.
  • Anakin is of the species Baby Mario and Padme is a Baby Luigi so when they breed they'll have an infertile Baby Wario or Baby Waluigi.
  • The fan theory where Jar-Jar is the Sith Lord.
  • The origin of angels as a terror.
  • Pre-hurricane ice crystal patterns.
  • Making biblically accurate angels out of everything.
  • Generational memory from back when we had wings.
  • Fish wings.
  • Being drunk all the time because you don't trust the water.
  • Aspartame's bitter aftertaste, and also fuck Stevia.
  • Coke Grownups.
  • Pepsi Peeps.
  • Eating the whole bag of Pepsi Syrup Peep Gushers and now you can't play D&D tonight because you just have to lie on the floor clutching your belly and complaining that nobody saved you from your life choices.
  • Food that exists to overwhelm your senses and your ability to make decisions.
  • The two genders of time.
]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being two different species.
  • Riff and Jenni play Rusty Lake.
  • Absorbing most of your twin in the womb and all that's left is his heart behind your nipple.
  • Nippleheart.
  • Cool Time Dice Hour.
  • Cragne Manor.
  • Heck of a project, terrible game, not recommended at all.
  • Cragne Manor's TV Tropes page.
  • A Metafilter thread about sleepovers.
  • Your mom asking for a report on all the swear words in the book you're reading.
  • Elsa Screams at Dentist.
  • Watching Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube to learn how to scream better.
  • Going to the bookstore by yourself when your are 13 years old.
  • Calling the anime repair guy when your anime goes out.
  • New guy just dropped: guy with trench coat full of VHS tapes who won't hand you the VHS tapes, he makes you reach in and take them.
  • Socializing your kids poorly so nobody will invite them to sleepovers.
  • Learning how sex works and then calling a conference on the playground to explain it to everyone.
  • Calvin's dad explaining that women only pee once a month.
  • Picking up the broken glass that your meth dealer neighbor keeps throwing in your cactus garden.
  • The tiny-handed thin-necked final girl.
  • Abraham Lincoln's wrestling career.
  • The one where they defeat the veloraptors with gymnastics.
  • The one where they defeat the velociraptors by showing them Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube.
  • Taking a bad book and adapting it into an even worse movie.
  • Doing drugs until the dinosaurs look like they have feathers.
  • Microscopic dust particles on the slicey bits.
  • Why blowing into the cartridge did or didn't work
  • Hunter-gatherers blowing on a blinking raspberry bush and cursing the defective lockout chip.
  • Being unable to hunt bison because of bison DRM.
  • A completely made-up kind of VR.
  • Downloading your estranged wife from the internet so you can reunite in VR.
  • A Rough Whimper of Insanity.
  • Max Headroom: a guy with a weird forehead who shows up in media sometimes, like a California Raisin.
  • Explaining Mac Tonight to a 22 year old.
  • The worst car you could have possibly imagined.
  • Delightful clean all-ages nonsense.
  • Demonstrating your allegiance to 90s-era edgelordism.
  • Cresting the event horizon of random bullshit.
  • The VR apparatus hanging off of your wasted body.
  • Adding more vanilla than the recipe calls for.
  • Putting a hapenny on the spice vendor's tongue and reaching into his trench coat to pull out a bag of cumin.
  • Poking bytes into memory to mod Cyberpunk 2077.
  • Whether Pico-8 is more or less racist than Dickens Fair.
  • The space battle that took place over Nuremberg in 1561.
  • UFOs vs. UAPs.
  • Tie-Fighters and Star Destroyers over Nuremberg.
  • The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: if you got an anomaly, yo, they'll resolve it.
  • Asking the Pentagon for money for a cab fare to go investigate unexplained aerial phenomena.
  • A mass hysteria of the collective unconscious.
  • Marrying your cousin and going into space.
  • Anakin is of the species Baby Mario and Padme is a Baby Luigi so when they breed they'll have an infertile Baby Wario or Baby Waluigi.
  • The fan theory where Jar-Jar is the Sith Lord.
  • The origin of angels as a terror.
  • Pre-hurricane ice crystal patterns.
  • Making biblically accurate angels out of everything.
  • Generational memory from back when we had wings.
  • Fish wings.
  • Being drunk all the time because you don't trust the water.
  • Aspartame's bitter aftertaste, and also fuck Stevia.
  • Coke Grownups.
  • Pepsi Peeps.
  • Eating the whole bag of Pepsi Syrup Peep Gushers and now you can't play D&D tonight because you just have to lie on the floor clutching your belly and complaining that nobody saved you from your life choices.
  • Food that exists to overwhelm your senses and your ability to make decisions.
  • The two genders of time.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being two different species.
  • Riff and Jenni play Rusty Lake.
  • Absorbing most of your twin in the womb and all that's left is his heart behind your nipple.
  • Nippleheart.
  • Cool Time Dice Hour.
  • Cragne Manor.
  • Heck of a project, terrible game, not recommended at all.
  • Cragne Manor's TV Tropes page.
  • A Metafilter thread about sleepovers.
  • Your mom asking for a report on all the swear words in the book you're reading.
  • Elsa Screams at Dentist.
  • Watching Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube to learn how to scream better.
  • Going to the bookstore by yourself when your are 13 years old.
  • Calling the anime repair guy when your anime goes out.
  • New guy just dropped: guy with trench coat full of VHS tapes who won't hand you the VHS tapes, he makes you reach in and take them.
  • Socializing your kids poorly so nobody will invite them to sleepovers.
  • Learning how sex works and then calling a conference on the playground to explain it to everyone.
  • Calvin's dad explaining that women only pee once a month.
  • Picking up the broken glass that your meth dealer neighbor keeps throwing in your cactus garden.
  • The tiny-handed thin-necked final girl.
  • Abraham Lincoln's wrestling career.
  • The one where they defeat the veloraptors with gymnastics.
  • The one where they defeat the velociraptors by showing them Elsa Screaming videos on Youtube.
  • Taking a bad book and adapting it into an even worse movie.
  • Doing drugs until the dinosaurs look like they have feathers.
  • Microscopic dust particles on the slicey bits.
  • Why blowing into the cartridge did or didn't work
  • Hunter-gatherers blowing on a blinking raspberry bush and cursing the defective lockout chip.
  • Being unable to hunt bison because of bison DRM.
  • A completely made-up kind of VR.
  • Downloading your estranged wife from the internet so you can reunite in VR.
  • A Rough Whimper of Insanity.
  • Max Headroom: a guy with a weird forehead who shows up in media sometimes, like a California Raisin.
  • Explaining Mac Tonight to a 22 year old.
  • The worst car you could have possibly imagined.
  • Delightful clean all-ages nonsense.
  • Demonstrating your allegiance to 90s-era edgelordism.
  • Cresting the event horizon of random bullshit.
  • The VR apparatus hanging off of your wasted body.
  • Adding more vanilla than the recipe calls for.
  • Putting a hapenny on the spice vendor's tongue and reaching into his trench coat to pull out a bag of cumin.
  • Poking bytes into memory to mod Cyberpunk 2077.
  • Whether Pico-8 is more or less racist than Dickens Fair.
  • The space battle that took place over Nuremberg in 1561.
  • UFOs vs. UAPs.
  • Tie-Fighters and Star Destroyers over Nuremberg.
  • The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: if you got an anomaly, yo, they'll resolve it.
  • Asking the Pentagon for money for a cab fare to go investigate unexplained aerial phenomena.
  • A mass hysteria of the collective unconscious.
  • Marrying your cousin and going into space.
  • Anakin is of the species Baby Mario and Padme is a Baby Luigi so when they breed they'll have an infertile Baby Wario or Baby Waluigi.
  • The fan theory where Jar-Jar is the Sith Lord.
  • The origin of angels as a terror.
  • Pre-hurricane ice crystal patterns.
  • Making biblically accurate angels out of everything.
  • Generational memory from back when we had wings.
  • Fish wings.
  • Being drunk all the time because you don't trust the water.
  • Aspartame's bitter aftertaste, and also fuck Stevia.
  • Coke Grownups.
  • Pepsi Peeps.
  • Eating the whole bag of Pepsi Syrup Peep Gushers and now you can't play D&D tonight because you just have to lie on the floor clutching your belly and complaining that nobody saved you from your life choices.
  • Food that exists to overwhelm your senses and your ability to make decisions.
  • The two genders of time.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+piSHHCWR ]]> Jim Stormdancer 181. My Own Personal Kennedy Assassination https://topiclords.com/my-own-personal-kennedy-assassination 9a6f9ecf-1e61-4e88-b23f-9a6cc06ba374 Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Avery and Tyriq. We discuss Adam the Giant, Heathcliff, novelty metal covers about Truly Scrumptious / Doll on a Music Box, and The Phone Call by James Tate. 1:04:00 true Lords:

  • Avery
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Adam, Father of all humankind, was maybe a giant
  • Heathcliff is still going and it's weird
  • I've heard a million novelty metal covers but still nobody's done Truly Scrumptious / Doll on a Music Box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  • "The Phone Call" by James Tate

Microtopics:

  • Withholding all your best URLs until the end of the episode.
  • Using lowercase Ls in place of Is and seeing if anybody notices.
  • Leaving capitalizations to the whims of chaos. (Your fingers.)
  • Teachers explaining that if you can't write in cursive by junior high your teachers will throw things at you and call you stupid.
  • Adam and Eve growing to 18 feet tall.
  • Pre-flood humans and their towering heights/lifespans/IQs.
  • How to make your wisdom teeth fit again.
  • Conspiracy theories that have no bearing on anything.
  • Fighting wars over the estimated radius of the earth.
  • The Nephilim.
  • YHWH fanfiction.
  • How many Jesuses are alive today.
  • The friend you have with superhuman charisma and whether they ended up starting a cult.
  • Getcherself a nice cult, settle down, have a thousand babies.
  • The guy who was both a dwarf and a giant during his lifetime.
  • Every tall person having been short at one point.
  • Chain-smoking tweens drinking martinis and yelling at their secretaries.
  • A Topic Lords ouroboros.
  • Hypothesizing why the elderly people Heathcliff lives with have a child.
  • Having a child for some reason.
  • A humanoid robot with the word "meat" printed on its chest.
  • The kind of people who read comics every day.
  • Zippy the Pinhead.
  • A weird underground subculture comic that somehow made it into newspaper syndication.
  • Mustache Mondays vs. Mustache Lasagna.
  • A milk mustache but for lasagna.
  • A cartoon anvil that has its weight imprinted on it.
  • Two side characters explaining the situation to each other.
  • One of the birds says to the other, "Christ, what an asshole."
  • Historians a thousand years from now deciding whether Heathcliff should be included in the Bible.
  • After recorded media stops being a thing, episodes of The Simpsons being passed down as oral history.
  • Rhapsodes.
  • Contests for the best rhapsode.
  • Hector of the Shining Helmet vs. Hector the Booty Inspector.
  • Fillet episodes in the Odyssey and the Iliad.
  • The Flaming Lips album that comes on four CDs that your supposed to play simultaneously, but nobody's ever bothered.
  • How they handle hidden tracks on Spotify.
  • How to deal with skits when you're ripping rap albums to mp3.
  • The Meat Puppets playing a set in the middle of Nirvana'a MTV Unplugged set.
  • Writing a song about a shooting star who's been turned into a rat and has just fallen in love with someone named Tristran, and trying to figure out what rhymes with Tristran.
  • Working at the Brill Building.
  • Tin Pan Alley.
  • Nearly jumping out of your pants.
  • Taking a high-paying job as a murder victim.
  • The one where people wear horse skulls.
  • The Scrambler, from issue #12 where the panels were all out of order.
  • Working at the oil refinery until a giant spider comes and steals the Light of the Silmarils.
  • Whether there's a werewolf in the Silmarillion.
  • Biblical Exigesis.
  • Getting email saying that your art is improving someone's life.
  • A phone that can receive text messages but you have to pay extra to know who they're from.
]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Adam, Father of all humankind, was maybe a giant
  • Heathcliff is still going and it's weird
  • I've heard a million novelty metal covers but still nobody's done Truly Scrumptious / Doll on a Music Box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  • "The Phone Call" by James Tate

Microtopics:

  • Withholding all your best URLs until the end of the episode.
  • Using lowercase Ls in place of Is and seeing if anybody notices.
  • Leaving capitalizations to the whims of chaos. (Your fingers.)
  • Teachers explaining that if you can't write in cursive by junior high your teachers will throw things at you and call you stupid.
  • Adam and Eve growing to 18 feet tall.
  • Pre-flood humans and their towering heights/lifespans/IQs.
  • How to make your wisdom teeth fit again.
  • Conspiracy theories that have no bearing on anything.
  • Fighting wars over the estimated radius of the earth.
  • The Nephilim.
  • YHWH fanfiction.
  • How many Jesuses are alive today.
  • The friend you have with superhuman charisma and whether they ended up starting a cult.
  • Getcherself a nice cult, settle down, have a thousand babies.
  • The guy who was both a dwarf and a giant during his lifetime.
  • Every tall person having been short at one point.
  • Chain-smoking tweens drinking martinis and yelling at their secretaries.
  • A Topic Lords ouroboros.
  • Hypothesizing why the elderly people Heathcliff lives with have a child.
  • Having a child for some reason.
  • A humanoid robot with the word "meat" printed on its chest.
  • The kind of people who read comics every day.
  • Zippy the Pinhead.
  • A weird underground subculture comic that somehow made it into newspaper syndication.
  • Mustache Mondays vs. Mustache Lasagna.
  • A milk mustache but for lasagna.
  • A cartoon anvil that has its weight imprinted on it.
  • Two side characters explaining the situation to each other.
  • One of the birds says to the other, "Christ, what an asshole."
  • Historians a thousand years from now deciding whether Heathcliff should be included in the Bible.
  • After recorded media stops being a thing, episodes of The Simpsons being passed down as oral history.
  • Rhapsodes.
  • Contests for the best rhapsode.
  • Hector of the Shining Helmet vs. Hector the Booty Inspector.
  • Fillet episodes in the Odyssey and the Iliad.
  • The Flaming Lips album that comes on four CDs that your supposed to play simultaneously, but nobody's ever bothered.
  • How they handle hidden tracks on Spotify.
  • How to deal with skits when you're ripping rap albums to mp3.
  • The Meat Puppets playing a set in the middle of Nirvana'a MTV Unplugged set.
  • Writing a song about a shooting star who's been turned into a rat and has just fallen in love with someone named Tristran, and trying to figure out what rhymes with Tristran.
  • Working at the Brill Building.
  • Tin Pan Alley.
  • Nearly jumping out of your pants.
  • Taking a high-paying job as a murder victim.
  • The one where people wear horse skulls.
  • The Scrambler, from issue #12 where the panels were all out of order.
  • Working at the oil refinery until a giant spider comes and steals the Light of the Silmarils.
  • Whether there's a werewolf in the Silmarillion.
  • Biblical Exigesis.
  • Getting email saying that your art is improving someone's life.
  • A phone that can receive text messages but you have to pay extra to know who they're from.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Avery
  • Tyriq

Topics:

  • Adam, Father of all humankind, was maybe a giant
  • Heathcliff is still going and it's weird
  • I've heard a million novelty metal covers but still nobody's done Truly Scrumptious / Doll on a Music Box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  • "The Phone Call" by James Tate

Microtopics:

  • Withholding all your best URLs until the end of the episode.
  • Using lowercase Ls in place of Is and seeing if anybody notices.
  • Leaving capitalizations to the whims of chaos. (Your fingers.)
  • Teachers explaining that if you can't write in cursive by junior high your teachers will throw things at you and call you stupid.
  • Adam and Eve growing to 18 feet tall.
  • Pre-flood humans and their towering heights/lifespans/IQs.
  • How to make your wisdom teeth fit again.
  • Conspiracy theories that have no bearing on anything.
  • Fighting wars over the estimated radius of the earth.
  • The Nephilim.
  • YHWH fanfiction.
  • How many Jesuses are alive today.
  • The friend you have with superhuman charisma and whether they ended up starting a cult.
  • Getcherself a nice cult, settle down, have a thousand babies.
  • The guy who was both a dwarf and a giant during his lifetime.
  • Every tall person having been short at one point.
  • Chain-smoking tweens drinking martinis and yelling at their secretaries.
  • A Topic Lords ouroboros.
  • Hypothesizing why the elderly people Heathcliff lives with have a child.
  • Having a child for some reason.
  • A humanoid robot with the word "meat" printed on its chest.
  • The kind of people who read comics every day.
  • Zippy the Pinhead.
  • A weird underground subculture comic that somehow made it into newspaper syndication.
  • Mustache Mondays vs. Mustache Lasagna.
  • A milk mustache but for lasagna.
  • A cartoon anvil that has its weight imprinted on it.
  • Two side characters explaining the situation to each other.
  • One of the birds says to the other, "Christ, what an asshole."
  • Historians a thousand years from now deciding whether Heathcliff should be included in the Bible.
  • After recorded media stops being a thing, episodes of The Simpsons being passed down as oral history.
  • Rhapsodes.
  • Contests for the best rhapsode.
  • Hector of the Shining Helmet vs. Hector the Booty Inspector.
  • Fillet episodes in the Odyssey and the Iliad.
  • The Flaming Lips album that comes on four CDs that your supposed to play simultaneously, but nobody's ever bothered.
  • How they handle hidden tracks on Spotify.
  • How to deal with skits when you're ripping rap albums to mp3.
  • The Meat Puppets playing a set in the middle of Nirvana'a MTV Unplugged set.
  • Writing a song about a shooting star who's been turned into a rat and has just fallen in love with someone named Tristran, and trying to figure out what rhymes with Tristran.
  • Working at the Brill Building.
  • Tin Pan Alley.
  • Nearly jumping out of your pants.
  • Taking a high-paying job as a murder victim.
  • The one where people wear horse skulls.
  • The Scrambler, from issue #12 where the panels were all out of order.
  • Working at the oil refinery until a giant spider comes and steals the Light of the Silmarils.
  • Whether there's a werewolf in the Silmarillion.
  • Biblical Exigesis.
  • Getting email saying that your art is improving someone's life.
  • A phone that can receive text messages but you have to pay extra to know who they're from.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+FTaFikHX ]]> Jim Stormdancer 180. We Are All Stardust Poop https://topiclords.com/we-are-all-stardust-poop 40800d8e-d393-40f0-a757-cd167bd79899 Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ichiro and Adam. We discuss leaning to animate by watching cartoons, Totally Human Rapper, Frog Fractions banned from AGDQ, "Frog Fractions" by Totally Human Rapper, and Tiny Mass Games small games cycle. 1:00:01 true Lords:

  • Ichiro
  • Adam

Topics:

  • I learned how to animate by watching cartoons as a child (and I'm curious what else folks absorbed as a child that impacted the kind of adult they became)
  • I created a Totally Human Rapper that can read up on a game and cut a rap video.
  • Frog Fractions is banned from AGDQ
  • "Frog Fractions" by Totally Human Rapper
  • Tiny Mass Games small games cycle.

Microtopics:

  • One of the episodes with a cold open.
  • Live from New York, it's.
  • Using ocean water as a mixer.
  • Being of poop and returning to poop.
  • Using the Boston river as a mixer.
  • Learning everything you know about love from Robotech.
  • Losing your fiancee and marrying an alien instead.
  • Paying $6/hr to play a MUD.
  • Corresponding with your MUD lover via dead tree letters.
  • Playing a MUD and cheating on one avatar with another avatar and eventually realizing that they are played by the same person.
  • Sleep is Death.
  • The cool part of the Metaverse circa 2005.
  • Learning what human relationships look like by watching Saturday morning cartoons.
  • Sarah and Duck.
  • Pocoyo.
  • Busting ghosts. (A very important time in a boy's life.)
  • Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League.
  • The center of your Venn diagram as a creator.
  • Ichiro Paydirt.
  • If Tank Girl were a streamer.
  • Endless Seinfeld pulling a Microsoft Tay.
  • The year of the deluge of AI generated crap.
  • Making a BBS door game about traveling into space.
  • Zooming out of yourself and looking at it with ghost eyes.
  • A game that appears to be family-friendly but is actually porn-adjacent.
  • The Timic skip.
  • A very respectful way to play Frog Fractions.
  • The two concessions Jim made to game design in the Frog Fractions remaster.
  • Catering to the you demographic.
  • Blanking on Tim Ambrogi's name.
  • Noted base jumping game "ahh"
  • An underlying engine that just won't swear.
  • Saying something interesting enough to be debated by a bunch of people.
  • Stemming the tide of mediocrity across streaming platforms.
  • The value of making dinner for two people vs. making art for millions of people.
  • Having a thought in your head and wanting people to hear it.
  • Gluing all the ports shut.
  • Games that gradually destroy themselves.
  • Follow the Frog, an arcade action adventure.
  • Where Totally Human Rapper gets his ideas.
  • How to jailbreak ChatGPT.
  • A deck building auto battler without the deck.
  • A well-scoped game design.
  • Not really having anything to say but loving to wrestle with language.
  • An AI generated game about AI generated games.
  • Polishing a prototype enough to put it in front of a mass audience.
  • Rating AI-generated food.
  • Synergies and combinatorics.
  • The development process for each Frog Fractions game.
  • Answering to ask things.
]]> Lords:

  • Ichiro
  • Adam

Topics:

  • I learned how to animate by watching cartoons as a child (and I'm curious what else folks absorbed as a child that impacted the kind of adult they became)
  • I created a Totally Human Rapper that can read up on a game and cut a rap video.
  • Frog Fractions is banned from AGDQ
  • "Frog Fractions" by Totally Human Rapper
  • Tiny Mass Games small games cycle.

Microtopics:

  • One of the episodes with a cold open.
  • Live from New York, it's.
  • Using ocean water as a mixer.
  • Being of poop and returning to poop.
  • Using the Boston river as a mixer.
  • Learning everything you know about love from Robotech.
  • Losing your fiancee and marrying an alien instead.
  • Paying $6/hr to play a MUD.
  • Corresponding with your MUD lover via dead tree letters.
  • Playing a MUD and cheating on one avatar with another avatar and eventually realizing that they are played by the same person.
  • Sleep is Death.
  • The cool part of the Metaverse circa 2005.
  • Learning what human relationships look like by watching Saturday morning cartoons.
  • Sarah and Duck.
  • Pocoyo.
  • Busting ghosts. (A very important time in a boy's life.)
  • Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League.
  • The center of your Venn diagram as a creator.
  • Ichiro Paydirt.
  • If Tank Girl were a streamer.
  • Endless Seinfeld pulling a Microsoft Tay.
  • The year of the deluge of AI generated crap.
  • Making a BBS door game about traveling into space.
  • Zooming out of yourself and looking at it with ghost eyes.
  • A game that appears to be family-friendly but is actually porn-adjacent.
  • The Timic skip.
  • A very respectful way to play Frog Fractions.
  • The two concessions Jim made to game design in the Frog Fractions remaster.
  • Catering to the you demographic.
  • Blanking on Tim Ambrogi's name.
  • Noted base jumping game "ahh"
  • An underlying engine that just won't swear.
  • Saying something interesting enough to be debated by a bunch of people.
  • Stemming the tide of mediocrity across streaming platforms.
  • The value of making dinner for two people vs. making art for millions of people.
  • Having a thought in your head and wanting people to hear it.
  • Gluing all the ports shut.
  • Games that gradually destroy themselves.
  • Follow the Frog, an arcade action adventure.
  • Where Totally Human Rapper gets his ideas.
  • How to jailbreak ChatGPT.
  • A deck building auto battler without the deck.
  • A well-scoped game design.
  • Not really having anything to say but loving to wrestle with language.
  • An AI generated game about AI generated games.
  • Polishing a prototype enough to put it in front of a mass audience.
  • Rating AI-generated food.
  • Synergies and combinatorics.
  • The development process for each Frog Fractions game.
  • Answering to ask things.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ichiro
  • Adam

Topics:

  • I learned how to animate by watching cartoons as a child (and I'm curious what else folks absorbed as a child that impacted the kind of adult they became)
  • I created a Totally Human Rapper that can read up on a game and cut a rap video.
  • Frog Fractions is banned from AGDQ
  • "Frog Fractions" by Totally Human Rapper
  • Tiny Mass Games small games cycle.

Microtopics:

  • One of the episodes with a cold open.
  • Live from New York, it's.
  • Using ocean water as a mixer.
  • Being of poop and returning to poop.
  • Using the Boston river as a mixer.
  • Learning everything you know about love from Robotech.
  • Losing your fiancee and marrying an alien instead.
  • Paying $6/hr to play a MUD.
  • Corresponding with your MUD lover via dead tree letters.
  • Playing a MUD and cheating on one avatar with another avatar and eventually realizing that they are played by the same person.
  • Sleep is Death.
  • The cool part of the Metaverse circa 2005.
  • Learning what human relationships look like by watching Saturday morning cartoons.
  • Sarah and Duck.
  • Pocoyo.
  • Busting ghosts. (A very important time in a boy's life.)
  • Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League.
  • The center of your Venn diagram as a creator.
  • Ichiro Paydirt.
  • If Tank Girl were a streamer.
  • Endless Seinfeld pulling a Microsoft Tay.
  • The year of the deluge of AI generated crap.
  • Making a BBS door game about traveling into space.
  • Zooming out of yourself and looking at it with ghost eyes.
  • A game that appears to be family-friendly but is actually porn-adjacent.
  • The Timic skip.
  • A very respectful way to play Frog Fractions.
  • The two concessions Jim made to game design in the Frog Fractions remaster.
  • Catering to the you demographic.
  • Blanking on Tim Ambrogi's name.
  • Noted base jumping game "ahh"
  • An underlying engine that just won't swear.
  • Saying something interesting enough to be debated by a bunch of people.
  • Stemming the tide of mediocrity across streaming platforms.
  • The value of making dinner for two people vs. making art for millions of people.
  • Having a thought in your head and wanting people to hear it.
  • Gluing all the ports shut.
  • Games that gradually destroy themselves.
  • Follow the Frog, an arcade action adventure.
  • Where Totally Human Rapper gets his ideas.
  • How to jailbreak ChatGPT.
  • A deck building auto battler without the deck.
  • A well-scoped game design.
  • Not really having anything to say but loving to wrestle with language.
  • An AI generated game about AI generated games.
  • Polishing a prototype enough to put it in front of a mass audience.
  • Rating AI-generated food.
  • Synergies and combinatorics.
  • The development process for each Frog Fractions game.
  • Answering to ask things.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+CHNTrCYA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 179. Get Bad https://topiclords.com/get-bad 1d4dfbe3-ae53-45f6-9db0-93e1da605b5d Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss reading music badly, guessing the animal from bad old-timey description, how to pronounce "MacPaint," a poem in the options of a Tumblr poll, and airport teleportation. 1:03:02 true Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Games that you should not play if you get addicted to games.
  • Roguelikes that take a reasonable amount of time to play if you are bad at them.
  • We're Not That Bad!™
  • The Sunnyvale Singers.
  • Producing music with a piano.
  • Two guards, one who can't read a book and the other one who can read a book aloud but doesn't know the language.
  • Buttons corresponding to the doots.
  • Given a starting note, figuring out what the next note is supposed to be.
  • Not being able to sight sing but faking it by looking at the vertical distance between notes.
  • Music direction reading "lower than you think" (but in Italian)
  • Knowing the chord progressions to 10,000 pop songs.
  • Ways to make music.
  • Moving between shapes even without hearing them.
  • Playing accompaniment to silent films.
  • Improvising music differently each time.
  • Pliny the Elder describing the camel leopard.
  • An animal with the neck of a horse but the head of a camel.
  • A bigness answering thereto.
  • Enjoying the alligator too much.
  • A curse on four legs, equally pernicious on land and river.
  • Inflating the chameleon.
  • Spontaneous generation.
  • Horned ghosts catapulting themselves around.
  • Hunting an elephant by tricking it into leaning on a tree that won't support it.
  • Whether elephants have knees.
  • Vultures gestating for three years and giving live birth.
  • Vultures and condors reproducing without mating.
  • Your good friend Ms. Paint.
  • Naming your dog a Japanese-sounding name with no regard to Japanese phonotactics and then arguing with people who try to correct you.
  • Baking a cake that is 80% vanilla extract.
  • A poem in the options of a Tumblr poll.
  • Starting from a point of trust but slowly starting to doubt yourself.
  • Orpheus and Eurydice.
  • A poignant way of putting the reader in the character's frame of mind.
  • The value of Oregon Trail.
  • Iterating the Orpheus and Eurydice prisoner's dilemma, where whether looking back is the right move is different every time.
  • Choosing to buy a certain amount of supplies and watching that not work out for you and the character you named after your best friend in the media lab dies.
  • Extremely short form interactive fiction.
  • Making an important decision and never finding out if it was the right decision.
  • Performing Sicilian Reasoning to finesse the outcome of this online cake ingredient poll.
  • Making a perfect stairway in an online poll.
  • Making a phone app to help people choose the best option in the cake ingredient poll.
  • Instantly teleporting from your seat on the flight to the entrance to your destination airport.
  • Teleporting from the TSA interrogation room to the entrance of the airport.
  • Teleportation gravity wells.
  • Establishing an international airport out of your home.
  • Hoping the cops never figure out that you can only teleport to the entrance of an airport.
  • Stuperpowers
  • Gerrymandering your teleport destinations.
  • An international airport that is 100 miles long and 1 centimeter wide.
  • Asking a friend to convince you that a certain building is an international airport.
  • Drinking a glass of water while standing on your head to convince yourself of what an airport is.
  • Hiccups Gone Install.
  • You Only Get Screamered Once.
]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Games that you should not play if you get addicted to games.
  • Roguelikes that take a reasonable amount of time to play if you are bad at them.
  • We're Not That Bad!™
  • The Sunnyvale Singers.
  • Producing music with a piano.
  • Two guards, one who can't read a book and the other one who can read a book aloud but doesn't know the language.
  • Buttons corresponding to the doots.
  • Given a starting note, figuring out what the next note is supposed to be.
  • Not being able to sight sing but faking it by looking at the vertical distance between notes.
  • Music direction reading "lower than you think" (but in Italian)
  • Knowing the chord progressions to 10,000 pop songs.
  • Ways to make music.
  • Moving between shapes even without hearing them.
  • Playing accompaniment to silent films.
  • Improvising music differently each time.
  • Pliny the Elder describing the camel leopard.
  • An animal with the neck of a horse but the head of a camel.
  • A bigness answering thereto.
  • Enjoying the alligator too much.
  • A curse on four legs, equally pernicious on land and river.
  • Inflating the chameleon.
  • Spontaneous generation.
  • Horned ghosts catapulting themselves around.
  • Hunting an elephant by tricking it into leaning on a tree that won't support it.
  • Whether elephants have knees.
  • Vultures gestating for three years and giving live birth.
  • Vultures and condors reproducing without mating.
  • Your good friend Ms. Paint.
  • Naming your dog a Japanese-sounding name with no regard to Japanese phonotactics and then arguing with people who try to correct you.
  • Baking a cake that is 80% vanilla extract.
  • A poem in the options of a Tumblr poll.
  • Starting from a point of trust but slowly starting to doubt yourself.
  • Orpheus and Eurydice.
  • A poignant way of putting the reader in the character's frame of mind.
  • The value of Oregon Trail.
  • Iterating the Orpheus and Eurydice prisoner's dilemma, where whether looking back is the right move is different every time.
  • Choosing to buy a certain amount of supplies and watching that not work out for you and the character you named after your best friend in the media lab dies.
  • Extremely short form interactive fiction.
  • Making an important decision and never finding out if it was the right decision.
  • Performing Sicilian Reasoning to finesse the outcome of this online cake ingredient poll.
  • Making a perfect stairway in an online poll.
  • Making a phone app to help people choose the best option in the cake ingredient poll.
  • Instantly teleporting from your seat on the flight to the entrance to your destination airport.
  • Teleporting from the TSA interrogation room to the entrance of the airport.
  • Teleportation gravity wells.
  • Establishing an international airport out of your home.
  • Hoping the cops never figure out that you can only teleport to the entrance of an airport.
  • Stuperpowers
  • Gerrymandering your teleport destinations.
  • An international airport that is 100 miles long and 1 centimeter wide.
  • Asking a friend to convince you that a certain building is an international airport.
  • Drinking a glass of water while standing on your head to convince yourself of what an airport is.
  • Hiccups Gone Install.
  • You Only Get Screamered Once.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Games that you should not play if you get addicted to games.
  • Roguelikes that take a reasonable amount of time to play if you are bad at them.
  • We're Not That Bad!™
  • The Sunnyvale Singers.
  • Producing music with a piano.
  • Two guards, one who can't read a book and the other one who can read a book aloud but doesn't know the language.
  • Buttons corresponding to the doots.
  • Given a starting note, figuring out what the next note is supposed to be.
  • Not being able to sight sing but faking it by looking at the vertical distance between notes.
  • Music direction reading "lower than you think" (but in Italian)
  • Knowing the chord progressions to 10,000 pop songs.
  • Ways to make music.
  • Moving between shapes even without hearing them.
  • Playing accompaniment to silent films.
  • Improvising music differently each time.
  • Pliny the Elder describing the camel leopard.
  • An animal with the neck of a horse but the head of a camel.
  • A bigness answering thereto.
  • Enjoying the alligator too much.
  • A curse on four legs, equally pernicious on land and river.
  • Inflating the chameleon.
  • Spontaneous generation.
  • Horned ghosts catapulting themselves around.
  • Hunting an elephant by tricking it into leaning on a tree that won't support it.
  • Whether elephants have knees.
  • Vultures gestating for three years and giving live birth.
  • Vultures and condors reproducing without mating.
  • Your good friend Ms. Paint.
  • Naming your dog a Japanese-sounding name with no regard to Japanese phonotactics and then arguing with people who try to correct you.
  • Baking a cake that is 80% vanilla extract.
  • A poem in the options of a Tumblr poll.
  • Starting from a point of trust but slowly starting to doubt yourself.
  • Orpheus and Eurydice.
  • A poignant way of putting the reader in the character's frame of mind.
  • The value of Oregon Trail.
  • Iterating the Orpheus and Eurydice prisoner's dilemma, where whether looking back is the right move is different every time.
  • Choosing to buy a certain amount of supplies and watching that not work out for you and the character you named after your best friend in the media lab dies.
  • Extremely short form interactive fiction.
  • Making an important decision and never finding out if it was the right decision.
  • Performing Sicilian Reasoning to finesse the outcome of this online cake ingredient poll.
  • Making a perfect stairway in an online poll.
  • Making a phone app to help people choose the best option in the cake ingredient poll.
  • Instantly teleporting from your seat on the flight to the entrance to your destination airport.
  • Teleporting from the TSA interrogation room to the entrance of the airport.
  • Teleportation gravity wells.
  • Establishing an international airport out of your home.
  • Hoping the cops never figure out that you can only teleport to the entrance of an airport.
  • Stuperpowers
  • Gerrymandering your teleport destinations.
  • An international airport that is 100 miles long and 1 centimeter wide.
  • Asking a friend to convince you that a certain building is an international airport.
  • Drinking a glass of water while standing on your head to convince yourself of what an airport is.
  • Hiccups Gone Install.
  • You Only Get Screamered Once.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+TuSBf2gy ]]> Jim Stormdancer 178. The Lathe of Kojima https://topiclords.com/the-lathe-of-kojima 31d8c4cd-287d-4951-9679-7c8ad40138b0 Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayfaber and Phone. We discuss calculus ruining incremental games, small form factor PCs, HDR, Ode to Ice Cream by Vada Sultenfuss, and Metal Gear Solid 2: the most important game of 2023. 1:06:15 true Lords:

  • CisHetKeyfaber
  • Phone

Topics:

  • Calculus ruined incremental games for me
  • SFF PCs are ridiculous and hilarious
  • What's the deal with HDR?
  • Ode to Ice Cream by Vada Sultenfuss (from the movie My Girl)
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 is the most important game of 2023

Microtopics:

  • Appropriating wrestling culture.
  • Idle games vs. incremental games.
  • Trimps.
  • Physics and calculus educators each pretending the other field doesn't exist.
  • Jerk as a unit of measurement.
  • Ruining a child's mathematical career by teaching them linear algebra.
  • Floating point precision.
  • Optimizing the area under the curve.
  • What's the jerk of my progress?
  • Position, speed, acceleration, jerk, jounce, hyperjerk, metajounce, binge warp, migrational spank, barflurch, dark jaunt, catastrophic snap, whipfuck, and Newton's Torment.
  • A real aerodynamic phenomenon.
  • Ruining the bench racers.
  • The kind of people who form an online community around a game.
  • The NGU IDLE speedrunning community.
  • Slaying the starting area killing slimes for 90 hours.
  • How big 26.8 liters is.
  • Rehoming your PC.
  • How many shoeboxes your PC case is equivalent to.
  • A graphics card that is perpendicular to the motherboard.
  • How many parakeets could fit in your PC case using modern parakeet packing algorithms.
  • Making a novelty enormous soda can to use as a fake scale comparison in photos.
  • Bending your hand at a weird angle.
  • JEBKAC.
  • The jerk of your PC case.
  • Turning the gamma up in order to see a video game.
  • Squashed gamuts.
  • Adding more bits to describe the color.
  • HDMI stratification.
  • The colors that future mankind will invent.
  • Being unable to use certain hex color triplets because the Pantone license expired.
  • When ice cream tastes good.
  • Poems written by works in progress.
  • B.R.R. (Before Rocky Road)
  • Not having seen My Girl but having seen the cover at Blockbuster.
  • Growing up in a mortuary.
  • Bragging that you know how to play the theme to Jaws on the piano.
  • Nick at Nite.
  • Playing with Legos with I Love Lucy in the background.
  • Timeshared cable channels.
  • Nickelodeon's audience being kids and Nick at Nite's audience being the elderly so the channel's average audience is middle-aged.
  • The most important game of 2023.
  • The core switcheroo.
  • Psycho Mantis reading your memory card.
  • Playing a really whiny guy who just sucks.
  • Whether they've invented pausing cutscenes yet.
  • Pausing a 40 minute cutscene to go make pizza rolls.
  • AI heel turns.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 beating out Vampire Survivors for most important game of 2022.
  • Why Hideo Kojima's dialog sounds like an American 90s movie.
  • Political theory outsider art.
  • The anti-Noby Noby Boy.
  • A discord channel brimming with Lords.
]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKeyfaber
  • Phone

Topics:

  • Calculus ruined incremental games for me
  • SFF PCs are ridiculous and hilarious
  • What's the deal with HDR?
  • Ode to Ice Cream by Vada Sultenfuss (from the movie My Girl)
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 is the most important game of 2023

Microtopics:

  • Appropriating wrestling culture.
  • Idle games vs. incremental games.
  • Trimps.
  • Physics and calculus educators each pretending the other field doesn't exist.
  • Jerk as a unit of measurement.
  • Ruining a child's mathematical career by teaching them linear algebra.
  • Floating point precision.
  • Optimizing the area under the curve.
  • What's the jerk of my progress?
  • Position, speed, acceleration, jerk, jounce, hyperjerk, metajounce, binge warp, migrational spank, barflurch, dark jaunt, catastrophic snap, whipfuck, and Newton's Torment.
  • A real aerodynamic phenomenon.
  • Ruining the bench racers.
  • The kind of people who form an online community around a game.
  • The NGU IDLE speedrunning community.
  • Slaying the starting area killing slimes for 90 hours.
  • How big 26.8 liters is.
  • Rehoming your PC.
  • How many shoeboxes your PC case is equivalent to.
  • A graphics card that is perpendicular to the motherboard.
  • How many parakeets could fit in your PC case using modern parakeet packing algorithms.
  • Making a novelty enormous soda can to use as a fake scale comparison in photos.
  • Bending your hand at a weird angle.
  • JEBKAC.
  • The jerk of your PC case.
  • Turning the gamma up in order to see a video game.
  • Squashed gamuts.
  • Adding more bits to describe the color.
  • HDMI stratification.
  • The colors that future mankind will invent.
  • Being unable to use certain hex color triplets because the Pantone license expired.
  • When ice cream tastes good.
  • Poems written by works in progress.
  • B.R.R. (Before Rocky Road)
  • Not having seen My Girl but having seen the cover at Blockbuster.
  • Growing up in a mortuary.
  • Bragging that you know how to play the theme to Jaws on the piano.
  • Nick at Nite.
  • Playing with Legos with I Love Lucy in the background.
  • Timeshared cable channels.
  • Nickelodeon's audience being kids and Nick at Nite's audience being the elderly so the channel's average audience is middle-aged.
  • The most important game of 2023.
  • The core switcheroo.
  • Psycho Mantis reading your memory card.
  • Playing a really whiny guy who just sucks.
  • Whether they've invented pausing cutscenes yet.
  • Pausing a 40 minute cutscene to go make pizza rolls.
  • AI heel turns.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 beating out Vampire Survivors for most important game of 2022.
  • Why Hideo Kojima's dialog sounds like an American 90s movie.
  • Political theory outsider art.
  • The anti-Noby Noby Boy.
  • A discord channel brimming with Lords.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • CisHetKeyfaber
  • Phone

Topics:

  • Calculus ruined incremental games for me
  • SFF PCs are ridiculous and hilarious
  • What's the deal with HDR?
  • Ode to Ice Cream by Vada Sultenfuss (from the movie My Girl)
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 is the most important game of 2023

Microtopics:

  • Appropriating wrestling culture.
  • Idle games vs. incremental games.
  • Trimps.
  • Physics and calculus educators each pretending the other field doesn't exist.
  • Jerk as a unit of measurement.
  • Ruining a child's mathematical career by teaching them linear algebra.
  • Floating point precision.
  • Optimizing the area under the curve.
  • What's the jerk of my progress?
  • Position, speed, acceleration, jerk, jounce, hyperjerk, metajounce, binge warp, migrational spank, barflurch, dark jaunt, catastrophic snap, whipfuck, and Newton's Torment.
  • A real aerodynamic phenomenon.
  • Ruining the bench racers.
  • The kind of people who form an online community around a game.
  • The NGU IDLE speedrunning community.
  • Slaying the starting area killing slimes for 90 hours.
  • How big 26.8 liters is.
  • Rehoming your PC.
  • How many shoeboxes your PC case is equivalent to.
  • A graphics card that is perpendicular to the motherboard.
  • How many parakeets could fit in your PC case using modern parakeet packing algorithms.
  • Making a novelty enormous soda can to use as a fake scale comparison in photos.
  • Bending your hand at a weird angle.
  • JEBKAC.
  • The jerk of your PC case.
  • Turning the gamma up in order to see a video game.
  • Squashed gamuts.
  • Adding more bits to describe the color.
  • HDMI stratification.
  • The colors that future mankind will invent.
  • Being unable to use certain hex color triplets because the Pantone license expired.
  • When ice cream tastes good.
  • Poems written by works in progress.
  • B.R.R. (Before Rocky Road)
  • Not having seen My Girl but having seen the cover at Blockbuster.
  • Growing up in a mortuary.
  • Bragging that you know how to play the theme to Jaws on the piano.
  • Nick at Nite.
  • Playing with Legos with I Love Lucy in the background.
  • Timeshared cable channels.
  • Nickelodeon's audience being kids and Nick at Nite's audience being the elderly so the channel's average audience is middle-aged.
  • The most important game of 2023.
  • The core switcheroo.
  • Psycho Mantis reading your memory card.
  • Playing a really whiny guy who just sucks.
  • Whether they've invented pausing cutscenes yet.
  • Pausing a 40 minute cutscene to go make pizza rolls.
  • AI heel turns.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 beating out Vampire Survivors for most important game of 2022.
  • Why Hideo Kojima's dialog sounds like an American 90s movie.
  • Political theory outsider art.
  • The anti-Noby Noby Boy.
  • A discord channel brimming with Lords.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+U-bAPFzL ]]> Jim Stormdancer 177. An Episode Your Landlord Should Not Listen To https://topiclords.com/an-episode-your-landlord-should-not-listen-to 798a25c3-7d5d-4c06-8e5d-69a16b3f3b24 Mon, 13 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alicia and Ryan. We discuss: Seattle's reaction to snow vs the Bay Area's reaction to rain, would you rather fart bones once a month or have Goldeneye "big head mode" on in real life for a year, Moral philosophy lessons from the California DMV, Nancy, and common everyday items that make you mentally "time travel." 1:03:35 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alicia
  • Ryan
    • Just type his name into google.

Topics:

  • Seattle's reaction to snow vs the Bay Area's reaction to rain: who is more dramatic?
  • Would you rather fart bones once a month or have Goldeneye "big head mode" on in real life for a year?
  • Moral philosophy lessons from the California DMV
  • Nancy
  • Common everyday items that make you mentally "time travel"

Microtopics:

  • Structurally reinforcing the scrotum.
  • Plugging mundane chores around the house.
  • Why do you live here, Seattle?
  • The lamentation of a failed joke being funnier than the joke itself would've been.
  • Turning the tire towards the curb when parking on a hill.
  • Driving in inclement weather.
  • Milking oats.
  • What it means for society when you make oat milk at home.
  • The rain we occasionally get except way more.
  • Bettie White-out.
  • When an imaginary kid uses his last words to put you on blast.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of big head mode.
  • How to get on the bus with big head mode on.
  • Whose bones you're farting right now.
  • Big Head Mode Confirmed in GoldenEye 007.
  • The yoga pose that is most optimal for shitting bones.
  • Getting your GoldenEye big head stuck in the automatic doors at TJ Maxx.
  • Whale bones on your mattress.
  • Which bones you can do without.
  • Bone pellets.
  • Using your broken tooth as a fidget toy.
  • An absolutely staggering amount of dental work.
  • A perfectly lovely root canal.
  • Using your bone-lasered rib as a fidget toy.
  • Extra ribs just loose in your torso somewhere.
  • Ribs of betrayal stabbing you in your soft pink innards.
  • McRib, more like MacBethRib.
  • The DMV letting you know that your custom license plate is "in the mail, you fucking pervert."
  • A grizzled PI paid to determine whether Dr. Puff is a real doctor.
  • Dark, but fair.
  • The moral philosophy of the DMV.
  • The 4chan veteran the DMV hires to detect profanity in custom license plate applications.
  • Three letters that mean a car thing.
  • You just got passed by a bad driver.
  • Nancyverse lore.
  • The one place in the world where the cost of living is higher than San Francisco.
  • Slant rhymes that slant so much they fall over.
  • Writing a Nancy fan poem just so you can slip increasingly awful rhymes into it.
  • Making your poem worse and worse as it goes on because what are the readers going to do, stop reading? Nobody has Netflix in 1966.
  • Using hand-crank egg-beaters when it's not the Prohibition.
  • Everybody at the office party with those paper guillotines, going to town on reams of paper.
  • Jim's hotel waffle story again.
  • Paying $8 for this novelty bust of Duke Nukem because you liked Duke Nukem 1.
  • High school kids dressing just like you dressed when you were in high school 20 years ago.
  • JNCO jeans with a dragon on the back pocket.
  • That Nostalgia Cycle: it's gonna come around.
  • Using two different keys to unlock and start your car.
  • The best car for the kidnapper on the go.
  • The first car to use the same key for the door, trunk and ignition.
  • Locking the exhaust pipe so nobody can put a banana in there.
  • Separate keys for locking your sun and moonroof.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alicia
  • Ryan
    • Just type his name into google.

Topics:

  • Seattle's reaction to snow vs the Bay Area's reaction to rain: who is more dramatic?
  • Would you rather fart bones once a month or have Goldeneye "big head mode" on in real life for a year?
  • Moral philosophy lessons from the California DMV
  • Nancy
  • Common everyday items that make you mentally "time travel"

Microtopics:

  • Structurally reinforcing the scrotum.
  • Plugging mundane chores around the house.
  • Why do you live here, Seattle?
  • The lamentation of a failed joke being funnier than the joke itself would've been.
  • Turning the tire towards the curb when parking on a hill.
  • Driving in inclement weather.
  • Milking oats.
  • What it means for society when you make oat milk at home.
  • The rain we occasionally get except way more.
  • Bettie White-out.
  • When an imaginary kid uses his last words to put you on blast.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of big head mode.
  • How to get on the bus with big head mode on.
  • Whose bones you're farting right now.
  • Big Head Mode Confirmed in GoldenEye 007.
  • The yoga pose that is most optimal for shitting bones.
  • Getting your GoldenEye big head stuck in the automatic doors at TJ Maxx.
  • Whale bones on your mattress.
  • Which bones you can do without.
  • Bone pellets.
  • Using your broken tooth as a fidget toy.
  • An absolutely staggering amount of dental work.
  • A perfectly lovely root canal.
  • Using your bone-lasered rib as a fidget toy.
  • Extra ribs just loose in your torso somewhere.
  • Ribs of betrayal stabbing you in your soft pink innards.
  • McRib, more like MacBethRib.
  • The DMV letting you know that your custom license plate is "in the mail, you fucking pervert."
  • A grizzled PI paid to determine whether Dr. Puff is a real doctor.
  • Dark, but fair.
  • The moral philosophy of the DMV.
  • The 4chan veteran the DMV hires to detect profanity in custom license plate applications.
  • Three letters that mean a car thing.
  • You just got passed by a bad driver.
  • Nancyverse lore.
  • The one place in the world where the cost of living is higher than San Francisco.
  • Slant rhymes that slant so much they fall over.
  • Writing a Nancy fan poem just so you can slip increasingly awful rhymes into it.
  • Making your poem worse and worse as it goes on because what are the readers going to do, stop reading? Nobody has Netflix in 1966.
  • Using hand-crank egg-beaters when it's not the Prohibition.
  • Everybody at the office party with those paper guillotines, going to town on reams of paper.
  • Jim's hotel waffle story again.
  • Paying $8 for this novelty bust of Duke Nukem because you liked Duke Nukem 1.
  • High school kids dressing just like you dressed when you were in high school 20 years ago.
  • JNCO jeans with a dragon on the back pocket.
  • That Nostalgia Cycle: it's gonna come around.
  • Using two different keys to unlock and start your car.
  • The best car for the kidnapper on the go.
  • The first car to use the same key for the door, trunk and ignition.
  • Locking the exhaust pipe so nobody can put a banana in there.
  • Separate keys for locking your sun and moonroof.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alicia
  • Ryan
    • Just type his name into google.

