296: The Slopposite

Brad, I'm 10 years into working from home this year. Really? Yeah, because I started when I left tested in 2015. Of course. 2025. Like, foo, you were the original self-employed, start a company and work from home guy. I invented this. Nobody ever worked from home before 2015. That's right. Nope. Only only shiftless lay about some people who are stealing time from the company. But like, so I've been going back into the office for the last year or so, a couple of days a week to help with PC world.

And it's nice being back in the office. And I realized like, OK, it's nice to have like an idea of what your your co-workers three dimensional faces look like. Yes. I worked with some people at Stray Bombay that I talked to. for hours every day that I don't think I would recognize if I cross them on the street because they were camera off people. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. As a rule. Almost all the time, man. Okay. And then even even in like a one on one situation.

Sometimes they'd turn it on a one-on-one, but often it was just like, because often you'd be sharing your screen. So it's like the thing you're looking at is a screen, not the other person. Sure.

Like more than the three dimensional representations of your coworkers faces and like going to lunch with people and talking at the water cooler or whatever. I miss the crap table. The crap table. Did you have a crap table at GameSpot? You know, it's like the table where people bring their crap that's too good to throw away but not so good that you want to keep it.

I think you could argue that maybe the entire office was the crap table. I didn't want to say that. There was a pile kind of over by the giant bomb pit at the last, back at the end of the CBSI days. Sure. Yeah. So there was so much stuff coming into that office that I think it was basically.

a kind of a crap office if you get my meaning because because like that's the like the problem doing these kinds of jobs where people were like everything you get is not something you have to spend money on like people send us stuff because they want us to cover it and

Even though I say no to almost everything that I get now, I often will go to an event and like I got a cool Mario Kart World poster when I went to the Nintendo thing. And like I'm never I don't want that Mario Kart World poster. Never going to use it.

I don't care enough about it to put it on eBay and sell it for 15 bucks for the person who does because it was like a launch exclusive at the Nintendo World Store. Of course. But like I would put that on the crap table at the office and it would go away and it would go to somebody who's like.

At the very least, their kid would be stoked to hang it on the wall of their room. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a perfectly good Mario Kart poster. Yeah. Like, did I have a Mario Kart poster like that when I was a kid? No, Mario Kart didn't exist when I was a kid. But if it had, would I have wanted one? Absolutely. And like the work from home, people need a solution for this. So I have an idea. Oh.

Yeah, I'm bringing problems today. I'm bringing solutions. Now, do you want to say it out loud? Is this a is this a billion dollar business opportunity? I do not think this is a business opportunity. Hang on. Can we spitball the can we spitball the name for your your crap table startup? I have a pretty.

good name but can we just can we just call it crappy oh okay well that crap dot io is is a possibility that's not bad or like maybe you're like a ripped from the headline situation like crap on them

Okay, crap over. I don't want to associate with those people. I don't think they're they're probably not. They're getting dunked on by the whole internet. It's starting to feel mean instead of hilarious. That that is the most that is some classic Twitter not to derail this. That is some classic Twitter main character action like I.

have not seen in a minute i gotta say though i i'm worried that maybe blue sky doesn't have the juice after all because i sent the link to that to my wife yesterday and she was like oh yeah i saw this day before and i was like oh crap yep yep not the first year okay so here's my idea

Yeah. Let's hear it. You know, we have those little free libraries have popped up all over all over the place. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think I'm going to start the little free crap table. Oh, OK. Yeah. All right. Well, they can't just be a table. You don't want it exposed to the elements like. Do I? Okay. Oh, you know what? Maybe that's what the crap deserves. Yeah.

Like, I think I think the little free crap table is just a thing that lives out in people's front yards. And maybe you put a little hutch over it if you want to make it classy. All right. But like you can put your old video card there. If you get a new mouse mouse pad, you can put your old mouse pad there.

Yes, the branded mouse pad was the first thing that came to mind when you talked about the crap table. Like that is the type of thing that goes on that table is like, you know, it is a mouse pad. It's maybe not the nicest one ever made, but somebody might find some use for it.

Don't pick up USB thumb drives off the little free craft table though. Yeah. Yes. Sage advice. Okay. Pop quiz. Hot shot. Oh boy. You're going to shoot me in the shoulder. No. Sorry, that was maybe a little aggro for this question. I am going to put your knowledge of petrochemicals to the test here. Okay. I'm back home. I'm back home this week for the first time since the hurricane. So there's a lot of post hurricane stuff.

To follow up on some of which, let's say, should have been followed up on probably about seven months ago. Okay. But anyway, one of those is how would you feel? How would you feel if there were like, say, somewhere between 10 and 20 gallons of gasoline sitting in cans out in the garage? Oh, are they like actual gasoline cans?

Yes, I mean, it is gas that we went and drew for the generator here that then didn't get dealt with. Things were very chaotic at that time, like flights were in and out, like there was so much to do that, let's say, nobody prioritized dealing with the excess gasoline that... Was just sitting around in cans once the power came back on. And is it just normal car gasoline? Have you added two-stroke oil and stuff to it already? It's straight out of the pump. I think it was 87 octane.

Okay. If I had to remember, which I can't quite. We did not put stabilizer in it. I know that's the pertinent question. Yeah, I was going to say that was the next question. So I think from the little bit I've looked up, and I've got a couple family members that are big into cars and stuff.

I will talk to them about it. Big gas fans. Yes, exactly. Some real gas heads around here. Yeah. But I wanted to see what you knew, but from the little bit I've looked online, it looks like we're in kind of a... Like a gray in between area where it's like everything I saw was like, oh, gas starts to break down at about six months if you haven't put any kind of stabilizer in it. But.

