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S3 Ep258: Double Down on the Demon Meat Shake
72 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Justin as they talk about food, friends, American New Years in Japan, the moral benefits of the mini fridge, proctology and more in this week's episode!
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Intro:
- Zoom Theme + Zoom Theme Remix (from the CW Flash)
- Eyewitness - Opening Theme
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Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Transcript
Aikido Mispronunciations & Morning Routines
00:01:05
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Substone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave?
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah. It's one of those suns not out and I'm just dead tired. How are you doing today, Dice? Hey, everyone. Doing okay. Had an Aikido morning and I'm just sore, so.
00:01:30
Speaker
Is that the way to pronounce it? I've always, I don't know why, but my brain was just like a keto. Yeah, it's Aikido. That's a diet, I guess. That is a diet. Phononyms and Japanese pronunciation stuff. What did you call me? No Phono. No Phono. That's fair. How about you, Jake? How are you? We don't often ask that. I always assume that you're good.
00:01:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's it's fair. So while DICE was engaging in Aikido, I was literally sleeping and got the message was like, hey, you know, I'm going to be available as like I was checking Discord in bed, having just woken up. And my brain went to like.
00:02:16
Speaker
Different people are in different places as far as physical activity and physical wellbeing and I'm not. I am not a wellbeing. I am not, yes. I mean, it is a conscious choice and I have to apply effort to actually do it. I am not a morning person or Saturday classes. I had to wake up at like 8 30 and that's ideally not when I want to wake up.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, depending on how long your classes are, like my brain would be like, okay, I got to burn through some bullshit Saturday morning. And then I come back and like, I've earned this fucking lunch. And then you just, you go nuts. You're like, Oh, you get it like a plate and you're like, I'm going to put this on it. And then the plate's way too big, but you're like, I've justified these calories.
Fast Food Follies
00:03:01
Speaker
I like that.
00:03:03
Speaker
Alright, you did not justify those comics. You didn't justify Dave Thomas levels of... What did you get though? Out of curiosity. They have a ghost pepper chicken sandwich right now, but they put cheese on it because it's American and that can get the tracks a little bit from it. It's also the ghost pepper sauce isn't particularly spicy.
00:03:24
Speaker
It's fine. It's better than they had a weird like Parmesan chip like overly crusted thing a couple of months ago and that was disappointing. Yeah.
00:03:37
Speaker
It's kind of interesting seeing how fast food develops, especially in like the burger wars or the chicken sandwich wars in the United States, because it gets really silly. I think if we go back into the historical record, I associated a bunch of like really out there sandwiches and burgers with like Carl's Jr. Okay.
00:04:00
Speaker
They would be like, oh, we're going to slap a bunch of crap on that. Here's like your super mega ultra. This burger is entirely your meal. And then like Wendy started to catch up. They had like the Baconator and then they're like, okay, too much political fallout. Son of Baconator.
00:04:17
Speaker
There's there's weird political stuff they got Wendy's got bought out by Arby's back when we were like in high school the Yum Co is the Pepsi Taco Bell KFC Pizza Hut the basically the primary competitor Whatever the conglomerate that owns Arby's bought Wendy's and tried to upscale them a little bit like to be more of the family dining and that's kind of when they started making the like
00:04:46
Speaker
fancier type of meals. And they had like the whole fry thing. But like I always associate the weird things with Taco Bell, just because they'll throw whatever in a thing and talk call it some kind of Spanish name that isn't accurate at all. But unless it's what you want.
00:05:04
Speaker
I mean, they have cheese fries. I mean, what are you going to do? Nacho cheese fries. This is our polo rollo. What? It's chicken that we've dredged in a... You know those small chocolate candies? Would not put it past them. Taco Bell's freaking great though.
00:05:24
Speaker
I can't judge, I can't judge Wendy's though. I distinctly remember back when we were working in the office, if I'd go to a different place depending on who I went to lunch with, Dave had standards. So usually we'd go someplace reasonable like Wegmans or whatever. But if it was Landon, we would just go to Wendy's. Usually that's where we, it's like Wendy's or Taco Bell's were an occasionally Chipotle when I visited you guys at EVA.
00:05:54
Speaker
Chipotle was the equivalent of our high class option. I mean, I would still mess around Chipotle. It's been a minute, but I always enjoyed that because it's just I want volume.
00:06:06
Speaker
Well, McDonald's fucking sucks. I will say, to Landon's credit, when he was about to get married and was doing like bachelor party stuff, I was like, okay, like we haven't really made an active plan for like food at this point. And he just, he's one of those people that's like, oh, I will eat later. I didn't think about eating lunch. And I was like, okay, well, should we grab some food before we go out and do stuff? He's like, sure, like, okay, what do you want? We'll go anywhere. He's like, there's a Burger King down the road.
00:06:32
Speaker
And then later on, his wife is like, you took him to Burger King? I was like, it was not my first choice. He was just so down for it.
00:06:41
Speaker
It was pretty great. I don't think we made him pay. That was the upside. No, of course not. That was the upside. We have to clarify in case people think they're like, and then you charged him money?
Restaurant Ordering Challenges
00:06:56
Speaker
It's payment for the friendship, right? I mean, every once in a while I do a tax collection with people.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's the different the problem I have with Chipotle is just our closest local one is very sad to quote next president very sad and I've ordered from them for like mobile pickup also like
00:07:21
Speaker
This is one thing that developed a lot of people develop the infrastructure During the pandemic and I'm still a big fan of it is you're just like order grab your food, right? Like show up grab it leave Mm-hmm, but it doesn't work Because they're just so behind on orders that like They very rarely had it ready
00:07:42
Speaker
Um, even if I show up a little bit late, they're just like, oh, what are you waiting for? And then they make it the food and then they make it. Oh, we can start that. Yeah, pretty much. I'm some, like, I guess it's slightly more efficient than waiting in line, but there's almost a line for the pickup at this point. And now you have two lines and I'm like, I don't think this is the control flow you guys want. I made the mistake or we made the correct choice based on what we wanted to do for Cinco de Mayo. Uh, Rachel and I ordered Plaza Azteca.