Topics:

  • Seattle's reaction to snow vs the Bay Area's reaction to rain: who is more dramatic?
  • Would you rather fart bones once a month or have Goldeneye "big head mode" on in real life for a year?
  • Moral philosophy lessons from the California DMV
  • Nancy
  • Common everyday items that make you mentally "time travel"

Microtopics:

  • Structurally reinforcing the scrotum.
  • Plugging mundane chores around the house.
  • Why do you live here, Seattle?
  • The lamentation of a failed joke being funnier than the joke itself would've been.
  • Turning the tire towards the curb when parking on a hill.
  • Driving in inclement weather.
  • Milking oats.
  • What it means for society when you make oat milk at home.
  • The rain we occasionally get except way more.
  • Bettie White-out.
  • When an imaginary kid uses his last words to put you on blast.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of big head mode.
  • How to get on the bus with big head mode on.
  • Whose bones you're farting right now.
  • Big Head Mode Confirmed in GoldenEye 007.
  • The yoga pose that is most optimal for shitting bones.
  • Getting your GoldenEye big head stuck in the automatic doors at TJ Maxx.
  • Whale bones on your mattress.
  • Which bones you can do without.
  • Bone pellets.
  • Using your broken tooth as a fidget toy.
  • An absolutely staggering amount of dental work.
  • A perfectly lovely root canal.
  • Using your bone-lasered rib as a fidget toy.
  • Extra ribs just loose in your torso somewhere.
  • Ribs of betrayal stabbing you in your soft pink innards.
  • McRib, more like MacBethRib.
  • The DMV letting you know that your custom license plate is "in the mail, you fucking pervert."
  • A grizzled PI paid to determine whether Dr. Puff is a real doctor.
  • Dark, but fair.
  • The moral philosophy of the DMV.
  • The 4chan veteran the DMV hires to detect profanity in custom license plate applications.
  • Three letters that mean a car thing.
  • You just got passed by a bad driver.
  • Nancyverse lore.
  • The one place in the world where the cost of living is higher than San Francisco.
  • Slant rhymes that slant so much they fall over.
  • Writing a Nancy fan poem just so you can slip increasingly awful rhymes into it.
  • Making your poem worse and worse as it goes on because what are the readers going to do, stop reading? Nobody has Netflix in 1966.
  • Using hand-crank egg-beaters when it's not the Prohibition.
  • Everybody at the office party with those paper guillotines, going to town on reams of paper.
  • Jim's hotel waffle story again.
  • Paying $8 for this novelty bust of Duke Nukem because you liked Duke Nukem 1.
  • High school kids dressing just like you dressed when you were in high school 20 years ago.
  • JNCO jeans with a dragon on the back pocket.
  • That Nostalgia Cycle: it's gonna come around.
  • Using two different keys to unlock and start your car.
  • The best car for the kidnapper on the go.
  • The first car to use the same key for the door, trunk and ignition.
  • Locking the exhaust pipe so nobody can put a banana in there.
  • Separate keys for locking your sun and moonroof.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+gaB4TOBl ]]> Jim Stormdancer 176. A Diglett Slightly Tan https://topiclords.com/a-diglett-slightly-tan 127a7a67-7bc2-4d2f-aace-fe8c21d779c4 Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Hallie and John B. We discuss tabletop RPGs as educational platform, Flicky-likes, Etch A Sketch Animator 2000, My Brother's Head Should Be Replaced by Jack Prelutsky, and Buff Diglett. 54:28 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Hallie
  • John B

Topics:

  • Tabletop RPGs as educational platform
  • Flicky-likes
  • Etch A Sketch Animator 2000
  • Poem: "My Brother's Head Should Be Replaced" by Jack Prelutsky
  • Buff Diglett

Microtopics:

  • 471 very positive reviews.
  • Pizza Tower, the Tower of Pizza.
  • Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular.
  • Taking a drink of your Safeway brand Diet Cola Caffeine Free Soda.
  • Bouncy the Rat and her friends in the Wild Wood.
  • Providing a platform for people to talk to each other and learn about boundaries.
  • Why to add numbers together.
  • Teaching children math when everyone has a pocket calculator in their pocket at all times.
  • A peek under the curtain.
  • The edutainment classics.
  • Three D&D combat system as a way to get comfortable doing arithmetic in your head.
  • Providing an experiential experience.
  • A tiny video game console that looks like a Sega Genesis.
  • Trying to sex Flicky.
  • Maximizing your combo chain in Flicky.
  • Sonic 3D Blast as a sequel to Flicky.
  • Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • Flicking the controller to make the rubber ducky jump.
  • A dude collecting dudes who follow you in a trail.
  • Pix the Cat.
  • All the Bubble Bobble sequels, none of which use the bubbling mechanic.
  • Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure.
  • Whip Whip: the word "whip" twice.
  • The Etch-a-Sketch: a terrible toy for terrible people.
  • Making animations that are perhaps five or six frames long.
  • Controlling with the knobbies.
  • The Magic Touch Pad.
  • A button that says "recall" on it.
  • Putt-Nuts Go to the Moon, featuring Alan Shepard.
  • Plugging your Etch-a-Sketch into your VCR to save your art.
  • The powder leaking out of the Etch-a-Sketch because you used it too much.
  • It's like painting but on a TV but worse than regular painting.
  • 2000 gray squares.
  • The poet laureate of children.
  • The golden age of the CD-ROM.
  • Wanting a tomato to be bigger.
  • The Tomato Centipede.
  • Poems about homework.
  • A mole-type Pokemon.
  • Everybody independently coming to the conclusion that Diglett has a muscular human body down there.
  • Buff kittens.
  • Whether Dugtrio has one muscular human body down there, or three.
  • Three human bodybuilders cosplaying as Dugtrio.
  • Trying to search for "naked diglett" but Google autocorrects you to "naked woman"
  • Space Dentist!!
  • That one dentist out of ten who recommends that you go to space.
  • Organizing your video game garbo.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Hallie
  • John B

Topics:

  • Tabletop RPGs as educational platform
  • Flicky-likes
  • Etch A Sketch Animator 2000
  • Poem: "My Brother's Head Should Be Replaced" by Jack Prelutsky
  • Buff Diglett

Microtopics:

  • 471 very positive reviews.
  • Pizza Tower, the Tower of Pizza.
  • Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular.
  • Taking a drink of your Safeway brand Diet Cola Caffeine Free Soda.
  • Bouncy the Rat and her friends in the Wild Wood.
  • Providing a platform for people to talk to each other and learn about boundaries.
  • Why to add numbers together.
  • Teaching children math when everyone has a pocket calculator in their pocket at all times.
  • A peek under the curtain.
  • The edutainment classics.
  • Three D&D combat system as a way to get comfortable doing arithmetic in your head.
  • Providing an experiential experience.
  • A tiny video game console that looks like a Sega Genesis.
  • Trying to sex Flicky.
  • Maximizing your combo chain in Flicky.
  • Sonic 3D Blast as a sequel to Flicky.
  • Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • Flicking the controller to make the rubber ducky jump.
  • A dude collecting dudes who follow you in a trail.
  • Pix the Cat.
  • All the Bubble Bobble sequels, none of which use the bubbling mechanic.
  • Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure.
  • Whip Whip: the word "whip" twice.
  • The Etch-a-Sketch: a terrible toy for terrible people.
  • Making animations that are perhaps five or six frames long.
  • Controlling with the knobbies.
  • The Magic Touch Pad.
  • A button that says "recall" on it.
  • Putt-Nuts Go to the Moon, featuring Alan Shepard.
  • Plugging your Etch-a-Sketch into your VCR to save your art.
  • The powder leaking out of the Etch-a-Sketch because you used it too much.
  • It's like painting but on a TV but worse than regular painting.
  • 2000 gray squares.
  • The poet laureate of children.
  • The golden age of the CD-ROM.
  • Wanting a tomato to be bigger.
  • The Tomato Centipede.
  • Poems about homework.
  • A mole-type Pokemon.
  • Everybody independently coming to the conclusion that Diglett has a muscular human body down there.
  • Buff kittens.
  • Whether Dugtrio has one muscular human body down there, or three.
  • Three human bodybuilders cosplaying as Dugtrio.
  • Trying to search for "naked diglett" but Google autocorrects you to "naked woman"
  • Space Dentist!!
  • That one dentist out of ten who recommends that you go to space.
  • Organizing your video game garbo.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Hallie
  • John B

Topics:

  • Tabletop RPGs as educational platform
  • Flicky-likes
  • Etch A Sketch Animator 2000
  • Poem: "My Brother's Head Should Be Replaced" by Jack Prelutsky
  • Buff Diglett

Microtopics:

  • 471 very positive reviews.
  • Pizza Tower, the Tower of Pizza.
  • Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular.
  • Taking a drink of your Safeway brand Diet Cola Caffeine Free Soda.
  • Bouncy the Rat and her friends in the Wild Wood.
  • Providing a platform for people to talk to each other and learn about boundaries.
  • Why to add numbers together.
  • Teaching children math when everyone has a pocket calculator in their pocket at all times.
  • A peek under the curtain.
  • The edutainment classics.
  • Three D&D combat system as a way to get comfortable doing arithmetic in your head.
  • Providing an experiential experience.
  • A tiny video game console that looks like a Sega Genesis.
  • Trying to sex Flicky.
  • Maximizing your combo chain in Flicky.
  • Sonic 3D Blast as a sequel to Flicky.
  • Super Rub-a-Dub.
  • Flicking the controller to make the rubber ducky jump.
  • A dude collecting dudes who follow you in a trail.
  • Pix the Cat.
  • All the Bubble Bobble sequels, none of which use the bubbling mechanic.
  • Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure.
  • Whip Whip: the word "whip" twice.
  • The Etch-a-Sketch: a terrible toy for terrible people.
  • Making animations that are perhaps five or six frames long.
  • Controlling with the knobbies.
  • The Magic Touch Pad.
  • A button that says "recall" on it.
  • Putt-Nuts Go to the Moon, featuring Alan Shepard.
  • Plugging your Etch-a-Sketch into your VCR to save your art.
  • The powder leaking out of the Etch-a-Sketch because you used it too much.
  • It's like painting but on a TV but worse than regular painting.
  • 2000 gray squares.
  • The poet laureate of children.
  • The golden age of the CD-ROM.
  • Wanting a tomato to be bigger.
  • The Tomato Centipede.
  • Poems about homework.
  • A mole-type Pokemon.
  • Everybody independently coming to the conclusion that Diglett has a muscular human body down there.
  • Buff kittens.
  • Whether Dugtrio has one muscular human body down there, or three.
  • Three human bodybuilders cosplaying as Dugtrio.
  • Trying to search for "naked diglett" but Google autocorrects you to "naked woman"
  • Space Dentist!!
  • That one dentist out of ten who recommends that you go to space.
  • Organizing your video game garbo.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+IRB1ID0V ]]> Jim Stormdancer 175. This Movie Has Marky Mark in It https://topiclords.com/this-movie-has-marky-mark-in-it 391dbde0-f68c-4730-9934-a50429cfa65b Mon, 27 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Jesse. We discuss the Spanish word that can't be spelled, Disco Elysium, Clue ||: Murder in Disguise, All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order, this year's beast of a Mystery Hunt, and shareable alarms. 1:14:16 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jesse

Topics:

  • There's a Spanish word which officially cannot be written because the grammar and orthography conflict about how it should spelled/pronounced.
  • My personal relationship with Disco Elysium
  • Clue II: Murder in Disguise
  • All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order
  • This year's beast of a Mystery Hunt
  • Shareable alarms

Microtopics:

  • Texans with nothing to plug.
  • The Army Corp of Engineers coming to your town and kicking ass.
  • No, and no.
  • Fuck em, just get a laptop.
  • Fact checking the dinner table conversation with your laptop.
  • An interaction deemed normal.
  • The Spanish double-L sound.
  • Finally finding a way that spelling in English is more sensible than spelling in Spanish.
  • Desperately avoiding hearing French spoken incorrectly.
  • A place that is less like the rest of Canada than any part of the United States is like the United States.
  • A good relaxing podcast that leads to substantial academic progress.
  • Stormdancer Zero.
  • Secret of Monkey Island with additional D&D stat checks and communism.
  • Continents not connected to tectonic plates but instead freely floating in the mist.
  • When your stats talk to you.
  • Equipping a philosophical idea in your thought cabinet.
  • Where the resource extraction happens.
  • An alcoholic amnesiac video game protagonist.
  • Finding the richest person in town to explain to you how the world works.
  • Recreating all your characters from the ground up to be optimized for the game engine.
  • Cheating past the final boss in Baldur's Gate because the alternative is starting from scratch with a viable build.
  • Revising your thinking about the Gros Michel banana.
  • Campy goofballs doing campy goofball shit except it's not Tim Curry this time.
  • The guy whose name Jim can't remember who played Chuck on Better Call Saul.
  • The VCR board game phenomenon.
  • Scenes sort of adding up into a narrative if you squint.
  • Seeing John Lithgow when nobody else sees him.
  • How to get Michael Land to talk to you at CES.
  • Out-of-work FMV actors.
  • Specializing in loving horrible FMV games.
  • The one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism.
  • DVD games vs. VCR games.
  • A DVD arriving too late to save a drowning VCR game industry.
  • The pride of seeing your topic grow up and take its place in the world.
  • Panache, aplomb, and savoir-faire.
  • Rolling, glass tanks of beverages that rocked that lined mountain.
  • Women as the exception to implied maleness.
  • A folk pop album featuring a disgraced CDC employee.
  • 50 Cent rapping about going to prison for insider trading.
  • The Topic Lords Guarantee.
  • A series of interconnected puzzles that you solve as a team.
  • Flavor text explaining why it's fun to solve this math problem.
  • A beautiful puzzle hunt that is way too long.
  • Assuming that being good at solving puzzles is the same skill as constructing puzzles.
  • Waiting all year for a chocolate box that ends up being a marathon through Death Valley.
  • How to test a 100-person puzzle hunt.
  • Admonishing astronomers to "get good."
  • Puzzles that are like tiny little gifts that open up and dance in front of you.
  • A chip that controls a single light point on the wall.
  • Doing something for free vs. doing it for a pittance.
  • Losing your wedding ring but also your wedding ring screams once a day.
  • Your screaming wedding ring following you from house to house.
  • One o’clock: Time for Pants.
  • Remembering that it's time for pants no matter what time zone you're in.
  • The Playstation Vita's pants alarm.
  • Playing a competitive minigame to see who can wake up fastest.
  • Earning achievements for getting out of bed.
  • The app that is the opposite of sex.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jesse

Topics:

  • There's a Spanish word which officially cannot be written because the grammar and orthography conflict about how it should spelled/pronounced.
  • My personal relationship with Disco Elysium
  • Clue II: Murder in Disguise
  • All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order
  • This year's beast of a Mystery Hunt
  • Shareable alarms

Microtopics:

  • Texans with nothing to plug.
  • The Army Corp of Engineers coming to your town and kicking ass.
  • No, and no.
  • Fuck em, just get a laptop.
  • Fact checking the dinner table conversation with your laptop.
  • An interaction deemed normal.
  • The Spanish double-L sound.
  • Finally finding a way that spelling in English is more sensible than spelling in Spanish.
  • Desperately avoiding hearing French spoken incorrectly.
  • A place that is less like the rest of Canada than any part of the United States is like the United States.
  • A good relaxing podcast that leads to substantial academic progress.
  • Stormdancer Zero.
  • Secret of Monkey Island with additional D&D stat checks and communism.
  • Continents not connected to tectonic plates but instead freely floating in the mist.
  • When your stats talk to you.
  • Equipping a philosophical idea in your thought cabinet.
  • Where the resource extraction happens.
  • An alcoholic amnesiac video game protagonist.
  • Finding the richest person in town to explain to you how the world works.
  • Recreating all your characters from the ground up to be optimized for the game engine.
  • Cheating past the final boss in Baldur's Gate because the alternative is starting from scratch with a viable build.
  • Revising your thinking about the Gros Michel banana.
  • Campy goofballs doing campy goofball shit except it's not Tim Curry this time.
  • The guy whose name Jim can't remember who played Chuck on Better Call Saul.
  • The VCR board game phenomenon.
  • Scenes sort of adding up into a narrative if you squint.
  • Seeing John Lithgow when nobody else sees him.
  • How to get Michael Land to talk to you at CES.
  • Out-of-work FMV actors.
  • Specializing in loving horrible FMV games.
  • The one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism.
  • DVD games vs. VCR games.
  • A DVD arriving too late to save a drowning VCR game industry.
  • The pride of seeing your topic grow up and take its place in the world.
  • Panache, aplomb, and savoir-faire.
  • Rolling, glass tanks of beverages that rocked that lined mountain.
  • Women as the exception to implied maleness.
  • A folk pop album featuring a disgraced CDC employee.
  • 50 Cent rapping about going to prison for insider trading.
  • The Topic Lords Guarantee.
  • A series of interconnected puzzles that you solve as a team.
  • Flavor text explaining why it's fun to solve this math problem.
  • A beautiful puzzle hunt that is way too long.
  • Assuming that being good at solving puzzles is the same skill as constructing puzzles.
  • Waiting all year for a chocolate box that ends up being a marathon through Death Valley.
  • How to test a 100-person puzzle hunt.
  • Admonishing astronomers to "get good."
  • Puzzles that are like tiny little gifts that open up and dance in front of you.
  • A chip that controls a single light point on the wall.
  • Doing something for free vs. doing it for a pittance.
  • Losing your wedding ring but also your wedding ring screams once a day.
  • Your screaming wedding ring following you from house to house.
  • One o’clock: Time for Pants.
  • Remembering that it's time for pants no matter what time zone you're in.
  • The Playstation Vita's pants alarm.
  • Playing a competitive minigame to see who can wake up fastest.
  • Earning achievements for getting out of bed.
  • The app that is the opposite of sex.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jesse

Topics:

  • There's a Spanish word which officially cannot be written because the grammar and orthography conflict about how it should spelled/pronounced.
  • My personal relationship with Disco Elysium
  • Clue II: Murder in Disguise
  • All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order
  • This year's beast of a Mystery Hunt
  • Shareable alarms

Microtopics:

  • Texans with nothing to plug.
  • The Army Corp of Engineers coming to your town and kicking ass.
  • No, and no.
  • Fuck em, just get a laptop.
  • Fact checking the dinner table conversation with your laptop.
  • An interaction deemed normal.
  • The Spanish double-L sound.
  • Finally finding a way that spelling in English is more sensible than spelling in Spanish.
  • Desperately avoiding hearing French spoken incorrectly.
  • A place that is less like the rest of Canada than any part of the United States is like the United States.
  • A good relaxing podcast that leads to substantial academic progress.
  • Stormdancer Zero.
  • Secret of Monkey Island with additional D&D stat checks and communism.
  • Continents not connected to tectonic plates but instead freely floating in the mist.
  • When your stats talk to you.
  • Equipping a philosophical idea in your thought cabinet.
  • Where the resource extraction happens.
  • An alcoholic amnesiac video game protagonist.
  • Finding the richest person in town to explain to you how the world works.
  • Recreating all your characters from the ground up to be optimized for the game engine.
  • Cheating past the final boss in Baldur's Gate because the alternative is starting from scratch with a viable build.
  • Revising your thinking about the Gros Michel banana.
  • Campy goofballs doing campy goofball shit except it's not Tim Curry this time.
  • The guy whose name Jim can't remember who played Chuck on Better Call Saul.
  • The VCR board game phenomenon.
  • Scenes sort of adding up into a narrative if you squint.
  • Seeing John Lithgow when nobody else sees him.
  • How to get Michael Land to talk to you at CES.
  • Out-of-work FMV actors.
  • Specializing in loving horrible FMV games.
  • The one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism.
  • DVD games vs. VCR games.
  • A DVD arriving too late to save a drowning VCR game industry.
  • The pride of seeing your topic grow up and take its place in the world.
  • Panache, aplomb, and savoir-faire.
  • Rolling, glass tanks of beverages that rocked that lined mountain.
  • Women as the exception to implied maleness.
  • A folk pop album featuring a disgraced CDC employee.
  • 50 Cent rapping about going to prison for insider trading.
  • The Topic Lords Guarantee.
  • A series of interconnected puzzles that you solve as a team.
  • Flavor text explaining why it's fun to solve this math problem.
  • A beautiful puzzle hunt that is way too long.
  • Assuming that being good at solving puzzles is the same skill as constructing puzzles.
  • Waiting all year for a chocolate box that ends up being a marathon through Death Valley.
  • How to test a 100-person puzzle hunt.
  • Admonishing astronomers to "get good."
  • Puzzles that are like tiny little gifts that open up and dance in front of you.
  • A chip that controls a single light point on the wall.
  • Doing something for free vs. doing it for a pittance.
  • Losing your wedding ring but also your wedding ring screams once a day.
  • Your screaming wedding ring following you from house to house.
  • One o’clock: Time for Pants.
  • Remembering that it's time for pants no matter what time zone you're in.
  • The Playstation Vita's pants alarm.
  • Playing a competitive minigame to see who can wake up fastest.
  • Earning achievements for getting out of bed.
  • The app that is the opposite of sex.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+k-PSf_Ec ]]> Jim Stormdancer 174. Occam's Raccoon https://topiclords.com/occams-raccoon 324adc98-4c2d-44b9-86c8-3b347d6c478b Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Alexander. We discuss words with similar sounds and meanings but no etymological relation, virtual marble runs with guns, the broom method of dealing with a hydrogen leak, a poem by Dr. Seuss, the Loveland Frog, and ghosts are real: what are the economic consequences? 1:05:42 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alexander

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.
  • Lords starting with Xa.
  • Moving boxes that have handles built in.
  • All else being equal, a raccoon did it.
  • Proto-Indo-European.
  • Putting the S in Island.
  • The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare.
  • Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa.
  • Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now."
  • Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other.
  • Escalating Revenge Core Destruction.
  • If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent.
  • Oil timers.
  • Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more.
  • Apollonian circles.
  • The ancestry of Firefox.
  • Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides.
  • Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing.
  • A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket.
  • Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot.
  • An air conditioner but backwards.
  • Marbula One.
  • Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle.
  • The year you finally get into Blaseball.
  • How Blaseball works.
  • How to detect a fire that you can't see.
  • Glass Onion: debunked.
  • A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters.
  • Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors.
  • What "from" means in "escape from the tank"
  • The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by.
  • The Snack of the Stars.
  • Safety testing various propellants.
  • What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium.
  • The Gregorian Underwater Choir.
  • Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it.
  • The Lorax threatening you with a bat.
  • My huge sawed off flashlight.
  • Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight.
  • Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies.
  • Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth.
  • Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry.
  • Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round?
  • Bee Barns.
  • A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods.
  • A frog guy. A guy who is a frog.
  • A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture.
  • A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals.
  • What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies.
  • Ghosts: what do they do all day?
  • Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alexander

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.
  • Lords starting with Xa.
  • Moving boxes that have handles built in.
  • All else being equal, a raccoon did it.
  • Proto-Indo-European.
  • Putting the S in Island.
  • The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare.
  • Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa.
  • Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now."
  • Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other.
  • Escalating Revenge Core Destruction.
  • If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent.
  • Oil timers.
  • Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more.
  • Apollonian circles.
  • The ancestry of Firefox.
  • Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides.
  • Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing.
  • A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket.
  • Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot.
  • An air conditioner but backwards.
  • Marbula One.
  • Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle.
  • The year you finally get into Blaseball.
  • How Blaseball works.
  • How to detect a fire that you can't see.
  • Glass Onion: debunked.
  • A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters.
  • Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors.
  • What "from" means in "escape from the tank"
  • The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by.
  • The Snack of the Stars.
  • Safety testing various propellants.
  • What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium.
  • The Gregorian Underwater Choir.
  • Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it.
  • The Lorax threatening you with a bat.
  • My huge sawed off flashlight.
  • Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight.
  • Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies.
  • Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth.
  • Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry.
  • Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round?
  • Bee Barns.
  • A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods.
  • A frog guy. A guy who is a frog.
  • A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture.
  • A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals.
  • What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies.
  • Ghosts: what do they do all day?
  • Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alexander

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.
  • Lords starting with Xa.
  • Moving boxes that have handles built in.
  • All else being equal, a raccoon did it.
  • Proto-Indo-European.
  • Putting the S in Island.
  • The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare.
  • Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa.
  • Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now."
  • Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other.
  • Escalating Revenge Core Destruction.
  • If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent.
  • Oil timers.
  • Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more.
  • Apollonian circles.
  • The ancestry of Firefox.
  • Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides.
  • Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing.
  • A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket.
  • Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot.
  • An air conditioner but backwards.
  • Marbula One.
  • Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle.
  • The year you finally get into Blaseball.
  • How Blaseball works.
  • How to detect a fire that you can't see.
  • Glass Onion: debunked.
  • A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters.
  • Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors.
  • What "from" means in "escape from the tank"
  • The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by.
  • The Snack of the Stars.
  • Safety testing various propellants.
  • What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium.
  • The Gregorian Underwater Choir.
  • Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it.
  • The Lorax threatening you with a bat.
  • My huge sawed off flashlight.
  • Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight.
  • Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies.
  • Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth.
  • Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry.
  • Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round?
  • Bee Barns.
  • A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods.
  • A frog guy. A guy who is a frog.
  • A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture.
  • A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals.
  • What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies.
  • Ghosts: what do they do all day?
  • Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+x6Irb8Ps ]]> Jim Stormdancer 173. How Much Anxiety Does Your Car Have? https://topiclords.com/how-much-anxiety-does-your-car-have 6f482bfc-4c44-4232-abf1-253291584b2d Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Tyriq. We discuss Nancy and having a continuous tone for a hundred years, recommendations, adding trinkets to other people's time capsules, and A Psalm for the Wild-Built. 1:03:41 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking down a lot while you're on a walk.
  • What is this Meta for?
  • Discovering that there is a cliff and having a brief high-octane experience.
  • Sitting on the bus and saying the lore of the land.
  • A lego minifig that you found on the street.
  • Fritzi Ritz.
  • Making millennial shitposts in the 1930s.
  • Being wholesomely surreal for a hundred years.
  • Accruing canon.
  • Simple archetypes that have been honed to a point.
  • Writing a new punchline to the same joke every day for a hundred years.
  • Comics going on two silent retreats, one for the setup (at a monastery) and the other for the punchline (at an empty lot)
  • Coronation St.
  • The kids we met in 1964.
  • Whether South Park is still a thing.
  • Finding success at a young age and staying the same person for the rest of your life.
  • Retirement or Blade Runner Retirement?
  • User Friendly.
  • Web comics that started when the hardest part about making a web comic is uploading an image to the internet.
  • Web comics going from having bad art to having good art.
  • Telling someone to like art other than the art they like.
  • Politely accepting advice and then ignoring it.
  • Speaking into the void to ask for music recommendations.
  • If you don't see it, that's what you paid for.
  • Delivering Nancy comics daily for over 100 years.
  • Working on the same game for 10 years even though you like different kinds of games now.
  • Working within the framework of past you.
  • Every page of a webcomic as a collage of all the previous pages.
  • Pokey the Penguin: updated sporadically.
  • Enjoying a webcomic a lot.
  • Weird semi-robot creatures.
  • Haribogosean.
  • Recommending someone a nice leaf.
  • Wanting to accept recommendations but hating them viscerally.
  • Tricking music recommendations into someone's life like a fairy tale gremlin.
  • Introducing hot jams to the people of the future.
  • Burying a can of cheese for a hundred years.
  • Extra old tardigrades.
  • A sealed piggy bank where if you want to get the tardigrades out you have to smash it on the floor.
  • Opening up your terrarium every so often to swap out the moss.
  • This wholesome man with this forty year old bottle ecosystem.
  • The most advanced level of mummification, in which you become a mannequin.
  • Dumping a pile of garbage in the forest and leaving it to your children in your will.
  • The Artemis Program.
  • Returning to the moon to get the geocache back.
  • Inserting a completely fictional topic into the historical record.
  • Wax House, Baby!
  • A fake fact about the world that has been purged from Wikipedia but is still everywhere that scraped the data from Wikipedia.
  • Chosts from chostville.
  • The age of monetizing all your hobbies.
  • Trying to make a human connection via your art.
  • Digging up, modifying, and reburying other people's time capsules even though nobody's paying you to do it.
  • Keeping your citizens happy and healthy.
  • An intentionally altered view of how automated clothing production is.
  • Going on a journey together with a robot.
  • Cozy books entirely lacking in high-octane moments.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking down a lot while you're on a walk.
  • What is this Meta for?
  • Discovering that there is a cliff and having a brief high-octane experience.
  • Sitting on the bus and saying the lore of the land.
  • A lego minifig that you found on the street.
  • Fritzi Ritz.
  • Making millennial shitposts in the 1930s.
  • Being wholesomely surreal for a hundred years.
  • Accruing canon.
  • Simple archetypes that have been honed to a point.
  • Writing a new punchline to the same joke every day for a hundred years.
  • Comics going on two silent retreats, one for the setup (at a monastery) and the other for the punchline (at an empty lot)
  • Coronation St.
  • The kids we met in 1964.
  • Whether South Park is still a thing.
  • Finding success at a young age and staying the same person for the rest of your life.
  • Retirement or Blade Runner Retirement?
  • User Friendly.
  • Web comics that started when the hardest part about making a web comic is uploading an image to the internet.
  • Web comics going from having bad art to having good art.
  • Telling someone to like art other than the art they like.
  • Politely accepting advice and then ignoring it.
  • Speaking into the void to ask for music recommendations.
  • If you don't see it, that's what you paid for.
  • Delivering Nancy comics daily for over 100 years.
  • Working on the same game for 10 years even though you like different kinds of games now.
  • Working within the framework of past you.
  • Every page of a webcomic as a collage of all the previous pages.
  • Pokey the Penguin: updated sporadically.
  • Enjoying a webcomic a lot.
  • Weird semi-robot creatures.
  • Haribogosean.
  • Recommending someone a nice leaf.
  • Wanting to accept recommendations but hating them viscerally.
  • Tricking music recommendations into someone's life like a fairy tale gremlin.
  • Introducing hot jams to the people of the future.
  • Burying a can of cheese for a hundred years.
  • Extra old tardigrades.
  • A sealed piggy bank where if you want to get the tardigrades out you have to smash it on the floor.
  • Opening up your terrarium every so often to swap out the moss.
  • This wholesome man with this forty year old bottle ecosystem.
  • The most advanced level of mummification, in which you become a mannequin.
  • Dumping a pile of garbage in the forest and leaving it to your children in your will.
  • The Artemis Program.
  • Returning to the moon to get the geocache back.
  • Inserting a completely fictional topic into the historical record.
  • Wax House, Baby!
  • A fake fact about the world that has been purged from Wikipedia but is still everywhere that scraped the data from Wikipedia.
  • Chosts from chostville.
  • The age of monetizing all your hobbies.
  • Trying to make a human connection via your art.
  • Digging up, modifying, and reburying other people's time capsules even though nobody's paying you to do it.
  • Keeping your citizens happy and healthy.
  • An intentionally altered view of how automated clothing production is.
  • Going on a journey together with a robot.
  • Cozy books entirely lacking in high-octane moments.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Maxx
  • Tyriq

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Looking down a lot while you're on a walk.
  • What is this Meta for?
  • Discovering that there is a cliff and having a brief high-octane experience.
  • Sitting on the bus and saying the lore of the land.
  • A lego minifig that you found on the street.
  • Fritzi Ritz.
  • Making millennial shitposts in the 1930s.
  • Being wholesomely surreal for a hundred years.
  • Accruing canon.
  • Simple archetypes that have been honed to a point.
  • Writing a new punchline to the same joke every day for a hundred years.
  • Comics going on two silent retreats, one for the setup (at a monastery) and the other for the punchline (at an empty lot)
  • Coronation St.
  • The kids we met in 1964.
  • Whether South Park is still a thing.
  • Finding success at a young age and staying the same person for the rest of your life.
  • Retirement or Blade Runner Retirement?
  • User Friendly.
  • Web comics that started when the hardest part about making a web comic is uploading an image to the internet.
  • Web comics going from having bad art to having good art.
  • Telling someone to like art other than the art they like.
  • Politely accepting advice and then ignoring it.
  • Speaking into the void to ask for music recommendations.
  • If you don't see it, that's what you paid for.
  • Delivering Nancy comics daily for over 100 years.
  • Working on the same game for 10 years even though you like different kinds of games now.
  • Working within the framework of past you.
  • Every page of a webcomic as a collage of all the previous pages.
  • Pokey the Penguin: updated sporadically.
  • Enjoying a webcomic a lot.
  • Weird semi-robot creatures.
  • Haribogosean.
  • Recommending someone a nice leaf.
  • Wanting to accept recommendations but hating them viscerally.
  • Tricking music recommendations into someone's life like a fairy tale gremlin.
  • Introducing hot jams to the people of the future.
  • Burying a can of cheese for a hundred years.
  • Extra old tardigrades.
  • A sealed piggy bank where if you want to get the tardigrades out you have to smash it on the floor.
  • Opening up your terrarium every so often to swap out the moss.
  • This wholesome man with this forty year old bottle ecosystem.
  • The most advanced level of mummification, in which you become a mannequin.
  • Dumping a pile of garbage in the forest and leaving it to your children in your will.
  • The Artemis Program.
  • Returning to the moon to get the geocache back.
  • Inserting a completely fictional topic into the historical record.
  • Wax House, Baby!
  • A fake fact about the world that has been purged from Wikipedia but is still everywhere that scraped the data from Wikipedia.
  • Chosts from chostville.
  • The age of monetizing all your hobbies.
  • Trying to make a human connection via your art.
  • Digging up, modifying, and reburying other people's time capsules even though nobody's paying you to do it.
  • Keeping your citizens happy and healthy.
  • An intentionally altered view of how automated clothing production is.
  • Going on a journey together with a robot.
  • Cozy books entirely lacking in high-octane moments.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+4UHBrCNl ]]> Jim Stormdancer 172. Don’t Apply Any Torque to This Bag https://topiclords.com/dont-apply-any-torque-to-this-bag 488b719e-bff8-4c3f-9b42-6d71811fb6de Mon, 06 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. We discuss incomprehensible PSAs, games which use player ignorance as a major mechanic, Man out of Space Easiest, Stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot), how to pay for things in Australia, and bats! Micro and Mega! 1:16:40 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Broken Earth Trilogy.
  • The Lightly-Massaged Earth Trilogy.
  • Turkish Delight vs. a Turkish Delight candy bar.
  • A candy that gives you the feeling of nostalgia but no corresponding memories.
  • Remembering to slip, slop, slap, seek and slide in the kitchen.
  • The three onomatopoeias for applying sunscreen.
  • Lamenting to your partner that you forgot to slip.
  • Posters that just say "don't forget to slip slop slap seek and slide" with no further context.
  • A cool grandpa following safety instructions.
  • Actionable snake advice.
  • Various ways to distinguish goats and sheep.
  • A music video that is also a drunk driving PSA.
  • How to use search atoms.
  • If you're on the train, that's a shame.
  • Rhyming platitudes about how social media is bad for your mental health and society as a whole.
  • A music video trying to get across a safe sex message to the kids.
  • Do They Even Know it's Christmas?
  • Something jarring to hear on the radio.
  • A desert wasteland full of crying children.
  • Tunic.
  • Reading the manual of the video game you just bought on the drive home.
  • Evoking the idea of playing old video games.
  • Jumping puzzles that cost you twenty minutes of your life if you fall.
  • A Jules Verne conception of the solar system where other planets are a five minute rocket trip away.
  • Learning a code and keeping it in your brain.
  • The Hourglass Twins.
  • Not being sure what to do so you go look at the moon.
  • The kind of game where most of the fun is figuring out how to play the game.
  • AAA games trying to make artistic statements about AAA games.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend as a better Doki Doki Literature Club.
  • A horror story about pigeons.
  • An ablative heat shield on your butt.
  • Manually aiming the rocket without being to look outside of your polyester bag.
  • The legality of dropping a moose out of a spaceship.
  • A safety mechanism that is not appealing to aerospace professionals.
  • Landing an airplane on Mars and then remote-piloting Mars rovers from inside the airplane.
  • The world's largest saltwater crocodile.
  • Pulling the quick release flap on the crocodile's mouth.
  • Don't Go To Space.
  • It's the 60s, and it's a bag.
  • A snorkel for when you land in the ocean and can't get out of your foam entombment capsule.
  • Bringing along a shotgun in case your escape pod lands in Siberia.
  • Clown First Lover Second.
  • A single paragraph with 19 parenthetical phrases and no other punctuation.
  • Deciding to hem your sweatpants.
  • Plum Nightmare.
  • Finding two extra poems inside an existing poem.
  • What to expect when you read a poem.
  • Whether it's illegal to drive barefoot.
  • Bare feet and there's textures down here.
  • The utter lack of technology at the pump.
  • No-flush toilets.
  • What kinds of towels they use to clean up messes in Australia.
  • Public restrooms that automatically eject you if you're not done in ten minutes.
  • Honeycomb candy with the same texture as instant coffee.
  • Look to your left; look to your right; one of you is a bat.
  • Visiting baby bats in the bat hospital.
  • Bats as pollinators.
  • Giving stuffed animals to baby bats.
  • The pollinating and bug-eating ecosystem.
  • A bat the size of a bat.
  • Spectacled flying foxes.
  • Bats reverse-nicheing back into mice.
  • Bats becoming nocturnal to avoid their creditors.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Broken Earth Trilogy.
  • The Lightly-Massaged Earth Trilogy.
  • Turkish Delight vs. a Turkish Delight candy bar.
  • A candy that gives you the feeling of nostalgia but no corresponding memories.
  • Remembering to slip, slop, slap, seek and slide in the kitchen.
  • The three onomatopoeias for applying sunscreen.
  • Lamenting to your partner that you forgot to slip.
  • Posters that just say "don't forget to slip slop slap seek and slide" with no further context.
  • A cool grandpa following safety instructions.
  • Actionable snake advice.
  • Various ways to distinguish goats and sheep.
  • A music video that is also a drunk driving PSA.
  • How to use search atoms.
  • If you're on the train, that's a shame.
  • Rhyming platitudes about how social media is bad for your mental health and society as a whole.
  • A music video trying to get across a safe sex message to the kids.
  • Do They Even Know it's Christmas?
  • Something jarring to hear on the radio.
  • A desert wasteland full of crying children.
  • Tunic.
  • Reading the manual of the video game you just bought on the drive home.
  • Evoking the idea of playing old video games.
  • Jumping puzzles that cost you twenty minutes of your life if you fall.
  • A Jules Verne conception of the solar system where other planets are a five minute rocket trip away.
  • Learning a code and keeping it in your brain.
  • The Hourglass Twins.
  • Not being sure what to do so you go look at the moon.
  • The kind of game where most of the fun is figuring out how to play the game.
  • AAA games trying to make artistic statements about AAA games.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend as a better Doki Doki Literature Club.
  • A horror story about pigeons.
  • An ablative heat shield on your butt.
  • Manually aiming the rocket without being to look outside of your polyester bag.
  • The legality of dropping a moose out of a spaceship.
  • A safety mechanism that is not appealing to aerospace professionals.
  • Landing an airplane on Mars and then remote-piloting Mars rovers from inside the airplane.
  • The world's largest saltwater crocodile.
  • Pulling the quick release flap on the crocodile's mouth.
  • Don't Go To Space.
  • It's the 60s, and it's a bag.
  • A snorkel for when you land in the ocean and can't get out of your foam entombment capsule.
  • Bringing along a shotgun in case your escape pod lands in Siberia.
  • Clown First Lover Second.
  • A single paragraph with 19 parenthetical phrases and no other punctuation.
  • Deciding to hem your sweatpants.
  • Plum Nightmare.
  • Finding two extra poems inside an existing poem.
  • What to expect when you read a poem.
  • Whether it's illegal to drive barefoot.
  • Bare feet and there's textures down here.
  • The utter lack of technology at the pump.
  • No-flush toilets.
  • What kinds of towels they use to clean up messes in Australia.
  • Public restrooms that automatically eject you if you're not done in ten minutes.
  • Honeycomb candy with the same texture as instant coffee.
  • Look to your left; look to your right; one of you is a bat.
  • Visiting baby bats in the bat hospital.
  • Bats as pollinators.
  • Giving stuffed animals to baby bats.
  • The pollinating and bug-eating ecosystem.
  • A bat the size of a bat.
  • Spectacled flying foxes.
  • Bats reverse-nicheing back into mice.
  • Bats becoming nocturnal to avoid their creditors.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Broken Earth Trilogy.
  • The Lightly-Massaged Earth Trilogy.
  • Turkish Delight vs. a Turkish Delight candy bar.
  • A candy that gives you the feeling of nostalgia but no corresponding memories.
  • Remembering to slip, slop, slap, seek and slide in the kitchen.
  • The three onomatopoeias for applying sunscreen.
  • Lamenting to your partner that you forgot to slip.
  • Posters that just say "don't forget to slip slop slap seek and slide" with no further context.
  • A cool grandpa following safety instructions.
  • Actionable snake advice.
  • Various ways to distinguish goats and sheep.
  • A music video that is also a drunk driving PSA.
  • How to use search atoms.
  • If you're on the train, that's a shame.
  • Rhyming platitudes about how social media is bad for your mental health and society as a whole.
  • A music video trying to get across a safe sex message to the kids.
  • Do They Even Know it's Christmas?
  • Something jarring to hear on the radio.
  • A desert wasteland full of crying children.
  • Tunic.
  • Reading the manual of the video game you just bought on the drive home.
  • Evoking the idea of playing old video games.
  • Jumping puzzles that cost you twenty minutes of your life if you fall.
  • A Jules Verne conception of the solar system where other planets are a five minute rocket trip away.
  • Learning a code and keeping it in your brain.
  • The Hourglass Twins.
  • Not being sure what to do so you go look at the moon.
  • The kind of game where most of the fun is figuring out how to play the game.
  • AAA games trying to make artistic statements about AAA games.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend as a better Doki Doki Literature Club.
  • A horror story about pigeons.
  • An ablative heat shield on your butt.
  • Manually aiming the rocket without being to look outside of your polyester bag.
  • The legality of dropping a moose out of a spaceship.
  • A safety mechanism that is not appealing to aerospace professionals.
  • Landing an airplane on Mars and then remote-piloting Mars rovers from inside the airplane.
  • The world's largest saltwater crocodile.
  • Pulling the quick release flap on the crocodile's mouth.
  • Don't Go To Space.
  • It's the 60s, and it's a bag.
  • A snorkel for when you land in the ocean and can't get out of your foam entombment capsule.
  • Bringing along a shotgun in case your escape pod lands in Siberia.
  • Clown First Lover Second.
  • A single paragraph with 19 parenthetical phrases and no other punctuation.
  • Deciding to hem your sweatpants.
  • Plum Nightmare.
  • Finding two extra poems inside an existing poem.
  • What to expect when you read a poem.
  • Whether it's illegal to drive barefoot.
  • Bare feet and there's textures down here.
  • The utter lack of technology at the pump.
  • No-flush toilets.
  • What kinds of towels they use to clean up messes in Australia.
  • Public restrooms that automatically eject you if you're not done in ten minutes.
  • Honeycomb candy with the same texture as instant coffee.
  • Look to your left; look to your right; one of you is a bat.
  • Visiting baby bats in the bat hospital.
  • Bats as pollinators.
  • Giving stuffed animals to baby bats.
  • The pollinating and bug-eating ecosystem.
  • A bat the size of a bat.
  • Spectacled flying foxes.
  • Bats reverse-nicheing back into mice.
  • Bats becoming nocturnal to avoid their creditors.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+l3sxOfes ]]> Jim Stormdancer 171. Reasons to Not Throw Your Phone in the Ocean https://topiclords.com/reasons-to-not-throw-your-phone-in-the-ocean 666f81f7-c38b-4b38-a5f5-51b1b87feb7c Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayFaber and Kev. We discuss food from dreams and nightmares, Han Unification, the Super Mega Crossword, Down by the Bay by Raffi, video game franchises known for secrets, five-tined forks, and horrible exceptions to rule 34. 1:09:48 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • First time long time.
  • A very light hobby that is kind of shallow.
  • Getting really into Rubik's Cube because you already love flash cards.
  • Being reminded of something right before you were about to forget it.
  • How best to memorize pizza coding and microphone specs.
  • Ignoring the room and being annoyed when people talk to you.
  • Work life balance being too tilted toward life
  • The King's Hand.
  • Orange Creamsicle Mashed Potatoes.
  • M&M fingernails.
  • A tweet and what happened with it.
  • Biting something with the wrong texture and having to stare at a wall for ten minutes.
  • UTF-8 character encoding.
  • Adding support for Asian languages to Unicode without consulting any native speakers for advice.
  • The international new global meme language of the internet.
  • PuzzleMania.
  • All the downsides of doing a crossword on paper.
  • Words that just happen a lot when you're constructing a crossword puzzle.
  • The Elden Ring of crossword puzzles.
  • Doing the crossword puzzle on paper so that when you're done you can say "looks right to me" and there's no app to tell you you're wrong.
  • Reading crossword puzzle clues to your wife as she falls asleep.
  • A time traveler from the future who invented time travel to bring us excellent children's songs.
  • A national treasure (Canada)
  • A fly wearing a tie, a bear combing its hair, a llama eating pajamas, &c.
  • A song intended to be performed improvisationally.
  • Extending the finger family song by adding more fingers.
  • Messing the cadence up with your fake mother voice.
  • Where the watermelons roam.
  • A mom saying nonsense that really makes you think.
  • Avoiding your mom because she keeps saying weird shit about a goose kissing a moose.
  • Unlocking a branch of a storyline by fulfilling a set of conditions.
  • Subverting overused fantasy tropes.
  • Finding a cool castle by going down a secret cliffside stairway into a hidden cave.
  • Systems that point you everywhere on the map.
  • Secrets of all sorts of scopes.
  • The Doom thing where they point out that you didn't find all the secrets.
  • Frog Fractions containing Rule 34 of itself.
  • Reacting to five-tined fork.
  • The fork optimization function that decided that four is the right number of tines.
  • Unknowing a conversation.
  • A Victorian flex of a fork.
  • When die-casting was invented.
  • A shovel with teeth.
  • Seven-tined sporks.
  • The Pornography Lord.
  • Human pairings and human activities that you would expect there to be pornography of.
  • Linda Hunt smugly declaring "ass to ass"
  • AI pornographers buying sex dice on eBay.
  • Weird combinations of words you can plug into a search engine.
  • People don't want everything; people only want some things.
  • The Frog Fractions pornography gap.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • First time long time.
  • A very light hobby that is kind of shallow.
  • Getting really into Rubik's Cube because you already love flash cards.
  • Being reminded of something right before you were about to forget it.
  • How best to memorize pizza coding and microphone specs.
  • Ignoring the room and being annoyed when people talk to you.
  • Work life balance being too tilted toward life
  • The King's Hand.
  • Orange Creamsicle Mashed Potatoes.
  • M&M fingernails.
  • A tweet and what happened with it.
  • Biting something with the wrong texture and having to stare at a wall for ten minutes.
  • UTF-8 character encoding.
  • Adding support for Asian languages to Unicode without consulting any native speakers for advice.
  • The international new global meme language of the internet.
  • PuzzleMania.
  • All the downsides of doing a crossword on paper.
  • Words that just happen a lot when you're constructing a crossword puzzle.
  • The Elden Ring of crossword puzzles.
  • Doing the crossword puzzle on paper so that when you're done you can say "looks right to me" and there's no app to tell you you're wrong.
  • Reading crossword puzzle clues to your wife as she falls asleep.
  • A time traveler from the future who invented time travel to bring us excellent children's songs.
  • A national treasure (Canada)
  • A fly wearing a tie, a bear combing its hair, a llama eating pajamas, &c.
  • A song intended to be performed improvisationally.
  • Extending the finger family song by adding more fingers.
  • Messing the cadence up with your fake mother voice.
  • Where the watermelons roam.
  • A mom saying nonsense that really makes you think.
  • Avoiding your mom because she keeps saying weird shit about a goose kissing a moose.
  • Unlocking a branch of a storyline by fulfilling a set of conditions.
  • Subverting overused fantasy tropes.
  • Finding a cool castle by going down a secret cliffside stairway into a hidden cave.
  • Systems that point you everywhere on the map.
  • Secrets of all sorts of scopes.
  • The Doom thing where they point out that you didn't find all the secrets.
  • Frog Fractions containing Rule 34 of itself.
  • Reacting to five-tined fork.
  • The fork optimization function that decided that four is the right number of tines.
  • Unknowing a conversation.
  • A Victorian flex of a fork.
  • When die-casting was invented.
  • A shovel with teeth.
  • Seven-tined sporks.
  • The Pornography Lord.
  • Human pairings and human activities that you would expect there to be pornography of.
  • Linda Hunt smugly declaring "ass to ass"
  • AI pornographers buying sex dice on eBay.
  • Weird combinations of words you can plug into a search engine.
  • People don't want everything; people only want some things.
  • The Frog Fractions pornography gap.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • CisHetKayFaber
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • First time long time.
  • A very light hobby that is kind of shallow.
  • Getting really into Rubik's Cube because you already love flash cards.
  • Being reminded of something right before you were about to forget it.
  • How best to memorize pizza coding and microphone specs.
  • Ignoring the room and being annoyed when people talk to you.
  • Work life balance being too tilted toward life
  • The King's Hand.
  • Orange Creamsicle Mashed Potatoes.
  • M&M fingernails.
  • A tweet and what happened with it.
  • Biting something with the wrong texture and having to stare at a wall for ten minutes.
  • UTF-8 character encoding.
  • Adding support for Asian languages to Unicode without consulting any native speakers for advice.
  • The international new global meme language of the internet.
  • PuzzleMania.
  • All the downsides of doing a crossword on paper.
  • Words that just happen a lot when you're constructing a crossword puzzle.
  • The Elden Ring of crossword puzzles.
  • Doing the crossword puzzle on paper so that when you're done you can say "looks right to me" and there's no app to tell you you're wrong.
  • Reading crossword puzzle clues to your wife as she falls asleep.
  • A time traveler from the future who invented time travel to bring us excellent children's songs.
  • A national treasure (Canada)
  • A fly wearing a tie, a bear combing its hair, a llama eating pajamas, &c.
  • A song intended to be performed improvisationally.
  • Extending the finger family song by adding more fingers.
  • Messing the cadence up with your fake mother voice.
  • Where the watermelons roam.
  • A mom saying nonsense that really makes you think.
  • Avoiding your mom because she keeps saying weird shit about a goose kissing a moose.
  • Unlocking a branch of a storyline by fulfilling a set of conditions.
  • Subverting overused fantasy tropes.
  • Finding a cool castle by going down a secret cliffside stairway into a hidden cave.
  • Systems that point you everywhere on the map.
  • Secrets of all sorts of scopes.
  • The Doom thing where they point out that you didn't find all the secrets.
  • Frog Fractions containing Rule 34 of itself.
  • Reacting to five-tined fork.
  • The fork optimization function that decided that four is the right number of tines.
  • Unknowing a conversation.
  • A Victorian flex of a fork.
  • When die-casting was invented.
  • A shovel with teeth.
  • Seven-tined sporks.
  • The Pornography Lord.
  • Human pairings and human activities that you would expect there to be pornography of.
  • Linda Hunt smugly declaring "ass to ass"
  • AI pornographers buying sex dice on eBay.
  • Weird combinations of words you can plug into a search engine.
  • People don't want everything; people only want some things.
  • The Frog Fractions pornography gap.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+qPcnVYz2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 170. My Brain Likes the Things I Like https://topiclords.com/my-brain-likes-the-things-i-like c6cdc2d0-01b3-4c7f-a3ef-e8afb3000e26 Mon, 23 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Cort. We discuss fantasy consoles, music from the 80s, getting earwormed by a song that doesn't exist, and Aesop Rock - Ruby 81. 1:08:52 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The album you finished.
  • A song that is entirely made of uncleared samples.
  • Turning leftover pumpkin pie into delicious pumpkin spice curry.
  • Interactive Pico-8 holiday cards.
  • Artificial constraints pegged at a level of technology somewhere in the 80s.
  • Writing specs for Pico-16 so that you don't accidentally make Pico-16 when you're making Pico-8.
  • Seeking a box to work within.
  • The most played entry in your Steam library is something your kids left running for weeks.
  • A collection of 50 games made for a console that never existed.
  • List of Fantasy Consoles.
  • The fantasy console hidden as an Easter egg in the Frog Fractions hat DLC.
  • Four joysticks in your garage waiting for an arcade machine to be installed into.
  • Languages that transpile to Lua.
  • Emulating the PlayStation 9.
  • A fantasy console for making 4D games.
  • A popular game engine that starts with the letters UN.
  • Civilisation's relationship with art.
  • Hop's Big Adventure in the Gift Dimension.
  • All the problems with Lua.
  • The Pico-8 show with the Pico-Lords.
  • All the things people were doing in the 80s.
  • Playing an inaudible guitar.
  • The sound of somebody being chased.
  • All the good Meat Loaf albums.
  • An inspiring thing that shows up a lot in your life.
  • A hip hop album entirely devoid of metaphor.
  • Listening to the first fifteen seconds of each song on an album.
  • Drums that are emblematic of everything you hate about the 80s.
  • A big decade with a lot of things happening.
  • Gil Scott-Heron.
  • Music that is distinctly of the 80s vs. music that happened to be released in the 80s.
  • The musical equivalent of oatmeal.
  • Not liking the whole chorus, but liking the first chord change in the chorus.
  • The bass part of Like a Prayer.
  • Your superpower: knowing what marmite tastes like and knowing your don't like it.
  • Hyperactive j-pop with way too many chord changes.
  • Creating a mashup that is better than the sum of its parts, but only for ten seconds.
  • Purging an earworm with another earworm.
  • We Need a Bigger Dumpster, by Cheek Face.
  • The parts of your brain that you're not on speaking terms with.
  • A photographic memory for all audio except for words.
  • Songs about love or romance or being horny: get that shit out of here.
  • "Baby Got Back," a song about Sir Mix A Lot's infant and her extremely loaded diaper.
  • Waking the sleeping beagle.
  • Some kind of intentional arson.
  • Painting an evocative picture of an extremely specific moment in time.
  • Uncles and aunts and stuff everywhere.
  • Thank you, Genius!
  • Bad or text-to-speech bad?
  • Trying to fix all instances of a given fact that is wrong everywhere on the internet.
  • Wesley Willis writing the story song "Oil Express" because he wanted to write about oil changes.
  • Lords Rule, Nuff Said.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The album you finished.
  • A song that is entirely made of uncleared samples.
  • Turning leftover pumpkin pie into delicious pumpkin spice curry.
  • Interactive Pico-8 holiday cards.
  • Artificial constraints pegged at a level of technology somewhere in the 80s.
  • Writing specs for Pico-16 so that you don't accidentally make Pico-16 when you're making Pico-8.
  • Seeking a box to work within.
  • The most played entry in your Steam library is something your kids left running for weeks.
  • A collection of 50 games made for a console that never existed.
  • List of Fantasy Consoles.
  • The fantasy console hidden as an Easter egg in the Frog Fractions hat DLC.
  • Four joysticks in your garage waiting for an arcade machine to be installed into.
  • Languages that transpile to Lua.
  • Emulating the PlayStation 9.
  • A fantasy console for making 4D games.
  • A popular game engine that starts with the letters UN.
  • Civilisation's relationship with art.
  • Hop's Big Adventure in the Gift Dimension.
  • All the problems with Lua.
  • The Pico-8 show with the Pico-Lords.
  • All the things people were doing in the 80s.
  • Playing an inaudible guitar.
  • The sound of somebody being chased.
  • All the good Meat Loaf albums.
  • An inspiring thing that shows up a lot in your life.
  • A hip hop album entirely devoid of metaphor.
  • Listening to the first fifteen seconds of each song on an album.
  • Drums that are emblematic of everything you hate about the 80s.
  • A big decade with a lot of things happening.
  • Gil Scott-Heron.
  • Music that is distinctly of the 80s vs. music that happened to be released in the 80s.
  • The musical equivalent of oatmeal.
  • Not liking the whole chorus, but liking the first chord change in the chorus.
  • The bass part of Like a Prayer.
  • Your superpower: knowing what marmite tastes like and knowing your don't like it.
  • Hyperactive j-pop with way too many chord changes.
  • Creating a mashup that is better than the sum of its parts, but only for ten seconds.
  • Purging an earworm with another earworm.
  • We Need a Bigger Dumpster, by Cheek Face.
  • The parts of your brain that you're not on speaking terms with.
  • A photographic memory for all audio except for words.
  • Songs about love or romance or being horny: get that shit out of here.
  • "Baby Got Back," a song about Sir Mix A Lot's infant and her extremely loaded diaper.
  • Waking the sleeping beagle.
  • Some kind of intentional arson.
  • Painting an evocative picture of an extremely specific moment in time.
  • Uncles and aunts and stuff everywhere.
  • Thank you, Genius!
  • Bad or text-to-speech bad?
  • Trying to fix all instances of a given fact that is wrong everywhere on the internet.
  • Wesley Willis writing the story song "Oil Express" because he wanted to write about oil changes.
  • Lords Rule, Nuff Said.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The album you finished.
  • A song that is entirely made of uncleared samples.
  • Turning leftover pumpkin pie into delicious pumpkin spice curry.
  • Interactive Pico-8 holiday cards.
  • Artificial constraints pegged at a level of technology somewhere in the 80s.
  • Writing specs for Pico-16 so that you don't accidentally make Pico-16 when you're making Pico-8.
  • Seeking a box to work within.
  • The most played entry in your Steam library is something your kids left running for weeks.
  • A collection of 50 games made for a console that never existed.
  • List of Fantasy Consoles.
  • The fantasy console hidden as an Easter egg in the Frog Fractions hat DLC.
  • Four joysticks in your garage waiting for an arcade machine to be installed into.
  • Languages that transpile to Lua.
  • Emulating the PlayStation 9.
  • A fantasy console for making 4D games.
  • A popular game engine that starts with the letters UN.
  • Civilisation's relationship with art.
  • Hop's Big Adventure in the Gift Dimension.
  • All the problems with Lua.
  • The Pico-8 show with the Pico-Lords.
  • All the things people were doing in the 80s.
  • Playing an inaudible guitar.
  • The sound of somebody being chased.
  • All the good Meat Loaf albums.
  • An inspiring thing that shows up a lot in your life.
  • A hip hop album entirely devoid of metaphor.
  • Listening to the first fifteen seconds of each song on an album.
  • Drums that are emblematic of everything you hate about the 80s.
  • A big decade with a lot of things happening.
  • Gil Scott-Heron.
  • Music that is distinctly of the 80s vs. music that happened to be released in the 80s.
  • The musical equivalent of oatmeal.
  • Not liking the whole chorus, but liking the first chord change in the chorus.
  • The bass part of Like a Prayer.
  • Your superpower: knowing what marmite tastes like and knowing your don't like it.
  • Hyperactive j-pop with way too many chord changes.
  • Creating a mashup that is better than the sum of its parts, but only for ten seconds.
  • Purging an earworm with another earworm.
  • We Need a Bigger Dumpster, by Cheek Face.
  • The parts of your brain that you're not on speaking terms with.
  • A photographic memory for all audio except for words.
  • Songs about love or romance or being horny: get that shit out of here.
  • "Baby Got Back," a song about Sir Mix A Lot's infant and her extremely loaded diaper.
  • Waking the sleeping beagle.
  • Some kind of intentional arson.
  • Painting an evocative picture of an extremely specific moment in time.
  • Uncles and aunts and stuff everywhere.
  • Thank you, Genius!
  • Bad or text-to-speech bad?
  • Trying to fix all instances of a given fact that is wrong everywhere on the internet.
  • Wesley Willis writing the story song "Oil Express" because he wanted to write about oil changes.
  • Lords Rule, Nuff Said.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+rGB1GkwS ]]> Jim Stormdancer 169. Topicless https://topiclords.com/topicless 0f6097a4-73cf-436c-8e36-30503e78c4dd Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Tim. We discuss compartmentalization, Deus Ex: Revision, Napster pranks, The Last Titan, the Gros Michel banana, and making art even when AI does it better. 1:12:04 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • America's self-denying culture of compartmentalization
  • Deus Ex: Revision is a mod for Deus Ex that changes maps just enough that it feels like a new game without losing what made the original special.
  • Napster pranks and more generally, fun with the early internet's poor security
  • The Last Titan
  • Topic Lords update: A review of the Gros Michel (aka "Big Mike") banana
  • If AI can tell better stories than you, is it still worth telling them (and why)?

