Two Bit Geeks

A brush with Brother-X, a penny for your data and the cloud for your consciousness, rolling into the theatre of the mind, abandoning Ped to assimilation in the collective and these aren’t the reviewers you’re looking for with Rogue One.

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The X-Factor and Risk Tolerance [0:57]

• Essential qualities of a 5-star movie (Brother-X style)
• Not our cup of tea (but to each his own)

One Fit Geek [11:10]

• Yay, roaming advertising IDs!
• The Faustian Cloud of our time

Rolling with D&D 5e [24:59]

• A taste of play-by-post
• Passionate creativity in fractal human subculture (Mike Shea)
• Free-wheeling narratives-for-fun: The Adventure Zone podcast

Hooking In, Wailing Away [36:22]

• Essential pic: Ped’s new smartphone
• Ped stands corrected! Quakers are totally fine with tech

Rogue One [44:36]

• For those about to hate (we salute you)
• But easter eggs are still really fun
• The fascinating Uncanny Valley
• The Citizen Kane of action films

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Updated subscriber totals, exploring echo chambers, managing the meta-leash, the opt-in nature of truth and practicing good mental hygiene: Ped & Tom get into, under, and all up in the grill of everyone’s favorite internet sensation, Fake News.

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Meta Disclaimers, Before-we-Beginners [00:00]

• The President, the Pope and Mark Zuckerberg walk into a bar
• And the 2016 Oxford Word of the Year is…
• Tom will blow this bridge up if he has to

What is “Fake News?” [06:13]

• Try an echo chamber on for size
• Craig Silverman’s landmark analysis
• This Video Will Make you Angry

Why is it a problem for the modern human mind? [17:57]

• Be thankful Tom pulled on the meta-leash, dear listener
• Shakespeare distinguishes thing-value from human-value
• Not everyone is required to see Santa
• #theresAnXKCDForThat

How do we protect ourselves from it? [39:04]

• Your mind’s instruction manual (404: Page Not Found)
• #theresAnXCKDForThatToo
• A practical, psychology-based take on the science of karma
• …but unconditional love is better [citation needed]

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Quickly drawing on machine learning, practicing good spoiler hygiene, taking a trip with Doctor Strange, the audacious Arrival and Ted Chiang, a language of pure logic, thinking without language and testing episode storage capacity.

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Quick, Draw! [00:39]

• Google doodles with machine learning

The nature and role of spoilers [03:25]

• Darth Vader does the hula dance
• J.J. Abrams’ Into Darkness mea culpa

Doctor Strange [13:00]

• Homer’s space coyote chili pepper vision quest
• A treasure trove of tropes
• “The most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness”
• With great power comes great responsibility

Arrival [24:20]

• Remembering the Story of Your Life
• The wonderful Ted Chiang, in his own words
• Down the wikipedia rabbit-hole with Sapir-Whorf

Can we think without language? [42:20]

• A taste of logical “Lojban”
• Deciphering inscrutable Hegel
• Faulkner attempts to go beyond in As I Lay Dying

.i coi do mi tavla fo la .lojban. .i .e’u do terbejbi’o la’o gy.Two Bit Geeks.gy. poi cravi ku’o te zu’e tu’a lo nu casnu lo cinri .e lo plixau .e lo se xalbo gi’e rinka lo nu pensi

Lojban translation and recording by {suzil}

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Ped flips the script on a telemarketer, Tom embraces his inner athlete, exploring the value of exploring space, assessing the relative worth of shrimp and Daleks and losing one’s composure with The Moral Machine.

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Consciously crafting positive human interactions [00:00]

• The problem with the Do-Not-Call List

Tom’s first 5K (with actual real people) [03:45]

• C25K
• Deep Cut: growing tomatoes in Plato’s Cave
• Tom’s preferred transport method

Should we explore Space? [16:50]

• NASA, The President and Stephen Hawking all seem to think so
• SpaceX: Elon Musk’s ambitious effort to colonize Mars by 2024
• Odds of an asteroid hitting you (and tips on avoiding it)
• Assessing the value of shrimp and Daleks
• Putting our best foot forward

Self-driving cars and The Moral Machine [30:47]

• The Moral Machine
• A novel solution to the trolley problem
• The effect of podcasts on young children

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

The pure joy of puttering and sneaky morning naps, attempting to drop the philosophy bomb with Carlos Santana and the nature of inspiration, google:defining the divine and the inexpressible experience of feeling and consciousness.

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Achieving a consistent, regular sleep-cycle [01:45]

• The pure joy of puttering (Sharon Kanner)
• Recreational sleeping

What’s the source of inspiration? [10:37]

• Top Shower Thoughts of all time
• Carlos Santana doing his doodle-oodle-ooo
• The “Flow” state of effortless, immersive creativity
• Where do thoughts come from? A Scientific answer (Dr. John Yohan)
• Where do thoughts come from? A Fluffy answer (Eckhart Tolle)

What defines the “divine?” [32:37]

• Google:define: the supernatural, the divine and God
• Taiji: one take on the “undifferentiated absolute”

What explains feeling and consciousness? [39:20]

• The “hard problem” of consciousness
• Or, the not-so-hard problem

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Ped & Tom are agog with gravitas at the end of Force Awakens, the subjective experience of movies, the marvelous MCU, the 2017 total solar eclipse (featuring the fabulous Path of Totality), climate change XKCD-style, increasing global empathy and saving the species with podcasts in space.

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The end of Force Awakens [00:39]

• Hello Internet discusses the end of Force Awakens
• Comprehensive review of Force Awakens easter eggs (Filup Molina)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe [05:18]

• Which is Nerdier: Star Wars or Star Trek? (College Humor)

Total Solar Eclipse in the US, Aug 21 2017 [17:01]

• The August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse in the US
• The Path of Totality, totally
• “Eclipse Chasers”

XKCD on Climate Change [27:57]

• XKCD 1732: A Timeline of Earth Temperature (the esteemed Randall Munroe)
• “The Hockey Stick Graph”
• NPR critique
• Saving The Planet (George Carlin)
• Foundation series (Isaac Asimov)
• Classic Doctor Who: The Ark in Space

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)