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S2 Ep168: Talkcast - August 2021
73 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as we talk about OJ, pulp, retail work, Girlfriend Reviews, and even some games in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Juice Preferences & Legalities of Recording
00:00:35
Speaker
And another thing about the juice. You were talking about juice. Yeah. I kind of grew up on moths and stuff, but really my heart is with Welch's. Welch's is. It's like the standard, I would say. I don't know if it's necessarily good, but I just don't. I'm not as much of a juice knob. I'm not enough of a juice knob to tell the difference between a good juice and a bad juice.
00:00:59
Speaker
Do you know how I know you're not? Because I'm pretty sure Mott's only does apple and Welch's only does grape. Welch's has to have more things than grape. They've got like white grape. That's white grapes. Wait, what was that? A grape. White. Grape. I mean, they honestly might have overlap, but like every time I see Mott's, it's like apple juice, applesauce. Yeah, maybe they do apples. I don't know.
00:01:27
Speaker
They just sell apples. Individual, just like a stick on it like this is us. They sell it as like a make your own applesauce. It's apples and applesauce kit. They charge you for like an apple and what tool would they give you? Yeah, I think some sort of mallet.
00:01:48
Speaker
Malice, most likely. Yeah. Although that's the problem with applesauce is you really don't want skins in there. It's not like orange juice where it's like pulp, no pulp. It's pretty. Let's pause there. It's no pulp. I mean, it's orange juice. It's not orange juice. Oops. And we forgot some things. Right. I want the liquid.
00:02:10
Speaker
Orange juice is
Podcast Introduction & Platform Notifications
00:02:11
Speaker
basically entirely fake at this point anyways. It's like we extracted the oil of an orange and then we used it to make a flavor and we injected this into the bottle and that's orange juice now. Are you like shitting on crystallite lemonade or anything else? I don't care. Don't give me chunks in my stuff. Yeah. I mean, it does make it, it does at least make it closer to actually having
00:02:34
Speaker
the properties of an orange if there is some literal physical orange in there instead of like the chemical essence of orange reconstituted. They're actually like very tiny like spiders and cobwebs that they just got. They're like, uh, here, here, this will be the new pulp. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. I don't like that actually. No, I don't think I'm a fan of that.
00:02:58
Speaker
But what I am a fan of is starting the episode. How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I didn't know we were recording. Hello. Well, thankfully, I think I'm okay. Pennsylvania is, it actually is a two party state. That doesn't work, but maybe, maybe the website, maybe he's in Castor somewhere else.
00:03:28
Speaker
What? I don't think that's the way the law works. Oh, did you party recording policy? Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. I'm pretty sure two people have to be aware in Pennsylvania. I don't know. That's not, I'm not going to fact check myself for actual real life meaningful facts on our video game podcast. That would be pointless.
00:03:48
Speaker
Also a heads up if you're listening currently and you were a guest previously, you were recorded. Right. Oh, should we have told those people? At least with zoom,
Professional Emails & Grocery Store Humor
00:03:58
Speaker
they say, Hey, we're about to start the recording. We're like, okay.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, that is good. You get like in teams, you get a little pop up that's like, we're now being recorded. If you're in this meeting, you consent. If you don't consent, leave right now. I like how it's like the very casual way of like, all right, no more jokes you're like making fun of the boss. It's just like, that's how it's like, it's professional time. You're like, okay.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, right. I had a question about something that we discussed earlier. Could you elaborate further? Thank you. It is I, businessman. I don't want to say it's fun, but I feel it's easy to switch to that mode. Yeah. Where like anytime I have correspondence with somebody, unless they're giving me like a little bit of flack, in which case I will treat you like you owe me and you've owed me money for like three years type thing. Like where the fuck's the thing?
00:04:52
Speaker
It's nice to be like, oh, hey, so I had a quick question about this, but you just go into like the spiel like you're doing sales work. Yeah, you just you just turn it on, run with it.
00:05:03
Speaker
It's a good skill to have honestly, um, being able to portray a persona that's different from your true self. Um, I just do it every time I go outside and talk to people. It's really easy. Yeah. I mean, like grocery store type stuff has kind of a similar feel where like you exchanged like minimal pleasantries.
00:05:25
Speaker
Right. You, you, you raise your, your effort level to like societal acceptable minimum. And I mean, I, that sounds like a negative thing to say that, but a lot of people never learned the skill of raising their effort level to a society, societal acceptable minimum. So you're actually doing all right. If you hit, if you hit the baseline, that's enough to keep people off the, off the trail.
00:05:50
Speaker
I've actually hit the point where at the grocery store, I don't want the interaction if I'm
Facial Expressions & Masks
00:05:55
Speaker
in line, but I expect it. Gotcha. What kind of interaction do you get in a grocery store online? Well, I mean like a checkout. Oh, the checkout. Hey, do you find everything you're looking for? Yes. Do you have a bonus card? No. Like just like the true answer. If they ask you, did you find everything you're looking for? You say, well, I did now and then finger guns. Yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker
While making the clicking noise through your mouth. It's the only acceptable answer, I think. I really wish that with the whole pandemic, that there was more eyebrow communication, but I did not practice at all. Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
I think there has been like a little bit of that though and like people became more cognizant of each other's eyes, I think. Just like your facial expression? Yeah, like because there's the expression, you know, like smile with your eyes, a smile that doesn't reach, you know, the serial killer thing, smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
00:07:01
Speaker
Um, but, uh, it became much more obvious, I think when interacting with strangers that were wearing masks, you went to the eyes for what their facial expression was. Whereas like before there was like a full group of people who will watch mouths instead of eyes. Um, and they basically were cut out entirely of having that avenue of interpreting people.
00:07:28
Speaker
I'm not trying to think about what I look for, for like facial cues. Right. It's pretty, it's, it's coded early, right? I feel like mouse, like the easiest one to see, it's right in the middle of the face, takes up a decent portion of the face. And then the eyes is like the, the accent on it. Cause you can smile, but like if the eyes are like, Oh, that's a fake smile.