00:08:10
Speaker
And I'm like, it's going to be slammed. We'll do call ahead. Their call ahead pickups always been good on like whatever random Fridays we normally order from them, but it was Cinco de Mayo on a Friday. I show up, I put my order in for pickup at five o'clock. I show up a little bit early, like just, I'll be here ready to grab it and go. The amount of people just stay in the Plaza Azteca had a two hour wait and people were waiting for it.
00:08:39
Speaker
And that was on top of part of the like the grab and go was great except that you then have the people running door dashes and grub hubs where they're not invested in they just need the food and then
00:08:55
Speaker
to leave they have no like they're not they don't cut the restaurant that's not even their order so sometimes it's like they'll just push their way through and like they'll shake it on the way yeah basically on top of all of the
00:09:13
Speaker
the people that, oh, we've been here 45 minutes. Where's our table? We told you it was an hour. And also you have your, your, your buzzer and they're like, why do we need our buzzer? Like, did you get a buzzer? Yes. Okay. I can actually tell you where you're in position based on your buzzer rather than you just showing up and being like, we've been here a while. Like, I think people, we, yeah, we avoid going to places that we know are busy.
00:09:43
Speaker
That's a good strategy. Also, not a bad health strategy in general. It's absolutely packed there.
Dining Preferences & Coffee Shop Vibes
00:09:49
Speaker
You might have a bad time. Land partying. I had a good time at land partying, but there was some bad time too. We don't go to many sit down places still, but we started diversifying a little bit.
00:10:06
Speaker
went to a what was it coffee shop recently days gonna see that tomorrow yeah try that one out and it was just very quiet very off-hours very chill atmosphere I'm like this is basically what I want like Starbucks Starbucks was onto something I think
00:10:26
Speaker
Hot take when they were like, hey, we're going to try to just cultivate a sit down sort of study atmosphere for all this crap. That's pretty much what I want ever. I don't want like mass panic in the streets, children running down like between the booths, trying to climb up onto your table. Are you going to finish that? I'm like, I have no idea who you are.
00:10:45
Speaker
The counter service style though, like where you're not necessarily being waited on. That's generally a cafe atmosphere for some extent. Yeah. Taco Bell works that way, no?
00:11:00
Speaker
Basically, you can order this counter. Okay. And then you leave. Uh-huh. Because like you put in your order up front, right? And then you go sit down. They're like, they call your name. You go get your food and you maybe hang out a little bit. That's Taco Bell. That Starbucks. That's, I'm not going back. Like I finished my coffee. You know what? I could go for a scope and then I'm like going back. Right. Well, no, you, you put a mobile order and then you pick it up when it's ready while you're sitting at the booth.
00:11:29
Speaker
You're like, I don't want to fucking talk to this person at all. More like talk Nobel. Got him.
00:11:37
Speaker
Everyone has to learn sign language to get taquitos.
Subscription Models & Delivery Costs
00:11:43
Speaker
You just keep making the gesture like a taco going into your mouth. You're like, ah, no fellatio, no fellatio. I had to explain what taco me meant to Rachel recently. Back in college when Shane and I would drive to Lake Lebanon to visit his friends from home,
00:12:03
Speaker
we would stop at the Taco Bell and get a party pack for the ride because it was being like eight o'clock. We were leaving to get down there at like midnight because college kids. Um, and so he was navigating. I just be like, taco, make it on a taco. Just throw it in my face basically. And that's the reason why there was so many Taco Bell receipts in my backseat.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's I think I think maybe a good healthy adult trend would be to frequent like cafes, things like that, more mature establishments as you get older. But like we just have our Taco Bell visitation graph is very positive, a very positive slope, probably more than when we were definitely more than when we were in college or any time prior.
00:12:53
Speaker
Now we just have the money for it. We can go to Taco Bell. We can afford it. We have Taco Bell at home. Taco Bell at home. But also Taco Bell keeps introducing new boxes. It's basically it's a box. They're exploiting FOMO.
00:13:10
Speaker
There's people that have the monthly subscriptions for some sort of themed box. I know those are quite popular. We get that at Taco Bell. And I get it multiple times a month. My brain jumps to that at Taco Bell already. I'm like, that's a thing you can do. Taco Bell is on Grubhub. Grubhub has that subscription.
00:13:34
Speaker
It's too far for me now. I'm not using DoorDash or Grubhub much now anymore. I'm trying to just pick stuff up if I can. It's kidding. I mean, we don't have to talk finance on our video game podcast if you guys don't want to, but it sucks. Delivery is definitely expensive.
00:13:52
Speaker
And the food is already significantly more expensive to the point where delivery or anything that's percentage based is like, I don't know, maybe not. Yeah, there's definitely more planning after you could put in this stuff.
00:14:08
Speaker
On my way home from work, I'll put an order in for pickup. When I get there, it makes a lot more sense than paying the 10 to $15. It ends up being on top of depending on which service they're using may make the cost of the items more already. Yeah. I mean, I, I just had sheets for lunch because I refused to cook chicken yet again. So it's dangerous.
00:14:35
Speaker
If you don't cook it. If you have some mud nearby, you dredge it. Actually, I can just make the same Rolo joke again. Pollo Rolo. Pollo, Pollo Rolo, yeah. Every time you say that, I'm thinking of the restaurant from Breaking Bad. That's on me. Pollo Sermonos?
Nostalgia in Fast Food
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah. The Chicken Brother.
00:15:01
Speaker
I mean, I would legitimately I would love to find like a nice good chicken sandwich because I don't dislike the frozen to whatever fry thing to do it like sheets or other types of fast food places. Like I can I can work with a chicken sandwich like that. But I'd love to have one room like yo guys, you got to try out this versus it's passable. I'm constantly on the hunt for a place that does the chicken wrap like I hated.
00:15:30
Speaker
There was something about like how they fried their skillet fried their chicken that I just can't find anywhere else.
