web01.fireside.fm Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:50:13 -0500 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Topic Lords - Episodes Tagged with “Xander” https://topiclords.com/tags/xander Mon, 09 Mar 2026 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 333. Bring Your Daughter to Monastery Day https://topiclords.com/bring-your-daughter-to-monastery-day af74c55d-a81c-4642-b99f-ddf5c8a1b8c8 Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: AP and Alexander. We discuss the 5th Ramsey number, Mr. Satan (from Dragonball), the Odyssey 2's ROM sprites, Search Lizard Vagina And You Shall Find by Patricia Lockwood, and why do drugs have two names? What's up with that? 1:08:33 yes Lords: * AP * https://store.steampowered.com/app/2364580/Titanium_Court/ * Alexander Topics: * The 5th Ramsey number * Why Mr. Satan (from Dragonball) is one of my favorite characters in all of literature * The Odyssey 2's ROM sprites * https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads-2024/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/Evl0wxIY.png * https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads-2024/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/gNkdwtoA.jpg * Search Lizard Vagina And You Shall Find by Patricia Lockwood * Why do drugs have two names? What's up with that? Microtopics: * Recording the fakest possible sounding laughter in case someone makes a joke that doesn't work. * Going on a nice short walk. * The PNW, where the frogs are a-croaking. * Going out to see the dog pee. * Lying down and pretending to sleep * Explaining to the doctor that you didn't sleep at all and he's like "that's not what your brain waves said!" * Dreaming that you've been awake for 48 hours. * Path of totality vs. regular shitty boring eclipse. * Consume Me. * Attempting to become hot in high school. * Whether unwishlisting and rewishlisting a game helps. * Very large prime numbers that are only two apart. * Prolific math speed freaks. * Whether the aliens know the fifth Ramsey Number and are just quizzing us. * Aliens visiting and sharing the ultimate secret to doing laundry. * Sentient arithmetic getting angry. * How do kangaroos clean their pouches? * Topics that don't cause listenership to drop precipitously. * Thinking about Mr. Satan in the bath. * Localizing Mr. Satan for the American audience. * A cartoon of two muscly guys screaming at each other, getting louder and higher pitched over the course of five minutes, to the point that you start worrying about the health of the voice actors. * An episode of TV that's just 22 pure minutes of building tension. * Goku's hair turning blond so that the manga artist doesn't have to laboriously color his hair black al on every panel. * Everyone in the story growing strong enough to blow up the planet on a whim. * Everyone on Earth showing up to cheer on Mr. Satan. * When wrestlers stopped maintaining kayfabe outside of the live show. * King Lear asking the audience if they can see the corpse breathing. * Giving annoying characters a moment of sincerity and/or heroism. * Enthusiastically chanting for Satan. * Witnessing the total horror of the universe and then being like "I didn't just see that" * Mr. Satan convincing the evil alien not to destroy the Earth by showing him a cool puppy. * How is Goku going to prevent spam bots from registering accounts? * A weird lens on this strange universe. * Sincerity punchlines. * Behold, an anime horse! * Top 37 Classiest Satans. * Death losing every game against Bill and Ted. * Coloring the up arrow green to represent a tree in your skiing game. * The division symbol you learned in grade school and never used again. * When you want to shoot a golf course, a plane or a tiny flat cake. * Collecting your favorite medieval manuscript scans. * The medieval scribe deciding on a whim to write the next passage in Greek. * The guy plucking penises off of the penis bush and putting them in a basket. * My brain, and the bad sunning lizard inside it. * Here is some pornography, if it will help you. * Great job, Canada. * Poems that foresee themselves being uploaded to the Internet. * One of the early "isn't it weird that this literary person is on Twitter writing shitposts?" * My Least Favorite Antibiotic. * Wrapping your antibiotic in a tortilla. * I love an antibiotic with a nickname. * Magic acts you can only do once. (Because they kill you.) * Settling Space. (And why we shouldn't do it.) * Establishing legal precedent for selling moon rocks. * Can God get a thorn stuck in his paw? * There's No P in Thomson. Let's try to keep it that way. Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> 310. Dance Like the Universe Is an Empty Wasteland https://topiclords.com/dance-like-the-universe-is-an-empty-wasteland 9b282781-a275-426a-a768-cf7a202b8292 Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Kev. We discuss floaty movement in games, giving people clutter they can't throw away, debunking Dunning Kruger, With or Without Witnesses, the instinct to not swing a heavy object at somebody, and Japanese curry. 1:03:15 yes Lords * Alexander * Kev Topics: * "Floaty movement" in games * The power to give people clutter that they can't throw away * https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/yorkdoom/palweb/week12/palwk12.htm * https://www.anabuzzalino.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/book-of-kells.jpg * Dunning Kruger got debunked! * https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/04/08/the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-autocorrelation/ * With or Without Witnesses, by Hasbro, Inc. * https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/457/alloy-myr * Esper says: "A lot of the lore and worldbuilding of Magic is conveyed through flavor text, but there’s also about a novel’s worth of writing for each set distributed as webfiction and a few dozen novels throughout the game's history. It’s good stuff, usually!" * The instinct to not swing a heavy object at someone, even when you're supposed to * Japanese curry Microtopics: * The Humble Screw. * What it might take to be good at hammering nails. * Fingerbashing. * An inclined plane that goes around in a circle. * Metric Rules Football. * Whether a state machine is the same kind of thing as a wedge. * Clockwork Maiden. * Speedrunning, cleaning and dating. * Floaty movement. * The JPEG artifact of physics simulation. * How to Unit Test a video game. * Using MIDI knobs to tune your game's physics. * Game Oriented Assembly Lisp. * Hot Reloading Workflow. * Why Naughty Dog stopped using Lisp. * Just going about your life when suddenly you have to use Perl for something. * Peak Node.JS/SAAS years. * Walk/run/sprint transition speed. * Getting an special drink for your guys. * Medieval style calligraphy. * Gifting someone with a burden for the rest of their lives. * Pouring rocks into your dad's pocket because that's where you keep your rocks. * The kitten going to sleep behind your laptop because it's warm back there. * Here's how someone in the 14th century would've written these words. * How to say "fuck around and find out" in medieval Latin. * Writing a meme in 14th century Blackletter Hand. * Sans-serif calligraphy. * The ancient Greeks trying to invent ASCII art but they couldn't close the deal. * Letters placed inside other letters. * Autocorrelation. * Figures 8 and 9. * Coming out of discussion the topic with a better understanding of the topic. * Using a bird feather to write. * Knowledge that we used to have and now have again. * Learning to Topic Lords while doing home improvement stuff. * Scrapping your fragile human body to merge with the machines. * Rainbows in Space. * Suns going around in circles regardless of whether anyone's looking. * A semi-conscious little robot dude. * Calling the Qualia Function. * A real messed-up looking machine cat. * Communicating the story solely via flavor text on mana dorks. * A squadron of little kids waving wooden swords at each other. * How do you turn sword fighting into something you can do in a video game? * East Bay Rat Motorcycle Club Flight Nights. * Situations where they ask if you want a mouth guard. * Asking the ref at the boxing match what the etiquette is for tapping out. * The crowd roaring when they realize you're a southpaw. * Punching a guy you just met three seconds ago. * Did you end up cutting that girl's head off? * Renaissance MMA. * That Awkward Sparring Feeling. * A simulacrum of kicking each other in the face. * Getting a part-time job at your favorite curry shop so you can learn the recipe. * What part of curry is the curry? * The curry you eat so you don't die. * Emperor Riding a Dragon to the Forbidden Palace. * The advantage of a burger as a fast food staple. * How to make curry convenient. * Rendang. * Dry curry. * Joining a discord and asking "what are all these users for??" * Which user is which lord on which episode? Lords

  • Alexander
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

  • Alexander
  • Kev

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> 292. A Dewey Decimal System, but for Libraries https://topiclords.com/a-dewey-decimal-system-but-for-libraries 13123412-8a9a-4e2e-9592-49850a895f4d Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Chall. We discuss having an address after not having an address, slopsquatting, book curses, This Boke ys Myne by Eleanor Worcester, the David Lynch random number generator, and game designers going into public policy. 1:04:47 yes Lords: * Alexander * https://youtube.com/@L4MPLIGHT * Chall Topics: * Having an address after not having an address * Slopsquatting * Book curses * This boke ys myne, Eleanor Worcester * https://15thcfeminist.substack.com/p/the-preservation-of-womens-words * The David Lynch random number generator * Esper says: My personal favorite use of numbers stations is the brief “station ID” type messages on Secret Agent Radio, a radio station that plays funky groovy Bond soundtrack-type music. Every now and then between songs, you’ll get a brief clip of creepy French-accented actual number station recordings, which really sells the vibe: https://somafm.com/player24/station/secretagent * Do game designers ever go into public policy or vice-versa? Microtopics: * Math. * An incredible youtube channel you don't know how to search for. * Lamplight but with a four. * Making art that only a tetrachromat could appreciate and then finding a tetrachromat to appreciate it. * The secret color: yellow. * Crashlands 2. * Watching X-Files until you've already seen all the Darin Morgan episodes. * Having twenty shirts to choose from and the same place to sit every day. * How long it takes to tire off the non-stop stream of novelty. * Working for yourself vs. working for someone else. * How to stop feeling like life is rushing past you. * Running a Kickstarter to get chores done around the house. * How to get your ADHD brain to do work in purpose. * Trying to get past the gauntlet of open browser tabs to the one where you get work done. * Running 100 times. * Productivity! * Buying a productivity calendar and then glaring at the calendar and saying "you can't trick me, calendar" * Nefarious NPM packages really popping off in the past few years. * Cool pens dot com. * Kazaam vs. Shazaam. * What people knew before they could search things on the Internet. * Dog bone facts. * The apocryphal things that LLMs like to say. * Lost books that we know about because they were mentioned in less old books. * The Actual Monster Mash. * Jeff Minter's Polybius. * Nobody ever releasing a fake Frog Fractions 2 even though Jim could never disavow it. * Hash tag relatable stories about medieval scribes. * Laws about book mishandling. * Dukes collecting books like treasures. * Putting a curse in your book to make sure nobody steals it. * The Falling Disease. * Irascibly Incoherent Book Curses. * May your NPM packages be infected with the falling disease. * A curse that can only curse people who can read. * Young people getting their grubby fingers dirty in the yard and leaving fingerprints in your books. * Someone left their bookmark in my book and the bookmark rotted again. * Cursing podcast bootleggers with the affliction where they always put their headphones on backwards. * The cheat code to unlock Nukey. * May your X button get stuck. * The wildest spelling that could possibly make sense. * A book that once belonged to a library. * Borrowing a book about space from your first grade teacher and forgetting to return it and learning about the ADHD shame procrastination spiral. * Blessed be he who steals this book. * Walking into a library and instantly being completely overwhelmed. * Giving your child the talk about where Little Free Libraries come from. * David Lynch giving you the weather in his all caps voice. * Why David Lynch never draws a 7. * The Reproducibility Crisis. * The Law of the Iterated Logarithm. * All the ways we make mistakes. * Coded drug drop messages on Britney Spears' Insagram. * The 485.152nd Amendment. * A great source of puns that must've existed for thousands of years. * How to predict whether your idea will work and then how to test whether it worked. * The Double Crossover Diamond Interchange. Lords:

Topics:

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

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

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

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> 226. Ilk-Action Lawsuit https://topiclords.com/ilk-action-lawsuit 5b8c1569-66c1-4426-87b1-4faf363b5312 Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Ryan and Alexander. We discuss getting so agitated that you cook dinner, acquired tastes that are worth acquiring, texturally enhanced alternative beverage, and Bagme Bloma. 1:08:29 yes Lords: * Ryan * Alexander Topics: * Getting so agitated that you cook dinner * What's an acquired taste that's worth acquiring? What's one that's not worth the effort? What's the point of even "acquiring" a taste for anything when there are probably infinite options you don't have to teach yourself to enjoy? * Texturally enhanced alternative beverage * Bagme Bloma * https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Bagme_Bloma Microtopics: * How the science gets done. * Measuring the height of a flagpole by measuring its shadow. * Using calculus to find the surface area of a potato. * Measuring and re-measuring until you get the result you want. * Confronting your professor about their involvement in Frog Fractions 2. * Country and Western music fused with synth heavy prog rock. * Using the gun to parallel park. * That time Ryan died while recording Topic Lords. * Getting so agitated that you do some differential equations. * New guy just dropped: guy who whenever he thinks about death he has to make a sandwich. * The first step towards rejecting a task: assessing the task. * Today is a good day to fill your Prius with snakes. * The Raccoon Prius story. * Hilarious mothers. * The inside of a Prius: nothing but corners. * Officer, it's not what you think. No, not that either. * Putting the AC on so the python in the back seat gets sluggish. * Getting a fork and spoon and twirling up snakes like spaghetti. * A taste worth busting your ass for. * An oral history of tricking alcohol post your tongue. * An entire generation that has never had to work to enjoy things because there are so many things that are easy to enjoy. * Twelve year olds from Alabama calling you a cuck. * New ideas that you haven't been thinking of even without looking at your phone. * Hiking: it's just hard walking. * Getting so agitated that you developed a taste for hiking. * The guy in the Fred Meyer buying Reese's cups while wearing a tuxedo. * The Men's Wearhome. * The Men's Wearhouse employee who is not allowed to tell you that they don't have anything for fat people so he brings out less and less flattering outfits until you take the hint. * Orbitz. (The soft drink from 1996.) * A proto-boba. * Drinking a random test tube from a bioengineering lab. * What if everyone had a number floating above their heads that represented the number of times they had to drink Orbitz before they developed a taste for Orbitz and now that Orbitz is out of production everyone's number stays the same forever * Big Dick's Energy. * Flavor-blasted slushies. * The sense-horror of drinking an Orbitz. * Shelf-stable tapioca pearls. * A free-to-play game for your tongue. * Texturally subdued beverages. * Decaf Red Bull. * The hypothetical beverage enthusiast who wants a decaf Red Bull. * How to make Orbitz in your toilet. * How many Orbitz you have to drink to reach Nirvana. * eBay sellers insisting that you don't drink the thirty year old novelty beverage they're selling you. * Thinking a poem is a Middle Earth thing but it's actually a regular Earth thing. * Poetry that is alliterative rather than rhyming. * Making art by fucking around with a new medium. * Music in a foreign language. * What Simlish sounds like in different languages. * A quest to discover why they started dotting the letter Y. * Expecting scrolls in 3 to 5 days. Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Alexander

Topics:

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

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Ryan
  • Alexander

Topics:

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

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> 214. Oh Shit! That Guy's Got Horse Legs! https://topiclords.com/oh-shit-that-guys-got-horse-legs 5c14804c-b73d-4727-8358-cc2be876c4f1 Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Daniel and Alexander. We discuss octopus dreams, perception of memory, hike on 58, World of Warcraft over the years, mathematicians not capitalizing your name, polywater, and involuntary trochaic trimeter recognition. 1:05:19 yes Lords * Daniel * https://www.cocoongame.com/ * https://kbones.itch.io/dorks * Alexander Topics: * Octopus dreams * Perception of memories. Why does actual recency and percieved recency often seem so at odds * Hike on 58 * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day * World of Warcraft over the years / WoW Hardcore Mode * The highest honor you can receive in mathematics is to have your name uncapitalized. * Polywater * My brain is polluted by trochaic trimeter recognition Microtopics: * Preventative care. * COVID lucky streaks. * Being able to go to the ER. * How to spell Cocoon. * Moth guys carrying orbs on their backs. * Boss battles that you wouldn't expect. * Wilford Brimley's agelessness. * Octopus nightmares. * The octopus equivalent of rapid eye movement. * Meeting sapient crows and asking them whether Y or Z should be up. * Which memories stick better. * Perception of time when you have a routine vs. when you don't. * Arranging your life to maximize perceived lifespan. * Different ways to have an adventure. * Shooby doooby doggie. * A sports rule that sounds like a 17776 plot point * Why the Bob Emergency is an emergency. * The best quarterbacks getting stuck in an endless hike and football ending forever. * The one person who hasn't played Frog Fractions but just listens to Topic Lords because they like topics so much. * Summer's lease. * Reading a poem aloud without knowing what "ow'st" means or how to pronounce it. * Words that used to rhyme but don't anymore. * Meter recognize meter. * Writing all your sonnets during COVID lockdown. * A poem about a dude that Shakespeare is not in love with. * Woe is me, etc. * Piss Jugman vs Piss Jugm'n. * Making phonetic reforms that don't take. * Smoothing off any rough edges or peculiarities. * Permadeath taking inspiration from real life. * A fun thing that you wouldn't have expected to see. * Enjoying spending time in the world. * Hold the W key and cruise through it. * The difference between wanting something vs. liking it. * Abelian. * The opposite of how you would think honor works. * Great honors: brands hate them! * Whether to capitalize "lynchian," "kafkaesque" or "quixotic" * Eternal abstract universal objects. * Teaching truck drivers where to put their piss jugs. * The highest honor Piss Jugman can receive. * The surname Piss. * What is the average Piss lifespan? * A real life Bobby Tables moment. * The Polywater Gap. * Water that scientists have sweated in. * Buying a can of Soviet Scientist Sweat in a Japanese vending machine. * Polyester intoxication. * Liquids with a lower freezing temperature than water. * The Polywater Doodle. * A metabolism described by Richard Feynman. * Brain Pollution. * The particular better of the first line of Aqualung by Jethro Tull. * Singing "parallelipiped" to the tune of Aqualung. * Hearing random phrases in your life. * Spelling "yogurt" backwards. * Trying to understand the New York Times' effect on man. * A killer rap album based on alliteration rather than rhyming. * Poetry that rhymes on the second to last syllable rather than the last. * The baffling cosmology of Butter Dorks. Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords

Topics:

Microtopics:

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

Support Topic Lords

]]> 189. If You Don't Know Who Your Wario Is, You're the Wario https://topiclords.com/if-you-dont-know-who-your-wario-is-youre-the-wario 1723faec-3e10-4c71-bc19-f8f63e7f2d02 Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Yaros. We discuss Somewhat Dim Mirror, Forth, getting email from Online Casino Guide about the most popular Mario characters, The Kraken by Alfred Tennyson, NES dev scene, heating a black hole to cool it down, and Winston being into Power Rangers 55:44 yes Lords: * Alexander * Yaros Topics: * Somewhat Dim Mirror * Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth * I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on? * The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheKraken(poem) * NES dev scene and new games still being released * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Yg0GAX5vw * You have to heat a black hole to cool it down * Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations * Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are." Microtopics: * Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games. * Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things. * Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now. * A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't. * A black mirror but a little less black. * How really shiny black things work. * Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable. * Reverse polish notation. * Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter. * Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?" * How Forth is like Eurovision. * Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment. * Your Dymaxion map of the globe. * The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators. * Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send. * A gaming and entertainment experience. * Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter. * How recently Nethack has been patched. * Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum. * The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract. * A kid named Wario. * The Abysmal Sea. * Unnumbered and enormous polypi. * Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool. * Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal. * Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it. * Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken. * Dendy. * Buying NES games made this year. * Sokoban with a Twist. * MOON 8. * Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square. * Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper. * Two people who are really bad at archery. * Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you. * A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies. * Forklift simulators in VR. * NES Maker and GB Studio. * LLVM's NES back-end. * Making a NES game in C and never using local variables. * Finding the free time to do all your hobbies. * The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I? * A tear in geometry that just leaks shit. * Care and feeding of your pet black hole. * Pascal's Breakfast. * Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles. * The International Cult Registry. * Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse. * Violence against putty monsters. * The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff. * A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original. * Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show. * Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie. * Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now. Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Yaros

Topics:

  • Somewhat Dim Mirror
  • Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth
  • I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on?
  • The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson
  • NES dev scene and new games still being released
  • You have to heat a black hole to cool it down
  • Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations
    • Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are."

Microtopics:

  • Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now.
  • A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't.
  • A black mirror but a little less black.
  • How really shiny black things work.
  • Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable.
  • Reverse polish notation.
  • Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter.
  • Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?"
  • How Forth is like Eurovision.
  • Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment.
  • Your Dymaxion map of the globe.
  • The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators.
  • Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send.
  • A gaming and entertainment experience.
  • Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter.
  • How recently Nethack has been patched.
  • Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum.
  • The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract.
  • A kid named Wario.
  • The Abysmal Sea.
  • Unnumbered and enormous polypi.
  • Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool.
  • Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal.
  • Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it.
  • Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken.
  • Dendy.
  • Buying NES games made this year.
  • Sokoban with a Twist.
  • MOON 8.
  • Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square.
  • Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper.
  • Two people who are really bad at archery.
  • Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you.
  • A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies.
  • Forklift simulators in VR.
  • NES Maker and GB Studio.
  • LLVM's NES back-end.
  • Making a NES game in C and never using local variables.
  • Finding the free time to do all your hobbies.
  • The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I?
  • A tear in geometry that just leaks shit.
  • Care and feeding of your pet black hole.
  • Pascal's Breakfast.
  • Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles.
  • The International Cult Registry.
  • Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse.
  • Violence against putty monsters.
  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff.
  • A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original.
  • Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show.
  • Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie.
  • Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Yaros

Topics:

  • Somewhat Dim Mirror
  • Unique and weird self-bootstrapping computer language - Forth
  • I've been getting emails from an Online Casino Guide offering analysis of the relative popularity of characters from the Mario Bros. movie. How did they get my email, and how did they know that this is the kind of thing I want to gamble on?
  • The Kraken, by Alfred Tennyson
  • NES dev scene and new games still being released
  • You have to heat a black hole to cool it down
  • Winston is suddenly really into Power Rangers which I'm not super thrilled about, but it does make me happy that the appeal of cheesy MIDI rock won't be lost on future generations
    • Esper says: "The tradition of taking Japanese action stuff and reworking it into an entirely different show is pretty wild, and pretty common. The original idea behind the western release of Sailor Moon was actually going to be a live action cast of young girls who transform into "cartoon scouts" or something, and the legendary anime Macross (known for animating lots of missles with cool smoke trails) was brought over here and entirely rewritten to be Robotech, an already existing western property. Power Rangers specifically comes from the Super Sentai tokusatsu series, of which there's actually two or three dozen seasons, each with more or less individual continuity. They're fun and goofy to watch if you get a chance to see the originals; I was mostly surprised by how self-aware they are."

Microtopics:

  • Just playing games you already know whenever you find the time for games.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the little annoying things.
  • Dystopian fiction about all the terrible TV shows that are on now.
  • A guy who thought his idea would work but it didn't.
  • A black mirror but a little less black.
  • How really shiny black things work.
  • Logging in to watch people make themselves miserable.
  • Reverse polish notation.
  • Giving up on operating systems and deciding to live inside a Forth interpreter.
  • Going back to the Cambrian period and being like "what is this shell thing and what is it trying to accomplish?"
  • How Forth is like Eurovision.
  • Borrowing someone's RPN calculator and being very confused for a moment.
  • Your Dymaxion map of the globe.
  • The next emulations of Hewlett-Packard reverse polish notation calculators.
  • Online Casino Guides and the kinds of email they send.
  • A gaming and entertainment experience.
  • Naming your movie @ and getting incredible engagement on Twitter.
  • How recently Nethack has been patched.
  • Carpetology and the study of rugs and carpets even though they're not in the same phylum.
  • The Dungeons and Dragons Chick Tract.
  • A kid named Wario.
  • The Abysmal Sea.
  • Unnumbered and enormous polypi.
  • Interpreting a poem as a political statement when it's clearly about how giant squids are super cool.
  • Lauding this poet's skill with language even though he didn't know the difference between abyssal and abysmal.
  • Calling a poem a sonnet when it doesn't meet the criteria of a sonnet just because Tennyson wrote it.
  • Wanting to be huge and eat sponges, like the kraken.
  • Dendy.
  • Buying NES games made this year.
  • Sokoban with a Twist.
  • MOON 8.
  • Releasing chiptunes on vinyl shaped like a square.
  • Russian Roulette for the NES making good use of the Zapper.
  • Two people who are really bad at archery.
  • Pointing your Rambo exploding arrow at the exploding barrel sitting right next to you.
  • A turn-based thing where you can kill zombies.
  • Forklift simulators in VR.
  • NES Maker and GB Studio.
  • LLVM's NES back-end.
  • Making a NES game in C and never using local variables.
  • Finding the free time to do all your hobbies.
  • The bigger I am the colder I am, and if you heat me up I get bigger and colder. What am I?
  • A tear in geometry that just leaks shit.
  • Care and feeding of your pet black hole.
  • Pascal's Breakfast.
  • Whether it's in your best interest to believe in waffles.
  • The International Cult Registry.
  • Trying to make a portmanteau of waffle and apocalypse.
  • Violence against putty monsters.
  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Power Rangers spinoff.
  • A Power Rangers spinoff made in the last three years that has the exact same production values of the original.
  • Writing a new TV show around the action scenes from a different TV show.
  • Taking the most expensive special effects shots from every movie and putting them all in one uber-movie.
  • Tricking Harrison Ford into being in your movie because he's so old now.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 174. Occam's Raccoon https://topiclords.com/occams-raccoon 324adc98-4c2d-44b9-86c8-3b347d6c478b Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Chris and Alexander. We discuss words with similar sounds and meanings but no etymological relation, virtual marble runs with guns, the broom method of dealing with a hydrogen leak, a poem by Dr. Seuss, the Loveland Frog, and ghosts are real: what are the economic consequences? 1:05:42 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Chris * Alexander Topics: * Words with similar sounds/meanings but no relation to each other at all. * Virtual marble runs with guns * https://www.youtube.com/@mikan2d * The "broom method" of dealing with a hydrogen leak * https://nextworldover.tumblr.com/post/706885583716466688 * Poem by Dr. Seuss: “I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!” * Loveland Frog (Ohio frog bigfoot?) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveland_frog * Ghosts are real: what are the economic consequences? Microtopics: * Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. * Lords starting with Xa. * Moving boxes that have handles built in. * All else being equal, a raccoon did it. * Proto-Indo-European. * Putting the S in Island. * The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare. * Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa. * Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now." * Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other. * Escalating Revenge Core Destruction. * If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent. * Oil timers. * Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more. * Apollonian circles. * The ancestry of Firefox. * Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides. * Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing. * A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket. * Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot. * An air conditioner but backwards. * Marbula One. * Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle. * The year you finally get into Blaseball. * How Blaseball works. * How to detect a fire that you can't see. * Glass Onion: debunked. * A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters. * Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors. * What "from" means in "escape from the tank" * The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by. * The Snack of the Stars. * Safety testing various propellants. * What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium. * The Gregorian Underwater Choir. * Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it. * The Lorax threatening you with a bat. * My huge sawed off flashlight. * Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight. * Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies. * Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth. * Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry. * Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round? * Bee Barns. * A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods. * A frog guy. A guy who is a frog. * A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture. * A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals. * What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies. * Ghosts: what do they do all day? * Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alexander

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.
  • Lords starting with Xa.
  • Moving boxes that have handles built in.
  • All else being equal, a raccoon did it.
  • Proto-Indo-European.
  • Putting the S in Island.
  • The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare.
  • Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa.
  • Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now."
  • Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other.
  • Escalating Revenge Core Destruction.
  • If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent.
  • Oil timers.
  • Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more.
  • Apollonian circles.
  • The ancestry of Firefox.
  • Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides.
  • Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing.
  • A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket.
  • Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot.
  • An air conditioner but backwards.
  • Marbula One.
  • Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle.
  • The year you finally get into Blaseball.
  • How Blaseball works.
  • How to detect a fire that you can't see.
  • Glass Onion: debunked.
  • A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters.
  • Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors.
  • What "from" means in "escape from the tank"
  • The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by.
  • The Snack of the Stars.
  • Safety testing various propellants.
  • What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium.
  • The Gregorian Underwater Choir.
  • Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it.
  • The Lorax threatening you with a bat.
  • My huge sawed off flashlight.
  • Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight.
  • Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies.
  • Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth.
  • Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry.
  • Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round?
  • Bee Barns.
  • A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods.
  • A frog guy. A guy who is a frog.
  • A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture.
  • A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals.
  • What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies.
  • Ghosts: what do they do all day?
  • Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