00:07:52
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, you can kind of make yourself crazy about it. Like right now I'm looking at you in the webcam and I'm like, OK, so I'm kind of averaging. I like let my eyes go a little out of focus. But I think I mostly get eyes to like centered nose. Is where like that's where my vision sets. When I'm looking at you.
00:08:13
Speaker
Well, I thought you were saying you get emotions through my nose. I'm like, that's a little on the- The very emotive nose. I don't know if anyone's ever told you this. On the Jew jokes that we made earlier. Anyway. Juice,
Film Discussions & Humor
00:08:26
Speaker
juice jokes. Juice jokes. We need to get more juice. Juice. Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
Schindler's grocery list. All right, I'm done. Oh, that one's actually a good one, though, if you were to make a if you were going to have a Jewish joke, having it be something around Schindler's list, non-destructive. Well, yeah, it's that's actually one of the better ones because it was the hopeful story. Yeah.
00:09:00
Speaker
A lot of people don't realize that the world actually was black and white back then, except for one girl in a red dress.
00:09:08
Speaker
I actually don't remember the part of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was the thing. It was because he was focusing on her and she was like she vanished or was captured or was lost or something like that. But that was the color. That was like the thing that he noticed. And so they literally represented that in the film as being like the rest of the world is black and white. But here's the one thing we're like, oh, that's a really cool artistic direction for them to take for the storytelling medium.
00:09:36
Speaker
But later we'll find out they're like, well, we could only afford like a couple of drops of red ink on the thing. Right. It's a full Silent Hill thing later on. Oh, OK. Yeah, it's just the movie is not that old. I mean, I guess it's I don't know how old it is, but black and white was definitely very, very uncommon by the time Schindler's List was out 1993. Do we have attention away from this movie?
00:10:00
Speaker
No, no, I figured we'd just talk about it for a bit. Who is your favorite key grip on that set? Key grip? I don't know what that means. Key grip somebody who holds the boom mic. Oh. Hmm.
00:10:18
Speaker
You got your key grip, you got your best boy. I'm just making up things that I saw given credits. Ah, gotcha. Okay. I didn't realize you were pulling this from any place. Best boy? Yeah. It's not best. It's best.
00:10:32
Speaker
No, it's Best Boy. Oh, Best Boy. Okay. They have some really weird names like Gaffer, Best Boy, Key Grip. I'm not to look up what these are at some point, but like I treat it as like a little fantasy land. I'm like, these are funny names. I assume Best Boy is just if you need a best man, but all of your friends are children for some reason.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. Comes up as like, you know, I'll usually like, they'll have like kids bring them like the range like, Oh, that's sweet. It's like so-and-so's nephew or the kid they had at a wedlock or like whatever it is. And then it
Gaming Nostalgia & Social Gaming
00:11:07
Speaker
comes up with the ring. He's like, here you go, bro. He gives him a fist bump and then stands next to him like, Oh shit, that's the guy. Yeah, that's him.
00:11:16
Speaker
the ring bearer slash best man or best boy. What have you been playing recently? Have you played games? Here and there did pick up a little bit of Dota again. I saw you playing that. We haven't played for like two months. So I would occasionally do some solos and then people started hopping on. So we've been doing some stuff. It's been fun to bullshit again. Oh, yeah.
00:11:44
Speaker
I did. Does that feel, does that feel like returning to nostalgia? Do you, do you like slide right back into it because of all of the hours you've spent in Dota or do you feel like this is a little foreign and it's a little hard for me to, to step back into this after two months?
00:12:00
Speaker
I feel like for me, like the broad sense of it, it's pretty easy to slide back in. But then as far as like a certain character's mechanics or timings of like when I should be doing things. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's I'm there to just not feed and then see how it goes, you know.
00:12:19
Speaker
That's a pretty good baseline though. If your whole team accomplishes the baseline of not feeding, you actually just win the game. Usually somebody does, then I flame them for 30 minutes. I'm like, why am I getting reported for being toxic? And then the valve's like, all right, this next ban is going to be for four months. Now it is.
00:12:44
Speaker
It's just fun to go back, but it's usually like it is just shits and giggles occasionally. Like we'll hunker down and try, but usually we need somebody like rally. Like Tony was pooping on people. So like he was like making the calls of like, we got to go in now. We're strong type things. New hero. It's a seagull.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, no, I get that. It's good to have like a, I think it's good to have like a poker night game in a way, right? Like I get that more now that I'm a little bit older.
00:13:19
Speaker
And we've talked about this like comfort games recently, but I think just conceptualizing that within like what older generations did. It's just like, oh yeah, poker night. Go out, here's the social event. Happens once a week, twice a week. It's nice. You get to hang out with your friends. It's comfortable. It's good to have. We should do that outside of the park.
Health, Caffeine, & Daily Routines
00:13:45
Speaker
We should do it for the podcast. Easy content. Easy content. You just hear like Jake and I smoking cigars, me coughing frantically, being a deep seated asthmatic.
00:14:00
Speaker
I was kind of, what is it, siding up on your turf? I think the term is because I did have a cough over the weekend. I was going to go to a social engagement, but I had like a cough that developed on Thursday.
00:14:16
Speaker
And it lasted through Friday and I was like, ah, let's call in. I let them know I'm not going to make it. I did get tested, though, and it's not COVID. And it's kind of funny because all of the work calls I've been on since then, I like have to mute myself, lean over and cough visibly, you know, sometimes clutch my chest. And then I unmute and say it's not COVID. I think I tested and I've used that like four times, probably in calls with the same people by this point.
00:14:41
Speaker
I have what they call in the olden times, a cough. Yeah. It's just because my body's garbage. That's the main reason. So you're like hucking down cough drops, drinking some teas. I haven't actually treated it much yet. I probably should. It's just, it doesn't feel like it's, um, it doesn't feel like it's a sickness so much as just like it's summer and like a moat of dust entered my lungs and never left. It's something minor, right?
00:15:10
Speaker
It's, it's more so than ever leaving. I was with you for like, yeah, allergies, seasonal stuff. I get it. And then you're like, and then it stayed there in Fester. Fester is not a good medical word. Unless it's, unless it's your uncle, old uncle will Fester. A lot of class act. Yeah. You gotta just have a swig a day, Quill, for like a couple of days.
