web01.fireside.fm Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:37:41 -0500 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Topic Lords - Episodes Tagged with “John” https://topiclords.com/tags/john Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -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 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. yes Jim Stormdancer jim@goombas.org 308B. Oops, All Microtopics! https://topiclords.com/oops-all-microtopics 0f60c5af-00fd-4aee-9709-7a906880c83c Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 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 yes 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

]]> 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 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 yes Lords: * John * Avery * Jay Topics: * Being known for one thing and trying to do a different thing * https://jtholen.bandcamp.com/album/new-active-object * Finding instruments on the street * Accidentally arguing with sauna guy 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

]]> 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 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 yes The video of Charles Martinet puppeteering Mario around the screen: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyezQsI-v-s 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 * https://allpoetry.com/Pad,-Pad * 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

]]> 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 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 yes Lords: * John * Tyriq * https://oddobject.zone/ Topics: * "Is it harder with twins than with one?" "I wouldn't know." * Would it be neat or terrible to live on a supercontinent * That 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 * https://cih.ucsd.edu/sites/cih.ucsd.edu/files/cfm/When%20I%20am%20among%20the%20Trees%20by%20Mary%20Oliver.pdf * Dippin' Dots except each dot is a tiny burger 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

]]> 267. Unburying the Duck https://topiclords.com/unburying-the-duck 4a86a57b-e574-4fcc-b9ca-b8a4c20cd52f Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800 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 yes Lords: * John * Erica Topics: * Golden owl pre-post-mortem * https://goldenowlhunt.com/ * Twin update: one year later * Notepad has support for alternative line endings now * Goodnight Moon (And/or Goodnight Dune?) * https://www.firstcry.com/intelli/articles/goodnight-moon-nursery-rhyme/ 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

]]> 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 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 yes Lords: * Alex * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSjSkaBRD7k&list=PLBk6-z6v3pDKi3Q-9MeqUfupJswozircH&index=7 * John Topics: * That time I spent 4 days fasting in the woods * Twins! Coming soon! Ahhhhh! * The Zelda 1 second quest * https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/806592-now-the-world-has-gone-to-bed-darkness-won-t-engulf 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

]]> 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 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 yes Lords: * John * JohnB Topics: * The word "juxtapose" seemed hyperspecific and esoteric when I first learned it in school, but has proven incredibly common and useful * Farewell to Cheap Bots Done Quick and the tens of thousands benevolent Twitter bots it powered: * https://twitter.com/v21/status/1643932890105884673 * Temple of Apshai's manual * https://fogknife.com/2023-05-31-the-book-of-apshai-a-personal-exegesis-.html * "Seen and Not Seen" by Talking Heads * https://genius.com/Talking-heads-seen-and-not-seen-lyrics * The new Zelda game several weeks in feels like the phase of a Civilization game where much, but not all, of the world has been revealed 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

]]> 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 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 yes 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

]]> 169. Topicless https://topiclords.com/topicless 0f6097a4-73cf-436c-8e36-30503e78c4dd Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 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 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John * robohunkx on Twitter, robohunk on most social media platforms * Tim * Jamestown+ * The Pathless * https://github.com/westquote/squidtasks 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 * https://topiclords.com/articles/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

]]> 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 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 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Hallie * https://twitter.com/Hallie_9000/ * John * https://twitter.com/robohunkx Topics: * 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 * Youtube streams movies now, and they have comments * Canterbury Tales General Prologue, by Geoffrey Chaucer * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43926/the-canterbury-tales-general-prologue 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

]]> 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 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 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John * https://twitter.com/robohunkx * https://twitter.com/AshbyBrewery/ * April * https://www.instagram.com/midnightgardenstitchery/ Topics: * Playing Grand Theft Auto 5 because I miss hiking in California * Embroidery * Jokes that three year olds tell * Moondrop's Tale * https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6h1_gLGH7hDy3uhWpLtqapbpRqVFkawAbQ1ywVEu4E/edit * Skeleton Jelly: https://imgur.com/lbIoX * Survivor * https://survivingtribal.com/2017/08/04/survivor-flashback-friday-survivor-gabon-gif-end-gifs/ * Excluding certain topics from my Twitter recommendations has never been harder (and also: trying to understand why Russell Crowe keeps showing up in the "suggested posts" of the AshbyBrewery account) 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

