October 12, 2020

51. I Don't Want To Eat This Bug, Obviously

1 hour

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

Lords:

Ben is not on the Internet but is just happy to be here. He recommends Lindsay Ellis, an excellent film critic:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG1h-Wqjtwz7uUANw6gazRw

Ryan is The Man Who Messed Up Walking His Dog So Badly It Made The News.

http://ryannorth.ca/

https://twitter.com/ryanqnorth

Topics:

Being able to cook a recipe from your mind without being able to explain how.

Every recipe has a step called "to taste" that is a mini version of this. How much salt, pepper, chili powder and cumin do I add to these chilaquiles? I donno, it's just muscle memory. But the muscle memory only works for three eggs. More or fewer, I screw it up.

How many times a day do you remember something stupid you've done in the past? Am I normal and developing as I should?

The Ice Magic jingle in Ben’s head for the rest of his life: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0rfL9d4MDJY

I miss making a game that was immune to bug reports.

Dan asks: "What would we have in common with intelligent aliens? It seems common for analytical-minded people to claim that mathematical theories are discovered rather than invented. There's a programming theory personality named Phillip Wadler who's claimed that if we met aliens, they would have Lambda Calculus. Another programming personality (on the 'math is invented' side) posted a hypothetical conversation between a human programmer and an alien programmer that went like this:

Human: How do you avoid race conditions?

Alien: We just look at the different futures and pick one without data races.

Alien: How do you calm arithmetic when it's angry?

Human: Our math is not sentient."

The Atari 2600 screenshot Jim was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

What's the worst thing you've ever put in your mouth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_razor_clam

Flake in Australia is a deep fried fillet of fish you can order at fish and chip shops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flake_(fish) Usually about the length of a dinner plate.

Nintendo Labo is an industrial design marvel.

Watch someone transform a Nintendo Labo keyboard into an actual synth! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CjLOElL0rY

Has anyone else noticed that long-anticipated events eventually "happen" and are thereafter "in the past"?

For years my personal blog was the top internet resource for earlobe cysts.

Microtopics:

Traveling to E3 from Australia.

Making games for the Nokia N-Gage.

Just now realizing that "Squirrel Girl" rhymes.

Bluffing your way through a title pun because there's limited time in a game jam.

A pun that you need to be both from England and New Zealand to get.

Procedures for recreating an unknown recipe when the recipe changes as it's observed.

A discrete series of steps that can be reproduced

A bottomless measuring cup that keeps track of how much a substance that passed through it.

A measuring cup that tells an anonymous third party you how much of a thing it holds, but doesn't tell the user.

Whether or not anything comes up if you search the internet for minestrone soup recipes.

Getting owned on Twitter after posting about the Ship of Theseus.

Feeling dumb and then later feeling dumb about how you felt dumb.

The mortifying ordeal of being known.

Dismissing intrusive thoughts with a vocal tic or a spasm.

Remembering advertising jingles from the 1980s all the goddamned time.

Whether or not the Zest jingle invented the word "zestfully"

Corporations owing serious back rent on the space in your brain taken up by advertising jingles.

Crackly choc-ice.

Going into a deep existential dread about a forty-year-old t-shirt.

Calling it the "WC" when it takes way longer to say "WC" than "water closet"

Asking the waitress where the toilet is and she gives you a weird look and says "in the bathroom, sir."

Offering your top hat for the nobleman to micturate into.

Having an audience who sees cool literary references in your work and assumes you did them on purpose.

Writing an impossible season cliffhanger believe that you're quiting the show, but then not quitting the show and having to somehow resolve the cliffhanger.

The biggest spoiler being whether or not a work is good or not.

Living vicariously through someone watching your favorite TV series for the first time.

Meeting an alien race with sentient math.

Having just the one math but being certain that it's the only math.

Doing your best to communicate with intelligent aliens but you can't think of anything to talk about.

Only trying to contact alien races that you have enough in common with to meaningfully communicate.

What kind of math a salt-leech would invent.

Coherent systems of mathematics that don't reflect reality.

Maths that would hypothetically reflect reality better than ours, and how ours could do better.

The guy waking you up from your cryogenic sleep explaining to you that we know how to divide by zero now.

Knowing that if the laws of physics change, your program will break.

Recompiling once a year to make sure your program breaks when mathematical laws are updated.

Realizing that the anecdote you're about to tell actually happened to your brother, not you.

Discovering that ants are extremely sour.

Ordering a shark kebab and the guy asks if you want crickets on it and you're certain you misheard him so you ask "what are those?" and he says "they're tiny bugs!"

Crickets just being crunchy until you look at them and realize that you're definitely eating an entire being right now.

Being stuck with your lame fish and chips when Australians have badass shark and chips.

Things you learned as a kid and never critically examined as an adult.

Razor clams: the meal that bites back.

Building a fully functional steering wheel, with levers and adjustable dials that click, out of cardboard and rubber bands.

The visual programming environment that comes with Nintendo Labo.

Buying toys for an eight year old when your son is born because one day he'll be eight.

Artisanal reprinted Nintendo Labo cardboard components on Etsy.

Taking your cardboard Nintendo Labo synth on tour and seeing how many gigs it lasts for.

Everybody really wanting to hear Jim's earlobe cyst story.

Jim's primary claim to fame before Frog Fractions.

Jim's top 3 earlobe cyst tips.

Just how deceptively close to the jugular the earlobe is.

Getting to watch a stranger's kid grow up because they don't believe you when you say they've got the wrong email address.

The kind of person who just assumes their email address is their name at gmail.com.

Holding onto the last vapors of 2012 Twitter.

Like finally talking to T-Rex.

Support Topic Lords

...more

View all episodes

By Jim Stormdancer

4.8

1212 ratings