Microtopics:

  • Planning around time zone differences.
  • What bots are left after the bot purge.
  • Text parsers that make it sound like you have silly accents.
  • C++ Coroutines for Everyone!
  • Playing the Frog Fractions soundtrack on mandolin at Jim's wedding reception.
  • Seeing friends catch up.
  • Waiting until the weekend to celebrate your birthday because weekdays are not for fun things.
  • Topicless Topic Peasants.
  • Planning to do things all week so you have things to look forward to all week.
  • How to schedule a movie night.
  • How to hang out with your friends on weekends.
  • Hanging out with your friends once a week because your internet audience demands it.
  • Setting traps for yourself so that you involuntarily have fun.
  • How you felt in the Fall of 2014.
  • Embracing making bad things.
  • Making bad art and dropping it in the company Slack.
  • April cameos.
  • What to do when Jim makes a mistake.
  • Watching a 3D film on a 2D viewing apparatus.
  • New super duper secret places to sneak around in.
  • Lay D Denton.
  • Let me tell you about my Napster pranks.
  • A very specific example of Napster interactions.
  • Authorless messages.
  • Renaming your band's music to have the same name as popular songs so people will download it on Napster.
  • A very benign internet security prank.
  • Telling your friend that you've made an AI chatbot but actually it's you typing the replies and she falls in love with the AI and wants to talk to it all the time.
  • Philly Boys.
  • Taking bets on whether any given domain name leads to porn.
  • Writing a cease and desist letter to the owner of a domain name that you want, claiming that you need it for your nonexistent porn company.
  • Getting out of legal jeopardy by constructing a gay porn web site.
  • An old god, his glory lost to memory.
  • A computer named Roboticus that you can't bear to decommission.
  • Looking on a diorama of dusty objects that represent your lost past.
  • Banana history.
  • A banana that you've never tasted.
  • Buying fruit from the Miami Fruit Organization.
  • The shocking flavor of electrolytes.
  • Fat Mike vs. Big Mike.
  • Quantifying 45 apple varietals without realizing that there is also wide variance within varietals.
  • Having to eat 10,000 bananas before you can safely say you know what they taste like.
  • Eating a bunch of types of bananas and realizing that they all pretty much taste the same.
  • Cotton candy flavored grapes.
  • Strawberries the size (and flavor) of a human heart.
  • Grapples vs. grapples.
  • A banana that is certainly a banana that you can eat.
  • The time Deep Blue glitched out and made a random chess move and Garry Kasparov couldn't figure it out and resigned the match.
  • Teaching a computer how to get flummoxed.
  • The purpose of making art.
  • What about Mario coins?
  • K-Mart music.
  • Smarty Pants, Brain Quest and Booty Blocks.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • America's self-denying culture of compartmentalization
  • Deus Ex: Revision is a mod for Deus Ex that changes maps just enough that it feels like a new game without losing what made the original special.
  • Napster pranks and more generally, fun with the early internet's poor security
  • The Last Titan
  • Topic Lords update: A review of the Gros Michel (aka "Big Mike") banana
  • If AI can tell better stories than you, is it still worth telling them (and why)?

Microtopics:

  • Planning around time zone differences.
  • What bots are left after the bot purge.
  • Text parsers that make it sound like you have silly accents.
  • C++ Coroutines for Everyone!
  • Playing the Frog Fractions soundtrack on mandolin at Jim's wedding reception.
  • Seeing friends catch up.
  • Waiting until the weekend to celebrate your birthday because weekdays are not for fun things.
  • Topicless Topic Peasants.
  • Planning to do things all week so you have things to look forward to all week.
  • How to schedule a movie night.
  • How to hang out with your friends on weekends.
  • Hanging out with your friends once a week because your internet audience demands it.
  • Setting traps for yourself so that you involuntarily have fun.
  • How you felt in the Fall of 2014.
  • Embracing making bad things.
  • Making bad art and dropping it in the company Slack.
  • April cameos.
  • What to do when Jim makes a mistake.
  • Watching a 3D film on a 2D viewing apparatus.
  • New super duper secret places to sneak around in.
  • Lay D Denton.
  • Let me tell you about my Napster pranks.
  • A very specific example of Napster interactions.
  • Authorless messages.
  • Renaming your band's music to have the same name as popular songs so people will download it on Napster.
  • A very benign internet security prank.
  • Telling your friend that you've made an AI chatbot but actually it's you typing the replies and she falls in love with the AI and wants to talk to it all the time.
  • Philly Boys.
  • Taking bets on whether any given domain name leads to porn.
  • Writing a cease and desist letter to the owner of a domain name that you want, claiming that you need it for your nonexistent porn company.
  • Getting out of legal jeopardy by constructing a gay porn web site.
  • An old god, his glory lost to memory.
  • A computer named Roboticus that you can't bear to decommission.
  • Looking on a diorama of dusty objects that represent your lost past.
  • Banana history.
  • A banana that you've never tasted.
  • Buying fruit from the Miami Fruit Organization.
  • The shocking flavor of electrolytes.
  • Fat Mike vs. Big Mike.
  • Quantifying 45 apple varietals without realizing that there is also wide variance within varietals.
  • Having to eat 10,000 bananas before you can safely say you know what they taste like.
  • Eating a bunch of types of bananas and realizing that they all pretty much taste the same.
  • Cotton candy flavored grapes.
  • Strawberries the size (and flavor) of a human heart.
  • Grapples vs. grapples.
  • A banana that is certainly a banana that you can eat.
  • The time Deep Blue glitched out and made a random chess move and Garry Kasparov couldn't figure it out and resigned the match.
  • Teaching a computer how to get flummoxed.
  • The purpose of making art.
  • What about Mario coins?
  • K-Mart music.
  • Smarty Pants, Brain Quest and Booty Blocks.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • America's self-denying culture of compartmentalization
  • Deus Ex: Revision is a mod for Deus Ex that changes maps just enough that it feels like a new game without losing what made the original special.
  • Napster pranks and more generally, fun with the early internet's poor security
  • The Last Titan
  • Topic Lords update: A review of the Gros Michel (aka "Big Mike") banana
  • If AI can tell better stories than you, is it still worth telling them (and why)?

Microtopics:

  • Planning around time zone differences.
  • What bots are left after the bot purge.
  • Text parsers that make it sound like you have silly accents.
  • C++ Coroutines for Everyone!
  • Playing the Frog Fractions soundtrack on mandolin at Jim's wedding reception.
  • Seeing friends catch up.
  • Waiting until the weekend to celebrate your birthday because weekdays are not for fun things.
  • Topicless Topic Peasants.
  • Planning to do things all week so you have things to look forward to all week.
  • How to schedule a movie night.
  • How to hang out with your friends on weekends.
  • Hanging out with your friends once a week because your internet audience demands it.
  • Setting traps for yourself so that you involuntarily have fun.
  • How you felt in the Fall of 2014.
  • Embracing making bad things.
  • Making bad art and dropping it in the company Slack.
  • April cameos.
  • What to do when Jim makes a mistake.
  • Watching a 3D film on a 2D viewing apparatus.
  • New super duper secret places to sneak around in.
  • Lay D Denton.
  • Let me tell you about my Napster pranks.
  • A very specific example of Napster interactions.
  • Authorless messages.
  • Renaming your band's music to have the same name as popular songs so people will download it on Napster.
  • A very benign internet security prank.
  • Telling your friend that you've made an AI chatbot but actually it's you typing the replies and she falls in love with the AI and wants to talk to it all the time.
  • Philly Boys.
  • Taking bets on whether any given domain name leads to porn.
  • Writing a cease and desist letter to the owner of a domain name that you want, claiming that you need it for your nonexistent porn company.
  • Getting out of legal jeopardy by constructing a gay porn web site.
  • An old god, his glory lost to memory.
  • A computer named Roboticus that you can't bear to decommission.
  • Looking on a diorama of dusty objects that represent your lost past.
  • Banana history.
  • A banana that you've never tasted.
  • Buying fruit from the Miami Fruit Organization.
  • The shocking flavor of electrolytes.
  • Fat Mike vs. Big Mike.
  • Quantifying 45 apple varietals without realizing that there is also wide variance within varietals.
  • Having to eat 10,000 bananas before you can safely say you know what they taste like.
  • Eating a bunch of types of bananas and realizing that they all pretty much taste the same.
  • Cotton candy flavored grapes.
  • Strawberries the size (and flavor) of a human heart.
  • Grapples vs. grapples.
  • A banana that is certainly a banana that you can eat.
  • The time Deep Blue glitched out and made a random chess move and Garry Kasparov couldn't figure it out and resigned the match.
  • Teaching a computer how to get flummoxed.
  • The purpose of making art.
  • What about Mario coins?
  • K-Mart music.
  • Smarty Pants, Brain Quest and Booty Blocks.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6reTakOB ]]> Jim Stormdancer 168. Take a Gasket, Leave a Gasket https://topiclords.com/take-a-gasket-leave-a-gasket 84f716ee-bf63-44b8-8e88-0839d87abb80 Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Jenni. We discuss Stronger with Stogner, what is and isn't ahegao, feeling old about anti-piracy measures, The Lanyard by Billy Collins, the WTF genre of narrative's often unsatisfying endings, and Ed O'Brien on Backing Vocals 1:19:37 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fighting for credit.
  • The discord: it's fun in there.
  • Forgetting an entire lord.
  • A lot of work to get twice as many views.
  • A convenient thing you can put old food in so it doesn't go bad as quickly.
  • Gaskets: there's a name for them.
  • The British vs. the American conception of a frown.
  • Frowning with your face gaskets.
  • Doing a cartwheel to feel happier.
  • Alan Snape.
  • Doing a racy political ad on top of a 40-foot pumpjack.
  • What the Texas Railroad Commission does.
  • Getting the idea for OPEC from Texas.
  • A political ad using the Sugar Hill Gang cover of Apache as a soundtrack.
  • The suburban Texan mom solving the climate crisis single-handedly.
  • Twerking at the sunrise.
  • Field-dressing a moose.
  • Fantasy-footballing a female running mate for Theodore Roosevelt even though they didn't have women back then.
  • Getting so annoyed at an ad that you have to log back into Twitter.
  • Scrolling social media and getting angry by yourself.
  • The crucial elements that comprise the ahegao face.
  • Electronic Girl.
  • The phylogeny of the e-girl.
  • Is it Soup?
  • Looking at Zelda's face and thinking "okay, that's soup."
  • Whether ahegao or Betty Boop are sexy.
  • A face that people make to indicate horniness.
  • The Betty Boop ahegao: it's bad, folks.
  • What is otaku's plan for us?
  • Project Lords.
  • A web site with JavaScript implementations of video game code wheels of various 90s video games.
  • Everybody playing the free version of chess for thousands of years when the paid version is a way better game.
  • Why there is no Casio Loopy emulator.
  • Finding a tiny blood reservoir for the smallest blood sacrifices.
  • Who wrote the Vagina Monologues?
  • Moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano.
  • What a lanyard is and what it's for.
  • How to repay your mom for all the things that she's given you.
  • God's Eyes.
  • Replacing your son's butt-gasket.
  • Being old enough to remember when it was normal for schoolchildren to make their parents an ashtray.
  • Making a gumball dispenser in wood shop and using it to convince your mom to buy you a big bag of gumballs.
  • 1899.
  • A sequence of mysterious things happening.
  • A mysterious TV show that ends when you overwater all of your boyfriend's plants.
  • The final episode of Lost, where the giant panda shows up and explains that "I'm god and you're in my dream!"
  • Comedy typing directly into the Topic Bucket.
  • What makes a good ending to a mystery-focused story.
  • Mystery as marketing hook.
  • How to end a mystery-focused story in a satisfying way without solving the mystery.
  • The most normal-looking guy in Radiohead.
  • The one guy in Radiohead who doesn't have any fans.
  • From the Basement in Rainbows.
  • A super chill guy keeping time with his leg.
  • Does Ed from Radiohead only sing his own name?
  • A Pokemon Named Ed.
  • Idiosyncratic ways to describe your favorite band member, that unlock your unique adoration.
  • The only member of the band who smiles.
  • Absorbing it all as the luckiest person alive playing with your pals in a huge venue.
  • The kind of Radiohead fan whose imagination is so powerful that you can't safely let them into Radiohead concerts because they might imagine a bomb.
  • The kind of Topic Lord who listens to the show.
  • Having some delightful chats in Texas.
  • Posing on the pumpjack where nobody will ever see you.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fighting for credit.
  • The discord: it's fun in there.
  • Forgetting an entire lord.
  • A lot of work to get twice as many views.
  • A convenient thing you can put old food in so it doesn't go bad as quickly.
  • Gaskets: there's a name for them.
  • The British vs. the American conception of a frown.
  • Frowning with your face gaskets.
  • Doing a cartwheel to feel happier.
  • Alan Snape.
  • Doing a racy political ad on top of a 40-foot pumpjack.
  • What the Texas Railroad Commission does.
  • Getting the idea for OPEC from Texas.
  • A political ad using the Sugar Hill Gang cover of Apache as a soundtrack.
  • The suburban Texan mom solving the climate crisis single-handedly.
  • Twerking at the sunrise.
  • Field-dressing a moose.
  • Fantasy-footballing a female running mate for Theodore Roosevelt even though they didn't have women back then.
  • Getting so annoyed at an ad that you have to log back into Twitter.
  • Scrolling social media and getting angry by yourself.
  • The crucial elements that comprise the ahegao face.
  • Electronic Girl.
  • The phylogeny of the e-girl.
  • Is it Soup?
  • Looking at Zelda's face and thinking "okay, that's soup."
  • Whether ahegao or Betty Boop are sexy.
  • A face that people make to indicate horniness.
  • The Betty Boop ahegao: it's bad, folks.
  • What is otaku's plan for us?
  • Project Lords.
  • A web site with JavaScript implementations of video game code wheels of various 90s video games.
  • Everybody playing the free version of chess for thousands of years when the paid version is a way better game.
  • Why there is no Casio Loopy emulator.
  • Finding a tiny blood reservoir for the smallest blood sacrifices.
  • Who wrote the Vagina Monologues?
  • Moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano.
  • What a lanyard is and what it's for.
  • How to repay your mom for all the things that she's given you.
  • God's Eyes.
  • Replacing your son's butt-gasket.
  • Being old enough to remember when it was normal for schoolchildren to make their parents an ashtray.
  • Making a gumball dispenser in wood shop and using it to convince your mom to buy you a big bag of gumballs.
  • 1899.
  • A sequence of mysterious things happening.
  • A mysterious TV show that ends when you overwater all of your boyfriend's plants.
  • The final episode of Lost, where the giant panda shows up and explains that "I'm god and you're in my dream!"
  • Comedy typing directly into the Topic Bucket.
  • What makes a good ending to a mystery-focused story.
  • Mystery as marketing hook.
  • How to end a mystery-focused story in a satisfying way without solving the mystery.
  • The most normal-looking guy in Radiohead.
  • The one guy in Radiohead who doesn't have any fans.
  • From the Basement in Rainbows.
  • A super chill guy keeping time with his leg.
  • Does Ed from Radiohead only sing his own name?
  • A Pokemon Named Ed.
  • Idiosyncratic ways to describe your favorite band member, that unlock your unique adoration.
  • The only member of the band who smiles.
  • Absorbing it all as the luckiest person alive playing with your pals in a huge venue.
  • The kind of Radiohead fan whose imagination is so powerful that you can't safely let them into Radiohead concerts because they might imagine a bomb.
  • The kind of Topic Lord who listens to the show.
  • Having some delightful chats in Texas.
  • Posing on the pumpjack where nobody will ever see you.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Jenni

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Fighting for credit.
  • The discord: it's fun in there.
  • Forgetting an entire lord.
  • A lot of work to get twice as many views.
  • A convenient thing you can put old food in so it doesn't go bad as quickly.
  • Gaskets: there's a name for them.
  • The British vs. the American conception of a frown.
  • Frowning with your face gaskets.
  • Doing a cartwheel to feel happier.
  • Alan Snape.
  • Doing a racy political ad on top of a 40-foot pumpjack.
  • What the Texas Railroad Commission does.
  • Getting the idea for OPEC from Texas.
  • A political ad using the Sugar Hill Gang cover of Apache as a soundtrack.
  • The suburban Texan mom solving the climate crisis single-handedly.
  • Twerking at the sunrise.
  • Field-dressing a moose.
  • Fantasy-footballing a female running mate for Theodore Roosevelt even though they didn't have women back then.
  • Getting so annoyed at an ad that you have to log back into Twitter.
  • Scrolling social media and getting angry by yourself.
  • The crucial elements that comprise the ahegao face.
  • Electronic Girl.
  • The phylogeny of the e-girl.
  • Is it Soup?
  • Looking at Zelda's face and thinking "okay, that's soup."
  • Whether ahegao or Betty Boop are sexy.
  • A face that people make to indicate horniness.
  • The Betty Boop ahegao: it's bad, folks.
  • What is otaku's plan for us?
  • Project Lords.
  • A web site with JavaScript implementations of video game code wheels of various 90s video games.
  • Everybody playing the free version of chess for thousands of years when the paid version is a way better game.
  • Why there is no Casio Loopy emulator.
  • Finding a tiny blood reservoir for the smallest blood sacrifices.
  • Who wrote the Vagina Monologues?
  • Moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano.
  • What a lanyard is and what it's for.
  • How to repay your mom for all the things that she's given you.
  • God's Eyes.
  • Replacing your son's butt-gasket.
  • Being old enough to remember when it was normal for schoolchildren to make their parents an ashtray.
  • Making a gumball dispenser in wood shop and using it to convince your mom to buy you a big bag of gumballs.
  • 1899.
  • A sequence of mysterious things happening.
  • A mysterious TV show that ends when you overwater all of your boyfriend's plants.
  • The final episode of Lost, where the giant panda shows up and explains that "I'm god and you're in my dream!"
  • Comedy typing directly into the Topic Bucket.
  • What makes a good ending to a mystery-focused story.
  • Mystery as marketing hook.
  • How to end a mystery-focused story in a satisfying way without solving the mystery.
  • The most normal-looking guy in Radiohead.
  • The one guy in Radiohead who doesn't have any fans.
  • From the Basement in Rainbows.
  • A super chill guy keeping time with his leg.
  • Does Ed from Radiohead only sing his own name?
  • A Pokemon Named Ed.
  • Idiosyncratic ways to describe your favorite band member, that unlock your unique adoration.
  • The only member of the band who smiles.
  • Absorbing it all as the luckiest person alive playing with your pals in a huge venue.
  • The kind of Radiohead fan whose imagination is so powerful that you can't safely let them into Radiohead concerts because they might imagine a bomb.
  • The kind of Topic Lord who listens to the show.
  • Having some delightful chats in Texas.
  • Posing on the pumpjack where nobody will ever see you.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+OE6htGko ]]> Jim Stormdancer 167. Riker's Doing the Biting https://topiclords.com/rikers-doing-the-biting 094b238d-fcca-4b38-80c7-7728873e409d Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Danny and Akash. We discuss 100khz microphones, the town in Alaska that's all in one building, grainy magazine screen shot filters, Hitler is a Jerk, coming back to games after not playing them for a while, and what to call the Vampire Survivors genre. 1:05:13 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Sleeping with 20,000 podcasts.
  • Hyper Light Waiter.
  • Rift of the Necrodancer.
  • Picking up a dog ribcage and the rest of the dog comes with it.
  • A cat flowing out of your hands like water.
  • Which organ you smell with.
  • Dipping your fingies into the chicken vat to refresh the chicken smell.
  • Serendipity, providence, kismet, fate: Stormdancing.
  • Nyquist vs. Dayquist.
  • A big talking world snake named Carlosti, just like in the Edda.
  • Pitching a character's voice down four semitones to indicate that they're the bad guy.
  • Inventing a sound never heard before.
  • Doing a fun click.
  • Whether to take Tidal seriously.
  • Moving to a town that lives in a shopping mall.
  • Snowpiercer but the wheels fell off.
  • Signing your kids up for Twitter because they have to learn about death somehow.
  • A tiktok sensation dancing with a subway sandwich.
  • Visiting the sewage treatment plant next to the Forever 21.
  • The only two Invisible War fans in the world, on the same podcast together.
  • Crimothy, Jermdom and Frenchalor.
  • The Archie Effect.
  • A video card that's broken in an extremely specific way.
  • Reading a brochure about Super Metroid over and over.
  • A controller made of marzipan.
  • 2x Sai vs. SuperEagle.
  • DLSS but for pixel art.
  • Star Wars but every six seconds it's a different director.
  • Paying composers to make original music because you enjoy the idea of paying people to do work.
  • A poem by Nega-Kanye West.
  • The engine that drives the popularity of the "Whistle while you work / Hitler is a jerk" rhyme.
  • Bratwurst vs. Vienna Sausage.
  • Whether Data has functional genitalia.
  • The episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation where Data stars in a porn film in order to better understand that part of the human experience.
  • Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X Porn Parody: it's a satire.
  • Trying to find the Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X porn parody but all you can find is endless copies of the Babylon 5 porn parody.
  • Searching the internet and the universe for an answer.
  • Pressing both the sticks in and the sea monkeys come out.
  • What's cool about Dark Souls.
  • Trying to get your mom to play Skyrim with the Macho Man Randy Savage mod installed.
  • Video games: fuck the whole town!
  • Game of the Year in the sense of Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
  • Roguelikes: they're like Rogue.
  • Single-stick shooters.
  • The kind of game that a CSI character would play.
  • What Fortnite was before it was a PubG clone.
  • The extremely bitter blog post about the Edge team giving up and wrapping Chromium.
  • Where to play Frog Fractions 4 and 5.
  • How to feel about numbers.
  • The most expensive Vampire Survivor-likes.
  • Where to find Drop 7 2.
  • Arcade Paradise.
  • Bootleg Fractions.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Sleeping with 20,000 podcasts.
  • Hyper Light Waiter.
  • Rift of the Necrodancer.
  • Picking up a dog ribcage and the rest of the dog comes with it.
  • A cat flowing out of your hands like water.
  • Which organ you smell with.
  • Dipping your fingies into the chicken vat to refresh the chicken smell.
  • Serendipity, providence, kismet, fate: Stormdancing.
  • Nyquist vs. Dayquist.
  • A big talking world snake named Carlosti, just like in the Edda.
  • Pitching a character's voice down four semitones to indicate that they're the bad guy.
  • Inventing a sound never heard before.
  • Doing a fun click.
  • Whether to take Tidal seriously.
  • Moving to a town that lives in a shopping mall.
  • Snowpiercer but the wheels fell off.
  • Signing your kids up for Twitter because they have to learn about death somehow.
  • A tiktok sensation dancing with a subway sandwich.
  • Visiting the sewage treatment plant next to the Forever 21.
  • The only two Invisible War fans in the world, on the same podcast together.
  • Crimothy, Jermdom and Frenchalor.
  • The Archie Effect.
  • A video card that's broken in an extremely specific way.
  • Reading a brochure about Super Metroid over and over.
  • A controller made of marzipan.
  • 2x Sai vs. SuperEagle.
  • DLSS but for pixel art.
  • Star Wars but every six seconds it's a different director.
  • Paying composers to make original music because you enjoy the idea of paying people to do work.
  • A poem by Nega-Kanye West.
  • The engine that drives the popularity of the "Whistle while you work / Hitler is a jerk" rhyme.
  • Bratwurst vs. Vienna Sausage.
  • Whether Data has functional genitalia.
  • The episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation where Data stars in a porn film in order to better understand that part of the human experience.
  • Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X Porn Parody: it's a satire.
  • Trying to find the Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X porn parody but all you can find is endless copies of the Babylon 5 porn parody.
  • Searching the internet and the universe for an answer.
  • Pressing both the sticks in and the sea monkeys come out.
  • What's cool about Dark Souls.
  • Trying to get your mom to play Skyrim with the Macho Man Randy Savage mod installed.
  • Video games: fuck the whole town!
  • Game of the Year in the sense of Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
  • Roguelikes: they're like Rogue.
  • Single-stick shooters.
  • The kind of game that a CSI character would play.
  • What Fortnite was before it was a PubG clone.
  • The extremely bitter blog post about the Edge team giving up and wrapping Chromium.
  • Where to play Frog Fractions 4 and 5.
  • How to feel about numbers.
  • The most expensive Vampire Survivor-likes.
  • Where to find Drop 7 2.
  • Arcade Paradise.
  • Bootleg Fractions.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Sleeping with 20,000 podcasts.
  • Hyper Light Waiter.
  • Rift of the Necrodancer.
  • Picking up a dog ribcage and the rest of the dog comes with it.
  • A cat flowing out of your hands like water.
  • Which organ you smell with.
  • Dipping your fingies into the chicken vat to refresh the chicken smell.
  • Serendipity, providence, kismet, fate: Stormdancing.
  • Nyquist vs. Dayquist.
  • A big talking world snake named Carlosti, just like in the Edda.
  • Pitching a character's voice down four semitones to indicate that they're the bad guy.
  • Inventing a sound never heard before.
  • Doing a fun click.
  • Whether to take Tidal seriously.
  • Moving to a town that lives in a shopping mall.
  • Snowpiercer but the wheels fell off.
  • Signing your kids up for Twitter because they have to learn about death somehow.
  • A tiktok sensation dancing with a subway sandwich.
  • Visiting the sewage treatment plant next to the Forever 21.
  • The only two Invisible War fans in the world, on the same podcast together.
  • Crimothy, Jermdom and Frenchalor.
  • The Archie Effect.
  • A video card that's broken in an extremely specific way.
  • Reading a brochure about Super Metroid over and over.
  • A controller made of marzipan.
  • 2x Sai vs. SuperEagle.
  • DLSS but for pixel art.
  • Star Wars but every six seconds it's a different director.
  • Paying composers to make original music because you enjoy the idea of paying people to do work.
  • A poem by Nega-Kanye West.
  • The engine that drives the popularity of the "Whistle while you work / Hitler is a jerk" rhyme.
  • Bratwurst vs. Vienna Sausage.
  • Whether Data has functional genitalia.
  • The episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation where Data stars in a porn film in order to better understand that part of the human experience.
  • Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X Porn Parody: it's a satire.
  • Trying to find the Star Trek Next Generation Triple-X porn parody but all you can find is endless copies of the Babylon 5 porn parody.
  • Searching the internet and the universe for an answer.
  • Pressing both the sticks in and the sea monkeys come out.
  • What's cool about Dark Souls.
  • Trying to get your mom to play Skyrim with the Macho Man Randy Savage mod installed.
  • Video games: fuck the whole town!
  • Game of the Year in the sense of Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
  • Roguelikes: they're like Rogue.
  • Single-stick shooters.
  • The kind of game that a CSI character would play.
  • What Fortnite was before it was a PubG clone.
  • The extremely bitter blog post about the Edge team giving up and wrapping Chromium.
  • Where to play Frog Fractions 4 and 5.
  • How to feel about numbers.
  • The most expensive Vampire Survivor-likes.
  • Where to find Drop 7 2.
  • Arcade Paradise.
  • Bootleg Fractions.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+nQ2nGYDA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 166. There's Only One Best Topic https://topiclords.com/theres-only-one-best-topic 685b1b60-aab5-4a6d-b73b-ef28c59401a7 Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Maxx. We discuss freesound.org, shutting down the FF2 ARG Twitter, leisure in the 70s, Snow by David Berman, the Some Potatoes diet, and plants that can see, sorta. 1:11:31 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Topic Lords discord.
  • Meeting friends in the Kingdom of Loathing chat.
  • A virtual birthday party crashing app.
  • Piranesi.
  • A website where people post sound.
  • Wav laundering.
  • Purchasing a lion sound effect from an off-Broadway sound effect shop.
  • Sending over the can crushing noises that you selected.
  • Someone's friend pretending to be a bird.
  • Having a roommate named Phil all of whose passwords were “Phil”
  • AAA games with Freesound user names in the credits.
  • Recognizing Brick Drop 5 from Dope Dragon 69's Freesound portfolio.
  • Officer, I was just making a video game!
  • The psychology of why no Freesound user has uploaded a good pneumatic tube delivery sound.
  • The bank teller watching you and registering your surprise at being delivered a tube.
  • The bank tellers noticing that you are shitting into the pneumatic delivery tube and lifting the Gallagher tarp in front of their faces.
  • Getting ready for bed and then suddenly recording an episode of Topic Lords.
  • SmokenweewALT recording water flowing sounds in Flushing, Queens.
  • The best Wikipedia pages.
  • Toe Cleavage.
  • Cats who have jobs.
  • Finding things on Wikipedia that are not directly related to one another.
  • Tweeting your disappointment that a weird thing turns out to be part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • The alternate reality where Frog Fractions 2 launched but nobody ever found it.
  • The final unsolved (and now unsolvable) FF2 ARG puzzle.
  • Who was solving things?
  • New ways to not be at work.
  • Another word for having a good time.
  • Choosing photos to represent the concept of leisure.
  • Phil relaxing on the couch next to his toilet paper.
  • Someone who doesn't have a bed but does have two lanterns.
  • The guy who has spent fifteen years uploading pictures of his foreskin to Wikipedia just in case someone needs a picture of foreskin.
  • Spending so long thinking about someone that you're unsure whether they're notorious to anyone but you.
  • A foreskin in repose.
  • Believing that genes are immortal survival machines that use our disposable bodies to endlessly replicate themselves.
  • The concept of leisure as a human right.
  • Serious vs. casual leisure.
  • Project-based leisure projects.
  • A poem stapled to the wall in a laundromat in Massachusetts.
  • Voices hanging close in the new acoustics.
  • Explaining to your little brother that the snow angels are angel corpses that a nearby farmer murdered.
  • Lying to your child just a little bit, as a treat.
  • The Seattle Space Noodle.
  • The last Burger King in Amsterdam.
  • The most normal person you know.
  • Running an impromptu experiment on the internet by asking strangers to eat nothing but potatoes and report back.
  • Trying the all-potatoes diet for thirty years.
  • Eating 40 potatoes a day.
  • Game designer and science communicator Nicky Case.
  • Halftato.
  • Overdosing on potassium.
  • Doctors telling you to cool it with the potassium.
  • Why doctors don't know how much chemotherapy to give obese people.
  • The doctor from the phrenology department measuring your neck to see if you have sleep apnea.
  • Parasitic plants imitating the host plant's leaves.
  • Recognizing silhouettes of birds from an 8x8 monochrome image.
  • Rapidly changing the hydraulics of your leaves.
  • A forest of Max mimicry.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Topic Lords discord.
  • Meeting friends in the Kingdom of Loathing chat.
  • A virtual birthday party crashing app.
  • Piranesi.
  • A website where people post sound.
  • Wav laundering.
  • Purchasing a lion sound effect from an off-Broadway sound effect shop.
  • Sending over the can crushing noises that you selected.
  • Someone's friend pretending to be a bird.
  • Having a roommate named Phil all of whose passwords were “Phil”
  • AAA games with Freesound user names in the credits.
  • Recognizing Brick Drop 5 from Dope Dragon 69's Freesound portfolio.
  • Officer, I was just making a video game!
  • The psychology of why no Freesound user has uploaded a good pneumatic tube delivery sound.
  • The bank teller watching you and registering your surprise at being delivered a tube.
  • The bank tellers noticing that you are shitting into the pneumatic delivery tube and lifting the Gallagher tarp in front of their faces.
  • Getting ready for bed and then suddenly recording an episode of Topic Lords.
  • SmokenweewALT recording water flowing sounds in Flushing, Queens.
  • The best Wikipedia pages.
  • Toe Cleavage.
  • Cats who have jobs.
  • Finding things on Wikipedia that are not directly related to one another.
  • Tweeting your disappointment that a weird thing turns out to be part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • The alternate reality where Frog Fractions 2 launched but nobody ever found it.
  • The final unsolved (and now unsolvable) FF2 ARG puzzle.
  • Who was solving things?
  • New ways to not be at work.
  • Another word for having a good time.
  • Choosing photos to represent the concept of leisure.
  • Phil relaxing on the couch next to his toilet paper.
  • Someone who doesn't have a bed but does have two lanterns.
  • The guy who has spent fifteen years uploading pictures of his foreskin to Wikipedia just in case someone needs a picture of foreskin.
  • Spending so long thinking about someone that you're unsure whether they're notorious to anyone but you.
  • A foreskin in repose.
  • Believing that genes are immortal survival machines that use our disposable bodies to endlessly replicate themselves.
  • The concept of leisure as a human right.
  • Serious vs. casual leisure.
  • Project-based leisure projects.
  • A poem stapled to the wall in a laundromat in Massachusetts.
  • Voices hanging close in the new acoustics.
  • Explaining to your little brother that the snow angels are angel corpses that a nearby farmer murdered.
  • Lying to your child just a little bit, as a treat.
  • The Seattle Space Noodle.
  • The last Burger King in Amsterdam.
  • The most normal person you know.
  • Running an impromptu experiment on the internet by asking strangers to eat nothing but potatoes and report back.
  • Trying the all-potatoes diet for thirty years.
  • Eating 40 potatoes a day.
  • Game designer and science communicator Nicky Case.
  • Halftato.
  • Overdosing on potassium.
  • Doctors telling you to cool it with the potassium.
  • Why doctors don't know how much chemotherapy to give obese people.
  • The doctor from the phrenology department measuring your neck to see if you have sleep apnea.
  • Parasitic plants imitating the host plant's leaves.
  • Recognizing silhouettes of birds from an 8x8 monochrome image.
  • Rapidly changing the hydraulics of your leaves.
  • A forest of Max mimicry.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Topic Lords discord.
  • Meeting friends in the Kingdom of Loathing chat.
  • A virtual birthday party crashing app.
  • Piranesi.
  • A website where people post sound.
  • Wav laundering.
  • Purchasing a lion sound effect from an off-Broadway sound effect shop.
  • Sending over the can crushing noises that you selected.
  • Someone's friend pretending to be a bird.
  • Having a roommate named Phil all of whose passwords were “Phil”
  • AAA games with Freesound user names in the credits.
  • Recognizing Brick Drop 5 from Dope Dragon 69's Freesound portfolio.
  • Officer, I was just making a video game!
  • The psychology of why no Freesound user has uploaded a good pneumatic tube delivery sound.
  • The bank teller watching you and registering your surprise at being delivered a tube.
  • The bank tellers noticing that you are shitting into the pneumatic delivery tube and lifting the Gallagher tarp in front of their faces.
  • Getting ready for bed and then suddenly recording an episode of Topic Lords.
  • SmokenweewALT recording water flowing sounds in Flushing, Queens.
  • The best Wikipedia pages.
  • Toe Cleavage.
  • Cats who have jobs.
  • Finding things on Wikipedia that are not directly related to one another.
  • Tweeting your disappointment that a weird thing turns out to be part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • The alternate reality where Frog Fractions 2 launched but nobody ever found it.
  • The final unsolved (and now unsolvable) FF2 ARG puzzle.
  • Who was solving things?
  • New ways to not be at work.
  • Another word for having a good time.
  • Choosing photos to represent the concept of leisure.
  • Phil relaxing on the couch next to his toilet paper.
  • Someone who doesn't have a bed but does have two lanterns.
  • The guy who has spent fifteen years uploading pictures of his foreskin to Wikipedia just in case someone needs a picture of foreskin.
  • Spending so long thinking about someone that you're unsure whether they're notorious to anyone but you.
  • A foreskin in repose.
  • Believing that genes are immortal survival machines that use our disposable bodies to endlessly replicate themselves.
  • The concept of leisure as a human right.
  • Serious vs. casual leisure.
  • Project-based leisure projects.
  • A poem stapled to the wall in a laundromat in Massachusetts.
  • Voices hanging close in the new acoustics.
  • Explaining to your little brother that the snow angels are angel corpses that a nearby farmer murdered.
  • Lying to your child just a little bit, as a treat.
  • The Seattle Space Noodle.
  • The last Burger King in Amsterdam.
  • The most normal person you know.
  • Running an impromptu experiment on the internet by asking strangers to eat nothing but potatoes and report back.
  • Trying the all-potatoes diet for thirty years.
  • Eating 40 potatoes a day.
  • Game designer and science communicator Nicky Case.
  • Halftato.
  • Overdosing on potassium.
  • Doctors telling you to cool it with the potassium.
  • Why doctors don't know how much chemotherapy to give obese people.
  • The doctor from the phrenology department measuring your neck to see if you have sleep apnea.
  • Parasitic plants imitating the host plant's leaves.
  • Recognizing silhouettes of birds from an 8x8 monochrome image.
  • Rapidly changing the hydraulics of your leaves.
  • A forest of Max mimicry.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+8Cb8EezP ]]> Jim Stormdancer 165. Spitting Wiggly Air https://topiclords.com/spitting-wiggly-air 931972ed-56d6-49bd-b736-cc4acb6c354c Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mark and Shirley. We discuss finding Shirley transformed into a puddle of water, aphasia, Dr. Icecreamwala, Eternal Champion - I Am The Hammer, Teen Censorship, and SCA stuff. 1:11:22 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • EEG, EKG and ECG.
  • Dogs and video games.
  • Kingdom: Two Crowns.
  • Whoops, I'm Dead!
  • Borker and Starina.
  • Waking up in the morning and telling your wife "and we're back!"
  • Sleeping with the Shirley-cicle.
  • When your wife turns into a puddle of water and you have to get a hot water bottle shaped like your wife to sleep with every night.
  • Hedge witches.
  • An Alex Mack situation.
  • Turning yourself into a goo accidentally vs. on purpose.
  • A dog athletic enough to pee on your glasses while you're wearing them.
  • Figuring out what muscle to flex to telepathically communicate as a glass of water.
  • Believing things you see written in an authoritative voice.
  • The kind of movies Bruce Willis has been making lately.
  • Aphasia vs. Primary Progressive Aphasia.
  • The four primary modalities of human language.
  • Figuring out how to hang out with someone you can't talk to.
  • Decoupling the word "yes" from its literal meaning.
  • Apraxia of speech.
  • Thanking colonialism for this moment of delight.
  • Serving your patients their prescription in a waffle cone.
  • Flying to the Bay Area to get some light dermatology done.
  • The battle-starved riders of Tarsul.
  • The demon priests of ill Nitaar.
  • Nolan Bushnell receiving feedback about the name Atari.
  • The God Blade.
  • Fist-pumpin', sword-swingin' heavy metal.
  • A good source of lore.
  • Cosmologies where god is a species.
  • Drinking his blood to see what happens.
  • Heavy metal bands fronted by blacksmiths.
  • Wanting your teenager to feel safe listening to fascist heavy metal in front of you so that you can talk to them about it.
  • Installing a web filter so that your child doesn't accidentally stumble into gross abusive porn.
  • Opinions about parent-child relationships from someone who was once a child.
  • Heavy metal bands who write music about white nationalism vs. heavy metal bands who are just white nationalist without writing about it.
  • Deliberately not separating the art from the artist so you get the extra enjoyment out of musicians who are cool people.
  • Videos of common household items being crushed under the wheels of a car.
  • Videos of people building things in the woods.
  • Devil's toothpaste.
  • Reacting to the sugar tax by angrily boycotting soda.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism kicking you out if you dress up as a time traveler from the future or a 1950s greaser.
  • The SCA re-enacting the before-times, when morning zoo radio didn't exist yet.
  • Apex Nerds.
  • Geniuses above petty squabbling.
  • A better system of chilling out.
  • Going into the woods with your friend who likes building stuff in the woods and watching him build stuff in the woods.
  • Movies set in the 80s that have absolutely nothing from the 70s in them because everybody threw all that shit away on January 1st, 1980.
  • Handing out arm rings to your sworn men.
  • Instituting a buddy system where you buy each other awards.
  • Happy baby cow.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • EEG, EKG and ECG.
  • Dogs and video games.
  • Kingdom: Two Crowns.
  • Whoops, I'm Dead!
  • Borker and Starina.
  • Waking up in the morning and telling your wife "and we're back!"
  • Sleeping with the Shirley-cicle.
  • When your wife turns into a puddle of water and you have to get a hot water bottle shaped like your wife to sleep with every night.
  • Hedge witches.
  • An Alex Mack situation.
  • Turning yourself into a goo accidentally vs. on purpose.
  • A dog athletic enough to pee on your glasses while you're wearing them.
  • Figuring out what muscle to flex to telepathically communicate as a glass of water.
  • Believing things you see written in an authoritative voice.
  • The kind of movies Bruce Willis has been making lately.
  • Aphasia vs. Primary Progressive Aphasia.
  • The four primary modalities of human language.
  • Figuring out how to hang out with someone you can't talk to.
  • Decoupling the word "yes" from its literal meaning.
  • Apraxia of speech.
  • Thanking colonialism for this moment of delight.
  • Serving your patients their prescription in a waffle cone.
  • Flying to the Bay Area to get some light dermatology done.
  • The battle-starved riders of Tarsul.
  • The demon priests of ill Nitaar.
  • Nolan Bushnell receiving feedback about the name Atari.
  • The God Blade.
  • Fist-pumpin', sword-swingin' heavy metal.
  • A good source of lore.
  • Cosmologies where god is a species.
  • Drinking his blood to see what happens.
  • Heavy metal bands fronted by blacksmiths.
  • Wanting your teenager to feel safe listening to fascist heavy metal in front of you so that you can talk to them about it.
  • Installing a web filter so that your child doesn't accidentally stumble into gross abusive porn.
  • Opinions about parent-child relationships from someone who was once a child.
  • Heavy metal bands who write music about white nationalism vs. heavy metal bands who are just white nationalist without writing about it.
  • Deliberately not separating the art from the artist so you get the extra enjoyment out of musicians who are cool people.
  • Videos of common household items being crushed under the wheels of a car.
  • Videos of people building things in the woods.
  • Devil's toothpaste.
  • Reacting to the sugar tax by angrily boycotting soda.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism kicking you out if you dress up as a time traveler from the future or a 1950s greaser.
  • The SCA re-enacting the before-times, when morning zoo radio didn't exist yet.
  • Apex Nerds.
  • Geniuses above petty squabbling.
  • A better system of chilling out.
  • Going into the woods with your friend who likes building stuff in the woods and watching him build stuff in the woods.
  • Movies set in the 80s that have absolutely nothing from the 70s in them because everybody threw all that shit away on January 1st, 1980.
  • Handing out arm rings to your sworn men.
  • Instituting a buddy system where you buy each other awards.
  • Happy baby cow.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Mark
  • Shirley

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • EEG, EKG and ECG.
  • Dogs and video games.
  • Kingdom: Two Crowns.
  • Whoops, I'm Dead!
  • Borker and Starina.
  • Waking up in the morning and telling your wife "and we're back!"
  • Sleeping with the Shirley-cicle.
  • When your wife turns into a puddle of water and you have to get a hot water bottle shaped like your wife to sleep with every night.
  • Hedge witches.
  • An Alex Mack situation.
  • Turning yourself into a goo accidentally vs. on purpose.
  • A dog athletic enough to pee on your glasses while you're wearing them.
  • Figuring out what muscle to flex to telepathically communicate as a glass of water.
  • Believing things you see written in an authoritative voice.
  • The kind of movies Bruce Willis has been making lately.
  • Aphasia vs. Primary Progressive Aphasia.
  • The four primary modalities of human language.
  • Figuring out how to hang out with someone you can't talk to.
  • Decoupling the word "yes" from its literal meaning.
  • Apraxia of speech.
  • Thanking colonialism for this moment of delight.
  • Serving your patients their prescription in a waffle cone.
  • Flying to the Bay Area to get some light dermatology done.
  • The battle-starved riders of Tarsul.
  • The demon priests of ill Nitaar.
  • Nolan Bushnell receiving feedback about the name Atari.
  • The God Blade.
  • Fist-pumpin', sword-swingin' heavy metal.
  • A good source of lore.
  • Cosmologies where god is a species.
  • Drinking his blood to see what happens.
  • Heavy metal bands fronted by blacksmiths.
  • Wanting your teenager to feel safe listening to fascist heavy metal in front of you so that you can talk to them about it.
  • Installing a web filter so that your child doesn't accidentally stumble into gross abusive porn.
  • Opinions about parent-child relationships from someone who was once a child.
  • Heavy metal bands who write music about white nationalism vs. heavy metal bands who are just white nationalist without writing about it.
  • Deliberately not separating the art from the artist so you get the extra enjoyment out of musicians who are cool people.
  • Videos of common household items being crushed under the wheels of a car.
  • Videos of people building things in the woods.
  • Devil's toothpaste.
  • Reacting to the sugar tax by angrily boycotting soda.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism kicking you out if you dress up as a time traveler from the future or a 1950s greaser.
  • The SCA re-enacting the before-times, when morning zoo radio didn't exist yet.
  • Apex Nerds.
  • Geniuses above petty squabbling.
  • A better system of chilling out.
  • Going into the woods with your friend who likes building stuff in the woods and watching him build stuff in the woods.
  • Movies set in the 80s that have absolutely nothing from the 70s in them because everybody threw all that shit away on January 1st, 1980.
  • Handing out arm rings to your sworn men.
  • Instituting a buddy system where you buy each other awards.
  • Happy baby cow.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+6b7AvI2s ]]> Jim Stormdancer 164. Dead Bodies Are Always in the First Place You Look https://topiclords.com/dead-bodies-are-always-in-the-first-place-you-look 06d046ab-78d8-40b5-80db-0ed5ceb12953 Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Tyriq. Topics: octopodes, teaching your son to drive, breaking the RNG in The Colonel's Bequest, and fixing the camera in Mario Odyssey. 1:12:56 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Nathan
    • MommysBestGames on Twitter.
  • Tyriq
    • FourBitFriday everywhere.

Topics:

  • Octopodes, continued
  • My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps.
  • The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay.
  • How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey?

Microtopics:

  • Game Type DX.
  • Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony.
  • The most serious episode of Topic Lords.
  • Bringing up Octopuses every three years.
  • Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored.
  • Sea pork.
  • Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm.
  • Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.
  • Chimpanzee pranks.
  • Making art because that's what people do.
  • Trying to disentangle making art from making a living.
  • Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time.
  • Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved.
  • Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
  • Molluscs having a good time.
  • Terraforming gone awry.
  • The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas.
  • Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive.
  • How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas.
  • Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again.
  • Terrifying two lane roads.
  • Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign.
  • Driving in Atlanta.
  • Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow.
  • The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery.
  • Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now.
  • Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious.
  • Detective adventure game structure.
  • The botched Red Baron Easter egg.
  • Walking by windows whenever possible.
  • Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy.
  • Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion.
  • Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look.
  • Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order.
  • A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody.
  • Game design that is driven by fun tech.
  • Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason.
  • An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG.
  • A game design critique of darts.
  • Fingers in the brain, squishing.
  • Why Game Genie codes are encrypted.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor.
  • BASIC Programming and Computer Intro.
  • The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog.
  • Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist.
  • Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids.
  • Looking into a shoebox of fun.
  • Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series.
  • A classic 3D platformer problem.
  • Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons.
  • The kind of Mario game that your dad can play.
  • Been solved. Not fun.
  • Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Nathan
    • MommysBestGames on Twitter.
  • Tyriq
    • FourBitFriday everywhere.