00:15:37
Speaker
and just see where it gets you drinking more water. Yeah. I'm told it does help. Liquids do definitely help. I got a boy land. This is black cherry from from the pizza place nearby. And yeah, that's it's really nice. I wish I could get this other places. We may have talked about it like two years ago.
00:16:01
Speaker
Doesn't count as like a hydrating beverage, I assume, since it's soda, but it's carbonated and has sugar. It's not great. Tastes good though. Oh yes, it's very good. I wish I could get them kind of in bulk, but instead I just continue to accumulate crates of lemon rain and energy drinks.
00:16:26
Speaker
I haven't done rain in a little bit, but I still have like walked over to my local corner store to be like, I want a little cake bites protein.
00:16:37
Speaker
bites. I don't know. Yeah, beef jerky. I think that's what they call me. Give me the cake flavored beef jerky please. Teriyaki smoked pepper and cake. Yeah, what I don't want on beef jerky is frosting. I'm sorry. I'll let you finish your story. Maybe a little bit.
00:17:01
Speaker
Like a little bit of brown sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody agrees on brown sugar. Yeah. It's the better sugar. Um, but then I'll usually grab like an energy drink, but since I've been doing more coffee in the morning, like if I grab an energy drink in the afternoon, I'm like super wired at three. I'm like, it's too much stuff. And then my throat gets a little bit scratchy and it's just, eh, it tastes good. I like the carbonation. Yeah.
00:17:32
Speaker
I know what we're talking about and the diluting beverages or something, but, um, I have on occasion done a little bit of that. I just want like water and then just like a pinch of flavor and energy drink. Cause there's like, if I get a 300, 400 milligram energy drink, there's no way that synergizes with coffee in a day in a way that doesn't somehow destroy my body. Um, it's too much just
00:18:00
Speaker
Get some energy, mio. That's probably not going to be enough caffeine if you're pounding four hundo, but I mean, the two 400 is way too much. That's the problem. It's like if I drink it in the morning and then no coffee and I ate food throughout the day, I might be okay, but I like coffee in the morning.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, I feel that I wouldn't, when I was down in Baltimore, I travel, um, I got a thing from Baltimore coffee. It was just in coffee grounds. And then when I came home and put it in my cabinet, I put an extra, another thing of Baltimore coffee. And I'm like, well, apparently I never use the other flavor as much as I thought. And it's still like a 99% full bag. So now I have the option between blueberry cream and raspberry.
00:18:52
Speaker
I mean, options are the spice of life, or variety, I think, is the spice of life is how it's supposed to be said. Yeah, I like spice. Yeah. Well, it must flow. That's all I know is that it must flow.
00:19:08
Speaker
Talkcast
Podcast Variety & Role-playing Games
00:19:09
Speaker
is kind of like a variety show. We have a variety of topics that come out of thin air. That's true. Sometimes we basically touch on nothing.
00:19:23
Speaker
that we actually plan to talk around. Your honor, I basically touched on nothing. That's not the strongest denial of guilt that I've ever heard, but we'll roll with it.
00:19:39
Speaker
It wasn't so much a laying of hands as a hover hand. I'll have you know, your honor, I am a registered paladin. Oh, he's fine. Yeah, just let him go. I don't know. I'm getting some Reiki vibes from that guy. That's my one good joke.
00:19:56
Speaker
Do you know what Reiki is, by the way? No, it just sounds bad. I'm not going to explain it, so I'm getting myself out of this hole. Reiki is like a spiritual energy healing. You can see me putting up my hands with like the air quotes. Yeah, he's doing the quotes. But basically, it's you like run your hands over somebody. You don't actually touch them, but it's like a transfer in some energy, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever the fuck. It's some new AG shit. I saw that. I just I never knew there was a term for it.
00:20:25
Speaker
But I was going with how Reiki sounds in that context with the not actually touching. And I was like, ooh, ooh, it's so good. There's layers to it. Definitely has weird shit. Yeah.
00:20:39
Speaker
don't play paladin. I mean, like they're just, they're probably overpowered. It's not worth it. I remember something interesting for the brief time I played DMD that, uh, Landon was doing a paladin and it's just all his roles were like, I'm beheading this person. Yes. That actually culminated. Um, we had a one-off where he played another character and because someone was like, we had two people, I think, or one person was unavailable and I wanted to like wrap up a little side plot.
00:21:06
Speaker
And the side plot was what happened to Aoth Sum. And so he ended up playing a different character. They were all just fixed level, different classes, pick which one you want, run with it. Just to try something else out that's new. And he did end up in a boss fight with his old character. And he did decapitate his old character to close the loop. And I will, I'll be entertained by this forever.
00:21:32
Speaker
So his new character is an even stronger Highlander. Right. It was for the one off. Those characters, they weren't played after that because they were basically like B team sort of. But I do like little things like that. I think when video games do it, it can be really.
00:21:52
Speaker
jarring sometimes to switch character like perspective if you're not Expecting that at all if you're attached to one character the last place to tell me about it, right? But uh, oh my gosh, that's a great segue Sorry, I'm actually just gonna use that more of like single small one offs like yeah Do you mean like in I don't want to say Sonic cuz that had more character switching. Yeah for some of the games are you talking about like I
00:22:20
Speaker
for this segment like witcher type thing witcher does it like there's places where you play is um syri oh yeah um but they mitigate that by making her overpowered right so it's like okay for this segment you are god girl go for it you know um
00:22:40
Speaker
And I think that's basically how games have to do it. But in the tabletop sense, if you've been playing one character for literally months, it can be nice for one or two sessions. Just play somebody else for a bit, step in some other shoes. Yeah. Or you just play a character with a split personality disorder and always be in someone else's shoes. I don't know how you'd balance that. Then again, I wouldn't even know how to role play as a single character.
00:23:08
Speaker
That's fair. But I guess it helps if you go in with something in mind. Yeah. For like, this is who I want to be. And you kind of build off that. And then maybe after a session, you're like, okay, maybe I could do more something like this.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the right way to do it because you want like a hook, some identity thing in your backstory. That's like, this is an interesting part of me and it informs what my character wants to do. You don't have to fill it all out, but just having something and then figure out how you want to actually play them in the game itself. But.