  • Chris
  • Alexander

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.
  • Lords starting with Xa.
  • Moving boxes that have handles built in.
  • All else being equal, a raccoon did it.
  • Proto-Indo-European.
  • Putting the S in Island.
  • The era of Topic Lords when we only discussed Shakespeare.
  • Some of the things you expect are wrong, and vice-versa.
  • Bacteria finding proteins hanging around and deciding "this is part of me now."
  • Branching path structures shooting red and blue bullets at each other.
  • Escalating Revenge Core Destruction.
  • If pachinko were extremely elaborate and violent.
  • Oil timers.
  • Turning over the rectangle on your desk and forcing the red and green combatants to fight for you once more.
  • Apollonian circles.
  • The ancestry of Firefox.
  • Web browsers surrounded by water on all sides.
  • Using the entirety of your computing resources to do basically nothing.
  • A phone app that makes your phone display Flying Toasters but only while it's in your pocket.
  • Computers that are really good at getting hot and not very good at not getting hot.
  • An air conditioner but backwards.
  • Marbula One.
  • Marble races except every marble is armed with an assault rifle.
  • The year you finally get into Blaseball.
  • How Blaseball works.
  • How to detect a fire that you can't see.
  • Glass Onion: debunked.
  • A hell planet completely saturated with a volatile gas populated by lava monsters.
  • Why leave the house? Just send a probe and infer the existence of your neighbors.
  • What "from" means in "escape from the tank"
  • The jingle the hydrogen truck plays as it trundles by.
  • The Snack of the Stars.
  • Safety testing various propellants.
  • What your voice sounds like without any transmission medium.
  • The Gregorian Underwater Choir.
  • Naming Helium after the sun because that's where we discovered it.
  • The Lorax threatening you with a bat.
  • My huge sawed off flashlight.
  • Stay back, officer, it's just just a flashlight.
  • Replacing your self-defense rabies bat every time it dies.
  • Brushing your self-defense bat's teeth.
  • Dr. Zeus's book of adult poetry.
  • Is the Death Star brutalist? Can brutalist architecture be round?
  • Bee Barns.
  • A four foot tall frog guy who lives in the woods.
  • A frog guy. A guy who is a frog.
  • A frog guy caught between two worlds of posture.
  • A Wikipedia user whose thing is to make photo illustrations of cryptids and extinct animals.
  • What happens to Pikachu's soul when it dies.
  • Ghosts: what do they do all day?
  • Ghosts exist, and they can talk, and they know all about the afterlife, but also they're huge liars.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 138. From Infracheddar to Ultrableu https://topiclords.com/from-infracheddar-to-ultrableu 60234a09-43a4-43c6-9858-0b71e77e857f Mon, 13 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Elena and Alexander. We discuss hosting a party vs. going to the party, the Pearl Jam Liner Notes method of writing first drafts, Lagrange Point Lasagna, Ode on the Longitude, the theory of spontaneous generation, Sunday Roasts, and diagnosing Jim's tongue. 1:00:44 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Elena * Alexander plugs https://www.constantpodcast.com/ Topics: * Hosting a party is way better than going to a party * The Pearl Jam Liner Notes method of writing first drafts * Lagrange Point Lasagna * Jonathan Swift, "Ode on the Longitude" * https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/TheWorksoftheRev.JonathanSwift/Volume17/OdeontheLongitude * The theory of spontaneous generation * It turns out Sunday Roasts are a whole Deal * Diagnose my tongue! * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI3yD3WAcz4 * https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielralston/the-true-story-of-the-fake-zombies-the-strangest-con-in-rock Microtopics: * Unfindable Lords. * The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong. * Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets. * People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand. * A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology. * The smallest of talk. * A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself. * Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward * Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any. * From Infracheddar to Ultrableu. * A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself. * Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties. * The weirdness of reading aloud. * Writing while talking. * A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once. * Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely. * Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence. * Worrying about commas later. * Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details. * How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces. * How to bake brownies that's all center pieces. * Sous vide brownies. * People who only like the center of the falafel. * The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie. * Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna. * Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension. * Subduction lasagna. * The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup. * Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension. * Lasagna creationists. * The Earth is a rock lasagna. * Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring. * Bepst and besht. * A long-standing problem in navigation. * Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation. * Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity. * Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is. * Such explosive ships, in such known locations. * A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public. * The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s. * The sense in which GPS is extremely loud. * Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out. * The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses. * How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails. * A recipe for scorpions. * The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast. * The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha. * Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week. * Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa. * Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension. * Via Gravia. * Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth. * The Yes Ship of Theseus. * That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed. * The Caramelldansen saga. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unfindable Lords.
  • The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong.
  • Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets.
  • People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand.
  • A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology.
  • The smallest of talk.
  • A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself.
  • Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward
  • Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any.
  • From Infracheddar to Ultrableu.
  • A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself.
  • Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties.
  • The weirdness of reading aloud.
  • Writing while talking.
  • A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once.
  • Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely.
  • Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence.
  • Worrying about commas later.
  • Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details.
  • How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces.
  • How to bake brownies that's all center pieces.
  • Sous vide brownies.
  • People who only like the center of the falafel.
  • The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie.
  • Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna.
  • Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension.
  • Subduction lasagna.
  • The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup.
  • Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension.
  • Lasagna creationists.
  • The Earth is a rock lasagna.
  • Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring.
  • Bepst and besht.
  • A long-standing problem in navigation.
  • Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation.
  • Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity.
  • Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is.
  • Such explosive ships, in such known locations.
  • A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public.
  • The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s.
  • The sense in which GPS is extremely loud.
  • Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out.
  • The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses.
  • How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails.
  • A recipe for scorpions.
  • The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast.
  • The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha.
  • Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week.
  • Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa.
  • Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension.
  • Via Gravia.
  • Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth.
  • The Yes Ship of Theseus.
  • That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed.
  • The Caramelldansen saga.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Unfindable Lords.
  • The Constant: a History of Getting Things Wrong.
  • Continuous vs. discontinuous weighted blankets.
  • People asking you about your life so you have to give them all the necessary context on your life so they'll understand.
  • A masquerade ball where you receive a quest to find someone wearing a dog mask and talk to them about topology.
  • The smallest of talk.
  • A continuous unplanned unstructured talking with each other that you expect to just happen by itself.
  • Bringing a cheeseboard to a party so you can go sort it whenever the conversation gets awkward
  • Sorting the cheeseboard from sharp to mild and then sorting the cheese by color but nobody at the party is allowed to actually eat any.
  • From Infracheddar to Ultrableu.
  • A sorting algorithm gaining intelligence and trying to understand itself.
  • Teaching your friends sign language so they'll be quieter at parties.
  • The weirdness of reading aloud.
  • Writing while talking.
  • A species of alien that can follow two conversations at once.
  • Balancing the complexity of your word choices so your sentence flows nicely.
  • Writing the most important word of each sentence first and then going back and filling in the rest of the sentence.
  • Worrying about commas later.
  • Taking so long to implement the core of your idea that you've forgotten the details.
  • How to bake brownies that are all edge pieces.
  • How to bake brownies that's all center pieces.
  • Sous vide brownies.
  • People who only like the center of the falafel.
  • The perfect solution for the person who prefers the grossest part of the brownie.
  • Opening a portal to the lasagna dimension and scooping some out and feeling safe because there's no e. coli in the lasagna dimension, just lasagna.
  • Tectonic plates in the lasagna dimension.
  • Subduction lasagna.
  • The asteroid equivalent of brownie soup.
  • Forming trade alliances with the people who live in the air pockets of the lasagna dimension.
  • Lasagna creationists.
  • The Earth is a rock lasagna.
  • Whether lasagna or baked ziti is more likely to be naturally occurring.
  • Bepst and besht.
  • A long-standing problem in navigation.
  • Figuring out how to determine longitude in the Age of Navigation.
  • Getting kicked out of Cambridge because you don't accept the Trinity.
  • Firing a cannon at noon so everyone knows what time it is.
  • Such explosive ships, in such known locations.
  • A new method for discovering longitude both at sea and land, humbly proposed for the consideration of the public.
  • The Jewish Space Lasers of the 1700s.
  • The sense in which GPS is extremely loud.
  • Putting a log on the fire and salamanders come out.
  • The riddle where to understand the answer you have to know that bees come from lion carcasses.
  • How earth used to have enough energy to spawn humans out of clay but now it only has enough juice left to make bugs and snails.
  • A recipe for scorpions.
  • The Tragedy of the Sunday Roast.
  • The St. Tuppensday Brouhaha.
  • Million Shilling Idea: serving Sunday Roast all week.
  • Victorian orphans mining for Bitcoin (or "bittums") out on the Playa.
  • Eating a Yorkshire pudding at a Lagrange point and sopping up gravy from the gravy dimension.
  • Via Gravia.
  • Nega-scurvy, where you eat too much fruit and grow extra teeth.
  • The Yes Ship of Theseus.
  • That time the Zombies broke up and then had a hit record and then fake Zombies started touring the US until someone from the real band noticed.
  • The Caramelldansen saga.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 124. Call Me Da5id; Da4id Was My Father https://topiclords.com/call-me-da5id-da4id-was-my-father bbbecf8a-8e87-461f-b675-26f3493e8368 Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Tyriq and Xander. We discuss choosing a name with numbers in it, overcoming the inertia of old tools, confusing two things that are not the same, Sweater Weather, by Sharon Bryan, making things that occupy real-world space, and Ithkuil: the inscrutable conlang that was co-opted by Russian Buddhist cultists. 1:01:39 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Tyriq * https://twitter.com/FourbitFriday * Xander Topics: * The year was 1998, and choosing a name with numbers in it was a completely normal thing to do. * http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802xerox-workcentresareswitchingwrittennumberswhenscanning * How do you overcome the inertia of old familiar tools when trying to learn new ways to do the same thing? * I confused Daniel Day-Lewis with Lou Diamond Phillips for years, thinking they were the same person. I'm not sure why but my hypothesis is that it's because they both have three names and they both have that "lou" sound in there. * If you really have to know: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/dtxjg/tilthatlimpbizkitactuallymeans/ * Sweater Weather: a Love Song to Language, by Sharon Bryan * https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=5543.html * I'm gonna try to make a bartop arcade machine with unconventional controls, I think. Anybody have any tips or suggestions or anything? Also more generally: How about that meatspace creativity? Anybody make anything that occupies real world space lately? * Ithkuil: the inscrutable conlang that was co-opted by Russian Buddhist cultists Microtopics: * Making games and albums. * In the pluggable range. * The history of Byzantium. * The weird mysteries of what happened, what we know, what we don't know, and what didn't happen. * An average of all the books that don't exist. * Taking the average of two books. * The square root of negative Garfield. * A lossy compression algorithm for plain text. * The most information dense thing you can change. * LLLL Cool J. * Beware the LLs of March. * All the numbers you might append to your user name. * Wanting or not wanting to be like Xeno746. * Social signaling by putting numbers in your user name or by not putting numbers in your user name. * Role-playing having sponsors because all your idols are influencers. * Using the term "Information Superhighway" unironically. * Visually decorating your name. * Putting card suit emojis around your name and then appending "-chocolate" * Encoding your identity in emojis and adding them to your user name. * The double inertias of trying to move plus leaving your comfort zones. * Jim's advice for learning a new tool. * Working with a tool the way it's intended to be used. * Petting a cat the wrong way as a metaphor. * Actors we confuse with each other. * Hearing two bands on the same mixtape and getting them confused for the rest of your life. * Refusing to explain a gross band name on the show. * Trying to figure out what sex act your parents named you after. * That Tom Lehrer song that's just a list of all the elements, except it's all your favorite turns of phrase. * Making a melody so dissonant and weird that the listener dissociates from music and just hears a sequence of pitches on its own merits. * Having a tongue party in your mouth. * The Sultan of Swat. * Loose Lips Buck Up. * Lifty Nifty, Bright and Shifty. * Making a bartop arcade machine with unconventional controls. * The kinetic feel of throwing and catching a flywheel. * Flipping a series of switches in quick succession. * A totally arbitrary control scheme that would be weird and interesting for one game but it's been used for thousands. * Designing your pinball table so that players nudge your pinball cabinet a bit but not too much. * Reasons for subtle variation in how pinball tables play. * Buying banned pinball parts at the pinball black market. * A pinball simulation of shooting cans with a gun. * The seesaw lever thing for going along the rails. * Bowling with a shuffleboard. * Being over monetizing your art. * Non-Functional Bullshit. * Non-Fungible Game Experiences, such as when the party you're DMing tries to intimidate NPCs with a severed leg. * Hobbies that feed your family. * Making sure your game remains mysterious by ensuring nobody cares enough to solve them. * Simmering on a thought before you express it. * Crunchy conlangs. * Idiosyncratic Oblasts of Russia. * Telling your boss at the DMV that you need time off to go speak to Russian Buddhist alien abduction cultists about the obscure conlang you invented. * Taking something functional and making something non-functional out of it to find out what it would look like. * A Dewey Decimal System for individual words. * Inventing a categorization system for all human knowledge that's extremely focused on maritime concerns. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making games and albums.
  • In the pluggable range.
  • The history of Byzantium.
  • The weird mysteries of what happened, what we know, what we don't know, and what didn't happen.
  • An average of all the books that don't exist.
  • Taking the average of two books.
  • The square root of negative Garfield.
  • A lossy compression algorithm for plain text.
  • The most information dense thing you can change.
  • LLLL Cool J.
  • Beware the LLs of March.
  • All the numbers you might append to your user name.
  • Wanting or not wanting to be like Xeno746.
  • Social signaling by putting numbers in your user name or by not putting numbers in your user name.
  • Role-playing having sponsors because all your idols are influencers.
  • Using the term "Information Superhighway" unironically.
  • Visually decorating your name.
  • Putting card suit emojis around your name and then appending "-chocolate"
  • Encoding your identity in emojis and adding them to your user name.
  • The double inertias of trying to move plus leaving your comfort zones.
  • Jim's advice for learning a new tool.
  • Working with a tool the way it's intended to be used.
  • Petting a cat the wrong way as a metaphor.
  • Actors we confuse with each other.
  • Hearing two bands on the same mixtape and getting them confused for the rest of your life.
  • Refusing to explain a gross band name on the show.
  • Trying to figure out what sex act your parents named you after.
  • That Tom Lehrer song that's just a list of all the elements, except it's all your favorite turns of phrase.
  • Making a melody so dissonant and weird that the listener dissociates from music and just hears a sequence of pitches on its own merits.
  • Having a tongue party in your mouth.
  • The Sultan of Swat.
  • Loose Lips Buck Up.
  • Lifty Nifty, Bright and Shifty.
  • Making a bartop arcade machine with unconventional controls.
  • The kinetic feel of throwing and catching a flywheel.
  • Flipping a series of switches in quick succession.
  • A totally arbitrary control scheme that would be weird and interesting for one game but it's been used for thousands.
  • Designing your pinball table so that players nudge your pinball cabinet a bit but not too much.
  • Reasons for subtle variation in how pinball tables play.
  • Buying banned pinball parts at the pinball black market.
  • A pinball simulation of shooting cans with a gun.
  • The seesaw lever thing for going along the rails.
  • Bowling with a shuffleboard.
  • Being over monetizing your art.
  • Non-Functional Bullshit.
  • Non-Fungible Game Experiences, such as when the party you're DMing tries to intimidate NPCs with a severed leg.
  • Hobbies that feed your family.
  • Making sure your game remains mysterious by ensuring nobody cares enough to solve them.
  • Simmering on a thought before you express it.
  • Crunchy conlangs.
  • Idiosyncratic Oblasts of Russia.
  • Telling your boss at the DMV that you need time off to go speak to Russian Buddhist alien abduction cultists about the obscure conlang you invented.
  • Taking something functional and making something non-functional out of it to find out what it would look like.
