Topic Lords

By Jim StormdancerComedy Education Arts

Topic Lords episodes

June 29, 202036. Look at an Octopus While You Shower
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This is the show we recorded live at Duckfest 2020! http://duckfeed.tv/duckfest
Lords:
Jenni is reachable at [email protected].
Chris is making cooking videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRsnCRAIi-VsRPPX4AtzVGQ/
April is @aprilsaur on Twitter.
Topics:
Befriending ravens
Just Say No. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ornithology/comments/29y31o/id_like_to_befriend_some_local_ravens_but_should/
What if part of the government apparatus was a PVP mobile game & billionaires willingly sent in tax dollars in exchange for units to pwn everyone else but the game was balanced so they only had a tiny edge?
Clone ethics: can you consent on behalf of your clone? What about a different person with the same name as you?
Larry asks: "Best ways to meet your own death as part of a puzzle or game"
Carnivorous mushroom death at 0:58. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58
My sister is doing her bathroom sea-monster themed; does anyone have unsolicited recommendations for sea monster bathroom amenities?
The badger story.
How do we survive from when we learn to climb on the furniture to when we get scared of climbing on the furniture?
The white-spotted clearwing
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBYeqqgAdrp/
Microtopics:
Plugging an activity nobody but you can do.
Eating trash out of the dumpster and fighting over dead skunk carcasses.
Recognizing jerks and being rude to them.
Feeding tiny bento boxes to nearby ravens.
Mobbing random strangers to demand a tiny bento box.
The ravens constantly pooping on your shoulders but it's ok because it's just your work shirt.
Meeting your shitting on things quota.
Befriending Odin's ravens and becoming Odin.
Being the one who operates firearms in this relationship.
Replacing taxes with a mobile game targeted at Elon Musk.
Elon Musk being defeated at a PVP mobile game by a seven year old in a Tinkerbell outfit and deciding he doesn't like the game any more so the company forms a team whose only job is to lose to Elon Musk.
Creating a GoFundMe to pay your rent while you save the world.
Whether Jenni is the raven or the game designer in her relationship.
Sharing DNA implying shared consent.
Explaining parents.
How consent works with conjoined twins.
All three hosts having a different interpretation of the listener's question.
Puzzles created in the before-times where if you solve them you see the face of god and then die.
Cool ways to die in video games.
A game that is great for people who have a lot of free time and don't have a child.
Requesting ideas for sea monster themed bathroom decorations and getting answers six months after you finished remodeling you bathroom.
A plunger shaped like a tentacle where the plunging part is just a huge suction cup.
All of your failings as a wife being forgiven by your ability to use a firearm.
Not knowing how to safely use a gun so you just kick it down the hill.
Guarding the coast from sea monsters but not being allowed to talk about it.
A shower curtain shaped like an octopus so you can paint a negative space octopus out of water all over the bathroom.
Failing to plan your sister's bachelorette party and she's still waiting to get married eight years later.
A COVID-19 Zoom Bachelorette Party eight years in the making.
Having a Mukbang instead of a bachelorette party.
Whether or not a pirate is a sea monster.
Marrying an indie game developer for the money.
Messaging your future husband on OkCupid because he thinks about Arnold Schwarzenegger wiping his ass a lot.
Being a piler of things.
Owing your wife a game about trolls but first having to train your son to be a game artist.
Skipping a step and having your child draw directly on the fridge.
Being asked to do something about the badger bothering people on the beach and making a joke about the badger badgering people.
The consequences of your county's limited animal control budget.
A badger hiding underneath the bench in the changing room.
Catching a badger with a dog catching stick even though it's not a dog at all.
Having a badger at the end of a stick.
What they call closets in the park district.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck wrangling a badger between your legs.
Carrying around a rattlesnake from a picnic area by putting it in a garbage bag and the snake repeatedly biting through the bag with venom dripping through the holes.
Restraining a snake inside your esophagus until you're ready to release it.
Latin being way older than the girl scouts.
Moving a snake with a steam shovel.
Only moving snakes where if you accidentally slice them in half they become two snakes.
A toddler smashing a drinking glass on the kitchen floor and saying "mess!"
Your child's milestones coming with commensurate levels of danger.
Hitting the ground with 1/10ths of the force as your dad when you fall.
Talking only about animals on this episode and the animal expert heckling you from the Discord.
The glass-like quality of a White Spotted Clearwing becoming revealed against the dappled light of the forest understory.
Making sure your transparent wings don't reflect light by covering them with nanopillars.
The butterfly not getting a cut of your profits from the invention you based on its wing design.
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52 min
June 22, 202035. Nick Cave's Meow Mix Murder Ballads
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Lords:
Erica is @yerrikTRB on Twitter, and is thinking about birds
Dan is @danlwarren on Twitter, and is at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (https://www.oist.jp/). His soundcloud is https://soundcloud.com/danwarren. He is writing music for Hypnospace Outlaw https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/
Topics:
1:58 The unreliable narrator in songwriting and/or songs where the POV character is a jerk
We all hope Ben Folds is an unreliable narrator in his song “Brick.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5EHAqhR1c
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmzP977za2bJ8gj8pVmOxSCBNcVZjGy6D
Moby Dick is bad https://medium.com/@jayshams/moby-dick-is-not-a-novel-e19e41fec946
George Michael was maybe not that into monogamy https://www.songfacts.com/facts/george-michael/i-want-your-sex
15:20 No one should live in this city (whatever city you're in edition)
Chitras flies and things that sting you https://indacampo.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/why-you-should-never-fall-asleep-in-your-hammock-at-twilight-in-panama/
Too much water all at once, monsoon edition https://www.kold.com/video/2019/07/31/watch-people-rescued-stranded-vehicle-tucson/
https://www.kgun9.com/weather/monsoon
The cheese guy in Okinawa fills in for a clear lack of cheese http://thecheeseguyinokinawa.com/about-us/
Richard Lenski breeds 69,000 generations of E. coli (not yeast) https://twitter.com/relenski/status/993671677748838400
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/
38:51 Toddlers have incredible memories and if you put something somewhere once because you were lazy they'll remember it goes there forever
https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/04/childrens-memories-toddlers-remember-better-than-you-think.html
Here’s the AI spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3HsCf5Tuum8bRfzYUiKLRqJmbOoC-32JorNdfyTiRRsR7Ea5eWtvsWzuxo8bjOxCG84dAg/pubhtml
AI evolves an organism that is tall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-wIZuAA3EY
43:20 Kaz asks: You guys talked about simulating people's voices, and I'd like to point out that there's been a lot of progress in this area. Take a look here for some examples: https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/speaker_adaptation
That Obama thing is called Son of Strelka, Son of God. There’s a Youtube playlist here where four of the nine chapters are illustrated/animated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Any38uNUelM&list=PLw-jIvFxpgIDIlxOnvHr9rN_2TUv87Ju_
The album can be downloaded here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dan_Warren/Son_of_Strelka_Son_of_God
The Trump thing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYeTmHHZQM
Evolution Control Committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DX4nsobHW8
Negativland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6gPSSYxex0
Cassetteboy is one of the most active and well-known people doing this stuff nowadays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI87PRgIKks
55:48 ANTS
Acromyrmex versicolor on the AntWiki https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Acromyrmex_versicolor
Walter Tschinkel’s aluminum ant colony casts https://www.core77.com/posts/23607/walter-tschinkels-aluminum-casts-of-ant-colonies-reveals-insect-architecture-23607
Strangely named ant reproductive strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170217095939.htm
1:03:39 Pokemon Stay (the opposite of Pokemon Go): what's happening to outdoorsy AR games these days.
