248. The Ephemeral Nature of Digital Fish Food

Jim Stormdancer — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Lords:

Elena
- https://www.gouletpens.com/blogs/fountain-pen-blog/sailor-shikiori-tokiwa-matsu-ink-review
Nathalie
- https://alienmelon.itch.io/ [cw:flashing lights]

Topics:

Fish-based screensavers
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQpCcQhNfxM
- https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams
Fire safety
The Aquarium and the Glass Harmonica
I Am Running Into A New Year by Lucille Clifton
- https://nextworldover.tumblr.com/post/738271770264600576
I went to Japan
- https://nerdparadise.com/mspaint/stereogram
- https://twitter.com/mischiefanimals/status/1704934776421913018

Microtopics:

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

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38. Inside the Atomic Purple Man

Jim Stormdancer — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:00:00 -0700

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Lords:

Rachel helps run Glitch City.
- https://twitter.com/rachel_sala
- https://glitch.city/
Natalie makes art games.
- https://twitter.com/alienmelon
- https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker

Topics:

If there was another animal that was horse sized and rideable, what would you want it to be?
- He-Man Sings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32FB-gYr49Y
- Chicken beauty pageants. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/03/the-bizarre-world-of-chicken-beauty-pageants-photographed-by-ernest-goh/
Would Jurassic Park be the same if the dinosaurs were depicted as giant birds instead of giant lizards and can you even be afraid of fluffy dinosaurs? Also, would your first instinct really be to run away from a fluffy dinosaur?
Daylight savings time abuse in speed runs
- Zero hour game jam. http://www.0hgame.eu/
Brad asks: "Hands-free browsing seeming great until you sneeze and close all your tabs"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index
- If humans got an upgrade, what changes would you want to make? E.g. no pooping, only 4 hours of sleep.
- Graham, who evolved to survive car crashes. https://stanflouride.com/2016/07/22/meet-graham-a-human-evolved-to-survive-a-car-crash/
- https://www.mariowiki.com/File:GBC_Atomic_Purple.png
Is it bad representation to put a dog in a video game and then not let you pet it? How would dogs feel about this?
The "Cool S" and the alphabet shovel
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQdxHi4_Pvc
Is it morally conscientious to make sourdough, name it, and basically form a bond with it the way you would with a pet, and then eat it? Is it ok to eat something you've named and deeply care about?
What's a terrible food from your childhood that you love?

Microtopics:

Living in the same city all your life.
Migrating your physical co-working space to a virtual co-working space.
Splashing around in your artwork.
A horse-sized great Dane that you ride around.
How human civilization would have been different if early man rode giant chickens rather than horses.
The most testosterone-filled Saturday morning cartoon available.
Transforming into a buff confident cat when it's time to save the day.
Chicken dressage.
Whether Poland has unicorn chickens, and if so, why didn't they put them in The Witcher.
Your giant chicken companion laying a giant egg and staring at you expectantly until you eat the egg.
Chilling out and eating bugs and vegetable scraps.
Having a pair of pliers for a face.
The stupendous cowardice of Steven Spielberg refusing to add feathers to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
Just how fluffy velociraptors would have to become in order to be considered birbs.
Velociraptors having been about the size of a turkey.
Being eaten by an adorable bird and hugging it from the inside.
Whether Pom Pom is about the size of a beach ball or about the size of a shoggoth.
Sitting on Pom Pom like a pilates ball, and whether he'd be into that.
An extremely clever abuse of our cultural understanding of time.
Making a video game in zero hours.
Preferring tools maintained by small communities.
Making a replacement for Flash without understanding why people like Flash.
Really giving touchscreens the business.
Whether or not touchscreens will be as good as mice and keyboards if we give them another thirty years to evolve.
Noticing a grease print where your ear touched your phone's screen during a call.
Keyboards also being excellent mirrors for how filthy humans are.
Your hands feeling like they're doing something meaningful when you touch your letters.
Starting a hobby where you touch mysterious peppers.
The Schmidt Sting Pain Index making certain stings sound delightful.
The sting of the digger bee: almost pleasant, a lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard.
The sting of the sweat bee: light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
The sting of the bullet ant: pure, intense, brilliant pain, like walking over charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.
Whether the Bullet Ant is named so because their sting makes you feel like you've been shot.
Couches, where humans go.
Detaching your stuffy nose and leaving it at home until your cold gets better.
Trying to hide from your employer that you don't need to sleep.
Whether or not you'd sleep on purpose even if you didn't have to.
Switching from food and beverages to photosynthesis.
The Atomic Purple boy showing off his pineal gland in anatomy class.
Whether dogs think other dogs are good dogs.
Putting a dog and a petting interface in your game so that you can pet the dog.
Not knowing how to draw but still being able to draw the cool S.
A fantastically evocative way to talk about typing.
Trying to think of something clever and alliterative to say.
Re-learning how to make the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" hand motion when you're 40 years old.
Getting some sourdough starter in a mason jar and immediately shattering the jar on the ground before you even get the chance to name it "Gerald."
Counting the number of bubbles that your sourdough starter makes.
Eating only a small piece of Gerald each time you make a loaf of sourdough.
The yeast throwing a party while the dough rises.
An alternate reality where it's seen as good and noble to eat the dead.
Feeding your prospective lover your body hair.
Adding an egg to ramen so that it's technically healthy.
A parrot that needs to be convinced to eat fruit.
The simplest carb and fat blast you can imagine.
Feeding your parrot whatever it is you're eating for dinner.
Hot dogs and grapes being the perfect size to choke to death on.
Salad Minus The D.

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Topic Lords - Episodes Tagged with “Nathalie”

248. The Ephemeral Nature of Digital Fish Food

38. Inside the Atomic Purple Man