]]> 79. Loose Meat Krispie Treats https://topiclords.com/loose-meat-krispie-treats 00d8b75f-ef35-448e-9320-e9322a673641 Mon, 26 Apr 2021 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Alex. We discuss Blaseball: the Musical, keeping the spirit of invention alive, mixing things into ground turkey, As Slow As Possible, existing outside the school system, and the experience of getting glasses. 1:16:07 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John Bettonville * https://twitter.com/robohunkx * Alex Diener * https://twitter.com/ThemsAllTook Topics: * Blaseball: the Musical * https://blaseballthemusical.com * https://blaseballpodcast.com * https://catacalypto.substack.com * https://blandcamp.com * https://medium.com/the-game-bland/shell-your-idols-blaseball-and-the-attention-economy-74037293776e * Keeping the spirit of invention alive * A couple weeks ago I made turkey burgers with shredded zucchini mixed in and it was great. Today I mixed in shredded cheese too, and now I'm convinced I could mix anything in and it'd be great. * https://imgur.com/Q7B5JkS * Miko asks "do you know about As Slow As Possible or should I put it in the Topic Bucket" * As Slow as Possible as Fast as Possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5-Yo328Rp4 * Indeterminacy: https://youtu.be/lOMHUrgMs * Existing completely outside the school system * Peter Gray on How Our Schools Thwart Passions: https://www.ted.com/talks/petergrayhowourschoolsthwartpassions * Glasses: getting them for the first time as an adult vs when you were younger Microtopics: * A modern take on Lunar Lander. * Flying a rocket ship underwater. * John Mystery's true identity. * The true identity of the investigator who uncovered John Mystery's true identity. * Blaseball: the Musical: the Deaths of Sebastian Telephone. * Whether it's okay to not be the most obsessed participant in your chosen fandom. * Take Me Out to the Blall Game. * Writing, recording and editing a musical in 72 hours. * Screaming about how Jessica Telephone looked at you. * The pros and cons of being cagey about your identity. * The ten most interesting things that happened in Blaseball this week. * Newsletters: the podcast that comes into your email. * The pros and cons of reinventing the wheel. * A non-destructive audio synthesizer that integrates into your makefile. * Writing the simplest version of a program that's exactly what you need vs. learning how to use someone else's complicated program that does all the things anyone could want. * Reinventing the wheel to learn how a wheel works. * Passing variously aggregated files back and forth between R and Python scripts. * NPM as exhibit A in the argument that maybe it's a good idea to reinvent the wheel sometimes. * Relying on a thousand strangers not breaking their NPM module so that your commercial web site can keep running. * Perpetually living in fear of the enormous arcane machine you've created. * Rice Krispie Treat Burgers. * The hidden dangers of putting diced onion in your meat loaf. * Ingredients blending into a homogenous mass. * Sweet Sundae Ramen. * Homemade fudge vs hot fudge. * A food dish that looks like something tasty. * A brown sludge at the end. * Whether this noodley carb would look more appetizing if it weren't dyed blue. * Adapting a 4chan cooking thread into a Youtube channel with MST3K style silhouettes heckling the whole time. * Shipping your symphony with instructions on how to remix it. * Indeterminacy. * Observing someone across the street when cars are passing by. * As Slow as Possible As Fast as Possible. * Basing the tempo of your performance on the wavelength of the shortest note in the piece. * Not knowing what to expect but being thoroughly satisfied by what you got. * Homeschooling vs. Unschooling. * A very positive thing for you that might not be great for other people. * Wanting to be a baker when you grow up but not knowing how to proceed because you already are a baker. * Learning by doing. * The correlation between people who like the structure of school and who people learn best by reading rather than doing. * The first person in your family to not be homeschooled. * Learning to play music because there are instruments in your house. * Growing up outside the school system and encountering the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time in your thirties. * Sending your homeschooled kids to high school so all their little personality quirks get beaten out of them by their peers. * Everyone American diagnosed with PTSD actually having PTSD twice, because they also went to middle school. * Learning how to deal with other humans once you're mature enough to have a little bit of emotional intelligence. * Embarrassment of your past self as a sign of growth. * A topic asking for the perspective of someone who is not on the podcast. * Getting glasses that make objects in your left eye look farther away than in your right eye. * Radially-oriented bifocals. * Finally achieving everyone else's normal. * Putting up with blurry vision for most of your life but wearing glasses when you hike because you want to see all the pretty leaves. * Putting on someone else's glasses as a joke but things do actually look a little bit sharper but assuming it's just an illusion. * Thinking you have normal vision until someone actually measures your corneas. * Swimming at the edges of your vision because lenses work best in the middle. * Wearing glasses that flip your vision vertically and your brain eventually learning to correct for it, and then taking the glasses off and your brain is like "oh shit it's this again!" * The thing where you put a mirror under your chin and walk around and the popcorn on the ceiling looks like the surface of the moon. * Objects shrinking every time you get new glasses. * Objectively measuring your perception by sticking a tape measure into your brain. * Writing one really excellent tweet and then hiding it behind a bunch of tweets promoting the musical you were in. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A modern take on Lunar Lander.
  • Flying a rocket ship underwater.
  • John Mystery's true identity.
  • The true identity of the investigator who uncovered John Mystery's true identity.
  • Blaseball: the Musical: the Deaths of Sebastian Telephone.
  • Whether it's okay to not be the most obsessed participant in your chosen fandom.
  • Take Me Out to the Blall Game.
  • Writing, recording and editing a musical in 72 hours.
  • Screaming about how Jessica Telephone looked at you.
  • The pros and cons of being cagey about your identity.
  • The ten most interesting things that happened in Blaseball this week.
  • Newsletters: the podcast that comes into your email.
  • The pros and cons of reinventing the wheel.
  • A non-destructive audio synthesizer that integrates into your makefile.
  • Writing the simplest version of a program that's exactly what you need vs. learning how to use someone else's complicated program that does all the things anyone could want.
  • Reinventing the wheel to learn how a wheel works.
  • Passing variously aggregated files back and forth between R and Python scripts.
  • NPM as exhibit A in the argument that maybe it's a good idea to reinvent the wheel sometimes.
  • Relying on a thousand strangers not breaking their NPM module so that your commercial web site can keep running.
  • Perpetually living in fear of the enormous arcane machine you've created.
  • Rice Krispie Treat Burgers.
  • The hidden dangers of putting diced onion in your meat loaf.
  • Ingredients blending into a homogenous mass.
  • Sweet Sundae Ramen.
  • Homemade fudge vs hot fudge.
  • A food dish that looks like something tasty.
  • A brown sludge at the end.
  • Whether this noodley carb would look more appetizing if it weren't dyed blue.
  • Adapting a 4chan cooking thread into a Youtube channel with MST3K style silhouettes heckling the whole time.
  • Shipping your symphony with instructions on how to remix it.
  • Indeterminacy.
  • Observing someone across the street when cars are passing by.
  • As Slow as Possible As Fast as Possible.
  • Basing the tempo of your performance on the wavelength of the shortest note in the piece.
  • Not knowing what to expect but being thoroughly satisfied by what you got.
  • Homeschooling vs. Unschooling.
  • A very positive thing for you that might not be great for other people.
  • Wanting to be a baker when you grow up but not knowing how to proceed because you already are a baker.
  • Learning by doing.
  • The correlation between people who like the structure of school and who people learn best by reading rather than doing.
  • The first person in your family to not be homeschooled.
  • Learning to play music because there are instruments in your house.
  • Growing up outside the school system and encountering the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time in your thirties.
  • Sending your homeschooled kids to high school so all their little personality quirks get beaten out of them by their peers.
  • Everyone American diagnosed with PTSD actually having PTSD twice, because they also went to middle school.
  • Learning how to deal with other humans once you're mature enough to have a little bit of emotional intelligence.
  • Embarrassment of your past self as a sign of growth.
  • A topic asking for the perspective of someone who is not on the podcast.
  • Getting glasses that make objects in your left eye look farther away than in your right eye.
  • Radially-oriented bifocals.
  • Finally achieving everyone else's normal.
  • Putting up with blurry vision for most of your life but wearing glasses when you hike because you want to see all the pretty leaves.
  • Putting on someone else's glasses as a joke but things do actually look a little bit sharper but assuming it's just an illusion.
  • Thinking you have normal vision until someone actually measures your corneas.
  • Swimming at the edges of your vision because lenses work best in the middle.
  • Wearing glasses that flip your vision vertically and your brain eventually learning to correct for it, and then taking the glasses off and your brain is like "oh shit it's this again!"
  • The thing where you put a mirror under your chin and walk around and the popcorn on the ceiling looks like the surface of the moon.
  • Objects shrinking every time you get new glasses.
  • Objectively measuring your perception by sticking a tape measure into your brain.
  • Writing one really excellent tweet and then hiding it behind a bunch of tweets promoting the musical you were in.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • A modern take on Lunar Lander.
  • Flying a rocket ship underwater.
  • John Mystery's true identity.
  • The true identity of the investigator who uncovered John Mystery's true identity.
  • Blaseball: the Musical: the Deaths of Sebastian Telephone.
  • Whether it's okay to not be the most obsessed participant in your chosen fandom.
  • Take Me Out to the Blall Game.
  • Writing, recording and editing a musical in 72 hours.
  • Screaming about how Jessica Telephone looked at you.
  • The pros and cons of being cagey about your identity.
  • The ten most interesting things that happened in Blaseball this week.
  • Newsletters: the podcast that comes into your email.
  • The pros and cons of reinventing the wheel.
  • A non-destructive audio synthesizer that integrates into your makefile.
  • Writing the simplest version of a program that's exactly what you need vs. learning how to use someone else's complicated program that does all the things anyone could want.
  • Reinventing the wheel to learn how a wheel works.
  • Passing variously aggregated files back and forth between R and Python scripts.
  • NPM as exhibit A in the argument that maybe it's a good idea to reinvent the wheel sometimes.
  • Relying on a thousand strangers not breaking their NPM module so that your commercial web site can keep running.
  • Perpetually living in fear of the enormous arcane machine you've created.
  • Rice Krispie Treat Burgers.
  • The hidden dangers of putting diced onion in your meat loaf.
  • Ingredients blending into a homogenous mass.
  • Sweet Sundae Ramen.
  • Homemade fudge vs hot fudge.
  • A food dish that looks like something tasty.
  • A brown sludge at the end.
  • Whether this noodley carb would look more appetizing if it weren't dyed blue.
  • Adapting a 4chan cooking thread into a Youtube channel with MST3K style silhouettes heckling the whole time.
  • Shipping your symphony with instructions on how to remix it.
  • Indeterminacy.
  • Observing someone across the street when cars are passing by.
  • As Slow as Possible As Fast as Possible.
  • Basing the tempo of your performance on the wavelength of the shortest note in the piece.
  • Not knowing what to expect but being thoroughly satisfied by what you got.
  • Homeschooling vs. Unschooling.
  • A very positive thing for you that might not be great for other people.
  • Wanting to be a baker when you grow up but not knowing how to proceed because you already are a baker.
  • Learning by doing.
  • The correlation between people who like the structure of school and who people learn best by reading rather than doing.
  • The first person in your family to not be homeschooled.
  • Learning to play music because there are instruments in your house.
  • Growing up outside the school system and encountering the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time in your thirties.
  • Sending your homeschooled kids to high school so all their little personality quirks get beaten out of them by their peers.
  • Everyone American diagnosed with PTSD actually having PTSD twice, because they also went to middle school.
  • Learning how to deal with other humans once you're mature enough to have a little bit of emotional intelligence.
  • Embarrassment of your past self as a sign of growth.
  • A topic asking for the perspective of someone who is not on the podcast.
  • Getting glasses that make objects in your left eye look farther away than in your right eye.
  • Radially-oriented bifocals.
  • Finally achieving everyone else's normal.
  • Putting up with blurry vision for most of your life but wearing glasses when you hike because you want to see all the pretty leaves.
  • Putting on someone else's glasses as a joke but things do actually look a little bit sharper but assuming it's just an illusion.
  • Thinking you have normal vision until someone actually measures your corneas.
  • Swimming at the edges of your vision because lenses work best in the middle.
  • Wearing glasses that flip your vision vertically and your brain eventually learning to correct for it, and then taking the glasses off and your brain is like "oh shit it's this again!"
  • The thing where you put a mirror under your chin and walk around and the popcorn on the ceiling looks like the surface of the moon.
  • Objects shrinking every time you get new glasses.
  • Objectively measuring your perception by sticking a tape measure into your brain.
  • Writing one really excellent tweet and then hiding it behind a bunch of tweets promoting the musical you were in.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 64. Going Out for Tacos In Germany https://topiclords.com/going-out-for-tacos-in-germany 6b7355c1-40c6-4b4a-b4d9-a8bbd8cbf8ca Mon, 11 Jan 2021 08:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: John and Jay. Topics: caring more about news about a thing than the thing itself, saying funny lines from movies, the Terminator 2 soundtrack and the Fairlight CMI 3, the diminishing returns of each console generation, and delicious things we've made recently. 1:07:12 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John of the Maryland Johns * Jay of Hypnospace * http://www.hypnospace.net/ Topics: * When you're more interested in following news about things than the things themselves: When will the rumored The Cure albums come out? No Man's Sky updates. What is Josh Sawyer working on? * Realizing that your funny friend as a child was just repeating lines from HBO comedy specials that you weren't allowed to watch. * The Terminator 2 soundtrack and the Fairlight CMI 3 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnpYowxlwsU * I couldn't find a source for the analog modeling synth running on a 60s mainframe, but I did find this example of early digital synthesis from 1961: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk * Fairlight is the name of a village in East Sussex, England. I could've sworn it was one of Santa's reindeer or something like that. * Kevin asks "The diminishing returns technologically with each passing console generation. For instance, NES to SNES was a massive leap, whereas you can barely distinguish ps4 games from ps5 games." * Adventures in cooking: share tales of delicious things you have made recently Microtopics: * A game about the old internet. * Figuring out who DMed John. * Doing better at a game than all the people who don't know that the game exists. * Searching things a lot when you're on the toilet. * Being more interested in news about the cure for COVID than about the cure itself. * The three rumored The Cure albums that have been teased for the past four years. * Identifying as someone who cares about video games long after you no longer have time to play video games. * The cultural event of Blaseball. * Whether you are less interested in things as you get older or if you just have less time. * Not buying a Raspberry Pi because you definitely don't have time to play with it. * Sitting two feet away from a 50 inch television and trying to get RetroArch working. * Buying a NES and SNES Classic but never actually playing the games. * Whether Bonk's Adventure is good in 2020. * Kanye West naming an album Turbo Grafx 16. * Naming your The Beatles tribute band The Beatles. * Being exposed to Monty Python primarily by your friends who constantly quote lines out of context. * Finally watching Monty Python and realizing your funny friend has never made an original joke in his life. * Friends who communicate solely in movie one liners. * Making friends with a kid who always says lines from Duke Nukem 3D and learning to say them yourself even though you've never heard of Duke Nukem. * Whether anyone actually knew what Cornholio actually was. * The abject cultural domination of Beavis and Butthead. * Whether or not the listeners will want to know what a ROMpler is. * A $60,000 industrial-strength sampler/synthesizer in your garage. * Playing naturalistic orchestral samples at unnaturally low playback speeds. * A terrifying grindy klaxon sound. * An unstoppable liquid metal monster with a jaunty soundtrack. * Supercomputers producing digital audio in not real time. * The Mellotron. * The brass hit sample used in Owner of a Lonely Heart. * Whether Fairlight the warez group has any relation to Fairlight the synthesizer company. * Emulating the crustiness of the Fairlight CMI. * Where to find all the samples that came built-in to the Fairlight CMI. * Audible frowns. * Just throwing polygons at the rasterizer. * Being clever and squeezing every last drop of performance out of the new consoles and it still doesn't look that much better. * The visual quality of a console you grew up playing being acceptable forever. * Noticing the hottest new game graphics for fifteen minutes and after that you're just playing a video game again. * How we could be up to the NES 6 or the Wii U by now. * Playing Wii Sports and not noticing or caring that the Wii can play other games. * Completely ignoring F2P games until one of your relatives turns out to be susceptible to gambling addiction. * How Nintendo spent the Breath of the Wild budget. * Shielding your eyes when you see a map because you don't want to know too much about the world. * Which Breath of the Wild HUD modes include a compass. * Stuffed mushrooms. * The only recipe that your family makes literally every Thanksgiving. * Making a tray of stuffed mushrooms where the seasoning is different on every mushroom. * A Delicious Chore. * Eggs on toast with remoulade. * The default thing you put on a sandwich. * Espresso machine eggs. * The hypothetical standalone steamer arm. * Promising to not promote anyone's Kickstarter. * What Jim will do with a sharp knife if he gets one for Christmas. * Putting a salmon in the fridge until it desiccates. * Whether scales are a kind of skin. * Knowing you really ought to eat fish. * Putting cabbage in the oven until it's melted cabbage. * Two people who are the same height but one looks taller because their legs are longer. * Dog content on this podcast. * Allowing both pronunciations of Jay's name. * Katie content on this podcast. * A baby becoming a person after basically being a potato for a while. * John's one (1) tweet. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • When you're more interested in following news about things than the things themselves: When will the rumored The Cure albums come out? No Man's Sky updates. What is Josh Sawyer working on?
  • Realizing that your funny friend as a child was just repeating lines from HBO comedy specials that you weren't allowed to watch.
  • The Terminator 2 soundtrack and the Fairlight CMI 3
  • Kevin asks "The diminishing returns technologically with each passing console generation. For instance, NES to SNES was a massive leap, whereas you can barely distinguish ps4 games from ps5 games."
  • Adventures in cooking: share tales of delicious things you have made recently

Microtopics:

  • A game about the old internet.
  • Figuring out who DMed John.
  • Doing better at a game than all the people who don't know that the game exists.
  • Searching things a lot when you're on the toilet.
  • Being more interested in news about the cure for COVID than about the cure itself.
  • The three rumored The Cure albums that have been teased for the past four years.
  • Identifying as someone who cares about video games long after you no longer have time to play video games.
  • The cultural event of Blaseball.
  • Whether you are less interested in things as you get older or if you just have less time.
  • Not buying a Raspberry Pi because you definitely don't have time to play with it.
  • Sitting two feet away from a 50 inch television and trying to get RetroArch working.
  • Buying a NES and SNES Classic but never actually playing the games.
  • Whether Bonk's Adventure is good in 2020.
  • Kanye West naming an album Turbo Grafx 16.
  • Naming your The Beatles tribute band The Beatles.
  • Being exposed to Monty Python primarily by your friends who constantly quote lines out of context.
  • Finally watching Monty Python and realizing your funny friend has never made an original joke in his life.
  • Friends who communicate solely in movie one liners.
  • Making friends with a kid who always says lines from Duke Nukem 3D and learning to say them yourself even though you've never heard of Duke Nukem.
  • Whether anyone actually knew what Cornholio actually was.
  • The abject cultural domination of Beavis and Butthead.
  • Whether or not the listeners will want to know what a ROMpler is.
  • A $60,000 industrial-strength sampler/synthesizer in your garage.
  • Playing naturalistic orchestral samples at unnaturally low playback speeds.
  • A terrifying grindy klaxon sound.
  • An unstoppable liquid metal monster with a jaunty soundtrack.
  • Supercomputers producing digital audio in not real time.
  • The Mellotron.
  • The brass hit sample used in Owner of a Lonely Heart.
  • Whether Fairlight the warez group has any relation to Fairlight the synthesizer company.
  • Emulating the crustiness of the Fairlight CMI.
  • Where to find all the samples that came built-in to the Fairlight CMI.
  • Audible frowns.
  • Just throwing polygons at the rasterizer.
  • Being clever and squeezing every last drop of performance out of the new consoles and it still doesn't look that much better.
  • The visual quality of a console you grew up playing being acceptable forever.
  • Noticing the hottest new game graphics for fifteen minutes and after that you're just playing a video game again.
  • How we could be up to the NES 6 or the Wii U by now.
  • Playing Wii Sports and not noticing or caring that the Wii can play other games.
  • Completely ignoring F2P games until one of your relatives turns out to be susceptible to gambling addiction.
  • How Nintendo spent the Breath of the Wild budget.
  • Shielding your eyes when you see a map because you don't want to know too much about the world.
  • Which Breath of the Wild HUD modes include a compass.
  • Stuffed mushrooms.
  • The only recipe that your family makes literally every Thanksgiving.
  • Making a tray of stuffed mushrooms where the seasoning is different on every mushroom.
  • A Delicious Chore.
  • Eggs on toast with remoulade.
  • The default thing you put on a sandwich.
  • Espresso machine eggs.
  • The hypothetical standalone steamer arm.
  • Promising to not promote anyone's Kickstarter.
  • What Jim will do with a sharp knife if he gets one for Christmas.
  • Putting a salmon in the fridge until it desiccates.
  • Whether scales are a kind of skin.
  • Knowing you really ought to eat fish.
  • Putting cabbage in the oven until it's melted cabbage.
  • Two people who are the same height but one looks taller because their legs are longer.
  • Dog content on this podcast.
  • Allowing both pronunciations of Jay's name.
  • Katie content on this podcast.
  • A baby becoming a person after basically being a potato for a while.
  • John's one (1) tweet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • When you're more interested in following news about things than the things themselves: When will the rumored The Cure albums come out? No Man's Sky updates. What is Josh Sawyer working on?
  • Realizing that your funny friend as a child was just repeating lines from HBO comedy specials that you weren't allowed to watch.
  • The Terminator 2 soundtrack and the Fairlight CMI 3
  • Kevin asks "The diminishing returns technologically with each passing console generation. For instance, NES to SNES was a massive leap, whereas you can barely distinguish ps4 games from ps5 games."
  • Adventures in cooking: share tales of delicious things you have made recently

Microtopics:

  • A game about the old internet.
  • Figuring out who DMed John.
  • Doing better at a game than all the people who don't know that the game exists.
  • Searching things a lot when you're on the toilet.
  • Being more interested in news about the cure for COVID than about the cure itself.
  • The three rumored The Cure albums that have been teased for the past four years.
  • Identifying as someone who cares about video games long after you no longer have time to play video games.
  • The cultural event of Blaseball.
  • Whether you are less interested in things as you get older or if you just have less time.
  • Not buying a Raspberry Pi because you definitely don't have time to play with it.
  • Sitting two feet away from a 50 inch television and trying to get RetroArch working.
  • Buying a NES and SNES Classic but never actually playing the games.
  • Whether Bonk's Adventure is good in 2020.
  • Kanye West naming an album Turbo Grafx 16.
  • Naming your The Beatles tribute band The Beatles.
  • Being exposed to Monty Python primarily by your friends who constantly quote lines out of context.
  • Finally watching Monty Python and realizing your funny friend has never made an original joke in his life.
  • Friends who communicate solely in movie one liners.
  • Making friends with a kid who always says lines from Duke Nukem 3D and learning to say them yourself even though you've never heard of Duke Nukem.
  • Whether anyone actually knew what Cornholio actually was.
  • The abject cultural domination of Beavis and Butthead.
  • Whether or not the listeners will want to know what a ROMpler is.
  • A $60,000 industrial-strength sampler/synthesizer in your garage.
  • Playing naturalistic orchestral samples at unnaturally low playback speeds.
  • A terrifying grindy klaxon sound.
  • An unstoppable liquid metal monster with a jaunty soundtrack.
  • Supercomputers producing digital audio in not real time.
  • The Mellotron.
  • The brass hit sample used in Owner of a Lonely Heart.
  • Whether Fairlight the warez group has any relation to Fairlight the synthesizer company.
  • Emulating the crustiness of the Fairlight CMI.
  • Where to find all the samples that came built-in to the Fairlight CMI.
  • Audible frowns.
  • Just throwing polygons at the rasterizer.
  • Being clever and squeezing every last drop of performance out of the new consoles and it still doesn't look that much better.
  • The visual quality of a console you grew up playing being acceptable forever.
  • Noticing the hottest new game graphics for fifteen minutes and after that you're just playing a video game again.
  • How we could be up to the NES 6 or the Wii U by now.
  • Playing Wii Sports and not noticing or caring that the Wii can play other games.
  • Completely ignoring F2P games until one of your relatives turns out to be susceptible to gambling addiction.
  • How Nintendo spent the Breath of the Wild budget.
  • Shielding your eyes when you see a map because you don't want to know too much about the world.
  • Which Breath of the Wild HUD modes include a compass.
  • Stuffed mushrooms.
  • The only recipe that your family makes literally every Thanksgiving.
  • Making a tray of stuffed mushrooms where the seasoning is different on every mushroom.
  • A Delicious Chore.
  • Eggs on toast with remoulade.
  • The default thing you put on a sandwich.
  • Espresso machine eggs.
  • The hypothetical standalone steamer arm.
  • Promising to not promote anyone's Kickstarter.
  • What Jim will do with a sharp knife if he gets one for Christmas.
  • Putting a salmon in the fridge until it desiccates.
  • Whether scales are a kind of skin.
  • Knowing you really ought to eat fish.
  • Putting cabbage in the oven until it's melted cabbage.
  • Two people who are the same height but one looks taller because their legs are longer.
  • Dog content on this podcast.
  • Allowing both pronunciations of Jay's name.
  • Katie content on this podcast.
  • A baby becoming a person after basically being a potato for a while.
  • John's one (1) tweet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 49. A Very Wet Hell https://topiclords.com/a-very-wet-hell e9505236-aa26-4174-b592-ebc60ccf45ba Mon, 28 Sep 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: April and John. Topics: climate-aware architecture, focusing on characters vs. story, why we say "ahh" after drinking, perpetual stew and laws and customs differing in different places. 1:08:00 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * April is @aprilsaur on Twitter. * John remains a mystery. Topics: * Climate-aware architecture * https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1013941701293928449 * https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/ * On Dungeons & Dragons: focusing on the characters vs focusing on the story * Why do people say "ahh" after taking a drink * https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/special-shows/the-mystery-hour/human-body/why-do-people-say-ahh-after-finishing-a-drink/ * Miko asks: "Perpetual Stew, a food that instead of being cooked once and then eaten, continues to be cooked for up to five hundred years (while occasionally also being eaten, but not in its entirety)" * That strange feeling when you move to a new state and the laws around plastic bags are different, and other weird differences between places * The Afghan-Mexican fusion burrito shop in Albany that we didn't name on the podcast: https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-hot-shop/Location?oid=1113434 * You want the "tropical" or the "cajun," depending on how spicy you like it. Microtopics: * Seasons that aren't summer and states that aren't California. * John of the Commonwealth of Virginia Johns. * Calling yourself a Commonwealther but not knowing all the deep Commonwealth cuts. * Not having a city name because you're between cities and so calling yourself a "census designated place." * An experience that you had that is in the past. * Plugging a suspiciously expensive hat that players love. * Not being able to have hobbies because you just bought a house. * California, where it's sunny for hundreds of years and then suddenly a thunderstorm covers the entire state in tens of thousands of lightning strikes. * Not having to get your home repairs done before people visit because nobody can ever visit. * The good news is: podcasting. * Not having had a basement in decades. * Discovering that Virgina is a tiny piece of a giant land mass called North America. * Buying the Frog Fractions hat DLC for all your friends. * An extremely Californian form of hell. * Architects forgetting that climate exists after air conditioning is invented. * Fantasizing about winning the lottery when you never play the lottery. * The downside of climate control via architecture. * The feeling of tatami mats under your feet. * Realizing that having bugs in your floor sometimes is just the price you pay for having floor mats that bugs like to live in. * The tortilla mouse story. * Discovering that a mouse is living in your bag of tortillas and signing a contract with the mouse that it will just eat the tortillas and not destroy the rest of your house or breed. * Cats discovering extremely stale candy in the cabinet under the sink. * A squirrel spinning a corn tortilla like a steering wheel and eating it from the outside in. * A squirrel spinning a tortilla like a sign spinner. * Joining a D&D campaign late. * Knowing what your characters are about and creating situations where the characters have something to play against. * Making sure your players have stakes in the story being told. * A dope encounter on a luxury liner where you have to follow a bard with an anti-magic field. * A D&D campaign where all the players just hang out and eat Doritos. * Crafting a narrative by building outwards from a single dramatic moment. * Not knowing anything about the company you own half of. * The mystery of the Ultraviolet City. * Collaboratively inventing a story with your friends. * Having a beverage with you and being able to test a beverage hypothesis. * The sensation of a little bit of cool air passing over the various nerve endings in the inner mouth area. * Whether pooping is a social construct. * A two year old fixating on the color of Pepsi. * Tripping out on your own sensory experience. * Some real good honest mischief. * Taking a deeper breath so you can drink more. * Getting out the whiteboard to teach your infant son how to drink and belch. * A gentle sweet boy forcibly closing your laptop so you'll pay attention to him. * Perpetual stool, which also hangs around for 500 years. * Living for as long as you can keep the stew going. * Being caretaker for a stew that is 300 years older than you. * Making sure you eat all the meat out of your stew before it goes bad and spoils the rest of the stew. * Filling your house with the smell of fresh baked bread. * A bread recipe where you just put all the ingredients in a pan and then bake it. * A gradient of cheese. * Broccoli with horrible stinky cheese melted on top. * Jumping on any excuse to make an elaborate ridiculous meal. * Visiting your friends in Virginia but never talking to them because of COVID. * Going ballistic whenever you see a deer. * Making everyone sign an NDA before they can listen to this episode of your podcast. * Some sort of palace of food. * Two grocery bags being filled before you even realize what's happening. * Stipulating that the burrito rant has occurred. * Differing vehicle registration laws in Virginia and California. * Running a bunch of stop signs because they don't write the word "stop" on the ground in Portland, they only have the red sign. * How to proceed with the ARG when you believe you've solved the mystery of John's identity. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • April is @aprilsaur on Twitter.
  • John remains a mystery.