00:15:41
Speaker
I don't think it exists. I think whatever that food company was in college, there's like, it wasn't a good company. It was either how greasy the skill it was or like how freshly it was chopped and whatever. But it was such a basic
00:16:03
Speaker
because it was basically just lettuce, chicken, and then your buffalo ranch dip. And that was a wrap. But what happened? That's a wrap, folks. They had a fry cook back there, or a cook. I don't know if a fry cook is a person who makes chicken or not. I haven't watched SpongeBob in long enough. But the cook back there, who's essentially a warlock, and they've made some pact with a demonic food entity in order to create the best chicken sandwich. And you'll just never find it again.
00:16:31
Speaker
This is how cults start. Does that make KFC a prime evil? They're a lesser evil, I would say. I haven't had KFC in a very, very, very long time. Are they good? I personally don't think so. Rachel and I do. We have KFC once a year for Christmas Eve.
00:16:55
Speaker
and because we are weeps. In Japan, KFC is like, you have to pre-order your holiday meal and they basically sold, or no, sorry, it's not Christmas, it's New Year's. Is it? It's one of the end of your holidays. Taki, only applause. Yes, and we watched Iron. But no, the general answer is no. But they will continue to have,
00:17:24
Speaker
Promotions there was a they did the double down promotion which just brought memories back of college when they first introduced the double down Yeah, Dave is intimately aware because I had to beg him to go play ultimate with me after having two of them because I thought my heart was stopping
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, I need to burn off anything. Can we go outside? I'm like, yeah, sure, buddy. It really feels like the double down is to traditional actual food as like for loco was to alcoholic beverages. It's just like, how do we concentrate as much of the thing as we can and then just convince someone that it's a serving size? Yeah, accurate.
00:18:06
Speaker
It fits in my hand, therefore I must be able to have just one of them. Not a fourth.
00:18:13
Speaker
I think I don't remember. I don't even know if this is true now because I haven't been able to find another reference for it. But I think we talked about it at one point in the podcast. One of the things to get into like one of the closed Diablo betas was to like buy a double down, I think. Yep. Yep. OK, so that's real. I trust. I trust it's real if you if you. Yeah, the closed beta is a couple of weeks. But I think like the March beta was based on
00:18:40
Speaker
I don't know if you were guaranteed close beta access or like that was what you had to do to submit a drawing to get into close beta. That's dangerous. The second thing you describe could lead to a bad situation where people consume multiple double towns in order to get into a game which is going to cause them to be sedentary for a week and then they die.
00:19:04
Speaker
And then yesterday, I think, yesterday, dates are weird. There's been a lot of marketing for Diablo 4, I can't imagine why. They had the chance to win a Demon Meat Shake.
00:19:26
Speaker
Shakes are usually something I associate with dairy. Putting that out there. Based on the description I heard recently, it was basically different sized jelly boba with some fruit in it, maybe some shortening.
00:19:45
Speaker
Pass. I'd like to pass so hard. Do not force this upon me ever. I don't like sucking jelly balls through big straws for a beverage. I want my beverage to be a liquid. Full stop. Rachel loves boba. So we end up ordering boba, and every time I order her, she even makes some boba at home occasionally, the part that I'm most disappointed in is the boba. Just give me a nice tea.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, I have two things. I have two points. I want to say real quick. First, thank you, Dice, for coming up with the title for this episode, which is now Double Down on the Demon Meat Shake. So we may get demonetized, but it'll be worth it. Demonetized? Sorry. That was a bit. Hey. See, this is why it's the duo, sometimes the trio. Pons.
00:20:41
Speaker
Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the Boba balls, but I think it has to do with straw circumference. If you're going to a weird Boba place, they might not give you the right straw. Or you pull a dave and you try to open your Boba with the wrong side of the straw. Because you didn't know there's a sharp end. I just had one end and I'm like, I'm going to jam it in. It's not working. Looks at the other end that's like serrated and actually has like a metal tip like motherfucker.
00:21:11
Speaker
Uh-huh, because you can get it as an additive at sheets. They have like Oh, yeah, like whatever energy boosts whatever whatever and then like boba balls basically But their straws do not accommodate so you can drink the entirety of it And then you got to like kind of fish them out with the straw and eat it like it's the worst spoon Doesn't feel like that's the experience you're supposed to have
00:21:36
Speaker
Thanks to Dave, I recently got to re experience an icy and I remember as a kid, they had this straw spoons. It's like the bottom was played out so you could actually scoop the ice chunks. But so those were fun for that bit. But as you're drinking, as you got time, like the last 10 percent, you couldn't because the straw was not actually flush with the bottom. You had like this nubs, you had to like bend it to try and like.
00:22:04
Speaker
Or you're me sitting in a movie going the
Movie Experiences: Past & Present
00:22:08
Speaker
whole time. I'll be honest, I could not hear you. The audio is very loud. It is, again, a theater. That's probably good.
00:22:19
Speaker
You don't want to be that guy in the theater, the whole six people that were in the theater, because we decided to see the movie at like the last possible moment. What are you going to do that for movies more? We saw John saw it for four. OK, so this is a recent one. I thought we were still in sepia reminiscing about the college days. No, I'm still a child. I saw Transformers one with a new actor, Shyla LeBouf. Yeah, LeBouf. Actual cannibal.
00:22:49
Speaker
I would not honestly mind going to see more movies just as like a nice going out experience but again with the smaller capacity of people because like I don't like packed anything like I'm not
00:23:02
Speaker
Yet that much of an anxious person, but the older I get and the more there's like outbreaks of things. I'm like, what if we just didn't throw in all these variables? That'd be cool. Um, I can attest that's true. Cause I saw Dave play Pac-Man twice and then never again. He's not a fan of packed anything.
00:23:23
Speaker
Your turn, Justin. We were talking about the, Dave and I had talked about, there used to be an old theater in our, in the town where we grew up, like in high school and stuff, that they always ran like just out of theater movies for really cheap. And it was always empty, which also explains why it's no longer there. But it was nice seeing movies when it was basically empty.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah matinees are a dream you pay like two dollars like we don't even care if you're here It's basically we're just showing this you buy popcorn. Would you please buy some popcorn while you're here? Thank you, right? Yeah, that is that is the trick right on one hand a thriving business is a full theater and a dying business is an empty theater But the dying theater is the one that's more appealing visit
00:24:20
Speaker
Do you have an ideal movie experience, Jake, of like going to the movies or would you rather prefer just doing it home set up every time?