00:23:41
Speaker
I don't want to lose the segue. I'm actually going to turn this car around and go back to it. I saw it off on the side there. You actually threw it out of the car. And I was like, no, we need that. Came back for it. Last of Us 2.
00:23:55
Speaker
subreddit.
Online Behavior & Gaming Controversies
00:23:57
Speaker
We're kind of late on this news. A lot of people would already know it. Oh, that's where you're going. But yeah, they will. The subreddit is garbage. So, you know, quote me on that. But that shouldn't surprise anyone. Right. With a game that had a controversy. But they got
00:24:15
Speaker
They had their own controversy when one of their members claimed to be receiving death threats from girlfriend reviews, which is a YouTube channel from her community. And then they did like some detective sleuthing work and stuff like that and determined it was the same guy making the threats as it was the guy claiming to receive the threats. And I just, I don't know.
00:24:45
Speaker
The internet, the internet, you know? How do you feel about that?
00:24:52
Speaker
People are really shitty on the internet. I mean, obviously it's due to like the anonymity. I disagree with something that you said or something that you did. What are you gonna do? Come and get me? My name is Yoshimitsu57. Call out to one friend who had that name on aim. But he's dead now. No, I mean, you just, you just, you angered someone on the internet.
00:25:18
Speaker
But yeah, it's just like, oh, I'm entitled to do such and such, so I will do it. But it's shitty people having an outlet. Yeah. I mean, do you consider yourself a shitty person? Most of the time not, but sometimes.
00:25:36
Speaker
do you find yourself being like more shitty because you're online? Like let's say like in a game context, but like with public, yeah, maybe some people we know. Um, like, do you find that's an easier thing because it's online versus like, if you were in person playing like a board game? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think,
00:25:57
Speaker
I think that there's literally research to back this up. I was going to say I wrote a paper. It wasn't an academic paper. It was for a writing class. And it was on violence and video games. And this was probably a decade ago at this point. But I had to look up, does playing violent games impact people's behavior? And it absolutely does.
00:26:22
Speaker
and playing violent games can make people temporarily more violent. The people that it makes more violent for an extended period of time are people that have other issues, and they shouldn't be playing violent video games because of that, but they have other issues.
00:26:42
Speaker
So, you know, check your outrage, I guess, because like perfectly stable people don't play a violent video game and then go on a school shooting. But when you're playing a video game like Call of Duty, it's easy to get like into it and remove yourself from real life for a second. You're invested in the game. And of course, you're going to like in any sort of good immersive game, you're going to be more emotionally attached in the moment.
00:27:12
Speaker
and there's a risk you could get angry or be upset or anything else like that.
00:27:20
Speaker
But in those cases, I would say like. I wish you would have done this or like worst case, like, hey, fuck you. Right. And the game's done. I'm not looking up that person later, but like, oh, they've they've awoken the Kraken and like all this shit. Like, I don't know, I feel very detached from a lot of other things in society. Like it's just it's just not my thing. It's not my space, whatever.
00:27:47
Speaker
So I don't understand when people hate tweeting or death threading people who are just either successful at something, just a woman in general, or just like, oh, I make wholesome content, or like all three, right? So I came on the girlfriend reviews fairly late.
00:28:07
Speaker
But I like their content a decent amount. I'm not watching every single episode, but but it's good. Yeah, it's well edited. It's incredibly wholesome. It's just it's very clean. Yeah. And like they have good memes and jokes and stuff. I just watched the one of like their E3 2019 or like they had like some guest YouTubers on for like presenting stuff. Yeah, it was cute and nice.
00:28:32
Speaker
And even if I didn't like that video and I watched for two minutes, I would watch something else. Like, yeah, I think, I think it definitely is like there, there are, there's a tier of people out there that are douchebags and they would be douchebags in real life. But if you take them, I mean, the internet is real life. We have this habit. I think we grew up and differentiating the internet from real life, literally in terminology, but some people don't.
00:29:01
Speaker
realize or they never really process that if you interact with a person on the internet that is actually a person or an FBI agent.
00:29:12
Speaker
And so if they remove all the checks, people who have no societal douchebag filter just max that bar out instantly. They're like, charisma is a dump stat, wisdom is a dump stat. Almost stats are dump stats, except for rage. All in on rage.
00:29:36
Speaker
I will say like one sympathetic thought is I've definitely found myself frustrated and through caffeine or just how my brain works like riding that yeah of like this thing didn't get done and you just keep piling on and it's like I'm taking the whole day down with me. Yeah.
00:30:01
Speaker
Rage against the machine where the machine is just people going about their day around you. But honestly, like I just need to like step away from something for a little bit. Yeah. Just fresh air, walk, have a snack and just be like, oh, this isn't the entirety of my world. This is a very small subset and this sucks briefly. Okay.
00:30:24
Speaker
There's I've done this several times back when I want to play Overwatch more. I would get really upset in like one particular game. Quit without saying anything. Walk away for a second, go to the fridge or whatever, contemplate life, walk back, sit down and like ask to be invited to the career. Like I literally done it probably more than three times. Yeah, I remember.
00:30:51
Speaker
You got to remove yourself from the situation sometimes. And the best is if you can do that without literally removing yourself from the situation. If you can mentally focus and be like, wait, I'm in the matrix, you know, like I can I can I can bend spoons or perhaps not rage at people online.
00:31:15
Speaker
Wait, it's a scene where he's eating the steak, but it's not a real steak. It's not a real steak. Yeah, but some people want to eat the steak. Even if they know it's fake, they would like the power to screw with people's lives online. And those are the ones you got to watch out for.
00:31:32
Speaker
I like messing with people very slightly if they're like, they start off with like, Hey, I'm a piece of shit. And we're like, okay. Thank you for being upfront. We won't make baby noises in chat because you're being a baby. We will. It depends. Like.