https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/
https://nianticlabs.com/blog/stay-safe/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/35114072073932236/
http://www.birderslibrary.com/images/excerpts/kaufman_advanced_birding/empid_plate.jpg
https://ebird.org/news/confusing-flycatchers
https://www.thespruce.com/flycatcher-identification-tips-3859843
Microtopics:
Staying inside and definitely being totally sane.
Being on the Hypnospace Outlaw soundtrack but not being Seepage.
Driving people away from you and writing songs about how they're gone.
Betraying the concept of music by putting it in advertising.
Singing about the fish you're going to eat.
Listening to music for a decade before realizing it's horrifying.
Being deeply obsessed with an art form others explicitly disregard.
An eight year old singing a pop song about sex.
Assuming that a song written in the first person is autobiographical.
Writing a song about cheating on your wife and everybody assuming you're endorsing it so you write a last verse that's like "/s"
The last verse of "I Want Your Sex" being about how George Michael doesn't really want your sex.
Putting together a choreographed dance routine to "I Want Your Sex" at summer camp.
Whether Dad Jr. has anything to say about it.
An angry crowd proclaiming that Jesus is a slut.
The Robert Browning poem where he evidently thought "twat" is an item of nun's clothing and rhymes with "bat."
Describing the white whale as obsidian and ebony because you don't have the internet and can't look up what obsidian means.
A beautiful desert with amazing food where you have scorpions in your house.
A microwasp stinging your hand leaving a patch of cell death that lasts for almost a year.
The dirt being impossible to dig in so there are no storm drains and when the monsoon comes the water rises up to your windshield.
The front door's doorknob being too hot to touch in the summer.
The process of getting into a car when it's 118 degrees outside.
Sedona being much more livable than most of Arizona because it's in the mountains.
Growing up in Oklahoma where it's incredibly hot during the day and cools down two degrees at night.
Going tide pooling where there are dozens of species of snail that
A subtropical jungle with stunningly beautiful coral reefs where all the wildlife is lethal.
Going tide pooling where dozens of species of cone snails are extremely interested in your death.
A fish that looks like a rock in a stream that will kill you if you step on it.
Encountering a dozen lethally venomous animals every time you go to the beach.
Living in the Bay Area where we have programmers.
Resenting programmers but getting along with them really well.
Getting a tech job and having to practice your self-compassion.
Repping the city in the world with the biggest economic disparity.
The power company shutting your power off because they can't be bothered to keep the lines clear of trees.
Discerning the different kinds of plants that are burning in a brushfire by smell.
Being performatively off-put by brushfire smoke that smells different from brushfire smoke in your hometown.
Cheese scarcity in Okinawa.
Whether or not you're allowed to bring suitcases full of cheese into Japan.
If Gandalf really liked cheese.
The Scottish guy who sells cheese in Okinawa for $100 per kilogram.
Long grain rice connoisseurs in Japan importing basmati from California.
Being unable to export farming and food preparation processes because your are getting assistance from local microbiomes.
Japanese laws restricting rice imports so they don't corrupt the local rice microbes, but they don't give a shit about the cheese.
RNA sequencing the brine from a batch of pickles that turned out really well.
Celebrating the 69,000th generation of your yeast culture by posting "nice" on Twitter.
Toddlers learning a lesson far too well.
Telling each other stories from the spreadsheet of all the ways machine learning has failed.
Breaking land speed records by falling over really fast.
Reassembling Barack Obama's audiobook into a story about a demigod with the head of a dog who recreates the world after the apocalypse.
Reality now being more ridiculous than your satire from four years ago.
Spending a lot of time trying to identify birds.
The basis for discussion of whether something is something or isn't something else.
Convincing the people with the money that your field of study will eventually help somebody some day.
The growing sense in the world that maybe not all progress is good and maybe we should skip out on some knowledge.
The number of lines of code it takes to destroy society.
Doing science because there is a trust that some day someone will want to know your results.
Wanting a place to have a conversation about anything other than Elon Musk's kids name.
Starting a podcast and never talking about anything depressing.
Trying to transplant your neighbor's leafcutter ants into your own yard because you are a field biologist who can't go outside.
Being waylaid by ant stings because you are allergic to wasps.
Ants biting you with their mandibles, but only to hang on so they can sting you like wasps because they're technically in the wasp family.
Ants being around long after humans are gone.
Filling an ant colony with lead because humans will get more value out of a model of an ant colony than the ants get out of being alive.
Filling an ant colony with jello and having a tasty dessert.
Ending up in an ant lab and doing ant things.
Studying the effects of climate change on Pokemon.
The exchange rate between Pokecoins and Bitcoins.
Coordinating Pokemon Go raids on Nextdoor.
Asking Pokemon Go players if they're registered to vote and they answer that they're doing a raid when that doesn't tell you whether or not they're registered to vote at all.
Trying to avoid the Audubon society losers at the ornithology conference.
Birds permitting you to identify them even though they could easily fly away.
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1 hr 13 min
June 15, 202034. We Don't Talk About Poop Stonehenge
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Lords:
Elena is on the Topic Lords Discord and recommends https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts
Shannon lives in a cave and recommends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelland
Topics:
2:14 Lucid dreaming and/or recurrent dreams - do you have them?
Can't find the link for Dream Wikipedia here but I'll keep looking. https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
14:04 Eight kinds of fun.
https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/
Real-play podcasts:
https://critrole.com/podcast/
http://friendsatthetable.net/
https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/adventure-zone/
The Kiri. https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Kiri
30:05 Your favorite Dewey Decimal System category?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancroft_Library
43:55 NotAButtFace asks "Being 'The Guy With The Hats' to future proof your identity against going bald"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichotillomania
55:25 Plants
"Kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage are all varieties of a single magical plant species" https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant
Microtopics:
Not remembering what you were going to say about the topics you picked.
Finding a tabletop RPG system to support your supernatural teen romance.
A novel written by Tyra Banks that is basically Harry Potter but for supermodels.
Being aware that you're dreaming but not having control and just being annoyed that you have to spend so long in your fake life.
Dreaming about recording a podcast before waking up and recording the real world podcast and ending up with two podcasts.
Your dream friends being rude to you because you are rude to yourself.