Well, let's see. We're about nine months, I think, since this gas was pumped. You're in the... Okay, so on a two-stroke motor, I would go nuts, I think.

so like a lawnmower or weed eater or chainsaw or something like that something that's real loud obnoxious makes a lot of black smoke okay because they deal with it better they and also you put the oil in there and it like it works itself out um people are gonna yell at me in the comments because that's that's like that's like redneck farm advice not good advice um territory yeah the manual absolutely says don't do that and to dispose of that

um i don't i don't actually know how you dispose of gas in the modern era because like i'm i'm i shouldn't say this but when i was a kid I think I know where this is going. Yeah, it got sent back to the earth, right? Yeah, that's where it came from. There was just a spot.

Where you poured the and that's bad. Don't do that. It's super bad for a whole host of reasons. But yeah, everything I could find about that was that you need to arrange arrangements with somebody who can dispose of it responsibly, whether it's the county or some private entity. I was gonna say the other way you can do it and you should never do this either. Cause like, well, okay. So look, if you want to make a fire.

it's people who don't know better use gasoline to do that right okay even i i look i'm not i'm i don't have a lot of uh Fuel experience under my belt. But even I know better than that. Yeah. The reason you don't do that is because gas vapors combined with air and they make a fuel air bomb and like the fire ignites about.

a foot or two out from where the gas is actually poured. My fuel air bomb is one of those phrases you really only want to hear in a military context. Often you see people with no eyebrows and it's because they lit their brush fire with gasoline instead of kerosene or fuel oil or something that's a little bit.

less explosive. So yeah, anyway, the TLDR is I'd probably find someplace to dispose of that gas and you might be able to just take it to your local gas station, especially if you don't care about getting the cans back. Maybe. I did read, I mean, this may also set off a number of comments. I kind of got the sense that the gas might still be new enough that we might be able to add it like a gallon at a time.

to the car tank mix it in with like good gas on top of like a good fill up from the station maybe just kind of so here's the there's some math you do here and the math is How expensive is it going to be to replace your fuel injectors versus just get rid of the shitty gas? It's not worth the $4 you're losing on the gas. I'm not trying to save the money. It's the hassle of trying to find somebody who will take it and get rid of it for us. It seems like it might be kind of a chore.

I bet you can call your local hazardous waste. They have a, hey, here's where you take the roundup and the... Because like that part of the country, I guarantee you that there's somebody in your neighborhood that has a shed full of Agent Orange or something really, really bad. That's probably true. Like if you call the people that have to deal with that business, you're like, hey, man, we just have some 87 octane here. That's like nine months old. They'll be like, don't we got you.

Mm hmm. That's their bread and butter. Yeah, it's going to be like the time I called poison control because my kid ate a couple of stocks, sticks of chalk. And I was like. is this a problem they were like well i mean she's gonna have a real bad stomach ache but no she's not gonna die you're fine it's just chalk it's the same thing as in tums or something and they laughed okay so all right

Well, all right. That's something to get started on. I guess I won't even bring up the fact that a lot of that gas is also still sitting in that generator, which is a whole other can of worms to deal with. Well, so I was going to say the nice thing about the generator is you can dump the generator out.

so you can yes you can drain you can drain it's got a it's got a drain on the tank but my understanding and again i barely know engines at all but my understanding is some of that old gas is like in the engine in a way that it'll be the fuel lines yeah yeah i'm like like i read it could be bad for the carburetor to start that up even to run down what's in there yeah but but so if you look at your um

If you look at the manual for that thing, it'll probably tell you how to drain the fuel lines and get like it. Here's the thing. When you crank that. when you crank the i don't know if this is an electric starter or a puller or whatever but it's a pole it's going to push a certain amount of gas through when it when it's like trying to start

And you'll, if you drain the tank and empty out the lines and all that stuff, it'll get through that before you get to the, like, it'll be fine. Okay. All right. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Don't worry about it too much. Plus it's, is it a two, it's probably a four stroke for a generator. It was quiet. You were asking questions above my head at this point. Well, hey, I'll look at the manual. What could go wrong? Yeah. Can we talk about car charging etiquette?

We can talk about anything you want, but especially that. So I my daughter's been at camp this week. We've been driving a little bit more than normal. And I was out and about. And I was like, I'm going to run by the car chargers to top off the car.

Uh, just because, you know, we usually charge all the way up at home and it's fine, but, but this week I want to just get, I want to get a little more juice in there, you know? And, uh, I rolled in and there was somebody with a plugin hybrid in one of the spots for.

The fast chargers. Plug-in hybrids have batteries that let them go about 20 miles, and they also have gasoline in their car that makes them drive the rest of the time when the battery's empty. God, is that really? Are the batteries really that small in a hybrid? 20 to 50, yeah. Man. It's just to recoup. It's just to gain energy back. There's a whole host of reasons why plug-in hybrids are not a great choice.

And the plug-in hybrids especially just add a bunch of weight to the car that doesn't really give you a whole lot of benefit unless you really only drive like 20 miles a day. And I just think anybody. who's driving one of those cars and parks in one of the charge spaces at like this was the this like it happens at the mall all the time you'll see somebody with a shitty bmw with a hybrid plug-in charger and they're they're just sitting in the space

That like somebody who their only force of source of energy is electricity could be using. Yeah. How long could that tiny battery take to charge on a fast charger? No time. And guess what? It's going to be there for four hours because those spaces are really good and near the front usually. They went to see a movie. Yep.

Yep. They're having lunch. I, I maybe swung by the gym, hit the grocery store afterwards. I, I just like, I wish they would put the charging spaces as far as possible from the desirable spaces. Sure. Cause like.

Like at Target, there's a bunch of level two charges, which aren't great. But like if you're in Target for two hours, you'll get a little bit of juice and they're free. But they're also the closest spaces to the shopping center because that's where the that was the easiest place to get electricity to.

