289. It's Pronounced VRML

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May 5th, 2025

1 hr 6 mins 59 secs

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About this Episode

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.
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