00:24:28
Speaker
I mean, the home setup's pretty good right now, not gonna lie. It's probably the best it's ever been, but if I disqualify that, I mean, there is a social aspect to, I don't invite people over to watch movies at my house that much. So if we're comboing this and it's like, hey, this is supposed to be a social thing, it's gonna be out there at the movies or whatever. I was a big fan of Movie Tavern. I can say that without necessarily doxing anyone, because there's several of them.
00:24:58
Speaker
Um, and also we had to travel to see one of them. So even if you start looking around specifically checking around the perimeter of a movie tavern, you're not going to find us. That was a cool experience. Uh, the food was very expensive, but I liked their chairs and I liked how you could get like a drink and stuff. And it was just, Oh, you mean how you could like cross your legs without kicking the person next to you. You actually had an arm space and you could fit a beverage without, you know, kind of having it teeter on the edge.
00:25:28
Speaker
That one didn't bother me too much, the crossing the legs without hitting the person next to me. But the upside is other people could cross their legs without kicking me. And that's what I was in for. I did go back a little bit.
00:25:41
Speaker
After doing Move-In Tavern as the default for so long, going and doing a regular movie, not having somebody walk across the aisle two or three times during a movie is more immersive. So like, it's what you want out of the experience. Or yeah, it just comes out.
00:26:04
Speaker
I will say at any home set up I've had, which is basically just a chair, a TV, nothing too crazy on my part. I like the idea of somebody bringing me alcohol. Maybe next time if I have a movie night, I'd be like, hey, I'm going to sit here, but while you're up, could you do me a song?
00:26:26
Speaker
Maybe that's just what I'm looking for in an experience. You got to get a mini fridge built into your lazy boy so that the drinks are already there for you. You technically brought yourself a drink. No lie, I'm very sad that my mini fridge died at some point because I got it for dirt cheap from somebody who I think stole it from a yard sale or something. It was handed down through a couple of people, a couple of college kids.
00:26:56
Speaker
How to make it the cheapest product imaginable, stolen from someone's own yard. But I think I paid like five bucks for it and it lasted for a couple of years. That's like half the price of a combo meal at Taco Bell. That's crazy.
00:27:16
Speaker
Uh, there was a, I saw mini fridge recently at, um, when we were doing our retail about shopping and it accommodated exactly six, I believe canned beverages. And I was like, what's the point of this? Was it USB powered?
00:27:34
Speaker
I hope, I didn't see, but that's the only way I could justify it. I assume when you guys are talking about mini-fridges, you're talking about the greatest generation mini-fridges, right? Those are the mini-fridges passed down by your grandpa. People fought in the war to defend this. You can survive nuclear blasts from inside of it. Right, yes. It was at least accommodated more than six cans. Why can I not hear you, Dave? I've now lost Dave's audio.
00:28:04
Speaker
I forgot to unmute from when I apparently was screwing back on the bottle cap so I didn't make noise. So you guys missed about 30 awesome quips. I was going to say that you could you could maybe fit like a small kid in there. It should it should be able to fit a couple of beverages and some leftovers like there should be a rack to be able to separate some stuff. But what about having a microwave on top of it?
00:28:33
Speaker
I mean, if it's forcefully built in and I have to pay extra money for that, yes. Because I need to be able to refrigerate my taquitos after I make them, assuming I don't eat them all, which is a very slim chance.
Science Shows & Childhood Memories
00:28:46
Speaker
Or have the taquitos immediately available so you just lean back in your chair, open the fridge, put the taquito in the microwave, and then you're ready to go. You're keeping the taquitos in the fridge? You sociopath. You sociopath. You have to have them fall so then you can cook them faster.
00:28:59
Speaker
Right. Well, you have a mini freezer. You have a mini freezer that stores the taquitos for long term. Move them to thaw. Move them to microwave. The actual effort you'll need to exert to complete this process is unbecoming of someone who owns a mini fridge, but still.
00:29:22
Speaker
Maybe. And then you have another thing to be like, well, this is for taquito sublimation and this one is for taquito flash freezing. Taquito Bose-Einstein condensates.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yo. That would actually make me vomit, I think. For anybody who does not remember what a Bose-Einstein condensate is because they watched, what was it, Zoom? Was that the Nickelodeon informational show? I don't know. Zoom is PBS. Come on. Okay, sorry, PBS. Come on, it's Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom-a. Zoom. Yeah.
00:29:53
Speaker
We'll keep doing the full intro for a minute now. That's going to be the intro for this episode. I'll look up the link for you. Thank you. Saves me some editing work. But a Bose-Einstein condensate is, I think it was water and... It's effectively a superfluid, so it does not have surface tension.
00:30:15
Speaker
Um, because it has no surface tension, it basically can move up glasses by itself. Um, it's almost in that like super chilled state, like it's near zero Kelvin to be able to get a fluid down to that level.
00:30:33
Speaker
I might be thinking of a different thing based on how you didn't fall it's water and one other ingredient that I was thinking of. I'm thinking of non-Newtonian fluid. That's what I'm thinking of. The slimes, glue and water or something. Baking soda or baking powder and water. One of those, yeah. I think it's baking soda.
00:30:59
Speaker
That was good stuff. Well, there's different types. I'm going to say it's corn starch. I'm going to say it's corn starch. That sounds right. You're right. You're right. What am I thinking? Because it was edible. Yeah, I'm thinking of baking soda plus something that made it explode. Vinegar? Vinegar. Yes. Yeah. Those were the home volcanoes. We are now middle school science fair. Of course we're going to be good friends.
00:31:27
Speaker
middle school there. As soon as you brought up the term Bose, I can sign condensate. I was like, this is basically our chance. This is the way that we actually age forward the podcast episode enough that it's not all juvenile college stories of what is the most convenient way to eat taquitos and stuff like that. The people have to know. We immediately went back to baking soda volcanoes.