Topics:

  • Octopodes, continued
  • My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps.
  • The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay.
  • How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey?

Microtopics:

  • Game Type DX.
  • Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony.
  • The most serious episode of Topic Lords.
  • Bringing up Octopuses every three years.
  • Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored.
  • Sea pork.
  • Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm.
  • Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.
  • Chimpanzee pranks.
  • Making art because that's what people do.
  • Trying to disentangle making art from making a living.
  • Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time.
  • Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved.
  • Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
  • Molluscs having a good time.
  • Terraforming gone awry.
  • The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas.
  • Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive.
  • How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas.
  • Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again.
  • Terrifying two lane roads.
  • Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign.
  • Driving in Atlanta.
  • Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow.
  • The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery.
  • Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now.
  • Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious.
  • Detective adventure game structure.
  • The botched Red Baron Easter egg.
  • Walking by windows whenever possible.
  • Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy.
  • Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion.
  • Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look.
  • Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order.
  • A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody.
  • Game design that is driven by fun tech.
  • Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason.
  • An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG.
  • A game design critique of darts.
  • Fingers in the brain, squishing.
  • Why Game Genie codes are encrypted.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor.
  • BASIC Programming and Computer Intro.
  • The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog.
  • Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist.
  • Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids.
  • Looking into a shoebox of fun.
  • Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series.
  • A classic 3D platformer problem.
  • Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons.
  • The kind of Mario game that your dad can play.
  • Been solved. Not fun.
  • Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Nathan
    • MommysBestGames on Twitter.
  • Tyriq
    • FourBitFriday everywhere.

Topics:

  • Octopodes, continued
  • My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps.
  • The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay.
  • How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey?

Microtopics:

  • Game Type DX.
  • Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony.
  • The most serious episode of Topic Lords.
  • Bringing up Octopuses every three years.
  • Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored.
  • Sea pork.
  • Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm.
  • Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.
  • Chimpanzee pranks.
  • Making art because that's what people do.
  • Trying to disentangle making art from making a living.
  • Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time.
  • Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved.
  • Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
  • Molluscs having a good time.
  • Terraforming gone awry.
  • The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas.
  • Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive.
  • How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas.
  • Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again.
  • Terrifying two lane roads.
  • Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign.
  • Driving in Atlanta.
  • Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow.
  • The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery.
  • Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now.
  • Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious.
  • Detective adventure game structure.
  • The botched Red Baron Easter egg.
  • Walking by windows whenever possible.
  • Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy.
  • Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion.
  • Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look.
  • Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order.
  • A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody.
  • Game design that is driven by fun tech.
  • Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason.
  • An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG.
  • A game design critique of darts.
  • Fingers in the brain, squishing.
  • Why Game Genie codes are encrypted.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor.
  • BASIC Programming and Computer Intro.
  • The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog.
  • Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist.
  • Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids.
  • Looking into a shoebox of fun.
  • Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series.
  • A classic 3D platformer problem.
  • Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons.
  • The kind of Mario game that your dad can play.
  • Been solved. Not fun.
  • Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+uEbqgtZ4 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 163. The Mean Horse Scenario https://topiclords.com/the-mean-horse-scenario 65dd8d59-7751-407a-b7b0-6cc96898fa1e Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mitch and Laura. We discuss how to get around in the post apocalypse, Super Mario Wiki, the GTA San Andreas conversation system, Last Straw by George Starbuck, and the gradual inflation of Youtube video length. 1:04:15 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • What vehicle would you use to get around in the post apocalypse? Are we talking live animals, internal combustion engine vehicles, bikes, skiis, etc? Why did you choose this?
  • The Super Mario Wiki is a beacon that other fan wikis should look to for inspiration
  • The GTA San Andreas conversation system
  • Last Straw, by George Starbuck http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2021/04/george-starbuck-nationalpoetrymonth.html
  • The gradual inflation of standard youtube video length

Microtopics:

  • Lowercase jan, capital Misali.
  • Collecting all 905 Pokemon after 25 years.
  • R-rated Pokemon competitor, "Seximals."
  • Free-range porn, or legitimate educational resource?
  • First impressions of seximal.net.
  • Counting up to 99 on your hands.
  • College basketball's tactical use of base 6.
  • The binary number represented by flipping someone the bird with both hands.
  • The Airworld situation.
  • A sled pulled by domesticated zombies.
  • Solving the tire problem so you can bike around in the post-apocalypse.
  • Horses destroying society by kicking every building down with their powerful legs.
  • Horsefingers.
  • Horseknuckles.
  • Being just tall enough for a horse to try to eat your hair.
  • Shoveling poop out of the bear bone barn.
  • Standards of accuracy and editorial quality in the Super Mario Wiki.
  • Niwa, the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance.
  • What Mario Wiki has to say about the Berlin Wall.
  • Abraham Lincoln's place in the Mario Canon.
  • Organizing the Marvel Wiki by universe number.
  • The most objective possible method of sorting a list of universes.
  • Regular Peter Parker vs. Ultimate Peter Parker.
  • 10 seconds of scrolling.
  • A wealth of information not intended for a phone screen.
  • The ontological difference between characters and allies.
  • What species exist in the world of Mario?
  • Action Toad.
  • The wiki article about Baby Mario, a distinct character from the times various Marios have been babies.
  • The love child of Bowser and Shigeru Miyamoto.
  • Making invitations to your bachelor party with Mario Print World.
  • Different forms of pounding your butt on the ground.
  • The Ground Pound, also known as the Hip Drop, Pound the Ground attack, Bounce, Butt-Bash, Jump Smash, Smash Attack, and Butt Stomp.
  • How wikis get away with not being normalized databases.
  • A loose simulacrum of conversation.
  • A conversation that takes the form of a hand wave and then a gulf a million miles wide.
  • Pausing for several minutes to contemplate whether you've ever eaten octopus for breakfast.
  • Fifty ways to say "please don't hit me in the head with that wrench."
  • The Heaven's Vault conversation system.
  • Ten different voice actors saying the same twenty lines.
  • A normal poetry thing.
  • Trying to find the poem "The Last Straw" by George Starbuck but Google only wants to show you articles about how Starbucks doesn't have straws any more.
  • Poems that use two meters at once.
  • Showing the frivolity of the line lengths.
  • Back when Youtube videos were limited to ten minutes.
  • Just sitting here making feature films by myself.
  • Al Gore, the guy who invented the Algorithm.
  • Promising things in the show notes that definitely aren't going to go there.
  • What happens in an ecosystem where there is no pressure to make your work shorter.
  • People who have time to watch a three hour Youtube video.
  • Watching a movie over the course of a week, ten minutes at a time.
  • Multitasking poorly.
  • How to find people on Cohost.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • What vehicle would you use to get around in the post apocalypse? Are we talking live animals, internal combustion engine vehicles, bikes, skiis, etc? Why did you choose this?
  • The Super Mario Wiki is a beacon that other fan wikis should look to for inspiration
  • The GTA San Andreas conversation system
  • Last Straw, by George Starbuck http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2021/04/george-starbuck-nationalpoetrymonth.html
  • The gradual inflation of standard youtube video length

Microtopics:

  • Lowercase jan, capital Misali.
  • Collecting all 905 Pokemon after 25 years.
  • R-rated Pokemon competitor, "Seximals."
  • Free-range porn, or legitimate educational resource?
  • First impressions of seximal.net.
  • Counting up to 99 on your hands.
  • College basketball's tactical use of base 6.
  • The binary number represented by flipping someone the bird with both hands.
  • The Airworld situation.
  • A sled pulled by domesticated zombies.
  • Solving the tire problem so you can bike around in the post-apocalypse.
  • Horses destroying society by kicking every building down with their powerful legs.
  • Horsefingers.
  • Horseknuckles.
  • Being just tall enough for a horse to try to eat your hair.
  • Shoveling poop out of the bear bone barn.
  • Standards of accuracy and editorial quality in the Super Mario Wiki.
  • Niwa, the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance.
  • What Mario Wiki has to say about the Berlin Wall.
  • Abraham Lincoln's place in the Mario Canon.
  • Organizing the Marvel Wiki by universe number.
  • The most objective possible method of sorting a list of universes.
  • Regular Peter Parker vs. Ultimate Peter Parker.
  • 10 seconds of scrolling.
  • A wealth of information not intended for a phone screen.
  • The ontological difference between characters and allies.
  • What species exist in the world of Mario?
  • Action Toad.
  • The wiki article about Baby Mario, a distinct character from the times various Marios have been babies.
  • The love child of Bowser and Shigeru Miyamoto.
  • Making invitations to your bachelor party with Mario Print World.
  • Different forms of pounding your butt on the ground.
  • The Ground Pound, also known as the Hip Drop, Pound the Ground attack, Bounce, Butt-Bash, Jump Smash, Smash Attack, and Butt Stomp.
  • How wikis get away with not being normalized databases.
  • A loose simulacrum of conversation.
  • A conversation that takes the form of a hand wave and then a gulf a million miles wide.
  • Pausing for several minutes to contemplate whether you've ever eaten octopus for breakfast.
  • Fifty ways to say "please don't hit me in the head with that wrench."
  • The Heaven's Vault conversation system.
  • Ten different voice actors saying the same twenty lines.
  • A normal poetry thing.
  • Trying to find the poem "The Last Straw" by George Starbuck but Google only wants to show you articles about how Starbucks doesn't have straws any more.
  • Poems that use two meters at once.
  • Showing the frivolity of the line lengths.
  • Back when Youtube videos were limited to ten minutes.
  • Just sitting here making feature films by myself.
  • Al Gore, the guy who invented the Algorithm.
  • Promising things in the show notes that definitely aren't going to go there.
  • What happens in an ecosystem where there is no pressure to make your work shorter.
  • People who have time to watch a three hour Youtube video.
  • Watching a movie over the course of a week, ten minutes at a time.
  • Multitasking poorly.
  • How to find people on Cohost.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • What vehicle would you use to get around in the post apocalypse? Are we talking live animals, internal combustion engine vehicles, bikes, skiis, etc? Why did you choose this?
  • The Super Mario Wiki is a beacon that other fan wikis should look to for inspiration
  • The GTA San Andreas conversation system
  • Last Straw, by George Starbuck http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2021/04/george-starbuck-nationalpoetrymonth.html
  • The gradual inflation of standard youtube video length

Microtopics:

  • Lowercase jan, capital Misali.
  • Collecting all 905 Pokemon after 25 years.
  • R-rated Pokemon competitor, "Seximals."
  • Free-range porn, or legitimate educational resource?
  • First impressions of seximal.net.
  • Counting up to 99 on your hands.
  • College basketball's tactical use of base 6.
  • The binary number represented by flipping someone the bird with both hands.
  • The Airworld situation.
  • A sled pulled by domesticated zombies.
  • Solving the tire problem so you can bike around in the post-apocalypse.
  • Horses destroying society by kicking every building down with their powerful legs.
  • Horsefingers.
  • Horseknuckles.
  • Being just tall enough for a horse to try to eat your hair.
  • Shoveling poop out of the bear bone barn.
  • Standards of accuracy and editorial quality in the Super Mario Wiki.
  • Niwa, the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance.
  • What Mario Wiki has to say about the Berlin Wall.
  • Abraham Lincoln's place in the Mario Canon.
  • Organizing the Marvel Wiki by universe number.
  • The most objective possible method of sorting a list of universes.
  • Regular Peter Parker vs. Ultimate Peter Parker.
  • 10 seconds of scrolling.
  • A wealth of information not intended for a phone screen.
  • The ontological difference between characters and allies.
  • What species exist in the world of Mario?
  • Action Toad.
  • The wiki article about Baby Mario, a distinct character from the times various Marios have been babies.
  • The love child of Bowser and Shigeru Miyamoto.
  • Making invitations to your bachelor party with Mario Print World.
  • Different forms of pounding your butt on the ground.
  • The Ground Pound, also known as the Hip Drop, Pound the Ground attack, Bounce, Butt-Bash, Jump Smash, Smash Attack, and Butt Stomp.
  • How wikis get away with not being normalized databases.
  • A loose simulacrum of conversation.
  • A conversation that takes the form of a hand wave and then a gulf a million miles wide.
  • Pausing for several minutes to contemplate whether you've ever eaten octopus for breakfast.
  • Fifty ways to say "please don't hit me in the head with that wrench."
  • The Heaven's Vault conversation system.
  • Ten different voice actors saying the same twenty lines.
  • A normal poetry thing.
  • Trying to find the poem "The Last Straw" by George Starbuck but Google only wants to show you articles about how Starbucks doesn't have straws any more.
  • Poems that use two meters at once.
  • Showing the frivolity of the line lengths.
  • Back when Youtube videos were limited to ten minutes.
  • Just sitting here making feature films by myself.
  • Al Gore, the guy who invented the Algorithm.
  • Promising things in the show notes that definitely aren't going to go there.
  • What happens in an ecosystem where there is no pressure to make your work shorter.
  • People who have time to watch a three hour Youtube video.
  • Watching a movie over the course of a week, ten minutes at a time.
  • Multitasking poorly.
  • How to find people on Cohost.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+EldZNgP0 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 162. The Best Lawyer on Fiverr https://topiclords.com/the-best-lawyer-on-fiverr c74c1d63-183d-4f51-98b2-377a6d84efad Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Quil and Maxx. We discuss not liking apples, Opposite Costco, the Sweet Science, the Village and the Curious Hole, and BALLU the best robot. 57:04 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Quil
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making robots and video games in Seattle.
  • Cohost dot org.
  • Tumblr without Tumblr's weird nesting.
  • Finding interesting people to follow in 2005.
  • Cohost's discovery apparatus.
  • Making bad music on the internet that's not very enjoyable.
  • The worst fruit. (Apples.)
  • The enormous gulf between the audiovisual experience of watching someone eat an apple and eating that apple yourself.
  • The world's most apple growing place.
  • "Extra honey" apples.
  • Upgrading your teeth so that you can eat stone fruit without pitting them.
  • Installing a machine in your mouth that you can pour wheat into and it extrudes noodles right into your throat.
  • What wheat becomes if you chew it.
  • Pasta-flavored gum.
  • Vaguely salty orange chewing gum.
  • Installing an app to play a "biting an apple" ringtone into whenever you bite any fruit.
  • Japan's canonical fruit ranking with melon at the top, as seen in Pac-Man.
  • The way in which the B-tier melons are substandard.
  • The most cherries per slot machine.
  • Pivoting to chewing gum after San Francisco bans your gambling machines.
  • Buying just one leaf of parsley from Opposite Costco.
  • Naming your company after the idea of charging for things.
  • Buying hundreds of jigsaw puzzle pieces in bulk.
  • Tito Beverage.
  • You win stun, you lose stun.
  • Doug Bowser's Heel Turn.
  • Inaptronyms.
  • Punching somebody and all their honey comes out.
  • Preferring to punch people who bruise extremely precisely.
  • Hypothesizing that you are about to be punched in the face and setting up a control group.
  • Using science in an interesting way in 1832.
  • Little Alchemy and other combine-'em-ups.
  • What to play if you like adventure game inventory puzzles but not the rest of the adventure game.
  • The phone number you could call as part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Investigating where the wind knocked over the fox shrine.
  • Finding an infinitely deep hole and dumping all your garbage in it until you realize you can use it to solve the housing crisis.
  • The deepest man-made hole.
  • The town that is permanently on fire.
  • An extremely plausible hellmouth.
  • Thanks, Hellmouth!
  • Inventing Hell in the 1970s.
  • A video that you can silently play in the background.
  • A robot that is just a large helium balloon.
  • A robot that is neutrally buoyant.
  • Strandbeests.
  • Making the goofiest lil guy.
  • The exploded cell phone ghosts.
  • A traffic cone skateboarding with ska playing in the background.
  • The Topic Lords startup incubator.
  • Cony Hawk.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Quil
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making robots and video games in Seattle.
  • Cohost dot org.
  • Tumblr without Tumblr's weird nesting.
  • Finding interesting people to follow in 2005.
  • Cohost's discovery apparatus.
  • Making bad music on the internet that's not very enjoyable.
  • The worst fruit. (Apples.)
  • The enormous gulf between the audiovisual experience of watching someone eat an apple and eating that apple yourself.
  • The world's most apple growing place.
  • "Extra honey" apples.
  • Upgrading your teeth so that you can eat stone fruit without pitting them.
  • Installing a machine in your mouth that you can pour wheat into and it extrudes noodles right into your throat.
  • What wheat becomes if you chew it.
  • Pasta-flavored gum.
  • Vaguely salty orange chewing gum.
  • Installing an app to play a "biting an apple" ringtone into whenever you bite any fruit.
  • Japan's canonical fruit ranking with melon at the top, as seen in Pac-Man.
  • The way in which the B-tier melons are substandard.
  • The most cherries per slot machine.
  • Pivoting to chewing gum after San Francisco bans your gambling machines.
  • Buying just one leaf of parsley from Opposite Costco.
  • Naming your company after the idea of charging for things.
  • Buying hundreds of jigsaw puzzle pieces in bulk.
  • Tito Beverage.
  • You win stun, you lose stun.
  • Doug Bowser's Heel Turn.
  • Inaptronyms.
  • Punching somebody and all their honey comes out.
  • Preferring to punch people who bruise extremely precisely.
  • Hypothesizing that you are about to be punched in the face and setting up a control group.
  • Using science in an interesting way in 1832.
  • Little Alchemy and other combine-'em-ups.
  • What to play if you like adventure game inventory puzzles but not the rest of the adventure game.
  • The phone number you could call as part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Investigating where the wind knocked over the fox shrine.
  • Finding an infinitely deep hole and dumping all your garbage in it until you realize you can use it to solve the housing crisis.
  • The deepest man-made hole.
  • The town that is permanently on fire.
  • An extremely plausible hellmouth.
  • Thanks, Hellmouth!
  • Inventing Hell in the 1970s.
  • A video that you can silently play in the background.
  • A robot that is just a large helium balloon.
  • A robot that is neutrally buoyant.
  • Strandbeests.
  • Making the goofiest lil guy.
  • The exploded cell phone ghosts.
  • A traffic cone skateboarding with ska playing in the background.
  • The Topic Lords startup incubator.
  • Cony Hawk.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Quil
  • Maxx

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making robots and video games in Seattle.
  • Cohost dot org.
  • Tumblr without Tumblr's weird nesting.
  • Finding interesting people to follow in 2005.
  • Cohost's discovery apparatus.
  • Making bad music on the internet that's not very enjoyable.
  • The worst fruit. (Apples.)
  • The enormous gulf between the audiovisual experience of watching someone eat an apple and eating that apple yourself.
  • The world's most apple growing place.
  • "Extra honey" apples.
  • Upgrading your teeth so that you can eat stone fruit without pitting them.
  • Installing a machine in your mouth that you can pour wheat into and it extrudes noodles right into your throat.
  • What wheat becomes if you chew it.
  • Pasta-flavored gum.
  • Vaguely salty orange chewing gum.
  • Installing an app to play a "biting an apple" ringtone into whenever you bite any fruit.
  • Japan's canonical fruit ranking with melon at the top, as seen in Pac-Man.
  • The way in which the B-tier melons are substandard.
  • The most cherries per slot machine.
  • Pivoting to chewing gum after San Francisco bans your gambling machines.
  • Buying just one leaf of parsley from Opposite Costco.
  • Naming your company after the idea of charging for things.
  • Buying hundreds of jigsaw puzzle pieces in bulk.
  • Tito Beverage.
  • You win stun, you lose stun.
  • Doug Bowser's Heel Turn.
  • Inaptronyms.
  • Punching somebody and all their honey comes out.
  • Preferring to punch people who bruise extremely precisely.
  • Hypothesizing that you are about to be punched in the face and setting up a control group.
  • Using science in an interesting way in 1832.
  • Little Alchemy and other combine-'em-ups.
  • What to play if you like adventure game inventory puzzles but not the rest of the adventure game.
  • The phone number you could call as part of the Frog Fractions ARG.
  • Investigating where the wind knocked over the fox shrine.
  • Finding an infinitely deep hole and dumping all your garbage in it until you realize you can use it to solve the housing crisis.
  • The deepest man-made hole.
  • The town that is permanently on fire.
  • An extremely plausible hellmouth.
  • Thanks, Hellmouth!
  • Inventing Hell in the 1970s.
  • A video that you can silently play in the background.
  • A robot that is just a large helium balloon.
  • A robot that is neutrally buoyant.
  • Strandbeests.
  • Making the goofiest lil guy.
  • The exploded cell phone ghosts.
  • A traffic cone skateboarding with ska playing in the background.
  • The Topic Lords startup incubator.
  • Cony Hawk.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+_BRs8dEQ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 161. How Much Can This Dog Deadlift? https://topiclords.com/how-much-can-this-dog-deadlift e3b739b0-53c7-4be8-b06f-90d9501a7b20 Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Shannon and Avery. We discuss measure words, what even is color, and My Cat is Sad by Spenser Madsen. 58:08 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Shannon
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer.
  • Why various albums aren't on Spotify.
  • During the American Revolution when the British were always quartering punk bands in colonial household.
  • The Bug Porn calendar that Shannon drew for the FF2 ARG.
  • A singular bug in a pin-up pose.
  • A praying mantis cosplaying as a nun.
  • Learning a language and then forgetting it because you're too embarrassed to speak it around people.
  • A soup vs. a bowl of soup.
  • Thousands of years of associating this thing with this other thing.
  • How singing works in tonal languages.
  • The people who keep insisting that orange doesn't rhyme with anything.
  • That time Tom Lehrer rhymed "orange" with "bizarre enjoyment."
  • Memory palaces.
  • Stand over mouth next to person equals.
  • The "two six-packs" mnemonic for remembering what the two dots on the guitar fretboard mean.
  • Mnemonics that you would prefer to forget.
  • The blue/black/gold/white dress.
  • Changing the perceived color of an object by changing the lighting in the room.
  • Whether light is real.
  • Naming a color and never telling anybody the name.
  • Keeping a color swatch because your memory of a color might drift over time, but the swatch fades.
  • Perfect pitch for color perception.
  • Getting two sensory outputs from a single sensory input.
  • A deeply visual species.
  • Striving to be amazed and confused by things normal people take for granted.
  • Visualization but for smells.
  • A list of attributes of what your daughter looks like.
  • Blind sight.
  • Seeing but having no experience of sight.
  • Hashtag Kant Folks.
  • Discerning green and pink.
  • Do these two sexy nazi ponies look the same to you?
  • The purpose of music theory.
  • The invention of standardized tunings.
  • Where to find poems.
  • A cat who does not have a cat.
  • A cat wondering why nobody else in his family is a cat.
  • Things it is funny for a cat to be sad about.
  • Why the family cat didn't go to college.
  • Making sure to get a pet early enough that you child can see it die before going to college.
  • Getting a second dog vs. getting your dog a dog.
  • Dog IQ tests.
  • The placards at the dog shelter listing each dog's D&D stats and alignment.
  • Cockatiel owners.
  • A sporting event that measures how hungry you are.
  • How many cinder blocks you'd pull for a kingdom's Klondike bar.
  • Looking into a well during the full moon and saying Avery's name a hundred times.
  • Dating a string of Lisas.
  • Six Songs For Lisa.
  • Starting your six song album on song number three.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Shannon
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer.
  • Why various albums aren't on Spotify.
  • During the American Revolution when the British were always quartering punk bands in colonial household.
  • The Bug Porn calendar that Shannon drew for the FF2 ARG.
  • A singular bug in a pin-up pose.
  • A praying mantis cosplaying as a nun.
  • Learning a language and then forgetting it because you're too embarrassed to speak it around people.
  • A soup vs. a bowl of soup.
  • Thousands of years of associating this thing with this other thing.
  • How singing works in tonal languages.
  • The people who keep insisting that orange doesn't rhyme with anything.
  • That time Tom Lehrer rhymed "orange" with "bizarre enjoyment."
  • Memory palaces.
  • Stand over mouth next to person equals.
  • The "two six-packs" mnemonic for remembering what the two dots on the guitar fretboard mean.
  • Mnemonics that you would prefer to forget.
  • The blue/black/gold/white dress.
  • Changing the perceived color of an object by changing the lighting in the room.
  • Whether light is real.
  • Naming a color and never telling anybody the name.
  • Keeping a color swatch because your memory of a color might drift over time, but the swatch fades.
  • Perfect pitch for color perception.
  • Getting two sensory outputs from a single sensory input.
  • A deeply visual species.
  • Striving to be amazed and confused by things normal people take for granted.
  • Visualization but for smells.
  • A list of attributes of what your daughter looks like.
  • Blind sight.
  • Seeing but having no experience of sight.
  • Hashtag Kant Folks.
  • Discerning green and pink.
  • Do these two sexy nazi ponies look the same to you?
  • The purpose of music theory.
  • The invention of standardized tunings.
  • Where to find poems.
  • A cat who does not have a cat.
  • A cat wondering why nobody else in his family is a cat.
  • Things it is funny for a cat to be sad about.
  • Why the family cat didn't go to college.
  • Making sure to get a pet early enough that you child can see it die before going to college.
  • Getting a second dog vs. getting your dog a dog.
  • Dog IQ tests.
  • The placards at the dog shelter listing each dog's D&D stats and alignment.
  • Cockatiel owners.
  • A sporting event that measures how hungry you are.
  • How many cinder blocks you'd pull for a kingdom's Klondike bar.
  • Looking into a well during the full moon and saying Avery's name a hundred times.
  • Dating a string of Lisas.
  • Six Songs For Lisa.
  • Starting your six song album on song number three.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Shannon
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Game Changer.
  • Why various albums aren't on Spotify.
  • During the American Revolution when the British were always quartering punk bands in colonial household.
  • The Bug Porn calendar that Shannon drew for the FF2 ARG.
  • A singular bug in a pin-up pose.
  • A praying mantis cosplaying as a nun.
  • Learning a language and then forgetting it because you're too embarrassed to speak it around people.
  • A soup vs. a bowl of soup.
  • Thousands of years of associating this thing with this other thing.
  • How singing works in tonal languages.
  • The people who keep insisting that orange doesn't rhyme with anything.
  • That time Tom Lehrer rhymed "orange" with "bizarre enjoyment."
  • Memory palaces.
  • Stand over mouth next to person equals.
  • The "two six-packs" mnemonic for remembering what the two dots on the guitar fretboard mean.
  • Mnemonics that you would prefer to forget.
  • The blue/black/gold/white dress.
  • Changing the perceived color of an object by changing the lighting in the room.
  • Whether light is real.
  • Naming a color and never telling anybody the name.
  • Keeping a color swatch because your memory of a color might drift over time, but the swatch fades.
  • Perfect pitch for color perception.
  • Getting two sensory outputs from a single sensory input.
  • A deeply visual species.
  • Striving to be amazed and confused by things normal people take for granted.
  • Visualization but for smells.
  • A list of attributes of what your daughter looks like.
  • Blind sight.
  • Seeing but having no experience of sight.
  • Hashtag Kant Folks.
  • Discerning green and pink.
  • Do these two sexy nazi ponies look the same to you?
  • The purpose of music theory.
  • The invention of standardized tunings.
  • Where to find poems.
  • A cat who does not have a cat.
  • A cat wondering why nobody else in his family is a cat.
  • Things it is funny for a cat to be sad about.
  • Why the family cat didn't go to college.
  • Making sure to get a pet early enough that you child can see it die before going to college.
  • Getting a second dog vs. getting your dog a dog.
  • Dog IQ tests.
  • The placards at the dog shelter listing each dog's D&D stats and alignment.
  • Cockatiel owners.
  • A sporting event that measures how hungry you are.
  • How many cinder blocks you'd pull for a kingdom's Klondike bar.
  • Looking into a well during the full moon and saying Avery's name a hundred times.
  • Dating a string of Lisas.
  • Six Songs For Lisa.
  • Starting your six song album on song number three.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Ij2Unkgx ]]> Jim Stormdancer 160. Dracula Never Brushes His Teeth https://topiclords.com/dracula-never-brushes-his-teeth bdde6ab6-1b6d-4be1-8158-3998ce19bc7b Mon, 14 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Shannon. We discuss going to Burning Man and not biting your nails, pros and cons of vampirism, twins conjoined at the brain, and "Gray cube, rectangular light," by Clarissa Darling's computer. 1:05:23 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Elena
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nominally saving everybody a big hassle but in fact completely failing to do the job.
  • Checking the double secret server.
  • Will Wood.
  • Listening to music but not learning a lot.
  • Biting your cuticles.
  • The Burning Man dust/paste situation.
  • Trying to get dust under your fingernails when you don't have fingernails.
  • Getting rid of the textures on your face which just causes more textures to happen.
  • A cuticle lab kit with fancy sticks and creams that you don't understand.
  • Nail-buffing cubes.
  • Losing some unpredictable aspect of your person at Burning Man.
  • A man made up of all the aspects of personalities that he stole from Burning Man attendees.
  • Leaving your nail biting behind in the temple.
  • Cutting your nails short ever since you got that gardening gig.
  • The weird traveling bruise you get when you hit your fingernail too hard.
  • Every shovelful had so much danger in it.
  • The perils of gardening barefoot.
  • Wearing gloves but not wearing shoes because you like the mud between your toes.
  • Dracula Daily.
  • Starting a mailing list for someone else's diary.
  • Couriers telling you that they delivered the boxes of soil and thanks for the shillings.
  • Explaining what a vampire is after the vampire is already dead.
  • Vampirism as a pyramid scheme.
  • Leaving and returning to your soldered-closed coffin at will.
  • God's meaner creatures.
  • Vampirism as a recipe for seasonal affective disorder.
  • What a bummer it'd be to discover that hell is real.
  • Living a thousand subjective years and learning a bunch of skills.
  • Getting up every night and finding a child to eat because that's all you have time for.
  • Dracula the trainspotter.
  • The Kirby dimension that his victims all go to and hang out together.
  • Offering value to the world that compensates for the person you have to kill and eat every day.
  • The guy in Dracula that is obsessed with technology and records his diary on wax cylinders but doesn't think to write the date on them.
  • Doctor C-Word.
  • The Blood of Manly Men.
  • God Sends Us Men When We Want Them.
  • Running out of manly blood but luckily a Texan shows up.
  • Affixing small electric lights to your chest so that you can explore a basement.
  • The spider that got so big that it was just a really big spider, you know, the really big spider everybody talks about.
  • How our intuition for what makes a person can be thrown off completely by simple biology.
  • Two brains that are slightly overlapped.
  • A closed system that can answer questions about itself.
  • Raising a child as if it is two people.
  • Split-brain patients.
  • Interpreting the two hemispheres of the brain as two individual people who are working in concert.
  • The storytelling part of our brain that we call consciousness.
  • Having control of three legs and an arm vs. three arms and a leg.
  • Trying to relate your subjective experience to other people.
  • What is the self?
  • A dog that likes another dog but doesn't like a different dog.
  • Cantilevered rainbows.
  • Clarissa Explains it All.
  • Clarissa Explains Indie Game Development.
  • Processing events in your life by making games about them.
  • Bringing out the special poetry lady to teach you poetry.
  • Writing a book of poetry where the typesetter also has to be a poet.
  • Writing a poem where you describe the scene from Fullmetal Alchemist where the two brothers burn down their house and your teacher is like "are you ok"
  • Writing a poem from the perspective of the piece of paper you're holding up to protect yourself from the rain and your poetry circle is like "I'm so sorry about your sister"
  • How to write a relatable poem.
  • The extra fridge that holds the food that you don't ever actually eat.
  • Who's got the tiger with the baseball bat?
  • Fragments of different jagged shapes.
  • Zero-Inbox Your Fridge.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Elena
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nominally saving everybody a big hassle but in fact completely failing to do the job.
  • Checking the double secret server.
  • Will Wood.
  • Listening to music but not learning a lot.
  • Biting your cuticles.
  • The Burning Man dust/paste situation.
  • Trying to get dust under your fingernails when you don't have fingernails.
  • Getting rid of the textures on your face which just causes more textures to happen.
  • A cuticle lab kit with fancy sticks and creams that you don't understand.
  • Nail-buffing cubes.
  • Losing some unpredictable aspect of your person at Burning Man.
  • A man made up of all the aspects of personalities that he stole from Burning Man attendees.
  • Leaving your nail biting behind in the temple.
  • Cutting your nails short ever since you got that gardening gig.
  • The weird traveling bruise you get when you hit your fingernail too hard.
  • Every shovelful had so much danger in it.
  • The perils of gardening barefoot.
  • Wearing gloves but not wearing shoes because you like the mud between your toes.
  • Dracula Daily.
  • Starting a mailing list for someone else's diary.
  • Couriers telling you that they delivered the boxes of soil and thanks for the shillings.
  • Explaining what a vampire is after the vampire is already dead.
  • Vampirism as a pyramid scheme.
  • Leaving and returning to your soldered-closed coffin at will.
  • God's meaner creatures.
  • Vampirism as a recipe for seasonal affective disorder.
  • What a bummer it'd be to discover that hell is real.
  • Living a thousand subjective years and learning a bunch of skills.
  • Getting up every night and finding a child to eat because that's all you have time for.
  • Dracula the trainspotter.
  • The Kirby dimension that his victims all go to and hang out together.
  • Offering value to the world that compensates for the person you have to kill and eat every day.
  • The guy in Dracula that is obsessed with technology and records his diary on wax cylinders but doesn't think to write the date on them.
  • Doctor C-Word.
  • The Blood of Manly Men.
  • God Sends Us Men When We Want Them.
  • Running out of manly blood but luckily a Texan shows up.
  • Affixing small electric lights to your chest so that you can explore a basement.
  • The spider that got so big that it was just a really big spider, you know, the really big spider everybody talks about.
  • How our intuition for what makes a person can be thrown off completely by simple biology.
  • Two brains that are slightly overlapped.
  • A closed system that can answer questions about itself.
  • Raising a child as if it is two people.
  • Split-brain patients.
  • Interpreting the two hemispheres of the brain as two individual people who are working in concert.
  • The storytelling part of our brain that we call consciousness.
  • Having control of three legs and an arm vs. three arms and a leg.
  • Trying to relate your subjective experience to other people.
  • What is the self?
  • A dog that likes another dog but doesn't like a different dog.
  • Cantilevered rainbows.
  • Clarissa Explains it All.
  • Clarissa Explains Indie Game Development.
  • Processing events in your life by making games about them.
  • Bringing out the special poetry lady to teach you poetry.
  • Writing a book of poetry where the typesetter also has to be a poet.
  • Writing a poem where you describe the scene from Fullmetal Alchemist where the two brothers burn down their house and your teacher is like "are you ok"
  • Writing a poem from the perspective of the piece of paper you're holding up to protect yourself from the rain and your poetry circle is like "I'm so sorry about your sister"
  • How to write a relatable poem.
  • The extra fridge that holds the food that you don't ever actually eat.
  • Who's got the tiger with the baseball bat?
  • Fragments of different jagged shapes.
  • Zero-Inbox Your Fridge.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Elena
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nominally saving everybody a big hassle but in fact completely failing to do the job.
  • Checking the double secret server.
  • Will Wood.
  • Listening to music but not learning a lot.
  • Biting your cuticles.
  • The Burning Man dust/paste situation.
  • Trying to get dust under your fingernails when you don't have fingernails.
  • Getting rid of the textures on your face which just causes more textures to happen.
  • A cuticle lab kit with fancy sticks and creams that you don't understand.
  • Nail-buffing cubes.
  • Losing some unpredictable aspect of your person at Burning Man.
  • A man made up of all the aspects of personalities that he stole from Burning Man attendees.
  • Leaving your nail biting behind in the temple.
  • Cutting your nails short ever since you got that gardening gig.
  • The weird traveling bruise you get when you hit your fingernail too hard.
  • Every shovelful had so much danger in it.
  • The perils of gardening barefoot.
  • Wearing gloves but not wearing shoes because you like the mud between your toes.
  • Dracula Daily.
  • Starting a mailing list for someone else's diary.
  • Couriers telling you that they delivered the boxes of soil and thanks for the shillings.
  • Explaining what a vampire is after the vampire is already dead.
  • Vampirism as a pyramid scheme.
  • Leaving and returning to your soldered-closed coffin at will.
  • God's meaner creatures.
  • Vampirism as a recipe for seasonal affective disorder.
  • What a bummer it'd be to discover that hell is real.
  • Living a thousand subjective years and learning a bunch of skills.
  • Getting up every night and finding a child to eat because that's all you have time for.
  • Dracula the trainspotter.
  • The Kirby dimension that his victims all go to and hang out together.
  • Offering value to the world that compensates for the person you have to kill and eat every day.
  • The guy in Dracula that is obsessed with technology and records his diary on wax cylinders but doesn't think to write the date on them.
  • Doctor C-Word.
  • The Blood of Manly Men.
  • God Sends Us Men When We Want Them.
  • Running out of manly blood but luckily a Texan shows up.
  • Affixing small electric lights to your chest so that you can explore a basement.
  • The spider that got so big that it was just a really big spider, you know, the really big spider everybody talks about.
  • How our intuition for what makes a person can be thrown off completely by simple biology.
  • Two brains that are slightly overlapped.
  • A closed system that can answer questions about itself.
  • Raising a child as if it is two people.
  • Split-brain patients.
  • Interpreting the two hemispheres of the brain as two individual people who are working in concert.
  • The storytelling part of our brain that we call consciousness.
  • Having control of three legs and an arm vs. three arms and a leg.
  • Trying to relate your subjective experience to other people.
  • What is the self?
  • A dog that likes another dog but doesn't like a different dog.
  • Cantilevered rainbows.
  • Clarissa Explains it All.
  • Clarissa Explains Indie Game Development.
  • Processing events in your life by making games about them.
  • Bringing out the special poetry lady to teach you poetry.
  • Writing a book of poetry where the typesetter also has to be a poet.
  • Writing a poem where you describe the scene from Fullmetal Alchemist where the two brothers burn down their house and your teacher is like "are you ok"
  • Writing a poem from the perspective of the piece of paper you're holding up to protect yourself from the rain and your poetry circle is like "I'm so sorry about your sister"
  • How to write a relatable poem.
  • The extra fridge that holds the food that you don't ever actually eat.
  • Who's got the tiger with the baseball bat?
  • Fragments of different jagged shapes.
  • Zero-Inbox Your Fridge.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+tmhTyck9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 159. It's Beautiful That We Once Existed https://topiclords.com/its-beautiful-that-we-once-existed b6eab021-dcb9-4c7d-9d3e-802376104117 Mon, 07 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0800 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kev and Cort. We discuss losing all your memories around age 4, extreme "kids in trench coat" trope scenarios, Krista and Tatiana Hogan, "Autopsy" by Ross Sutherland, Neighbors overplaying the same playlist, and technology making creative expression easier. 1:06:47 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mic on, pants off.
  • The inherent meaningless of "limited editions" in a finite universe ultimately bound for a slow heat death.
  • Vinyl record Easter eggs.
  • A big ol' spiral cut into the vinyl.
  • Limited characteristics of a physical process.
  • Mental models of what it means to master an album.
  • Novelty vinyl colors.
  • Jim's burgeoning record collection.
  • The most glorious twenty minute act of art terrorism.
  • Losing access to your old memories because your brain changed formats.
  • How to erase medical debt by just not paying it.
  • Borrowing money from your toddler.
  • Spark: the revolution of exercise or some other subtitle.
  • Mollusks eating their own nervous systems.
  • Eating your own childhood to launch yourself into adulthood.
  • Upping the emotional stakes with large animals and near-death experiences.
  • Putting your girlfriend in mortal danger so that she's more likely to want to marry you.
  • Getting pigeonholed as a really good butt.
  • Getting surgically separated so you can disguise yourself as two kids in a trench coat.
  • The hemispheres of the brain as independent entities which happen to share a body.
  • Lumps of biology.
  • Every person's unique inability to speak to other people's interiority.
  • Walkie-talkie telepathy vs. "perfect mutual understanding" telepathy.
  • One mind with two faces.
  • Superhuman limb/vocal cord coordination.
  • Segue Week.
  • Burroughs cut-ups.
  • Vigorous grandparenting with a face of terror.
  • A modern-day television quiz show phoenix.
  • The impenetrable free-form rhymes of a heart attack in October.
  • The greets.
  • Tracker music instrument names as cut-up poetry generators.
  • Super Obituaries!
  • The potentially transformative effect of reading your own obituary.
  • The perverse incentives behind soliciting reviews of unfinished games.
  • The awesome power of knowing that your feedback will be considered.
  • The neighbor who only listens to Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits over and over again.
  • Listening to entire albums until you're so sick of them that you underflow and love them again.
  • The song you have to listen to to get to Roxette's It Must Have Been Love.
  • Bad podcast ideas.
  • Novelty t-shirts whose joke is only funny once, but you still wear it once a week
  • The shirt with the Fight Club and the cognitive science reference on it.
  • Shirts/tattoos as pop culture dog whistles.
  • Getting a tattoo of the Colossus' weak points so that you can meet the people who stab you there.
  • Naming your game's public alpha something innocent so it doesn't arouse suspicion when your friends see you playing it.
  • The hazards of wearing a shirt promoting a pop culture reference you know nothing about.
  • Wearing a shirt that makes people try to talk to you about a video game you've never played.
  • All the people you disappointed in high school.
  • NPCs in Thief Deadly Shadows talking about how hard it is to get a job making games.
  • A bright future where nobody can make a living making video games.
  • A bright future where AIs curate collections of AI-generated content.
  • A case for the 1991 film "Super Mario Brothers" as the pinnacle of entertainment.
  • Charles Martinet doing the Mario voice as he leaps to his death from a roof in "The Game."
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mic on, pants off.
  • The inherent meaningless of "limited editions" in a finite universe ultimately bound for a slow heat death.
  • Vinyl record Easter eggs.
  • A big ol' spiral cut into the vinyl.
  • Limited characteristics of a physical process.
  • Mental models of what it means to master an album.
  • Novelty vinyl colors.
  • Jim's burgeoning record collection.
  • The most glorious twenty minute act of art terrorism.
  • Losing access to your old memories because your brain changed formats.
  • How to erase medical debt by just not paying it.
  • Borrowing money from your toddler.
  • Spark: the revolution of exercise or some other subtitle.
  • Mollusks eating their own nervous systems.
  • Eating your own childhood to launch yourself into adulthood.
  • Upping the emotional stakes with large animals and near-death experiences.
  • Putting your girlfriend in mortal danger so that she's more likely to want to marry you.
  • Getting pigeonholed as a really good butt.
  • Getting surgically separated so you can disguise yourself as two kids in a trench coat.
  • The hemispheres of the brain as independent entities which happen to share a body.
  • Lumps of biology.
  • Every person's unique inability to speak to other people's interiority.
  • Walkie-talkie telepathy vs. "perfect mutual understanding" telepathy.
  • One mind with two faces.
  • Superhuman limb/vocal cord coordination.
  • Segue Week.
  • Burroughs cut-ups.
  • Vigorous grandparenting with a face of terror.
  • A modern-day television quiz show phoenix.
  • The impenetrable free-form rhymes of a heart attack in October.
  • The greets.
  • Tracker music instrument names as cut-up poetry generators.
  • Super Obituaries!
  • The potentially transformative effect of reading your own obituary.
  • The perverse incentives behind soliciting reviews of unfinished games.
  • The awesome power of knowing that your feedback will be considered.
  • The neighbor who only listens to Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits over and over again.
  • Listening to entire albums until you're so sick of them that you underflow and love them again.
  • The song you have to listen to to get to Roxette's It Must Have Been Love.
  • Bad podcast ideas.
  • Novelty t-shirts whose joke is only funny once, but you still wear it once a week
  • The shirt with the Fight Club and the cognitive science reference on it.
  • Shirts/tattoos as pop culture dog whistles.
  • Getting a tattoo of the Colossus' weak points so that you can meet the people who stab you there.
  • Naming your game's public alpha something innocent so it doesn't arouse suspicion when your friends see you playing it.
  • The hazards of wearing a shirt promoting a pop culture reference you know nothing about.
  • Wearing a shirt that makes people try to talk to you about a video game you've never played.
  • All the people you disappointed in high school.
  • NPCs in Thief Deadly Shadows talking about how hard it is to get a job making games.
  • A bright future where nobody can make a living making video games.
  • A bright future where AIs curate collections of AI-generated content.
  • A case for the 1991 film "Super Mario Brothers" as the pinnacle of entertainment.
  • Charles Martinet doing the Mario voice as he leaps to his death from a roof in "The Game."

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mic on, pants off.
  • The inherent meaningless of "limited editions" in a finite universe ultimately bound for a slow heat death.
  • Vinyl record Easter eggs.
  • A big ol' spiral cut into the vinyl.
  • Limited characteristics of a physical process.
  • Mental models of what it means to master an album.
  • Novelty vinyl colors.
  • Jim's burgeoning record collection.
  • The most glorious twenty minute act of art terrorism.
  • Losing access to your old memories because your brain changed formats.
  • How to erase medical debt by just not paying it.
  • Borrowing money from your toddler.
  • Spark: the revolution of exercise or some other subtitle.
  • Mollusks eating their own nervous systems.
  • Eating your own childhood to launch yourself into adulthood.
  • Upping the emotional stakes with large animals and near-death experiences.
  • Putting your girlfriend in mortal danger so that she's more likely to want to marry you.
  • Getting pigeonholed as a really good butt.
  • Getting surgically separated so you can disguise yourself as two kids in a trench coat.
  • The hemispheres of the brain as independent entities which happen to share a body.
  • Lumps of biology.
  • Every person's unique inability to speak to other people's interiority.
  • Walkie-talkie telepathy vs. "perfect mutual understanding" telepathy.
  • One mind with two faces.
  • Superhuman limb/vocal cord coordination.
  • Segue Week.
  • Burroughs cut-ups.
  • Vigorous grandparenting with a face of terror.
  • A modern-day television quiz show phoenix.
  • The impenetrable free-form rhymes of a heart attack in October.
  • The greets.
  • Tracker music instrument names as cut-up poetry generators.
  • Super Obituaries!
  • The potentially transformative effect of reading your own obituary.
  • The perverse incentives behind soliciting reviews of unfinished games.
  • The awesome power of knowing that your feedback will be considered.
  • The neighbor who only listens to Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits over and over again.
  • Listening to entire albums until you're so sick of them that you underflow and love them again.
  • The song you have to listen to to get to Roxette's It Must Have Been Love.
  • Bad podcast ideas.
  • Novelty t-shirts whose joke is only funny once, but you still wear it once a week
  • The shirt with the Fight Club and the cognitive science reference on it.
  • Shirts/tattoos as pop culture dog whistles.
  • Getting a tattoo of the Colossus' weak points so that you can meet the people who stab you there.
  • Naming your game's public alpha something innocent so it doesn't arouse suspicion when your friends see you playing it.
  • The hazards of wearing a shirt promoting a pop culture reference you know nothing about.
  • Wearing a shirt that makes people try to talk to you about a video game you've never played.
  • All the people you disappointed in high school.
  • NPCs in Thief Deadly Shadows talking about how hard it is to get a job making games.
  • A bright future where nobody can make a living making video games.
  • A bright future where AIs curate collections of AI-generated content.
  • A case for the 1991 film "Super Mario Brothers" as the pinnacle of entertainment.
  • Charles Martinet doing the Mario voice as he leaps to his death from a roof in "The Game."

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+GTEFzhdI ]]> Jim Stormdancer 158. Bark Mitzvah: Where Your Good Boy Becomes a Mensch https://topiclords.com/bark-mitzvah-where-your-good-boy-becomes-a-mensch 255180cb-e886-4b86-b199-03a109ba825a Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and John. We discuss the Nancy Drew point and click adventures, garbage food technology, the grunting American Airlines voice, The Cow by Oliver Herford, indie games of the late 90s and early 2000s, and the Some Potatoes Diet. 1:09:04 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • The Real John B

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Other topic podcasts biting Jim's steeze.
  • Spending the next hour blushing.
  • Holding a Bark Mitzvah to watch your Good Boy become a mensch.
  • Releasing a director's cut from beyond the grave.
  • Bad games that you can't get enough of.
  • Adventure games that make you feel like when grandma would visit and bring you donuts.
  • Secret Fandoms.
  • The new Nancy Drew series where Nancy Drew is an airhead and nobody likes her.
  • A 70 year old woman playing a teenager.
  • Whether game designers play anything other than World of Warcraft.
  • Why the Nancy Drew adventure games are not on phones.
  • Putting Nancy Drew in Fortnite.
  • Friend of the show, Dropsy.
  • You don't have to be an American to eat a garbage diet, but it sure helps.
  • Food color technology over time.
  • When Froot Loops added the fourth color.
  • Speaking truth to power about the little silver disc that you microwave pizza on.
  • The starchy packet that helps the noodles cook.
  • A job that requires the skill sets of both a chef and a materials engineer.
  • Things that come out of boxes nowadays.
  • Watching meat substitutes grow up.
  • Plastic golems living in your body.
  • Getting your first reading glasses at your Old Mitzvah and giving a speech starting with "now I am an old."
  • The second person this hour who has admitted to the pharmacist that they need reading glasses.
  • The baby technology section at Walmart.
  • Snot removers that'd also be great for insect collection.
  • A sock that measures blood oxygenation.
  • Earwitness accounts.
  • Working on the American Airlines announcement system and adding strange grunting noises to the playlist.
  • Electrical noise that is being interpreted by a system intended to transmit the human voice.
  • The guy who does all the grunt voices.
  • A sound that is like audio from a music album.
  • An incredible technical smartass who got annoyed at luggage fees.
  • A fridge full of snacks in the middle of the plane.
  • Every passenger getting up and going to the snack pit.
  • Wrestling for Cheez-Its.
  • All the folks who are into weird pranks and technical glitches making a pilgrimage to the American Airlines flight with the weird grunting.
  • Nancy-likes.
  • The Three Investigators, presented by Alfred Hitchcock.
  • Joining the discord for more on the ukulele plane.
  • Back in 1901 when they worried about Peak Cow.
  • Milk punch.
  • Eggless egg nog.
  • Celebrating all the positive ways cows influence our lives, and also we eat them.
  • Whether scientists knew extinctions were possible in 1901.
  • Looking for free games on the internet in 1999.
  • Letting the Game Hippo domain lapse and a domain squatter picks it up and the rest is history.
  • Dink Smallwood.
  • A multidirectional shooter with a cool perspective trick.
  • All the search engines they had before google.
  • The Williams College MUD that you could log in to and visit Williams College in the MUD.
  • Graal Online.
  • Receiving a box of shareware from your mom's coworker.
  • PC games from before developers realized that computers would get faster.
  • Typing swim fast enough that you don't drown.
  • Please Copy That Floppy!
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • The Real John B

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Other topic podcasts biting Jim's steeze.
  • Spending the next hour blushing.
  • Holding a Bark Mitzvah to watch your Good Boy become a mensch.
  • Releasing a director's cut from beyond the grave.
  • Bad games that you can't get enough of.
  • Adventure games that make you feel like when grandma would visit and bring you donuts.
  • Secret Fandoms.
  • The new Nancy Drew series where Nancy Drew is an airhead and nobody likes her.
  • A 70 year old woman playing a teenager.
  • Whether game designers play anything other than World of Warcraft.
  • Why the Nancy Drew adventure games are not on phones.
  • Putting Nancy Drew in Fortnite.
  • Friend of the show, Dropsy.
  • You don't have to be an American to eat a garbage diet, but it sure helps.
  • Food color technology over time.
  • When Froot Loops added the fourth color.
  • Speaking truth to power about the little silver disc that you microwave pizza on.
  • The starchy packet that helps the noodles cook.
  • A job that requires the skill sets of both a chef and a materials engineer.
  • Things that come out of boxes nowadays.
  • Watching meat substitutes grow up.
  • Plastic golems living in your body.
  • Getting your first reading glasses at your Old Mitzvah and giving a speech starting with "now I am an old."
  • The second person this hour who has admitted to the pharmacist that they need reading glasses.
  • The baby technology section at Walmart.
  • Snot removers that'd also be great for insect collection.
  • A sock that measures blood oxygenation.
  • Earwitness accounts.
  • Working on the American Airlines announcement system and adding strange grunting noises to the playlist.
  • Electrical noise that is being interpreted by a system intended to transmit the human voice.
  • The guy who does all the grunt voices.
  • A sound that is like audio from a music album.
  • An incredible technical smartass who got annoyed at luggage fees.
  • A fridge full of snacks in the middle of the plane.
  • Every passenger getting up and going to the snack pit.
  • Wrestling for Cheez-Its.
  • All the folks who are into weird pranks and technical glitches making a pilgrimage to the American Airlines flight with the weird grunting.
  • Nancy-likes.
  • The Three Investigators, presented by Alfred Hitchcock.
  • Joining the discord for more on the ukulele plane.
  • Back in 1901 when they worried about Peak Cow.
  • Milk punch.
  • Eggless egg nog.
  • Celebrating all the positive ways cows influence our lives, and also we eat them.
  • Whether scientists knew extinctions were possible in 1901.
  • Looking for free games on the internet in 1999.
  • Letting the Game Hippo domain lapse and a domain squatter picks it up and the rest is history.
  • Dink Smallwood.
  • A multidirectional shooter with a cool perspective trick.
  • All the search engines they had before google.
  • The Williams College MUD that you could log in to and visit Williams College in the MUD.
  • Graal Online.
  • Receiving a box of shareware from your mom's coworker.
  • PC games from before developers realized that computers would get faster.
  • Typing swim fast enough that you don't drown.
  • Please Copy That Floppy!