00:31:53
Speaker
if they're kind of like a whiny person and being shitty to their team, or if they're just like flat out typing racist shit or invoice speaking racist shit, it's just like, all right, well, we're not going to engage because you're not going to be helpful. You're just going to ruin it for everybody. Right. Um, but we will go out of our way to kill you in the game. That is for sure. Yeah, yeah, obviously it is a game and it does require a certain amount of not taking it seriously. It's just, yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
Remember, you're dealing with people, right? And this is, I don't mean this is criticism to you. This is more to the original story of the person who's sending death threats and trying to cause problems. Like, you're dealing with people. Golden rule it, you know? If you're dishing out some jokes and some criticism and you couldn't take it yourself, you're a douchebag. Maybe not in general, maybe not all the time. But in the moment, you are a douchebag if you're treating people worse than you want to be treated. There you go. And if you want to be treated horribly,
00:32:53
Speaker
Don't treat people like you want to be treated. There's communities for this. The one guy's in BDSM is like, well, logic checks out. Yep,
Game Reviews & Comparisons
00:33:06
Speaker
yep. But anyways, that's one of the news stories. Anything else on here? Strike your fancy. I checked out a game called Elderborn. That's not even on this list. What's Elderborn?
00:33:19
Speaker
Uh, it's something that I got while drunk is like five bucks on steam. I think it's meant for VR. Um, maybe it doesn't have your support, but it's like a first person soul's like, as they said. Okay. I was going to say the name is literally Elden ring plus soul's born. But if it's actually a soul's like, that's a little on the news. It's.
00:33:47
Speaker
their checkpoints. It's kind of a linear game overall. And it's kind of fun a little bit because it's got some heavy metal vibes going with the music and you're smacking stuff.
00:34:01
Speaker
But it, it feels very clunky. Like you're kind of like weaving in and out of just like, I'm going to extend my hitbox and then receive my hurtbox. Right. It's mechanically, it's not, eh, I refunded it after like an hour. Yeah. Fun little exercise, but. Is it like a 2D platformer? You said it was like meant for VR. It's a first person thing. Linear first person. It's also like weird.
00:34:30
Speaker
It has like some platforming and a lot more verticality, but it's not, it's not huge. Yeah. Like it's not this big open thing. It's more so like tighter areas, but like it has traps. It has enemies. Um, it just doesn't feel great. A platforming in a first person game, like warlock jump. Hmm.
00:34:58
Speaker
That's it. Warlock, Warlock jump platform. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't sound terribly compelling. I'm probably not going to pick that one up, especially since you've literally refunded it. That's fair. No, it's, uh, it was just something I wanted to mention. That's always interesting. That is fair. Um, we were talking about this a little bit before the episode. Um, and yeah, we can talk about it here. Uh, grime.
00:35:28
Speaker
Is something coming out? It came out two days ago, a day or two ago.
00:35:36
Speaker
It's been out. There's a game of the year edition coming out. And this one, so to give Dave full credit here, I started to type it in Steam and it's like Grim Dawn. I was like, that's also worth talking about, but no, Grim. Dave mentioned to this one for me on Steam. I was like,
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, I probably didn't even say yeah. And it took me literally until today to watch a trailer for it. But it has some really cool concepts. Like it's basically a Metroidvania, but your character, the combat is more actiony sort of melee focused. And your head is a black hole. It's full Metroidvania. Yeah. Like I think the combat is very much like
00:36:28
Speaker
Symphony of the Night or Bloodstained or... Oh, that's fair, yeah. What was another game that we never got around to having an episode on? Honeypop. Well, it's a 2D platform. Spanish Catholic. Oh, yeah, Salt and Sanctuary. No.
00:36:51
Speaker
No. Um, it's something like, it's one word. It's like, it's, it's unforgiven. It's something like that. It's unwritten by Kelly Clarkson. Ah, that's what it was. Yeah. A freaking, isn't it like the word for forgiveness and Catholicism or something like that? I thought that was the thing.
00:37:21
Speaker
Well, I'm going to get Catholic. This is. Souls game 2D. We need a third person to look up shit. Blasphemous. Jamie Blasphemous.
00:37:36
Speaker
So I literally, I literally googled Catholic Souls game 2D and blasphemous is right there. But whereas blasphemous is much more Sprite style, this is more like a unity feel. Right. And I like the demo well enough, but not enough to like, Oh, I'm going to get this game. Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
Oh, for for this game that we're talking about right now, Grime. Yeah, I'm going to wait for a sale. I was like, you have blasphemous. You played this before I did. I put like two hours into it. But yeah, Grime, I'm waiting on. We'll see. But it's it's no Hollow Knight, you know.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, I very much appreciate faster platformers. Whereas it's just, if I beat an enemy, I'm like, well, yeah. Cause you just, you hit once every second and she's very slow type. I don't know. It just, yeah, it did not enthrall me.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah. I like, I like some of the mechanical ideas, but you basically have to hit every single point as a platformer to really get me to pick it up or just be like freaking weird. Like I played carrying after being on the fence because it's technically a platformer, um, because it was freaking weird. But otherwise, if you're more doing more traditional Metroidvania thing, it's got to be the, it's got to be the Trinity.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, there was another Metroidvania that was teased or something, but it was very like old school Japanese art style. And it looked fucking cool. But at the same time, it's another Metroidvania that.
00:39:26
Speaker
You have to hit the guy your side scroll next to his health bar. Watch out for his moves. And it's just I don't I don't want that for whatever reason. It just looks fucking gorgeous. Love the art design. Love the music. But I don't want to play it now.
00:39:44
Speaker
No, basically. And yeah, I like 2D games, 2D platformers, even less than you do. So if you're not picking a game up, basically I can use Dave as like my entry point filter for 2D platformers. Just like, Dave, have you heard of this? Or do you have any interest in this? And if Dave's like, no, it's like, all right, it's not worth my time. Oh, that's kind of sweet. Absolutely not worth my time. Which I did play a game together recently.
00:40:15
Speaker
That's true. But we're not allowed to talk to that because of decency laws in the U.S. Grounded. I actually deleted this one because I was like, I don't know, maybe like we'll cover it someday. So I crossed it out in the notes. We can still like have an episode on it. Yeah, that's true.