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Seasons that aren't summer and states that aren't California.
  • John of the Commonwealth of Virginia Johns.
  • Calling yourself a Commonwealther but not knowing all the deep Commonwealth cuts.
  • Not having a city name because you're between cities and so calling yourself a "census designated place."
  • An experience that you had that is in the past.
  • Plugging a suspiciously expensive hat that players love.
  • Not being able to have hobbies because you just bought a house.
  • California, where it's sunny for hundreds of years and then suddenly a thunderstorm covers the entire state in tens of thousands of lightning strikes.
  • Not having to get your home repairs done before people visit because nobody can ever visit.
  • The good news is: podcasting.
  • Not having had a basement in decades.
  • Discovering that Virgina is a tiny piece of a giant land mass called North America.
  • Buying the Frog Fractions hat DLC for all your friends.
  • An extremely Californian form of hell.
  • Architects forgetting that climate exists after air conditioning is invented.
  • Fantasizing about winning the lottery when you never play the lottery.
  • The downside of climate control via architecture.
  • The feeling of tatami mats under your feet.
  • Realizing that having bugs in your floor sometimes is just the price you pay for having floor mats that bugs like to live in.
  • The tortilla mouse story.
  • Discovering that a mouse is living in your bag of tortillas and signing a contract with the mouse that it will just eat the tortillas and not destroy the rest of your house or breed.
  • Cats discovering extremely stale candy in the cabinet under the sink.
  • A squirrel spinning a corn tortilla like a steering wheel and eating it from the outside in.
  • A squirrel spinning a tortilla like a sign spinner.
  • Joining a D&D campaign late.
  • Knowing what your characters are about and creating situations where the characters have something to play against.
  • Making sure your players have stakes in the story being told.
  • A dope encounter on a luxury liner where you have to follow a bard with an anti-magic field.
  • A D&D campaign where all the players just hang out and eat Doritos.
  • Crafting a narrative by building outwards from a single dramatic moment.
  • Not knowing anything about the company you own half of.
  • The mystery of the Ultraviolet City.
  • Collaboratively inventing a story with your friends.
  • Having a beverage with you and being able to test a beverage hypothesis.
  • The sensation of a little bit of cool air passing over the various nerve endings in the inner mouth area.
  • Whether pooping is a social construct.
  • A two year old fixating on the color of Pepsi.
  • Tripping out on your own sensory experience.
  • Some real good honest mischief.
  • Taking a deeper breath so you can drink more.
  • Getting out the whiteboard to teach your infant son how to drink and belch.
  • A gentle sweet boy forcibly closing your laptop so you'll pay attention to him.
  • Perpetual stool, which also hangs around for 500 years.
  • Living for as long as you can keep the stew going.
  • Being caretaker for a stew that is 300 years older than you.
  • Making sure you eat all the meat out of your stew before it goes bad and spoils the rest of the stew.
  • Filling your house with the smell of fresh baked bread.
  • A bread recipe where you just put all the ingredients in a pan and then bake it.
  • A gradient of cheese.
  • Broccoli with horrible stinky cheese melted on top.
  • Jumping on any excuse to make an elaborate ridiculous meal.
  • Visiting your friends in Virginia but never talking to them because of COVID.
  • Going ballistic whenever you see a deer.
  • Making everyone sign an NDA before they can listen to this episode of your podcast.
  • Some sort of palace of food.
  • Two grocery bags being filled before you even realize what's happening.
  • Stipulating that the burrito rant has occurred.
  • Differing vehicle registration laws in Virginia and California.
  • Running a bunch of stop signs because they don't write the word "stop" on the ground in Portland, they only have the red sign.
  • How to proceed with the ARG when you believe you've solved the mystery of John's identity.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • April is @aprilsaur on Twitter.
  • John remains a mystery.