And as a result, either people who don't have electric cars park in them or people who have plug in hybrids sit there and they're like, I'm going to get my 20 minutes, 20 miles of free charge here. That's right. Like your free charge takes me eight seconds to get. Just leave. Go away. Now, how passive aggressive are you looking to get about this? I look. Would you ever leave a note? Friend of the show, Gary Witte, used to have these cards that he carried around with him.

That said you park like shit that he put on people's windshields that like that parked like shit. I don't even know if that qualifies as passive aggressive. That might be actively aggressive. I feel like that's actively aggressive. I don't know if I want to go quite that far, but like. I feel like maybe maybe people don't understand the the level of hassle that they're causing when they do that.

Yeah, I guess if you want to be charitable, I mean, like this whole electric, whether entirely electric or partially electric vehicle thing is still somewhat new and maybe they don't know or maybe they're just assholes. Look, we've been in the valley before driving to L.A. and.

Some piece of shit with a giant pickup truck actively parks in the electric charge only spaces. And I'm I'm pretty comfortable assuming that they're assholes. Wait, hang on. Is that an entirely combustion engine driven truck? Uh huh. What?

Usually they have bumper stickers that indicate a political affiliation. OK, they probably rolled some coal on the way into that space. I don't know about that, but but it's never the Harris voters that are like, I'm taking the electric vehicle space with my gas engine car. Oh, look, it's a new era. There's a whole new stack of social mores to iron out over this thing. I'd rather just deal with the regular mores, please. The eels.

I realized why I don't like getting my hair cut anymore. Oh. And it's not because there's less of it than there used to be. Although, I mean, you know, that is you're doing. I started to say you're doing well for your age. Don't take the wow. Don't take the subclause for your age personally or anything. Wow. I mean, there are people fired. There are people 20 years younger than you with less hair.

than you how about that i mean that's true so okay so i realized that i go i used to go well okay i had the same woman cut my hair for like 20 years she lived here she lived down the street down the hall from us when we first moved to the city

And she did an awesome job with my hair. And it was just like, I just went in and she'd be like, hey, what do you want? I was like, I want to look cool. That's all I'm looking for. Every time? Yeah, every time. It's a joke. Just let her idea of what's cool at the moment guide your style. Nine times out of ten, it was good. So she moved during the pandemic and also she was getting really expensive because she got kind of like she got.

she she got good at a level beyond which i won't need somebody to cut my hair to be good at like she was doing like sergey brin's first wife's hair and stuff like that okay And I was getting a little priced out. So when she moved, it was sad and I was disappointed, but like, you know, it was fine. But what had happened was I used to wear contacts all the time, like seven days a week.

you know during waking hours so when i was getting my haircut at the beginning and like we were establishing what make me look cool looks like i could see what she was doing while she was doing it Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. I said, yeah, I know. I know as a fellow glasses person, I guess I see where this is going. Yeah. So now when I'm sitting there getting my hair cut by some stranger, I'm look at sitting there and they're like, Hey, hand me, hand me your glasses. I'm like,

no, I don't want to do that. And they're like, you have to take your glasses off so I can cut your hair. I was like, okay. But then, so then basically I might as well be putting on a blindfold for like 20 minutes.

I went through this exact same experience right before I went on this trip. I got a new haircut or I got a haircut at a new place for the first time and same whole deal. It's just like, boy, I am really trusting this person with my life right now because I can't see a thing they're doing to me.

I was like the only I told this guy who's like, what do you want? I was like, I want a little bit longer than you did the last time. And, you know, I want it. But I still like I need I'm an old guy. So I need to look like an old guy and have like a respectable grown up haircut. I can't look like one of those.

did like the broccoli haircut that the k-pop kids have now that's that would be bad i mean you could the guy before me got one of those and he was also about my age i was like you can't do that to me bro no way yeah so so So I'm in there and I'm like, I it's like I take off the glasses. I put on the blindfold 20 minutes later. It's like, surprise. What did you do to me? And how long is this going to take to get better? And.

I just want that. I want to get back to the make me look cool relationship. Like I miss that relationship. Yeah. Well, look, you know, a lot of things get more complicated as you age, it seems. This is why people start shaving their head, Brad. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Look, sometimes you just it's a trade off, right? Yeah. Now, does the beard get touched in this situation or is that all you?

So the beard trims have gotten expensive now because I go to a barber where they actually it's not like it's a five dollar add on. It's like twenty five bucks for a beard trim. And and but also. The trim that they do doesn't represent $25 worth of beard. Like their rule on their shop is it's one clipper length. And I'm like a two clip. I have like a side length and a bottom length. You have a complicated beard. I have a tricky beard.

So sometimes he does a little bit of touch up, but someday like today I did some work before I go. So I don't, so I don't get the question. Hey, you want me to touch up your beard? I was like, no, it's good. I got, I got it, man. A little, little pre-gaming. Also, one time he came down and like.

Came down on the top of the mustache so that there was like skin between the mustache, the beard and the mustache and the nose. The bald strip on your mustache. But it kind of made me look like like like the Spanish villain from a 1920s movie.

which I was kind of okay with. All right. I mean, that was a little, I looked a little bit dashing, but also I didn't want to have to maintain that. So I just let it grow, grow back. Sometimes, sometimes in order to look cool, you have to bring back the classics. It's true. I think maybe I'll start waxing the mustache on top of the beard. Maybe that's the thing I should do.

You've got the length for it. Oh, it's there. Okay, so I've learned something new about having kids. Oh, man, every day is a new adventure, right? Oh, you have no idea, man. I've gotten a little taste of it this week. Oh, yeah. You're with the nieces and nephews. You're getting that child life. Yep. Why do kids hate charging their phones, Brad?