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • The Real John B

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Other topic podcasts biting Jim's steeze.
  • Spending the next hour blushing.
  • Holding a Bark Mitzvah to watch your Good Boy become a mensch.
  • Releasing a director's cut from beyond the grave.
  • Bad games that you can't get enough of.
  • Adventure games that make you feel like when grandma would visit and bring you donuts.
  • Secret Fandoms.
  • The new Nancy Drew series where Nancy Drew is an airhead and nobody likes her.
  • A 70 year old woman playing a teenager.
  • Whether game designers play anything other than World of Warcraft.
  • Why the Nancy Drew adventure games are not on phones.
  • Putting Nancy Drew in Fortnite.
  • Friend of the show, Dropsy.
  • You don't have to be an American to eat a garbage diet, but it sure helps.
  • Food color technology over time.
  • When Froot Loops added the fourth color.
  • Speaking truth to power about the little silver disc that you microwave pizza on.
  • The starchy packet that helps the noodles cook.
  • A job that requires the skill sets of both a chef and a materials engineer.
  • Things that come out of boxes nowadays.
  • Watching meat substitutes grow up.
  • Plastic golems living in your body.
  • Getting your first reading glasses at your Old Mitzvah and giving a speech starting with "now I am an old."
  • The second person this hour who has admitted to the pharmacist that they need reading glasses.
  • The baby technology section at Walmart.
  • Snot removers that'd also be great for insect collection.
  • A sock that measures blood oxygenation.
  • Earwitness accounts.
  • Working on the American Airlines announcement system and adding strange grunting noises to the playlist.
  • Electrical noise that is being interpreted by a system intended to transmit the human voice.
  • The guy who does all the grunt voices.
  • A sound that is like audio from a music album.
  • An incredible technical smartass who got annoyed at luggage fees.
  • A fridge full of snacks in the middle of the plane.
  • Every passenger getting up and going to the snack pit.
  • Wrestling for Cheez-Its.
  • All the folks who are into weird pranks and technical glitches making a pilgrimage to the American Airlines flight with the weird grunting.
  • Nancy-likes.
  • The Three Investigators, presented by Alfred Hitchcock.
  • Joining the discord for more on the ukulele plane.
  • Back in 1901 when they worried about Peak Cow.
  • Milk punch.
  • Eggless egg nog.
  • Celebrating all the positive ways cows influence our lives, and also we eat them.
  • Whether scientists knew extinctions were possible in 1901.
  • Looking for free games on the internet in 1999.
  • Letting the Game Hippo domain lapse and a domain squatter picks it up and the rest is history.
  • Dink Smallwood.
  • A multidirectional shooter with a cool perspective trick.
  • All the search engines they had before google.
  • The Williams College MUD that you could log in to and visit Williams College in the MUD.
  • Graal Online.
  • Receiving a box of shareware from your mom's coworker.
  • PC games from before developers realized that computers would get faster.
  • Typing swim fast enough that you don't drown.
  • Please Copy That Floppy!

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+RXCOB4ll ]]> Jim Stormdancer 157. The Boy Who Cried ARG https://topiclords.com/the-boy-who-cried-arg a81c32dc-04f2-47c0-8a30-f70ed3f5a0f4 Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Chris. We discuss Jim's Mario videos, enjoying worldbuilding but not storytelling, Bigger Luke, the Green Street Mortuary Marching Band, and phantom kangaroos. 1:10:23 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Giving someone else's biography.
  • 7-Day Roguelikes.
  • Feeling ambiently like you are hanging out with somebody.
  • An emulator that works when you are not screen-capturing in OBS, but freezes when you are.
  • Making a backup of your Bowser's Fury save.
  • Video recording setup evolutions.
  • The pros and cons of extremely variable video lengths.
  • Playing Tony Hawk with Mario modded in.
  • What working on a Zelda game does to a person, psychologically.
  • Doing things that make people believe you're doing an ARG.
  • Twinbeard Rates Mario.
  • A robot co-host that eventually starts finishing your words for you.
  • Wanting to be a writer until you try writing.
  • A world that naturally develops in your brain.
  • How to tell stories.
  • Coming up with a bunch of characters that want things.
  • Reading stories in hopes that stories rub off on you.
  • Putting yourself in a situation where you write a lot of dialog trees.
  • How to make a platformer without doing any level design.
  • Expecting the same person to write the music and the lyrics.
  • The difference in the ideation process of world building and story telling.
  • A fact about the world that is true.
  • Captain Thalmoo surveying the battlefield.
  • Figuring out mid-burrito that there was a war, and deciding who won it.
  • A grain that flowers like lavender.
  • Searching Fiverr for Conlangers.
  • Paying $2 for something at the Dollar Store.
  • Logging Onto JimNet.
  • The Canon Bigger Luke Hypothesis vs. the Hamill Hypothesis.
  • The Inch-Luke Hypothesis.
  • Inch-Lukers.
  • Bigger Luke conspiracy theorists just assume that Han Solo stays the same size.
  • The real Skywalker was the bigger Luke all along.
  • The Boy Who Cried ARG.
  • Promising your wife that your son will not be Frog Fractions 3.
  • How many pages of laws a person is subject to at any given time.
  • Designing an ARG for your teenage son and he's like "ugh dad, again?"
  • Mortuary marching bands.
  • The patriarch who has just croaked.
  • The sister with the bent frame.
  • Uncle Louie with the wig.
  • Getting a free concert because someone died.
  • A funeral as a pleasant gathering of people you haven't seen in a long time.
  • Getting arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."
  • Dressing up as an ancient sea captain.
  • How many funerals this marching band is playing today.
  • Hiring your nephew who has a Casiotone keyboard to play your funeral.
  • Hiring the Green Street Mortuary Marching Band to play at your kid's birthday but all they know how to play is Taps.
  • Bringing an axe to the funeral in case there's an emergency and you need to open up the coffin quickly.
  • If a guitar is an axe, a tuba is a bent axe.
  • Unbending the Tuba.
  • Why brass instruments are so twisty.
  • If you unwind a French horn it'll reach the moon and back.
  • The large flutes that are curly.
  • The son of a flautist.
  • A bookshelf that you blow into and music comes out.
  • Potential downsides of cryptids.
  • Wanting to take EMF meters into a creepy house even though you don't believe in ghosts.
  • The script scientists developed to let you fall in love at will.
  • How many blue coins out of five you would rate your wife.
  • Taking the Race IAT every week and analyzing your results over time.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Giving someone else's biography.
  • 7-Day Roguelikes.
  • Feeling ambiently like you are hanging out with somebody.
  • An emulator that works when you are not screen-capturing in OBS, but freezes when you are.
  • Making a backup of your Bowser's Fury save.
  • Video recording setup evolutions.
  • The pros and cons of extremely variable video lengths.
  • Playing Tony Hawk with Mario modded in.
  • What working on a Zelda game does to a person, psychologically.
  • Doing things that make people believe you're doing an ARG.
  • Twinbeard Rates Mario.
  • A robot co-host that eventually starts finishing your words for you.
  • Wanting to be a writer until you try writing.
  • A world that naturally develops in your brain.
  • How to tell stories.
  • Coming up with a bunch of characters that want things.
  • Reading stories in hopes that stories rub off on you.
  • Putting yourself in a situation where you write a lot of dialog trees.
  • How to make a platformer without doing any level design.
  • Expecting the same person to write the music and the lyrics.
  • The difference in the ideation process of world building and story telling.
  • A fact about the world that is true.
  • Captain Thalmoo surveying the battlefield.
  • Figuring out mid-burrito that there was a war, and deciding who won it.
  • A grain that flowers like lavender.
  • Searching Fiverr for Conlangers.
  • Paying $2 for something at the Dollar Store.
  • Logging Onto JimNet.
  • The Canon Bigger Luke Hypothesis vs. the Hamill Hypothesis.
  • The Inch-Luke Hypothesis.
  • Inch-Lukers.
  • Bigger Luke conspiracy theorists just assume that Han Solo stays the same size.
  • The real Skywalker was the bigger Luke all along.
  • The Boy Who Cried ARG.
  • Promising your wife that your son will not be Frog Fractions 3.
  • How many pages of laws a person is subject to at any given time.
  • Designing an ARG for your teenage son and he's like "ugh dad, again?"
  • Mortuary marching bands.
  • The patriarch who has just croaked.
  • The sister with the bent frame.
  • Uncle Louie with the wig.
  • Getting a free concert because someone died.
  • A funeral as a pleasant gathering of people you haven't seen in a long time.
  • Getting arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."
  • Dressing up as an ancient sea captain.
  • How many funerals this marching band is playing today.
  • Hiring your nephew who has a Casiotone keyboard to play your funeral.
  • Hiring the Green Street Mortuary Marching Band to play at your kid's birthday but all they know how to play is Taps.
  • Bringing an axe to the funeral in case there's an emergency and you need to open up the coffin quickly.
  • If a guitar is an axe, a tuba is a bent axe.
  • Unbending the Tuba.
  • Why brass instruments are so twisty.
  • If you unwind a French horn it'll reach the moon and back.
  • The large flutes that are curly.
  • The son of a flautist.
  • A bookshelf that you blow into and music comes out.
  • Potential downsides of cryptids.
  • Wanting to take EMF meters into a creepy house even though you don't believe in ghosts.
  • The script scientists developed to let you fall in love at will.
  • How many blue coins out of five you would rate your wife.
  • Taking the Race IAT every week and analyzing your results over time.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Giving someone else's biography.
  • 7-Day Roguelikes.
  • Feeling ambiently like you are hanging out with somebody.
  • An emulator that works when you are not screen-capturing in OBS, but freezes when you are.
  • Making a backup of your Bowser's Fury save.
  • Video recording setup evolutions.
  • The pros and cons of extremely variable video lengths.
  • Playing Tony Hawk with Mario modded in.
  • What working on a Zelda game does to a person, psychologically.
  • Doing things that make people believe you're doing an ARG.
  • Twinbeard Rates Mario.
  • A robot co-host that eventually starts finishing your words for you.
  • Wanting to be a writer until you try writing.
  • A world that naturally develops in your brain.
  • How to tell stories.
  • Coming up with a bunch of characters that want things.
  • Reading stories in hopes that stories rub off on you.
  • Putting yourself in a situation where you write a lot of dialog trees.
  • How to make a platformer without doing any level design.
  • Expecting the same person to write the music and the lyrics.
  • The difference in the ideation process of world building and story telling.
  • A fact about the world that is true.
  • Captain Thalmoo surveying the battlefield.
  • Figuring out mid-burrito that there was a war, and deciding who won it.
  • A grain that flowers like lavender.
  • Searching Fiverr for Conlangers.
  • Paying $2 for something at the Dollar Store.
  • Logging Onto JimNet.
  • The Canon Bigger Luke Hypothesis vs. the Hamill Hypothesis.
  • The Inch-Luke Hypothesis.
  • Inch-Lukers.
  • Bigger Luke conspiracy theorists just assume that Han Solo stays the same size.
  • The real Skywalker was the bigger Luke all along.
  • The Boy Who Cried ARG.
  • Promising your wife that your son will not be Frog Fractions 3.
  • How many pages of laws a person is subject to at any given time.
  • Designing an ARG for your teenage son and he's like "ugh dad, again?"
  • Mortuary marching bands.
  • The patriarch who has just croaked.
  • The sister with the bent frame.
  • Uncle Louie with the wig.
  • Getting a free concert because someone died.
  • A funeral as a pleasant gathering of people you haven't seen in a long time.
  • Getting arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."
  • Dressing up as an ancient sea captain.
  • How many funerals this marching band is playing today.
  • Hiring your nephew who has a Casiotone keyboard to play your funeral.
  • Hiring the Green Street Mortuary Marching Band to play at your kid's birthday but all they know how to play is Taps.
  • Bringing an axe to the funeral in case there's an emergency and you need to open up the coffin quickly.
  • If a guitar is an axe, a tuba is a bent axe.
  • Unbending the Tuba.
  • Why brass instruments are so twisty.
  • If you unwind a French horn it'll reach the moon and back.
  • The large flutes that are curly.
  • The son of a flautist.
  • A bookshelf that you blow into and music comes out.
  • Potential downsides of cryptids.
  • Wanting to take EMF meters into a creepy house even though you don't believe in ghosts.
  • The script scientists developed to let you fall in love at will.
  • How many blue coins out of five you would rate your wife.
  • Taking the Race IAT every week and analyzing your results over time.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+bYzg1YUq ]]> Jim Stormdancer 156. Society Is Moving in a Direction https://topiclords.com/society-is-moving-in-a-direction 35defb5a-5f80-4a99-b4e3-f8bf088a7c00 Mon, 17 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and JP. We discuss your gravestone audio clip, counting the beats in eenie-meenie, SoundCcan and the SoundScan Era, the scorched-earth strategy for Lowest Positive Unique Integer, and "leaving beautiful ruins" in a video game. 1:05:26 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A return of many-storied adventure game developers.
  • A point and click adventure game that changed the trajectory of your life.
  • Suspenders as an architectural feature.
  • Onesie pajamas with a trap door.
  • People sneaking up behind you and trying to unbutton your poop flap.
  • Thoughts that are meant to remain unthought.
  • The famous elongated "some."
  • A marketing executive saying "nobody will know what a 'tetralogy' is."
  • Whether your game studio logo has a sound.
  • Console startup noises.
  • The button your loved ones can press on your gravestone to hear the Dreamcast startup sound.
  • King Solomoning the gif-vs-gif debate.
  • The governing body that decides whether your death is cool enough to warrant a gif of your death on your tombstone.
  • The kind of people who gravitate to a job that rates everyone's deaths on a five-star scale.
  • The IP situation surrounding your gravestone's looping wav button.
  • Your tombstone jukebox that plays David Bowie songs when people put a quarter in and the quarters all end up in your casket and if David Bowie wants them he can damn well come and get them.
  • Wagering on your ability to read emergent situations.
  • Electric Football.
  • Covering a metal plate with quarters and flipping the switch that makes the plate vibrate, creating the quarter configuration for optimal money gouging.
  • Becoming really good at beating a rigged game.
  • Becoming really good at funnel cake.
  • Dentists not understanding the motivations people have for drinking soda.
  • Largest Sip.
  • The liminal space between a Sip and a Gulp.
  • Gaming the outcome in Eenie Meenie Miney Moe.
  • Whether Eenie Meenie Miney Moe is a solved game.
  • A great opportunity to practice believing the lies that we form our wesociety on.
  • When Billboard switched from a call-stores-and-ask data collection system to an automated system to gather song sales data, and rap and R&B suddenly started dominating the charts.
  • Rockists fudging the numbers.
  • The pros and cons of getting a Billboard Hot 100 hit.
  • Jukebox charts.
  • The Billboard Humming chart based on them listening to the songs people are humming to themselves on the street.
  • Who loves the radio hits that everyone you know hates? (People you don't know.)
  • Knowing where to stick that quarter.
  • White dudes making 17 minute songs.
  • Axis of Discourse.
  • A directory of mp3s in your Jellyfin server.
  • Napster pivoting to NFTs but nobody notices or cares.
  • Nostalgia for the Spanish Flu.
  • A giant ball of iron with life forms clinging to it.
  • The earth continuing to be a lump of iron no matter how badly we treat it.
  • Potential human extinction and whether birds would notice it.
  • A fully-automated human house of the near to far future.
  • A band of roving pranksters in the post-apocalypse who are running around transmitting bad Roomba firmware updates.
  • Rolling up on prom with your entourage of four Half-Life scientists and five Barneys.
  • Rolling up on the rap battle with your entourage of backup singer Roombas trailing behind you.
  • The Mad Max series as prepper porn.
  • A good shelf to rest on in the collective psyche.
  • Friend deterrent strategies.
  • How strategy disclosure alters the gameplay of Rock Paper Scissors.
  • Disclosing ahead of the game or Rock Paper Scissors that your strategy will be to punch your opponent repeatedly, and how that affects the way the game is played.
  • Satisfactory: an open-world factory building game.
  • Building your factories and then leaving them behind.
  • Emergent haunted houses in abandoned player-built structures in persistent-world multiplayer games.
  • Having an idea for a game feature and having to build the whole game to try the feature out.
  • Being scared of weird old crap.
  • Adding Pokemon to Minecraft.
  • The last gasp of mainstream PC gaming before phones happened.
  • An 11 year old game developer getting thrown into the Capitalist snake pit.
  • The Human Attention Zoo.
  • Kids (or adults) having goofs.
  • The Golden Age of the Moddable Game Engine.
  • Getting a job based on your Roblox portfolio.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A return of many-storied adventure game developers.
  • A point and click adventure game that changed the trajectory of your life.
  • Suspenders as an architectural feature.
  • Onesie pajamas with a trap door.
  • People sneaking up behind you and trying to unbutton your poop flap.
  • Thoughts that are meant to remain unthought.
  • The famous elongated "some."
  • A marketing executive saying "nobody will know what a 'tetralogy' is."
  • Whether your game studio logo has a sound.
  • Console startup noises.
  • The button your loved ones can press on your gravestone to hear the Dreamcast startup sound.
  • King Solomoning the gif-vs-gif debate.
  • The governing body that decides whether your death is cool enough to warrant a gif of your death on your tombstone.
  • The kind of people who gravitate to a job that rates everyone's deaths on a five-star scale.
  • The IP situation surrounding your gravestone's looping wav button.
  • Your tombstone jukebox that plays David Bowie songs when people put a quarter in and the quarters all end up in your casket and if David Bowie wants them he can damn well come and get them.
  • Wagering on your ability to read emergent situations.
  • Electric Football.
  • Covering a metal plate with quarters and flipping the switch that makes the plate vibrate, creating the quarter configuration for optimal money gouging.
  • Becoming really good at beating a rigged game.
  • Becoming really good at funnel cake.
  • Dentists not understanding the motivations people have for drinking soda.
  • Largest Sip.
  • The liminal space between a Sip and a Gulp.
  • Gaming the outcome in Eenie Meenie Miney Moe.
  • Whether Eenie Meenie Miney Moe is a solved game.
  • A great opportunity to practice believing the lies that we form our wesociety on.
  • When Billboard switched from a call-stores-and-ask data collection system to an automated system to gather song sales data, and rap and R&B suddenly started dominating the charts.
  • Rockists fudging the numbers.
  • The pros and cons of getting a Billboard Hot 100 hit.
  • Jukebox charts.
  • The Billboard Humming chart based on them listening to the songs people are humming to themselves on the street.
  • Who loves the radio hits that everyone you know hates? (People you don't know.)
  • Knowing where to stick that quarter.
  • White dudes making 17 minute songs.
  • Axis of Discourse.
  • A directory of mp3s in your Jellyfin server.
  • Napster pivoting to NFTs but nobody notices or cares.
  • Nostalgia for the Spanish Flu.
  • A giant ball of iron with life forms clinging to it.
  • The earth continuing to be a lump of iron no matter how badly we treat it.
  • Potential human extinction and whether birds would notice it.
  • A fully-automated human house of the near to far future.
  • A band of roving pranksters in the post-apocalypse who are running around transmitting bad Roomba firmware updates.
  • Rolling up on prom with your entourage of four Half-Life scientists and five Barneys.
  • Rolling up on the rap battle with your entourage of backup singer Roombas trailing behind you.
  • The Mad Max series as prepper porn.
  • A good shelf to rest on in the collective psyche.
  • Friend deterrent strategies.
  • How strategy disclosure alters the gameplay of Rock Paper Scissors.
  • Disclosing ahead of the game or Rock Paper Scissors that your strategy will be to punch your opponent repeatedly, and how that affects the way the game is played.
  • Satisfactory: an open-world factory building game.
  • Building your factories and then leaving them behind.
  • Emergent haunted houses in abandoned player-built structures in persistent-world multiplayer games.
  • Having an idea for a game feature and having to build the whole game to try the feature out.
  • Being scared of weird old crap.
  • Adding Pokemon to Minecraft.
  • The last gasp of mainstream PC gaming before phones happened.
  • An 11 year old game developer getting thrown into the Capitalist snake pit.
  • The Human Attention Zoo.
  • Kids (or adults) having goofs.
  • The Golden Age of the Moddable Game Engine.
  • Getting a job based on your Roblox portfolio.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A return of many-storied adventure game developers.
  • A point and click adventure game that changed the trajectory of your life.
  • Suspenders as an architectural feature.
  • Onesie pajamas with a trap door.
  • People sneaking up behind you and trying to unbutton your poop flap.
  • Thoughts that are meant to remain unthought.
  • The famous elongated "some."
  • A marketing executive saying "nobody will know what a 'tetralogy' is."
  • Whether your game studio logo has a sound.
  • Console startup noises.
  • The button your loved ones can press on your gravestone to hear the Dreamcast startup sound.
  • King Solomoning the gif-vs-gif debate.
  • The governing body that decides whether your death is cool enough to warrant a gif of your death on your tombstone.
  • The kind of people who gravitate to a job that rates everyone's deaths on a five-star scale.
  • The IP situation surrounding your gravestone's looping wav button.
  • Your tombstone jukebox that plays David Bowie songs when people put a quarter in and the quarters all end up in your casket and if David Bowie wants them he can damn well come and get them.
  • Wagering on your ability to read emergent situations.
  • Electric Football.
  • Covering a metal plate with quarters and flipping the switch that makes the plate vibrate, creating the quarter configuration for optimal money gouging.
  • Becoming really good at beating a rigged game.
  • Becoming really good at funnel cake.
  • Dentists not understanding the motivations people have for drinking soda.
  • Largest Sip.
  • The liminal space between a Sip and a Gulp.
  • Gaming the outcome in Eenie Meenie Miney Moe.
  • Whether Eenie Meenie Miney Moe is a solved game.
  • A great opportunity to practice believing the lies that we form our wesociety on.
  • When Billboard switched from a call-stores-and-ask data collection system to an automated system to gather song sales data, and rap and R&B suddenly started dominating the charts.
  • Rockists fudging the numbers.
  • The pros and cons of getting a Billboard Hot 100 hit.
  • Jukebox charts.
  • The Billboard Humming chart based on them listening to the songs people are humming to themselves on the street.
  • Who loves the radio hits that everyone you know hates? (People you don't know.)
  • Knowing where to stick that quarter.
  • White dudes making 17 minute songs.
  • Axis of Discourse.
  • A directory of mp3s in your Jellyfin server.
  • Napster pivoting to NFTs but nobody notices or cares.
  • Nostalgia for the Spanish Flu.
  • A giant ball of iron with life forms clinging to it.
  • The earth continuing to be a lump of iron no matter how badly we treat it.
  • Potential human extinction and whether birds would notice it.
  • A fully-automated human house of the near to far future.
  • A band of roving pranksters in the post-apocalypse who are running around transmitting bad Roomba firmware updates.
  • Rolling up on prom with your entourage of four Half-Life scientists and five Barneys.
  • Rolling up on the rap battle with your entourage of backup singer Roombas trailing behind you.
  • The Mad Max series as prepper porn.
  • A good shelf to rest on in the collective psyche.
  • Friend deterrent strategies.
  • How strategy disclosure alters the gameplay of Rock Paper Scissors.
  • Disclosing ahead of the game or Rock Paper Scissors that your strategy will be to punch your opponent repeatedly, and how that affects the way the game is played.
  • Satisfactory: an open-world factory building game.
  • Building your factories and then leaving them behind.
  • Emergent haunted houses in abandoned player-built structures in persistent-world multiplayer games.
  • Having an idea for a game feature and having to build the whole game to try the feature out.
  • Being scared of weird old crap.
  • Adding Pokemon to Minecraft.
  • The last gasp of mainstream PC gaming before phones happened.
  • An 11 year old game developer getting thrown into the Capitalist snake pit.
  • The Human Attention Zoo.
  • Kids (or adults) having goofs.
  • The Golden Age of the Moddable Game Engine.
  • Getting a job based on your Roblox portfolio.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+X81ZsP8J ]]> Jim Stormdancer 155. Do AI Researchers Know About Having Kids? https://topiclords.com/do-ai-researchers-know-about-having-kids c4155803-5180-4ab9-82e6-df3f883dc4d0 Mon, 10 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jude and Shepard. We discuss the attention schema model of consciousness, studying a children's picture book in academia because it was successfully banned out of existence, your favorite floor cocktail, Ode to Waluigi, whether generations used to be a thing, and remembering what the mnemonic is but not what it is supposed to remind you. 58:20 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bike Church.
  • Learning to fix a bike.
  • The audio book for Watership Down.
  • The book that inspired the plugging.
  • Our own brain's mental model of our attention.
  • If you are what you think then suddenly you're this other thing.
  • The brain's proprioception of itself.
  • The Turning Test as praxis.
  • A second brain that tries to second-guess the first brain.
  • An idea that is brilliant or not.
  • Have machine learning researchers heard about having kids?
  • X: A Child's Story.
  • A discount dystopian nightmare.
  • A book that is banned in twenty states but otherwise nobody cares about it.
  • Kids who inexplicably look like Charles Bronson.
  • The consolidation of media into six megacorporations.
  • Kids learning how to pirate again.
  • A specific right that can be sold or exchanged.
  • The end of the golden age of streaming.
  • What Napster was like.
  • Downloading an MP3 from an FTP site and then recording it to a cassette tape because you don't have that much hard drive space.
  • Ice that is still ice.
  • When the bartender pours your drink on the floor and gives you a straw.
  • The Forbidden Jungle Juice.
  • A story from back when most of Jim's friends were alcoholics.
  • Noticing a cocktail on the floor of the elevator and wondering how it got there and then you realize the elevator smells like a smoke bomb and you're like "oh ok"
  • Checking the ceiling of the elevator for ninjas.
  • The problem with the wine bar spit urn.
  • The coffee that you give to the poor.
  • Pouring your excess coffee into the donation box at church.
  • Dropping a loose muffin into the mail drop box to show thanks to the mail carrier.
  • A floor made of mail.
  • A dastardly Nintendo villain.
  • Thy time to attack Mario and Luigi.
  • Why thou dost not have thine own video fame.
  • Why thou art always cranky.
  • Whether a power flower fell in you mouth when thou wast a baby.
  • What it wouldst be like to be friends with Bowser and thou.
  • Fighting Geno the Explorer dangerously.
  • Why thou art not in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • A poem that asks many important questions and provides no answers.
  • Hyper Mecha Sonic.
  • A thriller about video game mascots.
  • The bright line in the sand that makes Yoshi a pet rather than a friend.
  • Dumping your boyfriend Waluigi any time you need an extra few feet of jump height because at any time you can load up Mario Tennis and get another Waluigi for free.
  • Trying desperately to find or create a purple-moustachioed Waluigi.
  • The eight named generations.
  • The Reprisal Generation, of the Nomad/Reactive archetypes.
  • Why the concept of generational cohorts is unique to modern Americans.
  • Ming Dynasty Boomers.
  • Violence that is continuous and normal.
  • The Greatest Generation, who had no idea at the time how Great they had it.
  • A Radical for Fingers.
  • Seeing a king wearing a hat and trying to remember what that's supposed to remind you of.
  • Looking at your hands and trying to remember why this is important.
  • Not figuring out that your grandpa is hilarious until a week before he dies.
  • Waiting in the bathroom for the test to start.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bike Church.
  • Learning to fix a bike.
  • The audio book for Watership Down.
  • The book that inspired the plugging.
  • Our own brain's mental model of our attention.
  • If you are what you think then suddenly you're this other thing.
  • The brain's proprioception of itself.
  • The Turning Test as praxis.
  • A second brain that tries to second-guess the first brain.
  • An idea that is brilliant or not.
  • Have machine learning researchers heard about having kids?
  • X: A Child's Story.
  • A discount dystopian nightmare.
  • A book that is banned in twenty states but otherwise nobody cares about it.
  • Kids who inexplicably look like Charles Bronson.
  • The consolidation of media into six megacorporations.
  • Kids learning how to pirate again.
  • A specific right that can be sold or exchanged.
  • The end of the golden age of streaming.
  • What Napster was like.
  • Downloading an MP3 from an FTP site and then recording it to a cassette tape because you don't have that much hard drive space.
  • Ice that is still ice.
  • When the bartender pours your drink on the floor and gives you a straw.
  • The Forbidden Jungle Juice.
  • A story from back when most of Jim's friends were alcoholics.
  • Noticing a cocktail on the floor of the elevator and wondering how it got there and then you realize the elevator smells like a smoke bomb and you're like "oh ok"
  • Checking the ceiling of the elevator for ninjas.
  • The problem with the wine bar spit urn.
  • The coffee that you give to the poor.
  • Pouring your excess coffee into the donation box at church.
  • Dropping a loose muffin into the mail drop box to show thanks to the mail carrier.
  • A floor made of mail.
  • A dastardly Nintendo villain.
  • Thy time to attack Mario and Luigi.
  • Why thou dost not have thine own video fame.
  • Why thou art always cranky.
  • Whether a power flower fell in you mouth when thou wast a baby.
  • What it wouldst be like to be friends with Bowser and thou.
  • Fighting Geno the Explorer dangerously.
  • Why thou art not in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • A poem that asks many important questions and provides no answers.
  • Hyper Mecha Sonic.
  • A thriller about video game mascots.
  • The bright line in the sand that makes Yoshi a pet rather than a friend.
  • Dumping your boyfriend Waluigi any time you need an extra few feet of jump height because at any time you can load up Mario Tennis and get another Waluigi for free.
  • Trying desperately to find or create a purple-moustachioed Waluigi.
  • The eight named generations.
  • The Reprisal Generation, of the Nomad/Reactive archetypes.
  • Why the concept of generational cohorts is unique to modern Americans.
  • Ming Dynasty Boomers.
  • Violence that is continuous and normal.
  • The Greatest Generation, who had no idea at the time how Great they had it.
  • A Radical for Fingers.
  • Seeing a king wearing a hat and trying to remember what that's supposed to remind you of.
  • Looking at your hands and trying to remember why this is important.
  • Not figuring out that your grandpa is hilarious until a week before he dies.
  • Waiting in the bathroom for the test to start.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Bike Church.
  • Learning to fix a bike.
  • The audio book for Watership Down.
  • The book that inspired the plugging.
  • Our own brain's mental model of our attention.
  • If you are what you think then suddenly you're this other thing.
  • The brain's proprioception of itself.
  • The Turning Test as praxis.
  • A second brain that tries to second-guess the first brain.
  • An idea that is brilliant or not.
  • Have machine learning researchers heard about having kids?
  • X: A Child's Story.
  • A discount dystopian nightmare.
  • A book that is banned in twenty states but otherwise nobody cares about it.
  • Kids who inexplicably look like Charles Bronson.
  • The consolidation of media into six megacorporations.
  • Kids learning how to pirate again.
  • A specific right that can be sold or exchanged.
  • The end of the golden age of streaming.
  • What Napster was like.
  • Downloading an MP3 from an FTP site and then recording it to a cassette tape because you don't have that much hard drive space.
  • Ice that is still ice.
  • When the bartender pours your drink on the floor and gives you a straw.
  • The Forbidden Jungle Juice.
  • A story from back when most of Jim's friends were alcoholics.
  • Noticing a cocktail on the floor of the elevator and wondering how it got there and then you realize the elevator smells like a smoke bomb and you're like "oh ok"
  • Checking the ceiling of the elevator for ninjas.
  • The problem with the wine bar spit urn.
  • The coffee that you give to the poor.
  • Pouring your excess coffee into the donation box at church.
  • Dropping a loose muffin into the mail drop box to show thanks to the mail carrier.
  • A floor made of mail.
  • A dastardly Nintendo villain.
  • Thy time to attack Mario and Luigi.
  • Why thou dost not have thine own video fame.
  • Why thou art always cranky.
  • Whether a power flower fell in you mouth when thou wast a baby.
  • What it wouldst be like to be friends with Bowser and thou.
  • Fighting Geno the Explorer dangerously.
  • Why thou art not in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • A poem that asks many important questions and provides no answers.
  • Hyper Mecha Sonic.
  • A thriller about video game mascots.
  • The bright line in the sand that makes Yoshi a pet rather than a friend.
  • Dumping your boyfriend Waluigi any time you need an extra few feet of jump height because at any time you can load up Mario Tennis and get another Waluigi for free.
  • Trying desperately to find or create a purple-moustachioed Waluigi.
  • The eight named generations.
  • The Reprisal Generation, of the Nomad/Reactive archetypes.
  • Why the concept of generational cohorts is unique to modern Americans.
  • Ming Dynasty Boomers.
  • Violence that is continuous and normal.
  • The Greatest Generation, who had no idea at the time how Great they had it.
  • A Radical for Fingers.
  • Seeing a king wearing a hat and trying to remember what that's supposed to remind you of.
  • Looking at your hands and trying to remember why this is important.
  • Not figuring out that your grandpa is hilarious until a week before he dies.
  • Waiting in the bathroom for the test to start.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+xfegoRJg ]]> Jim Stormdancer 154. QWERTY in the Streets, Colemak in the Sheets https://topiclords.com/qwerty-in-the-streets-colemak-in-the-sheets dadaa3ed-54f3-4e79-9108-54b7b4c9dcda Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Stevie. We discuss striped humans, teaching yourself to type in new horrible ways, where did I get these floppy disk poems, and how to give a tech talk. 1:17:59 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The extent of Jim's patience vis-a-vis delayed plugging.
  • Wishing you didn't make things so you could talk about the things you didn't make.
  • Plugging the small random things in life, like bugs.
  • Sitting in a chair right now.
  • Trying desperately for forty years to never use Bluetooth.
  • George Michael's "Faith"
  • George Michael rehearsing a Queen song.
  • A Faith listening party.
  • The etymology of "Lobster."
  • Plugging bugs and unplugging crustaceans.
  • Invisible stripes along one's epidermis.
  • Mosaicism (as distinct from Chimerism.)
  • Blaschko Lines.
  • A secret invisible power to be striped.
  • The show where nobody knows anything.
  • Spiraling outward from a central point.
  • A thing that is a fact if you believe Wikipedia.
  • Describing an egg as ovoid because it is similar to an ovum, i.e. an egg.
  • Whether a factoid is bullshit.
  • Whether humans are humanoid.
  • The distinction between a fact and a factoid and how it has changed over time.
  • Being slightly hungry and eating a single macaronus.
  • Batman training his successor in the sci-fi future.
  • Joining the villain faction because they get the cool hooves and horns.
  • Turning 90 and getting your internal organs tattooed.
  • Check it out, here's my solar plexus. Enjoy.
  • An injection that makes your bones glow in the dark.
  • Cold-Turkey Colemak Switchin'.
  • Holding your left pinky on the tab key to keep your place.
  • Iterating until you find the episode title.
  • Typing without twerking.
  • Being able to get your hands to do what you want without hurting.
  • Getting a split keyboard so your hands keep working.
  • The ease and laziness of the Wiimote and nunchuk allowing you to put your hands anywhere you want.
  • Twitchy aim dominating the PC FPS design space regardless of what the game designer wants.
  • Making poem floppy disks and using them as drinking coasters.
  • Cleaning out your mouse.
  • Disassembling a floppy disk and folding it into the shape of the Starship Enterprise.
  • Remembering where the USB floppy drive might stuff.
  • Whether cursed demoscene executables still curse you if you run them in DosBox.
  • Whether the Ring video still cursed you after it's digitized to DVD.
  • Maybe'm or maybe'm not.
  • A pretty cool knick knack.
  • A human head like pancake batter.
  • Bread that you put in a blender.
  • The old good lord, bad lord routine.
  • Picking a god and channeling its power into your tech talk.
  • A community of people that you want to like and respect you.
  • Various ways to prepare to give a talk, and why Tyriq always does it the wrong way.
  • Going to a talk and thereby consenting to be lectured by the person giving the talk.
  • Blaming the audience for picking the wrong talk if they don't like your talk.
  • How to run an ARG for no money.
  • Deconstructing the idea that canon and headcanon are in any way different.
  • Re-telling the same story over and over again.
  • Same bullshit, different number of dimensions.
  • A movie that was cooler when it was just a throwaway line in another movie.
  • Depicting the same overarching event but with details changed.
  • Games that require you to make a choice that you can't take back.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The extent of Jim's patience vis-a-vis delayed plugging.
  • Wishing you didn't make things so you could talk about the things you didn't make.
  • Plugging the small random things in life, like bugs.
  • Sitting in a chair right now.
  • Trying desperately for forty years to never use Bluetooth.
  • George Michael's "Faith"
  • George Michael rehearsing a Queen song.
  • A Faith listening party.
  • The etymology of "Lobster."
  • Plugging bugs and unplugging crustaceans.
  • Invisible stripes along one's epidermis.
  • Mosaicism (as distinct from Chimerism.)
  • Blaschko Lines.
  • A secret invisible power to be striped.
  • The show where nobody knows anything.
  • Spiraling outward from a central point.
  • A thing that is a fact if you believe Wikipedia.
  • Describing an egg as ovoid because it is similar to an ovum, i.e. an egg.
  • Whether a factoid is bullshit.
  • Whether humans are humanoid.
  • The distinction between a fact and a factoid and how it has changed over time.
  • Being slightly hungry and eating a single macaronus.
  • Batman training his successor in the sci-fi future.
  • Joining the villain faction because they get the cool hooves and horns.
  • Turning 90 and getting your internal organs tattooed.
  • Check it out, here's my solar plexus. Enjoy.
  • An injection that makes your bones glow in the dark.
  • Cold-Turkey Colemak Switchin'.
  • Holding your left pinky on the tab key to keep your place.
  • Iterating until you find the episode title.
  • Typing without twerking.
  • Being able to get your hands to do what you want without hurting.
  • Getting a split keyboard so your hands keep working.
  • The ease and laziness of the Wiimote and nunchuk allowing you to put your hands anywhere you want.
  • Twitchy aim dominating the PC FPS design space regardless of what the game designer wants.
  • Making poem floppy disks and using them as drinking coasters.
  • Cleaning out your mouse.
  • Disassembling a floppy disk and folding it into the shape of the Starship Enterprise.
  • Remembering where the USB floppy drive might stuff.
  • Whether cursed demoscene executables still curse you if you run them in DosBox.
  • Whether the Ring video still cursed you after it's digitized to DVD.
  • Maybe'm or maybe'm not.
  • A pretty cool knick knack.
  • A human head like pancake batter.
  • Bread that you put in a blender.
  • The old good lord, bad lord routine.
  • Picking a god and channeling its power into your tech talk.
  • A community of people that you want to like and respect you.
  • Various ways to prepare to give a talk, and why Tyriq always does it the wrong way.
  • Going to a talk and thereby consenting to be lectured by the person giving the talk.
  • Blaming the audience for picking the wrong talk if they don't like your talk.
  • How to run an ARG for no money.
  • Deconstructing the idea that canon and headcanon are in any way different.
  • Re-telling the same story over and over again.
  • Same bullshit, different number of dimensions.
  • A movie that was cooler when it was just a throwaway line in another movie.
  • Depicting the same overarching event but with details changed.
  • Games that require you to make a choice that you can't take back.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The extent of Jim's patience vis-a-vis delayed plugging.
  • Wishing you didn't make things so you could talk about the things you didn't make.
  • Plugging the small random things in life, like bugs.
  • Sitting in a chair right now.
  • Trying desperately for forty years to never use Bluetooth.
  • George Michael's "Faith"
  • George Michael rehearsing a Queen song.
  • A Faith listening party.
  • The etymology of "Lobster."
  • Plugging bugs and unplugging crustaceans.
  • Invisible stripes along one's epidermis.
  • Mosaicism (as distinct from Chimerism.)
  • Blaschko Lines.
  • A secret invisible power to be striped.
  • The show where nobody knows anything.
  • Spiraling outward from a central point.
  • A thing that is a fact if you believe Wikipedia.
  • Describing an egg as ovoid because it is similar to an ovum, i.e. an egg.
  • Whether a factoid is bullshit.
  • Whether humans are humanoid.
  • The distinction between a fact and a factoid and how it has changed over time.
  • Being slightly hungry and eating a single macaronus.
  • Batman training his successor in the sci-fi future.
  • Joining the villain faction because they get the cool hooves and horns.
  • Turning 90 and getting your internal organs tattooed.
  • Check it out, here's my solar plexus. Enjoy.
  • An injection that makes your bones glow in the dark.
  • Cold-Turkey Colemak Switchin'.
  • Holding your left pinky on the tab key to keep your place.
  • Iterating until you find the episode title.
  • Typing without twerking.
  • Being able to get your hands to do what you want without hurting.
  • Getting a split keyboard so your hands keep working.
  • The ease and laziness of the Wiimote and nunchuk allowing you to put your hands anywhere you want.
  • Twitchy aim dominating the PC FPS design space regardless of what the game designer wants.
  • Making poem floppy disks and using them as drinking coasters.
  • Cleaning out your mouse.
  • Disassembling a floppy disk and folding it into the shape of the Starship Enterprise.
  • Remembering where the USB floppy drive might stuff.
  • Whether cursed demoscene executables still curse you if you run them in DosBox.
  • Whether the Ring video still cursed you after it's digitized to DVD.
  • Maybe'm or maybe'm not.
  • A pretty cool knick knack.
  • A human head like pancake batter.
  • Bread that you put in a blender.
  • The old good lord, bad lord routine.
  • Picking a god and channeling its power into your tech talk.
  • A community of people that you want to like and respect you.
  • Various ways to prepare to give a talk, and why Tyriq always does it the wrong way.
  • Going to a talk and thereby consenting to be lectured by the person giving the talk.
  • Blaming the audience for picking the wrong talk if they don't like your talk.
  • How to run an ARG for no money.
  • Deconstructing the idea that canon and headcanon are in any way different.
  • Re-telling the same story over and over again.
  • Same bullshit, different number of dimensions.
  • A movie that was cooler when it was just a throwaway line in another movie.
  • Depicting the same overarching event but with details changed.
  • Games that require you to make a choice that you can't take back.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+iAGa8TNu ]]> Jim Stormdancer 153. I Can't Wait for My Cockroach Lipids https://topiclords.com/i-cant-wait-for-my-cockroach-lipids 30f5c80e-1447-4f6a-8eb0-de9019bae6a8 Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: James and Avery. We discuss stone paper, The Flashing Blade, The Number Ones, King of the River, and cockroach milk. 1:03:34 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • James
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The latest on whether or not you've been canceled.
  • Spotify rejecting your album because you don't believe in yourself enough.
  • Spagbol.
  • The very one that is being digested by you now.
  • thisbolognesedoesnotexist.com
  • Paper that is 60% stone.
  • The price you pay for participating in art.
  • Coffee that is more powerful than a laptop.
  • What happens if you try to shred margarine.
  • Documents only for the document control society.
  • The Novelty FBI raiding your house and confiscating your Novelty Top Secret Documents and hiding them in their fake Groucho Marx glasses.
  • The guy who bought the last 100 Groucho Marx glasses from Party City.
  • Moustache Ninja.
  • Why more people aren't talking about Moustache Ninja.
  • The height of Pirate Ninja Robot Mustache Mania.
  • Ankle Biter Man.
  • Atrocities Guide.
  • One of many reasons why real life superheroes are a bad idea.
  • Superheroes: police except there is no oversight whatsoever.
  • Avery's Angels on Phoenix Jones.
  • If Seattle police arrest you for being nude, they are legally obligated to provide you with a dinner jacket for your jail stay.
  • Heath Ledger instructing the audience to charge their shower.
  • The Masked Magician Revealed.
  • TV stage magic.
  • David Copperfield raising the Titanic.
  • The Cheap Trick song that got to #1.
  • The songs that hit #1 because General Hospital used them on the soundtrack.
  • An antidote to the idea that music used to be better.
  • Breaking Up is Hard to Do.
  • Finding a way to enjoy art that you didn't like before.
  • Getting old and liking boring music.
  • What radio formats overlap with Beautiful Music.
  • A foam snake that shoots thirty feet into the air and then drifts into a nearby tree.
  • Tumbling over the rocks until you paint them with your belly's blood.
  • That other flesh, heavy with milt, bruised, battering toward the dam that lips the orgiastic pool.
  • Limber and firm in the state of his shining, forever inheriting his salt kingdom, from which he is banished forever.
  • The most animalistic and primitive part of your consciousness.
  • An Atari 2600 game inspired by a poem about a fish.
  • The level in Dante's Inferno where you have to fight unbaptized babies.
  • A game with one foot in the majesty of Greek mythology and the other foot in what it's like to bash someone's head into the concrete.
  • A great use of thumbsticks.
  • Whether Wisdom Tree would've published the Dante's Inferno video game.
  • Spending your entire life obsessed with the pear you stole as a kid.
  • An illumination of someone kneeling in front of a pear tree and weeping.
  • Pop songs about relationship situations.
  • An idea that is not as old as music.
  • A piece of music going right for the emotion, like the Windows Startup Sound.
  • Melody in lyrics, in conversation with each other.
  • Seeing a person and drawing a stick figure.
  • How do I get too much into my own head?
  • Why you're turning into a fish, and what the fish represents.
  • Sea Monkeys' Garden of Earthly Delights.
  • Do we want to get to the Cockroach Milk?
  • Being accosted on the street by Topic Lords fans asking for non-mammalian milk news but you're like "sorry I'm saving this for Topic Lords"
  • How many cockroaches it takes to make one serving of cockroach milk.
  • Sobbing in front of the slab of meat that Rocky punched.
  • Pouring cockroach milk onto stone paper to prove its resiliency.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • James
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The latest on whether or not you've been canceled.
  • Spotify rejecting your album because you don't believe in yourself enough.
  • Spagbol.
  • The very one that is being digested by you now.
  • thisbolognesedoesnotexist.com
  • Paper that is 60% stone.
  • The price you pay for participating in art.
  • Coffee that is more powerful than a laptop.
  • What happens if you try to shred margarine.
  • Documents only for the document control society.
  • The Novelty FBI raiding your house and confiscating your Novelty Top Secret Documents and hiding them in their fake Groucho Marx glasses.
  • The guy who bought the last 100 Groucho Marx glasses from Party City.
  • Moustache Ninja.
  • Why more people aren't talking about Moustache Ninja.
  • The height of Pirate Ninja Robot Mustache Mania.
  • Ankle Biter Man.
  • Atrocities Guide.
  • One of many reasons why real life superheroes are a bad idea.
  • Superheroes: police except there is no oversight whatsoever.
  • Avery's Angels on Phoenix Jones.
  • If Seattle police arrest you for being nude, they are legally obligated to provide you with a dinner jacket for your jail stay.
  • Heath Ledger instructing the audience to charge their shower.
  • The Masked Magician Revealed.
  • TV stage magic.
  • David Copperfield raising the Titanic.
  • The Cheap Trick song that got to #1.
  • The songs that hit #1 because General Hospital used them on the soundtrack.
  • An antidote to the idea that music used to be better.
  • Breaking Up is Hard to Do.
  • Finding a way to enjoy art that you didn't like before.
  • Getting old and liking boring music.
  • What radio formats overlap with Beautiful Music.
  • A foam snake that shoots thirty feet into the air and then drifts into a nearby tree.
  • Tumbling over the rocks until you paint them with your belly's blood.
  • That other flesh, heavy with milt, bruised, battering toward the dam that lips the orgiastic pool.
  • Limber and firm in the state of his shining, forever inheriting his salt kingdom, from which he is banished forever.
  • The most animalistic and primitive part of your consciousness.
  • An Atari 2600 game inspired by a poem about a fish.
  • The level in Dante's Inferno where you have to fight unbaptized babies.
  • A game with one foot in the majesty of Greek mythology and the other foot in what it's like to bash someone's head into the concrete.
  • A great use of thumbsticks.
  • Whether Wisdom Tree would've published the Dante's Inferno video game.
  • Spending your entire life obsessed with the pear you stole as a kid.
  • An illumination of someone kneeling in front of a pear tree and weeping.
  • Pop songs about relationship situations.
  • An idea that is not as old as music.
  • A piece of music going right for the emotion, like the Windows Startup Sound.
  • Melody in lyrics, in conversation with each other.
  • Seeing a person and drawing a stick figure.
  • How do I get too much into my own head?
  • Why you're turning into a fish, and what the fish represents.
  • Sea Monkeys' Garden of Earthly Delights.
  • Do we want to get to the Cockroach Milk?
  • Being accosted on the street by Topic Lords fans asking for non-mammalian milk news but you're like "sorry I'm saving this for Topic Lords"
  • How many cockroaches it takes to make one serving of cockroach milk.
  • Sobbing in front of the slab of meat that Rocky punched.
  • Pouring cockroach milk onto stone paper to prove its resiliency.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • James
  • Avery