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Seasons that aren't summer and states that aren't California.
  • John of the Commonwealth of Virginia Johns.
  • Calling yourself a Commonwealther but not knowing all the deep Commonwealth cuts.
  • Not having a city name because you're between cities and so calling yourself a "census designated place."
  • An experience that you had that is in the past.
  • Plugging a suspiciously expensive hat that players love.
  • Not being able to have hobbies because you just bought a house.
  • California, where it's sunny for hundreds of years and then suddenly a thunderstorm covers the entire state in tens of thousands of lightning strikes.
  • Not having to get your home repairs done before people visit because nobody can ever visit.
  • The good news is: podcasting.
  • Not having had a basement in decades.
  • Discovering that Virgina is a tiny piece of a giant land mass called North America.
  • Buying the Frog Fractions hat DLC for all your friends.
  • An extremely Californian form of hell.
  • Architects forgetting that climate exists after air conditioning is invented.
  • Fantasizing about winning the lottery when you never play the lottery.
  • The downside of climate control via architecture.
  • The feeling of tatami mats under your feet.
  • Realizing that having bugs in your floor sometimes is just the price you pay for having floor mats that bugs like to live in.
  • The tortilla mouse story.
  • Discovering that a mouse is living in your bag of tortillas and signing a contract with the mouse that it will just eat the tortillas and not destroy the rest of your house or breed.
  • Cats discovering extremely stale candy in the cabinet under the sink.
  • A squirrel spinning a corn tortilla like a steering wheel and eating it from the outside in.
  • A squirrel spinning a tortilla like a sign spinner.
  • Joining a D&D campaign late.
  • Knowing what your characters are about and creating situations where the characters have something to play against.
  • Making sure your players have stakes in the story being told.
  • A dope encounter on a luxury liner where you have to follow a bard with an anti-magic field.
  • A D&D campaign where all the players just hang out and eat Doritos.
  • Crafting a narrative by building outwards from a single dramatic moment.
  • Not knowing anything about the company you own half of.
  • The mystery of the Ultraviolet City.
  • Collaboratively inventing a story with your friends.
  • Having a beverage with you and being able to test a beverage hypothesis.
  • The sensation of a little bit of cool air passing over the various nerve endings in the inner mouth area.
  • Whether pooping is a social construct.
  • A two year old fixating on the color of Pepsi.
  • Tripping out on your own sensory experience.
  • Some real good honest mischief.
  • Taking a deeper breath so you can drink more.
  • Getting out the whiteboard to teach your infant son how to drink and belch.
  • A gentle sweet boy forcibly closing your laptop so you'll pay attention to him.
  • Perpetual stool, which also hangs around for 500 years.
  • Living for as long as you can keep the stew going.
  • Being caretaker for a stew that is 300 years older than you.
  • Making sure you eat all the meat out of your stew before it goes bad and spoils the rest of the stew.
  • Filling your house with the smell of fresh baked bread.
  • A bread recipe where you just put all the ingredients in a pan and then bake it.
  • A gradient of cheese.
  • Broccoli with horrible stinky cheese melted on top.
  • Jumping on any excuse to make an elaborate ridiculous meal.
  • Visiting your friends in Virginia but never talking to them because of COVID.
  • Going ballistic whenever you see a deer.
  • Making everyone sign an NDA before they can listen to this episode of your podcast.
  • Some sort of palace of food.
  • Two grocery bags being filled before you even realize what's happening.
  • Stipulating that the burrito rant has occurred.
  • Differing vehicle registration laws in Virginia and California.
  • Running a bunch of stop signs because they don't write the word "stop" on the ground in Portland, they only have the red sign.
  • How to proceed with the ARG when you believe you've solved the mystery of John's identity.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 40. I'll Show Them... I'll Invent Superman! https://topiclords.com/ill-show-them-ill-invent-superman 83062bf2-17f4-4aa4-99ca-7f2d01273643 Mon, 27 Jul 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: John and Jesse. We discuss Canadian Heritage Minutes, working with people of a different skill level, 3D games being ugly, losing your old web sites, and the lost Willie Brown records. 1:11:27 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John * Biker Chicks Tier List. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1591151119 * Jesse * https://twitter.com/thefringthing Topics: * Canadian Heritage Minutes * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm * YouTube playlist of Heritage Minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCWANopglXI&list=PL1848FF9428CA9A4A * List of Heritage Minutes on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Minutes * What are your tips for collaborating with people with a higher or lower skill level than you? * Are we allowed to talk yet about how for decades all 3D games were incredibly ugly * https://twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/status/1247200134057717760 * The website I build in high school & college is lost to the ages, or: how to reconstruct memories of your past without external records * The lost Willie Brown records * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac * Willie Brown - Future Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An9rC8olaVY * "Grandma Blues" cover (prank?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9xhKLJbXs * PBS History Detectives episode about Paramount Records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKQbZV4lQk4 Microtopics: * Being a playable character in Frog Fractions 2. * Ranking every Biker Chick from worst to best. * Regretting not having more Canadian Lords on the show. * Still making your TV PSAs even though nobody watches TV any more. * The big robotic articulating arm on the space shuttles. * That time Quebec was going to quit Canada. * A group shot with one teen of every ethnicity and gender configuration. * Reenacting the time someone told the creator of Superman that nobody will care about Superman. * Canada's revolting safety PSAs. * Hanging maple syrup for treason. * The biggest man-made explosion prior to the invention of nuclear weapons. * Celebrating the people who people who became successful after leaving your country. * Trading on the low-key anti-Americanism that is part of the Canadian national identity. * Taking a 45 minute break to worship the military. * Deciding that an idea is important and jamming it into the brain of millions of people. * Doing your best to enjoy yourself even though you are the worst musician at this particular jam session. * The high pressure world of game jamming. * The anxiety of waiting to be picked for a sports team. * Trusting your collaborators. * Not being a mentor so much as a friend who is around to answer questions. * Feeling like you failed your tutoring student but he was pleased and passed his course, so probably it was fine. * The ongoing war between R programmers and Python programmers. * Making your favorite programming language tolerable by totally replacing the syntax. * The smoke effect in Super Mario 64 looking like the MS Paint graffiti tool. * Goldeneye slappy hands. * The difficulty of going back to the video games of the Ugly Period. * Playing old video games on an unreasonably large CRT TV that you can't move by yourself. * Using modern technology to remove the texture filtering from Nintendo 64 games. * Conditioning gamers to desire the next step in graphical realism. * An epic story with three CDs full of cutscenes. * The old movie connoisseurs who want to see only the best examples of terrible stilted 1940s acting. * Making a video game in the mid 00s and having to support both SD and HD aspect ratios. * Moving your web site from Geocities to a cooler hosting provider in France who then stops hosting web sites because of a change in French law. * A gap in your personal history where no written records exist because they were on the early internet. * Letting a web site expire because you built it on old technology that your hosting provider now charges extra to support. * A government form asking you to remember every place you've lived for the past fifteen years. * The threshold for memory sticking. * What we would do with our missing histories if we had them. * Allowing yourself to remember a period in your life and then putting it in deep storage. * The object as a record of a moment. * Dredging the river near the defunct Paramount Records factory in Wisconsin, in hopes of finding pre-war blues records. * Old blues music now being exclusively the province of rich white boomers. * Writing and recording a fake Willie Brown song to prank record collectors. * Recording blues albums so you can sell phonograph cabinets to Black folks who can finally afford nice things. * Your record company being unable to obtain shellac during World War 2, so you go back to making chairs. * Training a neural network on old blues records to recreate a song using the single shard of the shattered shellac record you found. * Finding shards of different shattered shellac records that happen to fit together, and mashing them up. * Digitizing LPs by putting them on a flatbed scanner. * That time a news broadcast showed the QR code of someone's Bitcoin wallet on screen and someone immediately emptied it. * Cutting a new key based on a photograph of someone's key ring, when it's way easier to just break a window. * Recovering ancient room ambience by analyzing the striation on ancient pottery. * Breaking a code by beating the decryption key out of somebody and not having to read any cryptanalysis white papers. * Putting fake information about yourself on Spokeo as part of your personal ARG. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being a playable character in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Ranking every Biker Chick from worst to best.
  • Regretting not having more Canadian Lords on the show.
  • Still making your TV PSAs even though nobody watches TV any more.
  • The big robotic articulating arm on the space shuttles.
  • That time Quebec was going to quit Canada.
  • A group shot with one teen of every ethnicity and gender configuration.
  • Reenacting the time someone told the creator of Superman that nobody will care about Superman.
  • Canada's revolting safety PSAs.
  • Hanging maple syrup for treason.
  • The biggest man-made explosion prior to the invention of nuclear weapons.
  • Celebrating the people who people who became successful after leaving your country.
  • Trading on the low-key anti-Americanism that is part of the Canadian national identity.
  • Taking a 45 minute break to worship the military.
  • Deciding that an idea is important and jamming it into the brain of millions of people.
  • Doing your best to enjoy yourself even though you are the worst musician at this particular jam session.
  • The high pressure world of game jamming.
  • The anxiety of waiting to be picked for a sports team.
  • Trusting your collaborators.
  • Not being a mentor so much as a friend who is around to answer questions.
  • Feeling like you failed your tutoring student but he was pleased and passed his course, so probably it was fine.
  • The ongoing war between R programmers and Python programmers.
  • Making your favorite programming language tolerable by totally replacing the syntax.
  • The smoke effect in Super Mario 64 looking like the MS Paint graffiti tool.
  • Goldeneye slappy hands.
  • The difficulty of going back to the video games of the Ugly Period.
  • Playing old video games on an unreasonably large CRT TV that you can't move by yourself.
  • Using modern technology to remove the texture filtering from Nintendo 64 games.
  • Conditioning gamers to desire the next step in graphical realism.
  • An epic story with three CDs full of cutscenes.
  • The old movie connoisseurs who want to see only the best examples of terrible stilted 1940s acting.
  • Making a video game in the mid 00s and having to support both SD and HD aspect ratios.
  • Moving your web site from Geocities to a cooler hosting provider in France who then stops hosting web sites because of a change in French law.
  • A gap in your personal history where no written records exist because they were on the early internet.
  • Letting a web site expire because you built it on old technology that your hosting provider now charges extra to support.
  • A government form asking you to remember every place you've lived for the past fifteen years.
  • The threshold for memory sticking.
  • What we would do with our missing histories if we had them.
  • Allowing yourself to remember a period in your life and then putting it in deep storage.
  • The object as a record of a moment.
  • Dredging the river near the defunct Paramount Records factory in Wisconsin, in hopes of finding pre-war blues records.
  • Old blues music now being exclusively the province of rich white boomers.
  • Writing and recording a fake Willie Brown song to prank record collectors.
  • Recording blues albums so you can sell phonograph cabinets to Black folks who can finally afford nice things.
  • Your record company being unable to obtain shellac during World War 2, so you go back to making chairs.
  • Training a neural network on old blues records to recreate a song using the single shard of the shattered shellac record you found.
  • Finding shards of different shattered shellac records that happen to fit together, and mashing them up.
  • Digitizing LPs by putting them on a flatbed scanner.
  • That time a news broadcast showed the QR code of someone's Bitcoin wallet on screen and someone immediately emptied it.
  • Cutting a new key based on a photograph of someone's key ring, when it's way easier to just break a window.
  • Recovering ancient room ambience by analyzing the striation on ancient pottery.
  • Breaking a code by beating the decryption key out of somebody and not having to read any cryptanalysis white papers.
  • Putting fake information about yourself on Spokeo as part of your personal ARG.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Being a playable character in Frog Fractions 2.
  • Ranking every Biker Chick from worst to best.
  • Regretting not having more Canadian Lords on the show.
  • Still making your TV PSAs even though nobody watches TV any more.
  • The big robotic articulating arm on the space shuttles.
  • That time Quebec was going to quit Canada.
  • A group shot with one teen of every ethnicity and gender configuration.
  • Reenacting the time someone told the creator of Superman that nobody will care about Superman.
  • Canada's revolting safety PSAs.
  • Hanging maple syrup for treason.
  • The biggest man-made explosion prior to the invention of nuclear weapons.
  • Celebrating the people who people who became successful after leaving your country.
  • Trading on the low-key anti-Americanism that is part of the Canadian national identity.
  • Taking a 45 minute break to worship the military.
  • Deciding that an idea is important and jamming it into the brain of millions of people.
  • Doing your best to enjoy yourself even though you are the worst musician at this particular jam session.
  • The high pressure world of game jamming.
  • The anxiety of waiting to be picked for a sports team.
  • Trusting your collaborators.
  • Not being a mentor so much as a friend who is around to answer questions.
  • Feeling like you failed your tutoring student but he was pleased and passed his course, so probably it was fine.
  • The ongoing war between R programmers and Python programmers.
  • Making your favorite programming language tolerable by totally replacing the syntax.
  • The smoke effect in Super Mario 64 looking like the MS Paint graffiti tool.
  • Goldeneye slappy hands.
  • The difficulty of going back to the video games of the Ugly Period.
  • Playing old video games on an unreasonably large CRT TV that you can't move by yourself.
  • Using modern technology to remove the texture filtering from Nintendo 64 games.
  • Conditioning gamers to desire the next step in graphical realism.
  • An epic story with three CDs full of cutscenes.
  • The old movie connoisseurs who want to see only the best examples of terrible stilted 1940s acting.
  • Making a video game in the mid 00s and having to support both SD and HD aspect ratios.
  • Moving your web site from Geocities to a cooler hosting provider in France who then stops hosting web sites because of a change in French law.
  • A gap in your personal history where no written records exist because they were on the early internet.
  • Letting a web site expire because you built it on old technology that your hosting provider now charges extra to support.
  • A government form asking you to remember every place you've lived for the past fifteen years.
  • The threshold for memory sticking.
  • What we would do with our missing histories if we had them.
  • Allowing yourself to remember a period in your life and then putting it in deep storage.