00:40:35
Speaker
what were your initial things because we there's a free weekend yeah we checked out uh the four of us ourselves uh jenny and ian and we've spent actually like five hours yeah like a five-hour block playing it yeah it was uh it was good
00:40:54
Speaker
Um, it was really weird. I remember when this was announced and it's like being developed by obsidian. I'm like, those are the people that make like class CRPGs and, uh, like outer worlds and stuff like that. Why is obsidian making a cursed ruins horsemen of the apocalypse survival, open world crafting early access game. Um, and, uh, they're actually doing a pretty good job with it so far, I think.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's for anybody who's not aware, it's honey. I shrunk the kids survival crafting. So like you're in a backyard, uh, instead of like trees, you're cutting down. It's blades of grass. And then there's like mushrooms, bugs, uh, other things. Also spiders are like a really big threat. Yeah. And I have the arachnophobia settings turned on too. Uh, I don't want to know what's a spider. Uh-huh.
00:41:50
Speaker
when I actually launched the game initially before we had a group together, I walked up to this thing that I saw like, oh, it kind of looks like sap. It's the bigger thing of sap because it's just basically two orbs. And I went up and like, oh, cool. And then I saw a health bar. It's like orb weaver. I'm like, I know what weaver means. And I walked away. Yeah, they're kind of terrifying.
00:42:19
Speaker
This is weird, but it is related. So it's not cool to kill kids in games. It used to be more popular, but it's gone out of favor, I would say.
00:42:30
Speaker
Ever since literally Fallout, which is the only game I could pick up that actually had that. Like Fallout 1 and 2, not anything after that. But you play as kids in this game. And it does strike me that you can literally be kids fighting a giant spider and one of them runs off as everyone else is brutally slain by this monstrosity. It's very Stephen King in that way.
00:43:00
Speaker
Really doesn't care if kids die die die or do you get in kept you die? Mm-hmm. There's like a corpse. Oh I don't think it sticks around like it turns into a backpack pretty quick, but there is like a rag doll corpse to some extent It's not like gruesome right it's not like blood or missing limbs, but it's still dead kids wish you know I
00:43:25
Speaker
Usually I just get hit by like a beetle and then I would just be there on my hands and knees like it's so it's so hard to get up. Could somebody like give me a pat on the back? Oh, thank you. And like for them to resume. It's definitely an obsidian game, though, because like the core of it hits so many points that I love. And I'm like, this is a great game. And then there's certain important things that are just broken, like the ability to reliably revive people.
00:43:49
Speaker
That I was getting full like I wish this game had a fucking Hawks. I was I was getting set. Yeah But overall it does look it does look pretty good it feels in some ways it feels like a better forest But it's still early access and I mean the forest isn't technically early access But it still has some of those early access vibes. We'll see where it goes
00:44:12
Speaker
I feel like the forest will never be clean. I'm still very much interested in the forest too, because that trailer was so nice. But I will always say that forest's strongest point will be the story more so than the survival crafting stuff. I thought it was good enough for that, but the story is actually really engaging for me.
00:44:35
Speaker
This one's kind of, they accomplish a little bit more. And again, we didn't play it out long and I don't want to go too far into it, but they mesh the exploration, the survival crafting and like the base building through the research system and like taking missions to complete things like Seven Days to Die also did that, right? Like traders could give you missions to go off and do things.
00:44:55
Speaker
I realize it's literally radiant quests like from Bethesda games. I don't care. It's reliable content. It puts you out in the world. Things can happen. You can get resources. It forces you outside of wherever you are. Yeah. So like instinct is always, oh, let's set up camp here. Let's go grab resources. Bring back to camp. Why do you ever leave camp resources? What about something else? Here you go. That kind of forces you to get out there.
00:45:24
Speaker
It also has elements of verticality to it because you're really small, really shrunk. You can just stand on the leaves and things you normally wouldn't be able to stand on in a video game, like blades of grass, and you can build vertical structures. It's got a lot of freedom to it that survival games with much more jink to them, usually,
00:45:50
Speaker
Uh, they don't have the same they make more concessions I would say as far as like the presentation I also just like verticality in games. I like that as an option Yeah, I was like there's a bunch of ants and they're killing everybody i'm standing on a rock I am a god now until I started that you know, but they also the creatures are like
00:46:14
Speaker
They definitely use line of sight instead of proximity in some cases to like, de-aggro them. So if you're on a rock and you can kind of sneak back to the other side and like make it so the ant can't see you, it'll lose interest and wander off, you know.
00:46:31
Speaker
That's a way better implementation than you have to be 50 meters away from, which would have been like the entire. I mean, and thanks, Tracy. So that'd be impossible. Cause until you get eight for choose, you're slow as fuck. Yeah. But it does seem good. I do plan on picking it up later. I know some other friends of ours have picked it up and are playing it. Um, yeah, I think it'd be like a good group game. I think it's capped at four. It's fortunately, cause I could definitely see having like a larger party. Yeah.
00:47:01
Speaker
But yeah, definitely do want to play some more when it's either more fully released or we're on sale.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, so far I'm putting it, it's tentatively surrounded with like a dotted line around the tier of survival games that Seven Days landed in, which is like the good survival games. But we'll see. Seven Days is janky as shit. It is. It's also good. It had a lot of fun stuff. Yeah, it has enough good stuff to keep it rolling. But speaking of four,
00:47:34
Speaker
Back for blood. Oh. Yes, yes, back for blood. Four is the loneliest number. So I was reading an article that was talking about the alpha and obviously we're interested in this. I think you actually have it pre-ordered. Well, no, no, no. Somebody got it for me as a gift because I got them something and they're like,
00:47:57
Speaker
Fuck you. I'm going to buy you a game that doesn't exist. Exactly. Thanks. But there's an interest for some of the people in the Dota group to play it because we also like some Left 4 Dead type things. Yeah. So technically, as of today's recording,
00:48:16
Speaker
Uh, it is actually, there's an open beta that started today. So probably going to try and play some with people tomorrow. Since I currently have the game, I can do the beta stuff, check it out, get some early feels, not provide feedback on that person, apparently. And it should be good. Have you seen any of the trailers for like some of the characters or the enemies?
00:48:42
Speaker
I haven't seen the character trailers. I've seen a couple of the enemies. The article I read talked more about the systems and some of the game modes. Apparently, it doesn't have a versus mode in the traditional sense of working through a campaign, like dead air or something like that. It's wave defense, which is interesting. I don't know how I feel about that as a top-level reaction. You'll have to let us know your thoughts when you play it some.