Realizing you are in a dream and trying to convince your dream friends to do what you want but instead they convince you to do what they want because they will die as soon as you wake up.
Improving your dream friend's lives in your recurring Disneyland dream until they have the perfect day and you never wake up.
Careening off the cliff and going "zhoop" and uncrashing the car.
Improving your dream friends' princess dress-up game by leaving the room and observing them from the security room instead.
A creepy carnival in the hills that sometimes shows up.
Remembering eight dreams in ten years.
Jimmy Wales' appearing in your dream to ask for dream money to keep dream Wikipedia running.
The real reason why there's no etymological connection between Samhain and the minced oath "Sam Hill."
Poop Stonehenge.
Ranking the eight kinds of fun.
Everybody ranking submission/abnegation last when listing what they want out of a tabletop RPG.
Submitting yourself to a ritualized task and discovering the pleasures of being clockwork.
Deciding how you want to build your treehouse and then going to fight the moon.
Whether a DM describing an axe swing exceptionally well counts as sensory pleasure.
Listening to a lot of TTRPG podcasts but not playing a lot of TTRPGs yourself because who has the time and energy to organize it?
Agreeing to role play all the people who are missing from this D&D session and immediately drowning everyone, making everything a lot politically simpler.
Remembering everything your players say so you can role play a sapient bird who can only communicate by mimicking things it has heard.
Leaving the elf in the cart because if you take him out everyone will want to interrogate him and you don't want to bother RPing that hard.
Learning how to GM in LARPs where there are no NPCs and all you have to do is set up some plot hooks and then watch the players go wild.
Saying "you are in a shed" and thereby declaring yourself the GM.
Telling people in your RPG session that they're playing themselves and they're like "okay I boot up Animal Crossing."
Not being able to relate to your younger sister because she's too young to have used the Dewey Decimal System.
Describing all of human knowledge using only ten categories.
The Dewey Decimal System no longer having classifications for Mormonism or education of women.
000-099 being the best Dewey Decimal classification because it has the books about computer programming and UFOs and the paranormal.
Where to find cute animal pictures under the Dewey Decimal System.
Being shown you how to find something with the Dewey Decimal Drawers and being like "why wouldn't you just walk around until you find it."
Recording an episode in the library because where better to find out about topics.
Libraries being wild and raucous places now that the libraries don't shush you.
Going to the library all the time because there are Pokemon there but never going inside because they come out to meet you.
Going four floors underground in complete silence and wondering if you can still hear.
Making sure nobody is in the library shelves you're about to move before turning that big metal wheel.
Going into an anechoic chamber and hearing your synapses firing.
Going into an anechoic chamber and hearing ground hum because you needed to plug in your laptop.
Amazing 3D sound scapes that you can't appreciate because your head is the wrong shape.
Making a game that induces panic attacks and deciding you want to make a less horrible experience next.
People who do actual night dives being less terrified when playing Subnautica.
Knowing a cool guy with hats and liking the hats.
Self medicating using hats.
A twelve year old girl with otherwise extremely thick hair wearing a hat being less suspicious than a middle aged cis man wearing a hat.
Growing a beard to make up for your bald spot because hopefully people will think your head is upside down.
The pros and cons of wearing wigs.
Sending a picture of yourself wearing a wig and colored contacts to your mom and she asks "I don't recognize that friend, who is she and why is she wearing that tacky wig and colored contacts?"
Whether or not plants are so good.
Knowing how far apart to put the holes but not knowing how many seeds to put in each hole and your bok choy all growing on top of one another.
Tiling your entire yard with garden planters so you can actually fit all the cabbage you planted.
Your friends going into the back yard and getting blasted with water by the device you rigged to deter neighbor cats from digging in your vegetable garden.
Beautiful white butterflies that are wrecking the shit out of your cabbages.
All the plants that taste good technically being cabbages.
Not being able to be mad at the squirrels when they eat your plants as soon as they sprout because that's also what you were going to do.
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1 hr 9 min
June 08, 202033. Two-Grass of the Face
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Lords this week:
Craig was Jim's collaborator on Glittermitten Grove.
@craigtimpany on Twitter.
https://www.mostlytigerproof.com/
https://pinballheresies.com/
Shannon does a lot of different stuff!
@plentyofalcoves on Twitter.
Strucci Movies. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9DnjvObUcvvwrYbJ4-cLQ
Hbomberguy. https://www.youtube.com/user/hbomberguy
Struggle Sessions. http://www.strugglesession.us/
Critical Bits. https://www.criticalbitcast.com/
Topics:
2:51 What are the best attributes for a collaborator to have? The worst?
10:45 Craig's favourite language, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Vocabulary
18:17 TempleOS
http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/
TempleOS games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQtLv9GizKM
31:28 Quill asks: "What's your first memory being exposed to a computer?"
35:30 Why faking one's non-existence might not be a great career move.
41:32 Re: media consumption- "there are no guilty pleasures"- do you agree?
49:26 Did you know that daytime soaps air a new episode every weekday? How is this possible?
Every episode of Passions, on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu1cfjN6h09z6ssQcRwsJ8A/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid
Microtopics:
Getting some emails in six weeks.
Tweeting about a book about olives and getting in touch with the author and starting a podcast about olives.
A dumb joke that you are taking very seriously.
Creating one podcast episode per olive cultivar.
Deciding that you'd rather work with people you like than talented people.
The hypothetical coworker who is sufficiently good at their job that you put up with the death of everyone who enters the room with them.
The origin of the 10x programmer myth.
Never having met a 10x programmer, but having met a 10x QA tester.
The 10x singer who sings at 10x the pitch of regular singers.
Noodling vs. deliberate, thoughtful creation.
Whether having rock stars in your rock band is worth all the trashed hotel rooms.
A language derived from Australian sailor slang.
Mouth grass.
Trying to express a technical idea without using technical vocabulary.
The correspondence between the simplicity of vocabulary and the speed of spoken language.
Leaving space for audience participation.
A language that isn't a big compost heap like English.
English 2, where every single word is a swear word.
Making an operating system because God told you to.
Making a new operating system to talk to God because you don't trust MS-DOS.
Whether talking to God has more or less stringent security requirements than a voting machine.
Which mental illnesses make you a better programmer.
Implementing Minesweeper in your new OS in case you get bored talking to God.
The TempleOS indie game scene.
The music video generator Jim is never going to make.
Reconciling how you feel about a mentally ill asshole.
Being very online and really into the N-word.
Everyone loving your forum posts about weird bespoke operating system but being less into your race war posts.
Art and technology paradropped in from an alternate timeline.
Outsider art suspension bridges.
A trash peninsula that no longer has any homeless encampments on it.
Building a castle out of shopping carts and reclaimed concrete.
The text adventure that they named the genre after.
Dad bringing home an Amiga 500 and playing Marble Madness with you.
Accidentally flood-filling the wrong place and getting really upset because you don't know about the undo button.