  • A Dewey Decimal System for individual words.
  • Inventing a categorization system for all human knowledge that's extremely focused on maritime concerns.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making games and albums.
  • In the pluggable range.
  • The history of Byzantium.
  • The weird mysteries of what happened, what we know, what we don't know, and what didn't happen.
  • An average of all the books that don't exist.
  • Taking the average of two books.
  • The square root of negative Garfield.
  • A lossy compression algorithm for plain text.
  • The most information dense thing you can change.
  • LLLL Cool J.
  • Beware the LLs of March.
  • All the numbers you might append to your user name.
  • Wanting or not wanting to be like Xeno746.
  • Social signaling by putting numbers in your user name or by not putting numbers in your user name.
  • Role-playing having sponsors because all your idols are influencers.
  • Using the term "Information Superhighway" unironically.
  • Visually decorating your name.
  • Putting card suit emojis around your name and then appending "-chocolate"
  • Encoding your identity in emojis and adding them to your user name.
  • The double inertias of trying to move plus leaving your comfort zones.
  • Jim's advice for learning a new tool.
  • Working with a tool the way it's intended to be used.
  • Petting a cat the wrong way as a metaphor.
  • Actors we confuse with each other.
  • Hearing two bands on the same mixtape and getting them confused for the rest of your life.
  • Refusing to explain a gross band name on the show.
  • Trying to figure out what sex act your parents named you after.
  • That Tom Lehrer song that's just a list of all the elements, except it's all your favorite turns of phrase.
  • Making a melody so dissonant and weird that the listener dissociates from music and just hears a sequence of pitches on its own merits.
  • Having a tongue party in your mouth.
  • The Sultan of Swat.
  • Loose Lips Buck Up.
  • Lifty Nifty, Bright and Shifty.
  • Making a bartop arcade machine with unconventional controls.
  • The kinetic feel of throwing and catching a flywheel.
  • Flipping a series of switches in quick succession.
  • A totally arbitrary control scheme that would be weird and interesting for one game but it's been used for thousands.
  • Designing your pinball table so that players nudge your pinball cabinet a bit but not too much.
  • Reasons for subtle variation in how pinball tables play.
  • Buying banned pinball parts at the pinball black market.
  • A pinball simulation of shooting cans with a gun.
  • The seesaw lever thing for going along the rails.
  • Bowling with a shuffleboard.
  • Being over monetizing your art.
  • Non-Functional Bullshit.
  • Non-Fungible Game Experiences, such as when the party you're DMing tries to intimidate NPCs with a severed leg.
  • Hobbies that feed your family.
  • Making sure your game remains mysterious by ensuring nobody cares enough to solve them.
  • Simmering on a thought before you express it.
  • Crunchy conlangs.
  • Idiosyncratic Oblasts of Russia.
  • Telling your boss at the DMV that you need time off to go speak to Russian Buddhist alien abduction cultists about the obscure conlang you invented.
  • Taking something functional and making something non-functional out of it to find out what it would look like.
  • A Dewey Decimal System for individual words.
  • Inventing a categorization system for all human knowledge that's extremely focused on maritime concerns.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 99. I Want You to Never Show Me This https://topiclords.com/i-want-you-to-never-show-me-this 18433b63-bb09-4530-a28b-089e3a8403ab Mon, 13 Sep 2021 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mitch and Xander. We discuss what qualifies as a Mario game, spectrum of porcupine tunings by eigenmonzos, the Letter C, finding the light switch in this bed and breakfast, the bizarre CD-ROM game Monty Python made in the 90s, and how Tumblr is almost good. 1:01:51 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Mitch * https://twitter.com/hbmmaster/ * https://www.youtube.com/user/HBMmaster8472 * Xander Topics: * The title "Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 3DS" is the first two lines of a haiku * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XejJ6PzPtEw * Spectrum of porcupine tunings by eigenmonzos * The Letter C * Finding the light switch in this bed and breakfast * https://twitter.com/mogwai_poet/status/1419337769386536964 * The bizarre CD-ROM game Monty Python made in the 90s * Tumblr would be a good website if it wasn't such a bad website Microtopics: * Starting to meet up just in time for the Delta variant to show up. * jan Misali of the Youtube channel jan Misali. * Using Bing to google things. * A recent video you will have made. * How many games are in the Super Mario series. * Super Smash Bros / For Nintendo 3DS / It's Coming This Fall * Super Mario 64DS HD For Nintendo Switch. * The only three games that everyone can agree are Super Mario games. * Super Mario's Wacky Worlds for the Phillips CD-i. * Not knowing who to vote for comptroller so googling each candidate's name with "is good" and picking the one with the most results. * Whether Super Mario Run is a platformer. * The bare minimum of procgen required for a game to count as an endless runner. * When there's no consensus, there's no communication. * The Super Mario Artist series. * Any game you can look at counting as a "video game* because video is Latin for "I see." * Xenharmonics and microtonal music. * Subdividing the octave into 19 psychoacoustically equal segments. * The Venn diagram between people interested in microtonal music and people who understand singular value decomposition. * Enjoying 17-TET music but only the parts that would've sounded better in 12-TET. * Learning enough about Super Mario Bros. Special to decide whether it's a game. * All the different ways you could count things. * The only nontrivial solution to the cannonball problem. * Finding the center of a shape by cutting it out of cardboard and balancing it on your finger. * The Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers. * 39,474 different ways to find the center of a triangle. * Being wrong about the letter C. * Spelling it SD-ROM but still pronouncing it CD-ROM. * The fault of vulgar Latin. * Proto-Western Romance. * What Q means to us. * Slicing up a house into apartments by roping off a stairway. * Things depicted as normal in Hollywood movies that can't possibly be normal, such as flipping a switch to activate spinning blades in your sink. * Dedicated garbage knives that are just for cutting up garbage, that you keep next to the regular kitchen knives and they look the same but you know which ones are which. * The part of the infomercial for the Sink Knife Gun that's black and white where the lady is struggling to cut up her sink drain trash by sticking knives down there and wiggling them around. * Making a smoothie with a mortar and pestle. * Whether the Sarlacc Pit inspired garbage disposals or vice versa. * A Taco Bell built into a striking, memorable building. * A game you could check out at the local video store. * Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time. * CD-ROM experiences. * Minigames that mess with your interface. * The outer space labyrinth mine cart puzzle tying together all the unrelated Monty Python sketches. * Completing a game and it changes your desktop wallpaper to a congratulations screen. * Completing a level and unlocking audio you can set as your answering machine message. * Solving the secret for intergalactic success. * Topics you might like: food. * The quintessential Tumblr story. * The Tale of John Green's Favorite Taste. * Reblogging a post and then editing it so it looks like the person you were reblogging said something else. * John Green as in "The Bum Bum Song" John Green. * What it took to convince Tumblr to finally make it so you can't edit other people's posts. * Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra discussing John Green's Favorite Taste. * The Insane Clown Posse's web master writing a web chat server with no security whatsoever. * Feeling cool because you ruined it for everybody else. * Googling just the letter W. * Dueling George W. Bush to the death over ownership of the letter W. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Starting to meet up just in time for the Delta variant to show up.
  • jan Misali of the Youtube channel jan Misali.
  • Using Bing to google things.
  • A recent video you will have made.
  • How many games are in the Super Mario series.
  • Super Smash Bros / For Nintendo 3DS / It's Coming This Fall
  • Super Mario 64DS HD For Nintendo Switch.
  • The only three games that everyone can agree are Super Mario games.
  • Super Mario's Wacky Worlds for the Phillips CD-i.
  • Not knowing who to vote for comptroller so googling each candidate's name with "is good" and picking the one with the most results.
  • Whether Super Mario Run is a platformer.
  • The bare minimum of procgen required for a game to count as an endless runner.
  • When there's no consensus, there's no communication.
  • The Super Mario Artist series.
  • Any game you can look at counting as a "video game* because video is Latin for "I see."
  • Xenharmonics and microtonal music.
  • Subdividing the octave into 19 psychoacoustically equal segments.
  • The Venn diagram between people interested in microtonal music and people who understand singular value decomposition.
  • Enjoying 17-TET music but only the parts that would've sounded better in 12-TET.
  • Learning enough about Super Mario Bros. Special to decide whether it's a game.
  • All the different ways you could count things.
  • The only nontrivial solution to the cannonball problem.
  • Finding the center of a shape by cutting it out of cardboard and balancing it on your finger.
  • The Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers.
  • 39,474 different ways to find the center of a triangle.
  • Being wrong about the letter C.
  • Spelling it SD-ROM but still pronouncing it CD-ROM.
  • The fault of vulgar Latin.
  • Proto-Western Romance.
  • What Q means to us.
  • Slicing up a house into apartments by roping off a stairway.
  • Things depicted as normal in Hollywood movies that can't possibly be normal, such as flipping a switch to activate spinning blades in your sink.
  • Dedicated garbage knives that are just for cutting up garbage, that you keep next to the regular kitchen knives and they look the same but you know which ones are which.
  • The part of the infomercial for the Sink Knife Gun that's black and white where the lady is struggling to cut up her sink drain trash by sticking knives down there and wiggling them around.
  • Making a smoothie with a mortar and pestle.
  • Whether the Sarlacc Pit inspired garbage disposals or vice versa.
  • A Taco Bell built into a striking, memorable building.
  • A game you could check out at the local video store.
  • Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time.
  • CD-ROM experiences.
  • Minigames that mess with your interface.
  • The outer space labyrinth mine cart puzzle tying together all the unrelated Monty Python sketches.
  • Completing a game and it changes your desktop wallpaper to a congratulations screen.
  • Completing a level and unlocking audio you can set as your answering machine message.
  • Solving the secret for intergalactic success.
  • Topics you might like: food.
  • The quintessential Tumblr story.
  • The Tale of John Green's Favorite Taste.
  • Reblogging a post and then editing it so it looks like the person you were reblogging said something else.
  • John Green as in "The Bum Bum Song" John Green.
  • What it took to convince Tumblr to finally make it so you can't edit other people's posts.
  • Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra discussing John Green's Favorite Taste.
  • The Insane Clown Posse's web master writing a web chat server with no security whatsoever.
  • Feeling cool because you ruined it for everybody else.
  • Googling just the letter W.
  • Dueling George W. Bush to the death over ownership of the letter W.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Starting to meet up just in time for the Delta variant to show up.
  • jan Misali of the Youtube channel jan Misali.
  • Using Bing to google things.
  • A recent video you will have made.
  • How many games are in the Super Mario series.
  • Super Smash Bros / For Nintendo 3DS / It's Coming This Fall
  • Super Mario 64DS HD For Nintendo Switch.
  • The only three games that everyone can agree are Super Mario games.
  • Super Mario's Wacky Worlds for the Phillips CD-i.
  • Not knowing who to vote for comptroller so googling each candidate's name with "is good" and picking the one with the most results.
  • Whether Super Mario Run is a platformer.
  • The bare minimum of procgen required for a game to count as an endless runner.
  • When there's no consensus, there's no communication.
  • The Super Mario Artist series.
  • Any game you can look at counting as a "video game* because video is Latin for "I see."
  • Xenharmonics and microtonal music.
  • Subdividing the octave into 19 psychoacoustically equal segments.
  • The Venn diagram between people interested in microtonal music and people who understand singular value decomposition.
  • Enjoying 17-TET music but only the parts that would've sounded better in 12-TET.
  • Learning enough about Super Mario Bros. Special to decide whether it's a game.
  • All the different ways you could count things.
  • The only nontrivial solution to the cannonball problem.
  • Finding the center of a shape by cutting it out of cardboard and balancing it on your finger.
  • The Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers.
  • 39,474 different ways to find the center of a triangle.
  • Being wrong about the letter C.
  • Spelling it SD-ROM but still pronouncing it CD-ROM.
  • The fault of vulgar Latin.
  • Proto-Western Romance.
  • What Q means to us.
  • Slicing up a house into apartments by roping off a stairway.
  • Things depicted as normal in Hollywood movies that can't possibly be normal, such as flipping a switch to activate spinning blades in your sink.
  • Dedicated garbage knives that are just for cutting up garbage, that you keep next to the regular kitchen knives and they look the same but you know which ones are which.
  • The part of the infomercial for the Sink Knife Gun that's black and white where the lady is struggling to cut up her sink drain trash by sticking knives down there and wiggling them around.
  • Making a smoothie with a mortar and pestle.
  • Whether the Sarlacc Pit inspired garbage disposals or vice versa.
  • A Taco Bell built into a striking, memorable building.
  • A game you could check out at the local video store.
  • Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time.
  • CD-ROM experiences.
  • Minigames that mess with your interface.
  • The outer space labyrinth mine cart puzzle tying together all the unrelated Monty Python sketches.
  • Completing a game and it changes your desktop wallpaper to a congratulations screen.
  • Completing a level and unlocking audio you can set as your answering machine message.
  • Solving the secret for intergalactic success.
  • Topics you might like: food.
  • The quintessential Tumblr story.
  • The Tale of John Green's Favorite Taste.
  • Reblogging a post and then editing it so it looks like the person you were reblogging said something else.
  • John Green as in "The Bum Bum Song" John Green.
  • What it took to convince Tumblr to finally make it so you can't edit other people's posts.
  • Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra discussing John Green's Favorite Taste.
  • The Insane Clown Posse's web master writing a web chat server with no security whatsoever.
  • Feeling cool because you ruined it for everybody else.
  • Googling just the letter W.
  • Dueling George W. Bush to the death over ownership of the letter W.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 81. The Pianist-Oboist War https://topiclords.com/the-pianist-oboist-war f4644d9d-6c2a-48d7-a696-c7a9dc179660 Mon, 10 May 2021 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Amanda. We discuss sci-fi stories that are just reskins of stuff that already happens, ancient bitcoin, that time Wienerschnitzel actually served schnitzel, first encountering a song through parody, and bad habits that adventure games teach you. 50:01 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Alexander * Amanda Topics: * The disappointment of sci-fi stories that are just reskins of stuff that happens on Earth. * My bitcoin. * https://twitter.com/mogwai_poet/status/543952090800734209 * I can't decide whether I'm more annoyed that Wienerschnitzel doesn't serve schnitzel, or that they did for three months in 2017 as a gag. * Jesse asks "First encountering a song through parody." * Bad habits that adventure games teach you. Microtopics: * Shrinking your pony until it's really small. * Pulling down the console and typing +mlook. * Skyrim modding as a more convincing representation of magic than the spell system in the game itself. * A very cryptic twitter account that just posts numbers. * What @math_ebooks did to be suspended. * Wanting to land on a planet and look for Bob but a different planet gets in your way first. * Sci-fi as a safe lens for exploring our culture without getting people's defenses up. * Reverse mystery stories. * Starfish people who communicate through music. * Watching Solaris because you're really into boring sci-fi. * An alien invasion movie without the invasion. * Final Jeopardy asking you to identify the Close Encounters of the Third Kind melody from the interval names. * The fires of Musical Jeopardy. * The correlation between how tightly strung your instrument is vs. how tightly strung you are. * The Star Trek episode where the Enterprise discovers a musician planet where there's a war between the pianists and the oboists. * Edmonton, the early Bitcoin hub. * SETI@home never finding anything interesting. * Losing your Bitcoin wallet. * Buying a $40,000 coffee with Bitcoin in 2013. * Giving your college hard drive to a friend to ask them to try to find your Bitcoin wallet without first scouring it for incriminating evidence. * Deciding you no longer need a memes folder on your hard drive because you can easily find as many memes as you need on the Internet. * Dressing up as the Murder She Wrote theme song for Meme Day. * Whether the Murder She Wrote theme song is a meme. * The barbecue joint that accepts Dogecoin. * Going to Remedy Chai in Edmonton and getting a butter chicken wrap and a $40,000 chai. * Liking both hot dogs and schnitzel but hating Wienerschnitzel. * A joke that most people won't get or notice, and the people who do will be annoyed by it. * My First Book of Space. * Hating potatoes until you discover that they are delicious and then hating them even more. * Your refusal to admit that actually you like potatoes as foreshadowing to every argument you ever have on the Internet. * The Wienerschnitzel chili cheese dog burrito skipping right from marketing's brain to consumer's mouths without ever being taste-tested by anyone. * The Brain to Mouth social movement. * The culinary dimensional space of meat product folded into bread product. * A hybrid chef/engineer who has an understanding of both fast food pipelines and how to prepare a tasty meal. * Hearing every Weird Al version of a song before you hear the originals. * Mathnet. * Bible versions of pop culture songs so you can sing along to the radio without being full of sin. * The guy at Bible Camp who rewrote the lyrics of pop music to be about God, who retired back when Christianity was groovy, so the most recent pop music you're allowed to sing is from the 1970s. * It's getting cold in here, so put on all your coats. * Sherlock Hemlock. * Vincent Twice Vincent Twice. * Monty Python's popularity among Americans who are completely oblivious to what it's satirizing, so a whole generation of American nerds grew up thinking inscrutable nonsense is the pinnacle of comedy. (Which it is.) * A combination of things you usually don't see tickling your neurons in a novel way. * The scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide radio show where Douglas Adams is making fun of disco. * The missing album that the Backstreet Boys only released in Canada so they could practice being famous. * Time traveling to past and future Space Quests. * Doing ridiculous adventure game shit to get a book of matches when you could just go to a store and buy a gosh darned book of matches. * An adventure game where you can do what makes sense. * How the Infocom hard boiled detective text adventures were structured differently from traditional text adventures. * Wanting Roberta Williams to adopt you and now you've blown it. * The Seattle of Mexico. * San Francisco, The Everbrown State. * Roberta Williams tracking you down and adopting you against your will. * Luring Roberta Williams to your house with promises of trained chickens jumping through hula hoops. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Amanda

