9. Ask The Propagated Cactus

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Lords:

• Shannon is a time traveler and an unemployed attorney.
• Alex likes oranges and drove the getaway car.

Topics:

• 1:29 What if people propagated like plants?
  • How succulents propagate: https://collectivegen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Guide-to-Propogating-Succulents-778x1608@2x.jpg
• 8:16 Aphantasia and technical work.
  • Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ): https://www.eugencpopa.ro/wp-content/uploads/Afantazia-.pdf
    • Alex scored 22/80.
    • Shannon scored 68/80
    • Jim scored a perfect 16/80 and needs to reevaluate his life, or maybe the test is totally subjective.
  • Fun fact: if you do not have aphantasia, you are phantastic! [Ed. note: "phantasic", but ok.]
• 19:24 Fruit cocktail and manufactured scarcity.
  • “We offer our maraschino cherries in the following sizes: * Plastic Drum (500 lbs)” https://leelanaufruit.com/maraschino-cherries/
• 25:59 Mike asks "What is the most famous meal of the day?"
  • Google has an opinion: https://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+the+most+famous+meal+of+the+day%3F
  • History of Breakfast: https://books.google.com/books?id=5LghYCqDJw8C
  • Breakfast Around the World: https://www.thedailymeal.com/travel/what-people-eat-breakfast-around-world-slideshow
• 30:39 Best smoothie ingredients?
• 33:55 Participating in religious ceremonies that aren't your religion.
  • Common religions with tradition of evangelism: Christianity, Islam.
  • Common religions without: Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism.
  • Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast: http://ohnopodcast.com/
• 59:10 Your friend works in a shower curtain factory. He offers you a free shower curtain with whatever you want printed on it. What pattern do you get?
  • You can actually get shower curtains featuring the shadow of a knife-wielding maniac.

Microtopics:

• Not liking oranges because of orange soda and orange-flavored carsickness pills.
• Recognizing guest lords from the time they were a time traveler and drove the getaway car.
• Growing an entire additional self out of your self if you lose a limb.
• Instead of everybody being related to Genghis Khan, everybody actually being Genghis Khan.
• The tooth fairy growing clones of you from your teeth.
• Each of your tooth clones also losing teeth.
• Becoming a shark mom because you escaped a shark attack.
• Barbershops installing incinerators so your hairs don't each grow into a full human.
• A homunculus made of fingers growing out of your finger stump.
• Every animal starting with the butt because the butt is the most important part of any organism.
• A new self growing out of your severed finger but also a second self growing out of your finger stump.
• Technical workers being worse at envisioning objects or scenes.
• Imagining an elephant standing on one foot, wearing a beret, and singing Gizmo's song.
• A cartoon elephant standing on its back right leg, on a ball, wobbling to keep its balance, in the savannah, wearing a human-size black beret at the edge of one of its ears, its trunk lifted up, mouth open, the uvula shaking, singing Figaro's Aria.
• Thinking of a red cube on a white background.
• Imagining Harry Potter turning left at a corner and then the book says he goes right and your mind movie having to backtrack.
• An elephant's mouth probably having some teeth in it.
• Knowing what a trumpet sounds like in the same way you might know what cinnamon tastes like.
• Screwing yourself in a learning process because your teacher doesn't realize how good you are at faking it.
• Reinventing the abacus with your body parts.
• Turning the slot machine into a foodstuff.
• "Oops, All Cherries" fruit cocktail.
• Fruit cocktail manufacturers A/B testing cherry ratios.
• Liking maraschino cherries because they're delicious.
• Hating maraschino cherries because you hate almonds.
• Maraschino cherries being flavored with almond extract because cherry pits are toxic.
• Solving the murder and it was almond extract all along.
• Star inflation in Guitar Hero.
• Getting 40 stars being way better than your piddly 5 stars.
• Not being able to release this episode because the information in it is too dangerous.
• Big Breakfast inventing breakfast to sell more breakfast.
• Being confused when someone eats lunch for dinner.
• Breakfast looming so large in our minds because what counts a breakfast food is so heavily policed.
• Drinking a smoothie and being like "what would be the ultimate smoothie?"
• Saving your smoothie for last because it'll be the best one.
• Refusing to put fruit juice in your fruit smoothie.
• The tipping point at which your smoothie stops being a smoothie and stops being a sorbet.
• Taking any cuisine and reimagining the fast food industry around it.
• The manifold advantages of hamburgers.
• Making chicken tikka masala portable by putting it in a samosa.
• Making chicken tikka masala portable by running it through a food processor with naan and drinking it through a boba straw.
• Mainlining chicken tikka masala through a one-inch boba straw.
• Participating in religious ceremonies while not believing in them or knowing how they work.
• Using a small child as an excuse to go to every church.
• Trying to use a small dog as an excuse to go to every church but the churches not being super into dogs.
• Using a small child as an excuse to do things you'd otherwise be too lazy to do.
• Not knowing how to take communion and the guy with the piece of bread just shaking his head sadly at you.
• Kneeling perfectly still for two hours in a Shinto ceremony and then suddenly having to get up and come forward and falling into the person behind you because your legs had fallen asleep.
• Americans not really knowing how to squat either.
• Hanukkah being always the same day on the Jewish calendar but being a roving day on the Gregorian calendar.
• Not having any particular bad experiences with organized religion but thinking it's more trouble than it's worth.
• Secular churches for atheists who miss the community of church.
• Americans becoming atheist and eventually having to figure out how to get back what they lost when they abandoned religion.
• The nuclear family only having been invented after World War 2.
• Looking fondly on living in a dorm because you were living with a bunch of friends.
• Living with a bunch of friends and everybody looking at you funny even though that's how humanity lived for most of its existence.
• Avoiding groups because you're frustrated by group-think.
• Accepting that a little bit of group-think isn't the end of the world.
• Having a good one-on-one relationship with your wife and then ruining it by adding a kid.
• Feeling like a boomer because you don't understand how your friends use emojis.
• Adding a meta chat room where you try to figure out what the regular chat room is trying to say.
• The chick hatching out of an egg emoji meaning "oh that's cute" but the deer emoji meaning "oh dear that's concerning" and the hatching chick with antlers emoji meaning "that's cute but also concerning."
• The compromise between efficiency of communication and the difficulty of learning your new language.
• Making your shower curtain out of chainmail.
• A shower curtain with an image of what is exactly behind the shower curtain.
• Having a clear shower curtain so you can see if there's a murderer in the shower without opening the curtain.
• A clear shower curtain with a tuxedo body on it so you can take selfies that look like you wear a tux in the shower.
• A motorized showing curtain with all the books you don't have time to read printed on them.
• Not being able to wash your hair because you have to keep reading.
• Allowing your guest lord to be a topic lady.
• Not remembering the catchphrase.