The cool kid with the advanced Amiga 500 who becomes progressively less cool over time because his dad refuses to get a new computer.
Seeing Doom and realizing that your beloved Amiga is done for, and Commodore going out of business later that year.
Telling journalists that you don't exist when they approach you for an interview.
Backing away from the ARG puzzle you're designing when you realize solving it would involve doxxing yourself.
Building rapport with games journalists, but taking so long to make your next game that they've left the industry.
The impossibility of building a fan following in video games after 2013.
Wearing a ratty fake mustache for your Problematic Jim alter ego.
Lying about how you made the horse talk.
Trying and failing to preserve the mystery by giving a fake mundane answer.
Finding value in a work while still being critical of it.
Becoming the avatar of embarrassing pop music.
Reclaiming "guilty pleasure" to mean something you enjoy by a problematic creator.
Society shaming you more for liking Fall Out Buy than liking a Polanski film.
What it would take to turn the average band into sex pests.
Soap opera production schedules.
Actors playing the same role for sixty years.
Not watching The Simpsons or South Park any more, but figuring that South Park must be holding up better because nobody is posting embarrassing clips of it on Twitter.
Your creative voice ossifying in the 90s and having to write in that voice for the rest of your life.
Remaining in the Garfield mines for the rest of your life when Garfield's legacy of shitposts is already secure.
Hoping that "goodbye" in Tok Pisin is a transliteration of "see you in hell."
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1 hr
June 01, 202032. Tandem CPAP
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Rachel is on Twitter as @rachel_sala. Check out Glitch CIty! https://glitch.city/
Laura is on Twitter as @lmichet and the web at http://lauramichet.com/. Check out Industries of Titan! https://braceyourselfgames.com/industries-of-titan/
Topics:
4:10 All clothes hangers should be made of wood rather than wire or plastic.
8:32 How do you feel about food mascots shaped like the food you're about to eat?
Will Graham discovers Hannibal's love for sweetbreads at ~3:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbcI6h1_bHg
12:31 I could put any liquid in my CPAP humidifier.
18:21 Mallow asks: "Sliding doors. Are people in favor? Opposed? Terrified of them? Feels like in the US we've converged on a kind of door that just isn't that great."
23:48 If there was one silly skill you could acquire with no effort, like being good at karaoke, what would it be?
https://platypusegg.bandcamp.com/
34:08 People in different eras interpreting subtleties in media differently--for example, people not "getting" all of Shakespeare's jokes, interpreting the ending of The Wicker Man differently, etc.
https://nextworldover.tumblr.com/post/615235424343998464/patricia-von-arundel-friendlytroll
45:07 Multi-Mario races.
World record Mario 1862 run in 37h57m. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/588944589
https://iggmarathon.com/
Microtopics:
The comfort of a Discord voice channel where everyone is muted.
A Discord voice channel where you go to poop.
Perceiving a pun and wanting to forget it.
Being in total agreement as to whether we should discuss topics.
The hidden cost of plastic coat hangers.
Contemplating the luxury of your collection of fancy wooden coat hangers.
Never having purchased coat hangers in your life but still ending up with a bunch of them.
Accruing heavier and heavier clothing as you age.
Not needing coat hangers because you just drape all your clothes over the back of a folding chair.
A barbecue joint where the mascot is a sapient pig that is super thrilled that you're about to eat him.
Alienation from the food production process.
The weird zone where pigs are slaughtered in an alternate dimension outside our ken.
Chuck E. Cheese's real name.
The sweetest meat you'll ever eat.
Sweetmeats vs. sweetbreads.
A restaurant with the slogan "the sweetest bread you'll ever eat" and the mascot is a talking Thymus gland.
Thymus glands just being in you someplace.
Putting soup in your humidifier and saving yourself the trouble of making breakfast.
Accidentally blasting yourself with mold all night.
Sharing a CPAP machine with your life partner, like a tandem bike.
Adding a splash of bleach to your soup so it won't grow mold in your humidifier overnight.
Taking action to ensure huge amounts of water enters your body because otherwise the water will probably just sit there.
Every sliding glass door having a big colorful sticker on it because once someone ran into it and broke their nose or crashed through or both.
The worst-designed lateral thinking puzzle exacerbating your fear of heights.
All the rollers in the sliding glass door being crushed so you're just dragging a huge pane of glass along the ground.
Sliding glass doors being perfectly safe because they cannot break; they can only become windows.
Increasing the amount of natural light in your home via strategic placement of mirrors.
Holding a mirror and pointing the sun at your face.
Everyone loving your ukulele cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, but only the first time they hear it.
Knowing how to play a bunch of instruments but they all weigh 300 pounds.
Making a xylophone out PVC pipes you found in a dumpster and playing Ode to Joy on it.
Solving this portable xylophone problem once and for all by googling "portable xylophone."
A gigantic marimba that is built into the room it's in like a supercomputer of sound.
Wanting to go on a weird xylophone tour.
Being good enough to impress people who don't know anything about that particular skill.
Wanting to play an instrument that leaves your mouth free to have a jolly conversation.
Combining our powers to identify the hexagonal pirate accordion.
Circus jazz.
Scottish peasants swaying together like kindergarteners singing a jolly pagan song as the flames approach.
Fifty years ago, being horrified when pagans burn the character representing cops and religious authority alive, but nowadays everybody owns a guillotine and worships Alan Moore's snake god.
Whether the Nicholas Cage Wicker Man being hilarious at release was inspired by the 1970s Wicker Man being hilarious in a modern context.
Jokes that modern audiences don't have the context to understand.
Works written in 17th or 18th century English needing localization as much as works in a foreign language.
Not linking to an edifying Tumblr thread because Tumblr's threading is the worst.
People in the 1940s just talking like that actually.
Movie actors finally learning to act sometime around 1950.
Staying awake for 38 hours to get every star, moon and shine in the 3D Mario series.
Our failings as adult humans.
Doing game jams where you actually sleep.
Scoping your game development project to allow sleep during development.
Romanticizing the idea of staying up all night doing something fun because now you're an adult with adult responsibilities and shirt resilience.
Not being able to justify doing something for fun so you tack on a charity drive.
The shifting sense of what's important and what's moral that defines the human experience over time.
Whether or not you could pay us to play World of Warcraft.
Your guild leader getting in fistfights all the time and eventually going up jail and appointing you temporary guild leader because he doesn't realize you're a woman.
Training your brain to be okay playing just one video game for a while.
A hat that is so ugly you had to give it to a friend.
Giving your goth dog friend pastel outfits to wear on Bunny Day.
Lamenting that there is no other place or time to discuss topics.
Support Topic Lords
1 hr 5 min
May 25, 202031. seedhutch.horse
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Jenni is reachable at [email protected].
Chris is making cooking videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRsnCRAIi-VsRPPX4AtzVGQ/
Topics:
2:42 Suddenly Anxiety and OCD are culturally adaptive behaviors.