  • The object as a record of a moment.
  • Dredging the river near the defunct Paramount Records factory in Wisconsin, in hopes of finding pre-war blues records.
  • Old blues music now being exclusively the province of rich white boomers.
  • Writing and recording a fake Willie Brown song to prank record collectors.
  • Recording blues albums so you can sell phonograph cabinets to Black folks who can finally afford nice things.
  • Your record company being unable to obtain shellac during World War 2, so you go back to making chairs.
  • Training a neural network on old blues records to recreate a song using the single shard of the shattered shellac record you found.
  • Finding shards of different shattered shellac records that happen to fit together, and mashing them up.
  • Digitizing LPs by putting them on a flatbed scanner.
  • That time a news broadcast showed the QR code of someone's Bitcoin wallet on screen and someone immediately emptied it.
  • Cutting a new key based on a photograph of someone's key ring, when it's way easier to just break a window.
  • Recovering ancient room ambience by analyzing the striation on ancient pottery.
  • Breaking a code by beating the decryption key out of somebody and not having to read any cryptanalysis white papers.
  • Putting fake information about yourself on Spokeo as part of your personal ARG.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 26. The Double Equilibrium Point of Water (For Fish) https://topiclords.com/the-double-equilibrium-point-of-water-for-fish b669131d-4276-4c46-9954-e5687455b51f Mon, 20 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: John and Nelson. We discuss falling into the sky, lonely kaiju, this cool Arkanoid TAS, warming up to doing creative work, a sentient dog digging up a graveyard, and experiencing FOMO about things you don't want to do. 1:11:53 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords * John Mystery lives in Maryland. https://googlethatforyou.com?q=john%20mystery%20maryland * Nelson is making An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs. * @WritNelson on Twitter. * https://www.patreon.com/StrangeScaffold * https://store.steampowered.com/app/1246250/AnAirportforAliensCurrentlyRunby_Dogs/ * https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/epic-pictures-launch-gaming-venture-1289270 Topics: * 6:15 My worst fear as an adolescent: gravity reverses while I am in the family car on the 110 and I am flung into the sky at 9.8m/s^2 * VVVVVV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf06P-1lkU * 15:31 Kaiju who should know each other, but don't. * I'm pretty sure the male description of the RBLD dating persona is actually suggesting you stop dating entirely. * The Wild Rose: https://web.archive.org/web/20141031024714/http://www.okcupid.com/personality?type=RBLD&g=0&o=1 * The Manchild: https://web.archive.org/web/20141024161727/http://www.okcupid.com/personality?type=RBLD&g=1&o=1 * 21:52 This Arkanoid TAS: * http://tasvideos.org/6347S.html * The "Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics" video has been taken down but here's the original blog post: https://msm.runhello.com/p/20 * And here's a similar video that gets the idea across. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIb2F7OLQJw * 30:39 Yuri asks: "I was wondering what you and your fellow lords do to warm up prior to getting started on some creative thing. Does it change comparing coding to making music, drawing, crocheting, etc.?" * Gunhouse, on sale on Switch for $1 until April 26th! https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/gunhouse-switch/ * (Also available on a bunch of other platforms.) * 47:21 Would a Cool Sentient Dog in a graveyard dig up the bodies? Would that make him the anti-caretaker? * Oiled Up Sax Guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1dY6OkPb7E * Interview with Oiled Up Sax Guy, who it turns out really did arrange and perform that cover. https://dangerousminds.net/comments/theinfamoussexysaxmanfromthelostboysstillstillbelievesachat_wi * https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/12/tumblr-users-are-talking-about-bone-stealing.html * 56:38 Experiencing FOMO about activities that you do not want to do Microtopics: * John of the Maryland Johns. * Ruining the show before it's really even started. * High fiving a friend from six feet away using your selfie stick with a hand at the end of it. * Washing the hand at the end of your selfie stick after high-fiving someone with it. * Motion detectors not detecting black people so corporate hires white people to follow black people around and activate the motion detectors. * A black person walking in front of the Kinect and the Kinect being like "I think I just saw a ghost!" * Loving your punchline and so letting it go. * Being flung away from the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second. * The unfathomable horror of your senator voting in favor of the "subtly tweak the laws of physics" bill. * Finding the highrise apartment building that is most likely to remain attached to the Earth if gravity reverses. * Being deeply bothered by children who know the metric system and understand calculus. * Having known you were going to die but now being able to put a number to exactly how fast. * Always paying attention to whether you feel slightly lighter now, because that means gravity is starting to reverse. * Gravity's power suddenly doubling and the only survivors being people hanging out in trampoline parks and bounce houses at the time. * Our only hope being heroes in mech suits but unfortunately everyone who owns a mech suit is a billionaire. * Fish living through gravity doubling because they can swim up to a lower water pressure. * The moon crashing into the Earth. * Kaiju who are lonely because they don't know any other kaiju. * Whether Swamp Thing and Godzilla would be friends. * A giant dog who is perpetually alone because there is no Mothra equivalent in his universe. * Bigfoot technically being a kaiju because his feet are so big. * Whether Bigger Luke is big enough to be considered a kaiju. * The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen except for kaiju. * Whether Jack the Ripper looms large enough in our minds that he should be banned from our Kaiju-only dating app. * The OkCupid dating personality result that was fine for women but if you're a dude they were like "please stop dating" * A tiny green cat as dense as a neutron star. * Having to explain what a TAS, speed runs, Arkanoid, Breakout, and video games are before you can get to the part that's cool about this Arkanoid TAS. * Running your Arkanoid simulation on six cores for over a year to find optimal Arkanoid strategies. * Mario dancing with the fish for 15 seconds and then the credits play. * Martial arts masters going into the mountains and practicing one move for 30 years. * The Many Worlds interpretation of Super Mario World. * A speedrunner finding a COVID-19 vaccine faster than anybody else but the FDA blocks them from releasing it. * Philosophers not allowing themselves to have any fun because they're trying to counter the image of philosophers lazing around and not doing any real work. * Sitting down to create while being fully aware that you might not create anything worthwhile today. * Throwing nothing away and making everything. * A cool game that is available on a variety of platforms. * Being a year into making a game and it isn't fun yet and you have to trust in the iteration process that you'll find the fun before you ship, but actually maybe you won't, but you still have to ship anyway so it's not a total loss. * Making a bad game fun by association, by placing it in a fun context. * Hiring a narrative designer a couple months away from shipping your deeply text-centered game, because there is currently no text or story in the game and everything is on fire. * Adding a bunch of things to your game that will definitely bite you in the ass later because you cannot be stopped. * Running a D&D game that you haven't prepped enough and your players getting to the part of the scenario where your notes are blank. * Fragile people in a fragile people world attempting to make juice and having empathy for each other. * Sitting at the text editor to create and creativity not happening fast enough so you go browse Reddit. * Being stuck on a hard problem and going to play video games while your subconscious works on the problem. * Watching Zodiac while you're working on your cross-stitch and you look down and you've spelled out the name of the real killer. * Trying to pick a speed run to watch in the background while you work that will keep you from being bored but not be interesting enough that you watch it instead of working. * Having made your topic list and having to sleep in them. * Gifts to ourselves. * Cyber-Washington with carbon fiber dentures and a minigun that fires the teeth of his slaves. * A cool sentient dog wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses digging up bodies and putting them in cool poses. * Cool Dog digging for bones in the easiest place possible, the human body. * The movie with the oiled muscle-man singing and playing a saxophone. * Buff Weird Al Yankovic. * Promising to name this episode "Stacksophone" but lying. * Cool Dog turning out to be a very uncool dog if you think about it. * Lost Boys, exhibit A in the debate of whether being a jerk is cool. * Cool sentient dogs in the 90s digging up bodies in graveyards, but cool sentient dogs in 2020 awooing on Mastodon. * Preferring to use human bones in your occult rituals because you relate better to the energy they carry. * Selling your leftover human bones after you're done doing all your curses. * Whether or not the guy selling human bones on Etsy is cool, and whether they'd be cooler if they were a dog. * Loving Bribe Dog even though by all rights he ought to be in jail. * A small dog gumming at a stranger's ankles and not breaking the skin but they get upset anyway for some reason. * The life-long FOMO of wondering what you're missing out on from activities you never do because you hate doing them. * Correctly guessing that the other guest is subtweeting Animal Crossing. * A game that is fun until it becomes your job. * Not needing to buy a new video game because Breath of the Wild still exists. * Not wanting to do an activity so much as be a part of the community that does the activity. * That month where everyone in the world was playing Pokemon Go. * Recommending a video game to two people who have already played it. * Leveling up as a person the first time you've ever made a non-optimal decision in a game to retain your quality of life. * Your Animal Crossing villagers expressing shock as you chop down your entire orchard in front of them. * Opening an iPad feeling special, like someone confessing that they love you and not loving them back. * Getting FOMO about everyone you're not in love with. * The future where instead of social media, everybody drops an ARG about themselves that you have to solve in order to talk to them. * A thing that sounds exciting that you don't want to do. * An alternate reality where nothing happens and no-one cares. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • John of the Maryland Johns.
  • Ruining the show before it's really even started.
  • High fiving a friend from six feet away using your selfie stick with a hand at the end of it.
  • Washing the hand at the end of your selfie stick after high-fiving someone with it.
  • Motion detectors not detecting black people so corporate hires white people to follow black people around and activate the motion detectors.
  • A black person walking in front of the Kinect and the Kinect being like "I think I just saw a ghost!"
  • Loving your punchline and so letting it go.
  • Being flung away from the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second.
  • The unfathomable horror of your senator voting in favor of the "subtly tweak the laws of physics" bill.
  • Finding the highrise apartment building that is most likely to remain attached to the Earth if gravity reverses.
  • Being deeply bothered by children who know the metric system and understand calculus.
  • Having known you were going to die but now being able to put a number to exactly how fast.
  • Always paying attention to whether you feel slightly lighter now, because that means gravity is starting to reverse.
  • Gravity's power suddenly doubling and the only survivors being people hanging out in trampoline parks and bounce houses at the time.
  • Our only hope being heroes in mech suits but unfortunately everyone who owns a mech suit is a billionaire.
  • Fish living through gravity doubling because they can swim up to a lower water pressure.
  • The moon crashing into the Earth.
  • Kaiju who are lonely because they don't know any other kaiju.
  • Whether Swamp Thing and Godzilla would be friends.
  • A giant dog who is perpetually alone because there is no Mothra equivalent in his universe.
  • Bigfoot technically being a kaiju because his feet are so big.
  • Whether Bigger Luke is big enough to be considered a kaiju.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen except for kaiju.
  • Whether Jack the Ripper looms large enough in our minds that he should be banned from our Kaiju-only dating app.
  • The OkCupid dating personality result that was fine for women but if you're a dude they were like "please stop dating"
  • A tiny green cat as dense as a neutron star.
  • Having to explain what a TAS, speed runs, Arkanoid, Breakout, and video games are before you can get to the part that's cool about this Arkanoid TAS.
  • Running your Arkanoid simulation on six cores for over a year to find optimal Arkanoid strategies.
  • Mario dancing with the fish for 15 seconds and then the credits play.
  • Martial arts masters going into the mountains and practicing one move for 30 years.
  • The Many Worlds interpretation of Super Mario World.
  • A speedrunner finding a COVID-19 vaccine faster than anybody else but the FDA blocks them from releasing it.
  • Philosophers not allowing themselves to have any fun because they're trying to counter the image of philosophers lazing around and not doing any real work.
  • Sitting down to create while being fully aware that you might not create anything worthwhile today.
  • Throwing nothing away and making everything.
  • A cool game that is available on a variety of platforms.
  • Being a year into making a game and it isn't fun yet and you have to trust in the iteration process that you'll find the fun before you ship, but actually maybe you won't, but you still have to ship anyway so it's not a total loss.
  • Making a bad game fun by association, by placing it in a fun context.
  • Hiring a narrative designer a couple months away from shipping your deeply text-centered game, because there is currently no text or story in the game and everything is on fire.
  • Adding a bunch of things to your game that will definitely bite you in the ass later because you cannot be stopped.
  • Running a D&D game that you haven't prepped enough and your players getting to the part of the scenario where your notes are blank.
  • Fragile people in a fragile people world attempting to make juice and having empathy for each other.
  • Sitting at the text editor to create and creativity not happening fast enough so you go browse Reddit.
  • Being stuck on a hard problem and going to play video games while your subconscious works on the problem.
  • Watching Zodiac while you're working on your cross-stitch and you look down and you've spelled out the name of the real killer.
  • Trying to pick a speed run to watch in the background while you work that will keep you from being bored but not be interesting enough that you watch it instead of working.
  • Having made your topic list and having to sleep in them.
  • Gifts to ourselves.
  • Cyber-Washington with carbon fiber dentures and a minigun that fires the teeth of his slaves.
  • A cool sentient dog wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses digging up bodies and putting them in cool poses.
  • Cool Dog digging for bones in the easiest place possible, the human body.
  • The movie with the oiled muscle-man singing and playing a saxophone.
  • Buff Weird Al Yankovic.
  • Promising to name this episode "Stacksophone" but lying.
  • Cool Dog turning out to be a very uncool dog if you think about it.
  • Lost Boys, exhibit A in the debate of whether being a jerk is cool.
  • Cool sentient dogs in the 90s digging up bodies in graveyards, but cool sentient dogs in 2020 awooing on Mastodon.
  • Preferring to use human bones in your occult rituals because you relate better to the energy they carry.
  • Selling your leftover human bones after you're done doing all your curses.
  • Whether or not the guy selling human bones on Etsy is cool, and whether they'd be cooler if they were a dog.
  • Loving Bribe Dog even though by all rights he ought to be in jail.
  • A small dog gumming at a stranger's ankles and not breaking the skin but they get upset anyway for some reason.
  • The life-long FOMO of wondering what you're missing out on from activities you never do because you hate doing them.
  • Correctly guessing that the other guest is subtweeting Animal Crossing.
  • A game that is fun until it becomes your job.
  • Not needing to buy a new video game because Breath of the Wild still exists.
  • Not wanting to do an activity so much as be a part of the community that does the activity.