Topics:

  • The disappointment of sci-fi stories that are just reskins of stuff that happens on Earth.
  • My bitcoin.
  • I can't decide whether I'm more annoyed that Wienerschnitzel doesn't serve schnitzel, or that they did for three months in 2017 as a gag.
  • Jesse asks "First encountering a song through parody."
  • Bad habits that adventure games teach you.

Microtopics:

  • Shrinking your pony until it's really small.
  • Pulling down the console and typing +mlook.
  • Skyrim modding as a more convincing representation of magic than the spell system in the game itself.
  • A very cryptic twitter account that just posts numbers.
  • What @math_ebooks did to be suspended.
  • Wanting to land on a planet and look for Bob but a different planet gets in your way first.
  • Sci-fi as a safe lens for exploring our culture without getting people's defenses up.
  • Reverse mystery stories.
  • Starfish people who communicate through music.
  • Watching Solaris because you're really into boring sci-fi.
  • An alien invasion movie without the invasion.
  • Final Jeopardy asking you to identify the Close Encounters of the Third Kind melody from the interval names.
  • The fires of Musical Jeopardy.
  • The correlation between how tightly strung your instrument is vs. how tightly strung you are.
  • The Star Trek episode where the Enterprise discovers a musician planet where there's a war between the pianists and the oboists.
  • Edmonton, the early Bitcoin hub.
  • SETI@home never finding anything interesting.
  • Losing your Bitcoin wallet.
  • Buying a $40,000 coffee with Bitcoin in 2013.
  • Giving your college hard drive to a friend to ask them to try to find your Bitcoin wallet without first scouring it for incriminating evidence.
  • Deciding you no longer need a memes folder on your hard drive because you can easily find as many memes as you need on the Internet.
  • Dressing up as the Murder She Wrote theme song for Meme Day.
  • Whether the Murder She Wrote theme song is a meme.
  • The barbecue joint that accepts Dogecoin.
  • Going to Remedy Chai in Edmonton and getting a butter chicken wrap and a $40,000 chai.
  • Liking both hot dogs and schnitzel but hating Wienerschnitzel.
  • A joke that most people won't get or notice, and the people who do will be annoyed by it.
  • My First Book of Space.
  • Hating potatoes until you discover that they are delicious and then hating them even more.
  • Your refusal to admit that actually you like potatoes as foreshadowing to every argument you ever have on the Internet.
  • The Wienerschnitzel chili cheese dog burrito skipping right from marketing's brain to consumer's mouths without ever being taste-tested by anyone.
  • The Brain to Mouth social movement.
  • The culinary dimensional space of meat product folded into bread product.
  • A hybrid chef/engineer who has an understanding of both fast food pipelines and how to prepare a tasty meal.
  • Hearing every Weird Al version of a song before you hear the originals.
  • Mathnet.
  • Bible versions of pop culture songs so you can sing along to the radio without being full of sin.
  • The guy at Bible Camp who rewrote the lyrics of pop music to be about God, who retired back when Christianity was groovy, so the most recent pop music you're allowed to sing is from the 1970s.
  • It's getting cold in here, so put on all your coats.
  • Sherlock Hemlock.
  • Vincent Twice Vincent Twice.
  • Monty Python's popularity among Americans who are completely oblivious to what it's satirizing, so a whole generation of American nerds grew up thinking inscrutable nonsense is the pinnacle of comedy. (Which it is.)
  • A combination of things you usually don't see tickling your neurons in a novel way.
  • The scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide radio show where Douglas Adams is making fun of disco.
  • The missing album that the Backstreet Boys only released in Canada so they could practice being famous.
  • Time traveling to past and future Space Quests.
  • Doing ridiculous adventure game shit to get a book of matches when you could just go to a store and buy a gosh darned book of matches.
  • An adventure game where you can do what makes sense.
  • How the Infocom hard boiled detective text adventures were structured differently from traditional text adventures.
  • Wanting Roberta Williams to adopt you and now you've blown it.
  • The Seattle of Mexico.
  • San Francisco, The Everbrown State.
  • Roberta Williams tracking you down and adopting you against your will.
  • Luring Roberta Williams to your house with promises of trained chickens jumping through hula hoops.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

  • Alexander
  • Amanda

Topics:

  • The disappointment of sci-fi stories that are just reskins of stuff that happens on Earth.
  • My bitcoin.
  • I can't decide whether I'm more annoyed that Wienerschnitzel doesn't serve schnitzel, or that they did for three months in 2017 as a gag.
  • Jesse asks "First encountering a song through parody."
  • Bad habits that adventure games teach you.

Microtopics:

  • Shrinking your pony until it's really small.
  • Pulling down the console and typing +mlook.
  • Skyrim modding as a more convincing representation of magic than the spell system in the game itself.
  • A very cryptic twitter account that just posts numbers.
  • What @math_ebooks did to be suspended.
  • Wanting to land on a planet and look for Bob but a different planet gets in your way first.
  • Sci-fi as a safe lens for exploring our culture without getting people's defenses up.
  • Reverse mystery stories.
  • Starfish people who communicate through music.
  • Watching Solaris because you're really into boring sci-fi.
  • An alien invasion movie without the invasion.
  • Final Jeopardy asking you to identify the Close Encounters of the Third Kind melody from the interval names.
  • The fires of Musical Jeopardy.
  • The correlation between how tightly strung your instrument is vs. how tightly strung you are.
  • The Star Trek episode where the Enterprise discovers a musician planet where there's a war between the pianists and the oboists.
  • Edmonton, the early Bitcoin hub.
  • SETI@home never finding anything interesting.
  • Losing your Bitcoin wallet.
  • Buying a $40,000 coffee with Bitcoin in 2013.
  • Giving your college hard drive to a friend to ask them to try to find your Bitcoin wallet without first scouring it for incriminating evidence.
  • Deciding you no longer need a memes folder on your hard drive because you can easily find as many memes as you need on the Internet.
  • Dressing up as the Murder She Wrote theme song for Meme Day.
  • Whether the Murder She Wrote theme song is a meme.
  • The barbecue joint that accepts Dogecoin.
  • Going to Remedy Chai in Edmonton and getting a butter chicken wrap and a $40,000 chai.
  • Liking both hot dogs and schnitzel but hating Wienerschnitzel.
  • A joke that most people won't get or notice, and the people who do will be annoyed by it.
  • My First Book of Space.
  • Hating potatoes until you discover that they are delicious and then hating them even more.
  • Your refusal to admit that actually you like potatoes as foreshadowing to every argument you ever have on the Internet.
  • The Wienerschnitzel chili cheese dog burrito skipping right from marketing's brain to consumer's mouths without ever being taste-tested by anyone.
  • The Brain to Mouth social movement.
  • The culinary dimensional space of meat product folded into bread product.
  • A hybrid chef/engineer who has an understanding of both fast food pipelines and how to prepare a tasty meal.
  • Hearing every Weird Al version of a song before you hear the originals.
  • Mathnet.
  • Bible versions of pop culture songs so you can sing along to the radio without being full of sin.
  • The guy at Bible Camp who rewrote the lyrics of pop music to be about God, who retired back when Christianity was groovy, so the most recent pop music you're allowed to sing is from the 1970s.
  • It's getting cold in here, so put on all your coats.
  • Sherlock Hemlock.
  • Vincent Twice Vincent Twice.
  • Monty Python's popularity among Americans who are completely oblivious to what it's satirizing, so a whole generation of American nerds grew up thinking inscrutable nonsense is the pinnacle of comedy. (Which it is.)
  • A combination of things you usually don't see tickling your neurons in a novel way.
  • The scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide radio show where Douglas Adams is making fun of disco.
  • The missing album that the Backstreet Boys only released in Canada so they could practice being famous.
  • Time traveling to past and future Space Quests.
  • Doing ridiculous adventure game shit to get a book of matches when you could just go to a store and buy a gosh darned book of matches.
  • An adventure game where you can do what makes sense.
  • How the Infocom hard boiled detective text adventures were structured differently from traditional text adventures.
  • Wanting Roberta Williams to adopt you and now you've blown it.
  • The Seattle of Mexico.
  • San Francisco, The Everbrown State.
  • Roberta Williams tracking you down and adopting you against your will.
  • Luring Roberta Williams to your house with promises of trained chickens jumping through hula hoops.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 59. 1-800-Ask-a-Harpsichord.com https://topiclords.com/1-800-ask-a-harpsichord-dot-com 549dc05d-d381-4127-9a42-515c62980a44 Mon, 07 Dec 2020 08:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: Amanda and Xander. We discuss the care and feeding of harpsichords, shareware floppies in grocery stores, the outlandish economic world of Neopets, and running a Beanie Baby empire on 30 minutes of screen time/day. 1:11:31 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Amanda * akotchon@gmail.com * Alexander is still a math professor Topics: * Harpsichord music in public domain for spooky chiptune soundtracks * The elements of chip music. https://www.linusakesson.net/music/elements/index.php * Shareware floppies! Remember those? * Skunny the Squirrel: Save Our Pizzas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tceqj1x_Q8Q * Skunny Kart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0JzpjINeE0 * The outlandish economic world of Neopets * https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1297485937384001537.html * Running a Beanie Baby arbitrage empire. Microtopics: * Programming industrial robots to lift really heavy things. * Trying teach kids Python when you don't know Python, but it's okay because knowing how for loops work gets you 90% of the way there. * The consequences of buggy code when the robot is lifting a test tube vs. a car. * Whether three rotary axes mounted on a big linear slide counts as a robot or is just a fancy conveyer belt. * A failed branch on the evolutionary tree of keyboard instruments. * Having to retune your harpsichord multiple times a day if not multiple times per song. * A harpsichord jumping into organ territory. * A medieval troubador who is not playing power chords. * The Famichord. * Omitting the note that is most heavily implied by the other three notes. * Conflating Super Mario World and Link to the Past because they both use spooky harpsichord music. * The difficulty of synthesizing a piano sound. * A really slow early version of machine learning. * Conveying musical intensity when you have no volume control. * Sharpening your own crow quills to maintain your piano. * Sneaking broken harpsichords into somebody's house while they're sleeping. * Rompler rock. * Recognizing a Bach piece because once you typed it into your Commodore 128 as a PLAY statement. * A floppy disk that you bought in a grocery store when you were six. * Whether Sir Mix A Lot is actually dead or just represents a dead person in this analogy. * The internals of the Quake engine. * A C-like language with no arrays so you need to do everything with linked lists. * How long humans have been taking square roots for. * Real-time operating systems. * Putting your audio code in the same thread as your game code so the audio breaks up if you frame rate dips too low. * Sending Jim a sample of moustache man. * A pinball game that plays sound effects at significantly different rates depending on the version of the sound chip. * Buying a shareware game on a floppy disk at a grocery store for the same price as a blank floppy disk. * Playing the shareware episode of Doom and being like "I played Doom already, I don't need to pay for it." * Getting a call from your harpsichord landlord because you haven't paid your harpsichord loans and he refuses to take the harpsichord back. * Harpsichords requiring daily maintenance or they break down over the span of months. * Putting your harpsichord in a sauna to keep it moisturized. * A squirrel in ancient Rome fighting with gladiators over pizza. * A folder hidden by your mom's inability to do a recursive directory listing. * Deciding, as a culture, that the way to advance the 2D platformer as a genre is to make it as hard as possible. * Getting perforated printer paper at the library and drawing your own Prince of Persia levels. * Writing your opus with fire flowers and station wagons. * Whether or not it's cool that Mario Paint Composer graduated to twelve tones. * Back when there was a point to writing songs in different keys. * 1-800-harpsichord-facts.com * Delving into Neopets as an outsider and seeing real life principles of economics mirrored in a distorted reflection. * Making a bad search engine for the player shops so non-competitive shops run by inexperienced players get as much shop traffic as the competitive ones, and so finding a particular item feels like a discovery rather than a given. * Exploring the outcomes of a search engine that is bad in an interesting way. * Neopets voter fraud. * Designing daily quests to keep player shop prices high. * Writing gradient descent optimized algorithms to optimize your Neopets casino strategy. * Learning to code because you want the nicest Neopets shop. * Pushing HTML5 to its limits to get a really big sparkling snowflake in the middle of your ice themed Neopets shop. * Intentionally broken search bringing back the art of gift giving in the digital age. * Intentionally not buying something for yourself so someone can give it to you for your birthday. * Winning a trophy for reading books to your Neopet. * Reading 140 of the 150 possible space themed books to your Neopet to get that Neopet on the space themed books high score table. * A nine year old running a Neopets crime syndicate. * Pre-PayPal digital currencies. * Convincing your grandma to get you a PO Box and bank account so you can run an underground Beanie Babies empire. * The minimum and maximum permitted age for legal Beanie Baby arbitrage. * Editing a magazine and asking them to pay you in online gift cards so they won't figure out you're ten years old and not a 55 year old graduate of the University of Vermont. * The responsible young scammer who takes the profits from their Beanie Baby arbitrage and uses it to pay for less than their first semester of college tuition. * Getting an insider tip that Ty is going to retire every Beanie Baby at the end of 1999 and the market is going to tank but not being able to act on it because eBay kicked you off because you're 12 years old. * Going to juvie for insider trading. * Living off of Wonder Bread for four months after you get out of your oppressive parents no-wheat household. * Asking your dad what the internet is and the next day he prints the W3 consortium HTML spec at work and comes home and hands it to you. * Meeting your best friend in college because you both learned a variant of C++ that will only compile in Microsoft's compiler. * Making your own podcast, "Ask a Harpsichord," to put all the remaining harpsichord facts that didn't fit in this episode. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Programming industrial robots to lift really heavy things.
  • Trying teach kids Python when you don't know Python, but it's okay because knowing how for loops work gets you 90% of the way there.
  • The consequences of buggy code when the robot is lifting a test tube vs. a car.
  • Whether three rotary axes mounted on a big linear slide counts as a robot or is just a fancy conveyer belt.
  • A failed branch on the evolutionary tree of keyboard instruments.
  • Having to retune your harpsichord multiple times a day if not multiple times per song.
  • A harpsichord jumping into organ territory.
  • A medieval troubador who is not playing power chords.
  • The Famichord.
  • Omitting the note that is most heavily implied by the other three notes.
  • Conflating Super Mario World and Link to the Past because they both use spooky harpsichord music.
  • The difficulty of synthesizing a piano sound.
  • A really slow early version of machine learning.
  • Conveying musical intensity when you have no volume control.
  • Sharpening your own crow quills to maintain your piano.
  • Sneaking broken harpsichords into somebody's house while they're sleeping.
  • Rompler rock.
  • Recognizing a Bach piece because once you typed it into your Commodore 128 as a PLAY statement.
  • A floppy disk that you bought in a grocery store when you were six.
  • Whether Sir Mix A Lot is actually dead or just represents a dead person in this analogy.
  • The internals of the Quake engine.
  • A C-like language with no arrays so you need to do everything with linked lists.
  • How long humans have been taking square roots for.
  • Real-time operating systems.
  • Putting your audio code in the same thread as your game code so the audio breaks up if you frame rate dips too low.
  • Sending Jim a sample of moustache man.
  • A pinball game that plays sound effects at significantly different rates depending on the version of the sound chip.
  • Buying a shareware game on a floppy disk at a grocery store for the same price as a blank floppy disk.
  • Playing the shareware episode of Doom and being like "I played Doom already, I don't need to pay for it."
  • Getting a call from your harpsichord landlord because you haven't paid your harpsichord loans and he refuses to take the harpsichord back.
  • Harpsichords requiring daily maintenance or they break down over the span of months.
  • Putting your harpsichord in a sauna to keep it moisturized.
  • A squirrel in ancient Rome fighting with gladiators over pizza.
  • A folder hidden by your mom's inability to do a recursive directory listing.
  • Deciding, as a culture, that the way to advance the 2D platformer as a genre is to make it as hard as possible.
  • Getting perforated printer paper at the library and drawing your own Prince of Persia levels.
  • Writing your opus with fire flowers and station wagons.
  • Whether or not it's cool that Mario Paint Composer graduated to twelve tones.
  • Back when there was a point to writing songs in different keys.
  • 1-800-harpsichord-facts.com
  • Delving into Neopets as an outsider and seeing real life principles of economics mirrored in a distorted reflection.
  • Making a bad search engine for the player shops so non-competitive shops run by inexperienced players get as much shop traffic as the competitive ones, and so finding a particular item feels like a discovery rather than a given.
  • Exploring the outcomes of a search engine that is bad in an interesting way.
  • Neopets voter fraud.
  • Designing daily quests to keep player shop prices high.
  • Writing gradient descent optimized algorithms to optimize your Neopets casino strategy.
  • Learning to code because you want the nicest Neopets shop.
  • Pushing HTML5 to its limits to get a really big sparkling snowflake in the middle of your ice themed Neopets shop.
  • Intentionally broken search bringing back the art of gift giving in the digital age.
  • Intentionally not buying something for yourself so someone can give it to you for your birthday.
  • Winning a trophy for reading books to your Neopet.
  • Reading 140 of the 150 possible space themed books to your Neopet to get that Neopet on the space themed books high score table.
  • A nine year old running a Neopets crime syndicate.
  • Pre-PayPal digital currencies.
  • Convincing your grandma to get you a PO Box and bank account so you can run an underground Beanie Babies empire.
  • The minimum and maximum permitted age for legal Beanie Baby arbitrage.
  • Editing a magazine and asking them to pay you in online gift cards so they won't figure out you're ten years old and not a 55 year old graduate of the University of Vermont.
  • The responsible young scammer who takes the profits from their Beanie Baby arbitrage and uses it to pay for less than their first semester of college tuition.
  • Getting an insider tip that Ty is going to retire every Beanie Baby at the end of 1999 and the market is going to tank but not being able to act on it because eBay kicked you off because you're 12 years old.
  • Going to juvie for insider trading.
  • Living off of Wonder Bread for four months after you get out of your oppressive parents no-wheat household.
  • Asking your dad what the internet is and the next day he prints the W3 consortium HTML spec at work and comes home and hands it to you.
  • Meeting your best friend in college because you both learned a variant of C++ that will only compile in Microsoft's compiler.
  • Making your own podcast, "Ask a Harpsichord," to put all the remaining harpsichord facts that didn't fit in this episode.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Programming industrial robots to lift really heavy things.
  • Trying teach kids Python when you don't know Python, but it's okay because knowing how for loops work gets you 90% of the way there.
  • The consequences of buggy code when the robot is lifting a test tube vs. a car.
  • Whether three rotary axes mounted on a big linear slide counts as a robot or is just a fancy conveyer belt.
  • A failed branch on the evolutionary tree of keyboard instruments.
  • Having to retune your harpsichord multiple times a day if not multiple times per song.
  • A harpsichord jumping into organ territory.
  • A medieval troubador who is not playing power chords.
  • The Famichord.
  • Omitting the note that is most heavily implied by the other three notes.
  • Conflating Super Mario World and Link to the Past because they both use spooky harpsichord music.
  • The difficulty of synthesizing a piano sound.
  • A really slow early version of machine learning.
  • Conveying musical intensity when you have no volume control.
  • Sharpening your own crow quills to maintain your piano.
  • Sneaking broken harpsichords into somebody's house while they're sleeping.
  • Rompler rock.
  • Recognizing a Bach piece because once you typed it into your Commodore 128 as a PLAY statement.
  • A floppy disk that you bought in a grocery store when you were six.
  • Whether Sir Mix A Lot is actually dead or just represents a dead person in this analogy.
  • The internals of the Quake engine.
  • A C-like language with no arrays so you need to do everything with linked lists.
  • How long humans have been taking square roots for.
  • Real-time operating systems.
  • Putting your audio code in the same thread as your game code so the audio breaks up if you frame rate dips too low.
  • Sending Jim a sample of moustache man.
  • A pinball game that plays sound effects at significantly different rates depending on the version of the sound chip.
  • Buying a shareware game on a floppy disk at a grocery store for the same price as a blank floppy disk.
  • Playing the shareware episode of Doom and being like "I played Doom already, I don't need to pay for it."
  • Getting a call from your harpsichord landlord because you haven't paid your harpsichord loans and he refuses to take the harpsichord back.
  • Harpsichords requiring daily maintenance or they break down over the span of months.
  • Putting your harpsichord in a sauna to keep it moisturized.
  • A squirrel in ancient Rome fighting with gladiators over pizza.
  • A folder hidden by your mom's inability to do a recursive directory listing.
  • Deciding, as a culture, that the way to advance the 2D platformer as a genre is to make it as hard as possible.
  • Getting perforated printer paper at the library and drawing your own Prince of Persia levels.
  • Writing your opus with fire flowers and station wagons.
  • Whether or not it's cool that Mario Paint Composer graduated to twelve tones.
  • Back when there was a point to writing songs in different keys.
  • 1-800-harpsichord-facts.com
  • Delving into Neopets as an outsider and seeing real life principles of economics mirrored in a distorted reflection.
  • Making a bad search engine for the player shops so non-competitive shops run by inexperienced players get as much shop traffic as the competitive ones, and so finding a particular item feels like a discovery rather than a given.
  • Exploring the outcomes of a search engine that is bad in an interesting way.
  • Neopets voter fraud.
  • Designing daily quests to keep player shop prices high.
  • Writing gradient descent optimized algorithms to optimize your Neopets casino strategy.
  • Learning to code because you want the nicest Neopets shop.
  • Pushing HTML5 to its limits to get a really big sparkling snowflake in the middle of your ice themed Neopets shop.
  • Intentionally broken search bringing back the art of gift giving in the digital age.
  • Intentionally not buying something for yourself so someone can give it to you for your birthday.
  • Winning a trophy for reading books to your Neopet.
  • Reading 140 of the 150 possible space themed books to your Neopet to get that Neopet on the space themed books high score table.
  • A nine year old running a Neopets crime syndicate.
  • Pre-PayPal digital currencies.
  • Convincing your grandma to get you a PO Box and bank account so you can run an underground Beanie Babies empire.
  • The minimum and maximum permitted age for legal Beanie Baby arbitrage.
  • Editing a magazine and asking them to pay you in online gift cards so they won't figure out you're ten years old and not a 55 year old graduate of the University of Vermont.
  • The responsible young scammer who takes the profits from their Beanie Baby arbitrage and uses it to pay for less than their first semester of college tuition.
  • Getting an insider tip that Ty is going to retire every Beanie Baby at the end of 1999 and the market is going to tank but not being able to act on it because eBay kicked you off because you're 12 years old.
  • Going to juvie for insider trading.
  • Living off of Wonder Bread for four months after you get out of your oppressive parents no-wheat household.
  • Asking your dad what the internet is and the next day he prints the W3 consortium HTML spec at work and comes home and hands it to you.
  • Meeting your best friend in college because you both learned a variant of C++ that will only compile in Microsoft's compiler.
  • Making your own podcast, "Ask a Harpsichord," to put all the remaining harpsichord facts that didn't fit in this episode.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 43. You vs. The One Your Mom Told You To Worry About https://topiclords.com/you-vs-the-one-your-mom-told-you-to-worry-about 46c7904d-ecda-4b8a-a7d8-77ebdc843861 Mon, 17 Aug 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Alexander and Jonah. We discuss games on the TI-83, the jazz fusion act that secretly inspired all video game music, Wikipedia disagreeing with itself, rap cliche origins, leisurely game jamming, cartography on weirdly-shaped worlds, and the Doctor Who theme. 1:04:51 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Alexander teaches math at the college level, which has been quite an experience the past few months. * Jonah makes music for video games, for example Pony Island. * http://works.rip/ Topics: * TI-83 games. Specifically, Tie Fighter / Bobsled / Indy500. * The jazz fusion act that inspired all video game music. * This is the concert we refer to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBD1mrRUIk * But these are the specific T-Square songs included in the episode: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZaUPGjjA4c * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRRmA1I3UNY * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V3KDQh9DVI * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYie77YHkns * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWI%28musicalinstrument%29 * "Pronounced EE-wee also known as a robo-oboe" * This particular Adventure Playground seems to imply the purpose of the nails is to allow children to build things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdventurePlayground(Berkeley) * Wikipedia in different languages has different opinions on stuff. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-boundsyndrome * Quill asks: "My name is [name] and i'm here to say [...]" rap cliche can be dated back to a 1940's Chiquita banana commercial" * https://youtu.be/RFDOI24RRAE * https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/whomst-among-us-let-the-dogs-out/ * http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME05/Oldsweetsongs.shtml * Jamming at full leisure speed. * https://jsenzel.itch.io/old-friends * Cartography and meteorology on weirdly-shaped fantasy worlds. * https://imgur.com/a/AFwvAoB * The Doctor Who theme was created before widely available synthesizers. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIEkLww3lg * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0aflcF0-ys * https://goodak.weebly.com/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-predictingmachine#/media/File:099-tpm3-sk.jpg * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheKLF * https://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ Microtopics: * Using only the funny TLDs. * Trying to figure it out as you go. * Getting seriously into online homework grading. * Learning the weird object-based Perl they use for checking homework answers. * A podcast with a larger than normal demographic of math teachers. * The most accessible way to develop very small games. * Whether Tie Fighter / Bobsled / Indy 500 is one game or several. * Swapping games over the audio port. * Adding a line from Cool Runnings and renaming your racing game to Bobsled. * Remaking the entirety of Pokemon Red in a TI calculator. * All real world work being done in ways that would get you expelled if you were still in college. * Commissioning your high school classmate to make a bowling minigame in TI-Basic. * A thousand years in the future when nobody knows where TI calculators came from or how they work, but they're still the only calculator allowed on standardized tests. * Jazz fusion's towering influence over video game music. * Thinking a work is wholly original because you have no context for its inspirations. * Playing a riff from Kirby's Dream Land in a solo over Chick Correa's "Spain." * A band fronted by duelling wind controllers. * Having fun exploring and jumping on things. * Jumping into any part of a three hour concert and hearing a water level. * Japanese video games' sense of mystery benefitting from the American ignorance of their influences. * Deliberately exposing children to risk in play. * Rigorous safety procedures pushing back against incredibly unlikely outcomes. * Small children being basically indestructible. * 48 hours of sitting in a room with fans blowing on you, and you're a ghost. * Getting a lot of nosebleeds and hearing everyone's pet remedy for nosebleeds. * Trying all the nosebleed remedies and ending up with a bunch of cool hobbies. * Your favorite nosebleed remedy being dipping your french fries in the chocolate shake, not because it stops the bleeding but because it's delicious. * Wikipedia's surprising plausibility. * Reading Wikipedia and believing things on it even though anyone can edit it at any time. * Private services that seem like they really ought to be a branch of the government. * The pre-history dark ages from which we have no mind uploads. * Each of the Rice Krispies elves singing a verse about their onomatopoeic sound. * Grandmaster Flash watching that Chiquita Banana commercial in the 40s and being like "someday I'm gonna be a rapper and bite that one line." * Tracing a Miami Bass chorus back to a football chant. * The Cool S and the Epic of Gilgamesh being of similarly obscure origins. * The intense frustration of not being able to tell the difference between writing a song and remembering a song. * The damning similarities between "Yesterday" and "Georgia on my Mind." * Music lawsuits being decided by juries of non-musicians. * A Midsummer Night's Dream containing a performance of the Greek play that Shakespeare ripped off when writing Romeo and Juliet. * How to pronounce Ludum Dare. * Taking the weekend to do a game jam and making a game in about four hours and then deciding to watch a movie and relax. * Acrobats with extreme control of their bodies, except for time management. * Learning to scope on the fly by doing game jams. * Starting with a bouncing ball no matter how big your game idea is. * Doing an entire company's worth of git merges and everything collapses into a steaming heap. * Joining a game jam as a scrum master. * Putting separate minigames together into a single game. * Having no idea how to estimate the time it takes to do tasks you do every day. * Making a spreadsheet to find out whether you're making a new web site for your Fall class. * Playing Frog Fractions 2 to find Alexander's chess jam game. * A problem with no fully satisfying solution but hundreds of partially satisfying solutions. * Peeling an orange and then try to make the peel as flat as possible. * What the day/night cycle would be like on a donut planet. * Trying to imagine the political machinations informing the cartography of a fantasy race. * A tide chart for if you have two moons and you're inside a donut. * Land-biased maps where the land is displayed intact but oceans are cut into pieces. * A map displaying any given straight-line path from the front of a penny to the back. * Unwittingly making merciless caricatures of Mr. Lincoln. * You vs. the one she told you not to worry about vs. the one you told her not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you to worry about. * The performance of the 1963 Doctor Who theme. * Doing what feels like interesting work enabled by modern tools and finding out someone did similar work 100 years ago using much more primitive tools. * Cutting audio tape into microscopic strips and rearranging them into interesting sonic textures. * A weird proto-physical synth non-synth thing. * Moving your hand in physical space with no visual reference like a chump. * Artists doing laborious work with primitive tools when they could've just waited 100 years and it would've been so much easier. * A phone app that you take photos with but you have to wait three days after you finish the roll to see the photos. * All the joy of constraint and none of the headache of actually working with 8-bit hardware. * Inventing the math and physics to predict the tides as you're building your tide-predicting machine. * Writing a song about how to get a #1 single and then doing it. * Having a bunch of hit singles and then burning the money you made. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Alexander teaches math at the college level, which has been quite an experience the past few months.
  • Jonah makes music for video games, for example Pony Island.