8:16 Opening negotiations with your real-life employer to get them to pay you in Nook Miles
13:44 Animal Crossing speed runs
Animal Crossing 100% in 19h25m. https://www.speedrun.com/ac/run/y21ejk7z
Animal Crossing New Horizons All Debts in 1h52m. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdH-pj1ZUac
Super Mario Sunshine Lockout Bingo at AGDQ 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch3eSzem1v4
Animal Crossing Lockout Bingo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hhgu-fObME
20:23 Gary asks: "Printing Toilet Paper at Home"
How to make paper out of blue jeans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPdZPvMVMZk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chank_Diesel
26:54 Owning 5.25" floppies & suddenly having to be aware of magnets again as a threat in your life
Masquerade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_%28book%29
France's 25-year treasure hunt for a golden owl. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45005072
32:20 Apocalypse gardening and warlord potential
37:52 Amazon took Murder She Wrote away from us
47:07 Winding up with more social obligations than you had before quarantine
Microtopics:
Being confident in your recording setup because you're too lazy to verify it.
The old lady who lives in your ductwork who you can't hear because she only shrieks exactly when you're talking.
Finding out about the apocalypse from a podcast recorded months ago.
The subtle distinction between self care and overeating.
Feeling better about your anxiety disorder because the world has gotten worse to meet your mood.
A behavior that looks maladaptive but must secretly be awesome because it has survived for millennia.
A poltergeist that keeps turning your stove off.
Worshipping gods that turn out to be evil aliens.
Trying to make "Christian Splinter Faiths" scan to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme.
Going for the cosmetic upgrade before the inventory upgrade and causing your partner physical pain.
Clearcutting the entire island you're visiting because when you leave it will cease to exist.
Harvesting trees in a checkerboard pattern because they grow better that way.
A financial startup specializing in converting British pounds to Nook miles.
Putting pounds and dollars in the same bank account and they crossbreed while they're in there.
100%-ing Animal Crossing as fast as possible.
Speed runs that are entertaining to describe but not to watch.
Bingo races as the improvisation-heavy antidote to rote speed runs.
Forcing Caleb Hart to livestream Mega Man X any time anyone listens to this episode.
Feeding toilet paper into your inkjet printer to create a cool pattern to wipe your ass with.
Using Silly Putty to copy the stock market info from the newspaper.
Not being able to print toilet paper with your 3D printer, but printing a bidet instead.
Running out of toilet paper and 3D printing corn husks.
Buying the Taco Bell Grande Meal to eat the beans out of the burrito and then wiping your ass with the corn tortilla and wax paper wrapper.
Skipping a step and putting the burrito right in the toilet.
Introducing an awesome person to your friend and then ruining them in the very next sentence.
The outside of the printer paper protecting you from the horrifying inside of the toilet paper.
Pulping spare blue jeans to manufacture your own artisanal toilet paper.
Figuring out how to put your front yard in your back yard to hide it from the HOA.
Reporting your neighbor to the HOA for weeds in the middle of a global pandemic.
Getting notices from the HOA that you need to power wash your driveway and power washing the words "fuck you" into it.
Confusing Day of the Dead and Cinco De Mayo because they both happen in the same year.
An object you need to keep safe from magnets.
Advice on dealing with floppy disks in the Year of our Lord 2020.
Something in France that hasn't been found yet.
A Wikipedia list of things that have not been found in France.
Burying a microtransaction-heavy game in the desert and hoping the person who finds it is a whale.
Throwing a microtransaction-heavy game into the ocean and it traveling back in time and Captain Ahab hears about it and becomes obsessed with finding the whale who owns it.
Trying to think of a really big expensive home and your brain coming back with "a bucket!"
The train stopping slightly and thinking "maybe society is breaking down" and then the train starting again and thinking "I guess I'll just go to my boring job."
Part of you wanting to live in interesting times and be part of historical events.
Bringing your axe made out of a sharpened hubcap to work because Phil's allowed to bring his Leatherman.
Not being able to train to be a warlord in the post-apocalypse because during the apocalypse all the MMA gyms are closed.
Realizing that Amazon Prime Video doesn't have Murder She Wrote any more and wanting to just burn it all down.
The magical time in your life when you thought Netflix's selection of streaming video would only keep getting bigger.
Conflating Murder She Wrote with the Golden Girls.
Deadpanning ridiculous things that happen in St. Olaf, Minnesota.
Angry texts from your mom about how you ruined Murder She Wrote by telling her about the theory that Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer.
A big city businesswoman looking to take over her parents' failing Christmas ornament shop.
CG compositing Christmas ornaments into the background of every shot of Golden Girls.
Everybody playing online games all the time now because their extrovert friends have figured out the Internet.
Extroverts agreeing to watch speed runs with you because they're desperate to talk to anybody.
Finding an eight hour smooth jazz video and eventually realizing it's two minutes of smooth jazz looping for eight hours.
Trying to solve playing music with friends over the Internet.
Solving the problem of jamming with friends over the Internet by only playing music with precogs.
Sticking it to the HOA by dressing up as a weed and when they come by to report you, jumping out and yelling "I'm no weed, I'm a guy!"
Support Topic Lords
55 min
May 18, 202030. Century of the Fruitbat
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Chris will find you. He is working on Core Editor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RyUjnpyJY4
Chris is @MrChrisLHall on Twitter and is working on https://www.adventurelab.fun/
Topics:
2:07 Wikipedia descriptions of fighting game stories
The Rad Project. http://web.archive.org/web/20070406100535/http://www.flammie.net/vse/things/rad/index.htm
13:05 Is there a 21st century version of the thank-you note?
The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek. http://bookembob.blogspot.com/2011/07/double-disappearance-of-walter-fozbek.html
The Selective Attention Test. https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo
26:27 I'm pretty sure I could write a book about anything
Dolphin flip in slow motion. https://youtu.be/37C1KOSgTAk
32:49 Kevin asks: "Tom Nook: Robber Baron or Captain of Industry?"
38:37 Melodica purchased online
48:43 Ursula Vernon is rad
Weird fruit gallery: https://www.deviantart.com/ursulav/gallery/7872409/weird-fruit
57:01 Peering in on skateboard culture from the outside
So Deep + juggling pins. https://youtu.be/9pvzWY-lSRw
Microtopics:
Risking sounding like a corporate shill.
Whether or not Wikipedia is pretty great.
Wikipedia's editorial tone when describing ridiculous stories.
Finding a video embed in the middle of a textbook page and trying to press it.
A book with squiggle underlines wherever the author screwed up.
Having to come up with narrative justification for 500 one-on-one fights in a row.
The guy you just kicked off a cliff offering you cakes because nobody should have to fight on an empty stomach.
Your pet frog jumping on a box in your back yard marked radioactive, growing to massive size, then jumping down a huge hole that is also in your back yard for some reason.
The Japanese version of the wacky frog tank story just being factions at war in the post apocalypse.
