It's Ridge Racer! Ridge Racer! Hey! We're recording the podcast! He's off a little bit. Shut up! Good morning to you, wherever you are, because... is sitting right over there. I showed her my extension last night. It's Ashley Burns. Say hi to Ashley, everybody. You want to share memory cards? Always file an extension. Just do it. Just, it's...
It makes your tax day happen twice a year, which is who wouldn't want that? Who doesn't want more tax days? Who the fuck wouldn't want that? We all want more tax days. We all do. This way you can have double the tax. That is like the ultimate procrastination move that everyone endorses. You just file an extension. It's like, yeah. Aren't you supposed to have some sort of justification for an extension? Yes. How serious does that need to be? Well, you got to pay anyway.
So you pay like an estimate. So yesterday was tax day in America. I hope you all filed your taxes as good US citizens. Somebody's got to hold up their end of the bargain. And yeah, an extension, you can just file for an extension. And then you have to pay your estimated tax. You like ballpark it.
So then what good does that do? Is it what, just give you more time to like get your forms? So you still have to pay. So it doesn't mean that you can just like buy an extension and then like not pay until August or something. You got to write off all that Klarna interest. I wonder if you can write that up. That used to be a thing when I was growing up, they would always talk about like, oh, you got to have that mortgage interest write-off. And I was always like.
Is it worth it? Like, you know what I mean? Like, do you want a really high mortgage interest? Is that a good thing? Well, Bernie, it's a write-off. It's a write-off. You just write it off. Just write it off. Well, you got that thing? Just write it off.
All right. Another thing that gets taken for granted that I want to complain about. This is why I have a podcast. This is my therapy. I mean, that's basically what a podcast is for. Go ahead. So. When you have a kid, you notice it more because it's more on kid products, but it's on a lot of stuff. I don't like this system with the screw down battery compartments on devices.
Is it a thing for stuff that's not kid stuff? I mean, I know exactly why it's on kid stuff. It's because you don't want a kid like... scarfing down a battery going, this is some tasty shit. I'm glad you brought that up. Also, what kid is eating double A's? Like, really, honestly, if your kid is eating double A batteries,
You probably can't help them by like putting a little tiny screw on the thing. That kid's going to have problems down the road. I mean, look, anyone who's had to like hook Lego out of a kid's mouth is not willing to take chances. Pull beans out of their nose or whatever. in a household that you don't want kids to get into and has a special like way to open.
All electronics. No, but what's another item? Doors. Is this what you're coming up with? I don't want them opening doors. What's an item, Ashley, that is hard to open and has a device on it that makes it... You're still staring at me. I'm going to give you a big hint here. That's got a childproof opening on it. Okay, let's talk about prescription pills for a second, which have child-proof caps. Let's talk about that. Other times, like batteries and shit. I don't know.
You don't want him climbing in the laundry machine. While you were guessing, are children overdosed on antibiotics or something? All I'm saying is there are childproof caps on a lot of different things. You don't need a goddamn screwdriver to open all of those things. We've had childproof caps on stuff.
since probably what the 80s or 70s you know back before you know they gave a shit about kids and just gave them whatever they wanted i mean i i suppose hey kid you want some heroin uh but i suppose that it is potentially more difficult to engineer uneasy for adults to use, but difficult for kids to use battery cover, right?
Like, a cap is something that goes outside the whole thing, right? That's a fairly easy, fairly simple, fairly straightforward thing. You have the bottle, you have the cap. The cap goes on the outside, you do the pushy-turny thing. Right. All right? If you're looking for like battery covers for electronics, first of all, they're probably going inward. Okay. it's all a cap it's all a cap it's covered it's almost an opposite of a cap because it's going in
All of these things have like different shapes on them. They're all like different shapes of like toys and stuff like that. I'm just saying that it's not as easy as just. Here's a standardized cap. And I'm just saying, at this point, we should have some kind of mechanism or turny thing or something.
That can secure a battery cover that isn't a goddamn tiny screwdriver. That's all I'm saying. I will agree that it seems like the screws on them are designed to, you have to, when you order a kid, right, over the, you have to, in that same order, you have to include. Yeah, when you have a kid, by the way, your battery consumption goes through the goddamn roof. Way up. We actually switched over almost entirely to rechargeable batteries as a result because...
I know the rechargeable batteries don't hold a charge as well. They don't last as long. But when you look at the sheer number of batteries you'd be going through otherwise, you go, all right, we'll just deal with charging. We'll just have a charger with batteries ready to go at all times. Right. So we can change those things out every two weeks or whatever. Do we? Theoretically. Because here's the way I experienced that. I came up with the system where I have, there's a cabinet that we've got.