00:31:54
Speaker
I need to now to complete the thread, go back to when you said Bose-Einstein condensate of taquitos, I was thinking a non-Newtonian taquito, which is where I got the knee-jerk reaction from. You have to eat it so slowly so you can actually break it apart.
00:32:11
Speaker
That's the most dangerous thing. That's the antithesis. You're like, I'm so excited to eat this that you chip a tooth. That would be the worst thing imaginable. For anybody who doesn't remember non-Newtonian fluids, what I was trying to explain earlier before I fucked up is it is a substance that if you hit it quickly, it will react like a hard surface. The viscosity is non-consistent.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yes. But if you push into it slowly, you're met with less resistance. You can play around with it. It's always very fun to just suspend things in it or poke it with your hand. But if you slapped it, it's like slapping a countertop.
00:32:50
Speaker
the pre-YouTube era of like science shows, there were like Nickelodeon mythbusters where they made giant fats of non-Newtonian fluids and tried to have people run on it and then they just stand there and sing it.
00:33:06
Speaker
alternative description or definition for non-Newtonian fluid is. They got a bunch of fluids together and they had Newton look at each one and he'd say, no, not that one. I hate it when it gets like this. Newton, drink your juice. No. This is a non-Newtonian juice. But pulp sucks, am I right guys? Fucking worst.
00:33:33
Speaker
I know there's some pulpers here and I see you guys not speaking up that you're on my side. We can let it slide. It's fine. But I will judge you quietly for the rest of time. I already do not get enough fiber in my diet.
00:33:50
Speaker
I'm neutral on pulp. I think I used to really dislike it, but now I just accept similar thing. It's like if there is some displeasure from the ingestion of this, it's replaced by this. I'm being an adult sense of this is better for me.
00:34:09
Speaker
So you don't mind proctologist exams? Is that? Yeah, I mean, take what you can get. I've never done that actually. How old should one be when you start checking for such things?
Reddit, Content Curation & Browsing
00:34:26
Speaker
I think it's 35 as the recommended.
00:34:30
Speaker
So for you to be eligible for presidency, you're saying that. Well, I mean, if there's if there's a family history, they want you to do it earlier. But like the hey, you're an adult male. This is when we start wanting to identify whether this thing is a possibility for you.
00:34:49
Speaker
But it's also not- An opportunity, if you will. Imagine your life- It's not a regular thing. I think it's every couple of years after the first one, too. And I think they've made- I am not a doctor. You should speak to your family doctor about any scheduled appointments you should have if there's anything you're concerned. You don't necessarily have to do it every year, though. Yeah.
00:35:12
Speaker
As your family doctor, just get checked, I guess, if you're concerned about it. I actually, it's funny that we're talking about this now. Maybe you guys saw the same Reddit thread and like read the comments I did, but there was a post recently where people were talking about it. I have no idea what the topic was. I also, side thing, do you guys read Reddit comments or you just mostly check the OP when you're browsing Reddit? It's usually comments and then not the actual article because that's how I read it from. Yes.
00:35:43
Speaker
What about you, Dave? I'm somebody who like, if I'm browsing a thing like that, I don't really want the back and forth banter as much. I'm like, just give me the high level content. If I'm interested, I might delve into it more, but it's very much give me the PNG to lol at and I'll move about my day. My subreddits are very filtered to mostly discussion subreddits. So.
00:36:07
Speaker
That's kind of the content that I have designed Reddit for of like somebody breaking down the whatever the technology post was or whatever.
00:36:22
Speaker
I have to optimize the fun out of everything. I actually, I'm between the both of you because I usually check Reddit on mobile and I don't bother signing in on mobile. So I see the defaults.
00:36:38
Speaker
But the defaults aren't really the same that they used to be and it's kind of it's a combination of what all Used to be and what the defaults used to be because it used to be like 10 12 something default subreddits Whatever the big ones were and now it's like stuff can show up on that list
00:36:56
Speaker
from a non-default subreddit. Like a global trending. Yeah, exactly. Something big. Maybe it's just because I use Reddit is fun, actually, and they just have a different default. But whenever Naruto has a release, that shows up near the freaking top. And it's really funny to see that. Well, it's not really funny. It's just kind of indicative of how popular it is.
00:37:21
Speaker
This is owned by a release. I mean like Mongo release. They're like a new episode just dropped. Let's freaking go. Episode. That's what they call it. Mongo releases, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. For me, our anime may be in the defaults now. Is an anime with the world news?
00:37:42
Speaker
Subreddit though or no, no, no, I forget all about stats that there was some like besides the trees and yeah That's the old-school version. But yeah, there was definitely like somebody branched off some major subreddit and it was just some dumb world news Anime titties. Those are the two. Yep. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yeah, that sounds familiar
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah. I was looking up world news, mom, I swear. I'll be honest, any time that I have tried to like log in from my phone and like, oh, I'm just going to check some YouTube while I'm waiting on something and I'm not signed in.
Digital Content Access & Preservation
00:38:21
Speaker
I'm like, what fucking world is this? Because it is so wildly different from, hey, here's your curated thing over maybe a decade of here's the content you like. Here's Dark Souls, YouTubers. Here's people playing Smash. Here's a funny video too.
00:38:36
Speaker
What to me at this point, because I'm just so distant from it, all feels like TikTok. It's just like, hey, here's what the general majority cares about. I'm like, I hate the general majority. Perfect service announcement. Sorry, public service announcement. Chrome is changing their add-on manifest, and that is going to break
00:39:00
Speaker
at ad blockers for YouTube. Um, so use Firefox. People should use Firefox. You can use Firefox on mobile and get the exact same extensions that you have on desktop, which includes a fully supported ad blocker for YouTube. Okay. Or, you know, buy YouTube premium if, if you're okay with that.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, do you want to try it? I know you want to watch the 30 second video, but here's the 30 second ad about you could use this as TV. Just do you want to pay money for YouTube? Yeah, it's. It's it's interesting to think about, like I get that they want to make YouTube profitable, but at the same time, they kind of don't have to as a company, right? Like it's not like Google struggling as far as I can tell.