I mean, do they actively disdain it or do they just like kind of neglect it without thinking about it? No, let me give you a sample interaction. Okay. Hey, child, you're getting ready to be out of the house for a full day. I spent a fair amount of money.

both at one time cost and monthly so that you could have a telephone that you desperately needed. And also that we felt was important because you're out doing things autonomously more often now. Yes. And, and knowing you, as I do, you all spent a further amount of money equipping your house.

to charge in any scenario we like there are there are numerous charging configurations around the house we got pads we got usb to lightning she's a she's a lightning because she says se still but because in your small hand small phone But yeah, so she has plenty of opportunities to charge. There's chargers next to her bed. There's chargers on her desk. She could use the charger in the living room. Chargers galore. Hey, child.

You're getting ready to leave the house for 10 hours today. Is your phone charged? Oh yeah, dad, I'm good. I'm at 30%. What? Right. What? Right. Dude, I cannot sit comfortably at 30% on any device I own. When I know I'm not leaving the house for the rest of the day. She's she's like, I called her. I was like, hey, you didn't answer your phone. I called you. She's like, yeah, I know. I ran out of battery. Well, how did you charge it? Yeah, it was good. It was 35%. It was.

It goes down faster when you're not on Wi-Fi. Like it lasts a long time on Wi-Fi. I get that. I get that. That sets a false expectation. So when you're on the cellular modem and not on Wi-Fi, the battery goes down fast.

Look, some people, this was the Boy Scouts that had some motto about being prepared. I can't remember. Be prepared as Boy Scouts. Right. There's also a bunch of stuff about God in there. Oh, of course. Yes. Look, some people have the be prepared mentality and some people just let it ride.

I want to think that she's like, maybe I need to get a charger that I can carry around with me. But then that's not charged either. That's just another thing to have not charged. I mean, if somebody is, what's the word? It's not like spiteful. If somebody finds...

the act of charging to be grading than I assume that having to carry a separate battery pack around is even more of a deal breaker. No, no, it's not. It's not that you know what the difference is. It's that the act of charging isn't grading. It's that there's absolutely no anxiety about running out of battery.

I see. Okay. This just sounds like somebody who has not really learned fear of a number of things in life yet. Well, well, from, I mean, and maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe for me, it's like. Oh, God, if my battery runs out, it's going to be like I'm living in the 90s again. Right. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe we know what it was like before. Well, I mean, there were some upsides to not being able to have anybody track you down at any moment all the time. Well, but for her.

She looks at the nineties and she's like, man, the nineties looked really cool. So maybe she's trying to go back to the nineties. It's like a way of having a time machine, man. I was like, you know, maybe this is a rebellion I can support actually. I don't know who puts, uh, yeah, I.

I hate to mark myself as this kind of guy, although maybe it was probably abundantly clear that I was already this type of guy. But every time I see somebody post a screenshot they've taken of their phone, you know, like people just take screenshots of their phones constantly for whatever. It has to be probably 80% or more of those photos I see that are like in the 30% or even maybe like all the way down to single digit battery. Just like how do you live like this?

Well, OK, the worst ones now that everybody has notches and the bar doesn't show the number when you're just on the home screen anymore, it's less bad.

But in the old days, when you could choose to show the number or not show the number and people would not have the number showing, that also would make me crazy. Yes. I know people who actively disable the number because they don't want to think about it. They don't want to obsess over it all the time, which I guess I can respect. But I mean, yeah, I get that. You know, I just like to you never know what's going to happen out there. Nice to be equipped for any possibility. I find. Look.

You're never going to have you're never going to be in a situation where you're like, oh, man, I wish I had less phone battery. Right. It's not like the phone gets lighter as you deplete energy from it or something. You're not making it last longer. I mean, I guess kind of you are, but not really. Just charge the damn phone, kid. Plug it in. I find consistently on planes, I feel like I'm the only person plugging my phone into the back of the seat at the end of the flight to make sure.

I want to get off that plane with a fully fresh, ready to go new battery. Oh, see, I never plug in on the plane. I just turn it off. Man. I always use other devices when you're, when you're getting off the plane, you know, it's like wherever you're going next, you might want more battery there. Wait. So you're like, like from the time you land to the time you taxi to the door, you plug the phone back in. Yeah.

Or just, you know, as we're descending or whatever. It's like, you know, if the phone's down to like 70%, what if it was 100 by the time I got off the plane? Well, yeah, but don't you just leave it plugged in while you're using it on the plane? I'm using other devices on the plane. The phone has just gone down from use at the gates or listening to music or something. Got it.

You're not plugging in the Uber, though, right? No, no, no, definitely not. I think I can trust the USB ports in the airline seats. I'm not so sure about the one on offer in a stranger's car. Yeah, that's a good choice.

I hate this friend slop name, Brad. You hate the name, not the concept to be clear. Yeah. Like Metroid brainia. I can get behind that one. That one's really gross, but it's good. Well, okay, I will agree with you that it's gross, but I regret to inform you. I have stated publicly for the record I am very anti-Metroid-brainia. You didn't like Metroidvania 10 years either, though. Oh, I never had a problem with that one. Okay, okay.

I don't know. I think Metroid Brainiere is maybe just like a hair too cute for me. For me, though, Frenzelop sucks because those games, like the gap between those games that are good and those games that are bad is like a million. really hard little decisions and tweaks and timing things yeah are there are there bad ones out there like i've let's see oh yeah okay so just to define what we're talking about this is a term that has been coined to describe uh

It's proximity chat games, basically proximity chat games like your $10 like co-op. I mean, I guess originally it was kind of just the horror extraction games like lethal company and repo and content warning. I think I have lethal company likes is what I was calling them before. But now it's being applied to stuff like peak. And to be fair, I think we've both read the aftermath piece that hit this week about the term. Yeah, which basically the gist of which is it's nobody's.

It's fine to dunk on friend slop as a name because everybody thinks that friend slop is a stupid name. Yeah, like even the person who apparently coined the term has come out and said, hey, I was just kidding. Although, frankly, if you were getting dragged for the dumb term you came up with, that seems like exactly what you would come out and say. I was just joking, man.