And it's got a 12 battery charger that's going at all times and tops them up. So whenever you need a battery, because like you said, rechargeable batteries, they blaze through them sometimes. You can go and there's always a freshly charged set of batteries.
There's eight double A's, four triple A's, whenever you want it. Unless... you're me and what you run into is a battery charger that looks like a boxer that's been punched in the face by bare knuckles because it's all these missing batteries it's just missing teeth everyone else in the house must Love that system because every time they go, there's fresh batteries.
Because I replace them. No, you know what I do? And nobody else replaces them. I have complexified your system a little bit because I reserve specifically two of those because I have a nightlight for my chickens. Uh-huh. And they're... kind of like kids in terms of the overall battery consumption.
I would be going through so many. It would be so expensive to keep that nightlight going if I didn't use rechargeables. So I reserved two bays of the battery charger for the chicken's nightlight at all times. You also do the thing that some people do with toilet paper where you stack the... spent batteries just on top of the ones instead of putting them in little slots. You just stack them on top of the other ones. You ever see when somebody puts toilet paper and they're so fucking lazy.
They won't put it on the holder. They put it on top of the holder, just like sitting there. I'm sorry, says the guy who will put a new toilet paper on the back of the toilet and leave the empty roll sometimes? That is a UK thing. There's no toilet roll holders in the UK. That is a... A strange cultural difference that we experience, which is that at least where we are in the house that we moved into, there are no wall mounted.
toilet roll holders. That's just not a thing. So we can go and we can buy one of those freestanding ones. Sure. But otherwise you just sort of have to stash the toilet paper somewhere in reach? That's too much. That's too much. Americans, they nailed it. You mount it to the wall. You do it one time and then it's set. You get the little spring loaded thingamajig in the middle.
You're all set. You're all good, right? That's how we can turn America's economy around, right? We got to introduce the rest of the world to this thing that we got right. This is the thing that we got right. And then the exports are going to go wild. I got to say, though, I experienced one other... One of the joys of sort of American consumerism today, I took the kids to an indoor water park. Hey, man. Hey, man. Hey, man. I found that indoor water park. I feel like I got shut out.
You did a little bit. Well, you were off writing for the day. I had a two-hour writing session with somebody. I didn't know it was only two hours. Last time you had a two-hour writing session, it went into the afternoon. So I figured you'd be out for the day. I have a digital calendar that has blocks. You think I check your calendar? Clearly you don't, or you're avoiding taking me to the water park. No, because I came home and said,
So I took the kids to this indoor water park. I found the water park. Which you found and suggested that it would be very nice for us to go to. So we did. What a great idea. Ghosted. You just weren't there. But. It's hard to explain this water park given where we live now. It's the size of like... A couple of Walmarts. It's like a three-story building.
There are water slides that go in and out of the building. Do you want to say the name of the place? Because it's not near anywhere where we're staying. I think it's called Kalahari. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. And so it's up in Round Rock, Texas. So it's like a very short drive out of Austin. And it's just this huge. The size of a hotel, like a big hotel. It's massive. And it's an indoor water park. They had- Indoor outdoor.
Yes, the outdoors closed at the moment. How do you close the outdoors? How do you do that? You just say, hey, outdoors, we're not operating. Outdoors, go away. Only the birds are doing that right now, I guess. An Italian American town crier that comes out and shuts down all the outdoors. Rings the bell.
Ding, ding, ding. Hey kids, stop it with all the outdoors. Outdoors, piss off. No, but I think it's not open until a little bit later in the year outdoors. So this indoor part is all year round. And it's cool because... I was going as a family with little kids and they had no less than like three different sort of mini kid pools for us to so we could get a change of scenery or like we feel splashy right now or we just feel like we're going to pretend to swim right now.
It was amazing, the variety, but then they had, like, a whole, like, Tiki shack like over near like one of the like grown-up pools, which I didn't get to experience because you know children But it was insane. Bernie, with your hand up, please go ahead. Yes, I don't have a question. I just like to make a point. I'm tired of hearing about the water park I didn't go to. Thank you. That's all. But I'm just saying like it was this. You're talking about it more. I don't want to talk about it anymore.
The scale was impressive. This is like that phenomenon where you try to tell somebody, oh, you should check this out. I've been watching this show for four years. You should check it out. You should check it out. And they're like, yeah, you should check it out. And they start watching the show and they're like, hey, you should check out this. Or they're a bigger fan than you ever were and they constantly talk to you about it and you're like, I showed you the fucking thing. Stop.