00:39:55
Speaker
They messed up YouTube TV though, this week, based on Reddit discussions that I have no direct interest in. Apparently the end of some NFL game that was being, because they bought some of the sports licenses from DirecTV or something, so the only way you can watch certain network things about sports fall,
00:40:20
Speaker
but instead of playing the last like five minutes of a game that was really close, they got stuck looping an ad.
00:40:29
Speaker
That is hilarious, actually. God damn. I would absolutely hate that if it was like, say something related to me. It was some years back and I was watching the international and they're like, OK, ad break on Twitch or something. And then it's just like starts looping the head on apply directly to the forehead ad. But like more than three times, you're like, I don't actually think it's the original ad anymore.
00:40:56
Speaker
That would probably be a bad experience. I mean, it was like off season or something. So like, but if you're into that, like if that's what you, you paid some ridiculous amount of money because they basically turned YouTube into a cable company. Um, that's not cool. Do they at least.
00:41:20
Speaker
Do they treat it where like you could theoretically, if you refresh the page, go back to time or it's only live streaming and you have no control to go back? I think, I think it's actually set up like TV. So like there's a chance that you can go back and see something, but it's basically using YouTube as a replacement for cable TV. Um, so like you're leaving your local channels and like the national broadcast stuff, which is where sports ball things.
00:41:49
Speaker
That's an interesting question though, because I think YouTube is actually like, I never had the device, but there was the, um, was Tvo what it was called or DVR. Tvo was the name brand. DVR is the generic grants of digital video. Yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
YouTube basically kind of has that out of the jump. I think most of the broadcasts that happen, if the user decided to make it publicly available afterwards, it'll become available. Overwatch League matches after they switched off Twitch, those are all available on YouTube.
00:42:21
Speaker
Things like that. I could see how if they made like a deal with ESPN or something like that, maybe they didn't want the broadcasts to stick around in an accessible format otherwise because ESPN has like prehistoric levels. Well, specifically NFL. NFL does, yeah. Prehistoric levels of like
00:42:41
Speaker
caveman gravity right on that but I Mean it's almost like a pre solved problem in YouTube right that would be the upside I would think is you just people in the the Gen Z generation Wouldn't have any concept of the idea of DVR. They're just gonna expect expect things to be available This is how you get them to keep watching
00:43:05
Speaker
And it's one of those things where it's easier to do screen recordings of that stuff, so there's a chance, but there's a certain technology hurdle, so the average person won't do it, whereas back in the day, the VHS won because it let you record stuff. And it was literally just you press the button and magically you had that time shifting and then the DVR was an extension of that, whereas
00:43:33
Speaker
There are obviously ways of doing that capture, but there's a technological hurdle there that's not just press one button. There's guides online to do it, like if you were technically inclined and already doing that kind of stuff.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think that's fair. I have my brain goes to some of the videos I've seen on YouTube where it's like in order to avoid being copyright struck or outright brought down, they've done some sort of video manipulation. And there's almost this like
00:44:08
Speaker
Um, I don't want to say cult, but conspiracy like approach to it where people have gone in different directions. So they're like, okay, we introduce a grainy filter. Okay. No, that's not working. We're going to flip it horizontal. Okay. That just isn't working. We tried flipping it vertically. No one watches it. Okay. We cut off the top. We cut off the sides. We cut off the bottom. All right. We've shrunk it and we put it over some other video that's playing and we just have it up here in the corner. The opacity layer stuff. Yeah. There's like the speed up things like.
00:44:37
Speaker
Oh, we have a variable speed ramp and slow down so that it's not consistent. It's arcane. They're not like the show, but they're probably the show also. Like the studio, arcane studio.
00:44:52
Speaker
I see that a lot with Instagram, if I'm just scrolling, and be like, hey, here's a little DBZ clip. I'm like, oh, I remember that show. And then it is, as you described, it has this full border of stuff. They're using other non-copyrighted music for something. Or they put on a TikTok song for like, hey, the one time that Piccolo said no to go on. You're like, oh, it's so bad. But it's just such a weird way to re-experience that content.
00:45:21
Speaker
You triggered a weird recent association. So apparently back in the early 2000s before like Adult Swim and Toonami really existed,
00:45:35
Speaker
There was a whole bunch of experimentation on Cartoon Network. Somebody recently found an episode of JBVO, which was the Johnny Bravo, like late night talk show type of thing, like Space Coast, Coast to Coast, but hosted by Johnny Bravo. Apparently one of those episodes was the Namek saga of DBZ sped up, narrated by Johnny Bravo.
00:46:03
Speaker
And somebody found, they actually like, there was a VHS that somebody's mom had that had it's like, they, like, there was like that, uh, Shazam, uh, the Mandela effect, um, where like people weren't sure that this was actually a thing until somebody actually found the archive. Um, yeah, weird.
00:46:25
Speaker
weird things that existed. I can imagine that would be the type of thing I would expect the Mandela Effect to be in full effect for. It's like, do you guys remember Johnny Bravo voiceover of anime? You're like, no, no, I think that's you, dude. That's silly.
00:46:50
Speaker
Toonami was a time. That was before my time, though. I didn't get to experience it, really. No. That was... I won't say a good part of my childhood, but I do have very fond memories of when five o'clock rolled around on a school night, I was like, parents, I need to allocate the TV because some DBZ shit's gonna be going on for two episodes and then I will eat dinner after the fact.
00:47:14
Speaker
I had the VHS set up to record DBZ and then when they wouldn't do the seasons and I wouldn't know what the next episode was, I'd always like miss the first one of the new season of however they were doing the cures at the time.
00:47:31
Speaker
trying to watch all of DBZ on TV was rough. Yeah. It's so much more convenient now. We're like, Hey, stuff's online, whether on YouTube or another platform. And you're like, Hey, it's labeled appropriately. And I can know what I'm watching versus just, well, I know on Saturday morning, these shows will happen in this order. And I have to hope for the best. Oh, it's a rerun. I don't want to see that one for Ben 10 or whatever. I need to watch something else. Oh, Batman Beyond new one. Hell yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker
Felt like such a gamble. They even had like TV guides for like, hey, if you don't know the order of episodes for what we're gonna be showing today, here's what it is. You're like, okay, I can look, yep, 3 p.m., okay. TV Guide was basically designed inadvertently for a generation that was raised on strategy guides. You're like, here you go. Strategize your TV watching. And here's some cheat codes for the television. I'm gonna check the walkthrough real quick. Okay, it's 8 p.m.