So who knows? Anyway, those games are awesome, though. Like, I don't know if I don't know if I don't know if that was a friend slop derogatory situation or not, but I love that. Like. I don't mind admitting that like that style of like between Lethal Company and Peak, like not just the horror extraction games, but I thought content warning was really fun. I would play more repo. Repo was great. Phasmophobia.

Kind of in that category. Yeah. And I think peak is the one that has convinced me like, Oh, there's like, there's something to this beyond just the, like that very specific low fi or extraction sort of vibe. But that kind of cooperative proximity chat, goofing off with your friends sort of situation is like some of the most fun I've had in video games in the last several years. I think for me, it's less of a genre and more of a...

um i mean like it it's yeah it's weird right because like we have a looney tunes one of those because peak is looney tunes friend slop right and phasmophobia is jump scare horror friend slop as is lethal company and i guess repo and all most of those others but like i i hope we're expanding into new threshold new new genre boundaries here um because like like i look at peak and i was playing with some friends the other day and

Like one of us was climbing a pillar. Two people were dead. One person was climbing a big column and I was standing at the top waiting to grab that person who was making the long climb. And then I heard the gurgling sound of one of those ice geysers beside me. And I was like.

Oh, shit. I got to look and see if I'm too close to that. I turned and looked and it fired and just fired me off the side of the mountain. And like, that's like 15 really difficult decisions that were made somewhere along the way that they were setting up. Not even that level, because the levels are generated procedurally, but how that geyser works had these incredibly complicated series of decisions in it. And it's really finely tuned and really smartly made.

Like slop to me is the like what Polygon has become in the post having real people working their world. I mean, I know there's like two or three people still working there, but. There's a lot of AI slop on Polygon now that's just generated crap. And like advertorial and stuff like that. I would love, this seems like this is probably a topic for this very podcast sometime. You would need to talk to somebody with very specific domain knowledge about this.

I would love to know what the algorithm looks like or maybe what the seeding looks like for generating something like the mountains and peak because like you've got those geysers. Yeah. And obviously it would probably be very easy to just do some like truly random distribution. to place the geysers, but to bias them in the way that they do. The geysers, the little handholds, the...

The pittons and the little ledges that poke out in the middle of a long other ledge. And I don't know exactly how to say that word. But yes, like the climbing gear that they distribute, you know, like it's all. It's all very intelligently placed, and I would love to know what the weights look like for the algorithms that generate stuff like that. I mean, I'm sure that's very established practice at this point after...

20 plus years of procedural content and video games. But like, I'm not still for like for a lay person, I would love to hear an explanation of like how, how those, how the waiting is, is done for that kind of generation. But, and yeah, that procedural generation stuff, it's not. Like you say, you say it's established over 20 years, but it really changes wildly on a game to game basis, right? Like, like on that game, they, they have to know how far like one stamina bar will carry you. And then.

Like the gaps between the average gap between standing spot has to be, you know, that that number minus something so that people can do it when they're carrying backpacks or injured or whatever. And like. I think they do prefabs. I like looking at it. I feel like there's some shapes that I see that are pretty common. Okay. Then they connect. They have connection points that things can happen on. Like they can have bridge to bridge or they can have vine to vine or, you know, whatever. But like.

The set of things that had to happen for there to be a long climb and a way that I got up faster another way and a geyser standing on the side of it. And then for the timing to work for the gurgle sound to hit. And me turn to look at it and have time to turn and look at it and pause and be like, well, I'm fucked before getting fired off the edge of the cliff and scream is it's really hard to do. And like.

The games that do this well, the games that are not friend slop, that are awesome things to do with your friends, create those situations over and over and over and over and over again so that you have like. I have this script set up on my streaming machine.

And every time somebody makes a clip in Twitch, it just saves that clip locally on my hard drive there. And then at the end of the night, it copies all of those clips over into a folder on my NAS so I can get to my main PC and go through them and pull out the good ones. That's a good idea.

I just I go through and I take like one out of 10 maybe and it goes into like a clip reel that shows at the start of screens or what screens or what I'm like need to be right back or something with peak. I just copy every clip that was generated. That's not a dupe.

and put it in the folder. Okay. They're all good. Yep. Uh-huh. And like that doesn't happen by accident. That is not slop. That is the antithesis of slop. Yes. Also, by the way, not to just turn this into like a peak fan podcast, which I feel like we're dangerously close to. I can do that. The last time we talked about this, which was like a week and a half ago, I think. Yeah. I think that game had passed the 1 million mark. Yeah.

It's past 5 million now. Oh, it's probably well past that. They sold 5 million in the first month, they said. It's crazy. But I regret to inform you the procedural generation has turned mean in that game. Oh, no, I had I had a chance to get one good. So we talked about this. Your daughter's solo climb. Just like I'm going. Don't don't strategy. Just go up is her strategy. That's the entirety of her strategy. So I so I had time to get one good solo game in before I left town.

When I got to the jungle, every single vine, not the tiny vines that you hand over hand on, but the big ones that you can climb up and stand on, every single one of them had spikes on it. Oh yeah. That was a nasty seed that day. Did you, did you get that one? There was not a single vine on the jungle map that did not have thorns on it. And I burned every item I had to get to the top of that mountain. We, we, so, okay. Last, last peak thing.

i was watching patrick and and chia at remap play yesterday and i think it was their first time really playing oh for real okay and it's so fun watching people discover the complexity of that game like they got that you can slide along the hand over hand vines but they never got that you can do the flying leap and actively actively like at some point when when somebody was like hey we should try to jump down and grab that chain on the way down

The other one was like, are you out of your mind? There's no way we can do that. And I'm like, oh, man, you like it's like when that hits, it's going to be so good. It's such a it's such a it's such a special thing. Anyway, peaks really good. Go by peak. It's great. That's right. It's the opposite of slop. It's the slop opposite. Okay, Brad, I wish more stuff was like modern glue sticks. I'm always saying this, but how do you mean?