Stop talking to me about it. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of hearing how much you like it. Have you considered getting a bell and ding, ding, ding? Hey, shut up about it. Hey, kids. So we should probably talk about what's going on in the world. There's some really... There's some wild stuff happening. There's wild stuff going on. I feel like we have to mention the fact that now our home country...
our native home country has started to deport people to another country for prison. I know we had Guantanamo Bay, but it's like, Can we slow down? Can we just like... I don't know what else to say. It's like, are we just speed running this thing at this point? What the fuck is going on, dude? Well, one of the things that bothers me is the story about this dad that's in the news, right? Who...
is a US citizen and was mistakenly deported to this prison in El Salvador. And now they're like, oh, we just can't get him back. Yeah. That seems like something that, one, you don't want to do. And two, that should happen. How do you figure out, one, how do we fix it? And two, how do we not do that again? But instead... The sound of it is they're going, that's a great idea. We should do more of it. Remember, like it was seems like just yesterday, you know, recent history.
When somebody would do something, an American would do something fucked up in another country and would get in trouble, then it was like a national debate, like, Do we get them out like they're they're the Martian, you know, like we're trying to get them back and we got to put.
all the resources of the nation. They're getting them back and be like, well, they did commit a crime in this other country. And we're like, how many arms dealers do you want for this person? Great point. Great point. And now it's like we've rebalanced to the other side where we have... Essentially, we have prisons in other countries.
That alone is just like, what the how the fuck did we get here? And so fucking fast. It makes me feel like like a like a fever dream, right? Like, I don't understand how this is happening and how it's a debate whether this is the right thing to be doing. Delete your social media, everybody. That's all I got to say. Well, I mean, the good news. Let me tell you a little tip. I think we've talked about this before. You can request a backup of all your tweets on Twitter, x.com.
You can there's a thing where you can go and you can request a backup of all of your stuff. And the interface for that is better than the interface for Twitter. I've talked about this before. So if you don't want to lose like your history of tweets, if you want to keep that archive, keeping in mind, we've done the math before on how many books we may have written in tweet form. just over the years of spouting off random thoughts on
on Twitter, on social media, and it's a lot. So if you want to keep... that sort of archive, you can do that. You can download it. You can just download it straight from them. You request it. Within 24 hours, they send you a link, you download it, and then you have it forever. The cool HTML interface, infinitely more searchable. Yeah, you always went back to that.
to find an old tweet or something when you were looking for it because you can actually use it that way. You can actually go back and find the... three times you were right out of the 85,000 tweets that you wrote. That's what you can use it for. Which is really all we want, right? And let me tell you something about, I deleted my Twitter archive.
Years ago, I did this, and I had a service called, I believe it's called tweetdelete.net, which was a service you could get where I could say, I don't want more than the last three months of tweets out there. Here's why. Here's why. There's no purpose for your history of social media to be out there. No one is going to peruse your history to find out all the times you were right. That's all I'm going to say. There's no motivation for someone to do that. They're not going to do that.
You might be at a point in time where maybe make a plan for that stuff. What would you have that's out there? Because before it might be like, oh, somebody like might put a tweet on 4chan or something like that. Now it could be an entirely different consequence. Well, they're not going to be putting it on 4chan now. Right? Because I don't know what you've heard about this, but 4chan may be gone. So 4chan was apparently hacked and a bunch of it.
Source code compromised. A bunch of its user data, specific information, personal information about the mods and things like that, compromised. And so from what I understand, at this point, 4chan is just... down and may or may not come back at all. Which is pretty crazy. I mean, 4chan is- If you believe that.
I know. And 4chan has also always been one of those very troll-y sort of communities where they will post stuff, but if you believe it, you're an idiot. They troll people by lying about stuff all the time. Right now, it seems to be down and this...
as far as we understand, seems like it is why. So it might be gone, which is crazy because it is obviously a terrible place, but it has been a cornerstone of the internet for a long time. 4chan is like one of those places too where things start as a joke. And then they get taken seriously. Like I'm pretty sure the modern flat earth movement started on 4chan. Right. Like what can we, what can we get people?
to do that's some awful, dumb thing. I remember for a while, and I'm hoping, maybe this is a gut check, we can find out if this is reclaimed, but they were trying to make the okay signal, like a racist thing or a dog whistle. And I don't remember exactly what they were trying to make happen with the like the OK sign with your hand. Oh, right. There was a white supremacy, white supremacy. OK, but I feel like that originated there and they were trying to make that a thing.