00:48:31
Speaker
What about Adult Swim? Did you guys catch that to a degree? Daily show into Adult Swim is usually how my nights went. I did that for a while and then I got sleepy.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, it did go late. I didn't see Adult Swim until I was significantly older since I didn't have cable. Earlier I said that was before my time. I'm not like 20. I was just in a bubble for the earlier part of my life. But yeah, I have mixed experiences with Adult Swim. I started to watch it around college age.
00:49:04
Speaker
Give or take a couple years like 18 plus and Then it was like stuff like squid billies, which I completely this day. I don't understand and it makes me uncomfortable Yeah, it's also me the stuff I like was the anime stuff I can't imagine why mm-hmm
00:49:24
Speaker
He's a weeb. It's a callback. And then the other one that was on around that time was like a Metal Rock show. It was a band. It was about a metal band. Metal Occlips? Metal Occlips. That's the one. Yeah. And that one was more tolerable, but I was like, I still feel like I'm I'm outside of what the joke is.
00:49:49
Speaker
I will say as a metal fan, especially more so during that time, they had so many jokes in season one where it's just choice. Go to example I like to share. There is a, I think it's a Nordic black metal band called Dimu Borgir. And they have, you know, like that very black metal, hard to read font.
00:50:14
Speaker
But they had a little place like in like the background called dimu burger and that for me I'm like, okay, they know their audience. It was good enough of an instant references. Mm-hmm Yeah, I mean that's always good. Do you have a Goku example you'd like to share nice?
00:50:32
Speaker
Dave said he had a go-to example, and I was like, sit on the pun, sit on the pun. The listeners may be paying attention, maybe this will land, maybe it won't, but now that I've explained it, of course it'll land, 100% credit to me. Yeah, I mean, it's mostly, I really liked when they would do the anime movie stuff, because that wasn't stuff that I would watch normally, and then I found out that there was Kazaa, and I would just download anime instead.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't watch much there, but I will say I've looked at the price of some of the, like to just catch up on a show that I know is good and people have recommended. If I were to just do this legitimately, like rent the show on some medium, it's all priced out by season. So if something's really long, to me, the value actually kind of doesn't scale linear, linearly, if that makes any sense, right? Like if I were to watch.
00:51:29
Speaker
Carbon or whatever it was called And it's all just available on Netflix and I just do the Netflix subscription and I can watch all of the seasons great if I were to like try to watch it on YouTube and I'm gonna like watch them so that has six say I wanted to watch a Dexter or something for some reason or it's like seven seasons or whatever the crap each season is like 20 bucks and I'm like
00:51:51
Speaker
These are not equal value propositions, right? I can either consume all of this regardless of how long it is or all of this and spend so much money. And I just don't get it. It's nine seasons, but only four of them are good. Whenever you come with Lumberjack, just stop. Yeah, I had.
00:52:14
Speaker
back when I first had like adult job, I was buying anime, but it was convincing myself to buy anime specifically to be like, I want more of this thing. This is my way of saying I want more of this instead of it. Yeah. The collecting stuff. Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
I think that's good and I appreciate that more as I get older. I think I was a fairly shameless pirate when I was younger, but I also just didn't have a lot of money to throw around on such things.
00:52:56
Speaker
a person problem, it's a product problem. Right. It's like distribution or something, right? It's because there wasn't a better way to access this. Piracy was the better way of accessing it because you had to go through all the hoops of purchasing on top of it being free, whereas Steam has added so much value add to purchasing stuff that it's almost dumb not to buy it on Steam.
00:53:21
Speaker
And the library, right? It's like, Oh, you ever want to go back and play this? You don't need to go grab a DVD rip of black and white too. You actually do. Cause you can't get that game anywhere, but outside of that example, you'd have like a consistent library and there was so many upsides to that. Yeah. It's nice to have something that persists. So if I'm ever not at my home machine, I could theoretically still download and play a game that I want to do.
00:53:50
Speaker
Instead of like, Oh, did you bring your, your, uh, box of disc cats? You're like, no, I forgot them. Okay. Then we have recent examples of like Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii U stores and people literally bought everything like the week beforehand and downloaded it to their system so that they would have it available. Um, and then you have the.
00:54:15
Speaker
the apocalypse for iOS when they shut down the 32-bit apps, there are certain games that, you know, there was no reason to hoard them over to modern iOS, so the only way to play them is to hope that you have whatever the iOS version of an APK is and a completely unlocked thing, or one that had it downloaded already and is still functional. So it's just a whole
00:54:41
Speaker
archive thing, which support Internet Archive for that kind of stuff. They have a warehouse outside of DC specifically for physical media and that stuff.
00:54:54
Speaker
It's something I never appreciated growing up where my mom's like, we should take photos. I'm like, no, who cares? But the older I get, like my memory is so, so fucking sparse, but it is nice to go back to something physical, be like, okay, this reminds me of a different time and just having that available versus just going off of memory. I think I remember zoom beanies, but no, I was actually able to get zoom beanies on Steam. Probably paid a little bit too much for it, but nostalgia.
00:55:21
Speaker
And it's just cool to have that stuff accessible because now if I show people like 10 or 15 years down the line, be like, hey, this is something that we used to experience instead of going to like a YouTube video of people taking a picture of a Super Nintendo, be like, no, here's actually the games. Yeah. And there's constantly that whole like
00:55:44
Speaker
It's fractal almost like how much interest you can have on one specific thing and like how it breaks apart I learned I was watching a gaming historian video about a company trying to make a portable NES back in the 80s like there was a company that
00:56:02
Speaker
basically took the board, shrunk it down, and I was watching an LTT video recently about apparently when the Wii came out there was a community that was legitimately doing the exact same thing with actual guides on how to cut the PCB for a Wii, original Wii, such that you got rid of like some of the sensors and stuff that wasn't needed to actually play the games. Right. And they sell kits that you can mount. It's wild.