Mega Man except you are a gnarly wizard instead of a robot.
A floating Buddha named "Surprise" shooting you in the back.
If Astro Boy were a mailman.
Merging the wacky frog tank story and the post apocalyptic war story into a single canonical timeline in the new Switch release.
Writing on paper made of trees with a pen and it's 2020.
Writing a thank you note when a relative hands you a twenty dollar bill.
Writing a jam game for every special occasion because it's more fun than writing a card.
The correct plural of Magnum Opus.
Returning to Lazy Land.
The videos you like best inevitably being taken down due to copyright strikes because that's the world we live in now.
YouTube telling you that some videos have been removed from your playlist but not telling you which.
A digital representation of what it's like to grow old.
Making a USB drive ark and taking two of every genre of music.
Your Google ad profile gaining sentience and making credit card purchases behind your back but also getting a job and making your credit card payments on time.
Going to work and nobody remembering who you are.
Going into the office wearing a gorilla costume and eventually sending in a gorilla to do your job and it turns out the gorilla is better at your job than you are.
Using a gorilla Snapchat filter on a gorilla to make it look like a human who's trying to look like a gorilla.
Waking up in parallel dino world where everyone is a dinosaur and your dinosaur twin waking up in human world where everyone is a human, because you both had a mad scientist neighbor.
Making a note of how to disguise yourself as a dinosaur because you never know when you'll end up in dinosaur world.
Doing a face swap with your cat during the conference call so everyone is too horrified to notice the gorilla in the background.
A pedalboard except it's Instagram filters.
Chaining Instagram filters to create a truly epic fursona.
Reverse college, where you get paid to forget things.
Getting paid a dollar per paragraph about skateboard tricks.
A varial kickflip except instead of splitting the axes of rotation between your feet, doing all the rotation with your front foot.
Writing a book with your 18 month old and it's just the words poop, ball, bath and meow over and over and over.
Your toddler growing up to discover axes and cops, like leaves changing colors in autumn.
A raccoon who is very friendly and has taken a lot of your money.
Whether Tom Nook is a slum lord.
A dog with five fingers, an apron, and a whole lot of bells.
Being in debt forever because your landlord keeps building you a bigger and bigger house.
A 100% speedrun of Adobe Photoshop.
Adding achievements, particle effects, and screenshake to Visual Studio.
Two melodica players coincidentally bringing their instruments to the same party and locking eyes from across the room.
Cheap, portable musical instruments you can have with you at all times and practice with at the drop of a hat.
A tube with six holes in it.
Penny whistles always being in D because it's one more than C.
Wikipedia diving deep into the lore of each musical scale.
The cute face of the otamatone being almost assuredly more entertaining than the notes you play with it.
Penny whistles with a conical bore staying in tune better than cylindrical ones.
The monomyth of the boy who sneaks up on a seal while she's bathing and steals her skin and she turns out to be a beautiful human woman and now she has to marry him.
The origin of the pear-with-teeth meme.
The Biting Pear of Salamanca.
Whether anyone named Ursula is still alive today.
An interesting reaction to discovering that your daughter is made of birch bark.
A dead whale falling to the ocean floor and feeding scavengers for years.
Spending your whole life waiting for a whale to die.
Zombie worms growing like flowers in the lightless garden of a sunken whale corpse.
A tiny kobold fondling an eggplant.
Giving your wife a picture of a fruit with teeth for her birthday.
Your skateboard being stolen twice in the same day.
Angsty skateboarders lashing out at the world around them via sick kickflips.
Fighting everyone around you being morally equivalent to fighting no-one.
A nine year old girl in a tutu doing a double heelflip.
The cost of skateboarding being measured in hospital visits, especially when you are 40 and overweight.
Wearing an inflatable dinosaur suit and skateboarding in a bounce house for maximum safety.
Wanting to get into skateboarding but you're scared of dying and none of your friends have trucks.
Hacky sack looking fun but actually it's a lie built on a throne of falsehoods and pain.
Narrowing an artefact's origin down to the Century of the Fruitbat.
Musicians dancing while they play just to show off that they are good enough at music and dancing that they can do both at the same time.
Being entirely out of both topics and lords.
Support Topic Lords
1 hr 12 min
May 11, 202029. Respect the Hustler, Not the Hustle
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Jenni is on an internet break but you can email her at [email protected].
Gary is @GaryBuh on Twitter and does podcasts at the Duckfeed network. http://duckfeed.tv/
Topics:
1:41 How did people decide to eat certain vegetables, even though they don't look like food and sometimes taste like shit?
4:18 Stephen King writing about boners (there is a Tumblr)
https://stephenkingsboners.tumblr.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald%27s_Game#Plot
12:28 Airplane respiration strategies
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/05/explore-transparent-plants/
16:45 Being resourceful when you don't have the correct tool. For example, I recently unblocked a toilet by using a mouse pad in place of a plunger.
23:28 Replacing combat in video games with other stuff to slow down the pacing
33:27 What age were you meaningfully aware of your mortality? Did something happen?
38:06 The MT-80s MIDI boom box
https://twitter.com/cabel/status/979097369936502785
https://vgmusic.com/
48:21 Things that you do so people will think you're an adult but you can't figure out if there's another purpose for doing them
55:10 You can only listen to one song for the rest of eternity, you don't get to pick. How much money would it take, what song is the worst.
Gunhouse trailer with the title screen jingle I was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0yAm6iXEw
Here's a better trailer for a later version of Gunhouse, with better music FWIW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzokB1821Mw
Tony Hawk's Two Second Music Loop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uofB1_Y1gOk
Microtopics:
Goin' Polodna.
Goin' Polodna but bein' named Butterfield.
Only car thieves remaining.
Giving your guest a hard time for plugging something when you just asked them to plug something.
Being inspired by an eggplant you once had.
Stockholm syndrome but for vegetables.
A color that doesn't exist on earth.
Trying to cook every substance for every amount of time because you don't have Netflix.
Laundering a horse through a book.
The pe-noose.
Trying to Google which Stephen King book had the necklace of penises.
Deeming a penis to be a boner.
Looking upon a pubic hair topiary and despairing.
Sculpting the day your paramour will die into your pubic hair on the first date.
Fred Meyer's daughter, J.C. Penney.
Not having any particular insight into this boner blog.
Being a little bit hornt up despite being trapped in a Fred Meyer by the murder frog outside.
Whether or not "pud" is short for "pudding" or indeed anything.
A zoetrope showing Goofy pulling down his pants every 7 seconds.
A plexiglass box that is big enough for your head and a fern.
Hacking the oxygen mask to come down when you just need a hit.
Sprinkling some foliage on your head to make it look like the fern next to your head is just a lump on your face.
Sticking your head in the fern box under the seat in front of you and painting your face on your pants so your butt can wear the oxygen mask.
The tactile sensation of unclogging a toilet using a mouse pad.
The best water level for plunging a toilet.