It didn't catch on as far as I know, like some of the stuff that 4chan has done in the past, but they were trying, right? And that is, that's the kind of stuff that they do in general. It's a terrible place with terrible people. And I know that because... They tell me on Fortune, this is a terrible place and we're terrible people and we're terrible people. When we tell you that, believe us. But I do think you have to have places like that because you have a house, right?
The worst room in your house is the bathroom. It's the grossest room. The toilet is the grossest object in your house by far, right? You're never going to say, where do you want to have dinner tonight? Let's have it in the bathroom. You're not going to say that ever. It's the worst room. Everyone can pretty much agree to that. If you remove the bathroom from your house,
The rest of your house suffers because you got rid of the worst room. Because then what do you do? You have to take a shit in the living room? Right. it doesn't, you're not magically making the front porch. Where are you going to do that business? The horrible stuff doesn't go away. It's just, there's nowhere now to put it. Right. So let's not have the illusion that it's going to go away. Right.
you know if they ever come back that's gonna be like their their big slogan the toilet of the internet and it's like i mean the people that are on there too are like very brilliant and should probably not be interacting with anybody Right. I mean, I guess one of the dangerous things about it is like...
Then they're interacting basically with each other, egging each other on. Right. And then sort of it's a race to the bottom. Right. But I also think that there aren't necessarily a lot of other people signing up to. to be their, their, you know, their high point. Exactly. When we talk about the spectrum, Ashley, the entire spectrum is represented. It is the Roy G. Biv of the internet. Turns out, hey guys, we found the end of the rainbow. That's spectrum. We found it. We got it.
You found it. The big pot of shit. Was it a pot of gold? At the end of it. So actually, so I'm rude for you guys out there. I hope 4chan, I hope you get it back online. I really, I really hope you guys get it back online. Quick, before they find their way out. Good Lord.
It's like, what are they going to make their own forum on Reddit? Can you imagine? Can you imagine? I mean, how long would it last? The thing is, Reddit's had a lot of really weird, really dark communities, really messed up communities. What do you think is the most 4chan-esque?
subreddit. Watch people die? I would say WallStreetBets. Oh, really? Yeah. Just because it's so like YOLO, I lost my whole family's life savings? It's just financially focused and they're all hyper-focused in there, but they're also... People always associate it with the GameStop, the GameStop, MeanStop.
When they started making lots of money, I associate it with the people before that who would have bets where they would lose the most amount of money on options. And then the way they would pay their bet off is by publicly drinking pen. On Wall Street bets. I do remember that. Yes. And those people are driving. Some people's retirement.
Anyway, you got to have those places on the internet, man. You got to. You got to. Well, if you're looking for more nostalgia now that 4chan's down, great news. We have more. confirmation, it still leaks, but it's more confirmation that the Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake is real and that it is imminent. Joy. Well, this has been rumored for years, I think, years and years. But someone basically went through and found screenshots of this project on this developer Virtuos site.
And the, I think the, the speculation is that they're planning on shadow dropping, right? They're just going to like, hey, Kind of like they did with Fallout. Mission failed. With Fallout Shelter, right? When they were at E3 and they're like, hey, check out this cool little game. And by the way, you can download it right now. And down goes the App Store, right? As everyone goes, holy shit. So this game has been rumored for a long time. It's never been confirmed. But...
It's assumed to be coming as soon as next week in a shadow drop from Bethesda. I mean, I liked Elder Scrolls of Believing. That game did Red Ring 2, Xbox 360. Oh, really? In the same day. For me. So, you know, we have a complicated relationship, but, you know, it has its biggest fan and I'm its biggest fan. So I think everybody's line where the uncanny valley falls is different. Like some people like think Mass Effect and stuff is uncanny valley.
That's on. Only the eyeballs there. Yeah, that's on this side of the line for me. My line is right at oblivion. When you would go to talk to someone and it would do that zoom. Yes. I got creeped out. Like I got creeped out by that level of facial animation and realism. Although that was always compromised when the NPC would change voices halfway through a conversation and personalities and you'd be like, wait, what?
What just happened? I don't think I got that far. Oh, you know, but it's a fun game. One of the, I've always hoped for a Morrowind. I know there are fan projects that have been working on that kind of thing. And I believe they did add Morrowind to the Elder Scrolls Online. But Morrowind was such an interesting game because...
It was, at least for me, a very formative RPG in that it didn't have that sort of medieval European aesthetic. Like you land on this island and your version of fast travel is basically riding a giant bug. Right. You catch a ride on the big bug. Right. And it just had a very unique look and style to it and a very unique sort of... World building, loved that. Absolutely thought it was incredible. If you could, I'm going to talk slowly here, Vamp, so you can think about this question as I'm asking.