00:49:11
Speaker
But and then they have like a roguelite deck building sort of card system as you go through the game. You can like equip different cards to modify your character and weapon attachments. And that was basically the gist of the article. But it's clear that they're trying to pull a little to the side of the Left 4 Dead formula.
00:49:30
Speaker
Instead of being the exact clone. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually like, I don't know how to feel about that. Certain things I think are freebies, weapon attachments, never, never, no one's ever going to be like, oh, weapon attachments. I hate that. But changing the versus structure, adding like rogue light cards.
00:49:51
Speaker
Um, they could have literally made left for dead like content. Oh, as we're talking about it, I see people now launching it on steam. That's hilarious. They're definitely playing something. That's, that's really funny. But like, um, they could have just basically done a remastered more call of duty feel left for dead with a similar versus mode. And I think it would have like pulled people in droves. So I'm curious what these changes mean.
00:50:19
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I think people are very thirsty for another Left 4 Dead type game, because it's been so long since 2 came out. And obviously Valve's not going to be doing anything with it. Or anything. Yeah. They're taking pre-orders for it. You get like, artifact, here's our new Nintendo Switch. We'll see if it comes out. They're just going to take all the pre-orders and never ship. You can get this at TI 10.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty good. A lot of these are just like inside jokes if you like play Dota and nothing else. Yeah. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle.
00:50:56
Speaker
But yeah, I'm curious to see where it goes, for sure. I think I will just enjoy
Industry News & Cultural Impact
00:51:04
Speaker
doing something like that again, because I like a group shooter that's not Overwatch. Overwatch is a social game for me. I don't get like a lot of like, oh, that was fun out of it. It's like one out every time. I'm like, do you see that one cool thing? Nice. Otherwise, I'm just like doing stuff. Yeah.
00:51:24
Speaker
But poker game night. Nobody likes playing poker. I hate poker. But it's Tuesday. Yeah. It does look good. It's made by Turtle Rock Studios. So the same people who made Left 4 Dead 2, they also made Evolve, which we've talked about. And I wish it was slightly better or slightly more successful. One of the two.
00:51:51
Speaker
And is gone now doesn't exist. So this is probably their if it does well, it's basically their redemption story as far as viability I think is a company and if it doesn't do well, I wouldn't be surprised if they closed Given how poorly evolved fared but we will see I feel like it's
00:52:12
Speaker
enough in the right lane that it will do well. Yeah. I think you're right. I think a lot of the other changes that you're hesitant about are just knee-jerk. Because I have them as well. I very much want the same thing that I've enjoyed previously. But usually, people don't know what they want. So I'm sure I'll play it and be like, OK, pirate mythorant's so bad, type thing.
00:52:37
Speaker
You've never actually said that. This is how I know you're operating in a hypothetical space. Yeah, you know, I'm just taking the piss. But yeah, it it should still be good. I like the customization aspect. Yeah. It's like, which person are you? It doesn't fucking matter. Do you want different voice lines? There you go. Whereas each of the characters have like different base stats and passives to help the team. Right.
00:53:05
Speaker
So maybe you need somebody who like has more ammo for everybody or everybody moves quicker or just small things like that. It's like a little, it's a pinch of border lands in your left, almost. It's just the customization ads for more options for builds for yourself individually and your team. Right. That's always fun.
00:53:25
Speaker
for sure. Yeah, I don't mean to necessarily be negative. I'm just, that was my clickbait statement. There's changes. It's not Left 4 Dead 3. Oh, no, I didn't take it as like, this looks bad. I guess we'll see. It's more of just like, you would give it back. But you should have. That generates good content, right? That's the key. You said what? Just be antagonistic. Back 4 Blood is my son.
00:53:50
Speaker
And now I'm back for blood back for blood we Have a couple more things that I do want to actually talk about a lot of this. I feel like is skippable Or mentionable in the short Diablo immortal got delayed till 2022 haha suck it
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah, basically, right? Shouldn't surprise anybody. We were talking about the whole controversy that's going on. Since then, people have quit. Twitter accounts have been deleted. It's all in full swing. Hearthstone had a major expansion that came out, and they specifically were like, we're not going to have a celebration for it.
00:54:29
Speaker
because it's not the right time. And man, that's got to suck to be on the product team for Hearthstone. Team five is the team that works on Hearthstone where it's just like, all right, we're like working overtime, putting time in this, get it already. And there's not going to be any sort of reveal stream or anything. There's not going to be any hype because there's no way we could make it good. Right. We couldn't contextualize it. But yes, that's the company, you know,
00:54:59
Speaker
when that's the society you live in. And yeah, Diablo Immortal can be delayed until 2022, 22, and I wouldn't care. So. Nobody wants that game. Literally nobody asked for it. Yeah. There is an Outer Wilds expansion, which I haven't even watched a trailer for, but I should probably put my time off in for, this is Outer Wilds, not worlds, so this is the exploration game. I'm very excited for that.
00:55:29
Speaker
I love this. I've heard rave reviews from a number of people. I would say friends, a number of friends on Discord. They could be both. Kind of just people to me. Human flesh. I know it's. I'm not going to spoil what it is. We also already had like an episode on it. If you're interested, check it out. Yeah, exactly. If you like exploration games, give it a look. See, it's going to be one of those things where
00:55:59
Speaker
If it's on sale or somebody that gets it for me like a year from now, it'll be like a Saturday morning. I'll have some coffee, see nobody's online, be like, do I have anything to do? Maybe run some errands later. What should I, oh, I'll check this out. Yeah. And then I'll like sit down for a couple hours and probably enjoy it.
00:56:18
Speaker
It's definitely a Headspace game. If you're trying to rush through a game because you just had a limited amount of time or something like that, don't play an exploration game. You're never going to have a good time in that circumstance. It's like trying to rush through Subnautica, right? It's going to be it's going to be a rough time and you probably won't have that much fun.
