June 28, 2021

88. The Horned Lizard's Final Defense

1 hour 12 minutes

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Lords:

Tyriq

https://twitter.com/FourbitFriday/

https://frror.bandcamp.com/releases

Ryan

https://twitter.com/RyanIkeComposer

https://www.instagram.com/ryanikeaudio/

Topics:

What do animals know? Do they know things? How do we find out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

Can we all just be adults and admit that invisibility sucks as a superpower?

Where is the machine learning startup promising to fix the concert videos where the audience claps on 1 and 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UinRq_29jPk

Toxic by Britney Spears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOZuxwVk7TU

Unedited (syncable) commentary: https://youtu.be/x3eUVHdw54k

What mundane tool/item/technology do you wish were irrelevant, and what would you replace it with?

Microtopics:

Doing a perfect ollie your first time on a skateboard and then never skating again because you'll never top that.

Cooking every single dish in the human culinary encyclopedia and then starving to death because you refuse to repeat yourself.

Honor system rock paper scissors.

Making video games, one of which is called Catacomb Kids.

Naming your band one letter away from a common word so that your band is impossible to google.

An extremely austere and dour change log, like in Great Expectations.

Changing the "dragon breath" spell to "bear breath" because dragons aren't real but bears breathe fire.

A grim window into the world in which we live, dragonless and dragon breath -less.

A delicious treat for anyone who likes anise flavoring and salt.

A giant human sized licorice in a wedding gown.

Competing with nearby deer for the affections of the extremely salty licorice you're marrying.

Spendinga lot of your mental energy trying to figure out animal cognition.

Whether elephants worship the moon or in fact anything.

Dogs doing the things dogs do even if they've never been taught by another dog.

Where babies learn the things that their parents don't teach them.

Babies smiling when they see a face even though they're not happy to see you.

Baby reflexes that help parents bond with them during the time when they are hardest to love.

How to be sure that animals think and feel and have memory when we can't even be sure for other humans.

P-zombies.

A dog's mental model of the world.

The Far Side cartoon depicting a machine that translates dog barks into human speech.

Whether animals have to know stuff.

Meerkat accents.

The mantis shrimp having an innate ability to see ghosts, and learning our language to tell us that we're stepping on ghosts all the time and we're covered in ectoplasm.

A superpower that turns you invisible except for your eyes, so you're just a floating pair of eyeballs, not invisible at all, so you have to buy a pair of sunglasses to hide your eyes.

Putting two of the lamest possible superpowers together in the same married couple.

The lamest superpower that you would settle for.

The superpower of getting up when the alarm rings and not having to hit snooze even once.

The superpower of lactose tolerance.

The superpower of having practiced a lot.

Cutting a cantaloupe in half and the six of clubs is in there and the guy's like "yeah that's my card, but that cantaloupe was $9 at Whole Foods, thanks a lot."

How to convince general audiences that they should care when in the measure to clap.

Just assuming that audiences will be clapping in the wrong place so you add a single measure in 5/4 to your 4/4 composition to fix it.

Playing a concert video where the video and audio are desynchronized by exactly half a measure.

Inventing a snare drum that looks like a bass drum and vice versa, and filming a prank show where unsuspecting drummers play concerts with the inverted drum kit.

Going to fiver and asking someone to build you a drum kit that defies science and logic.

The one company that Topic Lords would accept sponsorship from.

Stopping the concert when the audience starts clapping on 1 and 3 and asking them "come on, did you spend $126 to get it wrong?"

Not finding out how low-poly these birds are until the quarter speed viewing.

Which side Britney's nails look most amazing from.

The outfit flight attendants had to wear in the 1950s, before they had the right to vote.

A flight attendant with pauldrons.

A loser with a sandwich that Britney wants to make out with in the bathroom.

Seeing someone's ass and wondering what the Blippi subreddit would think of it.

A dude who is a motorcycle.

Biketaurs.

Having the same facial expression as the motorcycle you're riding.

A sparkly Jackson Pollock that you wrap around yourself.

Stepping right in the laser.

Warning the janitor that you're turning on the office's death ladder so he's not surprised when he shows up that weekend to find 15 corpses on the floor.

A music video that is secretly the prequel to Jupiter Ascending.

Whether this hot Scandinavian guy is the same guy as the last hot Scandinavian guy.

Saving time shaving by dyeing your facial hair the same color as your skin.

Whether a stiff iron bar jabbing into your back would improve a bed or a chair.

Whether Britney Spears hallucinated the events of the Toxic video, and she's just an ordinary flight attendant.

How to fix bread closures.

Filling the moon with bread closures.

Getting a bread box so people stop having to manufacture bread closures.

How massive a bread is required to spin the bag at sufficient velocity to apply the bread closures.

Solving your headphone cord problem by never listening to audio of any kind.

Installing an ink sac in your fingernail so that you never have to look around for a pen.

A tattoo of a squid that you can squeeze to spurt ink into the eyes of your enemies, but the tattoo gets more and more faded as the ink depletes.

An awful thing that your ducks can do.

What's going on in that biome?

The horned lizard's final defense.

Dropping a tail if you need to escape.

A super ethical meat factory that spends all day terrifying the tails off of lizards.

An avocado-like spread made out of frightened lizard tail.

Nothing but adrenaline flavor in this tail.

How to live as a freelancer without being drained of all your bodily fluids.

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By Jim Stormdancer

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