If you, in your history of playing video games, could remaster any single title that you had played in the past. What game would you like to remaster? Here's a problem. A lot of them already have been. Yeah, that's true. A lot of them have been. I would have said Star Control, but they already made that. Final Fantasy X, which I think they did a remaster of that. I've played that on eight.
thousand different platforms um Myst has been remastered a billion times to the point where I mean the the first version I played was the original when it came out which is a series of pictures and then you turn you know you want to turn to the side and now it's just a different picture
And, you know, now you can just walk around in the world of Myst. And so a lot of those games have already been remastered. VR versions of games are cool. Like I had played Among Us. I had never tried to play the Among Us. But it was so weird to be walking around inside the environment of that ship, which I had been navigating. That does sound really weird. Yeah, it was really cool to be able to experience that.
Did it change the gameplay significantly for you? Yes. No, it was just cool. It was just cool to experience. I like spaces. That goes back to Red vs. Blue and Blood Gulch. Some days when I was like trying to get inspired to write something, I would just get in there and just wander around on the map.
Just wander around. Just take a stroll. Yeah, really. Just look at stuff and say like, what's this weird looking Dr. Seuss tree and stuff like that. Where should we keep the toilet? I would love to get like a new Ultima. a VR Ultima or something like that. That would be pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to like, I'm trying to think like other games. No, no, no, no. A lot of them already. What about Homeworld?
They did. That's another one that has already been remastered. Oh, really? Yeah. Unfortunately, the remaster, they did it as sort of a set. It was like Homeworld remastered and Homeworld 2 remastered. but there's one game in there that they, I don't think could do anything with. There was, it was,
Homeworld Cataclysm, which was like an expansion or like a standalone, not quite sequel, but kind of sequel to Homeworld, they lost the source code for it. The source code, it's one of those games that was... lost to time because just no one saved it. No one thought that there would ever be a need to do that kind of thing. You know, like the lost tapes of Doctor Who or something like that. So this source code for it is just
They can't get it back. So that game did not get remastered, but the other homeworld did. And can I tell you? They're so beautiful. I have one show in the Rushi's library that's like that. It has no production assets. It's just the final version.
And that's all that exists anymore? And it's like, okay, yeah, never going to, I mean, chances are I'm not going to go back and re-edit any of the shows, but this one's kind of interesting. But you could. Could, could. I mean, I could edit this one too, but. I would just be taking stuff away. I wouldn't be able to add anything back in. Not making any more of that one.
Anyway, so I'm really excited about the Oblivion remake. You know, it's going to be fun. I'm going to hopefully maybe not outplay myself this time. Last time, I think I didn't finish it. because I went through every oblivion gate that I saw. And then there's a point in the story where, spoilers here, like 13 oblivion gates open, and I was so tired of closing every oblivion gate I saw up to that point. I was like...
Fuck this shit. And I just stopped. Repetition in those older games got pretty serious sometimes. Like, oh, you know what this mechanic is? You do this. Now just do that a hundred fucking times. Yeah, how do we pad out the time, baby? Now it's all collectibles. Yeah, it's all playtime, man. There you go. Yeah, Gavin, I think, had a run through that game too where he found a cheat code where he could duplicate objects.
but he duplicated like too many melons or something that rolls. Or like wheels of cheese? Yeah, something like that. And he had like thousands of them in one area, but he couldn't get rid of them because it slowed down. his Xbox whenever he got in that region. So he just had to avoid that region like it had been hit by some kind of natural disaster. It's been plagued. 4chan moved there imagine trying to explain that as the NPC in the game some guy came through
Made a billion wheels of cheese and now there's nothing we can do about it. And we just, we just live, we're just buried in cheese. Now we're in some kind of singularity. We're in a time loop. I would like to say a big thank you to today's Cheesemasters, Amateur Warrior, and Sarah Sullivan. Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at Patreon.com slash Morning Somewhere. All right. Well, I want to talk to you about something that's coming up soon.
There's been much demand to have more Scott on the podcast. And so the way we're going to do that probably is this week on the Patreon, we're going to have a Q&A. It's not one where we ask Scott questions, right? Why would I want to know anything? Scott has to say. So we're going to, on the Patreon, we'll ask for questions this week. for a Q&A this weekend with Scott. We'll turn the questions over to Scott.
on friday and then we'll answer some questions this weekend oh my god you're gonna have to record for like four hours it'll be amazing it's gonna be absolutely ridiculous it'll be four hours though of me telling him he only has two minutes that'll be great all right well that does it for us today april 16th 2025. We will be back to talk to you tomorrow. We hope you will be here as well. Bye everybody.