00:56:38
Speaker
But I actually have a segue off this one to the next news item. Dave's like, there's five minutes left. We can not cover so many of these items. I'm like, I'm going to cover them all anyway. So Outer Wilds initially came out on Epic Game Store as an exclusive before coming out to Steam.
00:56:56
Speaker
And I read on PC Gamer, where I get all my news, that apparently we knew Epic spent a lot of money to get these exclusive rights for games. But because there's like a court settlement going on right now, a lot of documents have to be made public.
00:57:15
Speaker
and people are pouring over the documents and making connections. And apparently they've like only a tiny portion of their exclusives have ever made money. And the only one they could note was satisfactory. Everything else cost them a money, or cost them a money, cost them money, including one that was like, I can't remember exactly what it was, but they had a 2% return.
00:57:41
Speaker
uh, over the costs of the exclusivity deal. And it's just the funny thing about all of this is they don't even care because they only want market share. They're like, we will literally throw hundreds of millions of dollars at exclusives and free games and stuff like that to try to get people off steam.
00:58:03
Speaker
I don't think people are going to get off Steam. No, probably not. It's like, I'm going to have Steam if you are a PC gamer and that's your main thing. And then kind of like dip my toe in the water of like, I guess Origin has a free piece of shit or EA does or Epic. And you kind of just branch out as needed. Microsoft fucking account. And then you just push past that hurdle once.
00:58:28
Speaker
But they're not like, oh, this is my main place to go. Right. No, it's reach out to me on my Epic Game Store friends chat.
00:58:38
Speaker
No, no one's going to do that. I don't even really talk to people on Steam anymore. Like communication happens on Discord, but. Yeah. I'll only message people on Steam if I see that like they're actively playing a game. So like, oh, look at the message versus. Right. The overlay is way better if they were already in Steam, right? Yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
It's kind of funny though, cause this, this kind of, I think this is almost going to have a effect on the industry. Well, obviously it will, but like you could go look for, I'm sure on eBay, like an Epic game store account that's like $20 and it'll have all of the exclusive, like all of the free releases attributed to it. And it's going to be like a crazy number of AAA games at this point. Like those games,
00:59:27
Speaker
have their market value completely reduced because Epic is just spending all of this money to provide them for free and it's crazy. If you're a gamer looking to benefit, go to Epic, check out the free games thing like once a week and just get free stuff and there you go. Never associate your actual payment details and basically you can still get tons of games.
00:59:56
Speaker
And the last one that I want to talk about that's on this list is Tencent and some other companies associated with China had a pretty significant stock drop. It was like 12%. We don't usually talk about stocks, but these are gaming companies.
01:00:15
Speaker
I don't even care that their stock fell a little bit. They are made of money and they back everything, including Epic. But
Conclusion & Reflections
01:00:24
Speaker
the reason that the stock fell is because the government and state media has been talking about the negative effects of video games, how it's bad for young people.
01:00:38
Speaker
President Xi specifically called this, I'm gonna use the rare actual quote, a problem that needs to be solved. That's how he referred to gaming. So 10 cents. What would a bull take for somebody to have? This is a problem that needs to be solved. Parentheses not by me. Well, the thing is, it's the Chinese government. So they tend to just actually take whatever steps they think will be necessary to solve the problem.
01:01:06
Speaker
And so in response Tencent promised to limit play times for minors to one hour per weekday for their gaming accounts or two hours if it's a holiday and they're considering banning games for children under 12 completely. How do they know that when somebody signs up?
01:01:30
Speaker
So they have to have, so everybody in China has a state ID that is basically their GUID, their unique identifier, and it's stronger than social security. Um, their identity is literally tied to this and this includes, you know, kids. So, um, if they want to make an account to play a 10 cent game, they have to associate it with their state ID. And that's how they keep track of people. But yeah.
01:01:58
Speaker
Cause I had like a similar response. I was like, the reason this was interesting to me was like, wait, they already limit the amount of playtime kids have. Like that would be crazy in the U S right. Um, well, as like a government mandated thing. Yes.
01:02:14
Speaker
Yeah. Because we just think of it as, I mean, obviously, we grew up playing games, but I'm sure your parents were like, hey, after you do like setting boundaries, basically. Yeah. Eat. Please. Just emaciated. I'm like the pygmy from Dark Souls 3. I'm just crawling.
01:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's this is the first I've heard of that. Yeah, I don't think it's like the worst idea to overall like limit kids gameplay and was government mandate. OK, sure. Like you'll find something else to do as a hobby. Right. But yeah, it's feels very uncommon for that to happen at all.
01:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's China's kind of crazy. It's crazy compared like from our perspective, the way that they apply rules and regulations like they outlawed distance learning. They cost money. They just outlawed it entirely. You can't like pay schools money for remote learning and just wiped out the industry instantly overnight. Like all of those jobs lost anybody working for a company that did distance learning lost.
01:03:27
Speaker
And they could potentially do something like that to some extent with video games because they have that kind of pull, you know? Kind of, kind of sus, would you ask me? Yeah, yeah.
01:03:44
Speaker
It's crazy. And these are the companies, you know, that US companies, you know, bent over backwards to get funding from. So, I don't know, there can be ripples, there can be implications. That's, that's, that's the life of the video game political landscape. Yeah.
01:04:06
Speaker
Anything, any final, any final thoughts, words? I was going to say like, um, Confucius quotes. And then I was like, is that racist? That's not racist. It's not racist to bring up Confucius after talking about China.
01:04:20
Speaker
No, it's just a lot of the Confucius quotes. You're a nice girl, probably racist because they weren't actually Confucius quotes. That's true. That one is true. That is correct. Yeah. Actually, everyone that's jumping to my mind is pretty bad. Pretty bad. Pretty bad. Do you have any non-Confucius quotes? Words of wisdom for our listeners. Advice, horoscope. No, pretty much always. Don't try. Love yourself. Don't be a shit to other people. I hope I can see you soon.
01:04:50
Speaker
That sounds good. I'll second that. Love yourselves or if you love us, you can send feedback or episode ideas into Soapstone at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook. Our page is the only page that has
01:05:06
Speaker
I was going to say self-love, but that doesn't actually sound good. A loving community. We'll go with that. So no politics, obviously, we just keep that out at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.