Have you used a modern glue stick? Okay, this sounds really stupid. I started to say, I don't know if I've even used an old retro glue stick, but I'm sure I did at some point. Yeah, you used them. We used them in elementary school a lot. Yeah, I mean, we were way more, and I'm sure this is most people in the 80s, we were way more of the bottled Elmers.

Yeah. The Elmer's Elmer's goo. Yeah. What distinguishes a modern glue stick from a classic one? Well, so I think I think the rise of scrapbooking. Cause some like advances to happen in glue stick technology. Okay. Cause this is kind of exciting actually, because like, you know, they're there. I feel like there are so many different domains of technology and material science and so forth that have quietly gotten really advanced over time.

I have high expectations here because I bet there have been some glue innovations in the last 30 years. So, okay. So two things. One is it's washable now, the glue stick. So you can use it. You can give it to a kid. No big deal. Man, smear it all over the walls. Go nuts. Yeah, non-toxic. So if the kid eats it, also good. I think that was always the case, probably. The big one, though, is that when you put it on the paper, it's purple. And when it's dry, it's clear.

So it has built-in chemistry that lets you know when it's ready to go. That's cool. All right. And if you can't see it anymore, you've waited too long. Is that one of those pieces of secretly encoded information? I mean, kind of secretly, I can't focus as bad, but yeah. So it's like, and it's like a bright purple. So I didn't like, it's real purple. Wow. That's very purple. Yeah. Extremely purple. And then it just vanishes. Yeah. So I wish we had this technology for other stuff.

Right. Yeah. What do you got? Like, I wish we had this. I mean, toast obviously has this technology built in. Yes. Toast. But like, but like, I wish. you know occasionally when we order groceries we'll get one of those like pre-packaged like spaghettis or meatloaf and mashed potatoes or whatever just so that there's a fast and easy lunch when i'm here working from home and i wish that it had

Like a like a thing that changed color when it was done. And what if all food just turned to some really off color, like some off putting color when it was no longer like I think. Oh, when it was stale, when it was bad, when your ham turns green, you know.

I mean, that that does kind of happen. Green ham and eggs. Fair, fair. I started to say like, oh, you know, your strawberries turn black or something. But if you keep strawberries around long enough, they probably will do exactly that. Well, but but like the problem is that they don't go like. The color is really subtle until it's too late. Yep. And like having just had a bout of food poisoning caused by eating leftovers. Okay. Now I see where this is coming from.

Look, we had the same thing two weeks in a row, seven days apart, right? Okay. And I ate the leftovers that were from the first run, not the second run. Okay. At about day nine or 10. Huh. All right. It was bad. I did a bad job cleaning the fridge the week before, so it's on me. Can I ask what the food item was in question? I'm really curious. This is a secret. This could be a cautionary tale for all of our listeners. Hey, look.

The cautionary tale is clean your damn fridge and don't don't be like if the things like, oh, it's probably got a day left. Just get rid of it. It's not. I assure you. Interesting. I mean, I just I just finished some eight day old barbecue last night. I don't know if the clock is ticking or not, but I think barbecue is probably safe. Yeah, probably. Like what's barbecue is already it's been through the smoker. It's probably been warmed up in a pan. It's got some sauce on it.

You're good. Like, there's nothing in there. Was this some eight-day-old sashimi or something? Oh, God, no. No, no, no, no. I'm so curious. It was much more mundane than that. But, yeah, so... Having been on a gastric voyage of discovery recently, I wish that my food would just change colors when it's like, no, dog, you shouldn't eat this anymore. Okay, so I've had...

The basic exacto knife, you know, the the it's the narrow one with the angle blade, the standard. It's like when you think exacto knife, this is what you think of. Right. Looks like it looks like a medical implement. I mean, it's for crafts, but you could use it for medical implements in a pinch. Probably do surgery with it in a demanding enough situation. Let me ask really quick, actually, before you get into it.

Is X-Acto like Kleenex or Xerox? I think if you ask them, they'd probably have a different set of feelings about that. But this is a utility razor. probably is the generic term for exacto would be my guess okay so exacto is a brand name then it is a brand name what i mean for i guess maybe especially non-americans who might not be exposed to brands like kleenex as much but it's like the brand name that has become the stand-in for the generic term

A lot of Americans say Kleenex instead of tissue these days, for example. When I think of an X-Acto, what I'm talking about is a fine detail razor utility knife that has a replaceable blade. Got right. Sure. But there is an exacto company that makes exacto. A hundred percent. Yeah. Got it. They're really careful. Like the box that I got with my special exacto kit has exacto written on it. Yeah. Yeah. So.

I've always had the basic ones that cost like $3 when you go to any craft store. And when I went to, I needed some and I ordered them for Amazon because I didn't want to go to the store. And they didn't because Amazon often doesn't sell things that are like three bucks. It was like two dollars more to get a set of fancy exacto knives. Sure. And.

It comes with a bunch of replacement blades and different shapes and sizes, which is really convenient. But the big thing it comes with is two different handles. So there's like. a thinny and a thicky the thin one is the one i've always had before but the thick one is awesome for when you really need to like dig into something because it's much more comfortable in your hand and then the real thicky has like a screwdriver handle on it

so like one is just like a sized up normal exacto knife and then the other one is like you could you could just oh man put put this thing in your fist and whack it something i don't like the way you're gripping that blade that looks a little bit threatening

Look, you're 2,000 miles away. You're safe. Probably so. I'm not sure a blade of that precision is meant to have a handle that gives that much control on it, actually. I'm not sure. Or that much force. It's not control. It's more you could apply a lot of force to that tiny blade with that handle.