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The latest on whether or not you've been canceled.
  • Spotify rejecting your album because you don't believe in yourself enough.
  • Spagbol.
  • The very one that is being digested by you now.
  • thisbolognesedoesnotexist.com
  • Paper that is 60% stone.
  • The price you pay for participating in art.
  • Coffee that is more powerful than a laptop.
  • What happens if you try to shred margarine.
  • Documents only for the document control society.
  • The Novelty FBI raiding your house and confiscating your Novelty Top Secret Documents and hiding them in their fake Groucho Marx glasses.
  • The guy who bought the last 100 Groucho Marx glasses from Party City.
  • Moustache Ninja.
  • Why more people aren't talking about Moustache Ninja.
  • The height of Pirate Ninja Robot Mustache Mania.
  • Ankle Biter Man.
  • Atrocities Guide.
  • One of many reasons why real life superheroes are a bad idea.
  • Superheroes: police except there is no oversight whatsoever.
  • Avery's Angels on Phoenix Jones.
  • If Seattle police arrest you for being nude, they are legally obligated to provide you with a dinner jacket for your jail stay.
  • Heath Ledger instructing the audience to charge their shower.
  • The Masked Magician Revealed.
  • TV stage magic.
  • David Copperfield raising the Titanic.
  • The Cheap Trick song that got to #1.
  • The songs that hit #1 because General Hospital used them on the soundtrack.
  • An antidote to the idea that music used to be better.
  • Breaking Up is Hard to Do.
  • Finding a way to enjoy art that you didn't like before.
  • Getting old and liking boring music.
  • What radio formats overlap with Beautiful Music.
  • A foam snake that shoots thirty feet into the air and then drifts into a nearby tree.
  • Tumbling over the rocks until you paint them with your belly's blood.
  • That other flesh, heavy with milt, bruised, battering toward the dam that lips the orgiastic pool.
  • Limber and firm in the state of his shining, forever inheriting his salt kingdom, from which he is banished forever.
  • The most animalistic and primitive part of your consciousness.
  • An Atari 2600 game inspired by a poem about a fish.
  • The level in Dante's Inferno where you have to fight unbaptized babies.
  • A game with one foot in the majesty of Greek mythology and the other foot in what it's like to bash someone's head into the concrete.
  • A great use of thumbsticks.
  • Whether Wisdom Tree would've published the Dante's Inferno video game.
  • Spending your entire life obsessed with the pear you stole as a kid.
  • An illumination of someone kneeling in front of a pear tree and weeping.
  • Pop songs about relationship situations.
  • An idea that is not as old as music.
  • A piece of music going right for the emotion, like the Windows Startup Sound.
  • Melody in lyrics, in conversation with each other.
  • Seeing a person and drawing a stick figure.
  • How do I get too much into my own head?
  • Why you're turning into a fish, and what the fish represents.
  • Sea Monkeys' Garden of Earthly Delights.
  • Do we want to get to the Cockroach Milk?
  • Being accosted on the street by Topic Lords fans asking for non-mammalian milk news but you're like "sorry I'm saving this for Topic Lords"
  • How many cockroaches it takes to make one serving of cockroach milk.
  • Sobbing in front of the slab of meat that Rocky punched.
  • Pouring cockroach milk onto stone paper to prove its resiliency.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+oMJzI9pA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 152. National Butterscotch Pudding Day's Eve https://topiclords.com/national-butterscotch-pudding-days-eve 5281a6c6-9376-4e99-bff5-b2731041d42e Mon, 19 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alex and Shannon. Topics: Rebranding a Country, The single-celled dog, Joe Hart still hasn't cleared out the vampire dens, i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious, and National Butterscotch Pudding Day. 1:00:24 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Tying on the tiebreaker.
  • Cambodian street food.
  • Topic Time!!
  • Two countries in the process of changing their names.
  • Whether sovereignty was ceded.
  • Tourism videos encouraging people to pronounce your country's name correctly.
  • History continuing to happen after you leave high school.
  • Changing your name to North Your Name to get an alliance with NATO.
  • A bonanza for globe manufacturers.
  • The United States of Mexico.
  • Germany's reaction to the United States changing its name to The United States of Germany.
  • Playing the wrong Korea's national anthem by mistake.
  • Switching to Roguelike Alphabetical Order so Zimbabwe doesn't always go last.
  • What does it mean to be a particular kind of animal?
  • Transmissible cancer.
  • A breed of dog that no longer exists as a dog but does exist as a strain of transmissible cancer.
  • CTVT.
  • HeLa cells.
  • Whether Henrietta Lacks is still alive.
  • How to fix 20,000 years of evolution.
  • A dog that is unlike extant dogs.
  • When you decide to change your evolutionary niche from macro to microorganism.
  • Cancer that is smart enough to not kill its host.
  • How cancer interacts with your mutant healing factor.
  • What this is and why it's happening to you.
  • Why a two year old wants to play in a copper mine.
  • What kind of mines New England vampires lived in.
  • Rearranging a corpse so that the vampire can't walk.
  • No Arizona Mine Draculas.
  • Joe Hart: defending our vampires.
  • Change that you can really make, if you live in Arizona.
  • Not getting the Google results you want because of sports mans.
  • The pros and cons of vampire bats.
  • Abandoned mines serving as habitats for 28 bat species that are crucial to the local ecology.
  • Persons currently experiencing vampirism.
  • Can't Have Shitting Gotham.
  • Adding line breaks to someone's complaint about a glow in the dark star to make a poem.
  • The imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white.
  • A life situation that is so poignant that it's impossible to write a poem about, so you describe it in prose and wait for a Tumblr user to come and add some line breaks.
  • A monologue that you could read in many different ways.
  • Returning to Tumblr because you have more thoughts on the painted-over star.
  • Responding to every text from your daughter as if it's a formal letter to a long-lost cousin.
  • Putting glow in the dark eyeballs on your closet door.
  • Putting you pudding under the Pudding Tree for Father Pudding.
  • How you grow the Pudding Tree.
  • Werther's Compromise.
  • Using Werther's Originals as dentures and you have to replace them every hour.
  • Removing the butter from scotch to get butterscotch.
  • Soft crack vs. hard crack.
  • Those terrifying Pillsbury tins that you bang on the counter and they explode and breadsticks come out.
  • How to determine if your candy in progress is in the soft ball stage.
  • What is pudding?
  • Having an existential crisis on Butterscotch Pudding Day.
  • Butterscotch Buttercream Frosting.
  • All the Lords that are fit to print.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Tying on the tiebreaker.
  • Cambodian street food.
  • Topic Time!!
  • Two countries in the process of changing their names.
  • Whether sovereignty was ceded.
  • Tourism videos encouraging people to pronounce your country's name correctly.
  • History continuing to happen after you leave high school.
  • Changing your name to North Your Name to get an alliance with NATO.
  • A bonanza for globe manufacturers.
  • The United States of Mexico.
  • Germany's reaction to the United States changing its name to The United States of Germany.
  • Playing the wrong Korea's national anthem by mistake.
  • Switching to Roguelike Alphabetical Order so Zimbabwe doesn't always go last.
  • What does it mean to be a particular kind of animal?
  • Transmissible cancer.
  • A breed of dog that no longer exists as a dog but does exist as a strain of transmissible cancer.
  • CTVT.
  • HeLa cells.
  • Whether Henrietta Lacks is still alive.
  • How to fix 20,000 years of evolution.
  • A dog that is unlike extant dogs.
  • When you decide to change your evolutionary niche from macro to microorganism.
  • Cancer that is smart enough to not kill its host.
  • How cancer interacts with your mutant healing factor.
  • What this is and why it's happening to you.
  • Why a two year old wants to play in a copper mine.
  • What kind of mines New England vampires lived in.
  • Rearranging a corpse so that the vampire can't walk.
  • No Arizona Mine Draculas.
  • Joe Hart: defending our vampires.
  • Change that you can really make, if you live in Arizona.
  • Not getting the Google results you want because of sports mans.
  • The pros and cons of vampire bats.
  • Abandoned mines serving as habitats for 28 bat species that are crucial to the local ecology.
  • Persons currently experiencing vampirism.
  • Can't Have Shitting Gotham.
  • Adding line breaks to someone's complaint about a glow in the dark star to make a poem.
  • The imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white.
  • A life situation that is so poignant that it's impossible to write a poem about, so you describe it in prose and wait for a Tumblr user to come and add some line breaks.
  • A monologue that you could read in many different ways.
  • Returning to Tumblr because you have more thoughts on the painted-over star.
  • Responding to every text from your daughter as if it's a formal letter to a long-lost cousin.
  • Putting glow in the dark eyeballs on your closet door.
  • Putting you pudding under the Pudding Tree for Father Pudding.
  • How you grow the Pudding Tree.
  • Werther's Compromise.
  • Using Werther's Originals as dentures and you have to replace them every hour.
  • Removing the butter from scotch to get butterscotch.
  • Soft crack vs. hard crack.
  • Those terrifying Pillsbury tins that you bang on the counter and they explode and breadsticks come out.
  • How to determine if your candy in progress is in the soft ball stage.
  • What is pudding?
  • Having an existential crisis on Butterscotch Pudding Day.
  • Butterscotch Buttercream Frosting.
  • All the Lords that are fit to print.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alex
  • Shannon

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Tying on the tiebreaker.
  • Cambodian street food.
  • Topic Time!!
  • Two countries in the process of changing their names.
  • Whether sovereignty was ceded.
  • Tourism videos encouraging people to pronounce your country's name correctly.
  • History continuing to happen after you leave high school.
  • Changing your name to North Your Name to get an alliance with NATO.
  • A bonanza for globe manufacturers.
  • The United States of Mexico.
  • Germany's reaction to the United States changing its name to The United States of Germany.
  • Playing the wrong Korea's national anthem by mistake.
  • Switching to Roguelike Alphabetical Order so Zimbabwe doesn't always go last.
  • What does it mean to be a particular kind of animal?
  • Transmissible cancer.
  • A breed of dog that no longer exists as a dog but does exist as a strain of transmissible cancer.
  • CTVT.
  • HeLa cells.
  • Whether Henrietta Lacks is still alive.
  • How to fix 20,000 years of evolution.
  • A dog that is unlike extant dogs.
  • When you decide to change your evolutionary niche from macro to microorganism.
  • Cancer that is smart enough to not kill its host.
  • How cancer interacts with your mutant healing factor.
  • What this is and why it's happening to you.
  • Why a two year old wants to play in a copper mine.
  • What kind of mines New England vampires lived in.
  • Rearranging a corpse so that the vampire can't walk.
  • No Arizona Mine Draculas.
  • Joe Hart: defending our vampires.
  • Change that you can really make, if you live in Arizona.
  • Not getting the Google results you want because of sports mans.
  • The pros and cons of vampire bats.
  • Abandoned mines serving as habitats for 28 bat species that are crucial to the local ecology.
  • Persons currently experiencing vampirism.
  • Can't Have Shitting Gotham.
  • Adding line breaks to someone's complaint about a glow in the dark star to make a poem.
  • The imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white.
  • A life situation that is so poignant that it's impossible to write a poem about, so you describe it in prose and wait for a Tumblr user to come and add some line breaks.
  • A monologue that you could read in many different ways.
  • Returning to Tumblr because you have more thoughts on the painted-over star.
  • Responding to every text from your daughter as if it's a formal letter to a long-lost cousin.
  • Putting glow in the dark eyeballs on your closet door.
  • Putting you pudding under the Pudding Tree for Father Pudding.
  • How you grow the Pudding Tree.
  • Werther's Compromise.
  • Using Werther's Originals as dentures and you have to replace them every hour.
  • Removing the butter from scotch to get butterscotch.
  • Soft crack vs. hard crack.
  • Those terrifying Pillsbury tins that you bang on the counter and they explode and breadsticks come out.
  • How to determine if your candy in progress is in the soft ball stage.
  • What is pudding?
  • Having an existential crisis on Butterscotch Pudding Day.
  • Butterscotch Buttercream Frosting.
  • All the Lords that are fit to print.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+veidBICX ]]> Jim Stormdancer 151. A Fantastic Way to Escape From Your Loved Ones https://topiclords.com/a-fantastic-way-to-escape-from-your-loved-ones 198897fc-6d06-47d5-9d04-fca3202f0662 Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mike and Adam. We discuss cooking, profound kid questions, Mr. Jaws, Distant Regard by Tony Hoagland, and having very tight standards that you hold in one part of your creative life that you totally ignore in other parts. 1:07:45 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Desktop Dungeons Rewind.
  • A rug that looks like a cat's face.
  • Starting a game studio with your life.
  • How the whole butch/femme thing works.
  • After the fall of civilization when the guy with an iPod is the most important person in the village.
  • Your FK-IK rigging skills really paying off in the post-apocalypse.
  • How much kayfabe is happening right now?
  • Whether the PS5 exists and whether you can play Jamestown Plus on it.
  • A great way to nurture and nourish your loved ones while also staying away from them.
  • Soaking Ls.
  • Whether Jim has a sister-in-law.
  • Top three texture-bothers-me foods.
  • Jim's position on eating eyeballs.
  • A snack that can look back.
  • Sucking on the window to the soul.
  • Ordering your tuna salad extra starchy.
  • A deep appreciation of the sandwich arts.
  • Making a Youtube series where part of the bit is that it's really professionally made but also that means you need to do all the dang work, and also maybe you're not good enough to do it as professionally as you think.
  • Getting a real video editor to do the parts that are edited like a normal video but editing all the parts that are bullshit yourself.
  • A daughter in rock climbing camp.
  • Describing Cosmic Cat socks to your dad.
  • How to enjoy things.
  • A series of experiences that enter your body via your sensory organs.
  • Laying a framework for understanding the self.
  • Encoding your musical taste in a C program.
  • Configuring human behavior on an iPad.
  • Feeding the Reddit grist mill with season 4 of Westworld.
  • Living near a pleasing combination of straightaways and turns so you have to hear people racing motorcycles at all hours.
  • The emotional status of the teenager who flipped his car in front of your house.
  • What to say after a car accident to convince passers by to not call 911.
  • An SUV that looks like a t-rex just tried to eat it driving the wrong way on the Bay Bridge.
  • Bombing back into San Francisco in your exploded car.
  • Seeing someone driving recklessly but it's okay because the car has a bumper sticker saying "Everything is fine. We're not drinking in here."
  • Taking a joke that someone else made and making another joke out of it.
  • As topical an artifact as you can imagine.
  • Repetitive and familiar two-minute chunks of sound.
  • The They Might Be Giants album that has the giant squid on the cover.
  • Singing Fingertips from start to finish.
  • The amount of work that went into the cover art of Dickie Goodman's Mr. Jaws.
  • DJing from a dinghy.
  • Writing a thank you note to your travel agent.
  • The clouds blowing overhead like governments and years.
  • Secular Americans having to reinvent gratitude since they don't pray.
  • Parts of you that you think make you a better person.
  • Valuing something in yourself but not being sure how you got there.
  • Having taught yourself a bunch of hard things and learning to trust the process of learning a skill.
  • Civilization: something we agreed to do.
  • The difference between doing something professionally and doing it for fun.
  • Trying to sneak into a giant hovering ball of rock.
  • People who are hungry for topics refusing to hire you.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Desktop Dungeons Rewind.
  • A rug that looks like a cat's face.
  • Starting a game studio with your life.
  • How the whole butch/femme thing works.
  • After the fall of civilization when the guy with an iPod is the most important person in the village.
  • Your FK-IK rigging skills really paying off in the post-apocalypse.
  • How much kayfabe is happening right now?
  • Whether the PS5 exists and whether you can play Jamestown Plus on it.
  • A great way to nurture and nourish your loved ones while also staying away from them.
  • Soaking Ls.
  • Whether Jim has a sister-in-law.
  • Top three texture-bothers-me foods.
  • Jim's position on eating eyeballs.
  • A snack that can look back.
  • Sucking on the window to the soul.
  • Ordering your tuna salad extra starchy.
  • A deep appreciation of the sandwich arts.
  • Making a Youtube series where part of the bit is that it's really professionally made but also that means you need to do all the dang work, and also maybe you're not good enough to do it as professionally as you think.
  • Getting a real video editor to do the parts that are edited like a normal video but editing all the parts that are bullshit yourself.
  • A daughter in rock climbing camp.
  • Describing Cosmic Cat socks to your dad.
  • How to enjoy things.
  • A series of experiences that enter your body via your sensory organs.
  • Laying a framework for understanding the self.
  • Encoding your musical taste in a C program.
  • Configuring human behavior on an iPad.
  • Feeding the Reddit grist mill with season 4 of Westworld.
  • Living near a pleasing combination of straightaways and turns so you have to hear people racing motorcycles at all hours.
  • The emotional status of the teenager who flipped his car in front of your house.
  • What to say after a car accident to convince passers by to not call 911.
  • An SUV that looks like a t-rex just tried to eat it driving the wrong way on the Bay Bridge.
  • Bombing back into San Francisco in your exploded car.
  • Seeing someone driving recklessly but it's okay because the car has a bumper sticker saying "Everything is fine. We're not drinking in here."
  • Taking a joke that someone else made and making another joke out of it.
  • As topical an artifact as you can imagine.
  • Repetitive and familiar two-minute chunks of sound.
  • The They Might Be Giants album that has the giant squid on the cover.
  • Singing Fingertips from start to finish.
  • The amount of work that went into the cover art of Dickie Goodman's Mr. Jaws.
  • DJing from a dinghy.
  • Writing a thank you note to your travel agent.
  • The clouds blowing overhead like governments and years.
  • Secular Americans having to reinvent gratitude since they don't pray.
  • Parts of you that you think make you a better person.
  • Valuing something in yourself but not being sure how you got there.
  • Having taught yourself a bunch of hard things and learning to trust the process of learning a skill.
  • Civilization: something we agreed to do.
  • The difference between doing something professionally and doing it for fun.
  • Trying to sneak into a giant hovering ball of rock.
  • People who are hungry for topics refusing to hire you.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Desktop Dungeons Rewind.
  • A rug that looks like a cat's face.
  • Starting a game studio with your life.
  • How the whole butch/femme thing works.
  • After the fall of civilization when the guy with an iPod is the most important person in the village.
  • Your FK-IK rigging skills really paying off in the post-apocalypse.
  • How much kayfabe is happening right now?
  • Whether the PS5 exists and whether you can play Jamestown Plus on it.
  • A great way to nurture and nourish your loved ones while also staying away from them.
  • Soaking Ls.
  • Whether Jim has a sister-in-law.
  • Top three texture-bothers-me foods.
  • Jim's position on eating eyeballs.
  • A snack that can look back.
  • Sucking on the window to the soul.
  • Ordering your tuna salad extra starchy.
  • A deep appreciation of the sandwich arts.
  • Making a Youtube series where part of the bit is that it's really professionally made but also that means you need to do all the dang work, and also maybe you're not good enough to do it as professionally as you think.
  • Getting a real video editor to do the parts that are edited like a normal video but editing all the parts that are bullshit yourself.
  • A daughter in rock climbing camp.
  • Describing Cosmic Cat socks to your dad.
  • How to enjoy things.
  • A series of experiences that enter your body via your sensory organs.
  • Laying a framework for understanding the self.
  • Encoding your musical taste in a C program.
  • Configuring human behavior on an iPad.
  • Feeding the Reddit grist mill with season 4 of Westworld.
  • Living near a pleasing combination of straightaways and turns so you have to hear people racing motorcycles at all hours.
  • The emotional status of the teenager who flipped his car in front of your house.
  • What to say after a car accident to convince passers by to not call 911.
  • An SUV that looks like a t-rex just tried to eat it driving the wrong way on the Bay Bridge.
  • Bombing back into San Francisco in your exploded car.
  • Seeing someone driving recklessly but it's okay because the car has a bumper sticker saying "Everything is fine. We're not drinking in here."
  • Taking a joke that someone else made and making another joke out of it.
  • As topical an artifact as you can imagine.
  • Repetitive and familiar two-minute chunks of sound.
  • The They Might Be Giants album that has the giant squid on the cover.
  • Singing Fingertips from start to finish.
  • The amount of work that went into the cover art of Dickie Goodman's Mr. Jaws.
  • DJing from a dinghy.
  • Writing a thank you note to your travel agent.
  • The clouds blowing overhead like governments and years.
  • Secular Americans having to reinvent gratitude since they don't pray.
  • Parts of you that you think make you a better person.
  • Valuing something in yourself but not being sure how you got there.
  • Having taught yourself a bunch of hard things and learning to trust the process of learning a skill.
  • Civilization: something we agreed to do.
  • The difference between doing something professionally and doing it for fun.
  • Trying to sneak into a giant hovering ball of rock.
  • People who are hungry for topics refusing to hire you.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ZsHEKA4F ]]> Jim Stormdancer 150. Your Honking Monotoe https://topiclords.com/your-honking-monotoe 1189c2ea-2e66-4d9a-842a-4dab3ef1412c Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jenni and Tyriq. We discuss Hot Topic, toe picks, Topical medication, why they call it a Topic bar, Test of Proficiency in Korean, and Topic Records. 1:01:46 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Hot Topic
  • Toe picks
  • Topical medication
  • Groke asks: My friend (who is completely unaware of this podcast and did this apropos of nothing) emailed the Mars chocolate company to find out why the Topic candy bar has that name. "Dear Mr Smith, Thanks for getting in touch about our MARS product. The Topic bar has been a firm favourite since it's introduction in 1962, unfortunately over time the origin of how the Topic chocolate bar came to be called Topic has been lost and now it has become a mystery that we are still trying to discover'. If you need any more information, please let us know. Kind Regards, Nasteha Tiirow Consumer Care Mars Chocolate UK Reference No: 00366098"
  • Test of Proficiency in Korean
  • Topic Records

Microtopics:

  • Who has been on Topic Lords the most often.
  • Plugging a leaky dog.
  • Whether dogs know about consent.
  • A store in the mall that teenagers go to.
  • Stranger Things merch in the Hot Topic.
  • Squeezing the timeline.
  • The goth-emo shift of the aughts.
  • The phrase "big tiddy goth girlfriend" which will far outlast the word "goth" in general usage.
  • Dark Academia: emo but in school.
  • Trying to do actual research in an Elden Ring library.
  • Rustic Dark Academics.
  • Buying a sweet Kirby t-shirt at GameStop and getting a compliment on it from your therapist.
  • Minnesota: the Land of Lakes.
  • Dogehouse Laser Tag.
  • A variety show that shows a variety of Youtube videos.
  • The internet and real life merging, to the detriment of both realms.
  • Everyone's top four toes.
  • Intrusive thoughts about feet, the worst body part.
  • What the guy who runs the nude model sketch thing thinks of your feet vis-a-vis your age.
  • The most awkward encounter of your life until the next day when you run into the same guy again.
  • Sending a picture of your feet to the same friend every year.
  • Putting 720° in a Marble Madness cabinet so that when people can't figure out how to play it and ask you how, you can ask them to show you their feet.
  • Top ten toe beans.
  • Mr. Frito-Lay smelling a dog foot and thinking "I want a chip that smells like this!"
  • Nothin' but thumbs.
  • Whether a horse hoof is just one big toenail.
  • What people would look like if they had the proportions of animals.
  • The indecency of seeing a bird's knee.
  • Medication you're supposed to use topically but it also tastes good.
  • The ester they use to indicate that even though this hand lotion smells good, it also smells like you shouldn't put it in your mouth.
  • Very petroleum-based very fake coconut.
  • Chris Hemsworth answering a question at a press conference when one of his assistants says "it's time for your hourly chicken" and shoves a chicken breast in his mouth.
  • Deep-frying the inedible part of the edamame.
  • Chewing your food as many times as possible.
  • Elaborate traffic jam metaphors for chewing food.
  • Hitting the big four-two.
  • The Box of Celebrations.
  • Describing a Twix bar without ever saying the name Twix.
  • When the moon hits your eye like a big chocolate gravy, that's a mole.
  • Trying to buy just one Andes Mint so you go to a hotel or a steakhouse in 1997 but the host won't let you buy it, they're like "just take it and leave."
  • Triscuit: it's one more than a biscuit.
  • Champion Racehorse Electricity Biscuit.
  • The Shape of Electricity, starring Pikachu.
  • Winston drinking all of your water.
  • Being proud that you translated a sign in a language you're learning, then looking just below that sign and seeing a translated sign in your native language just below it.
  • Sneaking into somebody's room and replacing their diary with their diary translated into Korean.
  • Saloon: just a salon with an extra O.
  • The room where you keep your art collection in a pile on the floor and visitors can come in to dig through it.
  • The podcast where we talk about Robin Tunney.
  • Selling Soviet and left-wing political music by mail order.
  • The Hundred Best Poetry Topics.
  • Why it is so frustrating to be frustrated.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Hot Topic
  • Toe picks
  • Topical medication
  • Groke asks: My friend (who is completely unaware of this podcast and did this apropos of nothing) emailed the Mars chocolate company to find out why the Topic candy bar has that name. "Dear Mr Smith, Thanks for getting in touch about our MARS product. The Topic bar has been a firm favourite since it's introduction in 1962, unfortunately over time the origin of how the Topic chocolate bar came to be called Topic has been lost and now it has become a mystery that we are still trying to discover'. If you need any more information, please let us know. Kind Regards, Nasteha Tiirow Consumer Care Mars Chocolate UK Reference No: 00366098"
  • Test of Proficiency in Korean
  • Topic Records

Microtopics:

  • Who has been on Topic Lords the most often.
  • Plugging a leaky dog.
  • Whether dogs know about consent.
  • A store in the mall that teenagers go to.
  • Stranger Things merch in the Hot Topic.
  • Squeezing the timeline.
  • The goth-emo shift of the aughts.
  • The phrase "big tiddy goth girlfriend" which will far outlast the word "goth" in general usage.
  • Dark Academia: emo but in school.
  • Trying to do actual research in an Elden Ring library.
  • Rustic Dark Academics.
  • Buying a sweet Kirby t-shirt at GameStop and getting a compliment on it from your therapist.
  • Minnesota: the Land of Lakes.
  • Dogehouse Laser Tag.
  • A variety show that shows a variety of Youtube videos.
  • The internet and real life merging, to the detriment of both realms.
  • Everyone's top four toes.
  • Intrusive thoughts about feet, the worst body part.
  • What the guy who runs the nude model sketch thing thinks of your feet vis-a-vis your age.
  • The most awkward encounter of your life until the next day when you run into the same guy again.
  • Sending a picture of your feet to the same friend every year.
  • Putting 720° in a Marble Madness cabinet so that when people can't figure out how to play it and ask you how, you can ask them to show you their feet.
  • Top ten toe beans.
  • Mr. Frito-Lay smelling a dog foot and thinking "I want a chip that smells like this!"
  • Nothin' but thumbs.
  • Whether a horse hoof is just one big toenail.
  • What people would look like if they had the proportions of animals.
  • The indecency of seeing a bird's knee.
  • Medication you're supposed to use topically but it also tastes good.
  • The ester they use to indicate that even though this hand lotion smells good, it also smells like you shouldn't put it in your mouth.
  • Very petroleum-based very fake coconut.
  • Chris Hemsworth answering a question at a press conference when one of his assistants says "it's time for your hourly chicken" and shoves a chicken breast in his mouth.
  • Deep-frying the inedible part of the edamame.
  • Chewing your food as many times as possible.
  • Elaborate traffic jam metaphors for chewing food.
  • Hitting the big four-two.
  • The Box of Celebrations.
  • Describing a Twix bar without ever saying the name Twix.
  • When the moon hits your eye like a big chocolate gravy, that's a mole.
  • Trying to buy just one Andes Mint so you go to a hotel or a steakhouse in 1997 but the host won't let you buy it, they're like "just take it and leave."
  • Triscuit: it's one more than a biscuit.
  • Champion Racehorse Electricity Biscuit.
  • The Shape of Electricity, starring Pikachu.
  • Winston drinking all of your water.
  • Being proud that you translated a sign in a language you're learning, then looking just below that sign and seeing a translated sign in your native language just below it.
  • Sneaking into somebody's room and replacing their diary with their diary translated into Korean.
  • Saloon: just a salon with an extra O.
  • The room where you keep your art collection in a pile on the floor and visitors can come in to dig through it.
  • The podcast where we talk about Robin Tunney.
  • Selling Soviet and left-wing political music by mail order.
  • The Hundred Best Poetry Topics.
  • Why it is so frustrating to be frustrated.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Hot Topic
  • Toe picks
  • Topical medication
  • Groke asks: My friend (who is completely unaware of this podcast and did this apropos of nothing) emailed the Mars chocolate company to find out why the Topic candy bar has that name. "Dear Mr Smith, Thanks for getting in touch about our MARS product. The Topic bar has been a firm favourite since it's introduction in 1962, unfortunately over time the origin of how the Topic chocolate bar came to be called Topic has been lost and now it has become a mystery that we are still trying to discover'. If you need any more information, please let us know. Kind Regards, Nasteha Tiirow Consumer Care Mars Chocolate UK Reference No: 00366098"
  • Test of Proficiency in Korean
  • Topic Records

Microtopics:

  • Who has been on Topic Lords the most often.
  • Plugging a leaky dog.
  • Whether dogs know about consent.
  • A store in the mall that teenagers go to.
  • Stranger Things merch in the Hot Topic.
  • Squeezing the timeline.
  • The goth-emo shift of the aughts.
  • The phrase "big tiddy goth girlfriend" which will far outlast the word "goth" in general usage.
  • Dark Academia: emo but in school.
  • Trying to do actual research in an Elden Ring library.
  • Rustic Dark Academics.
  • Buying a sweet Kirby t-shirt at GameStop and getting a compliment on it from your therapist.
  • Minnesota: the Land of Lakes.
  • Dogehouse Laser Tag.
  • A variety show that shows a variety of Youtube videos.
  • The internet and real life merging, to the detriment of both realms.
  • Everyone's top four toes.
  • Intrusive thoughts about feet, the worst body part.
  • What the guy who runs the nude model sketch thing thinks of your feet vis-a-vis your age.
  • The most awkward encounter of your life until the next day when you run into the same guy again.
  • Sending a picture of your feet to the same friend every year.
  • Putting 720° in a Marble Madness cabinet so that when people can't figure out how to play it and ask you how, you can ask them to show you their feet.
  • Top ten toe beans.
  • Mr. Frito-Lay smelling a dog foot and thinking "I want a chip that smells like this!"
  • Nothin' but thumbs.
  • Whether a horse hoof is just one big toenail.
  • What people would look like if they had the proportions of animals.
  • The indecency of seeing a bird's knee.
  • Medication you're supposed to use topically but it also tastes good.
  • The ester they use to indicate that even though this hand lotion smells good, it also smells like you shouldn't put it in your mouth.
  • Very petroleum-based very fake coconut.
  • Chris Hemsworth answering a question at a press conference when one of his assistants says "it's time for your hourly chicken" and shoves a chicken breast in his mouth.
  • Deep-frying the inedible part of the edamame.
  • Chewing your food as many times as possible.
  • Elaborate traffic jam metaphors for chewing food.
  • Hitting the big four-two.
  • The Box of Celebrations.
  • Describing a Twix bar without ever saying the name Twix.
  • When the moon hits your eye like a big chocolate gravy, that's a mole.
  • Trying to buy just one Andes Mint so you go to a hotel or a steakhouse in 1997 but the host won't let you buy it, they're like "just take it and leave."
  • Triscuit: it's one more than a biscuit.
  • Champion Racehorse Electricity Biscuit.
  • The Shape of Electricity, starring Pikachu.
  • Winston drinking all of your water.
  • Being proud that you translated a sign in a language you're learning, then looking just below that sign and seeing a translated sign in your native language just below it.
  • Sneaking into somebody's room and replacing their diary with their diary translated into Korean.
  • Saloon: just a salon with an extra O.
  • The room where you keep your art collection in a pile on the floor and visitors can come in to dig through it.
  • The podcast where we talk about Robin Tunney.
  • Selling Soviet and left-wing political music by mail order.
  • The Hundred Best Poetry Topics.
  • Why it is so frustrating to be frustrated.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+DWpy7aOJ ]]> Jim Stormdancer 149. Croc Nutz https://topiclords.com/croc-nutz 251fd623-15ca-40cb-9ba0-29561eb1ac8c Mon, 29 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and David. We discuss a partnership between you and a tool, Schmalhausen and Vernadsky, whether a wedge is a machine and what to do about it, "The Poetry Teacher" by Mary Oliver, and drinking vinegar. 1:06:00 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • David

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Taking an allergy pill and getting something unexpected.
  • Nap skeptics.
  • Non-stop napping.
  • Wanting to eat nothing but spinach for two days so you go to Disney World and pay extra for all the park employees to tell you that in the happiest place on Earth we only eat spinach.
  • Who gets to chew the grape next and for how long.
  • Forgetting a story after you tell it, so you can tell the story back and forth forever.
  • A plastic grape that dissolves in your nose.
  • The least favorite thing that you bought during the pandemic.
  • The collective politico-pandemical nightmare.
  • A shitty partnership between you and a shitty tool.
  • Ol’ Slicky.
  • Tools that bring you distress.
  • Whether it's legal to open carry a claymore in Texas.
  • A decoration you can put on your truck just in case nobody knows what an asshole you are.
  • Whether you can open-carry a dildo in Texas if the dildo is also an assault rifle.
  • Gluing a penis to things you don't like and explaining that "this is a partnership between you and a tool."
  • Papers that you really approve should've read fifteen years ago.
  • The parallel world of the Modern Synthesis.
  • Soviet biologists who were recognized in their time but have since been forgotten.
  • Stalin's purge of scientists researching Mendelian genetics.
  • Being evacuated to Kazakhstan and fed only wilted spinach so that you can finally write the book you've been thinking about.
  • Bringing your adopted pet wolf back with you from Kazakhstan.
  • Growing up after the Russian revolution in St. Petersburg.
  • Delegating research by convincing the Game Detectives folks that there is a pop culture reward behind it.
  • Your own personal ARG that only you care about and doesn't lead to any goal except knowing more facts.
  • The point of games.
  • The creativity that exists in fiction that you wish you could capture in nonfiction.
  • The advantages of reality over fiction.
  • Becoming disenchanted with capitalism in the 1920s.
  • The Demon Haunted World.
  • Escaping from Stalinist Russia into Nazi Germany.
  • Cheers to a boring life.
  • A slightly tilted floor.
  • Electrifying the wedge so it's finally a machine.
  • The xkcd comic from 15 years ago that lampooned the way Wikipedia articles used to be stereotypically bad.
  • Being good at math and assuming that also means you'd be good at writing an encyclopedia.
  • Whether Wildlife Ecology is a different field from Wildlife Biology.
  • The shittiest source that Wikipedia will accept as a citation.
  • Citing George W. Bush as a source in your peer-reviewed paper about climate change.
  • All the dogs arriving at once.
  • Dogs teaching students how to write thirsty happy poems.
  • Dog Songs (2013)
  • Deliberately putting line breaks where they seem least intentional.
  • The Wedge of the Poetry World.
  • Dinging the pan to proceed.
  • The manufacture and use of short-chain fatty acids.
  • Fixing an ulcer with vinegar.
  • Fuck you, I'm drinking a shrub.
  • Drinking balsamic vinegar and then rinsing with baking soda.
  • Butter and vinegar, together at last.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • David

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Taking an allergy pill and getting something unexpected.
  • Nap skeptics.
  • Non-stop napping.
  • Wanting to eat nothing but spinach for two days so you go to Disney World and pay extra for all the park employees to tell you that in the happiest place on Earth we only eat spinach.
  • Who gets to chew the grape next and for how long.
  • Forgetting a story after you tell it, so you can tell the story back and forth forever.
  • A plastic grape that dissolves in your nose.
  • The least favorite thing that you bought during the pandemic.
  • The collective politico-pandemical nightmare.
  • A shitty partnership between you and a shitty tool.
  • Ol’ Slicky.
  • Tools that bring you distress.
  • Whether it's legal to open carry a claymore in Texas.
  • A decoration you can put on your truck just in case nobody knows what an asshole you are.
  • Whether you can open-carry a dildo in Texas if the dildo is also an assault rifle.
  • Gluing a penis to things you don't like and explaining that "this is a partnership between you and a tool."
  • Papers that you really approve should've read fifteen years ago.
  • The parallel world of the Modern Synthesis.
  • Soviet biologists who were recognized in their time but have since been forgotten.
  • Stalin's purge of scientists researching Mendelian genetics.
  • Being evacuated to Kazakhstan and fed only wilted spinach so that you can finally write the book you've been thinking about.
  • Bringing your adopted pet wolf back with you from Kazakhstan.
  • Growing up after the Russian revolution in St. Petersburg.
  • Delegating research by convincing the Game Detectives folks that there is a pop culture reward behind it.
  • Your own personal ARG that only you care about and doesn't lead to any goal except knowing more facts.
  • The point of games.
  • The creativity that exists in fiction that you wish you could capture in nonfiction.
  • The advantages of reality over fiction.
  • Becoming disenchanted with capitalism in the 1920s.
  • The Demon Haunted World.
  • Escaping from Stalinist Russia into Nazi Germany.
  • Cheers to a boring life.
  • A slightly tilted floor.
  • Electrifying the wedge so it's finally a machine.
  • The xkcd comic from 15 years ago that lampooned the way Wikipedia articles used to be stereotypically bad.
  • Being good at math and assuming that also means you'd be good at writing an encyclopedia.
  • Whether Wildlife Ecology is a different field from Wildlife Biology.
  • The shittiest source that Wikipedia will accept as a citation.
  • Citing George W. Bush as a source in your peer-reviewed paper about climate change.
  • All the dogs arriving at once.
  • Dogs teaching students how to write thirsty happy poems.
  • Dog Songs (2013)
  • Deliberately putting line breaks where they seem least intentional.
  • The Wedge of the Poetry World.
  • Dinging the pan to proceed.
  • The manufacture and use of short-chain fatty acids.
  • Fixing an ulcer with vinegar.
  • Fuck you, I'm drinking a shrub.
  • Drinking balsamic vinegar and then rinsing with baking soda.
  • Butter and vinegar, together at last.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica
  • David

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Taking an allergy pill and getting something unexpected.
  • Nap skeptics.
  • Non-stop napping.
  • Wanting to eat nothing but spinach for two days so you go to Disney World and pay extra for all the park employees to tell you that in the happiest place on Earth we only eat spinach.
  • Who gets to chew the grape next and for how long.
  • Forgetting a story after you tell it, so you can tell the story back and forth forever.
  • A plastic grape that dissolves in your nose.
  • The least favorite thing that you bought during the pandemic.
  • The collective politico-pandemical nightmare.
  • A shitty partnership between you and a shitty tool.
  • Ol’ Slicky.
  • Tools that bring you distress.
  • Whether it's legal to open carry a claymore in Texas.
  • A decoration you can put on your truck just in case nobody knows what an asshole you are.
  • Whether you can open-carry a dildo in Texas if the dildo is also an assault rifle.
  • Gluing a penis to things you don't like and explaining that "this is a partnership between you and a tool."
  • Papers that you really approve should've read fifteen years ago.
  • The parallel world of the Modern Synthesis.
  • Soviet biologists who were recognized in their time but have since been forgotten.
  • Stalin's purge of scientists researching Mendelian genetics.
  • Being evacuated to Kazakhstan and fed only wilted spinach so that you can finally write the book you've been thinking about.
  • Bringing your adopted pet wolf back with you from Kazakhstan.
  • Growing up after the Russian revolution in St. Petersburg.
  • Delegating research by convincing the Game Detectives folks that there is a pop culture reward behind it.
  • Your own personal ARG that only you care about and doesn't lead to any goal except knowing more facts.
  • The point of games.
  • The creativity that exists in fiction that you wish you could capture in nonfiction.
  • The advantages of reality over fiction.
  • Becoming disenchanted with capitalism in the 1920s.
  • The Demon Haunted World.
  • Escaping from Stalinist Russia into Nazi Germany.
  • Cheers to a boring life.
  • A slightly tilted floor.
  • Electrifying the wedge so it's finally a machine.
  • The xkcd comic from 15 years ago that lampooned the way Wikipedia articles used to be stereotypically bad.
  • Being good at math and assuming that also means you'd be good at writing an encyclopedia.
  • Whether Wildlife Ecology is a different field from Wildlife Biology.
  • The shittiest source that Wikipedia will accept as a citation.
  • Citing George W. Bush as a source in your peer-reviewed paper about climate change.
  • All the dogs arriving at once.
  • Dogs teaching students how to write thirsty happy poems.
  • Dog Songs (2013)
  • Deliberately putting line breaks where they seem least intentional.
  • The Wedge of the Poetry World.
  • Dinging the pan to proceed.
  • The manufacture and use of short-chain fatty acids.
  • Fixing an ulcer with vinegar.
  • Fuck you, I'm drinking a shrub.
  • Drinking balsamic vinegar and then rinsing with baking soda.
  • Butter and vinegar, together at last.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+V1XnBNcA ]]> Jim Stormdancer 148. Dual-Wielding Ingresses https://topiclords.com/dual-wielding-ingresses 0e2ac5ab-cebf-4c87-9413-3a3b2a257725 Mon, 22 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: CisHetKayFaber and Phone. We discuss Japanese adult video titles, 3DS Street Pass, service at Lou's Cafe, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and people that do things. 1:08:16 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topic Lords:

Microtopics:

  • Seeking penance from the Topic Lord.
  • Dual-purpose infotainment.
  • Getting a new job that is better for your mental health.
  • The People's Republic of Wal-Mart.
  • Maximizing human dignity.
  • Jennifer Government.
  • Works of stilted microfiction describing porn contents.
  • Information density and reading speed in Japanese writing.
  • Accidentally machine-translating the wrong field.
  • Organizing your porn by publisher.
  • The full title of Robinson Crusoe.
  • When movie trailers stopped giving the whole plot away as a matter of course.
  • Setting your most recently played game to "Health and Safety Information" before going out to collect 3DS street-passes.
  • Trying to get 3DS street passes on in suburbia.
  • Edging towards the playground to get 3DS street passes without getting close enough that people notice you edging towards the playground.
  • Walking backwards into the playground, staring at your 3DS.
  • Taking over a gym and leaving something behind.
  • A lady with three phones and a tablet out who you are sure is making a drug deal but it turns out she's just playing Pokemon.
  • Collecting all the territories in 3DS street pass.
  • The critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XVIV now with the free expansion up to level 60.
  • A problem that helps you exercise.
  • Wandering around Willow Glen dual wielding Ingresses.
  • Attacking a portal in an AR game and some guy in cargo shorts comes out of his house to politely ask you to stop.
  • Min-maxing your Burger King visits to become the mayor of Burger King.
  • Hacking the limiter on your chocolate milk tap.
  • Lou's superhuman beverage production.
  • The era of automats.
  • How they stored coffee in the 1950s.
  • Having one of each thing on your menu ready to give to potential customers immediately.
  • The turnaround on a queue of hamburgers.
  • Spaghetti and blankets at the Japanese McDonald's.
  • The MegaMuffin.
  • The Bojangles biscuit game.
  • Losing yourself on skag and skipping out for beer during commercials.
  • Nixon playing a bugle.
  • A revolution to get rid of the nubs.
  • Sliding a color TV into a stolen ambulance.
  • Only letting people into the revolution who can't spell Natalie Wood's name.
  • Dreaming about the end of television.
  • The BBC covering climate change by talking about how nice and sunny it is.
  • The guy who wanted to work at Nintendo so he got a job working at Nintendo.
  • Improving your tools and workflow because you're procrastinating doing actual work.
  • Playing Tetris on a gamepad vs. on a keyboard.
  • Tetris APM.
  • Switching joycon hands because you're accustomed to using the arrow keys with your right hand.
  • Making friends the wrong way in Japan.
  • Making things on purpose vs. making them accidentally.
  • Knowing how to act in a Japanese meeting.
  • Learning how to work towards a goal every day whether or not you feel like it.
  • How to tell when a game is ready to ship.
  • Going to the grocery store and explaining to the cashier about the cool art you make and they're like "great but you still have to pay for this food with money."
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topic Lords:

Microtopics:

  • Seeking penance from the Topic Lord.
  • Dual-purpose infotainment.
  • Getting a new job that is better for your mental health.
  • The People's Republic of Wal-Mart.
  • Maximizing human dignity.
  • Jennifer Government.
  • Works of stilted microfiction describing porn contents.
  • Information density and reading speed in Japanese writing.
  • Accidentally machine-translating the wrong field.
  • Organizing your porn by publisher.
  • The full title of Robinson Crusoe.
  • When movie trailers stopped giving the whole plot away as a matter of course.
  • Setting your most recently played game to "Health and Safety Information" before going out to collect 3DS street-passes.
  • Trying to get 3DS street passes on in suburbia.
  • Edging towards the playground to get 3DS street passes without getting close enough that people notice you edging towards the playground.
  • Walking backwards into the playground, staring at your 3DS.
  • Taking over a gym and leaving something behind.
  • A lady with three phones and a tablet out who you are sure is making a drug deal but it turns out she's just playing Pokemon.
  • Collecting all the territories in 3DS street pass.
  • The critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XVIV now with the free expansion up to level 60.
  • A problem that helps you exercise.
  • Wandering around Willow Glen dual wielding Ingresses.
  • Attacking a portal in an AR game and some guy in cargo shorts comes out of his house to politely ask you to stop.
  • Min-maxing your Burger King visits to become the mayor of Burger King.
  • Hacking the limiter on your chocolate milk tap.
  • Lou's superhuman beverage production.
  • The era of automats.
  • How they stored coffee in the 1950s.
  • Having one of each thing on your menu ready to give to potential customers immediately.
  • The turnaround on a queue of hamburgers.
  • Spaghetti and blankets at the Japanese McDonald's.
  • The MegaMuffin.
  • The Bojangles biscuit game.
  • Losing yourself on skag and skipping out for beer during commercials.
  • Nixon playing a bugle.
  • A revolution to get rid of the nubs.
  • Sliding a color TV into a stolen ambulance.
  • Only letting people into the revolution who can't spell Natalie Wood's name.
  • Dreaming about the end of television.
  • The BBC covering climate change by talking about how nice and sunny it is.
  • The guy who wanted to work at Nintendo so he got a job working at Nintendo.
  • Improving your tools and workflow because you're procrastinating doing actual work.
  • Playing Tetris on a gamepad vs. on a keyboard.
  • Tetris APM.
  • Switching joycon hands because you're accustomed to using the arrow keys with your right hand.
  • Making friends the wrong way in Japan.
  • Making things on purpose vs. making them accidentally.
  • Knowing how to act in a Japanese meeting.
  • Learning how to work towards a goal every day whether or not you feel like it.
  • How to tell when a game is ready to ship.
  • Going to the grocery store and explaining to the cashier about the cool art you make and they're like "great but you still have to pay for this food with money."

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topic Lords:

Microtopics:

  • Seeking penance from the Topic Lord.
  • Dual-purpose infotainment.
  • Getting a new job that is better for your mental health.
  • The People's Republic of Wal-Mart.
  • Maximizing human dignity.
  • Jennifer Government.
  • Works of stilted microfiction describing porn contents.
  • Information density and reading speed in Japanese writing.
  • Accidentally machine-translating the wrong field.
  • Organizing your porn by publisher.
  • The full title of Robinson Crusoe.
  • When movie trailers stopped giving the whole plot away as a matter of course.
  • Setting your most recently played game to "Health and Safety Information" before going out to collect 3DS street-passes.
  • Trying to get 3DS street passes on in suburbia.
  • Edging towards the playground to get 3DS street passes without getting close enough that people notice you edging towards the playground.
  • Walking backwards into the playground, staring at your 3DS.
  • Taking over a gym and leaving something behind.
  • A lady with three phones and a tablet out who you are sure is making a drug deal but it turns out she's just playing Pokemon.
  • Collecting all the territories in 3DS street pass.
  • The critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XVIV now with the free expansion up to level 60.
  • A problem that helps you exercise.
  • Wandering around Willow Glen dual wielding Ingresses.
  • Attacking a portal in an AR game and some guy in cargo shorts comes out of his house to politely ask you to stop.
  • Min-maxing your Burger King visits to become the mayor of Burger King.
  • Hacking the limiter on your chocolate milk tap.
  • Lou's superhuman beverage production.
  • The era of automats.
  • How they stored coffee in the 1950s.
  • Having one of each thing on your menu ready to give to potential customers immediately.
  • The turnaround on a queue of hamburgers.
  • Spaghetti and blankets at the Japanese McDonald's.
  • The MegaMuffin.
  • The Bojangles biscuit game.
  • Losing yourself on skag and skipping out for beer during commercials.
  • Nixon playing a bugle.
  • A revolution to get rid of the nubs.
  • Sliding a color TV into a stolen ambulance.
  • Only letting people into the revolution who can't spell Natalie Wood's name.
  • Dreaming about the end of television.
  • The BBC covering climate change by talking about how nice and sunny it is.
  • The guy who wanted to work at Nintendo so he got a job working at Nintendo.
  • Improving your tools and workflow because you're procrastinating doing actual work.
  • Playing Tetris on a gamepad vs. on a keyboard.
  • Tetris APM.
  • Switching joycon hands because you're accustomed to using the arrow keys with your right hand.
  • Making friends the wrong way in Japan.
  • Making things on purpose vs. making them accidentally.
  • Knowing how to act in a Japanese meeting.
  • Learning how to work towards a goal every day whether or not you feel like it.
  • How to tell when a game is ready to ship.
  • Going to the grocery store and explaining to the cashier about the cool art you make and they're like "great but you still have to pay for this food with money."

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+Wl_I_JaU ]]> Jim Stormdancer 147. Part-Time Cryptids https://topiclords.com/part-time-cryptids 2ccf1006-92ec-4777-a7ad-2d101154a7af Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Laura and Nick. We discuss how to fix pooping, The Hobbit: Dopemoker Edition, Gato Gonzales and the Guts Pose, "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop, Twitter's UI changing Top Three and Top Five into Top Four, and how to cope with growing a millimeter taller every week. 1:00:04 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Can the biological function of expelling waste be improved in any way? Should humans expel waste differently?
  • The Hobbit: Dopesmoker Edition. (it's great)
  • Gato Gonzales and the Guts Pose
  • The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
  • Twitter's UI has changed "Top 3" and "Top Fives" into "Top Four"
  • Every Monday, when you wake up in the morning, you discover that you have grown EXACTLY one millimeter taller. This continues throughout your life, so you will grow about 5.6 centimeters per year for the rest of the time you are alive. In ten years, you will be 1.8 feet taller than you are now. If you are 30 years old right now, you will be 7.3 feet taller when you reach 70. If you are 5.5 feet tall now, you will be 7 feet tall in just over 8 years, at which point you will start to look really weird. How does this change your life? What do you do about it? There is no cure for this condition, because it is caused by magic, not science, and there is no countercurse.

Microtopics:

  • The type of band that has four songs per album.
  • Creating ambient soundscapes via a series of guitar pedals.
  • Johnny To.
  • Interpersonal violence and the right to be perceived as human.
  • A world where everyone knows Judo for some reason and they fight each other with Judo all the time.
  • The quality of life edge that birds have over humans (their urine to feces ratio)
  • A nozzle in your wrist like spider man so you can poop into the tiny hole in the wall that everyone's house has for wrist poop nozzles.
  • Improving the human condition with a wall hole and maybe a wall tank.
  • Burying a pile of trash but also putting a photograph and a floppy disk in there so if you ever get in trouble for your pile of trash you can claim it's a time capsule.
  • How geniuses empty dumpsters.
  • Everyone taking the first Monday of the month off of work to poop and at 6pm the city's plumbing system explodes.
  • How to monetize pooping teens.
  • American poor being condemned to a low quality poop zone whereas in Europe they have luxury poop villas.
  • Locking your dumpster so it's not filled with old carpet overnight by marauding carpet installers.
  • A Person on Twitter.
  • Playing a stoner album at the same time as a stoner movie.
  • An album/movie combo entirely bereft of revelatory synchronicities.
  • The most wrinkly hobbit.
  • Whether Gandalf was actually smoking something or if that's just something people joke about.
  • Brian Moriarty's multiple GDC talks about looking for secrets where there are none.
  • Writing a classic rock album intended to be played simultaneously with Boss Baby 2.
  • Rodolfo "Gato" Gonzales's legacy in Japan.
  • What the Guts Pose means to you.
  • Assigning elaborate meaning to each fist in a fist pump.
  • Henry Cavill reloading his fists.
  • Playing Rock Paper Scissors with Mario whenever he collects a moon.
  • A little head tilt to get you in the right mood to pick up rocks.
  • Whether Guts Berserk is named after Guts.
  • Elden Ring as Berserk fanfic.
  • Understanding and enjoying Elden Ring in a new way.
  • Attending the Montreal Screw-Job but not having any idea what's going on.
  • Taking a photo to prove you were at a historical event but the flash just reflects off the bald head of the guy in front of you.
  • A poem describing a fish.
  • A five-haired beard of wisdom.
  • A poem with fantastic mouth feel.
  • Catching a fish while dad is in the bathroom and screaming at him to hurry up because you don't know what to do with a fish.
  • Downloading a poem to your hard drive.
  • A good idea or at least a fun idea.
  • Whether you can believe the web design on this whitehouse.gov.
  • Killing software like only a 90s dad can.
  • Eating nachos every night.
  • Wanting to do things in fours because on Twitter you can attach four images to a post.
  • Top Four Favorite Sandwiches.
  • Refusing to share your top anythings.
  • That time Nintendo burned a hole in the palms of millions of children.
  • The ways Pokemon Go encourages you to put your phone down.
  • The kinds of places that society benefits from Pokemon Go not being played.
  • The Pokestop Review Process.
  • Two excellent reasons not to ship the Virtual Boy as a helmet.
  • VR chaperones.
  • Being okay with growing too tall but only if you have friends who are also growing way too tall.
  • Small inconvenient things about growing taller.
  • A cryptic giant living on a mountaintop.
  • Being 10 feet tall and retired and figuring out how to live in a normal sized house.
  • Doing CSG with caves and shirts.
  • Modular clothes that you can reconfigure to cover your changing body.
  • A wisp of a person with an eternal tube sweater.
  • Not wanting to become a spaghetti but respecting anybody who wants to become a spaghetti.
  • Growing to twice your adult height and getting cast as the monster in every horror movie.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Can the biological function of expelling waste be improved in any way? Should humans expel waste differently?
  • The Hobbit: Dopesmoker Edition. (it's great)
  • Gato Gonzales and the Guts Pose
  • The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
  • Twitter's UI has changed "Top 3" and "Top Fives" into "Top Four"
  • Every Monday, when you wake up in the morning, you discover that you have grown EXACTLY one millimeter taller. This continues throughout your life, so you will grow about 5.6 centimeters per year for the rest of the time you are alive. In ten years, you will be 1.8 feet taller than you are now. If you are 30 years old right now, you will be 7.3 feet taller when you reach 70. If you are 5.5 feet tall now, you will be 7 feet tall in just over 8 years, at which point you will start to look really weird. How does this change your life? What do you do about it? There is no cure for this condition, because it is caused by magic, not science, and there is no countercurse.