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Using only the funny TLDs.
  • Trying to figure it out as you go.
  • Getting seriously into online homework grading.
  • Learning the weird object-based Perl they use for checking homework answers.
  • A podcast with a larger than normal demographic of math teachers.
  • The most accessible way to develop very small games.
  • Whether Tie Fighter / Bobsled / Indy 500 is one game or several.
  • Swapping games over the audio port.
  • Adding a line from Cool Runnings and renaming your racing game to Bobsled.
  • Remaking the entirety of Pokemon Red in a TI calculator.
  • All real world work being done in ways that would get you expelled if you were still in college.
  • Commissioning your high school classmate to make a bowling minigame in TI-Basic.
  • A thousand years in the future when nobody knows where TI calculators came from or how they work, but they're still the only calculator allowed on standardized tests.
  • Jazz fusion's towering influence over video game music.
  • Thinking a work is wholly original because you have no context for its inspirations.
  • Playing a riff from Kirby's Dream Land in a solo over Chick Correa's "Spain."
  • A band fronted by duelling wind controllers.
  • Having fun exploring and jumping on things.
  • Jumping into any part of a three hour concert and hearing a water level.
  • Japanese video games' sense of mystery benefitting from the American ignorance of their influences.
  • Deliberately exposing children to risk in play.
  • Rigorous safety procedures pushing back against incredibly unlikely outcomes.
  • Small children being basically indestructible.
  • 48 hours of sitting in a room with fans blowing on you, and you're a ghost.
  • Getting a lot of nosebleeds and hearing everyone's pet remedy for nosebleeds.
  • Trying all the nosebleed remedies and ending up with a bunch of cool hobbies.
  • Your favorite nosebleed remedy being dipping your french fries in the chocolate shake, not because it stops the bleeding but because it's delicious.
  • Wikipedia's surprising plausibility.
  • Reading Wikipedia and believing things on it even though anyone can edit it at any time.
  • Private services that seem like they really ought to be a branch of the government.
  • The pre-history dark ages from which we have no mind uploads.
  • Each of the Rice Krispies elves singing a verse about their onomatopoeic sound.
  • Grandmaster Flash watching that Chiquita Banana commercial in the 40s and being like "someday I'm gonna be a rapper and bite that one line."
  • Tracing a Miami Bass chorus back to a football chant.
  • The Cool S and the Epic of Gilgamesh being of similarly obscure origins.
  • The intense frustration of not being able to tell the difference between writing a song and remembering a song.
  • The damning similarities between "Yesterday" and "Georgia on my Mind."
  • Music lawsuits being decided by juries of non-musicians.
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream containing a performance of the Greek play that Shakespeare ripped off when writing Romeo and Juliet.
  • How to pronounce Ludum Dare.
  • Taking the weekend to do a game jam and making a game in about four hours and then deciding to watch a movie and relax.
  • Acrobats with extreme control of their bodies, except for time management.
  • Learning to scope on the fly by doing game jams.
  • Starting with a bouncing ball no matter how big your game idea is.
  • Doing an entire company's worth of git merges and everything collapses into a steaming heap.
  • Joining a game jam as a scrum master.
  • Putting separate minigames together into a single game.
  • Having no idea how to estimate the time it takes to do tasks you do every day.
  • Making a spreadsheet to find out whether you're making a new web site for your Fall class.
  • Playing Frog Fractions 2 to find Alexander's chess jam game.
  • A problem with no fully satisfying solution but hundreds of partially satisfying solutions.
  • Peeling an orange and then try to make the peel as flat as possible.
  • What the day/night cycle would be like on a donut planet.
  • Trying to imagine the political machinations informing the cartography of a fantasy race.
  • A tide chart for if you have two moons and you're inside a donut.
  • Land-biased maps where the land is displayed intact but oceans are cut into pieces.
  • A map displaying any given straight-line path from the front of a penny to the back.
  • Unwittingly making merciless caricatures of Mr. Lincoln.
  • You vs. the one she told you not to worry about vs. the one you told her not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you to worry about.
  • The performance of the 1963 Doctor Who theme.
  • Doing what feels like interesting work enabled by modern tools and finding out someone did similar work 100 years ago using much more primitive tools.
  • Cutting audio tape into microscopic strips and rearranging them into interesting sonic textures.
  • A weird proto-physical synth non-synth thing.
  • Moving your hand in physical space with no visual reference like a chump.
  • Artists doing laborious work with primitive tools when they could've just waited 100 years and it would've been so much easier.
  • A phone app that you take photos with but you have to wait three days after you finish the roll to see the photos.
  • All the joy of constraint and none of the headache of actually working with 8-bit hardware.
  • Inventing the math and physics to predict the tides as you're building your tide-predicting machine.
  • Writing a song about how to get a #1 single and then doing it.
  • Having a bunch of hit singles and then burning the money you made.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

  • Alexander teaches math at the college level, which has been quite an experience the past few months.
  • Jonah makes music for video games, for example Pony Island.