Well, I'll tell you, we use it for everything from like pumpkin carving to like working out like big chunks of like you can take out a big piece of wood or something if you need to carve something with that thing. I bet you could do some fine detail work on a pumpkin with that thing.

you well so you use the big one for the for the hole in the top okay and then you do use the little one for like the teeth and the and the like if you want to have like the pumpkin barfing you you know whatever whatever you do I mean, I'm not allowed to do that anymore. Nobody in my family thinks that's funny, but me. Do you just make use of the innards? I mean, like that seems like using every part of the pumpkin, you scoop the innards out and make that the barf, right? That's exactly it. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a classic, right? Yes. You can do things like take just the skin off with the fair narrow ones. You can have shading on your jack-o'-lantern if you want to get fancy. Sometimes you just got to treat yourself to the nice tools. Like sometimes you would just be shocked at how much it improves your life. Actually, is there a converse? Is there like a positive?

converse to you know that old saying about like a poor craftsman blames his tools oh is there a positive version of that like a like a like a like a great craftsman thanks his tools or praises his tools or something you know what i mean like i'm kind of anti tool fetishism in general. Yeah. Right. Like I feel like you like, like anything else that becomes a hobby.

Yes. Like a thing unto itself if you're not careful, right? It's like somewhere out there, there is a forum devoted to exacto knives and similar implements where people in there. It's really it's the forum sig problem. Like if you were putting. All the specs of your thing in the signature of your forum posts, you maybe have gotten a little too obsessed with the tools.

This is a bad idea, but I'm typing Japanese exacto knives into my Google right now. Some high quality folded steel exacto knives. Yep. that exit that exists alex japanese exacto craft knife with blade cover and this looks much nicer than my crappy exacto knives you're doing it right now you have to pull the ripcord god i should upgrade Oh, these look so nice. It retracts, Brad. It retracts. We had a real whiplash on my favorite sandwich place.

Should I ask what the favorite sandwich place is? I mean, there's a lot of considerations there. Like when I'm talking about a favorite sandwich place, I'm not talking about like barbecue or. Like a banh mi or something like I want just like a deli sandwich. Yeah. Like a counter you go to and you're like, hey, I want a turkey on rye. And then they make the sandwich for you and they wrap it up on paper.

What are the staples of the classic sandwich place? It's like an Italian hero, like a turkey and something, like turkey and cheese or turkey and avocado, like a turkey and... Yeah. Uh, what are, what are the other, like some salted meats, like some, like, like a, like a mortadella or bologna or something like that. Like maybe, maybe like a chicken breast if they're fancy. Yeah, I like a sliced chicken breast is real nice. Some sort of like a smoked turkey.

Like they, like they should have two kinds of Turkey. It should be like smoked Turkey or mesquite Turkey. And then just like a roasted Turkey. Yep. So if it's a really nice place, you're going to have probably a Reuben and like these days, maybe like a Cubano. Yeah.

And like, I'd expect him to have pastrami and I think Cubano is a San Francisco thing, by the way. I don't see that. I found one out here the other day. Oh, actually. See that, that, that might be too fancy for the kind of sandwich place I'm looking for. I want, okay. I want something that's going to put some meat and vegetables, or maybe just vegetables if you want, on like a grinder roll with some sort of sauce, maybe a little oil and vinegar, if that's your jam. Yes. And it is.

And a cheese and then roll that thing up, slice it into two to six pieces, depending on the length. And then you can take that. You take that out to the park. You bring it home. Everybody has a piece of sandwich. It's really good, right? Yeah. So a new one opened in like one of our, I don't know, it's not exactly a corner market because I live in the suburbs and we don't really have corner markets like that, but it's like.

the small grocery store that you stop at when you're turning into your neighborhood on the way home, but not a safe way or whatever. Yep. And he opened up a sandwich counter in the back, like maybe three months ago and made. The best sandwiches I've had since we moved to San Francisco. Wow. That's an old claim. God tier. Really freaking good sandwiches. He did a turkey pastrami that had shredded lettuce.

The ratios of everything are right. The shred on the lettuce is right. So that like you get a little bit of lettuce and all the bites. It has decent tomatoes, but not too, you don't want too good at tomato because you don't want, you know, like.

You don't want that tomato swaggering in there and hogging the spotlight. Yeah. You just want the tomato add some wet and a little bit of flavor, but too much flavor. I guess that's what a tomato does. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then like he had a usually like a.

the right balance on the cheese like you put like a sharp sharp cheddar on this it's going to be too much right but you need something to counteract that turkey and pastramo you need something that's going to stand up to that right yep and then The star of the show is that he made a roasted red pepper aioli at home, like grilled the peppers, burned the peppers in his backyard or on his grill or something, and would make this aioli.

that was like a a party in your mouth every time you put the sandwich in man is really freaking good i might have to make a pilgrimage this is you're making a strong case well so i got bad news for you brad i don't know i told you it was hard swings today He closed last week. What? Yeah, because because look, man. Yeah. How are you going to go on a podcast and describe possibly the best sandwich you've ever had and then say, hey, the sandwich no longer exists?

He he set up in the in the small grocery store that's low traffic and makes his money selling lottery tickets and beer to people coming home from work and then was in there 70 hours a week and was not paying his bills. So he had to go get another job someplace else. His last weekend was last weekend, man. And Gina went in to get a sandwich on like Friday afternoon. And he was like, Oh, I'm so glad you came. Cause like he knew us.

Right. It's been there for three months. We go like maybe once a week. Pretty good sandwich. And he already knew he was like, oh, hey, I'll get your sandwich going when he sees you in the line. Right. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is this is what I want. Right. And now it's now it's no more. And I'm my heart is broken. That's tragic, man. I wish I had I wish I had something more encouraging to say, but that's just. It's a deep and profound sense of loss. I feel right now.