Microtopics:

  • The type of band that has four songs per album.
  • Creating ambient soundscapes via a series of guitar pedals.
  • Johnny To.
  • Interpersonal violence and the right to be perceived as human.
  • A world where everyone knows Judo for some reason and they fight each other with Judo all the time.
  • The quality of life edge that birds have over humans (their urine to feces ratio)
  • A nozzle in your wrist like spider man so you can poop into the tiny hole in the wall that everyone's house has for wrist poop nozzles.
  • Improving the human condition with a wall hole and maybe a wall tank.
  • Burying a pile of trash but also putting a photograph and a floppy disk in there so if you ever get in trouble for your pile of trash you can claim it's a time capsule.
  • How geniuses empty dumpsters.
  • Everyone taking the first Monday of the month off of work to poop and at 6pm the city's plumbing system explodes.
  • How to monetize pooping teens.
  • American poor being condemned to a low quality poop zone whereas in Europe they have luxury poop villas.
  • Locking your dumpster so it's not filled with old carpet overnight by marauding carpet installers.
  • A Person on Twitter.
  • Playing a stoner album at the same time as a stoner movie.
  • An album/movie combo entirely bereft of revelatory synchronicities.
  • The most wrinkly hobbit.
  • Whether Gandalf was actually smoking something or if that's just something people joke about.
  • Brian Moriarty's multiple GDC talks about looking for secrets where there are none.
  • Writing a classic rock album intended to be played simultaneously with Boss Baby 2.
  • Rodolfo "Gato" Gonzales's legacy in Japan.
  • What the Guts Pose means to you.
  • Assigning elaborate meaning to each fist in a fist pump.
  • Henry Cavill reloading his fists.
  • Playing Rock Paper Scissors with Mario whenever he collects a moon.
  • A little head tilt to get you in the right mood to pick up rocks.
  • Whether Guts Berserk is named after Guts.
  • Elden Ring as Berserk fanfic.
  • Understanding and enjoying Elden Ring in a new way.
  • Attending the Montreal Screw-Job but not having any idea what's going on.
  • Taking a photo to prove you were at a historical event but the flash just reflects off the bald head of the guy in front of you.
  • A poem describing a fish.
  • A five-haired beard of wisdom.
  • A poem with fantastic mouth feel.
  • Catching a fish while dad is in the bathroom and screaming at him to hurry up because you don't know what to do with a fish.
  • Downloading a poem to your hard drive.
  • A good idea or at least a fun idea.
  • Whether you can believe the web design on this whitehouse.gov.
  • Killing software like only a 90s dad can.
  • Eating nachos every night.
  • Wanting to do things in fours because on Twitter you can attach four images to a post.
  • Top Four Favorite Sandwiches.
  • Refusing to share your top anythings.
  • That time Nintendo burned a hole in the palms of millions of children.
  • The ways Pokemon Go encourages you to put your phone down.
  • The kinds of places that society benefits from Pokemon Go not being played.
  • The Pokestop Review Process.
  • Two excellent reasons not to ship the Virtual Boy as a helmet.
  • VR chaperones.
  • Being okay with growing too tall but only if you have friends who are also growing way too tall.
  • Small inconvenient things about growing taller.
  • A cryptic giant living on a mountaintop.
  • Being 10 feet tall and retired and figuring out how to live in a normal sized house.
  • Doing CSG with caves and shirts.
  • Modular clothes that you can reconfigure to cover your changing body.
  • A wisp of a person with an eternal tube sweater.
  • Not wanting to become a spaghetti but respecting anybody who wants to become a spaghetti.
  • Growing to twice your adult height and getting cast as the monster in every horror movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Can the biological function of expelling waste be improved in any way? Should humans expel waste differently?
  • The Hobbit: Dopesmoker Edition. (it's great)
  • Gato Gonzales and the Guts Pose
  • The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
  • Twitter's UI has changed "Top 3" and "Top Fives" into "Top Four"
  • Every Monday, when you wake up in the morning, you discover that you have grown EXACTLY one millimeter taller. This continues throughout your life, so you will grow about 5.6 centimeters per year for the rest of the time you are alive. In ten years, you will be 1.8 feet taller than you are now. If you are 30 years old right now, you will be 7.3 feet taller when you reach 70. If you are 5.5 feet tall now, you will be 7 feet tall in just over 8 years, at which point you will start to look really weird. How does this change your life? What do you do about it? There is no cure for this condition, because it is caused by magic, not science, and there is no countercurse.

Microtopics:

  • The type of band that has four songs per album.
  • Creating ambient soundscapes via a series of guitar pedals.
  • Johnny To.
  • Interpersonal violence and the right to be perceived as human.
  • A world where everyone knows Judo for some reason and they fight each other with Judo all the time.
  • The quality of life edge that birds have over humans (their urine to feces ratio)
  • A nozzle in your wrist like spider man so you can poop into the tiny hole in the wall that everyone's house has for wrist poop nozzles.
  • Improving the human condition with a wall hole and maybe a wall tank.
  • Burying a pile of trash but also putting a photograph and a floppy disk in there so if you ever get in trouble for your pile of trash you can claim it's a time capsule.
  • How geniuses empty dumpsters.
  • Everyone taking the first Monday of the month off of work to poop and at 6pm the city's plumbing system explodes.
  • How to monetize pooping teens.
  • American poor being condemned to a low quality poop zone whereas in Europe they have luxury poop villas.
  • Locking your dumpster so it's not filled with old carpet overnight by marauding carpet installers.
  • A Person on Twitter.
  • Playing a stoner album at the same time as a stoner movie.
  • An album/movie combo entirely bereft of revelatory synchronicities.
  • The most wrinkly hobbit.
  • Whether Gandalf was actually smoking something or if that's just something people joke about.
  • Brian Moriarty's multiple GDC talks about looking for secrets where there are none.
  • Writing a classic rock album intended to be played simultaneously with Boss Baby 2.
  • Rodolfo "Gato" Gonzales's legacy in Japan.
  • What the Guts Pose means to you.
  • Assigning elaborate meaning to each fist in a fist pump.
  • Henry Cavill reloading his fists.
  • Playing Rock Paper Scissors with Mario whenever he collects a moon.
  • A little head tilt to get you in the right mood to pick up rocks.
  • Whether Guts Berserk is named after Guts.
  • Elden Ring as Berserk fanfic.
  • Understanding and enjoying Elden Ring in a new way.
  • Attending the Montreal Screw-Job but not having any idea what's going on.
  • Taking a photo to prove you were at a historical event but the flash just reflects off the bald head of the guy in front of you.
  • A poem describing a fish.
  • A five-haired beard of wisdom.
  • A poem with fantastic mouth feel.
  • Catching a fish while dad is in the bathroom and screaming at him to hurry up because you don't know what to do with a fish.
  • Downloading a poem to your hard drive.
  • A good idea or at least a fun idea.
  • Whether you can believe the web design on this whitehouse.gov.
  • Killing software like only a 90s dad can.
  • Eating nachos every night.
  • Wanting to do things in fours because on Twitter you can attach four images to a post.
  • Top Four Favorite Sandwiches.
  • Refusing to share your top anythings.
  • That time Nintendo burned a hole in the palms of millions of children.
  • The ways Pokemon Go encourages you to put your phone down.
  • The kinds of places that society benefits from Pokemon Go not being played.
  • The Pokestop Review Process.
  • Two excellent reasons not to ship the Virtual Boy as a helmet.
  • VR chaperones.
  • Being okay with growing too tall but only if you have friends who are also growing way too tall.
  • Small inconvenient things about growing taller.
  • A cryptic giant living on a mountaintop.
  • Being 10 feet tall and retired and figuring out how to live in a normal sized house.
  • Doing CSG with caves and shirts.
  • Modular clothes that you can reconfigure to cover your changing body.
  • A wisp of a person with an eternal tube sweater.
  • Not wanting to become a spaghetti but respecting anybody who wants to become a spaghetti.
  • Growing to twice your adult height and getting cast as the monster in every horror movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+q40gYejo ]]> Jim Stormdancer 146. If You Can't Pay the Time, Don't Do the Feet Liking https://topiclords.com/if-you-cant-pay-the-time-dont-do-the-feet-liking 8ad1c87a-9545-4304-a985-42e4aaab17d6 Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Maxx and Nelson. We discuss how many how many random numbers you can dial before you contact someone who is expecting you, pocket versions of your art, the Dave Matthews Band Chicago River Incident, and So You Want to be a Writer, by Charles Bukowski. 48:35 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being non-binary in Washington.
  • Witch Strandings.
  • The crucial aspects that define a traditional Strand-Like.
  • What makes the nurturing not feel bad/weird?
  • Physically inhabiting a mouse cursor.
  • Playing shuffleboard on a Mario Golf power meter using the Oblivion persuasion wheel.
  • Several things that people like, existing at the same time.
  • Why nobody but Jim is making Frog Fractions games.
  • Dialing random phone numbers until you reach someone you know.
  • A nightmare creature from the abyss waiting by the phone for your call.
  • Everyone having exactly one mom and exactly one faceless nightmare creature waiting by the phone.
  • Phone number Minesweeper.
  • Birthday parties as an opportunity to force your friends to play the weird game you just designed.
  • Guessing the phone number of the burner phone in front of you.
  • Computers you can talk to in your local area.
  • Hacking the government mainframe that has all the Nintendo games.
  • Needing to have a soul before your soul can be sucked out through the phone.
  • Finding out how smart dolphins are after they meet the being from beyond the abyss.
  • Holding on to your childhood dreams of stealing a series of towers for your tower collection.
  • Figuring out how to put custom ringtones on your flip phone even though the Verizon rep said it was impossible.
  • What the Kidz Bop version says instead of "it smells like R. Kelly's sheets."
  • A coat that smells like my baseball cleats, yikesssss.
  • What if football wasn't good?
  • What would happen if a child held all of baseball in their hands?
  • Futilitris.
  • Supernova SWF Enabler.
  • Working in the Kidz Bop factory.
  • Who Put Goku In Fortnite?
  • Ending the game immediately when somebody drops the come bomb.
  • Not being allowed to say dang or shit.
  • The through line from miniature replica sculptures to Kidz Bop Breaking Bad.
  • Kidz Bop Oldboy.
  • The French opera singer who replaced her girlfriend with a dummy and then set the nunnery on fire so it looked like her girlfriend died in the fire, but her opera singing was so good that the king had to pardon her.
  • If Jim was arrested for dumping 800 pounds of sewage on an open air tour boat, how many people would try to solve the ARG?
  • Wiping the raw sewage off of your face and wondering aloud "is this Frog Fractions 2?"
  • Going to jail for making a cursed tweet.
  • What if your tweet only goes viral after the cursed tweet law is enacted?
  • Having to read your tweet aloud to everyone who liked it.
  • Going to jail for writing a cursed tweet and being sentenced to having to explain it to your mom.
  • All-ages interactive sculptures.
  • A child with a tiny screwdriver installing an emergency communication system in case someone has a bad time in their Radio Flyer.
  • A pretty intense poem by a pretty intense dude.
  • Why or why not to be a writer.
  • Warning young people against destroying themselves.
  • Being deeply desperately driven by the essence of what you are creating.
  • Needing somebody to remind you that your work has value.
  • The different coping strategies required to create a work that takes half an hour to finish vs. years to finish.
  • False panels.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being non-binary in Washington.
  • Witch Strandings.
  • The crucial aspects that define a traditional Strand-Like.
  • What makes the nurturing not feel bad/weird?
  • Physically inhabiting a mouse cursor.
  • Playing shuffleboard on a Mario Golf power meter using the Oblivion persuasion wheel.
  • Several things that people like, existing at the same time.
  • Why nobody but Jim is making Frog Fractions games.
  • Dialing random phone numbers until you reach someone you know.
  • A nightmare creature from the abyss waiting by the phone for your call.
  • Everyone having exactly one mom and exactly one faceless nightmare creature waiting by the phone.
  • Phone number Minesweeper.
  • Birthday parties as an opportunity to force your friends to play the weird game you just designed.
  • Guessing the phone number of the burner phone in front of you.
  • Computers you can talk to in your local area.
  • Hacking the government mainframe that has all the Nintendo games.
  • Needing to have a soul before your soul can be sucked out through the phone.
  • Finding out how smart dolphins are after they meet the being from beyond the abyss.
  • Holding on to your childhood dreams of stealing a series of towers for your tower collection.
  • Figuring out how to put custom ringtones on your flip phone even though the Verizon rep said it was impossible.
  • What the Kidz Bop version says instead of "it smells like R. Kelly's sheets."
  • A coat that smells like my baseball cleats, yikesssss.
  • What if football wasn't good?
  • What would happen if a child held all of baseball in their hands?
  • Futilitris.
  • Supernova SWF Enabler.
  • Working in the Kidz Bop factory.
  • Who Put Goku In Fortnite?
  • Ending the game immediately when somebody drops the come bomb.
  • Not being allowed to say dang or shit.
  • The through line from miniature replica sculptures to Kidz Bop Breaking Bad.
  • Kidz Bop Oldboy.
  • The French opera singer who replaced her girlfriend with a dummy and then set the nunnery on fire so it looked like her girlfriend died in the fire, but her opera singing was so good that the king had to pardon her.
  • If Jim was arrested for dumping 800 pounds of sewage on an open air tour boat, how many people would try to solve the ARG?
  • Wiping the raw sewage off of your face and wondering aloud "is this Frog Fractions 2?"
  • Going to jail for making a cursed tweet.
  • What if your tweet only goes viral after the cursed tweet law is enacted?
  • Having to read your tweet aloud to everyone who liked it.
  • Going to jail for writing a cursed tweet and being sentenced to having to explain it to your mom.
  • All-ages interactive sculptures.
  • A child with a tiny screwdriver installing an emergency communication system in case someone has a bad time in their Radio Flyer.
  • A pretty intense poem by a pretty intense dude.
  • Why or why not to be a writer.
  • Warning young people against destroying themselves.
  • Being deeply desperately driven by the essence of what you are creating.
  • Needing somebody to remind you that your work has value.
  • The different coping strategies required to create a work that takes half an hour to finish vs. years to finish.
  • False panels.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being non-binary in Washington.
  • Witch Strandings.
  • The crucial aspects that define a traditional Strand-Like.
  • What makes the nurturing not feel bad/weird?
  • Physically inhabiting a mouse cursor.
  • Playing shuffleboard on a Mario Golf power meter using the Oblivion persuasion wheel.
  • Several things that people like, existing at the same time.
  • Why nobody but Jim is making Frog Fractions games.
  • Dialing random phone numbers until you reach someone you know.
  • A nightmare creature from the abyss waiting by the phone for your call.
  • Everyone having exactly one mom and exactly one faceless nightmare creature waiting by the phone.
  • Phone number Minesweeper.
  • Birthday parties as an opportunity to force your friends to play the weird game you just designed.
  • Guessing the phone number of the burner phone in front of you.
  • Computers you can talk to in your local area.
  • Hacking the government mainframe that has all the Nintendo games.
  • Needing to have a soul before your soul can be sucked out through the phone.
  • Finding out how smart dolphins are after they meet the being from beyond the abyss.
  • Holding on to your childhood dreams of stealing a series of towers for your tower collection.
  • Figuring out how to put custom ringtones on your flip phone even though the Verizon rep said it was impossible.
  • What the Kidz Bop version says instead of "it smells like R. Kelly's sheets."
  • A coat that smells like my baseball cleats, yikesssss.
  • What if football wasn't good?
  • What would happen if a child held all of baseball in their hands?
  • Futilitris.
  • Supernova SWF Enabler.
  • Working in the Kidz Bop factory.
  • Who Put Goku In Fortnite?
  • Ending the game immediately when somebody drops the come bomb.
  • Not being allowed to say dang or shit.
  • The through line from miniature replica sculptures to Kidz Bop Breaking Bad.
  • Kidz Bop Oldboy.
  • The French opera singer who replaced her girlfriend with a dummy and then set the nunnery on fire so it looked like her girlfriend died in the fire, but her opera singing was so good that the king had to pardon her.
  • If Jim was arrested for dumping 800 pounds of sewage on an open air tour boat, how many people would try to solve the ARG?
  • Wiping the raw sewage off of your face and wondering aloud "is this Frog Fractions 2?"
  • Going to jail for making a cursed tweet.
  • What if your tweet only goes viral after the cursed tweet law is enacted?
  • Having to read your tweet aloud to everyone who liked it.
  • Going to jail for writing a cursed tweet and being sentenced to having to explain it to your mom.
  • All-ages interactive sculptures.
  • A child with a tiny screwdriver installing an emergency communication system in case someone has a bad time in their Radio Flyer.
  • A pretty intense poem by a pretty intense dude.
  • Why or why not to be a writer.
  • Warning young people against destroying themselves.
  • Being deeply desperately driven by the essence of what you are creating.
  • Needing somebody to remind you that your work has value.
  • The different coping strategies required to create a work that takes half an hour to finish vs. years to finish.
  • False panels.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+iid2uV1n ]]> Jim Stormdancer 145. A Visceral Tobacco Consumption Experience https://topiclords.com/a-visceral-tobacco-consumption-experience 96cff35e-7878-4fc3-9cc0-4a5a68dc7b3b Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Hallie and John. We discuss finding value in shared imagined spaces and worlds outside of religious contexts, final Fantasy Challenge: Zero Story; and other vaporware games & mods of which no record exists on the internet, streaming movies on Youtube, and Canterbury Tales General Prologue, by Geoffrey Chaucer. 1:00:54 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Ten Timers Club.
  • Podcasting for three years straight.
  • Fantastical ideas for famous bands covering Garages songs.
  • An increasingly hard to describe person.
  • Reclaiming the asshole.
  • The sort of thing that sometimes happens in Maine.
  • Finding the right microphone settings.
  • A podcast about what people think about that ends up being a video game podcast because that's what they're thinking about.
  • The barnacle on the indie game scene life.
  • Making a video game good on purpose.
  • Talking to your friends who talk you out of grad school because you need to be talked out of grad school again
  • Your own personal relationship with the divine.
  • Shared imagined worlds and how we talk about them.
  • Your friend asks how you're doing and you say "Han and Leia at the end of Empire" and your friend just nods.
  • Fighting a great beast together.
  • Promoting group cohesion by developing a shared frame of reference.
  • How in the 70s everyone watched the same three TV channels but nowadays everyone has access to all of every form of media all the time, and whether that's a handicap for developing a shared cultural reference frame.
  • Waxy potatoes vs. starchy potatoes.
  • Where to find non-starchy potatoes.
  • Harry Potter and the Sacred Texts.
  • The act of interpretation and the creation of shared symbols.
  • A Final Fantasy mod that you were very excited about in the early 00s but that now has no results on google.
  • Abraham Lincoln Land vanishing from the internet.
  • All the bad video games starring Tux.
  • Your boss saying "let me show you how the Peter Principle works" and promoting you to Project Manager.
  • Erasing the projects you are ashamed of from your personal web site.
  • Adding a clause to your will about deleting all your novelty web sites.
  • A web site where you write a bunch of fake reviews of fake bands and eventually start writing the songs yourself.
  • Mutually executable languages.
  • A betrayal of both movies and Youtube.
  • Commenting with a timestamp of your favorite part of Napoleon Dynamite.
  • Whether Pedro won the election on his own merits.
  • Creating an audition tape for the musical extravaganza your employer is running, getting the part, and later finding out that you were the only one who applied.
  • Whether John will ever release the video of him dancing like Napoleon Dynamite.
  • An entire stanza of completely unintelligible Middle English.
  • Wanting to go on pilgrimages to seek the Holy Blissful Martyr because spring is coming.
  • Pronouncing all the silent letters.
  • A well-SparkesNotes'd text.
  • Having a poem memorized but not in order.
  • How wishing someone a happy birthday before their birthday is illegal in Germany.
  • The least surfer dude.
  • Various tobacco saliva receptacles, some of which ding and some of which don't.
  • Chewing tobacco but not having the self-respect to get a spittoon.
  • The nicotine delivery method where you stick a tobacco blob under your lip like a walrus tusk and make TikTok videos.
  • Dip a.k.a. Snus.
  • A cool friend from Tennessee.
  • Big League Chew, again.
  • Asking the clerk for tar patches because nicotine patches don't give you melanoma.
  • Ending the show early because you believe so vehemently that vaping is good for you.
  • A pithy German word for having guested on Topic Lords ten times.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Ten Timers Club.
  • Podcasting for three years straight.
  • Fantastical ideas for famous bands covering Garages songs.
  • An increasingly hard to describe person.
  • Reclaiming the asshole.
  • The sort of thing that sometimes happens in Maine.
  • Finding the right microphone settings.
  • A podcast about what people think about that ends up being a video game podcast because that's what they're thinking about.
  • The barnacle on the indie game scene life.
  • Making a video game good on purpose.
  • Talking to your friends who talk you out of grad school because you need to be talked out of grad school again
  • Your own personal relationship with the divine.
  • Shared imagined worlds and how we talk about them.
  • Your friend asks how you're doing and you say "Han and Leia at the end of Empire" and your friend just nods.
  • Fighting a great beast together.
  • Promoting group cohesion by developing a shared frame of reference.
  • How in the 70s everyone watched the same three TV channels but nowadays everyone has access to all of every form of media all the time, and whether that's a handicap for developing a shared cultural reference frame.
  • Waxy potatoes vs. starchy potatoes.
  • Where to find non-starchy potatoes.
  • Harry Potter and the Sacred Texts.
  • The act of interpretation and the creation of shared symbols.
  • A Final Fantasy mod that you were very excited about in the early 00s but that now has no results on google.
  • Abraham Lincoln Land vanishing from the internet.
  • All the bad video games starring Tux.
  • Your boss saying "let me show you how the Peter Principle works" and promoting you to Project Manager.
  • Erasing the projects you are ashamed of from your personal web site.
  • Adding a clause to your will about deleting all your novelty web sites.
  • A web site where you write a bunch of fake reviews of fake bands and eventually start writing the songs yourself.
  • Mutually executable languages.
  • A betrayal of both movies and Youtube.
  • Commenting with a timestamp of your favorite part of Napoleon Dynamite.
  • Whether Pedro won the election on his own merits.
  • Creating an audition tape for the musical extravaganza your employer is running, getting the part, and later finding out that you were the only one who applied.
  • Whether John will ever release the video of him dancing like Napoleon Dynamite.
  • An entire stanza of completely unintelligible Middle English.
  • Wanting to go on pilgrimages to seek the Holy Blissful Martyr because spring is coming.
  • Pronouncing all the silent letters.
  • A well-SparkesNotes'd text.
  • Having a poem memorized but not in order.
  • How wishing someone a happy birthday before their birthday is illegal in Germany.
  • The least surfer dude.
  • Various tobacco saliva receptacles, some of which ding and some of which don't.
  • Chewing tobacco but not having the self-respect to get a spittoon.
  • The nicotine delivery method where you stick a tobacco blob under your lip like a walrus tusk and make TikTok videos.
  • Dip a.k.a. Snus.
  • A cool friend from Tennessee.
  • Big League Chew, again.
  • Asking the clerk for tar patches because nicotine patches don't give you melanoma.
  • Ending the show early because you believe so vehemently that vaping is good for you.
  • A pithy German word for having guested on Topic Lords ten times.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The Ten Timers Club.
  • Podcasting for three years straight.
  • Fantastical ideas for famous bands covering Garages songs.
  • An increasingly hard to describe person.
  • Reclaiming the asshole.
  • The sort of thing that sometimes happens in Maine.
  • Finding the right microphone settings.
  • A podcast about what people think about that ends up being a video game podcast because that's what they're thinking about.
  • The barnacle on the indie game scene life.
  • Making a video game good on purpose.
  • Talking to your friends who talk you out of grad school because you need to be talked out of grad school again
  • Your own personal relationship with the divine.
  • Shared imagined worlds and how we talk about them.
  • Your friend asks how you're doing and you say "Han and Leia at the end of Empire" and your friend just nods.
  • Fighting a great beast together.
  • Promoting group cohesion by developing a shared frame of reference.
  • How in the 70s everyone watched the same three TV channels but nowadays everyone has access to all of every form of media all the time, and whether that's a handicap for developing a shared cultural reference frame.
  • Waxy potatoes vs. starchy potatoes.
  • Where to find non-starchy potatoes.
  • Harry Potter and the Sacred Texts.
  • The act of interpretation and the creation of shared symbols.
  • A Final Fantasy mod that you were very excited about in the early 00s but that now has no results on google.
  • Abraham Lincoln Land vanishing from the internet.
  • All the bad video games starring Tux.
  • Your boss saying "let me show you how the Peter Principle works" and promoting you to Project Manager.
  • Erasing the projects you are ashamed of from your personal web site.
  • Adding a clause to your will about deleting all your novelty web sites.
  • A web site where you write a bunch of fake reviews of fake bands and eventually start writing the songs yourself.
  • Mutually executable languages.
  • A betrayal of both movies and Youtube.
  • Commenting with a timestamp of your favorite part of Napoleon Dynamite.
  • Whether Pedro won the election on his own merits.
  • Creating an audition tape for the musical extravaganza your employer is running, getting the part, and later finding out that you were the only one who applied.
  • Whether John will ever release the video of him dancing like Napoleon Dynamite.
  • An entire stanza of completely unintelligible Middle English.
  • Wanting to go on pilgrimages to seek the Holy Blissful Martyr because spring is coming.
  • Pronouncing all the silent letters.
  • A well-SparkesNotes'd text.
  • Having a poem memorized but not in order.
  • How wishing someone a happy birthday before their birthday is illegal in Germany.
  • The least surfer dude.
  • Various tobacco saliva receptacles, some of which ding and some of which don't.
  • Chewing tobacco but not having the self-respect to get a spittoon.
  • The nicotine delivery method where you stick a tobacco blob under your lip like a walrus tusk and make TikTok videos.
  • Dip a.k.a. Snus.
  • A cool friend from Tennessee.
  • Big League Chew, again.
  • Asking the clerk for tar patches because nicotine patches don't give you melanoma.
  • Ending the show early because you believe so vehemently that vaping is good for you.
  • A pithy German word for having guested on Topic Lords ten times.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+mlJhjCBi ]]> Jim Stormdancer 144. Vultures Who Know the Difference (Between Sugar and Aspartame) https://topiclords.com/vultures-who-know-the-difference-between-sugar-and-aspartame f6df4126-6916-450e-ac57-f123b9e2d0ed Mon, 25 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: JohnB and Jesse. We discuss Wario 64, bringing back Dogme 95, Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name again, This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams, outdoor pop machines, and Godzilla. 1:12:59 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Link's Awakening speedrun that may surprise you.
  • Lord clouds.
  • What's the deal with Wario 64?
  • Asking Webster's Dictionary to define Wario 64.
  • Your source for video game deals.
  • How Wario64 feels about Chris Pratt voicing Mario.
  • Geralt in the bathtub.
  • Wario World for the GameCube.
  • The hidden origins of Wario64.
  • Ten rules for how to make a movie.
  • Lars von Trier being traumatized by a dolly shot and inventing Dogme 95.
  • Unintentional Dogme 95 movies.
  • Unboxing a Criterion Collection DVD live on the show and there's just a DVD in there.
  • Creative freedom, the worst constraint.
  • A recipe for the worst movies in the fucking world.
  • Dogme 95 drinking game.
  • Making a flag in the bucket.
  • The Adventure 2600 continuity.
  • Bats that can steal things that shouldn't be able to be stolen.
  • A video game quest that was very difficult and obscure until someone wrote a FAQ.
  • The ludonarrative consonance of following your self-destructive obsession at the same time your character follows their self-destructive obsession.
  • Being confused about a story beat in a video game and having to seek out a lore genius on the internet.
  • The Random House Annotated Fallen London.
  • Becoming St. Gawain's Candle.
  • How the icebox plums poem became a meme.
  • Learning about poutine on social media.
  • Satirical poetry in the 1960s.
  • Things that are Ira Glass's fault.
  • Extreme meminess.
  • Wanting a god damn plum right now.
  • Pictures of normal people that are considered heresy.
  • Deliberately making your podcast guest's audio sound bad.
  • Continuing to read poetry even though you're terrible at it.
  • Asking Siri to get you a substantial raise.
  • Checking the change return slots on the mobile phone bank for quarters, to do your part to sustain the soda vending machine economy.
  • The cost of a 510 ml bottle of pop these days.
  • The fastest pop machine in the world.
  • Joking about the day we record the show when it comes out weeks later and none of the listeners have any idea what you're talking about.
  • Applying the sugar tax to beverages sweetened with aspartame.
  • The Godzilla movie with Inspector Gadget in it.
  • Redheaded Stepzilla.
  • The three Godzilla movies that are out of print in the US. (But not on archive.org)
  • Having to license all the Kaiju separately.
  • Movies that are in the public domain because they were not explicitly labeled as copyrighted.
  • Public Domain Day.
  • The personality traits of Sherlock Holmes that are and aren't copyrighted.
  • The Beast at 20,000 Fathoms.
  • Messing up a slow-motion shot by undercranking the camera rather than overcranking, but it has to go into the movie like that because it was your only take.
  • Making a movie where you can do as many takes as you want but they all have to go in the finished film.
  • Godzilla taking some much needed time off.
  • Invasion of Astro-Monster.
  • Watching the entire Godzilla series and learning why people think Avengers: Endgame is good.
  • A latchkey kid in 1960s Japan overcoming his bullies by imagining that Godzilla is his friend.
  • A dinosaur falling in love with a lighthouse.
  • Empathizing with the dinosaur who is completely misunderstanding the situation.
  • Why the English speakers in Japanese or Korean films are such bad actors.
  • An island protector of these native people brought to society for reasons of Capitalism.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Link's Awakening speedrun that may surprise you.
  • Lord clouds.
  • What's the deal with Wario 64?
  • Asking Webster's Dictionary to define Wario 64.
  • Your source for video game deals.
  • How Wario64 feels about Chris Pratt voicing Mario.
  • Geralt in the bathtub.
  • Wario World for the GameCube.
  • The hidden origins of Wario64.
  • Ten rules for how to make a movie.
  • Lars von Trier being traumatized by a dolly shot and inventing Dogme 95.
  • Unintentional Dogme 95 movies.
  • Unboxing a Criterion Collection DVD live on the show and there's just a DVD in there.
  • Creative freedom, the worst constraint.
  • A recipe for the worst movies in the fucking world.
  • Dogme 95 drinking game.
  • Making a flag in the bucket.
  • The Adventure 2600 continuity.
  • Bats that can steal things that shouldn't be able to be stolen.
  • A video game quest that was very difficult and obscure until someone wrote a FAQ.
  • The ludonarrative consonance of following your self-destructive obsession at the same time your character follows their self-destructive obsession.
  • Being confused about a story beat in a video game and having to seek out a lore genius on the internet.
  • The Random House Annotated Fallen London.
  • Becoming St. Gawain's Candle.
  • How the icebox plums poem became a meme.
  • Learning about poutine on social media.
  • Satirical poetry in the 1960s.
  • Things that are Ira Glass's fault.
  • Extreme meminess.
  • Wanting a god damn plum right now.
  • Pictures of normal people that are considered heresy.
  • Deliberately making your podcast guest's audio sound bad.
  • Continuing to read poetry even though you're terrible at it.
  • Asking Siri to get you a substantial raise.
  • Checking the change return slots on the mobile phone bank for quarters, to do your part to sustain the soda vending machine economy.
  • The cost of a 510 ml bottle of pop these days.
  • The fastest pop machine in the world.
  • Joking about the day we record the show when it comes out weeks later and none of the listeners have any idea what you're talking about.
  • Applying the sugar tax to beverages sweetened with aspartame.
  • The Godzilla movie with Inspector Gadget in it.
  • Redheaded Stepzilla.
  • The three Godzilla movies that are out of print in the US. (But not on archive.org)
  • Having to license all the Kaiju separately.
  • Movies that are in the public domain because they were not explicitly labeled as copyrighted.
  • Public Domain Day.
  • The personality traits of Sherlock Holmes that are and aren't copyrighted.
  • The Beast at 20,000 Fathoms.
  • Messing up a slow-motion shot by undercranking the camera rather than overcranking, but it has to go into the movie like that because it was your only take.
  • Making a movie where you can do as many takes as you want but they all have to go in the finished film.
  • Godzilla taking some much needed time off.
  • Invasion of Astro-Monster.
  • Watching the entire Godzilla series and learning why people think Avengers: Endgame is good.
  • A latchkey kid in 1960s Japan overcoming his bullies by imagining that Godzilla is his friend.
  • A dinosaur falling in love with a lighthouse.
  • Empathizing with the dinosaur who is completely misunderstanding the situation.
  • Why the English speakers in Japanese or Korean films are such bad actors.
  • An island protector of these native people brought to society for reasons of Capitalism.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A Link's Awakening speedrun that may surprise you.
  • Lord clouds.
  • What's the deal with Wario 64?
  • Asking Webster's Dictionary to define Wario 64.
  • Your source for video game deals.
  • How Wario64 feels about Chris Pratt voicing Mario.
  • Geralt in the bathtub.
  • Wario World for the GameCube.
  • The hidden origins of Wario64.
  • Ten rules for how to make a movie.
  • Lars von Trier being traumatized by a dolly shot and inventing Dogme 95.
  • Unintentional Dogme 95 movies.
  • Unboxing a Criterion Collection DVD live on the show and there's just a DVD in there.
  • Creative freedom, the worst constraint.
  • A recipe for the worst movies in the fucking world.
  • Dogme 95 drinking game.
  • Making a flag in the bucket.
  • The Adventure 2600 continuity.
  • Bats that can steal things that shouldn't be able to be stolen.
  • A video game quest that was very difficult and obscure until someone wrote a FAQ.
  • The ludonarrative consonance of following your self-destructive obsession at the same time your character follows their self-destructive obsession.
  • Being confused about a story beat in a video game and having to seek out a lore genius on the internet.
  • The Random House Annotated Fallen London.
  • Becoming St. Gawain's Candle.
  • How the icebox plums poem became a meme.
  • Learning about poutine on social media.
  • Satirical poetry in the 1960s.
  • Things that are Ira Glass's fault.
  • Extreme meminess.
  • Wanting a god damn plum right now.
  • Pictures of normal people that are considered heresy.
  • Deliberately making your podcast guest's audio sound bad.
  • Continuing to read poetry even though you're terrible at it.
  • Asking Siri to get you a substantial raise.
  • Checking the change return slots on the mobile phone bank for quarters, to do your part to sustain the soda vending machine economy.
  • The cost of a 510 ml bottle of pop these days.
  • The fastest pop machine in the world.
  • Joking about the day we record the show when it comes out weeks later and none of the listeners have any idea what you're talking about.
  • Applying the sugar tax to beverages sweetened with aspartame.
  • The Godzilla movie with Inspector Gadget in it.
  • Redheaded Stepzilla.
  • The three Godzilla movies that are out of print in the US. (But not on archive.org)
  • Having to license all the Kaiju separately.
  • Movies that are in the public domain because they were not explicitly labeled as copyrighted.
  • Public Domain Day.
  • The personality traits of Sherlock Holmes that are and aren't copyrighted.
  • The Beast at 20,000 Fathoms.
  • Messing up a slow-motion shot by undercranking the camera rather than overcranking, but it has to go into the movie like that because it was your only take.
  • Making a movie where you can do as many takes as you want but they all have to go in the finished film.
  • Godzilla taking some much needed time off.
  • Invasion of Astro-Monster.
  • Watching the entire Godzilla series and learning why people think Avengers: Endgame is good.
  • A latchkey kid in 1960s Japan overcoming his bullies by imagining that Godzilla is his friend.
  • A dinosaur falling in love with a lighthouse.
  • Empathizing with the dinosaur who is completely misunderstanding the situation.
  • Why the English speakers in Japanese or Korean films are such bad actors.
  • An island protector of these native people brought to society for reasons of Capitalism.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+eSqDlViP ]]> Jim Stormdancer 143. Your Face Is Looking a Little Impact Resistant https://topiclords.com/your-face-is-looking-a-little-impact-resistant 4ea72677-7982-4e14-886c-4659e55cc64b Mon, 18 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chall and Jenni. We discuss frogs that leap without knowing how to land, the charachorder, speedrun health hazards, Bananas Bananas by Greg, the Chicago Bean, and walkin'-around videogames. 1:04:11 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nose Goes.
  • Allergy medication that does not make you drowsy.
  • Coming out of the womb sleep-deprived.
  • Jenni from the Blockchain.
  • Pokemon Gockchain.
  • A good speedrun idea for somebody else.
  • Watching Mario 64 let's-plays to distract us from the disaster of our own interiority.
  • Why Can't the Pumpkin Toadlet Land?
  • Landing in a t-pose and rigid-bodying your way into a pratfall.
  • Which frog would win the X Games of frogs?
  • The distant future when everyone has evolved to survive car crashes and nobody is allowed to wear a shirt in the payroll department.
  • An editorial team choosing what links will go on the front page.
  • Photoshop This Tractor.
  • "Gone drinking" as a euphemism for crashing into a lake.
  • The history of social media on the internet.
  • Choosing the most obnoxious possible video to be your Zoom background.
  • What's stopping developers from compiling ffmpeg to Webassembly and including it in every web page.
  • Chorded word entry.
  • Getting an exciting new keyboard where it takes you three minutes to type youtube.com.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to fix your abysmal typing posture.
  • A very dim room full of typewriters.
  • Thinking about the cubic watermelons.
  • Another one from the Deck of Old Memes.
  • Whether Plato ever got to prove his cave allegory correct.
  • RSI in the speedrunning scene.
  • Waving your right hand up and down for twelve hours a day.
  • Hypertapping.
  • Tap to Survive!
  • Clickers that require you to watch the game run to efficiently progress.
  • The deep crevasse where Cookie Clicker lives in your brain.
  • Getting RSI from watching speedruns all the time.
  • Coping with the mental anguish of speedrunning.
  • Leomard Sportsinterviews.
  • Making a mixtape of yourself playing clarinet and your younger brother reading poems, for your girlfriend Sara.
  • Your vengeful ex-girlfriend turning you in to VEVO for music piracy using the mixtape you gave her as proof.
  • Using music to anchor a repeated moment.
  • Using this episode of Topic Lords to score your morning routine.
  • Warrant canaries.
  • Bananas: they're underground.
  • The return of the Banana Box.
  • The tropical fruit that tastes like mayonnaise.
  • The cheese of the sea.
  • Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.
  • Chicago Bean Radiation.
  • Walking through the Chicago Bean and getting mirrored left to right and subsequently only being able to digest animals that also wandered through the Chicago Bean that you catch and kill.
  • Wearing a hospital wrist band informing your duel opponent that your internal organs are mirrored left to right.
  • Mirror image twins.
  • Fighting little ASCII bears and solving exploding bomb puzzles.
  • What you do in Proteus.
  • The game where you hit the ball back and forth over a net.
  • A board game where you vacation in feudal Japan.
  • The Museum of Other Realities.
  • Seiklus and Gebub's Adventure.
  • A place to wander while interesting things happen to you.
  • The talking tree that says "invest in leaves."
  • Legends of Murder.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nose Goes.
  • Allergy medication that does not make you drowsy.
  • Coming out of the womb sleep-deprived.
  • Jenni from the Blockchain.
  • Pokemon Gockchain.
  • A good speedrun idea for somebody else.
  • Watching Mario 64 let's-plays to distract us from the disaster of our own interiority.
  • Why Can't the Pumpkin Toadlet Land?
  • Landing in a t-pose and rigid-bodying your way into a pratfall.
  • Which frog would win the X Games of frogs?
  • The distant future when everyone has evolved to survive car crashes and nobody is allowed to wear a shirt in the payroll department.
  • An editorial team choosing what links will go on the front page.
  • Photoshop This Tractor.
  • "Gone drinking" as a euphemism for crashing into a lake.
  • The history of social media on the internet.
  • Choosing the most obnoxious possible video to be your Zoom background.
  • What's stopping developers from compiling ffmpeg to Webassembly and including it in every web page.
  • Chorded word entry.
  • Getting an exciting new keyboard where it takes you three minutes to type youtube.com.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to fix your abysmal typing posture.
  • A very dim room full of typewriters.
  • Thinking about the cubic watermelons.
  • Another one from the Deck of Old Memes.
  • Whether Plato ever got to prove his cave allegory correct.
  • RSI in the speedrunning scene.
  • Waving your right hand up and down for twelve hours a day.
  • Hypertapping.
  • Tap to Survive!
  • Clickers that require you to watch the game run to efficiently progress.
  • The deep crevasse where Cookie Clicker lives in your brain.
  • Getting RSI from watching speedruns all the time.
  • Coping with the mental anguish of speedrunning.
  • Leomard Sportsinterviews.
  • Making a mixtape of yourself playing clarinet and your younger brother reading poems, for your girlfriend Sara.
  • Your vengeful ex-girlfriend turning you in to VEVO for music piracy using the mixtape you gave her as proof.
  • Using music to anchor a repeated moment.
  • Using this episode of Topic Lords to score your morning routine.
  • Warrant canaries.
  • Bananas: they're underground.
  • The return of the Banana Box.
  • The tropical fruit that tastes like mayonnaise.
  • The cheese of the sea.
  • Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.
  • Chicago Bean Radiation.
  • Walking through the Chicago Bean and getting mirrored left to right and subsequently only being able to digest animals that also wandered through the Chicago Bean that you catch and kill.
  • Wearing a hospital wrist band informing your duel opponent that your internal organs are mirrored left to right.
  • Mirror image twins.
  • Fighting little ASCII bears and solving exploding bomb puzzles.
  • What you do in Proteus.
  • The game where you hit the ball back and forth over a net.
  • A board game where you vacation in feudal Japan.
  • The Museum of Other Realities.
  • Seiklus and Gebub's Adventure.
  • A place to wander while interesting things happen to you.
  • The talking tree that says "invest in leaves."
  • Legends of Murder.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Nose Goes.
  • Allergy medication that does not make you drowsy.
  • Coming out of the womb sleep-deprived.
  • Jenni from the Blockchain.
  • Pokemon Gockchain.
  • A good speedrun idea for somebody else.
  • Watching Mario 64 let's-plays to distract us from the disaster of our own interiority.
  • Why Can't the Pumpkin Toadlet Land?
  • Landing in a t-pose and rigid-bodying your way into a pratfall.
  • Which frog would win the X Games of frogs?
  • The distant future when everyone has evolved to survive car crashes and nobody is allowed to wear a shirt in the payroll department.
  • An editorial team choosing what links will go on the front page.
  • Photoshop This Tractor.
  • "Gone drinking" as a euphemism for crashing into a lake.
  • The history of social media on the internet.
  • Choosing the most obnoxious possible video to be your Zoom background.
  • What's stopping developers from compiling ffmpeg to Webassembly and including it in every web page.
  • Chorded word entry.
  • Getting an exciting new keyboard where it takes you three minutes to type youtube.com.
  • Switching keyboard layouts to fix your abysmal typing posture.
  • A very dim room full of typewriters.
  • Thinking about the cubic watermelons.
  • Another one from the Deck of Old Memes.
  • Whether Plato ever got to prove his cave allegory correct.
  • RSI in the speedrunning scene.
  • Waving your right hand up and down for twelve hours a day.
  • Hypertapping.
  • Tap to Survive!
  • Clickers that require you to watch the game run to efficiently progress.
  • The deep crevasse where Cookie Clicker lives in your brain.
  • Getting RSI from watching speedruns all the time.
  • Coping with the mental anguish of speedrunning.
  • Leomard Sportsinterviews.
  • Making a mixtape of yourself playing clarinet and your younger brother reading poems, for your girlfriend Sara.
  • Your vengeful ex-girlfriend turning you in to VEVO for music piracy using the mixtape you gave her as proof.
  • Using music to anchor a repeated moment.
  • Using this episode of Topic Lords to score your morning routine.
  • Warrant canaries.
  • Bananas: they're underground.
  • The return of the Banana Box.
  • The tropical fruit that tastes like mayonnaise.
  • The cheese of the sea.
  • Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.
  • Chicago Bean Radiation.
  • Walking through the Chicago Bean and getting mirrored left to right and subsequently only being able to digest animals that also wandered through the Chicago Bean that you catch and kill.
  • Wearing a hospital wrist band informing your duel opponent that your internal organs are mirrored left to right.
  • Mirror image twins.
  • Fighting little ASCII bears and solving exploding bomb puzzles.
  • What you do in Proteus.
  • The game where you hit the ball back and forth over a net.
  • A board game where you vacation in feudal Japan.
  • The Museum of Other Realities.
  • Seiklus and Gebub's Adventure.
  • A place to wander while interesting things happen to you.
  • The talking tree that says "invest in leaves."
  • Legends of Murder.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+2zo0MYzv ]]> Jim Stormdancer 142. Threatjazz https://topiclords.com/threatjazz 811bca70-b3a0-4df2-a73e-bd75fbe68067 Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ben and Tyriq. We discuss what occupations are closest to adventuring, getting a tattoo as motivation to be healthier, playing instruments with your hands vs. with your mouth, The Mushroom Hunters, putting butter in food, and the sad nonexistence of Violence/Threat Jazz. 1:07:57 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Which real life occupations are the closest thing to actual Adventuring? And would you want to do any of them?
  • Getting a tattoo has somehow motivated me to be healthier
  • It's weird that some instruments you play with your hands and others you put in your mouth
  • The Mushroom Hunters
  • Discovering how much butter and sugar is in your common or garden cake has filled me with sheer horror
  • A public call to action for the creation of Violence/Threat Jazz as a genre

Microtopics:

  • The collection of music songs that you put on the internet last year.
  • The Citizen Sleeper trailer.
  • Managing a game's Steam store page.
  • The conversations you don't have.
  • Adventuring as it is conceived of and perceived.
  • Going into the field and being exposed to health hazards.
  • Rock climbing and its relationship to speed running.
  • All the big parts of the world having been discovered already so you need to be satisfied with discovering tiny parts.
  • The difficulty of spending a lifetime rock climbing when you don't enjoy rock climbing.
  • Whether being sent off to war feels or ought to feel like an adventure.
  • Lockdown tattoos.
  • The uncle who convinced you to get an eyebrow ring.
  • Designing a tattoo so that it still looks right if the recipient suddenly gets swole.
  • The Clean and Jerk.
  • Compressing yourself inwards as you hit the ground.
  • The idea of caring about your appearance.
  • Looking in the mirror and feeling good about yourself.
  • A portion of meat that is ruining your aesthetic.
  • Your full-sleeve Gigantamax Meowth tattoo.
  • Ark from Terranigma.
  • A tattoo of a goat because you love goats a lot.
  • Putting pictures on your body and looking cool.
  • Going full body-mod in your old age.
  • A Rotom right up there in your armpit.
  • Walking around looking like a JRPG character with an asymmetrical pauldron.
  • The right torso for me.
  • Bone tattoos that are just for you because nobody can see your bones.
  • Waiting until you are 80 years old for eyeball tattoo technology to get safer.
  • Screaming higher and higher until you take a shower.
  • Airflow and handflow.
  • Licking a musical instrument that makes noise when it's wet.
  • Chromatic spittoon virtuosos.
  • Melody Pops.
  • How to survive long car trips before portable video games.
  • Lollipops you could write with.
  • Chocolate cigarettes wrapped in rice paper.
  • Rebranding your offensive children's cigarette brand to "Fads."
  • The formulation of laws to follow facts revealed.
  • Food Tasters.
  • One king left and so much food to eat.
  • Why so much fiction is so obsessed with royalty.
  • Cracking a nut in your brain.
  • The moon's excellent product placement.
  • Cakes for people to jump out of.
  • How to marble a cake.
  • The butter iceberg.
  • The inside scoop behind all the drama.
  • The Sharks and the Jets snapping at each other.
  • The dude in Mad Max Fury Road playing a flaming guitar on top of a moving truck.
  • Where to see Ben's cats.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Which real life occupations are the closest thing to actual Adventuring? And would you want to do any of them?
  • Getting a tattoo has somehow motivated me to be healthier
  • It's weird that some instruments you play with your hands and others you put in your mouth
  • The Mushroom Hunters
  • Discovering how much butter and sugar is in your common or garden cake has filled me with sheer horror
  • A public call to action for the creation of Violence/Threat Jazz as a genre

Microtopics:

  • The collection of music songs that you put on the internet last year.
  • The Citizen Sleeper trailer.
  • Managing a game's Steam store page.
  • The conversations you don't have.
  • Adventuring as it is conceived of and perceived.
  • Going into the field and being exposed to health hazards.
  • Rock climbing and its relationship to speed running.
  • All the big parts of the world having been discovered already so you need to be satisfied with discovering tiny parts.
  • The difficulty of spending a lifetime rock climbing when you don't enjoy rock climbing.
  • Whether being sent off to war feels or ought to feel like an adventure.
  • Lockdown tattoos.
  • The uncle who convinced you to get an eyebrow ring.
  • Designing a tattoo so that it still looks right if the recipient suddenly gets swole.
  • The Clean and Jerk.
  • Compressing yourself inwards as you hit the ground.
  • The idea of caring about your appearance.
  • Looking in the mirror and feeling good about yourself.
  • A portion of meat that is ruining your aesthetic.
  • Your full-sleeve Gigantamax Meowth tattoo.
  • Ark from Terranigma.
  • A tattoo of a goat because you love goats a lot.
  • Putting pictures on your body and looking cool.
  • Going full body-mod in your old age.
  • A Rotom right up there in your armpit.
  • Walking around looking like a JRPG character with an asymmetrical pauldron.
  • The right torso for me.
  • Bone tattoos that are just for you because nobody can see your bones.
  • Waiting until you are 80 years old for eyeball tattoo technology to get safer.
  • Screaming higher and higher until you take a shower.
  • Airflow and handflow.
  • Licking a musical instrument that makes noise when it's wet.
  • Chromatic spittoon virtuosos.
  • Melody Pops.
  • How to survive long car trips before portable video games.
  • Lollipops you could write with.
  • Chocolate cigarettes wrapped in rice paper.
  • Rebranding your offensive children's cigarette brand to "Fads."
  • The formulation of laws to follow facts revealed.
  • Food Tasters.
  • One king left and so much food to eat.
  • Why so much fiction is so obsessed with royalty.
  • Cracking a nut in your brain.
  • The moon's excellent product placement.
  • Cakes for people to jump out of.
  • How to marble a cake.
  • The butter iceberg.
  • The inside scoop behind all the drama.
  • The Sharks and the Jets snapping at each other.
  • The dude in Mad Max Fury Road playing a flaming guitar on top of a moving truck.
  • Where to see Ben's cats.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Which real life occupations are the closest thing to actual Adventuring? And would you want to do any of them?
  • Getting a tattoo has somehow motivated me to be healthier
  • It's weird that some instruments you play with your hands and others you put in your mouth
  • The Mushroom Hunters
  • Discovering how much butter and sugar is in your common or garden cake has filled me with sheer horror
  • A public call to action for the creation of Violence/Threat Jazz as a genre

Microtopics:

  • The collection of music songs that you put on the internet last year.
  • The Citizen Sleeper trailer.
  • Managing a game's Steam store page.
  • The conversations you don't have.
  • Adventuring as it is conceived of and perceived.
  • Going into the field and being exposed to health hazards.
  • Rock climbing and its relationship to speed running.
  • All the big parts of the world having been discovered already so you need to be satisfied with discovering tiny parts.
  • The difficulty of spending a lifetime rock climbing when you don't enjoy rock climbing.
  • Whether being sent off to war feels or ought to feel like an adventure.
  • Lockdown tattoos.
  • The uncle who convinced you to get an eyebrow ring.
  • Designing a tattoo so that it still looks right if the recipient suddenly gets swole.
  • The Clean and Jerk.
  • Compressing yourself inwards as you hit the ground.
  • The idea of caring about your appearance.
  • Looking in the mirror and feeling good about yourself.
  • A portion of meat that is ruining your aesthetic.
  • Your full-sleeve Gigantamax Meowth tattoo.
  • Ark from Terranigma.
  • A tattoo of a goat because you love goats a lot.
  • Putting pictures on your body and looking cool.
  • Going full body-mod in your old age.
  • A Rotom right up there in your armpit.
  • Walking around looking like a JRPG character with an asymmetrical pauldron.
  • The right torso for me.
  • Bone tattoos that are just for you because nobody can see your bones.
  • Waiting until you are 80 years old for eyeball tattoo technology to get safer.
  • Screaming higher and higher until you take a shower.
  • Airflow and handflow.
  • Licking a musical instrument that makes noise when it's wet.
  • Chromatic spittoon virtuosos.
  • Melody Pops.
  • How to survive long car trips before portable video games.
  • Lollipops you could write with.
  • Chocolate cigarettes wrapped in rice paper.
  • Rebranding your offensive children's cigarette brand to "Fads."
  • The formulation of laws to follow facts revealed.
  • Food Tasters.
  • One king left and so much food to eat.
  • Why so much fiction is so obsessed with royalty.
  • Cracking a nut in your brain.
  • The moon's excellent product placement.
  • Cakes for people to jump out of.
  • How to marble a cake.
  • The butter iceberg.
  • The inside scoop behind all the drama.
  • The Sharks and the Jets snapping at each other.
  • The dude in Mad Max Fury Road playing a flaming guitar on top of a moving truck.
  • Where to see Ben's cats.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+CO9g8fic ]]> Jim Stormdancer 141. Toast in Its Original Format https://topiclords.com/toast-in-its-original-format e0135fe2-eb2d-4fb9-be68-199e610ba0d1 Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Avery and Jesse. We discuss Laserdisc, tracing the lineage of racehorses on Wikipedia, bread too wide to fit in toasters, "In my Dream, I am a Man," and variants of bowling, now mostly lost to history, which are like glimpses into possible worlds metaphysically close to our own. 1:06:10 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Avery
  • Jesse