Needing an articulated arm like Krang's to plunge the toilet from around the corner.
Trying to guess the Game Boy games being used to prop up a projector.
The Podcaster's Dilemma.
Maligning the Final Fantasy Legend series.
Deciding that your punishment will be a good night's sleep and a stern toothbrushing.
Playing Final Fantasy Legend while you brush each other's teeth live on AGDQ.
Asking a question that you'd already answered in a previous episode and just copy-pasting the answer from there.
Not being in good enough shape to sleep everywhere.
Ripping through the topics and needing to dip into the extended bucket.
A gigantic bucket of shelf-stable potato soup that you save for the end times.
Setting up a P.O. box so your listeners can send you a big pile of food and toy cars so you can not eat for a week and then eat an enormous megameal.
A Visual Studio plugin that lets you play text adventures anyone while looking like you're at work.
Pressing the boss key to hide that you're playing an ancient video game and your boss asking you why you're writing emails in Word Perfect 2.0.
Having a child to reduce your mortality anxiety.
Having a child so they can do the heimlich when you choke on a ham sandwich.
Subtweeting your cat.
Not being meaningfully aware of your mortality but still making decisions based on not dying.
Overcorrecting and turning into a maudlin fucker.
A boom box with a floppy drive playing canyon.mid.
A product with no conceivable audience except the nerds who will think it's cool and nostalgic thirty years from now.
Opening a cabinet and your coffee mug singing the Zelda "you found the thing" jingle.
The intentionality of listening to music in the most inconvenient way possible.
Listening to music and lighting random pieces of paper on fire.
A very zinelike activity.
Independent movie theaters all vanishing in an eyeblink.
Filling the delivery tube with potato soup and sending it to the bank teller.
Chuck E. Cheese classing it up with woodfired, chef-inspired pizza.
Getting carryout from the Chuck E. Cheese and your chef-inspired pizza coming with a side of orange spider rings.
Sleeping on a mattress on the floor for years until your new girlfriend insists you get a real bed.
Putting a tennis ball on top of the screws you're supposed to attach the footboard to so you know where to park your keister.
Your migrating bedframe, a keter-class problem in the bedroom.
The one time it makes sense to have a strong opinion about someone else's bed.
Wiping down the incision site because if you get an infection after you die it's just never going to heal.
Only being allowed to listen to one song for the rest of your life.
The one song you're allowed to listen to also replacing music you hear in your head or anything you sing.
Trying to sing Happy Birthday to a co-worker but it always comes out as the chorus of "Selling the Drama" by Live.
All music in the world being replaced by the Intel Inside jingle.
The Zelda item noise secretly being the same as the Addams Family theme song.
Going to a concert and suddenly the band can only play the song you are cursed with.
The CIA discovering your musical curse and studying you on the dissection table like in Project ALF.
$10 million per For Fighting.
Support Topic Lords
1 hr 4 min
May 04, 202028. Stealing the Dead Skunk Back and Forth Forever
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
April is a beast lord and Jim's wife. @AprilSaur
Ryan is somehow also Jim's wife? @RyanIkeComposer
Topics:
3:56 The "spigot question" Jim keeps avoiding.
https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/others/hugin-and-munin/
A second person may be "cured" of HIV. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/5/18249607/hiv-cure-2019
13:05 New Decade reading resolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seanan_McGuire
http://www.scp-wiki.net/antimemetics-division-hub
I personally recommend starting with "Introductory Antimemetics," which is a good intro to the concepts, then everything starting at "Case Colourless Green," which is the main storyline.
https://shadesofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/A_Darker_Shade_of_Magic
22:54 What does the Nakatomi corporation do?
http://www.scp-wiki.net/
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/33713/was-nakatomi-corp-involved-in-illegal-activity
31:07 Favorite zoo animal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryonic_diapause
40:07 What sandwiches are better suited to a straight or diagonal cut?
44:28 I stayed in a hotel in Florence in 2009 where our room had a private bidet but the whole floor shared a toilet.
Microtopics:
Making a good dad joke on twitter.
The ravens that have been building a nest behind your corpyard at work.
The squabbling raven couple next door.
Being the neighbor who didn't call animal control.
Trying to remember the names of Odin's ravens.
Distributing podcast episodes in a post-internet wasteland.
The kid in middle school who guessed you were from New York because of how you say "basketball."
Why Jim is such a coward.
Reaching deep into the topic bucket and pulling out a black ichorous monster.
A garden hose spigot installed in your butt such that poop sprays forward instead of down.
Bodily fluids canceling each other out when you miss the toilet and so you just end up with a wet wall.
Liking ketchup so much you CRISPR a biological ketchup dispenser into your elbow.
Accidentally triggering your ketchup hands when you're icing a cake.
Putting a cap on your ketchup elbow so you don't drip ketchup everywhere.
Whether your new dispenser is a squishy flesh hose or a brass steampunk spigot.
Reframing your fleshy protuberance that shoots someone else's blood to sound scary and eldritch.
A spigot that shoots liquid money.
Making up for your horrifying blood pranks by giving blood.
Whipping blood into stiff peaks.
Carnivorous merengue.
Using science to make human blood safe to eat.
Letting the listeners hear the good podcast juice.
Falling down on your New Year's resolution starting in March.
Watching the Witcher show and then reading the Witcher short stories it was based on and knowing exactly what's going to happen.
Alchemy and math and words.
Whether or not reading on a screen still counts.
Reading your driver's license every night before you go to bed.
Getting hungry immediately after the body spigot discussion.
Being over your meal by the time you're done cooking it.
Assembling duck a l'orange ingredient by ingredient in your tummy and by the time you finish cooking it you're like "I've already eaten this."
Something standing right in front of you that you can't perceive.
Deciding not to read scary stories to your wife right before bed.
Getting ready for prose form, motherfuckers.
Trying to remember someone's name and only remembering that they have initials.
Medieval fantasy Londons and their relationships to magic.
Reading ahead in the tabletop adventure book.
A vault with 8 different kinds of locks on it, filled with non-negotiable bearer bonds.
A regular bearer bond except you can't negotiate for it.
A non-negotiable bond except you can hold it.
The database documenting the contents of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Manufacturing tiny toy guns and not being able to fight back against terrorists because your guns are too small.
Explaining why your tiny gun manufacturer has a money basement.
Tiny toy guns using only the tiniest gunpowder.
Writing the first season of your mystery show with the certainty that it'll be canceled after one season.
Having to figure out what polar bears are after your show gets renewed.
When a duck decides to start whispering its quacks.
The most convenient jaguar.
Biting each other in the face and having a good Bear Time.
Bats' closest relatives being humans because all their other relatives died.
Delaying gestation until everyone's pregnant at once.
Bats all giving birth at the same time and overwhelming the health care system.
A zoo except for the sea.
Watching a jellyfish enclosure and asking "what are they doing in there?"
Plastic bags floating around in the sea except they're alive and they'll still be alive after you're dead.