  • That month where everyone in the world was playing Pokemon Go.
  • Recommending a video game to two people who have already played it.
  • Leveling up as a person the first time you've ever made a non-optimal decision in a game to retain your quality of life.
  • Your Animal Crossing villagers expressing shock as you chop down your entire orchard in front of them.
  • Opening an iPad feeling special, like someone confessing that they love you and not loving them back.
  • Getting FOMO about everyone you're not in love with.
  • The future where instead of social media, everybody drops an ARG about themselves that you have to solve in order to talk to them.
  • A thing that sounds exciting that you don't want to do.
  • An alternate reality where nothing happens and no-one cares.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • John of the Maryland Johns.
  • Ruining the show before it's really even started.
  • High fiving a friend from six feet away using your selfie stick with a hand at the end of it.
  • Washing the hand at the end of your selfie stick after high-fiving someone with it.
  • Motion detectors not detecting black people so corporate hires white people to follow black people around and activate the motion detectors.
  • A black person walking in front of the Kinect and the Kinect being like "I think I just saw a ghost!"
  • Loving your punchline and so letting it go.
  • Being flung away from the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second.
  • The unfathomable horror of your senator voting in favor of the "subtly tweak the laws of physics" bill.
  • Finding the highrise apartment building that is most likely to remain attached to the Earth if gravity reverses.
  • Being deeply bothered by children who know the metric system and understand calculus.
  • Having known you were going to die but now being able to put a number to exactly how fast.
  • Always paying attention to whether you feel slightly lighter now, because that means gravity is starting to reverse.
  • Gravity's power suddenly doubling and the only survivors being people hanging out in trampoline parks and bounce houses at the time.
  • Our only hope being heroes in mech suits but unfortunately everyone who owns a mech suit is a billionaire.
  • Fish living through gravity doubling because they can swim up to a lower water pressure.
  • The moon crashing into the Earth.
  • Kaiju who are lonely because they don't know any other kaiju.
  • Whether Swamp Thing and Godzilla would be friends.
  • A giant dog who is perpetually alone because there is no Mothra equivalent in his universe.
  • Bigfoot technically being a kaiju because his feet are so big.
  • Whether Bigger Luke is big enough to be considered a kaiju.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen except for kaiju.
  • Whether Jack the Ripper looms large enough in our minds that he should be banned from our Kaiju-only dating app.
  • The OkCupid dating personality result that was fine for women but if you're a dude they were like "please stop dating"
  • A tiny green cat as dense as a neutron star.
  • Having to explain what a TAS, speed runs, Arkanoid, Breakout, and video games are before you can get to the part that's cool about this Arkanoid TAS.
  • Running your Arkanoid simulation on six cores for over a year to find optimal Arkanoid strategies.
  • Mario dancing with the fish for 15 seconds and then the credits play.
  • Martial arts masters going into the mountains and practicing one move for 30 years.
  • The Many Worlds interpretation of Super Mario World.
  • A speedrunner finding a COVID-19 vaccine faster than anybody else but the FDA blocks them from releasing it.
  • Philosophers not allowing themselves to have any fun because they're trying to counter the image of philosophers lazing around and not doing any real work.
  • Sitting down to create while being fully aware that you might not create anything worthwhile today.
  • Throwing nothing away and making everything.
  • A cool game that is available on a variety of platforms.
  • Being a year into making a game and it isn't fun yet and you have to trust in the iteration process that you'll find the fun before you ship, but actually maybe you won't, but you still have to ship anyway so it's not a total loss.
  • Making a bad game fun by association, by placing it in a fun context.
  • Hiring a narrative designer a couple months away from shipping your deeply text-centered game, because there is currently no text or story in the game and everything is on fire.
  • Adding a bunch of things to your game that will definitely bite you in the ass later because you cannot be stopped.
  • Running a D&D game that you haven't prepped enough and your players getting to the part of the scenario where your notes are blank.
  • Fragile people in a fragile people world attempting to make juice and having empathy for each other.
  • Sitting at the text editor to create and creativity not happening fast enough so you go browse Reddit.
  • Being stuck on a hard problem and going to play video games while your subconscious works on the problem.
  • Watching Zodiac while you're working on your cross-stitch and you look down and you've spelled out the name of the real killer.
  • Trying to pick a speed run to watch in the background while you work that will keep you from being bored but not be interesting enough that you watch it instead of working.
  • Having made your topic list and having to sleep in them.
  • Gifts to ourselves.
  • Cyber-Washington with carbon fiber dentures and a minigun that fires the teeth of his slaves.
  • A cool sentient dog wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses digging up bodies and putting them in cool poses.
  • Cool Dog digging for bones in the easiest place possible, the human body.
  • The movie with the oiled muscle-man singing and playing a saxophone.
  • Buff Weird Al Yankovic.
  • Promising to name this episode "Stacksophone" but lying.
  • Cool Dog turning out to be a very uncool dog if you think about it.
  • Lost Boys, exhibit A in the debate of whether being a jerk is cool.
  • Cool sentient dogs in the 90s digging up bodies in graveyards, but cool sentient dogs in 2020 awooing on Mastodon.
  • Preferring to use human bones in your occult rituals because you relate better to the energy they carry.
  • Selling your leftover human bones after you're done doing all your curses.
  • Whether or not the guy selling human bones on Etsy is cool, and whether they'd be cooler if they were a dog.
  • Loving Bribe Dog even though by all rights he ought to be in jail.
  • A small dog gumming at a stranger's ankles and not breaking the skin but they get upset anyway for some reason.
  • The life-long FOMO of wondering what you're missing out on from activities you never do because you hate doing them.
  • Correctly guessing that the other guest is subtweeting Animal Crossing.
  • A game that is fun until it becomes your job.
  • Not needing to buy a new video game because Breath of the Wild still exists.
  • Not wanting to do an activity so much as be a part of the community that does the activity.
  • That month where everyone in the world was playing Pokemon Go.
  • Recommending a video game to two people who have already played it.
  • Leveling up as a person the first time you've ever made a non-optimal decision in a game to retain your quality of life.
  • Your Animal Crossing villagers expressing shock as you chop down your entire orchard in front of them.
  • Opening an iPad feeling special, like someone confessing that they love you and not loving them back.
  • Getting FOMO about everyone you're not in love with.
  • The future where instead of social media, everybody drops an ARG about themselves that you have to solve in order to talk to them.
  • A thing that sounds exciting that you don't want to do.
  • An alternate reality where nothing happens and no-one cares.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 17. A Buzzsaw Made of Bananas https://topiclords.com/a-buzzsaw-made-of-bananas f5abed05-968b-424e-a77a-8a2c64dbbd92 Mon, 17 Feb 2020 08:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: April and John. We discuss creating D&D characters, being friends with people older/younger than you, when a head nod is appropriate, where to find the Big Mike banana, mind palaces, migrating your files from one computer to the next, and making great salads. 1:11:34 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * April is Jim's wife again and still a Beast Lord. * https://twitter.com/aprilsaur * https://www1.flightrising.com/lair/463464 * John is a Mystery. Topics: * 2:25 Create a D&D character right now * Drizzt the Drow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrizztDo%27Urden * Moai eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai#Eyes * 12:51 Being friends with people who are more than ten years older/younger than you: not weird until suddenly it is? * Teaching English in Japan. https://www.internationalteflacademy.com/teach-english-in-japan * Nova. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova(eikaiwa) * 24:31 Being in another country and seeing a person from your own country: is a head nod appropriate or not? * 30:05 You can get Big Mike bananas from a specialty dealer in Miami * https://miamifruit.org/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambutan * 43:04 Relational memory/mind palaces/file structures from long-retired computers * 46:37 What's your preferred method for migrating your stuff from your old computer to your new computer? * 56:43 Willow asks: "Methods for assembling great salads" Microtopics: * Refusing to be a Topic Lord because you're just on Topic Lords to promote your alternative podcast Beast Lords. * Not having anyone to plug this time either but maybe you have a Soundcloud somewhere. * Choosing all of your topics while driving to the zoo. * Containing multitudes and being super excited. * A band of adventurers being led by an operatic soprano. * A party of all bards. * Appropriating spam musubi because it's delicious. * Not technically being part of a band of adventurers but you play a tambourine and own the van. * Stealing the spam musubi from your bass player's bag of holding because they're going to go bad eventually. * Keeping both gold coins and spam musubi in the same bag of holding and having to dig around for the money when you buy anything. * Finally having a dog on this podcast. * Putting your dead dog in every D&D party you're in for the rest of your life. * Putting your dead dog in every platformer you make for the rest of your life. * All your D&D adventures going wrong because you're just musicians and can't actually deal with monsters. * Putting monsters onto the bus to the next town over. * Putting a fishtank bubbler on your bag of holding so all the monsters in there can breathe. * Fixing it then ruining it. * Coming to your chosen profession late in your life. * Age gaps getting less weird as time goes on. * Thinking about watching new TV to be able to relate to young people and deciding nobody has that kind of time. * Old people being full of stories from their lives. * Not talking to your friend as much as you used to because she lives in Ohio now. * Spending your retirement taking care of dogs. * Responding to difficult situations with grace and tact. * Stopping going to work because they stopped paying you. * The English teacher bubble in Japan. * Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and wondering if you should nod at them. * Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and thinking "frickin Americans!" * Not wanting to talk to strangers except in your favorite coffee shop. * Telling your wife something a week ago and then finding out it's a myth and having to correct her on a podcast. * Bananas being especially susceptible to disease. * Replacing the Cavendish banana with an even shittier banana after it succumbs. * Hiding your bananas because if your son sees them he won't be able to think about anything else. * Giving your son bananas because he already poops enough. * Foot-long avocados. * A giant box of intimidating tropical fruit being the best Christmas gift. * Drinking soursop juice tasting flights at a Mexican restaurant. * Bananas that look like a buzzsaw made of bananas. * Your infant son seeing a rambutan and realizing that maybe some things don't go in your mouth. * Haunted fruit. * Remembering trauma that happened when you were way too young to remember stuff. * Visiting your dad in prison and he's wearing fake shoes. * Riding in the back of a pickup truck and sharing Now & Laters with your older sister. * The US government deciding that televising court trials is a terrible idea after televising the OJ Simpson trial. * Knowing when a thing happened because you remember where it happened. * Trying to construct a mind palace like Hannibal and Sherlock and after a day of hard work deciding you don't need to remember anything that badly. * Yelling "story math!" when you correctly predict a story beat. * Realizing at the end of the episode that he's been inside his mind palace the entire time. * Copying your old hard drive onto the new one always working until one day you get an SSD drive and nothing fits. * Paying Dropbox money to get more storage and Dropbox starting to spam you about features you don't care about. * Only having a laptop to more effectively play your favorite web game. * Most people not really having any use for a desktop PC any more. * Having to remember life milestones differently because your life has settled down. * Liking a salad that doesn't have any lettuce in it. * Never having so badly wanted to go make a salad. * Peeling cucumbers so you don't get Cucumber Gas. * A hot cucumber. * Flashing your King.com CEO badge to get into the food truck even. * The burger joint offering you a salad with cheddar cheese crumbles on it and it turns out to just be a slice of cheddar they broke into a few pieces. * Crisping cheddar cheese in the broiler and throwing away the rest of your meal because you've peaked. * Trying to convince your wife that if you add mayo to a cheese plate it becomes a salad. * Not understanding when the young folks talk about going to sleep. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Refusing to be a Topic Lord because you're just on Topic Lords to promote your alternative podcast Beast Lords.
  • Not having anyone to plug this time either but maybe you have a Soundcloud somewhere.
  • Choosing all of your topics while driving to the zoo.
  • Containing multitudes and being super excited.
  • A band of adventurers being led by an operatic soprano.
  • A party of all bards.
  • Appropriating spam musubi because it's delicious.
  • Not technically being part of a band of adventurers but you play a tambourine and own the van.
  • Stealing the spam musubi from your bass player's bag of holding because they're going to go bad eventually.
  • Keeping both gold coins and spam musubi in the same bag of holding and having to dig around for the money when you buy anything.
  • Finally having a dog on this podcast.
  • Putting your dead dog in every D&D party you're in for the rest of your life.
  • Putting your dead dog in every platformer you make for the rest of your life.
  • All your D&D adventures going wrong because you're just musicians and can't actually deal with monsters.
  • Putting monsters onto the bus to the next town over.
  • Putting a fishtank bubbler on your bag of holding so all the monsters in there can breathe.
  • Fixing it then ruining it.
  • Coming to your chosen profession late in your life.
  • Age gaps getting less weird as time goes on.
  • Thinking about watching new TV to be able to relate to young people and deciding nobody has that kind of time.
  • Old people being full of stories from their lives.
  • Not talking to your friend as much as you used to because she lives in Ohio now.
  • Spending your retirement taking care of dogs.
  • Responding to difficult situations with grace and tact.
  • Stopping going to work because they stopped paying you.
  • The English teacher bubble in Japan.
  • Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and wondering if you should nod at them.
  • Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and thinking "frickin Americans!"
  • Not wanting to talk to strangers except in your favorite coffee shop.
  • Telling your wife something a week ago and then finding out it's a myth and having to correct her on a podcast.
  • Bananas being especially susceptible to disease.
  • Replacing the Cavendish banana with an even shittier banana after it succumbs.
  • Hiding your bananas because if your son sees them he won't be able to think about anything else.
  • Giving your son bananas because he already poops enough.
  • Foot-long avocados.
  • A giant box of intimidating tropical fruit being the best Christmas gift.
  • Drinking soursop juice tasting flights at a Mexican restaurant.
  • Bananas that look like a buzzsaw made of bananas.
  • Your infant son seeing a rambutan and realizing that maybe some things don't go in your mouth.
  • Haunted fruit.
  • Remembering trauma that happened when you were way too young to remember stuff.
  • Visiting your dad in prison and he's wearing fake shoes.
  • Riding in the back of a pickup truck and sharing Now & Laters with your older sister.
  • The US government deciding that televising court trials is a terrible idea after televising the OJ Simpson trial.