00:56:30
Speaker
Like archival and restoration is, is massive, right? Then there, it has, it seems like it's contrary, it runs contrary to people who want to be super protective of IP and people who want to, you know, suck as much value as they can potentially from an IP or just hold the idea that at some point they may re-release this. They don't want to be abandoned, wear your shoes and stuff like that. Yeah.
00:56:56
Speaker
Exactly. But on the other side, for people who actually develop something, realistically, you have a cycle of sales. Digital distribution probably smooths that out a little bit, so it goes longer than you would on just a physical release where at some point you're just going to get a long tail.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I didn't know that, but that makes sense. But like it still does feel like we're kind of like pushing up against these where the people who are most invested in the game or the medium or something like that, the hardware, they have to try to find a way to preserve this long term, be that ROM or whatever the crap. And, you know, it's always going to be pushed back on by the big company, it feels like.
00:57:42
Speaker
There's been like some examples where they subvert that like some company may release the source code for an old game or something like that. But it's all stuff back in the day. Yeah. Did they do that for King's Quest as well? They might have. I'm not going to be able to. Maybe I'm thinking of Shining Force.
00:58:00
Speaker
I mean there's also the a lot of large companies are getting better about it but there was so much it was Wild West and a lot of like the games that we grew up in there's a constant problem of like
00:58:14
Speaker
Square or Capcom literally just didn't have the source code or the assets besides and so like they want to remaster stuff So it's available again But then the only thing they have is like the finalized this because they can't do that high res conversion and stuff like that Or you know, they're reintroducing bugs from a beta build that they found they couldn't find this source for like the finalized version. So That's very funny Another round of QA fuck no ship it
00:58:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know that I think you mentioned it with the internet archive and that do they own the way back machine? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. I knew that that was, you know, potentially at risk because some people don't want their stuff. There's been lawsuits with the books that they ever make available through that and stuff, too. Mm hmm.
00:59:03
Speaker
And it would be a big loss. Even recently, I was watching a Hoi video on Polybius, and he uses the Wayback Machine to investigate claims that this internet, earlier arcade game site may or may not be the source of this myth, right? And he has a whole section on here where that entire section would have been impossible if the Wayback Machine didn't exist.
00:59:29
Speaker
And so it's like dang like legitimately we would lose so much If that just gets taken down It is weird how like in high school and like history is dumb and I don't think there's a point to it
00:59:45
Speaker
And then there's that classic history thing of like, how can we learn from our mistakes if we don't remember them and then move forward? So now slowly become the camp of like, I'd rather us record more. And then either we have the option to leverage it or not, but at least it is there as an option versus just deleting everything every two or three years. That's what the podcast is for.
01:00:14
Speaker
Oh god. We just have to work on my thoughts and memories.
01:00:22
Speaker
Yeah, somebody takes the entirety of this audio and feeds it into a much better AI version of me. It's Rachel was very upset. I was trying to she hadn't gotten around to listening to the AI episode a couple of weeks ago. And you had made the joke about you being a AI version of yourself in that one. I was trying to describe that joke to her. She thought that you had actually trained one of the artificial voice since as a deep fake of your voice. And she's like,
01:00:49
Speaker
Can I talk to Dave about how to do that? I'm like, I don't think he actually did that. It's possible, but you're going to need a lot more data than you actually have right now. Yeah. I will say the one that I was playing around with is called 11 Labs. And I think that they even say on their site, they can only do about maybe five minutes of audio to be like beyond that. It's like it's not really going to change the model too much.
01:01:16
Speaker
And it can sound pretty convincing, but it's definitely nowhere near perfect. But as like a fun playing around with, I do enjoy that very much. It is fun to make myself say stupid things. Okay. And you actually did. I didn't realize it had gone that far. I thought it was just a, you were using one of the generic voices.
01:01:34
Speaker
No, no. You haven't been on the voice channel and Discord, but I do have a TTS command to go through my voice, so the bot will speak in my voice. I once did it when Eric, a friend of the podcast who's also been on. Special guest. Special guest. There's a hierarchy. We've got to maintain it. Everyone's a friend of the show. Some people are special guests.
AI in Creative Projects & Podcasting
01:02:01
Speaker
But basically, um, I saw he was online and I hopped online and the bot was online as well. And so I had the bot say something to him, I think before I joined. And then I joined him like, Hey, what's up? He's like, what's going on? And I had to explain it to him. He, I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, don't mess with me. Like I need to know what's, what's happening. So it's fun for stuff like that for sure.
01:02:27
Speaker
It is crazy too, cause like 11 Labs, there's another one. I can't remember the name of apologies. They're like the popular, um, public ones, um, where you can kind of just trial in and give it a shot. But like, those are just like the injuries here, walking off the street tier, uh, voice trainers. And like people are using those for a ton of things. Um, it's only going to get better and they already have, you know, better ones out there. They're just not public. Brave new world.
01:03:00
Speaker
I still think it would be fun to splice in pieces of, not to say that I haven't already, but to splice in some AI voice for a section, see if anybody actually catches it. You have to leave trails all the way back to the original episode that people have to find and then they win a prize if they find all 30 of them. Did you guys not know about the QR code and the little adventure we made?
01:03:27
Speaker
We've had an ARG going for years. No one's even found the first start. Tunic has nothing on us. I'll say that much. We actually had an idea there for a bit, which was, I'm going to spoil it so that we don't actually do it or we'll do it and just not tell you.
01:03:46
Speaker
Which was generate the podcast scripts with chat GPT and then run it through The voice models for both of us and we've optimized ourselves out of the podcast. It's not even necessary anymore But you had to make a script for the podcast Well, that's the first phase we do that and then in the same conversation with chat GPT be like, okay Now that we've provided you with a script for a podcast make us another one That's it That's it
01:04:18
Speaker
But thank you guys for coming on. It's a pleasure to have you. And I will say that if you guys out there have better ideas than the one that we just talked about, please send those in. We freaking need them. Soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook while it exists at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.
01:04:45
Speaker
If this is not on Facebook, look us up on the Internet Archive if we still exist there.