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Using only the funny TLDs.
  • Trying to figure it out as you go.
  • Getting seriously into online homework grading.
  • Learning the weird object-based Perl they use for checking homework answers.
  • A podcast with a larger than normal demographic of math teachers.
  • The most accessible way to develop very small games.
  • Whether Tie Fighter / Bobsled / Indy 500 is one game or several.
  • Swapping games over the audio port.
  • Adding a line from Cool Runnings and renaming your racing game to Bobsled.
  • Remaking the entirety of Pokemon Red in a TI calculator.
  • All real world work being done in ways that would get you expelled if you were still in college.
  • Commissioning your high school classmate to make a bowling minigame in TI-Basic.
  • A thousand years in the future when nobody knows where TI calculators came from or how they work, but they're still the only calculator allowed on standardized tests.
  • Jazz fusion's towering influence over video game music.
  • Thinking a work is wholly original because you have no context for its inspirations.
  • Playing a riff from Kirby's Dream Land in a solo over Chick Correa's "Spain."
  • A band fronted by duelling wind controllers.
  • Having fun exploring and jumping on things.
  • Jumping into any part of a three hour concert and hearing a water level.
  • Japanese video games' sense of mystery benefitting from the American ignorance of their influences.
  • Deliberately exposing children to risk in play.
  • Rigorous safety procedures pushing back against incredibly unlikely outcomes.
  • Small children being basically indestructible.
  • 48 hours of sitting in a room with fans blowing on you, and you're a ghost.
  • Getting a lot of nosebleeds and hearing everyone's pet remedy for nosebleeds.
  • Trying all the nosebleed remedies and ending up with a bunch of cool hobbies.
  • Your favorite nosebleed remedy being dipping your french fries in the chocolate shake, not because it stops the bleeding but because it's delicious.
  • Wikipedia's surprising plausibility.
  • Reading Wikipedia and believing things on it even though anyone can edit it at any time.
  • Private services that seem like they really ought to be a branch of the government.
  • The pre-history dark ages from which we have no mind uploads.
  • Each of the Rice Krispies elves singing a verse about their onomatopoeic sound.
  • Grandmaster Flash watching that Chiquita Banana commercial in the 40s and being like "someday I'm gonna be a rapper and bite that one line."
  • Tracing a Miami Bass chorus back to a football chant.
  • The Cool S and the Epic of Gilgamesh being of similarly obscure origins.
  • The intense frustration of not being able to tell the difference between writing a song and remembering a song.
  • The damning similarities between "Yesterday" and "Georgia on my Mind."
  • Music lawsuits being decided by juries of non-musicians.
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream containing a performance of the Greek play that Shakespeare ripped off when writing Romeo and Juliet.
  • How to pronounce Ludum Dare.
  • Taking the weekend to do a game jam and making a game in about four hours and then deciding to watch a movie and relax.
  • Acrobats with extreme control of their bodies, except for time management.
  • Learning to scope on the fly by doing game jams.
  • Starting with a bouncing ball no matter how big your game idea is.
  • Doing an entire company's worth of git merges and everything collapses into a steaming heap.
  • Joining a game jam as a scrum master.
  • Putting separate minigames together into a single game.
  • Having no idea how to estimate the time it takes to do tasks you do every day.
  • Making a spreadsheet to find out whether you're making a new web site for your Fall class.
  • Playing Frog Fractions 2 to find Alexander's chess jam game.
  • A problem with no fully satisfying solution but hundreds of partially satisfying solutions.
  • Peeling an orange and then try to make the peel as flat as possible.
  • What the day/night cycle would be like on a donut planet.
  • Trying to imagine the political machinations informing the cartography of a fantasy race.
  • A tide chart for if you have two moons and you're inside a donut.
  • Land-biased maps where the land is displayed intact but oceans are cut into pieces.
  • A map displaying any given straight-line path from the front of a penny to the back.
  • Unwittingly making merciless caricatures of Mr. Lincoln.
  • You vs. the one she told you not to worry about vs. the one you told her not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you not to worry about vs. the one your mom told you to worry about.
  • The performance of the 1963 Doctor Who theme.
  • Doing what feels like interesting work enabled by modern tools and finding out someone did similar work 100 years ago using much more primitive tools.
  • Cutting audio tape into microscopic strips and rearranging them into interesting sonic textures.
  • A weird proto-physical synth non-synth thing.
  • Moving your hand in physical space with no visual reference like a chump.
  • Artists doing laborious work with primitive tools when they could've just waited 100 years and it would've been so much easier.
  • A phone app that you take photos with but you have to wait three days after you finish the roll to see the photos.
  • All the joy of constraint and none of the headache of actually working with 8-bit hardware.
  • Inventing the math and physics to predict the tides as you're building your tide-predicting machine.
  • Writing a song about how to get a #1 single and then doing it.
  • Having a bunch of hit singles and then burning the money you made.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 22. Abstinent Train Polycule https://topiclords.com/abstinent-train-polycule 8e7dcbb4-7f6a-4a9d-ab04-94f08be9b6eb Mon, 23 Mar 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: Ryan and Alexander. Topics: creativity from a seed vs. from a box, using Hall of the Mountain King in comedy trailers, HDMI ports in your feet, yak shaving, the Abstinence Train, and multi-lingual animals. 1:15:29 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Ryan (@ryanikecomposer) made a great grilled cheese sandwich in an air fryer two weeks ago. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_fryer * Alexander is a math professor at DigiPen and trades his chicken flock's eggs to a neighbor for home-roasted coffee beans. * https://www.quora.com/profile/Alexander-Young-2 Topics: * 8:41 Creativity from a seed vs from a box * 18:41 Every fucking comedy trailer in the 90s used Hall of the Mountain king and it sucked and I hated it and why don't we do that any more * https://www.20k.org/episodes/thebooj * 29:04 Some guy you just met asks to install an HDMI port on your foot. You decide to go for it. When you plug in a TV, what's playing on your foot? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TonyHawk%27sSkate_Jam * https://twitter.com/tonyhawk/status/5184156673 * 40:12 David asks: "Yak shaving in your profession or hobby" * https://i.imgur.com/t0XHtgJ.gif * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing * 49:01 I think about the "abstinence train" from a high school health class video once a week. How can I turn this from distraction into motivation? * 1:02:00 Multi-lingual animals Microtopics: * Making a transcendent grilled cheese in the air fryer. * Dipping food in terrifyingly hot golden juice that might burn your face off. * Walking into your friend's house and seeing an edifice. * Esoteric kitchen appliances that we find invaluable. * A Kevin Bacon co-working situation. * An espresso machine where you have to screw the lid down properly or it explodes. * The adrenaline rush of surviving the cooking process making the food taste way better. * Trading your chicken's fresh eggs for your neighbor's home-roasted coffee beans. * Trading jam games for fresh jam. * Getting super excited by discovering that something is impossible. * Proving the theorem that something can never be equal to something else. * Using a constraint to make something new. * AI-driven space helmets that generate plausible sounds for the space vista you're looking at. * A naval battle In Space!!; * Taking the script of an existing movie and adding a bunch of jokes to it. * Everybody knowing that Shakespeare was a hack but being afraid to say it. * Marching on the National Mall shrieking about public domain music usage in movie trailers. * Getting nostalgic about trends you always hated. * Aphantasia but for envisioning loudspeakers. * Being the kind of kid that keeps a database of classical music used in film trailers. * Owen Wilson's goblin-like face, sitting in his hall. * Looney Tunes characters creeping around while pizzicato strings punctuate their footsteps. * All classical music being recontextualized as Looney Tunes music. * John Williams changing one note of your opus and now it's the soundtrack to Star Wars. * Learning to play a mid-90s cartoon theme on harpsichord and realizing it's basically Hall of the Mountain King with every third note removed. * The booj. * Listening to a fake movie trailer and growing excited for a movie that doesn't exist. * A young child singing a Judas Priest song as if it's a nursery rhyme. * Putting the booj in trailers for Casablanca and giving 1940s audiences a heart attack. * Playing the booj outside ancient Rome and Romans inventing the film camera because they want to see the movie so badly. * Somehow removing even more agency from a "would you rather" question. * The HDMI port in your foot playing pretzel advertisements. * Asking your friend if they see the creepy guy staring at the camera in the background of this People's Court episode, but your friend can't get past that the TV episode is playing via an HDMI port on your foot. * Being assured that whatever comes out of your foot won't kill you. * The HDMI port in your foot not hurting unless you try to run. * The HDMI port on your foot playing memories of you running with the Columbia City Running Club. * Forgetting to run your brain screen saver and getting brain burn-in and the last thing someone said to you faintly ringing in your head forever. * An AR Tony Hawk skating game where you skate on power lines by holding your phone camera up to them. * Tony Hawk being a Pokemon. * The cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro. * Toddlers discovering the front yard. * A toddler whaling on a cat but she refuses to run away and just gets annoyed. * Getting all your cat poking and yanking out of the way as a toddler. * Yak shaving being a metaphor, hopefully. * Getting anxiety from hearing yak shaving explained. * Growing up with an antagonistic relationship with sleeping and by extension your own body. * Thinking of sleep as step 0 for anything you want to get done tomorrow. * Wanting a free uninterrupted hour and getting it by sleeping an hour less tonight. * The hemispheres of your brain having two different chronotypes. * Trying way too hard to relate to the teens. * Teens in the 90s being way into locomotives. * Three humans dressed up as train cars heading for Abstinence Street and the caboose trying to unhook himself because he wants to feel something right now. * The two front cars of the train polycule trying to convince the caboose that Abstinence Street is really cool actually. * The Abstinence Train PSA being the direct inspiration for The Human Centipede. * Ryan being the caboose in this metaphor. * The awards organization that gives you a trophy for eating your very last peanut butter and jelly sandwich. * An abstinent train polycule in the railyard of ideas, validating each other's impulses. * An abstinent train polycule changing the law to allow polygamy. * Becoming a Zen Master but when your followers think you're meditating, you're actually repeating the Abstinence Train PSA in your head. * Finally finding the Abstinence Train on YouTube and vaporizing into the atmosphere, your purpose fulfilled. * A homebrew recreation of the famous Abstinence Train video. * The results you get when you type "Abstinence Train" into YouTube. * Wanting to get a job at Google to fix YouTube's search engine so you can search for "Abstinence Train" but having to shave a yak first. * Mean Girls but all the time and they never grow out of it. * Chickens having a particular call they make when a hawk appears that means everyone should hide. * A crow that knows when chickens are warning other chickens about the incipient hawk. * Being very frustrated that the host put the topics in the wrong order. * The host leaving the show early but the guests continuing to talk for another fifteen minutes. * Assuring the listener that you're not bragging when you explain just how many podcasts you've been on. * Being called out by a podcast you were listening to but not otherwise involved in. * Being a doctor of mathematics but weighing in on whether dinosaurs were domesticable because it's Quora after all. * Chickens being way more shareable than your latest math problem. * Remembering the face of the human that threatened your nest. * Making decoy nests to fool the government agency trying to get rid of you. * A crow really just being a black pigeon. * The sound of a juvenile crow hassling their mom for food. * Throwing an olive at a murder of crows to meet the one crow who is willing to approach it like it's a live grenade. * Seattle residents exchanging crow attack stories. * Jim not being here to ask you if you want to plug anything. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making a transcendent grilled cheese in the air fryer.
  • Dipping food in terrifyingly hot golden juice that might burn your face off.
  • Walking into your friend's house and seeing an edifice.
  • Esoteric kitchen appliances that we find invaluable.
  • A Kevin Bacon co-working situation.
  • An espresso machine where you have to screw the lid down properly or it explodes.
  • The adrenaline rush of surviving the cooking process making the food taste way better.
  • Trading your chicken's fresh eggs for your neighbor's home-roasted coffee beans.
  • Trading jam games for fresh jam.
  • Getting super excited by discovering that something is impossible.
  • Proving the theorem that something can never be equal to something else.
  • Using a constraint to make something new.
  • AI-driven space helmets that generate plausible sounds for the space vista you're looking at.
  • A naval battle In Space!!;
  • Taking the script of an existing movie and adding a bunch of jokes to it.
  • Everybody knowing that Shakespeare was a hack but being afraid to say it.
  • Marching on the National Mall shrieking about public domain music usage in movie trailers.
  • Getting nostalgic about trends you always hated.
  • Aphantasia but for envisioning loudspeakers.
  • Being the kind of kid that keeps a database of classical music used in film trailers.
  • Owen Wilson's goblin-like face, sitting in his hall.
  • Looney Tunes characters creeping around while pizzicato strings punctuate their footsteps.
  • All classical music being recontextualized as Looney Tunes music.
  • John Williams changing one note of your opus and now it's the soundtrack to Star Wars.
  • Learning to play a mid-90s cartoon theme on harpsichord and realizing it's basically Hall of the Mountain King with every third note removed.
  • The booj.
  • Listening to a fake movie trailer and growing excited for a movie that doesn't exist.
  • A young child singing a Judas Priest song as if it's a nursery rhyme.
  • Putting the booj in trailers for Casablanca and giving 1940s audiences a heart attack.
  • Playing the booj outside ancient Rome and Romans inventing the film camera because they want to see the movie so badly.
  • Somehow removing even more agency from a "would you rather" question.
  • The HDMI port in your foot playing pretzel advertisements.
  • Asking your friend if they see the creepy guy staring at the camera in the background of this People's Court episode, but your friend can't get past that the TV episode is playing via an HDMI port on your foot.
  • Being assured that whatever comes out of your foot won't kill you.
  • The HDMI port in your foot not hurting unless you try to run.
  • The HDMI port on your foot playing memories of you running with the Columbia City Running Club.
  • Forgetting to run your brain screen saver and getting brain burn-in and the last thing someone said to you faintly ringing in your head forever.
  • An AR Tony Hawk skating game where you skate on power lines by holding your phone camera up to them.
  • Tony Hawk being a Pokemon.
  • The cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro.
  • Toddlers discovering the front yard.
  • A toddler whaling on a cat but she refuses to run away and just gets annoyed.
  • Getting all your cat poking and yanking out of the way as a toddler.
  • Yak shaving being a metaphor, hopefully.
  • Getting anxiety from hearing yak shaving explained.
  • Growing up with an antagonistic relationship with sleeping and by extension your own body.
  • Thinking of sleep as step 0 for anything you want to get done tomorrow.
  • Wanting a free uninterrupted hour and getting it by sleeping an hour less tonight.
  • The hemispheres of your brain having two different chronotypes.
  • Trying way too hard to relate to the teens.
  • Teens in the 90s being way into locomotives.
  • Three humans dressed up as train cars heading for Abstinence Street and the caboose trying to unhook himself because he wants to feel something right now.
  • The two front cars of the train polycule trying to convince the caboose that Abstinence Street is really cool actually.
  • The Abstinence Train PSA being the direct inspiration for The Human Centipede.
  • Ryan being the caboose in this metaphor.
  • The awards organization that gives you a trophy for eating your very last peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
  • An abstinent train polycule in the railyard of ideas, validating each other's impulses.
  • An abstinent train polycule changing the law to allow polygamy.
  • Becoming a Zen Master but when your followers think you're meditating, you're actually repeating the Abstinence Train PSA in your head.
  • Finally finding the Abstinence Train on YouTube and vaporizing into the atmosphere, your purpose fulfilled.
  • A homebrew recreation of the famous Abstinence Train video.
  • The results you get when you type "Abstinence Train" into YouTube.
  • Wanting to get a job at Google to fix YouTube's search engine so you can search for "Abstinence Train" but having to shave a yak first.
  • Mean Girls but all the time and they never grow out of it.
  • Chickens having a particular call they make when a hawk appears that means everyone should hide.
  • A crow that knows when chickens are warning other chickens about the incipient hawk.
  • Being very frustrated that the host put the topics in the wrong order.
  • The host leaving the show early but the guests continuing to talk for another fifteen minutes.
  • Assuring the listener that you're not bragging when you explain just how many podcasts you've been on.
  • Being called out by a podcast you were listening to but not otherwise involved in.
  • Being a doctor of mathematics but weighing in on whether dinosaurs were domesticable because it's Quora after all.
  • Chickens being way more shareable than your latest math problem.
  • Remembering the face of the human that threatened your nest.
  • Making decoy nests to fool the government agency trying to get rid of you.
  • A crow really just being a black pigeon.
  • The sound of a juvenile crow hassling their mom for food.
  • Throwing an olive at a murder of crows to meet the one crow who is willing to approach it like it's a live grenade.
  • Seattle residents exchanging crow attack stories.
  • Jim not being here to ask you if you want to plug anything.

Support Topic Lords

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

Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Making a transcendent grilled cheese in the air fryer.
  • Dipping food in terrifyingly hot golden juice that might burn your face off.
  • Walking into your friend's house and seeing an edifice.
  • Esoteric kitchen appliances that we find invaluable.
  • A Kevin Bacon co-working situation.
  • An espresso machine where you have to screw the lid down properly or it explodes.
  • The adrenaline rush of surviving the cooking process making the food taste way better.
  • Trading your chicken's fresh eggs for your neighbor's home-roasted coffee beans.
  • Trading jam games for fresh jam.
  • Getting super excited by discovering that something is impossible.
  • Proving the theorem that something can never be equal to something else.
  • Using a constraint to make something new.
  • AI-driven space helmets that generate plausible sounds for the space vista you're looking at.
  • A naval battle In Space!!;
  • Taking the script of an existing movie and adding a bunch of jokes to it.
  • Everybody knowing that Shakespeare was a hack but being afraid to say it.
  • Marching on the National Mall shrieking about public domain music usage in movie trailers.
  • Getting nostalgic about trends you always hated.
  • Aphantasia but for envisioning loudspeakers.
  • Being the kind of kid that keeps a database of classical music used in film trailers.
  • Owen Wilson's goblin-like face, sitting in his hall.
  • Looney Tunes characters creeping around while pizzicato strings punctuate their footsteps.
  • All classical music being recontextualized as Looney Tunes music.
  • John Williams changing one note of your opus and now it's the soundtrack to Star Wars.
  • Learning to play a mid-90s cartoon theme on harpsichord and realizing it's basically Hall of the Mountain King with every third note removed.
  • The booj.
  • Listening to a fake movie trailer and growing excited for a movie that doesn't exist.
  • A young child singing a Judas Priest song as if it's a nursery rhyme.
  • Putting the booj in trailers for Casablanca and giving 1940s audiences a heart attack.
  • Playing the booj outside ancient Rome and Romans inventing the film camera because they want to see the movie so badly.
  • Somehow removing even more agency from a "would you rather" question.
  • The HDMI port in your foot playing pretzel advertisements.
  • Asking your friend if they see the creepy guy staring at the camera in the background of this People's Court episode, but your friend can't get past that the TV episode is playing via an HDMI port on your foot.
  • Being assured that whatever comes out of your foot won't kill you.
  • The HDMI port in your foot not hurting unless you try to run.
  • The HDMI port on your foot playing memories of you running with the Columbia City Running Club.
  • Forgetting to run your brain screen saver and getting brain burn-in and the last thing someone said to you faintly ringing in your head forever.
  • An AR Tony Hawk skating game where you skate on power lines by holding your phone camera up to them.
  • Tony Hawk being a Pokemon.
  • The cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro.
  • Toddlers discovering the front yard.
  • A toddler whaling on a cat but she refuses to run away and just gets annoyed.
  • Getting all your cat poking and yanking out of the way as a toddler.
  • Yak shaving being a metaphor, hopefully.
  • Getting anxiety from hearing yak shaving explained.
  • Growing up with an antagonistic relationship with sleeping and by extension your own body.
  • Thinking of sleep as step 0 for anything you want to get done tomorrow.
  • Wanting a free uninterrupted hour and getting it by sleeping an hour less tonight.
  • The hemispheres of your brain having two different chronotypes.
  • Trying way too hard to relate to the teens.
  • Teens in the 90s being way into locomotives.
  • Three humans dressed up as train cars heading for Abstinence Street and the caboose trying to unhook himself because he wants to feel something right now.
  • The two front cars of the train polycule trying to convince the caboose that Abstinence Street is really cool actually.
  • The Abstinence Train PSA being the direct inspiration for The Human Centipede.
  • Ryan being the caboose in this metaphor.
  • The awards organization that gives you a trophy for eating your very last peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
  • An abstinent train polycule in the railyard of ideas, validating each other's impulses.
  • An abstinent train polycule changing the law to allow polygamy.
  • Becoming a Zen Master but when your followers think you're meditating, you're actually repeating the Abstinence Train PSA in your head.
  • Finally finding the Abstinence Train on YouTube and vaporizing into the atmosphere, your purpose fulfilled.
  • A homebrew recreation of the famous Abstinence Train video.
  • The results you get when you type "Abstinence Train" into YouTube.
  • Wanting to get a job at Google to fix YouTube's search engine so you can search for "Abstinence Train" but having to shave a yak first.
  • Mean Girls but all the time and they never grow out of it.
  • Chickens having a particular call they make when a hawk appears that means everyone should hide.
  • A crow that knows when chickens are warning other chickens about the incipient hawk.
  • Being very frustrated that the host put the topics in the wrong order.
  • The host leaving the show early but the guests continuing to talk for another fifteen minutes.
  • Assuring the listener that you're not bragging when you explain just how many podcasts you've been on.
  • Being called out by a podcast you were listening to but not otherwise involved in.
  • Being a doctor of mathematics but weighing in on whether dinosaurs were domesticable because it's Quora after all.
  • Chickens being way more shareable than your latest math problem.
  • Remembering the face of the human that threatened your nest.
  • Making decoy nests to fool the government agency trying to get rid of you.
  • A crow really just being a black pigeon.
  • The sound of a juvenile crow hassling their mom for food.
  • Throwing an olive at a murder of crows to meet the one crow who is willing to approach it like it's a live grenade.
  • Seattle residents exchanging crow attack stories.
  • Jim not being here to ask you if you want to plug anything.

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