  • Knowing when a thing happened because you remember where it happened.
  • Trying to construct a mind palace like Hannibal and Sherlock and after a day of hard work deciding you don't need to remember anything that badly.
  • Yelling "story math!" when you correctly predict a story beat.
  • Realizing at the end of the episode that he's been inside his mind palace the entire time.
  • Copying your old hard drive onto the new one always working until one day you get an SSD drive and nothing fits.
  • Paying Dropbox money to get more storage and Dropbox starting to spam you about features you don't care about.
  • Only having a laptop to more effectively play your favorite web game.
  • Most people not really having any use for a desktop PC any more.
  • Having to remember life milestones differently because your life has settled down.
  • Liking a salad that doesn't have any lettuce in it.
  • Never having so badly wanted to go make a salad.
  • Peeling cucumbers so you don't get Cucumber Gas.
  • A hot cucumber.
  • Flashing your King.com CEO badge to get into the food truck even.
  • The burger joint offering you a salad with cheddar cheese crumbles on it and it turns out to just be a slice of cheddar they broke into a few pieces.
  • Crisping cheddar cheese in the broiler and throwing away the rest of your meal because you've peaked.
  • Trying to convince your wife that if you add mayo to a cheese plate it becomes a salad.
  • Not understanding when the young folks talk about going to sleep.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Refusing to be a Topic Lord because you're just on Topic Lords to promote your alternative podcast Beast Lords.
  • Not having anyone to plug this time either but maybe you have a Soundcloud somewhere.
  • Choosing all of your topics while driving to the zoo.
  • Containing multitudes and being super excited.
  • A band of adventurers being led by an operatic soprano.
  • A party of all bards.
  • Appropriating spam musubi because it's delicious.
  • Not technically being part of a band of adventurers but you play a tambourine and own the van.
  • Stealing the spam musubi from your bass player's bag of holding because they're going to go bad eventually.
  • Keeping both gold coins and spam musubi in the same bag of holding and having to dig around for the money when you buy anything.
  • Finally having a dog on this podcast.
  • Putting your dead dog in every D&D party you're in for the rest of your life.
  • Putting your dead dog in every platformer you make for the rest of your life.
  • All your D&D adventures going wrong because you're just musicians and can't actually deal with monsters.
  • Putting monsters onto the bus to the next town over.
  • Putting a fishtank bubbler on your bag of holding so all the monsters in there can breathe.
  • Fixing it then ruining it.
  • Coming to your chosen profession late in your life.
  • Age gaps getting less weird as time goes on.
  • Thinking about watching new TV to be able to relate to young people and deciding nobody has that kind of time.
  • Old people being full of stories from their lives.
  • Not talking to your friend as much as you used to because she lives in Ohio now.
  • Spending your retirement taking care of dogs.
  • Responding to difficult situations with grace and tact.
  • Stopping going to work because they stopped paying you.
  • The English teacher bubble in Japan.
  • Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and wondering if you should nod at them.
  • Seeing the only other white person for a mile in any direction and thinking "frickin Americans!"
  • Not wanting to talk to strangers except in your favorite coffee shop.
  • Telling your wife something a week ago and then finding out it's a myth and having to correct her on a podcast.
  • Bananas being especially susceptible to disease.
  • Replacing the Cavendish banana with an even shittier banana after it succumbs.
  • Hiding your bananas because if your son sees them he won't be able to think about anything else.
  • Giving your son bananas because he already poops enough.
  • Foot-long avocados.
  • A giant box of intimidating tropical fruit being the best Christmas gift.
  • Drinking soursop juice tasting flights at a Mexican restaurant.
  • Bananas that look like a buzzsaw made of bananas.
  • Your infant son seeing a rambutan and realizing that maybe some things don't go in your mouth.
  • Haunted fruit.
  • Remembering trauma that happened when you were way too young to remember stuff.
  • Visiting your dad in prison and he's wearing fake shoes.
  • Riding in the back of a pickup truck and sharing Now & Laters with your older sister.
  • The US government deciding that televising court trials is a terrible idea after televising the OJ Simpson trial.
  • Knowing when a thing happened because you remember where it happened.
  • Trying to construct a mind palace like Hannibal and Sherlock and after a day of hard work deciding you don't need to remember anything that badly.
  • Yelling "story math!" when you correctly predict a story beat.
  • Realizing at the end of the episode that he's been inside his mind palace the entire time.
  • Copying your old hard drive onto the new one always working until one day you get an SSD drive and nothing fits.
  • Paying Dropbox money to get more storage and Dropbox starting to spam you about features you don't care about.
  • Only having a laptop to more effectively play your favorite web game.
  • Most people not really having any use for a desktop PC any more.
  • Having to remember life milestones differently because your life has settled down.
  • Liking a salad that doesn't have any lettuce in it.
  • Never having so badly wanted to go make a salad.
  • Peeling cucumbers so you don't get Cucumber Gas.
  • A hot cucumber.
  • Flashing your King.com CEO badge to get into the food truck even.
  • The burger joint offering you a salad with cheddar cheese crumbles on it and it turns out to just be a slice of cheddar they broke into a few pieces.
  • Crisping cheddar cheese in the broiler and throwing away the rest of your meal because you've peaked.
  • Trying to convince your wife that if you add mayo to a cheese plate it becomes a salad.
  • Not understanding when the young folks talk about going to sleep.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 2. Conjure a False Gobot https://topiclords.com/conjure-a-false-gobot 98cd634b-713e-44b8-b6b2-7ede1ccc0b1c Mon, 04 Nov 2019 08:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: John Mystery and JP LeBreton. We discuss horses climbing stairs, getting enough sleep, shitpost movie advertising, doctoring the historical record, and ending all reality from within a dream. 1:02:30 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * John is excited to be a Topic Lord * JP does stuff at http://vectorpoem.com/ Topics: * 1:36 Horses will climb stairs but can't get back down again. * http://www.firecritic.com/2009/08/18/fire-pole-or-sliding-chute/ * CLOP: http://www.foddy.net/CLOP.html * 12:13 Do you get enough sleep? If so, how? * 21:36 The ad for a movie sequel that was the entirety of the previous movie in the series. * The Wendy's tabletop RPG: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/dd-licious-wendys-now-has-a-tabletop-rpg-and-the-villain-is-frozen-beef/ * Too Many Cooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8 * Bandersnatch, the semi-interactive Black Mirror thing on Netflix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackMirror%3ABandersnatch * Adaptation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation(film) * The weird trailer for Identity that preceded Adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8fjyxM7DgU * 35:34 How much work would it take to insert a fictional person into the historical record? * Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - A novel by Neal Stephenson about near-future technological advancements like uploading your consciousness to the cloud and curating your online existence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;or,Dodgein_Hell * 49:18 John's recurring dream about seeing the wrong image and ending all levels of reality Microtopics: * Lord enthusiasm. * Thinking of Ghostbusters because you can't imagine a firefighter. * Foraging for oats on the top floor of a fire station. * Installing a pole because your infant son can't descend stairs. * Finding a horse in a tree. * Playing CLOP to learn empathy for the descending horse. * Replacing a spiral staircase with a normal staircase. * The entire city burning down because the firefighters can't get past the horse that's stuck on the landing. * Becoming a morning person because of your government job. * Your child possibly loving the daycare lady more than he loves you. * Taking melatonin because you don't have the discipline for not looking at screens before bed. * The shitty dreams of melatonin boot camp. * Gnawing on the melatonin and leaving it on the nightstand for next time. * Your body getting stuck on a particular sleep schedule long past its relevance. * Hypothesizing how much long-lasting damage you did with your teenage sleep habits. * Focusing better because everyone else is asleep. * Working until 4am because you're being so productive. * Not knowing how ads work because you have an ad-blocker installed. * Finding about how ads work from an 11 year old. * Your alternate reality self who enjoys a good advertisement now and again. * Maintaining the pace of film trailers for over an hour. * Mistaking the trailer before the movie as being part of the movie. * Nobody being fooled by your fake trailer because people don't watch movies in theaters any more. * Avoiding watching Bandersnatch because you're a completionist. * The technical difficulties of adding late choice points to an otherwise linear film. * Being nostalgic for old UIs of web services. * Finding a web page that hasn't changed in 15 years. * Finding a web page that looks 15 years old but also has a mobile style sheet. * Editing an innocuous fact on Wikipedia that nobody will bother to fact-check. * Asking to view a historical document and sneaking in a quill pen and inkwell to modify it. * Citing your doctored document on Wikipedia. * Befriending a history professor and asking them to mention your fake Kansas senator in a published paper. * Falsifying movie running times just because you can get away with it. * Citing an obscure magazine as your source on Wikipedia because nobody will bother to check. * Clinging to the scraps of the past that you've salvaged from eBay and garage sale VHS tapes. * Poor documentation of pop culture leading to compelling mysteries. * Drowning true information with false information. * The downside of having a unique Google string. * Having repercussions on all levels of nested reality. * Dreams as really lazy storytelling. * Remembering facts without remembering their origin. * Getting stuck opening a door to mask dream loading time. * Making up any old bullshit and being convinced it's a Beatles rarity. * Desperately fleeing from the "The End" title card. * Realizing your dream is actually just the plot of The Neverending Story. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lord enthusiasm.
  • Thinking of Ghostbusters because you can't imagine a firefighter.
  • Foraging for oats on the top floor of a fire station.
  • Installing a pole because your infant son can't descend stairs.
  • Finding a horse in a tree.
  • Playing CLOP to learn empathy for the descending horse.
  • Replacing a spiral staircase with a normal staircase.
  • The entire city burning down because the firefighters can't get past the horse that's stuck on the landing.
  • Becoming a morning person because of your government job.
  • Your child possibly loving the daycare lady more than he loves you.
  • Taking melatonin because you don't have the discipline for not looking at screens before bed.
  • The shitty dreams of melatonin boot camp.
  • Gnawing on the melatonin and leaving it on the nightstand for next time.
  • Your body getting stuck on a particular sleep schedule long past its relevance.
  • Hypothesizing how much long-lasting damage you did with your teenage sleep habits.
  • Focusing better because everyone else is asleep.
  • Working until 4am because you're being so productive.
  • Not knowing how ads work because you have an ad-blocker installed.
  • Finding about how ads work from an 11 year old.
  • Your alternate reality self who enjoys a good advertisement now and again.
  • Maintaining the pace of film trailers for over an hour.
  • Mistaking the trailer before the movie as being part of the movie.
  • Nobody being fooled by your fake trailer because people don't watch movies in theaters any more.
  • Avoiding watching Bandersnatch because you're a completionist.
  • The technical difficulties of adding late choice points to an otherwise linear film.
  • Being nostalgic for old UIs of web services.
  • Finding a web page that hasn't changed in 15 years.
  • Finding a web page that looks 15 years old but also has a mobile style sheet.
  • Editing an innocuous fact on Wikipedia that nobody will bother to fact-check.
  • Asking to view a historical document and sneaking in a quill pen and inkwell to modify it.
  • Citing your doctored document on Wikipedia.
  • Befriending a history professor and asking them to mention your fake Kansas senator in a published paper.
  • Falsifying movie running times just because you can get away with it.
  • Citing an obscure magazine as your source on Wikipedia because nobody will bother to check.
  • Clinging to the scraps of the past that you've salvaged from eBay and garage sale VHS tapes.
  • Poor documentation of pop culture leading to compelling mysteries.
  • Drowning true information with false information.
  • The downside of having a unique Google string.
  • Having repercussions on all levels of nested reality.
  • Dreams as really lazy storytelling.
  • Remembering facts without remembering their origin.
  • Getting stuck opening a door to mask dream loading time.
  • Making up any old bullshit and being convinced it's a Beatles rarity.
  • Desperately fleeing from the "The End" title card.
  • Realizing your dream is actually just the plot of The Neverending Story.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Lord enthusiasm.
  • Thinking of Ghostbusters because you can't imagine a firefighter.
  • Foraging for oats on the top floor of a fire station.
  • Installing a pole because your infant son can't descend stairs.
  • Finding a horse in a tree.
  • Playing CLOP to learn empathy for the descending horse.
  • Replacing a spiral staircase with a normal staircase.
  • The entire city burning down because the firefighters can't get past the horse that's stuck on the landing.
  • Becoming a morning person because of your government job.
  • Your child possibly loving the daycare lady more than he loves you.
  • Taking melatonin because you don't have the discipline for not looking at screens before bed.
  • The shitty dreams of melatonin boot camp.
  • Gnawing on the melatonin and leaving it on the nightstand for next time.
  • Your body getting stuck on a particular sleep schedule long past its relevance.
  • Hypothesizing how much long-lasting damage you did with your teenage sleep habits.
  • Focusing better because everyone else is asleep.
  • Working until 4am because you're being so productive.
  • Not knowing how ads work because you have an ad-blocker installed.
  • Finding about how ads work from an 11 year old.
  • Your alternate reality self who enjoys a good advertisement now and again.
  • Maintaining the pace of film trailers for over an hour.
  • Mistaking the trailer before the movie as being part of the movie.
  • Nobody being fooled by your fake trailer because people don't watch movies in theaters any more.
  • Avoiding watching Bandersnatch because you're a completionist.
  • The technical difficulties of adding late choice points to an otherwise linear film.
  • Being nostalgic for old UIs of web services.
  • Finding a web page that hasn't changed in 15 years.
  • Finding a web page that looks 15 years old but also has a mobile style sheet.
  • Editing an innocuous fact on Wikipedia that nobody will bother to fact-check.
  • Asking to view a historical document and sneaking in a quill pen and inkwell to modify it.
  • Citing your doctored document on Wikipedia.
  • Befriending a history professor and asking them to mention your fake Kansas senator in a published paper.
  • Falsifying movie running times just because you can get away with it.
  • Citing an obscure magazine as your source on Wikipedia because nobody will bother to check.
  • Clinging to the scraps of the past that you've salvaged from eBay and garage sale VHS tapes.
  • Poor documentation of pop culture leading to compelling mysteries.
  • Drowning true information with false information.
  • The downside of having a unique Google string.
  • Having repercussions on all levels of nested reality.
  • Dreams as really lazy storytelling.
  • Remembering facts without remembering their origin.
  • Getting stuck opening a door to mask dream loading time.
  • Making up any old bullshit and being convinced it's a Beatles rarity.
  • Desperately fleeing from the "The End" title card.
  • Realizing your dream is actually just the plot of The Neverending Story.

Support Topic Lords

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