Speaking of loss, we went to a sandwich place out here the other day. How was it? Expensive. Like Subway? It was good. It was good. The sandwiches were excellent. Okay. But they were like San Francisco priced sandwiches. Like 25 bucks? Okay. Wow. Maybe I haven't bought a sandwich in San Francisco for a while. There were like 15. Wow. There were 15, which is like, I mean, okay, maybe they've gotten...

Maybe they've crept up in downtown SF at this point, but I think of a $15 sandwich as a big city sandwich, except here we are in the mountains of North Carolina. Okay, so downtown by PC World's offices, sandwiches are... If you get an all vegetarian sandwich, it's going to be like 14, 15 bucks now. Okay.

something with some meat on it is 20 23 bucks probably okay it's been a while since i worked down there to be fair so yeah maybe maybe this is just maybe this is just another uh example of the rising tide of costs lifting all sandwich boats

But like, I think we all know things, things are more expensive right now. What's a New York? I mean, what's on a North Carolina sandwich, Brad? Oh, this was, I mean, kind of everything we just described. You get like the Dutch crunch. What's your bread's hitch? They had sourdough. I'm skeptical about North Carolina. This was a bakery, so they were making their own bread. It was a sliced sourdough. They had ciabatta. They were out of focaccia, but they normally made that.

Can you get a Dutch crunch there? I don't believe they had Dutch crunch. In fact, I had never heard of Dutch crunch at all until I moved to San Francisco. I think it's a uniquely, I think, I think everybody thinks sourdough is the San Francisco bread, but in reality it's the Dutch crunch. Yeah. I think that that has been my experience at least.

What kind of sandwich did you get? I got the Italian. I got the one with all the meat on it. Multiple salted meats. I did not eat again that night. A good sandwich for lunch, you're good. that was a late three or four o'clock lunch. And that would kind of turned into dinner as well. You know? So the, the other good thing about the sandwich place is that, that play, that, that, that guy carries novel.

chip flavors for the united states you could get an all dressed there oh good you had a ketchup chip if you wanted sure i mean i don't know why you would but that's that's fine i mean the all dressed are pretty good though yes yes that one the ketchup ketchup is fine Yes, I am of the mind that a sandwich cannot be consumed without some chips. You got to have chips. Do you like a Dorito? Is too much chip for your sandwich? I don't know. That is maybe a little loud for a sandwich.

Been kind of a sour cream and cheddar kick this summer or the queso flavor. It's a classic sour cream. Yeah. Yeah. This one just kind of petered out, huh? We're both getting the glassy look in our eyes as we think about sandwiches and chips. He gave us a pint of the aioli. Wow.

Because when Gina found out the place was closing on Friday, she likes the sandwich place more than I do. And he was like, come back tomorrow. I have something for you. Man, you guys were good customers then. Because she was like...

Look, when you have a sandwich this good, we got it the first day because somebody was like, hey, this new sandwich place is good. And then the next day, next time we came in, we were like, hey, your sandwiches are God tier, dude. These are really, really freaking good sandwiches.

and he was like oh man thank you so much and and like what's your name blah blah we had a nice little chat and then he remembered our names the next time we came in and and like so yeah he gave her he gave her a pint of the aioli and was like you gotta eat in the next two weeks we're like no problem

It's covered, man. Yeah. There's nothing better than becoming a regular. That now that we, I think we all agree on. And on that note, I think it's time to wrap up another edition of the tech pod. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you. Yes, we appreciate it greatly. If you're new and this is scary and confusing to you, we've done a few of these in the past when we get a big backlog of cold opens and we think they're good and want to want to use them.

But don't do enough podcasts to use them. Yeah, you just had your first cold, all cold open episode. Sometimes some weeks we show up and we have to fight over what cold open to do. Sometimes we have like three different ones. Almost all like the cold open. Cold open. A good cold open. They're to be treasured. That's what I say. Yeah. You can talk about anything for five minutes. Yeah, exactly. It turns out, even sandwich, man, I just want another sandwich, though.

we wouldn't be here without you all the listeners so if you want to learn how to support the show we're we're listener supported there's no ads there's no other nothing else it's just you all um so if you want to learn how to support the show you can go to patreon.com slash tech pod where for five dollars Less than the price of one San Francisco sandwich. You, too, can support two podcasters so that they can eat some San Francisco sandwiches.

And we appreciate each and every person who supports the show. Yes, we do. I mean, how many months of this podcast is one sandwich worth? Quite a few, it turns out. Yeah. Yeah. So again, it's patreon.com slash tech pod. In addition to the monthly patron exclusive episode, you get access to the fabulous tech pod discord where there is a food channel where people talk about sandwiches and other food all the time.

I bet there are some people in there with some good roasted pepper aioli recipes. God, I bet they're not going to be as good as this one, though. I should try some recipes while this stuff is still good so I can figure out what it is about his that makes it good.

You think you could track him down and extract some of his knowledge before he vanishes from the earth? Well, he told us where we told, he told Gina where he's getting a job. So I don't, I don't want, I don't want to out him, but no, no, no, no, no. You got to keep that to yourself. Yeah. Um, but anyway, uh, yeah. So thanks to everybody who supports the show, but a very special thank you to our executive producer, to your patrons, including Jason Lee, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippitt.

Hashtag bunny crimes, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamek, and Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer. Thank you all so much. Thank you. And that'll do it for us this week. As always, please check back next week for another edition of the TechPod. If you enjoy the show, subscribe to the Patreon at patreon.com slash techpod or leave us a review on iTunes because both of those things are great.

And then Q&A next week. Oh, yeah. So send your questions to techpod at content.town. That's an email address. That's right. Or post them in questions seeking answers if you're in the Discord. And that'll do it for us this week. Thanks, Brad. As always, a pleasure to see you, sir. And as always, please consider the environment before printing this podcast.