The universe being a big stupid donut.
Nobody giving a shit that you read Great Expectations.
Garfield being the great literature of the coming era.
Allegorical lasagna.
Caramelizing all your onions at once.
Cutting your sandwich into a pair of rhombuses.
Sitting on a stack of the most prestigious award in the country.
Figuring out what axis you can cut a hamburger on diagonally.
When the burrito guy folds your burrito wrong and the first bite is entirely sour cream.
Burrito Gaia, filled with loam, mantle and magma.
Naming your next kid after your least-favorite burrito.
The food dictator making you a cup of Crispix when all you wanted was grilled cheese.
The puzzle with the farmer trying to get a hen, fox and grain across the river except it's your butt, your poop, and a jet of water.
Taking it to squirts-town.
Building a hotel before they invented the combination toilet/bidet.
The french word for when you take a dump in somebody's bidet.
Hygiene strategies if a bird poops on your butthole.
The nose being an evolutionary strategy to protect our mouths from bird poop.
Dunking your whole ass in the ass-height sink.
Just making zoo noises until you've reached the required minimum podcast length.
Support Topic Lords
55 min
April 27, 202027. The Great Mongolian Potato Sack Yak Race
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Jesse is @thefringthing on Twitter.
Avery has a Facebook somewhere and if you find it you can ask him whether he's playing any live shows.
Topics:
2:03 Math problems that are easy to explain but unsolved or unsolvable.
https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/squinsqu/
13:28 The list of Mr. Potato Head's accomplishments on his Wikipedia page makes him sound like a real person who was perhaps an ambassador.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Potato_Head
https://www.ashrita.com/about/
23:36 Hypothesis: a steadily tedious job becomes bearable when you procrastinate and then do it in short, frenetic bursts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder
Salmon cannon. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a28678200/fish-tube-video/
35:25 Kaz asks: your conversation about language changing to people's misunderstandings reminded me of how "pitted" olives have no pits in them, and how "inflammable" is confusing, so "flammable" was coined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term
44:33 Theory: humans are unconsciously driving the evolution of some kinds of small birds toward cuter features and behaviors.
Samurai-lookin' crab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dan-no-ura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
48:10 The "Please Call Stella" accent database
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=detail&speakerid=145
WMAC Masters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJSKeBKCM0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL_(2020) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL_(2001)
Slam Ball TOP PLAYS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPuV7jK33k
Microtopics:
Writing a song and realizing that you just wrote Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies by mistake.
Not the coolest thing to accidentally be ripping off.
Rapidly shutting down the entire idea of introducing yourself.
Continuing to talk about about how mysterious Jesse is.
The question of whether a problem that has been proven unsolvable is as solved as it can be.
Asking two people to simultaneously explain Goldbach's Conjecture.
Four followed by more zeroes that would be in a trillion.
Determine whether the RDA of Iron is a multiple of two primes while choosing a can of soup.
Hitting the last prime number and running out.
Paul Erdos' advice for dealing with aliens who request Diagonal Ramsey Numbers.
Avery's favorite math proof.
Explaining to your bosses that your current task is technically uncomputable.
Not being able to elaborate on packing arc segments because biotech analysts might have you killed.
Yelling excitedly about graph isomorphism at the gym and tripping the Lunk Alarm.
Disappointment that Mr. Potato Head doesn't have an honorary doctorate.
Mr. Potato Head's presidential physical fitness award.
Potato cannibalism.
Most Votes For Mr. Potato Head In A Political Campaign.
Everyone who has finished Super Mario Bros. 2 in front of a Twin Galaxies representative.
A strange man lurking behind you while you play Mario, writing down your score.
The guy 120 Guinness World Records, or 119 if you don't count the "Most Guinness Records Held At Once" record.
Potato sack racing a yak across the Mongolian desert.
Most Yaks Raced Through The Mongolian Desert. (1)
The near worldwide tie of Most Guinness Records Not Held At Once.
Walking using shovels as stilts.
Most balloons inflated to inches in one hour. (671)
Slicing potatoes while hopping on a shovel.
Inheriting two shovels from your uncle's estate and trying to figure out what world records you can set using them.
Longest distance continuously somersaulting. (12 miles)
Whether cartwheeling for 12 miles is more strenuous than somersaulting for 12 miles.
Jumping on a pogo stick until your O2 tank is depleted.
Sleeping holding a brick.
Most Injuries Not Incurred Trying To Break World Records.
Trying to remember Fish Ladders but being derailed by the Fish Cannon.
Taking a break from counting fish.
Not performing any medicine for 10 hours and then in the next hour frantically performing 10x as much medicine as you normally would.
Buying a short-range electric car to teach yourself to plan better.
Being really confused by the turtle appearing on your dashboard and then the car turning off.
A dashboard light that's like the no smoking sign except instead of a cigarette it's a picture of your car.
Sneaking onto a billionaire's estate to furtively charge your Nissan Leaf.
Looking at security cam footage and seeing that you gave electricity to Doctor Who in a time of need.
The incredible variety of charge ports on a Nissan Leaf.
Having trophies ready to distribute as soon as you're allowed to leave the house.
Ordering yourself a "best attitude" trophy.
The gradient of a trophy's meaninglessness.
Ordering a bunch of trophies from Crown Awards and subsequently every ad you see being for Crown Awards.
Delving too deep into what a trophy is until it loses all meaning.
Realizing you could've ordered trophies better and throwing your existing trophies in the trash.
Passions being both flammable and inflammable.
Words that have changed meanings because of persistent misunderstandings.
Having a story about corn husks.
Holding a corn husk in the grocery store and saying "Ah! Corn husks!"
Explaining to schoolchildren that they used corn husks to wipe before toilet paper was invented but the children don't know what husks are so they assume you mean corn cobs.
Not eating the crabs that look like your forefathers.
Paying more attention to cats who cry at the same frequency as human babies.
Not eating the moths that look more like the soot-covered trees they're hiding on.
Sphinx Of Black Quartz, Judge My Vow except for the IPA.
Comparing accents visually.
Inventing new accents to compensate for accents merging into each other.
Having a particularly grating way of speaking and blaming it on being from San Francisco.
Your dead relative not listening to this podcast.
Whether or not Dragon's Lair is a pun.
Yelling like a soda jerk when the order is ready and nobody coming to pick it up because they can't understand what you're saying.
The British TV show that Sanford & Son was based on.
Memorizing your favorite carnival barker pitch and reciting it unprompted at family gatherings.
Field recordings of carnival barkers from the 1950s.
Pro Wrestling somehow retaining its weird 19th-century carny-speak for over a century.
Channeling the dark energy from your urn while you fight Hulk Hogan.
WMAC Masters, the martial arts tournament series with health bars on the screen.
If Undertaker and Hulk Hogan were trucks.
Hockey except you play it with a basketball and there are trampolines on the floor.
Taking basketball and making it extreme.
Sitting around until one of you thinks of a way to end the show.
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