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to sound like a douchebag if you are a programmer who lives in Oakland.
  • A Social Security Number that has way too many sixes in it.
  • A disc that is the same size as an LP but looks like a CD and has a movie on it.
  • Arcade games breaking whenever you transport them.
  • Laserdiscs rusting.
  • Integrating the likely degradation of the viewing medium into the piece itself.
  • The Matrix on Betamax.
  • The guy who owns all the Betamax players in your province.
  • The canonical paths to becoming a Laserdisc collector.
  • All the criteria used to curate the Criterion Collection.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of CAV discs over CLV.
  • Getting off the couch to flip the disc over halfway through the movie.
  • Asking your robot butler to flip the Laserdisc over.
  • Potoooooooo.
  • Seeing the name of the Wii for the first time and wondering if it's a typo for World War 2 or if it's a typo for WiFi.
  • Finding the They Live sunglasses and finally being able to read the Snickers ads.
  • The three racehorses that all thoroughbred racehorses are descended from.
  • Knowing more about the history of racehorses than about your own family tree, because racehorses are worth more than people.
  • War booty from the battle of Vienna.
  • The General Studbook.
  • Going blind in one eye from staying up for three days straight doing logarithms.
  • Bell Right Hooks and Cuban Menstrual Crisis.
  • Whether the clown face registry still exists for juggalos.
  • Nothing Sweet About Bees.
  • What happened to bread?
  • Your basic 4:3 bread vs. 4K ultra-wide bread.
  • Your favorite toaster from the 1940s.
  • A four slice toaster kind of day.
  • Making food better with science and it's going to be way better than nature because it's science.
  • Convincing Mr. Smeg not to put his name on the toasters his company manufactures.
  • What market research firm decided that podcast listeners want underwear and mattresses.
  • Constant angular velocity: the only way to rewind a movie.
  • A magnetic poetry set that includes the word "Kafkaesque."
  • How Kafkaesque the miscreant insects are.
  • Whether Jim has ever touched any other human being.
  • How Zoomers don't know about Graggle Simpson.
  • A possible scenario that is metaphysically close to our own.
  • How metaphysically close Canada is to the United States.
  • Getting up at 4pm every day and bowling.
  • A 3D model recreation of five-pin bowling.
  • The amount of data visualization competence that went into dimensions.com.
  • Candlepin and Duckpin bowling.
  • The dimensions of various famous bowlers.
  • Getting a parakeet and finding out how much water it displaces.
  • Making a flask out of a parakeet so people think you just brought your pet parakeet to work and aren't drinking on the job.
  • Buying a propane tank to use as a water bottle.
  • What's wrong with Jim's listeners?
  • Karate tournaments in the 80s and 90s.
  • Assuming Avery's identity and looking in the mirror.
  • To Mock A Mockingbird.
  • Certified Bird Mockers.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Avery
  • Jesse

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to sound like a douchebag if you are a programmer who lives in Oakland.
  • A Social Security Number that has way too many sixes in it.
  • A disc that is the same size as an LP but looks like a CD and has a movie on it.
  • Arcade games breaking whenever you transport them.
  • Laserdiscs rusting.
  • Integrating the likely degradation of the viewing medium into the piece itself.
  • The Matrix on Betamax.
  • The guy who owns all the Betamax players in your province.
  • The canonical paths to becoming a Laserdisc collector.
  • All the criteria used to curate the Criterion Collection.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of CAV discs over CLV.
  • Getting off the couch to flip the disc over halfway through the movie.
  • Asking your robot butler to flip the Laserdisc over.
  • Potoooooooo.
  • Seeing the name of the Wii for the first time and wondering if it's a typo for World War 2 or if it's a typo for WiFi.
  • Finding the They Live sunglasses and finally being able to read the Snickers ads.
  • The three racehorses that all thoroughbred racehorses are descended from.
  • Knowing more about the history of racehorses than about your own family tree, because racehorses are worth more than people.
  • War booty from the battle of Vienna.
  • The General Studbook.
  • Going blind in one eye from staying up for three days straight doing logarithms.
  • Bell Right Hooks and Cuban Menstrual Crisis.
  • Whether the clown face registry still exists for juggalos.
  • Nothing Sweet About Bees.
  • What happened to bread?
  • Your basic 4:3 bread vs. 4K ultra-wide bread.
  • Your favorite toaster from the 1940s.
  • A four slice toaster kind of day.
  • Making food better with science and it's going to be way better than nature because it's science.
  • Convincing Mr. Smeg not to put his name on the toasters his company manufactures.
  • What market research firm decided that podcast listeners want underwear and mattresses.
  • Constant angular velocity: the only way to rewind a movie.
  • A magnetic poetry set that includes the word "Kafkaesque."
  • How Kafkaesque the miscreant insects are.
  • Whether Jim has ever touched any other human being.
  • How Zoomers don't know about Graggle Simpson.
  • A possible scenario that is metaphysically close to our own.
  • How metaphysically close Canada is to the United States.
  • Getting up at 4pm every day and bowling.
  • A 3D model recreation of five-pin bowling.
  • The amount of data visualization competence that went into dimensions.com.
  • Candlepin and Duckpin bowling.
  • The dimensions of various famous bowlers.
  • Getting a parakeet and finding out how much water it displaces.
  • Making a flask out of a parakeet so people think you just brought your pet parakeet to work and aren't drinking on the job.
  • Buying a propane tank to use as a water bottle.
  • What's wrong with Jim's listeners?
  • Karate tournaments in the 80s and 90s.
  • Assuming Avery's identity and looking in the mirror.
  • To Mock A Mockingbird.
  • Certified Bird Mockers.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Avery
  • Jesse

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • How to sound like a douchebag if you are a programmer who lives in Oakland.
  • A Social Security Number that has way too many sixes in it.
  • A disc that is the same size as an LP but looks like a CD and has a movie on it.
  • Arcade games breaking whenever you transport them.
  • Laserdiscs rusting.
  • Integrating the likely degradation of the viewing medium into the piece itself.
  • The Matrix on Betamax.
  • The guy who owns all the Betamax players in your province.
  • The canonical paths to becoming a Laserdisc collector.
  • All the criteria used to curate the Criterion Collection.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of CAV discs over CLV.
  • Getting off the couch to flip the disc over halfway through the movie.
  • Asking your robot butler to flip the Laserdisc over.
  • Potoooooooo.
  • Seeing the name of the Wii for the first time and wondering if it's a typo for World War 2 or if it's a typo for WiFi.
  • Finding the They Live sunglasses and finally being able to read the Snickers ads.
  • The three racehorses that all thoroughbred racehorses are descended from.
  • Knowing more about the history of racehorses than about your own family tree, because racehorses are worth more than people.
  • War booty from the battle of Vienna.
  • The General Studbook.
  • Going blind in one eye from staying up for three days straight doing logarithms.
  • Bell Right Hooks and Cuban Menstrual Crisis.
  • Whether the clown face registry still exists for juggalos.
  • Nothing Sweet About Bees.
  • What happened to bread?
  • Your basic 4:3 bread vs. 4K ultra-wide bread.
  • Your favorite toaster from the 1940s.
  • A four slice toaster kind of day.
  • Making food better with science and it's going to be way better than nature because it's science.
  • Convincing Mr. Smeg not to put his name on the toasters his company manufactures.
  • What market research firm decided that podcast listeners want underwear and mattresses.
  • Constant angular velocity: the only way to rewind a movie.
  • A magnetic poetry set that includes the word "Kafkaesque."
  • How Kafkaesque the miscreant insects are.
  • Whether Jim has ever touched any other human being.
  • How Zoomers don't know about Graggle Simpson.
  • A possible scenario that is metaphysically close to our own.
  • How metaphysically close Canada is to the United States.
  • Getting up at 4pm every day and bowling.
  • A 3D model recreation of five-pin bowling.
  • The amount of data visualization competence that went into dimensions.com.
  • Candlepin and Duckpin bowling.
  • The dimensions of various famous bowlers.
  • Getting a parakeet and finding out how much water it displaces.
  • Making a flask out of a parakeet so people think you just brought your pet parakeet to work and aren't drinking on the job.
  • Buying a propane tank to use as a water bottle.
  • What's wrong with Jim's listeners?
  • Karate tournaments in the 80s and 90s.
  • Assuming Avery's identity and looking in the mirror.
  • To Mock A Mockingbird.
  • Certified Bird Mockers.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+l278Jq81 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 140. The Most Edible Petrochemical https://topiclords.com/the-most-edible-petrochemical 3244b87a-fba9-4b4e-829f-d3a8c1f1d154 Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Kevin and John. We discuss reading the other headlines on newspapers in films that flash on screen solely for the headline, the Game Boy Camera, best Halloween candy: candy corn or pumpkin-shaped candy corn?, "Icarus" by Edward Field, and Douglas Hofstadter. 1:15:09 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The James Webb Space Telescope.
  • The thing you get the most DMs about.
  • Recording a fan's answering machine message in the Mario Frustration voice.
  • The guy who "fixed" the NES triangle wave.
  • Bandlimiting your oscillators.
  • What the real Lordheads know.
  • Another place to shitpost.
  • 3D entertainment.
  • Deku momentum problems.
  • The analog stick mod for Mario 64 DS.
  • A remaster that is in direct conversation with what it's remastering.
  • The pros and cons of Mario 64 DS.
  • Abandoned let's-plays.
  • Waterworld for the Virtual Boy.
  • Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven.
  • How to give Nintendo money in 2022.
  • Prodigy Child Wins Every Award Given.
  • Pausing movies to read the nonsense headlines that the prop designers didn't expect you to read.
  • Pausing the movie to complain about the nonsensical Scrabble game depicted.
  • A movie about people who don't know how to play Clue.
  • A mahjongg game that is a literary microcosm of the players' lives.
  • Leaning across the couch to your girlfriend and saying "that's Chappie's chess game."
  • Playing Super Mario Bros. with the Power Glove.
  • The Steam reviews for the 8-bit wrestling game that appears for three seconds in The Wrestler.
  • The only digital camera that was under $100 in the 90s.
  • How to get images off of the Game Boy Camera.
  • Hooking together a TV, VCR, SNES, Super Game Boy and Game Boy Camera and plugging it in with a very long extension cord so you can shoot a movie outdoors.
  • An in-your-face student film about what happens when computers can detect emotion.
  • Using your Game Boy Camera as a webcam on Twitch.
  • The Game Boy Camera's music sequencer.
  • The Game Boy Camera asking ROM hackers if they are feeling ok.
  • The Gold Zelda Camera.
  • The gold Breath of the Wild cartridge that tastes like the Master Sword.
  • The Cool Cam.
  • The Lefty RX.
  • Ranking candy by its volume to surface area ratio.
  • Getting sick of candy corn naysayers.
  • Wax Lips: Ya Gotta Eat 'Em!
  • A powder that's been glued into a little puck.
  • What the American Oil and Gas Historical Society has to say about wax lips.
  • The oleaginous history of wax lips.
  • Edible dinosaur bones.
  • Bananasaurus Rex-flavored string cheese.
  • The Genius of the Hero falling to the Middling Stature of the Merely Talented.
  • Looking back on your best work and knowing you'll probably never best it but still liking your life more now.
  • A short story with extra line breaks.
  • Turning any text into a poem by resizing the window so there are extra line breaks.
  • Robert Altman's follow-up to MASH.
  • A retelling of Icarus featuring the wicked witch saying a slur.
  • What it means to be conscious.
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: I am a Strange Loop except more confusing.
  • Writing a book for the general public and having to figure out how to make your ideas fun.
  • Searching YouTube for "Crab Cannon" and only finding music for weirdos and no cannons of any kind.
  • Martin Gardner's column about math games in Scientific American.
  • Metamagical Themas.
  • Using math to do fun space stuff.
  • Stream Frasier Online Free.
  • Rubik's Cube except spelled like an asshole.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The James Webb Space Telescope.
  • The thing you get the most DMs about.
  • Recording a fan's answering machine message in the Mario Frustration voice.
  • The guy who "fixed" the NES triangle wave.
  • Bandlimiting your oscillators.
  • What the real Lordheads know.
  • Another place to shitpost.
  • 3D entertainment.
  • Deku momentum problems.
  • The analog stick mod for Mario 64 DS.
  • A remaster that is in direct conversation with what it's remastering.
  • The pros and cons of Mario 64 DS.
  • Abandoned let's-plays.
  • Waterworld for the Virtual Boy.
  • Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven.
  • How to give Nintendo money in 2022.
  • Prodigy Child Wins Every Award Given.
  • Pausing movies to read the nonsense headlines that the prop designers didn't expect you to read.
  • Pausing the movie to complain about the nonsensical Scrabble game depicted.
  • A movie about people who don't know how to play Clue.
  • A mahjongg game that is a literary microcosm of the players' lives.
  • Leaning across the couch to your girlfriend and saying "that's Chappie's chess game."
  • Playing Super Mario Bros. with the Power Glove.
  • The Steam reviews for the 8-bit wrestling game that appears for three seconds in The Wrestler.
  • The only digital camera that was under $100 in the 90s.
  • How to get images off of the Game Boy Camera.
  • Hooking together a TV, VCR, SNES, Super Game Boy and Game Boy Camera and plugging it in with a very long extension cord so you can shoot a movie outdoors.
  • An in-your-face student film about what happens when computers can detect emotion.
  • Using your Game Boy Camera as a webcam on Twitch.
  • The Game Boy Camera's music sequencer.
  • The Game Boy Camera asking ROM hackers if they are feeling ok.
  • The Gold Zelda Camera.
  • The gold Breath of the Wild cartridge that tastes like the Master Sword.
  • The Cool Cam.
  • The Lefty RX.
  • Ranking candy by its volume to surface area ratio.
  • Getting sick of candy corn naysayers.
  • Wax Lips: Ya Gotta Eat 'Em!
  • A powder that's been glued into a little puck.
  • What the American Oil and Gas Historical Society has to say about wax lips.
  • The oleaginous history of wax lips.
  • Edible dinosaur bones.
  • Bananasaurus Rex-flavored string cheese.
  • The Genius of the Hero falling to the Middling Stature of the Merely Talented.
  • Looking back on your best work and knowing you'll probably never best it but still liking your life more now.
  • A short story with extra line breaks.
  • Turning any text into a poem by resizing the window so there are extra line breaks.
  • Robert Altman's follow-up to MASH.
  • A retelling of Icarus featuring the wicked witch saying a slur.
  • What it means to be conscious.
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: I am a Strange Loop except more confusing.
  • Writing a book for the general public and having to figure out how to make your ideas fun.
  • Searching YouTube for "Crab Cannon" and only finding music for weirdos and no cannons of any kind.
  • Martin Gardner's column about math games in Scientific American.
  • Metamagical Themas.
  • Using math to do fun space stuff.
  • Stream Frasier Online Free.
  • Rubik's Cube except spelled like an asshole.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • The James Webb Space Telescope.
  • The thing you get the most DMs about.
  • Recording a fan's answering machine message in the Mario Frustration voice.
  • The guy who "fixed" the NES triangle wave.
  • Bandlimiting your oscillators.
  • What the real Lordheads know.
  • Another place to shitpost.
  • 3D entertainment.
  • Deku momentum problems.
  • The analog stick mod for Mario 64 DS.
  • A remaster that is in direct conversation with what it's remastering.
  • The pros and cons of Mario 64 DS.
  • Abandoned let's-plays.
  • Waterworld for the Virtual Boy.
  • Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven.
  • How to give Nintendo money in 2022.
  • Prodigy Child Wins Every Award Given.
  • Pausing movies to read the nonsense headlines that the prop designers didn't expect you to read.
  • Pausing the movie to complain about the nonsensical Scrabble game depicted.
  • A movie about people who don't know how to play Clue.
  • A mahjongg game that is a literary microcosm of the players' lives.
  • Leaning across the couch to your girlfriend and saying "that's Chappie's chess game."
  • Playing Super Mario Bros. with the Power Glove.
  • The Steam reviews for the 8-bit wrestling game that appears for three seconds in The Wrestler.
  • The only digital camera that was under $100 in the 90s.
  • How to get images off of the Game Boy Camera.
  • Hooking together a TV, VCR, SNES, Super Game Boy and Game Boy Camera and plugging it in with a very long extension cord so you can shoot a movie outdoors.
  • An in-your-face student film about what happens when computers can detect emotion.
  • Using your Game Boy Camera as a webcam on Twitch.
  • The Game Boy Camera's music sequencer.
  • The Game Boy Camera asking ROM hackers if they are feeling ok.
  • The Gold Zelda Camera.
  • The gold Breath of the Wild cartridge that tastes like the Master Sword.
  • The Cool Cam.
  • The Lefty RX.
  • Ranking candy by its volume to surface area ratio.
  • Getting sick of candy corn naysayers.
  • Wax Lips: Ya Gotta Eat 'Em!
  • A powder that's been glued into a little puck.
  • What the American Oil and Gas Historical Society has to say about wax lips.
  • The oleaginous history of wax lips.
  • Edible dinosaur bones.
  • Bananasaurus Rex-flavored string cheese.
  • The Genius of the Hero falling to the Middling Stature of the Merely Talented.
  • Looking back on your best work and knowing you'll probably never best it but still liking your life more now.
  • A short story with extra line breaks.
  • Turning any text into a poem by resizing the window so there are extra line breaks.
  • Robert Altman's follow-up to MASH.
  • A retelling of Icarus featuring the wicked witch saying a slur.
  • What it means to be conscious.
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: I am a Strange Loop except more confusing.
  • Writing a book for the general public and having to figure out how to make your ideas fun.
  • Searching YouTube for "Crab Cannon" and only finding music for weirdos and no cannons of any kind.
  • Martin Gardner's column about math games in Scientific American.
  • Metamagical Themas.
  • Using math to do fun space stuff.
  • Stream Frasier Online Free.
  • Rubik's Cube except spelled like an asshole.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+ZXVzNSZ9 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 139. She Died as a Space Racist https://topiclords.com/she-died-as-a-space-racist 4c539ebf-ac44-4504-b9cb-80d55ed26c7d Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Dan and Shepard. We discuss playing narrative games exactly once, when life is like an adventure game, Sleng Teng Riddim, Tyger! Tyger!, going to college on the internet, beating your dad at scrabble finally, and traffic jams. 58:36 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wanting to see all the stuff.
  • Replaying a series of four RPG length games to see the alternate endings.
  • Getting the most video game endings for your dollar.
  • Tenable and untenable ways to have an adventure.
  • Recapturing the magic of your first time (with emulators).
  • Getting every video game you wanted for a system and then enjoying that for 10 minutes.
  • A giant archive of every DOS game ever.
  • Losing your nostalgia for old games via emulation, but keeping your nostalgia for the box art.
  • Falling out of love with Windows Vista.
  • Keeping your custard pie intact until the yeti needs it.
  • The bread maker approach to learning a new skill.
  • Why there are no cupcakes in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Playing Go against someone better than you and suddenly losing.
  • The Go community rallying around the identity that computers can't beat the best Go players.
  • Whether computer Go has shaped the way humans play Go.
  • An extra creative extra special humany thing.
  • Beating a chess expert by convincing them to play something else.
  • John Henry's retirement plan.
  • Being promised a Yamaha DX7 but receiving a Casio MT-40 instead.
  • Writing a part for a rock and roll rhythm section that is accidentally a great reggae rhythm section.
  • The origins of the Amen Break.
  • Setting up a situation where you can write your own notes.
  • Figuring out where the genre can go with this new tonality.
  • Stripy guys and chonky units.
  • The best kind of tigers. (Floofers.)
  • Learning about slant rhymes one morning and that afternoon writing a poem that rhymes "eye" with "symmetry."
  • Blake hearing about the Great Vowel Shift from his grandpa and deciding that that would be a great way to make Tyger! Tyger! sound old timey.
  • Googling why Blake tried to rhyme "eye" with "symmetry" and finding dozens of implausible theories, all expressed with complete confidence.
  • Making an impression on the world of poetry by not being good at it.
  • Hipster throwbacks to the great vowel shift.
  • Calvin and Hobbes panoply of tiger poems.
  • Holding off on reading more Calvin and Hobbes tiger poems until you’re done recording the podcast.
  • Not letting online schooling get in the way of your online education.
  • Whether someone will figure out how to do a college class online before we transition back to in-person classes.
  • Whether ASL is especially well suited to bring taught over Zoom.
  • Doing yard work and wearing protective equipment so you can't pull out your phone to check Twitter.
  • Lying down in court.
  • Realizing for the first time that your parents don't know everything.
  • A framed photo of the one time your mom won at Risk.
  • The one thing you and your dad are both interested in.
  • Sports montage of getting better at Scrabble.
  • Driving or better yet watching movies with cars in them.
  • Everybody slowing down to take a look at the two headed chicken.
  • Driving towards a shadow and being blinded by the sun to what's beyond the shadow.
  • A time loop where the car in front of you slows down for no reason and then you slow down for a good reason but the car behind you thinks you're slowing down for no reason.
  • A car driving on a road.
  • Stacking a bunch of human reaction speeds on top of each other.
  • Slot cars as a fun and disastrous solution to traffic.
  • The slot car model of public transit.
  • Finding everybody on the Discord.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wanting to see all the stuff.
  • Replaying a series of four RPG length games to see the alternate endings.
  • Getting the most video game endings for your dollar.
  • Tenable and untenable ways to have an adventure.
  • Recapturing the magic of your first time (with emulators).
  • Getting every video game you wanted for a system and then enjoying that for 10 minutes.
  • A giant archive of every DOS game ever.
  • Losing your nostalgia for old games via emulation, but keeping your nostalgia for the box art.
  • Falling out of love with Windows Vista.
  • Keeping your custard pie intact until the yeti needs it.
  • The bread maker approach to learning a new skill.
  • Why there are no cupcakes in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Playing Go against someone better than you and suddenly losing.
  • The Go community rallying around the identity that computers can't beat the best Go players.
  • Whether computer Go has shaped the way humans play Go.
  • An extra creative extra special humany thing.
  • Beating a chess expert by convincing them to play something else.
  • John Henry's retirement plan.
  • Being promised a Yamaha DX7 but receiving a Casio MT-40 instead.
  • Writing a part for a rock and roll rhythm section that is accidentally a great reggae rhythm section.
  • The origins of the Amen Break.
  • Setting up a situation where you can write your own notes.
  • Figuring out where the genre can go with this new tonality.
  • Stripy guys and chonky units.
  • The best kind of tigers. (Floofers.)
  • Learning about slant rhymes one morning and that afternoon writing a poem that rhymes "eye" with "symmetry."
  • Blake hearing about the Great Vowel Shift from his grandpa and deciding that that would be a great way to make Tyger! Tyger! sound old timey.
  • Googling why Blake tried to rhyme "eye" with "symmetry" and finding dozens of implausible theories, all expressed with complete confidence.
  • Making an impression on the world of poetry by not being good at it.
  • Hipster throwbacks to the great vowel shift.
  • Calvin and Hobbes panoply of tiger poems.
  • Holding off on reading more Calvin and Hobbes tiger poems until you’re done recording the podcast.
  • Not letting online schooling get in the way of your online education.
  • Whether someone will figure out how to do a college class online before we transition back to in-person classes.
  • Whether ASL is especially well suited to bring taught over Zoom.
  • Doing yard work and wearing protective equipment so you can't pull out your phone to check Twitter.
  • Lying down in court.
  • Realizing for the first time that your parents don't know everything.
  • A framed photo of the one time your mom won at Risk.
  • The one thing you and your dad are both interested in.
  • Sports montage of getting better at Scrabble.
  • Driving or better yet watching movies with cars in them.
  • Everybody slowing down to take a look at the two headed chicken.
  • Driving towards a shadow and being blinded by the sun to what's beyond the shadow.
  • A time loop where the car in front of you slows down for no reason and then you slow down for a good reason but the car behind you thinks you're slowing down for no reason.
  • A car driving on a road.
  • Stacking a bunch of human reaction speeds on top of each other.
  • Slot cars as a fun and disastrous solution to traffic.
  • The slot car model of public transit.
  • Finding everybody on the Discord.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Wanting to see all the stuff.
  • Replaying a series of four RPG length games to see the alternate endings.
  • Getting the most video game endings for your dollar.
  • Tenable and untenable ways to have an adventure.
  • Recapturing the magic of your first time (with emulators).
  • Getting every video game you wanted for a system and then enjoying that for 10 minutes.
  • A giant archive of every DOS game ever.
  • Losing your nostalgia for old games via emulation, but keeping your nostalgia for the box art.
  • Falling out of love with Windows Vista.
  • Keeping your custard pie intact until the yeti needs it.
  • The bread maker approach to learning a new skill.
  • Why there are no cupcakes in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Playing Go against someone better than you and suddenly losing.
  • The Go community rallying around the identity that computers can't beat the best Go players.
  • Whether computer Go has shaped the way humans play Go.
  • An extra creative extra special humany thing.
  • Beating a chess expert by convincing them to play something else.
  • John Henry's retirement plan.
  • Being promised a Yamaha DX7 but receiving a Casio MT-40 instead.
  • Writing a part for a rock and roll rhythm section that is accidentally a great reggae rhythm section.
  • The origins of the Amen Break.
  • Setting up a situation where you can write your own notes.
  • Figuring out where the genre can go with this new tonality.
  • Stripy guys and chonky units.
  • The best kind of tigers. (Floofers.)
  • Learning about slant rhymes one morning and that afternoon writing a poem that rhymes "eye" with "symmetry."
  • Blake hearing about the Great Vowel Shift from his grandpa and deciding that that would be a great way to make Tyger! Tyger! sound old timey.
  • Googling why Blake tried to rhyme "eye" with "symmetry" and finding dozens of implausible theories, all expressed with complete confidence.
  • Making an impression on the world of poetry by not being good at it.
  • Hipster throwbacks to the great vowel shift.
  • Calvin and Hobbes panoply of tiger poems.
  • Holding off on reading more Calvin and Hobbes tiger poems until you’re done recording the podcast.
  • Not letting online schooling get in the way of your online education.
  • Whether someone will figure out how to do a college class online before we transition back to in-person classes.
  • Whether ASL is especially well suited to bring taught over Zoom.
  • Doing yard work and wearing protective equipment so you can't pull out your phone to check Twitter.
  • Lying down in court.
  • Realizing for the first time that your parents don't know everything.
  • A framed photo of the one time your mom won at Risk.
  • The one thing you and your dad are both interested in.
  • Sports montage of getting better at Scrabble.
  • Driving or better yet watching movies with cars in them.
  • Everybody slowing down to take a look at the two headed chicken.
  • Driving towards a shadow and being blinded by the sun to what's beyond the shadow.
  • A time loop where the car in front of you slows down for no reason and then you slow down for a good reason but the car behind you thinks you're slowing down for no reason.
  • A car driving on a road.
  • Stacking a bunch of human reaction speeds on top of each other.
  • Slot cars as a fun and disastrous solution to traffic.
  • The slot car model of public transit.
  • Finding everybody on the Discord.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+8guthXL2 ]]> Jim Stormdancer 138. From Infracheddar to Ultrableu https://topiclords.com/from-infracheddar-to-ultrableu 60234a09-43a4-43c6-9858-0b71e77e857f Mon, 13 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Alexander. We discuss hosting a party vs. going to the party, the Pearl Jam Liner Notes method of writing first drafts, Lagrange Point Lasagna, Ode on the Longitude, the theory of spontaneous generation, Sunday Roasts, and diagnosing Jim's tongue. 1:00:44 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unfindable Lords.
  • The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong.
  • Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets.
  • People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand.
  • A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology.
  • The smallest of talk.
  • A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself.
  • Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward
  • Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any.
  • From Infracheddar to Ultrableu.
  • A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself.
  • Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties.
  • The weirdness of reading aloud.
  • Writing while talking.
  • A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once.
  • Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely.
  • Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence.
  • Worrying about commas later.
  • Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details.
  • How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces.
  • How to bake brownies that's all center pieces.
  • Sous vide brownies.
  • People who only like the center of the falafel.
  • The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie.
  • Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna.
  • Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension.
  • Subduction lasagna.
  • The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup.
  • Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension.
  • Lasagna creationists.
  • The Earth is a rock lasagna.
  • Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring.
  • Bepst and besht.
  • A long-standing problem in navigation.
  • Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation.
  • Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity.
  • Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is.
  • Such explosive ships, in such known locations.
  • A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public.
  • The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s.
  • The sense in which GPS is extremely loud.
  • Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out.
  • The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses.
  • How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails.
  • A recipe for scorpions.
  • The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast.
  • The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha.
  • Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week.
  • Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa.
  • Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension.
  • Via Gravia.
  • Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth.
  • The Yes Ship of Theseus.
  • That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed.
  • The Caramelldansen saga.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unfindable Lords.
  • The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong.
  • Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets.
  • People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand.
  • A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology.
  • The smallest of talk.
  • A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself.
  • Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward
  • Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any.
  • From Infracheddar to Ultrableu.
  • A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself.
  • Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties.
  • The weirdness of reading aloud.
  • Writing while talking.
  • A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once.
  • Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely.
  • Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence.
  • Worrying about commas later.
  • Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details.
  • How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces.
  • How to bake brownies that's all center pieces.
  • Sous vide brownies.
  • People who only like the center of the falafel.
  • The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie.
  • Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna.
  • Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension.
  • Subduction lasagna.
  • The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup.
  • Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension.
  • Lasagna creationists.
  • The Earth is a rock lasagna.
  • Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring.
  • Bepst and besht.
  • A long-standing problem in navigation.
  • Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation.
  • Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity.
  • Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is.
  • Such explosive ships, in such known locations.
  • A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public.
  • The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s.
  • The sense in which GPS is extremely loud.
  • Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out.
  • The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses.
  • How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails.
  • A recipe for scorpions.
  • The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast.
  • The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha.
  • Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week.
  • Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa.
  • Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension.
  • Via Gravia.
  • Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth.
  • The Yes Ship of Theseus.
  • That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed.
  • The Caramelldansen saga.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unfindable Lords.
  • The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong.
  • Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets.
  • People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand.
  • A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology.
  • The smallest of talk.
  • A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself.
  • Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward
  • Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any.
  • From Infracheddar to Ultrableu.
  • A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself.
  • Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties.
  • The weirdness of reading aloud.
  • Writing while talking.
  • A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once.
  • Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely.
  • Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence.
  • Worrying about commas later.
  • Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details.
  • How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces.
  • How to bake brownies that's all center pieces.
  • Sous vide brownies.
  • People who only like the center of the falafel.
  • The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie.
  • Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna.
  • Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension.
  • Subduction lasagna.
  • The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup.
  • Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension.
  • Lasagna creationists.
  • The Earth is a rock lasagna.
  • Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring.
  • Bepst and besht.
  • A long-standing problem in navigation.
  • Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation.
  • Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity.
  • Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is.
  • Such explosive ships, in such known locations.
  • A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public.
  • The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s.
  • The sense in which GPS is extremely loud.
  • Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out.
  • The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses.
  • How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails.
  • A recipe for scorpions.
  • The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast.
  • The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha.
  • Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week.
  • Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa.
  • Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension.
  • Via Gravia.
  • Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth.
  • The Yes Ship of Theseus.
  • That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed.
  • The Caramelldansen saga.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+X4y4LYTP ]]> Jim Stormdancer 137. Burying the Machete (So Nobody Can Open the Coconuts) https://topiclords.com/burying-the-machete-so-nobody-can-open-the-coconuts f5ee9ffd-0c2c-4a91-b395-9dce8e4b3f1a Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and April. We discuss playing GTA V in lieu of hiking in California, embroidery, jokes that 3-year-olds tell, Moondrop's Tale, Survivor, and why Twitter keeps recommending Russell Crowe. 1:16:03 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Return of the Beast Lord.
  • Whether the Beast Lord fucks around.
  • The Beets Lord.
  • Hearing clapping and encouragement and assuming it's for you.
  • Being a tourist in a video game.
  • Riding a quad bike up Mt. Chiliad.
  • Getting past the first mission where you need to do violence to a lot of people so you can peacefully explore Los Santos.
  • Driving down the highway at night and taking a random turnoff into the wilderness and going on a hike in the moonlight.
  • The Grand Theft Auto V Not Hurting Anybody Challenge.
  • Taking a self-guided tour of the Bay Area in Watch Dogs 2.
  • A Short Hike mod for GTA V.
  • A needle art or craft.
  • Art vs. Craft.
  • What is the Citizen Kane of needlepoint? When will we see the first needle that can make you cry?
  • A piece of physical media that you look at.
  • Physically doing the thing to make it look like the image you have in your head.
  • An art form that has been around for as long as thread.
  • The joy of buying art supplies.
  • The anxiety relief of various stitches.
  • A boy who contains multitudes.
  • Getting dad a sidewalk for his birthday.
  • Cross-stitch route planning.
  • Marking notable locations in red.
  • The only way out. (Through.)
  • A three year old who wants to do something but delays as much as he can anyway.
  • A three year old who is just like adults except with way less impulse control.
  • A work in frogress.
  • The tale of druid Moondrop Honeysuckle.
  • A disembodied voice telling you to call it "granny."
  • The ancient place beyond the dead star in the Ultraviolet City.
  • Going into a random bar and hearing a poem about your mom.
  • Granny the Mind Flayer.
  • Falling sideways through reality and having to fight the big boss.
  • Recording season 42 of Survivor over Zoom.
  • The evolution of Survivor meta.
  • Finding a clue in the crook of a tree.
  • Throwing the flint into the ocean.
  • The gif of the two women gasping and the dude behind them smiling.
  • The Ashby Brewery Twitter account.
  • Why the algorithm thinks you care about Ratchet and Clank.
  • How to make Twitter livable on PC vs. on your phone.
  • The work every internet user puts into not being shown the stuff they don't want to see.
  • Mark Zuckerberg pointing at his mugger and shouting "See less of this! I'd like to see less of this!"
  • Eating the rich and having to worry about biomagnification.
  • Mr. Beer.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio.
  • All the Brews That's Fit to Print.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio quarterly brewsletter.
  • Being the bee man.
  • Not using Twitter in a while and Twitter emails you about what Russell Crowe is doing lately.
  • Extensively DMing Russell Crowe and then blocking Russell Crowe and then forgetting that either thing happened.
  • Why they call him John Mystery.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Return of the Beast Lord.
  • Whether the Beast Lord fucks around.
  • The Beets Lord.
  • Hearing clapping and encouragement and assuming it's for you.
  • Being a tourist in a video game.
  • Riding a quad bike up Mt. Chiliad.
  • Getting past the first mission where you need to do violence to a lot of people so you can peacefully explore Los Santos.
  • Driving down the highway at night and taking a random turnoff into the wilderness and going on a hike in the moonlight.
  • The Grand Theft Auto V Not Hurting Anybody Challenge.
  • Taking a self-guided tour of the Bay Area in Watch Dogs 2.
  • A Short Hike mod for GTA V.
  • A needle art or craft.
  • Art vs. Craft.
  • What is the Citizen Kane of needlepoint? When will we see the first needle that can make you cry?
  • A piece of physical media that you look at.
  • Physically doing the thing to make it look like the image you have in your head.
  • An art form that has been around for as long as thread.
  • The joy of buying art supplies.
  • The anxiety relief of various stitches.
  • A boy who contains multitudes.
  • Getting dad a sidewalk for his birthday.
  • Cross-stitch route planning.
  • Marking notable locations in red.
  • The only way out. (Through.)
  • A three year old who wants to do something but delays as much as he can anyway.
  • A three year old who is just like adults except with way less impulse control.
  • A work in frogress.
  • The tale of druid Moondrop Honeysuckle.
  • A disembodied voice telling you to call it "granny."
  • The ancient place beyond the dead star in the Ultraviolet City.
  • Going into a random bar and hearing a poem about your mom.
  • Granny the Mind Flayer.
  • Falling sideways through reality and having to fight the big boss.
  • Recording season 42 of Survivor over Zoom.
  • The evolution of Survivor meta.
  • Finding a clue in the crook of a tree.
  • Throwing the flint into the ocean.
  • The gif of the two women gasping and the dude behind them smiling.
  • The Ashby Brewery Twitter account.
  • Why the algorithm thinks you care about Ratchet and Clank.
  • How to make Twitter livable on PC vs. on your phone.
  • The work every internet user puts into not being shown the stuff they don't want to see.
  • Mark Zuckerberg pointing at his mugger and shouting "See less of this! I'd like to see less of this!"
  • Eating the rich and having to worry about biomagnification.
  • Mr. Beer.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio.
  • All the Brews That's Fit to Print.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio quarterly brewsletter.
  • Being the bee man.
  • Not using Twitter in a while and Twitter emails you about what Russell Crowe is doing lately.
  • Extensively DMing Russell Crowe and then blocking Russell Crowe and then forgetting that either thing happened.
  • Why they call him John Mystery.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Return of the Beast Lord.
  • Whether the Beast Lord fucks around.
  • The Beets Lord.
  • Hearing clapping and encouragement and assuming it's for you.
  • Being a tourist in a video game.
  • Riding a quad bike up Mt. Chiliad.
  • Getting past the first mission where you need to do violence to a lot of people so you can peacefully explore Los Santos.
  • Driving down the highway at night and taking a random turnoff into the wilderness and going on a hike in the moonlight.
  • The Grand Theft Auto V Not Hurting Anybody Challenge.
  • Taking a self-guided tour of the Bay Area in Watch Dogs 2.
  • A Short Hike mod for GTA V.
  • A needle art or craft.
  • Art vs. Craft.
  • What is the Citizen Kane of needlepoint? When will we see the first needle that can make you cry?
  • A piece of physical media that you look at.
  • Physically doing the thing to make it look like the image you have in your head.
  • An art form that has been around for as long as thread.
  • The joy of buying art supplies.
  • The anxiety relief of various stitches.
  • A boy who contains multitudes.
  • Getting dad a sidewalk for his birthday.
  • Cross-stitch route planning.
  • Marking notable locations in red.
  • The only way out. (Through.)
  • A three year old who wants to do something but delays as much as he can anyway.
  • A three year old who is just like adults except with way less impulse control.
  • A work in frogress.
  • The tale of druid Moondrop Honeysuckle.
  • A disembodied voice telling you to call it "granny."
  • The ancient place beyond the dead star in the Ultraviolet City.
  • Going into a random bar and hearing a poem about your mom.
  • Granny the Mind Flayer.
  • Falling sideways through reality and having to fight the big boss.
  • Recording season 42 of Survivor over Zoom.
  • The evolution of Survivor meta.
  • Finding a clue in the crook of a tree.
  • Throwing the flint into the ocean.
  • The gif of the two women gasping and the dude behind them smiling.
  • The Ashby Brewery Twitter account.
  • Why the algorithm thinks you care about Ratchet and Clank.
  • How to make Twitter livable on PC vs. on your phone.
  • The work every internet user puts into not being shown the stuff they don't want to see.
  • Mark Zuckerberg pointing at his mugger and shouting "See less of this! I'd like to see less of this!"
  • Eating the rich and having to worry about biomagnification.
  • Mr. Beer.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio.
  • All the Brews That's Fit to Print.
  • The Ashby Brewery and Video Game Studio quarterly brewsletter.
  • Being the bee man.
  • Not using Twitter in a while and Twitter emails you about what Russell Crowe is doing lately.
  • Extensively DMing Russell Crowe and then blocking Russell Crowe and then forgetting that either thing happened.
  • Why they call him John Mystery.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+xTj_6S3a ]]> Jim Stormdancer 136. Thanks for Inventing Dengue Fever, Mark Rosewater https://topiclords.com/thanks-for-inventing-dengue-fever-mark-rosewater 29da53b4-9d51-418f-8033-9ed3d3f3825d Mon, 30 May 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Erica and Jenni. We discuss the Talenti Cup System, decentralizing social media, what 3-year-olds know about peeing in the woods, Mark Rosewater-designed devil fruits, and decarbonizing the language. 1:03:25 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica plugs increasing optional mask compliance by farting
  • Jenni plugs birds
  • Jim plugs metaplugs repeating plugs

Topics:

  • The System, and by extension, The Talenti Cup System
  • Decentralizing social media is gonna be real good for people not yelling at each other & kinda bad for sharing specialized information
  • We just taught Winston about "peeing in the woods" when we were going on a hike and now he wants to "pee in the woods" everywhere
  • Mark Rosewater designed devil fruits
  • Esper says: "As a longtime (since 1999, with only one substantial break) Magic: the Gathering player, it does my heart good to hear Mark Rosewater come up. His GDC talk about lessons he's learned in designing games is really sharp stuff (if a little 101 in places), check it out sometime."
  • Decarbonizing the language

Microtopics:

  • Meta-plugging repeating plugs.
  • Bee Movie but it’s text to speech.
  • Increasing optional mask compliance by farting.
  • Mass: the volume of gas inside you, and how to increase its compliance.
  • A meme that people teach to each other.
  • Packing a shoe into a box and opening up a big box of mold years later.
  • Categories of things that fit into one-pint gelato cups.
  • The Body Box.
  • How to make itinerant lifestyles bearable and possible.
  • Organizing your entire house into the House Box.
  • Using your Dunbar number to keep track of your house plants.
  • Getting on Topic Lords by searching "pineapple on pizza"
  • Social media platforms that are owned by a rich asshole.
  • Drastically improving productivity in the workplace by banning the email forwarding of news articles.
  • The overwhelming feeling of shame when you don't have a take on the latest discourse.
  • Going on Tori Amos AOL chat to talk to your social group.
  • Buddha's list of 89 things that make you angry.
  • We've invented a new way to be angry.
  • Repeating topics because you've forgotten what you were just talking about.
  • Peeing in the laundry closet and calling it peeing in the woods.
  • Explaining to a three year old when it's ok and when it's not ok to pee outside.
  • Pee-ka-boo.
  • Everything sucks and I have no control over anything but I can poop in the front yard.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in Richard Kind's cat box.
  • How George Clooney gets away with poop modification.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in the Li-Cor machine that measures leaf respiration.
  • Whether playing Tom Jones at work constitutes sexual harassment.
  • Tom Jones in his leisure suit.
  • Cleaning up the lyrics to make rock and roll palatable to white people but leaving in the line about the "one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store."
  • Whether it's still sexual harassment if nobody points out that it's sexual harassment.
  • Jocund company.
  • Telling the story of the time you saw a bunch of daffodils.
  • Seeing a bunch of daffodils and shouting "Fuck! These fucking flowers are fucking pretty as shit!"
  • Conceiving of yourself as an indoor person, separate from the outdoors.
  • Reading a Japanese dictionary of dirty words and saying "Fuck! These fucking dirty words are fucking good as shit!"
  • Conceiving of interior spaces as being one with exterior spaced.
  • You can't unpee the bush.
  • Finding and eating devil fruits.
  • Eating the fruit that lets you talk to dragons when dragons don't exist.
  • Seeing a gun dog and assuming that it was a dog that ate a gun fruit but actually it was a gun that ate a dog fruit.
  • What happens if you eat a second devil fruit.
  • Dengue fever creeping up into Texas from Mexico.
  • The best place to contract Dengue Fever.
  • Burning the candle at both ends of the day.
  • Eating the burrito from both ends.
  • Harvesting the bioluminescent fungus.
  • Turbines on a windless morn.
  • Burning solar panels as a fuel source.
  • The worst thing to happen to Twitter/the best thing to happen to Mastodon.
  • The Dunbar Number for plants.
  • Voting someone out of the marriage because there's only room for one person in here.
]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica plugs increasing optional mask compliance by farting
  • Jenni plugs birds
  • Jim plugs metaplugs repeating plugs

Topics:

  • The System, and by extension, The Talenti Cup System
  • Decentralizing social media is gonna be real good for people not yelling at each other & kinda bad for sharing specialized information
  • We just taught Winston about "peeing in the woods" when we were going on a hike and now he wants to "pee in the woods" everywhere
  • Mark Rosewater designed devil fruits
  • Esper says: "As a longtime (since 1999, with only one substantial break) Magic: the Gathering player, it does my heart good to hear Mark Rosewater come up. His GDC talk about lessons he's learned in designing games is really sharp stuff (if a little 101 in places), check it out sometime."
  • Decarbonizing the language

Microtopics:

  • Meta-plugging repeating plugs.
  • Bee Movie but it’s text to speech.
  • Increasing optional mask compliance by farting.
  • Mass: the volume of gas inside you, and how to increase its compliance.
  • A meme that people teach to each other.
  • Packing a shoe into a box and opening up a big box of mold years later.
  • Categories of things that fit into one-pint gelato cups.
  • The Body Box.
  • How to make itinerant lifestyles bearable and possible.
  • Organizing your entire house into the House Box.
  • Using your Dunbar number to keep track of your house plants.
  • Getting on Topic Lords by searching "pineapple on pizza"
  • Social media platforms that are owned by a rich asshole.
  • Drastically improving productivity in the workplace by banning the email forwarding of news articles.
  • The overwhelming feeling of shame when you don't have a take on the latest discourse.
  • Going on Tori Amos AOL chat to talk to your social group.
  • Buddha's list of 89 things that make you angry.
  • We've invented a new way to be angry.
  • Repeating topics because you've forgotten what you were just talking about.
  • Peeing in the laundry closet and calling it peeing in the woods.
  • Explaining to a three year old when it's ok and when it's not ok to pee outside.
  • Pee-ka-boo.
  • Everything sucks and I have no control over anything but I can poop in the front yard.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in Richard Kind's cat box.
  • How George Clooney gets away with poop modification.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in the Li-Cor machine that measures leaf respiration.
  • Whether playing Tom Jones at work constitutes sexual harassment.
  • Tom Jones in his leisure suit.
  • Cleaning up the lyrics to make rock and roll palatable to white people but leaving in the line about the "one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store."
  • Whether it's still sexual harassment if nobody points out that it's sexual harassment.
  • Jocund company.
  • Telling the story of the time you saw a bunch of daffodils.
  • Seeing a bunch of daffodils and shouting "Fuck! These fucking flowers are fucking pretty as shit!"
  • Conceiving of yourself as an indoor person, separate from the outdoors.
  • Reading a Japanese dictionary of dirty words and saying "Fuck! These fucking dirty words are fucking good as shit!"
  • Conceiving of interior spaces as being one with exterior spaced.
  • You can't unpee the bush.
  • Finding and eating devil fruits.
  • Eating the fruit that lets you talk to dragons when dragons don't exist.
  • Seeing a gun dog and assuming that it was a dog that ate a gun fruit but actually it was a gun that ate a dog fruit.
  • What happens if you eat a second devil fruit.
  • Dengue fever creeping up into Texas from Mexico.
  • The best place to contract Dengue Fever.
  • Burning the candle at both ends of the day.
  • Eating the burrito from both ends.
  • Harvesting the bioluminescent fungus.
  • Turbines on a windless morn.
  • Burning solar panels as a fuel source.
  • The worst thing to happen to Twitter/the best thing to happen to Mastodon.
  • The Dunbar Number for plants.
  • Voting someone out of the marriage because there's only room for one person in here.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Erica plugs increasing optional mask compliance by farting
  • Jenni plugs birds
  • Jim plugs metaplugs repeating plugs

Topics:

  • The System, and by extension, The Talenti Cup System
  • Decentralizing social media is gonna be real good for people not yelling at each other & kinda bad for sharing specialized information
  • We just taught Winston about "peeing in the woods" when we were going on a hike and now he wants to "pee in the woods" everywhere
  • Mark Rosewater designed devil fruits
  • Esper says: "As a longtime (since 1999, with only one substantial break) Magic: the Gathering player, it does my heart good to hear Mark Rosewater come up. His GDC talk about lessons he's learned in designing games is really sharp stuff (if a little 101 in places), check it out sometime."
  • Decarbonizing the language

Microtopics:

  • Meta-plugging repeating plugs.
  • Bee Movie but it’s text to speech.
  • Increasing optional mask compliance by farting.
  • Mass: the volume of gas inside you, and how to increase its compliance.
  • A meme that people teach to each other.
  • Packing a shoe into a box and opening up a big box of mold years later.
  • Categories of things that fit into one-pint gelato cups.
  • The Body Box.
  • How to make itinerant lifestyles bearable and possible.
  • Organizing your entire house into the House Box.
  • Using your Dunbar number to keep track of your house plants.
  • Getting on Topic Lords by searching "pineapple on pizza"
  • Social media platforms that are owned by a rich asshole.
  • Drastically improving productivity in the workplace by banning the email forwarding of news articles.
  • The overwhelming feeling of shame when you don't have a take on the latest discourse.
  • Going on Tori Amos AOL chat to talk to your social group.
  • Buddha's list of 89 things that make you angry.
  • We've invented a new way to be angry.
  • Repeating topics because you've forgotten what you were just talking about.
  • Peeing in the laundry closet and calling it peeing in the woods.
  • Explaining to a three year old when it's ok and when it's not ok to pee outside.
  • Pee-ka-boo.
  • Everything sucks and I have no control over anything but I can poop in the front yard.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in Richard Kind's cat box.
  • How George Clooney gets away with poop modification.
  • Taking increasingly larger shits in the Li-Cor machine that measures leaf respiration.
  • Whether playing Tom Jones at work constitutes sexual harassment.
  • Tom Jones in his leisure suit.
  • Cleaning up the lyrics to make rock and roll palatable to white people but leaving in the line about the "one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store."
  • Whether it's still sexual harassment if nobody points out that it's sexual harassment.
  • Jocund company.
  • Telling the story of the time you saw a bunch of daffodils.
  • Seeing a bunch of daffodils and shouting "Fuck! These fucking flowers are fucking pretty as shit!"
  • Conceiving of yourself as an indoor person, separate from the outdoors.
  • Reading a Japanese dictionary of dirty words and saying "Fuck! These fucking dirty words are fucking good as shit!"
  • Conceiving of interior spaces as being one with exterior spaced.
  • You can't unpee the bush.
  • Finding and eating devil fruits.
  • Eating the fruit that lets you talk to dragons when dragons don't exist.
  • Seeing a gun dog and assuming that it was a dog that ate a gun fruit but actually it was a gun that ate a dog fruit.
  • What happens if you eat a second devil fruit.
  • Dengue fever creeping up into Texas from Mexico.
  • The best place to contract Dengue Fever.
  • Burning the candle at both ends of the day.
  • Eating the burrito from both ends.
  • Harvesting the bioluminescent fungus.
  • Turbines on a windless morn.
  • Burning solar panels as a fuel source.
  • The worst thing to happen to Twitter/the best thing to happen to Mastodon.
  • The Dunbar Number for plants.
  • Voting someone out of the marriage because there's only room for one person in here.

Support Topic Lords

]]> https://fireside.fm/player/v2/Wjlwj3_Y+PpwGmL2e ]]> Jim Stormdancer 135. I've Been a Bad, Bad French https://topiclords.com/ive-been-a-bad-bad-french 62021d3f-ecad-4087-9e62-acd4981e9808 Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 -0700 jim@goombas.org (Jim Stormdancer) full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nate and Fred. We discuss rice cookers playing music, competition in a utopia, Hot Ice, Cool Sounds, Goblin Time, whether the D&D-themed Nerds marketing campaign is good for D&D, and convincing the four horsemen to hire you as fifth horseman. 1:15:23 true Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Why do rice cookers play music but not microwaves?
  • If all your needs are met in a utopian society will we still need sports and competition?
  • Hot Ice, Cool Sounds
  • Goblin Time by Emma
    • https://mastodon.art/@emmajuettner/108103474257806186
    • Esper says: "My long-held suspicion has always been that humans are generally way less prone to salt-related health issues than suggested by nutritional science. I think a lot of that stuff was ginned up by cigarette companies trying to deflect blame. But I try not to go full-on conspiracy theory about it."
  • Nerds candy has a Dungeons and Dragons themed box. Is this good for D&D?
  • If the four horsemen of the apocalypse were recruiting for a fifth member, how would you convince them to hire you?

Microtopics:

  • A shmup about how Microsoft screwed up their Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • Screaming for 24 hours straight and having a heart attack, or vice versa.
  • Remastering your obscure protest game and needing to build a museum explaining the context for the protest.
  • An educational title about how to find games on the new Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • An infinite runner with extremely awkward horse controls.
  • Using all the right dark patterns.
  • Meeting an indie game developer in San Francisco and recognizing him because he's a white guy with a beard and glasses who likes Dark Souls.
  • A pot that's specifically for rice and it knows when to school cooking the rice.
  • Only rice cookers get to sing a song.